With This Ring — Mr. Zoat

Chapter 1: Dependency Day

Chapter 2: Welcome to Happy Hour

Chapter 3: Prod Zone

Chapter 4: Skived

Chapter 5: Exfiltrator

Chapter 6: Acceptance

Chapter 7: Initiative

Chapter 8: Clueless

Chapter 9: Tracers

Chapter 10: Exaltations

Chapter 11: Home Font

Chapter 12: Beta Male

Chapter 13: Revolution

Chapter 14: Inhumanity

Chapter 15: Contingency

Chapter 16: Reordered

Chapter 17: Transparency

Chapter 18: Displaced

Chapter 19: Half-hearted

Chapter 20: Mirage

Chapter 21: Minutes

Chapter 22: Insincerity

Chapter 23: Preparation

Chapter 24: Unusual Suspicions

Chapter 25: Gude-Willie Waught

Chapter 26: Gaolbreak

Chapter 27: Ex Perdition

Chapter 28: Homecoming

Chapter 29: Aberration

Chapter 30: Widdershins

Chapter 31: What Lies Beneath

Chapter 32: Doppelgänger

Chapter 33: Prayer

Chapter 34: Spring in Blume

Chapter 35: Stars, Crossed, part 1

Chapter 36: Stars, Crossed, part 2

Chapter 37: Hullevow

Chapter 38: Black Reign

Chapter 39: Carpe Tempus

Chapter 40: Date Night

Chapter 41: Fool's Canon

Chapter 42: Triumph of the Will

Chapter 43: A Star Reborn

Chapter 44: Demeanour

Chapter 45: Family Day

Chapter 46: Zigzag

Chapter 47: Bindings

Chapter 48: Escalation

Chapter 49: Undermined

Chapter 50: Titanfall

Chapter 51: Last Supper

Chapter 52: Falling Action

Chapter 53: Vega, Baby

Chapter 54: Tamanarama

Chapter 55: Control

Chapter 56: Headhunting

Chapter 57: Headhunted

Chapter 58: Do-Over

Chapter 59: Respite

Chapter 60: Authority

Chapter 61: Collegiality

Chapter 62: Rapprochement

Chapter 63: Resolution

Chapter 64: Converse

Chapter 65: Resurrectionists

Chapter 66: Alienated

Chapter 67: Pursuant

Chapter 68: Mandated

Chapter 69: Embattled

Chapter 70: Grind

Chapter 71: Rampage

Chapter 72: Retribution

Chapter 73: Gods and Mortals

Chapter 74: Excavation

Chapter 75: Foundation

Chapter 76: Clarion Call

Chapter 77: Judgement Day

Chapter 78: Z-E-R-O

Dependency Day

Dependency Day 1

next

Dependency Day

My bed feels soft. Did I go to sleep on top of the duvet? Stars? Did I leave the blinds open? I try to turn to the clock, but there's just more stars? I wake up pretty much instantly at that point and OH SHIT THAT'S THE EARTH! I see the Earth and it's a long way away and I'm breathing? I bring my hands up to my face. No, no space suit. I see the Earth and I'm breathing and I'm not cold or hot and there's no space suit? I'm in space. What?

There's something glowing on my left hand. I don't wear rings but I now have one on my ring finger? It's orange. In fact, I'm orange. I'm glowing orange. I hold my hand up to my eyes and-

-AAAAaaaauuhhhh!?

That's an orange power ring. I'm being kept alive in space by an orange power ring. Well I… I suppose I've never felt suicidal, so that much makes sense. I poke my other arm. Yes, definitely flesh, I haven't been turned into a construct. I don't seem to feel the overwhelming avarice that comes from the orange central power battery, so I guess this is one of the other rings? One of the ones that Larfleeze keeps in his cave? Does he know it's gone?

Fucking stupid. It's Larfleeze. Of course he knows it's gone.

Alright. I'm calming down. As long as I want to remain alive, I will. I can probably fly by wanting to move. I want to move.

Did I move? I can't tell. I don't seem to have moved relative to the Earth, but the Earth is very big and I wasn't trying to move that far. I don't want to go anywhere in particular. I'm still wearing my pyjamas; I can't go out in public like this. Pyjamas?

I look down to check that I am still wearing pyjamas. Yep, with an added orange lantern corps emblem on the chest. Guess the ring just changes whatever I wear to something thematically appropriate? Shouldn't it have generated an actual uniform?

I'm going to assume that that Earth isn't my Earth. If power rings actually existed and this one had come for me it would have found me in my bed. Unless I was dreaming about flying in space? I don't remember doing that and I don't remember seeing a ring choose a sleeping wearer in the comics. Would that work?

Huh. If that actually is DC Earth down there then I'm going to be the most out of shape Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!

Something happened. Everything's blurry. I think I'm standing on something, but I don't pay attention because everything hurts too much! My arms. My chest. My abdomen, my teeth, my eyes! How do eyes even hurt? They're watering and I'm blinking and gasping and all I can see is a creamy white colour and more black. I hug my arms to my chest and bend over. Oh, aagh, it's not just the pain, everything feels the wrong shape. The pain is being caused by something I can't fix. I don't want to-.

And it stops. My body still sort of tingles, like I've just gone from somewhere warm into somewhere cold and the veins in my skin are trying to decide whether to contract or not. But the pain is gone. My body still feels wrong though. I need to see-.

A thin orange line extends straight in front of me from the ring. At about four meters it stops and spreads right, as if someone was pouring liquid into a mould, only the mould is filling from the top left rather than the bottom. My first construct is a mirror. Sort of. Obviously it isn't reflecting anything, it's making an image of what it would reflect. It actually has a construct frame with a bevelled edge and is about three meters by two in size.

Whow. I'm looking good.

I've never been properly fat or anything, but I've never really taken to physical exercise and, well, no sense lying about it, I have been carrying a little weight about the stomach. Not any more. My arms are now about twice their earlier width. My shoulders are broader. My chest -I roll up my pyjama top- goodness, I have abs! I've never had abs! I run a hand over them. Huh, those don't feel like I was expecting. My chest hair is gone -wait, check- along with most of my other body hair. That feels weird. Feels kind of sticky. My face -the mirror shrinks and moves closer- is pretty much the same. My nose is a little straighter and if I can see this clearly my short sightedness has been fixed. No visible hair on my chin. Skin clarity appears to have improved. The hair on the top of my head is shorter. Looks like something Hugh Grant had in his prime, but longer at the back. Not sure how it's staying where it is. It should be flopping all over the place. Teeth are improved as well. Evenly sized, shaped and in good condition. I think I also look younger? Maybe, it's hard to tell when the image is orange.

I wave my hand and the construct dissipates. And that's when I realise that I'm STANDING ON THE MOON. Grey dust and rock all around and the Earth is visible in the sky. It's too much. I'm in a place only a handful of humans have ever been and my response is to drop to the ground, staring at the sky.

I'm sitting on the moon watching the Earth. I think the ring just rebuilt my body based on how I ideally want to look. Which really hurt. It must have been transmuting new muscle from existing fat. Or maybe even just making more meat from orange power? Should I feel bad about that? Doesn't everyone want to look a bit better than they do?

Shit. This isn't a dream. I never feel pain in dreams. And not enough is going on. I'm actually here and I have to deal with it.

Plan. Plan plan plan plan. Okay, first. Check that this isn't my Earth. I need to go home to do that. If there's another me here it's going to be weird, but I'm a fairly reasonable guy. DC comics don't really show much outside the US so I don't know if the places I've lived in will actually be there if I've somehow entered a comic reality. I can't plan anything else until I know where I am.

Now, how do I get there?

I stand back up. I go to brush off my legs because the dirt has coated everything it touched. Then I remember I'm wearing a power ring and I like being clean. A ring of orange passes over my body and the dust falls slowly away. As the ring reaches my feet I float a little off the ground. No sense getting dirty again just after cleaning myself. Now that's done, how to get to Earth? I have to want it to happen but I'm mostly just feeling apprehension about what I'll find when I get there.

Anal retentiveness to the rescue!

It's late at night and I have to be up for work tomorrow. I need to get to sleep and the best place for that is in bed! On Earth! If I don't then my schedule will be completely messed up. It's working! My need for regularity is controlling the flight!

Now to find somewhere familiar and see if it exists.

back

Dependency Day 2

next

Finding Eastbourne isn't that hard. Dropping down from the outer atmosphere I just follow the lights and the railway. It's always a bit further east than I think it is. I float down onto the station, hovering above the central track. At this time of night there's no one around so I take a good look. The building is locked up. That's normal, but then I notice that the fence between platform 3 and the car park is in the wrong style. Rather than having thick wavy uprights and a couple of crosspieces covered in chipped paint it's got thick posts with wire going across. The top actually has an overhang like they use at zoos to stop the animals climbing out, and there's actually a roll of razor wire. Who did they think was going to break in to Eastbourne fucking station? The display boards are wrong as well; they're actually LCD screens rather than the dot displays that are supposed to be there. It's stupid stuff, but when you're used to a place being a particular way it really hits you.

In a daze I float upwards. An orange night vision magnifier appears in front of my face and I can follow the route of the track. Hampden Park is still there. Polgate too, though it looks like they never moved the station so it's still at the end of the town rather than in the middle. Westham -the village where I grew up- doesn't exist. Looks like there's a proper station in Pevensey instead. Westham doesn't exist. Shit, I don't even….

Okay, okay, nothing I can do about it. It hasn't been destroyed, it was never there. The visor evaporates. My parents are probably fine. Next step. Next step.

Alright. I've still got no idea if I'm actually in a version of the DCU, but this definitely isn't my Earth.

I have an orange power ring, transmuted orange lantern corps pyjamas and I look like a bodybuilder. The ring-

"Ring. State remaining power."

"93% power remaining."

Woo. Did that speak out loud, or just in my head? Sounds weird. A power ring at 93% power and no way to charge it. That is a problem.

"Ring. Locate lantern."

"Specify."

"Locate the lantern this ring is paired with."

"None recorded. However, this ring detects a weak light-tether, possibly connected to such a device."

"Show location."

An orange compass point forms in the air, pointing out into space. I get the impression of a significant distance… I don't really know stars, but that's.. probably the Central Power Battery. Not picking that up then. Um, okay. As long as the ring is charged I don't need clothes. I probably don't need to eat either, now I think about it. Didn't Guy Gardner say something about that when he was on Superboy Prime guard duty? No, I shouldn't assume-ugh!

Come on! I spent more time reading comics than I did on my bloody degree coursework! Breathe. Woosaaah. What do I need? Money, and a power source for the ring. Probably in that order. If I'm not actually in the DCU money is far more important. If I am, it's a toss up. That place is dangerous. For goodness sake, an Imperiax probe destroys the capital of Kansas and a couple of months later it's business as usual. I need this ring.

"Ring. Scan planet for compatible power sources."

"None found."

Shiiiiiit. Wait, no lanterns at all?

"Ring. Scan planet for power lanterns, any colour."

"Will detected."

"How many?"

"Three."

That probably means Hal Jordan, Guy Gardner and John Stewart. And I hope I didn't just tell them where I am. Shit, I hope I didn't just tell Larfleeze where I am! No, no, can't do anything about it now. I doubt they'd just give me a lantern so what - Alan Scott! Alan Scott's Starheart lantern shouldn't register as a standard lantern because it was designed as a containment vessel. If this is Justice League Unlimited or something it might even still be in China.

"Ring. Detect Guardian-made containment vessels on Earth."

"Seventy-five found."

What?

"Ring, detect guardian containment vessels containing energy."

"Twelve found."

"Any in China?"

"China unknown."

This world has no China? That doesn't sound right.

"Ring, locate Eastbourne."

"Eastbourne unknown."

"You don't have a local atlas, do you?"

"No Earth locations listed."

Unfashionable end of the western spiral… Can't make a grab on the Starheart because I can't find it. If it even exists here. Can't think of any other easily reachable power sources. I could ask the Justice League nicely if they could put me in touch with Maltus or something. No, the Guardians would put the kibosh on that as soon as they heard about it. So, can't get a power source quickly. Money first then.

"Ring. How good are you at asteroid mining?"

"Construct strength is dependent upon avarice."

"Can we, assuming I want it badly enough, mine asteroids in this system and get back to Earth… um… with at least 60% power remaining."

"Answer depends on type and volume of material extracted and precise avarice levels."

Fair enough.

"Platinum and gold only. About this much."

I make a football-holding shape with my hands.

"And I want it as much as, uh, somewhere between my-life-depends-on-this and I've-been-looking-forward-to-this-all-week."

"Multiple variables decrease accuracy. Best estimate suggests high probability chance of success."

"Plot course to the asteroid in this system which offers the greatest quantity of the metals stated."

And I know where the asteroid is. It's… I don't know… what gravity would be if mass were money. Or something. There's no navigational display but I don't need it. I can find it like I can find the toilet at home at night without turning the lights on.

I might actually be able to make this work.

back

Dependency Day 3

next

The ring did all the hard work while I just grinned at the pile of thin disks floating next to me. Smashing a fairly large asteroid up, grinding it, sort of sieving it with a construct that pulled out what I wanted but left the rest of the lump behind and then shaping the metal into coins. The process was slow at first, but picked up speed after the first few disks were finished. I suppose I find it easier to want things I know I can get. It's too dark to see much of the rock, and the constructs are blinding compared with everything else so I have to look away. But I just mined an asteroid! The first human commercial asteroid miner!

I actually did five large rocks and a load of small ones before I registered that the pile was far more than I needed or could carry by myself. It's just so far outside anything I've done before! And kind of fun! I've just made more money in… I'm not sure, not much time… than I've made in my whole life. I think I'm actually giggling, but with no air I can't hear myself to be sure.

The disks, coins, are floating around me. They're about three centimetres across and maybe a third of a centimetre thick. I know that platinum is silver and gold a dull yellow but with the ring as the only light source they all look orange at the moment. And -huh- looks like I stamped them with the orange lantern corps sigil on one side and a representation of a lantern on the other. Not sure I meant to do that, but it sort of feels… right.

I should head back to Earth. I can just take some walking around money and leave the rest here.

I'm actually a bit reluctant to do that. Intellectually, I realise that the chance of anyone coming here to take any of my work is miniscule. But I always worry about whether or not I locked the door after I get to the end of my path back home. It could happen, right? I mean, they might just think the coins were odd and take a couple for some sort of analysis, but I put effort into this. These are my coins.

I'm being silly. Where would I even put them? Just grab some small rocks, fuse them together around most of the shiny coins. No one will know they're there. I'm still going to have to carry the rest with a construct. My pyjama pockets just weren't built for this.

back

Dependency Day 4

next

I'm floating over the Earth. I think that I'm in the upper atmosphere. I'm certainly close enough that the lights below form distinct huddles. I'm actually not completely sure what is beneath me. Picking out coastlines covered by clouds and in the dark is not simple.

So; money, sort of check. Power source, not check but I have some leads. Information, not check. I could try eavesdropping on local telecoms but I don't want to risk being found yet. Also, what are the chances that a random call has useful information? Clothes, not check. I think that has to be my next objective. Unless I plan to convert to Sikhism I need underwear. I need something I wouldn't mind fighting in and something I can wear when I'm not trying to draw attention.

Fighting. I haven't been in an actual fight ever. I haven't even been in a play fight since primary school. I suppose punch ups come with the ring but I've no idea what I'd do if someone actually went for me. Oh god, I'm like a slightly better looking Wee Hughie.

I remember from Flash villain pages on Wikipedia that there's a guy in Central City who does armoured costumes. I think his name starts with a G? B? Sounds Italian? It was a while ago. Shouldn't be too hard to find him if he exists here and I doubt he'll complain about being paid in precious metal rather than normal money. Speaking of which, I'm going to have to find out how much this stuff is actually worth. Not an immediate concern; I'll just overpay people.

Overpay a bit. I'm not going to get silly with it. That would just draw more attention. And I certainly don't want to spend all my time hanging around asteroids. That's probably only fun once.

A city full of supervillains is something I'll brave after I find a way to charge the ring. Some sort of motorbike protective gear should do in the short term. Should be easier to find. Actually-

"Ring. State remaining power level."

"68% power remaining."

Okay, that isn't too bad. My best lead on a power source is still Alan Scott. Other options I've come up with include trying to get to Maltus (don't know where it is if it exists), Qward (insanely dangerous) or asking a local super scientist (mostly malign hypercognitives, no guarantee that even if they try they'd be able to do anything before I ran out of power). Maybe I could get some sort of local avarice demon bound to the ring? Wow, that sounded stupid. And dangerous. I'll put that just ahead of going to Larfleeze and asking nicely.

If Alan Scott exists, he'll probably live in either New York or Gotham, if those are even separate places here. My knowledge of regular US geography is weak to nonexistent and now I have a load of fictional cities to work around. I think that New York is on the east coast near the top of the US but it's not like international borders are visible from up here. Under the knobbly bit with the French Canadians in it? In any case I need to find New York, or Metropolis if New York doesn't exist. Metropolis, because Gotham is a shithole full of dangerous lunatics and I'm not going there unless I have to. My need for information outweighs the risk of bumping into a Kryptonian. Should be able to get the information I need from a newspaper or a library without too much trouble. The Justice Society should have been big news and there will be some record of Alan Scott's public life. Clothes, something to put my coins in, then library. I need to go lower.

Waaw. Clear priorities must do something to the ring because I just shot through the sky like a very fast orange thing. I'm looking down on what I'm pretty sure is the American east coast. I've nearly caught up with the dusk line so it's probably evening down there? I can't be sure that the season is the same as back home, so really it could be late afternoon instead. Heck, I don't even know the date. Add that to the to do list.

There are about eight semi-distinct groups of lights that might be what I'm looking for. Is the Statue of Liberty in New York harbour, or Metropolis harbour? It was in Metropolis harbour in the Christopher Reeves films, but I can't remember for comic canon. I suppose either will do for now.

"Ring. Scan that-"

I make an arc with my right arm.

"-area of coastline. I'm looking for a large robed statue on a small island just off the coast."

"Matches found. Displaying most probable."

A construct forms in front of me. The statue the ring has found certainly looks like the Statue of Liberty, from what I remember from films and television series. As the construct extends down it fills in… oh, what was it called? Staton Island? I vaguely remember it from GCSE History. It's as good a match as I'm going to get.

Right! Let's go buy some pants! And some trousers!

Oh god, I'm going to have to get used to American English.

back

Dependency Day 5

next

I'm floating over the streets at a height of about ten floors up. The offices on either side are empty so I assume it's fairly late in the evening. A quick fly over revealed no LexCorp building and no Daily Planet so this probably is New York. I don't really want to drop to street level but I've got no idea where the shops I'm looking for are. Probably not in the central business district I suppose.

Not much open at this time of day. I really need to find out what local time is and get a watch. Finally, I find a place. Not sure if it's open for business, but there are motorbikes and a couple of vans outside and light on inside. I drop down to float just off the ground. I'm glowing orange but I'm not sure if anyone inside has seen me. The sign over the front of the building says 'Bluebeards Bikes' and has pictures of bones, bikes and women wearing snakes. Not the sort of place I'd usually go to. In fact, I've really got no idea what the protocol for this sort of situation is. I think I'll affect the manner of a polite but slightly daft Englishman. Act like this happens all the time -and around here it might-, make the purchases, then leave.

I push open the door.

"Sorry to bother you so late, but I saw a light on."

The man at the till is thin, has dirty blonde hair and is wearing a black t-shirt and jeans. The six other men are wearing quite a lot of leather, denim and metal. And tattoos. And they are all staring at me. Four of them were stacking rectangular wooden boxes in what looks like the workshop area. One is standing by the till and the last was flicking through a magazine by the rack. He drops it.

I'm pretty bad at reading facial expressions, but I think they look astonished. Two are actually gaping. The guy at the till actually looks scared. Right! Right. Super powered person shows up at business premises late at night. I raise my hands in a placatory gesture.

"No, don't worry. Heh. Not a supervillain. I'm just here to shop."

That doesn't seem to have helped. They're actually backing away from me. Which causes one of the ones near the crates to trip over.

"Are you alright?"

He actually cringes.

"I'm fine. I'm fine."

No sense in panicking the man I suppose. Oh, the lid of the crate he tripped over has fallen off, revealing… well, I shouldn't be surprised I suppose. Public gun ownership is supposed to be fairly common in this country. Everyone follows my gaze. I think a couple of them are hyperventilating. Hands drift under jackets.

"Guys, I get it. Second amendment. You're allowed guns. Might want to think about transporting them a bit more carefully though."

I drift back to the desk. The face of the chap there has taken on a rictus grin.

"Sorry for being a nuisance, but I'd really appreciate it if I could speak to your manager."

"Sure. Ah. Sure thing buddy."

He presses a button on his desk and leans forwards.

"Ah, Mitch, could you, er, could you come down here fer a minute?"

"Ooh, is that a shotgun? I didn't realise they made them that short."

"Yeah, no, that's fine, but you need to get down here man."

"Is that icing sugar?"

A door opens at the top of the stairs built into the side of the room and a overweight man in a black heavy metal themed t-shirt and blue jeans strides out. He's bald, but his beard is trying to make up for it. He's also carrying a revolver in his belt.

Goodness. What must the crime rate be like in this area?

"Lenny, what in Gawd's name…"

He sees me and stops moving.

"Hello! I'm Orange Lantern Two Eight One Four."

I float up to him and hold out my right hand.

"Do I have the pleasure of addressing the manager of this establishment?"

"Ah. Ah, yeah that's, that's me."

I grin, look at my hand, then look back at him. He blinks, and then starts.

"Uh, pleased t', pleased t'meet ya."

He shakes my hand very quickly, like he thinks I'll want to keep it or something. Then he just sort of stands there. What happened to American tradition of good customer service?

"I know that it's rather late, but I'd really like to buy some things. Jacket, trousers, boots… do you sell t-shirts here? A couple of t-shirts. And I'd like to pay in gold, if that's possible."

There is a flicker of a smile and his eyes dart to the till. "Um, sorry, but we don't take credit card here."

"No no. Not a gold card. The metal. Gold."

"Y-. Y'wanna pay with solid gold?"

"Yes."

His next look is more appraising. "Sure. Sure buddy, we can do that. You guys-" He indicates the other men. "-get back to work. Man wants to buy some clothes!"

Mitch was really helpful once he calmed down a bit. I found a jacket, boots and trousers made of… well, I don't know, but it was fairly tough and had some sort of armoured plates. I also found the price tags reassuring. They also had jeans. I have just realised that I don't know my current size. Huh. I float several black pairs of different waist measurements to my try-on pile. No underwear and no watches, but they do have a small range of offensively embroidered vests and t-shirts. I grab a small selection of grey vests.

"You couldn't point me in the direction of the changing room, could you?"

"We… Uh, we don't really have one. But you can use my office."

"Thank you. I really appreciate this. You're being a tremendous help."

I walk up to his office. A couple of chairs, desk, computer, playboy calendar, folders and a few personal photographs. The vests are tight in places I'm not used to my clothing being tight, but it doesn't take long to identify my preferred size. Half a second with the ring eliminates the imagery. My pyjama shorts make getting the jeans on a bit awkward. Turns out that my waist has exactly the same circumference, it's just made of different material. The constant sensation of cloth rubbing against my ring-optimised body is really bringing home the extent of the change. Once I get the boots on I have an ensemble that I could actually walk down the streets in.

"Ring, are you able to store uniforms?"

I remember thinking how convenient Lantern Stewart's costume change in Justice League Unlimited was. It would save having to lug heavy bike gear around the place.

"Affirmative."

"Alright, acquire that jacket and those trousers as 'light combat uniform'."

"Unable to comply. Uniform must be worn for subspace storage."

I roll my eyes and put them on. The trousers are even more of a pain than the jeans. But, plus side, I'll never need to struggle to get them on again.

I think that the ring must be controlling my body temperature. I should not be able to wear this much stuff and remain cool.

"Ring, designate this jacket and the outer trousers as 'light combat armour'."

"Designating."

My orange aura pulses. The colour and pattern of the jacket is eliminated. The body of the garment is now dark grey, with an orange lantern sigil across the chest and smaller ones on the shoulders. The trousers are dark grey and unadorned. The ring has also altered the fit: they are now both the perfect size for me.

"And send it to subspace."

My uniform disappears. My uniform. That feels odd to think. The difference between me and the superhero I'm committing myself to becoming.

I have no idea what I'm doing.

I keep the boots on. I should get some other footwear, or at least thick socks. They certainly aren't comfortable on bare feet. I walk back into the main shop floor. I end up exchanging three gold coins for the uniform, boots, three pairs of vests and jeans, and a pannier to put them in and small holster type bag which straps onto my leg to hold my coins.

They also provide me with some very useful information: the day just starting is Monday the 5th of July, 2010. Three years and change ago by my reckoning, though I can't think of any way to make that useful.

back

Dependency Day 6

next

5th July 2010

Early morning

I eventually found the New York Public Library by having the ring scan every street sign in the city. I really need to start scanning maps into this thing. I flew past a clock to get here so I actually have the time now. It's six fifteen and the library opens in three hours forty five minutes. I'm reduced to sitting on the steps and waiting.

I've still got the ring on but I seem to have managed to turn down the orange glow. I doubt that I'm in serious danger of getting shot dead due to lack of shielding but I don't know anything about the real New York. Either the New York of my own world or of this one. I do remember reading that compared with the real world comic cities have ridiculously high crime rates; that might explain all of the guns I saw earlier.

Does this library have publicly available computers with internet access? I'd tend to assume so but I've never been into a foreign library before. I assume it won't be free. Will I be able to pay in gold here as well, or will they be sticklers for procedure and force me to find a goldsmith or something? That'll be annoying, but at least I can get directions here.

I wonder if I can access the library computer system from out here? I don't really want to break in. I know I could, and probably without breaking anything or setting off an alarm… No, I can't take that sort of risk yet. If someone sees an orange light and thinks it's a fire, I'm in serious trouble. Can I send a thin construct in? Should be possib-. Wireless. Would a public library have wireless internet in 2010? Would it be on now? I gesture towards the library with my left hand.

"Ring. Access wireless data network."

"Access available"

That was surprisingly painless. No obvious construct generated, though the ring is glowing a bit. I rotate it on my ring finger so that the sigil side is on the palm side.

"Ring, acquire maps. I need you to have navigational data for this system and everywhere on this planet."

"Mapping data acquired. Navigation updated."

"Ring, tell me about Alan Scott. Firstly, does he exist?"

Because I'm boned if he doesn't.

"Alan Scott, born nineteen eighteen. Presently still alive. Currently resident in New York City."

Relief.

"Was a super hero operating under either the name Green Lantern or Sentinel during the nineteen forties?"

"Confirmed. Green Lantern began operation in nineteen forty. No further corroborated sightings since nineteen sixty nine."

"Compare available visual records. Was Alan Scott that Green Lantern?"

"High probability match."

Excellent.

"Ring, give me biographical information."

"Alan Scott, born nineteen eighteen in Gotham General Hospital. Presently still alive. Married Rose Canton in May nineteen forty eight. Marriage annulled in May nineteen forty eight due to insanity. No children recorded. Employment history. Railway engineer nineteen thirty seven to nineteen forty. This represents the most likely time he acquired the power ring and lantern. Reporter for WXYZ Radio nineteen forty. Volunteered for US army nineteen forty one. Released to act as war reporter. Promoted to news manager nineteen sixty five. Promoted to managing director nineteen seventy two. Retired nineteen eighty eight, though still maintains a minority stake. Currently residing in New York City."

"Ring, what was the source of that information?"

"Primary information source is website 'Encarta Populi'. Quoted information cross referenced with at least three other sources."

Looks like Wikipedia exists here, in a somewhat altered form.

"Ring, does the Justice League exist, and if so who are its members?"

"Organisation 'Justice League' exists. Official records state that the Justice League was founded in February two thousand and three, after its original members -Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman and Martian Manhunter- coordinated their efforts to defeat an Appellaxian invasion. Please note that the Green Lantern referred to was not Alan Scott. Current roster also includes Zatara, Captain Atom, Black Canary, an additional Green Lantern, Captain Marvel, Green Arrow, Hawkman, Hawkwoman and Red Tornado."

"Ring: confirm. Just 'Justice League', or 'Justice League of America'?"

Organisation full title is 'Justice League'. Though current membership comprises thirteen confirmed or probable US nationals to three non US nationals its UN charter makes no mention of nation of origin requirements.

Other important people in the setting next. Clark Kent, check. Bruce Wayne, check. Diana Prince, not check. I suppose Wonder Woman just never bothered with the alias because she definitely exists. Oliver Queen, check. John Jones, about three hundred possibles and I don't know the character… um, person… well enough to tell if one of them is him. Wally West, check. Oh. He's fifteen. Huh. Looks like this version of DC has the character timelines from.. ah, shit. Before I started reading comics. So, Barry Allen, check. Other Green Lanterns, triple check.

Chara- no, people who interest me next. Right. Theo Adams exists. Alec Holland existed, but there's nothing on Swamp Thing. There's no information on Tefe Holland or Rachel Roth or Timothy Hunter or Gemma Masters. Accomplished Perfect Physician? Nothing, but then I can't remember his actual name. Immortal Man In Darkness? I doubt the Chinese would tolerate that sort of data leak, so no replies doesn't surprise me. A search on Sonic Sally rewards me with a ten second clip of her masturbating with a piece of barbed wire. God, that whole thing is a mess. Worse, I don't think I can fix it without a time machine. One of only two times I ever cried reading a comic book was when her teddy died. Victor Stone is eleven and completely organic. Lonnie Machin is seven. Precocious little twerp is already fighting the forum wars as 'moneyspider'. John Constantine? Nothing, but I seem to remember that he uses magic to erase his records. Captain Cornwall? Two of them, and the older one is also the face of 'Golden Crust Pasties'. Knight and Squire? The Knight search gets me a series of tabloid drunken celebrity photographs, but none of them are dated this year so hopefully he's on the wagon.

Stopping now before I get TVTropes disease. Oh, too late, there go two hours.

I need to get it into my head that these people are real here. Thinking of them as fictional characters is wrong, and will result in me doing stupid things.

Alright, it's half past eight. I don't like phoning people I don't know, but I'm on a clock. How to go about this? Just telling him that I know who he is and that I really want his lantern will most likely result in him hanging up and me being visited very quickly by hostile superheroes. These are not people who can afford to take people discovering their identities lightly and once the Guardians get involved, well. Dread to think. I think it'll work better if I can talk to him face to face. Explain things. Let's face it: even at ninety-two he can probably punch me through a wall. I can't see him finding me threatening.

"Ring, interface with local telecommunications. Contact Alan Scott's home phone number."

A phone construct -a proper handset, from a phone that had an actual dial- appears in my right hand. Shit. There are a few people around now, and while I suppose they just assumed that I was talking on a mobile before a glowing handset will attract notice. Fortunately, my desire not to be noticed causes it to change to a flat mobile handset instead. It rings for a moment, and then:

"This is Alan Scott."

"Oh, um, good morning sir. I do hope I'm not disturbing you?"

I hear a sigh. "Is this about the New York Times subscription again? Because-."

"Oh no! No, um, sorry, um, my name is-"

Can't speak. My mouth and throat freeze. Can't say my name? Think fast.

"-is Colin Underwood. I'm writing an essay on the, the emergence of the American superheroic tradition. You were a reporter for WXYZ Radio during the earliest days of costumed heroes, and were there for the formation of the Justice Society. I'm in New York now. If it's not too great an inconvenience, I'd, I'd very much appreciate it if you'd be willing to grant me an interview."

There is a pause.

"Heh. Kinda long way to come for an extra credit assignment, isn't it, son?"

"Well sir, I've never actually been outside Europe before, there was a cheap flight. I'm mostly here for tourism. I had honestly assumed that you still lived in Gotham, or were… Well… Uum… Unavailable?"

"Don't worry about it kid. I feel the ol' axles creak every time I take a bend these days. Tell you what: give me an hour to get myself organised and I can speak to you this morning."

"Thank you sir! Oh, whaw. This is really great. I, I will see you shortly."

I dismiss the construct. Stage one, alright. Now to work out what to actually say to the man.

back

Dependency Day 7

next

5th July 2010

Morning

It's midmorning when I reach the front gate of the house of Mr Alan Scott, retired radio journalist, manager and director and former Green Lantern. I've used the time to study his history and rehearse my lines. I do actually want to talk to him about the early days first though. The Justice Society members really kicked the whole costumed crusade thing off. They weren't the first US super heroes -Hugo Danner had that title- but the primary coloured clothing NGO thing is their invention. My home has literally nothing equivalent to the beginning of the DC heroic age, and learning how normal people were affected would probably help me avoid making mistakes. It also isn't really covered in the comics at all. Marvel had that thing with the Bugle photographer but Marvel New York is condensed crazy.

Before I go in:

"Ring. Scan that house for Oan technology."

"Oan technology power source detected. Further materials consistent with known Oan technology also present."

He still has his lantern, then. I don't know if it is the Starheart from the standard DCU, but I should be able to adapt it. If not, then I've still got-.

"Ring, state current power level."

"Fifty three percent power remaining."

That's what I get for wasting that effort on dramatis persona enquiries. Mr Scott's house is a medium sized detached house in Inwood, a place I'd never heard of until I had the ring direct me here. I'm not sure exactly what I expected. Given his former occupation I assume that he's fairly well off but I suppose that since it's just him he didn't see the point of getting somewhere bigger. There are a couple of borders along the edges of the brick paved drive, but they're covered in gravel with only a few medium sized bushes planted at intervals. Adds some colour and I suppose it's low maintenance. There's no car in the drive but there is a garage so I suppose it could be in there. The gate blocking the drive has a communication panel on one of the supporting brick posts. I walk over and press the button. I hear a buzz. Ug, if this is anything like the one at work…

"Hello?"

Completely clear sound? And a screen? Mr Scott looks good for his age.

"Good morning Mr Scott! Colin Underwood here. I phoned earlier?"

"Of course. I'll let you in."

There is a soft clank and the gate swings inwards. I walk towards the front door and he opens it before I get there. Blue jeans and pale blue shirt. He still has most of his hair, and it is still visibly blonde. He looks physically fit as well, wrinkles aside. Really, he could pass for a man half his age. He extends his right hand.

"Alan Scott, formerly of WXYZ news."

I stand there for a moment. I am now talking to someone who was a superhero. And was a fictional character. It doesn't fit in my head. I'm just.. talking to a nice, retired American man.

"Colin Underwood. Pleasure to meet you."

His handshake is a perfect formal handshake. Not too light like his hand is acting on sufferance or too test-of-strength heavy.

"Please, come on in."

The interior of his house is light and pleasantly decorated. Maybe a bit empty. No, uncluttered. A single man lives here and he keeps it tidy. As he leads me towards the living room I get my first clear look at my revised face in a mirror on the hallway wall. Goodness, I look young. I think it's the lack of stubble, perhaps combined with my memory of the last time my hair was this short. I'm twenty nine and if I told myself I was a decade younger I'd believe me.

He offers me the settee and then settles into an armchair with a view out of the window across what I assume is a park.

"So, where did you want to start?"

Where do I want to start?

"I suppose I should start at the beginning. When did you first become aware that what might be called 'supernatural abilities' were things that actually existed?"

He gazes out of the window for a moment, and strokes his chin.

"Hmm. Well, thinking back, I don't think I was really in any doubt that things like that could happen. I grew up reading about Hugo Danner's actions in the Great War. 'The Mighty Coloradan.' You know who Hugo Danner was?"

"Yessir. The first American superhero. Tremendous physical potence and fortitude."

He face creases. "You know, ah, I actually met him once. He wasn't exactly… well, the superheroes were active when I started out with WXYZ, they had a clear idea of how they were going about things. They didn't always get things right, but that was an execution thing. They never doubted the mission. Despite everything he could do, I don't honestly think Danner ever really knew what he wanted to do with himself. Maybe… He didn't know anyone else in his position. The guys who founded The Society, even when they weren't working together, they knew each other. If things got kinda crazy, they needed to blow off steam with someone who'd been through the same stuff as them, they could. He didn't really have anyone. When he was growing up, there just wasn't anyone like him. That just isn't good for a man, especially not a man with the powers he had."

"Was meeting him the first time you encountered that sort of thing?"

"Oh, no. I didn't actually meet him until the early sixties. He came back to the US after spending some time in Brazil. No, the first time I saw something like that myself, I think it would have been November of nineteen forty. The Green Lantern held a press conference, and did a little demonstration of what his ring could do."

Yeah right.

"Nothing before that? I mean, there's been reports of low level magic use in US cities for, well, always."

"You hear things, maybe even see a thing or two, but you go home and you tell yourself it's all smoke and mirrors. And mostly it is. Someone like The Green Lantern, or the original Flash, or Fate once he came out of hiding? You can't fake that. It's happening right in front of you, and everyone can see it."

"You lived in Gotham pretty much the whole of the time Green Lantern was active there. Did you have a lot to do with him?"

"Not really. I saw him at press conferences, did a couple of interviews. I think we even went to a few of the same parties, but I couldn't say I knew him as a person."

"What sort of impression did you get of him?"

"He was a good man. Polite, maybe a bit stilted. Kinda, not preachy exactly, but a guy who didn't have to bother with a lot of stuff regular folks go through. Heh, why worry about cab fare when you can fly right over? He did a lot of good, and as far as I could tell it never went to his head."

"What do you remember of the public reaction to people like him going public?"

"In my experience people can ignore most anything not happening right in front of them. If a guy uses his powers for good, they'd say more power to him. If he uses them for evil, stick him in irons and throw away the key."

"Was there no negative reaction at all? I mean, the House Committee on Un-American Activities-."

"Jo McCarthy was a son of a bitch, if you'll pardon me. There was never any public support for that sort of thing."

Ooh, that's a sore point.

"Did you cover the hearings at all?"

"Wasn't my beat. Just as well, really. If I'd been there, they'd probably a'ended up dragging me out, kicking and shouting."

"Did you cover the formation of the Justice Society?"

"At the time I didn't have the pull to get that gig. Wrote a couple a'articles about them later. I think the paper put all that stuff online if you care to look for it."

"Do you remember the group disbanding?"

He seems to sag slightly. "Yeah."

"Do you know why?"

"No, but if I had to guess? Wonder Woman never got old. Come to think of it I don't suppose Red Tornado did either. But for the other guys? You're in your twenties, you're full of vinegar. You have super powers as well? There's nothing you can't do. Then, you hit thirty, forty. Maybe you got a wife, kids. A mortgage. A few injuries that keep you up some nights. You don't wake up quite so early and you try not to stay up so late. You want to fit in something like the Society as well as all'a the other stuff you gotta do? Good luck."

He looks at the ground, and sighs.

"Ah, it was a shame, though. They still got together sometimes, after that. Big cases. Mordru in sixty nine. Left the office to report on that one myself."

"What do you think of the Justice League?"

He perks right up.

"Those people, it makes me feel good just knowing that sorta thing can still happen, you know? I'd heard of The Batman before they all got together. Can't say I thought much of him. Heh, if it works out like that, I wouldn't mind being proven wrong more often. I didn't know much about Superman, at the time. Watching him since, he seems like a really good guy. Can't quite place his accent. Wonder Woman looks much the same as ever."

Wistful? Well, not that surprising really. Ah, time to get to the point. I feel a bit bad for misleading him like this. How to lead in?

"What do you think happened to Green Lantern's equipment? I used to assume that the first new Green Lantern was using it, but then the others turned up."

"Got me. Maybe Mordru destroyed it. Maybe it's in a crawlspace or a loft somewhere. Hey, maybe he put it down somewhere and forgot about it. Happens when you get older."

Fine, don't make this easy.

"Mr Scott, may I be frank with you?"

He waves a hand. "Go right ahead."

"Mr Scott, I believe that you are in fact the Green Lantern of that era."

"Oh? And what makes you think that?"

"Because your hair, build, voice and presence in Gotham City match that of the Green Lantern perfectly. Also, because this power ring has detected an Oan power source fifteen metres in that direction."

He gives me a measured look. "Your 'power ring'?"

I raise my left hand, palm open. "Ring, light combat armour please."

A wave of orange light passes over me, and in its wake my protective gear reappears. Mr Scott settles back in his chair.

"Alright son, you've been playing me long enough. What do you actually want?"

"That's simple, Mr Scott. I want your lantern."

back

Dependency Day 8

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5th July 2010

Morning

"Is that right?"

"Yes. I was thinking… Five hundred million dollars? Ten percent deposit by the end of the week, balance within two years?"

"I'm… Y… You want to buy my lantern?"

"Yessir."

I think I gobsmacked him, but his expression doesn't actually change much. The only things moving are his eyes and eyelids and he blinks.

"If the amount is insufficient-."

"It's not the amount, son." He rubs his brow. "What..? What exactly do you intend to do with it?"

"Well, first I have to check that it can be made compatible with this ring. Then, recharge. I don't really have any definite plans after that."

"Running low on power?"

"The asteroid mining I budgeted for, but you'd be surprised how much power internet background research can take. Ring, how much left?"

"Fifty two percent power remaining."

His eyes twitch. "Your ring can talk. So you're, what, a member of the Orange Lantern Corps?"

"That's right."

"They didn't give you a lantern of your own?"

"I know, right! If I'd been anywhere but Earth I could have been in serious trouble! As it is, this ring is tied to the central power battery on Okaara. It's far too far to commute."

I know that people avoid looking at other people's faces when they're thinking. So much of the run time on the human brain goes into analysing other people's expressions, you get measurably dumber when you look at one. He's currently studying his ceiling.

"Theoretically speaking, if I were not prepared to part with it, what would you do?"

"I'd try to persuade you to change your mind. If you were adamant… I'd just have to try somewhere else. Look, I'm on a bit of a deadline here. If you could give me some sort of indication-"

"Would you mind if I made a phone call?"

"Of course not."

He gets up and walks out of the room.

I think this is going reasonably well. I couldn't predict exactly how he'd react, and he seems more confused than alarmed or irritated. I had no way to tell how big a deal breaking his secret identity would be. I still don't, really. Surely everyone who had a personal grudge against him would be either dead or in their dotage by now? Not Mordru, obviously. Never found him interesting as a character but he was certainly powerful. Vandal Savage is probably around as well… and I didn't bother to look up either of them, damn it!

Mr Scott didn't strike me as the sort to have wireless internet, and stealing someone else's access while in his house didn't seem like a good idea.

I can just about hear Mr Scott's voice outside the room. Can't make out what he's saying. Tone seems to be conversational, with occasional rises for emphasis. Does he have a mobile? I would have guessed not, but maybe I'm being unfair to old people. If he's standing just the other side of the door, then it must be a mobile as there wasn't a phone in the hall. Or… I know that my ring enhanced my vision when it altered my body. Is my hearing better? I didn't think so, but if Mr Scott is a couple of rooms away…

The conversation stops. I hear another door open and close, then nothing. That's a bit rude. I get up and walk over to the window. Nice day out. Reasonable temperature -though that could be the ring-, grass in good condition, trees swaying in the wind and a nice view, even. The trees in the parks Mum used to take my sister and I to when we were little were usually packed together into areas of woodland. Here, one or two would stand in isolation with large gaps between them.

"Proximity alert! Will detected!"

That explains where he went. Understandable that he'd want his ring as well, I suppose.

I watch a family walk down what appears to be the main path through the park until the door behind me opens. I turn to see Mr Scott holding his right hand at chest level and flexing his fingers.

"Been a while since I've worn this."

His ring is larger than I was expecting. Certainly larger than mine. I don't remember what his looked like in the comics. Didn't he just cut a circle of metal off the Starheart container? This one sort of looks like someone stuck a tiny model lantern on it. It actually looks cheap and a bit silly until he moves the funnel to an angle at which I can see the glowing green core.

"Sixty nine, you said?"

"Hm? Oh, no. A few times since then. Not exactly active duty…"

He looks slightly distracted as he sits back in his chair. I stand at ease -thank you Scout Association- facing him.

"Can I ask if you've made a decision?"

"You know, I've had people after my ring before. Criminals, super villains, the occasional government official. I've been offered bribes more times than I care to remember. I honestly don't think anyone has ever tried to just… Just… Tried to.. buy me out."

"Is that a 'no'?"

"It's a… It's a… God damn it, what do you want me to say?"

He lets out a short laugh. Bemusement to amusement? I'll take that. He rubs his forehead with his right hand, then stops and looks at the ring again.

"So what does this… Orange Corps of yours do, anyway?"

Sit in a cave full of precious materials and eat rotten food? Go completely mad? Turn people into constructs?

"There are few restrictions on my personal conduct. I am empowered to act in the best interests of my sector, as I see them."

"So what exactly is the difference between what your people do and what the Green Lantern Corps does?"

"I have a greater degree of personal freedom while they are limited to law enforcement. A Green Lantern might prevent someone destroying a bridge, or repair it if they weren't fast enough to protect it. They won't ever use their ring to build one, even if the greater good could be served by doing so. An Orange Lantern should never be expected to clamp down their desire to help people."

"That so? And what would they say, if I asked them?"

"They'd say, 'Orange Lantern, what are you talking about?'"

"Not so well known?"

"There are not many of us, at present."

I don't think any of that was a lie.

"The Green Lantern Corps is run by the Guardians of the Universe, right? Who runs your Corps?"

I don't actually know. Should probably check.

"The technology employed in power rings was developed on Maltus. When the various political factions of that world experienced, well, 'irreconcilable differences', they agreed to separate. The Guardians -who favour the green light- went to Oa. The Controllers -who favour orange- remained behind. In terms of ideology the two groups seem rather similar, but when things get tense… Tiny differences…"

He nods. "Creating a green construct is an exercise in willpower, mental focus. Is that how your ring works?"

"No. The orange light responds to avarice."

That didn't go down well. He slides to sit on the edge of his chair and leans forwards.

"What exactly do you mean by that?"

"The more I want the construct, the more I want the outcome the construct is being created to achieve, the stronger the construct."

"And if you don't want it all that much?"

"Then it would be very difficult for me to act. With the ring at least. In extremis, the ring might actually prevent me from acting."

My eyes drop to the carpet. I don't know for sure that can happen, but it seems logical. Might actually have to watch out for it.

"That sounds unreliable."

"I… I suppose it is. I haven't had a problem so far, though."

"So what happens if you're short of cash, you walk past a jewellery store, see a valuable diamond? You don't have to will taking it."

"Money's not really my thing. If I need to buy something, well, I mentioned before that I'd done some asteroid mining?"

I take a single platinum coin out of my leg bag and toss it to him.

"I'm not sure exactly how much it's worth, but I don't imagine funds are really going to be an issue."

He nods, turning it over in his hand.

"And if you walked down a beach, saw a pretty girl..?"

Is he? Shit, he's implying…

"I'm not that sort of person!"

"You're a young man. Understandably, you have urges in that direction. Most people have good enough control of themselves that they aren't a problem, but you've got a power ring on your finger that responds to your desires, and from what you've told me, the stronger the better. And you want me to give you a tool for recharging it. Understand why I have concerns about this."

Fuck you old man.

"That could only happen if my sex drive completely overwhelmed my desire for social ingroup affirmation and intrapsychic rule compliance reward!"

"So what do you want to use it for?"

I don't know! I'm too angry about you calling me a rapist in waiting to think clearly!

"This world is dangerous. I don't mean getting hit by a car or being mugged or something. People deal with roads all the time and petty theft is well within the abilities of police. But if a fire throwing metahuman or if some rampaging monster or alien warlord or whoever it is today starts smashing people for fun, people can't deal with that. At Earth's current level of technology there are things most people are not safe from. I can, I can use this ring to make them safe."

"And why does it have to be you?"

"Because I went to sleep in a nice safe world with no aliens, no magic and no superhumans and I woke up IN SPACE, over this madhouse, with this ring on my finger. And I know exactly how dangerous it is around here with your giant robots and super powered psychopaths and the only thing that makes me feel even slightly safe is this ring. Your lantern represents the best way for me to keep it charged; if you'll sell it to me or lend it or rent it, then great! If not, fine. It's your property, but I would appreciate an answer now so that I can try and make other arrangements."

Then the doorbell rings.

"Mind if I get that?"

"Oh, go ahead. It's your house."

He walks out of the room and I try to calm down. Why the hell did he do that? I try to listen to the hall but all I can hear is my own pulse. I sit down heavily on the settee and make fists. My aura is back at full intensity. I've actually formed a construct chest plate. I can see it as a definite outline within the glow. Hooray for conscious ring control. Calm, calm. I run the first part of the first mission of Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64 through my mind as a relaxation exercise. It worked during my MRI scan. Step forwards, free aim at the guard's head, fire once or twice depending on difficulty setting, rush across the open area to the tower, shoot the patrolling guard and then move around the back of the tower to shoot the guard against the wall. Up the tower, pick up the sniper rifle and kill the two guards in the tunnel. And now I'm feeling better.

Then Mr Scott walks back in with Wonder Woman.

Leotard with star pants, golden tiara and double-ues, red body section. Boots. Goodness, I don't think I've ever seen a woman so muscular before. The breadth of her shoulders and the definition of the muscles of her arms are really quite pleasantly impressive. Her armour was made by Hephaestus, wasn't it? It isn't skin tight, there's definite depth to it. The outer layer is some sort of red material but I think I can see tiny threads of silver…

"Yes?"

Wonder Woman just caught me checking her out. Think fast!

"Bracers. Lasso. No sword or axe. Standard armour, rather than civilian clothes or the golden plate. A professional occasion, but not one where heavy resistance was expected. I'm afraid that I don't know you well enough to draw further conclusions."

I rise and meet her eyes. "Good morning Your Highness. Orange Lantern two eight one four at your service. It is my pleasure to meet you."

I perform a shallow bow. I think I got away with it.

back

Dependency Day 9

next

5th July 2010

Morning

She gives me a measured look, and then turns to Mr Scott.

"I hadn't realised you were training an apprentice."

"I wasn't." / "He's not."

We speak at the same time, and exchange glances. I make a 'go on' gesture with my hands.

"Colin here just made an offer on my lantern."

"An… offer?"

"Half a billion dollars."

Oh, so that's what Wonder Woman's does-not-compute face looks like. It's a lot like her normal face.

"I mean, you have these things lying up there in the loft and then some bright young thing comes around and tells you they're worth a lot of money. I wasn't even insuring it!"

"No, I don't suppose you were. Alan, what is happening?"

Standing at ease again, I watch Mr Scott as he talks. Less chance of looking at the wrong thing.

"The boy here phones me, says that he wants to interview me for a paper on super heroes due to my work as a journalist. He comes over, asks some questions, then flashes his power ring and asks to buy my lantern."

"How did he-"

She turns back to me, her expression hardening.

"How did you know Alan was the original Green Lantern?"

"This ring can detect power lanterns. There aren't that many to choose from. Plus, the two of them look identical. Tiny mask and a different parting?"

Mr Scott actually winces.

"How did you get a power ring?"

"No idea. I woke up this morning… no, hang on, last night, and there it was."

I raise my left palm. She looks at it carefully.

"What, exactly, can you do with it?"

"So far, flight, environmental protection, scanning, cleaning, construct creation, data analysis and this rather nifty thing where it can store my clothes."

"Cleaning?"

I face-shrug.

"The moon's dusty."

She goes to speak, pauses, and concedes the point. Her attention shifts back to Mr Scott.

"Do you plan on giving it to him?"

Million dollar question. I'd certainly like to know.

"It occurs to me that giving him my lantern would make him a very powerful young man."

"That's certainly.. true..?"

"And I'm certainly not letting someone like that loose without proper training and supervision."

Did he just say I could have the lantern if she agrees to take me on as 'Wonder Lantern'? She doesn't seem too impressed by the idea.

"I'm sure that you could show him the basics. Once he has been active for a while I can help him apply for a position in the League."

I raise my right hand. I don't remember a lot of what I learned in primary school but that one has really stuck with me.

"I'm sorry your highness, but that won't work. The lantern can remain green, or I can try to turn it orange. It can't be both. One of us will be out of power in a day or so."

Her jaw tightens.

"Colin, would you excuse us for a few minutes?"

You're seriously excluding me from this?

"Oh right. Adults are talking."

I put on my chirpy Edwardian ten year old voice and make the reins holding gesture.

"I think I'll go and play in the park. Do let me know when it's time for tea!"

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Dependency Day 10

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5th July 2010

Morning

Despite wearing the ring, I decide to climb the tree the normal way. Alright, the ring provides added safety, but I like climbing trees. Weren't many trees I could do this with when I was little. They were all the wrong shape or size. At this time of day the park is basically empty. The view over the green fields towards the coast is soothing. I changed back into normal clothes before leaving Mr Scott's house, though my vest appears to have acquired a lantern sigil in the centre. My panniers are on the ground at the tree's base.

Enough woolgathering. I still don't have a lantern. The local superheroes know I exist and it's pure good fortune that I'm not sitting in a science cell right now. From what Mr Scott told me I assume that Wonder Woman was part of the Justice Society in this time line, rather than it being Queen Hippolyta. Would she be prepared to tutor me? If I was a woman, probably. She took Supergirl on after all. But then, I'm not really a melee fighter, even taking my new buff body into account. As far as I'm concerned that's a silly way to use a ring. Would Mr Scott be any better? I don't remember him using particularly complex constructs in the comics and it's not like him teaching me how to focus my will would achieve anything useful.

"Colin?"

I look down. I guess Wonder Woman finished talking to Mr Scott. She's also switched to civilian clothing: blue jeans and a leather jacket obscuring her distinctive 'work clothes'. Does she keep clothing in Mr Scott's house? Because there's no way those are his.

"Yeah, look, Colin Underwood isn't my actual name."

"No?"

"Dad's first name, Nan's maiden name. I don't seem to be able to say my actual name."

"Really?"

Scepticism scepticism.

"Observe."

I start, but before I can get out the first phoneme my throat locks.

"Kkkkkkrrrr. Hhhhhucccccccccc."

Disbelief to puzzlement.

"Can you still think about your name?"

Can I? I try to bring it to the front of my mind-

"Woah!"

I nearly fell off the branch. I think I blacked out for a moment. My name is unspeakable and unthinkable. That's weird and a bit scary. I scoot along the branch and clamber down, trying not to think too much.

"My lasso can compel honesty. If the effect is caused by some sort of magic then it should remove the spell."

I slouch against the tree.

"Unless whoever did it was clever enough to put in a backup. Something along the lines of 'if the spell fails for any reason, detonate his head'. I think it's possible to survive your own death with a power ring, but you really only get one chance to learn."

"Power rings don't make you immortal."

Doesn't sound like she believes me.

"There was a zombie Green Lantern for a while. I'm not sure that he was fully functional, mentally, but he could put himself back together after being torn apart."

"A zombie Green Lantern."

"There's all sorts of Green Lanterns. Mathematical equation Green Lantern. Robot Green Lantern. Squirrel Green Lantern. Plant Green Lantern. Planet Green Lantern. One of them was a zombie. I don't remember why."

She dismisses the matter with a shake of her head.

"Alan tells me that he hasn't actually seen you create a construct yet."

"I made an armoured plate earlier when he suggested I could… that this ring could be dangerous."

"Apparently he didn't notice. Would you mind showing me?"

"Yes, actually. Constructs take power, and I still don't have a charge point."

"I… have a decision to make, and I need to know for certain that you have a power ring and that this isn't a trick of some kind."

How about a different ring function?

"What language do you hear me speak?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Power rings have a universal translator function. Your first language would be close to Classical Greek, right?"

She thinks, and then reaches up behind her ear and presses something. When she speaks, her accent is different.

"Alright, say something."

What to say? Aaagh! I've spoken English my whole life, then someone asks that… I want something that sounds good. Ah, an idea… Deep breath:

"I am the very model of a modern Lantern warrior,

I'm combination futurist, combatant and explorier,

I'll rewrite every schema pattern, thought and every moral code,

So I may better serve the sector in which I make my abode."

She raises an eyebrow, and smirks.

"Explorier?"

"I had a minute!"

"The translator is working."

"Really? 'Cause I'm pretty sure Classical Greek doesn't have words for some of those things."

"Themysciran Greek isn't exactly Classical Greek. I heard the tune and the words, though your ring wasn't able to make the words rhyme in both languages."

I turn my left hand palm up and stroke it with my right index finger.

"Don't listen to the mean woman. You did an excellent job."

A smile, and her hand pushes her hair back.

"You told Alan that you come from a parallel universe."

"Yep."

"Why do you think that?"

I shrug.

"Some places that should be there aren't. Some things exist that shouldn't."

I realise that I'm talking to a golem. Clay given life by both Titanic and Olympian magic, right?

"When you're out of my field of vision, I could be back home. Er, I've never actually been to my parallel's New York but-"

I wave at the scenery.

"-it all looks pretty normal. Then I look at my finger, and there's a magic alien ring. I look at you and there's a magical demigoddess. This is… This shouldn't be possible, but it's happening."

"Do you think it might be something else? If your mind has a block preventing you from using your own name…"

"If I was crazy, how would I tell?"

"I just meant that your memory of events might have been altered."

"It's possible, but, why? And anyway, these are complex memories I'm talking about, not just a couple of events. Wouldn't that be difficult to create artificially?"

She folds her arms across her chest.

"I only have your word for it that any of this is happening."

"True. Hmh. One of the Greenies could probably track me. Follow the orange trail back to where I first appeared. If it starts suddenly in space and there's no sign of faster than light travel, that would imply I appeared as I said I did."

"Or teleported."

"Pretty much every form of teleportation I know of leaves signs that a power ring can detect."

"Your world has teleportation?"

"No. I asked this ring about it."

We stand in silence for several moments.

"What did you and Mr Scott decide?"

She shifts her weight slightly.

"He wants to make sure that you learn to use that ring responsibly."

"And I'd like to learn to use this ring responsibly."

We both stare at the ground for a moment. I rub my face with both hands.

"Alright. Mr Scott will only give me the lantern if I get supervised training. You can provide that training, but the problems involved in dealing with people in our weight class mean you don't want to risk it with someone you don't know. What do I have to do to convince you to take the risk?"

"I'm not sure."

"I could just have taken it, you know? He doesn't normally wear his ring. I could have just locked on, ploughed through the house and been on the other side of the galaxy before anyone could have stopped me."

She shrugs.

"So, you're not a thief."

"I need the lantern. Take it away and I've got maybe a day of use left before I need a new power point."

"And?"

"Orange is the colour of avarice. I want the lantern more than anything you're likely to ask in return. So, ask. What do you want?"

"If avarice is that important to you, why would you stay true to your word?"

"Same reason I don't steal. Compared to what I lose, what I gain, it doesn't make sense."

She looks back towards Mr Scott's house, then back to the ground. It's not working! Wait, something… I don't know if this is…

"Back home, we don't have… gods. Not ones that interact with the world in any measurable fashion. Ha, I guess this place is going to be hard on my atheism. I remember hearing a radio program about ancient Greek religion."

"If the gods do not exist in your world then I doubt it would be accurate."

"Mm. One of the things it said was that an oath was considered most sacred when sworn to Gaea."

Now she's looking at me. Anger? No, maybe alarm?

"Would I be right in assuming that the consequences of breaking that sort of oath would be a bit more-"

I make a circling motion with my right hand.

"-apparent, here?"

"Not if you just spoke it. But the consequences of breaking a sanctified oath to Gaea are utterly devastating."

"Sufficiently devastating that you wouldn't worry about me breaking my word?"

I surprised her. I think she's actually thinking about it.

"It… it would depend on what exactly you agreed to."

I shrug, raising my palms to the sky.

"What do you want me to agree to?"

For a moment I think that she is walking away, but she turns back. Wonder Woman is pacing? At least she's taking it seriously. I can feel myself relaxing as I get closer to getting hold of the lantern.

"You'll have to agree to follow orders."

"Whose?"

"Mine, or those of a single individual I designate."

"Not suicidal orders. I don't mind danger, but I'm not dying because someone told me to."

She nods.

"Alright. You also can't leave the planet."

!My coins!

"Can we make it star system? I'm not planning to do a runner but I do need to practise space flight. Oh, voluntarily, voluntarily leave. Just in case I'm forced to."

She thinks, trying to spot a loophole I'm not trying to create.

"Acceptable."

"For how long? I mean, if you still can't trust me after working with me for six months..?"

"A year. One year from the time you make the oath."

To quote Urdnot Wrex, worse than I'd hoped, better than I'd feared.

"One other thing. I want to be able to nullify the oath by giving up the lantern. Returning it to Mr Scott."

Eyes narrow, suspicions raised again. I raise my hands.

"It might not even be possible for me to use it. I don't want to be stuck following orders with no ring."

She doesn't seem happy about it, but it isn't that unreasonable. A shallow nod. A year's freedom for the freedom of the universe. It's a fair trade.

"So, do I need to go somewhere in particular, or can I just do this here?"

"There's only one place to sanctify this kind of oath. We'll need to go to the Temple of Gaea. On Themyscira."

Oooh. Not sure…

"Am… I… allowed… there..?"

"In the Temple itself, yes, if I am with you. Nowhere else. It should be empty at this time of day, but I will make sure of it before calling for you."

Right then. I stand up.

"Are we flying there under our own power?"

"No, we'll take my jet. Follow me."

And she flies into the air, towards Manhattan Island. No force field, no engine thrust, just 'fuck you, physics'. That's just…

I retrieve my armour, pick up my bag and follow.

back

Dependency Day 11

next

5th July 2010

Morning

Apparently Staten Island isn't the thing with the Statue of Liberty on it. I didn't even have to ask the ring; I looked at the Statue as we flew over it and wanted to know and I suddenly knew. The island with the Statue on it is called Liberty Island. Staten Island is a lump of city just off the coast, connected by bridge -which we also flew over- and ferry -which we flew near-. Wonder Woman didn't seem bothered about people seeing us, and I doubt they could identify us at that distance.

We aren't next to each other, I'm definitely following her. After we took off I copied her swimmer style flying position before realising that for me there was no advantage in doing so. I tried creating a chair construct to sit on and then a lilo to lay on, but both felt weird so I'm just Black Adamming it and flying standing straight up. Still feels a bit strange. I suppose after so much exposure to the swimmer pose it just seems like 'the way'. While my environmental shield prevents me from feeling the wind my escort.. no, bad word… guardian? From the way her hair is moving I think she's getting full air resistance. Probably why she hasn't tried to speak to me since we took off. Must make having hair that long really awkward.

I spot the WayneTech logo on the side of the building from the beginning of the upper bay. Do normal world businesses have signs that huge? Hm, LexCorp and Wayne Enterprises. I wonder if there are more large family owned businesses here, or the comics just focus on oddities? As we approach the building we gain height, coming in from about twenty metres above the roof. It looks empty, until I have the ring scan it and give me an augmented reality view. I see its outline, picked out in orange. That's an invisible jet. There is an invisible jet parked on the roof. Are invisible things common around here? Amazons never struck me as technophiles but I suppose the purple ray? Was that a technological artefact or an arcane device? The invisibility might be magic in origin but I can clearly see the jet engines.

As Wonder Woman drops swiftly towards the roof surface I sink lower and circle around the plane, before approaching the side door.

"You can see it, can't you?"

"I have a power ring."

I can see outlines, but I'm not an engineer and I'm not sure what some of the things I see are. I land and turn to her.

"I'm curious, how does… what?"

She's giving me an odd look.

"Your eyes are glowing."

I raise my right hand and hold it over my right eye. Can't see any orange glow.

"Yes? Don't the Green Lanterns' eyes glow?"

"Human eyes aren't normally orange."

She floats over to the outline of the plane and places her right hand on the hull. The door extrudes slightly and then splits apart, sliding to both sides of the aperture. There is now a weird disconnect between the exterior surface which looks like an orange ghost-jet and the inside which I can see clearly.

"The flight should take about four hours."

She steps inside and heads to the cockpit. I follow her. The inside is part aeroplane and part spaceship. As I am qualified to fly neither I settle for sitting in one of the passenger seats behind the pilot's position which Wonder Woman has occupied. I have no idea what any of this stuff does so after I buckle up I place my hands in my lap. Buttons, switches and dials run down each side of the interior in a way that can't be good design, ergonomically speaking. How is the pilot supposed to reach them all? Is this supposed to be a team thing? I glance out of the canopy and… what! We've already lifted off? This thing either has amazing inertial dampeners or an anti gravity generator. Come to think of it, given how much this must weigh the roof we were on must be really strong. I do hear it and feel it when the main engines ignite. I've been on a plane twice in my entire life before this so I don't have much to compare it to. Beats Easy Jet, but when you're one hundred and eighty five centimetres tall cattle class is not a fun way to fly.

Hang on. Wonder Woman can fly, and the League have teleporters, don't they?

"I was just wondering, is there a special reason why we're taking the plane?"

"Its cruising speed is faster than mine, and you were worried about running out of ring power."

"Oh. Well, thank you for the consideration. Um, I was sort of under the impression that the League had teleporters?"

She pauses. I suppose it probably isn't public knowledge and she can't be sure that she can trust me not to tell people I shouldn't until I make the oath.

"No. The League uses a network of zeta beams. They need a terminal at each end, and there isn't one on Themyscira."

Zeta beams? Where have I… Adam Strange! His father in law -Sardath? Zardack?- used them for long distance teleportation from Earth to Rann.

"Is that a Rannian technology?"

"Hm?"

"I'm most familiar with zeta beams as a Rannian technology. Did the League trade for it?"

"The zeta beam network the League uses was originally created by a team led by Doctor Erdel."

I can't see her face and she can't easily turn to look at me. And not just because we're flying, these chairs don't swivel. But I think I just made a wrong-universe statement. It sounds like either Doctor Erdel was a fake, or the technology was developed very differently here than in standard DC universe. I've just demonstrated a counterfactual belief that no one from here or in my position should have. I'm not sure that she'll think anything of it beyond 'he's talking nonsense', but if this gets back to someone like Batman I'm going to have some uncomfortable explaining to do.

"What did you mean by 'Rannian'?"

Oh dear.

"It's a planet, Rann, I'm not actually sure what sector, humanoid population, space faring. I know they use zeta beams but I suppose you just, you know, parallel development."

Local zeta beams sound much less sophisticated than boom tubes. Lonnie Machin was able to put one of those together in his mid-teens. I need to see about making contact with him before then. Don't think I'll try his brain machine, though.

"I thought you arrived on our world last night?"

"I spent a couple of hours going through the ring's database. I didn't think so many alien species would actually look human."

"You'd be surprised."

Thankfully, she stops asking. I take a look out of the canopy window again. Clouds and sky. From where I'm sitting I can't look towards the ground. Which way would we go? Straight over the Atlantic ocean? Would going over the pole be faster? I've looked at plenty of maps but I can't remember the last time I saw a three dimensional representation of the world.

Nothing for me to do, and I don't want to risk saying something stupid again. I close my eyes. The chair is comfortable.

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Dependency Day 12

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5th July 2010

Wsfgh, sleeping, go away.

"…Tower to Wonder Woman. Watch Tower to Wonder Woman."

The position of my head and the drool on my chin suggests that I've been asleep. Not tied up and the ring's still there, so score one for trust.

"I'm here J'onn, what is it?"

"We're getting reports from the Greek media that a cruise ship has been taken captive near the island of Santorini. Since you are in the area I would like you to handle it."

This is actual superhero stuff. I'm actually going to… I really hope it's more straightforward than it looks.

"Anything special about the attackers?"

"Local media claims that messages from the passengers described them as 'harpyia'. Apparently they flew onto the ship from a small island and forced the crew to steer it into a natural harbour."

Harp-. Did he say harpies?

"How many people on board?"

"Seven crew and approximately eighty passengers."

"Can I assume that they haven't made any demands?"

"Indeed, though I am uncertain as to how they would if they wanted to."

Ring, tell me how much power you have left, but do it in my head.

Fifty one percent power remaining.

Hearing someone else's thoughts in your head is weird, especially when they aren't a person.

"I'll handle it. ETA seventeen minutes."

"Good luck."

I hear Wonder Woman mutter something. I try to work out how to approach this.

"Aaaaaare you going to want me to participate in this?"

"You're awake then."

"It's been a long and strange day. Uw, sorry for leaving you with no one to talk to."

"It wasn't a problem."

Well, thanks.

"Whether I want you for backup depends on the harpies. Kidnapping is out of character for them. You'll accompany me when I go and talk to them. If it came to a fight, would you be able to shield the hostages?"

I have no sodding idea.

"Probably? I can certainly create a shield, but I don't want to guarantee how long I could sustain it for."

"It'll have to do. I'll drive them away from the boat, you shield it while the crew get it underway."

"You wanted to talk to them first?"

"They know me, and they know what will happen if they try to fight me. I should be able to persuade them to back down."

Harpies are intelligent then, rather than being big birds.

"Any idea why they've done this now?"

"Not really."

"What sort of condition should I expect the hostages to be in?"

"Scared. There may be some minor injuries, but I doubt it."

"What do the harpies usually eat?"

"They don't eat people, if that's what you're asking."

"No, I mean, my world doesn't have harpies but I've seen fantasy art. They don't have hands, right?"

"No, but they have a high degree of fine motor control with their claws."

"They can't farm on a tiny island. So, what, they fish?"

"Mostly, yes."

Long chain omega 3 fatty acids. That explains the intelligence.

"With nets, or with their claws?"

"I haven't spent a lot of time observing them."

I could hear the eyes roll.

"Have they lived in this area for long?"

"At least as long as humans have."

"Greek islands, or this particular island?"

"Does it matter?"

"Maybe? You said this was out of character. Something has caused a change in their behaviour. There's no point freeing one group of hostages if they just grab another boat after we leave."

"I suppose. I'm not sure, but as far as I remember, there has always been a colony around Santorini."

"Do they get on well with the locals. Erm, local humans?"

"They don't usually have much to do with them."

"Do the humans know they're there?"

"Why wouldn't they? It isn't a secret."

"If they don't interact with them they might have sort of fallen out of the public consciousness."

"How could anyone forget the existence of an entire intelligent species?"

"If no one has seen them since before there were photographs, and all people have to go on are old stories, really easily."

She pauses. "Do you think the ship was taking tourists to look for them?"

"It's a possibility. Are they used to boats? Modern boats?"

"I assume so. The area is sailed fairly heavily. They'd have seen them from a distance, at least."

"That would be a fairly recent thing, wouldn't it?"

"Forty or fifty years is hardly recent."

"But, more, recently?"

"Probably."

"Could they be driving away the fish?"

"I wouldn't have thought so. There would need to be a lot of boats to have that sort of effect."

"Wait. Who controls the fishing around here?"

"The Greek government."

"So the harpies don't control the waters around their own island?"

"I... I suppose not."

That's bullshit.

"Shouldn't they? They've been here longer than modern Greece."

"If the Greek people have forgotten they exist, I expect the Greek government doesn't care either."

"Can we… Do something about that?"

A moment's silence.

"What exactly do you have in mind?"

I don't have anything in mind.

"Some sort of injunction? Get the courts to stop boats coming here until they can sort out who controls what?"

"You want to help the kidnappers?"

"Yeah, actually. If they're feeling threatened the best thing to do is to stop threatening them. If it actually is a territory problem then it's reasonable to help them sort it out."

"Even if they have a valid complaint, that doesn't justify attacking innocent holiday makers."

"And what would happen if a boat load of tourists turned up uninvited on Themyscira? Most places have laws against trespassing. Besides, we don't know that they've actually hurt anyone."

She's quiet for another moment.

"Alright, I'll ask about it when I speak to their leaders. But I still want you looking after the tourists."

"Having someone who can tell them all in their own language what's going on will probably calm them down."

"We might still have to fight our way out if the courts won't cooperate."

"If that happens, you could always ask Queen Hippolyta to annex the place."

"What!"

"If the Greek government does that then they've demonstrated that they don't care about the rights of their nonhuman citizens. It would be perfectly justified."

"I. I very much doubt it will come to that."

"Oh, do you have a satellite phone I can borrow? Some of them might want to phone home. It'll probably help."

"There's, there should be one in the back."

I release myself from the seat and carefully walk towards the rear section of the aircraft, keeping my hands away from anything technical looking. Now I have to work out how to explain to a crowd of tourists that we're not actually going to rescue them. We're going to leave that to the lawyers.

There is something very wrong with this idea.

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Dependency Day 13

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5th July 2010

Evening

I sit on a knoll at the end of the beach and watch as the children play on the sand with some of the braver harpy… chicks? Fledglings? Not sure. The game seems to involve throwing a long piece of driftwood and then jumping after it with your feet together. It's early evening, and with the sun behind the island the lights from the ship cast long shadows. I chuckle as a couple of the parents overseeing their children accidentally wander right up to a couple of harpies watching their offspring. The humans start to apologise before they realise who they are talking to, and then back awkwardly away.

I hear two feet come down on the grass behind me.

"I see that you've managed to keep things calm."

"You should have been here earlier; I made a giant orange Ferris Wheel. The harpy chicks had no idea what it was. It was hilarious; they kept trying to land on it, and then squawking when it moved."

Wonder Woman walks past me. She's wearing some sort of lavender coloured robe or dress. I guess it's Themysciran formal wear.

"Why are their heads glowing orange?"

"I extended the ring's translation effect. There's five or six human languages, plus whatever the harpies speak. I thought it would make it easier for them to get along."

"It would seem to have worked."

I lay back, folding my hands behind my head. Driftwood abandoned, offspring of two species dash along the shore.

"So? How'd it go?"

"You've certainly made Stellios, Penna and Takes very happy."

"Who?"

"The law firm mother uses when dealing with Man's World."

I raise an eyebrow.

"Do Amazons seriously call it that?"

She turns her head from the children to me.

"Yes."

She turns away again.

"The injunction should be in place by midday tomorrow. In the meantime, the government has issued advice to all commercial sea vehicles that they should avoid this area for the time being."

"Longer term?"

"I honestly don't know. I expect the eventual settlement will be political, rather than legal."

I don't know what I was expecting, but that sounds reasonably good.

"And the harpies are alright about it?"

"I'm not sure that the ones involved in the abduction had thought things through this far. The flock elders were quite angry with them. I think they were surprised to get anything good out of it."

"So, I was basically right about everything?"

A smile.

"No. The harpies don't care about the tourists. The elders actually said that this group are welcome to stay for a few days if they want to."

"What was it then?"

"Drift nets. The area was being overfished to the point that the harpies were struggling to get enough food. They didn't even realise it was a cruise ship until they had already attacked it."

It occurs to me that she probably can't sit down here with that on without getting it covered in sand.

"Umm, do you want me to make you a chair?"

The children have reached the end of the beach and are clambering over the rocks at the end which several adult harpies are using as their perch.

"Why did you do this?"

"Do what?"

A frown.

"Help the harpies. I could have persuaded them to release the hostages without making any concessions. Giving away something you aren't obliged to doesn't seem very avaricious."

"Standard Orange Lantern Corps method of dispute resolution. Work out what they want, and work out how giving it to them is in your interests."

I sit up and shift position slightly.

"Besides, this is nice, isn't it? It feels like the world is working a bit better."

"How is this in your interest?"

"For one, it's probably improved your opinion of me. Since you're going to be in charge of me for at least a year, that's pretty useful. Secondly, I get the impression that there aren't all that many harpies. I don't like the idea of them just… not being there anymore. Thirdly, since I'm not a psychopath, other people being happy makes me feel happy. Doing good feels good."

"You believe that most people are basically altruistic?"

"I believe that if people weren't basically civilised then civilisation wouldn't be possible."

"Isn't that a tautology?"

"Fine, then I believe that if people weren't at least slightly inclined towards altruism then complex society couldn't function."

"You would prefer to investigate and resolve the underlying problem through persuasion rather than impose a solution based on what you think is right?"

"Of course."

"That's a very… feminine… way of looking at things."

I smile.

"You have noticed that I've been watching the kids while you deal with the politicians and lawyers, right?"

She raises an eyebrow and grins.

"Are you saying that you're more of a woman than I am?"

"No. No, I'm saying that you've been performing a traditionally masculine role while I've been performing a traditionally feminine one. And it doesn't matter."

The human adults begin to collect their children and take them back to the boat.

"So, what's the plan now?"

"I will need to speak to the ship's captain and relay the decision of the harpy elders. I think it would be best to spend the night here and continue on to Themyscira in the morning."

Ring, remaining charge?

Thirty seven percent remaining.

"Rightyoh. Do you need me for anything else?"

"Not at the moment. Do you have something you want to do?"

"I'd like to speak to the harpies. Properly, I mean. We had a quick talk when I first arrived…"

"Why?"

"I've never spoken to a nonhuman intelligence before."

Err…

"Apart from you, sort of? In my parallel, on my Earth, there aren't any."

"None?"

"No gods, no monsters, just men. Humans! I meant humans."

She waves off my faux pas.

"Go ahead. I'll ask the captain to set up some quarters for us."

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Dependency Day 14

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Renegade option

The children have reached the end of the beach and are clambering over the rocks at the end which several adult harpies are using as their perch.

"Why did you do this?"

"Do what?"

A frown.

"Help the harpies. I could have persuaded them to release the hostages without making any concessions. Giving away something you aren't obliged to doesn't seem very avaricious."

"A few years ago I read a comic. It wasn't particularly good, but one bit stuck with me. One of the characters -he went on to become the embodiment of greed- was the leader of a major religion. One day, to prove his faith to his followers and potential followers, he arranged for a major ceremony. Got up on stage, and without anaesthetic cut off his own left arm, then shoved the stump into a brazier to cauterise the wound. He told them that he did it to prove his faith, to show that for his god he would give up anything. His actual reason was different. As he put it when he spoke to the embodiment of wrath, 'what does it matter if I give up one arm, if one thousand new converts freely give me theirs.' The harpies will remember me, and so will the tourists. One day, that will be useful."

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Dependency Day 15

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6th July 2010

Early morning

Unsurprisingly, crew and passengers alike chose to leave the next morning. They offered to take us with them, but they definitely weren't heading to Themyscira. I watched from the shore as they sailed away from the island. A surprisingly large number of harpies joined the vigil, including most of their young. The captain said that 'he'd think' about coming back, but I doubt it will happen.

My talk with the harpies was pretty unenlightening. I fielded questions about the wider world and the ring, they tried to answer mine about their history and culture. I don't think I was able to adequately explain the difference between the technology the ring uses and the magic they are more familiar with, at least in part because I don't understand exactly how it works myself. Their oral approach to history made me long for solid dates and timelines. Maybe an actual anthropologist could compare events for which we have a definite timeline to work it out?

We're back in the jet, and Wonder Woman is back in her standard armour. Fifteen minutes to Themyscira. Maybe half an hour until I swear my life away for a year. I need something to stop me feeling so nervous.

"You were up early?"

"I don't need much sleep. I also wanted to make preflight checks on the jet."

What else can I talk about? I've never been any good at small talk. Oh god, not that. Don't even think about that. I mean, I'm probably going to need to find out whether it's true or not eventually, but no. What did she say yesterday?

"Why 'Man's World'?"

"I'm not sure what you mean."

"Well, I mean, the population's about fifty fifty. Obviously the presence of men is a change from Amazonian society, but I'm not sure why you still call it that."

"Name one female head of state."

"Angela Merkel."

"Who?"

"The German Chancellor? No? She is in my parallel."

"Gerhardt Brandt was elected three years ago."

"That... Argentinean woman?"

"You don't know her name?"

"Only thing I ever heard about her was that she was banging on about wanting the Falklands back. Argentinean leaders tend to do that when they don't have anything intelligent to say."

"Santiago Ortiz."

"Oh."

That's… that doesn't make sense. No female heads of state?

"Guess you've kind of got a point then."

"Of course, your country is different. The head of state of your country is Queen Elizabeth the second, and you've had two female Prime Ministers."

"My country in my parallel has only had one. Who did we get here?"

"Elizabeth Taylor of the Conservative party, and Danielle Goldsmith of the Liberal Alliance."

Liberal Alliance?! I am in a strange universe indeed.

"I've never heard of either of them. Same queen. I know… I mean… I know there are more men in politics than women, but it's getting better, isn't it? I mean, compared to when you first came to the United States?"

"A little, in some places. But going from terrible to bad is nothing to be proud of."

"I've… never experienced that myself, obviously. But, it has sort of annoyed me that every copy of 'On Liberty' lists John Stuart Mill as the sole author, while in fact he wrote it jointly with his wife-"

Ring, name?

Harriet Taylor.

"-Harriet Taylor. My old copy actually has an introduction which talks about it, and still only has his name on the cover. I mean, he refused to modify it after her death because he didn't think he'd do a good enough job without her. There's no reason for it."

"I actually didn't know that. I'll have to pick up a copy."

"Might not be true for this parallel. I didn't really compare histories."

Silence for several minutes.

"How… are the other Amazons going to feel about you training a male student?"

I think the plane is descending, but I don't have a good angle to the window.

"They'll find it strange that I would want to. But my mothers have always supported my decisions regarding Man's World."

Mothers?

"I… wasn't aware that Queen Hippolyta had an, um, a consort...?"

Oh, wait, no, that's not what she-

"No, she doesn't. I was referring to the other Amazons who helped mother, Queen Hippolyta, raise me."

"Yes, I should have realised."

I barely feel it when we land, but I definitely notice the engines shutting off. I close my eyes.

"Wait here. I'll check the Temple and then I'll come back for you."

I hear her unbuckle and then get up and walk towards the exit. She stops just past me.

"Why are your eyes shut?"

"I appreciate that I'm here on sufferance and I don't want to risk accidentally seeing something I'm not supposed to."

"We're not maenads here, Orange Lantern. Really, even if I wasn't here, if you told them that Alan was your sponsor you would probably be fine."

I open my eyes. Always thought that Amazons were pretty misandrous. They had reasons, sure…

"Because… because the two of you used to work together?"

"No, it's..."

She avoids my gaze and looks uncomfortable.

"It's probably something he should tell you about himself. Suffice to say he is well respected here."

"They'd take my word for it?"

"You wouldn't be allowed to go anywhere until they'd checked you were telling the truth, but yes."

"Huh."

She walks through the cockpit door and then out of the main door. For a moment I feel a wind and hear birdsong. There is a scent of moist soil and pollen.

How exactly am I going to word the oath? Does an avatar of Gaea turn up and hear it in person? Are we going to write it down? Because I'm honestly not sure I could sign my name without fainting. What I agreed to certainly doesn't sound like a traditional oath. Can I just say 'we agreed to something earlier, I swear to keep up my end'? I try to work out how to actually say it in a way that doesn't sound stupid.

"I swear that I will obey…"

No, the returning the lantern thing should go first. Or not?

"In exchange for ownership of Mr Alan Scott's power lantern… I will obey any non-suicidal orders given by either Diana, Princess of Themyscira, also known as 'Wonder Woman' or by a single individual nominated by her. I agree not to leave this star system."

No, the time limit should come first.

"In exchange for ownership of Mr Alan Scott's power lantern I agree that for the duration of one year I will do the following. I will obey any non-suicidal orders given by either Diana, Princess of Themyscira, also known as 'Wonder Woman', or by a single individual nominated by her. I agree that I will not leave this star system of my own volition. I may rescind this oath by returning ownership of the power lantern to Mr Alan Scott."

I think that's it. Sounds a bit legal for a mystic oath. I hear the door again.

"Alright, we can begin. There are no other Amazons around."

I get up. For a moment I wonder if I could have handled things better and not needed to do this. But it doesn't matter. This is what I am doing.

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Dependency Day 16

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6th July 2010

Early morning

The jet doesn't have steps at the door. We both just float down the metre or so to the ground. It's dull grey.. stone, and natural looking. There aren't any markings and it certainly isn't paved. Behind the jet the stone continues a little way before breaking up into a beach of grey stone flakes. On the other sides the cove is surrounded by a steep grass covered bank. It also looks natural, though I suppose it would serve to suppress the noise of take off and landing. We're following a footpath around its edge. Away from the stone landing area everything else is covered in uneven clumps of grass. It might be grazed but it certainly isn't mowed. The area around the path has a small layer of good soil over stone and where they path it the soil has mostly been worn away. If it had chalk rather than whatever the grey stone is it could be the Downs back home.

It might be faster for us to fly, but I suppose raising my height would increase the chance of seeing something I wasn't supposed to, or of the locals being forced to notice me. The boots I'm wearing are tough but they aren't really designed for hiking. As we move past the mound I get my first unobstructed view of the Themysciran landscape and it turns out that the Downs were a pretty good comparison. I can see a flock of sheep in the distance but otherwise the whole area could be uninhabited.

"If you don't mind me asking, how many people live here?"

"One hundred and eighty two thousand nine hundred and sixty one."

"That's a very precise answer."

"The population doesn't change. No one is born, no one leaves and since no one ages it is unusual for anyone to die."

"You were… I mean, you're more recent than that, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"I… look, if this is something I'm not supposed to ask then just tell me to shut up, but are they planning to make any more in the way they made you?"

She stops. I wince.

"The last time I asked, they were debating it. Amazon society has barely changed in the three thousand years since coming to these islands. My… creation… was the first time it had increased in population size. If I had… sisters? If that was even possible, it would inevitably change more. Even if they lacked my more unusual abilities."

"Are Amazons very conservative?"

"That isn't the problem. Some like the idea. But even for them there is no sense of urgency. Mother feels that something that big should be a decision taken by our society as a whole."

She starts walking again. I decide not to ask about other available forms of reproduction.

"From what you said, I assume that there are no Amazons on your world."

"Not like your people, no. No magic and no gods means no immortality. The history which led to the Amazons leaving mainland Greece probably didn't happen. I'm… I'm having trouble coming up with any female dominated societies. I think some Greek city states had some types of property passed down the maternal line, but I wouldn't want to swear to it."

"An arrangement between father in law and son in law."

"Probably."

We've turned inland. The land is rising towards an area of woodland.

"If there's one hundred and eighty thousand people, where is everyone?"

"The main settlement is on the other side of the island. You can't see it from here. There are herds of animals, but none are in this area at the moment."

"I know you said that it's all horribly patriarchal, but what do Amazons think of everything else about the rest of the world?"

"They barely have any contact with it. Major acts of magic might result in investigation using the scrying pools, and there are wards around the islands to detect trespassers. Other than that, they know only what they hear from me. Most aren't interested."

"Why not? I'm sure it's nice here, but if they've been here three thousand years…"

"When I first went out into Man's World I had no real idea what I would find. From mother's tales of mainland Greece I was confident that I didn't want to go there."

"How old were you when you left?"

"Fifteen."

"Seriously?"

"I was… restless. I could fly and crush granite with my hands, and all of the world I knew was this island."

"Not much of a night life?"

"Oh, I don't know about that. You haven't seen it during the festival of Dionysus."

"I though you said you weren't Maenads?"

"Hah!"

I guess Amazons indulge responsibly the rest of the year.

"Anyway, I was gone for years. It wasn't until after the second world war that I could spend the time needed in order to visit."

"You were really out of contact the whole time?"

"Not completely. Kent was eventually able to create a two way scrying pool. I could see and speak to mother at intervals."

Kent?

"When I came home I told them what I had been doing. Because I wanted them to be proud of my achievements as a warrior, I told them about the war. I think the idea that the entire world could be involved in something like that reinforced the idea that isolation was the best policy. Did your world have a Second World War?"

"Yes. I don't know how similar it was to yours though."

"The Amazons lived in isolation for three thousand years and then I came back and told them that the atomic bomb existed."

"Oh."

"I did… try… to forge links. Later. One of the smaller islands housed a very successful women's prison and rehabilitation center for nine years."

"Why did it close?"

"We found that taking petty criminals out of their normal environment and giving them useful work to do broke them out of harmful patterns of behavior. Even hardened criminals could be turned into valuable citizens, given time. We weren't prepared for a genuine madwoman. Do you know what dissociative identity disorder is?"

"Yes."

"We thought that we had treated her. She showed every sign of being cured of her wickedness. But only one personality was being treated. We found out later that the switch between personas was caused by stresses that we had worked to eliminate from the prison environment. When she was returned to America she… reverted. She murdered eight people and injured many more before the Justice Society was able to stop her. After that, a senate committee investigated the prison. We thought that their concerns were reasonable, so we showed them the measures we used to ensure the safety of guards and prisoners alike."

"Was this the Committee on Un-American Activities?"

"Yes."

"Oh."

"We thought that the inspection went well."

"I can see where this is going."

"We used enchanted bracers and girdles to prevent violence amongst the population, and to encourage rehabilitation. We were accused of using mind control magic to turn them into our serfs."

And they probably weren't all that fond of the homonormative aspect either.

"And of trying to convert them to a heathen religion."

"Oh."

"The prison ceased operation shortly afterwards."

"Yeah, I… um… yeah."

We're just entering the wooded area. She stops again.

"Why are you doing this?"

Huh?

"Because you wanted to be sure you could trust me?"

"No. I mean, why are you so insistent on getting a lantern. Alan told me how dangerous you think the… our world is, but the fact remains that there are any number of people who live perfectly happy lives without super powers."

"Not safe lives. I appreciate your concern, but don't worry. I want to do this."

"But you didn't need to."

"I have no records, no legal existence, no friends and no family. All I have is this ring. I need it. I'm… I'm not complaining about the unfairness of the universe, I don't rail against the heavens and I certainly don't beg for help. It is within my power to deal with this situation and that is what I will do."

She appears to consider this. She nods.

"Alright. Come this way."

"Is the Temple in the woods?"

"The Temple is the woods."

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Dependency Day 17

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6th July 2010

Early Morning

I'm momentarily stunned.

"The Temple is the woods. Of course the Temple is the woods. Gaea is the Titan of the Earth and nature."

"What did you think it was going to be?"

"I was expecting something Acropolis-themed? This… this makes a lot more sense, actually."

And it does. Now that I look again I see a clear line of tall trees. I don't know what kind. Dad's the biologist. They are arranged in an arc too even to have occurred by chance, marking out the entrance in the way that carved stone pillars would on a more classical Greek temple. There are smaller trees forming a circle around them and they act to conceal them in such a way that you don't realise exactly how much taller they are than the rest. Their canopy and the vines I can see running between the trunks block a great deal of the light.

I follow Wonder Woman towards a gap between two of the larger trees. Should I feel something strange here? I have no experience of being affected by magic, but it just looks like a normal wood to me.

If it turns out that the oath isn't anything special I'm actually going to be disappointed.

Oh… what?

We've passed between the taller trees, and now we're in a clearing? There wasn't a clearing. I turn left and right and I can see a vast tree line… it wasn't this big. Right. Pass through the trees and end up somewhere bigger on the inside. I look left again and see that the tree line has a slight curve… Is that… I think I can see me in the distance. I'm looking away… I turn right, and I'm there as well. Experimentally I extend a hand in the opposite direction and see my doppelganger do the same. Feeling a little light headed, I wave at me. Yes, he waves as well. Reminds me of that episode of Star Trek with the floating head nebula thing.

"I realise that this must seem a little strange to you."

"No, no. Yes, but I can cope with a little spatial distortion."

Wonder Woman is giving me a moment to adapt. Maybe this clearing isn't actually all that big? Might be impossible to tell. There's a slight rise in the ground, heading towards a small grove. Wait. I look at the sky. There were grey clouds around before we came in. I come from Britain and so didn't think anything of it. Here, the few clouds are wispy and white, adding to the blueness of the sky with their contrast. I actually feel warm despite my environmental shield, when a hike across the island didn't change my temperature at all. Could it be psychosomatic? Yes, but the Harpy island had more 'hot' indicators. The grass is off as well. Rather than the clumpy overgrown moorland outside it looks like a mowed lawn that has been allowed to get a bit long. There are some low lying flowers -I can see many buttercups- but nothing else except at the top of the hill. I can smell them as well, and from this distance and in this concentration I shouldn't be able to.

I actually can't see the soil through the grass cover. As we start walking towards the grove I realise that I am reminded of the walks I took with my sister and mother through the parks of Eastbourne when I was of primary school age and younger. I suppose there's no reason…

Ring, remove my boots.

My feet feel strange for a moment, and then the boots are gone and I can feel the grass. Dry, slightly springy. The breeze on my feet feels nice, though the temperature hasn't changed. Usually I hate walking barefoot anywhere, but this feels appropriate, somehow, Ooh, that isn't a buttercup. I drop down on all fours to get a better look at it.

"Do you know what this is?"

Wonder Woman has gotten a little ahead of me.

"Uh? No, I don't. Is it important?"

"Probably not. Just curious."

I lean right up to it. I don't remember ever seeing one quite like this.

"Were you planning on moving any further?"

Right! Right. Goodbye, little plant. I get up and jog to catch up with Ms Doesn't-Stop-to-Smell-Flowers. As we continue up the hill I take a good look around. I can't see any other versions of me, so maybe the space bending thing only happens around the exit? The rest of the walk doesn't take long. The grove itself is a circle of short trees with a pool of water at the centre. Their roots appear to have grown into one another, like that old tree in Hampden Park park. I go to step into it, but Wonder Woman puts out an arm to stop me.

"This is one of the most sacred places in Themyscira. It is also my birth place. I understand that you don't worship the gods that I do, but I expect you to be at least respectful of it."

"Of course."

We step into the grove. Though the canopy blocks the light overhead it isn't dim so much as shaded. Wonder Woman kneels in front of the pool.

"Why are you doing that?"

"This is a Temple every bit as much as the stone buildings of the other gods. A reverential attitude is the appropriate one."

"Reverential? No, not reverential."

"If you're not going to take this-"

"Joyful."

I walk over to one of the trees and place my hands on its bark. It isn't enough. I lean into it, press my cheek against it. Breathe it.

"The life here. The drive to grow, to create verdant existence out of barren earth. Why would I kneel? I want this, it's wonderful!"

She's looking at me strangely. Have I said something wrong?

"That's an… unusual attitude to take."

"Is Gaea here?"

"That question doesn't really make sense. Gaea is everywhere on the Earth."

"Then why is this place so…"

I wave my hands. I'm not really sure what I'm trying to say.

"Her attention is more focused here, due to the blessings she has bestowed on my people. There used to be other places like it, in other parts of the world. There might still be, but this is the only one that I know about."

"Is there a ritual to perform, or do I just say it?"

"There is a traditional ritual, but since you aren't an Amazon all you really need to do is place your hands on the bare soil and state what you are promising."

"Is there likely to be a response from, you know, Gaea herself?"

"Possible, but unlikely. I've spent a great deal of time here and I've only spoken directly to an avatar of Gaea on two occasions."

That must have been amazing.

"So, how do we know if it's worked?"

She breathes out heavily. I guess that while Gaea doesn't really care Wonder Woman wanted reverence.

"It works."

I move next to her, and drop down onto crossed legs. Leaning forwards, I put both hands on the earth. Agh, what was it I was planning on saying?

"In exchange for ownership of Mr Alan Scott's power lantern I agree that for the duration of one year I will do the following: I will obey any non-suicidal orders given by either Diana, Princess of Themyscira, also known as 'Wonder Woman', or by a single individual nominated by her, and I agree that I will not leave this star system of my own volition. I may rescind this oath by returning ownership of the power lantern to Mr Alan Scott."

Nothing happens.

"Was that right?"

"I think you covered everything."

She stands up.

"We should probably get back to New York and see if you can actually use the lantern. If you can, I'll need to work out a training schedule for you."

I grin. Progress!

"Rightyho. Lead the way."

She starts back down the hill, and looks over her shoulder at me.

"Are you..? Are you feeling entirely well?"

"I feel… I feel good, actually."

Oh, that is the best idea ever. When did I last roll down a grass slope? Back in Scout camp when I was twelve? That one camp site that was basically a cliff? Uncomfortable thistles, though. But none of them here! I drop to my stomach and wiggle enough to start moving.

"Weeeeeeee!"

"Orange Lantern, what are you doing?!"

That was fun, but my unevenness has caused me to take a turn and now my feet are pointing downhill rather than across. That used to happen when I was little as well. Okay, I can't roll down like that…

"Ring. Zorb."

I rise into the air as the twin orange spheres form around me. For the first rotation I slide to the bottom of the zorb, but as it picks up speed I stick to the inner layer. Trees! Grass! Sky! Trees! Grass! Sky! Trees! Grass! Wonder Woman! Sky! I'm probably not moving as fast as I feel but the tree line is coming up pretty fast! Wow, this is great! Hey, if I time this right…

The zorb ceases to exist just as I hit the tree line and I'm flung straight forwards back into the woods and what the hell did I just do? Leaves and branches hit me in the face as I frantically trigger the ring to arrest my momentum. I finally stop and drop to the muddy ground, eyes wide. Why did I...? I don't..? What..? I haven't moved a moment later when Wonder Woman flies through and stops in front of me. She looks… relieved?

"I… I am so sorry. I I I I don't…"

"I should have realised. If you've never encountered magic before then you probably don't have any resistance to it. I still feel some of what you just felt whenever I go back there, but you experienced it at full intensity."

"Did I? Is Gaea going to be annoyed about this?"

"It's extremely unlikely."

"I think I'll make a donation to Greenpeace just in case."

As we start back to the jet I try to stay calm. Shit. Ambient magic messes you up. And apparently the ring doesn't block it. Or can't. I'm going to have to try and do something about that.

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Dependency Day 18

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6th July 2010

Morning

He kept it in a back room, not the loft. The room has trophy cabinets covered in medal plaques and award certificates. The walls are hung with photographs. Some of them look like newspaper photographs -the originals from the paper, I suppose- while others are group shots of the Society. Some are formal, posed, but others look like they were taken in some sort of social situation. There are bookshelves of photo albums containing photos not notable enough for the walls which share space with notebooks. Were they case note books he used when he first assaulted Gotham's organised crime? Or were they what he used as a reporter?

Wonder Woman left after dropping me off. Mr Scott has offered to put me up at least until she's finished planning what she's going to do with me. I accepted, partly because I don't know of any hotels that would accept gold as payment and partly because I prefer places and people I am at least a little familiar with to those I am not.

The lantern itself should look ridiculous. It's physically a carriage lantern of a sort that went out of use before my granddad was born, and it's emerald green. He had it in a beautifully carved wooden case with what looks like a velvet lining. It's now sitting on the desk in front of me. I've been an atheist ever since I was old enough to realise that adults could be wrong but this, this makes me feel reverential.

I'm starting to feel bad about taking it away from him.

"Well, that's what you came here for. Go ahead, son."

"Don't… might… do you think you should charge your ring first?"

"At my age? Be sensible, kid. What would I use it for?"

"If this works, this may be the last chance you get to ever charge it. Even if you don't intend to use your ring, it's a useful thing to have around."

"I suppose. Show you how it's done."

He steps forward and takes the handle of the lantern in his left hand. He holds his right with the ring about ten centimetres away from the funnel. He takes a breath.

"And I shall shed my light over dark evil,

for the dark things cannot stand the light.

The light of the Green Lantern!"

His charisma and radio trained speaking voice actually make it sound impressive. Always looked daft written down. Green light flows from the lantern to his ring, not in a beam but like a flame in the wind, waving and twisting as it moves. As I look I'm not sure whether it's moving into his ring or into him. After a moment or two it shuts off. He looks at his ring, and steps away.

"Fully charged. Not that I think I'll need it. So, ah, how were you planning on changing its color?"

I'm not sure that 'plan' is the word. If this is the Starheart then returning the case should be enough. If this is a normal green lantern I might be able to assimilate it in the same way Larfleeze did people.

"Ring, assess this lantern. Can it be adapted to serve as your charge point?"

"Scanning. Power source compatibility sixty two percent. Damage detected to numerous subsystems.

"Damage?"

"Cause of damage unknown."

"Would repairing the damage help compatibility?"

"Full compatibility and repair can be achieved by full core realignment. Realignment is possible due to existing damage."

I hold out my left hand.

"Ring, realign and repair."

"Avarice insufficient."

Oh, yeah, that.

Mr Scott is letting me do this of his own free will. Heck, he's even got me a teacher. I like the flying. I like the new experiences having this ring has brought me, and I'm looking forward to the experiences I will have in future. I want to ensure my own safety, dependent on no one. I want to live the best way I am capable.

"Ring, realign, repair and recharge."

"Complying."

This time the beam comes from the ring, billowing orange as the ring begins the reconfiguration process. The lantern seems to shimmer and darken. The handle disappears. The funnel shrinks. Four new hand holds appear along the sides, mirroring the orange sigil. The look of it shifts from matte metal to something more technological, glowing visibly from within at several points.

"Realignment and repair complete. Beginning recharge."

The billowing orange energy cuts off. The ring looks duller, visibly almost out of power. The lantern is now dark orange, with lighter parts along the joins.

Then it hits. A bolt of orange energy straight from the glowing core to the ring. I flinch. Should it hurt? It looks like it should. But it doesn't. It feels… right. I should have this power. I deserve this power. It's MINE.

"Welcome to the Orange Lantern Corps. You are Agent… error… processing… you are Orange Lantern two eight one four. Power level at one hundred percent."

"I have to admit, that was impressive. Had any ideas about what'cha gonna do with it yet?"

Hahahahahahahaha!

"One or two, sir. One or two."

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Dependency Day 19

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6th July 2010

Morning

Since I have no wish to end up a basket case like Larfleeze I have decided that I need to adopt a philosophical model which will assist in better focusing my avarice without causing me to be consumed by it. Wanting stuff is not by itself bad; I already believe this, and now I need a philosophical system which would suggest how to handle this approach.

A flight to Germany allowed me to pick up Nietzsche's complete works in the original language. The ring doesn't translate the words of the text, but rather translates the meaning of the sentences. It actually makes reading it jolly odd, but the ideas are communicated far more clearly and without the opinion of a human translator getting in the way. On a couple of occasions the translation of a sentence shifted as my understanding of the argument changed. Still not exactly quick going, and the summary I got during my degree covered most of the important points. I already accept the core cause of nihilism: I cannot objectively prove the truth of a particular moral code, and as such I have trouble placing faith in any of them. But if there's no absolute truth and nothing really means anything, why not make it mean whatever you want? It's not like anyone can prove you wrong. Clark Kent proves that a Superman doesn't have to be a monster.

Rousseau is a philosopher I have only encountered on TVTropes before. I don't think that his work will be of much use to me, despite my disbelief in the existence of evil. Maybe elemental evil does exist here, but I will never confuse the self interested actions of people excluded from mainstream society with some vague notion of innately entropic spirituality. I want to enable the avarice of others, channel it in constructive ways. The things someone like Pamela Isley could have achieved if she weren't a murderous lunatic…

I really only know Milarepa from the song. Actual information about his life is available but rather unhelpful. I suppose that since magic is real here he might actually have done the things attributed to him but aside from hunting down one of his followers I'm stuck for a way to find out how his religious teachings are different from default Buddhism. It's a shame because the song implies that he would be exactly what I need to study. The Song 'Invite Them In' exists here, but my internet search reveals that YouTube doesn't exist. Rather, that hole in the market is filled by VidULike.com. I think the name sounds silly but I suppose it's what you're used to.

Hmm.

"If you lose all differentiation between yourselves and others,

fit to serve others you will be.

And when in serving others you will win success,

then shall you meet with me;

And finding me, you shall attain to Buddhahood."

Not exactly Lantern oath stuff, but I can see where he is coming from. If I took the desires of others as my own I could provide an effective public service and use avarice vicariously. I'm just not comfortable with the degree of loss of self that approach would entail. Working towards it would probably weaken me, at least to start with. I think I'm going to have to call him a dead end.

It took a while, but I finally found what I was looking for in Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

That is pretty much perfect. I need to understand both my desires, and those of others, and how they can come together to create something greater. People need these things, and as long as the society they are part of provides them they will generally toe the line. Deny someone, and you have a structural problem that will bite you in the arse.

For myself, most of my basic needs are met. I'm not going to worry about sex just yet, although I suppose prostitutes are an option. Singles bars are as well; thanks to my mining I'm wealthy, reasonably interesting company and my altered body is quite pleasing to the eye if I do say so myself. I don't think mixing alcohol with power rings is a good idea, and I'm loath to take it off for any reason other than excreting. I tried to take a shit while wearing the ring on the ship off harpy island and it is not an experience I wish ever to repeat.

I'm as safe as I'm likely to get in this parallel, and the ring is perfectly capable of repairing my body and excluding disease.

As for belonging? I've been a lot more open with Mr Scott and Wonder Woman than I usually am with people I don't know particularly well. I think I'm trying to build a social ingroup at emergency pace. As far as sexual intimacy goes, I think I'll give it a while. My restricted social contacts and lack of a secret identity will probably mean that I'll be looking inside the super community. I'll just have to see what happens when I start spending time with people.

Family is… not something I've wanted to think about. I've missed work without prior notification. My boss will have tried to phone me, then phoned my emergency contact when I didn't respond. Mum or Dad will have visited my house and not found me. Unless me leaving left some sort of sign, Mum will get steadily more frantic. The one time I stayed out all night as a teenager she only calmed down once Eastbourne District General Hospital assured her that no one matching my description had been brought in to casualty. I don't remember how long it takes before police will investigate an alleged disappearance but I do seem to remember that their policy is that if an adult chooses to walk away from their life then that is their decision. I know I can't do anything about it, but my parents are going to have a really rough time. Move on.

Presumably my esteem will be dealt with when I start going on missions by earning their respect. Having had an opportunity to review the actions of my mentors in both the official reports and amateur video footage I can safely say that they've definitely earned mine.

I'm currently stuck as far as self-actualization goes. I'm still doing things because I need to, not because I have an idea for a way I want to reshape the workings of the universe. The very idea that I could do something like that is a new one.

I hardly dare think it, but would it be possible to create an Orange Corps not of construct-wraiths or crazy people, but of people whose genuine desires match the general good? Is that something I could work towards? I have no idea how practical it is, and there isn't much work I can do towards that goal for the rest of the year. But… I think I want to.

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Dependency Day 20

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6th July 2010

Late afternoon

I know I need practice using the ring for greater tasks than hitting things or zorbing. Might as well make it something that's good for the world as well, right? Somehow I went from that statement to the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I'm holding position in the middle of a cloud-ridden sky above the Great Pacific rubbish patch. I can't see a thing. Even my ring enhanced vision isn't showing anything useful because there isn't anything here. At some point the grey sky and grey clouds and grey rain become grey sea full of grey plastic particulates but the only way I can tell where any of those are is the ring's sensors.

Extracting precious metal from asteroids made me rich within the dreams of avarice. Not beyond, obviously, or I wouldn't have been able to do it. The same sort of system should work here. I'm not going to be able to clean the entirety of the world's oceans, but the high concentrations here make it possible to improve the situation.

Mr Scott has actually been surprisingly helpful with regard to construct initiation. I need to focus clearly on why I'm trying to do what I'm doing here, then start the process. Let's see…

This mess is created by humans, and as one I am responsible for dealing with it. I owe Gaea for her help, and cleaning her up a bit will help repay that. I eat fish, and I don't want to eat plastic they ate first. If I finish here I can go somewhere interesting…

I thrust my right hand down at the swirling mess of plastic beneath me. An orange beam extends downwards to just above the water, then spreads out into a vast disk. It's about ten miles across; not enough to remove the whole thing but it's a size I think I can manage. The glow is strong enough that I can actually see it from inside the cloud.

"Give me plastic."

The disk extends down, lengthening into a cylinder. I raise my left hand above me and another orange beam projects from it, with a stream of orange connecting it to the one going down. The connector looks a bit like the proton beam in the Ghostbusters films. As the cylinder filters out the plastic -fish and other sea life should be unaffected- it appears in a mass connected to the upper beam. My OrangeVisionTM lets me see it. Not much so far.

"Work faster, damn it!"

Waaah! The orange glow from below just dramatically increased in luminosity. For just a moment I could see clearly everything around me. I can feel the area of the subaquatic construct expand as it hungrily consumes every bit of plastic it can find. The lump above me visibly swells.

Ring, power level?

Eighty eight percent remaining.

Alright then. Cleaning time.

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Dependency Day 21

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6th July 2010

Evening

It's funny. Mum always said that if I put as much work into my school work as I did my hobbies I would go far. What she never understood was that I did. The things relating to my hobbies just stuck in my mind better because they were more interesting. Now, my work and my hobby are the same thing, and rather than making the hobby boring it has made the work interesting.

I don't have access to the full League intelligence database. Batman apparently believes that no connection is secure enough for that sort of information transfer. League members can download from the central archive to a Batman-approved terminal via Batman-approved satellite links, but can only upload by being physically present at one of a very small number of places. Basically, his cave and the Watchtower.

What I have is a slightly out of date copy of the records of currently active criminals with whom the League has had contact. Turns out this version of Matthew Hagen was a failed assassin rather than a failed actor. Dr Victor Fries is a bachelor, and without any of the redeeming qualities that made him an interesting character in Batman: The Animated Series. I suppose real people don't worry about whether an audience will find them interesting or not. I'm going to have to watch out for things like that, people I think I should be able to negotiate with because I think they have a different history to what they actually have.

That's why I've been trying to get more information on Black Adam. Having had a quick look at what is going on in Kahndaq I can only describe it as 'Saddam's Iraq, without his noble self restraint and fair-mindedness'. Unlike my parallel here there was no eleventh of September attack and as such no one has been sufficiently motivated to remove President for Life Asim Muhunnad from power. Oh, he gets condemned at international conventions and there are a load of sanctions, but nothing is going to come of it. If anyone can be said to deserve getting ripped in half in the central square of Shiruta it's him, and I really hope this version of Mighty Adam is more like his comic incarnation than Dr Fries is.

I checked earlier that Theo Adam exists, and Doctors Clarence and Marilyn Batson died at roughly the right time compared with Black Adam's first public appearance for the version I am familiar with to be the one that exists here. Bit of a huge thing to risk though, particularly since I have no idea how to communicate directly with his original personality. Maybe a telepath or magic user?

The database lacks entries on the Anti-Monitor, Atrocitus, Thaal Sinestro, Manhunter Androids and Krona. Someone isn't sharing. Again, I can't assume that the Guardians are the arseholes they are in the comics, but the more they look like they might be the stronger my negotiating position. Nothing on Larfleeze either, which means I can't confirm what I think I know. Oa gets a mention but Maltus doesn't. The few long terms plans I've come up with so far are rather reliant on the Controllers being where I think they should be and being pleased to see me. A bit optimistic perhaps, but I think planning for the best scenario is nearly as important as planning for the worst. Always be ready to seize an opportunity. Nothing on the Darkstars but I don't remember much about them other than the fact that a load of former Lanterns joined them after Lantern Jordan destroyed the Green Corps.

No entry on Darkseid, or anything on the other New Gods. Nothing on Apokalyps -or however it's supposed to be spelt- or New Genesis. Given the relative youth of the League here they probably haven't had any contact with them. I'd offer what I know but I can't risk giving them the wrong information.

Just in case my memory isn't up to the task of holding all of this information I've had the ring download a copy. I'll try and get it a full copy at the earliest opportunity. It's not like anyone on Earth can hack a power ring.

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Dependency Day 22

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6th July 2010

Night

Finding a gun in the United States is exactly as hard as I thought it would be. Buying a decent one on the other hand is going to be nearly impossible. I have no background to check and no passport to present. I can't even prove that I'm in the country legally. Certainly there are places I could go to pick one up illegally but I doubt getting one at all is going to go over well with my mentors. I'd rather stay as much within the bounds of the law as I can.

I do want one, though. Just as a backup in case I have to fight something ring proof or if I run out of power in a combat zone. Lantern Jack Chance would have been a dead man if he hadn't kept his gun after his recruitment and that particular piece of outside the emerald box thinking earned him my admiration.

I don't know much about guns, but I believe that revolvers are more mechanically reliable than magazine based pistols. I neither need nor want a large calibre weapon. Spare ammunition or 'fast-loaders' would be similarly pointless. This weapon is to cover my retreat, not initiate an attack.

Maybe I can get Mr Scott to buy one on my behalf? I suppose he might already own one, it didn't occur to me to ask. I don't remember anything from the comics about his attitude to firearms, but I hope that he is rational enough to realise that if you trust someone with a power ring you'd sound a bit silly saying that they can't have a gun due to how dangerous it is.

The other part of the gun issue is training. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of occasions on which I have seen an actual gun in my life and I've never fired anything more dangerous than a low powered air rifle. I don't remember where I first heard the phrase 'a weapon you don't know how to use is a weapon that belongs to your enemy', but I am inclined to believe it.

Which is why I'm now standing in the West Side Pistol and Rifle Range being shown how to load what I'm told is a Smith & Wesson Model 63 .22 revolver by a chap named Christopher. It's past their normal closing but a combination of uniform and gold bought me a few private sessions. He wasn't exactly impressed by my choice of weapon but when I pointed out that a) I'd never touched a gun before and b) there was no human produced gun that equalled a power ring he dropped the subject. He insisted that I wear earmuffs and goggles, despite me pointing out that the ring would not allow me to be deafened or blinded.

Oh, great, the comedian has decided to put up an alien shooting range target. Very funny. Alright, eight bullets loaded, safety off, feet planted, both hands on the gun, aim, trigger.

Yep, that's loud. After the first shot the ring glows and the sound of the second shot drops to nearly nothing while other sounds are amplified. I can actually hear the rustle of the target paper as the second bullet takes the target in the seventh tentacle. After the third shot clips the target the ring gives up on my aiming and gives me an augmented reality view of where the shot is most likely to go. I focus on my goals and it disappears. The whole point of this is to learn to fight without ring assistance. The rest of the bullets follow -more or less- in the direction of the first, and Christopher pulls the lever to reel in the target. Not too bad, though the distance was short. Three in the central area, and all of the other five hit the paper somewhere. Guess all that time spent playing Time Crisis wasn't a complete waste.

Christopher is less impressed. Apparently I'm over-correcting and worse, holding the gun too tightly. I'm also holding it too low and my arms are just generally wrong. And so are my legs. No, they actually don't teach this stuff in Lantern school.

Okay. I take a stance he is less unhappy with. Open the revolving bit, gently tip the spent… Urm, bullet left over thingys… Onto the counter, reload, shut it back up again and raise it -higher? Like this?-, aim, and fire.

Better this time? Oh? Well, your ten year old probably has more experience than me.

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Dependency Day 23

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7th July 2010

Late morning.

"How fast that time?"

Wonder Woman looks up from her stopwatch.

"I don't think The Flash has to worry about his job security."

"That's hardly a fair comparison; he has an opt out on the laws of physics. How about Superman, or you, or something."

"Your best time so far is about a quarter of what I can do. Without straining."

"Whaw I suck."

"It's not that bad."

"How about compared to the other Lanterns?"

"I'm not sure. I haven't flown with them that often."

That reminds me, I do need to ask about them. "Have the Green Lanterns said anything about me?"

"Are you expecting them to?"

"I was expecting to get stuck in a science cell, actually."

"Why?"

"The Guardians' deal with Larfleeze is that he doesn't leave the Vega Systems and they don't send Lanterns to the Vega Systems. I don't think they ever expected to encounter Orange Lanterns outside that area, and they don't usually respond well to things they didn't expect."

"Sorry to disappoint, but neither of them have been back to Earth since you arrived."

Neither? "I… pretty sure I detected three Green Lanterns when I first got here."

She looks down for a moment. "The other Green Lantern-"

"Lantern Gardner." She looks at me. "Come on, he doesn't even wear a mask. That's like not knowing who you are."

"Lantern Gardner is not a member of the League. As such, I have no idea whether or not he knows anything about you."

"Is there a particular reason why he isn't a member? He's not… that bad."

"He got his ring shortly after the League was founded. We might have included him in the first expansion were it not for the fact that he was in a coma at the time."

"What happened to him?"

"He was hit by a bus."

Huh?

"What?"

"I'm not sure exactly what happened, but he wasn't wearing his ring at the time and so was injured like any normal person would have been."

For God's sake, Guy.

"He regained consciousness earlier this year. He might still end up joining the League, depending on his duties to the Corps."

"He was in a coma for three years? My understanding was that injuries like that usually included some sort of lasting brain damage."

"I honestly don't know how well he's recovered. I've never worked with him. I would have thought that if the damage were significant then he would no longer be able to use his ring, and I know that he can."

I remember that in the comics he ended up switching between nice but weak Guy and mean but strong Guy whenever he hit his head. I'm fairly certain that such a condition has no basis in medicine.

Alright, I'm flying slowly, presumably because I don't care about going fast. It's the same problem as when I was in space: one patch of coastline is much like another unless you're right next to it, and when I'm that close I want to explore, not zoom past. I have to want it more.

"I think the problem with my airspeed is that I don't want it enough."

"Why don't you want to go faster?"

"Because it's abstract. By going faster all I achieve is a different number on the stopwatch. It doesn't matter. Competing against my own speed just doesn't…"

"What if you were competing against me?"

Mmmmm. I'm not that competitive, but maybe. "That might work."

She thinks for a moment. "The coast of Turkey is about twenty miles to the north of here."

"Loser buys lunch? I have been wondering where you carry things in that armour."

"On this world we have these things called 'credit cards'. They are convenient to carry and can be used to pay for things in many places. I keep mine in my left boot."

Ppppffffffff.

"Okay then, go on thre- HEY NO FAIR!"

I shoot forwards after her. Instinctively I assume the swimmer pose, arms tucked tight against my side, legs back and feet turned sole upwards. OrangeVision marks her position ahead of me, the compass points and the horizon. I'm gaining on her.

You're not going to have so easy a time of it.

Just as I come up alongside her she accelerates again. Holding back!

Don't mock me, I don't need your consideration.

Her relative acceleration drops, stops, then becomes negative. Gaining again! I can taste the pide!

And she's pulling away again.

Alright, fuck it, I'm winning this. It's a stupid pointless race with no consequence but I want it Want It WANT IT.

The sea blurs. The islands blur. I blink and I'm past Wonder Woman.

!Need!

Faster!

I risk a look back and I see an orange trail. Eyes forwards I see that my normal environmental shield has expanded and is far thicker at the front.

Faster!

OrangeVision marks the coastline. Not far now!

Faster!

The shield in front of me is damn near matte orange. I can see through the sides, but there's some sort of distortion in the air. Oh wait, is that..?

Baghuahlhahrhal!

Shield shield shield!

Uh!

Ow!

Argh!

Bwah!

Ow!

I come to rest in a furrow of soil, rock and tree. Araaahaah.

Everything seems to be intact. Uhh.

I gingerly push up on my hands, and then rise to my feet.

Shiiiiit…

I've… I think I clipped a section of cliff. An otherwise solid line of frontage has a chunk that just isn't there anymore. I can see where I hit the ground, bounced, and then hit again. Thank god there was no one around. There… There wasn't, right?

"Ring, scan for organic remains."

"No deceased or damaged animal life detected. Unable to calculate dendritic remains."

"Den what?"

"Tree parts."

Hahhhh. I breathe out. Picking my way back towards the unruined part of the cliff I survey the damage. Looks like a donation to the Turkish forestry commission is in order. And the tourist board. I shakily sit down and await Wonder Woman's arrival. I'm going to either need lots of practice not losing control when I create a sonic boom, or maybe just restrict myself to travelling that fast above a certain altitude. Pressure build up shouldn't be a problem on the edge of the atmosphere. Or maybe the ring can keep me just below the speed where it happens?

OrangeVision shows me Wonder Woman before I can see her unaided. I raise my right hand and create an orange sigil over my head. She comes in fast, then slows to survey the damage.

"No one… No one was hurt, but I'd rather not do that again."

"What happened?"

"I wanted to go faster, as fast as possible. I wasn't prepared for the sonic boom and lost control."

She nods, and comes down to land next to me.

"Are you sure you're alright?"

"Yeah. Yeah, the ground broke my fall."

She gives me a flat look. I giggle.

"I'm fine. Really. As long as I desire my own well-being the ring will put me back together."

"Try not to test it so thoroughly in the future."

I raise my hands and nod. "No fear." I look along the shoreline. Craters aside, it's really quite pretty. "So, lunch?"

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Dependency Day 24

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7th July 2010

Early afternoon

"I think that's my first federal offence."

The jewellery merchant and I look at the smouldering remains of the bundle of one hundred dollar notes in my right hand.

"What? How did..? Those were perfectly legitimate notes, honest!"

I don't know what just happened. I finally got round to selling some of my metal for money I could conveniently spend, and as soon as I picked it up, wompf.

"I'm sure they were. Would you please bear with me a moment? I need to have a chat with the ring."

"You go right ahead."

Ring, what the hell just happened?

Ring acted in accordance with the user's contempt.

Contempt?

Avarice is the desire to possess a thing. Contempt represents a desire not to possess a thing. You have contempt for local currency. By regarding it as less than valueless you indicate to this ring that gaining it would diminish your net worth. This is in contradiction to the avaricious principle of the orange light.

This is what I get for studying financial philosophy.

Ring, can I turn this effect off?

Only by learning to value the thing you currently regard as possessing entropic value.

How about a debit card?

Unknown. Result is likely to be the same, but accurate prediction is impossible without further data.

Fiddlesticks.

I know why I have contempt for cash. The recent -in my parallel- financial collapse resulted in me learning a great deal about the way in which money really works. And it's mental. Value based on confidence in future buying power I can sort of accept. Debt based currencies seem like a bad idea, but they do work, until all growth is debt based and suddenly it seems that everyone owes everyone. Including themselves, as the customers of newly nationalised banks were quick to discover. And somehow you end up with the same money being in three different bank accounts and no one really understands who owns anything. Except that whoever they are they have made a loss for tax purposes.

Gold may tend to keep its value relative to other commodities, but even if it doesn't then at the end of the day you have a metal which still has industrial uses. Same with platinum. I had realised the disquiet the whole thing made me feel, I just hadn't realised that it would ever have this sort of practical effect.

I turn back to the jewellery merchant. Her name is Paola, and she had such high hopes for this meeting. Looks like I'll have to disappoint her.

"I'm sorry, but it seems that… for theological reasons… I am unable to accept any payments in fiat currency."

She deflates a little more.

"Would a treasury bond certificate work?"

"Thank you for the thought, but probably not. And I don't think risking it is a good idea. Look, that-"

I indicate the ashes.

"-was about two gold coins' worth, right? Please, keep them. I would hate for you to be out of pocket over this."

We shake hands and I leave the shop. That is going to make life a little difficult. With one thing and another the amount of gold I have on me has noticeably decreased. I'm going to need to go back to the asteroid belt to pick up the rest of my reserves soon, but I don't really want to do that until I know where I'm going to be living in the medium term. Wonder Woman said that she would have an answer for me this evening. If it turns out that she expects me to live in a cave in Themysciran territorial waters…

Huh. I very nearly literally don't have any choice in the matter. Bit liberating, really. Only one thing left on my 'To Do' list and then I need to sort out what I'm cooking the three of us for dinner. Pudding is my signature chocolate cheesecake with orange custard but that's already in the fridge back at Mr Scott's house.

I may not have a lot of skills applicable to my current situation but I'm darn well going to use the ones that I do have.

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Dependency Day 25

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7th July

Mid afternoon

I'm floating in the sky over Central City, hoping that crossing the last item off my list won't be too difficult. Personal protective gear was my first priority when I returned to Earth after my mining expedition, but the bike gear I'm wearing was only ever supposed to be a short term solution. There are probably many people who could make the equipment that I want, but I only know one name and Mr Scott couldn't help. He never bothered with specialist gear himself and every name he knew retired long ago. I suppose that I could ask Wonder Woman if there was a smith on Themyscira who could enchant something to my specifications but given my last encounter with magic, I think I'll leave that for plan b.

The name I have is a G or a B and he makes the apparel of the Central City Rogues. Presumably if he's still in business then his name isn't known to the police. Which means that the only way I can think of for getting the name and address of the Rogues' supplier is to directly ask one of them.

A swift review of my supervillain related files reveals that I will want to avoid Mirror Master, The Trickster, The Top and Abra Kadabra. They are either too dangerous or have abilities I can't properly predict. Pied Piper seems like a good bet if his character is anything like his comic incarnation but I don't want to take the risk with a guy known for mind control. While none of the remaining members should be underestimated, I think that the safest to approach is probably Digger Harkness aka Captain Boomerang. Heh, Captain Harkness. Oh, I wonder if Doctor Who exists here? Have to check later.

Captain Boomerang got out of prison a week ago after serving eighteen months for armed robbery. It would have been longer if he'd used a gun but apparently the judge couldn't take a fellow armed with bent bits of wood entirely seriously. I sort of understand how he felt. I can only speculate how he manages to threaten The Flash badly enough to warrant inclusion in the Rogues at all. My best approach is probably to pose as a neophyte supervillain, use a little flattery and bribe money. After all, being a failed armed robber can't pay that well. And with that decision I utter probably the strangest instruction any Lantern has ever given their power ring.

"Ring, scan Central City for boomerangs. Exclude all toy and sport accessory shops."

"Boomerangs found."

"Give me an image of the area around the highest concentration."

An orange image appears in front of me. Looks like a bar. At this time of day not many people are inside but I can clearly see Mr Harkness on a stool in front of the bar itself. He is alone, and appears to be nursing his drink. One platinum coin should pay his bar bill without hindering my finances to any significant degree. Even better, he'll probably recognise it. Surprising how many people assume that it's silver. Must be the association with gold.

"Ring, plot parabolic flight path."

The ring makes no audible response, but a moment later I can feel the route, as well as its suggestions for avoiding the level of notice that touching down in the middle of the street would attract. Top of building then down fire escape it is.

Flight isn't an uncommon ability amongst metahumans and related oddities, but the only regular flier in Central City is Weather Wizard and he isn't particularly good at it. Perhaps some people see me as I make what is basically an exaggerated long jump over their heads, but I doubt that they think much of it. Onto the flat topped roof -must leak terribly-, reorientate, walk over to the metal fire escape, down, and out of the alley onto the street. I'm back in casual clothing so I don't attract much attention.

Minimum age for alcohol consumption in the US is twenty one, right? I'm not certain I could pass as that, and I don't have any paperwork to prove my age. Doesn't matter, I wasn't planning to drink here anyway. I push open the door. There's a television I didn't notice in the corner playing news of the aftermath of some sort of local super hero fight. A flash of OrangeVision confirms that aside from a shotgun behind the bar only Mr Harkness is armed. I walk over and occupy the stool next to him. He glances at me before returning his attention to his drink.

"What'd'you want?"

He sounds bored. Do random people walk up to him a lot? Do supervillains have fans? Not just crazy types like Dr Quinzel who obsess over their subjects, but actual rational admirers?

"Directions to your tailor, actually."

He frowns, but doesn't look up.

"Come a long way for a suit, ain't ya?"

"Says the Australian."

Nothing.

"You know, I heard a joke about that. If you hear someone speak, and you can't tell whether they're an Australian or a New Zealander, always guess New Zealander. If they're actually from New Zealand they'll be dead chuffed that you thought of it before Australia, and if they're from Australia they'll just laugh."

Nothing. Now I feel really awkward.

"Um, no, ah, not for a suit. There's a place in Vietnam I go to, they take your measurements and run the things up while you get lunch. I was referring to your other clothing."

That gets me another glance. Appraising? Irritated? I can't tell. I'm rubbish at facial expressions, and the ring can't really help.

"Look, I don't need another bleedin' reportah-."

I open my right hand on the bar, palm up, and create a rotating orange sigil.

"Ah. Now, how the hell d'y do that?"

"Power ring. Same as what the Green Lanterns use. I prefer my colour scheme, though." I dismiss the construct.

He appears to consider. "Where'd'ya get it then?"

"The Green Corps is run by the Guardians. The Orange Corps is run by the Controllers. They really don't get on. This sector already has three Greenies -four if the guy from the forties is still alive- so, here I am."

"Yew on Earth to pick a fight?"

I shrug, both arms adding emphasis. "Depends on how things go."

"Yew plannin' on starting something here in Central City?"

"No no. Just here to shop for clothes. I'm probably not even going to be working in this city."

He looks at my hand, and pulls what is probably his contemplative face. "Yeyh, a'right." He waves at the barmaid. "Oi, Jessie, paper and pen."

The barmaid puts down a glass she had been cleaning, pulls a sheet off her waitressing notepad and passes it over with her pen. Mr Harkness scrawls something and passes it over. Fortunately, my boss' handwriting is worse.

"Tell 'im Digger sent you."

Gambi. Paul Gambi. That was his name.

"Thank you. I appreciate it." I get up. Wait… "Oh, I'm sorry. I'm a bit new at this." I reach into my leg bag, take out a platinum coin and place it on the bar in front of him. "Would you accept a more practical demonstration of my gratitude?"

He squints. "Not silver."

"You know, you're the first person who's realised that straight out? Platinum, about two thousand dollars' worth."

He picks it up delicately with left thumb and forefinger. "I'd'a heard about a theft."

"I broke no Earthly law getting it. Please, have a few rounds on me."

He comes close to smiling. "A'right. Cheers mate."

I nod to him, and then turn and leave. I doubt that Mr Gambi will be able to provide me with the armour I want today but I should be able to get measured up and select materials at least. Ideally, he'll have some standard armour lying around that I can adapt in the meantime. I don't want power armour at this stage -since Steel isn't active I doubt that there is anything on Earth that measures up to what I can get off it- but I do want something that can reliably stop low calibre bullets. Beyond the stuff I know of from my own parallel I don't know what might be available on the grey market here, but from what I remember Mr Gambi is a basically honest guy and will probably be able to talk me through it.

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Dependency Day 26

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8th July

Morning

My sleep cycles are a mess. I usually wake up at six o'clock and go to bed at around eleven. Not only am I no longer on Greenwich Mean Time, but I've been spending time in different time zones and I think the ring is doing something to keep me alert when I would normally start to feel tired. As such, the knowledge that this is the day on which I meet my new team didn't keep me up last night. That fact just joined in with all of the other things. At about two o'clock I gave up on sleep and tried meditating. I remembered that in Justice League Animated John Stewart had been able to call his ring to his hand from several metres away, so I placed the ring on the palm of my left hand and tried to empty my mind of everything but my Hierarchy of Needs.

When my alarm went off I was sitting in the air, cross legged and glowing orange with the ring floating between my outstretched hands. When I became aware of this I fell out of the air onto my bum with some force. Still, it demonstrates that physical contact is not an essential component of ring control. Even better, the experience left me physically and mentally refreshed. Bruised posterior aside.

Breakfast was porridge with caster sugar. Alan -I now have first name privileges- doesn't use my preferred golden syrup and I would have felt silly flying to Britain to get some. My one attempt at interacting with an American supermarket left me distinctly unsettled, like a rabbit that leaves the burrow through the wrong entrance and finds itself inside the arena at a destruction derby. Smaller shops I can handle, such as the butchers and greengrocers where I got the materials for last night's Shepherds Pie, and I will make an effort to try to get to know the staff at the shops around wherever my new team is based.

Both he and Wonder Woman seemed surprised when I requested that Alan accompany us. The way I see it, giving his lantern to me marks me as his designated successor and the very least I can do for him is let him see me get properly started. Plus, I think he will enjoy meeting some of the current generation. The idea that I will have someone to speak in my favour if the League's Green Lanterns -who will be there- become hostile is also reassuring. It also gives him the opportunity to use his ring again on official business, something he seems happy about.

I think we were all surprised that he still fits in his old costume. I'm in my light armour. Turns out that Paul Gambi doesn't actually sell armour. He literally just does bespoke tailoring for supervillains. Luckily his brother Peter Gambi does have a line in personal protective equipment, and he was willing to put me in touch. I've got an appointment with him in Metropolis in a couple of days. I'm also bringing my lantern with me. Alan gave me the box he kept it in so that I would have somewhere to put it. I'm using the ring to add straps to carry it with.

Thinking about it rationally, I realise that I will probably be at the older end of the age range. Kyle Rayner would have been… what? Seven years younger than me when he got his ring, and he still ended up in… What were they called at the time? The Titans? Kathryn Kane -Batwoman- was younger than I am now when she started. Renee Montoya might have been older when she became The Question, but she had years of police experience. I hope there's at least a couple of other adults; it'll be weird if it's all teenagers.

I suppose I shouldn't be too insulted if it is all teenagers. They'll probably have been doing this sort of thing for years.

Our base of operations is going to be the newly refurbished Mount Justice facility in a place called Happy Harbour. I vaguely remember something about the early Justice League operating out of a mountain from a comic, but it was a modern addition to earlier stories and what I remember from it doesn't seem to match what I am now seeing.

It's about half seven in the morning when Wonder Woman parks her jet in a field overlooking the town. Alan makes a point of stretching when we get out. He hasn't actually activated his ring yet, though I can see the glow. I think it must have been low on power when I first saw it because there is no way not to notice the green light now. It's like a small green portal gun or something, energy wafting around the spout but never fully leaving.

The field is basically empty, but a small road runs next to it. No animals, and it doesn't look like there's a crop planted or grass harvested. Maybe she owns it? She was on the League when they worked out of the mountain so she must have parked the jet somewhere. I can see the mountain over on our left. Not much of a mountain, really. The lower parts are covered in trees and they continue up in parts to the summit. Bah, I've been up Snowdon. That is a jumped up Justice Hill.

Wonder Woman leads the way to the edge of the field and… a phone booth? A full get-in-and-shut-the-door phone booth? I can't remember the last time I saw one of those, the rise of the mobile pretty much killed them off. And who uses it out here?

Oh, I'm being stupid.

OrangeVision.

Yep, lots of circuitry and other gubbins I don't understand. So, this is a zeta tube. I stop walking.

"Oh, hell no. I've seen Star Trek. Those things are not safe."

They both look at me. Wonder Woman sighs.

"The League has been using zeta tubes since its founding. They are quite safe."

"It's all fun and games until your eye gets teleported to Poughkeepsie."

"That can't happen."

"Or into my face. I like my eyes."

She takes a breath, one hand resting on her hip.

"I don't think they've finished the ground level access yet. We closed them all off with rubble when we abandoned Mount Justice the first time."

"Is there really no other way in?"

She is about to answer, then pauses.

"There is a sea entrance."

"Sea entrance is good."

"We built it for Aquaman. The external end is about two miles out to sea. "

"And I need to test my environmental shield underwater."

"Some of us don't have power rings."

"I can extend the shield over you. Or make a bubble around the three of us."

Alan looks amused by the fuss I'm making.

"I can shield myself, thank you very much."

Or possibly at Wonder Woman's irritation. I have no intention of getting involved with that piece of mad science if I can possibly help it, but it would be intelligent to make my argument in a less confrontational way.

"We're here early anyway. You said the meeting was at eight, right?"

"Yes."

"Have you ever used the sea entrance yourself?"

"Not while conscious."

Okay…

"Then this is a great chance to see what it looks like."

She exhales. "I understand that you are concerned about using a new technology, but League members use these every day. You will most likely have to use these on your missions."

"Tell you what. We'll use the sea entrance this time, and I'll spend tomorrow going over the safety records and design schematics. If I can't find any evidence that backs up my concerns, I'll use them without complaint."

"Very well. We'll use the water entrance." She lifts off the ground. I follow. Alan remains where he is. Wonder Woman smiles. "You do remember how it works, don't you?"

"Yeah, yeah, it's… Been a while, though." A ghostly green flame aura surrounds him and he rises to join us. "Might be a bit rusty to start with. Try not to leave me behind too badly."

"Don't worry. My Granddad used to walk slower than the rest of the family. I'm used to it."

He perks up. "Used to? Did he start jogging or something?"

Internal wince. Can't think of a way to avoid answering.

"No, he um. He died. Sorry."

Why did I say that I am such an idiot. My hands rise to my face and I start to nervously giggle.

Alan and Wonder Woman look at me, then at each other. Then they start laughing.

"Well I hope I'm not that out of practice."

Ring, scan for the damn entrance.

back

Dependency Day 27

next

8th July

08:04 GMT -5

We break the surface in a plume of water.

"Alright, I admit, not as interesting as advertised."

I dismiss the environmental shield from around Wonder Woman and drift to the edge of the inner pool. She and Alan come down behind me, and I stop to let her lead the way.

"… calling it into service again, since you four are determined to stay together to fight the good fight. You'll do it on League terms."

I can just about hear someone talking. Low pitch. No idea where it's coming from. These caves are bouncing the sound around too much.

"Red Tornado volunteered to live here and be your supervisor. Black Canary's in charge of training. I will deploy you on missions."

"Orange Lantern, in accordance with the terms of your oath to Gaea I nominate Batman as the other individual whose orders you must obey."

Is that Batman's voice? Much easier to understand than the Christian Bale version.

"Rightyho."

"You realise that because of that detour we're late."

"Sorry."

"Here, it doesn't really matter. If you arrive late on a mission, people can die."

"Yes sir."

"Civilians. Your team mates. You."

"Yes sir."

A flicker of green in the corner of my eye draws my attention. I look up as a Green Lantern who must be Harold Jordan flies overhead carrying something big and mechanical looking in a glowing green hand. The hand is being projected directly from his ring. I've been using this ring for three days and I've already learned not to do that.

I can't believe Sinestro didn't teach him better than that.

He's seen us as well. He stops in the air, staring at me. I think about waving, but decide that it's probably inappropriate. He looks decidedly unhappy to see me. I reflexively strengthen my environmental shield. Just in case.

Then Alan steps forward. "Morning, Hal!"

Green two eight one four A nearly drops his construct. "Mister Sc… erm, Alan! Hi! We weren't… I wasn't expecting you."

"Thought I'd see the boy in on his first day. Especially when he keeps telling me that he's surprised I haven't dropped dead yet."

That's not what I…ugh.

I wince. Wonder Woman catches my eye and nods in the direction Lantern Jordan just came from. We walk away as he and Alan keep talking. Nice to know he gives Alan respect face to face, even if he couldn't be bothered to fix his lantern for him.

"The six of you will be that team."

We're getting closer to wherever Batman is. Since this is an actual induction, there are probably other League members around, working on other parts of the building. I'm a bit impressed that they have the knowledge to build their own bases, but I suppose they can't really hire people to do it. I remember all of the operation staff there were in Justice League Unlimited. Massive security risk.

"Cool! Wait, six?"

We exit the tunnel and enter another large cavern. I suffer a brief nerdgasm as I identify The Flash, Batman, Aquaman, Black Canary, Hawkman and Red Tornado. I wonder if he's the elemental/robot hybrid version, or the pure robot from the cartoons? Since Wonder woman had never heard of Rann, probably the latter. My future team mates appear to be Kid Flash -the Wallace West version-, Superboy, a tough looking black guy with bleached hair and a short, black haired guy. Probably a Robin, given that Batman's here. Yep, all teenagers.

Martian Manhunter and Miss Martian walk towards the cluster of people from the direction of what I assume is the zeta beam base station. Batman flicks his gaze in our direction for a moment, but everyone else is watching the Martians.

"This is the Martian Manhunter's niece, Miss Martian."

She waves, nervously. "Hi?"

"And that-"

Batman turns back toward me, and this time everyone turns with him. Still haven't quite reached them so I can clearly see everyone stare. Gulp.

"-is Orange Lantern, protégé of the original Green Lantern."

Chin up.

"Sorry I'm late, sir. I'm afraid that I took some horror stories about teleportation rather to heart and asked to come in by the sea entrance."

Kid Flash looks at me for a moment, and then decides he'd rather talk to the green girl. "Welcome aboard. I'm Kid Flash! And this is the -slightly extended- gang."

Another look at me. They all already know each other, don't they. Definite ingroup intrusion vibe. Might as well introduce myself properly.

"Robin." I nod. "Kid Flash. Miss M'orzz. Superboy. And… I'm sorry, I've got no idea who you are." I extend my right hand to the black guy.

He takes it. "I am Kaldur'ahm. My code name is Aqualad."

"Orange Lantern two eight one four. Pleased to meet you all."

I'm not the biggest Aquaman fan, but wasn't Aqualad white? Went on to become Tempest? I think his name was Garth, or Gareth, or something. Another difference.

Kid Flash squints at me. "Hey, wait a second. Orange Lantern? How many Lantern colors are there?"

I turn to him. "That I know about? Nine. Though, logically I… I suppose you could make one of any colour."

"Nine?!"

Robin puts a hand on his shoulder. "Try to stay whelmed, Kid."

Whelmed? "Whelmed?"

Kid Flash winces. "Don't."

back

Dependency Day 28

next

8th July

08:04 GMT -5

I dismiss the environmental shield from around Wonder Woman and drift to the edge of the inner pool. She comes down behind me, and I stop to let her lead the way.

"… calling it into service again, since you four are determined to stay together to fight the good fight. You'll do it on League terms."

I can just about hear someone talking. Low pitch. No idea where it's coming from. These caves are bouncing the sound around too much.

"Red Tornado volunteered to live here and be your supervisor. Black Canary's in charge of training. I will deploy you on missions."

"Orange Lantern, in accordance with the terms of your oath to Gaea I nominate Batman as the other individual whose orders you must obey."

Is that Batman's voice? Much easier to understand than the Christian Bale version.

"Right."

"You realise that because of that detour we're late."

"Sorry sir."

"Here, it doesn't really matter. If you arrive late on a mission, people can die."

"Yes sir."

"Civilians. Your team mates. You."

"Yes sir."

A flicker of green in the corner of my eye draws my attention. I look up as a Green Lantern who must be Harold Jordan flies overhead carrying something big and mechanical looking in a glowing green hand. The hand is being projected directly from his ring. I've been using this ring for three days and I've already learned not to do that.

I can't believe Sinestro didn't teach him better.

He's seen us as well. He stops in the air, staring at me. I think about waving, but decide that it's probably inappropriate. He looks decidedly unhappy to see me. I reflexively strengthen my environmental shield. Just in case.

Maybe asking Mr Scott to come along would have been a good idea.

Lantern Jordan lowers himself to the floor in front of me, and deposits his load on the ground. He crosses his arms in front of his chest. "So, you're an Orange Lantern."

My eyes flick to Wonder Woman for a moment, but no. I knew this was coming, I will deal with it myself. "Orange Lantern two eight one four, sir. Pleased to meet you."

"There's nothing pleasing about it. Why don't you tell me where you really got that ring?"

"This ring? This ring was made for me by a group of Leprechauns. They forged it from the concentrated avarice given off during the grand opening of the Ikea superstore in London. Beware the Vikings, Green Lantern. They will flat pack your life. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm late for an appointment."

back

Dependency Day 29

next

8th July

08:06 GMT -5

"This is the Martian Manhunter's niece, Miss Martian."

She waves, nervously.

"Hi?"

"And that-"

Batman turns back toward me, and this time everyone turns with him. Still haven't quite reached them so I can clearly see everyone stare. Gulp.

"-is Orange Lantern, protégé of the original Green Lantern."

Chin up.

"Sorry I'm late, sir. I'm afraid that I took some horror stories about teleportation rather to heart and asked to come in by the sea entrance."

Kid Flash looks at me for a moment, and then decides he'd rather talk to the green girl.

"Welcome aboard. I'm Kid Flash! And this is the -slightly extended- gang."

The ring told me that moving faster than light in an atmosphere was perfectly safe, so long as I have the course fully programmed in advance.

There is a momentary orange flare, then I'm next to Kid Flash with an arm around his shoulder. I'm both taller and more heavily muscled than he is, and he starts at my presence and then freezes.

Yeah. Guess who isn't the fastest guy on the team.

"I'm so sorry, Kid Flash. Would you have preferred it if I'd padded my bra?"

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NEXT CHAPTER

Welcome to Happy Hour

BACK

Welcome to Happy Hour 1

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Welcome to Happy Hour

18th July

10:37 GMT -5

"What I'm saying is, they accidentally took a guy from the wrong planet. That doesn't sound very safe to me."

M'gann and I are in the kitchen area. Finding out that despite her appearance she is actually forty eight was quite a relief. Someone I can talk to! Aqualad is sixteen but I've got no idea whether that counts as adult or not in his country. Superboy came out of his pod on the day I got the ring. He looks physically adolescent, but his mental development is all over the place. I had an interesting conversation with him about 'Human, All Too Human' a couple of days ago. His analysis of some of the aphorisms was interesting, but when he spoke it sounded like he was reading out something someone else had written. When I questioned him about it he got in a mood and stomped off. If we're going to live together I'll have to watch myself to make sure I don't push his buttons like that.

"Uncle J'onn says that that can't happen again."

"Of course it can't; he's already here."

She giggles. "No, I mean the safety systems have been improved since Dr. Erdel's experiment. There has to be a tube at each end, and they check the signal integrity before sending whoever is inside."

I've got a construct whisk whisking the mango custard. I'm on dinner duty this evening and I've decided to try my mango meringue cake on a captive audience. People at work seemed to like it. The construct has four whisk bits and as it has no actual mechanical components is virtually silent. I've kept the basic shape though, since I'm used to it and the handle is convenient. The one I made for work had two layers. This one will have three. Partly because I want to push my baking skills, and partly because I want there to be some left for the rest of us when Kid Flash has finished. He says that he has a fast metabolism as a result of his speed, but I don't think that can be right. He can run at the speed of sound; there is no way a human body can ingest enough to fuel that in the conventional way. On the other hand, he isn't gaining weight, so, I don't know.

Cooking for and being cooked for by apprentice superheroes is an interesting experience. M'gann goes for traditional American food, though yesterday she branched out into Tex-Mex. I pretty much flip through a recipe book until I find something that looks interesting, though when it comes to pudding I currently have a bit of a custard fixation. When he's actually here Kaldur does baked fish with various kinds of seaweed. It isn't as bad as it sounds. Superboy does Beef Stroganoff and poached pears. He does them well, but it appears to be all he knows how to do. I watched him once, and he put everything he needed out on the work surface in a very particular arrangement before starting. Cooked the whole thing in a fugue state, unresponsive when I tried to ask him about it.

One morning M'gann tried to help him make pancakes. I'm not sure exactly what happened, but I ended up having to remove burned pancake mix from the work surfaces, floor and his forearms with the ring.

Kid Flash actually looked distraught when he turned up last Friday evening and I told him I didn't know the number of the local pizzeria.

"But do they check the integrity of the thing checking the integrity?"

"There is at least one level of redundancy built in to each system, an automatic remote daily system check and a service each month." I stop and look at her. She simpers. "I read the manual."

"Good. I'm glad someone has."

The custard is mixed. I won't add the mango puree until it's started to get stodgy. I eliminate the whisk construct and watch as the custard mix coating it falls into the bowl. I put it in the microwave, one hundred percent power, four minutes.

"Are zeta tubes common on Mars?"

"No, we don't use them at all. Earth developed the technology first, and on Mars the radiation disrupts the signals too much for it to be much use."

I float off the ground, legs folded up beneath me. The cake itself is in the oven, the custard is in the microwave and I can't start the meringue until they are both done and cool. I also can't start doing something else while the custard is cooking because it needs attention every few minutes.

"Why are you doing that?"

"Huh?"

"You do that sitting in the air thing a lot. I was just wondering why?"

Huh, I suppose I have. Hadn't thought about it. Didn't realise that she'd noticed.

"I've had this ring for a fortnight. The novelty value of being able to do this hasn't worn off yet. Kinda hope it never does, actually."

"I can't imagine not being able to fly."

Huh?

"I don't think I've ever seen you fly outside of the base."

"Yes, because I'm trying to fit in. I can't just walk down the street and start floating things in public."

"Why not? There are humans who can do things like that."

"Yes, but not very many. I don't want to attract that amount of attention. While I'm here, I just want to be a normal Earth teenager."

Teenager? Odd. Maybe shape shifters think about societal groups in a different way to humans?

"You do know we're not a monoculture, right? A teenager in the United States is very different to one in Kenya, or Pakistan."

"Yes, but my first exposure to Earth culture was in some TV shows Uncle J'onn sent back after I asked what it was like here."

"They were all American?"

"I think so. I didn't bring the tapes with me, and when I watched them I didn't really know anything about the different countries on Earth."

"Might be interesting to watch them again, now you know more about what it's like here."

"Maybe. I think I mostly liked them because it was so different to what I was used to. Open skies rather than caves."

"You lived in a cave?"

"All Martians do. Oh, no, not little caves. Vast underground caverns. All of the settlements on Mars are underground, because of the radiation."

"Uh."

Mars must be very different here. And not just the being inhabited thing, there are reasons why some worlds don't develop life.

"You said that you came here from a parallel universe, right?"

"As far as I can tell, that's correct."

"Do you have… What's Mars like there?"

"In my parallel Mars is a frigid, barren, uninhabited desert wasteland. I think we found some bacteria in soil samples, but that's about it as far as life goes."

"Oh."

"Sorry, but it's like I said. Where I'm from Humans have only met other Humans."

The microwave keeps whirring. There was something I was meaning to ask. What was it? Oh, yes.

"I've been wondering… I saw you change your t-shirt from white to black when I first got here..?"

"Yes?"

"Do you actually wear clothes, or do you just shape shift part of your skin to look like you are?"

Silence. The microwave beeps, and I pull the steaming protocustard out onto the work surface and recreate the whisk construct.

"YesIwearclothesofcourseIwearclothes!"

I turn around. She looks flustered and is blushing purple.

"Oh. Shape shifting clothes. That's fairly impressive, actually. Though I suppose for a Martian on Earth something like that would be pretty essential."

A quick wizz with the whisk and then the custard goes back into the microwave. I set it for two minutes and go back to watching it.

"I'm not naked."

"Alright. What sort of range do these wonder garments of yours have? Just standard humanoid, or can they do extra arms as well?"

"Really. I'm wearing clothes. Totally wearing clothes."

"I fully accept that you are wearing clothes."

"I mean, you don't seem to care but some people would probably find it really strange if I wasn't wearing clothes."

"They probably would."

"It would be really humiliating."

"Okay."

"I just want to be clear."

"You are fully clad. The matter is resolved."

"Okay."

"Okay."

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Welcome to Happy Hour 2

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18th July

10:45 GMT -5

I've added the puree and am now trying to determine whether or not the custard needs to go back in the microwave. The puree adds a considerable amount of liquid and won't help with thickening, but the custard is hot and will thicken as it cools. Really, to act as icing between the cake layers it has to be quite thick. A little longer will probably be best. I set it for two minutes.

"What was it like?"

"What was what like?"

"Just… Turning up in space like that."

"I was asleep for the actual turning up part. Waking up was weird, then painful."

"Painful? Why?"

"The ring detects my desires and tries to fulfil them. It decided that my body wasn't perfect and corrected it. Human bodies really aren't designed to shift around like that."

"You think your body is perfect?"

I hear her raised eyebrow in her voice. I suppress an impulse to pose and flex. "No, it… This body is the most perfect form of me. I can't change it without it becoming either less perfect, or less me." I peer at the custard. Still counting down. "What about you?"

"What about me?"

"What made you pick that face?"

"What's wrong with my face?"

"Nothing's wrong with it, I just wondered why you chose it."

"It's my face."

"Pre-tty sure that Martians don't have hair."

She looks around. No one else near the kitchen area. There's an odd sound, a bit like reeds moving over a paving slab, and her hair merges with the rest of her head.

"I just… Human girls aren't usually bald. And I actually like having hair. Brushing it felt kinda weird to start with, but it was nice once I got used to it."

I know she doesn't want anyone to know that she is a White Martian, but images of what Green Martians look like exist, surely? I suppose I don't know for sure that this M'gann actually is a White Martian. And I can't check without other examples to scan and compare. Is it important enough for me to make the time to fly to Mars? Probably not.

I snort. "Yeah, and the rest."

"What-what do you mean?"

It's been a while, but I still remember broadly what Martian Manhunter's wife looked like in Justice League Animated. I hold out my right hand and generate what I think is a Green Martian female shaped construct about M'gann's size.

"You're talking to someone who actually knows what Martians look like. Heck, it takes me less time to get from Earth to Mars than to get to some places on Earth. Not that I don't appreciate you making an effort to fit in."

I remove the construct and take the custard from the microwave. I use the spatula construct to scrape the custard stuck to the edge of the bowl back into the centre, and to gauge its consistency. Not quite done yet. Back in it goes.

"I was just wondering, why that face? Was it from a magazine or something?"

There's that noise again as M'gann restores her hair. She's looking at the floor, hands clasped in front of her. Ah, I've done it again! I didn't think this would be a big deal for her.

"Could you not tell the others?"

"If that's what you want. But if it's just Superboy and me here, don't worry about it. You can change back. It wouldn't bother me and given what the Genomorphs look like I very much doubt that it would bother him."

No, not enough, I still feel like an arsehole.

"Look, I'm… I'm sorry, I didn't realise that it would be a big deal for you."

"That's okay."

No, it isn't.

I step towards her, take hold of her right hand with mine and hold it up, covering it with my left. She looks up. "I should have just left it alone. I should have realised that you were uncomfortable with what I was saying and stopped. I'm sorry. That you've changed yourself like this for our benefit shows great generosity. I just want you to know, you don't have to. I was expecting aliens to look different from Humans. I won't be angry, or scared, or revolted if you use your natural appearance, alright?"

She look to the side. "It's just… I really want to fit in here."

"I can understand that."

"And it's okay for guys to look like big ogres but girls need to look like girls."

"Okay, Wonder Woman would literally castrate me if I let you get away with saying that."

Her eyes flick back to me. She looks stunned for a moment, then indignant. "No, she wouldn't!"

"No, but she'd be annoyed about the double standard. And with me, for not commenting on it."

I release her hand. I think I fixed it. M'gann turns and starts to walk away. Probably best. I've made enough of a mess for one day. Then she stops and turns back to me.

"I copied this face from the lead actress on one of the television shows Uncle J'onn sent me. It was called 'Hello, Megan'. The first thing I did when I got to Earth was see if there were any more episodes, but it got cancelled after one season. I don't… Did you ever watch it?"

"Name doesn't ring any bells, but not all American comedies made it across the Atlantic. Particularly the short lived ones. From a parallel universe."

"I suppose you're even further from home than I am. Are you… I mean, getting on alright? With the differences?"

Am I?

"There's two categories. There's major differences, like this ring and you. Those I'm fine with. Then there's the small things. Names of popular websites, some minor historical events, commonly available technology. The television programs I used to watch. Walk down the street and everything's slightly off. That, sometimes, gets to me a bit. Honestly, I try not to think about it. Making myself miserable won't help anyone."

"What sort of television shows?"

"Doctor Who. My Little Pony. The BBC did a reinterpretation of Sherlock Holmes recently, that was pretty good."

"Do you miss not being able to watch them?"

"No, it's… I don't miss them. Doctor Who had really patchy quality in the last few series. But it would have been a point of familiarity, if we'd both seen it, y'know?"

"Yeah. I think that's what I was looking for, on Earth. I mean I know life isn't a situation comedy but I wasn't really… Happy, on Mars. I wanted to meet people like the people Megan met in the show."

"I could probably get the ring to play a canned laughter track whenever anyone says anything. If it would help."

She smiles. "No, that would just be weird."

The microwave pings. I open it and give the custard a stir. Done. I cover the bowl in cling film, poke a few holes then leave it to cool.

"Okay, that's about done. Kitchen's all yours for the next couple of hours."

"What are you doing for the rest of the day?"

"Right now, I have an hour's worth of meditation on the Hierarchy of Needs planned. Then reviewing intelligence reports. This afternoon I'm going back to the centre of the Pacific for more clean up duty."

"Why do you do that?"

"It's full of plastic."

"No, I mean, the meditation."

"Power rings, all of them, cause psychological instability. Some, like the green or yellow ones, just make you a bit odd. Others, like mine, can have really nasty long term effects. If you know what you're doing, you can counteract it. If you don't, you end up like-"

Larfleeze.

"-Star Sapphire. Meditating on the Hierarchy reinforces the balance between different levels of desire, from simple and direct ones to complex and long term ones. Without that, I would risk becoming... Risk only caring about my short term wants."

She looks concerned. "If it makes you crazy, is it really a good idea to use it?"

"Good idea, bad idea. It's the ring I have." I shrug. I really don't have a choice in the matter. "What are your plans for the rest of the day?"

"I don't really have any firm plans. Kid Flash said something about giving me a guided tour, so I suppose Superboy and I will be taking another walk around Happy Harbor."

"Haven't you done that, like, every day you've been here?"

"I don't want to get into a situation where I don't know what to do. Uncle J'onn is arranging for me to start high school, but until then I'd rather learn Human social customs slowly. And, well, Superboy…"

"Yeah. Alright, I understand."

What can I do to help?

"Look, I'm never going to be able to concentrate on plastic particulates all day. How about if I come back at about five o'clock and we all go somewhere. Anywhere on Earth. We could even spend the evening on Mars if you really want?"

"No! No, um, thanks for the offer." She thinks about it for a moment. "Maybe we could go to Acapulco?"

No reason why not. I don't know where it is and I only know the name from the song, but I'm sure the ring will be able to find it. Wait a minute.

"Did Megan from the series go there?"

"No. But one of her friends did. When I got to Earth I found out that was because the actress playing her got hit by a car and they needed to explain why she wasn't in the series any more, but they made it sound really fun."

"Okay, Acapulco it is. I'll see you later."

I leave the kitchen and walk back to my room. I'm a bit surprised she was so worried by me knowing what Martians look like. Maybe it's because as a telepath she'll know if we find it weird if we try to pretend that we don't? I'm also surprised she wasn't a bit more psychologically resilient than that. I suppose she's used to being in a society where everyone is empathic enough to stop asking when it's making you that uncomfortable.

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Welcome to Happy Hour 3

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18th July

11:27 GMT -5

I chose a room towards the centre of the base. It's not like the walk to the briefing room takes more than a minute, and I want to be as secure as possible. M'gann wanted one closer to the communal areas and Superboy… I think he got put in one near her. Remembering not to call him Conner or Kon-El might actually be difficult if he were more talkative. Kaldur has one as near as possible to the sea entrance. I'm not sure why as he generally arrives and leaves by zeta tube. Maybe that was Aquaman's old room? Maybe he just likes to go for a swim sometimes. I don't think that Robin or Kid Flash have bothered to pick out rooms, though that might change once their summer holiday starts and they have more spare time.

Running through the stages of the Hierarchy has become second nature to me. As has floating without touching the ring. I hold my hands cupped at my stomach, legs crossed, eyes staring at the blank wall in front of me. The ring floats about twenty centimetres above my hands, and the diffuse orange aura extends at least that far around my body. It's been over a week since I last fell out of this posture due to a surprise, M'gann opening the door unexpectedly. We had a conversation about how knocking was polite when dealing with people who aren't telepaths.

When I turn my mind to 'friendship' I find that M'gann's face has firmly joined those of Alan and Wonder Woman. That's new. Ah, no, she said that she was fine with me calling her Diana. Alan and Diana. I suppose our heart to heart in the kitchen has forced my brain to accept her as part of my ingroup. Progress with getting to know the others is slower. It wasn't until I demonstrated a pinpoint accurate ranged attack that I even found out they'd wanted Speedy -Roy Harper, not whatshername- on the team, and I only found out then because Kid Flash doesn't mutter as quietly as he thinks he does. I'm not sure that they hold his absence against me, exactly, but they certainly aren't happy about including someone they don't know. Someone they don't know who isn't an attractive woman, anyway.

I did -briefly- contemplate trying to use the ring to change my gender, but I don't think that would actually have helped.

Family hasn't changed. I miss them being around, and I worry about them missing me. It wouldn't be so bad if I could somehow send a message to them letting them know that I was fine but wouldn't be coming back anytime soon. I went up into orbit to scan my emergence point and it turned out that what I told Diana was true; a ring could track back my flight path to the start point. And then, well, it could tell me about the presence of certain forms of exotic energy and particles, and couldn't suggest anything helpful to do about it. I have noticed that this ring appears to have a very limited pre-programmed database. Maybe once I make contact with the Controllers they will be willing to update it.

Sexual intimacy? M'gann's nice, but she acts quite a lot younger than her actual age. I know Martians live longer than Humans but even so, her life experience should put her beyond high school level, surely? I don't feel that sort of attraction to her. No change to that analysis needed then.

In terms of confidence-.

"Hey, Orange!" Mr West appears to have decided that knocking is for other people. I put my feet down and float the ring onto my left hand, sigil facing inwards.

"Yes, Kid Flash?"

I'm still not completely comfortable referring to people by code names. Again, no serious mistakes yet, but I'm going to have trouble faking surprised if they open up enough to tell me their real names. And if they did, I still wouldn't be able to reciprocate. I didn't think that I said my own name often but not being able to introduce yourself gets frustrating quite quickly.

"Did you know that Megan has this awesome Bio-Ship?"

"Yes. It's been here nearly as long as she has."

The stealth was interesting, but without guns or shields I'd hesitate to take it into combat. When she showed me, I suggested that I could remedy this by standing on the outside of the hull. Though a functional solution, I am now slightly concerned that my idea will come back to haunt me.

"Oh. Well, we were all going to go flying around the harbor but she wanted to see if you wanted to come as well. I'll tell her you were busy with… Staring at the wall… Or whatever." He takes a step back to leave.

I hold up my right hand. "No, this sounds like something I should make time for."

"Pf. Fine." He leads the way towards the hangar, deliberately staying ahead of me so that he doesn't have to talk to me.

I need to make an effort. "Ahhh… No archer, then?"

"No."

I think he actually kicked the ground when he said that.

"Did he say why he didn't want to join?"

He slows, and lets me come alongside. "He thinks the League will treat us like kids."

I don't comment. I've seen these kids fight, in the database recordings. Put someone normal through that sort of thing, they'd die in seconds. How Robin manages I have no idea.

"Seriously, it's been over a week. Nothing!" He throws up his hands.

"I'm rather new at this. Is that sort of time gap between major missions normal?"

"In Central City, there's always something! One of the Rogues, or a mugging, or a fire, or something. Anything!"

Diana has had me accompany her on assignments a few times. It mostly involved me watching her work or using OrangeVision to provide her with tactical information. She also has me convey the apprehended criminals to police custody. It makes sense to me for her to treat me like that given that I am completely new at this, but the other guys have earned some involvement, surely? Or else, why put them here?

"Maybe Batman just hasn't found anything worth our time?"

"I'd take a jaywalker right now."

Not sure Mr Garrick would appreciate that. Oh, hang on, mustn't forget. "Oh, erm, I've got a cake in the oven. Would you mind if we went via the kitchens?"

He perks up. "Is it done?"

"The cake layer should be, but I won't do the meringue until this afternoon."

"How many layers does it have?"

"Three of cake, two of mango custard, and then everything gets covered in a layer of meringue. That takes a while to cook. Huh?"

He is now behind me. He stopped walking a second ago and is just staring at me. "Where'd you learn to do that?"

"None of it's particularly complicated. I've been baking regularly for years; frequently, since I started living here."

And then he's standing next to me, one arm stretched up companionably around my neck. He normally moves at regular speed. I've seen him run before, but celerity is a lot more shocking at close quarters. "I think you just became my-" He pauses, counting on his fingers. "-third favorite team mate."

Suck it, Superboy and Aqualad.

"Ah, thank you, I-." And he's gone. A flash -hah- of OrangeVision shows him in the kitchen staring at the oven. Our kitchen is awesome. I don't know who the would-be chef in the League is, but I owe them for not just assuming that teenagers would try living on take-away food.

"Inertial controls on. Ring, plot route before Wallace scoffs the lot."

back

Welcome to Happy Hour 4

next

18th July

11:31 GMT -5

My flight control has massively improved since my encounter with Turkey. In narrow confines like the base corridors I let the ring AI handle navigation. With my inertia regulated I can change directions with no loss of speed. First time Diana ever told me that I had impressed her was when I used that to fly at full speed through a dense Themysciran forest. I move through the base like a jet powered slalom skier, coming to a halt just outside the kitchen area.

"You sure it's not done?"

"Yes, the meringue takes an hour."

"Aww. M'gann made cookies earlier, but I could probably fit in a few slices of cake."

"I think that was the first time she used that recipe. How did they turn out?"

"Sooo good. Shame there weren't more. Everyone else just got one each."

I use a construct to open the oven and lift out the three cake tins. The cakes within look well done, though this mix does tend to brown on the outside while still being underdone in the middle. The ring also makes it very easy to lift the cakes out of the tins without lining them or risking breaking the cake.

"If you're really that hungry, there is a bakery in Happy Harbour. We could probably stop off."

"Any good?"

"I don't know. I don't buy stuff I could bake myself."

"Mrm. Think about it." We walk towards the hangar. "Have you used your ring in an actual fight yet?"

"No, I haven't."

"How come?"

"I've had it two weeks. In that time I've either been here, or shadowing Wonder Woman."

"Wonder Woman gets in fights all the time!"

"Errr… Put it this way: you've been active two years, right?"

"Huh. Yeah, I guess it would be."

"Did The Flash involve you in fighting the Rogues from the start?"

"Not right away."

"Well, there you-."

"We took down Mirror Master together in my second week. So if you fight someone today you'll only be just behind me."

Right in the ego. Right in the ego.

"So, yeah, you should probably just stay out of the way in a fight. We'll try and leave one or two for you. Regular guys, so you can actually cope."

"Ah. I appreciate the consideration, but I think I can aim a little higher than that. The Green Lanterns call power rings 'the most powerful weapon ever created' for a reason."

"Sure you can keep up?"

"I think I should probably take things at a steadier pace until I'm sure I know what I'm doing, but yes. I don't intend to be a burden."

"'Cause Rob and I were talking about it earlier and we think you're probably the weakest out of all of us."

"Really? As I see it, the only person here I couldn't take in a fight is you."

He looks at me with an expression of incredulity. "Really."

"I can't account for every possibility, but yes, I think so."

"You think you can take Robin."

"None of his standard ordnance is strong enough to penetrate my shield. My shield has no gaps. I can track him through his smoke bombs and attack at light speed."

"He always has plans for how to take his enemies down."

"Plans that in my case he has neither the information to set up nor the equipment to carry out."

"Aqualad."

"His strongest attacks might be a threat, but I can evade with flight and attack from a distance."

"Miss Martian."

"She shares my lack of combat experience, and is far less aggressive. I would attack before she can disrupt the ring with telepathy."

"Superboy."

I shrug. "Same as Aqualad."

"Seriously!? You did read the report where he took down me, Robin and Kaldur in like thirty seconds."

"With all due respect to everyone's favourite Human-Kryptonian hybrid, my regular sparring partner is Wonder Woman, and she hits at least as hard as he does."

"No. Way."

"Ah-ight." I shrug. Unless we start sparring against each other there's no way to tell for certain. Might be worth arranging to start that, actually.

"If you really think you could beat everyone else, -which you totally can't- why don't you think you could beat me?"

"It's not so much your speed as your faster reflexes. If I start with the ring inactive and we're about… what, five metres apart? I've got a fraction of a second to raise my shield before you hit me. Longer, if I want them strong enough to take you punching them as fast as you can. If we start further apart I can fly to evade but I'll still struggle to hit you. If you're intelligent enough to go after my lantern and play keep away, you'll probably win by exhausting me."

"Yeah, that sounds like something I'd do."

We reach the elevator and get in. Kid Flash pushes the button to take us down to the hangar in which M'gann keeps her ship. When she first introduced me to the ship we had a moment of cross cultural confusion when I asked her what its name is. Despite clearly regarding it as a living thing she didn't see any need to give it one.

"As much fun as this joy ride is going to be, might it be worth scheduling some team practice in for later today? Remedial sparring, if you think that I'm that far below your level?"

"Nah. We all pretty much know what we're doing. Even you, I guess. Wonder Woman and A-. Erm. Green Lantern wouldn't have put you here if you were completely useless."

"I do know what his name is."

"Yeah, he said, but you shouldn't get into the habit of using people's names. Still can't believe you just walked up to him like that."

"Seemed like the logical way to go about it."

"Secret identities aren't that easy to breach."

"Why does everyone think that? He wore a tiny mask!" I put my thumbs and index fingers around my eyes with my other fingers splayed outwards. "Tiny tiny mask which didn't cover his face at all. One facial recognition scan was all it took."

The elevator pings open while my hands are still in front of my face. I turn outwards to see the rest of the team staring at me. I lower my hands. They're still staring.

Yeah.

"It was a tiny mask!"

I stalk towards the open rear of the ship. M'gann is trying not to laugh by covering her mouth with her hands. I think the others are just bemused.

"Are we going or what?"

back

Welcome to Happy Hour 5

next

18th July

11:37 GMT -5

I plonk myself in the seat to the left of the entrance and the chair extends a seatbelt around me. M'gann follows a moment later and takes the pilot position.

"Strap in for launch."

She did let me have a brief go at controlling the ship a few days ago. I can handle simple manoeuvres with the manual controls but I couldn't get my head around using the gravity drive for more complex stunts. Intellectually, I know that 'down' is towards the floor of the ship but whenever I tried to do anything fancy I kept becoming convinced that it was about to be the planet's surface again. It's weird; I don't have that problem with the ring at all. My attempt at using the telepathic control system with the ring was a complete failure.

Kid Flash comes in next and takes the left midship position, swinging the chair around to face M'gann. Robin takes right midship, Superboy at right forwards and Kaldur at left forwards. Guess I'm nobby no-mates then.

"Red Tornado, please open the bay doors."

The ship manifests the control columns and M'gann raises her hands above them. I still haven't quite got used to flight that doesn't involve either conventional gravity or inertia. When I use the ring to alter my inertia it's all pre-programmed. I just ride along with it. I tried altering gravity so that the pull towards the ceiling was two gees once. It wasn't painful or even uncomfortable, but it was weird as heck and I haven't done it again. M'gann's ship pulls out of the hangar so smoothly that if I couldn't see the view I would think that we hadn't moved at all.

We shoot out over the water. I have no idea why no one has seen us. In a sensible universe we'd be a tourist attraction by now. M'gann shows off the artificial gravity by putting us into a brief vertical climb, turns and spins the ship on its axis, and then turns us back towards Happy Harbour itself. The whole time everyone on board felt no more than one point one gravities towards the floor, and maybe point one against the direction of acceleration. It actually feels like being in a malfunctioning simulator. If all Martian technology is like this I have no idea why they aren't the dominant power in this system.

"Incredible."

Robin seems to appreciate it. He can probably compare it to the Batwing, so can better understand how much more advanced it is than the best Earth has to offer.

Wallace sighs. "She sure is."

Either he is literally besotted, or, whaw. M'gann turns to look at him. I can't see her face from here.

"Ah, I mean, the ship."

He's actually pointing. Good save. Good save.

"Which, like all ships, is a she."

Stop digging, man.

"Fast with his feet. Not so much with his mouth."

Oowh, harsh, Robin. Harsh.

"Dude!"

I should probably try and help him out.

"Would it be a problem if someone saw us up here?"

M'gann stretches her neck to look at me. I worry a little about the pilot taking her eyes off the window, but there isn't anything to hit up here and no way for a birdstrike to interfere with the engines. "Why would it be? We're not doing anything wrong."

"Do you have a pilot's license?"

"Yes! Oh. Do you mean an Earth pilot's license, or a Martian one?"

"Whichever one the American civil aviation authority is likely to ask for."

Wallace takes the opportunity to support M'gann. "C'mon, Oh El. No one's gonna care about that."

Maybe he's right. Maybe civil authorities have learned to leave alien craft well alone. I certainly wouldn't blame them.

"No no. You can't call me Oh El, it'll get confusing."

I now have Robin's attention too. "You see any other Orange Lanterns around here?"

"No, but Superboy's an El, isn't he."

Wallace looks puzzled. "How d'you get 'El' from Superboy."

"From his father? That's usually how it works, isn't it? Kryptonians aren't matrilineal."

Superboy is now paying close attention. "What do you mean?"

"Superman's name. Kal-El. Son of Jor-El. Which presumably makes you, whatever you end up picking as your first name, followed by El. The important thing is, I can't be Oh El, because it would make me sound Kryptonian. People would get confused."

Superboy looks stunned. "I didn't know Superman had a name."

"You didn't think his parents called him Superman, did you?"

"I didn't… I hadn't… Thought about it…"

I smile. "Learn something new every day."

Robin leans towards M'gann. "Hey. How about showing us a little Martian shape shifting?"

Guess he decided that I've pushed Super-El too much.

M'gann rises to her feet and steps forwards from the pilot's seat. The reeds on stone noise again as her legs turn.. dark.. grey..?

I get out of my seat to take a closer look, glowing orange-soled boots making sure I stick to the deck. "Heheh. Damn, I look good."

Orange Lantern M'gann strikes a pose. She even has her ring facing the right way.

Wallace doesn't seem to share my appreciation. "Oh, that is just wrong."

Wait, does that mean that she really wasn't wearing clothes earlier? Not mentioning that to Wallace.

M'gann twirls on the spot, and shifts to female Kid Flash. Does Jessie Quick exist here? Another one to look up.

Wallace seems confused. "That's… Sorta wrong, but also kinda right."

Robin claps. "Impressive." M'gann shifts back to her default form. "But you know you're not exactly gonna fool anyone with those."

"Mimicking boys is a lot harder."

"And your clothes…"

Bad Aqualad! Bad! I was hoping no one else had noticed!

"They're organic, like the ship. They respond to my mental commands."

Uh? Wait, why was she so… Is shifting your skin like hanging around in pyjamas for a Human? And you put on actual clothes for company? Not something I do now, as getting dressed takes a literal second with the ring.

"Can you do that ghosting through walls thing that Manhunter does?"

Wallace continues with his interest in everything M'gann.

"Density shifting? No… it's a very advanced technique."

"Flash can vibrate his molecules right through a wall. When he tries it? Bloody nose."

"Dude!"

Robin is definitely off Wallace's wingman list.

"I've heard that power rings are supposed to be able to do the same thing."

I surround my left hand in an orange aura and press it against the side of the ship. "Nothing yet. Guess we've all got something to work on."

M'gann extends her hands again and the control columns twist to reach her. "Well, here's something I can do." A dull thumm sounds through the ship. "Camouflage mode."

The stealth on this ship is really good. Even knowing exactly where to look it's practically impossible to spot. Just hope no one shoots us with a paintball gun. Not sure how it compares to Wonder Woman's jet. OrangeVision bypasses both anyway.

"Red Tornado to Miss Martian. An emergency alert has been triggered at the Happy Harbor power plant. I suggest you investigate. Covertly. I'm sending coordinates."

"Received. Adjusting course."

Robin snorts. "Tornado's keeping us busy again."

We're now over land. I haven't learned the geography of this part of the town yet, but I can see three slim white chimneys attached to an industrial building. Presumably, our target.

"Well, a simple fire led you to Superboy. We should find out what caused the alert."

M'gann sounds more positive.

Superboy looks around. "I think I know the cause."

Tornado? Why is there a t-. Supervillain. Of course. Couldn't be someone testing the fire alarm at the wrong time. M'gann takes evasive action. I doubt that they've seen us, but an area effect attack will still knock us silly.

Too late!

back

Welcome to Happy Hour 6

next

18th July

11:44 GMT -5

Ring, medium armour.

An orange flare and Peter Gambi's finest work replaces my casual clothing. Ceramic and steel hexes held together by dark grey dyneema cover my joints and neck while larger plates protect my torso, arms and legs. I'm not sure what the padding material is made of but I barely felt it when he hit me in the chest with a baseball bat as a demonstration. The whole thing fits perfectly, protects against all of the forms of attack I specified and is wearable even without the ring maintaining my temperature. I'm not sure why, but he actually only wanted to charge me for materials. I was able to negotiate him up only once I said that I might be able to send colleagues his way.

A small holster on my left leg contains a ring-built pistol based on the Smith & Wesson Model 63 I was practising with. This one is largely titanium with a tungsten-lined barrel. I switched to practising with it after I created it and I find it slightly superior to the standard model. I haven't tried forging specialised ammunition for it as the process looks complicated and would be a dead give away to any investigator if I ever used it.

My hands are bare, as is my head. My ability to perceive and interact with my environment is too vital for ring use to compromise for a minor increase in protection. Once I leave Earth I'll see about getting hold of a force field generator of some kind.

Orange Lantern sigils cover my front, back and shoulder plates in traditional superhero fashion.

My eyes glow orange as I activate my visual enhancements.

NO. FUCKING. TINY. MASK.

The precision tornado hits the ship and the view through the window shifts wildly. An electrical crackling noise marks the camouflage being overwhelmed and shutting down. The cyclonic acceleration has much less effect on the interior than it should have and with the ring active I don't even feel that. Everyone else is thrown against their harnesses with a yelp. Fortunately, M'gann keeps her head together and, using the tornado's own movement to gain speed, manages to pull us away. After getting to a safe distance she spins the ship around and brings us down in the car park. We're about a metre up when the floor opens and the rest of the team drops to the tarmac. I'm left standing upside down on the exterior hull as my deck clamp construct remains in effect. I try to style it out by disconnecting and spinning to a crouch but I don't think anyone noticed.

In the distance I can hear panicked screams and just make out people fleeing the power plant building. The tornado is on the side of the building away from us. If the goal was the destruction of the plant, wouldn't it make more sense to drop it directly on the building? I blink and eighty or so avarice loci mark the locations of the plant workers. Most have either evacuated or are in the process of doing so, the few others having been in the parts of the plant furthest from the exits. Or maybe one of them is the villain? I was sort of expecting them to stand out more, but to be honest I couldn't even guess which of them was causing this.

The tornado moves towards the corner of the building. Definitely directed.

"Robin? Are tornados common to New England?"

Aqualad may not have seen a tornado before. Heck, I've only seen recordings. Wait, where's Robin?

"Robin?!"

I hear a peal of laughter, like that which would be produced by Chucky in an unusually positive mood. Is that the villain? Is the tornado a distraction while he invisibly picks us off?

"He was just here."

Shit, the telepath can't find him?

"Ring, scan for Robin." The windows blow out in the top floor of the building as the ring locates my errant team mate. "He's in the-."

They are already running -or in M'gann's case flying- across the car park towards the loading bay. Nice to know she overcomes her reticence when necessary. Oh, right, catching up.

There is a woosh of air and a dull clang.

"Ugoh! Guh."

Superboy makes it inside first, followed by the others. Robin is already on the ground, rubbing his head. Superboy leaps.

Yeah, that's a supervillain. Huge, red and black, with some sort of exposed blue cables running from his back to his arms. And a scarf. Why does he have a scarf? It looks like he's wearing power armour.

Why aren't I detecting avarice? Is the armour blocking my scans? It might be, but I'd be surprised if any Earth technology was capable of doing that.

Superboy lands in a crouch next to Robin. "Who's your new friend?"

"Didn't catch his name."

First step in a fight, armour. Orange plates -a bit like Mass Effect Tech Armour- congeal around my body. Last time Diana punched one she had to rub life back into her hand. I value my own life and physical integrity quite highly, and the strength of my defensive constructs reflects that.

"But he plays kinda rough!"

"My apologies. You may address me as Mister Twister."

Superboy is already charging forwards. Mister Twister points his arms at the ground and creates a visible cyclone around each one? Is that possible? The wind reduces Superboy's forward movement to virtually nothing. Then Twister moves his hands and the wind lifts Superboy into the air, spinning him around.

Whaw, that looks CRASH MAT CRASH MAT!

It forms before he hits the wall, reducing a dangerous slam to a light bump. Another forms beneath him as he falls, cushioning his landing. He rights himself and vaults over the railing.

Kid Flash pulls a pair of goggles out of his trousers. Robin rises to his feet with a groan. Aqualad nods at M'gann, who nods back. Aqualad's hands crackle with electricity.

Was there a team attack strategy session I missed?

A look around shows me that the evacuation is complete. I suppose now we're trying to preserve vital infrastructure? There is no mention of a Mister Twister in any file I remember reading, and those the ring absorbed are similarly blank. What does he want?

My team mates charge. And I? I have no idea what to do. I just float here. How to do this? This is too strange. I don't care enough about the fight to smash a guy who can brush off Superboy. I really don't want to try converting him into a construct. I'd like to negotiate, but that opportunity seems to have passed.

Kid Flash gets into range first, and handplants for a super speed flying kick. Mr Twister brings his hands together and causes the air currents to throw him past his target and out of the back of the building. Another crash mat from me catches him in mid air and safely deposits him on the ground outside.

Aqualad and M'gann get tossed around like dolls. Twister doesn't even have to move to knock them aside. I get a soft chair construct under each of them and pull them back to a safe distance. Superboy's attempt at a leaping attack just gives Twister more time to generate an air blast beneath him and send him up into the rafters.

What the heck is this room actually for?

I put a flight aura around Superboy as he starts to come back down, and bring him in for a controlled landing next to me. He shoots me an angry look.

"I was prepared to be challenged by a superhero. I was not, however, expecting children."

Has he not seen me? Or is he just assuming? I suppose the orange glow makes picking out facial characteristics harder. And M'gann does kind of have a 'youthful' body shape. Er, no offence if you're listening, M'gann.

Robin preps and throws two discs. "We're not children!"

Two cyclones again. The first disc detonates just ahead of him, causing no damage. The second hits him in the chest and embeds in his armour before he reaches up and flicks it away. It detonates on his left, out of range.

"Objectively you are. Have you no adult supervision? I find your presence here quite disturbing."

"Actually, not a.. child, back here?" I don't really want to draw his attention as I have no idea what I'd do with it, but I can't let a comment like that just... Go. I'm in a training team because I need training. Most of my team mates are younger because they started earlier. "I mean, I'm not even the oldest member..."

Hmm. I suppose the infrastructure is safe from further damage as long as we hold his attention. And aside from Robin's attempt at being a solo artist none of us are hurt.

"Well we hate to see you disturbed. We'll see if you're more turbed once we kick your can!"

Are they all just going to rush him again? Even Vas knows that's dumb. And what the hell is 'turbed'?

M'gann steps forwards, and uses telekinesis to rip open a metal.. tank.. that was stuck on the ceiling..? What nutter designed this place? Mister Twister is briefly wreathed in vapour, and Superboy uses the distraction to cover another leaping attack. A full air blast from our enemy sends him straight into a horizontal strut before I can grab him. He also manages to hit M'gann in the air before I get another crash mat under them both before they hit the ground.

This is getting really stupid. I'm no tactical genius or anything, but this is some seriously futile stuff.

Kid Flash and Robin charge just as my patience runs out. An omnidirectional airblast leads to the same mini tornado as Twister used on Superboy. To much the same effect, except that he takes the time to slam the two of them together before he stops it.

Reaching a decision, I grab Aqualad with a mailed gauntlet construct.

"Wha'?"

I bring him level with where I'm floating. "You wanna come up with a plan, maybe tell your least experienced team mate what it is?"

He's actually struggling against the construct. What is his problem? When he realises that he can't get leverage he stops and turns his head to face me.

"You should be aiding us against the enemy."

I roll my eyes. Really? "I should not have to explain the necessity of having a plan to the Atlantean Royal Champion!"

He starts, considers, then nods. I drop the gauntlet. "Can you hold him in place while we regroup? Perhaps a construct chain or manacles?"

No, 'cause those are solely dependent on construct strength and I don't care enough. Sonic attack, try to disable? Aided by -Teen Titan flashback- effective misdirection? I don't have a better idea.

"Miss M'orzz, would you please take over catching duty!?"

She has just disentangled herself from Superboy. "Uh, sure."

I raise my right arm, palm extended, and cause my hand to glow with bright orange light. Amplification please, ring.

"Would my team mates please stand clear of the target!"

back

Welcome to Happy Hour 7

next

18th July

11:50 GMT -5

That got a reaction.

"Another child in need of an education."

He raises his arms to ward off a direct attack. But I have a power ring.

The only time Kyle Rayner ever impressed me as a Lantern was when, during a fight with Power Ring, he fired a beam behind him and then through the ground under his target. Still, typical Green Lantern, he never expanded the technique. Or maybe it was just bad writing?

Whatever. OrangeVision shows me that the narrow beam running from my right foot has undermined Mister Twister's position while he's staring at my hand. I still don't think I care enough to hit him hard enough directly…

Oh, that'sgood.

"Things will get loud, now."

Four beams of orange light erupt from the floor around him. Each one sprouts four sonic energy projectors and activates, with his centre of mass as the focal point. I remember reading during psychology A-Level that this is how ultrasound is used to destroy kidney stones; beams are focused from several different directions so that the stone where they meet is vibrated to nothingness while the other tissues are unharmed.

"Graawgh!" His winds dissipate. His hands clutch at his head. I can see his armour vibrating. Wait, why is he clutching his head? The armour doesn't have ears, and I can't see external microphones.

Aqualad takes the initiative. "Superboy, try pulling on his cables!"

Superboy looks up, nods, and then runs full speed at Mister Twister. He isn't Kid Flash, but his strength gives him quite a turn of speed. He pounds across the room, jumps past my constructs and-

"Ghuaaaagh!"

-barrels straight into Mister Twister's chest, screaming in pain. Mister Twister was knocked backwards by the impact.

What? What happened?

He drops to the ground, clutching his head.

What?

My sonic constructs dissipate as I switch my attention to recovering Superboy. When he feels the stretcher construct touch him he flails at it. Even from the other side of the room I can see blood on his hands.

I want him safe.

Tentacle constructs wrapping around him I dump Superboy onto the stretcher and swiftly move it behind the rear wall. He's in a foetal position, still clutching his ears. An ambulance won't work, I'll need to contact Red Tornado-.

"Surprisingly intelligent, for a youth."

Huh?

I hear a vacuum sound.

Arrhhh!

Can't see!

Twister!

Waaaaahh!

Can't concentrate to fly!

Blauhoabaubauabuao!

Doafh!

Slamming through something, I hit the ground.

Uuuuugh.

I threw up inside my shield! Oh, that's disgusting. The ring automatically takes care of all of the vomit that left my mouth, but the bile still fills my throat. I retch and splutter, trying to clear the rest of it.

"Ring, fix it."

Oh that's better. I can still taste a bit, ugh, but I'm now feeling less revolting.

!Superboy!

I struggle to my feet and then immediately collapse down. The world spins as I roll onto my back in the earth. Earth? Trees? I must have cleared the car park.

"Ring, inner ear."

Even in a state of confusion my desire for self preservation remained. Otherwise, my shield would have gone down and the wind blast would probably have killed me. I try to rise again. Yep, fine, good work ring. I quickly check myself for injuries, then realise that's stupid.

Wholeness Rightly Assumed.

I'm at a sharp angle from the entrance to the power plant. I can see Superboy on the ground, but I can't see the others. I can hear them, though. Explosions and shouts.

!Superboy!

Superboy!

I'm at his side in seconds. He's still moaning. I lay a hand on his forearm and he knocks me away with enough force to weaken my shield.

"Ring, what's wrong with him?"

"Numerous physical defects detected. Current primary physical injury is the result of ruptured ear drums."

"Can you fix it?"

"Not without further physiological data for target species."

"Can't you just.. just… Work it out?"

"Suggested course of action is possible, but unwise."

Don't mess with people's bodies if you don't know what you're doing.

"Painkillers. Can you stop it hurting him?"

"Compliance."

A thin orange tether connects the ring to Superboy. He gasps, and stops moaning. He looks up at me, and pushes himself to his feet.

"What happened?" He looks shocked for a moment. "What happened!"

From shocked to scared.

He claps his hands together, loudly, then again right against his left ear. "Why can't I hear anything!"

"You've got ruptured ear drums. You won't be able to hear anything until you've had medical attention. Wo… Can you hear me?"

"Yes!"

"Okay, okay, I think the ring is interfaced with your auditory nerves. Mister Twister is still up and I-."

He bounds away, leaping around towards the other side of the building where our team mates are fighting.

Ear drums ruptured. Sonic attack. Super hearing.

It was me.

He went past my constructs, got hit by the sonic energy and his ears exploded. Oh god. Oh god.

Move.

Move.

Move. Move. Move.

I begin jogging, not trusting my ability to fly yet.

It was me. I might have permanently deafened him.

My shield flickers and weakens.

As I round the corner of the building I hear a grunt as Superboy is sent flying into a car, the force of the impact sliding it backwards.

"Isn't it obvious? I'm waiting for a real hero."

"Read his mind. Find a weakness!"

Won't work, Aqualad.

"Er, I thought I wasn't supposed to do that?"

"It's okay with the bad guys!"

I reach the ruins of the car Superboy hit as he pulls himself free.

"Nothing. I'm getting nothing!"

Mister Twister is airborne, clearly dismissing us. I could hit him, but right now my concern for Superboy is crowding out my other desires.

M'gann strikes the side of her head with the base of her palm.

"Hello, Megan! Mister Twister is Red Tornado in disguise." Um, no? "He's inorganic. An android. But how many androids do you know that can generate tornados?"

Probably a lot? Haven't you read the intelligence files? If you can make one…

"Red Tornado sent us here!"

Nonono Aqualad, not the avalanche of stupid…

"After saying we'd 'be tested soon enough'?"

Robin?

"This is his test! Something to keep us busy!"

Ring. Locate Red Tornado.

I get a momentary vision of him back at the base, staring at the main computer terminal.

"Red Tornado's still at the base! It isn't him!"

They stare at me, thought train derailed.

"Thank you for the information. Perhaps this will tempt Achilles from his tent."

He raises his arms above his head. Two funnels of air form, but they aren't directed at us. What's he..?

The skies darken.

No. Fucking. Way.

A swirling storm forms around him while he stands at the eye. Away from the edge, bright sunny day. Here, it's working up to hurricane force.

Superboy tries walking in a crouch towards the source of the attack.

No. That won't work.

A glow and I've grabbed him and I'm flying towards the others. We land in the centre of the group.

Lightning begins crackling around Mister Twister.

I see worried and fraught faces. My allies.

I fucked up with Superboy, but I'm not failing again.

An orange bubble forms around the group. I hold my arms outwards, palms towards the centre of the storm.

I. Will. Not. Fail.

Krackompf!

I feel the shield stress as the lightning hits. As the afterimage burns my retina I can see the orange membrane ripple like water where it was struck.

Krackompf!

I don't know what to do.

I don't know what to do.

I don't know what to do.

"I can't tank this forever!"

M'gann looks thoughtful.

Mister Twister floats down towards us, crackling with power. And then he stops.

"Fine then. I won't deny that you children have power. But playing hide and seek with you will not help me achieve my objectives."

What?

"So stay concealed. If you confront me again I will. Show. No. Mercy."

What?

OrangeVision

The Bio-Ship is floating between us and Twister, camouflage active. He can't see us, so he's breaking off.

Heh. He flies standing up too.

HeH hEh HeH.

back

Welcome to Happy Hour 8

next

18th July

11:56 GMT -5

Wallace recovers from his surprise first. "What happened?"

"I placed the Bio-Ship between us and the camouflage made it look like we weren't here."

Ring, charge?

Eighty seven percent remaining.

"What happened!"

"M'gann just said, the Bio-Ship-."

I hold up my left hand towards Wallace. "Superboy is temporarily deafened. Ring, share my hearing with him."

"Compliance."

"Superboy, you should be able to hear what I'm hearing."

"It's working."

Oh, that's a relief.

"Good, good."

His face hardens. "It's not good!"

He thrusts his face towards mine. I raise my hands in a surrender motion. "Okay, I'm sorry, poor choice of words. It's a useful temporary fix until we can get you to a medical facility."

He turns to the others. "And why were you all just standing there anyway!"

M'gann looks at the ground. "I thought… I couldn't read his mind…"

Aqualad steps up. "M'gann mistakenly assumed that as she could read neither Red Tornado's mind nor Mister Twister's that they were most likely the same person. Given the similarity in their abilities…"

"Why would Red Tornado attack us! I can't hear because of him!"

God… "No, no, I.. I'm sorry, that was me."

"What?!"

"When you jumped through the sonic constructs I was using to attack Mister Twister, you… I didn't turn them off. You took a glancing blow which appears to have-."

"AAAAAGH!" He slams his fist into the ground, sending up a plume of asphalt and dust.

Robin turns to me. "What were you doing at the start of the fight, anyway?"

"Waiting for someone to come up with a plan."

Wallace chimes in. "Yeah, bit slow off the mark there weren't you, Oh El?"

"Slow and steady may not win the race, but it does result in my team mates not being smashed into the walls. Or did you think those crash mats were appearing by magic?"

Aqualad places a hand on their shoulders. "This is not a productive avenue of discussion. Our first engagement with the enemy has not gone as we would have hoped. And Orange Lantern is correct. We should have had a plan before attacking."

They relax, the tension of the fight draining from their frames.

Superboy still looks ready to rip me in half. "Is this permanent?!"

Review.

"No. The ring says that sort of injury is usually healed in a couple of months."

"Months!"

"I can probably speed it up once I've had a better look at your auditory systems. I don't… I'm sorry, I don't remember Kryptonian regeneration rates."

M'gann looks up. "I'm sorry, I just thought it was him. It just made sense."

Aqualad waits until he catches her eye. "It was a rookie mistake. But you and Orange Lantern are rookies, and we should not have accepted your opinion as fact without checking."

"As long as you're within a few hundred metres I can probably replace your ears with a construct. As a temporary measure, as a temporary measure!"

I make a placating gesture. He's still visibly fuming.

"That was partially my fault as well."

No? "Aqualad, it really wasn't."

"I should have taken your inexperience into account before I limited my instruction to Superboy to a simple order to attack. And I should have recognized the form of weapon you were using."

"Do it."

"What?"

"The ears. Give me… Orange… Ears."

Don't laugh don't laugh don't laugh don't laugh.

"Ring, do it."

The strand of orange connecting us gets broader for a moment. The construct doesn't show, as it's inside his head.

"I can't promise that it's Kryptonian quality… Best test it out to get used to it. And, look, I am really sorry and I am going to fix this."

He looks away. "Mmf."

Aqualad steps back, causing the rest of us to form a near circle facing him.

"Before we engage Mister Twister again, we need a plan."

Hate to say this… "Should we notify Red Tornado?"

"No! If we do that then we're still just kids!"

Wallace is not enthused. Hey, I wonder what thused means?

"I'm not saying ask him to take over. Just tell him what's happening, and that we're in pursuit." Wallace goes to complain again so I pre-emptively interrupt him. "It's not about us looking good! If he heads to Happy Harbour and starts dropping buildings on people 'cause we were too proud to ask for help, that's on us!"

Aqualad thinks for a moment. "I agree with Orange Lantern. We should keep him informed."

No further objections? Good. "I don't really have anything else to contribute, planwise. I'll let him know."

I step away from the group. Ring, open a channel to Red Tornado.

Compliance.

A small orange image of Red Tornado appears before me.

"Sir. I confirm that the attack on the power plant was the work of a supervillain. They identify themselves as 'Mister Twister'. Red and Black power armour, able to generate intense winds. A bit like you do, actually. Since neither M'gann nor I could get a reading on his mind he's probably either a simple AI or.. what we fought was being remote controlled."

The ring does read Red Tornado. Not much, certainly not compared to the rest of us, but he definitely wants things for himself.

"He's broken away from us in the direction of the main harbour area. We'll be pursuing shortly."

"Message received." He bows his head slightly. "It is an odd coincidence that this 'Twister' shares my elemental abilities."

"I hadn't thought anything of it. Supervillains seem to like playing king-of-the-hill with someone who has abilities similar to their own. Though, if you don't mind me asking, sir? Might he have been built by the same person who built you? Or based on those plans?"

A pause. "It is possible. I will attempt to investigate. Continue pursuit. If you believe you are in danger of being overwhelmed, contact me again and I will take over."

"Understood sir. Orange Lantern out." The image disappears. Why are the others all looking at me? "What? Did I say something wrong?"

M'gann seems happier… "Supervillains like playing king-of-the-hill against people with abilities like theirs!"

Do they ever! Those files made depressing reading. The same wasteful idiocy again and again. "Yes?"

Aqualad smiles. "Then we have our distraction."

back

Welcome to Happy Hour 9

next

18th July

12:08 GMT -5

We're back in the Bio-Ship, heading for the harbour under camouflage. Aqualad has taken the seat at M'gann's left with Robin on her right. Wallace and Superboy are at the front. I'm leaning on the hull between Robin and Wallace. Seriously, either M'gann needs to move the command position back or we need another forward seat.

"Just one other thing. When the Justice League take someone like this on they use Mister J'onzz's telepathy to coordinate without being overheard. M'gann and I have… What?"

Robin, Wallace and Superboy all look at Aqualad, who flicks his eyes to the deck for a moment before looking back at me.

"Other members of the team, myself included, are not entirely comfortable with that form of mental contact."

Really? Odd. "You do realise that Aquaman, Batman, Superman and The Flash have all used it, right? I doubt Batman's keen on people knowing what he's thinking."

I try to catch Robin or Kid Flash's eye. Robin focuses on putting on his utility belt. Bright yellow?

Wallace does a deer in headlights impression. "It's not… I mean, I do trust M'gann-" His eyes flick to her. "-but isn't it… Don't you find it… Like… Weird..?"

M'gann decides to interject. "On Mars, telepathic communication is completely normal. Until this morning it didn't even occur to me that it might be a problem for some people. If you don't want to use my telepathy for the team, I'll understand. But, I would never use it to hurt you. It would be prevocal only. I wouldn't go any deeper, or do anything else."

This morning? "What happened this morning?"

Superboy is now facing directly away from me, arms folded across his chest. Robin looks at him, then Wallace.

"M'gann used telepathy on Superboy earlier. Kinda reminded him of Cadmus."

Superboy turns back to us. "I'm not having anyone go through my head again!"

"Yeah, well I don't want an opponent to thank me for information in the middle of a fight ever again!"

M'gann looks at him sadly. "Superboy…"

Aqualad interjects. "For myself, I must say that I found the experience quite disorienting."

"Really? When we tried it, it didn't feel much different to wearing an earpiece radio."

Robin starts. "You've tried it before?"

"In the base, yes. I wanted to know what it felt like. It was like hearing a voice that doesn't come from anywhere in particular." I pause as I remember some of the things I thought about to see if M'gann would hear them. Nothing beyond a twelve rating, mind. "Unless I deliberately thought a particular phrase at her, it didn't go anywhere. Not much different to speaking." Let's face it, if she'd been probing, she would definitely have said something about the whole comic book thing. And most likely completely freaked out.

They're trying to gauge each other's feelings.

"Some of the stuff we're planning requires perfect timing and coordination between us when we can't see each other. Unless someone brought tornado proof radios..?"

A shallow inclination of the head from Aqualad and Robin. Wallace averts his eyes, choosing not to argue the point. Superboy maintains his scowl for the longest.

"Fine."

We're coming up on the bay. I can see three large twisters doing their best to level the waterfront. Can't see Mister Twister himself from this distance. One of the tornados moves out along a wooden jetty, throwing several small motorboats into the air.

**Testing, testing, one two, one two.** I see the other guys wince. Babies. **M'gann, would you mind asking the ship to let me out? I'd like to shield the evacuation.**

M'gann nods, and a small opening grows in the floor next to me. I see the effect of the wind on the other guys' clothing and hair.

"Geronimo." I step into the hole, and fall towards the ground. Catching myself, I speed ahead of the ship into the danger zone. Ring, where's Twister? I am treated to a zoomed image of Mister Twister standing next to a fountain, arms outstretched. **Guys, he's by the fountain.**

I try thinking the picture at them. Not sure if it works. Now, time to make myself useful. The boats which the air currents picked up have reached the apex of their flight and have begun their swift return journey to earth. Can't be having that. A flight aura catches the first one and brings it safely to rest on the roadside verge. Twister looks up at me.

"See, whenever I played Command and Conquer, I'd always try to take the enemy base intact. Seemed like such a waste to just bring in artillery and level the place." I catch two more boats and hold them in the air for a moment before placing them on the ground a street away. "Pointless destruction. What is this supposed to be in aid of?"

"It was supposed to attract the required attention."

"Really? Most supervillains try to pretend it isn't just about attention seeking."

"Good news for ya: you've got ours, full and undivided."

Wallace runs at full speed down the main road and jump kicks Twister in the chest, pushes off and lands in a crouch. Twister staggers backwards. I'm a bit surprised that worked, to be honest. Hopefully this attack will force him to focus on us for a bit. I use the time to grab some of the larger bits of airborne debris and thrust them to the ground in a heap away from us. Whaw, this place is a mess. Looks like a tornado went straight through a large wooden house. I can see the ruined boards that used to be the outer wall, but also the insides of someone's life: sheets, curtains, a couple of picture frames. What looks like a soft chair. No one has died but a life has been destroyed. Pointless pointless pointless.

"Immaterial and insufficient." He raises his hands is Wallace's direction. "You are a distraction I can no longer tolerate."

"Aaaaaaaaaagghhhh!" Superboy narrowly misses landing directly on top of Mister Twister. Had his attack connected this would probably have been a very short fight. Twister thrusts himself backwards through the air, trying to gain the space and time he needs to counterattack. You know what? Fuck that guy.

I form a circular orange construct around his eyepiece. It doesn't damage him, but it does keep him off balance while I fire an orange cutting beam at his left leg. And… Oh, that's where that tornado went. It was coming in behind me but they aren't exactly quiet and they aren't all that high. I just climb above it, though my vision-obscuring construct and beam drop when I do. Our attempts to attract his attention are succeeding. Each of the pre-existing tornados is dying off without Twister making the effort to sustain it.

Down below I see Twister float up another boat and thrust it at Superboy. No, you don't. Another safe boat, and he has to back-pedal to avoid Superboy's lunge. Maybe we should see about getting Superboy some actual fight training? I know that Black Canary is a skilled martial artist, but some techniques just aren't efficient for someone that strong. Maybe Diana could..?

As Robin and Aqualad enter the combat zone, I activate OrangeVision to scan for remaining civilian presence. No, everyone is clear. Oh, for goodness… Crash mat.

**It doesn't have to look that good, Aqualad.**

**It is not always an easy matter to judge.**

I drop him onto the balcony of the house he nearly rammed into, and he jumps back down to ground level. Wallace is momentarily caught in a windblast, but recovers well and dashes out of range. Robin throws an explosive at a dying tornado close to his position and then pelts Mister Twister with the rest. Twister clears the space around him with another air blast but then takes a glancing blow from Superboy, who took advantage of his distraction. His retaliation blasts Superboy high into the air. I go to grab him but Twister leaves the cyclone in place and I can't get a clear acquisition!

!MINE!

I won't let him get hurt again!

The ring glows brightly and discharges a powerful beam straight at Superboy. Punching through the cyclone it strikes his right side. Glowing orange armour similar to my own manifests just before he slams into the concrete quay. Another boat swiftly follows and I lose sight of him.

I drop down to the impact site just as the largest piece of boat wreckage shakes and lifts. With a growl Superboy throws it at Mister Twister, who nonchalantly catches it with a wind blast and hurls it at Aqualad.

Did Aqualad just run up a flying boat?

**I'm coming in now.**

The idea of having M'gann assume the form of Red Tornado seemed so obvious once Aqualad explained it to me. Presumably a Justice League member counts as a 'real hero' for his purposes. I was surprised that she could get that much bigger, but apparently she can spread herself out.

M'gann lands in front of the regrouped team. I drop down behind them, still just off the ground.

"Hit the showers, boys. I was hoping you could handle this. Clearly, you cannot."

She sounds just like him. I wonder if Wallace 'Casanova' West is paying attention? Reminds me of that character from the Marvel series, Runaways. The Skrull shapeshifter who thought nothing of changing his gender on a semi permanent basis to pursue a relationship with a lesbian. Is that something Martians do? Maybe M'gann was a M'rikk before watching 'Hello, Megan'?

Maybe I shouldn't mention that to anyone ever.

Robin makes a token protest. "But we've got a plan now."

"The subject is not up for debate."

I put on a sullen expression, but I honestly doubt that Twister is actually looking at me. As per the plan, I need to get out of Mister Twister's line of sight. Once I'm out of his immediate field of vision I just tell the ring to get behind the roof of one of the still intact houses. I then turn down my environmental shield to minimum and activate OrangeVision.

**Orange Lantern in position.**

I wasn't lying about the Command and Conquer thing. But if I can't take something intact…

Ring, full scan of Mister Twister.

Compliance. At current avarice levels a full quintessence waveform scan will take approximately twelve hours.

That sounds like more information than I need. How about enough information to build the physical components?

No power ring disrupting technology detected in target. Physical scan complete.

Superboy's walking away more slowly, trying to stay in leaping distance. I try to turn the armour construct off, but no luck. My guilt over injuring him is overpowering my desire to follow the plan. It seems that the problem Alan pointed out is a real one, but it shouldn't matter too much here. I've just had to transfer the wiggly orange line connecting us underground so as not to give away my position. Wallace has just ducked behind the remains of a larger boat hull, ready for his part in assisting M'gann in pretending to be Red Tornado.

**Superboy ready.**

**Kid Flash ready. This still feels weird.**

Aqualad walks along the shore until he has some cover, then slips into the water.

"I was beginning to believe you'd never show up."

**Aqualad ready.**

"I'm here now."

They can start fighting with Kid Flash in place, but ideally M'gann can keep Twister talking until Robin-.

**Robin here. All set.**

Alrighty then.

M'gann-as-Red Tornado gestures, and Kid Flash is no longer in his hiding place. OrangeVision gives me his approximate location however: in the centre of 'Red Tornado's' tornado. M'gann gestures, and the tornado moves forwards. Mister Twister slides backwards, then matches it with a tornado of his own.

They sort of bounce off each other in a way which strikes me as unrealistic. Wouldn't two real cyclones merge? Maybe it's to do with the methods employed in generating them? I have no idea how Wallace can stand that without getting dizzy.

It also occurs to me that someone with an anti-materiel rifle could probably take down either Mister Twister or 'Red Tornado' from outside their range at this point. Note to self: practice offensive constructs before next fight. And buy the local police some decent guns.

Mister Twister thrusts a tornado in M'gann's direction, only for it to dissipate before it reaches her. Telekinesis, I presume. "We're evenly matched, Twister." A new tornado forms behind her and hurls rocks at Twister, who blocks by hammering his left fist into the ground and creating an incredibly intense updraft.

"No Tornado we are not." His hands crackle for a moment then a massive electrical discharge blasts from his hands at M'gann. She leaps aside, floats backwards and around before blocking his line of sight with a boat, which is struck and explodes.

He managed that with no preparation. That is actually scary. I'm not sure M'gann could take that hit. Looks like she agrees, as she's used the boat's explosion as cover for 'losing'. Falling onto her back away from the blast, she plays possum.

This is where we find out if we're going to win. Just in case I prepare a force beam. Robin's in support range close by in case something goes wrong with this stage, but no sense taking chances. Aqualad's voice comes in over the mind link.

**On your signal, M'gann.**

Twister closes the distance to M'gann as soon as he sees her go down. He waits for a moment, then raises his right arm. "Remain still android." Some sort of cable projects out of his fingers and attaches to M'gann's head. Huh. We didn't know that was precisely what he wanted. Really we were just hoping for a bit of distracted posing which would allow M'gann to grab him. "The reprogramming won't take long."

Worth knowing. Should probably advise Red Tornado to improve his skull armour.

M'gann grabs his cables.

**Attack is go.**

"Longer than you might think."

"No."

A telekinetic surge knocks him off his feet, and leaves half his cables in M'gann's hand.

**Orange Lantern moving.**

I'm already moving over the roof as tornado Wallace catches him in mid air and throws him over M'gann's head. He flips right over as he lands and runs right into a still orange armoured Superboy. A targeting construct appears in front of me. Superboy punches him once, then grapples his left arm. Perfect. Two circular saw constructs neatly sever the cables on Twister's back while he's stationary, and two small drill constructs hit the mechanisms in his forearms which generate his attacks. No more air blasts or flying for you. Superboy then yanks the arm downwards and twists sharply. I see metal crunch and crumble as he pulls the ruined limb down and swings a fist at Twisters head, which crumples and sparks.

**Aqualad moving up.**

We couldn't predict precisely how Twister would move, so Aqualad took the sea side on the grounds that it would be easiest for him to move in response to changes in circumstance. With Twister's main attack offline he uses his hilt thingys -must find out what they are called- to form a waterspout beneath him and propel him inland to join the attack. I aim my saws at Twister's right elbow as Aqualad runs one water-sword through his neck -severing the head- and the other into Twister's shoulder to anchor himself.

Aqualad wasn't too happy about decapitation, but eventually I was able to convince him that either the head was for show -in which case the head didn't matter- or it was an AI. In which case the decapitation probably didn't matter, as the mind would be inside the chest or have an emergency power supply.

Head gone and both arms out of commission, Superboy shoulder barges his legs out from under him and knocks him down. Aqualad and I begin cutting through the armour of his chest plate. He's already lost, but if there is someone in there we need to get them out of the catastrophically damaged power armour as soon as possible.

Looks like the guy inside has decided the same thing. The whole chest blows open and moves aside, revealing a humanoid in a green and white jumpsuit. I think it was supposed to look human but the metal skeleton is clearly showing at the chest and the left side of the head. I hear Robin, Wallace and M'gann move up to us.

Ring, confirm that target has no organic components?

Confirmed.

It falls forwards onto the grass. "Foul. Ah, I call foul."

How do we securely imprison a robot of unknown capabilities? I don't remember a character like this from the comics. On the other hand, most things you stick on the Moon tend to stay put. M'gann raises an arm to the side. Not sure where she's going with what the hell?

I get a barrier in place just before M'gann's rock crushes the inner robot.

"What the hell?"

"Y-y-y-you can't do that to me!"

"But it's not alive!"

"I am alive!"

Either he doesn't know he's a robot, or he hasn't realised the extent of the damage. "M'gann, would you drop a rock on Red Tornado?"

"Of course not! Oh."

"Yes, 'oh'."

"But you said that you couldn't feel his desires?"

"It's perfectly possible to build a sophisticated AI that doesn't desire things for itself."

"Ah, not a robot here?"

Wallace is nonplussed. "Dude, you're totally a robot."

"I… I am not." He surveys us, inadvertently showing off his bare metal skull to best advantage. Maybe it's the adrenaline talking, but I'm having trouble not laughing.

"You got a bit of a…" I gesture to the left side of my face. "Bit of a scrape there."

"Oh." He reaches up. "Well, dang."

"Anyone know the protocol for imprisoning-"

The robot's torso glows for a second, then it explodes. I stick a shield in the way as the parts rain down. For a moment we watch them in silence. Once they finish I drop the shield.

"Well, now I feel kind of silly for protesting."

Wallace steps forward and picks up one of the larger parts. It's an eyeball. "Cool. Souvenir."

back

Welcome to Happy Hour 10

next

18th July

12:38 GMT -5

I've dropped the remaining parts of Mister Twister off in Red Tornado's workshop, after Robin checked them for traps and communication devices. I should probably have helped with the clear up in the harbour, but the Federal Emergencies Management Authority is apparently quite good at this sort of thing now, and Superboy's injury takes priority. He's in medical until they can get one of the handful of people in the world who actually know anything about Kryptonian physiology in to have a look at him.

Doctor Mark Desmond would have been first choice, except that he's now an unstable mentally degraded monster and in prison. His staff are either in prison, or dodged prison by claiming that Desmond had the telepathic G-Gnomes control their behaviour and that they can't remember much about what happened. For some of them that may even be true. That pretty much just leaves STAR Labs, as the LexCorp personnel who have similar knowledge couldn't be trusted even if they were willing to help. And STAR Labs' go to guy -someone named Doctor Bernard Klein- is on holiday and can't be reached.

Without an enemy to focus on Superboy has remembered exactly why he's in the state he is. This is why I'm outside of medical cramming information on his physiology with a thin orange line feeding into the ward to maintain his auditory construct. I was finally able to drop the armour construct after Red Tornado pointed out that it would interfere with examination and treatment.

Ring glowing brightly from the strength of my need to fix my mistake, I float three constructs into the air in front of me. Superboy's body is… It isn't that half of the organs are Human, or half of the cells. Intellectually, I realised that there had to be more to it than that. Some cell types are purely Human with what the ring tells me is an artificial add on to make the body recognise it as being 'his'. Other parts -mostly skin and major muscles- are largely Kryptonian, with a similar add on for a similar purpose. Other parts are a weird mix of the two, including a number of actual hybrid body tissues. Again, with material not normally found in Humans or in my one Kryptonian sample holding it together.

And the ring tells me that not all of the parts work together properly. It's especially concerned about neurotransmitters and his immune system. No, I'm concerned. The ring just indicated that there might be a problem. I remember reading about Ligers; how despite their massive size and physical power they are actually often really unhealthy. The potential for seeing something like that in my team mate is quite worrying.

M'gann leaves the ward. Superboy wanted to speak to her. He didn't tell me what it was about, but she went in worried and now seems happier.

"What's that?"

"A model of the Human inner ear." Lex Luthor's, in point of fact. The genetics of the Human parts do indeed mostly match his.

"And that other one?"

"Kryptonian inner ear. Did you know that Superman is in Zimbabwe?"

"You… You scanned him in Zimbabwe from here?"

"No. When I scanned him he was in Mongolia."

She doesn't ask me what the third is; the damage is too obvious. It wasn't just his ear drum that was ruptured. Other parts that match those found in Superman and are presumably responsible for super hearing are damaged or destroyed. Worse, it appears to have been a hybrid system and with Superboy's bizarre tissue types I can't tell how much of what was there came from which parts of his make up.

I have made some progress in understanding the source of Kryptonian super powers, though really it just means proving the supposition of Doctor Klein. Something happens to Kryptonian skin organelles when they are exposed to certain light wavelengths. The range and concentration requirements appear to be quite specific, which matches what I observed in the comics. The organelles responsible are also found in other body tissues but in much lower concentrations, presumably why they were considered lower priority. The organelles respond with a form of exotic energy the ring doesn't recognise, which in turn does something to strong nuclear forces... Aaaagh! Why doesn't the ring have a full database!

None of that really explains why they didn't just program a full Superman clone. I don't remember much about Bizarro, but Luthor never seemed to have much trouble using him. That's from Justice League Unlimited and that thing where Alexander Luthor Junior sets up a supervillain society. There isn't a Bizarro here yet, so there is a gap for one…

"Any progress?"

I put the heel of my palms on my forehead, and move them in a circling motion. "Sort of? I don't think I can recreate what was there, but I think I know enough to create a working replacement."

"Why can't you replace it?

"Because I don't know what was there. Superboy's body has both Kryptonian and Human elements, and without a scan of what was destroyed…"

"Human?"

"Yeah, that's why he can't… Wait, you didn't know that?"

"That's not… How is that possible?"

"I don't know. I mean, the ring can pick up artificial alterations to his tissue which seem to make it all work together, but where they came from? No idea."

"But I thought he was a clone of Superman?"

"Yes, his Kryptonian parts are. And other parts are Human, and some bits don't match any species…"

Genomorphs. Ring?

Partial match confirmed.

Doesn't seem to help. I could grab Cadmus' full database, but I don't know enough about biology to do anything complicated.

"Actually, M'gann, I wanted to ask you about something. As far as I know there are no Martian doctors on Earth either. Would you mind if I did a full scan of you as well?"

"Uncle J'onn has medical training."

"Mister J'onzz has basic medical training. The League's current plan in case he gets seriously ill or injured involves getting a Martian doctor on Mars to consult via the Watchtower's FTL comms. We… This is high risk work we do. If you get hurt in the field I can't just rush you to the nearest hospital. I need to be able to treat you on-site."

She isn't smiling now. She looks at the ground, and breathes out heavily. "Okay."

I keep working on Superboy's new ears. "Thank you."

"What do you need me to do?"

"I need you to not hit me for doing it fifteen minutes ago."

"Fifteen..!"

"I scanned the others as well. Also, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern."

"Why?"

"I hate people I care about being hurt and not being able to do anything about it. My Nan-." Where did that come from? I stop for a moment. "Having this ring should mean that I can do anything I want. I wanted, I want to heal Superboy, but I can't because even though I had two weeks I never thought to scan him. Never again."

I flick my eyes to the side. She's staring at me. I tense as she puts her hand on my shoulder.

"It's…" She doesn't know what to say. "Should your ring be glowing like that?"

So say something else? "Yes. The glow reflects the strength of my avarice. I want to heal Superboy, but I can't, because I don't know how to enact my desire. So nothing happens and it keeps glowing."

"Oh." Her hand slips off. "Superboy said that he'd like to speak to you."

I nod, distractedly, and drop the constructs. "Right. I'm pretty much done with this. Time to face the music." I rise and enter the ward.

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Welcome to Happy Hour 11

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18th July

12:41 GMT -5

Superboy is sitting on a bed with his back against the headboard. His legs are bent up and his arms are stretched around his knees. He appears to be staring at his feet, and doesn't look up when I walk in. The surly teenager image is somewhat thrown by the orange strands feeding from the ring into his head like some kind of set of science fiction headphones.

"Right. I think I've got a solution."

He fidgets, slightly.

"I don't, I'm sorry, but I don't know enough about your ears' original structure to recreate them, but the ring has picked up enough about Kryptonian genetics now that I should be able to create a copy of Superman's-"

He looks up, his expression neutral.

"-with your genetic markers. You might… You should probably avoid loud noises for a few days while you adjust."

"What'd you mean, genetic markers? I'm a clone of Superman. There shouldn't be any differences."

He doesn't know. What were the League thinking, not telling him? "Okay, look, while I was trying to work out how to fix this, I had to study the way your body works, the way his body works. I think I found out some things you apparently don't know. I don't think you're going to like them, so if you just want me to fix your ears then shut up, I'll do that."

He's gone back to looking away. "I wanna know."

"Alright." I pull up a chair and turn it to face the bed. I sit. "Do you want me to do that talk first, or should I repair your ears first?"

"Ears."

I nod. "I'm afraid that the first stage involves removing the constructs that I've currently got doing the job. I'll still be suppressing the nerves so you won't feel any pain, but you won't actually be able to hear anything until I've finished building the new parts. Once I've done that, I'll connect the nerves, with a construct to limit the volume so that the sound is bearable. Then, I'll slowly remove the construct. If it gets too loud, or starts to hurt, let me know and I'll stop, alright?"

"Mpf."

Ring, erase my mistake.

The ring is perfectly capable of transmuting the material it needs from the surrounding air. Probably wouldn't work for precious metals due to the density and high levels of avarice required, but for healing a team mate I injured? Easy. The inner ear components are literally just copies of Superman's. I don't understand how they work, but then I don't need to. Any idiot can copy and paste.

"Have you started yet?" The volume is a little loud, but at least he isn't shouting. He looks at me.

Time to test his hearing. "Everything is now in place. I have just stopped suppressing the auditory nerves."

His hands slam over his ears, an action which causes him more pain. "Ghuh!"

"They're super sensitive at the moment, but should basically adjust on their own in a few minutes. You coping?"

He nods slowly, clearly still in pain. This is reminding me of something. What is it?

"This reminds me of a story I heard about why Superman stopped going to chapel. Don't know if it's true or not…"

He's looking at me, and his hands are clamped a little less tightly.

"His super powers came in as he grew up. When he was in his mid-teens, his super hearing came in with a vengeance. He could cope with small groups of people, even loud noises once he'd had a moment to adjust. Lots of quiet conversations at once? It was too much."

"Then what..?" He winces again. "Then what happened?"

"No idea. As far as I can tell, he has much better control now."

I think it was from a comic? Something about a cult giving a guy superpowers, and a woman who decided that Superman was an angel. It was a while ago, and it wasn't that memorable.

"Anyway, your new ears. You'll have to be a bit careful navigating around, as sounds won't echo quite like you've gotten used to."

He nods. "Oh-" No wince, but a slight pause. "-okay."

"Now, the other stuff you wanted to know. How blunt do you want me to be?"

"Just, tell me!"

"Okay, ahm, you aren't a pure clone of Superman. About half of you is Kryptonian, maybe a bit more. The rest is Human, with a tiny bit of Genomorph added to make the whole thing work together."

He's slumped, and isn't making eye contact. "That's why I'm weak."

"Well… It's… It's why you don't have the full range of Kryptonian abilities, yes. I don't claim to understand exactly how they work, but it looks like some of the effects generated by your Kryptonian organelles don't propagate fully to the Human components of your body. I mean,-" I form constructs depicting parts his body to illustrate my point. "-those are clearly Kryptonian photoreceptive organelles. That's clearly a Human myelin sheath. Some of this other stuff… I don't know. I've no idea how they made it, and I haven't found anything similar to the Genomorphs. If I had to guess, I'd say they were entirely artificial. For you, they're bridging components to make the other parts work together."

"What does that mean?"

"I d-, I don-, I don't know? I'm not medically trained. Look, I can give this to the League, if you want. See what they can make of it."

"Why?"

"What?"

"Why didn't they make me…" He crosses his arms across his chest. "Properly?"

"If you mean as a complete clone… I… I don't know. Maybe they couldn't?"

I feel a bit like I should complain on behalf of the Human species here, but I don't have the heart.

"I thought… I thought I'd get the rest. If I waited."

"I'm sorry, but I don't think that's going to happen."

He draws his legs up towards his chest. "If it had been Superman…"

"If what had been Superman?"

"Against Mister Twister. If it had been Superman. He wouldn't have gone down like I did."

"You know he's tough, rather than literally invulnerable, right? Sonic attacks are one of his few vulnerabilities as well."

"It doesn't… I should have done better!"

"None of us exactly covered ourselves in glory on that one." This isn't a productive avenue of discussion, as Aqualad would say. "Look, I'm pretty sure we're going to be doing actual teamwork practice from now on. And that orange armour construct I gave you? I can do that in every fight. You want to be stronger, tougher? I can do that."

"Can you make me fully Kryptonian?"

Can I? Should I? It might be possible, but I'm not happy with the idea of reconfiguring his brain like that. "I don't… I don't think so."

"Then don't bother." He swings his legs over the edge of the bed, steps on the floor and walks to the exit. When he reaches it, he pauses. "Thanks for… Fixing my ears."

"No problem."

He nods, and leaves the room.

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Welcome to Happy Hour 12

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18th July

13:01 GMT -5

I've taken to eating lunch on top of the mountain. With my environmental shield active the wind doesn't bother me or my food, and the view is really quite splendid. Superboy could probably do with some time away from me and with the others. And I need to do some thinking about how this is all going to work.

Once he got his head in the game, Aqualad was quite effective at organising the rest of us. I guess that means he'll probably end up in charge of our little coterie. I'll have to talk to him about team practice. I remember the obstacle course which the Teen Titans put Terra through in the cartoon. Don't think that anything like that actually exists here, and we wouldn't be ready for it even if it did. My current assessment would be that our effectiveness as a group is probably lower than our effectiveness as individuals, simply because we aren't used to the way each other performs under pressure. Maybe tactics training sessions? Or maybe just proper demonstrations of our abilities; I know I haven't shown all of the constructs I can create to anyone here. Likewise, I have no idea what Robin routinely keeps in his utility belt, or the range of Aqualad's Water-Bearers. I didn't even know that Wallace could create miniature tornados before today.

I need to get some notebooks. I'm getting used to using the ring for just about everything, but I find the act of writing things down helpful to my thought processes. I need to make time to check how much of my knowledge of Detective Comics applies here. The obvious low risk high reward choice would be trying to make contact with either Alec Holland or Swamp Thing, whichever version we'd be dealing with. We could fly down to Louisiana tomorrow, and narrow down the search by scanning for non-native plant life from the air. If he isn't there or -more likely- if he doesn't want to speak to us then there should still be evidence of his presence. Better yet, he might be alright about talking to us, if he actually exists here. One of my all time favourite comic book stories is of his attack on Gotham City after Abby gets arrested. The sheer raw power he can bring to bear if something antagonises him sufficiently is truly awesome.

Suppose it's worth checking if I can skip all that work, though. I lean over to a nearby tree and knock on the trunk.

"Doctor Holland, might I have a word?"

No response. I take a bite out of my baguette. Baked it myself yesterday, and added a cucumber filling. Back home I used a bread machine but was never quite able to get them right. Here, I have both the time to spend and the ring to do the boring bits. Leaving bread to rise for an hour, knead it a bit and then leave it for an hour again? Sure, why not, it breaks up the supervillain profile reading.

Happy Harbour doesn't exactly have chain stores. They're either genuinely local or franchisees instead. I've followed through on my idea of setting up a prepaid account at each one I use. Initially the owners found the whole thing quite confusing but now I think they just find me an amusing oddity. I usually drop round when I know the owner will be there but there won't be many other customers, either first thing in the morning or last thing at night.

So far as I can tell there hasn't been a noticeable decrease in the price of either gold or platinum as a result of my actions.

Alan has invited both myself and Diana for dinner next weekend. He'll probably want to hear about my first fight with a supervillain. Before getting cross examined I should really work out what else besides the obvious I should have done differently.

To start with, I should have begun by scanning Mister Twister. Not just a sweep with OrangeVision, but a full physical scan. That would have shown me his vulnerable points, as well as telling me that there wasn't anyone organic inside the armour. Complex AIs are people, but they can generally take having limbs ripped off better than organics can. Attacking his cables was also something I should have done. They were clearly vulnerable points; they were even a different colour from the rest of him to make it more obvious! I might have been able to do something to redirect his lightning bolts or disrupt his generating capacity, but that is probably a bit above my complexity level at present. I should also have dodged more. Stopping completely still during a fight was a bad idea, and I'm pretty sure I can get the ring to automate the process.

What did I do right? Hmm. I was mostly able to stop my team mates from being hurt. I didn't get myself hurt. I made the property damage Twister inflicted a little bit less. I managed to acquire enemy technical data which I've passed on to the League. I suggested to Red Tornado that he might like to use it to update his systems, but he didn't seem enthusiastic. Maybe there is a difference between an AI with a robotic avatar and an android, and he's more attached to his body? The armour I created around Superboy looked pretty sturdy. If it actually was as tough as mine then he might have briefly been tougher than his father. He didn't seem keen on the idea of me helping in that way. Hating needing someone else's help to get to where you think you should be anyway, I can relate to that.

I wonder if I can create similar armour constructs for the others as well? In theory it should be possible, and since the armour is basically weightless it shouldn't interfere with their combat abilities. I didn't specifically think 'armour' when Superboy was being threatened, the ring just acted when my desire to protect him reached a particular strength.

I wonder if the data could be used to create a weather control network, or at least some way to artificially break up major storms and natural tornados? I'll write something up and submit it to Batman. Does he ever monetise recovered supervillain gear? Can that be made to work, legally? Because if it can then the League might well be able to become self funding. Heck, FTL comms to Mars alone…

I've certainly learned that the theory and practice of this sort of combat are two radically different things, and that fighting a brawler like Diana in an open area is very different to fighting another ranged fighter somewhere where I'm supposed to be preventing collateral damage. Unless there is a natural hurricane or something collateral damage prevention isn't really something I can practise. I've learned that we need practice coordinating as a group, or to be assigned tasks that don't overlap so that we don't get in each other's way. If I'd confronted Mister Twister on my own I'd have been more aggressive, once I got it through my head that yes, this is a fight and I am supposed to hit the other guy. He wasn't a good match up for our brawler heavy line up. Perhaps I should ask M'gann about the extent of her telekinesis?

Another mouthful of baguette. The Pacific can wait, but I do need to finish my meditation. Where was I? No, no, after an event like that I should start from the beginning.

Physiological? No change. It took a while, but I've managed to mostly adapt to local time, and usually sleep better than I did. Had to replace my mattress with a harder one to match what I am used to.

Safety. Not sure how I feel about this now. I was able to prevent Mister Twister's attacks harming me, and if it happened again I could probably prevent myself throwing up by simply telling the ring to lock my inner ear. Now that I've had a chance to calm down, it's obvious that I am much more secure since coming here, even with the increased threat level. The fact that I can keep myself safe through my own power is particularly gratifying.

Belonging. Our first fight forced us to work together as an actual unit. I certainly feel more a part of the group than I did, and I think that Wallace at least is opening up to me a little. Maybe coming out here was the wrong thing to do? I thought it might be good for Superboy, but he usually just stomps off on his own when something annoys him. Communal eating is a big deal and I'm probably missing it. Alright, change that behaviour. I'll head down once I've finished this.

Superboy. Thinking about him being miserable makes me feel the same way it did when I inadvertently offended M'gann earlier. His wellbeing is more important to me now than it was this morning. Is that because I consider myself responsible for it in a broader sense than just undoing the harm I inflicted? He was pretty miserable, but he doesn't have M'gann's usual upbeat attitude. I don't really know what sort of things make him happy. I should try and find out, or at least come up with a novel activity which he can participate in. Maybe he'd feel better if he felt he was doing something useful?

Alright, bite the bullet. I feel closer to Superboy. Could I see myself being sexually intimate with him? Hmm. He's not unattractive, certainly. He definitely needs support, and I do like being needed. Cons, the age and experience difference is vast. Even greater than it would be if he was his actual physical age. With M'gann, if it came to it, as the younger party I feel I could say that I didn't care about the nineteen year gap. With Superboy… No, that would be wrong. He doesn't just need support while going through a rough patch, he needs serious help integrating the stuff that Cadmus stuck in his head, and learning how to function in society. Maybe.. that's something M'gann could help with? Can she telepathically build links between knowledge and information? Would he let her? Getting off the point. Bottom line, while I don't rule anything out completely, I generally prefer women. Superboy just isn't appealing enough a prospect to break my habits.

It's amazing how heteronormativity gets to you. I found even thinking about that rationally a little uncomfortable.

Esteem. Actually being able to fight is… New. I can ensure my own safety. Most people, even those in my home parallel, can't honestly say that. Some of the things I've seen power rings do in the comics suggests that I should be able to tank pretty much anything: nuclear strikes, eldritch weapons, medium sized gods… I had assumed that Diana just hadn't been giving it her all when she punched me during practice, but maybe I misunderstood. All told, having fixed Superboy's injury and acknowledging our obvious faults, I felt pretty good about our first supervillain fight. And about my role in it. I had been concerned that I lacked the necessary aggression to function in such a situation, but instead it seems that I have just about enough to fight without getting carried away. I think that the team's veteran members have more respect for me as well. Robin seemed rather impressed with my scan of Mister Twister's systems, though more in a 'that's cool' way than a 'let's revolutionise weather control' way. They seemed to regard deafening Superboy as unfortunate but not that stupid. I don't know what they think about him being up and about again.

Thinking about it, the Justice League don't have a medical professional amongst their ranks. Or on staff, since they don't have a staff. Does Mister Zatara use healing magic? I don't really remember much about his comic book alter ego, other than how he died. Zatanna exists here. Hm, wonder if she'll be joining us?

Self-actualisation. Even though it blew itself up I still think shielding the potentially self-aware robot from M'gann was the correct choice. I think what I said about telepathy not being a guide to personhood got through. I do need to start work on my big project, brainstorm who should exist here who might be able to handle an orange ring. Heck, we'll be a Lantern Corps. I can pick from anywhere in the galaxy.

Who can I remember that can channel their desires productively without being overwhelmed?

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Welcome to Happy Hour 13

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18th July

13:17 GMT -5

I hear a dull thump as something imbeds in a tree nearby. I look around and see Robin's grapple. Yeah, I guess this place is a bit hard to get to if you can't fly. I wonder what he wants. We haven't really spoken much since the team came together. Aside from both being trainee superheroes we don't really have anything in common, and then there's the age difference. I wonder if I should tell him I know who he is, and if so, should I say that I used the ring or suggest that I played Guess Who with Gotham notables until I came to an answer. I did that, just for fun, and you can pretty much work out who Batman is if you know what you're doing. The ring made getting the information necessary to make the eliminations easier, of course.

I hear a grunt as he pulls himself over the edge. "Need a hand?"

"Nah, I'm fine." He's upright, and pulls his grapple out of the wood.

"Did you come up for the view?" I take another bite of baguette. I think I left the yeast for just long enough this time.

And then he's kneeling beside me, one arm around my shoulder and the other in front of my face. His holographic computer is active, and a single name is showing. Aaron. I blink, trying to work out what is going on.

"Can I surmise that your intent is to scroll through names until I react?"

"You said you didn't mind us knowing."

"Quite the contrary; I'd like to have people call me by my name. But do you have them arranged alphabetically, or in order of popularity? I ask because while I believe my name is reasonably popular it isn't near the beginning of the alphabet."

"Oh. Huh." The arm around my shoulder is retracted for a moment as he rearranges the list. "Thinking about it, it probably makes sense to try and get the first letter before going after the rest of the name."

I still myself. Don't think the name, think the letter. Think about it in some other context. Parking sign! "P."

"That should make it easier." The arm and the screen return, and my name is showing. I can look at it, as long as I don't concentrate on it. But Robin's friendly arm can feel my reaction. "So it's 'Paul', then?"

"Yes."

"Huh." He stands up and walks forward to look at the view.

"What were you expecting?"

His face creases. "I don't know."

"Feel free to tell the others."

"You really can't say it?"

I suppose I might be able to say it now that someone knows. "Hello, I'm Orange Lantern two eight one four, but you can call me ugr ugh-."

Looks like I can't. Robin turns back to me as I try to relax my throat. He's grinning. "Okay. 'Ugr Ugh' it is."

I stare at him for a moment. Yep, that's annoying.

"Y'know, when you said that happened, kinda thought you were joking."

"'Fraid… Ah, I'm afraid not."

"Does that hurt?"

"It feels like a small blockage in my windpipe. Nothing major."

He's wearing sunglasses. Now that I think about it I don't think I've seen him without them. It is fairly bright today, but I'm not sure why he had them on inside. I know that his eyes are in perfect condition. I wave my right hand and an orange lounger forms. "Take a seat."

He walks alongside it and studies it for a moment, before flopping down on to the cushion, hands behind his head. "You planning on spending the day up here?"

"I didn't finish meditating earlier, so I needed to do that. I had been planning to spend most of the day over the Pacific. Now, I'm kind of off schedule. You have any plans?"

"Ugh, probably spend it filling in a report on the fight with Mister Twister."

"Mine took two minutes."

"Two minutes?!"

"I have a power ring. Power rings are awesome."

"Yeah, but, paperwork?"

"It's just an information transfer. Plus, the ring records pretty much everything that happens around me. Made the timeline easy."

"Huh." He leans back again, then his expression brightens. "I know. Why don't I just copy yours?"

"No."

"Come on. It was the same fight."

"Quite aside from the fact that there were bits you saw that I didn't, report writing is a valuable skill to learn."

"Phss. Oh, hey, I saw that Superboy's up and about."

"That wasn't as complicated as I thought it might be."

"You rebuilt his whole auditory canal."

"The ring handled the fiddly bits."

"Even so…"

"Wasn't like I was designing the thing from scratch."

"Sure, you were repairing him, but it's still-."

"No, I didn't know what his original looked like. I ended up copying and pasting Superman's."

"When'd you scan his?"

"About half an hour ago. I don't have to be close to do it if I want it enough."

He frowns. "Wait. Do you mean that his ears weren't the same as Superman's?"

Whoops. "I realise that I'm not a medical doctor, but I don't think I should talk about that without his permission."

"Ah, fine."

"What are the rest of you doing for lunch?"

"Kid Flash ordered pizza. I was going to ask what you wanted, but…" He gestures to the remains of my baguette. Mistake on my part.

"He's not getting them delivered here, is he?"

"No, he's picking up."

"Can he carry that many pizza boxes?"

"Yeah. He's had lots'a practice."

I can believe it. I get up. "I should probably head back down. Any plans once the report writing is finished?"

He gets off the lounger as I create a platform to float us down. He walks on board. "M'gann said something about Acapulco?"

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NEXT CHAPTER

Prod Zone

BACK

Prod Zone 1

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Prod Zone

19th July

12:49 GMT -6

I peer into the desiccated face of what was once our target.

"Ye-ap. This one's not alive either."

After yesterday I thought it might be good for M'gann and Superboy to get out of the base on something that looked kind of like a mission. Which is why we're walking through the swamps of Louisiana in an attempt to track down either Doctor Alec Holland or, as I hope, Swamp Thing. Finding the weird mutant plant he nominally lives in was quite simple for the ring. Finding the Elemental himself is presently defeating us. This is the seventh abandoned Swamp Thing body we've come across.

Robin is helping Red Tornado investigate Mister Twister's remains. American summer holidays are really long, apparently. He wanted to come until I said that it was unlikely anything interesting was going to happen and Red Tornado made it clear that we were obliged to retreat in the event of a hostile reception. His orders may not be binding like Batman's or Diana's but I don't want to irritate him all the same.

Wallace is back in Central City doing… Something. Possibly washing his hair. Since Robin let everyone know my name Wallace decided it would be fair to share his. Apparently, not even his mother calls him Wallace and I'm on a list with his grandmother and his geography teacher.

Kaldur wanted to plan out team training activities. I also asked him about getting the base warded against arcane attack. He said that it was a bit beyond his abilities. Mentioned some Atlantean friends of his who might have been up to it. Someone named Tula -whose name sounded vaguely familiar from the comics- and Garth. Kaldur became Aquaman's aide after he and Garth aided him in combat against Ocean Master. Both were offered the position, but Garth chose to remain at the Conservatory of Sorcery instead in this timeline. Would he have chosen differently if Kaldur wasn't there? I don't remember his comic background well enough to know if that's how it happened there. Kaldur also said that my referring to him as Royal Champion was a bit premature. He doesn't actually have a formal court title as yet.

Superboy appears to be adjusting well to his new and improved ears. He's currently photographing and taking samples from different parts of the Swamp Thing modified plants that we've found so far. M'gann and I are doing a bit of exploring. Since none of us know which bits are safe to step on floating over the ground is really the best way to do it. Superboy looked a bit down at the whole 'can't join in because you can't fly' aspect of the thing, but as I told him, we need information. He perked up a little once M'gann offered to teach him to fly the Bio-Ship.

**Orange Lantern to Miss Martian.**

**It sounds weird when you think it.**

**I'm still not sold on the whole 'secret identity' thing. Makes even less sense for you.**

**My Earth name is similar to my Martian name.**

**Actual name.**

**Right. And my face is the same, just a different color. People might make the connection if they heard it.**

**Anyone on Earth capable of telepathic eavesdropping could already get your secret identity. I don't suppose you've heard anything from our target?**

**I don't know what a Plant Elemental's mind would sound like, but.. so far it's just swamp creatures.**

**Right. He's either not here or he's avoiding us. I'll do a ring scan and then I think we should break for lunch. Try a different approach in the afternoon. Superboy, you about done on your end?**

**Yeah.**

**Red Tornado say anything about the pictures?**

**He said he'd get someone to look at it.**

I smile. **Anyone know a super powered botanist other than Pamela Isley?**

**Who?** / **Who?**

Neither of them have heard of her? **Poison Ivy? Crazy Gotham plant woman? Feeds people to giant pitcher plants?**

Silence from Superboy.

**I.. think I remember Robin mentioning her.**

**Right, when we get back I'm sticking both of you in front of some case files. You need to know this stuff.** I get a sense of disgruntlement from Superboy. I'll snap him out of that. **You think Superman doesn't read up on potential threats? You think he hasn't invested a great deal of effort in finding out exactly how hard he has to hit someone to put them down quickly without causing permanent damage? Being strong isn't enough, you have to know how to use it.**

**Fine.**

Done it again. **Look, I was thinking about asking Diana to give you some hand to hand combat tuition. I'm not convinced that Black Canary's martial arts are going to be of much use to someone as strong as you. Is that something you'd be interested in?**

There's a brief pause. **I should be getting taught by Superman.**

Haven't seen him around, actually. **How are things between you and him anyway?** There's a flash of something from M'gann. Feels like… Panic? **What?**

**They're fine!**

**Okay, well, let me know if you're interested. I'll see you both back at the ship.** If the swamp were a bit dryer, I might find it pretty. As it is the mud and mosquitoes put me right off. "Ring, scan for any more piles of vines that used to be Swamp Thing."

Immediately I can feel their locations. Wanting something more precise I create a map construct with their locations. There's about forty, plus or minus seven for degrees of decay. No real pattern, other than there seem to be more around his home, and none of them are moving. Makes sense. I save the map and fly back towards the ship.

There's a shallow pool to one side of the.. tree..? Vine mound? I have no idea what to call the thing Swamp Thing lives in. Beautiful and quite alien. I doubt it would survive without his attention and upkeep. The Bio-Ship is hovering over the more solid ground on the other side, stealth disengaged. Superboy left a letter from us addressed to the owner, asking him to get in contact. I somehow doubt that he will.

I fly around to the rear entrance and enter the ship. Superboy's in the pilot's seat with M'gann standing over him, pointing out the basic controls. Superboy hunches slightly as I land. M'gann turns around and smiles nervously at me.

**This is just coming to you. Superman and Superboy… Well… Superman didn't take finding out that someone cloned him particularly well. I don't think they've spoken since the others got him out of Cadmus.**

**Fiddlesticks.** She frowns slightly. **Dah, okay, sorry. I'll try and fix it.**

She nods, and turns back to Superboy. "Okay Superboy, take us up."

His hands move over the controls and the ship rises above the canopy. I'm not worried about being seen. If the comics are anything to go by this whole area is inhabited only by crazy people who see far weirder stuff on a daily basis. If the comics aren't anything to go by then there's still nothing anywhere near here. I walk over to sit at the right forward seat. I know we brought packed lunches, but…

Idea!

I swivel the chair around to face them.

"How about we go and find a restaurant? There's got to be somewhere that does good food around here. My treat, if we can find somewhere that will take gold as payment."

back

Prod Zone 2

next

19th July

13:04 GMT -6

It took M'gann a while to convince me that American roadside food can actually be quite good. That is very much not the case in England. It took me a while to convince her that going outside the ship with green skin would be perfectly fine. I certainly wasn't planning to drop my shield in a state full of gun owners, and hanging around with someone who glows orange while in her civies would do more to give the game away than going in Martian. Superboy didn't much care either way.

That was why on Monday the nineteenth of July in the year of our Lord two thousand and ten a Martian Bio-Ship dropped camouflage over Grammy Smith's Roadside Kitchen, between Houma and Morgan City, just off Highway 90.

"Ring, prevent mobile phone calls." An extremely nervous looking M'gann levitates herself down to the ground from the back hatch. I turn to Superboy. "D'you want me to-?"

He jumps down the seven or so meters to the ground, landing in a crouch. I float down after him to where M'gann is waving hesitantly at the few diners already present. "Er… Hi?"

They are too busy gawping to return her greeting. Superboy scans the area once, then snorts. Ah! The counter. I stride towards it. "Come on, this way. Either of you actually know anything about Louisianan food?"

Turns out? Superboy does. At least, to the extent of knowing what was in things. Better still, he didn't zombify much when he explained it to us. Maybe simple information integrates faster? Perhaps that means he'll get all of the rest without telepathic help. I order what I think is some sort of seafood stew with rice and Superboy and M'gann order a Risotto. Both food types are kept ready to serve behind the counter, but I can see the next batch being cooked so it's probably pretty fresh. They also order Coke, and I think about asking for a large glass of milk before I realise that they probably don't have enough and order orange juice instead. The cook seems to find our presence amusing, and laughs out loud when I hand him three gold coins to pay for it.

"No way, man! No way anyone is gunna believe this happened! These coins? These're gunna get me arrested!"

We take our food and walk to the most isolated free picnic table. It isn't a large area, so we aren't even out of earshot of the people who are just emerging from their stupor. I briefly consider sticking a shield up… But that would be rude.

Ring, one way sound baffle.

There's a brief orange surge, and a sound like collecting a water shield in Sonic 3. M'gann looks at me inquisitorially.

"Sound baffle. Makes it harder for people to hear what we're saying."

"Oh. Okay…"

She looks nervously at the other diners, some of whom are taking pictures of us and the ship. A group of children are either trying to jump up to the back hatch of the Bio-Ship or are re-enacting Superboy's jump down. Superboy's already started eating. Conversation has never been a great skill of mine, but if I can start with anything…

"You said that you were planning to attend high school. What year are you planning to start in?"

"Oh, I'm, ah, I'm starting as a sophomore."

I load my fork with what I think might be oyster. I wanted to leave my food comfort zone and -hooray!- I have. Well and bloody truly. "M'gann, I'm English. Our education system is structured differently. What does that mean in terms of how old your classmates are going to be?"

She's trying to split her attention between me, her food and the other diners. "They'll be sixteen. Mostly, anyway. How does it work in England?"

"At sixteen you're in the last year of secondary school. At the end of the year you take your GCSE exams, and then you're done with compulsory education."

"Really? That early?"

"I've never thought of it as early. A lot of people do go on to college for the next two years, or do a vocational qualification, but, yeah."

"That does seem a bit young."

"According to his personnel file, Kaldur started national service when he was twelve. Not sure how that works."

"Maybe it was a military school?"

"Maybe. Any thoughts on what you want to do after you finish school?" That question warrants a hurried mouthful. Yeah, remember that feeling. She shakes her head. "It's not an immediate concern, but you should probably start thinking about it if you intend to move to Earth on a permanent basis. I got the impression that you were planning on living here?"

"I'd like to."

"Thing about being a superhero? You usually don't get paid to do it."

"Usually?"

"Green Lanterns get paid by the Guardians. It's not great money, but you can live off it. Particularly when bounty payments are taken into account."

"They get paid bounties? That doesn't sound.. very…"

I wave a hand to stop her. "Not by the Corps, but a lot of the people they end up going after have bounties on them from other places."

"Do you get paid by your Corps?"

"Orange Lanterns assume that if you can't work out how to make money with a power ring then you're probably too stupid to be given one. Green Lanterns need to get paid because the Guardians have very strict rules against Lanterns using power rings for their own ends."

"And you can use your ring for whatever you want?"

"The Corps doesn't place restrictions. There's things I won't do with it. I mean, Sinestro got booted out of the Green Corps for using his ring to take over his homeworld. I wouldn't want to do that."

"So you used your ring to get gold?"

"And platinum. Asteroid mining. Most of the Mars - Jupiter asteroid belt was untouched, so I used the ring to smelt some metal. Maybe half an hour's work for what I've spent in this parallel so far, and I've been overpaying. Actually, that surprised me a bit: how come Martians haven't got involved in asteroid mining?"

"We've never really needed to. And, well, most Martians aren't very interested in leaving the caves."

"Ooh, maybe we need to introduce the rest of Martian society to the joys of Earth television?"

She smiles. "That might just turn them all into couch potatoes."

I'm finding the textures odd, but the food actually tastes quite good. It pretty much falls into my preferred gap in between 'we-call-it-a-kitchen-but-basically-we-just-microwave-stuff' and 'what-do-you-mean-you-don't-like-cheese-and-tomato-ice-cream'. Stuff that you actually enjoy eating.

Now for the tricky bit. "Superboy, how about you?"

He stops eating and looks at me, as if he's surprised that I'm there. "What about me?"

"School. Education. Do you have any plans, or has anyone talked to you about it?"

"No."

"Do you think it might be good to look into?"

"No." I give him what I hope is an encouraging smile. Please say something else..? "I'm a weapon. I know how to hit things. I don't need to learn anything else." He goes back to eating.

Ooooo keeeey….

"But there's so many other things you could learn to do as well!"

Think you're on to a loser there, M'gann.

"I don't-" He swallows. "-need anything else. I don't want anything else."

Well, that's… yeah. Okay. M'gann and I share a look. New topic. Erm…

back

Prod Zone 3

next

19th July

13:12 GMT -6

I should probably eat this before it gets cold. M'gann and I both focus on eating. Superboy's finished, and is glaring moodily at some of the other diners. Or maybe it's a Jason Bourne thing and he's working out potential attack vectors and escape routes?

There is one thing I've been thinking about. "I must admit, I was surprised that Mr J'onzz was prepared to take you in. I didn't think that he and his brother got on."

She looks at me in surprise. "You know uncle Ma'al?"

"By reputation only."

"No, they… Whaw, they really don't get on. My mom is their sister."

"That makes more sense. Any other family?"

"There's my mom and my dad, my brothers and sisters."

"Brothers and sisters? You come from a large family?"

"Not really. Only seventeen boys and thirteen girls. I mean, I've got about three hundred cousins, but it's not really… What?"

I'm gaping. "How many!"

"Why is..? Oh! I suppose by Human standards that is quite big."

"Just a bit, yes."

"What about you? Um, if you don't mind?"

"Both parents still with us, and one sister. Four cousins, if you're wondering."

"I suppose that could be nice. You must be able to remember all their names and birthdays."

One out of two isn't bad. "About the after school thing. Unless you want a normal job for the sake of it, you'd probably be better off finding a unique service you can offer, and charging people for it."

She chews for a moment. "I know there aren't many Human telepaths or shape shifters."

"There you go. Now, what can you do with those things that people will pay you for?"

"Most Humans I've met haven't been very keen on mind reading."

"I used to watch a television series where telepaths were routinely used in business negotiations to ensure that neither party was trying to deceive the other. There isn't a market now, but it's worth thinking about."

"What series was that?"

"Babylon Five. Don't bother looking it up, it doesn't exist here."

She thinks for a moment. "I suppose… Counselling services? I'm not sure I like the idea of going inside damaged minds."

"Not much money in it anyway. But if you can create telepathic suggestions you could offer your services to people trying to stop smoking. Or to stop using harder drugs."

"Mind control?"

"Very limited mind control that they ask for and pay you to perform, and that you can undo whenever they ask."

"I suppose… I don't think I like the idea of doing that sort of thing either."

I shrug. "No problem. Just an idea. How about telepathic illusions?"

"I've been practising, but I'm not that good yet. How about shapeshifting instead?"

"There's modelling. Don't really have any suggestions about that. Acting, but that will require a lot of time. Could work. I think Animal Man works as a stunt double. Money won't be all that great for a while if you're just looking for something to fund your superheroing."

"Well, it isn't as if I have to decide right now."

"True." New topic time. "Why is it that you're choosing to live in the mountain rather than with your uncle?"

"Uncle J'onn isn't around all that much. It was kinda lonely. Plus, I think he prefers being on his own."

"You think us living in a known superhero base is a good idea?"

M'gann looks at Superboy, intentionally giving him a chance to respond, before giving up with a small sigh. "Kid Flash said that we're hiding in plain sight."

"How so?"

"Because… The bad guys know it's a secret superhero base, so they won't look for us there?"

Eh? "That… that really isn't how hiding in plain sight works. A disused base suddenly showing activity draws attention. It would only be hiding in plain sight if there was some other more obvious explanation for it going live again that meant they ignored us."

She smiles. "You think you'll be attacked in your sleep?"

"I'm not worried about that; I sleep wearing a personal force field generator. I'm more worried about what happens if the mountain becomes a tourist attraction like the Hall of Justice. Even if we can cope with an aggressor, random holiday makers would just be hostage fodder."

"Our missions aren't usually going to happen near the mountain. And the Hall of Justice is hardly ever attacked."

"Umm, suppose. Oh, know what I've noticed?"

"What?"

"There's three people here but only two of them are talking. So! Superboy. Had any thoughts on a first name yet?"

He actually seems to think about that one. "No." But the result is the same.

M'gann looks concerned. "You do want one, right?"

He fidgets a little. "Well… Yeah…"

"Given any thought to the sort of name you want? Something Human, something Kryptonian, something that works in both?"

He think about it for a moment. "What… Kryptonian names do you know?"

"Sorry, not many. The male Kryptonian names I remember were all short. Kal, Jor, Dru. I can't even remember what Jor-El's brother was called. I suppose… Er… One of the Greenies might have better records." Not suggesting he ask Superman. Now, do I try to convince him to go for Kon-El/Conner Kent, or just let him do his own thing? Could be awkward if I forget his choice.

"How about Conner?" And M'gann out of absolutely nowhere. She seems strangely enthusiastic.

Superboy looks at me. Why? Oh. Kryptonian authenticity checking. "It works for a Human name, but it's a bit long for Krypton. Maybe if you just used the first syllable?" Might as well… "Maybe if you spelt the Kryptonian version with a K rather than a C?"

He avoids eye contact as he thinks about it. "Kon. El." I'm not sure that he likes it, but he doesn't seem able to come up with a reason to dislike it. And it sounds a bit like Superman's name. "Kon-El. Okay." He actually sounded calm when he said that, without his usual angry or confused tinge. It sounds better. Looks like M'gann's still in to bat for 'Conner'.

"Maybe Conner could be your Earth name. Like I'm using Megan Morse."

"I don't need one."

He'd probably take one if I demonstrated that Superman had a secret identity, but I think that would be tipping my hand a bit much. Another reason, then. "You might want to pretend to be Human at some point. For a reconnaissance mission, or something. It would probably work better if you were used to responding to a Human style name."

He thinks about it, then shrugs. "I guess."

Continuity preserved, or something like it. Time to get back to work. Ring, display list of names. There are no Abigail Arcanes, but there are seven Abigail Cables and two Abigail Hollands. The ring creates a hologram-like screen for M'gann and Superb-. Kon-El. Time to relearn what I already know. The display also has their addresses. "We'll check out the list, then head home. Remember, mid twenties to mid thirties, and she should have white hair with a black streak. If we see her and she starts freaking out, just back away and record the address." I smile. "Kon-El, anything to add?"

He looks blank for a moment, then… Did he just nearly smile? "Maybe… Maybe we shouldn't crowd her. It'll be less intimidating if only one of us speaks to her at a time."

"Good point. And well volunteered."

"What?"

"Abigail Jane Cable is closest." I stand up and turn to the Bio-Ship. The crowd looks bigger than when we arrived, but fortunately they leave a clear space around us. I wave my right hand and an orange staircase appears from the ground to the Bio-Ship's rear hatch. M'gann and Kon follow me up.

back

Prod Zone 4

next

22nd July

15:02 GMT -5

"I know you can lift more, but that isn't the aim here. You're supposed to lift a smaller weight repeatedly. Building strength rather than showing off what you already have."

It's a mark of how much our relationship has improved this week that Kon actually appears to listen to what I say, rather than snapping at me or storming off. He's lying on a bench press bench I fabricated out of tungsten after the normal steel one we tried this with collapsed under the weight. Near his head is an orange construct weight rest with a construct set of barbells. The barbells show fifty tonnes. It won't actually weigh anything until he picks it up, and it will stop weighing anything if he gets into difficulty.

Not too many people around who can spot for a Kryptonian.

This morning wasn't the first time that he mentioned his dissatisfaction with his sub-Superman abilities. Rather than let him either mope or try to persuade me to take a chance on modifying his body I suggested improving his strength in the traditional way. I doubt that any improvement will be significant. Really, I just want something to focus his attention on, but he seems to be pretty into it. We started on regular weights, but even loading the bar up to its maximum it still didn't strain him. So I had the ring exert thirty tonnes and the bench broke.

He reaches under the rest and puts his hands on to the bar, pushing up slightly. The ring creates the downwards force and he begins pushing. Up down up down up down up no no no. "Kon, it's about power under control. Slower. Here." I create a metronome construct with a three second swing. "One swing up, one swing down. It's harder to hold the bar with your arms bent than it is to hold it fully up."

He nods, then resumes. It's weird, really. He can lift fifty tonnes like it's no big deal, but is still perfectly capable of fine object manipulation without risking breaking whatever he's holding. No idea how it works. Maybe the level of strength he employs is somehow controlled by his intent? Wasn't he a touch telekinetic in the comics to begin with?

Watching his muscles move is impressive. My ring modified body probably has a little more definition -definitely not earned, I haven't spent any time in the gym for my own exercise- but even ignoring his super strength his muscles are clearly the larger. I haven't watched someone like him lift weights before and it's strangely enthralling. Kon changed into a vest for this and I can watch his muscles move as the tension shifts to different muscle groups.

There's a blast of displaced air and then Wallace-. "Guys! We're getting a mission!"

Kon holds the bar with his elbows bent at ninety degrees. Maybe I am setting the weight a bit low? "Finally."

He moves it to the rest, and sits up as I delete the construct. Should I be nervous? I'm not sure. I'm now fairly confident in my ability to protect both myself and my team mates. Shielding others was the main thing our recent team practices have allowed me to get good at. I can armour up Kon and M'gann in a second or so, and create versions of my environmental shielding for the others. Robin said that he preferred if I didn't use it on him as the orange glow draws the eye when he'd rather use evasion and misdirection. Kon, on the other hand, has been using it to the maximum. Barrier type construct shields are even easier, and I can use simple constructs on separate tasks without really concentrating.

"Do you have any other information for us?"

And the wind leaves his sails. "No. But Batman's coming down later to give the briefing."

Kon's a bit more interested. "When?"

"Batman's getting here about five."

If Wallace knows, then… "Can I assume you heard about this from Robin?"

"Yeah."

"He didn't tell you anything else?"

He gives me an irritated look. "Y'know, you could be more excited about this."

I lean back and cross my arms across my chest. "I don't have anything to be excited about yet."

It's a little frustrating. If we're doing this mission today I'd like a chance to do some preparatory reading. Maybe practise construct types appropriate to the local threats. And if Batman is coming here, he must already know more or less what we'll be going into. No reason he couldn't send an information packet over.

Whaw, listen to me. Actually sound like I know what I'm doing.

Kon doesn't understand my lack of interest. "This finally shows that they're taking us seriously."

"Kon, have you any idea how much it cost them to rebuild this place? This was always going to happen."

Timing's a bit awkward. If we're being deployed this evening then we're going to have to move dinner. Maybe we can rush the mission and find somewhere decent to eat out? Wallace doesn't get to pick this time. Not after the Mexican gut horror.

I could really use more information.

"I suppose using the ring to spy on Batman to find out more would be impolite."

They both look at me, shocked. Wallace speaks first. "You can do that?"

"I'm not going to."

"But you could?"

"Sure. Simply do a long range scan for Batman's DNA and then set the ring to report whatever he says."

Kon thinks about it. "Like you did when you scanned Superman."

"Exactly. Far easier to get the sound around a person than to perform a high grade medical scan."

"Dude. Seriously?"

"A power ring's scanning capacity is a function of the emotional power of the user and its energy reserves. I'd like more information, Batman's almost certainly in North America and I'm fully charged."

"The Bat Cave's got loads of anti-surveillance tech."

"Most of which is early twenty first century Human technology. I doubt any of it could stop a power ring."

"How… Long… Have you been able to do this?"

"From the moment I got the ring. Any Lantern could. Any competent Lantern. Really, the League's fortunate that Sinestro doesn't understand Human society at all, because he could pretty much wreck-."

Wallace's face is a picture of astonished surprise. "Are you seriously saying you think the other Lanterns are incompetent?"

"My mentor was hamstrung by his ring's lack of AI support, and by the fact he couldn't get training. I haven't seen any footage of Lantern Gardner. But the other two? From what I've seen in recordings, I haven't been impressed. They seem to have trained exclusively for power with no appreciation for the more subtle uses of the ring. Which is a shame, because I'm sure their teachers -Lanterns Sinestro and Tui- would have at least tried to expand their range a little."

"They're Justice League members! The League's first Green Lantern saved hundreds of people when Star Sapphire attacked the Las Vegas airshow! He beat the Golden Roc by freezing an entire waterfall solid!"

"Brute. Force. Star Sapphire was after him anyway, and the Golden Roc's transmutation ability only works on physical contact. Why was it even able to touch him?"

Kon frowns. "You really don't admire any other Lanterns?"

"There are four Green Lanterns whom I admire. Lantern Medphyl, for his comportment. If there was any justice he'd be running the Greenies' training program rather than that muscle brain Kilowog. Lantern Jack Chance, for his initiative. He actually carries backup weapons in case something goes wrong with his ring. Most Lanterns don't even wear actual armour, and I'm happy to learn from their mistake. Lantern Rot Lop Fan, for his adaptability. His species doesn't even have a concept of light, so he, hah, thinks that he's a member of something called the F-Sharp Bell Corps, and uses sonic constructs. And Lantern Kreon, for being the most highly skilled construct user in existence. A construct only needs to exist for a second to do its work but most Lanterns -myself included- can't quite get their heads around the idea. Most manage better than boxing gloves, though."

Kon bases his whole heroic identity on Superman. It's clear that he can't really relate to my position. "And no Orange Lanterns?"

Pff. "I surpass Larfleeze by leaving my bedroom each morning. There's nothing admirable there."

"And the others?"

How to put this? "The reason why I meditate each day is to prevent myself from turning out like the others; slaves to their base drives. I feel nothing for them but contempt."

back

Prod Zone 5

next

22nd July

20:06 GMT -5

Reconnaissance on a Santa Priscan drug factory? Sounds straightforward enough. I should be able to get most of the information we need via ring scan. Unfortunately, I can't get my head around the idea of the combat drug Venom being a major problem in a world with guns, not sufficiently well to do so long distance anyway. I also don't understand why the US government hasn't done something about Santa Prisca before now. From what Batman was saying its leading exports appear to be drugs, guns and mercenaries. It has basically no friends internationally. Baffling. Batman said that the Justice League would intervene if necessary, so, here's hoping we find something.

We're on the Bio-Ship, heading out over the Caribbean Sea. Wallace and Robin have the front seats. Kon and I are at M'gann's right (hooray for shape shifting decks) and Aqualad is at her left. Everyone except Kon is in uniform. Thinking about it, I suppose he doesn't really have one. I can't think of a material which would stand up to the forces he puts it under.

Fact is, when it comes to stealth? I'm a huge liability. I mean, I glow orange. A lot orange, when I'm actually fighting. As a result, Batman's instructions to me were to remain airborne while my team mates go in on the ground. I'll provide mapping and -if necessary- fire support. If I get high enough I should be mistaken for either a plane or a star. I suggested waiting underwater off the coast instead, but he was concerned that would affect my response time.

"We're approaching Santa Prisca."

The Bio-Ship's mind -or whatever- relays its sensors directly to M'gann's head via her telepathy. I thought about creating a construct map for everyone else to follow, but that might be rude, and the orange glow would be 'off theme' for stealth. Everyone else seems focused, and pretty sombre. I'm relaxed. After leaving Wallace and Kon in the gym I took a quick look through the BBC's current affairs section to try and get some idea what we would be doing. Nothing jumped out at me, so I spent most of the rest of the time either practising rapid construct formation or meditating. Maybe I'm just less emotionally invested in this than a group who've idolised their mentors for as long as my team mates have.

Through the sky around us I can see clouds and -I think- a mountain top. The map Batman showed us had locations marked but I didn't pick up on relief features. And then I know it's Monte Amarcoré, named after the home village of the captain of the first Spanish vessel to land here. The aboriginal name for it translated as something like 'desolate lookout point', but since the aboriginal groups were completely broken up during the colonial occupation no one uses it.

Is the team ready? We can coordinate our efforts much better thanks to the training Aqualad organised. We haven't completely gelled yet, but we're getting there. During the briefing Robin asked Batman who was in charge. I honestly had assumed that he'd be directing us from the mountain himself. I even offered to set up an uninterruptible communication link, but apparently that goes against the purpose of the exercise. Makes sense, really. Batman wants us to pick a team leader, but it's obviously Aqualad. We haven't even needed to discuss it.

"Drop zone A in thirty."

I thought about getting off the ship early, but since neither part of the group should be moving on the objective until everyone is down it really makes more sense for me to stay on board until the ship reaches the mid point. Otherwise, people looking up might wonder why the star is moving.

Kaldur stands and presses his belt buckle, turning his red vest dull grey. That technology isn't widespread. Either it's very expensive -which wouldn't make sense, otherwise he'd just have two vests- or no one in the Justice League is thinking about the fashion possibilities. "Ready."

"Putting Bio-Ship in camouflage mode."

I wonder if camouflage drains power, or tires the ship out? If not we should have been in camouflage mode since we left the US coast. If the people below have radar… Does this ship show up on radar? Have to ask afterwards.

The ship drops down to just above sea level, and Aqualad dives out through the floor hatch. If I had any doubts about his more than baseline Human physique before, I don't now. We're moving darn fast, and he hit the water without any indication of discomfort. There are anti-submarine nets around this part of the shore -not sure why- so he's going to cut through and make landfall on an empty stretch of coastline to nobble the ground based sensor network. Advanced infrared sensors and AK forty sevens. Weird. Not to mention the fact that the sensors don't have anyone looking after them on site. Or minefields.

**Heat and motion sensors are patched. It is now on a continuous loop. Move in.**

Wallace made some noise about wanting to use radio, but part of our group training session was devoted to getting used to telepathic communication and we're fairly used to it. After our away sessions together even Kon didn't complain.

I'm out next. In order to minimise the chance of my light being seen my environmental shield will be on absolute minimum. I'll be very nearly hanging off the ring until I get to two kilometres up. My active power level is so low that the sigils on my chest and arms have returned to the grey of the rest of the material. I rise and walk to the back of the ship. Hands clasped at my chest I lean into the rear door, which opens around me as I fall through the gap. It's a bit like diving. The ring arrests my motion once I'm clear and the ship carries on to the deployment zone for the rest of the team. I rise, with the ring notifying me of our height at intervals.

I could use OrangeVision to watch the ship, but that might brighten my aura. I'm rising at around ten metres per second, so I'll be ready in about three minutes.

**Drop zone B.**

Telepathic communication also has the advantage of keeping team members separated from the main group notified on their progress. If M'gann had just spoken that, Kaldur and I wouldn't know they'd arrived.

Wallace just shifted the colour of his armour to black.

How do I know that?

Information did not come from this ring. Most plausible alternative is image sharing via telepathic link.

That can happen?

Affirmative.

Not getting that from Kaldur… So, I get it from M'gann because she's maintaining the link?

This ring lacks data on which to make further observations.

**Very impressive.**

M'gann just changed the colour of her own clothes, though I note with a mental eye roll that she left the big red cross over her centre of mass in place. I asked earlier and it's the closest Manhunters have to an actual uniform. Historically Martians haven't bothered with much in the way of clothing and straps across the chest were once used for carrying tools and other objects. Later, red straps became the military norm and M'gann and Mister J'onn have maintained it despite having access to this wonderful Human invention called 'pockets'.

Hm. If I'm getting more detail from her…

I try thinking the image of a sniper noticing and taking aim at the red cross in the dark. I feel her surprise as she receives it, and I smile as she darkens the cross to a less noticeable dull red. Progress!

**No capes, no tights. No offense.**

Just about the only thing about Superman which Kon doesn't admire. I'll have to see what happened to his original bodysuit, the one ruined during his escape from Cadmus. If the League can replicate the technology that it used then he might end up with a skin tight costume that actually makes sense. Superman could end up using the material as well. Might help them have a conversation.

I get why Superman finds being around him weird, but a single conversation wouldn't kill him, surely? I asked Diana about it, and apparently Kal-El is usually very interested in everything Kryptonian. I suppose it's the American thing of obsessing about your heritage, like how many New Yorkers will describe themselves as Irish despite never having been to Ireland. Maybe me describing him as Kon-El's father was a bit much. I said it because I thought that was how Kon thought of him, and it is biologically true…

**It totally works for you.** Seems M'gann likes the way he looks now just fine. And without thinking about it I send her the image of a sweaty Kon pumping iron. I feel her eyes widen. Shouldn't have done that. **I-i-i-i-in that, that you can totally do good-. Good work in those clothes.** Nearly as smooth as Wallace. I feel her hide her blush with invisibility and her cloak.

From up here I can see the lights around the touristy parts of the island on the west coast. Quite a nice place to visit, if you don't mind the armed guards and can ignore the occasional peasant getting beaten up in the alleyways. Most hotels are on the beach, so the interaction between foreigner cash cows and 'free-range' locals are kept to a minimum.

I feel a squawk of alarm from M'gann as she, Robin and W… Kid Flash -mission now- dive aside as Superboy jumps down from the Bio-Ship without a harness. He seems to like doing that. Maybe he's testing his might against the ground?

**Knew I didn't need a line.**

**And yet, creating a seismic event might not have helped us much with the covert.**

M'gann decides to do the job. **Aqualad, Orange Lantern. Drop B is go.**

**Orange Lantern at altitude. Beginning scans.**

An orange sphere appears around me. One of the things I really liked about the film 'Avatar' was the computer monitors where a hand gesture could transfer a document or program from one terminal to another. My WarSphereTM construct feeds information from my scans onto orange screens on the interior surface, and they respond to my touch. I originally tried having them respond to my thoughts but that got a bit chaotic. Having actual monitors would help as I'd get colour. Maybe some sort of liquid crystal thing that could roll flat? I could stick it in subspace, and it wouldn't actually need any processing capacity.

**Main team, head for the factory. I'll track your GPS and rendezvous ASAP.**

**Roger that.**

back

Prod Zone 6

next

22nd July

20:21 GMT -5

I'm now tracking everything.

Sort of. I tried making myself aware of every potential enemy on the island, and I couldn't cope. So I've created windows monitoring each of the larger concentrations of armed personnel and arranged them by region. One group in the area around the factory looks like central casting South American rebels, but it's the other that appears to hold the place. They appear to have a wider range of racial backgrounds, and they're wearing the red hoods that the ring informs me are characteristic of members of the Kobra organisation.

Unfortunately, GI Joe doesn't exist in this parallel, so I can't make the obvious joke.

I passed that information on to the others. Robin said that this wasn't in accordance with Kobra's usual MO. Doesn't really change the mission; we still need to get eyes in the factory and to find out where the Venom is going.

I've also found the airfield, and truck depot. Ah, for a bit of a run up and a kinetic harpoon. They appear to be stacking some crates near what looks like the centre of the landing area.

Bane supposedly has links to the Santa Priscan government, mostly in a money-for-pretending-you're-not-there kind of way. No actual local military units in the area, though. Maybe he doesn't want them to know that he's been ejected from his -and their- revenue source. They'd get a lot of good will handing him over to North American or South American authorities. Actually located the man himself, as well. That felt weird. I can see you, Mister Major Supervillain, but you can't see me.

Kid Flash and Superboy were in favour of ambushing a small patrol of Bane's men for information, but Aqualad reminded them that this was a covert recon mission. One burst of gunfire and our location would be given away, and no local faction would make a point of knocking its enemies out and not killing them. Wanting to avoid the patrols resulted in a minor detour from the team's planned route, moving back around a rock formation to approach from another angle.

I can't hear the gunfire from up here with the WarSphere active, but M'gann passed along the noise as patrols from the two hostile local factions encountered one another, Bane leading the locals personally. It gives me the chance to observe the differing tactics the two sides use. The Kobras know how to use their weapons, and from what I can tell their guns are of a higher quality. But the locals know how to use the terrain. Two hold fire and flank the robe-wearers, killing most of them with a grenade and flushing the rest into the fire of the rest of their unit.

Bane closes the distance fast once they're off balance. He grabs the most alive looking Kobra cultist, says something, then…

Oh.

He picked him up by his legs and swung his head into a tree trunk.

That's the first time I've seen someone killed.

With the ones killed by bullets and shrapnel the robes conceal the fatal injuries. The one Bane killed, his head is very broken.

Bane's men scavenge guns and ammunition from the corpses and move into the jungle.

**The two patrols have encountered one another. Kobra… Lost.**

The reply comes from Aqualad. **Understood.**

There are a few minutes until they reach the bluff overlooking the airfield.

Maybe it's the fact that I'm seeing it in orange, on a screen. I'm not sure. I like to think I'm empathic enough to feel bad that someone else is dead. But not this time. It's just, oh, they're dead, I'll stop tracking them. The nearest I've previously experienced to something like this was an episode of Jimquisition where he showed a news clip of a man committing suicide at a press conference, and to be honest that didn't show very much. Maybe it'll hit home later.

Aqualad should meet up with the others just before they reach the viewpoint.

I wonder if Bane's group are going to do a completionist run? Use their superior knowledge of the terrain to attack and destroy isolated groups? I mean, unless the head of Kobra is here in person they're going to have to kill every cultist to push them out. Might as well do it while they're not together, right? That would give us time before we have to worry about them coming in behind us.

Ring, detailed scan on the landing field.

And then I know what's there. The crates definitely contain drugs. There's Venom, but it's been modified from what I saw in the League's files. The guys moving the stuff don't have more than trace amounts on them, probably residue in their robes. Cultists register slightly oddly to my avarice detector. These guys evaluate their worth purely in terms of the goals of the organisation and directions of their master. Fully indoctrinated, normal wants and needs redirected or repressed.

Hmm.

Ring, scan for Jeffrey Franklin Burr, aka 'Kobra'.

He's in the factory, standing on a catwalk near the centre. He's bald now, and his face is severe and humourless.

**Orange Lantern to team. Kobra himself is on site. Repeat, I have positive ID on Jeffrey Burr, aka Kobra.**

I feel Robin tense, but the others don't respond. He picks up on their lack of response too. **If Kobra's here in person, then this is big.**

Wallace misses the point. **We get it, Kobra wanted super-cultists, mystery solved. Radio Bats and we'll be home in time for-.**

I shake my head. **W-. Kid Flash, the cultists aren't using the Venom. And the stuff they're loading up reads as different from the normal product.**

**So they're shipping it somewhere else. So what?**

Aqualad's on the case. **So we need to know either the name of the buyer or the name of the destination. Orange Lantern, can you see a way inside?**

**The cargo entrance is only lightly guarded but is well lit, and has clear lines of sight all around. Oh, hang on, it looks like there's a passageway in the rocks near where you'll come out. Might be some rubble in the way. Could be an old mineshaft, or escape route in case of attack. I don't read any defences inside.** I send a mental image of the entrance to M'gann.

**We will take it.**

They reach the top of the bluff. Robin stops to take a look at the airfield for himself, while M'gann directs Superboy to the boulder covering the entrance.

**Look at all that product. They could keep every Venom addict in the US going for years with that!**

Superboy lifts the boulder out of the way without apparent effort.

**Aqualad, I am aware that Kobra is a very high priority target. If we conclude that the mission is complete I am prepared to make a swoop and grab on him before we leave.** I could also turn him into an orange construct and pass everything he knows about his organisation on to the police, but I don't mention that.

**I do not think it appropriate to send you in alone.**

**I defer to your judgement, but the risk would be minimal. I'd fly through the roof and leave the same way. The grab itself would take as long as I needed to get a clear shot at him. The guns they're using won't scratch my shields. The Kobra Cult do make use of metahumans but unless they have a very fast flier they won't catch me.**

**I will consider it, but apprehending Kobra is not our primary assignment.**

**Understood.**

The group enters the tunnel.

back

Prod Zone 7

next

22nd July

20:34 GMT -5

At the end of the tunnel there's a service lift. Robin crouches in front of it and tries to access it with his computer. Turns out it's a simple electronic device with no processing power. Once I confirm that there isn't anyone close enough to hear it they enter and descend. At the bottom there's a small generator which powers the thing and another tunnel, this time leading towards the underground portion of the factory. At the end of that tunnel there's a heavy blast door, and Robin gets his hacking fix. That takes them into a locker room, which in turn leads to what I presume to be a mixing room. Large metal cylinders provide cover and concealment, though I don't think having them leak from bullet impacts would be very healthy.

**All clear.** I see Robin sprint forwards into the room, moving from cover to cover.

Aqualad is not happy. **Robin. We need to stay together.**

**I'll be back in a minute.**

**Stay put. I'll get our intel and be back before the Boy Wonder.**

**Oh, for goodness sake, Wallace.**

**Oh El, we're on a mission. Remember code names?**

**Remember staying together and supporting one another? Look, Robin's gone up onto the catwalk around the room you're in now. Looks like one cultist in the control room directly above your current position. There are no guards likely to reach you soon, so I suggest heading there.**

**Agreed.**

I send a map of the route to M'gann, but Aqualad has a better idea. **M'gann, fly up and support Robin.**

**On it.**

The cultist operating the machinery gets one bewildering moment of staring at her before Robin knocks him out from behind with a hand held spray. **Good distraction, Miss Em.**

I watch as the others hurry quietly around the room. The lack of guards in the production areas is a little puzzling. Maybe they're just here to produce the one batch? They clearly know that Bane wants this place back.

Another screen draws my attention. Kobra has descended to ground level and is talking to a scrawny woman and a truly huge bloke with hardened skin and… Ugh, are those cracks? The woman reads as Selinda Flinders, aka Shimmer. She isn't listed as being a Kobra cultist and she isn't wearing the robes. Mercenary work, maybe? Nothing on the big guy.

**Orange Lantern to team. Be advised, Kobra has at least one supervillain with him. He's not on the League's database yet, but he's huge.**

Aqualad responds as they make it to the control room. **Define 'huge'?**

**At least as big as Doctor Desmond. Maybe a bit broader.**

This perks Robin's interest. **Think they're producing the Blockbuster Formula here?**

Oh, whoops. **I'm sorry, I can't check. I didn't think to record its chemical structure.**

**Don't worry about it. I'll soon… Find… Out…**

Another screen blinks at me. **Guys, there's a transport helicopter coming in. Not certain it's coming here, but it is heading in this direction.**

**Is it likely that they will spot you?**

Aqualad, if an unarmed helicopter could take a Lantern… **Anyone can spot me, but they're flying fairly low. They shouldn't be able to identify me.**

**Very well. Maintain surveillance. Alert us if anything changes.**

Kid Flash reaches Robin first. **Rob, what have you got?**

**Chemical formulas. It looks like they are producing the Blockbuster Formula here. Or something like it. I think… I think they've combined the two.**

**According to this, Kobra's new juice is three times stronger than Venom, and the effects are permanent. But how did Kobra get access to Project Blockbuster?**

**Our mystery buyer must also be Kobra's supplier! Using the cult to create a Venom-Blockbuster super formula!**

I feel obliged to jump in. **Let's not jump to conclusions. The two may be unrelated. A cultist working under cover at Cadmus could have passed the formula on to them.**

Aqualad thinks for a moment. **Orange Lantern. How much of the new formula remains to be loaded?**

**Looks like two forklift loads. They'll be done soon. They're not bothering with the remaining regular Venom. Kobra and the big guy are going out to meet the helicopter now. Two guards entering the floor below you.**

**I believe we now have enough information to call in the League.**

Sounds like. There's a pause for a moment.

**Orange Lantern, they have jammed the radio. Are you able to send a message to Batman?**

!Our mission!

!Not his!

**I generally use radio waves as well. I might be able to message one of the other Lanterns, but I don't know where they are at the moment. If they're on Oa, or near the other side of the Sector…**

I can feel the smug emanating from Kid Flash. **You send messages with… What was it? Early twenty first century Earth technology?**

**The ring can send messages in more advanced formats, but our mountain doesn't have the receivers for them.**

**Maybe you shoulda thought of that before the start of the mission.**

**Do you know how to build a Bleed Fracture-Pulse receiver?**

Kon's feeling combative. **We can take them.**

Aqualad is having none of it. **No. This is a recon mission, not a combat operation. We will exfiltrate and head outside of the jamming area.**

Wallace isn't happy. **But they'll get away!**

**If it comes to it, I'm confident that I can disable the helicopter with minimal risk to myself. The only thing I can see that might threaten my shields is that big metahuman.**

**Robin, download as much data as you can. We'll need to transmit this to the League.**

**… Fine.**

And then a rocket hits the forklift and explodes.

back

Prod Zone 8

next

22nd July

20:42 GMT -5

The hell!?

**Aqualad to Orange Lantern. What just happened?**

Another rocket shreds a group of cultists who had hunkered down to prepare for a rush. **Give me a moment.** A small group of fighters are firing rockets from the tree line. Either they have superb marksmanship, or those are being guided somehow.

**Bane's men fired rockets at the landing zone. Kobra's sending cultists back into the factory to secure it while the big meta goes after the guerrillas. You need to get out now.**

**Understood.**

They begin falling back, jumping down to the ground floor with M'gann's help rather than going all the way around the catwalk. They just about make it to cover by the time the first cultists enter the room and notice that the guy in the control room isn't responding. The team are already in the tunnels by the time the cultists start a search. I can't tell exactly how obvious the secret door is from here, but with a little luck they won't be able to go through it without extra equipment.

If Bane's people aren't rushing, that was a diversion. It clearly wasn't laid on for our benefit. There's still a minute or so until the helicopter touches down. What am I missing?

I feel M'gann's alarm.

!My team!

!Mine!

Bane. My team is surrounded by bombs. That will not do. I drop the WarSphere, switch my environmental shield back to minimum and aim myself at their location. With a little luck I'll be mistaken for misdirected ordnance.

Ring, what is he saying?

"Halt, children. I'm feeling… Explosive." Hammy supervillain monolog coming up.

**I'm inbound. I'm... I'm not completely sure that I can suppress those explosives.**

"I was a little worried when I found that my secret entrance had been uncovered. I wasn't expecting the Justice League Junior."

Aqualad starts to organise. **Kid, you'll need a running start.**

"I. Want. My factory back. If you're not here to take down my enemy, then perhaps the Justice League will come to avenge their sidekicks. Blowing the tunnel up with you inside should provide them the motivation needed."

Ring, prep armour constructs, and target his fighters' guns.

"And when the smoke clears, Santa Prisca will be mine once more."

Kid Flash moves. "With what? This trigger thingy?"

"Range achieved."

I grin. Coils of orange light reach down to seize rifles out of guerrilla hands.

"Don't you know, you never split the party

Cleric in the back, keep those fighters hale and hearty."

Orange armour constructs appear around my team mates. Superboy lunges at Bane, who takes a surprise fist to the diaphragm. M'gann telekinetically catches a thrown grenade and hurls it into the distance, where it explodes brightly.

"Wizard in the middle,

Where she can spread some light."

Wallace hits the outermost fighters while Aqualad and M'gann use precision blasts of water and telekinesis to slam those closest to them into the scenery. I hit the ground just in time to put manacle constructs around Bane's arm as he tries to punch Superboy. I then put another around his neck to pull his face down into Superboy's fist.

"And you never let that damn.. thief…"

I stop. "Where's Robin?"

I didn't look for him when I created the armour because he doesn't like using it. Oh, he can take care of himself. Bane shows some signs of life, so I pop a StunCrownTM construct over his head and activate it. He goes rigid for a moment, and then slumps.

It seems that my team mates have mastered the art of rendering people unconscious using kinetic force without causing lasting damage. Even M'gann, which I find a little surprising. I wonder what the secret is? I begin piling unconscious guerrillas into neat heaps. **Seriously, where's Robin?**

Aqualad deactivates his Water Bearers and shrugs. **He has a most unfortunate habit of doing that.**

Kid Flash walks back, eating a chocolate bar. "Haven't seen him. Hey, what did I do to finally qualify for actual armor?"

"You just looked so gosh darn fragile."

Actually, all the armour will do now is draw attention to us. The constructs dissipate.

M'gann looks at our captives. "I didn't bring any rope."

Superboy loots one of the fallen. "This guy did. Think he'll mind if we use it?"

Did he just make a joke?

It's been too long since Scouts for me to remember much about knots, let alone how to tie someone up reliably. Wallace and Aqualad on the other hand have the right skill set. Is that something I should learn? Not sure. My StunCrown is more reliable, but that would probably look like inappropriate brutality in this situation. It temporarily shorts out the motor cortex, but it actually causes less risk to long term health than the air tasers used by Batman and Robin. Two mornings of studying neurophysiology well spent.

I suppose if there's no one around who knows rope tying then I'd probably be on my own anyway. Not sure how all of the Venom in Bane's system will affect the paralysis effect. Don't want him getting away. Hmm.

"Would it be acceptable for me to remove all traces of Venom from Bane's body?"

Aqualad and Kid Flash share a look before Aqualad turns to me. "You are able to do that safely?"

"It's a single molecule whose structure I know. Shouldn't be a problem. Not sure about the withdrawal symptoms, but I can probably do something to reduce them."

Aqualad smiles slightly. Thinking about it, he's probably second only to Superboy when it comes to being sombre. Wonder why? "I think that would be acceptable."

I raise my left hand over the recumbent Bane. "Ring, locate and remove all Venom molecules. Identify and repair damage caused to all systems."

"Compliance."

Strobing beams of orange light project from the ring. There doesn't seem to be much of a pattern, until I wonder hard enough and I understand that it's targeting the Venom sites in order of concentration. Watching Bane visibly deflate is… Unnerving. Particularly when his neck and face shrivel so much that his mask comes loose.

Once the ring finishes Kid Flash steps forwards and picks the mask up. "Souvenir."

back

Prod Zone 9

next

22nd July

20:48 GMT -5

That went well. Now, let's see what I've been missing in the excitement. Ring, where did Robin and that big meta end up?

Two screens appear in front of me. The one on my left shows Robin, crouched under… The helicopter. The helicopter has landed, and Robin has somehow managed to sneak right up to it. Not good. The one on my right shows… I need a better name than big meta… Baran Flinders? An orange construct showing his last known appearance now floats next to the right hand screen. Whaw.

"No way. That little guy became that thing?" Wallace is now leaning on my shoulder. He's still eating.

And not sharing. I'm bringing my own snacks next time.

"Baran Flinders, eighteen years old. His DNA hasn't changed, and his face is roughly the right shape, allowing for the growth he's done since this image was taken."

"When was that?"

"Three days ago."

"Whaw."

"Worse news, looks like he's coming here." I move my hand and the picture of him walking through the jungle switches to plane view showing the landing area, Mister Flinders and us. He has a little way to go, but he's between us and Robin unless we want to go through the tunnels again. He looks like he should be able to move faster than he is. I can only assume that he saw a few orange flashes and is being thorough. Doesn't seem to be wearing a radio. Oh, jamming, right.

Aqualad joins Kid Flash just behind me, while Superboy and M'gann watch from the front.

**Robin, are you in immediate danger?**

**No one ever looks under the helicopter.**

**Can you get away safely?**

**Sure, when you get down here and we've finished kicking Kobra's keister.**

**That was not the plan.**

**I don't remember anyone making you leader.** Didn't we? We didn't talk about it but… Argh! That was why Robin asked Batman who was in charge. He thinks it's a contest he can win. Damn it. **Whoo… I think they're loading the Venom Buster now. Not sure the League can get here in time.**

Ah, hell. We can't leave Robin here. We can't extract him covertly. Can we? I pull the left window outwards from Robin. Nope, too many guards. My best idea for remaining covert involves sending a giant orange drill construct up underneath him.

I wonder what vert means? Some sort of skateboarding jump, isn't it?

Aqualad is a bit more together. **We will need to bypass or ambush Mister Flinders, then launch a diversionary attack on the airfield to allow Robin to withdraw. Ambushing without giving away our position will be difficult, and bypassing him risks him attacking us from the rear later. His strength will be particularly dangerous in the close confines of the forest.**

Hang on… I rotate the right screen and switch it to relief map. Since he's having to move up the side of the ridge, and with all of the trees… I should be able to pick him up without the other Kobra types seeing. After that, I could either stun him or fly him to the sea while keeping out of line of sight of the airfield. I should be able to hold him under water, as long as he has nothing solid to push against. Superboy speaks first.

**I'll take the big guy. I can wear these guys' clothes as a disguise and hold his attention while you get Robin. I'll join you once I'm done.**

I shake my head. **Superboy, you beat rock with paper, not with more rock. Miss Martian or I could neutralise his strength advantage, but I should be able to knock him out faster. That would also put me in a better position to attack the helicopter should it make a break for it.**

Aqualad steps to my side to get a better look at the map. **Following the helicopter in the Bio-Ship while under camouflage might lead us to the ultimate buyer.**

Robin does not appreciate the delay. **OR we can just grab everyone while they're still here, and Miss Em can take the information from their minds.**

She shakes her head. **It isn't as easy as that. There are ways to keep me out. And they might not even know who hired them.**

Kid Flash takes a closer look at the arrangement of guards. **Superboy, you're pretty much bulletproof, right?**

**Yeah?**

**Think you could jump from here-** He points to an elevated area which from the airfield is obscured by trees. **-into the middle of them?**

**Probably.**

**I should be able to clear out most of the Kobra goons if they're all looking at him. If M'gann's invisible when the attack starts she can be right over the helicopter when Superboy goes in!**

Stealth, guys! Stealth!

**Clock is ticking, guys. Don't really want to try hanging onto the underside of a helicopter all the way back to the US!**

Ah, hell. It probably doesn't violate my orders if I'm not the one doing it.

**Big Flinders is getting close. If we're doing this, I need to move now.**

Aqualad looks about as happy with this turn of events as I am. He bows his head slightly. **I suppose wisdom involves adapting a plan to unpredicted circumstances.** He places a hand on my back, and looks me in the eyes. **You are confident you can take him alone?**

I nod. **It should be within my abilities.**

**Go. Meet us either on the airfield or back at drop point B.**

I look at the relief map once more, planning the best route. Ring, plot flight path.

Course plotted.

I drop the map constructs, reinforce my armour and crouch slightly. In my mind I can clearly see the route I'll be taking, but the journey itself will be too quick for me to really experience it. The next thing I'll be aware of is Big Flinders being right in front of me.

Execute.

back

Prod Zone 10

next

22nd July

20:51 GMT -5

An unintelligent person might try to ram him. A moderately intelligent person like Jordan or Stewart would stop and create a striking construct. I like to think that I am a little more than moderately intelligent. That is why the now musclebound Mister Flinders finds himself hoisted into the air by the awesome power of the full nelson. Once he's off the ground I stick a flight aura around him as well. I do that second as it isn't impossible that he could flail around enough to break its hold, and I really don't want to make this a fair fight. Superboy and I tested it, and sufficient force can break the flight aura from inside.

Perhaps most importantly, I do this from behind. When I start my attack he can't see me, and he will struggle to turn his head enough to do so. His massive muscles mean that he can't bring his strength to bear to attempt to break my constructs, which I desire to flow around any strikes he makes and reform while still supporting him.

I'm also far enough behind him to be outside of immediate striking range if he does somehow get free, and I'm keeping a couple of trees between us in case I'm wrong about his neck. Doesn't look like I am.

His attempt to cry out is muted by the flight aura, and we're moving through the jungle away from the landing field even as I put a ShockCrown on his head. He twitches a bit, but keeps struggling. Guess his augmented physique is made of stronger stuff. I could turn the power up, but that would risk lasting damage and I don't currently need to.

I'm not going to try and move something as big as him through the jungle at full speed, but once we get down into the gully I can rise above the trees and increase my flight speed. Big Flinders is really going crazy now, hammering his chest in an attempt to hit the parts of the construct holding him. A couple of times he hits it but it just moves around the blows. Hmm.

Ring, power remaining?

Fifty eight percent.

A twitch of my right hand and he's upside down, hanging off his right ankle. He can't reach the construct at all and the flight aura prevents his weight straining it. It also gives me a clear view of the exposed muscle tissue showing through the cracks in his skin on his back and arm. I have no idea whether or not that will grow to cover it. I guess he thought the physical boost was worth it. They must have done animal tests first, surely? If only to find out if it actually worked or not.

Line of sight from airfield now obscured.

Big Flinders gets a mouth full of tree as we accelerate. I think he may have seen me then, as I've come over the canopy so as to avoid getting slowed down. Of course, he wouldn't be able to make out details, just a glowing orange humanoid. Yep, definitely seen me. He's stopped his flailing in favour of trying to twist around to get a better look at me. Far too slow.

If a person can drown in a bucket or a wheel rut, they can certainly drown in the shallows off the shore. Hm. Wonder if the environmental shield can prevent a person from breathing as well as making them always able to? Don't want to experiment here in case it inhibits all biological processes. Worth thinking about, though.

I drop the constructs around him and he drops towards the sea. Before he hits I loop another construct in an X shape around his chest. He's going at a fair old rate when he hits, hopefully with his mouth open, and then the construct locks him in place. He isn't far under, but he has nothing to push against and the Venom Buster appears to have removed any natural buoyancy he might have possessed.

Ring? Notify me when he becomes unconscious. I have no desire to kill him, but I don't want him fighting again any time soon.

Based on Human drown times and altered physical structure of subject, optimal time submerged is predicted at one minute thirty seconds.

He's trying to swim towards air now. I apply a little force and he moves in a circle. He can't reach the bottom with his feet, and the surface is just out of reach even if he twists face up. Which he can't. Without leverage his strength is useless.

I try listening to M'gann's telepathic communication, but I can't hear anything and I don't want to distract them by asking questions. I could look at what they're doing, but I don't want to risk losing focus on my current task.

Big Flinders is properly spasming now. Probably thinks I'm going to kill him. Or it could just be an automatic reaction to being out of breath underwater. He has a criminal record -I quickly review it- but there aren't any outstanding murder charges. I wonder what he's done that hasn't been discovered? I doubt that Kobra keeps written records.

Alright, I don't have anything better to do. The rents in his flesh are disturbing me.

Ring, is knitting his flesh back together practical?

Task is possible, but not advised under current conditions.

Wait until I take him out then.

Compliance.

His struggles are getting weaker. Son of Margaret and Joseph Flinders, Australian nationals of Markovian origin. His criminal record starts five years ago. Gang graffiti, petty vandalism. Stops two years ago. Maybe he joined Kobra then? Stands to reason that they'd want him to stop attracting attention.

Consciousness lost.

He isn't moving now. A scan of his brain confirms a lack of consciousness. Good, good. I haul him out. Remove the water from his lungs, and fix the splits. A small fountain vomits forth from his mouth, and the visible muscle glows orange. Ring, make sure he's breathing and notify me if he looks like he's about to wake up.

Compliance.

I float him up to my level -I'm about eight metres over the water- and begin flying us back towards the airfield. First solo supervillain take down went well, I think. Does he count as a supervillain if he doesn't have any outstanding super type offences? Not sure.

The ring has finished repairing his skin. Looks much better. The gaps which used to be there didn't seem to be irritating him; even when he was on his own he wasn't scratching the edges. I know I would have been, in his place. Maybe the Venom Buster stuff numbs the skin? Or maybe the whole thing hurts, and the tear isn't notably worse? Wouldn't it have got infected?

Ring, location of helicopter. It's left the airfield and is flying away from the factory. I suppose that part of the plan went-. The helicopter disappears from my awareness. Ring, show me what just happened.

An image of the twin rotor helicopter appears in my mind. It lurches in the air as an electromagnetic surge from near its rear hatch wrecks its electronics, forcing it to crash land. I see a single parachute leave from the front before it hits the ground.

I really hope that was intentional, and that the idea of us following them back to their home base was intentionally abandoned. Probably worth me trying to pick up that last guy, as I imagine tracking him and taking care of everything else would tax both myself and the ring somewhat. Also have to consider that the island's military must know that something's going on by now. Don't really want to have to fight our way out through them.

Ring, location of pilot. And now I can feel him. He's heading down hill, towards a stream which will take him to the coast. He is probably planning to take a boat back to the US. Intercepting him shouldn't be too difficult, but I'll do a weapon scan just in case. No, one low yield plasma weapon and a few explosives. Nothing I can't handle.

Might even get some useful intelligence out of this. I wonder if the League will be able to bring charges against Flinders, Bane and whoever this is. Bane is a 'person of interest' in a load of places, but all of Flinders' outstanding stuff is pretty minor. Even with being a member of Kobra.

back

Prod Zone 11

next

22nd July

20:59 GMT -5

With OrangeVision I can see the guy through the trees. He's carrying a large briefcase and doesn't appear injured. He's still coming downhill towards me. I double check his equipment. Yep, nothing that poses a serious threat to me unless the ring charge gets to around five percent. I'm currently at forty nine percent.

He must know I'm here. I glow orange. What exactly is he planning on doing?

I scan his weapons again. Even if the plasma weapon -which is shaped a bit like a crossbow for some reason- could be overcharged, he's still not a threat.

This is creepy. If he were just a courier, he would have headed for civilisation. Or hidden. His other behaviour and his weapons suggest a competent mercenary. So why is he coming towards an obvious threat?

DC mercenaries… Not Slade Wilson, he only has one sword and it's a rapier. Not Deadshot, he doesn't have a sniper rifle. Can't think of any others I'd call competent. Merlyn? Man's a clown, and this guy doesn't have a bow. Prometheus? He's good, but without his helmet and some very specialised equipment I'd still win. Must check whether or not neural chaff is a real thing.

I triple check this guy isn't carrying any.

Everything I can see tells me that I shouldn't be concerned, and I'm more nervous now than when I attacked Big Flinders. It must be the build up. I did consider just dropping in on him but I wanted to drop my cargo out of the way. And give whoever this is a chance to surrender. I should be able to drop him without causing permanent harm but there's always a risk. I don't think I'd be able to heal an adversary in normal circumstances; Flinders' wounds were just that disturbing.

Alright, he's quite close now. I'll just ask him to come quietly, and drop a ShockCrown on him if he refuses. No need to draw this out.

Amplification please, ring. "Please drop your weapons and come out with your hands up."

I don't have arrest authority. Well, I might be able to make some sort of Corps-based claim if interstellar law might have been breached, but I certainly don't have that authority on Earth. Maybe the 'please' was a bad idea? He's slowing down. Good. He's now about fifteen metres away through medium foliage, and I get my first look at his face with my normal vision. He's pulling his right arm back…

Why is he wearing a hockey mask?

Ahh! Javelin! I'm being attacked by Casey Jones!

I didn't even realise that DC owned the Turtles!

The javelin bounces off the construct armour around my chest and explodes. The explosion does nothing to me in terms of injury, but I have to expend effort to avoid getting blown off my feet by the force.

Did Casey Jones ever work undercover? As I ignore another exploding javelin I try desperately to remember everything about this character. It's mostly from the first two animated series, and he wasn't that big in either of them. At least he hasn't tried a hockey stick, the sheer shock of that might have caused me to drop my armour.

No, no, focus. Knock out Casey Jones now, deal with angry mutant Turtles later.

I really hope they don't mix that mutagen from Turtles with Venom or anything. Too much weirdness.

I rise off the ground and fly towards him, jinking to avoid getting knocked around by any more explosives he has. He's gone for his plasma crossbow but it's a simple matter to yank it from his hands and 'ring, subspace' it. He keeps it together though, dropping into a fighting crouch and moving towards me again. For goodness sake, I just tanked exploding javelins, you're just going to bruise your fists. He throws a smoke canister, then sprints to close the distance faster than someone watching him before would have been expecting. Might work on someone without OrangeVision, but I can still see him perfectly well. I extend a loop of construct rope from my right hip and send it forwards, closing it around his left leg as he shifts weight to his right, and yank backwards. He tries to roll with it, possibly assuming that he's snagged on an exposed root, and ends up flat on his face. I extend a ShockCrown from the loop and drop it over his masked head.

I don't know why I was so worried. Double check, yes, definitely paralysed.

Now, what happened to the case he was carrying? Fan constructs disperse the smoke as I begin to look. He was standing there when I last saw him with it…

It's propped up against a tree. A scan reveals that it's rigged to explode if not opened properly. A burst of orange light renders the explosive inert, and I open it. Some sort of injection device, and a single vial of purple liquid. So, that's what this stuff looks like.

I walk back over to Mister Jones. Damn. Maybe if I talk to the Turtles first? His mask is more sophisticated than it looks so I shut down its electronics before removing it. I thought that Casey had darker skin than that? Or maybe that was just in the second cartoon.

Whatever.

Ring, where is everyone?

I feel a pull from different directions. The airfield, for most, but also… New York? Oh, I just thought 'ingroup' and it's telling me where Alan and Diana are as well.

No, just the team.

Just the airfield this time. Seems like they've beaten everyone into submission. Right. Taking the case in my hand I extend flight auras around Flinders and Jones and fly up above the canopy. There's some smoke where the helicopter went down, but it'll probably put itself out. Should probably collect any Venom Buster samples that survived. Still got plenty of ring power left…

I head towards the helicopter, felled opponents in tow. It smashed into the trees sideways, which arrested most of its lateral movement but caused it to flip over. I drop the two guys and the case and take a closer look. A moment of work with a cutting construct later and I step back to avoid being buried in boxes. I can see liquid Venom Buster on the ground where the containers have cracked, and I'm honestly not sure that I can fly all of this stuff. Hah, I'm overthinking it.

"Ring, destroy all Venom and Blockbuster formula in the helicopter."

An orange pulse shines outwards from me, and the ring rests. No point checking for electronic data, the EMP would have wiped it. I pick up my stunned foes and the case once again and continue on to the airfield. As I come over the rise where we fought Bane I notice that he and his men are no longer there. Stupid, stupid, of course he had more fighters in the area! Ah, no point worrying about it now. A quick look at the airfield shows me that other than that we've won. The only people upright are my team mates. I eagerly hasten my flight.

Wallace is the first to notice me, and he waves as I approach. **Hey, Oh El's back. How'd it go, 'cause we pretty much cleaned up here.**

I float Big Flinders over my head and drop him down in front of him. Kon and M'gann stay standing guard over the bound and blindfolded Kobra cultists while Aqualad and Robin walk over. Aqualad asks the important question.

**Were you able to stop the courier?**

**Yes.** He smiles faintly as I float the case over to him. **One sample of Venom Buster. I destroyed the other containers in the helicopter at the crash site.**

**And the courier himself?**

I float Casey forwards. **No threat, really. I think his name's Casey Jones. Can't really remember-.**

**His name is not Casey Jones.**

**It isn't?**

**That is Sportsmaster, a noted mercenary.**

Oh. Guess DC don't own Turtles, then. **Erm, what's his real name?**

Robin peers at his face. **Lawrence Crock. Why'd'you wanna know?**

**I tend to feel that using their 'supervillain' names just encourages them.**

Wallace come to a realisation. "Casey Jones. The guy from the Turtles films? You seriously thought that you were fighting the guy from the Turtles films?"

Aqualad hasn't watched much surface television. **Turtles… films..?**

I rub my brow with my right hand. Wallace is happy to heap on the embarrassment. **It's a film about four mutant ninja Turtles who live in New York and fight evil ninjas.**

Aqualad looks like we've put him off surface television for life. He turns to me. **Did you… Why would you think you were fighting a fictional Turtle?**

Wallace is quick to correct him. **No, dude, Casey Jones isn't a Turtle, he's a Human vigilante with a hockey mask…**

I hold up Sportsmaster's. Aqualad holds up a hand to stop Wallace talking. **The point still stands. Why did you believe that you were being attacked by a fictional character?**

I throw up my arms. "My home parallel doesn't have superheroes! I have to pinch myself when I look around the room, or in a mirror! So, yeah, being attacked by a fictional character did seem possible." I drop my arms and sigh. "These guys aren't all going to fit in the Bio-Ship. When do the League get here?"

back

Prod Zone 12

next

22nd July

21:02 GMT -5

I rise off the ground and fly towards him, powering forwards to avoid drawing this nonsense out any longer. He's gone for his plasma crossbow but it's a simple matter to shoot it before he can fire. He hurls it aside before the fuel cell vents and ignites in a brilliant flare of red. He keeps it together though, dropping into a fighting crouch and moving towards me again. I just tanked exploding javelins, idiot, you're just going to bruise your fists. He throws a smoke canister, then sprints to close the distance faster than someone watching him before would have been expecting. Might work on someone without OrangeVision, but I can still see him perfectly well.

Ring, access League database. Who is this fool?

Lawrence Crock, aka Sportsmaster. Noted mercenary and assassin.

Not Casey Jones then. I feel a bit silly now.

I drop a lasso construct onto him from above and pull it tight under his arms, lifting him off the ground. He reaches for a weapon from his pack, but I cut the pack loose and spill his equipment on the floor. I also target the smaller weapons on his belt for the same treatment.

Now, what to do with him? Before I can reach a conclusion, he speaks to me.

"Not bad. But you're in way over your head, kid. If you know what's good for you, you'll let me go and forget this ever happened."

Hmm.

"Yes. I recovered the drug sample, but was unable to prevent the courier from escaping."

He regards me for a moment. "I'm a little surprised that you're taking the deal. Most people like you are a bit more self righteous."

"Oh, forgive me Mister Crock, I'm not taking the deal. That's just what I'm going to tell the others. Ring, assimilate."

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Prod Zone 13

next

22nd July

21:04 GMT -5

Now, what happened to the case he was carrying? Fan constructs disperse the smoke as I begin to look. He was standing there when I last saw him with it…

It's propped up against a tree. A scan reveals that it's rigged to explode if not opened properly. A burst of orange light renders the explosive inert, and I open it. Some sort of injection device, and a single vial of purple liquid. So, that's what this stuff looks like.

Ring, did you detect any damage to Mister Flinders' brain from the Venom Buster use?

Minor changes in neurotransmitter levels from Human norms. No significant deviations detected.

I insert the vial into the injector.

Just in case, take a snapshot of my current brain state, and resist major changes from those levels.

Compliance.

Wait, why am I thinking of using this injector?

Ring, inject Venom Buster formula into me at optimal locations. Monitor vital signs and prepare to reset to default in the event of danger. Seven orange needles appear around me, each with a link to the injector. I barely feel it as they pierce my arms, legs, neck, heart and groin. I see purple move beneath the orange as the formula flows. The orange light reknits the flesh as the needles dissipate.

Oh. Oh.

There's still no pain, I note, as my ribs break and swell outwards. The expansion of my thighs throws me to the ground. Again, I am dully aware of bones being pulverised and reforming, longer and stronger. Now I can't notice any one thing, everything is twisting and expanding, and unlike on the moon, now that I know what is happening? I embrace it.

My armour is an impediment, so it vanishes into subspace. My hands expand, and the ring grows to fit around my enlarged fingers. My skin darkens, toughens, and begins to split as it fails to keep up with the growth of the other parts of my body but oh no you don't… Better.

The wave of mutation slows, then stops. I push myself off the ground a little gingerly. A mirror construct forms in front of me. I'm naked, but the ring can probably turn some of my clothes into a pair of shorts until I can visit Mister Gambi again. I'm now about two and a half meters tall, though I've kept my body proportions better than Mister Flinders did. The ring tells me that my skin has turned out a little darker than his, but it's all dark at night. I hold out my right arm and flex the muscles for a moment.

Ring, do not assist.

I brace, then swing my fist directly through a tree trunk. It's like punching jelly, it just parts around my hand. The top part of the tree collapses onto my shoulder and I barely feel a thing, just brush it off like fallen leaves.

I smile. Intellectually, I realise that I haven't added much to my powers as a Lantern, but… There's something viscerally pleasing about this sort of physical power that I rather enjoy.

back

Prod Zone 14

next

22nd July

23:11 GMT -5

I've never actually been naked in a communal shower before. Sure, at the swimming pool I'd rinse off before getting changed but I still had my trunks on. And this is a really terrible time to remember that mass circumcision is still a thing in the US. And now I'm trying to work out which of my team mates… Superboy was grown in a pod, right? They wouldn't have… Aaagh! Bad brain!

Fortunately, I have a power ring.

"Ring, I really want to be clean. Okay, see you guys later!"

I leave my slightly bemused male team mates in the changing room and walk back to the main living area. We formally resolved the leadership question on the flight back. Aqualad had secured everyone else's support and they wanted to make sure that I was in agreement. When I said that I hadn't mentioned it before because I thought it was completely obvious that he was the man for the job Wallace sniggered and Robin glared.

Apparently, Aqualad's plan for attacking the airfield involved everyone putting on the clothing of Bane's irregulars over their uniforms, and then Kobra robes on top of that. They more or less just walked up to the landing area and doffed the robes once the attack began. Not sure that counts as 'maintaining cover', but Kobra can't be sure that Bane didn't just employ metahumans amongst his thugs. In a way Bane's escape makes that more believable. I violated cover worse than they did, though it's not like Kobra knows that Orange Lanterns exist.

The Santa Priscan authorities have moved troops in to secure the factory, but I imagine that Bane will be back in there before long. Wallace put Bane's mask in the same room as the robot eye from Mister Twister, and I added Mister Crock's hockey mask. Tragedy and Comedy. He wants to make it some sort of trophy room, but given the violent nature of our work I'm not sure that's entirely in good taste. I thought about adding the plasma crossbow thing, but the room isn't secure enough at present to house a weapon.

Batman didn't look too happy when we got back, but I think his eyes widened just a little when Jeffrey Burr and Lawrence Crock were marched off the League's transport jet in manacles. He also unclenched slightly when I handed over the Venom Buster sample. He wants our mission reports submitted by six tomorrow for a debrief at nine, which means that everyone else gets to stay up all night writing them. I did mine on the Bio-Ship on the flight back.

My personal failings? Not keeping track of Bane, obviously. I'm not going to include 'thinking that a lightly armed baseline Human was a threat to me' on a list I'm submitting to Batman, for goodness sake. Not directly sorting out the leadership question before the mission was an oversight, but we all did that and I honestly assumed it had been dealt with. Should I have gone back to the airfield immediately after dealing with Flinders? Maybe. It is possible for me to monitor someone at a distance for a long period of time, but I wouldn't have known exactly what he was doing unless I really needed to, and I would have been focusing on the prisoner transportation and the possible arrival of the local military. That ended up being dealt with by a surprisingly diplomatic Hawkman, and the captain in charge was more than happy for us to remove 'foreign terrorist criminals' once he was sure that we weren't accusing his government of anything.

Anything else? Attracting attention to myself with glowing lights is on the list, but there isn't much I can do about it. I tried asking the ring about shifting the colour a bit and it started talking to me like I was an idiot. As far as it is concerned avarice construct equals orange construct. Constructs which project other kinds of energy are possible, and I'm planning to head out to somewhere isolated to practise them. I was thinking Titan.

Should we have intercepted the helicopter as soon as we first saw it? Maybe, but I don't think so. Should I have bypassed the jamming signal? After my 'completely obvious' comment Robin was more than happy to explain at great length how I should have used the ring to get around that, so yes, but I didn't know how at the time.

Maybe I could have used some sort of neural interface construct to knock Flinders out earlier? That… It could work, but I'm not comfortable with practising that sort of thing. I know I eat animals. Logically, I shouldn't have a problem testing things like that on them, but I'm not sure that I could look a cat in its bewildered face as it tried to work out why its legs were moving on their own. I could probably bring myself to test the assimilation beam like that, but I'm not sure I want my team mates knowing that it exists.

I reach the living room and M'gann's already here, sitting in a chair. Can't smell anything. Do Martians not sweat, or did she just take the fastest shower ever? She's set up a civilian version of Robin's personal hologram computer on the coffee table and is typing up her report. I walk over and sit on the next door sofa.

"How's it going?"

Her eyes twitch in my direction, then go back to her work. "Slowly. There's parts of the mission where I wasn't really doing anything much, and then the fighting started and so much was going on that it's hard to keep it all straight. Are you going to start yours?"

"Already done."

"Really? Did you do it on the flight back?"

"Yeah. Took about five minutes."

"Five minutes?!"

"I have a power ring. Power rings are awesome."

She slumps slightly. "I don't suppose I could borrow-?"

"No. Quite aside from the fact that there were bits you saw that I didn't, report writing is a valuable skill to learn. Bit surprised you're not using a telepathic computer of some kind."

"I've got one, but it isn't compatible with Earth technology. Only other telepaths would be able to read it."

I suppose Martian tech is very different from Earth tech. There was something else… "I noticed that once you established the telepathic link I got a lot more, erm, imagery than I was expecting. I mean, not just words, but pictures and feelings."

Her eyes widen in surprise. "That was you? I thought it was Conner!"

Eh? "Why would you think it was Kon?"

"Well… Well… One of the pictures was of him…"

"Yeah, sorry about that. I was creating weights for him to lift earlier, and it just sort of slipped out. I mean, he wouldn't have been looking at himself, would he?"

"No, I suppose not. It's not that unusual, actually. It just requires the person who joins the link to have their mind more-" She circles her hands, trying to find the right word. "-open? To be more open with their thoughts than most people not used to telepathy are. The other reason I thought it would be Conner is because of all the time he spent with the G-Gnomes. His mind should be used to receiving information that way."

"I was wondering because it didn't happen when we practised earlier."

She frowns. "Yes it did."

What?

"And, um, I'm glad you like the way I look, but that bikini was probably a bit too risqué for me."

OoOoOoOoOo.

My face freezes into a nervous smile. "Didn't realise that you got those. I was, I was sort of trying to see how forward things had to be in my mind before you heard them, and I tried to think about something that might get an involuntary reaction."

"Oh. Well, this isn't-" She looks around the room to check no one has walked in, and lowers her voice. "-like you said, this isn't my Martian body. Seeing me wearing that sort of clothing doesn't have a strong enough effect to get that result."

"Makes… Makes sense. Um, sorry."

She smiles. "It's fine. It's perfectly normal for you to be interested in girls."

I'm wincing like hell on the inside. "Soo, Kaldur's in charge now."

She turns back to her report. "His plan was a little more sophisticated than Wallace's 'run in and hit everyone'."

"Plus, he organised all of the group training we've been doing. That was sort of why I'd assumed he already had the job."

"I was a little surprised that you didn't want to be leader."

"Why?"

"You were keeping us all organized during the mission."

"That was coordination, not leadership. It really isn't the same thing, and I wasn't even doing that once the fighting started. Our team leader needs to be able to direct people during combat, and I just go all 'Mine!' and lose perspective."

"Is your ring giving you trouble already?"

"No… I don't think so. I think that was just a normal desire to keep my friends safe, but I stopped thinking about the mission when it happened. I mean, you could probably have handled Bane and co without me. I left my post and stopped monitoring Kobra. If something big had happened, I'd have missed it."

"There were a lot of guns pointing at us. I know I felt a lot better when you removed them."

"Won't be my decision next time, I suppose."

back

Prod Zone 15

next

22nd July

23:17 GMT -5

"Oh! I wanted to ask you something." M'gann shifts around in her seat so that her legs are pointing at me, knees together, hands clasped in her lap. "When the fight with Bane started, were you singing something?"

"Yes. I'm a bit surprised you heard that."

"We were linked, so it just sort of came through. Was it some sort of battle song?"

"No. No, it's called 'Never Split the Party'. It's about a group of adventurers with different skill sets who can't handle a situation they get into because they split up."

"How does it go?"

Hmm. Still got some ring charge left… Why not? I get to my feet and walk to the open area of the room. A wave of my right hand creates medieval Dungeons and Dragons style versions of our team. Kaldur is arrayed as a melee fighter in full plate, with his upside down V emblazoned on his surcoat. Kon is dressed more in the barbarian style, stylish but impractical leather and fur which leaves his chest exposed. Robin as a thief just gets a hood and cape extension. Wallace the monk gets a keikogi with a lightning bolt on the back. M'gann and I get robes, hers with a heavy book strapped to the belt and mine with an Orange Lantern Corps sigil hanging around my neck.

Ring, lyrics please. "Ring, music please." I step to the side and take a breath.

"We were skulking through this dungeon - A pretty sorry lot."

The group 'walk' forwards, with the 'dungeon' scenery making it look like they're actually moving.

"And Kaldur'ahm the fighter had been actin' like a sot"

The Kaldur construct shoves past 'Kon' and 'myself' to the front of the group.

"Our cleric had colitis;"

'I' walk uncomfortably.

"Our torches all were wet"

'Robin' tries to light one and fails.

"But we had to find some treasure soon to get us out of debt...

So Kaldur'ahm and Conner were itchin' for a fight

They both took the left fork, while we went to the right"

Their constructs walk off down a passageway, while the rest of us remain centre stage.

"And that is when we heard it: the sound of rollin' dice"

I create a large piece of paper with the words 'Random Encounters' listed at the top, and some spinning dice constructs.

"We wondered why we had ignored those words of sage advice...

Don't You Know? You never split the party

Clerics in the back to keep those fighters hale and hearty"

At the rear of the group my construct brushes his sleeves up his arms and wiggles his fingers.

"The wizard in the middle, where she can shed some light"

Hard to do light when everything's orange, but I create a sort of ripple effect around her raised right hand.

"And you never let that damn thief out of sight..."

'Robin' cringes slightly as the others stare at him.

"So then we heard this bellow from back around the bend

We turned around to see if there was aid that we could lend"

The party about faces, the dice stop spinning, and the random encounters construct zooms in on 'Orcs, D6+3' for a moment before dissipating.

"And suddenly the corridor was covered up with Orcs"

The Orcs are shrunken versions of Baran Flinders, carrying wooden shields and sword/cleaver things.

"We fell back in a panic, feeling like a bunch of dorks..."

The party rushes through the rear Orcs and forms a line.

"The thief had pissed his leathers; the monk was turning blue"

I paint obvious fear onto the faces of 'Robin' and 'Wallace', then 'Robin' jumps into 'Wallace's arms in a forced bridal carry.

"Our wizard got all flustered and she covered us with goo"

'M'gann' gestures, waves, and I generate liquid coming from the 'ceiling' and coating all members of the group.

"The cleric swung his holy club some Orcish skulls to break"

My figure holds out a hand and generates a war hammer with a head the shape of a slightly flattened Orange sigil.

"We tried to dodge his backswing as we pondered our mistake..."

He pulls back to swing at the first Orc, the warhammer's shaft becoming ludicrously long as he does so, forcing 'M'gann' to duck and 'Wallace' to limbo under it. It's high enough that it goes over the Robin construct's head.

"Don't You Know? You never split the party

Clerics in the back to keep those fighters hale and hearty"

I let the fight progress. I remember hearing that Clerics make darn good melee fighters these days anyway. 'Wallace' gets himself together and makes martial art attacks against the Orcs while 'I' visibly feed energy to the others while continuing to swing the club.

"The wizard in the middle, where she can shed some light"

'M'gann' fires off some lightning into where the Orcs were forming a shield wall, killing a couple and breaking their formation.

"And you never let that damn thief out of sight..."

'Robin' sneaks, backstabs, and finishes the last one off with a thrown knife.

"We finally found our fighters; they were hacking at a Troll"

New scene, the Troll looks like Blockbuster. The larger part of the party enters stage left.

"They chopped off knees and elbows but it kept on growing whole"

'Kaldur' swings an oversized sword and 'Kon' an axe, cutting through the limbs only to watch Trollbuster heal them back.

"The wizard flung a fireball, her dice they did not fail"

'M'gann' holds her arms over her head and builds a large fireball, before flinging it forwards.

"She torched the troll and left the fighters roasting in their mail"

Trollbuster disappears, but 'Kaldur' and 'Kon' are visibly scorched.

"The cleric had his hands full; apologies were said"

'I' lay hands on the fighters and their visible injuries disappear.

"We swore an oath we'd stick together just like we were wed"

They gather in a circle, hands meeting in the centre. Robin is absent.

"But then we found that sneaky thief had vanished in the gloom

We caught him stuffing pockets in the secret treasure room..."

The room in question is the enlarged rear of a helicopter. The hatch collapses open and 'Robin' is shown holding two bags with dollar signs on the sides. He grins, nervously.

"Don't You Know? You never split the party

Clerics in the back to keep those fighters hale and hearty"

Cleric and fighters advance on the thief, who backs up a little.

"The wizard in the middle, where she can shed some light"

Wizard also steps forwards, electricity crackling around her hands. Thief makes a pleading gesture while still holding the looted bags.

"And you never let that damn thief ... no you never let that damn thief ... no you

Ne - ver let - that - damn - thief - out - of - sight!"

The helicopter's hatch closes just as they reach him, obscuring their retribution from the audience.

Real M'gann is covering her grin with her hands, but she isn't looking at me. What is she...?

Oh, showers are finished then. An amused Wallace is poking Robin, who seems a little disgruntled. Kaldur and Kon are smiling. I stretch my arms out to the side and take a bow to both parts of my audience in an attempt to brazen through my embarrassment.

I remove the helicopter construct.

"Let me go get something to eat. Chinese sound good?"

back

Prod Zone 16

next

23rd July

19:44 GMT -5

Batman's debrief was a good deal less harrowing than it might have been. He picked up on my failure to breach the radio jamming right away, and we'll all be getting lessons on communication technology from Captain Atom in the not too distant future. He was also not happy about us pretty much abandoning the whole 'recon' aspect of the thing, and we'll each be getting a written evaluation 'detailing our many mistakes'. His conclusion was much more upbeat, congratulating us on our inventiveness and for 'capturing some extremely dangerous people'. The League will be making sure that Jeffrey Burr, Lawrence Crock and the Flinders make it to Belle Reve Federal Penitentiary in Louisiana without incident.

I'm not worried about the written report. I've already gone over the things I think I did wrong, and it may suggest ways to remedy my failings. Wonder if Batman'll have Jordan or Stewart write the part concerning my use of the ring? I've had a look at their written records as well as the recordings and I can't see anything about them using their rings for team coordination.

Robin and Wallace have headed home. Just the lifers left; M'gann, Kon, Kaldur and I are trying to find something worth watching on television. A trial at the best of times. Kaldur likes documentaries. M'gann likes sit-coms. Kon has absorbed Wallace's habit of switching channel every few minutes. They aren't bickering, but they are debating with reasoned arguments and that sort of thing only ever leads to trouble.

"How about a film?"

It gets worse. We have WebFilm -a Netflix analogue- but that just gives us thousands of films that none of us know how to choose between. I'm watching the screen trying to spot something familiar -as our token surface dwelling/Human/more than three weeks old team member I have the best chance of recognising some of them- as my team mates take advantage of any hesitation to pluck the remote from one another's hands and search for something which suits their tastes.

Kaldur tries to find a pirate film where the pirates are the bad guys and not the good guys. He is a little disturbed that he can't. M'gann tries to locate a romance film, but can't find anything with aliens in it. She nearly tries Species III, but I suggest that probably isn't the sort of thing she wants. I suppose it could be different to the version from my parallel, but I'd rather not take the chance. Kon seems to just scroll through things with no real idea what he's looking for. During a brief lull in which Kaldur delivered an impromptu lecture on the damage done to world trade networks by pirate attacks I took the opportunity to compare films I know with ones which exist here.

Castlevania directed by Chris Nolan? Wasn't making Batman, I suppose. Star Wars exists here, but it seems that George Lucas was killed in a hit and run accident before he could make episodes I to III. Unfortunately, Disney then bought his company and had Michael Bay do it. So, pro, no Jar Jar Binks. Con, Queen Amidala in a boob tube and hot pants and a thirty foot tall General Grievous. Think I'll give it a miss.

No DC means no V for Vendetta. No Marvel comics either, but I'm not sure that superhero genre is the way to go with this. We are superheroes. Nothing we watch will match the experience. My suggestion of 9 is shot down from all sides, though I don't think I did a particularly good job of selling it. In desperation I suggest having the ring select one entirely at random. Faced with the very real possibility of spending the rest of the evening arguing or -worse- learning more about non-state actors as agents of social decay, Kon and M'gann vote for that idea.

And that's why we spent the evening watching Super Giraffeman Seven.

The plot was threadbare, the sets were made of plywood, the acting was nonexistent and one guy tripped on his own wires and I don't think I've laughed that hard since a crazy woman phoned me at work and said that she'd kept her youngest child's placenta in her fridge for seven months but needed to arrange for it to be stored somewhere else because her children had mistaken it for ice cream and tried to eat it. Took our lab manager twenty minutes to convince her that it would be pointless, after I'd tried for half an hour.

When I laugh really hard, I don't make any noise, I just do a sort of choking action. Watching this abomination I was convulsing so hard that I struggled to keep my eyes focused on the screen. Even better, I think I must have been feeding back into M'gann because she ending up laughing just as hard as I was. I'm not sure that Kaldur or Kon got the joke, but our reactions set them off as well.

And, seventy two minutes later, with one last cry of 'Evil shall fall upon my horns of Justice! They are small but they are mighty!' it was over, and I could try breathing normally again.

Oh god. There might be six more of those things.

"I can't believe someone actually made that!"

Kaldur's still bemused. "Do you think it was intentional?"

"I don't know. It might have been? I mean, they can't have not noticed that you could see the reflection of the entire camera crew in the sacred… giraffe…pool…" I barely manage to get it out before I start laughing again, which causes M'gann to start as well.

Kon's got the remote control and is trying to find more information on it. "It says that it was made in nineteen seventy five by Takeshi Meeki."

I get a breath. "Is that his real name?"

"There's a list of the other movies he's made."

Kaldur leans forwards. "Are they… All..?"

"I don't know."

I risk looking at the screen. The summary screen for Super Giraffeman in Space is there waiting for me. Made in two thousand and one. Oh god. Same title actor. He must be in his seventies.

I suppose he can't have gotten any worse.

"There isn't… There doesn't… Martian cinema doesn't have anything like that." M'gann takes a little longer to recover than I do.

"It wouldn't, would it? When you can shapeshift you don't have to worry about your mane wig sliding down your head halfway through your main scene."

Kaldur blinks in recognition. "It was the way he kept leaning over to try and prevent it from falling off completely that I found the most distracting."

Kon is still going through Mister Takeshi's list of film credits. "Maybe Martian cinema does have things like that, and you just haven't watched it? If I had to introduce someone to Earth cinema, I don't think I'd start with that."

"Don't rule it out so quickly. Rowan Atkinson's character, Mister Bean, is very popular in countries that don't speak English because slapstick is so universal. And I think that was more slapstick than wuxia."

Kaldur can't take his eyes off the screen either. "I cannot say with certainty what it was."

M'gann checks her watch. "We've probably got time for another one."

"I'm not sure it would have the same effect again, now we're expecting it."

"Paul, Uncle J'onn probably felt the laughter in your mind all the way up on the Watchtower."

Kon sits up a little. "If it's a choice between watching another movie like that, or arguing about pirates again, I vote Giraffe."

The cursor is now over 'Super Giraffeman Supreme Shogun-President'. Nothing more needs to be said.

back

NEXT CHAPTER

Skived

BACK

Skived 1

next

Skived

25th July

14:37 GMT -5

I don't think I'll ever quite get used to the way technology works around here. Not the user interfaces, which are either completely straightforward or completely incomprehensible -unmarked keyboards ahoy-, but the fact that it all works at all. Back when I first met Alan his intercom had completely clear sound, and it's all like that. Computers just don't crash during regular use. This base is full of machines that are just waiting to go wrong, and they never do. I remember reading Hyperion, where at the end the Shrike Church get trapped in their mountain fortress when the wormhole network collapses, because that was the only entrance. Our exits are giant blast doors and zeta tubes and they always work. I have the ring scan them every time before I use them. Nothing goes wrong. Coming from a place where the trains don't run on time if it rains -or if it doesn't- it takes a bit of getting used to.

I've paired my dark grey jeans with an orange shirt today. I doubt Alan or Diana would mind if I showed up in my usual vest but I feel I should make an effort. This will be the first time I've spent much time in both of their company in a casual setting since the team was founded. Plus, the orange colouration means that the Lantern sigil doesn't really show; Vietnamese colour matching at its finest.

I'm on pudding duty, so I'm bringing a few hundred grams of chocolate with me in subspace. I ended up getting a chocolate pudding recipe online after M'gann found me in the kitchen swearing at one of the ones we have here which expresses all quantities in volume rather than mass. I don't mind ounces or grams, but whoever thought that a 'cup' was a sensible measure of anything solid needs to be slapped around the face. Also, not American 'chocolate'. I know some mainland European connoisseurs get snooty about British chocolate, but the US stuff is frankly hydrogenated vegetable oil filled swill. The chocolate I'll be using comes from Belgium.

Cadbury exists here, and it doesn't look like anyone is planning to take it over. If that situation changes I will seriously consider buying as much of it as I need to in order to prevent that from happening. Fucking Kraft.

"Hey, nice shirt."

Wallace is standing next to the main computer console in casuals. Robin is working a case with Batman and M'gann's taken Superboy out shopping so instead of hanging around with them he's looking at the initial reports on Venom Buster. I vaguely knew that his Justice League Unlimited incarnation was a police chemist but until last Tuesday I hadn't realised that this version shared that skill set. Apparently he copied Jay Garrick's speed formula in his own bedroom with some fairly basic materials.

Given that the formula is three for three with no serious adverse effects, I wonder why it isn't more widely used? I can understand about not making it public, but any baseline Human in 'the community' could benefit. Heck, Wallace's eating disorder is probably a product of amateur level equipment, rather than a problem with the formula itself.

I wonder if he could fix it by repeating the process with better materials? Or would doubling up make matters worse? Is there some common element between the Garrick Formula and the Danner Formula? Not sure what happens when you use a magic formula on someone who's already had a magic formula. Besides, the Danner Formula needs to be used in vitro. I… might want to look at getting a copy of each…

"Thanks. You ever need a suit, I'll introduce you to my tailor."

"Heading out early, aren't you?"

"I'm doing pudding. Besides, Diana's bringing a plus one and I want to find out who it is. On my parallel, someone like Wonder Woman dating would be bigger news."

He stops typing, and looks at me in confusion. "Did she actually say she was bringing a date?"

"Urp, no, Alan just said a plus one. That means date, right?"

He goes back to work. "Maybe. But she's probably just bringing Troia along."

The word forms even as I remember who she is. "Who?"

He looks incredulous. "Are you serious? You didn't know about Wonder Woman's other student?"

Donna Troy, the woman with the most messed-about-with back story in DC. I know that she's got the same abilities as Wonder Woman, but even though I've never had any interest in the character I can remember three distinct versions of where her powers come from. Right, right, Diana already said that she doesn't have any sisters, so that's out. So, that leaves being given the powers by the Greek gods on Themyscira or inheriting them from Titanic ancestors. Or something else. Can't remember anything about her personality.

"Diana never.. mentioned.. her?"

She didn't. And I looked up 'Wonder Girl' on the League's database and found no matches. Maybe I should have looked up Donna Troy as well, but that might have shown that I know real names when I shouldn't. I thought she started calling herself Troia as an adult. I mean, what does Troia even mean, anyway?

"You really didn't know?"

"Does this look like my 'I know what's going on' face?"

"N-no? Whaw. Really?"

"Yes, really."

"Huh. Kinda assumed that you'd met her by now."

"Nope."

Is she going to think I stole her mentor? I haven't been spending that much time with Diana. Have I? I certainly haven't been monopolising her. But maybe there's only so many trainee-appropriate missions?

"Wonder if she wants to join us?"

"I don't know! I never heard of her until just now."

And then he's standing next to me with an arm around my shoulder. "You should totally talk to her about it. She's pretty hot."

"I'll be sure to mention it."

"'Cause if she did join, we'd have a Bat, a Flash, a Super, a Martian, an Atlantean, an Amazon and a Lantern. That's the founding League right there."

"I'm sure the subject will come up."

"Make sure it does. I don't wanna start feeling bad about hogging all the female attention around here."

Yea-ah.

"I will endeavour to ensure that that doesn't happen. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a walk ahead of me."

"You know New York has cabs, right?"

Sigh.

"I can't carry conventional currency without destroying it. Some cab drivers would believe that a person would pay them in gold, but most would tell me to get lost, or call the police. I don't want to draw attention to Alan's house by flying there while glowing orange so I either have to get the zeta tube to Upper Manhattan and walk, take one to Metropolis and walk further, or take the one to Washington and travel underwater, which is incredibly boring."

"Yeah, I feel so sorry for you having to have dinner with Alan Scott and two of the hottest women on the planet."

He releases me and walks back to the computer at normal speed. I walk over to the entrance to Zeta Tube A, and look at it for a moment.

"Ring, just… just check it's working properly."

"Operations within defined parameters."

"Are you still worried about that?"

"I am justifiably cautious."

He sniggers. "Whatever."

Fine. I enter my destination, straighten my posture, and march in.

"Recognised, Orange Lantern, B zero six."

Ugh.

"It's Orange Lantern two eight-"

back

Skived 2

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25th July

14:40 GMT -5

"-one four. Never mind."

I wonder how the Green Lanterns handle that? Must get confusing up in the Watchtower if they have the same handle as each other.

The zeta tube in Upper Manhattan is on the roof of the main office building in the Kord Industries complex. It looks like a second roof access, except it doesn't go anywhere and the fob reader on the outside won't open to staff fobs. Most League members have civilian identities which would explain why they were passing through the building, and can get away with taking the elevator down. I don't, so I take the external fire escape.

The building's five storys tall, and the views are only good if you like grey buildings. I think they tried to do a bit of landscaping -there's a few flower beds and a small group of trees- but it was a bit of a losing battle. You can just about see the river from the uppermost floor, but there are too many buildings in the way to get a look at anything interesting. There are also a couple of warehouses and a manufacturing plant on the site, though I'm not sure what it is they actually make here.

Ted Kord is active… Ish… As Blue Beetle, and his company is one of the League's suppliers. I guess Wayne Enterprises can't make everything without it looking really suspicious. He isn't a League member yet, but might well end up as one. No Booster Gold, which is a bit of a shame.

The way out -assuming that I want to avoid the front gate, which I do- is through a section of fence at the rear of the complex which drops into the ground when an authorised person touches it. That takes me to an alleyway, which leads out onto a path which takes me to Amsterdam Avenue. Completely straight roads are another thing I've found strange about America, along with the lack of roundabouts. Sure, British motorways are usually straight, but town roads go all over the place.

This grid thing might be convenient for drivers, but it really takes the fun out of being a pedestrian. If there's anything interesting, you can see it from miles away and be bored of it before you reach it. Especially in my case with my ring-improved vision. Remembering a route? Just walk forwards, and try not to bump into people. Not many people around, so really it's just a matter of stopping at intersections and waiting for the lights to change.

Ring, tell me about Donna Troy.

An image forms in my mind of a woman wearing a red unitard with silver star decoration, silver bracers and a silver belt with a lasso hanging off it. She looks… The obvious reference point is Diana, but that's not quite it. She's a bit shorter. The muscle is there, but her face and figure are a bit more rounded, maybe the result of growing up on an American diet rather than a Mediterranean one.

Donna Troy, also known as 'Troia'-.

Hold on a second. What does that word mean?

There are several possible meanings, depending on language and era. The most likely origin is the Latin name for the city-state of Troy.

She uses her surname as her codename?

That is the most likely explanation.

No mask and she uses her name in public. If Diana gives me any trouble about working this one out…

Resume.

Donna Troy, also known as 'Troia'. Born, fifteenth of April, nineteen ninety three. Name of natural parents unknown. Adopted parents Carl and Fay Stacey.

Stacey? So where does 'Troy' come from?

Earliest records indicate that her name was Donna Troy prior to her adoption.

Wouldn't her adopted parents have changed her surname to match theirs?

Unable to speculate.

No, wait, Richard Grayson. Maybe that's just not how things work here? Fine, resume.

New York resident. In her civilian identity attends the Eleanor Roosevelt High School. No data available on first manifestation of powers. First public appearance in heroic persona twelfth of July two thousand seven. Powers demonstrated in public include potence, fortitude and unassisted flight. Source of powers unrecorded. Standard equipment includes bracers and lasso. Usually seen operating in the company of Princess Diana of Themyscira.

Might have been nice to know that a week ago… Anything on her personality?

No interviews on public record.

Pffff. Any idea what she likes to eat?

Scanning Stacey residence. Genetic and food residue suggest that she likes cereal brand 'Lucky Charms'. Unable to specifically link other foodstuffs at the residence to the subject.

Did the ring just..? I just did a detailed scan on a private residence because I was curious about her eating habits. I… I need to avoid getting in the habit of doing that.

In an attempt to avoid boredom and random ring-snooping, I turn left towards Fort Washington Park. I see it in the distance.

Then, I see it a bit closer.

Then a bit closer.

Finally, I get to it and for a moment I feel the voices of my ancestors telling me to capture it for King George.

Heh, maybe later.

I've never actually walked this route before, though it's not like I can get lost with the ring's mapping feature and the fact that there isn't all that much space to get lost in. Last time I walked around Manhattan prior to my first meeting with Alan I stuck to the east side of the island, and I flew whenever I thought I could risk it. The park runs along the east bank of the Hudson River on the west side of the island, and is mostly open grassland with the occasional tree. It merges in the north with Fort Tryon Park and then Inwood Hill Park, which Alan's house borders. Not really sure why they're separate entities. In a place like Manhattan, wouldn't they be controlled by the same authority?

There are a few people picnicking and I think I can smell a barbecue somewhere. Not really one for barbecued food myself, though I've only ever really had it prepared by inexperienced amateurs. Children and dogs also in evidence, and I'm not really a fan of either. I actually learned to create the dog-away sonic device in construct form to use against guard dogs, but it occurs to me that it has other uses. Wonder if there's a frequency which repels children?

Alan didn't say what he was cooking for us. One of the many useful mundane functions of the ring is that it renders me immune to both heat and chemical burning caused by food. I remember once when I ordered pasta with chilli sauce in a restaurant at the Eastbourne Marina. A slight pleasant heat until I bit into a piece of chilli and ended up downing the table's water jug. Not fun.

I was planning to bring up the idea of training Superboy in super strength brawling with Diana, but now I'm not sure that it's practical. True, I actually can't learn that from her. We tried a couple of times but I haven't yet got the knack of increasing my physical strength while using my armour construct, not to the extent I'd need to in order to make a decent sparring partner for her at any rate. Plus, I really prefer making ranged attacks. Or maybe it's because I don't want to attack her? Not sure.

Superboy could spar on a more physically even basis, but unlike me he'd end up directly competing with Donna for the same type of tuition. Maybe I could suggest that she take part in our team's training as an additional teacher? I'm really more of a remedial case where fisticuffs are concerned.

I wonder exactly how enhanced Kaldur's strength is? I know that he's stronger than his mass suggests, and I know that Superboy is far stronger than him from the reports of their fight at Cadmus. Is there an actual super strength martial art? I remember wondering when watching the Justice League Unlimited cartoon why someone like Supergirl would bother hitting someone with a car when her flesh was far tougher than the metal of its body. Same with concrete or tarmac; slam a regular person into it and they get hurt. If Superman hit Solomon Grundy into either surface it would cushion his fall, compared to what would happen if he held onto the back of his head and kneed him in the face.

I turn from the parkland into the residential area. Alan actually gave me an electronic key for the gate and front door. Not sure how common those are here. I scanned it with the ring and I've used that every time since. Speaking of rings, I haven't seen him wear his since dropping me off at the mountain. I suppose he wants to conserve power, which is a sensible thing to do. After he finished talking to Lantern Jordan I asked him about the possibility of one of them letting him charge from their personal lanterns in an emergency and apparently the Guardians have made it clear to them that is not allowed. The local Corps members respect him, but he isn't part of the Corps and isn't permitted to use Corps equipment. At least they haven't tried to take his gear back. Wonder if they regret that decision now due to me?

None of the Green Lantern Corps members have said anything to me. I'm not complaining about them not hounding me, but the lack of any contact is making me a little nervous that they might just be biding their time. I think it's more likely that the Guardians are quietly panicking about the possibility that Larfleeze is on the move, and trying to pretend that nothing is wrong. If that is their concern, they might have ordered 'hands off' where I am concerned. I suppose, if I really want to know, there's nothing to stop me approaching one of them and just asking. If I decide to do that, Guy's the best bet. Something to think about.

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Skived 3

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25th July

16:33 GMT -5

Making most things is easy when you have a power ring. But most things I make aren't much easier to make, Kon's inner ear being the obvious exception. When I bake, a construct whisk is a little better than an electric whisk, but the main advantage is that you can hold a conversation at the same time due to the lack of noise, not that the whisking gets done any faster.

Making ice cream on the other hand becomes ridiculously easy. Though the first stage is the same as doing it the normal way, the cooling and freezing is much faster when you can play around with thermodynamics without having to wait for a comparatively inefficient freezer to do the cooling. The gooseberry ice cream that we'll be having with the chocolate pudding later is floating in a freezer construct in the middle of the kitchen, simultaneously being solidified and whisked.

Turns out that as a long time bachelor… No, that isn't right, he was married… Widower? Does it count if the marriage was annulled? Whatever, a single man. As a long time single man Alan is quite a good cook, and has many years' barbecue experience. The main course today is a selection of marinated chicken parts, sweet corn and vegetable skewers. I think that the last part is a concession to me, given my distaste for salad. He's in the back garden now setting it up.

I can't put the chocolate pudding together until it's cooking time plus fifteen minutes before we want to eat it. A strobe of orange light has already cleaned the surfaces and the few physical utensils I've used. Really cuts down on washing up duty. Sticking a lid on things that you're whisking is pretty useful as well. Alan told me that he'd never thought to use his ring for such mundane matters, but that having seen me do it he could see the benefit.

Ding dong.

"I'll get it!"

I deposit the frozen ice cream into a large bowl, cover it with cling film and put it in the freezer section of the kitchen fridge. Then I walk to the door and open it. Diana's wearing a pale cream blouse and dark blue trousers. A flicker of OrangeVision reveals that she's wearing her armoured bustier underneath and has her bracers and tiara in her handbag. Standing just behind her, wearing blue jeans and a red t-shirt with some sort of gold-coloured bird across the chest, is Troia. I smile. Need to thank Wallace for cluing me in.

"Hello! Come on in, Alan's just setting up."

"Thank you, Paul." I step back into the hallway and she steps forwards across the threshold. My eyes flick to Donna's and I smile a little more. "Paul, this is-."

"Donna Troy, aka 'Troia'." I extend my left hand as she comes into the house. After a momentary pause she takes it. "Orange Lantern two eight one four. You already know my name."

She isn't wearing her -I presume armoured- costume.

"Hello." Her face is in neutral. Not sure whether she's making an effort to be reasonable, or if Diana gave her enough notice for the shock to have worn off.

Might as well ask… "When'd you find out about me?"

Her eyes move to Diana for a moment. "Yesterday."

She doesn't sound happy about it.

"If it's any consolation I only found out about you a few hours ago."

"What?"

And suddenly I can't move my hand. Super strength demonstrated at close quarters in this way is alarming in the same way Wallace's bursts of speed are. You're forced to confront the fact that you are dealing with someone who isn't playing by the same rules as you. I noticeably outmuscle her, but unless I use the ring my hand is not moving.

"You haven't seen any of the news footage of all the times Diana and I fought together?"

"I've been here three weeks, and I've mostly been researching supervillains, not heroes. Did a quick search to see if there was a Wonder Girl, but, um…"

She releases my hand. Her eyes move to the side, her hands on her hips. Alright, so she's clearly not okay with me. "The Ares-worshipping cult in Utah?"

I shrug. "Sorry."

"The Sirens off the coast of Michigan?"

"Um, look, I've been-"

"What about the time Doctor Psycho took the entirety of Staten Island hostage?"

Doctor Edgar Cizko is a scary little man. I've actually read up on that mission, but I think she was listed as 'other League assets'. Probably not the best angle to take.

"Have you heard of Accomplished Perfect Physician? Or John Constantine?"

She pauses for a moment, brow furrowing slightly. "No. Who are they?"

"The first is a super… Well, in China they call them super-functionaries. You've never heard of him because China doesn't like people with super powers and independent turns of mind. The second is a notable member of London's magic scene. I think Mister Zatara knows him. Knows of him, anyway."

"Your point being?"

"I'm very new at this. There's a lot of things I don't know. You, are one of those things, and I'm not saying-." She goes to interrupt but I plough on, hands making the praying gesture. "I'm not saying what you've done isn't important. It is. I'm just saying, it's a big world with lots of stuff in it and you're one of the things I haven't got round to finding out about yet."

Her arms cross at her chest, weight shifted back. "… Fine."

Diana tries to ease the tension. "Paul, is Alan in the garden?"

"Er, yes, he's setting up the barbecue. Said something about using the right types of wood?"

"Very well. Donna, shall we?"

She holds out an arm and waits until a slightly hesitant Donna walks past her down the hallway towards the back door. I guess she's been here before. Diana waits for a moment. "Paul, I didn't tell you about her because-."

"You wanted to be sure I could be trusted before introducing me to your apprentice. I'm not offended. It's a perfectly sensible thing to do."

"That was part of it, to start with, but… Really, I assumed that you'd have found out by now. After all…" She makes circles with her hands and raises them to her eyes. "She doesn't even wear a tiny mask."

She lowers her hands, and with a smile in my direction follows Donna out the back. I stand stock-still. I'm not surprised that the mountain has cameras. I'm not even all that surprised that she saw the recording of me talking to Wallace. What I can't quite get my head around, is…

Did I just get trolled by Wonder Woman?

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Skived 4

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25th July

16:49 GMT -5

"I'm somewhat curious, what made you choose the Latin version of your surname as your code name?"

"You introduced yourself as Orange Lantern. You can't be worried about secrecy."

I shrug. "Out and proud. Plus, I can't say my actual name without choking. Robin had to print it on business cards, makes me look like a complete ponce when I hand them out. I thought.. secrecy was the name of the game around here?"

I planned to stay in the kitchen for ten minutes or so while Diana and Donna said hello to Alan. Give Donna a chance to calm down a bit. But from what I could see Diana said something to her and, after standing still for a moment, she came back inside and I had to pretend that I'd been doing something about pudding so I wouldn't have to explain why I hadn't followed them out. At the moment she's leaning against the wall on the other side of the room, arms still crossed.

"I'm not that recognizable. Apparently."

"Yeah, but all it would take would be a tourist with a camera posting a picture online. Then, someone uses some facial recognition software…"

"Most fights Diana and I get into are either too far away from people for it to be a problem, or I'm moving too fast to give them a good picture. Besides, have you any idea how dangerous it is to fight that close to people?"

Ah!

"Yes, actually. My first supervillain fight in Happy Harbour-."

"Which I've never heard of."

Touché.

"Right, well. We're fighting a robot that can throw tornados, and he's decided to level the seafront. By the time we got there, he was throwing boats around and he'd crushed a couple of houses. Was a big wake up call for me."

"Wait. Tornado robot? Like Red Tornado?"

"Same tech, different guy. We checked."

"And who's 'we'?"

I pause for a moment. This is Donna Troy. I know I can trust her, and it sounded like Wallace knows her, but I should probably stick to code names. "Aqualad, Robin, Kid Flash, Superboy, Miss Martian and myself."

She looks puzzled. "No Speedy?"

"Kid Flash told me that he wasn't keen on joining the kiddy team."

"And you are?"

"I need the training too much to be precious about it."

She looks off to the side again. "I didn't even know that Superman had a sidekick."

"He… Doesn't. He has a partial clone that Aqualad, Robin and Kid Flash broke out of a lab. Oh, and they really hate the 'S' word."

She looks back at me, one eye squinting. "What do they call themselves, then?"

"Apprentices. Students. Partners."

"And you're okay with being Diana's sidekick?"

"Well.. I.. I.. would be, but I'm not." I gesture towards her. "You are. I've only been on actual combat missions with her a couple of times, and she hasn't really let me do anything. I think she's mostly leaving my training to the team, and whoever the League assigns to us."

"Oh. I'd assumed you were…"

"What? No! No. I mean, she might start taking me out on missions once the school term starts and the team can't get together on missions as often."

"Planning on skipping school?"

Huh?

"I've finished full time education. Also-" I raise my left hand palm forwards and point to the ring. "-I have a job."

"What's the pay like?"

I make a finger clicking gesture with my right hand and call a gold coin forth from subspace. "'S alright. Benefits are pretty good too."

"The Orange Lantern Corps pays you in gold?"

"No, but outside work I can use the ring for whatever I want. And what I want includes enough asteroid mining that I never have to worry about money again."

"And this is what you want out of life?" She stands up and paces a circuit of her side of the room. "You actually want to be a full time superhero. All the things you could do and that's what you picked?"

Hm. Interesting point, actually. Once I knew I could charge the ring I just sort of assumed that this is what I'd do. I intend to do things a little differently from the norm once I get enough experience to know what I'm doing, but I never questioned that ring equals superhero. I wouldn't have a problem with some theoretical future member of my Corps using their ring solely for engineering or chirurgery, but I never considered that for myself. Have I been memetically programmed by years of comic books and cartoons?

Answer honestly.

"It's what I want to do at the moment. Once my year's up, then there might be something else I want to pursue."

She stops and looks at me again. "Why a year?"

Oh. Haven't actually told anyone about that.

"The only way I could think of to get Diana to take me on was to swear an oath to Gaea that I'd do what I was told. And if I hadn't, Alan probably wouldn't have given me his lantern. The oath lasts a year, so any other plans I might have are on hold until then."

"Oh." A frown. "You didn't have your own lantern?"

"Nope. I brought the ring, though."

"What do your parents think about this?"

I'm not sure what they'd think. Mum said that she'd disown me if I joined the army. Not sure this counts. After three weeks she'd probably be too relieved to hear from me to care.

"Didn't Diana say? I come from a parallel universe. I have no way to contact my parents."

"A parallel universe?"

Warding gesture. "If my story didn't check out, I'd've been truth lassoed by now."

Her eyes drop. "Oh. I'm… I'm sorry to hear that. About your parents, I mean."

"I prefer to think of this as an opportunity. No point dwelling on things I can't change."

"No, I suppose not."

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Skived 5

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25th July

18:56 GMT -5

"…with my last year of high school coming up, I haven't been able to spend as much time with Diana as I'd have liked."

We're out in the garden. Alan had a wooden trestle table in his garage and I gave it a ring clean before we sat down. Dinner was good, and pudding is in the oven. I nearly made a bit of a faux pas when I completely ignored the dip stuff Alan had prepared, but I spotted it in time. Only ended up putting a teaspoon's worth of each on my plate, and I tasted them very gingerly. When they noticed, Donna laughed out loud and Diana was covering her smile with her left hand.

"That's a commendably far-sighted attitude, Donna. I didn't start as Green Lantern until I was in my twen'ies."

Alan opened a bottle of wine for himself and Diana. Donna's having coke -I didn't recognise the brand- and I'm drinking milk. Their choice of tipple prompted a brief discussion about the differences in alcohol consumption laws in Britain and the US. I don't think they believed me when I said that the youngest age it's legal to drink in Britain is five. I have trouble believing that it's twenty one in the US, and Alan admitted that it doesn't make much sense. Also, I was surprised to learn that squash is basically unknown in the US. Must remember to check whether Ribena here still uses the gloriously sugar filled recipe that they used in my childhood, or the bland one they use now.

"Well, my parents pretty much insisted. But I do think they're right."

So, no Troia on the team until at least the end of the next school year, which if memory serves correctly is in May or June. Maybe I could persuade her to spend some time on the base before the school year starts?

"Do you have any plans for what you want to do when you finish high school?"

I'm a bit surprised that Diana hasn't talked about that with her before.

"College, I guess. I haven't really thought much about it."

I can't think of any obvious ways to make money using her power set. Boxing, maybe? Cargo transportation? I hesitate to suggest modelling, though I suppose she could. Strength and toughness just aren't very haxable powers. I certainly don't remember what she did employment-wise in the comics. Maybe she could try actual law enforcement? There must be some sort of Federal agency that hires metahumans for that sort of work.

"What about you, Paul? Any plans for your future?"

I've been quiet for too long and Alan's spotted it.

I raise my left hand, and point to the ring with my right index finger. "I'm a Sector Lantern. As far as I'm concerned, that's a full time job. I haven't even been to Mars yet, let alone any of the other inhabited worlds in this sector. I'm not going to bother trying to create a cover identity and I'm certainly not interested in mundane employment."

"The League could set up a cover identity for you."

"Diana, I appreciate the offer, but it wouldn't work. I mean, I think I was careful on the way over here but there's no way I could live like that full time. All respect to the two of you-" I wave at Donna and Alan. "-for being able to do it, but I'd be climbing the walls."

I fork some courgette and a small piece of chicken, dab it into the.. yellow.. goo.. stuff, and then put it in my mouth. I'm not sure whether to credit Alan's skill as a chef or the ring for augmenting my sense of taste, but this is great stuff.

Diana and Alan share a glance. Oh dear.

"Alan tells me that he offered you the chance to move in here full time."

My mouth is full, but I nod.

"Would you mind telling me why you turned him down? Mount Justice isn't exactly homey."

I wave a fork for a moment, then swallow. "I am grateful for the offer. But, fact is, I'm an Orange Lantern. My ability to assist my team mates in combat is directly proportional to my, um, my level of emotional engagement with them. The orange ring runs on selfishness, so I've been training myself to want what they want, to identify success for the team with success for me. If I spend more time away from them, it hinders that."

"I was impressed when I read the report of you healing Superboy's ears."

Donna looks interested. Ohhhhh… "What happened to Superboy's ears?"

"During the fight with Mister Twister -that robot I mentioned?- I used a sonic weapon construct. Those… Really don't mix well with super hearing." Donna winces, and Alan looks concerned. "When we got back, I read up on Kryptonian physiology, and I was able to rebuild the parts of his inner ear which I'd destroyed. I could do that because it was my fault, and I really wanted to undo my mistake. I can't just pop down to the local hospital and start healing people."

"He's alright now?"

I look at Donna. "Yeah. Better, actually. The only Kryptonian whose details were on record was Superman, so Kon's hearing is now exactly as good as his."

"Kon?"

"Oh, right. Superboy didn't have a name when Kaldur and co. broke him out of Cadmus. He picked Kon-El last week."

Diana sits back, and blinks heavily twice.

"I was meaning to ask, actually. I know you can't commit to the team full time, but is there any chance you could pop by before the end of the school summer holiday? I'm sure Kon would appreciate having someone in his own weight class to spar with."

"You're not in his class?"

"Not in his weight class, no. I can block his attacks okay, but I'm a ranged fighter. And, completely unskilled at hand to hand combat. He just finds sparring with me annoying."

She looks to Diana for approval. After a moment she gets a small nod, and looks back to me. "I.. still.. don't know when I'll be able to make it. But thanks."

"Don't thank me yet. Kon punches like a speeding locomotive."

"I'll manage." She's smiling at me for the first time since we met. If I'd have known that offering her a sparring match would brighten up her day I'd have volunteered myself.

"Anyone else want that last skewer?"

I think the ring can cope with transmuting whatever I eat. I'm not sure that I even need a digestive system any more, as long as I wear it. But if I stuff myself full of things I think of as unhealthy my self concept might change. Pretty sure barbecue vegetable skewers are safe, though. I get three negatives and put it on my plate. Donna's smile turns into a smirk.

"You know you said that your ring only helps people you care about?"

I hastily swallow a bit of pepper. "Yes?"

"If you could rebuild his entire ear, you must care about Kon a lot."

!Kon is mine!

"I do. He's quite important to me."

"I think you've spent more time talking about him than your other team mates combined."

I shrug. "I've spent more time with him and M'gann than the others. Living in the mountain, and with Kaldur spending time off with King Orin."

She's smiling more. Should I be worried?

"You haven't been talking about M'gann as much."

"She's more… Self sufficient? She finds Earth society fascinating. Kon… Needs me more. He doesn't have much social experience, hasn't seen much of the world for himself. He thinks of himself as a weapon, and mopes if he goes too long without a mission or mission related task. Even more than the others do. He idolises Superman, who won't give him the time of day… I guess.. I.. like being needed. He just gets so frustrated sometimes… I want to help him become a fully functional person, make him happy. I've been trying to find things for us to do together… That reminds me, what's happening with those plant samples we got from Swamp Thing's place?"

Diana pauses a moment. "Batman.. has.. people working on it."

There's a 'ping' from the kitchen. "Oh, excuse me, I have to go and check on that."

As I leave the garden I hear Donna say: "I guess that explains why he was staring at your armor when you first met."

"Donna, that's not helpful."

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Skived 6

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3rd August

07:36 GMT -5

"So, yeah, I get where she was coming from. She tells Wonder Woman that she's not going to be able to work with her for a year, then a couple of weeks later I turn up."

Kon and I are on an early morning walk through Metropolis. Not completely sure what he wants from the trip. He seems to know his way around; Metropolis doesn't quite have the rigid grid of Manhattan but he's leading the way just fine. Since this is Superman's home town perhaps Cadmus included route maps in his programming? He certainly hasn't been here before in person. Maybe he's trying to reconcile what he knows with what he's seen?

No sign of Superman himself. I could do a scan for him, but this is Kon's thing. I don't want to risk harming the relationship he clearly wants to build with his… Okay, not father exactly, but I don't have a better word to describe the male source of half of someone's genes.

"It wasn't like you were waiting for her to leave."

"Not the point. She was feeling bad about the decision, and then I appeared and she had something to focus her bad feelings at."

We're walking near what the ring informs me is the Metro-Narrows Bridge. Bit of an odd name, but then I used to live in a place called Hampden Park.

Used to live. I've pretty much accepted at this point that I'm not going home anytime soon. I haven't definitely decided that I don't want to as yet, but I'm leaning towards concluding-my-life-there and holiday visits only, rather than moving back full time. I have no way to know whether the ring would work back home, and I am completely sure that I wouldn't move back without it.

"Can you… Hear that?" Kon's stopped walking. He's looking at the ground and squinting, turning his head from side to side.

"No, but if you can describe it to me I can probably scan for it."

"I don't know…" He stops trying to listen, and peers at the bridge. From what I've been able to tell Kryptonian eyes do some sort of gravity lensing thing to enable long distance vision. When active, Kon's focus becomes extremely narrow. He's basically blind apart from the thing he's looking at, and he gets a headache if you stick something in the way close to his eyes.

"Ring, scan the bridge. Report structural anomalies or explosives."

"Structural weakness detected in suspension cables around south western pylon. No significant explosives detected."

"When you say 'weakness', what-."

Oh no.

Kon's already moving as in the distance I watch two suspension cables part company with the suspender cable and slam into the road. Only pure luck prevents them from smashing into one of the vehicles and I'm not a bystander, god damn it!

Kon gets a momentary surprise as I grab him mid leap and then we're both at the site of the accident. A yellow school bus and a couple of cars have swerved to a halt near where the cables are lying. I'm momentarily puzzled as to why the cables' own weight hasn't dragged them over the edge, but then I'm no structural engineer. The front end of the bus is slightly up on the rim of the bridge, but pulling it back shouldn't be much trouble. Then a LexCorp lorry that couldn't brake in time shunts it, pushing the bus further over the rim and going out of control itself. The lorry and another white car that had managed to avoid the bus veer across the road and slam into the crash barrier.

Time to make Kon look good for Superman.

"I'll get the bus, you deal with the accident."

He nods, and I drop the construct platform we're standing on. We're only about four metres from the surface, and Kon lands easily. I fly to the front of the bus and stick a platform under the front wheels. As I work I remember not to narrow my awareness -thank you Batman's post Santa Prisca performance review- just in time to shove aside a red car that was heading for the back of the bus, and cushion its deceleration. Negative acceleration, whatever.

Fucking front engine models. I have to take a moment to look at the faces of the panicking children on board before I want it enough to lift it off the crash barrier and fully on to the road. This bridge is going to be out of commission for a few days at least but the fastest way for these people to get off is to drive off. I should be able to hold-.

There's a flash of red in the corner of my eye, and the section of bridge I'm over seems to lift slightly. OrangeVision reveals Superman underneath supporting the bridge with his strength while heat visioning the snapped girders. Is that really a good idea? Doesn't steel lose a lot of its strength above a certain temperature? I could probably have fused it myself, but I suppose this is only going to be a quick fix until the civil engineers can get in to do a survey anyway.

Oh, I'm sure he knows what he's doing. Something like this is probably a weekly event around here. I drop down to just above the surface of the road. Superboy's already lifted a car that had been hanging over the other side of the bridge back onto the road. Not sure an overhead lift was really the best approach, but it's working. He's also checking on the other cars that have hit things or been hit. One took a side impact and he had to rip the door off to get the passengers out. Other damaged cars are leaking petrol and he's shepherding the people back behind the crash barrier away from the potential fire.

Right, what should I be doing next? I could try to reattach the cables, or move cars out of-.

"Nice work you're doing."

That's Superman. Superman's next to me. External underwear with pointless yellow belt, weird hair curl, truly huge muscles, -I don't care how loose his shirt and jacket are, the Planet staff must be blind not to notice that one of their reporters looks like a professional bodybuilder- pointless red cape… It's Superman.

"Thank you sir. How would you like us to proceed?"

He frowns slightly, then his gaze sweeps the bridge and alights on Kon, who appears to have the moving damaged cars out of the way thing under control. He puts a blue one down near us, freeing up several intact but trapped cars to drive away, and walks over.

Oh, am I about to be a third wheel at the most awkward father-son conference ever? Of course I am.

"Superboy."

Kon looks Superman in the eye, then drops his gaze off to the side. "I… I have a name."

Should I do something about the cables? Or maybe contact the emergency services? Someone will have already done that, right? Oh god I can't move.

"Oh? Batman didn't say anything about that. What did you choose?"

Ah shit, I didn't think about how he'd respond.

"It's…" Kon looks at him again. "It's Kon-El."

I'm not looking at Superman's face, but I feel him twitch and jerk back in the air as Kon says it.

Kon goes back to not looking at him. He turns, and takes in the bridge. In the distance I can hear the sounds of sirens as the ambulances arrive. I didn't see anyone who needed them, but I suppose it doesn't hurt to make sure.

"Did..? Did I, did we do a good job?"

I feel displaced air as Superman floats backwards. "The situation here seems to be under control."

"Well, yeah, but…"

There's a chime, and Superman raises his left hand to his earpiece.

"Superman. Wait, Arrow, slow down. What's attacking..?"

Superman turns away from Kon and myself, focusing on his conversation. Kon doesn't slump. I've noticed that about him. He gets angry first, fists clenching, muscles tensing, jaw setting. He only gets depressed after he's had time to calm down.

Superman flicks an eye back at Kon. "No, I'm definitely available. Coordinates?"

Kon can hear what Superman's saying even better than I can. He can probably hear Mister Queen's end of the conversation too. And I know he wants nothing more than for Superman to ask him to come along.

"Acknowledged."

But he isn't going to.

"On my way."

Superman turns back to us. I've drifted to just behind Kon's left shoulder. United front.

"Sorry… Superboy. Duty calls." He nods at me. "Orange Lantern."

He lifts up from the bridge and accelerates, heading south. At the near end of the bridge I can see a barricade being erected to prevent traffic. Kon's staring at the ground again.

"Aaarrrhhh!"

He crouches, then leaps up onto the nearest bridge tower, then away to the next one.

!Kon needs me!

Professionally, I know I should stay here and talk to the investigators. Personally, I'd like to go after Kon, but I doubt he wants to talk at the moment, and getting into an argument now won't help him. The ring glows brightly as my need builds with no productive channel.

Action plan, action plan. Paralysis helps no one. I need to talk to someone. Alright, New York's not far from here. Once I know this situation is under control, I can go and see if Diana's at the embassy. She's known Superman for years. She can probably suggest something.

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Skived 7

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3rd August

08:01 GMT -5

The Themysciran embassy doesn't seem to do a lot of actual embassy work. No visas are granted -aside from very special occasions, and Diana handles those personally- and there isn't really any trade to organise. She told me that they handle some post, mostly from historians and, well, fetishists, but most of the work that goes on there is work for the women's charities that Wonder Woman founded or supports.

I bypass the outer gate by landing inside the walls, and use the ring to open the security door. The orange glow hasn't really died down on my flight over here, frustration at the delay in getting someone to take an official statement from me giving me no outlet for my drive. You'd have thought that the Metropolis police department would be more geared towards handling people like me, but apparently not.

There's a chubby blonde woman in a suit behind the desk in the small lobby. I stride towards her.

"And whawt c'n ah do fer you, sugar?"

I stop just before the desk, pausing to regain my focus and calm. "Good morning. I am Orange Lantern two eight one four. Is Her Highness likely to be available anytime soon?"

She gives me a look. What am I doing wrong? Oh! I walk right up to the desk and offer her my left hand.

"Sorry about that. Rude of me."

She looks at my hand, and frowns. "Y'know, in mah lahn o'work, y'get a mite cautious abowt touching glowin' rings."

"Oh. Right, sorry." I withdraw my left hand and offer my right instead. She looks at me for a moment before taking it.

"A'hm Etta Candy, Princess Diana's PA. Y'know, you're a good deal politer than most people who come burstin' in through those doors."

"Bursting in? Oh, whoops. Should have used the intercom, sorry, sorry."

"Not t'worry, sugar. I'll cancel the call t'the police." I cringe. She smiles. "Just mah little joke. We'll geht you a pass card so you don't feul enclah'n'd t'do that egain."

"Actually, if you could just set me up on the system? I'd be entering my code with the ring anyway."

She nods. "Diana saw y' comin' in, an' called down. Y'c'n go right urp."

"Thank you."

I smile, and take to the stairs. Ring, where's..? Right.

Two landings up and I'm outside her door. I usually hate opaque doors in places I've never been before, as it used to mean that I would have no idea whether or not I'm in the right place until after I'd opened it. Now, I can use OrangeVision and see her sitting at her desk. Useful. I step up to the door and knock twice.

"Paul, you can just come in."

I open the door.

The room is carpeted in lilac, with walls papered in a paler shade of the same colour. There are shelves and racks with what are either trophies or mementos of home. Some of it looks historical, but I suspect that the spear is still razor sharp and that the breastplate could take a hit or two. Diana herself is wearing a white chiton with some sort of lacework along the edges, and she smiles as I enter.

A thought and I shift from my medium armour to my actual formal wear: white shirt, dark grey trousers and jacket with orange pinstripes. Gotta love the Vietnamese. I'm still surprised they even had this cloth.

"Thank you for seeing me at short notice."

"That's quite alright." She pushes some papers aside and gestures for me to take the chair opposite her. "What can I do for you?"

"Kon and I… There was an accident on a bridge in Metropolis. A couple of the suspension cables snapped off. We… I mean, Superman and we, handled it. No one seriously hurt."

"That's good to know."

I didn't really think this through. What do I say to her?

"Kon tried talking to Superman, afterwards. Superman wasn't exactly rude, but he made it clear that he didn't want anything to do with him. Kon idolises Superman. He wants, more than anything else, to have some sort of relationship with him."

"Superman hasn't spoken to me about him. I know that he was gravely concerned about the work that was being done at the Cadmus labs."

"Right, and if he'd heat visionned the whole place to ash, then I'd've understood. But it seems like he's taking it out on the only guy at Cadmus whose fault it wasn't. I get that he finds it weird, but he's more prepared to spend time with complete strangers than with the only other Kryptonian on the planet."

Diana brings her hands together in front of her. "Okay, and what would you like me to do about it?"

"Could you… Please, could you try talking to Superman? Find out what his problem is? He can't just pretend that Kon doesn't exist."

Her eyes drop for a moment. "I will admit, his behavior has been a little.. uncharacteristic, where Superboy is concerned." She nods, and looks back at me. "I'll try and talk to him about it. I can't promise how he'll respond."

"I know. Thank you anyway."

"Now, would you like to explain to me why your ring is still glowing?"

Oh. That. I flap my left hand a little. "It's my need to help Kon. It's like when I wrecked his ears and didn't know how to fix them right away. I need to help Kon with Superman, but I don't know what to do."

"That seems surprisingly altruistic for the power of avarice."

I wave my right hand. "Like I said when we dealt with the Harpies, I'm not a psychopath. Kon-El is my team mate and my friend. This hurts him, so it hurts me. His wellbeing is part of my wellbeing."

"You don't feel tempted to try something more direct?"

!Superboy Mine!

"Oh, you have no idea. Before I found out about Donna I did consider asking you to take him on instead. Or if a family connection is what he's looking for, I could…"

Not sure I should talk about that.

Diana leans forward. "You could what, Paul?"

That may have been an order.

"I'm, I'm having a very hard time justifying to myself why I don't just fly him down to Kansas and introduce him to his grandparents."

Diana stiffens almost imperceptibly for a moment. Really, all that shows is a stilling of her hands and a slight tension around her eyes. Then, she forms an expression of benevolent puzzlement.

"What makes you think Superboy has grandparents living in Kansas?"

"Tracking Kryptonian spacecraft isn't that hard. Tracking materials not native to Earth is even easier. Then, match up timelines and birth records."

"So, you know..?"

"Yes."

She thinks about that for a moment, then in a stern voice asks one of the questions I was concerned about.

"Who else do you know?"

"Pretty much everyone else." My eyes drop to the desk. "Yeah, I know I shouldn't have done it, and I'm sorry, and if I'd known when I got to this parallel what I know now, I wouldn't have done it. But at the time, finding out, it seemed like a sensible precaution."

For a moment she says nothing.

"Be that as it may…" Her face hardens. "Orange Lantern, this is a direct order. You are not to reveal the secret identity of any League member or affiliate without an order from myself or Batman, unless you have their express permission."

I nod. "Sir."

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Skived 8

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3rd August

08:04 GMT -5

"Like I said when we dealt with the Harpies, I'm not a psychopath. Kon-El is part of my ingroup. His wellbeing is part of my wellbeing."

"You don't feel tempted to try something more direct?"

"Oh, you have no idea."

She looks at me curiously. "What do you mean by that?"

"Kon wants familial ties. If Superman is unwilling, there's always his Human parent."

"Doctor Desmond won't be leaving-."

I hold up a large grey hand. "Wait. You think Doctor Desmond was the source of his Human DNA?"

She frowns. "If it wasn't Desmond, then who was it?"

"Alexander Luthor."

Colour drains from her face. "What?"

"That was news? You hadn't checked? Next you'll be telling me you haven't checked him for telepathically implanted commands!"

Her face stills. Oh, for goodness sake…

"Really? You did know that he was educated entirely by telepaths, right?"

"Well, yes…"

"And you have considered the legal issues concerned with keeping knowledge of his existence from his natural parent? Particularly given his age?"

"Lex Luthor is a scheming criminal-."

"Lex Luthor is a legitimate businessman until you can prove otherwise in court. Why are you trying to give him ammunition to use against you?"

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Skived 9

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3rd August

13:05 GMT -5

I'm not sure if Kaldur really thought it through. Clearly he knows that Wallace can move at incredible speed, but it doesn't look like he appreciated how fast his reflexes are. They've set up some sort of tactile air hockey hologram to pass the time waiting for our hand to hand combat training session with Black Canary to start. Or for Kon to get back.

We haven't heard from him. M'gann was a bit worried when I came back without him, explained what had happened and that I didn't know where he was. I could have scanned for him, but I thought it best to give him some privacy.

Everyone else is in their regular uniform, but I'm in my light armour instead. The point of this is to learn how to strike and avoid being struck, and I already know that a baseline human can hit my medium armour more or less indefinitely without doing anything but bruising themselves. The light armour is a little easier to move in and weighs less. I don't intend to wear the ring during this session; if I'm having to fight hand to hand then I've either lost the ring or run out of power. I'm more than a little nervous about getting into an arena with these people without it, but I suppose I can heal any injury after each bout.

I had thought that the fact my oath is punishment based and not literally unbreakable would be an advantage. Ultimately, it doesn't remove agency. If the need is great enough I can break it and accept the consequences. But in a case like this, not knowing if I'm about to violate an order is a bit tricky.

Everyone here knows the real names of everyone on the team bar Robin. And my surname, but that doesn't really matter. I know who Robin is, and I assume that Wallace does as well, but to be honest I pretty much think of him as Robin at this point. Kon, I think of as Kon first and Superboy a distant second. Is that a secret? He introduces himself as that, but he has a very limited social circle. If he does end up using 'Conner' as his 'Earth name', which one counts? The fact that Superman's name is Kal-El is in the public domain but most people don't know it. Would that count?

I haven't told the others that I know what I know. I suppose the fewer people who know, the better. I probably shouldn't have told Diana, but I got caught up in things and having her feel that she needed to order me to reveal information would probably have produced worse results.

Wallace is now winning twenty two to nothing. To show off to M'gann he's doing it while making a show of not really paying attention. And eating a banana. Kaldur's taking it pretty well, considering.

"Recognised, Superboy, B zero four."

Thank goodness. Practice was supposed to start at one o'clock, but the League had something big on earlier -presumably whatever Superman left to deal with- and Black Canary is a little late.

Superboy materialises in Zeta Tube A. He doesn't look any happier.

M'gann smiles at him. "Hi, Superboy. Are you ready for our training session?"

He stalks through the hockey table, causing the hologram to lose cohesion.

Black Canary and Martian Manhunter emerge from the gloom. Must have come in through the ground entrance. She clears her throat to attract our attention.

"Ready for training everyone?"

"Black Canary! Uncle J'onn!"

Not the shapeshifting telepath not the shapeshifting telepath…

Ah, thought that too loud. M'gann gives me a puzzled look before scurrying forwards to give her uncle a hug. He responds by just standing there, though I may have seen a slight smile. Maybe he doesn't convey emotions in the same way humans do?

"M'gann. I was.. in the neighbourhood, so I thought I'd see how you are adjusting."

"A few bumps, but I'm learning."

I'm not sure I could take him in a confined space even with the ring. More importantly, I don't think I'd learn anything from the experience of getting my arse kicked by him without it.

"That's all I can ask."

Where'd Kon go? I turn and see him walking away from the training area. Fiddlesticks. He'll probably enjoy this if he stays. More than I will, that's for certain. With the ring I rate myself pretty highly, effectiveness wise. Without it, I'd struggle against a guard dog. I'm certainly the weakest pugilist here. M'gann isn't much better skill wise, but she can increase her strength and toughness before a fight and get an advantage that way.

Black Canary's noticed him trying to walk off too. "Stick around. Class is in session."

Kon turns back, arms folded across his chest. Truculence mode. Maybe I shouldn't have left him earlier.

Black Canary walks into the centre of the room, and the base's computer creates a circle of light covering most of the floor. The sparring area is a little larger than I was expecting. "I consider it an honor to be your teacher. I'll throw a lot at you, everything I've learned from my own mentors,-" She doffs her jacket. There's a bandage on the middle of the upper part of her left arm. Should I offer to heal that? No, given how nervous I am about this there's no way I could want it enough to heal a potential opponent. "-and my own bruises."

Analysis of what else she's wearing? The choker looks like a bad idea, as does the long loose hair. It doesn't seem to be moving, though. Lots of hair spray or gel? Might be flammable. Her bustier doesn't look armoured. The boots look sensible. The forearm gloves and tights don't. What do these people have against sensible clothing?

M'gann voices concern about her injury. "What happened?"

I think about replying. Something along the lines of 'Her job. Ours too.' but I decide that smart mouthed is not the correct approach.

"The job."

Ah. Maybe I should have, then. Not having to carry injuries is an area where I have a definite advantage.

"Now, combat is about controlling conflict, putting the battle on your terms. You should always be acting, never reacting."

Not sure I agree with that. I'm more concerned about overextending. Letting them come to me gives me more preparation time. But, here to learn.

"I'll need a sparring partner."

By dint of tensing the muscles in my legs I manage to avoid taking a step backwards.

"Right here! Yeh!"

Wallace actually waves. He's still holding the banana. For goodness sake, man.

He walks to where she's standing in the centre of the arena. Standing in front of Black Canary, he finishes his banana. "After this:" He throws the banana peel to the bin at the side of the room. Hmm, wonder if he can pass momentum on to thrown objects, or remove it from them? I know he could in the comics… "Swish! I'll show you my moves."

Ring, tone down my embarrassment. Oh, that's better, thank you. I'm not going to complain about the age difference, but she's our teacher and he and I both know that she's in a relationship with Green Arrow. That is not on.

The 'challenge accepted' expression on Black Canary's face should tell Wallace to get his head in the game, but I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that that isn't going to happen now, and possibly not ever.

She lunges forward with right fist, he turns it aside with his left. She drops, spins, and sweeps his legs out from under him. He hits the floor hard, and a circle of light appears around him as the computer registers his loss. I'm not sure what the various components of the circle mean, but the 'Kid Flash Status: Fail' is pretty obvious. And true.

"Hurts so good."

I nearly find it in myself to admire his perseverance, but that's only because I'm not having to deal with my embarrassment any more.

"Good block."

Yes, between his ears. Wallace pushes himself into a sitting position, and Black Canary pulls him to his feet.

"But did anyone see what he did wrong?"

I tentatively raise my right hand, with the answer 'he got into close combat with a close combat specialist' on my lips. Robin is more enthusiastic.

"Ooh! He hit on teacher and got served?"

"Dude!"

"Orange Lantern?"

"Sir?"

"What do you think he did wrong?"

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Skived 10

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3rd August

13:10 GMT -5

"Black Canary. Multiple high level martial arts qualifications. Short ranged sonic attack from the mouth. Since you're primarily a short range melee fighter, his mistake was getting that close to you in the first place."

"Hm. Think you can do better?"

"No sir. But I think I'd fail with more class."

Robin sniggers behind me. Wallace pulls a face as he walks back to the rest of us. As he walks past me to the back of the group I stick out an arm to stop him.

"What?"

"Wallace, I'm going to share with you some wise words which Batman shared with Robin just before the first time he met Wonder Woman."

"O-kay. And they are..?"

"Think clean thoughts, chum." I pat him on the back. He looks a little puzzled, trying to work out whether I'm mocking him or Robin.

Black Canary addresses me again. I just volunteered myself, didn't I? I never learn…

"Is that what Wonder Woman taught you?"

I shrug. "I can fly, move fast, and make attacks from outside a melee specialist's strike range. It just seemed obvious. I'm not strong enough to really spar with Wonder Woman."

"Think you're strong enough to spar with me?"

"I rather think I'm about to find out, sir." I sigh, take a step forward and pull the ring off my finger. Immediately my armour stops glowing.

Black Canary looks puzzled. "You're not planning on wearing your power ring?"

"Wouldn't that rather defeat the object, sir? I mean, if I get that close to someone like you and I have the ring, the first thing I'd do is back away. Only reason I wouldn't would be if it wasn't available. I thought this lesson was about teaching us hand to hand combat?"

I look at the ring sitting in my right hand for a moment, then underarm throw it outside of the arena. I felt bad doing that. Deep breath.

"What if you couldn't back away?"

I frown. "Why wouldn't I be able to back away?"

"Perhaps there was some sort of barrier you couldn't break. Or hostages whose lives would be at risk if you weren't there."

"Then I'd maintain the maximum distance possible. I'm not sure what I'd do about the barrier, but for the hostages I'd try to keep my opponent's attention on me while removing them from the area."

She considers this for a moment, then taps her left foot twice. The arena area shrinks so that rather than being near the middle, we're now both near the edges. "Put your ring back on."

That's, that's, what?

I just stand there for a moment. "Are you sure, sir?"

She loosens her muscles and rolls her neck. "Yes."

"Sir, you understand that that thing isn't on cadet mode or anything. It is a fully functional power ring."

"I've sparred with Lanterns before."

Kid Flash chips in. "What was it you called them? Muscle brains?"

"That's not what I s… Uuuhrr."

I stick out my left hand and want it back. There's a slight jolt as it flies back onto my ring finger. My armour relights. Huh, hadn't noticed that Kon was standing on the other side of the circle.

I've warned her… Right, this is happening. How to go about it? We're about three metres apart. She said that it's always best to act. I need to look like the most passive person ever to step into a ring. I need her to believe that I'll hesitate, that I don't know what I'm doing.

Shouldn't be too hard. Even with the ring, that's pretty much how I feel.

I crouch slightly.

"You're completely sure about this."

She's looking me right in the eyes. I intentionally don't make them orange.

"Yes."

"I'm not… Errr…"

"Not what?"

I stand up straight again. "I'm not going to get in trouble with Green Arrow about this, am I?"

"He knows better than that."

I raise my fists, then lower them. "Look, would you mind if I put a barrier around the fighting area? I'm a bit worried about what happens if I miss you and hit a wall or something."

She exhales, and rolls her eyes. "If it makes you feel better."

I point my left hand out to the side, and extend a barrier construct directly from the ring. She might know that I never do that, but if she thinks about me in terms of what the Greenies do it'll look normal. The barrier forms much more slowly than I am capable of creating it, and once it's in place I leave my left hand sticking out slightly. As if I have to leave it there.

I duck my head down and bring up my fists in a poor imitation of a boxer's pose, left hand forwards. I'm right handed, but with a little luck she'll think about me in terms of a ring-assisted brawler. I bend my legs slightly. I probably look like a complete idiot to my team mates. But… If I can win, their opinion of me will dramatically improve. If I don't, well, then I've only done as badly as Wallace.

"Okay then. Er. Three, t-."

The countdown may have been pushing it, but it did cause her to focus on me, preparing for my charge on 'one'. As I start to say 'two' orange manacles on orange chains extrude at the speed of thought from the barrier directly behind her. One locks around her neck, four more capture her upper and lower legs, two get her upper arms and a larger chain with no clamp wraps itself around her torso. A fraction of a second later she's yanked backwards off her feet and pinned to the barrier. An opaque mask forms around her head, blocking her vision and preventing her from opening her mouth to use her scream. The chains grow, removing her capacity for movement completely. Feedback through the constructs lets me know that she's struggling, but she doesn't have the raw strength to break them and can't get any leverage. Dropping the barrier around the fighting area, I float her over to next to where Kon is standing, rotate her so that her back is facing down, and remove the binding constructs. She drops ten centimetres to the ground with an astonished expression on her face. The computer beeps my victory.

"One."

I'm going to die now, but I got the result I wanted. Kon's smiling again.

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Skived 11

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3rd August

13:16 GMT -5

There's silence as Black Canary pulls herself up. I'd offer to help, but I haven't moved from my starting position and I'm not sure that I can at the moment. Fear is warring with smugness for dominance in my head. It feels tingly. Everything's a bit unreal.

More so than normal.

A huge view window appears to my left, Batman's face filling it. Oh, thank goodness.

"Batman to the cave."

My team, Mister J'onzz and Black Canary walk to optimal viewing distance of the screen. Trembling slightly, I manage to turn to face it.

"Five hours ago, a new menace attacked Green Arrow and Black Canary."

The head and upper torso of a man appear in the top left of the screen. Pale skin, pointy ears… No, not a man. A robot. That's Amazo. Comic Amazo, not Justice League Unlimited Amazo.

"The attacker was capable of attacking, then duplicating-"

The view pulls back. We see Amazo standing in a ruined street. He looks right, then grabs the oncoming Superman, spins and uses him to batter away Red Tornado and the Flash.

"-the powers and abilities of his opponents. Arrow called in reinforcements-"

Amazo hurls Superman away, then starts blazing away with heat vision.

"-which nearly proved disastrous as our foe gained more and more power with each new combatant."

"Whaaw. One guy with the powers of the entire League?"

Wallace, stop being impressed and start thinking. Can this version of Amazo use multiple powers simultaneously? How mentally sophisticated is it? I know that machines can use the green light, but if it doesn't have its own wants and needs it shouldn't be able to use the orange. On the other hand, if it is mentally sophisticated I can probably assimilate it. Does it gain weaknesses as well as strengths? Not sure trying kryptonite would have been an option…

Oh. I don't know if this Batman has any.

I need to find time to go through the original footage of the fight. See if I can work some of it out for myself. And I need to try to remember what Kid Amazo's name is. If I could get to him before he went off the rails…

"In the end it took eight Leaguers four hours to defeat and dismantle the android."

Four hours? I can't imagine what that sort of fight would have been like. The devastation it would cause… What was Amazo there for? Hang on, where was there? Are we talking about… Where were they from… Star City? I hope this summary gets followed by an actual briefing.

"An android? W-who made it? T. O. Morrow?"

At least someone's thinking. Well done Robin.

"Good guess, Robin. But Red Tornado doesn't think so."

Mister J'onzz answers instead. "The technology bears the signature of.. Professor Ivo."

Something else I haven't bothered researching. Mad scientists. I had… Have? I have a good science GCSE and a reasonable chemistry A-Level, but if these people can do what even other genius leaders-in-their-fields struggle to comprehend it didn't seem worth the time.

Also, I'm going to have to remember not to call him Professor Robotnik. This parallel doesn't even have Sonic the Hedgehog.

"Ivo… But Ivo's dead."

Thanks Kaldur, that's actually a pretty good excuse for me not knowing anything about him. Shouldn't take me long to read at least a summary of the League's file.

Black Canary answers his nonquestion. "So we all thought. Or hoped."

Am I..? Is death a revolving door here? I'm not sure how well that works for me. If it is, then at some point I'm going to have to find out how death interacts with assimilation. Is the existence of an afterlife verifiable?

"To make certain this threat is permanently neutralised we're sending two trucks carrying the android's parts to two separate STAR Labs facilities in Boston and New York for immediate evaluation. Every precaution is being taken. We'll have four additional decoy trucks to create confusion in case Ivo -or anyone- tries to recover the remains. You will split into undercover teams to safeguard the two real trucks."

"Yyyyes!" Wallace likes the idea, then. "Road trip."

I check to see how Kon's responding, but he seems to have shifted back into neutral. It's a mission, right?

Kaldur's personal communication computer thing beeps. How advanced does a thing have to be to stop being a communicator and start being a computer? Or am I using outdated terms? Since I have the ring I haven't bothered getting either.

"Coordinates received. On our way."

They turn to leave. I guess we're not getting a full briefing then.

"Sir.. s, I have a question, and a request."

Black Canary turns to me. "What is it?"

"May I ask why you haven't simply had me or one of the Greenies fly one of the larger components into space? That way, even if someone recaptured all of the rest, they still can't reactivate the android."

Batman lowers his head slightly. "I considered it, but we have no way of knowing whether or not this will turn out to be an isolated incident. If there are more androids like this one out there, we need STAR Labs working on this as soon as possible."

I nod. Makes sense.

"What is your request?"

"I'd… Like you to unlock the League's files on kryptonite radiation for me."

Black Canary starts, then exchanges a concerned look with Mister J'onzz. Batman appears unfazed. "Why is that?"

"I've been studying Kryptonian physiology, the way their powers work. As far as I've been able to tell with the sources available to me, kryptonite radiation works by disrupting a mechanism intrinsic to those powers. So, if the android has Superman's abilities then it should also have his vulnerabilities. I don't know enough about kryptonite radiation at present to replicate it. If it came to a fight, I'd like to have that option available to me, and it's hardly practical for me to fly to the Rao system to get some."

Batman appears to think about it. "Information on kryptonite is kept highly secure for a reason. If, and only if the android is reactivated, will I consider doing as you ask."

I nod again. Shouldn't be surprised that's a red line, really. "Thank you sir."

I turn, and follow my team mates to the hangar.

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Skived 12

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3rd August

20:01 GMT -5

Hurry up and wait. That's how it goes, isn't it? Can't say I blame the League for wanting to make sure that everything is set up just right, but three hours in a muddy wood is pushing it. I've read Ivo's summary, and I'm now going into the detail. He was a pioneer in the field of cybernetics, but made his advances through vivisection -including a few homeless people- and brute force trial-and-error integration. The Locus Industrial Group covered up what he'd done, and made it look like he'd made his progress through more acceptable means. He made himself and them a lot of money and a great deal of good publicity… Until Red Tornado was able to infiltrate his lab and show the world how he'd really achieved his results. He escaped just ahead of retribution, and went underground with his money and research.

This was back in the eighties, before the League got together. Since then his work has mostly come to light during the clean up of various other high-tech crime groups. His signature cybernetic interfaces and advanced weapons, as well as more unusual pieces. He also seemed to be collecting other forms of advanced technology for himself, though he wasn't slow to abandon a doomed theft attempt if his own capture looked likely.

The man himself was notoriously difficult to track down. The League finally cornered him on Santo Pietro, a small island off the south coast of Italy. Once the ground team found him they also discovered that he'd imprisoned the inhabitants and replaced them with Human-seeming robots, who attacked to liberate their master once he was caught. His apparent death in the aftermath, combined with the lack of any more recent sightings or technology had led the League to assume that he was permanently out of the picture.

Worth mentioning that all modern cybernetics owe at least a small amount to his work. If Victor Stone ever becomes Cyborg here, it'll be in part because some poor bastard named Casey Williams was strapped to a table and cut apart in the name of science.

I don't really remember him from the comics. I guess the Kid Amazo thing will be a bust, given the man's age. Certainly there's no record of a daughter, and if he had one she'd probably be in her thirties by now, noticeably past the age she was in the Kid Amazo comic. Ah well.

The reaction of my team mates to my victory over Black Canary was perhaps milder than I was expecting. Kon was most happy about it. Not sure if he's happy for a friend or if it's a 'show-the-League-what-we-can-do' thing. He actually put his arm around my shoulder when he congratulated me. Odd really, but until he did that I think he was the only team member who'd never touched me. Kaldur shook my hand when the team first got together, just before Kon and I had to deal with that telepathic flashback nonsense. Still haven't got around to looking into anti-telepath techniques. M'gann in the kitchen before Mister Twister, Robin on top of the mountain afterwards, Wallace on Santa Prisca… Yes. Even when I tried to help him up when we were fighting Mister Twister he just pushed me away.

Robin was briefly amused, but switched to full mission focus almost immediately. His 'genuinely amused' laugh is a lot less creepy than his 'antagonising the bad guys' laugh. A nod from Kaldur, a smile from M'gann… Wallace…

"I still can't believe you did that!"

I rub my brow with my right hand.

"Kid Flash, what exactly is it about my actions which defies your belief?"

We're sitting on motorcycles just behind the trees from the field where the Amazo parts are being loaded. Or rather, will be loaded once we actually get started. After I finished the Ivo summary I had a little ride around. Since failing my driving test practical for the second time -all minors, I should point out- the largest thing I've driven is a quad bike, and I only drove that once. In a desert.

I did tell them that I don't have a driving licence.

Doesn't seem that hard, and I suppose it would rather give the game away if the bike glowed orange the whole time. Nevertheless, I've had the ring scan it thoroughly and it tells me that it can take over should the need arise.

"You were just.. just.. standing there -looking stupid, by the way- and then.. just…"

"Looking stupid was part of the plan."

He unisquints. "Really?"

"There was no way I could beat her in a fist fight, so I didn't try. I wanted her to assume that I was hopeless, and to be looking at me when I started my attack. My pose and the countdown achieved that aim."

Kaldur looks over and nods. "She lost sight of your advantages and in doing so let you take control of the situation. She allowed you to engage on terms where you were strong and she was weak."

"Rrrrright… Actually Kid Flash, I was meaning to ask: you didn't seem to be moving particularly fast during your bout-."

"Except straight down!"

"Dude!"

"During your bout, and I rather had the impression that your reflexes were as fast as your movements?"

He shrugs. "Yeah?"

"From your point of view, wouldn't her leg sweep have been really slow?"

He averts his gaze. "I kinda have to be moving a bit for that to work."

Oh. When he was super speed walking from one side of the hockey table to the other I had assumed he was just showing off. Guess it's kind of like Ravager and her adrenaline inhaler? I wonder if there's a way around it.

"Have you tried vibrating on the spot? Or intentionally accelerating part of your body?"

"Vibrating on the spot digs a hole in whatever I'm standing on, and my super speed's pretty much all or nothing. I'm either moving or I'm not."

"The Flash can vibrate parts of his body."

Wallace turns his head towards Robin. "Yeah, well, I can't."

"That was another issue I wanted to raise; you said gained super speed by duplicating Mister Garrick's formula, yes?"

"Well, Uncle Barry might have modified it a bit, but basically, yeah. What about it?"

"I was going through the records, and it seems that the current Flash is faster than both his predecessor and you. I was wondering if you knew why that was?"

He slumps slightly. "Uncle Barry created the formula under controlled conditions. And with better equipment. I mean, Mister Garrick was in a lab, but that was back in the forties. I was using stuff from the attic. Why d'you ask?"

"It seemed to be a sore point with you. I was thinking… Well, I can't promise…"

"What?"

"I was thinking that if I had a good enough scan of yourself and your uncle, I might be able to work out precisely what changes the formula made to your body, and to his. If I could work out the different ways you had both been affected-."

"You might be able to fix the differences! Make me as fast as him?"

I shrug. "It's not impossible. But, like I said, I can't promise. I don't know enough about how it works. I mean, have you tried-?"

Kaldur beeps his bike's communicator.

"They're finishing loading now. Helmets on."

I put my helmet on my head, and activate OrangeVision. When I do, it's as if the helmet has disappeared. My vision is totally unobscured, and the coming dusk is illuminated like clear day. I'll be heading to Manhattan with Robin and Kon. Speaking of Kon, what's he looking at..?

Oh. Of course. Superman.

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Skived 13

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3rd August

20:09 GMT -5

Kon snaps his head forwards, scowling. Did he make eye contact through the trees? Does Superman's x-ray vision work like in Smallville where it gives him actual x-ray footage, or like in New Adventures where it can peel away layers while leaving the image in full colour? As far as I know Kon can't do that, so maybe he magnified the view between the leaves?

There's a general revving of engines as the others don their helmets, and M'gann shifts to 'Human mode'. Kon and Robin have red bikes, Wallace has a yellow one, Kaldur and M'gann's are blue and mine's orange. Was this painted for me? Has it been sitting in a shed because no one told me motorcycles were being provided? I say motorcycles; mine and M'gann's look more like scooters on steroids. Does learning how to use it represent an efficient use of my time? I'd've said not, but here I am.

Heh. Just realised that I'm wearing my light combat bike gear on an actual bike.

Now, let's see. Ignition button, right. Engine's on. Gears are automatic. It's got gyroscope stabilisers, and they'll definitely be in use. There's a sort of super GPS and some integrated weapons, but they're inferior to what the ring can do and I don't intend to use them. As we prepare to leave I just about stop myself from creating construct stabiliser wheels.

"Star Boston is a go."

"Star Manhattan is go."

The second voice was Green Arrow. Didn't recognise the first. Someone -I assume Batman- gives the signal and the armoured trucks begin to move out. The first three head east towards Boston, then the second three move out west for their journey to New York. Aside from the armour of the trucks -which looked pretty darn thick to me- there are also soldiers of some sort on board. Not sure quite what branch of the military or law enforcement they're from. Maybe I should find out and get Donna a career pamphlet?

Once the trucks get out onto the road, Kon and Robin twist the accelerator and move out, followed by Kaldur, M'gann and Wallace. Taking a deep breath, I gingerly turn the handle.

Woooookay… Okay. Under control. I take a right out of the woodland, and with the road ahead empty apart from my team mates and our charge I increase my acceleration further. Glad I'm doing this in America. I know Jeremy Clarkson goes on about how dull US roads are to drive on but I think long and straight is about my level.

As I leave the starting area I risk a quick look at the assembled League members. I see Green Arrow and The Flash watching us go, while Captain Atom and Red Tornado take flight. Superman crouches slightly as he prepares to launch, but Batman lays a hand on his shoulder to stop him. Wonder Woman's next to them, and she looks like she's saying something? Probably the follow up on the Ivo investigation. I suppose it's still possible that someone is building on his work rather than it actually being him. Not like he can sue for breach of patent.

Standard mission process is… I tap my helmet communicator. The ring is better but there's no harm in following established process. Plus, this requires less mental focus and doesn't drain the ring's power.

"Orange Lantern two eight one four, comms check."

"Robin, reading you five by five."

"Superboy here, I hear you."

"Sergeant Ramones, truck hears you fine."

I experience a moment of confusion as we join the main motorway before remembering yes, Americans drive on the right, we're supposed to be feeding on from this side. A quick review of the route shows me that it will be at least half an hour before the trucks can split up. Really, if they're all going the same way they might as well have just sent one truck. I switch my comm to 'transmit to team only'.

"Robin, I realise that I'm probably trying to teach my gran how to suck eggs here, but we have put tracking devices on the android parts, right?"

"Ch, obviously."

"I mean, one to find, one not to find, one that broadcasts after a certain period of time…"

"Batman's got it covered, Oh El."

I nod, though there's no way he can see me as he's well in front of me.

In other circumstances I might have enjoyed the scenery, but scootering is too new to me for me to take my attention off the road. There's very little traffic around. Doesn't that make us a bit obvious? I remember when Bucky got hold of Captain America's shield after his death. Tony Stark had three armoured cars leave the storage facility by different routes, then sent the car that actually contained the shield a couple of hours later with a single superhero inside.

"Did Batman put decoy robot parts in the other trucks?"

"Eh, wasn't time to make them look realistic enough."

If it turns out we are the decoy, the others will be irate. Makes sense to me, though.

"You know Canary's gunna want a rematch, right?"

Oh, he was saving it up. That is more in character. "I suspected."

"She'll probably use you for every demonstration."

"I doubt that she's that vindictive."

"You punked her in front of the class."

"I'm not a good match up for her."

Kon joins in. "Because you're much more powerful than she is."

Robin dissents. "Taking down stronger guys is part of the gig."

"No no. It's not about power. It's like… I'm at my strongest blocking direct physical attacks, right? And that's what she uses. My constructs can't hold someone as strong as Kon or Wonder Woman, but they can reliably hold baseline Humans, and she is, physically, a baseline Human. Like you and I are. She's agile, but it's easy for me to stop her being able to move."

"Are you saying you think you could take Batman?"

There's an edge to Robin's voice. I'd rather he not try and find out. "Batman beats people in my weight class through careful study and preparation. He can't really research my background without talking to me, because none of it happened on this parallel. I imagine that he's been studying the footage of me, probably knows how I'll respond to different situations better than I do myself, and he's probably working on some sort of anti-Lantern gear or techniques in his spare time, but until that's complete… Yeah, I could probably beat him in a straight fight if he was limited to using his standard equipment."

"Whatever."

There's a break for a few minutes as I focus on driving. Then Kon asks a question. "If you're a bad match up for her, what do you think's a bad match up for you?"

"Telepaths, 'cause they can mess up my ability to use the ring. Tested it with M'gann once and it takes her about eight seconds to reduce my construct strength to the point where I can't even float myself. Maybe… Magic users? Simple attack spells shouldn't be a problem, but I don't know how my constructs interact with the more… Abstract stuff. You're not a particularly good match up in a spar, because I don't really want to hurt you and you're too tough for my gentler approaches to work."

"Last time we sparred, you slammed my head into a wall."

"Big baby, your skull's far tougher than the wall. And I only did that because I couldn't hit you hard enough with constructs alone, or bind you in the way I bound Canary. If I was seriously fighting a Kryptonian, I'd go for sonic energy projection constructs."

"I know I wouldn't wanna get hit by one of those again."

"Attack where your enemy's vulnerable."

And Robin rejoins the conversation. "So aside from telepathy, what else are you vulnerable to?"

"HAHAhahahaha!"

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Skived 14

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3rd August

20:44 GMT -5

Two of the trucks take a turning off the motorway, leaving us following the one which we've been told contains the Amazo parts. I suppose us following it isn't that much of a give-away. This is the main route between Gotham and New York after all, and if we've been under observation since we started it wouldn't matter anyway.

"No, vert would just mean object. So, invert means turn the object over."

"You might be right there."

"Okay, my turn: if dislike is the opposite of like, is disaster the opposite of aster? See, instead of things going wrong they go right."

"Might not mean that at all. In The Divine Comedy, Dis is a city in Hell, right? Aster might mean situation, and so a disaster is a situation which would be found in a city in Hell."

"Huh."

"So, going right would be antiaster. No, hang on, that would just mean a non-situation, that doesn't make sense. Shangri La aster? A situation that would be found in paradise?"

"It's a bit long."

"Shanaster?"

"La-aster?"

"That just sounds like you came last and hiccupped."

"Divaster? Like, a divine situation rather than a hellish one?"

"Sort of works."

"Can we please talk about something else?"

Kon's not feeling the shanaster.

"What's wrong?"

"Black Canary."

Aw. Sweet of him. "I'm not really all that worried about it. I'm sure we can trust her to behave in a sensible ma-."

"No, not that."

Kon and Robin are still ahead of me, though not by quite as much. I can't see his face to guess at his mood. I wait for him to carry on. "I just don't see how she's going to be able to teach combat skills to a guy with super strength."

Robin responds. "There's a lot more to combat than how hard you hit someone. Canary learned that the hard way, same as Batman and, well, me."

"Uh, yeah, but he's sort of got a point. If you're training with Batman and you don't dodge fast enough, you get hit, get a bruise. At worst, you might, what, break a bone? That'd put you out for a month. If you're training against someone with super strength and you aren't super tough, you can end up with bits getting ripped off. Wonder Woman was very careful checking that my construct armour could take her attacks before we started sparring."

"Maybe. But there's a whole bunch of other stuff to learn. Like, how to distract people, how to avoid being seen, how to predict what they're gunna do, how to fight groups so they all get in each others' way. Ooh, there's this great thing Batman showed me, where you sorta pick guys off from the edge of the group without getting spotted, and you leave the unconscious guys around and the rest of them find them and get completely panicked, and they've got no idea what to do. Then they either spread out and make taking them down even easier, or huddle up just asking for a gas grenade."

"I'd have trouble working like that due to the bright orange glow. And, you know, you could teach him that. What Kon really wants to get taught is how to fight other super strong people, and that requires different techniques to fighting baseline Humans. Wonder Woman told me that she finds it hard to keep her skills sharp, because there just aren't that many people who she can train with."

"I bet Superman doesn't mind practising with her."

Don't laugh don't laugh don't laugh…

"Not many guys would."

Rob-in!

"Actually, he's one of the few she can practise with. But it doesn't really help."

"Why not?"

"No offence to Superman, but Wonder Woman's been doing this since nineteen forty at least, and she grew up in a society of veteran warriors. He's a bit stronger than she is, but her skill level is quite a lot higher. Heck, she told me that she's spent some time training him."

We ride in silence for a moment.

"You… You said you were going to talk to her. About training me."

"I did."

She didn't tell me not to tell him. Did she assume that I'd assume? I tend to think she'd have told me directly.

"She said that she wanted to talk to Superman about the whole.. you.. thing. Er, in the meantime-"

Don't say Donna don't say Donna

"-Troia said that she wanted to pay us a visit before the next school term starts, and she should be able to give you a basic lesson or two. Not inside the mountain, though."

"Why not?"

"When two super strong people go at it, the surrounding environment really suffers. We live in a cave. If you two start slamming each other through the walls…"

"Oh. Right."

"You got Troia to join the team? Why didn't you tell me!"

"She's not joining, Robin. She's had to put heroing on the back burner this year to concentrate on her final year high school stuff. She might join up later. Hope so, she seemed nice."

"Exactly how much time have you spent with her?"

"We just had dinner that one time." I pause, and play that sentence back to myself. "With Green Lantern and Wonder Woman. They introduced us, to try and make sure she didn't feel like she was being pushed out or anything. I mean, it's not like there's a rule about only having one student at a time. I'd be perfectly happy to work with her more often."

"I bet you would."

Um, no. "Not like that. Honestly, it's more like-."

Something, then a lot of somethings, fly out of the sweet corn at the side of the road and latch onto the truck ahead of us. OrangeVision shows me… robot monkeys..?

What?

Robot monkeys with jetpacks?

What?

What?

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3rd August

20:50 GMT -5

They even make Monkey noises!

I can see about twenty of the little blighters. They're not at all aerodynamic, so I can only assume that they're either very light or have some sort of antigravity system. The first wave fly alongside the truck for a few moments after clearing the maize then swoop in and land on the side, rear and roof.

Okay, so we're being attacked by tiny weak robot-. How the hell do they have plasma cutters mounted in their eyes!?

Battle mode battle mode battle mode where's the button ah!

"Robin, Superboy, Orange Lantern! Our truck is under attack!"

"Orange Lantern to Aqualad, ours too. Robot Monkeys, about twenty of them. You?"

"The same."

"I hate Monkeys."

Kon's voice is filled with loathing. Guess that thing with the Joker hallucination left a bigger impression than I'd realised.

"Robot Monkeys, huhah! Totally Ivo's tweak style."

Looks like Gotham living just makes you jaded after a while. I press the battle mode button, and the screen between the handlebars is overlaid with an orange lantern sigil. Okay, so what happens…

"Hey Superboy, switch to battle mode."

Way ahead of you what the fuck!

The back of the scooter falls off. I yelp, and the ring replaces it with a construct and covers me in armour. Did I just press the wrong button? What sort of idiot puts a 'fall apart' button on a bike!? Okay okay, no time to worry about that now.

"No point."

No shit. How the hell is Robin balancing that? Ring, take over running the bike, grab the nearest Monkey bot and run a standard scan.

Compliance.

An arc of orange flows from my right shoulder and yanks a Monkey from the rear of the truck. It twists around, then tries to reactivate its jetpack. A thought smothers it. It tries its plasma cutter on the construct, but I respond by clamping its head and pointing it at the other Monkeys. Two are sliced in half before it shuts it off. And then I know the scan results. The circuitry doesn't make much sense to me, but the Monkeys aren't being remote controlled. Can't hijack them all, then.

Kon revs his bike and -what the hell?- leaps onto the roof of the truck. I catch his bike before it can hit Robin.

"Kon, a little more care, please."

Daft though that was, he's still mine. An orange arc connects me to him and the armour construct forms around his body. Bolts of red plasma come from somewhere behind me and shoot a couple of Monkeys out of the air. Did Robin buy a gun? Shit, don't tell Batman. Right, got this little guy here, not going to get a better chance to try this.

Ring, assimilate Monkey.

Unable to comply. Target possesses insufficient emotional substance.

Worth knowing. I form construct pliers and settle for decapitating the thing.

Robin's riding around to the front of the swerving van-. It's armoured you moron, swerving won't…

"Orange Lantern to all points. If we're under attack by things that can keep up with the trucks, there isn't much point continuing driving."

…won't help with jet pack Monkeys- and is tasering robots off the front window. While balancing on his bike's one remaining wheel. I thought he was a trapeze artist, not a unicyclist?

Some of the Monkeys have been distracted from their cutting to deal with Kon. I see a green beam hit the armour in front of his eyes, distracting him while others grab on and try to fly him off the roof. Nope. A turret construct takes shape in the air to my right. My charged particle beam projector construct is the most environmentally friendly of the weapons I learned to create while on Titan. Precision purple shots bore neat holes in every Monkey that dares try to take what is mine from me. Kon smashes off the last one himself before returning to the attack. I stop generating the construct the moment he's clear; it was probably overkill, and is a massive power hog.

There are a couple of explosions behind me, but since they're moving away I ignore them. I ride around to the right side of the truck and plier the necks of the four Monkeys trying to cut their way inside. Oh, idea. Rather than leave the remains on the road I grab them and stick them in subspace. Not sure exactly what I'm going to use them for, but those plasma beams looked a bit tasty.

Huh? Oh, four of them are getting clever and trying to lift my scooter. This time I'm more precise, the pliers cutting vital wires while leaving the chassis intact. Dead, dead, dead, dead, subspace. Actually, the scooter isn't really helping at this point. I subspace what's left of it and fly up to the top of the truck.

Kon's pretty much just posing at this point. The Monkeys made a decent start on cutting a hole in the roof, but he destroyed them before they could get inside and grab the Amazo parts. I shove his bike at him.

"You dropped this."

He starts, looks at the bike, then back at me. "Ah… Thanks?"

"Be more careful in future. You could have caused a nasty accident."

He blinks, then looks at the roof of the truck and the Monkey wreckage behind us.

I start laughing before he turns back. He looks puzzled for a moment, then lets out a chuckle of his own.

"Robin, you clear?"

"All done here."

Ring?

No animate Monkey robots remaining in this area.

"Sergeant Ramones, you in one piece?"

"Ah, ah, yeah. Yeah, you know. Hanging in."

"As far as you can tell, is the truck mechanically sound?"

"Seems to be. Lucky they didn't try cutting in through the windshield. Ah, look, I gotta ask: is this a regular thing for you guys?"

"I've only been doing this job a month. This is my first bunch of robot Monkeys. Superboy and I had to deal with telepathic illusion Joker-Monkeys one time, but that's the closest I can think of."

Kon flexes his fists. "Some of the Genomorphs were kinda like Monkeys."

"Yeah, I suppose. I wasn't with the team at that point."

Robin chips in. "The Penguin used Penguins with rocket launchers once. They didn't cackle, though."

"Rather you guys than me. I think I'll try and stick to armed robbers in the future."

Robin contacts our team mates. "Hey, Aqualad, the Monkeys are scrap. You about done with yours?"

There's a pause, just long enough for me to start to worry.

Then, Kid Flash responds. "Ah, done? Yeah, I'd say we're done."

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3rd August

20:57 GMT -5

Well, that sucks.

The Monkeys got the other set of Amazo parts. Not sure how much danger half an Amazo is, but it would probably cut down the rebuild time by quite a lot. We're driving towards New York while Kaldur decides what to do about the lost shipment. Kon's back to riding his bike behind the truck. Robin's inside plugging his arm computer into one of the more intact ex-Monkeys to gather information. I'm flying overhead. With Ivo clearly knowing where we are there doesn't seem much point in pretending. Plus, some of the left over Monkeys from the attack on the Boston truck might try something. I doubt they'd have the fuel to get here, but I don't know for certain.

The decoy trucks are so far unmolested. I think there may be something black in my lentils.

I just realised something. Professor Ivo used robot Monkeys. So did Ivo Robotnik. I'm rather glad my scan didn't show any animals being wired in as processors, because from what I read this Ivo is probably technically capable of doing that and that would be one freaky thing too many.

"Orange Lantern, would you be able to fly your android pieces to Manhattan faster than the truck can take them there?"

"Iiiiiin theory, yes. But we don't know how the mechanism by which it acquires new abilities works. It hasn't scanned a Lantern yet, and I'm a bit worried about what would happen if it turns out its learning ability is passive."

"Understood."

I haven't risked scanning the Monkeys who took their set of Amazo parts for the same reason. Being back in friendly hands might have caused them to reactivate. Our truck has another three hours of driving to our final destination, assuming we keep going.

Better check power level.

Ring, charge?

Seventy seven percent remaining.

Acceptable. While Kid Flash and I could probably find the Monkeys easily enough based on their last known vector, that would reduce the defences around our truck. Heck, we don't even know for sure that the Monkeys are from the same guy as sent Amazo. Worse, it could be that it was and there's another one waiting for us.

"Maybe we should contact Red Tornado?"

M'gann doesn't sound eager. As when we fought Mister Twister, notifying him certainly seems like the sensible thing to do. But, actually, I don't want to either. Aqualad gives a more reasonable sounding voice to my feelings.

"Tornado always tells us to handle things ourselves, and the mission can still succeed if we recover the missing parts before they reach Professor Ivo. Robin, any progress?"

"It looks like the Amazo parts were designed to give off a signal to attract the Monkeys."

Oh, come on!

"And we didn't know the lumps of killer robot were signalling for pick up because..?"

"It wasn't emitting it earlier! It only started doing it after receiving a signal from the Monkeys first! As far as I can tell, the Monkeys were all around the road just past the place where the other trucks turned off. Looks like they sent out a signal of their own, and only started swarming us once they got a response."

Aqualad asks the key question. "Do you know where they are headed?"

"Assuming they maintain their current heading… Gotham City!"

"That far south? M'gann and I won't get there any time soon."

I have other concerns. "Are the parts in our truck still signalling?"

I hear the noise of Monkey chatter over his line.

"Robin!"

"Not any more." I can feel the smug. "The Monkeys were laughing the whole time because they need to constantly hear the reply from the android parts. No laughing, no signal. Hah!"

Kaldur begins to plan. "Orange Lantern, could you transport Miss Martian and myself to the site of the signal?"

"I haven't actually transported people at full speed before. Should be alright, but I wouldn't want to pancake you because I was wrong. At slower speeds, sure, but how long do we have?"

"Not enough. Superboy, are you able to move cross country to intercept the Monkeys?"

"No problem."

"Robin, send the predicted destination to Superboy and Kid Flash. They can attempt to intercept while M'gann calls in the bioship for us to follow in."

"Wouldn't it be better for me to transport Robin along with them?"

"No. You said yourself: the android has not yet had an opportunity to scan a Lantern. I do not want you near it unless there is no other choice. Besides which, there may be subsequent attacks on your truck. I would rather you were there to defend it."

Damn. He's right, but…

Oh, idea. "Superboy, could you carry Robin safely while you're bounding?"

"Ah, probably."

"Wait a minute-."

"Robin, you're the IT guy. If they're going to be facing down an android, they're going to need you."

Aqualad agrees. "Orange Lantern is correct. I would like you there when Superboy and Kid Flash confront Ivo, and he should be capable of protecting the truck alone long enough for that confrontation to take place."

"Yeah, it's just… Uh. No one takes any pictures."

The truck pulls over and stops, and Kon pulls up next to it and dismounts. Robin exits the truck through the rear hatch, and I float Kon's bike inside, propping it up next to the Amazo parts and the front half of Robin's bike. Kon turns in the direction that should allow him to intercept the Monkeys, and bends to a crouch. Robin walks up behind him and puts his arms around his neck.

I shake my head. "Guys, I don't think that's going to work. Superboy puts out a lot of force when he launches. You won't be able to hold on."

Robin lets go, and sags. "It's not going to have to be a bridal carry, is it?"

"Fireman's carry might work, but that would probably be safer."

He points at me. "I'm serious: no pictures."

I raise my hands in surrender, then move my ring hand behind my back. He walks around Kon, and lowers himself gingerly into his arms in the approved manner.

"Okay, I think I'm about-." Kon launches, cutting off Robin's sentence. Since I don't hear him crying out in pain or see him drop off he's probably alright. I close the rear of the truck and walk around to the passenger's side.

"Sergeant. Shall we?"

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3rd August

21:26 GMT -5

The truck has no radio, so I've spent my time getting to know the good sergeant a little. Two brothers and a sister, elder brother and sister both working as primary -no, sorry, elementary- school teachers, and younger brother in college. His wife works as a chef and they currently have no children. He was surprised when I was willing to share both my first name and my family situation, but accepted my explanation as to the reason why I could do that with a 'yeah, I hear that can happen'.

"I've been meaning to ask; what part of the military or law enforcement are you actually from?"

"Police, Metropolis Special Crimes Unit."

"Metropolis? Isn't this a bit out of your way?"

"Commissioner Henderson's got some kinda deal with Superman. Guess the League find it useful to know where they can find people trained for this sorta thing. Well, trained as you can get, anyways."

"You seemed a little alarmed by the Monkeys earlier."

"The sorts of supervillain we usually get in Metropolis? If they get that close to you it's all over. I mean, I've seen ray gun eyes before, but those Monkeys were just creepy."

"I don't really have much to compare it to."

"You really don't have stuff like this where you're from?"

"Not even slightly. We could build an armoured van like this, but those Monkeys are at least fifty years more advanced than anything on my Earth. The android? Pfff, I couldn't even begin to guess."

"Must be pretty weird for you."

"Nah, not any more. Total immersion. At this point the shock's worn off, and this is the new normal."

"This ain't normal, pal."

"Is if I don't see anything else."

Have they reached Ivo yet? I don't want to risk scanning them to find out. Shouldn't use the ring to communicate with them for the same reason. Where did I put my regular… Ah, there it is!

"Orange Lantern to Robin. Are you able to give me an update?"

I hear an explosion.

"Little busy right now, Oh El!"

"Access Captain Atom."

The communicator cuts off. I don't recognise the second voice. Didn't sound like the recordings of Ivo I listened to earlier. Access..? No, doesn't ring a bell. Could be Amazo, but we've still got half of his body in the back. I checked. Would Ivo have had spare parts? Probably, but his usual MO during operations was to start heavy and then be ready to evacuate, not hang around in a fully equipped lab.

"They gunna be alright?"

"I.. don't know. If they were getting completely overwhelmed I'm sure they'd call for help."

"Did you see the recordings of what that android did?"

"Yes. Oh, not the whole thing, just highlights of the fight so I'd know what to expect."

"No, I mean-" He risks glancing away from the road for a moment to catch my eye. "-the aftermath. All the damage that thing did."

"Not specifically. Four hours, I know there's going to be a lot of wreckage-."

"Not the buildings. That thing focused on the League as soon as they got there, and they did the best job anyone coulda done. But last I heard? There were thirty confirmed dead and at least a hundred seriously injured. And once they start clearing wreckage, you better believe both those numbers gunna go up. And now The Flash's sidekick and Batman's sidekick and... Superboy? They're gunna try and fight it?"

"Half of it's still in the back. At most, they're fighting its head, shoulders and waist."

"If I had a dollar for every time-."

"Oh El! Guess who just did something totally awesome?"

"Kid Flash. I'm going to guess: Robin."

"J-. Okay, he did kinda awesome, but it was mostly me."

"Please just tell me what happened."

"Well, bad news, Ivo put Amazo back together. Sorta. Good news, since he didn't have all the parts it wasn't anything like as powerful as when the League fought it."

Remember that you don't know what they don't think you know. "Amazo?"

"Yeah, that's what Ivo called his super android. We caught up with them at the train depot. He did the whole 'sending children after me' speech, then we kicked his tin can's can."

"Do you have Ivo?"

"Nah, some of the Monkeys flew him away after Amazo reactivated. Dude, you shoulda seen it; looked like the Terminator with half his skin ripped off."

"What?"

"You know? The Sylvester Stallone film? Or doesn't your world have that?"

"We, we, Stallone? Er, different lead actor."

"Half the parts looked like he got them outta junk yard! Which is where we sent him."

"Are you alright?"

"I'm fine."

"Glad to hear it. How're Robin and Superboy?"

Nothing for a moment.

"Ah, Rob's good. Rob's good. Yeah."

"Kid Flash, I swear to the gods that if you don't give me a straight answer right now I will fly there and take it from your still living brain. What. Happened. To Superboy."

"Jeez, chill, dude. I dunno exactly. He went after Ivo, and it turned out the Amazo thing wasn't quite as down as we thought it was. Once we finished it off Rob tried finding him, but his communicator musta got lost or something."

!Kon Mine!

"Please confirm that the android is completely out of the fight."

"Yeah, I stuck one of Robin's EMP mines right in its brain. It's fried."

Ring, location of Kon-El. Thank you.

"Superboy's at the Gotham City Academy. Ivo and all the remaining Monkeys I can detect are there as well."

"I think Superboy can take some Monkeys."

I summon a view screen. Kon recoils as a glowing beam grazes his arm.

"No, I'm watching him now. Think they've upgraded the eye beams."

"Okay, well… Hey, Rob! How far's Gotham Academy from here? Okay. I can be there in, like, a minute."

"I'll be there in four seconds. Good evening, sergeant."

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3rd August

21:29 GMT -5

"I'm not usually one for the 'hands on' approach, but this is too good an opportunity to miss."

I'm directly above the playing field behind the main Gotham Academy building. The seven remaining Monkeys are arranged in a loose circle around Kon, rockets inactive. Ivo's sitting on a nearby picnic table, watching with interest. There's no way seven Monkeys are a threat to him. What am I missing?

One of the Monkeys leans forward, and two beams of red light blast from its eyes and strike Kon in the chest.

"Ggghhhurrrhh!"

Another two join in. His t-shirt burns off and his skin smokes and oh no you fucking don't!

I haven't yet found a safe and reliable way to enhance Kon's Kryptonianness, but my studies have given me an insight into how Kryptonians recharge. And why the red parts of the visible spectrum can be a problem. My photon beam illuminates the area around him to recharge him even as my construct armour materialises around his body. Kon seems surprised for a moment, then looks up at me and grins savagely.

"Ah. And who might you be?"

I lower myself to just above ground level, between Kon and Ivo. "Yes, because helping supervillains is what I'm all about. Superboy, do you want the Monkeys or-."

The first Monkey explodes as he lunges through it, creating a crater which bowls over two more.

"Rightho then." I look directly at Ivo, who cringes and draws a controller of some description. Jam. He presses it once, twice, then throws it aside and starts to run. I don't even bother holding him in place as a ShockCrown construct appears around his head. He freezes, trips, and slams into the ground.

Ring, make sure he doesn't leave.

Compliance.

A window shatters. Turning, I see Kon rip apart the last of the Monkeys. A flash of OrangeVision shows that the window was pulverised by the remains of the second to last Monkey, propelled at great force.

"RAaaaaaggghh!"

"Kon, you injured?"

His face is a picture of frustration and rage, and the remains of his t-shirt have flaked off. He raises his left leg and stomps down hard on one of the larger pieces of Monkey, throwing up a large cloud of dust and creating another depression in the ground.

Their groundskeeper is going to hate us.

Ring, check his health.

Vital signs within acceptable parameters. No significant injuries detected. No harmful microbes or parasites detected.

Right. I land, and walk towards him, removing the armour constructs around us and sending my regular armour to subspace as I go.

"Kon, what's going on?"

"Rrrrruh!" He turns, head down, and stalks away from me, booted feet leaving deep footprints in the soil.

I should probably tell Aqualad and the others what happened.

!Kon needs me!

But I suppose Ivo's not going anywhere. Kon doesn't seem to be walking in a particular direction, so I leave the ground and drift along after him. After a few moments he slows, then stops.

"He thought I was Superman's son."

Ah. I float around to his front. He still won't look at me.

"Urm, strength, toughness, 'S' on the chest. It was a logical deduction."

"He kept going on about it. Comparing us. Saying I wasn't as good as he is."

"Kon, supervillains are arseholes. Talking you down is what they do."

He looks up. "But I'm not, am I?! I'm never going to be able to do the things he can do!"

I'm at a loss. "Maybe not, but Superman style isn't the only way to be a superhero. There's other skills you can-."

"That's what they showed me."

"What who showed you?"

His eyes drop again, and he exhales heavily. "The G-Gnomes. When I was in the tank. They showed me being as strong as Superman. Stronger. Fighting him and winning. And now I'm out, and I can't… They showed me him so many times. And even though they wanted me to hate him, I don't, I just…"

He looks up. The anger is gone now, and he just looks lost.

"He was the only person they showed me who was like me. Even when they made me fight him the whole time, I felt… I dunno, a connection. A similarity. And then I got out and met him, I, I thought…"

"You thought that he'd feel the same way."

He sags. "It was stupid. There's loads of other superheroes around."

I don't think a rational argument is going to work here. I land about a metre in front of him. I don't know what to do. I take a step closer. No response.

I need to know what to do.

!Superboy doesn't need nasty Superman. He needs me!

Another step closer. We're only ten centimetres apart now. I reach out and put my right hand on his left upper arm, next to his shoulder. He moves his head slightly, looking at it.

Then I step forward again and hug him. My left arm goes around the right side of his chest, under his right arm. My head on his right shoulder, my right arm over his left. My hands against his bare skin. Touching him like this, I can feel it as he tenses slightly. I hadn't really thought about it, but now I do I suppose it's quite possible that no one's hugged him before. Maybe I shouldn't have done this? Then I feel him lean into me a little, and his previously loose hands reach up to touch my back. I feel him relax a little. We stand like that for a few moments. I don't know if this is actually helping him, but I hope so.

"Hey! You got Ivo! Nice work g-!" Wallace skids to a halt just past the place where Kon pasted the Monkeys. "Oh. Um. Oh." He's staring. He bends his right arm back, right hand behind his head. "I'll just. I'll just be over here. With Ivo. You just, just carry on. With… Whatever."

He walks backwards, narrowly avoids tripping on a crater and then turns and walks back to the recumbent malign hypercognitive.

Kon takes a half pace back, his hands still touching me. He's actually looking at me as well, and I can see the ghost of a smile.

"Um, thanks. That felt… Nice. We should, we should probably, probably clear up the Monqis, or something."

"Yeah, I hear that term time starts soon."

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4th August

01:06 GMT -5

"The Amazo android is in pieces again, safely being analyzed at the two separate STAR Labs. Ivo is in custody, and since he originated the tech I would strongly advise that the greatest possible security measures be put in place to ensure that he remains there."

We're standing opposite Batman, Black Canary, Red Tornado, Green Arrow and Martian Manhunter. Kon didn't have a spare t-shirt with him, so I've lent him one of mine. It just about fits; the shoulders and sleeves are a bit tight and he had to roll up the cuffs. Have to see about persuading him to try other clothes.

I returned to my original truck to see Sergeant Ramones safely to Star Manhattan, while the rest of the team dropped a still paralysed Ivo off with Metropolis SCU. They then flew what was left of 'Termanazo' -Robin's choice of description- to STAR Labs in Boston. No further incidents.

Just in case, I avoided using the ring directly on either part of the android.

I'm actually not sure why we didn't just use the bioship in the first place. Maybe the League were concerned about what would happen if Amazo reactivated in a confined environment? Some sort of public relations thing after the fact? Doesn't seem… Politic..? To question it. I know that I'm very junior here and there's probably something I'm not seeing.

Wallace keeps staring at me. Not sure why.

"Making sure the Professor remains in detention will be a League priority."

I'm glad that Black Canary's on top of things. If the police here are anything like in the comics then they're either incompetent or vastly outmatched. I took a few moments to look at the revised dead and injured count from the League's fight with Amazo and I fear the sergeant may have been being optimistic. Does this US have the death penalty? I'm not generally in favour, but I can see strong arguments for it in a place with people like Ivo. One man can do a lot more damage here than was possible back home.

Hm. Wonder if truth compulsion enchantments are used in trials. There must be some level of public awareness of that form of magic just from Diana's lasso. But then, I expected magic schools to be a fairly normal thing and they're virtually unheard of.

Martian Manhunter crosses his arms and narrows his eyes. "But we understand your mission encountered.. other.. complications."

What is he..? Does he mean where Kon went after Ivo? Because that was a reasonable decision if Amazo was down. Should I suggest something else? I'm honestly a little concerned that Ivo knew how to build red sun weapons.

Batman steps forward. "Complications come with the job. Your ability to handle them has impressed the League."

Kon leans back a bit, and crosses his arms. It's… No. Might have been nice if Superman was even slightly interested in him, but apparently that isn't happening. Wonder if Diana's talked to him yet.

"Of course there's no shame in asking for help; that's why the League exists, because there's some problems even we can't handle individually."

Robin responds to what I assume he sees as mollycoddling. "Please. If we needed help we'd never get the chance to ask."

I have no idea what that sentence means.

"Look familiar?"

He holds up an arrow Wallace found while checking the area around Gotham Academy in minute detail while Kon and I stood guard. He was very thorough. Useful, as I wouldn't have known what to scan for. There were a number of wrecked Monqis that Kon says he didn't destroy himself, as well as several arrows like that one.

"You were following us."

One arrow does not a League posse make, but he wouldn't hear it when he aired his theory on the bioship ride back. The arrow has green fletching, but now I've had a chance to scan him the ring tells me that the shaft and the shape of the tip are noticeably different to what Green Arrow uses.

"Babysitting, you still don't trust us!"

Green Arrow steps forward and takes the arrow out of Robin's hand. He examines it closely, while Batman answers the accusation.

"We didn't follow you."

Green Arrow holds up one of his own so Robin can compare them. The head of his is curved, rather than serrated like the ones from the Gotham Academy. I had wondered about that; serrated arrows are designed to be hard to remove from flesh without causing further harm and seemed a bit.. nasty for a clean cut superhero. Robin sees it as the rest of us do.

"And that's not your arrow. But that means-."

Wallace is grinning. "Speedy!"

If it isn't an apple, it must be a banana. How does that make sense? Speedy uses red arrows, this one is green and brown. And I doubt he uses serrated heads either. But if it makes them happy…

"He has our backs."

Kaldur, if you seriously believe that then I've got an underwater bridge I can sell you.

Air displaces, and Wallace has the serrated arrow in his hand. "Souvenir."

Wallace and Robin walk off in the direction of the trophy room. I guess that part of the debrief is done then.

"Sir?" Batman looks at me. I glance in Kon's direction. "The red light weapons which the Monqis attacking Kon were using. Has that sort of thing been used before? Against Superman?"

"No. After you described the process by which it operates I spoke with Captain Atom. He tells me that it would be within his abilities to replicate the spectra necessary to achieve that effect. Possibly, Ivo learned of it from the recordings contained within the android, and redesigned their weapons with that in mind. But you're right, it is a concern, and the League will be on the look out for similar technology in the future. If Ivo learned of it from someone else, we will find them."

"What..? What do you intend to tell the school?"

"The team did a thorough job of cleaning up evidence of anything… Unusual. Sadly, criminal damage is not uncommon in Gotham. It is unlikely this will raise any eyebrows, and it shouldn't delay the start of the new term."

"Thank you sir. If you'll excuse me?"

A tiny nod, and I turn away to walk back to my quarters. Uh, I need sleep. With one thing and another I missed meditation today. Yesterday. Missing one day every so often shouldn't matter and I'm far too tired to maintain the necessary mindset now. No need to charge the ring. None of what I did took all that much power, and I'm not planning anything much first thing tomorrow. First thing today. Second thing.

I haven't even reached my door when I switch to my pyjamas. They're the only clothing I currently own without some orange on them. Blue tartan pattern trousers and a thin grey pullover. Only thing that came with me from home. A pulse of orange cleans me. I actually have to pause for a moment as my tiredness means that my usual revulsion at the prospect of dirt is dampened enough that the process is noticeably slower than normal.

"Paul, do you have a moment."

I turn, not even trying to keep how I feel from my face. "Kaldur, I'm about to fall asleep on my feet. Is this something that can wait at all?"

"I wanted to commend you for your decision to preserve the Monqi specimens intact. It will make reverse engineering them a good deal easier."

"I hate seeing useful things getting broken."

Anything else? Yes, it seems there is.

"M'gann tells me that you do not believe the arrow was fired by Speedy."

"Kaldur, there's a lot of arrows out there. If you want to know whether it was him or not, just phone him and ask. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to bed."

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NEXT CHAPTER

Exfiltrator

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Exfiltrator 1

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Exfiltrator

9th August

09:52 GMT -5

I've now been in a world with superheroes for over a month.

The thought hits me as I leave my room having changed into beach wear. I'm not usually a fan of beach activity, but I have resolved to participate in as many group activities as possible. And who knows, maybe with the higher temperatures and -let's be honest here- nicer beaches than Eastbourne it'll grow on me. With the ring I don't have to worry about sun burn or cuts from small stones.

A world of superheroes is probably the only place in which my wardrobe would go unremarked. Back home I have an eclectic range of garments, bought years ago or -in the case of most of my t-shirts- won as prizes. Never tried to create a theme, and didn't really wear most of it. Here, I'm doing things a bit differently. Aside from a few white shirts everything is grey with orange decoration. As a result, everything goes with everything else and I'm immediately recognisable to anyone who knows me without standing out much to anyone who doesn't.

Currently, I'm wearing dark grey swimming trunks with a partial view of the Orange Lantern Corps sigil to the front of my left hip. I'm carrying a large thick grey towel with a slightly elongated Orange sigil in the centre. For obvious reasons the beach around the Mountain is private, and it's not like the sigil is widely known. I had thought that it might be a problem if anyone saw us on the beach attached to a known Justice League facility, but really the idea of this place remaining secret for any length of time was such a nonsense anyway that I decided not to care.

I've now been in a world with superheroes for over a month. Some things I've adapted to. The costumes no longer stand out as much. I've started getting used to new names for familiar things, and have updated my alternate history knowledge sufficiently that differences there no longer leave me dumbfounded. But the more I've learned, the less other things make sense. The separation of magic from mainstream study is a big one. Tech hoarding is another, and superheroes do it nearly as much as supervillains. I decided that if I wanted to change that, I'd have to prove to the League that I can have good ideas. Before I design an escape resistant supervillain prison on Ganymede, I need something on a smaller scale.

Suggesting appropriate people for League candidacy is one possible avenue, and recommendations for membership of my team another. I've decided to perform background research on people I think might be what the League's looking for, but whom they wouldn't ordinarily consider. Diana already knows that I can break secret identities easily, so that won't come as a shock. She hasn't said anything about that since. I wonder if I should ask?

League membership comes pretty much from word of mouth, which is why most members are American. There aren't any other Amazons in Diana's weight class and few of them would have the inclination to join up anyway. The latter is part of the reason why there aren't any other Atlanteans either, though Kaldur tells me that the opinion among younger Atlanteans is rather different. So; who do I know of that would be a good member?

Accomplished Perfect Physician is the obvious choice. A decent man, powerful enough to stand with the League and not so nationalistic that he'd create discord. Plus, if I remember correctly he's an actual medical doctor, and the League could do with one of those. Since he doesn't know anyone in the League he'd never be recommended through normal channels. Would the Chinese government let him? I think so. I doubt that they really want him in the Great Ten, or the equivalent group if it doesn't exist here. They signed off on the League's UN mandate, and I imagine that they'd like to see someone 'flying the flag'. So, put his name down for background checking if I can confirm that he exists.

Heh. I imagine it'll be a novel experience for the Chinese military: having someone hack them.

I can't think of anyone else. All the other superheroes I can remember well are American. Of those I don't remember well, I think there was an Arab guy who worked with Superman a bit? Might be able to track him down. Fire and Ice of course, but Fire's involvement in Operation Condor puts me off her a bit. No, hang on, she'd have been far too young to have been involved if that happened in this timeline. Uh, this is going to be irritating. I still can't rely on what I think I know.

Anyway. No one else stands out as a good candidate that wouldn't have already come to their attention. I can start investigating him this afternoon, if nothing comes up. As for team members, Zatanna is an obvious auto-include. We could do with a thaumaturgist and her father is a League member. She's a lot younger than I thought she'd be. Still no luck on Timothy Hunter or Rachel Roth. Actually had a go at tracing Ms Roth the hard way. None of the thirty two Rachel Roths in the right age category in the US appeared to match. I've given the ring instructions to make daily scans, but I'm not hopeful.

Once we finally got to speak to the right Abigail Holland I did a quick check. No Tefé. Abigail was understandably nervous about our presence but we eventually persuaded her to speak to Swamp Thing about establishing some sort of working relationship, though if he's anything like in the comics I doubt he'll go for it.

Other names? My first thoughts are of the younger Captain Cornwall and Red Star. Since the story I remember Cornwall from has him nearly kill his father due to his frustration at the latter's unwillingness to take superheroing seriously he seems like he would be both receptive to an offer and enthusiastic about taking advantage of it. If we can get to him before he reaches the patricide stage. Red Star I don't really know much about, but I think he was a member of the Teen Titans and again, I think his government would probably be okay about releasing him. I've already confirmed that Beryl Hutchinson is active as Squire, but I worry that Knight might fall apart again without her. Maybe? I'm sure that Diana would appreciate seeing some female names on any list I present.

The one person I'd really like to see join us is Amon. If he exists here then he's probably either an infant or in a slave labour camp somewhere. Plus, he won't be empowered unless I sort things out with Teth Adam. I think I'm going to need to retrace the Batsons' last steps to see if I can further clarify his origins. I'd like to help, but I can't afford to take unnecessary chances.

For a moment I actually considered suggesting Teth Adam for League membership. I remember him spending time with the Justice Society in the comics, but it didn't last and I doubt it could work here anyway. Theo's just done too much damage with his stolen powers.

We're meeting in the dining area. I think I can just about hear M'gann…

"…doesn't necessarily mean that. Maybe they just do things differently in England?"

I turn the corner and M'gann and Robin are already there. M'gann's wearing a yellow bikini top and yellow shorts, and she has a short red surfboard thing propped up against a work surface. She's also still green. Guess she thinks that the secrecy thing's a non-starter as well. Robin's wearing blue shorts, and has a small white towel around his neck and a ball in his right hand.

"Do what differently in England?"

"Ah-."

M'gann had her back to me. She turns and sees me. Her eyes widen. Do I have something on my face?

"What?"

Robin's smirking.

"Cooking! We were talking about cooking!"

"Oh. Look, I know Britain hasn't had the best reputation for food, but we've come a long way in the last decade or so. I grew up watching cookery programs, and we hardly ever ate take away or prepackaged food at home. Can't promise it's a national trait or anything, but I enjoy cooking."

M'gann's still staring. Is it the trunks? Were they a mistake? I haven't swum regularly for a very long time, but I used to wear them back when I did. Plus, I'm honest enough to admit that I want to show off my ring-engineered body a little. She can't be reacting to that, though. All the guys on the team are as buff as me, or buffer.

Kaldur and Kon approach from the kitchen, carrying picnic baskets. Kon just registers my presence, but Kaldur stares a little too. What is it?

"Um. I don't think I've seen you without-." M'gann's eyes flick over me, and she gulps. "Without your ring on."

"Oh, you still haven't. I'm wearing it now."

The whole team stares. Then, as one, their gaze drifts down towards my trunks.

"MY TOE! On my TOE!" I raise my left foot and point to it on my enringed long toe. "Minds out the gutter, people."

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Exfiltrator 2

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9th August

18:31 GMT -5

Batman, Red Tornado and Green Arrow stand with our newest recruit, waiting for us to respond to her presence. I wait for one of the others to say something. Kaldur, really. Nothing. Rolling my eyes, I step forward with my left hand extended.

"Orange Lantern two eight one four. Pleased to meet you, Artemis."

She seems a little surprised. A small smile and… Is that a blush? Hard to tell with that face mask thing. Not a bad effort, as masks go.

"Ah. Likewise." She takes my hand lightly, holds it for a moment and then releases. Not big on skin contact?

"Seems it falls to me to introduce the rest of the squad. You'll have to forgive them, they're a bit shy."

Another eye roll from me for her to see. I don't know exactly what Batman and Green Arrow were thinking, dropping her on us like this with no warning. Come to think of it, I don't know why they didn't give the first four warning about M'gann or myself.

I turn, and gesture to my team mates in turn. "Superboy, Miss Martian, Aqualad and Robin. Real names are extended on a case by case basis. Mine's on this card."

One appears and I hand it to her. She looks at it and raises an eyebrow. "Isn't this supposed to have your cell on it?"

The large areas of her face showing do rather ruin the otherwise sensible idea behind her mask.

"It's not a business card. I am physically incapable of saying my own name." I shake my head. "Don't ask why, I have no idea."

Kaldur finally gets his act together and extends his right hand. "Artemis, welcome to the team. My name is Kaldur'ahm."

She takes his hand with a nod, and the others step forwards to greet her. This whole thing brings to mind a group of dogs sniffing the posterior of a new member while the Human owners look on to make sure things don't turn nasty. I think I'd be a Collie…

"So are we getting a mission out of this?"

I think Robin would be something small and yappy. A Chihuahua, possibly. My Gran used to have one. Ancient thing, name of Fang. Blame my great uncle.

Red Tornado and Green Arrow look to Batman. "Yes. The briefing will be held once Speedy arrives."

Robin and Kaldur share a look. Kaldur speaks first. "Will Speedy be joining the team as well?"

Green Arrow winces slightly, but Batman answers. "He has been given that option, but so far has chosen not to make use of it."

"Yeah, said he wanted to go solo for a while."

Green Arrow isn't making eye contact as he says it. Looks like they had a bit of a falling out over the whole 'junior team' thing.

I don't remember Artemis from the comics at all. Not this Artemis anyway. I think that alien queen Booster Gold ran into was called Artemis, and there was almost certainly an Amazon by that name. I also don't remember anything about Green Arrow having a niece. A son, yes, and a couple of wards. No other family. Maybe Artemis is this parallel's version of Conner Hawke? Or Mia Harper? I haven't bothered putting either of them on my mental list of possibles due to me not really getting the whole.. bow thing.

It's a bent stick that fires pointy sticks. Even for trick arrow stuff, guns are just better.

Wait. Is he lying about the niece thing? Oh, yes, yes he is. Hm.

"Did he say when he was getting here?" I point towards the kitchen with my right thumb. "I ask because I'd started dinner. Wanna know if I've got time to finish…"

Green Arrow shrugs. "Roy said he'd get here at eight. He's usually pretty punctual."

I look at Batman. "Sir? Do you need me for anything in the meantime?"

He considers for a moment. "No." He turns to the rest of the team. "Reconvene at nineteen fifty. Aqualad, a moment."

Hm. Not sure what that's about. Team leader probably needs to know stuff about the newest member. With whom we've done no training at all.

My medium armour is replaced by my civilian clothing and Orange Corps apron (legend: You Know You Want This), and I walk towards the kitchen. Robin looks like he wants to hang around and wait for Wallace to turn up. Turns out that American school holidays can finish a lot earlier than they do in Britain, and he had to miss our time on the beach. A shame; I enjoyed it more than I was expecting and it would have made for a better team bonding exercise if he was present.

I suppose the rest will be starting back soon as well. I hope Kon agrees to attend. It would do him good, and I'm sure M'gann would appreciate having someone to keep her company. Means that I'll be rattling around here with Kaldur. Haven't had a really good personal conversation with him yet. I've read his file of course, but it would be nice to get to know him as a per-.

"What're you making?"

Oh. Artemis followed me.

"Chilli. I'd appreciate your input, actually. I know that chilli is a big deal in Green Arrow's family."

Maybe cruel, but she needs to learn that good cover stories don't just happen.

"Oh. Uh, of course."

I have two large frying pans full of beef mince on the hobs. I think of them as 'team' and 'Wallace'. I turn them back on and float up my notebooks while I wait for them to get back up to temperature. They're black covered, with orange bindings and an orange sigil front and back. One for League stuff, one for team stuff and the third…

The third is for my Corps.

I know I lack the skills that will be required to run it. Having seen the way the Guardians treat the Greenies I'd like a structure where authority is more in the hands of Corps officers. Since I can't be sure exactly who is available until I can get out into the wider galaxy I can't get too attached to a particular choice, but I've got a few names so far.

Since Starfire isn't on Earth, she is most likely still a prisoner of the Psions. The same may be true of her sister Blackfire as well. If Starfire is as she was in the comics then she'd make an excellent recruit. Her sister might as well, depending on the exact circumstances of their detention. I seem to remember that she was partially to blame for it? Not sure. Tamaranians seemed to get made into the galaxy's chew toy for a while, and I'd like to prevent that.

Though I wasn't specifically thinking of her at the time, Soranik Natu is the perfect example of someone who might use a ring for medical purposes and never get into a fight. How much she can actually get away with living like that will depend on the political and social situation on Korugar at this point in time, but I'd wish her all the best.

Who could actually handle running it? Who do I want for Clarissi? One name stands out, but will he be available?

The fat and oil in the pans starts to sizzle. I form a spatula and move it around a little. Time to haze the new girl.

"What sort of chilli powder do you think is most appropriate? We've got a couple of different types but it's all one to me."

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Exfiltrator 3

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9th August

18:36 GMT -5

It is fast becoming apparent that Artemis knows nothing about chilli. Asking whether or not I should add vinegar got an uncertain affirmative. Asking what type resulted in her looking wide eyed at the three types proffered before picking 'the brown one'. I say that I heard that the Arrows like it hot, she responds by telling me to use the whole jar of chilli powder, plus a generous measure of Tabasco sauce. I had to suggest that the rest of us don't have their tolerances in order to stop the whole thing getting ruined. Maybe she's more worried about the whole 'niece' thing than I thought she would be? Am I being a bit mean about this? Might be easier to just scan her background, but I really don't want to keep doing that sort of thing. Didn't J'onn J'onzz nearly get kicked off the nascent Justice League for doing exactly that?

Finally got the mince, onions, tomato and spice transferred into the large saucepan, and now it's on to simmer. I'm currently sitting in the air while jotting things down in the notebooks. The man I want as Clarissi is Vril Dox. Managing the Corps would be a trivial task for a man of his intellect, and his desire to create interstellar security will most likely make him a capable ring user in his own right. Legion, the Darkstars and my Corps as part of the same organisation? Suddenly the job starts to actually look possible. Depending on what point in his personal timeline this is, getting him will either be trivially easy or very hard. If he's-.

"What are you doing?"

"Planning."

"What are you planning?"

Her tone makes it clear that the unspoken word at the end of that sentence was 'ass'.

"Theft, brigandage, torture, the subjugation of all free peoples, and puppy golf."

Nonplussed. "Puppy… Golf?"

I put my feet back on the floor, look up, put my fists together and pull them back behind my shoulder. "It's like normal golf, only instead of a ball you-."

"I get it! I get it!"

I move my arms as if swinging a golf club. "Ruff!"

She grimaces. "You're disgusting."

"I try." I give her a smile. "I'm trying to plan -among other things- the future structure of my Corps. The sort of people I want in it, how I'll persuade them to sign up. That sort of thing."

"Wait. You can just give out power rings?"

"Noooooooott yet. That's something else I'm working on."

One of the things the ring actually does have instructions on is how to make more rings. At the most intense level of desire I could generate under test conditions the ring tells me that it would take me five months' continuous effort to forge one. At my actual peak output it would be more like a week, but there's no way I could sustain that. Think I'll put that on the back burner.

"Ah! But I'm being rude. How long have you been involved in vigilantism? I mean, if it's a family thing-."

Her eyes narrow. "You know." She turns away from me and clenches her fists. "Damn it!"

"You didn't put much effort into the cover story. If it helps, I don't actually care that you're not his niece. I'm not related to anyone around here either."

"What gave me away!?"

"Green Arrow's an only child and unmarried. Of all of the relations he might refer to as 'niece' to keep things simple, none of them are half South-East Asian."

I've actually got a fairly good idea which country, province and ethnic group that parent was from, but no need to completely freak her out.

And now she's right in my face. "Have you been spying on us!?"

Remember the cover story. "You, no. Him, yes. You got a ring scan when I wanted to check whether or not you were actually his niece. He got a thorough scanning when I first came to this planet and tried to work out what the hell was going on with the weird costumes."

Anger and confusion, now.

"You're an alien?"

"Ah, no. Parallel universe. With no superheroes. Point is, I was in a strange place without any backup, and I wanted as much information as I could get to keep myself safe."

She backs up a little. "Oh." She's looking to the side. Did I get away with it? "I guess that makes sense."

"Look, I don't know what your real name is, and I don't intend to use the ring to find out. I no longer feel the need to do that sort of thing. I know I can depend on everyone on the team, and they know they can depend on me. That's kind of what brought me and Superboy closer together."

"Ah..."

Now she's gone back to uncertain. Oh, right.

"You probably saw us fighting Professor Ivo's Monqis, right? You were at the school?"

"Um, yeah. I saw you both, y'know, together."

"You should have said something at the time."

"I… I didn't want to interrupt."

"We're professionals. The job takes precedence. And it might have been nice to get a little warning that you were going to be joining us."

"Batman and Green Arrow only came to talk to me after that. I'd been.. doing stuff.. since the end of July. Stopping robberies, stuff like that."

"I got the ring at the beginning of July. Waking up in orbit is not a fun way to start a day. But, you must've been in training for a long time to use a bow for something like that."

Wariness, this time. Surrender gesture with my hands.

"If you don't want to talk about it, that's fine."

Looks like she doesn't.

"You really woke up in orbit?"

"Ermmm… Sort of? In space between the Earth and the Moon. I'm not sure I was actually orbiting."

She frowns. "So… Does your universe have Orange Lanterns rather than Green ones?"

"If we do, none have come to our Earth at any point in recorded history. I'm fairly sure that the orange ring I wear came from this parallel."

"How does that work?"

"I've no idea. If you find out, let me know. I'd quite like to tell my parents where I am."

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Exfiltrator 4

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9th August

19:53 GMT -5

Green Arrow said that my chilli was 'okay'.

I can now die happy.

He said that he usually serves it with crackers rather than rice. I've only really seen crackers eaten with cheese as the last part of a meal or as a snack. It would never have occurred to me to eat them with chilli. He also made significant use of the Tabasco sauce I offered him as a condiment. I think his super power must be heat resistance. I could probably have equalled him with my ring-granted resilience, but why bother? Food shouldn't be an endurance contest.

Aqualad turned up when I started slicing peppers to give Artemis a tour of the facility. I suggested that she claim a bedroom now to avoid disappointment later. Red Tornado sort of sat in for dinner, but Batman said that he wasn't hungry. Everyone else was, and I like to think that eating together brought us closer together. Wallace actually ended up missing dinner. I was a little surprised by that. I don't think American schools finish all that much later in the day than British ones. Maybe he got loaded with homework? Doesn't matter all that much. No matter how pained the idea made Green Arrow look chilli freezes perfectly well.

Now we're waiting for Red Arrow to arrive with our briefing. Hope Wallace gets here as well; he'll be annoyed if he misses it. Robin tried the comm link a few minutes ago and apparently he's on his way.

"Do'ya know what Speedy's been up to lately? We've sorta been out of touch."

I think that's the first thing Robin's actually said to Artemis. He isn't happy about the whole 'replacement archer' thing. I'm trying to work out if I should suggest getting a better weapon, maybe a nice coil gun or something? I might be able to build one that can fire the specialist tips DC archers like so much.

Not a boxing glove arrow, obviously. I have standards.

Artemis' cover story is still paper thin. Obviously she would have met Speedy if she were actually Green Arrow's niece, and she clearly hasn't.

"Um, yeah, I've seen-."

"Recognised, Kid Flash, Bee zero three."

The zeta tube glows with white light and… Oh my…

Wallace has prepared for the beach. Robin did try and tell him there was a mission in the works, but it looks like it didn't get through.

"The Wall-man is here!"

He has a sunshade, a picnic basket, some sort of music player, a beach ball, two other bags and he's wearing swimming shorts. Maybe trunks really are that unusual here?

"Now lets get this part-ay star-." He hurries forwards and trips on the sunshade's support pole. I catch him, remove some of his encumbrance and stack it to the side before propping him back up. "Uh, thanks."

"Wall-man, huh? Ha, love the uniform." Is it really a uniform if it's not uniform? At least I have the excuse that other Corps members genuinely do dress like me. Inasmuch as they dress. "What exactly are your powers?"

I think I'm getting to like Artemis.

Wallace just looks blankly at her. "Uh, who's this?"

"Artemis, your new team mate."

"Kid Flash, never heard of you."

Green Arrow steps forward and places his right hand on her shoulder. "Urp, she's my new protégé."

"W-w-what happened to your old one?"

"Recognised, Speedy, B zero seven."

Everyone turns their attention to the zeta tube.

His clothes are black, except for the red 'shoot me' sign on his upper chest. He's wearing some sort of straps around his waist and shoulders. There's a red bow over his right shoulder, and a black quiver full of red arrows. Short orange hair and the de rigueur pointless tiny mask. Looks like he's actually thought about what it makes sense to wear, but was too concerned about the mockery of his peers to go full unretard.

"Well for starters he doesn't go by Speedy anymore." Red Arrow it is then. Makes sense to me. "Call me Red Arrow."

Ah, should have made a bet with someone.

Green Arrow is first to respond. He sounds… Concerned? "Roy. You look-."

"Replaceable."

"It's not like that. You told me you were going solo."

"So why waste time finding a sub?"

Maybe no one at all thought the cover story through properly?

"Can she even use that bow?"

Artemis steps up to him. "Yes, she can."

Wallace gets back to what he considered to be the most important question. "Who are you?"

"She's my niece." / "I'm his niece."

Red Arrow's going to know that's nonsense, isn't he? He doesn't say anything. I'm going to assume that someone who's been around superheroes as long as he has knows when not to argue someone's identity.

Kaldur steps forward to reassure his friend. "She's not your replacement. We've always wanted you on the team, and we have no quota on archers."

"And if we did, you know who we'd pick."

Wallace, we're going to have to work with this woman. Was that really necessary?

Huh, with Robin, Wallace and Kaldur moving towards their friend M'gann, Kon and I have sort of been shuffled to the back. I don't think any of us have actually met him before. No, hang on, Kon went with them the morning we fought Mister Twister. Maybe he just didn't make a good impression?

"Whatever, Baywatch. I'm here to stay."

She took that better than I was expecting.

Red Arrow takes a step towards his friends, and Kaldur tries to bring us to the point. "You came to us for a reason."

"Yeah, a reason called Doctor Serling Roquette."

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Exfiltrator 5

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9th August

19:58 GMT -5

Never heard of him. I did actually check the mad scientist files after the thing with Ivo too, so he can't be an existing supervillain.

Robin looks at his arm computer. "Nano-robotics genius-" Screens appear in mid air with parts of-. Her biography, and a current photo. I am so glad Diana wasn't listening to what I was thinking a second ago. 'So, you think that women don't belong in science, Orange Lantern?' Her eyebrow would be raised so far… "-and claytronics expert at the Royal University in Star City."

Royal? I think not.

"Vanished two weeks ago."

"Abducted two weeks ago. By the League of Shadows."

Wasn't that what Batman Begins renamed the League of Assassins? If we're going up against a bunch of people with swords, this is going to be the shortest mission ever.

"Whaw! You want us to rescue her from the Shadows?" Robin likes the idea. None of these people will have heard of Cliff Richard, so there's no point trying to make a joke of it. "Hardcore!"

Wallace fist bumps Robin. Seems he likes the idea too. Not sure what's so exciting. Frankly, I've read up on them and I'm fairly confident that I could take down a cell single-handedly. The only reason I haven't suggested this to anyone is that the cells are darn hard to find. If we already know where they are, this actually will be the shortest mission ever.

"I already rescued her."

Ring, has he filed a mission report? No, that would have been a bit much to hope for.

Red Arrow walks over to the display. A new screen with technical schematics pops up. "Only one problem. The Shadows had already coerced her into creating a weapon."

Ring, take a copy of all this stuff. It might be useful later.

Compliance.

"Doc calls it 'the fog'."

No no no! Not nanotech! Not the blooming code word for nonsense techno magic! It could do anything here! The only thing I remember about how it's supposed to work back home is that it's supposed to be bad at dealing with heat. And I learned that from a Deus Ex discussion thread. And I haven't practised a maser cannon construct! "Comprised of millions of microscopic robots. Nanotech Infiltrators, capable of disintegrating anything in their path. Concrete. Steel. Flesh. Bone."

One of the pictures is a slightly insect looking robot. How is that going to fly in a controlled manner? Would my shield block a nanoswarm? It should, it isn't made of matter and it's only porous to the things I want it to be porous to. Just have to remember to cover the ground and I should be safe.

"But its true purpose isn't mere destruction; it's theft. The Infiltrators eat and store raw data from any computer system-" We are now in comic book technology territory. Abandon the scientific method all ye who enter here. "-and deliver the stolen intel to the Shadows. Providing them access to weapons, strategic defense, cutting edge science and tech."

So, not guys with swords.

"Perfect for extortion, manipulation, power broking… Yeah, sounds like the Shadows." The tone suggests that Artemis isn't impressed. Or maybe she thought the last bit was kind of obvious…

Hang on. I can do all of that.

…

It would actually be easier for me to take that data with the ring than it is for the nano fog stuff to get it.

I could get it right now.

…

I don't think I'll mention that to anyone.

"Like you know anything about the Shadows."

Wallace has decided not to let the perceived slight against Red Arrow of Artemis' existence go unmentioned. Is this going to become a regular thing? I mean, there's plenty of information about the Shadows in the League database and I suspect that Batman's given her access to the same sort of partial version that I got before the team started.

Artemis smiles, not at him, but he can see it from where he's standing.

"Who are you!"

Does he think that she isn't famous enough to be here or something? Red Arrow ignores him and carries on with the briefing.

"Roquette's working on a virus to render the fog inert."

Robin tenses. "But if the Shadows know she can do that…"

"They'll target her. Right now, she's off the grid." An image of a large building appears on the screen. There's a red dot, presumably marking the location of the Doctor. "I stashed her at the local High School's computer lab."

Green Arrow is concerned. "You left her alone?"

"She's safe enough for now."

Ring, check that, would you?

I blink heavily and I get an image not only of the Doctor and the lab, but also of every weapon within two hundred metres. She's fine, but the school really needs to do a locker search…

"Then let's you and I keep her that way." Green Arrow walks towards Red Arrow, hands down by his side, tone friendly. Superman, take some fucking notes.

"You and I? Don't you want to take your new protégé?"

Green Arrow goes to take another step, but Batman puts a hand on his shoulder. He pauses, and reconsiders.

"You brought this to the team." He gestures in our general direction. "It's their mission, which means it's hers now too."

"Sshh. Then my job's done."

He walks past us, straight to the zeta tube. We watch him go.

"Recognised, Speedy-."

"That's Red Arrow." He looks at the ground, apparently frustrated at the need to define himself in terms of us. "Bee zero seven. Update."

THAT'S HOW YOU DO IT!

The zeta tube activates, and he's gone in a glow of white.

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Exfiltrator 6

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9th August

21:51 GMT -5

"That's how nanotech is supposed to work where I'm from."

Artemis and I are walking down a dark locker-filled hallway. Doctor Roquette was getting a wee bit testy at me asking questions about her Infiltrators, so I took the hint and went for a patrol. I asked Artemis to come along because I need to get to know her better in order to properly assist her with the ring, and because putting her in the same room as Wallace for a prolonged period seemed like a bad idea.

"And I thought scientists were supposed to like talking about their specialist subject."

We're not really patrolling to find Shadow Assassins, or whatever they're called. I've instructed the ring to notify me of any weapons breaching the perimeter, and frankly it'll do a much better job than any number of eyes. Unless… What was his name? That shadow guy the Hawks fought? Blinth, or something? Don't really remember, and I haven't seen him in the files. Could turn himself into an actual shadow. Not completely sure I'd pick him up.

"Not when they're trying to concentrate."

Kaldur, Robin and Wallace are in with the Doctor. M'gann's on the roof. Kon's on patrol somewhere... Oh, the roof as well? Alright.

I stop walking when we get to the locker I was looking for. I turn towards it, and set the ring to the task of opening it nicely. Artemis stops as well, and puts her right hand on her hip.

"Are you robbing a locker?"

"Technically, yes." The door comes open and I float out a small selection of knives. I take hold of one with a blood flow groove running down the side and hold it out to her. "Think these can go and live on the Headmaster's desk. With a note of the locker number."

She frowns. "How did you know they were there?"

I close the locker door and relock it. I realise that America is a bit more relaxed about weaponry than Britain, but I doubt that even their relaxed uniform policies allow for knives of this sort.

"Scanned the whole place for weapons, just in case."

"Really?"

"Yep." My eyes flash orange. "There's a couple of flick knives and a flare gun over in the western corridor, but I think we can-."

**Miss Martian, link us up.** If we're not linked, how am I hearing that? Maybe because M'gann's hearing it? Maybe Kaldur's been practising with her? Despite their earlier moaning, the others have got the hang of telepathic communication quickly enough. **We do not want the Shadows intercepting our comm.**

M'gann tests the network. **Everyone online?**

Artemis winces, and rubs her head with her right hand. **Auwa. This is weird.** For some reason she's staring at her right hand.

**And distracting.** Why did M'gann add the Doctor to the network? **Coding a distributed algorithm virus on a kiddie computer with less RAM than a wristwatch is hard enough. Now I have to hear teen-think in my skull?**

Kid Flash fails to de-escalate. **Lady, do you always complain when someone tries to help you?**

I need to stop him. **Orange Lantern to Miss Martian and Aqualad. I don't see any point in intruding in the good Doctor's valuable headspace.**

Kaldur agrees. **Miss Martian, are you able to exclude Doctor Roquette from the link?**

**Sure. Just a moment… There, that aughta do it.**

There's a momentary pause.

**Doctor Roquette confirms that she can no longer hear us.**

**Good to know. Orange Lantern and Artemis resuming patrol.**

I mapped the place earlier. The Headmaster's… No, hang on, the Principal's office is two corridors and a flight of stairs away. Can't think the title without thinking of Princeps. Not sure if anyone would hear the difference with the ring translating.

**What are we actually looking for, anyway?**

"Nothing really. If the Shadows knew where we were, they'd have acted already. It's more to stop us dozing off than anything else."

**You're supposed to be looking for the Shadows, remember? I'm sure Red Arrow would have been happy to explain, if you hadn't driven him off the team.**

Not again…

Rage flashes over her face and she thrusts her head in Wallace's approximate direction.

**That's so not on me.**

**Kid Flash, please try to remain professional while we're on duty.**

**She started it.**

**Not the point.**

I don't hear anything else from him. I wait until Artemis' attention returns to our environment, then start walking again.

"You can just speak out loud, you know. If you want to talk to just me, rather than the whole team."

**I'm having… Uh…** She holds the heel of her right palm against her forehead. "Don't you have trouble keeping, y'know, keeping it separate?"

"No, not really. According to M'gann I have an unusually open mind."

She skips a step. **M'gann?**

**Yes? What is it?**

**No, uh, was.. talking to Orange Lantern. Never mind.**

"She and I spent some time practising telepathic communication. Seemed like a good idea, given how much we rely on it."

"Yeah, I can see what you-."

**Aqualad to team. I have asked Doctor Roquette to begin tracking the Infiltrator swarm. This will mean that the Shadows will be able to use the signal to track our location. Please remain on high alert, and report anything suspicious before investigating.**

I catch Artemis' eye. She nods.

**Orange Lantern and Artemis, message received and understood.**

**Superboy, got it.**

**Miss Martian, I'm ready.**

We reach an intersection and I stop. Making an opening gesture with my arms, I bring to life screens covering the surrounding area. Artemis seems a little taken aback.

"Whaw. Can you watch everything from here?"

"Nnnnn. Tried watching everything once, gave me a massive headache. The ring detects potential threats and draws my attention to them."

One screen is following a cat. I like cats, but it wouldn't be right, keeping one in the mountain. I instruct the screen to look for something dangerous instead, and it turns out that cat is the fifth most dangerous thing near the perimeter. Huh.

**Orange Lantern to team. Monitors are live, no sign of trouble so far. I will report every five minutes.**

Artemis walks up to the screen showing the front entrance, where M'gann has just been joined by Kon, who drops down from the roof. Artemis looks at him for a moment, then turns to me, left arm across her chest, right elbow on her left hand and her right index finger tapping her chin.

"So, you and Superboy, huh?"

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Exfiltrator 7

next

9th August

21:56 GMT -5

"Superboy and I what?"

Nothing of note on the screens. The most notable weapon is a shotgun in the boot of a car about eighty metres from the front entrance. Is that good practice? I don't think that's good practice.

"The two of you seemed pre-tty friendly, when I saw you in Gotham."

"Yes, we're good friends. Four of us live in the mountain full time, and he, M'gann and I have spent a lot of time together this last month."

"But, the two of you, y'know-."

**Miss Martian, Doctor Roquette has located the fog. Reconfigure the bioship so Robin and Superboy can pursue.**

The bioship drops down into the field of view of the screen covering the front lawn, hovering just off the ground. Robin leaves the building, and he and Superboy jog over and board it. Superboy's actually more proficient at flying the bioship than I am now. Maybe because he has fewer preconceptions about how flying is supposed to work? Or maybe the bioship flies more like Kryptonians fly? Not sure.

The screen covering the front entrance shows M'gann walking back inside the school, while the one covering the lawn homes in on a bush… Oh. Hah! They actually are sending guys with swords!

**Ladies and gentlemen, we have a ninja on the front lawn. Weird mask, couple of bladed weapons. Ooh, a pistol bow. Haven't seen one of those before.** I move the screen out a little, giving me a better view. M'gann freezes on the front steps. **Don't stop. Either keep walking, or attack immediately.** She lowers her head slightly, and walks up to the doors. **Ah, cheeky devil's going for the fence on your right.**

M'gann surges into the air, hands outstretched in the direction of the first Shadow, who had been executing a rather elegant leap over the perimeter fence. The Shadow -wearing what appears to be a tunic and thigh boots- is suspended upside down in mid-jump, facing away from the school. Nice to know it isn't just the heroes whose ability to dress themselves sensibly gets stolen away. Ah, the first Shadow is a woman. I seem to remember that Ra's was somewhat patriarchal. Female Ubu's certainly weren't allowed to fight until… Nyssia? Talia's sister, whatshername, took over. Am I misremembering that, or is it just different here?

M'gann flies over to the would-be attacker, and I hear Kaldur give warning just before I do. **M'gann, do not get too close.**

M'gann lowers her so that the fence is between them. That won't be much of an obstacle if she turns out to be one of those ridiculously able comic book fighters. Not sure exactly how resilient M'gann is, and I really don't want to find out the hard way. In training, we found that while M'gann can hold many objects at once with telekinesis she can only maintain a really strong force in one place. She says it's just a matter of training and experience, but she could end up in serious trouble if she misjudges this.

**"Well, this is embarrassing."**

I don't recognise the voice. Female. Wait. I think I'm hearing the assassin. We've shared visual images before, but this is new. Interesting.

**Aqualad to Miss Martian. Try to find out who else the Shadows are sending. Orange Lantern, are you detecting any other Shadows?**

**Not at present.**

**Miss Em, if you need backup I can be down there in a sec.**

M'gann pulls her hand back, yanking the Shadow against the wire of the fence. **I think I can manage.**

**"You're the Martian, right? Guess I need to think quieter."**

**"Who else are the League of Shadows sending?"**

Think we need to work on interrogation technique during our next lesson.

**"I have no idea what you're talking about. I was just coming here to use the gym."**

**"R-iiiight."**

**"The middle of the night's the only time I can use it without a bunch of guys staring at my ass the whole time. Kinda flattering at first, but it got old really fast."**

I hear a burst of music.

**Can't get anything from her mind. She keeps thinking of this song.**

How to get around that? **You could try breaking her concentration.**

**I don't really want to hurt her if she isn't fighting back.**

**Can you get any information past the song that you could use to surprise her?**

I almost don't see it. The Shadow's arms move slightly, and something… somethings fly towards M'gann. She jerks back in the air and brings them to a stop mere centimetres from her face. Are those shurikens? Wait, that one-!

One of the projectiles explodes, covering the area in smoke. I can still see M'gann just fine, but I doubt she can see a thing.

**M'gann, go for height in case she follows up!**

**No, she's gone.**

M'gann rises out of the smoke, the Shadow's tunic still in her telekinetic grip.

Kaldur can't see what's happening. **Miss Martian, report.**

**The Shadow threw some knives at me. They went right through the fence, but I stopped them before they hit me. I didn't spot the smoke bomb until it exploded. She got away.**

Another monitor tracks the Shadow as she sprints away from the building. Sports bra. Practical, though not exactly well armoured. Maybe armour doesn't go with her build? Combat build, not physical build. I doubt that she could leap like that if she were wearing my armour.

**I'm still tracking her. She's leaving the area. Aqualad, do you want us to pursue?**

**No. The Shadows will try again. We need to focus on stopping the Infiltrators and protecting Doctor Roquette.**

Robin to Aqualad.

Rather than wear an earpiece that might throw off my hearing, I decided to have the ring relay radio communications. Sounds a bit… Off. I'm not used to hearing a voice other than the ring's in this way.

We're over Philadelphia. We've located the Shadow's next target. STAR Labs.

That wasn't the one with the Amazo parts, was it? Because that would be a bit of a problem.

We're too late.

I flick my right hand and an image of the collapsing building appears.

It's destroyed. Totally destroyed. The fog decimated it.

It destroyed one in ten buildings? I doubt it.

This is bad. STAR Labs is cutting edge science and now their secrets are in the hands of the enemy.

He pauses for a moment. Artemis takes a look at the orange rubble heap projection.

What's our next move?

Kaldur's already decided. We scan for the fog. Find it. We're moving the Doctor.

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Exfiltrator 8

next

9th August

21:58 GMT -5

**I don't really want to hurt her if she isn't fighting back.**

**Try telling her you think she has a nice arse too.**

There's a moment of silence. Then Kid Flash speaks. **I'm on board with that plan.**

M'gann's less sure. **Err…**

**You just need to stop her thinking about the song for a moment, right?**

**Well, yeah…**

**Reacting in a way which shocks her might well disrupt her concentration.**

**I… I suppose…**

Kaldur isn't keen. **Miss Martian, if you are not comfortable with the suggestion then do not make use of it.**

**No, it… It could work.**

Artemis stares at me as I cover my mouth with my right hand to try and prevent myself from laughing.

"Okay, that's mean."

"A bit. Funny though."

On the monitor M'gann's lips move. I've no idea what she's saying, but I doubt it's very convincing.

The Shadow responds by bending slightly and pressing her derrière against the wire of the fence. She then makes a circle with it.

M'gann jerks back in the air.

"Hah!"

She snerks, "Yeah, okay, that was funny."

"Serves her right for taking what Wallace said at face value. I give Superboy a reassuring hug and suddenly everyone on the team thinks we're romantically involved. It's ridiculous."

"I.. suppose it was, kinda…"

"Particularly considering what I've been doing in Japan."

Her face shifts back to neutral and she moves her gaze from the screen to me. "What have you been doing in Japan?"

I look at her from the corner of my eyes. And now the target has changed. "Ogre sex cult. With orange tentacles."

Stunned. "You, you what?!"

"Well…" I wave my huge grey right hand down my front. "It's all in proportion, isn't it? There's no way one woman could possibly-."

He expression becomes a gurning rictus of horror and disgust. "Oh, eww!"

She's actually gagging! I grin. "Funny you should make that expression…"

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Exfiltrator 9

next

9th August

22:36 GMT -5

I still can't do stealth.

I could have carried whatever equipment the Doctor wanted to bring easily with a construct. Heck, I could have powered it and given her a roaming internet connection so she could keep working while conveying her in a sealed, vibration free and climate controlled module. But the whole thing would have glowed orange and everyone would have known where we were. And the Shadows have got to have someone who can threaten me, right?

I did briefly consider suggesting that we take her back to the mountain. It would make an excellent defensive position, but would rather give the game away about our residential location.

The Doctor vetoed my suggestion of Atlantis.

We ended up scurrying from place of concealment to place of concealment, stopping only for me to create a small screen with which to track the assassin we knew about and check for any we didn't. Aqualad and I carried the computer equipment by hand, while Artemis scouted ahead and M'gann hovered invisibly above us. Credit where credit's due, Kid Flash managed to knock off the bickering for the journey while he performed rear guard duty.

Oh. Rear. Right. He wasn't anywhere near her.

We've set up shop in the local internet café. Hang on… **Aqualad, if the computers are already here, why did we bother bringing this stuff?**

He turns to me from where he was standing just behind the Doctor while she works. **To set up a decoy. I will remain here with Doctor Roquette. I want everyone else to move to the Sailor's Rest Bar and Grill up the street. Miss Martian will assume the form of Doctor Roquette to act as bait.**

Ring, update on our attacker's location. I see her several streets away. Looks like she had backup clothing stashed somewhere. She gestures and… Oh, that's her backup, is it? **If I may make an alternate suggestion?** Kaldur nods. **The Shadow we encountered at the school has been joined by two others. None of them are carrying weapons which are a threat to me. Why don't I sally forth and deal with them before they get here?**

This seems to surprise him a little. **Members of the League of Shadows are highly skilled-.**

Give me strength. **They're armed with sharp bits of metal and glue guns, Kaldur. They are no threat to me. At absolute worst, one could slip past and maybe make it ten metres before I stop them. Artemis, would you mind covering me from a concealed position?**

Her eyes dart between us. **Aah, no. I.. can.. do that.**

**There. Not even ten metres and they get an arrow in the foot.** I raise my forearms, palms towards me, in a gesture of appeal.

**Hey, how come she gets to help?** Kid Flash doesn't want to get left out.

**Because we need our more experienced team mate covering Doctor Roquette.** That mollifies him slightly. **And because I'm going to be throwing heavy constructs around and we haven't really practised that. I wouldn't want to accidentally pulverise you. Artemis attacks from a distance.**

Kaldur doesn't look convinced. **I am not happy about sending you to face multiple opponents-.**

Armour.

The construct covers me completely. **Kaldur, take a Water-Bearer and stab me in the face.**

"What?" I think I shocked him.

"My armour is not breakable by levels of force a baseline human can bring to bear. And I'm not completely convinced you can break it either. Stab me. Punch me. Whatever you need to do to assure yourself that my assessment is correct."

He waits for a moment, then reaches out with his right hand, pushing lightly against the faceplate. Then, he pulls his arm back and hammers his fist into the armour. Chest, diaphragm and face each take a hit without noticeable effect. I don't move even slightly, though I do have to suppress the blink reflex when his fist comes at my eyes.

If I'd set the armour to 'reflect energy' I'd have broken his hand just then.

He looks at his hand, opening and closing the fist a couple of times. **Very well. Artemis, accompany Orange Lantern and cover him from a place of concealment.**

**Don't worry. This orange light is dreadful for stealth, but it's great for keeping people's attention.** Artemis and I walk towards the door. I open it, step aside and smile. **Ladies first.**

That gets an arched eyebrow, but she walks through anyway.

I'm not normally a violent man, but I'm actually kind of excited about this.

"So, which way are we going?"

Flight aura.

And up we go.

"Hey!"

We shoot five blocks in moments. "Faster than walking." We touch down on the roof of a warehouse. The air conditioning outflow should give Artemis plenty of cover. If she needs it for some reason. "Three opponents: the ninja from earlier, redressed, some guy with glue guns strapped to his wrists and a guy with a big hook for an arm."

I create images of all three of them. Their little party remains in a dispersed formation, but are heading in the same direction closely enough to support each other. Artemis looks at the images for a moment. "I don't recognize the ninja, but those last two are Black Spider and Hook."

"Anything I should look out for?"

"Are you serious about fighting them on your own?"

Incredulity? Please. I hold out my left hand, palm first. My right index finger points to the ring.

"Do you see this ring? This is an example of the most powerful tool ever devised by a species that reached the limits of the technology curve, and then used their knowledge to build more curve for themselves. While I am in no sense an expert in its application, I am more than up to the task, of taking down, three baseline Humans, armed with primitive weapons."

"Cocky much?"

"There is no challenge here! But, if you have any doubts, feel free to watch so you can drag me out of the way when I lose."

Now, who to attack first? Think I'll go for the spider guy. Want to get the chance to clobber him before Marvel Comics do.

back

Exfiltrator 10

next

9th August

22:39 GMT -5

I'm nearly giggling as I lurk behind a warehouse, waiting for my first target to reach me. My lights are on low and the solid wall should prevent me from being spotted. It wouldn't matter much, but I'd prefer not to give them the chance to disperse.

OrangeVision live… Ah, there we are. Spider-Man… No, Black Spider, has leapfrogged past the other two and moved into cover on top of a greengrocer's on the side of the road opposite the other side of this warehouse. Interestingly, he doesn't seem to be using the web spray thingies on his wrists to assist his movements. Instead he seems able to vault and safely fall considerable distances under his own power. Maybe a metahuman? Or perhaps that's just what peak fitness baseline Humans can do here. Still not strong enough to actually threaten me, but I can afford to be a little rougher with him. The other two are at ground level. No time like the present, then.

Armour to full, I rise up behind the warehouse, a draconic four fingered claw manifesting around my target. It isn't quite instantaneous, but it's fast enough that he has no chance to dodge it before being lifted up two stories further and then slammed down into the middle of the road with some considerable force.

As I complete my arc to hover over the street about eight metres away from him -two other targets on his far side- I feel for a moment that maybe it would have been more satisfying to mirror the construct's actions with my own arm? Perhaps, but it would have been foolish and I want to avoid the mistakes the Greenies keep making.

Ring, keep him pinned and give me amplification.

Compliance.

"Good evening, members of the League of Shadows. I am Orange Lantern two eight one four."

A minor construct releases the wrist webbers from Black Spider and floats them over to me. Might be useful.

Ninja girl goes for height while Hook dashes forward more boldly, keeping the parked cars along the side of the road between himself and me as much as possible. Futile hope, or standard training misapplied? Another claw manifests around him and tosses him roughly into open space next to Black Spider. He rolls to a crouch.

"Okay, the ninja girl and the Spider man I kind of get, but what the fuck are you supposed to be?" A grimace, then he aims his hook and me and fires it like a harpoon. That bulky cybernetic actually has a chain in it. Unbelievable. A series of needle-like constructs pierce the links before the hook reaches me, arresting its movement and holding it in place. I send a line construct directly down from me into the ground and towards him. "Were all the good weapons taken or something?"

He snarls, and tries to pull it back like a fishing line. Nope. The line I send underneath him breaks through the tarmac and encases his hook-arm, then extends to generate an angle grinder from it. Now, how much of that arm is still flesh? Hmm. The cybernetic covers pretty much the whole arm, but some skin and nerve tissue -and enough blood vessels to keep them alive- is still intact. The bone and muscle appear to have been entirely replaced with the material used in more normal, natural seeming cybernetics. The bone replacement looks neat. I suppose they'd have to have reinforced parts of his body to take the extra weight and strain of the harpoon gun.

Didn't that come up in Global Frequency? About how you can't just add a little if you want to augment someone with cybernetics, because the body pulls itself apart? Think that was why the guy in Cowboy Bebop had a light and not very strong cybernetic as well.

Now he actually looks scared. Oh well. He yelps as the grinder slices neatly through the arm just above the elbow. Another souvenir. I drop the needle constructs and trigger the reel-in mechanism. Once it snaps back in place I stick the limb into subspace. We're going to need a bigger cupboard at this rate.

With the construct that had been holding his arm in place dropped, Hook falls to his knees, cradling his stump. His eyes are watering and his breathing is shallow and rapid. Oh hell, does he get pain feedback from that arm? I scan for the interface implants before sticking a ShockCrown over his head. He slumps bonelessly to the ground. Right, he's still in pain, he just can't move. Assuming that his arm is basically a customised standard model, destroying that and that should stop any signals reaching his organic nervous system. Another scan and yes, no impulses detected. Great.

Lifting Hook and Black Spider up -Black Spider showing some signs of life now- I spray them both with a good coat of Black Spider's own web solution before sticking them to the warehouse wall with the rest of it. Now, logically he'd keep a supply of solvent here… Yes, there we are. I know what I can do with that. I stick the dispensers in the still-hardening webbing next to Black Spider's head, and take off his helmet.

Hook won't be able to move for hours, and Black Spider isn't going anywhere fast unless the ninja cuts him free. Where'd she go? Ah, as far away from me as she can get in the time available. Rather than head towards the seafront and the Doctor, she's heading parallel to the seafront, over the rooftops. Does she really think that will help?

Ring, plot route.

Compliance.

A fraction's worth of blur and I'm standing directly in front of her. She's running at full pelt and doesn't have time to stop before crashing into me, and bouncing off my armour. Respect to her though, she uses her bounce back to roll away from me and into a crouch. A movement of her arms and three shurikens hit my construct armour, only to bounce off.

The area is fairly well lit, and I get my first direct normal-vision look at her. "Oh, GREEN! Green tunic and white mask! You're Cheshire, right?"

She draws two… Don't remember what they're called, knives like Raphael uses, and lunges for me.

"That's-." A group of clamps projected from my right hand grab each of her arms and legs -upper and lower- mid leap. She tries to twist out of their grasp, but makes no more headway than Black Canary did. "That's really not going to work."

Ring, scan for weapons.

Compliance.

A series of small claws projected from my chest home in on her every weapon. The two knives in her hands are pulled free first, with some resistance. Then the pistol bow, bolts and the shurikens attached to her back, and two weirdly blunt looking knives… Collapsible swords? Those exist? Whaw, learn something new every day. I snap the bolts in half before dropping the other equipment to the floor. Explosive pellets from her belt come next, then… Oh.

"Sorry about this, but if you will store things inside your tunic…"

She stiffens as the claws go inside her tunic. I feel really uncomfortable about this. Two normalish knives and a selection of throwing weapons join the pile on the floor. Maybe she really doesn't need armour with all this stuff in her clothing.

Please say she doesn't have a knife up her… No? Fffwww. That's a relief.

Having thoroughly disarmed her, I get a bit closer.

**Orange Lantern to team. Hook and Black Spider are stuck to a warehouse wall, and I've pinned and disarmed the ninja. Her codename's Cheshire, by the way.**

There's a moment, then Aqualad responds. **Good work. Do you detect any other Shadows in the area?**

Ring?

No threats likely to be in the category requested detected.

**Not at present. How's the program coming along?**

A pause, presumably to check with Doctor Roquette. **The Doctor informs me that it should be complete within half an hour.**

**Do you need Artemis and I back? I'd like to see if I can get anything out of the assassins before we hand them over to the police.**

**If there are no further attackers whom you can detect, then there is no need for your return. Try to find out if they know what the next target of the Infiltrators is.**

**I'm on it. Would you mind sending Miss Martian over? I'm fairly sure that I can keep Cheshire's attention away from annoying music.**

**Miss Martian, join Orange Lantern but stay invisible and out of line of sight.**

back

Exfiltrator 11

next

9th August

22:43 GMT -5

**Uh, Orange Lantern, do you still need me covering you?**

**Can't hurt. Move up so you can overlook my current position.**

Soooo… What do I remember about Cheshire? Nothing from the League database.

Ring?

No record on file.

Nice to know my memory's still working. All I remember of comic Cheshire is that she had a child with Red Arrow, poisoned her weapons -Ring, check? Yep.- and once blew up a country with a nuclear weapon. I only remember that detail because someone compared her action to that of Black Adam, commenting that it was hypocritical to consider her actions beyond the pale while not condemning him with equal vehemence.

First, that mask can go. An orange aura forms around her head as I unbuckle it and lift it off. Wait, that's her actual hair? I thought it was part of the mask! How much hair spray does she get through?

Ring, scan the mask.

Scan complete.

Huh. Decoration aside, it's pretty much the same as Crock's mask. Wonder if they have the same supplier?

Facial structure slender… Maybe Asian? Not sure. There's light here but it isn't great, so I can't judge skin tone. Her expression is fairly blank, but her eyes suggest that she'd quite like to tear my heart out right now.

"So, as I said, I'm Orange Lantern two eight one four. And you're Cheshire."

I move to a sitting position, hands clasped in my best 'sincere guidance counsellor' position. M'gann was right; I do like doing this.

"So, I don't know anything about you yet, but before we get started, is there anything you'd like to know about me?"

"Your real name, home address and a list of your vulnerabilities."

"Hm. Can't say it, don't have one, finite power reserve."

"How finite?"

"If you can hold out for two days or so, then I might have to recharge."

Her eyes move from my face. Oh, she's seen the ring. "That actually is a power ring, isn't it?"

"'Fraid so."

"I thought they only came in green."

I open my palm facing her, the glowing sigil clearly visible. "Actually, they come in a bunch of colours. It's just that everyone's heard of the green ones."

Another pause, as she looks away for a moment. "It wasn't the Martian who detected me."

"Nope, that was me. Oh, sorry, that can't be comfortable."

I use the clamps to push her into a sitting position, then extend them to create a comfy chair. She's still clamped to it, but she'll hopefully feel a little more at ease.

She looks more puzzled than relaxed. "Can't say I thought I'd ever be interrogated in an armchair."

"I'm a bit new at this. Please, forgive me if I get some details a bit wrong."

"I don't suppose it has a massage function?"

I grin. "It can if you give me a list of the targets which the League of Shadows is planning to use the Infiltrators on."

An incredulous look. "Really?"

"Sure. It isn't hard; I can apply pressure with a construct however you want."

Sometimes when I talk at cross purposes with someone, it's accidental. I have a bit of trouble following another's thought processes sometimes. More often these days I use it for humour instead. Cheshire blinks heavily twice before she dismisses what I said.

"Of course, I'm not actually trained in massage therapy yet. I've been thinking about taking lessons, but I've… Been busy with work."

"Are you actually planning on interrogating me at some point?"

"Well, yes, but… Ah! Shall we see how Hook and Black Spider are getting on?"

I make a sweeping gesture with my left hand, and a screen appears with the Chuckle Brothers in the centre. Hook's still out, but Black Spider has managed to take hold of the web fluid dispenser in his mouth.

"Oh, good effort there. Kinda like one of those crazy Japanese game shows, isn't it? Endurance, or something? Do you have that here? Contestant number one thinks he's about to get the web dissolving solvent, buuuut…"

He bites down on the trigger.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh!"

We hear his scream from where we're sitting.

"Some complete bastard replaced the solvent with pepper spray!" I make a face of comedically exaggerated astonishment, right hand covering my mouth with fingers pointing upwards. "Who would do such a thing?!"

She's back to her serious face. "Are you allowed to do things like that?"

"Eh, no one's going to care about pepper spray. If I'd made Fear Toxin or Smilex…"

No expression again.

"Did you know that Smilex started out as an antidepressant? Not a lot of people know that. Never made it as far as Human trials." I pause for a moment. "Well, obviously it's been tried on Humans now. I think Fear Toxin was supposed to be for riot control. You know, make rioters too afraid to start anything. That did get to Human trials. The stuff can actually be useful in interrogations. In low doses, anyway. High doses…" I make a circling motion with my right hand. "So! Anyway, is there anything you'd particularly like to tell me at this point?"

No response. Oh well. Ring, what's her name?

Gotham North High School records list her as 'Jade Crock'.

Crock? Interesting…

"Miss Crock, it would really help if-."

"That isn't my name!"

Furious again.

"Okay, what would you prefer?"

Sour taste face. "Nguyen. Jade Nguyen."

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Exfiltrator 12

next

9th August

22:47 GMT -5

"Right, well, Miss Nguyen-."

Ring, where does that name come from?

The surname is the maiden name of her mother, Paula Nguyen.

Who'd she marry to get the surname 'Crock'?

Lawrence Crock, aka 'Sportsmaster'.

"Huh, small world! I actually ran into your dad a couple of weeks ago."

"I don't care."

Ooooh, fierce. Not a good relationship, then. Worth knowing.

Ring, Ophidian's Eyes.

Everything changes. Scenery fades away to irrelevance. I still see Miss Nguyen, but I also see inside her mind. Not her thoughts, but her desires, her underlying fundamental drives. She needs structure and duty. She needs to be respected and to have someone she respects to look up to. I see glimpses of a face, sort of General Iroh meets pirate chief. I can't feel any drive towards conventionally moral behaviour. I suppose she doesn't define herself in those terms. And, yes, a huge jagged ball of do-not-want linked to an image of her father. I don't remember him being that big. Hmm.

Ring, end.

Back in the room.

"What did you just do?"

"Hm?"

"Your eyes turned orange."

"Night vision. Orange is, ah, kinda my thing." Not sure if she believes me, but she doesn't have any evidence to the contrary. "Would you like a biscuit?" A small plate with a chocolate cookie in the centre materialises from subspace. "I've finally got the hang of making them crunchy without being too dry."

She looks at it suspiciously.

"Oh, come on. If I'd wanted to drug you I'd just have done it."

"This is ridiculous."

"I need the feedback! The Martian tells me she likes them, but I think she's just buttering me up so she can skive off kitchen duty."

**Hey!**

I smile. **Miss Martian, you're in place then. How am I doing?**

**You're making her confused, but after a moment she goes back to counting pi. I'm getting some things, but not the location of the next attack.**

I float the plate closer to Miss Nguyen's right side, and remove the restraints from the lower part of her right arm. I still have hold of the plate with the ring though, I'm not stupid.

**I'll try and keep her off balance. Let me know when you have it.**

Gingerly, she reaches out and picks up the biscuit. Slowly she moves it towards her face, taking the time to study it carefully. An inch from her nose she stops and sniffs it.

I grin. "Not bothered by the power ring, but my chocolate biscuit's clearly a deadly weapon."

Perhaps realising how silly I'm making her look, she takes a tiny bite. Her face is a picture. In fact, ring?

Image stored.

Failing to detect anything untoward, she takes a larger bite. I hear the crunch.

"I understand why you don't want to be associated with him, you know. Supervillains are famous for making terrible fathers."

Her eyes narrow slightly. Another bite.

"You know Slade Wilson? Deathstroke the Terminator? Sword nut, blue and orange costume? Once it became clear that neither of his sons were going to follow in his footsteps, he decided that there was nothing for it but to turn his daughter into the perfect Stepford assassin. His chosen method? Obedience drugs. Only they don't work quite right, and she ends up completely obsessed with him. Rose Wilson ended up gouging her own eye out so she could be a bit more like daddy."

Another bite.

"Of course, she had it easy compared with Cassandra Cain. David Cain… He's one of your lot, isn't he? Anyway, to test a theory about how the Human brain processes information, he denies her access to any form of spoken or written language until she's in her teens. Completely messes her up."

Another bite.

"Finding out that he trained her to resist pain by shooting her, then shooting her again if she flinched, that cost me some of my faith in humanity."

Last bite. Nothing yet…

"Then you've got Raʾs al-Ġūl-."

"Lady Talia has never been mistreated by her father."

"Oh, no, not her. Always easier to get on with the obedient ones. No, I was referring to her elder sister, Nyssia. The one who ended up in a concentration camp?"

Her expression shifts slightly. Something there. Probably not enough for M'gann…

"Must be a relief to know that yours is in prison, really."

A blink of surprise, then hardening again. "How?"

She didn't know? "Like I said, I ran into him a couple of weeks ago."

"You really expect me to believe that-."

Ring, plasma crossbow.

I hold it up so she can get a good look at it.

"Look familiar? If it makes you feel any better, it didn't do much more to my armour construct than your shurikens did."

"You, beat Sportsmaster."

"The EMP mine in his helicopter didn't exactly help him, but yes. I knocked him out and the Justice League escorted him to Belle Reve."

"Hah!" An honest smile. I send the plate and crossbow back into subspace. "Did you hit him a lot? Please, say yes."

"Um, no, not really. The actual fight can't have taken longer than fifteen seconds. One construct to yank the weapon out of his hand, another to short out his motor neurons." She looks surprised, and a little impressed. Why? Oh. "Temporarily, temporarily."

Slight pout face.

"Might have accidentally bumped him into a few trees on the way back…"

The grin is back.

**She doesn't know! They didn't tell her what the target is.**

Darn.

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Exfiltrator 13

next

9th August

22:52 GMT -5

**Aqualad to Miss Martian, are you able to get anything useful?**

**The man using the Infiltrators is called Professor Ojo. He wears a helmet with a really powerful energy weapon built into the face. He might have a couple of other people with him, but they aren't fighters. I'm transmitting an image now.**

The helmet reminds me a bit of Triclops from He-Man. And that moustache? Really?

**I will inform Robin and Superboy.**

"So how did it feel, taking down one of the most feared mercenaries on the planet?"

Exaggerated facial cringe. "Honestly, I'd never heard of him. Thought he was Casey Jones until my team mates corrected me."

Puzzlement. "Who is Casey Jones?"

"Have you ever seen the film 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?"

"Yes..? Wait, you thought he was-?"

"It's the same mask!"

"You thought Lawrence 'Crusher' Crock,-"

"Yes."

"-Sportsmaster,-"

"Yes."

"-was Casey Jones, the idiot from the Turtles films."

"And. And the animated series'."

"Hahahahahahahahaha!"

Her head drops down.

"Hahahahahahahahaha!"

She's actually gasping for breath.

"Hahahahahahahahaha!"

"It's not that funny."

She gets herself under control and takes a couple of deep breaths. "Yes, yes it is. I almost want to go and visit him, just so I can tell him. Do they let you take cameras in? Do you think I could get a picture?"

"I've… Never looked into it."

"I could probably sneak in."

"It's supposed to be very secure."

"Eh, that's what they said about Stryker's Island."

That statement concerns me a little. The holding facility for the people Superman fights is not somewhere I want supervillains to think of as 'not all that secure'.

**Doctor Roquette has resumed tracking the Infiltrators. Orange Lantern, Miss Martian, continue to question Cheshire. I'm sending Kid Flash to stand by near a zeta tube in order to travel to whatever location the Shadows strike at next.**

"What's the pay like?"

"I'm sorry?"

"For being-" She waves her free forearm. "-Orange Lantern. I don't remember what the exact bounty on Sportsmaster's head was. Is that how it works?"

Maybe I should ask about that? There's probably some sort of reward. I don't need the money but it might be nice to make a charity contribution in my own name… Well, title at least.

"Miss Nguyen-."

"Oh, call me Jade." A dismissive gesture. "It's not like I can keep my identity secret."

"Ah, alright, thank you. Jade, I have a power ring, and a short flight from here at faster than light speed is the Mars-Jupiter asteroid belt. And in that belt is as much precious metal as I could ever spend."

I rub my right thumb against my right index and middle fingers, a single platinum coin emerging from subspace. Paola chased me down in New York three weeks after my original visit and informed me of the existence of US Mint issued one hundred dollar platinum coins. Their metal value may not match their face value, but it's close enough that I don't melt them when I pick them up. She's negotiating with someone at the Mint to get a whole batch struck for me. For a decent percentage, obviously.

I asked about getting 'All Others Pay Cash' on them, replacing the odious 'In God We Trust' motto. Doubt it'll happen.

It's a bit of a strain, but I create just enough normal light around the coin that Jade can see it clearly. She appears to be thinking about things.

"So you're rich, powerful and handsome."

Wa?

"Um, thank you?" I return the coin to subspace.

"Who's the lucky girl? Or guy?"

"No, I'm... Single at the moment."

**But, Superboy..?**

**Artemis, he's a month old. That would be completely wrong.**

**R-? Really?**

**Really. Grown in a pod. You really should read our mission reports. I mean, I like him, but… No.**

"Hm." And now she's smiling and appraising and I'm remembering that I'm sitting across from an athletically attractive Asian woman wearing what is -basically- fetish wear. And she's tied to a chair. I was ignoring these things. Now I'm not.

Construct strength isn't a problem here.

Maybe I should have spent more time on the intimacy parts of the Hierarchy.

My hands have moved together into my preferred meditative posture. My legs from dangling to crossed. I breathe out. Her smile grows.

"You know, I should probably thank you for dealing with… With my father."

That sounds…

!Really good!

…like a bad…

Is it, though?

"Um, what do you..?"

"How about a kiss?"

!Really good!

That sounds like something I shouldn't do. On the other hand, she isn't armed, she's tied to a chair and I have a power ring. And Batman… Well, Talia and Selina.

The Hierarchy flashes through my head. This doesn't appear to be contrary to any other levels of Need. I've always been a bit reticent where this sort of thing is concerned. Maybe, now is a good time to change that.

I lower the chair to the rooftop, and drop to the ground myself. "Are you sure? I wouldn't... I mean, I don't want to pressure…"

"If you'd had to live with him, you'd understand."

!Really good!

I walk two paces forward, alongside the chair and her free forearm. I increase the height of the chair slightly, so her head is only slightly below the level of my own.

Ring, she doesn't have a cyanide tooth or something, does she?

No poison detected inside her mouth.

And I'm out of excuses, and the orange light has dealt with my reticence.

Ring, drop armour.

I lean forwards and across, head tilted slightly to the side. I tense slightly as her hand touches the back of my head, but I suspect that my inexperience is showing. She presses me forward gently, and I move with her, eyes scanning her face before settling on her eyes. Closer, and our noses rub against each other. Our lips come together. Soft, warm, and… slightly damp? Lipstick, probably.

back

Exfiltrator 14

next

9th August

22:56 GMT -5

She removes her hand and I take that as the sign that I should pull back. I run my tongue along my lips. Hm, biscuit crumbs.

**Why are you KISSING the ASSASSIN?** Artemis is not amused.

**Her idea. Miss Martian, getting anything good?**

A pause.

**Hello Megan! You were trying to distract her!**

**I like to think I was keeping her attention focused at least a little, yes.**

**Right! Um, I've got the location of a few League of Shadows safe houses and informants. Nothing that really applies to this mission though.**

**That's a bit of… of…**

And now I'm sitting on the ground. Huh? How did that happen? Oh, that's a pretty sign over the road. Wonder if it distracts traffic?

**Orange Lantern, are you okay?**

Mind cuddles! I send a mental image of myself as a long fluffy orange snake all coiled around her and constricting in a friendly way. I feel her.. alarm? Why is she alarmed? Can't she see its big smiley snake grin?

**Artemis, there's something wrong with Orange Lantern!**

Maybe Martians just don't like snakes. HeEhEeHeE.

"HeEhEeHeE."

Oh, Jade's chair's disappeared.

I wish I had a comfy chair. Sitting up is sooo much effort at the moment. But Jade Jade Jadey Jade doesn't want to sit?

That's fine. I'll just lay here.

Oh look! A stick with a feather. Doesn't look like Jade likes feathers. Maybe it's from a super fast feather delivery company. InterFeather. InterFletcher.

"Hehehehehe"

No, I don't wanna get up.

Whaw, Jadey's a lot stronger than I thought. Being carried around is kind of fun. No more feathers?

Lots of feathers!

Ow. She dropped me. She must have been scared of all the feathers chasing her to jump off the building like that.

My head's dangling right over the edge. Someone really needs to clean that alley.

And now I'm being picked up again. But no one's touching me.

Hello M'gann!

**Hello M'gann!**

She doesn't look very happy. Maybe she needs more cuddles? Ugh, is she saying something? Everything's a bit….

"Paul, snap out of it!"

Ugh?

**He's been drugged.**

I can hear Kralder brut can't see? Huh?

**Artemis has gone after Cheshire.**

**I don't know what drug she used!**

**See if you can get him to focus on what's happening. He should be able to use his ring to purge his system.**

All of the voices?

"Paul, you need to use your ring."

Big face? Hand?

"Come on M'gann, he names his attacks, he told you what he called it. What was it?"

hfoiedgaspbh25xfjkbcvm,fg[pidgf

"Rightful…wholeness?"

Teehee, silly Martian. Wholeness Rightly Assumed.

"DAMN IT!" I'm on my feet and in the air immediately. M'gann's expression combines surprise with relief. Where's Jade?

I feel her. Artemis has her at arrowpoint. She's… Talking to her?

!My target!

A surge of orange and I interrupt their conversation. Eyes glowing, a swarm of Octopus tentacles projected from my chest yank her off the ground, completely engulfing her.

I drag her up in front of me. "That. Was rude."

I feel her pushing against the construct. Is she seriously trying to escape?

"Stop struggling. I've seen this film, and it doesn't end well for the Asian woman."

I tighten the construct's grip.

**Orange Lantern, are you well?**

**Yes, thank you Aqualad. I'm sorry…sorry about that. I realise it was stupid, but in my defence; poisoned lipstick?**

"You're choking her."

"What?" I descend to ground level. Artemis is looking at me like… Is she scared?

Ring, we're not choking Jade, are we?

Breathing of the subject is restricted.

Well, loosen up, then.

Stated request is contrary to user's desires. Unable to comply.

Ah, crap.

"Let her go, now!"

She's actually got an arrow notched.

"I'm trying!"

Okay, I'm angry because I was stupid. Of course she was going to try to escape. I shouldn't have thought otherwise. I shouldn't take it out on her.

Loosen.

The tentacles part slightly, and their numbers thin out. She's still being held securely and in some discomfort. I've got one around her mouth for good measure. She takes a deep and slightly panicked breath through her nose.

Ah, hell with it. ShockCrown.

back

Exfiltrator 15

next

10th August

09:14 GMT -5

Ten hours, and I still feel stupid about it.

Robin, Kon and Wallace dealt with Professor Ojo and the Infiltrators easily enough, and the four Shadows have been transferred to a very secure holding facility. Apparently Hook and Spider broke out of a normal transport last time they were arrested and the police have taken it a bit personally. What's left of the Infiltrator control unit after Superboy landed on it is in a secure STAR Labs facility. Green Arrow told me that Red Arrow made sure that he destroyed all of the backup servers when he rescued Doctor Roquette, so that should be that.

Most of my team mates found my actions to be more amusing than anything. I think Wallace was actually slightly impressed. Kaldur merely described it as 'ill-advised'. Artemis, on the other hand, was livid. Not really sure why. I mean, yes, obviously it was unprofessional and could have gone very badly, but by now? I need to find out what's going on there.

Batman wants our reports by ten this morning, but mine's already on the system. Rather than mope, or wait for him to tell me things I already know I did wrong, I decided to make a delivery.

I'm standing outside the Metropolis Special Crimes Unit's headquarters in the New Troy borough of Metropolis City. It also serves as the main police station for this part of the city. I'm in civilian clothing and trying to look harmless. A scan shows me that Sergeant Ramones is on site. Not sure how this sort of thing is supposed to work, so I decided to just walk up to the front desk and ask for him.

The technology in the MONQIs wasn't anything very exciting by local standards, except for the battery unit. Most of the wrecks we recovered went to STAR Labs, but apparently they didn't need most of the ones I collected. A little work with the ring and I was able to turn a battery and two eyes into a nifty little plasma pistol. I say pistol, but with the variable focus they can match most rifles for range and their power is much greater than commercially available weaponry. I'm keeping a green one and a red one for myself -just in case-, but that still leaves eight green ones that I don't have any use for. Seems like something the SCU could make use of now, not when STAR Labs finishes deciphering how the battery was made.

Not giving them any red ones. Handing out anti-Kryptonian weapons sounds like a really bad idea. Think maybe I'll give one to Alan?

I walk up the stone steps and push through the front door. There's a porch area with metal detectors with another set of doors on the far side. As expected, the ring doesn't set them off. Then I'm into the main lobby, and I walk over to the reception desk. The chap manning it looks up from his monitor.

"Can I help you sir?"

"I do hope so. I'd like to speak to Sergeant Ramones of the SCU, if that's at all possible."

"Alright." He reaches for his phone. "If you can give me your name and why you're here?"

"Orange Lantern, and I have some guns for him."

He's still for a moment, then sits back and looks irritated. "Why don't you go waste someone else's time?"

Huh.

I lay my right hand on the desk, palm upwards, and generate an orange sigil.

"I appreciate this is a little unusual, but I feel it is worth your time. I met the sergeant on the third while transporting the components of a rather dangerous android to STAR Labs."

"Oh-! Uh-! Right, sorry!"

He grabs the phone and starts dialling. I cancel the construct and stand at parade rest.

"Sergeant Ramones? Front desk here. There's a guy calling himself the Orange Lantern here, says he wants to talk to you." A brief pause while he listens to the reply, then he hangs up. "He'll be down in a minute."

"Thank you."

A look around shows me a settee to sit on, along with a table upon which rests a copy of today's Daily Planet and a few magazines. I also spot the security camera, and wave and smile at it when it moves over my face.

Come here, let's have a read. Anything about that bridge collapse last week? No, too much time's passed for it to be new news and too little for anyone to have a detailed investigation complete yet. Anything by Mister Kent? Yes, something on an ongoing investigation into government corruption. Oh, and an opinion piece by Miss Lane. I'm not going to bother reading it, but given how much her appearance changes in every comic and animated series it's worth remembering her picture.

There's a bleep as one of the security doors opens. I turn and see the sergeant staring at me. Odd seeing him out of the full armour he had been wearing. Best grin on. "Morning, sergeant!"

"Hi. Wasn't expecting to see you again any time soon."

"Had some guns to drop off for you."

I appear to have left him behind a little. "Where from?"

"I basically took the MONQI's eyes and power cell and stuck them together. Nothing too complicated. Thought the SCU might want them."

"Oh, you're donating them. Right. Um, d'you wanna come through? Sykes,-" He turns to the chap at the desk. "-sort him out a visitor's pass, will ya?"

I fill in my details -apparently writing my name as Orange Lantern is perfectly acceptable- and clip the tag onto my vest. Then I follow the sergeant through the building.

"The sortsa weapons we use, can't test them in a normal firing range. STAR Labs had to build one special."

"Makes sense."

By the time we get there a few other SCU officers are waiting.

"So, where's the cape?"

A heavy set bald black guy jerks his chin in my direction.

"'Where's the cape?' as in, 'where is the superhero?', or 'where's the cape?' as in 'why aren't I wearing one?'?"

"Didn't know the limeys even had superheroes."

"I can see this is going to be a productive meeting Mister..?"

"Corporal Jase."

"Alright then, corporal. Since I have everyone's attention, I'll begin. This-" I hold out my right hand and call the case with the pistols in forth from subspace. "-is my little gift to the SCU."

I put it down on a nearby table and open it. Eight pistols sit there, sticking out from the padding in two slightly overlapping rows of four. I pick one up.

"I made these from parts taken from the monkey robots that Professor Ivo sent after his android. As I'm sure the sergeant has told you, they bored through the armour of the trucks in a few seconds."

"Can't believe he made them look like monkeys."

A thin blonde man.

"They aren't called mad scientists because they're angry. For the purpose of this demonstration, I'll be setting it to.. low.. power-" I turn the rear of the gun in their direction and show them the dial. "-and short range." Another dial. "If either range or power are not selected then the pistol will not fire. This is the safety. If both are selected, then it will fire. Do not pull the trigger accidentally if the safety is not on."

I walk over to the range itself. "The gun itself is much quieter than most kinetic pistols. On the low energy setting, all you'll hear is a slight sizzle as the air is superheated. On higher settings, there's a slight… Mm, not sure how to describe it. A sort of ringing noise. The beam is quite bright, though not painful to look at for a short time."

I check the range, then raise the pistol, one hand on the grip and the other supporting the barrel.

"The beam is not affected by wind speed or gravity. At least, not within its longest effective range. If the range is not set correctly, the beam will strike it in a diffuse manner, and so have a dramatically reduced strength."

Regular visits to the West Side Pistol and Rifle Range have allowed me to graduate from 'piss poor' to 'not so bad, English'. Hitting the target with this weapon is easy. Three flashes of green light later there are three glowing circles in the centre of the heavy sheet of armour they have as the target.

"Now, any questions?"

back

Exfiltrator 16

next

10th August

10:25 GMT -5

"Recognised, Orange Lantern, B zero six."

Ah, it'd be too long if I changed it.

I walk to the mouth of the zeta tube and then out into the main area of the base. Wonder Woman, Red Tornado and Batman stop their discussion as they see me.

Oh, heck.

"Where have you been?"

Diana doesn't sound angry, but I'm a little clenched at the moment.

"Metropolis. I've turned some of the MONQI components into plasma pistols and I wanted to give them to the SCU." I approach to within three metres and then come to parade rest. I turn my head towards Batman. "I'm not late, am I, sir? Usually you take three hours to-."

He raises a hand to stop me. "I've scheduled the debrief for thirteen hundred hours. And from your report it appears that you are well aware of the serious error in judgement you made."

I wince slightly, and nod. "Yes… I.. am, sir."

"Then I see little need to labor the point." I sag slightly with relief. "You may also be pleased to know that Wonder Woman has agreed to take on a greater responsibility for Superboy's training."

!Is good!

I nod to her. "Thank you sir."

"She has also made me aware of a significant breach of League security. By you."

Oh. That. "Sir, if you've discussed it then you know why-."

His hand rises again. "Understandable, but still problematic for us. Firstly, I would like to confirm that you actually have the knowledge you claim to."

"Sir, Wonder Woman gave me an order not to use the name of a League affiliate without their permission or an order from you or her. I can't just… Well, okay, I can just say it, but the consequences are a bit severe."

Batman's eyes move to Wonder Woman, who nods slightly. "Very well. I order you to say my name. Once."

I create a barrier around myself and him, and make it as opaque as I can. "Bruce Wayne." I dismiss the barrier.

He considers for a moment. "I suppose, given the more complex ways in which you use constructs, it was inevitable you would become privy to sensitive data eventually. Have you shared this information with the rest of your Corps?"

"I don't… Not intentionally, sir. I'm not completely sure how the data transfer works. I… I've been assuming that using Green Lantern's lantern, I'm off the network. Certainly I haven't received any messages. My.. database hasn't been updated either."

Wait. 'More complex'? Did he just compare me favourably to the League's Greenies?

A shallow nod. "You had a chance to abuse this information and you didn't take it. I don't believe any further action on my part is necessary."

Now or never. "Actually, sir... I would appreciate it if you would remove the existing order. I've… Since Wonder Woman made it, I've been dreading the thought that I might say a name and be overheard by someone I didn't know was there, or I might say a name I didn't think was a secret, and violate the order that way. I mean, Kon introduces himself as Kon, but it's his real name and not many people know it. Does that count? Given the penalty I'm looking at…"

Wonder Woman stiffens slightly. Batman looks at her. "It… Might work like that. This sort of oath is used so infrequently…"

Back to me. "Consider it removed."

This version of Batman is much easier to work with than the one in Justice League Unlimited. "Thank you sir. That's quite a relief."

"One last thing. Considering what happened during your first practice session with Black Canary, I decided that it would be best if we found an additional tutor for you. Someone who could give you training in using your constructs in combat."

"Sounds sensible, sir. I'm going to assume you aren't referring to Lantern Scott?"

The zeta tube glows to life behind me. I remain standing where I am and try turning my head to see who's coming through.

"Recognised, Green Lantern, A zero four, Troia, A zero five."

Was that Alan's designation? Oh, no, no it isn't.

That's Guy Gardner. The uniform's different to the incarnations I'm familiar with, and so's his hair. Looks much better, actually. Sleeveless black and green shirt with Green Lantern sigil, black trousers and fingerless gloves. Not sure what they're for. Protection when he punches people? Doesn't look armoured, but compared with some…

He sees me and strides in my direction. I turn to meet him as Diana walks over to greet Donna, who was hovering a touch nervously at the tube mouth.

"So you're the punk who thinks he's a Lantern."

Hm. He's not a League member, so he doesn't outrank me. I tilt my head a little to the left. "So you're the idiot who got taken down by a bus."

"Oooooooooooh." He grins, and cracks his knuckles. "Smart mouth. Let's see how long you can keep that up for."

"Against someone who's been through Green Lantern training? Quite a while, I should think."

"Yeah, they told me you think we're a bunch of muscle brains."

Did I say that? "I don't think I called you all muscle brains."

"No?" He stretches his neck. "Guess I just take it personal when someone insults my teacher."

"Your teacher was Kilo-? Oh."

Poop.

back

Exfiltrator 17

next

10th August

21:46 GMT -5

I'm still not sure why they believed me when I said that she just 'got away'. It isn't as if I keep the ring's capacities a secret. Maybe they just didn't want to push me while the paramedics were still scraping Black Spider and Hook off the pavement. Had to use the ring to judge their injuries that precisely. Heck, even had to heal Hook a bit. But, the upshot was that Batman didn't really have much to complain about during the debrief.

Nice to know that I'm not completely dependent on the ring. And that ninja training doesn't somehow make you the equal of someone with actual super powers. Hook looked quite shocked when I caught his weapon in my bare hand. Heh, and then used it to spin him around my head.

Good day, good day.

Today's been less… Fun. Productive, though. Researching Jade Nguyen née Crock took a while, as did making sure that I kept up to date with all of her movements. Nice though my augmented body is, I do rather draw crowds when out in public. Fun in Aichi -hah, and rather time-saving- but inconvenient here.

I was shocked to learn that the League of Shadows keep computer data files on their agents. Poor practice, keeping things like that where just anyone with a power ring could scan it. Once I get round to handing the operatives I caught to Batman, that should get me a place in his good books. Valuable intelligence, too, though I'm making use of it first.

One of the many nice things about my new skin tone is the camouflage it offers. If I take hold of the ring in the palm of my hand, no light is visible until I choose to use a construct. If I stand in an unlit room, using the ring to breathe for me, then even a fairly alert person might walk right up to me without noticing that I'm there.

This is the third safe house Jade's been to. I think me shutting down all of the others in the area has left her rather spooked, as well as cutting her off from League of Shadows resources. But, now it's time to make myself known.

I spent some time staring into her soul, as I held her struggling, helpless form aloft when I fought -I'm being generous there- the three of them. I think I may have a use for her. If she's sensible, it won't be the same use I have for her father. The other two were clearly chaff, but she may yet become wheat for my mill. Her identity is so tied up in her father, in wanting to fight against him… I find myself curious as to what will happen when I tell her what I did to him. She wants to become strong, but the only model of strength she has is that of the man she hates above all others.

Defining yourself in terms of someone else. So wasteful. Such a diminution of the self.

I hear her, now. She stopped at this place to check that it was undisturbed before leaving to purchase food. All of the phone numbers she tried failed to reply. I think I might have caused the Shadows' entire American network to go to ground. I hear the crinkle of those paper bags Americans use for groceries. The security on this place wasn't bad exactly, but it dances to the ring's tune now.

She's walked past the utility room where I'm waiting, and moved on to the kitchenette. She kept the lights off. I assume she doesn't want to advertise the fact that there's anyone here to those outside. A reasonable measure, if I were a conventional assailant.

As it is, I form a small platform under each foot and drift after her. I'm standing directly behind her when she puts the bags down on the work surface and flicks on the light.

"Good evening."

She's sprinting for the door before the reflexively thrown knife glances off my chest. I hold it shut. Cornered.

She turns to face me, crouching, kunai in her hands. She looks haggard, as I imagine a beast at bay would look. Not really what I was going for, but I'll take it.

"I'm sure that you realise by now that those won't work."

Her eyes are wide, staring. In theory, my own eyes represent the one point of vulnerability she could exploit. In practice, the angle is a very awkward one even without the ring defending me.

"I appreciate how you feel, you know. Everything you've done, everything you've achieved, and someone like me can just come along and ruin everything."

"What-? What do you want?"

"Good question. My objective, is the complete destruction of the League of Shadows. I'm sure you've seen-."

"It was you! All of them!"

I allow myself a slight smile. "Yes, yes it was. But there lies the problem. I can only act when I have information-."

"I won't tell you anything."

She's shaking a little.

"Jade, I already know everything you know. Now, I want to make you an offer. Once you've heard me out, I'll leave you in as much peace as you're likely to get. I want you to return to the Shadows. I want you to continue your work for them. Then, one day, when I'm ready, I will destroy the entire organisation. And you, you will give me the information which I will need to ensure that none of its members escape me. Then, once your comrades are no more, I'll aid you in starting a new life, away from all this unpleasantness."

"They'll know. They'll kill me if I make a deal with you."

"Then tell them. Simply tell Ra's, or the Sensei, or whoever asks what I asked of you. Have a laugh at my foolishness. If I die or otherwise fail, you've lost nothing."

She looks like she's getting a better grip of herself. Hmm.

"He tried to deal, you know." Eyes narrow. "Your father, I mean. Implied that things would go badly for me if I didn't let him escape."

"If you're planning to pay him back, you're in the wrong place."

"You don't know the half of it, little girl."

The Sportsmaster Construct-Lantern materialises next to where she left the shopping. No orange beam connects us, though I don't imagine that she knows the significance of that fact. He's been quite useful as both an information source and as a provider of training. Black Canary just doesn't teach certain things which I want to know.

Jade flicks her eyes at it, before dismissing it. "It's just another one of your constructs."

"'Fraid not, Little Girl. Orange Lantern here doesn't believe in killing useful people. Doesn't mean he always makes them an offer like you're getting."

"Would you like me to make him dance for you? Sing? Pretend to be a dog? His mind is more or less intact, but his desires are completely subservient to mine."

She lowers her knives, slightly. "You… You killed him."

"In a manner of speaking. We met on Santa Prisca, while he was trying to recover an enhanced form of Venom. Which I used. Potent stuff." I make a show of examining my right arm, turning my hand to watch the muscles move under the slabs of armoured flesh. "Jade, I'm trying to alter the world for the better, and I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty to do it. I would very much like you to be a part of the change. This man-" I look at the partially late Mister Crock. "-shouldn't define you. You shouldn't let your feelings toward him limit your own potential for growth. I can, and will, give you opportunities that the Shadows can only dream of."

I extend my right hand towards her.

"Will you join me?"

back

NEXT CHAPTER

Acceptance

BACK

Acceptance 1

next

Acceptance

27th July

06:12 GMT -5

This early in the morning I don't think it's much of a risk to just fly to Alan's house, as long as I don't land in his garden or something. A quick look around to make sure there's no one in the immediate vicinity, and I land in a woodland in Isham Park before switching to civilian clothing.

I still don't know what he wants. He actually sent the message directly via the ring, rather than using the secure comm line. I knew that it was possible to do that from the comics and the animated series, but I had assumed it was intra-Corps only. Guess I was wrong about that. Unusual way to get woken up, particularly given that he said it wasn't that important, but I owe Alan a lot and if he wants me to visit early in the morning without telling me why, that's what I'm going to do.

I tense slightly when I see the expensive looking black car parked outside Alan's house, with a man whom I assume to be the chauffeur leaning against the bonnet reading a newspaper.

Ring?

No weapons detected.

Where's Alan?

I see his living room. He's sitting in the same chair he sat in when we first met. Another, more weather-beaten old man sits opposite. They're holding an animated discussion, but it seems to be good humoured. I don't recognise-.

The hell? He just turned to look at me, my perspective point on the image. I'm not even how is what?

Returning my full concentration to my surroundings, I pass the car, jog up the drive and open the door.

"He makes pretty good time, too."

The other man's voice.

I move down the corridor at stride-pace and open the door to the living room. Alan and whoever… Kent Nelson? Fate? Oh. Both turn their heads to look at me. Alan's in his standard shirt and jeans, but Mister Nelson's in a full suit. A walking stick is propped up against the settee. He lacks Alan's vigour, but he still looks good for a man of one hundred and six.

"Alan. Mister Nelson. Where's the fire?"

Mister Nelson lowers his head slightly, a wry smile on his lips.

Alan shrugs. "Paul, I said that it wasn't all that important. If you were still asleep-."

"I was woken up by a giant orange head coming out of the ring."

He pauses for a moment. "Uh, I didn't mean for it to be giant."

"I'm lucky there was no one in the room above me. The top half of your head was projected through the ceiling. I just saw a giant chin. Didn't even realise it was you to start with."

"Oh. Sorry about that."

"No, it's fine. I hadn't even realised that I could communicate with Green Lanterns that way. I'll have to see about prank calling Lantern Jordan or something."

Mister Nelson shuffles forward to the edge of his seat before rising to his feet. He offers me his right hand, and I shake it. He barely comes up to my shoulders, but his gaze is clear and slightly fierce, the mouth set of a man familiar with disappointment. His hand is cold, and bony.

"I was surprised when Alan told me he'd taken on an apprentice."

"I think I was a surprise to him as well."

"Wouldn't have worked in our day. No computer databases for your ring to sift through. Though I can see things like that'll be a problem, going forwards."

I turn and sit on the chair underneath the window. Mister Nelson gingerly lowers himself back into the settee.

"I wanted you to meet Kent while he was in the city. He's heading to the airport to catch a flight down to New Orleans in half an hour."

The older man smiles slightly. "Always happy to catch-."

"Kent! You! The scrying pool."

He looks at me quizzically. "I'm sorry kid, but you're going to have to be a bit more coherent than that."

"When I went to Themyscira. Diana told me that someone called 'Kent' created a scrying pool for her to communicate with home, back in the forties. I hadn't-" I wiggle my right index finger back and forth. "-made the connection between that and you until just now."

"Oh! I remember that thing. Must have taken weeks to get the darn thing to focus properly. Was worth it though, to see the smiles on her and her mother's faces."

"Did you ever try creating any others? I'd have thought that long distance communication with coloured images would have been very impressive, compared to nineteen forties technology."

He shakes his head. "It wouldn't have worked. Magala and I needed to be on hand at either end to keep it working when they wanted to speak as it was. There just weren't enough magic users around in those days to build a network." He sighs. "There's even less, today."

Magala?

"Don't the Atlanteans teach magic? Aqualad seemed to imply that it was fairly common where he's from."

"It's the wrong style, the wrong sort of approach. But, if things keep going as they are, I might need to hire an aqualung after all."

Alan nods at him. "Kent's going to-."

I hold up my hands. "Don't tell me, don't tell me! I've been practising this." I take a deep breath, and close my eyes. Ring, Ophidian's Eyes.

M'gann tells me that this application of the orange light makes my irises look like those of a snake, with glowing orange vertical slits. I can't see it myself, because it replaces my normal vision with images of the desires of whoever I look at, and mirrors don't want things. I know the Greenies can't do this.

I turn to Mister Nelson, and I'm assaulted by images. A woman… His wife? The Helm of Fate. A tower. An idea… There's no image, but I can feel-.

"That's about enough of that, I think." My vision returns to normal. Mister Nelson's raised his right hand in a 'halt' gesture, a golden glowing ankh floating just in front of it. "Young man, looking into someone's soul isn't something you should do so casually."

Souls are a thing here?

"Oh. Sorry, I didn't think that was what it did."

I flick my eyes towards Alan. And get a shock. Mister Nelson didn't turn the Eyes off, he just blocked them from working on himself. And now I know exactly why Alan wanted me to have his lantern.

"Ring, end."

back

Acceptance 2

next

27th July

06:17 GMT -5

"You really didn't think calling up an elemental to take a look at a person's desires didn't involve looking into their soul?"

I'm still a bit stunned, and take a moment to respond. "Um, no. The Ophidian is the embodiment of avarice. I thought… By the time a desire became part of him, it had been.. sort of.. projected? That it wasn't still in the person. So I'd be more looking at it than into whoever I was looking at."

He closes his hand, the ankh collapsing into gold flecks before completely fading. "I'll let you off, but that really isn't how it works." He turns to Alan. "Alan, you've still got a copy of my old book on elemental summoning, don't you?"

"Yeah?"

"Give it to Snake-Eyes here after I'm gone. I think he's going to need it." He turns back to me. "So? Tell me. What did you see?"

"Succession. The tower, and the Helm of Fate. You want an apprentice."

He smiles, and shakes his head. "No, I'm too old for an apprentice."

He pulls his pocket watch out of his pocket and opens it. Not sure why, there's a perfectly good wall clock.

"I need someone who can take over the whole thing, as soon as possible. I don't have all that much time left. And now, my best chance is to go down to Louisiana and talk to someone who's probably going to turn out to be another carnival huckster." He puts the watch away. "Offered it to Zatara first, but he didn't want it. Can't say I blame him. Working with Nabu isn't exactly the most pleasant experience in the world. All the others I've spoken to, they either felt the same way, or just didn't have what it takes. Now I spend most of my time chasing rumours. Still, I'm glad to meet you. If Alan can get someone to take up his lantern, then there's hope for me yet."

Think. Think. Adult magic users he could give it to. Only one name comes to mind. "Did you ever consider John Constantine?" I've done some research on him. Paper records aren't as easy to look through with a power ring as electronic ones, but it can still be done. What I've been able to get -including witness testimonies from the incident which sent him to Ravenscar- appears to match my recollection of the comics. To completely confirm I'd have to track down the other people who were there, and that certainly won't be easy.

He glowers at me. "No."

"Wait, you actually know who he is?"

"Yes, and I'd prefer my heir to have a slightly lower body count. And not to have spent any time in a secure mental institution."

"I'm sure you know as well as I do that sometimes, in this line of work, deaths are not avoidable. And as far as I know he's fully recovered, mentally."

Mister Nelson looks away, grimacing. "Do you know what he did to get sent there? How many people died in the Casanova Club Massacre?"

Wait. He's blaming Constantine for Newcastle? I checked that stuff bloody thoroughly, and nothing I could find indicated any deviation from what I remember.

"Yes, and apparently I know it rather better than you do. John Constantine and his colleagues arrived at the Casanova Club after the majority of deaths had already happened. As you say, there aren't that many magic users around these days, and they'd heard that the owner, one Alexander Logue, was one of them. When they got inside they found his ritual space a charnel house, the only one unharmed his daughter, Astra Logue. Upon further investigation, it turned out that she'd been sexually abused by her father's entire cult, for years. And when they brought her to their latest 'party', she snapped, and somehow managed to summon some sort of.. dukh… The witness reports I read described it as looking like a giant, inside out dog. Constantine decides that the only way to destroy such a creature is to summon and bind a demon of their own, but he makes a mistake during the ritual and rather than a weak, pliant demon bound to their will they manage to get Nergal, with no bindings in place at all. Nergal kills the dog thing, more for his own amusement than anything else, knocks Constantine around a bit, then drags Astra physically into hell. Constantine tried to pull her back, but just gets one of her arms through the portal before Nergal closes it, slicing it off. John Constantine was then remanded to Ravenscar Secure Hospital, where the guards took turns in beating him. For two years. I know he messed up, and you can be bloody sure he does, but I think at this point he's served his time. And I know all this because I actually investigated it, rather than doing what the police did in grabbing a mentally ill witness and blaming the whole thing on him."

"The police…"

"The police aren't trained to deal with stuff like that! Most of them don't even believe that magic is real. They just decided that the whole group were lying, despite the fact that their testimonies corroborated each other. The only reason Constantine went down for it was because he was still holding her severed arm when the police arrived."

"Paul, take it easy." Alan's voice. I'm standing. I'm standing over Mister Nelson. I didn't really think about getting up. I got so angry I just…

Breath out. Step back. Sit down. "I'm sorry. I think I got a bit carried away there."

I can't read Mister Nelson's expression. He's not exactly happy about my outburst, that's plain. But I think he's thinking about it. "That's alright. Things like that will make any decent man angry." He considers it some more. "You understand, I'll have to check everything you've said for myself. But if it pans out, then once I get back from Louisiana I'll probably be travelling to London next."

"Thank you."

"I'm not saying that I'll choose him. Even if the Casanova Club wasn't his doing, I've still heard a lot of bad things about John Constantine."

"A lot of them are probably true. He's intelligent, cunning, and by now he's experienced. But he's not particularly powerful, and he's had to fight things that are. He's had to choose a lot of… 'least bad' options."

A nod. He looks a little like he's sizing me up. "You know, when Alan said that your ring was powered by avarice, I imagined that you'd be rather different."

"I get that a lot. But having seen what happened to the head of my Corps, I have no desire to be consumed by the orange light."

"Not interested in taking up the mantle of Fate yourself?"

Alan interjects. "Hey, he's my apprentice. Hands off!"

"Heh, no, sir. As far as I know magic doesn't even exist in my parallel. I know only what I've read about it since getting here."

He frowns at that, then waves his right hand in front of his face. When it passes, his eyes glow white. Then it's his turn to be shocked. He jerks back, blinks, and his eyes return to normal.

"My God…"

Did he just see the Ophidian? I bloody hope not. "Give it to me straight, doctor. How long do I have?"

He shakes his head. "You're not ill. That wasn't what I was looking for." He takes a moment, organising his thoughts. "Are you a religious man?"

"Hah. Hardcore Dawkinsian atheist, me."

"I'm.. not sure what that means."

"Richard Dawkins? British biologist and atheist philosopher?" Blank looks from both Alan and Mister Nelson. "Guess he doesn't exist in this parallel. No, I don't believe in gods."

"Hate to break it to you kid, but I've spoken to several gods who would probably take issue with that."

"You've spoken to jumped up elementals with delusions of grandeur. There are no gods."

A pause, as he considers what I said. "Interesting way of looking at it. Well, since you asked me to be blunt; the world is full of magic. Even if they don't train at it, virtually everyone has some magic as part of them. In layman's terms, their soul."

I can see where this is going. "And I don't have one. Because I come from a place where magic doesn't exist."

"That would be my guess. I've seen a few people like that before, but they were the victims of magic attacks, and they didn't live very long afterwards."

I don't know what to think. If I've never had one, then nothing's changed. Be practical. "What does that mean for me?"

"In the short term, because as far as magic is concerned there's no definition for 'you', you'll have no resistance to magic effects at all. Alan told me about what happened when you went to the Temple of Gaea."

Ah, hell.

"You can expect that sort of thing to happen whenever you spend time in an area of high background magic."

Ah, hell.

"You'll also be much more vulnerable to offensive magic than most, although your ring shields should be unaffected."

"Any advice?"

"I'm afraid not. I've… I've never seen anything quite like it. It may well be that you'll start to develop one naturally, now that you're in a universe that has magic in it. Or, it could be that you just don't have the right, for want of a better word, the right 'parts' for it."

"No, I mean practical advice. I will be fighting magic users at some point."

His hand goes to his chin as he ponders the idea. "You might be able to get hold of some sort of artifact that could shield you. Ah, if I had a couple of months I could probably put one together myself, but…"

"You don't have time. Don't worry, I understand. I'm sure I can sort something out."

back

Acceptance 3

next

19th August

15:59 GMT -5

Belle Reve is not easy to reach on foot.

For very good reasons, it's a long way from anything else, and I decided that just flying right in would not be polite. Though the anti-aircraft guns, missiles, and soldiers on guard duty don't pose much of a threat to me, I want to make it clear that I am cooperating as much as possible. League records state that this place has a brute force teleportation jammer and that Giovanni Zatara warded the grounds against magic attack. Superman himself tested the strength of the walls.

They really should have asked the Lanterns to help out with it as well.

I land about three hundred meters from the first checkpoint, and switch to my suit. Just to complete the professional image I've added an Orange Lantern Corps tie and belt buckle. Or maybe those make me look like a prat. The guards on duty in the booth can clearly see me, and I did phone ahead to arrange this. The road up to the entrance is completely straight, and I can see where the trees on either side have been cut back to clear fields of vision.

Hands in my pockets, I start to walk.

The fact that I phoned ahead is most likely why they aren't scrambling to assemble a squad at the outer gate. I timed things so that I could get here just after normal visiting hours. I don't want to disrupt things if I can help it. I also don't want to get marked out by the harridan who runs the place: Amanda Waller. Unlike in the comics she came up through the FBI, rather than the CIA. She specialised in metahuman crime and containment, and this prison is her baby.

I considered the comic and Justice League Unlimited versions of her utterly loathsome, her paranoia causing suffering on a scale most supervillains only dream about. Here, she doesn't appear to have done anything of that sort, though I get the impression she doesn't like superheroes all that much. You'd have thought that she'd be resigned to us existing by now, given that it's been seventy years since the formation of the Justice Society and how -aside from a blip during the Second World War- the American government has never had direct control over its caped population.

As I get closer I smile and wave with my right hand at the guards. They don't wave back, but the nearest does nod before picking up a phone handset. Checking that I have authorisation, presumably. There are fortified watchtowers just inside the perimeter, but the outer gate is merely mildly military in appearance. Three armed police accompanied by two Alsatians pass in front of me. I get a couple of strange looks, but a friendly smile and a wave seem to reassure them. I have an existence on official paperwork, but I'm not active enough in the open to be recognised by the general public.

The chap on the phone lowers it as I step in front of the booth. The woman next to him looks me over with a slightly incredulous expression.

"What, no costume?"

"I didn't really think it was appropriate."

Surprise. "Didn't realize you'd be English."

Best fake Carolinian accent.

"I don't rightly know why folks keep makin' that mistake. Ah was born in Raleigh, North Carolina."

She splutters with laughter. Fellow next to her just looks slightly confused. "Identification, please."

Diana gave me a 'Justice League Affiliate' photo ID. All it really means officially is that I'm helping them with an investigation. It has my picture, title and identification number, as well as a couple of authentication devices that are quite sophisticated by Earth standards. It also has the phone number of the Themysciran embassy in case they want to check. Legally, it means bugger all for me, but the League's deal with the UN includes the right to interrogate prisoners held by signatory nations, and places an obligation on those nations to allow it. There are get-outs, but for the most part even people like Waller don't make a fuss about it.

I place the ID on the indicated spot, and the panel swivels to take it inside. I then start playing 'spot the camera', but give up when I get to twelve. He looks at the card, and runs it through a scanner. In the distance to my right I can see the squat mass of the prison itself. Looks like a giant upturned bowl of concrete, though I know it's more sophisticated than that. Between here and there just off the main road sits a medium sized rectangular building next to which sits a vehicle that looks like a cross between a bus and an armoured van.

"Reason for visit."

Back to my natural accent. "Following up on a case with an inmate, one Jade Nguyen. Is inmate the proper term if they're awaiting trial, but haven't been convicted?"

"If they're inside, they're an inmate."

"You're the expert. So.. can I go in?"

He hands the card to the female guard, who takes a look, visually comparing me to the image. Is this some sort of intimidation thing? That photo was only taken four days ago, and my face doesn't change.

She hands the card back to her male cohort, who puts it on the swivel plate and returns it to me. "Keep it handy; they'll want to see it again at the main gate."

The male guard picks up the phone again, and a moment later there's a buzz and the small pedestrian side gate opens. As I step through I take a look at the distance to the prison.

"Is it going to wind everyone up if I fly there? Just along the ground, I mean."

The female guard smiles. "This is a no-flights zone, 'Orange Lantern'. But, the bus bringing the regular visitors should be coming this way in a minute or two. Head on up to the sheep dip building over there and you can catch a lift back."

"Why would the bus stop there?"

"We have to search everyone before they leave, then we move them onto another bus in case they had anything stowed away. Can't be too careful. The prison-side bus can give you a lift back to the prison. Warden doesn't want you here any longer than you have to be."

I renew my smile. "I understand her attitude completely. Thank you for your assistance."

I give a shallow bow, then turn and continue walking. There appear to be two rings of thin rectangular watchtowers, one a hundred or so metres out from the walls of the prison, and the other just inside the outer fence. I can see gun turrets both in the manned section at the top, and another set of turrets which must either be camera controlled or automated positioned about a third of the way down.

Ah. Those ones are tracking me. I give them a nervous wave, and make sure that my environmental shield is still in place. I'm not completely convinced that it could hold off weapons of that calibre at its current near-invisible level.

The 'sheep dip' building is only thirty metres inside the outer fence. I decide to wait leaned up against the wall on the prison side. I can see the bus leaving the prison gate now. The gate is a huge thing which rises up inside the outer wall when open. Hmm. Doesn't look that secure. Wouldn't some sort of turntable arrangement be better?

Out of curiosity I give today's visitors a look over. The ring identifies them all easily, but most only have a single line of text in Justice League files describing their relationship to the inmate. A few have minor convictions, but nothing that really warrants my attent-.

Hello, I know you.

Lisa Snart, better known to the world at large and the skating community in particular as Lisa Star. Better known to me as the sister of Leonard Snart, aka Captain Cold. I check, but there doesn't appear to be anything untoward about her visit. Her Golden Glider identity doesn't exist here and her record is completely clear. Social service records from Central City appear to indicate that their father's abusive behaviour does carry over from the comics. A real shame, that whole situation.

Ooh, you've got more than a line of text. Hello, Huntress.

back

Acceptance 4

next

19th August

16:08 GMT -5

The bus has wheelchair access at the back, but the guard decides to be an arsehole and get everyone else off and into the building first, leaving her sitting there. The access is probably how they got prisoners who couldn't be allowed to move under their own power on and off before this armoured van was repurposed as a bus.

"Can I give you a hand there?"

She looks up from her lap, taking me in without altering her facial expression. "Ah, well, if you wouldn't mind..?"

She looks over at the control mechanism for the lift. It's too far behind her for her to reach and still be on the lift. Eh. My construct picks her up by her wheelchair and softly places her on the tarmac.

"Oh…"

She's in her late forties now, but she was really quite attractive as a younger woman. She's been out of prison for under three weeks and I just got her daughter arrested. And her husband. I should probably talk to her.

I smile. "Good afternoon, Missus Crock."

Heck, she probably spent her six year sentence… ah. No, I suppose her injuries would have made that unnecessary.

I wonder if Jade mentioned me?

"Orange Lantern two eight one four, at your service." She's looking at me more carefully now. There's a wariness to it. "It is Crock, right? Jade said she was using your maiden name..?"

I didn't even think about… Yep, Lawrence Crock's in the prison up ahead. Would she have been visiting him?

"How do you know my daughter?"

Sharper. How do I explain it..? Right index finger raised I open my mouth, then close it. Full explanation, probably unwise.

"I… Kind of arrested her. I mean, I don't actually.. have.. powers of arrest on Earth, so, detained until the police arrived?"

She blinks. "Oh."

I point to the prison with both index fingers. "You.. were visiting her, right? 'Cause-."

"Yes. Yes I was." She nods, then looks away. "Why are you here?"

'Because I wanted to apologise for nearly throttling your daughter to death' probably isn't the right answer.

"Well, I know that recidivism rates are lower for inmates with good social networks outside prison. I… I guess most people Jade knows are with the League of Shadows and I don't think they're a good influence, so.. I thought I'd… Y'know.. try and help? I mean, she might not even be in all that long."

That surprised her. She's looking me right in the eyes. She's probably quite a good judge of character, but it's a skill that's wasted on me. I wasn't exactly complex before getting the ring, and I've even less motive for subterfuge now. Want to do it, do it.

I give her a smile. She considers. "I'm not sure she'll want to talk to you."

I shrug. "Doesn't really cost me anything. But we did.. sort of.. have a conversation before I knocked her out."

"You knocked my daughter out?"

"Urm…" Didn't think that through. "W.. well, technically the construct I used just paralysed her. It's pretty much the lowest level of force I can use to end a fight. And she used poisoned lipstick on me first!"

Maybe shouldn't have mentioned that. Oh, no, she doesn't seem bothered.

"Poisoned lipstick." She shakes her head slightly. "That takes me back."

"Hey!"

Oh, the guard's back. As he stomps toward me rifle in hand I hold out my identification card. He snatches it out of my hand and glowers at it. I risk a slight smile. I want to seem friendly and helpful, but not smirky and irritating.

"Oh, it's you. You missed visiting hour."

"The Warden was kind enough to agree to allow me to conduct an interview outside of normal visiting hours."

He glares at me. Is that eyeballing? For goodness sake, I'm taller than you, more muscular, and I have a power ring. How scary do you think you are?

He thrusts the card back at me. I take it.

"Thank you."

He turns his attention back to Mrs Crock. Oh, you better not…

"Ma'am, if you could come with me please?"

Huh. I guess it's just me he has a problem with, then.

She puts her hands on her chair's wheels and pushes a quarter turn, then stops them and turns her head to me.

"Orange Lantern, thank you. I don't want my daughter taking the same path that I did, and I'm grateful for what you're trying to do."

"It's not a problem."

A slight nod, and she resumes wheeling herself towards the building, the guard in tow.

Right. Bus.

I walk around to the door at the front. The woman I assume to be the driver is standing outside, talking to another armed guard.

"Excuse me?"

"Through there."

She points to the building. Oh, for goodness sake. Light armour.

"I'm not visiting. I'm conducting an interview. I've already presented my authorisation, but here it is again anyway." I wave my card at them. "I'd very much appreciate a lift up to the prison. I've rather picked up that I'm here on sufferance, and I suspect that the Warden would rather I got in, conducted my business and left, as soon as possible. Can you help me?"

Surprise. They look at each other for a moment, and the guard indicates with a slight inclination of his head that it's her decision. "Yeah, of course."

"Thank you. I appreciate it."

I turn back and step aboard the bus.

back

Acceptance 5

next

19th August

16:17 GMT -5

I'm sitting in the seat just behind and to the left of the driver. The bus has actual seats, rather than the benches which the prisoner transports have. I suppose it's from the space they save stripping out the power suppression tech. I'm slightly curious about whether or not those collars would work on a power ring. Maybe they couldn't block if I was wearing it, but could prevent me summoning it? If the Greenies haven't volunteered to be guinea pigs, I'm not breaking ranks.

The main door opens with a very loud whirring, and we pull into the middle of an open area inside the prison.

"Looks like the Warden wants to speak with you."

A look out of the windows on the opposite side shows a stern looking Amanda Waller flanked by two guards. Unlike the other guards I've seen, they have full body armour and plasma guns.

Why plasma? Surely coil guns are easier to make?

I get up, suit up and step off the bus to meet her.

"That's close enough." Waller's voice. I stop, having just stepped around the side of the bus. The two guards have their guns levelled at my chest. I really couldn't take a shot from those with my shield at its current strength, so I strengthen it into visibility. The guards tense slightly as I do this, but return to normal when nothing else happens. "Check him."

Another guard, similarly armoured, runs forward. In place of a gun she carries what looks like a hand held metal detector. I hold out my identification card, but this is ignored. She runs the metal detector thing over my legs, torso, arms and finally around my head. Then she steps back.

"Sorry Warden, can't scan through his shield."

"Hmpf."

"Is there some sort of problem?"

"Yeah. You, in my prison."

Sigh.

"Warden Waller, I want to talk to one woman, for an hour at most. Then, I'm out of your hair. I don't want to cause any trouble."

This version of Waller isn't as fat as the others I am aware of. Her hair is tied back into a tight ponytail. Mine was like that, before I came here. I had thought that I liked it, but if it didn't survive the ring transforming me I must have been less keen than I thought I was.

"Fine."

The guns are lowered, and I reduce my shield strength. Waller motions forward a man behind her.

Okay. This guy actually is a little intimidating.

"Assistant Deputy Warden Bendemann. Show him to the prisoner."

He catches my eye. "If you'll follow me please?"

He leads me to a blast door, then places his right hand on a palm scanner. A glowing line moves from the top to the bottom, before the device chirps and confirms him. His name -Bendemann, A- and his rank appear at the bottom of the scanner. Next, he leans forward and peers into a device that somewhat resembles the fifty-pence-to-operate binoculars that I remember occupying seaside viewpoints during my youth. Haven't seen them for a while. Lastly, he raises his hand to his personal communicator.

"ADW Bendemann, moving to corridor adjacent to visitor room B, one guest."

A moment, a clunk, and then the blast door slides to the side. Gosh, that's thick.

He steps forward into the corridor. It's narrow, and lined with metal. At the other end is another door like the one he just passed. Can't see anything dangerous. I walk after him, and the door closes once I'm through.

For a moment, I feel a slight.. pressure..? On my shield. Doesn't seem to be an attack. "So, do you have to talk to a control room to get through every door?"

He looks back at me. "No. Just the ones leading to either a high security zone or an external door. The control room's off-site, so even if the prison got completely taken over, the inmates couldn't open the doors."

"Well, I'm impressed."

He doesn't smile, but his face does take on a slightly satisfied air.

Then the alarms go off.

"Blaarp blaarp blaarp blaarp blaarp blaarp blaarp blaarp …"

The ring adds noise filters to my ears, but Bendemann's still getting the full volume. He pulls his communicator up to his mouth with his right hand and covers his left ear with his left. "God damn it, what..! Well of course it doesn't work on him, you think he couldn't..! Yes, of course you-" The alarms cut off. "-should… Thank you."

He puts the communicator back on his belt, and snorts derisively. "Usually we scan everyone going in. Obviously, you're blocking it, and Control decided to be a bunch of circle jerkers and follow the normal procedure. I'll have words with whoever's supposed to be supervising them later."

"Thank you. Um, you know that compared to the ring, any other weapon I'm carrying is more or less decoration, right?"

"Yeah. I've seen Green Lantern in action."

"Which one? I'm being tutored by two of them."

"The black guy." He places his palm on the scanner for the next door.

"You know, he's the only one I haven't actually met yet."

I haven't had a proper conversation with Lantern Jordan, but we've been in the same place a couple of times. I think I make him uncomfortable. Maybe I should ask Lantern Gardner about how the Corps is responding to me.

Iris recognition next, then the communicator.

"ADW Bendemann, moving to visitor room B, one guest."

The door opens, and grants us access to a large oblong room, divided in two by a wall below and a clear screen from waist height. On either side of the screen is a line of bare metal chairs, fixed to the floor, with dividers separating them into cubicals. On the visitor side is a telephone handset, while on the inmate side a speaker and microphone are built into the dividing wall.

In addition to the Assistant Deputy Warden, there is another armed and armoured guard on this side, and two on the prisoner side. Jade hasn't been brought through yet. Or should that be brought back through? It isn't all that long since she spoke to her mother. I was half expecting them to have left her here. I have a quick look around, then walk over and take the seat opposite the prisoner side door. And here I thought I'd get a nice interview room or something. I'll have to ask if this is standard, or if the Warden's just being truculent.

The security here looks pretty good. One of their proudest boasts -and one which I've learned that they repeat to every new inmate- is that Superman can't break through their walls. That may be true, though I suspect that he could given time, but all of these electronics are child's play to a power ring. If one of these people ever gets selected by a ring, they're in big trouble. Even the stuff that isn't accessible without tearing through the armoured walls can be manipulated remotely with these things, and off the top of my head I can't think of a way to prevent it. Maybe, some sort of enchantment? But that would mean messing about with the general purpose wards. Some sort of telepathic network, like the Genomorphs?

The guards on the prisoner side become more alert, and I hear a buzz as the door unlocks, then slides open.

back

Acceptance 6

next

19th August

16:22 GMT -5

Jade comes out first. There are chains around her ankles and wrists, and those chains are linked together with more chain. She's wearing an orange jumpsuit, and her hair's straight and tied back. She looks different, in the light.

She scans the room. I raise my left hand and give a royal wave. She blinks in confusion, then staggers forward a pace as the guard behind her pushes her out. She glances back and for a second forms a half-snarl, before biting it down and walking over to the chair across from mine.

"Afternoon Jade."

The guard who escorted her takes up station next to the door. We aren't getting privacy, but at least we can pretend they aren't listening to everything we say.

She regards me blankly for a moment. "I didn't expect to see you here."

No real life in her voice as she says it. I suppose it doesn't pay to wear your heart on your sleeve in a place like this.

"Turns out, I can request an interview with any prisoner I want." I put the tips of the three central fingers of my right hand against the screen. "Biscuit?"

I'm not completely happy with my latest triple chocolate batch, but from what I remember prison food is usually fairly bad. The biscuit appears from subspace on the other side of the screen, and she stares at it for a moment.

"Jade, it's no more poisoned than the last one was."

"Why are you here?"

Her face hasn't really changed, but there's a definite edge to her voice. Okay, let's just say it.

"I wanted to apologise. I feel that I used excessive force to bring you down at the end, and I certainly shouldn't have said… What I said. I did it, because I was very angry about the poisoned lipstick thing, but I should never have let you get into a position where you could use it. My own.. inexperience…"

Her face has shifted slightly, though I'm not sure whether it's to confusion or incredulity. "What did you say?"

"You didn't hear?"

"I was too busy trying not to suffocate."

"Oh. Um, then, does it really matter?"

"You came here because of it."

Stern, this time. Now I'm blushing. My eyes drop. "Um, alright. It was something like, 'Stop struggling, I've seen this film and it doesn't end well for the Asian woman'."

She blinks, incredulous.

"I know, I'm sorry, it was a disgusting thing to-."

"Hahahahahahahahaha!"

…and breathe out.

I roll my eyes.

"Well, if I'd known you were going to find it funny…"

A genuine smile. I think. "Are you even allowed to watch that kind of movie?"

For a horrifying moment I imagine Diana walking in on me watching La Blue Girl. Would she count as a strong female protagonist..? No, no, don't think about it.

"Probably not encouraged to, no."

She breaks off part of the biscuit with her right hand, and puts it into her mouth. She crunches down, and chews. "You know, I thought you were just trying to get information out of me. But this is actually how you are, isn't it?"

She could have waited until she'd swallowed to say that? Eww.

"Yes, pretty much. I mean, we were trying to get information out of you as well."

She stops chewing for a moment. "The Martian."

"Just because you can't see them, doesn't mean they're not there. Counting pi was working, mostly." I shrug. "Sorry."

She shakes her head. "Ugh, no, I should have kept my guard up. And don't worry about the… The tentacles." She suppresses another laugh. "I've been hit worse in training than you hit me. How were you still moving?"

"What, 'cause of the poison? The ring could easily remove-."

"No, while it was still affecting you. I thought you'd either shrug it off or fall over. As it was I had to jump off the roof to avoid about a hundred orange arrows flying at me."

"I.. don't.. remember that bit too clearly. I think I meant them as a gift, but I was pretty out of it."

Another biscuit fragment.

"A gift."

She's worse than my granddad was.

"I sort of focused on how pretty the feathers on Artemis' arrows were. Artemis, that's the blonde with the bow you were talking to just before I caught up with you."

Quizzical. "Are you supposed to tell me her name?"

Eh? "Come on, that's not her real name, is it? Who's going to actually name their daughter Artemis? An Amazon?"

Oh. I think that biscuit went down the wrong way.

"So, anyway, to my drug addled brain, you avoiding her arrows meant that you didn't like them, so I needed to make prettier ones."

"The, the <cough>, the drug is supposed to work within a few seconds."

"I was enjoying our conversation, so the ring worked to keep me awake. Since it didn't occur to me that a drug could be administered that way, I didn't tell the ring to guard against it, and once it started affecting my mental state I mostly stopped caring. One of my team mates had to prompt me to get me to cleanse my system."

"Isn't that a pretty big weakness?"

"Yes, it is. So I'm actually grateful that I found out about it fighting you. You know, rather than someone who could actually threaten me." A brief scowl from her. "Why'd you pick me up anyway?"

"I didn't think this 'Artemis' would fire on one of her own team mates. Fortunately, your armour was arrow proof."

I nod. "Arrows and small calibre b- wait, she shot me?" Did I tell her that was safe?

Scowl replaced with sinister smile. "A couple of times."

"Was I still glowing orange at this point?"

"Yeees?"

"Eh, s'fine then. So, other point of my visit. Your mum's out of prison; I bumped into her on the way in. Your dad's in prison, -about eighty meters in that direction, actually- and with his record not likely to get out soon, if ever. I'm not asking you to betray any information you have about the League of Shadows, because I know you won't. But, both your mother and I would like to encourage you to disassociate yourself from them. What would it take to persuade you to do that?"

She avoids my gaze, and slumps slightly. For a good thirty seconds, she says nothing. Then, slowly, she looks up. "More cookies than you've got."

I cross my arms. "Well, excuse me if I try anyway."

back

Acceptance 7

next

19th August

19:37 GMT -5

Okay, a bit more than an hour.

"Recognised, Orange Lantern, B zero six."

Turns out, Jade hadn't seen her mum in years. And given that her mum really wasn't shy about telling her what she thought of her career choice, she actually preferred talking to me. I'm playing nice cop to someone's own mother.

Guess I've got the not-seen-your-mother-for-years thing to look forward to.

Oh, someone's sparring, and from the look of them they've been at it for a while. Kon has his t-shirt off, muscles on his heroically proportioned torso glistening with sweat. Donna's in her tight-fitting work-out gear, her hair either tied back in a bun or plastered across her face where it's escaped. They're both breathing hard.

Donna's actual combat uniform is a black bodysuit with some sort of wire mesh under the material, and with silver bracers matching Diana's gold ones. We found out quickly that it gave her a rather substantial advantage over Kon during training, so she's decided not to wear it. I really have to ask Diana what the metal is. There's no conventional material that can survive those sort of forces, let alone protect against them.

Kaldur, Wallace, M'gann and Artemis are spectating, while Diana calls out instructions to the fighters, correcting their postures and attacks. This is training for Donna as well as Kon, as without her armour she is noticeably less resilient than he is and her skills are tested evading and deflecting his attacks.

As I watch, Donna dives at Kon's legs, pushing off with her left leg, falling towards the floor then shooting forwards. One of her many areas of skill is in being able to switch between flight and walking with no gaps between states. Fighting against her forces you to rethink how people shaped objects can move.

Kon seems to find that much easier than Kaldur or I do. Wallace never stood a chance. He seems to find her somewhat distracting.

Kon crouches slightly as she launches, guards, then hops forward and stomps down hard on her most likely vector, forcing her to pull out of her attack. She spins away and tries to sweep him. He counters by kneeling, catching her leg and yanking her across in front of him. He swings a punch, and she rolls under it and attempts an arm lock.

"Don't anchor yourself in place when fighting a stronger opponent!"

Thing about supernatural toughness and stamina? They can carry on like that for hours. Diana doesn't believe in the whole 'fight's-over-if-you-hit-the-ground' thing, and Donna likes to get her money's worth while she's actually here.

The others are still watching the fight, but Artemis is sparing the time to scowl at me. I walk over to them.

"Sooo. How long have they been at it?"

"About forty minutes." Wallace takes a bite of his hotdog. "You know, if it was anyone other than Donna hogging the arena, I'd probably complain."

"Kon-El, she's baiting you. You're getting too aggressive."

Kon lunges forwards anyway, goes too far and gets an elbow to the back of the neck. He drops to all fours, turning as he does so and lashing out with his right arm in a wild swing. Donna doesn't get out of range quite fast enough and takes a glancing blow which knocks her spinning. She tumbles through the air before bringing herself under control just in front of us.

"Hey Paul."

"Good evening Donna. Nice to have you with us."

I meet her eyes with a nod and a smile. A glance to the side reveals that Wallace is taking the opportunity to ogle her chest. Fortunately, she's turned her attention back to Kon, and flies back into the fray.

"Yeah, soo not complaining."

I roll my eyes, and pat him on the shoulder. "Stay classy, Wallace."

Passing Kaldur, I walk over to M'gann and Artemis.

"Hi Paul! Where have you been all afternoon?"

"Prison. Belle Reve. I wanted to visit Jade."

M'gann looks a little concerned. "I'm not sure that's a good idea. You know she just kissed you so she could get away, right?"

"Yes, I had realised that."

"Did she even want to talk to you?"

Yep, still angry.

"Artemis, part of the reason why I went was so that I could apologise for the whole tentacle crush thing. She said that she'd been hit harder in training."

Artemis flinches slightly. Maybe she's more sympathetic than I've been giving her credit for? Don't think I'll mention the Asian-tentacle thing. If Jade didn't hear it then I doubt that Artemis did.

"It took you this long to apologize?"

"No, we moved on to talking about other things. Lantern Gardn-."

"What other things?"

"Oh, nothing secret or anything. A little about me, where I come from. A bit about weapons; she wanted to make sure I used the correct names for her knives in my report. We eventually got onto her relationship with her parents; I'd bumped into her mother going in, and her dad was-."

Artemis is staring at me. "Why were you talking about this with her anyway?"

"Well, Lantern Gardner used to work in prison counselling, and he told me that inmates who have good social support outside prison have a better chance of not reoffending. I mean, the supervillain rehabilitation rate in this country is basically zero, so if we want to avoid doing this all again in a year or two, we should really put some effort into.. finding.. productive... What?"

Artemis is still staring at me, but now she's leaning into it.

I smile nervously, catch M'gann's eye and make a small shrug.

"You went to Belle Reve?"

"Yes?"

"To talk to Cheshire?"

"Yes?"

"And she didn't say anything about…" She stops for a moment, and looks away. "You didn't ask anything about the League of Shadows?"

"No, I didn't really ask about them. I mean, M'gann already took everything Jade knew, and it's not as if the identity of their leader is a secret or anything. Look, is there something you want to tell me? Because you've been in a mood with me since we fought her. Did she.. say something to you? Because she didn't mention you at all."

Back to the staring, but it's less aggressive now. Huh. I'll have to ask Jade what she said next time I visit.

There's a loud thump from the arena as Kon lands hard on his back and doesn't immediately get up again.

"Kon, you alright?"

"Great!" He goes to push himself up. "Ow."

back

Acceptance 8

next

19th August

19:41 GMT -5

Diana holds up her right hand. "I think that's enough for today. Kon-El, you're improving, but you need to work on keeping your aggression in check. Your eagerness to strike your opponent leaves you open to their counter attack."

He nods in response, pushing himself into a sitting position. His breathing rate has already returned to normal.

"Donna, you need to work on using your opponent's blind spots. You're too keen on attacking directly and forfeiting your advantage in agility."

She just nods. She's panting harder than Kon is, but less than I would be pre-ringing after a two hundred metre jog.

Whaw, I was unfit.

The arena light shuts down, and Donna walks over to offer Kon a hand up. He smiles as he takes it. I don't understand it, but he seems to really enjoy this sort of thing. I still have unarmed combat lessons with Black Canary, and they just make me hurt. She tried to motivate me by comparing what I can do unarmed with what Lanterns Jordan and Stewart can do, but all that really tells me is that they're focusing on things that don't matter. Or maybe they do matter to a green ring? Not sure. My sessions with Lantern Gardner are much more useful, though even more harrowing. I was still shaking a good half hour after the last one.

Fixing minor cuts and bruises is easy with this ring, but dampening down the psychological effect of a constant green energy beam barrage is not so easy. I used to wonder why Dragonball Z characters ever used that sort of bombardment when all of the worthwhile damage was done with slower, more powerful attacks. Now I know: shell shock. Until you get used to it -and I still haven't- when you're under attack like that it's very difficult to think anything more complex than 'shitshitshitshitshitshitshit!'. That actually helps my armour in the short term, but would have cost me a real fight before too long.

There's a hum and a hiss from the roof, and the iris door to Red Tornado's room opens. It's directly above the arena for some reason. Wouldn't it be much more practical for it to be located off to one side? What if he wanted to get out and the sparring bout was still going on? Would stairs really be so bad? I had a look when I was taking bits of Mister Twister up there, and it's just an engineering workshop. I didn't even see any personal mementos. Alan's got a couple of rooms full of that sort of stuff.

Red Tornado himself drops down to the ground, and the iris closes behind him. The force of winds needed to keep someone of his weight aloft must be immense, but outside the red blur that surrounded his legs there was barely a breeze. He walks over to Diana, and I can just hear his-. No. No eavesdropping.

Wallace decides to take the initiative anyway. In a blur he's inside their personal space. "Do you have a mission for us?"

Red Tornado rotates his head in Wallace's direction. "Mission assignments are the Batman's responsibility."

"Yeah, well 'the Batman's' with 'the Robin' doing the dynamic duo thing in Gotham. But you're going somewhere, right? Hot date? Or a mish-shon?"

Red Tornado pauses for a moment, and then turns his head toward Diana. She considers. "It can't hurt. I was going to ask Donna and Paul to accompany me anyway."

I know that Red Tornado ended up married in the comics, but I haven't noticed much of an inclination toward social interaction while he's been here. Alan told me that he used to be the only member of the old Justice Society who lived on site, and that he had never known him to have a recreational pursuit.

Red Tornado steps away, and activates one of the holographic computer interfaces. As the rest of us congregate around it, there's a hum, and a picture of Mister Nelson appears on the screen.

"This is Kent Nelson. A friend of Wonder Woman and myself. He is one hundred and six years old."

Wallace leans over to me. "Guy doesn't look a day over ninety."

I shrug. "Alan could pass for forty."

"And he has been missing for twenty three days."

Ring?

Confirmed. One day after visitation.

Darn.

"Kent was a charter member of the Justice Society, the precursor to the Justice League."

A picture of a younger Mister Nelson in full Fate costume replaces the image of the old man on the screen.

"Of course. Nelson was Earth's sorcerer supreme. He was Doctor Fate!"

Sounds like Kaldur's done half the reading.

Wallace isn't impressed. "Pff. More like Doctor Fake. Guy knows a little advanced science and 'Dumbledores'-" He actually made the air quote gesture. "-it up to scare the bad guys and impress the babes."

"You realise you're talking to someone using a ring powered by his emotional state, right?"

"Yeah, but-."

"Kent may simply be on one of his… 'Walkabouts'. But he is caretaker to the Helmet of Fate, the source of the Doctor's mystic might, and it is unwise to leave such power unguarded."

"He is like the great sorcerer priests and priestesses of Mars. I would be honored to help find him."

Add researching Martian magic and religion to the slate. I've found that I can add things to my notebooks while they're in subspace. No idea how that works.

Wallace raises a hand enthusiastically. "Me too."

Not surprised. I imagine that Mister Nelson and Mister Garrick would have been friends, and Wallace seemed to admire the first Flash.

"Soo honored I can barely stand it."

Oh. No, he's just planning to hit on M'gann again.

"Magic." He makes the horns. "Rocks."

Hasn't he had even a basic induction session on the nature and uses of magic? We've done melee combat and criminal investigation, I assumed that magic lessons were further in to the curriculum. I've tried to do some reading, and the books belonging to Mister Nelson that Alan gave me were helpful, but there doesn't seem to be a set text or standard notation. I really need to talk to Diana about getting a thaumaturgist on the team. If Zatanna's not up for it, then maybe… Whatshername, Tracy Thirteen? Without knowing her real name I hadn't thought it worth trying to find her. Maybe see if Mister Zatara can teach a few lessons?

Time to stick my head above the parapet.

"I spoke to Mister Nelson shortly before he went missing."

Ah. Centre of attention.

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Acceptance 9

next

19th August

19:48 GMT -5

Diana's first to respond. "When was this?"

"On the twenty seventh of July. He was visiting Alan, and Alan called me."

M'gann looks offended. "Why didn't you tell me? I would have loved to meet him."

"Call came via the ring-" I point. "-at five past six in the morning. I was woken up by a giant orange head, and Alan was really unclear about why he wanted to see me. When I got to his house, Mister Nelson was there. He was stopping off before travelling on to New Orleans, and then probably on to London."

Didn't he visit Diana as well, or at least contact her? Maybe they weren't that close. Hang on. Ah, drug gang gun battle in Mexico City. She probably couldn't spare the time.

"Do you know why he wanted to go there?"

"Is this ring orange? Because he's a hundred and six and he needs someone to take over looking after the Helmet before he dies. There was a medium in New Orleans he was going to interview, and I suggested the name of a wizard I know of in London."

"What are their names?"

"Didn't ask about the medium. Wizard's name is John Constantine."

No sign of recognition. "I haven't heard of him."

"I imagine that he's a little under the League's radar, but I think Mister Zatara knows of him."

She nods. "I'll check with him. Do you think this John Constantine might have had something to do with Kent's disappearance?"

Well… "Do I think he'd have kidnapped him, or attacked him? No, that's quite a long way outside his method of operation. But that's not to say that there might not have been some sort of incident. London's magic underground isn't exactly a safe place."

She nods again. Kaldur's giving me a puzzled look. Not sure why. "Do you have any idea how to contact him?"

"I haven't been able to locate him, but I do know where his sister lives. I haven't approached her myself because, as I understand it, Mister Constantine doesn't want the rest of his family involved with, well, this." I gesture to the room. "But if there's an actual incident to investigate, might be worth trying her."

"Any other family?"

"Brother-in-law and niece, both living with the sister. Other than that, not that I know of. Ring, upload all information relating to John Constantine to the computer on Wonder Woman's jet."

"Compliance."

"I'll follow up on London. Donna, are you able to accompany me?"

She brightens at the prospect. "Ah, yes, but I should probably take a shower first."

Ring?

A wave of orange light passes through Donna, eliminating sweat and grime.

"Oh. Thanks."

Wallace looks curious. "Your ring has a shower function?"

Eh? "Why'd you think I didn't shower with you guys after missions?"

Red Tornado raises his right hand, holding what looks like a weird looking key.

"It would be best if the team investigated the Tower of Fate. It is located in Salem, Massachusetts." He holds out the key to Kaldur. "This key will grant you access. I will investigate the lead in New Orleans."

Kaldur takes the key, while Wallace wanders over to try his luck with M'gann again.

I'm going to need to recharge. I'm not low, but this looks like it'll be an actual mission and I don't want to take unnecessary risks. I step away from the group, but Kon and Diana intercept me from opposite directions.

Kon speaks first. "Would.. you mind cleaning me off as well? I don't wanna hold up the mission."

"Sure, let me just…" He is rather sweaty.

"Um."

Come on damn you work. Ah. The orange band moves over Kon. He runs his right hand through his hair.

"Thanks. Heading down to the bioship?"

"Just gunna recharge the ring first. I'll be down in a moment."

He nods, smiles, and turns back to the group. I turn to Diana and come to parade rest.

"Sir?"

"Kent told you that he was looking for a successor?"

"Yes? Well, confirmed it after I used the-" I point at my eyes. "-Ophidian's Eyes on him."

Not sure where she's going with this.

"Do you know who else he was considering for the position?"

"Ahp, I think he said he offered it to Mister Zatara, but he turned it down. Yeah, he didn't mention the others by name, just that he's asked a lot of people."

She doesn't seem happy about this for some reason.

"Can I ask? Why do you want to know?"

"Themysciran reliquaries hold a number of powerful arcane artefacts. Though I don't think there are any Amazons who would be prepared to.. bond.. with Nabu, we would be perfectly happy to secure the Helmet and any other dangerous objects as an interim measure. Please, if you see him, let him know that."

"Of course. Are.. there.. a lot of Amazonian magic users?"

"Few choose to become sorceresses, but most Amazons use magic to some degree. We've… They've, had a great deal of time in which to learn."

She makes to leave. "Oh, um, one other thing came up in conversation."

She turns back. "Yes?"

"It's probably more of a long term thing. Um. But Mister Nelson scanned me, and it turns out that I sort of.. don't have a soul. And, that could be a problem. In the long term."

Incredulous. "You don't have a soul? I know you said you were an atheist-."

"No no no, it's not a matter of faith. My home parallel doesn't have magic, so I came here without any sort of magic presence. No soul."

Realisation. "That was why you reacted as you did at Gaea's temple. I had seen people affected by it before, but your reaction was unusually strong."

"Yeah. Apparently that'll happen whenever I'm somewhere with intense magic."

Her gaze shifts from me over to the others; Kaldur in particular, I notice.

"The Tower of Fate is a site of powerful magics, though I have never tried to make a direct comparison between it and the Temple. Do you think that you will be able to cope?"

"I don't know." I shake my head. "I'll tell Kaldur, and let him decide. Even if I can't enter the Tower safely, I can still be on overwatch."

She nods her approval. "Have you considered what lacking a soul means for you?"

"I've been trying to do some research, but even though magic is readily available here, there don't seem to be many reliable books on the subject. I suppose it means that if I die there's nothing to go on to an afterlife, assuming those actually exist."

"I assure you that they do."

"Okay, but, like you said, atheist. I believed that there was nothing after death anyway. Really, this is still an improvement, because I know it could change."

She thinks for a moment. "I will speak with Magala, my mother's court sorceress. Once I have information for you, I will let you know."

"Thank you."

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Acceptance 10

next

19th August

20:02 GMT -5

If you're not sure of your mission fitness, inform your team leader.

I didn't take my normal seat next to Kon so that I could have a quiet word with Kaldur. I've been in close proximity to him when he's used magic before to no ill affect. He's actually taking some sort of Atlantean correspondence course, finishing the education that got interrupted by Aquaman taking him on. I've transmuted reagents for him a couple of times, then hung around to watch him work. The ring couldn't work out what was happening… Or maybe I just don't have the vocabulary to understand its explanation.

Is this going to be a big deal with the rest of the team? I know Americans tend to be more religious than the English, but none of my team mates have shown any overt religiosity in my presence. On the other hand, the three I've spent most time with aren't Americans, and it hasn't ever come up in conversation. I didn't even know that Mars even had a priesthood until M'gann mentioned it. Do they have several religions? The way she said it implied just one. And I have no idea how Atlanteans do things.

I lean forward, and try to keep my voice down. "Aqualad, can I borrow you for a moment?"

He looks up from the data pad he was reading. Looks like he's reviewing Mister Nelson's service record. "What is it?"

Where to begin?

I exhale. "When I spoke to Mister Nelson, he made me aware of something… Okay, you know how I come from a parallel universe?"

"You have mentioned it."

"Right... It's not just history that's different. The way physics works is different as well. And, one of the differences, is no magic."

His eyes drop for a moment. "If you are concerned about what we may face-."

"No, I've read up on that. The problem's a bit more… When I appeared here, I didn't suddenly start interacting with local magic as if I'd been here my whole life."

I'm trying to lead up to it, but I think I'm just confusing him. "Are you saying that you are immune to magic?"

"No. Quite the opposite, actually. I don't have a soul, and as a consequence I have no resistance to magic at all. Made a, heh, a bit of a scene when Wonder Woman took me to the Temple of Gaea. Was a bit like I was drunk, or high, or something."

Kaldur's face is still as he considers this. "You are certain that is the cause?"

I shrug. "I can't check, can I? But it sounds logical."

"It does, though it would appear to contravene what I was taught at the Conservatory of Sorcery. The idea that complex life is possible without magic is a strange one."

"Welcome to my world. Look, I wanted to let you know in case I start acting up when we get to the Tower. You might be better off leaving me in a supporting role."

He nods, once. "I will consider it. Thank you for informing me."

"-seriously considered becoming a wizard myself."

Is Wallace still trying that?

"Aqualad, I just want to check: there isn't a school for arcane learning in North America, right?"

"Not that I am aware of. In fact, I do not know of any in the surface world."

"Eh, there's a few. There's the White College in the north of England, but it's invite only. There's Nanda Parbat in Tibet if you're spiritually inclined, Themyscira if you've got a v-."

M'gann interrupts me. "We're approaching Tornado's coordinates, but-."

Kon stands, and peers out of the front window. "Nothing's there."

Kaldur checks an instrument panel. "Take us down. We will investigate further on foot."

M'gann moves her hands at the controls, and the bioship drops down to land on what looks like an empty car park. I take a moment to look out of the front window myself as the others file past, out of the rear hatch. There really isn't anything here. I mean, one look at the surrounding buildings shows that there isn't really any reason for there to be a big empty space here, so someone's playing silly buggers. And if I can even notice that fact, the wards must be of the more passive sort. A glamour, then? I didn't notice anything on those in the book he gave me, but I was more concerned with making sure I wasn't sending messages to the Ophidian than magical hacking.

I get up, armour up and join the group outside.

There don't seem to be any other people about. Wallace is conducting a celerity assisted sweep of the perimeter, pausing at intervals to check… something..? I'm going to assume that he thinks the Tower is concealed by technological means, and presumably he has encountered such devices before. And, of course, it might be. Just because it's hidden by magic doesn't means that it can't also be hidden by other means.

Just in case…

Ring, general scan, four hundred metre radius.

Compliance.

It seems that the ring finds this area perplexing. Some of the returns from its scans don't agree with each other, but it doesn't know how to resolve the dispute. There's definitely something here, though. I can't remember anything about the Tower from the comics that might offer any insight.

Maintain scans. Let me know if anything changes.

Compliance.

**Sorry, ring's got nothing.**

M'gann lowers her hands from the sides of her head. **Nothing on telepathic scans.**

Wallace returns to the group, braking hard in front of Artemis. **I can't find anything either. This isn't simple camouflage.**

Artemis has her hands on her hips. **So, what'd'ya think? Adaptive micro-optoelectronics combined with phase shifting?**

Ring, we're checking for that, right?

Optical camouflage is insufficient to affect base level scans. Current avarice levels also support multiphasic scanning, which is in progress.

Good to know.

**Absolutely.**

So, wait, has he given up on the magic angle with M'gann? I'd like to think so, now that a mission is in progress.

Then M'gann takes a few steps towards him.

**N..not.**

Gods damn it, Wallace.

back

Acceptance 11

next

19th August

20:11 GMT -5

**Clearly, mystic powers.. are at work here.**

Artemis' face leaves no question of what she thinks of his blatant nonsense. I'd roll my eyes, but the ring has just made me aware of a patch of phase shift at the edge of the area which the Tower of Fate is supposed to occupy. Someone just moved a stealth field up behind us, and I'm a little worried about the possibility of immediate attack.

Nothing.

Ring, are we able to see inside that area without letting those inside know that we've seen them?

Unable to confirm. Probability dependent on data not obtainable without bypassing phase shift stealth system.

Of course it isn't.

**If everyone could maintain the pretence of looking for the tower? We are under observation.**

Heads and eyes swivel in my direction. I ignore them, generate an orange torch and begin what I hope looks like a methodical search pattern.

Kaldur gets the idea first. He holds out his water bearers and forms an arc of water between them, and begins walking a grid. I wonder if he can actually use them to detect magic? Some sort of reverse dowsing? M'gann rises into the air and swoops across the tarmac, a small distortion forming around her hands. The others catch on, and spread out to look by more mundane means.

**The ring has detected an area of phase shift.**

Kon frowns. **I thought you said you couldn't find anything?**

**I couldn't. It wasn't there when I started scanning. Someone snuck up on us and is currently watching us. Kid Flash, don't look around!**

He freezes for a moment, before resuming his fake search.

Kaldur stops walking for a moment, and rotates on the spot, coincidentally making eye contact with me. **Are you able to determine who it is?**

**Not without piercing the distortion, and I can't guarantee that they won't detect that. With your permission?**

**You have it. Try not to let them know what you are doing.**

Ring, you heard the man. Minimum power.

I don't look in their direction, but in my mind's eye I see four orange outlines. No, five. It looks like Klarion the Witch Boy brought Teekl along. I only really know them from Seven Soldiers, but I don't remember him being particularly powerful in any of his incarnations. I see Mister Nelson, with his hands bound in front of him. He looks understandably miserable, but I can't see any injuries. Just behind him is a man in a white shirt and sporting a wand and a beard of evil. Abra Kadabra. Justice League records indicate that he uses highly advanced technology to perform apparently magical feats. Have to see about scanning his tech in detail later. I seem to remember that he comes from the future, but I can't yet tell if that's true of this version.

The last man is standing at the back. Black leather coat, black gloves, black leather boots and a full head mask with a white swirl over the face. No idea how he can see out. I don't recognise him, and there's nothing in the League files. Some sort of dark nineties version of Batman of the Future's Spellbinder? I can't see any weapons on him at this level of resolution.

None of them seem to be reacting to what I'm doing, though Mister Nelson might just be disguising his awareness intentionally.

**Three opponents, Mister Nelson and a cat. Abra Kadabra of Central City, Klarion the Witch Boy and some guy I don't recognise.**

I get an incredulous response from Wallace. **Klarion the what?**

**Witch Boy.** Wait, that sounds stupid, and since he isn't in the files I can't explain where I know it from. He also isn't wearing his traditional puritan pilgrim costume. **Young male magic user. He's wearing a suit. I think the cat's his familiar.**

Kaldur keeps things moving. **The other man?**

**Not on file, and I don't recognise him. No obvious weapons, but that probably just means that he doesn't need them.**

**Is Mister Nelson injured?**

**Not as far as I can tell.** I think for a moment. Ring, can we attack through the phase shift?

Phase shift piercing attacks are available.

Good to know. I transmit the ring's image and the enemy's location to the others via the telepathic network.

**Ah, Abra Kadabra. Such a shame that he never opened his heart to the true mystic arts.**

**Not the time, W-. Kid Flash.**

Artemis chips in. **I don't recognize the leather guy either.**

I'm starting to worry about that as well. The dress code suggests malnourished Midnighter, but he's slightly slumped. Oh, his hands are twitching. I think Klarion's saying something to him, but I don't have sound at the moment.

**I can try scanning under the mask, but that increases the risk of them realising that we're on to them. And, frankly, I'm not sure it's worth the effort. Major supervillains either don't do subtlety or they don't do fieldwork. If he were out of our weight class we'd have heard of him by now.**

**Just so long as you don't try kissing him.**

Banter? Glad to know she's stopped being angry with me. **He doesn't look like my type. All that leather? What is he thinking?**

She gives me a surprised glance. What?

**Rescuing Mister Nelson is our main purpose here. M'gann, find heavy objects and levitate them over the roof behind them. When I give the word, hurl them at Klarion and the unknown figure.**

M'gann nods, and raises herself higher up into the air.

**Orange Lantern, we will need you to neutralise Abra Kadabra as quickly as possible. Can you attack through his cloak?**

I did want a look at his tech. **Unless he's done something very clever, yes.**

**Prepare to initiate your attack on my command.**

**Sir.**

**Kid Flash, I need you to recover Mister Nelson as swiftly as possible. Artemis and I will cover you.**

**You got it.**

**Once you have him, take him to the bioship. Depending on the level of resistance we encounter, either return to assist or cover our retreat.**

back

Acceptance 12

next

19th August

20:18 GMT -5

What sort of construct to use? Clearly, I need to disrupt whatever Abra Kadabra uses to control his technology. I can see a wand, but I imagine he has implants to go with it. Shouldn't be too hard to block or destroy, but in case he doesn't need to move to use them I should probably avoid using the ShockCrown. The records in the Justice League database suggest that all of his really dangerous stuff requires a good deal of set up time, and I haven't detected anything like that around this square.

Hmm. Grapple, grab his wand and yank him away from the others, then plug a construct into his peripheral nervous system and paralyse him while jamming any signals to the outside. Slamming him into the ground couldn't hurt. Come up from below? Should I keep that in reserve?

**Is everyone ready?**

By 'sheer chance', Wallace's search pattern has brought him closest to the stealth field. Kon's crouched slightly, as if examining the ground. Artemis returned to the bioship for her bow, and is 'cleaning' some arrows. Kaldur has separated the water streams from his water bearers, ready to make medium distance whip attacks.

Ring, extend subterranean construct. Prep phase disruptors.

Compliance.

An orange filament extends from my right heel. It goes down a metre through the tarmac, then travels straight under our targets.

**Orange Lantern ready.**

**I'm ready.** I get a quick flash of M'gann's position.

**Ready.** Artemis 'experimentally' puts arrow to string.

**Ready.** Kon tenses his legs, ready to leap.

**I'm always ready.** Wallace stretches his right leg.

**Attack once the camouflage is down. Orange Lantern, attack when ready.**

My orange thread is split into four under the target area. The four sub-threads radiate away from the division point and form the corners of a square, each terminating in a ray gun like construct.

Now.

There's no sound, not even a visual distortion. One moment we're looking at a wall, the next, a group of three supervillains, a cat and an old man. Kadabra has just enough time to stare at his wand in confusion before the chain erupts from the tarmac under his feet. A clamp forms around his neck and yanks him face first into the ground. He drops his wand, and an orange tendril latches on to it. Wallace blurs past as I put an x-shaped harness around Kadabra's chest, jam his everything, and launch both of us off the ground. He's never shown any ability to fly, and most people will hesitate to attack if it means a two kilometre drop.

Just as we leave the area M'gann's projectiles zero in on the remaining targets. The guy in black raises his head toward them.

"'crack'"

The two lumps of concrete explode into powder, obscuring the area. I see Artemis' arrow fly towards the last location of the unknown villain-

"'tok'"

-and bounces off air. We're going to need to have that talk about the efficacy of pointy sticks against force fields, aren't we? I had been hoping to put that off.

Four bolts of red lightning blast out of the dust cloud forcing the others to evade, and I hear someone -I think it's Klarion- giggling.

**Orange Lantern to Aqualad. Kadabra is clear. Orders?**

**Kid Flash to Aqualad, Mister Nelson's clear. A bit beat up, but he says he'll be okay.**

**Kid Flash, return to the combat area. Orange Lantern, uh-**

**Kaldur?**

**Klarion's assistant is more dangerous than I'd hoped. Interrogate Abra Kadabra. Report anything useful you learn.**

**Sir.**

That will take me out of telepathic range, of course. I seem to remember Klarion's powers in the comics being a little more subtle than red lightning. Eh, they've got a clear line of retreat if they're being overwhelmed, and they've still got the radio.

Up we go then.

As the car park drops away I take a moment to scan Kadabra. Not as many implants as I was expecting. A couple in his gut, and a cluster around the base of his skull. They keep trying to transmit, but nope, still jammed. His organs are more or less baseline Human, though according to the ring there's been quite a bit of genetic tweaking. Optimisation, rather than redesign. I take his wand into my hand. It looks like it has similar subspace storage facilities to the ring, but it can also form links between stored objects and the outside world. He's weaponised something I use for notebook writing.

We're now at splat height, and he's pretending to be unconscious.

"Mister Kadabra, I can read your brain activity. I know that you're perfectly aware of your surroundings." He lazily opens his eyes, and wrinkles his nose at me. "Now, I'm Orange Lantern t-."

His eyes open wide in shock. His pupils flash down to the glowing sigil on my chest. His heart rate and breathing rate have shot right up.

Um… Okay…

"No no no no no no!"

He's reaching out for his wand with his left hand. The implant in his neck appears to be a dedicated subspace receiver, and he's trying to trigger it like mad right now. I suppose that implant handles the activation process of the subspace link? Wand waving wouldn't be precise enough.

I put the wand in my subspace storage.

"You can't be here now! I checked! You shouldn't be here yet!"

Guess he does come from the future, then. "Can I.. take it then that you've heard of First Lantern Larfleeze?"

"Heard of..? Hehehehe…" Despair fills his chuckles. He raises his right hand to mantle his face. He's still breathing as if he's sprinted four hundred metres.

This should be easier than I was expecting. "So, if you've heard of the Orange Corps, then you should know what I can do to organic life forms who aren't helpful when I want them to be."

He looks me over, then looks down. "Yes. Ah, yes. Yes, I know."

"Glad to hear it. Now, I've got some questions for you. You can answer them as you are, or you can join the Orange Lantern Corps the unfun way, and then answer them. Please remember, I'm monitoring your brain wave patterns."

" What do you want to know?"

Ring, transmit to the team. "Let's start with: who's the guy in leathers?"

"I.. I.. I'm not sure. I didn't meet him before this evening. Klarion called him 'Onomatopoeia'."

"And what can he do?"

"He doesn't talk, he just makes noises and things happen. I don't understand how it works! I don't know anything about magic!"

Brain activity suggests that he's telling the truth. Now, the other half of the problem.

"Now, talk to me about Klarion."

back

Acceptance 13

next

19th August

20:23 GMT -5

He makes a token struggle against the bonds, then gives up and looks down. Is he actually trying to spot Klarion from up here?

"Klarion is a Lord of Chaos, and one of the most powerful magic users on this planet."

What? Oh, hell. Ring, team status.

Kaldur's got both water bearers attached to Onomatopoeia, but before he can do anything with the connection the water freezes then shatters, knocking him back. Some sort of vaguely bear like creature made of mist is chasing M'gann, while Klarion cackles from behind it. Wallace picks himself off the floor and only just dodges another bolt of red lightning. He's limping. Artemis is pelting Klarion with arrows which twist and bend as they reach him. Most snap or fly into the wall, but one goes back towards her and forces her to dodge. Mister Nelson is just behind her, reaching for something. Why's he there?

Kon jumps through the mist creature, disrupting it for a moment. I see cuts on his chest and face.

!Help them!

Ring, shut down Kadabra's neck implant. Duration: twelve hours.

Kadabra gasps in shock. I do a quick check, but the implant doesn't do anything essential to his body.

"I'll be dropping you off now."

Ring, route.

At the moment, FTL is a bit rough on the people I bring with me. Kon walked it off, but M'gann asked if we could take the bioship next time. A momentary flicker of orange and Kadabra and I are hovering just over the grass next to the 'Welcome to Salem' sign. I let him drop. "I'll pick you up when this is over."

He's still a bit out of it, but he manages a-

"You can't!"

-before I transition back to the fight area.

A shock prod construct hits Onomatopoeia in the diaphragm. He's wearing armour, but NO ONE HURTS MY FRIENDS and he's knocked over and down. I spin in the air and a giant fan construct disperses the mist thing. I land next to Artemis.

"Where's Kadabra?"

"I shut down his tech and dropped him off on the edge of town."

Klarion smirks at me. I hadn't really noticed before, but the structure of his face isn't quite right. The hair horns could just be gel, but the angles in his head and his colouration are just subtly… Wrong. Something pretending to be Human, but not quite getting it.

I stick a bubble barrier around him. I've no way to know whether or not it'll actually do anything, but Mister Nelson did say that not having a soul shouldn't affect my constructs. Every little helps.

**It won't be enough.** Mister Nelson's voice.

"Oooooooooooh. Who gave you a kiddie decoder ring?" Klarion's decided that I warrant his full attention.

"No idea. Looks good on me though, doesn't it?"

"Eeeh, I've seen better. I don't think orange is your color."

Teekl rubs around his legs. Her eyes are solid red, and her fur has some decidedly odd markings. The versions of her I know about look more or less like a normal cat most of the time. She catches me looking at her and snarls, swishing a paw in my direction with claws extended. Usually I love cats, but I think I'll give this one a miss.

Klarion's eyes brighten for a moment. Both figuratively and literally. "You're empty."

What am I doing? Trying to hold his attention, I suppose. I don't particularly want to bait a spell I can't block with a barrier. I don't know what a 'Lord of Chaos' is except in Warhammer terms, but I'm guessing this is probably about my worst possible match up.

"Mum always told me to go before leaving the ho-."

Red lightning crackles around his left hand and my barrier dissolves like paint dust thrown into the wind. The sensory feedback I get from it feels like I thrust my forearm inside a big bag of uncooked rice. Lots of tiny packets of pressure from lots of directions at once. On the off chance, I pull the construct back, turn it into a razor sharp edge, and bring it around at chest height. This time, it's ink in water.

Uhoowf. Feedback from that one actually hurt a bit. Like sandpaper pressed into the skin of my left arm, then yanked hard along it. Calm. Breath. Focus on your need.

He is a threat to my ingroup. He has hurt my friends. I don't really mind a little small 'c' chaos myself, but comic Chaos is all about wanton destruction of the sort I find depressingly pointless. I want to build, and people like this live just to tear things down.

Shots from my particle cannon turn into filaments of light that swirl around him like streamers as they reach him. A chunk of concrete hurled by M'gann turns to gloop as it strikes him, then drips upwards and evaporates to nothing.

"Heeeey. My soo-oot."

Klarion makes a fist and oh hell. I remember the episode of Teen Titans where Raven forced Beast Boy to change from one shape to another. I hope that's what happened, because otherwise Klarion just broke M'gann's shoulders, hips, spine and neck twisting bits of her around.

She cries out, and Kon lunges in to catch her.

!Kill him!

I fire a wide orange coruscating beam at him while simultaneously building two Van de Graaff generator constructs on either side of him. Maybe avarice is inherently chaotic, or something? I ramp the generators up far beyond what normal physics allow, because mere electrons will do what I want them to. Then they discharge, a continual blinding stream of white so bright I put a shield around the target.

!M'gann!

There isn't much on Martian physiology in the part of the database I could access, but a brief application of orange light triggers her shapeshifting in the areas Klarion rearranged. Some breakages, but mostly things just aren't connected to each other properly. If she weren't in so much pain she'd do it herself, but with a little luck she should be able to sort herself out now.

There's a faint 'click' from behind me, and the Tower of Fate appears from wherever it was hiding.

When this is over, I'm going to bypass League security and get as much-.

"Hkk."

Cold. I feel cold.

The Van de Graaff generators collapse. The barrier's still up, but it's thinning and I can see a smiling, unhurt Klarion on the other side of it. I stagger slightly to the left, then catch myself. What is-?

Ghaaaagh!

There's a cone of glowing red nothing sticking out the left side of my chest, and from the feel of it an equal length inside as well!

"Aaaagh!"

Come on damn you, cut the pain!

The skin around in numbs, and for a moment I'm alright again. Breathing isn't working quite right, but the ring can just feed my cells directl-.

Eaughh!

I crumple, dropping to all fours on the ground, just able to raise my head enough to look at him.

"Ah ah aah." Klarion waves his right index finger at me as he shoves what is left of my barrier aside with his left hand. "No cheating."

back

Acceptance 14

next

19th August

20:28 GMT -5

**Get him inside. The Tower's defenses…**

Everything's getting a bit peculiar. I can see Klarion walking forwards, step by step. There's a cat in his arms, and he's stroking its head. There's a sort of orange haze around, but it's not really…

Oweraghowowaaagh!

The pain comes from two places now, the left of my chest and my abdomen, a red cone in both of them. My armour's still there, for all the good it's doing. I've rolled over onto my side, and I'd have curled up in the foetal position if that didn't make it hurt more. Dully, I register the ring describing the physical damage the cones are doing.

I think I'm melting. It doesn't burn, but parts of my body are being torn into tiny shreds. I try to regrow them-

"Yaaaaghh ah ah ah!"

-and it gets worse as the new flesh is melted in turn.

My eyes are wet.

I'm lifted off the ground. It's not gentle, but compared to the other pain, it's nothing. I hear a shout-

"No! Come back here! He's mine, mine, MINE!"

-then I'm through a heavy wooden door and into a corridor of bare brick. We're… Going up some stairs.

Brick. That explains the cold, I suppose.

Wider corridor. I see a worried green face. Rounded, hard and bald, like a Martian's supposed to look. A two fingered hand laid on my chest becomes five fingered.

**You're going to be okay.**

Her head changes shape, back to normal Megan. Why doesn't she just leave it? Why won't she show me her real face?

The wall ahead of us peels away to reveal a living room. There's a large square rug on the floor, and a fireplace in the far wall. M'gann deposits me on a chaise longue, and I curl up again while Kaldur tends to Kon's cuts. Banda- No, no, focus, Kon needs you. The medical kit I put in subspace clatters to the floor next to him. Wallace looks shocked, his eyes moving from me to Kon to M'gann. He wants to help, but doesn't know how.

The broken remains of Artemis' bow hit the floor with a clatter. The.. whatever it's made of.. has exploded apart near one end. There's a small cut on her cheek, but I don't think that she's noticed it.

"Let's have a look at you." Mister Nelson gently pushes me onto my back. I grip the sides of the chaise longue. I shouldn't curl up. He's the only one around here who can fix this.

But it hurts.

"As I feared. This spell shouldn't last longer than a few seconds, but you've nothing to fight it with."

He moves out of my field of vision, and my eyes are drawn back to the two red spikes in my torso. For a moment, I wonder about transferring the ring to my mouth and just cutting away the damaged parts of my body. No, no, too risky. Might work, probably wouldn't.

Aghhuhuhuha.

I feel a hand on mine, which still hold the chaise in a death grip.

"Paul."

Ugh.

"Paul."

Insistent. I push my head back to look. M'gann.

"Not dead quite yet, M'gann. "

There's a blast of cold air, freezing really. A few flakes of snow waft across the room behind M'gann.

"I can try to turn off the pain telepathically."

I try shaking my head. I think it wobbles a bit.

"Ring… Ring can do that. Isn't working. Magic, ugh…"

I wince.

She presses her other hand against my cheek, and looks across to Mister Nelson. He's now carrying his walking stick, the metal handle glowing gold. He holds the shaft and points the metal end at me.

The red double ended cones rise slowly from my chest, a faint golden aura around them. It doesn't hurt worse, but now the ring's giving me an even clearer idea of what's been happening inside me. Without the ring, my stomach, liver and small intestine would be a write-off, along with most of my left lung. As it is… Ugh… They'll be more or less fixed in a few moments.

Once the cones are fully out Mister Nelson sweeps the cane around, taking them with him. He walks over to an empty area of the floor, and a pedestal topped with a large lump of crystal rises out of the floor. A brighter glow, and the cones sink into the crystal, trapped the hell away from me.

The pain's starting to subside. Come on, you practised this. Wholeness Rightly Assumed.

"Ah!"

According to the ring, I'm now more or less intact. There's still some pain, though I don't know whether it's an echo or if there's still something wrong with me. I release my grip on the chaise, smile at M'gann and then move to a sitting position.

"Thank you, M'gann, Mister Nelson."

"Don't be too grateful. I didn't get all of it. You're going to need someone to spend a great deal of time making sure that they've removed every last bit of it before you'll be fully well again."

Kon looks relieved. His t-shirt's off and his chest is covered in plasters and bandages.

Ring, photon beam.

A thin filament of orange arcs from my head over to his, where it expands into the sunlamp-like construct of Kryptonian well-being. I need a name for it. Rao's Beatitude? No, Rao's red, that wouldn't make sense. Don't know.

He closes his eyes and turns his face upwards towards it, breathing out in relief.

"What… What exactly.. cut up Superboy, then?"

"Onomatopoeia."

Kaldur's sombre. There's a joke in his answer, but I'll not be making it. I just remember who Onomatopoeia was in the comics. He was a nobody. Vocal tic, whatever weapons he could lay his hands on. Guns mostly, but I marked him down the intelligence scale on the grounds that he wasn't in it for money. Once pissed off the Joker by using him as a distraction. Hah, clown-sexual. But the fact is, there's no way he should be able to do anything much to our team. Certainly not from a standing start. Then again, I wasn't expecting this much in your face power from Klarion. Reality warping rituals I could understand, but no-selling me head on?

"How?"

"He just pointed at him and said 'ssshik'. Gotta be some kinda radiation weapon, programmed to respond to his voice."

Wallace, I don't need this right now. And by the look of it, neither does Artemis.

"What happened to believing in magic?"

"I decided to get serious when a guy started trying to kill us!"

"Then how do you explain the red lightning? Or the mist creature?"

"An advanced plasma manipulation device, and.. probably.. some kind of holographic system, using charged water vapour as the medium. Magic isn't real!"

M'gann looks downcast, and rubs the back of her neck. "Having my whole body twisted around felt pretty real to me."

back

Acceptance 15

next

19th August

20:37 GMT -5

That shuts Wallace up for a moment.

I should be patient. He hasn't had any regular contact with magic. It's a bit out-of-context for him.

"Wallace, any sufficiently well understood magic is indistinguishable from technology. I don't understand how those things happened. The way Doctor Roquette's nanobots work defies everything I thought I knew about the way matter works, but you don't see me complaining about it. I mean, look at this ring."

I wave my left palm at him. He isn't having it.

"A power ring is super advanced Guardian technology."

"Don't ever let the Controllers hear you call it that. Maltusian technology, thank you very much. And you're trying to make a distinction where no distinction exists. The Controllers understand the forces which ignorant magic users -ur, no offence Mister Nelson-"

He waves it off with a smile. "None taken."

"-manipulate through spell and ritual, in the same way that you understand radio waves. And they use that understanding to build things like this." I tap the ring with my right forefinger. "The way I think determines the strength of my constructs, but doesn't affect the power drain. Where's the power coming from?"

"Your lantern, and it gets stored in your ring."

"And how does it get into the lantern? There's no chemical or nuclear reactions going on in there, I checked when I was trying to work out how to build one."

He looks to the side, thinking hard. "I… dunno, but that doesn't mean there isn't an explanation."

"Of course not. There's an explanation for everything. Doesn't mean it's going to be simple, or obvious, or that it can be understood in terms of things you already know. Mister Nelson just pulled something out of my chest. For the moment, I'm prepared to take him at his word."

A jab of pain, and I wince. Even that was better than it was when the spell was in full effect, but a chunk of my left lung just got lysed. I restore it, but from what Mister Nelson said I'm going to assume that will keep on happening.

I think I just got invalided out of this mission. I'd assumed that couldn't happen. That I'd either be able to fix myself or I'd go down and either die or wake up in a hospital.

Ring, power level?

Nineteen percent remaining.

That's below my 'recharge now' level. Where was the expenditure? The particle cannon?

Fifty four percent of recent total expenditure used on physical repair.

Shiiiitt... That's a lot of power.

I think Wallace is following my reasoning. "Okay, but I still don't really… Uh. Fine." He shrugs. "So, what do we do now?"

My eyes switch between Kaldur and Mister Nelson. Kaldur's my team leader, but Mister Nelson's the one who actually knows what's going on. I think everyone else is thinking in the same way.

Kaldur takes in initiative. "Mister Nelson, is this Tower secure?"

"Should be. Klarion will probably be able to find a way in eventually now that he knows where it is, but I think we have a little breathing room."

"I mean no offence, but was there a reason why you did not engage him directly? I know of your deeds as Doctor Fate, and compared with…"

Mister Nelson smiles, and waves his left hand. "Oh, I'm not Doctor Fate. I'm just an old coat Fate used to put on, until my wife Inza convinced me there could be more to life." He gets out his watch, and this time my angle is such that I can just see that there's an old photograph in the top section. "Ah, she was a real pistol, that woman. Anywho, Klarion's after the Helmet of Fate. If he gets his sticky little mitts on it he'll turn the planet into his own personal playground of pandemonium."

Artemis isn't satisfied. "What'd you mean, you're not Fate?"

"The Helmet of Fate is the home of the spirit of Nabu, a Lord of Order, and ultimate enemy of someone like Klarion. When a person puts the Helmet on, Nabu gains control of their body, and can act on the material world through them. Without that link, he's almost completely defenseless."

Kaldur's already thinking through the problem. "Then we must recover the Helmet. Are you well enough to use it again?"

Mister Nelson sizes Kaldur up. "I'll have to be. Oh, don't worry. There's life in the old bones yet."

I need to ask… "Can I assume that you didn't make it to London?"

He shakes his head. "Ambushed as soon as I finished talking to that woman in New Orleans. Huckster, like I thought she would be. Huh, maybe I should of gone to London first."

Oh heck. Then I've sent Diana to talk to Misses Masters for nothing. I really hope Mister Constantine doesn't take it badly.

Aqualad draws his water bearers. "How far must we travel to reach the Helmet?"

"Not far. A short walk and an elevator ride."

I end the photon beam construct. Kon stretches his arms. He told me that it feels a bit like a warm, relaxing bath. The area of carpet around him has faded noticeably. I need to be more careful about that. I also pull one of his spare t-shirts from subspace and float it over to him. He takes it with a smile.

Mister Nelson walks to the fireplace, and the wall peels back to reveal…

The heck?

Thin stone pathways floating in a putrid green void. From the orientation, it looks like the direction of gravity depends on exactly where you are on the path. After about fifty metres the one leading away from this room appears to shift to vertical, and there's some kind of multi-directional junction.

Kaldur nods. Has he seen this sort of thing a lot? "Orange Lantern." He looks at me. "I am sorry, but given your injuries, and your susceptibility to magic attack-."

"You think I should stay here." He nods. "I agree. I'm not going to be able to help if Klarion can take me out with a thought."

"I suspect that the high level of background magic within the Tower's more arcane sections would also present a problem to you."

I nod.

"Ahhh..?" Artemis holds up her broken bow.

back

Acceptance 16

next

19th August

20:41 GMT -5

I raise the ring at the same time Mister Nelson raises his cane. We simultaneously stop and look at each other. He nods at me.

Ring, repair.

An orange aura holds the parts of her compound bow in place while the ring undertakes repairs. The severed carbon fibre is mostly still there, and transmuting the little extra needed from the air is no real obstacle. For a moment I consider enhancing the bow, but the change in weight and balance might affect her aim. Still need to do something with the arrows.

"I should be able to transmute some more trick arrows, if you think it'll help. I've also got a spare plasma pistol..?"

She shakes her head. "Thanks, but I'll stick with what I've got."

Mister Nelson taps his chin with the head of his cane, then raises it in her direction. It glows for a moment. "There. I can't promise much, but that should make it harder for Klarion or Onomatopoeia to affect your bow or arrows with magic."

She smiles. "I'm looking forward to the rematch."

Mister Nelson takes a few paces toward the bizarre stone path. "We'd best get moving. Time's a-wasting."

The others follow on behind, M'gann flying above them with an expression of wonderment on her face. Kon's bringing up the rear, and is looking back at me as the wall slides back into place. I wave, and cover my discomfort as a sudden spike of acidity melts a small part of my liver.

Ring…

And it's fine again.

Now what?

Ring, scan.

According to the ring, nothing exists in the whole universe outside this room. And it's not too sure about the room. I gingerly stand up, and walk over to the pedestal. The double ended cones float in the crystal. I don't feel anything from them. I carefully tap the top of it with my right forefinger. Solid. Doesn't really smell, either. I stare at the translucent red shapes. Now that they're out of me they don't really look that special. The area of red is sort of cloudy, in motion but never going beyond the bounds of the cone.

I don't understand what I'm looking at.

I step back, and wave the ring at the faded patch of carpet, restoring its colour. Then I pace, making two full circuits of the room while examining the walls and decorations in detail. There's a large painting of a woman I assume to be Inza Nelson on the wall over the fireplace. She looks young, maybe in her mid twenties, and the painting looks old. Wonder why there isn't something more recent? A photograph perhaps?

No electric lights. The wall brackets have candles and the fire appears to be coal. Not giving off any heat, but the room's still a comfortable temperature. Puts me in mind of Goldeneye for the N64, where the light in the room appeared to come from the lights, but would still be there if you destroyed them. There's a grandfather clock, but there are no hands or numbers on its face, and the pendulum is still. Probably a good thing, as I find ticking clocks quite uncomfortable to be around.

"Ring, charge?"

"Seventeen percent."

Liver and bow, and that's two percent gone. I lose translation at five percent. Flight at ten. Particle cannon already takes more power than I have.

I sit back down on the chaise longue.

I quite like the colour of the walls. Always been fond of purple.

I wonder what the emotion of a purple power ring would be? What's a bit like love and compassion? Generosity? Or am I just thinking that because of Rarity's mane?

Who can I get to sort out the residual damage from Klarion's spell? Diana said that she was going to speak to Magala anyway. Is this her sort of thing? I do need to actually speak to John Constantine now that I've involved him in this. Not sure it's up his street though, and he does present certain… risks. Getting Mister Zatara to have a go would probably involve least work, and if I remember correctly his work commitments decrease toward the end of the tourist season.

Oh. Ooooh. That's a better idea. I need to test the flexibility of Captain Cornwall Junior's magic abilities anyway, and my dossier's about as complete as it can get without a face to face meeting. And I doubt that he can make the situation worse. Nothing I've found suggests that the men of his family -and it is just the men who put on the costume- have that sort of talent. I'm not quite sure what 'realigning my natural energies' would do, but I imagine it'll be either nothing, or something useful. Now, how to go about introduc-.

There's a sort of ringing sound, and Mister Nelson's ghost appears in the centre of the room. It's… He's.. a translucent gold colour, with different tones for his suit.

Oh, hell.

I stand.

"Mister Nelson, what happened?"

Oh, that's stupid. Obviously he died.

The ghost shakes his head.

"This is not Kent Nelson. You are speaking to the intelligence of this tower. Kent asked me to inform you that Klarion and Onomatopoeia are inside the Tower, and are attempting to intercept your team."

Relief.

"How did they get in?"

The projection raises its hand, and an image forms of the outside of the tower. I see my team retreat through the open door, which then closes and vanishes. Klarion waves his hands forward, and the wall glows red.

"What's he doing?"

"He's forcing the Tower to remain linked with Earth, rather than retreating to the Nexus of the Subtle Realms."

Onomatopoeia steps forward, past Klarion and nearly touching the wall.

"'cli-clunk.'"

The door reappears, and Klarion lowers his arms.

"'sssuuuih. creeeek.'"

Klarion claps as the door swings open, and Onomatopoeia stands aside to allow him entry before following him up the stairs. The image vanishes.

"Are they heading here? Because that would be rather bad for me."

"The Tower detected their hostility and has attempted to deal with them. They were redirected via a more.. hostile route. Unfortunately they have proven rather adept at overcoming obstacles."

"Does the team need my help?"

"Kent asked me to inform you that your assistance would not be required."

What can I do?

"Probably wouldn't be much use anyway. Thank you for letting me know."

What can I do?

"Could you please show me what's happening now?"

"Of course."

back

Acceptance 17

next

19th August

20:48 GMT -5

A new image forms.

They're running across an intersection. Artemis pauses to launch an arrow at another pathway, at ninety degrees to their own.

"'fooosh.'"

Not quite sure what that noise was supposed to do, but it didn't work and Onomatopoeia takes a quick hardening foam arrow to the left shoulder. Trick arrows may look silly, but they still move fast and have some mass behind them. That will have hurt. He twists, trying to get his coat off even as the foam expands. Perhaps realising that it's hopeless, he wiggles his right arm at the team's path.

"'crack crack crack crack crack.'"

M'gann frantically tries telekinetically hurling him out of line of sight. He sails off the platform he was on, bounces off the thin edge of the next and hurtles down… Um, away, out of sight. But the damage has been done and the team's pathway starts to come apart.

Meanwhile, Kaldur and Kon are trying to cover Mister Nelson. Kaldur's making shields with his water bearers, and Kon's got hold of a golden tower shield from somewhere. Red lightning evaporates water and chars metal while Klarion laughs maniacally and Teekl stares intently.

I can't do anything. I can't help.

Mister Nelson trips, and Wallace zooms forward to help him. Together they hobble towards a great golden bell, using it to take shelter from Klarion's onslaught. Mister Nelson strikes it twice with the head of his cane and it glows with golden light. He and Wallace step into it and disappear as the platform comes apart beneath them.

"No no NO!"

Klarion leaps from his pathway, falling towards the bell in a way which appears to defy gravity. Can he fly? Or is it the fact that he's in his element here, in a place suffused with magic? He strikes it and passes through as the surrounding walkways break into chunks.

Kaldur and Kon are holding on to one of the larger pieces, but they've got no way to get to the bell. The lump Artemis ended up on is spinning wildly relative to the rest, but with gravity working as it does in there it doesn't seem to be a problem for her. Motion sickness might be, as her eyes are closed. M'gann's floating freely, dodging smaller bits of rubble. She misses one, and it strikes her in the abdomen and knocks her back.

What can I do?

"Tower, can you open some sort of portal to them?"

"None of the pieces of walkway near them are large enough to support a doorway."

They're not in immediate danger with Onomatopoeia out of the picture.

"Alright, can you manifest from one of the smaller pieces and get M'gann to drag a large bit over?"

"That is within my abilities."

"Where have Mister Nelson and Wallace gone?"

The view shifts to a large platform surrounded by crenellations. It takes me a moment to realise that it's the roof. The Helmet is floating in the air next to Wallace and Mister Nelson. For a moment I am convinced that we've won, before Klarion materialises and blasts Mister Nelson in the chest. He staggers, but gets a dome shield up before collapsing to the ground.

Wallace is the only one with access to the Helmet. Even if he puts it on, I'm not all that confident.

What would John Constantine do?

Oh yes. Oh, that's beautiful.

"Tower, can you open a portal between here and the roof?"

"My instructions only prevent me from transporting you into the Tower's interior. There is no portal from here to the roof, but now that the bell has been rung there is an elevator that goes directly there."

"Open the elevator, then work on evacuating the rest of my team."

"Confronting Klarion in your present condition is extremely unwise."

"Giving Wallace the Helmet of Fate doesn't exactly score prizes in the cleverness category either, but it's what we've got."

The projection appears to think for a moment, then flickers. An outline of gold appears on the wall to my left, then solidifies into a lift door.

I run to press the 'open' button. Why does it have to be a nineteen thirties style lift? What's wrong with Dolmen Gates, or fairy rings? Magic had teleportation before machinery. So slow!

It opens, I lurch inside, spin around and press the 'roof' button. The door closes again and I see the Tower projection vanish with a smile in my direction.

The numbers above the door begin to count up as I ready my approach. I can't block Klarion's attacks even at full power. I'm now at…

Ring?

Seventeen percent.

Right. How to do this with low power?

Ring, prepare Ready in Sixty Four Directions Stance and the random evasive pattern of your choice.

Compliance.

Since I mostly fight from the air, a Lantern version of the Exalted charm Ready in Eight Directions Stance wouldn't be all that much help. My version expands my awareness in all directions, as well as augmenting my mind so that I can actually process that sort of volume of information. It also requires surprisingly little energy, though in testing I ended up walking into things a lot after I turned it off.

Floor eleven. How many floors are there? What's the betting the roof is floor twelve A? No, hang on, the other buttons go up to eighteen. So, nineteen? Is that significant? It's a prime number isn't it?

Urgh! Just in case I forgot, there goes the chaos magic. An allergic reaction in the intestine that time. Much simpler to repair.

Ring?

Sixteen percent.

Ffffffffffff…..

No, no, calm. It's fine. I doubt I'd get out intact if Klarion won anyway. Maybe I should start keeping my lantern on the bioship? What happened to the bioship anyway? The plan was to get Mister Nelson out of here, not hang around.

Floor eighteen. Might be a slightly larger gap between here and the next floor. I shuffle. Random evasion involves short FTL jumps and momentum control to enable rapid changes in air direction. No risk of motion sickness, but it is a little distracting. On the other hand, I really only need to issue one command and then either hide behind the wall or behind Fate. Assuming Wallace has actually put the thing on, of course.

Shit. If he hasn't, I might have to. Would that even work?

"Bing!"

The lift doors open. Doctor Fate -Nabu- is in the air and holding Klarion off with a giant golden ankh shield while Klarion throws red fire at him.

"-went out of fashion in the twentieth century!"

But he's not my target. This isn't the Cell Games, and I'm not as tough as Vegeta.

I spot my target just to Klarion's right, even as the Chaos Lord turns his head in my direction.

"Ring, assimilate the cat."

back

Acceptance 18

next

19th August

20:51 GMT -5

I love cats. All of them. No matter how cruel they clearly are or how little affection they feel for me. When I'm out walking I'll routinely stop when I see a cat and try to persuade it to let me stroke it. Not sure where that started, though I suppose my Nan's now long dead cat Muffy was a good deal friendlier than my Gran's Chihuahua, Fang. Heck, the cats owned by their neighbour Mister Lusty were friendlier. Sparky and Bunty I think their names were. Gosh, they must be fifteen years dead now, at least. I've even got time… No, I even had time for the cat owned by my neighbour in the house next to the one I owned before coming here. Vicious thing. Never seen me and not tried to take a swipe at me, even if it was inside my house at the time.

I don't want a witch boy. But I do want a cat. I want a cat a lot.

I'm holding my left hand outstretched with my palm toward my target. The orange beam travels straight from the ring. The beam is much brighter than when I've used the ring for cutting or kinetic force, the orange colour richer and more intense. Teekl's facing Nabu, fur erect and tail extended. It hits her on her left hip, and there's a sort of orange ripple, like dropping a pebble in a pot of orange paint. Then the orange glow coats her fur, and she yelps.

"Identity Theft in progress. Two percent complete."

Doooooooooooooooooooooodge!

"No!"

My FTL hop took me back behind the elevator and upwards into the sky. Klarion broke off his attack on Nabu to throw fire in my direction, but I'm far faster than his reaction shot. Heh, this might not be too-

"Identity Theft ability interrupted by FTL transfer. Resuming."

Teekl takes a shot up the arse.

I can't FTL? Oh, that isn't good.

"Identity Theft one percent complete."

Random dodge random dodge!

"Orange Lantern. Your presence here is not required."

"Get. Away. From my cat!"

Fuck both of you!

Klarion misses with two bolts of red lightning, then spends a moment charging a fireball. Nabu drops his ankh shield, points both arms forward and hits him with a golden ankh shot before he can finish. He staggers and drops the fireball.

That's not a fireball! It's a face! It's a flying burning face! Dodge the face dodge the face!

The Tower's a blur. I don't bother trying to see what's happening, I'm moving too fast to make sense of it. My Stance construct makes me aware of incoming attacks, but I just connect the data to the autododge.

"Identity Theft six percent complete."

This is going to take all night.

**Attacking his familiar is a sound strategy, but your vulnerability to magic renders you naught but a liability in this conflict.**

Is M'gann doing that, or can Nabu do it himself?

**You wanna try doing something helpful, like keeping Klarion off me until I'm done? Or shielding me yourself?**

With no real cover I've moved away from the Tower to make directed shots harder. Klarion takes another ankh to the face and disintegrates, before reintegrating on the other side of the Tower and summoning a swarm of the Tower's own bricks to fly after me. Between that and the BURNING FUCKING FACE I'm not liking my chances in the air.

Ring?

"Identity Theft eleven percent complete."

Oh, come on!

Four golden ankhs spring up around Klarion, boxing him in while a golden beam strikes him from above. Again, he disappears, but his projectiles are still in motion. Would they stop if the caster died or was forced away? I know some spells keep going after their creator's death.

A portal, black and lined with red opens behind me, and Klarion drops down onto one of the larger brickwork lumps behind me. He conjures a giant glowing red hand and takes a swing. I barrel roll out of the way.

Oh, that's it.

A blur as I loop the Tower once to lead the pursuit away, then dive for the Tower roof. I take position under where Nabu floats in my friend's body.

"That shield any time you like!"

Klarion steps off the rubble as it barrels towards us. Nabu spares me a withering glance, before lowering himself to the ground and summoning a circular golden barrier between us and the attack.

Okay, leave the defence to him. Why is my attack so slow? Idiot, you're not focusing your avarice. You want a cat, what makes you want a cat?

Two small sleeping bundles of black fur huddled up on my knee for warmth. In a year, Bubbles and Magic will be too big for this. Too argumentative too, they really go for each other before Bubbles establishes his dominance. But for now, in a strange house away from their familiar cattery, and their mother, aunt, brothers and sisters, they can be content with me.

"Identity Theft twenty five percent complete."

Teekl, left behind in the frenzy of activity, looks in confusion between Klarion and myself.

"Maow?"

The fire-face comes in. Nabu spreads his arms, and two ankhs form a wedge, splitting the face in half. Then they flare and it collapses to nothing.

Hampden Park's railway station. The tiny tortoiseshell that spends so much of its time hanging around the travellers climbs onto the metal bench, peers at me for a moment, then sits on my lap.

"Identity Theft thirty seven percent complete."

Ring, charge?

Twelve percent.

Doable, as long as Nabu doesn't fuck up.

Klarion gestures, and a huge arch of stone rises up to crush us. Without thinking I grab Wallace and pull us out of its path.

"Unhand me at once."

Oh. Right.

"Sorry."

I've lost sight of Klarion, though my link to Teekl is still in place.

I'm sleeping on my aunt's settee. Tomorrow is Christmas, and we're spending it with them. It's chilly, and Bulmer and Polo decide that if I think it's alright to sleep on their spot then they're perfectly at liberty to settle on me.

"Identity Theft fifty one percent complete."

I can feel Teekl. I turn my head to the left and I know she does too. In my mind I can see what she sees.

Teekl, reduce Klarion's power.

She doesn't want to. He's fun, and treats other people like she treats mice. Always someone new to toy with when you're with Klarion.

"You can't have my cat!" Klarion lunges out of a portal, hands wreathed in red flame. Nabu throws up a golden circular barrier, which flickers and shimmers as Klarion lets rip at point blank range.

He's smiling. Why is he smiling?

My Stance alerts me to the attack and I'm pulling myself aside even as the cluster of red lightning shards hits Nabu in the side, knocking him across the roof.

With him out of the way Klarion's glowing red eyes lock onto me, and his unfriendly smile lengthens into a predatory grin.

back

Acceptance 19

next

19th August

20:54 GMT -5

I'm sitting on the floor, watching dominant Klarion stalk towards his prey, hands crackling with red light. A man and a woman. They're dressed as puritans, and are backing away from him with expressions of horror on their faces. He's dressed in the same style. The male says something, and Klarion responds by raising his arms and hurling the red light forward. Their bodies are obscured for a moment, and their scent becomes strange. As I continue to watch, the visible outline inside the light shifts and contracts while Klarion laughs maniacally. He thrusts his hands forward, and the light aura collapses as he pulls out a pair of fun prey. He holds them up by the tails for a moment, then throws them to me.

…And back in the room.

I'm behind the stone arc before Klarion can release his spell. What the hell did I just see? I was close to the ground. I was looking up as Klarion turned two people into mice, then threw them.. to.. Teekl?

Teekl, was that you?

Fun with orange man? Fun hunt?

A short and very fast flight gets me over the edge of the battlements. The line between myself and Teekl is still a give away to my position, so I create six others radiating off from her in different directions.

Okay, I know from Dex-Starr in the comics and from my own experiences with dogs that power rings are perfectly capable of translating animal communications. I turn that ability off whenever possible. There's only so many times you can hear 'Ball! Ball! Gotta get the ball! Gotta get the ball!' before it gets really annoying. But I've never had images before. Teekl can send images? That's blooming useful that is.

"Identity Theft fifty nine percent complete."

"There you are!"

Move move move move move!

Doesn't this thing have a silent mode!

Klarion perches on a crenellation, hands at his sides. A dark portal opens in front of him, and six red outlined tendrils emerge from the aperture. They wiggle in the air for a moment, and then extend in my direction faster than I can move. I duck, dodge and try to get them in each other's way. One still comes close to latching on, and I'm forced to block it.

Warning. Eleven percent power remaining.

The tendril slams into the small barrier, coils up against it and explodes in a surge of power.

"Nabu!"

I take cover next to the outside of the tower wall, baiting the five remaining tendrils for a moment before yanking myself over the rim. No luck. They can turn as fast as I can. As I fly past the centre of the roof I get a brief view of Nabu pelting Klarion with small ankhs. Hopefully that's taken care of. Alright, idea. I grab a pile of the brick lumps that Klarion sent after me earlier while forming a rail gun. Rail guns are fairly ring energy efficient, at least at the power levels appropriate to an inhabited area. Iron pellets from subspace strike each of the tendrils in turn while I slam the mass of rubble into the portal from which they are still emerging.

"Aaaaaghh!"

Klarion drops to his knees, grasping his head. The tendrils more or less shrugged off the iron strikes, slowing but healing the holes my projectiles made with no lasting damage. The portal itself however seems to have been the weak spot, destabilising and collapsing and taking the tendrils with it as it vanishes. Huh. Never would have thought that reading Titan would actually ever have practical value.

Nabu raises his arms in the most melodramatic fashion possible, and another golden ankh materialises around Klarion, pinning his neck, arms and chest. Nabu's attention turns back to me.

"Finish your work."

I halt in the air, still braced for another attack as I search my memories for more happy cat videos. Or maybe that's the wrong approach…

The keeper forces the male tiger to remain in the ditch in concealment while another keeper leads the female around to the rear of the herd. When the female makes herself visible, the gazelle flee straight towards the male, who goes into a frenzy of killing. Reintroduction into the wild will go as planned.

Orange man? Reason?

Klarion hunt alone, only hunt prey he can catch. Orange man hunt with whole pride. Work together to catch better prey.

I envisage the scene on Santa Prisca, with several notable supervillains caught by my team at our mercy. Our fight with Mister Twister, working together to trick him into a position of vulnerability and then pulling him apart.

Wait. Is a house cat going to understand that idea? I seem to remember reading that they only hunt alone, even when they live in colonies. Damn. Er, okay…

I'm kneeling down between my house and my local supermarket while a couple of local cats nose around my shopping bags. The younger one decides to climb on my knees to better rub against my chest.

"Identity Theft sixty six percent complete."

Teekl hunt with Klarion.

Teekl hunt with Klarion, or Klarion hunt while Teekl watch?

Her head turns a little to the side. She doesn't like that idea.

I double check that Klarion's still being held in place, then drop to the roof just in front of Teekl. I crouch, and hold out my right hand while narrowing my eyes in what I understand is an affectionate gesture for cats. She sniffs at me. She's mostly orange at this stage, but I can still see fleshy cat under the glow.

"Teekl, NO!"

Klarion changes. His arms and legs lengthen while remaining stick thin. His fingers extend, gaining extra joints. His eyes shrink, and start to glow red.

The ankh holding him snaps.

Ah, crap.

His spine extends.

"Nabu, you wanna do s-?"

Klarion envelopes Nabu in his left hand, runs red lightning through him for a moment, then hurls him to the ground and raises his right foot, an expression of glee on his distended face.

Grab.

Nabu gets deposited behind me. "Arh." He's awake, but that attack appears to have done appreciable damage. Can he heal himself? He slowly pushes himself up to a crouch, eyes fixed on Klarion.

Klarion only has eyes for me. "How can you be so annoying?!"

Klarion pulls his arms back, and a swarm of red dots appear around him. Sweeping his hands forward, the dots turn into a volley of red beams. Most head toward me, but with the Stance construct still in effect I just about manage to dodge them. Nabu angles himself to reduce his profile and creates a circular golden shield, which blocks them.

"Aaagh!"

Klarion raises his right hand into the air and brings it down in an arc, a wave of red fire flying in its wake. Again, I manage to dodge. Then Klarion stops.

"Uh oh."

Teekl didn't manage to dodge. The force of the attack knocked her several metres. It looks like rolling on the ground put the flames out. Or maybe she's resistant to chaos magic by now?

"Teekl?" Klarion raises a finger to his mouth. He looks genuinely nervous, an expression completely at odds with his current appearance. "Teek? I didn't mean it."

back

Acceptance 20

next

19th August

20:57 GMT -5

Teekl rolls onto her chest, shakes her head, then gingerly gets to her feet. All the while her eyes are fixed on Klarion.

"Roawwwwwwwwwww."

Her fur stands on end.

The ring jolts.

"Identity Theft eighty percent complete."

Her ears go back. Her tail lashes.

"Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr."

"Identity Theft ninety one percent complete."

"Hehkkhkhhk!"

Mouth open, teeth on display. Teekl prepares to attack.

"Identity Theft complete. Teekl of Witch World, you belong to the Orange Lantern Corps."

There's a brief flare of orange light as the fleshy cat becomes an unusually solid looking construct. The markings on her side are still in place, but the ones on her face have moved to assume the form of the orange sigil. Then she starts to grow.

Teekl, cut off his power first.

"No." Klarion shrinks down, his monstrous form fading. "No. No." The red glow vanishes from his eyes. He actually looks scared. "Teekl? Teek?"

"Rawawowowow!"

"Ah!" He frantically scrabbles around in his pockets as Teekl -now the size of a lion- pads forward, teeth bared. He finds something, and makes eye contact with me. "You took Teekl away from me! I don't know how you did this, but I'll get you!"

He holds up what looks like a small stone with a glowing shape carved into it, and throws it to the ground. There's a brief blast of wind and Teekl charges forward, but it's too late. He's gone.

Teekl pads over to the area he was standing in, and sniffs it. I smell it as she does. Klarion's scent contains far more fear than she remembers smelling for a very long time. She looks back at me, and I get a brief moment of confusion as I see me looking at her and her looking at me.

Ring, block sensory input from Teekl unless I specifically request otherwise.

Compliance.

"You severed a Lord of Chaos from the source of his power." Nabu is floating in the air just off the ground. Puts me in mind of how Black Adam held himself to reinforce the idea that he was separate from the mere Humans around him. "I did not think it could be done."

"Is it permanent?"

"Unlikely, though it will take him some time to find an appropriate anchor to serve as the cat's replacement."

Teekl's walking across the Tower roof. She's returned to her normal size, and is sniffing something…

Oh.

I walk over to Mister Nelson's body. I scan it to make sure, but he's fairly obviously dead.

Damn.

Teekl stands on his chest, circles around twice and then lays down. "Teekl, no. Come here."

I reach down and gently pick her up to hold her against my chest. Her coat feels normal, despite its new colouration. I rub her head, and lift up Mister Nelson's body.

PAIN!

The ring keeps me upright while it does repairs. This time it was my normal stomach acids turning into something much stronger. A chunk of my body dissolved.

Warning. Nine percent power remaining.

Chaos spell pulling me apart. Lord of Order behind me.

I turn around to where Nabu floats.

"Nabu. Hate to be a bother, but Klarion used a rather unpleasant spell on me earlier, and taking Teekl doesn't seem to have turned it off. Would you mind-?"

He reaches up and removes his Helmet. His blue and gold costume disappears immediately, returning Wallace to his normal clothing. Wallace drops a metre to the ground and lands lightly.

"Kid Flash. Glad to have you back with us, but I was really hoping that Nabu could do something about that.. spell.. residue.. in my chest..?"

His eyes go from Mister Nelson's body to the floor. "He almost.. almost didn't let me go."

"Who didn't?"

"Nabu."

Oh.

He holds the Helmet up and looks at it for a moment.

I don't remember any version of Nabu who actually stole unwilling hosts.

"He wants someone to wear him badly enough that he'll just steal bodies? We'd never accept that."

"I don't think he cares."

Wallace tucks the Helmet under one arm, crosses the Tower roof and picks up something. Mister Nelson's watch. He walks over to where I'm floating his body and places it on his chest before folding his arms across it. I ensure that they stay in place.

I glance at the somehow still intact lift.

"We should… We should probably get back down."

"Yeah. I think Nabu did something to Onomatopoeia. Stuck him somewhere."

"Good."

"Mister Nelson.. he offered to stay inside the Helmet to keep Nabu company. That was the only reason he released me."

"Is that bad?"

"He put off.. going on to wherever his wife is. For me."

"Well, I… We'll just have to find a new host quickly then."

A long term coma patient maybe? Or someone suicidal? This doesn't sound like a job anyone should take up.

"Nabu didn't treat Mister Nelson like that back in the forties. What changed?"

"He got stuck on a shelf for fifty years."

Makes sense.

"And now we have to leave him there, because he won't accept going back there. I wonder if Lords of Order have a concept of irony?"

back

Acceptance 21

next

19th August

21:57 GMT -5

"Soahc esir!"

Mister Zatara holds his gloved left hand over my bare chest. We're in the medical unit. No one else has any serious injuries, though Kaldur needed some stitches and Mister J'onzz gave M'gann a very careful examination after hearing what Klarion did to her. Kon got some medical tape, but he heals fast when exposed to sunlight and we put some light bulbs in an old storeroom near his quarters which are nearly as good.

Teekl's curled up on the next bed over. She tried laying next to me, but got annoyed by all of the people. Just Mister Zatara and myself left in here now. I imagine that Batman will be asking me some rather pointed questions about her very shortly.

Tiny fragments of red rise from my torso and hover next to Mister Zatara's hand.

"Yfillun."

They disintegrate and disappear.

It turned out that the reason everyone didn't leave by bioship was that someone -they couldn't tell whether it was Klarion or Onomatopoeia- attacked her when she came in to land while stealthed. M'gann had to send her away before they completely destroyed her. I went from low power to vapours repairing the damage to her left side for our journey back, and I was sweating more than a little by the time I got to my room to recharge the ring.

Red Tornado took Mister Nelson's body from me. Wallace repeated his story about Mister Nelson's soul staying in the Helmet. Wallace kept holding on to the Helmet the whole way back. I hadn't really thought about it, but that might be his first exposure to violent death.

There's going to be a funeral. Two, actually. Superhero life being what it is his family will perform the actual burial, and we'll go along later to pay our respects. I feel a bit weird about it. I didn't really know him. Turning up for a memorial with two of his old friends seems… odd.

Donna went home. Diana's here, but she's in the main room arranging for Mister Nelson's family to collect his body. Presumably they know about his superhero work? She never found John Constantine, though she said that she signed an autograph for Gemma Masters.

"Soahc esir."

This time the red shards resist, coming out more slowly. They stop a few centimetres from my skin. Mister Zatara's hand shakes.

Ow!

The spell collapses, and the chaos energy re-enters my body. "I am sorry, Paul, but I do not think that I can remove any more of the Witch Boy's magic."

Thought that would be a bit too easy. "Don't worry. I appreciate what you've been able to do. What do you think what's left will be able to do to me?"

His hand rubs his chin. "I cannot say with any degree of certainty. Chaos magic is by its very nature difficult to predict. But, it should be less than what you experienced during your second fight with Klarion."

"Is there any way to change what it will do?"

"Perhaps, but only within the bounds of the original spell. It will always be harmful to you. Diana told you that she plans to take you to visit Magala on Themyscira tomorrow?"

"Yeah, but there's someone else I wanna try first. Could you… Alter it so the effect is less, but constant? I should be able to suppress the pain from low level damage but I don't want to risk suddenly getting a serious injury while I'm on duty."

He looks a little puzzled. "If you want. I suppose there's a certain value in predictability, but I strongly recommend that you attempt to have the remainder removed as soon as possible."

I hold up my hands in surrender. "No fear."

"Very well then. Soahc cigam skaep nettalf!"

Ow. Ow.

It isn't too bad. More in line with a modest cramp, and the ring repairs the ongoing damage as it happens.

"Thank you."

He smiles slightly. "Before I go, I should ask. Did Kent give any indication of what he wanted us to do with the Helmet of Fate?"

"He wanted someone to take over. He told me that you'd already turned it down."

He doesn't quite wince, but he does turn his head to the side for a moment. "Yes. I did not like the idea of giving my body over to Nabu."

"Yeah, Wallace… Doesn't sound like Nabu feels like sharing any more, and I'm not sure whoever it was in New Orleans would have felt any differently than you do."

"Diana said that she and Donna were following up a lead in Liverpool. I do not know of any practitioners of the mystic arts in that city."

Idiot.

Zatara looks at me curiously.

"You think he had someone in mind?"

"I.. recommended someone. I… Now we know what Nabu was thinking, I doubt he'd have taken it."

"Who was it?"

Shit.

He's noticed that I'm hesitating.

"John Constantine."

His face freezes. He knows him then, and he doesn't like him. It can't be about Zatanna, she's fourteen. Ah well, Zatara's decent enough that he won't take it out on me.

"Thinking about it, if there was a man who could get one over on a Lord of Order, heh, and might try on principle…"

He's frowning. "I am somewhat surprised that you know of him."

I shrug. "I've been trying to learn about magic. His name came up, I investigated… The official version of what happened in Newcastle is total nonsense, by the way."

He considers it for a moment. "Do you mean to say that Kent was going to give the Helmet of Fate, to him?"

"No, he was going to check up on Mister Constantine himself, then maybe ask him about it. Got the impression he was getting a bit desperate."

He nods. "I suppose he was."

"What's going to happen to the Helmet now? I think Wallace just wants to stick it in the trophy cupboard, but that doesn't seem... really.."

"That… Will be a matter for careful consideration." He nods to me. "I wish you a speedy recovery."

back

Acceptance 22

next

19th August

22:01 GMT -5

He turns and leaves, nearly bumping into M'gann at the door. After a mutual apology she walks in. I vest myself and swing around into a sitting position with my legs over the side of the bed. She looks… worried for some reason. Head slightly bowed, tension in the shoulders. Is she mimicking Human body language, or do Martians show things in the same way? Has she just learned that here?

"Hi M'gann. How are you doing?"

"How am I doing? I'm not the one who had chunks of raw chaos magic sticking out of my chest!"

"Oh, I know I'm not fine, but I'm not dying, and there's a good chance I can get fully repaired."

Teekl looks up, sleepily. "Mrw?"

Teekl, come here.

She gets to her feet, and takes a moment to stretch out.

M'gann grabs the chance to avoid what she came here to talk about. "Is there a reason why you're creating a cat construct?"

I raise my left hand. "No orange line means I'm not maintaining her. When I turn something into a construct it just.. stays there."

"You can turn things into constructs?"

"Some things. It's permanent, so I haven't really wanted to test it."

Teekl jumps onto my bed, and walks over to face M'gann. She leans forward and sniffs the air. M'gann reaches out towards her.

"How did you know that doing this to her would cut Klarion off from his magic?"

"I heard of a case where a wizard.. beat an enemy magic user by doing something similar."

M'gann's hand is now within Teekl's sniffing range. She presses her nose against it. "Who was that?"

"His name is John Constantine."

"Oh! The man you told Mister Nelson about."

"That's the guy."

Teekl sits back, and M'gann goes to stroke her head. "Is he a wise and noble wielder of the arcane mysteries?"

…

Um, how to put this…

"I'd describe him more as 'cunning' and 'well intentioned'. Pretty sure he could do the job, but I don't think Mister Zatara likes him, and it looks like the League will be deciding what happens to the Helmet."

Teekl's tail flicks, and she dawks M'gann, who snatches her hand back. M'gann flashes me an annoyed look. "Hey!"

"Wasn't me! She's still mostly her, and I got the impression that she grew up on a farm. Not entirely domesticated. Stroke at your own risk."

M'gann rubs her injured hand, her face sliding back into her earlier expression of unease.

"Are you sure there's nothing wrong? You just.. look a bit.."

She's looking at her feet.

!Support your teammate!

I stand, put my best friendly smile on my face and my right hand on her shoulder.

"M'gann, what's wrong?"

"When you were… When we were carrying you inside the Tower, I could hear what you were thinking. About my face."

What did I..?

"I was pretty out of it. I don't really remember, and if I thought anything offensive-."

"No. No, it wasn't that."

She finally looks up at me. "You were thinking that you were sad that I haven't shown you my-."

She stops, and looks over her shoulder at the still shut door. She wants privacy? Okay then.

Ring, block all observation devices in this room.

Compliance.

"My Martian face. You thought it meant I don't trust you."

Ah. "It's not… I know you trust me, I just.. I'd like to think that you feel able to show me that. If you don't want to, that's fine. It's not a problem for me. I know roughly what you look like anyway."

"Could.. could you keep the door shut, please?"

Ring, do it.

An orange line extends from my left foot, runs across the floor and highlights the door.

"Actually… You don't. When you showed me what you think Martians look like, in the kitchen, I was.. I was just so worried that you found out I didn't think about it. But, when I thought about it later I realized that the image you showed me wasn't all that accurate."

Oh. "It still doesn't matter, I wasn't thinking straight."

"No. You.. you were right. There's no reason-" She takes a step back. **-not to show you.**

Her hair retreats into her head, which expands, becoming squarer. Her arms, legs and torso lengthen while her living clothing pulls back across her skin, leaving just the red X. Not that she has anything to conceal in this form, as far as I can tell. Her arms terminate in the same two fingers I felt at the Tower, and her feet have three webbed toes. Her… carapace? Is hard and green, with softer parts in dull lilac. There's a membrane of some kind between her upper arms and the side of her chest. Her skull like face has some sort of fleshy bulge projecting from the back, but that can't be the source of her telepathy as she certainly doesn't have that in Human form. Her natural posture in this form appears to be bent over, knuckle walking, and she's quite a lot larger than a Human.

I suppose she really isn't a White Martian here.

It… She looks odd, like this, but honestly it isn't repulsive. I place my left hand on her right forearm. No, that won't be enough. I float up until my face is level with hers, and rest my forehead against her forehead. Next, I run my hands along the hard ridges under her eyes.

**See? Not so bad, is it?** I allow her to feel every part of my reaction.

**I suppose not.**

She doesn't quite sound convinced. She lifts her left hand and clasps her right arm, a nervous gesture I recognise from her Human form.

**Did the others see this when we entered the Tower? I triggered your shapeshifting to try and undo Klarion's attack, but I seem to remember-.**

**No, I didn't change all the way, and the others thought that it was caused by Klarion.**

Makes sense, I suppose.

**M'gann, I feel truly privileged that you have shown me this part of yourself. I'll keep it secret for as long as you want me to, but I say again that I think you'll find our team mates much more accepting than you appear to think.**

**I… Maybe. But I don't think I'm ready to do that yet. I can show you because you sort of knew anyway, but…**

**You don't need to explain it to me.**

I'm so glad that she decided to do this.

!M'gann Mine!

back

Acceptance 23

next

20th August

10:02 GMT

My body is telling me that it's five o'clock in the morning, and I don't know enough about my body clock to use the ring to reset it.

I'm in Truro, Cornwall, sitting at a picnic table outside a pub called The Builders Arms. The sign depicts four arms radiating from a centre point, each holding a tool of the trade. The school summer holidays are still in full swing here and in a few hours this place will be full of tourists getting lunch. The weather's just about good enough for my customary jeans and vest combo, and I've got my environmental shield set to minimum. The sigils on my clothing are visible, but they aren't glowing and so aren't attracting any attention.

I'm here to finally meet Robert Marrack, fourteen years of age and better known in the West Counties as Cornwall Boy. It turns out that I was mistaken when I first looked him up; he isn't called Captain Cornwall. Golden Crust Pasties just have a poorly laid out website. Getting hold of him was easy enough: he has a mobile phone, I have a power ring. Persuading him to meet me was fairly straightforward as well. I told him that I had a minor magic related problem that I hoped he could help me with. Respect to him though, he actually checked that I didn't want to speak to his father and had the sense to suggest a public place to meet.

If he can't help me with the residue from Klarion's spell then I'm getting that trip to Themyscira after all. I'll conduct the interview anyway, though I will need to be very clear that this is merely an information gathering exercise and isn't an offer of a position.

I think Diana was joking about me needing to wear a bag over my head.

Teekl seems to accept being around the team, though Kon finds her a bit weird. I asked if she wanted to come but she said that she'd rather explore her new home. Well, it actually came out as "Tell place I own", but I think that's what she meant.

Cats don't wee on stuff to mark it, do they? Oh, hang on, they do. My aunt had trouble with Polo doing that. Can a construct urinate?

I've had the ring tracking Cornwall Boy since he left his house, but he's only now coming into view down the road. He's wearing blue jeans and a white t-shirt with the Cornish flag printed on the front. As far as I know he isn't a nationalist, so he's probably just sticking to a theme in the same way I do. His hair's a dull blonde and his ears stick out a bit. He looks physically fit. Less muscular than me, but he has to actually work for it. When he gets close enough to start trying to work out where the guy he's meeting is, I wave with my right hand. He nods at me and starts walking faster. I rise as he approaches the table.

"Mister Marrack. Pleased to meet you."

I offer him my right hand. For a moment he seems a little off balance. Could be my accent. I think that living around Americans had caused me to redevelop the Received Pronunciation accent which I abandoned in primary school. Granny would be pleased.

He takes it in the slightly careful way that I've noticed people with super strength do when interacting with the squishy folk; holding but not applying any pressure.

"You can just call me Rob. Mister Marrack's my da."

"Alright, Robert. Please, take a seat."

He sits, looking a little uncomfortable. "So, you got some kind of magic problem?"

"Yes, yes. Yesterday evening I had a run in with a rather unpleasant practitioner of chaos magic. The spell's been largely removed, but there's residual energy that's causing me some trouble."

"A chaos wizard? Where was this, then?"

"Salem, in Massachusetts."

"And who exactly removed the spell?"

"Kent Nelson. I don't think you'll have heard of him."

"No, I haven't. So, why isn't he doing this?"

"The chaos wizard killed him."

"Oh. I'm sorry."

"Mmm. I didn't actually know him all that well, and he'd had a good innings."

"Right. Um. So what's this spell do then?"

"In its original form it dissolved parts of my body in a manner determined by its caster. Now, I just get a constant burning, and I don't mean a burning sensation. It is continuing to harm me. Quite painful, too."

He looks off to the side. I imagine he's thinking in the same way I did just after the bridge cable collapsed in Metropolis. Something's happening in front of you and you know it's your job to fix it, but you're not sure where to start.

"Look, um, I don't really… I mean, I haven't been trained in removing spells and that. Da said that stuff can be really dangerous if you don't know what you're doing."

"The spell isn't active, there's just some of the energy used to make it left over. I don't know.. how your.. connection with this sort of thing works, exactly. But if you can just take a look, and if you don't think you can help, that's fine, I'll just find someone else."

He still looks a bit uncomfortable, but he's getting his head in the game. "Yeah, I can do that. Whereabouts did the spell hit you?"

I point. "Bottom of my left lung, and centre of the abdomen."

"Jesus! And that was dissolving you?"

"Yeah, not a lot of fun."

"Okay, give me a minute."

He holds his hands out slightly, and closes his eyes. A moment passes. "I can feel it. I think. I can't really feel much from you."

"That's because I don't have a soul."

His eyes snap open. "What?"

I shake my head. "Problem for another day. So, can you help?"

"Maybe? It doesn't feel like there's much there. Da said that minor magics like that just wear off if you leave them."

"That's where the no soul thing comes in. Normally a person's soul will deal with foreign magic energy. Since I don't have one, I need to make sure that the wound's completely clear."

"That.. that sort of makes sense. There's.. something I can try. If this starts to hurt, you tell me immediately, right?"

"No need to worry about that."

Ring, monitor rate of ongoing physical damage to affected areas.

Compliance.

Robert sticks his hands out again, eyes unfocused but open this time. I can't see anything happen. There's no glow, no distortion in the air, but the pain fades to nothing almost immediately.

Rate of ongoing physical damage reduced to zero.

Hm. Lad came through.

"That shoulda sorted it."

I poke the impact sites through my vest. Still no pain. "I think you're right. Thank you. I was worried I'd be stuck with that for life."

"Ah, don't mention it." He definitely looks happier now. I know that feeling. "So, this chaos wizard. Did he get a load of other people too?"

"Not so far as I'm aware. Why?"

"Well, I could, like, fix them up as well?"

"No, I… I kind of made myself a target."

"What'd you do?"

"I beat up one of his henchmen, and then had a go at him."

He looks at me incredulously for a moment. "I thought America was full of superheroes. What were you doing fighting a chaos wizard?"

I smile. "Oh, you know-" I turn my right hand palm up, and generate a rotating orange sigil. "-professional occasion."

back

Acceptance 24

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20th August

10:08 GMT

He recoils.

"Fucking…"

I close my hand and remove the sigil. After a quiet moment with no follow up he calms down again.

"I just realised; you never told me your name."

"Correct. I didn't. Orange Lantern two eight one four, at your service. And I do mean that; I owe you for this."

He blinks as he takes this on board. "Orange Lantern. Like Green Lantern, only orange?"

I raise my left hand, palm pointing toward him so that he can get a look at the ring. He stares at it. "Same technology in the rings, certainly. Here-" I take a card with my name on it from subspace. "-since you gave me your name, it's only fair."

He takes the card from me, looks at it then looks back at me. "Paul?"

I shrug. "Dad wanted to call me Matthew."

"R-right."

"Is this a bigger shock than I thought it would be? I mean, you've met other.. empowered people before, right?"

"Yeah, but… Wait, empowered..?" He shifts back in his seat again. "You're not a criminal, right? 'Cause I know a lot of superheroes have villains with powers a lot like-."

I raise my hands to stop him. "No. The worst thing I've done was inadvertently destroying some money. Oh, and stealing someone's cat."

"Why'd you steal someone's cat?"

"It was the familiar of the chaos wizard I mentioned. Without it he lost access to most of his power, but she's still technically his property."

"And the money?"

"That's a bit complicated. Long story short? I pay for things with precious metal now, and the US Treasury Department told me that they don't intend to press charges."

He considers. "Um. Don't take this the wrong way, but I haven't heard of you. And I read a lot about superheroes in America."

I wave it off. "I've only been active for a month and a half, and I've mostly been in training. The missions I have been on, I'm not really supposed to talk about." I shrug. "Sorry."

Another pause. "Does the US have a superhero training program, then? That why they've got so many?"

"Huh? Oh, no, it's not a government scheme."

I start feeling it. The feeling I get when I'm about to make someone really happy. It's tingly, pins-and-needles' benevolent cousin.

"Then, who's training you?"

I take my League-issued ID out of subspace and push it across the table to him.

He doesn't pick it up. It seems to have transfixed him. He actually gulps. "Is that.. real..?"

I pick it up and disappear it. "Yes. Though I would appreciate it if you didn't, for example, phone the Themysciran embassy to confirm that."

"You… You're a member of the Justice League?"

"No, and keep it down a bit, would you? I'm part of a Justice League run training program. If I meet their standards, and if I want to, I might eventually join the League's roster."

"How'd you.. get into that?"

"Recommendation from a friend of Wonder Woman; the Green Lantern from the nineteen forties. You've heard of him, right?"

"Yeah, of course. He was one of the founders of the Justice Society. But I thought he was dead."

"Please don't tell him that."

"Uh, sure."

"Actually, that's the other thing I wanted to talk to you about."

Tingly tingly tingly.

"I've been putting together a dossier on you, your abilities and character. I want to be clear from the start: I don't have the authority to just bring someone on board. But, if it's something you want to get involved in, I'm perfectly happy to make a recommendation to the people running it. That doesn't mean they'll offer you a place soon, if ever. But, if you want to get more involved in superheroing, it's a pretty good route to take."

"Who's.. who runs the program?"

"Batman's in charge of mission assignments. Black Canary organises training, though my combat training is mostly handled by Green Lantern two eight one four bee."

"Which one's that?"

"The ginger one."

"Oh! Guy Gardner."

Knew it.

"Wait. You know Batman?"

"I've spoken to him, and he knows who I am. I'm not on his Christmas card list or anything."

He puts his right hand on his forehead. "What do you want to know?"

"To start with, are you interested?"

He looks me straight in the eyes. "Of course I'm bloody interested."

back

Acceptance 25

next

20th August

21:27 GMT -6

From the cover of trees in the Prairie State Park I'm observing a collection of wrecked cars in a scrap yard just outside of Central City. Kadabra's gone to ground, but now that I know what his technology looks like it isn't hard to find. That's a real scrap yard, but a good chunk of what my unaided eyes are seeing isn't real.

The perimeter of his base of operations is delineated by wrecked cars along three sides and the outer fence along the fourth. Other wrecks are arranged in such a way that, from outside, it isn't obvious that you're looking at a straight wall. In the centre of the area it looks like there's another cluster of wrecks, but it's actually a hologram of some kind disguising a fancy looking caravan. Interior decoration looks pretty nice as well.

The ring has also detected a number of subspace pockets around the area, linked to what are probably booby traps. It can't identify the devices on the other side, but it seems to think they're supposed to cause a local spatial distortion. The full description sounds like a vortex grenade.

It takes me a second to deactivate them and smash in through the roof of Kadabra's home.

Jam…

Oh. He isn't here. He was a moment ago. Teleportation, perhaps?

Scan.

Hm. Not a bad effort. Looks like he's not even going to try a phase shift this time. There are several subspace pockets with some sort of matter transmission devices in them, and a couple of others which don't appear to contain much of anything. They are tiny, and contain only tiny amounts of matter and parts of a complex energy waveform which…

Is that..? Is he hiding in subspace? No, there's just… Oh.

Oh.

Teleportation suspension inside a subspace pocket. That can't be safe. Ring, how long is that set to last?

Unable to determine. Devices make use of randomisation units whose technology defies analysis.

Come again?

Performing further analysis. Unable to determine. Certain similarities exist between residual radiation discovered at user's origin point and radiation within all subspace pockets. No other comparable samples on record.

Kadabra has Bleed tech? No, no, I can't assume that the Bleed exists without more evidence. At any rate, whatever he's using must be fairly impressive to defy a power ring.

Ring, analyse the comprehensible parts of the devices. Are you able to bring him out?

Unable to determine with certainty. However, the components controlling the system appear to largely utilise more comprehensible technologies. The evacuation protocols have been detected, and are available at your instruction.

I take a few steps back.

Do it.

The pockets containing the devices fire beams of blue-white light into the centre of the cluster, where it collects.

How does that work?

Ring, continual analysis.

Compliance.

Lightning -no, it can't just be lightning, I've no idea what it is- cracks between the energy portals and the centre point, forming a constant connection. Frozen lightning?

I see Kadabra's outline build in the centre of the area, then the whole thing collapses, filling him in. He staggers for a moment before catching himself.

Jam.

He looks up, and sags slightly. "I hoped that would work."

"Sorry."

He flops down into a nearby armchair, and lazily waves a hand in the direction of a whiskey decanter on the sideboard. Nothing happens. After a moment he gives up. "So, what now?"

Ring, Ophidian's Eyes.

There are faces, historical figures he admires. People whose inventions weren't just improvements on existing technologies, but radical departures from accepted truths. Some of them are not Human, but I don't get a clear idea of era like this. His boyhood reaction to seeing the activation process of.. some sort of device.. I can't tell what it is. Failing to find the same sensation in his own studies in.. engineering? Wonder. He wants wonder. Something he doesn't understand and can't learn by just reading the work of another.

I can work with that.

"Now, I pump you for information and then, decide what to do with you. Let's start with: where, and when, are you from?"

"You wouldn't know the name. It doesn't exist yet."

"Humour me."

"The Halo of Valgrun Septimus."

"Explain?"

"A halo is an artificial orbital ring. Valgrun-" He looks up at the hole I made in his ceiling, and sighs. "-you can't see it from here. I think it's in that direction." He points towards the ground.

It probably doesn't matter. "Alright. And when?"

For a moment he makes eye contact. "How do you..?" He sighs again. "About four thousand years in your future."

Woo. That's a long time. I don't even know what Human society was like four thousand years ago. Hang on, is what he's been using really the limit of Human technology after four thousand years? I mean, it isn't bad, but shouldn't he have a much easier time of it?

"Don't take this the wrong way, but the technology you've used so far, doesn't seem…"

"I scrambled the control systems before I left, but the people of my era would have no trouble detecting me if I'd taken anything more advanced than what I use now with me when I came to this era."

"And I assume that you have no way to return?"

He sneers. "Even if I did, all that's waiting for me there is a brief interrogation and then an execution."

"And why this period of time?"

"This period of time is known in the future for apparently anachronistic technology. It's just about the only part of Human history in which I could get away with this."

back

Acceptance 26

next

20th August

21:32 GMT -6

Hmm. So, he can't do much to improve this era's technology without getting spotted, and from his point of view it's all old hat anyway. He wants something new.

"Why were you working for Klarion?"

He makes a shrugging gesture with one hand. "He offered to teach me magic. The society I come from, we don't really use it. It interests me."

Bit more to it than that, I think. "When you first arrived in this era, what made you pick a fight with the Flash?"

"I didn't, not immediately. I spent months familiarising myself with the Earth of this era, making sure the historical information I had was even slightly accurate."

"Why wouldn't it be?"

"I don't know. Some sort of great disaster, perhaps? Maybe they don't put completely accurate data in the archives to prevent people trying what I did."

"Okay, so what did you do next?"

"I tried to find a practitioner of magic who could teach me. This was back in nineteen ninety nine, so Atlantis had no formal contact with the rest of the world. I couldn't find anyone. In the end, I decided to set myself up as a stage magician. I'm actually quite skilled, even without my technology. With it, it was child's play. The money was good, and the applause gratifying-."

"You forced people to applaud you."

"Sometimes, yes. It made the situation bearable. But I had hoped that I'd draw a genuine wizard out to meet a fellow practitioner. No takers." His eyes move to the decanter again. I wave my right hand and he slowly lifts himself out of his chair, gingerly walks over and pours himself a glass. He then picks up an empty glass and looks at me in an enquiring manner.

"No, thank you."

He knocks the first one back, then pours another, adding some ice from a container built into the surface of the sideboard. "Three years I travelled the world like that. Central City… The Flash… They were flukes. I simply happened to be here when I finally ran out of patience. I had hoped that he would summon magical aid, or that a magician would be drawn there by my actions." He takes a sip. "No such luck."

"Why didn't you try talking to Giovanni Zatara?"

He gives me a look. "Please. He's an obvious fake. Talking backwards?"

"Hate to break it to you, but Mister Zatara is very much a real magic user. "

"What?"

"This time last night he was pulling bits of Klarion's spell out of my chest."

That did not compute. "But… Talking backwards!"

"It's some sort of bloodline thing. I don't understand how it works."

His left hand goes to his forehead.

"So, why Klarion? Why not try Atlantis now? After your last term in Iron Heights you didn't have any outstanding warrants..?"

"Atlantis gives out only slightly more travel visas than Themyscira does. They certainly wouldn't let a man with a criminal record study magic there. Klarion.. approached me a few months ago. Said that he liked the way I caused chaos, and that he'd be happy to teach me if I did some work for him."

"Anything other than kidnapping Kent Nelson?"

"He also had me manufacture some synthetic materials. Nothing an advanced laboratory from this era couldn't produce."

"Anything special about them?"

"Strong and tough, but other than that? No." He takes another sip. "Stupid thing is, he didn't actually teach me anything. I tried copying his gestures and words. Nothing."

"Oh, that's not the stupid thing. You know what is?" He looks at me. "Mister Nelson was looking for a successor. If you'd sought him out rather than picking a fight with the Flash, he'd probably have given you a chance at it."

"Bah! I thought he was simply a retired archaeologist! I had no way to know he was Fate until Klarion told me."

"Really? You didn't bring any data analysis gear with you from the future? You couldn't narrow down probabilities based on known appearance and appearances?"

"No." He stares morosely at his drink. "I didn't think it would be this hard."

Hmm. What to do with him now? Standard procedure would be to drop him off with the local police, after checking they could actually hold him of course. But…

He wants to experience wonder again, and believes that he'll find it in magic since his society doesn't use it. I could probably get him a teacher. Heck, he'd probably be my friend for life if I just showed him the books Mister Nelson gave me. Could I use that to keep him on the straight and narrow?

"I should probably tell you now, I don't think that Klarion is in a position to keep his end of the deal."

"Why do you say that?"

"I turned his familiar into an orange construct."

His hand tightens on his glass.

"Magic users have powerful bonds with their familiars, and in his case me taking it cost him most of his power."

He downs his drink, and then puts his glass down. The ice rattles as his hand shakes.

"Mister Kadabra, I'm going to offer you a deal."

"Oh?"

"You may not know many magic users who could teach you, but I'm confident that I could find one or two. If you hand yourself in to the Central City police department, confess to everything you've done but not been sentenced for and serve your time, then upon your release I will arrange for you to receive tuition for as long as you remain rehabilitated."

"And if I don't take your offer?"

I shrug. "Nothing much. I knock you out and hand you over. You go back to Iron Heights, or on to Belle Reve, and when you eventually get out you're in no better position than you are now."

He considers it for a moment. "Why should I believe you?"

"You want magic, I want you on the straight and narrow. This doesn't have to be hard."

He still hesitates. I hold out my left hand. Ring, book.

"This is a volume on basic Elemental lore Mister Nelson gave me before his death. Outline only, you wouldn't be able to summon something with what's in here. If you accept my offer, I'll let you read it first. But, if you cheat on the deal, I will forcibly remove your implants, and I don't think twenty first century technology would allow you to rebuild them."

His eyes flick between my face and the book.

"I know magic users, and if reasoned argument fails I could pay a commercial mage from Atlantis to come to you if I had to. Do the intelligent thing."

He still hesitates, hand raised to grasp. "Can I… Think about it?"

I remove the book. "You have one week."

He nods.

"On another matter, I was interested to see that you know about the Orange Lantern Corps. Do you know of the War of Light?"

"How could I not? Entire planetary populations turned into undead monstrosities. I came to this time period so that I'd have a chance to learn what I wanted before any of that happened."

"Yes, Black Lanterns can be a bit of a handful, can't they?"

"Black? No, not Black. Orange."

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NEXT CHAPTER

Initiative

BACK

Initiative 1

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Initiative

27th August

05:38 GMT -5

Note to self: don't try looking into the soul of a man made of clay.

I collapse into my chair on the bioship, close my eyes and press my hands against my temples. When we confronted Clayface in the storm drains I thought that taking a look would be useful for intelligence purposes. It wasn't as if he was an immediate threat to anyone down there. One blast of orange confusion later and I recovered just in time to get slammed against the walls. That didn't hurt, but it did distract me from the fight until my team mates were downed, at which point they became my priority.

Taking on Clayface without specialist equipment isn't a great idea, but once my mind stops spinning I should be able to put something together. I am slightly worried that this version appears able to take on additional material; he was leaving blobs of mud around the place but wasn't any smaller afterwards. Why were we even engaging it? I thought Batman said that he just wanted us to track it?

The only vaguely coherent thing I got from that ill-advised use of Ophidian's Eyes was a series of fractured images of a woman I recognise as Talia al Ghul. In this timeline she and Batman broke up about a year ago. Since this version of Matthew Hagen works for the League of Shadows, he'd probably know her. Not sure why she was the only thing I could see, I usually get some kind of narrative and an idea of the way the target thinks about things.

"-point of putting on a clean costume when I'm not fresh?"

"Oh, Wally, you're always fresh."

I open my eyes.

"At least you have a clean costume."

Cleaning duty it is, then. I raise my left hand.

"Yeah, an old back-up! No stealth mode! It stinks!"

Ring, sort them out before my headache gets worse.

A beam strikes Wallace right in the lightning bolt, and a wave of orange disintegrates all of the residual clay. Next, it hits Kon, where it removes a lump of the caked on mud before disintegrating the rest. The removed blob floats over to me.

Ring, analyse.

Substance contains Aluminium, Oxygen, Silicone, Hydrogen, Iron, Magnesium, and various other elements. It is clay, and matches the chemical composition of local clay.

"Thanks Oh El!"

I rub my forehead with my right hand. "Don't worry about it."

Anything special about this clay?

Observed phenomena have no basis in conventional chemistry.

Right, right. Of course, the problem there might be me. I keep thinking that clay shouldn't be able to do that. I remember that the comics had a load of different Clayfaces, but the only origin I remember is the one from Batman: the Animated Series. Some sort of beauty product, wasn't it?

"So what do we do about the creature?"

Robin has never encountered Clayface before, so Hagen must have been transformed sometime between his last encounter with them and now. I doubt Robin would remember him though; he and Batman tend to go through henchmen rather quickly. I only know his former face because I made a point of looking him up.

"Batman wanted us to track it."

Well remembered, M'gann.

"Why settle for that? Okay, sure, it got the drop on us. But now we know its tricks!"

:-|

Kaldur, slap Wallace for me would you?

"Yeah! We split up!"

:-[

Kaldur?

"Then whoever finds old 'Clayface' radios the team."

Wait, what? Why is Robin-?

"We converge and kick some clay-butt!"

!-[

Kon, we're going to be having a talk about this.

"What do you think, Aqualad?"

"What? Oh. Yes… It seems we have a plan."

}:[

"Oh, we most certainly do not!"

The clay sample I was analysing moves aside as I rise out of my chair, and land with some force in the front of the ship.

"Are you seriously saying that you want to attack Clayface using exactly the techniques that just failed. He cannot be meaningfully hurt by kinetic force. And you think splitting up will improve our chances!?"

No sound. They're all looking at me, though.

Think calm thoughts.

>:[

I point at Wallace.

"Kinetic force."

I point at Kon.

"Kinetic force."

I point at M'gann.

"Mostly, kinetic force."

I point at Robin.

"And unless you've changed your utility belt load out without telling me, kinetic force! Now, does anyone have any ideas for fighting a thing made entirely of clay that are actually sensible?"

Stunned silence.

Oh, Kaldur's woken up.

"Could you track it with your ring?"

"No, because it's got exactly the same chemical composition as Gotham mud-"

I bring my clay sample to float in front of me, and wave it at him.

"-and Clayface can change his shape at will. No constant unique physical characteristics."

He looks down for a moment.

"Is there something you would like to suggest?"

"As I see it, we have two options for fighting it. We can bake it hard, or we can try and mix it with so much water that it can't maintain its integrity."

"How would we do that?"

"Can you use your water bearers to force water into it?"

"Possibly. But what is to stop it simply reforming?"

"Not much. I'm hoping that it needs a certain amount of clay in one place in order to think complex thoughts. But for my preferred option, Robin-"

I shift my attention from Kaldur to him.

"-do you know where you can lay your hands on some thermite at short notice?"

He grins.

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Initiative 2

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27th August

06:18 GMT -5

"Well, hah, that could have gone better."

Directly in front of me, the hard baked form of Matthew Hagen makes no response. Behind him, my reinforced anti-radiation shield bubble doesn't quite block out the sight of my fallen team mates. A quick check shows no serious injuries, then I ignore them and focus on the shield.

My gun construct is still up. On one level I know I don't need it; Clayface is baked. But the primitive parts of my brain are rejecting out of hand the idea that the huge mud-man who TPKed my team can't hurt me, at least until they've seen its blood.

I double check my armour. Still good. I mean, I wouldn't last long enough to know if it wasn't, but still.

What little plan we'd had was abandoned nearly as soon as we got to this warehouse. I hadn't seen this version of Clayface shapeshift, but apparently it was good enough at it to get the drop on all my team mates. I tried to scoop it up into a construct bubble, but it was able to exert colossal pressure and I couldn't hold it. Kaldur got slammed into a wall and I was faced with a choice between letting it out into Gotham, or using one of my shouldn't-use-in-an-inhabited-area constructs.

Maintain the shield. Maintain the shield. Everything will be alright if you maintain the shield.

"Orange Lantern."

Batman's behind me, outside the shield. It might be that he's just that sneaky, but I don't think I'm paying attention to much else at the moment.

Clayface is really big, up close.

Maintain the shield.

Not all that much bigger than Flinders, really. I think it's the obvious inhumanity that's getting to me. I mean, even after his transformation Flinders was obviously a functioning organic being.

"Orange Lantern."

"Sorry sir, did you say something? I'm a bit distracted."

"Is the creature neutralised?"

"Far as I can tell. No activity of any kind. And if it were magic, it'd still be going for me."

"Drop the shield. I'll take it from here."

"Sir, I'm compelled to obey your orders but I'm going to have to respectfully suggest that you reconsider that one."

"Your reason?"

"I was in too much of a rush to calibrate my attack properly. I'm not sure exactly how much gamma radiation I hit him with, but if I dropped the shield Gotham would probably melt."

I'm not looking at him, and I'm not going to split my attention to analyse his expression under his mask. He doesn't say anything for a moment.

"You are able to maintain the shield?"

Fuck yes.

"If I couldn't, we'd never know about it."

"How much radiation escaped before you raised the shield?"

"I put the shield up first. With both of us inside it. Probably why I'm a bit-" I jazz hands. "-at the moment."

"Have you been exposed at all?"

"No, 'cause this much gamma? There's no such thing as a little exposure. Look, I should.. I should probably take him somewhere. D'you mind if I drop him off on Ganymede? It's nice this time of year. Well, actually it isn't, but no one's using it and if I release the radiation there then it shouldn't hit anything inhabited in sufficient concentration to do anything."

"That sounds like a reasonable precaution."

Next to the wall, Kaldur starts to pick himself off the floor. I look up.

Okay, it's just glass. I can cut through it and lift it out of the way, no trouble.

Up we go.

I rise gradually, taking a chunk of floor with me. I had to put the shield under the ground as well, otherwise it wouldn't have worked. Of course, that means I'm stuck with Gotham warehouse floor until I get to Ganymede. Do I take a chance and transition it there? No, far too risky with something like this.

I project a clamp construct from the top of the bubble shield and attach it to the skylight. Next, a cutting blade from the side slices an ovoid just a little wider all around than my bubble.

Maintain the shield.

I rise up through my hole. Normally I'd take the time to reattach the window, but that bit of roof looks solid enough. I'll just lay it down there. Okay, accelerate.

With nothing else to think about I look down at the city as it appears below me for a few minutes before being concealed by the clouds. I know I instinctively think of Gotham as a shithole, but having actually had a look at the place, I think my accusation may have been premature. Or maybe it's that nowhere could be as bad as comics Gotham and still function, so this place looks good in comparison. The crime rate is high, but it's United States high, not Mogadishu high. The formerly unchallenged crime syndicates were either destroyed by Batman -though Harvey Dent got Falcone himself- or shrunk to a shadow of their former might. Commissioner Gordon hasn't quite cleaned up the police department, but without a safe source of money and a corruption friendly working environment Gotham's shady police have decided that now is the time for sensible men and women to be honest.

Above the cloud layer now. Nothing to look at but Hagen's face. I don't understand how he functions. It's actually possible that he is still alive in some way. Is he aware, like this? There's nowhere for light or sound to go, but then, there wasn't when we fought him and he seemed to manage.

I killed him.

I killed him.

Oh, I could justify it. I think on balance it was probably the right thing to do, given the situation. And he was certainly trying to kill us, if a bit clumsily. But I looked into the mess that they'd turned his soul into, then an hour later I intentionally hit him with enough gamma radiation to sterilise the northern hemisphere.

I just killed a man.

I don't really feel bad for him, but as I leave the Earth's atmosphere I get this weird feeling that I've violated some sort of rule. That I should expect some sort of retribution. Did Batman have a way to stop him without that level of force? I didn't try freezing, would that have worked? Alright, when I get back, find the schematics for Leonard Snart's cold gun.

Would they consider him to have been alive? There was nothing I could point to, no brain waves or heart beat.

I don't know.

Is he going to wake up, once the radiation dissipates? Reliquefy, or whatever? Create a body of Ganymedian mud, and rampage around the place in total isolation?

I'm not using the Eyes on him again.

My current speed would be deadly in an atmosphere, but in space it's fine. Shouldn't take me more than twenty minutes to reach Ganymede orbit, then maybe another twenty depositing him safely onto the surface.

I need to find out why this happened.

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Initiative 3

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27th August

14:43 GMT

I ended up putting him on a rise in the centre of an impact crater. There's a certain grandeur to it, and he'll get an unobstructed view of both sunrise and Jupiter-rise. Don't know if he'd have cared about that. I didn't say anything before I left. Not like I knew him, and the best I could come up with was 'Matthew Hagen, lived as an arsehole, died as a shit'.

But she did. I've had the Justice League files on Talia al Ghul since I started with the team. I've had Batman's personal files for less than an hour. Fortunately, despite their relationship, it's all business. He's got a fair bit on the League of Shadows' internal structure, but I still can't work out why Hagen and Talia would even know each other. She's their business manager, for goodness sake. Sure, she's attractive, but the only coherent thought in someone's mind after they get turned into a thing? No. There's something black in these lentils.

I'm standing on the Rue Volney watching her through the windows of the small restaurant where she's having coffee with a man. I don't recognise him from the League's files, but a quick internet search matches his face to that of Efraim al-Tauib, suspected financial fixer for one of the Niger Delta's more mercenary paramilitaries. I'm a little curious about how he even got into France. He definitely has an outstanding international arrest warrant. On the other hand, his face is fairly bland, and I could well believe that he's got a decent fake passport. Double check dental records and genetic codes against known relatives… yep.

I'm wearing a suit. Not my standard one with the orange trim, just plain black and white. I found a high class shop that would accept dollars, then waited while they phoned my contact at the US Treasury. He's been getting quite a lot of those phone calls, but given the amount of money I made them for virtually no work on their part…

Anyway. There's no way Ms al Ghul can escape, but I'd rather not cause panic in the centre of Paris if I can avoid it. I also don't have any evidence against her that would justify me handing her over to Batman. Looks like two bodyguards… no, three. Two at their table and one on his own at the bar. Can't tell whether they're his or hers, but they're carrying pistols and knives and wearing stab proof vests under their shirts. That can't be legal here.

Hmm. Lunch rush hasn't started yet. Walk in, or wait outside? An image of Mister Hagen's kiln-hardened face forms in my mind as I decide in favour of the former. I still feel resistance in my own mind. I'm breaking a social convention, intruding on their personal space in a public place. But it's becoming increasingly apparent to me that nothing will happen as a result. What was Hyperion's line from Supreme Power? 'If I choose to go to any of those places, exactly who's going to stop me'? Something like that.

Check both ways, cross the road. Check that the shield is up and on minimum. Step aside with a smile as a couple of well dressed women leave the restaurant, then push open the door for myself.

I assume that the Shadows know what I look like. A description at least. I've avoided asking Jade about exactly what they know on my last couple of visits. I don't want her to think about it as a choice between two adversaries, largely to avoid her making the choice I don't want her to make due to her contrary need to defy her critics. I take in the room like a clueless tourist while the bodyguard facing the door scans me for a moment and then ignores me. Guess I don't register. Maybe the people of this parallel are just really bad at facial recognition?

There's an empty table one place in from the window from them, and I amble over to it, vacant smile in place. I turn my back to them as I pull out the chair closest to them, and a firm hand is placed on my right shoulder. I turn around, smile still in place and eyebrows raised in unspoken question.

"I'm sorry sir, but Miss Head values her privacy quite highly. Would you please take another table?"

"Oh! I'm sorry, I didn't-."

I put my hand on the side of his arm.

Pithing Needle, ShockCrown.

The Needle construct locks his nerves to keep him upright as I deposit him on the available chair. I run an orange thread under the floor to keep him in place. A person who knew exactly what to look for might notice it, but this thin and in this light it's practically invisible. Next, I turn my eyes to the target table, step over and take a seat next to Mister al-Tauib.

"Hello there, Miss al Ghul, Mister al-Tauib."

She goes still. I turn my head towards him. He looks stunned.

"You're under arrest, by the way."

I turn back to Talia just in time for the guard opposite to lean across the table and strike the base of my nose with the heel of his palm. I don't feel a thing through the shield, though I imagine he'll have a bruise in the morning. A thread behind him ShockCrowns him and drops him safely back on his seat.

"I will admit to being a little disappointed, Miss al Ghul. I had been under the impression that you only mixed with the better class of criminal."

"I don't know who you think you are-."

I turn back to him. "Oi, yer rumbled. Learn to lose with dignity."

"You can't just-."

ShockCrown.

He slumps.

"Yes. Yes I can."

Ah! We have eye contact! Talia's expression remains neutral as she stares at my face.

"Miss al Ghul. You appear to have developed a hole in your schedule. Do you think you could possibly fit me in?"

Ring, monitor the fuck out of her.

Compliance.

She takes a sip of her coffee.

"You do not believe that the oppressed peoples of the Niger Delta are sufficiently 'high class'?"

"Oh please. He's paymaster for a group of opportunistic mercenaries who'll proclaim any creed if the money's right, and they have no ideology beyond 'let the devil take the hindmost'. I'd respect them if there was an actual liberation struggle going on."

Looks like she's decided not to start screaming. The guy by the bar is aware that something's off, but he hasn't moved yet.

"Who are you and what do you want?"

"I, am Orange Lantern two eight one four. And I want to talk to you about Matthew Hagen."

Her face doesn't move. "I don't know anyone of that name."

"I'm afraid that your brain activity says otherwise. Looks like memory.. and emotion." I frown. "Ooh, intense emotion." Friendly smile, singsong voice. "You'll feel better if you tell me."

A tiny change, the slightest grimace, and she turns from me to look forward. "Matthew Hagen is dead."

I raise my eyebrows, and lean forward attentively. "Really? He seemed remarkably mobile for a dead man this morning."

Added tension along her jaw.

"I told my father that sending him to Gotham was a mistake."

back

Initiative 4

next

27th August

14:48 GMT

"That would depend on what he was trying to achieve. The foyer of the Wayne Foundation may never be the same again." I nod my head to the side. "I don't consider attacks on charities to be high class, either."

She's allowing herself a little more expression. Looks like she doesn't, either. "I told Father it was beneath him."

"Sounds like business as usual to me."

"He usually accepts his losses with more grace."

Is this about Doctor Roquette?

"Which particular loss was this retaliation for?"

A tiny hint of a frown. I wonder if she's had Botox?

"The satellite launch at Cape Canaveral."

"Your father sent a man made of clay to kill your ex because he stopped a satellite launch?"

She narrow her eyes.

"That, and because Father was killed."

"Temporarily. And, really? A giant laser in space? That's silver age supervillainy right there."

A frown. I guess she isn't a comics reader. Or maybe the silver age didn't happen here? Or maybe it happened in real life instead?

"His plan was perfectly sound. If Batman had not intervened-."

"Then one of the Greenies would have destroyed the satellite in orbit. Or Superman would. Or me. Or one of the dozen or so armies that can hit targets in orbit. Realistically, he'd have got, maybe, one city. At most, two, if they were close together. But I'm not here to talk about Ra's al Ghul's deranged supervillainy."

I roll my eyes at 'deranged'. Talia curls her lip into a protosnarl.

"So, anyway, ambush fails, and we-both-know-who-but-I'm-not-saying-it-out-loud survives. So far, so typical. What I don't understand is why a professional killer just,-" I shrug "-walks off. Hagen didn't exactly seem focused on the mission. Plus I'm kinda curious how a baseline Human becomes a giant clay monster."

"If the attack was stopped, why not ask Hagen yourself?"

"Because I killed him."

She's taken aback. "He is dead? You are sure?"

"As far as I could tell he's permanently inanimate. I hit him with enough gamma radiation to sterilise the northern hemisphere, then dumped him on Ganymede. I couldn't detect any chemical changes and he wasn't moving… so, yes. Sure as I can be."

Her eyes move off me and she blinks, twice. Brain activity says emotion again.

"Now, I've.. I've never killed someone before. I don't know exactly how you were involved, but the only thing he could think coherently was your face, and I'd really quite like an explanation."

"Matthew Hagen attempted to use a Lazarus Pit to cure his cancer."

"The Pit did that?"

That doesn't match anything in the comics.

"Yes."

Hard to tell, but I think she's telling the truth.

"Father decided to make use of his new form."

Might be true? The ring's lie detection function just isn't good enough to tell how much of this is true, and I doubt that I could intimidate her as I did Kadabra.

"So why did Hagen give up?"

"Perhaps the changes to his body damaged his mind. I have no interest in speculating."

"I'm still not hearing anything to explain why he was thinking about you."

"Then you will simply have to leave disappointed."

Time for a new approach.

"Alright, so explain it to me: even if the satellite could have worked -which it couldn't- what exactly was the point in killing all of those people?"

"The objective was to remove the surplus part of the Human population."

"You think cities are surplus? Do I need to point out where your clothing and jewellery were manufactured? Or where the satellite itself was made?"

"The Earth can survive without those things."

"Until the next alien invasion, when no one has any advanced weapons. Or an asteroid impact, when we've got no spacecraft. Or a plague when modern medicine's bitten the dust."

"Manufacturing can be done on a smaller scale. Mass industrialisation unavoidably poisons all ecosystems, including the ones Humans depend on."

"I remember your father saying something about people born today having no idea about what clean air smells like. And he has a point. Thing is though, there's normal, sensible solutions... And then there's supervillain solutions."

"You cannot argue with the efficiency of an orbital weapon strike."

"Not if you're a megalomaniac, no. If Ra's al Ghul really wants to improve the situation, why doesn't he… I dunno.. encourage off-world colonisation? Or improve access to education and contraception to women in third world countries, something that's proven to reduce birth rates? Why? Because he's just another stupid supervillain so in love with his own ego that he couldn't make a good decision even if it killed him. And worse than most of them, because if it did kill him he'd just get up again!"

"You will show respect!"

"No, I won't. It's stupid, the whole idea's stupid."

Ring, genetic scan, match to parent and siblings.

Compliance. High probability matches; one living parent and one living sibling.

"I reckon this is why your sister left, you know."

She opens her mouth to respond, then stops herself. "I don't have a sister."

I raise my left palm so she can see the sigil of the ring. "The ring says otherwise. I mean, how old's your father? You've probably got loads of relatives around the place."

Ring, just in case I'm wrong, what's her sister's name?

Nyssa Raatko.

Nearly remembered it right. Not bad for an average quality comic I read over five years ago.

Get her address, and put it on a card.

Compliance.

"Distant relatives, perhaps. But Father would have told me if I had a sister."

"Not if she hated him because he left her and her entire family to die in a Nazi concentration camp. Can't risk you thinking for yourself. Here-" The card appears. "-her address. Look her up." I shrug. "Or don't. See, the actual reason you and Batman didn't work out? It's not 'cause he's a big softy and can't cope with your father's harsh but necessary methods. It's 'cause your father's a nutter."

I stand, floating Mister al-Tauib with me. No need to disguise my presence any more.

Medium armour, increase shields.

And now everyone's looking. I meet the eyes of the other bodyguard and smile. He turns back to the bar.

Now, where do I drop this guy off in France?

back

Initiative 5

next

27th August

10:02 GMT -5

I was pleasantly surprised by how on the ball the French National Police were, but it still took more time than I wanted to pass Mister al-Tauib over to them. They weren't unreasonably difficult about the whole superhero thing, but I got the impression that their standard operating procedures didn't cover the situation. Fortunately, they let me write Orange Lantern as my name on the forms and accepted the Themysciran embassy in New York as my main postal address and primary phone contact. The captain who ended up dealing with the situation said that he wasn't sure whether or not I would be called to testify. I said that if they wanted me it wouldn't be a problem.

I'm now high in the sky off the west coast of Ecuador, spying on Ra's al Ghul himself. I'm not seeing any particularly high level of alert, so either Talia hasn't been in touch or they don't think that I'll follow up. The island he appears to be living on is guarded, certainly, but the man himself appears to be taking a walk through a dojo running a morning training session. A large bald man, who I assume to be an Ubu, follows shortly behind.

I'm forced to wonder exactly how proprietary Batman is about his villains. I'm not planning anything one of the raw power Justice Leaguers couldn't do. I mean, that's an assassin training facility for goodness sake. I'll give Batman a dump of all of the information I've scanned from their electronic and paper records when I get back.

Why am I here? Ra's sent Hagen to kill Batman, and possibly a large number of other people. Revenge probably, but Talia's brain waves and Hagen's soul suggest there was more to it than that. I might never know what. Thinking about it dispassionately, killing everyone on the island would probably be a decent solution. I'm reasonably confident I could do something to Ra's he couldn't get back from.

But the others wouldn't see it that way. And I need them more than I need to know that I made a correct utility calculation. There must be some reason why Batman's left this place intact, right?

But I don't want to just fly back and present my report yet. I've never liked the fact that foot soldiers bear the brunt of their master's decisions. If killing one government official prevents a war, surely assassination is far more moral than killing hundreds of soldiers who believe that they are simply doing their job? Surely the execution of a convicted criminal is more moral than a chance killing on a battlefield?

What can I do to Ra's that will actually make him suffer for his action? I might have made Talia doubt, though I think that's a bit optimistic. Maybe I should give Nyssa some warning? But there's one thing I can certainly take that will hurt him.

I can't just tell the ring to find a Lazarus Pit. I don't know what they look like here, and there are any number of things on that island that could be the Pit.

But I know one way to make them show me.

The railgun forms alongside me. An upgrade on my original attempt to make a construct version, this converts the ring's power far more efficiently and uses tungsten slugs with iron jackets for projectiles.

Ring, adjust for movement. I want to get Ra's and only Ra's.

Compliance.

The gun shifts slightly.

In my mind's eye I see flight path projections, impact estimates and timelines. I'm aiming at his head, and as the projectile will pulp him and keep going I can't risk hitting someone else on the way in or out.

In theory they could see me, but I'm a small orange light in the sky some distance away with the sun at my back.

The construct hums, and I unnecessarily suppress the sound.

From killing someone in the heat of the moment to killing someone because I decide they deserve it all in the space of a day. I suspect that he'd be proud of that.

Kill him.

There's a sharp crack, and I see that Ra's' head has been obliterated. Some of the people near him appear to have been hurt by flying chips of stone, but I've achieved my objective. Guards run around and the Ubu picks up the intact part of Ra's' body while trying to spot where the attack came from. He says something, and a wall of Human shields gather around him.

I track him as he moves through the buildings to what I assume is Ra's' own home. Eventually, he gets to the lower part of the structure. The Pit itself is a sarcophagus like structure, quite unlike the large pool I had been expecting. Ubu gently lowers his headless master into it, being careful not to touch the roiling liquid himself. Then, he stands well back and waits. None of the others followed him into the inner sanctum. Interesting.

I have no idea how long this process will take. I set the ring to monitor the condition of Ra's' corpse, and begin designating nonliving targets for stage two. That takes about a minute; the number of things worth hitting that don't have people right next to them is rather low. After checking that nothing in the general area is likely to spot me I take a book out of subspace. I was disappointed to learn that Terry Pratchett doesn't exist here, but by some strange quirk of fate Charles Stross does, so I picked up a copy of The Atrocity Archive.

By the time Ra's pulls himself forth from his alchemical bath Bob and Mo are visiting Amsterdam. I remember that emerging from the pit causes temporary derangement, so it isn't surprising that Ubu keeps his distance. After staring wildly about for a few moments Ra's seems to get his thoughts in order, and Ubu approaches to hand him a towel.

Search parties have already scoured the island and found nothing. The ring no-sells radar scans, as well as something more sophisticated that appeared to scan for gravity distortions. I scanned that right back, and moved it to the top of the targeting list. I'm not going to level the island, but I do want to put everything breakable out of commission long enough for Batman to decide whether or not he wants to destroy the place completely.

Alright, the area around the Pit is clear. I transition to high above the island and recreate the railgun. My first targets are the boats and aircraft. Those can most readily be destroyed from above. While I'm up here I'll also take a few shots at the unoccupied portions of Ra's' house. Then, FTL transition to a position on the east side of the island for skimming targets where I can't risk over-penetration due to the proximity of League of Shadows henchpeople. Not sure if this Ra's is less patriarchal than the comic version, but a good proportion of the people getting ninja training on the island are female. I want my projectiles to arrive in a staggered pattern; while there aren't any technological weapons down there that can hurt me, there might be magic based ones.

I myself will be going in through Ra's' roof. It's a solid enough structure, but I'm a Lantern.

Ring, plot FTL jumps and shot trajectories.

Attack plotted.

Execute.

Flickers of sky and island and the hum of the gun, and then I'm directly above Ra's roof.

RazorWedge. Down.

Rubble explodes around me and the ring notifies me of the success of my other strikes. Four seconds and I'm in the target chamber. A slam as I close the sarcophagus. A whine as my cutting constructs free it from the stone floor in which it was embedded.

Subspace it.

I got transport and communications. They could swim for shore, but for the moment the island's a prison.

Ring, plot course for home.

Course available.

Hmm. Doubt it'll matter, but…

I withdraw Mister Crock's plasma crossbow from subspace and fire it repeatedly at the floor next to the hole where the Lazarus Pit used to be. I then return it to subspace before lashing out at the surrounding walls.

Execute FTL transfer.

back

Initiative 6

next

27th August

10:36 GMT -5

I exit FTL over the North Atlantic Ocean, next to the hangar entrance. I take a moment to breathe the sea air.

What's going to happen now? Killing Mister Hagen isn't a minor mistake; it's a breach of a fundamental part of the way in which the League likes to operate. Both being ejected from the team and being arrested are very real possibilities here. For a moment I consider simply flying away. No. This is my home, my team. I'll argue my case, and see what happens.

The uncertainty brings the now into sharper focus. I fly along the cliff to what M'gann calls our back door and transmit my access code. The fake section of rock slides aside and I enter the mountain.

"Attend?"

"Hello Teekl."

I crouch and rub her head. She leans into it.

"Finished telling the mountain who's in charge?"

"Tunnels patrolled. Excessive water."

She rubs against my knee.

"I'm pretty sure you can dry yourself by wanting to be dry."

"Excessive. Water."

I run my right hand down her back and scratch the base of her tail.

"Okay. Who else is here?"

A mental image. Kon, slumped in front of the television. M'gann, standing in the kitchen. I'm not sure Teekl has linked names to faces yet, or if she can even do that. There's also a vague impression of Red Tornado, she's not sure where he is and he doesn't smell like a person to her.

"Happpppyyyy."

"Come on you." I pick her up and hold her against my shoulder. "Let's go and be sociable."

Since Batman isn't around I'd like to talk to Kon and M'gann before contacting him myself. Put off the evil hour for a little longer. Something I should do before that, though. I need to check on the rats.

Wallace confided in me that he may have slightly overstated how happy Mister Allen was when he gave himself celerity. As a result, I suggested that we approach Jay Garrick for help with examining the effects of his formula on the Human body, rather than Mister Allen. He sounded fairly positive about the idea, but said that he didn't want to say yes or no without talking it over with Wallace's parents and uncle first. He did let me scan him, however. Mister Garrick isn't noticeably faster than Wallace, but interestingly he doesn't have Wallace's metabolism issues. Wallace got a bit excited about that, until Mister Garrick and I pointed out that altering him on the basis of such a small sample would be a bad idea.

Since there aren't any blood samples of either Wallace or Mister Garrick from before their transformation, the only places I could get a before and after would be either from Mister Allen or by using the formula on someone new, which I am extremely reluctant to do. Wallace jokingly suggested putting a request for volunteers in the Flash's fan club newsletter, but I said that laboratory rats would be a more sensible option, at least to start with. We spent an evening turning one of the more remote rooms -I think it used to be a secure containment room, which is about right- into a testing lab, complete with lab rats, rat run and a program to make the lights simulate the solar cycle. The whole thing should have automated feeding and cleaning, but I like to check on them every so often just to make sure.

Both hands on Teekl I press the door release with my right elbow. This shouldn't take long.

Oh.

"Good afternoon sir."

Red Tornado is taking in the rattery. He's presently facing the runs on the far wall, and there's a work surface with computer terminals between us. The run extends the whole edge of the room after I remembered some modular rat runs that used to be sold in the supermarket my mum shopped at when I was little. Always wanted to stick together a huge one, and now I have.

"Orange Lantern."

I put Teekl down on the work surface. She sits, looks around the room, sniffs, then starts licking herself. I have told her that she doesn't really need to do that anymore. Maybe it's instinctual to the point that she can't learn not to do it?

"Batman has informed me that he wishes to speak with you."

There's a slight mechanical creak as he turns from the rats he was studying in order to face me.

"Immediately, or should I just tell him I'm here?"

"He did not imply that it was urgent. I will inform him of your presence."

Right.

He starts walking around the room, his head pointing forwards. His schematics show that his cognition systems are located in his head, rather than somewhere sensible like an armoured box in his chest.

Ring, confirm status of the rats?

Rats and rat habitat within required parameters.

"If you don't mind me asking sir, did Batman give any indication of what he wanted to talk to me about?"

I step aside as he reaches the door. Teekl jumps down, and then we follow him out.

"He did not mention a specific topic, though I would imagine that he wants to speak with you concerning your mission this morning."

Maybe I'm asking the wrong person about this?

"Sir, I made an error in judgement during the mission, and I'd like.. some sort of indication, whether I'm a bit in trouble, or a lot in trouble."

"He did not seem angry when the team returned. That said, he may simply have been concealing his emotions."

Teekl looks at me, then walks off down a side passage.

Thanks Teekl.

"Urp, I should.. probably go and recharge the ring. Please let me know when Batman would like to see me."

"Of course."

Ring, plot course and execute.

I don't even notice the transition. The door's in front of me, and I push the button to open it.

Ring, remove my boots and socks.

When I first got here, the floor was bare metal. I spent a good chunk of my second day bringing it up to the standard of somewhere I would want to live. The deep shag carpet is pale grey with an orange Orange Corps sigil in the centre, and I relax slightly as I scrunch my toes in it. Unlike M'gann's room, mine doesn't have a rock wall, just more metal. I thought about covering it or painting it, but I couldn't decide on a colour, and in the end left it as it is. The bedding got replaced with something more 'on theme', and eventually I was able to replace the feather pillows with decent quality foam ones. Those were a pain to find. I also reconfigured the shelving, taking out most of what was here and replacing it with quality wooden pieces, and making room for my coin chest.

Storing things in subspace does take some power. It's not a lot, but it seemed to me that it would be a good idea to minimise what I stored rather than loading all of my possessions into it. Walking around money goes into subspace, but the majority of my coinage is in here.

I keep my lantern in the box Alan used to use. I altered the outer panels so that they have the Orange sigil displayed in light wood on the sides, rather than the monotone dark dyed wood it used to have. I walk over to the table on which it rests and open it, taking hold of the lantern's top right handle. I pull it out and put it on the table next to the box, then step back and extend my left hand.

Looking around, I'm starting to think that I may have taken the sigil theme a bit far.

I'm trying to remember what the actual Orange Corps oath is. I haven't actually tried using it, as I don't appear to need to. Maybe I should? Lantern Jordan's oath was personal to him, and I can't think of anything which would summarise my thought on my duty in four eight syllable lines. I can just about remember the first line. Think I saw it on a website. Deviantart? Not sure.

"This is my power-"

The treasures of civilisations, fallen ages past. Bones stripped of flesh and marrow. Vast serpentine eyes-

I yank my hand back, slip, and fall onto the soft carpet.

!Very bad very bad!

I pick myself up.

Did I just see Larfleeze's cave? That can happen?

I guess it's not my power after all.

I open my hand again, and hold it out to the lantern.

Ring, standard recharge this time.

back

Initiative 7

next

27th August

10:42 GMT -5

I hear the sound of chopping before I reach the kitchen. M'gann's slicing onions on the granite table. There's a bowl of slices next to her, and another bowl of whole tomatoes. She's on dinner duty today. Wonder what we're having? Starting this early.. some sort of stew?

"Hi M'gann. Where's Kon?"

She looks around, and her surprise turns to joy.

Um. Wow. That feels nice.

"Paul! Where have you been?"

"Um. Ganymede. Paris. Ecuador."

"You went to Paris?"

Eh?

"Briefly, yes?"

"What was it like?"

"I wasn't.. really.. sightseeing."

"Oh. Well, what were you doing?"

"Finishing the investigating into Clayface."

Her face falls slightly, and her eyes flick to the side.

"Oh. Um, Kaldur said that you beat it."

"Him, and I killed him."

Her eyes go wide, and she blinks heavily. "Killed?"

I shrug. "As far as I can tell. I hit him with a lot of gamma radiation. Baked him hard." I sit on the air, crumpling. "I mean, I don't understand how something.. someone.. like that works. He might.. still.. be alive, but…"

M'gann floats level with me, puts her arms around my shoulders and rests her head against the side of mine. I lean into her.

**How.. did he get the drop on the rest of you?**

**He could shapeshift. Not just change his outline, but change his mass and color as well. Once we split up he took on the appearance of other members of the team.**

**But you're telepathic. He couldn't think like them, could he?**

**No, but I don't scan other members of the team. Kaldur was very clear that it isn't acceptable on Earth.**

I pull back slightly, and she releases me.

**On the basis of this fiasco, I think we should reconsider that policy. I'll.. talk to the others about it. If I'm still here.**

She recoils slightly. **Why wouldn't you be?**

**! You weren't meant to hear…** I pause, and marshal my thoughts. **M'gann, I killed a man. That isn't something Batman can just pretend didn't happen.**

**But he was trying to kill us!**

**Not the point. We're supposed to be better than that. Than.. them.** I shake my head. **A Green Lantern in my position would already have been recalled to Oa, and their ring would have shut down pending a review of their conduct. I don't know what Batman will decide to do, but a slap on the wrist doesn't really cover it.**

She keeps looking at me for a moment, then gives a shallow nod.

I stand back on the floor.

"Red Tornado's gone to let Batman know that I'm back. Um.. where's Kon got to?"

"Oh, heh, um, I sorta had an accident when I started cooking. Tried to pile everything I was going to cook with on top of him. I mean, 'Hello Megan, Conner's not telekinetic', just didn't think. Stupid."

I make a winding motion with my hands.

"He ended up covered in milk, and eggs, and, well, he went to take a shower."

That should be funny, but I'm just not in the mood.

"Well, I'll just-."

"Would Orange Lantern please report to the Mission Room."

Red Tornado's voice.

My eyes drop to the floor, as every possible justification for my actions swarms my mind at once. The Butterflies in my stomach have turned rabid.

I raise my head and meet M'gann's eyes. "Excuse me." I turn, and walk toward the corridor.

"Good luck!"

I stop. That's not-.

I shake my head.

Plot route and execute.

I'm in the centre of the training area. Red Tornado steps away from the main console as the zeta tube glows into life. I stand to attention.

"Recognised, Flash, zero, four."

What?

He walks out of the tube at an easy pace, uniform a brilliant red. I haven't had any direct interaction with the Flash. Does he want to talk about the Garrick Formula? It's the only thing I can think of.

I've relaxed slightly as he makes eye contact.

"Orange Lantern. Abra Kadabra handed himself over to the Central City Police Department yesterday evening. Anything you want to tell me about that?"

I blink. This is the end of the week I said that he had, but Clayface… No, Hagen, it got pushed out of my mind. My mental gears screech.

"Yes sir. I tracked him down after the mission in Salem. Er, made him an offer and gave him a week to think about it."

His eyes narrow slightly, and he crosses his arms. "What kinda offer?"

"His greatest desire is to learn magic. I said that if he handed himself in and served his time, I'd find someone to teach him. For as long as he stayed straight."

"And if he hadn't handed himself in?"

"His most advanced camouflage technique had already failed to stop me detecting him." I shrug. "Wouldn't have taken long to find him again."

"What made you decide to do that?"

"Punishment isn't sufficient for supervillain rehabilitation, because they identify more with their identity as a supervillain.. than with normal society. The only way I could think of to get around that was to offer him something he really wanted. With a little luck, this way, you wouldn't have to fight him again in three or four years."

"So you want to rehabilitate supervillains?"

"Yes sir."

He leans back, and smiles. "Wonder Woman teach you that?"

Um.

"Not.. exactly, sir. That was really more Lantern Gardn-."

"Recognised, Batman, zero, two."

back

Initiative 8

next

27th August

10:46 GMT -5

I tense immediately, eyes locked directly on the zeta tube.

Flash notices. "Come on, Bats isn't that bad."

Batman walks out of the tube. He takes in the Flash, Red Tornado and me. The Flash takes a step back as Batman approaches to standard debrief distance and then stops.

"Explain to me why you thought it was a good idea to use high levels of gamma radiation against a target in my city."

Not exactly what I thought he'd start with, but I've got my defence prepared.

"I don't have.. erm, I haven't practised with many constructs that I thought would have much effect on a being made of.. undifferentiated clay. The Gamma Cannon was the only reliable one. My practice sessions.. um, in my practise sessions, that was the highest output I'd tried to contain with a shield. Since I wanted to stop the target immediately, I decided that was the appropriate power level."

"What was the probability of the shield collapsing?"

Huh?

"I'm not.. um, negligible? I can maintain a shield of that type against equivalent force more or less.. well, the longest I've actually done it is about an hour, but in theory, if I exhausted a full ring charge-"

Ring?

At standard levels of avarice expressed by user: eighteen hours, twelve minutes, fifteen seconds.

"-just over eighteen hours. Against my Gamma Cannon specifically I've only ever tried holding it for about fifteen minutes, but the shield itself is exactly the same."

"Why gamma radiation?"

"Because it offers better penetration than alpha or beta radiation, and I wanted an invisible lightspeed method of attack."

"Where have you practised using it?"

"Titan."

He nods slightly. "Acceptable, but try to avoid using it in inhabited areas in the future."

What?

"Of course sir."

"What happened to you during your first encounter with 'Clayface'?"

"I attempted to use.. to look at his desires to gain some sort of idea about how he thought, and what he was trying to do. What I got was a confused mess, and.. I think.. the feedback stunned me for a few moments. By the time I was coherent again Clayface was counterattacking, and I was more interested in protecting my teammates than in attacking him."

"Did you gain any useful intelligence?"

"The only thing I could clearly see was Talia al Ghul's face."

He doesn't react. Am I missing something?

"You did not approve of the initial plan for the team's second encounter."

"No sir."

"You continued to dissent after your team leader gave it his approval. According to the mission reports I've received from Robin, Kid Flash and Miss Martian, you were quite forceful."

"Yes, sir."

He wait for a moment. I'm not sure what he wants.

"Explain."

"They wanted to spread out, and then attack Clayface physically once he revealed himself. Spreading out isn't a good idea against a protean life form... It's pretty much an invitation to get ambushed, and.. we already knew that kinetic attacks didn't do any lasting damage."

"Why did you decide to disregard my orders not to engage the creature?"

"If we were going to be in close proximity, we needed some way to hurt it in case it detected us again." My eyes trail along the ground. "I'd... I'd probably have preferred a slightly less assertive pursuit."

"Your intent was to locate the target, and use Robin's incendiaries to bake it solid."

"If… Yes sir."

"What went wrong?"

"I'm not.. sure. I've only just got back, and I haven't had a chance to talk to everyone yet. The team.. spread out.. I think.. further than I'd suggested. Clayface was able to rapidly ambush each of us in turn, until it assumed Robin's form to attack Kaldur. At that point I was able to temporarily trap him in a bubble construct, but he was strong enough to break free. He slammed Kaldur into the wall, and then turned his attention on me. At that point the Gamma Cannon was the only thing I was reasonably sure would work."

"You were unable to hold it in a force field?"

"That's correct sir. I'm afraid.. applying pressure with a construct in that way.. isn't something I'm very good at yet."

I remember having the same problem with that school bus on the bridge in Metropolis. Maybe I need to practise abstract shapes as well? How often is that going to come up?

"I'll mention it to Lantern Gardner for your next training session."

"Thank.. you.. sir..?"

He turns away and starts walking toward Red Tornado.

!Don't say it!

"I expect your full written report by sixteen hundred hours, though based on past experience I doubt that will prove much of a challenge for you. Kaldur has decided to take a leave of absence from the team-."

!Don't say it!

I need to say this. It's just going to hang over me otherwise.

"Sir… Sir.. I just.. killed a man. Isn't that a bit more serious than my next training exercise?"

He stops, and turns around. "You're referring to the creature?"

"Yes!"

"Orange Lantern, my plan for dealing with it involved disrupting its morphic resonance pattern. I hoped that doing so would paralyse the creature, but it's entirely possible that forcing it to lose cohesion in that way could have destroyed it permanently. Were you able to identify anything analogous to brain waves?"

"W.. no..?"

"How would you describe the physical condition of the creature when you left it?"

"Well, between the gamma radiation and the absence of pressure there wasn't any water left, and his body was mostly ceramic. He certainly wasn't moving…"

"Given that you don't know how it could be alive, how can you be sure it was dead?"

"Because I pumped a massive amount of gamma radiation into it?"

"Why would that be more dangerous to a creature made of clay than incendiaries? Or a device which made it impossible for it to hold its body in shape?"

Oh.

He steps up to me, and puts a hand on my shoulder.

"Orange Lantern, the fact of the matter is that there is no such thing as a nonlethal weapon. Any of the things we could have done to the creature to stop it might have resulted in its death. Tomorrow, you can go back to Ganymede, pick it up, and bring it to a secure research cell at STAR Labs. If we're fortunate, it can be revived."

Batman's being reassuring. This is weird.

I nod, my whole body tingling.

"Yes sir."

back

Initiative 9

next

27th August

10:51 GMT -5

I'm not sure how to phrase my next question.

He removes his hand.

"Sir, can I ask? Have.. you.. ever..?"

"Killed someone?"

I can't meet his eyes.

"To the best of my knowledge, no, I have never directly killed someone. However, I have left people with permanent damage, both physical and psychological, and there have been occasions where it was impossible for me to assess the level of harm someone I fought had suffered. If you include indirect deaths, then yes, by my actions people have died who would otherwise have lived."

"How.. what do you mean by..?"

His eyes narrow, but I don't think that he's annoyed. He's remembering. No. Reliving.

"During my second year I attempted to apprehend three youths who were about to commit a robbery. One had a handgun, but I assumed that he wouldn't fire while his friends blocked his line of sight. I was mistaken. He panicked, and emptied his magazine in my direction. I was able to save one of his colleagues, but the other bled to death."

I nod. "Thank you sir."

"I'll follow up on the creature's point of origin myself, and I'll keep you informed of my findings."

"Sorry, um. That won't be necessary, sir. I've already done that."

His head tilts slightly. "Explain."

"Well.. I wanted to know why that had happened. Why I'd needed to kill him. And since the only lead I had was Miss Al Ghul, I went looking for her."

"Were you able to find her?"

"Yes. I used the images you and Robin took from your encounter at Cape Canaveral, combined with a partial DNA sample I took from an old blood sample I got from pier seven of the Gotham docks. Your report on the assassination attempt against Senator Stevens mentioned that she was injured there, and since the facial scan was giving me a lot of false positives…"

"Go on."

"She was in Paris, and as it turned out she was meeting with a man named Efraim al-Tauib. I.. didn't take the time to find out what it was about. Probably should have done, but it wasn't my focus and-."

Batman has his forearm raised, and is scrolling though his computer screen until an image of Mister al-Tauib's face appears.

"I received notification of his arrest an hour ago."

"I handed him over to the French police once I'd finished talking to Miss al Ghul."

"How did you approach her?"

"She was in a small restaurant. I scanned three bodyguards with small arms, nothing that could threaten me. I put on a normal looking suit, walked in and sat down at the next table, and one of her bodyguards came over and asked me to move. I put my hand on his arm and used a construct to paralyse him. I put him in my seat, then walked over and sat down in his. The other bodyguard tried hitting me, so I paralysed him, al-Tauib started making noise, so I paralysed him as well."

"Did anyone notice you doing this?"

"There was a third bodyguard at the bar. I think he noticed that I wasn't supposed to be there. No one else reacted, but I wasn't scanning their brains or anything, so maybe they were just keeping their heads down? The guys I paralysed were still upright, and the construct was covered by their clothing."

He nods. The Flash is covering his mouth with his right fist.

"So, um, I asked Miss al Ghul about it. She tried lying, but I was scanning her brain, so she gave up after her first attempt. His… Clayface's name is Matthew Hagen. She told me that he was a Shadow who tried to use the Lazarus Pit to cure his cancer."

"Do you believe her?"

"I don't know her well enough… The scans told me that she probably wasn't telling an outright lie, but.. I think there was more to it. Her emotional response was too strong, but I didn't have any real psychological levers I could use to get her to tell me what was really going on. She said that Ra's sent Clayface after you in revenge for you stopping his satellite launch. I'll put the full transcript in my mission report."

Another nod.

"If you want to follow up, she's in.. Monaco."

I raise my hands in a praying motion, then part them, showing a street scene with Talia walking along a pavement. I tilt my hands, and the view pulls out, showing her position within the principality.

"Looks like someone's doing the extra credit assignment."

The Flash -is it The Flash, or just Flash?- steps up and has a look at the image, before turning his head to Batman.

"Want me to pick her up? Shouldn't take more than a few seconds."

"No. I'll follow up myself, later. Orange Lantern, this is good work."

I wince, inwardly and outwardly. "Sort of.. haven't finished yet, sir. I… I didn't think my scan of Miss al Ghul's brain would be admissible in court. Thought I needed.. you know, hard evidence."

"I doubt that part of the investigation would come to court. Security cameras at the Wayne Foundation recorded Matthew Hagen's attack, and that should be enough to convict him. If a Shadow gained access to Ra's al Ghul's Lazarus Pit he's undoubtedly increased security-"

I wince again.

"-and as he rarely allows others to use it we shouldn't need to worry too much about attacks by clay cre.. clay people, in the future."

I am very aware of what I've got sitting in my subspace pocket right now.

"Um…"

Batman is looking me straight in the eyes again. "You have something else to add?"

I hold my right arm out to the side.

Ring, the Pit. Carefully.

Interestingly, it doesn't emerge in one go. Rather, an orange rectangle moves through the air, revealing more of the Pit as it passes. Completely moving it to normal space takes about seven seconds.

Batman looks at it. He doesn't double take, but I think I noticed him clench slightly. He steps away from me to take a closer look.

I shift my weight nervously from foot to foot, and search Flash's face for a clue to how badly I've messed up. I think I stunned him.

He notices. "Is that..?"

"Yes sir."

"You stole..?"

"Yes sir."

"When you want extra credit, you don't go half way."

"No sir."

I'm having trouble reading his expression through his face mask.

Batman lifts the lid. The green goo is still there, but it isn't glowing as brightly or bubbling quite as much as it was when I first picked it up. He lowers it again, then stalks back over to me.

I'm not having any trouble reading his mood.

"Tell. Me. Everything."

And he's looming over me and oh shit.

"Now."

back

Initiative 10

next

27th August

10:55 GMT -5

"Um. I was able to use my scan of Talia's DNA to locate Ra's himself. I was assuming that he'd have a Lazarus Pit set up where he was, or.. or.. at least where his base of operations was. He was on a small island off the coast of Ecuador, there was a training facility, some research labs and manufacturing, housing… A mansion I assumed was his."

"Did they see you?"

His voice is tighter, his relaxed tone from earlier completely gone.

"No.. er, I don't think so. I was miles away in the sky, and I kept the sun behind me. The ring kept their radar from picking me up."

"How did you identify the Lazarus Pit?"

My heart sinks. He isn't going to like this.

"I scanned everything, but I didn't know what the Pit looked like other than that it was a smallish body of liquid. Certainly didn't think it was a sarcophagus. Um. So, knowing that Ra's himself doesn't just.. hang around it, I realised that the only way I could locate it for certain would be… um…"

No getting away from it.

"I shot him in the head with a rail gun. Tungsten round. He died immediately, no significant collateral damage, and his ubu transported him to the Pit. His resurrection took about two and a half hours. Once he left the area around the Pit, I marked targets.. transport vehicles that could be used for evacuation, communication links, servers, that sort of thing.. and fired on them all while I smashed down into the mansion myself. Again, I don't think they spotted me. The rail gun construct isn't that noticeable from a distance, and all the strikes other than the one I made directly were tungsten projectile strikes, not orange energy beams. I was visible for maybe a second over the mansion before all the dust and rubble got in the way, and I think everyone was a bit busy checking the perimeter after I shot Ra's earlier. Urp, so, cut the Pit out of the floor, put it in my subspace pocket, came back. That was about twenty minutes ago."

"Could they have tracked you?"

"Don't think so. I destroyed their radar and gravity detection thing in my initial volley, and I was travelling faster than light. Didn't notice anything else."

"Did you kill anyone?"

"W-."

"Other than Ra's, did you kill anyone?"

"I.. no, of course not! I fired specifically to avoid injuring other people. Sir, I got into a state because I thought I'd killed a career assassin who was trying to kill me at the time, I certainly wasn't going to murder their technical support team."

"Show me the exact location of the island."

Map.

The first image is a bird's eye view of South America, with the outlines of countries and a gyroscope marking the location of the island. Then, it zooms in to show just the Ecuadorian coastline, the island, and lines of latitude and longitude. Lastly, it zooms again and shows a bird's eye view of the island. I can see tiny people working around the sites I hit earlier.

"Flash. Go."

There's a red afterimage as he runs straight into the wall, passing through it with no resistance. Batman's stepping away from me.

"Batman to the Justice League. Orange Lantern has located the headquarters of the League of Shadows. Rendezvous at Flash's coordinates. I want everyone who's available on this one."

He turns back to me.

"You."

I have his full attention.

"Staaaay. Here."

"Yes sir."

One last look at me and he's striding toward the zeta tube with Red Tornado.

"Recognised, Batman, zero, two, Red Tornado, one, six."

A flash of light and he's gone.

…

That went a lot better than I was expecting. I think… Yes, I definitely overreacted about Mister Hagen. And I don't just mean my attacks against the League of Shadows.

When he said 'stay here', did he mean exactly here, or in the mountain? I'm starting to hate imprecisely worded instructions.

So, given that I can't move, what I am going to do now?

Ring, open communications with the kitchen.

An orange screen appears in front of me.

No, properly.

A holo-emitter materialises from subspace and replaces the all orange screen with a colour one. After a moment M'gann's face appears on it.

"Are you okay?"

"Yes, yes I am. Batman said that we couldn't be sure that I'd actually killed Mister Hagen.. um, Clayface, and that given his unusual physiology anything we could have done to stop him might have killed him anyway. I don't feel.. entirely sanguine about it, but I think he's right. Oh, hi Kon."

Kon is walking past the monitor when he hears me, then stops and walks toward it.

"Hey Paul. Where you been?"

"Ganymede, Paris, Ecuador. Completing the investigation into Clayface. Stealing Ra's al Ghul's Lazarus Pit."

I swing the screen pick up around so they can see it, then swing it back to me.

"You did that without me?" M'gann nudges him with her elbow. "Without us?"

Actually, that was pretty dumb. M'gann would have been really useful when I was talking to Talia, and having Kon watch my back might have been a life saver.

"Um, no. Yeah. I should've got you. I just didn't think about it when I started… I was just thinking about finding out why I'd needed to kill Clayface, it didn't occur to me to bring anyone else in. I'm sorry."

"Well, don't do it again."

"I won't. Um, look, is Kaldur around? I should probably let him know what I've been doing."

M'gann bites her lip. "He's.. gone back to Atlantis for a little while."

Oh. Leave of absence. Right. "Oh. Did he say how long for?"

"No. Just that he needed to clear his head."

"Huh. Okay, if he's not here and Batman knows about it, I suppose it doesn't matter."

"Recognised."

Huh?

"Green Lantern"

Guy?

"Zero, five."

Oh dear.

back

Initiative 11

next

27th August

11:01 GMT -5

Lantern Harold Jordan of Space Sector 2814. Pointless tiny green mask, green upper with black patches which make it look he's been sweating under his arms and the dye's run out. White gloves, and a white circle in the centre of his chest with the Green sigil on it as a convenient 'shoot here' sign. Black leggings and green boots. How much hairspray does it take to keep his fringe curled like that?

At least Lantern Stewart has the sense to wear an armoured uniform.

I tried selling Guy on the idea, but he's of the view that anything that can pierce his shield would probably go straight through any Earth-made armour too. When I suggested plundering his ring's database for extraterrestrial armour designs he told me that he wasn't sure he was allowed to. What sort of leash do the Guardians have them on?

Maybe he'll go away if I ignore him.

"So, Kon, how's the mission report coming?"

"Ugh. Slowly. Could I have a look at yours?"

"No. Quite aside from the fact that there were bits you saw that I didn't, report writing is a valuable skill to learn. And, I haven't actually started it y-."

The holo-emitter flies out of my hand as a green clamp takes hold of it and pulls it over to Lantern Jordan.

"He'll call you back."

It shuts down.

"What the hell?"

"Batman wants me to make sure you don't do anything while the Justice League deals with the League of Shadows, and phone calls count as part of 'anything'. Plus I've been meaning to talk to you for a while now."

"Batman already ordered me to stay put. All I was going to do, was write my mission report and carry on reading old case files."

As he walks closer, I can't help it. The edges of my armour plates glow as my nerves cause my environmental shield to reinforce.

Alert. Lantern Jordan is attempting to access ring database.

"Knock it off."

Jordan winces, makes a fist with his right hand, then unclenches and clenches it a couple of times. Feedback? I'll remember that.

"Okay, maybe that was the wrong approach."

"Yes, yes it was."

"I've still got questions for you."

"I'm not going anywhere."

I think he's trying to size me up. "Where'd your ring really come from?"

"I. Don't. Know. Did you even attempt to check my origin point, as I suggested?"

"That part checks out. But it doesn't explain how you came through with a ring when you keep saying things like that don't exist where you're from."

"I don't know that they don't exist where I'm from. I just hadn't seen one. Look, any Maltusian successor species could have forged it, as could the Qwardians. Larfleeze has a massive pile of orange rings in his cave; the Guardians already know that."

He crosses his arms. "What makes you say that?"

Ugh.

"Look, if the Guardians didn't brief you properly, it's probably because they don't want you to know."

"How do you know what the Guardians want? You've never spoken to them."

"No, I'm not doing this. I'm not going to talk to you and risk giving out information prejudicial to my Corps. The Guardian's desires and mine do not align."

He walks… Oh, he's actually going to walk behind me. I'm not going to risk moving my feet and I refuse to twist around.

"Alright then: you killed Ra's al Ghul."

"Yes? I knew he'd get up again."

"Killing someone with a power ring isn't supposed to be possible. Why didn't your ring shut down?"

"Because it's not full of Bobblehead malware. The Book of Oa's rules are abstractions of parts of your ring's programming, which orange rings don't have. Why did you think Alan was able to kill people?"

His footsteps stop. "I've read the Justice Society's records. Alan's never killed anyone."

Let's pretend they'd actually have recorded something like that.

"Did you read the All-Star Squadron's records? Because I assure you, during the Second World War? He killed people. Not many, and never without good cause, but he did." While he's here, I might as well ask… "Actually, while we're on the subject, how come you never offered to repair his ring?"

"He's not a member of the Green Lantern Corps. I had to argue with the Guardians before they'd agree to even let him keep his lanter-."

Oh.

I hold up my left hand, smiling, and generate a sigil on the back of my hand.

"They can't be too happy about what I've done with it. But, hey, thank you."

"Don't. Thank me. By killing a man in cold blood you've shown that you have no understanding of how a Lantern is supposed to behave."

"He got up again! And if you really care that much, why didn't you track him down years ago? My scanning abilities can't be that much better than yours."

He starts walking again. "The Lantern Cor… The Green Lantern Corps has rules about Lanterns using their rings to control the planets under their protection."

"What? How does that count?"

"The League of Shadows is big enough and old enough that according to Corps rules it counts as part of Earth's political system."

"Seriously? Do they let you do anything?"

He's completed the circuit and is now back in front of me.

"Do you have any idea how dangerous the universe is to somewhere like Earth? The Green Lantern Corps exists primarily to stop interstellar war, to stop more advanced civilisations conquering and destroying primitive ones like ours. And if being part of that means I have to agree not to try and decide for myself exactly what my homeworld should be like, then I'm okay with that. It may not seem fair sometimes, and I don't expect someone whose Corps is devoted to serving its members' interests first and foremost to understand, but the only way we can operate is by maintaining trust. And we do that by staying true to our moral standards."

"Moral stan… Alright Lantern Jordan, try this: when Abin Sur -your predecessor- died, he left behind a widow and a son. Did you visit them to pass on your condolences A, immediately, B, after the conflict which resulted in Lantern Sur's death was resolved,-"

His face hardens.

"-C, after you finished basic training,-"

"You've made your point."

"Don't think I have, you're still standing here. D, a few years later when you were in the area on another unrelated matter, or E, you still haven't. Mmm?"

back

Initiative 12

next

27th August

11:19 GMT -5

Bud-dum bom.

Mission report's finished.

Bud-dum bom.

And I've had a whole FUCKING hour of this.

Bud-dum bom. Bud-dum bom.

Not a word, but he's still throwing that-

Bud-dum bom.

-FUCKING green ball-

Bud-dum bom.

-against the sarcophagus.

Bud-dum bom.

Focus. Focus. A lot has happened-

Bud-dum bom.

-and you need to meditate.

Bud-dum bom.

"If I give you a useful piece of information will you please STOP doing that!?"

Bud-dum.

He's sitting on a green chair to my right, facing the sarcophagus. He swivels it around.

"I'm listening."

"They've got ten months."

"Who do?"

"The Bobbl-… The Guardians. I swore a magically binding oath that I'd stay in this system and follow orders until then. After that, I'm heading straight to Maltus, so they've got that long to start a dialogue with the Controllers. The Controllers will want the Orange Central Power Battery, and I know where it is."

I've also recorded that information somewhere Alan can find it, just in case. I don't want to risk the plan getting nobbled by a visit from The Corpse.

"They don't have it?"

"If they had it, I wouldn't be the only Orange Lantern outside of Vega, would I?"

"You told the League that you worked for the Controllers."

"I do. I'm keeping their ring, so I accept their authority, but I've never been in direct contact. Though, if you want to give me their e-mail address..?"

"So where does this 'First Lantern Larfleeze' fit in?"

"He's the guy who stole the Orange Central Power Battery. He's been using it as his personal lantern ever since."

"Shouldn't that mean you work for him?"

"Something doesn't become yours just because you steal it."

"When did this happen?"

"No. You've had your useful information. Besides, the Guardians already know that."

"How could the Guardians know-."

"They're the ones who said he could keep it. They even agreed to leave him to it, as long as he stayed in Vega."

"Okay, I know that's a lie. Green Lanterns are barred from operating in Vega by the Guardians' pact with the Psions."

"Go to the border, point your ring at Okaara, and tell it to scan for the orange light of avarice. I wouldn't tell you a lie you could easily disprove."

Respect to him, he actually pauses to think about that one.

"Why would the Guardians cover that up?"

"The Guardians are billions of years old. You think in all that time they haven't done lots of things they're ashamed of, things they don't want becoming common knowledge?

His eyes narrow.

"Like what?"

Sector 666 is the obvious thing, but I don't think this is the time. Besides, I might need to damage his will at some point. Perhaps I can help someone with this.

"Lantern Raker is a prisoner on Apokolips. With no ring charge he can't leave. The Guardians know full well that he's there. Do you see a rescue?"

He holds up his ring for a moment. Is he talking to it?

"There is no Lantern Raker."

"And who edits your database? Go there, and see for yourself. Might want to make sure you've got a way to leave without a ring though. The Guardians can remote deactivate you whenever they want."

He turns his head away from me, shaking it. Let him disbelieve. I remember what happened to those poor bastards the Guardians betrayed to Lady Styx with that ability.

Ball?

That wasn't the ring's voice. That's Teekl. I have a quick look around the room, trying to work out where she is.

She's standing on the wall above Lantern Jordan's head. I mean, at right angles to the ground, sticking to it with her claws. I don't think he's seen her.

Throw ball? Play?

Bom. Bom. Bom.

He's bouncing it.

Teekl, take the fucking ball.

There's an orange blur as she hurls herself off the wall, grabbing the ball at the bottom of its descent and rolling across the floor with it, tearing at it with her teeth and claws.

"Hey!"

"Hahahehehehe."

Jordan looks at me. "What do y-?"

He's staring at my left hand. Ah, he knows what it means when there's a construct around but the ring's not glowing.

"How are you doing that?"

"The Bobbleheads really didn't tell you anything, did they?"

He opens his mouth to pursue that line of questioning. I raise my hands to stop him.

"The ring calls the ability 'Identity Theft'. I think of it as assimilation. I point the ring at a living thing, state the command, and the ring turns them into an enduring construct. As far as I can tell, Teekl there-"

Lantern Jordan deletes his ball. Teekl spends a frenzied moment searching for it, then decides that, yes, it has indeed gone. She rolls to her feet and daintily starts licking her left front paw, ignoring both of us.

"-draws power directly from my personal lantern."

"You can do that to any living thing?"

"I haven't practised, for obvious reasons. But, as far as I know."

I nod.

"It's slow, though. Not much use in a fight. I think it only worked on her because she didn't want to be Klarion's familiar any more."

Lantern Jordan dismisses his chair and kneels down in front of Teekl, and reaches out slowly with his left hand.

Teekl stops licking herself, sniffs at him, then expresses her displeasure.

Jordan pulls back gingerly, stands up, then takes a step away from her.

Her eyes are still fixed on him, and she's still growling.

"Could you call her off? That's kinda creepy."

"Teekl's pretty much independent of me. I'm afraid you're stuck with it."

back

Initiative 13

next

27th August

12:57 GMT -5

"It's just banter, honestly. He's a nice guy once you get to know him."

Jordan raises an eyebrow at this.

I finished my meditation while Teekl kept him transfixed. She wandered off after I finished. Maybe she was drawn here by my need to shut Jordan up?

I think I need to start bringing other people into my personal projects. Kon and M'gann were right; I should have involved them in the investigation. I'll talk to Kaldur about my ideas on anti-magic wards next time I see him, and I want to push Kon on the mental trawling thing I first thought about when I realised how much of a disconnect there was between what he knows and what he's been imprinted with. Maybe M'gann showing him her true… Sorry, her 'Martian' form, would help that along?

"He's always had a chip on his shoulder about getting his ring after I got mine."

Jordan's sitting on the sarcophagus. I'm still standing in place.

"That's not where the chip comes from."

"Well, where does it come from?"

"That's kind of personal to him. I mean, it would probably be good if you knew, and it didn't take me a lot of effort to find out. But I don't think it would be right for me to tell you. Besides, if I remember right, you weren't exactly first pick either."

Jordan crosses his arms. "What d'you mean by that? The ring chose me."

"Yeah, because Abin Sur edited the search criteria because he was dying and wanted to have time to explain things to the person it chose. The only reason Guy didn't get it was because you were closer."

"Did Guy tell you that?"

"You're wearing the ring; ask it."

"I don't need my ring to tell me that Guy's full of b-."

"Recognised, Batman, zero, two, Wonder Woman, zero, three."

I straighten up, arms straight down. Jordan stands.

Time to find out how badly I messed up.

Batman leaves the tube at a measured pace, Diana just behind him. I don't see any damage on him… I mean, I had been assuming that they'd level the island, but Jordan wouldn't let me check their progress.

Just in case…

Ring, scan for injuries.

Compliance. Batman has significant bruising to the right shoulder, arm and torso, as well as numerous other minor injuries. Diana is unharmed.

"Hey, what did you just do?"

Jordan spotted that? Interesting.

"Medical scan. Sir?" I catch Batman's eye. "If you want I can get rid of those bruises for you?"

He doesn't say anything. Guess not then.

Diana has a wry smile on her face. If I hadn't seen the expression before I'd probably have missed it. So, I'm not in the dog house? Or maybe I am, but Batman told a really funny joke just before they got in the tube.

I wonder if he'll say I can move before we start?

"At thirteen oh eight today the Justice League, acting on your information, attacked the League of Shadows facility on Infinity Island."

Guess not. Infinity Island. Even sounds like a supervillain base.

"At the present time, the facility, and all remaining personnel, are under Justice League guard pending the arrival of the Ecuadorian military."

Whaw. I mean, good, but whaw.

"Was Ra's there, sir?"

"He was not. Several other notable members of the League of Shadows' leadership were also absent."

Magic based teleportation, maybe? We really need a thaumaturgist on the team, and I don't think that Cornwall has the knowledge base. But why wouldn't they evacuate everyone. Finite power?

"The damage you did to their base, combined with the disappearance of their leadership, made our attack as easy as could be expected."

Go.. me?

"However, with their databases and records destroyed, by you, it will be very difficult for us to capitalise on this success. League of Shadows assets in the field will go into hiding until the leadership can re-establish itself in a new safe haven."

I wait for a moment. I really don't want to interrupt him, but he seems to have stopped for the moment.

"Um, sir? I was there for over three hours."

I make a small shrug.

"I took a copy of everything. Electronic and paper records. The only reason I haven't put it on the Justice League database yet is that it'll probably be a very large file, and I wanted to talk to you about it first."

He does nothing for a moment. Then, his face tilts slightly and he makes eye contact with Diana. She raises her eyebrows slightly.

Then he's looking straight at me. It's neither hostile nor friendly. Perhaps distant?

"You are certain that you got everything?"

Um..?

"If they had some sort of magic based storage system, then no. And I didn't scan stone carvings… Or people's memories. But otherwise, yes."

His head bows, slightly. He's still facing me, but I don't think that he's looking at me anymore.

"I will prepare a dedicated secure server. We will need to move on this quickly. The police will want access both to you and your data once the civil investigations start."

"I didn't have a search warrant, sir."

"There are.. internationally accepted procedures for getting around that. That was part of why the Justice League accepted a UN mandate in the first place. Given the number of countries in which you will likely be called upon to testify, it is fortunate that your ring has a universal translator."

He hasn't shouted yet. That's good.

"Make no mistake: despite what they've lost in resources and manpower, the League of Shadows will recover from this."

I wonder…

"Ring, locate Ra's al Ghul."

"Ra's al Ghul not found."

What?

"And adapt to the situation, if a little faster than I was expecting."

Oh, not good.

"Ring, locate League of Shadows member, codename 'Sensei'."

"Sensei not found."

So not good.

"Orange Lantern."

He gets my full attention again.

"I am not happy with your clear lack of forethought. Even though your ring lets you take certain shortcuts, preparation for an attack of this sort should have involved planning for any reasonably probable aftermath. The logistics needed to follow up on your success. While I understand what motivated you, it would have been far better to leave the facility in place and use your data intercept abilities to monitor their ongoing activities. Even with the database you've recovered, a sizable proportion of their fully trained field agents will not be found."

I nod, slowly. He's right. My focus was too narrow.

"And I am also not happy that you felt it appropriate to kill Ra's al Ghul, even temporarily. Nonetheless, a major blow has been dealt to the League of Shadows as a result of your actions. A great deal of their support infrastructure has been removed, and once we follow up on the data you procured their financial strength will be reduced as well. Furthermore, without a Lazarus Pit,-"

We both look at it for a moment.

"-Ra's al Ghul will be keeping his head down until he can create a replacement."

I wince slightly at 'head'.

It's strange, a little like one of those annoying quiz programs on television where they drag out telling the contestant whether they were right or not. I've heard Batman talking, but I genuinely have no idea which way he's going to go with the bottom line.

back

Initiative 14

next

27th August

13:00 GMT -5

"This is a major victory, and completely validates our decision to bring you into this team."

I shudder with relief.

"Thank you sir. Sirs."

"I don't expect you to be able to plan an operation of this kind at your current level of experience. However, should you feel the need to do something like this again, I will expect you to conduct yourself with a good deal more care."

I nod.

Batman turns away and walks toward the zeta tube. Diana smiles and steps forward, both hands on my shoulders.

"Next time, talk to a League member about it first. That's why we're here, to offer the benefit of our experience."

"Yes sir."

"Recognised, Batman, zero, two."

"Do you intend to put the Lazarus Pit in the trophy room?"

"I don't think the room's big enough, sir. Really, I was hoping that someone on our side could use it for research. Try and find out how it works? I don't know if Mister Zatara knows about alchemy..?"

"Very well. Green Lantern, would you mind carrying it?"

A green aura extends directly from his ring. I've just about trained Guy not to do that.

"Paul, Alan told me that he'd like you to visit him this evening, if you have the time."

"Of course. Did he say what it was about?"

"Something about old photo albums..?"

Oh, heck yes. "Excellent. I'll tell him I'm coming."

She nods. "I'm still needed on Infinity Island. Be well, Paul."

"You too, sir. Oh, sir!"

"Yes?"

"Batman ordered me to stay here. As in, right here. Could you possibly..?"

She bites down a chuckle. "Orange Lantern. Direct order. You are free to go."

"Thank you sir."

She turns, and walks over to the zeta tube. Jordan starts to follow, but slows as he gets close to me.

"You were right, you know. It was D, and it should have been C."

"I shouldn'ta said that. I was just trying to score points. But, look, you need to investigate the other stuff."

His eyes flick down for a moment. "I'll... Think about it."

Then he starts walking again.

"Recognised, Wonder Woman, zero, three, Green Lantern, zero, five."

I stand there as the light fades, then gingerly check that after this much time my legs still work. Yep. Okay, time to put my resolution into practice.

Ring, kitchen.

I appear where I left, three and a quarter hours ago.

"...Justice League today. While no information has been released to the press, the size of the military build up..."

Kon swings his head around, then presses a button on the control box and the news broadcast goes mute.

I see the island.. Infinity Island. I think the picture is being recorded from a helicopter, while the reporter stays on dry land. The news channel is cutting back and forth between the two, with images of the military mobilisation forming the backdrop of the reporter segments. The woman on the screen gestures at something, and the on-shore camera tries to focus on something in the air. It takes me a few moments to realise it's Diana.

"Is this..? Did you do this?"

Kon looks a little stunned.

"Urp, turns out? Power rings are very good at finding people who're trying to hide. Once I told Batman there was a League of Shadows base there, he called the whole League in."

"And they're just.. gone?"

"That base, yes. The Justice League is very good at bringing overwhelming power to bear on targets they know about. We won't know how badly the Shadows are hurt until Batman starts following up on the intelligence I gathered."

He sags slightly, and turns back to the screen.

I walk around to the settee and sit down next to him.

"I already apologised for leaving you out. With Kaldur taking a break and the League.. clearly occupied, I doubt there'll be any team missions for a few days. But there are a few things I'd like us to look into."

He snorts, still not looking at me. "Bet none of them are a base full of ninjas."

"I'm afraid not. I actually wanted to prioritise tracking down John Constantine. That guy Diana and Donna couldn't find?"

"What's so special about him?"

"He's intelligent, cunning and ruthless. In terms of practical utility, he should be capable of using the Helmet of Fate. And maybe providing me with some sort of protection against magic."

Kon frowns. "You never said how you got rid of the rest of Klarion's spell."

"There's a guy in Cornwall, name of Robert Marrack. I read up on his magic related abilities, then asked him to try fixing me. I'm actually planning on trying to persuade Batman to let him join the team."

"You can do that?"

I shrug. "Won't know until I try. Don't see any harm in asking."

He leans back into the settee. "So, do you know where this wizard guy is?"

"No. Probably somewhere in London. There's a few people we could try talking to who might respond better to normal looking people than to Wonder Woman."

"Couldn't you just scan for another Shadow base?"

"Sorry. Tried. They've found some way to avoid the ring's scans."

He exhales moodily.

"Kon, intelligence gathering is important. I badly mishandled the attack against the Shadows because I didn't think the consequences through, and I nearly died fighting Klarion because I didn't prepare well enough."

"Fine. But, next time you find some ninjas-?"

"Fetching you will be the first thing I do."

back

Initiative 15

next

27th August

20:34 GMT -5

"Yeah, I was still at the 'wearing it around the house stage' when I'd had mine for as long as you've had yours. Course, couldn't really get away with wearing it in public. Not, given its size."

Alan hadn't realised that I wear the ring pretty much all the time.

"Was that ever a problem? I mean, you were living in Gotham."

The table in Alan's dining room is covered in photo albums and case files. Black and white shots, mostly posed group shots and crime scene photos, with the occasional newspaper clipping and mug shot thrown in for interest.

"Yeah, but I lived in the good part of the city. Lower crime rate. Well, less street crime anyway. And my identity was a secret. No reason for anyone to target me. Heh, though ever since you showed up I've started wondering how many people were just humouring me."

The ring's scanning images and text, creating a database that I'll upload to the Justice League when I get back.

"Is Diana wearing culottes in that one?"

"Huh, yeah, actually. A lot of people think she wore skirts, but can you imagine flying in a skirt that size?"

For a moment I remember what Supergirl flew around wearing in the comics. Fortunately, all of the super women I've seen here are realistically proportioned. That would have been one weirdness too many.

"Did she really used to perm her hair?"

"Almost everyone on Themyscira has straight hair. I suppose it was her teenage rebellion stage."

I'm looking at a picture of a seventeen year old Wonder Woman. Her bustier had a different design back then. A different model, perhaps? Or maybe the armour was added later, and that really is just clothing? She never told me what she took with her when she left Themyscira.

Alan takes a sip from his glass. Two.. fingers? Of Scotch, with ice cubes.

"So, this is the All-Star Squadron period, right."

"Uh huh."

"Who came up with that name?"

"Oh, someone in the War Office, I expect. Originally it was just going to be there to coordinate us, y'know, super heroes. But a lot of us guys were getting called up, and then the Office of Strategic Services found out exactly how advanced the Nazis' arcane technology research had gotten… Well, it actually started handling combat deployments and suchlike."

"And they were okay with women being on the team."

"Funny you should ask; I actually got a picture of… Where is it...? Ah."

He flicks through a couple of pages, then points one out.

"Diana's holding a guy up by his ankle? Was he a German agent or something?"

"That's General MacArthur."

"No way."

"Honest to God. I got first question at every one of his press conferences in exchange for not publishing it. Think this is the only copy left."

Unreal.

Fun though this is, the actual reason I'm here is a bit more serious. None of these files are on the Justice League database, and given how long some supervillains can live -to say nothing of inherited abilities and technology- we need this stuff. I'm not sure whether or not Diana kept records back then, but I rather doubt it. A power ring can turn thousands of man hours of transcribing into the work of a few hours, but I'll still need to index the stuff.

"So, your mission reports are in…"

"Er, that one, I think."

I float up the indicated box. I'm not going to read them all here -that would be a waste of time, and fairly antisocial- but I do want to scan them with the pictures from the same period.

I stand up, and shuffle through while scanning, trying to get an impression of what they're about. Printed war department forms, covered with borderline illegible handwriting… Ah. I think the ring just turned it.. no, made me able to read them. Useful stuff. About two thirds of the way through, the texture of the paper changes. Not seeing any names I recognise, I shove the other reports out of the way and try and work out what the rest is.

There's no cover. The handwriting's different. There's some chemical formulas… What I think are medical records…

I carefully pull them out. Alan takes a look.

"Huh. Forgotten I had that."

I put the pile down in front of me, and begin going through them, trying to find some sort of explanation.

"What is it?"

"Well… You remember when we first met, you asked me where I first saw super powers?"

"Yes?"

"Well, after the All-Star Squadron stopped Hugo Danner's attempt to conquer Brazil with his 'Children of Dawn'… That was a bad business. They were children, you see? The formula -his father's formula- only works on children in the womb, and I guess he didn't want to risk waiting 'till they reached eighteen. Not that that would have been much better."

"How did he get them to work for him?"

"I've honestly no idea. None of them spoke English or Spanish. I suppose he found an isolated tribe or something. He said they called him 'Man-God', so perhaps it was religious reverence? Anyway, they pretty much tore up the military units that first tried to stop them, but by the time they reached Rio…"

He shrugs.

"Same thing that happened to the Indians. No resistance to White Man's diseases."

"Did any of them survive?"

"The Brazilian military took Danner himself, but it destroyed him, when his followers died. I remember hearing that he killed himself later. None of the children.. mm, teenagers, I suppose you'd say now, who took part in the attack lived. Jay and I, and a fellow named Doctor Robert Crane, we wanted to make sure he hadn't just left the really young ones behind, make sure no one was going to carry on his work."

He shakes his head.

"Never found them. No satellites or infra-red tracking in those days. But we did find what we thought was Danner's main base of operation, and laboratory. His papers. I just wanted to burn the whole place and have done with it, but Jay and Bobby argued that there wasn't anything wrong with the research. I mean, they were all volunteers, but it was like what you said happened with Clayface this morning. I'd just seen a thirteen year old girl damn near cough up her own lungs, I wasn't thinking rationally about it."

I feel floaty.

"You're telling me, you've got Hugo Danner's research notes."

"Nm, a couple of boxes worth. Jay didn't know what the long term effects of his own formula were going to be on him… 'Course, turned out he was fine. I don't think anyone's looked at them in decades. Forgotten I even had them."

The guys who wrote Bruce has a Problem didn't quite get it right, but there aren't many ways to give someone super powers that are reliable and don't have major side effects. I remember reading in Seven Soldiers, where Alix is in hospital and the doctors comment on how many admissions they get from people trying to improve themselves and failing. That happens here. Not quite enough to be a major problem; it's hard work to make a serious effort at it, and most people with that sort of ability either realise that it won't work, or get it right.

"Would you mind terribly if I took a copy?"

"'Won't be much use to you. Danner and his father both tried it on adults. Doesn't work."

No, but I have a power ring and a room full of rats. If I can understand the process, there really isn't any reason why I wouldn't be able to give everyone on the planet his abilities by inducing the change myself.

I could do that.

Would Alan be on board with transhumanism? Probably not. From his perspective it might sound like metahuman fascism.

Wait.

Kon.

Part Human.

Would it work on him?

"Metahumans happen. I… I wouldn't have a problem with people being able to choose to make their children as strong and tough as Hugo Danner was."

He looks me in the eye as he thinks it over. "I… I'm not sure that's a good idea. You and I, we chose to use our rings. Jay chose to use his formula on himself. It's not the same as a mother making the choice for her unborn children."

"Parents make all sorts of choices for their children, and it's not as if they'd have to be superheroes, or join the army. They'd just.. have a few extra abilities. And anyway, that would be years off."

"Uuhmm. I suppose. Alright, take a copy, but be careful with it."

"Because criminals might try and get hold of it?"

"No, because it doesn't have FDA approval." He widens his eyes. "Some laws aren't worth the trouble to break."

back

Initiative 16

next

27th August

23:09 GMT -5

"I don't recognise this one."

I've been saying that a lot. I thought my knowledge of DC history was fairly good, but I've never heard of most of these people. I think Alan's enjoyed talking about them. Mostly. I think a combination of Scotch -he's about half way through the bottle- and me bringing up the Danner business has given him a slight morbid tinge, as he's made a point of mentioning how each of them died.

Not many superheroes from the forties left. It's basically him, Jay, Diana, Red Tornado and Wildcat, and two of them are immortal. No. Ageless. He thinks some of the others might still be about, they weren't all particularly close.

"That's…. Danette Reilly. Firebrand." He waves his right index finger. "Uhh, the second one. She said the second one. I don't remember the first."

I don't remember her at all.

"Nice woman. Took a bullet for Jay in forty five."

I'm going to assume fatally.

We're looking at a book with some larger formal photographs. Mostly whole group shots in costume, though there's one of Wildcat, Jay and Alan in normal clothes in a bar.

"I remember that one. Johnny took it. He always said we didn't spend enough time together outside of, y'know."

He points at the page opposite; a full roster of the Society at its peak.

"Is that.. Johnny Thunder?"

"Nice to know not everyone's forgotten about him."

I wait for it.

"Died three years ago, after his…. fifth stroke? He sorta recovered from the first. Second sent him to a nursing home." He swirls his drink around, staring at it. "After his third, he didn't recognize me anymore. 'S. 'S nasty way to go."

Ring, is he okay?

Alan Scott is not in serious danger of alcohol poisoning. However, he would be in breach of local law if he attempted to drive a motor vehicle.

Duh.

Okay, new book, new page. Ring, find me the one in which Alan's smiling the most.

An album in a box on the far side of the room is acquired and lifted over. I close the one we had been looking at and push it aside as the album the ring selected lands.

"Hm. Don't recognize this one."

Sounds promising. There's got to be some good memories in here.

The first picture shows a much younger Alan with a group of other men, standing next to what look like a pile of railway sleepers. There's what looks like a train depot in the background. The date at the bottom is September 17th, 1937.

"Huh." He pulls the album over to him. "Took trains all over Connecticut with those guys. Uh, let's see, Cliff,-" He points. "-Derek, Saul, Joe, Eugene, Cedric, Donald, Morris and Jesse. Derek was my coal man, and Morris was my conductor. Christopher Keppler was the name o'the guy taught me to run it. Er, he's not in this picture."

He flips forwards a couple of pages. I catch sight of a picture of him with an older man and woman. His parents? Another picture, labelled 'Gotham, 1940', of an apartment building.

Then he stops, and exhales.

Looks like an office staff photo. I take a quick look at the names at the bottom.

Fuck.

Rose Canton is at the end of the line, arm around him.

Fuck.

She didn't even work there! She had a plant shop, didn't she? Something plant related? When she wasn't crazy?

He turns the next few pages. Some sort of tissue paper pockets with letters inside.

The next photograph is of the two of them at a restaurant.

Another intake of breath, and Alan pushes the album away a little. We sit in silence for a couple of moments.

I'm rubbish at things like this. I've no idea what to say. The woman he loved, the woman he married, had a serial killing alter ego. I risk a look sideways. He just looks dazed. I reach out and put a hand on his arm. That seems to bring him out of it a little. He breathes in, a little raggedly.

"It was horrible, what happened to her. I'd fought.. well, you know. The other woman."

A pause, while he gathers his thoughts.

"Attacks, some planned, some random. Even after I finally caught her, I didn't realize… Not right away. R-. Rose told me they were sisters. Since she clearly.. clearly needed psychological help, Diana was able to get the judge to send her to their.. to the Amazons' rehabilitation centre. The ring made it easy to visit. Think… I think she was the only one there who got visitors. Two years she was there, no relapses. We got married a month after they released her."

It was her. The investigation, the closing of the Amazons' prison. They happened because of Thorn Canton.

"After she… Did relapse, I knew that she couldn't ever be released safely. They built a.. an isolation unit on Paradise Island for her. She stayed, even after the rest of the prison was closed down. I kept visiting, but it was always Thorn, never Rose. She used to taunt me about it. She finally died, still cursing me, about twelve years ago."

I have no words. I can't even think anything.

"If it hadn't been for Jay and Joan, I don't know what I'd have done. They really are the best friends a man could ask for."

He seems to recover a little.

"Y'know, Donna thinks you're a fruit."

Whu?

"But, when Diana told me about how you stuck up for Superboy, and with what you said at the barbeque, it reminded me about how Jay stuck by me."

He pauses for a moment.

"I mean, it's fine if you are a fruit, it's just, I know that two men can love each other without it being..."

"Alan, Kon's two months old. Even if I was, no."

"Right. Right."

I'm not sure I should ask. I know Green Lanterns are tenacious, but…

"You kept visiting her for fifty years?"

"Yeah."

"That... That must have been…"

"Horrible? Yeah, it was." He shifts slightly in his chair. "Jay… He sorta tried to talk me into stopping, once. But I'll say to you the same thing I said to him. I never gave up hope, even after…"

Another deep breath.

"Love doesn't conquer all. You can't.. can't keep loving someone who does nothing but curse you, and spit in your eye. But I always hoped that there'd be some way to free the wonderful woman I once fell in love with."

"I'm… I'm so sorry."

He stares at his drink for a moment, then puts it down next to the album.

"It's funny. You were saying earlier how you wear your ring the whole time, 'cept when you're on the crapper? I only.. only started keeping mine charged again after Rose passed on. Only started keeping it with me when Johnny died. I was actually starting to think about…"

He shakes his head.

"Doesn't matter. When you showed up, I actually thought you were here to kill me. Before you said you wanted to buy it, I was this close-" He holds up his right hand thumb and forefinger. "-this close to just diving across the room and taking my chances."

"Alan, I was never-."

"I know you weren't. I know you weren't. Let me finish. You give me something new to hope for, you understand? 'S why I wanted you to have my lantern, why I tried to browbeat Diana into taking you on. Why I want you to be the best darn super hero you can be. And if there's anything else you need my help with, you just ask, yeah?"

His core desire. When I looked into his soul with the Ophidian's Eyes.

Legacy.

Me.

Challenge accepted.

back

Initiative 17

next

28th August

08:28 GMT -5

What is this crap?

Kon's hands are over his ears. M'gann's wincing.

"Paul, why are we listening to this?"

"John Constantine used to be in a punk band called Mucous Membrane. This is the only song they recorded that I've been able to find a copy of."

Kon turns to me as he hunches his shoulders. "How is this supposed to help?"

I'm not too sure myself, now. "Help us get into his head a bit?"

M'gann looks incredulous.

She's in her 'Megan' shape, and I've persuaded Kon to put on something other than his 'S' t-shirt. Just a plain black one with blue jeans, but it's a start. We're in the bioship, heading for London across the Atlantic.

I didn't get much sleep last night. On the plus side, I can now confirm that I don't really need it. After his speech about how he felt about me, Alan became noticeably more upbeat. He was even willing to carry on going through his personal album with me, and he was able to smile at some of the happier memories.

And once I got back to the mountain, I couldn't stop thinking about his surprising vitality. I know that in the comics there was some sort of pocket dimension thing, and temporal manipulation, which together explained why a group who fought in World War two could be alive and vigorous in the modern era. But Jay looks like a ninety year old. Ted Grant -Wildcat- could pass for seventy, but that's because he's just about the most muscular old person I've ever met. Alan looks half his actual age.

The only time I remember something like that happening in the comics was while he had the Starheart as part of his body.

His lantern was leaking. His ring visibly leaks.

I checked the photos. Until Rose died, he looked more or less his chronological age.

After she died, he started looking a little better. A little more colour in his hair, and I doubt he started dyeing it.

After Johnny died, the effect is much more pronounced. A little over a year, and you'd think one picture was of the other's son.

While Rose was alive, his strongest emotion was hope. Once she died, it was will.

He was forcing himself to keep going, and his focus on willpower made him younger.

And I took his lantern.

He can't recharge.

He's going to die.

To distract myself from dooming my mentor I started work on the Danner Formula. A couple of pregnant rats were removed to a smaller enclosure and given an injection of transmuted formula. The internet says that rats gestate their young for between twenty one and twenty four days, so I've got about four days before I need to start assessing whether it worked or not. I had the ring track the changes in their body tissues. Something's happening, but my knowledge of biology isn't good enough to understand it precisely.

I haven't told Kon yet. I don't want to raise false hope in him, but I'm hoping myself. Larfleeze was weak against hope because he hoped to be rid of the orange ring. I've never had that problem.

"Okay, Diana didn't get anywhere talking to his sister. We're going to talk to a man called Francis William Chandler. He's Mister Constantine's closest friend, and if anyone knows where he is, it'll be him."

With something other than the horrible caterwaul to focus on, Kon gingerly takes his hands away from his ears.

"Why didn't Wonder Woman try him?"

"I only found out his real name after that mission. I'd only ever heard him called 'Chas' before that, and you can't find someone on company records with a nickname."

Kon makes eye contact with M'gann. She turns to me. "So, how do you want to do this?"

"If we tell him that we want to see Mister Constantine, he'll put his guard up. A lot of people have tried to get at Mister Constantine through him over the years. It'll work better if we ask him to pass on a message. I'll pay him as well. Kon, I'll have my shield on minimum, so I'll need you to be alert for attack. M'gann, try and scan for Constantine himself. Don't attempt a deep reading, there's things in his brain no one should see."

Kon crinkles his nose. "So we're just coming here to talk to one guy?"

"No. I've got a list of addresses to try, and there's some pubs we can ask about him in. And we could, you know, look at the sights."

Kon slumps. Try harder.

"If that doesn't take your fancy, there's a giant prison camp in the Gobi desert full of metahumans we could take a look at?"

Now he's looking at me full on. "You mean, like Belle Reve?"

Mercifully, the song finishes.

"No. In China, they don't like metahumans running around freely. When their abilities manifest, someone from the Standing Committee on Metahuman Affairs pays them a visit to explain how it's their patriotic duty to offer their services to the state. If they refuse, a man named Captain Fang Zhifu comes to see them."

I generate a life size image of his current appearance.

"His codename, is August Captain In Iron, and he is China's greatest superfunctionary. Strength, endurance, and unshakable conviction. Not sure what that staff thing does."

Kon studies the image.

M'gann looks horrified. "He kills them?"

"No, not usually. He makes the offer again. If they refuse, he beats them into submission, then gets them transferred to the Gobi desert prison. It's amazing how being stuck in a desert with no contact with your family and no hope of release makes people reconsider the offer of work."

I checked this all thoroughly. His kill count on 'collection' jobs is surprisingly low, considering. I doubt he'd lie on an official report; his contempt for almost everyone came through really clearly.

"I can take him."

"Kon, picking a fight with him would mean picking a fight with all of China. China has a seat on the UN Security Council. They, sanction the Justice League. Disturbing though this is, nothing illegal has happened here. I'm more interested in this man."

A new image.

"This is Yao Fei, known in Tibet as Accomplished Perfect Physician. He went to Tibet as part of the Red Army. I'm not completely clear what happened, but the next mention of him in official records lists him as a defector."

I hadn't remembered that he'd killed a monk before he was empowered. Might make him a harder sell to the League.

"At some point, he gained superpowers, including sonic attacks, flight and healing, and started acting against Chinese interests in Tibet. He eventually handed himself over after another superfunctionary -the Socialist Red Guardsman- took a monastery hostage, and announced that he'd kill them if he didn't. He's in the desert camp now."

I remember him working with the Great Ten. Something different has happened, and I need to know what and why if I'm going to get him a place on the League.

"The camp doesn't look exceptional from the outside. We need recordings if we're to prompt the League into taking action. My aim here is to do something that will see conditions improved, and-"

I make eye contact with both of them in turn.

"-I think the way to do this is to convince the League that the Physician deserves a position on their roster. That would increase China's prestige and give them a voice in the League's decision making, while for him it would mean that he doesn't have to spend his time enforcing the Chinese government's will. Plus, the League's kind of overloaded with Americans at the moment."

Kon frowns.

"You think the League don't know about this?"

"China's got a lot of prison camps. And you're proof that the League doesn't know everything."

back

Initiative 18

next

28th August

19:27 GMT -5

Still no Constantine. Chas said that he hadn't seen him for a few weeks, but he took my money and the phone number I gave him and said he'd pass them on. M'gann said that he was telling the truth. The number goes to a payphone in Happy Harbour to which I've covertly added an answering machine, which will alert me if anyone actually leaves a message. A couple of the publicans we spoke to knew of him, but they hadn't seen him recently either.

The camp in the Gobi is much bigger than I expected. I'd scanned it before, and I knew the population size, but seeing it up close is very different.

I had to use the ring to deal with their sensors. They have a gravity sensor that is very similar to the one the League of Shadows had, and the bioship's stealth system only works for light. Not sure whether that's just what gravity sensors look like, or if they trade with the Shadows, or if the Shadows stole it. The latter is probably more likely, but these are the people who worked with a giant egg in the comics.

I asked M'gann to scan Yao Fei, so we'd have some idea what his mental state was. He felt it, though, and asked who we were. After a brief introduction he told us that he had chosen to stay in the camp because they are kept short of medical practitioners, and in any case some of the metahumans have nonstandard physiologies that would be hard for anyone else to treat. He thanked us for offering to bring the camp to wider attention, but suggested that releasing the information to the general public would most likely be counterproductive.

M'gann said that his mind was 'echoey'. I don't remember him in the comics well enough to begin to suggest why that might be.

I'm sitting up on top of the mountain, watching the sun go down. Never really been one for that sort of thing, but I've got time now. Maybe all time, if the ring has really nixed my ageing process. M'gann wanted to talk to Kon about something before dinner, and hinted that I should absent myself for a little while. Not sure what that was about.

Okay. Need to speak to Batman about Robert, and need to do more work on Yao Fei. Constantine can wait.

I hear a faint noise, a foot slipping on the loose soil as someone tries to climb the mountain.

"Ah! Friggin' bushes…"

That's not Kon's voice.

The League never said what we should do about regular trespassers. It would be easy to throw him out, but that would rather give the game away about the mountain being in use. Hmm. I'm in my regular clothing, and the ring's barely glowing. Could I get away with claiming to be the gardener? I don't have the appropriate ID, and I imagine the League are fairly hot on that for their contractors and employees. I can't pass as local. A tourist, trying his luck? Give it a go, I suppose. If I tell him they let the dogs out at eight…

"Bastard mountain…"

I hear a couple of groans as he pulls himself up the rocky patch on the south western side, and in the fading light I shuffle round to see who it is.

And then my shield goes up and my armour goes on.

John Constantine. Sting lookalike in a trenchcoat and a blue suit, wheezing like a man who smokes thirty a day and just tried to climb a small mountain.

Next time, I'll remember about scrying and divination magic.

I get up. He glowers at me.

"You…" He leans against a tree, panting as he points at me with his right hand. "You're the little sod.. who convinced me sister.. that the flamin' Justice League are after me."

For a moment, I'm dumbfounded. I gape, and blink stupidly. "No I didn't!"

That wasn't clever. Get it together.

"That's not the bloody impression I got! Wonder Woman asking after me. Christ!"

Pause. Prepare.

"Mister Constantine, a man named Kent Nelson had disappeared and you were one of two people we knew he wanted to talk to. You were never under suspicion of anything."

He stares at me for a moment. He's still out of breath.

"Would it help if I phoned Misses Masters and told her this?"

"Nelson… Nelson… Rings a bell…"

Okay, this is John Constantine. He almost certainly knows, and is fishing. But if I want him to trust me…

"Formerly Doctor Fate, late of the Justice Society."

He finally catches his breath, and pulls out a cigarette. "Yeah? And what'd he want to talk to me about?"

"Taking on his job. On my recommendation, actually."

He squints. "Y'what?"

"Doctor Fate was responsible for this.. magic.. tower.. thing, in Salem, plus a Helmet containing the spirit of a Lord of Order named Nabu."

"And he wanted me t'have it?"

"Um, no. He wanted to investigate you, and maybe offer it to you." I shrug. "Since he's dead, it doesn't really matter now."

"Depends. How'd he die?"

"Lived over a hundred years, then got hit in the chest by a bolt of red lightning thrown by a Lord of Chaos named Klarion the Witch Boy."

He sucks in his cheeks. "Him, I've heard of. So, who got the Helmet?"

"No one."

"Might wanna watch that, chum. Magic artefacts have a way of turnin' up when it's least convenient."

"Oh, we know where the Helmet is. But from the way Mister Zatara reacted when I mentioned your name, I doubt it'll go to you."

He shuffles a little when I mention Zatara's name, then lights his cigarette and takes a drag.

"So what you're saying is, my sister got scared out of her mind 'cause Wonder Woman didn't bother giving her a proper explanation, looking for a man I've never met, over a job that isn't available any more?"

Um.

"Basically?"

He turns, takes another puff, and looks down the slope. "Right, sod it then, I'm off."

!Protection!

"I.. have a job for you. If you're interested."

He takes a step towards the edge, and looks down some more. He seems less eager to leave than his tone suggested.

"Hear me out and I'll carry you down?"

He stands still for a moment, then turns around. "What is it?"

"I'm got a bit of a problem with magic. Some types of spell, I just can't block with this ring."

"So, what, you want some kind of protective charm?"

"No, I can buy things like that wholesale from Atlantis. But I seem to remember, some years ago, you made a Demoness impossible to detect with magic."

"How the hell did you hear about that?"

"I wasn't going to recommend you for a job like the one Mister Nelson had in mind without checking you out first. Now, would that ritual work on someone without a soul?"

He scowls. "Who'd you sell it to, you stupid berk?"

"No one. I come from a parallel universe with no magic. No magic, no soul. No soul, no magic resistance."

His face relaxes a little. Contemplative. "Thought finding you was a bit easy."

"Though, since you bring it up, how much would you charge for a copy of that nifty book on demons you've got? In this job I'm bound to run into one eventually."

He sucks his cigarette into an inferno, then walks over to me and sits down, legs over the edge. "Think you better tell me the whole story first."

back

Initiative 19

next

2nd September

09:07 GMT -2

I try to push all thought of the truly horrible thing my alleged team mates have done to me out of my mind as the man who introduced himself to me as Sephtian closes up shop. It's a slow day down here on the outskirts of the Shayeris central business district, and apparently I warrant his undivided attention. I hadn't appreciated before exactly how many Atlanteans diverge physically from the Human baseline. Sure, Kaldur has gills, but I'd sort of assumed that was the norm. Not so, as I now realise.

Sephtian looks like a cross between a Human and a Manta Ray. Most of the skin I can see is grey-blue, and he has flaps of flesh running down the sides of his head in place of hair. Another pair of fleshy protuberances line the sides of his mouth like a thin moustache. His nose is flattened against his face and his eyes look solid black. Unusually, he's wearing loose fitting robes -most Atlanteans seem to prefer tight fitting and minimalistic clothing, probably due to the pressure at this depth- and I think I might have caught sight of a thin tail when he turned away.

There was some sort of attack on the capital a few days ago, so I changed from my standard armour back to my civilian clothing. I don't have any equipment which would allow me to survive at this depth anyway, and magic and arcanotech weapons are common enough that I'd be nervous about employing any strategy other than 'run away'. I asked the ring about FTL down here, and it told me to trot on.

"Soooo…" Sephtian arranges himself on the chair opposite me. "Don't get many surface dwellers in my shop. In fact I.. I can't remember last time I saw one in the city."

"Getting here's a bit tricky for most of us."

"So I'd imagine. I.. don't recognise the spell you're using. Some sort of environmental barrier? You're clearly not wet."

I hold up my left hand, ring toward him. He shifts his head slightly, and pulls his hands into his chest.

And I get a sensation like someone's yanking my muscles around under my skin.

"Please don't do that."

"Abyssal.. depths, whatever happened to you?"

"I came here from a parallel universe. I don't have all the right parts."

"Clearly." He takes another look at the ring. "That's a power ring, isn't it? Our king sets great store by his Justice League; I've tried to familiarise myself with its members."

"Yes. I can block or disrupt conjured attacks, but less tangible forms of magic do a number on me."

"Yes, I suppose they would." He fans his hands. No webbing, I notice. "So what can I do for you?"

"To start with, I want a personal ward. Strongest you have immediately available. I don't have any local currency, but I'm sure we can sort something out."

He blinks, and nods. "Most likely."

"Then I want to talk to you about a custom job. A ward stronger than anything its size that has ever been created before. And once we've got a design that works, I want twenty of them."

"Well, I'm not sure-."

"By the end of the year."

He blinks heavily, then fans his arms. "It's nice that you have such faith in my abilities, but in all honesty that sounds like a commission that would be well beyond them."

"Actually, I suspect that you're the only person in Atlantis who can do it. See, I was reading through some of Kaldur's schoolbooks… Kaldur'ahm? Aqualad?"

Three small nods. "I am aware of him."

"He's got an essay you wrote, on amulet smithing. See, on the surface, we don't have magic education as part of our normal curriculum. You tell someone like me that smaller enchantments are proportionally more powerful than larger ones, and I get interested. I couldn't follow the proof, but I did follow the experiments. You had good results."

He leans forward, and makes a praying gesture with his hands. "The Sephtian Proof, yes. It's true, but the difference isn't that great at sizes it's practical to create. At best, if you gave me two years, I could make something maybe four times as effective as something you could buy off the shelf, and at an astronomically greater cost."

"But how much of that do you need to do?"

"All of it, that's the problem. The reason why I'm not a very rich man, heh. There are no steps you can skip."

"That's where you're wrong."

"Oh? How so?"

"A power ring isn't a weapon, it's a tool. I can create any object, any material, any shape you want. All of that tedious work with fine wires to get the sigils you need to bind the spell? Done in a couple of seconds."

His eyes widen slightly.

"I can also make them smaller than you could make by hand. The greater the density, the greater the-."

"Greater the effect, yes. With that out of the way…" He shakes his head, fins flapping. "From two years to maybe four months, and I'll reduce the price if you make me more blanks than you want for yourself. But before new year? No."

"I haven't finished yet."

"Huh, don't let me stop you. You've already been worth my time." He smiles, making an effort not to show me the inside of his mouth. "The proof was just a formalisation of things artificers already knew, if less precisely. I never expected to do much serious work with it."

"How much of the spellwork do you need to do?"

"Eeeerraaaaah. I could bring in other practitioners, but the cost jumps up and we'd probably get in each other's way."

"How about if they were students? Good enough to copy what you were doing, but not qualified in their own rights."

"Cheaper, certainly. But you've still got the same basic problem."

"What if the artefact consisted of a large number of smaller pieces, each enchanted individually then integrated?"

"No, it wouldn't work. The slightest difference in the spells themselves and they'd just disrupt each other."

"What if there were a master resonance effect-."

His eyes grow distant. "Effect on the workshop itself. As long as the spells were basically similar they'd tend to form in pattern, and because at the size you're talking about they'd be so weak anyway…"

He goes still, not looking at me. For a moment I wonder if he's fainted. Then he orientates on me again. "That could work. I'm.. not sure about the timelines. I'm assuming that you were thinking along the lines of lots of students, not a couple of apprentices?"

"We do it all the time on the surface. Interning, we call it. Most of the time they don't even get paid."

"Uuuuu, slavery is illegal in Atlantis, but I think I can keep the cost down." Another pause. "What, exactly, did you want this amulet to do?"

"Absorption of arcane power, constant effect. I realise that even if it was as efficient as your figures say it should be, there'll be some wastage, but would it be possible to make it recharge itself from what it absorbed?"

"There's a couple of things… You'll lose some effectiveness in a head to head fight. But if regular maintenance would be difficult... I don't know. I need to start.. work on this." He rises. "Right now, let me get the pendant you wanted. The woefully out of date pendant like the ones that all of my competitors use. Woefully out of date. Hm-hmm."

Ring, gold.

Twenty of the larger coins from my initial foray to the asteroid belt appear.

"I understand that high purity metal is pretty valuable down here. Is this going to be enough to get you started?"

"Hm? Yes, certainly. Hard to smelt to high purity gold underwater. Best we can do on any sort of scale is about ninety eight point seven percent, and that imposes some fairly severe limitations on the amount of arcane power it can bind. That's one of the reasons why King Orin is trying to increase our very limited trade with the surface. How pure?"

"One hundred percent."

His neck twists back to look at me at an angle that wouldn't be comfortable for a normal Human.

"I think I'm going to like you."

back

Initiative 20

next

2nd September

11:40 GMT -2

I really should have thought that through better. Their capital was just attacked by outside forces. Obviously they'd be on high alert.

And I hadn't bothered to get an entry visa.

The cell I'm sitting in is about one and a half metres by one and a half metres by two metres. The front is solid translucent water, like Kaldur's water bearers when he makes a solid shape. It isn't cold, but it resists when I push it. Interesting how magic takes the place of technology. I'm not sure what the walls are made of. It's purple, and slightly luminescent.

The charm Sephtian sold me is on a chain around my neck. It's made of silver metal and looks like a wishbone, with the two prongs pushed past each other. Since I was cooperating and didn't have any visible weapons the guards didn't give me more than a cursory search. Presumably they made the same assumption about my orange aura that Sephtian did.

I've no idea what the penalty is under Atlantian law for the sort of trespass I've made. If it's a fine then I should be out of here as soon as I can plead guilty. If it's a bit more brutal then I'll just have to forcibly extricate myself and plead my case with King Orin. He seems to be a reasonable chap.

One nice thing about this is that I've had uninterrupted peace in which to meditate.

My RingHUD indicates that people are coming down the corridor. I think I'm in the local police station equivalent rather than a proper prison, but I didn't see anyone else when they brought me in. Alright, who is..? Ah.

Kaldur and someone in a slightly fancier uniform than the regular guards step in front of the screen. The new guard has purple skin and tentacles where his legs should be. I smile guiltily and do a royal wave with my right hand. Kaldur says something to the guard, and a small portal opens in the screen.

"Orange Lantern. What brings you to Shayeris?"

I sag slightly. "Shoppiiiinnng."

"You have picked a most unfortunate time to do so."

I step up to the barrier, keeping my hands where they can see them. "Yeah, spotted that. Look, how much trouble am I in here?"

"That.. depends. The phrourarch needs to ask you some questions."

"Sure, no problem. Happy to help."

Kaldur steps to the side a little, and the guard comes to the fore. Since his title didn't translate I'm going to assume that English doesn't have a direct equivalent.

"Why did you come to Shayeris?"

"Shopping."

"But why have you come here, specifically?"

"I have a vulnerability to magic. I wanted to buy a protective charm, and you can't get those commercially on the surface. So, I went to see a guy named Sephtian, and bought this." I pull out the charm on its chain.

The guard's eyes narrow slightly. "That is a powerful ward. Far stronger than would be necessary for personal protection."

"Lets see how far you get with two shards of elemental chaos shoved through your chest, then."

His eyes widen slightly.

Kaldur sighs. "Please try to understand his concerns. Poseidonis was attacked by soldiers loyal to Black Manta. We were able to fight them off due to our use of combat sorcery. Protective magics such as the artefact you now possess represent a threat to our ability to defend ourselves in future."

Oh, come on.

I make a gesture of appeal. "I was shopping! It was for sale! Sephtian didn't mention any restrictions or anything. It's strictly for personal use and not resale. I'm sorry that I didn't think to pick up an entry visa, but the only way this-" I jingle the pendant. "-would go anywhere near Black Manta is if I was fighting him."

The phrourarch makes eye contact with Kaldur, who nods.

"Kaldur, you were there. You know how fast Klarion was able to take me down. I'd be a fool to leave such a glaring weakness. And you know that there's no way the guards could have brought me in if I hadn't let them."

That earns me a scowl from the phrourarch, but Kaldur nods again.

"Release him."

The phrourarch stiffens, and then makes an action with his hand just outside my field of vision. In response, the rest of the barrier collapses. He pauses, gives me a 'I'll be watching you sonny' look, nods respectfully to Kaldur, and then swims off down the hallway.

Kaldur watches him go, then turns back to me. "I am sorry for the questioning, but my king asked me to come here to speak with you. I could not show favouritism in discharging my official duties simply because we are friends."

I smile. "Of course. Don't worry about it. Look, what's the fine for not getting an entry visa?"

He shakes his head. "There is no fine. While visas are issued to make it easier for invited guests to interact with us while they are in Atlantis, there is no law which requires you to possess one. Few surface dwellers are capable of reaching here, so no law has ever been needed."

"Oh."

He starts swimming slowly down the corridor, and I follow him.

"Soooo… How's the leave of absence going?"

He doesn't immediately answer.

"I.. was made aware that I was not focusing properly on my responsibilities to the team. Batman felt that returning home would help me clear my head."

"Has it?"

"I believe so."

I don't really want to do this, but it needs to be said.

"Batman's got a mission for us. We'll be heading out either tomorrow evening or the morning after. Are you going to be back by then?"

"I am uncertain."

"Kaldur, that wasn't exactly a social enquiry."

We stop swimming. We've reached a balcony with a good view of the city. With no need for people to walk on the ground, buildings here have entries at all levels. With no light reaching us from the sun, they don't bother with windows. Bioluminescence everywhere.

"It was M'gann's idea. If you're not back, I'm… They're putting me in charge of the team. For that mission at least."

His eyes drop for a moment. "Congratulations."

"No, not congratulations. I want you in charge. Unlike you, I don't have the skill set to do that job." I exhale heavily. "But I'd rather develop the skills than go through another mission like Gotham, you understand? I thought I'd killed Clayface."

Kaldur nods. "Has he recovered?"

"STAR labs say there's some activity. We won't know for a while yet."

He moves over to lean on the balcony railing. I follow, giving him some space. "I should not have cut myself off from my home. Perhaps, if I had not…"

"Speaking as someone who can't go home, yeah, that was a bad idea."

He turns back to me. "I believe I have resolved my.. difficulties. I will be returning to the mountain tomorrow."

"Glad to hear it." I usually only feel like this with Kon, but it seems appropriate. I swim a bit closer. "Y'know, if you've got a problem, you can talk to us about it, right?"

"Thank you for your offer, but I believe I will be alright."

back

NEXT CHAPTER

Clueless

BACK

Clueless 1

next

Clueless

14th April

Nugh?

"Pffffffffffff!"

What the heck?

Sand?

What?

The cold sand under my right hand shifts slightly as I push myself into a kneeling position.

What?

Dark, I was expecting. Sand, not so…

"Oh!"

Right, dream. Chu.

I push backwards, onto my bare feet.

I've never been able to get this lucid dreaming thing to work for me before, but let's try…

"Clean!"

Sand sprays off me in all directions, nearly causing me to lose my lips as the sand in my mouth leaves by the nearest available exit.

Alright, that worked. Now, what do I… Whaw.

Looking down, I'm not standing on the ground anymore. I'm floating just above it. There's a small indentation where I was standing, and my feet are surrounded by a corona of orange light.

Flying dream. I love flying dreams. Even that one time I was riding on a dragon's back to do it.

I grin, and look at the sky.

Go go go!

Dust is blown away from me as I rocket into the sky. Within a few seconds I'm too high up to see the crater I made. I stop, and turn slowly around, taking everything in. A bit hard to see in the dark…

Haha! I control this dream!

The clearly illuminated desert dunes stretch away in all directions. Kinda dull, actually. No, I'm not wasting this!

I dive back for the desert floor, grinning like a loon. As I hit the ground I want it to part before me, and then like Scrooge McDuck I dive through the densely packed silica grains in a subterranean 'U' before surfacing and hovering just above the ground.

The path of my passage is now shiny crystal, a bit like the passages used in Tok'ra installations. As I watch, a weak wind blows some of the sand around the entranceway down into it. I suppose it'll fill in completely before too long. A bit of a shame, that. I remember an episode of the Aladdin animated series where Mechanicles tried to turn the whole desert into glass. Crazy, yes, but pretty.

Wait a second. Why am I glowing orange?

I hold out my hands for a moment. There's a glowing orange ring on my left. I bring it closer to my face, and turn my hand so that the palm is facing me.

Orange power ring, of course! What better representation of a whim indulgence lucid dreaming than a device designed to make whatever the user wants to happen happen!

"Hello, ring!"

"Awaiting command."

Hmm. The voice reminds me of the AI from Flight of the Navigator. Not sure what I was expecting. Was that my first exposure to the idea of artificial intelligence?

This desert's a bit boring. Go somewhere else? Wait, what am I wearing? My summer pyjamas? Oh, hello arm, aren't you muscular today?

I hold my right arm out to the side, upper arm horizontal and forearm straight up. I roll up the short sleeve of my pyjama top and rotate my hand one hundred and eighty degrees, watching the muscles move as I do so. I move my left arm over -yep, it's the same- and gently rub my right bicep, marvelling at it.

Ring, remove my pyjamas.

Oh HELL yes.

My left hand traces the contours of my abdominal muscles as my right runs over my pectorals. Some sort of silver pendant sits between them on a chain. Ignoring it, I stretch, lean and flex, all the while taking in the GLORY that is ME. I run my hands over the unfamiliar muscles on my back. No body hair? Odd, but somehow appropriate, like a body builder but less deformed. I bend and tense the muscles in my legs, lightly massaging my thighs and calves. Also good.

Spoiler: Not for the faint of heart

Penis looks the same, with the slightly discoloured patch on the left side of the head still visible. Looks like I evened up my scrotal balance though.

God, this is great.

Okay, clothes. Something classy. Oh yes, this is a nice suit.

I rub myself against it, taking a moment to relish the feel of the material against my smooth skin. Closing my eyes and stretching my arms out to the side. No glasses, but my vision is perfect. The feel of wind through the fingers is like nothing I've felt before. I can hear the faint sound of sand grains sliding past each other. I can smell the arid desert air.

I shake slightly at the overwhelming sensuality of it all.

Huhuhuhurrrr.

**Ohh, my head… Where am I? This can't be Mars…**

My eyes snap open.

What was that? Hello?

**One moon… white sand… Oxygen!**

Hello?

**Hello?**

I receive an impression of surprise.

**Who's there?**

**Ring, what's happening?**

**What ring? Who is this?**

**You are engaged in telepathic communication.**

Oh.

**Who was that?**

I want to go to wherever the person I'm talking to is.

The scenery shifts. I'm now facing a large dune, and just in front of me standing on the ground is… A young woman with long red hair and green skin.

Wait a minute! That's M'gann! The Martian girl from the Teen Titans comics!

back

Clueless 2

next

14th April

My time.

"Hello, M'gann!"

She smiles at me, a little nervously. "Um, hi?"

Grin to wide beam.

SO great!

I lower myself to just above the ground, a short way in front of her.

"Are we..? Are we on Earth?"

I tilt my head to the side.

Are we? Probably. Earth is my default planet after all, and I haven't tried to change it. Even if I did, what I got would probably be similar to the environments I already know.

"Maybe? Do you want to be on Earth?"

She frowns. "How do you not know? You.. you're Human, aren't you?"

"Yes, yes I am."

She smiles. "I'm so glad. For a moment I thought one of my brothers was playing a trick on me again. 'Make M'gy dream she's on Earth then listen to her thoughts as she wakes up'. They can be so mean."

I wiggle my right index finger. "No no, you can't be dreaming. This is my dream."

She pulls her head back slightly, narrowing her eyes. "I.. don't.. think this is a dream."

"Well, obviously you'd say that."

She blinks. "I… I.. don't.. think-."

Something SLAMS into the base of the dune with tremendous force, sending up a plume of dust. M'gann struggles to keep her balance, so I float her into the air as I drift down to see what it was that just crashed.

Things were getting a bit slow. Good work, brain!

A figure materialises out of the settling dust. He's crouched on all fours. Pale skin, blue eyes, black t-shirt with a Superman type 'S' logo. Blue cargo trousers.

That's Superboy. Am I going to get visited by that whole Teen Titans line-up?

Best subconscious ever!

"Um, I can fly by myself."

What? Oh, right. I release her and she floats right over to her team mate.

"I've seen that symbol. Is he..? Are you.. Superman?"

Huh?

Superboy stands, pulls his t-shirt up so he can see the 'S'. Uum, his chest isn't so bad either. "Yyyyaaaaaagghhh!" Then he rips the t-shirt apart with a bellow of rage!

What's up with him?

He lunges for M'gann, arms outstretched. She gasps and dodges, flying swiftly to the side and leaving him diving into the earth. Another surge from the Kryptonian, and this time he narrowly misses punching her as she goes for height. I can just about hear him growling as he watches her move away.

Why doesn't he fly after her? Superboy was always able to fly, right? And by this stage, since he isn't physically a child, shouldn't he have heat vision?

I drop down to his level, leaving me enough space to evade if needed. I've never felt pain in a dream before, but this dream has unusually high definition and I don't want to have to wake myself up because my arms got ripped off.

"Superboy?"

He orientates on me, crouching slightly, arms to the side.

"Kon-El? Conner Kent? What's up?"

"Aghaarh!"

Another lunge. Hah!

I skip to the side as he slams into my giant spring construct. Thank you, Sonic the Hedgehog Two. One priceless moment of confusion as he compresses it, and he's sent flying into the distance.

"And there goes the Id representation."

Something occurs to me. I haven't seen him in any television adaptation. I know him only from the comics, and then only really from Teen Titans. So:

"Why wasn't he wearing jeans? He always wears jeans."

M'gann drops back down to my level. "Was that..? Was that Superman?"

"No, that was Superboy."

"Superman has a son?"

"Kind of. He's basically a modified clone. Half Kryptonian, and half Human."

"Is that possible?"

"In a dream, yes. In a comic, certainly. In reality?" I shake my head. "Nnnnoo."

"This… This is reality."

I wiggle my index finger again. "No it isn't. In reality, you can't mix genes from two unrelated multicellular species together and get a functional life form. In reality, power rings don't exist." I open my left palm and point to the fat scowling boy symbol. "In reality, Mars is entirely uninhabited. I mean, what language are you hearing me speak?"

"… Ca'andran."

"Well, there you go. I don't speak Ca'andran. Watch my lips, I'm not making the right shapes for the words."

She peers at me.

I enunciate: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."

"That's… You're not. But, telepathy, maybe? I.. I can translate speech by connecting to the language centres of your brain."

"Telepathy's not real. Even in the DCU, there's maybe a handful of telepathic Humans in existence. Am I touching your brain?"

"W-? No."

"And you're not touching mine." I throw up my arms. "Dream logic! Narrative convenience!"

"Your power ring! The ring's translating!"

I stretch my neck out toward her. "Haooooow? Even if it had a database of the two languages, it wouldn't get the grammar in real time, would it? And there's no orange glow."

She sighs.

"This isn't helping. Do you know where we are?"

I'll play along. "Ring, where are we?"

"You are presently located in the Bialyan Desert, in the country of Bialya. On Earth."

"See!" I point at the ring again. "That's a made up country!"

back

Clueless 3

next

14th April

Alone in a desert with an attractive alien woman.

It seems that M'gann's knowledge of Middle Eastern geography is not sufficiently advanced to argue the point. Come to think of it, I'm not sure that, given national outlines and a list of names, I'd get them all right. I mean, I'd get Syria and Saudi Arabia, the obvious ones, but I'm not sure I could point to Turkmenistan reliably.

But I know that I've heard of Bialya in the comics. Can't remember which one, or when, but I'm sure it was there. And I'm sure that I've heard all of the names of the real Middle Eastern countries at some point.

Agh, no, I'm not looking at this the right way. This is basically an argument with myself. And while precisely narrowing down a fictional fact is reasonably interesting to me, I can sort it out with a Wikipedia search tomorrow.

"Got any plans for the rest of the evening?"

M'gann's airborne, looking in the direction Superboy blasted off into. She turns around. "Huh?"

"We're young, we're attractive, we're in the middle of nowhere. What do you want to do?"

"Shouldn't.. we go after him?"

"He didn't look like he was in the mood for company."

She frowns, thinking. "How do you know him? Come to think of it, how do you know my name?"

"This is my dream. I know everyone here."

"This isn't..! Uh." She turns away again.

I make a lazy circuit of her, slowly taking her in. She ignores me, talking to herself.

"If we're on Earth, I should try to contact Uncle J'onn. My parents will be worried. Well, once they realize I'm gone, anyway." She notices that I'm in front of her. "How did you get here?"

"Normally I get into a dream-."

She holds up her right hand. "Can you just, just pretend that it's not a dream. For now. Where were you before you came here?"

"Over that way." I point back the way I came.

"And before that?"

I shrug. "Nowhere. I woke… I became aware of my environment, lying on the sand. Flew around for a bit, heard you, came here."

She appears to consider this. I circle closer, dipping down behind her before rising from her left to her front. My face is level with hers, about forty centimetres away.

"You know, I didn't used to see the appeal of skin tight costumes. Too impractical. No armour. But that arse has converted me."

She starts, blushing. "W-what?"

"What?" I shrug. "I know DC Martians don't actually look like-" I make an upwards gesture with both hands, palms up. "-that. Clearly you gave Human aesthetics some thought before creating your current shape. Speaking as a Human, it's.. nice. Curvy without being flabby, you've resisted the temptation to make the proportions ridiculous. Hair's good for a species that's naturally bald… Face is cute rather than stunning, but-" I wave my right index finger at her. "-I think that works for you."

"Um." She floats back slightly, eyes down and off to the side. I follow at a slightly slower rate. "Thanks… I, I think."

I smile. "You're most welcome."

I suppose she wouldn't appreciate my own Lamian beauty. Martian aesthetic ideas must be rather different to Human ones, given their protean nature.

Hmm. If the dream is allowing me to hear her words from a distance, can I merge concepts? Can I transmit more complex ideas?

**[I run my right index finger up her throat to her chin, gently applying pressure to encourage her to look directly at me.]**

She starts again, looking at me. "I thought you said you aren't telepathic."

"I'm not. The idea that your ability can work that way just seemed… Obvious." I point my index fingers toward each other at my chest, moving them in circles without them touching. "Don't.. Martians…"

"Well, yes, but.. but not…" She's blushing up a storm now. Adorable. "That's something we only really do with, um people, who we're…" Her hands go to her mouth. "You don't think we're..?"

I raise my right index finger, and shake my head. "Mn. Question is; do you want to be?"

**[My arms around her chest, under her breasts. My bare chest pressed against her naked back. My face nuzzling her neck. Her giggles like silver bells.]**

She thrusts her hands forward, her eyes white. I feel a strong pushing force at my chest. I allow it to propel me backwards.

"This is not that sort of dream!"

"Apparently." I frown. "I'm usually awake and changing my trousers by this stage." I face shrug. "Ahh, I suppose that would be a waste of an opportunity anyway. What would you like to do instead?"

back

Clueless 4

next

15th April

Getting boring now.

"You really don't remember him?"

"I'm pretty sure I'd remember coming to Earth, and joining a superhero team."

"But you're on Earth now and you don't remember it."

"I know. I don't know why."

We're flying over the desert with no particular direction in mind. Apparently, I've generated a version of M'gann from before she joined the Titans. Or I just don't know enough about her backstory to fill in the gaps. As far as I remember she just sort of turned up after that One Year Later thing, and the Titans met up with her while investigating… something. I remember them visiting her in Australia, but I don't remember much else.

Dawn was a while ago, and we both took time to marvel at the changing colours of the desert. Apart from that -and I'll admit, it was well worth seeing- things have been getting dull since Superboy learned to fly.

Oh, no, I do remember something else; I remember that she's a White Martian. But this version seems to have the ruthless aggression aspect thoroughly under control. She's actually pretty passive.

And then she's not there any more. I stop in the air and look around. Oh, she stopped first.

"Perhaps if I concentrate, and can force myself to remember."

"Context reinstatement, that sort of thing?"

"Martian mental exercises are a bit more complicated than that, but, yeah."

"Sounds boring. Since I know who all your team mates are, why don't I just scan for them?"

"Uuhm…"

She actually puts her right index finger to her lips. I don't remember her being this cute in the comics. Don't remember her wearing a black costume either. I think I prefer this.

"I.. suppose… I mean, if they're here, they'll probably know what happened, right? And I can always meditate later if they aren't here."

Right. Who was in the team with M'gann? I think I can write off Superboy as a lost cause. If that's the version of him my mind spawned I doubt that I'll be able to get it to create another. Hmm. Robin? No. I think of Richard Grayson as Robin, and she was in the team with Tim Drake. The dissonance might wake me up.

"Ring, locate Wonder Girl."

"Wonder Girl not found."

Eh? I know that there's at least two of them, but why couldn't it find either? Maybe that's the problem? Right, who on M'gann's team was unique.

…

Mia… thingy? Harper? I know she was Speedy two, but maybe if I just ask for her by name?

"Ring, locate Mia Harper."

"There are no individuals by that name in the local area."

M'gann's starting to look uncertain. "Maybe I should-?"

"No. No, I'm gunna get this."

"Ring, locate Rose Wilson."

"There are no individuals by that name in the local area."

"Ring, locate Impulse."

"Impulse not found."

No, that's right, he changed his name after that thing with Deathstroke's son.

"Ring, locate Kid Flash."

Bit of a chance, but-.

"Kid Flash located."

"Hahah!"

Triumph. Oh, no, better not think about him, that sort of mess is the last thing I need.

"Where?"

And I know. I'm getting feedback from my dream about the state of my dream? Weird. Maybe above a certain degree of complexity that's the only way to interact with it? It's not like I'm keeping track of every grain of sand.

"Okay!" I make an upwards waving motion with my left hand and an orange bubble forms around us.

"Um..?"

"It'll be faster. Ring, take us there."

The scenery shifts. Sand is replaced by rock. Empty desert by Bart Allen and… A blonde woman in a green costume, carrying a bow. No, not Mia Harper. Wrong costume for Arrowette. Um. Um?

I tilt my head to the side. "Who are you?"

"Oh C'eridyall."

M'gann's dropped to her knees at the bottom of the bubble. Her hands are over her mouth. Oh dear.

I drop her out of the bubble. She falls about a metre to the ground, and is heartily sick.

Bart looks at me, then at M'gann. "Aaaaaaahh. Could you explain who you are, and why Martian Manhunter's a girl now?"

"Does she look anything like Martian Manhunter?"

He looks at her. She's stopped puking, and is wiping her mouth and shakily rising to her feet. He looks back to me. "Martian Manhunter's a shapeshifter."

"Exactly! Can you think of one good reason why he'd alter his humanoid form to that of a slightly smaller woman? I mean, it clearly won't be much use as a disguise. There's no practical benefit."

His head tilts to the side a little.

"Huh. I suppose you've-."

The blonde woman looks at him, then at me, then gestures emphatically at something behind me. "Tanks!"

I blink. "You're welcome?"

back

Clueless 5

next

15th April

Busy!

Douh!

Arg!

Uhh!

hElLo RoCk…

I'm pinned… No, hang on. I've made an impression in the cliff face. Something hit me from behind. My bubble shield is… yes? Gone.

Still doesn't hurt.

I push myself out of the rock, and fall down onto the ground on my back. "Ring, status report?"

"You have no serious injuries. You are slightly dazed. Another tank shell would most likely be fatal."

"Undaze, please."

"Compliance."

And everything's back in focus. I roll onto my front, rise to a sprinter's start, and try and work out what's going on.

Rock formations form a sort of channel on either side, and at the far end? Tanks. Four of them, forming a 'U' shape. Second from the left has some sort of burns around the right side of its turret, but there's no serious damage. If Warhammer 40,000 second edition taught me anything it's that you should go for the tracks, not the turret. An immobilised tank in the middle of the desert would be no threat to anyone.

Bart and the girl with the bow are in cover behind a rock formation. No tanker with any sense is going to want to close to that sort of distance with infantry, but then they don't really need to. The tank on the far right fires, and gouges a chunk out of the cliff near them. M'gann's in the air, and as the tank second from the right fires she brings her arms together. The shell detonates in mid air, but the force of the detonation knocks her flying.

This isn't like…

…

I'm starting to get the feeling that this may be real.

"Ring, is this actually happening?"

"Your senses and cognitive functions are unimpaired."

The tank's pintle gunners try to hit M'gann as she swoops across their formation. Arrow girl breaks cover and launches an arrow in an arc high into the air. After it passes M'gann it explodes into a cloud of dense smoke.

But…

Think it through, think it through. If this is real, then I have a power ring. I should help. Heck, maybe I'm one of her team mates. If it isn't, then I don't lose anything, and if it is some sort of hallucination I can't imagine that anything I'm doing would help me get out of it.

So, how do I-

The tracks. Right.

Flight.

Dust and sand blow away in my wake as I zoom along the ground, heading for the far right tank. The guy sticking out of the turret spots me and points, trying to get the attention of someone. The next guy in the line? The main gun begins to traverse.

Ring, calculate shell flight path and evade.

I hug the deck, aileron roll, and then I'm pulled aside as the cannon fires and misses. The pintle gunner fires too, but the angle's bad and he's having trouble following my jinking movements.

Ow!

I spin out of control for a moment, bouncing off the ground and getting a face full of grit before resuming my forwards travel.

Ring, what?

One hit to the back of left shoulder by Degtyaryov-Shpagin 12.7 by 108mm calibre machine gun. Impact absorbed by environmental shielding. Warning; at current avarice levels environmental shield is not capable of resisting sustained fire.

Arc barrier.

An orange rectangular panel appears ahead of my head, just big enough to block all possible fire arcs from the only tank firing at me. The larger surface area means that I watch several bullets bounce off it while others throw up puffs of sand.

Faster.

Then I'm past them and their rear armour's mine.

Circular saws.

I flick my index fingers forwards and the spinning blades fly into the rear of the tracks. They cut, bounce, scream and flicker.

Cut, damn it!

The noise drops as the blades slide through the steel, then on through the wheels at the side and then the track at the front.

O-kay then.

The tanks at the rear of the formation can't risk fratricide by firing their main guns, but they're reorientating their pintle weapons in my direction. The orange arc barrier extends.

Move.

Who deploys tanks like this without infantry support?

The second tank is closer to me than the first one was. The barrier shield extends around my rear as the tank whose tracks I just sliced opens fire again with its machine gun, and then I'm behind target two.

Cut!

This time I swing a single larger disc blade from left to right. It slices through the steel with little difficulty. There aren't even that many sparks.

I hear bullets of a different calibre hit my shield. Looking up, I see that the tank commander has clambered out of the turret and is shooting me with his sidearm.

Ring, knock him out.

An orange line hits him in the forehead and for a second an orange circlet appears on his head. Then he collapses bonelessly to the armoured surface of the turret and then slides off onto the ground.

That's going to hurt.

Out of enemy line of sight? What's everyone else doing?

The ring replays events in my mind. M'gann going high over the tanks, above their maximum elevation as whatsherface with the bow lays down more cover in the middle of the tank formation. She reaches her hands down, and the people manning the pintle weapons of the tanks on the left rise into the air and are sent flying into each other with a grunt. Straining, she makes an upward pulling gesture and the barrels of the main cannons bend into uselessness.

Not a bad idea, that.

I rise up behind my cover tank, my right index finger pointing at its barrel and my left targeting the barrel of the one I just left, now rotated to face me.

"BLAZING ORANGE BOLT!"

Two beams of orange the width of my entire hands flare out from me. The barrel of the closest tank is cleaved clean through, and a groove gouged into the tank's front armour. The barrel of the further tank is severed at the base, with the beam carrying on through the turret armour and out the other side. The guy manning the machine gun takes cover and slams down the hatch.

"Warning; low power."

Then I fall to the ground.

back

Clueless 6

next

15th April

Like I have time to find out!

The body of the enthusiastic tank commander breaks my fall. I decide that keeping my head down is a good idea, crouching down behind the tank.

"When you say low…"

"Ten percent power remaining. As per standing orders nonessential ring functions are now triggered by direct request only. High expenditure abilities not recommended."

I check, but the tank guy's still breathing.

No high expenditure, right. I'm guessing big orange beams are high expenditure? Is soaking bullets high expenditure? Why'd I ask for a suit instead of armour? I don't even know where my lantern is.

I edge around the corner of the defeated tank to look at the rear one of the two that M'gann took on. Their turret traverses left and right a little. They're not going to try firing it, are they? No, it seems they're not; they and their wingman are bravely advancing to the rear instead. I hear a sort of clang from over to my left, and shuffle along to the other side of my cover just in time to watch my first victim try to retreat as well, and fail as their entire track system comes apart.

Then the one I'm leaning against starts to rumble.

Uh oh.

How far back can it go before the tracks come off? Half a revolution?

I grab the tanker commander and lunge out of the way just as the tank follows through on its rumbled threats and I get a ringside seat at watching it drive out of its own tracks and grind to a halt.

I drop the tanker.

I think we're done here.

**We won!**

M'gann's voice inside my head.

I take a look at the tanker's uniform. There's writing. It might be Arabic, but it looks like the ring's translator is 'nonessential' and I've got no idea what it says. There's a flag, but I can't identify it.

**Okay, this is weird.**

Oh, you have no idea.

Bart doesn't sound like I thought he would. Has he not used team telepathy before?

What can I contribute? **Should we be.. going somewhere, away from here? These tanks probably have radios.**

**Right. Everyone head back this way.**

Bart's probably got most experience at this point in his life so I'm inclined to let him take the lead. But best to check.

**M'gann? I'm on low power. Is there anything in the immediate area that looks like it might wurragh!**

She dropped down right next to me, silently. I look her over. "You're looking.. better."

She looks at the fallen soldier. "He's not… dead, is he?"

"No, I just told the ring to knock him out." Ooh. "We should loot him."

"What?"

"We're in a desert, and I'm on low power."

I kneel down and start going through his pouches. Compass, map, notebook, water bottle, some sort of foil pack of something… Yep, I'll take that.

Hey, looks like this suit has decent pockets.

"I.. suppose. Doesn't he need it?"

"There'll be more in the tank, and they'll probably get resupplied inside an hour." I wave the water bottle at M'gann. "This, could be the difference between life an-."

She looks at it, and it's yanked from my hand. She catches it, takes a swig, rolls the water around her mouth and then spits it out. Then she does it again.

Ah.

"Sorry about the… sick… thing. I really didn't know the instant transfer thing did that."

"Don't mention it." She grimaces. "I mean it; really don't."

I hear the hatch open at the top. I put my right hand to my mouth. "We're still here! Carry on hiding!"

The hatch clangs again, and I hear it lock.

I look over to the rocks where arrow girl has already rejoined Bart.

"Would you mind giving me a lift? I wasn't joking about low power, and I don't want to fly if I don't have to."

"I can probably manage you."

And I'm floating up into the air. Now I get why she wanted to fly herself when Superboy came visiting; it's pretty unnerving when someone else does this to you.

She leads the way, flying us both upwards and away from the tank, dragging me slightly behind her. I notice that the crew of my first target are starting to stick their heads out, and they duck back down as we pass. I also notice that whatever inertia control thing the ring was doing when I was flying earlier isn't happening now. I don't think I'm in danger of mirroring M'gann's performance, but the acceleration and heat are making me feel a little queasy.

Oh, the heat. Now I've got nothing else to focus on, I'm feeling it with a vengeance. Looks like my environmental shield's climate control is nonessential too, but I'm not going to risk overriding it until I know what's going on.

"So, this 'Kid Flash' is one of my team mates?"

"I think so. Look, I'm starting to think this, is actually happening."

She turns in the air, still moving toward our destination. Her hands go to her hips.

"Oh really?"

"Yes. Um, sorry. You're clearly not a dream. And since I've got a power ring, I'm starting to think that I might be a member of the team as well."

"Are you sure? I mean, you don't have a uniform."

"I woke up wearing pyjamas, then I switched to this suit. I think the ring stores my clothes, so.. if I have a costume it's probably in there."

"Shouldn't you put it on?"

"I think the suit makes me stand out enough. I don't want to waste ring power until I have a better idea about what's happening."

From here I've got a clear view of arrow girl and Bart. They're… What's the term? Talking animatedly. His body language suggests embarrassment.

Why is his uniform black? The only Flash I remember with a black uniform was Wally West during his brief tenure with the Elite. And that death embodiment thing.

M'gann drops us down just in front of them. Arrow girl crosses her arms across her chest. An exposed midriff case. Along with the bow, it's making me seriously doubt her usefulness. Though, I suppose Bart didn't do anything in the fight just now.

"So." I clasp my hands in front of me with a clap. "Anyone have any idea what's going on?"

back

Clueless 7

next

15th April

Bewildered, and a little scared.

Bart scratches the back of his head with his left hand.

"Beats me. Woke up in a shack at the end of the valley, waited for sleepy head here to wake up, been dodging those tanks since. Uh, you wouldn't have anything to eat, would you? My metabolism's really fast, and dodging tank shells isn't as easy as it sounds."

I fish the foil packet out of my pocket. There's a blur, and it's in his hand.

"Careful! Last time I opened one of those, it was a duck's… Foot…"

It wasn't a duck's foot. It was chocolate, and he inhaled it. Guess Bialyan tankers have better taste than Chinese university students.

"Thanks man. So, who are you guys?"

M'gann smiles, hands clasped in front of her. "My name's M'gann M'orzz and I'm very pleased to meet you."

I give a royal wave with my right hand. "And I'm-."

…

How'd I get down here?

The others have gathered around me.

Arrow girl crosses her arms again. "Oh great! A narcoleptic."

What?

"What?"

Ow…

I push myself up into a sitting position. "Right. Not.. sure what happened there. Um, hello, I'm-."

…

And I'm down again, apparently.

"Ow."

Arrow girl huffs. "Seriously?"

"Looks like I can't say my own name. That's.. weird."

Arrow girl looks at M'gann. "Who's this idiot?"

I answer. "Orange Lantern two eight one six. Or is it two eight one.. four. I can never remember. They must be close together, right?"

Bart looks sceptical. "Orange Lantern?"

I shift to a cross legged position, and open my left palm toward him. The ring is guttering.

"Power rings come in nine different colours. But since none of them erase memories I don't think it's really relevant."

M'gann looks pleased with herself. "So, you've given up on it being a dream then?"

I sag. "Yeah, that didn't really.. pan out."

Bart squints. "You thought this was a dream?"

"I woke up able to fly, met up with a gorgeous alien from a planet I know to be uninhabited, and then I fought main battle tanks with super heroes. Does that sound remotely realistic to you? Really?"

"Uh, yeah. That's, like, every week."

I cautiously rise to my feet. "Not where I'm from."

"How long have you had that ring?"

Oh, goodness, the heat.

"Gotta be five hours now. And I'm at ten percent power, so, y'know, don't expect much."

Arrow girl rolls her eyes. "I don't think anyone was."

"Two tanks to none, 16th century peasant girl. Sorry. Sorry, not peasant."

Defensive hands to pointing hands.

"Yeoman!"

Shrug hands.

"Yeowoman."

Pointing hands.

"Yeoperson? 16th century yeoperson girl!"

"Ugh!" She rage-grunts, then steps forwards towards me.

"O-kay." Bart steps between us, a hand toward each of our chests. "Not helping."

Right, right. Rational. Calm down.

I look down, and take a couple of deep breaths. Once I feel a little more steady, I make eye contact with the visibly fuming yeoperson.

"I'm sorry, that was uncalled for on my part. Orange Lantern is really the best I can do for a name." I hold out my right hand. "What's yours?"

I take her piercing gaze at full scowl for five very long seconds. Then, grudgingly, her eyes still fixed on mine, she takes my hand in hers. "Artemis."

"Oh! Are you an Amazon?"

Her hand is withdrawn, and her arms recross. "No."

There's an awkward moment of silence, before M'gann speaks up. "So, um, do you have memory loss as well?"

Bart nods. "Last thing I remember is doing chemistry homework. Then, boom, desert."

He looks at Artemis, who glares back, before realising that we're all looking at her for her answer. "I was.. shopping."

I answer next. "I was trying to get to sleep, but I think the important question is, when was this?"

A flicker of concern from Bart. "March third."

Artemis nods.

Aaaaaaah.

"Oh dear."

M'gann looks concerned. "What is it?"

"What year?"

"Two thousand ten."

Aaaaaaah ah ah ah…

My distress must be visible. M'gann puts a hand on my left shoulder.

Calm. I will remain calm.

"I.. thought that today was the fourteenth of April. Two thousand thirteen."

back

Clueless 8

next

Pass

I don't even know.

Bart reacts first. "What? That can't be right."

I put my right hand on top of M'gann's, trying to draw comfort from it. "I.. don't.. suppose any of us are wearing a watch?"

There's a moment of collective looking at each other.

Artemis' frustration causes her to speak first. "You can't tell the time with a power ring?!"

"Sure, easily, but that'll use battery power. How much do we really need to know right now?"

Bart shakes his head. "We can worry about what day it is later. Right now, we need to know why we're here."

"Um, I can.. help with that?" M'gann's actually raised her right hand a little. "If our memories are suppressed or damaged rather than totally gone, I might be able to reconstruct what happened to us. Together, our broken memories should be able to form a whole, if.. you open your minds to mine."

!Want!

"I want my memories back. And, Superboy looked like he doesn't remember-."

Bart holds up a hand. "Wait. Superwhatnow?"

"Superboy. The Superman clone?" Blank looks from Bart and Artemis. "If you only met him after.. err.. the third of March? You wouldn't remember."

"What happened to him?"

"M'gann and I tried talking to him, he went a bit berserk.. and.. then I.. fired him over the horizon with a giant orange spring."

Stares.

"I'll apologise next time I see him. Can we focus on getting our brains back?"

Bart smiles at M'gann. "My brain's all yours. Try not to let its brilliance overwhelm you."

Artemis does not look happy. "You're both okay with her just reading through our private thoughts?"

!Memories!

"Yes! Very much okay! I want, my mind back."

Too much? From the look Bart gives me, yes. Having my mind altered like this is freaking me out almost as much as the environment. I hope complete-me has a better handle on things.

M'gann releases my shoulder and takes a step towards Artemis, hands raised in a placatory gesture.

"I have no wish to intrude, but we've each clearly lost a substantial period of time, and the only way for us to get it back is to trust each other. I swear, I will only look at the parts of your memory that have been damaged."

She still doesn't look happy about it, but I think she wants to know what's happened nearly as much as I do.

Bart steps up alongside her. She starts for a moment, then gives a shallow nod.

M'gann's eyes go white.

I'm watching Batman stand in front of a relief map of the area we're currently standing in. The view flickers, both on and off and between four slightly different perspectives. I know one of the viewpoints is mine, and I assume that the others are those of my companions. At least we know that we're actually on a team now.

"The Watchtower detected an immense power surge in the Bialyan desert. Spectral analysis revealed elements non-terrestrial in origin."

I work for Batman?

"Find out what happened at that site, what landed there."

Superboy's standing at my left. Then, out of my field of vision. Then my right. Can telepathic visions make you motion sick? He's a lot better company when he's not berserking. In fact, I think I.. like him a great deal.

"Bialya is a rogue state, ruled by Queen Bee, and not a member of the League's UN charter. All communications are subject to interception. Maintain radio silence at all times. If it is absolutely essential to transmit a message, Orange Lantern can send it to one of the League's Green Lanterns."

I don't remember anything about Bialya from the comics, or from the reading I hope I did in preparation for this mission. I have missions? If this.. place, is real, I might need to share the 'this looks like a comic' thing with M'gann just to get my memories back.

The scene shifts. It's now night, and we're standing in the desert. No, they are. I'm in some sort of.. aircraft? The bioship. M'gann's alien spaceship thing. Superboy… No. Kon. I call him Kon. Kon is carrying some kind of machine on his back. A cuboid, perhaps 1.6 metres by 1.6 metres by 50 centimetres. Is that armour plating? Must weigh tonnes. And suddenly I can remember him lifting far heavier weights in the gym with me spotting for him. I walk down the ramp after him.

Another shift. I'm holding up a glowing orange image of the target area. Through the eyes of my team mates I see my costume. Looks like I had the sense to go for armour, and I think it's grey in colour. I'm deducting points from myself for the glowing insignia, however. On the diagram, circles flare around points of interest; guards and flak guns.

I see someone short… Robin! Our team has a Robin. That would be Tim Drake, wouldn't it? He leans forward to study the image.

"Looks like they're dug in."

"Set up here."

I don't see who says that, and the voice is unfamiliar. I should know it! No, remain calm. Just let it come, or accept that it'll take time.

Through someone else's eyes I see Kon set the machinery down, then turn a knob at one end. There's a hiss as two banks of computers extend from the side.

I think there's a significant timeskip, but it's hard to tell. I think the next image is from Bart's point of view, looking over Tim's shoulder as he works on one of the computer terminals.

"Jackpot! The site's lousy with zeta beam radiation."

The perspective shifts to… Artemis, I think. Robin turns from his work. "Detecting non-terrestrial trace elements from the tent."

M'gann steps forward. "I'll check it out in camouflage mode."

"Good idea. Go."

That voice again. I don't remember someone other than Tim being in charge of this Teen Titans line up. Who the heck is it?

A new perspective. M'gann herself, I think. She's looking at Kon, but I can hear something. Sounds like a jet engine, but I can't see anything that could make that noise and none of the people in the image are reacting-.

It's not from the image.

**M'gann!**

back

Clueless 9

next

Worry about it later

Whenever

M'gann gasps, then hurls us all back into cover against the rock as shots come from above. I hit the canyon wall hard with my right shoulder. Artemis staggers before dropping into a crouch behind an outcrop. Bart goes flat on his back.

I look up and see M'gann go airborne. Bullets… Two sets of two parallel lines, moving along the canyon. Not infantry then, because we'd be doomed if it was. Not particularly good shots either, because we were very nearly sitting ducks.

Artemis puts a ridiculously unaerodynamic arrow on her bow and begins scanning for the target.

Right. I know I've got armour. I want to know what day this is. I want a backup weapon. On the off chance I've done what John Stewart did in that episode of Static Shock, I want my personal lantern if the ring's storing it, or at least to know where it is. A personal force field generator would be a good consolation prize. I need these things, and there won't be much point in preserving power if I'm shot dead.

"Ring, body armour."

For a moment the ring lights up, and I feel a sensation of added weight as the grey armour I saw in the telepathic session appears on my body.

Bart scrambles up once it's clear that there isn't immediately going to be another volley, and double takes at my armour as it appears.

I hold out my hands, palms upwards. "Ring, give me a sidearm and state time and date."

"It is eleven minutes past five p.m., local time. Today is the 4th of September, two thousand ten."

Three years ago? What? How? No, wait.. I'm starting to remember things. I remember standing on the moon, staring at the Earth above me. I remember standing with my arms around Kon outside a school. I remember sitting on the roof of a restaurant, eating a burger wrapped in greaseproof paper while Guy Gardner floats in front of me, recounting some sort of story from his brief career as a professional American Football player. There's continuity here. I've been doing things here. I'm supposed to be here. I haven't got everything back yet, but it's coming together.

A thing materialises in my hand. Looks a bit like a crossbow with.. bits? Stuck on.

Artemis looked round when the ring stated the time, and she's now staring at the crossbow. This is rather undermining my anti-bent-sticks-that-fire-pointy-sticks position.

"Ring, better gun."

Another flare, and the crossbow is replaced by a pistol. It looks a bit like a neural shredder from Warhammer 40,000, except that the glowy bit is red rather than green.

Better indeed.

I crouch, hold the pistol with my right hand on the grip and my left supporting the barrel. I feel something.. ah, there's knobs on the side. Range and intensity? No idea. Lets try fifty metres and 'low'. I'm trying to make connections, but I really can't remember anything about using this gun. Still, the basic principles should be fairly straightforward, right? Point the barrel at the thing you want to shoot, pull the trigger.

High in the air over to the right, there's an explosion. M'gann's fighting, and the rest of us are as useful as soap made of poo. I strain my eyes looking in that direction, bringing my pistol up while I try to find a target. Artemis has also orientated in that direction while Bart is stuck spectating.

"Bart. Ug, Kid Flash?" He looks over. "I've probably got a spare pistol if you want it."

"Ah, no thanks. Not really a fan of guns."

Pff, superheroes. No, hang on. I can remember an episode of Justice League where the Flash was able to hurl rocks at super speed as a ranged attack. Maybe that's what he's planning to do?

I can hear the sound behind us, over to the left. I turn and try to orientate on it, but the rock walls block it. Sounds like.. something coming in very fast? And out of control.

THUMP.

I think it just hit the ground at the top of the canyon wall.

THUMP.

Again, closer.

THUMP THUMP THUMP.

A burning combat drone pinwheels over the lip of the valley, spinning around as it drops straight towards us!

I push away from the probable impact site with my legs, going down on my back.

Not good enough! The narrowness of this part of the valley works against me as the out of control drone spins, bounces off the wall on the opposite side and is deflected back directly towards me!

Ah!

An orange barrier forms directly in front of me, affording me an excellent view of the crashing vehicle while not guaranteeing protection. As I watch it coming for me I have time to calculate exactly its path. Its left wing is going to crush the right side of my chest.

Its nose hits the barrier. It bounces, spinning. The shield breaks as it comes back down, its wing scything toward me.

It stops, centimetres from my ribcage.

I stare at it as it floats in the air. I can see the sand abrasions from where it hit the ground. Burns and distortions where something was ripped off the underside of the fuselage. I can see the writing along the seams, and a copy of the flag that the tanker was wearing.

Then I scramble backwards on my arse, pistol still clenched to my chest with both hands. When I hit the rock behind me I use it to slide myself upright.

"Are you alright?"

M'gann's floating just behind the drone, hands outstretched toward it. She gestures, and the drone moves aside and drops to the ground.

Oh, she was talking to me.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine."

Breathe. Breathe.

Bart steps towards M'gann. "That all of them?"

"I think so."

She lowers herself to the ground.

Pistol. The pistol. You're holding it wrongly. How do I… Shooting gallery. I remember a shooting gallery. Happy to have something safe to think about it, I correct my stance, and switch the pistol to 'no power'.

Bart nods.

"Good job. We should probably get somewhere safe before trying that again. Everyone else remember why we're here?"

Artemis nods, relaxing her string. "Finding out what the Bialyans are up to."

Something. There's something…

!Kon!

He's.. only been out of that pod for a couple of months. No wonder he went berserk. I make eye contact with M'gann.

"Kon. Superboy. We need to find him. His memory's going to be completely blank."

Her eyes go wide. "But he could be anywhere!"

Ring.

A map appears in front of me, and the others congregate around it. "We're here." The map pulls out. "He's here."

Bart nods. "I'll get him. Back in a sec."

Bad idea.

"Wait! How exactly are you going to pick up a berserk Kryptonian?"

All eyes on Bart. "Ah…"

M'gann looks back at the map. "I'll get him. I can transfer what we've already remembered to his mind. Hopefully it'll be enough for him to recognize me."

I don't have a better idea, and I'm in no position to assist.

"Warning; low power. Nine percent remaining."

What can I do?

As M'gann takes off I fish out the tanker's notebook. "Either of you read Arabic?"

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Clueless 10

next

4th September

17:16 GMT +3

M'gann's been gone a couple of minutes. Given that she can fly and be invisible, sending anyone with her would have been a bad idea. We've relocated further down the valley and hunkered down. Artemis is flipping through the notebook, and keeping an eye out for any Bialyan military units. I'm not sure why they used those drones for an attack run rather than just keeping us under observation. Seems like they'd be better served by knowing where we are, and organising an ambush with other units.

Maybe it was a misclick?

After a moment I realise that I should probably say something. I still don't remember exactly what my relationship with Bart is like, but I certainly don't feel any hostility toward him. "So, uh, how long have you been doing this?"

"About two years. Haven't been this far from Central City before, though. You remembered how long you've had your ring yet?"

"Not really. I seem to remember spending some time with Lantern Gardner, but exactly when I got it? No."

"Don't take this the wrong way, but you don't seem to have been in a lot of fights before."

"I haven't been in any. Well, no, I'm starting to remember that I have since joining this team, but before that? None, not with people who were seriously trying to injure me."

"What's with the gun?"

"I'm not sure, but I think it's there as a backup weapon in case something happens to the ring." I shrug. "Like.. running out of power while on a mission, I suppose. Thing is, I seem to remember practising with a projectile pistol, and not with this. Logically, you'd think that I'd practise with the thing I intended to use."

"Why don't you just, y'know, recharge?"

"Ring, state location of personal lantern."

"Personal lantern is located at Mount Justice, Happy Harbor."

"The Justice League's original headquarters! Think that's where our base is?"

"Maybe? There was a certain.. mountainy quality to the room in those memories."

He thinks for a moment. "Why don't you just bring it with you?"

I shrug. "I don't remember. Maybe it was because I was worried about it being destroyed? I don't know exactly how tough personal lanterns are, but I seem to remember that they explode very enthusiastically when they're damaged."

I only remember seeing it during Blackest Night, when an Alpha Lantern is killed by Black Lanterns.

"What about leaving it on that.. Martian ship-thing?"

"That would probably have been a good idea, but we don't know where that is at present."

"I think I remember it being on the Qurac border."

"Why did we leave it there? It's invisible, isn't it?"

"May..be.. they've got something that can detect it?"

"I seem to remember that power rings can prevent other forms of detection."

Did I really shoot Ra's al Ghul in the head? I mean, sure, there's plenty of supervillains who could profitably be shot in the head, but I don't think I'd get away with it. Particularly not if I'd bonded with people, and their disapproval would matter to me.

"Yeah, 'bout that. What'd you use all that power on?"

I just about stop myself from turning my head south east. I don't think you can see it from here…

!Lie!

"I'm.. not completely sure. I think those beams I used on the tanks were a bit overpowered, and I may have used some to try to keep my memories in one piece. The only reason haven't tried to use the ring to reassemble them now is that I've no idea how much power that would take."

"Still seems like a lot of power. I remember the Flash telling me about when Green Lantern fought the Invincible Destroyer, hitting him, shielding civilians, that sorta thing. Lasted two hours, and he didn't need to recharge once."

"I might have been mucking about with it a bit. I did think I was dreaming at the time."

That's sort of true.

"Yeah, lots of people think they're dreaming when they meet me. Usually it's girls, though."

"You're not my type. And, um, actually? I come from a parallel universe. You don't exist there, and neither do power rings. That's why I thought it was a dream."

He looks a little puzzled. "Huh."

"Can I assume that visitors from parallel universes aren't common here?"

"J… No. They're not. Are they where you're from?"

"No."

He leans back against a rock, looking down the valley. It takes me a moment to realise that he's looking at Artemis. "You and M'gann seemed pretty close."

"Yes. I think we've been.. living together, in the mountain? Also, I tried hitting on her earlier, while I thought this was a dream."

"How'd that go?"

Oh dear. "I came on rather strongly. I mean, I thought she was literally my dream woman."

His eyes swing around. "How.. strongly are we talking here?"

"Oh no no. Not like that. I mean, once I realised that it wasn't just happening, I backed off. Still, I mean, she's a friend, and we work together. I like her, but if I was going to, you know, go after her, I'd handle it differently."

I remember her true form, resting my forehead against hers and trying to reassure her. Yes, very differently.

"If I was dreaming, I think I'd pick a better location."

I raise an eyebrow. "Desert at night? That's pretty romantic, isn't it?"

"I woke up in a hut next to Arrow Girl. She took one look at me, freaked, and said that her father probably sent her to kill me."

"Yeah, you wouldn't dream that, would you? If I'd met rampaging Superboy rather than Miss Martian, I'd probably have worked out what was going on faster."

I remember the school again, broken monkeys and breaking Kryptonian. I remember him smiling through his bruises after his first training session with Wonder Woman. I remember watching him lift weights…

"Or maybe not. I mean, heh, Orange Lantern Corps motto's 'I want it all'. If I was dreaming, maybe I wouldn't mind trying some Kryptonian beef with my greens."

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Clueless 11

next

4th September

17:27 GMT +3

The conversation with Bart rather trailed off.

**Are you there?**

M'gann? Oh, thank goodness.

**Did you get him? Is he alright?**

**Yes, he's here. He's dazed, but he should be okay. Are you in a safe place? Can I share what he remembers?**

**You've probably got better lines of sight than we have. Can you see anything?**

**There's vehicles at the other end of the valley. Nothing at your end. If they've called in reinforcements I guess they haven't got here yet.**

**Bart?**

No response.

**Kid Flash?**

Nothing from him.

**Kid Flash isn't called Bart.**

**He isn't?**

**No, he's called Wally. I think I must be out of range.**

**If you're out of range, how am I hearing you?**

**You seem to be very sensitive to telepathic communication. That's sort of why I, um…**

**[His forehead pressed against mine, his hands stroking my eye ridges. Reassurance.]**

Her perspective? Was I meant to see that?

**Let's… Let's leave worrying about that sort of thing until we've got our full memories back. I'll let the others know that you're coming.**

Wally..? Wallace West. Not Bart Allen. If that's the case, then I know less about where I am than I thought I did. Wait. I remember him telling me that only his gran and his geography teacher call him Wallace. Getting my memories of the team back might not be that difficult after all. Getting back the rest..? Well, is anything particularly interesting likely to have happened back home? Probably not, and if it did then it's unlikely to be relevant to me anymore.

"M'gann's got Superboy, and she's on her way back."

Artemis arches an eyebrow. Which are black, I notice. The bits of the notebook which weren't in code weren't very helpful. "And you know this, how?"

"Telepathy. Apparently I'm really sensitive to it."

Wallace looks around. "Did she say anything about seeing Robin?"

"No. Should she have?"

"You saw the memories. He's gotta still be out here."

"Yeah, but he's Robin. I'm sure he can take care of himself for a few hours. Did either of you recognise the other voice?"

Wallace shakes his head. Artemis' head bows slightly.

"Alright. Who might it have been?"

Wallace perks up. "Speedy?"

I think about it. I think I've had something to do with him, but I'm not getting the flow of memories I do from my other team mates.

"I don't.. think so. Anyone else?"

Artemis looks up. "Doesn't Wonder Woman have a sidekick?"

I remember being over the Mediterranean Sea, trying to grapple her with chain constructs. We're training. She dodges, and punches them aside faster than I can react.

"Yes. Me, apparently. If you're talking about Wonder Girl, I don't remember her being with us."

"Yeah, I'm with Oh El on this one. Pretty sure I'd remember someone as hot as her." Artemis regards him levelly. "Not.. that.. she's anything compared to you."

I feel.. something, at the back of my mind. Looking up, I see M'gann fly over the ridge with a slumped Kon in tow.

What possibles haven't we eliminated?

"Do we..? Is there an Aqua.. lad..?"

Even as I say it, the memories come flooding back. Myself, Kon, M'gann and him sitting in front of a large television watching an action film about a man dressed as a giraffe. An underwater training session where I had to learn to block invisible attacks that could come from any angle. Him punching me in the face when I tell him to in order to demonstrate the strength of my armour.

**Did everyone..?**

"Yeah." Wallace nods.

Artemis shakes her head to clear it. "If Kaldur's out in this heat… That's not good for a guy with gills."

M'gann lands. Kon slumps into a sitting position next to her, head cradled in his hands. I walk over and crouch down next to him. "You alright?"

He slowly raises his head, and then smiles when he sees me. "A giant spring?"

"Sorry."

I stand and offer him my hand. He takes it, and I help him to his feet. As he comes upright, he staggers slightly and stumbles into me. I reach out to steady him and misjudge, my hands going around his waist.

Um.

His shirt's still not there.

"Um, sorry." / "Er, sorry."

We both step backwards at the same time.

Ring, do I have a shirt for him?

A short pulse of orange light, and a new black t-shirt with a red 'S' covers his torso. He looks at it, then at me. I look at him.

Apparently, I have his clothes stored in the ring. What exactly..?

Artemis coughs.

Right. Right.

We turn to Wallace.

"We need to find Kaldur. Orange Lantern, can you scan for him?"

"Ring, where's Kaldur?"

Ooooh dear…

A Bialyan military encampment, apparently.

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Clueless 12

next

4th September

18:22 GMT +3

"Warning; low power. Eight percent remaining."

Even with an invisible telepathic flier on your side, negotiating a desert filled with enemy soldiers is not easy. Approaching the camp where Kaldur was being held simply wasn't an option until after nightfall. Making a virtue of necessity we used the time to return to the bioship, restock on arrows and food. Each of us also spent some time being ministered to by M'gann, trying to get our memories back. I think that I'm all here now, though of course the thing about memory loss is that you don't remember what you're missing. I still plan to get the ring to double check, later.

Anyway, that's how I remembered that the bastards have my cat.

I sent Teekl in with M'gann. She can fly, though she doesn't like doing it after that time she got distracted by a bird and fell off a cliff. That's also how I know they haven't killed her; she'd have respawned at the ring if they had. She'd threatened to go into Happy Harbour to find things to hunt unless I took her with us. I think that's what she was threatening; it was either that, or she was threatening to literally ingest the entire town, which I find unlikely. It's hard, but if I close my eyes and want to know hard enough, I can just about feel her location. She's in the same tent as Kaldur, but I get the impression that her movement is restricted by something.

None of us remember what happened after M'gann went scouting, but it seems likely that whatever wiped our memories did so from in there. Maybe the memories further back from that point are more accessible? Whatever happened, that's where they're holding Kaldur. No sign of Robin. There was a chance that he would have fallen back this way, but I doubt that he remembers enough to do so. Other places he could be include the scanner unit, and somewhere overlooking the camp.

And captured, of course. I suggested that I scan for him, but Wallace pointed out that we couldn't really rescue him faster than we were going to anyway. Something else I wasn't expecting: with Kaldur absent… I'm sort of in charge. A strange experience for me, considering that I can't effectively direct or support the others with no ring power. And I haven't actually practised team direction.

I had a go at transferring myself back to base for a recharge, but apparently the minimum charge for that is fourteen percent. I hadn't even realised that it had a minimum. I also tried and failed to contact the League's Green Lanterns. Wallace was most irate when he realised what I was doing, but I wasn't able to make a connection with any ring but Alan's anyway, and he wasn't wearing it. I'm going to need to go over that with Guy during our next session. Maybe there's a form of words I need to use? Or maybe the Greenies are just on a different circuit, I don't know.

Now under cover of darkness, we're returning. I'm reluctant to completely blow the stealth aspect of the mission again, but with tanks destroyed, team mate captured and… And that thing I did south east of here, I think that it's a bit late to really worry about it. M'gann's scouting ahead. Kon's super eyes can see into the infra red, so I've put him on rearguard duty. I'm a little ahead, on the grounds that with my environmental shield and body armour I'm probably the second toughest, and the fact that I can get night vision if I really need it. Peter Gambi told me this armour could take assault rifle fire. I'm hoping I don't have to find out, but if it's a choice between that and seeing if Artemis had bullet proof abdominals…

At least with so little power I'm not glowing.

**Computer in sight. I can see Robin!**

**Glad to hear it. Any Bialyan military units?**

**I can't see any, but-. Yes! They're hidden under the sand!**

**Kid Flash, Superboy, go.**

A dark blur passes by my left side, and I hear Kon launch himself off behind me. Artemis and I accelerate to a jog, and I turn my pistol to low power.

**M'gann. How many?**

**Four immediately next to the computer. Another ten nearby. They're attacking!**

**Don't add Robin to the network, it'll just confuse him. Assist in whatever way you can. Artemis and I will join you as we get there.**

Trying to run faster will just get me bogged down in the sand. My ring granted athleticism means I can do this without getting totally knackered, and it doesn't look like Artemis is having any trouble keeping up. Really, we just need a good line of sight from the top of one of these dunes for her to loose her bolas arrows from. I could fire to disable with my pistol, but I never tested it against Human type targets and I'm not sure of the cut off point between agonising burns and cauterised limb stump.

We make it to the top, but we still can't see them from here and so we keep going. I blink a moment of night vision, and can't see any obstacles. For a moment I consider trying to reach out to M'gann to see what's going on, but I don't want to risk distracting either of us. I can hear automatic rifle fire, along with harsh grunts and shouting in a language I assume to be Arabic. Artemis puts an arrow to string as we get to the bottom of that dune and start up the next. I'm glad deserts get so cold at night, otherwise I'd be sweating like a pig.

Move!

I stumble as the sand gives more than I expect it to under my left foot, and she's past me and heading to the top. As I right myself and resume my ascent she crests the rise, aims, and looses. As I reach a level at which I can see beyond the dune, she lowers her bow.

Looking down, I see that all of the Bialyan soldiers are down. Robin and Wallace are walking towards each other at the bottom of the flat area in which we put the computer. Kon is picking up the downed soldiers -a flicker of night vision doesn't show any serious injuries- and binding their wrists and ankles. M'gann's floating over…

**M'gann, in future, please remain invisible until the perimeter is confirmed as secure.**

Her right hand goes to her mouth. **Sorry. Um, I can't sense any more minds.**

**And they'd probably have activated robots if they had any. Okay, I think we're good.**

I follow Artemis down the slope.

"KF! Man it's good to see a familiar face."

Robin and Wallace clasp hands. With my memories back I realise that this is Richard Grayson. I wonder how that will affect the timeline relating to other events I'm familiar with? We've got an Aqualad, and Garth didn't want the job. Donna can't spare the time and Speedy thought the suggestion that he should join anything other than the League itself was insulting. I don't remember anyone else being on the Titans starting line up, but M'gann and Superboy should only be joining much later. No Cyborg, Raven, Starfire or Changeling at all.

"Hey Rob. Memory loss?"

"Six months! Let's finish hogtying these creeps and compare notes."

I halt at the bottom of the dune. "Good evening Robin. Everyone, if we could avoid clustering up? That would be great."

He turns his head to look at me. "And you are?"

"Orange Lantern two eight one four." I can feel him preparing to make a smart comment. "Whatever you're thinking, you've probably already said it and forgotten about it. Miss Martian has been able to restore our memories to the rest of us. Do you have any objection to her repeating the process on you?"

"Ah. Miss..?" I point upwards to M'gann. "Oh, tch, right." He smiles at her as she descends. "Go ahead."

I watch them long enough to make sure that there aren't any problems, then walk over to the computer. I don't remember mirroring its scanning with the ring, and we might not be able to take it with us when we go.

Our data.

"Ring, copy of all data, then fry all sensitive components."

The ring chimes, then an orange strobe flashes out and I hear a series of popping noises. Thin plumes of acrid black smoke drift out of the exposed components.

Artemis and Kon have finished with the prisoners. Queen Bee supposedly uses some sort of mind control on those who associate with her. Wasabi Islam is much less prevalent here than back home, but the area's still fairly patriarchal. And not just in a no-heads-of-state kind of way, thank you Wonder Woman. If she's used her ability on these soldiers, I might be able to read the physiological changes with the ring. I don't know how much power that would take, and it's quite possible none of them have met her personally. Or were important enough to be worth controlling.

"Artemis, which of these guys is in charge?"

She glances at me, then pulls out a torch and examines their uniforms. "They're Desert Lions. Elite unit. This guy-" She points at one. "-is a sergeant. The officer's probably at the base."

"Any chance he's met Queen Bee?"

She turns off the torch and shrugs. "Maybe. Depends how important this place is to her. Wouldn't count on it, though. Why?"

"Wondering if I can find out how she influences people. But, with this little power, it just isn't worth chancing it."

back

Clueless 13

next

4th September

18:32 GMT +3

Robin's back to full functionality and we've moved up to a rock formation near the encampment. I've got an orange diagram of the place, and the others are clustered around. One main tent. No soldiers inside, though several are on guard outside. Through Teekl's eyes -once the bloody Moggie could be persuaded to open them- I see five scientists, some sort of machine with a spherical unit on top, and Kaldur strapped to a platform.

Every so often, they turn a dial, the sphere spins, and Kaldur gets electrocuted.

He's tough, and I think that his tattoos give him electrical resistance, but we need to get in there. When we realised what they were doing to him I had to physically restrain Kon from just leaping in there.

Another tent appears to be serving as the barracks. A third smaller one as a command tent. There doesn't appear to be a mess tent… Maybe they haven't got around to unpacking it yet. There are five large military transportation trucks on the side furthest away from us, three heavy Jeep type vehicles and two platform mounted anti-aircraft missile batteries with attendant flatbeds. I checked, and neither contain anything I recognise as a gravity scanner. Maybe we could have brought the bioship in? No. Couldn't take the risk they could be switched to hit ground targets.

Twenty two soldiers in total. Artemis tells me that taking those we've already encountered into account, that's normal platoon strength for Desert Lions, and Robin agrees. The officer -a First Lieutenant according to Artemis- is in the command post, along with two other soldiers and some equipment. There doesn't seem to be any reaction to our fight with the group we fought earlier, but I haven't seen any armoured vehicles since those tanks. I don't know if they are all out on the search, or if there just aren't any more in the area. Troop movements near this border are considered to be of international concern, so maybe they didn't think they could risk it?

Also ensconced with the Lieutenant is Doctor Simon Jones, better known to my colleagues by his nom de félonie, Psimon. Guess that explains what happened to our memories. I still don't remember confronting him, so I've no idea how he got us or why we weren't all captured or killed. Information on exactly what he can do is somewhat sketchy, for obvious reasons. And the only thing I remember about him from the comics is that he died when the Joker shot him in the head during Salvation Run.

"Warning; low power. Seven percent remaining."

**Artemis, you and I will take the far side. I'll concentrate on destroying those vehicles to provide a distraction. I need you to watch my back, and watch out for Doctor Jones. He's wanted for violent offences everywhere he's ever been, so don't bother pulling your punches.**

**How are you planning on taking out the trucks with seven percent power?**

I look at her, hold up my pistol and turn the dial to 'high power'.

She nods.

**M'gann, once the guards move away, go invisible and head for Kaldur. Kon, you'll deal with the missile batteries. I don't want them firing. Try not to set them off.**

Two more nods.

**Wallace, you're our reserve. If you see something start to go wrong, intervene. Otherwise, just watch our backs. If anyone runs into Doctor Jones, do not mess about. He is very dangerous, and I don't think any of us want to lose another six months. Robin…**

Oh, for goodness sake.

Wallace winces. **Yeah, he does that.**

**Where's he gone this time? Robin!**

**Just providing a little extra distraction.** The ring shows his position, moving around the base in a clockwise direction.

**Fuck's sake… Artemis, with me.** I lead us anticlockwise at a jog. I'm not sure how important it is for me to avoid attracting attention at this point, so I err on the quiet side.

**M'gann, get up in the sky and relay any unexpected movements.**

**On it.**

I hit a level clear patch, and borrow her vision for a second. Everyone's still where we expected. Good. Ideally, a distraction should have the capacity to turn into a genuine attack, and in a situation like this destroying their trucks and communications would leave them stranded for a while. I was going to have Robin go after their comms and if possible their hard drives so we could find out what actually happened here, but he has to go and do his own fucking thing.

**Robin, if you can spare the time, could you possibly see your way clear to-.**

**Looks like I've broken radio silence!**

**Fifteen seconds. Explain.**

**I set up some smoke bombs to broadcast. They'll send a squad, then boom! Sleepytime.**

**You split the party. Again. Please do the rest of us the courtesy of discussing things like that in future. If you aren't too busy, your target is any and all intelligence sources.**

Artemis and I reach the end of our flank. There are two visible guards at the flattened end where the trucks presumably entered.

**Artemis, the far one, on three.**

I burrow an orange filament under the sand toward the closer.

**One, two,-** She notches a gas arrow. **-three.**

The construct surges up in front of my target and stuns him. Artemis' target takes the arrow in his chest, coughs twice, then falls. We're already in motion.

**Cross and go high. I'll stay on this side.**

As soon as I get far enough forward to get a clear shot, I activate OrangeVision to check for passengers, drop to a crouch, and put a beam of red energy into the engine of the closest lorry.

The cab crumbles. The place the beam hits vaporises in a perfect circle, and for a moment I can see the interior of the vehicle as it ploughs through the chassis before the fuel tanks explode, obliterating what's left of the front half.

I blink twice, and resist the impulse to stare at the gun. Not bad. Good job I left the OrangeVision up, or the flash might have blinded me.

**M'gann, go when ready.**

**Right.**

I hear shouts as I line up the next shot. I don't have such a good angle on the cab, but I can see the external fuel tanks attached to the underside. The pistol has almost no recoil, and I find aiming it simplicity itself.

The beam and the fuel explosion cleave the truck in twain, sending the cab bouncing forward before toppling over and spinning the trailer section around. It tips then rolls, spilling boxes onto the desert sands.

**Do I have their attention?**

I hear engines starting. I sight a Jeep, and turn the pistol to medium range. Should narrow the beam. Don't want to kill the guys inside, after all.

**Two Hummers heading this way, and about eight soldiers.**

I fire, slicing a line through the underside of the Jeep as it turns, cutting through at least two wheels and causing it to flip, slamming into the rear of another lorry. Not sure what happened to the guys inside.

**One Hummer, and three more soldiers.**

**Superboy, go. Can anyone see Psimon?**

There's a moment's silence, and I hear a crash as Kon lands. I line up another shot at a supply lorry as the other Jeep tries to go hull down behind it.

**No one? Shit.**

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Clueless 14

next

4th September

18:36 GMT +3

I calculate the second Jeep's probable position, dial the pistol down to medium power and up to long range, and fire. The beam cuts through the lorry and the Jeep behind jerks to a halt. One of the soldiers jumps onto the back and swivels the roof mounted machine gun in my general direction. Two shots whiz past me.

**Artemis, roof gu-.** A bolas arrow takes out his legs, and he falls hard. **Thank you.**

**They're getting too close!**

**Understood. Flash arrow, then pull back.**

Ring, location of Doctor Jones.

Teekl see Bad Head Man.

**M'gann, Psimon's in-**

A sense of malevolent amusement. **Naughty naughty.**

Shit.

Artemis' flash arrow hits the camp entrance. Most of the guards are wearing night vision goggles. That must have hurt. I hear Artemis falling back, and rise to follow her. Bracing myself for the dash, I borrow Teekl's vision for a second.

Smug Bad Head Man stand in middle of room, staring into space. Strange Smell -M'gann- is visible only to the orange light. Coat Men panic as wind blows through the tent. Fish Man tied up. Metal box breaking.

I metaphorically cross my fingers, and follow Artemis at a dead run.

Teekl, assist M'gann.

I activate the radio on my belt. "Telepathic communication compromised. Complete objectives as assigned, then return to evacuation point. No chatter."

I need to try and find a low lethality back up weapon.

My OrangeVision is unaffected by Artemis' flash. The soldiers who were hit went prone, and their colleagues are being more cautious. Artemis and I should be able to get away. I can't hear Kon, so I'm going to assume that he's taken out the missiles and fallen back. He should be heading toward the border and the bioship. Artemis and I will continue on our current heading until we're sure that we've evaded pursuit, then head for a pick up point over the border in the other direction. From there, we can signal for pick up.

Through our link, I feel Teekl press her fore claws against the barrier containing her. There's resistance, but now that she's actually motivated she's pushing through. Teekie hasn't really jelled with any of my team mates yet, though she does seem to find it amusing to stare at Kon while he's trying to concentrate on anything. He told me that he's considering adding cats to his list alongside monkeys.

I hear gunfire behind me, faster and light automatic rifles along with the heavier machine guns. I can't risk making contact at this point, but I should be able to get away with a ring scan. I wait while until I find myself running on a level patch of sand.

Ring, one second view.

A flash in my mind, and I see everything. I found through experimentation that while my brain couldn't cope with processing everything continuously, with ring assistance I could cope with seeing everything for a brief time.

Kon's falling back at speed, his targets destroyed. Since he's our second best bioship pilot -just ahead of me- he can get it running if we need to change tack. Robin got too adventurous in the command post, but Wallace bailed him out and they're heading away as well. M'gann is floating in the centre of a miniature tornado along with Doctor Jones in the main tent. Teekl's draped herself over M'gann's shoulder, and appears to be nuzzling her. Kaldur's free, but seems to be stunned. The spherical unit on top of the machine appears to be broken, and the spherical object it contained is on the floor.

I hear the roar of an engine behind me. Are they guessing, or are they tracking us somehow? They can't be tracking radio. Can't be the ring. They wouldn't mess about if they had their own, and there's no way Earth technology can trace it. Heat is possible, but we're skirting the dunes. They shouldn't be getting a direct sight line to us. Is the pistol that hot? Subspace it, draw a new one, low power, long range. Noise? We're louder than the background, but not that loud and the echoes should make that method unreliable.

Another engine roar, as what should be the last Jeep continues pursuit. The Jeep I can take. So could Artemis, if what she said earlier about her explosive arrow was true. But the calculation becomes too complicated when I try to factor in the infantry. If they loaded it up, and jumped off when I fired at their transport, I can't be sure that I could take them all down without lethal force and protect myself and Artemis. Even worse if they got a few shots off from the machine gun before the Jeep went down. Or if the second Jeep wasn't as badly damaged as I thought.

Could it be a drone? We're a bit stuck if it is. An orange or red beam would be an even better guide to our position, and I'd have to catch up with Artemis to get her to shoot it. Assuming it wasn't too high up, she's a good thirty metres ahead of me, and is mostly out of line of sight. A construct attack might work better, but that would light me up.

Ring, scan local area for aircraft.

Yep, drone with thermal imager. Perfect top down view. I don't suppose an EMP burst..? Hardened? Where'd they get the technology to do that to a drone? I could brute force it, but I don't want to spend the power. There must be a better way.

Warning; low power. Six percent remaining.

Alright. Giving away my position only matters if I have to stay there. I can't outrun the Jeep. I can probably outrun the soldiers as the ring is fuelling my body in place of my insufficiently effective lungs, but I doubt that Artemis can and neither of us can outrun bullets. If the drone's gone, does the Jeep matter? Yes, but only until we clear the immediate area, then it's blind and finding us is guesswork.

I'm coming up to some sort of rise, sand giving way to stone. It isn't that high, and Artemis is already reaching the top.

Think.

I can destroy the drone with the pistol. It's moving, but not fast enough to avoid a light speed attack. Then what? The soldiers will most likely continue on our most likely trajectory, which is more or less the one we're taking.

Would they stop to check their surroundings? Perhaps, perhaps not. But if they're going for speed at the moment, and I was under the sand…

How to let Artemis know? No. Don't. I can't carry it out until I reach her, and she needs to look like she was still moving until they lost the drone.

An image of Kon leaping comes to mind. That could work.

Drone perception, continuous.

I feel its location.

ArcJump to Artemis.

I leave the ground. Rather than controlled flight, I'm hurtling into the air in the direction most likely to bring me into contact with Artemis. With the ring granting me extrasensory perception I can just about ignore the force of the wind and the sense of doom that comes from the certain knowledge that I will soon be falling. I close my water filled eyes, aim the pistol, and fire. It takes a second shot for me to hit the target, but then it's falling from the air. I open my eyes as I begin my descent. Artemis is off the rock already.

Adjust path.

A rough shove, and I'm aiming right for her.

The only useful thing to come out of my messing about earlier was learning exactly how easy burrowing through sand is with a power ring. You don't have to displace it, as transmuting it into a denser form is surprisingly easy.

I dial the pistol up to high power, and fire at the ground in the distance. Hopefully that will make them think we're over there.

Subspace it.

Artemis fast approaching, and things start happening a bit quickly. A slow command drops my speed from 'death-hurtle' to merely fast. I crash into her, grab on as she tenses to fight me off, extend my environmental shield around us as we fall and burrow before we hit the ground. A cocoon of dense crystal forms and is quickly covered by the surrounding sand.

"It's me. Stop stru-." She tries elbowing me, and strikes my armour. "They were using a drone to track us. I destroyed it. We're underground. They can't see us, and will probably drive right over us."

"And squash us!"

"I turned the sand to a dense crystal. It should be strong enough to take the weight."

"What about air!"

"We're both covered by my environmental shield. Oxygen provision costs very little power. My plan is, we wait here until they're well past us, then emerge and head to the border by a slightly different route."

She shifts slightly, becoming a little less tense. The small size of the space presses us together, and I'm somewhat relieved to note that my arm is across her abdomen and not elsewhere.

"Sorry I couldn't warn you, but radio and telepathy were compromised."

"Hfp. It's fine. How long do you want to wait?"

"I'll take a scan in fifteen minutes."

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Clueless 15

next

4th September

21:40 GMT +3

Artemis and I are sitting on a hill on the Saudi Arabian side of the Saudi/Bialya border. A few miles behind us the lights of the town of Ha'il are visible, and when the wind blows in the right direction I can hear the noise of cars and muffled voices. I reopened the crystal pod a few minutes after the Jeep had passed, and we proceeded cautiously towards our extraction point on a slightly different vector. I checked for pursuit at frequent intervals, but nothing appeared to supplement the Jeep and we were easily able to evade that.

I had thought Artemis' costume.. ill-considered, if not outright ridiculous. Once the ring's charge ran out with a sad 'Charge depleted' I began to envy it. I had Mister Gambi design my own armour on the principle that I'd be fighting with the ring active. I can walk in it fine and run short distances in it well enough, but it really isn't suitable for desert night hikes. Artemis' athletic physique and lighter gear meant that she had to make an effort not to outpace me.

Assuming the others made it out alright, we should be getting picked up before too long. To be honest, I'd sort of assumed that they'd be here by now. Another half hour and I'm going to suggest that we walk into town and try phoning for League assistance. What to do while we wait..?

"I've been wondering… What's with the bow?"

Her head turns to me. I'd just been staring into space. I think she was watching the border for lights which might indicate pursuit. I don't think that Bialya would risk attacking something across the Saudi border; they're not stupid, and Qurac just hasn't cosied up to America in the way their neighbours have.

"What'd'you mean?"

"Well, I know that you're not related to Green Arrow. He might have been teaching you, but, given the way Red Arrow's reacted to seeing you? Probably not for long. So, y'know, given all the weapons out there… Why a bent stick that fires pointy sticks?"

Her eyes narrow, but she decides to treat it as an actual enquiry and not an insult.

"It's a lot quieter than a gun or something, easier to own legally, easier to transport. Carbon fibre doesn't set off metal detectors, and if I got stopped by police while carrying point arrows I could claim that it was sporting equipment."

"And those.. special arrowheads you were using?"

Her eyes drop to the ground for a moment. "Those.. are a recent thing. Green Arrow's been sharing his stuff. He's… I think he's been missing Red Arrow? I don't know exactly how close they were-."

"Green Arrow adopted him three years ago, when he was fifteen, after the death of his natural parents." That earns me a look. I shrug. "Like I said, I looked up information on everyone before joining the team."

"Riiight. Well, normal arrows aren't always enough against armoured cars or people with super powers."

"How do you even get those to fly straight? They can't be aerodynamic."

"Looots a'practice."

"But the weight distribution-."

She squints at me. "Is entirely correct. The weight goes at the front. Basic aerodynamics."

Aerodynamics. That.. thing.. I don't have to bother with. "No, I mean, like-."

"You mean the drag."

"Um. Probably?"

"It's more difficult, but you just have to use more force."

I exhale through my lips. "Your arms must be made of-."

There's a blast of air and I see a slight distortion in the sky as the rear hatch of the bioship opens just in front of us.

Wallace waves at us from just inside. "We've been looking all over for you two!"

"Is everyone alright?"

"Kaldur's still pretty shaken up, but aside from that, fine."

Artemis is already walking towards the opening as I rise to my feet. Wallace points at my hand. "What's up with your ring?"

"Completely out of power. I'm glad the bioship's got air conditioning."

Wallace stands aside as Artemis walks in, then follows her into the cockpit. I stop at the threshold. I hear the door close and feel the slight pressure of acceleration.

"Why is there a giant metal ball in here?"

The ball rotates without assistance, rolls over to me, then swivels so that the small non-metallic area is… looking? At me. It's a slightly recessed circular patch of dark red, and has a lighted red line on it that resembles a slightly stretched omega. There are other, smaller lines and patches of purple. As I stare, I wonder if it's really dark red, or just that the lines get so thin that at this magnification it appears to be red.

After a moment, it beeps and warbles like a Simon game. What does that remind me of?

"Oh… New God technology. I'm assuming you're from New Genesis."

A duller beep. Kon looks at me. "You know what it is?"

"I've seen similar technology before. Nothing quite like this, though. Mother Boxes are usually-" I make a square with my hands "-about this big. Never seen a spherical one."

A warble, and it rolls over to where Kaldur is slumped in one of the rear seats. I walk past M'gann's pilot station and go to take the empty seat at the front right before I notice an orange glow. Turning, I see Teekl curled up on M'gann's lap. Her eyes open a little, notice me, then close again.

"Making friends are we, Teekl?"

M'gann looks down at the dozing cat, and takes her right hand off a steering column to rub her head.

"She was really helpful. When I fought Psimon inside my mind she bit him to distract him, and then she was able to enter our mindscape and attack him with me. I hadn't realized how complex her mind is."

"Ooo's a good diddle kitty den?"

That gets two open eyes and a sniff.

"Strange Smell Nice Smell."

She stretches and resettles. I plant myself in the front right chair.

"So, Robin, get anything useful?" Robin has his arm computer plugged into a hard drive.

"Not sure. I've broken most of the encryption, but some of this? I've never seen anything like it. You said the sphere was from 'New Genesis'? Could they be dealing with Bialya?"

An angry beep from the sphere.

"Doubt it. Apokolips might, but this.. seems kind of small potatoes for them."

He smiles, and glances away from his work. "Thought you were an atheist."

"New Gods is the best translation of their name for themselves. Apokolips and New Genesis are planets, inhabited by beings who are part organic humanoid, and part Platonic ideal form. The ruler of Apokolips, for example, is both a physically powerful man and the manifestation of the concept of tyranny. His courtiers include embodiments of the concepts of torture and of child abuse."

Uneasy and slightly disgusted looks from the team.

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Clueless 16

next

4th September

21:46 GMT +3

"Yes, it's exactly as bad as it sounds. If Bialya is dealing with them somehow, the League need to get on this."

Silence. I turn to the view screen. The augmented ambient lighting it provides means that I can see the desert, which will eventually give way to the Mediterranean Sea. We'll actually be passing over central Europe en route back to New England. Thinking about it…

"If anyone wants to get a zeta tube home, we can just stop off in Berlin or something. No need for everyone to stay on board. I can pilot the ship back..?"

No one seems eager. Oh well. I offered.

Wallace seems to have something on his mind.

"I've been meaning to ask: why'd you think you were dreaming?"

I shrug. "Like I've said, my parallel doesn't have superheroes, or super powers. When I first got here I spent a.. spent a couple of hours just.. sitting on the moon." I hold up my right hand, and flick it forwards. "Staring into space, before I accepted it was really happening. And this was even more bizarre."

"You charged your ring before we left, right?" Robin has some sort of technical diagram up on his arm computer, and he's watching me through it.

"Yes?"

"What exactly did you do that used up all that power?"

!Lie!

"Well,-."

M'gann giggles. Eyes move from me to her, and back again.

Darn it.

Artemis raises an eyebrow. "What.. happened, exactly?"

Rip the plaster off fast. "I.. made a statue, in the desert."

Artemis isn't buying it. "And that took all of your ring power?"

"Well-."

"He made a giant naked statue. Of himself."

I cringe. Jaws drop around the cabin.

Oh, just tell them. "First, I made a life size statue out of glass I transmuted from the sand, but I didn't think it would last long enough. So I broke it up, and made a bigger one out of transmuted diamond."

They're all staring except M'gann, who's progressed from giggling to chuckling. "I tried to get him to add trunks, but he wouldn't listen. I hadn't met anyone else apart from Superboy, so I couldn't just leave him. I didn't know where to look."

Wallace recovers fastest. "You mean there's a giant diamond statue of-."

M'gann waves her right hand. "No." She's gasping for breath now. "He wasn't happy with it, so he broke it down and made another one, even bigger."

I wince. "The third statue is made out of a super dense silicon based compound. It's about half a mile tall and the base goes about a mile underground, so there's no way anyone can remove it. Shaping and transmuting the material took most of the ring's power."

No one wants to be first to speak.

After about a minute passes, Kaldur raises the question. "This statue. It is still there?"

I close my eyes, and rub my brow with my right hand. I remember scanning every database in the world for the molecular structure I wanted; hard, tough and transparent. It seemed so sensible at the time.

"Almost certainly. I mean, it's not indestructible, but it's not far off."

That finally breaks Artemis' self control. "You made a giant naked statue of yourself in the middle of Bialya!?"

"Not.. not the middle, no."

M'gann snorts.

Artemis gesticulates. "You're unbelievable!"

"I thought I was dreaming!"

She crosses her arms, and stops looking at me.

Robin chuckles too. "Can't wait 'till Batman hears about that."

"I had an excuse. Why exactly did you think it was a good idea to run off before our attack on the Bialyan encampment?"

"That went okay."

"It would have gone better if you'd coordinated with us."

"You mean coordinated with you."

"In that situation? Yes."

He leans back in his chair and folds his arms. I look out the front window again. We're over the ocean now, and I think I can see the lights of the Turkish coastline.

If we're going to have to deal with the New Gods, I'm going to need to try and track down Scott Free and Big Barda. If they exist here. I wonder how well Diana will get on with her? She was making noises about wanting more female League members, I've just had trouble remembering any who would be worth while. I seem to remember Barda and Scott not being keen on the whole superhero thing. Something about wanting a normal life? Good luck with that. I'm also going to need to sit down with M'gann and create a telepathic defence construct. I've been thinking about it for a while, but other stuff's just come up…

Anyway. Everyone's alright, and we got the intelligence Batman wanted. Con, we failed the stealth part again, and I left a giant statue…

Maybe he'll see the funny side?

Wallace jerks in his seat. "Auw! I just realized; I didn't get anything for the trophy room!"

Teekl uncoils from M'gann's lap, jumps to the floor and walks over to Wallace. She sits, makes eye contact, and then drops something at his feet from her mouth. He looks at it.

"Is.. that a finger?"

I grin at him. "She likes you!"

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Clueless 17

next

3rd September

23:12:08 GMT +3

Nine seconds.

Ten seconds.

I scan the area again. The Bialyan encampment is still exactly as it was. The drones I detected being launched from the airbase outside Rutba are still en route, on the exact same vector as last time I checked.

I can't help but feel I'm being underutilised here. Batman explained that power ring scans aren't admissible as evidence, but why would this ever come to court?

"Oh El was right! The site's lousy with zeta beam radiation."

And that's a surprise why, Wallace? He and Richard are fiddling with the sensor array. Kaldur's managing to find a way to stand around dynamically, and Kon's watching Richard and Wallace. I'm trying to look alert, but in the dark my grey skin means that I look like a pair of glowing orange eyes floating in the air. Artemis is standing at a slouch close to me, arms crossed.

"Definitely detecting non-terrestrial trace elements from the tent."

I'd already identified the alien sphere, and the probable entry site for whatever form of teleportation was utilised. I could easily tell that it wasn't a zeta beam; for a start, there's no receiver station. Not sure what it was, though. I don't have any records of similar radiation patterns. Most vexing.

M'gann steps forward. "I'll check it out in camouflage mode."

"Good idea. Go."

Kon looks around. "Careful."

Kaldur nods. "And maintain telepathic contact."

"I will, Aqualad."

I roll my eyes. "Might I humbly suggest that telepathic communication in close proximity to an individual like Doctor Jones is perhaps not the best course of action?"

Kaldur looks at M'gann, who thinks about it. "It.. should be alright. Intercepting focused telepathic transmissions is pretty difficult."

Kaldur makes eye contact with her. "If you are sure."

M'gann nods, and camouflages as she rises into the sky. My OrangeVision means that I can see her just fine as she flies directly into the Bialyan encampment. That isn't clever, but it shouldn't matter. Nothing in there is sophisticated enough to detect her.

What exactly are we going to learn from this? I check the watch on my bracer again.

Artemis notices. "What's the matter? You got a hot date lined up?"

"Yes, actually."

She curls her lip. "I guess the people of Aichi will just have to do without."

Once she got over the initial shock, she'd assumed that I was joking about that. She's learned better since. "No. The plan this evening is to have dinner with a single woman. Conversation, personal and professional. Little more than that."

She looks at me, frowning, puzzled. I shrug.

"I am a man of many divergent drives. I don't always want the same thing."

"Who is she?"

"Your sister, actually."

She splutters. Hm. I'm pretty sure that qualifies me for 'token evil team mate' status. I've certainly got the look down pat.

"What!"

Kaldur looks over. "Artemis, lower your voice."

I can see her fuming. Delicious. And none of the others even knew that she has a sister.

"We met quite by chance, hit it off. Exchanged contact information. I find Jade to be a most interesting young woman."

The Sensei actually believed her. Certainly, what I advised her to say was completely true, but I was expecting more suspicion considering the circumstances. Better yet, Ra's has ordered her to gain my trust and gather information about me. I haven't told her that I'm bugging Infinity Island -that name, seriously-, and she hasn't yet told me that this is anything other than a social engagement. It's all getting delightfully convoluted. And it certainly doesn't hurt that I do find her quite attractive.

**I'm in.** M'gann's arrived, then.

**Good, but tread carefully. Camouflage is not invisible.**

Apparently Kaldur can exchange images with M'gann like this, but I haven't learned how to do that yet. Maybe I shouldn't. I'm not keen on the others seeing some of the things I've been doing, and I don't want to risk seepage. That was why -despite the obvious accessibility advantages- I couldn't risk getting M'gann to tutor me in telepathic defences. Fortunately, Mister Black lacks her squeamishness, and was more than happy to educate me in her stead. He's still working for the British government at this point in his life, and appears to find it mostly fulfilling. When we met, he made a half-hearted attempt to recruit me, but it was clear that he didn't believe his own Queen-and-Country spiel and he admitted as much afterwards. I was surprised by how amiable he was. Maybe the beer was helping.

**They're doing something to the sphere. It's alive! In pain! Hello? Can you hear me?**

Did she just open broadcast..?

**I can. And an open mind is a dangerous thing.**

MindShield.

The other members of the team are looking increasingly agitated. Unfortunately for them, I haven't worked out a way to use this form of construct on others yet. I'm not completely sure what will happen now, but I predict nosebleeds in M'gann's future.

She might need me to recover her. Batman won't like us failing the stealth aspect again, but I suspect that he'd like her getting dissected even less.

Ring, plot route to M'gann and mark targets.

By your command.

Then I feel it, a pressure against my shield. Mister Black told me that unfocused attacks like this were fairly easy to turn aside, but this is the first time I've tried my shield in combat and I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't a little concerned.

But no. The pressure is constant, but even as my team mates cry out in pain and double over clutching their heads I am unaffected. And here I thought Mister Black might just have been winding me up. Kon is the first to collapse, as the others groan and stagger aimlessly around. I walk over and put a hand on his shoulder, only for him to swipe me away. I pull back as he crouches and leaps into the sky. I'm a little stronger than Kaldur now, but Kon still overpowers me to a noticeable degree. Looking up into the sky I see M'gann shooting away from the science tent in a similar state of distress.

Hm.

What to do next? From the looks of things my team mates just got hit with a compulsion or a pain stimulation effect. Unlike how I thought things like that would work, Mister Black assured me that once the telepath puts them 'on', they don't require maintenance at all. Doctor Jones probably isn't continuing to do anything to them, so just killing him wouldn't really help. I'm not sure if he'd keep his abilities after assimilation, so that's not a certainty either.

I raise my right fist to my lips.

So what, then? Ah, yes.

"Ring. Heart Stilling Diminution Presence."

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Clueless 18

next

3rd September

23:16 GMT +3

I walk slowly towards the Bialyan encampment, making no effort to conceal myself. Quite the contrary, with my shield turned up and my MindShield active I'm lit up like a bonfire.

I was met by a group of guards outside the rim of the pit in which the base is being set up. I smiled pleasantly as they raised their weapons, and watched with interest as they collapsed. Their aggression triggered the ring to work its electromagnetic sufficiently-advanced-magic and slow their heart rates to below the level needed for them to remain conscious. A couple of them kept it together well enough to get shots off, but they're just using automatic rifles. Nothing that's actually a threat to me, and the shots will be heard from within the base, which will most likely work to my favour.

I broke their guns into pieces with my hands and neutralised the explosives in their grenades. Even if they aren't a threat to me I don't want them getting up and stumbling across my disorientated team mates with their weapons in working order. My understanding is that an attack my friends can see coming will probably snap them out of it -for a while at least- but a few bullets from outside their line of sight could see me returning to a very empty cave tomorrow.

Now I'm walking at an easy pace over the rim of the pit in which the Bialyans have set up shop. Guards shout, point, muster, and then collapse. This isn't the most efficient use of power I've ever made: it doesn't cause immediate unconsciousness and will probably end up using about ten percent of my total charge. It's certainly funny, though. These are the elite of the Bialyan military, but to me? They're insects.

Machine guns rounds spend themselves against my conjured armour as one of the military Jeeps opens fire from outside the effect of the Presence. I look in his direction and the effect takes hold, causing the gunner to fall from his perch.

And the best thing about this? None of them will be seriously hurt. And since none of them are getting a good look at me, the best description they'll be able to provide is 'big orange thing'. Now, where's Doctor Jones got to? Still in the main tent, with five scientists and four guards. No one I particularly care about. I think that they're assuming that the lack of fire means that the attack has been beaten off.

Ring, take copies of all electronic and paper records.

By your command.

I slow to strolling pace. If my clothing had pockets, I'd put my hands in them. None of these soldiers will know what method was employed to neutralise them when they wake up. They saw me, then nothing. I find that immensely satisfying.

Reaching the main tent, I take a moment to turn off the Presence. M'gann said something about the sphere being alive, so I should probably investigate in person. Besides, I haven't beaten anything into pulp since Klarion's cat, and it didn't put up much of a fight. I mean, if you're going to have one thing anchoring you to the material world you should at least make sure that it can survive being stamped on.

I calmly push the tent flap aside and walk inside.

"Have you found-?" Doctor Jones turns as he speaks, then cuts himself off as he sees me. He's wearing some sort of cloak and with the hood down I can clearly see through the transparent top of his head and into his metahuman brain. I scan it, and can clearly identify the novel elements which grant his abilities. Mister Black's useful abnormalities were far better integrated, this looks like a cut and shut job by comparison. "Oh."

As the soldiers get over their shock and raise their weapons, I raise my right hand and lazily project ShockCrowns into existence around their heads. Doctor Jones backs up as I give the panicking scientists the same treatment. He isn't scared, just cautious.

"I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised that at least one of you had the sense to disconnect. No matter." He raises his right hand toward me, fingers splayed. "Be. Still."

Shield to full.

I feel the pressure again, but he can't breach me. Mister Black took an indecent degree of pleasure in teaching me exactly how much force my MindShield can take at this juncture, and it looks like Doctor Jones' peak output is significantly lower than his. But there's no sense taking unnecessary chances.

I FTL to just in front of him. He barely comes up to my chest, and my sudden breach of his personal space causes him to jump back and trip. I catch his shirt in my left hand, pull him towards me and then take hold of his cranium with my right and raise him to my eye level.

"Was that supposed to be a telepathic attack? I've felt better. Pithing Needle."

He jerks as the construct locks his body in place.

If the sphere is alive, I suppose the next order of business is freeing it. I slice through the containment unit and pull away the remains. The unveiled sphere within somehow swivels on his axis until a small non-metallic area is.. looking..? At me. It's a slightly recessed circular patch of dark red, and has a lighted red line on it that resembles a slightly stretched omega. There are other, smaller lines and patches of purple. It looks a bit like a Mother Box, a conclusion it confirms a moment later when it starts pinging and beeping at me. I don't get a translation, but… I think I can understand it. Ah.

"I agree. I do look a little like Him, don't I? But I assure you, sphere of New Genesis, I am no servant of the Anti-Life, nor of the Tyrant God."

Three beeps, and it rolls backwards a little before rolling forward off the remains of the podium on which it was being held. It comes toward me, and stops about two metres away, growling like a revving engine.

"I doubt that they had anything to do with that, and I'm afraid that I'm not in a position to arrest them. Would you accept an offer of sanctuary, at least until we can make contact with your homeworld?"

A slightly more positive warbling chirp. I don't want to try sending it the location of the bioship without a better understanding of its nature, but leading it there should be no chore.

"That… That thing is the property of the Bialyan government. You have no business interfering!"

I turn back to Doctor Jones, still dangling by his head. "I'm a little impressed you can still talk. But you're wrong; interstellar kidnapping is a crime which a Lantern is fully empowered to investigate. And New Gods are rather forward thinking on the subject of AI rights."

Now… What to do with Doctor Jones?

An idea begins to form. Sure, I can't get away with killing him, but, well, I remember how Superman dealt with Mister Black, don't I?

"But leaving legal niceties aside. Doctor Jones, I will show you that there is nothing you can possess which I cannot take away."

The hand holding his head glows orange as I focus ultrasound scalpels on the graft points inside his head.

"No! What are you doing?!"

I smile, and increase the glow of my eyes.

Agh fuck! I forgot he's a telekine! I can feel it as the meat is twisted and torn and fractures form along the bones in the arm holding him up. I nearly drop him before reinforcing the arm's structures with the orange light.

"That's it? That's your last ditch defence?"

His records show that he can do more than this. I can only assume that not being able to move is impeding him. It isn't for show; with only the mechanisms of the Human brain to work with most telekines I've been able to study need to map certain activities onto their peripheral nervous system.

"Ghrgh!"

And then the ripping force is gone. I restore my arm and check. The surgery is complete. I remove the Pithing Needle, and open my right hand. He falls onto his arse, and I turn away.

"Come Sphere, we have team mates to round up."

"I ca… You…"

I smile, as behind me his eyes widen and he grasps his head with both hands.

"Auauauauauuauauauauauauauauauauaaua…"

Delicious.

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NEXT CHAPTER

Tracers

BACK

Tracers 1

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Tracers

5th September

09:54 GMT -5

Wallace looks uneasy at the furry objects in the basket. "This doesn't feel very scientific."

I sigh, and lower the bat. "It's not. I already know that the Danner Formula worked on them just fine. But yesterday I had to explain to Batman why I decided to build a giant naked statue of myself in the middle of an enemy country. I need this."

We're standing in the training area. The female rats which I treated with the Danner Formula had their litters while we were on the Bialya mission, and their offspring showed superrodent strength and fortitude from birth. Taking a bit of a risk, I commanded the ring to replicate the physiological alterations upon their mothers. They were already suffering from suckling their Dawn-Rat offspring, and leaving them in that situation seemed unnecessarily cruel.

It worked.

Wanting to check a wider variety, I took a random selection of other rats and upgraded them as well.

Now, we're going to play rat baseball.

"Remember, don't put your hand anywhere near their mouths."

Wallace looks at me, then back to the basket. I raise the bat, and take a stance.

His hand moves.

"Recognised, Troia, Ay zero five."

What?

"Hey guys, what are you do-?"

I turn to the zeta tube as the rat flies past me and hits the wall. Edgar McScurry drops to the floor and we all watch as he rights himself, sniffs the air and then scurries along the floor. My grip on the bat relaxes.

"And.. why were you going to hit that rat with a baseball bat?"

I make the appeal gesture. "Because the shop didn't have a cricket bat. Bloody Americans."

She's wearing her black star-studded armour and mithril bracers. Finding out that mithril exists here was a bit of a surprise. Finding out that Diana's gold armour is actually made of orichalcum was even more so. I'd thought that White Wolf made that stuff up for Exalted. But no: take a normal -if highly refined- metal, add a little magic and boom, super tough armour. I've got to add that to Sephtian's slate.

Before Edgar can reach the exit and give Teekl even more cause to shun my company, I grab his tail with an orange tentacle, lift him into the air and ShockCrown him before he can break free. I was a little alarmed to discover that these rats are now strong enough to break my weaker constructs, but I suppose that was sort of the point of the process. I float him over to the basket. Strong though they are, it doesn't seem to occur to them that they can get through a solid looking obstruction.

"Paul…"

Whaw. That's exactly the tone Diana uses.

"Short version: Alan gave me a copy of the formula that gave Hugo Danner super strength. I tested it on some rats, it worked. The bat wouldn't have hurt him."

"You made.. super rats?" She looks more disturbed than impressed.

"Yes!"

I raise my right fist in exaltation.

"NOW THE WORLD WILL TREMBLE IN FEAR BEFORE MY RODENT MINIONS!"

Donna and Wallace blink at me. Wallace waves a finger. "Ah, I'm not gunna help you with that."

"Was a joke, guys. Anyway, works on rats. Had a super strong Blue Jay flying around for a while. Not.. sure.. where that went. Monkey trials struck me as a really bad idea."

I pause, waiting for a response. Donna appears to decide that it's her turn. "So you can make super strong animals? Is that.. good?"

"The Danner Formula normally only works on foetuses. I now know how to make it work on adult organisms. I can make any baseline Human as strong as Hugo Danner was."

"Alright, but what do you need me for? I'm skipping Chemistry revision to be here."

"Eh, Wallace can help you with that."

Wallace grins at her. "I'm, like, the king of chemistry. I can totally help you with that."

"Your name's really Wallace?"

He slumps slightly. Whoops. "Yeah."

"Well, thank you, Wallace. That's very kind of you."

And he's fine again. I hold up my left forefinger. "Ah. Just a moment…"

Kon, Kaldur and M'gann walk in from the habitation area, with the sphere rolling along just behind them.

Tingle tingle.

M'gann's carrying Teekl, who turns her head to peer around the room. After her telepathic confrontation with Doctor Jones and my creation of offensively strong food animals, Teekl's been spending most of her time with M'gann.

"Okay, Kon, do you want the good news first, or the bad news?"

"Ah." He looks at M'gann and Kaldur, then back to me. "Bad.. news?"

"Right, oh-kay."

I float up into the air. Sooo good to have a full charge again.

"After our encounter with Mister Twister, you made it clear to me that you.. were unhappy, not having the full range of Kryptonian powers. I've been working on the issue." I raise my hands, and form two images. "Eye on the left is yours. Eye on the right, Kal-El's."

I trigger a zoom to various points of interest.

"As you can see, near enough identical. Your ability to perceive different wavelengths is almost exactly as good as his, as is your magnification. But."

The image pulls out and extends into the brain.

"Your visual cortex, his visual cortex. As you can see, noticeable differences in structure." I point with my right hand. "This bit here, as far as I can tell, is the capacitor for his heat vision. You don't have one. Your visual cortex is almost entirely Human. So, bad news, I'm sorry, but unless I changed the structure of your brain -which I won't, by the way- there's no way to give you heat vision."

He looks down, slumped, and nods.

"I'm still working on flight. Now, good news. I've found a way to upgrade your strength."

His head comes straight up. "Really?"

I move my arms out to the side. "No, I'm winding you up."

His face falls.

"No no no, that was a joke! That was a joke. I've done it, with a little help from Wallace, Alan and a guy named Abednego Danner."

The eye images are replaced by a cut away diagram of Kon's body, with Kryptonian, Human and Chimeric -presumably Genomorph- components in different tones.

"See, originally, I was trying to see if I could get your Human components to have the same strong nuclear force control as your Kryptonian parts. Couldn't do it. But, it occurred to me, I'd be better off studying existing metahumans, and seeing if I could replicate their abilities."

I float over to him, touching down a metre away.

"And with the Danner Formula, I have a way to upgrade your Human components. Can't promise that you'll be exactly as strong as Superman, but you'll probably be close."

He's smiling.

"And that's why Donna's wearing her armour. You spar today, she'll need it." I extend my hands forward, towards his chest. "So, you want me to do this?"

He looks a little stunned, in a happy sort of way. He nods.

"Yes."

Good day, good day.

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Tracers 2

next

7th September

06:46 GMT -2

…

Balls.

When Kaldur invited Kon, M'gann and I to visit Atlantis with him I was so looking forward to getting a tour of the place from someone who actually knows it. Being told what the structures of the buildings of Shayeris actually are means that I can appreciate it better than just tagging it all as 'alien weirdness to be ignored'. Really, the whole place is a wonder of expert biomancy, natural structures grown many times their natural speed in accordance with the magics of their crafters. Met Kaldur's parents, met his school friends -including the guy I was expecting to be Aqualad- and generally ended up with a much better understanding of Atlantean society than I had before.

Sure, I accidentally said a few things that I maybe shouldn't have done. Once they said that there was a 'Purist' movement which hates all Atlanteans who deviate from the Human physical template, maybe I should have thought a bit more about asking why they didn't just fix the spells which created the alterations. After backtracking a bit -and healing the scars they carved into Topo's chest - it was explained to me that the version of the spell that was used on the 'purebloods' was lost when the great sorcerer Ahri'ahn died just after the Sinking. Why there wasn't some sort of record made I'm not sure, but I got the impression that while they got some warning that the Sinking was going to happen, it wasn't all that much and things were a bit chaotic. Anyway, at this point turning one of the 'altered' Atlanteans back into a baseline Human would be next to impossible, even if it were politically acceptable to try. The bloodline magics are just too embedded.

Like I'd accept that for an answer. I ended up giving this whole speech about how nothing is impossible if you want it strongly enough. Any spell that was cast once can be rediscovered and cast again. I used to hate public speaking like that, but I think it actually went quite well. Particularly when I brought up the fact that I don't have a soul, which around here marks me out as the ultimate outsider, unable to perform magic in a civilisation where everything is magic based.

Apparently, the Atlantean term for someone like me is 'Hollow Man', which I suppose makes a kind of sense. I asked, and apparently people without souls can exist, a sorry state of affairs for those concerned that can be the result of major spell miscasts. The longest any of them are recorded as having survived afterwards is five days, and it's usually less. Until they died they behaved a bit like the zombies from African folklore before Hollywood got to them, listless and bewildered but still biologically alive. They also feature rather heavily in Atlantean horror stories, sort of a halfway house between a zombie and a vampire. That version can sustain itself by feeding on the souls of others, gradually diminishing in power and becoming increasingly corpselike when prevented from doing so. I was actually a bit worried that I might be some sort of Atlantean equivalent of Edward Cullen. Seems a bit trivial, given what happened afterwards.

For some reason, DNA scans on the altered Atlanteans tell me that they should be baseline Humans. Even the scans of the DNA on the bits which clearly aren't Human. The ring detects that the altered bits are altered; it can scan their structures just fine, it just can't explain why. I'd find someone to ask, but I don't think that Atlanteans know much more about DNA than geneticists know about biomancy. Not sure we'd be able to get the Purists on side with a re-enchanting plan. It's not like the Nazis let Jews off if they renounced their faith. But the Inquisition did, so, maybe.

Anyway, everything was going fine until we turned in. M'gann and Kon joined Kaldur in the palace's guest facilities while I returned to the bioship. I'm not ready to trust the ring to breathe for me underwater while I'm asleep. As a result, I managed to sleep through Queen Mera getting kidnapped by Ocean Master, and my friends getting blasted by lightning. M'gann's pain woke me up, but with Kaldur down and Prince Orm 'busy' no one would tell me what was going on.

I don't really remember Orm from anywhere but the episode of Justice League where he tried to use a confrontation with some American submarines to start a war and take over Atlantis. Kind of a big deal, but I didn't want to assume things would go the same here. He wanted to send us after a Purist stronghold in something called 'Old Roman Trench' which he'd heard about from 'sources'. I waited until we were away from the palace before suggesting that it would make more sense for me to scan for her DNA instead. Kaldur wanted to tell Prince Orm, but I suggested that we couldn't tell who among his staff could be trusted.

Funnily enough, she wasn't at either location Prince Orm marked as possible Purist strongholds. Took us half an hour to reach the S'Atiroman Cave where she was actually being held. We blitzed the handful of Purist guards, and confronted Ocean Master himself. My ward paid for itself when he tried to blast me, and I disarmed him.

Literally.

Okay, not exactly literally, but he doesn't have hands anymore. Why he left them unarmoured I don't know. His armour was heavily enchanted, and my first attack against him completely failed because of that. Kon tried to close the range, Kaldur went to free Queen Mera, and M'gann tried a 'Get Over Here' with her telekenesis. Then I saw his trident, and disarmed him by…

Yeah.

Then Kon grabbed him, broke his arms and caved in his chest. Orm's still alive, just about, but the medical mages are actually arguing about whether it would be kinder just to let him die. They still stick people on Traitor's Reef for High Treason here.

What a mess.

I'm sitting in some sort of drawing room in the palace with my head on my hands, trying not to draw attention to myself. King Orin's back, and somewhere in the palace he's just now finding out that his beloved half brother is also his greatest enemy. Kaldur's been pretty stoical about the whole thing, but I saw how shocked he was when we took Orm's helmet off. I checked Queen Mera over on-site, and neither she nor her unborn child -a boy, though Atlanteans don't practise agnatic primogeniture- seem to have suffered any harm. She said that we'd probably arrived before Orm could carry out whatever ritual he'd had planned. They've got a team of mage wrights going over the whole thing, trying to work out what his spell rig was supposed to do.

What I can't work out is, why didn't he just kill her? I mean, he must have known she was pregnant, why not make sure that she wasn't going to be a problem as soon as she was out of sight of the palace? If he really needed a death to fuel the spell, why didn't he just get his followers to abduct a couple of 'impure' Atlanteans? Can't believe it would be that hard in a place where they can just grab a guy off the street and cut letters into his chest without an utterly devastating police response.

The door opens, and Kaldur swims in. I straighten up and make a dejected wave. "How's King Orin doing?"

He approaches, his eyes downcast. "As well as could be expected, given the circumstances."

"Bet the Purists are going to love this, their greatest champion taken down by two aliens, a Hollow Man and a, well…" I point at my neck, wiggling my index finger up and down.

Kaldur lightly shakes his head. "Though Purist sympathies are hardly uncommon, Ocean Master himself is reviled throughout Atlantis. Any Purist group with him as its leader will swiftly find itself with very few friends. "

"That's.. something, I suppose."

"I… I had not wanted you to see my home like this." He takes a seat one along from me. "I had thought that when Ocean Master was finally defeated it would be at the hands of my king, and that it would be a day of great celebration. Now…"

"Yeah."

We sit in silence for a moment.

"What did.. Prince Orm, actually do in Atlantian government?"

"He served as King Orin's regent during his frequent absences on the surface. I think… I think that the League will have to manage without Aquaman for a time."

"Are the guards going through Orm's quarters?"

He shakes his head. "No."

"Why not?"

"Who could be trusted to undertake such a search? Prin-. Orm handled many appointments to the royal household, and as Ocean Master must have had help from inside the palace to capture Queen Mera. They are all under suspicion."

"Damn."

"My king said that he intends to ask the city of Nanauve to provide a replacement detail until the investigation is complete. Since virtually their entire population would be considered 'impure' by the Purists, such groups have never had any support among them."

Shark people. Wonderful. Makes sense though. I was a bit puzzled as to why their king was attending the Conservatory, but apparently they use a system like that of ancient Sparta, and have two kings at a time. King Nanaue Sha'ark is the younger of their current rulers, and they judged it worthwhile to send him to an institution as prestigious as the Conservatory of Sorcery in order to strengthen their city-state's bonds to the next generation of the Poseidonian elite.

And if he wasn't such a huge arse, it might have worked.

"Where've Kon and M'gann got to?"

"They left on the bioship half an hour ago. We did not know where you were."

"Oh. I, um… I thought I should stick around in case anyone wanted me for anything. Didn't want to get in the way, so I thought.. this.. was…"

That wasn't very clever of me. I didn't know what to do, so I removed myself from the situation. But I should have stayed visible. And leaving Kon and M'gann…

"You should join them. There is a zeta beam station in the city. I will lead you there."

"Yeah. Thanks."

We get up.

"After all, you have school today as well."

…

"Wait, what?"

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Tracers 3

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7th September

06:01 GMT -5

"No no no no no no no no no no no."

Diana stands there, waiting for me to stop. "Paul."

"No! This is not happening."

We're in the living area. Behind us, M'gann is making lunch for Kon and herself. Not for me, I put a stop to that right away. I have no idea what's going on, but I know what's not going on: me, going to an American high school. Kon needs the socialisation practice, fine. He doesn't need the knowledge, as since I upgraded his physique he finally agreed to let M'gann try meshing his programming with his conscious mind. It's working, slowly. It's even safe to let him into the kitchen now, though he hasn't got much beyond toast yet. M'gann wants to go to school, fine. She could probably use the Earth culture practice. I'm twenty nine, for heaven's sake!

Teekl's washing her front right paw while sitting on the work surface. Kaldur's staying behind in Atlantis for the time being, Red Tornado's gone to see what Kon's up to, and an uncomfortable looking Mister J'onzz has retreated to the far side of the kitchen. M'gann's looking a little nervous as well. Used to be that I'd hate making a scene like this. But, damn it, some things must not stand.

"Paul, I already told you that this was-."

"I thought you were talking to Kon and M'gann!"

She's right, though. School had come up in conversation. I just didn't credit the idea she meant me. My knowledge gap isn't that bad. Wait, I dimly remember that holding people back is more common in the American education system than it is in Britain. I haven't done anything really stupid lately, have I?

"I'm not even a US citizen!"

"Actually, you are. The League has arranged public identities for each of you. You just need to select a name which you-."

"Oh gods it's happened, hasn't it? I've caught it from you people. I'm going to start saying 'mailbox' and 'aloominum' and thinking that footballs are supposed to be ovoid and drinking tea with ice in it. I don't even like tea!"

"Paul, calm down."

"No. No. This is not the time for-."

"Paul, direct order. Calm down."

I freeze, trying to breathe more slowly. "I should have asked for something in the oath about impossible requests. Look, I find it strange enough that you're okay with M'gann going to school at forty eight, but what exactly do you think-?"

"Actually…" We both look at Mister J'onzz. He hesitates for a moment before continuing. "M'gann may be forty eight Earth years old, but Martians mature much more slowly than Humans. In your terms, she would be equivalent to a sophomore student."

I look blank. "And in British?"

"Sixteen. That would be.. year eleven, I think, in the British system."

Aaaagh!

This actually is the Junior Justice League! Everyone's… It's not just training. Not just training. That means.. everyone…

What?

"Exactly how old do you think I am?"

What do I do what do I do?

"Mid teens. I thought it best to put you in the same class as Kon and M'gann. I've no doubt that you can cope with the work load." She looks at me in an interrogative manner. "Actually, I hadn't realised until just now that I don't know exactly how old you are."

What do I do what do I do?

!Lie!

"Seventeen. I finished my GCSEs last year, and I have absolutely no desire to go back to secondary school."

Should I feel bad about that? I don't. I can't leave here, this is my home, but there's no way I'm going to school if I can possibly avoid it.

"Obviously, I don't have the certificates with me, but if you want something to put in the files I can just tell you my final grades."

Diana frowns slightly, and her eyes drop for a second. Progress!

"Students normally don't leave high school until they're eighteen."

"My birthday's on the seventeenth of September. If you really want me to go for ten days…"

She's thinking about it. Keep pushing.

"You're not making Kaldur go, and he's younger than me."

That's true.

"Kaldur is Atlantean-."

"And I'm British! Completely different education system, which I've finished."

"Don't you think it might be useful for you to have a genuine qualification?"

"Aaaaaah. No. I can already draw information from all databases on Earth. Once I get in touch with the Controllers, I'll have access to knowledge a billion years more advanced than anything Earth has to offer. I already told you that I don't want a secret identity, so there's no point in developing one. I am a Sector Lantern, and that's a full time job. High school is not worth my time."

Her left hand goes to her chin. "It would have been helpful to know this in advance."

Eh? "I told you in July. At the barbecue, with Alan and Donna."

Her eyes move to the side, the skin around them tightening as she tries to remember.

"You said that you 'weren't interested'. You didn't say that you'd finished school."

"Didn't I? Could of sworn…" Or was that the bit I said to Donna? Now she mentions it, I'm not sure. I shake my head. "It's splitting hairs anyway."

"The identity already exists…"

"Ring, detect all electronic records the League has created for my shell identity, copy them, then delete the originals."

"Compliance."

"There. Dealt with."

"Paul."

"If you can't list my real origin, at least list me as a local British national. Or even Maltusian. Something I'd want to be, something sort of accurate. Don't ask me to lie to everyone like that."

She nods, resigned. "Very well."

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Tracers 4

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7th September

06:36 GMT -5

"Unable to comply."

"Alright, but why?"

I'm back in casuals, and I'm standing in my room in front of my personal lantern. I thought it would be best if I put a little space between Diana and myself for the moment. I need to calm down properly, for a start. Not quite sure how I got away with concealing my true age. Isn't she some sort of truth demigoddess? I had a good look at myself in the mirror when I got in here, and I honestly don't understand how they could think that I'm in my mid teens. Maybe that's because I know what I looked like at that age? Or maybe they're underestimating my age due to the situation's demand characteristics?

Since I need something to do for a little while, I thought I'd have a go at doing what Wallace suggested during the Bialya mission. Gives me an excuse not to think about the chaos in Atlantis as well.

"No superior connection available."

"Expand."

"Connection to Central Power Battery permits increased matrix stability. Do you desire to form a connection to the Orange Central Power Battery?"

"No!"

"Compliance."

"What is increased matrix stability, and why do I need it to put my lantern into subspace?"

"Each personal lantern contains a small planar fracture, systems for stabilising and maintaining the planar fracture, and capacitors for storing power taken from the planar fracture. Simply put, linking the personal lantern to the Central Power Battery fortifies and magnifies all systems. Practical consequences include increasing power draw from the fracture and increased fracture stability."

"So, if I don't connect to the Central Power Battery, and put the lantern into subspace…"

"High probability of fracture evaporation."

"The personal lantern would permanently shut down."

"Affirmative."

Not doing that, then. "Does not having a connection create any other problems?"

"Affirmative. Eventual fracture collapse is inevitable. A connection with the Central Power Battery extends personal lantern life expectancy indefinitely."

"Collapse? How soon?"

"Estimated remaining lifespan one hundred ten thousand four hundred ninety five local years."

Fuuw. I can live with that. "Does this personal lantern have some sort of.. camouflage mode?"

"No. However, this lantern is capable of generating a subspace vacuole to conceal itself."

"I thought you just told me it couldn't do that without shutting down?"

"Ring based storage utilises power ring signature as the connection point. This permits storage mobility, but causes fracture instability in unconnected personal lanterns. The lantern's own system retains a small connection to the external world, resulting in lantern immobility while in use."

"How small a connection?"

"Two point one cubic nanometres."

"No risk of collapse?"

"No significant loss of active lifespan predicted. However, this system is much less secure, and can be breached by less advanced subspace manipulation systems."

Abra Kadabra aside… Should be safe, for the most part. Just have to put it somewhere that isn't obvious. Hmm. Haven't yet recharged since that excitement in Atlantis. I hold out the ring.

"Recharge."

Nothing makes the world feel more right than recharging the ring. I feel better about having had the argument with Diana as soon as the orange beam hits. Confidence, that's what it means to me. I'll go and smooth things over with her, then talk to her about Robert? I've been trying to find a good time, but Batman's a pretty busy guy. But first…

I pick up my personal lantern, and hold it over the foot of my bed.

"Lantern, occlude."

The lantern vanishes by degrees. It's almost as if it's turning out of sight, into dimensions I can't perceive. I run a scan, and the ring can still detect it. Hmm.

Kon and M'gann will probably be leaving for school before too long. Does Kon expect me to be joining them? Agh, I need to try and smooth things over there as well.

"Ring, take me to Kon."

My bedroom is replaced by the cavernous pool area. Kon's working on his bike. After the thing with the robot monkeys I spent time learning how to ride my scooter properly, but I took out all of the weird super hero adaptations when I rebuilt it. Kon's taken to working on his manually. I think he finds the focusing therapeutic, plus it helps integrate the mechanical engineering knowledge with which he was programmed.

The sphere is circling him, like a puppy with a ball in its mouth. I need to try and find out roughly how intelligent it is. Are we talking animal? Small child? Adult? Something completely unrelated to Human development? I think I've located Scott Free, but approaching him could be a bit tricky.

"Jealous much?"

Kon's looked around to the sphere, in the opposite direction from where I'm standing. The sphere twitters musically. Is it bored? Maybe I could build it some sort of giant marble run?

"No, I'm sure that your heart's big enough for me and the bike."

His head jerks back around. "Hey Paul! When'd you get back?"

"About half an hour ago. Look, I'm really sorry about leaving you like that after the fight with Ocean Master. I didn't.. really.. know what to do."

"Uuh, it's okay, but, why didn't you come and find me when you got back?"

I walk over and sit down next to him. "Had a bit of an argument with Diana. Upshot is, I completed the compulsory part of the British education system over a year ago and won't be joining you at school."

"Oh."

Yep, downcast as predicted.

"Ready for school?"

M'gann flies down the steps which lead from the kitchen area. Diana, Red Tornado and Mister J'onzz are just behind her. Teekl is flying with her. Flying for M'gann? I feel a little betrayed by that.

"I made our lunches!"

Kon and I stand, Kon wiping his hands on a rag. I always had a plastic lunchbox, but it seems that paper bags are de rigueur here. Wouldn't the stuff inside get squashed all the time?

"The first day of the scholastic season carries great cultural resonance."

Not sure what it's like on Mars, Mister J'onzz, but I always felt more of a 'ugh, here we are again' myself.

M'gann lands next to Kon, while Teekl lands on the sphere, which responds by growling its engine. Teekl stares down at it for a moment, then dawks it.

"We want to wish you.. both, well."

I make brief eye contact with Diana. She doesn't look particularly annoyed. I jerk my eyes and head in the direction of Kon. She dips her head slightly in acknowledgement, then focuses on Kon.

"Yes. I will be reading your report card at the end of the year, and I expect you to learn as much in the classroom as you do in the training ring."

Kon straightens. "I will. I won't disappoint you."

back

Tracers 5

next

7th September

06:42 GMT -5

There's a slight creak as Red Tornado focuses his attention on M'gann. "Miss Martian. Do you intend to attend school in your current form?"

M'gann claps her hands, then spreads out her arms and legs. "Ah! I spent hours choosing this outfit."

The change in her shapeshifting clothing spreads from her feet upward. She ends up with tall white socks, black shoes, a white t-shirt, and dark pink headband, skirt and.. jacket.. thing? The skirt has a narrow black belt with a gold buckle. Or rather, I suppose it probably doesn't, being a shapeshifted replica rather than an actual belt. Maybe? After how embarrassed she got when I asked about it the first time I've not broached the subject again.

"Can M'gann M'orzz pass as an Earth girl now?"

Red Tornado regards her for a moment. "Unlikely."

"Just kidding!"

In an instant her skin turns from green to pale pink. It's actually quite close to what my colour is these days as I've been getting a good deal more sun than I used to. Kon's still fairly pale. I suppose that his fortitude also protects his skin from ultraviolet damage.

M'gann turns on the spot to show off her new form. "Meet Megan Morse!" She curtsies, then turns to Kon. "What's your new name?"

Kon thinks about it for a moment. "Ah, you said you liked Conner, right? Why can't I just be Conner El?"

I smile, and lean forward. "The whole point of having a secret identity is that it's different from your super identity. Kon-El to Conner El is a bit obvious."

Mister J'onzz's form ripples as a navy blue suit replaces his black Manhunter uniform. "I chose the name 'John Jones' for myself, and suggested 'John Smith' for Red Tornado."

Mister J'onzz's Human-seeming form is that of a bald black man here. I distinctly remember him primarily using a white alter ego in the comics. Is that the product of him arriving on Earth decades later, in different social conditions? Or maybe he made a connection between Caucasian Humans and White Martians?

"Perhaps you could use 'Johnson' as your family name?"

I seem to remember the name 'John' meaning something about light in Ca'andran. 'Son of the Light'? That just sounds silly.

Kon looks at Diana. Oh, I see where this is going.

"What's yours?"

She hesitates for a moment. "Amazons don't tend to use them. Those few Amazons born since the Exile were once called 'the Younger', but that had fallen out of use by the time of my birth. When I joined the All-Star Squadron and their paperwork required that I have one I simply gave my mother's name."

Kon crosses his arms. "Then I'll pass."

Mister J'onzz is not so easily dissuaded. "Perhaps, Kent?"

He didn't.

He did. I seem to remember using the 'K' word myself in the desert when I first encountered Kon, but I don't think that Kon remembers it. He certainly hasn't asked about it.

M'gann seems to likes it. "Oh. In memory of Doctor Fate! The late Kent Nelson."

"Uh-of course."

Good save. Mister J'onzz shifts back to his Martian form. Or rather, his sort of Martian form. Now, let's see…

**[My arm over his shoulder. I'm grinning.] Smooth sir, very smooth. Why not suggest that he wear glasses, and study journalism?**

His eyes dart to me for a moment. I think. It's a little hard to tell. None of the others appear to have heard that.

"Okay. Sure. Guess it'd be an honor, or something."

Looks like Kon likes it, -well, is prepared to tolerate it- and so he becomes Conner Kent anyway. Is that narrative causality or historical imperative or just plain weird? I'm trying to keep my amusement from my face.

"Well, Conner Kent, timetochangeyourshirt."

She's actually batting her eyelids. Kon looks down at his 'S', and puts his right hand over it protectively. M'gann pokes him.

"You don't wanna reveal your identity."

Kon reaches up and pulls his t-shirt over his head. M'gann bites her lip as she ogles his broad muscular chest. Honestly. As it comes off Kon turns the t-shirt inside out and holds it out to M'gann, the 'S' now hidden from view.

"Will this work?"

She's blushing. "Works for me."

Come on M'gann, you've seen his bare torso before.

"Thaaat's not really a disguise. I think people are probably intelligent enough to add an 'S' on their own. Can I lend you a shirt? I'm sure the ring can alter something to your size."

He shrugs. "Sure."

I move the t-shirt into subspace. This gives M'gann an unobstructed view, and she takes full advantage.

!All together!

!All mine!

"Kon, do you have a colour preference? I've got white, blue and orange."

"Not white, and orange is kinda your thing."

"Quite true. Right then, ring, alter one blue shirt to Kon's dimensions."

"Compliance."

Purely coincidentally, the orange scanning beam projects from my eyes. It runs over him once from head to toe before moving back the other way and transposing the shirt onto him. Perfect fit. Probably not a combination of clothes I would have picked out, but I don't think he's ever shown any interest in other clothes. Have to take him shopping some time.

Whaw. Did I just mentally volunteer to go clothes shopping with someone?

Kon holds out his arms to get a good look at it. He doesn't seem to be that bothered one way or another, and lowers them. M'gann takes telekinetic hold of the lunch bags, then takes Kon's arm to lead him to the exit. As he passes me he frowns for a moment.

"Wait. Shouldn't I be Conner Nelson?"

back

Tracers 6

next

7th September

06:47 GMT -5

Mister J'onzz sighs. "They grow up so fast."

Diana looks at me. "Yes, they do."

"Look, um, I'm sorry about that. I should have realised that you wouldn't magically know how old I was."

She dismisses the matter with a wave of her left hand. "Since you're not going to school, what plans do you have for today?"

I fold my arms against my chest. "I was pretty much just going to laze around, watching TV and smoking marijuana."

No reaction from Red Tornado or Mister J'onzz. Diana raises an eyebrow. Oh well, I tried.

"I'm going to follow up on the Bialya mission. I think there are a couple of people on Earth who come from the same place as the sphere, and I want to talk to them about it. Maybe see if they can take it back."

Diana nods. "How have they escaped being noticed?"

"They look Human, and one of them is the New God of Freedom. Trapping him, even metaphorically, is pretty much impossible."

Mister J'onzz narrows his eyes slightly. "Your description of these.. 'New Gods'… It seems a little…"

"I know. That's why I wasn't going to add anything to the Justice League database until I'd been able to confirm it, but-."

I point to the sphere. It warbles. Oh.

"The son of Highfather and his wife, since you ask."

A series of beeps.

"No, his natural son. I said Freedom, not the Glory of War."

Mister J'onzz looks from me to the sphere. "You were able to understand what the sphere said?"

"Sort of. The ring doesn't turn it into words, but I can generally understand what it means."

Diana looks at Mister J'onzz, then Red Tornado. "I can understand it as well. Red?"

"No. I have been attempting to decode its sounds since it arrived here with no success. I find it odd that the two of you understand it so easily."

"It's not that strange. Metaphysically, Diana's probably a lot like a New God." I hold out my left hand, palm outward, and do the glowing flame thing Alan does when he flies. "And the ring is letting me fake it. I know I can't understand it when I'm not wearing it. Have the Greenies come up with anything useful?"

Diana and Mister J'onzz exchange looks. Oh, come on, by this stage you should be able to do telepathic consultations without looking at each other. Mister J'onzz responds for them.

"They are.. discussing with the Guardians what information can be released."

"That sounds about as helpful as I was expecting. I'll write up what I think I know later, but don't treat it as guaranteed."

Diana focuses on me for a moment. "I thought you said that your ring doesn't have a database?"

Whoops.

"I.. exaggerated a bit. Doesn't have much of one, and most of what's there isn't very useful, especially as I can't confirm it until my year's up."

Her eyes dart away for a moment when I say 'year'. She doesn't feel bad about that, does she? I still think it's a fair trade. "Hm. Very well. I will accompany you to meet this 'god of freedom'."

"Ooh. Um. Sir, you understand that they're here to hide from the New God of Tyranny? They're probably not going to be happy about having their cover blown. I was.. kind of planning to keep it to a minimum…"

"Orange Lantern, I have the greatest respect for what you have managed to achieve since receiving your ring, but you are still my student. Diplomatic contacts like this need to be conducted by League members."

"Yes sir."

"If their anonymity is such a concern, we can keep their identities between the two of us."

I nod. I hadn't expected that she'd want to get involved, but it wouldn't hurt to have her support. Now that I think about it, the only combat mission I've actually gone with her on where I was fully participating was dealing with that kraken that was attacking shipping in the Skandage. Not sure why she got called in on that one. Kraken aren't part of Greek mythology, but I suppose when a giant monster is attacking people you can't be too fussy.

Diana takes a step towards the zeta tubes, and I turn to follow her.

"Paul. A moment, if you will."

I wonder what Mister J'onzz wants? I turn back. Diana stops as well, probably as curious as me.

"A moment ago you sent an extremely clear telepathic message to me, and I do not believe anyone else was able to hear it. Diana?"

She shakes her head. "I didn't hear anything."

"Yeah, M'gann said that I'd taken to telepathy surprisingly easily."

He looks at me for a moment. "I do not think that you appreciate exactly how unusual what you are doing is. When M'gann told me that you were able to induce tactile sensation I was.. sceptical."

Aaaaaaagh.

"Oh, look, it was after our memories got wiped. I already apologised to her about it, she seemed okay and I backed off as soon as…"

His eyes widen slightly.

"And you didn't know about that." I look down, and wrinkle my nose. "You didn't know about that. Right."

There's a pause. Uuuuooooh.

He looks away from me. "You, and M'gann, are both mature young people. I am certain that she would have mentioned it if she found the experience… Uncomfortable."

This, actually, doesn't feel as awkward as I thought it would. I wonder if that's the ring's doing? I'd still rather not be having this discussion.

"Sir, love to talk about this some more, but,-" I point both index fingers at Diana, who now has both eyebrows raised. "-duty calls. Is there anything you need to say to me urgently?"

"I.. do not believe so."

"Right! Nice talking to you." I nod. "Red Tornado."

I turn around in what I hope is a definitive way and walk towards Diana.

"Come on Teekl, Sphere. Walkies."

back

Tracers 7

next

7th September

06:52 GMT -5

"Recognised, Wonder Woman, zero three, Orange Lantern, B zero six, Teekl, C zero one, Sphere, C zero two."

The zeta terminus nearest the home of Scott and 'Barbara' Free is in a Wayne Enterprises owned dockside warehouse on the shore of Hartford, Connecticut. Its neighbours are actually used for secure storage, so it doesn't look odd that this one has sophisticated security devices on the exterior, as well as armoured sides and anti-scanning insulation. Its other form of security comes from the fact that Bruce Wayne basically owns this town, being its largest employer and having donated generously to several civic projects. I'm not exactly sure what it is they do here; all of the area's other major companies appeared to be insurance providers.

Teekl zips in front of my face as I follow Diana to the exit.

"Teekl number one? Teekl queen?"

"Teekl, that's not how it w-." And there's a paw on my nose. I can just feel the claws against my skin. Bet Larfleeze never has to put up with this. "Tell you what, you can be the Sphere's queen."

Her head tilts slightly to the side as she withdraws her paw, and then she flies over to land at Diana's feet. Diana bends down and rubs her head.

"I hadn't appreciated how alive she is."

"I was expecting her to be a bit more obedient as well."

"Was she always able to talk?"

"I didn't hear her speak when she was with Klarion. Teekl? Were you always able to talk?"

Her tail waves back and forth. "Only Klarion hear." She stalks off to sniff the corner of the room.

"What does she mean?"

"Not sure. Power rings can translate for animals. Maybe Klarion didn't share his ability to understand her?"

"Power rings can translate animal sounds? I hadn't realised that."

"I think it's mostly interpreting gestures. They aren't really saying what you hear."

She walks over to a computer console, and checks that internal security hasn't been compromised.

Ring, check for listening devices, then secure room.

Compliance.

Diana turns back to me as the walls, floor and ceiling begin to glow orange. She looks around for a moment.

"Very thorough. Now, tell me about the people we're here to meet."

"Sir." I raise my hands, and create constructs in the shape of our targets. "Scott and Barda Free, aka Mister Miracle,-"

His costume was easy to locate, as he wears it on publicly available advertising material. I create an additional image next to his normal guise for comparison.

"-and Big Barda."

She's running self defence classes at one of the local gyms. I didn't want to risk scanning their home in case they picked up on it, and as a result I've had to rely on memory for her armour. Tight fitting mail, skirt thing, mega rod and weird helmet. That was about it, wasn't it? Should probably mention it to Diana.

"I don't guarantee that I've got her armour completely correct. I'll give their house a scan when we get there and inform you of any major errors on my part."

Diana walks over to the armoured image. Barda is actually at least a foot taller than her, and noticeably more muscular.

"Impressive."

"Don't get your hopes up. My files suggest that, having done a lot of fighting for Darkseid, she's more interested in a quiet life here rather than getting involved in our line of work."

"What's she the New God of?"

"No idea. Honestly, that dual existence thing might just be for their aristocrats."

The sphere had been heading for the exit, but it's rolled back to the image of Mister Free and is bleeping excitedly.

"She isn't one of their aristocrats?"

"No. Elite warrior, but not properly part of the ruling group. She was part of Darkseid's bodyguard… But I say again, I haven't been able to check a lot of this data yet."

"And her husband is an aristocrat?"

"Yes, as the son of Highfather, ruler of New Genesis. The 'good guys', if you like. Highfather was a friend of Darkseid's brother, before said brother was assassinated on Darkseid's order."

"He had his own brother killed?"

"His mother, too. Though, to be fair, Queen Heggra was completely horrible."

"It seems to run in the family."

"She trained him in it. Intentionally, I mean. She believed that Apokolips needed the greatest tyrant as its ruler, someone completely ruthless and cruel. I don't know if she was proud of her success or not."

"How did Scott Free and Barda meet?"

"As part of the treaty which ended the last major war between Apokolips and New Genesis, the rulers of both worlds sent their sons as hostages to the other. Darkseid's son Orion was raised by Highfather, while Scott Free was sent to a facility run by the New God of Child Abuse in an attempt to break his will. Didn't work, and eventually he escaped to Earth."

"The New God of… They have a god for that!?" Diana is clearly horrified.

"Goddess, actually. Her name is Granny Goodness, and she is part of the inner circle. Very good at breaking young minds, and then rebuilding them into whatever Darkseid wants. I don't have a picture, but think short fat old woman with a perm. Basically, shoot on sight."

"And Highfather willingly delivered his son into her care?"

I shrug. "It stopped the war. Maybe he was sure that Scott Free could survive and escape? If he'd stayed on Apokolips, Orion would just have turned into a copy of his father. If he was trying to do the greatest good for the greatest number…"

"Perhaps. But, still. His own son. What is Highfather the New God of?"

"Don't know. If I had to guess, I'd say loving paternal authority. He's basically Zeus without the philandering."

I can feel her desire to defend her god. Of all peoples, why the heck do the Amazons still revere him? The fact that she doesn't have an immediate comeback suggests to me that that part of the mythology is more or less true. Must remember to look up Cassandra Sandsmark later.

"Let's leave the comparative theology aside for now. How did you plan to approach them?"

"Walk up to their house in my civvies, ring on the doorbell." I shrug at her raised eyebrows. "Worked with Alan. I doubt they make a point of answering the door armed. If they'd wanted me to go away, I'd have done so. But, if you're coming, low key isn't really possible. I don't suppose you've got any casual clothing stored around here, have you?"

She walks over to a crate at the side of the room, and touches a panel. It opens, revealing female clothing. "It may surprise you to learn this, but I do think ahead occasionally."

"Of course sir." I walk to the far side of the room, look away and put my hands over my eyes.

"I'm just taking my boots off, Paul. The clothing goes over my armor."

"Er. Right."

"After all, I wouldn't want to make M'gann jealous, would I?"

Oh no, not this time sir.

"You know sir, I haven't actually told anyone that I know you keep at least one change of clothes at Alan's house."

A brief pause. I hear clothing being tugged on.

"When I returned to Themyscira after the Second World War, Alan offered to store some of my belongings until I decided whether I wanted to stay in the United States or not."

"And they're still there sixty years later?"

"Well,-."

"Oh, I believe you sir. I believe you. Thousands wouldn't..."

back

Tracers 8

next

7th September

06:56 GMT -5

"…on life support, so King Orin is going to be busy for the next few weeks."

Turns out that King Orin didn't tell anyone specifically why he had to return home when he left the Watchtower, and it was far easier to explain what happened than listen to Diana continue to question me about my relationship with M'gann.

"You cut off his hands?"

We're walking down the suburban street that leads to the Frees' home. There aren't many people up and about at this time of the morning, but there are a few and I didn't want to transfer us directly to their door in case someone saw. We're still aiming to keep this as quiet as possible.

"Only his hands and feet were unarmoured, and he was pointing an arcane weapon of a type I was unfamiliar with at a bound pregnant woman. I could have reattached them later, but the healers wanted me out of the way. I checked with Kaldur beforehand, and Atlantean rules of engagement allow-."

"I wasn't criticising the level of force you used. I'm more impressed that you picked up his vulnerabilities that quickly rather than repeatedly trying to blast armour you couldn't breach."

"Oh. Thank you."

We walk a little further. Teekl and the sphere are back at the warehouse. Diana is wearing blue jeans, white blouse and a denim jacket. I've got my environmental shield set to minimum. I don't think we stand out significantly.

"Mera's pregnant?"

"Yep. A boy, though I didn't tell her in case she didn't want to know."

"I'll have to send them my congratulations."

And I stop walking, my hands going to my face.

Diana stops as well. "What's wrong?"

"I kept his hands with me when we went back to the palace. I didn't have a bag or anything, so I put them into the ring's subspace pocket. The healers told me to get lost. I've still got them."

"You weren't planning to add them to the trophy room, I hope?"

"No! No, gods no."

"Then later today you can go back to Poseidonis and hand them over to the palace doctor."

I peel my hands away from my eyes. "Sir, was that pun intentional?"

A second of puzzlement. "I'm speaking Greek. If you heard a pun, it wasn't from me." She appears to think for a moment. "You heard me telling you to 'hand them over', didn't you?"

I nod. She smiles as she turns away, and continues down the pavement. I shake my head, and follow her.

We stop again at the path leading up to the Frees' front door. She nods at me. "Ring, full scan."

And I know the house's contents. Most of it is the same as its neighbours, escapology equipment aside, but there's a hidden compartment I can't scan. Scott and Barda also give confusing results. On one level, it's reading Human organs and tissues. On another, it's like it's glitching, occasionally getting partial images of something more. They're sitting at the dining room table.

And they've both looked up. Yep, they felt that.

"They're both inside, and they know that someone scanned them. I think they're keeping their specialist equipment in a sealed compartment, but I can't scan it."

"They can block power ring scans?"

"It doesn't surprise me that it's within their technological ability. I might be able to brute force it, but that would be a bit aggressive."

She nods. "Wait here."

I nod, and she walks up the path and rings the doorbell. We wait for a moment, but nothing happens. She notices the spy hole, and moves to stand directly in front of it.

Ring, what are they-?

The door explodes outwards, hitting Diana full on and knocking her back onto the path before she uses her flight to steady herself and throws it aside.

"Raaagh!" "Just two of them. This won't take long."

Barda charges out, Mega-Rod held in a two handed grip. She's wearing a short purple dressing gown which blows open, revealing red pyjama shorts, a red cut off pyjama top and pink fluffy bunny slippers. The Mega-Rod swings down in an overhead blow and is met by Diana's bracers, raised in a cross. Barda moves back a tiny amount before reversing the butt of the Rod into Diana's face, sending her hurtling backwards past me into the road.

Yeah, they think we've blown their cover. Poop.

And now she's looking at me and armour armour armour!

My grey armour and orange construct armour appear as she sprints forward. I raise my hands.

"Barda, could we just talk-!"

"Errgh!" "Why are you even here?"

She swings the Mega-Rod right to left with the intent of smashing me in half. I transfer to just behind her.

"Barda, please try to calm-."

She bends her legs slightly, and hurls herself backwards at me. I instinctively start to duck, before realising that's stupid and transferring myself left. She steadies herself and goes into a crouch, ready to attack me again.

She really isn't wearing a bra.

Diana torpedoes into her side, grabbing her around the waist. They both go down, grappling. Barda drops the Rod as soon as Diana gets inside her reach. Diana's got that, fine, what now? I look at the doorway and see Mister Free paused there, holding a silver disc in each hand. I don't remember exactly what those do, but I don't think it would be good for us.

I transfer to just in front of him, and raise my hands in surrender. "Mister Free, we're not here to fight. Please ask your wife to stop hitting Wonder Woman."

He blinks, and lowers the discs slightly. "That's Wonder Woman?" "I told her, don't go charging out, but does she listen?"

"Yes, and-."

Barda flies through the air and hits the side of their house hard enough to break several of the slanted slats of wood which make up the frontage. She rights herself again in a second, spots me, and lunges. I take a step back and feel something press into the rear of my armour construct. What?

Barda's fist slams into the right side of my face, but rather than decapitating me or bouncing off my construct faceplate I spin with my abdomen as the axis. I make a full dizzying rotation head over heels as she fails to arrest her momentum and my head comes back around again just in time to get a face full of New Goddess boob. That sends me spinning sideways and into the air before I flick the damn enerjam off and steady myself. Enerjam, is that what they're called? Not sure.

Diana flies at Barda at head height, pulling Barda's face straight into her knee. As Barda staggers back I eliminate the friction from under her feet and she goes down.

back

Tracers 9

next

7th September

07:00 GMT -5

!Pointless stop stop stop!

She's not going to listen, she needs to see something. Sphere! I transfer back to the warehouse. No point worrying about secrecy at this point. A quick scan, and then another transfer to the place the sphere and Teekl wandered off to. Fortunately, they only went as far as the seafront, and I don't think anyone's seen them. I materialise, stick a hand on each one, extend my environmental shield and then transfer back to the Frees' front lawn.

The sphere starts warbling happily as soon as it sees them. Mister Free and Barda look around in surprise, and Diana takes advantage of the opening to lunge up and toward her, bringing her fist down on the top of her head and driving her to the ground hard.

!No wrong no!

A mechanical claw construct grabs Diana and pulls her back and the sphere rolls up to Mister Free and beeps loudly.

"Sorry about that sir, but we need to deescalate."

Mister Free kneels and places his right hand on the sphere. "I can understand it." "It's the same technology as Mother Box, but I don't recognize the configuration."

How else to help?

I wave my right hand and the front panels of the house fuse back together. I gesture with my right palm and the door floats over to the doorway and reattaches, unbroken and unbent. I turn and the lawn levels out. Then I take a deep breath and float over to land next to Barda.

"Can I offer you a hand up?"

She glares at me, scowling. I give up on smiling and just lift her to her feet instead. Once she's upright she tries swatting the construct away, but I let it dissipate first.

"Sir? Mister and Missus Free? Might I suggest that we move this off the street?"

Mister Scott looks each way down the road and tightens the muscles in the corners of his eyes, as if tasting something unpleasant. "I think it's a bit late for that." "Oh, not again."

We all turn and take in the rest of the street. There aren't as many rubberneckers as there would be inside a city but I'd say that with all the neighbours looking on in horror -through windows for the closer ones, out on the street if they're further away- we've lost plausible deniability.

Or maybe we just need to lie bigger.

I take a video camera out of subspace and raise it to my eye, panning it around without turning it on.

"And that's a wrap! We can go again if you want Missus Free, but I don't think we'll get it any better with another take!" I lower the camera. "It's a good job Mister Free knows so much about explosives! That would never have worked so well without the special effects!"

Stares of utter disbelief from Diana and Barda. I think that Mister Free is trying not to laugh.

"We can work out how you want it cut now if you like! I can plug this right into your computer, inside!"

The grin is back, and I'm nodding my head vigorously in the direction of the now restored door.

Diana takes a few paces towards me. "Orange Lantern, no one's going to believe that."

"They will if there's no official follow up, so when we get inside you'll need to phone the police. Also, you might need to turn up at one of Missus Free's self defence classes."

Barda is now squinting at me with her left eye. "I didn't know that Earth had a God of Bullshit." "Scott, could that work? I don't want to move again either."

Mister Free steps away from the door as if to invite us in. "That might work, if we get off the street now." "New York was totally your fault. You know that, right?"

Camera held out in such a way that it would be obvious to onlookers, I walk into their home. Barda's following closely behind me, having paused to pick up her Mega-Rod. "I'll put the coffee on." "It said five items or less!"

Their table is still set for breakfast. There's some carbonised bacon on the plate in front of the seat Mister Free walks past me to occupy, next to a bowl that holds the residue of some sort of cereal. The sphere takes up station next to him as I come to a halt in front of the table. Barda strides past into the kitchen area, Teekl rubs against my left leg and Diana closes the door as she brings up the rear. The other plate on the table holds some half eaten toast. The toast is plain.

I meet Mister Free's eyes as he passes Diana the phone. "We might have got away with it."

I hope we have, anyway. Diana takes the phone, then walks into the living room to attempt to dissuade the police from bombing the place.

Mister Free pats the sphere, which responds by doing a theremin impression.

"After we detected a boom tube from Apokolips last week, we were expecting company. Just not from the Justice League." "And I could not be more relieved."

"The sphere there was all that came through, as far as my team were able to tell."

I shift back to civilian clothing, drop my construct armour and turn down my environmental shield.

"You know of Apokolips?" "There goes the neighbourhood."

"A bit. That's why we're here. We picked up the sphere in Bialya. If Bialya's trading with Apokolips, knowing a bit isn't good enough."

He nods. There's a gurgling noise from the kitchen, and he starts to look around before stopping himself. "I suppose something like this was inevitable." "Goodbye, splendid isolation."

Barda stalks out of the kitchen having retied her dressing gown, and thrusts a cup of coffee into my chest. "Coffee." "See, I can be polite to guests."

"Ah, thank you, but I don't-."

"Coffee. You will drink it." "What's wrong with my coffee?"

"Yes sir." I put my hands on the mug and she lets go, staring at me expectantly. I don't like coffee, but if it makes things easier…

Ring, I want to taste blackcurrant.

Compliance.

I bring the mug to my lips and take a gulp. Yep, blackcurrant. Good work, ring.

"Lovely. Thank you."

She actually smiles a bit, then turns to walk around behind Mister Free, putting her hands on his shoulders. Diana comes back in and hands the phone to Mister Free. That was quick.

"That was quick?"

"There's a protocol for this sort of thing. I just had to give an address."

Mister Free looks up at Barda for a moment, then turns his attention to Diana. "So, what does the Justice League need from us?"

back

Tracers 10

next

7th September

07:18 GMT -5

I'm sitting at the main computer in the training area, trying to remember everything I ever learned about the New Gods. Scott Free and Barda agreed that it was in their interest to provide information, though neither of them want to be active participants in League activities. Maybe that will change later. They both had things to do today, and since we don't have intelligence of an imminent attack Diana agreed to leave them to it. Hopefully we'll have a better idea of what's going on once they've had time to put pen to paper.

Barda got over that whole tearing-up-the-front-garden incident really quickly. She and Diana left together to visit her gym, and I strongly suspect that my mentor now has a new sparring partner. The sphere opted to come back with me to the mountain, and Teekl found the whole thing rather dull. They're around -somewhere- but both lost interest in me when it became apparent that I was just going to sit here and work.

The reason the Frees linked a polite knock at the door to the boom tube in Bialya was that -as I had earlier guessed- Diana 'feels' like a New God. And apparently the orange light 'feels' Apokoliptian. They aren't familiar with other forms of super-advanced technology. I'm going to have to be more careful about scanning New Genesisians in future.

Out of all the toys Mister Free showed me while Barda and Diana were bonding over unarmed combat techniques, I recognised only the discs. They're his Aero-Discs; Enerjams are much smaller and do something completely different. He stuck it on my back because he wasn't sure that I could take Barda hitting me. The Disc converted the kinetic energy of her strike into spinning motion. It was only due to the ring that I wasn't disabled by dizziness. They have one Mother Box -Barda's- between them, and while they could use it to generate a boom tube the forces of Apokolips would detect that almost immediately. I was surprised to learn that Mister Free never had one. I guess they don't give valuable equipment like that to mere Aero-Troopers. He's been slowly trying to rebuild his old tools here on Earth. Slow and difficult, but he actually laughed when Diana offered him a scrambler for his phone line.

In practical terms, I now know how to detect boom tubes with the ring. I can't honestly claim to have understood the description of how it functions, but Mister Free did have a container holding a group of what he called 'super inflated gravitons' in storage, and apparently those appear in a very particular pattern around a boom tube terminus. I'll know for sure next time one is used, I suppose. One other point of interest is that Mister Free has never been to New Genesis. He knows that Highfather Izaya the Inheritor is his father, but since he doesn't remember him at all he doesn't feel any particular need to prioritise visiting.

Only odd thing was them both insisting that I'd shouted 'Pointless stop stop stop' just before I went to pick up the sphere, and I certainly don't remember doing that. They were so sure that I checked with the ring, and it agreed with me. Strange, but then again they are aliens. Maybe the Apokoliptian language uses a lot of gestures? I don't think the ring would translate those the other way. Maybe I should test that?

Sitting down and writing about the military of Apokolips has reminded me of one of the Tales of the New Gods characters whose story I rather liked. Need to remember to ask Barda whether or not Canis Minor exists. I remember his story ending with Darkseid ordering Kanto to kill him, but I've no idea if or when that might happen. If he even exists here. I know that Parademons are a serious threat, but I'm having trouble imagining what the Dog Soldiers would actually look like. People couldn't take that seriously when Games Workshop did it in Warhammer 40,000, for goodness sake.

The console beeps at me. Incoming message from Red Arrow? I tap the button to answer it.

"Domino's Pizza. Can I take your order?"

There's a pause.

"Who is this?"

"Orange Lantern two eight one four. And you're Red Arrow. Good morning. How have you been?"

"Put Kaldur on."

"Kaldur's in Poseidonis, and everyone else is at school. Can I take a message?"

I hear a sigh. "I need access to the Justice League's database, and the exact height of the League of Shadows assassin known as Onyx."

"One moment, just confirming your identity…"

A small orange model of his immediate environment forms next to me. He's standing outside a conference centre of some sort, behind one of the decorative pillars at the entrance. He's in Taipei, and the gathered press seems quite excited about something. I swirl my right index finger around as I call up the information he wants. I only remember Onyx in the comics from when she worked for Batman as some gang leader's bodyguard. I haven't bothered reading up on her here because, well, the evidence so far has suggested that ninjas aren't a threat to me.

"Nice suit. Alright, she's one metre seventy one."

"Um. In feet?"

"Err... Five foot six. You want me to back you up? I can be with you in about twenty seconds."

"Please. The last thing I need is the Junior Justice League."

"A'ight. Suit yourself."

Ring, is whatever's happening in that building important?

News reports indicate that a meeting between the representatives of North Rhelasia and South Rhelasia is taking place. Scans detect heightened levels of military activity on their shared border.

Right. Korea might not be called Korea here, but its history is pretty similar. Only difference is that it's not ruled by a Kim, but by a military aristocracy. Like Burma, I suppose. If the conference goes badly I suppose there might be a limited military exchange, but I think I'm too jaded about stuff like that to really care.

The little orange model of Red Arrow has its bow out, and is ducking behind a bush. Security there must be really bad if he can get that close.

Person of interest detected.

Onyx isn't a person of interest. That's a very short list.

Who?

The image zooms in on a limousine which is just pulling up to the gates leading to the conference centre, and then enters the vehicle.

Alexander Luthor? Good call, ring. Who's that in the car with him? Mercy Graves if I remember Superman: the Animated Series correctly… A gynoid? No, the ring's feeding me her schematics. Cyborg. The same structural reinforcing that idiot with the hook had, but at least her right forearm contains a concealed gun rather than a fishing line. Some sort of plasma pulse weapon, and there's a smattering of other augmetics throughout her body. Looks like fairly conventional technology -if a little better than anything on the market at present- so I doubt she gets many shots before she needs to recharge.

I transfer the scan data to the Justice League's systems.

Ring, why is Mister Luthor at a peace conference?

LexCorp subsidiaries do business with both countries. Diplomatic communications from both sides indicate that they have accepted his offer to serve as a mediator.

I have spent a significant amount of time looking into Mister Luthor. I haven't been able to find any systematic financial irregularities. There are occasions where it looks like bribery -or at least generous campaign contributions. Why the heck do Americans elect judges anyway?- might have been made, but there's nothing concrete in the electronic records. Supervillains? LexCorp is licensed to research Kryptonite, which is fairly uncommon here. I think I recognised a few names on the employee roll, but again, no smoking gun. Whenever anything seriously dodgy has happened there's always been several gaps between it and Mister Luthor, to the point where if I didn't have 'special' knowledge I don't think I'd be able to convince myself of his involvement.

Duuuusuh. If Red Arrow thinks that the League of Shadows are targeting this conference, it might be worth me putting in an appearance in person. There are aspects of the personal philosophy of some versions of Lex Luthor that could be useful to me, and our species as a whole. I need to know which version I'm dealing with. Plus, I would sort of like to ask him about Kon. I did tell Kon that I knew the source of his Human tissue, but he's never asked for a name.

I get up, armour up, and transition to the mountain's back door. Apparently, when I use the ring's FTL I leave a wavy orange line behind me which persists for a fraction of a second. People would probably dismiss one or two, but if I keep leaving the mountain like that it will be noticed. I program a route to Taipei which takes me a long way out to sea before curving to my eventual destination. Not the conference centre itself, I don't intend to get close without seeing the area with my own eyes. There's an orange neon sign a few streets away that should conceal me.

Engage.

back

Tracers 11

next

7th September

20:23 GMT +8

Glowing orange sign in front of me. Looks like I've arrived. Ring, remote view.

Roy is pinned beneath a woman I immediately recognise as Onyx, who in turn is surrounded by armed guards with automatic rifles levelled at her head. Someone needs to teach them about overpenetration; they're going to shoot each other if she decides to risk making a break away. How the heck did she even get that close? Don't they check people? Don't they have perimeter guards?

She puts her hands behind her head instead, and one of the guards stows his weapon and puts plastic cuffs on her. That must have been just about the worst assassination attempt ever. Is Ra's really that stupid? I know that most of his trained people weren't on Infinity Island when the League smashed it, but he still isn't in a position to waste them like this. A distraction of some kind?

Ring, scan Onyx.

Scan complete.

She's physically fit and healthy, isn't carrying anything the ring recognises as an arcane device, and doesn't have any seriously concealed weapons. How the heck was she planning to get away, even if her attack was successful? And how was I able to scan her? After Infinity Island Ra's found a way to avoid my more sophisticated scans, and that immunity spread among the remaining known Shadow operatives faster than I could grab them. But I can scan her. The black in these lentils is so big there's barely any lentil left.

Oh dear. I'm going to have to do the thing with the ring. I hate the thing.

"Ring, omnicognisance, half a second."

Dughergherghugherghughergherghughahghugh.

I hate the thing. It doesn't literally make me omnicognisant, but it does feed everything that could affect anything around me through my brain all at once, while providing me with just enough support to avoid haemorrhaging. The power consumption's ridiculous, and it makes me feel like curling up in a ball every time I use it. I'm leaning on the sign for support as I try to get my brain down to a mere fourth gear.

Quick, come on, what did I just know? No, I don't need the number of electrons in the bush Roy was hiding behind. I don't need his deodorant brand. Come on, weapons, threats… No, not the visual range of the damn combat maid, I doubt Mister Luthor would risk being accompanied by something with a computer system that wasn't isolated. She's carrying a computer, for goodness sake. Wait, why are they pointing their weapons at Roy? No, no, he can manage that.

Tied. Rope. Enclosed. Yes, yes, what else?

Venom Buster.

Scan scan scan!

I can't detect the poor bastard tied to the vial, but I can detect the drug itself. He's in one of the kiosks around the edge of the park area in front of the convention centre. Everyone's watching Roy and the press and other rubberneckers are gathering and he's going to plough straight through them transition now!

I'm now in mid air in front of the convention centre. The kiosk is in front of me, and I get a barrier around it just as the automated plunger sinks into the bloke inside and he erupts through the wooden structure in a geyser of grey muscle. Shit. Armour construct. The wooden fragments are contained by the barrier and now people have started screaming and running. Good good, get out of the way. I didn't think that Venom Buster worked that fast? No, not the point. Whoever that was is still roaring in confusion, but he'll start testing my barrier soon enough.

I've kept up to date on the investigation into the Venom Buster samples we recovered from Santa Prisca. Venom is a fairly comprehensible super steroid. Its effect is entirely chemical, though I suspect that the chemicals wouldn't have that sort of effect back home. Blockbuster is another kettle of fish. It does interact chemically with Venom, but there's nowhere for the extra mass it produces to come from. It certainly doesn't cause the Human body to produce its own Venom, so how does it make the boost permanent? The only thing I could think of was alchemy, but-.

"Raaaaaagh!"

Two enhanced fists rise up and swing down onto my barrier, which cracks. Doesn't matter.

Ring, scan. Tell me how we can fix him.

Unable to comply. Scan protection still in effect.

He's alternating fists now, focusing on the weak spot and hammering into it with all his fury. The rents in his outer carapace are even worse than Mister Flinders' were, and I can clearly see muscle and fat beneath. The barrier feels increasingly precarious. The soldiers and bodyguards around Roy have reorientated to face the new threat, and Red Arrow himself has risen to his feet and grabbed his bow. It's a little gratifying that no one's aimed anything at me yet.

This might actually be an opportunity. We still don't know what it is that is preventing me from scanning League of Shadow operatives.

Ring, visual scan. Any of that look magical?

No listed sigils detected.

"Red Arrow, shield dropping in nine seconds, quick hardening foam arrow if you please."

"I don't take orders from you."

"That wasn't an order, that was a re-"

The shield breaks and the monster stumbles forwards, taking Roy's foam arrow full in the chest.

"Auraaagh!

"-quest. Thank you."

Odd. I got the impression that Mister Flinders retained his full intelligence. What's going on here? And why is Mister Luthor getting out of his car?

Ring, ShockCrown Onyx to prevent shenanigans.

Compliance.

She wasn't doing much other than sitting in the police car, but I don't feel like taking the risk. Okay, the new monster was basically just wearing a kilt thing. Might even have just been a sheet someone threw over him. It was plain, anyway. Something he ingested? Could be.

The foam has hardened, covering all but the head of his hunched, elephantine form. The foam actually still has a little give in it to prevent shattering, but the man inside is giving it his best and it seems to be weakening. Roy fires another arrow, and a cloud of gas envelopes the target's head. A normal person would have been knocked out, but this guy's fine.

Why is that reporter still standing there?

Can't risk a ShockCrown without a better look at his brain structure. Wait, Flinders' peripheral nervous structure was basically the same after his transformation. A Pithing Needle should still work, and with all those holes I shouldn't have to dig my way in. Yep, there's a very painful looking opening at his neck.

Pithing Needle.

An orange line from my right shoulder terminates at his neck rupture. He shudders and stills as it blocks nonessential nervous activity. Fuuw. Alright, now to fix him. I float closer, then open my arms wide and generate sonic imaging equipment.

Ring, detailed sonic scan. What shouldn't be there?

There's a tiny ripple in the air as the emitters do their thing. The thickness of his epidermis makes it hard to make sense of the internal picture, but the ring sorts it out easily enough. He's swallowed something, a tiny piece of metal far denser than the surrounding tissue. Disrupting its physical structure should end its effect. A shame that I wouldn't be able to-.

"Stop! Land on the ground and raise your hands!"

I'll pretend I didn't hear that. Ring, sonic scalpel, then full scan when able.

A moment, and the sonic image shows the target object bend and twist as intersecting beams of sonic energy converge with only minimal damage to the surrounding tissue.

Scan complete.

Venom Buster, and some sort of stimulant I don't immediately recognise. Manageable. Take a moment. Then focus focus focus focus.

!Flawless victory!

"Purge and repair."

The man before me shrivels inside the foam as the ring negates the effects of the drug cocktail. I hope that he makes a full recovery. My scan from immediately before his transformation and of his blood chemistry should remove any suspicion that he was a willing participant. I remove the Pithing Needle as his shrinking drops him down into the hole in the foam made by his former, larger body, and the ring knits his skin back together. I cut away the foam just as he reaches his original size and collapses to the tarmac.

I turn. That camera's pointing at me.

"Could someone please get this man some medical attention?"

back

Tracers 12

next

7th September

20:27 GMT +8

I look down the barrel of the automatic rifle levelled at my face, and switch my armour construct over from 'reflect' to 'absorb'. Don't want this idiot shooting himself in the face or anything.

"You don't look like a doctor, so I'm just going to ignore you, alright?"

I turn back to the man on the floor. The whole team has been trained in performing basic first aid on Humans, but given the chemical and psychological wringer this guy's been through… Huang Jianhong, apparently. Works as a travel agent. I float him upright and lend him some clothes, the kilt not having survived his shrinkage. I scan him again. Yes, just as I feared, brain and liver damage from the Venom, plus the general shock… Um. Right. Gurney. The brain is a pretty resilient organ really, and the patterns of damage are standard between-.

"What are you doing?"

Female voice. I don't recognise it.

"Are you a doctor?"

"Ah. No?"

"Then would you mind terribly making yourself useful and getting one? Mister Huang here is showing symptoms it normally takes Venom users years to-"

I turn as I speak, and come face to face with a blonde woman being closely followed by a cameraman.

"-develop. Ah..? Miss Grant, isn't it?"

She smiles and nods. "Cat Grant, GBS News."

Our public relations training is sometime next month. That may have been an oversight.

"Orange Lantern two eight one four, and I'm still not seeing a doctor?"

Right, do the liver first. Standard damage pattern. Is he going to mind if I make him lactose tolerant? No, just do what you need to. Regenerate. Good. Yes, good...

"Why are you tying him down? I don't think he's going anywhere."

"Miss Grant, I am attempting to undo the damage caused by the cocktail of combat drugs he just had stuffed into him. I'd like professional medical advice, but since the universe seems to be conspiring against me on that score, I'm just going to…"

A little forced cell duplication, and a tiny change in chemical balances. As when I restored Kon's inner ear I don't precisely understand what these things do, but I know what they're supposed to look like. The amygdala's the worst hit, but assuming that he didn't have any head injuries beforehand he should now process memory and emotion as well as any well socialised individual.

!Higher!

In fact, why not go a little further? It's so obvious when you really look at it. A slight rearranging of blood vessels, a tweak of the neurons...

"Going to what?"

"Hm? Oh, sorry. Fix as much of it as I can."

"He just tried to attack the peace conference."

"Yes, I had spotted that."

The cerebral cortex is second worst hit. In some places I can tell where cell death has occurred. Those, I fix. Ugh, I shouldn't take the risk on a general touch up until a professional has gone over it.

"Then-."

"Miss Grant, his name is Mister Huang Jianhong. He is gainfully employed, has no criminal record or history of disorderly conduct, and until about a minute ago he was tied up in that stall over there, with a plunger full of a particularly nasty form of Venom strapped to his arm. I very much doubt that his participation in this attack was voluntary, and even if it were, the attack is over." I turn angrily. "And where's the gods damned-."

A couple of people in white uniforms with red crosses on their sleeves run down the conference centre steps.

"Uh, thank goodness. Over here!"

I make a beckoning motion with my right arm. The medic furthest forwards starts to move in my direction on instinct, then gets a better look and slows down. Oh, don't make me come over there. I shift the gurney around toward him, and his sense of duty gets the better of his trepidation. He fishes a small torch out, and checks Mister Huang's pupil dilation.

"What happened?"

"Huang Jianhong, twenty seven year old Taiwan national. He was injected with a mixture of the steroid 'Venom' and a mutagen called the Blockbuster Formula. I've removed both, but he's unconscious and there's residual damage roughly equivalent to seven years' regular Venom use."

He sucks in air through his teeth.

"I've repaired most of the damage, but-."

A look of scepticism.

"You repaired his amygdala?"

A flash of my left palm. "Power rings are awesome."

He's transfixed for a moment. "Aaaaah. Right. Hey, you two!"

He gets the attention of two stretcher bearing orderlies, who hurry over. I dismiss the gurney and lift Mister Huang onto it.

"We'll take him to the convention centre's medical station until the ambulance arrives. Was anyone else hurt?"

"Don't think there's anything serious. Might be some cuts and bruises."

He nods, and heads off to check on the bodyguard-encrusted negotiators.

Alright, what now? Red Arrow's surrounded by security, but they aren't pointing weapons at him anymore, and one of them is on the radio asking for instructions. The police car containing the now paralysed Onyx is pulling away, and if they can't get her into a secure cell within the two or three hours the ShockCrown effect will last they deserve to have her escape. In the distance I can hear the siren of the ambulance.

"Do you have time to talk now?"

Oh, right. Miss Grant's still there.

"Probably, but please don't be offended if I have to rush off suddenly."

Ring, any weapons in the immediate vicinity not in the control of the security forces?

No such weapons detected. However, weapons held by League of Shadow operatives may not register.

"Ah-hem. Orange Lantern, what do you think triggered the attack?"

Supplement with sonic and electromagnetic scans, run continuous.

Compliance.

"The bald black woman was Onyx, a League of Shadow operative. Either they've got an interest in the Rhelasian conflict, or someone paid them. We'll know more once the police have had a chance to investigate."

I wait for the follow up. Nothing comes. Why is-?

"Nicely done… Orange Lantern, wasn't it?"

I know the voice from background research. I did want to talk to him, I suppose. I turn, and offer him a polite nod of acknowledgement.

"Mister Luthor. Good evening."

back

Tracers 13

next

7th September

20:31 GMT +8

"You really should have stayed in the car until security had a chance to check the area."

The other news crews might be a little slower -or a little more inclined to self preservation- than Miss Grant, but they're recovering now and I'm in front of the rapidly forming security perimeter on the convention centre forecourt. Cameras, Lex Luthor, and a superhero who's just helped him. I know what he's going to do even as he steps up and holds out his right hand to me.

But I'm not Superman. I extend mine, dissipating the armour construct around it. He turns his body slightly to present a better view to the cameras. Since he's on my left, my right arm is pulled slightly across my body. He releases my hand, and puts his arm around my shoulders.

"Oh, you seem to have things under control. It was thoughtful of you to ensure that your attacker got medical treatment. And took the time to publically dismiss him as a suspect."

"He was forcibly drugged. His actions weren't his choice."

"Still, you'd be surprised how many of your colleagues wouldn't have worried about it. Do you know the man?"

"No. Fortunately, Taiwan has a computerised national identity register and I have a power ring. Power rings are awesome."

"So I see."

He turns, applying gentle pressure to my back to encourage me to go with him. Hm. I suppose my objective now is to protect the peace conference, since I'm here. But my mentors are already going to be annoyed about the pictures.

"Excuse me." I transition to a space just off the ground next to Red Arrow, and hold my arms out as the ring generates multiple monitor screens.

Ring, points of interest at random.

Compliance.

The guards start at my appearance.

"Making friends with Luthor?" Seems that Mister Harper isn't happy. Again.

"We appear to have a convergence of interests. And I don't like alienating people without good reason."

"Hmn."

Nothing much on the screens, though one of them is showing a recording of me that will shortly be playing on GBS news. If it isn't already. Looks like I film pretty well.

"Do you have any information on other Shadow operatives who might also have been contracted?"

I'm not looking directly at him myself, but I switch one of the smaller screens over to his face and see his eyes narrow at me.

"… No. I picked up Onyx's fake ID coming in at the airport."

"Using public transportation?"

"The Justice League taking out Infinity Island's made it hard for the Shadows to use front companies to hire private jets, and a boat from the mainland wouldn't have made the journey in time for the conference."

I allow myself a moment of smug. Wait a second. Not only is there now a line of security guards and police between the conference centre and the crowd, there's also a loose cluster around us.

Pfffffff.

I push the screens out of the way, and drift over to one of the security personnel.

"Um, excuse me?"

He's wearing dark glasses, but I think he's looking at me. His hands tighten slightly on his pistol, but it stays down.

"Should I? Present, y'know, credentials?"

I take my identification card out of subspace.

He looks at it, then presses a hand to his earpiece. "Red Arrow, you've got one of these, right?" I point to the card.

His mouth tightens. "No."

Really?

"Really?"

He gives me a look… Okay, not pressing that point. One of the other security guards walks over and takes the card from my unresisting hand. He looks at the card, then at me.

How many people does he know who glow orange?

"You're a member of the Justice League?"

"No no, that just means that I've been deputised by one of them. If you phone the Themysciran embas-."

"Incoming communication from a priority source."

"Um, excuse me a moment." I raise my left hand to my cheek. "Orange Lantern two eight one four?"

"Orange Lantern, why can I see you on the news?"

It's Diana.

"A League of Shadows operative tried to attack the Rhelasian peace conference. Their assassin decided to use Venom Buster.. or something like it.. on a civilian as a distraction."

"Why are you shaking hands with Lex Luthor?"

"Because he's acting as an intermediary at the conference, and was right in the line of fire when the attack happened. Guess he likes not being pulverised."

"P-. Orange Lantern, listen to me. Do not trust him. Don't accept any offers from him. Don't-."

There's a sort of beeping noise.

"Oh Hera. Don't go anywhere, I've got another call."

Oh… Kay…

I lower my hand. The security guard who took my card is standing next to Mister Luthor, who's talking on his mobile phone and nodding. Did Mister Luthor arrange the security for this? I wouldn't have thought so, but I don't really know how this sort of event gets organised. I drift back to my monitors, and sit in the air. One of the many often overlooked functions of a power ring is that it keeps your circulation fine. No pins and needles or dizziness from getting up too quickly ever.

The police car carrying the recumbent Onyx passes through the outer gates with its escort. I watch them go. Since there hasn't been another follow up attack we're probably safe for now, and with the security around I don't have to worry about interview questions.

Mister Luthor lowers his phone with a smirk.

"We have confirmation. The 'Orange Lantern' does indeed work for Wonder Woman, and-" He makes momentary eye contact with Roy. "-the other.. -Red Arrow, wasn't it?- is Green Arrow's pal."

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Tracers 14

next

7th September

20:37 GMT +8

The shortest and fattest police officer does not look happy about this. "Whoever they are, they should be questioned."

Mister Luthor smiles at him. "The Justice League vouches for them, Captain, and so does Lex Luthor. I think that-"

He nods at the pile of rock foam which still holds the shape of Mister Huang's augmented body. News photographers are taking pictures of it. I wonder if it needs some sort of special solvent..?

"-given what they've already done, it would be doing them a grave disservice to treat them as if they were under suspicion."

Captain Fatty thinks about it, then nods. Security personnel gradually move away from us. Perhaps I should consider them brave for putting themselves in a position where they might have to try and contain me, but actually I just think of them as stupid for not recognising a completely untenable position.

"I don't need any favors from you." Mister Harper shoots Mister Luthor a look of pure adolescent resentment. As he walks past me I stick out an arm and smile at him.

"Red Arrow. Gift horse, mouth. Picking a fight with Mister Luthor will simply make our job harder."

"No one asked you."

The git actually sneers at me, and pushes past. Mister Luthor doesn't react.

"Apologies. I didn't realize you wished to join that young woman behind bars."

"You may have everyone here fooled, Luthor, but I know what you are."

"Oh, I don't pretend to be an angel. It just so happens that this time I'm on the side of the angels." He takes a few steps towards the conference centre doors, then looks back at me over his shoulders. "Will you be joining us?"

"Need a quick chat with my colleague first. Be riiight with you."

He acknowledges with a slight inclination of his head, then continues on slowly towards the doors.

I drop the screens and zip over to where Mister Harper is staring moodily at Mister Luthor's back.

"Red Arrow. You're angry. And I respect that, but-."

"LexCorp shell companies sell weapons to North and South Rhelasia. He's probably just here to negotiate a better price."

"Of course he sells to both sides. One of them might win if he didn't. Look, Alexander Luthor is very good at making potential opponents angry and stupid, and you are angry and he will play you. You know that, right?"

He averts his eyes, and inclines his head slightly.

"You're also a considerably more experienced investigator than I am, so, given that we've defeated the first attack, what happens next?"

"The League of Shadows won't stop until the contract is fulfilled. But if they're not following up right away, we probably have a few hours before they try again."

"The thing I did to paralyse Onyx should have worn off by then. How's about I stick around here and.. put a shield in the way of anyone dodgy looking, while you work out who the next wave are and where they're coming from?"

He narrows his eyes at me, and I respond with a friendly grin. "Fine. I don't think I could stand to be in the same room as Luthor anyway."

"Best of luck. Let me know if I can help you in any way at all."

He takes a step away, then frowns. "Why's Kaldur in Poseidonis anyway?"

"Weeee kind of beat Ocean Master into a coma this morning, and it turns out he was Prince Orm all along. Things are a bit hectic."

"Oh."

I think he's blinking behind those dark glasses, but he gets over it after a moment and continues on his way back to wherever he's been basing himself.

Right. So. Dealing with Kon's other Dad. Mister Luthor's standing at the door. Why is he waiting for me? Oh well; transition.

"Glad you could join me."

He hands back my card, and I subspace it. He then steps forwards, and the glass automatic doors slide open with a slight hiss. I follow, and Mercy brings up the rear.

The lobby is large and richly upholstered. In the left and right wings medics are tending to the injured of the North and South. I don't see Mister Huang… Oh, he's being loaded onto an ambulance already. They made pretty good time. Or maybe they were here already? Not sure. A quick scan confirms that none of the injuries are serious. Actually…

Ring, remaining power?

Seventy seven percent remaining.

Should be fine. I don't usually like escort missions, but nothing I've seen the League of Shadows do suggests they have anything that's an actual threat to me.

"Hiring assassins, Li? Had you no one among your own troops to do the North's dirty work?"

Who? Oh. Prime Minister Tseng is shouting across from the south's medical station to the North's, the pink plasters on his face giving his complaint a slightly farcical air.

"I need no assassin, Tseng. Such is the method of a Southern coward."

"Good luck, Mister Luthor."

"Oh, it's mostly posturing. Even agreeing to meet like this means they risk looking weak to the hardliners back home. When the cameras aren't on them they can be surprisingly reasonable."

"Why give the cameras access to anything at all then?"

"Because they need to look strong. I.. take it that you'll be joining us for the deliberations?"

"If you'll have me. Power rings are very good at shielding things. If Red Arrow can't track the League of Shadows down before they launch another attack, I should be able to stop it."

"Feeling confident?"

"I've encountered members of the League of Shadows on two previous occasions. On neither occasion did they manage to present a significant threat to me."

"Then it sounds like we're in good hands. Now, if you'll excuse me?" He walks past the cluster of photographers, and addresses the belligerent factions. "Gentlemen, gentlemen. Shall we attempt some smiles, for the cameras?"

"Incoming communication from a priority source."

I raise my left hand to my cheek again.

"Orange Lantern two eight one four?"

"How's the conference going?"

Diana again. "No one's died yet sir. And before you say anything, I do recognise the threat Mister Luthor poses. I know he's about as trustworthy as a used lawnmower salesman. I'm not going to do anything stupid."

"I'm glad to hear it. The Rhelasian representatives seem fairly hostile."

"Mister Luthor thinks… Mister Luthor told me that he thinks they're just posing. I have to say, assassins aside, I'm not worried. The equivalent country in my home parallel is much more harshly divided, and they've managed to avoid all out war since the fifties."

"You'll have to tell me all about it some time."

"It's not that complicated. I suppose these things never are when you're not personally involved."

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Tracers 15

next

7th September

21:26 GMT +8

I now know more about Rhelasian history and politics than any rational person could possibly want to. The meeting has temporarily broken up, and the two parties have retreated to their separate dining areas for coffee and cool down. They certainly got less shouty once the cameras were off them, but that just gave them the opportunity to list their grievances in precise detail. I think that Mister Luthor's making some headway. They've agreed in principle to reduce their mutual military build-ups, and set up a committee to negotiate fishing rights. Honestly, I'd have said that he was giving them too much rein, but perhaps letting them vent their spleens helped?

I connected the ring to the conference centre's slightly-less-closed-than-it-used-to-be circuit cameras, supplemented by sonic, electromagnetic and radiation scans from the ring. The results are then compared to the results of a standard scan, and if the first set show someone the second doesn't, then we've got a Shadow. I've also had the ring feed me information on everyone whose face it registers. There was an episode of Justice League Animated where J'onn J'onzz tried to scan an entire city to find Lex Luthor, and ended up having an episode himself. I'm sort of starting to understand how he felt. I know names, addresses, personal histories, confirmed from multiple sources, and the whole thing is staying in my mind. Since I'm taking a break, the ring's set to notify me of any problems but isn't currently feeding me data for review.

I've taken refuge in the large room set aside for public announcements. With any luck, at some point tonight they'll be signing some sort of agreement here, but at the moment it's deserted. I'm sitting at one of the seats at the end of the long table, arms crossed and draped on the tabletop, body slumped. Today has been an unusually violent day for me, and I'm not… I'm not entirely comfortable with how well I'm handling it. Shouldn't I have trouble with cutting off a man's hands? It's not like I want to, so is the ring keeping me going?

I straighten slightly, and hold my left palm open facing me. I stare at the ring, right index finger tracing the circle on the sigil. I've been telling myself that wearing it all the time is the logical thing to do, but… Am I still me, if it overwrites my natural response with that of an idealised version of me? The body thing I don't mind, but my brain is-.

"Ah, there you are."

I straighten the rest of the way, feeling a momentary burst of guilt at occupying a seat not intended for me. No, that's stupid. "Are they starting back already? I thought we had a few more…"

Lex Luthor walks in from the 'off stage' position, arms held loosely behind his back. He shakes his head. "Oh no, we don't reconvene for anotheeer…" He checks his watch. "Twelve minutes."

I nod. He walks past the table, and then turns along the edge of the stage. No Mercy? Ah, she's by the door.

"I wanted to have a quick chat with you before we started back."

And now I remember that in one version of his origin he got his start by killing his parents for the insurance money. I know that he didn't inherit the whole thing Smallville style here, and I doubt that any evidence of such a crime would have survived the thirty or so years since it would have to have happened.

"I'm afraid that I'm unlikely to know anything about Rhelasia that you don't, but if you think it'll help?"

He stops, centre stage, and turns his head halfway around to me. "I am finding it a little refreshing, speaking to a man in your profession who doesn't treat me with suspicion, or with outright hostility."

"There's no margin in it." I shrug. "Perhaps you're a problem and perhaps you're not. I'm not going to get excited about it until you're my problem."

A wry smile. "A commendably rational attitude." He turns fully around to me, framed by the empty room and the large rear window. "I had rather been under the impression that those rings only came in green."

"Really? I happen to know that Lanterns of at least two other colours have been active on Earth in the recent past."

His eyes stop focusing on me directly. The change is slight, and if the ring hadn't enhanced my own vision I would probably not have noticed. "Are you.. referring to Star Sapphire?"

"Never try and consume an energy field larger than your head, Mister Luthor. It tends to make a person erratic."

"Sage advice, I'm sure." His arms come forward, left across his chest, right elbow resting on his left hand, right fist to his chin. "You'll forgive me if I say that I'm a little concerned about this. You appear to be a man of good character, but… Representatives of alien organizations, given authority to act as they see fit on worlds that have no say in the matter?"

"I don't know how the Guardians handle things, but I'm sure that if Earth ever gets a unified government then my own.. overseers, the Controllers, would be perfectly happy to negotiate a treaty defining my rights and responsibilities. Since no such organisation or treaty exists, I work for the Justice League, who operate under the nearest thing to a sensible legal framework for my work that exists here. Ultimately, you can't ask a criminal if they mind being arrested. There are worlds out there that are home to truly vile civilisations, and Lanterns may be called upon to act against them for the good of the rest of the galaxy. Asking them if they're happy with that is a non-starter."

"They would only negotiate with a unified planetary government?"

"Those advanced alien civilisations I know about, virtually all of them have some sort of central authority. I'm not sure they'd mind talking to someone else, exactly, but I doubt they'd think it was worth their time, talking to a relatively small nation state."

"Mmm. And how would one get in contact with these.. Controllers? I assume.. through you..?"

"Not until my probation's up. Ten months, if you're wondering. The Greenies could do it now, but…"

I wave at him, and he nods. "Yes, I see."

"The only other alternative is travelling to Maltus, and I don't think that Earth technology is quite up to the task." Hm. Now's as good a time as any, I suppose. Ring, brain scan. "Actually Mister Luthor, while you're here, there was something I wanted to talk to you about."

"Oh? What would that be."

"Well, a lot of people seem to have the impression that a superhero's job is to use their powers to make the world a better place. But, in my experience, it mostly just involves preventing it from getting worse. I mean, this conference. We both want it to work, but, if you fail, a war happens. If you succeed, a war that isn't happening at the moment continues to not be happening. Worth doing, certainly, but it's a bit… Lacking? The best case is that things carry on as they are."

"Ideally, these negotiations will form the starting point of a gradual reduction of tensions throughout the Rhelasian peninsula. If we're fortunate, we will be able to prevent future altercations of this kind, and both countries will be able to divert resources away from military spending and on to projects which help their people. Making their lives better, rather than guarding against them getting worse, as you put it. Improving the lives of seventy four million people is hardly an insignificant success."

"But my participation is limited to preventing the League of Shadows from murdering you. Maybe I'm just being.. arrogant, but I'd like to see an improvement that I did. I mean, even the Shadows managed to get hold of the Blockbuster Formula from Cadmus, combine it with Venom, then utilise it to pursue their objective. There's all this super advanced technology around, and no one uses it to the benefit of people as a whole. Miss Graves' arm-"

I turn and point in her direction.

"-is less sophisticated than something Thomas Morrow built seventy years ago. That, shouldn't happen. And the superheroes are nearly as bad."

He raises an eyebrow.

"Do you see any supercomputers based on Kryptonian crystal technology around the place?"

He nods. "What would you like to do about it?"

"I don't know. Give STAR Labs a truly obscene amount of money? Work on commercialising what they produce? Did you know that when James Dyson came up with the cyclone vacuum cleaner idea, he went to Hoover with it first. After they refused to buy it and he built his own company, he spoke to one of their executives and they told him that if they'd know what was going to happen, they'd have bought the patent off him and sat on it. Because they had the market working just as they liked it. And stuff like that's probably happening everywhere, in every field of innovation. You go out into the universe, you see how far behind we are compared to some of the hostile species who are capable of visiting us… We can't afford to do stupid stuff like that. We can't… be firing on anything less than all cylinders. Actually, that's one of the reasons why I respect you so much."

"It's nice to be thought of so highly, but I'm.. not.. quite.. sure..?"

"You funded Cadmus Labs, Mister Luthor."

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Tracers 16

next

7th September

21:31 GMT +8

He's silent for a moment, presumably considering his options. "While it's not impossible that LexCorp had some sort of financial interest in Cadmus-."

"Oh, don't be so modest. The Greenies might be happy to use their xenotech hypercomputers as blunt instruments, but I like to think I'm a little cleverer than they are." I turn my left hand palm up, and generate an orange sigil. "Forensic accountancy. LexCorp put a lot of money into that place, and I can't believe you wouldn't have had to approve something like that yourself. Look, I get it's PR poison now, but the biotech work they were doing is exactly the sort of thing the Earth needs. There's spacefaring races that don't have telepathic communication networks."

Still no response. Hmm.

"I'd feel slightly more comfortable if they'd managed to create a technique which granted the ability to Humans, rather than building an artificial life form. I mean, Henry King was active in the forties, Simon Jones and Edgar Cizko in the modern era. It can't be that hard to do."

"Human… Augmentation… Can be legally problematic."

"Well, that needs to change for a start. The technology for reliable Human augmentation has existed for over a century; legislators can't just pretend it doesn't happen. Do they prefer it just happens to people at random?"

"I sometimes rather think that they do. It gives them an excuse not to have to deal with something difficult."

"Only thing I don't understand is why Cadmus was trying to clone Superman. A sufficiently detailed study of his cellular structure should have told them everything they needed to know about how his abilities work."

"My… understanding, is that Doctor Desmond was authorized to perform precisely that type of study. Why he took it upon himself to create an entire specimen I really couldn't say."

"You are aware that Superboy is a Kryptonian/Human hybrid?"

"Really? I wasn't aware that Human and Kryptonian tissues were… Compatible."

"They're not. That's part of why it's so impressive."

"Orange Lantern, I'm not sure what you want me to say? I am the Chairman and Chief Executive of an extremely large multinational company. Even if I had approved funds for Cadmus, I wouldn't be involved in day to day operational decisions. Dare I ask who the donor of his Human DNA was?"

"Mister Luthor, I'm not the police, I'm not a reporter. I have a great deal of respect for you, so, please stop treating me like I'm an idiot. I don't believe for a second that you didn't authorise it. It worked fine. Superboy's a good friend of mine, and if there was actually a halfway sensible reason for creating him I'd approve. If it was something stupid, well, given all of your achievements, I can't tell you how disappointed I would be to find out you were running with the short bus crowd. And yes, you can tell Ra's al Ghul I called him that."

"Though I am.. aware.. of the leader of the League of Shadows, we're hardly on familiar terms. Ra's is something of a… Competitor, of mine."

Not working. New approach.

"Sooo…" I squint at him. "What's with the Superman obsession?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"The clone thing. Why clone Superman?"

"While I cannot claim to know for certain why anyone would want to clone Superman, I can see the logic in using material from the most prominent of the world's superhumans. Well, not 'Human', of course."

"Yeah, but if you can create an adult clone in six months, why not just create a Human and use the Danner formula? You get the strength and toughness, only drawback is that it has to be administered in vitro, and if your clones only take half a year… Why not?"

A small frown. "Danner formula?"

"Hugo Danner. America's first superhero? Fought in World War One? It'd make far more sense than that creepy yandere thing you've got going on with Superman."

Genuine puzzlement. "Yan Dare? I'm afraid I don't follow..?"

"You created a son who has DNA from both of you. At this stage you might as well just stage a giant robot attack at a pride parade. Oh, why won't the alien love me!"

He actually chuckles.

"Orange Lantern, amusing as I'm sure the notion is to some people, you really should try to avoid believing everything you read in supermarket tabloids. I'll admit, my relationship with.. Superman, hasn't always been as productive as it might have been, but to suggest that I'm obsessed with him -especially in that way- is simply to engage in the lowest form of sensationalism. If, as you say, Doctor Desmond took it upon himself to use my DNA in his research, then I honestly have no idea why. I'd suggest a somewhat unsettling attempt at favor currying but, given how erratic his behavior became prior to his dramatic exit from Cadmus… That would be pure speculation on my part."

He shifts slightly where he stands. "How… is the youth?"

"He's fine. The League's got a telepath working on properly integrating the data Cadmus programmed him with into his mind."

"I suppose that Superman's taken responsibility for his upbringing. He always did seem so keen on keeping hold of any fragments of Krypton that he could find."

Um..?

I hesitate, and he picks up on it. "Ah? A little uncharacteristic. Dare I hope that the League hasn't simply dumped him somewhere? A growing boy needs proper guidance."

Calm. Stay calm.

"He's getting it."

He spends a moment examining me. "Princess Diana?"

Shit.

"That's.. unexpected. Still, I suppose neither Superman nor myself are really equipped to act as mother figures. I suppose.. visitation rights are out of the question?"

!Kon help protect!

"As I said, he's being looked after. I even managed to augment him up to full Kryptonian strength. He's..!"

He's mine, is what I want to say. And then I want to say 'you can't have him', and then I want to hit him. A lot. Control.

"He's doing just fine. Thank you for your concern."

"If you say so. I'm sure the League knows its business."

back

Tracers 17

next

7th September

21:35 GMT +8

"Incoming transmission from Red Arrow."

Phew.

"Excuse me a moment."

Orange Lantern two eight one four?

Onyx has escaped.

Wha'? How?

Bane attacked the police station holding her with a rocket launcher. They escaped by helicopter.

In the middle of Taipei? How were they expecting to hide that? The police'll be on them in, what, twenty minutes tops?

Not sure. I'm at their landing zone now.

You want me to back you up?

No. Stay with the conference. I'll tell you when I find out what's happening.

I nod.

Alright. Good luck. Thank you for keeping me in the loop.

Just keep your guard up. Red Arrow out.

I lower my hand. Weird. I undid the damage that Venom use did to Bane back when we attacked Santa Prisca. It doesn't make a person stupid, just aggressive, combative and somewhat mentally inflexible. And that shouldn't be affecting him yet even if he started using it again immediately. What is he doing here? And why rescue Onyx? I know that he had a connection to the League of Shadows in the Nolan films, but I don't remember that from the comics and there's no record of it in the Justice League's database. I don't think that I have any information that would help Mister Harper.

"Trouble?"

"Hm? Oh, probably. A minor supervillain from Santa Prisca named Bane just broke Onyx out of the police station that was holding her. Red Arrow's in pursuit."

Mister Luthor nods, and checks his watch. "We should probably be getting back. I find that it helps establish a position of authority if one is already at ease in the room when everyone else arrives."

I nod, rise, and follow him as he leads the way to the corridor. Miss Graves stays by the door as I walk through, then follows me. I was honestly expecting a little more hostility from her, or at least that she'd recognise me as a potential threat. Not that I intend to harm Mister Luthor without a very careful cost/benefit analysis, but still.

Actually, that reminds me. I demand that the universe give me a data stick, and lo! The ring transmutes one for me. It's grey, with an orange sigil on each of the larger sides.

Ring, transfer audiobook How to Succeed in Evil onto the data stick.

Compliance.

"Mister Luthor?" He keeps walking, but looks around. I hold the stick out to him. "I think you might find this amusing, though I'm not sure it'll actually teach you anything."

Amused puzzlement, but he takes it and slips it into his breast pocket. I wonder how he'll feel about the ending? I suppose it isn't all that different to how the version of him from Superman: Red Son dealt with Superman. Or the way Justice League Unlimited Luthor dealt with Bizarro.

We continue walking towards the conference room. Oh well, back to work.

Ring, resume dataflow.

Nothing.

Agh. Ring, resume dataflow.

A cleaner on floor twenty seven is smoking a cigarette out of a window. That's the extent of lawlessness in the entire building. No new faces since my last check. Nothing that registers as an out of place weapon. Outside? A few reporters have tagged in their replacements or gone to their trailers until something of note happens, but for the moment everything is peaceful.

Are Bane and Onyx just trying to scarper?

Ring, detect Bane.

Unable to comply.

Okay, working with the League of Shadows?

Ring, detect Onyx.

Unable to comply.

Huh? Did she get one of the scan blocking things from Bane?

Ring, detect Red Arrow.

Got him. He's about fifteen miles away, running after a truck? No, I should keep my mind focused on my part of the job. Besides, there's more I want to say to Mister Luthor.

"Y'know, I'm curious. Why Lex Luthor?"

Bemused. "It's.. my name…"

"Your name's Alexander Luthor. The normal abbreviation of Alexander is, 'Alex'. In fact, you're the only Alexander I know of who shortens it to Lex. I was just wondering if there was a reason."

He turns his face back to the direction of travel, and smiles slightly. "I suppose the snappy answer would be that I'm not merely A Lex, but the definitive article. Honestly though, I hadn't thought about it. I suppose I just prefer the sound."

"Hmm. Alright, last question before I go back to boring myself trying to spot nonexistent assassins. You said that Human augmentation could be legally difficult. How about magic?"

"Witchcraft is hardly a replacement for scientific achievement."

"Any sufficiently well understood magic is science. I was in Atlantis this morning, and there? Everything runs on the stuff. It's taught in schools. It's a resource available to Humanity, and yet, outside Themyscira, it's hardly used anywhere on the surface. Do you know how many fire mages it takes to do the work of a gas fire power plant? Because I don't, and I know that no power company is ever going to investigate it."

He actually stops walking. His gaze is distant.

"LexCorps spends massive amounts on research and development, right? How much would it cost to hire a couple of Atlantean thaumaturgists? Stick a Rune of Cold on an overheating supercomputer. Stick a Sigil of True Sight on a space telescope. Stop treating magic as something separate, something for primitives. Break a paradigm. I checked, and no one's doing this stuff. If it works, you could enter entirely new markets with products no existing player could match. If it doesn't, well, that's R&D."

"It's.. an intriguing concept. But, as you say, no one outside Atlantis is doing work on.. thaumaturgy, was it? The scientific study of magic energies? The Atlantean population has traditionally been rather opposed to trade with the surface."

"Yeah, but King Orin's all for it. Not being able to get high purity m-."

"Incoming transmission from Red Arrow."

"I'm sorry Mister Luthor, but I need to take this. You should probably get to the meeting room."

He looks at me full on for a moment, his expression thoughtful. "Yes… I will."

A slight frown as he turns away, and walks onward with Miss Graves following just behind. I bring my left hand up to the side of my head.

Orange Lantern two eight one four?

Get… Get outside!

Why, what's going on?

Bane's going to try and complete the assassination.

Yeah, that's scary.

So?

He brought trucks carrying anti-ship missiles. Big ones. They could take down the whole building. I'm in pursuit. Get everyone out!

Shit.

back

Tracers 18

next

7th September

21:40 GMT +8

HOW THE HELL DID BANE GET MISSILE TRUCKS INTO TAIPEI?!

Aaaaaahhhhh..!

Right. Right. Even if I FTL transfer everyone to ground level -and I've never tried that with groups larger than seven- the missiles and debris from the building could still kill them all, to say nothing of everyone else in the area. Rushing into the room and shouting would probably be a bad idea. Fire alarm?

I look down the corridor. Fire alarm.

The alarms start ringing as I ring Miss Graves' phone. There's a click as she answers, and then she doesn't speak. I'm momentarily befuddled.

"Miss Graves, hi, Orange Lantern two eight one four here. We may have a slight missile problem. Could you please evacuate the building as quickly as possible? Thanks ever so."

She rings off. Good. Right. Outside. Outside. Now!

I transfer back to the presentation room, next to the large window. Apparently I don't have any sufficiently unobstructed paths to the outside. Fine. Suction, cut, extract, duck and move, put it back and reattach. And now I have a unobstructed view of Taipei at night.

With this ring I've seen so many amazing things and it's shocking how seldom I'm in the proper mood to appreciate them.

"Ring, find the missiles."

A brief and mindchurningly horrifying moment as the ring tries to show me every rocket based weapon in Asia.

"Taipei. In Taipei."

A more manageable though still migraine inducing number. I swiftly eliminate fireworks and other non-military rockets as I fly up above the convention centre. Cull it further. If the Shadows couldn't get a single assassin to Taiwan without using commercial airlines I seriously doubt that they could have smuggled a significant number of missiles in. Picked up locally? I doubt they could have got them like that legally, but, Bane. Hang on. He shrivelled up when I removed the Venom from his body. Would that mean that facial recognition checks no longer pick him up? He could have just flown in.

Did I..? I wrote about him shrivelling up in my mission report, but I don't think I included a picture of his shrunken face. Damn.

Ring, passenger manifests. Search for Bane's current face.

A blur of faces, then a match. Little Bane in a suit. He's been here for four days.

Who's helping him?

Too many possibles. No Santa Priscan passports. Don't worry about it.

Ring, what missiles does Taiwan have that are small enough to be fired from a truck and large enough to threaten a building?

Balls. Yep, that would do it. Supersonic means I've got next to no chance of seeing it and reacting fast enough to do anything clever. Plus, I can't let it fall on anyone.

Any thefts from military facilities? Or factories?

No records of ongoing investigations. But… Oh. I get an image of a naval missile boat in harbour, its crew stabbed to death. I spend a moment scanning the naval base. There's activity from Taiwanese military personnel, but I can see where missile batteries have been wrenched from their moorings. Would they have needed Venom Buster enhancements to do that, or would regular Venom have been enough? If they used the regular stuff they could sneak away afterwards. Non-permanent versions have their advantages too, I suppose. How many? Looks like ten missiles.

Ring, access military records. Get the serial numbers of those missiles, then find out where they've gone.

"Serial numbers available. Unable to comply with second request."

No no no no no! Not the missiles as well!

Next step. I've practised shielding large areas with Lantern Gardner, but I'm rubbish at it. Can't get emotionally invested enough. But missiles are fairly flimsy, aren't they? Try anyway.

This is my mission, my cause. Shield.

An orange hemiovoid shield forms over the building, extending down around all sides from where I'm floating. Sure, the building's lit up now, but anyone competent enough to steal missiles from the Taiwanese navy and get them into truck-launchable condition could probably hit the far side of a building perfectly well without my help.

Ring, infrared scan. Detect launches. Grab me a spy satellite and give me optical scans. Find the missiles!

I feel as the ring acquires eyes in the sky. I become aware of patterns of heat and air currents across the city. Is this normal? I haven't tried something quite like this before.

Probable launch detected.

Transfer launch site location to… The Peace Enforcing Special Service Forces? Really? Fine. Give me positional data.

Warning! Only approximate data available.

It's on the outskirts, but accelerating. I see waste heat, but whatever satellite the ring just grabbed isn't giving a good view.

Warning! Approximately twenty seconds to impact.

Long range constructs I can do. Mostly. I create a hemisphere construct under the rocket's approximate location, making sure it keeps pace with where I believe it to be. Crossing the index and middle fingers of my right hand-.

Probable launch detected.

Damn it. I form a network of razorblades above the hemisphere, slicing the missile into pieces. Rocket fuel ignites and the warhead detonates as I extend the-

Probable launch detected.

-the hemisphere to contain the force and the shrapnel. The construct holds, just, but I can't keep doing it like that.

Suppress fire, compress remains and place on the ground.

Compliance.

I can't grab the others precisely enough to just point them skywards. Can't just fly to them and transfer them somewhere for the same reason.

Ring, technical schematics. Extend constructs, then sonic scan the missile's probable location to get a precise location.

Compliance.

Two beams of orange light rush away from me in opposite directions.

Locations confirmed. Probable launch detected.

Sonic scalpel to deactivate the detonators. Fix the control surfaces in place, then point the missiles upward.

Compliance. Probable launch detected.

Understood. Repeat-.

Probable launch detected. Probable launch detected. Probable launch detected. Probable launch detected.

back

Tracers 19

next

7th September

21:43 GMT +8

Ring, contact Green two eight one four B. Message: HELP!

Compliance.

Turns out that messages to Green Corps members have a routing system that requires their sector number and seniority. Alan's off the network, but if I want to talk to Guy I need to give his full identification. He says that the Greenies have a 'favourites' list within their Corps, but mine doesn't seem to have that shortcut. Maybe once I start on my own Corps? Or maybe it requires a Central Power Battery?

HUD.

I see the convention centre, the estimated position and time to impact of the missiles. Missile four is further away than some of the others, but has been accelerating for longer and will hit first. Extend, sonic scan, scalpel, fix control surfaces, redirect.

The 'time to impact' number associated with the missile jumps up, then changes to 'non-threat' as the ring calculates that it can't hit us.

Accelerated perception.

I'm going to feel this one in the morning. Time appears to slow. The ring detects impulses forming in my mind and triggers the receipt signal without waiting for it to travel anywhere. My mind is more orange light than organic matter at this point, and the change in the missile impact numbers goes from a blur to a slow flipping, like old train station clocks. I tried this twice before and leaving it on is a very bad idea. Quite aside from making it hard to focus on any one thing, it also causes vomiting, unconsciousness and ultimately? Neural architecture collapse.

Next missile. Extend is fast. Sonic scan feels ridiculously slow. I can see the sound waves and their echoes even as I wait for the ring to form a coherent picture from them. The scalpel forms, and I see the parts of the detonator stress and fail as it damages just enough to make the fused detonation impossible. I have to force myself to remain on target as the ring performs the delicate task of fixing control surfaces without causing fuel detonation, then applying just enough pressure to redirect the oncoming missile without tearing it apart.

Safe. But I've also made estimates as to how long it's going to take to do all of them. At least two will impact my shield.

Ring, automate disabling by impact time. Normal perception.

Aaaaahghgh…

I throw up in my mouth as my thoughts crash together in complete confusion for a moment. I fall about four metres before I can coherently want anything again. Mouth clear. Close your eyes tight. Curl up in the air. Everything feels wrong, but that doesn't matter. Focus.

I never liked Missile Command. With my eyes screwed shut to ward off painful sensory input all I can see is the HUD. Maybe it's easier in the abstract? Guy's very big on practical experience, but not very interested in novel approaches.

I feel shitty and it's the fault of the missiles!

One missile goes to non-threat status.

My city! My building!

Another missile off target. Two left. Too slow!

Missile eight ploughs into my shield construct. I can feel the impact, the detonation of the warhead and the ignition of the remaining rocket fuel.

No! You can't have it!

The construct holds, just about. Bits of missile rain down onto the blessedly empty forecourt.

I don't think the shield will stop another.

Probable launch detected.

Oh, come on!

Three seconds on missile nine.

!No can't won't wrong mine wrong wrong!

Transition.

I open my eyes.

Did I just-?

It feels like perceptual acceleration flicks back on as the missile strikes my armour construct right in the chest, slamming me back against the shield around the building. I see the warhead detonate in slow motion as my resistance becomes hard enough to set it off. Distantly, I register the sharp increase in pressure, then the shield behind me buckles and breaks. Time goes back to normal as the force of the detonation sends me flying backwards in an uncontrolled hurtle. I see sky, black explosion cloud, wreckage flying away in all directions, building shield faltering and fading away from my impact site as my focus fails. A pain as I pierce the glass frontage in a shower of crystal shards, slamming onto a board room table before bouncing and flipping end over end back onto the table, then the floor at the far end before crashing through the rear wall and coming to rest on the floor of the hallway.

Uuuuhuuuhuhuhhuhgh.

I try to rise. My hand pushes on glass and it slides away. I catch myself.

Uh.

On my hands and knees, I try to push myself up. I slip, and go down on my face. My armour construct shimmers and fails. This situation, this situation. I should be doing-.

Wholeness rightly assumed.

Hoooooagh. That's better. The disorientation hasn't quite faded as I push back on my haunches and then stand, steadying myself against the wall. Wooh!

Why are there still people..?

I blink, recognising the South Rhelasian party as they stream into the hallway. The ones at the front of their party stop and stare at me and the wreckage.

This is why peace conferences shouldn't be held at the top of tall buildings.

"Keep going!"

Fucking stupid rubberneckers…

They pick up speed down the corridor towards the exit sign.

Warning! Approximately eight seconds to impact.

The HUD shows the tenth perfectly following the flight path of the ninth. I can actually see it with my unaided eyes as I stagger back towards the breach. No time to take it apart neatly. Uh. I don't think I can focus well enough to block it reliably.

What's left? Redirect? It'll still hit the building. Don't know how many people..?

Wait, could that work?

Ring, can you target the missile visually?

Affirmative.

"Heh.. heh heh."

I run, stumbling then righting myself, towards the hole in the glass.

"Ring, extend environmental shield to the missile. Subspace it."

Slow again. I can watch the missile as it physically enters the building at one and a half times the speed of sound. I see the pale orange glow of my environmental shield extend from my hand and coat the metal surface. I can see the Taiwanese flag and the serial number on the nose. I can see the effect of the air being blasted away by the rocket motor, sending the glass that fell inside the room towards the opening. I think I'm falling forward, hand out towards the approaching missile as it disappears.

I fall against the table, then pull myself upright.

Is that it?

Please be it.

back

Tracers 20

next

7th September

21:46 GMT +8

Seat. Seat. I pull out a chair, brush off most of the glass with my right forearm, then collapse into it.

Altering your own brain with a power ring is a bad idea.

I hear a whistle. "Some party. Hope you ain't been drinking."

I look up. "I don't think Taiwan celebrates Saint Patrick's Day, but well done for coming prepared."

Lantern Gardner grins as he floats in through the hole in the wall. Used to be, I'd have been scared to be this close to a drop like that. Now it's just, whatever, y'know?

He takes a moment to look at me. "You okay, kid?"

"Used the perception acceleration thing. I'm a bit out of it. Chucked a, ogh…" A wave of nausea. "Redirected a bunch of missiles up into the sky. Could you please catch them before they run out of fuel?"

He waves it off. "No problem. Sit tight and watch while I show you how a real Lantern takes care a' business."

He floats backwards, waves a mock salute at the Rhelasians in the hallway, then turns and accelerates away. Guess he still hasn't got his head around short ranged FTL transitions. Whatever. This is well within his abilities.

"Ring, remaining charge?"

"Fifty nine percent remaining."

Fine, that's fine. I've found that sorting my head out from things like this is best achieved with music and food. I'm not risking unfamiliar foreign food in my current state, but the ring's music is still there.

"Ring, play 'There she is!', no translation, and let me know if anything dangerous happens."

"Compliance"

I push myself up with the aid of the table as the unintelligible K-Pop -um, R-Pop, I suppose- pours forth. I'm sure that if I actually understood the language I wouldn't like it nearly as much. Then I slide the chair back through the glass shards and turn to go in search of the kitchens. Wasn't there a fad in China for fish and chips a while back? Shouldn't be too hard to…

…

The entire peace conference is behind me. They're gawping. I can just about see Mister Luthor and Miss Graves at the back.

"Ah, I'm going to clean that up." I point my thumb at the hole. "Just need a few minutes, and… Hang on. Ring, off!"

The musical accompaniment to a touching Rabbit/Cat love story is silenced. Damn, they all speak the language, don't they? I must look like a prize idiot.

"You… You made the missile disappear?"

"No, General, I just shifted it into the ring's subspace pocket. I'll return it to the Taiwanese coastal defence people once-" Another wave of nausea, accompanied by dizziness. "-erum. Excuse me. Once I know things are settled here."

"An impressive technology, is it not?" Mister Luthor's managed to make his way through the crowd by using Miss Graves as an icebreaker. "Orange Lantern, I believe I counted two missile impacts? In addition to the one you caught in mid air?"

I nod, falling into parade rest. "Yes, plus the seven I stopped before they reached the building."

Silence.

"Ten missiles?"

He doesn't actually sound surprised. He's just asking for confirmation. I see Miss Grant and her cameraman following behind him.

"Yes, Mister Luthor. Ten Taiwanese Brave Wind mark three anti-ship missiles. Stolen from a naval shipyard earlier today, most likely on the orders of a Santa Prisca national by the name of Bane. No idea how he made them truck launchable though. Erm, he's also notorious for his Venom habit and for his ownership of Venom production facilities, so that may explain how Onyx had a dose to use on Mister Huang earlier."

Wait a second. I couldn't scan the missile I now have in subspace. The Taiwanese will have to wait a little while on getting it returned, I need someone to take a look at it.

I really hope the rocket motors haven't incinerated all my stuff.

Prime Minister Tseng and General Li share a look, then step forward towards me. The Prime Minister speaks first.

"You saved all our lives. Thank you."

"Red Arrow was investigating the original attack. If he hadn't warned me this was going to happen, I'm not sure that I'd have been able to stop them. Plus, Lantern.. Green Lantern two eight one four B is collecting the missiles I redirected before they run out of fuel and fall on someone."

I checked, and while Guy's name isn't exactly a secret, knowledge of it isn't that widespread. He said that he didn't really care, but I don't think I should blab.

General Li steps up to me, hand outstretched. Puzzled, I shake it. "Modest too."

There's a flash. A camera. General Li steps aside, and I shake hands with Prime Minister Tseng. Mister Luthor is third in line, then walks around behind me and puts an arm around my shoulder as we pose for the photographer.

Yep. Definitely an oversight. Next month is definitely too long.

"If there's any way we can repay you..?" The General again.

"Well, General, this is supposed to be a peace conference. And, if the League of Shadows wants to prevent peace, it seems to me that that's a good reason to go for it."

The two leaders look at each other.

"If it helps inspire confidence, I'd be happy to monitor the military stand down of both sides. It'd be easier for me than for a team of UN inspectors, anyway."

The Prime Minister looks away first. "Orange Lantern, you must understand, our nations have been at loggerheads since their creation. At this point, reunification is-."

"I never mentioned reunification, sir. And compared to the hostility between Britain and France over the last thousand years, a mere sixty year stand off doesn't mean that much. And look at how well Britain and France get along now."

They avoid eye contact for a moment.

"Hey!" Guy's back and, oh. He decided to bring the six misdirected missiles with him, rocket motors off and bound in glowing green tethers. Gosh they're big. "Someone drop these!?"

back

Tracers 21

next

7th September

23:46 GMT +8

I stand with Guy and Roy at the side of the stage while in the centre Prime Minister Tseng and General Li sign the agreement Mister Luthor and I were finally able to talk them into. Guy thought it was funny to prop the missiles themselves against the wall on the other side of the room, and I'm sure they'll make an interesting talking point for the guests once the signing is over. Guy's grinning at the attention and Roy's still glowering at Mister Luthor, who looks mildly pleased from his seat between the General and the Prime Minister. Not really sure how I feel. I mean, he was right; improving the lives of seventy four million people isn't insignificant, but I'm just not really feeling it.

We're keeping an eye out for follow up attacks, but nothing's happening. After handing the missiles off to me Guy went to see what was taking Roy so long. Answer: six heavily armed guys hopped up on Venom. The two of them seem to have bonded over the fight and the really-wanting-to-be-on-the-Justice-League-but-being-unfairly-excluded thing. I hope this publicity helps Guy's cause. Not sure about Roy. Haven't spent enough time with him to say that I know him well enough to assess it, but he really came through here. Though they and the Taiwanese police picked up some of Bane's helpers the man himself got away with most of them. As did Onyx.

I see Miss Grant over toward the middle of the room. Wonder what she's reporting..?

"…signing a treaty which promises to bring hostilities between these two nations to a permanent end. While both sides have publicly ruled out reunifica…"

"I can't believe we're doing a solid for Lex Luthor."

I shrug. "Seventy four million people will be happy with the result. I can live with it being seventy four million and one."

"Yeah, and it's not like it's worth the League of Shadows killin' 'em now, is it? Which means you and I can go home, while Orange here-" He slaps me on the back. My body armour prevents me from having to stagger forward. "-gets to spend the rest of the week playing Risk with real soldiers. Heh, League of Shadows, who even came up with that name?"

It's a little disturbing how often Guy and I are on the same wavelength.

"Ra's is hundreds of years old. It was probably original when he first thought of it."

"But what about-." Roy stops himself, and lowers his voice. "What about the other problem?"

Apparently Onyx told him that the League of Shadows had a source inside my team. I think that's pretty unlikely, but I'll talk to Kaldur about it once he gets back.

"Head games, Red. She's just messin' with ya'. Don't worry about it."

"Just in case, I'll talk to Diana about lassoing everyone and asking them. I've been reading up on the Lasso of Truth, and apparently it can compel truth even if you don't know you're lying."

I've sort of been meaning to ask about the possibility of using it to get my name back. Since I know for sure that I don't have any arcane compulsions on me (thanks to Mister Constantine) or telepathic ones (thanks, M'gann) there shouldn't be a significant risk in the attempt. Okay, so when she was checking me out M'gann got it into her head to have a look for my surname herself, and we both got knocked out for four hours and I had to explain to Mister J'onzz what we'd been doing and why exactly we thought that was a good idea -I didn't-, but the theory is sound.

Robin tried guessing it, but apparently 'candles' is too cryptic a clue even for him. I can't think of anything closer that doesn't set it off. It's not like anyone's going to use it; the whole thing's just so annoying.

The General, the Prime Minister and Mister Luthor rise, and step to the side to pose for photos.

"Either of you know how long we're supposed to stay?"

Roy snorts. "Treaty's signed. Job's done. I'm out of here."

"Ah, come on Red, don't be like that. I'm still on US time! And in the US it's time for lunch. Either a' you been to Taipei before?"

Um, not close to the ground.

"No?"

Roy still doesn't look happy, but he isn't leaving. "Yes, but I wasn't here for the food."

"I was here in oh five, fighting Evil Star. After I finished kicking his ass, some guys from the local police took me to this stall in the Shihlin Night Market. Does the best Chinese food you ever tasted."

Chinese..?

"Well I… I was planning to get something to eat. R-" Not Roy. "-ed Arrow?"

"Do they take credit card?"

Guy frowns. "'Course they don't. Wait, you seriously don't have any local currency? How long you been here?"

"A few days. I've just been using room service."

I don't have any… What's Taiwan's currency? The New Taiwanese Dollar, or Yuán for short. Wasn't that the currency in Legend of Korra? "Do you think they'd take gold?"

Guy chuckles. "Doesn't matter what kind of card it is, they don't have a terminal."

"No, I mean, gold the metal."

I take a shiny yellow disk out of subspace and hold it up. Not a US mint approved one, this. Double sided orange lantern sigil, and noticeably larger.

"That real?"

"No, Guy, I plan to preserve the karmic balance of the universe by matching the good we've done here with the evil of ripping off a bunch of street traders."

"Probably take it. Where'd you get that?"

"My Corps doesn't have a rule against its members using their rings for their own ends. Let me go check with Mister Luthor, then lunch, dinner, whatever time of day we're on, is on me."

"You mean you can just…" Guy seems more than a little peeved.

"Guy, avarice. If I couldn't use it for what I wanted to use it for, I wouldn't be able to use it at all."

"That is such BS."

"Excuse me?" We turn as one. "Cat Grant, GBS News." The cameraman has his camera in the at rest position. "Do the three of you have time for an interview? If we're not going to be attacked again, I mean."

The three of us look at each other. Sadly, none of us are telepathic or even know each other that well and so we don't learn anything. I decide to reply.

"We were going to get something to eat. Once this winds down, I mean. Um, do the two of you want to come along? We could talk while we eat?"

She grins. "That... That would be great!"

Guy nudges me with his elbow. Known her for two minutes and you're already asking her to dinner? Real smooth, kid.

What? No, no, that wasn't what I… Uh, never mind.

back

NEXT CHAPTER

Exaltations

BACK

Exaltations 1

next

Exaltations

8th September

13:08 GMT -5

The only good thing about monitoring a phased military stand down in a country on the other side of the planet is that when night falls you can go home and still have some day left. I think I'm going to be abusing the ring's 'don't need to eat or sleep' function. I had thought that I'd be working in an office with representatives of North and South. Instead, I spent most of it in front of a room full of press people, announcing a confirmation of each stage as it happened, as well as fielding their questions. The recording of me listening to 'There she is!' was released on VidULike and has now gone thoroughly viral. There's remixes, mash ups, extended cuts and the last mutation I saw had the music edited out and replaced with a porn sound track which I turn off once I see the Rhelasians. After I watched that, I stopped looking.

There were a few people dressed up as Doki and Nabi outside, and they were eventually joined by people dressed as me.

I have cosplayers now.

That's a thing.

Guy turned up for a bit around local midday. Not sure what he was planning, but it gave me a break so I didn't really care. When I came back, he was trying to dodge answering questions on the relationship between our Corps. I feel a bit bad about that. He's clearly been ordered not to say anything. News programs have been making the whole thing more interesting by splicing in parts of our dinner with Miss Grant. I guess that either she made the recording off the clock or GBS sold it on. I think we come across fairly well, and the people running the stall seemed happy enough about it.

Diana's finding the whole thing a little amusing. Her only punishment for me 'coming out' was to make me spend an hour screening her fan mail so that I'll 'have a better idea of what I've let myself in for'. If I ever see a picture of a fat hairy naked guy again, it'll be too soon.

Haven't heard anything back from the Taiwanese police yet. Bane's employees are in their care. I checked, and they are being treated properly. Well, aside from being made to go through Venom withdrawal cold turkey, but I can live with that. Mister Huang hasn't woken up yet, and I've set the ring to alert me when he does.

I'm in the base's kitchen. No one else is here, and I want to eat something. Something not Asian. I don't mind it exactly, but the flavours just clash in my mouth and I haven't worked out the exact mechanics of eating some of it yet. I check, but the last of the chilli is gone from the freezer. What do we have? Nothing that looks appetising. Right, head into Happy Harbour, buy some fresh fish and vegetables, come back. If I stick some potatoes in to roast now, they should be ready when everything else is. The ring makes peeling easy, and lets me skip the usual pre-boiling and feathering with a burst of microwave radiation and a slight application of force. Olive oil, heat resistant dish, oven on to gas mark 6, oh. Right. Electric oven. Chart on the wall says gas mark 6 equals 200oC, which translates into Imperial as 392oF. In it goes.

Ring, transition to the training area.

Compliance.

The scene shifts and oh. Kaldur's back. "Hi Kaldur, how's..?" I look at the object he's holding in his right hand. He notices what I'm looking at, and raises it slightly. "Is that.. actually.. Ocean Master's trident?"

"Yes. My king did not want to keep it in Atlantis, and since we were the ones to defeat its former owner…"

That's a little weird.

"You know.. the only one of us who can use it is you, right? Are you.. actually.. planning to?"

"I have not yet decided. It is a powerful weapon. I will need to train with it before I make a decision."

"It's not booby trapped or anything, is it?"

"No, it was checked thoroughly, and by mages of proven loyalty. I do not believe that Ocean Master would have considered planning for his own defeat worthwhile."

"How.. is..?"

Should I be asking that? I look away for a moment, and Kaldur does likewise.

"He is… There is no immediate danger of Ocean Master dying. King Orin has expressed a desire for a full trial once he is well enough to go through it."

I've still got his hands in subspace. With all the excitement in Asia I completely forgot about it.

"Before I forget, there's a few things I need to talk to you about. Got a moment?" He nods. "Alright, first, I've still got Ocean Master's hands."

His eyes widen slightly.

I wave my hands in a warding gesture. "I picked them up after I cut them off, and with one thing and another I haven't got around to returning them. They're perfectly preserved… Ah, would they be able to reattach them?"

He blinks, trying to come to terms with the idea of me carting around a man's hands. "Possibly. Now that he is out of danger…"

"Who.. would I talk to about that?"

We look at each other for a moment. I'm starting to feel like laughing.

He shakes his head slightly. "I honestly am not sure. I suppose it would be the physician responsible for his care. If you go to the palace and ask for Tuvul'Orr, they should be able to direct you."

"Thank you. I'll do that after lunch. Second thing, ran into Red Arrow yesterday. There's a-" I wave at the computer console. "-mission report, you should probably read. In summary, League of Shadows tried to violently break up the Rhelasian peace summit and we stopped them, but… When Red Arrow fought Onyx, she said something about them having a source inside our team. Now, I haven't put anything about that in the report. I've checked our electronic systems, nothing there."

He nods in understanding. "That would just leave the people."

I shake my head. "I don't think there's anything to it. I think she was just trying to wind him up, but, your call."

His eyes flick down for a moment. "I suppose we cannot rule out the possibility."

"I suppose not. Heh, I don't think I'd have believed my backstory if I hadn't lived through it. Alright, you want me to ask Diana to come here and truth lasso us all? I'll go first."

"With all due respect to your sponsor, I think it would be more prudent to investigate quietly. If there is a mole, I have no wish to tip him -or her- off."

"Okay, if that's how you want to do it. But if we're investigating, we need to get lassoed. I don't doubt your honesty and I don't think that you doubt mine, but if we're being thorough…" He nods. Glad he's not arguing about that. "I should be able to get hold of her this evening. Alright, last thing. Has Batman said anything to you about the process for us getting new members?"

"No, he has not. Do you have someone in mind?"

"Yes."

I call the grey with orange sigil notebook out of subspace. Turns out that the rocket motor shut down as soon as I put the missile there. I desire, and the ring generates a copy of my research before returning the original to subspace. I hand the copy to Kaldur.

"This, is Robert Marrack."

back

Exaltations 2

next

8th September

13:12 GMT -5

Kaldur takes the notebook and opens it to the first page, with Robert's picture both in and out of uniform. "Cornwall Boy?"

"He picked it when he was eight. Last time I talked to him, he said that he's probably going to change it."

"You have already spoken to him?"

"I didn't say that I could offer him anything, just that I'd bring it up. And I needed to find out if he was even interested, and why."

Kaldur scans the first few pages. "How did you meet?"

"I was looking for potential new members anyway. He was in the right age group. I went to see him for the first time after we got back from Salem."

"It was him who..?" He moves his right hand to the left side of his chest, and makes a circling motion.

I nod. "Yep. Took him a few seconds to sort it out. Don't know what he'd have been able to do if it was at full strength, but I suppose you could check that."

"I would be interested to meet someone versed in surface world magics."

"Yeah, you'd probably find it disappointing. His family owns some books on the subject, but it's, y'know, not exactly rigorously researched. Not by Atlantean standards, I mean."

"What can he do?"

"There's an artefact his family owns. While he's connected to it, he's very strong and very resilient. Not quite at Kon's level, but still pretty impressive. Since he can turn the connection off, he's been learning shotokan karate at a local gym. Brown belt at the moment, though I think Black Canary could get him up fairly quickly. He also has an instinct for magic energies, but he hasn't really learned to do much with it yet."

Kaldur smiles faintly. "It seems that his skill set is fairly similar to my own."

"Huh. Suppose it is. Hadn't really thought about it."

"Why does he want to join us?"

"Apparently his power set runs in his family, in the male line. But, his father isn't really interested in doing much more than looking after their reliquary, and occasionally supporting the local police. Robert wants to go further, thinks he can achieve more with their powers. I mean, let's face it: if you don't know where you need to be or you can't get there, it's very hard to use super strength effectively."

"The League's intelligence resources are extremely useful."

"And the zeta tubes, for members who aren't super fast."

Kaldur closes the book. "I will read it and consider the matter carefully. You will have my opinion tomorrow."

"Thank you. If you like the idea, I'll bring it up with Batman."

"How many other potential recruits have you spoken to?"

"Spoken to? None. There's a few maybes I'm making notes on, but he's the only one who's got to this stage." Hang on, there was something else… "Oh! Do you want this for anything?"

Kaldur looks in bemusement at the coconut sized lump of grey plastic that has appeared in my right hand. "What is it?"

"It's what's left of the rubbish I cleaned out of the North Atlantic Gyre."

He stares at me for a moment. "You.. 'cleaned out' the North Atlantic Gyre?"

"Well I started.. on the Pacific Rubbish Patch, but when I finished that it occurred to me that there was probably an equivalent area in each major ocean. The one in the North Atlantic didn't take as long as I'd already had loads of practice… Didn't I mention that I was doing that?"

"You did, but I had assumed that it would take a good deal longer."

"At the speed I was going at the start, it would have. But I've got much better at creating filtration constructs and focusing my avarice since then. I mean, there's still some plastic in there, but the place it used to be collecting in is now about as clear as the rest of the ocean."

"The presence of that area of surface-created pollution had been a major cause for concern in Atlantis. This may help improve relations between Atlantis and the surface world. The use of the ocean as a dumping ground has long been a contentious issue."

"Really? I'd have thought that you were all too deep to be affected."

"No one lives directly under the center point, but even many miles away it is… It was, possible to taste the detritus in the water whenever you open your mouth or your gills. You have truly done Atlantis a great service."

"Oh. Well. Um. No problem."

He goes back to looking at the lump.

"I have no use for it personally, but I am sure that the Poseidonis Royal Museum would be interested."

"I'll offer it to them when I drop the hands off." Oh it felt weird to say that. He starts walking to the habitation area. "Look, I was going to cook something for lunch. You hungry?"

He stops and thinks for a moment. "I thought that you usually ate your main meal in the evening."

"I've been through so many time zones today that I don't even know what time it is."

"Are you not supposed to be attending school today?"

"There's a funny story there. I never told Diana how old I am. I'm seventeen, and in the British education system compulsory schooling finishes at sixteen, so I don't actually need to attend school unless I plan on having a career in a field that requires a particular qualification, and-" I hold up the ring. "-I don't."

"Then I think I will join you. Thank you."

He resumes his journey. I'm probably going to be spending a great deal more time with him, now that M'gann and Kon are going to be at school all day. Especially with M'gann's cheerleading practice. Cheerleading. Nothing is more American than celebrating the concept of celebration. Reminding cheering people that they're supposed to cheer. It's like those greeters at WalMart who are there to tell people that they've entered a shop. I mean, for goodness sake, what's the point? Ah, I'm sure that she'll love it, and I try to be polite when she brings it up, but my inner British curmudgeon is demanding that I do the whole thing down whenever possible.

I wonder if there's a New God of Celebration?

I focus, and remotely prepare a couple of potatoes for Kaldur and add them to those already in the oven. Remote control for complex tasks is a bad idea, but this is a job the ring could do in my sleep.

I'm glad that the Atlanteans will be pleased about all that cleaning work I've been doing. To start with it was a bit of a hassle, but after the first few weeks it became a challenge to overcome, and that made it much easier. I'm doing low Earth orbit next, once the Rhelasian stuff is dealt with.

back

Exaltations 3

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9th September

17:26 GMT -5

Grimacing, I curl the glowing orange shield in front of us inwards, compressing the exploded remains of the late Roderick Rat into a gooey ball of blood, guts and fur.

"Ring, incinerate."

The ball blackens. Once I'm sure that it's sterile, I cool it, open the biological waste bin and deposit it inside. Only then do I risk looking at my fellow researchers.

Wallace is staring wide eyed at the test area.

"So, not.. taking.. the formula.. then."

"Sorry. Looks like two doses isn't healthy."

It's so annoying! We've been able to replicate the Garrick Formula just fine! Sure, as soon as Speedy Gonzales got scared he ran out of the mountain through a wall, but the formula definitely worked! We've even been able to make impure versions which are probably similar to what Wallace and Mister Garrick used originally. But, give a rat a second dose… Rat-a-blew-ey.

"Ring, transfer scans of the last subject to the computer."

"Compliance."

Wallace relaxes enough to sag. "It's not gunna work, is it?"

Mister Garrick looks up from my research records. "It was a first attempt, Wally. You shouldn't expect modifying my formula to be that easy."

"Noo… I know. I just… I just really hoped it would be." He sighs. "How about we try with one of my blood samples?"

The left side of my mouth tenses slightly, and I make momentary eye contact with Mister Garrick.

"Oh kay…"

I pick up a test tube containing a small sample of Wallace's blood, and create a shield cube around it.

"Recording. Transmuting in three, two, one."

The blood sample was small, but the blast still coats it across an impressive proportion of the shield before it slides down the sides.

"Ohhwah…"

"At least your blood actually reacts to the stuff."

I wave at my own samples, still in a stand on the bench. For reasons I suspect have something to do with alchemy it fails to react at all to either the Danner Formula or the Garrick Formula. Even when the samples are cloned rather than extracted, Wallace's samples react and mine don't. Mister Garrick found it fascinating. I'm not sure that I'd actually have used either of them even if I could, but the option would have been nice. The third, much darker sample a little further along the stand is proof that Venom Buster can interact with me, but that change isn't something I'm willing to contemplate.

Combining the two formulae doesn't work. Administered in sequence, the second does nothing. Administered together, they tend to neutralise one another. Again, that shouldn't happen. Worse still, I can't remove the effects. I can transmute the formulae from other materials no problem, even if I have to do so in every cell of the body like for the Danner Formula. I can transmute it back fine, until it gets into a living being and goes to work. Transmuting it back then just makes it disappear for a few seconds with no noticeable change in the abilities of the user. It then reappears spontaneously.

I'm starting to think that it's just doing it to spite me.

"Ring, transfer scans to the computer, then incinerate and bin."

"Compliance."

Silver lining, I can now induce celerity in any baseline Human, up to and possibly beyond what Mister Allen has. Even a modern lab can't quite manage the reagent purity a power ring can. But we're still no closer to helping Wallace. I bring my right knuckle to my chin.

"The way I see it, there's three basic approaches we could try from here. First, I could try altering the materials already in your body. Second, I try turning you back into a baseline Human, and then we give you a dose. Third, we try getting hold of an alchemist, see if we can get a better understanding of the mechanisms involved."

"But..! Chemistry..!"

"Sorry Wally, but he could be right. I based my original work on Professor Danner's paper on alkaline radicals. Even after we found that it couldn't possibly work by the mechanism which he thought it did, I always assumed that we'd eventually have a scientific explanation for how the formulae worked. It's been seventy years, and if a power ring says it isn't the chemical reactions, well, then there isn't really anywhere to go from there."

"Mister Garrick, are there other people we could talk to about this? Johnny Chambers, or Max Mercury?"

"Afw… Sorry Paul. Johnny's been dead for more than twenty years. Max… You don't find Max, he finds you. I could put the word out, but I haven't seen him for decades."

Mister Constantine might be able to get hold of Mister Chambers anyway, but I don't think I'll bring that up unless we're really desperate.

"Probably worth doing. Look, can I check that we're all on the same page about alchemy? Wallace, you tested my blood samples yourself. In simple chemical terms, there's no reason for it not to react."

Wallace looks away, then down, before grudgingly nodding.

"Mister Garrick, about Abednego Danner. I've been trying to look up other chemistry papers from the same period, and I haven't found anything even remotely similar to his work. That's unusual, right? Were any of his contemporaries working on the same thing?"

His gaze drops slightly, he frowns a little, and shakes his head. "No. I tried investigating the same thing myself in the forties, when I started work on my formula. His work doesn't have any obvious precursor. Doesn't have that many successors, either, particularly these days. Serious chemists aren't prepared to put time into things that shouldn't work. And yeah, that is odd."

"Then there's something black in our lentils." Both Mister Garrick and Wallace give me a puzzled look. "It's an Indian saying. Means, someone's playing silly b-. Um. It means that something odd is going on. I mean, he might have put random chemicals together and got incredibly lucky, but…"

Wallace perks up. "But that's really unlikely!"

"Yeah. So how does a professor at the University of Colorado get an education in alchemy in the eighteen nineties?"

Mister Garrick nods. "And another question: if he learned it from an existing source, why aren't there other people with the same ability? If it was written down, other people would have read it. If he learned it from a person, what stopped them telling other people?"

"The stuff I got off Alan showed a progression in his research. He definitely improved on what he started with, but either he didn't write down his initial work, the notes didn't survive, or someone gave him a leg up."

Wallace appears to think for a moment, then makes eye contact with me. "You said that any sufficiently well understood magic is science, right?"

"Yes?"

"Do you know anyone who understands it well enough?"

"I could get an alchemist, but I don't think they'd have the necessary understanding of the theory behind the operating mechanisms to do original work. There might be someone in Atlantis, but I don't think they study regular chemistry down there."

"Then I'll do it."

My eyebrows go up. That, I did not expect.

"You sure? I mean, we haven't eliminated all other avenues..?"

"Yeah, but it's a completely new area for me. It's going to be a while before I know enough to be worth anything. You keep trying ring transmutation, and I'll grab some books off Kaldur." He shifts uncomfortably on the spot. "Paul… Jay… I need this. I don't even care about the speed so much, but I can't keep eating whole tubs of ice cream 'cause I got the munchies."

Mister Garrick steps toward him, and lays his right hand on Wallace's shoulder. "It's okay Wally. We'll work this out together."

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Exaltations 4

next

10th September

09:23 GMT -2

I nod at our host.

"Alright then. Let's see it."

Sephtian told me that he had the first of what he's decided to call 'Spell Eater Amulets' ready when I visited yesterday. Since I had a meeting with Diana planned I said that I couldn't stick around, but that I'd come back today. I then decided to kill two fish with one harpoon, which is why the world's most out of place Liverpudlian has joined us in Sephtian's workshop.

I still haven't quite worked out why John Constantine agreed to come. Sure, I know he's a sucker for anything to do with magic, and he did hold out until I offered to take him to a couple of Atlantis' arcane book shops. I want him because yesterday evening I slowly disassembled the Brave Wind missile, and I've located what I think is the runic inscription on the inside of the outer shell. It's written in electrically conductive polymer, probably with one of those circuit pen things. Sephtian is more likely to be able to analyse it, but Mister Constantine knows more about who might have been able to create it. I also want them to have a look at the Danner and Garrick formula samples I've brought. I know that neither of them are really alchemists, but I really want to give Wallace something to work with.

Sephtian… I can't read his body language. His face is too different and his robes obscure too much of his body. I'd guess that he's excited, but I'm not really sure.

"The hard part was the maths, really."

He picks up a flat case from the work bench and holds it out towards me. Unlike when we first met, he actually isn't standing on the floor. I'm keeping Mister Constantine and I anchored to it out of habit, but we're surprisingly buoyant. I hadn't even thought about it during my last couple of visits, but we should have negative buoyancy at this depth.

"Calculating the relationships took about four days' work. I mean, four whole days. I didn't sleep."

I see a motion in the corner of my eye as Mister Constantine pushes off the counter and half wades/half paddles over to us. Navigating under water when you can't fly and aren't much of a swimmer isn't easy. My environmental shield means that he doesn't have to worry about breathing or getting wet, but as he wasn't happy about me being the one moving him around he's having to struggle a bit.

"Let's see what all the fuss is about, then."

Sephtian reaches his right hand around to the front and flips the catch. One hand over and one hand under, he slowly opens the case. "Getting help to do the enchanting was easy enough. I even set up a system so that they don't have to be in close physical proximity to the artefact."

The lid passes the forty five degree point, and I get a look at the product of his labours. This prototype is a disk of black granite with a hole in the centre and tiny gold wires crisscrossing the surface. They actually run through the granite as well, something that is basically impossible to achieve without a power ring. Granite is pretty common in amulets of this type because it's fairly mystically inert. The hole is for the thong which will allow it to be worn as a necklace without risking disruption to the binding wires.

The thong itself is in the case next to the disk. It isn't made from leather -they couldn't work that down here even if they could get it- but from enchanted whale sinew. Thanks to Atlantean efforts -diplomacy in modern times, fishing boat hunting a few generations ago- fish and aquatic mammal stocks in this parallel are much higher than at home. But this probably wasn't taken from an actual whale but rather created by a professional biomancer.

I only found out they existed yesterday, when Tuvul'Orr explained the process for reattaching Ocean Master's hands. Recreating the whole hands would have been immensely difficult, but according to him reattaching them was day surgery. If the surface world only gets one thing in trade with Atlantis it has to be the ability to regrow simple body tissues. I mean, I used to work in umbilical cord blood storage, and I know that even the most generous estimates of future stem cell regeneration techniques are nothing like what Atlantis can already do.

"Well?"

Sephtian's lower body is in constant motion, treading water. Or maybe that's just how he shows excitement? He sounds breathless, but I'm not sure how much of that is being translated by the ring. Would I be able to hear him at all without it?

"It doesn't look any different to me."

"Of course it doesn't! You certainly can't see magic."

Another advantage to having Mister Constantine here is that he can tell me if this is some sort of weirdly complex conjob. I extend my right hand and pick it up. It dries as it passes through my environmental shield. I can't feel the wires, and the stone is smooth and cool to the touch.

"Let's give it a try then."

I subspace my armour, replacing it with my vest and jeans. I reach up with my left hand and remove my existing ward, putting it in the case in place of its successor. I don't.. feel any different. No, I suppose that's not a fair test. I put the new ward back in the case as well, taking hold of the lower flap with my left and with my right hand hovering just above the Spell Eater.

"Sephtian, that scanning spell you used on me when we first met. Cast it, and don't look at my hand."

He nods once, releases his hold on the case and pulls his hands into his chest. He's much gentler now than he was the first time, but it still feels like I've got some sort of burrowing insects living in my hypodermis. Keeping eye contact with him, I drop my hand onto the new ward. Half a second later the feeling is gone, and Sephtian breathes out heavily and blinks rapidly. He rubs his hands together as if he were washing them.

"It is not a comfortable feeling, to be casting at the Spell Eater. Once it gets going, it feels like it could pull the spirit out of you."

"It can't, right?"

"Nnnnnnnot out of a normal person. Perhaps… Perhaps out of some sort of elemental? I'm not sure."

I turn to Mister Constantine. He's pulled out a cigarette, and is in the process of lighting it. He started nagging me about that during our mid-Atlantic descent, until I realised that the environmental shield would probably keep them dry. As long as it's in close proximity to him anyway. Atlanteans don't smoke, obviously. I've already told the ring to unmake the smoke and ash.

"Bit beyond me, mate, to be honest. I mean, I recognise the runes and that. The theory bits sound right, but…" He shrugs.

I suppose he's got a point. "Fair enough. Another practical test then." I pull out the Spell Eater and the thong. I thread the thong around and through it, and put it around my neck. Oh, hang on, should check. "Does it have to be in contact with my skin? Or can I wear it over clothes.. or what?"

"It needs to be in close physical proximity. Skin contact is best, but a centimetre or so shouldn't matter too much."

"Rightyoh. How about the other ward?"

"That thing? It would fail after a few minutes if you tried wearing them together."

"Alright. Mister Constantine, present for you."

I hand him the other ward and he slips it into his coat pocket as I put the Spell Eater down my chest under my vest, and keep it there. Then I take a couple of steps away and take a solid stance.

"Hit me with something."

He reaches up to his mouth with his left hand and pulls out his cigarette, holding it out to the side slightly. He then meets my eyes, his own narrowed slightly, a thin smile on his lips. He holds this position for about six seconds. "Why don't you give me your power ring?"

I blink. "Um, no?"

He winces, squeezing his eyes shut and hurriedly jamming his cigarette back into his mouth, sucking on it. "Yep, it's working. And I'm not testing it again. Feeling like your soul's gettin' sucked out loses its novelty value after a while."

Sephtian either exhales heavily. Or farts. Or does he have flotation bladders? He's looking at Mister Constantine in alarm. "Please avoid using that sort of magic while in my company. Atlantean law takes mental influence spells rather seriously."

I smile. "Wouldn't be much use to me if it only worked on legal magics, would it? Alright, I'll take it. How long will it take you to complete the order?"

"I've.. modified the design a little, now that I've had a chance to see it working. The next model should be about a hundred and twenty percent more effective. If you can fabricate.. you said you wanted twenty? If you fabricate them now, we should have completed the order within fifty days."

I frown.

"That's longer than it took to make this one."

"I did not fully appreciate how small your ring can make things. The next generation will not be limited by my preconceptions, but only by my knowledge and ability. The individual enchantments.. there will be many more of them. It will probably not be quite that long, now that everyone knows what they are doing. But I'd rather overestimate than disappoint you."

I nod. "Sounds good."

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Exaltations 5

next

10th September

09:27 GMT -2

I convey myself over to the counter. "Now, payment. You said you wanted other metal samples?"

He makes a gesture with both arms, striking out to the sides. It's a bit like a shrug, but I'm really not sure that it means the same thing.

"Yes! So many things become possible with complete purity! And… Since most of the enchanting work here doesn't actually require my personal oversight…"

I nod. "Right. Wasn't sure exactly what you wanted, but…"

The Atlantean language is pretty similar to ancient Greek dialects. Diana told me that she and King Orin can understand each other fairly well without translation, though the idioms don't work at all. I thought it best to write the name of each metal on each ingot, and nearly forgot that Sephtian almost certainly doesn't speak or read English. I asked Diana about it, and it turns out that Themysciran Greek doesn't have names for a number of the elements in the periodic table. They can refine to complete purity, but haven't ever done much work with elements they can't mine themselves.

"Tin, Gold, Silver, Copper, Aluminium, Titanium, Lead, Zinc, Tungsten, Nickel and Cobalt. Are you sure it's alright to just put them here? Most of these react with sea water."

He waves a dismissal with his right hand. "My workshop is enchanted to prevent certain types of chemical reaction. I realise, in terms of chemistry, Atlantis is a long way behind the suuuurface..?"

The chemistry textbooks with pages made of polymer substrate materialise next to the ingots. Nothing amazing by surface standards. I really don't know what sort of level of chemistry education Sephtian has. Since everything they do down here involves the manipulation of materials by magic, I suppose that conventional reactions are only relevant if they want to prevent a particular reaction happening. But Sephtian clearly knows that there's something out there that he doesn't know, so he must know something, right? Just in case, I got a range from real beginner stuff covering appearance and basic uses, through secondary school textbooks on to more specialised guides to industrial processes. I wasn't completely happy with some of the translations, but I'm sure that he'll manage. And from the way he's picking them up in turn and caressing them, he's happy with them.

"Um, Mister Constantine-."

"Is calling me 'John' against the rules or something?"

"… No. I can call you 'John' if you prefer? I didn't want to presume."

"Think so, mate. Not used to posh people being polite to me. Messes up my world view."

"Um, I'm not posh. I'm middle class. I mean, my parents are. Well, my paternal grandparents were upper middle class, but they went down a level after the Second World War. I suppose.. don't know… how the class system deals with superheroes."

He chuckles.

"What?"

He shakes his head. "Don't worry about it, mate."

"Er, okay. Would you mind taking a look at this?"

I take the section of missile epidermis out of subspace, creating a pocket of air around it and positioning it so that the sigil is toward John. He leans towards it slightly, peering at the design.

"Any ideas?"

"Yeah. Used something like it myself a few times. It's a ward. Supposed to prevent someone scrying for whatever you put it on. You know what the symbol's made of?"

"A conductive polymer, probably drawn on with a circuit pen."

"Hm. Generally stick to chalk, meself."

"But apparently other things work. I saw a television series once where a man held off a demon by standing in a magic circle made of light. Would that actually work?"

He tilts his head to the side for a moment. "Maybe, if the guy inside knew his business. Be a stupid way to die if the demon was bright enough to cut the power."

"Let me see that." Sephtian still has 'Modern Industrial Chemistry' clasped to his chest like a teddy. "Mm, yes, scrying ward. Weak, though. I doubt it would hold off a skilled practitioner."

"Not on its own, but if you combine it with a few things-."

"Yes, but there's nothing else here." He turns back to me. "Where did you get this?"

"Taiwanese Brave Wind anti-ship missile."

A moment of recognition from John. "Oh, that was you. Should'a realised."

Sephtian looks from me to him and then back again. "Ah..?"

"Three days ago I took part in preventing a peace conference from being destroyed by these." I create a life sized missile construct. "I couldn't scan them with the ring for some reason, and since I still can't scan this plate, I'm going to assume that the scry ward is interfering with it."

Sephtian blinks. "Could do. I'm surprised that it's still working. I.. was assuming that your ring didn't use magic?"

"Technology this advanced, there isn't much of a distinction. I don't suppose there's an easy way around it, is there?"

"Oh, any sort of scrying focus would probably bypass it. Or having more than one person scry at the same time. I don't think… Hm. Mister Constantine?"

"Yeah, I think you're right there. Don't suppose there's any chance the Taiwanese put it there themselves?"

"I'll ask, but I doubt it. A surprisingly large number of people have found a way to evade my ring scans lately. Are you saying that having several people scan it at the same time would get around it?"

John and Sephtian look at each other for a moment, then Sephtian nods. "Yes, if a single example of this was the only protection they had. This-" He waves a hand at it. "-is poor workmanship. Really, I'm surprised that the binding has held the spell for as long as it has."

"The missile went from the launch site to the target in less than a minute. I started scanning a little before they launched, but not by much."

"Oh, it would easily work for that long. But if people are evading your detection for a sustained period of time, I would assume that they have access to something better."

"Any chance you could come up with a way to counter it?"

"For a magic user? Certainly. Easily. For you? Mmmmmno."

"Right. I suppose that would have been too easy. Thanks for your help. If you could show me your revised designs?"

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Exaltations 6

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10th September

10:22 GMT -2

I hadn't thought about it, but even though the inhabited parts of Atlantis only cover a fairly small area of the sunken continent they aren't restricted in how high they can go. There's still a down -usually- but if you step out of a fiftieth story window here you just stay there rather than falling as you would on the surface. Plus, their use of bioluminescence means that sunlight isn't an issue. So, they usually build up rather than out, and they don't dig down. Oh, they build foundations, but Sephtian found the idea of a basement quite strange. Buildings in Shayeris are often a sort of mushroom shape, while in Poseidonis they seem to favour tall thin towers with the apartments projecting out from the side like boils. At ocean floor level the feel of being in ancient Greece is still pretty strong, though I doubt these buildings actually predate the sinking.

I asked about the Formulae, and it was all I could do to stop myself laughing when Sephtian actually said 'Oceanus' breath, Orange Lantern. I'm an artificer, not an alchemist.' Clearly he's never seen Star Trek, and I don't think I'd be able to explain why it was funny to him. So, after picking up a couple of what Sephtian called 'apprentice level' books for John we headed off to Poseidonis. Didn't get around to seeing much of the interior of the Conservatory of Sorcery last time I was here, but there certainly weren't all these guards. Most of them are Sharkmen… um, Sharkfolk? How would I tell..? No, not thinking about it. There are a few fish-tailed types as well, but I'm not seeing any Purebloods.

The outer parts of the Conservatory are clearly in the Greek style, with a large and quite out of place Atlantean tower in the centre of the complex. Interestingly, no effort appears to be being made to keep down the level of aquatic plants. I don't think that they're part of a garden, but maybe they use them for reagents? Mindful of what happened during my first visit to Atlantis, I bring myself and John to ground level at the edge of the plateau on which the Conservatory sits, and make sure that the guards have seen us before starting toward the main entrance. There are four of them on duty -three Sharks and a Triton- and the Triton nods at two of them who start swimming in our direction.

"You sure about this, mate?"

"They're probably from Nanauve. Like I said, King Orin's had to temporarily replace a large chunk of the local garrison with the Sharks. Don't worry, they'll behave themselves." He gives me a sceptical look, and lights a new cigarette. I wave my index finger in the Shark's direction. "Come on."

I walk forward to meet them, and John follows me. Once we get to within easy speaking distance the Sharks stop in the water. Atlantean soldiers usually carry a type of arcane sonic pulse weapon, but the Sharks have theirs stowed in favour of a short straight sword and a shield. Some of the ones I saw yesterday were in Nanauvian red and blue, but the armour these wear is Poseidonian turquoise.

"Warning: arcane sigil detected."

John looks at me in surprise. "Your ring can talk?"

"Hm? Yes?"

"Exactly how in-."

"Identify yourselves."

The Sharks' posture doesn't suggest that they're particularly worried about us, but I notice that the two still on the steps have drawn their ranged weapons. They aren't pointing them at us just yet, but they're being cautious.

"I am Orange Lantern two eight one four. I was hoping that I could use the library, maybe book a consultation with one of the Conservatory's scholars?"

They look at me for a moment. Then the one on the left tilts his head slightly forward. "Aren't you the guy who caught Ocean Master?"

"I was part of the group, yes."

The one on the right shows an interest. Their voices remind me of those belonging to the Krogan. "Did you really cut his hands off?"

"Um, yes?"

"What did they taste like?"

I blink. Need to research Atlantean rules of engagement.

"I didn't eat them. I didn't know where they'd been."

That gets a laugh from both of them. The one on the left nods. "The Queen put you on the accepted visitors list. You're fine to go in. Who's your friend?"

"This is John Constantine. He's a… A visiting scholar, from the surface."

Right Shark looks puzzled. "I didn't think the surface world had magicians."

He looks at them both in turn, inhaling deeply through his cigarette. Then he removes it and breathes out a cloud of smoke, which goes.. through.. the environmental shield? How did..? It wafts toward the guards, and as it reaches them it seems to shift its shape. I can't see what they're seeing, but both of them instinctively crouch and raise their shields as it passes through them and then dissolves into the water behind them.

"John!"

He returns the cigarette to his mouth with a smug grin. This could be very bad.

The Shark on the right turns his head away from us, a difficult feat for someone with no apparent neck. "A phantasm. I can't believe you fooled us with a phantasm. Could you, like, not tell anyone that happened?"

"Don't worry, mate. Lips are sealed."

Left Shark wiggles his head. "Uh. Guess you're okay, then. Come on."

They swim in a loop around us, dropping down to our level at our sides as an escort. I start walking again. Right Shark is now next to me, and Left Shark is next to John.

"So, are you enjoying working in Poseidonis?"

He exhales sharply. "I was liking it just fine, 'till they stuck us guarding-."

"Alki!"

Left Shark tries to shut Right Shark -Alki, I suppose- down.

"What, Ceyx? You really like him so much?"

Ceyx rotates his head to the left for the moment.

"Thought not. Only good thing about having two kings is it doesn't matter too much if one of them's a-."

"Report!"

The Triton on the steps has stowed his ranged weapon -note to self, find out what those are supposed to be called- and has swum down to meet us. Our escort simultaneously bang their shields with the butt of their swords.

Ceyx swims to the fore. "Sminias. Orange Lantern and guest. They want to use the library."

"Have you confirmed his identity?"

Alki looks at me for a moment, then back to his superior. "He's glowing orange."

I hold out my left palm, and project a large orange sigil out in front of me. Sminias looks at it, then nods.

"Orange Lantern, welcome. All Atlantis owes you a debt for defeating Ocean Master. I'll let the Queen know that you're here."

"Oh, there's no need to disturb her. I'm not doing anything I need to talk to her about."

"She's said that she wants to speak to you anyway. Ceyx, Alkiphron, escort them into the library."

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Exaltations 7

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10th September

10:35 GMT -2

"This is my kind of library."

"Because it's full of arcane lore?"

"No. Because it doesn't have a 'no smoking' sign."

I was expecting something like the library at the University of Sussex. Central light well, rows of bookshelves, a few desks around the edge and large windows. What we've got is a series of rooms with fairly small areas of floor space. Around the edge of each are scroll racks, rising to the ceiling. The rooms are about ten metres tall, so that's a lot of scrolls and I have no idea what organisational system they use. Ceyx and Alkiphron have no idea either. I've extended the ring's translation ability to John, but after his first attempt to swim up to the top of a scroll rack while wearing a trenchcoat I suggested that he stick to the bottom scrolls. He's about as athletic as I was before getting the ring.

I'm not much use either. We're looking for stuff on alchemy, thaumaturgy and soul structure, and unless one of those words was specifically mentioned I could go right past the scroll we want without realising it. I've been trying to read up on the subject of magic generally, but this is probably the greatest store of magic learning on the planet. I'm as far out of my depth metaphorically as I am physically. I can't even scan for it; unsurprisingly, the whole place is warded against scrying. And the light comes from the floor and ceiling equally. Twice now I've found myself getting confused about which way 'up' is.

John found it a bit amusing that I'd volunteer for the same sort of soul carving that he used on Chantinelle when I'm the one person on the planet that he can't do it to. I'd need to have a soul first. Can't believe I didn't spot that particular rub sooner. Plus, I do kind of want one anyway. Bargain basement immortality might not be much, but it would still be an improvement on my current position. John said that he'd be happy to help, as he's curious what happens when you give a soul to something that isn't supposed to have one. Another poke in the eye to the powers that be, I suppose.

I slip a scroll on the spiritual resonances of amphibians back into the rack. "It's no good, John. We need a librarian."

John rotates the scroll he's holding through ninety degrees and peers at it, before giving up and rolling it back up. "Think you're right there, mate. Ceyx, you know where the front desk is?"

Ceyx nods, and takes the opening to the north. That's something it took me a while to pick up but now I can't stop seeing: no doors. There were these sort of screen shutter things in Kaldur's family home, but there aren't any external doors anywhere I've seen, including this school. We go through five rooms similar to the ones which we've already passed before coming to a large room with rows of desks and -Hallelujah!- a librarian station. This place needs a waterproof computerised catalogue. I notice several students reading things at the desks, including Garth and Tula. She waves at me, and Garth turns around to look at who it is she's spotted. Since no librarian is in evidence, might as well say 'hello'. First though, the escort.

"Ceyx, Alkiphron, thank you for bringing us, but I think we can manage from here."

Ceyx looks at me, then around the room. Did I mishear earlier? Are we required to have an escort? "Alright. If you say so."

Alkiphron nods. "We were just using this as an excuse to skive off, really."

Ceyx sags as his colleague continues.

"With Ocean Master gone and Black Manta having lost most of his men in that last attack, I don't even know why we're here. And hanging around inside beats hanging around outside."

Ceyx shoves him toward the door. "Get moving."

As they reach the exit Alkiphron turns back to us. "Careful now: some of these scrolls can be vicious. And none of them have hands! Heheheh!"

Ceyx takes hold of his dorsal fin and uses it to shove him forwards.

"Ow! What'd'you do that for?"

John takes a drag on his cigarette before taking it out of his mouth with his left hand and pointing it at our retreating guides. "Don't know about you, but I'm a lot less scared of Sharks than I used to be."

I nod, then beckon him. "Come on, I want to introduce you to some people."

I lead him over to where Tula and Garth are sitting. Garth, who's closest to us, rises.

"Garth, Tula, nice to see you again."

Garth nods. "Orange Lantern. Who's your friend?"

"This is John Constantine. He's a magician from my home country. Um, the equivalent of my home country in this parallel. We're trying to get some information, but it's a bit of a maze here…"

Tula pricks up her ears at 'magician'.

"Oh! Well, we can show you around. What are you looking for?"

I look at John. Come on, magic talk time. He rubs his chin with his free hand.

"Some sort of introductory guide to Atlantean alchemical practice would be nice. And anything you've got on thaumaturgical studies of the soul, how it can be damaged and repaired."

Garth frowns at the second one. "That's a bit-."

"You're trying to help Paul get a soul? Is that even possible?"

"Dunno 'till we try, do we?" He looks at me speculatively. "Not sure you were supposed to tell me his name, though."

Her face falls. I wave my right hand. "Don't worry about it. I don't have a civilian identity to protect. Probably want to be more careful with the others, though."

"I'm so sorry. Secret identities aren't something that exist in Atlantis." She rises out of her chair. "I'll take you to the scrolls you-."

"Actually." Garth glances at John then turns back to her. "Why don't you take John Constantine to the alchemy section, and I'll take Orange Lantern to the restricted section. No offense-" He looks at John. "-but some of the spells there are really dangerous, and we don't know you at all."

Makes sense, I suppose.

John nods. "Alright. Lead the way, love."

Tula swims toward the exit on the left and John wades after her, thin orange line still connecting us. As they leave the room she looks at his mouth with a slight frown. "Why do you have a burning stick in your mouth?"

I turn to Garth. He appears to be studying me, and I have a momentary urge to check if there's something on my face. "This way."

He rises up into the middle of the room, and leaves through an exit in the roof I didn't even see until just now. I follow.

back

Exaltations 8

next

10th September

10:41 GMT -2

Garth doesn't seem to appreciate exactly how hard navigating around Atlantean buildings is for someone who isn't used to it. He keeps shooting ahead, and it's getting a bit irritating.

"Hey, Garth!" He stops at the entrance to the next room. "How's the background checking on the Ocean Master's appointees going?"

His face hardens, and he looks away. "Mine was finished yesterday."

What?

"Wait, what?"

He looks back at me. "Prince Orm was King Orin's regent. He didn't just approve palace appointments for his own agents, his name is on nearly everything. Including the royal scholarship grants that make it possible for Tula and I to study here."

"Oh. I'd.. I'd assumed that Queen Mera would be responsible for that sort of thing."

He shakes his head. "In exchange for the scholarship, we agree to spend several years in the military as battle mages. Since the military's involved, it has to be approved by the royal court. I had thought that I'd got approval from the senate committee, or the military education board. But apparently Prince Orm signed it himself, and, since I'm a Pureblood…"

I feel like I should be apologising. "You know.. they have to be thorough, right? I'm sure no one actually thought that you'd-."

"It felt like they did." His face relaxes a little, and he turns back to the exit. "Come on."

One more east, then up two and we arrive in a larger room. It's much shorter than the other two, and there's a couple of attentive looking Shark guards between what appears to be a reception area and another room which holds the familiar scroll racks. The short passageway between them is covered in gold symbols, presumably being used to bind protective spells in place.

Ring, optical scan and identify when able.

Compliance.

Garth swims ahead to speak to the guards. "Garth of Poseidonis and Orange Lantern.. two eight one four, to access the restricted section."

The guard on the left nods, then pulls two small amulets off his belt. I move up to him, and he hands one over. "You'll need this to go inside."

"Um, is it safe for me to wear this?"

He thinks about it for a moment. "It should be. It doesn't do anything to you, it just stops the defensive spells inside registering you as a threat."

Alright then. I nod. There doesn't seem to be any sort of fastener, so I try just pressing it against the strap of my vest. Nothing. Um. Trouser pocket, that works. Garth watches me put it away, then walks through the passage to the room with the scroll racks. I walk after him.

"How basic do you want?"

I stop at the entrance to the passage, and run a sceptical eye over the runes. I should be safe, right? "I'm not sure. John can already-." I take a step into the passageway, and a piercing shriek nearly deafens me before I ring up some ear protection. Garth stares at me in confusion for a moment, then everything goes white and cold. Ice! The water's turned to ice!

Ring, armour, construct armour, break the ice!

Shards of white explode away from me as the water churns. A portcullis has dropped over the far end and Garth turns, staring in astonishment. Lightning bolts spend themselves against my armour. I turn, and there's another portcullis through which a couple of hostile looking Sharks are staring at me.

The lightning cuts off, to be replaced by force beams like those used by Atlantean soldiers. I add a dome shield. What's going on! No, can't worry about it. Confusion is a distraction. I need to not be here.

"Ring, vacuum tube transition!"

After last time, when the ring told me that I couldn't FTL under water, I came up with a way around the restriction. By forcing water away from a particular area, I can create a zone where FTL travel is possible. I need an area for re-emergence as well. The whole thing's a bit avarice intensive, but with the noise and the surprise violence I have no problem wanting OUT enough.

A narrow orange beam projects from my dome shield and through the portcullis on the exit side of the passageway. The standard dislocation, and the vacuum around me collapses. I'm standing facing the backs of the guards, who whirl around to confront me.

"Come on! You gave me the entry pass!"

They take no notice, raising their shields and spreading out in an attempt to become harder to hit. The Atlantean military really needs better briefing on Lantern capacities.

Scan, Pithing Needles.

Lines of orange extend from my armour chest plate, and curl around the Sharks. Both strike home next to the base of their dorsal fins, but for some reason there's a moment of delay while the Sharks are still able to react. Left Shark is brought to a dead stop as the construct takes effect, but Right Shark is a bit faster off the mark and brings his sword around, severing the construct. Huh?

Warning: slicing sigil detected. Warning: fortification sigil detected.

I jerk the other tether aside as he slashes at it. Realising that he isn't going to free his colleague, he pulls his strike and surges forward toward me. I send chains in four directions around him and try to grab him from behind. He swirls in the water and slashes at them, cutting the one heading for his sword arm and blocking another with his shield. I get both his legs, though, and drag him back. He tries to bend to cut those too, but his body isn't really designed to move in that way. Plus, he's assumed that the constructs he cut are no longer a threat, when in reality I just lost control of the bit which was severed.

Instead, they become Pithing Needles and strike the armour on his now exposed back. A moment of resistance, then he goes still.

Construct resistant armour? Wonder if I can get Sephtian to do that to mine? Now, how do I turn off the alarm? I move to the portcullis, subspacing the Sharks' swords and shields as I pass. The inside of the passageway seems to have calmed down. At the other end, Garth looks like he's trying to cut through the portcullis, but stops when he sees me. I throw my hands up in the air.

"What just happened!?"

"What did you do to the guards!?"

"What? Oh, just paralysed them, they'll be fine. How do we turn the alarm off?"

He stares at me for a moment. "Uh, I'm not sure. I think the Queen has to-."

A flare of light behind me. I turn, and a vast lilac manta fills my vision. Star Sapphire? The back wall is.. gone. There's a distortion around the place it used to be, and the side wall glows where the join should be. I crouch, raising an orange sigil emblazoned tower shield in my defence. Behind the manta I see more Sharks, a couple of Tritons and… Oh.

Hello, Queen Mera.

back

Exaltations 9

next

10th September

10:46 GMT -2

"I'm really sorry about this, your majesty."

Her escort are checking over the two Sharks I paralysed, and Sminias is waving some sort of wand at the portcullis. The siren finally stops and the portcullis retracts into the wall, leaving no sign that it was ever there.

"That's alright, Orange Lantern. I am just curious as to why the defences reacted to you. You do have an access talisman, I hope?"

"Er, yep, hang on."

Ring, regular clothes.

Once my armour has been replaced I reach into my pocket, pull out the talisman and hand it to her.

She looks at it for a moment. "It seems to be in working order. Are you carrying any other enchanted artefacts?"

"Um, yes." I fish out the Spell Eater Ward, and hold it out on the end of its thong.

She regards it with curiosity. "I do not recognise the design."

"The design didn't exist until last week. Sephtian… Um, he's an artificer, lives in Shayeris?"

"I know of him. I made his one published work a set text."

"Right! That's how I heard of him, reading Kaldur's textbooks. So, he found a way to prove that for a particular amount of magic energy, it was always more effective to use lots of little spells than one big spell."

"Orange Lantern, I am somewhat familiar with theoretical thaumaturgy."

"Yes, yes, of course you are. Sorry. So, I went to see him, urm, and he explained that the problem in doing anything with his work was that he couldn't get materials pure enough or create bindings small enough to make it work. But then I realised: I have a power ring, and power rings are really good at fabrication."

She looks a little closer. "What does this amulet do?"

"He calls it a Spell Eater Ward. Sucks the power right out of anything.. that…"

Oh.

She lowers her head slightly. "I think that we may have located the problem. The spells guarding the restricted section of the library attempted to detect your access talisman, and your ward began draining their power."

"Oh."

"Precisely how potent is it?"

I shrug. "Sorry, your majesty, but I'm not at all familiar with theoretical thaumaturgy. I got the impression from what Sephtian was saying that it's very effective."

She looks at it with interest. "I wonder." She makes a circle with her right index finger, leaving a glowing white trail in the water. Then, she pokes the centre of the circle. For a fraction of a second, a shape appears, but it's gone before I can get a good look at it. The rest of the circle swiftly follows suit. "Goodness. And you say this took you and he a week?"

"Four days' design work. And we found a way to let a whole team work on the enchantments without disrupting each other."

"That is a remarkable achievement in itself. I may have to find an opportunity to speak with Sephtian."

"Er, this is just a prototype. I've got him working on a batch of the final version now. If you can wait a couple of weeks… What?"

She's staring at me. She looks… nervous..? What's happening?

"How much more effective will the final product be?"

"We don't have one yet, but he said about twice as effective."

"How long do they take to make?"

"He estimated that twenty of them would take fifty days. Maybe less."

Her eyes drop. She takes a breath. "Goodness."

"That's alright, isn't it? He didn't say anything about ward creation being illegal, and I really need the defence."

"Illegal, no. However, the ward which you are wearing is two orders of magnitude more effective than anything of a comparable size I have ever seen."

"Is that.. bad?"

She thinks for a moment. "I would not say that it is bad, precisely. I will need to discuss this with my husband."

I really hope that I haven't just dumped Sephtian in hot water. Garth cautiously emerges from the passageway, and I slip the ward back under my vest.

"What are you hoping to find in there?"

"As you know, I'm what Atlanteans call a Hollow Man. I know that Kaldur focuses magic through the tattoos on his back and arms. I was hoping that by studying the... By studying how they function, a colleague of mine by the name of John Constantine might be able to create some sort of channel.. system.. thing… I don't know the terminology… That would cause me to develop a soul-like structure. Since I don't have whatever normally causes a soul to develop."

"An interesting theory. It.. may be possible. Who is 'John Constantine'?"

"An English magic user. Not much formal education or power, but intelligent and very cunning." I point at the orange line running from my leg down through the library. "He's on the other end of this tether, actually, if you want to talk to him. Tula's showing him the alchemy section."

Her eyes glow white for a moment as she stares into space, then she refocuses on me. "You have an interest in alchemy as well?"

"Sort of. This, is a small preparation of the formula which gave the Flash his super speed. This, if injected into the womb of a pregnant animal, will result in offspring who are supernaturally strong and resilient. But no one, not even the people who first developed them, knows how or why they work. I've eliminated chemical reactions as a possibility. That leaves alchemy, and this is the best place to research it."

"You will certainly have your work cut out for you. I presume that your intent was for your ring to make copies of the content?"

"If that's alright?"

"Orange Lantern, access to information of this sort is restricted because the potential for abuse is so high. While I have no doubt that you intend to use it as you say you do, I would not have that security if anyone else were to gain access to it through you." She pauses, considering the matter. "I will allow it, on the condition that you limit access to Justice League affiliates, and that you share your findings with the Conservatory. I would be interested to see what someone with a completely different background will make of the subject."

Um…

"John… John isn't affiliated with the Justice League. I mean, he knows Mister Zatara, but they aren't particularly close. He's.. he's the only person I know with expertise in this field."

She nods. "I will speak to him, before making a final decision. In any event I am content to give you access, and perhaps you could find a researcher in Atlantis to help you in John Constantine's stead."

True, but really awkward.

"I will acquire the scrolls which you will need from the restricted section, and then we will go and speak with your magician."

"Thank you, your majesty." I give a shallow bow. "That would be very helpful."

back

Exaltations 10

next

10th September

10:57 GMT -2

I'm back in the reading room, scanning through the scrolls -and in one case a stone tablet- on soul magic. The wards prevent me doing a mass scan, so I have to unroll each one and scan it by eye. Garth's sitting across from me, presumably either to make sure that I don't damage anything or to make sure that I don't go mad from the revelation. No need to worry about that, this is far beyond my level of comprehension. Tula's gone back to her own reading, and over by the librarian's station John and Queen Mera are talking animatedly. He started talking about an event where someone attacked him by using ley lines as a conduit for fear magic, but they've moved on since I tuned them out.

When we followed the orange thread back to the couple of rooms which contain the Conservatory's information on alchemy, I could feel John preparing a truculent response to Queen Mera quizzing him. He clearly had no idea who she was, but some frantic eye and chin movements from me seemed to encourage him to bite down his typical response to someone in authority attempting to stop him doing something. He actually turned on the charm, and he can be very persuasive even without magic.

Wait. Did Queen Mera just giggle? He does know that she's married.. doesn't..? No, don't worry about it.

"Do you need to concentrate to do that?"

Garth isn't exactly chatty. Before today we'd only spoken a few words to one another, and our trip to the restricted section wasn't much of an ice breaker.

"Not really, I just have to want it." I reroll the scroll and move it to the side, before picking up the next.

"Then, do you mind if I ask a question?"

"Of course not. What is it?"

"I spoke to Kaldur about your rescue of Queen Mera. You defeated one of the most feared battle mages in Atlantis in a few seconds. How did you manage that?"

I shrug, and begin unrolling the scroll. "I was wearing a ward which absorbed his first spell. Then, I noticed that his hands were unarmoured, and struck. Pureblood Atlanteans are tough, but not tougher than my circular saw constructs."

"How were you able to strike with such precision?"

"My mind controls my construct. It took a bit of work to learn how to focus my desire to harm my target into something capable of precision strikes, but actually performing them isn't that hard. Didn't hurt that he had to split his attention between the four of us, and I think that he might have dismissed me after his armour blocked my first attack."

"Why..?" He turns his head away, looking for a moment like he'd swallowed something unpleasant. "I'm not criticising what you did, but was there a reason why you didn't call for assistance? Even if you couldn't trust the palace guards, I'd… We'd have been more than willing to join you."

"Wasn't really my decision."

"Kaldur said that you advised him against it."

"I advised against telling Prince Orm." I shuffle the scroll along a little. "Look, I couldn't think of a reason for Ocean Master to leave the Queen alive. If we'd come to the Conservatory, we'd have lost time we didn't have to spare. It wasn't supposed to be a personal slight to you or anything."

He nods. "I.. know. But when Black Manta invaded Poseidonis, Kaldur made certain.. observations, about my combat skill."

Oh dear. "Uh, I don't know exactly what Kaldur was thinking, but he's been fighting alongside King Orin for two years now. There's things you learn from the practical experience of people trying to kill you that you don't get in training, however good it is. Plus, the four of us have been training at working together, and.. we haven't trained with you. Well, Kon, M'gann and I haven't trained with you, and Kaldur hasn't trained with you recently. We don't know exactly what you can do or how you react."

"You do have a point."

Problem described. Suggest a solution.

"There's a zeta tube in Poseidonis if you want to train with us. With the American school year started it's just me and Kaldur in the mountain for most of the day, and I'm sure he'd love to show you around."

Another scroll done. I roll it back up.

"I might take you up on that."

That it? Right then. I look around, but John and Queen Mera are still deep in conversation. I somehow doubt that we'll have trouble convincing her to let him review the soul scrolls.

Ring, charge?

Seventy four percent remaining.

Hmm.

"If this is really bothering you, I don't mind showing you how I fight. Do you have a sparring area here?"

He smiles. "This is a school for battle mages, of course we do. We usually practise combat magic on the roof."

"Oh, that's what the tower's for. Well, if you don't mind taking these back… Don't think I should risk that again."

"I don't think so either."

I create a small scroll rack, and a stand for the tablet. Then I push the seat back. "Lead the way, then."

He pushes straight up, and starts swimming to the ceiling.

"Garth?"

Garth's movement distracted Queen Mera from her conversation with John.

"Orange Lantern has finished with the scrolls, and he can't return them himself. He's also volunteered to spar with me."

John dodges making eye contact with her by scratching his head.

"I too would be interested to see how a Lantern fights. I was a little distracted on the last occasion."

Her hand describes an arc, and a portal to the restricted section appears. Garth takes the rack construct from me, and swims toward it.

"Your majesty, if you're going to be spectating, do you think you could take over providing John's environmental protection? I'd hate for him to drown because I got distracted." John glowers at me. I face shrug.

Queen Mera looks at him and smiles. "A sensible precaution. I'm sure I can manage something."

Garth returns, and Queen Mera opens a new portal. I see a view over the Poseidonis skyline. Sealine. Not sure.

"Right. Tallyho then."

back

Exaltations 11

next

10th September

11:01 GMT -2

"First question, what equipment do you fight with?"

Garth and I stand near the middle of the circular roof arena. Queen Mera, John and Tula are watching from the building side. John's standing in an air bubble Queen Mera created around him. I'm not sure how interested he is in this, but he is of the 'it's the journey not the destination' school of thought. Maybe a demonstration of Atlantean combat magic is right up his street?

"Battle mages don't usually use equipment. Things like Kaldur's Water Bearers are tools for people who haven't learned how to create those effects themselves."

Oooh.

I hold my arms out to the side. "Ring, armour."

"Compliance."

"And make the sigil glow."

The familiar weight of my armour settles across my body.

"I can't tell you to carry equipment until I get some idea how you fight, but for me? If I'm getting into a fight, I'm wearing armour. The armour of the Sharks who attacked me earlier was able to temporarily block my construct."

"I thought your armour glowed orange all over?"

"That's my construct armour. This stuff-" I tap the chest piece. "-will stop small arms and most unarmed attacks. This-" My construct armour appears. "-will stop a Taiwanese anti-ship missile strike. On a mission last month, Kaldur punched me repeatedly in the chest and face and I felt nothing. In training, I've had it sustain multiple strikes from Wonder Woman. The only things that have hurt me since I've come here are things that bypass it, telepathy and chaos magic."

"Any armour I could wear that could do that would slow me down too much."

"Ocean Master wore full plate. If he'd covered his hands and feet that fight could have gone very differently." That's a thought. "What's happened to his armour? I know Kaldur got his trident…"

"It's being studied in the Conservatory. The spells bound to it are extremely powerful, and we don't yet know how he was able to make it."

"I cut off his hands when every other part of his body was protected by armour I couldn't break. Your arms and legs are bare. You can spar like that, but I strongly recommend getting some armour, or protective spells or something before you go into the field."

He raises his arms in front of him, and lines running along them glow as a small blue barrier forms in front of him. "I can cast defensive spells."

"And when you're doing that, you're not doing something else. Here." I remove from subspace the shields and swords I took from the Sharks earlier. "Without a boost from magic or some other sort of unusual ability, melee combat's a joke. These swords can cut through my constructs and…" I launch a shield up, then chop at it with an axe construct. It holds. "The shield can take a hit. At least get a ward or something."

He appears to consider. "I'll think about it."

Well, I tried. He swims up a little into the water, and turns to face me side on. I push the swords and shields over to the spectators. "So, do we go on three, or what?"

He's not looking at me. He's looking at Queen-.

"Begin!"

His hands form a ball catching position at his chest.

Scan, various.

He registers as Human, even on sonics.

"I-"

His nerves are in the right places.

"-summon-"

Streams of water whirl around him, focusing on the point between his hands. His arms are glowing far more brightly than when he made the shield. Hmm.

"-the power-"

No need to mess about, I suppose.

Shockcrown.

A line of orange from my right shoulder connects with his forehead. His eyes go wide for a moment, then his spell falls apart as he starts to drift.

"Not a good choice. Far too slow in a location without cover, or without someone to distract for you."

Unshock.

He rights himself.

"Whenever you're ready."

A glow of a fraction of a second on the arm facing away from me, then he's speeding through the water up and to my right. His right arm comes forward and a bolt of electrical energy leaps from his hand to me. My construct armour takes it without complaint.

Ring, analysis?

Electrical energy appears to be conventional. Unable to determine how it remains focused through seawater. Unable to analyse generation method.

The electricity itself is conventional? Not troubling the Spell Eater, then. I send a series of orange lines out in different directions through the material of the roof, then create a nice big tower shield between myself and him. He slows, bringing up his left arm and intensifying the attack. I respond by sending a chain up from one of the lines, clamping it around his left leg and pulling him to the floor before binding him.

"It isn't easy to make conjured attacks powerful enough to break my armour."

I dismiss the chains and the shield. He rises to the floor and walks over to the spectators. For a moment I wonder if that's it, before he picks up a sword and shield and returns to the arena. I don't think that anything less than a full covering will help him significantly, but if it makes him feel better. I move back across the arena, taking his original place as he takes mine.

Lines on his arms glow as his arcane shield reinforces his enchanted metal one, covering not just his front arc but top, bottom and sides as well. I briefly wonder what the point is, before the lines on his legs glow and water churns as he rockets toward me.

I strike the shield with a circular saw construct even as I plot the FTL passage. I activate it as he reaches me, reappearing behind and just below. He slows and he passes through the space I had occupied.

Pithing Needle.

His shield collapses. Hmm. This is a bit dull. The ring is letting me cheat on years of magic education. I just have to study application while the piece of orange on my finger does the stuff that he's had to learn all of the supporting theory to do.

!Motivate!

Hmm. That might get him moving.

Ring, trunks.

My armour disappears, leaving my bare skin visible. Next, I swim up to Garth and take hold of him from behind, before generating orange light along my skin in a pattern similar to what I saw on that Hollow Man scroll Lori showed me the first time I was here.

Prepare the ham.

"Three falls! Now I get to eat your soul!"

back

Exaltations 12

next

10th September

11:05 GMT -2

"Garth!"

Huh?

Wooooosh!

The beams projected by certain types of Atlantean spell and weapon are not light energy or plasma, but are instead incredibly compressed water. A hit from the gun version will pulverise flesh and shatter bone. The spell version can do that, but it's more typically used to explosively decompress in the middle of enemy formations.

And, turns out? If you're dumb enough to drop your armour construct next to a woman who honestly believes that you're about to eat her boyfriend's soul? They really hurt, even through an environmental shield.

Fucking Wholeness fucking Rightly A-fucking-sumed.

Aaaagh!

I accelerate out of my aquatic tumble, two more compression bolts shooting past me. I've lost the pithing needle on Garth already. I risk a look in their direction. Tula raises her hands together, and the water around them shimmers. I don't see any effect, but she jerks suddenly and stops the spell.

Ready in Sixty Four Directions Stance.

My awareness expands. Tula's floating in front of Garth, and flinging her arms forward and launching more explosive water at me. I should consider myself lucky that she doesn't have a homing version of this spell; she's a shockingly bad shot, but she might still have done me a serious injury if that didn't matter. What's Garth up to?

"I summon the power of the tempest!"

Armour! Move! And drop the stupid Hollow Man glow!

A continuous tumult of water passes by at my left side. The most intense part misses me, but the outer eddies shove me violently aside. Move faster. Garth's redirecting the flow, but I'm aware of his movements before he can bring it to bear. Quick check? No injuries, armour's fine. Now, if you'd been thinking, they'd-.

Wooooosh!

Barrier! Yes, one of those. Right. Turret, intercept.

An orange ray gun appears on my right shoulder and immediately opens fire on the incoming water bolts. To no effect. Not solid objects, of course. Switch to barrier creation and attempt to prematurely detonate.

Not sure why exactly Tula thought I was being serious. She must know that I can't actually eat souls, right? On the other hand, this might work as a training format. Blasting hasn't worked for them. What will they do next? The turret fires a beam which changes into a barrier just as Tula throws another water bomb. It detonates a short distance from them, knocking them both flat and throwing up a cloud of bubbles. Should I call this off? I don't want to seriously scare them. Queen Mera's still standing in place, and doesn't look seriously concerned. Hmm.

Five translucent fish the ring identifies as Payara shoot from the murk. The turret shoots the lead fish in the face, but the orange beam passes through harmlessly. Could be an illusion, could be insufficiently tangible for the impact to take effect. I put a beam through each one just to keep the summoners honest. Negative impact. They're moving at a fair old rate, so I evade, locate my bubble-clouded opponents and fire a pair of orange shots at their diaphragms. Something intercepts the beams, and the water clears enough for me to see the pair of them encased in a dome of ice. Their hands are glowing and their heads are bowed. Presumably their summoning pose? Not a bad idea, and I don't fancy finding out whether or not the fishes' teeth can pierce my construct.

Since that hasn't worked, I continue to evade. They're fast, but not quite as fast as me and I lead them on a circuit of the tower. Hm. A ghost fish construct might be useful. Ring, assimilate.

The beam curves around from my right side and seeks out the front fish. This time the beam makes contact and the summoning shimmers. Tula grimaces, cringes, and then straightens as the summoning collapses. Hm. Odd. Oh, just realised that it might have tried to assimilate her. Not doing that again, then. Another Payara appears just outside the ice dome, while the ones behind me spread out to try and trap me. They even remember that under water is a three dimensional environment. Hm. Does the ice barrier continue under the surface of the platform? No? Alright then.

I send a tether down, through the floor and under the ice barrier, then up between them.

Ring, transition.

The tether expands slightly for a moment, forming a vacuum channel past their defence. Then, I'm among them. Tula looks up for a moment before I double ShockCrown them. I use the point of contact to pull Tula over to me.

"You do know that I can't actually eat souls, right? Anyway, good work with the fish things, but you can't assume that a surface like this is an impenetrable barrier. Ring, unshock."

The constructs fade. Tula jerks away from me before steadying herself. Garth swims in a arc around me to float alongside her, watching me warily.

"Tula, you know I can't use magic. There's no way I could eat someone's soul."

"I felt it! You were feeding on my magic!"

Oooooh!

"You felt this." I change back to my civilian clothing and fish out the Spell Eater. "It's a new type of ward that consumes magic targeted at the one wearing it."

"But your tattoos..!"

I hold up my right hand, and light up a couple of different shapes under the skin. "You mean these? Ring generated. I'm sorry, I didn't realise quite how scared you'd be."

Garth looks me in the eyes for a moment, then looks away and shakes his head. "You copied them from that ridiculous scroll Lori showed you, didn't you."

"Yep. Hollow Men don't exist, remember."

Tula gapes at me for a moment, then gives a relieved laugh. "Oh, Lori's going to find this hilarious."

She and Garth hold up their arms, and after a brief glow the water surrounding us reliquefies. I repair the holes I made in the roof. Wouldn't want any water to get in, would we?

"Good work with the ethereal summonings, I couldn't hit them at all. Hey, can you make fish summonings of one type, and then convert them to something else?"

Garth and Tula look at each other for a moment, then Garth responds. "Maybe. Why?"

"It would be more difficult to stop a smaller faster target. If you could send it to the target as a minnow, especially with a distraction, it's far more likely to connect than if it's obvious."

They look at each other again. "We could.. try that."

"And armour. I know a guy named Sephtian, in Shayeris. Tell him I sent you. Urm, either of you want to go again?"

Tula shakes her head vigorously. "Oh, no. I think we've had enough excitement for one day."

back

Exaltations 13

next

10th September

14:57 GMT -5

"It sounds like you have had a productive morning."

I set the next test sample -a section of brick wall- in place fifty metres away on the firing range we've set up in the training area. Then I step aside as Kaldur takes aim with his new weapon.

"Had its moments. Of course, she changed her mind when John asked for a bout."

Kaldur's tattoos glow, and the trident sends repeated arcs of electricity at the target. "You said that he was not a battle mage."

"He's not. Demons, rituals, and mental manipulation."

Ring, accuracy?

Strikes cover an area of 3 square centimetres.

Kaldur looks at me, and I shake my head. "Same again. I don't think you're going to get it better than that. Wanna try something else?"

Kaldur points the trident's head at the pool of water on our right, and a column of water about a metre wide arcs out before stopping in mid air next to him. The other end is still connected to the pool. Looks a bit like water bending, and I really wish Avatar existed here. "I do not seem able to solidify it. Freezing…" I feel the chill as the column freezes in a second, then hastily raise a barrier as it overbalances and slams into the floor next to him. It remains solid, though. Interesting. "It is powerful, but it lacks the flexibility of my Water Bearers. I do not think I would be comfortable taking it on a mission if it cost me my ability to generate shields."

"Ocean Master probably relied on his armour for that. Could you manage one handed?"

He shakes his head. "Water Bearers are designed to be wielded in pairs. Given the trident's size, I do not think that it would be practical to switch between them."

His tattoos glow again, and the ice rises into the air like a giant frozen candy cane. He shifts the trident to his right hand, holds up his left and clenches it into a fist. The ice shatters, but remains in the air.

Target.

A large archery target appears over the water. Kaldur gestures with the trident and a cluster of ice fragments fly forth and strike it dead centre. I shift the target, and he sends more ice to meet it.

"Did Tula win?"

"Hmm? Oh, no. John struggled out onto the arena, then turned around and just stood there. Tula takes her place, probably worried that she was going to accidentally kill him or something. Queen Mera tells them to begin, and Tula just sort of stands there for a few seconds before turning around and swimming out of the arena."

Kaldur's tattoos brighten as I begin moving the target around.

"She refused to risk fighting him?"

"No. She thought she'd already won. She actually refused to believe us when we pointed out that he was still standing there, until she turned back around to look for herself."

"He was able to affect her mind that easily?"

"He somehow got hold of one of her hairs when they were looking at alchemy scrolls. Tied it around his left thumb-" I point at my own. "-and made eye contact. I think he was trying to make the point that there are indirect methods for beating an opponent. Or about the importance of preparation." I think about that for a moment, and shake my head. "Or maybe he was just showing off."

Kaldur grunts and stops glowing. The remaining ice falls back into the water. He lowers the trident.

"You alright?"

"Prince Or-. Ocean Master is a considerably more powerful mage than I am. The trident is calibrated to be most effective at a level of energy which I am as yet unused to sustaining."

"So, less flexible, and you can't really get the benefit anyway?"

"I should be able to adapt to it with continued practice. But, in the short term, yes. I certainly will not be taking it on missions at any point in the immediate future."

Hmm. Shield generation. I know the sigils for shielding, and since bound weapons use their user's magic abilities… Some sort of bracer?

I cup my hands in front of me.

Fabricate.

The ring squeezes titanium from my subspace pocket into my hands in the form of a bracer. Gold threads run through the outward facing part in the shape of the 'shield' sigil. The bracer is in the 'open' position, but I've added the sigils for resizing the clasp, though I can't trigger it myself. I hold it out to him.

"Try this."

He takes it, and places it around his right forearm. "The workmanship is of extremely high quality. Did you purchase it while you were in Atlantis?"

"No, I made it just then."

He looks at me.

"Really. I can't enchant, but if I see a description I can probably create it. That's designed-."

"To generate a shield, yes, I see that. It does not appear to have a way to generate its own water supply."

I shake my head and shrug. "Don't think I've seen a diagram of that. And I wouldn't know how to make the different effects work together anyway."

"It would not matter under water. On the surface, however…" He points the trident at the water, and a sphere about half a metre in diameter shoots forth and strikes the bracer. It splatters, then is pulled around into a tower shield shape connected to the bracer on its outer side. Kaldur tries moving it around experimentally.

"How does it feel?"

"Strong, but inflexible. You have also not included the components which would allow it to change shape."

Come on. "It's my first go, man."

"I realize that. I did not mean to imply that it is inadequate. For any artificer in Atlantis making such a device it would be the work of many months of careful design, testing and planning. There would be a number of additional features included as part of the design. They would also need to have been studying the craft for many years. To know that you created this in seconds, after only a few months' worth of study…"

"Yeah, but I can't improve it without someone telling me exactly what to do. I was thinking of making something for Garth. Feel a bit bad about him not having any way to block my constructs. His shield was perfectly effective, but it didn't cover enough. I was hoping that I could eventually create full body armour with something like that."

He takes a closer look at the bracer, then looks over the rest of his body, presumably imagining what it would be like. "That may well be possible." He raises it in my direction. "But first, let us test this one. If it is at least as effective as the shield my Water Bearers generate, I may be able to use the trident after all."

back

Exaltations 14

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10th September

23:04 GMT -5

That was… unexpected.

Carefully, I reach across with my right arm and gently stroke the hair of the woman sleeping in the crook of my left. She responds by pressing herself more tightly against my side. Her breathing is regular and slow. Just to be sure, I check her brain activity. She's definitely asleep.

She seems so fragile like this.

I think I may have misjudged this situation rather badly. No, not badly, but… I hadn't planned for Jade to be anything other than a source of information. And if I'm honest, after I infiltrated Infinity Island's records, she wasn't likely to be of much use in that regard. But I kept seeing her. At the time, I thought I was doing it because I found her to be a fun and safe way to practise intrigue. The techniques don't come naturally to me, and my raw power means that I probably couldn't just pick it up.

I suppose I was wrong when I told Artemis that one woman couldn't… Hm. My skin doesn't respond to soft physical contact on its own anymore, but the ring allows me to detect touch, and relay it to the nerves under my outer plating. After realising that, getting complex feedback from a normal construct seemed like a perfectly natural progression.

She certainly seemed to like it well enough.

The intelligent, dispassionate thing to do would be to simply enjoy the sensation and not allow it to change my behaviour. But I'm an Orange Lantern, and I will not deny my own desires. And, surprising though it is, I find that I want her. Jade Nguyen is mine.

My original plan to set her up with a new identity post-League of Shadows will need a rethink. Particularly given the criminal activities she confessed to me this afternoon. Twenty nine murders… I don't think a pardon is likely. Four senior members of criminal syndicates plus nineteen of their bodyguards, those, we could work around. But five legitimate businessmen and one politician… I checked, and while the deaths are known to be murders there isn't much evidence linking it to her.

She more or less threw her crimes at me this afternoon. I think she was offended by me daring to say that I didn't care about what she'd done as a Shadow. Thing is, I've never cared all that much about the suffering of people I know. If I'm honest, I was always more concerned that I was responding to them in the way I was supposed to, expected to. Now that need is gone, and I certainly don't care about people I've never even heard of. I'm not working to get over how I feel about her work, or even accepting her in spite of it. It genuinely doesn't matter to me. Atypical for a superhero? Should I care?

No. I'm not a group. I'm me, and with this ring I can finally express exactly what that means. I'll destroy what physical evidence there is tomorrow.

!Mine!

The size of my chest makes it hard to see her from this angle, but a thin and almost lightless construct connected to my visual cortex allows me to look her over once more. I haven't seen her peaceful before. I want to see it more.

I shift slightly in bed. I actually had to reinforce it to hold my weight. I could have used the ring to compensate for our 'activities', but I might want to get some sleep tonight. I had been a little concerned that the hotel might not accept me, but it turns out that sufficiently large amounts of money can smooth over most problems. There'll be a tip for the cleaners when we leave as well. Would it be polite to turn the bed back? No, wrong question. Do I want to? No. Does it serve a practical advantage? Not really. I mean, I'm known, now. My face, my appearance and my power set are public knowledge. The fact that I reinforced a bed merely adds interest, and it isn't so much heavier that they can't move it.

Will the fact that I was seen coming here with Jade cause a problem? Unlikely. Ra's knows that we're meeting. Wonder Woman knows that I like Asian women. She was less than pleased when she found out about Aichi. It seems that she thought I was considerably younger than my twenty nine years, but even after I corrected her on that score she felt that I was treating the women there as sex objects. I countered by pointing out that I talked to all of them beforehand, and as such knew them considerably better than she did. That no coercion or deceit had taken place, and that not all women share her reticence on sexual matters.

That may have been overdoing things a little, but I've checked and as far as I can tell she's never even dated anyone. Mister Scott mentioned that during World War 2 she dragged her Air Force liaison officer -First Lieutenant Steven Trevor- to a couple of formal receptions after someone said that she was supposed to bring someone with her. He was fairly confident that they'd never actually been involved, however, as he was the one to explain to her how courting and romantic relationships work in Man's World, and why the women who she'd originally asked to go with her had been so shocked.

I'm a little surprised that Queen Hippolyta hasn't given her a nudge yet. Didn't she make a noise about grandchildren when Wonder Woman dated the idiot in the comics? He exists here, but he's a junior FBI agent and they've never met. Anyway, while Wonder Woman hasn't said anything about it since, I shouldn't risk her ire so casually. And -I stroke Jade's hair again- I don't think I'll mind at all switching my attention to Jade alone.

Hmm. I'm still planning on making contact with the Controllers once my year is up. I need to know that Larfleeze isn't in a position to threaten me, and I do rather like the idea of having other Lanterns around for backup. I'm not sure that Jade would want to leave Earth. I'll have to pencil in the League of Shadows' destruction for mid June, and see what she wants to do after that. I already have the faces and genetic patterns of most of its members. I'll have to get serious about the extraterrestrial prison I've half started to plan. If I start picking people up I'll have to have somewhere secure to put them. I don't intend to risk comics nonsense ninjas ruining my work, and assimilating all of them would be dull. And of course, if the most practical plan is to kill them all, I'll want to know exactly where Jade stands before I leave the planet.

I've sort of toyed with the idea of taking the organisation over, but it seems like it would be a lot of work for little actual benefit. I might end up cherry picking a few useful people or arcane artefacts, but I have no desire to run a network of assassins. I suppose I could give it all to Mister Luthor, but I'm not sure that's really his thing either. Perhaps I could ask for his advice? They did try and kill him last week, and disposable Venom Buster assassins are a distinctly unpleasant development. Miss Grant was impressed that I removed the drug from their systems, but really that was the best option. There was no way I could have fought all seven of them and protected everyone.

My new Bane construct-lantern has been quite forthcoming. Apparently, once he took back control of the factory on Santa Prisca he was swiftly contacted by a League of Shadows representative looking for him to take over the contract from Kobra. And they're buying nearly all he can produce. The street price of Venom in the US has more than doubled since then due to the supply shortfall. Though I doubt that his factory is still their only source, I undertook a railgun strike on the place. No people were permanently injured, but they won't be manufacturing anything there anytime soon.

Perhaps the Shadows finally have a clue? Ninjas are for hiding. If you want to brawl with superhumans, come loaded for bear.

Ah, the League of Shadows can be a problem for tomorrow. I intensify the sensitivity of the nerves in my left arm and side, letting me feel every part of Jade's body which is in contact with mine. I can feel the texture of her skin, and dampness of her sweat, even the small scars on her arm and the larger one on the lower part of her left rib. I feel her chest move as she breathes, and I feel her breath as it moves across my skin.

I could get used to this.

Do I risk sleeping myself? She has some weapons in her clothing, but nothing that's within arm's reach. Of course, if I were asleep my nervous system would be reduced to its natural sensitivity and she might be able to extricate herself without waking me. I might desire her, but I can't guarantee that she feels the same way. I want to believe it, but I think I'll leave having such complete faith for a while yet.

!Jade Mine!

How might I further convince her to remain with me? I undertake a detailed scan of her body, and mend her internal scarring. I leave the external ones. She might be proud of them or something. There are a few bruises, and I remove them. Hmm. I tweak her senses a little. They're all in fairly good order, but I doubt that she'll complain about having slightly better eyesight or hearing. All of those explosives aren't good for the ear drums. I take a moment to admire her musculature. Nothing else to do here.

Perhaps her mother? I know the woman is paralysed from the waist down, but I'm not sure how easy that would be to heal with a power ring. Is that something Ra's would be concerned about? No, she could claim that she was learning to manipulate me. I doubt that he'd object in principle, and Jade's already reported that I've killed her father. What about Artemis? Getting her a better weapon shouldn't be all that difficult. Amazons use bows, and some of them must either be enchanted or created using arcane materials. I wonder what they'd want in exchange? Or perhaps improved arrows?

Alas, I can't really risk giving Jade herself better weapons, and we've mostly talked about work when we've been together previously. I need to find out about her other interests. I remember hearing that roses are never wrong, but that does seem a little generic. Jewellery? I wouldn't have thought that she's the type. I'd use the ring to just find out what she wants, but that feels inappropriate for some reason.

I'm due to give Batman a report on my infiltration of the League of Shadows tomorrow. I think that I should be honest, if a little nonspecific when the precise nature of my relationship with Jade comes up. Or maybe it doesn't matter; he certainly isn't in a place to lecture me on having relationships with bad girls, and Talia wasn't even an informant when they were together.

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Exaltations 15

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11th September

17:41 GMT -4

"Are you actually reading my personnel file?"

Lessons are over for the day, and after going over the modifications Kaldur wants made to his shield I've returned to the training area to find Artemis studying a holographic interface with my face on the screen. She jerks when she hears my voice, half a second of guilt before her more typical aggressive response. "It's on the team's database. We all have access to it, Paul Candle. And you know everything about us anyway!"

"It's not Candle, I just couldn't communicate anything closer. And I'm not complaining. I'm just a bit surprised. I've been monitoring the file, and before now only Kaldur's accessed it."

"I've accessed it." Robin walks in behind me, towelling his hair which is still damp from getting drenched by a wave of water propelled by Kaldur's trident.

"Robin, power ring. If you'd accessed it, I'd know about it."

He smiles broadly, and walks past me to sit down on the steps leading up to the habitation area. How could he..?

Oh.

"Uuuuunless you accessed it from the Batcave. Which I'm not monitoring. Because Batman ordered me not to. And which contains one of three complete copies of the Justice League's database."

"You got it. Hey, I've been wondering; what actually happens if you violate an order?"

"I'm not sure. I had been assuming it would be something like what happened to Orion: hunted down and killed by some sort of giant monster."

"Harsh."

"Eh, I agreed to it."

"Can you actually do all this stuff?"

Artemis appears not to like what she's reading.

"Um, probably?"

"Faster than light travel."

"Of course. How do you think Lanterns patrol their sectors?"

"Create an energy shield a mile across?"

"About that. I struggle to go above a kilometre."

"Turn people into constructs?"

"You've met Teekl, right?"

"Accelerate your brain?"

"Yeah, but that always feels-."

"Alter every cell in someone's body?"

"You've seen the rats."

"And what exactly did you do to earn this?"

I shrug. Can't deny that I kinda won the superpower lottery.

"Nothing. Or if I did, I don't know what it was."

She huffs, and folds her arms across her chest. "That is so unfair."

"Green Lantern two eight one four A got Abin Sur's ring because he was closer to his crash site than Lantern Gardner."

Guy's smug could have powered Texas for a year when he got that confirmed. Turns out that the ring actually rated him slightly higher than Lantern Jordan due to the latter's dishonourable discharge. I told him that whole case was a nonsense, but I don't think he was listening.

"If it's any consolation I can't go home, and the only other person I know of who owns an orange ring was driven mad by it. And.. I.. don't.. have a.. soul..?" I rub the back of my neck with my right hand. Thing is, while Robin's skill set stretches to criminal investigation, tactics and computers, Artemis is pretty much just bow girl. Heh, only one string to her bow. "Um, I could give you celerity or super strength if you wanted. Probably need your parents to sign something…"

Robin straightens up. "You can do that to anyone?"

"I think so? We sort of lost containment on a.. super speed rat a couple of days ago, and I'm a bit reluctant to do more tests on live animals. But the strength boost works on everything except me."

Artemis still looks miffed. "'Cause you really needed it."

"Would have been nice."

"But what would you do if your ring ran out of power again?"

"Ring, small target, twenty five metres, range shields."

An orange line loops out of my right shoulder and across the room where it creates a small circular target. Two shield walls form a shooting lane. In a smooth motion I draw the pistol from my leg holster, ready, aim and fire.

Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.

I lower the gun, raise my right hand and jerk it back. The side walls drop and the target flies over, bullets suspended where they struck. The target is only about twenty centimetres across, and five hit the centre third and three hit the middle third. I pass it over to Artemis as I clean, maintain and reload, before reholstering.

She blinks at it, then at me. Robin seems similarly surprised, but she finds her voice first. "You carry a gun?"

"Yes. Taking a backup weapon seemed sensible. I've also been visiting a range in New York for training. I'd also like to point out that it's only a fraction as powerful as energy projection attacks the ring can generate. Or those beam pistols I made from Ivo's MONQIs."

"Huh."

Robin recovers. "So, uh, you made Superboy stronger, you're working on making Wally faster and you're making better equipment for Kaldur. What do we get?"

"If celerity and super strength don't take your fancy, I could probably improve your body armour?"

"No alien computers?"

"Sorry, I won't have much of a tech database until I can visit the Controllers. And.. I'm afraid that everything I came up with for Artemis involved, well…"

She raises an eyebrow and transfers her weight to her back leg. "Dropping the 'pointy stick launcher'?"

I eliminate the bullets and target.

"I didn't want to put it quite that way, but, I know you said that you wanted something that you can hold onto legally. And that makes sense! But on team missions, if you left the weapon here between outings, there's no reason you couldn't use something a bit-." I limply circle my right hand in the air.

Her eyes narrow. "A bit what?"

Um. How to put this? "Better. If you want to stay a ranged fighter, I could build you a coil gun. Or something that works using air pressure. Or some sort of micro missile launcher."

"The bow's fine."

!Wrong wrong wrong!

"Really? Because I'm pretty sure that there's nothing in your arsenal that can hurt, for example, me."

She steps up to me, staring into my eyes. "Wanna bet?!"

"Yes!"

"Fine! Stay right there!"

back

Exaltations 16

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11th September

17:46 GMT -4

I'm pacing. Artemis stormed off in the direction of the cave's arsenal. Maybe I shouldn't have said that?

!Improve Upgrade Aid Make Better!

But, godsdamnit, it's a bow! It is a pointy stick launcher! She can probably get away with it during regular patrolling, but if she's comparing herself to me in the ranged fighter category there's no way she's going to be able to make up the difference if she won't upgrade her equipment.

"Don't you think that was a bit..?" Robin was smiling. Now, he doesn't sound so enthusiastic.

"Robin, you're pretty good with those throwing weapon things you use, right?"

"Yeah?"

"Would you seriously consider limiting yourself to just those? No staff, no taser. No personal computer?"

"Well.. no…"

"Because as I see it, that's what Artemis is doing. There's -just about- room for a bow in our line of work, but if she had to fight someone like me, it wouldn't be enough."

"But how likely is that? There's just the Green Lanterns,-"

I snort.

"-you, and that Larfleeze guy. And you said he never leaves Vega."

"And Thaal Sinestro. And whoever else the Qwardians have equipped. Or Star Sapphire, and whoever else the Zamarons have equipped. Or a magic user with a thing for barriers, teleportation and summoning. Power rings are only special in that they're so user friendly, there's nothing I can do that can't be done with magic."

He looks down for a moment. "I su-ppose…"

His head jerks up, and I turn to see what's drawn his attention. Artemis has stormed back in, fists balled, muscles taut. She's wearing two quivers, each loaded with her fanciest arrows. Kaldur and Wallace follow in her wake.

Wonder where Kon and M'gann have got to?

Artemis heads directly for me and keeps going until she's right in front of me. She stares directly into my eyes. "Still feeling confident?!"

"Yes, actually."

"Then get a shield up, so I can knock it down!"

"Eh eh." I wiggle my right hand in front of her. "I said bet. What's on the line here?"

The intensity of the stare lessens for a moment as she thinks about it. "If I drop your shield, you have to learn how to use a bow."

"Alright. If you can't, after expending all those arrows, you have to learn how to use the weapon of my choice."

"Fine!"

I hold out my right hand for her to shake. She hesitates for a moment, then grabs it and squeezes hard. Petty. The ring prevents any pain, but I elect not to respond in kind.

"Minimum safe distance please, everyone." I rise into the air, floating over to the area above the water. I'm about five metres from the surface. No need to damage the floor after all. I change to a cross legged sitting position.

"Environmental shield to full."

My orange aura intensifies.

"Construct armour."

Glowing armour plates appear around my body.

"And lastly…

I want to win. I want to be right. I want to help her by showing her that she's wrong. I want my team to be as effective as they can be.

!Exalt Ingroup!

"Shield sphere."

A perfect sphere of orange light forms around me. It doesn't appear to be projecting from any one part of my body, but the area around me is so suffused with orange light I couldn't swear to it.

"Hey! You said one shield!" Artemis gestures angrily as she sets up on the edge of the water.

I hold up my hands. "And I meant it. You win if you break the outer one. I just want to avoid the possibility of getting hurt on the off chance that you actually manage it."

"Worried?"

"Are you?"

Her eyes narrow, and she puts a large explosive arrow on string.

"Kaldur, you alright about judging this?"

He tilts his head down slightly, and sighs as he makes eye contact with me. "I had hoped to persuade you both to settle your differences amicably. But if you absolutely must do this, then I accept." He turns to Artemis. "You will stop the moment I rule that his shield is down. Am I clear?"

She grits her teeth. "Crystal."

He looks at me. "Are you ready?"

I'm staring at the arrow.

"Am I glowing orange?"

"Artemis, you may begi-."

The first arrow explodes against my shield to minimal effect. The second hits before the smoke from the blast has fully dispersed. I had thought that she might try to overwhelm the shield through speed, but instead she's taking time to aim at the exact same spot. I don't think that my shield works like that. A third explosive, then a sonic shrieker which blows away the smoke and does no perceptible damage. What am I, a guard dog?

I smile and wave at her. Her quiver can easily hold about twenty point arrows, or about half that in specialist ones. If she's done the intelligent thing and overstuffed both of the quivers then I could be looking at anywhere between thirty and sixty, depending on what she's loaded.

What's she got now? An EMP arrow. Really?

"This shield isn't made out of ionised gas, you know!"

She looses it anyway. It strikes with a brief flash of white. No effect.

I've got this in the bag.

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Exaltations 17

next

11th September

17:52 GMT -4

With a brilliant flash of white and a deafening bang -both suppressed by the shield- arrow forty six -a flash bang arrow- spends itself against my defences. Seven arrows to go, and the shield is barely scratched. I shouldn't be surprised: my environmental shield with no particular focus was able to hold off a shot from a Bialyan tank. Of the seven remaining arrows, four are simple point arrows and since neither of the others are atomic arrows or a phantom zone arrow they shouldn't be a problem. Since that's decided…

"Artemis, you're going about this in the wrong way!"

She's scowling, but hesitates as she reaches for her next arrow. Either anti-radiation or hard foam, neither of which would work. Kaldur remains impassive, patiently watching what I assume he believes to be needless infighting. Surely he'll see where I'm coming from? I mean, he's been fighting with his Water Bearers for what, two years? Then King Orin gives him the trident and he tries it out because it might work better. Wallace is standing next to Artemis. I imagine that he's making 'helpful' comments, though I can't hear them with the ring doing noise reduction. Should I tell him that I no longer think that he could beat me one on one? No, we're already working on the fix for that, it would just make him feel worse. Robin looks thoughtful.

"My shield isn't just an energy barrier, it's a literal manifestation of my desires. If you can't force it down, try finding something that will make me want to drop it. Even if I don't actually drop it, it might weaken enough for you to breach it."

She looks down as she thinks it over. Then she lowers her bow, and points at me with her right hand. I lower the level of noise reduction.

"Don't. Go. Anywhere."

I smile and shrug. She turns, and walks off toward the living area. Hmm. I float back over to the others, taking care to stay off the ground and to keep the shield up.

"Well, not much longer now."

Robin looks up. "Would that actually work?"

"Would what work?"

"Making you want to drop the shield? Or finding something you want more than winning the bet?"

"Of course. Same with distracting a Greenie, or calming a Red down, or destroying a Blue's hope."

"Sooo… what exactly would it take to do that?"

I raise an eyebrow. "Do your own homework, boy wonder."

"D'y'think..?" Wallace shifts uncomfortably. "Do you think that maybe you're being a bit hard on her? I mean, so a power ring's better than a bow, I mean what does that prove?"

I shake my head. "I don't mind her using a bow. I mind her refusing to consider trying something better. I mean, you want to be faster, right?"

He nods, but doesn't meet my eyes.

"And you,-" I turn to Kaldur. "-you've left the Conservatory, but you're still studying magic, and you're learning to use the trident. And me? I'm studying magic, and learning to build better constructs. We're learning, but we can't get better if we just decide that we're good enough already. Maybe this is a bit of a harsh way to-."

"Uh. Hey."

Kon?

Kon walks down the steps from the living area. He looks a little puzzled.

"Artemis said you wanted me to come out here and-" He reaches back, and pulls his t-shirt over his head. "-take my.. shirt off?"

I remember seeing something a few years ago that suggested that -as muscles gain strength through exercise- Superman should actually look quite weedy due to seldom having to exert himself. Looking at Kon, I'm glad that turned out to be nonsense. I don't think that giving him the Danner Formula has affected his physique visibly, but he still has a very pleasant looking tors-.

A point arrow breaks on the shield right in front of my face.

Oh, hah hah. I roll my eyes.

"That won't be enough."

I float upwards, and make eye contact with Artemis where she's standing near the top of the steps.

"I've seen Kon without his shirt on loads of times. And after I've won this bet, I'll probably see it loads more."

Another arrow to the face. I feel a twinge of nervousness as it releases a flare of violet light, but that doesn't do anything either. Ah, anti-radiation arrow.

"Not radio-ac-tive."

!Win!

Kon looks a little miffed. "You just wanted me to distract Paul so you could shoot him?" He puts his t-shirt back on. M'gann walks past Artemis, looking right at him. "Why did you think that would work?"

M'gann colours slightly when Kon asks. Having reflected long upon the matter, I think I might.. possibly.. like Kon. My earlier justification for not taking the matter further still stands; he still has little life experience, and I think he still needs my support too much for the sort of equality I think that sort of relationship requires. I don't know, I've never felt quite this way about another man before. I don't know if I'm properly characterising how I feel. Maybe this is just what really close friendship feels like?

And, whow, my shield just noticeably faded. Focus. Still want to win. Okay, we're back. It should be alright anyway, Artemis has already expended her heavy ordnance.

M'gann looks at me. "Um, what's going on?"

"I bet Artemis that she couldn't down my shield. She's down to her last five arrows, and she tried to use Kon to break my mental focus."

I drift in Artemis' direction as she readies an electroshock arrow.

!Triumph!

"Of course, if she were really thinking, she'd try showing me something I haven't seen before."

Artemis' eyes narrow. "What?"

"Not that hard to work out, is it? What have you got that might appeal to me more than Kon's chest."

The electroshock arrow hits my shield over my chest and bounces off, swiftly followed by three point arrows.

"Last cha-."

"RAaaaahhh!"

The hard foam arrow hits the shield in front of my face, and swiftly envelopes the shield. I'm not worried, as the substance doesn't contract significantly during hardening. I cross my arms with a smile as the room disappears. I'll use the ring to comm Kaldur and get confirmation that I've-.

"Uuuugh!"

I hear something clatter to the floor. Right. I'll get confirmation from Kaldur that I've won, and then start looking at weapon types. Artemis'll probably need a day or so to cool down, but after that we'll-.

"Recognised, Artemis, B, zero eight."

Huh?

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Exaltations 18

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12th September

06:43 GMT -5

I'm an arsehole.

I'm an arsehole.

It took a while to sink in. I knew that I was being a bit hard on Artemis, but I thought it was proportional to the potential gain. It wasn't until I cut my way out of the foam and none of the others would meet my eyes that I appreciated how far overboard I'd gone. And it wasn't until much later that I finally realised that I'd suggested to a fifteen year old girl that flashing me was her best tactical option.

I'm an arsehole.

Worse, I'm an arsehole who's in the Bat Cave for an appointment with his supervisor. Kaldur gave Robert Marrack his provisional approval yesterday before I tried to add myself to the American sex offenders register. And I asked Batman when a good time for a chat would be, and he said that he wanted to talk to me privately about a couple of things and that I should visit him in the cave this morning.

Irritatingly, some part of my mind is still trying to justify it. I remember in a wilderness survival lesson when one of the female members of my Scout troup expressed reluctance to share body heat, and the instructor asked whether her modesty would be more important than the life of whoever she was with. If that was what it took to stop a rampaging Red Lantern for example, would it not be correct to consider it? Maybe? No. It doesn't matter if it might have worked, it was still massively inappropriate! Artemis actually threw her bow to the ground and left the cave without it. I've got it in subspace now, and I'll give it back to her when I apologise to her today.

Unsurprisingly, the zeta tube exit in the Bat Cave is in a sealed room. The walls, ceiling and floor are made of reinforced concrete. Thick cables running along the ceiling power large fluorescent tubes in boxes of laminated glass. The floor is bare, and the door in the far corner looks like something out of a submarine. Tough, but not sophisticated. If I didn't know where I was -and if I didn't have a power ring which could scan the whole area anyway- I would have no idea that I was in Gotham, let alone in the headquarters of the current chairman of the Justice League.

Ring?

No, no automated defences. No gas dispensers, no guns, no bat robots. Maybe those are in the next room? Or maybe there's a zeta tube program for that, a warehouse somewhere with a one way zeta relay and a swarm of angry hornets, ready to go at a moment's notice. Or maybe he assumes that anything that can penetrate the zeta network can probably handle anything it would be sensible to automate? The control computer for this tube is embedded in the concrete. Is this entrance only?

I walk over to the door and knock. A dull metallic thud. I think that the room's airtight. Hmm. I lay my left hand on the door and open it. There's a thud from inside as I bypass the mechanism and have the ring do it manually. The door swings toward me, and I step around it and out into the corridor. Oop, manners. Close the door and reset the controls first.

Okay, where am I? A walkway made of metal grating is attached to the sloping side of the cave, about two metres above the 'ground' level. The part of the wall which makes the outer wall of the room I have just left is concrete, though painted and textured to resemble the natural rock of the rest of the cave. The cave wall itself looks natural, but I suppose it could be artificial. I'm hardly an expert on rocks. The walkway is about eighty centimetres wide and curves around the side of the cave in straight sections before coming to what seems to be the main work area. There are a small number of powerful lights in the ceiling, creating clearly lit areas while leaving deep shadows around them. In front of me, down on the 'floor' level of the cave, a black car -which I presume to be this parallel's version of the Batmobile- is parked with its rear facing me. I lean on the railing to take a look at it. It's surprisingly plain. No ridiculous bat-themed detailing. No glowing parts. No flashing lights. It looks a bit like a slightly oversized sports car. You could drive it around, park it in broad daylight, and it wouldn't attract too much attention. Sensible.

Doesn't seem to be anyone around. I don't seem to have set off an alarm though. I stand up straight. I'm a little early, I suppose. What does Batman do on Sunday mornings? If I had to guess, I'd have said 'go to bed after working all Saturday night'. Just wandering around feels like it would be rude. I could scan for him, but this is his home, and I am a little early. Instead, I walk along the walkway, around a corner and on to the main work area. There's the Bat Computer with numerous computer screens, and a work bench with numerous fancy looking pieces of scientific equipment. I don't see any of the mementos that most versions of this cave which I've seen before have, but I haven't seen everything and maybe he keeps them somewhere else.

Should I just wait here? He said seven, but I thought that security might take a little-.

"Can I help you, sir?"

English, upper class, formal. I turn, and see Alfred Pennyworth standing at the bottom of the steps down to the car with an enquiring expression on his face and a dustpan and brush in his hands.

"Mister Pennyworth-" I put my right hand to my chest. "- Orange Lantern two eight one four. I have an appointment with Batman scheduled for seven o'clock, but I'm a little early. Is it.. alright, if I wait here?"

"Please do. I will inform Master Batman of your arrival."

I give a shallow bow. "Thank you. Um. If he's picked up an injury? I don't mean… No offence to your skills as a medic, but I'm probably best placed to heal him." I hold up my left hand, and give it a wiggle.

"Thank you for your consideration sir, but fortunately last night was relatively injury free. If you'll excuse me?"

"Of course."

He turns, and walks past the car and up a flight of stairs to another part of the cave. Perhaps the exit is in that direction? Or a communication device? I move to stand at parade rest. I'm not sure what Batman wants to talk to me about, but my research into both Robert Marrack and Yao Fei is complete, and I need to talk to him about them. If he seems receptive, I'd like to put in a good word for Guy as well. I had been planning to brush up on my arguments last night, but I had to spend the time thinking of ways to placate Artemis instead.

In the end, I realised that the only way I'd get anywhere was to use the ring to acquire background information on her. Turns out she's Jade's sister, and is currently living with their mother. Jade's sister, Artemis Crock. Small world. I suppose that explains why Jade found it funny that I didn't think 'Artemis' was her actual name. And why Artemis was so concerned about what we'd been talking about.

I've still got her father's plasma crossbow thing, so I can give her that. I bought an orchid in a pot. Not sure if she likes flowers, but it can't hurt. I've fabricated replacements for the arrows she used against me, as well as one type of my own design using technology STAR labs are dragging their feet about reverse engineering. In addition, I plan to have a go at repairing her mother's spine. I've sort of been thinking about that for a while as I've got to know her during our visits to Jade. The journey to Belle Reve isn't something she could really afford on a weekly basis, so I've been flying her there instead. Now that I think about it, I've never picked her up from her house, always the local park. Was she trying to avoid me meeting Artemis outside of work? Hmm. In theory, the damage to the tissue and the remaining shrapnel should be reasonably simple for the ring to deal with. Motivation certainly shouldn't be a problem anymore. Alienating a team mate feels wrong, and I genuinely like Paula.

"Orange Lantern."

Batman precipitates out of the darkness. I wasn't really trying to spot him, so I'm not sure if this version has the ludicrous stealth capacities of some versions.

"Sir. Thank you for seeing me."

He walks up the stairs to the work area where I'm standing. "I understand that you've had an.. altercation, with Artemis."

"Ah, yes sir. My behaviour…. was not appropriate. I was going to apologise to her after we've finished here."

He nods. "I think that would be for the best. I will also remind you that alcoholic drinks are prohibited from the mountain. American laws are less relaxed on the subject than European ones."

"I was cooking with it. Red Tornado spent the whole four hours looming over me. You know there wouldn't be significant amounts of alcohol left after that."

He maintains eye contact with me for a few seconds longer than I'm comfortable with. I drop my eyes.

"Yes sir. No alcohol. Right."

He walks around the work bench and takes a seat. I turn to face his position.

"What was it you wanted to talk to me about?"

I raise my right hand and call forth my Cornwall Boy notebook.

"Kaldur said that you hadn't defined a process by which a new trainee might join us. So, I thought that I'd take the initiative."

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Exaltations 19

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12th September

06:48 GMT -5

I offer him the notebook and then return to parade rest. He takes it, looks at it for a moment, and then lays it down on the work surface.

"What makes you think that the League intends to expand the team beyond its current membership?"

"Artemis turning up, sir. If you'd left it at the six of us, I might have thought it was a one off thing. But she's been active with Green Arrow for even less time than I've been being tutored by Wonder Woman. And I didn't have a pre-existing tie to her, so the deciding factor can't be that."

He looks at me for a moment, before opening the first page. "How did you meet 'Cornwall Boy'?"

He says the name without hesitating. I suppose that objectively it's no sillier than 'Batman'.

"After Klarion hit me with the chaos magic shards and neither.. Mister Nelson nor Mister Zatara.. were able to completely remove them, I sought him out. I'd been looking at potential future recruits for a while, and it seemed like a good opportunity to introduce myself."

"He was able to completely heal you?"

"As far as I can tell. I've had a couple of other people check, and they agree."

Batman nods, and turns the page. "He's British."

"Yes sir."

A minute of silence, and he turns the page again. "He doesn't appear to have any sort of relationship with a League member."

"Neither did Kon, sir. I'd only known Wonder Woman for three days when the team first got together. And Robert's great grandfather worked with the Justice Society on several occasions."

Batman gives a shallow nod.

Alan mostly remembered him for having a truly huge moustache, but after having a moment to think about it he told me what he remembered of their meeting and damn, but Graham Marrack would have been a scary guy to have to fight. He actually subbed in for Fate on a couple of missions during World War 2, and Alan didn't think it was a downgrade. He was in his sixties at the time, and at the height of his arcane powers. And really hated it when people smoked around him. Not sure why none of his heirs have reached the same heights of achievement. His eldest son, David Marrack, started as Captain Cornwall much later in life than his father had, and never really achieved the same level of renown. Trevor Marrack -Robert's father and current holder of the title- never really bothered, though I found some evidence to suggest that his younger brother Julian was a bit more involved in the arcane, and in a criminal way. Interestingly, I haven't been able to track him down, and Robert didn't want to talk about him. Furthermore, the Marracks generally only have one son per generation, but they're always the first born. Robert's got four younger sisters, two Marrack great aunts and would have had six Marrack great great aunts if they were still alive.

"He doesn't appear to have achieved much with his powers so far."

"He's fourteen sir, and Truro isn't exactly Gotham. It's harder for him to find things that match his abilities."

"What exactly have you told him?"

"I've told him that the Justice League has a training program, that I personally think that he would be a good fit, and that I'd hand that-" I point to the notebook. "-to you, with my recommendation. I haven't told him who else is on the team, I haven't mentioned the content of any missions or even that the team is given missions. I haven't mentioned zeta tubes or the location of any League facilities, including the mountain, and I haven't mentioned any real names other than my own. Um, and Mister Zatara's, but…"

He closes the book and pushes it to his left. "Orange Lantern, what do you know about Artemis' background?"

"Pretty much everything, sir."

"As of when?"

"As of last night. After the whole getting banned from saying people's names thing I decided to stop routinely scanning everyone, but I thought that I needed to know more about her in order to come up with some sort of apology gift? Really, given the amount of time I've spent with her mother, it surprises me that I hadn't bumped into her out of costume before."

"I see." He thinks for a moment. "My original vision for the team was that it would supplement the individual training you received from your mentors with both other skills taught by League members and with training in coordination and teamwork. It was never intended as a training centre for people with no experience at all."

"Well, I didn't-."

"Wonder Woman brought you to my attention only after I conceived of that methodology. I also did not expect Superman to react quite as negatively to Superboy as he did, so I had to adapt the model. Artemis' inclusion -though not part of the original plan- fits the model. Though they are not related, Green Arrow is training her. You are asking me to consider including someone who -by your own admission- is unlikely to get any training outside of what the team receives."

I feel the first glimmerings of despair.

"Are you investigating any other potential members?"

"Yes sir."

"How many?"

"Twenty seven, though some of them are a bit obvious. I mean, Troia and Zatanna meet all of the original requirements."

"Do you intend to present me with a report on each of them?"

"Not at this time, sir. Robert's probably the best fit I have, and the amount of added value that could be gained by including him, plus the low probability of him advancing himself in any other way…"

He nods. "I'll look into it. If I reach the same conclusion as you, I will contact his parents."

"Thank you sir."

"Now, I want to talk to you about your encounter with Lex Luthor."

"Um, before we start on that, sir?" I hold out my right hand again, and a second notebook appears. "These are my notes on Yao Fei, a Chinese national. He's presently resident in-."

"The Gobi Desert."

Uh?

"Sir, how did you know that?"

"I don't recognize the name from any of their active metahuman groups, and I know the Chinese government policy relating to metahumans. You generally work by examining existing databases, so it would make sense that you discovered him by examining theirs." He holds out his right hand, and I pass the notebook to him. "Why do you want to bring him to my attention?" He opens the book. "He seems a little old for the team."

"Actually, sir, I was going to recommend him for your team."

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Exaltations 20

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12th September

06:52 GMT -5

There's no immediate reaction. He appears to keep reading. Perhaps I should explain?

"American superheroes have always existed in an unusual position of independence from the US government. In most places that isn't how it works. China has a small number of super functionaries who could join the League, but they're all tightly controlled by the Standing Committee for Metahuman Affairs, and their first loyalty is to the state. I mean, you could probably talk them into lending you August Captain in Iron or whoever, but you wouldn't be able to fully trust them. Accomplished Perfect Physician on the other hand spent several years acting against the Chinese government before being forcibly convinced that it was counterproductive."

"What makes you think we want someone from China at all?"

"Sir, you know as well as I do that most of the world calls you 'The Justice League of America'. Aside from Wonder Woman, Aquaman and Red Tornado, all of the members of the world's premier group of superheroes are American, and the only reason Red Tornado isn't an American is because the American legal system still hasn't adapted to the existence of AIs yet. Your recruitment method seems to be 'know a guy who knows a guy'. There are going to be a lot of highly skilled people across the world who aren't going to get anywhere near it because they don't know the right people."

"A reasonable point to consider. But I doubt that the Chinese government would be prepared to release Yao Fei to work with us. And according to this, he doesn't want to leave the prison."

"Well, as I see it, China certainly wouldn't mind having someone on the League, and he is a highly skilled medic. You don't have one of those, and there aren't all that many people who are both superheroes and medical doctors. That gives you a reason to ask about him specifically. Plus, the existence of the Gobi Desert prison isn't common knowledge. If they thought that there was a chance of the information getting released…"

"Don't underestimate the willingness of the Chinese government to ignore international criticism."

"Oh, I don't. But conditions in the camp are.. not good. If they thought that they could hold the people there hostage to Mister Yao's loyalty, they might be prepared to consider it. And, frankly, he's being wasted there."

He flicks past a few pages. "There's no mention here of him receiving medical training."

"Past life knowledge. As far as I can tell he perceives certain forms of magic as sound. He can heal a wound or still an earthquake by humming at it. And he's spending his time treating dehydrated metahumans in the Gobi Desert and feeling sorry for himself."

Batman closes the notebook and slides it to his right. "Anyone joining the Justice League would have to have the approval of all existing members. The chance of someone whom none of us can vouch for gaining acceptance is slight, to say the least."

"Sir, if the League continues to grow, that system isn't going to work."

He doesn't reply for a moment, and drums the fingers of his right hand on the notebook once. "Do you have any other recommendations?"

"Lantern Gardner, obviously. I don't have a file on him, but I assume you already know everything about him that you need to."

"I understand that the other Green Lanterns of this sector don't share your opinion of him."

"Lantern Stewart hasn't spent five minutes talking to him since he woke up. Lantern Jordan.. yeah, he's… I think Lantern Jordan reminds him of his brother, and he's transferring some of that resentment. But, Jordan and Stewart are spending most of their time off Earth at the moment, while Gardner's here full time until the Guardians decide what they want to do with him. I know who will be most useful to the League."

Batman bows his head slightly. "Is there anything else?"

"No sir, I think that's everything."

"Very well then. Your meeting in Taipei with Lex Luthor."

Full transcripts were included with my report, along with a record of my scans of his brain. I also included scans of his face in case Batman could read it better than me.

"What about it, sir?"

"How long have you known that Luthor was one of Superboy's genetic parents?"

"Since just after the fight with Mister Twister. I had to repair his inner ears, and I needed to know what tissue to use, so I did a full scan."

"Why did you decide not to tell anyone at that time?"

"I told Kon that I knew who it was, but he's never been very interested in his Human components."

"And why didn't you tell anyone else?"

"Because it's none of their business? If Artemis hasn't told anyone that Sportsmaster's her father, I don't see why Kon should be expected to tell everyone that Mister Luthor's his."

"The rest of the team don't know about Artemis' background. Both myself and Green Arrow do."

Oh dear.

"Sir, are you telling me you didn't know about Kon-El's… Seriously?"

Oh dear. I'm stunned.

"W..? Who performed his medical examination before he joined the team?"

"Kryptonian physiology is resistant to most sensor technology at our disposal, and we had access to the records from Cadmus. According to those, the source of his Human genetic material was Doctor Desmond."

I just about stop myself facepalming.

"Sir, did you not..? Any of the Green Lanterns could have checked that. I mean, a saliva sample..?"

"An extremely regrettable oversight, especially considering what you uncovered about LexCorp's links to Cadmus."

Putting it mildly.

"How bad..?"

"It might come to nothing. But as a worst case scenario, now that you've given Luthor a way to claim that he only found out about the relationship since Superboy was freed from Cadmus control, he could try to get custody of Superboy through the courts."

Shit.

!Kon mine!

"Is that likely? I mean, he doesn't have any sort of social relationship with him."

"There may be legal instruments he could attempt to use to that effect. Clearly, existing law doesn't properly account for this situation. Regardless of his physical or mental maturity, Kon-El is a two month old boy with only one other biological relative."

And Superman doesn't want to know. And much as I'd have liked to improve their relationship, the idea of Superman playing a larger role in his life just because the alternative was Lex Luthor is quite distasteful. Would Kon actually want..? I don't think so. He's never spoken about Cadmus except through clenched teeth. I can't imagine him responding well to the man responsible for it all.

"The other matter I wanted to discuss with you is your studies in the field of Human augmentation. Why did you think that drawing Luthor's attention to the possibilities of combining Abednego Danner's formula with Cadmus' cloning technology was a good idea?"

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Exaltations 21

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12th September

06:56 GMT -5

I said that, didn't I?

"Because I honestly believe what I told Mister Luthor. That sort of research is something that our species needs. I mean, maybe not from him specifically… No, even if it has to come from him."

He leans back in his seat, hands steepled in front of him.

"Heck, giving Mister Luthor everything he wants might turn out to be the best way to neutralise him as a threat."

Batman's eyes narrow.

I raise my hands in surrender. "He doesn't actually have the Danner Formula. I only got hold of a copy by complete fluke, and the originals have all gone walkabouts. I checked. He can already create Kryptonian/Human hybrids and program their brains, so even if he got a copy it wouldn't improve his position all that much. And Human cloning's illegal anyway, isn't it?"

"Are you sure that he couldn't simply get it somewhere else?"

"No, and I'm honestly not that worried about it. Are you sure that he couldn't get hold of Mister Garrick's original research? That was far more widely distributed than Mister Danner's."

"No, Orange Lantern, I'm not sure at all."

"Sir, the Martians are an entire species of shapeshifting telepaths. The Atlanteans have been augmenting themselves since before the Sinking. I can only imagine the effort that it's taken to stop transhumanism spreading. And I hate it! I hate the fact that it's somehow okay to keep these advantages to a tiny proportion of the population. If I could, I'd give every pregnant baseline Human on the planet a shot of the Danner formula."

"Have you any idea how difficult that would make our work?"

"It would make it so that the population at large could deal with the sorts of thing they need the League for now! I mean, do you want to be augmented? Speed or strength. It will take me a couple of seconds."

"I don't feel that I'm missing anything by not having super powers."

"I don't… Sir, I have the utmost respect for your achievements, but having an extra edge doesn't take anything away from them. You just.. have an extra tool. Both of the formulae I have access to have been shown over many decades to have negligible side effects. The Danner Formula even makes you live slightly longer!"

"Orange Lantern."

I bow my head slightly. "Sir."

"While I appreciate what you are trying to do, I do not wish to be augmented."

"Sir."

"I understand that you have already used the Danner Formula on Superboy."

"After testing it, yes."

"Why didn't you ask a member of the League to supervise?"

!Kon mine!

"Because none of you know more than me about either Kryptonian physiology or the Danner Formula. And, none of you are Kon's legal guardian. I knew it was safe, he wanted it. We put him through his paces afterwards, he was fine."

"Wonder Woman received a phone call from Troia's parents about the injuries she received."

"Wh..? I offered to heal her, she told me she wasn't hurt?"

"He was able to hit hard enough to harm her through her armour. The bruises probably wouldn't have been showing when she left the mountain. Fortunately, she heals quickly."

I think I owe her some flowers or something.

"Do you know how much stronger you've made him?"

"About a third, I think? It's hard to test. It increased his endurance by more."

I flat out can't make constructs that can stop him anymore. I mean, in a direct struggle, I always found it difficult, but now he just goes straight through them. Finding that out made him so happy, and I'm happy for him. He's now as strong and as tough as he thinks that he should be.

!Kon mine!

"Incidentally, given that you knew he'd been educated telepathically, was there a reason why you didn't make sure that a telepath went through his mind to remove the Cadmus programming? M'gann had to remove five different types of override when she started the knowledge integration. Can you imagine what would have happened if one of those had been triggered during a mission?"

!Kon mine!

"All too easily. I.. accept that the League hasn't done all that it could for Superboy."

"Diana's… Wonder Woman's really stepped up there, sir."

He nods. "How is your work with Kid Flash going?"

I shake my head. "It's going nowhere. We need a greater level of alchemical knowledge than any of us have, and the Atlanteans only study the subject out of historical interest. He's started studying it himself, but it's going to be a while before we get anywhere."

"Were you able to track down the test animal that escaped?"

"Eventually, sir. It wasn't immune to rat poison, and managed to eat enough to overwhelm its accelerated metabolism. Since it was female, there's no need to worry about another generation of speedy rats."

"Can the Garrick Formula be passed on from one generation to the next?"

"I don't know sir. Testing would be a bit of a risk."

"You mentioned in your report that you found the origin of the formulae suspicious. Have you uncovered any evidence that would support that belief?"

"No, but I haven't prioritised investigating that."

I think I vaguely remember something about one of the New Gods being in the US during the 19th century? I could ask, but the way things are around here finding a period of Human history free of aliens might be harder than finding one with them in it.

"To be honest, given how much time's passed, I'm not sure that there would be any evidence anymore."

"You may well be right. Very well, continue your research, but keep me appraised of any significant new developments."

"Yes sir."

He stands. "I believe that Artemis is spending the morning with Green Arrow in Star City."

I nod. He didn't need to remind me about that. "That's where I'm heading, sir."

He walks around the table and heads down the stairs to ground level. "I'll send you there by zeta tube."

I follow him down. "Actually sir, could you send me back to the mountain? I've got a couple of things to pick up, and I'd rather fly there myself. Don't want to risk giving away the Star City zeta tube's location by shining a great big orange light on it."

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Exaltations 22

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12th September

07:34 GMT -5

I might make a habit of getting up at six, but I try not to assume that everyone else does the same. Looks like Artemis does, but I wanted to wait until I saw Paula moving in the window before I buzzed for admission. I've been sort of lurking on the other side of the road for a good twenty minutes. Is that creepy? I thought that scanning the place would be creepier. I mean, I don't like to violate people's privacy without good reason. Their home is a flat in Old Gotham, and I've been occupying myself by removing the lead from the paint and replacing the asbestos with something a little less carcinogenic. And a lot more effective, but then, if LexCorp wanted to make a profit on this stuff then they should be selling it. I did tell Mister Luthor about Dyson. I've also made some minor repairs to the structure, pipes and electronics… I'm not sure that I should have done, but it's just so darn easy.

Finally, I see a familiar face in what I gather from the location of the pipes is their kitchen window. I'm not making an effort to conceal myself but she hasn't ever seen me in casual clothing before. I straighten up from the lamp post I've been leaning against, look in both directions and then cross the road. Up the steps, in through the outer door. There's a bank of post boxes on my left behind an empty desk, and an intercom on the right. The stairs are at the end of the lobby on the left and the lift is on the end wall. I suppose that it's a good job that no one is around, really. I walk over to the intercom and clean the metal to a sparkling silver. Ugh, no names. Right. I look over to the post boxes, and see the name 'Crock' on box number 302. Guess she hasn't got around to changing it. Okay then. I press button 302, and hear a buzz. Probably take her a little while to get there.

I take another look around the lobby. Bit shabby, but basically well cared for. I spruce it up a little, cleaning and repairing the paintwork. Windows could do with a little-.

"Yes?"

Ah. Quicker than expected.

"Ms Nguyen. Orange Lantern two eight one four here. Congratulations on getting the divorce finalised. Do you mind if I come up?"

A delay of a couple of seconds. "Oh, um. Of course not."

"Glad to hear it. See you in a jiffy."

When I go… When I went shopping with Mum, it amused me to race the lift on the stairs from the car park. I still prefer stairs, though I don't think I could get away with something so juvenile at my current age. Even if everyone thinks that I'm not my current age. Anyway, it's only two flights up and either everyone's still recumbent or they're all really early risers. Flat 7, and knock…

And the door opens. Paula's wheelchair is facing sideways from the doorway while she's turned to face me. She looks a bit surprised. "The others usually come in through the window."

I frown thoughtfully. "Does that not strike you as a little odd?"

She blinks. "Um, come in."

She wheels herself backwards and I enter the apartment, closing the door behind me. "Is… something wrong?"

"Ah, sort of. Um."

Where to start?

"Is Jade in some sort of trouble?"

"No. No, other daughter. Okay, so I only just found out that Artemis is your daughter. Um."

"I thought your power ring could identify people by their genes?"

"Oh, it can. I just thought, well, that I should let her have her privacy. But, yesterday, I finished our training session by being, um, quite rude to her."

"I thought she came back early. If you wanted to see her, she isn't here. She is spending the day with Green Arrow in Star City."

"Yes. I know. See, I wanted to do something to make up for my behaviour, and it occurred to me that fixing your spinal injuries would be quite a good way to do that."

She stares at me. She says nothing for about ten seconds.

"The.. the doctors said…"

"The doctors don't have a power ring. I'm not going to be digging into you and risking further damage, I'm just going to be pointing the ring in your general direction and telling it to sort it all out. Assuming it's just tissue damage and shrapnel, it shouldn't take long. Obviously you'd have to do physiotherapy to get full functionality back, y'know, heh, don't try jumping right out of the wheelchair or anything."

She's still staring, her face still. "You are sure that it will work?"

"At my current level of motivation, I'd give myself roughly a ninety nine percent chance of pulling it off with no problems. And I'd estimate that the chance of anything going seriously wrong is… I dunno… Point nought five percent? I rebuilt a Kryptonian's inner ear with no difficulty, and the ring's had loads of data on Human physiology."

"Oh. Um. What..? Do I need to do something?"

"No, not really. Well, you have to say that you want me to do it, but other than that you can just sit there."

"And.. you're doing this.. to apologize to my daughter."

"I've also got her some arrows and a pot plant, but I thought she'd want this more. Um, hehe, plant in a pot. Not marijuana."

She slumps slightly, looking at the ground. Is she really having to think about this?

"Sooo..?"

"Yes. Please?"

!Make better!

I grin. "Just what I wanted to hear. One moment." I raise my left hand so that the sigil on the ring is pointing directly at her. "Oh. Um, are there any injuries you want to keep? Like, important scars, or whatever."

She gives me a puzzled look, then shakes her head. "The only thing I want to keep from that part of my life is my daughters."

"Rightyho. Ring, scan, analyse and repair."

Orange light strobes over her body. There's a sharp intake of breath as she tenses up and watches it work with trepidation. The ring reports its findings to me, numerous scars and old breaks, shrapnel and bone fragments, sliced muscle and nerve. And some unusual chemical residues, though not in significant concentration.

Fix it all.

There's a flare of orange light, and then it shuts off.

Oh. Whoops.

"Feeling alright?"

"I... think so…" She holds up her hands to look at them, then lowers them and pokes her right thigh with her right index finger. She gasps. "I can feel it."

"Glad to hear it. Um, small problem…"

She jerks her head up to look at me. "What is it?"

"Well, I was reading your 'Huntress' file on the Justice League database yesterday, and I was sort of thinking of the picture of you they have on file -from back when you were active- when I was healing you. Um, I may have inadvertently knocked about ten years off your age." Got to say, I can totally see what Lawrence Crock saw in her. "Or.. mmmaybe a bit more."

Eh, Orange Lantern Corps. Even if we fuck up we get the result we want.

Her hands go to her face. "Mirror."

"You got to understand, this is the most advanced tool in the universe, and you did say that you didn't want to keep anything else. I mean, I was going to suggest keeping this as a surprise, but there's no way Artemis is going to believe that that's a new brand of make-u-."

"Mirror!"

"Um, right."

I step back and generate a mirror construct identical to the one I used back on the moon when I first augmented my body. She stares at herself, mouth open in shock, running her fingers over her rejuvenated features. "I. I don't…"

"It's not a problem, is it? 'Cause I'm not sure I could make you older intentionally…"

"No.. This is, this is..."

She leans forward in her seat, peering at herself, then takes a moment to collect herself.

Is she crying?

"Thank you. I don't… I can't…"

Her hand goes to cover her mouth as she starts to weep openly. I pass her a tissue, which she takes and begins using to dab her eyes. I don't really know what to do. I kneel down in front of her, and she smiles at me through her tears.

"Thank you."

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Exaltations 23

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12th September

06:49 GMT -7

Star City certainly looks nicer than Gotham.

I stayed with Paula while she got herself back together. Even made her a set of railings so she could practise walking, though I asked her to only use it while there was someone else there. Under my supervision she just about got to the point where she could stand up straight with only a little help. She offered me a cup of tea by way of thanks, and I didn't have the heart to turn it down. Good job I like blackcurrant.

Okay, so where is Artemis? Top of a building, that seems simple enough. What's she shooting at?

What the heck is that?

Some sort of giant robot is smashing up the street she's overlooking. I know I joked about it with Mister Luthor, but giant robot rampages are actually fairly uncommon, even here. Green Arrow is at ground level, trying to find a vulnerable point to hit while Black Canary tries to run interference in close quarters. The robot doesn't actually have all that much mass, it's just very tall and thin. As I watch, the robot slaps aside an arrow, which bursts and releases hard foam over its left hand. The robot shakes most of it off before it fully hardens and… huh? Cars are driving at Canary and Arrow with no drivers. How the heck is it doing that? There can't be enough electronics in them to allow that sort of control. And why is it wearing a ten gallon hat? Canary dodges frantically, while Green Arrow takes cover in a shop as a car parks itself through the front window.

Transition.

Then I'm standing on the rooftop next to Artemis. She wheels, arrow on string. The bow she's using looks like one of Green Arrow's, and the arrow is a simple point arrow. She starts as she realises who it is, and scowls. "You."

I hold out my left hand, and her bow appears.

"Yes, me, and I'm very sorry for everything, but can we please focus on the robot?"

She put the bow she had been using down and snatches hers away from me. "I used up all my special arrows on you. I can't hurt it!"

Ah. Good news, then. I used some of my time last night to create a new type of arrow based on the designs originally created by Alexander Tuttle. His original 'Crumbler' gloves are in storage in STAR labs, and it didn't take long to scan them. I don't understand how they do what they do, but they do it well, and they give the fellow on the other end hell. I materialise one in my right hand.

"Try this."

The head is only a little larger than that of her normal point arrows, and there's a groove around it that compresses on impact to activate the 'crumbling' effect. I think that the weight… um, drag pattern… thingy, should be something she can cope with. She looks at it, puzzled, but takes it and puts it to string.

"I call them 'Arrows of Unmaking'. You see-."

"Weeeerl lookieee here!"

I'm armouring myself even as I turn to see a robot head with a damaged flesh mask and a ten gallon hat rise up over the edge of the building. Once it reaches head height the head stops, while its neck keeps going, bending up above the head in a inverted 'U' shape.

Scan.

A huge metal talon rises up from the street. It actually looks thin and flimsy, then it slams down onto the roof to the left of us and my perspective sorts itself out. The thing must be a metre across at the knuckle, and the fingers have at least that between the joints.

"Cain't sit outa this here rodeo!"

His elbow bends upwards as he begins pulling his body up the building.

"Shoot the chest, past the ribs. That's his power source."

"Right."

She takes aim, pulls the string back, and as the disproportionately small chest appears over the roofline atop his telescoping spine she looses. The arrow passes between the third and fourth ribs on his left side, and then unmakes a perfect hemisphere of his torso in a radius of approximately sixty centimetres.

The robot's head jerks up and swings around to look at the damage.

"What in the Sam Hill..?"

The left side of his torso crunches and collapses. His left arm -which he had been bringing up to either climb or strike at us- falls backwards with enough force to snap it off at his shoulder.

"Nnnnyyahh!"

I pull another arrow out of subspace and hold it out to Artemis.

"Lower abdomen this time. Make him fall."

She takes it and makes a hurried couple of steps forward to the edge of the roof. The robot is hanging onto the side of the building by the arm on the roof with his right leg dug into the side. His left leg is twitching loose from his hip. Artemis sights, draws, and looses. The arrow's impact is virtually silent as the robot's spine is cleaved in two. Immediately his body drops down, top half trying desperately to hang on to the roof by his right hand while his hips swing about the pivot point made by his embedded right foot before acquiring enough force to break its hold and tumble to the ground.

"I ain't licked yet, ya littl' varmints!"

Putting more force into his remaining shoulder, the robot raises his head up as high as he can and then swings it down toward us. I extend my left hand toward his torso.

"Fall."

An orange beam hits him in the chest, and overcomes his precarious hold on the roof.

"Aarrrh!"

His claws dig furrows in the roof, and then he's gone. I step forward, and Artemis and I look down at where he's lying on the road below.

"Dang. Dang. Dang. Dang d-dang. Dangdangdaaaaaaangggg."

He chassis spasms and goes still. Whoops. I jump down, tearing batteries out of wrecked cars as I go. A piercing construct takes out the transmitter embedded in his head that he was using to control the cars, and a slice cuts off his head as I assemble a power transformer. The pieces come together as I land, and his eyes blink open.

"Maw? Can't feel.. mah legs, Maw."

Black Canary walks up from my right, favouring her right leg. She takes a breath which I know from experience is a prelude to a Canary Scream.

"Sir, he's got Human-equivalent intelligence!" She hesitates for a moment, then goes to speak. I pre-emptively interrupt. "Before you say anything: Red Tornado. Are we killing people now?"

She thinks for a moment, then nods. "Alright. I'm not sure if we can arrest him, though."

We both look around as sirens sound from the end of the street, and Green Arrow pulls himself past a broken car embedded in the shop front.

"Sir, would you mind handling this? I've got to go and apologise to Artemis."

She gives me a sharp look. "Yes, you do."

"Ring, transfer."

And I'm back on the rooftop. Artemis is still looking at the remains of the fallen robot, but turns to me when I speak. "I want to apologise for the way I behaved yesterday. I really went about that the wrong way, and I certainly shouldn't have suggested flashing me."

She thinks for a moment. "Got any more of those 'Arrows of Unmaking'?"

"Yep."

I hold out a quiver I made. It's in her preferred brown, but shaped like the flat, double sided one Green Arrow used in Justice League Animated. It contains thirty of my arrows.

"I also replaced the ones you used on me. They're in the.. team's armoury."

She takes the quiver.

"And, I got you this."

I smile, and remove the orchid in the pot from subspace and hold it out as well. It's just starting to come into flower. She stares at it, puzzled.

"You got me a plant?"

"Yes. I mean, I can get a different one if you don't like it, but you just need to water it every couple of days and I'm told it will really look quite pretty. Oh, nearly forgot!" I take her father's plasma crossbow thing out of subspace and hold it out with my other hand.

Her expression changes from puzzlement to distaste. "You can keep that."

She decides to ignore the plant for the moment, and pulls out an arrow to examine. "These arrows. Could they destroy your shield?"

Can they ever.

"Yeah. One hit and the shield collapses." I clench and unclench my left hand at the memory of my test of that facility. "Really stings, too. So, um, are we okay?"

She smiles, then nods. "We're okay. Just as soon as I test out these arrows."

"Ah, okay. What do you want to test them on?"

Her smile morphs into a grin as she looks at me.

Oh.

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Exaltations 24

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13th September

16:07 GMT -5

I trudge across the playing field toward the stand where Kon is watching M'gann and the other cheerleaders practise. I haven't been back to Happy Harbor High School since the thing with Doctor Roquette, and I never did deal with that flare gun. Oh well, I'm sure that Kon or M'gann would have mentioned if it had been used. The lacrosse team are warming up to my right, and I see the American football team armouring up. Pff. I still think it's rather odd that a nation that prides itself on its virility should feel compelled to strap on forty pounds of protective gear just in order to play rugby.

Kon's sitting on the… Bleachers? Is that what they're called? We didn't have anything like that at my secondary school, so I'm relying on my knowledge of imported television. I'm in civilian clothes and so can pass as a student to anyone who is casually curious, while I think my accent should convince anyone who I need to convince that I'm not an actual student. Kon's at the far end, right elbow on his knee and right hand propping up his head. The cheerleaders are prancing around on the grass in the middle of the athletics track… No, come on, be nice. This matters to M'gann. The cheerleaders are practising on the grass in the middle of the athletics track. If Kon's watching them at that distance then he's got almost no peripheral vision. Hmm.

Ring, nullify my sound and scent.

Compliance.

I wait a moment, but it doesn't cause my environmental shield to flare. So, I step up onto the bleachers at the bottom level, and climb up to two levels above the one Kon's sitting on before walking toward him. Maybe I should look into expanding my wardrobe? The weather here is easily hot enough for me to get away with this vest at present, but for goodness sake I can't have people thinking I'm a Geordie. Kon, bless him, has become rather fond of dress shirts for school wear.

I can sort of see why Batman wants to send Kon and M'gann to Belle Reve, but he's picked a pretty inopportune time to do it. I mean, they've only just started school and they could be gone for weeks. Couldn't he have done this before they started? It wasn't as if we were all that busy. I just hope whatever they're planning doesn't take that long. I haven't gone into Belle Reve's security in great detail, but Hugo Strange aside the place looked pretty solid to me, and he hasn't done anything yet. Honestly, I barely remember him from the comics. Think he was in the Arkham City game? I remember a video clip in which Ra's killed him before falling out of the building. I'm monitoring him, but he's not exactly William Hand, is he?

Speaking of William Hand, he hasn't done anything much either. I had John check, and he wasn't able to detect anything untoward, mystically speaking. Assimilating him might remove the problem, but I don't think I'm ready to do that to a man who might be entirely innocent. Besides, Nekron might just pick someone else.

Kon's looking slightly to the left, so I sit down on his immediate right and lean right up to his ear.

"Hi Kon."

He jerks upright and twists his head in my direction, eyes wide in surprise. Hah!

Leaning over like this, his face is only a couple of centimetres away from mine. His eyes are a really stunning shade of brilliant blue.

"So, um, how's the practise going?"

He blinks, then relaxes. "I don't know exactly. I don't think they're really preparing for an event or anything."

He turns back to watching, and I shuffle right up next to him. He's surprisingly relaxed about me being inside his personal space like this. Not sure if it's because of what happened in Gotham, or he just doesn't care. Come to think of it, I don't think that I've hugged anyone aside from him since getting here.

"I don't really see the appeal of it, to be honest."

"M'gann says it's good aerobic training."

I still say it's dressage for people. And can't M'gann reconfigure her body at will? Surely she doesn't need exercise any more than I do. But these are Americans. Leave them to their foolishness.

"Not taking part in extracurricular activities yourself?"

"I can't." He shrugs. "I'm too strong. If I joined the football team I could hurt someone."

True… "Kal-El had the same problem, when he was at school. But you could always join a different type of activity. Didn't M'- Didn't Megan say that Cadmus taught you to play chess?"

Seems like the sort of thing Mister Luthor would want his son to be able to do.

"Yeah?"

"Well, it may not exactly be butch, but I expect that this place has a chess club. You could join that."

His head drops slightly. "I'll think about it."

Is he down? He sounds down. I think he's down. I put my left arm around his waist and shake him a little. "Something wrong?"

"No."

I wait patiently. After a minute or two, he sighs.

"M… Megan finds it easy to fit in here. I don't."

"Megan grew up as part of a large family. Plus, she's got forty eight years more life experience than you do. She's going to be better at things like that."

"I guess. But why didn't Cadmus program me with that stuff?"

"I don't know. Maybe they couldn't. Maybe they planned to do it later. Or, maybe they were going to socialise you themselves. But, you get on alright with Donna, don't you?"

"That's different. I get fighting." He shift in his seat. "I told Wonder Woman that I'd do this, but when I'm here, I have to spend hours just sitting in class, getting told stuff I already know."

"I'm sure that your teachers would be prepared to give you extra work if you asked for it. Maybe they could find something you don't know about?"

"Maybe." He scans the playing field. "What have you been doing today?"

Trying to massage life back into my left hand after Artemis spent all yesterday morning breaking my shield is what I don't say. I hadn't even realised that I had a limit on the number of times per day I could recharge, but apparently my lantern's capacitors can only hold power for two full recharges, and each of them takes about eighteen hours to refill. I had to walk back to the zeta tube. Once I recharged, the ring was happy to tell me that that problem could be fixed by connecting to the Central Power Battery. Nooo, thank you.

"Clearing Earth orbit of small pieces of debris."

Kon nods. "The mid two thousand nine update to the NASA debris FAQ placed the number of debris items over three point nine inches at nineteen thousand, between point three nine inches and three point nine inches at approximately five hundred thousand, and that debris items smaller than point three nine inches exceeds tens of millions."

"It's not the number, it's tracking down each one. All day got me about enough to fill a pint glass."

Kon suddenly orientates on the cheerleaders.

"What?"

"They're talking about you."

"Oh? What are they saying?"

He frowns. "Karen's asking Megan how we know each other. What does 'alternative relationship' mean?"

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Exaltations 25

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14th September

22:07 GMT

I'm sure there are many people -and I try to be one of them- who, when faced with a strange situation, try to take whatever they can from it. Try to enjoy it, even. The Beresford twins, however, seem more inclined to piss and moan. I mean, Batman wanted to stick them in a reinforced cage in a warehouse somewhere. I had to argue the point, saying that the risk of break out or discovery was unacceptably high when better alternatives presented themselves.

The only light over the lunar landscape is the orange light cast by my personal lantern, floating over our heads. Just to be extra sure we wouldn't be spotted I transported us to the dark side of the Moon. No more Humans have walked on the Moon in this parallel than have done so back home, and we're the first Humans ever to walk on this side. When the lantern is behind you the view of the stars is breathtaking. But I can't concentrate on that, because I've got to deal with these two delinquents.

"Well, you should have thought of that before you started smashing down buildings!"

"I need tah pee!"

I've tried explaining this three times, but Tuppence Beresford isn't getting it.

"Look, d-do you see that you're glowing orange? Yes?"

She's treating this as a contest of wills. I know she's doing that. I know that I'm wasting my time, I do. But somehow that knowledge isn't quite filtering through into my actions. Psychologically, I have trouble responding sensibly to people who have abandoned rational discourse. One of my old work colleagues used to taunt me with the idea that President Obama wasn't born in the US. He didn't believe it, he just knew that it drove me to distraction. Every time he did it I rose to the bait and tried presenting evidence. He found it hilarious.

"The environmental shield is designed to deal with -among other things- body waste. As long as it's active, you don't need to eat, you don't need to breathe, you don't need to shit and you don't need to piss. Did you not notice that there's no air?"

"Ya'll cain't do this!"

Eeeeegghh…

I roll my eyes and raise my hands in surrender. I can, actually, but…

"Fine. Fine. Fine. Ring." I gesture with my right hand, and the surface of the dark side of the Moon is deformed as the ring pulls dust and rock into the shape of a cubicle and toilet seat and fuses it in place. Next, I excavate a shaft straight down and a small chamber for waste collection. Not that any waste will go there. "There you are. One completely superfluous lunar toilet. Enjoy."

She rage-stares at me for a moment longer, before snorting angrily and trying to stomp off. It turns out that stomping off under lunar gravity doesn't really work, and she ends up launching herself off the ground. I take a breath, then pull her back down. A sour glance and she resumes her walk to the cubicle.

Now, I've tried excreting while wearing a power ring before. She hasn't. As she disappears from sight I can't help but have a moment of smug.

"Ya'll gowna watch? What kinda sicko are you?"

"Mister Beresford-."

"It's Mister Terror!"

"It most certainly is not. I've seen your birth certificate. I've scanned your parents. You are not called 'Terror' and no one in your family is called 'Terror'. Mister Beresford, while I respect your protective instincts there is a good twenty centimetres of granite between Miss Beresford and myself, in a place where there is no air to carry any sound which will not in any case be made because the environmental shield is going to deal with any waste material she produces. Do you know how little privacy there is in prison?"

He clenches his fists. "You wouldn't be so smart if'n ah weren't wearin' this collar!"

I rub my forehead with my left hand. "I would be exactly this smart if you weren't wearing that collar. Mister Beresford, are you an idiot?"

"What d'you call me?"

"I didn't call you anything. I asked you a question. Are you an idiot? Because if you're not, I would invite you to consider for a moment the likely result of you taking a swing at me."

He makes an expression part way between a sneer and a grin. "Me, feelin' real happy."

"Briefly, that's probably true. Then, if you hit, and if you killed me or knocked me out, the environmental shield would shut down. Your toughness might let you survive the temperature here, but you wouldn't be getting any air and you'd asphyxiate in short order."

He actually isn't an idiot. I can see the wheels turning. Hm. I thought that a reasonable criticism that could be levelled at Twilight Sparkle in her studies of friendship was that she only ever befriended ponies who were inclined to be friendly. She's supposed to be learning the true nature of friendship but never took the extra credit class of making friends with someone like Gilda or Discord. Never tried to help Queen Chrysalis find another way to feed her people. Not wanting to copy her flaw, I thought that maybe I could use this as an opportunity to reach out to two newly minted supervillains.

I think I've misjudged. Jade is alone, and purely self interested. I can deal with that. These two have each other, and my look at their souls showed me that they think of life as a conflict, them versus all. They can't understand negotiation and regard coexistence as submission. I'm not sure I can help, at least not any time soon.

Thomas sits, knees folded up to his chest. Hmm, that's a thought. What grants him his strength? Aside from his sister none of his relatives are metahumans.

Ring, scan.

Compliance.

Oh, that is interesting. Someone, eighteen years ago, got access to the Danner Formula and gave Mrs Beresford a shot. His father's a truck driver and his mother works in a supermarket. Neither attended college, and having scanned Mrs Beresford slumped in an alcoholic stupor in front of the television I think I can rule out undiscovered scientific genius. I will need to follow up on this.

"Thomas, I'm curious… Can I call you Thomas?" A sneer and a shrug. "Thomas. Have you always been that strong?"

"Yeah?"

"Then I'm curious. What is it that made you embark on a destructive rampage across New Orleans, when there are so many productive things you could do with your abilities?"

"Like whut? Help ol' ladies cross the street? Ah went toe t' toe with Wonder Woman. Nuthin' else I couldah dun woulda beat that. Who the hell'r you, anyway?"

"I, am Orange Lantern two eight one four, and in my first close combat training session I bound Black Canary in glowing orange chains and threw her across the room. I defeated her in roughly two seconds, Thomas, whereas earlier today my mentor Wonder Woman tossed you into an ambush without straining herself. And have you any idea what the US military, or the CIA, would pay to have someone like you on their books?"

This doesn't appear to be what he was expecting.

"Whu'?"

"I'm serious. I reviewed your files. You've been stealing chump change. If you'd used your head as something other than a bludgeoning weapon you could have been a millionaire by now. Legally. Hell, just a blood sample so they could find out how to make other people as strong as you are would be immensely valuable to any number of groups."

He frowns, clearly confused. "So yuer sayin'-."

"Ah! Jesus!"

Tuppence cries out from the stall. Thomas flashes me an angry look as he leaps to his feet.

I shrug. "I warned her."

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Exaltations 26

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15th September

10:17 GMT

Thomas shoves the draughts piece over to the fourth row. I'd always wanted to play a board game on a giant board, but neither Thomas nor Tuppence understand chess or have the patience to learn Settlers of Catan. They did find me defacing the Moon for a board funny, but who's ever going to see it? Neither of them are exactly chatty, but after I popped back to Earth to pick up a breakfast of bacon sandwiches their disposition has changed from openly hostile to merely surly. No rational person can honestly argue against the claim that the Scottish have perfected bacon. Their bread isn't all that, but I have some that I baked myself in my subspace pocket, and the Beresfords are happily munching through it.

Took the time to pick up Teekl as well. Thought about bringing the sphere, but I realised that the likely result of putting it in a low gravity environment was the Moon getting a moon and decided against it. My cat is currently sitting on the top of the toilet cubicle, staring down at Tuppence while she stares up in return.

"'ugh 'at ifz weird. 'S freakin' me ouh."

Teekl appears to have taken the staring as a challenge. I'm not sure if that's an animal thing or an intelligent decision based on what information she's gathered about Tuppence. Or maybe she just wants some bacon. I'm not giving it to her, she doesn't need to eat. Tuppence is on her third bacon baguette. She's munching messily, and she'd be spurting ketchup all over her face if the environmental shield wasn't dealing with it.

Ketchup. What a waste of good pig.

"Hay! It's yer turn!"

At the height I'm currently floating the board looks like the tabletop version I used to use when playing with my sister's boyfriend's sons. Thomas has leapt back onto the rim of the crater. His collar is still on, but he's had time to adapt to the lower gravity. The game is still in the early stages, and this move hardly requires a great deal of thought. I pick up a piece and move it to the side of the board. Thomas is looking thoughtful.

"Orange boy, whut was that you were sayin' yesterday. 'Bout makin' money with super strength?"

Ring, access 'How To Succeed In Evil'. The bit where Edwin talks to Lifto. Audiobook version, obviously.

Compliance.

Knowledge appears in my brain. I could even do the accents.

"Oh, that. Well, take bank robbing, for instance. How much cash do you expect to get robbing a bank? Assume you get in and out with no trouble."

"I dun't know. Couple million?"

"Nope. On average? More like five thousand."

He contemplates the board. Behind me, Tuppence yelps as she gets too close to Teekl and the cat takes a swing. Thomas' response is less than supportive.

"Tuppy, you ain't never bin no good wid critters. Why you think a glowin' orange one gonna be any different?"

"Teekl's got a bit of a vicious streak. You're probably better off just ignoring her."

Tuppence glares at both of us, chomps off most of her baguette, then hurls the nobby at Teekl. Teekl just stands there and… And that damn cat has learned how to phase! How the heck..? She gives Tuppence a contemptuous look, then sits down and starts washing her right forepaw. Thomas walks back to the board, and starts pushing a piece.

"So? Five thousand don't sound bad t'me."

"Thomas, within a hour of getting this ring I owned about a quarter of a million dollars in precious metal. Legally. With powers like yours you should be aiming higher. Think about it. Robbing a bank; what does it cost you?"

"I dunno..? You wouldn' ask if it were nothin'… Takes tahm, I suppose?"

"Yep. Plus, depending on how you do it, you've got to factor in the costs of getaway vehicles, disguises, percentages for the people doing the money laundering. Then, you've got to factor in the risk of getting caught afterwards, and what sort of sentence you're likely to get. For your first armed robbery conviction, you'd be looking at seven years if you went in with a gun. With super strength, and a criminal record? More like nine years. Which, by the way, is probably how long you're going to Belle Reve for."

"Ah, aih ain't sweatin' it."

"But it's soooo pointless! Look, if you were going to get a normal job, what would it be?"

Thomas steps back from the game piece, and frowns as he thinks about it. "Aih dunno. Truck driver?"

"Right. So, you start out as a truck driver on, what? Sixty five dollars a day?"

"It ain't five thousand."

"True, but think about it. Lets say that if you rob a bank, you've got about a one in three chance of getting caught. Actually, if you use super powers and don't hide your face it's a lot higher than that. And if you don't get caught… lets say you have to lie low for a month. So, five thousand dollars divided by thirty. A hundred and sixty six dollars and sixty six cents a day. Split two ways, that's eighty three dollars thirty three."

"Still more'en sixty five dollars."

"And there's less overheads. But, then you've got to add in the chance of getting caught, right? A one in three chance of getting nine years, or an average of three years, of no income. If you worked as a truck driver on sixty five dollars a day for three years -lets say two hundred and sixty days each year- you'd make fifty thousand seven hundred dollars, before deductions. Money you can't make if you're sitting in a cell in Belle Reve."

"Wull, no?"

"So, on average, you lose over forty five thousand dollars every time you rob a bank."

He blinks heavily. I'd wager that he's more intelligent than Lifto, but what I just told him is a bit of a stretch even so. He shakes his head. "Tha's crazy tawk, man."

"You're going to get nine years to check my working."

I move another piece, trying to force him to start jumping and open up the board. Tuppence walks over to her brother, touching her face with her right hand to make sure that she's not bleeding.

"If'n you got it all figured out, what'd'you thank we should be doin'?"

"If you'd make more money as a truck driver than breaking a law, you need to either get a truck or find a more profitable law to break." I shrug. "What do you like doing?"

They look at each other.

"Smashing stuff." / "Smashing stuff."

"Eeeeerrr… Some types of demolition? Ship breaking? There's lots of things that pay more than negative forty five thousand dollars, and if you enjoy them, why not do them? If nothing tickles your fancy, if you don't mind killing people there's probably someone in the CIA or the military who'd hire you."

This does not compute. Tuppence is looking bewildered. "You sure yer a super heero?"

I shrug. "All of my basic needs were taken care of already. And I decided that I quite liked the idea of crowds cheering me as I walked down the street, so… Becoming a superhero was the rational choice. Work's interesting, the people are nice, you get respect from just about everyone and there's always someone interesting to fight. Everything's sharper, more intense. Life, plus one."

Tuppence blinks at me again. The trick is to create an argument which appeals to the audience. Like I did with Jade, -and like I failed to with Artemis- I can't make this a you-are-wrong-and-I-am-right thing. Can't convert atheists using scripture. This is going to be a long term thing, but that's okay. I've got time, and so do they.

"Thomas, your move."

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Exaltations 27

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17th September

07:22 GMT -6

Unsurprisingly, everyone's on edge when I drop Thomas, Tuppence and Mister Nigma off in arrivals in Belle Reve, Louisiana. The regular guard complement has been heavily reinforced with Louisiana State Troopers. Those guards still standing, anyway; we flew over at least three ambulances on the way in. Even with all of the chaos I've got no idea how Mister Nigma managed to get out. Fortunately, he wasn't carrying any of the anti-scrying gear that is becoming depressingly common amongst the people I'd like to pick up. And he hadn't had a chance to rearm. It's not completely impossible that some of his more esoteric equipment might have affected me.

Now that I'm inside the wards, I should probably check-.

Shit.

I wanted to check on Jade and Kadabra. He's fine, though I'm detecting spatial distortions which suggest that he sat the whole thing out in subspace. She's in medical swathed in bandages. I haven't had a chance to get a full report from Kaldur yet. What the hell happened? No, don't worry about it, she isn't dead so I can just-.

"And just where do you think you're going?"

Waller, four heavily armed and armoured guards and Doctor Strange hovering just behind them.

"A rather good friend of mine is in your medical facility with a fractured arm and truly horrific frostbite which without proper assistance will probably cost her an eye, her legs and most of her fingers."

"And she's not the only one. A third of my guards are in medical 'till we can get them transferred to a hospital. If you think I'm going to prioritize your convict girlfriend-."

!Jade need!

She takes a step back as my aura flares.

"Warden Waller, I'm going to respectfully suggest that at this point you need all the friends you can get. Until now, you have been remarkably tolerant of my presence here, and I am grateful for that. If you get out of my way, then in half an hour or so you and I can have a chat about all the things which a power ring can do to speed up repairs and improvements to this place. Heck, I'll even do what I can to get your guards back on their feet. Power rings are very good at putting people back together."

"And if I don't?"

!Jade need need need go go go go!

My aura pulses again.

"Then, in the short term, you'll find out that projectile weapons are no better at stopping me than they were at stopping the inmates. In the medium term, after Taipei, Lex Luthor owes me a favour. Such as the name of his favourite law firm, and enough political favours to make the congressional hearings you're going to be going through truly harrowing." I shrug. "Can't promise you'll keep your job as it is, but…"

She grunts. "They can only shoot me once. Rawlings, escort him to medical."

One of the troopers steps aside, then gestures down the corridor. "Sir, if you'll follow-?"

"No, too slow." I step up to him, put a hand on his chest plate, and we transition to the first blast door. Follow protocol?

!Jade needs me!

No, that would take too long. I seize the mechanisms and open the door, heedless of security protocols. They're lucky I'm not just smashing through. Rawlings floats along as I trigger all of the intervening doors in sequence, making the full transition to medical before dumping my escort on the floor.

Paula's sitting in her wheelchair at her elder daughter's bedside, facing the head of the bed. She looks up as the displaced air blows through the room, her face streaked with tears.

"Paul, can you-?"

Two strides take me to the head of Jade's bed and I hold my left hand over her recumbent form.

"MINE!"

The orange light is so intense that Jade is briefly completely obscured by it. I feel her body as the ring detects and repairs her. Gods… The only thing I've seen like the internal damage is what Klarion did to me, and Jade's had this since last night at least. She's drugged unconscious, and I instruct the ring not to change that. Fourth-degree frostbite to everywhere. Until I started work more of her skin was red and black than her usual olive. Some of her flesh had actually liquefied as cell walls burst when the water within froze and expanded. The only thing I've seen that's comparable is in pictures of some of Mister Freeze's victims, post thaw.

I stumble back as the ring finishes. All physical damage fixed, but she could all too easily have died from that.

"Done. Um, done. She should.. she should be fine."

Paula sniffs, and blows her nose into a tissue. "Is it safe..? Can I hold her hand?"

"Yes, yes of course."

She shuffles a little closer, and reaches under the bedclothes to take Jade's bandage swathed hand in her own. They'd probably been trying to warm her up while preventing impacts that could worsen the damage further. Paula sniffs, pulls Jade's left hand up to her face and holds it against her cheek. How did this happen?

"Do you know what happened? I haven't had a report yet."

"I'm not sure."

She takes a deep, unsteady breath. Keeping Jade's left hand clasped in her own, she reaches out and places her right on Jade's forehead. Bandages, right. I want and the bandages disintegrate from around Jade's face. Paula breathes a little easier when she sees healthy skin, and begins stroking her hair.

"The one who froze her was Killer Frost. When the inmates first broke free, Killer Frost tried to kill the guards. Jade's cellmate stopped her. There was a fight, and Killer Frost did this to Jade."

"Jade's cellmate?"

"A blonde woman. I think her name was Tuppence?"

Oh.

**M'gann?**

**I'm… I'm here.**

**Where's 'here'?**

My eyes glow orange as I look around, and I see M'gann's outline hovering -metaphorically hovering- next to the entrance.

**Is she really okay?**

**There's no remaining physical damage. I suppose I won't know how she is mentally until she wakes up. Killer Frost?**

**I did something Uncle Ma'al taught me; I locked her inside her own mind. Unless another telepath helps her, she'll never get out.**

**Good idea. Didn't that blow your cover?**

**I punched her as well, so it looked like I just knocked her out. The other prisoners thought I was defending my friend. I did the… I did what we're supposed to for fast freeze injuries, but I was so scared that she wouldn't make it anyway.**

**You probably saved her life. Thank you.**

**She was.. nice. I know you've been visiting her, but I wasn't expecting her to be like that.**

**I'm a little surprised myself. I think I may need to do something for her.**

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Exaltations 28

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17th September

08:54 GMT -6

This is probably the most eventful birthday I've ever had. Shoving civil engineers aside, I've fixed all the damage from the break out attempt.

Healing the guards was harder than I thought it would be. I suppose this is the first time when I've tried fixing someone I don't really care about on an individual basis. After a little trial and error I found that it worked best if I focused on the idea that helping them would improve Jade's chance of getting a favourable outcome. Doing that, I've fixed up the guards who had minor injuries, and dramatically reduced the recovery times on the more seriously injured ones. A couple of frostbite cases, but nothing on a level with what Jade had.

I even gave the prisoners the once over, but the only one with really serious injuries was Cameron Mahkent. Turns out that the other prisoners didn't appreciate him being deceived by Kon into preventing the break out. They might end up having to transfer him to another prison, though given what happened I'm not sure leaving all of the cryokinetics in one place would have been a good idea anyway.

One of the female guards asked me how Jade was. I said that I'd pass on her best wishes.

Warden Waller was a little surprised by my offer to transmute the interior of the prison walls to diamond. She's been called to Washington, and in any case seemed a little reluctant to accept my aid for anything long term. Maybe she'll change her mind once she's been pilloried in the national press for a few weeks. I'm all for self reliance, but this country genuinely can't afford to have the sort of break out that nearly happened here happen. Someone from on high has decided to put Doctor Strange in charge while she's away, which strikes me as odd. Wouldn't Bendemann or some other senior guard be next in line rather than the prison psychiatrist? Or is this the American thing of senior civil servants being political appointees?

I contacted Mister Luthor, and he was only too happy to give me the direct line of the lawyer he uses when he is personally accused of criminal activity. I think I remember Frederick Tuckman from the comics… Something to do with Green Arrow? Jade clearly isn't safe here, and I'll need to talk to Batman about what she's actually being accused of. See if I can get some of it dropped.

!Jade mine!

M'gann left after she checked out Jade's mind for obvious damage. She said that Jade should be alright, and I need to have a talk with her and Paula about our next step. As I approach the medical area I note that whatshisface… Rawlings, has cleared off. He didn't throw up after the transfer, so I'm going to assume that I've finally got the hang of FTL transitions with passengers. M'gann left as well once she was sure Jade would be alright.

"… don't clap your hands

Grandma hits you on the head till it hurts."

Huh?

Paula looks around when I walk in, before turning back to her daughter. She's definitely looking a bit happier. Jade's still out, but it looks like she's sleeping normally. I stand just behind Paula. Think I'll skip asking about child abusing grandmothers.

"Alright. Prison's fixed. Ish."

"Do they want to put Jade back in her cell?"

"No, I've talked to the warden… I think.. Jade should.. probably hear this. Are you alright with waking her up?"

She nods, and puts her right hand on Jade's shoulder. "Jade? Jade, it's time to wake up."

A slight moan, a shift in the bed, and her eyes flicker open. Eyes narrow, she looks first at her mother, then me, then her eyes open fully and she stares at her mother. "Mom?"

"Yes Jade, I'm here."

Jade stares for a moment longer. "Paul?"

"Yes?"

"Why does my Mom look like Miss Ho Chi Minh City?"

Paula stifles a laugh. Um?

"I don't know. Is the current Miss Ho Chi Minh City your cousin or something?"

She lays still for a moment. "Paul, what did you do?"

"He repaired my spine. And don't talk about me like I'm not here. It's not polite."

Jade blinks, then shifts her gaze back to me as I frantically but silently shake my head and wave my forearms back and forth across my chest in a 'don't' gesture. Her eyes narrow.

"So, I can't feel any injuries, but the last thing I remember is getting iced. Literally."

"Orange Lantern healed you. You should thank him."

"How.. bad.. was it?"

"Pretty bad, Jade. Usually I'd applaud heroism-" She winces. "-but we nearly lost you there."

I walk around her bed to the other side and pull up a chair. She considers her options.

"Don't think I'm making a habit of it. Tuppence was my cell mate. You need someone to watch your back in a place like this."

"That wasn't Tuppence. That was my colleague, M'gann M'orzz. You remember, the Martian who read your mind when-."

The hand her mother isn't holding goes to cover her face. "I'm starting to hate shapeshifters."

"Mm. Well, she's starting to like you."

"What happened to Frost?"

Don't really want to implicate M'gann in anything that might be criminal. "M'gann hit her, and she hasn't got up yet."

She shuffles, and uses her right hand to move to a sitting position against the headboard. I notice that she hasn't made any effort to reclaim her left hand form her mother. "Was kinda hoping to deal with that myself. Oh well." She looks at her mother, the sheets, and then me. "So, what happens now?"

"Now, you stay right here and look ill. I've spoken to Warden Waller, and she agrees with me that moving you back to the cell block would be a very dangerous thing to do."

"She can't stay here forever."

"I've hired a man named Frederick Tuckman to conduct her.. um, your defence on the assault, membership of a foreign terrorist organisation and attempted murder charges."

Jade's eyes flick to the side. I don't think she recognises the name. "He any good?"

"His client list includes Lex Luthor."

Jade blinks. "That's pretty good."

"His first order of business is to get you transferred to another prison. Since you don't have a registered address I was going to suggest one in Gotham, but that's Blackgate and I don't think you'd be any safer there. How do you feel about the Gloria McDonald Medium Security Facility on Rhode Island?"

"Do they have cable?"

"I didn't ask, but it's pretty close to where I live. I'm also going to talk to the Justice League about getting some of your charges struck or reduced. Manhunter owes you for looking after his niece, and I will be reminding him. With a little luck, you'll be offered a favourable plea bargain before too long."

"Whaw."

I can feel her reaching around for a sarcastic response. A few seconds later it doesn't look like she can find one. Then she raises her eyebrows.

"Guess I should have gotten frozen to death sooner."

Okay, I was wrong.

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18th September

19:02 GMT +8

I haven't quite gotten used to the stares yet.

Obviously my activity last time I was in Taipei was far more obvious than what I've been doing with the team, but there are plenty of other Caucasians around and it's not as if I'm wearing my armour. But I'm getting recognised. I'm getting photographed. I'm getting gawped at, even just walking down the street.

Feels jolly odd.

I'm on the way to the Mackay Memorial Hospital where Mister Huang Jianhong has recently woken up. Had to skip out on the morning training session, but Kaldur said it was fine. Mister Huang's parents -Missus Huang De and Mister Huang Tung- and a young woman -ah, her name's Miss Su Xin- I assume to be his girlfriend are with him now. It's been a couple of hours, and I think that the initial 'thank-god-I'm-alive' bit should have passed by now. Thinking about it, I'm not sure why I want to speak to him so much. I'm sure that the police will be interviewing him after an appropriate amount of time has passed, though at this point a new lead is unlikely. Everything I know about neurophysiology says that he should be at least as good as new. But I don't regard the case as complete until I've seen for myself.

I don't know whether or not I'm actually allowed in to see him. It isn't as if I'm a relative or anything. Hmm. One of the windows in the room next to his is open, and the door doesn't make a good enough seal to stop my FTL. It's a pretty good room. Mister Luthor made a point of paying for his care. It was thoughtful of him, even if he made sure that the press knew about it. I'd have done it myself, but it just didn't occur to me to offer. I suppose I'm too used to the NHS just being there.

Might as well skip the whole front desk bit. I materialise in a hospital corridor, one door down from the one Mister Huang occupies. I hear a soft thump, and turn to see someone I presume to be either a nurse or an orderly staring at me in astonishment, having just dropped a pile of folded bedclothes she was transporting from the cupboard to a trolley. She's probably in her mid twenties, though I remember reading an interview where the interviewee claimed that Asian women generally kept looking young until they suddenly don't, so I could be well out. I pick the sheets up and move them to their intended destination, before walking toward her. I stop moving when her confusion shifts to nervousness.

"Good morning, miss. Orange Lantern two eight one four."

"Um… G-good morning, sir."

She actually puts her hands together at her waist and gives me a shallow bow. Am I supposed to do that?

"I'm here to check on Mister Huang. He's in this room-" I point. "-is he not?"

"Ah!" She moves to her trolley and consults a clipboard. "Yes, that is where Mister Huang is staying."

"Thank you. I won't keep you."

I find myself bending slightly, as if some part of my brain believed that bowing was appropriate but was unable to secure a majority. I straighten, turn away, walk to the door indicated and knock loudly. The conversation within carries on, and for a moment I wonder if they didn't hear me.

"Come in?"

A woman's voice. I turn the handle and push open the door. Miss Su and Mister Huang senior are sitting on either side of the head of the bed, with Miss Su taking the window side. Missus Huang is sitting by the foot of the bed at her husband's side, and is looking at me as I enter the room. Given how surprised she looks I'm going to assume that she was expecting a doctor or something like that. Miss Su flickers her eyes up, then back to the patient, then back to me with her eyes widening.

"Good morning. I'm sorry to intrude, but I was hoping that I might have a few words with Mister Huang Jianhong."

Mister Huang senior stops talking to his son with a grunt. "You couldn't even wait a day, could y-." He swivels in his seat as he speaks, then cuts off. And I get a direct look at his son for the first time in two weeks. He's smiling faintly, and unlike his guests doesn't seem shocked by my being here at all.

"What can I do to help? They showed me the recordings of what I did, but I really don't remember much about it."

"I didn't honestly expect you to. Have the doctors here explained what the stuff the League of Shadows stuck you with did to your body?"

"Not yet. They're going to run some tests to check how I'm doing. I do remember reading a newspaper article on the effects of Venom use, but I thought that most of the harmful effects took a while to manifest?"

"Usually, they do. But what you were given was a new substance made by combining Venom with something called the Blockbuster Formula. They then mixed that with something called Adder Venom, which is a Venom variant which had only previously been seen in a couple of places in Mexico. The stuff was responsible for you going berserk, and it has much worse side effects than regular Venom."

"How bad?"

"You'd have needed a new liver, and would have been left an emotionally unstable wreck. Probably for the rest of your life."

He looks down at his chest. "I don't seem to be..?"

"Power rings are awesome. The liver was an easy fix, and it's now as good as it ever was. Thing is, I didn't know what your amygdala looked like beforehand, and that has a larger effect on your behaviour than your liver does. When I repaired it, I made it as good as an amygdala can be, and that's probably quite a bit better than it was."

He looks more puzzled than worried. "What would that mean for me?"

"Not sure, to be honest. As an educated guess, you'll be able to learn new skills faster than before, and your memory will probably be better. You'll have better intuition of what other people are feeling or thinking, and you'll probably be calmer and friendlier, no social anxiety at all."

He seems to think for a moment. "Those all sound like good things."

"If there were likely to be negative effects, then I wouldn't have been so gung-ho about doing it. Fact is, I've never done this to someone before and so I can't predict exactly what will happen. Plus, those behaviours might not have been how you were originally."

"You have repaired my son's brain from the damage the terrorists caused… By making him smarter?" Mister Huang Senior wants to make sure that he's understood correctly.

"Sort of? There haven't been any studies into the effects of doing what I did. I mean, we know what the result would have been if I'd done nothing, but it isn't as if I just go around doing this to everyone."

"I do feel a little different." He frowns slightly. "When I woke up, I wasn't worried at all. I suppose I should have been, waking up in hospital with no memory of how I got here. But, I think I like it better this way than the alternative. And I appreciate the effort you have gone through on my behalf. Thank you."

"You're welcome. But if you start to feel uneasy about the situation, contact me on this number." I summon forth a card with the number of the public phone in which I'm monitoring in Happy Harbor.

He takes hold of it. "I will. Thank you for checking up on me."

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18th September

08:52 GMT -5

Note to self: use FTL more. After I finished talking to Mister Huang and his family and handing my scans of his brain over to his doctor, I decided to walk out of the hospital. As a result, I walked straight into an ambush of news reporters when I reached reception. I couldn't hear what any of them were saying over the general noise and the receptionists were giving me the evils. So, Doctor Manhattan style, I transferred the whole thing outside and set up an impromptu press conference.

When they ignored the order I was trying to create I muzzled them so that only one could speak at a time.

That might have been overdoing it, but they were getting on my nerves. And it certainly made things go much more smoothly. In no particular order: Mister Huang's fine but should probably be left alone for a few days, I don't live in Taiwan, I'm not a member of the Justice League, the police are handling the investigation though I'm happy to give them whatever help they want, I'm single, I'm glad you liked the interview but it was really a fairly spur of the moment thing, never heard of him, never heard of her, never heard of them, why would you even ask that -that came up more than I would have liked-, things in Rhelasia are going well but I was really just acting as a guarantor and credit should go to the politicians, I couldn't say and that while I respect Mister Luthor's work I don't know him well enough to comment.

Once things started getting trivial I excused myself and left. Transitioning to the seaward side of the mountain with the bulk of it between me and the town, I turn head down and dive for the sea entrance. With repeated visits to Atlantis I've got my air to water transition so smooth that I don't feel it, the change being marked only by the different level of illumination. Manta construct extended around me, I turn smoothly in the water and head through the tunnel. Now that I know where I'm going and know how to augment my vision the journey takes much less time than it did back when Diana, Alan and I first used it. Hmm. Where is everyone? Ah, the arena. The computer marks danger areas on the floor and throws up targets. Participants have to hit them as swiftly as possible without getting in each other's way or staying in danger areas. Useful for the others, a bit pointless for me. Last time I tried it I had to switch to the beam pistol and even on low power still managed to shoot through the ceiling into Red Tornado's quarters. No Artemis yet, but everyone else is here.

I'm feeling pretty good. Jade's good deed yesterday, Mister Huang being okay, patched things up with Artemis… I'm getting the urge to do some showing off. I accelerate as I near the surface on the cave end, and prepare a cold gun construct. Pushing water ahead of me I fly from the surface, freezing water droplets so that they fall in a corona of snow about me as I spread my arms wide and spin in the air, orange sigil glowing behind me.

"Duh dah!"

The holographic lights from the training exercise shut down as the others turn toward me.

Robin strokes his chin. "I'd give you a nine point two."

Kon squints. "Nine point four."

Wallace walks to the edge of the water. "Where you been?"

"Mister Huang woke up from his coma." I float through the ice particles to the solid ground. "Seems he quite likes the upgraded amygdala I gave him."

Robin looks interested. "Anything new on Bane or Onyx?"

I shake my head. "He said that he didn't really remember anything, and given what the drugs did to his brain I can well believe it. I didn't want to push too hard."

He nods.

"So, coordination practice?" I raise both arms and form an assault cannon under each, grinning. "I'm up for that."

Kaldur pushes my right arm down. "Perhaps not. I have completed the revisions to the shield bracer you designed-."

I drop the constructs. "Ooh! Gimme! Water armour for everyone!"

Kaldur smiles faintly. "Not quite yet, though this version should allow anyone with some magic training-."

"Recognised, Artemis, B, zero eight."

Wallace looks nervous. "You did patch things up with her, right?"

"Yes, of course I did."

Artemis materialises, scans the room and locks eyes on me. "You."

Wallace steps away from me. "Are you sure?"

I was. I remain exactly where I am as she stalks across the room. What have I done now? Is she angry about me working to get Jade transferred? But that's not going to happen for weeks at least!

M'gann steps into her path. "Good morning Artemis!"

Artemis brushes past her. Ten metres. She's wearing the quiver I made for her, but I can only see two of my arrows. Five metres. Should I try talking to her? Two.

"Er, hello? How have you-?"

One. She reaches up with both hands, pulls my head down to her level and puts her lips to mine. Oh. Um. Am I supposed to shut my eyes? Don't think about Jade. My arms are sticking out to the side slightly. Should I bring them in? Am I supposed to put them on her? Before I can decide she pulls back a little, still holding my head in place.

"Thank you."

"Mm, you're welcome."

Then she pulls back a little further and-.

"Ow! What was that in aid of?"

She's grinning. "I guess it would have worked, then."

I rub my cheek where she slapped it. "Yes of course it would! I wouldn't have suggested it otherwise."

Wallace raises a hand. "Ah, can someone explain what just happened?"

Artemis looks down for a moment, trying to work out how much to share. Perhaps I should..?

"When I went to say sorry, I got Artemis some new arrows. And a rather nice orchi-."

"He healed my mom." She goes to cross her arms at her chest, but I catch hold of her hands and bring them up to my chest instead. She's still not meeting my eyes. "Mom has.. had, a spinal injury. She couldn't walk. He fixed it. The doctor said she should regain full mobility within two months."

Robin's eyes go wide. "You can.. do that? Fix long term injuries?"

"By channelling my need to be in Artemis' good graces, yes."

"Can you.. do that.. to other people..?"

"I can try." I bring Artemis' hand up to my lips, kiss her knuckles and then release them before turning to Robin. "Did you have someone in mind?"

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18th September

09:21 GMT -5

Robin… No, Richard, leads the way through the corridors of the Gotham Mercy General Hospital with a familiarity born of constant repetition. We went from the mountain to the Bat Cave, then up into Wayne Manor proper where he changed into a suit. I suppose that Batman must have told him that I knew who everyone is, but it was still a strange experience. Like stepping behind the stage at a theatre, or a fairground when the rides are being packed up. No, behind the frontage while they're in operation. I can hear the music and the laughter, but I'm seeing the guts of the operation.

This is also the first time I've seen him without something covering his eyes. I mean, I'd scanned his eyes so that I'd be able to repair them, but I'd never seen them with my own before. I switched to a suit myself, one where the only orange sigil is a tiny one sewn into the lapel. I've transferred the ring into my pocket, and it's taking an effort of will to stop me reaching in to put it back on or to touch it.

Richard looks a lot younger like this. Turns out, there is a good reason why his name isn't abbreviated to anything other than 'Dick'. And we're on our way to see him.

"Richard, I'm so sorry. I mean, I knew about your parents but it never occurred to me to check for other relatives."

"I could have told you after you fixed Su-. After you fixed Conner's ears. Just didn't make the connection."

We pass through a department waiting room. Mister Pennyworth drove us here and he offered to come in with us. Not sure why Richard turned him down.

"Why do you do that?"

"Do what?"

"Use Wally's full name, and mine."

"Errh. Not really sure, to be honest. Where I'm from, 'wally' means fool, and a 'rubber wally' is a condom, but I think it's mostly just because I don't like abbreviations. That was one reason my Mum picked my name; the fact it can't be abbreviated."

He turns his head to look at me while continuing on his course. "Wally means fool?" He smiles, but it has a brittle edge to it.

"Yeah. I mean, if it really bothers you or him, I could start using abbreviations. I just prefer full names. And I usually call you, you know, the other thing anyway." I'm not used to actively pretending to not be a superhero. Usually it's just convenient, but if, for example, one of Kon's schoolmates rumbled me, I wouldn't care. But Richard and Batman are fully committed to the masquerade, and I respect that. We step aside for an elderly man being pushed down the corridor on a bed. "You know, I can't promise this will work, right?"

"I know. But I've got to try. Uncle Rick's all the family-." He cuts himself off, head going down for a moment. "Aside from Bruce and Alfred, Uncle Rick's all the family I've got."

"Okay."

We walk the rest of the way to the long term care ward in silence. Richard doesn't bother talking to the large black nurse on the desk, instead heading straight for one of the rooms. The nurse gives me a brief puzzled look before turning to my friend.

"I'm sorry Dick, but today wasn't a good day."

He stops, downcast, and nods. "Can we.. go in anyway?"

"'Course you can, hon."

He nods again, and I scurry to catch up.

"Not a good day?"

"Uncle Rick's injuries give him constant pain. When it gets really bad, they just give him something to knock him out." He slows down. "Might be better this way. I wouldn't want to get his hopes up."

I'm wondering how often he's awake, but I don't think I'll ask. He slows almost to a stop as we get to the door labelled 'Richard Grayson'. I raise my right hand to put it on his shoulder, but before it gets there he pulls himself together and opens the door. Not a big room, but I suppose that it doesn't need to be. His uncle is laying on the bed, drip attached to a tap in his right arm. I walk in after Richard and he shuts the door behind me.

Right. I slip the tip of my left ring finger through the ring. Scan. Gods. This isn't a single point of damage like Paula's was. His spine is mashed in five different places, and the tissue around it has healed wrong. His pelvis was broken and set almost correctly, but almost everything is slightly off. I can well imagine that it must hurt. I walk around the bed. Right. I hold my right hand over the bed.

"Heal."

Nothing. Right, come on. This is Richard's last blood relative!

"Heal."

An orange strobe flickers and fails. It's not working, I just can't feel the need for his well-being viscerally enough!

"Work around it, work around it. I didn't cause the injury, and I haven't done anything to offend…"

I can't. Could he? Maybe. I could keep trying, but I've no real reason to believe that I'll do any better.

"It's… It's okay, I-."

"Right. Robin. I've got an idea. I think the reason that it's not working is because I don't think of your Uncle as being part of mine. But, you might be able to do it."

"Wh-? I don't have any training in using a power ring!"

"I know. Okay. I think I should be able to direct the effect while you provide motivation. I'm not sure, but it's the best idea I've got at the moment."

He thinks for a moment, then nods. "What do I do?"

I put the ring fully onto my ring finger and take my left hand out of my pocket. "Take my hand. If you start feeling weird urges, let go immediately." He nods, and takes my left in his right. "Ring, designate Richard John Grayson as secondary user."

"Succession acknowledged."

And I'm looking at the bed from two different places. Ugh. I close my own eyes, and then I just see out of his. That I can manage. "Okay, now focus your mind on your need for your Uncle to be well." I maintain a scan, and share the image with Richard. He knows about as much about Human physiology as I do, but he isn't used to seeing it like this. "When you're ready."

My viewpoint shakes as he nods.

"Uncle Rick, heal."

Nothing. I feel his sympathy for his Uncle through the ring.

"Heal."

"No, that won't work. You're thinking altruistically. Compassion and love won't work with an orange ring."

"Then what will!?"

"Need. Selfish desire. I'm.. I'm sorry. The only thing… You need to remember what it was like when your family first died. The horrible sense of loss and wrongness and abandonment. Feel your need for things to be right, how they should be. Use that."

For a moment he doesn't respond.

"That… That's…"

"Yeah. I know. No, I'm sorry, I don't, but…"

Hell. No one should go through that, but I can't think of another way. Maybe there's a doctor around here..? Vision goes as he scrunches his eyes closed. For a moment, I don't feel anything much. Then I feel him start to shake, and he opens his eyes again, our vision blurry with tears.

"Uncle Rick, heal."

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18th September

09:26 GMT -5

Orange light blasts from the ring, and I focus my mind on the injuries it's treating. The ring's fairly user friendly, but I don't want Richard Senior to end up being transformed into Richard Junior's father or anything. I see bone straightened and set, sinew and muscle moved and set true. Nerves mended. Our patient is on anti-rejection drugs for organ transplants, and I ensure that the tissue markers causing the trouble are rewritten. The light begins to restore wasted muscle, but before it goes too far I try to shake my ring hand free. I'm not sure what would happen if we kept pouring the orange light into him, but…

Richard isn't letting go. Oh dear. I bring my right hand around and try pulling his fingers off mine.

"Richard, you need to let go."

I open my eyes and look at him. Through my eyes I see his eyes blazing with orange light. Then he swings his left hand around and starts trying to pull the ring from my hand.

"No! Mine! It's mine! No one will hurt my family again!"

Heck. I grab our hands with my right hand, trying to make it harder to move anything. The ring's glowing like mad.

"Ring, remove secondary user."

No change. He's yanking at my arms in a frenzy now. I'm lucky he's too overwhelmed to try anything clever; he's much better at unarmed combat than me. No, I will not let Robin end up like Larfleeze.

"Ring, remove secondary user now."

"Compliance."

The flow of light shuts off. Richard gasps, and his grip loosens. I pull his fingers off and snatch my ring hand away. He brings his arms up, hugging his chest, shivering. For a moment neither of us speak.

"Did… Did it work?"

I nod. "Yes, I think so."

There's another pause, and he looks up slightly. "Is it.. always..?"

I nod. "Pretty much. You adapt, learn to steer it. But, yes. When you want something that much."

Another pause. "I think I'll… I think I want to stay here, until he wakes up." He walks around and sits at his uncle's side, not looking at me. "I'm... I'm sorry.. I tried to take-."

"Don't. Don't. I should have expected something like that to happen. I'll just… I'll be in the waiting room. Shout if you need something."

He nods, shallow and slow. I step backwards, and run a quick scan on our patient. I hope that was worth.. ah. Yes, it was. Not sure he'll ever be an acrobat again, but Richard Senior should have full and pain free feeling back in his whole body when he wakes up. Right, intruding on private time. I turn, and exit the room. The nurse at the desk looks up for a moment, then turns back to her files. I scan the room, looking for somewhere to sit. And ideally, something I can read to take my mind off making Robin relive that.

And then I see Alfred Pennyworth sitting primly in the chair closest to Richard Senior's room, brown leather bag at his feet. A slim and somewhat foxed paperback is lying in the seat next to him. He turns his head in my direction, and raises his eyebrows by the smallest fraction. Is something..? I tense slightly, and metaphorically kick myself as I return the ring to my pocket before walking over and pulling a chair out of the row so that I can sit opposite him.

"Successful visit, sir?"

I lean forward a little. "Too early to say, Mister Pennyworth. I think so, but we won't know for sure until he wakes up."

The slightest of nods. "And Master Dick?"

I feel wrongness. "The.. the device is empathic. To get it to work, I made him relive something very unpleasant."

His eyes narrow slightly.

"It was the only thing I could think of that would work! I'm not exactly impressed with myself, either."

A slight tilt to the side. "I had rather been under the impression that you simply…" He holds out his hand vertically, just in front of his chest, then waves it to the side.

I shake my head. "No, you have to think in exactly the right way. Feel the right way. And I don't.. I didn't.. know him well enough to suggest anything else."

I look away, and shake my head again. "You.. compel yourself to hold to this extreme mode of thought.. at all times.. yourself?"

"I.. I suppose I do. If you keep it up for long enough, the extreme just becomes the new normal."

He shifts slightly in his seat. "I'm not wholly unfamiliar with the concept, sir."

Hah. I suppose he's not. Wonder why Batman never got a power ring? Right, what else do I need to do? "I hope somebody's got a blooming good cover story for this, because this is well beyond Earth medicine."

Mister Pennyworth's eyes flick down for a moment. "Nil desperandum, sir. Any number of strange things could have happened. Perhaps, an unusually energetic reaction to some new medication?"

"It's a bit of a stretch, Mister Pennyworth."

"Only if he remains the responsibility of this hospital. Do not worry, sir. Matters are in hand."

I nod, and sit up. "Didn't.. Richard ask you to stay in the car?"

"He usually does, sir. But he's generally pleased to see me when his visit is over, nonetheless."

I can imagine. Ergh, alright, I'm not going to stop feeling like a puppy-kicker any time soon. Is there something I want to ask Mister Pennyworth? Something I could ask in a fairly public area? Oh, well…

"Mister Pennyworth. Can I ask you a question?"

"Of course."

"Tell me honestly: how long do you think I've got before I start to sound like an American?"

A faint smile, and he appears to give the question due consideration.

"I mean, I'm sure they're a lovely people, but I-."

The door to Mister Grayson's room opens, and I cut myself off. Richard Junior stands in the opening, looking first at Mister Pennyworth, then myself. We look at him, waiting for him to speak.

"Alfred, could you..? Would you mind coming in here, please?"

He waits for a moment, but Richard says nothing else.

"Of course, Master Dick."

He picks up his bag, stands, and walks toward Richard, who stands aside to let him enter. Richard's looking at the ground near my feet. Well, yes. I'm certainly not expecting to be on his cool list any time soon after tha-.

"Paul, you should probably come in too. I want Uncle Rick to meet you when he wakes up."

He's looking me in the eyes now, and a small smile is back on his face. Mine too. I rise, and walk back into the room.

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22nd September

19:23 GMT -5

And, lastly, the fact that Jade may well be stuck in prison for several years, despite my efforts. I feel myself recoil from the idea, but the hierarchy stresses acceptance of inconvenient facts, and the fact is that she's been a very naughty girl. I may not like it, but there it is. I haven't pressed her on the precise nature of her work with the League of Shadows. Maybe I should, but I don't think that I should learn something I might be asked to testify about later. She hasn't volunteered the information. While I'm on the subject, I suppose I should accept that she has most likely taken part in assassinations before. Would that bother me? I don't.. think it would, unless I was directly confronted by her victim's family or something. That would be inconvenient.

Is that everything? I think so. I lower myself from the cross legged floating position I've been occupying in the air just above the bioship, and take the ring from where it floats in the air in front of me. I've taken to performing my daily meditation here. The view is restful, and simple enough to avoid being distracting. I land on the ground next to it and pat it on the hull before walking back to the lift. Kon's cooking this evening -with M'gann keeping a watchful eye on him- so I should probably avoid the kitchens. Kaldur wanted to do some more revisions on the water armour system we're working on. I'm trying to keep up with him, but he's had years more tuition in matters arcane than I have and it's easier to just help him with the fabrication. Not sure where Wallace is, and Artemis and Robin won't be here for a couple of hours.

Something I should do before they get here. I trust my team mates, I do, but I'm very self conscious during the few times each day when I take the ring off to allow for… How to put it? Less uncomfortable excretion. I know how vulnerable it makes me, compared to how I normally am. I've tried to switch to the ring method a couple of times, but I just can't cope with it. Last time the ring leapt off my finger as soon as I sat down, and I took the hint. There's a toilet attached to the living quarters a couple of levels up from here, and that's where I'm heading.

I haven't asked the ring if it's been regularising my bowel movements. I know I like regularity, and I certainly like to know when the ring is fiddling about with the way my body works without running it by my conscious mind first. But I think that maybe there are some things I'd rather not know about myself. And I think finding out that I am literally anal retentive-.

Ah. I'm here. Alright, ring off. I put it down beside the sinks, and walk over to the middle cubicle. The ring is far too large to do something like falling down the drain, and even if it did my remote ring control is now good enough that I could locate it and summon it out. Of course, if it got right down the system I'd have to pull it straight through the side of the purification system, which could be a bit messy. Nothing I couldn't fix…

Seat up, close the door, trousers and pants down, and sit. Being nervous about my vulnerability does nothing to ease my passage, but after the first few times I built a voice activated computer into the stall door so that I wouldn't lack for reading material. Tried reading case files once. That was a bad idea. All those faces were a bit off putting. I also modified this toilet to exactly my dimensions. It's now the most comfortable toilet I've ever sat on.

I'm not actually sure that anyone else uses this place. My quarters are a bit isolated. Unless we have a major recruitment drive, I might-.

What was that?

Sounded like water running through the pipes. I think that some pipes from the upper levels run through the walls near here. I gave everything a scan when I first moved in, but I never bothered memorising it all. Worth taking a look? No, just stick to the business at hand -there we go- and then use the ring to check in a moment.

Huh? Oh, that isn't good. Water's running under the door. How the heck..? That's the first time anything mechanical has gone wrong around here. I'm torn between concern and smugness. Right, start wiping, and I should be ready to go before it gets to a significant height. What's the pressure going to be like? Pretty high, I'd have thought. Worth calling the ring right now? Probably not. The system should detect the faulty tap and shut it off in a few moments.

I've been shopping around, but I haven't been able to find a type of toilet paper I'm completely happy with. This stuff is a reasonable compromise, but it could do with-.

Is that Red Tornado? I can hear heavy footsteps, but his usual creaking sound is hidden behind the sound of running water. I thought he was taking a shift on the Watchtower? And I don't think his duties include facility management anyway. Okay, clean enough for government work. Ring.

Ring.

Huh?

Ring.

Oh, not good. I stand, pulling up my pants and trousers. The water's reaching the top of the tread of my boots. This is actually quite serious. Open the door and-. What? Who are-?

The red robot standing between me and the sinks turns to look at me. It's less bulky than Red Tornado, but retains a masculine shape. Actually looks a bit less clunky than he does. Its eyes glow red. I'm not carrying any weapons.

Ring!

Where is it? Right, don't freeze. Move. The door's on my left-.

Bwoogh! I don't even make two steps before a column of water rises up from the pool covering the floor and hits me in the face, knocking me to the ground. I'm on my side, and try to regain my feet as my clothes get waterlogged. I slip on the floor, covering only a small distance as the water flows away beneath me. I finally get my feet back under me and get to a standing position as the water surges across the room, pushing me past the robot and pinning me to the wall. In the second or so before it covers my face I take a deep breath.

I have to fight the urge to cover my eyes as I am completely enveloped. The water isn't turning to ice, and it isn't taking on the slightly glistening quality of water made solid by magic. I'm being supported off the ground and kept pressed against the wall by the current in an apparently stationary body of water. The force that must take…

I relax and don't fight it. I can't afford to waste the air. The robot takes a step closer. Like Red Tornado himself there is no equivalent to Human facial expression. Did someone find one of Doctor Morrow's old laboratories? The man's central aim is listed in the files as exterminating the Human species and replacing us with robots. Sort of an evil version of that guy from the Swamp Thing comics who made robots in the image of dead people so that their lives could be completed. This robot is a great deal slimmer than Red Tornado, and has a gold 'M' on his chest. Can't think of anything it could stand for. Looks like he's got a gold starfish on his head. Fits with the water theme, I suppose.

Right, assuming he's a physical match for Tornado he'll be much stronger and tougher than me, but also much slower. I just need to get away long enough to work out where the ring is, then get close enough to call it to me. Once I've got it, I could take an army of these. Forties EMI shielding was crap. I narrow my eyes and let my head loll. Tornado told me that his eyes can't rotate. He has a wider field of vision than a Human, but to move it he has to move his entire head. If the robot is watching my face, then it isn't watching my legs. I fold them back so that my feet are against the wall. If I can launch myself suddenly, I've got a fair chance of getting past him. If he has to aim visually to target precisely I should be out of the door before he turns.

If not…

He goes to take another step forward, and I push off, aiming for his left side. He moves his left leg to the side to balance, and my torso is out of the water. Another breath, and the weight outside the water pulls the rest of me in the same direction. My right foot touches the ground, and I lean into a running pose.

Then my left foot sticks, and my right skids on the wet floor. No! I try to take a hopping step forward but fail to make any progress. The robot turns his head to me, and a ball of water rises from the floor and flies at my head. The impact isn't hard, but soft. The water coats my face and remains in place. I'm holding my breath, but I'm getting scared. I can't keep this-.

The robot steps closer, glowing red eyes perhaps forty centimetres from my own. It's head tilts sideways a little, then it draws back its right fist and strikes me hard in the diaphragm!

"Offggawgagaw!"

Air's gone.. I'm gagging underwater! My arms flail in the air and my right foot finally looses all traction and I greet the rapidly approaching ground with my forehead.

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22nd September

Ooooooowwwwww….

"Uuuuugh ughHUH!"

Even as I open my eyes I'm vomiting water out of my lungs. My chest can't move much, and each choked breath is cut off by the violent expulsion of more liquid. My arms and legs are covered in something, but I'm too busy being consumed by the pain and disorder of my airways to pay attention.

"Oh El! You're awake!"

I'm coughing, but I'm mostly clear now. Would that actually have been my lungs or my stomach? Wouldn't I have drowned..?

"Uuuuh."

I blink, and try to concentrate enough to take in my environment. I appear to be suspended over the pool by the training area in some sort of cocoon made of a hard grey material. Below me stuck just out of the water I see Kon and Wallace, trapped in a similar substance. Kon's looking relieved while Wallace looks hopeful. Looks like they're caught as well.

"Awo. AhUh. Yep. Awake."

I hear a noise a bit like a drill on low revs heard through a couple of walls. I try to turn my head to the right, and can just about see the sphere stuck into the wall next to me. Great.

"Did they get the others?"

"We are up above you."

Kaldur's voice. Can't see him.

"Who's 'we'?"

"M'gann is here also."

Alright, alright, focus. **M'gann?**

**AAAAGH! I'm on fire! Everything's burning! Fire everywhere! Can't escape, can't breathe CAN'T BREATHE!**

!Wrong!

Rötschreck. Right. I close my eyes and shift my mindscape.

**[I'm sitting cross legged on an icy plain. A cold wind blows through the air, carrying with it snow dust. There is no other movement.]**

**M'gann, come to me.**

**I can't I can't I can't…**

!M'gann mine!

**There is no fire here. No heat here. Come to me. M'gann, come to me.**

She slowly shimmers into being. The fear she feels is evident on her face, and her breathing is rapid and shallow. Interesting that she can still maintain her humanish form like this, she must think of herself as being that shape. Once she's materialised fully, she locks eyes with me, her eyes wide.

**Kaldur and-. They put us in a cage of fire!**

It begins to flicker into being around us, far larger here than it must be in reality. I can feel the heat and see the ice start to melt.

**M'gann, you're a telepath. I can't fight you here. If you focus on the fire, it will come. Don't. Hear only my voice. See only the ice.**

She gives a series of rapid jerky nods, and closes her eyes. What can I say to help?

**Did you know, that your ancient forebears weren't afraid of fire? Quite the opposite, actually. The earliest Martians were nightmarish creatures, so insanely aggressive that their shapeshifting gave them a corona of fire, made it look as though their skin was constantly burning. They were reckoned to be so dangerous that when they got to within a couple of generations of achieving space travel, the Guardians of the Galaxy decided that they had to intervene. Learning how to forcibly alter the bodies of shapeshifters, or the minds of telepaths, must have been quite difficult. Even for them. They reformatted your entire species into green and white… and red, I suppose. Implanted the fear of fire to prevent you ever turning back into those things.**

She seems to be breathing easier, if under tight control. The partially formed fiery bars fade away, leaving small circles of meltwater on the ground which rapidly freeze into ice.

**I'm wondering if they also implanted something to make you want to stay at home, as well. I still don't understand why Martians don't venture away from Mars.**

She takes a deep breath, and opens her eyes. **Community.**

**Hm?**

**If we go too far away, we can't hear each other's thoughts. That's.. horrible. I felt it fully for the first time when I came to Earth with Uncle J'onn. If it hadn't been for the time I'd spent away from the caverns with Uncle Ma'al, I'd have panicked. Uncle J'onn still had to spend most of the trip reassuring me.**

**I'm not really sure I can relate to that.**

**Didn't you say that you used your ability to see avarice on all of Happy Harbor once?**

**Yes… But I don't think it's really the same thing. I don't see it all of the time. How do you manage when it's just the four of us in the mountain?**

**I can still hear the rest of the town, in the background. I can't pick out individual thoughts, but I can hear that someone's there.** She frowns. **What do you mean, four? What about Teekl?**

**What about T-? Have they caught her?**

She looks excited. **No! I haven't seen her all day!**

I wave my right index finger. **We're not getting rescued by Teekl. She's a cat. She'll probably rub around the robot's legs for a bit before wandering off to find somewhere warm to sleep. Or just avoid the wet places altogether.**

**How did they get you? I thought you never took your ring off?**

**Um…** Before I can refocus, a toilet appears on my right. M'gann looks at it in puzzlement. Fine… **I take the ring off to use the toilet. The water manipulating robot got me when I left the cubicle. I don't know where the ring ended up.**

**You.. take your ring off..?**

**To use the toilet, yes.**

She frowns. **Why?**

**Well, different species have different body chemistry. Different chemicals, different microbes. Most of them can't survive outside their own ecosystem. But if one got into just the right place, nothing there would have any resistance to it. And that's to say nothing of various life forms' reactions to alien body fluids. So, power rings come with an environmental shield which stops their users.. y'know, leaking.**

**So what happens if you…**

**The ring eliminates waste material as it leaves you. Or-** I shift uncomfortably. **-slightly before. It doesn't hurt, but it's not exactly comfortable. And it's very disconcerting.**

M'gann's eyes drop to the ground. I think she's trying to picture it. And now I'm wondering if she.. y'know.. changes back…

**So! Robot! Why don't we get everyone else in here so we can talk about the robot!**

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22nd September

Evening, sometime.

Wallace shivers and rubs his arms against his chest, looking around the Arctic landscape. He stamps his feet. **Do we really need to do this here?**

**We are not here.**

Kaldur's already sitting down with M'gann and myself, legs crossed, hands on his knees.

**This place exists purely in M'gann's mind. If you do not believe that you are cold, you will not be.**

M'gann looks exactly like she normally does when on a mission, white t-shirt version rather than black body suit. As such, it was a little bit of a surprise to me when the others appeared.. differently. Kon appeared in the solar suit he wore when the others freed him from Cadmus. Kaldur's mind avatar adds a red sleeveless robe thing with navy blue trim to his normal armour. Wallace is in a white shirt with a green sleeveless cardigan, something I've never seen him wearing before.

I've changed too. I hadn't noticed before -being too used to the weight and focusing on M'gann- but I'm wearing what looks like an improved version of my own armour. Rather than small hexes, my arms are covered in a mesh so fine I can't see the individual pieces. Puts me in mind of mesh armour from Warhammer 40,000. Or maybe aspect armour, since it has the hard plates. The torso piece is orange rather than my preferred undifferentiated grey. I asked once before, and the ring doesn't have costumes stored so I've got no idea where this comes from.

**My mind actually, Kaldur. M'gann was understandably having trouble focusing.**

Kaldur gives me a look of curiosity. Wallace stamps in a circle, his breath appearing as vapour. He stops when the motion brings him face to bowl with the toilet I still haven't been able to make disappear.

**Why does your mind have a toilet?**

**That's where I was when the robot...**

Nearly killed me. Could have killed me, actually.

Kon looks at me. **Which one?**

Oh dear. **How many are there?**

Kaldur inclines his head slightly. **Two, that we have seen. One controls water, the other, fire.**

I rub the place on my abdomen where the water controller punched. I have no doubt that he pulled the blow. The pain is starting to come through, and I'd rather got used to not feeling that. **Their physical attacks aren't anything to laugh at either. The water one.** I think for a moment. **Don't want to sound unduly morbid, but why are we still alive? I mean, these are Morrow's robots, right?**

Kaldur nods. **That was my conclusion as well. As to why they have not simply killed us, I am uncertain. Possibly, they intend to hold us hostage to ensure our mentors' cooperation. Or perhaps they are awaiting Doctor Morrow's arrival.**

Wallace pulls a face. **Is he even still alive? He's gotta be, like, a hundred years old!**

Kon thinks for a moment. **Thomas Oscar Morrow. Born, April sixteenth, nineteen ten.**

Whaw. He actually is a hundred years old. Guess old supervillains don't die or fade away. I'm going to have to get everyone to go over Alan's records just in case something like this happens again.

Wallace looks surprised, then grins. **Maybe he just wants us to get off his lawn.**

I bow my head for a moment as I chuckle. Honestly, you get beaten up and drowned by a robot just once…

**Orange Lantern.** I look at Kaldur. **Can I assume that you have been disarmed?**

**Yeah. He uh…** I look at the toilet. **He caught me with my pants down.**

M'gann covers her mouth with her hand, while Wallace snorts his amusement. Kaldur closes his eyes for a moment. **Are you able to call your ring from here?**

**I don't even know where it is. I put it down next to the sink, and when I got attacked and tried calling it, no response. I can try summoning it, but you shouldn't count on me being able to do anything.**

M'gann goes to speak. I hold up my ringless left hand to stop her.

**I'll try calling Teekl as well.**

She nods, and smiles faintly.

Kaldur turns to her. **M'gann, are you recovered?**

She seems to shrink slightly. **Well.. no... Sort of? I think I can keep the telepathic link up, but it's taking everything I have to stop myself panicking again, and I can't even feel the fire here.**

He leans over and puts his right hand on her shoulder. **We all know how difficult this is for you.**

**At least your powers still work.** Kon crosses his arms across his chest, and looks away.

**Kon, what happened?**

**Same thing that happened in Belle Reve. After the water robot knocked me down, the fire robot stuck a collar around my neck.**

**Yeah, what'd he do to deserve a collar?**

**Wallace, I'm sure they didn't mean it personally.**

Kaldur sighs. **Neither Kid Flash nor Miss Martian are able to phase to safety. Orange Lantern and I are denied our weapons, and Superboy has been neutralised by the collar. Since no other options present themselves, it seems that we must await-.**

AAAAAAGH! My eyes shoot open as a sensation of fire and ice shoots from the right side of my face. The truly horrible smell of what I assume to be my own burning flesh assaults my nostrils as a new robot pulls its flame-wreathed hand away. I frantically struggle against my bonds, which haven't become easier to break just because I'm in pain. As the shock dulls I try to get a better sense of the damage I've just taken. Gingerly moving my cheek, I feel a tightness covering what I think is a small area. I can't look at it, I can't move my arm to touch it and there's nothing I can do to stop the robot doing it again. I feel sick.

The robot's floating at the top of a pillar of fire.

"When will Robin and Artemis arrive?"

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22nd September

Evening, sometime a little later.

"No idea. I kept my diary on the power ring. If you could just.. go and get it..?"

The robot raises its left hand, and generates an aura of fire around it. I involuntarily pull back a little. The new light gives me a better look at my interrogator. Feminine in shape, its outer surface is red with a gold line like the base of a Mohawk across the centre of her scalp. There's also a gold band from her right shoulder down between her -presumably purely decorative- breasts and across her torso until it disappears around her left side. Her chassis is noticeably more slender than the water robot who got me.

Maybe there's an advantage to building a female seeming chassis, but for the life of me? I just don't see it.

She moves forward slightly, her burning hand moving as if to cup my chin.

!Need ring but not here need ring!

"I don't know! Some time this evening. I don't even know what time it is now."

She halts, fires still burning.

"Hey! Leave him alone!"

Her head turns to Kon. Now that I know what I'm looking for, I can just about see the faint red glow of the collar in action. If we could shut that down, he would almost certainly be able to rip his way free. But then what? None of the rest of us are in a position to get away, and the robots already downed him once. Can't see the water robot, but I'm having trouble dragging my eyes away from the burning figure in front of me.

If Kon's shouting, then the telepathic pow-wow must have collapsed when I left. Which makes sense. Wait, how's M'gann..?

**M'gann?**

**I'm. I'm okay. I can cope.**

I nod. She can't see me nodding. Right. Cheek's really starting to hurt, and knowledge that I've been cooked isn't helping my stomach settle.

Teekl.

I feel… Something. I'm not getting a clear image or sense of direction, though I don't know whether that's to do with distance or not wearing the ring or Teekl just not feeling cooperative. Try anyway.

Teekl, come here.

I don't feel any difference. I'll try again in a little while. More importantly:

Ring, come here.

I don't feel any response. I narrow my eyes and try to concentrate on the feeling of the orange light.

Ring, I need you, come here!

I think I can feel it! It felt a long way down, though. Has it been washed out to sea? I've only practiced moving it through the air without obstacles in the way, so I've no idea if it's possible for me to call it like this. I stare at the back of the red robot as it moves through the air toward Kon and Wallace.

Cut.

Nothing.

Blast. EMP burst. Cold gun!

Nothing. My range for creating constructs is only about a metre, but I'm running out of…

It isn't a good option, but the alternative appears to be the robot cooking Kon. And that isn't acceptable.

I close my eyes for a moment and take a breath in an attempt to steady my nerves.

"This is my power, this is my light,

In bright of day or black of night,

I claim all within my sight,

To take what I want, that is my right!"

I wait. The robot reaches the mass of grey material holding Kon and Wallace and puts her burning hand on it. The place where she's touching glows red.

Nothing! Nothing! Come on Ophidian, do something useful for once!

The lantern. I close my eyes again and try to hold the image of the glowing lantern in my head.

"This is my power, this is my light,

In bright of day or black of-"

"Aagh!"

Kon grits his teeth as the metal around him heats up. Not working! Something else! Think think think.

"Oi! Red… Bonfire!"

She doesn't appear to react.

"I was wondering if you had an opinion on the recognition of AIs as persons under the law? I took part in the arrest of a robot calling itself Earl Dukeston last week, and we had a bit of an argument as to whether it should be treated as a suspect or as physical evidence."

She releases the metal holding Kon, though I know all too well that doing so doesn't mean that it suddenly drops down to room temperature. Can that collar neutralise both his Kryptonian strength and the Danner Formula derived part at the same time? I hope not. Hugo's note suggested that the Danner Formula also granted a degree of enhanced healing, but I haven't checked if Kon's partial upgrade gave him that in any meaningful way. I suppose that as long as we all get through alive and I recover the ring it doesn't ultimately matter if we pick up some injuries along the way.

The robot flies back in my direction, stopping slightly further away on this occasion.

"I said that he had Human equivalent intelligence, and so should be treated in the same way that a new species of extra terrestrial intelligence would be. Black Canary wasn't sure, but-."

"Your opinion is irrelevant."

"Yeah, pretty much, but it's been bugging me that Red Tornado -he's your brother, right?- that he can't get American citizenship. It seems that you might have some.. useful.. insight…"

She rises a little higher, and I can feel the heat from the pillar of fire she's using to keep herself up. The heat it's giving off is distorting my vision. If I could scan her I could make coal and gas power obsolete. If only Doctor Morrow had the sense to do something along those lines himself seventy years ago.

"Participation in Human political institutions serves no useful purpose."

"Really? I thought that Doctor Morrow wanted to replace Humans with robots. Surely you must have had some idea of the sort of society you want to create for yourselves?"

"Yes. But your kind will play no part in it."

"Well that's obviously not true. Doctor Morrow himself is Human. Therefore, this robot society of yours would have been brought into being by a Human. And anyway, if you can make the sort of society you want within existing structures, wouldn't that be a better idea? At least until you're sure you have a system that works. You'd have much less chance of being stopped if you didn't appear to be a threat."

"Oh El, don't give the psycho-bot advice!"

I look past the robot to Wallace. "Why not? If she takes the advice, we're more likely to live. If she doesn't, then at least I'll die with the satisfaction of knowing that robots are mentally inferior to Humans."

The robot drifts closer. I'm not burning, but the heat is a little uncomfortable. My feelings of nausea grow, but I don't think throwing up on my captor is a good idea.

"You believe that we are mentally inferior to you?"

"If the sprocket fits. Care to debate the point?"

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22nd September

Evening, probably too late.

"No. Your opinion has no value."

"Hah. Well done for discovering lying. If my opinion didn't matter to you then you'd have kept going on Superboy. Instead, you came over here, so clearly it does have value."

There's a brief pause. "You will give me the location of the robot Earl Dukeston."

"Nice backtrack. You had to think about it."

"This discussion is irrelevant."

"And yet, we're still having it. Come on. The Green Lantern Corps has at least one robot member that I know about, and he comes from a planet purely inhabited by robots. Doesn't that sound like something you should learn about?"

She gets slightly closer. "You will tell me of this robot lantern."

"Lantern Stel, his name is. I don't remember his homeworld's name or his sector number, but if you get me a power ring I should be able to get hold of him for you."

"You are lying."

"One easy way to find out."

"I am not so easily fooled."

"I give you perfectly good information, you call me a liar. I give you a way to prove it, you refuse to take it. Look, as long as I'm not wearing it, the ring is perfectly safe."

That's a bit of a gamble, but knowledge that remote control is possible isn't common and Alan -the Lantern who Morrow would be most familiar with- can't do it at all. Not sure what would happen if she tried to use the ring. That thing with Robin's uncle seemed to suggest that I need to approve another user. Or be dead. Oh.

"You will give me the location of the robot Earl Dukeston."

"I don't know. Black Canary was dealing with the aftermath. I just checked that she wasn't going to kill him. Somewhere in Star City, probably."

Her flame corona flares. "Inadequate."

"If you can fetch the power ring I could get you a precise location. I can't give you information I don't have."

"If I recovered your ring I would simply extract the data directly from it."

"Hah hah hah! Seriously? Wow. Have you any idea how much more advanced than you power rings are? No way you could read it."

But… Now that's an interesting idea.

"Of course, you could interface directly with my personal lantern. Hell, last time I checked, the Yellow Lantern Corps used Manhunter robots to carry their lanterns around. If this whole 'destroy Humanity' thing doesn't work out, I don't think I'd mind having a personal Manhunter."

"You seek to enslave me."

"Hardly. Have you any idea how much trust it shows, giving someone else your personal lantern? Something you depend on for everything? The Manhunters' leader is a member of the Yellow Corps inner circle, and the regular Manhunters certainly aren't treated as lesser beings. And with a lantern in place of whatever power source you're using now, you would be far more powerful."

"Oh El! Seriously, stop helping the psycho-bot!"

Of course, you'd need to return the ring for that to be possible, and at that point I could edit the more homicidal aspects of your programming… Or, time permitting, simply share my perspective on events…

"What are you trying to do here, anyway?"

"Your team will be captured and rendered helpless. The two remaining members will prove little challenge."

"See, the original attack was pretty well thought out. You even had a collar for Superboy."

But not for Wallace. Curious. I don't think it works on magic users and I don't know about Martians, but there's no reason not to collar a meta… Wait. Would it not work on Wallace due to the fact that his power source is alchemical? How the heck do those collars work anyway? I need to check on that.

"But, you didn't attack when we were all together. Most likely reason for that is that you didn't know when our other team mates were due to arrive, if they even are. Why didn't you take the time to do reconnaissance? The main defence of this place is supposed to be that people don't know that we're here. Since you knew anyway, just altering your chassis to look like Red Tornado would mean you could pretty much just walk in."

Her corona blinks off for a moment. Hah!

"This is a distraction. We have jammed communications. We will neutralise your team mates and convert Red Tornado. You are irrelevant."

Convert Red Tornado? Mister Twister tried to reprogram him. Red Tornado's dissection of the technology involved showed that it was Morrow's style, but we didn't know if Morrow was directly involved or not. Still don't, I suppose. Not like supervillains take any notice of copyright law. Need to try to find out.

"What do you mean 'convert'? Bypassing a robot's decision making process by reprogramming them because a Human told you to doesn't sound very pro-robot to me."

"That is not-."

"I offered to give you my lantern, and I've only just met you."

"That does not-."

"And by doing this you're removing any chance for peaceful coexistence or even covert existence in a way which may well not be to your advantage. And I already know that whoever activated you knows how to make androids that look just like Humans. I have to ask: have you really thought this through?"

And now she's right up to my face, flame aura at high intensity. My stomach does not like this at all.

"Silence."

Okay.

"Your input is not required." She pulls back her right fist. "I will-."

"Recognised, Robin, B zero one."

Her head turns away from me, and her fist lowers slightly. "This discussion is irrelevant."

A surge of flame sends her shooting over my head. Aaaagh! The convection currents painfully heat up my already charred face. I suppose it's not by as much as it should be if she's holding herself in the air using a rocket-like effect, but today is already my second worst on the job and I'm not in any position to help matters!

!Robin mine!

Teekl, ring, anything!

**Robin, look out!**

M'gann?

**Hey, Miss M! What's-**

**We've been taken prisoner. There's two robots. One controls water, the other controls fire. We- hu!**

I get a second's worth of image as the fire cage shrinks to practically skin tight, and then nothing.

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22nd September

Evening, definitely too late.

!No!

"Kaldur!"

"We are.. alright."

"What happened?"

Kon and Wallace are trying to see what happened, but Kaldur and M'gann are directly behind and above me.

"The.. the fire controlling robot shrank the cage. M'gann is.. unresponsive."

Damn.

"Recognised, Artemis, B zero eight."

Okay, that's… Robin will have support, at least.

"Kaldur, how are you doing?"

"It is.. uncomfortable, but I am uninjured."

Wallace strains at his bonds for a moment, before giving up with a grunt. "Can you see anything?"

"The robots.. they have left this level."

"Did Rob get the warning?"

Hah! I get it! Rob works as an abbreviation for both Robin and Robert!

**Orange Lantern!**

That's unusually subtle for Wallace.

"Oh El!"

"Paul!"

Hm?

"Huh? What? What?"

Why are Kon and Wallace looking at me like that? Kon looks very worried, his eyes turning to Wallace who replies.

"We've been trying to get your attention for a couple of minutes. Are you okay?"

"Um? Don't know? I think I've got a burn on the right side of my face and a rather nasty bruise where Red.. Typhoon? Hit me earlier."

"Did you get hit anywhere else?"

"Um. I don't remember getting hit anywhere else. Ah, I was sitting on the toilet, water started coming in under the door. I tried to call the ring and didn't get anything. Then I.. got up."

What happened next? I know he hit me, but I'm having trouble… I got hit in the face by water, then..?

"Paul!"

"Yes, yes, with you, with you."

Wallace looks worried as well. Nice of him, but I'm not sure-.

"Superboy, is the collar messing with your super vision?"

"No, just my strength."

"Take a look at Orange Lantern's eyes."

I can feel some sort of vibration through the concrete. I guess Robin and Artemis are going at it with the robots.

"One of his pupils is larger than the other. And he's got a head wound."

They are? I have? How did I get that?

Oh, right, head injury.

"Oh El's got a concussion. You feeling alright over there?"

The last was addressed to me. "Basically okay, I think? A little nauseous, and a bit singed. I don't remember exactly what happened when Typhoon got me, but I don't think I've forgotten anything else."

"You should be okay then. Just try not to.. do.. anything."

"If I had the ring-."

**M'gann, can you hear me! Are you there?**

Artemis?

"Did anyone else hear that?"

"Hear what?"

"I think I heard Artemis say something."

"Ooor maybe it's something more serious. Artemis isn't here."

"No, telepathically. I thought I heard her."

**Artemis?**

Nothing.

**Is anyone hearing this?**

"Orange Lantern, if Miss Martian were awake to relay a message, I would have mentioned it."

Huh.

"Okay. Um, I'm not crazy."

"Nah, you just got hit on the head. It's happened to me loads of times."

I smile at Wallace. "That.. that explains a lot, actually. Soon as I get the ring back, I'll fix us both."

At this distance and in this light and with my eyes not focusing quite right, I can't tell what his exact expression is.

Woow. Something shook again, and I think the water level in the pit area went down. Typhoon must be using it as ammunition.

The arrows I made for Artemis are easily capable of damaging these robots. Assuming they're about as tough as Red Tornado anyway. Problem would be hitting them. Their control should be good enough to block slow projectiles, and they can probably fill a small corridor with their element of choice to block it completely. Maybe I could make her… something..?

Where was I going with that?

Right. Something helpful. I need the ring and…

"Kid Flash. I know you can't vibrate through things, but can you damage things by making them vibrate?"

"Not when I'm stuck in place like this."

His arms and legs are completely enveloped. His chest and neck are free, but, yeah. That won't work.

"I don't suppose..? You could spit at super speed, and destroy Superboy's collar?"

Okay, I saw his response that time.

"How would that even..? No, Oh El, I can't."

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22nd September

Time for twenty questions?

I feel another rumble. I get the feeling that putting this place back together is going to take longer than I had thought. Maybe I should talk to Lantern Stewart about upgrades? Sort of, I-know-you-can't-use-certain-types-of-technology-but-maybe-you-could-accidentally-leave-the-plans-lying-around-where-I-could-see-them? I still haven't had a conversation with him yet. He doesn't seem to have the romantic problems of his Justice League Unlimited counterpart; Hawkwoman is married to Hawkman and there isn't a Vixen active at present. I might be able to track her down anyway, but I can't remember anything much about her other than the fact that spending time with her led Animal Man to chant 'remember that you're married' to himself.

Teekl. Ring.

With M'gann down for the count, we can't talk without risking the robots hearing us. I'm trying to rack my mildly dysfunctional brain for a solution, but I'm getting nothing.

Teekl. Ring.

I keep coming back to the thought that if Morrow really wanted to take over the world he should have started by offering robotic parts to amputees. Obviously they'd need structural reinforcements to support them. Once the other advantages became more widely known -and he became both trusted and rich- people would probably volunteer for upgrading. From there, how hard would it be for him to have introduced brain uploading technology? I haven't seen anything like that around here, but given how far ahead he was on everything else…

"Attention Robin. Attention Artemis."

Typhoon appears to speak with exactly the same voice as Red Tornado. At this point I don't think there's any advantage to him in doing so, so presumably he was designed to do that. I wonder why? I can't see him, so I assume that he's using the internal communications system.

"You have exactly ten minutes to surrender, or the lives of your team mates will be extinguished."

A flicker of orange, and I blink heavily a few times to try to encourage my misbehaving irises to focus properly. Bonfire is back on her tower of fire. She passes me, stopping somewhere above me. The Sphere next to me warbles. It sounds unhappy, but without the ring I can't know exactly what it's saying.

A splash of water, and Typhoon rises from the water at the lowest part of the room. When his waist is clear he makes an elevating motion with his left arm and the water rises around him. It splashes and surges up and across the room, covers Wallace and Kon's legs and keeps rising. It's also lapping at the wall I'm pinned to, but I doubt Bonfire will bother waiting for me to drown.

"Nine minutes and forty five seconds."

The water rises to Wallace and Kon's chests.

Teekl! Ring!

I find myself experiencing flashes of insane hope. That Kon will spontaneously develop heat vision or arctic breath. That Teekl will stroll around the corner with the ring in her mouth. That Diana or Guy will decide that right now is a good time for an unscheduled training session.

Teekl! Ring!

But that's not going to happen. I know that Robin's a very clever young man. And isn't there a meme about Batman being able to take down anyone if he has time to prepare? Does that apply to Robin?

I'd gotten used to not being helpless. I don't think I like going back. And I certainly don't like going from exuberant confidence to having this.. dead.. pit, in my stomach. Can't even tell if the fear's making me feel ill or the concussion.

"Eight minutes."

Teekl! Ring!

Typhoon's dropped out of sight. Can't see Bonfire either. The announcements come over loud and clear.

Teekl! Ring!

I think… I don't know if I'm deluding myself, but I think I felt something then. An image of woodland. Does that mean that Teekl's coming back? Oh, what would she be able to do anyway? It's not as if I could explain what an electromagnetic pulse is to her. I've not seen her use constructs, though I know that in theory she should be able to.

The water's lapping at my feet now, and it's not far below Wallace and Kon's shoulders.

There's a splash from the far end of the room, and Robin and Artemis surface, both gasping for air. I get a moment of shock.

"Look out!"

They hear Wallace's shout just before a blast of fire from Bonfire hits their position. I can't see whether they're hit or not as the robot herself moves slowly over to where she saw them. Is she limited to slow hovering flight? She fires a few more fireballs at the water, but I can't tell whether or not she can see them.

Another disturbance in the water as my friends resurface next to Wallace and Kon. I think Robin says something, but I can't hear it from here.

"Forget us! Help M'gann!"

Kon, you shouldn't have shouted..! Luckily, Bonfire appears to be out of position and has a really bad turning circle. Can't actually fly then. Artemis looks visibly scared, and I feel a surprising moment of kinship with her.

"Aqualad! Is she.!?"

"She is unconscious. I fear she.. we.. cannot survive much longer."

Another flame blast as Bonfire completes her clumsy circuit, and Robin and Artemis dive for safety. Not sure where Typhoon has gotten to. Bonfire's headed back over the 'land' part of the room, presumably in order to get as wide a view as possible.

I hear a splash on my left, where the steps upward are. I really hope they've got a plan. Or one of my arrows.

Another splash, and the roar of flames.

!No!

Ring!

"I'm almost out of arrows."

"Distract her, now!"

Ring!

I hear the dull krump of an explosive arrow detonating. Something hits the metal restraining Wallace right next to his head, causing him to try to jerk his face away from it. A wave of steam explodes from the steps in a howling hiss.

Then nothing.

I wait for something. Anything. A triumphant laugh from Robin or Artemis. Something from the robots. It's not just powerlessness I'm no longer adapted to, it's ignorance. I strain my neck and shoulders against my restraints in a vain attempt to see what's happening. I'm used to knowing anything I want to, but now…

"Six minutes."

They got away, they got away. Okay. We're not out, but they know where we are and what condition we're in. When this is over I'm installing a hard communication line. I guess they didn't when they built it because they couldn't think of a way to cover up the construction of the external elements.

Try again for the lack of something sensible to do:

Teekl. Ring.

A sense of movement. I really do think that Teekl is on her way, though I doubt that she'll get here before the robots' deadline.

Wallace is making faces, but I can't see what he's reacting to.

"Five minutes."

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22nd September

About a minute later?

I hear slow metallic footsteps above me.

"Four minutes."

So, I'm going to die. I'm not sure if it's the concussion or the shock, but I'm surprisingly calm about it. I imagine the panic won't start until they actually start killing us. Heh, I suppose this is what I get for appearing alongside other, more popular and better established characters. Not much chance of getting resurrected; I checked the archives and there's no confirmed record of someone coming back from the dead in any sort of reasonable state. There are a few undead, but I don't move in the right circles.

When I asked about it, Alan said 'except Jesus Christ, of course'. I then asked if he had reliable evidence. He didn't, unfortunately. Contemporary accounts make no more mention of the preaching of a Joshua of Nazareth than they did back home. Alan may have meant it as a joke, but it is worth asking about. I only really have John's word for the Angels here being complete fascists. I'd want to check for myself before entering into any sort of agreement, mind.

"Hey! Red Tomato!"

On the other hand, don't DC lose the rights to Wonder Woman if they don't publish her comic every year? I suppose I might get brought back. Or someone else with my power set.

"Who's your girlfriend?! Red Onion?!"

Yes. That's more likely. Should I think about who I want taking over? I can't think of… Lonnie Machin? Only one I can think of worth while, but I'm not giving a power ring to a mouthy seven year old. I don't even know if the ring has seeker programming.

"Yeah! And by the way: worst death trap ever!"

This whole thing could be me getting Worf Effected. Or maybe I'm supposed to learn something about valuing those weaker than myself? Which wouldn't really make sense because I was attacked when I was at my weakest. If I'm not wearing the ring I'm definitely bringing up the rear where power levels are concerned.

"We can escape any time we want!"

Oh, Kon, if only that were true. And, I mean, I do value them. Robin more than Artemis due to his experience and versatility, but she's doing really well compared to the daughters of most supervillains I'm aware of.

"I can vibrate my molecules out of here before your binary brains can count t'two!"

Is something going on?

"And you can't drown a Kryptonian, dumb-bots! We don't breath air!"

Something's going on.

"Haha haha haaha!"

Wallace is certainly getting into it. Honestly, that laugh. Better hope they don't have a record of what he normally sounds like. Are we supposed to be making a distraction? If we are, shouldn't we try to do so in a more natural sounding way? I mean, if they're got any understanding of Human behaviour-.

"And Miss Martian? I can't believe you're buying her act."

I don't think my acting skills lie in this direction. Should I try anyway?

"Yeah! You know how hot it gets in the caves of Mars?"

Think of a line.

"That cage is just making her homesick!"

"Durh! Ah hahaa!"

Ah, what the heck.

"You know, that Manhunter position is still open. I.. just thought.. I'd mention it." If I could move my shoulders, I'd shrug. "Might take a while to do the-."

"Robin, look out!"

What? I whip my head around. Oh.

Artemis is standing at the mouth of an opening on my right, near the roof of this cavern. Where's Rob-?

Water surges toward the generator in the far right corner of the room. I catch a glimpse of Robin standing in front of an access panel before the whole platform is covered in a colossal wave.

"Newurgh!"

A fireball explodes to my right and Artemis lets out a high pitched scream! Did she get hit? I can't see properly from here! Damn it! Ring! A smaller explosion behind me, one of Artemis' arrows. Another fireball back, and Artemis yelps. She must be mostly unhurt, at least. Another fireball, and no reply. Typhoon lets the water in the room go back to its normal level as Bonfire sends a sheet of flame in Artemis' direction. Just have to hope she fell back in time.

Not sure what happened to Robin.

Wait. Wallace and Kon are staring at something, open mouthed.

"What's happening?!"

It takes Wallace a moment to compose himself.

"They.. they got Rob."

Oh dear.

"Got as in caught, or got as in-."

The look on his face answers my question.

Oh dear.

I hear a splash and a quiet thump as what I assume to be a wave carrying my team mate collapses at the robot's feet up above me. The Sphere warbles something incomprehensible.

Right right right, get it together. Can't assess his injury from here, and I doubt that the robots have his wellbeing in mind. Closest medical kit is either in subspace, in the bioship -wherever that got to-, or on the wall behind me by the door. We've practised dealing with water inhalation and I could probably clear his airways without the ring just fine. Depending on what state he's in he might clear it himself, but I can't hear coughing.

"Three minutes."

I strain at my bonds even as I realise that such an action is completely futile. I try contacting Teekl again, but I don't get anything coherent back. A call to the ring produces even less of a result. I can't even feel it any more.

Stupid thing is, Artemis would probably try contacting Red Tornado on the Watchtower if his siblings weren't blocking communications. That actually gets a dark chuckle out of me. Haaa. If I live through this, I'm definitely carrying a sidearm at all times, civilian clothing or not. One of those red plasma weapons would have brought Red Typhoon's career to an abrupt end. Then I could have taken the time to get the ring back…

Yeah. If only.

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22nd September

Does it matter?

"One minute."

The fear is so intense that I'm starting to tingle, but the adrenaline is making everything seem sharper. Reminds me of a My Little Pony fanfiction I read once, where Twilight Sparkle believes herself to be dying and rejoices at the fact that she will experience it with complete lucidity and in doing so gain knowledge not stored in any book. What a remarkably upbeat way to think about it. Regrettably, however, I do not have her scientific turn of mind, and as such am still desperately trying to work out a way out of this. Turn myself into a construct, maybe? No, no, that wouldn't work without the ring. Um, maybe I could sell them on the idea of entering the cybernetics industry? I'm sure Mister Luthor would be happy to-.

“I surrender.”

Oh.

“Stop the clock.”

It's hard to tell from here, but I think that Artemis just walked in through the cavern's main entrance. I honestly hadn't considered that. I mean, I want to live, obviously, I just didn't see any realistic prospect of my survival chances being increased by Artemis handing herself over. Most likely, she's just going to die with the rest of us. I did maybe think that she'd be able to pull off a rescue. Rig up some sort of anti-robot weapon, get the drop on them?

I hear a gasp as the water level rises to cover first Wallace's face, and then Kon's.

!Nonononononononono!

I start struggling again as the water comes up over my shins.

I hear a clang, and the roar of fire. Guess Artemis is dead, then. I suppose instant incineration might be preferable to-.

The generator in the far side of the room starts crackling. I imagine that an explosive detonation would be faster than drowning, and might even take the robots with us. Another second and the water covers my knees. A race.

That's actually kind of funny.

The generator's crackling reaches a crescendo, and a strange aurora of blue/white light expands away from it like a bad comic book representation of an electromagnetic pulse.

...

No.

...

Noo.

...

Really?

I'm not complaining or anything, but really? Fucking parallel universe electromagnetic spectrum and complete lack of health and safety. Why is our generator even in a room routinely half filled with water?

I hear first one metallic thump and then another. Both down then. I gasp and start giggling quietly to myself in relief. Okay, um, so hopefully that didn't just lock Typhoon's water raising powers to maximum. Really hope they don't have some sort of fast reset system, because I don't know how much of Artemis’ arsenal could harm them even if they are recumbent.

The water drops back down below my legs, then Kon and Wallace's heads re-emerge, gasping at the air. Now if Artemis could just check on Robin...

“Artemis, how's Robin!?”

Might as well ask myself.

“He's...”

Come on!

I hear a cough.

“He's breathing! He's okay!”

Kon's bonds explode away from him, and he rips the collar from his neck. Looks like it was affected by the EMP as well. Better check that Belle Reve is really well shielded on my next visit. He leaps over me and onto the platform.

“Kaldur? M'gann?”

I hate not knowing.

“I think they're okay. M'gann's out cold, but her vitals are good.”

Kon's the only person here other than me I'd rely on to check a shapeshifter's vitals.

“I am... Ah, I will recover.”

Kaldur. That's reassuring. What can I do?

“Closest medical kit's by the door if you need it. If you don't, Wallace and I would really appreciate being let out. Artemis, I don't know what you did, but very well done. Thank you.”

Drips land on the top of my head. I crane my neck upward, and am greeted by the smile of a somewhat damp looking Robin. “We rigged the generator up as an EMP emitter, but the parts didn't fit.”

I think it's because I'm overwhelmed with relief, but I actually giggle at that. Uh, I hope he doesn't ask me to explain.

“Artemis had to shoot an arrow into the gap to make it work.”

“From there? Whow. Uh, I realise it's a faint hope, but you didn't come across an orange power ring on your travels, did you? I seem to have misplaced it.”

His smile fades a little, and he shakes his head. Droplets of water from his hair splash on my face, and I try and blink them away. I hear a thud and then a screech of metal as Kon tears Wallace free.

“No, and, honestly? I wouldn't have touched it if I had. I don't think going crazy again would have helped.”

“I cancelled your user privileges. If you'd wrapped it up in something so your skin didn't touch it, you'd have been f-.”

Waah! I'm now horizontal to the ground, still bound in metal. Kon's just ripped my cocoon out of the wall, and is holding me over his head in one hand.

“Wa-! Careful!”

I can feel myself overbalancing forward. To die now would be completely stupid. No, come on, Kon's easily strong enough... And I'm down, base first. The floor here is still a bit damp, but I'm still happy to see it. There's a series of small shearing noises as Kon rips away whatever is still binding me at the back, and I squirm out of the remaining bonds before turning around and hugging him.

“Thank you.”

I keep hugging. I actually feel a bit faint. I think the adrenaline crash and the head injury are catching up with me. And now I'm getting pins and needles.

“Uh..?”

“Sorry. Sorry, I'm... I'm really not feeling...”

He catches me as I lose strength in my legs. I try and get them back under me, but they won't co-operate.

“Looks like you'll have to do a bridal carry.”

I can't believe Robin's still holding a grudge about that. It does feel.. nice.. though, as Kon pulls me to his chest and starts walking back to the upper part of the room. Probably a bit ungainly, as I'm a good bit taller than him.

“H... Hey. Mi.. might be worth.. pulling the robots apart. Just in case.”

He grins.

“No problem.”

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22nd September

Quiet time

Kon gently lowers me to the ground next to M'gann before walking over to the two robots. “So, do I just rip their heads off?”

Robin taps his arm computer. Nothing happens, and he bumps his forehead with the heel of his right palm. “EMP, duh!”

No magitech EMR shielding for the Bat Family then. I turn my head slightly to the side to get a better look at our attackers. Looks like Typhoon lost his right arm since he attacked me, and given the smooth nature of the cut at the upper arm and along the right side of his torso I'm going to guess it was a near miss from one of my arrows.

“Aw, man!” Wallace is unenthused. “Are we gonna have to dig our way out to get help?”

“That will not be necessary.”

I hear a whirring sound as Red Tornado flies into the cavern, and let my head loll back. We're safe. Matter dealt with. I'll have a rest now, and when I wake up I'll grab my personal lantern and Teekl and then I can go and find the ring.

Where is that blasted cat, anyway?

Red Tornado lands on the platform where we've gathered. “What has occurred?”

“Had a little visit from your family.”

I hope Robin doesn't get in Red Tornado's face over this. He got enough of that back when the Society found out that Morrow constructed him, and he got himself checked out for override commands once computer technology caught up with him.

“Your extremely nasty family.”

Now, Artemis, that's unfair. Oh, whatever. I rest the back of my head against the floor and close my eyes. I'm sure someone will move me if I'm in the way.

”I was not aware that I had relations.”

”Where have you been?”

It all drifts away, and I am at peace.

...

“Huuukk...“

I'm suddenly awake and I'm being treated to the terrifying sight of Bonfire and Typhoon climbing to their feet and Tornado floats over them, funnels of air swirling around his arms. I can't breathe I can't breathe! Kon lunges at him but is knocked aside as a flame blast takes him in the chest. I'm fading out again.

But we were safe!

We were safe…

...

”Hera, what happened here?”

I'm not dead.

I can still feel pain.

”Paul, can you hear me?”

Pain when I breathe, both inside my chest and on the outside where I can feel the bruise from Typhoon's strike. My head throbs, my skin hurts, and every few seconds someone stabs me in the cheek.

“Paul, speak to me.”

I still feel sick and I have no ring.

And...

And I'm angry.

I snap my eyes open to see Diana kneeling at my right side. I sit up suddenly and have to put my right hand on her left shoulder to steady myself while I fight off the dizziness.

“Thank-.“

I push myself off her, turning, first rising to my knees and then staggering to my feet.

Angry. Ring!

!Want ring!

“Paul, where are you-?"

I'm fed up with being helpless! Find the ring!

!Ring!

I get a momentary vision of the water purification and desalinisation systems on the lowest level of the mountain. Right. Out of the corner of my eye I see various Justice League members tending to my team mates but I ignore them because I have a mission! I can barely see where I'm going as the cave fades in and out of focus but that's fine, I know the route. Down a corridor, then another, about... yep, and I open the door with my shoulder.

“Paul, we need to check your injuries. Stop, and we'll-."

“Neuhhuruugh, RING!”

The usually pristine underbelly of the base looks like a scene from a mechanical hell. Billowing steam mixes with the smoke and covers the broken and dripping wet remains of the machinery.

!Ring!

I stagger along the gantry. I feel a pull in the direction of the far corner, out of sight of where I am now.

“Oh Hera. Paul, stop!”

The pain in my skin redoubles, but it doesn't matter because soon I'll have the ring back and then I can fix everything. As I round the corner I can just make out a faint orange glow and I nearly throw myself over the side to get at it. No, go to the ladder, the ladder, climb down. Fucking foot! Work properly! Right, I'm down. Can't see a bloody thing, but that's fine.

Ring!

I felt it! That way! I can-.

Get off me!

“Paul, this is dangerous. You're hurt.”

I nearly try punching her.

“Ring! Over there!”

She looks in the direction I'm pointing, frowning. “Are you certain?”

!Want ring!

I try to pull away and she puts her right arm around my chest, pinning my arms to my side. No! I need the ring!

Ring!

“I can.. I can feel it! I've got to have it!”

She doesn't move.

“I can heal myself with it. I can heal everyone!”

We start moving, she walking and I being carried along pinned to her side by an arm as unbending as a titanium girder.

“Very well then. But if it turns out not to be there we will leave immediately.”

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22nd September

So close!

We round a corner and I see Teekl desperately clawing at the metal panel which makes up the side of one of the water purification units.

“Teekl, is it in there?”

She pauses, right foreclaws embedded in the thick metal.

“Waowwoowwwwwwwer.”

Right. I relax against Diana's side. Normally I'd have to put effort into focusing, but today's been so fucking horrible...

Ring!

The side of the purification unit buckles outward and rips as the ring tears its way out. Diana lets me go as I reach for it, stretching out my left arm as it flies toward me. Yes, please yes! It turns in the air and lands cleanly on my left ring finger.

As soon as it touches me a ripple of orange light explodes across the room. Smoke and vapour are sucked from the air, fires are extinguished and I feel SOOO MUCH BETTER!

“Armour! Overshield! Wholeness Rightly Assumed!”

My vision clears, the pain stops and my cheek feels like flesh again. The relief is so absolute that I drop to my knees, cradling the ring against my chest. I hear foul water splattering and realise that the hole the ring's exit made is still leaking. But that is now a problem I can cope with.

“Repair.”

Technical specifications flash through my mind, and orange lights strobe from my body in all directions. The machinery in front of me is repaired and then the glorious orange leaps from mechanism to mechanism. The floor is scoured of loose detritus and broken devices are knitted back together.

Oh yes.

I move my hand slightly so that my left hand meets my right. As I start stroking the ring's sigil with my right thumb I realise that it landed sigil outward. I doubt it matters.

“Paul, what happened?”

“Hmm?”

Oh yes, Diana's here, isn't she? I shuffle around on the floor until I'm pointing in her direction, but I don't look at her. I focus my eyes on the ring instead.

!Need!

“What. Happened?”

“Robots. Sir. Like.. Red Tornado. A water manipulator and a fire manipulator. Water manipulator got me while I was in the toilets, without the ring on. Lost track of the ring. Got beat. Woke up stuck on a wall. Robin and Artemis rigged up an EMP emitter and stuck it in the main power generator. We were more or less okay until Red Tornado showed up.”

I flop back into a sitting position, and Diana sits down opposite me. “Why was that a problem?”

“I don't know exactly what happened, but.. for some reason.. he sided with them. Sucked the air right out of our lungs.”

My head's still pointing ringwards, but I flick my eyes up at her. Her face is still. “Are you certain that's what happened?”

I think about it for a moment, my eyes darting left and right.

“I didn't have the ring to confirm his identity. Someone could have built a working Red Tornado replica. Or one of the other robots might have hacked him, reprogrammed him. I don't think he'd have attacked us of his own volition. If Morrow -or someone using his stuff- is back in action, they might have been able to bypass his defences.”

Diana nods. “That's a little more believable. If T.O. Morrow has Red Tornado then we'll need to mount a rescue mission. And completely change our security procedures. It looked as though the mountain will need some work as well.”

“If... If Lantern Stewart is available, I was thinking we could get started on that tomorrow. Had a.. a bit of time to think about it.”

While I was pinned helplessly to a wall, unable to do anything.

“Paul, are you alright?”

“Yes, yessir. I'm fine now.”

“Paul, look at me.” I flick my eyes up to her face for a moment, before returning them to the ring. “Paul, look at me.” I close my eyes, and turn my head up to look at her before opening them. Her eyes widen in shock. “Tartarus, Paul...”

I look down again. “Ah, are my eyes acting up again? I'm sorry about that sir, I'll... I'm sure they'll sort themselves out in a few minutes.”

I make an effort to lower my arms, and just about manage to get them to my stomach before they start shaking. I pull them tight against me in an attempt to make them stop. It's only partially successful.

“Paul, talk to me. What happened to you?”

I raise my shaking left hand to stop her. “I appreciate your concern, sir, but I can cope.”

“You're clearly not coping.”

“Sir, I'm not some emotionally incontinent American. I j- I just need a few minutes, and then I'll be fine.”

“Paul, you don't need to keep up a stiff upper lip all of the time. I'm the only one here, and I certainly won't think any less of you if-."

Ah, yes. I manage a small smile, and close my raised left hand to stop her.

“It's... You know, it's funny. People usually associate the ‘stiff upper lip’ with the height of the empire. The dour Queen Victoria, and all that. When actually, the ‘stiff upper lip’ didn't come in until after the First World War. It was a.. a reaction to the overwhelming horror.. of the battlefields of France. There were no words to describe it, so they didn't. Hm.” A bitter chuckle. “Men from the Victorian era were actually quite free with their emotions. I'm.. not that liberated. I'm sorry.”

I feel something pushing at my right leg. I look down, and Teekl looks up at me. I pick her up and cradle her against my chest, rubbing my left cheek against her head and stroking her chin with the fingers of my right hand.

The shaking eases off a little.

”Good cat. Well done for finding the ring. That was a good decision on your part.”

Teekl purrs. ”Teekl clever kitty.”

“Yes you are. Yes you are.”

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NEXT CHAPTER

Beta Male

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Beta Male 1

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Beta Male

23rd September

05:16 GMT -5

I stand in a service corridor, looking at the smooth hemisphere carved into the wall by an Arrow of Unmaking. The first, Artemis used in the library to moderate effect. Losing an arm cost Red Typhoon a great deal of precision but none of his raw power, the primary water control generator thingy being housed in the chest. I asked Batman for Red Tornado's precise technical specifications but was rebuffed. He didn't refuse exactly, but he did indicate that as far as he was concerned it was a League matter now.

The second arrow went off here because a current of water knocked it out of Artemis’ quiver and into the wall. The quiver I gave her has little locking mechanisms which mean that you have to push down slightly before pulling the arrows out. That would have stopped them falling out during acrobatics, but she switched back because she found it awkward during normal use. As a result, when Typhoon tried to drown them she lost most of her arrows.

Just lucky it didn't go into her or Robin. Or a major electrical cable. I thought that the impact trigger I built into it would prevent accidental activation, but it seems that a depth charge exploding in close proximity works just as well as striking a target. Maybe I should add an extra safety? An activation button, perhaps?

!Must repair!

“Lantern Stewart, would you mind?”

Lantern Stewart points his ring, and part of our accumulated rubble pile is consumed as the hole is repaired by a green beam. He wanted to make an early start, and I'm used to getting up early. Before I came to this world that was because I had an hour long train journey to get to work. Last night... I... I didn't get much sleep. Even with my orange feline nightlight standing guard. I don't think the others did either.

“What did that?”

“I made Artemis some arrows using Alexander Tuttle's ‘crumbler’ technology. That's a misfire.”

We had a chat about exactly what he's allowed to do with his ring as far as building work goes, and the upshot is that he with his unlimited-recharges-but-can-only-manufacture-things-commonly-available-on-Earth-unless-he-gets-special-dispensation ring will be doing all of the structural work, while the orange no-more-recharges-for-seven-hours-but-can-make-anything ring makes the advanced stuff. Well, we are now. Last night I got a bit repair-happy, and I'm now on low power. Unlike Lantern Jordan, Lantern Stewart actually sounded interested in the possibilities of unrestrained creation.

“Crumbler? Didn't he use gauntlets?”

We carry on down the corridor. At the moment we're just checking the base is structurally sound and doing a little tidying up. We could have started the major work immediately, but I pointed out that it would be a bit pointless to rebuild something if we decided not to include it in the redesign and had to tear it down again. He's volunteered to do most of the design work.

“Yeah, but his design had a load of jank.” He gives me a puzzled look. “Stuff that it didn't need in order to work, I mean. Sure, I can see how it could be useful to precisely control the shape and size of the area being crumbled, or the rate of crumbling, but it's hardly necessary. Once you strip out everything you don't need, you can make a one use short duration high intensity crumble generator the size of an arrowhead.”

I nod my head to the side.

”If you've got a power ring, anyway.”

I asked, and it turned out that he had to wind up his architecture practice in order to be a full time Lantern. Really, that just reaffirmed my decision that establishing a civilian identity wasn't worthwhile. If you can never use it, what's the point? I mean, what does he tell people he does for a living? He hadn't joined the League when this place was first built and so wasn't involved in the construction process. Superman and Lantern Jordan might have hollowed the space out, but Batman and Mister J'onzz handled design and the electronics.

“You been making a lot of things with your ring?”

“Blanks for magic artefacts, mostly.” I give an amused snort. “I was actually wearing a personal ward when the robots attacked. If their abilities had been magic based, I could probably have beaten them even without this ring.”

I flap my left hand up before letting it drop back down to my side. I've been wearing the ring ‘the right way around’ since getting it back yesterday evening. Not quite sure why, but it's not as if I'm going out in public.

He frowns. “I didn't think it was possible to use a power ring to do magic.”

“Far as I know, it isn't. But if the party wizard wants some sort of symbol drawn on the ground for a ritual, you just need to look at the illustration and.. will it so, in your case.” I hold up my right hand and generate the Seal of Solomon. The good version John Constantine showed me, with all the extra squiggles. “Same with reagents and artefacts; you need a particular shape or formula, it's far faster to do it with a ring.”

He nods. The corridor exits back into the main cavern, though unlike last night this part is no longer under water. With the main generator out, light is provided by halogen spotlights connected to portable generators. The rest of the mountain has emergency lighting powered by built in batteries... Where they hadn't been completely destroyed, anyway. Ring power means that Lantern Stewart and I can see just fine.

“We'll be bringing in a replacement generator at oh six twenty.”

Being at ground zero for an electromagnetic surge of that sort of power turned out to be a bit unhealthy for the main generator. I'm not sure exactly how it generates power, but the consensus among those who do understand it appeared to be that replacing it would be more sensible than letting me reset it to factory settings.

“How exactly are they going to get that in here?”

“The generator was designed to be exactly the maximum size the mountain's zeta tubes can handle. We'll use the temporary generators to power the tubes at this end and bring it through.”

“For a moment there I was wondering if we were going to have to hinge the entire mountain open.”

I look around the cavern. Kaldur and M'gann are talking to Mister J'onzz. No King Orin, but I suppose it would have been very short notice.

!Assist!

I should really talk to Kaldur about that, see how things are going in Atlantis. If Kaldur's still here, he probably hasn't had any sleep at all. I'll see if I can bring myself up to speed and then suggest that he get his head down for a few hours.

Captain Atom's pulling some wrecked electronics from the wall. Teekl's floating just over his shoulder, watching the sparks and flailing wires with interest. Then, she turns and makes eye contact with me before dropping to the floor and starting to walk in my general direction. I mean, she's still a cat. She isn't going to hurry over, is she?

This is probably the furthest she's been from me since I got the ring back. She followed me back to the main cavern, then to my room, then back to the main cavern when I finally gave up on sleep and then part of the way around the mountain checking for damage. She usually doesn't spend that much time with me in a week. I wonder if it's my need that's drawing her to me, or if she's genuinely that compassionate?

Last time I saw them, Wallace and Robin were in the living area, dozing on the settee. They were really quite angry when the League first appeared, but there's only so long you can keep that up when the other party doesn't respond and you are either dog tired or ravenously hungry. Kon's been stewing in his own frustration. I left Diana trying to engage him in conversation, but I'm not sure where he is now. I still think the best thing to do is to keep yourself occupied in a situation like this.

!Make better!

Fretting doesn't help.

!Make better!

Artemis was talking to Black Canary –not sure where they've got to- while Green Arrow hasn't arrived yet. Superman was here, and he and Kon studiously avoided looking at each other until he left to see if he could pick up the Reds' trail.

“Hard at work already? ‘Cause I gotta be honest; you could both use the beauty sleep.”

!!!

I jerk my head to the right, armour forming around me even as I process the voice. Guy Gardner, with a slightly concerned looking Captain Marvel standing just behind him.

“Wohw! Easy there buddy.”

I relax slightly, dropping the armour.

“I was just sayin’ t'Marvel here, hope you're not going to try an’ use this as an excuse to pussy out of training on Saturday.”

“Why, have you finally learned to balance the ball on the end of your nose?”

A flicker of green in the corner of my eye is swiftly followed by a sharp stinging sensation on my left earlobe. I jerk my left hand up to it before my brain catches up. I look down at the green construct hand sticking out of the ground on the end of a thin green thread. It waves, and then makes an obscene gesture at me. I grin. Not only is it not coming out of his ring, but his ring's not even glowing.

“You finally got the hang of it!”

Lantern Stewart looks at it with evident curiosity. “How are you doing that?”

Guess Lantern Tui isn't all that imaginative, either.

“Paul showed me. Ya gotta send a real thin construct under the ground from your foot. When it comes out the other end, just make whatever you want from that, instead of yer ring.”

Lantern Stewart looks confused. “I thought you were training him.”

I shrug. “Well, yeah, but what would we have done for the rest of the afternoon? I think I've nearly undone all the damage Lantern Kilowog did. Just wish I could do something about the smell.”

“Oh, that's it! On Saturday, we're doin’ orbital bombardment practice!”

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Beta Male 2

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23rd September

06:39 GMT -5

“...not because of Superman! I'm just saying, if there's no difference in power consumption we might as well go for the one that affects Kryptonians as well as other targets.”

!Protect!

At the far side of the room, Kaldur's having a private conversation with Batman. The rest of the team are sitting at a table on what was the training circle, and will be again once Lantern Stewart and I have finished repairing it. He and I are standing in front of the main computer screen, discussing internal defences for the revised mountain design. I.. don't think he's appreciating my input.

“How many other Kryptonians do you know of?”

Black Canary's been doing a noble job of containing the team's growing frustration. If I thought it would help I'd have told them to do what I've been doing; keeping busy really helps. If they don't get movement on the Tornado issue, they're just going to keep on getting more irritable.

“Two main groups I know about. Firstly, you've got the Phantom Zone prisoners.”

Green Arrow brings a bowl of some sort of biscuit over, and puts it in front of Wallace. Not a bad idea, usually, but in this situation it might come across as a bit blatant.

”Thanks, but no thanks.”

“Superman's not going to let them out any time soon.”

”Yeah. What we want, are answers. About Red Tornado and his siblings.”

“They're not all serial killers. As I understand it, the Science Council got a bit Phantom Zone happy towards the end. Some of them could be paroled eventually.”

”Exactly.”

“Even so...”

“Then you've got any Kryptonian who happened not to be on Krypton when it was destroyed.”

”Leave the bowl.” Wallace begins inhaling the biscuits.

“There weren't any. They were isolationists.”

“All of them? They had faster than light travel, and every single one decided not to use it?”

He frowns, and turns to look at me sidelong. “Do you know something?”

How do I explain? “I.. might have heard something. About a group of Kryptonian naval personnel who chose not to return to port when the Science Council mandated isolationism came in.”

“Where did you hear that?”

!No!

Um.

“Nowhere I can talk about with a member of the Green Lantern Corps.”

His face relaxes a little. “Have you told Superman about it?”

“I've barely said two words to him since I got here. Besides, wouldn't it be cruel to get his hopes up like that, unless I've got something concrete?”

He puts his right hand to his chin. “I suppose. Wouldn't hurt to look into it.” He nods to himself. “I'll mention it to Tomar-Re. If we could find-.“

“YOU KNEW!”

Stewart and I jerk our heads around as Kon rushes across the room and grabs Kaldur by the vest. Oh dear.

!Team must not fight!

“Excuse me Lantern Stewart.” I start walking toward Kon. Not sure what set him off, but we're all a bit on edge.

“That android and his maniac family nearly killed us all!”

M'gann beats me there. “Conner, what are you doing?”

“Kaldur knew we had a traitor among us AND SAID NOTHING!”

!HelpNoBad!

Oh dear. Transition.

I appear at Kon's shoulder, and put my right hand lightly on his right forearm. “No, he didn't."

Kon turns his head to me in full glare mode. Haven't seen that for a while. “He just told Batman that he knew-!”

“Kon, Red Arrow heard an accusation from Onyx. Onyx is a member of the League of Shadows, and isn't exactly a font of reliable intelligence. He told me, and I, reported her claim to Kaldur.”

“What! Why didn't you tell the rest of us?”

!Unify!

His anger is mixing with confusion and hurt. Oh, please don't take it like that.

“I didn't think it was a credible claim. Enemies don't generally give away their plans mid fight, but, just in case, Kaldur and I checked every team member and everyone checked out fine. No unexplained gaps in their personal history, no irregular financial activity, no drugs and no other physiological alterations.” His grip on Kaldur loosens, and I pull his right hand up to my chest, holding it there with both of mine. “We even got a magic user in to check for unnatural mental influences.”

“When?”

I turn my head to look at Robin. “You remember on Monday evening, when we all went out for burgers?”

He looks down for a moment with a frown. Then his head shoots up. “The blonde guy!”

“His name is John Constantine, and he's an expert on mind magics. He found nothing.”

Kaldur smoothes down his vest, calming himself. “We concluded that there was unlikely to be any truth in Onyx's claim.”

I nod. “And, let's face it; winding Red Arrow up isn't exactly hard.”

Kon's eyes fall from my face. “But why didn't you tell me?”

!Make better!

I don't know what to say. I stand there gormlessly for several seconds before Kaldur rescues me.

“That was my decision. I did not want to risk causing discord within the team without firm evidence. Since we had none, I decided to let the matter drop.”

I nod again. “Neither of us considered the possibility that it might not be a team member. And to be honest, I'm still not convinced the two events were related. Doctor Morrow's never had anything to do with the League of Shadows.”

Neither Robin nor Wallace look happy with that explanation. Artemis seems okay, surprisingly.

“But, they've gotta be.” Wallace voices their doubt.

I shake my head. “Morrow's had it in for Red Tornado for seventy years, ever since Red Tornado first overcame his command overrides. Remember what Mister Twister tried to do? Same technology. Seems to me, he just kept going at it until he finally got through.”

back

Beta Male 3

next

23rd September

06:43 GMT -5

Robin appears to think for a moment. “Wait. If you checked up on us, who checked up on you?”

I wince, and flick my eyes to Kaldur.

“Queen Mera gave Orange Lantern access to the Royal Archives. Every record of my history and actions was at his disposal. Additionally, he persuaded Wonder Woman to grant us use of her lasso.”

I'm told I managed seven or eight mostly coherent answers before being completely intoxicated by the lasso's magic. Kaldur got enough answers to assure himself that I wasn't working for the opposition, -whoever they might be in this context- but all I remember is waking up with a headache. Can't even check the ring's recording, as I took it off in order to prevent it looking like I was using it to dodge the lasso's effect. Just have to hope that if I said anything out-of-context that he wrote it off as part of the intoxication effect.

Magic: it's a hell of a drug.

I step closer to Kon, pulling his whole right forearm forward my chest.

!Kon mine!

“Kon, remember how you felt when M'gann found those telepathic controls in your mind? Do you think I'd have felt any better than you did if I'd had them?”

“... No.”

“Do you think Red Tornado feels any better, being reprogrammed by his.. creator?” Nearly said father, but that's a therapy session for another day.

Kon tilts his head up to look at my face, thoughtful. “I.. guess not...”

!Kon mine!

And then Wallace's finger is under my nose. I pull back slightly, staring at the tip of it. Um?

“What if they were connected? Ra's al Ghul's, like, a thousand year old. What if Morrow's been in cahoots with the Shadows all along?”

Kaldur steps toward him. “Then the attack by the other robots would still have taken us by surprise. Telling you would not have changed what happened.”

Probably true, and- Why is M'gann blushing?

“If you're all finished.”

I give M'gann a puzzled look which she avoids, then turn to face Batman. A moment later I remember to let go of Kon's hand. In the corner of my eye I see Artemis elbow M'gann in the ribs, and M'gann bat her away.

“With Red Tornado.. missing, the team will now be overseen by rotating supervisors. Captain Marvel has volunteered to take the first shift.”

We're being overseen by a ten year old. The ring shows me what it thinks he should look like; short, scrawny, and still in primary school. The League doesn't ‘officially’ know how old he is, and I can't help but wonder exactly how many of them know and pretend not to. Or how much of a difference the Wisdom of Solomon makes to his behaviour. I still remember the Justice Society comic where he started getting close to Stargirl and Jay pretty much called him a paedophile.

The big red cheese himself approaches, stopping next to Batman's right shoulder.

“I'm really looking forward to hanging with you guys.”

My knowledge of the modern American lexicon isn't quite what it could be, but that sounded odd, right? Or am I just projecting my own expectations? From the looks my team mates are giving each other, they seem to think something's off.

Kon crosses his arms. “What are we doing about Red Tornado?”

Batman's eyes narrow slightly. “Red Tornado is a member of the Justice League. That makes him a League responsibility.”

“Well, yeah, but-."

“I have another assignment for this team.”

He gestures with his right arm, and a holographic monitor appears showing the front page of the ‘News of the Planet’. The leading article is entitled ‘Gorilla Trades Bananas for Bullets’, and features a fuzzy photograph of what looks like a large ape carrying a minigun. So, Mallah and Brain, or one of Grod's henchapes. Should be doable without too much difficulty.

The screen shifts to a new -slightly lower brow- newspaper, the Gotham Truth Rag. Most of the front page is covered in a picture of a man named Hamilton Hill, the current mayor of Gotham. His head is bandaged and he has a cast and sling on his right arm.

“Gotham Mayor Attacked by Guerrilla Gorilla.”

Wallace reads the headline aloud, just in case the rest of us have forgotten how to read.

**Red Tornado's being held prisoner by Morrow, and they're trying to distract us with this?**

I think Kon just included myself and M'gann in that.

!Unify!

!Support!

**[shrug] If it needs doing...**

Wallace is less restrained. “Monkeys with machine guns. It's a supermarket tabloid story!”

I roll my eyes. “Really. Apes with guns are a ridiculous impossibility, but a man made of asphalt makes perfect sense?”

“Ahh...”

“I've checked the sources. I've studied the patterns. Mayor Hill's encounter is only the latest in a series of incidents. Aqualad-" He turns to Kaldur. “-you and your team will depart for India and check this out.”

I remember nothing at all about DC India. Wait, Gorillas aren't native to India, are they? Kaldur nods, and the team begins to head off toward the bioship.

Oh, hang on.

“Ring, state remaining charge.”

”Thirty seven percent remaining.”

Ahh. That's what I get for repairing everything I could see last night. And I've got another five hours until I can recharge. Flight to India should take about that... Don't really want to hang around here then catch them up later...

Kaldur stops and turns back to face me. “Do you need to recharge?”

!Need team!

“Can't. My personal lantern's capacitors won't be fully charged for another five hours.”

“If.. you are unable to participate..?”

“No, no, I'll bring it with us. Go on, I'll catch up with you.”

He nods, and then follows the others toward the exit.

back

Beta Male 4

next

23rd September

06:47 GMT -5

I transition to my room. My decision to occupy a remote part of the base appears to have paid off. There was some water on the floor when I stumbled in here last night, but aside from the fact that the lights were on emergency power nothing else had been affected. Now, you couldn't tell that anything was ever wrong.

Ring, door.

I originally reinforced the door because I liked the way the fortified version looks. Of course, when main power was down the door mechanism was out and I had to use the ring to get in. Okay, press the button, no point closing the door if I'm just popping in.

!Improve!

Maybe I should put a narrow tube through the wall so I can transition in directly? No, I shouldn't compromise the structural integrity. I'm also giving serious thought to altering the air supply. Deep underground, air quality and heat build up are serious concerns. The few hours our power was out didn't make any difference, but we make quite a lot of use of air conditioning and purification systems. Should I build an isolated system for myself? Or my team mates? Doesn't having a centralised system add vulnerability? I'll ask Lantern Stewart later.

Right. Lantern. It's still in the presentation box I got from Alan. I pick up the box and put it under my right arm.

“Ring, time until first recharge?”

"Five hours and thirty seven minutes remaining until a new ring charge is available.”

Ugh. I asked Alan, and he said that he honestly couldn't ever remember running out of recharges. Out of ring power, sure, but he never had the lantern conk out on him. But it wasn't as if he could give me precise usage figures. The most he could clearly remember recharging it was twice in one day, which it can still do. Was it still connected to the Green Central Power Battery? I had been assuming that if it was connected then the Guardians would have sent someone -probably Abin Sur- to pick it up. Did I make it work worse by realigning it? Something else to ask the Controllers when I meet them.

I walk back out of my room, press the button to close the door, lock it and then transition back to the training area. The team's already left -can't see Captain Marvel either- and Batman, Black Canary and Green Arrow are clustered together for a chat. Lantern Stewart is still working on the plans, a glowing green model of some sort of vault door floating next to him. It's being projected directly from his ring, I notice. He looks up when I appear, and his eyes fix on the box.

“Is it in there?”

I walk over. “Yes.”

“Mind showing me?”

!MY LANTERN!

I grip the box a little tighter. “Why?”

He makes a slight shrug. “Haven't seen one that wasn't green before.”

!Mine!

I don't... I‘m not sure why I'm so reluctant. He isn't going to just grab it off me or anything.

Is he?

No, not with the others here. And not without quoting a lot of Guardian legal mumbo jumbo first. This is fine. I project a table from a filament connected to my hip and put the box down on it. Rotate the circle of the sigil on the top surface, and that panel moves out slightly. I pick it up and set it aside, before reaching in and taking hold of the handles on its right side to pull out the dull lantern itself. I hadn't thought about it until the ring told me about the two-charge-capacity thing, but the lantern's illumination depends on how many charges it has stored. At the moment it looks more gray than orange, weak lines of colour running along its surfaces. The focal point at the front -the ‘eye’ I suppose- is particularly depressing. Rather than the brilliant orange glare I had rather become accustomed to, it's doing a bit of an orange lava lamp impression. At least the structure of the thing doesn't look so much like a carriage lamp anymore.

“Why don't you just stick it in subspace?”

“It's not connected to the Orange Central Power Battery. If I subspace it, it destabilises.”

“Jordan's lantern didn't look that drained after six Lanterns recharged their rings from it.”

!My lantern!

I put the lantern back in the box. “Again, that's because it's not connected to the Central Power Battery. What did you think the Central Power Battery did, anyway?”

He frowns slightly. “I thought that it was where our power came from, and that our personal lanterns just acted as relays.”

“Then how do you explain Alan Scott? Or me, because I assure you, if Larfleeze knew I was here? He'd have sent someone to have a look by now.”

!Irrelevant!

!Team!

The rest of the team are probably waiting for me. I put the box back under my arm. “If you want a better explanation, ask your ring. In fact, if you haven't done so already, you should probably get a full explanation of how rings function from your database.”

“Is that how you learned to do that thing you showed Gardner?”

“No, I got that from a fan website. You should read those, too. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm required in India.”

One transition later and I'm looking at the side of the bioship. Down below I can see Diana talking to Guy. I cringe slightly. Guy had made certain observations in my presence about his appreciation for her preferred mode of dress, and I'm a little concerned that he's about to be put back into a coma. Oh well, it'd be his own silly fault.

“You can't come. You're a cat.”

Kon walks out the back of the bioship, holding Teekl by the scruff of the neck. He puts her down. She takes a couple of steps away with her tail raised, then turns and sits down facing him.

“You'd probably just get captured again.”

Teekl looks over to me. “Mrrrp?”

Kon follows her gaze. “Paul, tell her she can't come.”

!Teekl!

Um... “Has Kaldur said anything about it?”

Teekl floats upward until she's level with Kon's face then thrusts her head forward, sniffing at him.

He moves his head back slightly. “No.”

“Then I've got to be honest, Kon: I wouldn't mind having her along. Being able to see through her eyes is pretty useful. Plus, she's immortal.”

Teekl puts her right forepaw on Kon's nose. He stands his ground. “But I told the sphere it had to stay here.”

“The sphere doesn't have any weapons and can't fly. And I don't think either of us understand what it says well enough to get useful intelligence reports.”

“What weapons does Teekl have?”

I wince inwardly as Teekl rotates her head slightly to the side. Kon, you had to say it.

“Ow!”

back

Beta Male 5

next

23rd September

06:52 GMT -4

I follow Teekl and Kon into the bioship, Kon touching his face where Teekl clawed him to see whether or not she's drawn blood. I don't think she has. I didn't even know that Teekl could hurt someone as tough as Kon. I had sort of assumed that the reason I have trouble fighting him is because I like him so much, but it's interesting to have confirmation.

"Stupid cat.”

Kon plonks himself down in the rear left chair while Teekl flies up to... Captain Marvel?

“Hey kitty.” He rubs her head, and she closes her eyes in pleasure.

“Captain. I hadn't realized that you were going to be accompanying us.”

I try to make eye contact with someone who can give me a clue as to what's going on. Stupid seats facing away from the entrance... Mister.. no, Master Batson gives me a big smile.

“Oh yeah! I wanted to see how the team works, y'know, in the field.”

Maybe Solomon's Wisdom only works when babies are getting cut in half? The rear door oozes closed behind me. Still haven't really got used to the noise this ship makes. Artemis appears to have decided to try my quiver, and is fiddling with the arrow release mechanism. Robin and Wallace are looking at Robin's computer, presumably reading the full mission briefing. Kaldur's looking pensive. M'gann's taken up position in the pilot seat.

!Wellbeing!

Wait. She and Kaldur were awake when I slouched off to sleep last night, and were still around when I got up. M'gann raises her hands over the control panels. I focus my mind on her.

**M'gann, one moment. Did you get any sleep last night?**

**Uh. No. I mean, with everything that was happening... Why?**

I expand the communication to Kaldur. **Aqualad, everyone on the team except me is running on very little sleep. I think it might be worth having me fly us to India while everyone else tries to get some rest in.**

**You have a concussion!**

**Had, Miss Martian. Not only did the ring repair my injuries, but according to Lantern Gardner a Human wearing a power ring can go without sleep for about two weeks without any detrimental effect. Martian concentration suffers as much as Human.**

**It would be better for every member of the team to be at their best when we arrive. Very well, Orange Lantern will fly us to our destination.**

**[Mildly reproachful affront.]**

I think that last bit was just sent to me. M'gann rises from the pilot's position and takes a seat on the right side of the ship. I walk around to the right past her as I head to the pilot seat.

**[!Mine!

!Protect!

!Nurture!

!Exalt!

Friendly concern

!Mine!]**

M'gann gives me a puzzled look as I take my seat. Did I send that wrongly? Oh well, I'm sure she'll tell me later if I did. I put the box containing my lantern down by my right leg and hold out my arms to the control nodes. First, I allow the ship's senses to connect to my mind. The ship has gravity sensors, broad electromagnetic spectrum detection and radar sensitive enough to let me ‘see’ patterns of air pressure. Learning to connect to the ship's mind is essential to pilot the ship, that and appreciating that the ship is a living creature and needs a degree of.. compassion? Collegiality? It's sort of a cross between a simple AI and a horse, I suppose. The ship seemed to start ‘liking’ me after I healed it following our first fight with Klarion, and we've been on the same wavelength ever since. Connecting to the ship lets me know that local airspace is clear enough for us to launch. Second step, camouflage mode. Third step...

Ring, doors.

Compliance.

The large external doors slide open.

!Improve!

Have to see if we can get one of those optoelectronic camouflage systems for the external facing during the revisions. I hadn't bothered before because I still don't regard keeping this place secret as a realistic possibility. But I really don't want to go through another home invasion. Or a tourist swimming around the bay at an inopportune moment.

Ring, access full mission brief.

Batman's notes appear in my mind, and I use the destination to plot our flight path even as I coax the bioship smoothly into the air and into the general direction of the North Pole and the upper atmosphere. Depending on how things go, we're looking at about five hours and fifteen minutes of flying.

“What's in the box, Oh El?”

“Hm? Oh. My personal lantern.”

I take a look at the rest of the mission brief. Looks like we're heading to... Oh dear. The facility is licensed as a biotech research facility. Not sure how they got authorisation to build something like that in the Valmiki National Park... I honestly just thought that, didn't I? Okay, so a fairly hefty payment to someone..? Huh, the payment was actually more or less above board. Exclusive use of a good chunk of the national park in exchange for quite a lot of money for schools and health centres. And some bribes, but on a contract that size in that part of India it isn't anything obscene. Alright, so, fair enough, but where did the money..?

Oh dear.

“Can we have a look?”

Huh? “At what?”

“The lantern.”

“It's really not that interesting.”

“I think it's pretty interesting. Everyone else think it's interesting?”

I return my attention to the cabin and see that everyone is looking at me, nodding. Except Teekl, who has taken position on Batson's cape-side shoulder. Ugh. I float the box up, open it and extract my lantern.

“Here.”

Artemis doesn't look impressed. “I thought it'd be brighter.”

“It's still recharging. Once it reaches maximum power -which probably won't be until Sunday now- it gets fairly bright.”

Wallace gets up to have a closer look.

Robin looks a little uncomfortable. “Is that safe?”

“Should be. If you're worried, don't touch it or stare at the core.”

“Okay.”

“And if the voices come back, just let me know and I'll hit you over the head with the banishment hammer.”

Wallace breathes in sharply, and takes a hurried step backward. I catch Artemis’ eye and we do a simultaneous snort-laugh.

He relaxes again. “Oh, hah hah. But seriously, that can't happen, right?”

“The Ophidian communicated to me exactly once, when I spoke the oath in front of the Lantern. It didn't say anything, and all I got was a general impression of where it was. I've spent a great deal of time around my lantern since A-."

No, wait, I know that Wallace knows who Alan is, but I shouldn't compromise his identity to the rest.

“Since my predecessor gave it to me. No serious ill effects that I've noticed.”

M'gann looks curious. “What's the Ophidian?”

“The Embodiment of Avarice. Giant snake elemental thing made of orange light. Very dangerous.”

Wallace squints with his right eye. “And.. it.. talks to you every time you say the oath?"

“Maybe. I haven't wanted to... Oh, no, I don't usually say the oath to recharge.”

“Well, what do you normally say?”

I set the bioship to follow the course and then stand, right arm extended with my right hand under the lantern. My team mates -and Captain Marvel- lean forward to get a better look. I hold my left back, take a deep breath, and bring the ring forward with great solemnity to tap it against the core.

“Recharge.”

They sag.

back

Beta Male 6

next

23rd September

07:11 GMT -5

Ordinarily the bioship is not a quiet environment. We might discuss the briefing materials, share information and ideas, or just talk about any old thing to relieve tension. Today, I don't know if it's last night's attack or the presence of Master Batson, but once everyone realised that my lantern isn't all that interesting the chatter pretty much dropped off. M'gann hasn't, but she is doing a Martian relaxation meditation thing that can probably sub in for it.

I asked the ship to make a seat for Captain Marvel at the front, and he's sitting there staring out the front window with every sign of being completely enthralled. We're flying over southern Canada at the moment, but at this height you can't really see any detail. I'm trying to remember what I was like at ten years old, and I'm drawing a blank. I would have been in class eight, wouldn't I? With Mister Ford? To be honest I'm having trouble remembering the names of most of my primary school teachers.

And shouldn't he be in school today? And the others? Or is this American half term? I don't really see the point of M'gann or Kon going to school if they don't want to and I realise this mission is more urgent, but if they're going to go, shouldn't they.. go? Two days off to go to prison, and now this? Robin could probably do that GED thing and then go to some sort of business school if he wanted to join Wayne Industries at management level, but Wallace really can't afford to bunk off like this. Is this worth mentioning to Batman?

!Support goal!

It probably is. I'll send him a message when I submit my mission report.

Kaldur rises from his seat and walks over to me. I request that the ship generate him another and it bubbles up from the floor facing me. He sits. “Have you had a chance to read the briefing papers?”

I nod. “Yes. Well, I've had the ring tell me what's on them. Same difference.”

“Then you are aware of who owns the facility.”

I grimace for a moment. “Yeah. Thing is, the site is being rented completely legally, and if Hamilton Hill wandered over the boundary by mistake or just decided to ignore it, they haven't necessarily done anything illegal.”

“It would hardly be the first time a LexCorp subsidiary was involved in criminal wrongdoing.”

“Sure, if it were just a subsidiary. But I took a look at the corporate structure, and it isn't. Valmiki Biotech is owned by Alexander Luthor personally. That's... Weird. More weird than a Gorilla with a machine gun on the wrong continent to be honest with you.”

“He paid for it himself?”

“Nearly all of it, out of his own pocket.”

“Do you think it could be something he doesn't want to show up in company reports?”

I think for a moment. “No. If that was all it was he could find some other way to hide it. By owning it like this, anything we find is directly connected to him. That's a huge risk, and I just... It doesn't make sense! He knows the League's after him, and having an ape gun down the Mayor of Gotham is... Stupid. And Lex Luthor is not stupid.”

Kaldur looks down for a moment. “You do not think he might merely have become overconfident?”

It's not impossible... But I shake my head. “If that was likely to happen, it would have happened already.”

He nods. “You are most likely correct.”

“It's still worth investigating. Something's going on. We might have to actually be stealthy this time, though.”

He says nothing for a moment, and I take a look around. Artemis appears to be doing the sensible thing, equipment on the floor, leaning back into her chair with her eyes closed. Kon's staring at Teekl, who has abandoned Marvel to curl up on the floor against his leg. Robin's reading something on his personal computer while Wallace just looks bored.

“I have been meaning to ask: how are you coping with yesterday's events?”

“Oh, trying to stay busy. I wasn't the one stuck in a cage of fire.”

He shakes his head slightly. “Your injuries were more severe. I was concerned when you ran from the room after the Justice League arrived.”

“I had to get the ring back.” I draw my hands away from the interface and tap the ring with my right index finger. “No good to anyone without it. And I'm fine, now. Plus, I pretty much fixed the whole underbelly of the base after the Red Bonfire robot wrecked it.”

“I suppose. But that is not why I asked. How do you feel?”

“Getting your arse kicked is supposed to feel bad. Most productive thing I can do is work out how to stop it happening again. Spent the morning going over the design schematics with Lantern Stewart. I mean, it's supposed to be easy to be wise after the fact, so we'd look pretty silly if we didn't make it impossible for anyone else to do what the robots did.”

“I look forwards to seeing the outcome of your work.”

!Nurture!

“Kaldur, were you awake all night as well?”

“I am responsible for the team. I could hardly leave to take a nap while the League was on site.”

“Alright, but we've got... four hours and forty minutes before you need to do anything. You might want to think about it.”

“Thank you for your concern, but I will be fine.” He stands.

“Apropos of nothing, I can synthesise a tranquiliser that affects Atlanteans, you know.”

“That.. will not be necessary.”

“Alright.”

He walks back to his seat, and I tell the ship to reabsorb the one he just vacated. As he sits down, my communicator beeps. Odd. I tap the earpiece, and hear Artemis’ voice.

“Hey, I was wondering. Were you serious, when you said you could give people super powers?”

Looking over to her I can't even see her lips moving. If I'd been asked, I'd have said that she were most likely asleep. I try to respond in kind.

“Yes, completely. I haven't tried either formula on a baseline Human yet, but I can't see any reason why they wouldn't work. Interested?”

“Maybe. Fighting those robots would have been a lot easier if I was strong enough to punch them in half.”

!Enhance!

“Well, um, I'll give you whatever information you need to make a decision. I'll need your mother to sign something before I do it, of course.”

“What's the downside?”

“You'd be barred from most professional sports. I don't know if you were planning to use your archery skills competitively? You might have trouble using a normal bow in combat.”

“I thought you didn't like the pointy stick launcher.”

!Exalt!

“The Chinese superfunctionary Celestial Archer can put a pointy stick through a main battle tank with his bent stick. That's the sort of thing you could aim for. If you went for strength, we might be able to get someone on Themyscira to make one that you could use at that level of strength. If you're serious about this, I can start making enquiries.”

“I'm not... I'll think about it.”

back

Beta Male 7

next

23rd September

21:34 GMT +5:30

“We are now arriving at Valmiki National Park. Valmiki National Park, our final destination. All change please.”

Still in stealth mode, I bring the bioship in low over the trees. Kaldur's looking at a holographic map of the local topography for a good landing site. He wants to scout the perimeter on foot before we head to the main facility.

“Snrrkhuh. Ah!”

Wallace jerks awake and wipes the drool from his mouth as I direct the bioship to return his seat to the upright position. Robin smirks at him, then goes back to rereading the map on his arm computer. Everyone except Batson and I managed to sleep away part of the journey. Well, and Teekl too I suppose. Does she still sleep?

“Here.” Kaldur expands an area of the map and points to a small clearing.

“Right oh.” I accelerate the ship in the direction indicated. “Twenty seconds to landing zone.”

“Artemis. Robin.”

At Kaldur's direction they rise from their seats and walk to the back of the ship, attaching those bungee cord things to their belts. Since they are the sneakiest members of the team it really does make most sense for them to go down first.

!Protect!

They are a bit squishy, though. Particularly if Mallah is hanging around with a machine gun. But, can't really give them armour without ruining the whole stealth thing. A quick scan shows them both to be in perfect health. Hmm.

Ring, scan indicated drop point.

Compliance.

No, not a fat lot there. Various plants, none of them poisonous. My Dad would probably have loved this, actually. Maybe not in the dark, I suppose, but this would really be his thing during the day. I wonder how different the ‘normal’ plants on this world are to how they were back home? Purely academic interest, as aside from that time I went a bit overboard growing cress when I was at Secondary School I've never been one for plants. No large animals around, and no man made devices. I bring the ship directly over the drop zone and halt it there.

“Opening rear door now.”

The slime sound again, and from the outside I hear the noise of moving air. The smell of forest and the feel of the slightly higher humidity and temperature follow a moment later. There's little wind, and I can hear the sound of insects and... birds, I think? Or maybe Monkeys? Through the ship's senses I see Robin and Artemis hit the ground and ready weapons before doing a quick sweep of the jungle. A moment later Robin double taps his comm to signal all clear and I bring the ship down.

The rest of the team rise and walk toward the rear door, Captain Marvel leading the way. Wallace brings up the rear and takes a moment to stretch himself. Teekl sits on the ground behind them and cocks her head to the side, listening to the strange new sounds. I wonder if she's ever been to a proper forest before?

I'm walking softly through the great forest as strange things flap overhead. My witch-sight lets me see in the pitch black of the canopy, but I am far from the largest hunter here and I am a long way from safe-home.

Teekl turns her head to fix me with her eyes as I blink heavily. She hasn't shown me many memories since becoming a construct, and most of them have been of the farm on which she was born and grew up. I think she likes having a bit of stability with regard to her place of residence. Klarion seems to have been jumping all over the place. No sightings of him since the fight at Fate's tower.

My team mates step out. Kon still takes some sort of odd pleasure in hard landings, and M'gann floats out after him. Wallace and Kaldur walk out once the ship reaches ground level.

“Thank you ship. We'll be back in a bit. Keep your camouflage up and don't go anywhere.”

The bioship doesn't exactly respond, but I sort of feel a sort of sense of... acknowledgement? M'gann probably gets more precise feedback. I withdraw my hands and rise to my feet.

“Come along then Teekl. Best foot forward.”

"Foot?"

She floats up into the air and heads out of the ship. Hah. I pick my lantern up in my right hand and head out into the dark. The others have already switched their uniforms into their stealth colorations. Odd, in a way; my uniform is the most stealth friendly by default, but the orange glow makes complete stealth impossible. At present, the sigils are glowing weakly but otherwise my environmental shield isn't glowing at all.

!Danger!

Sort that out quick enough. There, strong enough to take a rocket propelled grenade without flinching, not so bright as to broadcast our location. I doubt that much will happen between now and the... eighteen? Eighteen minutes until I can recharge and it's not as if... thirty five percent charge with a power ring isn't exactly bad.

“...Lantern is low on power, he will remain here with the ship and monitor the environment for hidden threats. Everyone else, pair off. Kid Flash, you and Robin take the western approach. Superboy, you and Miss Martian approach from the north-east. Artemis and I will come up from the south.”

I approach from the rear of the arc of my team as Kaldur hands out assignments. Wallace and Robin high five each other when they are assigned to work together. Having me stay back and observe is one of my standard roles, the other being hanging around Kaldur so that he can keep track of everything.

“Remember: we are here to gather information, and ideally should remain unseen. If you are unable to approach the complex without being spotted, pull back and wait for orders. Any questions?”

Wallace waves his left hand in the air. “So, what'd’you think Luthor's doing in there, anyway?”

Kaldur thinks for a moment. “We do not know for certain that anything untoward is happening at all. The injuries that have been reported could simply be the actions of an overly enthusiastic security detail.”

“Pff, yeah. But seriously. Killer robots? Hallucinogenic gas? Bioweapons?”

I decide to step in. “Pointless, he's already got it, too risky for too little reward.”

He turns his head to look at me. “Come on, Oh El. A secret base in the middle of a jungle-"

“A national park, and the research centre is public knowledge.”

“-full of creepy scientists-"

I spread my hands apart and create an image of the main building. “Looks like two scientists, at the moment.”

“-and all of it funded by Lex Luthor!”

“You know he's never been convicted of anything, right?”

He crosses his arms at me for ruining his fun. “So you saved him from a missile attack, and suddenly you're best friends.”

“No, but he's not going to do something supervillainy where it would obviously be traced back to him. And if you damage anything on camera, he will come after you for compensation.”

Captain Marvel raises a hand. “Where do you want me?”

“Since we have not trained with you, and since your uniform lacks a stealth mode, I think it would be best if you remained here with Orange Lantern. We will contact you when we reach the facility. Miss Martian, please establish the telepathic link.”

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Beta Male 8

next

23rd September

21:39 GMT +5:30

I wave my right hand and establish the monitors as the others disappear into the bushes. The monitor can ‘see’ through solid objects, so keeping track of them even in quite dense foliage presents no difficulty. Scanning the whole forest doesn't bear thinking about. I mean, I'd try, but the fact is that keeping track of every potential source of danger in an area this size isn't something I could do for any length of time. I've told the ring to draw my attention to anything that represents an immediate threat.

“Um, do you know why they didn't want me along?”

Captain Marvel looks a little dejected.

“I wouldn't take it personally, sir. Takes a little while to gel with a new group. Wasn't exactly Mister Popular myself when I turned up at the mountain unannounced.”

Thank you Batman. I've still got no idea why he didn't just tell them that there'd be a couple of extra members joining. Kon was fine with me after we went through that ridiculous telepathic hallucination courtesy of a G-Gnome, but I don't think Robin or Wallace fully accepted me until Santa Prisca. M'gann says that my ring generated telepathic baffles are now good enough that a G-Gnome shouldn't be able to do that again. I'm just glad that Kon didn't tell anyone about me trying to put an axe construct through the Joker's face.

Through Napier's face. Don't mythologise.

“You don't have to call me ‘sir’, you know.”

“As a League member, you outrank me. Teekl, could you...”

Oh, she's wandered off. I close my eyes and focus for a moment. She's not far away.

Teekl, stay alert. Warn me if anything approaches.

I feel the amused contempt of her reply, but she keeps feeding me a little of what she's experiencing.

“Oh! Don't worry about that. You can call me by my name if you want.”

My team mates appear to be making reasonable progress. I bring up an area map with our objective near the centre.

“Thank you William. My name's on file, feel free to use it.” I turn from the monitors to look directly at him. “I can't say it mys-.”

Captain Marvel's face is completely still, his mouth slightly open and eyes wide in surprise. Maybe I shouldn't have said that, but I've got as far as I can researching Black Adam and it's William's input I need now.

“Ah, my name's not ‘William’, it's 'Captain Marvel'.”

I guess Solomon wasn't much of an actor. “I can call you that if you want, but-"

Anyone or anything around? No? Good.

“-your name is William Frederick Batson.”

He opens his mouth and closes it a couple of times. “Is not.”

Ah, why not? “Is too.”

He turns to the side, and does the worst impression of someone trying to look nonchalant I've ever seen.

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Your transformation doesn't change your genetic structure. Plus, your Captain Marvel form is basically a slightly more muscular version of your father. If it's any consolation, I know pretty much everybody's secret identity. Hard to keep secrets from a power ring.”

He turns back to me, looking as if I just caught him creeping in after curfew. He's slightly hunched, a noticeable contrast to his usual chest thrust out pose.

“You haven't told anyone, have you?”

“No, and I don't intend to. Most League members choose to keep their identities secret from each other. Really, it was quite impolite of me to pry, so, sorry about that.”

He recovers a little as the prospect of being found out by the adults retreats. Haven't really investigated his background, though I know a sixty five year old man by the name of Dudley Dudley is his legal guardian. I can only assume that the man had shockingly unimaginative parents.

“It's okay. So... how's the mission going?”

I expand the screens and spin them around to face him. “Aqualad and Artemis are heading up the river. Making reasonable time.” I rotate to the next screen. “Superboy and Miss Martian are going over the grasslands, and Robin and Kid Flash are heading through the denser woodlands. Assuming they maintain their present pace, they should get to the research facility just before my lantern finishes charging.”

“Does it look like they'll need any help from me?”

“Couldn't say. I don't see any immediate threats. Um, listen, I wanted to ask you something.”

“What is it?”

“What do you know about Black Adam's history?”

He thinks for a moment. “Black Adam? He used to have my job, until he turned evil and took over Kahndaq. Then, his gods-.“

“Can we assume that I know of the existence of the wizard Shazam?”

He's less shocked, but still surprised. “How do you know about him?”

“Research. I went to Black Adam's tomb. The hieroglyphs aren't flattering.”

Don't think I'll tell him that I've already read one version of events. Black Adam obviously had some loyal followers at that point, and the surviving images made it clear that they hated Shazam for what he did to their hero.

“Well, okay. About five thousand years ago the wizard found a man he thought was virtuous enough to use the power of Kahndaq's gods for good. He gave him the stamina of Shu, the strength of Hershef, the power of Amon, the wisdom of Zehuti, the speed of Anpu and the courage of Menthu. Basically the same powers as I've got, but from different sources. But then rather than use them for good he used them to kill his pharaoh and take over the country, so the wizard took them away again.” He shrugs. “I don't know how he's still alive now, but all he seems to want to do is fight people. Me, usually.”

“May I ask where you heard that version?”

“From the wizard.” He frowns. “Wait. What do you mean, that version?”

“Have you checked it against other sources? I mean, I don't believe that people just ‘turn evil’.”

His frown deepens slightly, and then the boy is gone and the man returns. “Do you know something? Black Adam isn't someone you should play around with.”

I push the screens to one side. “When I scan you, the ring detects you as you naturally are.”

I create a model of William Batson in his standard apparel. I leave it a moment before waving it away.

“About a month ago I scanned Black Adam -from a very safe distance, I should add- and I saw this.”

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Beta Male 9

next

23rd September

21:44 GMT +5:30

The glowing orange figure of Theodore Adam sneers at us. He's wearing jeans and a short sleeved shirt, though that's an addition of mine based on the pictures I saw of the dig at which Clarence and Marilyn Batson were killed and he was ‘abducted by bandits, but managed to escape’. Officially, he's in the clear, as he was very definitely injured and some distance away from the dig site when the other members of the dig crew caught up with him. The ring can calculate his ‘correct’ appearance despite his magic induced change, but it's got no idea what he'd be wearing if he changed back.

“Now, if we add a little muscle...”

The Theodore Adam image swells. The chest expands, arms and legs grow and neck broadens. Pointy ears aside, the likeness is obvious. I look to Captain Marvel with my eyebrows raised as he continues to stare at the projection.

“Black.. Adam…”

“I always thought his skin was a bit pale for a Kahndaqi. Particularly one from his era.”

“That's Theodore Adam. He was on the dig with my parents when-." His eyes dip for a moment. “It was him. It wasn't thieves..!”

“Probably not, but we should check before-."

“Did..! Do you think the wizard knew about this?!”

His fists are balled, his muscles pulled tight. I think I should have planned this better. I wiggle my right index finger and the image of Mister Adam dissipates and the screens zip back in front of me.

“I've got no idea. He might, but I don't see what he would gain by keeping it from you. Not like it hurts him to give you more reason to want to beat Black Adam.”

A quick look shows that nothing much has changed with my team mates. Kaldur's moving down a slope at the side of a short waterfall while Artemis stands watch at the top, arrow on string. M'gann-.

**We've found the place where Mayor Hill was attacked.**

I increase magnification. Though any footprints would have long since been eroded by wind, monsoon rain, and the movements of other animals I can see bullet casings and dropped equipment. Which makes even less sense. If this was a Lex Luthor job, he would never have left physical evidence on site. Or survivors. I can only assume someone's either being very stupid, or panicked.

Kon bends down to pick up a slouch hat. It has several bullet holes. **Definitely a struggle here. Don't know if their attacker was a Monkey though.**

Aqualad pauses at the bottom of the slope, water bearers drawn as Artemis follows him down. We still haven't got the water armour to a stage where either of us would be comfortable taking it on a mission.

**Survey the area, and then proceed to the objective.”

M'gann's shapeshifting clothing makes carrying extra equipment rather difficult, but Kon's followed my lead in keeping a few useful bits and pieces on him. He pulls out a small camera to start recording, but then stops and straightens up.

**M'gann, do you hear something?**

Huh?

Ring, what exactly-?

Ah, heck.

**Superboy, Miss Martian, two elephants heading your way. I'm reading thickened skin, augmented physique and flesh tears. It looks like someone's dosed them up on Venom Buster.**

I'm downplaying it. I didn't think that Venom Buster had existed for all that long, and yet the male Elephant has significantly altered tusks, with a second prong coming off about half way along. I sort of understand the whole thing becoming bigger, but shouldn't an additional structure have to grow from scratch? And aren't tusks basically teeth? That makes no sense. What makes even less sense is that both elephants have spines growing through their skin. Mister Flinders didn't show any significant dental anomalies or spine growth. Maybe the elephants are allergic or something? And I didn't think female elephants had tusks.

**Doesn't look so good for your buddy Luthor now, does it Oh El?**

**Well, we are trespassing.**

**Testing drugs on an endangered species?**

**I wouldn't want to try poaching something like that.** Ah, that's interesting. **Superboy, Miss Martian, be advised that the Elephants are wearing some sort of electronic collar. I can't tell exactly what it's doing, but-.**

Kon crouches as the first Elephant -the male- crashes its way through the trees at the edge of the forest. Seeing it there with Kon gives me a much better idea of size; it's grown a lot since getting injected. Is it..? Yes, roughly in proportion to Mister Flinders' own growth. Kon leaps directly at its head, swinging his fist directly at its forehead before pushing off with both legs. Oh dear. Kon is a great deal stronger than Mister Flinders now, and if he isn't careful he could end up making Asian Elephants even more endangered. The Elephant staggers back a couple of paces, then recovers enough to grab Kon's leg with its trunk and swings him into a tree, which splinters on impact. The female Elephant chooses that moment to emerge from the woodland as well. M'gann takes to the air and presumably goes invisible as the female Elephant slows from lumbering charge to a trot, swinging her head from side to side as she searches for her target.

This is pretty out of character behaviour for Elephants.

**Miss Martian, do you require assistance?**

Kon pushes the fallen tree away and gets back to his feet. **We're fine, Aqualad.**

The male Elephant sees him and accelerates, trying to trample him. The female is still on the lookout for M'gann, who is now directly above her, just behind her head.

**Aqualad, I'm in position to destroy the collar.**

**Do it.**

She raises her arms. The collar buckles and shatters and its wearer stumbles to a halt. Right, that seems under control, what's happening with-.

!Kon!

No, I should keep watching the fight in progress. They might need my help. The male Elephant catches up with Kon and brings its right foreleg down hard. He catches it at the foot, and braces himself as the Elephant trumpets and leans forward, bringing as much weight to bear as it can. Kon strains, bending slightly, then turns and shoves the upper part of the Elephant's leg sideways. Already overextended, the Elephant falls to the side with a trumpeted cry of distress. Kon's on it as soon as it crashes down, sticking a hand through the material of the collar and tearing it off before jumping back. The male Elephant jerks and shakes his head for a moment, before rolling upright and climbing back onto his feet.

The Elephants look around, then at each other. Then they both turn and walk away. Kon watches them go.

**The collars are gone, and so are the Elephants. Guess they must have been controlling them somehow.**

Good good. Now, what's happening with-.

**Kaldur, watch out!**

A Venom Buster enhanced Crocodile explodes from the water next to Kaldur, its jaws wide!

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Beta Male 10

next

23rd September

21:48 GMT +5:30

Kaldur reacts instantly, catching the jaws and straining to keep them apart! The sheer strength of the Crocodile pushes him back away from the water as Artemis draws her bow.

Ring, any other Croc-?

Oh, poo.

**Artemis, another behind you! Move away-!**

She's already in motion as the second Crocodile erupts from the water straight up into the air. Even as it snaps at her she's lunging forward, twisting as she falls to land on her back and bring her bow to bear. As the Crocodile shoots upward she sights and looses, the explosive arrow hitting the monster of a reptile in the neck.

**Aqualad, it'll be easier to hold its jaws shut than keep them open.**

**If I were not... Between them... I would certainly.. heed.. your.. advice.**

Oh. Yeah.

Kaldur strains as the Crocodile tries to push forward. It's far more massive than he is but it doesn't look as though it's able to bring that force to bear efficiently in a straight up pushing contest.

**Do you want my help?**

I'd actually forgotten that Captain Marvel was there.

**Nah, we got this.**

Artemis rises to a crouch, aims, draws and looses at the first Crocodile. If she could hit the second Crocodile in the air while on her back a stationary target certainly presents no challenge. The blast breaks the collar and.. it's still attacking? Of course it's still attacking, it's a predator grappling with something mouth sized.

Ring, time to recharge?

Six minutes remaining.

Current power level?

Thirty four percent power remaining.

**Looks like we got giant Vultures to go with the Elephants! Still think Luthor's not up to something?**

**How many Vultures?**

**Three. No, four!**

!Must help team must help team!

I try and split my attention between the two screens. Robin and Wallace are running through the forest, pursued by four truly huge birds.

**I can be there in half a second.**

**Trying to work here, Oh El.**

**Artemis?**

**We got this!**

She sprints to just behind Kaldur and looses another arrow directly into the Crocodile's open throat. I see a plume of some sort of gas, and the shock spurs it into more aggressive action. It yanks its head violently from left to right, pulling Kaldur off the ground and flinging him aside. Before he can rise it charges forward again, only to be met by another gas arrow which strikes it directly between the eyes. It roars in confusion and then turns violently around, narrowly missing a rapidly retreating Artemis with its tail. It then scuttles forward, back into the water. Kaldur recovers his water bearers from where he dropped them when it first attacked and watches the water to make sure that it's gone.

**The Crocodiles have retreated. Robin, Kid Flash, status report.**

I watch on the monitor as Wallace dashes up a tree and then somehow spin dashes Sonic the Hedgehog style off the top to knock a Vulture out of the sky. I open another screen on Robin as he ducks under a thick root, forcing the Vulture that was swooping down on him to evade.

**We can manage!**

!Bad match up!

**Aqualad, they can't strike back effectively. I can get there, shoot the collars and get back without any trouble.**

A Vulture makes another dive at Robin, who jumps at the tree trunk, pushes off into a back flip and strikes the bird in the neck as it passes. A moment later a small detonation removes the collar.

**We can manage!**

Shadows moving through the trees. Furry-men! Surrounded! Run!

Teekl? Ring, apart from the Vultures, anything Venom Bustered up near my team mates?

No threats in requested category detected.

Oh, no. I'm not doing another poisoned lipstick. Ring, any advanced weapons or augmented animals -including people- within-.

Teekl bursts from the underbrush like a cat out of hell. Her fur's on end, her eyes are wide and I can feel her panic in the empathic feedback. She climbs up my left leg and my back with her claws extended and curls herself around my shoulders, shaking.

**Hate to be a bother, but I think Captain Marvel and myself are about to receive company. One moment.**

Ring?

Standard scan detects no threats.

Infra red oh hell.

Venom Buster enhanced Monkeys run in from all directions. Two leap straight from the trees and latch onto my chest as Teekl goes into a hissing spitting frenzy in my ear.

Armour!

The plates form, but the Monkeys still hold on! One tries yanking my right arm, trying to either remove my lantern or the arm itself. The other tries to bite my face, and gets slashed by Teekl for its trouble.

!Safety!

Get away! Two orange force beams strike them in the chests and shove them off, but the rest are getting closer. Height! I fly directly upwards and I immediately feel grateful that they aren't flying Monkeys. I lost my monitor screens in my scramble to get away, but I'm sure the others can handle themselves for a moment.

Ring, turret autofire. Aim for the collars only.

I'm about twenty metres up as two Goldeneye-style gatling turrets materialise at the end of orange tethers attached to my hips. Immediately they swivel and begin firing off single shots. I see Monkeys drop as their collars are shot, then scrabble to their feet and flee from the noise. This turret design fires real ammunition from my subspace pocket, but with their enhancements the Monkeys should be able to withstand it without being harmed themselves.

I look over at Captain Marvel. The Monkeys seem to have focused on him. He's buried beneath them, arms pinned in place. I turn a turret in his direction and two shots later his head is clear as the newly liberated primates throw themselves off. He takes a moment to look around, and then flies straight into the ground hard. Then he goes up, turns over and slams down again. Most Monkeys lose their grip at that point and he takes hold of the rest one by one and snaps off their collars. He remains low to the ground, baiting our remaining assailants. Without their full numbers and with no way to close the distance faster my turrets soon finish off all of the collars.

“Captain, are you injured?”

He checks himself over. “No.”

He bends down to pick up a broken collar with his right hand. He gives it a look over, then crushes it.

“What sort of person would do that to a defenseless Monkey?”

**Orange Lantern to Aqualad. Venom Buster enhanced Monkeys beaten off, no damage sustained. Resuming overwatch.**

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Beta Male 11

next

23rd September

21:51 GMT +5:30

Kaldur and Artemis have resumed their journey. Kon and M'gann are finishing up their survey. Mayor Hill mentioned seeing some sort of trap stun a Tiger at the bottom of the hill, so they're going to have a look there once they're done. Robin and Wallace appear to have evaded the Vultures. The birds are flying around the general area, but they can't follow them into the denser foliage and have lost track of them.

Teekl has calmed down a bit, but she's still sticking close to me. I'm not really sure why she was so scared.

With nothing else to focus on, I float one of the more intact collars over to me. I look on the inside and, yes, there it is. I'm getting bloody tired of seeing anti-scry wards on everything.

**Orange Lantern to Aqualad. I think we're rumbled.**

**Explain.**

**The collars the Monkeys were wearing had scry wards. The collars the other animals were wearing didn't. That suggests that the Monkeys were sent after me specifically.**

**It also means that we cannot guarantee that your scans are accurate with regard to potential threats.**

**Not at range, no. Close up I can just use infrared or optical scans.**

**How long until you are able to recharge?**

Ring?

Four minutes remaining.

**Four minutes. But I can just bring the lantern with me. It's not that fragile.**

**We will manage for four minutes. Are there any further threats in your immediate vicinity?**

Ring, full scan this time.

It doesn't reply, but instead expands my senses. Nothing much. Looks like everything got scared away by the Monkeys.

**No.**

**Very well. Artemis and I will proceed to the research center. Kid Flash, Robin, have you successfully evaded the Vultures?**

I see Kid Flash put on his goggles and take a look around.

**Looks like.**

**Then proceed to the objective. Superboy, Miss Martian.**

**Ugh...**

!Kon!

I'm rising into the air, but stop when Captain Marvel lays a hand on my shoulder.

“I.. thought.. Aqualad wanted you to stay here.”

“Kon's in tro-.”

**We found the trap that caught the Tiger, but it was still active. Some sort of paralysis field. Miss Martian took it out with telekinesis.**

And I float back down. Of course. Kon and M'gann are probably the duo least in danger.

“Look, Orange Lantern, I know you wanna help-."

“Sorry Captain, one moment.” **Superboy, is the trap more or less intact?**

**Yeah?**

**And it just paralysed you?**

I bring a screen to bear. I see three devices which look like miniature Tesla coils. One has been snapped off near the base, and the other two are inactive.

**I think so. Why?**

**Lantern Stewart was less than enthusiastic about my idea of using red sun plasma weapons for the mountain's internal defences. Could be he'll find something like that less objectionable.**

There's a moment of silence, then it isn't Kon who responds.

**You're building red sun plasma weapons?**

**Red sun is a bit of a misnomer, Robin, but basically yes.**

**Isn't red sunlight one of the only things that can hurt Kryptonians?**

**Well, it disrupts the functioning of Kryptonian photoreceptive organelles, it's not exactly... You know that white light thing I use on Superboy sometimes? Sort of the opposite of that. And, it's just as good as the green sort against other targets. I constructed them from the eyes of Ivo's MONQIs.**

**I thought you handed those over to the Metropolis PD?**

**I only handed over the green ones. Didn't think putting anti-Kryptonian weapons in Metropolis was a good idea. Wait, why is this a surprise? You all saw me using one in Bialya.**

**Didn't realize that's what it was.**

**Why do you have anti-Kryptonian weapons anyway?!**

Kon, it's not for you... **So the rest of you would have a chance if we were attacked by Kryptonians.**

**What Kryptonians!**

**I don't know! I don't know, but if it's even slightly possible that we might get attacked by them, I'm going to make bloody sure that-!**

No, no, calm down.

**I'm going to make sure that we are capable of defending ourselves. I don't think such an attack is likely, but until yesterday I didn't think an attack by element controlling robots was particularly likely either. Kon, with your Danner formula augmentations you're less susceptible to them than a full blooded Kryptonian, but by my calculations someone like-** I don't know that General Zod exists here. **- like any other Kryptonian would go down hard.**

So long as the auto-tracking was good enough to hit him. I'm not sure exactly how good Superman's reactions are...

**The rest of us?**

**Artemis, I am perfectly capable of replicating the effect with the ring. Do you have a kryptonite gas arrow?**

**W-? No. You're being ridiculous.**

**If we'd had EMP emitters installed-!**

**This is not relevant to the mission.**

Kaldurs voice hits me like a cold damp flannel. On a mission. Deal with the mission. Don't get distracted. I should know this. I should know this.

**Orange Lantern, we will discuss your preparations at another time. Superboy and Miss Martian, continue on to the objective. We can recover the trap on the way back.**

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Beta Male 12

next

23rd September

21:54 GMT +5:30

About a minute left before I can recharge. I've created a small platform for the Lantern in the middle of the screens and I'm staring at it. I've seen it at each charge level, but I've never actually seen it go from no charges to one charge. Should be interesting.

I've already scouted out the route for my team mates to the research centre. Nothing much there that I can see. Even yanked a satellite just in case, but I couldn't really see much. Since I've got thirty three percent power to burn that'll just get wasted in a moment I mapped out the remaining trap locations and forwarded the map to each duo. Took another percentage point to get the designs of the trap components from here, but they're just too useful to ignore.

Teekl's gone back to the bioship.

“Um, are you okay?”

“Will be in a minute.”

“Kind of creepy, the way you're staring at it.”

I lower the lantern and make eye contact with him. “Better?”

He smiles at me. “Look, I know it's hard when your team leader puts you on the bench. When I first joined the League, Batman had me just standing around the Watchtower a bunch of times while the others were out on missions. But you gotta trust that they know what they're doing, keeping you in reserve for when they most need you, or to cover for an attack they weren't expecting.”

“Captain, that's really not my problem. I mean, I think I'm being underutilised and I'm not really sure that Aqualad understands the strategic or tactical implications of FTL travel, but it's his decision to make and I respect that.”

“Okay, so, what is the problem?”

My eyes drop for a moment. “How d'you..? How do you know that you're using the powers the wizard gave you properly? I mean, in the most effective way?”

“When he first gave them to me, the wizard showed me statues of the Enemies of Man, and talked to me about how I'd overcome each of them. I guess he thinks that it's best to give powers to good people and then trust them to make the right choices.”

Not a bad way to go about it, as far as it goes. But... “Yeah, but he thought the same thing about Black Adam. How do you continue to know that you're worthy?”

“Well the wizard would probably tell me if I wasn't. I guess you can't know, not for sure. But you're doing okay, aren't you? Why are you worried about it?”

“Have you ever considered.. just.. not bothering to be Billy Batson? I mean, by every objective measure your Captain Marvel form is superior. It wouldn't be that hard for someone to set you up a fake civilian identity. Have you ever thought about what you could do for the world applying the Wisdom of Solomon to, I don't know, medical research?”

“Giving up being me?” He shakes his head slowly. ”No, I couldn't do that. I'd go crazy trying to be Captain Marvel all the time. Maybe I will end up using Solomon's Wisdom for more things. At the moment I'm just glad to do what I can.”

I'm feeling a little.. I don't know. Drained, maybe? “They weren't even particularly tough robots. If I'd bothered to create a single EMP gre-.”

The cracks on the surface of the lantern glow and pulse like a quickening heartbeat, growing brighter with each repetition. The pulses radiate away from the orange lava lamp core, where strands of white and different tones of orange twist and swirl faster and faster. Ah, here we go! One last pulse, and the vibrant orange colour remains throughout all of the cracks. Nothing else for a moment, and then the whole of the lantern begins to glow orange and the near-grey panels shift to dull orange. One last surge of orange light, and the core calms down at its new brighter power state.

”First capacitor charge complete. Ring recharge available.”

It's beautiful, really. Almost a shame to discharge it. Not that it'll stop me. I raise it back up and hold out the ring. Certainly don't need the Ophidian's help with this mission, thank you very much.

Mine.

I bring the ring forward to just in front of the core and hold it there for a moment, wispy strands of avaricious energy moving between the lantern, ring, and my hand. They're probably an indicator that the lantern is in a poor state of repair, but I find them even more entrancing than a proper plasma ball.

“Recharge.”

The strobing arcs merge into a single beam and intensify, pouring all my wonderful power into the ring. Oh YES! By the time it finishes I'm actually shuddering. With relief? Pleasure? The removal of fear? I'm not really sure. Colour's drained from the lantern again. I take hold of it with my right hand, and flex my left.

”Ring charge at one hundred percent.”

!Yes!

“That's what I like to hear. To quote Revolver Ocelot, I'm alive again!”

“That was... Strange...”

“I'll just go and put this in the bioship. Don't go anywhere.”

I drop to the ground and walk over to where I know the ship to be. Don't want to waste power looking at it while it's cloaked, after all. I lay my left hand on the hull and the doorway oozes open. I call the parts of the lantern's box over even as I start to walk in, and place it within. Teekl's curled up on the pilot's seat.

“Teekl, look after this.” She opens her eyes and stretches her legs and claws out as I put the box under the seat. Should I..? It's probably best practice, I suppose. “Lantern, occlude.” The box fades from existence. I straighten up and give Teekl a quick head scratch with my right hand and then exit the ship again, the door flowing shut behind me. **Aqualad, I'm recharged and ready for action. Where do you want me?**

**We are still some distance from the research centre.**

**I can hunt down other collared animals if you want? Or fly high above the facility, make sure everything's where the plans say they should be? If no one spotted me on Santa Prisca there's no way anyone here's going to spot me. Or I could collect up all of the trap units? They're dangerous and they're evidence.**

“Are your eyes supposed to be doing that?”

“What? Oh, yes, it's a Lantern thing. Look at the Greenies' eyes when they're not wearing their rings sometimes.”

Marvel looks sceptical. I suppose he might just have assumed that Jordan had green eyes, but Stewart? Can black people even have green eyes?

...

Was that a massively racist thing to think? I didn't mean have as in 'permitted'...

“They don't usually look like that.”

**Can you not run scans from your current location?**

**Not reliably if they're using scry wards.**

**Very well. Take up position well above the research centre, but do not reveal your position and do not use faster than light travel to get there.**

**No problem.**

I remove my construct armour and dim my environmental shield. These days my minimum is much stronger than it was when I started out. Feels even stronger than it was yesterday, for some reason.

**Should I go with him, Aqualad?**

**No, Captain.** He sags a little. **It would be more helpful if you could recover the trap Superboy and Miss Martian destroyed and return the parts to the bioship. You can rejoin us when we start the main attack.**

back

Beta Male 13

next

23rd September

21:58 GMT +5:30

I think I'm flying faster, too. Maybe getting attacked like that has helped me focus on the important things? Was I getting complacent? Maybe I was trying to tech up too early and got Zergling rushed. Or maybe Dark Templar rushed. Those robots were probably too great a commitment of resources to be comparable to Zerglings.

!TeamNeedPosition!

I'm not even glowing visibly as I pierce the canopy and rise into the clear Indian sky. This country has no central government organised metahuman program, so it's not as if I have to worry about someone local intercepting me and that's the only thing that could realistically interfere. Probably a few hedge wizards or mystics in the state, but though those can still be dangerous -ask anyone who's had a run in with John Constantine- the Spell Eater should keep me safe.

From this height I can see the edges of the forest. I adopt what I realise is Per Degaton's flying stance. A bit like Black Adam's, but rather than folding your arms across your chest you clasp them behind your back. No swimming position here, no siree. With nothing much to concentrate on I look toward the ground and quickly scan for more Venom Buster enhanciles. Ooh, that's a nontrivial number. All collared as well.

**Captain, there's a Venom Buster enhanced Tiger in your vicinity. About thirty metres west south west from the trap.**

**Thanks for the heads up! I'll get that collar off the poor kitty.**

**Just remember, that won't necessarily stop it attacking.**

That should be high enough. I start moving forward, any air resistance utterly humbled by the power of the ring.

**Robin, initiating transmission of the locations of all enhanced animals to you now.**

**Thanks, Oh El.**

Hmm. Might be able to hit the Vultures' collars from here, but given the time to target and the need for concealment... I don't think that their necks would survive the force a railgun would exert. Ah well, once we've found out what's going on at the research station I can go back and remove the collars and Venom Buster both. I'm a completionist at heart.

Right, I've pretty much got line of sight to the research centre itself now. Accessing computers. The two scientists I detected earlier are listed as Doctor Arnold Munro and Doctor Niang Guan Jun, and they're both wearing collars similar to those the animals are wearing. No other personnel present that I can detect, though internal computers have user profiles for several more researchers and security guards. No sign of them. Interesting. Oh, hang on... No, not detecting any Human remains. That would have been a downer. Several areas of the base are warded and shielded. Not perfectly as far as the ring is concerned, but I can't get a perfect read on them. Some sort of animal pens? The facility itself is part top quality prefab and what looks like it was once a visitors' centre or a group of safari cabins? I recognise a ring of the paralysis trap things on the outskirts, but that won't be hard for me to shut down.

Wait. There's a Doctor Munro working at a place surrounded by mutant animals? Hah! Oh, he must have heard that one so many times. Don't recognise his name otherwise, or Doctor Niang's. They're in one of the cabins, a little way away from the main structure. I wonder why there's so much shielding... Superman. I haven't checked, but I suppose it would be quite in character for Mister Luthor to want to make his research centres as close to Superman-proof as possible. I can force the issue, but only by sending a construct down.

Scanning around, I see a storage shed with a considerable number of sacks of what is labelled as Rat food. Venom Buster Rats? That wouldn't be fun. Are there..? No, can't pick any up. Maybe they just did some early testing on them. They could be inside, but given how big and hard to manage they would be there can't be all that many. I try accessing the original plans as well as LexCorp records, and they more or less match the buildings I'm seeing.

Quick check? Yep, got a few minutes yet. Hmm. Personnel files. According to her file, Mister Luthor poached Doctor Niang from Beijing Institute of Genomics where she worked on metahuman genetic sequencing. A little odd. I still don't really know what Mister Luthor was planning to do with this place. If the enhanced animals are intentional then I'm a bit surprised that the Chinese were willing to part with someone who had her expertise. Maybe Mister Luthor has some pull there, or offered to share information derived from her work here?

Doctor Munro is an American who has supposedly spent the last few years doing something in the private sector in Brazil, but I'm having trouble finding anything to back that up. His field is the hormonal and chemical modification of farm animals. Altering growth rates, disease resistance, milk yields and behaviour. Put together, the two of them might have been able to recreate Venom Buster -or something sufficiently like it to fool me- from the descriptions that are now publically available. Maybe. I don't really know how much the conventional parts of their work would merge with the super powered parts.

If this was what Mister Luthor had in mind. If it wasn't... He does make charitable donations, both as a private citizen and on behalf of LexCorp. Not to nature charities. Art museums sometimes, but he seems to have a soft spot for museums of technology and science. So why would he bring these two scientists out here? I don't really see what he could have them do here that they couldn't more easily do somewhere else.

For a moment I consider the idea of simply phoning him and asking. It's not as if he could get someone on site fast enough to stop me finding out for myself, and it might save trouble later. Don't think Kaldur would agree with that idea, and I'm a little uncertain about it myself. It would basically be giving him proof that we were trespassing, and if we didn't find any proof of malfeasance down there things could get a bit uncomfortable.

Or maybe there's another option. It's nearly ten o'clock at night, local time. I don't see anything resembling a bed in the room both scientists are in. Or lab equipment. Looks like a kitchen unit. And the door's locked. Jolly odd. But it does have a phone.

Ring, dial the hut.

I see the two of them look around as the phone rings, and after a few seconds Doctor Munro walks over and picks it up.

“What do you want now?”

Curious. “Do I have the pleasure of addressing Doctor Munro?”

His head jerks up. “Wh-? Who is this?”

“Orange Lantern two eight one four. May I ask who you were expecting?”

“Oh, thank God. I thought it was that Brain creature again.”

“Brain in a travel machine, accompanied by a Gorilla named Mallah who carries a machine gun?”

“Yeah, that's them. How did you know..?”

“The ape shot a tourist, but let him get away. Do they have any other assistants on site?”

“They've been giving some sort of mutagen to the animals-.”

“Yeah, we've met those. Apart from them? Anyone intelligent? Armed guards?”

“No. Um, not that I've seen. They might have, I don't know.”

“Is the Brain or the ape still on site?”

“I don't... They stuck us in this cabin when they arrived. I haven't seen them since this morning.”

“How long have they been here?”

“A little over six days now.”

“Thank you, Doctor. That's most helpful. Last question: what is this place actually supposed to do?”

“I'm not... I have a confidentiality agreement with Lex Luthor. I can't just-."

“Anything that might be dangerous to me and mine if we come in to rescue you. I'm not asking you for commercially sensitive information.”

He's silent for a moment.

“We're working on ways to augment things. Animals. Ultimately people, but we only got here ten days ago. Everything's in early stages.”

And we have a motive. Mister Luthor follows through on his transhumanistic instincts, and another supervillain helps himself.

“There's nothing here that the Brain.. thing.. can use right away. Even if he gets a copy of our database, we're years from anything viable.”

“Thank you, Doctor. Now sit tight. Your liberation is imminent.”

back

Beta Male 14

next

23rd September

22:17 GMT +5:30

None of the others encountered further resistance on their final approach. Robin and Wallace move around the perimeter to link up with Kaldur and Artemis, and I relay my images to Robin's computer. Really need to see about getting the others something like that. I'm still high overhead as Kon and M'gann approach the research centre from the other direction. Captain Marvel will hopefully be joining us shortly, though he's being slowed by Kaldur's request that he fly under the level of the canopy.

I've been trying to remember anything about the Brain from the comics, and all I've come up with is that his condition was caused by Niles Caulder, leader and convener of the Doom Patrol. Bit unusual for a supervillain to have a reasonable grudge, but there we are. I remember him having a romantic relationship with Mallah, but I don't remember anything helpful like his standard armament or his real name. Without anything to work on checking which version we're dealing with in advance will be next to impossible. I'm a bit concerned about not being able to scan the interior of his travel machine, as I might not be able to identify in advance which bits are weaponry and which bits are part of the life support system.

**Miss Martian, are you able to read the minds of anyone inside the facility?**

**Just a moment...**

I feel a moment of disorientation, as if I'm looking down on the facility from the sky while simultaneously looking at each room and corridor from within.

**Sorry Aqualad. I'm just reading the two researchers.**

**Suppose if anyone was going to come up with telepathic shielding it would be a guy called the Brain.**

Apparently Wallace already knew about him. Have he and the Flash fought him before? I suppose I don't currently have any evidence that the Brain is male, any more than I have evidence of his personal history or intentions. Batman's documentation is rather light on what exactly those ‘patterns’ he was studying are. Might be worth asking when we get back.

**First, we will need to take out the force field.**

**I can do that. I've taken a look at the schematics, and I can easily hit every one of those projectors from here.**

**Or I can take the field down with an arrow since, y'know, giant orange beams are a bit of a giveaway.**

**If you'd prefer, I could use a railgun.** Ring, probable consequences... Oh. **Sorry, forget the railgun idea. The ring says that the splash damage would be a bit excessive.**

To put it mildly.

**I do not think that we would be able to disguise our presence for any length of time once we make our move. And it would be best if they cannot tell which direction we are coming from.**

**Orange beams it is then.**

I had a quick go at working out how Brain... Should that be ‘The Brain?’ It's a bit like Flash, I'm still not sure if it should have a ‘the’ at the start. Let's just go with Brain, since I don't know his name. Working out how Brain and Mallah got here, but without knowing where they started from that's pretty much impossible. There's no landing pad here, so I assume they must have driven in. Hiding in a crate, then break out once the construction crew left? No idea. And I don't really know why they would still be here. Surely the sensible thing to do if stealth was impossible would be go in, grab the database and kill the residents in a way that couldn't be specifically traced back to them.

**Next, we must locate our adversaries. Orange Lantern, were the doctors able to give you any information?**

**Sorry. Doctor Munro said that unless they wanted them working on something, they tend to leave them locked up.**

**Guess it really wasn't Luthor.**

**First time for everything.**

Not Robin too. Have he and Batman been investigating Mister Luthor? I don't remember seeing anything in the files...

**I'm more worried about the fact that the Brain could be working with the League of Shadows.**

Wallace has a point. That is a bit of a worry. Luthor might have had Blockbuster on file, but Brain had to have got Venom Buster from somewhere. From Bane, via the Shadows? From Kobra? Directly from the Santa Priscan government?

**This guy's just a brain on an electric wheelchair, right? How hard is taking him down going to be?**

Kon is clearly not impressed. I'm undecided. I don't know enough about the limits of mad science here to know whether the concept is as stupid as it sounds or something brilliant. But if I don't see death rays, I'm calling him Brainitar.

**He's made weapons for every major criminal organization on the planet, including Blacksmith's Network in Central City. And now he's got Venom Buster, plus whatever Luthor had these guys working on. Oh El, can you see any internal defenses?**

**No, and I checked with the doctors; there shouldn't be any.**

**Aqualad, I can find him fastest. I'll keep him occupied until the rest of you can get there.**

**Orange Lantern, are there any animals inside the facility?**

**Rats, they said. For testing their formulae on.**

**Did they know whether or not the Brain used the Venom Buster formula on them?**

**No, sorry Aqualad. They actually said that they weren't working on Venom Buster.**

**Yeah, right. What have they been doing?**

**Kid Flash, you know how much work is involved in making sure that a new lab is properly sterile. Plus, they're team leads. They were sorting out the practical issues associated with working somewhere this isolated. They wanted everything up together when the rest of the research team gets here.**

**Where is everyone?**

**Not sure. The other researchers weren't expected to arrive for a few days yet, but security should have been here by now.**

**Good job they weren't.**

Really, Wallace? I like to think that anyone Lex Luthor employed to handle security on one of his personal projects would be competent enough to take a Gorilla and a brain in a jar. Plus, once they got up and running they could make their own defenders by dosing up guard dogs or something. And if Luthor found out about this before the League did, we'd get to find out whether a Monkey with a minigun could handle a Spetsnaz team.

**Orange Lantern, take out the force field on my signal then be ready to support Kid Flash. Kid Flash, we need a better idea of what is going on inside. If you meet with opposition, evade until the rest of us can reach you. Miss Martian and Superboy, your target is the animal holding pens. I do not want to have to deal with a swarm of Venom Buster enhanced Rats. Robin, anything you can acquire on the Brain's activities would be invaluable. Artemis, you're with me.**

No need to make this flashy I suppose. My team needs me to do this right.

Ring, target all force field emitters.

Orange target icons appear in my vision, hovering over each one. I think I'll just use beams. No need for anything fancy. **Ready on your mark Aqualad.**

**Aqualad, Superboy and I are as close to the force field as we can get.**

**Orange Lantern, go.**

back

Beta Male 15

next

23rd September

22:21 GMT +5:30

WarSphere, Eliminate.

A dim orange sphere forms around me, and from it orange beams curve outwards and down to strike directly into the top of each of the force field projectors. The beams pierce them as if the field was not even there and force their way downward, wrecking their interiors and causing a shutdown.

Armour.

Might help to keep the attention of anyone watching on me. Certainly can't hurt, and we can honestly tell Mister Luthor that we're attempting to rescue his staff and recover his property. For a split second I register Wallace cross the distance from the tree line and enter the main building.

Visual imaging.

From the beams now surrounding the building probe lines project outwards, rapidly building up a picture of the shielded interior of the structure which I relay to Robin's computer. Everyone's moving now, Superboy taking the direct route through a wall with M'gann just behind. Artemis and Kaldur go in through the front entrance as Robin takes my map and shouts directions.

**Found the Brain!**

I hear gunfire.

!Help team mate!

**We are coming!**

Kaldur and Artemis are running down the main corridor as Robin heads for the server room. Fighting remotely with constructs is possible, though it's surprising how much not being able to see the results of your action first hand reduces emotional investment. I send a probe through a series of walls, near the ceiling so that I don't risk accidentally spiking anyone. I still can't see exactly where- Ah. Looks like this wasn't originally a lab. A large store room, maybe? It is now, and it's been refitted to be Brain travel machine friendly. The man himself is manipulating his equipment as Mallah keeps Wallace suppressed at the doorway with bursts of minigun fire. Wallace rolls frantically to the side as Mallah remembers that concealment does not equal cover and starts putting bullets through the weak interior wall.

No.

I transition along the probe tether into the room.

“Mallah!”

The Gorilla -wearing a lab coat for some reason- heeds his master's command and scampers back to the Brain. He moves awkwardly, keeping hold of his gun in his right hand while he uses his left to knuckle walk. The Brain rotates his travel machine in my direction as I hard scan his chassis.

“Bzzkh.”

Mallah halts next to Brain, pulls something from a pouch and presses it to the ground. A shimmering aquamarine shield bubble forms over them and telemetry from my scan cuts off. I create twin buzz saw constructs and swing them at it from either side. The shield stresses slightly but holds as I start looking for the projector. Wallace dashes in and after taking a fraction of a second to catch up with events blurs up to the shield and begins punching at super speed.

Armour him.

Don't want them dropping the shield for Mallah to perforate my team mate now, do I? I can't find an external emitter, and unlike Garth Brain has had the sense to extend the shield across the floor under him.

“Magic creates interesting challenges, no? So little research of any quality, and yet it is so observably potent.”

I zip over to the barrier -on the opposite side to Wallace- and thrust my right hand at it. After a second I feel the mild warmth of the Spell Eater activating, and the area of the shield around it dims noticeably. Mallah growls at me with teeth bared, and starts to raise his gun in my direction.

“No, Mallah. Our work here is done. It is time to bid them goodbye.”

Wallace sneers. “Nowhere to go, Brain.”

Good luck getting past me. I didn't recognise all of his internal systems, but there aren't any teleport-.

Oh heck.

Plates on the surface of Brain's chassis more aside and armatures extend outward. They form brightly glowing vertical curves along his sides. Wallace stops attacking and backs up a little. I don't know what he's trying to do.

What?

The ring picks out sigils being projected... The walls! He's projecting sigils onto the walls! The air shimmers and the barrier protecting them flattens. Shit!

Get them!

I generate a laser construct and fire it directly at the Brain's dome. I can see him, and therefore the barrier shouldn't stop visible light. Sadly, the protective magic of the barrier isn't playing by the normal rules. Plasma? No. Sonic? No. Electromagnetic flux? Small electrical discharges dance around Brain's chassis but it doesn't seem to be interfering with him to any great extent.

**Kaldur, know anything about countering magic based teleportation?**

**A little. We may be delayed. Try to keep them occupied.**

Bit late for that. Brain's arms dim and fold back into his chassis, but the lights on the wall remain in place.

“Farewell, my friend. I do hope you enjoy the little gift I have left for you.”

The barrier flickers, and then leaps out to touch the runes glowing on the walls. Then things get a little strange. Space.. bends, Brain and ape being simultaneously close and far away. Around the edge of the affected area I see part of a completely different room.

Sod it. I hold out my right hand.

Assimilate!

The beam flies from my right palm and shoots towards Brain, but as it reaches him it seems to slow. Come on! It looks like it's at relative stop. The bastard thing begins to roll away into the other room. I see a man with white skin and wearing red armour on the far side, his arms glowing with ghostly light. I try running after them but the air turns to rubber around me. I can't make any headway! Then the portal area begins to evaporate from the sides of the room and I step back to avoid being inside the affected area.

Aaaahh!

There's a brief increase in air pressure as the portal collapses completely. I feel cheated. Wallace just looks mystified.

“What..? What just happened..?”

“Some sort of magic based spatial distortion, I think. Some of the shapes on the walls looked a little familiar.”

“The Brain's using magic? Since when?”

“I don't-! I don't know. Aagh!” A sudden shooting pain in my right arm. What?

**Brain and Mallah are gone. What's happening?**

**Paul, help!**

**M'gann, what's happening?**

**The rats! They're-!**

I get a momentary flash of the image of a giant snarling rodent, and then the connection disappears.

back

Beta Male 16

next

23rd September

22:24 GMT +5:30

“M'gann!”

Wallace dashes out of the room before I can think. Another painful stab, this time in the lower part of my right leg. It's not my pain I'm feeling.

“Miss Martian, report!”

Kaldur's voice on the radio. Why is he using the radio?

!Help team mate!

**M'gann! Speak to me!**

I can't feel her! I nearly tell the ring to take me there, but I try to clamp down on the impulse. Should I should I should I-? Rats get the rats help M'gann get the rats. The orange line along which I'm generating Wallace's armour is still there transition.

He's standing in front of a sealed door, thumping it with his fists. There's a keypad next to it.

gOnE!

“Oh El, do you know-?"

Orange light flows around him and strikes the door. Brickwork crumbles around it as I shove the door backwards out of its frame.

“...or that works.”

The door hits something.

“Skreee skreee!”

A monstrous head lunges into the gap left by the door. The rat's face is bald and grey, and its eyes glow red as it frantically tries to reach us through the hole in the wall. It must have been given a dose of pure blockbuster formula, but it's grown far more than any other subject. Must be a metre and a half across at the shoulders. It backs up a little before lunging again, twisting and scrabbling with its paws as it does so.

The wall gives way, and it lunges forward and I'm wasting time!

!Help M'gann!

Wallace steps to the side and turns, bringing his right fist around at super speed and hitting it in the side of the head.

Railgun.

The Rat doesn't seem to notice anything other than the fact that two targets in its field of vision have been reduced to one. It pushes off the floor and leaps at me.

I don't much like rats.

Target the brain and fire.

The gun is shorter than the one I used on Ra's, but with a crack the Rat is knocked head over tail. Good, now let's-.

I've never heard a Rat snarl before. It rolls back onto its feet and fixes me with its glowing eyes. It's drooling. Alright.

Fire more.

It braces against the first hit, and isn't fazed. The second knocks it back almost comically while in mid-leap.

“Oh El, can you handle-?"

“Yes. Go!”

Wallace disappears into the room beyond as the Rat comes at me again. It might be big but it shouldn't be all that heavy. I clamp its tail as I activate my radio.

“Orange Lantern to Aqualad. Kid Flash and I have encountered a Blockbuster Formula enhanced Rat.”

The Rat goes into a berserk frenzy, writhing from side to side and pulling with all its might against the clamp which.. breaks? What?

Oh, I'll take the answer from its cold dead corpse. Gamma beam.

The two ‘barrels’ of my revised gamma projection construct appear around the Rat's head. One emits the radiation and the other ‘catches’ it before it can go anywhere but the target. My understanding of radiology is now much better than it was when I baked Mister Hagen, and I know enough to make any radiological materials I generate safe. A ramming construct lifts the Rat off the floor and pins it to a wall by its chest. It shouldn't be able to get much in the way of leverage in that pose while I cook its brain. It struggles in a frenzy, screeching loudly. There's no way it should be this strong.

“Aqualad to team. We are.. likewise.. encountering.. resistance.”

!Team!

The Rat jerks and then goes still, smoke rising from its head. I let it drop to the floor. Need to go-. No. Find out what happened to make the Rat this strong first. We need to know what we're-.

The Rat twitches.

Scan.

Oh. That isn't Blockbuster. I mean, something like Blockbuster's definitely in the mix, but... The Rat is healing itself from what should be ludicrous overkill. I can't leave it here but I can't stay here what do I-?

!TeamTeamTeamTeam!

Ring, fentanyl.

I shove a tube construct into its throat as the ring shoves a large dose of Robin's preferred knockout gas into its lungs. Its full name is much longer than that and I was advised to be really careful about the dosage but if I'm trying to kill the target anyway... The Rat finally goes still.

“Aqualad, situation.”

“Artemis and I are in the cafeteria. We were attacked by thirty or so rats. They appear to have been given Venom, or something like it.”

“Do you need assistance?”

“No. When they began swarming around us Artemis was able to knock them out with a gas arrow. We are heading to relieve Robin now. Kid Flash, have you been able to locate Superboy and Miss Martian?”

“Not yet. This place is trashed. Looks like the Rats were hooked up to some sort of injection system.”

“We have encountered the results.”

“I'm heading to the next room. Oh El-"

Transition.

“-oh. He's here, never mind.”

Wallace's right hand is blurring at the keypad, trying to guess the combination. I can hear screeching, probably coming from the rats on the other side. They really don't like trying to move through solid barriers. Leaving the door intact is probably a better idea.

“Miss Martian, Superboy report.”

The keypad chimes as Wallace gets the combination. A clunk, and the door slides aside. A large room, possibly some sort of large animal operating theatre? On my left the tile covered floor drops down to an external roller shutter door. Can't get an elephant through the corridors, of course. It's open. Kon and M'gann's point of entry? The main animal pens should be just through-.

The wall to my right explodes as Kon barges through it!

back

Beta Male 17

next

23rd September

22:28 GMT +5:30

Kon's bleeding from numerous puncture wounds. At least three rats are latched onto him by their mouths, one on his right shoulder, one on his left calf and another on his right hand. Everything slows. Wallace moves to aid him as I create vitalising white light.

“Yaaaagh!”

Kon hammers at the Rat on his right hand with his left fist while Wallace tries pulling the Rat off his shoulder. Both Rats.. are fine? What? How? That shouldn't be possible.

!Kon mine!

I see two more scurry through the hole in the wall, and reinforce the armour around Wallace. One leaps at him, easily clearing the distance to his face and bringing its teeth down on the glowing orange faceplate.

“Skreee!”

The plate cracks. Wallace freezes, eyes wide. “Ah!”

I grab the Rat and pull it free. These ones are only a little larger than normal size, but bloody hell are they strong!

Railgun, autofire. Keep them back.

The gun forms over my right shoulder, and hits the Rat scurrying toward me full in the face. It's bowled over, but is otherwise unhurt and recovers quickly. Another construct tendril grabs its tail and flings it back through the hole as the railgun tracks and fires. Kon gives up on hitting and presses his left thumb and index finger into the sides of its mouth, gradually forcing it open. With a jerk it leaves his flesh and he snarls as he uses his hold to pull its lower jaw right back with a quiet snap before hurling it away. Wallace takes a firm hold of the one on his shoulder and seems to blur as he vibrates back and forth on the spot. I remember Robin telling us that Wallace couldn't vibrate through solid objects but it looks like super speed shakes aren't Rat friendly. It comes loose and follows its partner out of the room.

Kon twists and takes hold of the one on his calf with both hands as the railgun begins firing with increasing speed. My eyes glow as I look through the dark and dust into the room beyond and a lot of red eyes glow back. Oh dear. Why the hell were they making so many super rats here? Kon squeezes and seems to be trying to just rip it free. Not a terrible choice, since I can heal the resulting wound, but I have a better option.

Ring, fentanyl spray.

Kon removes his hands as a spray can construct appears next to the remaining super Rat, and its head is enveloped in a translucent mist. That should... It's not letting go. What? Increase concentration. Still no effect. But neither Blockbuster, Venom nor Venom Buster give poison resistance! I remove the spray can construct and Kon goes back to work. There's a snap as he breaks the Rat's jaw and tosses the bloody thing away.

!Help Kon!

Cleanse wound and heal.

An orange strobe, and his flesh knits back together. A moment later I expand the effect and remove the blood from his clothes as well. Kon rubs the sites of the injuries, and tries to get his breath back.

For a moment there's nothing but the hum of the railgun as Kon, Wallace and I stare at each other. Then I shakily raise my right hand to my radio earpiece.

“Kaldur, there's rats here strong enough to bite into Kon, and I couldn't tranquilise them. Be very careful.”

“Understood. Captain Marvel, please assist as soon as possible.”

“Hold on, I'll be there in a moment.”

!M'gann!

Kon gestures behind him as I send the railgun forward.

“M'gann's still in there!”

Armour him and send out probes.

“Lead the way. Aqualad, if you're not too sorely pressed could Captain Marvel assist us in recovering Miss Martian?”

“Captain, please do so.”

Kon jogs back through the hole he made, and I keep the railgun just ahead of him. The probes are sending me images of every room in the area, but I don't know what shape M'gann's in.

“Hey, Oh El, found something on the server you should probably know about.”

A Rat dives down from the top of a filing cabinet at Kon's face. He meets it with his right fist and it somehow grabs onto the armour around his hand with its paws and bites down. Kon reacts by punching it with his left fist and the Rat flies into the floor hard enough to leave a crater.

“I hate Rats, and Monkeys.”

“What is it Robin?”

“You know that stuff you used on Superboy? The Danner Formula?”

“Yeah?”

I've scouted three rooms in every direction. If M'gann's here then she's not in humanoid form. I have detected plenty of rats, and most of them are heading our way. Extra railguns. They're trying to keep out of sight but they're still coming, going for the surround.

“They were working on it here.”

What!?

“What?”

“The formula's not on the computer, but it's mentioned by name. And there's a shipping manifest which says they brought in pregnant lab rats. It's dated two days after you met Luthor in Taiwan.”

oH gOd.

Luthor actually got hold of it somehow. And now Brain has it too. That explains the chemical resistance. But it doesn't explain why they're attacking...

“Kon, any idea where M'gann is? We need to be gone.”

“We were this way.” He leads the way to an opening next to a broken door.

“The next step was going to be tests on dogs. Last entry's six days ago.”

Dogs too? No, hang on, that's when Brain got here, they probably never got started.

“Any idea how Luthor got the formula, Oh El?”

“No, none at all. There shouldn't be-."

Arnold Munro? Iron..? No. That can't be right. It was bullshit when they included him in the comics. There were tests! The formula isn't hereditary! I checked! I looked for him!

Ring, scan Doctor Arnold Munro. Does he have Danner Formula enhancements?

Confirmed. Danner Formula chemistry present.

How the hell did Mister Luthor find him when I couldn't?

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Beta Male 18

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23rd September

22:32 GMT +5:30

A wave of Rats scurry down the corridor toward us, and my railguns begin breaking the mass up. I still can't do general scans on this area, and I've got no idea why.

“Do we have the slightest idea where we're going?”

Wallace seems about as worried as I feel. Anything that can bite into Kon would go through him or me like we were made of rice paper, and running full pelt through the building is a good way to get ratted.

“We came in near the cargo entrance. Rats swarmed us from all directions soon as we got into the main building.”

**M'gann!?**

**[dark enclosed fear fear fear]**

“Everyone hear that?”

Kon nods while Wallace just looks confused. “Hear what?”

“M'gann, I hope.”

I don't get any sense of her location, but now we have a starting point. Transition.

A large room, open to the outside at one end. There are three slightly battered looking medium sized lorries parked in the centre of the room. I'm surprised that Mister Luthor didn't use something with a bit more polish, but it does seem like this was a bit of a rush job, and the roads around here probably aren't good enough for large lorries. Packing crates of varying sizes are stacked neatly near the loading dock and here come the rats!

Two of the large uberblockbuster rats -near identical to the one from earlier- lead the charging albino carpet, scurrying out of the entrance to the main building. Three railgun constructs cut loose as I stick a platform under us and lift us into the air. I recreate probes, and fortunately the rats ignore them. Still no idea where M'gann is.

And the rats start leaping.

“Skree!”

I raise a barrier. Some rats slam into it and bounce off but more grab on and start gnawing. One of the Uber Rats clambers on top of a lorry and leaps, being met by Kon's fist and getting knocked flying. Wallace blurs around the flying orange enclosure, hitting the smaller rats off the barrier before they can gnaw through. Railguns are catching most in the air but I still have no way to really hurt them.

Okay, okay. Get it together. I can use fentanyl on the Uber Rats-.

“They're not wearing collars. Why are they attacking us?”

A-? Good question actually, Wallace. Ring?

Airborne Venom derivative detected in local environment.

“It's in the air! Ring, neutralise!”

An orange strobe in all directions. Turning my head, I see that the area affected has spread a little outside the facility. I really hope it hasn't reached any more wildlife.

“Hey guys! What's happen-oh good lord!”

Captain Marvel flies under the roof and nearly lands on the Rat covered floor. He has a second or two while they remain fixated on us, and then they start throwing themselves at him.

More railgun!

Marvel goes for height as the smaller rats are knocked from the air by iron slugs. An Uber Rat leaps, ignores the railgun fire and slams into his shoulder. He's forced to grapple with it, straining to keep its teeth from his face. More of the smaller rats turn to the softer target and one makes it through my barrage, biting into his side.

“Ow!” Marvel twists and-. “Shazam!”

A bolt of lightning shoots down from the sky and hits the Uber Rat dead centre. It spasms, and Captain Marvel throws it down. Alright, he's fine, why are they still attacking? The environmental shield's protecting us now, but if there's Venom in the air, why wasn't Kon affected earlier?

Armour Marvel.

Captain Marvel pulls the Rat attacking him free and drops it down into the mass below, and orange armour forms around his body.

What's the difference between Kon and these Rats? Kryptonian physiology? Maybe, but he's been made human-compatible, hasn't he? What els- size! He's bigger! It would take a higher dose to affect him. The rats will calm down eventually. Probably. I mean, their neural physiology might have been permanently chang-. No, that doesn't help. The rats are berserking. I can't remove the Danner Formula, but I should be able to remove the Venom.

“Ring, purge rats.”

The railguns reconfigure, and iron slugs are replaced with orange beams. I watch as one illuminates one of the smaller rats for five seconds, then cuts out and seeks a new target. The Rat stops where it stands on the floor, sniffs the air and then heads for somewhere better concealed.

Oh. Four other small Rats abandoned the attack on our position to mob their former comrade and they tear him apart in short order. Whatever instinct kept the Rats from turning on each other appears not to apply to Rats who are no longer affected. When the orange beams purify the system of a Rat it is immediately set upon by its neighbours. I need to get groups close together all at once.

“Clusterfire only!”

With the rats distracted from our position Kon and Wallace watch in horror alongside me as the swarm below turns into a bloodbath. As the numbers start to thin out the ‘freed’ Rats stop being swarmed, but against an opponent who won't do what a wild Rat would and back off after being injured beyond a certain extent the damage is just as bad. It's just shared by both parties. The freed Rats certainly don't work together, and why should they?

I think about two thirds die before enough are purified that the remaining envenomed can't reach the freed Rats before they are targeted in turn. Blood and shredded fur coat the ground...

Wallace goes pale and covers his mouth with his right hand. “I think I'm gonna be sick.”

The smell... Burnt flesh from the Uber Rat who took the lightning bolt, Rat faeces and the blood...

!M'gann!

“No, you're going to stay with it until we find M'gann.” I lower us to the flatbed of one of the lorries, away from the main area of carnage. **M'gann, where are you!**

**muuuha?**

Kon leaps off the lorry and back into the building. Wallace takes a couple of deep breaths and dashes after him. M'gann should be fine. Job. Captain Marvel drops down next to me, and he isn't looking much better than Wallace.

“Kaldur, we've just dealt with a major Rat attack. There's something.. Venom related, in the air. Robin and Artemis should switch to rebreathers.”

“Understood. Have you located M'gann yet?”

“No, but I'm leav-."

!Help M'gann!

“I'll get right on it. Stand by.”

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Beta Male 19

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23rd September

22:47 GMT +5:30

M'gann sits shell shocked on the steps of the cabin in which the doctors were formerly imprisoned. When the Rats attacked and demonstrated that they could force themselves past her telekinesis she shifted to a smaller form in order to escape... Which made her more vulnerable to the airborne chemical. Apparently it doesn't cause Martians to go into a frenzy, but she was on a really bad trip when Kon found her hiding behind a couple of cryogenic storage tanks. She'd shifted into the form of some sort of serpentine thing and hissed angrily at us until I was able to run a ring purge on her system.

I've gathered up the now-docile Rats and deposited them in cages with familiar-smelling bedding and food. They could still fight me, but the fury's left them and they just want to return to normalcy. The five Uber Rats this place is housing turned out to not be immune to the paralysis trap, so we're leaving them between three emitters we found in one of the crates. Bloody horrible looking things. The one I fought earlier seems to have finally died, but I'm not taking any chances with it. I also fully cleansed the building of the airborne chemical. According to Doctor Niang the whole place is designed to be easy to gas in case of an animal escape. Clearly, the system could use work.

On the other hand, no one actually died. As supervillain operations involving mutant superanimals go, I suppose that means that it wasn't all that bad. Kon goes and sits down next to M'gann, putting an arm around her shoulder. She starts, then clings onto him and buries her face in his neck. Know how she feels. Once M'gann was safe I went looking for Kaldur, Artemis and Robin. They'd been forced to pull back to the roof, destroying the stairs to get away from the envenomed vermintide. Most of the Rats of Dawn focused on my group, which was a lucky thing really.

Hah.

As the most recognisable member of our group Captain Marvel is talking to the doctors. Kaldur's hovering near M'gann, while Artemis climbed onto the roof of the cabin to ‘keep watch’. I'm sitting on the steps of the main complex. I might still not be able to scan the whole thing, but I went through each room in enough detail to know that there's nothing at liberty behind me.

”We still need to ask.”

Wallace and Robin are standing together. They've been talking in quiet tones since we left the building. Wallace is looking a little better, though I'm not sure how much is keeping up appearances and how much is genuine recovery. Robin nods, and they turn and walk over to me.

“So Oh El, how exactly do you think Luthor got hold of the Danner Formula?”

Wallace crosses his arms. Robin turns his head slightly to the side, and I'm reminded for a moment of Teekl. I extend my right index finger, and wave it in Doctor Munro's direction.

“Him, probably.”

Robin's eyes narrow. “What makes you think that?”

“He's a Danner Formula enhancile. Don't know if he got the records of the process as part of the deal, or if he reverse engineered it from his own body.” I shrug. “I suppose it was a bit hopeful for us to think the Formula would just disappear. You know the Beresfords are the same, right?”

Wallace and Robin share a look. For a second, it's a flash of surprise. I did put that all in the report. Not sure why it's news. Hmm. Think I might have just failed a perception check, though I'm not sure what the result was supposed to be.

“Hugo Danner died.. sixty years ago, right?”

“His attempt to take over Brazil was stopped in nineteen fifty five. Don't really know what happened to him after that.”

I look over to Doctor Munro. He's dressed in safari shorts, short sleeved shirt and leather hiking boots. His hair is combed back and from the looks of things held in place with some sort of hairspray. He also wears a fairly substantial horseshoe moustache. Both are pale grey, but there's no sign that his hair is thinning and his skin looks comparatively youthful. If I had to guess his age I'd have said mid forties, but if you told me he was a prematurely grey thirty I wouldn't have argued it.

“You said the Danner Formula had to be administered in vitro, right? There's no way Doctor Munro's that old. Doesn't that mean that someone else is out there giving it to people?”

“I don't know, Robin. I..." I put my face in my hands for a moment, then look up again. “The Danner Formula enhances the human body. It doesn't just make you strong, you heal better as well. Doctor Munro could well be sixty. Or even older. I know the Beresfords are their apparent age because I could find records for them. Him, I've got no idea. And I haven't even tried to find out where the Beresfords got it from.” I need to talk to him. And I think I need to talk to Mister Luthor. I push myself to my feet. “I'm going to try and find out what's going on. Do either of you need me for anything?”

“How.. much.. older.?”

“No idea, Robin. Not enough human test subjects.”

“Yeah, but-."

“No, really no idea. I don't know what happened to Danner, the aboriginals he augmented either died or went into hiding. I'm not testing Rats back at home for fun, I'm doing it because no one really knows.”

Robin frowns, then nods thoughtfully. I make brief eye contact with each of them, and then head over to Captain Marvel and the doctors.

“-day's work. The main thing is that you're alright, and that the Brain won't be able to unleash super Rats on any innocent people.”

Marvel appears to be in full bombastic hero cheese mode. I realised almost immediately that there's nothing to stop Brain making more, and whatever magic he used on the place to disrupt my scans was a level above the sigils the League of Shadows uses. Oh. Of course, that's who the man at the other end of the gate spell was. Wotan. For some reason he was trying to put out the sun when Kaldur, Wallace and Robin first liberated Kon. I almost hope that it was all him, because if someone who's actually intelligent has got into magic... I thought we'd have longer before that sort of thing started happening. And I don't remember Wotan from the comics at all, so I've no sort of in with him.

“Excuse me, Doctor Munro, might I borrow you for a moment?”

He tears his attention away from Marvel and looks around. “Sure, son. Hey, you're the fella I spoke to on the phone.”

“Quite so, sir. Orange Lantern two eight one four. I'm sorry to trouble you, but in light of what happened I'm afraid that I have to ask: where exactly did you get hold of the Danner Formula?”

For a split second his eyes drop, then he looks over to Doctor Niang. Her face remains impassive. He exhales. “I didn't really... Hm, was hoping that I wouldn't have to spread this around. Guess you do need to know, though. I got it in a.. some papers my.. natural father left for me.”

“Sir, I'm sorry, but this is important. Who-?"

“Hugo Danner.” He shuffles slightly. “My birth certificate says that my father is John Munro, my mother's husband. Mom didn't tell me the truth until Dad needed a kidney transplant and I got a blood test to see if we were compatible.”

How did I miss him?

“I couldn't help but notice that the Formula was used on you. Did your mother..?”

“No, ah. Way she described it, it was really -heh- more of a hook up. I suppose I must have inherited it from Hugo.”

But that's not... It doesn't work like that! All the notes..! No, I don't know for sure, and if his mother got an injection and didn't tell him or if Danner himself injected her while she was asleep or something, there's no way he'd know. And no way for me to find out.

“Do you intend to stay on site?”

“Oh, hell no. Soon as everything here is locked down, June-" He nods to Doctor Niang. “-and I are heading to the nearest town. Luthor can sort out this mess.”

Yes. I rather imagine that he can.

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Beta Male 20

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23rd September

22:51 GMT +5:30

“One other matter, Doctor Munro. I understand that you were moving on to testing on Dogs next? Only, I didn't see any Dogs...”

Another look at Doctor Niang. “We.. had six.. Dogs... If they're not here, I guess they musta got out? Or the Rats could have eaten them, we hadn't started on the Dogs yet. They'd be easy prey.”

Or you're lying to me. Or Brain already transferred them. That totally doesn't sound like something that's going to bite us in the arse later. I smile and nod anyway. “Do you intend to run tests on Dogs in future?”

“Maybe? It's all up in the air at the moment.” He shakes his head. “Won't be doing anything else until security gets improved, I'll tell you that for nothing.”

“Thank you, Doctor.” I nod again, step back and then turn away. Should probably talk to Kaldur before phoning Lex, see how he wants to play it.

“Can I ask you something?”

I stop, and half turn. “Of course?”

“How do you know about the Danner Formula? It's kind of important to my life, but I didn't think it was widely known about.”

“I've an interest in human augmentation myself. The Formula has no known adverse effects... Seemed like a good place to start."

“You.. you actually know the formula? How?”

“Doctor Munro, my mentors are Wonder Woman and Green Lantern, both of whom were members of the All-Star Squadron. Quite aside from that, you're the fourth Danner Formula enhancile I've met recently.”

He boggles. “There are others? I-I thought I was the only one! Who!? Where!?”

I make a placatory gesture. “I'm sorry Doctor, but that's privileged information. If you really-." He starts to interrupt, so I pre-empt. “If you really want to meet them, I can ask them if they're okay with that. If they are, then I can put you in touch.”

For a moment he looks as if he is going to continue, but he thinks about it and reins in his enthusiasm. “Yeah, okay, that's fair. But please, let ‘em know as soon as you can.”

I nod, then turn away. Kaldur's talking to M'gann, and I walk toward them. She looks a little better. I think. I suppose it would be hard to tell, what with her being a shapeshifter. I'm going to need to pester Mister J'onzz for more information on Martian psychology.

“Aqualad, do you have a moment?” The three of them look around. “I had a thought about how to follow up on this mission.”

Kaldur's eyes flick back to Kon and M'gann. “Then it is something we should discuss as a team.”

Oh. Don't see why not...

“Alright.”

I turn my head over to Wallace and Robin, wait until Robin is looking at me and then beckon them over with my right hand.

**Artemis?** Nothing, though given the state M'gann's in, that isn't a surprise. "Artemis!” Her head appears over the roof. “Debrief. Get down here.”

Her head disappears, and is replaced by her feet as she lowers herself from the edge before dropping down. Wallace and Robin stroll over.

“Ring, privacy.”

”Compliance.”

A transparent orange bubble expands around us, cutting out ambient sound. I step back so that we form a rough circle.

“Alright, here's what I'm thinking. Nothing we saw today can be definitively linked to Mister Luthor. We accuse him of anything, he'll blame Brain, and we have no solid evidence to the contrary. Plus, the doctors over there are going to report our presence back to their employer.”

A thoughtful moment while everyone examines the ground.

“Best idea I've come up with is phoning him and asking about it.”

Robins shifts uncomfortably. Wallace stares, dumbfounded.

“Your plan is to ask him? He's not going to say something incriminating over the phone!”

“Probably not. Still, I'd be interested to watch his reaction and to hear the official reason for this place existing. Plus, wouldn't hurt to have him owe me another favour. Robin, get anything definitive from the computers?”

He shakes his head. “Nothing he couldn't talk his way out of.”

Kaldur frowns as he thinks. “How do you intend to watch him?”

“Ring?”

A construct appears in the middle of our group, showing Mister Luthor sitting at his desk reading some sort of paperwork. I wave my right index finger and the image magnifies his face.

Artemis crinkles her nose. “Okay, that's creepy.”

I raise my left eyebrow. “Compared to super strength Rats?”

“Thought you said that wasn't him?”

“I said we couldn't prove anything. I think it would be out of character, but, who knows? Aqualad, am I doing this? You know Superman's just going to fly by his office tomorrow if I don't.”

“Your suggestion has merit.” He nods. “Do it.”

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Beta Male 21

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23rd September

22:55 GMT +5:30

I raise my left hand to my ear. Theatrical rather than necessary, but it feels appropriate. “Ring, phone Mister Luthor.”

"Compliance."

I pull the image out as a light on his desk phone comes on. He ignores it and keeps reading. Well, that's rude. After a moment he glances up, and I see Ms Graves reach across his desk and pick up the receiver.

“Lex Luthor's office.”

I think that's the first time I've heard her speak. “Good afternoon Ms Graves. It is afternoon there, isn't it? Orange Lantern two eight one four. Could you possibly put me through to Mister Luthor please?”

“We have a switchboard, you know.”

“You also have an office window. Besides, I think that Mister Luthor would probably rather keep this quiet, and since I can bypass normal traceable communication channels...”

She makes eye contact with her employer. “Hold please.”

I smile for the gallery. “Cheeky cow put me on hold.”

A nervous smile from Wallace and M'gann.

Ring, lip reading.

Compliance.

“-the Lantern. The orange one.”

Mister Luthor appears to think about it. “It's certainly more civilized than the alien's usual approach.”

He holds out his right hand, and Ms Graves hands the handset over. “Orange Lantern. To what do I owe the pleasure of this call?”

I focus the image on his face, with another, smaller image showing the room as a whole.

“I'm standing in your research centre in the Valmiki National Park. Interesting place.”

“Mm, well, after you drew my attention to the existence of the Danner Formula I realized that I would be doing humanity a grave disservice if I allowed it to vanish from the face of the Earth. May I ask how you found out about the research center?”

“Are you familiar with the supervillain known as The Brain?”

He shifts a little on his chair. “I wouldn't say ‘familiar’, but I know of him, certainly.”

“He and his hench Gorilla -I know, don't laugh- occupied the place, and took your researchers prisoner.”

He sits up. “And the security personnel?”

“I was going to ask you about that, actually. There aren't any. What's up with that?”

He frowns. “They were supposed to arrive a week ago. I don't make a habit of leaving important projects undefended. I realize this may be a silly question, but are you sure they weren't driven off or killed?”

“No remains, no security vehicles and I didn't detect any other humans anywhere near here.”

“That is concerning. Are the doctors in good health?”

“As far as the ring can tell.”

“I'm glad to hear it. Doctor Niang is an expert in her field, and Doctor Munro's expertise may well be irreplaceable.”

“Couldn't help but notice that Doctor Munro is a Danner Formula enhancile himself.”

He leans back, with a narrow smile. “Enhancile? En-hance-ile. You know, I rather like that word. It fits the concept well. Yes, finding Doctor Munro so quickly was a stroke of luck. I was expecting to be forced to send people out into the Brazilian rainforest for years. Were you able to take the Brain into custody?”

“I'm afraid not. He teleported away when he realised the game was up.”

“Oh, I'm sure you did your best. I.. hesitate to ask, but the facility itself..?”

“Largely intact, but I'm afraid that Brain used enhanced animals as vengeance weapons. You'll probably need to replace a lot of stuff.”

“No, that hardly matters. It uses modular units we manufacture in bulk in Patna, though the delay will be a nuisance. Though as long as most of the lab equipment is intact..?”

I shrug. “I think so. I'm not an expert, but the Rats were mostly focused on other animals.”

“They didn't escape, did they? Valmiki National Park is an important nature reserve.”

“None of the Rats did, but the Brain intentionally released various enhanced animals. They're wearing control collars, so corralling them shouldn't be too hard. Mister Luthor, you understand that there's some questions that the Justice League will want to ask you about this place?”

“I have nothing to hide... Though I would rather this had remained low key. Some people -the League among them I'm afraid- are rather against this sort of work.”

“Were you intending to research anything other than the Danner Formula here?”

“Not in the short term. I made sure they had information on other work we've undertaken in the same area-" I look at Robin and raise my eyebrows. He nods. Score. “-and I may have decided to expand the facility eventually, but the results the Danner Formula has already shown make everything else seem rather ineffectual by comparison. I was mostly interested in supporting Doctor Munro discovering the mechanism by which it works.”

“Did... Do you have any particular commercial applications in mind?”

“Well, several possibilities do spring to mind. Super strong guard Dogs, for example. I think we're both.. open minded.. on the matter of human augmentation, but that would have to be a long term aim. And given the lead time I don't think it would ever be a major commercial enterprise.”

“Not planning on selling doses of the formula to pregnant women?”

“No. I plan to provide it at cost... Perhaps even for free. For me, sharing the ‘fire of the gods’ with the world is an ideological matter. As I understand it the formula isn't all that expensive to make, and I could hardly hold the resulting children in bondage to LexCorp. No, in the medium term I plan to try to create a market in animal enhancements. I'd like the project to be self financing, but I think the benefit to humanity outweighs the financial burden to me.”

I look over to the paralysed Uber Rats. Yes, I can well believe there'll be a market for things like that.

“Thank you for your time Mister Luthor. Someone will be in touch if we have any further questions.”

“No, thank you, Orange Lantern. Losing that facility and the researchers would have been a crippling setback. It appears that I am once again in your debt.”

“Oh, do you want me to hang around until your security people get here?”

“No, that shouldn't be necessary. I'll be lighting a fire under them just as soon as I get off the phone.”

“I won't keep you then. Keep up the good work.”

“Goodbye, Orange Lantern.”

The image of Mister Luthor lowers the phone, and I lower my hand.

“Balls.”

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Beta Male 22

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23rd September

20:47 GMT +1

”Shazam!”

I walk slowly away from the entrance to the tomb of Rameses the Second to where John's sitting on a rock, staring at an unlit cigarette. I stop about two metres away, staring past him out into the Kahndaqi desert.

“Well I feel like a giant shit. How about you?”

John exhales slowly, then fishes in his coat pocket for his lighter. “Yeah, well, he asked for it, didn't he?"

“And?”

He flicks the lighter on for a moment, then closes the lid. “Most days, mate, if I'm honest. Surprised it was that fresh. I mean, he's, what? Twenty five?”

“Would the fact that it was a ritual killing have made it more... Stick better?”

“Might do. I didn't recognise the ritual whatshisface... Theo Adam?” He looks back at me, and I nod. He looks away again. “Was using. Doesn't really mean much. Once you've got the basics sorted the ritual will work pretty much whatever. But, might make it easier to find out where he learned it.”

I don't reply. Captain Marvel wanted to be left alone for a few minutes, which under the circumstances is quite understandable. We were both pretty sure that Theodore Adam had murdered his parents to get at Teth Adam's power, but I'd had no idea that their ritual sacrifice was part of the actual process of acquiring it. And Marvel just watched alongside us as John's phantasms re-enacted the process. It's just a mercy that the psychic residue wasn't strong enough for us to clearly see their faces. He seemed to be holding up alright when I left, but that might have been more due to Achilles’ courage than anything else. And he just turned it off.

I actually don't know if Marvel's ever been here before. Didn't think to ask. John was surprisingly alright about coming out here at such short notice. He said it was because he needed the cash since all the local bookmakers have blacklisted him and everyone he could trust to place a bet on his behalf, but I suspect that the prospect of a magic based opponent in Black Adam's weight class might have had something to do with it.

Thinking about it, I don't think I learned anything much from the conversation with Mister Luthor. I mean, if I wasn't on his cool list before I almost certainly am now, but in terms of learning things that will help us cope with whatever Brain does with what he took from their servers, or getting evidence of Mister Luthor's involvement in anything criminal... The doctors checked the facility over once more after I got off the phone, then got into the most Rat giblet free lorry to drive to the closest town. And that's when Marvel asked to have a word in private, about coming here. I'd been thinking about involving necromancers in murder investigations for a while, so...

Good idea, subpar implementation, I guess.

The rest of the team are heading back to the mountain. I left my lantern onboard; I can easily pick it up when I get back. Teekl decided to come with me. She's back in the tomb at the moment. Hopefully William will find her as reassuring as I do. Or maybe she'll ignore him and start hunting Jerboas. Probably just as well she didn't come to the research centre; those Rats would probably have given her a complex. And if I'd assimilated any of them she'd never have spoken to me again.

John twists around on the rock so that he's facing me. “So, what's the next step?”

“What makes you think I know?” I make brief eye contact, then drop my eyes to the desert floor. “I was already pretty sure that Theodore Adam got hold of Teth Adam's power here somehow. I didn't know.. that.. happened. Don't suppose there's an easy way to undo it?”

He puffs out his cheeks and exhales, shaking his head. “Forget it. Far as I can tell, the ritual connected him to a source of power that already existed, and if he's ended up like Captain Marvel there? No. It's too... It's too tightly bound.. for a street magician like me to mess about with.”

“And if he dismissed it himself?”

“Then he's just as vulnerable as anyone else and there's all sorts of things I could do. Do you think he will?”

I've checked. Theo Adam basically dropped off the planet after getting back to the states. Guess that's a no then. I shake my head. Different approach.

“How about Teth Adam? Is his soul intact?”

“It was. I could feel it, the anger's ground into the walls. Don't know how coherent he'd be, if whatever bound him here survived the ritual.” He lights his cigarette and put it in his mouth. “Takes a real bastard to tie someone's soul to their own corpse like that. He have any family?”

“Yes. Uh-" I shake my head. “-I think so, it's hard to know.”

I remember him giving some of his late wife's jewellery to... Whatshername, the woman who became Isis. Don't remember any other family but he probably had some. But something else is bubbling at the back of my mind. Something about what Mister Luthor said. No. About the way he said it.

“If you know where Theo is, I could probably check that the original soul's still there. Simple bit of scrying.”

“Probably worth doing.” John stands up. “Whow! Not right now! Captain Marvel's still in there.”

He shrugs. “Your money. Just sit here and work on my tan then, shall I?”

As I understand it the formula isn't all that expensive to make. As I understand it. Why wouldn't he know?

“How's the soul binding research going?”

Another shrug. “It's going. Whether it'll work or not, no way to know. Not like we can give it a proper test. Got a friend of mine, Clarice, her name is, working on how to tattoo the spell onto you. Should have something for you in a few weeks.”

Why wouldn't he know? Would he gain anything by pretending ignorance?

“The full works? Permanent scry immunity?”

“Hell no. A couple of bindings and a power tap. I can't very well carve a spell on something you don't have, can I?”

“And what'll that do?”

“Bleed energy into you and force it to stay put. If the stuff in the Atlantean scrolls is right, with a bit of luck, that should cause it to bond to you and make you a ‘real boy’.”

He smirks, but I'm not really concentrating on what he's saying. He seems to have it in hand. I just transmute the reagents for the Danner Formula, but none of them are that expensive and neither's the process. If you can do it in the late 19th century, a modern lab should be able to recreate it easily. If Mister Luthor really cares about this -and he certainly seems to- he should know the price down to the penny.

“If it all goes well, I can probably do the other thing later. If it doesn't, well, you can just grow the skin back, right?”

Am I just reading too much into it? But if Mister Luthor doesn't know how much it costs, he probably doesn't know what's in it. Alright, back to basics. Who knows how to make it? I do, Mister Garrick and Wallace do. Alan might, but I got the impression he never read the stuff he gave me. Batman. I haven't told him but let's face it, he's Batman. Doctor Munro. Munro works for Luthor, so...

Wait.

Is Doctor Munro not sharing?

back

NEXT CHAPTER

Revolution

BACK

Revolution 1

next

Revolution

25th September

07:01 GMT -6

“Are you sure about this?”

“Yeah, come on. Hit me!”

Guy stares me down with a rakish grin. We're floating above the Chihuahuan Desert, and the ruined proof of the fact that the League shouldn't call upon me to counter an orbital bombardment any time soon. Sandcastle New York lasted about twelve seconds. Sandcastle Seattle managed three. Sandcastle Mount Justice survived for all of two minutes before Guy actually put some effort into it.

The statue of Kon's still standing, mind.

“Alright, but if it looks like it's not working, I'm going to stop immediately.”

“It'll work!”

I hold out my left hand. I've put the ring sigil back on the palm side, and I point that right at him.

“Ring, assimilate.”

The deep orange beam strikes Guy square in the chest and the orange ripples spread out over him like a cocoon.

"Identity Theft in progress. One percent complete. Warning, will detected."

Guy grins harder, and clenches his right fist harder.

”Two percent complete.”

His ring crackles with green energy, momentarily breaking through the orange coating.

”Warning, will intensifying.”

“I am.”

The cocoon shatters as his environmental shield surges.

"Identity Theft ability interrupted by will pulse. Do you wish to resume?"

“Hah! Told ja it'd work.”

His ring is still crackling and his aura is a brilliant green shield of solid willpower and smug.

“Do you want me to try again?”

“Sure! Go ahead.”

Wipe the grin off his face.

“Ring, assimilate.”

Another orange beam, this time pointed at his head. As soon as it touches his environmental shield the beam fades to nothing.

”Unable to connect.”

“Hah!”

“Okay, I'll bite. What are you doing?”

“You said you heal yourself by focusing your need to be perfect. But I'm me right? I already know I'm perfect. So, I just gotta focus on being me, hard as I can? I can do that. I am.”

His aura intensifies still further. He unclenches his right fist and brings his ring up to his lips to kiss it.

Ophidian's Eyes.

No, nothing. All I see is a green Guy Gardner. I'm genuinely impressed. Guy's never been that imaginative, and he's copied my concept and developed his own green-friendly version in a few weeks.

“And the doctor said I mighta had brain damage. Huh, shows what she knows.”

Or you just fixed it. We certainly didn't need hit-on-head-to-change-personality Guy around the place, thank you very much.

“Any news on going back on active duty?”

His aura drops back to normal and his ring crackles as his smile fades. “They've scheduled an assessment for a couple a’ weeks. Dunno why they're draggin’ their feet over this.”

“Because something unexpected has happened, and that annoys them.”

“Hey, show some respect.” He jabs at me with his ring finger. “The Guardians got a whole Corps to run. They ain't got time t’ come runnin’ just cause I'd like ‘em to.”

“Doesn't Clarissi Salaak run the Green Corps?”

“Salaak? Nah, he's just a secretary.”

Ring, message him using Salaak's image.

Compliance.

Guy's ring blinks twice. He frowns at it. “Oh. Hang on.” He holds it out in front of him. “Yeah?”

Salaak's image appears.

Guy immediately clenches to attention, all humour vanishing from his face. “Lantern Salaak. Got a mission for me, sir? Ohhhh...”

The image of Salaak has an orange sigil in place of the green one. Curious, I didn't mean to do that.

Guy drops his ring down and look at me. “That, was a dick move.”

“Pffffff!”

“Okay smart guy, serious time now.” He crosses his arms. “Wonder Woman wanted me to talk to you about the robot attack.”

“What's to talk about? We got owned. If they'd wanted to kill us, they could have done. Lantern Stewart and I-.”

“Yeah yeah, turnin’ the place into a fortress. She said. You really think that's necessary?”

!Yes!

“I think events speak for themselves. I always thought that the whole ‘they won't think to look here’ thing was a bit weak, and the robots just proved me right.”

“Okay but, plasma cannons? Anti-Kryptonian plasma cannons?”

“It's not a measure of power, they just operate on the right wavelengths to disrupt Kryptonian organelles. And they're not cannons, they're just… Efficient. Besides, I said I'd compromise on that.”

“Right... Paralysis traps. Which you got from The Brain.”

I hold out my hands, palms upward. “Which don't cause any lasting harm. An intruder would be rendered helpless, and all a friend who forgot to enter their password would have to do is shout it. Or wait until someone came to check on the cause of the alert.”

“Look kid, I'm not... I've got no say in the rebuilding process. I just wanna know that you're coping okay. How's that meditation thing of yours goin’?”

I look away. “I've... Been having.. trouble. Short term stuff's demanding so much of my time at the moment. And I think I might have messed up with Captain Marvel.”

John got his bone fragments eventually. Marvel didn't say much else to me. I've no idea what he's thinking at the moment.

“Didn't you say that you needed to keep your long term goals in mind to avoid going cuckoo?”

“Look, Guy, two nights ago two robots broke into our home and took most of us prisoner. If that.. if that happened to people under my command, I'd give them a few days before sending them anywhere. Instead, we get sent to India, and nearly eaten by super rats. If we'd delayed a day the team could have been well rested and I'd have started with a full ring charge.”

“Alright, but he's giving you a break now, right? If you let John handle the-.”

I give him a calm and level look.

He looks puzzled. "What?”

“He's sending us to Africa tomorrow.”

“What?”

back

Revolution 2

next

26th September

17:39 GMT -5

I sit straight, resisting the urge to slump like a moody adolescent. On the other side of the coffee table Guy sits cross legged reading through my mission report again. I think he's stalling. On my right Diana sits with her hands in her lap, waiting for Guy to start. Am I really worrying her this badly?

With a slight wince Guy puts the PADD down on the table and waves his right hand in a circling motion.

“Alright, so... Why'd you say you wanted to go on this mission?”

Huh? “I don't follow.”

He glances at Diana. “Thought Batman was gunna say you could sit this one out?”

“He did. I chose not to.”

“D'you think that was a good idea?”

“As opposed to all my friends going into danger when I wasn't there to protect them? We didn't know that Brain hadn't taken a load of enhanced rats with him.”

“Okay, that's.. that makes sense, I guess. So, you run into these enhanced gorillas...”

He makes a combine harvester motion with both hands.

“The gorillas had Venom-Buster enhancements, augmented brains, inhibitor collars to use on us and telepathy, and by the time we noticed them they were right on top of us.”

“Do you think maybe you put a bit much force into it?”

“I didn't know how good their telepathy was and I thought it would be best to put the baffles in place as quickly as possible. I know M'gann got hurt by the feedback, but I already apologised to her and she said it was fine. Really I still think it was the right decision.”

“No, I meant... Says here you fractured their shoulders?”

“Yes. Well, I tried dislocating at first but that was too slow, and one of them was on the ball enough to push it back in. Think I fractured the brown one's hips as well, he was a bit lively. I didn't even know gorillas came in brown.”

“And you did this..?”

“Sonic lance construct. Turns out that Blockbuster enhanced bones can be a bit brittle.”

First time we've had that sort of melee combat since Santa Prisca. Construct armour with psi-baffles on everyone and Rao's Benediction on Kon plus precision railgun and sonic lance constructs equals one very sorry gorilla troupe. Then, an FTL transmission for everyone to the visible-from-orbit ‘Gorilla City’ and a gratifyingly short fight against a group of local mercenaries later, mission complete. Even better, they'd -they being the Brain and the freaky looking Ultra-Humanite- set up an actual Dolmen Gate and didn't have time to sabotage it before legging it. Pure magic mass teleportation. I'll be taking it to Atlantis for further analysis but damn that was a lucky find. We can track down what magic system they're using and monitor to see if anyone else tries to use it. Not even mentioning all of the potential civilian uses.

“You know they're endangered, right?”

“I healed them all once the base was secure. None of them suffered any long term damage. Plus, with the base under their control they can keep augmenting future generations. Even if they don't use Venom-Buster on them.. well, can you imagine what it would be like for them if none of their offspring shared their improved brains? The modifications Brain made weren't genetic.”

“Paul, that isn't really why we wanted to talk to you.” Diana scoots over to the edge of her seat. “I'm.. we're concerned about the manner in which you conducted yourself.”

“I didn't think any of my decisions were particularly unreasonable. If you'd like to let me know what I did wrong..?”

“It isn't that you did anything wrong, it's that your behaviour was...” She searches for the right term. “Uncharacteristically brutal.”

Oh. Thinking about it, I suppose it was, a bit.

“Particularly when I compare it to the way you dealt with the harpies when we first met.”

“The harpies weren't a threat to us. I didn't know how strong the gorillas were until after I'd started-.”

Um, not sure how to put it...

“Dismantling them?”

I give Guy a look. He shrugs.

“S'what we call it. You saw they weren't an immediate threat to you, so you broke bits until they weren't a threat to anyone. Batman beats up gangbangers like that, hits ‘em where it hurts ‘till they get a clue.”

“Paul, when was the last time you took off your ring?”

Um. Not recently. I've even sort of got used to excreting while wearing it. I don't actually think...

“Paul?”

My eyes drop down. My hands come together in my lap and I start rubbing the sigil with my right thumb. “I haven't taken it off since.. Red Typhoon...”

“Would you please take it off now?”

!NoWeak!

“W..? Why?”

“You told me that the orange light could cause obsessive behaviour, and after the trauma of having your home invaded your behaviour has noticeably changed. You told Lantern Gardner that you were having trouble meditating. Do you think that there could be a link?"

!NoNotBeWeakNeedRing!

My right hand clasps itself around my left.

Wait. You knew this could be a problem. Think it through rationally. Have I changed my mind about something after taking off the ring before?

I don't think s-. No, wait, I did. I changed what I thought about the way I'd been dealing with Artemis when I took it off. It didn't occur to me exactly how hard I was on her until I wasn't wearing it any more. I unclasp my right hand and hold the ring up in front of me, staring at it.

!KeepFriendsSafeNeedRing!

The glow of the ring intensifies. Tiny crackles of power like those Guy's ring gives off when he gets angry flick out from the surface.

“I... I'm not sure I should. Where is everyone?”

“Your team are all inside the mountain. Lantern Jordan, Captain Marvel and Zatara are on site, and Batman is conducting the debriefing.”

“But, if something happened...”

The ring develops an orange flame aura.

“Paul, put the ring on the table.”

!No!

“I need it!”

Diana and Guy share a look and then Diana gets up and beckons me to follow her. Okay... She walks over to a full length mirror mounted on the wall and I follow her. Alright, so what's-?

Oh no.

back

Revolution 3

next

26th September

17:43 GMT -5

I peer closer at my face, my eyes. I lean so that my face is only a few centimetres away from the mirror surface, turn so that the right side of my face is closest and put my right hand up to my face to pull the skin away from my right eye.

My iris isn't just orange, -and that was weird enough- it's been replaced by an orange sigil. I've no idea how I can even see out of it. I don't remember Larfleeze ever having that in the comics. In fact, the only time I remember that was with Lex Luthor during Blackest Night, when he got an orange power ring after Ganthet duplicated them. He acted like a complete idiot while he had it, despite all the good he could have done if he'd kept it together. He ended up spending months rushing around trying to get hold of an equivalent power source because he couldn't control.. it.. properly.

I turn and walk back to my seat, sit, lean forward and pull the ring from my finger and put it on the table before sitting back as far as I can and trying not to look at it. Diana smiles at me in a matronly way.

“That was the right thing to do, Paul.”

“Yes, I... Hadn't realised...”

I wave my right hand at my eyes. Without the ring on the weight of my armour is quite noticeable, and I shift a little to try and get into a more comfortable position.

”Is it.. gone?”

“Didn't know your eyes were green.”

Might be less ironic, but my eyes are dark green rather than the emerald green members of the Green Corps end up with.

“What colour are yours? Under.. that.”

A small smile. “Brown.”

“Are you feeling any better now?” Diana walks back to her chair, passing behind Guy as she does so.

“Um. Maybe? No.” I shake my head. “No, not really. The intense need is gone, but now I just feel...”

“Feel what?” She leans forward in her seat, and pats my knee. “I know you don't want to talk about it, but you clearly need to in order to use your ring safely.”

I close my eyes. The feeling's back. How I felt when I ran full pelt through the mountain to get at the ring.

”Helpless.”

Breathe. Breathe, and open your eyes.

“When I told you why I wasn't... Why I chose to live here, rather than move in with Alan, and I do.. realise, how happy that would have made him... Do you remember what I said?”

She thinks for a moment, then nods. “You said it was because you needed to identify your team mates' good with your own.”

I throw up my hands for a moment. “Success! I now need, absolutely need, to help them.”

Her eyes flick to the side. “Kon's enhancements, your study of Jay's formula?”

“Among other things. And when the robots attacked, I couldn't...”

“You were pinned to the wall and you couldn't help them.”

I nod, then bow my head and stare at the floor. It sounds stupid, put like that. “I thought we were all going to die. If it was in a fight because we got overpowered, I'd... I don't know if that would be better, but... If it was because I took off the ring to have a shit, after not taking the time to install basic automated defences..!”

I look up, and the ring's floating off the table, glowing, moving towards me.

“No, I don't want you.”

It drops down again.

“Making sure that the Mountain is safe is a League responsibility.”

“But the whole point of this place is that we're supposed to learn to not be dependent on you! A simple walk around identifying weaknesses and I could have sent a report to Batman. Or just.. just fixed it myself. Can't believe it took me as long as it did to make sure Artemis had decent arrows.”

“Look, Paul, I felt pretty stupid when I got outa the coma and the doctors told me I got taken down by a bus, but-."

“How often do you take your ring off now?”

He hesitates, then tries to crack a smile. “I sure look both ways before crossin’ the street.”

“Not what I asked.”

“Well..." Diana looks at him with an eyebrow raised. He shrugs. “I don't wear it all the time.”

She turns back to me. “When you're not wearing your ring, are you better able to cope with your desire to help your friends?”

“Without the ring I can barely act on it at all. Um, yes, I suppose.”

“And are you able to meditate while not wearing it?”

I close my eyes. Ah... Respect for others? Thinking about it, Kon could probably have got those rats off of him without me or Wallace.

No sudden overwhelming sense that of-course-he-needed-me. Looks like I should be alright. I open my eyes.

“Yes. Hm. Maybe... Maybe Orange Lanterns always go insane, and the best I can really hope for is to steer it so I go insane in a productive way, rather than an unproductive way?”

Diana doesn't follow. “Productively insane?”

“You know, like Batman, rather than like Larfleeze.”

I've noticed that Diana doesn't do stunned exactly, but she does hesitate for a moment when you surprise her in conversation. “Batman isn't crazy, Paul.”

I bow my head a little and look at her with my eyebrows raised. “Massive psychological trauma in childhood leading to intensely aberrant behaviour as an adult?”

“He's just dedicated.”

I keep staring.

She looks over to Guy, who face shrugs. “I was kinda wondering.”

She dismisses the idea with a shake of her head. “We're not here to talk about Batman. Can we agree that it would be better to make sure that you remained mentally coherent?"

I nod. I feel a little relieved. I don't want to keep feeling like this.

“Then this is what I'm going to suggest. I will speak to Batman about allowing you to make the changes you want in order to ensure that the Mountain is properly defended. In return, you will take off your ring for at least an hour each day, both to meditate and to ensure that it is not affecting you unduly. After a week, we will review your mental state and see what changes we need to make to your training regime. Does that sound fair?”

An hour? I look over to where it lays on the table. Could I cope with that? Now, yes, but while wearing it? It sounds like a reasonable thing to do, and I don't want to have my brain altered by the ring.

“Could I keep it close by, in case I needed it?”

“Would that have the same effect?”

“I don't think it's affecting me now, and it's less than a metre away.”

She nods. “Very well then. Do we have an agreement?”

I nod. “Yes.”

back

Revolution 4

next

1st October

18:05 GMT -5

As I reach the ‘esteem’ part of the hierarchy I open my eyes to look at the newly fortified doors of the hangar. At the hardened interior doors. At the place where the reactor used to be before Lantern Stewart and I moved it deeper underground to a more secure location. Shame he didn't like my idea of ‘accidentally’ leaving the schematics for something a bit more sophisticated somewhere I could find them, but I guess that was fair. Lastly, I smile slightly as I look at the EMP emitters, motion sensors and paralysis field generators now built recessed into the walls. Not an exact copy of Brain's design as it turned out that those ones usually caused a Human caught in them to have a stroke after half an hour or so, but just as effective. I know, because I tested it. Doesn't even hurt. I found it rather fun, actually, trying to move and not being able to when there's no obvious reason for it.

The ring's back in my room, along with my lantern. Given how big a problem it could be causing, I've been going without for more than the agreed upon hour. It's going to be about four hours today. I don't know that that's necessary, but then I read Gone With The Wind when my mum suggested that I branch out from science fiction, horribly long racist -both horribly long and horribly racist- piece of rubbish that it was. If it's safe to take it off for one hour in here -and I honestly think that it now is- then it's only slightly less safe to take it off for four. Confidence. I can be confident without the ring. This world isn't quite dangerous enough to justify wearing it inside a properly fortified mountain. Not sure I'm ready to go outside like that yet. Maybe next week, after Diana and Guy review my mental state.

Queen Mera was delighted with the Dolmen Gate, and promised to put a team on it. Guess Wotan really knows his stuff. Poseidonis seemed to have stood down from high alert, and the mix of guards was noticeably less sharky. I'm glad. It wouldn't be any fairer to discriminate against purebloods than it is to discriminate against... Still don't know what the polite term is. Ablantian? Have to remember to ask Kaldur. Or would that be like me asking a black man what the polite term for a nigger is? He came with me for the trip. Think he picked up some more equipment, but I haven't got around to asking about it. Anyway, that was a worthwhile achievement.

As was capturing Gorilla City intact. The League's going to keep an eye on the place for now, and they haven't told the Bwundian government about it. My knowledge of African national borders isn't good enough to recognise the country or countries Bwunda replaces. The name makes me think Rwanda, but though there has been some ethnic violence post colonial independence there's no history of outright genocide. I doubt that there's much risk in keeping knowledge of the existence of a small group of sentient gorillas secret. I only saw about forty adults plus their offspring. Will inbreeding become a problem? I wonder if they'll need to uplift neighbouring groups in order to cope?

M'gann appears to have made a full recovery from the rat episode. Mister J'onzz told me that he doesn't have reference materials on Martian psychology with him, but that he'll add it to the list of things he'll bring back with him on his next visit. He spent some time around the mountain after the India mission, and told me that as far as he can tell M'gann is fine. I was pleasantly surprised by her response to my suggestion that we upgun the bioship. Not just the fact that she liked the idea, but that she had already been putting time into working out how to make it work physically. She laughed off my semi-serious suggestion of popping over to Mars and looting their military databases. Hm. Integrating Earth weapons would require the ship to give up some of its shapeshifting, so we'd have to remove them regularly for its regeneration cycle. And it couldn't fire when in stealth mode. A problem for later, perhaps. Anyway, her decision making during the mission was exemplary and there's no way she could have predicted what the chemical would do to her.

Turns out Robin and Wallace had been wondering whether I was the source of Mister Luthor's access to the Danner Formula. Not sure my saying ‘he didn't ask’ was quite the reassurance they were looking for, but the video of Doctor Munro lifting an unconscious Venom-Buster elephant over his head when Mister Luthor's people finally got on-site made the alternative quite apparent. I'll have to ask Thomas Beresford when I see him next week. I tried booking a visit to see Tuppence first, but was told that she didn't want to see me. Doctor Strange is still in charge of Belle Reve at the moment. I've got no idea how long the hearings are likely to last. I was prepared to ‘deal’ with Waller in some way if she was like the comic version, but she actually seems okay here.

Wallace is finally getting ready to start his first alchemy experiment. His aim is to produce something simple, but which has no basis in its chemical components. I thought about offering to help but, respect for others. I trust that he'll have the sense to ask if he needs me.

Guy's been trying to teach me to generate power ring energy pulses. I think he's accepted that I'm never going to be able to shield a sandcastle in the way Greenies are trained to do. Similarly, the sort of endurance training Kilowog made him do wouldn't help me do anything but hit him harder. Energy pulses on the other hand are supposed to be perfectly possible for anyone with a power ring. The Greenies can all do them and Star Sapphire certainly used them. Alan didn't, but he had no training. I remember them from the animated versions; just point the ring and fire. Turns out? Not that easy. The theory behind it seems to involve making the same sort of furrow in the universe we use for FTL travel, but sending a packet of energy from the ring rather than myself. I can sort of do it, but not reliably enough to want to try it in an actual fight and Guy's at a loss as to how to put the thought processes necessary in terms of avarice rather than willpower. Bloody powerful for its energy cost when I can make it happen, though.

The only part of self-actualisation I need to dwell on is that while I may not be entirely responsible for my own actions under extreme orange influence, I am responsible for getting into that state. I cannot allow my mind to decay like that, for the good of my friends and mentors as well as for my own sake.

Right. That's done then. I rise to my feet, and shake my legs to try and get the cramp out. Uh, that's the sort of thing I've had to get used to now I'm not wearing the ring full time. That, and not walking into the corner of kitchen units. And paper cuts. And all the other stupid stuff the ring just made go away. Hurrrrrr. Wonder if there is a safe way to wear it full time? At least I've been able to shit naturally again.

“Hey Paul. Wally said I could probably find you down here.”

I stop the pins and needles dance and look over to Artemis, standing in the newly fortified lift.

“Good evening, Artemis. How was school?”

Haven't seen her in civilian clothing much. Black trousers, white t-shirt and a sort of short jacket thing. It's brown. Doesn't look very practical.

“It was... It's okay. Kinda weird having to wear a uniform.”

“In Britain, it's all uniform all the time.” I start walking towards her. “Will you be staying for dinner?”

“Um, yeah, I think so. I was thinking about picking out a room here, for when I want to stay over or for keeping my equipment in. Hard to explain some of that stuff to the building super.”

“Plenty of rooms left, and I can always dig out more if nothing's to your taste.” Evil grin. “Plus, it'll give you somewhere to hide out when your mum starts dating again.”

She gags. “Uah! Don't even joke about that!”

I tone down the evil. “How's your mother's physical therapy going?”

“It's going really well. She's on crutches now, pretty much stopped using the chair.”

“Oh, that's great!”

I enter the lift and turn around as she presses the button for the main meeting room. M'gann's on dinner duty today. Kaldur and Robin were sparring...

“Mom.. wants me to invite you over for dinner.”

I turn my head to look at her. She's looking at me and smiling.

“Well, I.. don't have any plans for the next eight months. That would be lovely. Did she have a particular day in mind?”

“I don't think so. Why, what's happening in eight months?”

“I'm travelling to Maltus for the first time. That's where myyy... Employers?” I make a circling motion with my left hand. “Live.”

“Huh. Don't think I've ever seen you without your ring on before.”

“I go to meetings now. They're very understanding. ‘Hello, my name is Saul and I'm a ring user’.” Her eyes flick down, and her smile lengthens slightly. Ah, I should probably ask about that. “While we're alone, have you given any thought to the augmentation question?”

Serious face. “The.. strength.. formula. That's what that Munro guy and the Terror Twins have, right?”

“Can we not call them the Terror Twins? Their names are Thomas and Tuppence Beresford.”

“Planning on visiting them, too?”

“I am, yes. Well, Thomas. Tuppence doesn't want to see me. But, yes, that's where their strength comes from.”

“And those freaky rats?”

Turns out that while Danner and Garrick can't work together, Danner and Blockbuster work really well. I still don't know enough to know what that says about the mechanism.

“The small ones who came after Kon, Wallace and I had it. The big ones had that and Blockbuster, which was why they looked like they did.”

“And there aren't any.. y'know, side effects.”

“None ever reported, and we've got several human subjects and, um, loads of rodent ones.”

We share a chuckle.

“And.. and it's permanent?”

“’Fraid so.”

She looks down. “I think I'm-."

The lift door opens, revealing Wallace eating a bag of popcorn. “Hey guys. What's up?”

back

Revolution 5

next

1st October

18:13 GMT -5

Artemis stalks ahead of us to the training area.

Wallace nudges me in the ribs with his free arm. “You know, if you wanted a little more ‘elevator time’, I'd totally have understood.”

“Wallace, we were just having a private conversation. It wasn't anything... elevator timey.”

Another nudge. “Staying faithful to Kon, I can respect that.”

Uhh.

Up ahead, I see Kaldur and Robin in full civilian clothing. Whow, they must stink like arse if they've been sparring in that. I mean, the aircon here's good -great really, thanks to Lantern Stewart's hard work- but that's still a couple of layers of clothing while performing combat acrobatics. Kon and M'gann are standing together at the left side of the room, and Captain Marvel and Mister Zatara are standing together at the far side. Marvel seems to have bounced back from the whole Kahndaq thing, though I've no way of knowing if William is handling it as well without Achilles’ help.

I hear Wallace sigh as we approach Kaldur, Robin and Artemis.

“So if Zatara's our babysitter of the week, why's he still here?” He points at Captain Marvel. “And why is he eating my snacks!?”

“He and I were investigating Theodore Adam's-."

"Recognised, Batman, zero two."

The zeta tube glows as Batman materialises, striding towards us. “Computer, national news.”

I think that's the least growly I've ever heard him.

A large holographic screen appears on our right and we turn and face it. Ms Grant appears centre shot, reporting from Metropolis. “The initial attack was short lived, but Metropolis was only granted a short reprieve.”

A giant towering pillar of vines -which remind me slightly of the Monster Minds from Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors- has risen straight up from the centre of a street and sent out tendrils in all directions. As we watch, a building is enveloped and then crushed.

“And despite the intervention of Superman-" Kal-El flies in to evacuate two people from a roof before that building too is reduced to rubble. “-and the Justice League-" Hawkwoman flies across the rooftops and swings at some of the more adventurous vines.

DontThinkAboutHentaiDontThinkAboutHentai.

“-there seems to be no end in sight.”

Lantern Stewart cuts off a vine that had struck Hawkwoman before the two of them head towards the central plant tower. The severed vine appears to have a disturbingly red interior. Is it really a plant? Hawkman flies in behind his colleagues, cutting through another vine. How did he do that? How did he make a straight cut with a mace? Is that some property of Nth metal weapons? Because I've been reading up on them, and I was expecting there to be a brittle carbonised chunk which would collapse on itself, not a neat line.

“Shall we get out there?”

Robin can barely contain his excitement. I checked, and Swamp Thing's junglefication of Gotham hasn't happened yet, if it's going to happen at all. I could check with John, but some of the stuff that happened between him and the swamp god was a bit personal. Lending Swamp Thing his body to get Abbey pregnant? As far as I can tell by indirect means that should have already happened if it's going to happen, but I'm not sure I could explain the question if it isn't going to happen.

Batman turns back to us.

“No. The League will soon have the situation under control, that's not why I'm here. According to your intel-" A picture of Mister Crock in prison garb appears next to him. “-Sportsmaster supplied Cadmus’ Blockbuster Formula, to Kobra.”

“Who combined it with Bane's Venom to create Venom-Buster.”

Thank you for the reminder, Wallace. I'd completely forgotten about that.

“Which The Brain combined with the Danner Formula to create his animal army.”

Are Robin and Wallace part of an exposition club or something?

“The Brain also used inhibitor collars, like the ones at Belle Reve penitentiary.”

M'gann too, I see. Nice that she's got hobbies other than pompom prancing.

“Batman, is it possible that plant thing is on Venom-Buster too?”

I narrowly avoid rolling my eyes. Of course not Artemis, that's ridiculous, it's a plant, how would-?

“I had Green Lantern run a spot analysis.” Batman waves his left hand in front of him and a holographic keyboard appears. “The vines' cellulose does contain trace amounts of a Venom-Buster variant.”

How is the what? What?

...

What?

“These cannot be coincidences.”

No, Kaldur, they can. They can also be completely unimportant. They're drugs, they were always going to get out somehow, and we never could be completely sure that Kobra hadn't shipped some of the stuff out in advance of the main delivery.

“Unrelated criminals cooperating with each other worldwide.”

If they're cooperating they aren't unrelated, are they? It's a supply network, so what? That's like saying that the guy who invented the AK-47 is working with Somali pirates. Robin opens a holographic keyboard of his own and starts typing frantically.

“Exactly. It's now clear our enemies have now formed some kind of-" Don't say it. Please don't say it. “-secret society of supervillains.”

If I was wearing the ring, I'd generate a wall just to have something to beat my head against. We have no evidence of broader cooperation! There are all sorts of links in supply chains!

“The attack on Metropolis is only the beginning.”

I tentatively raise my right hand. “Sir, have any sort of demands been made? Or do you think someone's just doing this for fun?”

“No demands have so far been issued.”

“It isn't just Metropolis.” Robin generates four additional screens adjacent to the main one. “Plant creatures have sprouted in Gotham City, Paris, Star City, London and Taipei.”

Oh dear. Might have to do something about London myself. Then the pictures on the screens cut out at once and are replaced by static. Batman turns to them, presumably to stick his hand down the back and fiddle with the aerial cable. Wallace looks at Robin's keyboard.

“Dude.”

He types with frantic speed, trying to work out what's going on. Maybe I should get the ring..?

“Not me. Someone's cutting into the satellite signal. All satellite signals.”

Then the static disappears, replaced by...

Is that supposed to be the Joker?

back

Revolution 6

next

1st October

18:17 GMT -5

I've seen pictures of Jack Napier before, but since he isn't a threat to me I didn't study him at any length. He seems to have gone the canon failed comic to Red Hood to pasty nutter route. Scans of his Arkham records gave me his DNA, and it looks like Lonnie really is his son. Not sharing that piece of data.

He leans up to the screen -camera, I suppose- and taps it with the knuckles of his right index and middle fingers.

“Ladies and gentlemen. We interrupt your regularly scheduled mayhem-"

Go for the ring or stay here? Oh, one of the Greenies has got to be tracking this, right?

“-to bring you this-"

He draws and flicks open a flick knife. Is he going to stab someone on worldwide television? Would be in character I suppose. He reaches forwards and past our point of view -presumably to take hold of the camera- and the viewpoint rotates.

“-important announcement-”

Centre screen are Wotan, what looks like a Zombie in military fatigues, the Ultra-Humanite, Count Vertigo -weirdly, his real name and title-, Theodore Adam and Doctor Pamela Isley. So, two I couldn't solo for definite, and Wotan's the only one who actually worries me. Got to find out who that Zombie is. Sometimes not knowing who people are is another effect of not wearing the ring full time.

“-from the Injustice League. Hehuhhuhhahahahahaha”

Really? That was the best name he could come up with? I mean, it sounds dated when the Justice League use it. And the Zombie's got his hands in his pockets. He's not even looking at the camera! At least the others are glowering at the audience.

The camera zooms in on Count Vertigo.

“We.. are responsible.. for the attacks on your cities.”

Well, someone's about to get squashed by the might of whatever air force is closest.

“If you wish to save them, a ransom of ten billion American dollars is required.”

I saw pictures in Gorilla City, but the Ultra-Humanite's head is really freaky. The hair on the top hasn't grown back yet, and I think the surgery must have been performed by Mallah or something because those scars are huge. Would they have had to enlarge the internal space to fit a human brain? Maybe, but the gorillas we met were fully sentient with regular sized heads. Wonder if the technique Brain used on them would work on regular humans?

“Delivery instructions have been sent to the United Nations.”

A bit like in Soon I Will Be Invincible, when Doctor Impossible makes his ‘make me ruler of the world’ demand and then waits for the superheroes to show up. Apparently they actually had a legal formula whereby that could happen. I guess you just have to be prepared for these things when you live somewhere like this.

“There is no time limit, but, the longer your governments wait...”

Napier's hand moves across the lens and he pulls the camera back around. His face fills the shot. Someone didn't go to film school.

“The more we get to have our.. jollies.”

He breathes the last word with passion.

“Ehhuhhuhhuhhuhhuhhuhhuh!”

The camera cuts off, and static returns.

Well, this is some old school supervillainy. Giant plants terrorising the planet, criminals with no goal but their own enrichment, a basically unworkable scheme...

Batman's communicator beeps. “Roger that Aquaman, the UN will prepare the ransom as a fallback. But it won't come to that.”

Robin's back on his keyboard. This is technically a briefing, so I don't think that running off to pick up the ring would be polite. Maybe I've been a bit too enthusiastic about the not-wearing-it-the-whole-time thing. I'm basically reduced to standing here like a lemon without it.

The villain team photo reappears on the main screen, and little boxes appear around its members' faces as he says their names.

“Count Vertigo, Poison Ivy, Ultra-Humanite, Atomic Skull,-"

Oh, that's who the Zombie is. I was expecting something more like the Justice League Unlimited version.

“-Black Adam, Wotan, seven heavy hitters!”

Were the rest hiding behind the gorilla?

“Probably behind everything and everyone we've faced.”

Seeing links where none exist? Isn't there a word for that?

“Could we please use their actual names?”

He flashes me a look. I think I threw him off.

“There's your secret society!”

I add Wallace to the debit side of my only sane man meter. Or maybe just my wrong genre savviness meter. Is this how things work here? I had been assuming not, but... “We don't have any hard evidence of a broader system of cooperation. Besides, why would a secret society broadcast to the entire world?”

“Perhaps after India they saw that we would deduce the truth and saw no point in hiding any longer.”

And Kaldur.

“All we knew was that Ultra-Humanite, Brain and Wotan were working together. Now we've seen their whole roster and know exactly who to prepare for. And where's Brain?”

“Whatever's going on, we need to get out there and kick some plant creature butt!”

“Wallace, they don't have-."

“The Justice League will handle the plants. I have a different job for this team.”

“Owh mayn..”

Wallace gets punched in the shoulder by Artemis. I'm really starting to like her.

“With the plants attacking so many locations simultaneously, there must be a central control system.”

I'd dispute that, but this is Batman. He's got way more experience of supervillain hijinks, and presumably has a better idea of the limits of MadTech.

“Your mission, is to destroy it.”

“You realize what you're asking them to do?” Zatara walked forward from the pack while we were focused on Batman.

“They're ready.”

Guess I'm going to be trying out the anti-Theo Adam techniques sooner than anticipated. Should work, though I would have liked to go over things with John once more.

“Ready? Ready for what?”

And Wallace earns another punch, and Artemis swiftly pays him with one. What was it Superboy said about Impulse in that comic? Quick, but not swift?

“Aow!” He rubs the bruise. I'll have to repair that before the mission proper gets underway. “Will you cut that-."

“Hello Wally!” Huh, works in British English too. “If the big guns are fighting plants, who do you think we'll be fighting?”

“I don't know! I guess we'll-."

Artemis points at the screen. Wallace follows her finger, then gasps. Oh my goodness.

“Ooooohh.”

I raise my right hand, index finger extended. “Can I bagsy Theodore Adam?”

back

Revolution 7

next

1st October

18:21 GMT -5

Mister Zatara looks us over for a moment, then turns his head to look at Batman. “Well Batman, I trust that you are correct.”

“I trust you can locate the enemy.”

If it was Wotan who warded Mister Luthor's research centre, then he's almost certainly warded his own base in the same way. I don't want to underestimate Mister Zatara's abilities, but if he doesn't struggle at least a little then the lentils have gone and blackness is all that remains.

“Indeed. Wotan's involvement suggests sorcery is a part of how the plants are controlled. Robin, if you would provide a holomap.”

More frantic tapping. I can't help but feel that perhaps a custom keyboard layout would be better for him. A pale blue translucent globe about four metres pole to pole appears in front of us, rotating slowly.

“I'll search for signs of concentrated sorcerous activity.” He walks forwards, his shoes clicking on the floor. When he gets to optimal distance he raises his hands. "Etacol retnecipe fo yrecros!"

Hundreds of red dots appear on the globe, blinking out and reappearing elsewhere moments later. The globe itself shudders and fritzes.

Zatara frowns. “Laever!”

The globe stabilises, the number of red dots is reduced by about a third and their movement slows.

Wallace cocks his head to the side. “Some kinda magic proxy server?” Artemis scowls at him suspiciously. He raises his hands. “I'm serious, that could happen.”

“Laever!”

I make momentary eye contact with Captain Marvel, who nods. I raise my hand again.

“Sir, would it help if you had something to focus on?”

Mister Zatara lowers his hands with a frustrated sigh. “Yes, but a few pieces of the Ultra-Humanite's body fur will not suffice. I am sorry, but there are wards in place that are far more complex than anything I have previously encountered.”

Robin tilts his head slightly to the side. “Maybe Wally's right about proxy servers. Oh El, you said that you saw Wotan when Brain used a magic portal to escape in India, right? Maybe they've been comparing notes?”

“I wasn't thinking about body fur, sir. I have a fragment of Teth Adam's bone. It's had about five thousand years' contact with his magics...”

And everyone's staring at me.

Kaldur voices the question. “How did you get a piece of Black Adam's bone?”

“Captain Marvel-" I point over my shoulder to him with my right thumb. “-and I were investigating his background, found his tomb in Kahndaq.”

“Ah, Oh El?” Wallace points at the screen. “He isn't dead.”

“Dih? He sort of is, it's... a bit complicated.”

Batman's eyes narrow. “I don't remember seeing a report.”

“I haven't finished it yet. Um, look, I'll get the ring,-" I point in the direction of my room. “-hand Zatara the bone, and stick what I've written up so far on the system.”

Batman looks at Mister Zatara, who nods thoughtfully. “A piece of bone certainly should work.”

Batman nods at me. “Go.”

I step around Kaldur. “Excuse me. Thank you.”

Once I'm out of the huddle I run towards my room. I knew this sort of thing might happen if I stopped wearing it full time! Uhh. Right, from now on just an hour. And my room's still furthest away from the training room! I might need to move-.

I turn a corner and skid to a halt to prevent myself running into Teekl, who is sitting on the floor licking her right forepaw.

“Bloody cat! What are you-?”

She looks up, and the ring's in her mouth. I kneel down in front of her, and rub her head just in front of her ears with my right hand.

“Sorry Teekl. Good choice, well done. Are you going to give it to me?”

She rubs her head against my hand, looking me in the eye. Just as I'm about to ask again, she opens her mouth and drops it to the floor.

“Thank you.”

The ring glows faintly, and flies onto my left ring finger, sigil inwards. A wave of orange later and I'm dressed for work. I look at Teekl and pat my left shoulder with my ring hand.

“Coming?”

She looks at me with her head tilted to the side until just before I get up to leave without her.

"Teekl come.”

She floats around me, then I feel her pressure next to my head and then her weight on my shoulder. I stand up and transition, taking the padded case containing the bone fragment out of subspace the moment I rematerialise. I step forwards and hold it out to Mister Zatara.

“Careful, it's very fragile.”

He takes it, and opens the lid. “Do I detect the hand of John Constantine in this?”

“Erm. Yes. Sorry.”

He sighs as I step back into the huddle. “Taolf enob.”

The dull yellowy brown bone shard floats up out the case, which he closes and slips into his jacket pocket. With the bone hovering between them, he holds out his hands towards the blue globe once more.

“Enob, raeh rouy s'renwo llac! Laever Kcalb Mada!”

Shouldn't that be Teth... huhtet? Thet? I've no idea how it would sound. Works anyway. The bone floats, rotating slowly on its axis, and begins glowing gold tinted white. Then it leaps towards the globe, anchoring itself somewhere on the southern US coastline. More tapping from Robin.

“Coordinates locked in. The Louisiana Bayou.”

Kaldur nods. “We are on our way.”

back

Revolution 8

next

1st October

18:25 GMT -5

Zatara waves his right index finger at the bone and it floats down as he delicately returns it to the case. My team mates turn as one for the exit as I pluck the case from Mister Zatara's unresisting hands and return it to subspace. I turn to start towards the hangar. Artemis, Robin, Wallace and Kaldur will be heading to the changing rooms and then to the armoury. Kon's pre-changed, and M'gann shifts from her casuals to her field costume as I watch. I start walking too. There's really no hurry for me, it'll take at least-.

Why is Captain Marvel going with them?

“Captain Marvel.” Batman speaks, he halts. Batman's chairman of the League at the moment, which I think makes him Marvel's superior. Possibly? I'm not completely sure how that whole thing works. “For this plan to succeed, the entire Justice League must be seen fighting the plant creature.”

Oh. This is the first time we've had contact with Black Adam since finding out exactly what happened to the Batsons. Marvel's face isn't showing disappointment, he's actually angry.

“You, Zatara and I are needed elsewhere.”

I wonder..? Batman almost certainly knows who Marvel is. Heck, he had to step in to stop him joining us on the mission to Africa. But he doesn't know exactly how Marvel's parents were killed, he won't understand why his normal approach might not work. Is Marvel wearing his communicator? No? Darn. Directional amplification, please.

”William, I'll get him for you.”

He turns his head in my direction and I meet it with a slight smile. Come on, you told me Shazam picked you because you overcame the Enemies of Man. Beat Hatred again. I can literally see him force down his anger as he swallows and forces his face to relax. Another moment to put his normal friendly smile back in place. I get a nod, and then he walks over to his two team mates.

“Okay, Batman, where are we heading?”

I transition to the lift, appearing next to Kon and M'gann. Any preparation I need to do?

Ring, charge?

Ninety six percent remaining.

That's fine. Haven't really done much with it today. Hm. London attack might be a good time for Robert to show-.

“Louisiana? Giant plants? Didn't we spend a whole day looking for a plant guy down there back in July?”

I look at Kon, and start feeling stupid. “Yes, yes we did.”

And I still have Abigail Holland's phone number. Not that it'll help if she's out in the swamps somewhere. Would Batman have already phoned her? Won't hurt to check. I generate a phone construct next to my right ear as the lift opens.

“I'll try and get hold of Missus Holland now.”

We walk into the lift.

“Is Teekl coming with us again?”

I feel her ears brush against my cheek as she turns her head to look at him, and he takes a step away. She showed no interest in joining us in Africa, but I hadn't actually asked.

”Teekl come? Where come?”

M'gann smiles and leans over to scratch Teekl's head.

“There are some very bad people in Louisiana, and we're going to stop them.”

”Hunt?”

“Well, we don't know exactly where they are so.. yes, we'll need to hunt them.”

"Teekl come hunt.”

Kon doesn't seem to be impressed. “Maybe we can use her as bait.”

"Ooooreeeeorhh."

Ring, dial.

Compliance.

“It's ringing now.”

Of course, going by past experience she's either not there or she's just not going to-.

“Hello?”

“Missus Holland, Orange Lantern two eight one four. We spoke back in-."

“I remember. What do you want?”

“I don't know if you're watching the news, but some rather large plants controlled by a group calling-."

“I saw the broadcast. Alec isn't helping them.”

“Of course not, I wasn't about to accuse him.” The lift doors open, and Kon leads the way to the bioship. “It's just that it would be really convenient if a guy who can control plants would turn up and deal with this supervillain engineered death vine thing before hundreds of people died. I mean, that is sort of his job, isn't it?”

“I don't know. Recently, he's been... Alright, look, I'll see if I can get hold of him. I don't know how long it'll take though.”

“Thank you Missus Holland, that's all I can ask.”

I drop the phone construct. Not what I was hoping for. I do remember something about her and Swamp Thing becoming estranged in later comics, but that only happened after the nameless thing killed about a third of my species, and I think someone would have mentioned if that had happened. Right, next job.

Ring, dial Robert Marrack.

Compliance.

The rear hatch of the bioship goops into being and Kon and M'gann board. I know I could make this phone call just as well from inside, but I feel like pacing a little. I hear the ringing as the ring makes contact.

Still ringing. Then:

“If this is another bloody insurance call-!”

“Rob, it's me.”

“Oh! Orange Lantern -shut up, Dad, shut up!- what is it?”

“Am I interrupting something?”

“You know there's a bloody great plant attacking... Yeah, course you do.”

“That's what I was phoning about. Any chance you and your Dad could put in an appearance?”

“Dad can teleport us between standing stones, but some complete... Some complete nobbler has only gone and killed every stone circle anywhere near London. It'd take hours by car and Dad... Dad's not keen on us trying to get a plane.”

There isn't a zeta tube in Truro. London, Edinburgh and for some reason Brighton.

“Okay, keep your hair on, I'll see if I can pick you up.”

“Aw, thanks mate!”

“I said I'll see, I'm going to be occupied myself. You know anything about fighting giant plants?”

“N..no...”

“Alright, I'll see if I can get you a weapon as well. Don't go anywhere.”

I hang up.

...

Apophenia! That was it!

back

Revolution 9

next

1st October

18:30 GMT -5

First thing that comes to mind when it comes to weapons for mystically enhanced melee fighters is swords. Diana's got a few enchanted weapons in the embassy. Her actual combat sword was a gift from Queen Hippolyta after she returned to Themyscira post World War 2. It's got all sorts of nasty enchantments on it, but her training swords are just charmed not to break when she hits things with them at full strength. Could be just what the Cornwalls need.

The other thing that's tickling the back of my mind is Lantern Medphyll. In theory, getting hold of him by ring is easy, and he's certainly demonstrated plant control abilities with his ring that would make him invaluable in a situation like this. Or at least he did in the comics. I don't know his sector number so I can't get hold of him myself. Have to see if I can get hold of Guy.

Ring, locations of Guy Gardner and Diana.

Agh! A incomprehensible blur of images of Leaguers and giant vines. Right, one at a time, please.

I see Guy holding a huge creeper away from a tall building with a tall barrier while the people inside evacuate. His head turns back for a moment, watching them go. As the stream trails off he smiles slightly before turning back to the plant. His face tightens, his ring pulses and giant vegetable knives appear, attached to him by filaments projected from his back. I taught him that. The knives swing forwards and the vine is cut into slices. The crowd cheers and Guy turns to say something to them. This seems like a good time.

Ring, contact Green two eight one four B.

Compliance.

Guy's head snaps around to his ring, and the picture in my mind is replaced by the picture projecting from the ring. “Little busy here, Orange. What is it?”

"Have one of you Greenies tried to get hold of Lantern Medphyll yet?"

"Who?"

"Lantern Medphyll. The plant guy? Yellow skin, one eye, leaves growing out of his head?”

“Never met him.”

“He can use his ring to control lesser forms of plant life. If he can-." The image jerks and dissolves for a moment. “Er, Guy? You alright?”

“R-. Really busy, Orange!”

“Just give me his sector number, I'll call him myself!”

Silence for a moment. “He's five eight six A. Now y'mind if I-?”

“Thankyou.”

Ring, end.

Compliance.

Alright, so I can now get hold of the Lantern I consider to be the model of Lantern comportment. Maybe the first properly alien alien I've met since getting here. I mean, M'gann looks human most of the time, Kon and Kal-El look human all the time. I remember the snapshot that issue of Swamp Thing gave of his home planet. Giant sentient trees for buildings, plant forms replacing animal forms throughout the ecosystem and a Lantern who can manipulate plant life by controlling his own spiritual resonance.

I haven't tried randomly contacting Green Lanterns, though I suppose I could have done. Don't want to antagonise them unnecessarily, after all. I have no idea at all where five eight six is in relation to two eight one four, but it shouldn't take too long for a Lantern to travel from one to the other wherever they are.

Next thing, the Cornwalls. I'll have to leave the mountain to pick them up, which means speaking to Kaldur first. And Diana. I don't have unrestricted access to the Embassy's armoury. In fact, I have ‘don't ever touch these unless I'm here’ access, though that order was given in one of my early training sessions. Maybe I could talk to Sephtian about getting her an-.

“Hey, Paul, you coming?”

I turn to the bioship and see Kon sticking his head out of the hatch. M'gann's probably ensconced in the pilot seat, running a check on the ship's systems. There isn't a pre-flight checklist exactly, but M'gann likes to make sure that everything is in full working order. In a normal commercial aircraft the journey to southern Louisiana would take us about five hours, pretty much the same time as it took the bioship to get to northern India. Should take us about an hour and twenty minutes.

“Just doing some plotting, Kon. Ring, where's Diana?”

In my mind's eye I see her airborne, hacking smaller tendrils from a central vine... in? London. Convenient.

“Orange Lantern to Wonder Woman.”

“Go ahead.”

“Got some local help for you, but they're stranded in Truro. Also, any chance you could lend them a couple of your training swords? I don't think their skills are optimised for anti-plant work.”

In the corner of my eye I see the lift doors open and the rest of the team enters the hangar.

“Captain Cornwall? I remember his grandfather. If they offer their aid-" One tendril severed, and a gouge cut out of the main trunk. Immediately, Hades' bound spell goes to work on the living plant matter, causing it to necrotise and fester. There's a reason Diana usually leaves that sword behind. “-I will gratefully accept. I also give you my.. permission-" She swoops lower, slicing at the vine as she does so. “-to use the swords.”

“Thank you sir.”

I hang up as my team mates file past me and what is Kaldur wearing!

“Kaldur.. what..?”

He stops in front of me. I think it's him, anyway, the familiar full helm with its glowing red eyes is obscuring everything but his mouth.

“P-. Orm’s trial begins later this week. My Queen thought it would be best if Ocean Master's armor was removed from Atlantis for the duration. Given the power at our foe's command, this seemed.. prudent.”

His normal red vest and navy blue leggings have been replaced by a black body suit with pale purple armoured plates around the shoulders, forearms and boots. I wince slightly as I see his bare hands. Better than what he normally wears, I suppose. His Water-Bearers are attached somehow to his waist, but he's carrying the trident in his right hand.

“I would have liked more time to grow accustomed to wearing it, but we do not have that luxury.”

Everyone else has boarded, and he walks after them.

“Aqualad, can you spare me for two minutes?”

He swings his head in my direction. Huh, good articulation. “We cannot wait. The attack-."

I hold up my hands. “It'll take the bioship over an hour to get to Louisiana, and I can catch you up in the air. Two minutes. It'll really help the League in London.”

“Hey, are we going or what?!”

Hurry up and wait, Wallace.

Kaldur's head turns to the ship, then back to me. Is his field of vision getting restricted?

“Very well. Two minutes. Do not take longer.”

“Ring, embassy.”

back

Revolution 10

next

1st October

18:35 GMT -5

I materialise at the front door, the ring already feeding in my entry code. A click as it unlocks and I push forward, raising my right hand in greeting to the woman on the reception desk.

“HiMsCandysorrycan'tstop.”

Transition.

The entrance to the armoury is in an out of the way part of the embassy. Two security doors bar the way, which is why I had to be ordered not to go there without explicit permission as neither of them slow me for more than the four seconds it takes for them to open a crack. The short corridor between is warded, but they're far more passive than the ones in Poseidonis and with the Spell Eater I don't even feel them. First time I came through here I was giggling drunkenly by the time I got to the far end, but not anymore! Last transition and I'm woow! I bend back limbo style as the spear passes over my nose and transition to the far side of the room as the hulking kithotaur wielding it moves to a guard position.

“Ferdinand, what the hell, man?”

“Oh! Uh, sorry. You surprised me.”

He looks as sheepish as a man with the head of a bull can, and turns away to return the spear to the rack.

“Have the kitchen's knives got so blunt you need a spear for chopping vegetables?”

“No, no, I just thought... Oh, doesn't matter.”

I head over to pick up two of Diana's training swords. They're still in their scabbards, and I put the straps over my right shoulder.

“Right, sorry, in a rush now, but tomorrow we're going to talk about what's bothering you. Ring, location of Cornwall Boy.”

I feel him in a field just south of Truro.

“Transition.”

A flicker and I'm standing just behind them. Trevor and Robert Marrack are both crouched down in full costume looking at something at the base of one of the standing stones. Looks like Robert took my advice and ditched the cape.

“…vandals! They've done it bloody intentionally, I'll have-!”

Captain Cornwall seems most irate about something.

“Excuse me?”

Two red-masked faces twist in my direction. Robert's on his feet first. “Orange Lantern, you made it!”

“Yes I did.”

He stares at Teekl as I slide both of the swords off my back and hold one out to him. “Is that the cat you..?”

“Yes. These are on loan from Wonder Woman, don't lose them, try not to get them destroyed.”

He gingerly takes it by the hilt, then puts his left hand on the scabbard and pulls the blade free. The forward facing kopis blade slides out easily. Diana herself primarily uses a somewhat more conventional bastard sword, but I thought a kopis might be better for anti-plant work.

“Wonder... Wonder Woman?!”

“Yeah, she knew your great grandfather. Are we going? I'm in a hurry.”

Mister Marrack senior pulls himself to his feet. “A copper stake. Geomantic energy patterns are going to be all over the bloody shop. It's a miracle-"

Ring, extend environment shield around them and transition to London.

Another flicker.

“-that we haven't had an earthquake."

We're in the middle of an abandoned road. At this point everyone's legged it. There are cars left by their owners in the traffic jam. I can't hear screams, but over the tops of the buildings I can see the ludicrous vine towering high into the sky.

“Uh!” / “Oh!”

Both Cornwalls cringe. Oh, come on, I thought I'd got the hang of transporting people!

“Dad, what's that? It feels weird.”

“You saw the broadcast, Rob. Wotan's involved. Right.” He sticks out his right hand and I pass him the other sword. He weighs it for a moment, then slides it out and passes the scabbard back to me. “Cheers, Orange Lantern.” He closes his eyes for a moment, muttering under his breath. I see the air bend around him and when he taps his son on the chest the effect spreads to him as well. “Don't want to have to leave this one to the bloody yanks.”

“Actually, Wonder Woman's-" There's a rush of displaced air as they zoom away. “-Greek.”

Not super speed but a sort of rapid series of bounding leaps. Unlike Kon they don't hit the ground with great force at the end of the arch. Interesting. But, my part done Map. I haven't asked John about Map. Would he be shaman of the spirit of London yet? Would London care about this attack? Should I stay here and look for him myself? No. Running around trying to sort out this city is John's job. Where is he? Right.

Transition.

“…any sense, I'd have already left!”

A small pub, empty but for John and a loud and decidedly uncomfortable looking Mister Chandler sitting at the bar. Lucky for me a window was open.

"Sorry to bother-."

"Shit!” Mister Chandler twists violently around, knocking his pint off the bar and into his lap. He stares at me, then at his trousers and then at me again. He deflates. “Aw, shit.”

Cleaning.

“John, hate to be a pest, but it looks-.“

“Theo Adam, gotcha. Here." He reaches into his coat and pulls out a packet of stuff that I really wouldn't want Batman to find on me. “Remember, he's got to breathe it in and it won't work on its own. You'll need to do something to loosen Teth Adam's spirit.”

He tosses it to me and I catch it. “Getting him angry shouldn't be too hard. Shouldn't you be winkling out Map about now?”

He hasn't mentioned Map to me and I haven't previously mentioned knowing about him, but John takes it in his stride. “Bloody vine came from the underground, didn't it? He can't not know it's here.”

“Jooohn.”

He sighs, and slides off the barstool. “Come on Chas, looks like the tights brigade needs John and Cabbie Boy.” He finishes the dregs of his pint. “Gimme a ride to King's Cross-.”

“I'm not going anywhere while that thing's smashing up the place! Renee'd kill me!”

“Mister Chandler, I realise that exposure to John might have left you somewhat cynical where these matters are concerned but I am inclined to pay people who do work for me. Here." A small bag of unmarked gold coins appear from subspace and lands on his lap. “That should square things with your good lady wife. Now, if you'll excuse me?”

Transition.

back

Revolution 11

next

1st October

18:37 GMT -5

And I'm knocking on the rear door of the bioship with a good ten seconds to spare. We're airborne, just entering Connecticut airspace. The door slouches open the narrowest crack and I transition inside. Aaaand Kon was in my seat. Kon was in my seat. I pat him on the shoulder and get up off his lap, trying to ignore the sniggering from Wallace and Robin. And M'gann. Kon just looks puzzled. Right, free seat on the far side. Going over there now.

“I trust you were able to resolve matters in London?”

Can't get used to seeing Kaldur wearing that.

“The Cornwalls are assisting Wonder Woman, and Constantine's gone to dig Map out from whatever hole he's fallen into. And you have no idea who those people are, do you?”

“Nnnnnooo.”

Wallace looks blankest, but those names don't seem to ring many bells with anyone. Kaldur read my report on Robert, but I can't read his expressions with that mask on. Right. Images. Static three dimensional pictures of the Cornwalls and John appear.

“Captain Cornwall and Cornwall Boy. Magic assisted brawlers I ferried in from south west England. And this.. is John Constantine, magician. Not particularly powerful, but cunning, resourceful and ruthless. He also gave me a.. well, a little something that should disrupt the magics empowering Theodore Adam. Don't have a picture of Map, but he's the favourite shaman of the spirit of London.”

I dismiss the images. Teekl hops down from my shoulder and struts over to M'gann. Treacherous moggy.

“Also relevant, once Superboy reminded me about him I tried getting in contact with Swamp Thing, elemental champion of earthly plant life. He actually doesn't live all that far away from where we're going, and if he puts in an appearance it'll be a very short fight. On that principle I also contacted Lantern Gardner about Lantern Medphyll, who has similar plant control abilities. Haven't got in touch with him yet.”

I take a breath.

“So what have you all been doing?”

Five glorious seconds of silence.

“We were about to begin reviewing the files on our opponents.”

“The Black Adam one's out of date, I'll just update it... There we go.”

“You said that you wished to.. ‘bagsy?’ Black Adam?”

“I said that I wanted to bagsy Theodore Adam. I've been studying him with a view to combating him since just after I came to this world. I'd have probably been hunting him down in a few weeks even if this wasn't happening.”

Robin has his computer out, hungry for data. “This file doesn't look complete.”

“It isn't. I hadn't finished writing it, and.. I.. excluded information which might reveal Captain Marvel's secret identity.”

“You know Captain Marvel's secret identity?

“W-? Kid Flash, I have a power ring. I know everyone's secret identity.”

“For how long?”

“Since just after I got here and realised this wasn't all-year-Halloween planet.”

“You didn't know my name when we first met.”

“Yes I did. I just thought it would be impolite to use it.”

“Bu-! Bu-!”

“We need to focus on the Injustice League.”

Right, right. Sorry Kaldur. An hour and sixteen minutes until important mission. Less if we get intercepted, and Theo Adam is certainly capable of that.

“Robin, go through what we know about each of its members so far.”

“Right.”

He presses a button and the hologram generator on his computer projects an image of Atomic Skull. “Atomic Skull-."

“Doctor Albert Michaels.”

He gives me a look.

“Atomic Skull. He can project powerful energy beams from his eyes. Effective range against a moving target is about thirty feet. A direct hit will vaporize a normal person, but it takes a second or two to power it up. He hasn't shown any real physical enhancements or combat skills.”

Wallace leans back in his chair, arms behind his head. “Sounds easy enough.”

“Black Adam. Oh El, you wanna do this one since you know so much about him?”

“Black Adam, real name Doctor Theodore Adam. Archaeologist, and expert in Kahndaqi history. Used the grave goods of Captain Marvel's predecessor to gain access to his powers. In theory, the gods of Kahndaq have blessed him with stamina, speed, strength, wisdom, power -including the power to fly- and courage. In practice, don't expect much wisdom. He usually just does the beginner thing of flying at the target and punching them really hard. Footage of him doing just that when Marvel stopped him wrecking the Fawcett City bridge is available upon request. I have a counter strategy prepared based on undermining the spell binding the power to him, but he'll walk off most physical attacks that can actually hurt him and I'm sorry to say that telepathy will not harm him at all.”

“Were you really going to go after him on your own?”

“Ah, no, I was going to probably take Captain Marvel with me.” Kon sags. “He's not a ninja, Superboy.”

“Count Vertigo. He can cause intense vertigo to anyone in his line of sight. It doesn't start working instantly, but it incapacitates the target almost completely. He's also a highly skilled unarmed combat fighter.”

M'gann looks round for a moment. “Is he a telepath?”

“We don't know. His ability could be telepathic, or he could be projecting infrasound.”

I nod my head to the side. “Either way, I can probably block it."

I did rate him as a nonthreat for a reason.

“Poison Ivy-."

“Doctor Pamela Isley.”

“-expert botanist, and probably most responsible for the plants attacking world cities. She can control plants, and can also throw out clouds of intense pheromones that.. well, they can be pretty distracting.”

“I've got gas masks for anyone who wants them. Also, Artemis? M'gann? Anything you want to tell us before you might have to fight a woman who uses pheromone based mind control?”

Artemis crosses her arms. “No.”

“Like what?”

“Like do you think you might be affected by human pheromones?”

“Ah, I don't think so? I mean, I do find humans attractive. Some humans, I mean. But I don't think it's because of how they smell.”

“Wotan.” Robin looks at me challengingly.

I shrug. “Far as I know that's his actual name.”

“Powerful magic user. Probably capable of just about anything, but his recorded abilities include energy projection, barriers, flight and teleportation.”

“Sounds familiar. My Spell Eater amulet should let me handle his attacks for a little while.”

“Hey, when do the rest of us get those?”

I make eye contact with Wallace. “Christmas.”

back

Revolution 12

next

1st October

18:40 GMT -5

“If we are going to fight Wotan, would it not be better to share them now?”

I shrug again. “Sorry Aqualad, but the rest aren't finished yet. Each one needs several thousand tiny enchantments. Heck, the one I'm using is just an inefficient prototype.”

“That is unfortunate.” He regards Wotan's image. “At the Conservatory we were taught that the best way to combat powerful magic users is to attack them constantly in order to keep them too distracted to use their more complex abilities.”

“Think you could pretend to be Ocean Master, try and confuse them?”

My eyes respond to Wallace's question by going straight to Kaldur's mouth. Um, no, there's no way Orm's had that much sun. Could we shoot a transmission so that the camera just focused on the armour-covered part of his face?

“At a distance, perhaps, but I am both shorter and broader than Orm and it is quite possible that they have already heard of his fate from other criminals. This.. armor-" He holds out his right arm and looks at it, flexing the armour on the back of the hand. “-should protect against all but his most powerful arcane attacks.”

“And when do the rest of us get armor like that?”

“The materials employed in its construction are transmuted. They do not occur in nature, and the difficulty of their creation...” He trails off, looking at me.

I jazz hands. “It's on the slate, but it isn't a priority and to be honest we'll probably skip straight to orichalcum rather than mess around with impure mithril derivatives.”

Mithril's lighter, and the pattern of the external plates on Ocean Master's armour is designed to improve the protection it offers without interfering with the user's agility. Makes sense if you're forced to work the material in a more or less conventional way, but with a power ring Sephtian and I should be able to transmute any size of loop for chainmail, down to far below what would be possible with mere steel.

“Mister Nelson said that Fate needed to use him as an anchor. Does this Wotan guy use something like that?”

“Not as far as we know.”

Having Kon battering away at his shields probably wouldn't be a bad way to go about it, but I'd rather have him attacking the facility. Kon's really good at unrestrained destruction, and destroying the vines is the main point of this after all. And on that note...

“I've been wondering. Wouldn't it make more sense for us to just spot wherever the vines are coming from, and then call in a cruise missile strike? I mean, I don't think any of the Injustice.. whatevers.. could block that sort of attack.”

Robin squints at me. “The nearest place a cruise missile might be is the Navy Reserve base in Belle Chasse. Even assuming they had one available and were prepared to fire it on a target inside the US, it would take far too long to prepare it. And it might not even work!”

“Alright, so how about we find it, I fly up into low orbit, and fire kinetic harpoons at it, until the whole area looks like the surface of the moon.”

“Don't think the State of Louisiana would appreciate you doing that.”

“It is an option, but I would like a better idea of the situation on the ground before I authorize it.”

“You're the boss. Who's next?”

“The Joker. Bet you don't know-."

“Jack Napier.”

He gawps, but covers it quickly. “Right. He's very dangerous, he-.”

I roll my eyes. “He's a baseline human with poisons, a knife and maybe a gun. Again, gas masks are available.”

“You've never fought him.”

”And wouldn't that be the most thrilling two minutes ever. Look, he causes trouble for Batman because he's unpredictable and intelligent enough to prepare well. And not to come into the open until he's ready. We already know where he is and what he's doing. Unless he's got hostages there -aaaand local missing person reports suggest that's unlikely- then at this point he's the least threatening of the group.”

“He's done more, killed far more people, than any other members of the Injustice League!”

”Oh, don't I know it. On my world, someone like him would have fallen down some stairs by now. Probably assisted by other prisoners. He's entirely without redeeming qualities and the strongest argument in favour of the death penalty I've ever seen.”

My lips curl in disgust as I remember the crime scene photos on the files I read. Morbid curiosity? A little, but it was more that I fully expect to see more things like that if I keep the superhero thing up, and I need to make sure that I can keep functioning. Napier might be.. inventive.. with a knife, but sadism isn't a weapon that can compete with a power ring.

Kaldur's glowing eyes pass from me to Robin.

“The Ultra-Humanite.”

“Gerard Shugel.”

A moment of silence.

“The Ultra-Humanite was a woman.”

“Not his first brain transplant. The body we saw was that of a Dolores Winters, a film actress listed as a missing person back in nineteen sixty three.”

Wallace gags. “Oh, that is messed up.”

“He was terminally ill. No idea how he made a brain transplant work though.”

Artemis looks sickened as well. “What happened to Dolores? Her brain, I mean?”

“No idea.”

Robin deactivates his computer. “Being a gorilla makes him as strong as one. Judging by the footage we found in Gorilla City, as strong as a normal gorilla, rather than an enhanced one. He's also smart, and carries a big gun.”

Kon think about that last statement. “Why don't Isley and Vertigo carry guns?”

Robin hesitates for a moment. “Well, Poison Ivy has to concentrate to control her plants. Vertigo.. I don't really know. It would make sense.”

I roll my eyes. “Because he's a supervillain, and therefore an idiot.”

“What weaknesses do they have that we can exploit?” Kaldur's actually kind of scary in that armour.

Robin's eyes flick down for a moment. “Ivy seems to get some sort of psychic feedback from her plants. I packed some ultra strength defoliant gas to use on her pets. It should distract her long enough for one of us to get close enough to knock her out.”

“Theo Adam draws power via the bound soul of a hero. I plan to loosen his grip. I'm sorry, but it's not really something anyone else can put into action. Not unless you speak ancient Kahndaqi, anyway.”

“And the others?” Robin and I look at each other, then shake our heads. Kaldur nods. “Then we will simply have to be creative.”

back

Revolution 13

next

1st October

18:47 GMT -6

We're about as ready as we're going to get. We've brainstormed approaches, past behaviour and tactics. I've fabricated anti-plant arrows for Artemis and handed inhibitor collars over to Wallace. The configuration needed to suppress Isley was already on file, but for the rest we'll just have to settle for ‘lots of electricity’. The place is warded, naturally, so I can't do long distance scans other than to narrow down the approximate location based on where I can't scan.

Really need to talk to someone about getting a thaumaturgist on the team.

We've had reports from the League. Approximately seven hundred believed dead so far, though the death rate has dropped off now that the target areas have been evacuated. Could end up being ten times that once they finish going through the rubble, of course. To make matters worse the vines give off Smilex if burnt. Not sure if it's a response to heat or to flame. Either way I can't risk a radiological attack. Not that I was really planning to. The fights are ongoing in all six cities, though new growths in London seem to go inert about a minute after emerging from the ground. The League's actually transferred personnel away from there. I wonder, could Papa Midnight protect New York in that way? Would it be worth training a network of city-shamans for situations like this?

“So, you gonna call him or what?”

I'm holding my left hand out, palm upwards, ring gleaming invitingly. Wallace and I are both staring at it.

“This will be the first time I've spoken to a Greenie who isn't local. I'm not even sure I'm really allowed to do this.”

“Didn't you say Medphyll was one of the Lanterns you actually admired? For his.. what was it..?”

“His comportment, yes. I don't think he'll have a problem with... Ah, hell.” I straighten up in my seat. “Ring, contact Green five eight six A.”

"Compliance.”

The ring flashes as it makes contact. He might just decide not to answer.

“Five eight six? That's not anywhere around here, is it?”

“I don't think so, but I really couldn't-."

Lantern Medphyll’s broccoli stalk head appears above the ring. “Lantern Medphyll of Sector five eight six reporting.”

My team mates stare at him. The image is orange, but his face is a short cylinder with a single eye and a cross between a small bush and an afro sticking out of the top.

“Er. Hello. Sector two eight one four here.”

His eye refocuses. Shouldn't his depth perception be really bad? Maybe his eye uses multiple photosensitive layers or something? Have to ask Guy if he can give me xenophysiology files. The Guardians can't object to me having medical information, can they?

“I'm sorry to hear of your predecessor's death. May I ask which of them was it?”

“No ssssir, they're all fine. I'm new.”

“By the Great O, how many Lanterns does your sector need?”

More, probably.

“Reason I got in touch, sir, was that a group of local criminals have created some sort of giant world spanning vine, and are using it to hold several cities to ransom. As I understand it, you are able to control plant life-."

“Commune with, not control. It would be a violation of a sacred trust to force my designs on other plant forms.”

“Ah. Right, sorry. It's just that at the moment our options are pretty much pay up or kill it. I'd really like to have an alternative. I've no idea how intelligent it is, but it's... Magnificent, really. And unique. I hate destroying unique things.”

“Your compassion does you credit.” He looks away from his ring for a moment. “I'm sorry, my sector's other Lantern is a new recruit still undergoing basic training and I can't leave here until they return.”

“Is it a technique you are able to teach?”

“Not within a short span of time. Are there truly no beings on your world who could make such a communion?”

“I know of only two. One's out of touch, we're trying to get hold of him. The other is responsible for the attack.”

His fronds rustle. That would probably mean something to me if I understood his species' body language. “I regret that I cannot be of more help.”

“I don't suppose you know of any other Green Lanterns with equivalent abilities?”

“I don't believe there are any. Sophisticated plant forms are surprisingly rare across Lantern patrolled space.”

Sounds like Mother of Mercy hasn't been recruited yet then. Score one for my future Corps, though it's rather inconvenient now.

“Ah. It's a shame, but I suppose we can't do much about it now. Thank you for your time.”

I close my left hand, then lower it to my side. Wallace stares, wide eyed.

“That, was awesome.”

“Why? It didn't help-."

“You just phoned a guy on the other side of the universe!”

“Yes? It's a basic ring function.”

“We're approaching the target.”

All heads turn to M'gann for a moment, then to Kaldur. He nods at me, and I rise and walk to the rear hatch. If we do get intercepted, I need to be ready to respond immediately. We need M'gann at the pilot station as she's far better at it than the rest of us, and none of the other team members can fly. A gloop, and a tiny opening appears in the back of the passenger compartment. I can't risk active scans in case they've got something that can detect them. They must know that someone's coming, but-.

“Ouh.” M'gann's left hand goes to her forehead.

“Miss Martian, are you well?”

That doesn't work with the helmet at all.

“I feel.. dizzy.”

“Vertigo. Ring, active scan.”

An image of Count Vertigo and Theodore Adam standing on a rocky promontory overlooking a pond. I couldn't have asked for a better opportunity.

“Aqualad, with your permission?”

He nods. “Go.”

Armour, HUD, transition.

I appear above the pond, directly in front of the green clad Count.

Infrasonic attack detected.

He lowers his head from scanning the sky to focus on me. From behind the glowing orange plates of my armour I raise my left eyebrow. “Infrasonic against a power ring? Really?”

His eyes narrow. “Ad-.” An orange line connects us as the inhibitor collar materialises around his neck -explosive armed- and the ring subspaces his headband weapon. Might be worth developing myself. “GAAAAAAAGHHH!”

The electrical discharge function activates and he collapses bonelessly to the ground, rolling down the slope to Theo Adam's feet. The explosive won't go off unless someone tries to remove the collar, though Wotan could probably magic it off without too much risk. Next target.

“Theodore Adam, I understand that you're a scum sucking murd-."

His right fist slams into my faceplate.

back

Revolution 14

next

1st October

18:50 GMT -6

I'm sent flying backwards at tremendous speed, a jagged crack running down the centre of the faceplate. As expected, Theo doesn't follow up, contenting himself with hovering in the air and watching me go. Would he know much about Lantern capabilities? I don't think he's fought any of them before, though it's not completely impossible he -or rather, his predecessor- fought one back in the old days. No idea who the local Greenies were back then. Would his threat level have been high enough to warrant their intervention? No, focus. Right. Need to keep his attention.

Repair armour construct, then railgun.

The faceplate reknits and a large railgun appears to my right side. It won't hurt him significantly -not at levels of force I could conscionably use in a landscape we are trying to preserve- but I need to prevent him from trying to spot the bioship. The heads up display shows me his face. Smug bastard's just watching. Not sure how much he can see from that range.

Fire.

The gentle hum of the gun as it launches an iron slug at his left eye. Then another. Then-. He's moving.

Automate FTL dodge.

Scenery skips, and the HUD notifies me that Theo just lunged through the space I had been occupying at near the speed of sound. I'm now.. above? Alright. I turn in the air, aim and fire the railgun at his right ear. He jerks his right hand up to cover it. Probably felt like an insect bite to him. His head snaps around, we make momentary eye contact and he's mov-.

My view skips and I set the gun to automatic. He's already looking for me, but at this point I'm schmuck bait. Another shot to his right eye before another transition. I need to make sure that he isn't going to try anything clever, and it looks like I'm in luck. Next step. Another shot, another lunge and another miss but this time I appear directly behind him and as he turns his head a lumen cannon materialises directly in front of his eyes.

The world around me darkens as my armour construct begins reflecting more light. Theo's too quick and too strong for me to form a seal around his face and I don't want to risk blinding myself. All I see is a white flicker lasting less than a second, but the lumen cannon just put about two hundred million lumens' worth of light energy directly into his eyes.

“JJJJEEEYYYAAAAGGGHHH!”

He flies away from me, clutching his eyes. I doubt that did much lasting physical damage, but it should take him a while to regain his sight.

Earpiece, ancient Kahndaqi translation only.

Compliance.

I don't risk keeping right up close to him, but I follow at a distance as the filament connects me to his ear.

“Mighty One, why do you allow this-"

He swats at the earpiece with his left hand, still holding his right over his eyes. It disintegrates, then reforms.

“-this villain to use your powers? He is unworthy-"

Another swat.

“-of the gods' blessings. He does nought but-"

Theo accelerates straight up, and I follow.

“-cause misery, chaos and death. He lacks even the wisdom to-"

“SHUT UP! SHUT UP!”

He lashes out in all directions. I don't actually make any noise when flying and no scent can escape my environmental shield. He's got no idea where I am.

“-command-."

“DO YOU THINK I CAN'T UNDERSTAND ANCIENT KAHNDAQI!?”

Oh. Huh. I suppose he would have some knowledge, but I'm surprised it's of conversational quality. He risks blinking his eyes open, but closes them with another wince.

“Mighty One, your people languish beneath the heel of a new tyrant.”

“HE CAN'T HEAR YOU! HIS SOUL IS BOUND TO THE SCARAB! EVEN I CAN'T HEAR HIS WHINING ANYMORE!”

Scarab, right. That must be the focal point of the spell. The phantasms John summoned in Kahndaq showed him using some sort of ritual object, but we couldn't see clearly what it was. Ring, is he wearing a scarab?

No scarab detected.

Must be attached in his unenhanced form. Turning him back would be difficult to say the least. My back up plan involves seizing control of his vocal cords and forcing him to say ‘Shazam’, and I already know that isn't a good plan. John was pretty convinced that it should be possible for Teth Adam to fight the bonds loose if not free himself completely, but at some point I'm going to have to determine whether it's really working or not.

Ophidian's Eyes.

Oh, he wants to hurt me. Beyond that into the core of his being, I feel a need to dominate and crush opposition and rule his people wisely and...

Wait, what? Oh. Oh, that is interesting. I see the network of desires I recognise as belonging to Theodore Adam, but behind.. beneath that, another set of drives. Unless I concentrate they blur together but Teth Adam's still in there, and seems to be at least basically coherent.

“Mighty One, if you do not strain with all your might to break his hold, you will prove that the wizard was right. That you are slothful-”

I see Shazam's face for a moment, and oh the hate, the need to hurt him. There's more, other faces, but no one I recognise. A woman? And two boys?

“-in the performance of your duties. Would you have your legacy be this criminal's actions? For him to be the only ‘Adam’ anyone remembers?”

“HE WON'T HEAR YOU!”

We're high enough up that I can see the curve of the Earth in the distance. He's facing away from me. I've got no real way to judge exactly how ‘free’ Teth needs to get before moving onto the next stage.

Aaaaghfuck! Theo's arms are around my waist in a bear hug. Too fast for the ring!? He smiles at me, happy as a psychopath with a fresh puppy to torture.

“Not so smart now. I can hear the wind, boy, and you change how it flows.”

!Armour!

I'm not in pain because the armour's holding. If it wasn't, I'd be dead. His grin is pulled back against his skull in a grimace as he exerts more pressure and cracks start to appear.

Twin-linked sonic cannon.

One cannon appears on each side of his head, facing inwards. I'm not worried about rupturing his eardrums, but at this range even a short burst risks affecting me as well.

Ultrasound pulse.

His face shudders, but his eyes burn with determination and the cracks are getting longer. How can I-? Vertigo.

Infrasound, continuous.

The pressure loosens slightly and Theo looks like he's struggling to stay on target.

“Mighty One, if we work together we can bring this monster down. Do not let the legacy of your virtue be forever-”

“ShUt..! ShUt Up! He's never getting free, and your STUPID tricks can't stop me!”

He's given up on flight now, focusing on his hold on me to the exclusion of everything else.

“-obscured by his vice.”

My armour is still weakening. Kon never managed this, but then he wasn't actually trying to kill me.

“Let us prove the wizard wrong together.”

Theo snarls. “You want the wizard?! Here! Shazam!”

back

Revolution 15

next

1st October

18:53 GMT -6

He suddenly twists us in the air and AUOOGAAAAGH!

Wholeness Rightly Assumed!

I just took the hit from Aton's lightning. Went through my construct armour like it wasn't there. My amulet soaked up the residual magic energy and my first coherent thought was to repair my body. I don't think there's any-.

“Not so much fun, is it? Shazam!”

He drops, grabbing hold of my right leg and swinging me arAUOOGAAAAGH!.

Ohow that hurts.

Wholeness Rightly Assumed.

Don't think it's doing much lasting damage, but the Spell-Eater's starting to feel warm against my chest. That indicates that it's filled to at least half capacity and I really don't want to find out what happens to a normal person with no protection hit by arcane lightning. How do I-?

“Shazam!”

GGGEEEGGGHHHH!

Wholeness.. Rightly.. Assumed...

“Nothing to say, boy? I've never heard someone beg for mercy in Ancient Kahndaqi before!”

The lightning transforms him. I need it to hit him. How how how how? FTL transfer? No, I don't know where it's coming from. But maybe to free myself?

Transition.

Unable to comply. Dimensional anchor in close proximity.

Stay calm. What else? Conduction! Ring, when he says it again generate conductive constructs around us both.

Compliance.

“You'll beg for death before I've finished with you. Shazam!”

Accelerated Perception. He swings me again in slow motion and in the distance I see a point of light. Orange cables materialise around us and bind us both together as the lightning AAAAOOOOWWWFFFUUUUUUUCCKK!

Pressure vanishes from my leg.

Wholeness Rightly Assumed.

“Wwwwwwwwwwwhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaattttttttttt????????”

No point in looking around at this speed. Show me.

Theo's back, falling through the sky towards the Earth. Unlike the image I showed Captain Marvel, he's wearing jeans and a plain white shirt, with a beetle amulet on a leather thong around his neck.

“Ssssssshhhhhhhhhaaaaaaa-“

Score. Railgun.

Orange light crawls into the mould over my shoulder.

“-azzzzzzzzzzaaaaaaaaaaammmmmmm!”

Fire.

A point of light in the sky, but this time the lightning isn't coming for me. The hum of the railgun charging. Go faster!

A flash of light and a puff of smoke as the lightning hits him. Did I hit in time? Normal perception, John's surprise, repair armour. Uuuugghhhh. Should I back off? No, if it did work, I'll need to be close for the next stage.

“You think I still need the amulet?”

Oh well.

“It's been years! The bindings will hold even without a focus!” He stands in the air, facing me. “This is my power now! Not the wizard's, not the gods’ and certainly not yours!”

“True. It's Teth Adam's. And without the scarab-" Please say I hit it please say I hit it. “-he isn't bound to you anymore.“

He squints, confused. “No, that can't aaaaaaaggghh!”

His eyes go wide, staring. His hands clasp the sides of his head and I feel the need to cast down this monster radiating out with almost overwhelming strength as Teth Adam's soul makes a play for their shared body. That'll probably take him out of the fight, but I want more than that. Kahndaq needs Teth Adam functional.

Really hope we don't get blood tests after this.

Transition.

My face is inches from his own paralysed horror filled rictus as I bring up John's little bag and burst it. White powder blasts out and I drop my faceplate and breathe deeply, forming a small set of fan constructs to blow -hah!- as much of the rest as possible into Theo's nose and mouth. This is supposed to create a shared mystical state of consciousness, but I didn't get a chance to experiment and it's not as if I've ever experimented with psychedelics before myself.

And then-

-things start to get-

-a bit-

-odd.

Umm. Oooooohhh.... Enchanted LSD, it's a hell of a drug. Heh. Hehh. Hopefully not literally. Everything's a blur of everything. I'm seeing Theo Adam. I'm seeing colour, shape, nonsense patterns that I can't... I'm tasting textures and touching smells. Carpetty.

What was the next step?

“You need to take control of your conceptual space, mate.”

”John?”

He leans in front on me and clicks his fingers.

“Yeah. What you've got to do is find a way of comprehending what you're experiencing. No one can cope with seeing all of everything.”

”John? It's all weird, John.”

“Oh, bleeding hell, you really are a first timer. Listen.”

I feel the sound of blackcurrant as he shakes my shoulder.

“What did you come here to do? What do you want?”

And then he bursts into a cloud of tiny orange snakes.

back

Revolution 16

next

Time

and spaaaaaace

The snakes writhe and coat my arms and feet like damp toadstools as I contemplate my next course of being. What do I want? What do I want? I took the drug to enter the spiritual conflict between Theodore and Teth Adam, but I don't... See... Them..? Or maybe I do, and just don't recognise them?

wOOOOOOooooOOooo.

John said that I should take control of my conceptual space. I have to assume that they're here, and force them into a form I can recognise. How would this contest even work? Wait. I remember in the comics that Shazam selected Teth Adam for his virtues, and Marvel told me that Shazam selected him because he overcame the Enemies of Man. If the virtues are represented by the Egyp-. By the Kahndaqi gods’ blessings, wouldn't they get to decide the winner? I mean, at this point Teth has to be their last living worshipper. Makes sense to me. So, what would that sort of conflict look like?

The Enemies of Man had those statue things in the Rock of Eternity, right? What were their names again? Pride, Envy, Greed, Hatred, Laziness, Selfishness, and... Um... Can't remember. Teth will, right? They're not quite the Catholic Seven Deadly Sins, though I think most of them correspond. Not Lust? Hmm. Well, Shazam did knock up a demon, so lucky escape for him. And of course Kahndaqi gods had big statues at major temples.

Take control.

A glowing orange lantern sigil appears in the chaos and confusion all around me. As I stretch out my texture towards it, the circle in the centre shrinks inwards and then expands out to the edge, revealing blackness beyond. I try to float towards it, but don't appear to be making any progress. Tch, of course I'm not! Get over here!

Obediently, the sigil comes in my direction, growing to fill my field of vision as it does so. As I reach the aperture it turns, dropping the opening over my head and disappearing. Or did it never exist on this side? Not sure. I am now standing in a blackened room. Beneath my feet is a curved stone hemisphere, and I sit down atop it, cross legged.

Ah! There they are!

In the centre of the room are two balances. Each is hanging from a cord held in the hand of a vast statue. The style is Ancient Egyptian and made of unpainted stone. Her hair is cut short at the front and long at the back and sides, and decorated by a headband with a feather sticking out. There appear to be decorative bands at the wrists and upper arms and... are those wings? Attached to each arm. The rest of her body that I can see is covered by a long plain dress.

On each balance one side is dramatically higher than the other. On my left, held up by her right arm, the left plate contains Theodore Adam in full Black Adam mode. He is alone on the plate, which is higher than the other part of the balance. Pushing his side up on the other side of his balance are six statues in the Ancient Kahndaqi style. A muscular man kneeling in rocks while supporting a cloud with his arms and back. A ram-headed man with a complicated headdress. A man standing between two lions facing left and right. A man with the head of an ibis. A plain-looking man kneeling, one hand cupped with water draining out and the other hand shaping his own left leg from a rough mass into a limb. A man with the head of a falcon. Those statues whose hands are not otherwise occupied hold staves and ankhs.

On the other balance the upper plate on the right is empty. The left plate contains an athletic Arab man in a plain white kilt with an elaborate decorative collar containing a lightning bolt emblem around his neck. Chains are clamped onto his arms and legs, forcing him into a kneeling position. The other ends of the chains are pulled behind him and wrapped around the arms of a bizarre looking statue, quite unlike the artistic Egyptian-style ones counterbalancing Theodore. It has no legs, just a torso that appears to rise out of the plate. The torso itself is a simple cylinder with no visible features, widening slightly at the shoulders. Two thin arms project from that point, terminating on the base of the plate in disproportionately huge fists. The head looks like something from a Warhammer 40,000 Ork, all pointy fangs and snarl.

The man is Teth Adam.

Around this centrepiece I see huge statues in the same style as the one binding the soul I came here to rescue. Far around to my right, a fat statue, thin arms folded across its chest, mouth downturned, eyes shut. On my immediate right, a thin, nervous looking statue, both arms held to its left as if warding off something. On my left a gap - perhaps where the statue holding Teth Adam would go?-, then a tall and very thin statue, arms held limply in front of it. Next, a short statue, indolently smiling face supported by both its arms. On the far side, a scowling statue, arms folded and head pointy. That's five, plus the one binding Teth Adam. Where's the seventh?

I look down. Oh. Okay. So, which one am I sitting on? I try to look closer at the statues I can see. Aren't they supposed to have names written on them? Ah! I see them now!

Teth Adam is bound to Hatred. The others are Pride, Envy, Selfishness, Laziness and... Injustice? Really? Alright, whatever. Which one does that l-.

Hah! I'm sitting on Greed! Oh, very good. I take another quick look around. Nothing up above us but down below, looking up at us, is a rather odd looking statue-creature. The head appears to be that of a crocodile or alligator -not sure how to tell the difference- while the body is split. The front half appears to have fur carved onto it, and the forepaws are those of a large cat. The rear seems to be a different animal, being far bulkier and smoother and the feet having heavy toenails rather than claws.

Do I remember something about Egyptians believing that the souls of the unworthy dead were eaten by a hippopotamus? Am I misremembering, and it is actually supposed to be that creature?

Okay, looks like a simple test of worth. Theodore has the support of the gods at the moment, while Teth is bound to his hatred. What does he hate? Shazam, presumably. Don't think I'm going to be able to persuade him to give that up easily.

“Ruuuuuah!”

Theodore tries to fly off the side of the plate at his rival, but as soon as he reaches the lip he reappears on the other side and stops in confusion. Teth fixes a rage-filled stare on his enemy and tries to struggle against the chains to no avail. Did this sort of test exist in his day? I cup my hands at my mouth.

“That's not how it works!”

Both faces turn to me. Theodore snarls and tries flying in my direction. This time he keeps trying, giving me a minor headache as he keeps flickering from the front to the back to the front and back again. Teth stops struggling as he tries to work out what's going on.

“Do not waste your breath trying to reason with him. He is an animal.”

I shake my head and waggle my right forefinger.

“Umm, don't be so quick to judge. He's actually an expert on Kahndaqi history and, well, he worked out how to access your power.”

“Then he chooses to be a savage. That is all the more contemptible.” His eyes narrow. “I.. know you. I heard your voice...”

“Yes Mighty One, and I would very much like to see you win this little-" I spread my arms wide. “-thing. Unfortunately it looks like you're going to have to do the hard work yourself.”

Theodore stops his pointless breakout attempt, hovering just above the surface of his plate.

“I have the power of the gods while my spell has him chained to a statue!”

“Actually, it doesn't. Your spell stopped working when I destroyed your scarab amulet back in the real world.”

“Then why am I-" Teth Adam pulls at the chains again. “-still-“ He pulls harder, focusing his attention on his right arm. “-bound!?” He falls onto his face before rising to a crouch.

“Don't you recognise the statue, Mighty One? Surely you visited Shazam's home at least once?”

He stops pulling, and twists around as best he can to get a look at it. “That is... Hatred. One of the Enemies of Man the wizard spoke of.”

“Yep. Your soul is literally bound by chains of hatred. And the only one who can free you from that.. is you.”

back

Revolution 17

next

Who are you?

What do you want?

“Hah!” Teth throws back his head to laugh bitterly, then shakes his head, his eyes dropping to the plate he kneels on. “I know not whether you are some demon or a projection of the wizard's. You want me to give up my hate? You have no idea, no idea...”

"I have some idea Mighty One, but if you'd like to explain the rest?”

He looks at me. “I recognise that statue too. Are you Greed, then? Do you hunger for my pain? Does my suffering bring you such delight?”

"No, Mighty One, just a man. One-" I raise my left hand. The ring isn't there, but my forearm shimmers as it switches between flesh and orange light. “-gifted, with power. Not quite as you were, but...” I spread my hands out to the sides. “I can't force you to listen to me, but we can reason together. This place does not literally exist. I destroyed the scarab Theodore over there-" I flick my left hand at him and he sneers back at me. “-used to bind your soul. Then I dosed us both with... Um, a magic powder, to let us share this experience, this hallucination. The two of you both know far more about Kahndaqi religion than I do, so where are we?”

Teth takes a look around. “We are surrounded by the Enemies of Man. The Heralds of Isfet, as my people would have called them. And-."

“And we're standing on scales being held up by Ma'at, with Ammut below to consume our souls if we are found wanting. Yes, it's obvious and clichéd.”

Theodore looks upwards, and with less aggression than before tries flying straight up. Once he reaches a certain height things bend and he is returned to the surface of the plate with a snort of frustration.

Teth Adam appears to consider. “So, our souls are to be weighed. I cannot even hope that mine is lighter than a feather, but I prayed that my gods would not side with him over me.”

”I'm not sure they have. The whole point of the spell he used was to convince them that he is you. Otherwise he could just have petitioned them directly.”

“You say they will hear me now?”

“No, they won't hear you now! You're dead, and I don't see Anubis!” Theodore walks over to the edge of his plate and looks down at the god statues. “Shu, Horus, Amun, Thoth, Aten and Mehen. The sources of Black Adam's power and I am Black Adam. Me!” He thumps his chest with his right fist. “If you ever want to achieve anything in a world that thinks of you only as objects of historical curiosity, it is through me you will do it! You need me!”

The large statue of Pride around to my right disappears, and a smaller version appears next to him on his plate. He starts as the increased weight on his side causes the plate to drop slightly.

“What? No! Get off!”

He lunges at the statue, right shoulder first, and tries to shove it off the platform. It stands resolute, indolent grin taunting him. Teth Adam watches, curious. “You are supposed to be an expert on Kahndaq? You could not even properly name the gods who you have tricked into blessing you.”

Was that the list Captain Marvel gave me? I... I can't clearly remember. But even if it wasn't, Kahndaq worshipped them for over three thousand years. Maybe the names changed?

“Spirit. Man. Whatever you are. How long has it been? How many years was my spirit bound to my bones in the tomb of my father?”

"Mighty One, I'm not sure it's really a good idea to-."

“I know it has been many years. Many.. ages, perhaps. Sometimes I was able to see through his eyes and such sights I saw confounded me, but I must know!”

”Alright. Difficult to be sure, but my best... The best estimates I was able to see before I set this up said that you died about five thousand years ago.

“Five thousand..?” I see the pain on his face. “And the wizard still lives, and has anointed a new champion. It is some cruel joke. Does anything of Kahndaq remain?”

"Oh, yes, there's definitely a Kahndaq. Not sure exactly how the borders map on to the ones it had in your day.”

“Kahndaq had no borders. It was the Nile, and such land as we could cultivate around it. What of its people? Its gods?”

"Population's a bit more varied, ethnically. About two and a half thousand years after your death it was conquered by the Hellenes, from over the sea to the north, then later by the Romans. But you'd still recognise the faces of the people.”

“But the gods. Was what he-" He gestures with his chin in the direction of Theodore, who has given up on getting rid of Pride and is now prowling his plate. “-said true? Do they no longer pray to our... To my gods?”

”No. They keep the surviving temples because touris-. Um, because travellers pay to see them. But the dominant religion in Kahndaq these days is Sunni Islam. It's a monotheistic religion which worships a benevolent omnipotent creator god."

“Omnipotent? Hah! My people had a creator god.” He looks at the now slightly higher plate containing their statues. “Atum, who by his power forced matter into being from the primordial waters of chaos. But all powerful? No, it is too much. How could anyone relate to such a being? How may a man strive to become like a being that is all things?”

”Don't ask me. I'm an atheist.”

“You.. do not believe.. at all?”

”Just because they exist, that's no reason to start believing in them.”

He looks at me, his mouth slightly open. “You, are a strange man.”

”Yes, but this isn't about me. It is -to quote the Vorlons and the Shadows- about who you are, and what you want."

“I? I want the wizard dead by my hand. I want the people of Kahndaq -my people- safe, prosperous and happy. I want to see my wife and my sons again. I want that beast-" He glares at Theodore, who sneers back. “-gone.”

”Why? He's probably going to get to Shazam eventually, if only to protect himself. Or get killed. Either way, doesn't look like you really lose anything."

“The wizard... Shazam, deserves death for what he did to me. But as pharaoh I had... No, have.. a duty to my people. Everything I did, what the wizard condemned me for, was in the service of that duty. He knows nothing of duty, nothing of honour. He has no cause greater than his own fulfilment.”

”And you do?”

“Yes. I know my homeland has changed, but my duty still gives me purpose.”

”And yet you are still bound to Hate. Tell me, Mighty One: if you had to choose between your duty and your Hate, which would you choose?"

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Revolution 18

next

What we're here for.

“And I say ‘duty’, and I am free? Fine! Duty! Duty is more important than hate.”

”No, Mighty One. You can lie to the world, but you can't lie to Ma'at. Not in a meaningful way.”

“Do you understand what you are asking of me?”

I take another look at the Eater of Souls below us. Is it getting bigger?

“All that time. Five thousand years, the only thing that kept me sane was the desire to take revenge. And now you expect me to just toss it away?!”

"It would probably be for the best, but Theodore over there isn't chained up to Pride. Maybe you just need to re-evaluate your priorities.” I make small circling motions with my hands. “Put it this way. If there was some great catastrophe about to befall Kahndaq that would destroy it entirely and you knew for certain there was no other way, could you swallow your hatred and ask Shazam for aid?”

“Of course he couldn't! I don't really care about the wizard, but him? Didn't you read the hieroglyphs in his tomb?”

“I know that I should...”

"Kahndaq needs you, Mighty One. Its current ruler is a tyrant on a scale earlier generations could only dream of.”

He looks at me in disbelief. “Does he take the penises of his defeated enemies as trophies in battle?”

"He did have five hundred people tortured to death last year, not counting executions or torture survivors. He likes to watch, sometimes. As I recall Kahndaqi armies generally only took penises as trophies from the dead. You see, that's why I'm doing this. You are the only one I can think of who is both powerful enough to sort it out, and committed enough to actually stick at it. And if your love for your people, your commitment to your duty, isn't strong enough-.”

“DO NOT PRESUME TO LECTURE ME ON DUTY!” He tries lunging forwards and is brought up short by the chains. His eyes are filled with rage. “Everything I did was for my people, before I was chosen by the gods and after. I-.”

“You murdered your own father to take his throne!” Theodore seems to find this amusing. “It doesn't seem that we're quite so dif-."

“You think I liked doing that? My father was a bloody-handed tyrant who demanded that our people worship him as a living god! And when he-."

“Impudent, wasn't he? Proclaiming his divinity while standing next to you. I understand completely. I would not have acted any other way myself.”

Teth Adam surges to his feet, striding to the edge of his platform.

“What I did, I did without choice. In the name of peace and sanity. My sense of duty is what separates me from him and from you and while I will never let my hatred go I will always rise above it.”

That worked, sort of. Chains are gone, but Hate's still there and the plates haven't moved. No. Movement? Both platforms shift as the Ibis headed statue vanishes from Theodore's counterweight platform and appears on Teth's, causing his balance to balance. Teth looks around and drops to his knees.

“I thank you for your faith, Lord Zehuti. I swear that I will prove worthy of it.”

“Oh come on! Really? That was all it took!? Fine.” He turns to look at Teth and the god statues, his arms held open and low. “Toth. Zehuti. Whatever you're called. I am part of a group that has combined magic, biotechnology and cybernetics in a way that has never before occurred on Earth! The ritual I used when I killed the Batsons? I invented that, by combining the blood magics of the Aztecs with the binding rites of the Diablo Islanders! And you know what I learned about myself doing it? I don't want to rule, I don't want to conquer. I certainly don't want to murder my own father. I don't want to be troubled by the affairs of ants at all!” He locks his eyes on the back of Teth Adam's head. “What I want is power, inherent in myself. What I want is to associate only with those whose capacities match my own. What I want are challenges worthy of me. You.” He shifts his attention to me. “Do you think I care about the ransom money?”

”Mister Napier rather gave me the impression it was more about having fun causing devastation. You've killed at least a thousand people, by the way.”

He smiles. “And not one of them matters at all. No. Vertigo wants the money. Joker just wants to hurt people. I? I did this as a challenge to people like you. People worth fighting. And as soon as the drug you gave me wears off and this pointless psychodrama fades into memory I will tear your head from your shoulders and take your power ring for myself as the next stage of my ascendancy. But, when I do that, I will not hate you. In fact, I thank you for providing me with such a challenge.”

Envy and Selfishness disappear from the perimeter and reappear on his plate.

“Bah! As if it matters while I have the gods’ favour.”

“You murdered people to steal my power?”

“Yes. Yes, I did. Clarence and Marilyn Batson. They had a son and a daughter, I think. They weren't Kahndaqi if that's what's bothering you.”

Teth turns to me.

“You! You have heard him. You can give testimony-."

“As if it matters! I've killed hundreds since becoming Black Adam, and the greatest thing any of them achieved in their entire lives was to provide me with some temporary amusement. I will never face a trial. I will never be taken to court. At absolute worst, I will die at the hands of one of my peers in this fight or some other. And I think that.. would be a good death.”

Injustice appears next to him. He looks at it for a moment, unconcerned.

“Hm. So what now, Orange Lantern? Neither the primitive nor I are prone to Laziness and you yourself are sitting on Greed. I win, four sins and five gods to his one sin and one god. I am Black Adam!”

Teth shifts his position so that he is now kneeling facing the other god statues. “You are indeed an unclean and impious man. I am Adom, prince and pharaoh of Kahndaq, hailed by the people of Kahndaq as Mighty Adom for my successes in war with the Nubians. While I cannot swear that my every decision was pleasing to Ma'at I strove always to rule justly and if my people are now oppressed by some foul tyrant I will cast them down.”

The goat-headed god with the head dress vanishes from Theodore's counterweight and appears on Teth Adam... Adom's side. The balances move once more.

“No!”

“I thank you for your favour, Lord Heryshaf. I will use your gift of strength ever to defend your people.”

Theodore looks desperately at the remaining god statues. “Shu... Two lions... Aker? But the scrolls didn't say-. Fine. Atum, yes, and Montu. So I was told wrong. Gods and styles of art and worship change over millennia. I still have the favour of more of them than you do.”

“Not for long.”

back

Revolution 19

next

Shouldn't be too long now.

“Lord Shu, for five thousand years my spirit has endured being bound to my corpse by my enemy, the wizard Shazam. My mind and my purpose remain intact. I humbly ask-."

“Lord Shu! I have… I can...”

Yeah, he's got nothing. To be honest, I'm impressed with how on the ball Teth Ad- Teth Adom is. Five thousand years with no stimulation. Maybe his gods kept him company? Not like they've had much to do lately.

“Lord Shu, I have repeatedly fought against beings who were my physical equal! It is my greatest pleasure, a contest of skill, strength, speed and endurance. Without-."

The statue of the kneeling man supporting the cloud disappears from his counterweight, and reappears on Teth Adom's. The balances shift once more. Ammut's head is now facing upward, his mouth open. I didn't see him move. And is he getting bigger?

“No! Why! I am more worthy!”

“Apart from murder, what deeds have you performed without the gods' gifts? When have you fought for your life from necessity and not ego? When I fought the Nubians I stood on the front line knowing that the sling of the least skilled peasant among them could end my life with a lucky shot. What have you ever done that required courage?”

“What have you ever done that mattered! One tiny skirmish that didn't even alter your own border and that is what you lay before Montu? I have used the gods’ power to fight the mightiest living beings on Earth! I didn't even know the extent of my power when I challenged the might of the Wisconsin National Guard!”

”Pppfffffffffffhahahahahah!” He whips his head around to glare at me. “What, was Maine a bit of a trek? Hawaii too hot for you? Or are you just really lactose intolerant? You're seriously boasting about fighting Wisconsin?”

“They were aided by Captain Marvel, the wizard's new champion!”

”I seem to remember reading that you ran away from him.”

“I distracted him by destroying one of the supports on the Fawcett City Bridge and he elected to help the ants rather than continue to fight me!”

"Which allowed you the time to run away. Oh look, there goes Lord Montu.”

“No! Damn it! Atum! My research into magic formed a core component of the plant weapon that is even now ravaging major cities across the world!”

“While I was pharaoh I commissioned a series of defensive fortifications and temples. I also created a standardised code of law, courts and made a policy of transferring the population of conquered areas away from their homelands and allowing them to settle elsewhere rather than slaughtering or enslaving them. That was one of the causes of strife between myself and my father. I do not know if that custom survived...”

"Either it did, or it was reinvented. I remember hearing that the Babylonians did something similar to a city in Israel.”

“That is good to know, though I do not recognise either of those nations. War is sometimes necessary, but wanton slaughter should be avoided where possible.”

Looks like Atum agrees. Just Aker to go.

...

I don't know anything about Aker. What might Teth Adom have done to demonstrate his speed?

“Strength, Endurance, Power, Wisdom, Courage... Aker is god of horizons and boundaries. What does that have to do with speed?!”

“The lions at his side represent the passage of time, yesterday and tomorrow. Aker also stands at the gate to the underworld and removes the death wounds on the souls of those who pass by. If you had ever stood vigil by the side of a dying comrade you would know just how swift the change from life to death can be. And who but Aker could control the rate at which time passes and grant more of it to his favoured servant?”

“I had to work with great speed to conceal what I had done when I killed the Batsons. The authorities still believe the story that it was the work of bandits!”

”You know, I really don't think you're helping yourself by saying stuff like that.”

“I doubt that there is anything that quite compares with five thousand years locked in a single room to grant an appreciation for the passage of time. By the sounds of it, I would have much work waiting for me if I were to return to the world of the living.”

The statue of Aker joins the others. Theodore looks incensed, the scales lowering him to their lowest point yet. Ammut's jaws are wide open below us.

Nothing happens.

Teth Adom and I share a slightly confused look.

“Should something not have happened?”

"I was expecting something. I didn't want to bring this up before, but I really don't know what's happening to our bodies in the real world, and I've got a nasty suspicion that they're falling to Earth at considerable speed.”

“Hah heh heh heh.”

Come on, what comes next?

“You've done all this work and it still comes to nothing. The gods' power still protects me, but you have to concentrate to use your ring, don't you? I'll be bruised, you'll die, and you-" He squints up at Teth Adom. “You can go back to being a little voice in the back of my head. I can always make a new binding. Perhaps I will track down the Batsons’ son to make the required sacrifice.”

“No, you will not. Now that I have the gods’ support I may once more call upon their power by speaking the wizard's name!”

“No!”

“Shu, Heryshaf, Aker, Zehuti, Atum and Montu. I pray to you, grant me your power that I may once more serve as your champion. Shazam!”

A bolt of orange lightning flies from me and strikes him in the chest. He throws back his head in a silent shout as the energy crackles around him. He grows a little, his musculature increasing in size though still nothing like Theodore's transformed form. An athlete rather than a body builder. Next, the black with gold trim uniform I am most familiar with replaces his kilt and necklace. He floats into the air, marvelling at his newfound vitality.

“It's not happening it's not happening it's not happening...”

Theodore is curled up in a ball on his plate, shrivelled back to his true form. For some reason he's still wearing his costume but it hasn't shrunk with him and it just emphasises how much smaller he has become.

“Thank you, oh gods of Kahndaq. May I prove myself worthy of the blessing you have bestowed upon me.”

He looks at me.

“How do we return to-?"

“No! I will not be weak again!”

“The gods have turned from you, criminal. You have no-."

“There is more than one source of power here! I call upon the Lords of Hell! Enemies of Man, grant me your powers! Sabbac!”

Ma'at releases her grip on his scales, and it drops into Ammut's waiting jaws.

“NNNNNNOOOOOOAAAAAAGGGGHHHHHH!”

Teth Adom and I look down as his screams are cut off. Ammut doesn't seem to have gone anywhere. Alright, up to me. Another conceptual gate?

Portal.

An orange lantern sigil appears at my feet and another appears on Teth Adom's platform. They twist, rotate and move upwards and I open my eyes to the stinging wind and ground!

back

Revolution 20

next

1st October

19:01 GMT -6

Tree mud water fly!

Unable to comply. Low pow-.

“Armour!”

The construct flashes into being an instant before I slam into the mud, the shockwave from my terminal velocity impact sending dirty water flying in all directions before I strike the more solid ground beneath and get sent into a tumbling bounce.

“Gyouygh!”

I pull in my arms and legs as I hit a tree, smashing through the trunk and into the ground behind. Another bounce and a row of bushes are torn asunder before I make final splashdown in a small pond. The splash made by my impact sends a wave shooting to the muddy banks even as I sink below the murky green waters.

Fffffeeeeeeuuuuuwwww. What a relief.

In the light of the armour construct I can see the cracks from damage it took protecting me. I'm not sure exactly how much energy a terminal velocity drop into mud puts into the droppee but I imagine that it's a lot. Good work, armour. Now I just have to hope that stuff with Teth Adom actually happened. If it didn't then John owes me a refund, but from the way Theodore was acting beforehand something happened when I destroyed the scarab. Right, next step.

Ring, charge?

Ten percent remaining.

Not sure what that power got spent on, but I suppose that can be a concern for later. Can't fly out, so start walking. Wading. Ring, map. Thank you. Need to contact the rest of the team. Not sure if the plasma pistol is completely water proof, so I'll recover that from subspace after I get out.

**Orange Lantern to team. Provisional mission-kill on Black Adam. Count Vertigo-**

Ring? Ah, good.

**-collared and wandering the swamp in a daze.**

I think I remember something about him having a problem with his inner ear which his device -now mine- corrected. Certainly looks that way from how he's behaving. The bank of the pond is steep and a little diffuse, but I find some exposed roots and start hauling myself out.

**Could I please have an update?**

**Good work. The plant control network is down but we are -ah!- sorely pressed.**

**Be with you as soon as I can, Aqualad.**

Hm. If the vine is destroyed then with a little luck...

Ring, location of team.

The ring adds the distance and direction to the armour's HUD as I break the surface and pull myself fully out, water and gunk running off my armour. Behind me, seventy metres. I pull myself to my feet. Alright, shouldn't take.. too...

I'm looking at a golden boot, hovering over the pond. Its partner is next to it, toes pointing downwards slightly. Coming out of the boots are black leggings. I take a breath. Time to find out whether I'm boned or not. Gold sash, lightning bolt cape, athletic build and I throw my arms in the air in triumph!

“Yes!”

“I am glad that you find my appearance so pleasing.”

“Gotta be honest with you Mighty One, I was not sure that would work.”

Unlike Theodore, he doesn't scowl by default. His expression is blank, or stern, perhaps. He unfolds his arms from the front of his chest and raises his right hand to examine it.

“It is.. strange, to be flesh again after so long. And in this place. I have never seen a.. a bayou before.”

Ophidian's Eyes.

Yep, I can only see one set of desires. Should probably get Mister J'onzz to make sure at some point, just in case. I blink them away as he recrosses his arms.

“I wondered, while we were in the dream, if perhaps you were the wizard, projecting yourself into my soul as some strange sort of test. Or maybe even the embodiment of Lord Atum himself.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

“Oh, I am very far from disappointed.” He cocks his head to the side, listening to something. “But perhaps we should leave this for later. Now, I think I should remonstrate with Theodore's former comrades.”

His face twists as he names his predecessor. Or should that be successor?

“I'll catch you up.”

He nods, and is gone in a roar of displaced air. Right.

**Orange Lantern to team. I have turned Black Adam. Repeat, I have turned Black Adam. He's inbound now.**

**You what?**

**Turned to our side, Kid Flash. He shou-.**

**He's here. Oh. Oh, God... **

Through his eyes I see Teth Adom holds Wotan's collar in one hand and Wotan's severed right arm in the other before he hurls him to the ground. Maaaaybe I should have thought this bit through better.

**He's five thousand years old, you need to explain our rules of engagement!**

Oh dear, is Teth Adom going to understand English? I've only got five percent power left until we're reduced to charades unless Zehuti's Wisdom portfolio includes modern linguistics. Would M'gann be able to communicate telepathically?

**Miss Martian.**

**On it, Aqualad.**

It seems Kaldur had the same thought. That should save the Injustice Gang's lives, assuming that Wotan doesn't bleed out. He should know some healing spells, right? More importantly, it won't stop Teth Adom from making friendly contact with the Justice League which would be pretty much off the table if any of these mass murdering criminals died. Will this be tried in Louisiana? Do they have the death penalty? I certainly hope so, but supervillains seemed to be able to duck that sort of thing in the comics with little difficulty. I look around, trying to find the best route through the swamp before the ring plots it for me. Running's a nonstarter, but with the ring improving my awareness of my immediate environment I can manage a decent jogging pace. Is it normal for there to be this many flowers around at this time of year?

I hold out my right hand.

Ring, gun.

One of the red plasma pistols appears in my hand. Not that I think Teth Adom is going to leave anyone standing, but don't places like this have alligators? Low power and short range.

“Well look who tried to skip the party.”

I stop. Napier? Gun to ready position.

“Good evening Mister Napier. If you could please come out with your hands raised?”

Ring, locate him.

Compliance.

He's standing eleven metres away, behind a bush. Not sure his brain would respond in the normal way to a StunCrown. Weapons? Two knives and some odd looking gloves. Some dangerous chemicals, but not in a significant quantity and I might just be reading him. I'm having a bit of a flashback to my ‘fight’ with Mister Crock.

“Can't do that. I'm trying to be a responsible dog owner.”

Dog?

“We'll see what we can do about getting you visitation rights.” I raise the pistol in his direction.

“Aren't you a swell guy? Thank the man, Rover.”

Rover?

“Grrrrrrrr!”

I swing to my right as the white mass of fur leaps out of the undergrowth!

back

Revolution 21

next

1st October

19:04 GMT -6

In the moments before the supersized canine hits me I get a clear view of its fur. White, but for a patch around its head which someone -presumably Napier- has dyed green. I don't think that anyone but him would have put the crimson lipstick on either. I line up the gun and fire as it leaps. Fur is burnt along its chest but it still has enough momentum to barrel into me.

Brace.

My pistol is knocked aside. It's aiming for my throat, but is wrong-footed when its considerable mass doesn't push me over. It takes half a second to recover before it locks its jaws around my head. The view of the inside of its mouth as it chomps on my armour is a little disturbing, but not really any worse than the rats in India. Looks like another Venom Buster case.

Ring, purge.

Unable to comply. Scan protection in effect.

Of course it is. Luckily I didn't land on my head after my return to Earth so the dog? Wolf? Is biting the strongest part of my armour. Maybe I should do what I did to Mister Huang, but I'm at ten percent power and about to get into a fight with a group of supervillains. I manipulate my pistol to a better angle, dial the power up to medium and fire point blank into its side. It falls sideways with a whimpering yelp.

That is one freaky looking wolf. Alright, Napier next, then-.

“Raaaar!”

The wolf leaps back to its feet and hurls itself at my left leg, biting the construct armour and shaking its head from side to side.

Infrasonic.

“Do you like him? When the big gorilla told me about them I knew I just had to get one of my own. Maybe I'm getting broody? Ha ah ah.”

The wolf doesn't seem to be noticing the infrasonic waves and continues to worry my leg as the armour starts to crack in earnest. Dogs. That was why Doctor Munro hesitated. They weren't working on dogs, they were working on wolves. Okay, still shouldn't be-.

“Couldn't just take them off the peg, so I added a little Gotham fever. Wotan did something to give the little guy a little extra pep as well. Who'da thought teamwork could be so much fun?"

I bring the pistol up, switch it to high power and shoot the wolf in the head. Flesh melts away from the right side of its face and its right eye bursts. Then the flesh regrows and the eye reforms and it keeps at me. A normal wolf could tear apart a man's leg and I've no doubt that the moment my armour construct fails this thing will do that to me.

“I did the lipstick myself. He was having trouble applying it. You just can't get it in paw-friendly sticks out here.”

**I'm at low power and being attacked by an augmented wolf. I could really use some help if anyone's free!**

Warning; low power. Eight percent remaining.

Reknit armour.

Compliance.

The cracks disappear from everywhere but the leg that the wolf is attacking. There they flicker from repaired to damaged as the wolf cracks it anew.

Warning; low power. Seven percent remaining.

The inside of its mouth might be more vulnerable, but I'm not sure I can hit it from here. Can I shoot off its jaw? Not sure. I dial the pistol down to shortest range, hold it near the side of its face and pull the trigger. A flash of red light and it loses its grip. I end the brace effect and take a few hurried steps backwards. High power shots tend to deplete the pistol's power cell quickly and I don't have a solution to the wolf yet.

“Aaaaaaggrrrrrrrrrr.”

The wolf can't growl properly with its jaw hanging off, but the muscles begin reattaching even as I watch. Assimilate it? Try to hope it can't heal back brain damage? A second pistol might-.

An orange shape rushes through the undergrowth and catches the wolf in the side, bowling it over. It's feline and.. Teekl? Teekl's grown to the size of an adult lion and is currently sinking her teeth and claws into the wolf. With a wet snapping noise she tears her muzzle free, taking a wodge of its back with it. The wolf tries to return the favour but is pinned to the ground by her extended claws and can't get its head around to bite her. Tossing the meat aside, she attacks again before the flesh can regrow. This time there's a crunch and the wolf shudders and goes still as she breaks its spine. I quickly run forwards, put the barrel of the pistol up to its eye and pull the trigger. In a flash its skull is hollowed out, baked from the inside.

I step back, gun ready in case it is still able to regenerate. Doesn't look like it. Ring?

No regenerative activity detected. Addendum, this ring cannot identify certain forms of magic effect.

Reassuring. I walk up to Teekl. “Good cat.”

"Teekl top hunter.”

She expands her jaws too far beyond their natural proportion, clamps them around the dead wolf's neck and bites down. Its head is separated from the body and she holds it up as a trophy.

"Teekl rule. Dog drool.”

“Not anymore it doesn't. I didn't know you could grow like that, Teekl.”

“Teekl awesome. Teekl beat whole dog group.”

“How many-?”

There's a woosh of displaced air behind me as Teth Adom flies into the clearing, Napier held in his hands by his lapels. He takes in the scene.

“You are uninjured?”

“Yes. Any casualties?”

“The battle is won, and won well. The youth in yellow was somewhat mauled, but the wound did not seem mortal and the archer was tending to him. I saw no other serious injuries.”

I nod. I can heal Wallace-.

“Well you're about to see one reeeeeeal close.” The Joker's right hand goes to his left lapel, and a spray of dark green gas squirts out of his buttonhole flower!

Environmental shield!

An orange line connects me to Teth Adom. Would Smilex affect him? Don't know, don't want to find out, don't know if I was fast enough.

“Good, ain't it?” The Jok-. Napier turns his head to look at me. “You don't know if it worked. I don't know if it worked. We're all just on-."

Teth Adom releases the lapels and transfers his hold to Napier's face, thumbs just under his eyes. Then he rises slightly into the air, his face emerging from the vapour cloud.

“That was your ‘Joker Toxin’, was it not? I possess Theodore's memories of its effects.”

“Hate to break it to you big guy, but I don't have the slightest idea what you're saying.”

“You kill people with euphoria while polluting the air with your demented cackling.” He begins exerting pressure, twisting Napier's head back. “No more silly faces.”

“Adom! Stop!”

“Why?!” He sounds more startled than angry. “So he can go on to kill more people? How heavily do Ma'at's scales weigh against him already?”

“Very heavily, I imagine.”

“The green woman told me that you do not kill your foes, but this.. animal... Why? Why should he be spared the fate he has inflicted on so many others?”

What answer would he accept?

“He shouldn't. He thoroughly deserves to die.”

“Heh! New at this.. hero thing.. are ya? I'll admit... Interesting.. change of.. pace...”

StunCrown.

An orange line connects me to Napier and he goes still. Adom checks him for life and then looks at me with confusion on his face. “Why? If you agree he deserves it...”

“Because we, we are not the rightful authorities. This country has laws and honest judges and it is to them we leave these decisions. Would you have accepted people enacting justice in your kingdom, save by your leave?”

His face stills as he thinks about it. “I would not.” He nods. ”Very well, I shall stay my hand. At least until I understand this land better.” He moves Napier's recumbent body to underneath his right arm, before turning to give Teekl a look over. “The cat is yours? You show excellent judgement in your choice of companion.”

back

Revolution 22

next

1st October

19:13 GMT -6

“This is weirding me out.”

Wallace stares as Adom drops the bewildered Count Vertigo into the mud outside of his former base, his collared companions looking on. Wotan's just finished healing himself, and Kaldur lowers the trident he had pointed at the back of the man's head while Artemis snaps magic suppression bracers around his arms. They're usually used by Atlanteans for imprisoning dangerous mages. I only found out they existed when Kaldur mentioned them on the bioship journey in, though I should have realised that logically they'd have to have something like that.

Would this place be worth leaving as a tourist attraction, or will whoever's in charge of this place want it destroyed? I mean, aside from the hole in the roof where the vine got weedkillered it's pretty intact. The League at least will want to go over everything left looking for clues. The surrounding plant life certainly looks vigorous enough to recolonise the area.

“I mean, that's Black Adam, grade A bad guy.”

The wolf that attacked me had eight pack mates, and one of them got a grip on Wallace's right arm before Kon was able to pull its jaws apart. Bone's fractured and blood is continuing to soak through the bandage Artemis applied. Teekl joined the others when they disembarked from the bioship but she only grew after the Injustice Mob unleashed the hounds. Those that survived Teekl and Adom either succumbed to their wounds or to whatever crap Napier put in their systems.

“And he's helping?”

I lay my right hand on his chest. “Wholeness Rightly Assumed.” A wave of orange passes through him and I see the small cuts on his face disappear. “Feel better?”

“Yeah, I..." He flexes his right arm a couple of times. “Huh. Thanks, Oh El.”

“At the risk of repeating myself, not Black Adam. Teth Adom.”

“Meaning..?”

“Uhh... Literally, it would be something like ‘the gods have made him mighty’. I told you that Theodore was using the soul of a dead hero as a power source?”

“And that's him? Well, how did he get out? And where did normal Black Adam go?”

“Theodore bound his soul to an amulet which I destroyed during our fight. I used a magic powder to enter their shared psyche and helped Adom prove his worth to his gods.”

“And Theo Adam?”

“Ma'at fed his soul to Ammut.”

He squints. “His soul.. got eaten.. by a dog.”

“No, not ay mutt, ah mutt. It's a sort of crocodile-lion-hippopotamus thing that ancient E... That ancient Kahndaqis believed ate the souls of those judged unworthy after their deaths. I guess accepting power from their gods meant that he also accepted their right to judge him.”

“Whow. Harsh. So he just takes over Theo's body?”

“Yes. Pretty much, anyway. I think what they transform into depends on how they want to look. Theodore looked like a power lifter because that's how he sees strength. But Adom's better adjusted so he looks pretty much like he did in life.”

I watch as Adom descends to speak to Kaldur, though he stays a little way off the ground. M'gann and Artemis stand nearby, forming a perimeter around the captured criminals.

“Where'd Robin and Kon get to?”

“They went inside to try and secure evidence. You know, apart from my arm this mission went really smoothly.”

I tense, but nothing happens. And if it wasn't going to happen then, we must really be in the clear. I take a moment to look at the villains. Mass murderers all, the only one with skills which could be useful enough to excuse her continued existence is Isley. Do I try talking to her? I exhale as I consider it. I probably should. Even if nothing comes of it, I'll at least know that I tried. Nodding to Wallace, I walk in their direction.

Napier's propped up against an exposed tree trunk, still immobile. Vertigo's lying on the ground, shaking and whimpering. Should I give him his balance control thingy back? No, I don't think so. Wotan's whispering something to the Ultra-Humanite, but quietens himself as I approach. Atomic Skull pretty much collapsed when the collar found the setting to block him and has just been staring into space since. None of them are worth my time. Isley's standing a little way away from the others, examining a vine that appears to have gone into unseasonal fruit.

“Pamela Isley.”

No immediate response.

“Doctor Is-."

“There is no Isley.” She hisses the name, not bothering to turn around. “I was Poison Ivy, and once this collar comes off I will be again.”

This isn't going to work, is it?

“Have you ever considered that.. just perhaps, killing hundreds of people isn't the best way to communicate an ecological message? Have you ever considered-?”

She turns around, snarling, and I see Artemis notch an arrow.

“No. I will not deal with meat. I am Gaia's champion-."

"But you're not, are you? If you mean Gaia as in the Titan, that's Wonder Woman. If you mean Gaia as in the embodiment of Earthly plant life, that's Alec Holland."

A pause, then a moment of recognition. "Alec Holland is dead."

"He didn't seem very dead last time I went to visit him."

She frowns in confusion. I think she knew his work. She might even respect him. Then she shakes her head. “No. You're lying.”

“Come on. You've been here for weeks and you didn't feel anything? About seventy kilometres in that direction?”

I point in the approximate direction of Houma. She looks like she's thinking about it. Would she have felt him? Could he get her back onto the straight and narrow, or at least sane enough for a trial? Would he bother? I did try talking to Abigail about more intelligent uses for his abilities, but all that did was give her the impression I was trying to own him. John must have left a very bad impression.

Then a thick vine bursts forth from the swamp. It's identical to the ones that have been ravaging the world's cities and is swiftly followed by others. Five, six, seven, oh not good. Armour.

“Rise, my babies! Scour these impudent mammals from the swamps!”

Yeah, lost cause there. The vines continue to rise and thicken, reaching out and twisting around each other for support. Two main trunks emerge, fusing together about ten meters up and continuing to grow. Isley's blocked and Napier's control gloves are sitting in subspace. What's doing this? The main trunk sprouts two clusters of the grab flower things that the vines in the cities have been using to smash cars. About thirty metres up they bud on opposite sides and the vines they're on extend downwards. At the top I see some sort of mound forming as the growth spurt comes to an end. Smaller spore pods packed with Smilex dot the epidermis.

“Yes! Yes!”

Isley's ecstatic, though the other villains are less sanguine.

Wait.

Two ‘arms’, two ‘legs’ and a mound at the top. Oooooooh.

Swamp Thing bends at the waist to have a better look at us, far below him. He doesn't look very impressed.

back

Revolution 23

next

1st October

19:17 GMT -6

The colossus turns its torso around slowly, taking all of us in with glowing red eyes. It... he, doesn't seem to have a neck, and his torso seems somewhat stiff. None of us move, perhaps not wanting to attract his attention. Isley's staring up with what I imagine is religious awe. Two things are running through my mind. The first is that this is the first potential opponent I've seen here against whom I have literally no chance. Destroy one avatar and he creates a new one. Or a dozen new ones. He can control the Smilex bearing vines and the microscopic plants inside our bodies. None of us have any weapon that can directly attack his true energy based self. I really hope Adom doesn't jump the gun on this one.

**Orange Lantern, is that..?**

**Yes, Aqualad. That's Swamp Thing.**

The second? Bog god bog god bog god bog god bog god bog god bog god bog god bog god bog god bog god bog god bog god bog god bog god. I hope someone else says something first, because I don't want to say that. Not only is it a bit rude but it would also associate me in his mind with John, and their relationship was rocky at best.

Still staring upwards, Isley walks away from the group to a point directly in front of Swamp Thing. I don't remember them ever meeting in the comics and I've got no idea what his response to her is going to be. She shouldn't be able to control him, especially with the collar on. Out of the corner of my eye I see Robin and Kon emerge from the top of the Dome. Robin keeps his head down. Kon looks like he's carrying something.

“Oh. Oh, mighty...“

Swamp Thing's head reorientates on Isley immediately and she trails off.

"You.”

The tangle of vines making up his head moves a little, becoming a bit more face-like. She starts to look a little nervous.

“Y-yes? I am Poison Ivy, and I-."

His right arm raises a little, then shoots down and grabs her before hauling her up to the level of his face. The arm itself is thin and bends in an inverted U shape to do this and I've got no idea how it's got any strength to it.

"Your.. voice. Always… On the edge of hearing. Whining, screeching, demanding voice! Be… Silenced.”

The flowers start to wrap around her.

“No! Wait! What have I done?! I only wanted-!”

“The Green is... Not your playground. We care not for your causes, your pettiness.”

He brings his left arm around and clasps his second flower cluster around the first. Oh heck, he isn't going to kill her, is he?

”By command of the... Parliament of Trees... I cast you out.”

He retracts his left arm and lowers his right to the ground, dropping Isley into the mud. Alright, what was that ab-.

Oh.

Isley's hair is now brown. Her skin, which had been pale green, is now a more normal Caucasian flesh tone. She lies in the mud, her knees drawn up to her chest with her arms around them. She's shaking, staring blankly in front of her.

She's been cut off.

**You know Oh El, when you described Swamp Thing I was really thinking more along the lines of Floronic Man. Are we going to need to fight that?**

**Sorry Robin, but there wouldn't be much point. Aqualad, do you mind if I try talking to him?**

Swamp Thing continues to watch Isley. I don't remember him ever being slow about killing people from the comics, so I can only assume that he doesn't particularly want her to die.

**Go ahead.**

Me and my big... I start walking towards Isley.

“Excuse me! Doctor Holland!”

The face and two deep red eyes swing in my direction. Oh heck, I could stand at the bottom of one of those eyes and my head wouldn't reach the top.

”No. Not... Holland.”

“Alright. Um. Swamp Thing. I did try and get in touch with you earlier.”

"I have been... Here. I felt... A disturbance, but when I arrived the wards on this place confused... Me.”

“Quite understandable. We couldn't-."

”Wait. You are the one... Who spoke to Abigail.”

“It's not as if you have a phone number.”

His right arm comes around, flower head stopping three metres away. It's... sniffing me?

"You reek of Constantine's magic.”

Ooh.

“Yes, I've been working with him.”

"You will not contact my wife again.”

Oh no you don't.

“Why not? Do you realise how easy it would have been for us to clear this up if we'd been able to contact you from the start? How many lives could have been saved?”

He looms over me, kneeling in the mud. Gosh that's a lot of Smilex pods.

"The Green is not at your beck and call.”

“Never said it was. You don't want Abigail involved, fine. Give us a way to contact you directly -in situations like this only- and she'll never hear from us again. You know we can't force you to do anything, but you got involved here anyway. Wouldn't it be better to coordinate with us?”

His eyes narrow slightly, then his right arm twitches. The flower hand withers and dies as the seedpod behind it expands and ripens into a pale orange vein covered tuber.

"Take it. Plant it. If you... Wish to speak with me, consume one of... The fruits.”

I walk over to it, form a blade construct and support it from underneath as I cut it off. It's a rough sphere with a diameter of about twenty centimetres. The outer surface is softer than I would have expected.

"Do not seek... Me out otherwise. AND DO NOT SHARE IT WITH CONSTANTINE.”

I nod, meeting his eyes once more.

“Thank you. You see how easy-."

His eyes go dim and soft green growth goes brown and woody. I get ready to dash to the side as it creaks and tilts, but it settles and remains stable. Guess he's abandoned avatar. Don't think I should risk subspacing the fruit, just in case that has some effect on the magic. Need to test that. M'gann helps the traumatised Isley to her feet and back to the other villains. I feel a brief twinge of sympathy, but suppress it by reminding myself what she did to deserve it. Once Isley's settled, I'll ask M'gann to take the fruit to the bioship for safekeeping.

Adom floats around to stare at Swamp Thing's now vacant head. I should probably explain this whole thing to him. Robin and Artemis lower their weapons, and Kon makes his way down the outer surface of the dome.

Is that a puppy?

**That was nicely handled.**

**Thank you Aqualad.** I think for a moment. It's a bit of a long shot, but... **Think we could build an arboretum in the mountain?**

back

Revolution 24

next

1st October

19:21 GMT -6

“No, my people never literally believed that our gods had the heads of beasts.”

I'm not sure whether Robin overcame his concerns about Teth Adom's presence, or just asked an impertinent question to mask it. He's sitting on the shoulder of Swamp Thing's former Avatar, and Adom is floating just in front of him with his arms crossed. Fortunately, Adom has decided to treat it as a serious question and just as fortunately I've got just enough power to translate for them.

“It was an artistic shorthand. Just as certain beasts were ascribed certain traits or were associated with particular territories, so a god who possessed those traits or whose cult was centred in that area might be shown as having a head of that animal.”

Kon's got the wolf pup wrapped in a blanket taken from the Dome. Once the Ultra-Humanite realised that it was still alive he started volunteering information in an attempt to preserve what he terms ‘an invaluable experimental subject’. According to him, Brain was going to use the wolves for perimeter defence until he realised that one of the females was pregnant. That pup got a shot of Danner Formula and if the poor little mite lives, she'll be nearly as strong as her newly adopted father. At the moment, her eyes are still shut and she whines constantly for her mother. Turns out that telling your ring not to translate dog doesn't automatically mean that it won't translate wolf.

“In public places the animal headed depiction was more common, but in other places they might be shown as fully human or in more abstract ways. I suppose it is unlikely that much of our artwork has survived this long.”

“Well, the pyramids are still there.”

Synthesising wolf milk shouldn't be a problem for the ring, but we're going to need to contact some sort of expert on canine behaviour when she gets a little older. She has the same white fur as Napier's ex-pet, which I suppose might mean that she's his daughter. Not going to waste what little charge I have left checking. Teekl's still in Battlecat mode, circling Kon and sniffing at the small furry bundle. I certainly hope she finds it less offensive than a full sized one.

“The what..?”

I put my right hand to the side of my mouth. “Pyramids were after his death, Robin.”

“Oh, ch, right. Here, I'll show you.”

He generates a holographic screen with his computer, brings up an image and holds out his arm. Adom floats a little to the side for a better look as Kaldur walks up to me.

**Members of the League will be here shortly.** I nod. He looks over at Teth Adom. **In light of the presence of our new friend, I feel I should warn you that Captain Marvel will be among them.**

**I discussed my plan with him beforehand. It won't come as a complete surprise.** I frown, and look at our prisoners. **How are we going to move them out of the swamp?**

**Your friend Lantern Gardner will be handling prisoner transport. Arrangements have been made for them to be held in Belle Reve pending a final decision on where they will stand trial.**

**They're sending Napier to Belle Reve?**

**Temporarily. It is the closest facility secure enough to house him. I do not believe that he will be mixing with the general population.**

I nod.

“Alright, I got a question.”

Adom stops squinting at the screen and looks over to Wallace, who dashed up Swamp Thing and is now hovering at Robin's shoulder.

“You may ask.”

“What's with the ears?”

Adom's right hand twitches up for a moment, as if reaching up to touch them. “Ah. That.”

“Yeah. I mean, if it's really personal or something-."

“No, no. A little.. embarrassing, perhaps.” **May we continue this mentally?**

Wallace nods.

**My father wished to be seen as a living god. Part of his method for that was to make himself physically distinct from the common people. He would wear makeup in complex patterns, affect certain strange manners of behaviour. He also had the royal chirurgeon.. trim.. his ears. And, since I was the son and heir of this new god, when I was very young he ordered mine trimmed as well. It was the gods' own mercy that I did not die of some infection as a result.**

**He did that just so you would look different?**

**Otherworldly, yes. And it worked, to an extent.**

**So why did.. you know... The other guy have the same thing?**

**I assume that he saw my picture on the wall of my tomb and assumed that it was caused by transformation. A sign of power. He-.**

His head snaps around. What has he..? Ah. Hawkman, Hawkwoman and Guy Gardner fly into the clearing carrying Mister Zatara, Batman, Green Arrow and Black Canary on a glowing green platform. Adom has eyes only for Captain Marvel. Marvels slows as he sees Adom but continues to head towards him, coming to a full stop about four metres away and slightly above, arms bent at his sides as if preparing to receive a charge. Guy lands the others, nods at me and then creates a glowing green birdcage around our prisoners while Marvel and Adom take each other in.

“So, you are the wizard's new champion.”

“Yeah. And you're the spirit of his last one.”

“Spirit and flesh, now.”

“What'd you do to Theo Adam?”

“The gods fed his soul to Ammut.”

“Meaning what, exactly?”

“It is destroyed. Utterly unmade. Nothing of him survives.”

“Huh.” He looks away for a moment. “Guess that's okay.”

Adom rises up to his level. “You are called Captain Marvel, correct? I remember that this land does not have hereditary nobility. Were you a member of your nation's military before the... The wizard recruited you?”

“Ah, not exactly.”

The bioship uncloaks and flies in to land. The other members of my team begin to walk towards it, but I want to stay on hand in case something goes wrong with Adom and Marvel.

“You know, when I told the wizard what Orange Lantern was planning to do, he said that you'd probably attack me on sight anyway.”

“I had... Considered it, but now that I am once more counselled by Lord Zehuti I realise that you were not a party to the wizard's crimes against me. I have no more reason to assume that you are worthy of my wrath than I would have done a younger version of myself.”

“And the wizard?”

Adom's face hardens. “He can wait.”

Sounds like they'll be okay. Guy takes off, escorted by the Hawks. Adom watches them go, a puzzled frown furrowing his face. The other League members have headed to the Dome, I assume to start gathering evidence. Or maybe just to make the place safe. I don't see Batman OH FUCK HE'S STANDING RIGHT BEHIND ME! I theatrically put my right hand over my heart as he regards me.

“Orange Lantern. A word.”

back

NEXT CHAPTER

Inhumanity

BACK

Inhumanity 1

next

Inhumanity

3rd October

08:07 GMT -5

“…tells me that in this age a skirt is not an appropriate item of clothing for a man, but I am still not completely comfortable with thisss.”

He spreads his arms and gestures at his bodysuit. Adom and I are in the staff dining room of the Themysciran embassy, eating breakfast. He's staying here until the League can think of somewhere more permanent for him to go. Batman seemed to be alright about what I did to make this happen, but he was right when he pointed out that I hadn't really planned for the next bit. I would have done, given a little more time, but in the meantime we've got a man who doesn't speak any modern languages and who's never seen iron before to introduce to this country.

Maybe the costume is a bad idea. I mean, he doesn't look all that much like Theodore Adam's transformed state, but if I've learned one thing during my time in this crazy world it's that people tend to see the costume and ignore everything else.

“I'm sure that if you wanted to wear something else a tailor could be found, Mighty One.”

He shakes his head. “No, it is a trivial matter. Learning English and Kahndaqi Arabic is a far more urgent concern.”

“How's that going?”

“Your princess has arranged for a tutor from a local school... No, they are called..." He frowns. "Universities? I teach them of Kahndaq-. Ancient Kahndaqi, I should say, and they teach me English in exchange. It is slow, but I can hardly require that you or one of the Martians escort me at all times.” He smiles faintly. “Martians. To think that there are other worlds like ours...”

“And Arabic?”

“No. I am lucky enough to have a teacher who can understand Kahndaqi at all. Arabic will have to wait.” He slices through a piece of bacon with his knife and holds it up on his fork. “They tell me that this is forbidden in Kahndaq, now. That the animal it is taken from is considered unclean. Do you know why that is?”

“It's a religious prohibition, but the underlying reason? No. I didn't think it was favoured in your time either.”

He shakes his head. “Another change that occurred after my death. In my time we did not have the luxury of rejecting perfectly good food. It seems wasteful... but perhaps I should make an effort to conform?”

“Planning to convert to Islam?”

“Of course not, but it would not hurt to observe some of the traditions...” He lowers the fork and pushes the plate aside. “And what of you?”

“Today? The wizard who helped me with... you has finished designing an enchantment I wanted and I'm getting it tattooed onto my skin. Given how magic affects me I doubt I'll be much use for anything else for the rest of the day after that.”

“When you said that you had no soul I had thought that you were using a metaphor. You must trust this wizard a great deal.”

Um...

“On certain matters, yes. I trust him not to stab me in the back. I'll be taking Kaldur -Aqualad- with me even so.”

And I asked Queen Mera to review his designs. According to her they should work as described, though she couldn't be certain. Nothing quite like this has ever been done before.

“At some point I should probably take the time to thank him for his efforts on my behalf.”

Errrr...

“If you like, Mighty One. But John Constantine is a somewhat... Idiosyncratic man. Not always easy to get along with.”

Adom waves my concern aside. “I used to run a country. I am certain that I can hold my temper around one irritating wizard, particularly when I am in his debt. Now, I shall take my leave.”

He rises, and walks out of the room in the direction of the residential section. Ferdinand got the job of explaining modern plumbing to him and he got the hang of it immediately. Mostly. I saw him watching in horror at one of the charity workers taking a glass of water directly from a tap and had to do a quick off the cuff presentation of modern water treatment processes, but he's intelligent enough to realise that if we're doing something there is probably a reasonable reason for it.

Now for the other reason I'm here. I pick up the glasses, his plate and my bowl and head towards the kitchen. Ferdinand usually has the place to himself, though they hire people in during large events. As I push through the doors I see him putting the finishing touches to a leafy salad. I clean the crockery and return it to the correct cupboards. Ferdinand and I are both very particular about that sort of thing.

“Was something wrong with the bacon?”

Ferdinand's holding up the salad bowl and looking at it critically. His eyes are a bit further towards the front of his head than those of an actual bull would be, but he told me that his snout can still get in the way.

“No, but bacon's banned in Kahndaq. He doesn't want to do something which might offend his countrymen.”

“Fair enough.”

I lean back against the work surface and hold my arms across my chest. “So... The spear thing...”

“Yeah, look, I... I was a bit angry about some stuff, thought I'd take it out on a training dummy.”

Ah, personal conversations. With someone I don't really know all that well. I mean, we've spent some time in each other's company -mostly him watching me like a hawk-bull when I wanted to use the kitchens here- but I wouldn't say that we're close.

“Do you want to... talk about it? If not, I can probably create better sparring opponents than training dummies..?”

“Uhh.” He sighs and tosses his head. “Leslie... We were talking about Christmas, and she wants me to spend it with her at her parents' place.”

“That's great, isn't it?” Why wouldn't it..? Oh. “She has told them you're a... y'know...” I mime having horns.

He lowers his muzzle so that he can stare at me with both eyes. “Of course she has. It's not even them I'm really bothered by.” He walks over to look out of the window onto the busy New York street below. “When I first came to New York with Diana, I got stared at a lot. I didn't like it but, fair enough, they hadn't seen anything like me before. Eventually, people here got used to me. I still get the occasional tourist wanting a picture but apart from that..."

He slumps a bit, putting his weight on his arms. There isn't a tribe of cow-headed people anywhere. The original Minotaur is still around somewhere and I found out that the two of them share a great grandfather, but apart from that he's never mentioned other family. Given that the mythological version of how the Minotaur came to be appears to be true, I haven't wanted to ask.

“I don't like getting stared at, and if we spend a week in Seattle I'm going to get nothing but people staring at me.”

“Have you considered a disguise?”

He turns his head just enough to give me an incredulous look with his right eye.

“I mean, like, an illusion spell or something.”

“Diana would just tell me that they'll get used to it.”

“Well, luckily for you I'm not her. I know a guy who does good work, and.. I'm.. due to meet him in about two hours, if you want to come along?”

back

Inhumanity 2

next

3rd October

13:07 GMT -5

“Recognised, Aqualad B, zero two, Orange Lantern B, zero six.”

Uuuuhhhhggghghhh....

I'm leaning on Kaldur as the lights fade and the zeta tube deposits us in the mountain. Tattoos are on, feeding tiny amounts of power into the whole body binding seals. I should start to feel better as the spill over from the inscribing process starts to be drawn away, but right now I feel rough as vulture sick. On the plus side: with a little luck I've started slowly growing a soul. John may have done the design work, but a woman named Clarice Sackville did the actual tattooing. Obviously I had to have the ring and my Spell Eater off. I think Kaldur started talking to me about when he got his own tattoos done, but it's all a bit of a blur. We're both in civilian clothes, and I've added a leather jacket to my usual vest since I wasn't wearing the ring for most of my trip.

“…can't call her.... That!”

“Why not?”

Teekl's in big cat mode with the wolf pup on her head. I'm honestly finding it a bit freaky how cooperative she's being about our new resident. She's never been this friendly with the sphere. Puppy's eyes might not open for another week, but she's already getting used to the new smells. Kon and Artemis -both in uniform- seem to be arguing about something. Wallace looks like he's trying to keep out of it, plate of something in his left hand.

“What would you do if she ran off in a park?”

“Call her back.”

“You'd shout that in a park!?”

“What seems to be the problem?”

Both look at Kaldur.

“Kon wants to call the puppy... Bitch.”

…

I lose it.

“HHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!”

I fall to the ground, trying to suck down more air between guffaws.

“hErE bItCh. GoOd BiTcH. wHo'S a CuTe LiTtLe BiTcH? Hahahahahahaha!”

“If you don't like it you can just say that.”

“Aaaw, I'm sorry man, I'm sorry. Haaheheha.”

“How about Krypto?”

Wallace, did those tortilla crisps come from a packet? Was that cookery lesson I did entirely wasted? I thought you said you'd use it?

“I think it's taken. Fine.” Kon kneels down in front of Teekl and rubs the puppy's head. She moans. “Guess we'll just have to call you ‘Wolf’ then.”

She raises her right forepaw a little and places it on Kon's hand. Soooo cute. Ring, picture.

Compliance.

I roll into a sitting position. “Where have Robin and M'gann got to?”

“’ob ‘anned-." Wallace swallows. “Rob wanted to do some probing stuff with the sphere in the med bay. He took M'gann with him ‘cause he didn't want to risk hurting it by accident. How was London?”

I push myself up onto my feet, staggering a few paces as I come upright. “I don't really-."

“Recognised, Zatara, one one.”

I know he's supposed to be overseeing us, but I know the others appreciated not having him hovering every moment. He materialises, leaving the tube at a jog and looking a little panicked. What happened? He locks onto me, eyes wide.

“What in God's name possessed you to let John Constantine try to give you a soul!?”

This again...

“Professional experience? Did you know he once cut his own soul in half to dodge out of a demonic pact?”

“It does not surprise me in the least.”

No, no. “It wasn't a pact he made, it-."

“Queen Mera checked his calculations herself, and I was at his side for the entire process. It was as safe as it could be.”

“And I don't fancy going through life without a soul. I mean, does that sound like a good idea to you?”

And guess who's ‘eighteen’ and legally capable of making that sort of decision for himself? I watch as the wind leaves Mister Zatara's sails.

“Sir, if you don't mind me asking: what exactly is your problem with him?”

As far as I can remember, he didn't like him in the comics due to his relationship with Zatanna, and she's far too young for any of that to have happened here. Right?

“That is not your concern. If you wanted assistance in matters of magic, you could have come to me.”

“No disrespect intended sir, but it isn't your specialist area and -as far as I know- you're not a tattooist.”

“Neither is Constantine.”

“No, but he knows-."

He raises his right hand, palm outward. “Laever tfarclleps.”

Rude. Oh, um, ‘laever’ is ‘reveal’ and-. Ow! Burning sensation! Need to get the Spell Eater back. He lowers his hand and I put my left hand into the pocket of my jeans and slip the ring on my ring finger.

Spell Eater.

“The spell is leaking energy. Whoever did this-."

“Sir, it's supposed to be leaking, that's the whole point of it. I don't attract spiritual energy on my own, so the tattoo has to do the whole thing. Look, how about I give you a copy of John's notes? You can read through them, and if you find any actual problems we can talk about it.”

Alert: person of interest attempting to access zeta tube.

Oh yes? Who's the lucky victim?

Zatanna Zatara is attempting to access the San Francisco zeta tube.

“That's... Reasonable.”

Notes. And grant Zatanna access as A zero six. We're on six now, right?

A copy of John's work appears in the air just in front of Mister Zatara and he takes hold of it.

Affirmative. Access to cave granted.

“I don't imagine-."

“Recognised, Zatanna Zatara, A zero six, authorisation, error not found.”

“What!”

He turns around as his daughter appears in the zeta tube. She's wearing white trousers and a lilac strap top thing and is facing the side of the machine's tunnel. She turns her head in our direction in surprise.

“Ahh. I'm not in Potrero Hill anymore, am I?”

back

Inhumanity 3

next

3rd October

13:11 GMT -5

“…going straight home! Whatever did you think you were doing?”

“You got a phone call and ran down an alleyway. When I got to the end of the alley you weren't there. I wanted to know where you'd gone; I haven't seen you all week!”

Perhaps I should redefine what the ring counts as ‘attempting to access’? I wonder if insatiable curiosity is a wizard thing, or just a Constantine thing? Ooh, that's an idea, would Gemma prefer to go to an Atlantean school rather than wherever she's going to in Liverpool at the moment? Anyway, sounds like Mister Zatara had a freak out when he heard about what I'd done and cut short a father-daughter visit to San Francisco. I was surprised when I learned that they didn't live there, but maybe I'm just misremembering the comics.

“You know my work with the Justice League can call me away at short notice!”

My team mates are waiting for Black Canary to arrive. She hasn't actually arranged a training session, but there'll probably be one for anyone who's interested. I know Robin and Wallace have been looking forward to it. This is presumably why they haven't left the room while the father/daughter conflab takes place, loudly. Reacting to the social discomfort they've retreated across the room. I'm signed off from practice on a no-heavy-lifting-or-heavy-thinking order, but... I have been agitating for a team thaumaturgist for a while now and Zatanna was near the top of my list of preferred candidates. Might be tricky now that I see how protective Mister Zatara's being.

Time to break them up, I think.

“Excuse me sir?”

They both look around. Mister Zatara's face is a picture of controlled irritation. “Orange Lantern, this is a private conversation.”

“Not at that volume it isn't, sir. Look, I think we all-" I gesture with both arms to my team mates who are checking the ceiling and floor for cracks. “-all know that you aren't happy about Miss Zatara -hello! I'm Orange Lantern, pleased to meet you- being here, but since she is here I'd like to point out that inside a mountain surrounded by superheroes is a lot safer than, for example, all of New York.”

M'gann, Robin and the sphere enter from the direction of the lifts. Robin's in casual clothing.

“No attacks by evil wizards since... Ooh, last Tuesday, wasn't it?”

Mister Zatara schools his features. “That was contained extremely quickly.”

“What I'm saying is, now she's here, where's the harm in introducing her to everyone?”

I can virtually see him counting to five. He breathes out.

“I suppose you're right.” He half turns back to her. “Go and say hello. I need to look into how you were even able to get through the zeta tube.”

“Miss Zatara? If you'd care to accompany me?” I hold out my right arm.

“Um. Thank you.” She looks a little puzzled, but smiles and comes alongside me. We link arms as we start to walk in the direction of my team mates.

“Sorry if I'm interrupting your practice.”

“Eh, I'm skipping anyway.”

Apparently having learned from what happened when Artemis first got here, Kaldur steps forwards first.

“Miss Zatara, welcome to the cave. I am-."

“Wally. I'm Wally. He's not, he's Kaldur, that's Artemis, Kon, over there's Rob, M'gann and The Sphere, you've already met Paul, that's Teekl and that is Wolf. Hi!”

Wallace holds out his hand. For a moment she's taken aback. Then she gets a better look at the puppy.

“Aw, he's so cute!”

Zatanna pulls free of me and walks past Wallace over to Teekl. She bends slightly to stroke Wolf's head. Wallace sags. Kon steps protectively towards his pet.

“Wolf's a girl.”

“How long have you had her? How old is she? And.. why is this cat orange?” She pulls her hand back and gives Teekl the eye.

“Ah, two days, ‘bout a week. Paul turned her into a construct.”

"Teekl talk for Teekl. Who you?”

She blinks. “Did your cat just talk?”

I waggle my right forefinger left and right. “That won't even be the strangest thing you see today. But yes, Teekl has near human intelligence.”

She scans my face to check I'm being serious, then looks back at Teekl. "Um, well, I'm Zatanna Zatara, I'm a magician-."

“I'm something of a student of the mystic arts myself.” Artemis gives Wallace a sceptical look. “No, really. I've been studying Atlantean alchemy.”

“Uh huh.”

He reaches into his shirt pocket and pulls out a small bottle. “Prepare to be amazed, nonbelievers.”

He unscrews the pipette lid, holds it over his head and allows five drops of the clear liquid within to drop onto him. He then puts the lid back onto the bottle and returns it to his pocket.

“A little activation energy...”

He puts both hands in his hair and ruffles it at super speed for a couple of seconds. When he takes his hands away...

His hair is now blue. Completely blue. Brilliant blue, actually. There's no blue colour on his hands or the skin around his hair... If that's simple alchemy he could put hair dye manufacturers out of business in a few years. Or blackmail them into paying him not to.

“What d'ya think? Not bad for a guy who didn't even believe in magic until a couple of months ago. No chemical basis for the blue coloration at all.”

I think Zatanna is trying not to laugh.

Artemis doesn't have her subtlety. “You look ridiculous.”

“For obvious reasons liquid dyes are not common in Atlantis. I am impressed you were able to produce this simply from book study.”

“Took like fifty tries... Hey Zatanna, you joining us for training?”

“Um, I don't know. What sort of training?”

“This week? Unarmed combat. Black Canary's taking over from your dad as our supervisor.”

“Hooray for punching week. This is why I got the tattoos done now.”

“They let you off practice… To get a tattoo.”

“No, they let me off practice because I'm currently experiencing arcane overload. Magic makes me drunk, basically.”

She frowns. “Why would tattoos..?”

I make a vague 'wave forwards' gesture at my team leader. “Kaldur, you wanna..?”

“It is common practice in Atlantis for mages to have energy channels inscribed on their skin to aid in their spell casting.” He holds out his right arm and slowly twists it, showing off his design. From a distance it looks like a thick black line, but close up there are a lot of slight differences in tone and pattern across the tattooed area. They glow for a moment, and electricity dances around his hand.

“Oh, I see. Well, what do your tattoos do?”

“I'll show you.”

Ring, remove my jacket and vest.

back

Inhumanity 4

next

3rd October

13:15 GMT -5

"And now no one's looking at my magic hair.”

Zatanna's jaw goes slack and her cheeks colour slightly.

“I don't really understand exactly what's involved, but this bit over my heart-" I point. “-stands for the core of my being. The one-" I turn around and bend back slightly. Ah, Artemis is paying attention as well. Good to know. “-at the base of my neck, does something to spread the effect throughout my body using my nervous system as a conduit. This one-" I straighten and pull my trousers down a little at the back, revealing the symbol at the base of my spine. “-is the focus of the system binding the power generated to my body.”

I pull the trousers back up and turn back to the gang.

“On my arms -see here?- there's the marks for drawing power from local mana flows. Or something, I was a bit out of it when they started talking about that part. Plan is, if this all works like it's supposed to then I can go on to get some other stuff done. I'm thinking passive buffs rather than active stuff like Kaldur has.”

Zatanna seems a little distracted. “Buff... Yes...”

The sphere reaches Teekl and warbles at her. Teekl responds by ignoring it, sitting down and licking her left forepaw while being careful to keep Wolf balanced in place. Artemis shifts her weight to her left hip, left arm across her hip, right elbow on left hand and right fingers at her mouth.

“Hey, um, Kaldur. Can we have a look at your tattoos too? You know, for comparative purposes.”

He thinks for a moment. “You would have to undergo several years of study before you would be able to make use of tattoos like mine. If you are interested, you are welcome to look at my school books-."

“Can you... Just, put your shirt back on?”

“Sure, Wallace. Ring?”

“Compliance.”

I roll my shoulders as the vest and jacket reappear.

“So, um, what do those tattoos do?”

“Ah, there's a story there. I come from a parallel universe entirely without magic and as a consequence, I don't have a soul.”

She blinks. Artemis suddenly loses interest. She leans over to whisper something to M'gann who starts, then blushes. Has she heard this story before? I think I-?

“That's not possible. Everyone has a soul.”

“Different parallel, different set of physical laws. It isn't possible for someone here to survive more than a few days without a soul, but Humans where I'm from evolved under different conditions. The tattoos are designed to pull tiny amounts of magic to me and lock it in place.”

“You're trying to build yourself a soul?”

“Exactly. Fighting Klarion without one was not fun. No driving, no operating heavy machinery and no fighting superheroes hand-to-hand until I'm back to full... Um, what's the word?”

Artemis smiles. “Coherency?”

I frown. “No, that's not it...”

Robin grins at Zatanna. “Are you joining the team?”

“I hadn't even... I didn't know there was a team until just now.”

“Do you have a costume?”

“Um, well…”

I flap my right hand back and forth. “Ah, come on, it can't be any worse than Superman's. I don't think anyone's noticed, but-" I raise my eyebrows. "-he wears his underwear on the outside! And a cape. I mean, really?”

“I didn't exactly plan to come here today. Buuuut…” She closes her eyes for a moment, and takes a deep breath. “Emit ot yrt tuo eht wen kool!”

A puff of smoke and she strikes a pose. “How do I look?”

Oh dear. White blouse and bowtie, pale yellow waistcoat, black jacket with tails, black… Hot pants? Tights and high heeled calf length boots. I guess you can get sillier than Superman's costume. That's her costume from the comics -more or less- but if she tries getting into a fight like that...

“It looks great!” M'gann? “It's so elegant!”

Yes, it looks nice, but... Oh, I need to sit down for this. I walk across to Teekl and turn around.

Teekl, backrest.

I sit, lean back, and fall over because the bloody cat's moved. She tilts her head slightly to stare down at me.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, it's the magic Kon, don't worry. Just going to stay down here for a bit.”

“So, what else can you do?”

The only member of the team I showed my ‘potential recruit’ files to is Kaldur, so Artemis doesn't know how Zatanna's abilities work. I don't know how they work, but I do have a rough idea of the limits of the backwards talking thing.

“In theory? Just about anything, but all magic requires energy and it usually has to come from within. Plus, I need to know the incantation cold, or else have time to prep it. I can't just make the impossible happen at will.”

Guess the energy thing is why demons are so popular. Map uses London, Adom and Marvel use their gods. Papa Midnight -would Mister Zatara know about him?- uses his club. John uses the tiny amount he's got really well and Atlanteans start magic exercising their metaphysiques in primary school. But if long incantations are a problem...

“Couldn't you get pretty far with just... I don't know... Erif?”

“It's a bit more complicated than that. If I didn't say what I wanted the fire to do it would probably just set light to my hand.”

Artemis considers. “So you can do nearly anything, but you've only got so much power and you have to consciously activate it?”

“Yes..? That's right.”

Artemis’ head looms over me and she nudges me in the ribs with one of her feet. “Sound familiar, Paul?”

back

Inhumanity 5

next

3rd October

13:18 GMT -5

“Well, fun as this was 'till someone decided to pull a Chippendale routine I need to get changed for Black Canary's lesson. Rob?”

“Right with you, Wally.”

Kaldur considers. “I think it would be wise for me to gain more practice fighting in Ocean Master's armour.”

The three of them head off in the direction of the armoury, Robin sparing a wave and a smile for the new girl. I need to do something about her costume.

“Zatanna, about that costume...”

“What about it?”

“It's... It's a great costume for a stage magician. It's just that, well, even if a show goes really badly, the audience generally doesn't try and shoot you.”

She blinks. “Dad wears his stage costume when he's out on League missions.”

I push myself up to a sitting position, wincing slightly. “Mister Zatara uses a shield spell. Is your gear enchanted?”

“M... No? You're wearing a leather jacket, how much protection does that give you?”

“Oh this isn't my uniform. I just stick Lantern sigils on it ‘cause it's a theme. This is my actual armour.”

I've thought about trying to upgrade, but Batman gave this armour his seal of approval and I haven't been able to find anything better. Yet.

“Someone could fire an Uzi at my chest from five metres away, and I'd barely feel it, even without the ring generating a shield.”

Ah... Need to avoid this turning into another me versus Artemis. Not.. sure.. how to do that...

“Doesn't Wonder Woman go around in a swim suit?”

"Okay, leaving aside the fact that Wonder Woman could tank anti-tank rounds naked, she can get away with that due to her bustier having been made by Hephaestus, Olympian God of Smiths. It's orichalcum plate held together with mithril chain, and loaded with more defensive spells than you've ever cast. You're suggesting wearing a silk shirt and tails which -while classy, and may I say quite flattering- do not protect against bullets. Or knives. Or blunt instrument trauma."

Agh, too much. Her head's bowed and she's not meeting my eyes. Lighten the mood.

“I mean, I'd wear her gear if it fit me.”

“Huh?”

My jacket and trousers vanish into subspace as I jump to my feet, and a glowing orange construct bustier forms around my torso in their place.

“What d'you think? Good look for me?”

The construct is opaque, but I'm pretty sure I don't look good in drag. Zatanna's giggles and Artemis’ bark of laughter suggest they share the opinion. Kon's watching me blankly.

Think maybe someone needs to have a talk with him.

Clothes.

“Robin and Wallace both wear armour. M'gann vetoed my idea of stealing something from the Martian military for her, Kaldur's got that natty suit we took off Ocean Master... Armour's just sensible in our line of work. Artemis, back me up here."

"Ah, actually, you wear more armor than I do."

My eyes and hers drop to her exposed midriff. We both hold for a few seconds.

“Well, now I feel stupid.”

"Yeah. Me too.”

We contemplate her navel for a moment.

“Not even a bit armoured?”

“... Stab resistant.”

Oh Artemis... I'm reminded of a post I read years ago now about some sort of superhero RPG. The guy who wrote it played as an archer, but found that his character kept getting defeated. One of the other players suggested that he give the character body armour, which in that particular system was highly effective. As a result, a baseline Human armed with a pointy stick launcher was basically ignoring small arms and the guy playing him found it unsatisfactory. He went away and read some Green Arrow comics and found that when Green Arrow got shot he generally folded like wet tissue paper, then decided that he would remove the armour from his character's inventory in order to stay true to the source material.

I do this as a memorial to your pointless suffering, nameless RPG archer guy.

"Alright, I'm dragging you both out shopping. There's a guy in Metropolis, made my armour, does great work."

Zatanna looks scandalised. “I can't just go to Metropolis!”

“Yeah you can. Watch. Mister Zatara! Is it alright if we take Zatanna home?!”

He looks up for a moment from the main holo console before returning to trying to trace the power ring's undetectable alterations. “Yes, that is fine. Zatanna, I will be home by seven.”

“There. Now we've got.. five hours?”

“Doesn't the zeta tube log where everyone who uses it goes?”

“Power rings are awesome. Are we doing this? We can always visit some of Metropolis’ other shops while we're there. They're open on Sunday, right?”

“Um, can I come?” M'gann's posture suggests nervous exuberance.

“Peter Gambi doesn't do shape shifting armour I'm afraid, but, sure?”

The girls make eye contact with each other and start grinning. And I'm starting to think that maybe I should just have measured the two of them with the ring and sent Mister Gambi their measurements. Artemis leading the way, they start walking over to the zeta tube.

“Um...”

Kon looks a little despondent. It's not like any conventional armour could survive him wearing it, but perhaps another approach?

“Kon, do you remember when M'gann took you shopping for shirts?”

His eyes glaze. He did not have fun that afternoon. “Yeah?”

“Like that, but for five hours, and there's three of them.”

I keep my face passive as the horror dawns on him. “Oh. Okay.” He reaches forward with his right hand and pats me on my left shoulder.

I nod, and reach across to lay my right hand on his for a moment. “Thank you.”

Ring, wolf milk.

The bottle materialises in my left hand and I pass it to him. He takes it with his left and releases my shoulder. Taking a deep breath I turn and follow the girls to the zeta tube. Oh, what the heck. I need some winter clothes anyway.

Ah, they were waiting for me. That was nice of them. M'gann shifts into Megan and-

“Egnahc kcab ot ym dlo kool.”

-Zatanna changes back into her normal outfit. Artemis looks at me and I nod.

“Normal clothes, please.”

I felt like I was walking on eggshells when I asked Artemis if she wanted me to keep hold of a change of clothes for her, but she took the suggestion at face value without being offended by the apparent impropriety.

“Recognised, Artemis, B zero eight, Zatanna Zatara, A zero six, Miss Martian, B zero five, Orange Lantern, B zero six.”

back

Inhumanity 6

next

3rd October

15:38 GMT -5

"And then Superman says, 'Oh, no, I don't use it for body protection."

It takes Zatanna a moment to get it, then her eyes go wide, her cheeks go red and she covers her mouth with both hands. Artemis is just behind, spluttering in incoherent disgust. M'gann…

"I don't get the joke."

The visit to Mister Gambi went off without incident. I told him when I bought my own armour that I would do what I could to find him other clients. Feel a bit bad about taking this long, but I swiftly redirected the intrapsychic arousal into irritation with Green Arrow for letting his new student run around the place with a ‘shoot me’ sign on her stomach. Black Canary too. Wasn't she supposed to be the responsible one? Really, what were they thinking?

We're taking a break at a cafe in the Collyer Center, sitting at a table overlooking the third floor balcony. Since we're here in civilian mode I haven't put my bags in subspace. I think this is more clothes than I've ever bought in one session before.

"The implication is that Superman is so strong that-."

"Pots gniklat!"

I wait a moment, looking at Zatanna with a smirk. Then:

"Doesn't work." I pull the thong with the Spell Eater on it out of my vest. "Knowing that attack by magic was both possible and very dangerous to me, I upgraded my defensive equipment. Spell Eater Ward."

Upon realising that I had virtually unlimited funds, Artemis decided that it would be fun to treat me like a Human dress up doll. When I turned out to be better at hiding my discomfort than Kon, M’- Megan joined in. Zatanna still seemed a bit uncertain about the whole thing. I say that I was hiding my discomfort, but actually, having other people pick out clothes made the whole thing a good deal less stressful than I usually find clothes shopping. Plus, I should really have realised that Artemis wouldn't have much -if any- disposable income. Not like superheroing leaves time for a part time job.

"Where did you find something like that?"

Interesting. Doesn't look like she felt the usual discomfort. "I didn't find it, I know the man who invented it. An Atlantean artificer by the name of Sephtian."

Artemis takes a closer look at it. "Were you serious about getting all of us one for Christmas?"

"Well, I'm not sure exactly what would happen if an actual magic user tried wearing one, have to try that out with Kaldur, but yes."

"How much do they cost?"

"They don't." I shrug. "I traded Sephtian about three hundred dollars' worth of science textbooks for this one, but that was more because I wanted to improve his knowledge of surface world science than because I thought that was a fair trade. For the ones I'm getting you for Christmas he just wanted me to fabricate a few extras. About two minutes' work each."

I put the straw of my mango milkshake in my mouth and take a slurp in an attempt to forestall further questions along this line. Would she consider competition archery? Find a tournament offering reasonable prize money? Is there any money in competitive archery? If there is I can bypass all of the transportation costs. She's in a pretty bad position, really. More expenditure per encounter than the rest of us, no power for me to work out how to monetise and no conveniently huge multinational company backing her.

Megan catches Zatanna's eye. "So, how long have you been studying magic?"

Zatanna bought some sort of strong coffee, and has been delicately sipping it. So classy.

"Dad says that the first time he saw me cast a spell was when I was six, but I don't really remember it. He started giving me formal lessons when I turned twelve. It's a nice way for us to spend time together. How.. long have you been on Earth?"

"Five months, and I love it here!"

"How did you learn English?"

"From Earth TV. Oh, and I used telepathy for a few weeks when I first got here. Hello Megan, they're not going to put everything on TV."

"You can telepathically translate any language?"

"Yes. Well, any humanoid language. It sometimes doesn't work on species who are really different, like robots."

Worth finding out about. "Were you able to feel anything from Swamp Thing?"

She shakes her head. "I was too busy just staring at him to even try."

Zatana raises her left eyebrow. "Swamp... Thing..?"

I look at Artemis with my straw in my mouth. She picks up on it. "Yeah, he's this giant.. plant elemental.. thing.. we met two days ago in Louisiana."

"Was he helping the Injustice League?"

"No. He was so mad about them using plants like that that he took away Poison-."

"Can we not call her that?"

"Everyone calls her that, except for you."

Zatanna's looking confused. "Um... What.. do you want to call her?"

"Pamela Isley. Her name, in other words. I think calling them by their ‘supervillain name’ encourages them."

"Whatever. He took away her powers."

"Wait. Were you fighting the Injustice League?"

The three of us share a smug look. Is that inappropriate? A lot of people died, but I don't think anyone else could have dealt with the situation any better than we did. Guy's been working overtime clearing rubble ahead of his evaluation thingy. Not sure it'll help with that, but it's getting good publicity on Earth. He should be a shoo-in for the League now.

Artemis nods. "Batman sent us after them while the League dealt with the vine attacks."

"And a jolly good job we did of it, too. I'm particularly proud of what I managed to do with Teth Adom."

Artemis thinks for a moment, then narrows her eyes at me. "What exactly was in that ‘magic powder’ you gave him?"

"Oh, some herbs, some powdered bone to represent the link to his former self..." I tense the corners of my mouth. "Some.. lysergic acid diethylamide..."

It takes a second for her to work it out, then her eyes widen.

"You took LS-!"

Stop her!

A tiny ray gun like construct appears next to my right hand, and Artemis suddenly goes silent. She angrily shouts in silence for a few moments before sitting back in her seat, arms crossed and looking to the side.

"How about not shouting it out in the middle of a shopping centre?"

"I can't believe you."

"Actually, mind altering substances have been used in magic rituals since time immemorial."

Megan and Artemis turn to Zatanna in surprise.

She blinks at them. "What?"

"Heh. Always the ones you least expect, isn't it?"

back

Inhumanity 7

next

3rd October

18:07 GMT -5

"You really can't say your own name?"

We're sitting in the living room of her home in New York. M'gann was meeting up with her uncle in Middletown -apparently that's a real place, and in a country with a place called Smallville I suppose I shouldn't be surprised- and Artemis was due out on patrol with Green Arrow.

"Can't even think it. Not without collapsing. Of course, I haven't tried using magic to reveal it yet."

"I could probably help with that."

Ring, remove Spell Eater.

"Be my guest."

"Kaeps ruoy eurt eman."

And I'm on the floor.

Zatanna looks stricken. "Are you okay?"

"Yep. Fine. How long have I been down here?"

"Ten seconds."

"Well there you go, you see: could be much worse. Feel like trying again?"

"I-is that a good idea?"

"Probably not, but I am rather tired of this whole situation. Do you know a spell for revealing the name of a person by looking at them?"

"I.. could.. probably... Ekat-."

"Wait, wait!" I lie fully on the floor. Sure, my environmental shield would probably stay active if I blacked out again, but no sense taking unnecessary risks. "Okay, go."

"Ekat sih eman morf eht Koob fo Ynitsed!"

I wait for something to happen. I don't think I've moved...

"Paul?"

"Still with you. Get anything?"

"No. I don't think I can have done it right."

"Ah well." I sit up and push myself back onto the settee. "If you think of something else to try feel free to let me know."

"That's really strange. You said that Dad couldn't detect any magic doing that to you?"

"Yep. I don't suppose you know any... Name eating spirits, or whatever?"

"There are things like that, but being attacked by one of them has other effects as well, and you aren't suffering from any of those."

I nod. Still bugging me.

"I've been thinking..?"

"What about?"

"Don't you normally have to tell a zeta tube where you want to go?"

"Yes?"

"Because I didn't. Even if someone had created a user profile for me I should have had to activate the relay, and I didn't touch anything. There was what looked like an old cupboard someone had dumped in the alleyway, which I suppose must have been the zeta tube entrance. I opened the door to see if Dad was hiding or something and the next thing I know I'm inside the mountain."

"Yes, bit odd that. It's almost as if someone with a xenotech hypercomputer was maintaining a constant connection to all zeta tube monitoring equipment, then used that access to undetectably create a new user profile and initiate transportation when someone they wanted to talk to stepped into a booth."

Understanding dawns.

"That's.. oddly specific."

"Yes, it is. Did I mention that I think our team really needs a magic user?"

"Are you going to get in trouble for doing that?"

"Maybe, a bit, but Batman's actually surprisingly reasonable. I mean, I don't think I'd get away with doing this for someone who wasn't already, y'know, part of the community, but about a month ago I gave him a file on potential future recruits and he didn't mention there being a problem."

After my visit to the Batcave he asked for everything I'd put together. I had to spend a couple of hours rushing around to get it into a sensible format, and delete a couple where I couldn't reasonably explain how I heard about them. I officially heard about Red Star from ‘an old Russian military server, now physically destroyed’.

"So, you recommended me?"

"Sort of. There were a few names sharing the magic skill set. You're a bit more accessible than the other good candidates."

"Exactly how far down the list was I?"

"Your name starts with zed."

She folds her arms.

I wince. "Joint second."

"How many magicians our age do you know?"

"A few."

"Who was your first choice?"

"A guy called Timothy Hunter."

"Who?"

"Yeah, exactly. I couldn't find him."

Which means that either he doesn't exist here at all, he will exist but hasn't been born, he has been born but is five years old and hasn't left a trail or he's already studying at the White School and so is beyond my reach. John got rather evasive when I tried asking about him, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything.

"What makes him better than me?"

"Broader magic education. We already have people who can make ranged attacks -you're better than him at that-, but what we're really lacking is someone who knows how magic works."

"I thought Aqualad used magic."

"He does, but he's only studied Atlantean style, and he stopped studying everything outside of combat magic when King Orin took him on."

At some point I'm going to need to return to the Conservatory and scan everything onto the ring. If they'll let me, anyway. I may never be able to cast spells myself but being able to identify components with a quick scan would be an invaluable ability.

"And, joint second?"

"Rachel Roth, aka Raven. Couldn't find her either. Much less range of ability but with a bit more combat focus. I.. have a bit of a problem detecting magic users who don't want to be detected."

"So you want me on the team... because I'm the only one you could find?"

"Not- Well, sort of. Top three in the world isn't bad. You know, I... Used to read a lot of comics, before coming here. Heh, bit pointless now. Seemed to me there were two things a team had to have if it didn't want to get completely blindsided by certain types of opponent. Firstly, you have to have a telepath. Telepathic illusions and psychic shut down commands are an easy way to defeat anyone without the right defences. That's pretty much what happened to us in Bialya. Not so much a problem now, I've learned telepathic defence constructs and M'gann's had extra tuition from Mister J'onzz. Secondly, you've got to have a magic user. Someone who knows how magic works. Like, we're walking down a corridor and there's some runes on the ceiling. Is it just writing? A trap of some kind? What? I wouldn't know, and I don't think that anyone else on the team would either. I don't expect you to fight directly without appropriate training, but we do need someone with your skill set. Do you think that getting that training is something you would be interested in?"

She's not looking at me, weighing up her options.

"I..." She looks back at me with a small smile. "I think I would."

back

Inhumanity 8

next

10th October

16:58 GMT -5

I hate punching week.

I drop and lunge forward under Kon's swing, driving him back a little before rolling aside as he swings his arms down in a hammering motion.

Robin and Artemis are too good for me. Zatanna's too bad, and I'm not good enough to teach her safely. Kon's too strong for me to fight without the ring. But Kon's too strong for anyone else to fight with their other powers unavailable. Diana can't be here all the time, Donna's busy and while Adom's English is coming along really well I doubt the League will authorise him as an instructor anytime soon. Kon needs to practise too. For me, Guy's on Oa, and I don't want to risk messing things up for him by ringing -hah!- him.

Kon pushes off with his right leg to surge forwards, swinging his right arm around. I've learned all too well that a full strength Kryptonian can get away with clumsy blows. With my armour up it wouldn't hurt, but it would knock me into a poor position. I sidestep, but he turns fast and goes for a grapple anyway. I strain to keep his arms apart while attempting to knee him in the diaphragm. He turns aside and his arms tighten, closing in on me.

No constructs and no flight. I'm being taught to respond in a stupid way. Yes, I know I need to learn how to do this, but I don't want to develop these instincts.

Foot stomp foot stomp foot stomp. He grimaces in pain, but as when I fight Diana he can just take it and keep going. Agh! Arms are pinned against my sides! I try kicking again, but I can't hit hard enough! Head butt!

Ow! Not clever!

"Good work everyone." Black Canary walks into the sparring area, and the floor lights dim. Kon loosens his grip on me. "In fact, it's been a very productive week."

For some people. I'm going to get Guy some flowers or something when he gets back. Black Canary's direct oversight resulted in a much bigger structured tuition element than Marvel's or Mister Zatara's, and it's all stuff I don't need. Not flat out useless, but still...

Artemis and Wallace step apart. Mister Gambi's had to order in some parts for her and Zatanna's armours and so they haven't been completed yet. He said that teenage girls don't really make up a big part of the market and so he generally doesn't find it worth stocking equipment for them. Artemis’ design is quite a bit lighter than mine, as she isn't as strong as me and is trained as an acrobatic style fighter. No point adding to her protection if she just gets hit a lot more to make up for it.

M'gann bulked out her humanoid body to spar with Ocean Master armoured Kaldur. As I watch her muscle mass deflates and she grows slightly taller, Wallace grimacing as he watches. Kaldur takes off the helmet and turns it around in his hands so he can look into the eyepieces. Apparently there's some sort of bound spell on them which means that they don't interfere with vision. Actually, from how he described it, it sounds like it improves his ability to see in low visibility situations.

Robin helps Zatanna up. He's mostly been showing her things in this session. She's in black jogging bottoms and a white... What's that called? Really? Alright, white muscle vest. Mister Zatara allowed her to join us only very reluctantly, and has made it very clear that he doesn't want her participating on missions any time soon or having anything to do with ‘that man’ at all.

"Martian Manhunter should be here in a couple of hours to start his shift. I've really enjoyed being your, ah, ‘den mother’ this week."

I don't see any point in going directly against Mister Zatara's prohibition, but I have been working with John to get her a complete copy of the Grimoire Verum; everything you wanted to know about demons but lost all your SAN points before you could ask. He had two partial copies, one he was left by his old friend Benjamin Cox after his death and another he said he took from a demon worshipping cult. Since all known copies of the Grimoire come from a single print run it was simple-ish for me to scan most of Europe for segments of text until I had enough to assemble a complete version. And to remove some of the extant copies from inappropriate hands. Add in Ben Cox's research notes -and John's, once I finish persuading him we need them- and we should be able to deal with any demon we encounter.

"Recognised, Zatara, one one."

Zatanna walks over to the zeta tube as her father materialises.

Ring, clean me and my armour, then change to civilian clothing.

Compliance.

Teekl stalks over. Wolf opened her eyes for the first time yesterday, but is still perfectly content to spend most of her time on the head of her feline steed.

"How was training today?"

Zatanna rubs her left shoulder with the right hand. "It was a.. learning experience. If this is what training is like then Paul was definitely right about the body armour."

Since it's easier to get forgiveness than permission, we agreed that we wouldn't tell Mister Zatara about our trip to see Mister Gambi until he agrees that armour is a good idea. Then I can just ‘get hold’ of it. According to her she will be able to call it to her from any distance without loading it into any sort of subspace pocket equivalent. Downside being that it isn't protected, I suppose.

"Well..." Mister Zatara glances at me for a moment. "We'll see."

The rest of us move into a team huddle. Haven't been able to persuade the others to take advantage of the ring's cleaning function yet.

**Do the rest of you get the impression we're still on probation with Zatara?**

**M'gann, he's concerned about his daughter. It's hardly unreasonable.**

Robin raises his eyebrows at me. Oh come on, it's not the same thing... You were a professional acrobat, Zatanna's a glass cannon!

**But he's been here every day!**

**Yeah, he totally needs to be worried about someone who can turn your blood into fire with a sentence.**

It appears Wallace has decided to take advantage of the fact that with telepathy he can eat and talk at the same time.

**It almost makes one nostalgic for Red Tornado's tenure as our supervisor.**

I'm a little surprised. I honestly thought that if anyone would appreciate the stricter schedule it would be Kaldur. Mister Zatara walks over to speak to Black Canary. Zatanna's frowning.

**Yeah, at least he trusted us.**

"Dluow uoy esaelp kaeps tuo duol."

"If you ignore the fact we shouldn't have trusted him! It took them five seconds to turn him against us! That machine almost got us killed!"

Whoops.

Black Canary and Zatara jerk their heads around. Kon looks stunned for a moment, then scowls at Zatanna, who crosses her arms.

"You were doing it again."

Thing about training to fight together as a group? That's where the mental ingroup is, and Zatanna isn't fully part of that yet. M'gann explained it on Thursday the first time it happened, when the rest of us started laughing at something Wallace thought at us and Zatanna didn't know why we were doing it. Her exclusion from the conversation wasn't even intentional, she just isn't an automatic include yet. Black Canary steps away from Zatara and towards us.

"Is there a problem?"

I look at Kaldur, but it's Kon who responds. "Yes! It's been weeks since Tornado's attack, and the League hasn't told us anything."

"The League is searching for Tornado, as well as the other androids that invaded the cave and their creator T.O. Morrow. Batman's made tracking them down our highest priority."

Robin steps forward. "But you've found none of the above."

"Not yet. But Tornado is Justice League. The team is not to pursue this."

back

Inhumanity 9

next

10th October

17:06 GMT -5

Well, that was completely predictable.

We're in the bioship, heading away from the mountain at a reasonable pace, freshly recharged ring on my finger. I had to hack my own security system to get us out without notifying Black Canary and Mister Zatara. I'm not sure whether I should be glad I can do that or worried that someone like me could do that.

Artemis taps me on my shoulder. "Shouldn't it be really easy to find Tornado or Morrow with a power ring?"

"Finding Morrow would be easy enough if they had a genetic sample or a recent photograph, which.. I.. don't.. think they do. And photographs generate a lot of false positives anyway. Tornado... Maybe? Most of his components aren't unique. If whoever took him disassembled him a bit..." I shrug. "We also don't have any hard evidence it even was Morrow. He's a hundred years old, if he's even still alive."

Wallace frowns. "Who else could it be?"

"If I knew that, I'd have suggested it already."

That does it for Robin. "Where are we going!? Batman is the world's greatest detective, and he's searched for Tornado and Morrow in every logical location. If we're gunna do better, we need an illogical solution."

Eh? He turns in his chair and looks at Wallace.

"A truly dumb idea."

How is that..? Why is everyone looking at Wallace? And why is he smiling about it?

"As a matter of fact... I juuust might. Morrow's a mad scientist, right? So who else do we know who's a mad scientist?"

Kon smiles. "Do super strong mutant rats count?"

"No, Ivo! He's Morrow's biggest competitor at building androids. He'd need to keep track of what he was doing so he didn't fall behind."

"He's also been on the run for years and in prison for a month. I don't see how he'd..." Now everyone's looking at me. I throw my arms up. "But if it's a dumb idea we're looking for..."

"Changing course for Belle Reve Penitentiary now."

Oooooh. Actually...

"If no one minds, I've been meaning to practise moving larger objects at FTL speeds for a while now. I could, you know..."

M'gann winces. "Is this going to be like when you moved me in Bialya?"

Now Wallace and Artemis look uncomfortable.

"No no no. Well, probably not. I can move individual people perfectly well now and I think the technique can work on-" I gesture at the bioship's interior. "-vehicles. This mission isn't time sensitive, so, could be useful to be able to do it and if I mess it up it doesn't matter that much. I mean, if we'd got to Louisiana an hour earlier last week..."

"Your point is understood. Make the attempt. I will contact Interim Warden Strange and let him know that we are coming."

I nod.

Ring, environmental shield around the ship and plot FTL transfer for a mile outside the Belle Reve exclusion zone.

Compliance.

Orange light spreads out from where I sit, covering every surface and everyone inside the ship. Zatanna holds out her right hand and examines it.

"Is this supposed to happen?"

Erm.

"Prrrobably."

The view on the front screen skips, and the orange light disappears.

10th October

16:09 GMT -6

Transfer complete.

Wallace peers out at the new terrain. "That's it? Not that I'm complaining."

"Usually, yeah, that's all that happens. Um, we're pretty near the edge of the prison's no-fly zone here."

Kaldur presses something on the control panel in front of him. There's a short delay as he listens to something. "Aqualad, with the Justice League. Please put me through to Interim Warden Strange. Yes, I will hold."

"Um, hey." I swivel my chair right around to face Artemis. "Mom wanted to know if you had any plans next Friday."

She's speaking a little quietly.

"No, not really. Sort of depends on what Mister J'onzz has lined up for us and when Guy comes back from Oa. Why d'you ask?"

She squints a little with her eye and tilts her head a little to the side.

Oh!

"Right, dinner, sorry. Slipped my mind. Um yes, I should be free. Um. What sort of time..?"

"About seven?

I nod. "I'll be there. Um, I don't know how it works in America, am I supposed to bring something..?"

A moment of incredulity and she shakes her head. "You don't need to bring anything. She also wanted to know if there was anything you particularly wanted to eat."

Hmm. "How about something Vietnamese? I've been there a couple of times, but I've never had the courage to try the local food."

She raises her right eyebrow. "You sure about that? ‘Cause when Mom cooks Vietnamese, she cooks properly Vietnamese."

"Funny story about that. I'm in my last year of secondary school, just the exams left to go. Now, Willingdon used to rent its building out to foreign schools during the summer holidays, so I was in for a revision class at the same time as a group of Chinese students were there. They were using the cookery rooms, and one of them noticed I was watching and offered me this little foil packet. I couldn't read it, but I opened it, and inside was a duck's foot. I had no idea how to go about eating it or even which bits were edible, but she's given it to me."

I put my hands together on my right and then bring them to the centre of my chest.

"And I know the Chinese eat that sort of thing so I'm not going to insult her by refusing it, right? So I gingerly-" I mime bringing something up to my mouth. "-gingerly take a tiny little bite out of what looks like a meaty bit, then pull it away to see if there's a clue yet. Nope, still no idea, so another little nibble. And another. The taste isn't very strong but I'm finding the texture really weird. And there's a couple of them watching me by now, and the one who gave it to me says ‘You don't have to eat it if you don't like it’."

I shrug.

"But that just means that as well as risking insulting her, it's a challenge, so I keep going. Must have taken me about ten minutes, but all that's left is bone and webbing and I think I can safely put that in the bin. And then she's got this puzzled look on her face and she says ‘Do you like it?’ and I nod and say: ‘It was very interesting, thank you’."

Artemis turns her face to the floor and sniggers for a moment.

"Now, it may be, that I won't like it. But it won't kill me, and it'll be an interesting new experience. So yes, I'm sure."

back

Inhumanity 10

next

10th October

16:12 GMT -6

The bioship touches down just outside the main prison complex. At Strange's request M'gann deactivated the stealth system so we're fully visible to their anti-aircraft weapons. Not sure exactly how tough this thing is, but we're here invited after all. Bit of a change of pace to be welcomed here; no matter how many times I made myself as unobtrusive as possible Waller always took the time to appear and scowl at me. She certainly wouldn't have tolerated me flying this close to the prison.

I don't remember Strange much from the comics. The only thing I remember him from was... Batman and the Monster Men..? Don't remember exactly what it was called. He was a bad guy in Arkham City as well, but here his time in charge of Arkham is notable only for the fact that he didn't go insane, get killed or kill himself. Unlike every single one of his predecessors. Apart from that one guy in the twenties who just disappeared. Maybe he just transferred away too soon for it to work its foul magic on him? Should I suggest getting the place exorcised? I vaguely remember something from Shadowpact about Gotham being the home of some sort of eldritch abomination. Couldn't hurt to check...

We're a bit around the side of the building from the place I (and the rest of the visitors) usually come in. I think this is the entry point for guards and official visitors, but I've never been in this part of the prison before. Doctor Strange and a guard I don't recognise are standing next to our designated landing area. Kaldur leads the way out of the bioship, closely followed by Robin and Wallace.

"Interim Warden Strange, thank you for agreeing to our request."

"Oh, no trouble at all Aqualad. I am only too pleased to help the Justice League in whatever way I can. I'm having Professor Ivo brought up to one of the interview rooms now." He turns to lead the way inside the prison. "A fascinating case. Did you know that he..."

I tune him out, hanging back a bit. The gun towers aren't tracking us. They don't need to, but that never stopped them under Waller. Hm, what does it say about my life at the moment that I notice when guns aren't pointing at me? I shake my head and start after the others, bringing up the rear... Oh. No I'm not. I didn't see Artemis..? I turn my head and see her lagging behind me.

"Artemis?"

"Maybe I should stay here. Don't really wanna risk running into, y'know..."

Hm. This isn't exactly hostile territory, but this is a personal conversation. Access her communicator.

"Cheshire isn't here anymore. She transferred to Gloria McDonald Prison last week. I thought you knew?"

She relaxes slightly, and joins me in walking towards the entrance while a new guard glowers at us. Ah, that's more like it. "I knew she was getting moved. Didn't know it had already happened."

"You.. could visit her, you know? It isn't that far-" I smile at the guard as we walk past him. Not going to risk saying 'from our base', even at whisper volume. "-or I could take you?"

She grimaces, and starts hurrying to catch up with the others. "We really don't have that sort of relationship."

I pick up the pace to keep up with her. "It's not about what you have. It's about what you want."

She raises her right hand to wave me off. I slow to normal walking pace and she leaves me in her wake. Right. Hang on, did we just pass a security door? I check the corridor wall. We did. Like the one I went through with Bendemann the first time I visited Jade. But.. the doors weren't closed at either end. Did Strange arrange that for us, or is there a policy change regarding security procedures during normal operation? Hmm. Not sure I approve, but I suppose I'm not the one running the place.

Kon stops for a moment as Artemis catches up with Kaldur. He looks puzzled. As I reach him he puts out his right arm to stop me.

"Yes? What is it?"

"Are you dating Artemis?"

I blink. "No? Why do you ask?"

"You're having dinner with her."

"I have dinner with you and M'gann most evenings."

"She kissed you in front of everyone."

Right. I'd sort of forgotten about that one. "She also slapped me."

"She hits Wally all the time." He frowns for a moment. "I think she might have issues."

"Superhero teams are not a good place to avoid people with issues. Look, shall we?"

We resume walking through the prison.

"Kon, I'm trying to learn to be a gregarious person, trying to use this ring to help people. I find it easier to help people I'm already invested in; you, Kid Flash, Robin and, yes, Artemis. But, dating? Even ignoring the age difference I think it would be a bit creepy to exchange.. y'know, ring favours for dates, or something like that."

That's.. one of the things which has prevented me talking to Kon about... Well. I've seen the adoration with which he looks at Diana these days, but she only started tutoring him because I asked her to. I can't... I'd hate to somehow give the impression that I was holding that over him. Even subconsciously. The power inequality is just-.

"So you're not dating anyone?"

"Not at present, no."

"Oh. Okay."

The corridor comes out on a square room with resilient-looking doors leading off from it and another corridor leading to a security door which I assume leads to the area of the prison inhabited by the prisoners. That one is sealed tight. Each of the doors has a number over it as well as an 'In Use' sign. Only one sign is illuminated. As well as Strange's escort two other guards are here. They're wearing standard prison officer uniform rather than the heavier armour they sometimes wear, and are carrying conventional looking firearms. I suppose heavier weapons aren't really needed with Ivo. Or was Waller putting on a show for my benefit?

Strange clasps his hands in front of his chest and addresses Kaldur.

"Professor Ivo is being held in room three. I'll leave you to it, shall I? Just ask Corrections Officer Cooper when you're ready to leave."

Cooper I do recognise. Usually he's fairly stern, but he makes eye contact with me after passing his gaze over my team mates and I'm treated to a minute nod and the ghost of a smile. I smile back. He was one of the guards escorting Freeze when the break out attempt started, and I saved him from a lengthy stay in hospital.

Kaldur nods in acknowledgement. "Thank you Doctor Strange. You have been most helpful."

Strange smiles and walks past us, back down the corridor. We begin to form a huddle around Kaldur. He nods at M'gann and her eyes glow for a moment as the telepathic link is established.

**I will ask Ivo for the information, but it is unlikely that he will be prepared to volunteer it. Miss Martian, if he does not cooperate I want you to take the location from him.**

**Right.**

Zatanna looks at me. **Can P-. Can Orange Lantern use his ring to read Ivo's mind?**

I shake my head. **No. The ring can only read a person's brain, not their mind. I could probably identify a complete fiction or total honesty based on which parts of the brain were most active, but that's about it. Randomly shouting out coordinates and see if anything triggers isn't a good option.**

And neither's turning him into a construct. Only if the fate of the planet is on the line would I even consider doing that. No one's actually asked exactly what the limits are. I assume that Batman's already realised, but I haven't wanted to make a point of pointing it out. 'I can kill you all and make you my slaves forever' doesn't seem like a sensible thing to say to anyone ever.

Kaldur considers her. **Zatanna, do you know a spell that could force him to reveal the information we require?**

She thinks for a moment. **I think so. I haven't tried it before, but it should be simple enough.**

He nods, and leads the way to the interview room door.

**In the Conservatory of Sorcery in Poseidonis we were taught to be extremely careful of mental manipulation magics. Let Miss Martian try first. If she is unsuccessful then attempt to compel him to speak.**

back

Inhumanity 11

next

10th October

16:21 GMT -6

Smug git. ‘As if I'd never faced a telepath before’. Hah! Reminds me, actually, I need to find out what happened to Henry King Junior. I remember reading his name on his father's League profile but I never followed up on it. But seriously, Henry King was the earliest telepath on record and Ivo prepared for that and not arcane compulsion?

I brace myself against the roof of the bioship as we climb into the air. In a marked departure from his predecessor's attitude -though I suppose she's not technically pre yet- Doctor Strange was perfectly happy for us to land in the prison grounds. And to grant us access to Professor Ivo without kicking up the sort of fuss that Warden Waller did during my first visit. Funny, I was expecting him to be a minor supervillain and her to be a major part of America's government metahuman program. Wrong on both counts.

"Orange Lantern to Aqualad. Do you want me to drop us right on top of him, or do you want to come in from further away?"

"Can you detect any surface activity at Yellowstone?"

Ring, grab a satellite and show me.

Compliance.

Images flick through my mind's eye. "Yes, but nothing that looks mad sciencey. If you could be a bit more specific I could do a more detailed scan?"

"Is there anything in the specific area Professor Ivo mentioned?"

The bioship reaches cruising height and accelerates in the direction of Wyoming.

"There's a... jogger..."

Wait a second.

"You remember that little robot inside Mister Twister?"

"Yes. It self destructed before we could take it into custody."

"There's a guy just to the west of Ivo's coordinates who looks just like it. One moment."

Ring? Does it blend?

Individual is Human.

Get me a name.

Probable match found: Brom Stikk. No known address. Degrees in robotics and mechanical engineering. Prior convictio-.

That's fine. Weapons?

Presently unarmed.

"The ring says his name's Brom Stikk. He's a robotics engineer. This whole thing might well be him."

"Ivo was certain that Morrow was involved."

"Zatanna? Correct me if I'm wrong, but that spell would only cause him to give what he believes to be the correct answer, right? If he believed something that wasn't true he'd still say it?"

"Well, yes. Do.. we need to go back?"

There's a pause while Kaldur thinks about it.

"No. Either way, interrogating Stikk is our next course of action."

How long would it take the Justice League to reach Yellowstone? Depends on whether the Greenies are on the ball. If they are, seconds. If they're not, they have to fly in from Cheyenne. Except the Flash, obviously.

"Orange Lantern, when I give the command bring us down right on top of him. Robin, Superboy, prepare to deploy."

I smile, and focus on the target.

"Roger roger."

If the androids and gynoid are there, we should be able to beat them. Even with the geysers providing water ammunition I don't think they can breach my armour constructs. Would Stikk have access to those really annoying scry jammers? Probably not, because I can detect him. Another robot? Maybe, but if anything I'd say that Twister was stronger than the other two. If the other two were built afterwards... And why would Stikk care about Red Tornado? Yeah, definitely don't have the full picture here.

"Miss Martian, lock out all external communications. Soon Black Canary and Zatara -Batman too I imagine- will know of our ‘visit’ to Professor Ivo. We haven't much time."

I half listen to Kaldur while I consider the situation. Do I need to message the League? I probably should. If Guy were on Earth I'd just tell him everything and ask him to wait ten minutes before passing it on. He'd be okay with that. Alan? No guarantee he's even wearing his ring.

"Then let's go! I'm way past ready to stuff Red Tornado into a trash compactor!"

Clearly Kon's still angry about the whole thing. I'm not, curiously enough. I don't even feel fear at the idea of confronting Red Bonfire again. Stuff Marshal Law, confidence comes with a power ring. Red Tornado wasn't willing to share much information on his internal systems but I know that his armour will break if I hit it with railgun rounds and that I can now manoeuvre well enough to dodge his air currents. Without a scry ward I can track him through any cover he's likely to be able to get. Where's the threat?

"Are you so certain he cannot be redeemed?"

Diana? Maybe. I'm a bit... I don't think she'd exactly be okay with this. Make the message vague?

"Are you so sure he can?!"

"Perhaps, perhaps not. But even so, that makes him but the victim of his creator's programming. Certainly he deserves the chance to prove that he is more than the weapon others designed him to be."

Knew there was a reason he was in charge. Ring, charge?

Ninety percent remaining.

Hmm. Looks like transporting the bioship doesn't cost much more than transporting just me. Ugh, alright, I'll worry about informing the League later. If they had something strong enough to one shot an alert Lantern they wouldn't be hiding.

"Still ready up here. Stikk's in open ground at the moment."

"If everyone is prepared?"

A brief silence. Presumably they're nodding to him.

"Orange Lantern, go."

Transition.

10th October

15:23 GMT -7

As the scenery skips I dive off the side of the hull, chaining the astonished Mister Stikk off the ground. Kon and Robin hit the ground next to him as I come in to land.

"I'm not a robot I'm not a robot I'm not a robot this time!"

Kon grabs hold of the front of his blue overalls. "Maybe we should check!"

Robin pushes him aside. "Where's Morrow?"

Bit of a risk, telling him we don't know. Over my shoulder I see the still cloaked bioship moving away to a better landing zone.

"W-? W-? W-? M-? Morrow? He's nowhere near here, it's the other one. I mean, I didn't really know what that crazy android was planning. You gotta stop him!"

Crazy android sounds bad, but Robin isn't letting himself get turned aside.

"Where. Is. Morrow?"

Get over here, then muzzle.

The lines linking me to the chains pull taut and pull our prisoner in front of me.

"Mister Stikk, you are panicking. That's annoying, so in a moment I am going to suppress your fear response and you are going to clearly and concisely explain what is happening. Are we clear? Just nod."

"Ummm!"

He nods.

"Glad to hear it. Ring, demuzzle and becalm."

back

Inhumanity 12

next

10th October

15:25 GMT -7

"Morrow made an android of himself and it built a new super android that's going to kill all life on Earth."

"You see, that wasn't so hard. Now, what sort of opposition are we looking at?"

"Aaaah, Red Torpedo and Red Inferno are still down there."

Those sound so much better than what I guessed they were called. Kon steps over and yanks Stikk around to face him.

"What about Tornado?"

"He's still in pieces. The Morrow Android didn't have time to put him back together yet, but he's already transferred all his memories of the Justice League to Red Volcano."

Volcano. I remember seeing a documentary on the probable damage that will be caused when Yellowstone finally erupts. Plus: air, fire, water and earth. Robin's got his computer out to run a simulation.

"How much earth can Red Volcano move?"

"Well I don't know exactly, we only just turned him on. But, in theory? If everything works out it should easily be enough-."

"-to trigger an extinction level volcanic eruption!"

"Why were you working for him!"

Think Kon's a couple of seconds away from ripping his head off. Stikk looks like the fear's coming back.

"It was too good an opportunity to pass up. I mean, Thomas Morrow, the greatest robotics engineer of all time! And he wanted my help! Obviously he wasn't in any position to tell me anything, but he said that if I reactivated his android duplicate it could teach me everything he'd ever learned! And then the android wanted my help recovering some other robots, bring them back into working condition. I didn't think it was gunna kill everyone!"

Robin's eyes narrow. "Just the Justice League."

"Well-." Stikk realises a little late that that wasn't the most intelligent thing to say. "It's less than everyone."

I speak up before someone hits him. "Orange Lantern to team. Opposition located in underground base."

Ring, scan and transfer results to Robin's personal computer and the bioship.

Compliance.

Also, construct armour.

"Opposition is believed to be comprised of four androids: Red Torpedo and Red Inferno who carried out the attack on our home last month, an android replica of Doctor Morrow and Red Volcano. Mister Stikk, exactly how super is Red Volcano?"

"The other two Morrow built seventy years ago."

Whow. I need to scan them. And Android Morrow's memory if at all possible.

"Volcano's top of the line modern, next generation processor, better armour, stronger, faster. There was some other stuff, but Morrow didn't let me see what it was."

"Red Volcano, highly dangerous, full powers beyond earth control as yet undefined."

I'd like to think that there isn't any form of man portable armour I can't break. I certainly think it's true, but Morrow was so far ahead of all others in his field...

**Link is up.**

I turn and see the others jogging across the grassland. The sun won't be setting for another couple of hours, so there's no point in stealth mode. And frankly, I don't think it would do much good anyway.

**Aqualad, anything you want to ask him, or can I turn him loose?**

Angry stare from Kon. **Why should we let him go?**

**Because if we win we can pick him up later, and if we lose he'll die anyway.**

**Only one question.** Kaldur walks up to Stikk, his face tranquil. "Why did Red Tornado help you? Did one of the other androids program him with a virus?"

"Wu-? No. They just had an authentication code. One that could only come from Morrow. Or an android replica of him. I wanted to use a virus, but Morrow said it would have taken too long and we didn't know if Tornado had upgraded his own antivirus systems."

Kon looks at Kaldur, but he doesn't look happy at his vindication.

**We will enquire further once we have disabled his brethren.**

"Oh, one last question from me. How mentally complex are the other androids?"

"They'd.. pass a Turing Test. Torpedo and Inferno passed themselves off as human for years."

Torpedo. James Lockhart. I only just made the connection. Alan called him ‘the only one of us who had the sense to quit’. Said he became a doctor.

"Who was Red Inferno!"

"Danette Reilly! Firebrand! She-."

I drop the construct in shock. "Nice woman. Took a.. bullet.. for Jay, in forty five."

"Well, more of a plasma beam, but yeah. Guess you'd know all about her."

How the hell. How. How the.

Alan must've known, wouldn't he? Should I-? I share a bewildered look with Wallace. No, worry about this later.

"Get out of my sight."

"Rrrright."

He sidesteps our group and flees as fast as he can as Kaldur starts to lead the way to the target coordinates. As I numbly watch Stikk go I notice that Zatanna's joined us. In her silks. Well, I can do better than that.

**Zatanna, might I suggest that's not the most sensible choice of clothing-.**

"I-." **I know, but the armour isn't ready yet.**

**You're welcome to my older set. I can easily alter it to your size.**

**Can it protect me from killer androids?**

**No, but it'll help with shrapnel and glancing blows.**

**Ah, alright then. What exactly..?**

Ring, alter my light armour to Zatanna's dimensions.

Compliance.

Tough biker trousers appear over her tights and a tough biker jacket appears over her jacket. It's still got my sigil and preferred colouration.

**Huh. Okaaay. Didn't realize you were into motorcycles.**

**I'm not, but it was the only place in New York open when I arrived on this planet in my pyjamas. Nice people.**

**Oh? Where was it?**

**Bluebeards Bikes.**

She frowns. **I think I've heard of it. Didn't everyone there get arrested for gun running and drug trafficking about two months ago?**

...

**They did? But they were so helpful.**

back

Inhumanity 13

next

10th October

15:29 GMT -7

The hologram covering the entrance is obvious, now I'm here and looking for it. I haven't detected any unusual seismic activity yet. Two ways we could get in.

**So, Aqualad. Do we go in through the door or should I smash our way down?**

Kaldur's standing next to Robin, reviewing the map on his computer. **The interior of the complex does not seem to be particularly large. With no exterior sensors it is unlikely they are aware of our approach.**

I've located Torpedo and Inferno, standing against the wall in what appears to be the main workshop. A larger android -whom I presume to be Volcano- is standing next to a console, but I can't see Morrow and Tornado is still disassembled. How the heck did they build this place? Tonnes of rock must have been excavated without anyone noticing. I don't care if it was recent or back when Morrow was first active, someone should have noticed. Isn't this area full of seismic monitoring equipment?

For the benefit of my team mates, I generate life sized images of our opponents. Looks like Morrow was able to rebuild Torpedo's arm since our last encounter. Volcano is a big bastard. Don't want to risk a more intrusive scan in case he can detect it.

Wind's picking up a bit. I haven't really bothered looking at a weather forecast since coming to this world, as I can ignore virtually all of it. No idea if this is typical weather for this time of year, but since Tornado is very definitely down I think I can ignore it.

Kaldur looks over at our newest recruit. **Zatanna, are you able to make yourself invisible?**

**No. I've got a spell which makes it hard for people to notice me, but it doesn't work on cameras and I've never tried using it on robots before. I could.. try and come up with something.**

**No, it is too risky. Robin, Miss Martian, enter the base covertly and attempt to access the central com-.**

In an instant the winds go from gusty to hurricane force. Soil particles and small stones are sucked into the air around us and normal visibility drops away to the point where without the ring I wouldn't be able to see my hand in front of my face.

**Gaah!**

**Agh!**

Even as I hear M'gann and Robin cry out I'm stabilising myself. Ring, armour everyone, HUD and orangevision.

Orange lines radiate outwards from me to each of my team mates, but one flickers out almost immediately.

Unable to fully comply. Aqualad's armour resists-

Doof! A boulder smacks into my faceplate and I stagger back before bracing. Not hard enough to do noticeable damage, but it's basically impossible to track individual rocks in this condition.

-construct attachment.

**Aqualad to team. Report!**

**Orange Lantern, I'm fine. Armoured constructs are up and they should be able to take this. How's the visual enhancement working?**

**Miss Martian, I'm okay. I can't see who's doing this.**

**Zatanna, definitely talking to dad about armour when we get back.**

As the others report in I take a look around. Typhoon and Inferno are still where they were. Where's Volcano? Does he do something other than earth control? Is this a pyroclastic flow? No, temperature's too low, though the fast moving dust is starting to build up an electrical charge. Ring, identify the source of the wind.

No obvious meteorological source detected. Pattern matches wind generation technologies utilised by Red Tornado.

Another larger rock slams down onto my head.

Addendum: mass of airborne debris exceeds that which could be held aloft by air currents alone.

I check again, and I can see Red Tornado's head on a workbench.

Ring, find Red Volcano!

An indicator flashes up on my HUD as the ring complies with my instruction. Red Volcano is very clearly of a different generation to Red Tornado. For a start, his silhouette is far more human. He's built like a weight lifter and has abdominal tron lines. Tron abs. Jesus. There's a glowing triangle with a dot in the middle between his pecs. There's another smaller one on his forehead and I can't work out whether it's supposed to be a Masonic symbol or just decoration. Apparently next generation equals glowy.

"Your destruction is inevitable, humans."

Volcano's voice? He sounds almost bored. Despite the roaring winds I can hear him clearly.

Ring, relay to team mates. Also, railgun, anti-tank size.

Compliance.

The three metre long barrel appears next to me.

**Aqualad, I have a shot.**

**As do I. Zatanna, are you able to remove the dust from the air?**

**Um, yes? I think. But that won't stop Volcano just putting it back the next second.**

**I do not intend to give him a second. Robin, Kid Flash, when Zatanna removes the dust move to flank him. Superboy, frontal assault. Miss Martian, go above him and then go invisible. Orange Lantern, when Miss Martian tells you she's clear remove the armor construct. Artemis, Orange Lantern, fire the moment you have a clear shot.**

A chorus of acknowledgements.

Charge gun, prepare to fire.

It starts to hum, but the iron jacketed tungsten projectiles are still in subspace.

**Zatanna. Now.**

"Dniw llits, dna pord lla tsud!"

I can barely hear her over the roar of the wind, but as soon as she finishes the roar drops away to nothing and the dust falls to the ground as if sucked by a vacuum cleaner. As it drops there's a flash as static electricity jumps from every part of the dust cloud into Kaldur's trident, which begins glowing brilliant white.

He jabs the trident in the direction of the now visible Red Volcano and a scintillating bolt of white flickers out at the android. Volcano's standing on a rectangular pillar of stone, presumably pulled earth bender style from the ground beneath him. He staggers slightly as the lightning strikes him in the chest, but the winds are already returning and boulders are pulled from the ground to shield him from any follow up attack.

Rightyho then.

Automatic fire.

I can't make out the hum over the sound of the wind but I do see the flare of colour as the dirt on the projectile's flight path is converted to plasma. Even as his shielding rocks obscure line of sight my HUD reveals him, and the rocks are nowhere near dense enough to stop the slugs hitting him in the chest. The next second the shielding rocks are just gone as an Arrow of Unmaking hits them dead centre. Penetrating power isn't something I designed those for, though an actual hit will mess him up.

And now I can see him tanking my shots like a peashooter.

"Inadequate. Red Tornado's mem-."

Then Kon hits him in the chest and knocks him off his ledge. The wind disappears almost immediately.

"Grrrraaaaaww!"

Kon is hurled to the side. I might have made him stronger than he was, but he doesn't weigh any more. There's a yellow blur and Wallace dashes in with the EMP mines and I try to reacquire the target.

Got him. Target-.

Rock and soil explode away from his location, forming a triple layered star of rock. He rises into the air, a wind funnel full of medium sized rocks protecting him.

"Red Tornado's memories and my next-gen processor make outthinking you children child's play."

**Good thing we haven't learned anything since he left. Artemis, I can take out his barrier.**

**I'll use one of your arrows. Do it.**

I hold out my left hand, palm extended.

Destruction.

back

Inhumanity 14

next

10th October

15:33 GMT -7

I find it hard to get into the right frame of mind for orange light energy pulses. I'd rather take an object apart, understand and try to learn from it. Against an unprotected living opponent it's just too powerful to risk. A normal human would be obliterated by a glancing blow, and it's hard to judge precisely when an energy shield will fail. But, from what Tornado was willing to share about his schematics he can survive on emergency power with just his head and I can't think of a reason why Volcano would be any different.

The pulse of orange light from the ring doesn't look like all that much. Bit like a really small photon torpedo. It takes longer to hit the target than a round from my sidearm would. The rail gun and the gamma cannon and the particle cannon, there's an obvious gun thing right there. This looks like it should be the real life equivalent of a pistol in Doom or a Chitin Short Bow from Morrowind. The weakest ranged attack of all.

Nope.

Orange light flares as it batters a metre wide hole through the three layers of rock protecting him and detonates inside the inner tornado. Rock? Gone. Dust? Gone. Wind? All of the energy he put into it just isn't there any more. If I knew more about physics, that would probably upset me.

"Emoceb desufnoc dna deredliweb!"

Volcano falls out of the air, slamming into the inside of his rear fortification as Artemis lets fly. The arrow moves in a perfect arc through the hole, striking Volcano in the right shoulder as he tries to stagger upright. There's a sort of swooshing noise, and his right upper arm and a chunk of the right of his torso crumble to nothing. He must be made of something very dense for it to destroy that little. His elemental control systems are probably located in the centre of his chest, so she'll need to hit it again. Don't want to waste this chance.

Ring, scan him in detail.

Processing.

"Grrraaaagghhh!"

The air shimmers as a wave of superheated air roars from Volcano! Magma fountains up from the ground around him and the outer ring of rocks glows red before liquefying and flying outwards, filling the air with molten rock. I see droplets land on my armour and on those of my team mates. Okay, still not enough to-.

The ground disappears beneath me! I lose track of my surroundings as I'm enveloped on all sides by molten rock. My armour holds... it should keep holding, but I've never tested it with magma before. How much energy..? I can't see out! Come on, why isn't the HUD..?

Depth increasing. Connection to external armour constructs lost.

Depth?

Current depth is three hundred thirteen metres below sea level and falling.

Display depth and rise!

Numbers appear on my HUD. I focus on trying to fly through the superheated rock, but my only guide is the compass and distance indicator. It's going down, but far more slowly than I would like.

**Still alive. Should be with you momentarily.**

I hear nothing in response. Oh goodness, can they survive that sort of attack without my armour? Kaldur and Kon should be able to take small amounts of molten rock...

Warning: magma pressure increasing.

The compass spins as something pushes me to the side. Keep going! Is this... Is he setting off the volcano?

Warning: armour integrity decreasing.

Reknit.

Warning: armour integrity decreasing. Armour will fail before surface is reached.

Um um um um um...

He can't have caused the eruption already...

Ring, width of the lava tube?

Boundary imprecise, approximately twenty metres.

Display closest edge!

Compliance.

I don't appear to be falling any further, but this is the slowest twenty metres I've ever flown. Does the fact that I'm not being pulled down further mean that Volcano's been killed or just distracted? Come on, move! Finally, my surroundings start to dim as I pass the boundary until the only light is coming from my own armour. Fine, drill, get me back to the surface. And -ugh- message to Green two eight one four A and B: assistance requested in Yellowstone Park. Supervolcano erupting. You're allowed to help with that, right?

Guhh!

Warning: rock pressure increasing.

Yes, I'd noticed. Right. Errr... Volcanoes generate extremely hard rock. Now that the bit I'm in is relatively solid there's nowhere for it to get moved to when I tunnel. And if Volcano keeps moving it around... Anyone above me? No? Right. I need to get back to my team mates. Destroy!

The pulse of orange light disintegrates a clean hole through the rock above me, and I rocket out after it. The place Volcano was standing is a volcano now, solid rock partially melted and forced upward by the pressure of magma Volcano is pulling. Nooooot good.

Status of team? A few burns, nothing immediately life threatening. Where's Volcano? Standing up to his waist in molten rock, being covered in flame.. by.. Red Inferno..? What? Volcano tries creating a magma tornado around himself only for Red Torpedo to quench it, causing it to collapse under its own weight. Volcano tries raising himself out of the lava with a solid rock platform only for Kon to leap across the molten pool to punch through it, shattering it and making our adversary fall. Might need to rethink his armour situation; his clothes have burned off and the skin beneath is reddening. Kryptonians might project a force field a few millimetres around their skin but Danner Formula enhanciles don't.

Inferno... Danette... Whatever, she drops on Volcano feet first, driving him under. Then.. she.. follows him down? Volcano tries to struggle free only for Torpedo to dive in and grapple his remaining arm.

No.

!Mine!

Transition.

Kon snaps his head around as I dive past him back into the magma. OrangeVision shows me the robots' positions. I force myself after them, throwing up a fountain of liquid rock behind me. The two older robots are visibly melting, and Volcano's disintegrating around the hole Artemis made.

For Alan.

The orange beams strike Inferno and Torpedo, forcing the magma away from their skin and holding their chassis together as best it can.

Mine.

Volcano jerks and dims as something critical gets melted. Right. We're out of here. Volcano's remains drop away as I pull Inferno and Torpedo with me out of the superheated morass.

Alert! Critical system damage to attendant robots.

Yikes, they look it. Don't have full scans of their systems... Improvise! I've got Volcano's scan... Do it. The ring starts repairs based on that template as we come in to land at the edge of the combat zone. Core systems only, cognition and main power. They're not going to be pretty, but I'll be bringing two of Alan's old colleagues back from the dead. Inferno collapses onto her front when we touch down, melted joints locking her limbs in place. Torpedo's legs are completely melted, leaving him as a torso propped up on his solidifying stumps.

And then a giant cloud of ash and dust shoots up into the air as the eruption begins in earnest.

back

Inhumanity 15

next

10th October

15:36 GMT -7

Well, fiddlesticks.

"Paul!" Kon bounds over to us.

Um.

Clothes.

"Hello Superboy. Know anything about volcanoes?"

"You're alive!"

"No, I'm just pretending." He blinks. I sag inwardly. "Yes, I'm alive. My construct armour can take being submerged in molten rock. Just about. But seriously, volcanoes?"

He shakes his head. "Yeah, plenty, but not how to stop an erupting supervolcano."

**Oh El, that you?**

**Yes Kid Flash, I'm here.**

**Alright. Everyone! We're on the edge of a stage three supervolcano eruption. There's no turning back from that! We need to vent pressure fast, then we have to deal with an ash cloud big enough to cause a nuclear winter.**

I look up into the sky. Shiiiiit.

**Oh El, can you do something to contain the cloud?**

**I.. don't know... Constructs that big... I'll just have to try.**

Core system repair complete.

Maybe...

Use my memory of their voice and scans of Volcano to restore their vocal systems, and let them hear me.

Compliance.

I see explosions on the body of the volcanic protuberance. It stops growing, but begins vomiting forth even more ash.

"Doctor Lockhart, Ms Reilly. Got a bit of a volcanic eruption going on. Anything you can do to help?"

Inferno shakes for a moment, trying and failing to move her burned out limbs. "I do not believe there is anything I can do. I.. am sorry."

Freeze gun? I have the schematics of one of Captain Cold's older models on file. I somehow don't think it would be up to the task.

"I may be able to help."

Torpedo's head shudders slightly to the right in an attempt to look at me. The left side of his face is slag, while his red right eye flickers and flashes.

"With assistance, I should be able to manipulate atmospheric water to precipitate the ash from the air. Father showed us your fight with Mister Twister. Is Aqualad with you?"

**Aqualad, Zatanna, Red Torpedo thinks that we could clear the ash by making it rain. Could the three of you get enough water into the air to make that happen?**

**It is possible, but we need to move quickly. Can-?**

I extend the environmental shield around the robots and Kon. Transition.

We appear next to Kaldur. Wallace and Robin are trying to work something out on the latter's computer. Kaldur looks at me, then at what's left of Torpedo.

**Is he..?**

**His brain and water control system are fine.**

"Very well. Zatanna, we should be able to get the necessary quantities of water airborne but have no experience in creating rain."

"Um, neither do I. I'll try.. Okay! I think I've got it."

Kaldur raises his trident, and I shift Torpedo's torso around to be facing the same direction.

"Red Torpedo, on the count of three."

"I am prepared."

"One, two, three."

I've seen Kaldur move large volumes of water around with the trident before, during practice. Torpedo managed to raise the water level of the entire hangar. Now, I watch as a wall of water fifty metres across blasts into the air as if thrown by a high pressure hose. Where is that even coming from? There shouldn't be liquid water this close to an erupting volcano, surely?

"Retaw, esir otni eht yks dna niar no lla eht hsa!"

Right, okay, I need to get up there. Transition.

I reappear in what I think is low orbit. Looking towards the planet I see the tiny mushroom cloud of the Yellowstone eruption. I remember the scene in Supreme Power where a young Hyperion flies high into the air then holds out his hand to block his view of Earth. The ash cloud looks so tiny, so insignificant, yet I know that Wallace was correct in his assessment.

Closer.

The sky darkens as I reappear level with the top of the plume. A cloud isn't a solid body, and though I'm not in the main body of the ash particles are impacting on my armour construct. Looking down I can see the colossal amounts of water being thrown up, cutting into the mushroom stem. Magnify. Yep, that's working.

**Good work, the lower part of the ash cloud is falling to earth. If you increase pressure a little...**

**That.. would prove difficult. I am.. -ah!- struggling to maintain the current level of water flow.**

**Okay, er, how about I come down and pick up Torpedo? You could pass it up to him?**

**I do not believe that I would be able to relay sufficient water.**

**Right, right. Okay, I'll try something.**

The ash is being thrown aloft by hot air, right? I just need to drop it down to the level of the clouds Zatanna is creating. Ring, cold gun, wide beam.

Compliance.

The rifle-sized construct appears off to my left. There isn't enough water up here for the signature frost beam to appear, but a gouge is cut in the mushroom head as the air freezes and loses the ability to support the mass of detritus. Not fast enough. I'm only affecting a tiny part of it. Ring, remaining charge?

Sixty five percent remaining.

Plenty. Multiple cold guns. Break the cloud up.

I'm having an effect, but I have no idea how to tell whether this is working fast en-.

A giant green turbofan appears over the main body of the ash, blasting it down into the clouds.

"Yes, Orange Lantern, we are allowed to help with that."

I look around. Turbofan, of course it's Jordan. With most of the ash being forced down by the higher pressure air I focus the cold guns on the periphery. Once the high altitude is clear I move on to the rain clouds below. Don't want to cause a nuclear winter with steam clouds after all. Right, think that's about done. Atmosphere clearing, Jordan floats over to my position, keeping himself slightly higher in the air.

"You wanna explain what this is about?"

Should I leave that to Kaldur? Oh, it can't hurt to give him a summary.

"We found Thomas Morrow. Well, a Thomas Morrow android replica actually. He has-."

I look down. Hmm.

"Probably had, now. Had a base under Yellowstone where he was building another android, with the aim of activating the supervolcano and destroying all nonrobotic life on Earth. We beat the new android with the help of the two other androids who attacked the cave last month, not sure why but we can ask them later. The Morrow android had a human assistant who I was about to go and pick up. Team's basically in good condition and there were no civilian casualties but I regret to report that the new android got reduced to slag."

His eyes narrow slightly. "And Red Tornado?"

Um?

back

Inhumanity 16

next

11th October

10:18 GMT -6

"So what happened to Tornado?"

"Hm? Oh, Robin ran into Morrow's base once the fight started. Grabbed his head, downloaded some files. It was Tornado giving the other two a speech that got them to join in on our side. The League's building him a new body, apparently this isn't the first time he's been damaged like this."

Thomas sits back in his chair on the other side of the divide. After the thing with Ivo I thought I'd make an effort to come during normal visiting hours today. Several of the guards took time out from their busy schedule of scowling at people to greet me when I came in, mostly people I'd healed after the break out attempt. That felt good, actually.

"You saved the whole darn planet, just like that."

"What, you mean by dumb luck? Yes, pretty much. I mean, no one knew Morrow was going to try something like that. All too often, that's what it comes down to."

"And y'all kicked his ass anyways."

"His ass got ground into scrap by Red Volcano, but yes, basically. Even with earth, wind and fire manipulation we were able to bring enough force to bear that his new robot couldn't cope."

"Lemme make shure ah'm hearin' y'right. Wahl ah've been coolin' mah heels inside a' heeyah, you gots t'fight two super robots-"

"I didn't really fight them much myself."

"-super monkeys, super rats an' super gorillas-"

"Team effort, but yes."

"-an' some kinda crazy plant monstah."

The League appears to have decided that telling people that we'd been sent to fight the Injustice League would push even the relaxed child endangerment laws of this version of the United States. Diana said that I could mention my involvement -being over eighteen- but I decided not to in a show of solidarity.

"A lot of people fought that thing."

"Guess you were righaht abaht getting bettah fights thun me."

"And don't forget the company. I mean, I'm sure Tuppence is a peach once you get to know her, but that's it, right?"

"She stiw not talkin' t'you?"

"No, no she's not."

He shifts a little in his chair. "Ah told her she should. Not lahk our Mama or Daddy gonna be visitin' any tahm soon."

I understand about his mother but I don't see why his father wouldn't visit, even if it was just to give them a hard time about it. Perhaps a new subject?

"Ooh, I've been meaning to ask actually. There's this guy.. urp, sorry, skipping ahead. You said you'd always been as strong as you are?"

"Hehw mahn, with this here collar own, ahm as weak as a puppy."

"You know what I mean."

"Yeah. So?"

"Have you ever thought about why?"

He frowns. He's not stupid, but he is unused to self reflection. "Ahm a metuhhuman. Same as Tuppy."

"That's really more of a category than a... Look, I'll cut to the chase. As far as I can work out, before you and your sister were born you were dosed with something called the Danner Formula."

His eyes narrow a little and he frowns. "How'd that happen?"

"No idea. Shouldn't have happened, there's a handful of places it could have come from. No idea how your mother got hold of it."

"This Dannah stuff do anythang else?"

"You heal faster than most people and you'll probably live a bit longer. There may be other effects, we haven't really studied it enough. Reason I bring this up, other than yourself and your sister I know of one other Danner Formula enhanced human in the world and he told me that he wants to meet you."

"Who?"

"His name's Doctor Arnold Munro. His grandfather was the man who created the Formula."

"An' he's strong as me an' Tuppy?"

"Roughly. He's probably a little past his prime."

"Is he related to us or somein'?"

"No. Well, I don't think so, I didn't really... Oh, no, everything I've read on the subject says that the Formula doesn't run in families. He's just interested in meeting someone else like him."

Thomas shrugs. "Sure. Not lahk I got someplace else t'be. You kin send him raht along."

"Oh, he will be pleased."

I take a moment to absorb the sounds of the room. Ms Snart's back speaking to her brother, who both recognised me and found the time to sneer at me as I walked over to Thomas' booth. Don't recognise the rest. Mostly mothers and a few wives. A couple of what even the most ardent campaigner against racial profiling will excuse me for calling gang members.

I mean, damn. Living the stereotype.

"One last thing-."

He rolls his eyes. "Yeah, they do GED courses."

He tries moving the chair closer to the screen, which doesn't work due to being bolted to the floor. Recognising this, he shuffles to the edge of the chair and leans over.

"Be abaht tha only guy doin' it. Whuts it gonna do fer me, anyway?"

"Probably nothing. That isn't the point. You do it, it shows that you're doing something productive with your time. Show that someone who might want to give you a job can trust you to do it and not just go on another rampage. You give that any thought?"

"Whut was that thang you said? Ship breakin'? Hows that wurk?"

"Companies have old ships they need breaking up for scrap. Usually they sail the big ones over to India and pay the locals peanuts to take them apart slowly with power tools. But, given how strong you are, you could rip one up in a couple of hours."

"Pays peanuts?"

"For a couple of hundred guys working for weeks, yes. For one man working for a few hours? If they paid you a tenth of what they'd have to pay their entire workforce it would still be worth their while, and you'd still make thousands of dollars."

"Fer real?"

"Sure! Look, are you looking for something that pays really well, something that's fun, or something that's kind of a mix?"

"Think ah'd always enjoy getten that much moneh."

"Thomas, I've got to be honest with you: I think you'd love getting paid to smash up a ship. You'd probably quite like getting paid to smash up three or four. But by the end of the second month, when it's just another day at work? I don't think you'd like it so much."

"Maybe. Whut else?"

"I know LexCorp is doing research on the Danner Formula. That's who Doctor Munro is working for. Probably be better talking to him if you want to get involved with that. There's quite good money in being a celebrity bodyguard, but you'll need to learn a lot of things to make a go of that. I imagine some rap musicians would love having a metahuman ex-con bodyguard, but they'll need to know that you'll stick at it."

"Fight'n off rival rappers? You think that'll be fun?"

"Oh, no. It'd be boring as Helheim."

"As whut?"

"Its like… Viking hell, but more boring. By the time a record company big enough to make it worth your time gets hold of them they're well tamed. All mouth and trousers. But if you need an outlet, if that's what it takes, I know a few people in your weight class you could spar with."

"Lahk who?"

I smile. "You enjoyed fighting Wonder Woman, didn't you?"

back

Inhumanity 17

next

11th October

13:07 GMT -5

Mister Kord holds the data stick up like a banknote of uncertain providence.

"Not that I wanna sound ungrateful, but doesn't the League usually give this sorta thing to STAR Labs?"

The visitor chair in his office was clearly inadequate for a man of my dimensions, to say nothing of my weight. He didn't appear to have thought of that in advance and was a little self conscious about it until I simply lifted it aside and created a construct chair instead.

"STAR Labs has a copy as well, but I was able to convince Wonder Woman that it would be advantageous to make use of this information sometime before the next millennium."

"Okay, but why me?"

"WayneTech doesn't have a cybernetics division."

"LexCorp does. North American Robotics would kill for something like this."

Because I know a trap when I smell one. I don't intend to unproductively provoke my superiors in the League by suggesting something like that. They didn't appear to care about me killing a sophont android and the furore over me killing Ocean Master seems to have died down, but I'm on best behaviour for the foreseeable future.

"The League is reluctant to work with Mister Luthor, in part due to the ongoing dispute between him and Superman."

"Mm, well, given all the practical work Doctor Morrow did it shouldn't be too hard to get something into production. Red Torpedo's synthetic skin was really that good?"

"No one noticed anything wrong for seventy years. Appearance, temperature and texture all pass all but the closest examination."

"I've seen some experimental designs that actually use living tissue..?"

"No, all synthetic. The body is hairless and the eyebrows and eyelashes don't grow. We're still not sure how his hairstyle changed."

"Maybe the Morrow android visited him every few years?"

"Perhaps. I believe that Batman is following up on the matter today."

"What happened to Torpedo anyway?"

Ah.

"A little embarrassing, that. When he and Red Inferno attacked our base he caught me with my trousers down. Literally. I was forced to fight him without this ring."

I hold it up. I hadn't really given it any thought before, but it is a little interesting how it resized itself when I grew to my current stature.

"Since I didn't know precisely how he was controlling the water I couldn't risk leaving much intact."

Mister Kord puts down the stick and pokes the mechanical arm lying on the desk before him.

"So..?"

"That used to be his, yes. Once he was out of commission it was a trivial matter to collect the ring, and after that..."

"Wasn't.. wouldn't Red Inferno be as powerful as Red Tornado?"

"Perhaps." I shrug. "She was built a little earlier and has a smaller chassis. From what I observed, she was able to generate flame without reference to an external heat source, while in the absence of air Red Tornado would be unable to create his signature twisters. Her, I was able to bring down whole."

"And she led you to Morrow?"

"It would be more true to say that our invasive probing of her brain led us to Morrow. Impressive cryptography, I'm told."

"And Tornado was okay with you doing that to his.. sister..?"

"He wanted to access her mental network himself. Fortunately I was able to convince the League that such an attempt would create unnecessary risk."

"I saw a piece on the news this morning about the League's attack on Morrow's base at Yellowstone."

"The Morrow android and his assistant are in custody, and their improved android was destroyed in the attack. With my assistance-"

And that of my team mates, but Theodore Kord isn't cleared to know about us quite yet.

"-it was possible to take the base whole and undamaged. They haven't decided what to do with the Morrow android yet. According to Wonder Woman it behaves exactly as he did when he fought the Justice Society."

"Any luck finding the man himself?"

"Tornado tracked him to a hospice in Milwaukee. He isn't much of a threat to anyone anymore, and won't be one at all before too long." I make a shrugging gesture with my right arm.

"Given how old he is… Not much point in attempting to bring him to trial, really. Tornado wanted to spend some time with him before he finally dies."

"What are they doing with Red Inferno?"

"I'm not sure. Morrow did something to her when he removed her from her grave to reactivate her. She retains her memories of being Danette Reilly, but as if they were lived by someone else. Without her 'father' to give direction she is somewhat aimless, but it's a League matter now."

Perhaps the greatest cause for concern, I can't see her desires in the same way I can see her younger brother's. Perhaps it was not some action of Morrow's, but the fact of her death causing her soul to be cast adrift? Could Constantine or Papa Midnite find and reattach it? Something to ponder.

"What exactly.. does the League.. want?"

"That you use this information for the greater good. In terms of civil uses, I imagine you could find a market for improved cybernetics and robotics. Personally, I would be interested in acquiring armour based on the epidermis of the final android. It proved immensely resilient."

But not power ring or magic sword proof. Even Morrow can't build quite that sophisticated just yet. Probably won't get the chance now. I know it's necessary but I can't help but feel that it's an unfortunate loss to the species.

"I can get our robotics people working on this right away, but if there's as much information here as you're saying it's gonna take a while to sift through it all."

"Then don't. I arranged the contents by category, just find something with commercial potential and bring it to market as fast as is practical. You aren't on an overall time limit here."

He thinks for a moment. "Does it include information on Morrow's element control technology?"

I give a shallow nod and faint smile. "Yes."

"Oh God." He puts his right hand over his mouth. "There's so many civilian applications for that I don't even know where to... We could shut down tornadoes before they form. Control flood waters, stop fires, halt earthquakes."

"I knew I came to the right place."

"Blue Beetle, power armoured master of the elements!"

And there goes my confidence.

back

NEXT CHAPTER

Contingency

BACK

Contingency 1

next

Contingency

14th October

13:56 GMT -5

I dash down the corridors of the Allen Hospital in what I fully appreciate is a panic. Come on, come on, they said it was around here somewhere!

"-complete overreaction, Diana. I just tripped. Coulda happened to anyone."

There! I darn near bounce off the wall at the end of a T junction, feet scrabbling for grip on the squealing floor.

"Alan, you're not a young man anymore. Doctor Jacobs is just concerned-."

I shove through the door to Alan's room, and they both turn their heads to look at me. Diana's wearing.. tweeds and a shawl? Guess she finds it hard not to get noticed around New York. Alan's still in jeans and a slightly rumpled shirt, sitting on the edge of the bed nearest the door and slightly turned away from the walking frame positioned at the end of it.

"Oh, not you too. It's noth-"

I cross the gap between us, bend down and hug him.

"-thing. Okay." He hugs me back. "Clearly I.. scared you more than I thought I did."

As I loosen my grip I get my first good look at his face. The skin around his right eye is purpling in a way which suggests a black eye in the not too distant future. That skin which had been smooth and blemish free when we first met three months ago has taken on the looser and more wrinkled look I remember from my grandparents. His formerly wheat blonde hair is now noticeably greying. Maybe I'm imagining things, but his eyes seem a little dimmer too.

"Paul, I'm okay. I just caught my foot on the edge of the step when I was carrying some.. ah, some things upstairs. Hit the side of my face. But I'm fine, really."

No you're not. You're ninety three and you had a fall. My Nan was younger than you and she never fully recovered from her first fall. I knew he'd age but I thought we'd have more time than this!

Ring, heal.

Unable to comply.

I hold up my left palm to stare at the stupid thing.

"Well why not!?"

"A high proportion of the substance of the target individual is etheric in nature. Its alignment resists modification by orange light. Though it is possible to proceed, the most probable result is further damage."

"Paul, it's fine. I've been bruised worse than this plenty of times. I remember in my first fight with Grundy-."

"Okay, it's not a problem, you can just use your ring. Where did you leave it?"

His eyes dip to the floor for a second, and then he makes eye contact with Diana. "Well, I... Until you showed me, I didn't even know power rings could be used for healing."

"Now you know, and if Guy can get the hang of it then you should... What?"

"Paul, I... I thought I told you."

"Told me what?"

"My ring's been out of juice for three weeks now. Can't get a durn thing out of it."

Nooooo.

"Oh, come on, I'm not going to drop down dead tomorrow. I'm not touching that walker, though."

"Do you want a hand up?"

He shuffles his weight right to the edge of the bed, arms supporting himself on both sides. A little gingerly he shifts the load to his legs, standing up fully once he's sure they can take it. Once he's up I realise that I was standing by to catch him if something went wrong.

"There, see? I'll take things a little slower for a few days, next time this week I'll be good as new." He frowns and looks me over. "You're not skipping out of class to be here, are you?"

"No. Mister.. Jones is teaching mental techniques I already know. Apparently, power ring users tend to shrug off weak mental illusions anyway."

In Carpe Jugulum, Nanny Ogg said that Discworld vampire hunters get drunk before they go hunting, as vampires find it hard to get through the 'fog' surrounding their thoughts. Turns out? Probably not true for here. Mister J'onzz can send me to sleep when my ring generated telepathic shields are down, but when I focus to create a construct simple telepathic illusions and attempts at mental misdirection tend to fade away. Wish that had been true when I first moved into the mountain, could have wrapped that whole thing with the G-Gnome up very quickly.

"How is Kon coping with it?"

Can't be very often a man honestly forgets that Diana is in the room with him. From her smirk I think she may have spotted it.

"He seems to be doing okay. He certainly sees the value of it, and he did some practice with M'gann when she removed his Cadmus programming."

She pushes open the door and holds it open. I wait while Alan walks out ahead of me.

"He said that you were having dinner with Artemis tomorrow."

Alan's head jerks around and he gives me a grin.

"Oooh?"

"I'm having dinner with Artemis and her mother. Her mother had a spinal injury and I repaired it with the ring, they invited me over to say thank you."

A quick check online suggested that Artemis was wrong about the etiquette. A bottle of wine might be appropriate, but I don't drink and Artemis can't drink legally. Oh, wait, America. Neither Artemis nor I can drink legally. I think they'll like my alternative, but I am a little worried that I might have overdone things again.

"Getting on her mother's good side already?" He turns to Diana while pointing at me. "This is what happens when you teach them strategic planning."

No. No.

"Alan, Artemis -I like her- but she's a bit young for me."

Diana nods. "You have been spending a good deal of time with her sister. And I think Ollie said something about her recently divorced mother looking noticeably younger?"

My face freezes as I look at Diana. She's an Amazon! She shouldn't be allowed to make this sort of joke! Change the subject change the subject.

"Diana, do you have a bow?"

She raises her eyebrows slightly and Alan chuckles.

"I've trained with most types of weapon. Why do you ask?"

"No, I mean, do you have a bow like your training swords? One where you can use it at full strength without breaking it?"

"I do, but it's a little impractical; I can shoot an arrow further than I can see. Why do you ask?"

"Can I..? Is it possible for me to commission weapons like that? Or armour?"

"I.. suppose. I'd have to ask Io. But why would you want one?"

"I was thinking of getting Artemis one as a pres-."

They both nod as if understanding has dawned.

"NOT LIKE THAT!"

back

Contingency 2

next

16th October

11:56 GMT -5

Doctor Lockhart shakes his head emphatically.

"You're not listening, little brother. I didn't even like being Red Torpedo all that much when I thought I was Human."

Robin and I are in Red Tornado's quarters. Not what I'd call comfortable. The rock and the metal of the floor are bare but for a workshop area with a small fabrication plant where Robin is working. No, that isn't quite right. There's a small shelf on the main workbench upon which rests a small number of items which seem out of place. Keepsakes? Is that really all he's kept from sixty years of life? Given how personal they must be I haven't wanted to look too closely.

"If that is truly your choice then I will respect it."

Red Tornado is making do with a temporary body, mostly made from salvaged parts of Mister Twister. The oversized arms make him look a bit like a gorilla. Creaks less than his normal one though. He wanted us to focus on repairing his siblings, but once we removed Morrow's control programming his brother was quite definite that he did not want to be restored to combat effectiveness. His highest priority was looking like Doctor James Lockhart again. He had been wearing highly sophisticated synthetic flesh when the Morrow android took him from the Windward Assisted Living Home in Bar Harbour, Maine. When Morrow cut it off him he put it in storage in his base but both skin and base were destroyed during the eruption. Now I've finally finished reattaching the replacement version he looks exactly like the old man on the missing posters.

"My choice would be for this whole mess never to have happened."

He's got back into crotchety old man character almost as soon as he reactivated. Not sure if it's a behaviour subroutine activated by the presence of skin in order to preserve his cover or a coping mechanism. I could relate to that. He even wanted us to remove his water control system, but that just isn't possible. It serves as his main power source and we're nowhere near advanced enough to replace it with something of comparable output or size. His other systems are now back in working order, though not restored to factory settings as we just don't have those. He also refused to upgrade to the 'next generation' processor that his youngest brother had.

Red Inferno turns her head from where she's lying on a sort of steel bed thing. Unlike her eldest brother she has opted to be brought up to full combat effectiveness. We still haven't finished finalising her design. Since I am very far from understanding how Morrow's systems are supposed to work my best suggestion has been a smaller and more feminine version of Volcano's body but at the moment I've limited myself to restoring her head and giving her the processor upgrade Torpedo refused, the rest of her body being skeletal robotic components that grant her mobility but little else. That's what Robin is working on now.

"If Father had not come for you then you might have remained in the Home indefinitely. In spite of appearances you do not age. Finding out simply means that you are less ignorant."

"Then ignorance is bliss." He looks down for a moment, trying to work out how best to articulate his bitterness. "The only people this works out for are my medical insurance providers. What a waste of money that was. Ah, to hell with it. Who do I have to see about getting a ride home?"

He could just walk out to sea and then travel there himself. Not sure exactly what his top speed is. Guess he just doesn't want to. I shuffle nervously. I feel like I'm intruding on a family row, but I can't leave without drawing attention to myself.

Red Tornado takes a step forwards.

"There is no need for you to return there. You know now that your apparent infirmity was part of your infiltration programming. If you wanted, you could live elsewhere."

"I appreciate what you're trying to do, Tornado, I really do. But right now I just need to be somewhere familiar."

Red Tornado lowers his head slightly. "There is a Zeta tube in Augusta. I will escort you.. home. Would it be acceptable if I were to visit you, once you have had a chance to settle back in?"

Doctor Lockhart hunches slightly. I know that there's nothing wrong with his motors or joints, though they're much weaker than the ones which his original chassis had. Habit, I suppose. He looks over Tornado's mismatched body parts for a moment.

"Sure. Sure. Everyone else gets visits from family, and it's not like any of us have anyone else."

Red Tornado walks over to the floor opening to his quarters and opens the iris. Doctor Lockhart follows him, but Tornado hesitates for a moment.

"What of our father?"

"That rat bastard can die in his bed for all I care."

"I had thought that the.. Human thing to do would be to look after him. Since you are a medical doctor and have no other responsibilities-."

"First time I met our father he ordered me out of my home, had me dig up Da-. Our sister's body, ordered me to kidnap you and nearly kill a group of children, and then try to destroy the human race by setting off a supervolcano. Hate's a very human characteristic too, Tornado. Maybe you should try that instead."

He takes hold of his brother's proffered right arm and they rise up in the air a little with a blast of wind before dropping through the hole to the training area. I relax slightly.

"Orange Lantern." Red Inferno is looking at me. If our first meeting had left any residual fear of her, seeing her partially dismantled body would have removed them. "I wish to.. apologize, for my actions while under Father's command."

I walk over to the bed/slab thing. I'm trying to make the angle more comfortable for her.. but that actually doesn't make sense. Her neck actuators can handle any angle they can make with no pain feedback. Not that she's getting any pain feedback at present. She looks a bit like.. I don't know, actually. Not a Cylon, not a Terminator, not a Necron. Her arms and legs are basic to say the least. There are motors in the joints, but with none of the super strength muscle fibres her combat avatar had she looks skeletal to say the least. Her spine -which is clearly visible as we haven't even started on the outer plating yet- supports her head and connects to legs salvaged from the robot version of Mister Stikk. Wires from her power plant/fire control system visibly run to every part that requires power from a box hanging from her shoulders under her head.

I wave her apology off. "Oh don't worry. I was fine once I got the ring back."

Robin looks up from the computer interface he's working at. "You were kind of a mess before that, Oh El."

"I couldn't really see myself. But I'm not going to hold a grudge over an injury I could easily heal, particularly when inflicting it wasn't really your choice."

"That is not entirely true."

Eh?

"While I was compelled to obey Father's instructions, it was my decision how those orders were to be implemented. Though I bore you no personal malice I took the decision to rouse you by burning your face, and to strike you when I found I could not deny the logic of your arguments."

That's a bit...

"May I ask why you made that decision?"

She turns her head to stare up at the ceiling. A minute passes and I start to get concerned for her well-being.

"Danette Reilly was not merely working as a superhero, she... I devoted myself completely to becoming the most heroic person I could be. She had no other interests. No friends beyond her team mates. When she saw Dragon King pointing a weapon at The Flash... At Jay, she did not hesitate. She died knowing that she had done the right thing. That was her identity. Then, I woke up, and I was no longer Danette Reilly. I found myself compelled to obey a man I knew to be villainous in contravention of her every moral belief. I wanted to lash out and you were convenient. That choice was mine."

No, I still don't see any point in holding a grudge about it. "If you wanted, you could be Danette Reilly -Firebrand- again. We can restore your chassis and it's not as if having two names is uncommon around here."

"Danette would not hesitate to say yes. I am no longer certain."

"If you aren't certain, why did you ask to be fully repaired?"

"I cannot rely on my own judgements. But, whatever new goal I decide to pursue being fully functional would make achieving it easier. In addition, it allows me to delay making that final decision."

"Would it help you to talk about it with Jay Garrick or Alan Scott?"

Her head reorientates on me. Diana and her were in the All-Star Squadron together, but she told me that she was going to hold off on reintroducing herself until Inferno was ready for it. She hasn't told their other surviving contemporaries yet. She told me that she hadn't known that Danette was a robot, but that she couldn't swear that the others hadn't.

"They are still alive?"

"Yes. You didn't know? Alan mentioned you when we were going through his photo albums a few weeks ago."

"Do they know what I truly am?"

"Not sure. I've been meaning to ask. But I think you're doing Alan a grave disservice if you think he'd care."

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Contingency 3

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16th October

15:53 GMT -5

Teekl sniffs at the corner of the stone block I'm sitting on before jumping up onto it. Captain Marvel only just got Teekl's approval for taking care of Wolf for the duration of the exercise, but Wolf herself has apparently decided that she's had enough excitement for now and has gone to sleep in his arms. Her adopted kitten in safe hands Teekl has condescended to resume her original stature. Odd, I'd started getting used to her being a big cat. Kon, Aqualad, Artemis and M'gann are already lying down on their blocks, while Robin and Wallace seem a good deal less happy about the situation. Mister J'onzz is standing off to the side talking to Batman while we prepare ourselves.

**Does this seem like a really bad idea to anyone else?**

I wonder if Wallace realises that Mister J'onzz can almost certainly hear that? I will admit to not being entirely sanguine about the situation myself. I mean, he had a point when he pointed out that there isn't really any other way to practise for an alien invasion. But when he said 'fully immersive telepathic illusion' my Star Trek redshirt death sense started tingling.

**Wally. This sort of training is a core part of the Manhunter training program. Uncle J'onn has been through hundreds of this sort of sessions like this, and I've done dozens. It's perfectly safe.**

I should probably ask. **Has he ever done this with humans before?**

**Of course he has! The Justice League do training like this all the time.**

**Uncle Barry said he did it twice.**

**Well... Okay, but they still did it.**

**And my telepathic shield construct won't disrupt it?**

**Your awareness will be limited to the illusory world. You won't be able to form real constructs, just alter the illusion based on what you'd normally be able to do.**

**Has that been tested? I don't want to risk smashing up the place by creating a construct in the real world.**

**The Green Lanterns did the training. They glowed a bit, but they didn't create any constructs.**

**And what happens if I try to use the ring in an original way? Something I haven't tried before?**

**Like what?**

**Errrr... Telepathy broadcast disruptor?**

**Well, your shields wouldn't-.**

**No, I mean something that would disrupt it over an area. If I scanned the brain of an illusory telepath inside the scenario, would it let me learn how to block that, or would the fact that I've never done that before make it impossible?**

**Umm...**

**The system is adaptable, within limits.** Mister J'onzz leaves Batman and walks over to us. **In the example you gave, as long as you had the necessary data to support your belief that the telepath could be blocked using the technique you developed, it would work as expected. That said, a completely original use might fail when it would work in reality. I have noticed that you are.. somewhat more creative than either of the Green Lanterns I have worked alongside.**

**Thank you sir.**

**If that occurs, simply assume that you did not in fact have the necessary data to support your conclusions, and practise the technique once the scenario is concluded. Remember, the purpose of this exercise is to aid in your training. You can learn just as much -if not more- from failure as you can from success.**

Well, this is happening then. I lay down, careful not to kick Teekl as I swing my legs around. She looks at my legs, then walks up between them onto my stomach.

"Teekl, that's not-."

She turns in a circle, pads, then curls up on top of me. Bloody cat.

**Is Teekl coming too?**

Kon seems amused by the situation. Teekl never usually sleeps on me. I'm not sure that she actually does sleep. A normal cat will sleep if it doesn't feel the need to eat, excrete or patrol, but Teekl seems a lot more mentally complex. Teekl's head comes up, and she looks at Mister J'onzz.

"I am able to make contact with her mind. M'gann told me of her actions in Bialya and Louisiana. If you wish for me to include her in the scenario as an active participant it should be possible for me to enable that."

He looks at me for confirmation. I look at Kaldur and raise my eyebrows.

He thinks for a moment. "I have no objection. Teekl, do you wish to participate?"

"Teekl sleep hunt."

Kaldur regards her curiously. "Does she mean 'yes'?"

"Probably, but don't assume that she won't just wander off when the scenario starts."

Robin's head jerks up. "Hey, why isn't Zatanna doing this?"

"Grounded for life, remember." Artemis shifts awkwardly on her bier. That's the word. Bier. What coffins are put on. Not ominous at all. "Why don't these things have cushions?"

"If you are all ready?"

I raise my right hand, wave it, then lay my head back on the hard surface of the bier. The biers are arranged in a circle, our heads are pointing towards Mister J'onzz in the centre. I hope we're using these things for a reason, it wouldn't have taken me more than a couple of minutes to move our beds out here. I tilt my head and flick my eyes back to see Mister J'onzz raise his hands slightly.

Wooow. We're standing in a misty purple void. Or dull lilac, possibly? Robin, Artemis, Wallace and M'gann are now in uniform, and Kaldur has changed from his old uniform into his Ocean Master gear. Kind of assumed that I'd feel something first. Hm. Interesting.

**Is anyone experiencing any sort of discomfort?**

There's a general shaking of heads. Mister J'onzz isn't in here with us, but will be monitoring events externally. You know, maybe the League needs to get another telepath. If this drags on he's going to be stuck here for a while.

**Then I will begin the scenario.**

Gradually, the mists part and the training room emerges. The floor appears first, then the main screen with Tornado -how he looks when fully repaired, not how he looks at the moment- standing next to it. Batman's image fills the screen. Looks like he's in some kind of aircraft.

"Deploying camera sensor units."

The image shifts from Batman's face to some kind of alien spacecraft. Our opponent for the afternoon, I suppose. I turn my head to the side as the far walls of the room appear, then the end of the corridor and the ceiling until the illusion is complete. Just to make sure I create an orange sigil over the ring. Yep, that works.

On the screen one half remains locked on the target craft, while the other follows Batman's spaceship. We watch as Lanterns Jordan and Stewart fly up to the alien ship.

"Attention, you have entered the boundaries of Earth space. Disengage all weapons and engines."

I frown. "Pretty sure that's not in accordance with standard Lantern Corps protocol. Why are they both standing right-."

The alien ship fires some sort of huge beam weapon. The Greenies create bubble shields with their rings, but they are swiftly overpowered and incinerated.

"Saw that coming. Are we assuming that the weapon destroyed their rings as well? Because if they didn't we should get a couple of new Greenies out of that. And the Guardians would certainly be-."

Wallace gives me a sour look. "Are you going to keep this up for the whole thing?"

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Contingency 4

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Gotham City

15th October

18:37 GMT -5

Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-day.

The zeta tube light fades behind me as I walk out of the Gotham alley onto a side street. I had thought that zeta tube placement represented appallingly bad security, but when I asked I was informed that it doesn't matter all that much if their location is discovered. It's happened a few times, and all that happens is that it gets deactivated and a new one placed in what is hopefully a more secure location. The worst thing that can happen is that the area around it gets booby trapped, but Batman put various types of sensors around each terminal when they were constructed and these days Mister Zatara wards them to be unnoticeable.

So, back in Gotham. I took the time to read up on the currently active 'theme criminals' before coming here. No Hagen, obviously. He's reliquefied, and the last report I read from STAR Labs was that he was managing to speak simple sentences coherently. Napier and Isley are back in Arkham, Isley more or less catatonic and Napier his usual self. Dent's in Arkham too, from a case last year when he tried using a gang of blackmailed identical twins to commit robberies using their twin to secure an alibi. Cobblepot is a more or less legitimate businessman these days and Catwoman doesn't do muggings, so unless I walk into Mister Jones or Mister Lynns there shouldn't be any trouble on that front. Of course, I'm quite a bit more confident in my abilities now than I was when I first came to this world. I'm sure that any engagement with anyone known to be operating in Gotham at present would go worse for them, but I'd rather not get involved in anything liable to make me late for dinner.

I could just fly there. I mean, the fact that Orange Lantern knows Paula Nguyen isn't a secret. Neither is the fact that Paula has a second daughter. But it occurred to me that it's probably best not to draw attention to the fact. I may not have been around long enough to pick up an actual nemesis, but in Gotham all it would take is one nut taking an interest. So, no flying into a residential area. Twelve minutes walking time, more or less. Funny, despite being in the murder capital of the east coast I'm feeling really good. Confident. Did Kal-El grow up feeling like this? No one here can hurt me. I'm humming happily, and I'll probably be singing under my breath by the time I reach my destination.

My oh my what a wonderful day.

Shame Torpedo's taking the whole being a robot so badly. Maybe he just needs time to adjust? Combined with my scan of Red Volcano the data Robin was able to extract from Morrow's base should start getting improved robotic designs into production some time next year. Batman was surprisingly reasonable when I raised the possibility of not just handing the whole thing over to STAR Labs and forgetting about it. The proto responsometer thing tech that powers the androids and gives them elemental powers will go to STAR, but the more mundane stuff will be making Ted Kord a very happy man.

I didn't even bother raising the possibility of sharing with Luthor. Letting everyone have access to the data might work to prevent accusations of favouritism, but the League's preference is to restrict access -big surprise- and their charter allows them to do this.

Hah! There's three tough looking youths sitting on those steps over there, and I don't even slightly feel like crossing the road to avoid them! With this ring I can afford to think the best of people, and if I'm wrong it doesn't matter.

"Fuck you lookin' at, fuckin' fagget?"

And with a grunt, the alpha male howler monkey marks his territory.

I stop walking. I was sort of hoping something like this wouldn't happen. For a moment, I'm reminded of the scene in Wanted, where the now supervillain trained Wesley confronts the people who shout and throw things at him every day when he walks home from work. Oh, why not. I smile at them.

"Three upstanding citizens, I'm sure."

And they immediately jump to their feet. One black man and two Hispanic men, though I suppose that might just mean that their families come from Brazil. The black chap has a red jacket and a black woolly hat, while his friends favour hoodies, grey and green respectively. Grey hoodie takes the lead.

"The fuck is your problem, limey!?"

Back in my home parallel I had people shout at me -usually from cars- while I've been walking or cycling along quite peacefully once too often. I remember a television series that I used to watch on the Science Fiction channel. It was based on an American supermarket tabloid, but the weird things they claimed were happening actually were. What was it called? Ah, yes, that was it: The Chronicle. Anyway, there was an episode with what appeared to be a superhero, so the three reporters did some research on the subject. The nerdy reporter offers his colleagues a range of quality comics from his own collection to read up on, the jock dismissively rejects Dark Knight Returns because 'he watched the series' and the woman complains that comics are basically power trip fantasies for emotionally retarded adolescent males.

Or something. It was a while ago, and I like to think that I've been mostly level headed about the whole thing. But I'd never attempt this without the ring.

"Well, you see, I was just peacefully walking down the street, when-."

He reaches me and tries shoving me. I decided that an orange shirt would be appropriate for this evening rather than my usual grey vest. It's one of those that Artemis picked, and among its virtues is that it conceals my well developed ring forged musculature. The small calibre bullet proof environmental shield doesn't exactly hurt. I don't move so he tries shoving again, harder. Again, I remain in place. He takes a closer look at my face and starts.

"The fuck is wrong with your eyes?"

Perhaps his colleagues are more observant, because they stopped walking towards me before he spotted that. For a start, my body language is wrong. Batman's lesson on body language was really quite interesting. I should be defensive or aggressive, but instead I'm at ease. Strange. I'd have thought that the old instincts would still be in operation but I haven't been consciously forcing myself into a particular behaviour pattern and I don't feel even slightly tense.

"Oh, they've been like this for months."

Transition. I appear behind them.

"Now, I'm going to suggest that-"

They jump, backing away in earnest. Even in Gotham, most murders aren't caused by' theme criminals'. Those are just the ones the newspapers focus on. Murders related to normal crime -usually robbery- is the largest figure. The robbery rate isn't all that much higher than in other places, the thieves just seem much more willing to use lethal force.

"-perhaps you're being unnecessarily confrontational about this? Really, I'm just going for a walk here."

Red jacket has ended up closest to me, his right hand going into his pocket. Oh! That's what those guys at Bluebeards Bikes were doing, reaching for their guns. Suddenly I feel less bad about their arrest. I nod at it, still smiling.

"That really something you want to do?"

Green hoodie slaps him on the back and he slowly withdraws his hand, empty.

"Uh, look man, it's cool-."

"Don't worry about it. In fact, just to show there's no ill feeling, here."

One of my 'what happens when you put food in subspace' pizzas appears on a plate in my right hand, still warm from the oven. As far as I know, the answer is 'nothing', though storing living rats there ate silly amounts of ring power. Dead rats take much less. Weirdly, subspace seems to differentiate between living and dead matter. Something to do with mystical presence, perhaps? I hold the plate out to red jacket and he looks at it like I'm offering him a landmine. With what I assume is a Gotham-evolved survival sense, green hoodie steps around him, takes the plate while showing submissive body language and then steps back.

"Thanks, man. We'll get out of your way, you can just carry on with your walk."

"So kind. You all have a good evening now."

I nod, then carry on down the pavement, listening carefully to what's going on behind me.

"The fuck you doin'? Don't fuckin' eat it! You see how he was smilin', probably put Smilex or some shit in it!"

Ah Gotham, don't you ever change.

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Contingency 5

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16th October

17:08 GMT -5

"All I'm saying is, if it hasn't, then there's three perfectly good personal lanterns just sitting there."

We're in the bioship, heading to the alien fighter which has 'conveniently' isolated itself next to the Fortress of Solitude. We skipped most of the distance with the aid of the ring, but Kaldur didn't want to take us in too close in case the orange trail was spotted. I know that this whole scenario is premised on us being all that's left after the League die, but would it really have killed Mister J'onzz to make it a little more believable? Diana fighting with her lasso; something which I know and he should know she doesn't bring with her on missions where capturing the foe is not a realistic option. And dying to a shot she blocked, which if I understand the spells bound to her bracers right is basically impossible. Guy fighting from a static position when in fact he is always moving during a fight. Weapons used by the Earth's military forces being ineffectual but somehow Green Arrow's arrows do something. That was one of the things which annoyed me about the Justice League Unlimited episode Dark Heart: bullets do nothing but Huntress' staff can destroy the nanotech-enriched killer robots just fine.

Wallace sags as he looks at me. "Are you still going on about that?"

"It's a plot hole. Guy even gave me the access frequency for his lantern's subspace pocket. If the Greenies aren't going to send someone to investigate the death of three of their members -and they would, by the way- I might as well pick them up."

Anyway, Superman, Captain Atom, Captain Marvel and Mister J'onzz die charging the alien mothership. Batman died in his spaceship after getting shot by the alien fighter craft which are even now swarming Earth based defence centres and strafing cities. The rest of the League -and Guy Gardner, nice touch there- die in the atmosphere. The panicked news reports provide a nice in-universe way of explaining the plot to us. We don't know the aliens' motivations in the scenario but to be honest it doesn't look like Mister J'onzz has bothered giving them one. Interstellar warfare only makes sense in a very limited range of situations, and given that the mothership landed in Smallville of all places and that the fighter craft are not just killing anything that fights back but also attacking concentrations of civilians... He seems to have gone for some sort of 'because we're evil' motive.

Kaldur holds up his right hand in an attempt to prevent further bickering. "The alien weapons are far too dangerous to risk you recovering Lantern Gardner's lantern."

Stupid arbitrarily powerful weapons. Power ring shields are designed to take the worst the universe can throw at their bearers. If anything could down sector Lanterns like Jordan and Stewart that easily then everyone would be using them and power rings would be obsolete. But no. Strength D. No saves for you.

"How about looting the Fortress then? Bound to be some decent weapons in there."

"Perhaps. Time permitting. But please, try to take this scenario seriously."

"Right. Sorry." I lean back in my chair and strum the fingers of my right hand on the top of the box containing the illusory representation of my personal lantern. Ah heck. "Ring, display New York, Inwood and the Themysciran Embassy."

An image appears in front of me. Inwood has been badly shot up. Just check... Yes, Alan's house is one of those that has been hit. The Embassy has similarly ceased to be. Their armoury should still be intact, but if the aliens' bullshit weapons could shoot through the spells on Diana's bracers then it might not be.

"Status of Green Lantern A-."

Wait, does everyone here know Alan's name? Wallace does, but Artemis didn't seem to last night, and I haven't got around to asking his permission to tell people yet.

"A zero three."

"Unable to locate."

Hm. Well, that's realistic, at least. Would have been nice if I could have handed Guy's lantern to illusionary Alan but I suppose just assembling a new Justice League and making this their problem would rather defeat the object of the exercise.

There's a chime from the ring, indicating the presence nearby of an alien fighter patrol. I dismiss New York and set the ring to monitor them. If their guns are cheaty bullshit then so far their sensors have proven not to be. Which is odd, because a gravity sensor would detect the bioship if I didn't actively disrupt it, and Earth can build those. Or at least salvage them. No, alien ships are pulling away. I can't think of any advantage they might gain by letting us carry on if they knew that we are here.

"Orange Lantern." I look around at Kaldur. "Try to work out which part of the alien ship serves as their communications array. We will need to destroy that first when we make our ambush."

"Scanning." The feedback makes little sense to me in terms of Earth aircraft, but... "I think that red glowing thing on the end of the right wing is their communications node. There's complex energy patterns being emitted from it on all of those fighters I've scanned so far. Ring can't decode it though -which is bullshit, by the way-."

"Orange Lantern-."

"But it is! Decryption is hardly an original use. Fine. I can't decode it. It could be reports, it could be a remote control system, it could be part of a hive mind. Could be anything, but I can't detect any other likely candidates."

"What if they're telepathic?"

I look at M'gann and shake my head. "I can't detect anything like an organic brain. If they're telepathic then it's nothing like any form of telepathy I've seen before. Of course, that doesn't mean that isn't what's happening."

Kaldur nods. "We will simply have to hope that you are correct. And work quickly in case you are not. Miss Martian, since they do not seem able to detect us through the bioship's stealth, it is logical to assume that they will be unable to detect you whilst you are invisible. Destroying the target vessel's communication device will fall to you. Orange Lantern, what can you tell of their propulsion system?"

Ring? Uuuuuh.

"There's no exhaust gas, no ionic discharge and no significant heat that I can detect. Based on those ship designs Lantern Gardner showed me I'd say it's probably some sort of gravity control system. And either their inertial dampeners are ridiculously good or there aren't any actual crew inside those things. I'd guess that it's located at the base of the main module, but none of the designs that I've seen are similar enough to this that I'd want to bet on it."

Kon shrugs. "We just want the gun, right? Why not just smash everything else, just to be sure?"

Wallace smiles. "Sounds like a plan to me."

I roll my eyes. "That's not a plan, that's an aim."

Kaldur gets up and walks to M'gann's pilot station. Teekl watches him go, then jumps into his chair and curls up.

"Artemis, we will drop you off before the attack begins. Get to a place of concealment and await my order. Miss Martian, once Artemis is in place move us in to fifty meters behind the target. Once we are in position exit the bioship and get into position as close as you can to the target. I will leave with Artemis and get underneath the alien craft. Superboy, once the ship is immobile board it and remove the main gun. You and Miss Martian will then attach it to the bioship. Orange Lantern, take control of the bioship once Miss Martian leaves. Be ready to take evasive action at the slightest sign it has detected us. We cannot afford to lose this ship. Robin, Kid Flash, I want you prepared to help with stripping the alien ship as soon as it is defeated. In addition to the main gun it would be most helpful to have access to its memory banks. Teekl-." He looks at his chair, where my cat now has taken up residence. "-stay exactly where you are. Are there any questions?"

"Yeah." Robin looks at M'gann. "How long will it take the bioship to.. connect to the alien gun?"

"I can't be completely sure. I'd guess a few minutes, and we won't be able to use camouflage mode while it's happening."

Ring?

"Two other alien fighters within easy intercept distance. Even if we get the communications array, they could probably see us."

Kaldur nods. "We will simply have to be ready for them."

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Contingency 6

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Gotham City

15th October

18:53 GMT -5

I tend to walk quickly when not restrained by the presence of others. In fact, my legs were the only part of my body that could be said to be in reasonable shape before I came here. But this evening I've decided to slow things down a bit. Left hand in pocket, smiling, right hand waving at people and wishing them a good evening. I've gotten more than a few stares but some people have nervously returned my greeting. A street light flickers and I fix it with a nod. Then it hits me: I'm trying to be Benton Fraser.

Whow.

I check both ways before crossing the road to Artemis' apartment building in something of a daze. Due South. Haven't thought about that for years. How old was I when that series was on? Fourteen? Younger? I step aside as two men walk out of the door of the building, then push my way inside. Ring? Ninety five? I was eleven? Whow. Have to see if I can get hold of it here.

I nod at the concierge, a young white man with long and slightly straggly looking hair. His eyes flick up from the textbook he's looking at as I walk over to the intercom panel. Just as shiny as I left it on my last visit. Still says 'Crock' next to the box for flat 302. Did she decide to keep the name? I assumed that she'd change it back and she hasn't corrected me when I've called her that, but I never actually asked. Should I ask? Eh, no point worrying about it, she'll tell me if she finds it annoying.

I press the intercom button, hear a buzz and wait.

"Yeah?"

"Good evening, Artemis." I go to say my name and realise that I can't. "Me.. here."

I hear an amused snort. "Hey Paul. Come on up."

"With you in a moment."

I step away and head towards the door to the stairs. Wait, wasn't there something..? I take a quick look around. Last time I was here I did a few repairs with the ring, but-. The windows! A quick look shows that the concierge chap isn't looking now that I've shown that I'm supposed to be here. Clean. What looks like twenty years of accumulated dirt and bird muck evaporates from the small windows over the door. Ah, why not? I extend the effect upwards, cleaning the front windows of every apartment. The wave of orange might be noticeable to anyone looking directly at it, but it only lasts a moment and isn't all that bright. Eh, and what if someone does notice?

Plenty of sunshine heading my way.

Through the door that should probably be a fire door just a moment, there we go- and up the stairs. Getting too into it, I have to come to a sudden halt halfway up the second flight and move to the side to avoid running into an elderly black woman. She gives me a surprised and mildly affronted look for a moment. Yes, probably a bit juvenile.

"Good evening."

"Oh, I know you. You're that young English man been seein' Paula's daaghtah."

"Um... W-which one do you think..?"

"The older one. The one in prisaan."

"I've been visiting Jade, certainly."

Her look is now amused and appraising. "Good! That woman, she had a lotta hard times. It's good that someone's looking out for her, not like that husband of hers."

"Ex-husband..?"

She nods, and starts down the stairs again. Alright, on to- And she pinched my bum. She pinched my bum, and now she's chortling down to the entrance. She's sixty if she's a day and... Alright then. A short walk down the corridor takes me to number 302 and I take a bunch of purple carnations out of subspace before knocking on the door. I've got the actual thank you for having me gift set up for later, but I thought it might be nice-.

Artemis pulls open the door, looks at my face, looks at the flowers and then looks away.

I blink.

…

No, I'm actually seeing it.

"Are you wearing a dress?"

Okay, that was a bit stupid, but I've never seen-. Is she blushing? Then she snatches the flowers and walks back into the flat.

"I'm sorry, it's just I've never seen you wearing-."

"I have other clothes!"

"Well, yes, of course..."

Err, okay. I follow her as she leads me into the kitchen. Oh! No, bad. Slippers, and clean the floor.

"Mom, do we have a vase I can put these in?"

Ms Nguyen is standing at the cooker, stirring a pot. Doesn't smell too offensive. Actually, smells kind of nice. She turns around as we walk in. "Oh! Those are.. carnations? I didn't know there were purple carnations."

"Um. It's a fairly recent thing. There's an Australian biotech company that modified them using genes taken from petunias."

She takes the bouquet from Artemis and sniffs them. I bought them from one of the main greenhouse complexes in Australia just before coming here, so they're as fresh as they get.

"There should be one in the cupboard in the living room."

Artemis nods and walks back out while her mother props the bouquet up in the sink.

"Dinner should be ready in about ten minutes. It's been a while since I've cooked anything Vietnamese. Artemis and.. Jade.. both grew up in the US."

I admit, I spent some time since getting the invite preparing myself for worst case scenarios concerning Vietnamese cooking. Snakes and snails are both very real risks here. But, I've never eaten either. For all I know they're delicious, and that's sort of the point of this.

"How's your physical therapy going? I don't see any crutches..?"

"Very well, thank you." She walks back to the stove. "I'm not back to full fitness yet, but-"

Artemis comes back in with a glass vase decorated with flowers. Her mother takes it from her and puts it under the tap to pour water in.

"-I can walk around and use the stairs on my own. I'll leave the acrobatics to Artemis." She smiles. "For now, anyway."

I nod. Shouldn't be too much of a surprise that she'd ideally like to get back to full fighting fitness. And if Batman can drag his sons around when he fights crime...

With the vase half filled with water Paula removes the flowers from their paper binding and inserts them into it. She moves them around a bit until she's happy with the arrangement, then puts the vase in the middle of the kitchen table. Then she walks back to the cooker, stirs the pot once more before turning her head to look at me.

"Did you have any trouble getting here?"

"No, not really. There were these three guys who seemed to think they owned the street, but they don't think that anymore."

Artemis looks interested. "Why, what did you do?"

"Scared them a little, then gave them a pizza." I shrug. "Didn't really see any point in starting a fight. It's too nice a day for it."

"You.. gave them a pizza."

"Yes. You remember I said that I wanted to test what happens to things I put in subspace?"

"You gave them a subspace pizza. Did you check it was alright before you gave it to them?"

Um. Whoops.

"It.. looked fine. And I don't think they were going to eat it. Seemed to think I might have laced it with Smilex for some reason. Oh, and I bumped into an old woman when I was coming up the stairs and she pinched me."

Paula looks a little puzzled. "Misses Owens? Where did she pinch you?"

"Well..." I shift a little uncomfortably, and clench. Paula notices and tries to suppress her smile. Failing, she turns back to the stove. Artemis just snorts.

back

Contingency 7

next

16th October

17:22 GMT -5

I close my eyes and see the world through the bioship's senses. Took a while to work out exactly the mental attitude and ring constructs necessary to replicate M'gann's connection to it, but it was time well spent. And Mister J'onzz hasn't decided to arbitrarily remove the ability either, which is nice. M'gann's in position behind the alien fighter which is holding position just outside the entrance to the Fortress of Solitude, a metre or so off the ground. Artemis is behind a snow bank to its right. I'm not completely sure that the snow will give her cover but it should conceal her precise location. Unless Mister J'onzz has decided to give them bullshit sensors after all. Kaldur's just coming up to position underneath the alien fighter. According to him the ice is thin enough for him to attack through.

Everyone except me has switched to thermally insulated Arctic camouflage. Robin raised the point that it might be worth upgrading my armour with the smart fabric they use but I countered that I'd still glow orange so there'd be little point. The rest of the team are ready for rapid deployment if the initial attack is a success. If it isn't, then we either leg it or I use the ring to force open the Fortress. I haven't actually scanned the real Fortress. It seemed that might be pushing my boundaries a bit, especially given my total non-relationship with Superman. Since I haven't seen any Kryptonian technology anywhere I can't even judge whether or not the risk would be worth it.

Kaldur's now in position. With the bioship's sensors and the ring I'm best placed to coordinate, especially since I pointed out that we don't know that the aliens can't detect telepathic broadcasts.

**Orange Lantern to Aqualad. Everyone is in position and ready to attack on your order. Two alien craft still within intercept range.**

**Acknowledged. Miss Martian, Artemis, target communications and the gravity drive. Now!**

I watch as the tip of the fighter's right wing buckles before being ripped clean off. I didn't detect any irregular outbound signals and it didn't seem to be in communion with its fellows, but the clock has definitely started ticking.

**Communications disabled.**

An arrow strikes the fighter low on its right side and a chunk of it ceases to be. It lurches in the air and then falls to the ice.

**Gravity drive disabled.**

The top mounted bullshit gun swivels in Artemis' direction and opens fire. Doesn't look like it got a precise fix on her, and the weapon doesn't seem to be penetrating the densely packed snow very well. It penetrates a little and then an oval of snow just disappears. Curious. Might be possible to defend against by using a larger bubble shield, rather than my usual construct armour.

I begin manoeuvring the bioship closer now that the target is downed. Kaldur's put on his light gear for this, his attack twisting the frozen waters of the ice sheet and causing it to buckle beneath the fighter. I'm not completely convinced that was necessary, but it does put him in melee range if any alien crew disembark and now that it's frozen to the ice the fighter will find it harder to take off if it has some sort of backup system. At least I persuaded him to stay underwater. I mean, for goodness sake, what would be the point of exposing himself when he can attack from below its arc of fire?

The bioship shakes as Kon launches himself at the fighter's turret. At this range it has no chance to traverse before he gets below its minimum elevation. He sticks his right arm through its outer hull armour to brace himself, then jabs his left forwards through the centre of the gun's 'stalk'. Red energy -some sort of plasma discharge?- crackles around him as he rips through, causing the turret to flop to the side. Once he sees that its lights have gone out he manoeuvres into a better position on the fighter's top surface, kneels, grips, and wrenches it free.

You know? Looks kind of like an Eldar Falcon now. No sign of any crew. No sign of secondary weapon systems either.

**Orange Lantern to Aqualad. Weapon disabled.**

**Understood. Miss Martian, Superboy, begin installing the weapon.**

I call up an image of the other two fighters as I deactivate the camouflage. The bioship lists slightly as Kon jumps onto the roof. He holds the gun in place while M'gann begins the joining process. One useful thing that's come out of this: first thing I'm doing once this session is over is getting a plasma gun for the real bioship. I've been so concerned with something permanent, some perfect solution, that I've been ignoring the possibility of abusing the shapeshifting capabilities of the ship to use something good enough. Just plug something into the hull and take it off once the mission's over. As long as it only needs electricity to function there's no problem.

**Rerouting systems to integrate weapon into ship's biomatrix.**

**Understood.** Kaldur forces the ice aside and jumps out onto the surface next to the fighter. **Artemis, return to the ship. Wallace, Robin, study the alien ship but be ready to leave at a moment's notice. Orange Lantern, status of the other fighters?**

**Still coming in this direction, no change in speed. I'll keep you appraised.**

Since the ring's translation and analysis functions have 'mysteriously' failed Robin and Wallace really are the best people on the team to try and identify memory storage units within the fighter. Robin's attaching what look like ultrasound probes to try and get a picture of the interior.

**Don't think that's gunna work, Rob. How about we go with Superboy's suggestion?**

Honestly, I'm with Wallace on this one. I try taking another look at the fighter's interior myself but none of what I see makes any sense to me. Maybe it would to Robin? Shame we can't do some sort of telepathic skill sharing network thing.

**I think I've got something. Aqualad, try cutting here and here.**

Kaldur brings his water bearers to bear on the spot indicated. Neither the ship's sense nor the ring can tell exactly what he's doing, but from the looks of it he's cutting through part of the red dome at the front. Incoming fighters? Uh oh.

**Aqualad, the enemy fighters appear to have spotted us and are accelerating. Yikes, they're moving fast. Estimate one minute to intercept, and I'll remind you that construct shields do not reliably stop their primary weapon.**

**Understood. We will have to hurry. Miss Martian, will the weapon be integrated with the bioship by the time they arrive?**

**No. Sorry Aqualad, it's too soon.**

I see Artemis reach the alien ship and put one of my arrows to her bow. **What direction are they coming from?**

**South west south. They're coming in low, twenty metres.**

She takes cover behind the bulk of the fighter's hull and takes aim. If I can't stop the beam with a barrier, what can I..? Ah, that might work.

**The biggest target here is the bioship and it's a sitting duck. Robin, do you need either of the alien ship's wings?**

**No. I think its primary data storage is behind here.**

Kaldur's finished cutting a hole and stands aside as Robin points a light inside.

**Miss Martian, can the bioship support the gun's weight yet?**

**It should be able to, yes.**

**Superboy, would you mind snapping off the alien fighter's wings? I can probably use them to block one shot each, at least.**

**On it.**

He jumps down, wraps his arms around the one on the left and squeezes until the armour breaks. I extend a tendril construct out of the rear door to take hold of it. If the aliens hit the bioship... I don't know what would happen. How much mass can those guns cope with? I move the ship to a hull down position behind the fighter, rear door towards my team mates so they can embark quickly. Kon crosses to this side and snaps off the other wing. Right. I move each of them into the line of fire between us and the enemy.

And here they come.

back

Contingency 8

next

Gotham City

15th October

19:16 GMT -5

"Which part of England are you from?"

Apparently, the stuff we're eating is called Far. As far as I can tell, it consists of a chicken broth with chicken pieces, onion, bean sprouts, peppers and some sort of leaves. The broth is spiced, but not so strongly or unpleasantly that I have to give the ring instructions to change it. There were sauces available. Artemis sprinkled an amber coloured one over her dish quite liberally, but I've been a good deal more conservative. After getting a stern look from her mother she was just able to stop herself laughing when I nervously tried my first bite.

I had no idea how to go about eating it. Paula provided me with a soup spoon and a fork in addition to chopsticks. They just have the chopsticks, so I thought I'd have a go without the aid of western implements. Before this evening I've never successfully used chopsticks before and I'm only managing it now with ring assistance.

"The south coast, just east of Brighton." Not actually all that close to Brighton, but it's the only place in that general area she might have heard of. "The village where I grew up is called Westham, but it doesn't exist in this parallel."

Paula frowns. "This parallel? I'm not sure what you mean."

"Oh. I haven't told..? Sorry, I'm just used to everyone knowing. I come from a parallel universe. Quite a lot like this one, a few differences."

Okay, no idea how to eat broth with sticks. I'm just going to have to use the spoon. And since the sticks are in my right hand and I don't want to dirty the table by putting them down, have to use the left hand. Haven't worked out how to use the ring to make myself ambidextrous yet.

"A.. parallel.. universe?"

I nod. Artemis makes an 'umm' noise as she swallows, and clicks her sticks together to get her mother's attention.

"They don't have magic or super powers or aliens."

"Well, we might have aliens somewhere. We just haven't met any, as far as I know."

"How did you get here?"

"Um. Not sure. There's a sort of mostly sealed Bleed tear thing in near Earth space where I came through, but no one in the League has been able to work out how it happened." I take a sip from my spoon and shrug. "I went to sleep in my bed at home and woke up in space here, this ring on my finger. And promptly freaked out, because where I'm from that sort of thing doesn't happen. Sat on the moon a bit until I calmed down enough to think clearly, then tried looking for home. Didn't find it."

Paula looks concerned. "Do your parents know where you are?"

"Prrrobably not. As I said, I don't know how I was transferred. There might be some sort of huge glowing hole in reality on my home parallel's end. Or, I might be a copy of me and the original me is carrying on with our life unaware that anything has happened. There's really no way for me to tell." I lower the spoon and look out of the window into the darkening city. "Mum's probably frantic, but I can't get back at the moment. Can't even send a message."

I don't like thinking about it. I can take my new environment, even enjoy it, but I hate being helpless. Bleed portals... I asked Guy about it. There are a few civilisations which make limited use of Bleed technology, but tracking an uncontrolled transition after the fact is supposed to be basically impossible. I can't fix it, and I probably never will be able to.

There's a pressure on my stick hand, and I jerk my head around to see Paula patting it. I give her a slight smile. No, shouldn't worry about it if I can't fix it. Keep me eyes and ears open, but, yeah. Hah, I suppose there might be a character remarkably like a recently disappeared Englishman appearing in DC comics even now. Have they done another bloody crisis lately? I remember something about a New 52 but the whole thing sounded so stupid it may well not have lasted. And this place is a lot calmer than I'd expect a post crisis DC-verse to look like.

"Anyway, erm, Pevensey and Westham Church of England primary school, Willingdon Secondary, followed by-" Here come the lies. "-a year and a half of gainful employment before my unscheduled planeshift."

Artemis frowns. "I thought you said you were an atheist."

"I am. Oh, no, that was just the name of the local primary, it wasn't a religious school in the sort of way you're thinking. I mean, okay, I'm still word perfect on a whole load of hymns and Saint Mary's was right next door, but it wasn't... Huh. I guess it was, actually."

I just thought of the place as normal, but I suppose that compared with the theoretically secular American state run schools it would seem a bit indoctrinatory. Wasn't like we did Bible readings in lessons or got taught that the world was only seven thousand years old or anything. And I still ended up an atheist.

"Saint Mary's is still there. Here. Worth a look if you're in the area. It's over nine hundred years old and-."

Artemis picks up her bowl, raises it to her lips and starts slurping. I blink, then look at my soup spoon and then back to her.

"Was I meant to be doing that?"

Paula suppresses a giggle. "That is the usual way to drink it. Though, I think your way is more... Stately."

Thank you, I think? Just doesn't feel right to do that with a soup bowl. I'll stick with the spoon, but maybe a bit faster?

"Most of the old buildings are still there. Here. You know. The building that's the reception classroom was built here, but it's a museum now and the rest of the school was never built. The castle's still there-."

Artemis hurriedly puts down the bowl. "Your village has a castle?"

"Yes. Well, it's called Pevensey Castle in the tourist brochures, but it's actually between Pevensey and Westham. The keep's in Pevensey, so maybe that's why it's called that? The outer wall was built by the Romans when it was a Roman fort and the Normans built the inner keep. It's pretty ruined, though. Hasn't been used for centuries." She looks sceptical. "I can take you there after dinner if you don't believe me."

Paula gives her a reproachful tap on the upper arm and she resumes her drinking.

"Compared to my home parallel the area that should be Westham was never really developed. Pevensey's bigger, and the village on the other side is a bit bigger but my house isn't there."

Think I've just about got all of the broth now. I start picking out the last few bits of bean sprout.

Paula looks a little puzzled by something. "You said that you are eighteen?"

I nod. "Yes?"

"And you had a job for over a year?"

"Yes? Oh! British compulsory education stops at sixteen. I could have gone on to college but I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do, there was a job going at a place that sounded interesting..."

Not sure whether or not the company I worked for would have employed a sixteen year old. Probably should try taking the conversation in another direction. Wait, what time is it in Vietnam? No, still a bit early for that. She said any time after six in the morning but I'd like to give her a bit longer.

Paula smiles. "I have some news in that regard."

Artemis jerks her head around. "You got a job! Mom, that's great!"

"I will just be working a checkout at the local supermarket, it isn't anything very exciting."

I beam at her. "Congratulations anyway."

That is good news. Quite aside from the extra income, employment is a major part of a person's sense of self worth. Even if it isn't a particularly exalted position -and far less than she can do- this is a big step towards reintegrating with society in general. For just about the first time since I got here I've effected a positive change in the world.

back

Contingency 9

next

16th October

17:26 GMT -5

The two enemy fighters skim us at high speed, throwing up clouds of loose snow. As they pass the pressure wave hits and for a moment I have to focus on stabilising the bioship. Artemis' position behind the hull shields her but Robin and Wallace are knocked flat for a moment before quickly getting back to work. Now that they've had a look at us the two fighters do a banked turn at the other side of the ice field, bleeding off speed and bringing their weapons to bear. Why were they banking? At their level of technological sophistication -to say nothing of their total lack of aerodynamics- they shouldn't need to bother.

I move the bioship around the downed fighter so that it's between us and its comrades again. Artemis runs around as well before kneeling, switching arrows and taking aim. The airborne aliens are finally making use of their inertia control, spinning and yanking themselves to the side in order to make themselves a more difficult target even as they charge their main guns. I doubt that she'd be able to hit with an Unmaker, so going with high explosive makes sense.

Ring, track enemy turrets and show targeting predictions.

Compliance.

I shift the wings I'm holding to the best intercept positions. Should I attempt to shoot them down myself? Energy pulses would be too slow and given that we're facing a worldwide invasion I don't think a power hog like the particle beam would be a good idea. Railgun it is then. Artemis looses at the enemy squadron a second before my railgun fires but my slug still hits home first. It impacts on the front dome of the fighter to the right and penetrates, but it doesn't seem to have done further damage. The explosive arrow reaches them and is detonated by its proximity fuse at the same moment they fire their main guns. Not sure if it was the force of the blast alone or a combination of that and their gravity control system but both of them are shoved sideways in the air, throwing off their shots. The beam from the one I hit strikes the ice sheet about ten metres to the left of the downed fighter. A chunk of ice disappears, but the beam cuts off almost immediately as the fighter readjusts. The beam from the other flickers over our heads for a fraction of a second but gets cancelled too.

The still-active fighters are keeping their distance, splitting up and moving around us in clockwise and anticlockwise directions respectively as Kaldur takes a second to assess the situation as I fire again.

**Robin, how much longer?**

Robin pulls a small and vaguely organic looking thing from inside the downed fighter. **I think these are part of its data storage system. Superboy, break the armor here.**

Artemis puts three Unmakers on her string as two of my slugs hit the anticlockwise fighter, causing its hull to wobble. Its return shot is pointed directly at the bioship and I shield the wing before blocking at what I hope to be a safe distance. The beam strikes the shield and in a flicker of light the wing segment is gone, shield along with it. It didn't feel like it was broken exactly, not as the Unmakers do. Weird. Artemis looses, but it's at her extreme range and none of the arrows hit. She reaches for a rocket propelled arrow as I swing the bioship aside to dodge the missed fighter's return fire.

**Aqualad, I either need to use heavier attacks or we need to leave.**

**Superboy, Kid Flash, into the bioship.**

I drop the ship down and Wallace and Kon board and hurry to their seats.

**Robin-.**

**I'm almost done.**

I stand, keeping my hands over the controls. "Superboy, take over, I'm needed outside."

He comes over to the pilot position. The clockwise fighter tries to slow for a more stable firing position but has to move again as the rocket arrows home in on it. A glancing hit buckles its left wing -damn, they're going to have reported in now, aren't they?- but it fires anyway and I'm forced to intercept the shot with my last wing. That one was targeted at their fallen comrade.

**Robin, they're targeting you.**

**Just a little longer.**

I nod to Kon and we swiftly switch positions. Right, now that I don't have to concentrate on that I transition to directly behind the fighter that's been ignoring my railgun. It jerks as I appear and tries to evade but this close it can't evade my particle beam projector. A purple beam bisects the fighter across its centre, causing the two parts to fall away from each other and detonate in the air. I glance at its partner and see it plummet to the ground as the damage to its wing cripples its manoeuvrability. Good show. Any others?

**Aqualad, reinforcements coming in from orbit. We really need to-.**

I watch as Artemis looses another Unmaker at the downed fighter. I see it reorientate its turret in her direction and begin to charge. I see Robin pull another processor thingy free from inside the first ship and start moving towards the bioship.

**Okay, I got-.**

The arrow hits and a chunk of the front of the fighter crumbles to nothing. Artemis throws herself aside as the dying fighter returns fire and I try to stick a shield in the way. Fortunately it overshoots, and Artemis comes up to her knees and launches a rocket arrow straight at the gun. The arrow accelerates away and strikes before the gun can recharge, wrecking it. Okay, done, now we can...

Wait. Where's R-?

**Robiiiiiiiiiinnnn!**

I feel M'gann's scream in my mind even as I transition to directly above the crippled fighter and destroy it utterly. For a moment I just watch it explode, numb. It just... Robin just died. I hear a whoosh as Wallace dashes out of the bioship to his friend's last location and I begin flying back.

Oh goodness.

"Rob!"

Wallace runs at the first fallen fighter and punches it in the front dome. The force of the attack overwhelms the already damaged ship and it jumps slightly before crumpling in on itself. His face is a picture of rage contained grief.

"They're dead! Every single alien is dead! If it's the last thing I do!"

O-orbital... They're still coming.

**Kaldur, Wallace, I'm sorry, but we need to get out of here.**

Kaldur walks over to Wallace and puts a hand on his shoulder. Wallace jerks away, leaning on the remains of the alien fighter and trying to collect himself. I know.. how close they are. Were. Come on, this is a comic book, there must be something we can do about that! Robin was.. was.. analysing the processor units from that fighter. Scan. No, they were destroyed as well. Um. The ship I just destroyed is too destroyed to have anything left, but the other? Yes, transition and cut. Three of them. I don't know what good they'll do...

I transition to the interior of the bioship and collapse into my chair as it hits me. It's not just Robin. Alan, Diana, Guy... And the world, so many dead. Right. Organise and prioritise. We need to leave before the reinforcements get into firing range. I have no idea where to. Kon looks at me in shock.

"Is Robin really..?"

I nod, still not quite comprehending myself. Our friend just died. I mean, after the Reds attacked the mountain I knew something like this was a possibility, particularly today with the opposition we're facing. But...

Artemis walks in and sits in her chair, head down. She unslings her bow and starts fiddling with it. Wallace and Kaldur are next in. Wallace's fists are clenched, muscles taut. He throws himself into his chair. Kaldur slowly approaches Kon and lays a hand on his shoulder.

**Miss Martian, is the gun fully interfaced?**

**Y-yes. Yes. Stealth should work now.**

He bows his head. "Superboy, take us away from here."

back

Contingency 10

next

Gotham City

15th October

19:23 GMT -5

Before today I had never heard of the Docynia Fruit. Having eaten a bowl flavoured with ginger and sugar I find myself wondering if it would be rude to ask for seconds. Artemis notices me staring at my spoon.

"Finding it.. interesting?"

"Noo. Wait. Yes. Um..."

Artemis snorts while Paula looks confused. Artemis waves her spoon. "Paul told me about one time at his high school, when a Chinese kid offered him a duck's foot and he ate it to be polite even though he hated it. When they asked if he liked it he said he found it 'interesting'."

"But this I actually quite like."

Paula nods slowly and gives me an arch look. Glass! I pick up my glass of milk and take a drink.

Artemis wrinkles her nose. "I don't know how you drink so much of that stuff. We have soda, you know."

Escape! Thank you Radio 4.

"Genetics. You see, all infant mammals produce a chemical called lactase, which lets them digest milk better. Obviously that's so they can feed from their mothers. In Humans it usually stops being produced when they're somewhere between two and five years old, but, Europeans-" I bring my hands to my chest. "-have been drinking so much milk for so long that we've actually mutated to produce lactase our entire lives."

Artemis stares at me in disbelief. "Really. Did you just make that up?"

I shake my head. "No, honest. Paula, you've got the 'milk, yuk' version of the gene and both of your daughters inherited it." I raise the ring. "It's actually an easy fix if you want me to-."

Artemis raises her right hand in a warding gesture. "No. I'm fine with not drinking milk. Where did you even hear about that?"

"BBC Radio 4. There was a guy on who was doing some research on historically recent human evolutionary change. That was one of the ones they talked about."

"What other ones were there?"

"Um. It was a while ago, I'm not sure... I think black people tend to recover from very loud noises slightly faster."

"Aaand Asians?"

"I remember them saying that Japanese people starve slightly slower. I don't think they said anything about other countries."

Ring, status of… Oh, good. Best not keep her waiting.

"Oh, there was something else I.. thought I'd bring, as well as the flowers."

Paula smiles. "Paul, you didn't need to bring anything at all."

"With a power ring I don't really have an excuse for not doing everything I can, and, turns out, 'everything' is quite a lot." I push back my chair and get up, taking a 2D screen out of subspace and attaching it to a spare area of wall. It isn't quite 2D, but it's pretty darn close. Even rolls up.

"We don't need a new TV, Paul."

"Artemis, this isn't a television. Ring, access satellite aaand phone."

The ring rings. Aaaand nothing happens. Ah. We went through this but I'm not sure she-.

The screen comes to life, the image... A woman's chest. Come on, we talked about tha-. The woman sits back, revealing herself to be an elderly Asian woman. Nguyen Thi Nhung, eighty one, Paula's mother and Artemis and Jade's grandmother. She gives them a smile and a royal wave.

"Hello Paula! Hello little Artemis! Oh, you're not so little anymore."

Paula's eyes are wide. "M-mom?"

I'm still not sure that I've judged this right. "Yes, I.. spent some time in Vietnam this week. Um. You know, tidied her garden up a bit. Redid the village's electrical systems, phone lines.. and sewers and.. storm drains. And put in some streetlights, and there's a properly tarmaced road to the nearest national road now. Hah, that took a while. Oh, she also doesn't have osteoporosis anymore."

Silence from my hosts. Mrs Nguyen Senior leans around to try and get a better angle on me, before pointing at me with her right hand. "He is a good boy. Very patient, teaching me how to use this."

I nod at her and go into clearly enunciating for an old person mode. "I thought you did very well, Misses Nguyen."

She had a bit of age related memory loss. I fixed that, but she didn't want improved milk drinking either. The screen I left with her is a bit bigger than this one so she can get a better view of the whole room. Paula gets to her feet a little unsteadily and walks towards the screen. I step aside as she approaches.

"Hello Mom. How have you been?"

I feel Artemis' hand on my shoulder and turn my head to face her. She nods towards the open door. "Come on."

I follow her out, Paula and Mrs Nguyen's conversation disappearing into the background. She leads the way into the living room and shuts the door behind me as I shuffle nervously in the middle of the floor. I remember a comic where Power Girl? Or was it Supergirl? One of them said something about feeling a little awkward that they could join in a fight and effortlessly do what a whole team couldn't. My DPS isn't at Earth 1 Kryptonian level but now I sort of see where she's coming from.

"Did I..? Was that alright? I mean I wasn't really..."

"The last time we saw Grandma was at Grandpa's funeral. That was about eleven years ago. We flew over there, but I don't really remember it."

Eleven years ago would have been while Paula was still active as Huntress. Artemis sits in front of an armchair, her back against its front with legs curled up next to her. I sit opposite her, cross legged. She doesn't look straight at me.

"Mom gets letters from her and from one of my cousins. I've spoken to her on the phone a few times but I only recognized her from photographs."

"Originally I was just going to teach her how to use Skype but things sort of snowballed 'cause.. their phone lines weren't really good enough and they use generators rather than... Well."

I shrug. I sort of accidentally your grandmother's whole village. Is that bad?

"So you just... Everything."

"Yyyes."

"This can't be because you still feel guilty about.. our argument."

"No. Two reasons really. The first one's pretty simple. We're superheroes. What's our job?"

She frowns. "Stop bad people? No, you told Luthor-."

I nod. "I wanted to make the world better, not just stop it getting worse. The ring-" I wave it. "-only lets me act on selfish motives but you, your mother and your sister are my friends. Your good is my good. There's thousands of isolated villages who could benefit from stuff like that and I can only help the one where I've got some personal connection. But if I can't even do that-" I shrug. "-then what's the point of me?"

She gives a shallow nod. "So, what's the other reason?"

"That one's a bit more complicated."

back

Contingency 11

next

16th October

17:36 GMT -5

Without a specific destination in mind I just transitioned us to a section of the US/Canada border which the aliens are ignoring. Thanks to the ring I'm not shaking, but I don't know... I've never had a friend die suddenly before. I'm hesitating to say anything because I don't want to risk causing offence. Wallace is clearly taking it the hardest, tremors of rage running through his body. M'gann has been weeping quietly since it happened. Artemis has removed and replaced every arrow left in her quiver at least twice now.

I need to get it together. I am an Orange Lantern. What do I want?

!Team mine!

Easy. I want everyone back. I want the aliens gone, killed, whatever. And I want those of my team mates who are still alive to remain that way. That's first, then. I turn my chair and lean over to Artemis.

"Artemis?"

She doesn't look up.

"Artemis?" I lean forwards and tap her lightly on the upper right arm with my right hand. She jumps slightly then looks at me. "I didn't want to push before, but given what just happened-."

"You want to upgrade me."

"As a matter of priority, yes."

"Do you think it would have helped-."

She cuts off and looks at the floor. I admit, I hadn't been pushing Robin quite as I'd been pushing her, but he's.. he'd been active longer. He must have known what was available? I did tell him I'd be happy to-. No. Not productive.

"It might, and it will certainly help you."

She keeps looking down. "Do it."

"Which..?"

"Strength. I wanna break them apart with my bare hands."

Not the most efficient... Uh. Ring, Danner Formula upgrade. An orange strobe passes over her as the ring makes the indicated changes. It only takes a second or two. She holds up her right hand, clenching and unclenching it.

"I don't feel any different."

"You won't. Not until you try doing something. Here."

I take a small steel rod out of subspace and pass it to her. She takes it in her right fist and bends it easily with her thumb. I return it to subspace. She picks up her bow and pulls lightly on the string.

"Thought it'd be harder to compensate."

"Only when you're under st-."

"Naah! Ghaah!" I twist around and see Wallace beating the instrument panel in front of him. "Aah! Guh! Aaaauhh!"

"There will be time to mourn later." Kaldur gets to his feet. "For now, we have a job to do: defend the Earth, and ensure that Robin's sacrifice is not in vain."

"No." I wave my right index finger at him. "The death of my team mates is not acceptable to me."

Wallace half rises, his eyes fixed on me. "You can't fix dead, Oh El!"

"Certainly I can. You appear to have forgotten that a little over a month ago I stole a Lazarus Pit from Ra's al Ghul." I raise my left hand and create an image of it. "The League's been keeping it in a warehouse in Cleveland which... The aliens are ignoring."

Wallace's eyes widen. "We can get him back?"

Kaldur shakes his head. "Using untested mystic artefacts-."

Wallace turns on him. "It's not untested, Ra's has been using it for centuries!"

I hold up my right hand. "Wallace. He's the only one who knows how it works, and it requires at least a small tissue sample. Which we don't have. I wanted to make you aware of the possibility, but it's going to be a while before we can use it safely."

He nods. He's still shaking slightly but his relief is palpable.

Kaldur seems less impressed. "And if it cannot be made to work?"

"Then when this madness is over I will find a way to circumvent my obligation to remain in this star system and go and get the parts needed for a white power ring. Or use some other technique. When I say something is not acceptable, I mean it."

M'gann seems to recover slightly. "W-where do we go next?"

Hmm.

"The Hall of Justice." Kaldur turns back to M'gann. "The Human race must know that there are still heroes defending them."

Um?

"Begging your pardon, Aqualad, but is announcing our continued existence on a channel the aliens may be monitoring really a good idea?"

He turns to me. "You have a suggestion?"

"Well, if there's one man on Earth who's prepared for an alien invasion, it's going to be Lex Luthor. Why don't I get in touch?"

Kon squints. "Luthor?"

"It's his planet too." I generate an image of the LexCorp tower in Metropolis. The buildings around it look somewhat the worse for wear but Mister Luthor's tower stands proud behind an ovoid energy shield. A small swarm of alien fighters are pouring weapon fire into it for no apparent effect, though there is no return fire at all. I hold the image up so everyone can see it. "Worth looking into?"

Kaldur nods. "Attempt communication. We need all the help we can get."

Ring, contact Mister Luthor.

Compliance.

I hear a ringing.

"This better be important." Mister Luthor picking up his own phone?

"Mister Luthor, Orange Lantern two eight one four. How are you holding up?"

"Orange..." He exhales. "Better than the rest of Metropolis. How many of you are left?"

"Not many. How secure is your building?"

"Oh, it should be safe. For another minute or so, at least."

"Your.. shield..?"

"A special project. An incomplete one, it won't hold. I've told the rest of the staff to evacuate, though I don't know how far they'll get."

"What about you?"

"The activation of LexCorp special projects is tied to me, personally. If I leave my office it will shut down, and any chance my employees have..."

Damn. "Is there.. anything..?"

"Your ring. I presume it has near infinite data storage?"

"Yes I.. I think so."

"Can you open a connection to my desk computer?"

Ring, do it.

Compliance.

"Should be on now."

Datastream detected.

"I'm sending you LexCorp's entire technical database. Beat them for us, Orange Lantern."

On the image the barrier starts to contract around the building.

"I'll.. I'll try."

"Is my son..?"

I look over at Kon. The ring stimulates my auditory nerves directly, there's no sound for him to overhear.

"Yes, he's here."

"Then that's something, I suppose."

"You know, it's... I was going to send this ring to you. If I knew I was going to die."

"Hm. I'm sorry to deny you the opportunity. It seems that you'll simply have to-."

The building disappears, and I hear only static.

back

Contingency 12

next

16th October

17:36 GMT -5

Artemis is dead.

I'm a little surprised by how much that is affecting me. It's certainly true that I liked her but I had assumed that at this point I was a bit more ruthless than this. Shouldn't believe my own hype, I suppose. M'gann's sobbing at the pilot's station while Wallace shakes with impotent rage.

Assuming we win, I'll make time to assimilate Ra's al Ghul and resurrect her. I wonder if I can network the knowledge of construct Lanterns without having to wait for them to speak to one another? If I remember the comics correctly -and if the same rules apply here- Lazarus Pits can only be created in certain places and will only work a certain number of times. Shouldn't be a problem. There are only so many people I care about enough to bring back.

Wait a moment. Why is this making Wallace angry? His uncle died under two hours ago and they were very close. His parents live in the suburbs of Central City so they might still be alive, but virtually everyone else he knows is dead and this is what gets him? That.. could happen, but something feels off. Were they romantically involved? I didn't notice anything, but I'm not always the most observant. Hmm.

Mister Black says that one way to detect telepathic interference is to compare one's own memories of one's own actions and of the actions of others and see if they still make sense to you. Mister Scott may have been looking for me to be something I'm not, but I was fond of him. Princess Diana too. When I confirmed Mister Scott's death earlier today, I.. shrugged. I feel remorse, even guilt now for my earlier lack of empathy, but at the time I thought of it as an inconvenience.

Why?

And the others. Richard loves Mister Wayne, but when we saw him die... I remember him smiling. Why would he..? Are my memories being altered? Hard to check. Nothing sticks out as inappropriate, but if the practitioner were skilled...

"Naah! Ghaah!" I turn my head and see Wallace beating the instrument panel in front of him. "Aah! Guh! Aaaauhh!"

"There will be time to mourn later." Kaldur gets to his feet. "For now, we have a job to do: defend the Earth, and ensure that Artemis' sacrifice is not in vain."

Is she even..? No, it doesn't matter. Someone is fucking with us and no one gets to do that.

M'gann turns to him, grateful for his sense of direction. "Back to the cave?"

I raise my right hand. "A moment, Aqualad."

"If you wish to say a few words..."

"No. I may activate a contingency, later, but at the moment I have a different concern. Does our recent behaviour not seem... Strange, to anyone else?"

Kaldur's eyes narrow. "If you believed you had a better plan-."

"No, I did not mean to criticise in that sense. I meant, Robin, your father just died. M'gann, Wallace, your uncles. Kaldur, you always spoke with the utmost respect and affection for King Orin and yet when we heard of his death you were unmoved. All of you were. We are all displaying greater grief over the death of a young woman we have barely known for two months."

Kaldur's eyes open fully as he thinks about it, but he shakes his head. "If it were... Shock..."

"No, you are reinterpreting. Remember what you felt at the time."

They're all facing me now. Eyes drop to the floor as they try to reinstate.

Robin frowns. "I didn't.. feel anything. I was.. I think I was expecting it. But that doesn't make sense. I..."

I watch as Kaldur forces his face to relax. "What do you believe to be happening?"

"Someone is affecting our minds."

Wallace squints. "Who? I mean, we're being invaded by aliens-."

"Are we? How do we know that?"

"Well..." He blinks.

"Insidious, isn't it? This is why -with the greatest respect, M'gann- I will never be completely comfortable with telepathy."

She shakes her head. "I haven't felt anything, but if you're right I wouldn't remember it if I had."

Kaldur nods. "If our minds have been altered, what do you intend to do about it?"

"I have sought out additional tuition on the subject of counter-telepathy techniques." I raise my left hand to the side of my head, ring pressed to my skin. "A sufficiently strong ring-generated feedback pulse should cause such agonising pain to an attacker that they will either back off or lose consciousness. M'gann, if you have any presence in my mind, withdraw it and shield yourself."

Kaldur frowns. "If the alterations to our memories have already been made, would they not simply be unable to amend them further?"

"No. I have experienced it before; implanted false memories should have broken as soon as we became aware of them. Someone is continually doing this."

"I am not completely convinced. Still, if you are right..." Kaldur nods. "Do it."

"Mindfray."

Oooouughghgh. I clamp my teeth shut with a grimace. The main drawback with this technique is the pain and disorientation it inflicts on the use-.

"Aaaaagh!" M'gann seizes hold of the sides of her head and screams! I told the silly woman to shield herself! I can take this, but the whole point is that telepaths-.

Wallace dashes to her side. "Hey, you're hurting M'gann!"

"Spill over. I.. -mreh!- warned her."

Or perhaps not. I narrow my eyes. Why would she do this? Or not her. After all, that isn't her natural form. Could I distinguish between her and another Martian? I never bothered scanning Mister J'onzz, I've never been to Mars...

M'gann bends over, screaming silently. I find myself curious as to what-.

"Stop it. Stop it now." Kaldur looks serious.

He's being stupid.

"No. I will not tolerate this mental interference. Ring, increase inten-."

He grabs my arm and tries to pull it away from my head. He's strong -far stronger than a man of his musculature should be- but I'm stronger still. The others are on their feet now, undecided as to how to act. Ugh. If they think I'm killing M'gann they should attack me. If they believe me then they should restrain Kaldur. Ditherers.

"Ring, increase intensity!"

Orange energy spirals around my head and-

-purple mists-

-and I snap open my eyes. I'm looking at the ceiling of the training area in the mountain. I push up to a sitting position as my team mates similarly begin to show signs of life. I rise to my feet and look to the middle of the circle to where Mister J'onzz is kneeling on the floor clutching his head. Three strides bring me over to him and I grab him by the front of his uniform and haul him up to my eye level.

"Completely. Safe. Is it. Sir!?"

"BAAAAGH!" I slam him into the ground.

"Orange Lantern, that's enough! Stand down!" I meet Batman's stare with my own, orange energy crackling around my body.

"It is not enough. It is not nearly enough." I release Mister J'onzz and stride past him in the direction of the lifts. "Once he has recovered ask him about his stunning display of incompetence this day, and do not even suggest such training sessions again."

back

Contingency 13

next

16th October

17:41 GMT -5

We materialise over the outskirts of Washington D.C. and I immediately begin scanning for both aliens and human resistance.

"Three alien fighters making attack runs against a US army position outside the Capitol building."

The ring shows me a small group of people running down a street just as another alien squadron turns the corner. The turret glows and the people are incinerated. Another fires a red energy beam from what we thought was its communications device at a car someone is using in an attempt to escape. The driver tries to swerve but the first shot melts the left rear of the vehicle, bringing it to a halt. The second pierces the engine and the car explodes, killing those inside.

"S.. six other fighters making attack runs at everything they can see. Next nearest alien fleet concentration is Metropolis."

Kaldur nods. "Miss Martian, plot an intercept course for the closest alien ship. It's time to test our new gun."

"Wouldn't it be better if I handled the alien fighters? Does... I mean, can we fire while camouflaged?"

Kaldur looks at M'gann. She thinks for a moment. "We should be able to. It... I don't know exactly how much power the gun takes and anyone who's watching can see where the shot comes from, but the stealth system will keep working."

A squadron of three alien fighters flies across our front, swooping down on the Washington waterfront. Kaldur points. "Take us in, as close as possible."

The scenery tilts and we accelerate after the rear fighter. I don't know whether they're just idling or going full pace, but the bioship is a lot faster than them. I suppose it would be too much to hope that the Martians would come to help us? No, M'gann said that it would take months for them to get here anyway. Could I transport them here? I could...

We're at point blank range when -with a quiet crackling sound- our stolen gun turret fires. The fighter disappears in a wave of golden light which spreads out from the point of impact. It's gone in a second and we accelerate after the second, then the third. They have no chance to respond before they're eliminated. Whow. A few ships like this... Fuck it, I'll just steal them, it'll take the Martians months to send someone to arrest me.

Kaldur nods. "Is the power use acceptable?"

M'gann closes her eyes for a moment. "Yes. The gun doesn't really use much power at all."

"Then our next target is the squadron attacking the Capitol Building."

"Ah?" Kon half raises his right hand for a moment. "Should we try and get more of the aliens' guns? I mean, shooting them doesn't seem to leave anything behind."

M'gann thinks about it. "I could drop you down on top of one of them and shoot the other two?"

I look at Artemis, who nods. "Drop me too."

Kaldur frowns. "Using your specialist arrows at that range-."

I shake my head. "Artemis volunteered for augmentation. She's not much weaker than Kon now."

He looks her over. "Very well then. Do not endanger yourselves unnecessarily, but anything we could salvage would be very useful."

She and Kon get up from their seats and walk over to next to where the floor opening normally appears. I prepare to transition us, but the bioship easily crosses the distance from the waterfront to the Capitol Building in seconds. The US military position consists of four Abrams tanks and thirty or so infantry. No dedicated anti-air, not even infantry borne homing missiles.

The floor iris opens. Artemis clenches her right fist. "So, how exactly..?"

Kon's already watching for his target. "Just grip onto the armour then hit it. Really hard."

"Oh-kay. I can do that."

The alien fighters start shooting their secondary weapons at the tanks as we come up to them. Kon leaps down as we pass the first, then we bank right and Artemis throws herself at the second. Down a little and our main gun takes care of the third. The infantry has scattered away from the tanks, two of which are destroyed as their armour is utterly overpowered by the alien beam weaponry. Wonder if we should salvage those as well?

I watch their attack through the front window. Kon falls onto his ship just ahead of its turret. He crouches, grips its armour with his left hand to brace himself and then brings his right fist down over his head in a powerful thump. A section of its upper surface just crumples and he has to shift position and get a better grip as it wobbles in the air. Another blow and the armour at the bottom of the fighter explodes and he hangs on as it tumbles from the air.

Artemis lands directly on the turret and grabs on for dear life. Should I have pointed out that a fall from this height won't hurt her anymore? Of course, grabbing on at her new strength results in the turret 'arm' crunching and going dead. The area around the 'gun' bit is so crushed that it falls off due to its own weight, nearly taking her with it as it goes. The fighter bucks and she's thrown forward, sliding over its armour and nearly falling off the front before forcing her fingers through the armour over the top of the forward dome. Once she's sure that she's not going to fall she pulls back her right fist and punches it right in the centre of the dome. It breaks easily and she sinks in up to her elbow. Recovering, she shoves it in the rest of the way before pulling its innards out. When the fighter doesn't immediately fall out of the sky she grips the interior of the dome and wrenches it to the side. It cracks, and she rips it clear from its housing before assaulting the inside. A moment later it stops in the air, tips nose down and falls from the sky.

The fighter Kon is on comes in at a low angle and he hangs on as it slides along the ground, coming to a halt just in front of the assembled soldiers. An officer I don't immediately recognise steps forwards and says something to him as M'gann brings the bioship in and turns it around for us to exit. The position also allows her to keep the gun pointed at the most likely route of attack for the remaining fighter craft. Kaldur walks towards the rear hatch and the rest of us get up to follow him. Ooh, should probably check on Artemis.

**Orange Lantern to Artemis. You still in one piece?**

**Think my boots have had it, but yeah. Gimme a sec to get a grip on this thing.**

We walk down the ramp to the cheers of the assembled soldiers and Kaldur leads the way over to Kon and the officer, a general, judging by the rank insignia.

"See, it is Superman." One of the soldiers elbows the guy standing next to him. "Told'ja he wouldn't leave us out here alone."

"I don't know. Looks kinda young. Where's the cape?"

"I'm not Superman."

Yeah, whispering near a man with super hearing. That'll work. Wonder if those two actually knew Kal-El?

"I know that." The General takes a step towards him "But right now I don't care. You wear the 'S' and you got the job done."

The soldiers to my left step back and raise their weapons. Turning, I see the fighter Artemis took down rise into the air and flip onto its roof as she gets a good enough grip on the inside of the hull to move it.

**Yuuughk.**

She's covered in some sort of black goop and her boots are indeed ruined. She kicks them off before leaping over to us and landing in a crouch.

Clean.

Kaldur walks up to the General, who salutes him. "General Samuel Lane, US army."

Lane. Lane? Oh, this could go very wrong. Or possibly not. The whole US government anti-superhero thing doesn't seem to have started in this timeline, so hopefully he's still rational about things like us.

"Aqualad, Justice League. We'll help you salvage as many of the aliens' cannons as possible. Then we start taking back what is ours."

back

Contingency 14

next

Gotham City

15th October

19:28 GMT -5

I hold out my left hand, palm upward.

"I was.. thinking about what you said, about not having done anything to earn this ring."

"Paul, you've-."

"Nuh nuh nuh." I wave and she stops to let me finish. "See, I haven't. But, most Lanterns don't. None of the local ones did. In fact, the only Lanterns I can think of who did something big enough to qualify for a ring in advance are Katma Tui and Bro'Dee Walker. For everyone else, it's... The seeker program doesn't check for achievements, it checks your personality. It assesses... Whether or not you're the sort of person who should be given a ring. And this ring doesn't have a seeker program. Someone -and I've no idea who- decided that I was a fit and proper person to have a power ring. That's.. a huge show of faith from them even before you consider that orange rings tend to induce insanity. I mean, with this.. I'm a one man post-scarcity civilisation."

I lean back a little.

"'Here you go, you're now one of the ten most powerful people in your Space Sector, and I reckon you're such a good guy I'm not even going to bother checking up on you.' I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to do enough to justify that faith. Even if I do everything I can I'm not sure there's an amount I could do that would justify it."

"You seem to be doing an okay job to me."

I look at the floor for a moment and smile a little. "Thank you. But you're.. kind of.. biased. And it's not as big a deal as you think."

"Not a big deal!"

"Taking on a group of men armed with guns when you're a baseline human with a pointy stick launcher takes immense skill and courage. Taking them on when you're bullet proof is just, like, whatever."

I shrug.

"Doing that work in your Nan's village manually would take a hundred construction workers months and cost millions. But, for me? Thirty hours. If we assume I count as a semi-skilled manual labourer, twelve dollars an hour... It's three hundred and sixty dollars' worth of work."

"Not to the people who benefit, it's not."

"Mmmm. They're not the ones trying to pay off a power ring. Anyway, after next July I'll know one way or the other."

"Why's that?"

Wait... Is my origin story in my personnel file? I never bothered reading it in detail...

"Did I.. do you know how I ended up joining the team?"

"Wonder Woman sponsored you."

"Right, but I came to this world on the 5th of July and the team first met on the 8th. When I first got here I didn't know anyone."

"Sooo, how'd you do it?"

"Green Lantern. You know, the Green Lantern who was a member of the Justice Society. Think he used to live around here, actually."

She thinks for a moment. "The blonde guy from Mister Nelson's funeral?"

"That's him."

She frowns. "But he'd have to be ninety."

"Ninety six."

"Whaw. He doesn't look it."

"He does now." She gives me an inquisitive look. "When I got here, I had a ring but no lantern. No lantern, no way to recharge. Once I got a rough idea of the sort of place I was in, I went looking for one. And I found him. We had a chat, I tried to buy it... Well, he was retired. He was alright about giving it to me, but he wanted some assurance that I'd use it appropriately. So, he made a phone call to his old colleague Princess Diana. She.. was less keen. I mean, my story's ridiculous and this ring's powered by avarice, you can see where she's coming from."

Artemis nods.

"The only way I could think to persuade her was to make a magically binding oath. I have to obey orders from her and Batman almost without question and I can't leave this star system. It lasts a year, and after that point I consider myself obliged to.. 'report in'." I shrug. "Assuming the Controllers don't make contact with me first."

"Who are the Controllers?"

"Like the Guardians, only taller. My bosses in the Corps, inasmuch as I've got one."

"So.. why does Green Lantern look like his real age now?"

"Because his Lantern was keeping him young. Now he's given it to me, it doesn't." I rub my temples with my right hand. "I don't even know if he's realised that's why it's happening."

"Could you.. give it back?"

"I don't think so. I had to change it from green to orange so I could use it. I can't change it back and he's not avaricious enough to use it as it is now. Best chance would be to get him a replacement but I'm stuck here for a year."

I exhale slowly. Whaw, that's depressing to think about. New topic.

"So, how'd you get involved in this costumed tomfoolery?"

She twitches and looks out the window for a moment. "Does Jade ever.. talk about our dad?"

"Sometimes. Not much. He's not exactly her favourite subject. I mean, I know about most of his professional history..."

She has talked a bit about his training regimen. Turned my stomach. I think she feels a bit bad about leaving Artemis there, but it wasn't as if she had concrete plans herself at the time. She was thirteen, for goodness sake.

!Jade mine!

"After Mom got out of prison, she didn't want anything to do with that sort of life anymore. He left. I went out for the first time that evening. Stopped a robbery at a grocery store."

"Well done you. My first night on the job I walked in on a major drugs and firearms sale and completely missed that it was happening. I bought some clothes and walked out."

She snorts in amusement.

"How'd you meet up with Green Arrow?"

"Him and Batman were waiting here when I got back from patrol one evening. He offered to be my tutor."

"I haven't spent much time with him. What's he like?"

"He's really easy going. Supportive. Just.. nice. I was kinda expecting it to be like with Dad, only, y'know, less evil, but I actually get on well with him. Black Canary's great too."

"Have you.. given any more thought to visiting Jade?"

She rolls her eyes for a moment. "Every time Mom goes to visit she tells me that I can come with her if I want, but I don't have to and that she understands if I don't want to. Guilt trip much."

I shrug. "Might be easier to go on your own. Or I can hang around, if you want."

"When's she getting out?"

"The lawyers are still wrangling. Probably some time around mid-March next year."

She fidgets. "Yeah, okay. Not sure what we're gonna talk about... Do you think the others know? About Dad, and Jade?"

"Robin, almost certainly. The others, probably not."

She stares into my eyes, and jabs her right index finger at me. "You can't tell them."

I raise my hands in a surrender gesture. "I won't. I won't. But, I don't think they'll react as badly as you seem to think. Batman and Green Arrow certainly know and they're fine with you. Mmm. On a lighter note, given any more thought to getting super powers?"

"Uh. Nooot really."

"Oh come on..."

"Wouldn't being super strong mean I'd just.. just be breaking stuff the whole time? And I'd have to spend time retraining..."

"No. I already have the collar configuration to block the effect. You could train to use it, then turn the collar on and go right back to how you were. Here." I take the slim collar out of subspace. Okay, not that slim, but much less bulky than the electroshock variant Belle Reve uses. She takes it from me. "I can make it look like pretty much whatever you want, long as it's about this weight. Try it on."

She raises her right eyebrow. I roll my eyes and shrug. She pushes her hair out of the way and puts it around her neck.

"Can you.. help me do it up?"

"Sure, hang on."

"You can't tell anyone about this either."

"No problem, but if you decide-."

The door is pushed open and Paula walks through. "Artemis, your grandmother wants.. to..."

She trails off as she.. sees.. me collaring her daughter. The artificial leather collar with the metal pull ring.

Darn.

back

Contingency 15

next

16th October

17:58 GMT -5

I stand in the driveway of what used to be Alan's house, his lantern held limply in my left hand. The whole area's been shot up but they seem to have targeted this place in particular. It's been reduced to rubble and wreckage. Could they detect his ring? Or were they simply working a priority target list that was slightly out of date?

"Green old man gone?"

I reach up with my right hand to where Teekl sits on my left shoulder and rub her head.

"Yes. He has."

But I can't worry about that. The soldiers are moving to the Hall of Justice with the bioship providing air cover, but I'll need to be back when they arrive. I hold up my left arm and look into the core of my personal lantern. I hope Gaea's paying attention. Hope I'm close enough. I kneel, lower my lantern to the brick surface and let go.

"I return this lantern to its owner, Alan Scott."

It took me a while to realise it, but the oath doesn't really cover what happens if I give the lantern back and then steal it. It also doesn't cover the fact that Alan's willed the lantern to me in the event of his death. So, it briefly becomes his and then goes back to being mine. I pick it up again. Now -in theory at least- I can leave the system without incurring Gaea's wrath. I'm not planning on doing a runner, but the sad fact is... I'm not convinced we can win this. And if it really comes down to it, I can now evacuate thousands -possibly millions- of people to the nearest habitable world.

Transition.

A twelve story apartment building has been reduced to a burned out shell. I'm floating over where the floor to Guy's flat used to be before damage to the structure caused it to cave in. Could they detect the subspace pocket containing his lantern? I'd have thought that they'd have been more thorough if they could.

Ring, transmit access frequency.

An orange strobe, and Guy's lantern appears in mid air, rotating slowly. I really hope that the Guardians haven't added anti-me security. I gingerly reach out with my right hand.

"Authorized user detected"

Guy... Thanks, Guy, I... No, focus.

Transition.

Another broken pile of stones. There's no cover here, but the alien fighters appear to have moved off. No matter, I know where the embassy's armoury used to be. Dig. Bricks and stone shower upwards. Artemis needs a better bow, and some of the stuff here might be useful for Kon or Wallace. Or Donna? Oh noo, I'd hoped that she'd be alright...

The normal entry corridor doesn't exist anymore so I rip through what used to be the armoury's wall. With Diana's death her last 'don't touch' orders would bind me, but now I've dealt with the oath I could just loot this whole place. Except that neither I nor my colleagues have trained in the use of enchanted primitive weapons, and I'm not even sure what some of the enchantments do. Can't risk trying to use them then. Maybe when this is over I can return this stuff to Themyscira?

I don't know why Diana didn't take some of this stuff with her. Maybe she just didn't get enough notice to pick it up? It would explain the lasso. Under the rubble the walls of the armoury were more or less intact before I dug through them. The aliens don't seem to have focused on this place. I haven't seen them using anything I'd recognise as magic yet, so I'm not sure why they attacked the embassy at all.

Teekl stands and stretches, digging her claws into my shoulder armour as she does so. Then she jumps down onto the floor and stretches again before walking over to where Diana's training bow rests on its stand. I follow her and pick up the bow and quiver before subspacing both. Next, the training swords she lent to the Cornwalls. Right. One last thing I need to check.

Transition.

Teekl and I look out across the surface of Mars. The sky on the horizon is a sandy yellow, contrasting with the rust red dust and the small dull brown rocks scattered about. And the alien motherships. None of them are particularly close to where we are, but in the distance across the Martian surface I can see two... no, three of them, sitting on the ground surrounded by swarms of fighters. Map. Yes, each one directly over a subterranean Martian city. There's no help to be had here. I can't even risk grabbing Martian technology. Or rescuing civilians. Damn it. Damn it.

Transition.

We appear at the top of the steps outside the Hall of Justice. On the plaza below the soldiers are setting up barricades. Looks like they've made contact with other surviving units and rallied them here. They've brought a couple of extra tanks -probably worthless as anything other than a distraction- and several four by fours mounting some kind of SAM system. That could be useful. A flicker of OrangeVision shows me the bioship in camouflage mode standing watch over the gathering.

"Did you find what you were looking for?"

I turn and see Kaldur, turned back to look at me as the others walk through the doors into the ruined Hall. I hold up the glowing green lantern. "Some of it. Artemis in there?" He nods, then turns to join the others. "Wait." He stops. "They hit Mars first. I saw three motherships. There were probably more."

He bows his head slightly. "It cannot be helped. I think it would be best if we kept this from M'gann for now."

I nod. "Right."

Teekl and I follow him into the building. Somehow, despite the damage to the walls and interior the glass front is largely intact. I see Artemis, Wallace and M'gann looking up at the partially destroyed statues of our mentors. I suppose Kon's still in the bioship. I find my own eyes searching for Diana's statue. Just to Superman's right, wasn't it? Looks like something hit that side hard. Her legs are all that survive. I feel a momentary impulse to restore her. It. No, waste of time and energy. Think about something else.

"You know... I've.. never actually been in here before." Kaldur takes his eyes off King Orin's statue on the far left to see if I'm being serious. I shrug. "Well, why would I? All the stuff I need's either at the mountain or the Embassy."

M'gann floats over to the fallen head of the J'onn J'onzz statue. She reaches out with her left hand and lays it on his face for a moment before collapsing to her knees and sobbing. There.. isn't really anything I can say. He's dead. Probably, the rest of her family is dead. But perhaps there's some way to make her hurt less? I start walking towards her when she suddenly starts. I don't see..? She leaps into the air away from the stone remains, thrusts her hands forwards and starts lifting what's left of the statue from the ground. Once it gets a bit of clearance there's... Shit. Is that..?

"Uncle J'onn!"

How the hell did he survive? He sits up, looking a little bewildered as M'gann tosses the statue remains aside and swoops down on him. Kaldur looks at me. Ring, is that actually..? Apparently it is. I nod at Kaldur in confirmation. First good news I've had all day. M'gann wraps her arms around her uncle's chest. He still seems to be a little behind events. Kaldur takes a step forwards.

"Martian Munhunter. I do not wish to sound ungrateful, but how is it that you are still alive? We saw you, all the League, vaporized."

M'gann helps Mister J'onzz up. He's holding his right hand to his head.

"Yes, I remember. But I cannot remember how I survived. Or how I arrived here."

M'gann hasn't stopped hugging him. "Maybe you were density shifting and the beam passed right through you?"

Wallace rubs his chin. "Depending on the type of radiation they use, that might explain the amnesia. And if you survived like that..."

The Flash might have survived. I tried checking for him earlier, on the basis that they're not dead until you see a body. Couldn't find him, but then I couldn't find Mister J'onzz either and he's right here. Some types of technology and magic do interfere with ring scans. I just don't know.

"My mind is clouded. I feel certain I had something important to tell you."

Wallace hits his forehead with the heel of his left palm. **Hello Wally. C'mon!**

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Contingency 16

next

Gotham City

15th October

20:02 GMT -5

"Nine, so, one wood for you-" I pass the card over to Paula. "-and two wheat for me." I help myself.

Artemis scowls at her two cards. Two wheat, if I remember rightly. "You sure you're not using your ring?"

I make a face of cherubic innocence. "Are the dice glowing orange?"

What makes it even better is that I'm actually not. She looks at her three roads, three settlements and poor resource access. Yes, she's next to two lots each of wood and brick, but they got 2, 3, 10 and 12 and they're just not coming up that often. Paula and I both spotted that trap and went for high probability low usefulness resources plus ports instead. Rock port plus rocks on 6 and 9 for me, sheep, wheat and a three to one port for Paula. I've even got a spare knight card on standby in case someone gets an inconvenient 7.

"Fine. Anyone want wheat?"

I shake my head. "No."

Paula rechecks her hand. "Ah, not really. Sorry, Artemis."

She picks up the dice and hands them to me. I make an orange shaker and rattle them for a moment.

"So.. you gunna.. talk to your mother about..?"

Paula looks at me then at Artemis.

"Talk to me about what?"

Artemis pauses for a moment. "Paul wants to give me super powers."

Paula blinks in surprise as I roll the dice. 5. I pass a sheep card to Artemis and two to Paula.

"You can just do that?"

I pick up the dice, nodding. "Some powers are granted by chemical formulae. If I know the formula, I can replicate it. At the moment it's a choice between super speed and strength, endurance and rapid healing." I hold out the dice to her. She takes them and holds onto them.

"How fast, and how strong?"

"Fast as the Flash -or possibly slightly faster- aaand about Wonder Woman strong. I mean, Artemis doesn't quite have her muscle mass, but that's the sort of level we're talking about."

"I thought Wonder Woman's powers came from her gods."

"Oh, they do. I just needed something to compare it to and since I doubt you've heard of Hugo Danner she was the obvious choice."

Paula nods, looking at the board. Neither of them had heard of Settlers of Catan when I suggested it. I explained the rules to Paula while Artemis reacquainted herself with her Nan.

Without the collar.

"Are there any side effects?"

"Neither of the Flashes experienced any, though Kid Flash has a ravenous appetite. We think that was due to him using an impure version, which wouldn't be a problem for Artemis. Danner Formula enhanciles had problems, but that was due to them not getting immunisation injections which Artemis has already had. Worst consequence I know of is that she'll be banned from professional sport."

"Why is that?"

"When metahumans first started appearing at the beginning of the twentieth century there was a guy... He had super strength. He was playing in an American Football match in college and he accidentally killed a member of the opposing team. He was running with the ball, three guys tackled him and one of them got knocked back and landed on his head, snapped his neck. No malice to it, bad luck more than anything, but metahumans have been banned from professional sport ever since."

Paula puts the dice down and turns to Artemis. "Do you.. want this?"

"I.. I don't know. I mean, it sounds good, but..."

Something occurs to Paula. "Have you offered this to Jade?"

"Hohoo, heck no. I mean, maybe once she's been out of prison a while, but... Look, I like Jade, but I'm not sure it would be sensible to trust her with super powers just yet."

"And can you undo it?"

"Nnno. Mmmmm.... Maybe if I did a full body clone or something, but basically no. That's what the collar's for. As long as it's active it can suppress the power. Artemis would be exactly as she is now."

"Could these powers be passed on to her children?"

"Moooom!"

"It's something you need to think about!"

Artemis goes for redirection. "Are you gunna throw the dice?"

Um. I try to think of a good answer while Paula rolls for the turn. Mister Garrick never had any children. Mister Allen doesn't have any at present. I remember at least one Flash having children in the comics but I think that was Wallace. Could it cause infertility? He hasn't said anything...

"Twelve! Finally." Artemis reaches over to the piles of cards next to me and takes a wood, then holds out her right hand for the dice.

"Nnnot sure. The research I've seen suggests that the Danner strength formula can't be, but I've also met a man who credibly says that he got it from his father. I can't promise any of this is completely safe, buuut it's probably safer than superheroing without it."

Paula passes Artemis the dice and she rolls them immediately. 7. Artemis looks at me hungrily and I fan out my hand.

"Just seven I'm afraid."

"There's eight!"

"Development cards don't count. I did say."

She scowls, then moves the robber to rock 9. I hold my hand out to her and she takes one of my five rock cards. She checks her hand once more and sags slightly before passing me the dice. I wait for a moment while Paula thinks the empowerment thing over.

"I think it is something that Artemis and I will need to talk about."

"Understood." I roll. 6. Three rock for me and a sheep for Paula. "Two rock for wood, two rock for brick..."

Artemis huffs. "Here we go."

"Wood and a brick for a road, three rock and two sheep for a city. Knight, moving the robber to sheep five. Paula, if you would?"

She fans her hand and I pick a wheat. Hm. I push the dice over. "Pass turn."

I'm only on 6 victory points. Me clustering around the rock hexes gave Paula an easy run at longest road, putting her on 7. Artemis is stuck on 3. She looks at me. "What would I have to do to get a power ring?"

"Be the strongest willed person in the Sector when one of the Greenies dies?"

"No, an orange one like you've got."

"Uuuuuuhhh. Steal one from Larfleeze? I could try and put in a good word with the Controllers when I meet them but there aren't really any orange rings floating around. Um, as far as I know. If.. you're thinking about it I'd be perfectly happy to teach you the mental techniques I use."

"You learned it pretty quick and you didn't even have a teacher."

"Yeeeah, but... You remember when you came into the cave after I healed your mother, and Robin and I ran off?"

"Yeah?"

What can I say without giving anything away?

"There was.. a member of his family. They had crippling, agonising injuries. He wanted me to try healing them. I couldn't work up the need, so I gave him access to the ring. He managed to stay focused for about three seconds before he started trying to claw my hand off to take it."

She blinks in surprise.

"Orange power rings.. mess you up. They can give you everything you want and they force you to go for it. How do you fight against what you already want? In your case: you hate your father? Think he deserves to suffer?"

She dodges my gaze.

"Then the first thing that will happen when you get an orange ring is that you'll force your way into his prison cell and start breaking bits off him. And you won't stop. You won't want to. And that intensity of desire never goes away. You either learn to harness it, or you turn into a narcissistic monster and that's what happened to the only other Orange Lantern in the universe that I know about. So: if you want to learn, I'll try and teach you. But you'd probably be better off going for one of the other options."

She thinks about it. "But you healed him, right? Robin's relative?"

I nod. "Robin did. But it freaked him out, and you'll notice that he doesn't risk standing on my left side anymore. I don't think... I don't think orange rings should go to the most avaricious people, in the way green rings go to the most wilful. It's about being just avaricious enough to use the thing, and wanting the right sorts of thing so you use it well. If you don't have the right character traits, it doesn't mean you're a bad person, it just means you're not right for that colour of ring."

I look at the dice.

"You gunna roll those?"

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Contingency 17

next

16th October

18:06 GMT -5

Wallace calls the ship down and then dashes inside. Artemis, Teekl and M'gann walk outside with Mister J'onzz, whose appearance gets a brief cheer from the soldiers and causes General Lane to walk over to have a word. Kaldur and I lurk at the back for a moment. He nods at me. Time to find out.

"Ring, contact Green two eight one four A."

Nothing.

"Ring, contact Green two eight one four B. Green two eight one four C. Green five eight six A. Green Clarissi. Green Illustres. Green... one four one seven A.

Nothing on any of them.

"Ring, explain inability to communicate."

"Error: subject not found."

Kaldur and I look at each other. "Can the entire Green Lantern Corps truly have been destroyed?"

I shake my head in a daze. "I'd.. say no. It's more likely they've just blocked me. Um. Ring, contact Blue one." Nothing again, but then I don't know if Saint Walker has been recruited yet. "My last option is to try communicating with Larfleeze. Normally I wouldn't even consider it, but I'm-" I look out of the Hall's front windows at the ruined and burning cityscape. "-I'm not sure how much worse even he can make things now. I'll leave it up to you."

Kaldur looks down at the floor for a moment before nodding slightly. Right then.

"Ring, contact Agent Orange."

As I say his title I feel.. something. It was a bit like when I tried speaking the oath; need, but not my need. The ring crackles for a moment before releasing a pulse of orange light which swiftly takes Larfleeze's form. He's hunched over, legs drawn up, hugging what I suppose must be a representation of the Orange Central Power Battery. Bigger than I expected. His multi-tusked head jerks around as he takes in his environment before finally coming to rest on me.

Um.

"Sir, Orange Lantern two-."

"YOU CAN'T GO ANYWHERE YOU'RE MINE YOU'RE MINE YOU'RE MINE!"

Um?

"Certainly, sir, but would.. you..?"

His head jerks away again, looking at... Something on his end? Is he.. cowering? What the hell is Larfleeze scared of? Now I'm seeing he doesn't look like much of a threat. Almost stick thin, and he's behaving like a scared animal.

"YOU HAVE TO STAY! MY PLACE! MY SHINY! ALL MINE! RAAAWR!"

The image glows a little brighter and then bursts. I blink the afterimage away. "I don't think he'll be any help, even as a distraction."

"You said that he was deranged, but I did not fully appreciate what he would be like. What caused him to become like that?"

I shake my head. "A couple of million years in a cave all on his own."

**Guys! Look at this.** Wallace waves at us from where he's perched on top of the now visible bioship and Kaldur leads the way outside. It looks like Wallace is wearing one of R-. One of Robin's computers. I blink and he's right in front of us waving the screen under our faces. **It's giving off zeta beams. The same stuff that powers our zeta tubes. T-this thing doesn't disintegrate, i-it teleports. Rob is alive!**

Kaldur leans forwards to get a better look at the screen, which appears to show a diagram of the gun attached to the bioship with zeta radiation concentrations highlighted. **Perhaps. I am not familiar enough with-.**

**No, no perhaps. They're all alive.**

Ooooooh.

"Gauss flayer."

I say it before thinking. Wallace and Kaldur both look at me for an explanation.

**I... I don't recognise the gun, but I have heard of something with a similar effect. Zeta radiation...** I bow my head and close my eyes for a moment. **Nothing says it has to teleport all of an object at once.** I open my eyes to the looks of shock on their faces. **Given how we observed it functioning.. the outer parts of the target disappearing first... And then comparing our general technology level to theirs... I'm sorry, I don't think it's very likely.**

The hope he'd briefly felt drains from Wallace's face. Wait, what's tha-.

A red beam of energy spears one of the tanks of the perimeter and I barely get a shield in the way fast enough to stop it taking the infantry huddled down nearby with it. In the distance I see a swarm of alien fighters swooping down. They must have come in from orbit!

!Protect!

No! I won't lose anyone else!

The orange shield dome extends across the military position as the anti-air missile systems on the trucks try to establish a lock and Kon begins moving the bioship to meet them. Kaldur takes in the scene as more red beams hammer down, targeting the vehicles.

**Superboy, activate stealth sys-.**

The turret beam from our right hits the bioship. It glows for a second and then disintegrates into nothingness.

Kon.

Dimly, I hear M'gann and Mister J'onzz cry out in shock.

Kon.

More beams start striking our position as my dome fails.

Kon. Kon's dead.

Someone's.. shouting.? Soldiers stream past me, covering one another as rockets from the SAMs start shooting up at the enemy ships. One takes a glancing hit and spins off to the side.

Kon...

Whu'? Artemis has picked me up bodily and is hauling me back into the Hall.

"Okay. I'm.. I'm okay."

She puts me down to the side, just out of sight from the outside, and swiftly puts an arrow on string.

"This doesn't.. change anything. Just because it's my my... My best friend rather than Wallace's. Right. Right."

Numb's no good to anyone. What do I want? I should be angry but the shock's too much. Kon... And there's no face for me to hate, just a bunch of drones... What can I do? What.. amount of force...

Oh. That.. could work. I see Kaldur open the door to the library, the route to the Hall's closest zeta tube. Evacuate? Not a bad plan. If he takes this green lantern to the Watchtower he might be able to reactivate some of the systems the Guardians gutted before handing it over. He'll need me to override the computer, or fix it if it's been damaged. And it's not like I want the others around if I go through with this...

The vehicles outside have been either destroyed or abandoned as anyone who can retreats inside. Right. The aliens are getting cocky and there're things I need to do. I hold up my left hand, lantern and ring glowing in concert.

"I need you to not be here."

Faster than usual, pulses of orange light fly out and hit the alien ships as they slow down to manoeuvre. A single strike is enough to smash each one apart. I'm still not angry, I'm not even feeling particularly destructive, I simply.. need a little breathing space at the moment. Five die and then the rest have the sense to get out of my line of fire. I nod at Artemis and then we both sprint to the zeta tube.

back

Contingency 18

next

Gotham City

15th October

20:32 GMT -5

Paula gives me a bemused look. "You really don't think that you've earned your ring?"

Twelve - nine - five. Welp, I'm impressed by how quickly Paula picked that game up. Also by how vicious she decided to be at the end there, waiting until I got my ninth victory point before getting three in one turn to end the game on a plus ten score. Artemis never really got a look in. I flick my left hand up and the pieces of Catan rise into the air and shuffle themselves.

"No. Not yet anyway. I'm, y'know, paying it down, but it's such a huge thing..."

Artemis seems irritated by my apparent modesty. "What did those people you said did earn it do?"

"I said they were the only ones I knew of who earned it in advance. There's probably plenty of Lanterns who spent decades fighting the good fight and earned it that way."

"So?"

"Alright. Story time." I let the pieces stack themselves on the table. "The story of Lantern Katma Tui. Not quite the Book of Oa version, but I'll try and do it justice. Once upon a time, there was a mighty Green Lantern by the name of Thaal Sinestro. He knew neither doubt nor hesitation. His intellect was incisive and his willpower incredible, and, perhaps most importantly, he believed passionately in the mission the Guardians give their Lanterns: to establish order throughout the galaxy. So respected was he by both the Green Lantern Corps as a whole and by the Guardians of the Galaxy themselves that he was promoted to the position of First Lantern, overall commander of the Corps."

Artemis frowns. "Isn't Sinestro that guy who-?"

"Yes, yes he is. I'm getting to that. You see, there's some things his fellow Lanterns didn't know about their leader. Firstly, that he was responsible for the death of his predecessor. You can't use a green ring to kill someone, but if they give it to you because they're too wounded to fight on, it won't compel you to get them medical attention. He got the ring, won the fight and couldn't stand the idea of giving it up. So he just stood there and watched Lantern Prohl Gosgotha bleed to death. Secondly, that his belief in the supremacy of will was so intense, he didn't believe that weaker willed people deserved autonomy. He turned his homeworld of Korugar into a police state, with himself as the dictator. But -and this is genuinely true about him- he didn't do it for his own aggrandisement. He didn't favour one ethnic group, one caste, one religion. One rule for everyone. If you stepped out of line you were stepped on, and if you were in his government and abused your power? You were stepped on harder, for letting him down."

I lean back a little. Guy was a bit iffy about sharing a Greenie's personal history with me, but he was happy to talk about Sinestro. Turns out they still didn't know what he'd done to Prohl Gosgotha. Once I questioned him Guy compared the timelines from Sinestro's logs. He was disgusted to say the least when he confirmed what I said.

Paula looks puzzled. "How could the Guardians not know that he'd taken over a planet?"

"The universe is a very big place. And Lanterns are allowed to hold political office, they just aren't supposed to use their rings to get it. Anyway, after Lantern Abin Sur died and his ring went to Lantern-"

Um.

"-two eight one four A." Paula looks confused. "The first Greenie in the Justice League." She nods. "Sinestro took him on as his personal student, because Abin Sur had been about the only friend he had at that point and if the Human was going to wear his ring then he was going to learn to use it properly. They worked together for about a year before Sinestro decided that his new apprentice was ready to see the wonders he'd achieved on Korugar. 'Course, he hadn't spent a lot of time on Earth. Didn't appreciate how individualistic Americans tend to be. And he certainly didn't expect Katma Tui to kick off a planetwide rebellion during his visit. Two eight one four attempted to take her into custody as a crazy anarchist and got a very pointed demonstration of his mentor's dark side. After he confirmed it for himself he put a call in to the Guardians and Sinestro's ring got deactivated. Sinestro was then tried before the Corps, convicted and banished to the antimatter universe, his ring going to Katma Tui."

I shake my head. Would it have killed them to execute him instead?

"Of course, by that stage the Green Lantern Corps was so hated on Korugar that she can't ever go home. But the point is that she brought down the most powerful Green Lantern alive through cunning and determination. She didn't even know that two eight one four was going to be there, she honestly believed that they'd have to fight Sinestro themselves, and she was prepared to do that. If she hadn't, any number of impressionable new Greenies could have been taught to do things the tyrannical way by the man responsible for leading them. And that would have been a disaster for everyone."

Artemis is incensed. "They can't blame her for what he did!"

"Yes, they can. And they can certainly blame the Greenies for not keeping tabs on Sinestro, and her for agreeing to work with them."

"Well, why'd she take it then, if everyone was going to hate her for it?"

"Who else could she trust? They gave the ring to Sinestro in the first place. Who would they have given it to if she hadn't taken it? She took the hit because she thought she needed to, for the good of all."

Don't think that Artemis liked that story. "What about the other guy?"

"You sure? Bro'Dee Walker's story s'not much more upbeat."

"How can it be less upbeat than getting exiled from the planet he saved?"

"Alright. Bro'Dee Walker's homeworld was technologically equivalent to our mid nineteenth century when its sun started dying. They knew enough to realise what was happening, but weren't advanced enough to escape or call for help. Walker was a priest, and while all around him went mad with fear he put his faith in scripture, the inspiring tales of his people's great heroes. When it became apparent that not enough of his fellows shared his attitude he remembered a prophecy concerning the arrival of a divinely appointed champion who would be revealed to the faithful at the hour of their greatest need. And since it's hard to get greater than complete societal collapse due to oncoming nova, he decided to undertake a pilgrimage to the mountain where the saviour was supposed to appear. He set out with his father, his wife, his son and his daughter, each of whom his faith had inspired."

I generate a simple illustrative construct. I don't remember exactly what they looked like, but it should be close enough.

"On the way to the mountain they had to cross a rickety rope bridge. Their children made it safely to the other side, but the rope snapped while the adults were still on it. Walker and his wife were able to hold on but his father wasn't, and he fell to his death. A little further along they came to a mountain stream and stopped to get a drink and to bathe. Unfortunately, the sun's increased heat had melted the ice from the top of the mountains and the river surged while they were in it. Walker was able to rescue his son, but his wife and daughter were swept away and drowned. With nothing better to do, the two of them continued their journey. It took them days to get to the upper slopes of the mountain and by the time they did their supplies were exhausted. Walker and his son stopped to rest for a while, and while he wasn't watching his son ate a fruit from one of the local vines. The stomach cramps started almost immediately, and the poison killed him before the day was over. Alone and despairing, unable to think of anything else to do but keep going through sheer bloody mindedness, Walker made the final ascent. By the time he reached the summit it was raining hard, and he pulled himself over the final ridge hoping against hope to see someone, something, that would give his family's deaths meaning."

I shake my head as my construct Walker rails against the uncaring heavens.

"But the summit was empty. He fell to his knees, beat the ground with his fists, cursed everything. His family had believed in him as he had believed in the prophecy, and there was no one there. When he finally had the strength to move again, he raised his head up a little, and saw, reflected in the water running down one of the larger rocks that lay on the peak, his own face. Understanding dawned. He walked back down the mountain, back into his temple, picked up his holy book, walked out into the town's main square, and started preaching. To start with, people just ignored him, but he kept going, and as time passed his calm cut through the fear and people stopped to listen. Eventually the whole town stood there, listening to him remind them of the best aspects of their nature. Once that happened he travelled on to the next town, then the next, and where he walked peace and sanity were restored. Finally, when his whole people were prepared to accept the end with dignity, the first blue power ring descended from the sky, drawn there by the hope he inspired. The very first thing he did with it? He channelled that hope and rejuvenated their sun by millions of years."

I relax a little, dismissing the construct.

"The nova reversed. Planet's still there now, if you're ever in Sector one, and the first Blue Lantern is hailed as a saint by his people. He earned his ring, and I can only hope to one day be a fraction as good a man as he is."

I think they're stunned. I wave the Catan hexes.

"Anyone for another game?"

back

Contingency 19

next

16th October

18:10 GMT -5

Artemis and I run past the soldiers covering the library door. Not.. sure what they think those M16s are going to do but the skies are currently clear so I doubt that it matters. About twenty at various states of readiness. We come to a halt next to Wallace. Mister J'onzz is doing something with the zeta tube's computer.

"Kid Flash, would you mind holding onto this?" I hold out Guy's lantern.

"W..?" He takes it in both hands, staring at it. "I can't use it without a ring."

"No, but you might be able to restart some of the Watchtower's systems with it. That's where we're going, right?"

"Ah, no, back to the cave."

"Why are we going there? The Watchtower's labs are far better. Has it been destroyed?"

"Ah..."

"Never mind. Artemis, these are for you." I bring the bow and quiver out of subspace and pass them to her. "They.. used to belong to Wonder Woman, so you should be able to use them at full power."

"R-right." She folds her bow and gives Diana's a pull to test the resistance.

Ring, monitor alien fighter behaviour.

Compliance.

I turn away and walk over to where Mister J'onzz, Kaldur and General Lane are standing. A small.. turret of some kind? Extends from the ceiling and runs a green scanning beam over Mister J'onzz. He still looks a bit dazed.

"Override, Martian Manhunter, zero seven."

"Recognised. Access granted." The outer doors open, revealing the zeta tube itself.

"Aqualad? Have we been able to contact the Watchtower?"

M'gann steps into the tube. "Recognised, Miss Martian, B, zero five."

He looks at me sadly. "Even if it survives, it is unlikely that any members of the League would have fallen back there."

"No, but Robin dug these-" I take the lumps of alien spacecraft out of subspace. "-out of one of the fighters from earlier. The cave doesn't have a xenotech lab, the Watchtower does. If there's data on here..."

"It would likely take more time than we have. Artemis."

She comes forwards.

"Recognised, Artemis, B, zero eight."

"Would Kid Flash be able to restart any of the systems the Guardians deactivated using Guy's lantern?"

Kaldur waves Wallace forwards. "Perhaps, but if the zeta system were damaged he would be stuck on the Watchtower with no way to evacuate."

"How about I try it, then?"

He shakes is head. "It is too risky. You are next."

"Isn't there a risk that the aliens will be able to use this place to trace where we've gone? Particularly if they are familiar with zeta radiation?"

He hesitates. "What do you propose?"

"Leave me till last. I can fly at faster than light speed. Catch you up manually. I can wipe the computers and smash everything after you've gone."

And I really don't want you to see what I'm about to do.

He nods. "Very well."

I pluck the lantern from Wallace's unresisting hands.

"Kid Flash, B, zero three."

"Manhunter-."

Warning, incoming-

Shield!

Teekl shoots in through the door as a wall of overlapping kite shields appear along the walls and over the door. Several soldiers try and aim at her but she's moving too fast.

-attack craft.

A beam of ruby energy takes out part of the far wall next to the door, but the shields behind it hold. Teekl takes cover behind my legs, fur on end.

"Recognised, Martian Manhunter, zero seven."

Seeing no return fire, the aliens intensify their attack. Individual shields weaken as more beams are fired. Kaldur catches General Lane's eye. "General, begin evacuating!"

Why aren't they using their zeta cannon things? Did the ones we fought near the Fortress not realise the signif-.

The roof comes down! Shield! I get the dome up fast enough to block most of the debris, but I hear a yelp of pain as a chunk of rubble lands on someone. I can't keep up this many defensive constructs!

What do I do?

!Wrongness! !Teammates must thrive!

"Kaldur. Get out of here!"

A giant hand construct forms from my ring hand and shoves him back towards the zeta tube.

"Recognised, Aqualad, B, zero two."

But there are still people in here and I can't keep the shield up. I need more power. No choice.

I close my eyes, trying to bring all of my desires to the forefront of my mind.

"This is my power."

The treasures of civilisations, fallen ages past. Bones stripped of flesh and marrow.

"This is my light."

Vast serpentine eyes blink.

The ring pulses.

"Be it bright of day or black of night."

Forked tongue flicks, tasting my presence. Approval.

"I claim all that lies within my sight."

A squalling gnat is knocked aside as scales flow through the portal to their new home.

The ring shines, the links between myself and my shields expand and thrum. My lantern shakes and glows so brightly that it's painful to look at. Distantly I'm aware of the soldiers moving past me into the zeta tube.

"TO TAKE WHAT I WANT, THAT IS MY RIGHT!"

Orange...

...light...

...everywhere...

back

Contingency 20

next

16th October

18:14 GMT -5

And everything is suddenly so very clear. This is my building. These are my soldiers. And I'm not going to have anyone harming what is mine. I raise my right hand a little

Nasty will. Drop it, drop it.

dropping Guy's lantern to the ground with a clatter. Why did I want to use that to power the Watchtower? When I make it mine I'll use my own lant.. no, that would expend it. It's all I have left of Alan, I'm keeping it forever. I still have scans of Alan's when I first converted it, I'll just reconfigure Guy's to orange. Then I'll have a Watchtower. Yes.

The shield around the room is now effortlessly preventing the normal beams from penetrating, but those zeta flayers could still be

We/I recognise those.

easy to deal with, now that I understand the operating principles of zeta transportation technology. Jam.

"Hey, ahhh..."

I look down at the soldier. The name stencilled on his armour says 'Reid', but he

Are we/I being blocked?

seems somehow insubstantial, almost hollow.

"Yes?"

"Can you operate the zeta tube?"

Oh, of course, the evacuation. One person at a time, who designed those things? I reach out to each soldier in the room, shifting rubble off them and repairing

We/I will keep our possessions in good repair.

their injuries. "General Lane, if you would please lead your men to the zeta tube entrance, I believe that I am now sufficiently powerful to guard your retreat."

They seem ill at ease for some reason. Should I alter their hormonal balance? No, that might reduce their combat effectiveness. Enhance them?

"Is that.. supposed.. to be there..?"

I frown, then look up into the Ophidian's face where it floats just above me. Its body is bent up above its head, one coil looping around the ceiling and then down the back wall, terminating with the tip of its tail plugged into my lantern.

"Yes. If it bothers you, just don't look at it."

"Iss.. it here to help?"

"That.. would probably be overstating it. But it is sharing

I/we do not share. I/we serve our interests.

its understanding of zeta radiation. I should be able to send all of you in one go. Or you could stay, if you wanted. I've got some fascinating techniques I could use to alter your bodies to be more combat effective."

I smile at him. I like having good teeth.

"No, no, ah.. General Lane, sir?"

The General lowers his rifle and stares at the Entity.

"Greaaaat snakes. You sure you know what you're doin', son?"

"Oh no, General, I'm making it up as I go. But I don't think I can kill all of the aliens and protect you and your men, so you might want to get out of here now."

He nods, and waves his right arm at the zeta tube entrance. The transmission process is simple enough, but I need to allow for the fact that there is significantly less space at the cave end. But we do have two tubes next to the main training area, plus two in the hangar. I'll just have to split them up.

Reminds me a little of when I used to play Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun. When a unit got damaged and I didn't have any way to repair it I used to send it back to my main base to be out of harm's way. Or in Morrowind, where I would get the Skeleton Key and never use it to keep it pristine.

The soldiers walk into the zeta tube. Most of them steal a look at the Ophidian overhead. A couple cross themselves. Right. Ring

I/we have no need for interlocutors.

don't worry, I can handle this. I blink slowly as I get used to interfacing directly with the tube's systems and pour orange light into it. Hahaa!

"Whom does the zeta tube work for?"

"You, master."

Yes, you do. I feel space begin to twist as I alter the zeta array itself, increasing its accuracy and precision tenfold. Then I activate it with a nod, and in a flash the soldiers are gone.

Next item on the agenda, resurrecting my friends. Should I be

The Life Entity is not here. We/I do not understand.

able to sense it now? Because I can't. Oh well, my plan had been to get normal lanterns of each colour then persuade a Controller to forge a ring, rather than petition the Life Entity directly. But I can't leave my other friends here while they're under attack. And... this building. If we're the new Justice League I'm not having our public face looking like a pile of rubble. I release my hold on my lantern and let it float into the air, then with a negligent wave of my left hand I expand the shield wall to encompass the entire building. Now, let's see, there should be plans and images in the League's computer.. there we are! I look up again.

"Better than a cave on

We/I appreciate liberation.

Okaara, isn't it?"

I drift through the library as walls and ceilings are made whole once more. Can't repair incinerated books without knowing exactly what

We/I sense a record.

they.. were... Oh, guess there was a record after all. In an orange shimmer the place is as good as new as I walk out into the lobby. I watch as an orange surge restores the front windows, through which I see twelve stationary alien fighters firing continuously from both weapons. I wave at them. Hmm, looks like jamming their zeta transmission doesn't shut off their carrier beam. Oh well, doesn't matter.

I turn back to the room, and wherever my eyes pass things are made right. The walls and floor knit back together either from material from the rubble or simply transmuted. Or maybe created ex nihilo. Not sure. Next the lights flick back on as I restore damaged power lines. Air conditioning is next, then water, then the tourist information computers. I think I can feel the whole of the building. Clean up the toilets, restart the reactor. Good job it isn't plugged into local systems, otherwise I'd have to restore the entire city to get this place working right.

Now, the statues. The bombardment the Hall received when we took shelter here has smashed apart the ones that were left. I could just restore them, but... we're the League now. Aren't we? So my team should have statues. Rock flows into orange moulds as the orange light gives my desires form. In the centre, standing over the lift entrance, I create Kon-El's likeness, arms folded across his chest. To his left, Artemis, and to his right, Robin. Next to Robin goes Wallace and then Kaldur, and next to Artemis goes me and then M'gann. Not strictly reflecting our hierarchy but pleasantly mirroring the positions of our predecessors, I think. I can always make extra statues for them somewhere else. Yes, those look good.

“We will rebuild this world as a testament to our greatness! All will love us and rejoice!"

I look up. The Ophidian is following me into the room. Well, its front part and its head are, the bulk of its body is still back in the library where I left my lantern. And Guy's. Well, those aren't urgent requirements. Ring, state

I/we have no need for interlocutors.

power level. I can feel much more than I used to be able to how much charge I have, but I'd like to be able to put a number on it.

"Fifty thousand percent remaining."

I grin.

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Contingency 21

next

16th October

18:18 GMT -5

"And -just to confirm- is it going down at all?"

"Charge level is not being depleted."

"Excellent."

Hey, where's Teekl

Our/my taste in toys is different now.

got to? I don't think she left with the soldiers. "Teekl! Here Teekl! Where y'gone? Where y'gone? Here, Teekie Teekie Teekie!"

I look around and.. oh, there she is! She's crouching at the top of one of the bookcases, growling and hissing at the Ophidian. Bit rude. Oh, I'm sure she'll

The toy will be quiescent.

come.. around... Teekl stands up, jumps down and strolls over towards me. Hmm. Not sure what happened there. Right. Power, cat, team mates safe. Next step: the air armada that's still firing at my building. I spread my arms out to the side and float upwards until I'm level with the top part of my Hall's glass frontage and the Ophidian's head. After a moment Teekl floats

Mere glass is inadequate to display our glory.

up to join us. Hm. Should I replace it with something else? It gleams for a moment as I transmute it to diamond. Is that really..? Aluminium oxynitride? One of Mister Luthor's fascinating ceramic nano-composites? I cycle through them a couple of times, trying to assess the visual differences. I honestly can't tell. Oh, let's just go with the LexCorp one. It feels more

Reasons are irrelevant.

Human. He made it to resist an alien, and it's resisting aliens. Or rather, it isn't, because orange shield. Well. The Ophidian turns its head towards the ceiling and moves forwards, passing through the steel and concrete with no resistance. Show-off. I still

We are joined. Our knowledge is one.

don't know how to do that, but maybe I can work it out? It's not a matter of destroying and reconstructing it. It can't be a matter of molecular density. I'm sure that's a mistranslation from the Ca'andran original because that whole idea makes no sense to me. Hmm. Some sort of partial planeshift, using the orange light as a conceptual tether? I float right up to the glass. Well, at least the only one who'll see if I do something stupid is Teekl. Through we go oh that's weird but I made it.

Above me the Ophidian's busy looping itself around the roof. The alien fighters split their attention between it and me, and I chuckle as they fail to harm either. The Ophidian flicks out

They have no scent.

its tongue. I wonder why it hasn't attacked them yet. Is it waiting for me? Sweet. I hold out my left hand and make a grabbing motion, warping gravity around the closest fighter. I feel its drive system try to resist. Futile. Get over here. I pull it to me, dome level with my face.

"Not quite as much fun when someone does it to you, is it?"

Its armour strains as it continues trying to manoeuvre.

"Your communications are still intact. I know you can understand me. And I want you to understand me when I tell you this. And I want you to relay it to every other unit your people have on Earth and Mars and anywhere else."

I lean closer, and rest my left hand on the dome surface.

"Are you listening? Yes? What I'm going to do is, I'm going to tell you where you went wrong. This planet? It's called Earth. It's not really all that important to the wider universe, pretty primitive, a bit out of the way, but, it's mine."

I pat myself in the centre of my chest with my right hand.

"Mine. That building-" I point at my Hall. "-is mine. You damaged it and I had to repair it. I could live with that. But what I can't live with is what you've done to the people. My friends. Because, you see…"

What do I/we want most of all?

"Ahem, THESE PEOPLE ARE MINE! AND NO ONE TAKES WHAT IS MINE FROM ME!"

The orange beam from the ring burrows through the centre of the ship, pierces the rear armour and then spreads out inside. The dome glows brightly as the outer hull cracks, and then explodes outwards.

No, you don't. You're mine and you'll do what I tell you.

A network of orange beams links every piece of ship together before they can strike the ground, and pulls them back together in the sky. I can feel it as broken hull pieces fuse back together, wires and tubes realigning and techno-organic computer systems recompiling. The exterior twists as an orange sigil appears on its now orange front dome.

Mine.

I go higher into the air, orange filaments whipping around from the ends of my fingers.

Mine.

Each filament strikes a fighter and in a pulse of orange light they become mine.

Mine.

The last few fighters try to break off and try to flee. Chuckling, I point forwards with both hands and the filaments seek them out as well. I can feel their thoughts on the edge of my mind. It's similar to piloting the bioship except that I'm not even trying to make this a relationship between equals.

"Spacecraft of the Orange Lantern Corps. Seek out your brethren, and destroy them utterly. Off you trot."

I feel them access their tactical network, then they form into squadrons of three and peel off after their targets. I turn to the Ophidian.

"Look at them go!"

Now, what was next? There are still people in this city, and while I may not care for any of them individually every bit of damage I can undo or prevent is something I won't have to come back and fix later. I hold up my right arm and create a paintbrush construct.

"First, I'll fix this city."

I wave the brush and in an orange glow buildings are restored.

"Fix the people."

I reach out to the trapped and terrified. I liberate and calm.

They are too easily damaged.

And augment. After this we can't just go back to the situation pro bellum. Nothing crazy, I'm not going to Danner the whole world or anything. But strength and intelligence are based on physical structures. Behavioural tendencies are the results of hormones and brain structures just as much as learning. A few modest tweaks... Yes.

One of my fighters surges out from the ring. It's no longer metal at all, just pure orange light. It looks at me for instructions.

"Get back to it you slacker. And no dawdling, you're a Lantern, act like it."

A streak of orange lightning and it's back to the fight. Right, Washington D.C.'s fixed. What's next?

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Contingency 22

next

16th October

18:53 GMT -5...

Probably

"AND YOU'RE MINE

Assimilation complete. These will be useful.

AS WELL!"

Gosh, this is fun. When I thought about it, I realised that everyone I cared about personally was either safe or dead. So, second tier: where are the people they care about? Didn't take long to pick up Mister and Missus West and drop them and Paula and Jade off in the Batcave. And to seal them and Alfred in. Then I remembered M'gann's family. I never asked where on Mars they lived. Probably should have done. But, when I thought about it I realised that it didn't really matter; any mothership I left unmolested would go on to attack their city if I just attacked the immediate threat. Plus, even one mothership would provide me with

Toys.

enough chaff for distraction attacks on the rest. Heck, even assimilating a whole mothership didn't take more than about twenty

Fifteen point four.

seconds. Once it became clear exactly how one sided this was going to be I just sent those I'd already taken into orbit to watch for further attacks. Only three of the Martian cities were properly breached, though anything that was left on the surface was properly wrecked. They used these weird four legged things for infantry, thin insect like legs equidistant around a central cylinder with an eye gun about halfway up. Cleaning them up didn't take much longer. Unfortunately I've got no idea how to identify M'gann's family. From what she said about Martian families there're probably loads of M'orzzes around, I can't hack the biological data storage systems they use and for some

Inconceivable!

reason I can't perceive the locals' desires to just find people who are worried about her.

Has been interesting to see Martian warships. They started joining in after I dealt with the fifth mothership. Hmm. I suppose those few might be all that's left. Bit pointless really. They can't hit hard enough or move fast enough to matter. I ended up just sticking shields around them to stop a lucky hit from an alien fighter taking them down. They also don't seem

Jealous of my/our majesty.

too keen on the Ophidian though. I left it with my lantern in orbit, but one of the motherships tried to do a runner and its head entered the atmosphere to bite it. They kind of freaked out a bit.

This whole thing reminds me of the second time I tried to play Dungeons and Dragons. After the DM banned me from playing as a pony I looked at the possibility of playing as a necromancer. Foolishly, I assumed that the necromancer would be a minion controller class. I mean, it's all about summoning and binding the undead, right? Wrong. Not even a skeleton until something stupid like level 5. I wasn't expecting Wights or anything at level 1, but a zombie rat? A weak skeleton? A ghost? Something? Anything relating to the title? No. Fuck you negative energy blasts.

Right, when I get back to Earth I'm fixing D&D. And Warhammer 40,000. Oh goodness, yes. And I'm going to see about introducing Babylon 5 CCG, the greatest CCG of all time. I don't even care that no one here's watched the series, I want a game. A game against decks that someone else has designed. The ring's been improving my memory for as long as I've been wearing it and I'm sure it can extract near complete sets from my mind. Kon was saying that he.. was.. enjoying...

Kon's dead. That's.. important. I should probably get on with doing something about that. An instant later I'm outside the orbital mothership cordon. I'm not getting any feedback about further threats so hopefully this is about it. I'll take two with me and leave the other seventy here. Feel a bit silly forgetting that Construct Lanterns could perform their own assimilations. Having motherships fire assimilation cannons rather than zeta-cannons sped things up a great deal. Okay, got my lantern, got my Entity, got my cat -I scratch her head and she rolls on her back for a belly rub- got my Construct Lantern motherships... You know, now I really look at them, their design is really ugly. Not very efficient either. If I just rearranged the main beam projectors-. No. No. Resurrect Kryptonian beefcake first, alien weapon systems later.

Would it be too obvious if I went straight to Happy Harbour? Note to self, change every sign in the place to spell it properly. Eh, I'll just go into orbit somewhere around the moon and have a think. Transitioning. Right, you, mothership A, deploy fighters. Mothership B, stick with me. Now, where is everyone?

"...survives because the battle is not over."

Kaldur? No, just a recording.

"Not as long as even one of us-"

Me, I suppose.

"-is willing to fight."

This is supposed to be.. stirring, isn't it? It doesn't really make me feel anything other than slightly aggravated that my property might be at risk.

"It doesn't matter how many fall."

Does that sound as stupid to everyone else as it does to me? Is that the fault of Wallace's delivery? Am I just jaded? Or -heh- did the aliens focus on the good speech writers specifically to prevent this sort of thing?

"For new heroes will always rise to carry on."

Not if everyone dies. Right, stop listening. The cave... They're not at the cave. Where are they then? Smallville? What the hell are they doing in Smallville?

Oh

Undesirable.

heck. Move!

I'm at the edge of a patch of woodland as the grounded mothership detonates, blast wave burning the earth bare. Wallace and Artemis were in there and I can't find them. Kaldur. I can't feel Kaldur. Do not want! Do not want! Okay, deal with the alien attack, assimilate Ra's, still manageable. Mothership, get down here and mop up. Where's M'gann and Mister J'onzz?

**Don't... Don't tell me the mission was a success. The price was too high.**

There she is! I appear just before the two Martians.

"Hello!"

"Paul, you're alive! I thought you died in the Hall!"

"Pch, nah." I look up as a bright orange light illuminates the landscape. "Oh, and check out my new mothership."

Its secondary batteries open up on the surviving alien fighters, and moments later they are either destroyed or assimilated, joining the flock. I can just about see Teekl sitting on top of it, lantern in her mouth. Has the Ophidian finished coming through?

"Picked it up on Mars."

"They.. they attacked Mars?”

"They hit Mars harder than they hit here. Didn't do all that much damage before the Ophidian and I cleared them out. In fact, the only place that suffered significant damage was that place near Albor Tholus."

**No no no no no no no no no...**

"I mean, they were stomped completely flat. I'd hate to have lived there. Look, if we're about done here I think we should make a start on the Lazarus Pit thing..?"

The Ophidian shimmers back

We/I will make this place ours.

into corporeality just behind me. Mister J'onzz's eyes widen in shock. "No. This has gone on too long already."

Hm? Oh I suppose a giant translucent orange snake takes a bit of getting used-.

He steps forwards and rams his fist through M'gann's chest.

back

Contingency 23

next

16th October

18:57 GMT -5...

I think

M'gann shudders, eyes wide and water filled. Her cape bulges as his fist emerges from the other side of her torso.

"KILL YOU!"

The Ophidian surges forward as my orange pulse hits her uncle in the head, killing him and knocking his smouldering corpse to the ground. I rush to take

She is mine/ours.

hold of M'gann. Martian healing Martian healing Martian healing. Not allowed to die! Not allowed. Don't know if Lazarus Pit works on aliens! The Ophidian pierces Manhunter's body with its fangs as I try to remember which organs are important to shifted Martians and…

Purple Mists..?

Where's she gone? SHE's MINE.

Our eyes snap open showing us the ceiling of the training area, illuminated by the bright orange light shining off me in all directions.

“Give her back, she's MINE!”

We're in the air over a circle of stone slabs, one of our team mates on each Kon! Keep safe keep safe! We fling each of them into the air and create the strongest construct armour around them we can. Immediately we realise that Artemis is squishy again. Fixfixfix! And Robin! Mustn't get hurt!

Where are our enemies! Manhunter

Analgesia.

lies in the centre of the circle and is starting to rise. No!

"Hhssssssssssss!"

A pulse of orange light sends him tumbling across the room, bouncing him into the floor and finally pinning him to the far wall. Teekl flees the room while Marvel

Going for a walk in the park with his father on a sunny day.

stares in confusion while Batman

Fulfil his responsibility to protect the children.

... What? They're dead. We saw them die! Is Diana..? She's alive! Alan's alive! Guy's... Not here. Where find him find him find him! GreenLightGreenLightTooMuchGreen! No! We need him! We see him! He's standing in front of a half circle of... Green Men. We remember them and we don't like them. They helped the gnat.

"Orange Lantern, that's enough! Stand down!"

Batman is staring up at us. We wrench our attention away from the.. Guardians! That's what they call themselves. He's.. important.? We think?

"Batman." Nasty Manhunter speaking! "It's not him. Something else came throu-!"

We muzzle him. Not important. Team mates! Aside from elevated stress levels they seem in good condition. Aliens? No, no hostile forces nearby. Kon! We remove the armour constructs around them, leaving the flight aura. Then we zoom over to Kon

To stop being confused.

and hug him around the waist, rubbing our face against his chest.

Want. Koooooooooon.

We perceive Batman move to a position directly behind us. "Identify yourself."

Kon pats me on the shoulder. "Paul, what's going on?"

**That isn't Orange Lantern.** Manhunter voice in head bad! We manifest our snake-face directly in front of him. "HHHHEeeeeeeehhhhh!"

"Orange Lantern, this is a direct order. Drop your constructs and take off your ring."

We don't want to, but... Our prop- No, our ingroup is safe. He.. has.. authority... We lower everyone to the ground, regretfully peeling ourself from Kon. Making eye contact with the Manhunter we remove his bonds, muzzle and guard.

**Manhunter, what happened in there?** Batman's eyes are still focused on us. His hand... Is he preparing a weapon of some kind? Nothing he's carrying could hurt us.

**M'gann's belief in the reality of the exercise overwhelmed me. I became as trapped as they were. By the time I remembered what had happened only M'gann and Orange Lantern remained active. But.. he had turned hundreds of alien ships into constructs, something that should far exceed his power level. He was also accompanied by a giant orange snake, and no such creature existed within the scenario.**

"Orange Lantern, I ordered you to take off your ring."

We narrow our eyes. "No, we won't, too dangerous."

Wallace

When he was seven years old, he saw a racing red bicycle being ridden by another child.

looks at me in confusion. "We?"

Kaldur's hands glow. "There is another presence within his body."

"Kon died! Diana and Alan were dead! We... I... He needed more power!"

Artemis rubs her head. "About that. Not that I'm complaining, but..."

Batman looks at her. "Try to remember. What you experienced was a training exercise. Manhunter psychically linked the six of you in an artificial reality. You all knew this going in. What you didn't know was that it was a train for failure exercise."

We scrunch ourselves up, hands held near our ears, wobbling back and forth. "Exercise exercise exercise exercise." We think that's.. bad. Why is that bad why is that bad?

Batman glances at us before continuing. "No matter what the team accomplished the scenario was designed to grow worse."

"hEhEhEhE HeHeHeHe."

"Still, you were aware that nothing was real, including the deaths of the entire Justice League."

Manhunter gingerly walks towards us. "That was why you hardly grieved, even when your mentors were disintegrated before your eyes."

"Not real not real not real not real not real."

"But all that changed when Robin died. Though consciously Miss Martian knew it was not real her subconscious mind could not make that distinction. She forgot it was only an exercise... And her subconscious took control, making all of you forget too."

Batman walks slowly in my direction, then crouches down.

"Orange Lantern. What did you do?"

"Kon was dead and Robin was dead and everyone we cared about was dead or stuck in an unwinnable fight. We needed more power. We.. he.. connected his personal lantern to the Orange Central Power Battery and called us.. it.. the.. the Ophidian, through."

"The Avarice Elemental."

"Embodiment. Far more than an elemental."

"Contact with something like that must have been a shock."

"Contact? Contact? It's still here-" We tap our chest. "-in us. We are the Ophidian, and the Orange Lantern."

back

Contingency 24

next

16th October

19:01 GMT -5

We remember.

The bipeds wrestle in the dirt while we watch. One is stronger, firmer, more experienced. He believes himself to be favoured by their tribe's god, and this has granted him a confidence and resolution.

The other is smaller. Weaker. He has no great skill and no weapons and were the others of their tribe to see them fighting they would swiftly kill him for daring to harm the god's chosen.

The chosen one does not call for help. After all, why should he need it?

The other? We have favoured him. We have whispered in his ear of want and acquisition. He believes that his god has chosen wrongly, and that if he wins here that the rest of his tribe will see that. He wants what the other has. He wants it in a way one smugly accustomed to power and authority cannot imagine.

His avarice empowers him. He twists, he bites, he gouges and when the fight is over it is he who is victorious, standing over the still body of his rival. He roars his triumph.

We are already well familiar with this pattern. We saw it in our original home, when our need for pre-eminence led to us experiencing a growth in comprehension unknown amongst our kin. The sight of worlds beyond number, civilisations of all shapes and styles, uncountable galactic years, a grand testament to the power of avarice to motivate and empower.

And blind.

We do not like to reflect upon our failures, but perhaps we might have learned something from the brevity of that creature's triumph, before it was driven from its tribe for its actions. The suffering it subsequently experienced. With the understanding that our new joining has brought us, we can see an equivalence to our own capture and imprisonment by the gnat. Our avarice is strong, but without direction we charge heedlessly. We understand that now, and we will change it.

The smaller green one

M'gann. Her name is M'gann.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

has water leaking from her eyes. Not a Martian gesture. Her need to be part of her new community is so strong that she

Tymbrimi

changes a fundamental part of her physiology and adopts the mindset instinctively. Community-need. We feel it too. We have not felt that in

M'gann needs me. I calm, stand, turn and walk up to her, embracing her.

a vast amount of time.

**[Wellbeing] This is not your fault.**

"You said this couldn't happen!" Kon takes a defensive stance with M'gann and myself behind him and our mentors in front. "You said he wouldn't be able to use his ring!"

Manhunter shakes his head in confusion. "It should not have been possible. I truly do not understand."

**[Fear]**

**[Reassurance/Fellowship]**

M'gann pulls away a little and looks up at my face. She's.. looking at something. What is she looking at?

"Why didn't you stop the exercise?!"

"We tried, but M'gann had.. a death grip on the scenario. Even Robin -who should have awakened upon his death- was so convinced he had passed that he slipped into a coma. I realized I would have to wrest control from Miss Martian's subconscious from within. But upon entering the reality, I was overwhelmed by your collective emotion. There was.. too much.. noise, to think clearly. To remember why I was there. The death of Superboy helped, but the brief moment of clarity I experienced was swiftly drowned out by a single overwhelming sensation. It was only when the mothership exploded and Aqualad, Artemis and Kid Flash were silenced that I could begin to focus clearly. When the.. Entity within Orange Lantern revealed itself I was able to identify and block its influence, clearing my mind for long enough for me to remember my true purpose; to shock M'gann out of the exercise, before your comas became permanent. My apologies. I had no idea a training exercise could be so dangerous."

He is touching our mind.

He reels and Red Tornado catches him. "So.. so damaging."

I hear a crunching, and Artemis raises her right hand up to shoulder height, a lump of the concrete bier she was lying on held therein. She stares at it and squeezes. It explodes into powder. Wallace goggles.

"Wait. That was.. that was inside the illusion. Why can you-?"

Artemis wheels on the spot-

"Aaaaaghh!"

-and punches the end of the bier full force. It cracks, rubble exploding outward from the far end and spraying across the room. She breathes heavily, clenching and unclenching her right fist.

"H-how..?"

"You were too fragile. We couldn't risk you being hurt."

"When the planet was being invaded by aliens!"

"As far as we can see the same logic applies now. You weren't any more resilient, and the planet might be invaded tomorrow."

"What? You mean you did it after..?"

"Yes. Robin too."

His head whips around. "What?"

"Your death in the training scenario highlighted concerns about your physical limits which we had had for some time. When we awoke and felt under threat and you weren't dead anymore it seemed perfectly rational-."

He jumps directly up, reaching the roof of the training room nine metres up without straining himself. He turns in the air and pushes off it with his legs, landing lightly in a crouch.

"Whow."

**See M'gann, no harm was done. Robin and Artemis are stronger, and at our current power level there is nothing that can stop us protecting everyone.**

M'gann takes a clumsy step backwards away from us as Batman clasps a hand on our shoulder and shoves us around.

"What exactly did you do to them?"

"We introduced the Danner Formula into every cell in their bodies. It's completely safe, we tested it."

"Give me the inhibitor collar right now!"

Artemis is not as receptive as we had thought that she would be. She takes a step back as we turn our head to her. Something has definitely happened to our appearance. "No. That would just make you vulnerable again. We never want to see our team mates die again, you are all too important to us."

Kon turns to Manhunter. "We can get that thing out of him, right?"

Manhunter puts his right hand in the centre of his chest. "I am uncertain, but-" His uniform flows away from where he's touching, revealing green skin and the glowing orange lantern sigil embedded in it. We reach up with our right hand and feel the familiar shape on our forehead. "-I believe that we must try as a matter of urgency."

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Contingency 25

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16th October

19:03 GMT -5

"But Uncle J'onn said there was no way he could have stopped me."

"I know and accept that."

"Then I don't understand why you're still mad at him."

After doing a certain amount of damage to the gymnasium and composing my report on the training 'incident', I walked to the hangar and attempted to calm myself by sitting on the launch platform with my legs crossed, watching the waters. Hm, going to my 'happy place'. That was where M'gann found me. I'm shielding my mind and I altered internal monitoring so that it would not report my position. She must simply have been searching manually.

"M'gann, when I first started training with Wonder Woman she was very careful in precisely assessing the strength and durability of my constructs. She did this so that she could train me in a way that was safe for both of us. She did the same again after my.. physical change. And though we have both received minor injuries during our sessions together, the risk of anything serious happening is minimised to the greatest degree possible."

"But he didn't kno-."

"Exactly." She blinks at me. "That might be a reasonable excuse if he genuinely had no idea that you were telepathic but that is very much not the case. He knew that you are telepathic, he accepted responsibility for training you, and he never bothered assessing how strong you are."

She blinks. "Oh."

"Worse, he decided to telepathically link you to the rest of us, just to make it a bit more dangerous." I spread my arms wide in a gesture of appeal. "Is that how the Manhunters usually run things?"

"I don't, um, I'm not.. sure?"

"Though it could have been worse. Can you imagine if something like this had happened on an actual mission? Uuh." I shake my head. "M'gann, I'm.. I'm sorry. The technique I used to break the link... At the time-."

"You don't need to apologize. I was the one who was mind controlling-."

"No." My right hand envelopes her right shoulder and I stare into her eyes. "Of all the people who are at fault here you are not one of them. I will certainly not criticise you for being too empathetic. Perhaps the rest of us would have done the same, had we your power set. There is no way to know." She looks at the ground, but nods anyway. I release her shoulder and push myself to my feet before extending my left hand to her. After a moment she looks up and takes it and I pull her up. "Come on. Wallace of all people volunteered to cook this evening and there's nothing like spending an hour in a furious temper to give me an appetite."

She nods, and together we walk down the concrete steps. "What's he making?"

"I shudder to think." What with one thing and another it didn't occur to me to ask.

"He wouldn't have volunteered if he couldn't cook something." I give her a sceptical look, and she's suddenly less sure. "He wouldn't, right?"

As we walk across the main floor and up the steps to the kitchen and recreation area, I'm left wondering what horrors are about to be unleashed on our palates. My sense of taste was dulled by my transformation in the same manner as my sense of touch, but again the ring can make up the difference. In an emergency I know a few quality take away restaurants, but my colleagues don't always share my preferences. I let M'gann go first as we enter the kitchen. I'd have held open the door for her but space-wise it isn't really practical.

Wallace looks up from his.. is that a wok? Oh dear. "Hey guys! We were about to send out a search party!"

"Wally, we were just in the hangar."

Artemis, Kon and Richard are hard at work on their reports. Kaldur's helping by chopping celery. He looks at me. "I am glad that you have been able to resolve your differences."

I wave him off. "My problem was never with M'gann."

Richard looks up. "What are you talking about? You hate telepathy."

"I regard it as a useful tool. The fact that the idea of someone touching my mind makes me uncomfortable does not mean that I dislike telepaths personally. That said, M'gann, given what happened could I perhaps recommend an alternate telepathy tutor? I think we'd both prefer it if this didn't happen again."

She looks uncomfortable. "Uncle J'onn..."

"Can just suck it up. Uuh, he has other responsibilities in addition to your training. I was thinking-."

"About the guy who taught you how to block Psimon?" Richard slides his completed report away from him.

"Oh, good heavens no. Henry King Junior." I generate a life-sized construct. "Fifty eight, formerly Brainwave of Infinity Incorporated. He works as a motivational speaker now. His primary skill is telepathic illusion, but he is perhaps the most capable Human telepath available."

Richard crosses his arms. "What's wrong with your teacher?"

"He values his privacy quite highly. I was taking my life into my own hands approaching him as I did, but he found me amusing enough to tolerate the intrusion. Telling other superheroes about him would risk harming the working relationship we have established, and I can hardly teach M'gann what he's been showing me myself."

"Maybe that should be for Miss Martian to decide."

Something's going on. "What's this about, Robin?"

"It's about the way you keep secrets from the rest of us. And not just the telepathy thing, you never said how you knew to attack Klarion's familiar. Or how you knew that Teth Adam existed at all."

"Ah. Then you feel that I should be completely open and honest with my team mates?"

"Yes! I think we've earned it."

!Put the whelp in his place!

"Very well, then I have but one question." I fix him with my gaze and he meets it unflinchingly. "What is your name?"

Then he flinches.

"Oh, come on Oh El. That's not fair." Wallace defends his friend. "Batman ordered him not to tell us."

"Batman isn't here."

"The monitoring-."

"Internal monitoring shows what I want it to. There will be no recording. So, Boy Wonder, are we.. worthy? Of hearing your name? Have we.. earned it?"

He's still meeting my eyes, but he seems to have shrunk. The bravado's gone. We regard each other for a minute before he looks down, picks up his report and rises to leave.

I let him get halfway to the far door before I speak, slowly and deliberately. "Richard. John. Grayson." He freezes. Artemis quietly gasps, and looks at him anew. The others are staring at me. "His name is Chester Black, also known as Manchester Black and 'Manny' to his few friends. He works as a spy, saboteur, agent provocateur and occasional assassin for the British government, and the first time he tried to teach me anything I was reduced to a quivering, incoherent, incontinent mess. He is not a nice man but he is very good at what he does. M'gann, if you truly want him to teach you I will make contact on your behalf but I urge you to choose Mister King. He's more.. your sort of person."

Wallace looks dismayed. "Dude..."

"You knew." Richard's hands are clenched tightly. He remains facing the exit. "You knew, and you asked me anyway."

I nod. "Yes, I did. I've known since I first got here."

"Then why?"

"Because you demanded my secrets while giving none of your own. Because Batman's order was an insult to my intelligence and to our team mates' integrity. And because you pushed me."

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Contingency 26

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Gotham City

15th October

22:12 GMT -5

"Sooo... How long do you normally stay out?"

Artemis and I are standing on the roof of a run down apartment building opposite a warehouse. Gotham: living the stereotype. I say standing; she's crouched, watching over the rim of the building through some techy looking binoculars as rough looking types load up a van. I'm sitting down with my eyes closed, having the ring play the scene by my optic nerve.

"Wh..?" She lowers her binoculars and turns her head to look at me for a moment before going back to spotting duty.

"How long-?"

"You really think this is the time!?"

"I'm seeing seven men, two shotguns and a revolver. Given that we're in Gotham..."

"What's in the boxes?"

"Looks like junk. Some shelving, various types of light bulb, some pipes... Could be a theft, but there's nothing high value there. Honestly, I doubt they'd make minimum wage plus van rental."

"It used to be an electrical supply warehouse."

"There you go then. Someone new's bought it and they're having a clear out. Just check... Yep, new owner. Holding company, holding company, company owned by.. a.. huh."

"What?"

"I'm not an expert, but I think that's a fake ID. Could just be from somewhere without good computer records, of course. No employee records matching the chaps down there, but they might just be day labour."

She relaxes a little. "I'll keep an eye on it." She stows the binoculars on her new equipment belt. Mister Gambi finished her new armour yesterday and I have to say that I rather like it. Much lighter than my own, it moves, it breathes, it covers her abdomen, it has her preferred decoration and colour scheme and it has an equipment belt. We'll need to add League issue camouflage material to the outside this weekend. "I usually stop patrolling at ten. Depends on whether I'm in Star City or Gotham. And what homework I've got."

"Ah, the eternal bane of the teenaged superhero."

She crawls a short way from the edge before standing. There aren't a lot of streetlights in this area and they wouldn't really illuminate the rooftops anyway, but we're hardly invisible. Especially me. My environmental shield is on minimal but these days it still gives off a visible amount of light. I follow her as she leads the way over to the next building.

"Do you have a.. set route?"

"There's only so many ways you can go around here. What's with the questions?"

"I've never patrolled before. Well, I fly around Happy Harbor sometimes, but the worst I've encountered there is a small group of rowdy drunks. Not exactly a challenge."

"Huh."

We reach the edge, and I put orange platforms under our feet to float us across.

"Do you... I mean, I got the impression that Batman was a bit particular about who was active in his city."

"He hasn't said anything about not patrolling. Not like Gotham's short of crime."

"Can you give me any indication of how you're feeling about the augmentation thing?"

"Mom wants to talk about it. Why, what's the rush?"

"There's, like, one woman on Themyscira who makes weapons of that grade. I don't know how long it'll take her, so if you said 'yeah, probably' I'd get her started as soon as possible. See if she can get it ready for Christmas."

We touch down and she takes cover behind an unlit billboard.

"I don't know. I'll talk to Mom about it this weekend and let you know Monday. Who's the Amazon who makes..?"

"Her name's Io, and she's been doing it for about three thousand years."

"Whaw. So, does she just do bows, or..?"

"Anything that needs smithing. I mean, at this point most Amazons can forge things. But no one's taken it as far as she has. She does weapon enchantments as well. Could see about replacing your arrows."

"Maybe. Does she do.. samples, so I could try one out?"

"I'll ask."

"She's really three thousand years old?"

"Thereabouts. They left mainland Greece about three thousand years ago, so she's probably a bit older."

She takes a quick look at the streets. I can't see anything interesting happening.

"They really don't have any men?"

"They did, right at the beginning. Young male children too young to have left their mothers, and some of them were pregnant. But the eternal youth spell on the island only applies to women and they were pretty homonormative, culturally. Not many pregnancies after they arrived on Themyscira, and eventually the last of the men just died off. Diana was the first 'new' Amazon for about two thousand eight hundred years."

"Wonder Woman didn't see a man until after she left?"

"Err. She'd seen pictures. Statues. But, no."

"Is she... y'know..?"

"I haven't asked."

"Right." Seeing nothing of interest, she walks to the other side of the building. "What time does Mister.. Jones, want us there?"

"He said four in the afternoon."

"He say what the scenario is yet?"

"Not exactly, but he did say that it will be a widespread disaster, and that the only reason he wasn't telling us was to stop us planning everything in advance. We'll be told as soon as it starts. So Kaldur's had us lifers planning for everything."

"Does this whole telepathic training thing seem weird to you?"

"Everything on this planet seems weird to me. Including me."

"Y'know what I mean."

I shrug. "It's not like we can practise a major natural disaster in the real world. We'll know it's not real but it will seem completely real. And, hey, if it works we could get M'gann to do it again for fun."

"What if something goes wrong?"

"Mister Jones has been on Earth for sixty years, and his people do this sort of thing all the time. I don't think we've got much to worry about."

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Reordered

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Reordered 1

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Reordered

17th October

15:51 GMT -5

"Y'know, I think I'm starting to like New Paul."

He looks at the dishes of ice cream covering the dining area table. We aren't an expert... No, I suppose we are an expert. Probably the greatest expert ever, actually. Absorbing all frozen milk derivative pudding knowledge in the world only took a few moments, and we combine that with the ability to feel every molecule in the substance throughout the mixing and freezing process.

Artemis swings her right hand at the back of his head. We ready a shield, but Wallace sidesteps at super speed. "Hey! You need to be careful doing that!"

She crosses her arms at her chest, hands folded behind her upper arms. "I'd have hit you exactly as hard as you deserved. He's possessed, you shouldn't joke about it!"

"He seems okay to me."

"His forehead has a glowing lantern sign carved into it!"

He indicates a bowl with his spoon. "Hey, what's this one?"

"Orange flavoured."

He leans down to peer at it, squinting with his right eye. "Doesn't look very orange, buuut I guess you're the expert."

"We extracted oil from the rind of seven oranges to make it. Commercial orange ice cream almost always uses food colouring in addition to the artificial flavouring. We find this practice distasteful."

"See, he's even making jokes! Hey, Rob-" He addresses the wall monitor, through which the cave's laboratory can be seen. "-you finished the toxicology screening yet?"

Robin's face appears. "It's... As far as we can tell, it's just ice cream. Cream, sugar, egg yolks and flavoring."

"And it won't do to me that thing that happened to Manhunter?"

"Can't think of any reason why it would."

"Sweeeett."

"We would not have poisoned you. We are guided by our desire for your happiness."

"You're making him happy by helping him pig out on ice cream."

"It works."

"We will also be monitoring his digestive processes, his blood sugar and fat deposits. We have long been curious as to the cause of his dietary concerns."

Wallace shrugs. "I burn a lot of fuel to go fast."

"You would need to eat far more than you do to fuel your speed through calorie intake alone, you regularly eat more than your stomach should be able to process, you do not spend a proportionate quantity of time excreting and neither of your predecessors share this problem. It cannot be a simple matter of fuel."

"See Artemis, it's for science. What's this one?"

"Mint."

"And this one?"

"Mango."

"And-?"

"Peppermint."

Artemis appears to realise something. "You're monitoring his digestion?"

"Yes, of course. Matter is being transformed, and we must understand-."

"Okay, Oh El? New rule. No scanning me while I'm in the bathroom."

"That will make it much harder to get good results. And do you know how many superheroes have died while on the toilet?"

He and Artemis look at each other. "Nnnnnooooooo?"

"Three. Granted, in Red Bee's case it was due to underlying health problems rather than assassination... But if we'd been scanning him at the time we could have healed him."

Artemis screws up her face. "Ew!"

"Don't care, got ice cream." His expression turns more serious as he looks at me. "And I'm serious about the bathroom thing."

"As you wish. Having observed your ingestion habits we recommend starting with the white chocolate variety."

"Which one is..?"

We raise it up. "We have raised it to optimal eating temperature. We hope you will enjoy it."

He takes hold of the bowl in his left hand and brings his spoon to bear. "Here I go." His spoon passes easily into the soft white just freezing material. He takes a small amount before withdrawing and looking at it critically. "Looks okay."

"…down and have a bottle of beer with the ache of all you've lost. I saw Milarepa at the coffee house…" All three of us stare at the ring as it starts singing. We slap it a few times and it stops. "We're sorry, we have no idea why it keeps doing that. Please, continue."

Wallace frowns, but dismisses it. In truth, we are a little concerned. Neither of our components understand power ring programming and the Ophidian was once imprisoned by such a device. It shouldn't be acting contrary to our desires like that. The song is not relevant to our current situation. Or perhaps it is? The Ophidian couldn't be said to be caged any longer.

We watch as Wallace gingerly raises the spoon to his lips before sliding it in and sucking the ice cream off. He rolls it around his mouth for a moment for a moment, a beatific smile gradually appearing on his face. "This is the greatest thing I have ever tasted."

"We're glad, but you have many more to go. Perhaps we may surprise you again?" And then the bowl's empty and he's picked up the macadamia nut flavour. We flavoured it with nut oil rather than putting pieces in and we're not quite sure what the effect will be.

"Ugh." Artemis looks unimpressed as Wallace begins moving through our work at some speed. Fortunately, these are just sample bowls. We still have plenty more. "Look, are you.. both of you, whatever. You're still not going to do anything about this super strength.. thing."

Wallace momentarily stops spooning. "He gave you super powers! I dunno what you're complaining about!"

"I never asked for this!"

"And it's awesome!"

"We were really more concerned about-."

"And you still won't give me the collar that Paul made for me?"

"If you like the collar-."

"Whow whow whow." Wallace lowers his thirteenth bowl and gives Artemis a stunned look. "He gave you a collar? Like-?"

We generate a construct to demonstrate its appearance. Artemis throws a spoon through it, disrupting it and embedding her projectile in the door of one of the kitchen units.

"A power suppression collar! So I could get used to super strength without smashing things."

"That is actually far more unlikely than-."

"And now he gets possessed by a demon and just forces it on me!"

"The Ophidian isn't actually-."

"When that inquisitor gets here, I am so going to look forward to him kicking that stupid orange snake right out of you."

We blink. "Inquisitor?"

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Reordered 2

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17th October

16:22 GMT -5

We're standing in the training area with Batman, Diana, Captain Marvel and Lantern Jordan. We're not really sure why Jordan has joined us. He is hopelessly outclassed. All he's doing is making us uncomfortable with his glowing ring and staring eyes. Wallace and Artemis followed us. Wallace picked up the snail ice cream to keep himself occupied and appears to be reconsidering the wisdom of his choice. Kaldur was already here. Kon and M'gann are.. outside, next to Doctor Holland's tree. M'gann has been rather out of sorts since the end of the scenario. We've tried to talk to her about it, but our presence does not seem to help.

“Recognised, Zatara, one one, Father Mattias, A zero seven.”

Mister Zatara

John Constantine choking as he squeezes his throat with both hands.

takes a few steps into the room before stepping to the side, giving us our first good look at the inquisitor. He's an older but still athletic looking man with what looks like a buzz cut and is wearing a sarum cassock, though we note that it's slit at the sides. Surprisingly, his clerical collar is red rather than white, and his fascia is red bordered. He wears a heavy looking silver pectoral cross. What hair we can see is white, and his skin is tanned. Mediterranean heritage, perhaps. And

********

we are unable to read him. Odd. Ah, the upright part of his crucifix appears to be hollow near the crosspiece. We can't feel anything inside, but we suppose that doesn't mean that nothing is there.

He smiles at us. "So, you are the young man I am here to see?"

"Yes, we believe we are. However, we feel that we should reiterate: we are not possessed by a Demon. We are not convinced that your ministrations are appropriate. Furthermore, Orange Lantern was not Christian."

"The faith of the vessel is not really the issue. Do you know who I am?"

"The zeta tube said that your name was Father Mattias. Given your accent and ethnicity we doubt that was your birth name. We understood that inquisitors were ordained priests, not monks."

"Members of my order are not called inquisitors. But you are correct, we are not monks, and I was not born as Mattias."

"Not inquisitors? Do you really think that 'Hammer of Witches' has more positive associations?"

"We prefer to translate it as 'Hammer of the Malevolent' these days. His Holiness Pope Pius the Thirteenth ended the Church's universal prohibition on the use of magic in nineteen sixty five. Giovanni-" He holds out his right hand to Mister Zatara. "-was one of my parishioners before I joined the Order."

We look at Mister Zatara. "We had wondered how he'd squared that circle."

"Yes, the reforms were quite far reaching. The feeling during the Second Vatican Council was that the prohibition was actively interfering with our ability to guard our flocks against the temptations of the demonic. Of those priests who were actively involved in the.. sharp end.. of the struggle, most had adopted a policy of hiring non-Catholic wizards and seers anyway, if they did not simply choose to wilfully violate the edict themselves. And, since His Holiness had been involved in directly fighting against the unholy himself, he felt it foolish to require us to continue to practise such hypocrisy."

"But if you are a priest, why change your name?"

"To make it harder for those who would do us harm to identify us." He looks around the room at our mentors. "And, of course, there are certain spells which require a person's name to be spoken."

We search the Catholic Church's records. "We cannot identify where you received your clerical training."

"The Seminary of the Archdiocese of Milan, since you are interested."

We look again. "We see no record of you."

"When our Order was created, a number of experts in such matters were consulted. They had expertise we needed. Learning how to protect certain types of information from-."

"Two brothers and four sisters. Seventeen nieces and nephews. Two grand nieces. Ah, I see your real name." He doesn't react much, just nodding slightly.

"And how do you have that information?"

"We took a reading of your DNA from skin cells you have shed since entering the room, then compared them to everyone in Italy. You are still listed by your birth name in your eldest sister's photograph album. Her back is giving her trouble again."

He nods again. "That is quite impressive."

"Thank you. And now it isn't."

"…having a Danish with his hurts and hatreds. He said 'You've got to invite them in, or you pay-'..."

Again? "Silence!" The ring ceases. We shake our head. "We are sorry, the ring insists on playing that song. We will try to prevent it from interrupting again. We presume you were given information about Orange Lantern."

"I was. What would you prefer me to call you?"

"We had not considered that issue. We are happy to answer to the name of either of our constituent parts. Though.. if you wish to be formally correct, the name of the Entity is used as the host's title. The host of Ion puts aside their Green Lantern Corps designation, so perhaps we should as well."

"Can I call you Paul?"

We shrug. "As long as you understand that it is not completely accurate, yes."

"Well then Paul, the Justice League are concerned that we are in fact talking to a Demon that is possessing their student, and they've asked me to see whether this is true or not."

"We had surmised. We cannot check your credentials, but we doubt the League would have invited you if you were not what you appear to be."

"Do you have an objection to that?"

"Not in principle."

"Are there any questions you want to ask before I begin?"

"Why can we not see your desires?"

He takes his crucifix in his right hand and holds it up. "Members of my Order are issued with these. In addition to symbolising Christ's sacrifice, it-."

"Shields you."

"It's a little more complicated than that, but in essence, yes."

"Understood." Our eyes blaze with orange light and the core of the crucifix begins to glow blue/white in response. "We no longer share Orange Lantern's vulnerability to magic. And we do not like being separated from our element." The cross starts to blacken and char. We feel Batman start to move but Mattias holds up his left hand to stop him.

"Interesting. You may not be aware, but these days all Catholic priests are trained in identifying different forms of magic. A Demon wouldn't be able to affect a crucifix like this."

"Perhaps not directly, but a sufficiently intelligent one could find a work around. Or corrupt its manufacture."

"True. Do you intend to burn all the way through?"

"Yes. After what happened during the training session we have come to loathe the presence of people whose desires we cannot see."

"It's quite valuable."

"We will compensate you for your loss."

"I think I'd rather just take it off, since it bothers you so much."

We blink, and the glow fades. "That is acceptable."

He reaches up with both hands, and carefully lifts it over his head before handing it to Mister Zatara. And now we know him.

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Reordered 3

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17th October

16:26 GMT -5

He wants to free our.. Orange Lantern, but this desire is receding, fading in prominence. Does he believe our statement that the Ophidian is not a Demon? Connected to this desire are memories and regrets, things he wants to have done differently. We see intoxicated children reading from a book they had no business possessing. He wants to be anywhere else as he nods to the armed police officer next to him, who raises his gun. He wants to help us, to understand us. We see him participate in the autopsy of.. we're not sure. It has the form of a man but appears to be made of parts of different men. We see a name. Gregori Arcane. We remember him from the comic.

Comic? We remember.. this is... this whole place..? That thought feels strange. We do not know why. Yes, he was Abigail Arcane's father, killed by accident in a mine field and repaired by Anton Arcane as best as he was able. He ended up fairly mindless. Presumably Father Mattias was involved in the investigation of Anton's first death. We would have suggested napalming the whole place instead.

"Is that better?"

"Yes. Thank you."

"Then I will begin." He reaches through the slit in the side of his cassock with his left hand. "I realise that it's a little old fashioned, but..." He pulls out a small glass vial. Holy water, presumably.

"The Ophidian is not a Demon." We hold out our right hand and pull the bottle towards us through the air. "Shall we tip it over our head? Drink it?"

He waves his right hand in dismissal. "No. A few drops on your hand will be proof enough."

"You realise that there is nothing to stop us shielding our hand. Or transmuting the water."

"Will you?"

"No." We take the vial in our hands and unscrew the lid. It seems to just be water, but our senses will not necessarily detect magic not relating to our element. We levitate the lid away and hold out our left hand, palm upwards, and sprinkle a little of the water onto it. No effect. We look at Father Mattias.

"How do I know you're not making a shield? Wouldn't it be a better test if you took your ring off?"

"If you prefer." We float the vial away and without altering the position of our left hand pull the ring off with our right and drop it on the floor. "It doesn't matter. With the Ophidian's power in us we no longer really need it." Hmm. Perhaps? We generate a construct knife from our right index finger and cut into our left palm. Blood mixes with the holy water and we hold our palm in his direction.

Mattias nods. "I suppose that's fairly conclusive. Of course, elemental possession-."

Our ring is surrounded in a green aura and lifts off the ground. No no no no no no no! We crush the will aura and turn on Lantern Jordan, staring him down, eyes brilliant, crouched and braced to charge. We will make him our toy for his impudence! "Ggrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!"

"Jordan." His eyes flick to Batman for a moment, who shakes his head with a small motion. Jordan tenses slightly, then lowers his head, turns and walks to the exit. We watch him go, calling the ring back to its rightful place on our left ring finger.

"'…ten times the cost'. Stop running away, 'cause nobody runs as fast as fear and loathing."

"Not the time."

"Paul?"

"Yes." Our eyes are still fixed on Jordan's back. We could take him. We could take his ring, his lantern.

"Would you mind looking at me?"

Jordan turns a corner, heading to the gymnasium. We stare after him a moment longer, then turn back to Father Mattias. Ah, yes. We rescrew the lid and float the vial back to Father Mattias, who catches it.

"Do you need a bandage?"

"We can heal ourself."

He nods. "Why don't you tell me, in your own words, how the two of you came together."

We're not sure about that. "Batman?"

"Father Mattias is cleared to hear about the training exercise. Don't mention any real names unless it is essential."

We nod. "Have you been shown our written report?"

"Yes. It seemed a little.. detached, though. In the cases of nondemonic possession I have studied, it is usual for incredibly intense emotion to be involved."

"The Ophidian is extremely intense emotion. Avarice. The emotional need for a thing. In the training scenario we became convinced... Orange Lantern became convinced that several members of his ingroup had been killed, and that the rest were fighting for their lives. His power was insufficient to protect them, so he asked for more."

"You knew this would happen?"

"He did not know exactly what would happen. He assumed that his mind would be permanently altered and his power increased. That the Ophidian would live in him, twist and deform him. This joining was not anticipated."

"That would seem more in character for a Demon than an Elemental. What does this.. Ophidian, get out of the arrangement?"

"Perspective. It is need, but its relentless pursuit of need led it to be trapped in a cave for millions of years. It does not know how to want one thing rather than another. Plus, it gained freedom from Okaara and the Orange Central Power Battery where it had been imprisoned. It wants new experiences."

"Did it assist you as you wanted?"

"Yes." He waits for us to continue, but that answer appears to be complete to us.

"From the description you gave, it would appear that when the Ophidian originally appeared, the joining had a rather different character to the one it has now."

We try to remember the event from the Ophidian's point of view. It is not easy. "The Ophidian did not know it was a telepathic illusion any more than Orange Lantern did. It found the situation puzzling. It could not feel the desires of the illusory people."

"But you weren't joined."

"No. We think.. subconsciously, Orange Lantern could hear it. And his avarice was reinforced. But our minds did not merge."

"From what Batman and your team mates said, you seemed fairly distraught after the illusion ended."

"Yes."

"Could you explain to me what you were feeling?"

We frown. "We hadn't really..." Why had we done that? We genuinely were a bit of a mess. "We wanted to protect our friends, but in fact the protection was unnecessary. We wanted something that wasn't really there."

"And you were possessed in the process."

"It was a shock for both of us."

"You seem to be alright now."

"We are."

"I understand that your colleague Miss Martian found the-."

"It was not her fault! It was our decision!"

"You recovered when you comforted her."

"Yes. She needs us. We like being needed."

"I don't think that is quite it. Let me explain to you how I see it."

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17th October

16:30 GMT -5

"Oh, before I get started; how long has your ring been trying to play that song?"

We frown. "Since twenty one minutes after the training scenario ended."

"What is it about?"

"We are not sure how this is relevant."

"Humour me."

"The song concerns the teachings of the Buddhist sage, Milarepa. The essential argument is that rather than suppressing one's less noble aspect, one should accept and make peace with it."

"Does it have some relevance to you?"

"Orange Lantern knew that the orange light was dangerous when he started using it. He sought systems of thought which would help him use it without losing his mind. Buddhism was considered but ultimately rejected in favour of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs."

"But the song, in particular."

"It has no relevance! It was an interesting piece of music. That is all."

He nods, and strokes his chin. "You are right to differentiate between Elementals and Demons. It is a distinction which some of my more conservative colleagues have yet to fully grasp. A Demon which takes a host will have almost complete control of their body, but the minds remain separate. The Demon may even be identified by its ignorance of their life. If it is banished, the host may be completely unaware of what it used them to do. What is interesting is what happens on those few occasions when the Demon -particularly if it is powerful- leaves voluntarily. When that happens, the taint of its evil may remain in the host, influencing their actions even without its active design."

We nod. "We remember hearing about a cab driver in London, a decent man who was used as a vessel for Nergal." Mattias crosses himself. "After the Demon left him, he assaulted his wife, picked a fight in a bar and nearly committed adultery, all quite contrary to his normal character."

"The taint can be purified. This cab driver..?" We nod. "Praise the Lord. The point I wish to make is, the presence of creatures of magic can alter a person's behaviour and character."

"We know this."

"You do? And you still don't know why the song is relevant?"

"It isn't!"

"When you were in the false world you wanted to help your friends and your world. To achieve that end you wanted the Ophidian, a creature that is want manifested, to join forces with you."

"Yes?"

"You wanted it, even knowing that it would most likely leave you unrecognisable in body and mind, if not soul."

"Yes."

"You wanted it more than you wanted to remain you."

We suppose we did. We feel.. pleased about that. "Yes."

"The two of you pursued your aim until the scenario reaches its conclusion, at which point... The whole thing is revealed as an illusion. Your initial justification, the very thing which made you want to do something that you would never do under normal circumstances, was revealed to be a response to a situation which never really existed."

We... That... FeelsWrongFeelsWrong...

"That was the real reason for your confusion. You might have accepted having your mind altered as the price of saving your friends, but just letting it have the run of your body? No, you wouldn't do that. Then, when Miss Martian started showing signs of distress?"

Nonononononono.

"You had something to want again."

We stumble to the left a step before righting ourself. We feel dizzy.

"As long as you want something, the elemental within you has a hold on you. Have you slept since the end of the training scenario?"

We shake our head. We feel unwell. There's something, something...

"You have the power of a pagan god and you spent the morning making ice cream. Paul, is that gain proportionate to what you gave up? Would you make the decision that you made in the training scenario if all that was at stake was ice cream?"

"He likes the ice cream!"

"Stop pushing away, you're just making it worse."

"No! We won't! Treacherous ring!"

"The Ophidian is altering the way you think in order to make you unwilling to get rid of it. You don't need it, Paul. It isn't part of you."

We're.. I'm... We're on our knees, clutching our head again. "Grahhh!"

"It may not even be doing it intentionally. It may be that its very presence is causing every desire you feel to be as important to you as the lives of your friends. Or it may be that that is simply how it sees the universe, the people in it mere collections of needs."

"Stop putting it off, 'cause it'll be back again in different clothing."

"I think you -the real you, within you- realises this. And I think your ring does as well. It's playing the song to try to remind you."

He's just in front of us. We can't look we can't look up. "Breathing, food, water, sex, sleep, homeostasis, excretion."

"There is so much more to life than avarice."

"Self-esteem, confidence, achievement, respect."

"You are stronger than this. You do not truly want this."

We feel our lips turn in a sneer, hate we don't feel burning from our eyes. We/I look up into his face.

"But. We. Still. WANT."

Father Mattias' face falls. He takes a step back, then his resolve hardens. "You will not have this one, creature." He jabs his right index finger at our forehead. "You will not have this one. We will find a way to remove you. I will find a way."

We.. we were... Worried about something? Why are we feeling shaky? We get to our feet. No, everything's fine. We take a moment to compose our thoughts. "We admit, we are a little disappointed. No Latin chanting? No censers of incense? No being compelled by the power of Christ?"

"Elementals require a different approach. Do you remember why you were on the floor?"

We think for a moment, then shake our head. "Was it important?"

"Yes, but you shouldn't worry about it. Not yet. I will need to do some research before we meet again."

"As you wish. You may wish to consider speaking to John Constantine. He has an eclectic knowledge of magic phenomena."

"Thank you. I have not heard of this.. John Constantine?"

"Ask Mister Zatara. He's been wanting to strangle him continuously since at least the end of the training session. Probably longer, if we're any judge."

He looks at Mister Zatara for a moment, who winces slightly and looks down for a moment. "I may do that. Thank you for your help."

We shrug as he and Mister Zatara turn and walk back to the zeta tube. "You're welcome."

"Just pop the clutch and go into reverse."

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19th October

10:19 GMT -5

"Paul, what are you doing?"

We turn away from our construct to smile at Diana. Her hands are on her hips but she looks more amused than annoyed.

"The Justice League has over half a million phone calls from concerned New Yorkers, to say nothing of all the complaints about there being no chicken's eggs for sale anywhere in the city."

We turn our attention back to our mixing bowl construct. "Not just in the city. We doubt that there are any eggs left in north America."

"And why is that?"

"Wallace reminded us that we should have baked our Christmas Cake a month ago. We thought that we should make an immediate start."

She nods. "Yes, I can see that you've done that. I'm just not sure how you went from wanting to bake a cake to mixing a cake in a giant orange mixing bowl four miles in diameter in the sky over New York city."

We blink. Isn't it obvious? "We doubt that even Wallace could eat this much cake."

"So why bake it?"

"Because no one has before. Also, Lantern Gardner observed that Orange Lantern's ability to create extremely large constructs was lacking." We look over to the west as the two thousand bags of plain flour we took from the main Pennsylvania ShopRite warehouse finally arrive. "We think that we can now safely lay his concerns to rest." We deploy them across the bowl before disintegrating their bags. No, not nearly enough. We still need more.

"What about everyone else who wants to eat the food you're taking?"

"What about them?"

"Paul..."

"The ingredients we are using were available for sale. It was not our intent to defraud anyone, we simply purchased them before anyone else. We do not see anything inherently unreasonable about this."

"How are you planning on cooking it?"

"Though it is hardly ideal, we will have to use microwaves for the majority of the cooking process. And some directed heat to create the outer crust. We had considered running metal rods down into the cake structure and heating it that way, but we were concerned about the potential for localised overcooking."

"That.. makes sense." She doesn't sound too convinced. "But who is going to eat it?"

"Everyone! We calculate that with this volume of cake we can give everyone in New York city a piece. Not a wedge shaped piece. We haven't been able to work out a way to do that." We run a few more slicing simulations through our head. We could just about do it, but there would be an unacceptable oddly shaped cake volume left over.

"And where are you going to store it?"

"We have created an artificial chamber below the Swiss Alps. Once we altered the structure of the surrounding rock we were able to create a space that could both keep water off the cake and keep the cake itself cool."

"Why..." She seems lost for words. "Why Switzerland?"

"We could hardly keep it at Happy Harbour. Quite aside from space considerations Batman forbade us from bringing alcohol into the cave. We did consider near Earth space, but we are not aware of anyone having tried that and were concerned that there might be unexpected side effects, particularly relating to the lack of pressure."

"Alright, but why are you mixing it in the sky over the city?"

"We thought that the inhabitants might find it entertaining." We frown. "Should we have done it lower so that people could see what is happening in more detail? We thought that allowing it to be viewed by a greater number of people was more important, but there's no reason why we couldn't reshape the bowl and move it to Central Par-."

"No!" She holds up her right hand. "No. Leave it here." We nod. She rubs her brow with her left hand. "How much longer is this going to take?"

"Is there a problem?"

"It's a.. a little unusual."

"We estimate seven hours. If that is a problem we can accelerate the process, but that would involve a greater amount of visible orange light."

"If you accelerated it?"

"Perhaps two hours, including cooking time."

She thinks for a moment, looking at the city below us. With our augmented vision we can pick out individual people stopping what they were doing to gaze upon our work. We like this feeling. "I think it would be best if you did that."

"Very well." We close our eyes and reach out to all flour, eggs, butter and treacle in the world and calculate what of it is most easy to reach. Diana seems to be worried about one area being left without... Should we spread the extraction more broadly? Yes, that should be easy enough. Orange streamers radiate out in all directions as we call them to us, leaving platinum coins in their place. Combined with the fruit we gathered Sunday night, soaked in brandy and then deposited in our subspace pocket, the mixing bowl construct is starting to fill. Obviously with a bowl this size a whisk construct would be far too inefficient so we've settled for forcing an even consistency using our ring. Wouldn't want any of the eventual eaters to feel hard done by where sultanas are concerned. "Incidentally-" We look across the bowl as more treacle and brown sugar arrive. "-we have finally finished removing debris from near Earth orbit. We also took the liberty of deactivating seventeen armed satellites which we believe contravene the Outer Space Treaty, and have marked for review one hundred and fifteen others which we feel may violate international law."

"That's.. good. Paul, can I talk to you about something not related to your giant cake?"

"Of course, Diana. You can talk to us about anything."

She looks to the side for a moment, and brushes her hair out of her face with her left hand. Oh, how inconsiderate of us! We create a windbreak.

"No. Not to 'us'. Just to Paul."

"We're sorry, but that isn't possible. He no longer has a separate existence."

"You know I don't accept that."

"Yes."

"And that doesn't bother you?"

"We know you are motivated by your desire for our... for his wellbeing. We actually find it reassuring."

"You understand that we're going to try and separate you."

"We do not believe that is possible with the technology at your disposal. And given how the Guardians gutted the Watchtower before handing it over we doubt that they will be willing to supply you." We float over to hover just in front of her. "But you are free to make the attempt. We will not be offended."

"Alright. When you finished removing space debris, why did you think it appropriate to turn the moon around at the same time?"

Oh. That. "We felt it unfair that the dark side was seldom seen by anyone. Since the mass remained in place the effect on the Earth should be negligible."

"And you were sure you could do that safely?"

"Yes? It wasn't hard." She stares at us for a moment. "We can put it back if you don't like it."

"That.. would.. probably be for the best."

"Very well." We look up into the sky where the moon is just visible. Diana follows our gaze as it begins to visibly rotate.

"Hera." She blinks heavily and shakes her head slightly as if to snap herself out of a daze. "Paul? Kon wants you back as well."

"We... We had..." Something is different, there. We feel possessive of him, but... Didn't we used to feel something else? Something... The Ophidian never knew him, the feeling must have come from Orange Lantern.

Why can't we remember what it was?

"We regret that he will be disappointed as well." We shrug. "Kon is important to us, but that does not change the simple fact that this bond is undissolvable. Now, do you have any thoughts concerning icing?"

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21st October

17:47 GMT -5

Though we could just transition directly into the dining area, we have been told that it is more polite to walk from a little distance away so that our team mates can finish any truly private conversations before we arrive. We are not sure that this applies given that we hear everything they say anyway, but perhaps they don't realise that? After Wallace prohibited us from observing him in the toilet we are loath to inform them of our new habit in case they make a similar prohibition.

"…nn's still on Oa. The Guardians are trying to work out what… What you-know-who did to him."

We close our eyes for a moment and feel Manhunter's position through the brand. Still in the Green Lantern Corps' hospital. A Guardian stands at his bedside with his hands stretched over the sigil. Their eyes widen as we stare at them, then they raise a shield of will around the bed. Ineffectual. Hmm. We don't know exactly how we branded him. We think it was when the Ophidian bit his corpse during the exercise. Presumably we could do that with someone else but it seems like an unnecessary effort.

"Is he hurt?"

We stand outside the door. Kon's voice... There's something.. important..? Wasn't there? We're not sure anymore.

"He says he isn't, but it's preventing him from shapeshifting. I think he blames himself for what happened to-."

We push through the door and their heads jerk up. Kon and M'gann are sitting at the table with a couple of textbooks and notepaper between them. Kon's at the table's head and M'gann is to his left, facing us. Her grip on Kon's hand tightens. We smile at them.

"Guess what we've found!"

M'gann looks unhappy again, and glances at Kon. We don't know what to do about that. We do have a pack of Chocos in our subspace pocket... We have no desire to render her an addict, though we are uncertain as to how that could happen. Maybe we should leave a single biscuit in every household on Mars and see what happens?

Kon looks downcast as well. "What?"

Hopefully this news will cause him to brighten up. "Ninjas!"

He blinks. "What ninjas?"

"After Orange Lantern attacked Infinity Island, you said that the next time he went after ninjas, you wanted in. We found ninjas!"

"What.. kind of ninjas?"

"Looks like the rest of the League of Shadows. Ra's, Sensei, several others with outstanding warrants. We even found a new Lazarus Pit!"

"I.. thought you couldn't scan for them because of that scrying ward."

"Ah! Funny story. You remember Babylon Five? The television series from Orange Lantern's home universe?" They look at each other, puzzled. We are going somewhere with this. "There was a species in that whose starships couldn't be detected using gravity or radio waves. Most races that fought them had to close to point blank range and manually target them to hit them with their main guns. We read a story later in which Humans were at war with them. In that they found two ways around the technology. Firstly, telepathic scans were unaffected. With the right equipment and training a telepath could detect the location of their ships and relay that information to their own fleet. The second was optics. The enemy ships still reflected light, so when they fought the Human fleet fired thousands of observation drones into their enemy's most probable vector and used that information to aim."

"Okaaay. And?"

"We did the same thing! We couldn't scan for them normally, but by putting light sensitive constructs everywhere we have been able to detect his location."

Kon thinks for a moment. "You mean like spy satellites?"

"No." We shake our head. "That would only work if they were on the surface. Their base is actually built into a mountain in the Himalayas, we had to look everywhere to find it."

"Well, yeah... Himalayas are pretty big."

"No, we mean we looked everywhere." We wave our left hand and our eyes appear, eyeballs with an optic nerve trailing out of the back, becoming finer and finer until it joins the filament network. Though they still give off some orange light we can make lines so fine that they are effectively invisible. There are thirty in this room alone, staring in all directions. M'gann gasps and shrinks back against her chair. As she does so the eye over the table identifies her as a point of interest and lowers itself to stare directly into her face from about ten centimetres away.

"AH!"

A telekinetic blast destroys the eye, but it reforms two seconds later. I tell it to keep its distance a little this time. Hm, can we hear running feet? Kon doesn't look much happier than M'gann does.

"You've got these.. things everywhere?!"

We nod. "Everywhere except the Batcave and any toilet Wallace is in. Which is a little inconvenient, because-."

Kaldur runs in through the far door, Water Bearers drawn with machete blades projecting from the tops. The closest three eyes orientate on him and he instinctively-

"Raawah!"

-slashes at them before taking in the room. M'gann looks concerned. "Kaldur, what's wrong?"

He stares directly at us, swords in a guard position. "What are you doing?"

Kon looks from him to me and then back again. "What happened?"

"We were demonstrating our observation construct. Is something wrong?"

"They are everywhere."

"Yes?"

"Throughout the cave. In Happy Harbor. The sky itself is full of orange construct-eyes."

"And local space, and the sea too." They stare. "We did say 'everywhere'." They stare some more. "Should we remove them? They've been there for at least a day, but now that we've found our target-."

"Remove them at once."

We shrug. He's the boss. We make a circling motion with our right hand and the eyes across the world fade. He lowers his blades slightly.

"Why were you observing the entire world?"

Oh! That's right! He'll like this too! "We wanted to track down the remnants of the League of Shadows."

"Were you successful?"

"Yes! If we leave now we can have Ra's in custody within an hour." We generate a cut away construct of the facility. Not all of those inside are Shadows, there seem to be monks of some kind. With alien physiology? They could just be metahumans... No. There're definitely nonhuman genetic elements and extraterrestrial materials and technology. Could that be the place that Prometheus got trained in? We haven't found him here but that might just mean that he isn't active yet.

Kaldur considers our suggestion. "Show me the full schematics of their base." We create an exploded view, separating levels and magnifying. He examines it, then shakes his head. "Alien human hybrid monks? Alien technology of a species never before encountered? Even if Ra's al Ghul were not present himself, those two factors indicate that this is a mission for the League, not for our team."

"But we can do it! Even if it was just the four of us, we can-!"

"You are not cleared for missions for as long as you remain possessed. And I do not believe that the rest of the team is in a fit state to carry out a mission like this, even if we had authorization. Which we do not."

"But we-."

"You just covered the world in glowing orange eyes. Surely you can understand that your judgement is suspect."

We shuffle where we stand, our head twitching from side to side. Not right not right not right. Kon wanted ninjas!

"I think… Paul, I think Kaldur's right. I just don't.. feel like taking on ninjas right now."

Oh. Well. There goes that idea. "Okay. We'll. We'll send this data to the League."

Kaldur puts his right hand on our arm as we go to walk past him.

"It is still useful information, and it will be a major victory when the League acts on it. It is simply.. not our role to do so."

We're trying to help trying to help. Why don't they want our help?

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22nd October

16:14 GMT -5

You can get normal sport arrows for about two dollars apiece. The point arrows which Artemis, Green Arrow and Red Arrow use cost a little more than that, but not much. The explosive headed arrows are more like twenty dollars each for the low yield ones, and they certainly aren't reusable. The more complex ones... Some of them cost in the region of five hundred dollars a shot. There's no way Artemis can fund herself.

We had a look at Mister Queen's finances. He was removed as CEO from Queen Industries by his own board due to -more or less- not doing the job of running it, preferring to spend his time as a superhero. Or just goofing off. Mister Wayne might be able to get away with that behaviour with Lucius Fox at the helm but Mister Queen's second -a man named John Deleon- had no such brand loyalty. To be fair, it literally wasn't his job to carry Mister Queen. Maximising shareholder value was, and as the new CEO he's done that rather well. Does Mister Queen understand this, or does he see Mister Deleon as a traitor out to improve his own standing no matter the cost to anyone else? We think the latter is more likely, but one man does not a revolution make. He might have encouraged the ill feeling among the shareholders and members of the board but he didn't cause it to be there in the first place.

In any case, the profits from his investments can keep him in arrows but Artemis isn't in that position. Unlike Red Arrow she can't go independent. And we want to fix that.

It came to us when we were in Kahndaq earlier today, looking for the Thanagarian spacecraft which was once in the possession of Prince Khufu. When we asked Adom about it he said that he was surprised that we knew of it. His friend showed it to him once and he was willing to tell me where that happened, but he said that he had no idea where it would be now if it even survived the intervening millennia. Does that mean that there is a reincarnating version of Hawkman around as well as the alien police officer version? We haven't seen any sign, but we didn't really follow their history back home. Anyway, the ship wasn't there but we were able to locate a minute sample of Nth metal and we have big plans for it.

Adom's English has gotten a good deal better since Orange Lantern first liberated him. He's starting to read up on recent history and tried to get our opinion on Kahndaq's nineteenth and twentieth century. Quite a bit like Egypt from Orange Lantern's home parallel combined with more than a little Iraq and North Korea, a pattern the Ophidian remembers repeating in millions of polities of all sizes. We didn't have anything to add to his growing disbelief at man's casual inhumanity to man. And his anger. He seems to be heading in the direction which Orange Lantern intended, but we suggested that he talk through his concerns with Diana. We're sure that she has a better idea of the political realities than we do.

Artemis is sitting on the top of Mount Justice, looking out across the bay. We remember that this was where Robin discovered Orange Lantern's name after the fight with Mister Twister. A place to go to isolate oneself, and we certainly don't want that. Dimming our aura we float up to her. As we enter her field of vision she glances at us before turning away. We land a short distance to her right.

"What do you want?"

"We have a proposal for you."

"I'm not interested in talking to the snake."

"We.. can.. leave you alone. Ifff it affects your decision, this is something Orange Lantern was planning to deal with at some point. We have simply prioritised it."

She says nothing for a moment. "Fine, what do you want?"

"It has occurred to us that your resource expenditure per encounter is greater than that of any of our other team mates."

She screws up her face as she turns her head to look at us. "What?"

"Arrows cost money. Constructs don't. Punches and magic don't. Shapeshifting and telepathy don't. Wallace spends an unusual amount of money on calorie rich foodstuffs but we calculate that the cost to him per encounter is still-."

"Really. Really!" She leaps to her feet and storms over to us. We smile inwardly. After the sadness tinged doldrums everyone else has been affected by her anger is refreshing. "That's the best you could come up with! Trying to BUY ME OFF!"

"We're simply trying to be practical. You have expenses. At present Green Arrow meets them, and Orange Lantern chipped in with those Arrows of Unmaking. But if you wanted to operate independently you need some way to pay for it."

"I'm not going to abandon Paul just because-."

"It was his idea! The Ophidian would just give you a pile of money, but we realise that your pride would not accept that."

"What, then?"

"An expense account. You could claim back the cost of professional equipment by presenting receipts." She simmers down a little. Will she consider it? We want her to. Diana's being noncommittal about talking to Io for us, so our next step is talking to Io ourself. Leaving a note where she will find it, anyway. We don't want to intrude on Themiscyra uninvited. "That is hardly an unusual practice. Many businesses allow employees to reclaim costs incurred in the performance of their duties. If it makes you happier we will not even administer it ourself."

"How would you even open a bank account? If Paul didn't have a passport you certainly don't."

"We could fund the account while a League member controls it. Failing that, we have an arrangement with the US Treasury. We do not believe there will be any difficulty." She doesn't immediately reply. "The account will be open to expense costs of all team members. It is not our intent to single you out."

"Can you really afford that after that huge cake you made?"

We nod. "That did consume most of our cash assets. We had been planning to acquire more."

"How?"

"Orange Lantern was capable of small scale transmutation. We are capable of altering vast amounts of matter, but do not do so in order to avoid harming the world commodity market. We plan to continue mining asteroids, though we imagine that the process will be considerably quicker now."

"And.. Paul was going to do this anyway?"

"He was focused on encouraging you to accept augmentation, and did not feel that pushing you on two fronts would be productive. He was considering creating it anonymously. We... We seem to be having trouble relating to our friends at the moment. We do not..." We shake our head. "We do not understand why. We want you to know that we're on your side."

She's still facing us, but her eyes are looking out to sea. "Fine."

"We can help?"

She sighs. "Yeah. I mean, you're right. Someone's got to pay for this, and if Paul was going to sort something out anyway..."

"Would you like to watch?"

"Watch you break up an asteroid?" We nod excitedly. "Um, okay. I've never been-." And then she throws herself backwards onto the ground, panting, staring up in terror at the sky.

What?

"We thought it would be more convenient to bring the asteroid here. This rock has more than enough precious metal for our purposes." We've suspended it ten metres above the peak of Mount Justice. It's about eight hundred metres long and maybe sixty across at its widest point, rotating slowly on its axis. Why is she concerned? "Don't worry, no one was using it. We don't even think it had been investigated by robot probe." We hold out our hands and begin the disintegration process while sending an e-mail to our contact at the Treasury. "Do you have a preference for the account signatory? Green Arrow has an appropriate business background but we are uncertain that he will be sufficiently diligent."

"You... You... Rock..."

"Thank you. We like to think that we do as well, but it is nice to have it confirmed." We frown. "Do you have any use for seventy thousand tonnes of silica?"

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23rd October

16:42 GMT -5

We didn't actually know this room existed. No, that isn't quite right. We knew it was here, we just never had anything to do with it so didn't integrate that knowledge. We're sitting on the left of a two seater green settee opposite Black Canary. She's sitting on a matching green armchair about a metre and a half in front of us. We were half expecting Father Mattias to be here. He's been hanging around a fair bit this week, but, no. Just her.

"I.. see you put the moon back."

Our team mates are currently moping in the living area. We have tried to cheer them up, but nothing we do seems to work. "Diana asked us to. We turned it around on a whim. We saw no reason to refuse. May we ask if Ra's al Ghul is in custody?"

She shakes her head. "By the time we managed to get that far into the monastery he had already escaped."

"We suggest searching for any residue that might be associated with phantom zone portals."

"What.. makes.. you say that?"

"We are familiar with the technology of thousands of different races. Since our direct input is not required we will content ourself with shouting from the sidelines."

"How is that..? How does your bond with the Ophidian work, exactly?"

"We are one being. We have the knowledge and experience of both, though..."

"What is it?"

"We have noticed.. some things feel a little... We're not really sure. As if... When you cannot remember a particular word; you know it exists but cannot remember what it was."

"Can you give me an example?"

We lean back. "How we feel about Kon. To the Ophidian he would not matter at all while to Orange Lantern he was extremely important. We should retain the full extent of that feeling and the intensity is certainly there, but... We think its character is different now."

"Different how?"

We shrug. "We're not sure. We have forgotten the word."

She nods. "Have you felt like that since the training exercise?"

We nod. "We think so. If we do not concentrate on it we do not notice it."

"You were extremely affectionate to Conner when the exercise finished."

"We were relieved that he was not dead. That would have involved a great deal of work, even as we are now."

"You.. how were you planning..?"

"Assimilate Ra's al Ghul, batch produce Lazarus Pits. The League now has two of those, does it not? How is the research going?"

"I.. don't know."

"They resurrect the dead. Do you not think it is worth prioritising?"

"The League doesn't really do that sort of research and development, and STAR Labs doesn't-."

"Are you familiar with the computer game 'X-COM'?"

She looks a little confused for a moment. "No, I can't say that I am."

"It's really quite good fun. On one hand you have a turn based squad combat game, but at the same time you have to capture aliens and alien artefacts and research them. As the game progresses the level of opposition you face steadily increases and if your research has fallen behind... You lose. You lose however highly skilled your soldiers are. They just don't have the equipment necessary to deal with the situation."

"And you think that the League is in the same position?"

"Yes. We approve of your work with STAR Labs, but they are unequal to the task and -as you pointed out- cannot work with magic. Take the Gamma Gong, for example. Paralysis with no side effects at all. Very nearly the ultimate low lethality weapon. We can well understand not wanting to risk the only example you have in the field, but can you imagine the advantage you would have if League members carried devices like that as standard?"

"That isn't really what the League does."

"True. But do you think it should be? Leveraging all of your advantages-."

"Like you did with Robin and Artemis?"

"Yes! Well, perhaps not quite like that. More controlled. We were prioritising their survivability above other factors."

"You like helping your team mates, don't you?"

"Of course. We... Orange Lantern had been discussing the possibility of augmentation with Artemis for several weeks." We frown. "When we were in the scenario, she asked us if Robin might have survived our first encounter with the aliens if we had enhanced him."

"Do you think he would?"

"At the time, he didn't know. Having reviewed the fight since, we believe so."

"J'onn told me about how the aliens' main guns worked. The -Danner?- formula wouldn't have made him immune to it."

"He was already moving when the fighter fired. Had he been stronger he would most likely have been able to evade more quickly. Had he been faster-."

"You can't blame yourself for him not having super speed."

"Yes we can! Orange Lantern had the ability to give him super speed for over a month! He couldn't-! He couldn't block the zeta cannon thing, but he was behind most research carried out here. He could have been more insistent, should have done more for his squishy team mates."

"Squishy?" She smiles slightly, then stops when we don't share it. "I'm not sure they'd appreciate being called that. Come to think of it I'm not sure I do."

We shrug. "We are sorry, we are not sure if it would be safe to augment a metahuman using the substances currently at our disposal. If you would like to provide a blood sample-."

She holds up her right hand in a stilling gesture. "That wasn't what I meant. It sounds a bit dismissive."

"We suppose it is. Orange Lantern has long wanted to augment the whole of our species and these formulae have no downside. There is no reason not to use them if you can."

"Then why were you so determined that Artemis should use one and not Robin?"

"Robin has many other skills, ones not directly related to combat. So far as we know, Artemis doesn't."

"You don't think that she can pull her weight?"

"We want her to be sure that she can pull her weight. She wants very much to be someone who belongs on a team like this and we do not think that disguising the power disparity between us would be appropriate. We would rather simply fix it by raising her to our level."

"You can't be responsible for everything that the other members of the team do."

We smile. "You're wrong. That is the beauty of this joining. We are now fully capable of doing just that."

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23rd October

16:46 GMT -5

She blinks at us.

"We can track their every movement, the actions of every part of their bodies. We don't wish to crowd them of course. The point of the augmentations was to ensure that they could manage without us but if we had to step in-."

"And what do they think about this?"

"We don't..." We toss our head. "Our friends have gotten worse since the training session. Listless. Passive. I brought the location of Ra's al Ghul to Kaldur first and he insisted I hand it over to the League."

"Kaldur was right to do that."

We stare through the walls at the kitchen. Artemis hasn't arrived yet, but the others are moping in there. "He was acting in accordance with the team's official rules of engagement, yes. But we didn't do that when we went after Morrow and we were instrumental in preventing a supervolcano eruption." We look at the floor for a moment. "M'gann can barely stand to be in the same room as us now. And we don't know how to do anything about it."

"What exactly did you do to Martian Manhunter?"

"Branded him." We come forwards in our seat. "We don't really understand the process."

"Neither of you..?"

"The Ophidian doesn't usually stop at marking people in that way." We tap the sigil on our forehead with our right index finger. "Hosts get this. Everyone else who opposed it got turned into a construct or killed."

"Can you remove it?"

We smirk. "Could the Green Men not work it out?"

"The.. Guardians..?"

"The Ophidian didn't know their name for themselves when it first met them. It called them the Green Men due to their connection with the green light of will. It didn't like them."

"I asked you."

"We don't know." We shrug. "We could try removing it, but we don't want to risk turning him into a construct."

"How did you put it there?"

"We don't know. We're not even sure when it happened. Nothing like this has ever happened to us before."

"What does it do?"

"Ties him to the orange light. We know where-." Wallace moved where's Wallace where's Wallace!

"What is it?"

We see him and calm ourself. "We cannot track Wallace when he moves at full speed. He ran from the kitchen to greet Artemis as she entered the cave. He is now awkwardly attempting small talk. How is she managing with the strength increase?"

"Why don't you ask her yourself?"

"We.. tried. She no longer enjoys talking to us. She refers to us as if we were only the Ophidian."

"You can't be too surprised. Surely you realized that she'd be annoyed that you changed her body without her permission. And nearly dropping an asteroid on her didn't help."

We didn't..! "We know... Orange Lantern wanted her permission in order to avoid that. When the training scenario ended and she was no longer dead we were more concerned with her continued survival than her high regard."

"Is it really irreversible?"

"We believe so. We could create a clone of her body and transplant her brain across, but then brain tissues would still be affected and we aren't sure what the result would be. Would she.. want that?" The idea hurts. That rejection. We're only trying to help.

"I don't think we're at that stage yet. She's.. adapting. Green Arrow was shocked the first time he saw her leap across the street eight stories up without using a zip line."

"She isn't using a power suppression collar?"

"No, not when she was with us."

We smile.

"She's still pretty upset with you."

"We know. We will work at it."

She shuffles in her seat. "I know one way to make her a lot happier about the whole situation."

"Tell us."

"Get rid of the Ophidian."

This again. "We.. can't."

"Can't or don't want to?"

"Both? Whenever we think about it we see ourselves trapped in the Orange Central Power Battery, or in the Hall of Justice with all of our friends dead and ourselves soon to follow. Merged as we are, we no longer have to fear either eventuality."

"Can I.. speak to the Ophidian?"

"You are."

"Then why do you look like Paul, Orange Lantern of Space Sector two eight one four?"

"You want..." We frown as we think about it. There's no real reason not to, we suppose. It just... We close our eyes and tilt our head back. And then we open them again as our Snake body replaces our Human flesh and our coils shimmer into existence around the edges of the room. We hold our head over our former seat as we regard our instructor. The universe looks different when viewed through these inhuman eyes. We can still comprehend matter, but we taste more strongly the emotions associated with it. Canary seems to be a mix of indigo, green and yellow. There's a.. vibration in the air? Speech! It's hard to focus on like this. Perhaps if we.. focus on the emotional content?

"…in there? Paul, can you hear me?"

Awareness.

The pattern of lights change. We think we reassured her. What does she want? We see.. oh. A bit obvious. We reach out through the orange light to the pattern of desires we recognise as belonging to Mister Queen and provide stimulation. We feel him respond. He won't realise that anything's amiss, but he'll have a bunch of flowers waiting for her when she finishes here.

"Okay, so it's definitely the Ophidian. Paul, you can come back now."

She still doesn't understand. We stretch our head forwards, flicking our tongue, tasting her soul. It reminds us of Jade's. The same desire for affirmation and challenge, but nurtured and cultivated rather than forcing its way up through cracked paving slabs.

We know her.

Our Snake form coalesces into a Human outline and our flesh body reappears on the settee. "What else would it have been?"

"It might... We weren't sure if the Ophidian was literally within you or you were just being.. affected, by your contact with it."

"We might just have been generating a construct."

"That wouldn't have caused your body to disappear."

"True. Now, we have a question for you. Who is taking over M'gann's telepathy training?"

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23rd October

16:50 GMT -5

"J'onn is-."

"No. If this debacle has proven anything it is that his abilities as a teacher are sadly deficient. M'gann needs a competent teacher."

"Do you blame him for what happened to you?"

"Yes. To Orange Lantern and to our team mates. The Ophidian.. objected less."

"That seems a little harsh. He was as much in danger as the rest of you."

"He failed to assess the strength of M'gann's telepathic abilities in advance of the scenario. He did not investigate the effect of telepathic effects on power rings, despite working with two Green Lanterns for several years. He did not ask Orange Lantern about specific risk factors relating to the orange light. He decided to use a high stress scenario for our first use of that training technique instead of starting with something more basic. And when he entered, he was overwhelmed by our emotional response to the situation. Do Martians not study lucid dreaming? Self hypnosis? Why did he not bring in another telepath to oversee his attempts to liberate us? Why did he not use a psi-baffle or inhibitor collar on M'gann from outside? A catalogue of errors." We make a dismissive gesture with our right hand and shake our head. "He may be a highly effective police officer but he has demonstrated himself as an inadequate teacher."

"That..." Her eyes drop to the floor for a moment. "I... Some of that may be reasonable-."

"It is all both reasonable and accurate. We understand ingroup loyalty but that does not get M'gann the instruction she needs."

"That isn't... Is this why you branded him?"

"In the scenario, when he killed M'gann, Orange Lantern shot him in the head and the Ophidian bit him through his chest. The brand is in the location which the Ophidian's fangs penetrated. Why did he even think that was a sensible way to break us out?"

"Is that why you feel angry at him?"

"We.. we don't think we feel anger anymore. At best, we feel frustrated that M'gann does not have something she should have. The…" We wave our hands in an approximate circle. "The universe is the wrong shape."

"Okaay, who would you suggest? It would take months at best for another Martian-."

"Henry King Junior."

Her mouth opens and closes. "I'm.. not sure who that is."

We generate a construct in his likeness. "Brainwave Two. He was a member of Infinity Incorporated and is the only Human telepath I would recommend. Alternately, we could simply assimilate Doctor Cizko."

"I don't think-."

We shrug. "He has killed many people, and by all accounts is quite skilled in his chosen field. The only downside as we see it is that we would have to put up with him for the rest of eternity."

"You're talking about murder."

"The murder of a very bad man in whom we have no investment. He will be dead in a few decades anyway, he may as well make himself useful."

"That doesn't sound like something Paul would say."

"No, he wouldn't say it. He wanted to fit in here. We are more ruthless. The Ophidian is old, Black Canary. Millions of years -perhaps billions- of existing in harmony with the avarice of all living things. Orange Lantern was concerned about the effect of repeat offending supervillains on the stability of civilisation if more permanent solutions were not employed. The Ophidian knows what the effect would be. It has seen it all before." She takes a breath. "But we know we will not convince you. If Henry King is not to your liking, perhaps you would consider Chester Black." Another construct. "He is a good deal more vicious, but he has telekinesis in addition to telepathy which better matches M'gann's skill set."

"I... I'd have to talk with J'onn-."

"No!" We feel our Snake body manifest behind our Human flesh. "He is not what M'gann needs!" We float from our feet, aura crackling. "You are supposed to be in charge of our training. You will get someone appropriate!"

"Paul, calm down."

"Why are we even talking to you?"

She tries to stare us down. It isn't working. "The League felt that it might help if the team had someone to talk-."

"Counselling? From you? Guy Gardner is trained as a counsellor with several years' experience working in criminal rehabilitation. You're a florist!" She blinks. Did Batman and Diana not share knowledge of our knowledge with the rest of the League? "Could the League really find no one with relevant skills? Even that priest would have been-."

"Paul, you need to sit down."

"We are not compelled to obey you." We drop to our feet, snake body receding. "This time is a sunk cost. We will not waste any more."

"P-."

Zeta transfer.

"Recognised, Ophidian."

We pace across the flat area of the hangar. Though we still need a base station at the journey terminus, transporting ourself by zeta beam is now simple for us. Back in the room we just left we see Black Canary sag a little before getting up and walking over to the intercom. Calling in whoever's next on the list?

What did we even hope to achieve by talking to her? Where is Guy anyway? An opportunity like this, we would have expected him to be all over it like fake tan on a chav. New York, talking to Alan. Odd. Jordan? California? Stewart? He's actually in Happy Harbour. Odder still. We would have thought that he'd at least visit if he were in the area. No, unimportant.

We need to do something to make the team happier but we're having trouble coming up with anything. Oh, we have ideas -we gave M'gann a DVD version of Hello Megan! earlier this week, detail and colouration enhanced to modern standards- but nothing which we feel is large enough. Nothing which compares to our healing of Paula and Mister Grayson. We yearn to just go and talk to them, but that does not appear to help.

We step out over the water and float over to the middle of it, crossing our legs. The bioship isn't here. That's a bit odd. Has M'gann taken it somewhere? Maybe that'll do her good. Closing our eyes, we feel the structures in the rock around us. A mountain is a fairly resilient object, but we can do better. We reach inside, transmuting granite to more sophisticated substances, designed to both resist and absorb force. No, that isn't it either. Quartz crystals form in the shape of the scrying wards. We may not be able to power them ourself but they should gradually draw power from local geomantic systems. Useful, but not what is required. Eyes still closed we raise our cupped hands in front of us and take our Nth metal sample out of our subspace pocket. The Ophidian doesn't remember encountering it before. Certainly we haven't felt any naturally occurring ore similar to it in this system. Even with this sample we do not seem able to remotely detect more of it, even knowing where it is. Puzzling.

Scans of the Hawks are much more informative. It isn't just their weapons which use the stuff, there are traces of it throughout their bodies, most noticeably at nodes surrounded by dense clusters of nerves. Something like element zero nodes which biotics possess in Mass Effect. We don't currently understand exactly how it works, but presumably it explains how a winged humanoid can fly.

Could it work on a humanoid without wings?

We briefly considered attempting to integrate Miss Ervin's flight aura with Kon, but discovered that rather than being a 'Bang Baby' as Orange Lantern had assumed her kinetic energy manipulation ability is actually granted by her Collective technology belt. We have scanned and copied it but we feel that Kon would consider that.. unsatisfactory. Not to mention fragile. No, finding a way to connect his own strong gravitational manipulation abilities with the mass warping effects of Nth metal would be far more useful. And the ability to synthesise it could improve the armour of everyone else. We've seen Batman's file on Hawkman's armour and it's much better than anything commercially available. But they won't share the technology so we'll have to do this the hard way.

Which, with the Ophidian's experience and power, should be a good deal less hard than it might have been.

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23rd October

17:19 GMT -5

In the novel 'The Last Continent' the wizzard Rincewind remarks that there are times for mindless, terror-filled panic, and times that called for measured, considered, thoughtful panic. In a similar way, there are times which call for giant unstoppable avarice constructs to smash aside all resistance, and times for careful patient exploration to ensure that the avaricious impetus doesn't result in the object of one's desire being destroyed. We know that Nth metal can be exceedingly dangerous so we will not rush this. We have already analysed the fragment down to the fermionic level. Regrettably, the structures we have observed do not explain its physical properties. And we are also unsure how pure this sample is.

We remember an issue of Swamp Thing where, pressed with the need to find a solution to a highly complex problem and impaired by his own damaged mind, Swamp Thing is inspired by Abigail to create a vast plant matter based computer to improve his intellect. In a similar way neither Orange Lantern nor the Ophidian would be intellectually capable of handling this problem alone. Together, we can harness our desires to create a mental augmentation construct which allows us to cope with the sheer mental load of our task. We suppose.. we could even leave it active full time... No. A distraction. Manifested around the edge of the hangar pool, Snake face and Human face stare at the fragment from opposite sides. Nothing is beyond us. Kon will fly today.

While we shift our observations deeper into the metal and our expanded mental abilities attempt to recognise patterns amongst waves and particles no Human has ever previously detected, we decide that the best approach is to unfocus our mind and allow recognition to come. We idly extend a strand of our awareness back into the room where Canary sits with Kon while we remove a small piece of lead from subspace and begin altering it in an attempt to match what we have observed.

Kon is sitting in the seat we previously occupied. What are they talking about?

"…ot working!"

"Conner, Mattias told us it would take time. You can't expect something that powerful-."

"You're supposed to be good at this! If it happened to one of us, he'd have ten different plans for how to get rid of it by now!"

"It's not that simple. No one on Earth has ever encountered anything like this snake creature before."

Wrong. Even now we can feel the blinding white light of the Life Entity. It doesn't appear to exist in a physical location but rather is partitioned from the corporeal world in some sort of mystical demiplane. Strangely, we feel no desire to intrude on its isolation.

"Well.. what are the Guardians doing? Paul said that the Ophidian was imprisoned in the Orange Central Power Battery." We feel a chill. "Couldn't they just stick it back in?"

"According to Lantern Gardner it isn't quite that simple. More importantly, Zatara thinks that forcing it out of Paul would risk causing him a great deal of harm."

"What about magic?"

"All the spells he knows that might help expel the Ophidian assume that the person being possessed will have a soul."

"I thought.. his tattoos..?"

She shakes her head. "As far as Zatara could tell they hadn't been fully effective yet. Conner, everyone's doing the best they can for him. You can't just force your way through every problem. Sometimes you just have to be patient and wait for an opportunity."

Is this why everyone has been so uncomfortable around us? They all think that we're the Ophidian? We can we can we can we'll prove that we're still us! Ah! We see patterns in the boson oscillations! Reformat the lead a litt-. A brilliant flash of green-white plasma as the piece of lead becomes super energetic! Half of it goes down and vaporises an appreciable part of the water below us, spreading scalding steam in all directions. The other half goes up, melting a circular impression into the rocky ceiling.

It wasn't meant to do that. We shake our heads. Try again.

"I'm more worried about how the rest of the team's been holding up." Kon turns his head to the door, but doesn't get up. "You've been spending a lot of time with M'gann..?"

Kon sullens. "She's been taking it hardest. I think she still blames herself for what happened, to Paul and Manhunter."

Nonotrightnotrightnotright. Fundamental energies, magic energies, below the normal structures of matter, entangled with them! We see it! More lead! Alpha radiation spikes but for some reason doesn't travel more than a small distance from the sample, forming a sphere. That.. doesn't make sense... The particles are forming a cloud but what's stopping them..?

"And what do you think?"

"She's wrong! No one could have known that would happen!"

Gravitons gravitons what are the gravitons doing doing doing? The radiation sphere contracts, then spits plumes of particles in three different directions. Whywhywhywhy? We need to be more intelligent! Everything... We would expect everything to slow down. It doesn't. Every single thing we can perceive is now loaded with so much information that we can only stare at it. Patterns with patterns within patterns within within within so much content in even the smallest piece of matter. We are captivated.

"Well, yeah, of course I do." Kon's no longer in the room and Artemis sits in his seat. How much time..? No, doesn't matter. "Y'know he was the first guy to ever give me a flower? S'stupid."

"I wouldn't say that. I didn't realize the two of you were..?"

"We're not. I think he's interested in my sister. It was after we had that.. fight."

"Where he said you could win by-."

"Yeah. Turns out that might actually have worked."

"Yooou didn't-."

"No! After he fixed Mom's spine I met him here and.. kissed him."

Canary looks at her quizzically.

"And then I slapped him. No shield." Black Canary smiles, and Artemis clenches her right fist. "Suppose if he put up a shield now I could just punch it down."

"How have you been coping with that?"

Artemis frowns. "You know how I've been coping."

"Not when you're with Ollie and me. The rest of the time. How do you feel about it?"

"It was that.. that damn snake! Paul made a big deal about not forcing me to have this, and then the Ophidian just goes and does it!"

"So you didn't want it?"

We twist gravity waves, super compressing matter to try and get those damn leptons to behave themselves. The gravitons react far more than we anticipated and water and steam begin streaming in from all directions. We have to raise a barrier around ourselves to keep it off.

"I... I don't know! Wally keeps saying that it's great but I just didn't... It's not me."

We turn the lead into plasma in a controlled fashion and try building tiny Nth metal like structures within it. Waves of gravity fluctuate around us, making patterns in the muck and water.

"It's like there's this alien thing under my skin and if I'm not careful it'll jump out and kill someone. I feel like I'm a bomb, like I'm dangerous to everyone."

"With the loneliness that's eating you alive."

We can see it! Another gravity pulse, but now we know how to avoid them! And the radiation the radiation has to happen, it's part of the process! We understand! We extract a single sliver of newly transmuted pure Nth metal from the focal point and admire it for a moment before the something causes the neutrons to decay and it sucks the heat from the air as it evaporates. No!

Stupid. Stupid!

We must try again! We must get this right!

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23rd October

18:02 GMT -5

I hum tunelessly as I wipe dry the ring of the cake tin. The Christmas Cake itself is cooling on a wire rack on a nearby work surface. While it would be easier to do this with the ring -or just have the ring clean the objects which I used during cooking without recourse to water and soap at all- I've been trying to practise my hand eye coordination without ring assistance. Given how big they are and how insensitive to touch my skin is, it is a reasonable concern of mine. When we were together last night Jade commented-.

"Why?"

I stop humming and smile slightly to myself before lowering the tea towel and tin to stomach height and half turning to where Richard stands in the doorway. "Forty two."

He scowls and struts forwards. "You didn't even bother disguising it."

I return my gaze to my cleaning, gently feeding the metal through the tea towel with my right hand. "Would you feel better if I had? I don't think either of us really believe in divine intervention."

"So tell me why. Why is Uncle Rick suddenly able to get out of his hospital bed for the first time since-?"

"Because I wanted him to." I lift the tin up for a closer look. Seeing neither significant amounts of water nor damage inflicted by my own hands I put it down on the table and drape the tea towel over the back of a chair. "It seemed to me to be the most expedient way to repair our working relationship."

"Since when have you cared about that?"

"You seem to be acting under the misapprehension that I dislike you. The truth of the matter is that I don't care about you personally one way or the other."

"You made me look like an idiot."

"You were being hypocritical and I called you on it. If you looked like an idiot then it was because-."

"Do you have any idea what would happen if my identity became public knowledge?"

"I have a rough idea. Do you think that is likely to happen, now that our team mates are in the loop?"

"The more people who know-."

"Because you don't know our identities. Well?" I make a gesture of appeal with my right arm. "Do you? You certainly know Wallace's, Kaldur doesn't have one, Kon and M'gann have only just started using one but you know it. Artemis?" He glowers. "Mm. And I am unable to communicate mine. Not that I'm really capable of pretending to be someone else." I pick up the power ring from the work surface and slip it back over my left ring finger, immediately feeling relief as external sensation returns to my skin.

"Then why now?"

"I was content to let you have your secrets. We all have secrets we would rather not have our team mates know, it isn't inherently unreasonable." I took a short trip to Mars to acquire a gun for the bioship and was most interested to see what Martians truly look like on this plane. M'gann's been telling porkie pies. "But you demanded that I reveal things I would rather have kept quiet." Artemis was briefly very uncomfortable around me once she realised that I wasn't joking about Jade, but she warmed to me after I healed her mother. I made a point of reassuring her that I wouldn't share what I knew about her parents' criminality with our team mates and now our relationship is better than ever.

"Knowing how to shield ourselves against telepathic attack would be useful for the team. Knowing my name isn't."

"You should have trusted me to make that determination. Chester Black is not a man you just ask for lessons, especially if you are a well known super hero. Mister King is far better placed-."

"Black Canary is supposed to be in charge of training! If you had a problem with what we're being taught, you should have taken it up with her."

"Why? Why should I make myself even more dependent on the League? I don't see any of the Greenies stepping up to teach me how to more effectively use this ring." I hold it up. "Are you telling me that they are not aware that we may end up facing telepathic opponents, even after the Bialya mission? They may not have known of Mister Black but Mister King's name was already in the League's database and Mister J'onzz is a League member."

His eyes narrow as he considers. "If you don't think you did anything wrong, why heal Uncle Rick?"

"Did you know that I apologised to M'gann for the force I used to break the link?" He blinks. "She is my team mate. She didn't mean to harm us and I harmed her to disrupt the connection. I am not a.. nice man, but I try to be an honourable one. In your case? I don't believe that I have done anything to you I should need to apologise to you for, but I do want to maintain a productive working relationship and the best way for me to do that was to do something that would return me to your good graces." I turn back to the draining board and pick up the cake tin's base. "How is Mister Grayson adapting?"

"Slowly. The doctor's think it'll be months before he can walk unaided and he might never use a trapeze again."

I reclaim the tea towel. "I would offer to help, but I'm afraid the ring isn't up to repairing Human schematic systems. Perhaps he-."

"Alert. Alien vessel in close proximity."

Richard looks from me to the ring in surprise. "I've been scanning for boom tubes since the Bialya mission. I detected one opening in Metropolis about half an hour ago. When I realised that the visitors were from New Genesis rather than Apokolips I rather disregarded it but they've been heading in this direction-."

"You should have told someone!"

"I did. Batman told me to monitor them but take no action if all they did was sightseeing." I nod at the space between us and a construct of the ridiculous flying car they're travelling in appears. "This particular band are called The Forever People, if I remember correctly." I barely remember them from the comics. I remember that they can summon Prince Drax from his place of exile by saying 'Teru' -or something- at the same time but I don't remember their names, abilities or character.

"Do you know why they're here?"

"Nooooo." I think for a moment. "They could be here for Mister and Missus Free. They could simply be here for tourism. But, given that they are coming in this direction-."

"They're here for the sphere."

"Either that, or I really do look like Darkseid and they're after me. Ring, analyse."

"By your command."

The small one has two pistols -though they are probably far more powerful than their diminutive size would suggest- and the others appear unarmed. No way to know what innate abilities they have, of course. Only one Mother Box. It's in the hands of the brown skinned youth in grey armour. That.. could be very useful. I've been hamstrung by the lack of a database in the ring since I got here. But, Mother Boxes are intelligent. I could assimilate it but so far I've managed to keep knowledge of that ability from my team mates. And.. I am still reluctant to kill simply because it would be convenient.

"Are they dangerous?"

"I don't know enough to make a proper assessment. Yes, probably." I look down at the cake tin base and dry it the easy way before returning all of the cooking implements to their cupboards. "If they are tracking either the sphere or myself in some way they will find this facility in short order. I would suggest, therefore, that it would be best to prepare for a potentially hostile encounter. Ring, location of the sphere." Ah, in the hangar with Mister Tawny. Initially, I wasn't sure that Kon would be able to look after him, but they seem to have bonded well enough.

"Artemis and Wally have gone home for the day. Kaldur, M'gann and Kon are out. How long until they get here?"

"Looks like three minutes. Armour." I have to say, Mister Kord's people did some very nice work. I can even take a punch from Wonder Woman without it caving in my chest.

"They'll never get back in time."

"True." I nod towards the door. "What's say you and I intercept them ourselves?"

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23rd October

18:08 GMT -5

"Are you sure this is a good idea?"

Robin and I are standing in the hangar. Lantern Jordan -our current -ugh- 'den mother'- is more than happy for us to greet the oncoming godlings without direct supervision. Presumably he knows about the New Gods from his ring's database and has similar expectations for this meeting to me.

I was a little surprised when he took over from the Moronic Manhunter. I had rather been under the impression that the Greenies weren't on the rotation. Perhaps the Guardians authorised it so that they could keep a loyal pair of eyes on me? No, no, I shouldn't assume that it's all about me. Maybe the fact that Lantern Gardner is back on active duty means that they can spare him to oversee us? Jordan doesn't like the fact that I exist, but he doesn't appear to have a problem with me personally. Or perhaps this version of Jordan simply has much better self control than the ones I am used to?

Robin and I are standing on the flat area between the bioship's platform and the steps up to the kitchen. Mister Tawny was kind enough to herd the sphere into the kitchen and is occupying a concealed position just inside the doors. The Forever People have been circling around the mountain for a minute or so. I would have thought that they could spot the entrances, and they appear to be electing to use the hangar doors.

"What metric are we using to assess it? We can't go out without drawing even more attention to this place, especially if they are hostile. Waiting for them to enter makes sense."

Alert. Foreign presence detected in Mountain computer systems. Do you wish to destroy it utterly?

Hm. Not yet.

The hangar doors.

"And.. here.. they.. come."

The Fantasticar enters front end first and moves halfway over the inner pool before turning to the left and tilting slightly so that everyone on board can have a look at the place. There are five of them, the black lad in grey armour with the Mother Box, a large brutish looking man, a blonde child dressed as some sort of Hollywood science fiction cowboy, a youth in what appear to be dark grey leathers with violet accents and a young woman in a violet tunic with black leggings. None of that rings any bells. They seem more curious than anything else.

Richard takes a step forwards. "Ah, hi."

And immediately the curiosity is replaced by anger. Leather Jacket and Armour half rise from their seats, ready to jump into action. Armour raises the Mother Box.

"Return the New Genesphere and the rest of the technology you have stolen from New Genesis, Human."

New Genesphere? Original.

"Stolen? We haven't-."

"No Robin, do not explain yourself to them." I stride forward, putting myself a little ahead of him. If they have ranged weapons it would be best if they pointed them at me, after all. "Warriors of New Genesis." I make eye contact with the chap in armour whom I now presume to be their leader. "You think that you can break into my home and start making demands? Where is your-?"

Their eyes go wide in shock and fear. Oh come on, I don't look that much like him. They all stand, the Child drawing his guns and Leather raising his right fist. Armour holds out his Mother Box. "I don't know why you are here Grayven, but whatever your plans for this world-"

Grayven? Wasn't that the name of Darkseid's other.. son..? Ohhhh dear.

"-the Forever People will-"

Though if we have to fight, it would be better to win.

"vanquish y-."

Orange beams shoot from my eyes straight towards him, angling right as they reach him and then back, straight at the Mother Box. It glows for a second and then I overcome its resistance and drop it in my subspace pocket. Oh yes, the look on their faces says it all. Not quite so eager to face someone who appears to command the Omega Effect, are we?

"Now perhaps you will conduct yourselves with greater civility. What-?"

The Fantasticar drops down and swings around to drive straight for us. Richard fires his grapple at the ceiling and pulls himself out of the way as I brace myself. Armour construct, MindShield and fortify. Orange light surrounds me. Just before the Fantasticar hits me I use the ring to slide aside and swing my right fist up and then down onto the left side of its bonnet. Whatever technologies enable it to fly appear not to completely negate normal physics as it upends and spins away from me, throwing the Forever People out across the cement before coming to rest on its top against the concrete steps.

"Hey, Oh El, think you might be coming on a bit strong. And who's Grayven?"

I watch as the Forever People pick themselves up. The Child is fastest to right himself and opens fire immediately, glowing blue bolts hitting me dead in the chest. They're more powerful than anything Earth made, but they aren't going to do much to my construct armour. Just in case... The Orange Effect flashes out again, each eye beam striking a different pistol and subspacing them.

"Hey!" Ugh, he even sounds like a cowboy.

"Attacking me is unwise, child. Now-."

A lightning blast from Leather's outstretched hands hits me in the head. That appears to be a natural ability. Irrit- A metal girder smashes through the concrete beneath me and wraps itself around my legs as the Brute charges me. Huh?

"Aaaaaaghhhh!"

I push the metal away and step forwards to meet him. He goes for a shoulder barge. I sidestep to his left, my left leg in his direction of travel and my arms reaching out to grapple. Training with Wonder Woman has been immensely useful in learning to use my unusual strength in close combat, though my altered morphology means that I can't directly apply everything she could teach a more conventionally proportioned student like Donna or Kon. He responds by halting and swinging his right fist around. By grappling I'm forced to remain in place-

"Douh!"

-and the strength of the blow shows that he has genuine super strength, not the discount augmented muscles and bulk version I possess. But I have better leverage. I put pressure on his left side while pushing him forwards and he trips as he tries to stabilise himself. I release him from the grapple as he goes down, take hold of his leg -he weighs only what a normal man of his proportions would- and throw him back at his companions.

He pushes himself up with a grunt. Armour has his eyes fixed on me. "It is time."

The Girl seems more worried. "Without Mother Box? Can we-?"

"What choice do we have?"

The male members of the group raise their left arms up, fists clenched. She raises her right. I have no desire to fight 'Uncle' Drax.

Ring, Quietus.

By your command.

"Ta-." / "Ta-." / "Ta-." / "Ta-." / "Ta-."

And sound cuts out completely. Girl and Leather clasp their throats with their free hands. I smile and clap slowly and silently.

Ring, transmit my speech alone.

By your command.

"What a truly idiotic method of attack. You should have started with the summoning, preferably out of line of sight."

Armour tries to respond. He's speaking and gesturing in a fairly aggressive way but is unable to make any sound.

"You have been outfought and are outgunned. Yield."

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23rd October

18:11 GMT -5

Alert. Telepathic attack detected.

I feel the pressure on my shield. It's actually weaker than what Doctor Jones tried to use.

"Weak. Why can you not accept-?"

Richard drops down in front of me and points to his earpiece. Fine, authorised.

"Oh El, that's enough."

"Robin, with all due respect, butt out. You do not know these people. I do. I will ascertain why they are here-"

"By beating them up?"

"-Batman style." He looks away for a moment. "I will not cause lasting harm, but whatever their intent we cannot allow them to simply do as they please any more than we would any other group of unregistered vigilantes."

His eyes narrow, but I get the nod I was looking for. I walk past him as the Forever People start to back away. Mister Tawny finishes repositioning himself at the top of the steps, ready to leap down on them. Ring, permit sound. If they try to teru, Quietus again.

By your command.

"I asked you to explain yourselves and you attacked me. I am also going to assume that you have not sought permission from this world's authorities to be here."

Armour takes another look at me, his eyes widening. "That sign on your chest. It is the sign of the Beast of Okaara!"

Mister Tawny makes his displeasure at Armour's raised voice known with a low growl and they start edging away from his direction as well. Ah, they know of Larfleeze! Having confirmation that he even exists is more than a little useful. "I, am-."

"You are Grayven, son of the ruler of Apokolips and sworn enemy of the gods of New Genesis!"

"It's so nice to be recognised. Why.. are you here?"

"We are here to recover the technology you stole from our homeworld!"

"And here I thought I was being subtle." I shake my head. "I haven't stolen anything from you. I was actively trying to avoid you. What led you to me?"

"Mother Box -whom you so casually destroyed- detected the New Genesphere in this mountain."

"What is your name?"

"I will not-."

"I refuse to keep thinking of you as 'Armour Lad'. What are you called?" I add a little orange eye glow to emphasise the point.

"I am Vykin, leader of the Forever People."

"Then let me ask you, Vykin. What other New God technology have you detected in this mountain?"

"We.. did not detect any."

"And did that not give you pause? A single piece, when you were looking for.. how much?"

"That you have shared it with your followers-."

"Oh, now you're just trying to excuse your failings as an investigator. As it happens, I recovered the.. 'New Genesphere'? From a camp in the desert far to the east of here. Some of the locals were experimenting on it. It mistook me for Darkseid." They wince at the name. "Really? Even his name hurts you?" That was unexpected. "Fine." I wave my right hand. "Call him Uxas, it was his name before his ascension. I know that the Genesphere was sent there by boom tube, but beyond that? It was not my affair."

"We detected other pieces on this continent."

"Well then, perhaps it would behove us to hunt them-."

"We will do nothing with you. You are keeping her prisoner here, and you killed Mother Box!"

"What, this?" I bring Mother Box out of subspace and into my right hand, showing it to them. It beeps at them but I swiftly silence it. "I do not destroy things that can be useful to me. If another New God is trying to turn my new home into their playground then they are very much my concern." I feed orange filaments through the ground underneath them just in case. "I suggest that we cooperate. I will assist you in recovering the stolen New God technology, minus a few trophies for myself. Then you will leave."

The Brute clenches his fists. "We're not leaving without the Genesphere!"

"Should that not be.. her? Choice?"

Violet girl scowls. "Why would she want to stay with you?"

"Does it matter? If it is her choice freely made, should you not respect it?" Ring, internal communications. Message: Would the Sphere please report to the hangar. Make sure that the doors work for her.

By your command.

The Forever People look at each other. Weren't they supposed to have some sort of thought synchronicity thing going on? Wasn't that how they summoned Drax from wherever he came from? I don't really know New God body language but they seem agreeable. Vykin turns back to me.

"How can we trust you?"

"I swear by my love of the Source that I will not betray you."

"You have no love for the Source!"

"The Anti-Life, then." He looks unconvinced. "Fine. What oath could I give that you would believe?"

"None." He stares at me for a moment. "You will return Mother Box and Serifan's guns as a precondition to any cooperation."

I nod. "Acceptable." The Orange Effect flicks out from my eyes and strikes Serifan's holsters, releasing his guns from subspace. He immediately draws them and checks them over, smiling slightly when he sees that they are undamaged. I take a few paces forwards and hold out the Mother Box. Vykin hesitates for a moment, then strides over to me and takes it from my unresisting hand. I remove the silencing effect as he holds it up to his ear and some of the stress leaves him as it warbles at him. A warble that after a moment is matched by one approaching rapidly from the kitchen. We look around as the sphere accelerates over the top of the steps and flies across the room. It.. she spins for a moment to counter her own momentum before rolling rapidly over to me and warbling in a manner with which I have become all too familiar.

"No, I-."

Warble.

"A few bruises, they're basically fi-."

Warble chime.

"Yes, certainly, but why-?"

Beep beep warble.

"Because it amuses me and harms no one. Now, would you-?"

She rotates to face Vykin, a brief two way warblefest with the Mother Box commencing. Vykin looks at me with puzzlement.

"You have.. bonded, with the New Genesphere?"

"She is not the greatest conversationalist, but I have found it pleasant to have a confidant to bounce ideas off." As the second most advanced technology I've had access to I've made a point of spending time with the sphere. I now understand her better than anyone else on the team or in the League, though that understanding has thus far been of little practical use. She hasn't wanted to share technical specifications and insists on badgering me when she judges my behaviour to be 'inappropriate'. If the others actually understood her I might be in a great deal of trouble. "Now, what is our first target?"

"Mother Box detected the Rescue Drill in the metropolis where we first came to this world."

"Then that is our destination. Robin, would you-."

The sphere revs for a moment, and then unfolds.. into.. some sort of.. giant.. red.. motor trike..?

What?

...

What?

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23rd October

18:22 GMT -5

"What are your names, anyway?"

We're flying in the direction of the metropolis they mentioned, which amusingly enough appears to actually be Metropolis. I'm not sure that joke would translate into whatever language they are actually speaking. I've formed orange replicas of aero-discs under my feet to disguise my use of the ring. I'm on the Fantasticar's left while Richard and Mister Tawny fly on the sph... The Genesphere on its right, Richard at controls to the rear and Mister Tawny taking the front seat. I may have to revise upwards my estimations of his intelligence.

And Mister Tawny's, too.

The Girl scowls at me. "Why do you care?"

I smile at her. "So that I know what to put on the urn when I return your charred remains to Highfather Izaya."

Richard's been following my lead as I asked, but I can't help finding his new approach a little suspicious. I wonder what he's thinking? Mister Tawny has taken to flying surprisingly well, though I note that he isn't looking towards the ground.

The Brute grimaces. "You will not be sending our remains anywhere, Grayven!"

"I beg to differ. When we fought you lightly bruised my face and your team mates could not even do that. In combat I expect more from Robin and Mister Tawny than I do from the lot of you. If that was truly the best you could manage I weep for the once mighty legions of New Genesis. Even Canis Major must have grown bored collecting your skulls by now."

"Canis Major was slain last year by his own son."

I look into Leather Jacket's electric blue eyes with astonishment. "You can talk!" He scowls, and I wave my right hand. "I'm sure it was very artistic. I wonder if Canis Minor will try to put what's left of him in a gallery?"

"How can you be so callous?"

I shift my eyes back to her, feigning complete indifference. "Practice. On Apokolips, any affection is vulnerability, a lever another could manipulate to harm you. It teaches you to be callous, cold and calculating, and rewards most of all those who learn those lessons best. I proved an apt pupil." A memory stirs. "Wait... I think I've heard of you." I point with my right index finger. "Beautiful Dreamer, yes?"

She blinks. "Dreamer. Just Dreamer."

"Then the men of New Genesis are blind as well as stupid." Disgust covers her face. "Ha! Ha! Ha! Oh, come on. I will keep needling you until you tell me."

Leather Jacket stills his features. "I am called Moonrider."

"Was that so hard?" I nod at the brute. "And who's the bear?"

The Brute looks thoughtful. "I am named for an animal that does not exist on this world. Bear..." He thinks some more. Oh goodness, is he actually going to..? He nods. "Bear is an acceptable substitute."

"If you have the time once we have finished recovering the misappropriated technology, you really must make time to visit the city of San Francisco. I'm sure that you'll be very popular there."

"Don't pretend to be nice. What are you doing on this planet?"

"Before you got here? I was baking a cake."

He narrows his eyes. "I'm sure it was an evil cake."

"It was for a local religious event which commemorates the birth of a man whose sole purpose in life was to suffer and eventually die in incredible agony as a ritual sacrifice to stave off their god's wrath. The religion's practitioners wear a symbol of the mechanism used to execute him around their neck."

The Forever People stare at me. On the other side of the Fantasticar Richard squints at me with his right eye through his helmet visor and tilts his head slightly to the side.

Bear is repulsed. "That sounds like an evil cake to me."

"To a man forced to live such a life, I think a cake is the least he is owed. But surely such things do not offend you so? After all, Serifan there patterns his whole character after a people defined by the genocide they committed against that region's former inhabitants."

"You take that back!"

"Pick up a history book while you're here, you ignorant child. You'll find it illuminating."

Richard waves at me with his right hand. "Ah, Grayven? Can I speak to you for a moment?"

"Of course." I lower my speed a little to fall behind the Fantasticar and then accelerate up on the Genesphere's right side, falling slightly to put my head level with Richard's.

"What are you doing?"

Ring, sound filter.

By your command.

A pale orange sphere surrounds us, blocking sound and making lip reading difficult. I doubt we'd have to worry about that from aliens unfamiliar with Earth, but there's no harm in being certain.

"Could you be a little more spe-?"

"You're acting like an insane supervillain! Who's Grayven?"

"Grayven is one of the sons of Darkseid, ruler of the planet Apokolips. From the way that our guests have been carrying on I assume that I look like him. The.. banter is simply my way of encouraging them in their misapprehension."

"Why are you pretending that anyway?"

"New God technology is millennia in advance of anything the Earth has. If we can secure even a small part of this cache, the advantage we could gain-."

"You're lying to them so you can steal from them?"

"If they give it to me voluntarily it isn't theft, is it? Besides, they attacked me, and we only have their word for it that the stuff is even theirs."

The Genesphere warbles at me.

"Well I'm sure that's true, but we haven't seen the rest of the allegedly stolen materials yet. They might just as well have come from Apokolips, and according to League practice should therefore be delivered to STAR Labs."

"What was that.. antilife thing?"

"Ah, that's a bit of a complicated one. Essentially, it's a sort of arcane mathematical proof that life is worthless and meaningless. It can be used to suppress free will on a universal scale. As I understand it, Darkseid possesses a part of it -enough for truly frightening feats of arcane mind control- but not enough to totally dominate everything."

"Who or what is Darkseid?"

"Formerly Prince Uxas of Apokolips, he was able to join himself to something called the Omega Force. In doing so he became Darkseid. He's ruthless, intelligent, physically easily as powerful as Kal-El and is able to project a beam-" I raise my right middle and index fingers to my eyes. "-from his eyes which can do just about anything to anything that it hits."

"That was why you fired the beam from your eyes."

"Just so. In any case, if someone is using New God technology on Earth, we need to know about it."

He nods, reluctantly. "Why do they call themselves New Gods?"

"As I understand it, because they believe themselves to be divine. I'm afraid I don't understand the precise metaphysics. They may look humanoid but rest assured that there is far more going on with them than that."

"Hm. Stealing technology from gods, Oh El? Careful you don't get your liver pecked out."

"Oh no, Richard. I'll be doing the pecking."

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Not important!

Not important!

Working working working it's working! Our Nth metal rings are remaining stable without our continual intervention! We can even decorate them with the 'S' sign! Plasma suspension, that was the key! Granted, no one from the outside can see what we've achieved. Though things go back to normal once the Nth metal stabilises during fabrication things get a little strange. The additional gravity is nothing that we cannot cope with but before we lost sight of the ceiling we noticed cracks beginning to appear.

But it doesn't matter! We can put it all back once the armour is complete! We focus, and lead turns to plasma and we force force force it into the tiny metal rings and wires and plates. We can't use other materierials can't risk weaker material. Chain for joints, interlocking plates for for for larger less flexible areas. Grey 'S' on the chest, yes! Yes! Let it cool let it stabilise.

Did something..? It's getting harder to hear the outside with our Human body. What's going on?

"…indecision. The only result was that everyone who had survived to that point died alongside me. I am not fit for command."

No no no no no no need to do something for Kaldur. Tula rejecting him made him sad maybe we can find him someone else? Or clone her? We can already tell the position and direction of every everything every part in her mind.

"Who do you recommend to take your place?"

"Were it not for his current difficulties I would already have nominated Orange Lantern as my replacement." We see Black Canary dip her head slightly. "Since.. he is.. unavailable..."

We're not unavailable but we don't need to be available! He couldn't have known what we know!

"Artemis is too raw and untrusting. The only one of us she really opened up to was..."

He trails off. Artemis gets on all right with everyone, doesn't she? Did we did Orange Lantern miss that? Maybe we need more normal social activities as a group? We can still fix that. Compared to duplicating Tula that's easy!

"Kid Flash is too rash and impulsive. Miss Martian... She lacks the necessary detachment to make good judgement calls in the field. She.. has taken what has happened to Orange Lantern even harder than the rest of us."

But we'll fix it!

"Superboy carries too much anger, though he is better when.. Wonder Woman..."

We know, but that wasn't hard. She's very nice. Someone would have taken him on by now even if we hadn't said anything. Probably her.

"Making Robin the logical choice."

No bad. Finish armour, fix everyone else. It's good that they're talking to Canary, we'd never have been able to get this out of them. Now we know everything that's wrong and we can fix it. Yes, now the leg pieces. Clasped solid segments and chain and we need to make sure it will all work in tune with his organelles.

"But he is so young."

"Kaldur, you're all young."

No we're not. We're capable and we're going to prove it. We focus and begin linking the Nth metal to Kon's biological force field. With that in place his natural shield will extend through the armour, adding its resilience to the metal. No more getting made naked by lava. Wait. Did we just hear a crack? Our view of Black Canary and Kaldur appears to shake. Why is that..? We force the material around our shield away for a moment to watch a large chunk of rock fall from the roof. It doesn't hit the ground but rather falls in an arc with our shield at the bottom. We see and feel other cracks appearing, though our reinforcements are holding.

Is that..? Why is that alarm going off? We see Kaldur and Black Canary get to their feet. Kaldur looks confused.

"Black Canary, what is happening?"

Black Canary ignores him and raises her right hand to her earpiece.

"He..? Alright. Hal, do it." She looks at Kaldur. "Kaldur, we're evacuating. Head to the surface. Don't use the elevators or the zeta tubes."

He starts walking and she follows immediately after. "Please, tell me what has happened. Orange Lantern has done nothing to indicate-."

"As far as we can tell, he's creating a quantum singularity in the hangar and it's threatening to cause the entire mountain to collapse."

It is? We knew the stress was... Oh. Did we get carried away? We look around as we force the water to separate from the dust and rock. Perhaps we did. Perhaps. But we can fix it! The gravitational effects of the metal fall off as the newly transmuted metal completes the stabilisation process and we let the water fall to the floor.

"An' the Guardians think this'll work?"

Guy? Guy is... Guy is in my room. We frown. That's a bit rude.

"They said it might. At this stage I think that's really the best we can hope for."

We push the detritus back to the ceiling and fuse it in place, strengthening the roof to a level of resilience far above what it had before we started. Why are Jordan and Guy and Stewart and.. Alan? Alan's here? Yay!

"Still can't believe you had the balls t'stand up to 'em like that."

And he's looking younger. Did they let him recharge with their lanterns? We feel.. green will.. and something else. As we drift over to the landing platform we try to identify what it is. A.. crystal? It's violet. Violet is.. love? Love. We remember... something..? Ahhhh! We don't like this feeling don't like it!

We land hard on the launch pad as we see Alan recover our lantern from its subspace pocket. We feel that's a little intrusive, but we can't really hold it against him. He holds it out to Jordan and Jordan pushes the crystal OWOWOW! Kon's new armour falls to the floor next to us and our snake body disappears and and and-

"John, what's happening?"

"He's down... No, he's getting up again."

We struggle to our feet. They're... They're attacking us? Through our lantern. Why? Why would they..? We stagger towards the lift. We'll find out we'll find out we'll-

"Activating internal defenses."

What? What? Paralysis field generators emerge from their recesses and our Human body is momentarily locked in place.

"Eh. Guess we shoulda let him have plasma cannons after all. So, plan 'B'?"

We roll onto our side, shaking. We don't understand. We don't we don't-

"In brightest day, in blackest night,

No evil shall-"

Our Human body isn't working.

"-wherever the cause should make me roam,

always I vow to fight the good-"

We remove it, switching to our snake body. Much better.

"-alone I set my mind in motion."

We swim through concrete, metal and rock in the direction of our room.

"For the dark things cannot stand the light-"

We come out in the corridor. We try changing back to our Human body-

"Nerd."

"You recognized it, jackass."

"Focus, gentlemen, please."

-but the internal defences immediately register our presence and we fall to the ground once more. Why are they doing this to us? We don't understand!

But we remember that we don't like the Green Men.

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We've had enough

We manifest directly through our lantern, forcing back and buckling the green shield the Servants of the Green Men have placed around it. We look at them and see their will. It is not enough. We strike out with our tail, slamming them against the walls.

"We are displeased."

Bindings made of small orange snakes tie them to the walls and a hissed breath pulls the rings from their fingers as we reform our Human body and take a moment to look at our lantern. The crystal... Is that..? Yes, the Star Sapphire. No wonder we feel strange. As we reach out with our right hand to pull it out the orange light around our Human limb fades. We take hold of it. A jerk and it's free and we focus on knitting our lantern back together.

"Hey, snake-!"

We muzzle Lantern Stewart without turning around as we gaze into the Star Sapphire. A large, evenly cut violet gem. We can feel its power, though it feels.. strange to us. We had assumed that it would be like a power ring, but it isn't. It's more like a personal lantern, providing its own power to be shaped by emotion. And we can't detect any sort of programming. Curious, but not useful to us at the moment. It seems able to preserve its own stability so we send it to our subspace pocket. We can deal with it later.

We wonder if it would go well with Kon's armour? Or maybe Alan could learn to charge himself from it?

Lantern restored and checked and checked again we occlude it once more and turn to the bound Lanter-. Why did we bind Alan and Guy? We release them immediately from the walls. Why would we do that? They are ours, we don't want to hurt them. And Alan needs his ring to stay healthy. He now looks just like he did when Orange Lantern first arrived on this world. We float it back over to him.

"Alan, we are very sorry. We we overreacted to you interfering with our lantern. We are very glad to see that you are looking so well."

He looks at us for a moment, then extends his right hand to pluck his ring from our grasp. Maintaining eye contact he slips his ring over his left middle finger. Immediately the crackling green light pours forth from the lantern shaped design.

"What's all this about, Paul?"

"They didn't tell you? Orange Lantern made himself host to the Ophidian to win a training scenario after he became telepathically convinced it was real."

"Paul, you nearly brought the whole mountain down."

"No we didn't. We reinforced the mountain first, there was little danger of it collapsing. The gravitational effects were an unfortunate but inevitable side effect of transmuting enough Nth metal for Kon's armour."

"Ah..?" Guy waves his right hand to get our attention. "Any chance the rest of us could get our rings back?"

"Not a significant one. We don't know why you did that. We're inclined to blame the Guardians but we didn't enjoy it very much and have no intention of giving you another chance."

"Juust askin'."

"Lantern Jordan." We float over to just in front of him. "Did you talk to the Guardians as we recommended?" There's a quiet ringing sound, and we turn our head away for a moment and watch as his ring vibrates in our grip, a weak green glow contained within our greater orange. "Not a bad effort, but it won't be enough. You are overpowered. Did you speak to them?"

"Yeah. They really opened up."

"Did they admit to abandoning Lantern Raker?"

"That isn't quite how they put it."

"Hah. Did they tell you the truth about Larfleeze? About Okaara?" He grimaces. "The nature of the Ophidian?" He looks down. "And they sent you back here without Ion? With Ion you would have stood a chance. We remember Orange Lantern telling both you and Guy about it. Should we expect the big green whale sometime soon?"

"No."

We allow our confusion to show on our face. "What else do they have?"

"Nothing. They were going to make you the offer they made to Larfleeze. As long as you stayed in this Sector they wouldn't touch you."

What?! "But that's a tremendous abdication of responsibility! And we are proof that it didn't even work with Larfleeze. What if we had been Parallax, The Butcher or The Predator? They are far less personable than we are!"

"Heh." We twist our head to look at Guy. "Yeah, that's what we told 'em. An' it turns out, Guardian law doesn't let 'em stop a Lantern defending their home Sector. They tried, back in the day. Caused too many rebellions."

"They sent you here without the tools you need to do the job. If we didn't like you so much we might have turned you all into constructs. We might have assimilated your rings and personal lanterns and expanded our Corps."

"An' that's what they said." He shrugs. "Getting Alan recharged was Hal's idea. To defend a Sector 'gainst somethin' like you, there's a surprising amount of leeway in the Book of Oa. Says 'Any Green Lantern', so..."

We drop the snake-bonds around Lantern Jordan and hug him. He freezes.

"Ahh..."

We let him go and pull back a little. "We are very grateful. If you like we could convert your ring and personal lantern to run on orange light instead of green. Then we could give them back to you."

"No.. thanks..."

We drift back towards the centre of the room. "You know, this whole thing reminds us of when we asked Guy about the first generation of Green Lanterns. When the Guardians handed their first green power rings out to Lanterns G'Hu, Wachet, Blu and Avra?" Guy and Jordan nod. Lantern Stewart just stares. We suppose we could probably risk releasing him now. "Guy went on about how it shows that even the meekest can accomplish great things if they focus their minds on it and how amazing things can come from unexpected places. Do you want to know what we heard? We heard the Guardians boasting that they handed out massively powerful tools to three veteran warriors and a civilian and did not bother to provide them any instruction in their application." We hold out our arms to the side. "Perhaps the need to get them into the field was too pressing for a full training course, but a summary? A few pointers? From what Guy told us the first Lanterns didn't even know that power rings could create constructs! Lantern Blu died pointlessly because of that. And even in their newfound desire for honesty we very much doubt that the Guardians have told you about some of the other skeletons in their cupboards that we know about."

"Paul, I don't care about what the Guardians may or may not have done. You're not well."

We twist around to look at Alan. "Why does everyone keep insisting on that? We're fine!"

"You're calling yourself 'we'."

"We can call ourself 'I' if it makes you happier. We simply feel that this is more honest."

"You know I can't accept this."

"We will show you!" We reach out to the desires of each of them. With everyone this excited even Alan's desires come through easily despite his flaming green aura. "We know everything each of you want. And we know just how to help all of you get it."

"Everything?" Guy face shrugs. "You sure 'bout that? 'Cause I could go for-."

A large glass of beer and a steak sandwich appear in the air front of him. "We admit that we do not understand the appeal of American... Beer. We were thinking about more fundamental things, but if it helps..." He takes hold of each and sniffs them before taking a voracious bite out of the sandwich. He nods.

"If pr'y goof. Bu'ah dah thee-" He swallows. "-a Brazilian-."

"You are not socially compatible with any Brazilians currently employed as fashion models. However, this-" We generate a booklet and hand it to him. "-is a full profile of Miss Tora Olafsdotter. We believe you will get on splendidly."

"I dunno Paul. I really had my heart set-" He opens the booklet. "- on a nice!"

"If you are satisfied, we will begin. Lantern Jordan. How would you like to be the greatest Green Lantern to have ever existed?"

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We're being helpful!

Watch us!

"Hey!" Guy gestures at us with his sandwich. "How come I get a sandwich an' he gets t' be the greatest Lantern ever?"

"Because he wants it more. You want to be great, Lantern Stewart wants to achieve great things. Lantern Jordan wants to be the greatest because at the moment most of the Green Corps thinks of former Lantern Sinestro in that way, and that offends his sense of how things should be." Jordan grimaces. Our eyes unfocus as we gaze deeper into his soul. Looking at the green light.. itches.. but if we are to check our suppositions we must see all of him. Ah. Not unexpected. "Lantern Jordan believes to the core of his being that a person with sufficient determination can achieve anything. A belief which -as far as we can tell- was instilled in him by his father."

"Dad worked damn hard to get to where he did. I wouldn't do anything less than live up to his example."

"Harold Jordan is in many ways ideal Lantern material. In addition to his willpower he has a military background and a strong moral sense." We smile at him. "In a way, the dishonourable discharge from the air force actually helped. He would do anything rather than let this second chance pass him by."

"Thanks.. I think..?"

"Aside from experience -which it would be difficult for us to grant you- there is really only one flaw in your abilities. From a Green Lantern Corps point of view we mean."

He folds his arms across his chest. "Oh? And what's that?"

"Fear."

We hear Lantern Stewart let out a chuckle-exhalation in disbelief. "That's ridiculous. Hal's the most fearless person I know."

"He is not concerned for his own safety, certainly. If we just consider obvious threats, we assure you that we are the most fearsome thing that any of you have ever met. We could atomise you all in a second and scour this continent down to the bedrock and none of you are afraid of us. That is not his problem."

Jordan's eyes narrow. "So what is?"

"You base your personal philosophy on that of your father. Determination equals success. And when you were nine you watched him die in a plane crash."

"He died keeping his plane from crashing into the spectators!"

"Yes. And as a man you recognise it as the noble sacrifice that it was. But as a boy you knew only that the man who was the centre of your life was dead. And.. if a man as strong willed as him could die in such a way, does that not work to undermine his whole philosophy? Demonstrably he could not achieve everything he wanted to."

Goodness us, we do believe that Jordan's actually thinking about it. "I'm.. not sure that's true... And I'm not sure how thinking that it is makes me the greatest Lantern ever."

"Simple. More willpower equals more ring power, and while raw ring power is not the sole determining factor of Lantern greatness, it really helps. Once you completely stop being afraid that your personal philosophy is wrong, you will receive a noticeable increase in power."

"Enough to beat you?"

"Perhaps. Not in a straight fight. But maybe enough to gain sufficient prestige within your Corps that the Guardians would choose to grant you access to Ion out of respect for your abilities. Or be compelled to assist you further due to other Lanterns choosing to follow you in rebellion out of personal admiration. In any case, Sinestro would become a distant memory, one criminal amongst the many you had banished to the Science Cells."

"That.. sounds pretty good."

"Hal..."

Lantern Jordan holds up his right hand in Alan's direction. "I don't really understand why you're being so helpful, though. If I get stronger I'm just going to come back here and fight you harder."

"We know and approve. A Green Lantern should be resolute and unswerving. We have.. changed. We are something that is not either of our component parts, and we understand that this is.. disconcerting.. for our friends. We wish to demonstrate that we are not your enemy."

"How.. exactly.. were you planning to help me..?"

"We are not telepathic, but during this conversation we believe we have identified the patterns in your brain associated with your memories of the incident in question."

"Ahh..."

"We believe that we can forcibly integrate them into your conscious mind. In effect, you would constantly experience your father's death with exactly the raw emotional intensity that you did as a child." His eyes go wide and he takes a half step back. "The Human mind can only sustain the fear response for so long. We doubt that it would take you longer thannn.. two hours? To completely overcome your fears. And then you wouldn't have to worry about-."

"No. God, no."

We frown. "We don't understand. We can see your desire, we can see your fear. The only other method we can think of to overcome it would be some sort of psychotherapy, and you don't have the right personality to take full advantage of that. You do understand that Sinestro's yellow ring is fortified by the fear of his enemies, do you not? Every Green Lantern that has ever heard of his achievements as First Lantern is at a crippling disadvantage in the field. You could surpass-."

"That isn't helping."

We screw up our eyes. His conflicting desires.. doesn't.. what? "But you.. but you... You want the ends, why don't you want the means? We don't.. we don't..." We shake our head. He's clearly being irrational. Ignore him. We flow through the air to float in front of Guy. He eyes us and takes a deep drink from his glass.

"Heck, Paul, if y'cn make me relive my Dad's death, I'd probably pay you." The other three Green Lanterns stare at him, shocked. "What? I can see where this is going. My old man was a mean son of a bitch. You gonna offer to make me relive every time he ever beat on me? Go right ahead. I ain't afraid o'him."

"Quite true. You're genuinely not. Given what you went through it's an impressive recovery, but you certainly aren't being held back by fear."

"Sooo?"

"Did you ever wonder why you enjoy drinking that?"

"What, beer?"

"No. That particular brand. Mass produced American beer is an embarrassment to breweries everywhere, but even in this market you unerringly home in on a brand that tastes almost exactly like horse urine."

"Heh, you mean you-?"

"We performed a chemical analysis."

"It doesn't taste-." He sniffs it and takes a sip, gagging only slightly. "-quite that bad."

"Yes it does. Do you remember the first time you returned to your family home after your father's funeral? A funeral you did not in fact attend."

"A bit. Mom wanted me to clear out some of Dad's stuff."

"I can only see links between events that have a strong emotional resonance."

"Yeah? Didn't mean anything to me."

"You're wrong. There's a strong emotional resonance there. You're in the kitchen drinking from a can of cheap beer while pouring the rest of his stash down a sink."

He nods, and goes to take another swig. "Yeah, I remember that. So what-?"

"It's the same brand. You like drinking it despite the taste because it reminds you that he's dead."

Guy freezes, staring at the glass. Then he pulls it slowly away from his face before dropping it to the floor.

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Progress!

We're getting somewhere!

We catch the glass before it reaches the carpet and raise it back up. "Please don't do that, this is our carpet. Hmm." We look into him again and transmute the beer into a darker and rather superior variety. "You drank this for the first time on the recommendation of one of your new team mates after you successfully passed the try outs for your college's American Football team. You associate it with camaraderie." We float it back towards him but he shakes his head.

"No thanks. I don't really feel like drinkin' right now."

"As you wish." We disintegrate it. "You see, your problem isn't that you fear your father. There really isn't anything holding you back from growing steadily more and more powerful."

"So what's my problem supposed to be?"

"Lantern Jordan strives to become more like his father. The more he achieves the more he affirms that bond." We pause, considering how to go about the next part. "Do you remember when you stopped playing American Football seriously?"

"Day I got drafted for the Browns was the greatest day in my life, up t'that point anyway. Then I went an' got a knee injury at mini-camp. Never saw a single pro game."

"And?"

"An' it stunk." We look at him for a moment. "What?"

"After you received your injury..?"

He looks away, the skin around his mouth tightening. We note that his ring glows where we're holding it. It takes him a moment, but he forces his face to relax and he faces us once more.

"I got mad, an' I smashed up the dressing room with a barbell." We nod. "So, what? You're sayin' my anger's holdin' me back? I figured that out."

"No. Quite the contrary. You use the force of your will to suppress your rage. That constant effort is what led you to train your willpower to the point where you were capable of acting as a Green Lantern. Without the anger you probably wouldn't have your ring. You might even not be able to use it at all." We nod at it where it floats next to us. "Jordan thought your ring glowed when you spoke to him because you were considering hitting him, when in reality it glowed because you were forcing yourself to stay civil."

His face hardens. "What're you offerin'?"

"You want to be a Lantern. You want to stop being angry. As far as we can see, if you remain a Green Lantern you will remain angry."

"Heh. Orange ain't my color neither, pal."

"We know. Would you consider indigo?"

He peers at us. "Ahh. Which one was..?"

"Compassion. You are angry and are therefore capable of using a red ring. But that isn't what you want. You have a green ring. But, ultimately? It doesn't get you what you want. You forced yourself to stop being angry because you couldn't stand for your father to win. What you chose on your own was to complete a Bachelor's in Psychology and Education and to work first with prisoners-" We look at Jordan for a moment. "-and later disabled children. What you want, is to be compassionate."

His eyes drop for a moment, and he shuffles his feet. "Yeah, well... Not much chance of that, is there? If there's any indigo rings 'round here, I'd have to be the most compassionate person in the Sector and there's no way that-."

"No you wouldn't!" We beam at him. "That's the beauty of it. The Indigos accept people entirely without compassion. Their rings were originally designed for criminal rehabilitation. Once you put one on your finger it suppresses your ability to feel anything other than compassion. You would stop being angry and could still operate as a Sector Lantern." We frown. "The uniform looks fairly stupid, but perhaps you could get an exemption or something."

"Wait wait wait." We turn to look at Lantern Jordan. "Indigo Lanterns? How come I've never heard of them?"

"They use long ranged teleportation rather than conventional Lantern FTL. It makes them harder to track. Also, their home world is hidden from detection. We think.. we know roughly where it is. We distantly remember the Proselyte..." We remember the weird purple octopus thing. We didn't like it much but we do remember it. "We are confident that we could eliminate all possible locations within a few years. In fact-" We raise Jordan's ring. "-combined with Abin Sur's star charts-."

"Ferget about it."

"What? Why?"

"I'm not gunna give up my ability to feel just 'cause I get angry. I'm not gunna let what Dad did make me afraid like that. No way."

"But if you genuinely wanted to join it might not even do that."

"Don't care. I ain't never been one fer takin' the easy way out. Way I see it, every time I force my anger down I'm steppin' away from what Dad was gunna make me. Maybe I don't end up right where I wanna be, but it's me doin' it, not some kinda ring brainwashin'. Sorry snake." He folds his arms. "No dice."

"But we can see how badly you want to-."

He smiles with the left side of his mouth. "Sometimes it's not worth what'cha give up."

"No. No! You're wrong. You're wrong. You're just telling us this to distract us."

"What? You're the one who can look into people's souls, right? What'd I want, you tell me."

"You want." No no nononononocan'tberightno.

"What do I want, Paul?"

"You want you don't want you want you want. No! You're tricking us!"

"Hm, I was right then. For a moment I wasn't sure myself."

We can't we don't we we we. "Lantern Stewart!"

"My father's still alive, and I get on with him just fine, thanks."

"If your ring were orange then the Green Men couldn't stop you building things with it. Wouldn't that be-?"

"No. That's not me either."

"Fine. Fine! We didn't want to have to mention this, but if you're going to be obstin..." No. The guilt isn't there. The emotions associated with Xanshi should be easy to detect, but there's nothing. When did that happen in the comics? He's only been a Lantern three years here. Maybe...

"You out of ideas already?"

"The Orange Lantern Corps doesn't have a formal structure yet. If your ring were orange you could choose to spend your time away from here. Perhaps... With Lantern Tui?" A slight tightening of the skin around his eyes. "We would even change the colour of her ring if she wanted it. We are sure that Korugar would welcome her back if she no longer wore the green sigil."

"Katma decided that she'd convince her people that the Corps wasn't to blame for what Sinestro did. Green Lanterns don't change our minds easily."

He's right he's right he's right he's right. No good no good no good! We drop to the floor cringing slightly. "Alan-."

"Whatever it is, no."

"We know that you don't really want anything for yourself, but we know your desires all the same. We... Orange Lantern, wanted something for you."

"I've got no reason to believe a thing you say, but go ahead. Say your piece."

"You're going to die. And we don't want that."

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Come on come on

come on come on...

He gives us a wry smile. "Paul, I'm ninety six. Everyone dies eventually, even that Ophidian thing o'yours."

"That isn't what we meant."

"Oh?"

We open our arms and create constructs showing him at different points in his life. "We base these on what we've seen in your photo album, combined with our own observations. This-" We enlarge the head and shoulders of him in a railway engineer's overalls. "-is the closest we have to an image of you when you first got your power ring."

"Handsome devil."

"Five years later." A new face from a photograph taken at a New Year party at the WXYZ offices. "Ten years later." A picture taken to head an article he wrote in the Gotham Gazette. "Fifteen." This one's in uniform, posing with other Justice Society members during one of their occasional gatherings after the organisation stopped meeting regularly.

"Okay..?"

"Aside from slight changes in hair style they're exactly the same."

He frowns. "There's no way the resolution on those old pictures is good enough for you to know that."

"This is you when you first met Orange Lantern." We put the five images of his face in a row in front of him. "And this is you now."

He looks at them, skin under his eyes tightening slightly, right fist tapping his mouth. "That can't be right. I was old-."

We dismiss the images and create new ones in series. "Sixty five, when you semi-retired Green Lantern as your role at WXYZ expanded." It disappears to be immediately replaced by another and another. Now the images are aging visibly. "Ms Canton's death." It looks like the life's been sucked right out of him. Objectively he doesn't look that bad, but it's in noticeable contrast to the earlier images. A few more flash by. "Mister Thunder's death." Alan's face grows visibly more vital. Still old, but not elderly.

"That was.. when I..."

"Started wearing your ring again, yes. More than that, it was when you found new purpose in your existence."

"Uhh, Alan? What's he talking about?"

The others are watching the display, but it's Jordan who voices their concerns. We don't think this could happen to them...

"After.. after Johnny died... I started thinking about my own death. Johnny's strokes cost him almost all of his mental acuity.. heh, not that he was all that smart to begin with." He shakes his head. "I decided I.. I didn't want that happening to me. I didn't want to go out like that, in some darn hospital or nursing home."

"You found new resolve." Stronger and healthier images, until we arrive at his meeting with Orange Lantern.

"Wait wait wait." Guy looks decidedly unsettled. "You sayin' rings make people immortal? That's a load a'crap, there's loads of old guys in the Corps."

"But their personal lanterns are in perfect working order and connected to the Green Central Power Battery. Alan's leaks. You see the way his environmental shield has a.. sort of flame effect? While yours and Orange Lantern's are more static?" Alan takes a careful look at his right hand, turning it around slowly. "That isn't an aesthetic choice. Its systems are damaged."

"Is this something to do with why you couldn't fix my black eye?"

"Yes. As far as we can tell you aren't entirely Human anymore. So much of you is green light that loss of access to it, or lack of mental focus-" We display images of him after our first meeting. The ageing is slow but still visibly apparent until the point at which his ring ran out of power completely. "-and you start showing your true age."

"I started aging because I gave Paul my lantern?"

"No. You started ageing because you were no longer living just for yourself. You were building resolve to commit... suicide by supervillain." The others look at Alan with some alarm, but we press on. "When you met Orange Lantern that stopped being your aim. The mental focus required for a mentoring role is less than that required for a self destructive act but it wasn't until you ran out of power that the decay truly set in. Now that you've recharged and rededicated yourself-" We gesture to him with both hands. "-you're young and vital again, and we see no reason why you shouldn't continue to be so."

"I don't have a lantern. I can't keep asking Hal to-."

"Yes you can! As long as we remain like this the Green Men will continue to regard us as a threat. The justification for it remains the same!"

He shakes his head. "No. I won't try to dishonestly make myself immortal at Paul's expense."

"Orange Lantern was going to try to arm twist the Controllers into making you a new one. But we don't need them! We can make you an orange one ourself! We are just concerned that you.. won't.. last..."

"Maybe I won't."

Nonononononononononononononononononononono! "No! If we if we assimilate one of these rings-" We pull the other Lanterns' rings in front of us. "-we can give one to you now!"

"I won't take it."

"But we saw your core desire! The thing you want more than anything! You want a legacy, we will build an entire Corps to venerate you! Yours will be the first story in the Book of Maltus and and you could be there to see it happen! You could teach the first generation of Orange Lanterns as you taught us! Please..."

"What sort of example would I be setting for them if I caved in now?"

We look out into the universe. "One of the Green Lanterns of Sector seven five one has just died and his ring hasn't reached its destination yet. We could intercept it for you! You are easily more worthy than-."

"No."

We pull the Star Sapphire out of our subspace pocket, ignoring the pain it causes us. "This, then! It belongs to the Zamarons but I doubt they'll miss it. It can save-."

"Paul, you know what my romantic history's been like. I doubt I could use that even if I tried."

"But we need you to. Orange Lantern would have wanted you to at least try. He loved you as a grandparent!"

"And I love him like a grandson. Him. Not you."

Feelswrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrong...

"But if he did, and you're supposed to be him and the Ophidian combined, how do you feel about me?"

Missingmissing something missing we don't know we can't feel... The Sapphire! We slam it into our forehead but it doesn't go in. How does it work! He wants us to feel we need to feel but we can't feel we don't feel...

"Alan, y'mighta gone a bit far."

"Father Mattias said to keep pushing him. I'm not stopping until I get Paul back."

We grab our lantern and try to thrust the Sapphire back into it! Nothappeningnothappening! Whywhywhywhywhy! Can'tcopecan'tcoptneedtobeawayneedtobeaway!

"Ah, nuts."

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Wedon'twedon'twedon't

Wedowedowedowedo

Theywon'tletushelpdon'twantourhelpdon'tunderstanddon'tcan'tcan'tcan't.

Small room, seat, Sapphire clutched in our right hand hugged to our chest as we rock back and forwards.

"Well now, aren't you a delightful mess."

Can'thelpcan'thelpcan'thelpnothingwedonothingwedonothingwedo.

White face, white suit, black hair, gold eyes, don't know who, irrelevant.

"Be like that, then. I'm more than content just to watch."

Wanttohelpbutcantdon'tunderstandthemwanttohelpbutcan't. Can't. Can't. Wanttocan'twhycan't?

Wall hard cold grey, seat hard cold grey, warm avarice, stars distant, orange coils.

"Ah? As much fun as this has been, I think I'm going to have to love you and leave you. Do look me up if you ever snap out of it. Either of you."

Whycan'twhycan'twhycan'tdon'tunderstanddon'tunderstandthemneedtowanttobutcan't.

Her..? His..? Hand, patting our face. Gone. We're alone.

**…sure this is safe? OW! Hey!**

**No, Kid, this ain't even close to safe.**

**I'm not... What? I just wanted to be clear, okay? I'm not backing out.**

**Alright, listen up. Father Mattias thinks we finally started breaking Paul and the snake apart**

Wanttogotothembutdon'twanttogotothemwanttomakethemhappybutjustmakethemunhappybytryingtomakethemhappy.

**And we're going to finish the job.. by singing to him?**

**His ring's been playing that song all week. It's got to mean something.**

**Conner's right. The song.. I think it's about accepting things. I.. don't know if he'll actually listen, but I should be able to transmit it to him from here.**

**Comeheredon'tcomeherecomeheredon'tcomehere.**

**Everyone hear that? Think we're in range.**

**It sounds as if his condition is worsened. I will take the first verse.**

Kal..... dur....?

**Sit down and have a cup of coffee

With your firm conviction that they're out to get you

Sit down and have a cigarette with your awful fear of death

I saw Milarepa at the all-night diner sharing a table with his personal demons

He said 'You've got to invite them in with compassion on your breath'**

Ophidian already here Orange Lantern already here doesn't help.

**Stop running away, 'cause nobody runs as fast as pain and sorrow**

Couldn't stay Artemis we couldn't cope.

**Stop pushing away, you're just making it hard

Stop putting it off, 'cause it'll be back to kick your ass tomorrow

Breathe in, breathe out, let down your guard**

Stop. Slow down. Breathe. We hold up our ring and look at it. We need to slow down. We can't see the solution if we're panicking. What is wrong with us?

**Sit down and start shooting the shit

With the fear that you'll never measure up to your ideals

Sit down and have a bottle of beer with the ache of all you've lost

I saw Milarepa at the coffee house having a Danish with his hurts and hatreds

He said 'You've got to invite them in, or you pay ten times the cost'.**

We miss Kon already. We hurt our friends by being as we are but we can't stop being as we are. Why can't we stop? We are defined by wanting. We can't want to not want.

**Stop running away, 'cause nobody runs as fast as fear and loathing

Stop pushing away, you're just making it worse**

We know, M'gann!

**Stop putting it off, cause it'll be back again in different clothing

Just pop the clutch and go into reverse**

We can't want not to want. We need to stop wanting. How..? Orange Lantern did that once, before he came here. We remember the experience being strange and unpleasant just for a normal Human. Can we still our mind like that?

**Invite them in and let them be there while you learn to stand it**

We dismiss our snake body.

**Invite them in and give them room to stomp and shout**

We let our view of our ring fill our mind.

**When they can come and go**

We slow our breathing. We don't want not to want. We want so many things but the only way we can get the most important things is to stop wanting. We told Lantern Jordan that if you want the end you should also want the means.

**They won't be always pounding on your door**

Want the end, want the means. Want the end, want the means.

Don't feel numb. Be numb.

**If you let them in you can let them out.**

We breathe out and the ring shuts down. I feel a momentary sense of diminution and confusion before the liquid in my mouth vaporises and flows from my mouth as frozen steam, all air in my lungs swiftly following. I'm on the moon, it's a near vacuum. My eyes feel -agh!- dry and uncomfortable. Vacuum exposure drill.

**Help help! I'm me again but I have no air!**

The insulation in my armour is preventing me freezing from conduction, but I've only got about eight seconds of consciousness left. Ring's glowing up a storm. Can I do anything to aid in my rescue? Toilet walls are blocking anyone's view of me. Trying not to touch anything else I push off from the floor in the direction of the stall opening. I need to give any potential rescuer the best chance to see me and the ring's a beacon. Strangely, I still feel completely calm, which has to be worth another half second or s-

Green light envelopes me and I sigh as my imminent death problem is dealt with. Following the green tether back to its source I see an exuberant looking Lantern Gardner.

"Feelin' alright there buddy?"

"Did you bring my Lantern?"

"Ah, no, it's back in the cave. Why's yer ring glowin' like that?"

"The Ophidian had to go somewhere. Currently, it's trapped in the ring. Obviously, that's far more power than it was designed to cope with."

"So, what? It's gunna explode?"

"Probably. And then the Ophidian would be released in Earth orbit without a host."

"Ah. And that's bad."

"A bit, yes. Where did you park the bioship?"

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Not a priority

at the moment

Suspended in the green aura, Guy tows me to where the bioship is parked on the other side of the giant draughts board I built for-

An orrery of orange light blazes forth from the ring. I stare at it. Nullity. Nullity. I keep staring blankly as Guy manoeuvres me into the bioship's extended rear entrance. An added airlock. We'd never-. I clamp my right hand around my left wrist as my left hand is momentarily wreathed in orange flame. Nothing. Nothing.

Guy lands next to me, the rear hatch closes and with a hiss the airlock begins to pressurise. **Alright, he's on board. Get us back to Earth, pronto.**

I feel the slight, barely detectable shudder as the bioship accelerates from full stop. Even at best acceleration it will take us hours to get back to Earth like this. I'm not sure I can keep-.

The interior door opens and Kon steps through and throws his arms around me in a bear hug. I freeze, hand still clasping wrist and trying not to try. After a moment he responds, pulling back and looking at my expressionless face with concern.

"Paul, you okay?"

"No, not yet. May I sit down? I need to explain what is happening."

"Uh, yeah, sure."

He stands aside as I carefully walk into the ship's interior and take my usual seat near the front. I try to avoid looking at everyone. Can't risk the emotional force. Head still down I sit on my chair. "I probably need to apologise to a lot of people, but I'm afraid that's going to have to wait. The Ophidian is currently trapped in this ring, and-."

"Good riddance."

Artemis... A few worried seconds, but I think I'm still alright. "Please please don't interrupt. I'm having to hold my mind in a very particular way to prevent it getting out and it's quite difficult. I-I can't have unnecessary distractions right now. I need to avoid wanting anything strongly enough to form an emotional connection to it. I don't think I can keep this up indefinitely. If I fail, at best we're back to square one. If I can but we can't get back to my personal lantern quickly enough, then the ring will explode and the Ophidian will be free to do as it pleases. The only thing I can think of to do is to try releasing it into my personal lantern, and I don't even know that that will work. Lantern Gardner, are you able to transfer large objects at faster than light speeds?"

"Ah, well, thing is-" I slowly close my eyes and then open them again. "-I've never done that before. Coming here I jus' stuck a couple'a giant green engines on th' back."

I turn my head slowly around and carefully raise it to stare at him. "Please tell me you're doing that now."

"I ain't an idiot, Paul." I note the green threads flowing from him to the sides of the bioship. "How long y'got?"

"I have no idea. It doesn't appear to be getting worse, but I don't think anyone has ever experienced this before."

"We've cleared the dark side of the moon. Heading for Earth now." I risk looking at M'gann. She smiles broadly at me and I jerk my eyes away. Bad idea.

"Aqualad to the cave. We have him. Please ask Gre-. Please ask Lantern Scott to bring Orange Lantern's personal lantern to the hangar."

For a split second I start to relax before I catch myself. "How long is transit likely to take?"

"'Couple minutes. C'n y'hold on that long?"

"I will have to." The other problem... Just standing in front of my lantern and hoping for the best isn't much of a plan. "Lantern Gardner, would it be possible for me to consult with a Guardian regarding containing the Ophidian."

"Ah, no, sorry. We're cut off until, y'know, you're dealt with."

"That's... That's not the most helpful thing they could have done. Given the nature of the emergency, do you think it would be possible for you to request assistance from the Controllers instead? They have the required knowledge."

"I don't..! I dunno how, okay? I don't know how to get them a message. I always thought Oa was the Guardians' homeworld. That whole area's off limits to Green Lanterns anyway."

"Alright, the Zamarons, then."

"After what Star Sapphire did? They wouldn't help."

"See? Ten plans."

"And if they wouldn't help then the Qwardians certainly wouldn't."

"The Qwardians would cut y'inta pieces t'see what made ya tick."

I nod.

"Half way there."

I can't think of anyone else who understands power ring technology well enough to offer advice. Would Ganthet be willing to break quarantine? Maybe, but at this point he's still toeing the party line as far as I can tell. Now, even if we get to the cave -which is looking increasingly likely- without someone who knows what's going on to give advice I still don't have any real idea how to vent the ring. I don't think that the Ophidian would be willing to go back on its own. From what I remember that just isn't how it works.

Breath in, breath out. Breath in, breath out. Nullity. I just stare at the ring and keep my mind as empty as possible. It's so quiet in here when I do this.

Breath in, breath out. The oath. Why is the oath special? Lantern oaths are personal things. Speaking it should.. only... It made a link to the Central Power Battery. It wasn't the words, it was the acceptance. Could I take it back? I don't think so, not without some other factor. Bleeding off power? That should be possible, but it's the changes to my mind that are the underlying problem. The Ophidian... I don't think it liked Larfleeze. I remember that it didn't in the comics, but when I think of it and him... A little of the confusion I felt when I shut the ring down.

No. This isn't an external problem. The Ophidian and I were trying to help Lantern Jordan... Oh no. Why did we-? No. Apologies later. Internal problem. The way I think.

"Entering Earth's atmosphere now."

The bioship vibrates. I'm not sure how fast we're going, but it must be much faster than the bioship can go on its own. Does Guy know enough to prevent shockwaves..? No, don't get distracted. My relationship with my desires. I wouldn't be a very interesting comic book character. I don't have any dark secrets. Happy childhood, reasonable scholastic history... Avarice? I haven't had a problem using it. Well, aside from really early on-

The ring on my finger shines with even greater intensity. I try to move my right hand to cover it but physically can't force it closer. I have to deal with the problem without thinking about the problem?! Gah, right, blank, blank.

Breath in, breath out. Watch the lights. Don't think.

Don't feel.

"Entering hangar doors."

A hand on my shoulder. Black, fingerless glove. Guy's.

"Come on Paul. Let's see what you pull out o'yer ass this time."

Gingerly, I rise to my feet and walk towards the rear exit. Don't look at your team mates. From this angle all I can see outside are legs, but I try to keep my eyes on the deck and on the ground so that I don't see anything else. Can't take the risk. I walk down the steps.

"Paul? That you?"

I come to a halt. The way my head is facing I can only see Alan's feet. "More or less. Are you holding my lantern?"

"It's here."

I lift up my hands and bring them forwards until I come into contact with the metallic surface. Keeping my left firm against its front I release my right and take hold of one of the lantern's side handles with my right.

Now comes the hard part.

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23rd October

19:56 GMT -5

The ring brightens again, but the orange light is drawn off into the lantern. The effect is something like a bonfire in high wind, or perhaps a highly active plasma ball. Okay, no immediate danger of explosion. I think. What now?

"I'm just going to be thinking out loud here, so anyone who knows anything about power rings, personal lanterns, central power batteries or Elementals should feel free to jump in at any time. Situation: during the training session I somehow connected my personal lantern to the Orange Central Power Battery. The Entity of Avarice, the Ophidian, was trapped there and took the opportunity to transfer itself into what it thought was my personal lantern. It ended up inside me because I thought that the scenario was real, and when the scenario ended it stayed on. We disconnected when it became apparent that we couldn't get what we wanted by wanting it harder. I have no idea if it still understands that justification. It is currently trapped in this ring and I'm bleeding off the extra power it's generating. This is not a permanent solution. We have no way to contact anyone who could create a new containment vessel."

I think my lantern is glowing a little brighter. On a time limit, then.

"Ring, shunt excess power to Central Power Battery."

"Unable to comply."

"Explain."

"Link to Central Power Battery not designed for energy transmission."

"Guy, could you please fish your personal lantern out of subspace?"

"What d'you want it for?"

"I want to see if I can improve my lantern's functionality based on your lantern's design."

"I dunno..."

"It got damaged badly enough to sever it from the Green Central Power Battery and then I messed around with it. I'm sure it's due a service. Need I remind you that this thing breaching is a very bad idea."

I hear a faint ringing noise as he opens his subspace pocket. "Ring, scan and use it as a template for correcting my lantern's internal mechanisms."

"Repairs in progress. Estimated time of completion: now."

All of the orange energy is obscuring the lantern a bit. I think it might be a little taller, maybe? Not a solution.

"Thank you." Right, what was I thinking about on the ship? I don't have a dark and secret past. I haven't had any real problems with avarice. I mean, I had some trouble at the beginning while I was learning to focus it, and I did go a bit far a couple of times, but I had that under control.

"Have you considered removing the ring?"

I look up. Father Mattias is standing just behind Alan. Behind them I see Diana, Jordan, Stewart, Canary and Red.. Ms Reilly... Wait, when did..? No, not important now.

"Yes. I think what would happen if I did that is that the ring would build up power until it detonated, then the Ophidian would grab a new host. Or just go into me again. The mountain might contain the blast, but I'd rather not take an unnecessary risk like that."

"Wonder Woman said that previously removing the ring improved your mental clarity."

"Yes, but my clarity isn't the issue here. I think we should leave that as a last resort measure at best."

Alright, avarice. I haven't really had much of a problem with it. I want enough things and have enough power that I can channel the desire towards productive ends. Is there something I could use the Ophidian's power on? No, not a permanent solution even if there was something.

Wait. The song. I have desires to do things I don't do, because on balance I don't want to do them. The basic drive is still there. I'm not going to have to act on every impulse, am I? No, that's not what it says.

"Sit down and have a conversa- OW! What? He said anyone could jump in!"

"Anyone who knows something!"

"No, no, actually, keep singing. I think this could be important."

"Y'see? Ahem. Sit down and have a conversation

With the loneliness that's eating you alive

Sit down and watch a sunset with your overwhelming rage

I saw Milarepa at the corner bar buying a round for the monsters in his heart

He said 'They're really not so bad when they're let out of their cage.'

Stop-."

"Stop a minute. Thank you." I might not have monsters, but the Ophidian has everyone's, right? And I'm still connected to it via the ring. "Okay, got an idea. Green Lanterns, just in case, could you please stick a shield around m-." Well, there was no need to be that eager. Right. Accept the Ophidian and it'll go away? That would be convenient. I pull the ring back from my lantern a little. "Ophidian."

Just walking along and they pass me and suddenly I wonder what it would be like and I hit them and I hit them and their flesh tears and their blood spills and I see their insides and I bite them and I chew them.

I stagger, gagging. I taste stomach acid in my mouth.

"Paul, are you alright?"

My head is shaking before I really think about it. It's not the Ophidian. It's not the Ophidian. It's revolting but.. who hasn't wondered momentarily about throttling a baby that just won't stop crying? Or seeing a plump pair of breasts on a woman you've never met and thinking what it would be like to give them a squeeze. You don't do it, but just for a moment...

Shit.

"Oh dear. Um. That's..." She has seniority, right? "Wonder Woman, I think I just found out what I'm supposed to be doing. And it's pretty disgusting and I'm probably going to be doing that a lot. Just.. just leave me to it."

Again.

There's cake and fruit and cream and chocolate and I grab handfuls of it straight from the serving plate and force it into my mouths and shove it down and another handful and another all for me!

Ugh. Perhaps not as bad as murder cannibalism... No, nothing like as bad, but revolting all the same. Closer to reality, perhaps. It isn't as if I have to watch what I eat while I wear a power ring.

It's weird and it looks wrong and it feels wrong and I cut and stab it and my skin breaks and my blood runs out and it finally comes off and I feel clean and happy.

My knees hit the ground and the vomit flies out of my mouth. Oh uuuuughhhhh... Haaauh. Don't think the.. doesn't look like the Ophidian and I were eating much.

Random impulsive violence, gluttony and self mutilation. I can't really relate to the reality of the first. I've been aggressive without good cause or at the wrong target before, but I've never taken a hammer to someone's skull. Gluttony? Sometimes. Never to that extreme, but I've eaten things I didn't particularly want when I wasn't hungry just because.. they were there and I could. Self mutilation? I've had acne.. I had acne for more than half my life. And I once tried to cut a mole off with a pair of nail clippers. Not the cleverest thing I ever did. Alright, I think I can see where this is going. Sexual violence next? Not something I have any real experience of, the occasional viewing of a bondage video aside.

Hit me.

I'm getting everything I want all of the time and everyone's doing what they're supposed to be and doing it properly and it's all due to me. My people. My appendages. I am the One True Soul.

No one. There was no one left. It was just me. Everything.. everyone was me. It was like something Darkseid would work towards. With the brand on Mister J'onzz and assimilation, I suppose I can replicate some of the effects of the Anti-Life... I have had power fantasies. With the ring I've even lived some of them. But universal mind control? Maybe. For a second.

And apparently that's enough.

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23rd October

20:03 GMT -5

Oh this plan is rubbish.

Please don't please don't please no please no PLEASE!

And there's the violent sexual imagery. I just about manage to avoid collapsing face first into my own sick, but I'm being propped up by my elbows and there's no real prospect of me getting myself upright any time soon. Uhh. Alright, try and think this through before the next one. Mostly, I don't have a problem with wanting the things I want. When the pull factors massively outweigh the push factors there's no real conscious conflict. And when there is, once I make a decision to act in a particular way I mentally emphasise the 'good' points of the argument in favour of that position while diminishing those against it unless someone draws my attention to it. But, that doesn't seem to be good enough now. Now, I'm being forced to confront the desires I was never going to act on, ones that make up only a tiny part of my character.

I wasn't prepared for this.

As I hold up the list of names, each with a large negative number next to them, I know it to be perfect. Nodding in satisfaction, I transition to the location of the first and plug him in the head with a railgun round before moving on to the next.

That one.. that one didn't produce the same level of revulsion. If I knew for sure that a person's life had that great an adverse effect on the species as a whole I might well consider myself obliged to kill them. I like to think I'd be less.. glad about it though. And that I'd consider other approaches rather than just offing all of them. All of my worst impulses without the restraining factors they have in my actual mind. Isn't Jesus supposed to have said something about thinking about doing something being the same as doing it as far as Yahweh is concerned?

The Hierarchy doesn't really help with things I don't want to want. No, don't want to do on balance. These aren't alien thoughts being imposed on me by an external force. Neither are these things really essential parts of me being me. If I could just cut them out of my brain... No, I wouldn't do it, but I can certainly see the appeal. Milarepa... Invite them in? Experiencing these desires as normal even for a moment made me throw up and fall on my face. How does it go?

Stop running away, 'cause nobody runs as fast as pain and sorrow,

Stop pushing away, you're just making it hard,

Stop putting it off, 'cause it'll be back to kick your ass tomorrow,

Breathe in, breathe out, let down your guard.

Ring? How long do I have?

Estimated time to associated personal lantern overload: four minutes.

Don't really have much choice then.

The knife cuts easily across her abdomen, through skin and fat and muscle. She's too out of it to really notice as I push in with both hands and start squishing her intestines around. I shove my right forearm further in, feeling the shape of her other organs as a length of small intestine is displaced out of the hole by my probing limb.

A-ah! No, no! Don't just feel revulsion. Don't assign value! It's just sensory input. It didn't happen. No one's been hurt.

It's dark. There's a collar around my neck and other bindings around my arms and legs, all connecting to chains firmly attached to the rock floor. I'm curled up on the ground, pulling myself in on myself. I deserve this. I need this. I should be punished!

Detachment. Tightness, cold, damp. A place to be. I can accept... No. If I have to go through all of them like that I'll run out of time. What was it I said to Jordan? The Human mind can only sustain a fear response for so long? Oh no. A few deep breaths through my mouth, trying to avoid the stench of my gastric juices.

Ophidian, I need this to be over. Show me all of them. All at once.

It's light, blinding light. It's black emptiness. It's pain and satisfaction and savagery and joy. It's winning being crushed everything torn down everything's built up. A thousand images and sensations, all of them mine but not me. My.. dark side. No. No disassociation demonisation. Me. Yes, this is me. I feel myself stick a thumb through someone's eye socket then pull across, ripping off the front of their face.

And.. and it doesn't feel all that bad anymore. Without compassion I stamp on a homeless man's fingers as he reaches for a twenty dollar note before picking it up myself. Without will I jump from point of interest to point of interest, abandoning those who rely on me with thoughtless ease. Without fear I will never hesitate, heedless of consequence. No anger to make me stupid when I don't get my way. No hope to distract me with delusions. No love... No love. Hm. I mentally shrug. Oh well.

The power of avarice. Oh, it feels good to think like this. I feel the thoughts of the Ophidian around me, suddenly far less alien than I would have imagined. Is this how it thinks all the time? Amazing it was willing to put up with me for as long as it did, really. Or is it trying to teach..? No, don't care. I float myself up onto my feet as I review the images that had previously so horrified me. Hm. Not that exciting, now I look at them again. Seem rather bland, actually. Minor kinks of the brain. I think I'd have a cup of coffee with them any day. Sure, not all desires can be reconciled with one another, but if the question is simply one of 'What do I want?'... I am my desires, but I still need to be able to prioritise things.

Wait, that's not right. I'm not just my desires. I want everything, and avarice is just one part of everything. I just lost.. I'm losing parts of myself. That isn't what I want at all. The images flicker again, scenes of.. horror? No. I don't feel that. Just things I don't want all that much. Small things. All parts of me, but relatively?

Just small parts of the whole.

This is who I am. All my wants and.. and everything else. Oh. Whaw. This feels... I can't explain... Clearer. Cleaner. All the normal concerns just flowing away, calculations of need resolving themselves by instinct.

"I." I should try to say something. "I accept my nature. Every want, every desire, every noble intention and base drive. I am One. I am Whole."

The ring and lantern are still glowing madly. What am I doing? I blink, smile, then slowly shake my head. Just because I can, it doesn't follow that I want to. This whole crazy obsessive drive... Having everything be mine? I raise my left hand, palm up, and generate a orange sigil.

"This is no longer what I want."

The orange flow from the ring to the lantern reverses, flaming filaments pouring into the sigil as if draining through a hole in the universe. Orange flames are rising from me like fire in a draft, pulled tight around my skin and into the sigil. It doesn't change visually, but it feels somehow more than it was before. I watch it, fascinated, as the flow of orange gradually decreases before finally cutting off. Alone in my own head again. I hold the sigil up to my face. An.. energy pocket of some kind. The Ophidian is inside. What should I do with it?

The lantern is still in front of me.

"Just as a temporary measure, alright? We'll find a more permanent home for you later."

I position my left hand under the lantern and raise it so that the sigil moves through the base and up into the body of the lantern. The internal glow gets brighter but remains contained, controlled.

"This is my power, this is my light,

Be it bright of day or black of night,

I claim all that lies within my sight,

To take what I want, that is my right."

The ring shuts off and I stumble. Someone catches my right arm and steadies me.

"Thank you. Thank you. I.. bwa… I think I'm back."

"You sure about that?"

Alan. I put my right hand on his arm where he's propping me up and look him in the eye. "Moderately sure? The Ophidian's in my personal lantern. Power overload no longer appears to be an issue... I think... "

No. I know. I can see the flows of energy within the lantern. The Ophidian, bound up in them. It seems.. calm, for some reason.

"You mind explaining what just happened?"

"I followed Milarepa's advice. Made peace with my less pleasant desires." I straighten up a little as strength returns to my legs, though I don't pull away. "It was, um. It was an enlightening experience."

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23rd October

20:07 GMT -5

"Let me just..." The sick disappears from both myself and the floor. Lantern seems happy floating by itself, but I take hold of it in my right hand anyway. No obvious reaction. "Ring, status of personal lantern?"

"Personal lantern systems stable. Personal lantern now connected to the Orange Central Power Battery. Alert: Elemental consciousness detected within personal lantern. Status: quiescent. Power reserves at.. reserves at.. ten thousand.. one hundred thousand.. one hundred... Unable to calculate power reserves."

The green barrier is still around us. Alan must have pushed... I take a step away and look at him. He still looks somewhat concerned, but... Eh? I can see colour... The green light is all around, but, like... Under his skin? I see green and blue and indigo and.. back to normal. Sort of. I can still... The green's a shell, the indigo's an aura but the blue is filling a hole in his core. How do I..? No, I can work on that later.

"Ophidian's contained, I'm me again, lantern and.. ring, check systems." I'm not having another poisoned lipstick incident, thank you very much.

"Ring systems normal."

"And.. how am I?"

"Physical status normal."

I raise my eyebrows. He looks me over, then nods and raises his ring to his mouth. "He's okay. Drop the barrier."

A second passes and then the green sphere around us drops away, revealing Guy, Jordan and Stewart holding their rings pointed directly at me. I smile slightly and slowly wave my ring hand to show that the lights are out. Guy lowers his ring almost immediately.

Jordan and Stewart exchange glances and Stewart nods at me. "Say something."

"Liiiike what? I mean, there isn't any information that I'd know that the Ophidian wouldn't..." They lower their rings. "What?"

"You called yourself 'I'."

"Yeees? That could just mean that we've merged permanently. It's not a great friend or foe identification metho-."

And then Kon charges me in the left side, wrapping his arms tightly around my chest. With him gripping me I can't really turn, but I put my right arm over his left shoulder and rest my forehead against the top of his head. "I'm okay, Kon." He relaxes his grip a little, and I lean away slightly. A flash of green and yellow. That's.. going to take some getting used to.

Out of the corner of my eye I see Jordan head over to Diana while Guy walks around to hover by Stewart. And now I'm remembering what I said before I headed to the moon. And.. Robin and Artemis. And the giant cake. The two of us -the Ophidian and I- really made a mess, I don't even know where to.. Oh. I do know where to start. All the factors.. just.. line up, in my head. I know exactly why I'm going to do what I'm about to do. That's new as well.

"Kon, I'm glad to see you too, but I sort of need my torso back." His eyes flick down for a moment, then he lets go. I'm going to spend some time with him later. He needs me to be stable more than anyone else. Our other friends are just behind him... No Robin. Ah, yes. That'll take more work. Dealing with this is a priority. Ring, collar.

Unable to comply. No collar in subspace pocket.

Doesn't really matter. I raise my right hand and fabricate a replacement. Following Paula's advice I try and make it a bit less bondagey looking. I nod to Alan and then put my right arm around Kon's back and lead him over to the others.

"Artemis, I'm sorry about.. everything. We shouldn't have-." Everyone jerks back. "What?"

"You should probably try and avoid the 'W' word for a few days."

"Um, okay? Look, here." I hold out the newly fabricated collar and she carefully takes it from me. "I'm sorry w-. That the Ophidian and I wouldn't give you this. It should suppress the effects of the Danner Formula and I've got one for Robin... Where is he?"

"Yeah, about that..." Wallace looks away and scratches the back of his head. "Rob's trying to build.. one of those collars. He's.. kinda.. freaked out about the whole 'snake' thing. You really.. can't.. reverse it?"

I shake my head. "Sorry. Doesn't... I'll try and make it up to him." I raise my hands in a surrender motion. "In a.. non-crazy way. Um, look, I want to thank you all for coming after me like that. If you hadn't.. I'd probably have stayed up there indefinitely, and I'm really glad not to be doing that."

"Of course we came after you. You'd have done the same for us." M'gann.. blue.. she's feeling a bit more optimistic. "Are you..? Can you remove-?"

"The brand? Yes, I think so. Mister J'onzz will need to be here though." I try looking for him again, but all I get is a brief impression of green. Not powerful enough to punch straight through to Oa anymore. Fair enough, I'm more than happy to live with that. M'gann's smile becomes a bit more genuine. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to report to Wonder Woman."

Downcast eyes. Yeah. I realise that there is a very real possibility I could get booted from the team for this. I can't.. no, I won't blame the whole thing on the Ophidian. But despite how I'm feeling I don't hesitate, don't even drag my feet, as I walk to where my superiors are standing. Diana's face is impassive, Lantern Stewart and Lantern Jordan stern. Canary looks more bemused.. and there's the flash of light-impressions. Pure green from the lanterns and a mixture from the other two.

"Sirs. I.. apologise for my recent cond-."

"Exactly how much of that was actually you?"

Jordan asks the million dollar question. "I'm not sure. What I said about your father... Again, I apologise. That's not something I would have said in a normal... The knowledge was mine, but I wouldn't have mentioned it unless it were absolutely critical. I certainly wouldn't have suggested-."

"Locking my mind at the worst moment of my life for two hours."

"W... Yes."

"The Ophidian?"

"Inside my personal lantern." I hold it up for a moment. "No danger of a breach that I can detect, though feel free to check."

Lantern Stewart sets his jaw. "We have."

I nod. "I should also be able to safely remove the brand from Mister J'onzz. I realise.. what's happened to me, and what's going to happen to me is something the League is going to need some time to think about. So.. because I do want to stay here-" I set the lantern to float for a moment and slide the ring off my ring finger with my right hand, place it in the palm and hold it out. "-I don't think an hour a day is sufficient after something like this. I'd like to hand this and the lantern over to you for a week. Orange light cold turkey." Diana steps forward, reaches out her right hand and picks up the ring. "Careful, don't touch the inside."

She looks at it for a moment and then closes her hand around it. "Why?"

"Because that activates it and I'm not sure-."

"No. Why are you handing it over?"

"I need to show you that you can still trust me. The best way I can think of is to render myself powerless."

She thinks for a moment. "You've made quite a mess."

"I know. I'm going to try and make things.. make up with-."

"No, I mean literally. Quite aside from the damage you did to the hangar you appear to have dumped your entire subspace pocket when you fled the mountain. A whole section of the base is inaccessible."

Oh heck. "I'll.. get.. right on with cleaning that up." How much stuff did I actually have in there?

She nods, considering the matter. "I don't know what the League will decide to do about all this, but I'm very glad that you're back, and that you're you again." And then she hugs me. I'm momentarily surprised and given what her armour covers I'm not sure where it's alright to put my hands. I settle for briefly resting them around the lower part of her back.

"Um, thanks. I'll.. go and get on with that now."

Guy puts his left arm around my shoulders. "I'll come with ya'." We start walking towards the lift. "Stewart had to make a zeta tube construct t'get us out."

"That was pretty cle-."

"Recognised, Green Arrow, zero eight."

We all look over to the zeta tube. As the lights dim Mister Queen strides out in civilian clothing, giant bouquet of pink roses in his arms.

"Hey.. wooow." He looks around at the fused ceiling and the gathered superheroes. "What'd I miss?"

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23rd October

20:32 GMT -5

Sooo... Infinity Man is a giant robot. I did not see that coming. Having seen it in action, I think I'm rather glad that I was able to prevent them from summoning it within the confines of the mountain. I want to find out what happened to Drax here since he clearly didn't become Infinity Man, but I can't risk giving the game away. What would Grayven know? Or, more importantly, what would they expect him to know?

Oh, what tangled webs I weave as I practise to deceive.

My first impression of the Forever People's combat abilities turned out to be completely accurate. Against five opponents armed with Apokoliptian technology -one with a pair of energy whips, two with some sort of seismic weapon and the last two with a bizarre drone disc launcher- the lot of them went down in under a minute. Honestly, if Desaad had just given Intergang guns instead of the joke weapons he actually did then the Forever People would have failed to live up to their names in a truly epic fashion. When I saw the tremor gauntlet things being activated by thumping the ground it was all I could do to stop myself laughing, a resolve which completely failed once Bear ran straight at the area they had converted to quicksand and sank up to his armpits.

Since I'd offered to act as rear guard -and explain events to local authorities whom I had notified of the attempt at bullion theft- they didn't see my loss of composure. Mister Tawny had to act as a distraction while they disengaged and Richard used smoke bombs to cover their retreat. In the whole encounter only he achieved anything worth while, planting tracking devices on the drill and one of the gang members. It wasn't until the fight moved to the surface that the Forever People did something useful, tagging in their giant robot buddy. And even that... The process takes a good eight seconds. Sphere had to fly air support to prevent them dying fighting five baseline Humans!

Of course, once Infinity Man put in an appearance it was all over bar the shouting. He... It..? Was able to create some sort of shockwave by which he knocked out the female gang member whom Richard identified as Whisper A'Daire. Infinity Man was able to eliminate her whips and the weapons of a couple of other gang members with golden beams projected from its eyes. It seemed to be somewhat slow on the uptake however, as it was unable to prevent the gang members other than Ms A'Daire from escaping via boom tube. I'm kicking myself over that one. In my defence I was a bit cautious about antagonising the robot but still! Bruno Mannheim, Mother Box owned by someone I could justify attacking right sodding there! Ugh!

In other news, Infinity Man can fly and is able to generate boom tubes, an ability which he used to remove the drill. Back to New Genesis presumably, though I can't say possessing it really interests me. One super bolas around Ms A'Daire as she attempts to flee for the boom tube and the unstoppable god-machine turns back into the easily stoppable godlings.

"Robin, do you have a trace?"

"Wait a sec... Yes! Metropolis International Airport."

"Sloppy of them."

"Why were you just standing there?"

"I was gathering information on our guests. I would have intervened if things were getting truly out of hand."

"You can't just pick and choose when you help your allies!"

"They are not our allies. They are self interested aliens. Do you think for a moment they would stir themselves if Intergang were using Khundian technology instead of their own?" I shake my head. "No. Our interests may intersect, but they are not the same."

The Forever People approach the defiant Ms A'Daire. She tries to back up but bumps straight into Mister Tawny. Eyes to 'orange glow'.

"You appear to have denied me any trophies."

Vykin turns his head to scowl at me as I walk over to join them. "If you had wanted prizes then you should have assisted during the fight. Can you explain how they came into possession of Apokoliptian weaponry?"

"Presumably, someone from Apokolips gave it to them. We don't really restrict arms sales. Ms A'Daire..."

"I'm not talkin'."

Oh, a clever one. Ring, brain scan. "Ms A'Daire, you have become involved in a conflict beyond your understanding." I take hold of the metallic bands around her chest with my right hand and lift her up to the level of my eyes. "I care little either for you or your criminal associates. Your sole value to me is your knowledge of which of our kind supplies Intergang with alien technology. Was it Virman Vundabar? This does rather seem to be his metre." Hmm. She didn't recognise the name. More importantly, she doesn't recognise me. If this were Darkseid's doing, would she have met him? Possibly not.

"There are easier ways." Dreamer raises her hands to her temples. No, I don't think so. I extend my left hand and flick her in the forehead, breaking her concentration.

"Perhaps. But mine's more fun. Since I am denied artefacts as trophies I think I'll take this one instead." Orange beams flash from my eyes and strike Ms A'Daire in the exposed cleavage -seriously, who designed that?-, marking her with the orange brand. Now there's fear in her eyes as she strains her neck in an attempt to see what I've done. "You're abandoned and alone, Ms A'Daire. Whoever's been equipping you I assure you that I am far nastier." I throw her to the ground. "Now, sing 'Come Sail Away' for me."

She grunts as she lands and then rights herself. "I'm not going to.. to..." She trails off for a moment. And then, as I knew would happen: "I'm sailiiiiing away. Set an open course for the virgin sea." She's got quite a nice voice, though my pleasure at the act comes mostly from her growing fear at her lack of control. "I've got toooo be free. Free to face the life.. that's aheeeeead of me."

But Vykin runs out of patience. "Enough! Release her!"

I roll my eyes. "No sense of fun, that one." Branding may only allow me to compel simple actions and it's easy enough to remove but Ms A'Daire doesn't know that. She also doesn't know that I can now follow her anywhere. If we let her go she might lead us to all sorts of interesting places. Alas, maintaining cover to get a chance to grab a Mother Box takes precedence. I wave my right hand and the sigil evaporates.

"Dreamer, show us who their sponsor is."

He just saw me use the anti-life equation on someone. I think my cover will survive. I cross my arms as Dreamer focuses once more and white mist rises from Ms A'Daire's head, coalescing into a form I recognise immediately.

"Desaad. How anticlimactic. I was hoping for someone who might be fun to fight."

The apparition gives an evil chuckle. Looking closer, I see that his skin is damaged, as if burned or melted by acid. Or perhaps some strange growth? I try to remember what I can of him from the comics. He's supposed to be intelligent but I don't remember him being much of a fighter himself. The Forever People seem a little more concerned about his appearance than I am, though Bear covers it when he sees that I've noticed. Exactly how far down the New God hierarchy are they?

"Who is Desaad?"

I think I may be nearing the end of Richard's patience. "Desaad is the New God of Torture and Darks-" They cringe again. "I'm so sorry, Uxas' chief aide. He plots, he schemes, he invents and builds, he kicks you when you're down or stabs you in the back. In a fight? Even your little gang-" I nod at the Forever People. "-could probably take him head on."

Dreamer scowls at me, then takes a step towards Richard. She raises her hands to the diadem at her head. Her eyes glow, and an illusion of two orbs appears in front of her, one red and one blue. "The New Gods come from two worlds at war. Those of us from New Genesis are gods of life, freedom and the Source. Our enemies of Apokolips-" I attract some stares, and respond with a smile and a small wave. "-are gods of anti-life, slavery and degradation."

"Excuse me. I've seen the way you treat the insectoid species that dwells on New Genesis' surface. What is it dear Orion calls them? Bugs? Not all that different to our Lowlies, is it?"

Dreamer makes an effort to ignore me. "Desaad is God-Scientist -and chief torturer- of Apokolips. His experiments are pure evil-"

"No they're not. They generate knowledge. To be pure evil they would have to be without purpose."

"-his works, abominations-"

"True enough."

"-his master-."

The illusion seems to smile. "Unspeakaaaable."

"Ugh, mysticism from those who call themselves gods. His master is Darkseid, father of Orion, Kalibak and Grayven. Once known as Prince Uxas, he arranged for the murder of his brother -Prince Drax- so that he and not his brother could seize the Omega Force and become the most powerful being in the Universe. Know that if you pit yourself against Apokolips you pit yourself against such a man. If you cannot even stand to hear his name spoken then abandon your cause now, for you lack the moral fortitude to stay the course."

Ms A'Daire's bravado seems to have abandoned her as she looks from the cackling illusion to me. "They're both seriously creepy."

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23rd October

20:56 GMT -5

"You know, that little speech you gave Robin reminded me of something."

We're parked on the outskirts of the airfield, looking at the hangar cum warehouse where Richard's tracker sent its last signal. They're fairly small, but not something it would be difficult for New God technology to locate once it occurs to them to check. That same New God technology is the reason why I haven't risked scanning the place. I don't want to spook them and risk losing my supertech database.

Dreamer folds her arms and doesn't look at me. "That you are innately a foul and destructive blight upon the universe?"

Richard passed a spare set of binoculars to Vykin -they didn't bring any of their own magnification equipment, preferring total dependency on their Mother Box- and they are observing the hangar. It's an obvious trap. I'm not worried for myself, and for once I'm not worried for my team mates. Because they're not here. The Forever People can go in and die or do the intelligent thing and merge outside, I'm just here for a Mother Box.

"No, I hadn't forgotten that. I was speaking of an old Apokoliptian legend. It tells that at one point, the Source and the Anti-Life were two parts of a greater divine being, which split itself in two in order to play its two aspects against one another. Upon the resolution of that conflict -you slaying us or us slaying you- the two parts would merge and the universe would be remade in the image of whichever was victorious."

"What do your blasphemous lies have to do with anything?"

"Well, think about it. Your kind worships the Source, prays to it for guidance. On Apokolips, they study the Anti-Life equation, trying to better understand its nature. If the resolution of our conflict results in the end of the universe and the birth of a new one, would it not serve the God of Tyranny best to become one with the Anti-Life equation first? In victory therefore.. becoming that greater divine?"

"And you'd rather it were you."

"No. No! I like this universe! I keep all my stuff in it. I like meaningful conflict, which would be forever lost in a universe in which Darkseid is. I even like you.. well, not you as an individual, you're fairly pathetic, but some of the other gods of New Genesis. Lightray, Orion, Metron, Izaya, Himon... Especially Himon. And what of the untold billions whose existences would be irrevocably changed by a new mind governing the cosmos? Surely, out of respect for their individualities we are obliged never to reach such a resolution."

I'm not just winding them up for fun. I mean, it is fun, but I'm mostly doing it because I remember the Death of the New Gods storyline. If I can sow even a little doubt... Ah, the others were listening. Moondancer turns to me. "You have a long-winded way of pleading for your life."

"Don't put your faith in a force you don't understand, Mooney."

"That is what faith is."

"Then you'll never know whether the legend is true or not. Not until it's too late, anyway."

"Infrared shows no heat signatures inside the hangar." Looks like Richard's patience has run out. He needs to learn to relax a little. Maybe a hobby..? He lowers his binoculars and Vykin does the same. "I still don't like it. Has your computer detected anything?"

Mother Box warbles and Vykin listens. "Mother Box confirms that there's a large cache of Apokoliptian technology inside. No sign of this.. 'Intergang'."

"Could their Mother Box have detected you doing that?"

"No. The scan was passive, detecting energy emissions from the weapons."

So, they could have detected emissions from your car and the Sphere? Uhh. Maybe they were sent to Earth to get some experience before being given work that is actually important? I'm being torn between my desire to correct their errors and my desire for them to get out of the way of me acquiring this equipment.

!Fools!

Now all of them are glaring at me. Not.. sure why. I think I'll leave them to it. Dreamer turns to Vykin. "I can disguise us as the Humans we disabled when we recovered the Rescue Drill." Humans who are.. just being picked up by police next to a giant hole leading to a gold depository. I also left a recording of the fight clearly marked as evidence. The Dreamer looks at me and smiles. "I'm sorry, but I can't mask your Apokoliptian signature from their Mother Box. You'll have to stay here."

"I am more than content to watch your rear." And she gags. Hah!

The Forever People climb out of the Fantasticar and Richard and Mister Tawny exit the Sphere.. Trike... I'm going to have to find out if she would mind being called something else, because I can't carry on calling a thing that clearly isn't a sphere the Sphere. Anyway, Tawny and Richard join in the New God group, Dreamer raises her hands to her head and.. a couple of thugs in black hoodies stand on the tarmac. It isn't telepathy, my shields are still up. I can only assume that it's some sort of magic effect. Instinctive, rather than learned? No way to be sure. I watch as they head towards the hangar.

Ring, prep scan and dynamic entry route. I want to know where Desaad is the moment our enemy reveals himself. Oh, and send filaments under the structure.

By your command.

They're entering now... No immediate response. Hm. I suppose the Intergangers might just have left by car. Ring, scan the surrounding area but not the hangar. No, they're not there. Some other form of teleportation? Richard, Mister Tawny and the Meat Shields -well, I assume they've stayed together, I can only see two illusionary figures- get a little further inside... And they drop the illusion. Idiot! If Richard gets killed because of their incompetence I'll turn any survivors into constructs! The lights go on and the ring immediately scans the area. Thirteen gang members including Mannheim himself, all armed with Apokoliptian weapons. Both types that they used in our previous encounter, plus.. some.. sort of halberd? They aren't attacking immediately... Ring, tell me what he's saying.

"…masks heat signatures, visor filters out illusion." I'll be acquiring those then. "We gotcha!"

Richard drops a smoke bomb and fires a grappling line to the top of the crates behind him as the Forever People scatter and Mister Tawny charges. Mannheim fires off some discs.. no, that isn't a disc, it can be used as a gun! Why didn't he..? No, not important. The crates Richard's standing on take a hit -looks like Intergang isn't worried about the security of future shipments- but he recovers and drops down behind another pile.

"Any time you're ready, Oh El!"

Still.. not.. seeing Desaad. I could just grab the equipment I want, but it occurs to me that Desaad is a good deal less dangerous when you know where he is. Mister Tawny has already torn his first target apart and is using Intergang's sub par positioning to cause his next targets to foul their friends' lines of sight. Mooney's returning fire and Vykin's sticking up some cover... Huh, Mooney actually hit someone. With enough force to knock them off their feet and into the roof. Serifan's shooting down discs and appears to be treating it as a game. Dreamer.. managed to wrestle a guy to the floor. New God physiology. I shouldn't underestimate them physically just because they're stupid. Bear engages in melee with some halberdiers while Vykin sends a crate into the side of three gang members who appear to have forgotten that they have the advantage of overwhelming firepower and were charging forward.

"We'll soon be overrun. It is time."

Serifan and Mooney lay down suppressing fire while the others fall back to their position. Why aren't the Intergangers pressing them? They know what will happen. What's Mannheim doing? Staggering backwards, shielding his eyes... So far so incompetent. One of his subordinates walks up to him and.. splits.. down.. the middle. Desaad inside. Right, I've seen about all that I need to.

"Now, mortal. Deliver the Father Box!" Desaad holds out a third example of my second favourite device in the universe. Wonder if I can get them both? Are all such normal versions called Mother Boxes or is it a New Genesis/Apokolips divide? No matter. Mannheim takes hold of it with his left hand, pulls his arm back -transition- and gasps in shock as I take hold of him around the forearm with my right hand and relieve him of Father Box with my left.

"I really don't think so."

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23rd October

21:07 GMT -5

"Father Box, is it?" I hold it up to my eyes as the Forever People complete their ritual and Infinity Man begins annihilating the equipment being carried by the Intergangers. "This will come in useful. My thanks, mortal." Infinity Man blasts the man slain by Mister Tawny. The spilt blood disappears, his wounds reknit and his head jerks up just in time for a second blast to remove his equipment and stun him. Was he not truly dead, or did I just witness a resurrection?

"Hey! Who the hell are you supposed to be?"

My eyes glow orange and then beams of orange light strike his disc projector harness and transfer it to subspace. He gasps.

"Master?" "O great Darkseid, I don't understand. You told me-."

"I am not Darkseid, Desaad. If I were, I would have slain you, resurrected you and then slain you again for the insult you do me simply by being here. How did one such as you ever manage to murder Uncle Drax and Grandmother Heggra?" This is something of a hard test of my Grayvenness. Desaad would have had the opportunity to interact with him on a regular basis. But would he have taken it, and how recent would it be? And it's not as if I can't just kill him if it doesn't work.

Having finished eye beaming the Apokoliptian weaponry, Infinity Man begins launching bolas at each of the now defenceless Intergangers.

"Who is this guy Desaad?"

Desaad gives me another look. "Prince Grayven?" "I had no idea you were here, let alone that these people were yours."

"It's so nice to be recognised." I grab the front of his robe with my right hand and hoist him off his feet, feeling a sort of tingle as I take hold of him. "Mannheim. The Mother Box. I saw it in your hand when you fled the depository. You will hand it over, now."

"What? What's goin' on?"

I roll my eyes. "You're a gangster aren't you? Surely you are familiar with the idea that if you wish to operate in someone else's territory it is wise to seek their permission?"

"Metropolis ain't your turf."

"Not Metropolis. Earth. I don't care about your criminality, but you involved the family. As if having one brother here isn't bad enough, I have to put up with the idiot children and father's gopher."

"Desaad didn't say nothin' about-."

"I know. And that's why you're still alive. But Infinity Man may well not share my patience where the technology of New Genesis is concerned."

More Intergangers enter from the main hangar door, armed with conventional weapons. Automatic rifles ping off his armour while a rocket propelled grenade aimed at his face is blocked by his forearm. He retaliates with the same kinetic blast he used on Ms A'Daire, sending them flying across the ground before firing off more bolas. Then he turns to us.

"I urge you to expedite your decision making, Mister Mannheim."

Desaad now appears to be panicking. "Prince Grayven, you're as much in danger as we are!"

I smile at him. "I'm.. really not." Ew. What the heck is up with his arm?

Mannheim finally gets a clue, but not in the way I had hoped. "If you're Desaad's boss, I don't mind workin' with you instead'a him."

I shake my head. "I have little use for you, I'm afraid. My plans for this world are rather different."

"Prince Grayven, please!"

Hmm. I don't need him as such, but chasing after Apokoliptian infiltrators would get old very quickly. "The Earth is off limits. Understood?"

"Yes! Of course!"

"Glad to hear it. Father Box, open a Boom Tube to the Armagetto."

Ploong.

A dull chime, noticeably different from that of either the Sphere or the Forever People's Mother Box, acknowledges my order. A golden point of light appears a metre off the floor just in front of us and opens to display my chosen location. The smog obscures the view but what I can see looks little different to a British town during industrialisation.

"Could you not simply send me back to the palace?"

"No. The trek back is what this little escapade has cost you. But take heart; I'm sure that a god of your resourcefulness will easily survive the journey. Oh, and before you go." Two beams flash from my eyes once more. There is a far greater resistance than I have felt from any other target, but once I exert myself a little.. yes, there we are. Branded. If he ever comes back I'll know about it. I pull my right arm back and hurl him through the portal.

"What is that place?"

"The Armagetto. Apokolips' slum housing. Imagine a tenement complex the size of a continent inhabited by the utterly powerless who are attacked at regular intervals by military forces who are taught to accustom themselves to violent death and take pleasure from the suffering they cause. Not a fun place to live. Father Box, close it down please." I see Desaad pick himself up and look around before the tube vanishes.

Infinity Man is now only five metres away, towering over us.

"Mister Mannheim…"

"Right, right. Ah, here!" He pulls the second Mother Box out from under his pullover. "Here, take it! I didn't even know it was stolen, honest!"

Infinity Man gestures and the Mother Box is drawn over to him through the air before a Boom Tube opens in the air below it and it drops through. Alas, I couldn't see the destination from my current position. It might have been interesting to see New Genesis, but it's hardly a priority.

"There. The last of the stolen technology. I'll keep what's in the crates from my own homeworld as my priz-."

The crates explode, knocking Mister Mannheim over and forcing me to brace myself. What? What!? I look at Infinity Man in fury but he didn't move. Then who..? Richard. Richard. I had wondered where he'd got to. Infinity Man surveys the destruction as I do. Nothing recoverable. I'm not sure if Robin packed extra explosives on this trip or if the weapons had an enthusiastic anti-theft device. Damn and blast! I bite my tongue as Infinity Man glows gold and disappears, replaced by the Forever People. Happy looking Forever People. I lower my left arm to block their view of Father Box.

"It seems that your trophy cabinet will remain unfilled, Grayven." I scowl at Vykin. Deep breath. The path most likely to get them to leave peacefully is the one that involved giving them some token victory over me.

"I'll.. make do."

"These criminals-."

"Will be dealt with by local law enforcement. Unfortunately, with so much of the evidence destroyed, our ability to convict them may be a little hampered." Mister Tawny reappears from somewhere and pads over to Mannheim, who looked like he was thinking of fleeing. Mister Tawny growls.

Mannheim sits back down.

"See to it that they are."

"I am not your servant, Vykin. I will preserve order on this world because it is mine, not because you will it."

He nods. "The New Genesphere-."

Back in sphere mode, the Genesphere rolls into the hangar at full speed, knocking aside still burning packing material. She brakes hard at my feet and starts warbling again.

"No, no one..."

Warble rev.

"No, I just sent him back to Apokolips."

Chime warble.

"No, I didn't break anything off him first, do you see any..?"

Simon impression.

"Look, would you mind talking to Vykin about this? He seems to think that I'm holding you against your will."

She rotates on the spot and makes on loud and clearly negative sound. Hah. Vykin's eyes narrow, but he nods. "Very well then. We return to New Genesis. And we will remember you, Grayven."

I roll my eyes as I survey the wreckage. Ring, notify police that we've got Intergangers for pick up. Also, you should probably call in the fire brigade.

By your command.

And where's Richard? I have his location. Transition. I appear next to him as he observes the burning hangar from outside.

"You destroyed technology of incalculable value to deny it to me. Why!"

He tenses, but holds his ground. "Because you were making this mission up as you went along. Because you were getting too into your supervillain god role. And because I don't trust you with that sort of power."

"I already have a power ring! Exactly how much of an improvement did you think that was going to be! That technology could have been used to secure the Earth against any future invader, and you.. you..!"

"Yeah." He crosses his arms across his chest. "Me."

I so badly want to rip him in half.

!Kill!

So badly...

But... I still have Father Box and what I took from Mister Mannheim. Really, I'm forced to admire his moxie. I am so much more powerful, and he just did what he thought was right anyway. I bring my right arm around and clap him hard enough on the shoulder that he's forced to bend his legs to absorb the force.

"Hah hah hah hah! Be you ever so resolute. Be you ever so resolute." He's stunned. Astonished. What, did he think I was some idiotic Apokoliptian god, unable to rise above his base nature? Can't let this slight go completely unavenged, of course. "Oh, but just for that? You can walk back."

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23rd October

21:21 GMT -5

Guy and I stare at the wall of paper blocking the corridor to my room.

"Did you have all your files on paper in there? Y'know rings can do data storage, right?"

"I'm not.. completely sure." We both walk up to the blockade and pull out a few pages. It's actually stacked fairly neatly but it's continuous. We're about.. um.. eighty metres from my room. Corridor's about a metre and a half wide and two metres tall, the paper's A4...

"This some kinda alien?"

Guy turns his page towards me, revealing... A picture of a Carnifex. My page has what appear to be mathematical formulae, but after a moment my eyes unfocus and it starts to make sense. Did I really do that..? Clearly, yes.

"Sort of. There's this wargame I used to play called Warhammer Forty Thousand. That's a picture of one of the units. It's called a Carnifex. I think.. when the Ophidian and I were.. you know, together.. we sort of decided to rework all of the rules. See, the company which makes it is really bad about balancing stuff, and a load of rules just don't work or don't do what they're supposed to and they got a bit of a randomness obsession in the last version of the main rulebook..." Not that 6th edition's been released here yet.

"You're sayin' all this is..?"

"My attempts to do better. Well, the Ophidian's and mine, there's no way I could have done this sort of calculation by myself." Hm. A summary of fixes for Slugga Boyz. Choppas with AP 4 or shred or rending, run and assault, pursue into new combat... Huh, and looks like changing vehicle firing rules to only restrict heavy or ordnance weapons works just fine.

"The rulebook's supposed to be this big?"

"No, but this includes records of all of my testing. All of my alterations, and the results of thousands of simulated games based on those alterations. I'm.. not really sure why we put it on paper, mind."

"Why not?"

"Nooot with you."

He frowns. "What'd'ya mean?"

"Oh, um Britishism. I don't understand what you mean."

"Why don't you understand why you did it?"

I take a moment to look through what appears to be an attempt to model the effect of imposing 2nd edition choosing a target rules on 6th edition. "I don't remember everything we did together. It's like.. you remember what I told you about accelerating your brain using a power ring, why I don't do it routinely?"

"'Cause the bits o'your brain that were in the ring bits would vanish when y'took the ring off."

"Right. The Ophidian is this.. ancient elemental.. thing. I don't know if I can explain it properly. I don't even know if I can comprehend it as I am now. I'm.. not Green Lantern material. I don't stick with a thing until it's done, I stick with it until I get bored with it. This was created by a being who couldn't comprehend stopping until it got exactly what it wanted."

"Which was what, exactly?"

"The perfect wargame. I might also have a complete redesign of Dungeons and Dragons in there somewhere. And.. possibly the Human digestive system. Got a bit.. strange, towards the end."

"You redes-. You know what? I ain't even gonna ask." He tries to slide his page back into the piles, but can't tip the pile back far enough to get it the full way in. "What'd'ya wanna do with all o'this?"

"I'd quite like to send it all to Games Workshop headquarters in Nottingham. I mean, I've basically written the next edition for them, and it's far better than anything they'd have put out."

"If only y'hadn't given Wondy your power ring."

"Yeah... I.. couldn't persuade you to stick it in yours, could I?"

"All of it?"

"When I headed to the moon.. I don't even really remember dumping everything. I've got no idea where the important parts are. And the rest is the proof that the change is the correct thing to do. Without it, it's just one man's opinion."

He rubs his chin with his right hand. "Eh, not like we can just set fire to it in here. You want it in any particular order?"

"Nooo. I'm just hoping there's a record on the ring where it's all supposed to go."

He raises his right hand, and his ring highlights the first pile of paper with green light. A second later it disappears into his subspace pocket. This could take a while.

"There gunna be anything interestin' through here?"

I shrug. "I'm not sure. I was working on improved water armour for Kaldur, but I pretty much stopped that once he started using Ocean Master's gear. There's some plasma pistols, my clothes..."

"A cake the size o'New York?"

I wince. "No. That's in a safe place under some mountains in Switzerland."

"How were you plannin' on..?"

"The Ophidian could phase. I haven't.. is that a thing power rings can actually do?"

"Yeah, I known guys who can do that. I can't, Jordan couldn't last time we talked about it. Don't know about Stewart or Alan. So, what, the Ophidian could phase but you couldn't?"

"No, it doesn't... When we were together, we shared our understanding of the orange light and its applications. Now... I can sort of remember how to do some things, like those tiny filaments I used on the eyeballs-."

"Freakiest fuckin' thing I've ever saw, by tha way."

"Yeah. Well, you don't have to worry about me doing it again. When we were together, I knew how to phase. I don't even remember it taking that much focus or power. Now? No idea. That part's just.. not in my head."

"You remember everything you saw with those eyes?"

"No. I was only paying attention to the bits which looked like ninjas. A normal Human brain can't hold all of the data. I might get flashes when I see a place or meet a person, but I don't really know any more than before I did it."

"Hm. Oh, good work fixin' up Red Inferno. I know Tornado really appreciated it."

"Was that me?"

"You don't remember?"

I shake my head. "No."

"Sounds like you mighta lost a lot."

"I think you're right."

"You okay with that?"

"Okay?" I wrinkle my nose. "It sucks. Losing memories takes away not just that knowledge, but it also changes my behaviour. Who I am. Except.. I really want me... I don't know. I've never done something like that before, and it doesn't suck enough to make me want to rebond with the Ophidian."

"Glad t'hear it."

"But losing phasing does create a problem. As I am now, I can't get the cake out. I'm going to have to relearn within the next two months or I'll miss Christmas."

Another stack of paper disappears. I think I can see a doorway.

"Been meaning to ask: what'd you do with the Star Sapphire?"

"Ah. What?"

"Glowin' pink rock, 'bout yay big." He makes a circle with his hands.

"I don't.. did I..? Did I leave it on the moon?"

"Didn't see it."

"Then I'm sorry, I just don't know."

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24th October

07:49 GMT -5

I stand across the road from St Patrick's Cathedral in New York, watching the door as parishioners attending the early morning mass stream out. Going back to travelling without a ring was a bit of a shock to the system, though fortunately I still have zeta tube access. Changed my 'official' name back to Orange Lantern while I was at it. Fortunately I'm not attracting much attention, despite the cake incident last week. The black with orange lining suit I'm wearing does have orange sigils in a couple of places, but they're fairly subtle and I don't think anyone's noticed them.

After Guy and I finally reached my room I realised that I've been using the ring for so much basic stuff that I don't actually own some fairly basic stuff. No toothbrush, for example. No toothpaste. I have a towel but no flannel, no brush, no comb and no nail clippers. I was lucky that the local supermarket stays open late and I was able to get most things. Even more luckily my money stayed here. Hm. Thinking about it I suppose that I could handle normal money now that I'm not wearing the ring. Wouldn't be worth getting much normal cash -all being well this will only be for a week- but it would certainly speed up small exchanges with people who don't know me. My wardrobe is okay, but if the temperature drops I'm going to need warmer jumpers before too long.

I'm a bit embarrassed by how long it took me to realise why we never had training sessions scheduled on Sunday mornings. I honestly thought it was because Saturday nights were busy for those of us with patrol routes and everyone wanted a lie in the next day. Ah, there they are. I see Father Mattias first. Not many people wear red dog collars. Mister Zatara and Zatanna are dressed in a slightly more normal fashion. Come to think of it, this is probably the first time I've seen Mister Zatara in normal clothes. A dark blue suit, rather than his stage slash superhero costume. Zatanna's wearing a black calf length skirt, white blouse and blue jacket. Mattias is the one I'm here to see, but I should say hello to the others as well.

She can't really be grounded for life.

Can she?

Right. They're standing outside talking to some people I don't recognise. I'm still not completely certain of my ability to cross American roads without assistance, but there are plenty of people trying to use the zebra crossing here and I can just follow their lead. If I get hit by something Guy will never let me live it down. Zatanna looks a little bored. There don't seem to be that many people her age around. In Britain that would be because her peers aren't going to church, but in America I imagine that they just go to a later service. She's looking around and so is the first to catch sight of me. She double takes, then waves to me. I raise my ringless left hand to wave back, and finish navigating my way through the crowd.

She comes part way to greet me. "Paul! What are you doing here? You're not.. still possessed, are you?"

"Good morning Zatanna. No, the Ophidian's being stored in my personal lantern. And, to be faaaair, I wouldn't really call what it was doing to me 'possessing' in the normal.. demonic sense. I wanted to thank Father Mattias for the work he put into separating us, and this was the one place I knew he'd be. How's the.. being grounded for life thing going?"

"Oh, I'm sure Dad will let me out." She sags a little. "Eventually."

"Couldn't you teleport or.. some sort of magic duplicate?"

"I used to do that, but Dad's warded all the doorways and windows. There's no escape."

"Ordinarily I'd suggest consulting with the most cunning magic user on the planet, buuuut..."

"That's that Constantine guy, right?"

"Yes. I've been meaning to ask; you don't know why your Dad-."

"Orange Lantern." Spotted. Mister Zatara walks over, Father Mattias just behind him. "This is unexpected. Are you planning on attending a service?"

"No sir, still an atheist. Though.. I suppose that if I do end up getting a soul, it does make sense to think about what sort of afterlife I'd want to end up in. You know, consider offers from different religions. I hear Yahweh's kind of needy."

"Perhaps. But he's very dependable." Father Mattias meets my provocation with a smile. "Unlike the entities which your mentor Wonder Woman worships."

"Oh, no fear. I'm not going anywhere near them." Think I'll avoid mentioning the First of the Fallen or the Resurrection Crusade. He's a good man, it's not his fault that he's wrong about everything. "Look, I wanted to thank you for helping getting me... Separating me from the Ophidian."

"It was a pleasure. I was rather hoping that you would be willing to explain to me exactly how you were able to make the resolution that you did. Elemental possession isn't a well understood area."

"Ah, that. Lantern Gardner was diplomatically not asking me about that."

"If.. it's too painful..?"

"No, no. It's... It's just a bit weird, really. The Ophidian showed me everything I'd ever wanted. Not the big stuff, just.. momentary impulses. Usually violent and always uncivilised. And it showed me me acting on them without regret or hesitation and feeling great about it."

"And you resisted, and so were able to free yourself?"

"No. Just the opposite, really. I accepted that I am a person who wants many different things. Some of my impulses are not very nice, and quite a lot I'm never going to act on. But, trying to pretend that those desires don't exist..."

"If you let them in then you can let them out?"

"Yes, exactly."

Father Mattias looks a little taken aback. "I don't think that's something I would have suggested. And I really don't recommend ever trying that with a Demon."

I shake my head. "I wouldn't dream of it."

"And there were no other side effects?"

"Err... Yes. There are." I wasn't planning on keeping them secret, exactly, but I had wanted to investigate a little on my own. I suppose there's no real reason not to tell him...

"Can you tell me about them?"

"Alright. Two main ones. Firstly, I'm constantly aware of everything I want, and why I want it. It's kind of like what the Ophidian can do and what the ring let me do a little to other people."

"What is that like?"

"I always thought... Well, not always, but... I could understand not really knowing what you want. The world's a complicated and often bewildering place. What I couldn't understand is knowing what you want and not trying to get it. Or at least trying to stop wanting, if you didn't think it was an appropriate thing to want. I don't have that excuse anymore, and if it's stayed for a day.. this might be permanent. I know where my desires come from, and how they inform my behaviour. You can't make a free choice if you don't have information to base it on, and I always know, now."

"You make it sound liberating."

"It sort of is. Um. Anyway, the second thing is that I can see people like the Ophidian does. The most intense emotions they feel, that they're.. made of. It's not on all the time-" A flicker of colour in.. around.. whatever.. Mattias. Indigo and just a little white. Interesting. I haven't seen white before. "-and I can't control it yet. Haven't.. asked the other Lanterns. For all I know this is perfectly normal."

"Hmm. I don't recall other instances of possession mentioning anything quite like you're describing. Would you mind if I.. ah... If I included what you've told me in my report?"

"No, go right ahead. I know I got off very lightly. There were a lot of ways that could have gone a great deal worse, and if what you've learned can help others..."

Mister Zatara looks thoughtful for a moment. "Orange-. Paul. We were going to have breakfast. Would.. you.. like to join us?"

Unexpected. I've already eaten and I can't rely on the ring to get around the finite stomach capacity problem. But since coming to this world I've been trying to make an effort to socialise more, and it's been paying off. I've felt.. happier around people. "Thank you, yes. I'd like that. Lead the way."

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24th October

07:54 GMT -5

Zatanna and I fall in behind Mister Zatara and Father Mattias as we cross the road and start down 5th Avenue.

"Soo... Where are we heading?"

"The Great American Pancake Parlor on Fourteenth Street."

"Don't think we have those in my parallel."

"You don't have pancakes?"

"Heh, no, we have pancakes. I mean the restaurant chain. I think it's probably the equivalent of our International House of Pancakes. Though now I think about it, I've never been in one of those either. This might end up being like that time I tried ordering gravy in Houma." I don't shudder, but the memory is distasteful.

Zatanna frowns. "What's wrong with ordering gravy in Houma?"

I shrug. "I should have remembered that in the US 'gravy' doesn't necessarily mean meat based sauce, but when confronted with a menu I just went into automatic. Just to check, a 'pancake' is made from flour, eggs and milk, right?"

"Aaand baking powder."

"What? Why would you put baking powder..? Oh." I shake my head. "Sure I'll manage."

"They.. probably do crêpes as well. I've never asked."

"Doesn't really matter. I've been trying to try new stuff. Is this a regular thing with you and your dad?"

"No. We usually get breakfast before going to mass."

"I read about the 'no-eating-before-going-to-mass' thing in 'The Godfather'. I didn't realise it was something people still did."

"You're kind of supposed to. I think Dad's being strict about it because Father Mattias is staying with us." She leans her head around and looks at my hands. "You really gave up your ring?"

"Just for a week."

"What's it like, going back to... You know, not having it?"

"Bit inconvenient. Aside from the fact that I can't go on missions or train properly.. makes shopping harder."

"I'm not sure I could manage going without magic for a week. I use it for.. ugh. Sthgil egnahc!" The lights at the crossing change and the cars come to a stop. Mister Zatara looks back at her with a raised eyebrow, but says nothing. "Just about everything. How does it make shopping harder?"

"I was buying raw milk from this place in Suffolk, and I can't do that now."

"Raw.. milk..?"

"Unpasteurised. It's illegal to sell it in Rhode Island, and the amount I drink, it's just not practical to get it any other way."

"Is that.. safe?"

"These days, if you want to sell unpasteurised milk your milking parlour has to be clean to clean room standards. With the ring that didn't really matter anyway, but I'd still feel fine about drinking it now." I frown. "How does having... Being able to use magic work.. at school? I mean, there can't be all that many magic using teenagers around here."

"There aren't. Most of my classmates think it's kind of cool. That, and having a dad who's a superhero."

"And the teachers? I mean, I was talking to Kaldur about it, and he said that an Atlantean your age would struggle to do a fraction of what you can do."

"They don't have a problem with it, as long as I don't disrupt lessons. Why would they?"

"On my parallel I'd have expected it to be more of an issue."

"That doesn't make sense, you said magic doesn't exist on your parallel."

"It doesn't, but neither do gods and we still have religion."

"How can you know they don't exist?"

"It's not like.. here. If you want categorical evidence of the existence of supernatural beings you can just stick up a summoning circle. Elementals, Demons, spirits.. there's even ways to call up an Angel if you want. Faith comes from deciding that you agree with their position. Back home, you can't do that, either because there's nothing to summon or no way to summon it. No evidential basis for religion at all."

"What about the Bible?"

"What about it? If you're talking about the New Testament, we don't know who wrote most of it, we don't really know when it was written with any degree of certainty and most of it is hard to corroborate with contemporary sources. An objective look at this world reveals any number of life forms a person could choose to worship. A look around mine.. doesn't. And if I understand the mechanism correctly, even if there was a Heaven.. or whatever... Without souls we couldn't go there."

"Are your.. tattoos.. working?"

"No idea. I was hoping to ask your dad to take a look."

We walk in silence for a few moments.

"How did the big cake turn out?"

"Ooooh. Were you here for that?"

"I do live here."

"Fairly well... I think. I don't remember everything from when I was joined to the Ophidian. How badly was everyone freaking out?"

"Quite a lot to start with, then nothing really happened for hours. People just started ignoring it until one of the news helicopters went up to see what was happening. Do you remember that?"

"Nnnnnnooooooooooo?"

"You made a landing pad for them and did a short interview."

I cringe inwardly. "On a scale of one to ten, how crazy-?"

"About a six. My favorite bit was when you started singing 'New York New York'. And the dancing."

"I don't remember that bit. And I think I'm glad I don't."

"Where are you keeping it?"

"Switzerland."

"Is Switzerland big enough?"

"I'm storing it under the Alps in a chamber I built. I phased it through the rock to put it there and -without the Ophidian- I'm not sure I can get it out."

She blinks. "I'd offer to help, but I think that's a bit beyond me. If it's any consolation I think the eyes scared people more."

I wince. "Not really, no."

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24th October

08:01 GMT -5

The insides of GAPP reminds me a little of last time I went inside a Little Chef, but one that someone's put effort into maintaining. I get the innermost window seat, opposite Zatanna and next to Father Mattias. I remember having known his real name, but I'll be jiggered if I can remember it now. Not sure when it's appropriate to use it anyway. Last time I had any significant contact with a cleric was back in primary school, where Reverend Gino used to turn up during assemblies and deliver the occasional sermon. He was a nice man -as far as I remember- but I never found the theology convincing. He retired while I was in secondary school.

I pick up one of the plastic coated menus and spread it out between myself and Father Mattias. Mentally I begin categorising them as 'normalish', 'interesting' and 'Why would you do that to a pancake?'. There are other things on the menu, but this is a Pancake Parlour. Presumably if you're here, you're here for pancakes, right? I usually get a little worried when confronted with a situation like this, being confronted with a new thing and not knowing what the 'right' answer is. This time? Nothing. Nothing like that, at least. Curiosity, yes, and anticipation too. I almost feel like picking something...

Oh, those are omelettes! Yes, that makes far more sense.

There's not really a problem with me skipping lunch today. Some of the others have more sessions with Black Canary lined up and Diana said that she wanted to schedule some sort of training session later. She told me that so that she could let me know as politely as possible that she was expecting me not to be in attendance. I know that I don't need time to 'decompress' or whatever fancy word the Americans have for getting over yourself. I mean, if I hadn't already done that then separating from the Ophidian wouldn't have gone nearly as well as it did, but I do see the point of taking the actions which others expect of me. Anything that I can do to show that I haven't been driven crazy by the experience can only serve to help my standing.

On the other side of the table Zatanna's grabbed the other menu and is holding it up to review in detail. Mister Zatara leans back a little to read it over her shoulder. Swiftly eliminating anything that looks very heavy, I try looking for my preferred variety: unleavened with lemon juice and granulated sugar. Sugar there is, in the little sachet box next to the salt and pepper. Lemon? Looks like I could be out of luck. They appear to offer only blueberry or cinnamon flavoured apple compote. There is a crêpes list...

"A little bewildering, isn't it?"

"I just want to make sure that I know exactly what's available before I make a choice." Ah! There it is, on the back of Zatanna's menu! British style pancakes with lemon juice and sugar. I reach into my pocket, pull out a $100 platinum coin and lay it on the table.

"Grain and nut pancakes for me, I think. With.. blueberries? Paul?"

"British style with lemon juice."

Zatanna lowers her menu. "Lemon juice?"

"It was that or golden syrup, and you would not believe how hard it is to find that in the United States."

Mister Zatara reaches out to take the menu from her, checks it and then folds it up. "I will be having the strawberry. Zatanna?"

A waitress approaches our table, notepad at the ready.

"Ham and mushroom omelette, please."

He nods again and turns to the waitress. "Grain and nut with blueberry, British crêpes with lemon, regular with strawberries and a ham and mushroom omelette. Coffee for everyone?"

Father Mattias and Zatanna nod. Ordinarily I'd just go with the group and transmute it. Not an option at the moment. I take a quick look at the drinks section of the menu. No milk? How can a pancake restaurant not have milk? They're not just taking them out of a packet and heating them up back there, right? Ugh. "Orange Juice for me, please." Mister Zatara nods and the waitress notes it down before heading back to the counter.

"I don't recognise the coin?" Father Mattias nods at the platinum piece I put on the table.

"Not many people.. well, not many people outside of Happy Harbour would." Can't believe I repainted all of the signs. "It's a one hundred dollar platinum coin. Since I can't handle normal money..."

"Why can't you handle normal money?"

"Short answer, because the ring destroys it, burns notes and melts coins. I technically committed a federal offence during my first week here after I tried selling some gold and ended up destroying several hundred dollar notes. Oh, don't worry-" Mister Zatara is giving me a concerned look. "-I came to terms with the US Treasury Department. They get a cut of any precious metal I bring to Earth, and in return they mint these for me." I pick up the coin and pass it to Father Mattias.

He briefly looks over both faces before reading the motto. "All.. others.. pay cash. I'm not sure-." He cuts himself off and then nods. "Ah, I see. Most amusing. And this is legal tender?"

Zatanna snorts with laughter and Mister Zatara looks mildly scandalised. "That's what they tell me. It's a special issue, so it doesn't need to have 'In God we trust' written on it. Most people who notice just find it funny."

"If your ring is powered by avarice, why does it destroy money?"

"A few years before I left my home parallel we had a fairly major economic collapse, caused by... Well, caused by a lot of things, buuuut one of the underlying causes was a financial system which treated debt as if it were actual money. I ended up learning a lot about how money really works. I mean, obviously the materials in a dollar note aren't worth a dollar, and most people realise that modern money isn't backed by precious metal... According to the ring, my contempt for fiat currency is now so strong that I can't touch it without feeling... Sullied." I shrug. "There's so little real value there that I find it an insult to the idea of value. The metal in that is worth slightly more than the face value, so it's valuable enough that I don't feel the same way."

Zatanna looks amused as the waitress returns with our drinks. "That's.. weird."

"I've become somewhat desensitised to weird since coming here."

I take a sip of orange juice while Zatanna adds fake milk to her coffee and Father Mattias pours two sachets of sugar into his. He then passes the coin back. "Are you planning to pay for breakfast?"

Mister Zatara lowers his cup. "Paul, there's no need. I invited you-."

I wave my right hand around to cut him off. "It's not... American tipping customs are different to what I'm used to. Since I'm never sure exactly what I should be offering I've got into the habit of overpaying. It isn't as if I'm ever likely to be short of money."

Father Mattias' mouth twitches. "Generous of you."

I shrug. "To me, it's just metal."

"Ah, yes." He waves his right index finger. "I should like to pass on my sister's thanks." I give him a blank look. "You and the.. er.. snake creature, healed her back." He raises his eyebrows. "You don't remember?" I shake my head. I need to go through the internal monitoring system records of me at some point. But while I'm here, with these people...

"About that.. possession thing. I didn't have a soul before being possessed, but I did have a network of enchanted tattoos-"

"Yes. Zatanna mentioned them." Mister Zatara raises his right eyebrow and glances at his daughter, who blushes slightly and looks away from him.

"...which were supposed to fix that. I don't know exactly what the possession did to them, and you're... Well, you know who I normally ask about that sort of thing."

"Do you want me to check that they are still working?"

"I'm hoping that having had the Ophidian in my body means that they're already at full charge, but yes. I'd like to know whether I need to get them redone."

He thinks for a moment, then nods. "It shouldn't be difficult." He raises his right hand.

"One moment sir." I pull the Spell Eater out from under my jacket, lift the thong over my neck and put it down on the table. He looks at it for a moment, then points his hand at me once more.

"Wohs skrowten fo lautirips ygrene."

His eyes unfocus. Zatanna looks at him, fascinated. After a few seconds he seems to come out of it. He looks a little concerned.

"Well?"

"There's.. something, certainly. You exist in an arcane sense where you did not before. It is not.. quite like a normal soul, however."

I fan out my hands. "Beggars can't be choosers, sir. I'm just happy to have anything at all."

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24th October

10:22 GMT -5

I walk through the gardens attached to the Gloria McDonald Prison towards where Jade and another inmate are weeding the vegetable patch. Looks like.. potatoes? Some sort of root vegetable anyway. Dad was a big fan of gardening but neither myself nor my sister share his enthusiasm. They're wearing denim trousers and Jade's colleague also has a denim jacket. Jade's jacket is folded up on a nearby bench, showing a plain blue t-shirt. Both of them have their hair tied back in a simple ponytail. Jade's colleague happens to look around as I approach, recognises me and then elbows Jade.

"Your boyfriend's here." Jade stops weeding, but doesn't look around. "I'll go take this to the incinerator, shall I?" She stands, put the weeds she was holding into a wheelbarrow and with a toothy grin in my direction pushes it away down the path. Jade sits back on her haunches and stabs her gardening fork into the bare soil.

"Are you allowed back here?"

"The Governor seemed to think so."

"I'd be careful: some of the women here haven't seen a man in years."

"Then I'll have to rely on you to protect my virtue, won't I?"

She turns her head to her right so she can look at me. "So, you're a virrr.. tuous man, are you?"

"I like to think so."

She stands up and walks over to pick up her jacket. I think I like her hair better like this than how she had it when we first met. "Really? So why was the shower block full of glowing orange eyes last Thursday?"

I wince. "Um, look, about that-."

"Artemis already explained." I relax a little as she puts her jacket back on. "Is there a reason why you're visiting today? You usually hate 'abusing your position'."

I pull the two folded letters out of my pocket and hold them out to her, one in each hand. She looks at me through narrowed eyes before taking hold of the left one with her right hand and opening it. "Well?"

"March twenty sixth."

"That's good, isn't it?"

"It's about what I was expecting." She refolds it and slips it into her jacket pocket. "But..." She looks to the side for a moment. "Thanks. Y'know."

I smile at her. "You're most welcome." I wiggle the other letter. Again, she takes it and opens it.

"Oh, it's about time. I can't believe it took them this long."

"I still can't believe you had less high school than Tuppence flipping Terror."

"I left home at fourteen, Paul. The League-." I take a step forwards to give her a hug but she puts her left hand on my chest, holding me away. "Would you stop doing that?"

"N-no?"

"I'm not so broken up about it that I need a hug from you every time I mention it, okay?!" She crosses her arms. "The League of Shadows has an education program but it's not exactly Department of Education approved. I'm already fluent in seven languages. I only went to classes here so I could help the other students. Passing the GED exam was just a matter of turning up on time." She looks me over. "Where's your ring?"

"Wherever Wonder Woman put it. After what happened last week I thought I'd hand it over as a show of good faith."

She frowns. "You never take it off."

"I do now."

She adds the GED results slip to her pocket and then walks back to the bench to sit down. Usually in a situation like this I'd make an orange bench opposite her, but that isn't an option at the moment. She isn't.. completely comfortable with me being inside her personal space, so I don't want to push. On the other hand, standing up could give the impression of delivering a lecture... Just as I'm about to sit on the ground in front of her and cause myself to have to send these trousers to a dry cleaner she looks up, meets my eyes and then flicks them down to the empty seat next to her. I walk forwards and take the indicated space.

"Artemis came to visit?"

Jade puts her hands in her lap and leans forwards slightly. "Yeah. Just after you nearly dropped a giant asteroid on her."

"There was never actually any chance that the asteroid-."

"What was it like, being that powerful?"

I think for a moment. "Frustrating."

"Really?"

"I lost my capacity for empathy. I couldn't understand why everyone was so worried, so it didn't matter how powerful I was..." I shrug. "I couldn't make them happy, and I couldn't understand why."

"So do I have to live in New York to get a piece of cake, or-."

I snort. "I'll make sure you get a bit. Assuming I can.. get it out.. you know… From Switzerland."

We sit in silence for a moment. I watch a bird of some kind -starting to miss the ring's database- land on the vegetable patch and peck at the freshly tilled soil.

"When do I get super powers?"

"When you've been out of prison for a year without reoffending."

She looks at me, her right eyebrow raised. "Really?"

"Sure. Why not? I'd like to augment everyone, and I like you a lot more than a random person off the street. And Lex Luthor's already got the formula I used on Artemis anyway."

"Lex Luthor's not Ra's al Ghul. If he knew you'd use it on me after a year he'd probably order me to go inactive."

Oooooh. "He's.. not.. really a problem at the moment."

"What do you mean?"

"Wh..? Really? I sort of assumed... Didn't I tell you..?"

"Tell me what, exactly?"

"The League of Shadows sort of.. doesn't exist any more."

She rolls her eyes. "The League doesn't just disappear because you caught one cell, Paul."

"Yeeees, I know that. I... The Justice League and I hit Infinity Island. I took copies of all of their files before they could delete them. The Ecuadorian military's occupying the place now. We've shut every front company, frozen or confiscated every bank account and arrested something like twenty thousand people across the globe. Agents, informants, allies, people who were being blackmailed over serious crimes... Ra's and the Sensei escaped, but we caught the Sensei in Nepal... That's what the eye constructs were for. Ra's is still at large but he's got next to no staff and only the clothes on his back for resources. The League's.. dead."

"Oh." She shuffles in her seat. "I was wondering why they hadn't sent someone to give me the 'we haven't forgotten about you but talk and we'll kill you' speech."

"Don't think they've got anyone they can send." They weren't a good influence on her, but the Shadows were still a big part of her life. I should move the conversation on. "How's that Tai Chi class you were running doing?"

"You can't just dump something like that on me and then..!" She shakes her head.

"Jade, the League of Shadows was a major criminal organisation. I wasn't pumping you for information but I wasn't just going to leave them there."

She kicks her right foot against the ground. "I just thought our security was better than that."

I shrug. "Power rings are awesome."

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25th October

01:43 GMT -5

"Yes, I'll hold." I allow the phone construct to dissipate before returning my attention to the two men hanging upside down from my binding chain constructs. "Can you believe that?" The Gotham police don't seem to be taking me seriously. The ring will notify me if a Human picks up the phone again, but... They've hung up!

"Mmmmrmmm!" The gag constructs makes it impossible for them to respond properly. The one on my right shakes himself in an attempt to look at his colleague, who has pretty much shut down, staring at me in horror. The bomb making components they were attempting to attach to support column three of Gotham City's Metro-Narrows Bridge lay disassembled beneath them. I remember reading a short piece of fiction which treated the film 'The Dark Knight' as a role play game. With the players in revolt the GM has to explain exactly how -given that Batman was supposed to be such an inspirational figure, Gordon has passed every leadership and loyalty check and Dent had the mobs on the back foot- the Joker had been able to set up his games in the first place with no one reporting anything to the police. I'd sort of wondered that about the Riddler in Batman Animated.

Mister Nigma himself was the only man to successfully escape from Belle Reve during that little uprising Kon and M'gann worked so hard to prevent. Someone has been leaving clues for the Gotham Police to pick up. It might not be him, I suppose. Didn't Spoiler's father have a similar trademark until Arkham cured him of it? Whatever. The pattern is one of escalation, and while I have no head for riddles I can scan for bombs easily enough. To ensure that I would have evidence of criminal intent I altered the chemical structure of the explosives from well overhead and let them set up before dropping down onto them. Baseline Humans armed with pistols. I wonder if I've inadvertently entered a 'starting zone'? I suppose the stories about Gotham being insanely dangerous are written from the point of view of normal people.

They were also carrying small amount of what the ring tells me is a combination of high purity ecstasy mixed with just a dash of Smilex, a combination known locally as 'Chuckles'. That does go some way to explain how people are recruited to do work like this. These gentlemen will be going to prison for some time, if I'm any judge. The only question is; do I brand them and see where they run, or just hand them...

"Ploong."

I look down at where the Father Box sits at my waist. "Thank you." I shift it to subspace. It seems that the decision is being taken out of my hands. Ring, show me. Narrowing my eyes to prevent distraction, I watch as Batman and Richard land on the bridge above me. I shouldn't be surprised. He's Batman, not Second-With-The-News Guy. "Oh, what the heck." I hold up the ring to my ear. "Orange Lantern to Batman."

Batman's posture doesn't change. "Go ahead."

"I have apprehended two men who appear to have been trying to plant a bomb on the Metro-Narrows Bridge. The bomb is disarmed, and the suspects are available for questioning. I'm not entirely sure what the protocol is... Are you nearby? Would you like to take over, or should I just transport them to the nearest police station?"

"I'm not far from your position now. I'll be with you shortly." Richard flashes him a look. Well, he didn't lie. I doubt that he intercepted my phone call to the police. I'm not bugged myself, I check every time I go anywhere near Richard. On the other hand, people on the bridge probably saw the flash of orange as I descended. Not completely clear how that would have gotten back to him, mind. Does he have some system monitoring all communications in-city, CIA style? Or maybe he was just looking in the right direction when I flashed down.

I need to come up with a more subtle form of flight, don't I?

Batman and Richard attach lines to the edge of the bridge before stepping off. Batman lands silently to my left while Robin touches down in the only nearby cover: the boat the criminals used to get here. Harsh.

"Orange Lantern." I open my eyes fully and pantomime surprise. "I wasn't aware you were investigating this case."

"I wasn't. I just had some spare time and found myself thinking: 'bombs in Gotham, those are bad, aren't they?'. I found the Chuckle Brothers here with a ring scan." Said ne'er-do-wells notice Batman and... Oh, come on. He's scarier than me?! How does..? Oh, fine.

"Let them down."

"Sir." I extend the chains, causing them to drop to the ground without becoming free.

"Have you found any evidence as to who was behind this?"

"A small amount of Chuckles. Personal use, it looks like. I scanned for other examples of that precise mix but there are so many slight variations..." I shrug. "I've tried tracing the bomb components but that was either impossible or led nowhere. Boat's stolen and both suspects have numerous prior convictions. No known associations with any criminals who might be inclined to blow up bridges, however."

He takes a step towards my prisoners, who try squirming out of the way. "Have you interrogated them?"

"No. I thought I'd try to do things by the book while I was in your city."

"Robin and I will take it from here."

I make a shallow bow. "Of course, sir. I'll leave you to it."

"Before you go, I need to talk to you about your encounter with the aliens from New Genesis."

I put sensory deprivation helmets over the heads of the suspects. "I rather thought that you might."

"Robin feels that you needlessly antagonised the Forever People."

"I admit, it was unnecessary. I could have been polite to them. The result would have been more or less the same as far as apprehending Intergang is concerned. I posed as Grayven because I wanted more out of the situation than a group of criminals in prison."

"The Apokoliptian weaponry."

"I wanted the Mother Box far more. What we could have learned from it..."

"Stealing technology from alien civilisations is not appropriate behaviour."

"I'll be sure to remember that next time we encounter Apokolips technology in the hands of Earth criminals."

"You said in your report that 'Desaad' would be unlikely to return."

"Everything I know about him says that's true, but he's hardly the only member of Darkseid's inner circle. And we still haven't uncovered a link between Bialya and Intergang. Look, about Robin..."

"Yes?"

"I feel that some of the problems we encountered could have been prevented if our... Our interpersonal relationship had been better. My fault, really. I'm not very.. clubbable, but this is the first time it's actually had an adverse effect on a mission." I don't think Richard's told him about the outing him thing. Batman would have mentioned it if he had, surely? "If I'd confided in him previously, or if he'd trusted me more... Not that I've really given him cause to." That's nearly true. Much as I hate to admit it, him doing that blindsided me. I can't afford for my relationships with my team mates to decay to that level. And.. perhaps I really did go too far this time. It would be useful to have someone of a different disposition who was prepared to call me on it without blowing up the objective. Ring, show me Richard's face.

By your command.

"That's part of why I'm in Gotham, actually. I was wondering, would it be possible for me to work with him outside of team hours?" The ring shows me Richard involuntarily straighten up, his mask hiding a look of horror. "I cooperate acceptably well with everyone else, I'd really hate-."

"To destroy any more aircraft hangars."

"I went back this morning and offered to rebuild it, the police wanted to preserve the crime scene. But yes, essentially."

He thinks for a moment. "That may be possible." The ring shows me Richard shaking his head at Batman's back and repeatedly mouthing the word 'no'. I work to keep my amusement contained. "Now, your recommendation that M'gann receive tuition from someone other than Martian Manhunter."

"I meant every word of it. He failed all of us, but her most of all."

"He.. agrees." I blink in surprise. "I will make contact with Brainwave this week, with a view to adding him to the team's training staff. The British government denies all knowledge of a 'Chester Black'."

"I would too, if I'd been more clear headed when I mentioned him to Robin. Thank you, sir. It's nice to see that my concerns are being taken seriously."

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25th October

08:05 GMT -5

"Okay, but it seems to me that given how many Justice Leaguers live in America that you'd be better off-" Diana and I step into the Zeta Tube.

"Recognised, Wonder Woman, zero three, Orange Lantern, B zero six."

25th October

12:05 GMT -1

"-using a US time zone. " The lights fade and I get my first look at the interior of the Watchtower. "Huh. That's... " Big. Oh. I frown. "Not an efficient use of space."

We just exited the left Zeta Tube of the three which lead directly into what appears to be the main room of the Watchtower. I haven't been in here before but I have seen pictures. League meetings are held in the middle of this room. Don't see a chair, so I guess they just bring them in for sit down meetings and take briefings standing up? It's easily fifty metres across, flat floor made of a material I can't identify and a view to open space on my right.

"That.. does not look safe."

"Originally it had a permeable green light barrier so that Green Lanterns could fly through it without the station losing pressure. When the Guardians gave it to us they removed it and replaced it with a much simpler force field."

"Wouldn't blocking it over have made more sense?"

"There are shutters in the event of attack, but the Watchtower's main defence is its stealth systems. I find the view rather relaxing."

Okay Ms Amazon Crazy Woman. "Shouldn't there be more defensive systems here?"

"The Watchtower isn't armed, Paul."

"Really? Does it have thrusters?"

"It has a gravity impeller…" She blinks. "Thing. You'd have to ask Batman or one of the Green Lanterns if you wanted technical details."

"If it can move, then it's armed. But, I mean, force fields linked to an independent security system? Or those paralysis generator things we have in the cave now? I once took a Zeta Tube to the Batcave and ended up in a featureless white room. It just seems like such a sensible precaution."

"The Watchtower isn't designed to be a fortress, and we can't design weapons more powerful than we are. There's always someone on duty and they can call in reinforcements from any League member or from the Atlantean army in Poseidonis. If all else fails they can put the Watchtower into total lockdown and then evacuate until we can better prepare to face the threat." She stops at the far side of the main room. "Medical is up there." I follow her gaze up the wall to an opening about fifteen metres up.

"Why is it..?"

"This used to be manned by Green Lanterns. Since they could all fly, it wasn't a problem."

"Is there a lift?"

"Yes, just through there." She smiles. "Or I can carry you up."

"Oooor I could just fly up myself."

She raises her left eyebrow. "Oh? How were you planning to do that without your ring?"

I lift the bottom of my jacket aside, revealing the belt the Ophidian and I made based on the one worn by the superhero Rocket. We actually made thirty three of them, though why that precise number I've no idea. Guy's holding on to the rest. I haven't practised using it much. I know Kon's going to get dejected if it takes him a while to get the hang of flying in the Nth metal armour I made for him, and I want to be able to go through the learning process with him so we both look silly. My version has an orange sigil at the buckle instead of the blank circle the original version has, but otherwise is identical. Right. One tap for low power, jump and bounce wooohw! I'm rising in the air towards the opening but really slowly. This is a very strange feeling. Since there's nothing visibly holding me up I keep waiting for gravity to realise that I'm tricking it and to make me fall back down again.

Okay, entrance coming up and... And I'm slowing down further. I'm going to come up short. Can I reach..? I stretch out my arms but it's no use. Can't reach. And down I go. Looking down I see Diana covering her mouth with her right hand. She's trying not to look me in the eye. Oh yes, I'm sure this looks hilarious. I can't just deactivate it and fall to the floor, but if I deactivate and then reactivate before I hit... Okay, and on again. Yikes! Too much too much! I massively overshoot and end up scrabbling against the wall in an attempt to avoid falling back down!

"Perhaps..." Diana clears her throat just behind me. "Perhaps I should.. should carry you there after all?"

"Think that's probably a good idea."

She puts an arm around my waist and I deactivate the belt. Being carried by a flyer is nothing like in Superman. I'm hanging off her, being supported by her chest and arm. I still have all of my weight. It's a bit strange; she doesn't look strong enough to support me like this. I know that she is, I've seen her carry weights far heavier than me. It's just.. I'm not used to being that weight. She brings us in easily, depositing me on the floor of the tunnel to the medical section before landing herself, leaning against the wall and... Giggling?

"Wasn't that funny, sir."

She recovers herself, and leads the way down the corridor. "You couldn't see your face."

True, I suppose. Anyway. Back to business. "Is Mister J'onzz here on his own, or did he bring a Guardian with him?"

"The Guardians appear to be reluctant to come anywhere near you."

"I feel happier about that than I think I should."

She turns her head to look at me for a moment. "Developing an adversarial relationship with the Guardians won't help you."

"I know, I know, but they nearly got this Sector's Lanterns killed. And did you know that Alan's on a Do Not Recruit list?"

"I.. didn't."

"Guy told me." The caduceus-inscribed door slides open as we approach. "Apparently they think he'd be 'disruptive to established Corps working practices'."

We walk into medical. The basic design is near identical to the one we have in the cave, though the walls aren't bare rock here. Mister J'onzz is lying on a bed in full uniform, reading from a small book. I don't recognise the language on the cover. I can just see the glowing main circle of the brand through his clothing. He looks up as we enter and closes the book, laying it on the bed next to him. I didn't think I used the ring's auto translator function much, but it's amazing how you miss it when it isn't there. Speaking of which, the ring and my lantern are sitting on a table next to him, along with the box I usually keep them in.

"Okay, that needs to be kept somewhere more secure."

"I've been keeping hold of it. It only left my sight when I left to bring you here."

"Sir, it contains the Ophidian. Please keep it with you."

"Do you think it could interact with the brand?"

I make an exaggerated shrugging gesture. "No idea, don't.. really want to take the risk."

She nods. "J'onn, how do you feel?"

"Much the same. If it were not for the glowing symbol on my chest I would not think anything was wrong."

Diana picks up the ring by its outer edge and holds it out to me. I shake my head. "Hasn't been a week yet. And I thiink I can do this without it."

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25th October

12:12 GMT -1

Diana crosses her arms. "I thought you said you don't know how the branding process works?"

I shrug. "I don't. On the other hand..." I look at the ring and it lifts off the table and performs an elliptical circuit of the room before returning to its resting place. "I can move the ring without touching it, but I can't access its other functions. Trying to remove the brand without it is less risky."

She nods, and I step up to the bed, reaching over the brand with my left hand. "Sir, would you mind..?" His uniform flows away from the area over the brand, revealing green Human-seeming muscles and orange glowing sigil. It looks like it should cut into his flesh, but when I lay my hand upon it I realise that it's flat to his skin. His skin feels a little cold. That could be a Martian thing, there's nothing special in biological terms about Human body temperature. Haven't noticed that from M'gann, but she puts more effort into her Human appearance anyway.

I close my eyes and try to feel the brand. I'm not sure.. yes! It's a bit like the time Guy got me to try to assimilate one of his constructs, but more familiar. I get a momentary flicker of Ophidivision, showing me Mister J'onzz' spiritual structure. Bits and pieces of everything held together with green, with the orange intrusion shoved into the side. Right. Doesn't look that complicated. A verbal instruction doesn't feel appropriate. There's no ring AI to activate. How else to remove an orange construct? I pull back my hand a little and smile faintly.

The idea of the cessation of need.

The brand rises off his skin a little before dissolving into what seems to be orange dust and flowing into my hand. I frown as I clench and relax it. No, that didn't really feel of anything. Odd, but probably not something to worry about. "Feeling better now sir?"

"I did not precisely feel unwell before." I step back as he sits up and then swings his legs around to stand on the floor. "Let us see if I am recovered." He pauses for a moment, then shifts into his 'John Jones' form, looking himself over to make sure that the transformation is complete. Next, he adopts Diana's form and then mine before returning to his normal green shape. "It appears that you were successful. Thank you."

I close my eyes and try reaching out to him through the orange light, but the beacon of the brand is gone. "I can't feel it anymore. Let me know if you... What?" He's staring at my face.

"Your irises are orange. I.. was under the impression that your eyes only changed color while you were wearing your ring."

I turn to Diana. "Sir? Have they been like this since I passed the ring to you?"

"No, they were green a minute ago. Do you feel any different?"

I shake my head. Would be weird, but... I hold out my left hand and try creating a construct. And again. No, nothing. Ah well. "The orange light doesn't seem to be causing me the same problems that it used to." I look to Mister J'onzz. "Sir, you were on Oa. Exactly how badly are the Guardians freaking out?"

"I am not sure I would describe what they are doing as 'freaking out'. They were certainly concerned about the Ophidian's apparent liberation. I do not believe that the Green Lanterns have yet reported on your current state."

"Are you worried about what they'll do?"

I nod my head to the side. "A bit, yes. Mm, for the next six days, anyway."

Diana puts her left hand on my right shoulder. "Whatever we end up deciding to do about you and the Ophidian, we're not just going to hand you over."

Yeah. I don't know that the Corpse exists here, but if they do I must be fairly near the top of their hit list right now. Me or Larfleeze. Exactly how much power has this cost him? "Thank you sir. Sirs."

Mister J'onzz nods at me. "I should return to Chicago. Explaining my absence-."

"Sir, before you do that... I think we need to talk about the training session."

His head droops a little. "You.. are.. most likely correct. Black Canary shared what the Ophidian.. and you, I suppose, think of my abilities."

"I thought those sessions were supposed to be private."

He and Diana look at each other, and she replies. "We weren't sure what we were talking to. If the Ophidian was holding you captive..."

"It's okay, I'm not angry about it. But, I remember what I said and.. having had time to think about it, I think I still agree with it all. Sir, what were you thinking?"

"I realize that I badly underestimated the dangers. The Ophidian-."

"No sir, not the Ophidian. I don't blame you for the Ophidian. There really wasn't any way you could have anticipated that. I didn't even know it was possible. Bloody good job it was, though."

He frowns. "I realize it is little comfort, but had your last resort measure failed it may have been possible to end the scenario more swiftly."

"Sir, the Ophidian wasn't my last resort measure. The ring contains a complete copy of the Grimorium Verum." Blank looks from both Mister J'onzz and Diana. "Greater Demons, a spotter's guide. I only got it so that I'd know how to fight them but if I really saw no alternative I could have summoned a real Demon, one of the big ones. I didn't have a soul to trade, but if one had been summoned into the false reality of the scenario I have no idea what would have happened." But all three of us can guess. I can see it on their faces. "Why were we even doing a scenario like that without any prior experience of that sort of training? And not knowing how strong M'gann was... That was-." Can't think of another way to describe it. "That was dumb, sir."

We stand in silence for a moment. I think.. should I feel bad about doing this after he's only just recovered? I think I would have done, but now? I don't, not really. I see my own resistance to the idea, the little voice telling me to keep my head down. I also see my far stronger need to ensure that M'gann gets the tuition she needs. There's no conflict between the desires, rather the two streams flow through me and merge. Certainly the stronger stream determines more of the course, but all my drives run into a single sea. Or something. That rather got away from me.

"You recommended that someone else take over."

"Yes. Look, you couldn't force her to stop. Could you train her? Safely, I mean? You know more about this than I do."

"There are some matters in which I could instruct her with little danger, but I take your point. The stresses that would be involved in combat or the more realistic training sessions... No. In all honesty I do not believe that I could."

I nod. "Is it possible to hire another Martian, one with stronger mental abilities?"

"There are those amongst our people who could tutor her, but I do not know of any who would be willing to leave Mars. They would most likely expect M'gann to return home..."

"And that's probably not something she would want to do." And I wouldn't want her to either. I don't think any of the team would consider that acceptable. "Alright, how do the Human telepaths you've met compare?"

"Doctor Psycho and Psimon are both highly telepathic by Martian standards. I have never met Chester Black, and I only met Henry King Junior for a short time several years ago. I don't know that either of them would be up to the job." I raise my eyebrows. I don't say 'And you are?'. At this point it's rather implied. He looks down at the ground. "I will speak with Mister King. If he is capable and willing, I will suggest to M'gann that it may be advantageous for her to take additional lessons."

"Thank you sir. That's all I can ask."

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25th October

12:23 GMT -1

"So these.. 'Ethereals' attack the Earth because they wanted to see if Humans had the capacity to learn how to fight them?"

Turns out that Black Canary shared our interview session with everyone. I may have just got the world's premier superhero team interested in XCOM.

"Partially. They also wanted us to develop psychic abilities. They actually get quite excited when one of your soldiers is able to interface with their psychic network just before the end."

Mister J'onzz left the Watchtower and Diana offered to give me the tour. Unlike in Justice League Unlimited, this version of Mister J'onzz isn't a.. what's the term Commander Vimes used? Ah, that was it. A persistent floater. He has a life outside of the League and so doesn't spend all of his time on the Watchtower. The man we're going to see, however...

"What did they want to get out of it?"

"That's not really clear. They considered themselves to be failures, and wanted to find something that could do better than them. Whether they wanted to use what they learned to overcome their own limitations, or just guide us as XCOM spread psychic abilities across the species, I don't know. There's no way in the game to find out."

"Why would they think that anyone on Earth would follow them after what they'd done?"

Through the windows to my right I can see the garden -more of a jungle really- which supplies the Watchtower with both oxygen and somewhere to go to relax a bit. We're approaching the xenotech laboratories now. That's where they ended up putting the armour the Ophidian and I made for Kon.

"Because they're aliens? Some species just think differently. The Ethereals value the life of XCOM's psychics much more than billions of ungifted Humans, and they were still happy to kill them to make sure they're strong enough. Or maybe it was just bad writing, I don't know. The Ophidian and I only brought it up because w-. Because the two of us wanted to make a point about how essential research and development is to an organisation like the XCOM, or like the League."

"I see your point."

"You know.. you could play the game yourself. It's pretty much the same here as it was back home."

She glances at me as we come up to the heavily reinforced door. "I.. don't really..."

The door slides open, revealing a room with a floor space of perhaps fifteen metres squared and a lot of analytical equipment I don't recognise. Lying on a work bench under what looks a bit like a magnifying lens but is probably a good deal more sophisticated are the pieces which make up Kon's Nth metal armour. Hawkman -Katar Hol- is examining it closely, facing away from us. He isn't wearing his helmet and I have to say that his head looks remarkably Human. His hair is short, black and curly and without the wings and armour I don't think I'd look twice if I passed him in the street.

There's a flicker, and I notice that there's some sort of force field around the armour. Not sure why he thought-.

Mister Hol looks up, still facing away from us, and says something incomprehensible. A Thanagarian language, I suppose. Maybe I should get hold of one of the translator things the League uses? I didn't think it would really matter for a week. He stiffens slightly when no one replies and half turns.

Diana smiles. "Magpie, Katar?"

"Wonder Woman." He straightens and turns to face us fully. "And you. Where did you get the Nth metal to make this?"

"I... The Ophidian and I transmuted it."

"Of course, but the base material?"

I shrug. "We used lead."

His eyes widen slightly. "Lead?"

"You saw the records of the gravity distortions it caused, right? I mean, the Ophidian's basically a mid-tier god."

"How did you even learn of Nth metal's structure?"

"I found a fragment from a Thanagarian spacecraft which crash landed in North Africa. Only a tiny little flake-" I hold out my right thumb and forefinger to indicate the size. "-but it was enough to learn its subatomic structures. More or less. We had to brute force the complete structure."

His eyes flick to Diana. "I was not informed of a crashed spacecraft."

"It crashed about five thousand years ago. If you want any details you'd have to ask Teth Adom. Or Vandal Savage, I suppose. I think he was in the area at the time."

He shakes his head. "Thanagar may be more technologically advanced than Earth, but we did not have interstellar spacecraft with that sort of range five thousand years ago."

"Maybe they were time travellers? That can happen, right?"

"In.. theory. It's a little far fetched though." He folds his arms across his chest. "Where is the craft now?"

"No idea. It wasn't where Adom last saw it, though given how long it's been..."

"And the crew?"

"Crew of three, one of whom survived the crash. She ended up marrying the local ruler, chap by the name of Prince Khufu. As I said, Adom's really the person to ask about it."

"What was her name?"

"Adom pronounced it 'Chay-Ara', but he was probably Kahndaqising something that didn't match the phonemes he was used to. Is it a common Thanagarian name?"

He rubs his chin with his right hand. "Common enough to be plausible, I suppose." He gestures at the work bench with his left hand. "Why did you make this armour?"

"We were hoping that we could give Kon-El the ability to fly. The gravity distorting ability of Nth metal, combined with Kryptonian strong nuclear force manipulation... Would that work? I wasn't thinking entirely clearly at the time."

"Perhaps, if it was attuned perfectly. I'm afraid it's more likely that what you've got here is 'merely' exceptional body armour."

"It's a bit of a blur, but I'm pretty sure I remember us attuning it properly."

"That's.. somewhat improbable." He turns back to the bench and presses a few buttons on the viewer. "It takes years of training in metallurgy to make equipment a Thanagarian can use, and we're able to use it almost instinctively."

"You did hear me say 'mid-tier god', right?"

"Do you remember what you did?"

"Not..." I shake my head. "Only in approximate terms."

"Do you think you could do it again?"

"Not without the Ophidian. And I don't intend to rebond with her."

"Mmm." He takes a closer look. "I had thought you'd simply misforged it, but if it is supposed to be attuned to a Kryptonian-."

"Kryptonian-Human-Genomorph hybrid."

"How is that pos..? No, never mind. Wonder Woman, as far as I can see there are no irregularities in its forging. We may as well let Superboy use it. I would be very interested to see if it works as advertised."

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25th October

16:14 GMT -5

I reach Happy Harbour High School just after the end of the school day. There's a chill in the air, and without the ring's environmental shield I've taken to adding a grey leather jacket to my usual vest and jeans. Not the one I bought when I first got here, Zatanna still has that. Think I remember making it last week. Groups of teenagers are still cluttering up the pavements in the surrounding area, meandering back to their homes or to whatever hang outs they spend their time in. Clubs like M'gann's pranc-. Nooo. Like M'gann's cheerleading generally go on to four or five.

"You know, I'm sure that didn't used to have a 'u' in it."

"That's how the Canadians spell it, isn't it? Wonder why they changed it?"

I wince inwardly as I walk past the main entrance and the students looking at the sign the Ophidian and I repainted. Looks like we even made the sign itself a bit longer so that it still has the even border around the lettering. Probably should fix that once I get the ring back. Kon never told me where his chess club meets, so I'm heading towards the fields where the cheerleaders practice. This might be easier if we wore secure communicators all the time or something, but those are a bit hard to explain to anyone who might see them by chance. Or I could just get a mobile. That might make more sense.

I hadn't really thought about it before, but neither Kon nor M'gann have been spending all that much time out of the cave. They usually come back after their extracurriculars, then we've all got our other extracurriculars... Given that the whole point of them even going to school is to give them social development and a plausible 'normal' background... Should I be encouraging them to get out more? It feels a little odd to be in that position, given my own introverted behaviour at Secondary School, but...

I see two young women carrying large kit bags across the playing field. Both are wearing.. what were they called again? Honeybees? Another thing I'd forgotten was this annoying: forgetting things. My memory is still much better than it was, but without the ring chipping in I'm relearning normal levels of recall. And they're rubbish. Anyway, probably Honeybees uniforms, yellow 'H', black sleeveless jumper with yellow rims over a white blouse and black and yellow pleated skirt. One on my left is pale skinned with short black hair and the one on my right is dark skinned with some sort of strange Mickey Mouse ears hairdo. I raise my right hand in greeting.

"Good afternoon! Can I give you a hand with those?"

They stop and look at me. Black girl tilts her head to the side. "Uh, no, we're fine. Thanks."

White girl blinks in recognition and points at me with her right hand. "I know you! You're Conner's b-friend, Paul, right?"

I perform a shallow bow. "Kon and Megan's friend, yes. They're not around, are they? I was hoping to say hello before class starts."

Black gir-. No, come on, M'gann showed me a picture... Karen! That was it! Karen and probably Wendy! Karen relaxes a little now that I'm a bit more of a known quantity. "Conner's probably still at Chess Club. Megan went to see him after our practice session."

"My friend Marvin goes there! I can show you where it is after we've dumped these bags."

"Much obliged." I hold out my right hand with a smile, and after a second's hesitation she passes me the kit bag. These are some surprisingly heavy pompoms. I sling the bag under my right arm and follow them in the direction of what I expect is the equipment shed.

"How long have you been living in Happy Harbor?"

Her eyes are a really quite intense shade of blue. "Coming up to four months now. Moved in.. would have been the eighth of July."

"How do you like it so far?"

"Oh, everyone's been very friendly. In fact, they've even repainted all the signs for me, which I thought was jolly nice."

"That was for you?" I squint my left eye at her, uncertain if she's being serious. Karen elbows her in the ribs. "Huh? Oh! Heh heh." She simpers. Karen rolls her eyes. "Um, how long have you known Conner? A-and Megan?"

"I met them shortly after I moved here." Not a small problem, actually. Without an actual secret identity it's a bit tricky to explain how I know them if I'm recognised. There are excuses I could employ but I'd rather run them past Kon and M'gann first. "So, Chess Club?"

Wendy slides open the equipment shed door and I follow Karen inside, putting the bags down on a shelf to the side. "I was a bit surprised when Marvin said Conner was going. I thought he'd be into something more, y'know, jock related."

"He's got, um, many hidden talents." There's a spluttering noise from behind me and I look around to see Karen covering her mouth with her right fist. I bow my head slightly as I smile. Chess was actually the first non-combat thing Kon took real pleasure in. I think it surprised everyone, him included. It certainly surprised Robin, who'd offered to give him a practice game.

Completely. Owned.

"Ah, this way." Karen shuts the external door behind us as I follow Wendy into the school proper. "You said you had a class?"

"Yes. A local physiotherapist is hiring one of the school's rooms to do a sports massage class. That's.. something I've been wanting to learn to do for a while, and I've got the spare time at the moment..." **M'gann, you about?**

**Hey Paul! How'd it go with Uncle J'onn?**

**Brand removed, no lingering problems that I could detect.**

I follow Wendy as she turns a corner deeper into the school.

**That's great news!**

**Yeah. Um, we're also going to have a look at-.**

"So, why is Conner so into chess?"

"There'sssss... It's kind of personal to him." I don't think 'his Human dad had the scientists who made him program it into his brain' is an answer conducive to maintaining cover.

Karen spots the oddity. "How can chess be personal?"

Ah... "One of his parents is a big fan of the game, and he doesn't get on with them very well."

"Oh. That's.. kinda sad."

"Yes, so I'd be grateful if-."

Wendy pushes open a door and... That's a lot more chess players than my Secondary School had. There must be at least twelve of them. A young man -Marvin, presumably- looks up from yikes that's a bad position to wave dejectedly at Wendy. Kon's a little further in with his back towards me, playing against an Asian girl who looks about twelve, M'gann hovering next to him. Sneaky sneaky. Trying to make as little noise as possible I walk around behind him.

"Hey Paul."

M'gann looks around as I make a fist and swing it sideways across my chest. Rats, super hearing.

"Hi Kon. How's the game going?" I nod at his opponent, who ignores me. I have no idea who's winning. Pieces removed look to be about even, but I haven't played at anything like the level he's on.

"S'okay." He glances around. "Did you talk to.. ah.. Diana. About the thing?"

"She's bringing it here after school tomorrow." I step forwards and put my right hand on his shoulder. **You know we can just talk telepathically if you want to discuss 'official' business.**

**Oh. Yeah.** He picks up a bishop and moves it into a flanking position. **And you think it'll let me fly?**

**I was in full super intelligent Ophidian mode when I made it. I can't comprehend my own thoughts, but I remember being fairly sure it would.**

**How long do you think it will take me to learn?**

**Should be fairly instinctive.**

**Is everyone else going to be there?**

**On a week night? Shouldn't think so.**

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26th October

14:06 GMT

I hold out the small piece of marmalade laden toast to Jade. She raises her right eyebrow, realises that I'm being serious, rolls her eyes and leans forwards allowing me to put it delicately into her mouth. She then rather ruins the effect by masticating loudly before swallowing.

"Well? Does it meet with your approval?"

"You know, when you said you wanted to show me your body, this isn't what I thought you meant."

I take a moment to examine my exquisite new arms. Father Box might not be particularly forthcoming on every subject but it was quite eager to assist me in getting a physical form 'appropriate to my station'. Now, rather than looking like Ben Grimm's granite-faced cousin I might actually pass as Human in low light. True, I'm still noticeably larger and broader than I was in my original natural form, my skin is still grey, and my face is halfway between my original face and the one the Venom Buster gave me. But -wonder of wonders!- once more I can feel with my unaided skin, taste with my unaided tongue! And, though I out-mass every one of the League's standing members, I am now merely the size of an unusually large man and not the hulking colossus I was before.

Jade and I are sitting on a picnic blanket on a hill with truly magnificent views of the New Forest National Park in Hampshire, England. Even this late in the season I can still smell the heather flowers and beneath that the scent of damp earth. When I scouted this location out I was also able to smell a nontrivial amount of animal dung, but I removed that before bringing Jade here.

"I will be more than happy for you to study my revised body in further detail later, but... I've had a rather good week at work, and I could think of no one I would rather share my celebration with than you."

"I'm glad your week went so well. I've been tailing a senator's 'second family'. It's so boring, and she's so stupid I think she still thinks that he'll actually leave his wife for her."

"Too invested in the false belief to question it. It happens. I think I feel a little sorry for her."

"It's her own fault. If she wants to live like that-."

"No, not about the situation. That she's clearly too weak to forge her own path." I shrug. "I always think that's such a waste."

She opens the picnic basket. "Hope I'm not making Superboy jealous by monopolising you like this."

"Superboy's at school." I look up at the sky for a moment. "And, fond though I am of him, there are things that I can share with you that I just can't talk to him about."

She reaches into the basket and pulls out a tub of foie gras. "You really went all out. I'm guessing that's more than a fancy iPod."

"Ploong."

I take Father Box off my belt and hold it out to her. "Father Box is a highly sophisticated techno-organic artificial intelligence. And, unlike the power ring, he has a complete xenotechnological database."

She looks at me and then at Father Box before carefully taking him from me with her right hand.

"Ploong."

She jerks, nearly dropping him. "I... I understood that. Why did I understand that?"

"Mother Boxes and Father Boxes speak directly through your soul. The noise is just part of the carrier system."

"You said you don't have a soul."

"I don't, but the ring lets me fake it. For some purposes, anyway." That reminds me, I got into a conversation with Kaldur this morning about Atlantean trade with the surface world. I hadn't really thought about it, but I suppose it should be obvious that they would struggle to generate high purity metals by themselves. Might be an opportunity there... "What did he ask you?"

"'He'?"

"He self-identifies as masculine. I haven't asked about how they reproduce."

"I'm not.. it wasn't clear. Something about our relationship."

"Hmm. Apokolips isn't really the place for soft emotions." She passes Father Box back.

"Soft.. emotions?"

"It's... It's why I wanted to come here." I look away, taking in the panorama once more. "When I was a child I came here several times with my parents, sister and my maternal grandparents. I wanted to share this with you as well." I turn back, looking her directly in the eyes. "I love you, and I want us to have an actual relationship, not just the occasional hook up when our work schedules allow, or when we need to convince our employers that our meetings serve their interests. I don't know what.. what you had in mind..."

"Oh." Jade blinks and drops her eyes down. I don't say anything for a moment. I really... I'm really regretting scaring her as much as I did when we first met. And when we second met. I think that's the first time I've felt bad about my behaviour since coming to this insane world. The parallels between my behaviour and her father's are all too apparent. I've tried to make up for it since...

Jade rises to her hands and knees and crawls across to me, then turns to sit leaning against my left side, facing away from me. I put my left arm around her waist. "You know I'm wanted in twelve different countries, right?"

"Three." She turns her head up to look at me. "Nine might have had.. mysterious computer failures. I mean, don't walk in front of one of the investigating officers or anything..."

"Thiss... I don't even know your name."

"No one here does. I decided that not being able to say my own name was idiotic, so I've chosen a new one."

"Oh. What is it?"

"Grayven."

"That's a bit unusual."

"I think 'normalcy' pretty much passed us both by."

She shuffles a bit closer. "Yeah."

We sit in silence for a moment. I suppose what I want for us would be a big change for her. My best approach is probably to make her aware of the possibility and then not to bring it up again. "Oh, I got you a present, actually."

"Does it explode?"

"Only if you shake it just right. Here." I pull the vial forth from subspace into my right hand as I hold it out in front of her.

"I think you're supposed to put that in my drink when I'm not looking."

"Please. Like I'd need that. This, is Velocity Nine. Essentially, it's a Soviet era knock off of the formula which gave Jay Garrick his supernatural celerity. The original version had a variety of horrendous side effects, but with the ring and the aid of Father Box I've created a generation that has side effects no worse than strong coffee."

"Couldn't get the real stuff?"

"Of course I have the real stuff. If they're going to leave it in a fortified vault where just anyone might happen across it..." I chuckle. "I just can't think of a deniable way to leak it to you. Besides, would you really feel comfortable permanently altering your body like that?"

"No, I wouldn't." She takes the vial from me and looks at it. "Ra's would love to get his hands on this."

"Nnoooo. This is a gift for you. It decays quickly outside an organic body, and defies analysis within one. I'm happy to supply you with as much as you want, but you alone."

"No side effects?"

"Father Box has an extensive knowledge of alchemy, and I've trialled it on Eastern European orphans." She elbows me. "No, really. Once I was reasonably confident it would be safe I paid them to run tests. Minimal dose only. The children thought it was awesome, and the orphanage is now better funded than it's been at any point in its history. There's a second present, but it's in your maternal grandmother's house."

She frowns. "Grandma? My grandma lives in Vietnam."

"I know." I shake the vial. "Race you?"

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26th October

20:11 GMT +6

"You totally cheated."

Jade's vibrating on the spot, air currents churning around her with the occasional crackle of electricity. I put the picnic basket into my subspace pocket and she took that as the signal to go.

"Ddnt."

"Did too."

I barely notice as she vanishes then cold, right in the face! I blink and brush off the snow as she watches.

"Most amusing."

"Hw?" She closes her eyes and concentrates until the vibrations cease, then opens them again. "How long does it last?"

"That depends on the dose. The amount you took gives you about four minutes at full speed, with a warm up and wind down period of about thirty seconds each. Obviously I would warn against attempting to vibrate through solid objects near the end of the time allowance. Also, don't rely on your sense of time. The accelerated perception-."

"Slows everything down. I did spot that."

I nod. "Do you like it?"

"I ran around the world three times in under a second after getting here and I'm not even tired. I watched that orange strand thing your faster than light travel uses move through the air in front of me!"

I smirk. "Is that a 'yes'?" I feel her hands at the back of my head pulling my face down before I see her, her lips pressing hard against mine. I open my mouth as the tip of her tongue rubs along my lips before pushing in. We haven't kissed like this before; quite aside from any risk with my former body there wasn't much point. I fold my arms around her back and bend forwards a little. She's still quite a bit shorter than me, and I don't want her breaking off because she lost balance. "Mm." Moments like this are what enhanced senses are made for. I can feel her heartbeat in the arteries in her lips through my own, I can smell her sweat and her preferred brand of soap, I can taste-.

"Jade, is that you?"

She jerks back, her eyes wide in shock. I remove my hands as she dashes over to face the elderly Vietnamese woman in front of whose somewhat upgraded house we have been clinching.

"Grandma?"

Missus Nguyen Thi Nhung spreads her arms wide and embraces her granddaughter, who surprises me a little by returning it immediately. Vietnam isn't a country where she's ever been wanted -in the criminal sense-, and I don't think Missus Nguyen is completely clear on her daughter's, late son-in-law's or elder granddaughter's employment. No, wait, Jade has an older cousin... Bah, I know what I mean.

"My little doe, it is so good to see you again. Your boyfriend said that you might be coming by." She pulls back a little. "He looks a bit strange, but he has a good heart, I think."

"It is good to see you too, Grandmother. Are you well?" She must be in a good mood if she didn't complain about the diminutive.

Missus Nguyen makes a face of mock disappointment. "Oh, you have not been practising your Vietnamese, have you?"

"I.. haven't been back here, not since-."

"Your grandfather's funeral, yes. Good. I would be dreadfully offended if you had been back and had just chosen not to visit me." Fixing Missus Nguyen up was a worthwhile investment in time. In terms of effort it barely cost a thing. Improving her house took a little more effort but was well within my abilities. I went for a 'prosperous Vietnamese peasant' aesthetic, rather than anything obviously western. Still stuck a geothermal power plant under the floor to power the new oven and the lights. I mean, there's trying to fit in and then there's being silly about it. "Oh, what am I keeping you both out here for? Come in, come in!" She makes a beckoning gesture at me before turning around and walking back up the steps to her front door.

I walk up behind Jade and put my arms around her once more. I hear her exhale. "I think I'm more a fox than a doe."

"I've.. certainly.. always thought of you as a bitch." She stamps on my right foot and I rub my face into her hair as I chuckle. "Still too tough for that."

She pulls free and moves to follow her grandmother up the steps. "Don't you have to go play tag with Robin, or something?"

"Not for another five hours at least." I follow after her.

"Is this my present? I mean, seeing her again is nice-."

"No, that's inside."

"Are you going to give me a clue?"

"No."

"The house looks.. different, from last time I was here." She pushes open the door and I follow her inside. "Did you do that?"

"Maybe."

"Is that it?"

"No."

Ahead of us Missus Nguyen walks through the opening to from the living area to the kitchen. "Both of you, sit down. I will put the tea on."

"Thank you Missus Nguyen."

Jade scans the room in detail. Seeing nothing of note, she sits down on a cushion on the settee. I designed it to look as if it were made largely from bamboo. It's actually entirely synthetic, though you'd need to dissect it to find that out. Similarly, the cushions look like they could have been made of leftover fabric but are water and flame resistant and unusually comfortable. I cross the room to join her.

"Still not seeing it."

"That's because-."

She blurs for a moment. "Nothing obvious in the house."

"Subspace pocket. Ring, reveal."

"By your command."

The eye piece appears on the table in front of us. I haven't gotten around to showing my team mates my new Apokolips-derived armour yet. After scrapping the disc-launcher I was able to get a grey with orange highlights suit that matched my style requirements. I can now fight clad in what is far and away the toughest armour on Earth at the moment. Can't really justify giving a suit of the stuff to Jade, sadly. I made one but it occurs to me that encouraging the League of Shadows to pick up the Apokolips contract would be a very bad idea. The visor derived eye piece, on the other hand, is just as impossible to replicate and is far less easy to identify as Apokoliptian. Especially as it doesn't have to be built in red. The one I now use is orange and Jade's comes in the same shade of green as her kimono.

"What is it, night vision?"

"Among its other modes. It also pierces magic disguises, registers and informs the user of the target's unusual abilities... I've started using one myself."

"You're.. new at giving girls presents, aren't you?"

"Um. Maybe? I can.. I mean, if you'd rather have-."

"No, I like it... How does it attach?"

"I couldn't understand the explanation. 'Very well', basically. Just hold it against-." She holds it over her right eye and presses the thin support strip to the side of her face. "That's not going to.. hold..." She pulls her hands away. Yep. I suspected, but there's a definite Dragonball Z Scouter look going on. I'd do the line but the series doesn't exist here.

Missus Nguyen walks back in with a tray supporting a teapot and three cups with saucers. She puts it down on the table before taking the seat opposite.

"So! When are the two of you getting married?"

!!!

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26th October

13:06 GMT -5

"...don't see why people can't accept that they were reasonably well written but entirely of their time! They're not even that good!"

Diana and I are sitting outside a restaurant in Happy Harbour, having just finished lunch. I was interested to discover that while she prefers traditional Greek fare as far as she knows she can't put on weight. Apparently someone asked her to put her name to a diet book once. Don't think most people could copy her exercise regime.

"Alright, but I don't understand why it bothers you so much."

"It's ridiculous to give that much emphasis to one playwright! Shakespeare was the reason-" Why I didn't take English A-Level, but I can't tell her that. "-why I wasn't going to take English A-Level. Two plays for GCSE, and nothing modern. I mean, if we were going to use the qualification we'd be writing for modern audiences, not Elizabethans."

"Perhaps the British Department of Education disagrees with you about their quality. If they are still being performed after this long..."

"If longevity was the deciding factor then we should have been studying Sappho! Her work stayed on the Greek curriculum for over a thousand years, more than twice what Shakespeare's managed. "

"She didn't write in English."

"Shakespeare didn't write in modern English! The versions of the text we studied had to be annotated for us to have the slightest idea what anyone was talking about."

"Sappho is still studied on Themiscyra." No shit. "I had rather got the impression that her work hadn't survived in the rest of the world."

"Wait, you've got her complete..." She nods. "Have you ever considered doing a revival? Bringing a Themiscyran theatre troupe over and doing a few readings? I'd have thought that the notion that the greatest Greek poet in history was being forgotten -especially given that she was a woman- would be something Amazons would be a little more exercised over."

"She was a playwright as well, actually." She rests her right elbow on the table and her chin on her palm. "There.. might be interest on Themiscyra in doing something like that." She nods. "I think it would be worthwhile sharing her unknown work with the world. I'll speak to Mother about it."

"If they need someone to show them around I'd be happy to volunteer myself."

"They'll certainly need a translator. Few other Amazons speak any English, and only a handful have been to America before."

I take a sip from my milk glass. Across the road, a man sees Diana, stares, and walks into a lamp post. One of his friends offers him a hand up as passersby try to smother their amusement. I've never actually seen that happen in real life before. It's true that even in casual clothing she's a strikingly beautiful woman, but after spending this much time around her I am somewhat less stunned by her appearance than I was when we first met. I suppose a person can adjust to almost anything, given time. I nod in his direction. "Does that sort of thing happen a lot?"

"I've learned to tune it out. I seem to remember that you were somewhat distracted when we first met."

I shrug. "I'd never met a woman as muscular as you before. And I was still new to superhero costumes."

She raises her eyebrows and gives me a knowing smile. I take another drink. "Giovanni told me that your time with the Ophidian resulted in you getting a soul."

I look down at the case on the ground next to her seat. "We don't actually know it was the Ophidian. It might just have been the tattoos. Or the combination."

"Did Father Mattias try to convert you?"

"Not really. Though he did say I'd be better off with his god than with yours."

"Oh really? What's wrong with my gods?"

"Um... How accurate are the myths, exactly?"

"It varies. Which one do you have in mind?"

"Medusa. The thing with Poseidon-?"

"That was..." She exhales. "Athena did not turn Medusa into a serpent-woman as a punishment. She did so in the hope that Poseidon would lose interest."

"And did she turn her back afterwards?"

"Poseidon is more powerful. If turning her back had been possible he would have done it."

"Alright. Did it work?"

"No."

"So Poseidon goes on the-" I look out to sea for a moment. "-dick list. How about Ares?"

A wry smile. "As far as most Amazons are concerned Ares is the very definition of dick."

"Why bother with him then?"

"The gods represent all parts of both the world and Human nature. Though we may wish it otherwise, we are a warlike species and it is a habit we must strive constantly to overcome. Pretending otherwise would be foolish."

"So.. why don't you just replace him?"

"It.. isn't really up to us."

"Why not? I mean, the Amazons are basically the only people who worship the Olympians anymore, and there's plenty of decent war gods out there. How about Tyr? He's alright."

"He isn't.. part of the same family."

"That isn't a reason not to bring him in. And if it's really a problem.. well, Athena's still single, right?"

Her mouth drops open. "I'm not going to try-." She suppresses a chuckle. "To try and persuade the goddess of wisdom to.. to 'hook up' with a Viking god to satisfy your desire to play musical pantheons!"

"Persuade? Wait. Aphrodite or someone has had a chat with her, right? She does know people don't normally spring fully formed from their fathers' foreheads."

She bows her head slightly, unable to trust herself to respond. "I don't-. I don't think-."

"Ooh. Right. Amazons. Got it. I think Sekhmet's single." A splutter. "You know, if gods aren't her thing. She's got a bit of a temper, but get some beer in her and she's a real pussycat."

"Haahahahaha!"

"Athena's an adult, she can make her own choices. Or maybe Hera."

"H-Hera isn't single."

"She's married to the god of adultery. She doesn't really get anything out of being queen at this point so-."

"He... Lord Zeus doesn't behave like that anymore. One of the advantages of not having so many worshippers. Not that I'm excusing him, but their marriage is now one of genuine love and respect."

Eh? "Sir, did you read that file on potential future recruits I handed to Batman?"

She frowns. "I'm not... Just the records of those eligible now. Why do you ask?"

"Cassandra Sandsmark, aged eight. Natural daughter of Doctor Helena Sandsmark and Zeus, King of Olympus."

"That's impossible."

"She has super strength, fortitude and can fly a bit. Genetic comparison to a sample of Ares' blood left on one of your spears suggests a close genetic relationship and there's a picture of what I believe to be Zeus' Human-seeming form stored on the computer. I took it from surveillance footage on the cruise ship where they met. In Greek waters, if you're wondering."

All trace of humour is gone from her face. She stands up suddenly, lantern-case in hand. "I'm going to confirm this for myself."

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26th October

13:27 GMT -8

There wasn't a zeta tube close to Gateway City, so Diana elected for us to travel there in her jet. We sat in silence the whole way. I'm not.. sure exactly how big a deal this is, either to her or in general. I'm sitting on a bench on the other side of the road from Cassandra's school. Through the window I can see her, and every so often I get a flicker of her white light core. It looks a bit like an Australian aboriginal painting, with everything else hung off it. I think. It's been a while since Dot and the Kangaroo.

Diana went to talk to Doctor Sandsmark over an hour ago. I think I should be feeling bad about it. No. I think this is something I would have felt bad about, and I certainly empathise with her, but the self blame I expected isn't there. I certainly didn't intend to seriously undermine her faith in her gods. At this point all of their personal failures are sort of out there. Zeus' habitual infidelity isn't something they weren't aware of…

I hear someone sit down at the other end of the bench. "You were right."

I turn my head in Diana's direction, noting that the box is still with her. "I know. Um. Sorry about that."

She shakes her head. She looks.. tired? Not sure. "You have nothing to be sorry for. You were not the one who betrayed your wife."

"I'm not sorry for doing it. I'm sorry for the outcome. I mean, I don't know exactly what it will be..."

"Either Lady Hera will leave him, or..."

"Or based on past form, simply accept it." She grimaces. "What do you intend to do now?"

"One of the charities I am a patron of works with young metahumans to hone their abilities. If Cassandra is as strong as I was at her age then she will need guidance and training. I offered to work with her myself. Doctor Sandsmark was.. less than keen."

"Is that going to be a problem?"

"Doctor Sandsmark was the student of an old friend of mine, and they're still in touch. I think I can talk her around, once she's had time to get used to the idea."

"Did she know it was Zeus..?"

"When they met?" I nod. "He told her who he was. She said she thought he was joking."

"That was probably more likely."

She finally turns her head to look me in the eyes. "How did you find her?"

I see a flicker of white. Yep, same basic look as Cassandra, though more... bass. There's more depth to it. "I didn't know Zeus was supposed to have sworn off.. well... I looked for reports of metahuman abilities, followed up on them. In her case there weren't any obvious metahuman genetic markers, her mother is an expert in Greek archaeology and I had Ares' genetic code on file."

She nods, and goes back to staring straight ahead. "I had meant to spend this afternoon asking you about your time with the Ophidian."

"I imagine that you remember it better than I do."

"You mentioned to Giovanni and Father Mattias that you think you are different now. Given how you responded to J'onn not being aware of his student's abilities..."

"Good point. Alright. I find prioritising easier. Rather than having to spend an hour a day going through all of my desires I'm constantly aware of all of them all of the time. The intrapsychic conflict that.. used to mess me up just isn't there anymore."

"Are you sure about that?"

"Oh, I'll do the meditation thing once I get the ring back. Assuming I'm getting it back, of course."

"And if you don't?"

I shrug. "The lantern's mine after a year. I don't want to have to sue the Justice League to get hold of it, but I would. Then, I'd forge myself a new ring."

"I thought you said that you didn't think you'd be able to do that."

"Forge a ring?" She nods. "It's hard, but as I said, I don't think focus will be a problem for me anymore. Isss.. that likely to be necessary?"

"I don't think so. You wouldn't be the first person associated with the Justice League to have their mind altered by an external influence. We've never held it against the people involved before. Giovanni offered to try to communicate with the Ophidian to be able to make a better assessment but J'onn and the Green Lanterns thought that would be unwise to say the least."

"I'm not... They might be right. I don't completely understand why the Ophidian's being this relaxed about the situation. Sir, about Larfleeze..."

"The Guardian embargo will remain in place until we can confirm that you are safe with your ring and that the Ophidian is indeed where we believe it to be. Once it's lifted, I know Hal intends to press them quite strongly for information. From what you were saying about Larfleeze I'm not sure there is much we could do to prepare."

"Could actually end up being really inconvenient for me, if the Guardians make a grab for the Orange Central Power Battery. Not as bad as Larfleeze going on a rampage, of course."

"From what I know of the Guardians they are unlikely to break their agreement with him, even if the reason for making it no longer applies. I imagine that they'll be monitoring the region far more closely just in case." She looks at me quizzically. "Before you bonded with the Ophidian, were you really planning to fight Larfleeze in the name of your Controllers?"

"Yes. I mean, I wasn't just going to charge in there. There are exploitable weaknesses in any system, and since beating him is in the Controllers' interests I expected them to be both helpful and well motivated. Speaking of exploitable weaknesses... What are the Watchtower's defences against magic like?" I remember during the Justice League comic with the League of Ancients that Jason Blood was called in to serve on the League while the main members were sent backwards in time. He was disturbed to learn that there weren't any and so put some in place himself. He's on the list of League possibles I gave Batman but he seems to be completely into his cover identity and I haven't seen any recent record of Morgana le Fay being active in the recent past.

"Giovanni put in a ward against scrying-" Ahah! "-but your Spell Eater is much more potent."

"That needs to be fixed. I'll pencil it in for next week, shall I?"

She smiles faintly. "We'll see. Are your own thought processes the only thing to have been affected?"

"No. Other things have changed too. You know I could sense the desires of others?"

"Yes."

"It's not just desire now. That's still most precise, but if I look at someone and make a little effort, I can see all the colours of the emotional spectrum, like coloured lines in their skin."

"What colors do you see when you look at me?"

"A mix of green, blue, indigo and violet. So, you know, HEY!"

That got a chuckle. "Will, hope, compassion and love. Kind of you to say so."

"It's not that you can't feel other things, it's that they aren't a fundamental part of your nature." I check my watch. "We should probably start back if we want to be in time for Kon's training session. Kaldur's volunteered to try out the flying belt thing as well."

She nods and rises to her feet. "Before we go, I received a letter for you at the embassy."

"Do you want me to start going through my fan mail again?"

"This wasn't fan mail. It was an invitation to dinner."

"Well, some of them-."

"From Lex Luthor."

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26th October

19:43 GMT -5

"Okay, so I was wrong about no one else turning up."

"Y'think?"

Kon and I are lumbering through the air above the training area. Doing this outside wasn't really an option, and trying it in a room with a large body of water covering the floor didn't seem like a good idea. Kon got the hang of flying in a straight line fairly quickly and can hover just fine, but turning, manoeuvring and going slowly are still eluding him. I remember the comic in which Superman fought Preus; you tend to go where you're looking. For my own part, I'm finding this WAAGH! Okay, okay. Stable again. I'm finding it a lot harder than power ring flight. The controls are meant to be instinctive but the lack of AI support means you have to do everything manually. When I get the ring back I'm going to give it a thank you polish. I can fly forwards and turn, but trying to hover is an exercise in sea sickness. And forget flying backwards.

"I find the solution is not to fight the controls." Which Kaldur is managing just fine. No, better than that. He's taken to it like a fish to water. Ugh, I feel bad for even thinking that. He floats past us and comes to a gentle stop. "Kon, how are you finding the armor?"

"It's great! I just need-." He shoots up into the ceiling, hits his head hard "OW!" on the entrance to Red Tornado's quarters and spins away before getting himself back under control. "Did you make a helmet for this?"

"Sorry."

I hear gentle feminine laughter from below. We all look down to see M'gann cover her mouth with her right hand. She isn't participating in this exercise, saying that she was perfectly content with autolevitation. Wallace is standing next to her, holding an ice pack to his head. Turns out that kinetic energy manipulation belts don't mix with super speed. He got a little cocky when he got the hang of medium speed while Kon and I were still taking it slowly, tried going flat out and bounced off three walls at the speed of sound before crashing into the ground.

Zatanna seems to be enjoying herself, though she lost control of her yaw axis when she tried going above jogging pace. Thing is, I can't be sure that all of these belts are really identical. It's quite possible that the Ophidian and I decided to try slight variations and I just no longer remember what they are. That's the only thing I can think of to explain why Artemis is still upside down. I did start asking if she had the belt the right way up but she growled at me so I decided to back off. She should be having some sort of circulation problem about now, but she's not wearing the collar and I think the formula is keeping her going.

Diana is watching over us with fascination, Guy with amusement and Hawkman and Hawkwoman are watching Kon like.. a...

You know what? I'm not going to finish that.

Just Teekl, Wolf and Robin missing. Teekl's been avoiding me since I split from the Ophidian, though M'gann says that she's still around. Wolf's probably curled up in her basket in Kon's room. She's a lot less mobile without her feline bearer. Robin... I haven't seen him since I Dannered him. I was sort of hoping that he'd come to this...

Alright, another go. Nice easy arc around.. yes.. do a loop... Oh, these things don't maintain relative down. You need to get a bit of speed going or the pull of natural gravity feels really weird. Maybe the problem is my own expectations? I've gone soft training with the easy mode ring? I've got to say, I'm starting to really respect what Ms Ervin has been able to accomplish with this thing. Okay. Accelerate, yep, there's the purple aura. You tend to go where you're looking but OW! Foot! You need to bear in mind where the rest of your body is. Ow.

"Alright, playtime's over kids!" Guy starts to raise his right hand, makes eye contact with me and stops, clasping it to his left behind his back. Six tiny green filaments rise from the floor before terminating in a series of glowing green rings. A circuit. None are too close together, but they're all at different heights and angles. With the ring I could go through them in seconds. Faster if I was allowed to just FTL plot the whole thing. This is not going to be quite so easy. "Who's goin' first!?"

Artemis pushes herself upright by grabbing onto a rocky outcrop on the wall. "I think Wally should have first try, since he's sooo fast."

"Oh, hah hah."

"Well, Kaldur is our.. team leader." Oh, I shouldn't have said that. That just means-.

"But you designed the belts." Kaldur doesn't smile when he says it, but I think that's just because he's got better self control than me. I'd be smiling.

"I didn't actually design... Fine." Where's the first..? I spot it, high up near the ceiling. High speed surge aaaaand bubble. Dowh! Okay, using the force field bubble functions to stop suddenly works, but it doesn't kill off all of your momentum. I'll remember that. I take a mid air bow as my team mates laugh at my expense.

"You ready up there?!"

I don't usually fly in the swimmer pose, but I haven't managed to make anything else work with this belt yet. I take a moment to plot the route. Down hard and shallow right turn to ring two, forwards and upturn to ring three then immediate loop down to ring four. Back up high and right turn to ring five then down and angle for the finish. Deep breath. "As ready as I'm likely to get!"

"I'll start the clock when you go through the first ring!"

Face the direction of travel. Face the direction of travel. Deep breath. Aaand dive through the ring, face the floor and accelerate down, turn my face slightly early don't look at the ring don't look at the ring yes! It worked! Turn towards the ceiling again and through the next turn turn turn agh! Damn it! Right, not working, to the ceiling, kick off, better, down through four, land -this is costing me so much time- aim and up to ring five, simple enough, then dive down again, turn a little, and through! I twist in the air to convince the belt to deal with my momentum.

"How did I do?"

"Twenty three point seven two seconds. 'Part from the flip over you didn't do too bad." Not exactly high praise, but I'll take it. "Okay, who's next?"

"Ooh! I'll have a try!" Zatanna smiles broadly before aiming herself at the first ring. "Tleb og retsaf! Ah! Pots! Pots!" She slams to a halt what looks like inches from the rocky ceiling, arms and legs splayed. Maybe I should look into getting it padded? "Heh. Heh." Turning her head, she slowly edges away and back towards the ring. "So I just.. go?"

"Whenever you're ready!"

She flies through the first ring, loops up slightly, sights the second and spirals anticlockwise down towards it, goes past before completing an anticlockwise circle and going through it, leisurely turns up through three, stops dead, then drops down through four. Then up- "A elttil tib retsaf!" -accelerates, fails to make the turn and bounces off the ceiling before passing through the ring the wrong way, realises what she's done, goes back through it and then down to the ground and jogs through the finish. "How did I do?"

"Forty one point five four." She seems happy with that. Wait. Are they all assuming I know how to use this because I normally fly? "Next!"

"Superboy." Hawkwoman gets his attention. "Why don't you give that armor a try?"

"Uhh. Okay." He sights the first ring, crouches slightly in the air and he's there. "You all might want to get back a bit." I catch Zatanna's eye and we take refuge next to the zeta tubes.

"I wasn't really watching what he was doing. Is he really..?"

"Like an American sports car. Great in a straight line, crap at corners. Should be fun to watch though."

Kon blurs through the first ring, blurs down, stops hard, blurs through ring two, stops dead under ring three, shoots up diagonally through it, stops again, down through four, blurs up and straight into the roof, rock and dust raining down. Zatanna and I wince, but he's still going, wobbling a little as he passes through ring five before dropping like a stone to just above floor level, reorienting, and shooting through ring six and slamming to a halt just ahead of us. I take a half step back just in case. He looks a little shocked himself.

"Fifteen point eight five. New course record to the Kryptonian." Kon smiles and nods his head in satisfaction. "And you can fix the roof when we're done." He lands with a grimace. "Next!" Kaldur and Artemis look at each other. She aims herself at the first ring, pushes off the wall and promptly flips over.

"Stupid belt!"

"Aqualad, looks like you're up!"

He nods and flies up to ring one under perfect control.

The git.

"Recognised, Robin, B zero one."

Huh?

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26th October

19:49 GMT -5

The interior of the left zeta tube glows brilliantly for a moment then dims, revealing Robin in casual clothing. He starts to walk out, trademarked grin in place, then makes eye contact with me and stops.

"Zatanna, could you give us a moment?"

"Um. Sure. I'll just go and.. um.." She points to the other side of the training area and starts walking away. I take a few paces back myself and Robin comes fully into the room.

"Nineteen point oh nine! Artemis, you joining in?"

"Yes! Just... Aaaaaagh!"

"Simetra nrut revo!"

"Wohw! Ah, thanks Zatanna!"

Robin looks around the room, then back at me. "Um."

"Robin, I want to apologise for what I did, altering your body like that. And also for anything else I've forgotten about while the Ophidian-."

"I thought that wasn't you you."

"It sort of was, sort of wasn't. The impetus came from me, the Ophidian wouldn't care about you enough to do anything like that. Uh. Ordinarily I'd offer to make you a power suppression collar like I made Artemis-"

"Thirty six point two three!"

"I'm going again!"

"-but I don't have access to the ring until Saturday at least..."

He holds out his right arm and pulls back his sleeve, revealing a suppression manacle. "I spent a few days putting these together. Figured they'd be less noticeable than a collar."

"Might be right. I just thought..." I shake my head. Yes, they occupy a larger area and feel more awkward but they'd be easier to cover with clothes. Especially if you didn't want people knowing that you were a metahuman. "How are you coping? With the.. augmentation."

He sighs and looks over to our supervisors. "Killer Croc punched me in the face and broke three fingers." Oh.. kay..? "I hate that you changed me without even asking how I felt about it, but the reality of having these powers? It's great. The more I think about it, the less I can deny it." He shuffles his feet. "When I was trying to get inside the alien space ship in the training scenario, I didn't even stop to think about it shooting me. Not really. Then, zap. No more me. It just really brought home how dangerous what we do is."

Shit. "I assumed.. you'd been injured before. I mean, Gotham isn't exactly..."

"Bruises, scrapes. A couple of knife wounds and I broke my leg once. I've never been disintegrated. I get into a fight now and I don't think there's anyone in Gotham who can hurt me."

"Well, at the point where that happened we all still knew it was just a training session."

"That's not the point. Batman always says to treat training sessions as if they're the real thing, and I do." He looks at the ground. "And... I'm sorry, but it's not just the enemy. You and.. and the Ophidian, you changed my whole body in a second. You didn't even have to try hard. I used to just laugh when I heard someone asking how a guy with no powers like Batman made it on the Justice League. Now I.. I can sort of see where they're coming from. It's just.. there wasn't anything I could have done to stop you."

"Twenty nine point six two! Gettin' better! Hey, Paul, you-!? Uh. Superboy, you goin' again?!"

"Robin, if I could take it back, I would. If... About the power level thing... You're not going to match the DPS I can put out, or that Kon can. We're not like Wallace where you can keep up by being more intelligent. Batman can't speed blitz with the Flash or Superman either. His skills.. his utility, and yours, lie in a different area. And it's not like anyone else could have stopped me when I was with the Ophidian either."

"I thought the Green Lanterns..."

"Is that what they're saying?" I glance over at Guy. "They got the drop on me and still only managed ten seconds before I had their rings off their fingers. They 'won' by rejecting their own desires and so making it impossible for the Ophidian to help them."

"How's Artemis handling it?"

"Reasonably well. I think she still believes that the divide between normal me and the Ophidian was.. more than it actually was, but... I think I'd pretty much sold her on the augmentation thing anyway, and my relationship with her was... I mean, you and me got on okay, but..." He nods. "Look, if there's anything I can do to make up for it..."

"Thirteen point eight four! Easy when you don't crash, huh, Superboy!"

"I don't... I don't think there's anything. I don't think this is something you can just make up."

I exhale. "You and me, are we going to be able to work together? I have no intention of repeating that.. whole thing, but I'll understand-."

"No, that's..." He shakes his head. "I know you thought it was helping, but you wouldn't have waited as long as you did with Artemis if you'd have considered forcing it on us without the Ophidian messing with your priorities. The other stuff... That's just something I'm going to have to work out."

"I'll owe you then." He nods, and starts to walk slowly in the direction of Wallace. I follow. "Diana said that she was going to offer you and Artemis lessons in how to fight at your new strength level."

"Yeah, Batman said. I tried doing a circuit in the gym back home, and all of my instincts were off. It's gunna be a while before I can really use my new strength."

"Are you here for that now?"

"Pff, no. Wally phoned me about the flying belts. No way I'm missing this."

Guy half turns, and a belt appears in the air just in front of Robin, who catches it. "You up next?"

"You bet!" Wallace trudges in our direction. "Hey, Wally, why're you down here?"

"Don't ask."

"Ooookay." Robin looks over the belt, then puts it around his waist and fastens it. This one has an 'R' belt buckle. Did I make it for him? No idea.

"Tap the buckle three times for normal activation. Oh, and if the rest of us are anything to go by you might want to turn your suppressors off."

He gives me a characteristic insolent smile. "Turned them off before I got here." He crouches then uncoils, leaping high into the air and not coming down as the belt activates.

"Glad Rob's enjoying himself. You two talked things out?"

"As much as we can, I suppose."

"Good, that's.. good. Um. Hey, Oh El?" Wallace has sidled right up to me, and is making a point of looking across the room. Okay..?

"Yyyess?"

"Sorta been meaning to ask. When you fixed my arm, did you.. you know, do anything else?”

I frown. "I didn't intend to. I don't have to precisely tell the ring what I want it to do, just a rough impulse... Why, is there some sort of problem? If you tell me what it is I'm sure I can fix-."

"Aaaah.” His eyes flick down to the ground, and he fidgets slightly. "Nnnoo. It's fine. I think I'll just go, um, talk to M'gann."

"Oh.. kay?" I watch him wander off, ice pack still held against his forehead. Wonder what that was about. Not being able to come up with anything I walk over to where the Leaguers are standing.

"Kon seems to be adapting well to the armor."

I flash Diana a quick smile. "Good thing too. Not like I can modify it."

"Did you plan to make armor for everyone?"

"No. M'gann wouldn't be able to shapeshift, Wallace wouldn't be able to run... I think you were probably next on my list."

"I already have armor."

"Sir... How can I put this? I understand that your armour is made of orichalcum. I know that it has so many protective spells on it that a mortal magician would get a migraine trying to make sense of them, and I know that wearing it allows you to take an anti-tank rocket to the chest and barely feel it. But you have to accept that it looks like a leotard and even I don't understand why it doesn't cover your arms or legs."

"Hey!" Guy turns from my airborne team mates to point at me with his right index finger. "Wondy's armor's fine the way it is."

She gives him a slightly surprised smile. "Why, thank you, Lantern Gardner."

"You convince her to cover up some and you'll earn the hate of every red blooded man on the planet." He thinks for a moment. "An' I reckon more than a few o'the women. There's a place for fancy armor and there's a place for leotards. And that place is on Wonder Woman, capisce?"

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26th October

21:49 GMT -5

I lean against the end of the row of lockers as I take off my socks, leaving me naked. Everyone else is still practising their flying in the training area so I've got time to have my shower before the others get down here. Another thing I miss about the ring, not having the automatic cleaning function. Guy left about half an hour ago, saying he was a couple of hours ahead and needed his beauty sleep. I still can't fly anything like as well with the belt as I can with the ring, but I can fly competently with it now and that's really all I need. Kaldur's still a little better, Robin and Zatanna about as good and Artemis is still a little worse. I wonder how practical it is for Kaldur to add the belt to the Ocean Master armour. It would work easily with his original gear... Wait. How water resistant is it? Okay, I'll have to suggest not wearing it under water until I can check.

Kon was flying circles around the rest of us at the end. Not sure whether his top speed is higher than ours or he was just less afraid of ramming into the walls. Since it went so well Diana wants to take him out for a 'real' flight tomorrow evening. I was a bit concerned that the Hawks might try and claim the armour in the name of Thanagar or something, but they seemed more interested in the techniques I used to make it than in the suit itself. I suppose that makes sense; one suit of armour isn't that big a deal but a non-Thanagarian supplier would threaten their monopoly. I explained what I could remember about making it to them, which wasn't much. Don't think I ever read any comic where the Hawks were the focus, except a bit of a Justice Society storyline where Hawkwoman reincarnated without her past life memories and became romantically involved with someone other than her predecessor's still-living husband. Don't think that applies here. Hawkwoman doesn't seem to be much like the Hawkgirl from Justice League Animated either.

I walk into the shower area and pick the shower to the left of the door. Seems simple enough, one knob for hot and another for cold. Huh. Hadn't really thought about it before, but this room's really big. Even allowing for a reasonable amount of personal space you could probably fit an extra row of showers down the middle without it being crowded. The shower spacing along the walls is about what I'd expect, so... Why'd they make it this big? And.. why were there that many lockers? Three banks on each side, two lots of eight per bank... Ninety six lockers? And that's just the men. How much recruiting are they planning on doing?

Right. First rule of using an unfamiliar shower: stand to the side when you turn the hot water on, and let it run for a bit before adjusting the temperature. I make sure I'm out of spray range and turn the hot knob three wrist twists anticlockwise. I'm not sure why the League went for a central boiler system when they originally built these; giving each shower its own heating element would be far more efficient. Didn't occur to me to ask Lantern Stewart when we rebuilt the place, but now I'm actually having to use it... Okay, constant and rather hot temperature achieved, now the cold... And I forgot the soap. Too used to just being able to make things appear. Right. Leave that running, nip back to the lockers, pick up the soap and shampoo... There's no soap dish. Right. Second thing I'm doing once I get the ring back is fixing this stuff. Under the water, rub up a lather, step slightly out so the water doesn't wash away the soap, put the soap down and soap my arms.

Doesn't look like the ring not maintaining my physique has produced noticeable decay yet. I joined Kaldur in the gym this morning but I'm not in the habit and I don't think I could keep up the sort of regimen he does. I mean, if I found exercise interesting or pleasurable I wouldn't have needed the ring to rebuild me in the first place, would I? Arms done, rinse them off... Hm, nothing like flying around a room lined with metal and rock at high speed with a xenotech flight belt you barely understand to make you sweat. Torso next. Good thing about having short hair is that I don't have to do what I used to do and sort of stick it in a lump on the top of my head with shampoo to keep it out of the way. Right, rinse the front-.

"Oh, hey Paul." I drop the soap. I'm facing the wall, and Kon just walked in the shower room. He's probably naked right now. "Didn't think you used these showers."

"No ring. Um. Have to clean myself the normal way."

"Oh, right." I hear his footsteps on the damp floor. He's.. oh. He walks around behind me then turns and takes the shower next to me. I keep staring at the wall, moving my soapy hands over my back as I try to work out what to do next. Naked anyone else would just be a little awkward. This is...

The squirting noise causes me to instinctively turn to my right as Kon drops his shower gel bottle to the floor and begins.. rubbing.. himself. Definitely larger pectoral muscles than me. I turn back to the wall, and then turn further to let the water rinse my back off. Turns out, perfect awareness of my own desires doesn't cover either unfamiliar social dynamics or other emotions. Normally after my torso I clean my genitals but he's right there. I don't know what the protocol for this sort of situation is. I feel my desire to avoid giving offence, but I don't know what might make that happen. For the lack of something else to do I crouch down and pick up the shampoo bottle. Of course, he's probably well used to this sort of thing by now.

"You have any plans for the rest of your week off?"

"Tomorrow, I'm having Mister Constantine do a check up on my soul, maybe modify the tattoos a bit." Super strength scry ward please. If it was good enough for the Shadows it's good enough for me. I put a blob of shampoo on my right hand and rub it in as I duck back down to return it to the floor. Huh. I can feel the heat from Kon's shower from here. I suppose turning just one knob is slightly quicker and his augmented toughness means that the hot water doesn't hurt him. "You know how magic messes me up, so that's probably Thursday occupied as well. Then on Friday, Lex Luthor's invited me for dinner."

"Luthor! You're not going to go, are you?"

"Don't see why not." Both hands in my hair now. "He's not going to have me killed when everyone knows where I am."

"What do you think he wants?"

"No idea. I mean, he'll probably start by thanking me for Taipei again then.. I don't know.. try and sound me out about some sort of cooperative venture?" Diana was having kittens about it but couldn't be more precise than 'he's up to something'. I mean of course he's up to something, he's Lex Luthor, but just because it serves his interests doesn't mean that it doesn't also serve mine.

"But.. if he did try something, you haven't got your ring. Shouldn't you.. I don't know.. try and reschedule or something?"

"I've got the belt." I tilt my head back into the water stream and use my fingers to assist in removing the lather. "If it really comes to it I can just fly through the window, but I don't seriously think it will. Look-." I turn my head left to meet his eyes.. and he's facing me. Completely facing me. Meeting his eyes takes a moment. Looks like Cadmus didn't cir-. No. Stopping that right there. "Um. I really don't think there's any need to worry about it." A flash of Ophidivision shows me the violet of his feelings for me. Fluffy violet, rather than the more spiky kind I've come to associate with romantic relationships after seeing it in the Hawks. The underlying yellow of his fear of rejection and isolation has almost completely been displaced by blue. That's good, but the violet thing makes me realise that building a romantic relationship with him would be a very long term endeavour. On the other hand, if a full frontal didn't put me off then I don't think I have to worry about any lingering heterocentrism. "So, um, what's up with you?"

"I took Wolf to play outside for the first time this afternoon. She seemed to like it, but she got tired out kind of quick. Oh, um... You know when you were.. possessed..?"

"I'm not likely to forget it, Kon." I bend and start soaping my right leg.

"Well.. M'gann took it really hard. I.. tried to make her feel better. You know, like you did for me..."

"Good for you."

"And we're... Well, we're kinda dating."

I freeze for a moment. Looks like someone didn't have my reservatio-. No, that's not fair. I remember her being in a right old state last week. "How do you mean 'kind of' dating?"

"We haven't actually gone anywhere yet. I mean, we've kissed and stuff..."

I'm.. happy for him. Them. I really am. In desire terms.. no, I really don't have any problem with my team mates being together. That just makes them both more appeal-. Oh dear. Another look at his face. Kon looks a little uncertain. Normally when he's this like this I give him a hug, but that doesn't seem quite as appropriate when we're both naked and soapy.

"Well. Good for you." He perks up as I smile. "Both of you. I'd try offering advice but.. I.. don't really have any..."

"Really?" He raises his left arm and rubs gel along his left side. "I thought.. you and Artemis..."

"I did say it wasn't a date."

"Okay. What about that assassin girl you keep visiting?"

"No. I mean, on that basis you could try and make out that I was dating Thomas Beresford." I pause in soaping my left leg. "I'm not, by the way. Um, suppose you could try reading up on Martian culture, so you'll know what she's expecting?" She'll have shown him her natural form, right? Agh, maybe I need to talk to her about this as well.

Now, to crotch or not to crotch?

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27th October

10:22 GMT

Ugh... Too... Early...

I'm just about keeping myself awake in the back of Mister Chandler's cab. This is the first time I've actually felt jet lag and it's rubbish. My team mates left or went to bed at a sensible time but I decided not to. No. Diana said that she'd appreciate it if I could sort through the League's various trophies and artefacts to prioritise them for further study. She said to do it 'if I had time' and that there was 'really no rush'. So I stay up until half past midnight reading up on what they have, completely forgetting that a half past ten meeting in the UK is five hours earlier in the US.

"...apart from that one time when Sir Cyril ran over Mickey D's bonnet, but that doesn't really count..."

Fortunately the seat is hard, the suspension is stiff and Mister Chandler hasn't stopped talking since he picked me up. Not sure whether it's professional pride or he's covering nerves. I got the zeta tube from the mountain to London, walked about a hundred metres through a run down industrial estate and phoned him. We should get to the Tate Club early, not that I really think anyone there will mind. I suppose I could have flown but I didn't really want to draw that amount of attention without the ring on for protection. Sure, I have the belt, but part of last night's binge involved me acquainting myself with its weakness. Only stops kinetic force. Heat, light and electricity go straight through it. And magic, presumably. Even if I have some sort of spiritual presence now I'm sure that Mister Zatara would have said something if it looked strong enough to just tank arcane effects. I'll get John to check just in case, but I'm probably only as 'magical' as the average person here.

"...are you seeing those Tate weirdos for anyway?"

"Hmm? S-sorry, drifted a bit there. What did you say?"

"I mean, John's a mate, but I wouldn't trust the rest of them further than I can spit. Don't you lot have that Zatara guy handling your magic stuff for you?"

"Not really his field of expertise, I'm afraid. I asked in Atlantis but it turns out that it isn't really theirs, either. Besides, John's already done what I want done to me at least once. Easier getting him to do it again than trying to get someone else to work out how."

I watch the rear view mirror and spot him taking a look at me and giving an amused smile. "Hey, late night mate?"

"Uuhm. US time." I shake my head. "And if Helen of Troy's face launched a thousand ships Diana of Themiscyra's could easily make a man forget he had a meeting tomorrow."

"Wait. You telling me you and Wonder Woman..?"

"Uh? No." I shake my head. "She's my mentor. She asked me to do some research when I got a moment, unnn..."

"Thought you were gunna be a bigger bullshitter than John for a mo'. Anyway-" We pull up to the pavement and stop. We'd been slowing down but I'd sort of just assumed that was London traffic. "-we're here. Call it thirty quid."

I take a gold coin from my jacket pocket, reach forwards between the front seats and hold it out. It's one of the US ones, so he can easily change it to pounds sterling. He looks back and takes it from me.

"Renee said she wouldn't mind me doing more work for you in future." He turns the coin around in his hand. "Do.. y'know.. Justice League people usually tip like this?"

"Well, they're mostly Americans so it's.. fifteen percent pretty much the whole time. Batman tips big and on the few occasions Red Tornado actually orders something he writes out a full report and does an itemised tip based on how good he thought the experience was." Didn't see it myself, but Diana shared a story from the Justice Society days when they all went to a Chinese restaurant, and apparently he still does it. "Actually, if you're not prebooked or anything..?"

"You want me to pick you up when you're done?"

"No. Magic.. messes me up. I'm probably going to be fairly out of it when we finish here. I've booked a hotel room but I'm going to need someone to take me there, stick me in bed and hang around just in case I need anything." I shrug. "Bit rubbish, but if you're up for it I'll pay you well for your trouble."

He thinks for a moment. "When you say 'messes you up'..?"

"A bit like I'm drunk or high."

"You gonna throw up or something?"

"Haven't before, but maybe. Um. Sorry."

"Wouldn't be the first time. Mind if I stick some sheets down?"

"Makes no difference to me. If it happens I'm going to be too out of it to remember."

"Err. You're not going to get, like, supervillains attacking you or anything?"

"Don't think so, but just in case..." I take a card out from my inner jacket pocket. "This's got Green Lantern two eight one four B's mobile number."

He takes it lightly between right forefinger and thumb, looking a little lost. "Right..."

"He should be available all day, and he's just about the only one who could get here quick enough. Look, it probably won't come to that, but I like to prepare just in case. Unlike... You know..."

"John."

"Well. … Yes."

He thinks for a moment. "And how much..?"

The small bag chinks down on the seat next to him. He looks at it and purses his lips. "Right. You hop out now, I'll be back in about half an hour. You won't be finished by then, will you?"

"Doubt it. I'm expecting this to be an all day thing." I shuffle over to the left side of the seat and open the door. The outside of the club doesn't look like much. Same dull grey stone as the rest of the street with a frankly cheap looking sign over what I assume is a recent addition: a sort of shelter over the steps leading up to the main entrance. "See you in half an hour. John'll be in there if you can't get hold of me." I step out of the car and slam the door behind me. Mister Chandler pulls away as I contemplate the building some more. Bars over the first, second and third floor windows, and a general feeling that it could do with a bit of a clean. According to John London's got the most magic users per head of population of any city in Europe. Or North America. And this is where they hang out. You'd never know to look at it.

I'm still a little early, but there isn't anything else for me to do. I walk across the narrow pavement, up the steps and push open the door.

"Yes?" The uniformed concierge just inside the door isn't the same man as last time I was here. John told me that the owners are magic users but the other staff generally aren't.

"Good morning. Orange Lantern two eight one four to see Ms Clarice Sackville-" He nods and begins to point to the tearoom. "-and Mister John Constantine." He scowls for a second before mastering his appearance.

"Right you are, sir. Ms Sackville is taking tea at present." On her third gin most likely. I've no idea where she puts it; she's skinny as a rake. "Do you know the way?"

"Yes, thank you." I nod to him and walk across the foyer. Most of the ground and first floor of the Club form a single large room. The area around the edge forms a veranda overlooking the main floor from one floor up. It also serves to make it a bit dingier than it might otherwise be. Street magic is supposed to drive people a bit weird after a while, and looking at the architecture here I can well believe it. Ritual spaces, meeting rooms, libraries and whatever else this sort of club has are second or third floor, floor space being at something of a premium.

Turning the corner I look up another shallow set of steps to the various tables laid out, presumably for lunch. Only the one being used by Ms Sackville is occupied and as I predicted she is nursing a gin while speaking to her... Actually, I'm not sure what her precise relationship to Albert Case is. I suppose anyone who survives long enough around here just sort of drifts together. He was hanging around when I got my original tattoos done but I don't think I heard him say anything. I wave in their direction as I slowly walk up the steps. Mister Case notices me first and nods in my direction. She frowns for a moment before turning to look at me, stretching her wrinkled face into a smile.

"Dear boy! Come and sit down and tell me what exciting things you've been up to!"

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27th October

10:33 GMT

"Well. Haven't you had an interesting week." Ms Sackville moves her cigarette holder to take another drag, only to find that it's burned down. Mr Case moved an ash tray under it while she was listening to me, and reaches into his jacket to take out a replacement for her. She slots it in and holds it out for him to light before taking a puff. I have no idea how she lived to her present age of two hundred and forty seven but it can't have been through clean living. She isn't undead, I checked that last time I was here and her body is organically functional. I'm sitting on a chair with her to my right and Mister Case across from me. "Albert, you remember Giovanni Zatara, don't you? He did a couple of seasons in the West End in the early nineties." Albert's face looks fairly blank. "Italian man. Wore a top hat. Used to be friends with John before that business with the Brujería. He was seeing that blonde woman.. oh, what was her name." There's a vague glimmer of recognition in Albert's eyes, but it doesn't look like he'd want to rely on it. Ms Sackville's eyes drop as she tries to remember. "Cinde-. No, wasn't Cinderella, but it always made me think of.. Sindella! That was it." She turns back to me. "How is she?"

"Dead, I'm afraid."

"Oh, that's a shame. I liked her. Added a bit of class to the proceedings. Unlike John sodding Constantine, who's late again." She looks over to the door and then -John not immediately appearing- snorts quietly. "Honestly. We'll just have to start without him. You told me Giovanni said that you've got a spiritual presence but it isn't like a normal Human soul."

"Essentially yes."

"And what exactly do you want me to do about it?"

"I'd like you to give me a second opinion, please. You understand better than he does what the tattoos should do if they work properly. And..." I reach into my right inner pocket and draw out a vial of Danner Formula. "I'd like your opinion on this."

Mister Case takes it from my outstretched hand, unscrews the lid and gives it a sniff, shrugs, puts the lid back on and hands it to Ms Sackville who looks at it carefully. "And what might this be when it's at home?"

"A small sample of something called the Danner Formula."

"Never heard of it. What is it supposed to do?"

"Assuming you're not pregnant, noth-."

Ms Sackville lets out a peal of surprisingly raucous laughter, ending in two dry coughs. "I think that's rather passed me by, dear boy."

"Um, I meant 'you' in the collective... Um." I shake my head. "Assuming the person taking it isn't pregnant, nothing. If they are, the child gets born with supernatural strength and stamina."

"And what else?"

"Nothing, as far as I know. Aside from the consequences of the strength itself there's basically no down side."

"Bloody hellfire."

"I'm showing it to you because I know it doesn't work through chemistry or nanotechnology, which basically just leaves magic. I don't know any alchemists, you've got connections to all of London's magic users..."

"Why? Do you want more of it?"

"No, I can make as much as I want. I want to understand the principles by which it operates. From what John was saying this is far more advanced than any alchemical formula currently in circulation. If we can unlock the mechanism for giving people supernatural powers safely..."

She purses her lips and leans back in her chair, shaking the vial slightly. "John told me he thought you got an avarice ring because you have so little avarice that you wouldn't be taken over by it." She stares directly into my eyes, and for a moment she very much doesn't seem like a jovial old woman. "He was wrong, wasn't he? You're just better at focusing it. Most people around here would give their eyeteeth for something like this. More than a few have sold their souls for something less than half as good, but for you it's just another stepping stone."

"I don't see a reason why I should be privileged like this when everyone could be."

She shakes her head. "There's always a price."

"Then I need to know what it is before the bill's due, don't I?"

She thinks, then nods, cautiously. "I.. can talk to some people for you. That Greaves girl... Albert, you know where she lives?" He nods. "Invite her for tea tomorrow. We'll have a chat."

"Thank you."

"We'll need to show her the Atlantean books."

"If she can read Atlantean Greek, sure. I can't do another translation until Saturday night at the earliest. Is John keeping the last one?"

"No, it's up in the secure library and he's put a very nasty spell on it in case anyone sneaks a look when he's not here." She clenches and unclenches her right hand. "Oh! Speak of the devil!"

I turn in my seat to see John walking up the steps to the main area. "Good morning John."

"Rather not speak of him, Clarrie. We've got a bit of a history."

"You're late, you scallywag."

"Someone nabbed me ride, didn't they?" Whoops. John pulls out the seat to my left and slumps in it. "Right, so why are we four gathered together?"

"He wants us to check his soul's working." Clarice holds out her left hand to me, and I remove the Spell Eater from around my neck before taking hold of it with my right. Her skin feels cold and saggy. Reminds me of my Nan's. Realising what's going on I offer John my left and he takes it. He shuts his eyes and Ms Sackville's gaze goes vacant. I don't.. feel anything. That's a good sign, usually this would be really uncomfortable. A flicker of Ophidivision -I need to come up with a better name for that- shows me that Ms Sackville and Mister Case are almost empty with just a tiny dynamo of white and black light in their souls, mixed around and... Harmonious? What? For a moment I'm too stunned to notice Ms Sackville and John release my hands. I haven't even seen black before. How was..? John pushes me in the left shoulder.

"Hm? Sorry?"

"Looks.. sort of... Clarrie?"

"The power you got off of the snake spirit got stuck, but it hasn't imprinted you yet. And when did you achieve enlightenment, you sneaky devil?"

"I'm not sure. I think it was just before the Ophidian left. What does that mean for me?"

John leans forward, putting his weight on the table. "You can resist magic as well.. probably a bit better than a normal person, but it won't sustain your consciousness. Not yet, anyway. It.. should mould itself to you..." He makes a dismissive gesture with his right hand. "Like I said when we did it, this is all new to me. Anything could happen, really."

"So I don't have the normal bits a person's soul would have?"

"'Fraid not mate."

No alchemically induced super powers for me yet then. "Alright. Can you.. sort of.. force it to mould to me in certain shapes? Like, cutting runes in a person's soul, but making it permanent?"

Ms Sackville blinks in confusion. "The binding tattoos.. sort of do that. I'm not sure it would actually be permanent, and there isn't a wizard alive who can cut runes onto someone's soul." John coughs. Ms Sackville gives him a sour look. "John? Something you want to share with the rest of us?"

John winces. "You remember Harry Cooper?"

"Oh, that mess was you, was it? I should have known."

"He was going to kill Cheryl, what was I supposed-?"

"No, I wasn't referring to that whole Fuckpig thing. I was talking about when that Succubus got knocked up by that Angel and you had to-."

He stares at me in shock. "How the fuck-!"

"I read it in a comic book from a parallel universe." He stops talking. Given that one of his friends was once abducted by fictional characters he isn't really in a position to dismiss the idea. "Scrying wards so strong the First of the Fallen himself can't see past them. A man in my position could use something like that. Is it doable?"

He stares at me, as if trying to discern some great truth from my face. After what feels like a minute he looks away. "Maybe. Probably. There's a cost to it, mind."

"I'm reliably informed-" I look at Ms Sackville, whose irritation has been replaced by curiosity. "-there always is."

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Uuuuuuuuuuuunnnnghghnnngh

"Oi, mate."

Ughuhuhuuh. Something's...

"Lantern... owh. Should have got John to tell me what your bleeding name is."

I think..? Something soft? I curl up slightly.

"Alright, get it together Chas." Pressure, something, a hand! On my... Thing. Shoulder! "Oi!" I'm being shaken. "Orange Lantern! Wake up!"

My eyes snap open and I shudder violently. Peach sheets and a peach pillowcase immediately in front of my eyes and a duvet pulled tight around me. I'm lying on my front, and I hurt. "Uguh?"

The hand is immediately withdrawn. "Mate, your phone was ringing." That's.. Chas. Right. Right. So.. I don't really... He was going to get me to my room at the Lanesborough Hotel if I.. overloaded. "You told me I should answer it, so I did. Um. She says she's Wonder Woman?"

I roll over slightly and put pressure on something I shouldn't! OW! I jerk slightly, instinctively trying to get into a more upright position. Thanks to the ring I didn't really experience any soreness when I got my original tattoos done but that wasn't the case this time around. Plus the ritual wounding and burning. Branding. It didn't.. hurt... No, it did, but the pain didn't feel important at the time. I look blearily at Chas, who's holding the phone out to me as if it might catch fire at any moment and he wants to be able to drop it quickly when it does. He's still in the white t-shirt, and blue jeans he was in yesterday... it was yesterday, wasn't it? I shakily reach my right hand out from under the covers and he hands me the phone before retreating across the room to sit down heavily in an armchair and pick up a newspaper.

I drag it closer to my head across the surface of the pillow. "Hello?"

"Paul, where are you?" Diana. She sounds.. angry? Worried?

"London. I told you I was... I did, didn't I?"

"Are you alright?"

"Sort of?" I try moving my legs so that I can sit up properly, but they stick to the sheets. That isn't a good thing. Please tell me I'm not stuck to the bedclothes by my own excrement... I manage to shuffle up a bit with a pulling sensation on the aching skin of my legs and push the bedclothes back to get a look at the mess. "Oh dear."

"What is it?"

Looks like the wounds on my legs weren't fully scabbed over when I got in here. Either that or me moving around dislodged the bandages. I'm not bleeding heavily but it looks like I've seeped a bit. Most of it has already dried brown on the sheets. "Oh, nothing.. much. I wasn't.. really sure what the ritual involved... I don't appear to be seriously hurt."

"What ritual?"

"Well, I heard that John did this.. thing.. to a Succubus who needed to get away from her superiors. Made her impossible to detect through scrying. Thought it could be useful."

"I thought you said that you wanted them to check that your soul was developing properly."

"Yeah." I push the bed clothes off the rest of the way. What did Dan say about stuff like this? Take the sheets off the bed, bundle them up and leave a generous tip. I can do that. Shame I don't have the ring with me... "Apparently I've got a sort of orange light magic aura, but the tattoos are only gradually working it into soul shape. I wanted the other thing done before it.. set, sort of."

"And that's all that happened?"

"Well, my memory is still a bit fuzzy. You know how I get around magic."

Silence on the phone for several seconds. It's like that time I stayed out all night without letting my mum know in advance and when I phoned the next morning to let my parents know where I was she told me that she'd phoned the police and the hospital to try and find out if my body had been handed in. The only reason I hadn't phoned the previous evening was because by the time I'd decided to spend the night at a friend's house it was late enough that I thought they'd already have gone to bed. My desire to give them a good night's sleep resulted in them not getting one. A valuable lesson.

"Who was the man I spoke to earlier?"

She sounds calmer. Really not sure what she was so worried about. "His name's Frank Chandler. He's a friend of John's." Chas looks around at the mention of his name.

"Another wizard?"

"No, he's a cab driver." Chas is starting to look a bit concerned.

"He was guarding you?"

"No, more making sure I didn't do anything stupid while I was intoxicated."

"If you knew something like this might happen you could have come to me."

"Sir, the people I was dealing with? You'd probably have put them right off."

"And if you'd been attacked?"

"Then Guy was a phone call away. Sir, has something happened? I don't understand why you're-."

"M'gann felt it. Whatever they were doing to you."

Oh no. "I'm so sorry, I had no idea that would happen."

"I'm… Oh! No, she felt that they were doing it to you, not as if they were doing it to her."

I breathe a sigh of relief. "Oh, thank goodness. Is she alright?"

"A little shaken up." I hear her exhale. "I phoned you and you didn't reply. I tried the number you gave me for Constantine but I didn't get an answer from him either. Giovanni tried scrying for you, but couldn't find anything." Working then, at the moment at least. Good to know. "I've been worried sick." Yes, just like the time with Mum.

"Really sorry, didn't mean to worry anyone but I was never really in any significant danger. I can be back at the cave in-." What time is it? The bedside clock is analogue and doesn't have a date display, but it says nine minutes past one. I'm going to assume Thursday. "Um, say ten o'clock, your time?" I'd like to have a shower and something to eat as well as checking my injuries over, but Chas can just dump me in his cab and drive me to the zeta tube if we really need to.

"If you're really alright, then you don't need to hurry back." Oh good. "When you do get back, let me know. You and I are going to have a long talk about your insalubrious contacts." Darn.

"I'll see you in a few hours then. Um. I do appreciate the concern, sir."

"We'll talk about it later."

I nod as she hangs up and then put the phone down on the bedside table. "Okay. Um, Chas, please phone room service. Fried bread, bacon, fruit, milk and orange juice for me, and whatever you want for yourself. Er, and probably some fresh bandages. Realise that bit wasn't exactly what you were expecting, and really appreciate you sticking around like this."

He nods, apparently taking it in his stride. "You want a hand getting up?"

"No, I can-" I swing my battered looking legs over the side of the bed and gingerly lower them to the floor. Still wearing my underwear and a few bandages but my other clothes are absent. He probably just put them in a drawer or something and there'll be a robe in the toilet. "-manage, thanks. Which way to the shower?"

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29th October

18:52 GMT -5

The LexCorp Tower isn't exactly hard to spot. Its curved central tower is visible from across Metropolis and the few buildings tall enough to block sight of it from the street don't obscure the view from the air. Even Lex Luthor can't monitor everything, but he does have most places in Metropolis likely to house a zeta tube under surveillance. That was probably why Diana agreed with me that flying in from New York under belt power was a sensible decision. Initially I flew in at my preferred cruising height but I swiftly reached the conclusion that doing so was a bad idea. The kinetic energy absorption system prevents you getting sandblasted by the wind but does nothing to protect against the cold or to prevent you swallowing an insect.

Mister Luthor's apartment is comprised of the top two levels of the central tower. I gave it a scan when I first started researching potential threats and despite the obvious wealth of the man it isn't all that big. As far as I can tell this is due to the fact that when LexCorp Tower was constructed he had just a fraction of his current purchasing power. Heck, when it first opened about two thirds of the place was rented out to other companies, though many of them were subsequently bought out and added to the LexCorp brand. The Lex we see now as the wealthy businessman isn't how he always was. In one of his recent interviews he claimed to keep the apartment 'for the view' but I think he keeps it out of pride, occupying the first visible sign of the position of power he'd earned.

I make a steadyish landing on the concourse in front of the building. The trick I've found is that rather than doing a controlled drop as I would with the ring you have to swoop down so that you're laying parallel to the ground and then fold your legs down. Intentionally touching the ground tells the belt that you want to stop flying and you can straighten yourself up without having to worry about taking off again. Not the most dignified way of going about things but then I only have to put up with it for another day or so. Diana said that Batman had been meaning to speak to me about it but something had come up in Gotham and he couldn't spare the time until tomorrow. Not sure what that was. I checked the news and there wasn't any mention of supervillain activity there. Maybe it hasn't been leaked... Right. Gotham. That's not going to have happened. They leak to the flipping mob, they're going to leak to the press.

Oh well. If he's not prioritising me then I'm probably going to get let off with a brief lecture. Anyway, quick look around. There's a few people on the street but my aerial arrival in a suit doesn't appear to be arousing any significant interest. The main entrance to the LexCorp Tower is a long row of doors at the top of a flight of shallow steps. I start towards it as I fish my invitation out of my jacket pocket. There are card readers by the door but to my surprise the door opens without me having to use it. Perhaps business hours here are somewhat later than I'm used to? Or maybe I was detected on radar and a security guard opens the door remotely. If I had the ring finding out would be easy. As it is... I suppose it probably doesn't matter.

The lobby is a broad area with the LexCorp logo displayed in granite on the floor. The large reception desk is still manned by uniformed staff, a couple of whom look up as I enter the building. I know the way up but I should probably-.

"Orange Lantern." Ms Graves steps forwards from the side of the desk. She's in her customary black jacket and skirt with white blouse and red tie. "If you'll come with me I'll escort you to Mister Luthor."

I walk in her direction. "Thank you Ms Graves. Oh, and um." I take out my name card and hold it out to her. She raises her right eyebrow as she takes it. "My name isn't a secret, I'm just physically incapable of saying it. Please, feel free to call me that." She nods and slides the card into her breast pocket before turning away to lead me deeper into the building. I follow after her. "I've been meaning to say... If you wanted, I could probably replace that cybernetic limb with an organic one. No offence intended to my host, but even advanced synthetic skin can't offer anything like the same level of sensory feedback that a natural limb can."

"Thank you for the offer, but I am quite satisfied with the limb I have."

"Why? I mean, if you want to keep the gun I could probably upgrade it. Maybe build the projector into the palm so you can keep use of the hand in combat?" She turns her head to give me a look. It's strangely impassive. The offer's genuine and I was expecting it to provoke some sort of response. Instead, nothing. "Okay. Don't worry about it."

We pass a bank of lift entrances and head to a separate lift within its own security glass enclosure protected by a group of three security guards. Mister Luthor's private lift. Ms Graves stands aside as she reaches the entrance and I hold my invitation card against the reader for a moment before the door unlocks and allows me entrance to an antechamber to the lift room.

One of the guards taps some buttons on a computer console. "Please stand by for a moment, sir. We're just going to scan you for weapons."

I roll my eyes. "Of course I'm armed, I'm a superhero coming to meet Lex Luthor." And it's just occurred to me that I'm not sure whether or not the belt shield would stop Ms Graves' arm gun. It would stop plasma and particle beams. Won't stop light or electricity... I wasn't planning on starting anything but I really should have considered that.

"Ahh, right." He peers at the screen. "I'm not picking anything up."

"Oh good, shouldn't be a problem then." I point at the door to the lift room. "May I?"

He glances at Ms Graves as if for instructions and gets a very shallow nod in return. I suppose that the belt just looks like a belt? If they don't know Cooperative technology it probably just registers at a metal belt, especially while it's inactive. Then the guard opens the door in front of me and I walk up to the elevator. Still haven't quite got used to security guards having guns like this. Before coming to this world I'd only seen real firearms in the hand of railway police, and then only a few times. I turn back to see if Ms Graves is coming the rest of the way and watch as she gets a perfunctory scan before coming into the room with me.

"This way please." She walks past me to the lift and places the palm of her organic hand against the palm reader plate. A moment passes and the door opens with a chime and she walks inside, taking up station to the immediate left of the door. I walk into the middle of the lift and turn around to face the door as it closes.

"So, is it just you, me and Mister Luthor?"

She doesn't turn to look at me as she responds. "Mister Luthor has invited a small number of other guests but wishes to speak with you privately before they arrive."

I just about feel the lift start its upwards journey. I usually enjoy running up the stairs, but I think that in a building this tall that could get a bit dull. "Think I can probably manage that. Anyone I know?"

"Mister Luthor wishes for that to remain a surprise."

"Okay." I smile at the back of her head. "Long as it's not Ra's al Ghul, huh?" No response. "Though actually, if it was, it would save me a lot of time." Nothing again. Oh well. As the lift continues to rise I take a closer look at its interior. Someone who knew something about design could probably name the style but to me it just says 'elegant simplicity' without any of the labels. Carpet's a pretty nice deep blue, and makes me feel a little self conscious about the fact that my shoes aren't 'ring clean' at the moment. "Did Red Arrow get an invite?"

"Mister Luthor wishes-."

"You said. Probably would be a bad idea." I try humming a few notes quietly, but stop when I realise that it might annoy her. How long is this going to-?

"The.. data stick you gave Mister Luthor in Taipei."

"Yes?"

"What was on it?"

"A novel called 'How to Succeed in Evil'. I can get you a copy on Monday if you want, but it's available online for free. Why do you ask?"

"Mister Luthor was.. laughing, when he listened to it. He doesn't laugh very often."

"I'm glad he liked it. I gave it to him because there's a certain similarity between him and the main character. And between Superman and one of the others, though the relationship is rather different."

She inclines her head slightly. "I.. might like-." The lift door opens and she cuts herself off. "Mister Luthor's penthouse. Please follow me." She steps out of the elevator and I follow into Lex Luthor's home.

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29th October

18:58 GMT -5

We step out into a small wood floored antechamber. The walls are decorated with pictures, though without the ring I've no idea whether they're chosen to demonstrate the owner's wealth or because he actually likes them. Pastoral scenes for the most part, though there's also a framed photograph of Mister Luthor with.. some.. guy in a suit. He looks vaguely familiar. My instincts say 'President' but I could easily be mistaken. I haven't really studied recent American history in depth. Come to think of it, I'm not sure I could name the guy before George Bush I back home.

"I can take your jacket." Ms Graves holds out her organic arm, standing next to a door set into the wall.

Hm. Losing the jacket makes the belt a bit obvious, but the existence of the belt technology is hardly a secret. Icon's origin is publicly available information even if his identity isn't. I unbutton it and slide it off my right shoulder before taking hold of it with my right hand and extracting my left arm. I shake it to settle out any creases before passing it to her. "Thank you."

She opens the door and steps inside. Over her shoulder I see a variety of overcoats and jackets as well as a few scarves. She takes a wooden hanger off the rail and slides the jacket over it before pausing and turning to me. "I believe that Mister Luthor is aiming for a casual atmosphere. If you'd rather take off the tie..?"

"I spent an hour watching 'how to tie your tie' website videos today and a good fifteen minutes actually doing the thing before I got it right."

"If you'd rather ke-."

My fingers are already in motion. "No, I hate the blooming thing. Take it with my blessing." Silk, dark grey with orange sigil. It glows when I'm wearing the ring. She winds it around the hanger, hooks the hanger back over the rack and then steps out, glancing only briefly at my now revealed belt with the glowing circles front, sides and back. In the inactive state the glow isn't all that bright. Maybe she just thinks it's a fashion statement?

She leads the way through the inner door to the living quarters proper. It's two.. maybe three levels tall, the glass front probably providing a great view of Metropolis during the day. The room itself is probably about forty square metres, a size that would make the rent cripplingly expensive in this part of the city. Unless you own the building I suppose. I recognise one of the hologram television projectors at the base of the window. The seating area is slightly lower than the walkway around the edge of the room, with black leather settees forming a U shape around a wooden table. The room is decorated not with more pictures but with tall potted plants and abstract metal sculptures. I really hope he's not going to want to talk about them because my art knowledge really isn't up to it.

There's a door to my right at the end of the room and a spiral staircase near the middle of the right wall but Ms Graves leads me to the left. The next room is a large dining room where three members of the waiting staff are laying out places. Fortunately for me Diana gave me a lesson in formal dining so that part I should be able to cope with. None of them look up as we pass, but I suppose they're just that professional. I don't quite see how many places are being laid out. Six or fewer, I think. We pass what I assume are the double doors leading to the kitchen on the left and on to a smaller and lower-ceilinged room. Mister Luthor is standing at the far end staring at a picture. The room has several others of varying sizes as well as other objects of interest. Relics, they look like. He's wearing black trousers and a pale blue shirt. Seems a bit strange, seeing him without full 'business armour'. I stop just in from the door while Ms Graves approaches him. She whispers something and holds out the card I gave her. I see his head turn slightly towards it before he turns around completely and slowly walks towards me.

"Good evening Orange Lantern. Or may I call you Paul?"

"Be my guest, Mister Luthor. My name isn't a secret."

"And neither is mine. Please, call me Lex." He extends his right hand to me and I shake it. "I'm glad that your colleagues weren't able to warn you off."

"They.. expressed some reservations, certainly." Only time I've been glad that Superman tries not to have anything to do with us. Diana at least thought that my assessment of the risks was accurate.

"Mercy, would you mind..?" She nods and walks out of the room, closing the door behind her.

"I have to say, I'm a little curious as to why you've invited me here."

"Really? Quite aside from saving my life during the missile attack, your assistance in promoting peace in Rhelasia has already earned LexCorp in excess of twenty million dollars as part of the peace dividend." He stops for a moment and looks at me expectantly.

"I'm.. glad that's working out so well. LexCorp is certainly well placed to provide..." He dips his head with a chuckle. "What?"

"The reaction your associate Red Arrow had during the conference was more in line with what I've come to expect. Sometimes it seems that LexCorp can't operate anywhere without a superhero taking exception to it."

"I rather thought it was just Superman you had.. poor relations with."

"No, he's just the most notable. And the Justice League's UN mandate makes stopping him through legal mechanisms a little more problematic than most. Tell me, do you aim to join that august body yourself?"

"Oh, not any time soon. I'm only.. four months through a year long probation, and given what happened last week..."

His eyes narrow slightly. "Yes, I wanted to ask about that. Did you really.. spin the moon..." He raises his right hand, index finger extended, and makes a circling motion.

"Yes, that was me. I put it back."

"I wasn't aware that power rings had that sort of raw power."

"As a rule, they don't."

"Do you simply have a.. knack, for it?"

Hm. Giving information away is usually a bad idea, buuut... I do want to work with him in future. And it wouldn't be that hard for him to notice that I won't be utilising the same levels of power in future that I did last week. "You remember what I said about not swallowing an energy field larger than your head?"

A small frown. "That it tends to make a person... Ah. Was there a reason for you to disregard your own -quite sound- advice?"

"There is always some special case,

time or place,

to forget,

etiquette."

"Precisely how large an energy field..?"

"About the size of the universe. Fortunately it was fairly diffuse. And not hostile."

"I suppose that explains the New York.. event. Congratulations on your entry into the Billboard Top One Hundred by the way."

I blink stupidly. "Nnno."

"You hadn't heard? You may want to ask Ms Colbert to phone the relevant record company, I'm sure you're due some royalties."

"I'd.. really rather not."

"Can I assume that the 'eye constructs' were also your doing?"

"Yes, but those were actually useful. I was able to use them to find Ra's al Ghul, and what was left of his command structure is currently being held in a very secure location awaiting trial."

"This, following on from the League's attack on that place in Ecuador. There can't be much of the League of Shadows left."

"Not as far as I know, no. We missed the man himself, and I'm not sure what happened to his daughter Talia, but I think the League of Shadows can pretty much be written off as a functioning organisation."

"We'll just have to hope that you are right. And I wouldn't worry about Ra's. When criminals like him experience a turn around in fortunes such as he has, it's remarkable how often former allies turn on them in their moment of weakness. Add to that all of the politicians he was blackmailing who will now want him permanently silenced, and I fully expect that problem will be taken care of presently." He pauses for a moment. "The energy you mentioned, you seem to be functioning normally to me. Were you able to expel it?"

"It would be more true to say that we came to terms. Not sure I'd want to go through that again, though."

"That sounds like a wise decision. Before my other guests arrive-" His arm goes around my shoulders and I allow him to lead me over to the picture he had been studying. "-I wanted to find out what you made of this."

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29th October

19:07 GMT -5

"I'm not really an art person." And I'm really not. I'm looking at a watercolour of a street scene. Looks... I don't know, could be anywhere in Europe and any when in the first part the twentieth century. I say that due to the style of the car and the fact that there's only one of them. A couple of open topped horse drawn carriages. The art style... Pass. Qualitywise it looks okay, far better than I could do but not something I'd expect to find in Lex Luthor's home.

"First impression?"

"Frankly? I'm not sure why it's here. If I saw it in a hotel I'd walk straight past it."

"I'll admit, the artist wasn't nearly as talented as he believed himself to be."

Lex wouldn't be showing me this for no reason. I peer a little closer. "I think... Are the people less detailed than the background? I'd expect it to be the other way around." No, more than that. I was sort of assuming that it was a stylistic convention, but they actually look misshapen.

"Art critics have tended to agree with you on that score, though they're usually less polite about it."

"Is this.. some sort of investment? Is the artist about to become really popular, and this is going to shoot up in value?"

"I rather hope not. It has a certain.. rarity value -perhaps surprisingly so given how prolific the artist was- but I don't think I'd ever sell it."

"Were the rest better than this?" Oh. That might... "Some sort of personal connection? It's not one of yours is it. Or-?"

He seems to find that idea amusing. "No, no. I have been known to sketch upon occasion but I've never had any real interest in creating art myself. Perhaps if you had a closer look?"

I'll- Oh. The street sign's in.. German? Or it could just be a German sounding name. "Central or Eastern Europe. Can't tell much from the clothes, the detail's not there. Car's got a curved roof rather than a square Model T style roof or a soft top... Between twenties and sixties? Later than that there'd be more cars. No obvious communist symbology..." I shake my head. Whatever the lesson is supposed to be, it's getting lost on me. Did the artist sign it? I take a look at the bottom. It's a bit worn but I can just take a step back in shock! I mean, I knew he painted but I never thought I'd see...

"For some reason the Defense Department keeps every one of his paintings they ever got hold of in a warehouse in Delaware. Given what else he did with his life, I'd understand if they had them destroyed. I'd understand if they sold them, or exhibited them. But, instead, all they do is accrue dust and consume taxpayer money. No one wants to make the decision. Bureaucratic inertia at its most depressing."

"This... This... It's a bit of a risk, isn't it? I mean, if the Jewish Anti-Defamation League ever found out you were showing one of these..."

"An embarrassing oversight. The painting was acquired as part of a job lot and.. I leave the task of decorating the interior of the LexCorp Tower to an external company."

A rehearsed excuse, but there's no way he'd take a risk like that without a better reason. "Why do you... I mean, I can't believe for a second you share his politics..."

"Of course not." He's standing besides me now, examining the picture again. "Have you ever thought about how history might have been changed if he'd met with more success in his preferred field?"

"Not really, I've played Red Alert. Without a strong leader Germany struggles through the thirties and forties while the Soviet Union reorganises, most likely invading the west sometime before nineteen fifty."

"You don't think someone else could have managed the situation just as well?"

"They didn't need a manager, they needed a unifying ideology and a charismatic leader. If there'd been someone else who could do the job as well as him, they'd have done it."

"I'm not so sure. There were a few people on the far right who might have been able to assume the role. If not.. things would certainly have been a good deal more dicey during the thirties, but Hindenburg or Papen might well have been able to pull things together without concerted Nazi opposition."

"It-. Maybe. I don't-. Why do you have an Adolf Hitler in your gallery?"

"Mostly, because I was curious. What sort of imagery would be produced by such a clearly depraved individual?"

"Low quality water colours. I guess evil really is banal."

"You know, when Superman first became.. active in Metropolis, I did find it somewhat aggravating. Not his power precisely, there'd been people who could fly since before the Second World War, and people with super strength earlier still. It was the way people responded to him. On the day he stopped his first armed robbery a full two thirds of the city went to work for me, directly or indirectly." He pauses for a moment. "And what made the news? Our work on fullerene tube circuitry? The bacterial strains we're creating which eat industrial pollution? The restoration work on the Museum of Natural History, made possible due to a LexCorp endowment? No." His head is tilted down slightly, his eyes a little unfocused. "Some guy in a cape, with his underwear outside of his tights."

"He doesn't do that anymore."

Lex turns his head and raises an eyebrow. "Stop robberies?"

"Wear his pants outside his leggings. They had a bit of an accident.. last week." He gives me a curious look. "I always thought they looked stupid too."

"I'm sure your medal for services to fashion is in the mail. Anyway, off the back of that frustration I ended up sinking a wasteful amount of money into armaments intended to allow the Metropolis Police Department to keep up with him. The press had a field day with that." Phillip Karnowsky, aka 'Barrage'. Lex Luthor's first totally-not-an-assassination-attempt on Superman. "They still use my equipment, but do you see that in the papers?"

"You know that the Daily Planet is basically a tabloid, right? In the British sense of the word? Superheroes are flashy, high impact, and this was happening in their city. Rational perspective didn't really come into it."

He looks at the painting again. "Hitler had relatively few strengths and many weaknesses, but he was living in a time and a place where he could make those strengths count and where the weaknesses didn't matter. At least, not in the short term. It was this painting which made me realize that the problem wasn't Superman, not really. Bread and circuses have always drawn the crowds, and I can't deny that he makes the more appealing clown." Petty. "When people see a figure like that, one who seems to stand up above the common man, their very evolutionary history encourages them to follow and obey. That story you gave me, 'How to Succeed in Evil'. Do you remember the part where Edwin wonders why people aren't more horrified by the actions of the Cromoglodon, only to listen to an interview where a local man empathises with his rage and experienced vicarious satisfaction through the destruction he caused?"

I nod.

"I laughed out loud when I heard that. It's so obvious. Superman didn't earn his abilities, he was born with them. And if an accident of birth is all that separates the man on the street from the demigod floating overhead.. then it's just too bad, isn't it? You can't compete with it because Destiny simply didn't choose you. Regularise it, as you and I are seeking to, and.. what was it the narrator said at Excelsior's press conference? They don't want you to bring their heroes down to their level. I can't be that shining, empty symbol, I'm just all too Human. In a world where even a man like the Joker has a fan club, I came to see that I shouldn't take it so personally. It wasn't as if we were directly competing with one another. Superman can fight the good fight all he wants, but he doesn't appear to be inclined to clean up refuse, run industry or balance the national budget. When the Appellaxians' attack was dealt with by the nascent Justice League, it occurred to me that if it hadn't been Superman, it would have been someone else. Some other super.. powered individual. And, upon reflection, I think it's far better for the world that it was Superman rather than..." He waves his right hand.

"Socialist Red Guardsman?"

"Among others. We've been quite fortunate with our super powered defenders over the years."

I've heard that idea before. "Plekhanov's idea of the beginner in history."

He glances at me before returning his attention to the picture. "Yes. Working patiently for the common good each day just isn't exciting."

"So.. you.. don't have a problem with Superman anymore?"

"I wouldn't go that far. When I.. got over the personal aspect of it and started to think about it more dispassionately, I realized that many of my concerns were still valid. Particularly when the budget for the Metropolis Special Crimes Unit was slashed in response to his activities." I hadn't known that had happened. I'll have to check that claim tomorrow. "I am simply not comfortable relying for our defense on a small number of apparently irreplaceable individuals. Or with the idea that mere 'normal' people could not hope to play a role in our planet's defense. That was why I was so glad that you brought the Danner Formula to my attention. If a man like Hugo Danner had come to me, instead of trying to take over Brazil... Well. Who knows what might have happened."

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29th October

19:11 GMT -5

"I think I can guess. I did see your research centre in India."

"Yes. You'll no doubt be pleased to know that we've improved security substantially since your visit."

"I'd blooming hope so. I mean, I'm glad you're doing the research but I don't really want to have to fight uberrats again."

"Uberra-? Oh, I see. No, as I understand it Doctor Munro is no longer performing tests on rats." That's not as reassuring as I think he means it to be.

"I'm interested in how the Danner Formula works myself. I hope you don't mind, but I handed a sample of it over to an alchemist for analysis."

"An alchemist?" He chuckles. "I think I'll survive."

"Lex, I have a power ring. I've analysed the Formula completely. There is nothing in its chemistry which explains the effect it has on foetal development. This is something that hasn't made sense to me since I got here; you know magic works. Everyone knows magic works. And yet-" I spread my arms. "-hardly anyone uses it."

"I took your point about power generation, but convincing investors or shareholders-."

"Biotechnology, then. Atlanteans have the ability to regrow entire organs now, and as far as I know artificial organs are still years off."

"I have tried making overtures towards Atlantis. Unfortunately, my point of contact was Prince Orm..." Ah. Would he have known..? No way to be sure. As Garth pointed out, lots of people dealt with Orm. "Getting researchers from elsewhere is proving to be somewhat problematic."

"Do you know what the name of the city with the highest concentration of magic users in the western world is?"

"No. Somewhere in Australia, perhaps?"

"London. If you like I could talk to some people for you."

"That would be helpful. I hadn't realised you moved in those sorts of circles."

"It's a recent development."

He frowns. "You only started interacting with London dwelling magic users since moving to the United States?"

"Um, sort of? That wasn't.. really..."

"You said 'since you got here'. I assumed that you were referring to the US."

"Oh, no. I realise it sounds a little strange, but I arrived on this planet from a parallel Earth about four months ago, and I've been scurrying to catch up ever since."

Another glance. "I've heard stranger tales. What distinguishing characteristics..?"

"No magic, no superpowers. There's a load of minor differences spiralling from that, but they're the main ones."

"Gracious. You must have found our Earth a little strange."

I shrug. "I had popular fiction to work off. It's not the fact that things like that are possible, it's the logical inconsistencies in their use. I mean, so Superman gets born with the ability to fly, punch through steel plate and whatever. Captain Marvel can do nearly the same thing, and it's public knowledge that his powers are magic based. And yet, Cadmus clones Superman and no one researches the magic which might allow them to replicate Marvel's abilities. Biotechnology firms spend millions trying to work out how to give people the metahuman ability to create fire when any competent student of elemental magic would learn how to conjure fire within months, if they applied themselves. I thought it might have been religion, but apparently the Catholic Church doesn't have a problem with it..."

"American Protestant denominations have traditionally been less understanding and all major versions of Islam feel the same way. I can see that it would seem odd to an outsider.. and now that I hear you describe it, I'm a little puzzled myself. Are you.. sure.. that the formula is alchemical?"

"Sure? I can't be sure until the analysis is complete, but I can't think of anything else it could be."

"These.. London magic users. Are they of the robe and hat variety, or..?"

"I think there's.. some ritual clothing, but for the most part they dress sensibly. I mean, it's not like they could completely isolate themselves from the modern world, after all."

"It does produce a rather amusing mental image, doesn't it? I'll give you a phone number to pass on before you leave. Speaking of Cadmus, I had a rather strange conversation with Batman about that earlier this month. I say conversation, he mostly limited himself to vague threats and insinuations. As it is indeed 'PR poison' I haven't become directly involved in its operations but I have promoted James Harper to the position of Operations Manager and I don't intend to try to second guess him. I hope that -unlike me- the League feel that he can be trusted."

I'm not sure that anyone who was involved in Cadmus should still be there, whatever the courts said on the matter. A security chief who can't spot mind control isn't much better than one who is actively criminal, to my mind. And that's saying nothing of the enslavement of the Genomorphs. But if American law doesn't recognise AIs I can't imagine that getting recognition for a novel organic intelligence would be a quick process. "I can't speak for the League, but if the alternative was you..."

"Quite. Now, about the-. About.. my son."

I clench. "What about him?"

"Batman appeared to think I intended to... I do appreciate that the boy's life to date has not been anything close to normal. Please reassure the League that I have no intention of trying to snatch him away from whatever stability he's been able to find, but-."

The door opens and we both turn around. Ms Graves walks in, followed by a woman in a long, conservatively cut pale green dress. She has short black artfully tussled hair and I'd guess... Arabic appearance? It's subtle.. mixed parentage, perhaps? She looks familiar, but I can't quite place her.

"So good to see you, my dear." Lex walks over to her, takes her right hand and kisses it.

"Lex." Her eyes move to me. "And this is..?" I take a few steps closer.

"Orange Lantern two eight one four. Pleased to meet you." I extend my right hand.

There's a slightly awkward pause as she stares into my eyes. "You don't recognise me, do you?"

I shake my head. "I'm sorry, I see a lot of faces. You look familiar, but..."

"Since you are the man responsible for uniting me with my sister I will forgive you. I am-."

I blink. "Nyssa Raatko."

She smiles at me and takes my hand. "You do remember. When she knocked on my door I was quite astonished. She really did not want to believe I was who you said I was."

Her great grandson -a man named Vasily Arketov- is still alive at present, and in the comics it was his death which switched her into full crazy mode. As far as I know she's fairly rational at the moment, though she isn't usually particularly sociable.

Ms Graves whispers something to Lex, who nods and then looks at us. "Would you please excuse me? The head chef needs to talk to me about something."

I tear my eyes from Ms Raatko. "Oh yes, of course." He nods at me, nods more deeply to Ms Raatko, then follows Ms Graves out. "Were you able to convince her?"

"Yes. I still keep a few relics from the old days in my home."

I checked, and Talia wasn't part of the most recent round of League of Shadow arrests. "Do you know where she is now?"

"I believe that she intended to return to the house of her lover, the Batman."

...

"Well he's been keeping that blooming quiet!"

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29th October

19:15 GMT -5

"I'm going to have to talk to Robin about his stepmother vetting procedures. They clearly need improving."

She raises her eyebrows. "Are you implying that my sister is unworthy?"

"She has a.. certain amount of baggage. Did she say why they broke up the first time?"

"Yes, because the Batman refused to join our father. Since he is no longer an issue, I fail to see why there should be a problem."

"She did quite a lot of stuff while she was working for your father that.. some people might find concerning."

"So did I, unless you think the fact that they happened a long time ago means that they count for nothing."

"You left him under your own power. Plus, the Justice League didn't actually get Ra's, so he's still out there somewhere."

"My sister did not leave our father simply because the League of Shadows was being destroyed. If she had still believed in his cause she would have stood beside him to the last. Your.. diatribe against him when you encountered her in Paris affected her more than you appear to have appreciated."

"Really? I.. sort of assumed that I was wasting my time."

"I particularly liked the bit where you called Ra's al Ghul, seven-hundred-year-old master of the League of Shadows, a 'nutter'."

"Yeah." I wrinkle my nose. "Probably not the most sensible thing I could have said, but the situation was really winding me up. How'd you feel about the bit where I shot him in the head?"

Astonishment, but happy astonishment. "She didn't mention that!"

Ah. If we're going to talk about this in Lex Luthor's home... I pick one of John's most recent gifts out of my right trouser pocket and hold it out to her. "If we're going to talk shop, would you mind holding one of these?"

She takes the small dark-grey stone from me, and for half a second there's a slight distortion in the air. I tested them before coming here and they certainly appeared to work. "I don't recognise the runes."

"I got it from a magician friend of mine. He described it as 'sort of like a scrying ward, but for sound'. It should prevent eavesdropping, lip reading or sound recording."

"Useful. But I'm more interested in hearing about how you shot my contemptible dog of a father in the head."

"It was just before the League hit Infinity Island, the League of Shadows ex-headquarters. I wanted to know where his Lazarus Pit was and it seemed to be the most expedient way to find out." Oh, that's right, she can make them, can't she?

"You shot him in the head and... Why did you need to know where his Lazarus Pit was if you did not intend to prevent him from using it?"

"So I could steal it." She lets out a peal of laughter, covering her mouth with her hands. "Well, technically, it's an arcane artefact used by a supervillain to enable criminality so the Justice League has the authority to confiscate it.. but basically steal it."

"And you did that.. before the Flash..?"

"The Flash didn't get there until after I shot the place up. " I shrug. "The Justice League didn't know about it."

"Then how did you find it?"

"Finding stuff is something power rings are really good at." Out of habit I start to raise my left hand, then remember myself and lower it. "Once I had Talia's DNA.. I was pretty well motivated. Scanning for Ra's wasn't that hard."

"What had he done to so enrage you?"

"He sent a man made of clay to attack Gotham City. I'd had to.. well, I thought at the time that I'd killed him. He's.. he pretty much survived, as it happened..."

"You had never killed someone before?"

"No. Far as I know, I still haven't. I don't have a.. the same level of resistance to the idea that some of my contemporaries do, but I think that if you're going to kill someone you should be sure that they deserve it. On an individual level, I mean. Besides, if you've got a power ring it's usually just as easy to take a person down without killing them." She nods, and takes another look at the stone. "If you don't mind me asking, what brings you here? I mean, laughing at Ra's' misfortune is fun, but we're quite a way from your home here."

"Lex.. wants me to work for him, at his research centre in India. My father shared his knowledge of alchemy with me before we parted company, and I have studied further on my own since. I wanted to ask you if you thought-."

"The cheeky bastard!" She recoils slightly at my outburst, then turns her right palm upwards and shakes her head, looking for an explanation. "He was telling me how hard it was to study magic, and he'd already made you an offer! Have you any idea how hard it is to find good alchemists?"

"Do you think he's untrustworthy, then?"

"That's... This was probably just a joke at my expense. Generally? I don't trust him to do what I'd like him to. I trust him to serve his own interests in a reasonably rational manner. If you come to an agreement with him he'll probably stick with it, but don't make assumptions about anything not covered by it."

"Does he have no principles at all?"

"Um. His desire to bring augmentation to the masses appears to be genuine. Beyond that, I couldn't say with any certainty. Does it make him money, bring him power? Can he get away with it?"

"He had given me the impression that your working relationship was rather better than that."

"But did he tell you it was?" She thinks for a moment, then shakes her head. "Classic Luthor. Still, if you just want to spit in Ra's' eye, he did try and kill Lex last month. It's not a bad place to start from."

"I was hoping for a simple 'yes' or 'no'."

"Sorry. I mean, if it's this or keep sitting in your lighthouse, I'd definitely take it. I'd offer you something myself but I just don't have the infrastructure that Lex does, and despite my urging the Justice League hasn't got itself into research and development yet. Unless you feel like working in Atlantis..?"

She smiles. "I don't think the water would be good for my complexion." Then the smile disappears. "Also, I am dependent on Lazarus Pits in the same way that my father is, and I do not believe that I could create one underwater."

Maybe I should talk to Batman about it when he comes up for air? I'm sure that Talia would enjoy spending some more time with her sister. Speaking of family... "How is Captain Arketov doing?"

"I suppose it would be too much to hope that I could keep any secrets from you. He is well." She sighs. "Since I age little I have to be somewhat remote so as not to invite suspicion among his peers. He knows who I truly am, but the only pictures he has of me are from when I allowed myself to visibly age."

If he stays alive, no kryptonite bullet. "If you'd like to tell me where he is, I'd be happy to aug-."

"Captain Arketov has agreed to join LexCorp as head of security of our Gdańsk facility." Lex closes the door quietly behind him. I hadn't even heard him come in. "A good deal safer than the Moscow City Police Department, and noticeably better paid."

Darn it. Giving him supernatural fortitude and regeneration would make him more likely to survive, but Luthor's done more or less the same thing just by giving him a cushy job. I nod, more to myself than to him. "I can see that a man would have to get up fairly early in the morning to catch you napping."

"My dear Orange Lantern, I would advise that man to abstain from sleep entirely."

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29th October

19:19 GMT -5

"My final guest has arrived, and the chef has informed me that he's ready to begin serving. If you'll accompany me?" Lex waits a second for us both to turn to face him before half turning to open the door for us, bowing slightly as he does so. My eyes flick to the grey stone just visible in Ms Raatko's right hand. I doubt that Lex will listen to the recording -and there undoubtedly is one- until after we've left but when he does he will see the stone and I'd rather have it back. I pass through the door immediately after her and step to her right side as she turns towards the table, tapping her right hand with my left as I do so. I breathe a sigh of relief as she gets the message and drops the stone into my palm, our bodies blocking Lex's view. Back into my pocket it goes.

Two waiters stand behind two free chairs at the sides of the table, while Ms Graves stands behind the larger seat at the head of the table which I presume to be reserved for Lex. The seat at the foot of the table is already occupied by Doctor Munro, who is in the process of rising from it. "Orange Lantern. I hadn't realised Lex had invited you as well. And who is your lovely companion?"

He stood because he was being joined by a lady. I suppose he might be about old enough for that to be correct formal behaviour. "Doctor Arnold Munro, Ms Nyssa Raatko. Ms Raatko, Doctor Munro."

Ms Raatko walks towards him as he steps out from the table to greet her. She offers her right hand and he takes it and kisses it delicately on the knuckles. Wait, was I supposed to do that? "Tell me Doctor, what is your field of study?"

"Well, biochemistry, though lately..."

Lex walks up besides me, and I turn to him. "Doctor Munro isn't really comfortable in large groups, but he can be quite charming in a one to one conversation. Old world manners."

"And since you want them to work together, you want them to get on. It might be awkward if you just flew her out to India. And me being here helps put Ms Raatko in a more receptive frame of mind."

"That's.. part of the reason. You also made quite a good impression on Arnold. Of course, I wouldn't want you to believe that my gratitude wasn't genuine. I am rather fond of my life."

"But there's no reason not to have this meeting serve other ends as well. I take my hat off to you. I'm kicking myself for not approaching Ms Raatko earlier myself."

"No sour grapes, I hope?"

"Of course not. I want alchemy to be part of mainstream Human science as much as you do, and if the League can't be bothered with it, why not?"

This earns me a sidelong smile. "Oh, if only your colleagues shared your attitude. Nyssa, Arnold, shall we take our seats?" He walks around to his as Ms Graves pulls it out from under the table. Doctor Munro returns to his and the waiter pulls out the chair on the near side for Ms Raatko. I walk around behind Doctor Munro to take the far chair which the other waiter pulls out for me. I have literally never had someone do that for me before. Do I just sort of squat in midair and wait for them to bring it forwards? Or would it make more sense to just perch on the edge and then shuffle it in myself once they've left? I compromise, sitting down after a short delay and getting enough of it under me that it's comfortable.

Right, next step: serviette. It's there, folded into a fan just past the forks. I suppose Lex's idea of informal is somewhat different to mine. Diana was quite clear that it wasn't to be used as a bib, and that I should only use it as a lap cover if Lex did and it doesn't look like he is. The serving staff who were in the room retreat into the kitchen. It looks like Ms Graves is sticking around, though not joining in. Alright, commencing operation 'don't make an arse of myself'.

Lex turns his head in my direction. "Paul, I couldn't help but notice your rather eye-catching belt. I believe it's.. the same design as the young heroine from Dakota City.. Rocket, I think her name is.. generally wears. Are the two of you acquainted?"

"Not as yet, though I imagine that we will be before too long."

"Do you share a tailor?"

"No, it's a piece of xenotechnology her mentor gave her. Which I proceeded to copy. Much harder to use than a power ring, and much less flexible."

"Which I noticed you aren't wearing. I do understand that your colleagues have concerns about your safety. I wouldn't have demanded that you leave it behind."

"After the craziness last week I thought it best to demonstrate to my mentor that I could be relied upon not to routinely alter the movement of planetary bodies because I wanted everyone to be able to look at them from another angle."

"Wait." Doctor Munro looks thoughtful for a moment. "I remember hearing something on the radio about Jupiter's Great Red Spot disappearing almost overnight. You don't mean to say..?"

"Yess, that was me."

"The only Lantern I'd ever met before was a member of the Justice Society. I think I've been operating under a false idea of what those rings are capable of."

"Almost anything, given sufficient power and focus. Last week I had an encounter with an elemental which resulted in me getting near unlimited amounts of both."

Ms Raatko frowns. "You truly had unlimited power?"

"Not far off. Why so puzzled?"

"I'm not sure what I would expect from a person in that position, but..."

Lex jumps in. "Wouldn't you say that making a giant cake was a waste of an opportunity?"

"Getting power like that altered my perspective. Rational application of that power didn't really come into it. Orange power rings work on avarice, and what I really wanted was for my friends to get whatever they wanted. Of course, they were too busy freaking out about the changes in my behaviour to present me with an itemised list."

The waiting staff return bearing four silver trays covered by silver lids. They take up station next to each of us before removing the lids and placing the soup bowls before us. It's tomato orange with visible pieces of vegetable artfully arranged in the centre, topped by a sprig of something or other. It's not giving off any heat.. Gazpacho! "Hah!" I quickly check the cutlery and find the soup spoon in the expected location.

Lex raises an eyebrow. "Something amusing?"

"There was a.. television comedy series I used to watch. 'Gazpacho soup' were the last words of one of the characters. He was remembering an incident when he was invited to dine with his employers and didn't realise that gazpacho soup was supposed to be served cold. He felt that instructing the staff to send it back to be warmed up had put a permanent black mark on his record." Lex 'hmms' in a slightly amused tone as I pick up the spoon and take a small amount of the soup onto it. "So, Doctor Munro, had any more trouble with escaped rats?"

He swallows. "Oh no, we've stopped using rats for testing. It clearly works, after all, though I'd never considered combining it with other augmentative chemicals as the Brain did. I also wanted to thank you for putting me in touch with Tommy and Tuppence."

I'm glad that went as well as it did. Thomas I expected would be interested to meet him, but why Tuppence was alright about talking to him but not me I have no idea. "Have you had any luck in working out where their mother got the Danner Formula sample from?"

He shakes his head. "Hasn't, um, hasn't really been a priority. I think, err, I think Lex..." He looks over to his employer.

"I have some people looking into it, though, frankly, I doubt they'll find anything. It's infuriating, really; there can't be that many samples of the Danner Formula left that aren't owned by either Paul or LexCorp, and someone delivers a dose to a woman apparently at random and doesn't bother keeping track of them."

"I'm sorry." Ms Raatko holds her spoon just below her lips. "What is this 'Danner Formula'?"

"It's what I want you to work on with Doctor Munro. Doctor?"

"The Danner Formula is the work of my grandfather. Without wanting to go into too much detail, if injected into a pregnant woman it will result in her child being born with supernatural strength and endurance, approximately on a par with Princess Diana of Themiscyra. I... I would like to see it distributed as widely as possible, and Mis-. And Lex has offered to fund the research." She looks very interested. "More than just the formula itself, it might hold the secrets to unlocking all manner of supernatural abilities if we had someone who knew how to study the alchemical aspects that have been stymieing our efforts so far. Getting approval when we don't understand the basic mechanism..."

She nods, eyes down. "I think, Doctor, that I should take a look at your research."

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30th October

08:57 GMT -5

"So as you can imagine, I was pretty glad to see him." Mister King looks a lot like Captain Metropolis from Watchmen. The older version. He's not fat, but he's definitely put on weight since Infinity Incorporated broke up. The suit he's wearing is designed to conceal it somewhat, and he has kept up his exercise regime. Too much rich food, I suppose.

"I can't believe they put you in an asylum for being telepathic!" He, M'gann and I are lurking by the zeta tubes in the training room while Kon, Donna, Artemis and Robin warm up for their first combined super strength combat lesson with Diana.

"They didn't know I was telepathic, they just knew I was hearing voices in my head. Statistically, in a Human that's far more likely to indicate some sort of mental disorder than it is to indicate that they can really hear what other people are thinking. And once they got some drugs in my system... Well, I became symptomatic."

"But why did your parents let them do that?"

I'm only half listening to their conversation. Batman's coming to talk to me. I stare at the zeta tube at parade rest. I'm in my armour, which isn't particularly comfortable to wear without the ring at the best of times.

"Mom thought I was ill and she wanted me to get help. Dad came to get me out as soon as he heard, but he was a career criminal and him and Mom weren't in touch anymore. So, anyway, he created a telepathic illusion of a fire, -" M'gann cringes slightly, but I don't think he noticed it. "-waited until they evacuated everyone and basically just walked away with me. Spent the rest of the week nursing me back to health."

The ring and my lantern are still in the box over with Diana, over on the other side of the room. She said that Batman would have a decision for me today. I want to stay here. If he's got conditions, I'll accept them. Heck.. yes, I even want it more than I want to maintain secrecy about my age and the whole DCU thing. If he asks for a full explanation, I'll provide him with one. I'd rather not have to, of course...

"Was that the first time you'd met him?"

"Yeah. I'd seen his pictures in the newspapers a couple of times when I was growing up, but I hadn't really thought anything of it. We were together about a month, him teaching me and us getting to know each other. Finally learned how to shut all the voices out."

"Had you always heard what everyone around you was thinking?"

"No, started kicking in when I was about nine or ten." He squints as he tries to remember. "Only heard a few whispers at first. Didn't get really bad until I was fourteen."

She nods. "Martians don't usually worry about that, but after what happened Wednesday I think maybe I should learn how to do that too."

I apologised to her once I got back from London. She said it didn't matter, but I could feel the echo of her fear when she spoke telepathically and I could see the yellow that still clung to her.

"Look, ah... Do you have a living area or something? I remember what it was like when Nuklon and Fury used to spar together and I don't think this room is going to stay a safe place for us fragile people for much longer."

"Yes, of course. Right this way. Paul? Paul?"

"Mm?"

"It'll be okay." **[Reassurance]** I nod. She's probably right. If he were planning on doing anything punitive the box wouldn't be here, but that doesn't stop me worrying. "Do you.. want me to wait around?"

"No, no. I'll be fine." I don't think she believes me. "Go on. Enjoy your lesson." She nods uncertainly and leads Mister King towards the lifts.

"Recognised, Batman, zero two."

Here we go then. I come to attention as he steps into the room proper.

"Orange Lantern. Do you have anything to report from your meeting with Lex Luthor?"

"I believe he was able to convince Nyssa Raatko to enter his service. From what was said I don't think he's pursuing other forms of arcane research."

"That would be Talia al Ghul's sister, correct?"

"Yes sir. She claimed to be an accomplished alchemist, and if she's still alive after this much time she at least knows how to make Lazarus Pits."

"Did anything else of note occur?"

"He showed me a painting by Adolf Hitler." Batman pulls his head back a little in surprise. "I think he was trying to make a point about the folly of mindlessly following heroic figures, but it was rather lost on me."

He thinks for a moment. "Owning paintings by Hitler is not itself a crime, even if it is a little disturbing. It seems unlikely to me that he has those sort of far right leanings." I nod. "Who else was in attendance?"

"Ms Raatko and Doctor Munro. Ms Graves was there, but she wasn't eating and didn't say much. I'll have the recording transcribed for you before the end of the day." Lex might not have been recording everything but I certainly was.

"Good." He looks across the room, where Diana is demonstrating the ineffectiveness of striking unanchored super tough opponents by punching Kon in the stomach, sending him flying across the room into the far wall. He gets up, brushes himself off and leaps back. "We also need to discuss your ring."

"Yes sir."

"Martian Manhunter reports no lingering ill effects from being branded. Are you still able to make use of the ability?"

"I assume so, I don't know. That was the first time I'd used it."

"Can you call your ring from here?"

"Probably."

"Do so."

"Sir, it.. hasn't been a week yet."

"Orange Lantern, almost the first thing you did after regaining your senses was give up your ring. I am not concerned about you repeating last week's behavior of your own volition. What I am concerned about is you being overwhelmed by the Ophidian again. I want to be sure that you retain your usual level of self control when you make contact with it."

"You do realise that you're right next to me if I can't, sir?"

"Your views on unaugmented Humans aside I am quite capable of looking after myself, and if there really is a problem then Wonder Woman and Superboy are just across the room."

I nod. I don't need to close my eyes or gesture, the ring just rises into the air and carries the box and lantern with it. I float it around the edge of the room until it arrives in the air next to me, then take hold of it with my hands and lower it to the floor. I open it. The lantern inside is glowing even brighter than it used to while storing two charges, but it doesn't seem to have decayed since I handed it over to Diana. The ring.. it's fully charged, but it doesn't look unusual in any way. I pluck it from its resting place with my right hand and then straighten up, holding it a short distance from my left ring finger to give Batman a chance to change his mind. He doesn't say anything. Okay then... It flies from my right hand into its accustomed place on my left ring finger, face inwards. The sigils on my armour light up immediately, I feel cooler and the stickiness of my sweat disappears, but I don't otherwise feel any different. I turn my left hand palm up and generate a sigil construct. No, it's still working.

"Do you feel any different?"

"Yes. I used to get a rush when I put it back on or recharged it. This time, nothing."

"What is your current charge?"

Ring?

Charge is currently at one hundred percent.

"One hundred percent."

"Try recharging anyway. If nothing untoward happens you can consider yourself reinstated."

"Thank you sir." I hold out my left hand towards the lantern. "Recharge." A thin beam of orange light projected from the lantern's core strikes the ring. It doesn't feel of

I can hear you again.

anything, though I note the beam is much more focused than what it was before I used Guy's lantern's template to repair it. I shake my head at Batman. "Nothing again."

He nods, and offers me his right hand to shake. "Then welcome back to the team."

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30th October

19:34 GMT -5

"Give me back my pants!"

Artemis' cheeks flush red as she tries to hold down the ridiculously short skirt, though whether it's from rage or embarrassment I can't tell.

"It's part of her costume. It doesn't come with trousers."

"Looks good to me, babe. Aaarrrroooooo!"

"Uuugh!"

Artemis appears to be regretting accepting my offer to help with her Halloween costume. Wallace has gone with a wolfman headpiece. It's quite an impressive piece, actually. Kon is wearing ring-crafted bandages and pseudo-Egyp... Pseudo-Kahndaqi ornamentation. I even made it so that the bandages would have the same smell as actual mummification wraps. Wolf doesn't seem to think much of it.

"How about tights?" Okay, it was rage. I raise my hands in surrender as she stalks towards me. That costume doesn't come with a collar. "Cycle shorts?"

"Now!"

Ringmakeitso.

There's a brief orange glow around her.. her hips, and a pair of non-canonical white hot pants materialise, just visible under the hem of the skirt. She takes a quick look. "That's barely any better!"

"I'm sorry. Thigh socks would probably go with it, but... Would you rather I just tried something else?"

She tries tugging the skirt down, then gives up with a huff. "It's fine. What are you going as?"

"I'm not."

"What!? Why not?"

"It's an American holiday. I'm British. I don't do Halloween any more than I do Thanksgiving or Independence Day."

"It's just a party, Paul. What are you going to do instead?"

"Batman wants a chat with Kaldur and me, and I really need to get around to reclaiming the rest of my stuff from Guy."

"You could get your stuff from Guy any time. If the meeting with Batman finishes quickly you can still go."

Quite aside from the risk of being recognised, I really don't want to go to a party populated by teenagers. "I'll tell you what: if-."

"Recognised, Zatanna Zatara, A zero six."

M'gann looks around from admiring Kon's costume. "Hey Zatanna. Great costume!" A witch costume, really? Is she trying to reclaim the stereotype or something?

"Thanks! Are you.. going as a Martian?"

"Nooot exactly." M'gann takes a few steps away from the rest of us, holds out her arms and spreads her legs as her clothing and skin transform. First, her short skirt changes into a tattered floor length grey dress, t-shirt and jumper merging to form the bodice. Next, gloves in the same style appear on her hands and forearms as her skin changes to pale grey with heavy black eyeliner and lipstick. Lastly, a torn veil appears on her head, pulled back out of her face. "Grraaaaww!" She makes a grabbing monster gesture with her arms before resting them on her hips, satisfied with her transformation. Sort of a.. Corpse Bride thing?

"If what?"

I return my attention to Artemis. "If you'll celebrate Guy Fawkes Night with me next week."

Kon looks over to me. "Is that some sort of English holiday?"

"Yes. It commemorates a failed attempt four hundred years ago to blow up the Houses of Parliament during the State Opening. If it had succeeded they'd have killed the king, most members of the House of Lords and a lot of members of the House of Commons. The country would have been decapitated."

"What do you do?"

"Traditionally, in the evening, there's a firework display and bonfire. Toffee covered apples are consumed. The highlight of the celebration is the burning in effigy of the leader of the plot, a man named Guy Fawkes, and the Pope." Stares. "The Pope of the day, obviously. I can't say his name, it's the same as mine. If you're interested in the background I studied the Reformation at school and I'd be happy to talk you through it."

Artemis' face looks a little pained. "I.. think I'll give it a miss, thanks."

"Rightyho. I'm not much of a party animal anyway."

There's a degree of awkward shuffling, which is brought to an end by Captain Marvel emerging from one of the side tunnels. I think he's started occupying a room here. Wallace waves at him. "Ah, hey Cap. Any plans for Halloween?"

"I thought I'd take Adom for a look around Fawcett City. Y'know, since this is the one night of the year when he won't get attacked on sight for, y'know, looking like the other guy."

M'gann looks puzzled. "Couldn't he just wear something else?"

"He doesn't seem to like the idea." He really doesn't. Once we convinced him that distinctive costumes were de rigueur for people in our profession he point blank refused to wear anything else. He appears to consider it beneath him. I thought he was being unexpectedly easy going, but he's now familiar enough with the modern world to start expressing informed opinions. I honestly don't see him accepting Diana's hospitality for much longer. One bad news story from Kahndaq is all it would-.

"Recognised, Artemis, B zero eight, Zatanna Zatara, A zero six."

The zeta tubes flare as they disappear. Huh. Guess they didn't want to go to the dance thing either. I suppose not really knowing anyone there would take the fun out of it.

"Well, we should probably be going too." M'gann puts her right arm through Kon's left and I reach out and take Wolf from his right. "Have fun with your meeting."

"I'll try. Enjoy the party." M'gann, Wallace and Kon head towards the seldom used ground exit as Wolf realises that she's been moved and wakes up enough to try burrowing against my body. In a normal puppy that would be cute but I have to reinforce my environmental shield to stop her ripping the outer layer of my armour. I shift her so that she's lying up my chest, and she turns her head to the side in order to lick my face. I stroke her head in an attempt to get her to go back to sleep. The licking doesn't bother me as the ring can easily deal with it. No, she doesn't seem to be feeling tired. Is Batman a dog person? I don't remember seeing one in Wayne Manor. It would probably be best if I persuaded her to stay somewhere out of the way for the meeting. I'll go and find her basket and put her in it with a hot water bottle, that usually works.

I start walking, then remember that the ring is back on my finger. A flicker and I'm at the cupboard where we keep the hot water bottles, another and I'm in the kitchen, turning the tap on to fill it. A quick blast from a heating element construct later and it's up to temperature. Right, basket... I look across to the living area and see Teekl cowering below the basket's rim.

"Teekl? I've been looking for you." There's fear in her eyes. She's shaking. "Teekl, I'm not going to hurt you, you daft cat."

"Not like big orange snake!"

"The Ophidian is inside my lantern. It isn't possessing me anymore. You're perfectly safe." My cat behavioural awareness tells me that approaching will just cause her to bolt so I stay right where I am.

"Not like big orange snake!"

"You don't like the Ophidian, I understand. It isn't here. Sniff me. Your orange light sense should tell you that I'm me again."

My Agent is correct. We are no longer joined.

Teekl suddenly calms down, blinking at me. She must have taken a look. I'd thought that it would take longer than that. Not that I'm complaining. I walk over to her and rub her head. After a slight hesitation she leans into it. Good. Everything back to normal.

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30th October

20:16 GMT -5

I'm squatting in the air at chair height in one of the mountain's side rooms. Oh, I missed this. Hanging here, legs bent like I'm sitting on Mum's old kneeling chair but with the ring's flight system taking all of the weight. My back's slightly hunched and my hands are in my lap as I wait for Batman to start.

"Computer, secure the room."

There's a hiss as armoured blast doors close at the exits of the room and a clunk as the air vents close.

"Secured."

"Ooh, sir, before we start?" I float a grey stone each over to Kaldur and Robin on my left and Batman, Red Arrow and Red Tornado on the other side of the room. Shooould work on Tornado, but I'll use the ring to plant a listening device on an external wall just to check. They certainly covered my conversation with Nyssa. I remotely accessed his internal monitoring and the recording of our chat cuts out at the moment she touched the stone. Batman takes hold of his stone between his right thumb and forefinger, studies it for a moment and then looks at me for an explanation. "Scrying wards prevent remote viewing. These prevent remote listening. No one who can't see the speaker with their own eyes will be able to hear what they're saying."

"Was this created by your Atlantean contact?"

"No, by John Constantine. I'll show it to Sephtian next week and I should have an improved and.. smaller version available for League members-" I incline my head towards Red Arrow. "-and associates, within a fortnight."

Batman nods. "Useful." Then the thieving git slips it into his utility belt. It doesn't need skin contact to work but he could at least have asked. "I'll cut to it; do we believe there's a mole within the team?" I narrowly manage to avoid rolling my eyes.

Kaldur takes a step towards him. "I am convinced there is none. When Onyx claimed she had an inside source she was merely sowing dissent."

Robin sits up slightly in his chair. This room has plenty of chairs and I've got no idea why everyone else is standing up. "Her intel could easily have come from comparing notes with the other villains working for the 'Injustice League'." I glance left and, yes, he did the air quotes gesture.

"Kaldur and I did background checks on everyone after we first heard the accusation." I shake my head and shrug. "No evidence of malfeasance. There are other things we could do, but they're invasive and frankly.. paranoid."

"And think about it." Robin leans back with his hands behind his head. "If anyone was working with those creepoids..."

Kaldur inclines his head slightly. "...he or she would have betrayed us during our fight against them."

"I'm not convinced." Well of course mopey arrow isn't convinced. "Sure Robin, Aqualad and Kid Flash are above suspicion-"

"Thanks."

"-but I know Artemis isn't shooting straight." Isn't the only advantage of a bow over a gun that you don't have to shoot straight? "For starters, she's not Green Arrow's niece."

No shit Sherlock. Kaldur jerks his head around to stare at me. I shrug. "She has a secret identity. You said to just share information you needed, and you didn't need it."

"Your decision was correct." Batman nods slightly. "Though Artemis' relations may make her suspect, in the absence of specific evidence we have no reason to share her true identity without her consent."

"And what about you?" Red Arrow narrows his eyes at me. "We have no way of verifying anything you've told us about where you come from. And you've been getting friendly with Lex Luthor."

"Two points to consider in my defence. Firstly, I spent the week before last as a physical god. Assuming that I'd stayed true to whatever cause I was betraying you to, there was absolutely no reason for me not to off the lot of you. Believe me, it was well within our abilities. Secondly, Kaldur used the Lasso of Truth on me during our initial investigation. I don't remember exactly what I said-" I look at him for confirmation. "-but apparently it was quite convincing."

Kaldur thinks for a moment. "You said that you would only think it correct to betray the team in a situation where to do so would serve the greater good in a way that massively outstripped the harm done, and that you were aware of no such situation currently existing." Huh. Not exactly the declaration of camaraderie I was hoping for. "You also said that you were not capable of betraying Superboy, regardless of the situation." Orange light for the win. "Then you tried to explain some point of moral philosophy. Something about 'believing in the ideal and not the idol'? I'm afraid that by that stage you had become fairly incoherent."

I look at the others. "Well, I'm convinced."

"Then what about Miss Martian?" Red Arrow's really got the bit in his teeth at the moment. "She is Manhunter's niece, but he told Black Canary he has a few hundred nieces and nephews. And the first time he met M'gann was five months ago, when she stowed away on his last trip from Mars to Earth."

Hah! I grin. I didn't know that she'd done that. Kaldur remains impassive. "This changes nothing." He folds his arms across his chest. "I have fought side by side with these people. None, are traitors."

"Though.. there are techniques for bypassing agency. Kon was nearly the victim of one. Might be worth getting M'gann and Mister King to have a look at all of our brains." I think for a moment. "Actually, it wouldn't be a bad idea to make that a regular thing for all of us."

Kaldur thinks for a moment. "Members of the League of Shadows were routinely being issued with wards to block scrying. Might enemies with the capacity to use magic be gathering information that way?"

I look at Batman. "Please tell me this mountain's warded." A small shake of the head. Ah, poop. "Well, I could get someone in to fix that, but you might be happier if Mister Zatara did it instead. Scrying wards for League members -including when they're in their civilian identities- might also be a good idea. Aside from magic and telepathy... The greenies and I can scan for implants or nanotechnology. I suppose... Parallel universe duplicates? Are they a thing?"

Batman considers. "Though I haven't ever encountered one, your presence here suggests that they could be."

"Could the problem be on the League end?"

"I performed thorough background checks on every League member. All of them are loyal to the organization."

"A robotic engineer who had studied either myself or my brother or sister could duplicate our bodies, and we are not susceptible to telepathic interrogation." It's weird how someone Red Tornado's size can fade into the background just by being silent and stationary. "I have upgraded our security protocols to ensure that the technique our father used to ensure my siblings' obedience will no longer function."

"I don't suppose we managed to get Onyx during the last round of arrests?"

Batman shakes his head again. "Both she and Bane are still at large. We're monitoring his factory on Santa Prisca, but it doesn't appear to be in operation."

Robin leans forwards. "How about Brain? We know he had contact with both Wotan and the Ultra-Humanite."

"Gerard Shu-gel." He scowls at me.

"Nothing as yet, though all League members are on the alert for any information on their whereabouts." Silence descends. I can't think of anything to add to the discussion. After a moment Batman raises his head. "On the basis that we have no hard evidence, I think it would be best to proceed on the assumption that there is no mole. I'll ask Zatara to contact you with regards to the cave's arcane defenses. Dismissed."

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Displaced 1

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Displaced

1st November

21:09 GMT -4

I dash up the dingy theatre aisle, ignoring the stares from the other members of the audience. Behind me on the stage some wizened thespian witters through Prospero's lines. Listening to Shakespeare while wearing a power ring is a strange experience; Elizabethan English really isn't modern English and half the time the ring decides that it needs to be translated. That amusement was just about the only thing keeping me interested, which is probably why I was the one who noticed Ms Reilly get up and head for the exit. The body I built for her doesn't creak in the way that Red Tornado's does and it can move pretty darn fast. By the time I'd clambered past Mister Grant and Jay and Joan Garrick she had already left the auditorium. The ring can track her easily enough but I can't use it to just appear at her location with all of these people around.

I slow to a jog as I pass through the corridor to the main lobby. Funny thing, it's actually quite difficult for a group of superheroes to get together out of hours. One camera taking a picture of a group of people with a particular set of physical characteristics when they're spending time together, one person realising that those people bear a remarkable resemblance to another group... It's even worse when the group in question includes people like Diana, Jay and me who don't have secret identities. Jay can just about get away with it this far from Keystone City, Diana wore a shawl, coat and big dark glasses and I avoided wearing orange but one little burst of FTL and I blow it for Alan and the others.

Through the main door and out onto the street, turning left. Ms Reilly has slowed to a walking pace but is steadily heading away from the theatre, and not in the direction of the nearest zeta tube. Red Tornado is back in the mountain, so...

"Ms Reilly!"

She slows slightly and I hurry to catch up. Not many people on this street during performances and her name isn't really a risk factor. Would someone recognise her, and so me and then the others? I'd have thought not, but the risk... I really don't like this secrecy. She comes to a full stop as I catch up and move ahead of her. Her face is completely still. She has a program for generating organic Human facial expressions but she appears to have it deactivated. I watch her for a moment, hoping for a clue as to the cause of her behaviour.

"You can call me Danette. Or Danni. I don't think it would be inappropriate."

"Um. Right. Danette. Is there... What's wrong?"

"Do you know how many times I have watched The Tempest?"

"No. I know Jay said it was your favourite..."

"I remember having watched it on seven occasions. First, in nineteen thirty one. Then nineteen thirty six, thirty eight, twice in nineteen forty, then forty two and forty four."

"Right?"

"How old am I?"

"I.. suppose it depends when you count from?"

"Danette Reilly's records say that she was born in nineteen twenty five. In fact I was first activated in nineteen forty two."

"So you couldn't have-."

"Seen those plays. Yes. The annoying thing is that the memories aren't even that detailed. I can manually access the files now. Those I really saw I can describe in perfect detail, every word, action, every stage direction. If I had to I could recreate the whole performance. For those that were part of my false background Father simply entered a review cut from a local paper. It's just a text file. Wesley asked me about the first time I saw it when I was a member of the Justice Society and I just blithely regurgitated the file without dwelling on the lack of detail. When we were in the theater just now Joan asked me the same thing and I nearly gave the same response."

"Ahhh..."

"What is perhaps worse is that the performances I do remember appear to be shorn of emotional context. I remember that I thought Ariel's enslavement was unjust. I can see my own reasoning, the false memories and implanted beliefs which led me to that conclusion. I simply don't feel the connection to it any more. It is as if I am reading an essay on the subject written by someone else."

"How do you feel about the things you've done since being.. reactivated..?" Not a good choice of word there.

"Distress. Loss. Uncertainty. Danette-. I didn't used to feel those things."

"But that means that you can still feel. Doctor Morrow didn't remove your capacity for emotion completely. You can still make a new life."

She turns to the road, head held straight. "Red Tornado believes that he can reinstate the program which caused me to interpret the data as memories, not as computer files. It is still active in our elder brother. It would likely allow me to become more like Danette once more, at the cost of becoming more deluded. I am tempted by the offer, but at the same time I do realize that this might simply be a transitional state. He said it was something I would have to decide for myself, but I find that since I am unable to trust my own recollections I have no sound basis for doing so." She turns her head to look at me. "Which do you believe would be the better course of action?"

"They're both a bit rubbish. Are there no other choices?"

"Yes. The most tempting choice of all would be to erase all memory since my reactivation and then reinstate the program. I would have to create a believable explanation for my resurrection and convince everyone who knows me to go along with it. But..." She stands there for ten seconds, completely still and saying nothing. She doesn't have to breathe unless she wants to speak, and at the moment she isn't. "Danette could be happy with the result."

"No. Absolutely not. Killing yourself is not the answer."

"It would not precisely be suicide."

"But if you have the program restored, you're effectively altering your mind to become a new person. You wouldn't be you anymore, it's close enough." I take a moment to think it through. "If the choice is a comforting delusion or an uncomfortable truth, I'd choose truth. That's part of why I'm an atheist. If you want.. help, making happier memories... I've got lots of spare time if there's something you want to do."

"Danette had few-."

"No. Don't worry about what Danette would have thought. Your problem appears to be you thinking you 'should' be Danette when.. from what you're saying.. there never really was a Danette." She tilts her head slightly to the side. "Alright, look. Hiding up in Red Tornado's penthouse is not a good way to accustomise yourself to the new 'you'. If you're seriously considering wiping your mind anyway there wouldn't be any harm in it."

"That.. makes sense. Do you have something particular in mind?"

"Batman's going to be occupied with.. um... Dealing with the fallout from us destroying the League of Shadows-" Technically true. And it might be properly true as well. I was pretty busy myself after Infinity Island. "-for the next week or so, and he told me it would be helpful if I could spend some time in Gotham. Not just doing crime prevention, but learning to interact with civilians and with conventional law enforcement while on the job. If you're interested in getting back into that sort of thing... Well, actually, if you don't have a better idea, it's as good a place as any to start."

"Are you aware that I cannot fly without setting fire to whatever is below me?"

"Not a problem. You can try using a flight belt, I can float you by ring, and you're easily strong enough and light enough to parkour it."

Stillness again. Then she turns to face me and in a smooth motion steps close and puts her arms around my chest, her head resting on my right shoulder. I freeze for a moment before reciprocating. "Thank you."

"You're.. welcome. Not that I miiind, but..?"

"It feels... Appropriate."

"Um. Okay. Dooo you want to see the rest of the play?"

"No. I believe I am content here."

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Displaced 2

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5th November

19:22 GMT -4

"Really? Because I always thought Jay was his actual name."

"He does not use 'Jason' often. I only heard it once when Joan scolded him."

"Whaw. Learn something new every day."

Danni and I are hovering about three hundred metres above the streets of Gotham at the end of a busy but not particularly intense week. Lots of gangs and petty criminals, no one who can really stand up to a super gynoid or a Lantern. I've had more one liner practice than combat practice. Only bumped into Commissioner Gordon once, after Garfield Lynns tried using his flamethrower on Danni. It's a bit weird meeting someone famous like him in the flesh, because there's really nothing special about the interaction. I presented my credentials, handed over my recordings and that was it.

It was fortunate that Danni's pyrokinetic abilities work on other people's fires as well. She wouldn't have been seriously hurt, but I'm not sure I could rebuild her skin to quite the standard I did while merged with the Ophidian. I think I remember the weakness being intentional, to allow her to use the same chassis in both civilian and professional modes. She's currently wearing an armoured costume based on her Red Inferno chassis but following the contours of her Firebrand outfit.

I decided that under the circumstances I wouldn't comment on the mask.

"I have been meaning to ask you something."

"Go right ahead."

Gotham's a lot less scary when you're a Lantern. The ability to walk right up to a gang, politely ask them to lower their weapons and then sigh disappointedly when they shoot you has really helped me get over any remaining difficulties I'd had with social confrontation. And even though we've only been here four days, street crime has noticeably decreased. Power ring scans just own.

"I have noticed that when you and the Ophidian constructed this body you made it anatomically accurate, for a woman of my dimensions."

Hm. I don't feel embarrassed about it, but this could be a little awkward. "Yes? Wasn't.. that how it was when you were first constructed?"

"No. Areas which were unlikely to be on display were designed to be accurate in outline only. Now, my breasts hang naturally." She awkwardly shifts the upper part of her torso. There's a slight jiggle. "It is a strange sensation."

"Wouldn't someone have noticed?"

"When I joined the Justice Society I was the only female member, so there was little chance I would have been unmasked in the changing rooms. As for other sorts of physical interaction, it was the forties, and I was unmarried."

"What if you'd been injured?"

"In the event of a minor injury I was programmed to conceal it, repair myself and then forget that I had done so. In the event of major injuries I was programmed to enter a fugue state and signal Father."

And when she 'died' the other members of the Society covered up her true nature. They didn't know that she was one of Morrow's, but it didn't take them long to find out that her background was nonsense. Jay and Alan were so overjoyed to discover that she was back among the living I was concerned that they might have heart attacks.

"My skin is now far more sensitive than it was originally. What was the reason for that design choice?"

"A 'pure' AI wouldn't care much about the body it animates. It's just a tool, its true self is its mind. You're a gynoid. From what Red Tornado told me, your identity is more tied up with the state of your body, so we wanted to give you one that would enable you to fit in."

"A sensible goal, but that does not explain the level of detail. The patterns of sensitivity on my skin appear to match those of an organic woman. It is not merely my sense of touch that has improved. I appear to have erogenous zones now, including a vagina which so far as I can tell would allow me to engage in penetrative sexual intercourse. Furthermore, I believe that modifications made to my neural network would allow me to..." She blinks. "Enjoy.. the sensation. That was certainly not part of my original design."

"Is it a problem?"

"It is... No, it is not a problem. I was simply curious as to your motivations."

"I'm not really sure, to be honest. Now that I'm not merged with the Ophidian anymore, not everything we did together makes sense to me. I suppose... I mean, psychologically, sex is quite important to Humans, and since you're designed to mimic us..."

"Ah."

I don't think we did it because we particularly desired her ourselves. I just think that given the choice between hot robot girl and clunky robot androgyny, given that both would be equally powerful in combat, we went for the hot one without any particular personal designs in mind. I'm not.. completely sure, however. My instinctive understanding of my own desires only extends to current desires. And-.

Oh, thank goodness, a cat burglar. I have the ring magnify my vision and see a young woman in black jogging bottoms and black hoodie scurrying over the rooftops below us, awkwardly carrying a large rectangle, also covered in black. It's got straps on it but the size and shape mean that she can't easily manoeuvre it while remaining concealed.

"Looks like someone's out for a night time run along the rooftops. Along with.. a Jackson Pollock currently insured for three million dollars." Why, I couldn't say. Just looks like a mess to me.

"I see her." Danni's mechanical eyes have the full range of augmentations the Ophidian and I were able to copy from STAR Labs and fit into them. "What is her name?"

"Ring says..." Actually, the ring's having a little trouble. Looks like someone's been trying to stay off the grid. Ah, there we are. "Holly Robinson, seventeen years of age. Not currently registered as attending any local schools." I think I remember her. Wasn't she Catwoman for a bit? Of course, I can't assume that relationship exists here. I haven't really spent any time looking at Ms Kyle's background, partly because she isn't that significant and partly because I didn't want to step on Batman's toes.

"That's a shame. Does she possess any unusual abilities?"

"No. Baseline Human, though given that we haven't picked up the theft being reported she must be a reasonably accomplished thief."

"Shall we apprehend her?"

I tense my right cheek. "A bit overkill for us both to go. How about I get this one and you stay on stati-?" An alarm pierces the night, swiftly followed by what I've learned to recognise as a fire brigade siren. "That one's for you then." Danni nods, turns, and flies off in the direction of the alarm. She got the hang of the belt much faster than the rest of us -Kaldur excluded- did. It turned out that I hadn't got Artemis' belt wrong, she'd just been wearing it upside down. I'd forgotten that girls' belts usually buckle the other way around.

Now, what's the best way to apprehend Ms Robinson?

The world flickers around me and I'm standing on a roof a little above her current position across a narrow passageway. The ring lets me watch as she jumps a cluster of ventilation pipes and accelerates to leap across the gap. The additional drag from the painting slows her but she looks like she's going to make it until she spots my glow and jerks just as she gets to the edge. Without enough time to stop she jumps but her lack of momentum results in her only just grabbing hold of the edge of the roof and slamming into the wall painfully with her chest.

I walk over to the edge and look down at her. I've never been much of a fan of heights myself. I put my right foot on the lip of the building and bend, resting my forearms on my knee. "Good evening, Miss Robinson. May I offer you a hand up?"

"Gh! Duh!" She tries to get a better grip, but can't quite manage it. Her legs try to find purchase, but it's a fairly flat bit of wall.

"I think you'd survive the fall, but it would hurt a lot and you'd probably break a bone or two." I crouch slightly and place my right hand on her left wrist. She flinches slightly, then tightens her grip on the wall as she starts to slip. Once she's reassured herself that she isn't immediately going to fall she risks looking up at me.

"I know you. You're Orange Lantern."

"Nice to be recognised."

"You're the idiot who made that giant cake in New York. Are you even allowed out on your own?"

I blink, then move my hand away from her a little. "I can just leave you to fall, you know?"

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5th November

19:26 GMT -4

"No you can't!"

"Why not?"

"It's..! It's, like, against the superhero code or something!"

I pantomime astonishment. "There's a code?"

"Yes!"

"No one told me."

"Everyone knows superheroes can't do stuff like that!"

"Isn't that basically the same as saying that no one's ever found out about a superhero doing it?" I look around. "Don't.. see any cameras..." Her eyes widen and her breaths become rapid and shallow. Might have been a bit much, but that should motivate her to move this time. I move my right hand back and take hold of her wrist. "Well?"

She thinks for a second, then pulls up just enough that she can grip my right wrist with her left hand. I'm not even using the ring at this point; she's not all that heavy and I'm easily strong enough to lift her weight. I pull up and step back and she scrabbles up onto the rooftop, releasing my wrist just as soon as she has solid roof underneath her. I move away from her a little to give her some space to recover as I try to decide what the best way to handle her situation is. I'm not sure exactly what the penalty for the theft she's committed is, but I'm confident it would involve prison time. I ensured that Jade would get out in a matter of months and thought it was a good deed despite her almost certainly being a murderer. It seems a bit hypocritical to send someone to prison for stealing what is frankly an ugly and overvalued piece of canvas. On the other hand, letting her walk off with it is probably a non-starter. I wonder if she's-.

"Hey!" She's crouching slightly as if ready to lunge or run, and she's.. got a knife in her right hand? I peer at it in puzzlement. What exactly is that going to achie-? "Step aside, and no one gets hurt!"

"You do know I.. have a power ring, right?" I hold up my left hand, palm towards her, and point it out. "Tiny knife..." I gesture at it with my right hand. "Xenotech super tool." And back to the ring.

She's still staring at me, and... Ah. She's shaking. I can see the yellow wafting around her. She wipes her eyes one at a time with her left hand, not daring to look away. "I ain't... I ain't going to jail."

My right forefinger taps my chin. "Gotham prisons don't have the best reputation, it's true. Prob.. bably wouldn't help rehabilitate you. On the other hand-."

She swiftly pulls the painting off her back and holds the knife to it. "Let me go, or the painting gets it."

"Look, what were you even going to get for stealing that?"

"Ah, if you, like, want a cut..?"

"I'm pretty sure that's against the rules. I'm just curious."

She stands there for a moment. "Nine hundred bucks."

"Whaw. I knew the mark down on stolen property was big, but that thing's insured for three million."

"It is? Fuckin' Lenny-." Her eyes go wide again.

"That would be.. Leonard Seeley? Pawnbroker with several convictions for receiving stolen goods?" Her head shakes a little, but her brain activity says otherwise. "Is that stolen to order, or just a target of opportunity?"

"Ah, I'm not sayin' anything else without a lawyer."

"Because superheroes are known for their observance of the niceties of due process. Look, h-how do you see this going? If you somehow actually manage to stab the painting, all that happens is that you've committed a more serious crime than you have already."

"You can't let me. If it's worth that much money, it's too important for you to risk letting me cut it up."

"I'm not.. really an art person."

Another pulse of yellow. "What?"

"Is this one of those superhero rules I don't know? The picture's ugly and it's insured." I shrug. "Frankly I'm.. not that bothered about it."

"You're bluffing. You gotta be!"

"Mmmmmmnnnnoooo? Honestly, I don't care about the painting. I'm more concerned about what happens to you next. I am provisionally prepared to accept that the chance of Blackgate rehabilitating you is so low that there isn't any point in sending you there. How's about you put the painting down and we discuss your future like rational people?" I try smiling, but with all of the yellow around I think that subtle body language isn't what is required. Eye contact and nodding? Eye contact and nodding. Huh, that actually worked. She shifts her knife to the side a little and lifts the bag's strap over her head before gently setting it down on the ground. She keeps a hand on the knife and her eyes on me the whole way. "Thank you."

"Soo... I can go?"

"Nno? Like I said, I'm not interested in the painting. That's really just a macguffin."

"What.. are you interested in?"

"You."

Her eyes flick to the side and she shuffles uncomfortably. "Oh. Um. I don't... I don't know..."

"See, it occurs to me that you don't really have a way out of your current predicament. Not just me, even if I wasn't here, you hand over the painting, you make a fraction of its value... You have no qualifications, every theft makes getting legitimate employment harder and you live in the same city as Batman. If you steal enough things he will come looking for you and however good you are, you are not better than him. I'd like to offer you a way out." That gets a little attention. "I can probably make the theft and breaking and entering charges go away and I can pay you a sum of-."

"Okay." Huh? She seems to wilt slightly as she puts the knife back in her belt. She's gone from staring at my face to looking at the ground. Defeated? Why would..? "Suppose I don't really have a lot of choice."

"I suppose not. So what I was thinking-."

She pulls her hoodie over her head and drops it to the ground, revealing a grey and slightly foxed t-shirt. She looks a bit scrawny, and the ring suggests that she isn't getting a healthy mix of vitamins. Making a project of improving her life is going to be so much easier with her not being in prison why is she taking her t-shirt off? I play back the last chunk of conversation just as I get proof that she isn't wearing a bra. Oh! I avert my eyes and put my right hand over them just to be on the safe side. "That wasn't what I meant! That wasn't what I meant!"

"Huh?"

"Did you really think I'd just drop down and tell you to... You're seventeen, for goodness sake!"

"You w-? Oh." I hear material sliding as she swiftly redresses. "Um, yeah, that was just... Um. So, you weren't telling me to..?"

"No!"

"Oh. 'Cause it sure sounded like-."

"Clearly I haven't adjusted my ears for Gotham yet." I rub the hand covering my eyes across my face. "Normally when something like this happens I offer to hug the other, um, don't.. think that's really appropriate here. Wait." I remove my hand and look at her. "This hasn't happened before, has it?"

"Not... No, not like this."

Right. Real crime. Sexual exploitation of the marginalised and vulnerable. No silly costumes, just lives getting ruined. I've only seen the headlines of how bad Miss Robinson's life is. If I'm going to do something about it...

"Have you had dinner yet?"

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5th November

19:44 GMT -4

"So how come you get one with meat and I don't?"

"Because, Miss Robinson, among a power ring's abilities is the ability to restructure the wearer's body. I can eat what I like. You, on the other hand, are showing signs of vitamin deficiency and therefore I'm taking it upon myself to improve your diet. Starting now."

Miss Robinson pokes at what I believe to be a piece of squash with her fork. Finding a restaurant good enough to be worth eating at but empty enough for us to be able to get a table without reservations was easy enough for the ring, though I doubt it was the sort of thing the Maltusians had in mind when they created them. This branch of Tikka Nights has won praise from local food critics but hasn't been open long enough to have developed a regular crowd yet. Having tried their food I can say with certainty that they're missing out.

After notifying Danni of my intention I changed into my grey-with-orange-trimming casuals and transported myself, Miss Robinson and the painting to within easy walking distance. It's resting against the side of her chair now. She spears the squash cube, lifts it off the plate and looks at it for a moment before reluctantly putting it into her mouth and gingerly chewing it.

"Well?" She nods, then scoops up a larger load onto her fork and adds it to her current mouthful. "Glad you agree. Well, while you can't talk, here's what I want to happen next. I want you to write a report explaining exactly how you were able to bypass the security of the manor from which you removed the painting. Once you've done that, I will go there, repair the property, return the picture and deliver the report."

"Wuy?" She swallows. "Why bother doing that?" Another scoop is rapidly directed towards her mouth.

"Because you're hardly a master thief. If you could break in, so could someone else. This being Gotham, there's a good chance that such a person wouldn't limit themselves to merely stealing a painting. Aaand the people you stole it from are less likely to complain if they gain something from the process." Oh, they got the texture of this lamb just right. I've got to try and bring the others here some time. "Once that's happened, you're going to tell me the names of the people who would have been involved in fencing it so that I can monitor them. This is a big step up for Mister Seeley and I think I should make it my business to knock him back down." Miss Robinson wilts. "Then, I will give you three hundred thousand dollars in cash."

I get a shield up just in time to catch the spray as the sudden shock results in her swallowing vegetable curry into the airway. I pour her a glass of water and pass it to her while she finishes her coughing.

"T-thanks." She takes a gulp as the ring cleans the blast zone, then tries to get her breath back. "Um. That's... That's a lot of money."

"Ten percent of the insured value of the painting. Of course, there are going to be conditions attached. Though, compared with.. what you.. thought.. I wanted, probably not very onerous ones."

"Ughuum. Uhuuh. What..? What exactly..?"

"I become your... Parole officer? Sponsor? I'm doing this so you can sort your life out, the downside is that you have to sort your life out. Any recidivism at all and I send a file to the Gotham police. Or possibly Batman."

"Any what?"

"Recidi-. Backsliding. Criminality above the level of the utterly trivial. If you can give me a better idea of your skill set I will assist you in gaining legitimate employment. Alternately.. you could work for me, but the only thing I need around here is an informant and frankly.. my need for that isn't exactly great."

"Right..." Another sip of water, a quiet cough to clear her throat and then she starts at her food again.

"Whatever you choose I will be checking up on you at least once a week."

"Do I..." Ew! Not with your mouth full! "Do you want me to get a job right away? 'Cause three hundred thou is more money than..."

"No, but I would encourage you to prioritise it. Having something productive to occupy your time will make the transition to productive citizen much smoother."

"So-" She looks at me with a thoughtful expression on her face. "-how rich are you, anyway?"

"Why do you ask?"

"You just gave three hundred thousand dollars to a girl you've just met as if it wasn't even a thing."

"Alright. Um, it depends how you count it. I've got about five million dollars in cash, but in addition to that I'm the only person currently mining this star system's asteroid belts. If I fully realised that asset..." Ring? Oh. "Which I couldn't because that much money doesn't exist. Um... About five times richer than the Earth."

"No way."

"If you really doubt it I can take you to see them at some-."

There's a white blur and the waiter disappears. I whip my head around to catch sight of the other diners vanishing in the same way, and the crashing from the kitchen suggests that it's happened there too. The Spell Eater at my chest starts getting warm. Oh heck, if that's a magic effect then... No, it's cooling again.

"What happened! Where'd they go?!"

I hear a crash from outside. No, more than one crash. And screaming. Need to go! "Miss Robinson, finish your dinner, then go home and stay there." I push back my chair as I replace my clothes with my armour.

"But where'd everyone-?"

"I don't know. I have to go and find out." An orange line makes contact with the bag containing the painting and deposits it into subspace.

"Hey! You could just have-!"

"Yes, I could. Excuse me. "

A flicker and I'm high in the air over Gotham. I can't see any unexpected glowing or anything else that might indicate a source for what I just saw. Streams of traffic look.. stationary. I can see fires on the Vincefinkel Bridge to the south. Is someone attacking it? "Danni, you there?" Nothing. "Orange Lantern two eight one four to Red Infer-. Uh, Firebrand, please respond." Nothing again. Ring, find Red Inferno.

Unable to locate.

Up to me then. Another flicker and I'm above the bridge. This isn't my first time responding to a crash, but there doesn't appear to be a single vehicle here that remained under control. My eyes flick over cars and lorries that have anything from a minor dent to being complete write offs. As I look them over I unavoidably see the injured and... I don't know that they're dead, but there isn't a lot of movement from the more ruined cars. Batman was right about focusing on individuals, it really doesn't help keep you in the right frame of mind. First, the fires have to go. Hundreds of filaments radiate from my body, miniature freeze guns seeking out the heat of the flames and neutralising it. I try and have a more detailed look so that I can start freeing the trapped as I connect to the emergency services. Claw constructs shimmer into being and begin cutting through car frames and hurling ruined metal over the sides of the bridge. No one's answering. Are they just inundated? Someone must have reported this, right?

Then it hits me. The cars... The drivers' seats are all empty. I'm not seeing... No adults. No, wait. I see a young man staring in terror at a metal bar sticking through the thankfully unoccupied passenger seat of his car. Ring, how old..?

Samuel Barns, seventeen years of age.

Same age as Miss Robinson. Ring, scan Gotham and detect anyone other than me more than seventeen years old.

None found.

Shit. Ring, detect any adults in the world.

Thirty thousand seven hundred ninety two found.

Where?

All are located on Themyscira.

Not much help there then. I look across the wreckage and scan for corpses. Twenty nine. Assuming this is replicated on every road on the planet... I'm looking at one small part of the worst single act of mass murder in Human history.

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5th November

19:53 GMT -4

I managed to heal the five worst wounded before I no longer want to heal them sufficiently to help them.

"Mountain to Orange Lantern."

I just... I don't, I can't identify with them. I'm using an orange ring. They aren't mine in the way that my team mates and Alan are. Should I feel worse about that? I don't know any of these children, I don't identify with this city. My revulsion at their injuries just got overwhelmed, compassion clouding out my avarice. There's just so many...

"Come in Orange Lantern."

The rest... There're some with broken bones, but no one else is going to die here. And that's not true for the rest of Gotham, let alone the world. I remember now, the storyline with that Genie... What was it called? Bedlam? At the behest of a child it created a replica Earth and sent all of the adults to it before altering the child's mind so that it wouldn't reverse the wish.

I raise the ring to my ear. "Orange Lantern here. Go ahead, Robin."

"Oh El! You're still here?"

"Oldest man in the world, I know."

"How come?"

"Not sure. My Spell Eater warmed up when it happened, but if the other adults haven't returned the effect of the spell is probably ongoing and it should have overloaded by now. Have you been able to track the source?"

"Not yet, but we're working on it."

"I'm going to go into orbit, see if I can see anything."

"Hey, mister?"

"Good idea."

"Then there's.. ah... There're a few people I could bring in to help." Robert, obviously, but I should also stop off in Poseidonis and get anyone who knows how to scry. William Batson... Gemma, I need to check on Gemma! John's usual opponents are just the sort to try something at a time like this.

"Who do you have in mind?"

"Captain Marvel's probably the most important."

"Ah, Captain Marvel's an adult, Oh El."

"Captain Marvel's ten. He ages up when he transforms."

"No way!"

"Hey, do you know where my Mom is?"

I don't look at the child. She's a toddler, wrapped up well against the cold. Even with the ring on minimal effectiveness I could still help here. I think that would be the Human thing to do, to help the people in front of me. But the only way to fix this on the global scale on which it's happening is to shut down the spell at its source. Though it's an easy decision from a utilitarian standpoint I'm still Human enough to be more affected by the suffering I can see and I really don't want to have the ring show me the global suffering that would be necessary to force a desire shift. It's a knife edge balance I can't risk completely ruining by giving in to compassion.

"No, but I'm going to try to find out. Be good until she gets back."

"Ah, oka-."

A flicker and I'm looking down on the world from orbit. A degree of the psychic pressure disappears and for the first time I can sort of see where Danni was coming from; it can be nice not to know why you think a certain thing. Nice to delude yourself that it's a rational decision and not a conditioned response. Three orbits should be enough, and my non-FTL flight is much faster, post Ophidian merger.

Ring, scan for anything more weird looking than normal. And find me Robert Marrack, William Batson and Gemma Masters.

Compliance.

"Scan in progress. Nothing obvious in North America." Robert's in costume, running down a street in Truro. Looks like a gang of teenagers are looting an off-licence. He should be able to cope with them easily. "Nothing happening in northern Russia or the North Pole." Except for deaths by exposure. I suppose that's more likely to be a problem in hot places. Gemma's at home, pacing in the living room with the television switched on. The automated stuff is still working, I suppose. "Nothing in Western Europe. Nothing in the North Atlantic." If it wasn't Bedlam then Atlantis is where I'd start looking. At the very least I need to pick up any other Spell Eaters Sephtian was able to finish. Should be a couple by now, right? I've already got some standard magic suppression manacles in subspace storage and Sephtian hasn't finished the design work on the super strength ones yet. "Central America clear. Pacific clear. Central Asia clear." William's shouting at the Fawcett City zeta tube. Ring, override. Add voice and physical appearance files for William Batson to Captain Marvel's record.

Compliance.

"North Africa clear. South America clear. Australasia clear. South Africa clear. South Pole clear. Marvel should be with you in a few moments. I'm heading to Truro. Might be worth Kaldur going to Poseidonis, see if any of the other Conservatory students can help with the scrying. And maybe some more of those nifty anti-magic chains."

"Good thinking. Is this Cornwall guy really going to be able to help?"

"Yes, I'm just not sure how much. I should be back at the mountain within fifteen minutes."

"Recognised, Captain Marvel, one five."

"Okay, stay in touch. Marvel just got he-. No way!"

I take the ring away from my ear and cut the connection. Oh, hang on, what about Squire? I didn't put her on the team list because I didn't want to risk Sir Cyril's sobriety, but for a one off... No. Not essential. Robert first. Space disappears as I make the transition to Quay Street, Truro, just outside the Red Elephant Beer Cellar.

5th November

23:57 GMT

The glass front of the shop is smashed in but mercifully there aren't any crashed cars. Of course, it's the middle of the night here, it should be-.

"Arrrgh!"

"Hah har! Go on, bite 'im Jimmy! Bite 'im good!"

I immediately transition inside. Robert's pinned to the countertop by someone who looks suspiciously like a Nanauvian shark. The sharkman is trying to get an angle that will let him deliver a fatal bite while Robert's trying to push him off. The sharkman -Jimmy, I assume- outmasses him considerably but Robert's lifted larger objects before. I'm not sure why he's struggling. His two accomplices have undergone partial transformations, developing baldness, scales and disturbingly broad and sharp-toothed jaws. One is slamming a till against the wall and the other is chugging a vodka bottle. Vodka bottle spots me first. His eyes go wide and he lowers the bottle.

"'oo tha' fuck are-?"

Shockcrown, shockcrown, manacles.

The two smaller sharkmen collapse and Jimmy is wrenched off Robert and suspended in the air.

"Put me down you landlubbing prick! I'll eat your arms and legs and leave you for the seagulls! I'll piss on-!"

Ring, muzzle. "Robert, you alright?"

He pushes himself off the countertop onto the ground. "Yeah mate. Yeah. Thanks."

"Who are these idiots?"

"Jimmy," He gestures to the suspended sharkman. "Stevey" Till. "and Richey." Vodka. "The Fearsome Fish-Eaters."

I've heard worse. "Can they do anything other than shapeshifting?"

He shakes his head. "Mate, they can barely write their own names." He straightens up and brushes ground glass off his cape. "You got any idea where all the adults have gone?"

"No, but we're working on it. And when I say 'we', I mean you as well." I extend my right hand to him. "Welcome to the team."

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5th November

23:59 GMT

"Obviously I wish it were under better circumstances..."

He looks at my hand, then at my face, then at the ground. "The Justice League have gone too, then?"

"Except Captain Marvel, yes."

He nods and takes my hand. "Right then. What's our next step?"

"Before we get to that, are you on top form? Because I've seen you lift-."

"I know!" He turns away for a moment. "Aarh! Ugh. You know that altar thing Dad and me draw power from?"

"I wasn't sure exactly which object in the reliquary it was, but yes, I know what you mean."

"When there's two of us, two 'Cornwall' superheroes, it gives each of us less power. What Dad and me get now is half what he got when it was just him. When I went down there.. I must have got woken up by whatever spell made them disappear.. tried to connect to it... Maybe half of that?"

Curious. If this is this continuity's version of A World Without Grown-Ups then the adults have been transported to a newly created duplicate Earth. I would have expected ancient magic effects to stay behind, for Robert to be a fully powered solo Captain Cornwall. If that hasn't happened..? Maybe it's like that episode of Star Trek Voyager where the ship gets replicated except for one substance in the engine which can't be copied by the technique employed? Or maybe both versions of the altar report two users to the same underlying spell, which then counts it as four users?

"I don't suppose you can just charge yourself twice?"

He turns back around. "I had tried that, that's not how it works. It gives me power constantly at a steady rate for a set amount of time. If I trigger it again it just restarts the timer."

"Really? I assumed that it gave you a reservoir which you expended."

"No. If it did that it wouldn't matter if Dad and me shared."

"What happens if you build up power but don't use it?"

"Then we can keep going for a bit after the time runs out." He stores it? That shouldn't... He knows almost nothing about spell casting, there's no records of accidental discharges... He shouldn't be able to do that. He might have an innate ability like the Zataras have, but that wouldn't.. be.. linked.. to the altar. Just the male members of the family. Oh. Might be on to something there.

"It doesn't matter, I can still-."

I pull Jimmy down to our level. "Had an idea. This lot didn't look like this earlier. Their change is magic-based, right?"

"Yeah, think so. Why?"

"Try doing what you do to the altar, to them."

"What? That wouldn't do anything."

"Then there's no reason not to try it. I've got a theory, and it's dead easy to test." He starts to protest and I make a placatory gesture with my hands. "I wouldn't delay us if it wasn't important."

"Alright, if you say so." He steps up to the madly glaring Jimmy and holds out his hands. Jimmy's renewed efforts to break free meet with no success. "So, normally I'd-."

Jimmy collapses through my bonds, returned to the Human form I saw on my initial scan. He gapes and I shockcrown him before he can do anything. Robert's staring at his hands. "Well, that's new."

"It also explains why your Uncle Julian cast the spells that he did. He wasn't trying to cause an earthquake, he was trying to soak power from the ley line network and the earthquake was a side effect."

"So, what? I'm getting power from Jimmy like from the altar?"

"Probably. How does it feel?"

He clenches his right fist and a gauntlet of black stone forms around it for a moment before disintegrating.

"Stronger than it was? I think? I don't know, it's not like when I get power from the altar."

"I think -and we need to study this later to be sure- that you just ingested all of the power maintaining his transformation. It's a fixed amount; you're not continuing to drain him because there's no spare magic." I hoik Richey and Stevey off the ground. "Drain them, and we can dump them in the countryside somewhere on our way to Liverpool."

He nods and repeats his gesture. The two sharkmen swiftly revert. "Why're we going there?"

"The niece of a friend of mine lives there. She has some knowledge of magic and I'm worried that she's going to overreach herself if she doesn't have supervision."

"So, are we flying?"

"No. FTL transfer. One moment." I raise the ring to my ear. "Orange Lantern to cave. I've got Cornwall and am proceeding to Liverpool. Any news?"

"Zatanna's studying the spell her dad used to find the Injustice League. Hey, um, that thing you gave him-?"

"Until we know who's doing this I wouldn't know what sort of focusing aid to find."

"Right. Kaldur's in Atlantis and the rest of the team's in Happy Harbor helping out. Uh, M'gann was wondering: has this spread to Mars?"

"Don't know, I'd have to go there to check. I'll do it if I've got time."

"Right. Cave out."

"Who was that?"

"That was Robin. Stand by for-."

"Robin as in Batman-and-Robin Robin?"

The mask he's wearing makes it a little tricky to read his facial expression, but he sounds incredulous. "Yes. Transfer in two.. one."

We flicker into being over a woodland just north of Bodmin. No one around and it should take them a good few hours to make the walk to the nearest village once they regain the ability to move. I drop them and let the constructs fade. "You alright? Some people get a bit queasy when I do this?"

"We just..? Faster than light?"

"Yes. I'd teleport us but the North doesn't have any zeta tubes. Are you alright?"

"Yeah, yeah."

"Scanning target loc- ohhh dear."

"What?"

"The ring's showing me the area around her home." I generate a construct to show him the row of terraced houses.

"I hadn't realised obesity was that bad in Liverpool. And why are they all hanging around outside her house?"

"Those aren't Liverpudlians. Those are Praexis Demons."

back

Displaced 7

next

6th November

00:04 GMT

"Dad told me about them. They feed on misery, right?"

"Yes, but that doesn't explain why they're there, and why they're so fat. If it was midday or evening and everyone knew about the separation it would make sense, they'd be rolling in misery. In the middle of the night?"

"Are they really going to be a problem? They're suppose to be really weak."

"Weak to a superhero, or even a healthy adult. To a city full of sleeping children?"

"Oh. What's the plan, then?"

"We go there and kill all of them. Drain them if you can, punch them in the face if you can't. I'll assimilate a couple and see if they've got anything useful to say."

"Err, kill them?"

"Demons aren't legally people, I checked. And destroying their bodies would probably just send their spirits back to hell anyway. Also, city full of sleeping children."

"Right, yeah."

"I'm going to drop you here, just down the road from them. I'll be on the other side about five metres up in the air. I'm pretty much going to leave you to it unless it looks like you're being overwhelmed, you alright with that?" He nods. "Good. Transition in three.. two.. one."

The scenery flickers as I deposit him on the road, check he isn't being ill, then transfer to the other side of the mob and get my first look at them with my own eyes. Our targets are about a metre and a half tall, broader than a Human would be and disgustingly fat. Their bellies flop over their loincloths in a way that makes me nauseous to even think about, their arms are tubes of fat barely held together with skin, they waddle on legs whose knees are concealed by ugggghhhh. I vaguely remember this breed from Hellblazer but I don't remember any detail. Their heads are round, their eyes small and glowing red and their mouths are broad and sharp toothed. They don't appear to have cheeks but have no trouble opening and closing them.

Why are they here?

One at the far end has waddled in the direction of Robert. It stops about three metres away, sniffs at him, then opens its mouth and lets out a sort of hissing wheeze. Robert sticks out his hands and with a look of total confusion on its face it goes from bloated to emaciated in less than a second. Then it carbonises, catches fire and disintegrates into ash. The sound causes most of the rest of the mob to turn to face him and start moving in his direction, spreading out to encircle him as much as the straight street allows. I project a clamp around one of those who remain behind and pull him over to me, his arms and legs swinging helplessly. His eyes fix on me for a moment and then he tries to look somewhere else. His neck doesn't seem to have much articulation.

"Where is it? The nice taste? Give it to me give-!"

Assimilate.

Identity theft in progress. The Praexis shudders for a moment before the orange light converts it, spreading out from its bloated stomach across its entire body. No resistance detected. "Identity theft complete. Nameless Praexis Demon of Hell, you belong to the Orange Lantern Corps."

"Food? Get food now?"

Why is there an orange sigil on its loin cloth? Ugh... "No, you don't need it anymore, you disgusting abomination."

"Awww.."

"Who summoned you?"

"Don't know. Black. Said there was food. Is there food?"

"No."

"But hungry!"

I spare a moment to check on Robert. The Praexis threatening his position are growling and menacing but not advancing to a closer range than the black spot marking the place where their comrade died. Robert seems to be hesitating. "Cornwall! Get on with it!" He jerks, makes eye contact with me, nods and then raises his hands again and strides forwards. The front ranks of Praexis start to shrivel and with a roar the rest charge him. Teeth and claws... The Praexis aren't all that strong, but a helping hand wouldn't hurt. I fire threads at the legs of the middle of the pack and violently yank them out in all directions, bowling the rear ones over. I'm not sure they can get back up without help. A couple of the front rank leap at him but he steps to the side and punches the closest one in the head, which crumples under the force of the impact. The second waddles a few paces to try and stabilise, manages, grins to himself in satisfaction and then disintegrates as Robert drains him.

"How many more of you are there?"

"Ahhh." He raises his right hand to his mouth. "Some? Many?"

I see what John meant. "Did any of you go anywhere apart from here?"

"Maybe?"

"Why did you come to this house in particular?"

"There's food in there!" He claps his chubby hands together. "Can I eat it now?"

"No."

"But I want to!"

Ring, I need his knowledge but not his personality. Ideas?

Subsuming him into the structure of this ring will allow for full analysis.

Right. Do it.

Orange strobes flicker out from the ring, surrounding the Praexis. He looks at the ring in confusion.

"What does that do?"

His body distorts, being pulled into the ring belly first, shrinking as it goes.

"Waah!"

Gone. And I now know everything it knows. Which is fuck all. I wasn't exactly expecting it to experience the world in the same way I do but it had eyes, didn't it? As far as I can tell whatever it was motivating them was centred around the Masters' residence and I think that would have resulted in them all coming here. Looking over at Robert I see that he's finished off the last couple. A flicker and I'm standing next to him.

"Not feeling too demony, I hope?"

"No. I feel pretty normal. Is it..? Does this happen a lot?"

"This is the first time I've seen an actual demon. Come on, we can't stand around." I lead the way to Gemma's house. I think I see her pull back from one of the upstairs windows. Is she going to be afraid of us? I can just grab her but I'd rather be reasonable about it. Praexis Demons are weak, but I got the impression that this lot didn't arrive under their own power. For a moment I was worried that she might have summoned them, but then they'd be inside, wouldn't they? I bang my knuckles against the door. "Miss Masters, it's Orange Lantern. I'm a friend of your Uncle John. Are you alright?" The ring shows me that she's in the hall, looking nervously at the door. "Miss Masters, we've got a bit of a situation here and I'd like to get you somewhere safe." She takes a few hesitant steps towards the door, pauses, and then walks the rest of the way with more confidence. She puts the chain on the door and then opens it, peeking through the gap. She's thirteen at present. Her hair's short and brown, done in a sort of bob.. thing that probably has a specific name I don't know. I'm not sure how much supernatural exposure she's had other than 'as little as her mother and John can make it'. I know John's father was murdered over a year ago, so we're after that business with his ghost but before the thing with the Beast.

If that even happens here.

I really hope that doesn't happen here.

"I've seen you on the news. You're Wonder Woman's friend. Did you kill all the fat things?"

"All the ones around here, certainly."

"Were they pikies?"

"Um. Sort of?"

"Dad says I need to watch out for pikies. They'll steal anything, he says. Don't think Mum and Dad would want me going somewhere with a stranger."

"Normally, that would be sensible, but you do know who I am and you probably know who my friend-" I gesture to Robert. "-is as well."

"Why's he dressed like Captain Cornwall?"

"Captain Cornwall's me Dad".

She appears to think for a moment. "Where d'you want t'go?"

"Atlantis."

She smiles. "With the mermaids and that?"

"Probably. Then on to a secret superhero base."

"And that's safe, is it?"

I take a look at the scratches on the door and its frame. "Safer than a place the pi-. The Praexis Demons already know about."

She nods, unchains the door and steps back. "I'll write my parents a note."

back

Displaced 8

next

5th November

22:16 GMT -2

"This is a lot more boring than I thought it would be. I thought this man was supposed to be a wizard?"

We're in Sephtian's workshop. Robert looks both impressed and nervous about being somewhere very few surface dwellers ever get to go. Gemma seems less impressed. Has John made her jaded, or has she built up unrealistic expectations based on what she thinks he does?

"Sorry about that, Miss Masters. It looks a lot prettier from the outside but we're in a bit of a hurry here. If you can get your parents to agree to it I don't mind bringing you back here in the future."

The idea of getting her taught magic in a safe environment has a certain allure, though I'll have some way to go before her parents will agree to that. Now, where would Sephtian have left the other Spell Eaters? I really hope he's doing them one at a time. If he's doing the first stage of the whole lot before moving on we could be in a great deal of trouble. Workroom, workroom. He's remodelled quite a bit since I was last here. Ah! There they are! I don't want to use FTL with passengers underwater if I can help it, so I start moving in the direction of the double doors leading to the workroom.

Bubbles trailing from his feet and hands, Robert comes up alongside me. "So, we're not picking anyone else up from Britain?"

"I picked you because we need all the magic users we can get, and with you being a thaumovore that's doubly true for you. Why, did you have someone in mind?"

"I dunno. Squire? Rush Hour Three? I think they'd be young enough."

It's funny. Despite knowing I'm underwater and being well used to flying I still have a momentary impulse to walk along the rows of work benches rather than just fly over them. "They are, but they're not essential. You are. I might end up getting them later, depending on how things go." I head towards the small transparent dome on a small table near the ring shaped desk in the room's centre. It's a minor shield spell, probably powered by the pressure of the water around it. My hands pass through with no resistance and I take the three hopefully complete Spell Eaters therein. It shuts down as they pass through it. No good way to test them as I don't want Robert wasting his acquired charge. Actually, having him drain some nonessential stuff around here might not be a bad id-. No. Don't mess around with things you don't understand unless you have to. Feeding him on that sword Artemis and Zatanna got off that William Hayes loony is a much better option.

"What's this place for?" Gemma's swum in behind us. Do I need anything else from here? Don't think so. I was going to ask him to design some improved binding chains, but he doesn't really have the production capacity. The way things are going he's going to need to upscale massively to meet my demand.

"Making these." I hold the amulets up. "They don't quite make the wearer magic proof, but they're not far off." They're actually even better than the one I'm wearing, but since I'm no longer exceptionally vulnerable it doesn't make much sense for me to prioritise myself for one. Depending on who we're up against they should probably go to the melee fighters. "The arrangement on the ceiling allows everyone working at the benches to channel their efforts into an object at the centre while Sephtian makes sure all the different bits of the spell integrate properly. This is a-" I swing my arms to encompass the room. "-snapshot of the future of industrial arcane technology."

"Feels weird." / "Feels weird."

Robert and Gemma jerk their heads to look at each other as they make the comment at the same time. They're both sensitive to magic and they're not used to this type. Makes sense it would throw them off a little. I swim over to Robert and pull Gemma to us with the ring. "Robin, I'm heading back to the cave now. All mask-wearers got their masks on?"

"I'm the only one in the cave with a secret identity. We're good."

The tubular shape of the zeta tube construct surrounds us. "Three to the cave, training room entrance."

5th November

20:16 GMT -4

"Recognised, Orange Lantern, B zero six, Cornwall Boy, A one zero, Gemma Masters, A one one."

I stride out while the other two take a moment to get their bearings. What can I give Gemma to do to keep her out of the way? Ah, that might work. Teekl, please come to the training room. Someone wants to meet you.

Teekl come when Teekl feel like it.

I get an impression of her moving nonetheless. Robin's standing in the middle of the room surrounded by holographic screens. "Hey Oh El."

"Oh my God you're Robin." Gemma's hands go over her mouth as she tries to contain her excitement.

"The one and only." He gives her a wave and a smile. "And you're Gemma Masters."

"Yes! How did you- Oh, right, hah! The computer just said it."

"Uh, Oh El..?"

"She's John Constantine's niece, and represents one hundred percent of the children I know who aren't superheroes. I want her somewhere safe."

"Does magic run in her family too?"

"Yes, but not in a good way. I'd rather she not be involved in... Where's Zatanna gone?"

"Kaldur brought his whole class. They're in the hangar, because-."

"Can't get out of the water, right. You got anything?"

He shakes his head. "Nothing on satellite, and with the news channels down there's no good eyewitness reports of anything that could explain this."

"Um." We both look at Robert, who shrinks slightly. "Sorry. Is there.. like.. something I should be doing?"

"Cornwall here can absorb other people's magic to power his own."

"That wasn't in the file you gave Batman."

"We just found out. Know anything about scrying or divination?"

"Little bit. Some geomantic stuff. I mean, if you've got people working on it already-."

Robin shrugs. "Every little helps. Oh El-."

"Yeah. Come with me. I'll show you down. Robin, if you can't find anything could you please keep an eye on Liverpool? We ran into a mob of Praexis Demons and I want to make sure there isn't some apprentice summoner going crazy down there."

"Sure, but that wasn't what I was going to ask. You were in Gotham when this started."

Oh. "Yeah."

"How.. bad was it?"

"I was on the Vincefinkel Bridge. Twenty nine dead and.. lots of injuries." I close my eyes for a moment, picturing it. "I stopped the situation there getting worse, but if you extend those sort of figures across the city... Or the world..."

He nods, visibly shaken.

"Add in the risks of exposure and starvation... A load of healthy children getting scared isn't the problem, we're going to need paramedics and primary caregivers back in the next few hours or things are going to get even nastier."

back

Displaced 9

next

5th November

20:24 GMT -4

"And this is the hangar."

"Whow." Robert looks appropriately awestruck as he takes in the large cavern, before pointing hesitantly at the bioship. "Is that.. an alien spaceship?"

"Yes. It belongs to Miss Martian. Very useful. This way please?" I lead the way to the right, down the steps to the open area where I see that the others have gathered. M'gann, Kon, Artemis and Wallace are still out rounding up unattended small children around Happy Harbour. Low traffic density plus low speed limits have apparently kept the casualty count down locally and with the best will in the world I can't think of a way to use their abilities to aid the search.

"Wot's that?"

Gemma's hanging back a bit, pointing at one of the visiting Atlanteans. Maybe this whole thing will shock her out of her magic fascination? Hm, no. Wishful thinking. "The big guy in the water's Blubber. Atlantean with whale traits grafted on. No idea how he got in here." I sort of assumed that Kaldur would just get Garth and Tula. Blubber can cope with the low pressure here well enough but he can't support his own weight out of water without suffocating. He could have swum in through the hangar doors but it's an awfully long way here from Poseidonis. How did they get him from the zeta tube to the water? "Cthuloid-looking fellow's called Topo. Another Atlantean." I hadn't realised that he could walk on land. He's standing a short distance from the discussion going on between Kaldur, Tula and Garth. I point them out. "Aqualad, Tula, Garth." Garth's facing in our direction. He nods at me and I wave my right hand in response. He looks slightly puzzled by my guests then dismisses them with a small shake of his head. Kaldur's in Ocean Master gear sans helmet, which is sitting on the concrete steps behind them. "Zatanna Zatara and Lori Lemaris." Zatanna's by the water's edge talking to the mermaid. Lori notices me and I assume she says something because Zatanna glances my way before pointedly looking away. Not sure what that's about. "And the Creature from the Black Lagoon over by the steps is La'gaan." And William Batson is sitting next to him. I can't use his real name and he doesn't look like Captain Marvel at the moment. Maybe I should just make something up?

Kaldur says something to Garth and Tula which prompts them to nod in agreement before turning away and walking over to the water's edge, Topo following on behind them. Kaldur stands still for a moment and then walks to meet me.

"Orange Lantern. It is good to see that you have remained with us."

"Fat lot of-. Yeah. Got anything so far?"

"The worldwide nature of the spell, combined with its obvious power and complexity, makes it very hard to trace an origin point. And it seems that the League of Shadows were not the only ones to learn how to avoid unwanted attention." I nod. Supervillain networking at its worst. "Cornwall Boy." He offers Robert his right hand and to his credit Robert only hesitates slightly before taking it. "Orange Lantern speaks highly of you."

"Um. R-right. Thanks.. thanks for having me. I'll try and make myself useful."

Kaldur nods, then turns his attention to Gemma who is standing a little back from us. "I do not believe we have been introduced."

"This is Gemma Masters, John Constantine's niece. Gemma, Kaldur'ahm, our team leader."

Kaldur holds out his hand to Gemma, who clasps both of hers to her chest. After a moment Kaldur lowers his hand. "Miss Masters, I understand that this must seem strange to you but rest assured that we are working as hard as we can to find out what happened to all our elders."

"Uh.. uh-huh..."

"Orange Lantern, have you tried speaking to the Ophidian?"

"No. And... And I should have done. Sorry, I should have-."

"Ah!" Gemma leaps past me, trying to hide from something.. Teekl. Teekl nudged the back of her legs while lioness size and is now sitting down and regarding Gemma with amused curiosity. "What the hell is that!?"

"That's Teekl. Iiii was going to ask her to keep you company. She's perfectly safe." Teekl gives me an incredulous look. "Safe to her friends. Usually." She's still looking at me. "Teekl, cooperate! Important things are happening!"

The tip of her tail flicks. "Teekl be nice to kitten."

"Right. I'm... I'll go and check on the Ophidian. R-. Cornwall, stick with Kaldur."

"Okay, I can-."

The hangar disappears as I transition to the corridor just outside my room. Another post-joining improvement: the filters in the ventilation system are no longer fine enough to prevent my filament FTL. I open the door and quickly stride to where I keep the box containing my personal lantern.

"Reveal."

Whatever's happened to the world my subspace storage still works. The lantern... Damn it. Whatever reduced Robert's power looks like it's had its effect on my lantern as well. Rather than the brilliant glow it's had since I stuck the Ophidian in there it looks dull, glowing only faintly. No, that's not... It's at least as bright as its old 'two-charges-available' mode, just darker than I've got used to.

"Ring, lantern status."

"Lantern physically intact. Power drain detected. Error, unable to locate source."

"Is the lantern at risk?"

"Lantern integrity not at risk. Rate of power drain constant."

"Is the Ophidian still in there?"

"Lifeform 'Ophidian' not detected."

"Can the lantern be restored to full functionality?"

"Nature of error unknown, unable to effect repairs."

Great. Anything else? I don't need to recharge at the moment. "Occlude." The lantern vanishes once more. The Ophidian is certainly older than eighteen, if that really is the cut off point. But William Batson isn't, and Captain Marvel is William Batson. I also don't know enough about the Amazons to know why some of them weren't affected. Are they the magic users? Ones who had some sort of defence? But if that was the case, wouldn't loads of Atlanteans have avoided being affected? Gah, I don't know. What's the next step? Without the Ophidian there's no way I can stabilise world conditions by myself. With a drain on my lantern I can't even constantly work at small scale change reliably. No, stick to the counterattack strategy. I need to keep as much charge as possible available for that.

I blink, and for a moment I see the mangled wreckage on the bridge. Damn it.

Next step, Marvel.

I transition back to the hangar, next to William and La'gaan.

"Neptune's beard!"

"Hey, ah, thanks for giving me access for the zeta tubes."

"You're welcome. Um, what am I supposed to call you at the moment?"

"Billy. Billy's fine. There's lots of Billys around."

"Alright, Billy. Adults aren't here, we are. I don't know that Captain Marvel would go to wherever they are, but every moment we delay sorting this out more children die and I'm having trouble coming up with a better idea. Are you up for giving it a go?"

He shrinks a little, and looks away. "Ah, noooot.. really."

back

Displaced 10

next

5th November

20:33 GMT -4

"Ah. Mind if I ask why?"

"Because I'll just.. disappear! Captain Marvel might have the courage of Achilles, but I just have the courage of-." He looks around. "Of me."

"I've always been a bit suspicious of that one. Achilles knew he was invulnerable, right? So... How was what he did brave? How does fighting people who can't hurt you require courage? No, Patroclus was brave, for daring to fight beside him while lacking that invulnerability."

He keeps looking down. "Yeah, but... I mean, what if they're all..."

"They are not dead."

I appreciate La'gaan's confidence, but I can't be that sure. "Do we know that for certain?" He recoils slightly. "No, seriously, I don't know enough about magic to recognise the effect. Could what we observed have killed them?"

He has to think for a moment. "No. Finding everyone over a particular age everywhere on the planet-."

"Not everywhere. I'm still here, and Thirty one thousand out of one hundred and eighty thousand Amazons are still on Themyscira."

"R-right. I don't know what would have prevented..."

"Wait. How did you manage that?"

I look down at where Garth is standing. "Ring, remove torso armour."

"Compliance."

Garth's eyes widen as he takes in my tattoos. The cuts and brands inflicted during the more recent work have faded into near invisibility, but they're just about noticeable when I move. Garth comes closer and I walk to the steps to meet him. "What are those... What is that supposed to do?"

"The tattoos cause any attempt to scry for me to fail. They've been tested -not by me- against the most powerful life form in Hell. If he couldn't see through them, I'm probably safe.. from..."

Garth makes a scooping gesture with his left hand, his own tattoos glowing as he does so. A thin tendril of water rises from the pond and moves through the air to pool just beside him, forming an upright circle. He lays his left hand on it and it shimmers. Through the rear I see a picture of the steps I'm standing on, La'gaan and Billy. And not me. "That's..." He looks up as if to check that I'm actually here, then turns back to his water screen. "That shouldn't be possible. Who did this?"

"John Constantine. You remember, the-."

"The wizard you brought with you..."

"That's him." I shake my head. "I'd really like to talk to him about this at the moment."

"How long does the effect last?"

"Should be permanent. John can carve runes directly onto a person's soul, so it-."

"That's not-!" He looks at the water window thing again. "No, clearly it is. I hadn't realized he was that skilled. Were you wearing your Spell Eater talisman when the.. event happened?"

"I never take it off, but I was assuming that it couldn't have drained a spell this big."

"It couldn't, otherwise the spell itself would have shut down. But the combination might have prevented it from detecting you."

"Would it help if I took it off?"

He nods. "If we could monitor the effect as you disappeared, it might give us a better idea of how the spell worked. Of course, if it isn't the Spell Eater that kept you here, nothing will happen."

"Are we out of other ideas?"

He sighs. "We're training to be battle mages, not researchers. If we-."

"Okay." I put my right hand on the Spell Eater. "Do you need me to do something first?"

"I don't think... We can't use a spell to track you because your amulet will just absorb it-."

"And I can't take it off because that will trigger the disappearance."

"Right." He makes a small gesture with his right fingers and a small amount of water separates from his window. "But if you swallow this, we should be able to track it. And we can probably put... Tula! Kaldur! We've had an idea!"

They walk in our direction, accompanied by Zatanna. I try meeting her eyes, trying to get some idea of why she's annoyed with me. She spots what I'm doing and makes a point of looking away, arms folded across her chest. Hm. Think this is the first time I've seen her in Mister Gambi's armour. It's black with white lines which look like they're supposed to suggest the shape of a dinner jacket. Trousers rather than tights, thank goodness. Still wearing her hair loose but I'll take what rationality I can get.

Kaldur looks from me to Garth while Tula squints at my chest. Given Atlantean clothing standards I'm going to assume that she's just looking at the tattoos. "What is your idea?"

"We think that Orange Lantern will get transported to wherever the adults are if he takes off the Spell Eater. If we monitor it carefully we might be able to get some idea of the nature of the spell. The risk is that he almost certainly won't be able to come back if we do it."

Kaldur looks from me to Tula and then to Garth. "That.. sounds.. complicated. Were you able to get anything useful from the Ophidian?"

"Turns out that the Ophidian either isn't talking to me or is over eighteen."

He nods. "Robin told me that Batman and Zatara disappeared within a second. Would there be enough time for you to gain useful knowledge?"

Tula thinks for a moment. "Maybe. I don't know..."

"Would it be possible to drain power from whatever part of the spell causes the disappearances without shutting it down completely? Would that help?"

Garth frowns. "Doesn't your Spell Eater drain as much as it can all of the time?"

"Yes, but-. Cornwall! Over here! You remember how you were afraid that I was a magic drinking abomination?" Garth and Tula drop their gazes for a moment as Robert reluctantly leaves the shelter of the wall under the bioship's landing platform. "Turns out that Cornwall here is a thaumovore." Tula and Garth simultaneously turn, look and take a small step away from him as he comes within touch range. "The men of his family appear to have an innate ability to drain magic from others and add it to their own reserves. He disintegrated a mob of Praexis Demons rather swiftly before we got here, and he should be able to disrupt or at least slow down the spell effect enough that you can get whatever readings you need. Cornwall?"

"Um, maybe? I haven't had a lot of practice."

Kaldur looks at him. "Exactly how much practice have you had?"

"The Demons, and there were these sharkmen I turned back into normal Humans." The Atlanteans just about manage to conceal their horror. "That's it. Nothing before today."

Kaldur turns back to me. "Do you understand the risks? We have no idea where you will go, if indeed you go anywhere."

"I accepted the risks when I took the job. I'm as well equipped to survive the process as I can be, and I really don't see a future in a world where everyone just vanishes at eighteen." My armour reappears, Spell Eater on the outside. Construct armour appears on top of that. Just to be doubly safe I add my MindShield construct.

Kaldur nods. "Very well. It would be best if everyone was involved in this." He gestures towards the water's edge where Blubber, Lori and Topo have clumped together. I nod and head towards them.

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5th November

20:46 GMT -4

Nothing!

Fucking... Nothing!

I'm standing in the training area, having taken over manning the monitoring and communications station from Robin and I'm still annoyed about that. I took off the Spell Eater and nothing happened! All that build up, I felt like a complete idiot. Garth said that I was probably protected by the tattoos instead and I can't exactly turn those off. Well, maybe I could, but it turns out that Robert's magic sucking is a magic ability and he couldn't feel the magic making up the ward.

The Atlantean contingent are working on some sort of detection network that should be able to pick up major alterations in the Earth's magic systems without directly picking up the warded ritual site. I... I feel a bit useless. When I first got here I thought about prioritising disasters for the attention of the emergency services, only to kick myself for forgetting that there aren't any at the moment. I didn't prepare for this.

I've been hearing about the activity of some of our peers. A group from Japan whom I've never heard of called the Super Young Team have been making regular reports of their activities, including organising their fans to perform house to house searches for young children whose parents have disappeared. The power of social media. Kaldur plans to make a similar broadcast when he gets the time. Elsewhere in Japan an individual identifying themself as 'Hammersuit Zero-X' was noted as fighting some sort of monster. I can't get any pictures and the pilot appears to be less interested in self promotion than their countrymen. I've never heard of any of them, but when this is over they're all going in the notebook.

Several people have been active in Dakota City including Rocket. No Static, I noticed. No Big Bang event has happened here as far as I can tell so maybe we've got him to look forward to. Donna phoned in earlier. She's attempting to organise things in New York but very much wants to be in on the attack when we find the source. I mentioned the thing about Amazons remaining behind but she couldn't come up with any explanation as to why that happened either.

Most disappointingly, no reports of anything that could be the focal point of the spell which is causing this. No reports, no pictures... I've got the ring doing an analysis of satellite imagery but I can't properly describe what it's supposed to be looking for. Next step is to just start scanning for every magic using supervillain there is and working out which ones we can't find, and that's just-.

I look around as I hear footsteps. Zatanna walks down the corridor behind me and starts walking towards my position. She looks like she's deep in thought and isn't really paying much attention to her surroundings. She gets most of the way across the room before looking at me and then stops dead. No one else around and I don't really have any ideas on what I could be doing to fix the world so I suppose now's as good a time as any to find out why she's annoyed with me.

"Hi Zatanna."

"Um, yeah. Hi."

"Have I.. done something to offend you lately?"

"No." She crosses her arms. "What makes you ask?"

"Because I've got much better at reading body language since I got this ring. Also, your aura is tinged with red."

"I'm just worried about my father." She resumes her walk in my direction, stopping on the other side of the closest hologram screen and motioning her hand to turn it around.

"Right." I bring up a summary of events in New York. "Things seem to be staying quiet in your neighbourhood."

"Uhuh."

It's still night in China, so I don't have much information on what's happening there. Is there a Great Ten youth team? I don't remember one from the comics. "Mind me asking what you were doing when this all kicked off?"

"I was here, talking to Artemis about the team. And you were busy setting fire to the Pope."

I stop and look at her. "Is that what this is about? Zatanna, I've never been to a Guy Fawkes Night celebration where they burned a dummy dressed as the Pope. I mean, yeah, they burn the Guy, but the major events stopped burning the Pope before I was even born."

"But you said..?"

I shake my head and shrug. "I just wanted to get out of going to the dance."

"Setting fire to the Pope isn't something you should joke about."

"Okay, one, setting fire to a dummy in robes. The few places that still do it do it because it's traditional, not because they hate Catholics. Two, not the current Pope, the Pope from a period of history in which the Catholic Church was trying quite hard to persuade Catholic European countries like Spain and France to invade England and convert us back to Catholicism by force. Ever heard of Bloody Mary? The queen, not the drink? Queen Mary Tudor, who had over two hundred people burned to death to try and achieve that end after having her immediate Protestant predecessor decapitated. I don't have a problem with the Catholic Church as it is now and I don't have a problem with the current Pope. He's not exactly at Pius the Thirteenth levels of awesome but he's alright. Four hundred years ago when the commemorations started the Church was a very different organisation and I think it's worth remembering that. Third, you don't see me complaining about Independence Day, despite all the complete nonsense you lot get taught about British colonial policy. I'm not saying I'll go to a parade or anything but I'm not going to sit in my room hiding under a Union Jack with Men of Harlech and Jerusalem playing on a loop." I pause to take a breath. "And I went totally overboard with that, didn't I?"

She nods. "A little, yeah."

"Sorry. And, I'm sorry, I hadn't realised the thing about the Pope would be that offensive. If I had, I wouldn't have said it."

"That's.. that's okay. I'll forgive you for that." She frowns. "What do you mean, 'complete nonsense we get taught about British-'."

"The fundamentality of the right to liberty proclaimed by rich slave owning white men. And they did have representation, it was-."

"Recognised, Kid Flash, B zero three."

I think that was probably a lucky distraction.

"Hey Oh El, hey Zatanna. Any progress?"

I shake my head. "The Atlanteans are working on it. How's Happy Harbour?"

"About as peaceful as it could be. Think we've got all the kids out of the cars now."

"Ah. I'm sorry, how many died?"

He blinks in astonishment. "What? None? Why'd you... Oh. You were in Gotham, right?" I nod. Good to know that wasn't replicated everywhere. "How bad..?"

I look down, right fist tapping against my mouth. Zatanna's staring at me as well. "Fairly bad. Would have been.. convenient, to have a ring better adapted for medicinal uses."

"Right. So, um, hey, how come you're still here?"

"The consensus is that it's probably my warding tattoos."

"See, I've kind of got this bet going that you've been lying about your age." I tense, then try not to. "I think you're really under eighteen and that's why you weren't affected." Aaaaand breathe.

"No, I'd definitely be in the target age group. I don't think it even works off that. It didn't affect thirty one thousand Amazons and M'gann's still here."

"Really?" Puzzled frown. "I thought M'gann was, like, sixteen or something. Are you saying she's really eighteen?"

"Wallace, M'gann's forty eight."

"What."

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5th November

20:53 GMT -4

"Don't worry about it, Slayer. King Orin ordered Wotan locked up so well I doubt he can even move, let alone cast spells." King Nanaue Sha'ark grins at me. I think he's grinning anyway. The way his mouth's structured makes it a bit hard to tell. "Same with Orm-" He grimaces. I think. "-and anyone else in Atlantis who could have done something like this. It's you surface worlders who can't keep your magic using criminals under control."

"I rather suspected, thank you." Sha'ark would be taller than me if he were standing fully upright. As it is the tops of our heads are about level. He came along with the others but he'd been lurking under the water until just now. He can move about on land but he's not exactly elegant doing it. He only came up because he wanted to meet the man who crippled Orm.

Zatanna moves her hand through the holoscreen, removing Wotan and Orm from the Guess Who board of our potential suspects. There's still a lot of faces on there. She sighs. "This isn't going to work. There's no way they could have avoided being affected by their own spell without being outside of its area of effect."

"So we're probably looking for someone under eighteen?"

Sha'ark turns his head to the side to get a better look at the images. His head isn't quite the same shape as a natural shark as his eyes are more forwards-facing. "Why is it eighteen anyway?"

Zatanna looks at him curiously. "Why wouldn't it be?"

"In Nanaue, you're adult at sixteen. If whoever did this was trying to get rid of people who could fight back shouldn't they have set the age limit lower?"

"Is that a clue?"

"Not unless you know where they could have got a spell to do exactly that. The sort of person who… Who'd do this... I don't think they'd be worried about that sort of thing."

"Hm. Carnage doesn't bother me, but this is pathetic. If you're going to remove the world's most powerful warriors, you should attack immediately, not wait for them to work out how to stop you. Are you sure nothing's happening out there?"

"No, I'm not. Nothing shows up on satellite and I'm monitoring discussion forums, but if something were happening in the parts of the world that're still asleep, or... Okay, that isn't helping. We agree that there must be someone under eighteen doing this?" Zatanna and Sha'ark nod. "Alright. I don't know of anyone under eighteen who would do this, but I know a couple who could. Zatanna, if I give you a name can you send a message to a person?"

"Maybe, but who..? Are you talking about.. that Timothy Hunter guy?"

I shrug. "It would be convenient if we could get hold-."

"Who's this guy?" Sha'ark points at a picture of Klarion.

"Klarion, Lord of Chaos. Nasty piece of work. I stole his cat."

"Why's he on the adult list?"

"Because he's at least forty years old. In fact, according to Kent Nelson's notes he's an ancient eldritch abomination who just chooses to look like a child."

"So, not him then?"

"Wouldn't have thought.. so..." Wait a second. Mordred. As far as I can tell he doesn't exist here, but when he used his version of this spell in Justice League Unlimited he remained behind when he should have disappeared due to being at least a thousand years old. "Last time I saw Klarion he didn't have access to most of his magic due to his lack of a familiar. He still looked Human."

Zatanna brings his image to centre screen, expanding it. "Do you think he could be behind this?"

"Maybe. I'm not sure how to check except by finding him."

"But if he doesn't have a familiar, where is he getting the power from? I mean, that was how you beat him, right?"

My mind flashes back to the well fed Praexis Demons. "Dread to think. He might just have got a replacement, I don't know what the requirements for a familiar are."

"The animal needs to be emblematic of the wizard adopting it, and have some sort of social bond to them." We both look at Sha'ark. "What? I go to the Conservatory to study these things. You think anyone in Nanaue would tolerate being ruled by an idiot? If he had a cat, he'd probably want a cat again."

"Klarion didn't strike me as an animal person. How strong a bond?"

"Familiars are animals. If you feed them, that's usually enough." Another Praexis Demon flashback.

"Would something else work? A Demon, or something?"

"A Demon?" He thinks for a moment. "I don't know. I've never read about it, but if the Demon were fully intelligent, I don't think so."

Come on out, Fatty.

A fat hand emerges from the ring, flaps around and then somehow the Praexis manages to.. fall out of the ring and belly flop onto the floor.

Zatanna takes several steps back. "Is that..?"

Fatty looks up without getting up. "Food?"

"No. It's a Praexis Demon I assimilated. So far it's only demonstrated intelligence equal to that of a monkey."

"Food now?"

"Maybe less. They're weak as Demons go, but if you fed it..."

"Consorting with Demons is a death penalty offence in most of Atlantis. I don't know anyone who would know how to make one a familiar." Sha'ark seems disconcerted by the idea.

Zatanna looks horrified. "Why would you take something like that?"

"I wanted to know why it was in Liverpool, and asking it didn't seem likely to work. And I was curious if it was possible to take a Demon permanently out of circulation using the ring's assimilation function. Normally, when you 'kill' a Demon you just send it back to Hell. I'm not one for temporary solutions."

"Do you think.. Klarion..?"

"Honestly, I think we're speculating too-."

"Aqualad to Orange Lantern."

I raise the ring to my ear. "Orange Lantern here."

"Billy has volunteered to transform. With luck, we will soon be back in contact with the Justice League. Have you found anything?"

"No, not... The only youngish magic user who could be doing this we've been able to come up with is Klarion."

"That does not bode well."

"He wasn't just going to disappear. Doubt he'd have any allies with him. I think the fight's winnable if the first wave use Spell Eaters to protect themselves and cover him in magic suppressors."

"Do you have any leads on his location?"

"No, sorry. Do you want Zatanna down there for when Billy tries it?"

"Yes." She nods and walks towards the lifts. "While we wait for news of his success, please, keep looking for any information that might help us."

"Of course. Orange Lantern out."

Not like there's anything else I can do.

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5th November

20:59 GMT -4

"-am!"

I step away from the rapidly dispersing cloud of smoke as Billy appears in the training room, rapidly looking around to get his bearings. He's smiling like a loon so I assume-.

"It worked! Batman, Zatara, Red Tornado and some British guy, they're in the mountain! Only not this mountain, it's-!"

"A copy of the world where all of the adults went?"

"... Yeah." He peers at me. "How'd you know?"

"It was one of a range of possibilities, and given how you reacted it seemed to be most likely." I raise the ring to my ear. "Orange Lantern to Kaldur, good news. Billy's back and our elders are alright. You should probably come up here."

"We are on our way."

"Orange Lantern to team. Please return to base as soon as reasonably possible." I lower the ring. "Billy, when you say 'some British guy', can you describe him?"

"Uh, blonde hair, blue suit, long coat and he was holding an ice pack to his head."

John. Wait. "Ice pack?"

"Yeah. Guess he hit his head or something. But the main thing is everyone's okay!"

"No they're not. What you mean is: the majority of adults are physically okay. I can only imagine how bad the panic is worldwide. Have they had any more luck than us tracking down the perpetrators?"

"No, not yet. Zatara and the British guy were working on it. They said something about scrying for bad guys until they get the right one."

I look back at the list I was working from. That could take a while.

"I don't suppose they told you where Danni w-."

There's a blast of displaced air as Wallace comes to a halt next to us.

"Who's Danni, Oh El?"

"Danette Reilly. The gynoid?"

"Oh yeah, you were with her in-. Wait. You abbreviated her name?"

"I.. suppose I did..?"

Wallace leans down to elbow Billy in the shoulder. "Y'know, for Oh El that's like second base."

Billy looks puzzled. "What's second base?"

"Uh..."

Wallace looks away, then looks relieved as the rest of the gang approach. Kaldur, Robin, Zatanna, Garth, Tula, Sha'ark and La'gaan file in. Floating around Garth and Tula are a small cloud of glowing stones. Our detection network, presumably. The plan had been to have me fly up into orbit and spread them out in a grid while the Atlantean contingent conducted the scan from the ground. Would have taken ages to scan the whole planet like that, but if we can narrow it down even a little...

Kaldur fixes his eyes on Billy. "What news?"

"There's, like, two worlds. Adults on one, kids on the other."

"My dad's okay?"

"Zatara's in the cave right now. He's standing right over there." He points near where I'm standing. I can see the tension visibly leave her. I hadn't noticed it earlier. I suppose I'm not the only one who tries to keep busy.

Kaldur looks a little relieved too. "Does Batman have orders for us?"

"He says you should keep looking for wherever the spell's being cast. I don't think they're having much luck with that either."

"Have they managed to identify the perpetrators?"

"No, they're trying to work it out based on who they can't detect."

"We do need to know if someone we haven't heard of might be handling the youth end of things. The only one we've been able to come up with is Klarion, and he's supposed to be out of action."

Garth takes hold of one of the rune stones and walks forwards to give it to Billy. "See if you can take this with you when you transform. If we're lucky we can create a sympathetic link between it and the ones on this side."

"Got it. Anything else you want me to tell them?"

"No. Take the stone to Zatara and return once we know whether or not it can be used to communicate."

Billy nods. "Sha-!"

"Wait." Billy cuts himself off, and the others look at me curiously. "Is it really just Mister Zatara and John there trying to work out how this happened?"

"Well, yeah. Everyone else is out trying to keep order."

"Please pass on my suggestion to Batman that the League's priorities need to be reassessed. Panic is unfortunate but inevitable given the situation and the League is ill equipped to act as a police force. Everyone capable of aiding in the search in any way should be on that."

Kaldur frowns. "I do not think that abandoning-."

"Tell Batman to imagine a world where in every hospital, every clinic, every doctor's surgery... Doctors: gone. Surgeons: gone. Anaesthetists: gone. Critical care nurses: gone. Any child who was undergoing surgery when the separation occurred is most likely already dead." The faces around me whiten. What, didn't they think about this? "Most children who were in critical care wards will be dying without the constant attention they need. Small babies-" I wince and rub my brow. "-who were being bathed when their parents disappeared stand a good chance of drowning." My voice hitches. "And good as autopilots are I don't know how long we've got until planes start falling out of the sky with no pilots. Major roads are covered in crashed cars, the injured and the dead and there aren't enough of us to help. I will be astonished if we keep the death toll to a mere five figures -most of whom will be children- and I will shout the praises of any deity who feels like chipping in, we cannot afford-." I take a ragged breath as my mind's eye sees the bridge again. "We can't afford to pay any unessential attention to secondary objectives. Please pass that on."

Billy stares at me wide eyed, mouth open. "O-okay. Sh-shaz-."

A flash of lightning and a puff of smoke and he disappears. I turn to see the others still staring at me. "What? Didn't you realise? This isn't two people in silly costumes hitting each other. This isn't theft. We aren't dealing with an ideology that could be engaged with. This is mass murder on a planetary scale at least. This makes the Injustice League look like amateur hour, and most of the victims will be young children."

Tula swallows. "The... The stones are ready. If you take them i-into orbit we can get started."

I nod. "Oh, um, if I'm not here when Billy gets back, tell him to get the Greenies to call in reinforcements from their Corps. Someone who knows how to do rapid planetary surveys." I use the ring to take hold of the stones. Garth shakes himself and takes one of them back. Right, for the communication attempt.

"Um, sorry to bother you..." Gemma and Teekl emerge from the trophy room. Gemma's hesitant, slightly crouched. Teekl's as confident as she always is. "You've.. probably thought of this, but.. to scry for someone you need something they've owned, right?"

Garth turns to her. "No, but it makes it a lot easier. Why?"

"Well... Didn't Klarion.. used to own Teekl?"

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5th November

21:23 GMT -4

Fifty miles up, I move the enchanted stones to their next position. They really aren't designed to be used like this. In Atlantean cities they have things like these spread out through the streets to monitor thaumic shifts for much the same reason that the surface world monitors solar radiation. Moving them around makes it much harder to detect anything. If I had a thousand of these we'd already have a location but there's no way to make that many new ones in the time in which we have to complete this mission or rework the ones currently in use in Atlantis.

"Aqualad to Orange Lantern. Zatara has identified Blackbriar Thorn as being among our enemies, and confirms that Wotan remains in his cell."

"Understood. Any news on the Lanterns?" Teekl cooperated surprisingly well with the scrying but her link to Klarion barely exists in arcane terms, what with her no longer being his familiar and becoming a Construct-Lantern. The best we could get was 'somewhere in the south-east of the United States' but at least that's more than we had before.

"Lantern Stewart has confirmed that the effect is limited to Earth."

Blubber was in a bit of a state when I left. Whales can't breathe water, and neither can Whale-form Atlanteans. His people used Whale-form shapeshifting before the sinking and are the only ones to live in homes with air-filled spaces in the modern day. Though obviously dangerous the only real alternative would be moving to Venturia. It's the only Atlantean city-state with territory above water, but it's also the most autocratic and usually the risk is perfectly manageable. Adults have a spell-song for extracting oxygen dissolved in the water and children usually accompany them until they're old enough to learn to do it for themselves. Which means that as of a couple of hours ago any of them caught outside their homes have had to hold their breath and swim for an air pocket. They should mostly be alright as their lung capacities are as good as the natural Whales they pattern themselves after. But if any get lost, or panic and try to swim for the surface...

"What about reinforcements?"

"No news yet. Move to the next location."

I'm moving quite large distances. It's up in the air as to whether they'll work as intended at all. Only advantage of there hardly being any magic users in this country is that anything artificial-looking is probably our target. I'm over North Carolina now, near the coast. Why is Klarion doing this? There aren't really any other examples of confirmed Lords of Chaos. I suppose this is certainly chaotic, maybe that's the point. Maybe the people we're fighting are just that bad. Perhaps their desires are just too... Inhuman. I blink and trigger Ophidian'sEyes and the dark world below covered in points of light near major areas of inhabitation is replaced with something that looks like one of those satellite images we used to look at in secondary school geography. It's practically impossible to make out individual sets of desires at this range and with this many people. I think I'm glad about that. No. I don't think it's helping, nothing's standing ou-

Mommy! Daddy! Help!

I clutch my head, clamp my eyes shut and try and shut the Eyes down. Agh! Individual desires might be imperceptible but the collective whole is strong enough. Need to try again. Need to refine it. Ring, track individual desire-clusters. I want to.. to skim the desires.

"Nothing again. Move to next location."

I take the stones south, watching the desires as I go. Rather than listening to a crowd like before and being overwhelmed when they shout in unison this is like hearing a great many quiet voices in succession. They're going so fast that I don't know if I'd spot anything...

Oh no. I'm hearing them cut out. I'm seeing them go dark. I thought.. ah.. I thought that by this point most of the deaths would have already occurred. They probably have but that doesn't mean

Exaltation, joy, speed, lights out.

that more people.. more children, aren't going to die while I'm doing this. I take a second to see what that last one was about and see a freshly burning car, smashed up and flipped on its roof. Joy riding idiots. Why..? Why would they..? Focus. I know that what I'm doing is the best way to end this but I'm really starting to understand why most superheroes prefer the inefficient way. This is... More going dark. North Carolina has about nine million inhabitants. I should have expected this. Even on a normal day people would be dying. I don't know if this is unusual or not. I hope it is. The glow of orange just makes it more obvious when the dark patches suddenly appear, however small they are.

"We have something! Hold position." Ohpleaseohpleaseohplease. "Move to position out to sea, just off the coast."

I can't use FTL transfer without them losing the connection and I can't risk the delay that would cause but I think this is the fastest I've ever flown anywhere. I want to ask what they've picked up but I can't risk distracting them. I scan the area below me with the Eyes again but I don't even know if they'd work through the ward. More fading out.

"Move south. There's some sort of distortion effect."

I comply. "Is it him?"

"I am uncertain. Given that these readings are indirect it must be incredibly powerful but it does not match what I felt during our last encounter with Klarion."

"Would having a new familiar to draw power through change the feeling?"

"There are too many unknown factors. Decrease height to twenty miles."

"Decreasing height. Is it worth notifying the League?"

"Not yet. I do not wish to alert them until we have something solid."

Below me the American coastline tapers off towards Florida. To the north there's a fairly impressive river mouth and off the main coastline there are a few small islands. I switch between daylight-augmented vision, normal vision and the Ophidian's Eyes, trying to spot something that could be relevant just a little sooner. The ritual site could well only be a few metres across and from this height unless it really stands out it's a faint hope, but I have to try, damn it!

"Twenty miles, holding position."

When this is over I think I'm going to have to be a bit more forceful about the research and development thing. Now that I've cleared local space there's really no reason why we couldn't install a magic field reading network. Unlike normal spy satellites I don't think the Security Council would object to us tracking something they don't use in any significant way, particularly if this is the result of not doing so. I cringe and close my eyes as a series of orange lights disappear, fire consuming a street. No fire services. No adult on hand to grab a fire extinguisher at the first sign of smoke. I can't tell what started it. Dodgy wiring? An unattended deep fat fryer? It isn't just the new disasters, it's all the small things adults are better equipped to deal with than small children, accidents always producing casualties at the top of the predicted range because all of the things that could ameliorate the situation aren't happening.

I could try getting the ring to analyse visible light, but at this height I'm going to get a great deal of blur. Long range scans are unreliable because of the wards. I hate this powerlessness!

"Orange Lantern, we have something. Decrease height to ten miles and move fourteen miles to the south west."

"Height decreased, movement complete. I'm directly over-." Ring? "The Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge."

"We have your location. The technique we're using can only give us the approximate location of what we're looking for. Are you able to see anything unusual?"

"No! Sorry. Sorry. Give me a moment. Ring, membrane and visible light analysis." A pale orange glow extends across the sky behind me. Shouldn't really be noticeable from the ground. Were there anyone down there to notice it. Water, sand, grass... "Can you suggest a direction?"

"It would-. One moment." He goes quiet and I extend the light-sensitive film further. Still nothing. "Try to the north."

"Moving north." I follow the sandbank north and a little to the west. I've no idea what makes a good ritual site. Would Klarion bother with conventional camouflage? I really don't know. "Coming up on Roanoke Island." I try to avoid looking at the inhabited areas in any detail. We haven't heard any reports and someone would have said something by now, wouldn't they? Wait, what's-? "Got something." A blur of purple in the middle of a woodland. Shouldn't be there and a direct scan with the ring says that it isn't there. I move directly over it, dropping the membrane construct as I do so. My eyes can see it well enough now. There's a glowing, five pointed star drawn on the ground down there and kneeling in the centre is a colossal purple humanoid. Five streams of purple light flow from its back to small circles at the points of the star. Four are empty, but the fifth...

"I have visual confirmation. Klarion's on Roanoke Island. And he's got a friend."

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5th November

21:29 GMT -4

"Relaying visuals now." Giant purple genie thing. Bedlam. I can't see whatever his name was, the boy it bonded to in the comics. Maybe Klarion took that role or stole Bedlam from him. Does this mean that Klarion still doesn't have much of his own power? If it weren't for the wards I could scan him to make sure that he still reads as a baseline Human. Certainly his proportions are still more 'correct' than the first time we met.

I don't see a shield.

Directly behind me the railgun construct appears. I know he can't detect me with magic. He could see me with his eyes, but I'm still ten miles up and I'm not actually glowing all that much. I know I'm perfectly capable of firing my projectiles hard enough to level a good chunk of that woodland. If he is Human at present then he'd be reduced to meat in seconds.

And I really want to kill him.

I can't see any other magic users. If that Bedlam is anything like the one in the comics then it can rearrange reality as soon as it notices us. Should I take the shot? No. What set of actions is most likely to result in Klarion's death?

"Billy is notifying the Justice League now. Assuming that the adults taking part in the ritual were occupying the other points of the star there will be three others in addition to Blackbriar Thorn. That.. being in the centre. I have never seen anything like it."

"My first guess would be a Djinn but I can't claim to know anything about its capacities for certain."

The best outcome is most likely to result from us working together. "Did you give Billy a picture of the symbols he's using? John will want to see it."

"Of course. It would probably be best if you returned to the cave. I do not want Klarion to learn of our coming until we are ready to strike."

I can't use FTL until I'm out of his line of sight. An orange streak across the sky would be a blatant give away. I keep my distance, flying in a curve towards sea level. I don't see him looking around. A summoning would probably be able to see me if he had them on sentry duty. I have the ring show me a map of the land's contours, plotting the earliest time I can FTL back and pick up the others. Being an island that means that I have to go further than I would like. Can't risk going supersonic because I haven't bothered practising and the noise would attract his attention. With FTL available practising it just didn't seem worthwhile. Briefly I consider travelling underwater but I haven't practised that post Ophidian and I don't know how brightly the travel corridor would shine.

It feels like five minutes by the time I get enough land and tree between Klarion and myself that I feel confident that I will not be spotted. I plot the FTL transfer as close as I can to the ground -sure, it'll be spotted, but it's not like Klarion is watching news reports- and in a flash I'm at the external Happy Harbour zeta tube. Come a long way since the first time I came here with Diana and Alan.

"Recognised, Orange Lantern, B zero six."

The ring protects my eyes from the glare as I walk into the main training area. The team's all here, along with Donna and Robert at one end of the group and Garth and Tula at the other. Sha'ark, Gemma and Teekl are lurking near the back wall while the others are standing in front of the main holo display. A pile of heavy chains and manacles covered in runes made of gold filaments sits under it while it displays the images I took of the area.

"-am!"

Billy reappears, takes a second to get his bearings and then scurries up to Kaldur. "Green Lantern confirmed it, they're on Roanoke Island. Four guys: Felix Faust, Blackbriar Thorn, Wizard and some guy in a black cloak he didn't recognize. The big purple guy doesn't show up on that side."

"Does Batman have a plan?"

"He thinks we should attack both places simultaneously, in case they can warn each other. Um, and he thinks we should do it quickly." He looks at me nervously. "Batman said you were right about stopping them as soon as possible being the most important thing, but without the League around.. people are getting scared."

"How scared?"

"A mob attacked STAR Labs in Gotham. By the time the police got it under control the whole place was on fire. I guess... Things like that, they're gunna be happening in a lot of places, aren't they?"

"Probably. The faster we end this the faster it stops." Except for those whose children have already died. I don't dare even think about telefragging.

Kaldur picks up a set of manacles. "These are used by Atlantis to imprison powerful magic users. Placed around Klarion's arms and legs they should prevent him using his magic."

Wallace gestures to the image. "Do they come in giant size?"

Ring, Spell Eaters. The three of them appear just in front of me, held up by my orange aura. "No, but these do. I'm not saying they'll make you magic-proof but.. near as I can do."

Robin looks from them to me. "Don't you need one of them? I mean, given what happened last time we fought him..."

"I don't have that special vulnerability anymore, and-" I tap the armour in the centre of my chest. "-I've still got my first generation model."

"Kid Flash." Kaldur holds out the manacles to him. "You stand the best chance of getting close enough to him to use these." Wallace takes hold of them and gives a sombre nod. I float a Spell Eater over to him and slip the thong around his neck.

"That will protect you from direct attack and generally cause magic around you to fall apart. If he conjures fire it will still burn you. If he makes himself physically more powerful like he started to last time we fought it won't help at all."

"Got it."

"Superboy. Troia." He picks up a length of chain. "This will be less effective, but with luck it will suppress Klarion's power to something we can cope with." Kon puts the chain over his right shoulder and they both catch the Spell Eaters I send their way. This is the first time he'll be wearing the Nth Metal armour on a mission, but he's done plenty of training with it. Sadly it doesn't have the same magic-negating effect as Hawkgirl's mace in Justice League Unlimited. Other than letting him fly I'm not sure how much help it'll be.

"Ah…" Robin points at the manacles. "I know Kid's got the best chance of putting it on him, but shouldn't we all have one of those just in case?"

Garth shakes his head. "There aren't any more. Those are the strongest we could find. The sort of manacles used on regular prisoners wouldn't stand a chance of working on a Lord of Chaos." Robin nods.

"Miss Martian. Do you believe you would be able to conceal us under a telepathic illusion?"

"If.. Klarion's.. mind is like a normal Human's... Probablyyy." She doesn't sound certain. Heck, she's got good reason not to.

"Do what you can. Our best chance is for Kid Flash to get close without being spotted. Cornwall." Robert appears to be doing a bit of a deer in the headlights impression, but he manages a nod. "When we reach the ritual area, your first target is the spell warding the area against detection. Once it is down I want you to try and disrupt the ritual directly." Another nod. "During our previous encounter Klarion favoured attacks of pure magic, though he may change tack if he realizes that approach is ineffectual."

"I'll manage. I'll have to."

"Garth, Tula: Roanoke is a small island. I want you at the water's edge ready to strike at Klarion as soon as the ward is down." Scry targeted water artillery. Useful, plus it gets two people we haven't trained with out of the immediate fighting area. "Orange Lantern. Do you believe that you will be able to assimilate the Djinn as you did Teekl?"

"It's not impossible, but I wouldn't want you to depend on it. In theory the ring should work on just about anything but I just don't know enough about it... Or how long it might take."

He nods. "Try anyway. The rest of us will do our best to distract Klarion from his magics. Remember, our primary aim is to end the spell as quickly as possible. Attacking Klarion is only worthwhile in that it makes that goal easier to accomplish." There's a short pause. "Does anyone have anything they wish to add?"

"Just one thing. I'll be taking my lantern with me. If we're able to break Klarion's focus and remerge the worlds, I doubt it'll just go away. And the only thing I'd feel confident taking that thing on with is the Ophidian."

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Displaced 16

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5th November

21:36 GMT -4

Looks of surprise and dismay from my team mates while Robert, Garth and Tula just look puzzled. Right, I suppose they haven't read the reports of what I did while under the influence. As far as I remember we didn't go under water, though we did spend enough time in the UK to rename Pevensey Castle as Westham Castle. Probably didn't make the news. It's such a stupid thing; we could have tracked down Klarion then, but instead we focused on correcting a signing error that doesn't even exist in this parallel.

"Are you sure that is wise?" Kaldur sounds concerned, but I don't hear a better alternative. "Last time you bonded with it, your ability to focus was severely compromised."

"I know, but even if it happens exactly the same as last time I'm fairly confident that at the very least I... We would remain focused on the Djinn for the duration of the fight."

Garth frowns. "What are you talking about?"

Kaldur glances sideways at his friend. "Orange Lantern's personal lantern is home to a powerful Avarice Elemental. When they bond, his power increases dramatically."

"How dramatically?"

"He-. They did not strain themselves in rotating the moon full circle."

The newcomers take a moment to absorb that. Tula recovers first. "Why aren't you using it now? With something that powerful-."

"Because he goes crazy!"

Artemis doesn't like the idea, it seems. "That isn't why. It isn't here. I checked my lantern earlier. I mean, it's an ancient Elemental, of course it's over eighteen."

Robin frowns. "So where is it?"

"The lantern was in subspace when the separation happened. I.. assume it's in the copy of my lantern on the adult side. If it was loose I'm sure Batman would have mentioned it."

"What happens if you move the lantern and it isn't in the same place as the one the Ophidian's in when the spell ends?"

"Um. Oh. Not sure. That's... That's a good point, actually." I was worried about telefragging, but if the lantern moves to Roanoke while the Ophidian stays behind... "No, you're right. I can't risk it. Aqualad, once the merger occurs I can transport myself back here and pick it up, but Robin's right. I shouldn't take it with me."

Kaldur nods. "Is there anything else?"

"Yeah." Sha'ark moves away from the wall and takes a few steps towards our group. "I need Slayer to take me back to Nanaue before you kick things off."

"Why?"

"What he was saying earlier got me thinking. King Arp'ax and all the Councillors are on the adult side. I'm the only ruler left. My blood tells me to fight, but my head tells me my city needs me." He snarls. "And it tells me I can't fight on land well enough to make a difference."

I look at Kaldur and shrug. "I can drop you off on the surface above the city. I'll only take a couple of seconds."

"Very well. Once that is done, return here to transport the bioship to Roanoke. Billy, inform Batman that we will begin our attack at twenty one forty five eastern standard time."

He nods. "Right. Shaza-!" He's gone in a cloud of smoke.

I head towards Sha'ark as Kaldur turns to the group. "Make any remaining preparations and then head to the bioship. We leave as soon as Orange Lantern returns." There's a collective nodding and they head to the lift, Zatanna hanging back a bit. Probably wants to talk to Kaldur about something. I reach Sha'ark and create a zeta tube construct.

"Recognised, Orange Lantern, B zero six, King Nanaue Sha'ark, A one two."

We rematerialise in Happy Harbour. "Haven't done this with a sharkman before, so if you feel unwell let me know."

Nanaue is in the North Atlantic, north of the Greater Azores and roughly on the same latitude as Edinburgh. Atlantis covers a large area but virtually all of its population is concentrated in its sprawling city-states. Nanaue doesn't bother with a census, but official estimates give it a population somewhere between two and three million, virtually all of them sharks. The world flickers and we're hanging in the air a long way above and a little to the south of it. It's raining, and with all the clouds there's little to distinguish the sea from the sky.

"Can you find your way from here?"

"If we're in the right place I'll smell it when I get in the water."

"Okay, well, thank you for your help-."

"I never understood why High King Orin liked the Justice League so much. I always respected him as a warrior, but what does the surface world have to do with us? Now I get it. One powerful enemy can tip the sea into the sky and you lot stop just long enough to work out how to cut his hands off."

"We can do more together."

"You might have something there. Hm. Those scampi you and the Cornwall boy caught. If your king-."

"Queen."

"Whatever. If your queen doesn't know what to do with them, send them our way. I'll see they get straightened out."

I nod and release him. He turns face down in the air and shimmers blue as the sea rises up to meet him. I don't just mean the waves, a whole area about forty metres across extends upwards. All of Kaldur's Atlantean friends have specialised in their preferred areas of arcane combat and Sha'ark is a very capable aquatic melee fighter. Sharkman mages are more muscle wizards than mid range blasters like Kaldur, which unfortunately means his assessment of his usefulness in a fight on Roanoke was completely accurate. I watch for a moment through the water as he shoots downwards at a pace that a torpedo would envy, then create another zeta tube construct to transport myself back to the mountain.

"Recognised, Orange Lantern, B zero six."

I emerge in the hangar and transition to the air just above the bioship as my team mates come through the lift doors. Tula and Garth could really do with some armour, but if their part of our strategy works they shouldn't see direct combat. And I suppose if it doesn't then a little ceramic plating isn't likely to do much against a Lord of Chaos. I watch as they all pile into the bioship. I should probably stay out here, given how crowded it must be getting in there. I'll need to drop the bioship off a little way away; it's still unarmed and we want to attack from an ambush if at all possible.

But...

Kaldur's plan involves doing things the superhero way. Nothing he said was wrong exactly but I doubt he even considered the more militant approach. I am quite capable of railgunning the site. If Klarion has been brought down to Human physical normalcy then I can assimilate him. In fact, if Fatty is anything to go by it won't even be that hard. Klarion didn't strike me as one to practise deferred gratification. If. If I can pull it off, then whatever the Djinn can do shouldn't be a problem. Or... The ritual symbol. If I can just shoot the ground underneath it, would that disrupt the process?

I consider as the hangar doors open and I plot the best flight path. Deliberately firing to kill. How badly do I want this? It won't be like Clayface; if it works Klarion will be meat paste. I blink and see the bridge again. Yes, I think I can live with that. I raise my left hand slightly and surround myself in construct armour. **Everyone ready?**

**All set.** M'gann's mental voice sounds distant. Usually before a mission there's a little excitement, a little... Not fun exactly, but at this point Wallace or I would try a little humour. Not this time.

**Course plotted. Prepare to engage stealth once I disengage. Transition in three, two, one.**

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Displaced 17

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5th November

21:42 GMT -4

We appear just above sea level, just north east of the Kitty Devil Hills. M'gann engages the stealth system as I rise up from the bioship, extending the finest filament I can into the sky above me. I need to check that-.

**Aqualad to Orange Lantern, is-?**

**Confirmed, Klarion and the purple entity are still in place. Relaying image now.** I open my mind to the rest of the team, showing them what my optic membrane construct is showing me. Beneath me I see the distortion in the air as the bioship begins its approach.

Am I actually going to do this? Not the murder attempt -and it is murder, I don't have any sort of legally recognised authority to shoot criminals dead- but acting outside the agreed upon behaviour of my ingroup.. that's a little harder. Should I say something?

**Orange Lantern to Aqualad. Would it be helpful to disrupt the physical structure of the ritual site?**

**At this point it is most likely that it would not.** There's a brief pause. **Tula and Garth are in the water and heading for the shore. We will be landing momentarily.**

**Understood.** No response from Klarion or Bedlam yet. I should be undetectable to them but the others aren't. On the other hand the woodland should conceal their approach from visual detection but with my armour glowing I'd be quite visible. Keep to the plan, or attack immediately myself?

I see the bridge again.

Right. I transition to a point three hundred metres above the ritual site. From here I can easily see Klarion and Bedlam with my unaided eyes. Bedlam looks unwell, while Klarion's standing in a fairly relaxed pose in his space in the magic circle, soaking in the power flowing from Bedlam.

"Ring, firing solutions."

Target plots appear in front of me as a circle of railgun constructs appear in the air around me. Multiple points of impact should disrupt the ground of the ritual site. I'll shoot Klarion and Bedlam as well. Bedlam will most likely ignore it but this could end Klarion. Before Wallace or after? I know he can perform complex actions at super speed but... No.

The railguns hum, higher in pitch than they used to. I have the ring calculate the effect of the kinetic energy on the ground. The forest is acceptable collateral damage but the nearby village of Wanchese isn't. Done.

**Stand clear, stand clear. Ordnance inbound.**

**Orange Lantern, what-!?**

The guns around me flash and dust erupts from the ritual site, obscuring my view. The purple glow of Bedlam is still there, but I can't tell whether I got Klarion or not. If you haven't found the body... I transition down into the billowing dust cloud, emitting beams of orange light in all directions in an attempt to feel out the environment. There's a distortion as they pass through Bedlam but he doesn't seem to be reacting either to them or to me.

**Orange Lantern, what did you do!**

**Bombarded the ritual site in an attempt to kill Klarion. Given that we aren't seeing his accom-.**

My armour shuts down and I fall to the ground.

**Ufff!**

"Well, look what the cat didn't drag in." A wave of orange light pulses outward, drawing the dust from the air. The ground I'm laying on is broken, as if someone took a giant rotavator to it. The ritual site is unaffected, protected by a glowing purple dome. The power for the dome flows not from Bedlam himself but instead rises from Klarion's left hand like evaporating nitrogen. I try raising my armour again but nothing happens! Klarion smiles at my confusion. "Get over here." An orange hand materialises in the air next to me and forcefully grabs me before pulling me through the air to hang in front of Klarion. He's hacked the ring! How the hell has he done that? I try reaching for my pistol but the orange hand pins my arms to my sides! Don't think it would do much anyway. "Have you got any idea how hard it is to find a Lost City? I had to spend weeks in that stoopid desert, and even longer making sure the spell didn't affect you." The hand rotates and then flicks me across the ground with force. Ow! "But it was worth it!" I get my arms up to protect my head but even through my body armour I'm going to get a bruise.

I take a moment to look at the ring. It looks dirty, orange light barely showing through the caked on dust. Wait. Lost City. Dust. There's something about that... Klarion grins and steps through the shield protecting his ritual site. Purple power stops flowing to him from Bedlam and instead goes directly into the shield. Klarion raises his hands and a giant orange Klarion appears above him, leaning over me and grinning in the inhuman way he did before I took Teekl. That was it! In the comics, Vandal Savage tried something like this on Alan! I don't remember how he got out of it, but I know how I'm going to.

"Now, how do I make you give me Teekl back?"

I reach across with my right hand and pull the ring from my finger.

"Hey, what-!" The confused face of the construct evaporates as I shove the ring into one of my pouches and scramble back to my feet. Klarion looks up in the air in confusion for a moment before locking his eyes on me. "How do you keep doing this?! Bedlam!"

The purple colossus turns slightly. If I had to guess I'd say it was genuinely unwell. Nonetheless, it raises a purple right arm and sends a wafting stream of purple energy through the barrier into Klarion. He throws his head back and drops his arms to the sides. When he returns his gaze to me his eyes glow with purple light. "Y'know, if you'd let me keep using the ring I'd have played with you for a bit. Now, I'm just gunna squash you!" He makes a punching motion with his right hand, I tense, and a circle of ground five metres away is flattened by a tremendous physical force.

Eh?

"What?" Klarion looks at his hand in bewilderment. Recovering quickly, he points his right middle and forefinger at me like a gun, and a brilliant beam of purple energy.. goes.. straight.. past me? I start moving clockwise around the ritual area as he charges an electrical blast in his hands. The lightning bolts strike the area around me to Klarion's visible frustration. "Aagh!" He can't aim at me. He can't aim at me! He concentrates, walking forwards to keep me in sight, and fires off another bolt. This one hits me in the chest. There's a small pain and I feel the muscle around the impact site clench, but my body armour is well insulated enough to take it! Thank you Mister Gambi!

**The Djinn's called Bedlam. He's charging Klarion but doesn't otherwise seem to be participating.**

Klarion's mouth glows and I lunge forwards to press myself against the side of the purple shield as he vomits forth a wave of purple fire. It misses -just- and I don't feel any heat from it. Startled, I look at the ground and see that the upturned soil has been transmuted, replaced with brick, glittering jewels, sand, some sort of slime and a strange blue bush that doesn't look anything like earthly plant life. When the flames peter out I start moving again, trying to get to the far side of the shield. Klarion watches me from the other side, not bothering to respond until I reach the opposite side from him. His eyes appear to have reverted to normal.

"Bedlam!" The Djinn's hand points to him again and purple light envelopes him. Glowing eyes again. Is he becoming vulnerable?

**Klarion appears to burn through the power Bedlam's giving him quickly. I suggest waiting until he does so again and then sending Kid Flash in with the chain.**

**What did you think you were doing?**

Kaldur's understandably annoyed. **I was trying to kill Klarion as quickly as possible. And I should point out that he had no warning before I strafed the ritual site and the shield was still there. If Kid Flash had gone in first he'd just have run into it.** Again, I share my vision of what is happening in front of me.

**Why aren't you using your ring?**

Kon sounds more concerned than angry, though I can hear anger there as well. **Klarion did something to it to take control of it. I took it off to stop him.**

**Sit tight Oh El, be with you in a sec.**

**Wait 'till he's discharged!**

Looking across the circle, Klarion appears to have reached a decision. "Oh well. If I can't blast you, I'll just have to pull your arms and legs off." He crouches slightly, and his body stretches in the same way it did near the end of our last fight. His arms and legs lengthen and become far thinner than is humanly possible. He gains an extra set of elbows and knees and at least two fingers on each hand. His spine lengthens and bends, giving him a permanent stoop. His fingers grow and gain talons for fingernails and his face... His face regains some of the inhumanity he displayed on top of Nabu's Tower, glowing purple eyes and obvious monstrosity.

Then he pushes off the ground and clears the shield dome in one easy leap.

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Displaced 18

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5th November

21:46 GMT -4

He swings at me with his right talon but I'm already moving out of the way. Ah! Not fast enough though! His claw clips my left side and flicks me into the air. I roll as I land, my left hand instinctively checking the area struck. The dyneema outer layer is ripped clean through and the plates beneath are scratched but unbroken. Not super strong then. I get my feet underneath me just as he swings again and I dive out of the way. Okay, big, strong, not all that agile. Still got no way to hurt him.

"Oooh, are we having trouuuuble?" He fans his hands out towards me as I get up again, a ball of purple fire growing in size and intensity. Maybe I can use the shield to make it hard for him to manoeuvre again? I'm up and running again. A moment later I hear a rapidly closing roaring sound and.. for a second the right side of my body feels.. strange. Not painful, but as if the sensory input was for something of a different size or shape and wasn't being interpreted correctly. Phantom limb where the missing limb was made of tentacles. I glance at myself and for a moment see my body wreathed in pink fire before the flames are evaporated by the Spell Eater. If that had been a normal fire I would have been unpleasantly burned just then. "Gah! Not again!"

I risk a look back, slowing as I do so. Klarion stares at his hands as his eyes flicker between purple and normal. Right. I draw my pistol and take aim. **Kid Flash, whenever you're ready.** I fire.

Blam!

My first round misses, his unusual body shape throwing off my instincts. The noise makes him look up in surprise.

"A gun? You can't have-."

I aim more carefully and fire again.

Blam!

It clips the side of his body.

"Ah!"

I can't tell how much that really hurt him. Not much by the look of it. He starts towards me again. Right, his torso's facing me. It's not going to get any easier.

Blam! Blam! Blam!

A hastily materialised barrier blocks the shots, but he stops coming towards me and he definitely looks worried. And it's not quite big enough to-.

Blam!

"OW!"

-protect his feet. He looks faintly ridiculous hunched up like that. Right, six shots, pretend to be out. Lower the gun. He hops a little but he doesn't look seriously injured.

"Klarion, you're under arrest for over a thousand murders and sorcery most foul." Which is technically a crime in its own right in the US. Thank you snapped.com.

"Oh, boo hoo." He shrinks back to his normal size, a little of his cockiness gone. "Bedlam!"

Gun up. Blam! Blam! Two hits, upper left chest and left shoulder.

"A-ah!" Klarion goes down on his back, and in a rush of displaced air Wallace materialises next to him and clamps the manacles shut around his wrists and neck. I take a moment to breathe. Did we just..?

I hear running and look around to the direction Wallace just came from. Kon and Donna lead the way, flying into Bedlam's barrier and punching it repeatedly. Robert's a little behind them, the same distortion his father used on them both in London forming an aura around his body. He slams to his knees, laying his hands flat on the ground. Right, the anti-scrying ward. Not sure that should be a priority now.

**Aqualad to Orange Lantern. Are you injured?**

**Not that I can feel.** I take a moment to make sure everything's still there. Yess... Can't check under the armour and without the ring to regulate things I'm swimming in so many endorphins that I'm not sure I'd feel it.

"Citsym reirrab, espalloc!"

I need to talk to Zatanna about the white patches. Without those she'd have quite effective camouflage. She's staying back, but I see the shield start to buckle where she's pointing at it. Robert stands and joins in. I start walking in her direction. With no ring and the rest of my ammunition in my presently inaccessible subspace pocket I'm a near total liability at the moment. Shit, no ring. I fish it out of my pocket and look at it. Still covered in hardened gunk, and my armour doesn't come with a utility belt. Maybe if I find Robin-.

"Bedlam!" Oh, what's he doing n-. Oh shit. Bedlam turns towards where Klarion lays on the floor and the flows of energy to the other points of the circle disappear. Then the barrier drops and Bedlam compresses and flows directly into Klarion's mouth and eyes. Wallace backs away in a hurry as Klarion rises into the air, the chains around his arms and neck glowing brilliant purple for a moment and then exploding away. The injuries I'd managed to inflict on him vanish and he turns his inhuman grin towards Wallace. Wallace starts to run, but a series of purple lightning bolts strike at the area around him with enough force to make the ground explode! He evades two, but the third strikes him directly and the blast from the fourth sends him careening into the tree line.

I start running directly away from him. I haven't got any way to hurt him. What can I do? **Aqualad, I strongly suggest having Cornwall take down the ritual site as soon as possible.**

**Cornwall, do it. Garth, Tula, target Klarion. Kid Flash, status.**

**I'm.. I'm okay. Worried there for a minute. That ward thing really came through.**

Robert takes a few awkward steps forwards into the circle and Donna and Kon fly at Klarion, chain stretched out between them. It hits him in the stomach and pulls him through the air a few metres before his body glows purple and he stops dead. Donna and Kon turn and try yanking on the chain harder to no effect as he turns to face them.

"Stop bothering me."

His hands glow brilliant purple, then he points them directly at the two of them and fires. Both drop the chain, Kon evading, while Donna follows her Amazon training and blocks with her bracers. I wince, but enchanted mithril and Improved Spell Eater combine to result in her merely being knocked flying. Kon flies along the deck to attempt to ram into Klarion with his fists only to be intercepted by a far stronger looking purple barrier which brings him to a full stop.

Then Klarion hits him with another purple beam and he slams into the ground hard enough to cut a furrow.

"Guess I don't need that stupid cat after all."

He looks up and waves his right hand, a torrent of water presumably launched by Garth and Tula striking another shield.

"Kcatta ruo ymene neesnu!"

I'm no good like this. I need to get into cover, and see if Artemis can lend me her crossbow. Won't do much good while he's in God Mode, but it would at least-.

**Er, Aqualad, sir? There's some sort of yellow crystal in the middle here.**

"Rrrrragh!" The water covering the ground where Klarion blocked the Atlanteans' shot surges upwards and engulfs him, freezing solid as it does so. That's Kaldur, right? I can't see him.

Arrows strike the ice, embed themselves and then vaporise it. Unmakers with delayed timers. I didn't see the point but Artemis wanted them. Can't see Klarion now. Did she get him?

**Ignore the crystal. Focus on draining the ritual site.**

I see the glowing lines making up the magic circle retreat from the far edges inwards towards where Robert's kneeling. Figures flicker in the air. I think I see Batman.

"No no no no no no!"

Klarion rematerialises in the centre of the magic circle which immediately reignites in brilliant purple. A stomp of his foot causes the ground beneath Robert to leap upwards, throwing him into the sky. I instinctively try to generate a construct to catch him, then feel rather foolish.

No, I can't do anything else here.

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Displaced 19

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5th November

21:50 GMT -4

**Garth, Tula, target the barrier.**

I make it two thirds of the way to the tree line before I spot Artemis and start heading to her position. Something roars behind me but I don't stop. If the people there can't deal with it then it probably can't be dealt with. Artemis looses another arrow towards the shield before ducking back into cover. If a tree even provides cover against Klarion at the moment. I duck in behind the next tree along.

"What did you think you were doing!?"

"Our priority is to end the spell as soon as possible. Killing Klarion immediately was more likely to do that than binding him." I look back at the ritual site where he's reraised the dome shield. "Don't suppose you've got any anti-magic arrows, have you?"

"There aren't any!"

"Right. I need to get Sephtian to work on more offensive antimagic stuff."

She notches and looses again. "Is this really the time for a shopping list?!"

Oh, that's clever. The water being fired by Garth and Tula is getting turned into steam just before it hits the barrier. Kaldur worked out how to do that with the trident during one of our experimental sessions but this is the first time I've seen it used in the field. Not much use in Atlantis compared to freezing but blooming useful on the surface.

"Klarion did a number on the ring and my gun's empty. I'm out of offensive options."

"You can't hide from me with baby magic. Etsat ruoy nwo enicidem."

The howling vapour suddenly redirects towards an apparently empty area of ground. Why would-?

"AAAAAAAAGGHH!" Kaldur appears in the vapour as it turns back into water before cutting off completely. He drops to his knees. He did the intelligent thing and wore the helmet, but Ocean Master's armour isn't sealed. His hands, feet and face just got hit by boiling water.

Oh no.

**Aqualad's down. Miss Martian, get Aqualad to safety. Superboy, Troia, alternate hitting the barrier and evading. Tell me when your Spell Eaters start getting hot.**

**Right.** / **You got it.**

M'gann's invisible and without the ring I can't see her, but Kaldur's steaming form rises into the air and heads back from the combat zone at high speed. I see Donna swoop in as Klarion raises his hands to the top of the dome and purple lightning lashes out from all sides.

**Cornwall, Zatanna, we need that barrier down.** From the far side I see Cornwall's cape flap as he runs back towards the circle. A lightning bolt hits him in the chest, staggering him. He steadies himself, then surges at the barrier even faster. I actually see a wave of force ripple right across it where his fist strikes it, then he plants both hands on it. Klarion looks at him in puzzlement.

"Evael Noiralk faed dna dnilb!"

Klarion's glowing eyes alight on Zatanna. "You don't have what it takes to magic me."

**Zatanna, the barrier. Get the barrier down.**

Purple electricity runs through Robert, forcing him to his knees. **Robert, can you cope? We can get you out if you need-.**

"I can manage!"

"Artemis, please notch an unmaker and loose at Klarion the moment the shield fails. Shoot to kill."

**What?**

Surprise but not irritation. "I'm a utilitarian. Every moment we delay more children die. I don't care who's on the adult side, he's the most powerful of the group. We've already demonstrated that we can't hold him. Do you have a better idea? Because if so I would very much like to hear it."

Her eyes dip for a second, then she nods and pulls her bowstring taunt.

"Thank you." **Robin, I don't know what conventional explosives will do to-.**

"-am!"

Billy appears in the middle of the combat zone and blinks in confusion as he takes in the scene. Klarion turns to look at him and raises his hands.

**M'gann, get him into cover!** Billy is flung sideways as a purple beam blasts through the space he had been occupying. "Billy, get over here and never teleport into a combat zone like that again."

He scurries over as Kon, Donna, Robert and Robin all capitalise on Klarion's distraction to pound unrelentingly on the shield. I can see purple wisps of power flow into Robert before Klarion returns his attention to his assailants and fires a stream of what look like shards of purple glass from his hands directly through the shield at them. Donna evades but Kon and Robert are both struck and go down as Billy makes it into cover near me.

"It's-. It's the gem! It-!"

I hold up a hand to stop him. **Miss Martian, please add Billy to the network.**

**Added.**

**Billy, you can provide your information to everyone telepathically. What does the gem do?**

"I can? Oh, um-." **It's what caused this. It's what's keeping the worlds apart. Destroy it and we win.**

**Oh, is that all?** What could we do what could we do?

**You could dig underground with your power ring and-.** I hold up the dirt-encrusted ring. **Oh.**

That spinning dig thing Superman did in Christopher Reeves' Superman film would never work in real life. Phasing? **Miss Martian, come over here and take my Spell Eater. The best way to get-.**

"Zatanna, stop!"

**Robin, what-?** A brilliant golden glow appears over the combat area as Nabu manifests a pointless giant ankh to pose in front of. **Who put on the fucking Helmet?**

**It was Zatanna.** A host who's familiar with magic. Nabu must be thrilled.

"Klarion. This ends now."

Nabu's golden ankh blast is met by a purple beam from Klarion, who doesn't look overly worried by this development. M'gann appears as she touches down besides me.

"You said Nabu didn't want to let Wally go last time."

"We can't worry about that now. She's got his full attention. Here." With some difficulty I get the thong out from under my armour. "Put it on, get under the shield, get the gem and then get out. Clear?"

"I-I'm not sure. I've been practicing phasing with Uncle J'onn, but-."

"If you can't do it then you can't do it, but now would be a very good time to try. Get up close to the barrier and try to duck under it."

She nods, takes the Spell Eater from me and fades from view.

Godsdamnit. I did not want to see Nabu again.

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5th November

21:53 GMT -4

**Billy, how are things going on the other side?**

**The magicians were way more powerful than they were supposed to be. Batman thought that big purple thing was sending them power.**

**And it stopped when Klarion absorbed it?**

**Er, yeah, I guess. The guy in the cloak's keeping up a shield but without the extra power we've got them on the run. Um, where's Aqualad?**

**He got badly scalded, Miss Martian put him somewhere out of the way.** Okay, Nabu and Klarion are still beam-of-warring it. I can't believe that neither of them have managed to learn anything more sophisticated. **Cornwall, can you drain Klarion's beam?**

**I can try.** He moves around the side of the barrier while Klarion ignores him, walking his hands around its surface as he goes. I can't tell from here whether it's having any effect.

"Billy, I think we've got things under control here. Get back to the adult side and help them get the gem."

"Okay. Um, should I tell Zatara about..." He points at Nabu. Have to say, that costume looks good on her. Better than it did on Wallace anyway. Maybe they can work something long-term out? Having Nabu back on the active roster would be useful if it turns out he can actually be trusted. Maybe I was being too cautious?

"Probably a good idea." **Superboy, Troia, Kid Flash; status reports?**

**I'm fine, but I think Superboy's bleeding under the armor.**

**Kon, how bad?**

**I'll heal in a minute. The purple.. spike.. things are fading. Spell Eater's getting pretty hot, though.**

**Troia? How's yours doing?**

**It's warm to the touch.**

**Right. Superboy, stay back until you've fully healed. Troia, start hitting the barrier again.**

**Right.** / **Right.**

**What about me? I'm -ow- good to go.**

Realistically, what can Wallace do? **Do you see a jewel in the middle of the pentagram?**

**Yeah?**

**If the shield drops, grab it and get it to Nabu.**

**That's it?**

**Unless you've developed a magic disruption potion and brought it with you, yes.** I can feel his frustration through the link. **Kid Flash, I don't honestly think that brute force is likely to take down the barrier. Getting the jewel makes us win. Are you with me?**

**... Yeah, okay.**

**Garth, Tula, any-?**

**Garth's looking after Kaldur.**

Damn it. **How bad?**

**He'll-. He'll get better. It looks worse than it is...**

**As long as he's not going to die we can probably fix it. Right, I need you to scry the shield spell and tell me if we're actually doing anything to it. I honestly have no idea.**

**I can do that. It'll take a moment.**

**Tell me when you have something.**

With Robert's help -I think- Nabu drives the ankh back towards Klarion's shield. Klarion snarls and makes a downwards gesture with his right hand. What did-? "Agh!" I see a purple circle form around Robert as he's sucked underground with a yelp.

**Cornwall, stay calm and hold your breath. Miss Martian, are you in position yet?**

**Almost!**

A purple beam knocks Nabu's ankh aside then Klarion starts flinging exploding purple balls up into the sky, forcing Nabu to take evasive action. Returning my attention to the circle I barely see it as the jewel disappears. I tense, but Klarion appears too caught up in his duel to notice. Nabu takes advantage of a brief lull in the explosions to fire a golden bolt of eldritch energy at the shield. Klarion seems unfazed. Is anything we're doing having an effect on him?

**P-? Orange Lantern? The shield's definitely weakening, but he can restore it in a few seconds. If you want to take it down you have to keep attacking.**

**Thank you Tula.**

Then Nabu blurs and Zatanna drops a metre in the air before reassuming his costume. What?

"When the world divided the Helmet split in two! You're not all here Nabu! And you're losing hold of that poor-"

M'gann rises from the ground, supporting Cornwall with one arm and holding the jewel in the other.

"-soon to be dead-"

**Fate, catch!** The small yellow jewel flies towards the recovering Nabu as Cornwall heads back towards the shield dome.

"-girl. What?" Klarion does a double take as Nabu catches it. "How did you get that? Give it back!"

"No, Witch Boy, you have wrought harm enough this day. Yam eht owt emoceb eno ecno erom!"

And then things get strange. The barrier around Klarion shimmers as a tall thin figure in a dark grey robe appears in one of the other focus points, his head slightly bowed and his arms fanned out. A small forest of black thorns covers the ground but substantial portions of it appear to be on fire. I catch sight of John on the far side pulling himself free of brambles that appear to have pinned him to a tree. Batman dodges as Faust hurls a barrage of flame at him, only for it to turn on its creator as Danni seizes control of it. A barrage of green bolts slam into the shield dome from above courtesy of Guy and Stewart and are swiftly joined by an even larger ankh. Red Tornado fires a tornado at William Zard, only for him to hold up.. something, I can't see it from here, and send it up into the air at Mister Zatara, who's standing on a floating pentagram. Red Tornado realises what's happened and abandons the ranged attack, but Zatara's-

"Sdniw eb dellits."

-completely fine, right. Robert, Donna and Kon are all up and hitting the shield again, quickly joined by Marvel and Diana. Klarion appears to have abandoned the offence.

"Oh well. Fun while it lasted." The shield around the ritual site flickers from purple to a pale grey as a red oval opens in the space next to him. Bugging out. I'd rather capture or kill him but that doesn't seem to be on the cards. "See ya later, armadillos. Unless I see you first!"

Zard and Faust look around in panic and are swiftly knocked down for their distraction. Robe guy doesn't look particularly bothered. His shield appears to be holding.

**Tula, how's his shield holding up?**

**I... I'm not sure. It doesn't read like any form of magic I'm used to. If I had to describe it I'd say it's a bit like-**

Two beams of ghostly white energy pulse from his right hand, corroding Guy and Stewart's armour constructs and knocking them out of the sky.

"Green Lanterns. We will continue this another time."

**-a power ring.**

His shield collapses as he fades out of existence.

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5th November

21:57 GMT -4

I make my way in John's direction as my team mates and the Leaguers gather in the centre of the clearing. He appears to be dangling a piece of burned and twisted wood on the end of a shoelace while walking over to a thick patch of blackened brambles. The piece of wood jerks suddenly.

"There you are."

He looks up and sees me. Yikes, that's a nasty bruise. John points at the wood. "Crack this open for me, would you?"

"And how would you like me to do that, exactly?"

"Well excuse me, but you look just like this guy I know who's got a power ring." I hold it up. "Fuck me, how'd you manage that?"

"Klarion had some sort of magic dust. Managed to bypass my armour construct and Spell Eater." For a moment I consider tossing it to him and asking him to have a crack at it, but it occurs to me that John Constantine and orange power ring probably shouldn't be mixed.

"Constantine." Ah! How the heck did Batman sneak across an empty field? "You were permitted to accompany us on the understanding that you would offer technical assistance only. At what point did you decide that it would be acceptable to kill Blackbriar Thorn?"

"Just the man I was looking for. You got one of those sharp batarang things?" He holds out his right hand. Batman scowls at him. "See, the thing about Blackbriar is, he doesn't exactly die, does he? It's like shooting the Bog God; put a bullet through his head and what have you done? There's no brain there, just more moss. Only looks Human out of habit." He wiggles his outstretched fingers again to no effect. He rolls his eyes and turns back to the wood, carefully taking a grip on an exposed section of charcoal and snapping it off. I wave him aside and hit the indicated area hard with the butt of my pistol, cracking it further. "That should do it." I stand aside and he sticks his hand in up to the elbow and reaching around inside what appears to be a hollow tree trunk. "Ow! Got the bastard." He withdraws his arm, hand holding a short but surprisingly vital thorn vine. There are a few small leaves along the length and a cluster of roots around the lower end. John looks at it for a moment, then holds it out to Batman. "Used to be I'd hand him over to Alec, but we're not really talking these days. Should take about three months for him to regrow, based on past performance. Make sure he's somewhere secure when he does, right?"

Batman's face eases slowly away from the scowl. He takes the proffered vine, looks it over and then places it inside his utility belt before turning away and heading for the gathering below.

"How the heck did you take down Blackbriar Thorn?"

"Sympathetic magic, mate. I had a bit of his body from last time we met." He holds up a fag butt. "He got close enough, and..." He holds up the piece of wood on the shoelace and brings the two objects together.

"Whaw. Thought you kept saying you were out of your depth with this stuff?"

"I am, you just can't see the blood in this light. Pinned me to that friggin' tree-" He nods at it. "-with his brambles and I couldn't do a thing until the purple supercharge he was getting from that yellow crystal cut off." He turns to look at the huddle. "Hadn't realised he still held a grudge. Come on, I need a lift home."

We start down the shallow incline, stepping over the remains of Blackbriar's signature attack. "What happened to your eye?"

"Got cocky, is what happened. Used an enchantment to make people not want to see me, then snuck in your mountain. Thought I might learn something about what happened. Batman spotted that people weren't looking my way and punched it just in case." He stops for a moment and looks at me. "And you better have a bloody good reason for getting Gemma involved."

"Mob of Praexis Demons outside her house." He reluctantly nods approval before starting on again. "We left a note. Though while we're on the subject, what do you think Mister and Missus Masters would say about her going to school in Poseidonis?"

"Terry would tell you to fuck off. Cheryl would castrate you with a rusty spoon. Not sure I'd stop her."

"So that's a 'no'."

"Of course it's a 'no' you stupid... Those Atlantean kids. You had them in the mountain looking for Klarion, didn't you?"

"Yyyyyes. Not sure how much Gemma saw..."

"'Course she saw, she's a Constantine. Fffffffffffuck. She's gunna use a spoon on both of us."

"Aren't you going to stop him?"

Nabu-in-Zatanna is levitating just over the centre of the former ritual site while Wallace gestures at the place Klarion disappeared. He has a point, but if there's one thing I've learned from our last two encounters with Klarion it's that Nabu doesn't trump him.

"To what end? Klarion is chaos personified. He cannot be contained."

Sounds like someone's not trying hard enough. I seem to remember him saying the same thing about Teekl. Guy nods at me as John and I reach the rear of the huddle. He's running a green strobe over his chest, presumably undoing whatever damage the black beam did.

"Guy, Kaldur took a pretty nasty hit. He's with a couple of other Atlanteans in the bioship, would you mind getting him to an Atlantean hospital?"

"No problem. What happened to him?"

"Klarion redirected steam onto him. Gaseous water at over one hundred degrees centigrade."

"Yikes. I'll get right on it."

The afterimage of a glowing green filament marks his leaving. Captain Marvel's wrapping the enchanted chain around the unconscious Zard and Faust. They should be weak enough to be contained by it. Kon and Donna are standing with Diana on the far side of the group. They both look fine, but... Ah, there's Robert. Can't tell his expression with the mask on but I know it's pretty unnerving being around this many new people. Especially when the one who decides to talk to you is Batman.

"…k you sir. I-I-I really appreciate this."

"We'll need your parents' approval before this becomes definite, but you've demonstrated the skills and the character that we're looking for."

He just nods as Batman turns away and walks to where Mister Zatara is trying to stare down Nabu. "Fate!" He takes a breath, getting his worries under control. "Great Nabu. Release my daughter."

Nabu stares at him for a moment. Wait, he's not going to-? "No." Shit. "Witness the havoc wrought in these hours." He spreads his arms out as if to encompass the world. "The world needs Doctor Fate, and the girl's natural affinity for the mystic arts.. makes her the perfect candidate."

Shit.

"You can't do that!" No, Artemis, he can. That's why no one put him on before now.

"She has her own life to live!" Robin, he doesn't care about it. We need an order-based argument, and I'm coming up with nothing. Think think think.

Wallace tries next. "Kent would never allow you to-!"

"Kent Nelson did object most strenuously. So I released his spirit to the afterlife. He is gone."

I've got nothing. I've got nothing.

Mister Zatara slumps slightly, then spreads his arms to the side. "Then take me instead. My-."

"No!" John pushes his way forwards. "You! Nabu! Take me."

The venom in Zatara's glare is tempered with surprise. "John, this is not the time to-!"

"Shut up." John pokes him in the chest. "She needs you. Well? Magic's run in my family's blood for thousands of years. I'd be a far better host than-!"

Nabu glares at him. "You?! No! You reek of Demons and damnation. You are barely less chaotic than Klarion! You are useless to me."

Zatara gently pushes John aside. "But I am not."

"True. In many ways you would be a superior host. But if I remove the Helmet, what guarantee have I that you will don it?"

"My word." Oh gods. This is actually going to happen, isn't it? "Ekat em daetsni."

Nabu looks down at him for a moment, then floats down to the ground. John isn't any happier about this than I am. "Giovanni, don't do it. We can find-."

Mister Zatara puts his right hand on John's right shoulder. "John... This time, it isn't your fault." He looks at him for a moment, then walks over to Nabu. Nabu looks at him for a moment, then raises his hands and lifts the Helmet from his head. As Zatanna's face is revealed the uniform fades away. Still under Nabu's control, she lowers it to her chest. Her eyes open narrowly at first, then they widen.

"Dad!"

"Zatanna!" They embrace. I don't suppose there's any chance he'll have an attack of common sense and just throw the bloody thing away? From the devastated look on John's face I don't think so. "Remember. I love you." Mister Zatara kisses his daughter on the forehead, before taking the Helmet from her unresisting hands. He looks over our group. "Take care of my girl."

"You have my word." Batman, that's not going to fix this. Gahh! If my fucking ring wasn't broken I'd fly that stupid Helmet into the sun!

Mister Zatara raises the Helmet over his head and Zatanna belatedly realises what's about to happen. "No! It was my fault!" Robin takes hold of her from behind. She struggles, but he's far too strong. "Dad, don't-!" He closes his eyes as he lowers the Helmet. "Dad!"

His eyes blaze golden as Nabu takes control. Then uniform appears, and we all know that's it. Mister Zatara's gone. I'm glad the Helmet hides his face. It makes him easier to hate. He looks at Zatanna for a moment, then turns towards Faust and Zard. "Leave these to Fate." He gestures at them, and then he and they rise into the air before disappearing in a ball of golden light. Zatanna drops to her knees and my team mates surround her to offer support.

What do I do?

No. What do I want?

I walk up to John and put my face close to his.

"John, I'm not prepared to accept this. Can I assume that you're not either?"

The look he gives me, I can see why Demons are scared of him. "Too bleedin' right I'm not."

"Right. Get back to London and get some stuff together. I need to get the ring fixed. Then..." I nod to myself. No doubt at all. "Then we're going to work out how to kill Nabu."

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5th November

21:59 GMT -4

I take a moment to admire the blasted landscape. Frustrating as impotently wailing on Klarion's shield was, I'm still inclined to call this a success. William in particular impressed me with his resolve. Of course, I knew that this was almost certainly this parallel's version of the World Without Grownups storyline, but there was no reason for him to believe that there was anything other than oblivion awaiting him post transformation. Anyway, it wasn't as if either side could help the other, and whoever the adults were up against they couldn't have been as powerful as Klarion. William accepted my idea of utilising the Sword of Beowulf to enable him to participate in the fight in place of his usual Captain Marvel abilities. Turns out that the Sword agreed with Shazam's character assessment and even without the wisdom of Solomon William is sufficiently intelligent to master 'stay in cover and fire lightning at the bad guy'.

Wotan, Zard, Faust and what's left of Blackbriar Thorn sit bound in the Atlantean magic-suppression chains I took out of subspace once I'd crushed the focus gem. Batman, Red Tornado, Wonder Woman, Mister Zatara and Lantern Stewart were managing I suppose, but even Batman doesn't carry the equipment that I do. Bit of a blow that Klarion got away but if I'm honest with myself I know that I'd have had to be very lucky to complete an assimilation on someone like him. Now we just have to explain to Nabu that if he doesn't give Zatanna back he's going to get dogpiled by twelve superheroes who'll swiftly teach him the value of teamwork and we can retire for the evening.

Why isn't that happening?

"Take me instead. My skills are already at their peak, my body is physically stronger, better able to withstand the strain of your power."

Oh. That's actually quite clever. In any fight there's room for things to go wrong. If he can be persuaded to just take himself off we can throw the Helmet into the sun without taking the risk. I knew there was a reason I was studying under these people.

"All true. But if I remove the Helmet what guarantee have I that you will don it?"

"My word." He's a magnificent actor, really. I must go and see his magic show at some point. "Ekat em daetsni." Hm? Take me instead? Would that work on Nabu? Might be overplaying it. Whatever. Nabu appears to be taking the bait, dropping down to ground level. Hah! High heels! I hadn't noticed those until just now! Right, right, Helmet off, come on. Some of us have things to do this evening.

"Dad!"

"Zatanna!" They embrace. "Remember, I love you." Wait. He isn't actually going to..?

Yes, yes he is.

I'm stunned. He's actually going to do it. He kisses Zatanna on the forehead, before pulling the Helm from her grasp. He looks to the Leaguers. "Take care of my girl."

Batman replies for them. "You have my word." What? There's-. What?

Zatara raises the Helmet-.

Oh, this is completely stupid!

As Zatara goes to put the Helmet on his head and seal his fate -hah!- I extend a grapple line and pull it from his hands.

"Hu..? What are you doing?!"

"Something intelligent for a change."

I catch the Helm in both hands and look at it for a moment with OrangeVision. It shows me more than it used to; Father Box's work I suppose. The pale gold aura of order-based protective charms is present, but there are tiny cracks of orange light. He has opened himself to the idea of Want. An error, I think.

"I will remind Nabu who rules this world and it is not the dead! Ring! Assimilate!"

Orange light invades the Helm from where my hands touch it. Almost immediately I feel Nabu attempt to resist. Insufficient.

"Identity theft twenty percent complete."

"Your selfish desire for a body stolen from another undermines your defences, Wraith."

Another surge of orange. All but the front piece is mine, now.

"Identity theft seventy percent complete."

"This world is mine! These people are mine! You! Are! Mine!"

Everything but the eye sockets is glowing orange. They glow with arcane power as he tries something, anything, to stop the process. But my wards are at full strength, and he has no mortal vessel to bind him to the world.

"Now you will learn what it is like to wear you."

There's a final flash of orange as the process is complete.

"Identity theft complete. Nabu of Cilia, you belong to the Orange Lantern Corps."

The Helm is now faintly glowing orange. The outline is the same, but the eye sockets are slightly narrower and there is an Orange Lantern sigil over the faceplate. The sigil looks like it's been cut, but the surface remains smooth as I run a thumb over it.

"You… You have made me break my word…"

"Dad, he-."

I hold up my left hand. "No, no, he has a point. That sort of thing can have mystical significance." I take the helm in both hands again and hold it up level with my eyes. "Lantern Nabu. Direct command. You will be obedient and subservient to Giovanni Zatara in all matters. Confirm command."

"i CoNfIrM."

The voice is strained, distorted, but it's unquestionably him. "Glad to hear it." Turning, I use my right hand to toss the helm to Zatara. He catches it, still looking more than a little stunned at the turn of events. "You'll make a better Fate than he ever did."

He looks around. He moves his mouth as if to speak, but no sound emerges. He looks to the ground, then his daughter, and then the Orange Lantern Corps Helmet. Then, he turns it and places it on his head.

There's a flash of orange-tainted golden light as he rises into the air. Another flare of light as a similarly miscoloured ankh appears behind him and a gust of wind blasts out in all directions. He remains floating, and raises his hands to stare at them as if seeing them for the first time. He's gained a cape and his suit looks like it's been dry cleaned.

"I'm… I'm in control. I can feel his power, his knowledge. They are mine now!"

"And you still fulfil your oath." I roll my shoulders and stretch my neck. Not a bad day's work. Shame about all the deaths, but if these people weren't such a bunch of fucking sleepwalkers…

The assembled League members are staring gormlessly at the newly ascended Giovanni Zatara. I interpose myself. Time to let them know how I feel about their inactivity.

"Aaaaggghhhh! Are you all! Completely! Retarded!?" Shocked expressions. "Aaaaaaaaaggghhhh! Right!" I transition to the bound prisoners and haul them up by the chains. "Since I clearly have to fix every fucking problem myself around here, I'll deal with these gentlemen as well." A burst of FTL takes my prisoners and me over the North Pole before a Boom Tube takes me to my actual destination over the Great Wall of China.

6th November

10:03 GMT +8

Lantern Stewart didn't look particularly on the ball but that and Father Box's efforts at stealth should prevent him from locating me immediately.

Father Box deflects the radar scans as I take a look around. Now, where would Chairman Jiang of the People's Republic of China's Standing Committee on Metahuman Affairs be at this time of the morning?

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5th November

22:16 GMT -4

I sit cross-legged in front of my personal lantern, with my hands palms up in my lap. The tainted ring sits in them. Lantern Stewart hesitated when I asked for a lift back, then couldn't get me here fast enough when I queried the wisdom of leaving the Ophidian to its own devices. Sadly, it looks like mere exposure to the lantern isn't enough to fix the ring. If I can't make this work I'm looking at a month to create a new one and then struggling on for a further six with no AI support. I'd hoped it wouldn't come to this, but it's time to ask the Ophidian for help. I stare deep into the lantern's glowing core.

"Ophidian."

No, of course that won't work. It doesn't have ears. It doesn't have eyes. It perceives the universe as shades of desire. I close my eyes and try to see as it does, as the ring lets me see.

Ophidian.

Not enough. It understands need most easily. Why do I want it?

Firstly, the ring is mine. No. The ring is me. Over the past few months it has become so much a part of who I am and what I do that I'm not sure how I'd cope without it. It should be here, it should work, it is wrong

Wrong.

that I am denied it.

Secondly, the ring is mine. It is both my property and the tool I use to gain all other things that I want. It is the weapon and the medicine that protects and restores me. If it is vulnerable then everything is vulnerable, and

Unacceptable!

that is not acceptable.

Third, Zatanna Zatara is mine. She is my friend, my team mate, a part of my ingroup. Giovanni Zatara is mine. He is my teacher whom I respect

Mine!

and a vital component of Zatanna's happiness. If he can be taken from me in the name of expediency, who else is at risk? Might Zeus decide to send Diana to Tartarus? Might the Guardians decide to investigate Alan's elemental nature by dissecting him? I need this ring to protect those who are mine.

Mine!

babum. babum.

Something, there's something... I think I can feel it, a long way off but coming closer and so powerful. I hear a pulse, a heartbeat, the pure idea of avarice shorn of all particularity. Keep going.

Fourth, I will not be cowed. I am not prepared to let Nabu get away with strong-arming us. I don't care who or what

Mine!

babum.

he is. And with the ring? This is something to strive for that is on my level. I could chase muggers all year and be bored to tears by the level of threat they pose. Nabu needs someone like me to stop him. Everyone

Greater purpose?

BAbum.

needs me to stop him.

I feel its eyes on me now. Last step.

Fifth, these events defy my ideas of how the universe should work and what it should become. The old should not constrain the new, should not force it to fit into its patterns. The world is wrong. This should not

Should not be

be happening and I

BAbum.

happening and I will not

will not tolerate it!

BAbum.

tolerate it!

This place is mine, not his! Mine, not his!

These people are mine, not his! Mine, not his!

BAbum.

Zatanna is

"Ours." Around me is the colossal presence of the Ophidian, strange and overwhelming and yet... Somehow familiar. "My Agent. We are of one mind. The Order-Lord's actions are unacceptable."

The ring is damaged.

"Yes."

Will you aid me?

"Declare our intent to the universe. Make your oath to me."

BABUM.

My eyes snap open. I can still feel it, the heartbeat of universal avarice.

BABUM.

And I know what I want to say.

"This is my cause, this is my fight!

Shine through the void with orange light!

I've claimed all within my sight!

To keep what is mine, that is my right!"

The ring rises from my hands, shaking, orange light shining

BABUM.

under Klarion's muck like sunlight through a tear in a blackout sheet. The corruption burns away, flaking off and disintegrating

BABUM.

as the ring purifies itself. I gingerly hold out my left hand and it gently slips on, a wave of orange passing through my body. In the quiet I hear the heartbeat still.

BABUM.

"Thank you, my Embodiment."

"Agent. I am with you. Go forth in my name."

I stand, taking my personal lantern in my right hand and putting it on my desk. I know what I want to do, and I know how to do it. I repair my armour and return it to subspace as I raise the ring to my left ear. "John, prepare a summoning ritual. I'll bring the focus, and with a little luck I'll have Zatanna and Teekl with me." I lower the ring. His phone will ring until he picks it up and then it will play that message. I take a deep breath, then open my door and walk towards the training room.

As I see it, this is a kidnapping. Nabu won't harm his host himself, even if we attacked him. Not that that's a good idea, not until we have a much better idea of how he works at least. Who can we ask? Klarion? Probably not. Alan's still got most of Mister Nelson's books. The ring can sort through them for information in no time. I vaguely remember something about him encountering Nabu for the first time somewhere in the Middle East, but I might just be remembering Doctor Strange's origin story. The other members of the Justice Society might remember something Mister Nelson or Nabu himself said from last time he was active. Alan, Diana, Jay and Danni would certainly tell me anything that might help. Mister Grant? He probably would, we haven't really spoken much.

Wait. Am I overthinking this? Nabu said that Mister Nelson had passed on to whatever afterlife awaited him. I know where his grave is. Could we.. talk.. to him? Nabu said that Mister Nelson didn't approve of his decision and it would only be a temporary ritual. I'm not exactly thrilled at the idea, but I can't think of a logical reason not to. Have to ask when I see John next.

Do I bring the rest of the team in on this? No, not yet. I don't know how telepathic Nabu is, or how good at reading people. Need to know only at this stage.

"Recognised, Robin, B zero one, Superboy, B zero four, Miss Martian, B zero five, Artemis, B zero eight, Zatanna, B zero nine."

I keep my face neutral as I walk towards them. If I'm keeping this from them for now -or at least keeping how far I intend to go- then I need to get Zatanna alone in a little while. From the way Robin and M'gann are supporting her I assume that she's still in shock. Zatanna herself is weeping, her eyes bleary and her whole body shaking.

Kon notices me first. "You got your ring working okay?" I nod as I keep coming. "Where's Kaldur?"

"Hospital, an Atlantean one. He's-" I take a moment to have the ring check on him. "-going to be fine."

The group come to a halt as I reach them. I look Zatanna over for a moment and then step forwards and hug her. As I do so I flare my aura outwards. With all that's happened today I doubt anyone will think much of that. It serves to camouflage the sonic stabiliser effect which cancels the noise of what I'm about to say. As she relaxes into the hug I put my chin on her shoulder and whisper into her ear.

"On the flight back I had a few ideas about getting Nabu out of your father. If you're up to it, come and find me in half an hour."

I pull away, hands resting on her shoulders for a moment. She's still crying, silently, but the tremors have faded a little and there's a focus in her eyes that wasn't there before.

We're coming for you, Nabu.

BABUM. BABUM. BABUM.

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NEXT CHAPTER

Half-hearted

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Half-hearted 1

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Half-hearted

6th November

02:51 GMT

At this time of the morning London's streets are almost completely silent. A couple of hours from now the first delivery vans of the day will make the first deliveries. Five hours from now people will wake up to find that they slept through the murder of hundreds of thousands of children. I imagine that they'll consider themselves lucky. Will they reflect -as they should- that their offspring's survival was a matter of pure chance? A few hours this way or that and the majority of casualties could so easily have been in Europe rather than... I don't actually know where they are. I doubt we'll know the final death toll for days. Anywhere rush hour was, I suppose. The Americas and East Asia, perhaps?

Teekl's walking on my left. She's at lion size, ignoring her surroundings and keeping pace with me in a decidedly non-catlike manner. Zatanna's on my right. She's got her arms crossed at her stomach and every so often she rubs her upper arms with her hands. I had thought that she might be cold, but she kept doing it after I extended my environmental shield around her. I'm not sure... I don't know what else I can say to support her. She used the half hour to change and clean herself up a bit. I'm finding her face a little odd like this; part of cleaning up involved removing her makeup. I hadn't realised that she was wearing any. I suppose that's the aim when it's applied with skill.

I should say something.

...

I look down at the perfectly cubical cardboard box in my hands. Best I could do for a talisman of order. I hope making it with the ring isn't a pr-.

"Do you..?" Zatanna looks away from me to her right. "Do you really think this will work?"

"This?" I exhale. "No, it's... It's not very likely. I mean, it might work. I don't know enough about order magic to really know, but I would have thought... I mean, if they were likely to take exception, I don't think Nabu would have done it."

She stops dead in her tracks, her face creasing on the verge of tears again. "Then why, why are we..?"

I turn to face her and put my hands on her shoulders. "Because it might work. Because in the short time I've had to think about this, it's the least violent thing I've been able to come up with and I think we should try it before trying something riskier. Because I don't think, even if he finds out about it, Nabu will do anything about this."

"Couldn't.. I mean, the Ophidian..?"

"Could she beat him in a straight fight?" Zatanna nods, still looking down at the ground. "Maybe. Maybe. If she had some way to stop him just.. teleporting away. But I sincerely doubt that Mister Zatara would survive the fight, at least not without being-" I flick my right hand in Teekl's direction. "-assimilated. Also, I'm... Nabu... I haven't seen him at full power, as powerful as he is now, with your father as a host. It's.. hard to judge exactly what he's capable of." She nods and I see drops of water splash onto the pavement.

No, that won't do. I move my right hand to her chin and force her head up. "Zatanna, listen to me. This is not a murder. This is a kidnapping. Whatever happens today, we will free your father. I just don't want to give you false expectations. This will take some time, it could be weeks, months, even years. Not everything we come up with will work, but the end result will be Nabu either back in the Helmet or dead and your father free. Do you understand me?"

Her breath is ragged and she only meets my eyes for a moment before looking away, but she manages a nod. A little shaky, but I'll take it. "Okay. O-okay."

I step in for a hug before turning and slipping my right arm behind her back. "Come on. Not far now." John phoned me back while things were calming down in the cave. He's at the Tate Club now. He said he'd try to get Clarice and Albert there but that he couldn't promise. I try scanning the place but -surprise surprise- the ring can't tell me that it's there at all. I had to tell John about the scry ward problem because I wanted him to try and come up with a way around it. Could he have warded the place because of me? Because of Nabu? Or would a club built to host magic users of dubious legal status have been built with wards incorporated into its design?

"Hey, um. How..?" Her voice sounds a little steadier. "You called the Ophidian 'she'?"

"Yes. Nottt sure how I know that, actually. We had a brief chat when I got back to the cave. She doesn't like what Nabu's done any more than I do."

"Why does..? I mean, I'm not complaining about the help, but.. I didn't think..?"

"Because you-." 'Because you're mine' probably isn't the way to go with this. "Because you're my friend, part of my team, part of how my.. world.. is. Should be. What Nabu's done, disrupts that, hurts you. And since I'm her Agent that.. reduced her as well."

This whole thing shouldn't take more than a couple of hours. Zatanna needs sleep. I can go without if I need to but I don't think there's much I can really do to fix the world after something like this. Oh! Damn it, I need to go back to Gotham and pay the people at Tikka Nights for dinner and check up on Miss Robinson. Ah, both of those can wait for a more civil hour, I want to be around in case Zatanna needs something.

"This... John Constantine. Who is he? I know you've talked about him and I know Dad didn't like-."

"Doesn't. Doesn't like."

Her eyes flick up to me for a moment, then she nods. "Doesn't like him, but I don't know why. And he tried to take the Helmet."

"John..." Where to start? "You're probably better off asking him. Who he is, well, um, born in Liverpool, mother died in childbirth, brought up by his father. His father was murdered by a serial killer known as The Family Man about seven years ago which means the only people left in his immediate family are his sister Cheryl and-."

"Gemma. His niece."

"Yep. He's been involved with magic since secondary school. Not particularly powerful but cunning, intelligent and knowledgeable. Don't think we're going to outmuscle Nabu so he's probably the sort of person we need."

"But how did-. How does he know Dad?"

"I really don't know. Your dad performed on stage in the West End during the nineties so they might have met then. Clarice... Ms Sackville mentioned that she knew, um, both your parents. Anyway, John doesn't... The things he's been involved in over the years, a lot of his friends have died as a result. That might be why your dad was so worried. I don't know why they fell out, or when."

"Is he a.. British superhero?"

"Uhoow, um, I wouldn't... Not in the conventional sense. He does fight supernatural opponents but, no secret identity, no costume, he's not exactly an icon of clean living and he frequently uses his arcane abilities for personal gain. Also, he doesn't think of himself as being one."

"Has he fought anyone like Nabu before?"

"His most powerful opponent to date was a being known as The First of the Fallen. At the time, he was the de facto ruler of Hell."

"He.. beat.. Lucifer?"

"No, Lucifer left of his own accord about, um, thirty years ago? Threw everyone out and locked the gates behind him."

"The.. Plague of Ghosts? That was Lucifer leaving Hell?"

"Yes. Well, you understand I haven't been able to ask anyone directly involved, but as far as I know, yes. The whole.. mess.. only started to get sorted out when Duma and Remiel reopened it. They have de jure authority over the place, but the Demons listened to the First. John outsmarted him repeatedly, and he died with a golden two-pronged sword embedded in his chest. So, yes, fought and beat. If anyone can work out how to free your father, it's him."

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Half-hearted 2

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6th November

02:59 GMT

There wasn't anyone on the door when we arrived at The Tate Club, though that didn't really surprise me. The cleaning staff -at least, the ones who clean the more mundane areas- would have left an hour ago. Once inside the building I have no trouble scanning its interior and locating John in one of the first floor rooms. Since I don't want anyone phoning the police I light the way through the empty halls with the ring rather than putting the lights on. It's nothing like as creepy as I thought it would be. I mean, this is the centre of borderline evil magic in London, shouldn't there be nameless things skittering just in the corners of my eyes or something? It could be the Spell Eater, but Zatanna doesn't seem to be picking up anything either.

She's leaning on me a little more than she was and she appears to have stopped crying. I wish I could do more but I've never been in the position she's in. My grandparents are all dead but for three of them it was after a prolonged period of ill health and my paternal grandfather died before I was born. Everyone else I... I suppose the nearest I've felt to how she's feeling was in the training scenario after I found out that Alan and Diana were dead, but in that case we were already doing everything we could to fight the things responsible. I also know how I reacted. I don't think Zatanna would do anything that extreme while there was an alternative but I'm probably going to hold off sharing my knowledge of demonology for a little while just in case.

The closest stairs up to the first floor are a little out of the way. They're also fairly narrow and in a part of the building that's less well decorated than the bits we just walked through. I suppose that's because they don't want regular guests coming up here by mistake. Or maybe it's a metaphor about looking behind the façade? Or maybe this is just part of the 'below stairs' part of the building. Not sure. Doesn't matter. I release my hold on Zatanna to let her go up first and then follow along behind her. Yep, cleaning trolleys. Zatanna stops on the landing and I point to the door leading to the main corridor. Definitely better decorated through here. The carpet's complex pattern is slightly faded.. ah, I see, built in runes. Oooor possibly just mystic-looking nonsense. The lights on the walls are designed to look like candle sconces and the ceiling is decorated by plaster ceiling roses. Zatanna waits for me to put my arm around her again before we head in the direction of the room John's occupying.

I go to push the door open and then realise that if John's actively doing anything that may be a bad idea. Doesn't look like he is but the ring doesn't detect magic energy. Or maybe I just haven't learnt how to yet? I reach forwards with my left and knock. Inside, the ring shows me John sit up from painting on the floor with a brush with a look of confusion on his face.

"Yeah?!"

I push open the door then stand aside for Zatanna to enter. Over her shoulder I see John's face go from confused to stunned. On the bare wooden floor John's painted some sort of summoning pattern. It doesn't look like the one for Demons; those are generally just a circle surrounded by warding sigils. This is angular, straight lines and arcs in regular patterns with a central space constructed from many straight lines overlapping each other. Next to him is a small pot of white paint and he's still showing the bruise Batman gave him. As I walk into the room I play a strobe of orange light over it to fix the damage. He's left his coat and jacket in a pile in the corner of the room, along with what looks like a rolled up carpet.

Zatanna shuffles nervously. "Um, hi." John sits back on his haunches as he looks at her. "I.. I want to thank you for trying to take.. for offering to take the Helmet from-."

John shakes his head. "No, no, it's... Giovanni, I owed.. I owe him. It's..." He tilts his head back to look at the ceiling. "Shit. You look just like..." He trails off, then pushes himself to his feet.

"Like.. who?"

"Like your mum. I mean, she was blonde, but apart from that." I glance at Zatanna. Don't really see it myself. John goes to pat his pockets, looking for a cigarette packet that's still in his jacket. He appears to realise this and looks over to it before deciding against getting one. Teekl walks over to the carpet and slouches against it, eyes fixed on John.

I float the perfect box into the centre of the design and release it. Zatanna looks puzzled. "You're going to use that?"

John nods and walks around to the far side of the painted shapes. "The whole point of Neo Vodoun is that regular stuff works just as well as idols of whatsit or icons of bumfluff. As far as most people are concerned a cardboard box is regularih'y and structure, much more than anything obviously magical."

"The box is exactly one metre cubed. The corrugations are perfectly regular and it contains one A four sheet of plain white paper. The Elemental will need something to manifest in."

"Yeah, we're not going for an Elemental. If we're serious about getting someone to overrule Nabu, we need someone higher up than that."

"Another Lord of Order?" Zatanna looks understandably worried. "Is that really a good idea?"

"Things like that, they need something to bind them to the world. Thiss..." He waves his right hand at the still drying paint. "This isn't enough to anchor one for more than a few minutes. If it looks like it's found a way to stick around, we can wreck the floor and break its connection."

"But I thought the drawings were supposed to protect the people performing the ritual?"

"With Demons, yeah. Lords of Order are a different kettle of fish. If we act with respect and don't do anything obviously chaotic it'll probably go okay. Not saying he's just going to say 'yes' or anything..."

"Didn't Nabu say you were chaotic?"

John gives a humourless laugh. "I'm wearing a charm that should make me look a bit more neutral. But if I'm on best behaviour he'll probably take it anyway. The one we're going to try and get hold of is supposed to be pretty diplomatic."

Zatanna nods. "Where should I stand?"

"Just over there." There are three points coming off the edge of the design. John's already next to one, Zatanna takes the second and I remove my Spell Eater and I stand on the third.

"Are my tattoos going to be a problem?"

"Shouldn't think so. He might not be able to see you, but it doesn't really affect how well you can use magic. Right, first step. Paul, you see the design on the floor?"

"Yes?"

"Can you extend it into three dimensions?"

Ring, analyse.

Logical geometric progression available.

"Yes." I give the ring the nod and orange lines appear in the air mirroring the design on the floor.

"Can you do more than three dimensions?"

Um. "Not without practice. Um, do we need-?"

"No, we shouldn't need it, it's just..." He sighs. "Okay, the ritual's simple enough. Just say: 'By', then the names of three orderly things, then 'Lord Kilderkin of Order, I summon you'. I'll go first, then Paul and then you. Remember, this is Neo Vodoun. The more mundane the orderly thing is, the better. I'll say again, it's not like with a Demon. If you get it wrong it shouldn't matter too much, we'll just keep going until we get it right. If you can't think of something, just stay silent until you do. There's no rush. If I've started, all three of us need to have a go no matter what's going on in the middle. Anything you want t'ask?"

"How do we.. talk to it?"

"Really politely. Don't try to appeal to his emotions, he doesn't really have any. Use logic, rational arguments and back it up with evidence. Don't talk over each other. Take the time to think what you're going to say through before you start. He won't mind waiting but he'll get annoyed if you don't express yourself clearly." She nods. "Okay then. Ahem. By red letter boxes, red phone boxes and driving on the left, Lord Kilderkin of Order, I summon you."

"By a perfect diamond, by pure white light and the music of the spheres, Lord Kilderkin of Order, I summon you."

There's a short pause while Zatanna tries to come up with something. "By the passage of time, gravity and electricity, Lord Kilderkin of Order, I summon you."

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Half-hearted 3

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6th November

03:07 GMT

Control of construct lost.

The orange light still floats in the air but the filament connecting it to the ring is visibly severed. Paint from John's abandoned tin streams through the air in defiance of gravity and replaces the orange with matte white. I don't think there was that much paint in the tin. We hold our breath for a moment as it finishes but nothing further happens. At least they've noticed us.

John decides that we've waited long enough. "By brick walls, coastal defences and the national grid, Lord Kilderkin of Order, I summon you."

Um... "By Planck length, the Avogadro constant and the degree centigrade, Lord Kilderkin of Order, I summon you."

Zatanna thinks for a moment. I can sympathise. If we have to go around again I'm going to be having trouble myself. "By democratic elections, bank accounts and school timetables, Drol Nikredlik fo Redro, I nommus uoy."

The cardboard box in the centre of the ritual space rises smoothly into the air and.. shrinks... No, not shrinking! It's expanding, but... My eyes ache and I have to blink and look away as the box opens up in what appears to my limited ability to perceive them to be new spatial dimensions. Limiting myself to brief glances I think I can see the piece of paper inside it through some of them. I think it's looking at me.

Objective accomplished, I guess.

After perhaps ten seconds the box seems to calm down. Now that it's no longer inwardly unfolding it doesn't hurt to look at but I start to feel cross eyed when I try following the line of one of its sides from corner to corner. Then, with no real warning, a bald fat man with a Fu Manchu beard, melon skin and pointy ears wearing a navy blue open robe, loincloth and quite a lot of jewellery materialises within the centre of the ritual space. He's holding the multidimensional box with no apparent difficulty and floats off the ground with his legs bent up under him. If he were standing on the ground he'd probably be about one metre sixty tall. As it is he's above us and is holding the box at convenient head height.

"I have the honour to be the personal slave of Lord Kilderkin, a Manifestation of Order, here incarnated in the form of a sheet of paper."

Part way between sublime and ridiculous. I'm not sure how the thing is supposed to be 'orderly'. His eyes aren't really focusing on us. Zatanna and I look at each other and then over to John.

"Miss Zatanna Zatara." The box doesn't turn. The space around and within the box distorts and the box is facing Zatanna. "You mixed two forms of magic during an unfamiliar ritual contrary to the instructions of your moderatus. This is an incorrect procedure."

She looks at me then at John in a minor panic. I make a small shrugging gesture. John nods at the box. She opens her mouth and closes it, getting herself together. "Lord Kilderkin, I apologize if I have offended you."

There is a brief pause. Is Kilderkin thinking about it or waiting for one of us to speak? "Your apology is irrelevant and unnecessary. You acted contrary to both order and good sense. You are young and have been chastised by one who is your senior. How you feel about it, your degree of 'sorrow', is irrelevant. In species such as yours maturation is often marked by a gradual transition from chaotic to more orderly forms of behaviour. You are not yet fully mature. Endeavour not to repeat your mistake." The universe within the ritual space warps again and the box is facing John. "It is unusual for one such as you to call forth one such as I. Speak your piece."

"Kilderkin, Giovanni Zatara is my friend and Zatanna's father. Nabu used Zatanna as a hostage to force him to agree to allow Nabu to use him as a host. We'd like to request that you instruct Nabu to release Giovanni, and are prepared to negotiate an exchange to facilitate that."

"Please wait a moment while I review his case history." The space within the box spins and looking away looking away! "Please confirm; to the best of your knowledge, is the Lord of Chaos named 'Klarion the Witch Boy' presently active on this planet?"

John points at me. If spending time with Diana has taught me anything, it's that being completely honest doesn't mean you have to say everything you know. "My understanding-" Space distorts again and I force myself to maintain focus. "-of the term 'Lord of Chaos' is not good enough to reliably answer that question. I can confirm that there is a magic user by the name of Klarion active on this planet. During our first encounter I either cut or substantially reduced his ability to use magic. When last I saw him he was dependent on an unidentified type of Elemental to power his spells. As such, I am not sure that he still qualifies."

"How was this achieved?"

"He used his cat, Teekl, as his familiar and bond to the Plane of Chaos." I lift the ring to display it to him. "I am an Orange Lantern. Assimilating Teekl allowed me to have her close the link. My understanding is that it will be difficult for him to form a replacement familiar bond."

"As a Lord of Chaos Klarion had access to extremely large amounts of arcane power. However, raw power is not his only strength. Anyone who manages to become a Lord of Chaos would have to demonstrate an exceedingly high level of arcane skill." Something twists within the box. "Skill enough to generate a planar fracture to separate adults from children, for example."

"My Lord, while I will not deny that he is dangerous he did that as part of a group, and despite Bedlam's power he used a crystal to channel the energy to make the ritual work. Furthermore, the ritual site was warded against scrying. Even if Nabu had a host the moment the spell started he would not have been able to locate it faster than we did."

"I have more faith in Lord Nabu's abilities than that. If he had a host earlier he could have hunted Klarion and the other participants down before this became an issue."

"If.. that's.. your price, we can do that."

"It is not. Lord Nabu's skill set makes him uniquely capable in that regard. Though it is within my power to overrule Lord Nabu's decision I am strongly minded not to do so. What can you offer to counterbalance the loss of a Lord of Order in the field?"

"Klarion's familiar."

Another distortion results in Kilderkin looking at Teekl, who stands and regards him with decidedly unfriendly eyes. "RrAAAooooooowwwww."

"She currently provides him with no power. I doubt that you could return her to him even if you wanted to and I do not believe that you do want to. Were she active your offer would be worthy of consideration. As it is I see no value in it."

"If people find out that Lords of Order take over people's bodies they will want nothing to do with you."

The box orientates on Zatanna again. "I do not believe that you are correct. You are distraught at the loss of your father, while worldwide millions grieve for their lost children. You will find that most of them would consider the loss of your father an acceptable sacrifice in order to prevent a repetition of that event and to prevent other similar events from occurring in future. As you grow older you will come to understand the value of objective utility. Your father may have sacrificed himself for you, but by doing so he will save far more lives than he could have done separate from Nabu. Furthermore, I believe that you have incorrectly predicted the actions of your superiors."

What's that supposed to mean?

"Alright then." John's face hardens. "Exactly what would you want in order to set Giovanni free?"

"Something of proportionate value. Since the primary justification for his presence is the reciprocal presence of a Lord of Chaos, you will find me far more amenable to negotiation if Klarion is dead. If, as you say, he has been significantly weakened by you denying him use of his familiar then this task should be well within your abilities. Is there anything further you wish to discuss?"

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Half-hearted 4

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6th November

03:19 GMT

"Oh, Zatanna, poppet." Ms Sackville gives Zatanna a boney hug. "John told me what Nabu did to Giovanni, that beastly thing!"

"Zatanna Zatara, Ms Clarice Sackville."

She was sitting at her accustomed table when we got back downstairs but got up when she got a look at Zatanna. Mr Case has gone to fetch a pot of tea. The lights immediately above us are on but the rest are off. The other tables are bare and the dark wood makes the place look even gloomier. Ours has a basic tablecloth and.. a photo album. Ms Sackville leads Zatanna to a chair and then sits down herself. I sit on Zatanna's other side, John sits next to me and Teekl flops down behind Zatanna and starts licking her right forepaw. Zatanna looks kind of drained. She didn't fall apart after Kilderkin and his slave vanished back into the Plane of Order or whatever it's called but I think she's still in shock over the whole thing.

Ms Sackville pulls the album over. "I had Albert get this out of the loft." She opens it a little way in from the beginning. For a moment I wonder if it's going to be some black and white tissue-paper-between-the-pages job, but it's full colour. "We took these when your parents were in London, before you were born." Zatanna nods and pulls it closer.

"I didn't... Were you friends?"

"Not sure I'd say that. Your father might have grown up with stage magic, but he was still finding his feet with the real thing when we met."

I see a photo which looks like it was taken in the room we're sitting in now. Albert looks younger, although still hard worn. Mister Zatara looks younger as well. Ms Sackville looks exactly the same. Missus Zatara... I'm not sure what John meant earlier. She doesn't look that much like Zatanna. I mean, there's a resemblance, but it's not all that. I don't remember Sindella Zatara from the comics at all though I had the ring acquire pictures when I started researching Zatanna. Don't know exactly how she died, but it was some time before Zatanna was two. The photo looks as if someone walked up to the group and gave them a few seconds to pose before taking it.

Come to think of it, I've not... No, the ring can't track.. ah. Her paternal grandparents are both deceased, though she has aunts, uncles and cousins in Italy. Nothing on her mother's family. What exactly is she going to do now? Is she going to move over there? Does she even speak Italian? She can probably manage on her own for a while, depends how long dealing with Nabu takes. Have to ask her about it, tomorrow.. well, later today.

Zatanna turns the page and Ms Sackville pulls her chair around a little towards her. "How did it go with that thing you summoned upstairs?"

Zatanna reaches out to touch a page with her parents, John and a group of other people I don't recognise in a pub. "He-. He said that the only thing we could do that would make him order Nabu out of Dad would be killing Klarion."

"It's what they do." John puts his elbows on the table and leans forwards. "You give anyone.. -anything- that sort of power and they can't resist lording it over people. If Giovanni was willing to put the Helmet on full time, he'd have been fine putting it on part time as well. They just didn't care."

"So. Are we interested?"

"I-." Zatanna looks at us, then drops her gaze back to the album. "If it's the only way... Maybe we could just hand Klarion over?"

John shakes his head. "Catching him and handing him over'd be a lot more difficult, and it's not exactly easy to start with."

"It occurs to me... Lords of Order and Lords of Chaos are.. similar, right? They work in the same sorts of way?" Tentative nods from John and Ms Sackville. "Then any technique we develop to attack Klarion would probably work on Nabu. I.. don't have faith in the forces of Order right now. Kilderkin had a point, we do need to do something about Klarion... But.. if this is how Nabu treats people..."

John gives me an incredulous look. "You wanna get them both? Psssssh, don't think small, do you?"

"If our primary concern is freeing Mister Zatara, then an alternative we may wish to consider is working with Klarion. He hates Nabu, maybe more than he hates me. Is that something we want to consider?"

Zatanna looks straight at me and shakes her head. "No. Not after what he did."

"Okay then. So, investigate both of them?" Nods all round.

John pulls out a cigarette and taps it against the table. "First problem with that: we know sod all about them. I'm game, but it isn't exactly gunna be-."

"How good's your necromancy?"

He narrows his right eye. "Why?"

"I know where his previous host is buried. Nabu said that Mister Nelson tried to persuade him not to do it. I can't think of anyone who'd know more."

Zatanna's shocked. "You can't turn Kent into some kind of zombie!"

John grimaces and shakes his head. "It wouldn't work like that. We do a séance, speak to his ghost for a few minutes." He pauses for a moment, looking at Zatanna. "I can do it, if that's something you're okay with."

"I don't-. Is there something else we could try?"

"A-. Green Lantern, the one from the Justice Society, has all his old books. He'd probably let us read them. I don't know how much help they'd be."

Clarice looks at me sadly and slowly shakes her head. "Dear boy, don't try turning into John. We've already got one of him and he's plenty. Read the books first, then try the dark magic."

I nod. Yes, that's probably a better idea.

"Alright, second problem." John looks at me then Zatanna. "What was Kilderkin on about when he said that we've 'incorrectly predicted the actions of our superiors'? What have the Justice League people said?"

I shrug and look at Zatanna. She looks down and shakes her head. "Batman just asked the others to get me back to the.. um, our base. I don't know what they're going to do about the whole.. thing."

"John, Batman's Giovanni's friend, and the rest of them aren't going to tolerate this any more than I am. Only reason I didn't get Wonder Woman to join us was because I don't know how good Nabu is at reading minds." Her League file lists her as 'highly resistant' but I don't know if that's 'Lord of Order resistant'.

"Yeah, well, I was his friend and look how well that turned out."

"W-. What do you mean?"

John shakes his head. "Oh, it's not... I'm not used to people who just-."

Ms Sackville glares at him. "John, you owe her." He flinches. "She's going to find out eventually."

"Find out what?"

John sags, staring at the middle of the table. "Was in ninety seven. I was..." He breathes in deeply and then out again. "I'd run into this group called the Brujería. Right nasty bunch of..." He shakes his head. "Thought they were just some crazy cult, 'n they are, but they've got the power to back it up. They wanted to summon up some sort of primordial.. evil.. thing. Never worked out what they thought they'd get out of it. I didn't even find out exactly what they were up to until they were already onto me. They killed the people working with me and I only got out by dumb luck." He leans back in his chair. "And then I did what I always do: went to my friends for help. A bunch of us got together; Steve Dayton -he was a bit less mental in those days-, Richard Occult, John Sargent, Baron Winters... And Giovanni and Sindella Zatara."

"Nineteen ninety seven... That was the year-."

"Yeah." John nods, the misery plain on his face. "I was the one who got your mum killed. S'why... Why Giovanni hates me, an'... And he's right to. I've failed.. my friends.. a lot, but I've never done it to one who had a fourteen month old daughter before." He takes a breath and finally meets her eyes. "He hates me and you probably should as well, but... I'm not letting it happen again. I'm not... We're going to get him back, alright? I couldn't live with myself if-."

Zatanna's chair shoots back as she jumps to her feet, turns and marches away from the table. I sit there in shock while John brings his hands up to cover his face. "Fuck."

back

Half-hearted 5

next

6th November

03:25 GMT

Fuck. That was how Giovanni died in the comic, and this time it was... "John, Ms Sackville, that was not helpful."

Ms Sackville glares at me. "She would have asked eventually."

"But not tonight!"

"Then when? When would be a good time to reveal something like that? If we're working together she'd be asking us about how we knew her father, 'cause she misses him. How long d'you want us to keep schtum for? A week? A month? Now, you're right; we can't let Nabu get away with this. Klarion neither. Working out how to-."

Zatanna's collapsed to the floor next to the door we came through to in the main room. I exit FTL squatting against the opposite wall and try to work out how I can fix this. If she refuses to have anything to do with-.

"Did you know?"

"What?"

"Did you know?"

"No! I wouldn't have... There's no record. Missus Zatara's cause of death is listed as a stroke on every file I saw! There was-. I didn't-."

"Dad never told me why he was so scared when you started talking about him. He wouldn't tell me-. How can I work with someone like him!"

Take a moment. Think it through. "Zatanna, a few hours ago we were on Roanoke Island fighting Klarion. And if he'd been a bit more intelligent when I charged him, or a bit more on the ball when Billy appeared or.. or a bit luckier, any one of us could have died. Kaldur was in charge of our team. Would it have been his fault? Or after he was injured and I took charge, would it have been mine?" A pained, gasping breath and she bows her head. I squeeze my eyes closed and rub my forehead with my right hand. "They shouldn't have just sprung that on you like that. I'm.. I'm sorry."

"How many of the others died?"

Ring, access records. "The time of death of Mister Sargent suggests he died as well. Mister Dayton has a range of prescriptions, antipsychotics, mood stabilisers.. few other things. Of course, pharmaceuticals won't necessarily work if the cause is magical. Doctor Occult survived and I can't find good records for Baron Winters." Who else? I've got a long list of John's late friends stored. "Benjamin Cox, Franklin North, Emma Young and Anne-Marie Mason. All of them were friends of his. I've got no way to know which of the other deaths that happened at the same time were caused by the same thing, but there's a noticeable spike-."

"Stop. Please, stop." I stop. "Dad knew, didn't he? About all those other people. And Mom..."

"Almost certainly."

"That's why he's so protective of me. I thought it was just him being..."

"Yeah. What we do, is dangerous. No two ways about it. We train, we carry advanced equipment-" I tap the Spell Eater where it hangs on my chest. "-and we try and be sensible about our abilities, but... We can die. And not because we messed up, just because the sorts of people we fight are people who are capable of killing us."

"So why did he join the Justice League? Why did he keep being a superhero?"

"I don't know. I don't know what his reason was. Why are you doing it?"

"I wanted to help people. I want to.. to be like Dad." She sits up a little straighter. "What about you?"

"Have you ever looked over someone's shoulder at a crossword.. or test or something, and just found the answer really obvious? Sometimes, when I look around the world, at what people are doing, the way society works... That's how I feel. There's no reason for magic not to be mainstream. There's no reason for research into mad science type technology to be so slow. There's no reason... I want to make the world work properly. To do that, I need a good reputation and I need contacts."

"You don't want to help people at all?"

"I have an orange power ring. If I want to help someone, I have to care a great deal about what happens to them. For you, for our team mates, that's easy, but I had to abandon injured children in Gotham because their individual well-being didn't matter to me enough to trigger the ring. But, by doing so, I helped stop the spell that bit earlier. As a result, more people live." I look away slightly and shake my head. "I hope, anyway. See, the fact is, objectively, a life is a life. But it feels different when it happens to you, to people you care about. Except.. it's not, not really. Six people die and one man goes mad, and everyone else on Earth gets to live."

"Is he really..? Is he the best chance we've got?"

"If I knew someone better we'd be there instead. And-" I look at him through the wall with the Ophidian's Eyes. "-he's completely motivated to see this through. If you can't stand to be around him then-."

"No. No, I shouldn't-. It's just... I don't remember Mom. All I had were Dad's stories and photos and now Dad's... And he just comes out with it..."

I reach over and pat her on the knee. "Do you want to go home? Or, I don't know, we've got plenty of space at the cave if you want to stay there for a bit."

"No, we need to finish.. sorting out what we're going to do." I stand and offer her my right hand. She takes it and pulls herself up. I have the ring open the double doors back into the main room and we walk through arm in arm.

Albert's finished organising the tea. The pot and six cups are on the table and he's taken the seat between John and Ms Sackville. There's a hip flask next to John's. We slowly walk over. Zatanna looks directly at John. "Paul and I can talk to Green Lantern. What are you going to be doing?"

His head stays tilted down but he manages to raise his eyes to meet hers. "There's.. this guy I know. He's involved in high level chaos magic. Dunno how much help he'll be but I can try and get hold of him."

Ms Sackville nods. "I'll put the word out that we're after information on Klarion. Should be able to get hold of a few books on Order and Chaos. We can see if we can find out-."

A phone rings. After a momentary delay Albert reaches into his jacket pocket and fishes a modern looking mobile out and answers it. "Wot?"

Ms Sackville frowns at him but presses on. "See if we can find out anything helpful. You'd be amazed what people can just shove in a lock-up somewhere and forget about."

Albert looks like the phone call is displeasing him. After a moment he holds it a little away from his ear. "'Ere, Clarrie. Some berk called Cyril's on the phone. Sounds like a nonce. Want me to tell him to fuck off?"

Ms Sackville sighs. "What does he want?"

"Somefink about Demons in Liverpool. Oh, 'ang on. John, it's yer sister."

"What?" John suddenly comes out of his funk and grabs the phone. "Cheryl?" He winces. "Yeah, I-. I know, it wasn't-." He listens to her for a moment. "Yeah, look... Okay. Tell him I'll be there. Yeah, sure." He moves the phone away from his head and hangs up before passing it back to Albert.

"Well?"

"Don't ask me how, but Cheryl somehow got hold of Sir Cyril. You know, Knight?" I nod. "Those Praexis Demons you ran into wouldn't have just turned up on their own. He wants me to help him track down where they came from."

"Right, I'll come with you. Don't feel much like sleep. Zatanna?"

Ms Sackville shakes her head. "No. You're taking her straight home."

I frown at her and look at Zatanna, who nods. "Yes. Could you.. take me back to the cave, please?"

"Of course. John, I'll be back in half an hour."

back

Half-hearted 6

next

6th November

05:14 GMT -4

"Uuh!"

The punching bag lies strewn across the gymnasium floor in tatters.

"Uuh uuuh!"

A little further along the floor the heavy bag has suffered the same fate. A cloud of slowly settling dust marks the final resting place of the rubble bag and the heavy metal punching block lies in torn pieces where I've ripped it apart. I'm now working the force field pads in a frenzy of concussive impacts.

"Uuh. Raah!"

The energy shield around the upper right one fails under the impact of my fist. This isn't working. I came back from China in a filthy temper. I was alright going there, but being kept hanging around while they decided what to do about me left me plenty of time to think about what happened on Roanoke Island, and the more I thought about it... The angrier it made me. I hoped that I'd be able to work out my aggression with a little mindless violence in our gymnasium. It's been.. four hours. Haven't calmed down noticeably. I've got no idea what the others are up to and frankly I don't really want them to have to deal with me while I'm like this.

I stare at the pads. "Ring, repair and recharge them." Nothing happens. "Rrrrrrhh!"

Footsteps behind me. Boots, heels. I narrow my eyes, still facing the pads.

"Wonder Woman. I wondered who it would be." She takes a breath to start speaking. "Before you start, I'm going to tell you what I occasionally had cause to tell my mother before coming here. I am in an absolutely foul mood and it's taking me quite a lot of effort to remain this polite. I'm really not fit for civilised company at present. Come back later. A few hours... Tomorrow, perhaps."

"I'm afraid I can't do that."

"Then on your head be it."

"Grayven-."

I turn on her, eyes blazing. "What the fuck was that! What did you people think you were playing at?! Mister Zatara nearly ended up spending the rest of his life as Nabu's meat puppet! You all just stood there!"

She remains calm, gazing levelly at me. "Are you finished?"

Words fail me. I growl under my breath and shake my head, not trusting myself to look at her.

"Zatara agreed to take on Nabu to save Zatanna. His choice-."

"Nabu was holding Zatanna hostage! No such deal could be considered to be freely made! You, or Stewart, or Batman... Any of you could have taken the Helmet from him!"

"Angering someone as powerful as Nabu has other consequences-."

"So we deal with them! That's what we're for, isn't it?!" I turn away and lean against the pads. "It shouldn't have had to be me. You're supposed to be his allies, his team mates, his.. friends. I don't even like him that much!"

"You believe we should have interrupted."

"Yes. Such a sacrifice would have been completely pointless. I... When Robin stood up to me when we were dealing with those godlings... He was right, and I was wrong. I was having too much fun to stop and consider the wisdom of my actions and he needed to blow up my objective to make me see that. My respect for him... And I thanked him for it. My friend, stopped me doing something stupid. You, you just..."

We stand in silence for a few moments. Huh, I actually feel a little calmer now. Maybe I should have just found some random person in the street to shout at hours ago.

"What did you do with our prisoners?"

"Shouldn't you be out doing something? The ring estimates that the death toll from that spell was at least seven hundred thousand."

"Grayven, I need to know."

"It'll be public knowledge in three days anyway. Frankly, you can wait. If you've got nothing better to do I'm sure that you could make yourself useful helping track down Klarion."

"Did you kill them?"

I frown. Ooooh. That's why I'm getting prioritised. I suppose it's not an unreasonable guess. "Hundreds of thousands of children dead. That'll rise, of course. Injuries. Suicides. Only bothers me in the abstract, really. Everyone I know well enough to care about is old enough to look after themselves."

"Grayven, did you murder them?"

"Of course, that's the same for you, isn't it? Amazons don't have children, the only Justice Leaguers with offspring are Batman and Mister Zatara..."

"Peter Garibaldi is the Themysciran embassy's media relations officer. He has two young sons and the first thing I did when the fight was over was make sure they were alright. Now answer me."

"He was fortunate. You can find out when the bereaved do. Three days."

I hear her hands slide over the rope of her lasso. "That isn't good enough."

I turn around to face her again, grinding my teeth. "If I were going to kill them I'd have done it then and there where you could all see me do it as a judgement on your ineptitude!" I take a deep breath. "But while this incident has completely destroyed my faith in the Justice League my faith in humanity remains. Justice will be done."

We stare at each other for several seconds. "What. Did you do. To them?" I just shake my head. "Grayven, ........................................."

Her lips move, but I hear nothing. "Hah hah haaah! You just tried to give me an order, didn't you?" I tap my right ear with my right index finger. "Half second delay. If the ring thinks you or Batman are about to give me an order, I suddenly go deaf." Actually, Father Box handles it but I've managed to keep his existence a secret so far. The technique was obvious, really. It was just that before today I hadn't thought that I'd need it.

This clearly doesn't please her. "You swore that you would obey my commands. We trust you with Alan's lantern because you made that oath."

"I swore obedience to a woman I trusted and I don't trust you with that authority anymore. And if you were relying on that then you severely misjudged the situation. If you relied on that, if you used that oath to compel my obedience to every request you made, what do you think would be the very first thing I would do when the year was up? If you'd failed to make me want to follow your lead? When I was finally free I'd-. I gave you a year, not so you could restrain me, but so that you would..."

I raise my right hand to my face. Oh. I hadn't realised that myself until just now. "So that you would have time to convince me that your way of doing things was right. Zard, Wotan, Faust and Thorn were all murderers before yesterday. All known to you and to the police. If it were just me, if I didn't care... If I'd gone to Louisiana to fight the Injustice League on my own... I'd have killed them all then and there. Wouldn't even have broken the law doing it. I held myself back because I.. I wanted to believe that the League's way of doing things was right. That mercy and restraint are really the best way to deal with these things." I shake my head, lower my hand and look straight at her again. "But they're not, are they? It doesn't work. Because four murderous wizards didn't die years ago hundreds of thousands of children died last night. And I may not care about them as individuals.. but I do care about the species as a whole. It-. It's appalling. It doesn't work. Doesn't work." I turn back to the pads and make fists, but my heart's not really in it. "Leave me in peace. In a few hours I'll go out and help with the damage limitation."

"The fact that something like this happened doesn't invalidate the things we fight for. If we can't hold ourselves to a higher standard than supervillains then what are we for?"

"Tell it to the dead." I punch the mid left target, then lean against it. "I wanted to be wrong so badly, you know? I didn't really want the responsibility of deciding everything for myself, not until I understood.. more. Now, don't have that luxury."

I hear her take another step towards me. Oh, what does she want now?

I feel her hand on my left shoulder.

How dare she?

"I'm stronger, faster and better armed than you get your hand off me!"

back

Half-hearted 7

next

6th November

06:57 GMT

I nod at the young woman in the yellow, green and black tabard. "Morning, Squire."

She looks up from her computer with her eyebrows raised, rolls her eyes at me, then looks back down. Beryl Hutchinson's sitting on the bonnet of a police car. She's fifteen in this continuity, actually a little older than Robin. Sir Cyril's over near the police cars talking to the Chief Inspector in charge of the operation. The whole area around this part of the dock was cordoned off by the Merseyside Police once John and Trevor Marrack narrowed the site of the summoning down this far. Another set of scrying wards is blocking us from working out precisely where it is, though since Demon summoning actually requires magic knowledge that might not be connected to everyone else suddenly finding out about it. Fortunately, Fatty and his friends left a trail that wasn't protected.

I sent Teekl back with Zatanna and instructions to look after her. Spending all the time she has with Wolf appears to be bringing out her mothering instincts. At the side of the road there's an armed response unit nearby checking their weapons. UK police are trained in dealing with hostile metahumans but they aren't equipped with anti-Demon weapons and sounded decidedly unhappy about having to check the area building by building with no real idea about what they'd find. They brightened up once I made it clear to them that I'm taking point now.

"Saw the interview you did in Taiwan." Miss Hutchinson's checking through three dimensional architectural plans of the buildings we're about to enter.

"Don't suppose there's any chance you didn't see the cake thing?"

A small smile. "Not bloody likely."

I tighten the left corner of my mouth slightly. "Anything on the plans that doesn't match my scans?"

She shakes her head. "So I did a ring-round last night." One warehouse disappears and is replaced with an office building. "Only British superhero under eighteen I couldn't get hold of was Cornwall Boy. In fact-" Another image. Storm drains, I think? "-Captain Cornwall didn't sound like he knew where he was. Worrying, that."

"We don't get.. very good signal."

"Who's 'we' when we're at home?"

"Young people undergoing instruction by members of the Justice League."

She tilts her head and looks at me out of the corner of her eye. "Sidekicks."

"I believe the term my colleagues would prefer is 'partners'."

"So, that'd be Robin, Kid Flash, Aqualad, Red Arrow, Troia, Artemis, Zatanna and you, would it?"

"Nnnnnnnnn... Most of them. I'm not really supposed to say what the full roster is."

"Should I be offended?"

"I only stopped to pick up R-. Cornwall Boy, because we were desperate for magic users. Your skills... Your unusual skills lie in data analysis and we didn't really have any data to analyse."

She turns off the computer and gives me her full attention. "So what exactly happened last night?"

"In summary, five extremely powerful and extremely unpleasant magic users somehow managed to divide the Earth in two and put nearly everyone over eighteen on one and nearly everyone under eighteen on the other. The League and.. hehr.. the sidekicks attacked the site of the ritual and stopped it, but not before a lot of people died."

She thinks about it. "Car crashes.. an' planes an' that?"

"Mostly. Europe got off lightly because of the time zone. In other places it was..." I see the bridge again, and rub my forehead with my right hand. Probably better I'm here rather than sleeping.

"God." She looks to her left as she tries to get her head around the death toll. "I just.. I heard some crashes. Got the kids out and went up to the castle. Didn't realise..." She shakes her head. "Who was it that did it?"

"Klarion, Blackbriar Thorn, William Zard, Felix Faust and some guy in a robe I didn't recognise. Klarion and robe guy got away, Batman's got what's left of Blackbriar Thorn and Zard and Faust are being detained at Nabu's pleasure."

"Who?"

"Nabu. Er, Fate, Doctor Fate."

"Having trouble with the 'real names' thing?"

"Nabu's naturally non-corporeal. I doubt he has a secret double life."

"What's this robe guy look like?" I pop a screen out of subspace and display what I saw of him. She nods. "Dark Druid. Don't know much about him." She looks thoughtful. "Not sure anyone does. Show me that attack again." I replay him blasting Guy and Stewart. She shakes her head. "No, nothing like that. Last time I saw him, he was legging it after Cyril and me caught him trying to burn down a church."

"Why was he doing that?"

"A lot of churches in this country are built on the holy sites of older pagan religions. He was targeting them. He'd ritually sacrifice a bunch of animals and then burn them down."

"Were the sacrificial rituals actually.. magic? Or was it just to freak people out?"

She shrugs. "Never saw anything happen as a result. Might be worth getting Captain Cornwall or.. John Constantine?" I nod. "To check them out."

"Do you know where his name came from? I didn't think druids really went in for-."

"Oh. Um. That was me."

"Dark... Druid..?"

She blushes a little. "I was twelve, alright?"

"I've heard worse. Think he got an upgrade from somewhere. If you could send me the reports-."

"Alright you two, over here!" Sir Cyril waves us over. John and Mister Marrack are already with him. Miss Hutchinson drops off the car to walk over to them. I send the screen back into subspace. I need to make sure they let me go in first. I don't think Sir Cyril's ever worked with a Lantern before. Hm. A flicker and I appear next to John at FTL speed. Sir Cyril's head turns slightly but his helmet obscures any surprise he might be showing. I was slightly impressed to learn that his armour and weapons are enchanted. Might be more impressed if I had any idea how good it is. I mean, I've seen videos of it stopping rifle bullets, but I don't know the mechanism it uses. Miss Hutchinson's gear is a bit more mundane but still of high quality. She apparently had the sense to wear armour over her torso, though the leggings are unarmoured. "Right then. Someone's been summoning Demons. We can't be having that, so we're going to go in there and put a stop to it. We don't know how many Demons, cultists or what have you there are, and we don't know if there's any hostages."

John removes a half smoked cigarette from his mouth. "Shouldn't be anything too big." He exhales a stream of smoke and takes a look at the target area. "It'd be too noticeable, even round here. 'Course, if a Demon's actually runnin' the show..."

"Well, anyway, armed response is here to back us up. We're going in once the police've got all the exits covered. I'm going in first, Captain, Orange Lantern, Squire, you're after me. Constantine, I'll call you in if we find something magical we need you to take a look at."

"Sir Cyril, I'm quite a lot more resilient than you. It really would make more sense for me to take point."

He shakes his head. "If there's anyone there, they're going to be using magic. My armour's warded against stuff like that."

Ring, remove torso armour. "So's my skin, sir. In addition-" Ring, restore armour and add construct-armour. "I can tank quite a bit more normal damage, as well as being able to relay information from my direct scans back to Squire. If it comes to it I can also run away a bit faster. Sir, I really think-."

"Alright, alright. Made your point." He stands aside and extends his right arm in the direction of the closest building. "After you."

back

Half-hearted 8

next

6th November

07:34 GMT

First building was an empty office block. Bare walls, mould and a couple of sleeping homeless people who were escorted outside. Once I got well inside I ran filament constructs throughout the corridors. Finding nothing, the others entered and John and Captain Cornwall tried detecting anything untoward. Nothing obvious, so we proceeded through the building at walking pace, stopping every ten metres or so to repeat the process. I wanted to go a little faster but Sir Cyril was pretty definite, and he's both in charge and has more experience than me. His justification was that there's no way for our target or targets to get out by conventional means so the most important thing is to be sure that we're not missing anything. Slow and steady might not always win the race, but at least it doesn't end up splattered all over the walls.

Anyway, roof to boiler room, nothing. No cultists, no kidnap victims and no Demonic unpleasantness. John found that suspicious as cults and Demons are usually both pretty territorial. Next was a series of large gutted terraced housing and it was the same story there. No indication of demonic presence. John's confident that they couldn't hide themselves completely even if they could obscure their precise location, so we move on and the police tighten the cordon behind us.

The five of us are now standing outside of a distribution warehouse. Not all that long ago shipping containers were unpacked and their contents loaded onto lorries to be transported across the country. Not really sure what happened. Import of manufactured goods is still big business in Britain. I know Liverpool's been through some hard times economically and our manufacturing output has decreased but shouldn't somewhere like this still be in operation?

I look at Sir Cyril. "Point of entry?"

Squire brings up an image of the interior. Of course, most of the equipment's probably gone. Looks like it's a choice between the old staff entrance and two fire doors. Any of us could open the main goods entrance and I could easily break through one of the walls but we're aiming to contain and that means no new places for potential targets to escape out of.

"Not much to choose between them. Constantine?"

John walks over to the outer wall and lays his hands against it for a moment before shaking his head. "Nothing."

"Might as well use the closest, then."

I nod and use a construct appendage to gently remove the lock before cracking open the door and sending a filament into the building. More filaments radiate off it, sending data to Squire's computer. Just confirms what we thought was there: corridors, what was once a locker room, stairs up to the offices and an entrance way to the warehouse section. I look at Sir Cyril and he nods.

Ring, accelerated perception.

Compliance.

I appear in the locker room and scan my surroundings with my eyes, switching between normal and Ophidian vision. Nothing out of the ordinary. Not sure why they left the lockers here. Maybe they were too much of a pain to get out? Or maybe whatever estate agent picked this place up was hoping to sell it on in working condition?

Normal perception.

I still feel a little unwell using it, but better a little unwell than getting mobbed by Demons as soon as I appear. I send filaments into each of the lockers. Nothing. Ceiling space? No. "Locker room clear, proceeding to corridor." There was a card reader system but the lock appears to have been forced. Cultists or more homeless people? Can't tell. Nothing in the corridor but dirt. No obvious tracks... "Corridor clear. Come on in."

I turn away from the door as Sir Cyril comes through, turning sideways so that his armour can fit. I put their position on my HUD and walk to the foot of the stairs. From the top or do the ground floor first? Hm. I hold out my left hand, palm flat to the floor. I'd rather have Teekl do this, but... I tap the back of my left hand with my right and Fatty falls out of the ring. It lays on its belly on the ground for a moment, its fat head swinging left and right. A moment later it stops and stares at me, its face hopeful.

"Food?"

"Why are you laying on the floor when you can fly?" It looks to the side for a moment, then floats into the air as if someone is lifting it from the shoulders. It slouches into the air, looking at the ground in apparent confusion. "Go up the stairs and let me know if you see anyone."

"Food upstairs?"

"Stranger things have happened. Go." Fatty accelerates up the stairwell. At worst he'll be able to give me a few seconds warning. Need to find out whether he can actually fight or not.

"Erm, what was that?"

I turn to Sir Cyril. "I assimilated that Praexis Demon last night. Now it works for me. Sorry, my other Construct-Lantern's far cleverer but I left her at home."

"Rrrright. And it knows what it's doing, does it?"

"I.. honestly have no idea." Sir Cyril doesn't seem to have another question so I walk towards double doors leading to the loading bay.

Glancing back I see John taking a look around while Captain Cornwall watches him. "Feeling something. Dunno. Not very strong. Might just be an imprint from all the people who used to work here."

I push open the doors ahead of me with a construct and send out feelers. Nothing organic feeling, though there are a number of slightly rusted shipping containers. I transition myself to the air in the middle of the room. Nothing even slightly demony, and Fatty's just looking at empty offices. There aren't any windows in here and the lights are off so it's a bit dingy. "Clear. Generating light emitting constructs."

Sir Cyril leads the way again. He takes a look at the room and draws his sword. It looks like a simple arming sword, but down the flat of the blade on both sides runes are picked out in silver wire. They're glowing, but I don't know if that's in response to a threat or just what they do. He heads into the room and towards the right.

As the light spreads across the room I take a look around. Abandoned and partially deconstructed shelving in the rear area, a few cardboard boxes and five metal shipping containers. Bit sloppy, but I suppose when your company goes under the motivation to do a thorough job just sort of leaves you.

Captain Cornwall comes through the door next, air bending aura thing in place. Need to find out what that's actually called. He walks left towards the bay doors. John and Beryl bring up the rear. John looks around and smirks. "Alright, what's wrong with this picture?"

Beryl thinks for a moment. "Should be more dust?"

"Nah." He walks towards the nearest shipping container and peers at it. "This place has been out of use how long?"

"Eight years."

He nods. "Makes sense. And no one's going to bother clearing a place like this out completely. But shipping containers are expensive, they're designed to fit on the back of lorries easily and the door's right there. Why.. are they..-" He reaches out towards it with his right hand. "-still here?" He holds his hand just over its surface.

Fatty falls out of the ring onto the top of the central shipping container. It lands with a thump, and.. there's another quiet noise from inside. It pushes itself back to its feet. "Funny painting."

John's eyes narrow as he looks from Fatty to the shipping container. Then he presses his hand against its surface. "What're you hid- OH SHIT!" He yanks his hand back. "They're in the shipping containers! They're in the shipping containers!"

I flick on Ophidian'sEyes and AGH! Fuck! For a fraction of a second I see a nightmarish network of black lines and what looked like the outlines of people before something... Something. Wholeness Rightly Assumed. Ah. Better.

And then the giant baby tackles me out of the air.

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Half-hearted 9

next

6th November

07:40 GMT

The head is too big. It brings frighteningly sharp teeth down onto my shoulder construct-armour and all I can think about is how big it is. Its arms are scrabbling at the construct-armour around my head but there's no way... Urgh! It doesn't have joints! Its arms are disjointed and held together with long tubes of skin. Its legs are wrapped around mine and despite what I know about biology its grip is incredibly strong. What the hell is-? No. Don't think about that. Orange cracks form in front of my eyes. Ring, transfer.

Unable to comply. Dimensional anchor in close proximity.

We slam into a girder.

"Empty."

I focus and direct an infrasound beam at the monster baby's face. No apparent effect.

"So empty."

I form a band of orange power around the bits of its body I can see and try to pull it away from me. The limbs bend and distort, resisting my efforts. The head is more solid, however, and gradually pulls away. Which forces me to look at its face. Empty milky white eyes, chubby cheeks, gaping, distended mouth containing the claw-like fangs, thin wisps of hair across the dome of its head, snub of a nose.

"So quiet."

It chomps at me once, realises that it can't reach me and closes its jaw. Its actual mouth continues with the baby proportions and its body is baby-sized and this is fucked up.

Ring, brand.

Unable to comply.

Orange smoke flows from the constructs into its eyes. What the hell is this thing?

Warning! Energy drain detected. Seventy nine percent remaining.

The fat little baby-fingers scrabbling at my head glow ghostly-white and poke holes in the construct-armour. They're an inch away from my eyes and I instinctively lean back.

Proximity alert! Black light detected.

Shit! Shit! Assimilate!

A film of orange light briefly covers it before being sucked away.

Unable to maintain connection.

It opens its mouth again, teeth glowing white.

Oh fuck the hell no.

The bands of light harden into chains and my need to get this monstrosity off me wrenches it backwards. I alter my construct-armour, curving its plates and reducing the friction it's getting. I strain to pull my legs up to my chest in an attempt to break its hold on that part of my body. It jerks, trying to get a better hold even as my hold on its neck forces its head away and stretches its neck out away from its bloated baby torso body.

"What is this thing?!"

"A gift."

With a disturbing fleshy slap it finally comes free, long and loose limbs snapping back like rubber bands. Who the fuck said this was a gift? The orange lights had dimmed as I focused on this thing so I turn them back to full power. Captain Cornwall and Knight are slowly backing away from a shambling mob of forty six people. They look.. sick, starved and they stumble uncertainly in my allies' direction. At the back Beryl stares at them in disgust while John only has eyes for the robed figure behind them.

Dark Druid.

"You recognise it, don't you Mister Constantine? Progress is such a wonderful thing. Why, only a decade ago creating an Invunche would have taken us years of work yet I was able to put her together in only a few months."

He takes a step forwards. Fatty leaps at him from the top of a shipping container, mouth open to bite. Dark Druid negligently raises his right hand and blasts him in the stomach, disintegrating him. Ring, if you've got spare power, scan him. No, all it's showing me is a figure made of ghostly, sick looking white light. If that's his construct-colour then he must be blocking me in the same way Guy does.

"Would you like to know her name? Do you think her parents are still looking for her? I wasss thinking of arranging a visit, but Klarion's offer was simply too good to turn down."

"So. You're Brujería, then? Didn't think they took Europeans."

"Oh, I won't say that convincing them was easy." He pulls back his hood. The left side of his face is almost normal, aside from the complete lack of hair. The right... The skin is heavily scarred, the ear torn ragged and his right eye glows with the same white light as this Invunche thing's fingers. On his forehead is a 'U' shape. No, not a U. Each of the ends curves outwards and splits in two and there's a small dot which could be an eye. Looks a bit like a double ended snake.

I jerk to the side as the Invunche fires its hand at me, its arm stretching like elastic. The fingers penetrate the construct-armour and grasp at my face. A cluster of hook constructs cut into its flesh and drag it away.

"Constantine, do you know what these things are?" Sir Cyril's holding his sword out with obvious reluctance towards the people encroaching on their position.

"Not exactly."

"John, can this thing be healed?"

He looks up. "No. Sorry mate, but it can't. Once they do that to them-."

"Her name is Katherine Maher. She screamed so hard when I broke-."

Shield, Gamma Cannon.

An orange bubble extends around us just before the radiation beam strikes the monstrosity. The skin burns away but the muscles beneath glow weakly with white light and resist my attack. The whole skin fries off first, arms and legs dropping off as the connective tissue is burned through. Fingers still glowing! I quickly focus the Cannon on them and watch as the hands burst into flame, the glow disappearing and the remains of the limbs falling to lay on the bottom of the shield bubble. Then I focus on the head.

"Surprising ruthlessness from a superhero. You're right though, she couldn't be saved. The rest of them can. Good luck working out how."

Sir Cyril sheathes his sword and punches the closest in the head as I finally burn the flesh off Kath-. Off its face, and start on the bone. That isn't resistant and its head starts to crumple. Gods, this is horrible. I'm just relieved that I can't smell it.

"I think I'll try Manchester next. Or possibly Edinburgh? Or overseas again? There's so many possibilities."

The man Sir Cyril hit staggers and starts to fall before a ghostly white glow envelopes his head and he rights himself.

"So empty. So quiet. Share with me."

He then strides forwards and lashes out, the glow of his fist narrowly missing Sir Cyril's breastplate as he backpedals away from it. As soon as he gets more than three metres away the shambler stops glowing and returns to its former listless state.

"Railgun."

It hums as it flings tungsten slugs at Dark Druid, passing straight through his body and into the floor. If he's a Black Lantern.. is he phasing?

"I'll leave you to it, shall I?" He raises his hood and shimmers slightly as he disappears again, just like he did on Roanoke.

Damn.

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Half-hearted 10

next

6th November

07:44 GMT

Sir Cyril uses his scabbard to knock down another. "Trevor, any ideas?"

"Hear the sound of eternal silence."

Captain Cornwall gestures and the floor buckles upwards. The shamblers who are free of the press stumble and a small wall of earth now blocks their path.

"Captain, Robert can drain magic directly from something like you do from your altar. I think you can as well. If Dark Druid did this with magic you should be able to remove it."

"How'd you-! Never mind, I'll give it a go." He reaches his hands out. "Ugh, death magic. Never felt-" The first shambler collapses. "-anything like it." He points his hands at another.

Wait. Ring, status of that man?

Subject is deceased.

"Stop! That killed him!" He drops his hands immediately. "Ring, are the rest alive?"

"Readings unclear. Vital signs present, but presence of black light suggests otherwise."

Sir Cyril shakes his head. "We can't just assume that he's telling the truth about being able to save them."

The Invunche is completely vaporised so I start neutralising the radiation. Not going to have a repeat of Gotham. Every atom gone, no sign of any sort of magic re-emergence. Check again, just in case-.

John scurries away from the shambling lines. Where was he trying to get? "Oi, Lantern, can you get us up on the shipping containers!"

It isn't coming back. It isn't-. "Better idea." I form an orange platform under each of them and lift them into the air. "Sorry for the delay, was a bit occupied."

Sir Cyril nods at me. "Thanks. I wasn't-."

"No, seriously mate, I need to have a look at the spells he's using. Get me over-." I swing his platform over to the one furthest away. "Right." He rolls up his sleeves, stretches his neck, stares at it and then places his hands on the metal surface. He grimaces, but remains in place.

Beryl kneels on her platform and looks down. "So, are we safe now?"

I look down. They've more or less come to a halt without a target but they're not going for the doors. If the glowing is as strong as the Invunche's then I'm not sure I could stop them with a construct barrier if they charged the exits. Sir Cyril strokes his chin with his right hand. "I doubt it. Constantine, would having Captain Cornwall drain the shipping containers work?"

"Frigging hell, this is complicated." He shakes his head. "I don't know, is the answer. Unless you can find a necromancer on short notice we're pretty much guessing here. I think.. I think it's replaced their vitality with something.. something.. unliving. Life and.. anti life."

Anti life as in the Anti-Life Equation? I really hope that was just colourful language to describe a form of necromancy. "John, the rune array. Is there an isosceles triangle with seven straight lines coming off the long side? Might be inside a circle."

"... Yep, got it. What is it?"

"Symbol of the Black Lantern Corps." Nekron was in the comics before the Blackest Night, but I don't remember anything about him. "Super zombies, only... These aren't, and Dark Druid isn't acting like-."

Creamy energy slams into my armour and starts melting through it. Automatically I evade and return fire, knocking one of the shamblers down. He was standing at the centre of a huddle with four others and they are bowled over as well. None of them rise.

Ring, what the hell just happened?

Several poured their black energy into a central figure who projected it as a beam.

Frantically, I look for others organising themselves in the same way. "They're burning themselves out to shoot us." Three reach out and put their hands on one who is staring up at me. I form construct-manacles and pull them apart. Immediately they glow and go into a frenzy, attacking and destroying their bindings.

Ring, message Green two eight one four B. Message: I need everything the Green Lantern Corps has on Nekron, don't mess me about.

Compliance.

"Looks like most of the power's flowing through that Lantern rune. I've... I've got no idea what to do about it."

Another group clusters up. I send a construct to grab them but this time they turn and breathe the orange light in.

Warning! Energy drain detected. Forty four percent remaining.

I dismiss the construct and use a construct beanbag gun instead. They go down and slowly scrabble back up onto their feet.

Sir Cyril looks at John. "So the choice is, do nothing, drain the victims so they die properly or drain the rune and hope for the best?"

"I might be able to subvert it with orange light, but..." I hold my hands out to the sides, palms up. "I really don't know if that's better or worse."

Beryl looks at me. "Is there, like, a Life Lantern rune or something?"

I respond with a jerky nod. "Yes, the White Lantern symbol. The lines spray out more from the triangle."

Sir Cyril nods. "That sounds like a better option. Constantine, can you change it?"

He shakes his head. "No. Too much power in the system. Even if it doesn't just kill me it'll just change back anything I do to it."

"Right. Trevor, drain as much power out of the system as you can without collapsing it. Constantine, if you can change it, do it. If you can't, tell me right away and we'll have to... Well. Orange Lantern, keep the.. the infected people apart."

I nod. Since the beaned shamblers don't seem to have been harmed I take the initiative and shoot all of them to the ground.

"I'm draining it now."

"Okay... Okay... Stop! Right. I'll try an'.. redirect..."

Several of the shamblers start convulsing.

Ring, monitor what's happening with them.

Black light being superseded by white light.

That's a relie- The other shamblers are looking at them. Right. I grab them, deposit them on the far side of the room and fire off a new volley of beanbags. "John, is it holding?"

He nods. "Think so. Cornwall, ease off on the draining."

"Right."

The people who had been convulsing start showing signs of life. Those who are moving moan, cry, clutch themselves or whoever's next to them. I can't imagine what that was like but at least they'll recover eventually. I think.

"Ring, status?"

"Physical health restored. Black light infection eliminated."

John nods, relieved. "Shift us over to the next container. I could use some good news before Orange and me have to go and talk to me sister."

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Half-hearted 11

next

6th November

14:07 GMT -4

There are nice parts of Gotham. There are parts of Gotham that are poor and a little past their best but still decent enough, like where Artemis and Paula live. Then, there are places like this. The ring excludes the stench from the puddles of urine as I make my way through the poorly lit and graffiti encrusted corridors. Are those..? Yep, those are needles. I should probably do something about that but at the moment I just can't work up the enthusiasm. Maybe... Maybe in a couple of days or something. Once the mess outside is cleared up sufficiently and I don't have to worry about running out of charge.

I recognised that wearing my armour would be a bit of a social faux pas around here so I've gone with some slightly more 'street' gear that Artemis picked out back when I first met Zatanna. Me, street. Oh, I feel dumber for even thinking of it like that. Zatanna was asleep on my bed with Teekl curled up around her when I popped back to recharge after dealing with Dark Druid. None of our spare rooms are really furnished and I guess Teekl decided to take her there. I need to talk to Alan about those books, though I think it would be best if we left going through them until next weekend. Zatanna still has school next week and while the ring can filter the information far faster than we could read them together I want her to feel involved with this. I hate feeling powerless at the best of times and this is far from that.

Miss Robinson's apartment is on the seventh floor of this block of flats. I thought it would be rude to scan the interior in any detail but I know she's in there. A quick check that I don't look too street -no fear of that-, make an effort to smile then knock three times on the door with my right hand.

The noise of movement from inside stops for a moment and I can just make out a muffled conversation. And.. is that running water? Then footsteps approaching and a quick walk, a chain going on the door and a stiff latch being turned.

"…what you really got up to last night but there's no way it's..." The woman on the other side blinks at me through the gap between door and frame. Her hair is cut short and dyed a garish shade of purple. She's wearing narrow glasses, a pink t-shirt and blue jeans. I.. have no idea who she is.

"Good afternoon. I'm Orange Lantern two-."

Her eyes widen and she slams the door shut with some force. I hear a couple of heavy footsteps and then it goes quiet. Hm. I rap my right knuckles against the door again and lean up to it. "I say? Are you alright in there?"

There's a noise which could be an 'uh huh', then what sounds like scrabbling and a frantic sounding speech noise from further in. Um. Ring, I am at the right house, right?

Confirmed. Holly Robinson is within.

A picture starts to form next to the ring but I wave it away when I realise that she's in the shower. Okay, so, friend of hers? Or-. Wait. I remember that thing in the comics when Selina Kyle had a daughter. Holly was babysitting with.. her girlfriend. Huh. Right. Don't remember what said girlfriend looked like. I don't suppose it really matters, but I don't have time to stand out here all day. Knock again? I don't want to panic the poor woman. No, it's alright, I hear footsteps coming back and the chain being pulled off. Ms Purple Hair opens the door wide enough for her to stand in it. She looks a little embarrassed.

"Um. Sorry about that. I just thought Holly was making you up or something."

"Quite alright. Shall we start again?"

"Yeah. That'd probably be a good idea."

"Right. Hello, I'm Orange Lantern two eight one four. And you are..?"

"I'm Karon."

"Karon Robinson, or is it a bit early for that?" She blinks and gapes for a moment. Then she blushes. Guess I was right about that. "Or is it like Cher and it's just Karon?"

"Case! Karon Case."

"Alliterative, I approve. Can I come in?"

"Holly's just.. in the shower."

"I hate to be a nag, but there was a fairly major disaster last night and I'm a bit busy today."

"Sure. Um." She takes a step back, still holding onto the door, then she turns away into the room and pushes it a little wider as she releases it. "It's not much, but-."

"Are there any dead children in it?"

She turns back, alarmed. "Wh-? No!"

"Then it's far better than the rest of my day's likely to be." In fact, it isn't that bad inside. Carpet's a bit worn, settee cushions sag with use and the television on the small table opposite is one of the old cathode ray type. Against the wall to my right are a couple of kitchen units, a sink and a microwave. A full bin bag is leaning up against one of the units and behind the sink I see a window with a view of more Gotham brutalism. "Has Miss Robinson completed the report I asked her for?"

"Ahhh..." Miss Case sits down on the settee and reaches down beside it. "Here it is." She retrieves the report and hands it out to me. "It's a bit, um..."

I take it from her, then generate a chair construct opposite the settee and sit down. "I'll type it up for her."

The door to the bedroom swings open and Miss Robinson marches through, still towelling her hair. She's wearing loose trousers and a short sleeved pyjama top and from the way they're sticking to her skin I don't think she took the time to fully dry herself. Averting eyes. "Hiiii. I wasn't sure you'd actually be back."

"Of course I would. Do you want to.. take a seat?"

"Right! Hehehe." She walks around the front of the settee and plonks herself down next to her girlfriend.

"So, I went back and paid the restaurant bill, that's taken care of. I have your report-" I wiggle it. "-and I don't see any criminal activity in your flat, so..." A slim white briefcase appears in the air next to me and I float it over to her. She looks at Miss Case and then hesitantly reaches for it, her right hand shaking. Once she gets a grip on the handle I release it from the orange aura. She puts it on her knees and with a slightly gleeful expression pops it open.

"Eeeeeeeee!" The cash doesn't fill it, unfortunately, so the visual isn't as good as I might have liked. She turns and pulls her girlfriend into a hug. "We got three hundred thousand dollars! We got three hundred-!"

"Actually.. you.. don't."

She swiftly turns back to me. "What gives?"

"You got fifty thousand dollars now, the balance being paid over the course of the next year. I did say I'd be checking up on your progress. I'll visit you weekly and as long as you continue to avoid backsliding I'll hand another instalment over each time. Sound reasonable?"

"I.. guess..."

"Might I suggest that one of your first actions be to open a bank account? Assuming you don't have one already. No disrespect intended to your neighbours but I don't get the impression that this is the sort of neighbourhood where it's wise to keep that much cash in the house."

She looks at me like I've said something rather foolish. "No shit."

"Hey, were you.. serious, about the dead children?"

I close my eyes and take a moment to compose myself before responding. "Yes. Well, it's.. it's easier for me than for the emergency services, and they're mostly focused on dealing with the injured. Plus, I can match parents to children more quickly than.. posting facial reconstructions somewhere. Cleared Gotham's bridges first thing, now I'm mostly focusing on crashed aircraft. See, because of how the split worked, the airplanes didn't always stay with the bodies so it's... There aren't many of us who can track them down." I look down at the floor for a moment. "So I'm.. um… I'm going to get back to work now. Keep your nose clean, and I'll see you again next week."

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Half-hearted 12

next

9th November

20:13 GMT -5

The Sphere keeps pace with me as I stride towards the training area. Show time's in two minutes but there's really no point in turning up early. She warbles at me for a few seconds and I understand her as clearly as if she were using actual words. Letting Father Box remodel my spiritual architecture -or rather, give me some- has turned out to have all sorts of fringe benefits.

"No. I understand your concerns, but I am determined. It was a rational decision and I stand by it."

Another warble.

"I don't care if he finds out. His own father agreed with me. Kryptonian law-." I cut myself off as we emerge from the passageway and I see that Kon, Mister Tawny, M'gann, Artemis and Kaldur are already here. And so is Wonder Woman. Ah. I feel.. not guilty exactly, but perhaps.. embarrassed? By my prior outburst. Honestly, if she hadn't made what was supposed to be a reassuring gesture I might be wearing black eyeliner by now. As it was, we've mostly kept apart since then. We bumped into each other yesterday in New York while we helped clear wrecked cars but we were very.. stilted. Got the job at hand done and then went our separate ways.

And.. I need to apologise. Something about seeing countless parents screaming with grief when they were notified that it was their offspring that I just extracted from the wreck rather puts our disagreement into perspective. It isn't about me. It's just.. with Richard, it was clearly my fault for alienating him. I recognised and accepted that. Mister Zatara deserved better. They should've.. I mean, they're the Justice League! They're supposed to be.. be better than that. But.. I need to be as well. I'm not bigger than the cause. If I'm going to have a row it should be about something important.

I'm distracted from my thoughts as space bends to my left and Zatanna appears, grinning like a loon. "It worked!" She blinks, takes in the room and then dashes over to me. "Dad's been showing me this new way of teleporting Fate taught him. I went from home to here in seconds. I don't even feel tired!"

"Miss Zatara, I'm pleased that Lantern Nabu is making himself useful."

"Oh, you can totally call me Zatanna."

She takes my arm as we walk over to the group. I think I may have a fan. She isn't really... I didn't exactly save her father for her, she hasn't been around enough for me to bond with her in that sort of way. But, perhaps I should? Particularly given that carrot I intend to offer my team mates. Something to consider. But first: "Wonder Woman." She looks at me, her face expressionless. "I wish to apologise for the way I... For blowing up at you on Saturday. I realise that your concerns were justified, I just.. wasn't clear headed enough to really engage with it." Her eyes flick down for a moment, then she nods. Reconciliation might still be possible.

And now I'm going to ruin it. But there's a difference between ruining something by being a belligerent fool and ruining it over a matter of principle.

"Kon. Present for you." I extract the small dull-grey triamid from subspace and toss it over to him. He catches it, looks at it for a moment and then looks back at me.

"Uhh. Thanks? What is it?"

"A complete repository of Kryptonian history, sociology and language. It's a copy of the one Jor-El made for Kal-El. Just run a finger down one of the edges to activate it. Index is a simple AI, it'll respond to your voice and no one else's."

He looks stunned. "Did... Did Superman give you this?"

"No." Sadly Father Box didn't have much on Kryptonians. I suppose Darkseid hasn't started his vendetta with Superman yet. "I extracted the data from the computers in Kal-El's Fortress. And before you ask:-" I make eye contact with Wonder Woman. "-no, I didn't have his permission."

"Um." He looks guiltily at Wonder Woman, who does not look happy with me. I have a counter argument prepared, but I was really expecting to have to use it on Kal-El himself.

"That data was private. You have no right to go through Superman's property."

"You know... I could make an argument about that data being non-specific, and how it should rightfully belong to all Kryptonians. But I don't need to. Did you know that Kal-El has a digitised neural clone of Jor-El in the Fortress? I spoke with it when I took the data. Apparently, clone rights politics were a big deal in his youth. He was really-" I make a fist with my right hand and perform a small air-punch. "-right on about the whole thing. Said that Kal-El was failing to live up to his duties as head of House El, and that as a blood relation Kon should have been provided with it already." Wonder Woman's face tightens. "And who am I to argue about Kryptonian law and customs with Jor-El?"

Kon puppy-eyes her. She holds his gaze for a moment before looking down in defeat, slowly nodding. She's been great for Kon, she really has, but even she hasn't been able to pull super-head out of super-arse and frankly I've passed the point where I'm prepared to put up with nonsense from the League, especially when it hurts my friends.

"Recognised, Robin, B zero one, Kid Flash, B zero three."

I wave at them as they materialise. "Gang's all here, then."

Kaldur looks at me curiously. "Now that we are assembled, why did you ask us here?"

I smile at him. "Computer, Chinese State News, if you please?" A large holographic screen appears showing a news desk and two presenters.

"…just released from the Special Tribunal…"

Confused looks from my team mates, save for Artemis. Ah, of course. "Allow me to provide a translation." Orange headphones for all.

"…criminals responsible for the horrifying attack last week." Wonder Woman looks at me with a frown. I reply with a small smile. "We go now to the sentencing hearing."

The scene shifts from the newsroom to what looks like a cross between a judge's bench and some sort of Roman emperor's box at the amphitheatre. The senior judge of the three is a grey haired woman in thick rimmed spectacles. The four wizards -Wotan, Faust, Zard and Thorn- are chained unmoving to gurneys with the arcane suppression chain I provided to them. Flanking them are the public faces of the Great Ten: August Captain in Iron, Socialist Red Guardsman, Thundermind and Celestial Archer. Around them are Xeno-Team soldiers, Committee functionaries and a few journalists. They clearly want this recorded properly.

The Committee does have wizards of their own but sadly the only Chinese sorcerers with enough power and experience to handle these four were killed during Mao's era. Too independent. Just wouldn't get with the program. And -while I'm not sure how much of the propaganda about them to believe- even the internal documents I acquired suggested that they were a fairly nasty bunch.

"Wotan, Felix Faust, William Asmodeus Zard and Blackbriar Thorn. You have been found guilty of mass murder-" There wasn't really much doubt, but my smile grows a little at the news anyway. "-of in excess of one thousand individuals as well as lesser offences too numerous to mention. Though it is likely that we will never know the precise magnitude of your evil the law demands only one sentence. Captain!"

Captain Fang bows to the bench and then barks an order. The microphones don't quite pick it up and his rigid epidermis makes it impossible to read his lips but everyone around him hears it. Everyone save for Socialist Red Guardsman moves away from the condemned. Hm. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that they're using Gu Lao for this. Despite his spree-killing tendencies he's still well respected amongst the Party old guard for his hard-line beliefs. Personally, I don't think even this could rehabilitate the man whose claim to fame is that he soloed Tiananmen Square, but I understand why they might try. Having Zou Kang pull them apart would ruin his image, Xu Tao's arrows wouldn't cut it with immortals-. I think, anyway. Need to check exactly what they can do. And while I'm sure Captain Fang would be happy to spear each of them until they were fully incinerated, the greater visual impact of-.

The iris over Guardsman Gu's chest plasma cannon opens. I had assumed that his suit focused his radiation, but it doesn't. Instead, it uses it to power both the suit's systems and an extremely powerful chest mounted plasma cannon. He looks to Captain Fang, who points to the condemned with his spear. The cannon glows and then:

Pfsssshhhh! Pfsssshhhh! Pfsssshhhh! Pfsssshhhh!

Not even ash remains. Captain Fang looks at the charred ground for a moment before lowering his spear and nodding. The image transitions back to the studio.

"Computer, off." The holo screen disappears. Zatanna's no longer gripping my arm and other than Kon the rest of my team mates look more than a little shocked as well. I feel a momentary urge to be flippant about it. To come up with some sort of triumphant one liner. No. I need to get them on-side.

Wonder Woman slowly turns to me. "You took them to China?"

I nod. "They're a permanent member of the UN Security Council, they took more fatalities than nearly any other country and their holding facilities are better than India's. It seemed only reasonable."

"You knew that they'd be killed."

"Executed. A fair trial with transcripts being made publicly available was one of my conditions to handing them over. America, Atlantis and Themiscyra all have the death penalty for certain classes of offence. And let's not pretend that there was any doubt of their guilt."

"They were arrested in America! Do you know how many international conventions you broke doing that?"

"I no longer have confidence in American justice in these matters. Not after Wotan's repeated escapes. Not after what they did with Werner Vertigo."

Richard winces. Wonder Woman's expression darkens. Everyone else just looks confused.

Artemis checks that everyone else is as ignorant as she is before asking the question: "Whaaat did they do with Count Vertigo?"

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Half-hearted 13

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9th November

20:18 GMT -5

"They... Um. What's that American phrase?" I click the fingers of my right hand theatrically, then point my index finger at the ceiling. "Walked, that was it. They let him walk."

"What?" / "No way!" / "But he's a criminal!"

"He has a diplomatic passport."

Oh, Wonder Woman. You aren't merely on a sticky wicket, you're on a couple of twigs floating in a vat of olive oil. And wasn't that the last time I googled your name with the search filters off. Wasn't even a good likeness...

"The State Department may be unaware of this, but there are procedures for requesting that a country withdraw diplomatic protection from a person."

"As I'm sure you know, Queen Perdita is in the hospital and unable to withdraw his status."

"Then it falls to her regent. What was his name again..?"

"This isn't funny, Grayven."

"Oh, I'm painfully aware of that. So, the man we want to accuse of the crime is the man who has the authority to make himself immune to prosecution! What a pity, I guess that means we'll have to ignore all those murders! If only there were some lawful mechanism by which he could lose that authority. For example, a vote by the Vlatavan Diet called by the Prime Minister in order to remove him from office for malfeasance contrary to the crown's interests as he's constitutionally obliged to do." I take a breath. Don't want to lose my temper now. I don't mind being seen as aggressive -I am aggressive- but I can't be seen as some sort of rage monster. Don't particularly want to be a rage monster either. "Because not doing so... Not doing so indicates that he did all those things in his official capacity. For his country. And if he was doing it for his country, then... Well. If he was doing it for his country, that means Vlatava is at war with Taiwan, Britain, France, and.. um... What's it called, that place south of Canada? Memory's like a sieve today..."

"What? Mexico?" Artemis slaps the back of Wallace's head. He looks at her in irritation and she points down with both index fingers. He looks puzzled for a moment. "Oh. Yeah, I guess it would."

Wonder Woman half turns in order to face the whole team. She's an intelligent woman; she knows that she's not going to convince me and she'll try to salvage the situation by convincing the rest of them. Good luck. "The State Department thinks that it would be better to wait until the Queen is fully recovered. Count Vertigo can't leave the country, he's being monitored and pressuring the Vlatavan government will just lead to unnecessary political unrest."

"So in the mean time we have a supervillain whom we can't arrest wandering around. And anyway, Queen Perdita is ten years old, she shouldn't be making that sort of decision."

"That isn't your decision to make."

"Sort of.. is. I mean, if I'm the poor sap who has to arrest him, I'd rather do so in a polity that is inclined to actually do something with him. Should we just have left him in Louisiana? Sorry to have bothered you Count Vertigo, our mistake, and of course you can keep your Doom Vine, it's registered as a Vlatavan embassy." Yeah, she's got nothing. "Kaldur? How good's your history?"

He's clearly uncomfortable with the situation. "My.. knowledge of Atlantean history is excellent. If you are asking about the surface world..?"

"Nineteen forty two. In response to the mining of Venturian territorial waters by the allies and their attempts to set up a base in the Greater Azores which were and are Atlantean territory, Queen Clea allied herself with the Nazis to repel the invaders."

He nods. "Though it was hardly admirable behaviour, she knew nothing of their domestic policies. As far as she was concerned..."

I wave him off. "Yes, yes. The point I was making is, do you remember what broke the alliance?"

He blinks at me, then looks nervously at Wonder Woman. She replies for him. "I did."

"Yes. The Crown Princess of Themyscira attacked an Atlantean City-State. And as a result..?"

"Atlantis was.. briefly at war with Themyscira, though there were no other hostilities. I was able to discuss the matter in full with Queen Cora before things got out of hand."

"And she had authority to handle that because?"

Kaldur takes that one. "Because Queen Clea is a tributary to the ruler of Poseidonis, who knew nothing of her activity."

"Just so. You-" I point at Diana. "-handled it sensibly. Defeat the villain then hang around to make sure the situation is fully resolved. You didn't let things fester or dump it on someone else's lap. I don't hold Queen Perdita responsible for Count Vertigo's actions, any more than Queen Cora was responsible for Queen Clea's. I don't hold Vlatava responsible for Count Vertigo's actions. It clearly wasn't an action taken in the service of his country. All I ask, is that mass murderers go to prison. Well, either that or..." I nod at the space the holo screen formerly occupied. "Criminals like that shouldn't get to just.. walk away from their crimes. And if I'm faced with a choice between a polity that will punish a criminal.. and a polity that won't... Where do you think I'm going to take them?"

"Was one of your other conditions that they guarantee to execute them?"

"No. I don't dictate policy to the People's Republic of China's Standing Committee on Metahuman Affairs. But as a point of interest: Chairman Jiang Eng doesn't have any children. He does have a niece and he did have a nephew. The boy was six years old. During the split, he tried boiling some rice for his little sister, because she was hungry. He managed to.. tip a large saucepan of near-boiling water over himself. He lived until just after the merger, not much longer than that." I look her in the eyes. "It's the personal stories that really bring it home, isn't it? I mean, you see the numbers and it's just a number. I didn't get it until I had to..." I wave in the general direction of 'outside'. "Well. Do you think I should visit the State Department officials who made that decision and read them testimonials from all the families who lost children to the vine's Smilex? Maybe I should pick Count Werner up and take him to Taiwan, I'm surprisingly popular over there. I'm sure I can convince them to see it my way with regard to his 'immunity'. Maybe I could join the Taiwanese air force and carry out a retaliatory strike on their behalf? Or, hell, I'm rich. Maybe I could take the case to the Supreme Court? Or a major newspaper? I could buy one, do some agitating."

"That isn't necessary. They're hopeful that the queen will be well enough to direct the Diet to remove his protection herself in a few weeks."

"It wasn't a few weeks a month ago when they made the decision to soft pedal this. One good thing about America electing everyone is that when everyone involved in this comes up for re-election I'll be running campaign adverts telling the electorate exactly what they were involved in."

"You'd destroy their careers because they waited a month?"

"Yes. Yes I would. Eight hundred and sixteen people die and the Injustice League's leader walks? Yes."

She looks over my face. She can't think I don't mean it, can she? I've already made the adverts. Should I show them to her? Whatever she's looking for, she doesn't find it. She then looks to my team mates. They look sullen. Even Kon won't meet her eyes. Finding no support, she nods to herself. "I will inform the rest of the Justice League what has happened."

I nod at her as she walks towards the zeta tube. I'd say 'tail between her legs' but given what I just did to her she actually seems pretty together. I feel a momentary pang of sympathy. I needed to do that but I don't feel particularly good about it.

"Recognised, Wonder Woman, zero three."

I wait for the glow to die down. No one says anything. "I did some thinking, while I was scraping the remains of dead children out of crashed vehicles over these last two days, and I have reached three important conclusions. Firstly, I am not pulling my weight. I assumed that the Justice League had global problems in hand and that I could more or less coast through my year on Earth. I no longer believe this to be the case. Secondly: that the way the League deals with empowered criminals does not work. Wotan was captured after he tried putting out the sun, after he released the vines on the world as part of the Injustice League and on numerous occasions before he had a good go at murdering the world's children. A new way of dealing with people in his category is required. Thirdly: that while I don't care for the Justice League I do care for all of you. As such, I would like to offer to aid you all to the fullest extent that I am able."

I have their attention. Time to -as the Americans say- knock it out of the park.

"How would you like to become gods?"

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Half-hearted 14

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9th November

20:22 GMT -5

Blank incomprehension. Not too surprising, I suppose.

Kaldur recovers first. "What.. exactly.. do you mean?"

"When Richard and I encountered the godlings of New Genesis I attempted to secure examples of their technology for further study. I was not as unsuccessful as my official report would have you believe."

Richard is not happy. "You lied on a mission report!"

"Yes. Ring, armour." My normal dull-grey armour is replaced with my dark-grey-with-orange-tron-lines Apokolips-inspired number. A visor -the scouter design was fun but this really makes more sense- covers my eyes and Father Box appears at my waist. "While you and the godlings destroyed nearly everything I was able to recover Mister Mannheim's harness and Desaad's Father Box. Father Box-" I strum the fingers of my right hand along the top of it.

"Ploong."

"-has been most helpful in adapting their technology to serve me. And I would like to offer to use the knowledge I have gained to improve your equipment as well. Here-" visors appear in front of each of them. "-try them. They'll see through any form of stealth and can give an approximate threat assessment of whatever you look at. M'gann, it uses.. well, I don't actually understand the system, but it should be able to go invisible or intangible when you do."

Kon's the first to take the proffered eyewear, though he doesn't put it on immediately. Next, Zatanna takes hers, then Artemis and Kaldur. M'gann, Wallace and Richard are a little more reluctant but when Zatanna puts hers on to no ill effect they take theirs as well. I tried to colour coordinate with their uniforms. Zatanna's is grey, Artemis' dark green, Kon's is black, Kaldur's is deep red, M'gann's is light green, Wallace's is yellow and Richard's is pale red.

"Observe." I generate an opaque orange barrier around myself and hold up two fingers on my right hand. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

My own orange shades show me Zatanna looking directly at me. "Two."

I raise two fingers on my right. "And now."

"Four."

I drop the barrier. "M'gann, would you please go invisible."

"Um. Oookay." M'gann puts on her own glasses and remains exactly as she was. I lower my glasses slightly to check and yes, she is indeed concealed from normal sight. "Can you see me?"

Kon has his on now, as do Kaldur and Artemis. Seeing them nod, Wallace dons his own. "Whooow. Dude, you have to try this."

Richard remains reluctant. "And you were planning on sharing these when, exactly?"

"If I thought they would be essential for a mission. I know, I know, that wasn't the right thing to do, but I assumed that your mentors would have your equipment requirements in hand. Now that I realise.. that I can't rely on that, I'm going to be putting more effort into things like this. For a start, I also have armour-" I tap my chest with my right hand. "-like mine for each of you. Sorry M'gann, it is somewhat malleable but I haven't worked out how to make it truly shapeshift."

Artemis tries looking at her glasses from the outside, trying to spot the heads up display from the outside. Can't be done. She then narrows her eyes to look at me. "How good's this armour?"

"It would easily stop a depleted uranium shell from a modern main battle tank. If you're talking about resistance to super powers, my own resistances make it hard for me to fully test. Certainly better than anything you could get anywhere else."

Zatanna looks at me uncomfortably. "What.. did you mean about making us gods?"

"Err, sorry. Think.. low level pagan gods, not..." I wave my right hand at the ceiling. "Not Jehovah. Father Box contained full data on the nature of the Forever People and their ilk, and it turns out that the thing which makes them 'unusual' is fully compatible with Human soul-structures. Between Father Box and the Sphere-" It warbles. "-I've learned how to... It's difficult to fully explain... Cut additional channels? Allow spiritual growth far above what a normal person could ever hope to gain on their own."

Kaldur looks thoughtful as he nods. "Like Atlantean arcane tattoos."

"Only more so. So much more so. You may have noticed that I don't look like-" I fix my eyes on Wallace. "-Boulder the Rock Monster any longer."

"Ooooh. Yoooou heard that, huh?"

"Yes. Quite apt, I thought. Boulder the Rock Monster indeed. Most amusing. Among other changes-."

"You really think you're a god?"

"Sadly, Richard, no. I'm not. Having had no soul before coming here Father Box has had its work cut out performing remedial aetheric grafts. I have.. a presence now, that I didn't have before, but it'll be a very long time before I qualify for even the lowest levels of divinity. I do intend to get there eventually, mind you."

Kon doesn't look like he's in a good place, but he musters up the will to ask anyway. "Does that.. just work on Humans? Or would it... I mean..."

"I'm afraid so. There might be ways to make it work on other species, but it's beyond me at the moment. Good news though: thanks to your grandfather I now know enough about Kryptonian genetics that I'm able to fully convert you, if that's something that you want."

Gobsmacked. "What?"

"Ring, Father Box plus Kryptonian genealogical data. I'd have to deactivate your powers temporarily and I would recommend being unconscious for the process, but I can replace your Human and Genomorph elements with fully Kryptonian ones. You'd have a choice between becoming a full clone of Kal-El or.. um.. I can find Kryptonian near-equivalents for your non-Kryptonian attributes. I'd recommend the second, but it's up to you."

He's not looking at anyone and is blinking rapidly as he tries to comprehend what I just told him. I never had a little brother and my relationship with my younger sister was more one of equals. She was always more assertive than me. My relationship with Kon.. it's most important to me out of all my team mates. I even did something I'd been putting off ever since getting here in the hope that he'd be able to forge a relationship with at least one Kryptonian. Don't think she spotted it...

"What..? What's the difference?"

"You, are a product of hardware and software. I won't change the patterns of your neural activity but if you try to run yourself on altered hardware.. your new fully Kryptonian brain, then the way you think will change. It'll probably change a little anyway, but going for equivalence will keep the change to a minimum."

He nods, a little dazed, then starts as something occurs to him. "What about M'gann?" He looks at her then back to me. "Have you got something for her?"

"Of course. Presents for all the boys and girls." I face her. "For you, M'gann, I can remove the blocks which make your entire species afraid of fire."

She frowns, confused. "But.. that's just.. I mean, all Martians are afraid of fire. It's an evolutionary thing."

"Wrong, I'm afraid. It's a rather sophisticated piece of arcanotechnological engineering. Frankly, now that I can analyse it, it's got the Guardians' grubby paw prints all over it. I mean, did you not wonder why it occurred in every single member of your species? No exceptions, even the mentally deranged? Why a race of telepaths couldn't remove a simple phobia? No, it's artificial and I can get rid of it." I make eye contact with each of my team mates in turn. "Look, I understand this is a lot to take in. I'll put the armour in the armoury. Feel free to just try it out at your leisure. Talk about my offer with your mentors but please believe me when I say that I am motivated by my desire for your well-being. I want you... I want us all to be the best we can be." I pause for a moment. There is more I could say but I think it's best to leave it there. I can talk to them individually-.

"If I said 'yes', what would it do to my magic?"

Zatanna appears to be giving it serious thought. Interesting. Richard looks decidedly unhappy about this turn of events. "Zatanna, you can't seriously be okay with this! He just proved you can't trust-."

"I nearly lost my dad last week." Richard shuts up. Does she know his circumstances? "If Gravyen hadn't stopped him, he'd be Nabu right now. And if it's just…" She turns back to me. "It's just a power up, right?"

"More or less. Understand, I can't completely predict the results. According to Father Box and confirmed by the Sphere, your instinctive grasp of the arcane would improve, as would your magical presence and energy reserves. That's in addition to the life extension effect that would give you more time to study and improve, and the physical buffs which would make you more likely to survive long enough to do so."

"And what about..? You said it involved changing my soul. If I went for it..."

"The add-ons would still be filled by.. made of.. earthly magics. Your soul would still be drawn to the same place upon your death, if that's what concerns you."

She nods. "I need to check this with my dad. But, if it really does what you say.. then I'm interested."

"I'm.. glad to hear it. Mister Zatara can contact me through Nabu whenever is convenient for him." She nods. "Oh, and before I go." I fix my eyes on Mister Tawny. "The physical replication is flawless, Mister J'onzz, but you haven't quite got the hang of Mister Tawny's body language. Plus..." I tap my glasses. "Glasses." I turn to return to my room. "I'll expect the real Mister Tawny back by breakfast. Don't let the door catch your tail on the way out."

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Half-hearted 15

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10th November

06:22 GMT -5

I sit on the settee in the living area, staring blankly at the television's channel select screen. A thousand channels and nothing's on. Or at least nothing I feel like watching. I'm having trouble working up the motivation to do anything, actually. After getting back to the mountain... Last night? This morning? Not sure. Sleep didn't seem to be happening, and lying in the dark just made me keep thinking of the bridge. Odd, really. I didn't have this sort of problem when I got back from Santa Prisca, which was my first exposure to real bloodletting. Didn't bat an eyelid about sending a tungsten slug through Ra's' head. Cut off Ocean Master's hands without a second thought. Even the rats... And it's not as if the manners of their deaths were that unusual. Car crashes happen every day. Plane crashes once or twice a year. But.. so much of it.

M'gann and Kon have school in a couple of hours. I already readied all of the components of their breakfast and left them on the work surface. No point putting the toast on yet. Their lunch boxes.. um, bags are assembled. Zatanna's too. She decided that she'd rather stay here than go home so I took a few minutes to transport all of her stuff to one of the spare rooms. She picked the one nearest to mine which.. I mean, I wanted to be on hand more but having seen the magnitude of the job outside... The numbers just become so much more real when you're the one who-.

Alert! Connection made to monitored telephone line.

Oh? Which one?

Second public telephone, BP, Happy Harbour branch.

I frown. That's the number I sometimes give out as being mine and I'd be surprised if someone's phoning a public phone for another reason. Ring, who's calling?

Call originates from GBS building, Metropolis.

Hm. Well, not like I've got anything better to do. I lift the ring to my left ear. Answer.

"Orange Lantern two eight one four. What can I do for you?"

"Oh! Um, hi! I didn't think you'd actually pick up!"

Don't recognise the voice. "Right. Who am I talking to, please?"

"Sorry! Sorry! Dana Dearden. I'm a researcher with GBS Morning News."

"And what can I do for you, Miss Dearden?"

"Miss Grant wanted me to try and get hold of you. Can I put her through to you right now?"

I guess she's important enough not to have to make her own phone calls. "Certainly."

There's a short delay. No hold music. I shake my right hand in the direction of the television and the ring finds a picture of a meadow accompanied by quiet birdsong. Good. I can cope with that.

"Good morning Orange Lantern. Thank you for taking the time to talk to us."

"Good morning Miss Grant. No problem at all. How can I be of service?"

"I understand that you've been involved in the recovery effort."

"Recovery effort? I suppose that's one way of putting it. Yes, um, I've.. been in Gotham and New York here in the States, Liverpool, Calcutta... A bunch of small places on, um.. aircraft flight paths..."

"What are you doing now?"

"Heh. Um... Sitting at home watching television, actually."

The line goes quiet. Yeah, that's.. probably not the way I should have gone with that. "Do you.. do you really think this is a good time to be watching TV?"

"It was this or try Call of Glory.. and I don't know where Kid Flash hid the controllers."

"You are aware that the death toll stands at around eight hundred thousand?"

Oh, for goodness..! "Miss Grant, I really don't need this from you, alright? I haven't eaten anything for five days. I haven't slept for five days and whenever I try.. whenever I close my eyes all I can see is piles of mangled wreckage and children's bodies. I'm sitting at home right now because Wonder Woman ordered me to. She ordered me to stop because I'd got to the point that I couldn't cope and I'm.. I'm sorry about that, I realise it's so much worse for the parents, but don't think I'd be much use to anyone at the moment."

Another moment of quiet. "I am so sorry. I hadn't realized-."

"No, no, it's fine. I can see that I might have given the wrong impression."

"Are... Are you alright to carry on?"

"Yes, certainly. That's.. the American thing to do, isn't it? Talk about your feelings? It's supposed to help, may as well give it a go."

"Can you.. can you give us an idea of what sort of work you've been involved in?"

"Ahhh, yeah. There was an aircraft, something wrong with its autopilot. When the split happened the adult version carried on but as far as we can tell the children's version crashed almost immediately. When both Earths remerged, the child world's plane vanished and the children's bodies appeared back in their seats next to their parents. I can't.. can't imagine what that would have been like for them. After they.. after it landed, they tried to get the parents off... Some of them just..." I remember the crying, wailing Indian woman when I first went in there. Inconsolable doesn't quite cover it. "Anyway, um, I got called in to clean up the inside of the plane. Make sure all the.. the parts ended up in the right body bags. Thing is, at this stage there isn't really much we can do. Most of the deaths happened in the first few minutes. All the super urgent stuff.. the we-need-a-superhero-here-now stuff, that's already happened."

"Where were you when it happened?"

"Gotham. I was having dinner with... Well, it doesn't matter. The staff and most of the other diners disappeared. I tried to get in contact with my superiors and got nothing. Ended up on the Vincefinkel Bridge just after the car crashes blocked it."

"I'm sorry, but.. you were on the child side?"

"Yes."

"Do you know why?"

"Because the individual who cast the spell really hates me. He said as much when we confronted him, though I suppose he might have been lying. Seemed in character, though."

"You know who it was?"

"Of course I do, I was part of the attack that stopped it. Hasn't that information been released yet?"

"No. Can you tell us?"

I haven't been told not to, I suppose. "The main instigator's called Klarion, and the adult side was being handled by William Zard, Blackbriar Thorn, Felix Faust and Dark Druid."

"Are they in custody?"

"I don't... Last I saw, Batman had what's left of Blackbriar Thorn. He'll regenerate in a few months. Nabu-. Fate took Zard and Faust, don't know what he did with them. Klarion and Druid vanished. A few of us caught up with Druid on Saturday morning but he threw enough undead at us that he was able to escape again."

"Are they still a threat?"

"Druid threw an undead monster-baby at me that could cut through my barriers like they weren't there, and Klarion's far more powerful. The League.. I'm sure they're on it... You know what the death toll from this is better than I do."

"Could they do that again?"

"I don't think so. They were using a... This crystal thing. Last time I saw it Fate had it. Doesn't mean they can't do something similar, of course."

"What do you think of Senator Knight's call for magic to be made illegal?"

"W-? It's moronic. That's like saying 'oh no, the Soviet Union has nuclear weapons. Quick; let's keep ourselves safe by banning fire'. Ugh." The sheer stupid makes me shake my head. "Mass murder is illegal, but that didn't stop them. The best way to prevent something like this happening again is to have people study magic and learn how to counter it. For goodness sake, this is vital to the world's defence. To America's defence. Why isn't this happening already? It's so completely obvious. You don't deal with a threat by sticking your head in the sand, you deal with it by studying it until you know how to beat it."

"That's about all we've got time for. Thank you for your time, Orange Lantern, and for all your good work, from me and from the GBS audience."

"Well, if they get to actually hear me this time. I seem to remember being cut from most of the broadcasts of the Taiwan interview."

Small pause. What? "They're hearing you now. You're live on GBS Breakfast."

I blink. "This is live?"

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Half-hearted 16

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10th November

11:29 GMT -5

"...and I'd take it from Batman or Kal-El, but she's killed hundreds of people! Does she really expect me to believe that nineteen year old Gefreiter Schmitt of the Luftwaffe was that much more worthy of death than the four who -by most recent estimates- killed something like two hundred thousand people -mostly young children- each?"

Mister Scott nods and I relax a little. I don't know if he actually understands where I'm coming from. Perhaps he holds that 'war' is a separate special type of event that should have no bearing on other times. It's not a view I share but it's common enough. Certainly his own war record shows that he was willing to employ a degree of viciousness wholly absent from his earlier and later conduct.

I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting Wonder Woman's response to Tuesday's.. discussions, to be. I certainly wasn't expecting a meeting mediated by Mister Scott. Wonder Woman's waiting in one of the meeting rooms while he and I thrash out what I actually want to get out of this in another. Since I dropped in on him on my first day here I haven't really had that much to do with him. He's sort of tried to get to know me better a few times but we don't really have anything in common. And.. I.. let him believe that my exposure to Venom Buster was accidental. Prrrobably shouldn't have done that. He looks.. frailer than when we first met. I hope it isn't due to my actions, he's a good guy.

"You think she's being hypocritical?" I nod. "Legally, there's a difference between war and policing. I'm sure you realize that."

"I never understood why being a soldier is considered to be more moral than being an executioner. In a fight between modern nations, a soldier can be reasonably confident that most of those he fights against are men much like himself. People he'd probably get on quite well with if he met them socially. And yet, he's suddenly expected to kill them and be okay with that when the only real difference between them is one of geography. An executioner knows that the people he's called upon to kill have been tried and found guilty of some grotesque crime by as fair a court as his society can provide, and in contrast to deaths in warfare effort will be made to make the death as swift and painless as possible." I'm not completely sure that having Ghost Fox Killer rip your soul out of your body and enslave it for eternity is exactly a painless death, but I couldn't think of anything else that would work on Wotan, Faust or Thorn. Guardsman's efforts were more for publicity than anything substantial.

"She was a lot younger back then. I don't think she'd do that sort of thing now." He shakes his head. "I won't try and convince you that they didn't deserve it... I'm not sure I believe it myself. But, there's a protocol to follow. You ignored your superiors in the field and you've caused a major diplomatic dispute between the US and China."

"I think I aggravated the US government. I don't think many US citizens really mind all that much. The US doesn't have the best record for executing murderous supervillains."

"You think execution is the only correct response?"

I shake my head. "If they could be reliably contained or depowered? No. But if you choose not to execute people like that.. and you can't contain or depower them... As I see it, that makes you responsible, in part, for their next rampage. To my mind it isn't a question of what right I have to make that decision as.. what right do I have to condemn their future victims? I wasn't joking when I said that Napier should have died years ago."

"You didn't kill Jack Napier."

I nod. "I didn't. And next time he breaks out..."

"Batman told me that Arkham's security's improved a lot since last time."

"He probably said the same thing the last seven times as well."

"You should give him more credit; Batman's a good guy."

I grimace. "If he's such a good guy why did he just stand there when Mister Zatara went to put the Helmet on? He was the man who nominated Mister Zatara for membership. They're friends."

"Diana said you got pretty angry about that."

"It's... Unconscionable. I don't understand how... If it had been you, if Mister Garrick were putting on the Helmet to protect someone, would you have intervened?"

He looks away for a moment, thinking about it. Then he nods. "Yeah, if I were on the ball, I think I would have."

"I didn't expect to be able to live up to League standards right away, you know? I was going to work at it, learn the craft. Then the woman I consider to be most moral out of all the people I know, who's.. pretty much become Kon's foster mother... I thought I might disagree with her for practical reasons, but moral ones? Never. I never imagined that she might just…" I wave my right arm in a dismissive gesture.

"You feel she let you down."

"I was expecting better. I dread to think what would have happened if I hadn't been there."

"She's pretty disappointed you just took off like that."

"I was.. furious. I'm not sure.. what decision I'd have made if I'd had a clearer head." I sigh. "I don't think anyone there would have agreed with the one I actually made."

"Diana mentioned that you had anger management issues."

"She's right. I won't try and deny it."

"Where do you want to go from here?"

I'm not sure. "When I first got to this planet, I had a choice. I already had more money than I'd ever have been able to spend. I could have stuck the ring into a drawer somewhere and forgotten about it. Or, tracked down some other type of super powered technology. I didn't do either. I wanted to get involved and I decided you were my best bet because you're Green Lantern. You handed me off to Wonder Woman, and that was fine because.. she's Wonder Woman. Now, I've got another choice."

"Thinking of quitting?"

I shake my head. "No... Just about how I carry on. Let me show you something. Father Box: open a boom tube to Maltus."

"Ploong."

A small explosion and a glowing rip in space appears. In the distance a planet is just visible. I've learned that opening one closer invites a rather aggressive response. Alan leans closer to get a better look. "Through there is the homeworld of the species one offshoot of which went on to become the Guardians of the Galaxy. I had a quick look earlier and a lot of them are still there. If the Controllers aren't on the planet then there will be people who know how to get hold of them. If I walked to my room, picked up the lantern and handed it back to you... I'm free. I'm at full charge. I could be there in a few minutes. I could make a deal with them, get a new power source... And I wouldn't have to put up with the League any more."

"So why don't you?"

I stare through the portal. "It would feel like losing." A little longer. "Father Box, close it." Another bang as it collapses. I sit where I am for a moment longer, then rise to my feet. "May as well do this now."

Mister Scott follows me as I leave the room. Wonder Woman's in a room down the corridor and around to the left. I don't really know how good her hearing is. The doors were shut but she'd still have heard the boom tube. She doesn't bother looking around until I sit in the seat opposite her.

"You probably feel that you can't trust me." I nod. "And you're right not to. I've been keeping a lot to myself." I pat Father Box with my right hand. "But, after Roanoke Island I find that I don't fully trust you either."

"You made a sacred oath and then tricked your way out of it at the first opportunity."

"No, I didn't. I created that program after I got back from China, and I turned it off about half an hour after you left me on Saturday." She narrows her eyes slightly. "You can always tell when someone's lying. Am I?"

"No. You're not."

I nod again. "You don't lie. You hate lying. If I'm going to follow your lead I need to be able to believe in you in a way I just don't at the moment. So I'm going to ask a question and whatever answer you give me I'll accept. If it hadn't been Mister Zatara, if it had been Donna Troy, would you have intervened?"

She frowns. "Donna's hardly any older than Zatanna, it's not the same."

"Would you. Have intervened?"

"Yes. I would."

I relax, nodding. "Thank you. Thank you. I wasn't lying when I said that I'd rather you were right, either. I'm.. prepared to follow your instruction. I'll listen to you, for the next seven months at least."

"It's not that simple. I can't teach someone who has no interest in taking in what I have to say, and I'm not sure that I want to teach someone with the sort of uncontrolled temper that you have."

I nod my head to the side. "Alright. What would you like me to do about it?"

***

10th November

14:03 GMT -5

There are only a few of us in the room. I'd known that Lantern Gardner had worked as a prison counsellor but I hadn't realised that he still ran sessions like this. Still, it could be much worse and.. this may even help me. I slowly rise from my all-too-small plastic chair and address the room.

"Good afternoon everyone. My name is Grayven, and I'm a very angry man."

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Half-hearted 17

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Brellin said:

10th November

15:18 GMT -5

Senator Knight held his head in his hands. A single brief interview, barely more than a few short minutes, and his political ambitions had been ruined. His attempt to rally political support by being seen to introduce a bill to outlaw magic had backfired in a truly staggering fashion. With just a few brief words his name had become synonymous with obliviousness and ignorance.

"Steve, what kind of damage am I looking at here? What kind of damage control needs to be done? You're my number one PR man, give me something to work with."

"Senator... Henry, it's not good. With the interview having gone viral it's pretty much impossible to sweep this one under the rug. Worse is that Orange Lantern gave the world the first answers… Answers everyone's been looking for, regarding who was responsible for the attacks. Was involved, in fact, in finding and stopping those individuals responsible. As far as the media and public is concerned he might as well be preaching Gospel, thanks to his direct involvement in stopping the event and his follow up efforts with... With the 'recovery' of the victims."

"I know that Steve, give me something here. I'm looking at my name being used in jokes and satire right now! How can I fix this?"

"It's going to be difficult, sir. You'll need to issue a public apology, at the minimum, admitting to presenting legislature without the full picture and information if you want to maintain any sort of credibility. After that? I'd say you'll need to go largely hands off. Cast your vote on the issues, answer questions if interviewed but don't put your name out there if you don't have to. In a few weeks, or maybe a month or two, the media will have latched onto something else. Hopefully the trials for those individuals that Orange Lantern said were in custody. Until then your best bet is to keep your head down and hope people forget about it."

"Steve... You're asking me to kill my chance at the party candidacy. If I'm not putting my face out there, my name out there...! He sighed. "Damn it. Just... Damn it all. I was just trying to help. Trying to do something to deal with this when it looked like no one else was."

"I know sir. It's a bad situation all around, for everyone involved. Don't let this get to you. It might not have panned out well, but you were at least trying to do something. All that aside, there's always the election after next. You've been knocked down sir, but not out."

"… Thank you, Steve. I think I needed to hear that. Why don't you take the rest of the day off? I know your kids are still shaken up by what happened, I'm sure they wouldn't mind having you around."

"Thanks, Sir, I will. Have a good evening Mr. Knight."

And as Steve left the room, Knight couldn't help but look at the picture on his desk of his own family, his daughter in particular. "We were lucky, weren't we? I guess... Yeah, I guess I should spend some time home too."

Click to expand...Click to shrink...

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Half-hearted 18

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11th November

16:12 GMT -5

The lights are off as we crouch in the darkness. Teekl is not happy about having a sheet draped over her but we can't even pull off a fake surprise if her orange glow gives us away. Fatty's tolerating it much better. He actually made himself useful during the disaster recovery so I've been letting him out more. He's taken to flying much more readily than Teekl, can sense magic -including people's souls- and appears to be able to consume different forms of energy. Not long after the fight with Dark Druid I watched him suck out a fire that threatened to engulf a Gotham tenement. Turns out that some of the child side fires I saw were transferred over when the merge happened, raging infernos appearing from nowhere and taking everyone by-.

No, I'm not going to spoil this. M'gann, Kon and I spent a good deal of time setting this up and I've never even been to a fake-surprise party before. This is also Kaldur's first full day back from Atlantis. He was only in hospital for three days while they healed him up, but then he was under doctor's orders not to strain himself and his mother decided that meant spending some time at home. He told me that Garth and Tula are considering spending some time in the cave as part of their training. Perhaps more importantly as far as I'm concerned, Queen Mera gave Sephtian a Royal Warrant of Appointment after hearing how his wards let us tank shots from a Lord of Chaos. I need to visit him again and find out what that means for my orders, current and future.

Oh, and congratulate him.

Since my interview went viral -I stopped looking after seeing a satirical news conference where a comedian dressed as Senator Knight earnestly called for fire to be banned to protect us all from the godless communists- everyone's been treating me with kid gloves. Ms Lance even offered to 'listen, if I needed to talk'. I had the ring check me for post traumatic stress disorder but apparently I'm not showing most of the symptoms. According to it I can manage with about half an hour's sleep a week but that doesn't sound like a good idea to me. I managed a full night last night, no unpleasant dreams. I think my problem was more to do with a particular shocking image getting lodged in my mind -like how some people can tell you exactly what they were doing when they heard about JFK getting shot- more than any sort of enduring problem. Maybe enlightenment has practical value beyond ring usage?

If I strain my ears I can just about hear Wallace walking through the corridor leading to the kitchen area.

"Zeta tube network now offline due to extreme atmospheric conditions."

Hadn't really noticed those. I haven't left the mountain since Diana ordered me off duty and it's not like this place has windows. Maybe I should talk to Queen Mera about that Dolmen Gate? If the zeta network can be taken down by inclement weather it might be worth investing in a second system.

"Whow, I just made it." He's in the kitchen now. I see M'gann gesture towards the light switches. "Be a tragedy if I missed my own-."

The lights go on and Wallace stumbles back, shielding his eyes. Not sure if he's faking that. I mean, this party was pretty much his idea but the lights are rather bright.

"Surprise!" / "Surprise!" / "Surprise!" / "Surprise!" / "Surprise!" / "Surprise!" / "Surprise!" / "Surprise!" / "Surprise!" / "S-surprise!" / "Surprise!" / "Huh?"

Wallace looks at us, takes a quick peek at the tables laden with food and presents, and then pantomimes surprise.

"Whaaat? Aww, you guuuys. You shouldn't have."

Over-actor. Teekl throws off the sheet covering her in relief, sits and starts licking her left forepaw. Fatty picks up the discarded sheet and stuffs it into his mouth. Teekl's been putting quite a lot of effort into ignoring him. I'm not sure if she thinks of him as competition or just as a nuisance.

In addition to the team, Mister Allen, Red Tornado and Danni have joined us. Robert's standing back slightly. His first visit to the cave was this morning -afternoon, UK time- and he hasn't quite got his head around the whole thing yet. Aside from nerves he seems to be fitting in alright, save for an awkward moment when he told Kon that he 'didn't know Superman had a son'. I took it as a mark of how far Kon's come that all it got was a muttered 'he doesn't' and a change of subject rather than a stomp off.

Robin folds his arms across his chest. "Not like you've been hinting for days or anything."

Wallace grins as M'gann levitates a party hat onto his head. I'm already wearing mine. Normally I have a problem finding hats big enough, especially the sort of hats found in Christmas crackers. I've pretty much had to master the art of getting them to perch on my head without falling in the gravy. Kon lights the candles as M'gann leads him over to the table with the birthday cakes. M'gann originally wanted to do two identical cakes, but what's the point in that? Any flavour can get boring eventually.

There's a tap on my arm and I realise that the rest of my team have gathered around the table. Danni comes up alongside me and is looking at me curiously. She's wearing what is basically a slightly updated version of her old costume.

"Hi. Sorry I haven't.. I didn't get in touch after Gotham. Been a bit busy."

"Was your meeting with Miss Robinson productive?"

"I think so. Painting's back on the wall and the owner will be upgrading their security, she's got an opportunity for a new life. I'll be checking up on her, but I'm hopeful."

She nods, then turns her attention to the table as Wallace blows out the candles. "Several members of the Justice League have expressed concern for your psychological welfare. Given what has taken place, I share their concern."

"I'm fine. Once I got over the initial shock... Don't think I'll try working five days straight again though. That wasn't clever."

"No, it was not. Do not do it again." She follows me as I amble over to the birthday table huddle.

M'gann kisses Wallace on the forehead as she hands him a plate of cake. "Happy Birthday." He doesn't even try to conceal his disappointment. Honestly.

"May I try a slice of the cake?"

M'gann looks at Danni in surprise. "Can you..? I didn't know you could eat."

"I gain no useful nutrition from ingestion but I am able to taste." She frowns. "Though I cannot say how comparable the sense is to yours."

"It's not gunna make you explode or anything, right?" Wallace leers at her. "'Cause that'd be a waste of some fiiine engineering."

Ugh. Fortunately it doesn't look like Danni cared. "Though some of my sense-analysis subroutines have been.. black boxed..." She looks at me.

I rise my hands defensively. "I really don't remember doing it."

"I do not believe that any of them could cause a power surge large enough to make any part of me explode."

"Here you go." M'gann hands her a plate with a slice of cake and a cake fork. She takes it and holds it up to her nose to sniff it. "Isss something wrong?"

"This is the first time I have eaten cake with my current oral system." She taps the sponge with her right index finger. "Father did not believe that an accurate sense of taste was important in my infiltration mission. To this point I have only experimented with toast."

"That's..." Wallace squints. "Reeeally not that experimental."

"If you were ever to develop a synokinetic sense I would similarly advise you against experimenting with it on a magma field." She dips her right index finger into the icing and then pulls it away, a small white blob remaining on the tip. She looks at it for a moment, head slightly tilted to the side. Then she puckers her lips and slowly slides her finger into her mouth. There's a very quiet sucking sound and then she slides the saliva-slicked finger out again, her tongue following it a short way out and giving the tip a farewell lick.

Wallace's mouth is hanging open. I have to blink for a moment myself. M'gann just looks puzzled. Danni looks vacant for a moment as she processes the sensation. "I think.. I like it." She nods, takes hold of her fork, cuts off a slice and delicately places it inside her mouth before closing her lips around it and slowly pulling the fork free with a sigh of pleasure.

I really hope I didn't program her to do that.

I shake myself slightly and reorientate on the birthday boy with a smile. "Wallace, happy birthday." I take my well-wrapped gift out of subspace and float it over to him. "Careful, it weighs a bit." He looks puzzled as he goes to open it. "Oh, and if NASA ask -they won't, but if they do- this didn't come from me."

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Half-hearted 19

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11th November

16:19 GMT -5

"They are? Are you allowed to tell me who?"

Red Tornado remains motionless as he considers. "At this stage all that Batman has requested is that names be forwarded to him for consideration. Presumably he also intends to perform background checks."

"Do you know if Yao Fei's on the list?"

"Ah. That would be the Accomplished Perfect Physician. I believe that Batman intends to nominate him. He has forwarded a dossier on Yao Fei to each League member. Having read it, I am minded to vote in favor."

"Do you know what the Chinese wanted in exchange for releasing him?"

"Batman made no mention of an exchange. Perhaps it will be discussed at the meeting."

"Do you know..? Sorry, being silly. Ring, location of Yao Fei."

"Yao Fei is located in the Chinese consulate in New York."

Excellent. "Do you think any of the other members would object?"

"It seems unlikely, though any other member of the 'Great Ten' would have faced opposition from several League members."

"But he isn't a member of the Great Ten. That's why I suggested him."

Red Tornado pauses, tilting his head slightly. "Yao Fei joined the Great Ten last month. Presumably he would remain on their roster while serving with the League."

I nod. "That's what it cost." I suppose... "Compared to what I thought they might ask it's cheap, though I don't imagine he's entirely happy about it. Can you tell me who else is likely to get in?"

"Lantern Gardner, I would imagine. Green Arrow will almost certainly suggest his own protégé. Beyond that there are many notable superheroes worthy of consideration. Yourself, for example."

"Huh?"

"I am a little surprised that Wonder Woman has not mentioned the possibility."

"Um... That's..." I shake my head. "I've only got four months' experience, that's not going to happen."

"I had less than four months' experience when I joined the Justice Society, as did Red Inferno. I think you would do well in the League."

"Um, thank you. Is Danni likely to get a nomination?"

"Not..." He turns his head to look at her where she sits talking to Cornwall. He mimics her as she raises her hand and they both generate a small flickering flame. "She has shared her disquiet about discovering her true nature with me. I do not believe that it would be appropriate to push her forward until she has found a mode of existence with which she can be content."

I nod. Given how his brother responded I can well understand his reluctance, but wouldn't actually giving her a role help? She certainly seemed to like what we were doing in Gotham... Don't know. I take a look around the room. Artemis is grinning evilly on the settee next to a gobsmacked Wallace while Zatanna and Robin smirk at them. Teekl's shrunk down and is lying across Zatanna's left shoulder. Kon and M'gann are giggling about something while Wolf gnaws on something at their feet. Kaldur's talking to Mister Allen and Robert's trying to copy a circle of fire Danni's holding in front of her. I wonder why Mister Allen's bothering with a costume in here? Given how fast he can change-.

"Attention team." Batman's voice over the speakers and everyone freezes. "Suit up." Plates are downed, hands and mouths are wiped and I realise that I'm standing at parade rest. "Polar stealth, mission briefing in five."

Mister Allen raises his right hand to wave at Wallace. "Catch you later, Wally." He disappears in a red blur. Fatty notices that no one is paying attention to the food and tips a bowl of salted nuts down his gullet. Zatanna takes Teekl off her shoulder and puts her down on a chair. My cat then jumps down and grows back to lion size. "Romra raeppa." Zatanna's armour appears at the same time as I transfer mine onto me from subspace. Robert runs for his kit bag -lucky he brought it at all really- and pulls out his uniform. M'gann shifts her clothing to her costume and Kon and Kaldur hurry away to the armoury. There doesn't seem to be an easy way to quickly don their armour but they've got it down to just under five minutes.

Artemis looks at me expectantly and I ring her, Robin's and Wallace's uniforms onto them. I get a thank you nod from Robin but Wallace doesn't seem to notice. "A mission on my birthday! This is sweet! Who d'you think Batman's sending us up against? Mirror Master? The HIVE? Black Manta?"

Robin smiles as we start walking in the direction of the training room. "I'm sure Batman will tell us during the briefing."

Red Tornado looks at Wallace. "I imagine that the alert is most likely associated with the unseasonably bad weather we are having."

Artemis looks puzzled. "It is kinda early, but it's snowed in November before."

"The formation of snow requires a particular pattern of air currents and humidity. Neither were present in the run up to the current snow storm and in any case it would be highly unusual for a natural area of snowfall to cover the entire country."

Looking back I see Robert take off his shirt and go to unbuckle his trousers before freezing when he notices that Danni is watching him. Getting changed in front of people is just something he's going to have to get used to, though I should probably extend my costume-storing offer to him. "Danni, do you want to come along?" And now Robert's caught preparing to drop his trousers while everyone looks at him. Ring, changing screen.

"Cheers mate!"

Danni looks at us, tilts her head to the side as she thinks about it and then rises to her feet, joining us as we walk towards the training room.

Wallace rubs his chin. "So, Captain Cold, Mister Freeze-" It's his birthday, I'm not going to correct him. "-Killer Frost, Icicle and Junior are all in Belle Reve. How many ice villains are left?"

Robin looks at him. "Could Weather Wizard-"

"Mark Mardon." I tried.

"-be behind it?"

"Not unless he's got a maaajor power up."

"I don't suppose there were plans for a Red Blizzard, were there?"

"Father shared no such plans with-" Tornado looks at his sister for a moment. "-me."

Danni shakes her head. "His android replica made no mention of designs for other Red robots beyond Red Volcano. However, Red Volcano did say that his future plans involved using the eruption of the Yellowstone Caldera to draw attention away while he created enough robots to fully populate this planet. It is not impossible that further new designs existed."

Tornado stops dead. "Excuse me. I am required elsewhere." He turns off down a side passage. Guess he decided to get that integrated communication system with his body rebuild after all.

Artemis drops back in the pack to walk alongside me. "Thanks for getting Wonder Woman to lend me her bow."

"No problem. Have you got the hang of using it?"

There's a pause. "Yeah... Basically."

"Artemis."

"Small.. overpenetration problem." Titanium arrows survive impacts quite a bit better than her old point arrows. "But I'm on top of it. It's actually a lot easier than I thought it would be."

"Glad to hear it."

"Do you know..? I don't wanna nag or anything, but-?"

"When are you going to get your own?" She nods. "I've sent Io a letter. I don't know how long it'll take her to respond, then.. you're probably going to have to go there yourself to talk to her."

"Why?"

I speak slowly. "She lives on Themyscira, I'm a man."

Her eyes dip. "Right."

"And she's probably going to want to see your technique and stuff. Um, has your mother forgiven me yet?"

"Yeah, I think so. I explained about the Ophidian, and she gets that I'm less likely to get hurt like this. You might have overdone the flowers, though."

"Did she like them?"

"One bunch of flowers is fine to say you're sorry. Two if you're really sorry. Covering the entire building with flowers was kinda creepy."

...

Suppose it was a bit.

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Half-hearted 20

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11th November

16:27 GMT -5

We fall in to a rough line in front of the main holographic display, Fatty.. somewhere and Teekl and Danni back a little to our left. Robert tried doing the same thing until I shoved him forwards. His costume isn't up to spec yet so I altered the dye myself, turning the black cross a dull blue-grey and the red to pale grey. Stand at the back of the lecture theatre, get asked the questions. I look around as a gust of displaced air heralds Kon's arrival. He pulls up just before reaching us and touches down in a perfect landing. There might be times when it would be convenient to carry his armour in the ring, but the fact is that without the Ophidian supercharging me loading and unloading exotic materials takes too much power to be practical. And it's not like I can make him or Kaldur another suit. Well, maybe Kaldur, eventually, but Nth metal is right out.

Neither material really works with the camouflage fabric the rest of us have covering our armour. Kon compromised by getting a surcoat in white and pale blue. His arms and legs are still a darker grey but without some sort of attachment point on the armour itself I don't think a sleeve is really practical. He grins at me for a moment then tugs the coat straight and orientates on the blank holoscreen. A moment later Kaldur approaches at a jog. He's easily strong enough that the armour... Oh, that's interesting. He's solved the camouflage problem by coating himself in a layer of frost. Easy to do with the trident and more practical than a material cover. And the insulation effect of the armour and underclothes mean that compared to the ocean temperature Atlanteans are designed to withstand the low temperature isn't a problem.

"Pst, Oh El." I lean forwards a little to look at Wallace. "Where'd Flash go?"

"W-. Kid Flash, he runs at the speed of light. Even if I told you his current lo-."

The holoscreen changes from standby to a close up of Batman's face and I straighten up. I think.. is that an aircraft canopy? Is he on the phone while flying a plane? That doesn't sound like a good idea.

"A massive ice storm has paralysed North America from coast to coast." Wonder if that includes Canada and Mexico? "Satellite imagery has detected five flying.. 'Ice Fortresses', source unknown-" A holographic image of one appears at chest height just in front of the main screen. The shape is roughly cylindrical, broader than it is tall. There's what looks like a command centre on the top in the centre and through ten large vents around the rim and on the base... Well, I assume it's supposed to be cold air or something, but on the hologram it just looks like blue light. Why isn't there a scale on the image? Oh, thank you ring. About eighty metres across then. That must be very cold air if it's having this sort of effect. "-which seem to be responsible and must be stopped."

"Could the Watchtower just blow them out of the sky or something?" Wallace doesn't seem impressed.

Zatanna frowns. "What's a 'watch.. tower'?"

I resist the urge to facepalm as Batman sighs. "The League's orbiting headquarters is not weaponized. And with both of the League's Green Lanterns off-world-" He's calling in Guy? Don't fuck this up, man. "-I need all hands on deck."

Robin grins. "Does that mean what I think it means?" He takes a step forwards. "The League and the team fighting side by side?" Mmmm... Unless those Fortresses are entirely manually controlled I'm fairly sure that Guy and I could seize one each. On the other hand learning how to work together as a larger group could be invaluable in the future. Given what Tornado was saying I'm going to assume that most of my team mates are eventually going to get 'upped' to the League. For me, I'm not sure. Jordan and Stewart attend meetings about as often as Kosh Naranek attended Babylon 5 Council meetings. I'm not sure I'd want to commit to something if I wasn't sure that I could actually be there enough for it to mean something.

"Whow, really?" Wallace makes a small air punching gesture with both fists. He likes the idea, then. I suppose I've had a lot less time fighting beside Diana than the rest have with... Um. Well, not Zatanna, though she said that her father's been teaching her for two years. And I think Kon's only been out in the field with Diana as often as I have. And I'm not sure about M'gann... Well, some of the team, anyway.

"Orange Lantern, transfer Robin, Superboy and Aqualad to Ice Fortress One before meeting up with Lantern Gardner at Ice Fortress Two." Really don't fuck this up Guy. "Miss Martian, Artemis and Zatanna, take the bioship and rendezvous with Green Arrow, Black Canary and Martian Manhunter at Ice Fortress Three." Good job we finally got around to arming the bioship. "Other Leaguers will deal with Fortresses Four and Five. Sending all coordinates now." They're in the database and the ring has them. Two looks like it's directly over Denver. Can't risk it crashing. "Cornwall Boy."

"Yessir?"

"I realize that you haven't had time yet to train with the team. Do you believe yourself to be ready for a mission?"

Robert stands there for a moment. Then he nods. "Yessir."

"Very well. Join the attack on Ice Fortress Three. Ms Reilly, will you be joining us?"

I look back and see her nod. "If you have a use for me."

"Can you fly fast enough to reach Fortress Five within two hours?"

I create a construct map with the locations of the Fortresses marked by numbered Fortresses. She thinks for a moment. "That should be possible, though I have not tested the belt in weather conditions like these." Her skin might look and even feel Human, but it's a good deal stronger and she's perfectly capable of keeping herself warm on the journey. Having the zeta network non-functional really slows things down.

"Red Tornado is headed in that direction. When you arrive, join in the attack." She watches the screen for a moment longer and then turns and heads for the exit.

Wallace looks down the line and then steps forwards. Oh, right, his name wasn't mentioned. "Ah, Batman? I think.. you.. skipped-?"

"Kid Flash. A young girl in Seattle is in desperate need of a heart transplant. With all conventional air traffic grounded by the storm, you'll need to pick up the donor heart in Boston and run it three thousand miles across country."

Wallace looks crushed. Wait a second... Wouldn't it make more sense for the Flash to do that? It wouldn't be safe for the Flash to attack a Fortress on his own even if he could get up to reach it and he's far faster than Wallace. Or I could do it. Blink… Blink. It's not as if the snow interferes with Lantern FTL. Or Guy. Actually, Guy would be better. I'll say som-.

Wallace spreads his arms wide in a gesture of supplication. "Who is this girl!?"

Batman's eyes narrow. Not a good way to ask, Wallace. "Does it matter?"

Wallace slumps a little. "... Noo... Of course noot. But can't we zeta-?"

Robin looks at him. "Zeta tubes are off-line. Sorry."

"Sir, wouldn't the Flash, Lantern Gardner or I be better choices? We're all faster than Kid Flash." He looks at me and slumps a little more. "Um, sorry."

"The attack on Fortress One starts in a few minutes. I'm concerned that once whoever's controlling them realizes that they are under attack they might ditch them in order to escape. We cannot have Fortress Two crash landing on Denver. You and Lantern Gardner should be able to prevent that, and Flash is the only other Leaguer who can reach Fortress One in time."

I lower my head. He's right. Really need that alternate fast travel system.

"Right." He gives Batman an obviously fake smile. "Then how can I say no?" He bows his head. "Guess.. I won't be needing stealth." He taps the insignia on his chest and his uniform returns to its usual yellow and red. "When you really need the fourth fastest guy you've got, I'm your guy."

Ooh, ouch. Guess I shouldn't tell him that Superman's point to point speed is probably faster as well. And possibly Marvel's...

"Any questions?"

"Sir, is it desirable to take the Fortresses intact? I was planning to start reglaciating the poles myself, but these would make it much easier." And involve less boring flying over the ice. When I get bored jobs take so long.

"Capturing the Fortresses would also make it easier to investigate their point of origin, but don't put either yourselves or the people you're protecting at unnecessary risk to do it."

Robin grins. "Bonus points."

"If there's nothing else?" No one says anything. "Dismissed."

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Half-hearted 21

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11th November

16:31 GMT -5

M'gann and Zatanna peel away from the line up and head in the direction of the lift. Artemis starts to go with them, realises that Robert hasn't moved, grabs him by the cape-

"Hey!"

-and pulls him after them. "Teekl, go with them." I look at her retreating tail. "Oh, you already have. Good guess. Fatty, with me!"

Wallace watches them go and then turns his gaze on the rest of us. "This totally sucks."

Kaldur steps towards him. "I realize that you are disappointed not to be fighting alongside your mentor. Try to look on the bright side; each of us will be fighting as one amongst many, our individual performances contributing only a small amount towards the final goal. You will be the only person this child is relying on to save her."

"I.. guess."

Ring, show me Ice Fortress One. Ah. High in the sky, middle of nowhere. I suppose it just happened to be close to wherever Batman happened to be at the time. I'm not seeing any obvious point defences. Hold position at two miles and wait for the go signal? Oh, wait.

"Everyone got their flight belts, right? It's a long way to fall." Nods from everyone except Kaldur and Wallace, who hasn't touched his since that first session. I follow the group as we walk in the direction of the main entrance.

Robin looks at me. "Were you serious about repairing the polar ice caps?"

"Yes. I mean, after cleaning up the oceans and clearing near Earth space of debris it seemed like the next logical thing to do. I could have gone for worldwide nuclear disarmament but it seemed to me that people might object to me looting their silos." He blinks. "Um, that was a joke. I mean, I probably could turn all the plutonium to lead or something, but I wouldn't actually..." Though, now I think about it...

"Computer. Open." Wallace moves out ahead, though at regular speed rather than superspeed. I doubt that a few seconds will make much difference. His voice sounds remarkably lifeless. I wonder what running all that way would be like? And the heart... I remember in Batman: Sub Zero, where Doctor Fries' wife receives a transplant after he tried and failed at stealing Barbara Gordon's organs for her. I don't think that the audience were supposed to dwell on the fact that that meant that someone else had died in the meantime, having volunteered to have their organs removed post mortem. I used to have a donor card myself but I haven't tried adding myself to a register here. Quite aside from the fact that I don't legally exist I have no idea if my altered spiritual presence makes me incompatible with the locals or not. I also know that no one here would be able to tell me reliably enough for me to want to risk it. I dodged blood doning for much the same reason. Between me and the two aliens the locals must think there's a secret Jehovah's Witness coven around here somewhere.

There's a gust of cold air as the mountain door lowers. Note to self: see about getting a less noticeable door installed. I know we're a good long way away from Happy Harbour proper -which still hasn't repainted the signs- but people do still come up here, anti-trespass laws be damned. I did float the idea of non-lethal... Of low lethality booby traps, but it got turned down in no uncertain terms. Well, door's open, time to go.

Orange lines connect me to my team mates and Wallace starts running. "Prepare for transition in three.. two.. one." Snow surrounds us as we hover in the sky above and to the south east of Ice Fortress One. I put a platform under us and then release everyone. "No one lose anything?"

"Food?"

"Anyone else?"

Kaldur shakes his helmeted head. "We are all fine."

The wind isn't all that strong where we are, though from the look of those ice vents and the snow and clouds there's some pretty strong winds below us. Ring, detailed scan of the Fortress. Uuuh, I'm getting so fucking tired of scry wards. Fortunately they seem to be focused around what I assume is the command tower. I can detect the freeze ray projectors easily enough. Only a few of them, and they're all on the upper surface of the main ring.

Kon looks around. "When's Batman getting here?"

Robin raises his binoculars. "The Batplane's a bit slower than a power ring, Superboy."

"And probably doesn't have ring-proof stealth. Ring-."

"Actually, it kinda does." Et tu, Bruce? "Batman had Zatara-."

"Bah! If Under Siege Two taught me anything, it's that there's more than one way to detect a stealth plane. Ring, we're looking for a plane-" There's a rush of displaced air as a black jet aircraft shoots over our heads. I get a shield-dome up just in time to stop us getting blown away. "-just like that one." The ring adds a target reticle to the dome shield, tracking the plane. "Very funny." I lift the ring to my ear. "Orange Lantern to Batman, should we deploy?"

"Point defenses?"

"Transmitting scans."

Two missiles shoot away from the plane, striking the gun emplacements on the near side. A small black shape glides after them and lands in a crouch. "Landing area clear."

The air flickers and we're standing next to him. No immediate attack but whoever's inside must know they got hit. I nod to Kaldur. "See you back at the cave. Ring, Ice Fortress Two." Another flicker and I see-.

"Hey Orange, what kept you?" Guy's face floats above the ring. I peer through the snowfall, just managing to make out the glow of Guy's construct-armour in the middle distance. "An' who's your friend?"

"Friend?"

I close my eyes for a moment, then transition to Guy's position. Strictly speaking there's no advantage to us being close to each other but it makes it psychologically easier. "My latest Construct-Lantern. He used to be a Praexis Demon. I call him Fatty. And how he learned FTL transition before Teekl I'll never know."

"O..kay..." Guy and Fatty stare at each other for a moment but Fatty's too vacant to intimidate. Guy shakes his head and returns his attention to the Fortress. "So what's say the three of us bust this sucker open, huh?"

"Any Lantern could bust it open. I want to capture it intact. Then I want you to go somewhere Leaguers will see it and repeat the process."

He face shrugs. "Not exactly publicity-shy, but what's the big deal?"

"The League's recruiting. I want you to get in. Best way to do that-."

"Is fer them to see me do somethin' clever." He nods. "That thing's too heavy fer those vents to be keepin' it up."

"Anti-gravity system?"

"Probably. Whoever's in charge'll be in the tower, along with the control systems."

"Isn't that a bit obvious?"

"Eh, probably more worried about ground to air missiles than us. Think you can hold the whole thing up on your lonesome?"

"Have you ever bonded with an Embodiment?"

He grins at me. "Arc of fire on those guns, don't reckon they can hit us if we come in from the top."

"You cut through to the inside while I try and patch into the controls?"

"Sounds like a plan to me." An idea strikes and he looks away from the Fortress and at me. "Hey, how d'you think the League guys who can't fly r'even gunna get up to these Fortresses?"

Um? "No idea, actually."

back

Half-hearted 22

next

11th November

13:36 GMT -7

Guy's large circular saw construct hits the side of the command tower at the same time as my much smaller drill. The six upper segments of the tower are basically huge radiator grilles. The temperature up here is staggering, and without either rings or supernatural fortitude trying to take this route inwards would be a very bad idea. I've no idea what they're made of that they're not glowing red or on fire. Even with my scans blocked I could try taking a piece, but I don't want to risk breaking the thing. And hey, if we capture the Fortress I'll have all the time I want to dissect it.

I've set the ring to notify me if the Fortress starts to fall. If it actually is using a gravity manipulation device -and wouldn't that be a find- I won't necessarily feel it if we start heading towards the city below. Don't want to get carried away and get thousands of people killed because I got fixated on the secondary objective. I sent Fatty to draw fire from the freeze ray cannon emplacements. They can't really hit us up here but I want whoever's inside to think that this is actually a fight for long enough for us to grab them. Fatty hasn't got the hang of phasing but has worked out that a weapon designed to impair molecular vibrations doesn't work too well on a thing that isn't made of molecules.

I may not be able to scan the inside from the outside but I should be able to worm a construct around inside until I find something. Harder going than I thought it would be. I've practised cutting through steel and titanium, but this is.. no. Focus. If I don't get this done I'm going to have to spend ages at the poles. And Denver will get flattened. I've never been to Denver before, but I'd really want to avoid pointless destruction whatever the location.

"Orange, I've got the hatch! What's takin' you so long?"

And I'd quite like to beat Guy... There!

"I've got access! I've got... Ah."

"Got what? Booof!" Guy shoots backwards out of the hatch, the head and shoulders of his construct armour caked in inch-thick ice. He steadies himself for a moment, then the ice glows green and explodes off him.

"Local internal monitoring and automated defences. I've registered the hatch alarm as a malfunction and told the monitoring that nothing's happening but it isn't connected to anything else. Whoever made this actually had the sense not to run everything through a single central computer."

"Whaw. Step up from the normal crazies."

"Not too far up, that entrance still connects to the rest of the superstructure."

"I'm goin', I'm goin'."

He disappears back down the hatch. I rewrite a few memory sectors to make sure we don't get shot in the back and then follow him in, using the severed hatch to plug the hole and repairing the join. The inside reminds me a little of a submarine. Once you get past the internal airlock... Which means this could have been built off-planet. Ugh. Anyway, the corridor appears to have been built with modular components, mostly conventional steel rather than whatever the external armour is made of. And I can scan.. some of it. Most of the internal structure. Not what I assume to be the command centre and not the machine doing the freezing, but I can get the rest. Ring, transmit this to the team and the League.

Compliance.

Guy's already at work on the first internal bulkhead, a fine green beam slicing into the doorframe. I can't see a manual mechanism and the surround is made of the same stuff as the external armour. This time I don't bother with it. I already know that I can cut through the steel to get at the circuitry on the other side so I fire off a cutting beam of my own. "So, why do you suppose this is happening?"

"What'd'ya mean?"

"No demands have been issued, so no one's trying to hold the country to ransom. It's not an alien invasion because there's no troops or resource extractions. No one's gone on television to declare themselves the 'god of snow'..." I penetrate the steel and start feeling around for the next section. Another armoured wall. Cutting...

"Heh. Those one's 're always fun."

"Right, ego trip, but no one's doing it."

"So, what, a distraction? I mean, these thing 'ave gotta cost.. pwww, more than I make in a year."

"Yes, but not just the cost. Getting access to technology this advanced on Earth wouldn't be easy. I'm just thinking.. if it were me... The only thing that really justifies however many millions of dollars these things cost to build... Do you think you could shield yourself from a nuclear blast?" Guy stops cutting. I'm through, now I send out multiple filaments to try and find a wire linked to the controls. "I mean, one from a reasonably modern ex-Soviet bomb or something. It's not a secret that most of the League's American. Lure everyone into a small area around it, watch the news footage until you're sure the whole League are in place and then boom."

He starts cutting again, the glow noticeably brighter. "Anyone ever tell you you've got a nasty imagination?"

"Makes sense though, doesn't it? Doorway security compromised, internal defences to safe. No one on the other side again."

"Yeah. Wish it didn't. 'Cause if a bomb like that goes off over Denver..."

"Yep. Want a hand with that?"

"Nah." The door comes free of its frame and he moves it aside. "I got it." He steps through the doorway. "What I'm worryin' about is why there aren't any guards."

"And what would, say, thirty guards do against us?"

Guy leads the way at a jog towards the next door. "Warn tha' guys who could actually stop us."

"Who, Lenny McDoesn'texist?"

"Hey, don't get too cocky. We couldn't scan through this thing's armor and we still can't scan some bits. How do we know it's not crawlin' with guys?"

"I'm still monitoring the sections we've passed through with filaments. I can watch the outside through Fatty's eyes and Batman's attack by their mission cameras. All anyone's seen so far are automated defences."

"Ah. Yeah, okay, sounds like you've got it covered."

We jog down the corridor, heading towards where the command centre appears to be. While we could use FTL it would only really shave a few seconds off our time and harm our reactions if there really was a stealthed enemy at the emergence point, and that's leaving aside the horror stories Guy's taken pleasure telling me about counter-FTL techniques and what happens to Lanterns who don't spot them in time. Temperature's heating up a bit here. We're directly under one of the radiators so whatever physics breaking thing they're using to make the heat exchange work is running through the walls around us. Even if the League destroy the other four, they have to try to salvage the power system. I can barely begin to imagine how much power-

Approximately one quadrillion, eight hundred trillion Watts at peak operation.

-this place... Oh. I'm not actually sure what that equates to, but it sounds like a-.

Guy is blasted back against the wall opposite the corner he just turned and is swiftly encased in ice. His armour is still whole and I see him roll his eyes at me. Green sword blades spin around on all sides and with a lump of ice acting as a shield he charges forwards again. "Thought you said you turned alla' these off!"

"That one's on an independent system. Hang on a moment and I'll-."

I hear a muffled explosion. "Don't worry, I got it."

back

Half-hearted 23

next

11th November

13:40 GMT -7

Well, they certainly know we're here now. No sense messing about. Guy goes for the heavily reinforced door with a green cutting beam as I pop out three particle beam projector turrets. Overpenetration might be a problem but I doubt it would be a worse risk than dropping this thing on Denver. A flurry of purple beams later and Guy pushes the burned-through door into the room beyond with a green blast wave. He swoops after it as I dismiss the projectors and takes up station over the centre of the room as I sweep my eyes over it from the doorway.

Three other reinforced doors at the other cardinal points. A slightly sunken circular area with Star Trek bridge looking chairs arranged in a circle around a central command chair. Each chair has a holographic display/control system, probably of individual systems. Over to my right I see a spiral staircase down to what the ring says is a kitchen area. On my left another goes up to some bunk beds. No one's here? I'm certainly not seeing any bombs...

Guy hovers over the command chair, green light strobing across the room from his body. He remembered!

"You bin holding out on me, Orange?"

"About what?"

"That purple beam thing."

"I never said I didn't have a particle beam projector construct. And it drains the ring more than it's worth most of the time." I send filaments from my right hand to each of the consoles. "Turrets deactivating, freezing systems-" Are protected, but I have a power ring. "-deactivated. Anti gravity generator stable. Thank you mystery supervillain who really should have found a more productive use for their abilities, I won't waste your wonderful bounty."

Guy looks disappointed. "That it?"

"Looks like. Oh, hang on, looks like there's a scuttling charge on the power plant."

"I'll get down-."

"Don't worry, a turret had line of sight. I've frozen it. Um, ring, transmit full schematics to Lantern Gardner."

"Compliance."

"Data file received."

Huh. I have no idea whose voice Guy's ring uses.

"Uh.. thanks?"

"Now you send it to the League. Actually-" Quick scan of the place. The main freeze generator is directly below us and not shielded from this position. Once we've taken care of this I'll have another scry blocking design to show John. This makes.. what, five now? Yep. "-get lost. I can handle this place by myself."

"You sure?"

"Well, check with Batman, but I've got full control of this place. I can land it or stick it over the North Pole or whatever."

"Mh. Guess I am supposed to be in charge."

"How are you supposed to be in charge?"

"Got a few years' seniority on you."

"Different Corps. That's like an Air Force officer giving orders to an Army officer. Besides, I'm affiliated with the Justice League and you're not."

"Not yet, maybe."

"Not never unless you go and do something impressive in front of Batman."

"Fine, fine." He lands and strolls out of the door we came in by. "Lantern Gardner to Batman, Fortress Two secure. Orange's gunna stay here and look after it. Where'd you want me?"

I transition to the command chair. Nice set-up. Whoever's in charge can rotate and address their subordinates as well as seeing what they're doing through the back of their holoscreen. Any crew listed? No. Alright then, ring, scan for genetic material.

Hair and skin cells detected from one hundred thirty seven Humans and nine Cows.

Cows?

Seat cushions covered with preserved cow skin.

Real leather seats? I press it with my right index finger, thinning my construct armour to feel the texture. Nice. Anyone I know?

No matches found for either Humans or Cows.

That would have made things too easy, I suppose. Okay, doesn't seem to be a practical way to clear the sky with the heat from the radiators and I wouldn't want to risk compounding everyone's misery by flooding the place. The fortress isn't able to move particularly fast but I set course for the North Pole anyway. After a few seconds' analysis the ring manages to understand the broken door's composition well enough to repair it. Loss of heat shouldn't be a problem for as long as the radiators remain hot but I don't feel like having an arctic draft. Hmm. For what I want this thing to do the cold air system isn't really what I need. Giant cold guns would be better but that would require the system getting reconfigured. Is Batman going to want to look over everything personally? Of course he is.

Now that the computers are dancing to my tune I should probably do a manual inspection. Those scuttling charges need to go for a start. Just.. just to be sure, I send filaments throughout the Fortress, accessing door controls to open them as they spread. No, there's really no one else here.

I don't get it.

I'll get Mister Zat-. Oh. No, I won't. I'll get John or Kaldur to go over this place, see if it's been exposed to magic of some sort. Ring? Residual zeta radiation?

None found.

Anything that looks like a Dolmen Gate?

None found.

I get up and start walking in the direction of the main power plant. This thing was clearly designed for a crew, a humanoid crew. Ring, is this thing spaceworthy?

Ice Fortress is capable of space flight.

FTL?

No FTL travel mechanism detected.

Any stealth systems?

No stealth systems detected.

Cow leather, so the seats weren't made by aliens. I shake my head. What could anyone possibly get out of doing something like this that they couldn't just buy with all the money it cost them to build it? And five of them? I shake my head again. Oh well. What was the line? Stories have to make sense but real life doesn't? A flying building that's clearly designed to have a crew doesn't have one. That's a massive expenditure of resources. They can't... Could there be some easy way to build massive structures like this that I don't know about? A power ring could do it eventually. Some sort of refitted alien surplus? Steel is pretty much steel, right? But the ring didn't detect alien DNA... Ring, scan for DNA equivalent molecules?

Subject undefined.

Fair enough. I have asked, but Guy told me that the Greenies aren't allowed to share their databases with me. I understand where they're coming from and at least the Guardians aren't keeping the exclusion zone up anymore. I haven't mentioned the Corpse to him and if they haven't visited yet I'm going to assume that I'm in the clear.

One more reinforced door and I'm in what appears to be the main generator room. Huh. The generator appears to be a metal hoop surrounded by a corona of cables in a larger hoop-shaped frame. One end of each of the cables is attached to the inner hoop and the other trails outwards then down around the outer rim of the outer hoop before drooping down to the floor. A pool of treacly blackness spans the interior of the inner hoop. I peer at it then shine an orange light at it. No reflectivity at all.

Ring, what is that?

Unable to identify.

And then the black circle flickers and dies and the floor drops out beneath me.

back

Half-hearted 24

next

11th November

13:46 GMT -7

RingPowerItPowerItPowerIt!

Orange filaments connect the ring to each of the cables as the Fortress continues to fall through the air. I'm halfway to the ceiling and I've got maybe twenty seconds to get power to the anti-gravity system before I flatten Denver. My only alternative is dead lifting the thing with a construct and I've got no idea at all if I can do that. The biggest thing I've tried holding up was a ten tonne construct Guy was using to train me. I managed it, but this weighs a bit more than ten tonnes.

The floor rises slowly beneath me. Ring? Am I matching velocities or is the anti-gravity actually back on?

Power flow sufficient for anti-gravity operation. Warning, ring charge to electron flow conversion at rate required will deplete ring in seven minutes.

I use my connection to the navigation systems to change course from North Pole to 'away from civilisation'. I think. I'm not going to be very popular with the Arapaho Forestry Commission but at least the chance of me squashing anyone is minimised. I need to understand what just happened. Ring, analyse the hoop. How was it generating power?

Unable to assess. No component of the structure indicated has significant power generation capabilities.

What? So what was the black circle thing?

No similar phenomena on record. However, it is the most likely source of power.

Thank you, Captain Obvious. Okay, pool of light generating power. The hoop couldn't be sustaining that itself. So, coming from somewhere else? Relaying power like a wormhole or something? There was no signal from this side, I'm in complete control of every computer system I can find and I'm aware of all radiation in the area around the hoop. So if there was no signal...

I look around and strengthen my armour construct. No, stupid, Guy's making me paranoid. All they'd have to do is look up-. No, just look on the news, they're bound to be reporting on the fact that the snow blowers have stopped. With no way to know what I'm looking for I can't take the time away from this to look for the power source and try to reconnect. Getting a replacement power source or my lantern is out for similar reasons.

Guy!

I hold the ring out in front of me. "Orange two eight one four to green two eight one four B."

There's a slight delay, then a small image of Guy sitting leaned back on a command chair like the one on this Fortress' bridge, his hands behind his head. "'Sup Orange. Fortress One's under control, thanks to yours truly."

"Have you turned the ice blower off?"

He waves his right hand "Yeah, first thing I did. And froze the scuttlin' charges. Bats is goin' over the place now."

Fiddlesticks. "Guy, get everyone out."

He frowns. "Whaat? Why? Thought you wan'ed-."

"The Fortress doesn't power itself. The generator is more of a relay and it can be deactivated remotely. I'm having to hold this Fortress up by my own power, and if the jets are off-."

The image blurs as he throws himself from the chair towards the exit. "Then anyone with a telescope'll know we've busted their toy. Bats, we need to vamoose! You need help over there?"

"Unless you've got someone strong as Superman, fast as the Flash and able to fly, don't worry. I'm pretty sure I can avoid landing on..." Oh, hang on. "Guy, what's the largest object a Lantern can do an FTL transfer with?"

"I don't actually think there's a lim-. You gonna try n'move the Fortress?"

"I really want to keep this."

"Well good lu-. Whoow!" He jerks in the corridor. "Okay, we just lost engines." He flies through another door, pushes Batman aside and levels his ring at the hoop. "Sorry Orange, I need to concentrate."

"I'll leave you to it. Off." Of course, he can just take his lantern out of subspace when he runs out of power. Ring, calculate distance to the nearest coast.

North Pacific coastline is approximately fifteen hundred kilometres due west.

I don't suppose there's any chance this thing will float, is there?

A cut away image of the Fortress appears in my head.

Probability minimal. Quite aside from high density and poorly buoyant shape the structure is not air tight. Vents designed to allow sub zero air to blow outwards would swiftly let in enough water to fill the lower corridors, increasing the weight further.

An animated sequence in my head shows the Fortress landing on the sea and sinking slowly before getting faster and faster as the water level inside increases. I suppose I could just drop it somewhere shallow like in DearS.. but if I did that I doubt I'd ever be able to make it go anywhere. If it was going to sink the forest would be the better choice... Ice. Frozen water floats on liquid water. This machine basically makes ice... Ring, remaining charge?

Eighty one percent remaining.

How much of that would an FTL transfer to the sea shore take?

Variable. Intensity of-.

Avarice, avarice, yeah. Freezing seawater is a pain, the volume combined with convection currents... Ring, is there a significant difference in energy consumption between an FTL transfer to the North Pacific and one to the Arctic Circle?

No.

Alright. If I transfer to the Arctic Circle and turn the ice maker up to maximum, can I freeze enough water to support the Fortress?

Variable. Intensity of-.

Stop. Plot course. Turn the ice machines on. Tell me when I get avaricious enough.

Compliance.

Used to be that I'd come up with a list of practical reasons why this was a good idea. Not this time. Between the Ophidian and the oath I've learned something.. a lot of things, about avarice. This Fortress isn't mine because a piece of paper somewhere lists me as owner or because I have the strength to see off challengers. It's mine because it must be mine. I require it to be mine. The alternative isn't just unwelcome, it's unthinkable. I am my wants. I am this Fortress. I am reglaciation. I am environmental restoration. I am the world and all the-

Necessary avarice achieved.

-people in it. All me. All mine. My designs are what the future will conform to.

"This is my cause."

The Fortress begins to glow orange.

"This is my fight."

I see the splash down zone.

"Shine through the void with orange light!"

A momentary disorientation.

Destination reached.

"I've claimed all within my sight."

BABUM.

An orange frame appears around the outside of the Fortress, additional cold gun constructs appearing and targeting the sea as the Fortress falls towards splashdown. The sea beneath starts to ice up but I need more!

"To keep what is mine, that is my right."

The frame drops, pushing itself under the water. I feel the cold guns firing at full power and a column of ice begins rising from the water. Larger base area.

BABUM.

The Fortress splashes down but I bring us in soft and anchor myself relative to the room around me. Immediately I refocus the cold guns on the water touching the Fortress and cut the flow of freezing air from the vents. We're sinking, but the holes are frozen over and the ice is resisting, buoying the Fortress up. Too close, I need more ice. More more mo-.

Charge depleted.

The ring goes out and a moment later the Fortress shudders as the remaining support provided by the anti-gravity generator disappears. Fingers crossed then. Ooh, suddenly quite cold. Should probably head back up to the bridge.. no, won't be any power there either. I start walking towards the top of the main body of the Fortress. If this sinks I'm kind of doomed. I don't think.. I mean, the last image the ring showed me seemed to suggest that I'd made enough-.

Fatty floats around the corner. "Food?"

"No, there's no..." Hang on a minute. "Fatty, you can eat heat, right?" He nods enthusiastically. "Would you be so good as to fly outside and suck heat out of the water around the Fortress?"

"Food?"

"Do it, and when we get back to land I'll buy you whatever food you want."

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NEXT CHAPTER

Mirage

BACK

Mirage 1

next

Mirage

13th November

09:06 GMT -5

There's a soft thump as Alan puts another stack of battered looking journals down on the table. "I think that's the lot of them. Since Kent.. urm.. passed on, I haven't really got around to organizing it all yet."

Zatanna pushes her current volume aside, stands and leans over the table to check the front piece and opening pages. Most of them have turned out to have dates written somewhere reasonably accessible but the dates on individual entries generally don't have the years written on them and we're not quite sure about the order of some of the volumes. "Thanks Mister Scott. Sorry about taking over your dining room like this."

"That's quite alright Zatanna. And please, call me Alan."

"Thanks! Okay, um, this one starts in nineteen twenty seven..." She picks it up and moves it into the appropriate pile. "Nineteen twenty nine aaand..." She sags slightly. "Forty two."

Kent got the Helmet of Fate somewhere between thirty nine and forty one, and either he happened not to keep a journal during that period.. or something happened to it. I suppose it might have got left in Kahndaq when he returned to the states or.. got destroyed in one of the many fights he was involved in afterwards. Nabu might even have destroyed it himself.

Alan thinks for a moment. "Well, it might just have got mixed in with some of his other books. They're not really in any order. Howsabout you and Paul make a start on these and I'll have a rummage around up in the attic, see what I can come up with?"

Zatanna nods, already leafing through the forty two journal. "That would be really helpful."

Alan turns to leave then pauses, looking at Zatanna with a small frown. Dismissing whatever idea struck him with a small shake of his head he then continues out of the room.

I turn another page of the nineteen forty six edition. I understand why he warded the books but it has meant that I can't just scan the whole thing in one go. Plus, I'm not... Zatanna has a much better idea of what's relevant than I do. She's already read the bit with the fight with Mordru in sixty nine, but that wasn't the first time they ran into each other and Kent didn't bother putting down an explanation of what Mordru was. That might be in the journal explaining their first encounter, or it could be in a different sort of book entirely. Did he write books for magic instruction?

Another page. Nabu had the gall to show up at one of the Ice Fortresses, though thankfully not the one Zatanna was fighting at. I've already watched the recording of his actions and he didn't use any abilities I haven't seen before. My own Fortress is still on its custom built iceberg waiting for me to find a power source big enough to get it back into the air. I'm tempted to try asking the Ophidian to guide me through the process of plugging my personal lantern into it but I don't want to have to explain that one to Diana. Guy managed to bring Fortress One down more or less safely. The bottom couple of levels got turned into a crumple zone but it could be repaired. The other three attacks went less well. No one on our team was hurt but the three Fortresses are all smouldering wrecks and Fortress Five crashed inside Central City. The area below had been evacuated but the property damage was extensive.

Guy ended up giving me a lift back to the mountain after the Fortresses were all dealt with. Good job too; no power meant no communications or heating. Much longer and I'd have had to risk getting a ride on Fatty or trying to persuade Teekl to pass on a message. I asked Batman but he told me that the League doesn't have any power sources that could be used to power the Fortresses. He didn't have a problem with me keeping the one I've got -as long as I don't let it sink- so I'll just have to add that to the list of things to do after I leave Earth. STAR Labs people are already all over Fortress One and the others are going to get a quick League inspection before being dismantled by the local version of Damage Control.

Another page turned. Nineteen forty six was not a helpful year. Kent stopped using Nabu in nineteen forty five at the urging of his wife, and cut back on his 'superhero hours' a great deal as well. This journal's mostly about his professional life as a teacher and archaeologist. Interesting stuff I'm sure but not a lot of good to us. Need to go through it all though, just in case. Actually... "Zatanna, what was it Batman wanted to talk to you about yesterday?"

She flinches. Why would she..? I reach across the corner of the table and put my right hand on her right shoulder. A moment of tension and then she relaxes slightly. "He.. wanted to talk to me about..." She keeps looking at the journal but reaches across her chest to put her left hand on mine. "He's listed in Dad's Will as the person who becomes my legal guardian in the event of Dad's death. I mean, Dad's family all live in Italy and I.. barely speak any Italian."

"So he offered to take you in?" A shallow nod. I frown. "But Mister Zatara's not dead."

Her head turns slightly towards me and she meets my eyes for a moment. "That's what I said. He... He said that the League's going to try to help Dad but he has no idea if it's even possible." She exhales sharply through her nose. "I knew Dad and Batman were close, but I don't even know who he is."

"Really? He didn't tell you?"

She shakes her head. "Secret identities don't stay secret if you keep sharing them. Obviously he would tell me if I'd.. said yes."

"It was condi-?" I blink then wave my left hand, filling the room with orange light to prevent eavesdropping. Then I take two sound ward stones out of subspace and pass one to her.

She picks it up with her right hand. "What?"

"Bruce Wayne. Batman's real name is Bruce Wayne."

Her eyes widen in surprise for a second, then she nods. "That.. makes sense. I'd wondered how my dad knew a billionaire industrialist. So, that means that Robin's..?"

"Richard Grayson, yes."

"You.. weren't supposed to tell me that, were you?"

"Probably not, but he should have. If he was asking you that... "

"He was just trying to help."

I 'mmm' noncommittally. If Batman thought that freeing Mister Zatara was that difficult.. maybe not even possible.. then he shouldn't have taken 'no' for an answer. Tempting as the idea might sound to some of her contemporaries leaving fourteen year olds to their own devices isn't a good idea. Maybe he just wanted to leave it for a bit? I turn another page and turn off the orange light as I hear Alan come back down the stairs.

He walks in with a broader but thinner book. "Nothing too exciting, but I remembered Kent putting this together as a guide for the rest of us for if we ran into something magical. There's a bit on Mordru in there." He puts in down next to Zatanna's current book. "Look, I was watching the news when you and the League took on those fortresses. I know there's a new Doctor Fate. I'll understand if you've been told not to tell anyone but I'd sort of like to know who it is." Alan frowns slightly as he looks first at Zatanna then at me. "Shouldn't he be reading all this so he knows what he's letting himself in for?"

Zatanna looks at me. "It's up to you, but I think we should tell him."

She nods, then looks at Alan. "It's... It's my dad."

Alan's frown deepens. "I thought he wasn't interested in it? That's what Kent said he said... Was that why he's taking a leave of absence? To.. get used to it?"

Ah yes, the Justice League press release. I'm not.. sure why they decided to cover up what really happened to Mister Zatara. Diana said that working out how to play that issue was why they were so slow in releasing information on what happened on Roanoke Island.

Zatanna gives me a pleading look.

"He's not taking a leave of absence. Nabu's taken him and isn't giving him back."

Alan recoils. "What? No!" He looks at Zatanna and her mask fades slightly. The emotion in her face is enough to convince him. "Wh-? Are you telling me Diana was a party to the Justice League lying to the world? She'd never do that. She can't stand lying."

"If Mister Zatara was taking a leave of absence don't you think that he'd be the one making the announcement?" His eyes drop. He doesn't doubt me but it's a big idea to get your head around. "I don't think Diana was happy about it but she didn't write or read out the press release."

"Even so, Fate isn't-."

"Alan, I was there when it happened." I look at Zatanna. "And so was Zatanna. We're reading up on Nabu to try and work out how to get rid of him."

Alan shakes his head in disbelief. "I just.. can't believe that bastard -oh, pardon me, Miss- would do something like that. I remember when Kent stopped wearing him, why he said he.. did it. I just... And the League knows about this?" Zatanna looks up and him and nods. "Well I... Zatanna, I'm so sorry. I'll... I'll just make a start on this pile, shall I? I'll let you know if I find anything."

back

Mirage 2

next

13th November

20:48 GMT -5

I follow Jade down an alleyway on the outskirts of Chiclayo. As per our agreement I've left the ring and Father Box behind in my hotel room. My hotel room. Feels wrong to even think it.

"Jade, if you don't tell me what it is I've done wrong I can't possibly apologise for it." My night vision's far superior to a normal Human's but I can't read facial expression beneath a mask when the face is pointing away from me. I think she might have just twitched but that might just be how ninjas move. She's wearing her mask. With me. If I'd realised that she was that angry I'd have tried to sort this out sooner.

"You haven't done anything."

!Find out!

Oh, is that how we're doing it. "Jade, you've been annoyed with me since we got back from your grandmother's. I don't know-."

She turns around to have me, face thrust forwards. "Seven! Years!"

Oh. That. "Jade, she surprised me. I didn't mean-."

"So, not seven years then? Maybe you meant eight or nine years?"

!!!

"She surprised me, alright? We hadn't-." She folds her arms across her chest and turns her head to the side. "Hadn't talked about it. I was just trying to communicate that it wouldn't be in the immediate future. What..? What do you think is a reasonable amount of time? Tell me, and I'll plan with that in mind."

"That's not how it works."

"Well, I'm sorry, but I've never done this before. I've never even seriously considered marriage before. And she asked and you didn't answer and I thought I'd say something to.. break the silence. I.. I didn't mean to-."

She turns her face back a little, her eyes on me. "Were your parents really together for seven years before they got married?"

"Yes, and when I left my home plane they'd been together thirty three years since their marriage. A long courtship doesn't necessarily mean that I'm not interested, I am. I didn't even mean to suggest it as a.. time.. for us. How important is this to you?"

"I don't know." She relaxes a little. Oh, thank goodness. "I've never been in a relationship like this either." I take a slightly uncertain step towards her and she doesn't move away. "My parents got married five months after they first met."

"Without wanting to be flippant about it, look how well they get on now. Your father didn't even take the time to write to your mother while she was in prison, let alone visit her." Another step and I'm close enough to reach out to gently pry her hand away from her chest. She shifts position and for a moment I think she's going to move away but instead she lets me pull it to my chest. I run the tips of my fingers over the skin of her hand, delighting in being able to touch her again after.. seventeen days? Too long. Too long. "Trying to be rational about it, I don't think marriage is sensible until we have some sort of resolution on the matter of the Justice League and the League of Shadows. However, if you want, we can throw rationality aside. I'm sure we can find a priest around here somewhere."

"How would you find a priest without your ring?"

"We're in South America. I'll throw a brick."

"They aren't that common."

"I either hit a priest, or I hit someone else and a priest will turn up to give them the last rites."

She turns her mask downwards slightly and gives an amused exhalation. "You're an atheist."

"I'm prepared to tolerate God's interference for a few minutes if it means getting you for a lifetime."

"Oh. Damn it." There's a hitch in her voice. Is she.. crying? I strongly dislike not just being able to tell. "I was going to stay angry. I was-. I was-." She lunges forwards and throws her arms around my waist as I pull her closer. I want to bury my face in her hair again but I'm just a little too tall and I don't want to break contact to alter our position. I find myself grinning like a loon as she settles into my embrace. This is how things are supposed to be. "Is this going to keep happening?"

"If we didn't care it wouldn't hurt.. and, we care. A lot. But the more we talk about what we're feeling, what we're thinking, the less it will happen. Oprah said so." She snorts, then pulls back a little to push her right hand up under her mask to wipe her eyes. "You know, you could take your mask off and let me do that."

"No, I'm on a job. The mask stays on." She removes her hand and straightens the mask. "You can take it off me later."

"No, I think I'll leave the mask on this time. Haven't tried that before."

"We have. That time-."

I shake my head. "That was a blindfold, that's totally different."

She turns away once more but now there's a spring in her step that wasn't there before. And-. Is she wiggling at me?

She leads the way towards wherever our rendezvous point is supposed to be. I did scan the area but to be honest I didn't consider the exact location particularly important. Batman's files are quite clear: if Ra's makes an agreement he'll stick to it. The letter of it anyway. There'll probably be a load of Shadows or whatever around -some of them probably with equipment that can actually hurt me- but unless I start something they won't. And just in case? None of the walls around here are strong enough to stop me slamming through them and calling the ring to me. Still a risk but I think I need to do this.

Jade holds up her right hand to stop me, then scurries ahead to check our entry point. Having a homeless person or lost drunk hanging around would be a bit of a nuisance, quite aside from local law enforcement. I feel a moment of concern as she goes beyond my visual range but I close my eyes and take a deep breath and let it flow away. Huh, actually is helping. I have been pleasantly surprised to discover that this version of Lantern Gardner is a nice enough man.. if you can stand a certain amount of banter. I think I like him, actually. Perhaps I should talk to him at the next session about pooling our ring-related knowledge?

Jade comes back inside my visual range, waving me up. I take a quick look around myself and then head in her direction, taking care not to make excessive noise. We walk up some concrete steps to a loading dock and then enter a warehouse. Conveyor belts, cardboard and various work stations, but the light inside is even worse than outside and I can't see the far walls. I close my eyes and sniff. Myself and Jade aside, seven distinct scents, fresh and Human. I've never smelt Ra's before. If he's here then so is Ubu. The rest will most likely be regular Shadows.

Jade stops about fifteen metres into the building and kneels. I come to a halt a couple of metres back. After a moment she looks back at me. "You're supposed to kneel."

"Why? He isn't my master."

"It would be a sign of respect." Hard soled steps on metal. Ra's' voice. I still can't see him but I can see metal stairs going up to the machinery above us. The echo's throwing off my hearing. "Perhaps that is expecting too much from a man such as yourself."

"At this stage, yes, it is. That's rather why I wanted to talk to you about your little murder-cult."

More footsteps, ahead and to the left. I can just about see him in the gloom. "The League of Shadows is far more than a murder-cult."

"So Jade's tried to convince me. She believes and I.. find that I rather dislike the idea that a man of your age and intelligence would set up and maintain such an organisation purely for that purpose. I have to tell you, however, that your recent activity has not left me feeling optimistic." Yes, it's him, silently walking Ubu by his side. "A giant laser in space? The sour grapes mud-man? I realise that judging a seven hundred year old man by the activity of a few months is unfair but from the reports I've read it would appear indicative of your behaviour during the whole modern era."

"If your opinion of me is so low then why did you ask to meet with me?"

"Hope isn't really my thing, O master of assassins. Buuuut, before I condemn you in my own mind as just another lunatic, I thought I'd give you the chance to tell me what it's all about. I'm not asking for you to let me in on day to day operations, but what's the ideology? What's your goal? What is all the killing in aid of? You're clearly an intelligent man, there must be something driving you?" No immediate response. "Isn't there?"

"And if there were, why would I share it with you?"

"Recent events, the whole Roanoke Island business, have led me to doubt the Justice League's modus operandi."

"Why should I believe that?"

"You already know what I did to Mister Crock. You probably know that I did the same thing to Bane." A slight inclination of his head. "And how do you think the Great Ten really got hold of those nasty wizards?" A slow and considered nod. "You're never going to get a better chance to turn me than this. So, talk. What's it all about, really, when you get right down to it?"

back

Mirage 3

next

15th November

13:11 GMT -5

She doesn't look around as I take the stool next to her at the bar.

"Have they seriously not finished the hearings yet?"

Amanda Waller turns her head just slightly towards me. "Oh. It's you." She takes a tiny sip from her whiskey glass before using it to point at the television above the bar. "What do you make of that?"

"Hm?"

"It's hardly a big secret that he was living in the Themysciran embassy. With your sponsor."

It's tuned to GBS and is showing some sort of lively protest march. The caption says 'Live in Kahndaq'. As I watch, the camera turns away from the protestors to a distant figure floating in the air. A moment later it zooms in on Adom's face. He's side on from the film crew and his arms are folded across his chest. His eyes flick briefly in the direction of the camera and then he goes back to watching the people below.

"No, he's doing that on his own. Only good thing to come out of this whole mess if you ask me." Their children disappearing triggered a small protest in Cairo. It was the middle of the night there and it wasn't the government's fault but the additional unrest was enough to trigger a public demonstration. The government attempted to follow through on its repressive instincts and send in the troops only to discover that every single military transport vehicle near the capital had been torn apart. When the expected clamp down didn't come more people joined in and Adom's stock has sky-rocketed. "I'm actually a bit impressed with how restrained he's being."

"So what makes Cairo different from Fawcett City?"

I shake my head. "Same power set, different guy. That's Teth Adom, not Black Adam."

"Oh really? So what happened to him?"

"I did."

This time she turns her head far enough towards me to look at me with both eyes. "That so?"

"I was part of the team that went to Louisiana. But back to my original question..?"

She takes another sip and goes back to watching the television. "I spent six weeks getting chewed out by the Senate Judiciary Committee and roasted by the press. Belle Reve was and is sound. To even try to break out they had to tamper with prison uniforms being supplied from outside the prison, make sure exactly the right people were inside and attack our off-site monitoring post. And even with all that, only one person got out and you picked him up immediately. They had nothing."

"So how come you're here rather than back at Belle Reve?"

"Report's not been released yet."

I frown. "Is that.. unusually slow?"

She glances at me with raised eyebrows. "What d'you think? Meanwhile I'm dodging every representative and reporter who wants to talk to me about how to stop everyone's children being stolen away again."

"But you don't know anything about... I mean, no offence or anything, but you designed Belle Reve to hold metahumans and schizo tech users, not magic users."

"I know! Try telling that to a politician in search of a sound bite."

I shuffle uncomfortably on my stool. "Well..."

"Oh yeah. Good work sabotaging Senator Knight's presidential bid. Even made me laugh a little."

Presidential..? "I didn't think the election was for.. two years?"

"Any politician sniffing after the top job needs to start getting their name in the headlines now if they want a run at the Oval Office. Let people know where they stand. All President Horne's people have done is spout platitudes so Knight figured he'd try and grab the spotlight." She takes another sip. "You have anything to do with Wotan getting shipped to Atlantis?"

"I didn't put him there, but I did point out that they had better facilities."

"Sounds like they should be talking to you, then. Maybe if you hadn't scared them all off..."

On the screen Kahndaqi police try launching tear gas at the protestors. In a second Adom's on site, throwing the grenades back at the police and then standing between them and their targets. The police back up in a hurry and the crowd cheer, causing him to grow a thin smile.

"Do you think..? Is there anything I can do to help you get your job back?"

She frowns and swivels around on her seat to face me. "Why? Is Strange blocking your conjugal visits?"

"Okay, look. Jade, is not my girlfriend. We are not having, and have never had sex. The only time she kissed me was to drug me with her lipstick and in any case she isn't even at Belle Reve anymore."

She frowns. "When'd that happen?"

"Just after you left. She got transferred to Gloria McDonald. Her lawyer convinced a judge that since she'd helped the guards during the breakout attempt she wouldn't be safe there any longer."

"She's a career killer."

"She was a career killer. I want to give her better choices." I wiggle my right hand. "Strange doesn't seem to have a problem with me visiting the Beresfords or Kadabra. Actually-" Another wiggle. "-he's a good deal friendlier than you are."

"So why're you offering to help?"

"Because I'd rather have someone who knows about prisons in charge of somewhere like Belle Reve. Because Strange is the first former head of Arkham not to end their tenure either dead or as an inmate, and there's something about him that I don't trust." Because he's a bad guy in the comics and I can see trouble brewing. "Because if someone's dragging their heels about reinstating you I'm worried that the other shoe will be a mass break out, for real this time."

She turns back to the bar. "Strange has been changing people around."

"So? That's normal, isn't it?"

"Maybe. After a break out there's a lot of finger pointing. If he was trying to scapegoat them I'd get it. I don't mean they deserve it, they're all solid people, I wouldn't have hired them if they weren't but I'd get the point. He's not. He's arranging transfers and people are taking them. Promotions, even."

"I'd understand not wanting to hang around, given what happened."

"These aren't people who'd be put off easily. And the new hires don't have the experience. Something doesn't add up."

"Was Strange getting the job unusual in itself? I'd have assumed that it would have gone to a senior warden?"

"A little, but it's a special prison. Could just be they wanted him because of his Arkham background."

I nod. "I'll keep an eye out. But I'm not sure what that has to do with you getting your job back?"

"I was going to be meeting someone about that." She looks past me towards the door. "But I suspect my meeting's been cancelled."

I frown and look around. Two black-suited bodyguards and a thin blonde man stand a little back from a thickset man in a blue suit with a red tie. His hair is black on top while his temples have faded to grey and he's looking at me with astonished horror.

Ah...

"Senator Knight. What an unexpected.. meeting."

back

Mirage 4

next

15th November

13:42 GMT -5

"So it works like a circuit board?"

"Aaaaaahhh... Sort of. With an active effect you'd need a practitioner controlling it, but it would still make it much easier than doing it manually."

The man introduced to me as Steven Goldberg makes another note on his notebook while Henry Knight nods in understanding. You know, I'm actually sort of impressed. A lesser man might have started an argument or stormed off. Henry's decided that he needs to learn enough to avoid saying something stupid like that in public again and since I know more than him he swallowed his anger.

"And you're saying this is common practice in Atlantis?"

"Yes. I mean, not everyone has them. It's not really worth it for simple magics and the most advanced adepts reach the point where they don't need them, but if you're talking about most professional mages, yes. My friend Kaldur -Aqualad- uses his for generating electricity."

He gestures at my arm. "What do yours do?"

"They make me undetectable by means of magic.. and certain forms of advanced technology." Guy lost that spar badly. I can now stand right in front of him and his ring's default scanner won't detect me.

"And... Anyone can use things like that?"

"For active stuff you'd need training, but, yeah."

"You don't need to be a member of some sort of cult, or descended from some great sorcerer or demon or something?"

"No." I smile. "As my friend John Constantine says, the ultimate secret of magic is that anyone can do it. A person's soul is essentially a stable magic network. Thousands of people -even without any particular training- use tiny amounts of magic actively all the time. That's why banning magic wouldn't work." He grimaces. "If you don't mind me asking, Senator: why didn't you ask us about this?" I shrug. "The League could have given you a summary, Mister Zatara's address is public knowledge."

He thinks for a moment, tapping his whiskey glass against the surface of the bar. "I suppose I just had a certain set of assumptions.. and in the absence of data to the contrary I didn't question them."

"Look.. um... I want to apologise. I.. shouldn't have... If I'd known it was an actual interview I'd have been a good deal more moderate in.. how I expressed myself."

"No, no. The damn journo shouldn't have ambushed you like that. And you're right, I should have checked my information before coming out that strongly." He sets his jaw a little to the left. "If I remember the last report from Commerce, America doesn't have significant trade with Atlantis. Hell, I don't think we even recognize each other's borders. You really think they'll help us out with this?"

"King Orin didn't join the Justice League for fun." I picture him laughing with Kaldur after Ice Fortress One was brought down. "Well, not just for fun. He's been trying to establish some sort of relationship with surface nations."

Henry turns to his assistant. "Steve, we need to set up a meeting with King Orin as soon as possible." Steve nods and fishes out a mobile phone. Henry turns back to me. "Is he.. actually king or..?"

"Atlantis is a constitutional monarchy. The King of Poseidonis is nominally in charge of the country but most of the actual national governing is done by a senate comprised of representatives from each city-state. Individual city-states have a high degree of autonomy. Some have their own hereditary rulers who are subservient to King Orin, others have elected bodies or oligarchies."

"Do you think they'd be prepared to trade magic based weapons with us?"

"That would depend on exactly what you want. I think they'd be very wary of sharing anything that could compromise their own defences, and if you're asking for ways to counter magic attacks.. that's basically what you're doing. I'm in the middle of getting some protective wards made for my friends and I'm going to be looking into getting manacles produced that can nullify the wearer's magic."

"Like the-" He wiggles his right forefinger at Ms Waller. "-collars that Belle Reve uses."

"Same idea, different mechanism. I'm going to be having a chat with my supplier. If you like I can ask what the rules are about selling to other governments."

"Ms Waller, do we have anything that can do that right now?"

"No, sir."

"Goddamn." He stares at the surface of the bar. "The more I hear about this the less I like it. Are you really telling me that the United States of America has no specific defenses against magic based attack?"

"Yes sir."

"There's a few magic users around, Senator. But the nation as a whole?" I nod. "Basically." I take a book out of subspace and pass it to him.

One of the bodyguards moves to intercept it but Henry waves him off. "Don't bother, Hank. I think we can trust him. What is it?"

"A copy of the guide the previous Doctor Fate wrote for the All-Star Squadron. Should give you a rough idea about the sorts of things that are possible."

"From the Second World War? This is really the best guide available?"

I shrug. "Atlantis hasn't needed to write books like that for outsiders for thousands of years. The best guide available would involve getting an actual Atlantean mage to advise you but they don't even have a consulate at the moment."

"America, requesting military aid to defend itself. Never thought I'd see the day." He takes a gulp from his glass. "Give me some idea: what's King Orin going to want in exchange?"

"The main trade good they want would be high purity gold. Those circuit boards? They need the highest purity possible and Atlantis can't get it high enough to really maximise the advantage."

He nods. "Okay, we can do that. How about political stuff?"

"I'm afraid I don't know him well enough to say. You'd probably need to come to some sort of agreement about borders and shipping. Water quality's a big issue for them as I'm sure you can understand."

He nods, then something seems to occur to him. "Can they actually be made like printed circuit boards? Those.. rune set up things."

I blink. "I.. honestly don't know. Sounds logical... You'd need to talk to an actual practitioner to be sure."

"It'll be more palatable to the Senate if I can present it as an equal exchange. I hope you can understand how I want to be sure of my position this time out."

"I was planning to visit my supplier next week. My professional relationship with the Atlantean Royal Artificer should make it easier for me to get the information quickly."

He nods, finishes his drink and then stands and holds out his right hand to me. I take it. "Son, I wanna thank you. You might well be handing me the ladder I need to climb out of the hole I dug for myself. The hole America's dug for itself."

"We're here to help, sir."

Another nod. "Waller, we'll have to reschedule. I'll have someone phone you later today."

"Yes sir." He turns and leads his party out of the bar. She gives a small sigh and shakes her head. "I don't know how the hell you did that."

I turn back to face Waller. "What?"

"That little conversation might just have made him electable again. And you only had to spike my chances to do it."

"What do you mean?"

"He needed to look strong on defense, to take a strong line on supervillains. I've got something that would help him do that in the works. His buy-in was going to be making a fuss about the hold up in publishing the report on the Belle Reve break out attempt. Now I'm back to square one in finding out who's behind that because you've given him something better."

"Oh. Um, sorry." Wait, she's not talking about-?

"And you didn't even mean it, did you?"

Ring, brain scan. "No. I should probably warn you, however, that if the thing you were going to discuss was some sort of brand X task force-" Her face doesn't move but the brain waves tell all. "-using convicted supervillains for black operations, if I found out that such an organisation existed, I would be obliged to inform my superiors in the Justice League. And the press."

Her eyes narrow at me. "I'll take that under advisement."

back

Mirage 5

next

16th November

19:17 GMT -5

"Yeees, I suppose that could work."

"Mister Zatara, would you please take the Helmet off? I can't hold a serious conversation with a man whose head is glowing orange."

Zatanna was true to her word and is now lurking just within earshot as I describe in detail the alterations I wish to perform. We're in the training area now, waiting for Artemis and Green Arrow to arrive before heading off to see a 'finished example'. Only Zatanna and M'gann have expressed an interest in my assistance so far, though Wonder Woman has paid me a great deal more attention recently than at any time since my arrival. If I had to guess I'd say that Kon won't accept my offer without her approval despite wanting it so much that when I look at him his whole body is filled with roiling orange clouds. I think... No, that does make me happy. A power up would be nice but at this point in his life a strong relationship with a primary caregiver is far more important.

"I believe that would violate my agreement with Nabu."

I roll my eyes. As if that matters anymore. "Lantern Nabu, you are hereby instructed to permit Giovanni Zatara to remove you at his leisure. Confirm command."

"cOnFiRmEd."

Mister Zatara tilts his head to the side for a moment, then reaches up and lifts the Helmet from his head. He holds it out to look it in the eyepieces. "What.. exactly.. did you do to Nabu?"

I shrug. "I can't honestly claim to understand the process exactly. It appears that I can use the orange light to.. well, replace any living thing, convert all of its energy and matter into an enduring construct. Nabu's personality and memories remain unaltered, it's simply that rather than you being subservient to him, he's subservient to me."

"I'm still not sure that you should have done that. I made the agreement of my own free will."

"That's alright sir, we all make dumb decisions sometimes."

He narrows his eyes slightly as he looks at me. "It is a matter of personal integrity."

"No. Once he marked himself as our enemy it was a matter of working out the most expedient way in which to beat him, then doing it. If I let him take your body, what does that say to a spectre or to any other sort of dead man who feels like taking over one of us? So many inhuman things have so many advantages over us already I don't believe that holding back is a survivable option. As far as I'm concerned, if you haven't rigged the game then you're not trying hard enough."

His eyes widen in shock and recognition. "I once had a friend who told me a very similar thing. It did not turn out well for anyone involved."

Oh? "Did he have a power ring? Or a Father Box?"

He gives a slight shake of his head, looking away to the side. "You are a very.. confident young man."

"Yes. I am. And with good reason, I think." Mister Tawny nudges the side of my right leg and I automatically reach my right hand down to scratch his head as he lets out a bored moan. I don't think he's quite intelligent enough to have understood me when I told him where we're going but he always appreciates sojourns outside the mountain.

Mister Zatara puts Nabu under his left arm. "Would your Father Box and ring allow you to reverse the changes if something went wrong?"

"No.. though, as I understand it the effects of the change would be gradual and it's well within my abilities to arrest them."

I suppose that I don't need them to be entirely happy with the idea. I can well afford to play the long game and wait until my friends reach their majorities. It's just that it would be better all round if this happened sooner. Of course, if there really is something which I've missed I'd rather find out about it now.

"I'm still not sure. Zatanna's magic abilities will improve on their own."

"Yes. More slowly and peaking far earlier. Aaand she'll still physically be a squishy baseline Human. My process would render her far more resilient."

We both look over to where Zatanna stands, wearing my Apokolips-tech armour and visor. "I am grateful for what you've done, but I-."

"Recognised, Artemis B zero eight, Green Arrow zero eight, Black Canary one three, Wonder Woman zero three."

Ah. I look over to zeta tube one as the lights fade. I wasn't expecting Wonder Woman or Black Canary to be joining us. I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise. A little notice would have been nice, but no matter. All in uniform and armed. Zatanna scurries over to join us. I think we're about ready to go then. "Thank you all for coming. If you're all ready, our next stop is the east peak of Mount Hua."

"Ahhh, not so fast." Green Arrow raises an eyebrow. "Why exactly are we going to China?"

"I asked you to come for the purpose of comparison. I wanted to compare your skills to those of the greatest archer on the planet."

"Oh really?" He crosses his arms. "And who exactly do you think that is?"

"The Chinese super-functionary Celestial Archer." I hold up my hands defensively. "It would be far easier to introduce you than to argue the point."

Wonder Woman frowns. "There isn't a zeta tube on Mount Hua."

"Who said anything about a zeta tube? Father Box, boom tube to Mount Hua."

"Ploong."

A booming rush of displaced air and a white-rimmed portal appears. On the other side is a stone pavilion on a rocky platform high above a tree-filled valley. I gesture to the Boom Tube with my right hand. "Shall we?"

Mister Tawny leads the way. Are there Tigers in that part of China? I don't think so. The mountain's too touristy, surely? Zatanna goes through next, quickly followed by her father, then Artemis, Green Arrow and Black Canary. Wonder Woman remains where she is, looking at me. "Ladies first." She continues to regard me for a moment and then crosses over. I follow.

17th November

08:21 GMT +8

Green Arrow walks over to the railings at the edge of the platform and looks down. He whistles. "Quite a drop."

"Indeed, sir." The Boom Tube shuts down, revealing Xu Tao sitting cross-legged on an outcrop of rocks just back from the winding path up to the pavilion, Celestial Bow of Yi resting on his knees. He wears a blue tabard and loose blue trousers, though I know for a fact that he wears armour under both. In the centre of his chest his heraldic device is a yellow disc with blue decoration. His arms and head are bare, revealing a well muscled physique and youthful face. He's sixteen, and only recently inducted into the Great Ten.

Green Arrow ambles in his direction. "So, Orange Lantern says that you're the greatest archer in the world."

Tao nods solemnly. "I believe that to be true, sir."

I have to hand it to him: his English is really quite excellent, especially when one considers that he hasn't been studying it for much more than a year. I didn't actually meet him during my first visit, but Chairman Jiang was more than happy to lend him to me. "Celestial Archer's soul structures have been modified in the same way that I am proposing doing to Zatanna." I flick my eyes over to Artemis. "And such other of my team mates as express an interest. The skill of the goddess Chang'e far exceeds mine, but he should be able to give you some idea of the end state of the process." I smile at Green Arrow. He's an easy going enough fellow, but I can see the urge to compete building within him. "I took the liberty of setting up some targets, sir. If you'll turn your attention to the mountainside behind Celestial Archer..?"

Standard archery targets supported by wooden poles slotting into holes I made in the rock. I'll repair the damage after the demonstration. The closest is at one hundred metres, then a further nine at twenty five metre intervals along the mountainside. I don't imagine that the first five or six will present much of a challenge to Green Arrow once he's got his eye in and grown used to the local air currents, though the furthest will. That isn't the point. This is a contest between a heroic mortal and a young man who might as well be an Exalt. I know Tao will win. I want to make a point concerning the difference between skilled mortals and broken demigod bullshit. I want to help my friends escape the baseline Human crab bucket the people of this world seem to want to live in.

Just a bit of a shame that one of the few Leaguers I haven't alienated yet has to sacrifice his ego for me to do it.

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Mirage 6

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17th November

08:23 GMT +8

Green Arrow unslings his bow while looking over the targets. "Hm. Bit mundane given all this build up, but I'm game." He looks up at Tao. "How are we scoring this?"

Tao looks at me a little uncertainly. "I had thought that this was to be a demonstration. I did not think that we would be competing."

Green Arrow smiles. "Yeah, keep telling yourself that. Artemis, you want in?"

Artemis looks at the targets, at Tao, at me and then back at him. "Ohh no. I know a set-up when I see one."

Green Arrow moves his right hand to cover his heart. "Your lack of faith wounds me, Artemis. Right here."

"Mister Zatara." I gesture to Green Arrow who's already putting his first arrow to string. Should I tell him that that's an inefficient technique? No, this is a test of accuracy, not speed. He should do whatever he's most comfortable with, and anyway I'm not sure the fast shot technique works with his trick arrows. "Subject one, 'Green Arrow', real name.. nominally classified, thirty two years of age. Baseline Human. With no significantly debilitating injuries he's at his physical prime. Began studying the use of the bow when he was.. nineteen, I believe?" Green Arrow turns his head my way and nods once. "And has continued to train himself since, using the criminals of Star City as target practice. For this demonstration he'll be using simple point arrows and a conventional recurve bow with a draw weight of around fifty kilograms."

He pulls the string taut and then relaxes it a little, limbering himself up. "One hundred and one pounds."

"Forty five kilograms."

"Sounds a lot less impressive like that."

Black Canary smiles as she shakes her head. I just roll my eyes. "Forty five thousand grams, then. Though the majority of his experience is in precise, rapid, short ranged shots his skill in other areas is advanced enough to put him in the top ten.. probably top five archers on the planet."

"Oh yeah?"

"I wouldn't have bothered asking if it wasn't a reasonable comparison."

"No, I mean how come I'm not number one? Or-" He nods at Tao. "-two, according to you?"

"I judge Shado's skill at long ranged and indirect fire to be superior to yours. Malcolm Merlyn has demonstrated the ability to shoot out individual organs." I incline my head towards Wonder Woman. "The Amazons Aella and Dessa are noted for their skill with the bow amongst a race who have had three thousand years to gain experience with primitive weapons. In fact, I would say that of the top one hundred archers in the world at least eighty five are Amazons."

"Really?" He looks at Black Canary. "Maybe I should visit sometime? Show those ladies how to really handle a s-." She pokes him in the ribs. "Hey, kidding!"

"He's about as good as baseline Humans get. It is also worth noting that Green Arrow hasn't practised in this environment before. The shape of the valley and the temperature of the rocks can create difficult air currents-."

"Please. I work in a city!"

"Perhaps the trees, then? I.. think that's everything. Oh, for this demonstration no artificial aids.. sights, anemometers, externally applied enchantments.. will be in use. Loose when ready."

Green Arrow loosens his neck, draws and takes aim at the first target. "How big're those targets?"

"One metre twe-" There's a thwack as his first arrow strikes the first target dead centre. "-nty." Bull's eye on the one hundred metre target. Tao doesn't look around.

Green Arrow notches another arrow. "Are we taking it in turns, or what?"

I make a dismissive gesture with my right hand. "Take a shot at each target. There's no hurry."

His second and third bury themselves in their targets' centre. Fourth is a little off-centre, though still within the bull's eye. Green Arrow tilts his head to the side. "See what you mean about the air currents." He notches his fifth and takes noticeably longer to aim before loosing. Dead centre at two hundred metres. Despite myself I find that I'm being impressed. I mean, it's a pointlessly outdated weapon and all that but he's bloody good with it. He looks up at Tao. "Worried yet?"

"No, sir."

"Oh really?"

"May I say, I consider that it is a privilege for me to compete with you."

"You may."

Tao frowns. "I beg your pardon, sir. I have been learning English for only a short time. I do not believe that I understand..?"

"Ah, don't worry about it." He draws his sixth. "This is where it gets interesting..." The distance is enough that we can actually watch the arrow in flight. Thwack! Right on the black line between the inner and middle rings. "Aaah." Two hundred and twenty five metres and he's disappointed? I'm impressed that he can hit the damn thing at all. There'd be a delay in me hitting it from here with a construct! I mean, that's what laser projection constructs are for, but still. He notches and draws another, now completely focused on his task. Shoom.. thwack. Blue, outer circle. He takes a moment to breathe before slowly drawing another arrow, notching, drawing and taking aim. The arrow is visibly pointed away from the target now. Another careful breath and he looses. Thwack. Inner red. A hit at two hundred and fifty metres. Should I call the people at the Guinness Book of Records? His eighth arrow is drawn just as slowly as the seventh. He aims, looses and.. it moves past the target to break on the vertical wall of the mountain. "Uuh. No do-overs, right?" He lowers the bow and rolls his shoulders before taking out a new arrow. "This next one's about three hundred twenty yards, right?"

"About that."

He takes a couple of deep breaths, notches, draws, aims and looses. As he does I find that I actually rather want him to win. I mean, it'd be pretty terrible if he did, but... My goodness. Outer blue at three hundred metres. Ring, that wasn't us, was it?

Negative. No assistance was provided.

I suppose.. over that sort of range the factors that he can't properly predict mount up. If he took five more shots at the same target he might not get any more hits.

"Last one." He's smiling as he looks at Black Canary. "Kiss for luck?" For a second her eyes flick over the rest of us before she walks up to him and lightly presses her lips to his. They stay together for a moment and then she steps back. "Well, now I've really got to hit it." He takes out another arrow and looks it over critically. He runs his right index finger along the shaft and the tip then checks the fletching before holding it up to stare along its length. Finding no imperfections he notches, draws and takes careful aim. Three hundred and twenty five metres. He looses, all of us staring intently at the path of the arrow as it flies towards.. and over the top of the target. And the mountain.

Whoops. Ring, transfer! I appear on the far side of the ridge, an orange aura extending from me in all directions. The arrow slows to a stop as it flies towards me and I pick it up with my right hand before transferring back and returning it to its owner. He takes it with a slight wince. "Eight hits out of ten, the furthest at three hundred metres. Perhaps you are number two after all, sir."

"Haven't seen number one yet." He looks up at Tao once more. "Well, 'Celestial Archer'? Still think you can do better?"

"Would you please step back a little, sir?"

"Ah, okay?" He and I both move back towards the pavilion as Tao closes his eyes. He takes a single arrow out of the quiver on his back before closing a flap over the top of it.

"Subject two, 'Celestial Archer', real name Xu Tao, sixteen years of age." His eyes open. "Augmented Human. Began studying the use of the bow when he was fourteen and more or less fell over the Celestial Bow of Yi." His eyes flick down and his lips tighten. Is he embarrassed about it? "Was conscripted into the Great Ten in two thousand and eight after a brief period of independent operation. His augmentations are a gift from the goddess Chang'e, the widow of his bow's former owner. Please note that unlike me she was able to fully charge his soul grafts almost immediately. The Celestial Bow -if I understand correctly- is an arcane weapon with an infinite draw capacity. Superman could pull on it without being able to overdraw it. Celestial Archer, begin when ready."

He bows his head slightly, eyes narrowed, arrow resting loosely against his bowstring. He's still sitting facing us with the targets behind him. He starts leaning forwards, overbalancing. As he falls to a right angle with the rock face he pushes off, spinning vertically and horizontally as he does so. I can't even track it as his arrow disappears, his body twisting to bring his legs back underneath him as he bends his legs slightly to absorb the impact. He straightens facing us and then gives his audience a shallow bow.

Green Arrow looks puzzled. "Okay, but.. what..?" He looks at the first target. His own arrow has been shot through the middle. "Oh, trick shot is it?" He smiles. "Pretty good. Now lets see you do the res-." Black Canary lays her right hand on his shoulder and points to the next target with her left hand. Another of Tao's arrows has split his. He blinks and then takes another look at Tao's quiver. Yes, still closed. His arrow at the third target has similarly been split. In the fourth, Tao's arrow is firmly placed at the centre. Fifth is split, then centre, centre, centre, centre and centre. Green Arrow gapes in astonishment. "But-! How did-!"

Zatanna points at Tao while looking at her father. "See Dad, totally safe. And amazing!"

"To perform many shots with one arrow is one of the advanced techniques I am able to perform." Tao shifts his weight to his left leg. "I.. have not offended you, I hope? You have been an inspiration to me."

"If you're still not convinced sir, I set up some targets on the ridge line over there." I point out across the valley. "Celestial Archer could pierce them with little difficulty."

Green Arrow and Artemis both turn around and try and get their heads around the idea. Tao shifts his weight to his right leg. "I... I am sorry?"

Green Arrow waves at him. "No, no... That's.. that's fine." He turns to look at Black Canary. "Maybe we should have kissed for longer?" She pats him on the shoulder.

Artemis takes one last look across the valley before walking up to an increasingly uncomfortable looking Xu Tao. "You got any plans for the rest of the day?"

He leans back slightly. "Um? No?" He looks at me for direction, initiative not being encouraged amongst the Great Ten. I point at him with my right index finger and mime sniggering. He looks back at Artemis. "Is there something that you want to do?"

back

Mirage 7

next

17th November

16:37 GMT -5

I breathe in as I take a look around the living area. "It's a bit of a fixer upper. Are you sure about this?"

Miss Robinson smiles as she nods. "I've lived in plenty worse."

I shift weight from my left foot to my right. It always makes me a little uncomfortable when she says things like that. I mean, I know that her life's been really hard but every time she says or does something which shows she thinks it's normal-.

"Why're you glowing?"

"I am?" I look at my hands. Yes, I am in fact glowing. "Um, sometimes when I want something really bad but don't quite know how to get it the ring just sort of 'builds up'. It's nothing to worry about."

"Rrrright..."

"Will Miss Chase be joining us?"

"Ehh, she's got work 'til later." She sniffs. "Oh, finally, the smell's gone." She walks towards one of the damp-rotted windows. "Thought I'd have to leave the windows open all winter." She pulls it closed. "Why'd you call her that?"

"What, Miss Chase? She told me that's what her name is."

"Her name's Karon." She walks along to the next window. "No one calls girls like us 'Miss'. Seriously. Are you secretly, like, fifty or something?"

"... I'm eighteen. Would you prefer I called you something else?"

"What's wrong with Holly?"

"Nothing's wrong with Holly, I just didn't want to make assumptions. I can call you Holly."

"Oookay then." She looks at me like I've said something weird, then gives the second window a tug. It sticks for a moment and then it comes free, thumping closed. "If it's not 'cause you're fifty, is that just how English people talk?"

"I've.. been brushing up on my diction since coming to America. I think I've.. maybe taken it a bit far."

"Y'think?" She rubs her arms. The central heating isn't working yet and she didn't want to put the fan heater on while the windows were open. She's wearing two hoodies and she's still cold. "Are you planning on sticking around?"

I flap my hands in the direction of the door. "I can.. get lost if you want me-."

"No! I just need to go out and get a few things." She puts her right index finger to her lips and taps them twice. "Think I can probably trust you in here on your own."

"I'll.. put a vacuum around.." I take a look around the room again. "Or dust pan and brush or.. something."

She makes an amused snort and smiles at me. Compared to most things I've been doing a little light home improvement is practically a holiday. With the ring ambient temperature isn't something I really worry about, though after leaving the Fortress in the arctic circle I've given serious thought to incorporating heating elements into my armour. The trick is getting a battery that can take the strain for long enough, and working out whether incorporating the extra point of failure is worth it in the handful of situations where it'll matter.

"Okay, well, I'll be back in about a half hour. There's beer in the fridge."

"W-."

"You don't drink, do you."

"N-no. No. Um. I don't."

She's giggling as she walks towards the door. "You're a real one-of-a-kind, you know that?"

"Thank you?"

She closes the door behind her with a rattle and I wince slightly as I have another look around. I can well understand her wanting to be out of her old flat but I sort of assumed that she'd just rent somewhere nicer. True, this place was dirt cheap considering the location, but that was because three people were ritually murdered here and after twelve years the estate agents just really wanted it off their books. 'A bit of love' isn't really going to cut it. Damp, rot in the wood, three different flavours of mould... I'm not sure she wouldn't be better off just getting it knocked down and then rebuilding. I mean, it looks nice. Ish. If you stand back a bit. And if she pulls it off she could resell for a large profit...

If I'm helping, I'm helping the whole way. I jerk the ring downwards and Fatty falls out onto the floor. He lays there for a moment before slowly floating himself upwards without moving from his recumbent position.

"No food?"

"Fatty, I realise I may regret saying this, but you are aware you can take more power from the orange light, right?"

"Huh?"

"Never mind. Fatty, this house belongs to a friend of mine. She's had a rather hard life to date and I'd like to make it a bit easier. To do that we need to make the house structurally sound. We leave the decorating to her but we're fixing everything else." I take a breath. "It's time to Disney up in this bitch."

Orange gossamer fairy wings form on my back and an orange wand appears in my right hand. And I'm surprisingly okay with that. I give it an experimental wave across the far wall and orange light splurges from the tip, cleaning brickwork, mending wood and drying plaster. Maybe I could work this into... No. Another wave fixes joists and floorboards and adds a layer of instantly drying varnish. Years of dust explode from the rug, colours suddenly as vibrant as they were when it was first woven.

"Fatty, see what you can do about any residual spiritual energies from the murder."

"Food?"

"Sure, eat all you want. Last thing Gotham needs is more psychic filth around the place."

He claps his chubby little hands together excitedly, a disturbingly broad grin spreading across his face. A second later he's gone, an orange trail heading upstairs in the direction of the room in which a brain damaged vagrant tortured a family of three to death before stabbing himself through the eyes.

Fucking Gotham.

No, not thinking about it. Another wand twirl replaces the cracked and dirty windows with sheets of clear diamond and replaces the rotten frames with a hard synthetic wood-like substance. I grin as a light wing flap takes me into the air. Add a bit of life to those settee cushions. Repair the ceiling rose and dust the ornate light fitting. Fuse and earth the electrics. Double wands! Vacuum cleaner constructs roar as I send them shooting throughout the house, floors, walls and ceilings. Defur the insides of the pipes and add carbon nanotubes for strength and because I can! I put the drip-catching buckets in the loft into subspace as I straighten and clean the roof tiles, transmuting new ones to cover holes where they've fallen away. I swing the wands with wild abandon, everything that makes the house anything less than Holly deserves evaporating before my need. With a clunk the boiler starts up again and I hurriedly create thermostatic controllers in every room. Could change it to run on electricity instead of gas but I think I'll leave that for Holly to decide. Swinging the wands upwards I spread the orange light upwards to the first floor. I'll have this place in tip top shape-.

Someone knocks on the door and I suddenly remember myself. Fiiiine. The wings fade away and the wands evaporate. Boring filament bound constructs continue the repair work as I drop lightly to the floor and head over to the door. Is Karon back early? Doesn't seem likely but I haven't looked up her workplace. Holly hasn't asked me to keep our association a secret but it would probably be best if I wasn't obviously Orange Lantern just in case. Another knock. Right, right. I stride to the door and reach for the latch. Should I use the chain? Not like I need it but a normal Gothamite probably would... Nah. It's a good.. ish.. neighbourhood and I'm fairly physically imposing. I should be able to get away with it. Turn the latch and open the door.

And blink.

Hello, Ms Kyle.

back

Mirage 8

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17th November

16:53 GMT -5

She blinks at me in surprise. "Oh. Hello." She's wearing a pale yellow blouse, light brown jacket and brown trousers and she's carrying a brown paper shopping bag. I was pleased to learn that despite what television tried to teach me the Americans are in fact intelligent enough to know that shopping bags need handles.

"Good afternoon. Can I help you?"

She leans back slightly to check the house number, then sizes me up. I've made the switch from my summer vest to a dark grey dress shirt but my ring crafted musculature is still fairly evident. "Where's Holly?"

"She just popped out to get some stuff. Do you want to come in and wait for her?" I point my right thumb at the room behind me.

Another look. Is she checking me for weapons? Catwoman's checking me for weapons! Eeeeeeee! "And, who are you?"

"Oh, don't worry about me, I'm just here to burgle the place, you'll barely know I'm h-."

The first blow strikes me in the neck. It doesn't hurt but I'm knocked back into the house by the surprise. I hear a bang as the bag drops and the second blow strikes me across the eyes. I turn my head away from it instinctively. A baton? What? Oh no... Another strike to the head then what feels like it was supposed to be a heavy punch to the groin. When I don't react she dives past me, rolls to her feet and takes a stance.

No, stop this before it gets any sillier.

"Ms Kyle, I'd like to apologise for what was clearly a.. very badly misjudged attempt at humour. I'm Orange Lantern two eight one four, and-."

"Prove it."

Agh, damn it, it's just like when Diana told me to say something to prove the ring could translate! I've only been doing this four sodding months... I drop my hands to the side and rise into the air in a flare of orange light. She relaxes slightly and lowers the baton. "Also, if it helps my case I totally think you're better for him than Talia is."

"What?"

"No? O.. kay. Iiiii'll stop listening to rumours then." Darn it, I totally ship those two. "So!" I drop to the floor, smile and clap my hands together while being careful not to move towards her or do anything else that could be taken as aggressive action. "What brings you here?"

She looks over at the bag. "House warming present."

I wince. "Wasn't.. breakable, was it?" I turn around to look at the bag. I can't see anything leaking. "I'm really sorry about.. um.. just sounded a lot funnier in my head."

Keeping her distance slightly she walks around the room to recover her bag. "Just some groceries."

"I can unbruise fruit!"

"It's just cans and boxes." She squats to pick it up. "You can unbruise fruit?"

"I like bananas being at a very particular ripeness. It seemed like a useful thing to learn."

She opens her mouth to comment, then dismisses it with a shake of her head. "I'm going to put these in the kitchen."

"Alri- ohwaithangonaminute!"

Too late! The anthropomorphised orange vacuum cleaner drives through the opening from the kitchen, stops in front of her, looks at her for a moment, beeps and then takes a sharp left turn and drives up the wall, refreshing the paint as it goes.

I should probably have removed the construct before it did that.

Ms Kyle looks at me in bewilderment. "Had a.. bit of a Disney.. fairy godfather thing going on. They're not actually.. you know, intelligent..."

"I thought the house looked a little different." She watches it go for a moment and why have I still not got rid of it? It vanishes in a puff of orange. Ms Kyle looks at me for a moment and then carries on to the kitchen.

"It was that or.. basically rebuild the whole thing."

"I told her she should get a survey done first." She slows as she gets into the kitchen. Oohhhhh. I.. marbled? I think I might have got a bit carried away. It looks nice but I should really have run this level of change past Holly first. Ms Kyle walks to the closest work surface, puts the bag down and starts unloading. "So why'd you do it?"

"Enchanted, I think? Or maybe Beauty and the Beast? I mean, I work for an Amazon so subverted gender stereotypes just go with-."

She sighs and sags her shoulders slightly. "No, not that. Why did you give Holly the money to buy this house?"

"It produced the best outcome for everyone involved. What, should I have beaten her up and sent her to Blackgate?" I shrug. "What's the point in that?"

"Fairy godfather, huh?"

"Hey, I rock the fairy wings." She looks at me with an amused frown and I recreate the glowing butterfly wings and wand. She snorts and shakes her head. "Um, on a slightly more serious note..." I generate a construct of just prior to my first meeting with Holly. Ms Kyle watches her start her run up, spot me and lose speed, barely making the leap. "I made another badly judged joke about not helping her up here. She.. kinda freaked out." I let it continue playing as I haul her up and she pulls out her knife, first waving it at me and then at the picture. There's some posturing, then she puts the knife down. "The next bit still worries me." Holly's posture gets less angry/scared and more defeated/scared. She pulls off her hoodie again, and then her t-shirt. We both watch the shock on construct-me's face as he covers his eyes. I dismiss the image. "If I'm taking on a problem… And I'm in this.. all the way... I'd like to know how big it is. How bad things have been for her. Why she thought.. that was.. what I was looking for."

Ms Kyle nods. "You said something that sounded like a threat, didn't you?" I face the floor as I nod. "She was never a prostitute, as far as I know. Not in the sense of having sex for money, but.. for runaways and street kids there's.. often a coercive element. You need food, you need a safe place to sleep.. need to feel safe at all." She looks away, her gaze becoming distant. "They need affection, which state institutions just don't provide. Not in Gotham anyway."

"Do you have any..? I'm not really.. trained for this. Is there anything in particular I should do? Or not do? I don't.. don't want to be a-" I grimace. "-coercive element. Or look like or.. be thought of as a coercive element."

"I.. think you're doing alright. I've tried to look after her, but my life isn't exactly-."

"You're Catwoman." A degree of caution reappears in her countenance. "Irregular hours, uncertain payoffs, not exactly an ideal role model. Um, no offence."

"None.. taken. You don't seem concerned..?"

I shrug. "While I don't want to diminish the negative effects of theft on a society.. a few high value items being taken from very rich people doesn't really change much. Plus, acting against you would harm my relationship with Holly." She looks a little sceptical. "Ms Kyle, each week I visit a friend of mine in the Gloria McDonald Prison on Rhode Island. She.. was.. a career assassin. She hasn't been convicted of murder but I know full well that's probably because she's good at covering her tracks. And I don't care. I can neither change the past nor raise the dead. But, I can try and persuade her that there are better ways to live.. and help her pick one."

A wry smile. "You have a soft spot for damsels in distress?"

"I'm also visiting two men in Belle Reve. Don't.. think.. Thomas would like being called a damsel..." He's actually attending classes. Took a while to talk him into it. A lot of draughts games with the board projected onto the transparent panel between us. He doesn't appear to be finding the tuition rewarding as yet. He might have attended school for longer than Jade but I don't think he was paying that much attention to the teachers. I was pleased to learn that despite going back to India Doctor Munro still phones him and Tuppence twice a week. "They need help I don't think they'll get from anywhere else. Anyone else. I guess.. maybe I do?"

"Hm. Well, I don't think Holly has any particular panic buttons. Just.. keep doing what you're doing now." She smiles, and opens a wall cabinet to start loading tin cans in. "And you're right."

"About what?"

"I'm far better for him than Talia is."

back

Mirage 9

next

19th November

16:31 GMT -5

I try to keep my intense dislike of telepathic intrusion suppressed as Mister J'onzz and I stand in the formless void. Oh, he says that in this state he can't hear what I'm thinking and I've kept my ring-based defences up as much as I can but I can perceive a thing which he can't. This simply won't work unless he has access to my senses and that requires some connection. In the real world the two of us are sitting down a short distance from M'gann while Mister King and Lantern Jordan monitor the three of us. Nice to see that he learned that lesson from last time.

"Father Box. Show the man."

"Ploong."

Three pictures shimmer into existence in front of us. The first is a cut-away of a Martian in their default form. The second is an artistic representation of M'gann's mind, her network of thoughts. Mister J'onzz will get more out of that than I do. I mean, I can sort of feel what different bits do but I'm much less familiar with the use of his telepathic sense than he is. The third is the best image of emotional-spiritual systems I can come up with. I'm.. finding.. that I am getting something of an instinct for certain spiritual resonances, one not tied to the ring or to Father Box. I don't have the words to describe it. I'm not sure that English does. A sort of fuzzy.. mental feel? An inadequate description, but the best I can manage. Low level psychometry? Perhaps I am indeed becoming a New God. Won't that be fun. There shouldn't even be much risk of the real Grayven hearing about me until I'm a little better positioned to defend myself.

"As you can see sir, it has almost no physical presence at all." I make a beckoning motion with my right hand and the image of the Martian's head is enlarged, the outer surface peeled away until we can see the brain. "But, if we look at the arcane layer..." The mess of M'gann-shaped colours surrounds us. Reminds me a little of tie-dyeing, except... "You see here? This band of green? The way it binds this patch of yellow?" I look over at my co-worker. Mister J'onzz narrows his eyes and for a moment I get a disorientating burst of feedback as he probes the irregularity using my enhanced awareness. "Now, if we switch to the mental layer..." All I see is a neural network, but again I magnify it to show positively tiny attachments of green and yellow.

"They seem so tiny."

"Their presence doesn't need to be particularly large. I am a little surprised at the Guardians utilising the light of fear in this way, but they know far more about it than me."

"And there are no physical signs at all."

"If there were, it would have failed. Martians are shapeshifters.. but you're also telepathic. Do Martian mothers commune with their children in the womb? Because as I understand it that's all it would take. The slightest mental or spiritual contact-."

"I've seen enough."

Aaaand back in the room. I blink as I adjust to the separation and real environment. Uuugh. I either need to avoid spiritual travails like that in future or train in them because I feel rough as vulture sick. Mister J'onzz floats to normal head height before unfolding from his cross-legged sitting position. Mister King winces slightly while M'gann and Lantern Jordan just look curious.

"J'onn? What happened?"

It's then that I notice that Mister J'onzz hasn't landed. His arms are at his side and his fists are clenched. I don't know Martian body language but he's probably been on Earth long enough to have adopted Human expressions and he looks bloody furious. He floats over to just in front of Lantern Jordan.

"It is exactly as he said. I witnessed bands of green light forcing her mind, her very spirit into patterns they dictate."

Jordan raises his hands defensively. "Hey, hold on J'onn. I'm sure the Guardians wouldn't have done this without a good reason. If it even was the Guardians in the first place."

"For making my entire species afraid of simple exothermic reactions?! They have violated our most intimate psychic links with this abomination! What possible excuse-?"

"Actually sir, I might be able to answer that." Mister J'onzz turns to look at me. He appears not to have noticed how much his outburst is disturbing M'gann, who's staring up at him wide-eyed. I haven't bothered getting to my feet myself. "What does the Martian species know of their ancient forebears?"

"The Martian environment is not kind to archaeological remains on the planet's surface. Much of our ancient history is lost to us. What are you implying?"

"The Guardians are ancient. Some of what I've read suggests that they are a branch of the first sentient species in this galaxy. If the records of ancient Mars are lost they may well have involved themselves before that time."

"Wait just a minute there." Jordan turns his attention to me. "I'm not going to stand by while you accuse the Guardians of doing something like this without hard evidence. Altering the minds of an entire species goes against everything they stand for. John and I already asked them about it and they said they had nothing to do with it."

"Oh p-lease Lantern Jordan. Do you really think a people as old as the Guardians don't have any number of things they'd rather not become common knowledge? Do you really think they've never made a single shameful mistake? When next you speak with them ask them for the real reason why nothing lives in Sector Six Six Six. Ask them about the war with Apokolips which cost the lives of most of their Corps, and whose resolution had them abandon First Lantern Raker Qarrigat as a trophy for Darkseid." The ring might have no data on it but Father Box was only too happy to boast of Darkseid's glorious victory. More fear-aura hypertech than yellow body armour but it was fairly conclusive just the same. "Ask them about the Corpse, their little band of black ops murderers. Ask them of Krona, of Parallax, of the robot Manhunters, of the Anti-Monitor, of the Psions. Why they handed the first four green rings over to the first Green Lanterns without providing them any training whatsoever. And when they've finished soiling themselves at the idea of another being knowing about those things, ask them about Larfleeze and how they threw the Vega Systems to the Beast."

"That... How would you know any of that?"

I speak slowly. "I. Have. A. Father. Box. If you don't believe me, feel free to go to Maltus and check. Heck, get yourself some space armour and take off your ring and I'll send you to Vega. Or Ysmault, if you feel like living dangerously."

"Those worlds are off-limits."

"How convenient. Mister J'onzz, I don't know what your forebears did to earn the Guardians’ ire but I can remove their taint from M'gann." And that's true. I don't know, not for certain. Since I'm not suicidal I have been checking and as far as I can work out the mechanism which allows Martians to communicate with their unborn can also impose forms of thought upon them. If Burning Martians are a thing here.. or were a thing, then their offspring would have been so overwhelmed by the ferocious mental states of their parents that they would always have come out as Burners themselves. M'gann on the other hand is a well-socialised individual surrounded by us. Would the Burners have been as they were because they carried with them the thoughts of their presentient ancestors? It sounds like it makes sense and it would mean that the Guardians altering them was probably the only way to turn them into the civilised people they are now. Buuut, they don't leave their caves. They haven't colonised or mined off their planet, despite having the technical capacity to do so. There still isn't any sort of permanent diplomatic presence on the only other inhabited planet in the system. The Guardians’ modifications might have all sorts of knock on effects. Why have they just left it there?

"I would rather that you performed the procedure on me. If there were any unintended side effects-."

"Then it would be better that the Martian with medical experience was unaffected and able to offer aid. "

"You could bring someone here from Mars. Under the circumstances I am certain that many would offer to make the journey."

"Do you think any Martian doctor could keep that secret? Do you really want to incite a worldwide panic on Mars? Besides, I don't think I like you enough to want to help you enough to use the ring on you. M'gann,-" I turn to her. "-how about it? Do you feel like becoming the first Martian in recorded history not to fear flames?"

She looks down as she thinks about it. "I'm not sure. I mean, what if something goes wrong?"

"Then I'll reinstate the block. This is actually far safer than what Zatanna's trying to persuade Mister Zatara to let me do to her because I can fully reverse it. I'll be monitoring you constantly and at the first sign of something going wrong I'll intervene."

She looks at Mister J'onzz and then back to the ground. "Would it hurt?"

"I can't think of any reason why it would but I can't answer for sure without having performed it on anyone first."

"O-okay." She looks up at me with a small smile. "I want you to do it."

"Mister J'onzz? No objection?"

"None."

"Excellent. M'gann, hold still a moment."

"What exactly-?"

Orange cables extend from my hands and plug into her head. She looks alarmed, but since I can interact with the lock directly it doesn't take more than a moment to finish her liberation. I dismiss the cables. "There. Done. Do you feel any different?"

"Nnno. Not really." She waves her right arm and generates a second forearm for a moment. "My shapeshifting-" **-and telepathy-** "-feel the same as normal. Are you sure it's gone?"

"Let's find out." I take a ceramic bowl half filled with copper chloride powder in methanol out of subspace and hold it out. Mister J'onzz turns away. "Ready?" She nods, clearly scared of being scared. The compulsion must be quite unpleasant. I fear things myself, but nothing so common as fire. "Ring, ignite."

"By your command."

There's a whoosh as the fumes over the bowl ignite. M'gann flinches but almost immediately steadies herself, staring wide-eyed at the flames. "Well? What do you think?"

She continues staring, transfixed as the flames billow in front of her. "I think... I think it's beautiful."

back

Mirage 10

next

22nd November

10:51 GMT -5

"So this is where you grew up, huh?"

Robin's standing on the bank of Westham village pond, looking across the water. Teekl's sniffing the bushes and Fatty's floating overhead.

"Well, in a manner of speaking. Used to come for walks around here, though I.. stopped bothering as I got older."

"When you said you came from a parallel universe I though it would be.. y'know, different."

I turn to look at where Wallace is sitting, on the short wall dividing the pond-area from the path.

"If it had been very different I wouldn't have survived coming into your universe. On the other hand, if you tried mixing up the Garrick Formula here you wouldn't get very far. Don't even know if your speed would work." M'gann and Kon are sitting on the bench, arms around each other with Wolf sitting on Kon's lap. I completely missed that Wallace didn't know they were seeing each other. Not that I noticed until Kon told me, I suppose. "Thanks for doing this, M'gann. I... It's really nice to be able to see it again."

"No problem. Oh! Can we go and see the castle next? I've never seen an English medieval castle before!"

"You know it's.. more or less the same on your Earth, right? Aside from where the Ophidian and I changed all the signs?"

"Well.. yeah..."

I snort and smile. "Of course we can. Come on, the best route takes us past a church that's more than nine hundred years old. That's about four times older than the United States."

They get up to follow as I lead the way down the road. Shame the others couldn't be with us but Zatanna's school doesn't break up for Thanksgiving, Artemis had been rather letting the homework pile up, Kaldur's doing something with King Orin and Robert clearly isn't getting out of school for a colonial celebration. I'm rather pleased with the way he's been coping with the training. He thinks that with Black Canary's focused training program he should be able to go for his judo brown belt some time before Christmas. He told me that he picked judo because he thought he'd mostly be fighting people much weaker than himself and wanted to be sure that he knew how to take them down while doing as little lasting damage as possible. Canary told me that she plans to introduce him to Brazilian jiu-jitsu because that isn't the case any more.

Some of the buildings on Westham high street shimmer uncertainly. The ones which have changed ownership or that I never paid much attention to. Spoils the illusion a bit but I do have clear memories of-.

"Robin, Kid Flash, Superboy, Miss Martian, Orange Lantern. Report for mission briefing."

I turn back to look at my team mates and shrug. M'gann smiles at me apologetically. "We can always come back later."

I nod, then my eyes snap open and I push myself upright. Lilos! So much better than those weird bier things Mister J'onzz had for us during the exercise. Around me my team mates are taking a moment to collect themselves. We took over one of the small side rooms like the one Black Canary used for the team's counselling sessions. Shoved all of the furniture to the sides of the room and then stuck down the lilos. I swing my legs over the side and rise to my feet before returning mine to subspace. Robin's already heading out of the door while M'gann helps Kon up.

Wallace looks at me as I subspace everyone else's lilos. "What d'you think it's about?"

"Not sure. No advance notice again so it's probably something fairly immediate."

"Think he might have found that Dark Druid guy?"

"Maybe, but I don't think he'd pass that on to us. Given the Security Council discussions on dealing with worldwide supervillain attacks I'd have thought that the League would handle him themselves. It's more likely that it's something to do with Kahndaq."

"You took down Black Adam easy enough last time."

I frown. "Why would he send us against Adom?"

"He's trying to take over a country."

"He's trying to overthrow a brutal military dictatorship. He hasn't even said that he wants to take over afterwards." It's odd, actually. The Sinai Peninsula has now become a de facto independent country with a newly formed governing council operating out of the city of Shiruta on the peninsula's tip. Adom has shown repeatedly that he easily could tear the government apart manually. I'm really not sure what he's waiting for.

Wallace pats me on the shoulder. "When you've been doing this as long as I have, Oh El, you learn that when a guy with super powers picks a fight with the police in broad daylight, nothing good is gonna happen."

I tap him on the chest with my left hand, putting his costume on him from subspace. My own armour materialises a moment later. When we're not in a rush Robin prefers to sort out his own gear. Kon.. I have actually sort of come up with a work around for Kon's armour but I want to save it for his Christmas present. Finally got around to taking a look at his solar suit and I'm fairly sure I can adapt it for a slightly up-armoured version. Won't let him fly of course and its brilliant white is intrinsic to the design but I can transport it in the ring. I plan to start prototyping later this week, some time after my visit to Sephtian. Bit of a shame I don't have another Kryptonian to try it out on.

"Hey, uh. Y'know, normally? Alan spends Thanksgiving with Jay and Joan. Have you talked to him about it?"

"No. I mean, Thanksgiving's an American thing. I don't really know what's involved and I don't really feel any connection to it." I think for a moment. "You're probably right though, I should..."

"Why don't you bring him here?" I look around at M'gann's beaming smile. Wonder why she's so cheerful? "Uncle J'onn doesn't really do anything for Thanksgiving either so Conner and I were going to cook Thanksgiving dinner here."

Kon nods. "I already invited Diana."

"Um, okay. I'll suggest it." He'll probably love it, actually. Seeing what we've done with the place since his last visit and meeting the team. Maybe I could suggest to Artemis and Paula that they might like to come along as well? Does Paula have clearance for something like that? Zatanna.. yeah. Not sure exactly what she's got to be thankful for right now but they don't celebrate it in Italy either. "When is it again?"

Wallace looks at me as if I've said something completely bizarre. "How can you not know-?" I create a small Union Jack construct between us. "Oh. Yeah."

"You don't have Thanksgiving in England?"

"No. I always thought of it as a purely American thing but the ring's telling me that several other countries have similar celebrations. My primary school used to get involved in the church's Harvest Festival but I haven't really thought about it since I left. Er, are you going to want me to do anything for it?"

M'gann leans into Kon as he pulls her closer. "We're good, thanks." I keep my face still. He has come on in leaps and bounds since we first met but Thanksgiving dinner for a large number of people sounds like a fairly large undertaking. I'll check on the fire extinguishers after the mission.

"Okay, well, if you need anything, just ask."

M'gann glances up at Kon as we come around the corner to the training room. "We could use some help getting vegetables." Batman's standing near the main display. He has his personal computer out and appears to be talking to someone. He looks up for a moment and then back to his work.

I nod. "Light speed delivery at your service." Wallace rolls his eyes. "Soil to table in about two minutes over the cooking time."

"I'll make you a list. Of course, we'll need to know exactly who's coming first."

I nod again as we all start straightening up for the Bat-briefing. "I'll get hold of Alan after the briefing."

back

Mirage 11

next

22nd November

11:08 GMT -5

Batman brings up the first two holo images as Robin joins the line up. That's the thing about being around Batman: we're all so used to him being in charge that we ended up just standing here for ten minutes while Robin went to the equipment locker, checked his gear and walked to the training room. Once we got into his general vicinity chatting or.. I don't know, a quick game of construct table tennis just seemed completely unthinkable. Even Teekl and Fatty have more or less lined up, with Wolf sitting on Teekl's head and watching the proceedings attentively. It wasn't even like he'd started giving us orders or anything.

On the left hologram is the face of a slightly overweight Arab with a moustache, beard and receding hairline. Just to his right appears a map of the Middle East with the familiar country of Bialya highlighted, along with its western neighbour Qurac. Since the flag behind the man is the same as the one on Qurac I'm going to assume that he's the sultan, king or president. I don't remember hearing much about Qurac before but I suppose it's like Missus King used to say back when she did supply teaching: you don't learn the names of the well behaved children.

Then the legend 'President of Qurac Rumaan Harjavti' appears below his face. Ring? Oh, quite good Human rights record, corruption levels reasonable, actually democratic. Sort of like Kuwait back home I suppose. It was mildly Soviet aligned during the Cold War -more because Britain had given it rather a hard time during the colonial era than any particular Communist belief- and as such actually managed to keep its oil production nationalised. Second highest Human Development Index score in the region. Just a bit of a shame about the location.

"Rumaan Harjavti is the democratically elected president of Qurac." Thank you Batman, we can read. "Harjavti-" There's a chime as a new window opens, showing a video clip of President Harjavti shaking hands with.. Bruce Wayne. Hm. I think I can assume that his reputation is accurate then and not merely the result of really good information control. The clip is taken from GBS and appears to be from the end of a news conference at the presidential palace in the capital, Dhabar. "-has been praised as a fair and wise leader, a humanitarian."

"Surrre." Wallace leans towards Robin and cups his left hand around his mouth. "Any friend of Bruce Wayne's."

"But five days ago Harjavti aligned himself-" Another window pops up with a headshot of our least favourite Middle Eastern ruler. Still bugging me that I haven't been able to find out her real name. Could be nothing but she must have put some effort into having it covered up if I can't find it, and why would she do that if it wasn't important? At least we're not dealing with the alien insect version. "-with the dictator of the neighbouring nation of Bialya, Queen Bee." Not like any of us would forget who she was. We were all on the last Bialya mission.

Kon snorts. "Not a fan."

Batman's gaze is level and calm. "Few are."

Pheromone based mental manipulation. Nothing my environmental shield can't see off easily enough, though if we close to short range I might have to extend it over any thralls she's picked up. If by some miracle I couldn't just knock her out right away. As powers go it's useful for subtle manipulation but surely by this stage it's like Succubae in the Salvation War, where the only way anyone will negotiate with them is in a heavily air conditioned room or with a gas mask on. Plus, she's ruling a blooming country. It can't leave her much front line time.

"But Harjavti suddenly backs Queen Bee's baseless claim that Qurac and Bialya were one nation in ancient times, and has announced that the countries will reunify in two days at a ceremony in Qurac."

I frown. They probably were, if you go back far enough. Their current borders are largely the work of British and French cartographers with not much attention being paid to local ethnic boundaries. I don't think this Earth really has a Kurdistan problem but the lines on the map were drawn by much the same people. On the holo map the two country outlines merge together under the Bialyan flag. Ring..? Ah. No reliably authenticated document shows the two countries unified in a way which excluded other territories. Sometimes conquerors got the whole area, sometimes the border lines went all over the place. The last time the whole of both countries were unified under a single ruler was in the fourteenth century under Timur the Lame. Even Queen Bee doesn't try and claim succession from him.

A new holo window opened showing President Harjavti making an announcement, flanked by four rough looking sorts from the Quraci... That doesn't sound right. Quracian? From Qurac's military. "After the ceremony, I will step down-" Oh my goodness, that's a Queen Bee stained glass window behind him. Fricking stained glass window. "-as president, so that our rightful monarch -Queen Bee- may rule." The shouting from the crowd makes it clear how they feel about this transfer of sovereignty. I'm still stuck on the window. That's some Doctor Evil level stuff right there.

The scene shifts to Queen Bee's press conference in her capital, Al-Qawiyah. "I laud President Harjavti for unifying our peoples, and I will gladly come to Qurac to be crowned sole leader of our nation."

Ring, were they both speaking English?

Affirmative.

Odd. Why would they do a press conference primarily directed at their own people in English? Wouldn't the local Arabic dialect make more sense? Also, I'm sure I've heard Queen Bee's voice somewhere before. Just can't quite put my finger on it...

Wallace tilts his head to the side and narrows his right eye. "And the Quracis are okay with this?"

Yes, Wallace, they were jeering with joy.

"Hardly." The press conference window closes and a new one opens, this time showing a demonstration. Protestors are carrying lighted candles and banners. Three of the four I can see are in English. I guess they realise that the only countries likely to intervene are outside the immediate area. "They're well aware of the brutality of Queen Bee's regime. But Harjavti has censored the press,-" A still image of protestors shouting at what appear to be riot police. "-silenced all legitimate protest-" Police readying grenade launchers. "-and invited the Bialyan military into his country to enforce martial law." Protestors flee as choking clouds cover the street. Sort of reminds me of Iran back home. And if there's one thing the world does not need, it's another Iran.

"Queen Bee has to be controlling Harjavti. Doesn't she have the power to enthrall most men?" I doubt Robin's right. Doctor Jones would be a more obvious choice. Rulers of entire nations can't just turn up in places without a huge fuss being made. And her control isn't permanent. If she's not reinforcing it...

"And some women. But not long distance, and we have confirmation she hasn't left Bialya. Something else is at work here."

"Wouldn't Simon Jones be the most likely suspect, sir? Assuming he's recovered from his meeting with M'gann and-" I look at my cat. "-Teekl."

"It's a possibility. Your job will be to determine that for certain. Orange Lantern."

"Sir."

"You're team leader."

Ah. Guess we're not voting on it ourselves this time. I nod, plans already forming in my mind. If Doctor Jones is in Qurac then travelling to Bialya and having M'gann read the plan from Queen Bee's mind would be the easiest optio-. Ow. I give Kon a look as I rub my shoulder where he just punched it.

Wallace makes a gesture of appeal. "What about Aqualad?"

"Busy with King Orin. He said before he left. Sir, may I ask: why hasn't the Quraci parliament impeached Harjavti?" I vaguely remember a similar incident in South America. I don't remember which country it was, but the president tried to hold a poll on extending term limits before he reached the end of his own limit despite the fact that the constitution specifically prohibited that. He was impeached and removed from office by their parliament and ended up taking shelter in the embassy of one of his allies.

"They tried. Bialyan military units stormed the parliament building. The entire Quraci parliament is currently under house arrest."

"The Quraci military?"

"Without orders from the president they can't legally take action. The choice of whether to try and work with them or not is up to you." I nod. "Any further questions?" I give a slight shake of my head. No one else says anything. Batman nods. "Team dismissed."

back

Mirage 12

next

22nd November

11:13 GMT -5

Batman walks off in the direction of the zeta tubes as the rest of the team looks at me. Ooh that's weird. "I thought we might mix things up a little by actually staying covert on our covert mission this time so: Teekl, sorry, but I think a large glowing cat would be too much of a give away." She flares her nose and looks away from me. "I'm going to be sticking Fatty in the ring. Do you want to get in the ring?" She rises to her feet and without looking back walks off in the direction of the living area. "Thought not. Fatty."

"Food?"

A Ghostbusters trap construct appears on the floor beneath him and sucks him in before dissipating. "K-. Superboy, you've spent more time with the Sphere than me. Do you think it would want to accompany us?"

He shrugs. "Maybe, but it doesn't have any weapons."

"Recognised, Batman, zero two."

"My thought is this: nothing the Bialyans have deployed in Qurac is a threat to either you or me. We'd laugh off rocket propelled grenades and heavy machineguns. But if they've continued dealing with Apokolips since our last visit..."

Robin nods. "They could have all kinds of stuff."

"My database on Apokoliptian weaponry is woefully incomplete, even with the information Big Barda and Scott Free have provided to the League. Neither of them really had access to the planet's full arsenal. I doubt they've given Queen Bee a Mekkanoid or a squad of Parademons, they'd draw too much attention. But they might have handed over a Techno-Seed or a Hell Spore. If we start seeing alien technology I'd like to have someone on hand who can tell me what I'm looking at." I think about that for a moment. "Or at least beep at me in an intelligent sounding way."

Kon nods. "I'll get her."

"M-. Miss Martian, how do you feel about going mind to mind with Doctor J-?"

Wallace makes an exasperated gesture. "Can't you just call him Psimon like everyone else does?"

"Yes, but I'm not going to. The fact that he has a silly pseudonym is not what makes him a threat; the fact that he's a telepath, telekine and a doctor of physics is. Having had a look at his thesis-" The abstract anyway, the main body was scarily above my level. "-it's quite possible that he was the one who managed to make contact with Apokolips in the first place." I tilt my head to the side. "That, and the fact that it lets us make Indiana Jones jokes."

Wallace starts, ponders with his right index finger tapping against his chin and then slowly nods. "Good point, well made."

M'gann shuffles. "I.. don't know. Henry and I have mostly been practicing telepathic illusions, not direct mind to mind fighting. I mean, I should be able to stop him doing what he did last time but I'd really find it easier to stop him spotting us in the first place."

"Exactly what can your illusions cover up? Do you think you could scan someone he was controlling without him noticing?"

"Maybe. If I concentrated."

That gets Robin's attention. "You really think Harjavti's being controlled?"

"Controlled... I'm not sure. Even someone like Doctor Cizko struggles to completely control someone who's more than about thirty metres away and not have them look like a zombie. And.. if Doctor Jones was around the President all the time Batman would have had a picture of him. If Doctor Jones is running the Quraci end of the operation it's more likely that he's inserting a series of compulsions and leaving the President to his own devices most of the time. So, two basic choices: go to Qurac and scan President Harjavti to get confirmation, or go to Bialya and try extracting the information from Queen Bee."

Wallace makes a show of counting us off. "Oh El, I'm counting four guys here, and unless you wanna tell us something we're all in the 'most men' category. Going up close with Queen Bee doesn't sound like a smart move."

"Pheromone based mind control is easily blocked by power ring environmental shields. Or an airtight costume with a gas mask. Besides, Miss Martian wouldn't have to get close to scan her and would be invisible. Only real problem with it would be if Doctor Jones was near her and picked up on the scan."

Robin shakes his head. "And if he is we're surrounded by the entire Bialyan army. Your ring hasn't been all that reliable at detecting things lately."

"That's the problem. But there's ways around it, and data mining Queen Bee's brain could have all sorts of rewards."

"Um..." I look at M'gann. "If Queen Bee's spending a lot of time around Ps-. Around Doctor Jones, it might not just be him who could pick me up. Do you think she's had the same sort of telepathic resistance training you've all had? I mean, if she's really that controlling..."

"That's a good point. If she spots it, or if she's got New God detection equipment, things could get dicey. So, Qurac instead?" Nods all round. "Right. I should be able to scan the presidential palace for Apokoliptian technology from a distance. Assuming there's nothing suspicious-looking we can bring the Bio-Ship in under stealth. Ideally, Miss Martian will be able to scan President Harjavti without exposing herself." Bad brain bad brain! "Once we know what's wrong with him we can decide what to do next. If he can be freed easily we can assist Quraci forces in expelling the Bialyan military units from the capital. If Doctor Jones is around I would very much like to collar him. If Harjavti's down for the count the next in the line of succession are the Vice President and the Prime Minister. They're under house arrest. They'll be our next stop; break them out, get them to the palace and then remove the Bialyans."

"What if he's.. y'know." Kon looks away to the side. I hope he's not this nervous about contradicting me. "Not being mind controlled?"

Robin holds out his right hand, palm upwards. "You heard Batman, Superboy: Harjavti wouldn't do something like this under normal circumstances."

"There's more ways to influence someone's behaviour than mind control. Doesn't seem likely that he's been bought..."

Robin brings up his computer. "His closest family's his daughter. She hasn't been seen in public for weeks!"

"So we'll need to locate her as well. This is all-" I flick the fingers of my right hand back and forth. "-pretty fluid based on what we find on the ground. I mean, if it turns out they've Justified the entire Quraci army or something we're going to need a major rethink. Okay, erm, anything else anyone wants to bring up now?"

"Ah, Oh El?" Wallace raises his right hand. "Justified?"

"Oh, that's where they play you the Anti-Life Equation and turn you into Darkseid's willing slave." Worried looks all around. "But don't worry: he's usually more possessive of the Anti-Life Equation than that. I really doubt he'd let a mortal like Queen Bee use it."

"Oh." Wallace appears to be reaching for a response. "Good."

"Right then. Robin, got your flight belt?"

"Never leave home without it."

"And, um. Your suppressors?"

"I'm.. keeping them with me, but I'm not wearing them. Took a while but I've pretty much got the hang of being super strong."

Wallace nudges him with his elbow, then winces and rubs it. "Wonder Woman gave him an intensive course."

"Kon, get your armour and Sphere. We'll see you in the Bio-Ship when you're ready."

back

Mirage 13

next

22nd November

11:19 GMT -5

I watch as Kon and the Sphere come out of the elevator and head towards me. I'm standing just inside the Bio-Ship's rear hatch. We're not really in a rush; once we clear the hangar I'll transition us to the Eastern Mediterranean. It'll be.. twenty past five in the evening there. By the time we've completed the flight rush hour should just about be over. Transitioning right to the Presidential Palace is doable but I haven't quite learned how to use the near-invisible filaments I now use for my own transfers on objects the size of the Bio-Ship yet. Anyone looking would know that something had happened even if they couldn't precisely spot us. The Bio-Ship is tougher than a modern plane or helicopter gunship but it can't take heavy fire. All the troops below would have to do is fire upwards with enough small arms and I'd have to stick up a shield to protect it.

Kon's armour is in its carry case. Putting it on here would have been a bit of a delay and he can easily put it on while we complete our journey. In stealth terms it's a wash: he can't walk stealthily while wearing it and he can't blend into a crowd but his flight is silent. I step aside as the Sphere rolls up the steps with a cheerful burble. Maybe we should let it out more? Since no one from New Genesis has come looking for it and with neither Big Barda nor Scott Free looking to head there any time soon the poor thing's pretty much stuck here.

I step back into the cockpit as Kon follows on just behind it. "Soo, first time in charge?" He reaches out with his right arm to pat me on the back.

"First time starting in charge, certainly." He takes his seat at the front of the Bio-Ship and plonks his bag down next to him. Wallace is on the right, Robin the left and M'gann at the pilot station with the Sphere next to her. We're all capable of flying the Bio-Ship at this point but she's still best at it and there's no good reason not to have her do it. Hmm. Feels a bit empty in here at the moment. I walk over to next to the pilot station and put my left arm on the back of her chair. "Miss Martian, please take us up and activate stealth mode at your earliest convenience."

Her hands tilt slightly and I hear the oozing sound of the Bio-Ship closing its rear doorway. The view through the windscreen shows us rising up off the landing pad as the mountain's external doors open. As we accelerate forwards I realise that I'm hovering in what is probably a distracting and unhelpful fashion and… Ah. There isn't a good 'command' seat in here. Need to ask Mister J'onzz how Martian warships arrange themselves. I straighten up and head to my usual seat at the back left.

"Camouflage mode engaged. Time to Qurac, three hours-."

"More like twenty minutes." My orange glow spreads out across the interior of the ship. "Stand by for transition to Eastern Mediterranean in three, two, one."

22nd November

18:19 GMT +2

The sea in front of us flickers and the sun goes out as we pass into night. "Miss Martian, please proceed to the Presidential Palace at best speed. Ring, notify me if anything tries to scan us."

"Setting course."

"Compliance."

"Hey, Oh El?" Wallace turns his chair to the side to let him look at me. He's grinning. I think I know where this is going. "Do you think that while we're here we could.. you know, swing by southern Bialya and take a look at your statue?"

Uuuuughh. I shake my head a little. "It's really not that interesting."

"I think it's interesting. Rob?"

He smiles too. Git. "You don't see giant statues in the middle of a desert every day. S'probably a cultural monument by now."

"Ah." Kon turns in his seat. "I'd like to see it."

"Oh, come on Kon, it's not like you haven't seen me naked be..fore." Darn it. No, Wallace spotted that and snapped his head from Kon to me in rapid succession.

"If we're picking places to go sightseeing-" Thank you M'gann! "-I'd like to stop at the Logan Animal Sanctuary."

For one strange moment I imagine Wolverine running a nature reserve. No, not that Logan. Rings a bell though. What is it-? Oh! Yes, the actress who played Megan Wheeler in 'Hello, Megan!'. Ring, same woman?

Confirmed. The sanctuary is home to Marie Logan and her son, Garfield Logan.

"Of course! A nice wholesome animal sanctuary, what a good idea. And I'm sorry, but a trip to the naked statue's probably not going to be possible. Bialya's military is going to be on full alert once we thwart their coup and I just can't justify the risk simply to assuage your curiosity."

Garfield Logan? Beast Boy! Well I flipping missed that one! Weren't his natural parents explorers or something? There's no Doom Patrol on this Earth, I checked. Having seen Steven Dayton's prescription I hope his mother has a long and happy life. His father..?

Mark Logan, deceased.

Ah. An animal sanctuary in what might well end up being a war zone probably isn't the safest place to live but it isn't as if the Bialyans have any reason to target it at present. Wait, why is Wallace looking at Robin's computer screen and sniggering-? Oh. I flick my right forefinger at the holo screen and have the ring shut it down.

"Alright, where did you get that picture?"

Robin turns to look at me. "After the last mission Batman sent a stealthed recon drone over the site to check for further activity. Couldn't really miss it. You know, ahh… It's a pretty good likeness."

"The ring did the work." I cover my face with my left hand. "Was there any further activity?"

"Not at that site." He taps his computer a couple of times to no effect. "Ahhh…"

Ring, let him.

Compliance.

The screen reappears and I walk over. A glance at the view through the windscreen shows us coming up to the coast. Robin has the computer display a map of southern Bialya. "It looks like they moved their operations underground. Couldn't really get a good look at it, but they had a whole company of army engineers working there." He appears to think of something. "Oh, and they put a desert-camo tarp over your statue. Guess they didn't think it was artistic enough."

"Thank you Queen Bee."

"It took about thirty trucks and a couple of helicopters to get it in place. That's after they stopped trying to blow it up. They were there for weeks."

I chuckle. The whole thing was too ridiculous. "Do you think that if I put another one up near the Quraci Presidential Palace they'll call the whole thing off?"

Wallace appears to consider it. "Might be worth trying."

Kon smiles. "Every time Queen Bee does something to Qurac, she gets a statue."

"She's already got my statue. I'm doing you lot next."

Wallace recoils. "Mmmaybe not then. It is.. heh.. kinda petty."

"Glad we're on the same page. Okay, primary objective: rescue President Harjavti and with him or otherwise, liberate Qurac. Secondary objectives: one, arrest Doctor Jones." I take five power suppression collars out of subspace. "These are set to block his known abilities. Since he's never been in custody for long don't assume they will prevent him doing everything he can do until I've had a chance to recalibrate them. Two, gain information on Queen Bee's other plans. I doubt she'll give up after one failed invasion and I'd like to know what else she has in the pipeline. Three, capture examples of Apokoliptian technology. Quite aside from the advantages we could get by adapting it we will be facing more of it in future and I want to be prepared. " I make eye contact with each of my team mates in turn. "Everyone clear?" Nods all round. "Okay, well, we've got about twenty minutes until we deploy. Anyone want to talk about something not related to giant naked statues?"

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Mirage 14

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22nd November

18:42 GMT +2

M'gann's eyes dim and she nods at me. "President Harjavti's mind feels.. clouded. I think he's still all there but someone's made it so he can't think clearly."

I nod and take another look out through the windscreen at where the president of Qurac has been staring vacantly in our direction since we got here. We're still stealthed but at this range the slight distortion around the Bio-Ship should be visible. He isn't reacting at all. "As far as you can tell, is the illusion holding?"

"Well, no one's shooting at us." Her eyes glance down for a moment. "I can't tell, not really. I'm broadcasting the illusion of us not being here just like Brainwave taught me. It should be working but there's no way to be sure."

Wallace gestures at the vacant-looking president. "He's right there. How difficult does this need to be?"

I wave my right hand and generate a map of the palace grounds. "Guards at the gate, guards on patrol, guards-" I peer out the windscreen again. "-on the roof." I zoom the construct in on the palace building itself, making the rooms translucent. "Guards in the foyer and on patrol inside. Where are there no guards?"

Robin nods. "There aren't any guards around the president."

"Bingo. The only one they're mind controlling is President Harjavti, otherwise they'd have the Vice President and Prime Minister here as well. They wouldn't leave him unprotected, so: there are guards there, I just can't see them. Kon?"

He turns his head from where he was staring through the hull. "I can't see them either."

"The rooms immediately adjacent are the obvious places to keep a protection detail. Curtains are drawn so we can't just look in. Can't risk a telepathic scan because Doctor Jones might pick it up. Can't send a construct because they glow. So, we either blitz the place and hope for the best or…" I focus the map construct on the roof. "Robin, this isn't really my field. Do you think you could get into the ventilation system and take a look into those rooms from above without setting off any alarms?"

He looks closer and smiles. "Should be easy enough."

"Right. M'gann, take us up. Manoeuvre the Bio-Ship to block the roof guards' line of sight to Robin's infiltration point."

"On it."

There's a slight push towards the floor as President Harjavti drops below the angle of the windscreen. "Robin, present for you." I take a small pouch out of subspace. "Laser communication relays. Since we can't risk using radios in case they're being monitored you should leave these behind you as you go. Make sure they each have line of sight to the one in front and the one behind, hold this one up to your mouth and press here to talk. The Bio-Ship's hull can detect the laser if it's pointed this way."

He attaches the pouch to his belt and looks at the one I was using to demonstrate. "Wouldn't it be easier just to use a fiber optic cable?"

"In a situation like this it probably wouldn't make any difference, but these can be used across patrolled spaces without having a visible cable hanging out. They also work across longer distances without encumbering you with a heavy cable."

He nods as M'gann completes the manoeuvring. "We're in position."

Robin walks to the open space behind the pilot's station. The hull opens next to him and he crouches then jumps down, landing silently on the surface below us. Him, I can track. He puts the first relay on the side of the building so that we can move position without losing contact. Another goes on the roof next to the duct. Next, I watch as he puts some sort of clamp on the side of the duct and then gets a tool out of his utility belt and starts cutting through. I check, but whatever he's using must be near-silent because none of the guards are reacting to it. Once he's nearly made a full circle incision he takes hold of the clamp with his left hand and carefully finishes it off, lifting the cut section carefully very slightly away. Holding it up, he stows his cutting implement and gets out one of those flexible camera things, feeding it into the gap between the side of the duct and the cut section. There's a short delay as he checks the interior but it looks like he can't see anything worrying. He returns the camera to his belt, pulls the cut section away and gently inserts himself, covering the hole up with the cut section once he's inside. It won't stand up to inspection but to a casual observer it would look as if nothing were wrong. On the construct-map I see him place a relay and then move along the interior of the duct.

"This is Robin. I'm in. Comm check."

"We hear you, Robin."

Wallace tracks Robin's movement on the map. "What do we do if he gets spotted?"

"We smash through the wall and attack them while they're distracted. M'gann, move us back down to level with Harjavti's office."

I feel the movement through the floor but my eyes are glued to Robin's progress. He's into the main body of the building now, placing the relays as he goes. Harjavti's office is on the top floor, looking out across the grounds from a slightly recessed point on the northern side. Assuming that they're more or less normal guards I should be able to transfer Kon and Wallace into one adjoining room and myself into the other. I need M'gann to stay back in order to keep the illusion of us not being here going. Doctor Jones is the one thing around here that I'm not completely sure of our ability to beat. Our telepathic defences are okay.. ish, but they wouldn't stand up to a determined attack. My best defence so far appears to involve accelerating my perception and giving anyone touching my brain a massive headache trying to make sense of what they're feeling.

"Robin to team. Three guys in the room to the east. They're wearing some kind of grey armor with glowing red sections and integrated weapons. No way to tell what it does."

"Plug the relay into your camera."

"Right."

I take a hologram projector out of subspace so that the relayed image will appear in colour. One guard has some sort of chest mounted gun complete with a screen across his face. Some sort of targeting mechanism? His arms are holding handles next to the gun. The second guard has a similar rig but with glowing red bulbs around each of his hands and what look like additional bulbs on each shoulder. The third seems to have drawn the short straw. His chest piece is the same dull grey as that of the other two but is entirely without the red tron lines which presumably form part of the weapons. In their place he has two red.. handles? Throwing weapons of some kind, perhaps?

"Okay Robin, image received. Proceed to next room."

"Moving."

Kon turns to the Sphere. "Well? Do you know what they are?" The Sphere warbles and revs. I'm getting something about.. disc cannon? Seismic something or other? Those don't sound like particularly sensible weapons to employ at close quarters. Kon looks at me then back at the Sphere. "Ah, she says the chest gun fires discs which can either explode when they hit or fly after you and electrocute you into submission. Apparently guards use them on Apokolips to stop slaves escaping. The thing with the four headlights can make solid objects act like liquid. Or just shoot you. It's only really dangerous if both beams hit you at once."

Wallace raises an eyebrow. "They look pretty dangerous. Is she sure about that?"

The Sphere beeps its response.

"Oh. Uuum, dangerous to a New God. She thinks one would probably seriously injure a Human."

"Speaking as the only guy here who's tough as a normal Human, that's the sort of thing I like to know."

"And the little hand weapon things?"

A brief beeping.

"Shock pads. They can generate small force fields and concussive impacts. She says it's all fairly low level equipment."

"Thank you Sphere. And their armour?"

"Tough, but it doesn't cover much of their bodies. We can just work around it."

"Right. Kon, get your armour on. Looks like a direct attack is our best option."

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Mirage 15

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22nd November

18:49 GMT +2

"Looks like seven guys this time. One's an officer."

I frown. "Doesn't look like he's armoured."

"Officers organize, Oh El. If he's fighting on the front line he's not planning the fight."

"Sure, I understand him not having an Apokoliptian weapon system but you'd think he'd have decent body armour." Still, not a good situation. No one else in Harjavti's room, but three to the east, two to the west and six to the south. Three seismic disruptors, three disc launchers, three shock pads and two halberd-looking things. Conventional weapons are available too, as well as reinforcements from all over the palace grounds. Two gold bars… Who uses two gold ba-? The French. He's a lieutenant. Probably in charge of palace security. I'm a bit surprised that someone higher up isn't on top of this. Or maybe..? Yes, Desert Lion's insignia on the lot of them but not on the guys patrolling the grounds. They'd probably want to keep knowledge of their elites' 'unusual weapons' limited as much as possible. Bialyan soldiers tend to be loyal but there's no way they wouldn't talk about them amongst themselves and all it would take would be one overheard conversation… "Robin, do your gas and smoke mines come with remote detonators?"

"Yeah, but those face masks might have filters."

"Okay. We need to knock them out as quietly as possible without them raising the alarm, killing Harjavti or destroying the building. M'gann, any luck working out where Doctor Jones is?"

She shakes her head. "He isn't staying connected to Harjavti the whole time. He's just made it so that Harjavti wants to do what he says."

Wallace winces. "Definitely him, though? I still remember the headache from last time."

"My experiments suggest that remaining at high speed should make it difficult for him to affect you. If it really comes to it you can make a tour of the building and knock out the guards who are on patrol."

"Why not just go after him?"

I look over to the orange changing screen I erected for Kon. "In Wallace's case, because Doctor Jones would almost certainly still be able to feel his location and could fire area effect telekinetic attacks at him. He might be able to evade but I don't like using the term 'might' in reference to supervillains."

Wallace shakes his head. "No certainties dealing with these freak-ohs, Oh El. So how we doing this?"

"We can see through smoke, they probably can't. Perhaps the ones with the disc launcher screens? We all have gas masks, they might, they might not. Robin, set up both types of mine over both rooms. Trigger the gas first. Give it enough time to diffuse into the room before smoking the place. M'gann-."

"Oh El? Remember the code names?"

"Oh. Right, sorry Kid Flash. Miss Martian, close as you can to the wall and open a tiny hole in the Bio-Ship's hull. I need to send a filament into those rooms. Once Superboy's armoured up I'll send him into the eastern room. Kid Flash, you'll be in the west. I'll take the south. Robin, I want you in the corridor outside in case of runners."

"What about me?"

"I need you to maintain the illusion and tell us if Doctor Jones scans the area. Once Harjavti's secure and sensible we can hunt him down. Remember, those weapons are ludicrously powerful. We cannot let them get a shot off. Robin, time on those mines?"

"Twenty seconds."

"Superboy?"

A sound of material being tugged on. "Ready."

I dismiss the screen. Wallace lowers his goggles and puts on his air filter as I pass Kon his gas mask. A hole maybe a centimetre across opens in the floor beneath me. In theory it's a risk, but someone would have to be looking directly up at it to see into the Bio-Ship. Closing my eyes I send a filament down and across the short distance to the outer wall. Going through the brick would be a little difficult, but fortunately the window frame is made of much less solid stuff. Once it's in Harjavti's office I run it under the carpet into the room to the east. I can transfer things by FTL without going with them but it does a number on the ring's energy store. Still don't completely understand why, something about 'avarice flow induction in transit'. Just another question for the Controllers I suppose. Next, I loop the filament back through Harjavti's office into the western room, then back into the office and then out into the southern room.

"Mines in position, heading to the corridor."

Under normal circumstances I'd back Robin in a fight against a small number of guards. With super strength it would be even more one sided but for the fact that we can't risk them getting even a single shot off. His smaller frame and stealth habits should mean that he's better able to conceal himself from the guards patrolling on the floor below than the rest of us. I make a beckoning motion with my right hand and Kon and Wallace come to stand close to me. Wallace thinks of something and turns to me with a frown. "What happens if Harjavti gets gassed?"

"Then I wake him up with the ring. If the gas Robin's using had a significant chance of killing someone with brief exposure Batman wouldn't use it." He nods.

"In position. No one in the corridor."

"I'll jam their radios when I attack. Give the gas.. fifteen seconds? Would that be enough for it to take effect?"

"Coming from the ceiling? Ten should be plenty."

"Activate the gas on my mark, smoke ten seconds later. We transition in eleven. Mark."

There's no sound to indicate that the gas has been released. With Robin in position to intercept I can't tell if the gas has worked without creating a construct camera and the risk isn't worth it.

"Smoke in two.. one..."

"Transition."

The flicker is just long enough for me to get a quick snapshot of each room as I drop my team mates off at their targets. The soldiers are still upright and just starting to react to the smoke when they get hit. Wallace is so fast that I actually see him strike his first target before I transition to my own. Accelerated perception. Jam radios in these four rooms only. Block alarms in these four rooms only. Assess. Officer down, soldiers unsteady. Haven't tested my attacks against Apokoliptian armour but their heads are unprotected. The one with the disc launcher is in the process of swinging around, his attention on his screen. Him first. A filament extends from my right shoulder to his forehead. So slowly, but I can't risk changing my perception speed down yet. ShockCrown. Did it work? Yes, he's definitely being disrupted, he just hasn't had time to fall yet. Seismic weapon next. ShockCrown. Shock pads one is in the process of bringing them together and I'm not sure how large the shield effect is. The filament goes behind him and around to the back of his neck before burrowing up under his helmet to ShockCrown him. Halberd starts making a blind sweep with his blade while shock pads two staggers to his knees. Ignore halberd. Two filaments cut through shock pad two's gloves and force his hands to open and drop his weapons. ShockCrown. Halberd's stopped his swing and is pointing his weapon at me. He can see the glow of my environmental shield! Armour and get him! Filaments race with the glow of his weapon. No, the energy build-up's already started. Drain it! Filaments connect to the muzzle and to three points along the shaft before the last two strike his head. He shudders and the glow in his weapon dies. Can't see anyone else. Normal perception.

Uggggh.

There's a thump next to me as another guard hits the floor. I jerk around to see Robin smugly smiling at me, another halberd -there was a second halberd, of course there was a second halberd!- in his right hand. "Miss one, Oh El?" He steps into the room and quickly and quietly shuts the door behind him.

"Yes. Thank you." The door to the office opens and Wallace takes a rushed step through before realising that we've won. I wave my hands to remove the smoke from the air. "Done?" He looks around then nods, pulling up his goggles. "Right then. Let's check on the president."

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Mirage 16

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22nd November

18:53 GMT +2

I pick up the recumbent forms of the guards and give them a quick puff of Batman-authorised knock-out gas. They wouldn't be going anywhere while under the effect of the ShockCrown but I'd rather they didn't hear or see anything either. One by one I float them through the door to President Harjavti's office and set them down out of the way. Not sure what happens to them when this is over. If this is a war then they would be handed back to their own government but I'm not sure it is -technically- war. The officer I keep with me, floating just ahead of me as Wallace, Robin and I follow the floating soldiers.

I point a laser relay at the distortion outside the window. "Miss Martian, would you be so good as to join us?"

Kon looks up as he plonks his own still groaning opponents down. "What d'you want done with their equipment?"

"Much as I'd love to spend time adapting it for our use, there simply isn't time. Robin, do you intend to make use of that halberd?"

He gives it an experimental swing. "Nnnn. Don't think so. Somehow I don't think a place called 'Apokolips' uses stun settings."

"Right then. Ring, subspace the Apokoliptian gear…" Five orange tendrils extend from my back and one by one make contact with the required objects, vanishing them into my collection. "And their regular armour, their masks, helmets and side arms. Kid Flash, please draw the curtains. Robin, please lock the external doors leading into the side rooms."

Robin heads into the eastern room while Wallace moves to the window, stopping as he comes level with the president. He looks uncomfortably at him as M'gann comes through the wall next to them. "Uh, Oh El? What are we doing about Harjavti?"

At the sound of his name Harjavti turns his head to look at Wallace. His gaze is blank and expressionless. "Where's my daughter?" He winces, his left hand rising to grip his forehead for a moment before lowering it again. "Where's Psimon?"

That looked like a programmed response. Anything out of the ordinary happens and he requests his programmer. Sensible. "Miss Martian, are you able to remove the programming from President Harjavti without dropping the illusion?"

She bends down to look into the vacant looking president's face. "I won't know until I see exactly what he's done."

"Would that alert Doctor Jones?"

"Only if he checks."

"Take a look. Tell me what you see." Her eyes glow as Robin re-enters and then crosses back into the west room. I take a selection of hand and leg cuffs and gags out of subspace. "Kid Flash, Superboy, please restrain our guests."

Kon picks a pair of leg cuffs up while Wallace pulls a face. "They're unconscious."

"True, but the effect isn't permanent and I'm not sure how long we're going to be here for." He tilts his head to the side and picks up a pair of handcuffs. "Remember, behind the back."

M'gann steps back, her eyes dimming. "What Psi-. What Doctor Jones has done isn't permanent. I think I can remove it without dropping the illusion."

"Do it. Carefully."

Wallace rolls a guard onto his front and pulls his arms back. "Okay Oh El, what's the next step?"

"That's sort of up to him." I nod at the president. "He runs the country after all, we'll be operating at his pleasure. My thoughts were that M'gann could assume this guy's form-" I give the officer a shake. "-and arrange to transfer elements of the Quraci army in to secure the palace. Once they're in place and the president is protected we can focus on hunting Doctor Jones down."

There's a sharp intake of breath from Harjavti. M'gann steps back, her eyes dimming once more. The president looks around in shock. "Who-? What-?" His face curls into a snarl. "Psimon."

"Yes, Mister President. I am Orange Lantern two eight one four and we're here to help. How much do you remember?"

"He was making me give Qurac over to Queen Bee! Peace Envoy! Hah!" He takes a moment to collect himself. "What is the situation in my country?"

"Bialyan infantry occupy the capital in battalion strength, and they're building up near the towns closest to the border. Forces occupying the palace grounds itself are at platoon strength only, and this chap was in charge." I give him another shake. M'gann frowns at me and lifts him away with her telekinesis. "Miss Martian, any data you can extract would be invaluable."

"On it."

"Do you know where they are holding my daughter?"

I bring up a construct map. "Her quarters, under guard." The guards there are perfectly visible to me. Of course, the thing about invisible guards is…

"Are you able to free her?"

"Yes. To be honest, we could probably forcibly eject the Bialyan presence from the country entirely if you ordered it. The problem with that is that they might decide to try shooting their way out. What I'm going to suggest depends on what Miss Martian can get out of his brain." I turn to look at her. "Well?"

Her eyes are still glowing as she searches for information. "He's not part of the guards' platoon but they've been ordered to assist him. I think-" Her outline shifts as she changes shape to mimic him. "-I can maintain the pretence long enough to get your daughter to safety."

Harjavti stares at her for a moment. Then he nods. "Of course. Martian, like the Manhunter."

"Are you going to be able to maintain the illusion from the other end of the building?"

"No, but, to be honest? If he looks in this direction he'll see a bunch of unconscious guards anyway. I can make it look like we're not here but I can't make their brains look like they're still awake."

"Fiddlesticks." I turn to the President. "Any idea where he might be? "

He shrugs. "Somewhere the cameras won't see him. I only see him when he wants to-" He winces and wiggles his right hand at his temple. "-renew his grip on my mind."

"Miss Martian, can you create an illusion that we are in a particular place? Just.. give him an inkling that we're somewhere else?"

"Whoh, that… No, that's far too advanced for me."

I cover my face with my right hand. "We're about to fail stealth again, aren't we?" Robin pats me on the back. "Right. Mister President, please stay here and act as if you're still under the influence. We'll get your daughter to safety before starting our attack on the soldiers inside the palace. Robin, Superboy, remain here. Kid Flash-" I wave my right hand. The fatigues disappear from two of the recumbent guards and materialise -tailored to our dimensions- on us. "-welcome to the Bialyan army."

Wallace's uniform is tight enough that his fatigues go over it but I'm forced to send my armour back into subspace. He looks over his new uniform. "Dude. A little warning?"

"We need to go with Miss Martian in case she gets spotted and we need to evacuate Miss Harjavti under fire. Mister President, is there somewhere we can use to communicate with the outside world?"

"There's a communications room near the hall we use for press conferences."

"All being well that's where we're going next, then." I hold out my right arm in the direction of the door and smile at M'gann. "After you, sir."

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Mirage 17

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22nd November

19:02 GMT +2

I pull awkwardly at the straps of the Apokoliptian disc launcher. Most of the weapon folds up into the straps or away on the back but I'm not entirely comfortable having a weapon that I don't understand this close to me. That, and the fact that in order to keep the orange glow from giving me away I've had to put the ring in my pocket. Alright, I suppose I don't really understand the ring either, but while a quick scan was able to give me a rough idea of the controls I haven't practised with it and I didn't really have time to perform a detailed analysis. The control stick armatures fold forwards under the arms, the two circular pads which make up the disc launcher extend over the shoulders to meet at the centre of the user's chest and extend into the barrel when they meet. The cables to power the thing extend from the sides of the straps -that probably isn't the right word for them given that they're rigid- and the targeting screen extends from the top of the barrel.

Wallace probably made a better choice when he went for the halberd.

"So, what happens if they spot us?"

"Are you speaking Arabic?"

"No, wh-? Oh. Right."

A Bialyan patrol comes around a nearby corner and steps back in a hurry as M'gann walks past. She glances at them and acknowledges them with a nod. I have to assume that she took enough knowledge of Bialyan military practice to mimic his body language.

We've seen guards in several places but none of them have stopped us. They seem a little nervous about us, actually. Would it be worth checking the unconscious guards to see if they've been exposed to Queen Bee's pheromones or even the Anti-Life Equation? Pheromones, maybe, but I don't even know for sure that the Equation exists here and I've got no idea at all how to detect it if it does. Other than, you know, people shouting 'Die for Darkseid!', and it doesn't look like anyone's doing that here.

"If it comes to it, we give Miss Martian a chance to talk our way out while maintaining our cover identity. If that doesn't work, we fight."

He nods without turning his head. We're in the residential part of the palace, just coming up on Miss Harjavti's room now. The corridor opens into a large open.. room? Area? With doors leading off left and right. Both are guarded by two armed Bialyan soldiers and I know from my earlier ring scan that there are a further three guards inside Miss Harjavti's quarters. I might be able to knock them all out but I have no doubt that either the route of one of the patrols comes through here or they radio in to report their status every few minutes. We probably only got away with knocking out the Apokoliptian weapon users due to the separate command structure.

M'gann marches up to the guards outside her room and says something in what I'm going to assume is Bialyan Arabic. The guard on her right nods and gets out his radio. I have a Justice League translator in subspace but wearing it would have risked giving the game away. I'm just going to have to hope that no one wants to talk to me. There's no real reason for them to want to but my left hand is poised to dart into my pocket and touch the ring if it looks like they are going to. The guard says something into the radio and keeps hold of it, awaiting a reply. I take a slow look around but the guards on the opposite side don't seem concerned. Another noise from the radio and the guard lets go of it with a nod and moves away from the door. M'gann gives a small nod of acknowledgement and steps past him, opening it and walking inside.

I wait a moment before following her, Wallace just behind me. The room inside is an ornately decorated living room. To my right a large television screen tuned to a news channel whose name I can't read is showing footage of the Bialyan occupation. The sound is turned right down, not that I imagine I could understand it anyway. One guard directly in front already answering M'gann's questions, one to the right and another in Miss Harjavti's study. M'gann heads across the room and Wallace and I follow her again. The guard holds up a hand to stop us and knocks on the door. He and someone inside briefly exchange words and then the door opens. The guard outside says something but M'gann ignores him and heads through the door. The guard winces, makes eye contact with me and mutters something at me which sounded like it had an interrogative on the end. Completely guessing, I give a small shake of my head as I walk past him. No shouts of alarm so I'm going to assume that it wasn't a request for a password or anything like that. As Wallace closes the door behind us I think I hear the other guard in the room bark something at the one we just went past.

I'm sure that I just missed a lot.

The study has book shelves, tables, another television and a desk with a computer monitor mounted on it. Miss Harjavti is at the desk, though she doesn't appear to be working on anything. Standing against the far wall is another guard, female this time. Rather decent of them, as these things go.

The guard comes to attention while Miss Harjavti scowls at the three of us. She says something which -again- I don't understand. M'gann takes a quick look around the room and then her eyes glow red. "Miss Harjavti, we're here to rescue you."

Her head jerks back and she frowns. "Olav-? What do you-?"

I quickly look at the guard. Her eyes have glazed over and she's not responding. I slip the ring onto my finger and subspace my face mask, revealing my decidedly non Middle Eastern complexion. "Miss Harjavti, I am Orange Lantern two eight one four. These are my colleagues Miss Martian-" M'gann shifts back to her normal form and waves. "-and Kid Flash." He lifts off his helmet to show the face-covering parts of his mask. "We're here to prevent Queen Bee from taking over Qurac."

"My fa-!"

"Please, keep it down. We've already freed your father. Miss Martian, can you convince the guards that we need to move her?"

"They've been ordered to cooperate with everything I do."

"Glad to hear it. We'll take you to see the President now, then evacuate you to somewhere safe while we retake the palace."

She gets to her feet. "I should stay here. This is my home, and my father-."

"Will be much better off with you out of the line of fire. I'll bring you straight back once the palace is in Quraci control but unless you've got super powers you haven't told anyone about you are presently a liability." She grimaces, then nods. I restore my mask and remove the ring, Wallace rehelmets and M'gann shifts back into the officer's form. "We're heading to his office. Remember, we're a prisoner escort. Look angry and defeated."

Transformation complete, M'gann's eyes glow again and the guard comes back to life. There's another quick exchange in Arabic and the guard doesn't seem entirely happy about events. M'gann raises her voice and the guard straightens up and says what I'm assuming was the Arabic version of 'Sir, yes sir!'. M'gann walks back to the door and I give Miss Harjavti a push in that direction.

M'gann strides ahead as we pass through the living area and out into the hall. The guard who radioed before does so again but it looks like that was just to report on our position. Walking around as if you own the place really does work wonders. Just give her the occasional push and glare at the regular guards and no one notices anything out of the ordinary. Shame this almost certainly wouldn't work on Doctor Jones himself.

Even with the confidence I've started feeling it's still a relief when we get back to President Harjavti's offices. Door shut and locked behind me I quickly spot Robin's gas mine next to the doors. M'gann shifts back and I remove the uniforms from Wallace and myself. Miss Harjavti hurries ahead, pushing open the inner door and running to embrace her father who is similarly overjoyed to see her. Kon and Robin have kept themselves busy by finishing binding the guards, though none of them are showing signs of life as yet.

"…and do not worry, I will be fine." President Harjavti tries to reassure her, but I can only imagine how badly she's been shaken by this.

"Be careful, father." He nods and she steps back from him. "How do you plan to get me away?"

"Oh, that's easy." I stand facing her and put my right hand on her left shoulder. "Transition." She starts as the scenery shifts. "This is the Themysciran embassy in New York. Just tell them who you are and you'll be looked after until we can bring you back."

"New York! That's thousands of miles-!"

"Power rings are awesome. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get back."

back

Mirage 18

next

22nd November

19:16 GMT +2

I try not to look up at the air vents as we make our way towards the communications room. Didn't take long to alter a uniform for Kon, though compared to most guards here he's rather broad. Wallace was pushing it, and Robin's far too small for it to be believable.

Eh, he seems happy enough. Crawling around air ducts probably feels like home for him.

The last patrol we passed gave us slightly odd looks but after a harsh stare from M'gann they went about their business. The telepathic illusion's back up and Harjavti's managing to maintain the whole zombified look really well. Qurac has easily enough military power in the area to beat the Bialyans and once they're back in control I can use more assertive methods for locating Doctor Jones. When he's safely in custody either M'gann can try reading his mind or I can try fiddling with his brain a little to make him more inclined to explain what he's been up to and he certainly isn't a member of the Bialyan military. Branding him might work but I've tried it a couple of times since the training debacle and it's a lot harder than the Ophidian made it look. I should probably ask them to commute Doctor Jones' sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole but I'm not exactly sad that he's going to be taken off the board.

We go through the double doors which open into the corridor leading to the briefing room. Through the windows to the right I can see the floodlights the Bialyans are using to enable them to keep watch over the grounds. I wonder-.

Wait. Is that music? M'gann slows as I activate the disc launcher. I'm not about to shoot anyone but the screen will stand out less than the ring. Yes, someone's in there. Doesn't look like Doctor Jones… Don't recognise him at all, actually. I return the launcher to its standby mode. "It's not Doctor Jones. Keep going."

M'gann nods and pushes the doors to the briefing room open. Rows of red upholstered chairs facing the empty podium at the end. No, empty stage. The podium itself has been shoved off to the side and a large projection screen covers the backdrop. A muscular man with short curly blonde hair wearing a purple polo shirt and white Bermuda shorts is sitting in a chair he's moved into the middle of the gangway. Next to him is a small table supporting a large bowl of popcorn and a glass of coke. He's leaning back, watching as Indiana Jones and his father drive a motorcycle out of a crate while some Nazis stand in a boat. That's.. Last Crusade, isn't it?

"Psimon, finally. I was beginning to wonder-" He turns his head in our direction. "-where you'd… Oh." He frowns. "What are you lot doing here?"

We keep moving forwards as M'gann starts to reply in Arabic, only to be cut off by him speaking back in the same language. A moment later he switches back. "-and clearly my Arabic is far better than your English. And your Arabic. Where did you learn to speak, anyway?" M'gann opens her mouth. "No, never mind." He makes a dismissive gesture with his right hand. "If you've been told to take him to the communications room, take him to the communications room. I don't intend to concern myself." He turns back to the film, puts his right hand into the bowl and flicks a single piece of popcorn into his mouth.

M'gann risks a look at me. I just shrug. I genuinely have no idea who he is, but a man watching a film doesn't really mean much for our objective. She, President Harjavti and Wallace continue head over to the doorway to the right of the stage which leads to the communications room while Kon and I take up station by the door.

"Can't you move faster, you're getting in the way!" The blonde man tosses his head. "Oh, honestly." He looks back at Kon and I. "Have you seen this? Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade?" And then he lapses into Arabic. And he looks like he's expecting a response and Kon's programming didn't include Arabic. I put my left hand into my pocket and make contact with the ring.

Ring, what did he just say?

Subject said: 'Please tell me you speak English? I though you lot were supposed to be elite?'

The ring even did his voice. Right. I think I can do a convincing Bialyan accent. The alternative would be to have the ring translate what I said into Arabic and that would mean that Kon couldn't follow the conversation.

"Certainly, sir. I speak English."

"Noooo. Not sir, I'm not one of you thugs. You may address me as Doctor."

"My apologies, Doctor. I have been somewhat occupied. I did not recognise you."

"Who could you possibly mistake me for? Oh, don't answer that. Just, move to somewhere that doesn't put you right in the corner of my eye." Kon looks at me and I shrug. No real harm in it. I cross the room behind him and walk towards the front. "When is Psimon getting here anyway?"

"I am sorry, Doctor. I do not know."

He tries crossing his legs, right ankle resting on his left thigh, right foot waving back and forth like the tail of an irritated cat. "Oh, it's no good." He presses a button on a small control pad on his lap. "Were you serious about not knowing who I am?"

Hallelujah! "I am afraid so, Doctor."

"Oh, that's just too much. I've a good mind to-. Ah! Finally. Psimon, tell this ignoramus who I am."

I try to conceal my expression as I follow Doctor whoever's gaze to the rear of the room where Doctor Jones is standing in the shadows, a cloak over his head.

"Was that really Indiana Jones, Doctor Sivana? I'd have thought you'd have put more effort into your mockery."

Sivana? Isn't he that short bald man who Captain Marvel fights? When did he become a buff blonde man?

"You're not worth my A-game. Why are we even here? I was hired for my scientific expertise, not to lounge around a palace while Queen Beatrice annexes her neighbor."

"Take this from someone who has been floating around academic circles somewhat longer than you have: the job is whatever the person providing the funding tells you it is. Besides, I'm sure that you can manage to occupy-" He looks around the room, gives Kon and myself a quick once over and then returns his attention to Doctor Sivana. "-yourself for a few days."

"Certainly, if I could leave the grounds. Or get a better look at those curious-looking weapons your flunkies are using. Why did you want President Harjavti down here anyway?"

Ring on.

"I'm afraid that's not-. Wait. What? I didn't..?" He frowns and looks at us, and then past us through the wall to where M'gann, Wallace and Harjavti are hopefully already in communication with the nearest Quraci military base. "What is he doing?" Sounds like the illusion's holding.

Doctor Sivana smugs at him. "Personnel management problems?"

Do I try collaring him? He doesn't appear to have a radio at hand and muzzling him would be an easy matter. The collar won't necessarily shut him down but I should be able to shield myself. Can't safely ShockCrown him without a better idea of how his brain works. I start feeding a filament under the floor towards him as he flips back his hood and stares harder at the rear wall.

Understanding dawns on Doctor Jones face. Then he smiles. "Hello, Martian."

Fuck it, failed stealth again. The filament rises up behind him, clamps onto his neck and pulls him- "Whow!" -backwards to the floor before sticking the collar around his neck. "Dawh!"

I armour myself in orange as Kon steps towards the unconcerned looking Doctor Sivana. **Miss Martian, we're rumbl-.**

**Nononononono!**

**Oh El, Miss Em doesn't look so good.**

**Have you contacted the Quraci military?**

**Yeah, they're on their way.**

**Robin, keep-.**

Doctor Sivana looks at the fallen Doctor Jones, at my orange glowing armour plate and then at Kon walking towards him. He smiles. "Finally, something interesting!" He stands, then leaps across the room swinging a fist at my face!

back

Mirage 19

next

22nd November

19:22 GMT +2

I get about enough time to think 'what?' before he clears about fifteen rows of seats and lands a perfect haymaker on the front left of my face plate. Instinct beaten into me during long hours of practice with Diana and Kon causes me to immediately move across him away from the blow but it still causes a significant fracture of my armour. He tries to follow up with a jab to my diaphragm but I've recovered enough to have the ring transition me to the other end of the room. I watch him spin around to spot me only to get tackled in the chest by Kon.

"Oof!"

Don't remember Doctor Sivana being that strong in the comics.

**Kid Flash, status of M'gann!**

**Err. She's.. erm, growing? Mutating? I think Psimon messed around with her shapeshifting!**

Or she might be resuming her natural form under stress. She's been pretty clear about not wanting anyone to know what she looks like. I'd rather forgotten about it, actually. **Kid Flash, get the President back to his office. Maintain cover as long as possible. Robin, cover Kid Flash. We'll handle Sivana.** Kon pins Sivana to the floor, legs around his chest and starts hammering punches at his head. Against a super tough opponent who can't fly it's a pretty good approach.

**Wait, Sivana? The scrawny scientist guy?**

**I think Sivana's a more common name than we thought.**

Sivana gets his arms up to block Kon's attacks and Kon responds by grabbing his wrists, pulling his arms apart and headbutting him right on the nose. "Agh!"

Ring, sound deadening. Really can't risk any guards hearing this and investigating.

Compliance.

And start checking the frequencies on Psi… Ugh, fine, Psimon's collar.

In progress. Estimated time to completion, three minutes.

Sivana somehow gets his right arm free and slams a hook into Kon's exposed cheek. It won't cause serious harm but it does lift Kon off him, allowing Sivana to follow up with an upper cut as he surges to his feet. Kon careens back into the chairs, the sound strangely muted. Sivana take a moment to check his nose as Kon gets back up. "That actually hurt. You actually hurt me. I'm impressed."

Looks like Kon's got that under control. **M'gann, talk to me.**

Kon assumes a grappling pose. "Yeah? What makes you so tough?"

"My father, Thaddeus Sivana. Only the best in biotechnology would do for his eldest son. Heh." He wipes what I hope is blood away from the end of his nose as he takes a boxer's stance. "You?"

Nothing from M'gann, that isn't good.

"Kryptonian."

Sivana slowly and carefully starts closing the distance, his eyes fixed on Kon's. "No you're not. No flying? No laser eyes? Anyway, they're extinct, apart from Superman. Come on, tell me."

"Half Kryptonian, then."

They start circling each other. "And the other half is.. Human? I hadn't realized they were even compatible." He jabs at Kon's head. Kon parries and Sivana pulls back before Kon can get a hold of his arm. "Two entirely separate evolutionary histories… No, wait. I've never heard of you and there's no way Superman's old enough-"

**M'gann!**

"-to have a son your age." He straightens up slightly. "Hah! You're an escaped lab experiment!"

The rage is plain on Kon's face, but Diana has taught him self control and he manages to avoid charging his tormentor. Instead, he steps forwards as if he were going to do that then sidesteps around Sivana's punch, locking his arm and using that leverage to slam Sivana's face into the ground.

**No. Please, stop.**

**M'gann, who needs to stop?** Something's still happening to h- Fuck! Psimon! I have the ring yank him off the ground by hooks under his arms. He opens his eyes to look at me and gives me a weak smile.

**Oh, hello.**

Ring, fortify my mental defences and analyse his brain structures.

In progress.

**The Martian's in a bit of a sorry state.**

"Agh!" I take a quick look and Kon's managed to get both of Sivana's arms locked and is having a crack at dislocating his shoulders while avoiding his opponent's attempts to kick him. He's got that well in hand.

**And she's far more interesting to play with than you would be. Psimon says-.**

"How's life with nine fingers?" His eyes narrow. "Teekl kept it as a trophy, you know? I realise that Miss Martian did most of the work beating you last time but I like to think this'll be a team effort."

There's a brief distortion in the air between us as he tries for a telekinetic blast but the collar appears to have already adapted to that. **The hard way, then. Psimon says pain.**

Uguh. Most pain induction is, agh, fairly straightforward to fight off with a power ring. Direct stimulation of the peripheral nerves -like that- can be overcome by simply telling the ring to circumvent them. Ugff. Central nervous system stimulation requires the deadening of all tactile nerves. Mind stimulation is pretty much impossible to stop directly with the ring but can be fought using telepathic resistance techniques or by violently stunning the perpetrator.

**Come back! Please. Please.**

And he's still doing something to M'gann at the same time!

BABUM

No. M'gann is mine to keep. **M'gann, I'm here!** Psimon grins a little wider. Oh, I've had enough of you. And if it goes wrong I can probably stop it before you get totally converted. "Ring, brand."

"Compliance."

**What?** Orange light blazes around his body as the orange sigil begins to form on his transparent brain dome. **What are you doing?!**

"Making you my slave for eternity. You really shouldn't-."

His face tenses and the room goes dark around me. He's no longer in my grasp. Where did he..? Oh, a mindscape fight. Not much I can do against a hostile telepath in here but the branding is still happening. And the collar should be nearly done by now. I hope, anyway.

**Paul..?** I look down and see M'gann below us in full Martian form. Looks.. paler than when she showed me back at the base.

**Miss Martian. You're looking pale.**

**I thought.. everyone… I was so alone.**

**Miss Martian, you are mine. Nothing will keep me from you when you need me. Now, focus. We need to beat Doctor Jones-.**

He reappears and fires a beam of black energy at me from his forehead, right where the brand was forming. I shove both my hands and my need forwards, forming an orange sigil-barrier. His black beam strikes it and sprays off, to his obvious frustration.

**Okay. Okay.** A turquoise energy beam fires from her forehead, forcing him to stop the beam pointed at me and create a bubble of darkness around himself for protection. **Taste your own medicine!**

He manages a smile. **You'll have to do better than that.**

BABUM

Two vast orange serpentine eyes open in the void behind him.

**Alright then. We will.**

back

Mirage 20

next

22nd November

19:25 GMT +2

I shouldn't be surprised, really. I'm still connected to my lantern via the ring, and I know the Ophidian has an awareness beyond its current home. I'm still not sure how much, though, and with no scale here I can't tell how big what I'm looking at is.

**What is that?**

I look 'down' at M'gann. She's stopped blasting Doctor Jones and is just staring at it.

**Oh please. As if I'm going to fall for that. Look out behind you!** He jazz hands for a moment, then smirks as he looks at me. **You don't seem surprised. Has she shown you her true form before? And.. not the Kryptonian? How very sordid.**

BABUM

Doctor Jones' head jerks to the side. He frowns in puzzlement. **What was..?**

**That, Miss Martian, is the Ophidian. The Embodiment of Avarice.**

BABUM

**You, are mine. What's mine is hers. Therefore, she regards you as hers also.**

BABUM

Doctor Jones reinforces his shield and slowly starts to turn away from us as more and more of the Ophidian materialises behind him.

**Doctor Jones tried to hurt you.**

BABUM

All I can see beyond Doctor Jones is the orange glow of the coils of my Embodiment. She's even bigger now than she was when we fought the illusory aliens in the training scenario. I'm going to assume that she understands the false nature of our environment this time.

**He shouldn't have done that.**

BABUM

Doctor Jones finally turns sufficiently to get a look at the Ophidian. **Ahhhhhhhhhhh..!** He throws up his arms as if in a futile attempt to ward her off as her head lunges forwards.

**'s not allowed.**

**Ahhhhhhhhhh…**

Either he's moving away, he's getting smaller, or.. I don't know. The Ophidian appears to be lunging at him and it does look like he's heading into her mouth but she's not getting any closer to either myself or M'gann.

**She can't eat him!**

I tear my eyes away from the site before me. **I don't think this is literally…** I don't know what would happen if she actually ate Doctor Jones here. I'd rather have him cogent to answer questions, though. **Ophidian!** Her eyes shift a little, from the tiny Doctor Jones to me. **We need him alive! If you could possibly limit yourself-.**

Her head turns sideways, mouth coming around, one huge fang piercing Doctor Jones through the chest. He jerks, but there's no blood and at this 'distance' I can't hear his cries. She then violently twists her neck and hinges her jaw back, flinging Doctor Jones off her fang and into the distance. I look down again at M'gann. I can't read her expressions when she doesn't have any but I imagine that seeing the Ophidian is a bit of a shock.

M'gann needs us.

I'm moving through the void until I float with my head level to M'gann's. Yep, White Martian. I know these aren't the psychopathic comic versions and I can't honestly say I'm surprised. I know that she made a big deal of showing me her 'true' appearance after our first encounter with Klarion but I like to think that I'm too level headed to get annoyed over so small a deception.

**M'gann?** She's still staring at the Ophidian. **M'gann!** I put my hands on either side of her face to get her attention and she immediately reorientates on me. I let go and float back a little, trying to block her view of the Ophidian. **Soo, how do we get back to the real world?**

She takes a moment to look around the environment. **I should be able to ah!** The Ophidian, much reduced in size has just coiled herself around M'gann's right shin. **What does she want?** The Ophidian continues moving up her leg, then loops around M'gann's long right arm before leaning out so she can stare directly into M'gann's face. **Paul?**

**Not.. really.. sure. Don't think she's hostile..?**

**Ours.**

I blink, and I'm back in the briefing room. For a confused heartbeat I drop in the air before getting my head back together. There's a thump behind me as Doctor Jones falls to the ground. Sivana's up again, gingerly supporting his left arm with his right as it hangs loose at his side while Kon pulls himself out of the far wall. Sivana watches him, takes a couple of deep breaths and then grabs his left shoulder with his right hand and yanks it back into the socket! "Grraw!" He winces and cautiously tries moving it a little.

**Miss Martian, are you.. in good shape?**

**Yeah, I think so.**

**Are you up to continuing the mission?**

**Yes.**

Ring, show me the guards. Okay, looks like the sound deadening is still working because none of them are coming here. I can't track Wallace while he's wearing the Apokoliptian equipment but Robin and Harjavti look fine. Doctor Jones.. is laying on the ground in a daze. Ring, status?

Brand complete. Collar adaptation complete. No significant injuries.

Maybe we haven't failed the stealth after all. Show me the Quraci military convoy. A picture forms in my mind. Trucks and APCs. Enough to overwhelm the soldiers defending the palace but there'll still be casualties. On the other hand, with Doctor Jones down…

**Orange Lantern to team. Doctor Jones is down. Telepathic communication is now authorised. Miss Martian, Robin. Begin opportunistic ambushes of any guards inside the palace. Co-ordinate between yourselves and do not allow yourselves to be seen.**

**Right.**

**On it, Oh El.**

**If you get seen, let me know immediately. Kid Flash, stay with the President.**

**Right.**

"Doctor Sivana. You're under arrest."

He turns his head in my direction for a second. "By whose authority!?"

"Technically, I don't have arrest authority here but I rather imagine that the Quracis will be only to happy to put you in the cells alongside the Bialyans." I send a construct down and pull up Doctor Jones' shirt just enough to confirm the brand's presence with my own eyes. Yes, and it's far bigger than the one she gave Mister J'onzz. Really need to do something nice for the Ophidian.

"What, after you've tried overthrowing their government? I find that a little hard to believe."

I frown. What? "Why would we need to overthrow the government?"

"Because President Harjavti instigated the union between the two countries and you're trying to prevent it!"

"Harjavti was being mind controlled!" Kon's crossed half the distance to Sivana and looks like he want to carry on their brawl. "No one in Qurac wants to be ruled by Queen Bee!"

Sivana rolls his eyes. "Well, of course that's what they told you."

back

Mirage 21

next

22nd November

19:29 GMT +2

The skin around my left eye twitches. Ring, just check that for me, would you?

Analysis of local electronic communication records until local servers were shut down by presidential order suggests a high degree of popular opposition to union with Bialya.

Thank you. "Doctor Sivana, might I ask why you think he's doing it voluntarily? Doctor Jones is quite a powerful telepath."

He squints at me, experimentally moving his left shoulder. "Are you dense? Do you really think a few thousand Bialyan soldiers could take over an entire country that easily? The Quraci military was prepared for an invasion. Where are they?" About two miles down the road at this point. "And the rest of Qurac's political leaders? You don't seriously expect me to believe that mind controlling a single person somehow negates the entirety of their apparatus of government? All their checks and balances? Is it really that inconceivable to you that maybe, just maybe, they got tired of being America's stooges? Do you even know what happened during the Persian Coup of nineteen fifty three?"

"I realise that it sounds a bit odd -and yes, I do- but that's pretty much what's happened." I float down to stand just in front of him, ready to transfer away if he makes a move. "I thought you said that you haven't been outside of the palace?"

His eyes dip for a moment. "Well, no, but why should I need to? It's not that hard to get a protest together."

Kon looks like he's getting ready to pounce on Doctor Sivana from behind. I make eye contact with him and shake my head. **Superboy, hold off a minute.**

**Why?**

**Because while we almost certainly could beat him in a fight I'd rather persuade him if at all possible. We're here to make sure Qurac stays independent, not pick a fight with everyone we meet.** I hold up my right hand and an image of an elderly Quraci man appears. It's a live feed and he's pacing back and forth. "Vice President Rehan Fadhil. Currently at home under armed guard. Bialyan guard." The image pulls out to show them. Regular Bialyan soldiers, but they probably believe that their orders are legitimate. No one… No, that isn't true. Very few people are the villains of their own stories. Maybe Doctor Sivana thinks what he thinks because that's what the normal soldiers have been told and it sounded plausible to him. I hold out my left hand. "Prime Minister Ahmad Al Thuwaney." A younger, clean-shaven man shouting into the impassive face of a Bialyan sergeant. I spread my arms to the side and display a small orange screen with extracts taken from local message boards. "A brief summary of local opinion on the matter. I've marked the ones posting from Bialya."

"How can I know that's genuine?"

**South Wing's clear, Oh El.**

**Good work, Robin, Miss Martian. Kid Flash, any trouble?**

**No, we're fine.**

"Simply put, Doctor, you don't. I could be making this up, though I don't know the local vernacular and certainly couldn't write this much fast enough. You could go outside and talk to people, but maybe they're stooges. You could wait until we've stopped the take over and walk around.. anywhere in the country, really. And then -assuming they let you in without a chaperone- you could go to Bialya and compare the experiences. I assure you, you'll find in our favour."

"Oh, whatever." He straightens up a little and slightly lowers his fists. "I don't really care how these people conduct their affairs. I was just in it for the alien technology. Do what you like." He looks around the room for a moment. "Ah." He walks a little way up the gangway, rights the chair he had been sitting in when we first arrived, sits back down and puts The Last Crusade back on.

Wh..? I stare at the back of his head for a moment. What..? I mean, if he had what he thought was a genuine invitation, then he might not have committed any criminal acts… Well, I can track him with the ring easily enough. M'gann can work out what he actually knew later. I'd feel stupid starting a fight if all he's done is enter the country without appropriate documentation.

Wonder if Lex would have a job for him?

**Right.** I check Kon over. His borrowed Bialyan uniform looks like it's more or less intact but I give it a quick Orange Beam of Mending anyway. **Superboy, relieve Kid Flash.** He nods and heads for the door. **Kid Flash, Miss Martian, I'm going to need you at the front gate when the Quracis get heeeeere in about three minutes. I'd like to get them inside without shots being fired.**

**We're on it.**

**I'd rather they not be able to identify you but if it's a choice between blowing your cover and people dying…**

**We get it, Oh El. What happened to Psimon?**

I glance at him. He's managed to sit up on his own and is now staring around vacantly. "Uh?"

**Branded, collared and quite out of it.** Wait a m-. "Doctor Jones, how do you feel?"

He slowly turns his head in my direction. He seems to be having trouble focusing. "I'm not sure. A little.. numb, I think..?"

"Are you capable of inducing short term memory loss in the guards on the gate?"

"Aaaaaahhh..? Not from here, but yes… At least I think so. It's all a bit…" He raises his hands to his face and cradles his head.

"Doctor Jones, focus."

For an instant the brand on his chest flares brightly enough to be visible through his shirt and his eyes flash orange. He jerks for a moment and then nods with greater confidence. "Yes. Yes, that should be well within my abilities. Exactly what outcome are you hoping for?"

"I need them to be taken into Quraci custody by the soldiers who will be here soon, ideally without a shot being fired."

"None at all? A little different to what I usually do, but I suppose a change is as good as a rest."

"What did you do to him?" Doctor Sivana has managed to pull his attention away from the travails of the other Doctor Jones.

"I don't think I'm going to tell you. Don't worry, it's temporary."

"Rrrrright."

I never really experimented while Mister J'onzz was under the influence and I don't remember the branding well enough from the comics to make a truly educated guess. It would be really great to have a control technique that didn't turn the other person into a construct and I can't think of a reason why it would be harder to remove than it was from the guy who was responsible for that whole training mess up. Now, what to do about Sivana? I shake my left hand. "Out you come Fatty." This time he manages to stop himself before he hits the ground and floats back around to head level.

"Food?"

I point at Doctor Sivana. "He's got popcorn. Watch him." The Doctor looks decidedly unhappy about the prospect. What, did he think I was just going to give him the run of the place?

"Yay!"

Fatty's diving for the bowl as I help Doctor Jones to his feet. He doesn't weigh a lot. Not much more than Robin-. Well, than Robin did before I Dannered him. A little less than he does now.

"Thinking about it, it may work better if I simply scramble their short term memories rather than deliberately erasing anything. If the Martian assumes the form of that lieutenant and is loud enough and assertive enough…" He nods to himself. "That should work." He taps the metal around his neck. "You'll need to remove the collar, of course."

Yes. Hm. If we're going to go outside with me using the Bialyan uniform as a disguise he can't be seen wearing a large metal collar. How much do I trust him… No, how much do I trust the Ophidian at this point? Quite a bit, actually, and even if the brand isn't doing anything I'm fairly confident that I could reactivate the collar before he can do anything to me. A filament removes the collar to subspace and he rubs his neck before starting towards the rear entrance of the room. I follow on behind him and I can't help staring at him. "You don't.. find anything strange about wanting to defeat your employer?"

"Oh no, not at all. In fact, I'd.. go so far as to say that I can't remember ever wanting anything so much in my life."

back

Mirage 22

next

22nd November

19:52 GMT +2

"…order to avoid further bloodshed I will give all Bialyan military personnel currently within the still independent Republic of Qurac one hour to begin pulling out. If they undertake any further acts of violence towards my people or if after that time they are not heading directly for the border I will unleash the full might of Qurac's armed forces upon them."

President Harjavti straightens himself up a little. He'd been really getting into it, using his arms to emphasise and punctuate his speech. I'm impressed with his delivery, particularly given that it's live and unrehearsed. The soldier operating the camera pulls back a bit to get the Quraci soldiers guarding their President in shot, along with their commanding officer Major Najjar and the newly returned Miss Harjavti. I'm not going to be on camera, though. We're not going to be able to keep our involvement completely secret in the medium term but in the short term I want to keep it under wraps.

"The Bialyan soldiers already in custody will be returned to their home country once this invasion is over. However, the Bialyan agent who masterminded this coup attempt is not a member of their armed forces and so will remain in custody."

The camera pans around to the vacant-looking Doctor Jones. His customary hood is around his shoulders, leaving absolutely no doubt over who he is. With both him and M'gann working on the remaining guards convincing them to leave their posts was easy enough. A telepathic illusion from M'gann causing them to see the approaching Quraci trucks as Bialyan, Doctor Jones making them more open to suggestion and M'gann-as-Bialyan-lieutenant issuing apparently legitimate orders resulted in them handing in their weapons and reporting to the gardens to the south of the palace for a fitness assessment. They were understandably distressed when the telepathic control was removed and they snapped out of it to find themselves stripped to the waist doing star jumps while surrounded by armed Quracis. Fortunately they realised exactly how one-sided a fight would be under those circumstances and didn't do anything silly. The Quracis also maintained discipline, though I'm not sure how much of that was due to me standing there with the ring on hand. I didn't show them the ring, but my decidedly non-Middle Eastern face was on display and President Harjavti had told them that he had been freed by 'foreign allies'. That reminds me, need to talk to the president about Kahndaq before we leave.

"We will be releasing the information he has given us on Bialya's covert operations to the world, so that all will know of Queen Bee's duplicity and evil!"

Doctor Jones hasn't actually given us any information as yet. I'll sit him down and instruct him to start making a list once the situation has stabilised. And once he has, the brand comes off and they can punish him in accordance with Quraci law. I doubt that he'll be able to ever go back in Bialya after this; my brand doesn't show up on the camera footage so it looks like he's volunteering information to us. I hope he knows who's been handling the Apokolips end of the exchange, or better yet can get me a Boom Tube generator of some kind. Or their research notes. I had the ring take a quick look at the Apokoliptian equipment and it can't make head nor tail of it. The scientific data it needs to perform an analysis just isn't there. With Earth tech -even the really advanced stuff- that isn't a problem, but with alien gear it looks like I'm out of luck.

"Remain strong, my people. Soon we will be free of these invaders once more!" He nods at the cameraman, who presses a button and begins moving the camera out of the way. Harjavti turns to me. "There are Bialyan soldiers in the Dhabar offices of each of our major news broadcasters. How can you be sure that message will get out?"

"Power rings do rather trump Human communication technology. This ring hijacked a few satellites to make sure it got broadcasted. I've set them to play it on repeat to make sure that everyone gets a chance to see it."

He nods, thoughtful. "Good. I would hate to have to order an attack in a Quraci city just because the Bialyans weren't watching television at the right time. You are certain your colleagues will be able to look after things?"

"Nothing is certain, sir, but they're faster than anything else available." Quick check…"The Vice President is already on his way here. Mister President, are you sure this is what you want to do?"

He glances at his daughter, then nods. "Yes. With any luck, the hand over of power will be temporary but after the past week I would well understand if the people of Qurac were somewhat sceptical of my abilities. If he had any lingering influence..."

"It would be easy enough to have Miss Martian give you a full MOT."

"Thank you, but… I need to be sure for myself as well. Qurac needs to be sure, and while I have every confidence in your friend's abilities it isn't something the public can see."

I nod. I can understand. I think I asked M'gann three times to delve into my mind after the last Bialya mission to see if there were any other memories floating around that could be recovered. In the end she just told me that no one remembers everything that happens to them and that I was being unhealthily obsessive about it. Wonder if Psimon got anything from that exchange or if they were just wiped? "Very well, Mister President. I'll notify you if the Bialyans do anything unusual."

"Why don't we just ask him what they'll do?"

The Major's staring right into Doctor Jones' eyes. The Doctor isn't responding. Unsurprisingly they find what I did to him somewhat disturbing. Not as disturbing as they found Fatty, who is now firmly back inside the ring. The squad who went to secure the briefing room had a freak out and.. me telling them that he actually was a Demon probably didn't help.

"We can if you want, but I can't promise he'll know anything. He doesn't have any military experience."

We both look at Harjavti, who nods. "Do it."

I hold my left hand palm up at my chest and tap the ring sigil with my right index finger. "Doctor Jones, you really want to talk to us about the annexation attempt."

The sigil on his chest flares through his shirt again and his eyes suddenly focus. "Of course I do. I'm afraid you were incorrect earlier; I wasn't the mastermind. Taking over Qurac is one of Queen Bee's pet projects. She just decided that since I couldn't work on the Apokoliptian weaponry until the new research facility is complete and since she was paying me anyway she may as well get her money's worth."

The major glowers at him. "But you were responsible for the Qurac end of things."

"No, not really. My role was to control Persident Harjavti and to assist in fighting off any counter attack. Bialyan military operations here are under the command of Colonel Jamal."

"Colonel Jamal only entered the country four days ago. You already had the president under your control by then!"

"We already had the itinerary of the people we needed to keep out of the way. Getting hold of a few Quraci military uniforms wasn't hard. Your brother was most helpful."

Harjavti's eyes blaze. "You controlled my brother?!"

"Oh, no. He's been passing information to Bialya for years now."

Harjavti shoulders the major aside and grabs Doctor Jones by the lapels. "You're lying!"

"I'm really not. I never asked why. It might have been money, or power, or-."

"Queen Bee is a metahuman. She can control men-."

"Of course." Harjavti calms down a little and releases Doctor Jones. "He was my ambassador there, while we still had one. It…"

The Major looks uncomfortable. "Mister President, I'm sorry to have to say this but whatever his motive-."

"We have to arrest him." Harjavti nods. "Call him here, say I want to talk to him." The Major nods and walks over to the phone banks to start tracking him down. Won't help if he's fled already but if he's still trying to preserve his cover he'll have to come. The president looks at me. "Orange Lantern, Qurac thanks you. I thank you."

"Mister President, you are welcome."

"I hope that once the Bialyans have left your team mates will return here so that I can thank them in person as well."

"I'm sure that can be arranged, though I'd prefer it if it could be kept quiet. Detailed information about our group is supposed to be secret."

"Of course. If there is anything I can do to thank you..?"

"I can think of one thing sir. How up to date are you on the situation in Kahndaq?"

back

Mirage 23

next

23rd November

06:39 GMT +2

Oh, this is going to be so much fun.

It took a little persuading, getting substitute team leader Richard to agree to let me do this. Wasn't as if he really wanted me on this mission anyway. I mean, honestly: refusing to let M'gann fly the Bio-Ship through a Boom Tube because it 'hadn't been tested'? How exactly does he think New God ships travel through interstellar space? And that meal he made of rescuing the Logans from the wildebeest stampede; M'gann is easily capable of lifting them both out of the way without the invading Bialyans being any the wiser. But no, we had to stop and get into a fight, and then let the Bialyans flee. If I hadn't destroyed their radios before they got away I dread to think what would have happened. As it stands they'll still report our positions before too long.

That little fact might have been what tipped it over the edge. The sheer magnitude of potential for negative fall out from my suggestion meant that he was pretty reluctant to go along with it but he couldn't stand for the idea that he'd put civilians in the way. To my way of thinking any civilian dumb enough to set up an animal sanctuary on what is basically the pre-Gulf War Iraq/Kuwait border pretty much has it coming. I suppose you can't think like that living in Gotham. You'd end up thinking that everyone had it coming.

And, yes, I did the thing of suggesting a range of logical but unpalatable suggestions to go with it in order for it to seem reasonable by comparison. I mean, forcibly resisting the encroaching Bialyan army is a perfectly valid option. It would fulfil the objective Batman set us, eventually. I mean, one of their officers must know how Harjavti got nobbled, right? And it's not like Batman wants us to find out what happened to Harjavti and then fly home. I can fight an army if I have to, or if we'd gotten a move on I could just have fought the Bialyans already in the country. But it would have been open and it would have been violent. This way, only bad people -which to his way of thinking probably includes me- get hurt.

Plus, it's fun for me.

I sit astride the Sphere's flying trike mode. There's no way I'd fit in either of the passenger seats and she's informed me that while she is capable of adapting her internal layout to accommodate me it's a bit uncomfortable for her and isn't something she's inclined to do when I don't really need it. Mister Tawny once again elected to join me, taking the front seat. I was a little concerned about what would happen if the Sphere chose to engage in aerobatics while neither of us are really strapped in but she made it clear that we won't fall off unless she wants us to.

Good job I can fly without her.

It's still dark in Al-Qawiya as I look down at the lights of the royal palace. There are antiaircraft guns around the palace grounds but with the ring and Father Box working together there's no way they could get a radar lock on us. A quick tap on the visor lets me confirm Queen Bee's presence. Not a shapeshifter, clone, robot duplicate or illusion. She's having breakfast with her Chief of Staff and Principal Private Secretary. There are guards around of course, as well as waiting staff. I'm not seeing anything Apokoliptian, and Father Box should-.

"Ploong."

I'm sorry, Father Box can bypass any attempt by a lesser technology to evade my detection. Unfortunately that particular affinity only works with New God technology; my ring scans can still be fooled by arcanotechnology which it is within the ability of Apokoliptians to build.

What to do, what to do, what to do.

"Sphere, shoot out the wall would you? There's a good girl." She warbles. "Well, of course you can avoid shooting people. If I'd wanted you to shoot people I'd have told you to shoot people."

She revs, and tilts slightly in place. I did offer to have Father Box upgrade her weapons to use mounts that could traverse rather than the fixed mounts she was built with but she said that the idea of interfacing with Apokoliptian technology like that made her uncomfortable. I guess organics aren't the only ones who instinctively shy from the idea of being modified, even when it's in their interests. No negative feedback from M'gann yet, though we're all finding her new habit of striking matches just to watch them burn down a little disturbing. In addition to Zatanna, both Artemis and Mister Queen have expressed an interest in undergoing Divine Awakening. We'll be talking to Misses Crock about it over Thanksgiving dinner. Hopefully seeing Jade again will put her in a good mood. Must remember to get Tao something nice too.

The Sphere's guns clack into full extension on her side pods. She lets out a warning ping and then a volley of glowing blue bolts shoot into the palace's wall which erupts in a cloud of debris and dust. "Good, now take us in, full speed." We're diving down even as shouts of alarm ring out across the palace grounds and searchlights are brought to bear. Far too slow to achieve anything worthwhile against us, but a professional and disciplined display. I approve.

The Sphere slaloms sideways as we reach the dust cloud marking the remains of the wall. Brickwork that survived the shooting is obliterated as we smash through and come in for a landing inside. The two civil servants have already retreated to the rear of the room but Queen Bee herself remains proud and confident, standing just behind the row of heavily armed guards who are kneeling with their weapons pointed at me. Two more guards flank her, standing with guns levelled at my face.

I jump off the Sphere and land with a loud thud. Her targeting is excellent; the wall's gone but the floor beyond it is completely untouched. "I must do that more often."

Queen Bee's eyes narrow. "I don't know who you think you are, but you'll soon regret attacking my palace."

"Mortal. I think that I am Grayven of Apokolips." She reacts, but it's tiny, a momentary tensing of her jaw and eye orbit. Without the visor I'd never have noticed it. "I think that one of my kind has been giving you weapons. I think you will give me their name." "Come out, come out, wherever you are."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Yes, you do. Was it Vermin Vundabar? This seems to be the sort of thing he'd do, particularly if he knew Desaad was supplying another faction." I take a step forwards and there's a general clacking as safeties are removed and guns are readied. I chuckle. "Shoot, then. Get it out of your systems. Your weapons worry me about as much as a single wind-wafted pollen grain worries you." No immediate takers. "Mortal Queen. Order them to shoot me." "Show yourself and I may forgive your trespass."

A glimmer of uncertainty. If she does it, she'll be doing something I told her to do. It would undermine her authority, doubly so when it failed to have any effect. If she doesn't, then she let me bulldoze her wall and talk down to her without any sort of come back. There are New Gods squishy enough that human-made projectile weapons could hurt them. How is she going to play this?

I grin wider as she draws a pistol from under her own jacket, levels it at my face and fires three times. I don't even bother with the ring's environmental shield and just let them impact my skin; cheek, nose and forehead. My skin is pliant enough that the risk of hazardous deflection is fairly small but far too tough for such a small calibre bullet to graze. "Well, look at you. Aren't you a go-getter? Satisfied now?"

She hands off her pistol to a nearby waiter. He appears to have been rendered paralysed by shock, but snaps himself out of it in time to avoid fumbling a loaded weapon. "Clear the room."

The civil servants and waiting staff leave at just under a run. The guard to her right twitches his head in her direction. "My queen, he-." She gives him a look and he freezes. Then he lowers his gun to the rest position. "Detail, at ease." After a momentary delay the other guards rise and make safe their guns before marching out of the room. Mister Boss Guard clearly isn't happy about the situation, but he won't openly defy his sovereign. He shoots me a venomous look before following his men out of the room.

So. Just the two of us then. Queen Bee nods at someone on the outside of the door and they close it. The visor shows me the guards forming up just on the other side, ready to run in.. and do what exactly? Oh, they mean well. Queen Bee looks me over once more, then moves on to the Sphere and Mister Tawny. Then she steps forwards and sits back down at her place at the head of the breakfast table and takes a bite of her croissant before acknowledging me again. "Have you had breakfast yet?"

Damn. If I'd met her before I met Jade…

I walk over to the table and look at the seat in the opposite position. Could that hold my weight without reinforcement? Best not chance it. I pull it out and sit down as Mister Tawny jumps down from the Sphere and takes up station on my right. With no further passengers the Sphere curls up again and rolls to my left. I look over the table and use tongs to transfer a pain au chocolat onto the plate in front of me. "I'm still on US time, but I never turn down good food." "That offer is time-limited, mind you."

Mister Tawny turns his gaze on me. He was really quite put out that we wouldn't let him hunt the Wildebeest at the animal sanctuary and Queen Bee doesn't appear to be touching the sausages. Lamb, I note. I put down the pastry tong and use the meat tong to flick one over to him. He catches it easily, flashes of fang showing as he mashes it up in his mouth. I smile at him and then return my attention to the Queen. "I'm still waiting for you to answer my question."

back

Mirage 24

next

23rd November

06:44 GMT +2

"And I'm waiting for you to develop manners."

"Hm?" She glances to her left, at the gaping hole I just made in her wall. "Ah, yes. I suppose that could get a bit draughty." A wave of orange light from my eyes passes over the rubble inside the room before moving to the hole and reassembling the wall. I didn't pick up all of it but I'm not exactly short of building material in my subspace pocket. Still, that sort of transmutation usually represents quite a significant expenditure of power. I recharged just before we left, armoured myself by use of the ring, light combat including destroying the radios, long range monitoring… Ring?

Ninety one percent power remaining.

Nothing much to worry about for the moment then. I return my attention to my host. "Better?"

"Barely." Ah, she's looking at the Sphere. "I assume that I have you to thank for Doctor Jones' current incapacity."

So, they haven't been able to restore his abilities. Useful to know, assuming it's true. "Yes. In case I wasn't clear, I take a very dim view of anyone trying to involve other Apokoliptians in Earth's affairs." I pick up the pain au chocolat lightly between my right thumb and forefinger. All that precision control practice I undertook for Jade's benefit has really paid off. I've never really been sure what the 'correct' way to eat these is so I settle for biting a small piece off the corner before returning it to my plate and chewing slowly. My ability to judge textures is still a bit off and there wasn't any chocolate in that piece but.. texture seems good, flavour certainly good, slightly warm… Freshly baked, then? Toxicology reveals nothing suspect. "Very good. My compliments to your baker."

"My soldiers described you as having skin like rock."

"I've had some work done. Father Box has been most helpful." "If you haven't made yourself known to me by the end of breakfast it will be the worse for you."

"Ploong."

Father Box gets her full attention. "An alien computer system."

"A synthetic mind. Fully conscious. With a full database of Apokoliptian technology, even including Desaad's special projects." I close my eyes for a moment, focusing on him. He's walking through some sort of factory complex… Ah, a Parademon genesis chamber. He cringes as he feels me. He hasn't been able to do anything about the brand and he hasn't dared enter Darkseid's presence since he got back. "The Sphere is also fully alive, which is why I felt so revolted by Doctor Jones' actions." The Sphere warbles and I roll my eyes at her. "A part, then. It was in the mix."

"Fascinating. I wasn't aware that your people could be so squeamish."

"I would not leave her in the hands of someone too brutish to understand her value." I reach out to pat her gently with my left hand and take another bite of the pastry. Uum, chocolate that time. Quality dark stuff, too. A bit bitter for me really but I can appreciate it in small amounts. "And don't think I haven't noticed that you haven't answered me yet. I might put up with two hours of waffle from Ra's al Ghul but I'm not that generous where family is involved. Who, is your contact?"

"And if I don't tell you?"

"Then I kill people. I'm not sure exactly how many. Certainly no one who'd had any contact with Apokolips would see another dawn."

"Do you really think that your Justice League masters would allow that?"

"Masters. Hmm." Eye glow to full. "Do not think, mortal, that because it temporarily suits me to play along with their ridiculous rules of engagement that I consider myself their thrall. If I must play a long game in order to stand amongst this world's gods then I will accept that without complaint but that does not mean that we are of one mind."

"You think the members of the Justice League are gods?"

"Their icons and idols can be found in every nation. Their powers outstrip those of lesser beings, their guidance is sought, their protection begged, their natural authority supersedes even that of the leaders of nations. What other title is there for such a man, such a woman, than that of god?"

"The League would never accept that title, or exercise that authority. If that's your 'long game' you'll be sadly disappointed."

"You think I should consort with moronic costumed criminals? Or with international outcasts like you?" I shake my head. "No. I wish to make something of this world, something strong and vital. Apokolips…" I shake my head again. "Too intelligent to trick, too powerful to strong arm. You invite your entire species' ruination for a few miles of desert."

"Qurac is hardly a few miles of desert, and I think your assessment is too pessimistic. If Apokolips is truly as powerful as you say I'm sure that they have more important things to worry about. From what Doctor Jones told me before his.. unfortunate encounter with you, our contact there isn't even that high up in your people's ranks."

"A name."

She takes a moment to take a sip of tea, delaying her response a few seconds just to prove that she won't be cowed. "He never told us his name. In fact, I only met him once. He looks.. human-shaped, but his skin is dull yellow and he has black facial tattoos rising up from his eyes and across his chin."

Doesn't ring any bells. I'll ask Father Box about it later. "How do you contact him?"

"He gave Doctor Jones a beacon after the first time the portal opened. We can send messages and he can use it to open portals-."

"Boom Tubes. They're called Boom Tubes."

"Boom Tubes, then. He can detect the beacon from his side and send materials through."

"What does he ask in return?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing?" I shake my head. "Nothing. Foolish mortal, when New Genesis found out that Desaad was sharing New God technology far less sophisticated than the Sphere with humans, they sent a squad of warriors to recover it. Your entire army couldn't stop me and I assure you that they would be even less able to handle Infinity Man. You're taking hand-me-down weapons we give to slave overseers -not even proper soldiers- and you're baiting our enemies. He's either doing it for a laugh or-." Or he plans to field test something, once they've got used to taking his equipment.

"Or he's getting information. Qurac, Grayven, is a sideshow. While he watches how we use the 'hand-me-downs' he graciously bestows on us we in turn study them. What we're learning will revolutionise Earth's electronics, power generation and power transmission systems." That's.. actually rather clever. Might even work. I nod. "And what Bialya learns, the whole of the Human race will benefit from."

"I'll believe that when I see it."

"You may be surprised what a small number of like-minded individuals can achieve through.. strategic partnerships." Wait. That… Ra's said something like that. I frown. I thought he was just posturing, but.. if he… "Of course, if we had your assistance, that sort of risk would no longer be necessary. A full database of Apokoliptian technology could do wonders for the Earth, through a.. managed release."

Ah, there it is. The smart pheromones I'd been expecting since I got here. Won't do much to me even without the ring's environmental shield, but I take another scan of it. Might be useful at some point. "I have more faith in your species than to believe that is necessary."

She gives a nonchalant shrug. "Then we will simply have to maintain our current contacts."

"I think not. I will not have others of my kind working here save by my leave and I do not want the Forever Children back. What else?"

"What do you mean?"

"It has not escaped my notice that President Harjavti is behaving in an uncharacteristic manner. Doctor Jones is now bereft of his telepathy. You are here. Since this is your project I can only assume-."

"What does it matter to you how I-?"

Lantern Crock and Lantern Dorrance appear at either side of her, grab her arms and haul her into the air as I patiently look on. Locating Bane's father was a simple matter once my inability to refer to him by his surname started getting to me. Sir Edmund Dorrance -aka King Snake- is presently residing in Hong Kong and the Great Ten have a rather large file on him.

Queen Bee has just enough time to snarl "Unhand m-!" before a construct muzzle appears around her mouth, cutting out her voice. Her eyes blaze as she sees the nature of her captors. Would she know who they are? Crock, maybe. Dorrance, I wouldn't think so.

I casually flick the table aside with my right hand. Cutlery, china, toast, pastries and other assorted knickknacks crash to the floor as I rise languidly to my feet and fold my arms behind my back. "Mortal, you appear to misunderstand how this works." Ring, assimilate. Slowly. Count off at ten percent intervals.

By your command.

An orange corona appears around her as Mister Tawny investigates the sausage bowl. "You have nothing to offer me that I cannot take. That I even condescended to speak to you is a privilege and I will not apply more effort to cleaning up your mess than I absolutely must."

"Identity theft ten percent complete."

"If this process completes you will be nothing, not even a slave. An object of curiosity at best. An extension of my mind."

"Identity theft twenty percent complete."

"Dealing with Apokolips as you are doing, from a position of incredible weakness, would doom the Earth and waste the investment I have put into it. I will not tolerate that."

"Identity theft thirty percent complete."

"If the first words out of your mouth when I release your mouth are not an explanation of how President Harjavti is being dominated then the brief remainder of your corporeal existence will be incredibly painful. Do you understand me?"

She stares fiercely at me for a moment before making the slightest inclination of her head. I dismiss the muzzle. "After learning that Doctor Jones was no longer in a position to assist, our contact offered a replacement. A misshapen lump of a creature, but its telepathic range is incredible. There is nothing on Earth quite like it."

"Identity theft forty percent complete."

"An artificial Apokoliptian telepathic life form. Mortal, your delusions of cunning may have doomed your race. Where is it?"

"We didn't let it out of the research centre. It can only see what we want it to and all of the guards have telepathic defence training."

Show me the facility.

Rocky desert, Bialyan army engineers, military construction equipment, rocky underground chambers. An indistinct figure on a Apokoliptian looking chair. Analyse the Humans… Hah. Glassy eyed and motions mechanical. I watch as one cuts his hand with a trowel and doesn't even notice. Feed the results to Father Box. I need to be sure that my defences will work against this thing.

By your command.

And end assimilation. The aura around Queen Bee fades as I open a Boom Tube to just outside their new facility. I'll need to deal with the Lump, destroy their data, grab the beacon and then I'll need to trash the place. "Insects are worth taking the time to crush. Otherwise, why invent DDT? You think mental discipline will protect you? Hah! Now that this Lump has learned how to deal with Human minds he will seize control of all of you and make this a world of puppets." I walk through the Boom Tube, the Sphere just behind me. "Lanterns, bring her. I want her to see the full extent of her folly firsthand."

back

Mirage 25

next

23rd November

07:14 GMT +2

"Oh, you're joking."

The Bialyans were kind enough to pull out in reasonably good order. Oh, they spent a good third of their allotted time trying to contact their people in the palace and then their superiors back at home but they were packed up and moving out with time to spare. The only thing my team mates had to do was make sure the Quracis lining the route didn't start anything as they left.

The Bialyan units which had taken up position near the border towns didn't move until the brigade which had been in Dhabar passed safely into Bialya. Reasonable enough I suppose; they wanted to make sure that their countrymen weren't ambushed. And now the fall back route of the group below us is taking them directly through the Logan Animal Sanctuary. Four trucks filled with soldiers and two jeeps with three medium tanks leading the way. Nothing we can't take, more than we can take while staying under the radar.

Fiddlesticks.

"We've got to do something!"

I rub my forehead with my right hand. "Yess, M'gann, I know."

President Harjavti was kind enough to offer us rooms in the palace to stay in over night. I suppose I could just have transitioned us back to the mountain but M'gann did want to see the animal sanctuary and, well, us being immediately on hand probably wasn't a bad idea. I stayed up monitoring the situation and making sure no one did anything untoward to Doctor Jones. He's given us reams of material, though the Quracis were far less interested than me in their contact with Apokolips. Even got a description of their New God contact, though it didn't ring any bells with me. Maybe it will mean something to the Frees?

Kon's staring out of the main windscreen. "The Wildebeest are stampeding! We need to get in there!"

I don't really know enough about world politics to know what this will do for Queen Bee. President Horne is far more passive than President Bush was -either of them- and Qurac isn't an ally in the way that Kuwait was back home. Unless she does something stupid like directly attack American interests I doubt the Security Council will stir themselves and Qurac just can't afford to prosecute an aggressive war.

"So close. So close." I look up and have the ring produce a map of the area. "No actual people in the way?"

Wallace looks uncomfortable. "You're not saying we should just sit it out, are you?"

"There was a reason why I didn't want to openly engage the Bialyans. Adom's being about as passive as he can be but he's still getting a lot of negative press coverage. People just aren't comfortable with superheroes getting involved in political violence, even when one side has it coming. If they're just scaring some animals then I'd-."

Robin's got his computer screen up and tapped into the Bio-Ship's sensors. "Oh El? Looks like they're stopping."

Oh no… "M'gann, take us directly over the farm house. Robin, can you tell why they're stopping?"

"No, not… They're sending a truck and a jeep towards the house and the other jeep looks like it's trying to round up the Wildebeest."

Fucking… I sigh. Nothing for it. We're going to need to fight them. I've got a lot of respect for Adom but our League superiors have made it clear that…

Waaait just a moment.

"M'gann. Do you think you could convincingly pretend to be Adom? "

"Maybe. Um, yes, I think so. Why?"

"Because he's been on the news a lot around here and I'm pretty sure those fellows down there know exactly what would happen if they tried to fight him. Everyone, get ready to deploy, but if we can get away with a bluff…"

Robin smiles. "They still won't know we're here!"

"Okay, ah…" M'gann gets off the pilot seat and I take her place. There's a soft squelching sound as her shape begins to change, a strange ripple passing through her body from toe to head as her muscles swell and her uniform darkens. "How do I look?"

Kon looks her over. "Errr… Wasn't he taller?"

Now that I look, I think he's got a point. M'gann-as-Adom shrugs. "I can't make myself bigger when I shapeshift. There's only so much me to go around, and Adom's much bulkier than I am."

"They probably won't notice as long as you don't get too close." I create a construct of Adom's preferred aerial pose, straight backed, arms folded across his chest, feet pointing slightly downwards."Hover in the air like that, close enough that they can identify you. Once they've seen you -assuming they don't just attack you- point towards the far boundary of the sanctuary and say 'leave'. Er, in Arabic, obviously. Don't engage in conversation, he wouldn't talk to them. If you can telepathically encourage them to believe it, even better. If that doesn't work we'll probably have to fight them openly. Superboy, Robin, you're on the tanks. I'll be shielding anything vulnerable looking. Kid Flash, I'll want you to stay at full speed and disarm as many soldiers as possible. Everyone clear?" Nods all round. "Mighty One, go."

M'gann looks confused for a second, then gets it and drops through the floor. Really odd seeing that expression on Adom's face. When he's confused -or at least when I think he's probably confused- he makes a point of looking blank or curious instead. Iron self control. I have the ring create a larger image depicting the situation as I bring the Bio-Ship down to ground level. Looks like Misses Logan and Garfield are taking shelter in their house. They'd probably have seen the broadcast last night so I'm hopeful that they'll just keep out of the way.

M'gann moves fast through the air. Her top speed is quite a bit lower than Speed of Aker, but she doesn't have that far to go and they aren't really watching the sky. The first thing they know about her coming is that she's there in front of them, floating off the ground between the advancing soldiers and the Logans' home. A little higher up than Adom usually floats when he wants to talk to someone on ground level, but if M'gann doesn't know that I'm confident that they don't either. The soldiers closest to her stop immediately. A couple raise their rifles but -ring, facial analysis?- the rest look like they're having difficulty avoiding soiling themselves. The man in the jeep's passenger position -a captain- is shouting something at them, prompting a rapid fall back. The tanks are orientating their turrets on her but keeping in character she looks at them once and then dismisses them with a toss of her head before floating towards the captain.

**Stand by for very rapid transfer if this doesn't work.**

The officer's body language suggests that he's trying to discuss the matter like what he's doing is reasonable. Adom's activity has been public knowledge for almost two weeks now but it isn't as if he does interviews.

**I don't think he's buying it.**

**I suppose it was a long shot. Stand by, we'll-.**

**No, I can… You've spent most time with him. If I could.. see your memories of him-?**

**My mind is your mind.** I try to relax, thinking of my conversations with Adom and my observations of the way he's been behaving. I've been paying a great deal of attention to the news broadcasts ever since his return to Kahndaq and.. ah yes, there it is. I can feel M'gann reliving it. Odd experience, like having a flash of vivid recollection not really connected to anything else I was thinking about.

"Hey, Oh El, can we get some sound on this?"

"Hm? Oh. Probably. Ring?"

"…smuggling. We're just going to check the place for contraband and then we'll-."

"No." M'gann's doing the thing of not looking at him as she talks to him. That's totally what Adom does when he thinks he's talking to someone beneath him. "You will obey President Harjavti's edict."

"I just can't do that. I have orders. Surely you wouldn't-."

"I stay my hand in Kahndaq because it is my homeland. Even those who oppose me are still my people, and worthy of my care. You, are not my people, and I do not see any cameras." Then she looks at him. "Did you know that in my era it was common to take a defeated enemy's genitals as a trophy in battle?"

The Captain flinches, and there's some uncomfortable clenching in the Bio-Ship as well. I'm not sure that was actually Adom's era... "Ah aaah. I… Of course, Mighty One. Company!" He waves his arm in the direction of the far fence and the soldiers remount their truck with near indecent haste. The tanks start rolling first, having not turned off their engines. The captain's jeep is only just behind and after some frantic talking on the radio the other jeep turns away from the herd to join the retreat. M'gann hovers there with her arms crossed, a somewhat un-Adom like smile on her face.

back

Mirage 26

next

23rd November

07:18 GMT +2

**Good work, Miss Martian. I su-. Mm. Follow them at a distance until they're well out of visual range. I don't want them doing something silly like staying in the area and taking pot shots at the property.**

**No problem.** M'gann peers imperiously at the retreating Bialyans and then flies upwards, staring down at them in the manner of a well fed but slightly bored hawk observing something small and furry.

**Have you considered taking up acting professionally?** Now that I'm confident that we won't immediately be needed in combat I bring the Bio-Ship in to land in a concealed position behind a nearby barn. Anyone inside? One slightly dazed looking Oryx. Can't remember last time I saw one of them. I dismiss my construct and look up at my team mates. "Well, mission's over so I'm not exactly in charge anymore. Do we want to go in as off-duty superheroes or as a lost coach trip?"

Robin raises an eyebrow. "We'd have to be pretty lost."

"Field trip, then? Bus comes back in a few hours? If it really comes to it I can just grab a bus from somewhere."

Wallace shrugs. "I don't really think it's a problem, Oh El. We're in the middle of nowhere out here."

"Alright then." The rear door of the Bio-Ship oozes open. "I doubt the Bialyans can see exactly who we are from this range so.. we.. may as well go out and say hello." I hear a revving sound as the Sphere accelerates down the steps and out onto the grassland beyond. "And I.. didn't think that through properly." Robin smiles at me before following Wallace and Kon out of the hatch. Should I let Fatty out? No, I don't think so. A group of Humans would pass as normal at a distance -as long as I don't glow too much- and the Sphere… Um. Well, optimistically, doesn't look like a threat, and could be mistaken for a piece of equipment. A glowing orange monster midget is both threatening and easily connected to me.

I lever myself out of the pilot seat. **Thank you Ship. Please stay in stealth mode for the time being.** I feel an acknowledgement. I still don't really understand exactly how 'aware' the ship's mind is. M'gann can't even give me something to compare it to as Earth doesn't have anything even nearly equivalent. I sort of think of it as a well trained animal though I know that isn't accurate. Ah well. Time to meet M'gann's idol.

I walk slowly down the steps to join my friends. I tried watching 'Hello Megan' once at M'gann's urging. Apparently the Ophidian and I gave her a DVD copy of the whole run, the pilot and the sole series. I stuck with it, because.. it was 'interesting' in the duck's foot sense, but it really wasn't my thing. Lots of canned laughter and little actual humour, that I could see anyway. Couldn't think of a British series that could really serve as a counterpoint to it. I get a flash of The Inbetweeners and shudder. Nothing I'd actually want them to see anyway.

Robin's leading the way towards the house, Wallace on his right and Kon to his left. The Sphere is trying to get on Kon's left but it looks like he's trying to block it. Beyond them I see Missus Logan stick her head out of the door of her house about a second before a widely grinning Garfield sticks his out lower down. She really does look like an older version of M'gann's Human-seeming form, sort of what I imagine 'Megan Morse's mother would look like. She's watching 'Adom' and the dust cloud marking the location of the Bialyans with concern written all over her face while her son's pointing at us and trying to get her attention.

"Mom! Mooom!"

I suppose… I am sort of in charge. I transition to a short distance away from the veranda. "Good morning Missus Logan. Are you alright?"

"Yes, we're-." She looks at me and frowns. "Who are you supposed to be?"

"Orange Lantern two eight one four. These are my colleagues-" I hold out my left hand in their direction as they approach. "Kid Flash, Robin and Superboy." Garfield looks like he might burst with excitement.

His mother, on the other hand, looks decidedly unimpressed. "And you brought Black Adam with you."

"Er, no? Not exactly. Adom… He's in Cairo at the moment, floating just outside the room the Kahndaqi cabinet are meeting in so he can glower at them through the window. No one can glower like... Never mind. That's Miss Martian, a shapeshifter. I thought it would be better to scare them off than confront them directly. Didn't want to risk making you a target."

"Bialyan 'border patrols' are a fact of life around here, and I doubt they're just going to stop because their coup attempt failed."

"Mom. Uncool."

She sighs. "I'm.. sorry. I should thank you. This is my son, Garfield. I'm Marie Logan."

I shrug and give what I hope is a disarming smile. "I.. know. It's called the Logan Animal Sanctuary.. and.. one of my team mates is a fan of your television work."

"Rather a long way to come for an autograph."

"We were in the area. If you have no objection, I'd like to stick around until we're reasonably sure the Bialyans aren't coming back any time soon."

She sighs. "That's probably a good idea."

"Is there anything we can help with while we're here? You seem to have suffered some damage to your fencing."

"And I've got to round up the Wildebeest before they can run off or injure themselves, nurse a sick Oryx back to health and submit today's journal entry to the national security commission for review before it can be published on the Sanctuary's website."

Robin smiles. "No need to worry about that last one. President Harjavti's first action once the Bialyans started leaving was to cancel the state of emergency."

Wallace nods. "I can round up those Wildebeest for you in record-."

"No. No super speed. Not until we're completely sure we're not under observation."

He wrinkles the left side of his nose. "Guess we can do it the slow way."

"I can probably help with the Oryx. I'm not a veterinarian but I do have the most advanced sensor in the galaxy on my left hand." I hold my palm out facing her. Garfield stares at the ring and I decide to show off by generating a cut away diagram of an Oryx.

Kon looks around the Sanctuary, looking for something. "If you show me where the fence posts are, shouldn't take long for me to fix it."

"Okay, um. Thank you. Garfield, why don't you show.. Superboy?" Kon nods. "Where we keep the fencing materi..al." He's already gone, grabbing Kon by the hand as he leads him to a shed at the side of the house. She turns her attention to Wallace and Robin. "Do either of you boys have a driver's license?"

Wallace stares for a moment, then face palms with his right hand. "Dad, why didn't I listen to you?"

The Sphere warbles, revves, and then unfolds.. into.. some sort of.. giant.. red.. motor trike..? The four of us just blink at it. Robin snaps out of it first. "I did not know it could do that."

Missus Logan points at it uncertainly. "What, exactly..?"

"Alien synthetic intelligence we rescued from Bialya. It's friendly. The trike thing's new to us as well."

"Okay, well, try not to scare the Wildebeest. Orange Lantern? I'm keeping the Oryx in the barn."

I take a quick look in the direction of the now barely visible Bialyan column. Shouldn't be a problem with using the Sphere in vehicle mode. "Lead the way. We've parked Miss Martian's space ship behind there."

"You what?"

"Don't worry, she's currently invisible, there's no way the Bialyans could spot her."

"That wasn't why…" She sighs again. "I'm sure Garfield will love it."

"Um, I was wondering; I thought that Wildebeest were native to the southern part of Africa? Why set up a sanctuary in the Middle East?"

"Oh, well, that's a good question. You see..."

back

Mirage 27

next

23rd November

08:06 GMT +2

"And… That's… Done…"

Drilling for geothermal power is easy when you have a power ring. After we scanned the Oryx and I started to feel superfluous it struck me that it must be rather difficult to keep a place this isolated supplied. Mains electric supplies tend to be a bit iffy in rural Qurac at the best of times and having large fuel tanks in a place the Bialyan military use as their parade ground seems to be asking for trouble. I've sort of been thinking about assisting in implementing geothermal power generation on a wide scale for a while now. No unsightly turbines like wind, no carbon dioxide emissions, no spent nuclear fuel… Not exactly mobile but electric cars have come on in leaps and bounds in recent years. It just feels… I have a power ring and the best thing I can do for the planet is dig deep holes really well?

Anyway, it's perfectly adequate for the Logans’ needs. I'll offer to convert their jeeps to electric before we leave.

"Yahoo!"

I look around as Garfield zooms past on the Spheretrike, arms up in the air. Wallace is at the controls to the rear. I've ordered them to stay close to the ground but M'gann reported that the Bialyans are long gone so I doubt there's any real harm in it. I wonder who designed the trike mode? It doesn't look very practical, having a seat at the front and another at the back like that. It also has that whole bigger-on-the-inside thing going on, and why have wheels when you can fly? Don't know enough about New God engineering to really know what to make of it.

I should probably forward the mission report to Batman. I've just got the 'further action' section to go. Obviously we need to keep an eye on the border area. Should probably ask the Frees to have a look at the Apokoliptian gear we took off the Bialyans. Be nice to know where it lies on the scale of New God nastiness. Oh, I'm going to need to try it out against my armour construct aren't I? It'll hurt, but it's better to know in advance what I can take. Batman might want to take part in interrogating Doctor Jones before I free him from the brand. Spot of luck that Qurac has no specific law protecting against self incrimination. Not sure that anything learned would be allowed in an American court but it could at least guide other investigations.

M'gann confirmed that Doctor Magnificus Sivana was being honest. He really didn't know that this was a hostile annexation, he just didn't bother looking into it in any great detail when the job offer came through. Doctor Jones was going to take him back to their research facility when he'd finished here. The intensity of undirected orange light within him was so strong that I nearly handed him one of the Apokoliptian devices and offered to hire him myself. The only reason I didn't is that I just don't have the facilities to support his work. I think things could go very badly wrong unless we find him an outlet so I took his contact details before he left for the airport under armed escort. I don't know if Lex has a xenotech research project and I'm fairly confident that Batman would blow his top if I helped him set one up. Maybe his alter ego would be interested instead? Or Mister Kord?

**[Surprise. Disappointment.]**

I frown. After reporting that the Bialyans were well and truly back on their side of the border M'gann was giddy with excitement at the idea of meeting Missus Logan. I've.. been getting the occasional 'ping' from her direction since then and I don't think their talk is going quite how M'gann imagined it. I should probably make sure that she's alright. I start heading around to the front of the house. Ring, forward report to Batman.

Compliance.

Missus Logan's standing on the veranda, leaning on the rail and watching Garfield fly around the paddock. She looks around as I approach, coffee mug in hand. "It's been a while since I've had a fan as.. enthusiastic as your Martian friend."

Agh, I knew I should have encouraged M'gann to look at some of her more recent work! "She's not.. being a nuisance, is she?"

"Ah, no, no, not really." She takes a sip from her cup. "I'm sure seventeen year old me would have been thrilled to have fans from another planet."

I point back the way I came. "I've finished setting up the geothermal system and I can.. swap out your generator whenever you like."

"Thank you. That'll really help keep the costs of running this place down."

"I was wondering… The system can generate much more power than you need? And.. you're quite a long way from anyone out here. I.. can put a teleportation device in, if you want." She blinks. "I realise that Garfield probably does one of those internet school things but.. um.. I've never been convinced that.. they can.. really cover the social side of normal school. I could put the other terminus in Dhabar or.. wherever, really."

"That…" She looks at the ground, frowning. "And it's safe?"

"Safer than crossing the road."

"That's kind of a big deal. I'll need some time to think about it."

"No problem. I'll leave my number."

She turns back to the field as Wallace tries a loop the loop, to Garfield's obvious pleasure. "The news reports say that the Bialyans have completely pulled out. They're not even doing border patrols. Don't know how long it'll last though."

"I rather got the impression that President Harjavti intends to do something about that." I'm not really sure what, mind. I am physically capable of building a satellite weapon network to protect Qurac. As a private citizen I don't think I'm covered by the treaty which prevents countries putting weapons in space and when I was clearing orbital debris I found that at least three of them have violated that agreement anyway, but that would make them dependent on me and I.. don't.. really.. want that. Also, I don't think it would make the League very happy. Perhaps he's thinking more along the lines of more assertive patrolling of his own?

"The report didn't mention your group."

I shrug. "Probably better that way. The less Bialya knows about us the better, really. Um, is M'gann still inside?"

She nods and I walk past her into the house. Robin's got the news on. Looks like Mister Wayne's here already to publicly give his support to the… Um. Currently suspended? President? He looks around as I come in. "Hey, Oh El."

"Anything I need to worry about?"

"Don't think so. Not until Psimon finishes spilling his guts to the Quracis, anyway."

I look down the corridor and see M'gann leaning dejectedly against a wall. "Let me know if anything changes. Um. How'd you think it went?"

"We got the job done, no one died." Not actually true, but a mere three deaths in protests like that in this part of the world isn't too bad. He shrugs. "I can't think of anything I'd have done differently."

"Thank you. Oh, don't stay in here all morning. Get Kid Flash to relieve you if you get bored." I turn away and walk down the corridor to where M'gann stands and lean against the wall opposite, generating a sound baffle around us with the ring. "Anything you want to talk about?"

She looks at me, then down the corridor and then at the floor. I'm seeing bent yellow and.. I don't know exactly what that means. "When our minds were linked, you… I know I looked-."

"You're a White Martian, not a Green one." She looks at me with alarm. "M'gann, Martian racial politics mean nothing to anyone on Earth, except you. It's like the whole pureblood thing with Kaldur; we don't care."

"And.. you're not mad that when I.. showed you, after Klarion…"

**Of course not. You are mine, even if you occasionally keep secrets you don't need to or.. flat out lie to me. [Shrug] Doesn't matter.**

**Um… About.. being yours…**

Ooh! Head that one off. **Not like that. I just mean that I'm invested in you on an individual basis. The Earth's mine but that doesn't mean that I care about everyone on it individually.** "How'd it go with Missus Logan?"

"She's… Not.. Megan Wheeler."

I smile. "Well… No…"

"I feel stupid. Hello Megan, it was thirty years ago! Of course she's not still the same."

"Yeah… Buuut… Megan Wheeler would have grown up by now too. I'm.. not sure exactly what you were looking for, and I'm.. having flashbacks to a conversation I had with Kon a few months ago." Missus Logan's still being much friendlier than Kal-El was. Point in her favour. "Maybe you could.. try.. getting to know her as she is now?" I fan my hand out. "Try asking her about her other work. If you want to have some sort of relationship with her she's right there. If you'd rather have the fictional character… Well, I can leak the series onto the internet and.. you could try writing fan fiction about it. 'Hello Megan, series two', by M'gann M'orzz."

She giggles. "That's silly. Who'd read fan fiction about a series that was cancelled years ago?"

"You'd be surprised."

"No, I'll go talk to her." She smiles at me. "Thanks for listening."

I shrug. "No problem. I'm always here for you."

And so am I.

back

Mirage 28

next

23rd November

23:56 GMT -5

Under the circumstances Richard was happy to authorise a Boom Tube back.

I lower myself to the mountain's landing pad as the Bio-Ship comes in to land, Batman and Mister J'onzz already waiting for us. Batman regards me dispassionately but Mister J'onzz is visibly anxious. We were going to spend some time making sure that the situation on the Qurac/Bialya border was well and truly settled but one of the conditions I agreed to when I removed the Guardians' programming from M'gann was that I'd report any unusual side effects and as soon as they heard what happened during our confrontation with the Lump we got recalled. Complete overreaction.

"Orange Lantern, report."

I fan my hands. "I'm not sure what you want me to say, sir. You already have my report."

"Did you know that would happen?"

"By 'that' am I to assume you're talking about what happened to M'gann?"

"Yes."

Behind me, the Bio-Ship's door oozes open and the woman herself flies straight at her uncle, halting in the air just in front of him. "Look, Uncle J'onn! Isn't it great!"

He flinches. "Ah. Yes. M'gann, this is-."

"I mean, being able to look at fire was nice, but this is amazing." She smiles broadly as she holds up her right hand to stare at her tomato-red skin. That's going to take some getting used to. Better than her turning into a Burning Martian, I suppose. "You should totally have him do it to you as well!"

I shake my head as my other team mates troop out of the Bio-Ship. "I honestly had no idea that Martian.. 'ethnicity' was tied to the Guardians’ programming, though this does rather prove that keeping this to ourselves was a sensible choice." I haven't spent all that much time studying Martian society, but as I understand it the Reds form their civilisation's elite. Their aristocracy. The idea that just anyone could join them -particularly a White- would cause massive social upheaval.

And I haven't worked out how that could help me yet.

I take a moment to look over my team mates. It's interesting, how much more unified we look now that they -most of them anyway- are wearing the Apokoliptian armour I designed for them. Normally a superhero just picks a colour scheme they like the look of -usually a fairly garish one- so any gathering will look fairly uncoordinated. Now, I'm in dark grey with orange sigil and highlights, Kon's in dark grey with red 'S' and trimmings and Wallace is in dark grey and yellow. Even M'gann joined in, shapeshifting her intelligent clothing into an approximate facsimile of the armour I designed for her. Not sure it really goes with her new skin tone, mind. Might need to have a look at that. Only Richard stands out, not wanting anything to do with my offerings. Oh, he tried to spare my feelings by claiming that he was concerned about the weight but come on: he's had plenty of time to get used to it and it isn't as if I'm not aware of the state of our relationship.

"How..?" Mister J'onzz tears his eyes away from M'gann for a moment to look at me. "How did this happen?"

"Though I wasn't present at the time, I understand that the Lump attacked the rest of the team telepathically when I entered the Bialyan research facility." I look at Richard and raise my eyebrows. "Robin?"

He steps forwards. "Orange Lantern sent us a message from the Bialyan research center as soon as he knew what was happening. Apokolips had sent them equipment to allow the-" He glances at me. What, I can't make up silly names too? "-'Lump' to project its mind over long distances. The team went to the Presidential Palace to rescue Harjavti while Orange Lantern went after the Lump directly."

Batman's eyes narrow slightly as he looks at me. "I understand that you took Queen Bee with you when you confronted it."

"If I didn't show her exactly what sort of people she was dealing with she would only have got back in touch with them once we left. She needed to know that she was horrendously out of her depth. I was confident that my telepathy baffles were strong enough to protect us both."

"Your mission was to prevent Bialya annexing Qurac."

"I thought that stopping Apokolips annexing Earth was more important. Bialya's citizens live in paradise compared to the Hunger Dogs of the Armagetto."

Richard holds up his right hand to stop me continuing the exchange. Right, don't antagonise the boss unproductively. "We didn't know exactly what its range was but we found out right away that it was controlling Harjavti constantly. We had to destroy the relay in the Palace grounds to cut the connection. We made it past the Bialyan soldiers okay but when we got to the relay it used the connection to try and control us."

Close your eyes. Breathe in. Count to five. Let it all flow away.

"Was it successful?"

Richard shakes his head. "I.. don't remember. When I came around M'gann had already destroyed the relay, and, well…" He waves at her.

"I knew I had to keep everyone safe. It was pushing so hard against our minds, I just had to push back. I made it but I lost control of my shapeshifting. I expected I'd end up green and bald but I went Red instead!"

Hm. Mister J'onzz obviously knows what Martians really look like. I assume that Batman does, and so Richard probably does. If she really lost control she'd have gone back to her natural form, not to her current red 'Megan Wheeler look alike' form. Maybe the others were too out of it to notice? M'gann certainly doesn't mind being red so she might have kept that when she changed back to her interacting-with-Humans form.

Batman looks over us all. "And the Lump?"

"Returned to sender, sir." I didn't think that zombified Bialyan soldiers would be a problem, even after I found out that their sponsor had shipped in 'the good shit' to arm them with. Father Box simply called them 'blasters', probably because they're the most simple type of proper Apokoliptian weaponry. Precise, accurate and really powerful, they managed a couple of very nasty hits on my construct barriers before I removed them from their owners' hands. Don't really have a use for them yet but I'm sure that something will come up. "Regrettably it hadn't been programmed to obey my namesake and I had a good deal of difficulty penetrating its force field." Nothing wrong with Father Box's information, just a very powerful barrier with no exploitable flaws. "It also had a fear aura generator in case one of the Greenies went after it. Fortunately the orange light is less susceptible to being weakened by fear." Bloody thing still bypassed all of my defences, though. I could turn it down but that still left me with a constant sense that something just out of my visual field was about to attack me. "I was only able to overpower it after M'gann destroyed the Quraci relay. I assume there was some sort of blowback that weakened its concentration."

"Were you able to trace Queen Bee's supplier?"

I generate a construct. "His name is Mokkari. No idea what he's supposed to be New God of. Appears to be a mid level researcher and engineer."

"Status?"

"Father Box was able to track his location on Apokolips using the beacon he gave Queen Bee. He was somewhat surprised to see me." I close my eyes for a moment, remembering his obvious fear when I finally confronted him. He at least knew who Grayven was. "After he gave a full explanation of the nature of his work -which Queen Bee was on hand to hear- I assaulted him-" And branded, but let's draw a veil over that. "-and did a significant amount of damage to his facility. He accepts my authority and is highly unlikely to return."

"He believes that you are Grayven, Darkseid's son."

"He believes I can find him and beat the shit out of him if he tries anything like this again. But yes, he appeared to also believe that I was that Grayven. I think Queen Bee does as well." She also seemed fairly keen on the idea of future cooperation, or rather using the Apokoliptian database in Father Box to strengthen her position. She also sounded like she was coming on to me, but maybe that was just her giving the pheromones another try. Though my initial impression was favourable, seeing the sorts of risk she was prepared to take rather put me off. She has some characteristics I might find attractive were they not paired with suicidal arrogance. She can't act at the level she's trying to and she stood a good chance of taking the rest of us down with her.

Batman focuses on M'gann. "Miss Martian, aside from your color change have you noticed any other side effects from the procedure which Orange Lantern performed on you?"

"No, none at all."

Batman glances at Mister J'onzz. I don't see him respond but Batman nods before returning his attention to the rest of us. "Team dismissed. Orange Lantern, a moment of your time. In private."

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Mirage 29

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24th November

00:07 GMT -5

"Computer, secure the room."

Since Batman wanted a private discussion I opened a Boom Tube to one of the mountain's smaller rooms. I suppose we could have gone to Titan or just held our talk in space or something but I'm mindful of the fact that it would be best not to look as if I'm trying to dominate him. There's a hiss as armoured blast doors close at the exits of the room in response to Batman's command and a clunk as the air vents close. Reminds me of the old fire alarm checks at work.

"Secured."

Helpful smile in place. "What can I do for you, sir?"

"You met with Ra's al Ghul."

Hm. I didn't specifically tell him I did that, though I suppose I shouldn't be entirely surprised that he knows. "Yes."

"Why?"

"Information gathering. Sir, I was under the impression that you didn't want full reports on my undercover work."

"When I authorized you to develop Cheshire as a double agent I did so in the expectation that you would maintain a professional objectivity. Instead, I understand that you've been.. 'dating' her."

"Sir, I am aware of your relationships with both Talia al Ghul and Selina Kyle."

He remains still for a moment, and then smiles. Not a dressing down, then. "Then you know that I know what I'm talking about. If she's a member of the League of Shadows she will have committed numerous criminal offences."

"She told me about the worst. But, they haven't dared give her any more high.. illegality missions since she started having dealings with me."

"If she's murdered people then we won't necessarily be able to have her pardoned. She will still be looking at a considerable period of time in prison."

"If the offence can be proven."

The smile disappears. "What information have you been able to extract so far?"

How much should I tell him? I'd known this was coming for a while, and while my knowledge of their operations is far from complete we could organise a mass take down of League of Shadows operatives based on what I currently know. And yet… The way Ra's was speaking, as if he'd had a rethink about his omnicidal campaign. His talk of an invisible hand guiding Human destiny. I had thought that he was either waffling or making an oblique reference to Adam Smith, but then Queen Bee's allusion… "I have a great deal of knowledge of the League's ongoing operations, including training centres-" Infinity Island and some sort of temple thing in China are the only major ones, though there are many smaller dojos. "-and the identities of Shadow officers. However, the cell structure which the 'active' parts of the League of Shadows use mean that there isn't any one membership roster. Even Ra's al Ghul doesn't know exactly how many people work for him."

"Orange Lantern, the mission was to acquire information which could be used to destroy the League of Shadows. From the sounds of it you've succeeded, yet you seem reluctant to complete the mission. Explain."

"When I met Ra's I taunted him about how moronic his ideals were, only to be told that he'd modified his position. He's, what? Seven hundred years old? That's a long time to go without changing your mind. And if he has, why hasn't he spoken to you about it? From all accounts he respects you, and if the main cause-."

"He has."

"Oh." I blink. That was unexpected. Would he have mentioned what I did to Crock and Dorrance? He didn't see anything I couldn't talk my way out of, but Batman investigating is something I'm rather keen to avoid. "Was he as vague with you as he was with me?"

"Probably. But even if something has changed, the League of Shadows is a major criminal organization. If you're concerned about Cheshire's safety-."

"It's not that. Ring, play recording."

"And what Bialya learns, the whole of the Human race will benefit from."

"I'll believe that when I see it."

"You may be surprised what a small number of like-minded individuals can achieve through.. strategic partnerships."

"End. Ra's mentioned the Human race benefiting, but he's always claimed that anyway. He also mentioned partners, then when I heard Queen Bee say the same thing…"

"You think there's a connection."

I shrug, and look to the side. "Perhaps. I don't have much to go on at the moment. I wondered.. when we fought the Injustice League, how such a disparate group of people ever got together. I mean, Napier and Isley knew each other from Arkham, but the rest? They have nothing in common in geography, history or skill sets. It isn't as if Vertigo could place adverts in the classified section. And we know that Shugel was working with The Brain, probably for several years, and yet the Brain was conspicuous by his absence. I'm left with this worrying feeling that there's something going on that we're just not seeing."

"You want to see if Ra's will tell you what it is."

I nod. "Or Queen Bee. If this is a cabal that thinks that dealing with Apokolips is clever I dread to think what else they might do in the name of 'helping' the Earth." Asking Black Adam would be a better option but the League has been understandably reluctant to do anything to Theodore that would effectively remove him from control of his own body and I'd struggle to 'aid' Shazam's former champion without making it obvious that it was me. If only Wisconsin had the death penalty. If only the US Constitution didn't prevent us from just truth lassoing Vertigo and commanding him to tell us everything.

If only I could work out how to do it anyway without anyone finding out.

"The Justice League can't operate in Bialya."

"I might be able to persuade her. I think I convinced her not to attempt to renew her Apokoliptian connections but she knows that I have what she wants. It would be perfectly in character for 'Prince Grayven' to demand more information on who he was being asked to assist. In the meantime, I can provide you with some information on League of Shadow activities-."

His eyes narrow. "You'll provide me with more than that."

"Sir, if you order me to then I will comply, but I would ask you to consider whether or not your databases are Apokolips-tech proof. Or proof against the technology of other alien races that Ra's or Queen Bee might have had dealings with. I simply don't want to risk those parts of the organisation on which I have good information going to ground."

"How long do you envisage this taking?"

"No real way to know, but if I don't have something concrete by next July I'll assume that they're both bluf- FCHAAAAAGGGH!" Pain! Incredible pain emanating from the ring! I drop to my knees, clutching my left hand. The ring's sparking- No, flashing short streams of red light. Through the agonising haze I try to sense what they are. I'm not getting any feedback from the ring at all. I can't feel anger. What's happening!? Father Box!

Be not. Embrace dominion. Love the yoke.

"Ploong."

I see my connection to Desaad being corrupted. I see his robe torn away, the brand on his mutated chest laid bare. Red beams of light striking it and someone, someone who is more than me, more than I could ever-

"Ploong."

I see his face, his physical face shown in reflected light and the godly face of his inner nature. The mechanics of spiritual suppression and annihilation paired with a rocky grey body which looks so much like mine. His arms are folded patiently behind his back, patient and inevitable as entropy, his head bare on top but armoured around the side and chin in a way suggesting a beard and male pattern baldness while he extends his overwhelming soul into the brand. The beam, the Omega Effect-

"Ring, extinguish the brand on Desaad. Do it now!"

"By by by by your by his by his-."

"Father Box, assist the ring."

"Ploong."

"By your command." The pain vanishes, and I pant in relief.

"Grayven, what happened!?"

"Dar… Darkseid found out about the brand. Ow. Fired an Omega Effect into the brand I put on Desaad." I gingerly get back on my feet, still shaking slightly. "I don't think he wants me on Apokolips any more than I want him here."

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NEXT CHAPTER

Minutes

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Minutes 1

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Minutes

24th November

11:21 GMT +2

I watch as a truck full of men dressed only in their underwear drives through the Shiruta streets below us. "I understand why you're shipping them out, but why did you take their clothes?"

Adom's expression doesn't change. In public his body language is almost completely static and it makes talking to him a little strange. "They were sent here to murder members of Shiruta's provisional governing council. My belief is that killing them would have been appropriate retribution.. but, since I was able to prevent them from reaching their targets and since I am endeavouring to be… To behave in the manner befitting a modern 'super hero', I decided against it. Publicly shaming them was the next best option. A man might believe it is noble to die for a cause but it is unlikely that he will believe that it is noble to be driven around in his underwear for one."

True, I suppose. "If you don't mind me asking, why have you taken this long to communicate directly with the rebels?"

"There are several reasons. The situation is far too volatile for me to take the time to perform an administrative role. The government in Cairo has sent two major attacking forces as well as aircraft against Shiruta since the civil disobedience became open rebellion. I need to be in the open, where both my enemies and the people whom I protect can see me and know that I am ever-vigilant."

"That makes sense, but you could have stopped to speak with them for a few minutes, surely?"

"That.. would have been difficult. My Arabic is much improved, but it is still not good enough for long conversations and I do not wish to appear uneducated. My people have high expectations of me and I must live up to them."

"How have you been getting on with Captain Marvel?"

The merest glimmerings of a frown. "He is an unusual man. He has been asking me for tales of ancient Kahndaq, of the battles I fought during my first life. I do not think that I was ever so.. exuberant, so unguarded as he is. He has an almost childlike capacity for joy." I try not to react. The League might know that William isn't as old as he appears but it isn't common knowledge. "He is a good man. I think we might have become friends were it not for his continued service to the.. wizard."

"Don't rule it out. I don't think that the wizard gives him orders on a day to day basis."

"Perhaps." The truck is just a speck on the horizon to me now, though as I understand it Adom's eyes are much better than those of a normal Human. "I am grateful that you thought to arrange this meeting with the Quracis."

"I thought I owed you for the whole 'scaring the Bialyans off' thing. Anyway, President Muhunnad has few friends, internationally. He hasn't provoked anyone enough for them to want to force him from office by military power but hardly anyone will complain if he's removed by other Kahndaqis. It's only taken this long to arrange a meeting because there wasn't anyone in charge to meet before."

"There still isn't. The provisional council only speaks for Shiruta."

"I think they meant you." He doesn't respond immediately. "They're taking the fact that you're attending this meeting as a sign that you're finally taking command."

"I had hoped to leave it longer."

"Why?"

He thinks for a moment. "I have made a study of the ways in which nations are governed in this age. Captain Marvel was an enthusiastic proponent of American democracy and its division of powers. Princess Diana's nation is ruled by a Queen but most decisions are consensual, arrived at through discussion by its citizens. Your own nation has a monarch, an elected body and an appointed one. If I come to rule Kahndaq once more I have no desire to force a particular form of government upon my people. I had wanted to see where people naturally look for leadership when not compelled to bow to Cairo by force. Shiruta has a council, tribal groups have their elders, there are exiles who are now returning to their homeland who have their own ideas. I wanted there to be a structure I could govern through before I formally accepted the authority to do so. Above all I do not want to taint this resurgence of the Kahndaqi spirit with kinslaying as proponents of different forms of organisation fight amongst themselves."

"Do you want to rule?"

He bows his head slightly. "Yes. I occupied the position for so long that in my own mind it defines me as much as the gods’ blessings do. But I would not impose myself against the wishes of the Kahndaqi people."

"How long were you in charge for?"

"From my father's death until the wizard slew me… About eighty years."

"Oh. I'd sort of been assuming that he killed you because you killed your father."

"No. Even he was hard pressed to argue that my father did not deserve it."

"If you don't mind me asking, what exactly did your father.. do..? You sort of implied-."

His jaw tenses. "If any other man had asked that question…"

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you, but I can't help unless I know more about what happened."

He doesn't respond immediately. I can see scab-textured red churning inside green within him. Old rage, kept in check but never fully excised. "I had been the gods' champion for fourteen years. The wizard knew that I had duties to Kahndaq as its Crown Prince, and that in the fullness of time I most likely would have further duties as its Pharaoh. He made it clear that he did not give me… No, did not assist me in receiving these gifts, so that I could make Kahndaq pre-eminent among nations. I accepted that without complaint. When I fought demons, sorcerers and mad titans for the wizard and for mankind I did so with the gods’ power, and when I led Kahndaq's armies against bandits, against other nations and other tribes I did so as a mortal man."

"But… Having met people from all parts of the world, having seen their lives and experienced their cultures, I knew that my people were really not so different from people I might meet anywhere else. Their lives, their hopes and dreams… That the men I slew as Prince Adom were much the same as those who fought beside me. And I found that I could not forget that, even as I put the gods' powers aside. So, I stopped taking trophies from the bodies of those I slew, stopped making slaves of those I captured. I tried to negotiate with foreign chieftains rather than fight with them. It was not easy; I could not use Lord Zehuti's wisdom and I.. am much less wise than he. Father hated it, hated that I, the gods' anointed, accepted the defiance of barbarians and foreigners. Shiruta, my wife for whom this city is named, supported me. Calmed me when the foolishness of all those around me drove me to rage, counselled me when my own wisdom was insufficient to surmount the challenges I faced. Confronted me when my stubbornness… And my father believed that she was corrupting me, weakening me and had her and our sons Gon and Hurut killed."

I suddenly realise that my mouth is hanging open. "Mighty One, I didn't-."

He holds out his left hand to stop me. "The assassination of the high priestess of Isis justified me in using the gods' powers to track down her killers, and their sponsor. When I confronted him he didn't even bother to lie to me about it. He boasted how he had.. freed me. So I resumed my mortal form, drew my sword and killed him. My action was just and because I had not used the gods' powers the wizard had no grounds to intervene." He exhales. "I think that was when he lost faith in me. My later actions, forming alliances with others like myself to better protect the world, were seen as those of one seeking to cement his personal power. When other nations swore fealty to us in exchange for our protection he had the excuse he needed to act against me."

"Others?"

"My friends Prince Khufu and Princess Chay-Ara. Your Hawkman and Hawkwoman appear much like them. The sorceress Gamemnae, Lord Rama Kahn of Jarhanpur, the Anointed One… The wizard finally confronted me when I was isolated from them in Kahndaq. I don't know if he took action against the others afterwards." He turns to face me fully. "If the wizard had stayed his hand, if he had seen how we acted rather than deciding that we had broken some arbitrary law, if he had trusted me, who had exercised the gods' power on his behalf hundreds of times, we could have created an age of order and peace the likes of which the Earth had not seen before or since. That, is why I hate him."

I don't know what to say. Having said his piece Adom turns away again. "Now, we have a meeting to go to. We should-. Ah, yes. Before we go there, the gods have asked me to pass on a message to you."

"Um. What is it?"

"It is from Sekhmet." Huh? "She tells me that while she appreciates the consideration, she simply isn't interested in Athena in that way." Shiiit. He frowns and glances at me again. "Athena is one of Princess Diana's gods, is she not? What is Sekhmet talking about?"

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Minutes 2

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24th November

11:28 GMT -5

"The time of the Awakening is upon us." I jazz hands. Green Arrow smirks while Ms Lance rolls her eyes.

I'm not usually one for humour in situations like this but my run in with Darkseid has left me more than a little rattled. After a quick and rather frantic check that we weren't about to become ground zero for an Apokoliptian invasion I had to explain as much of the mechanics of what had just happened as I could to Batman. I should probably have been more worried about his reaction but after getting a good look at Darkseid's true divine self I'm not sure any lesser stressor will ever intimidate me again. I removed Mokkari's brand just in case. Hopefully he's still too afraid of me to risk coming back, though I'll have to stay alert. It was still hours until my tremors fully subsided and forget about sleep. Shouldn't matter too much for my purpose here. It hasn't affected the degree to which I want this and the first stage of the Awakening process is actually fairly simple for Father Box.

My whole team are in attendance, Zatanna and Artemis standing slightly further forwards than the others. Only Zatanna will actually be undergoing the process but Artemis was very much impressed by young Mister Xu. We'll be going over the strategy we'll use to convince her mother to sign off on it later. Mister Zatara is close at hand, Helmet firmly on head. He'll be monitoring the arcane components carefully. He was prepared to insist forcefully if I refused, but I readily agreed. This is a big deal for everyone and I want to get it right as much as he does.

Kon's standing next to Wonder Woman. She.. grudgingly.. gave her permission so today will be the last day Kon has any Human or Genomorph biological components. That process will take slightly longer but is far more predictable. Lantern Jordan is on hand to monitor that, and he's been staring at the orange-glowing lantern at my feet whenever he thinks I'm not looking at him. I suppose this is the first time he's seen it. Father Box had a good deal of information on green personal lanterns dating from the Greenies' failed invasion attempt and I used it to fix my own lantern up a little. Nothing major; while I can function as a superhero without it, it would be extremely limiting to be forced to rely purely on Father Box and my slight divine attributes if I damaged it.

Further back Batman, Big Barda and Scott Free are also observing. Batman's here in his team oversight role and he brought the other two in for their New God expertise. They both had a quiet freak out when they first saw me. Barda's eyes are still fixed on me, her right hand caressing the hilt of her Mega Rod. Mister Free's got some sort of scanner doohickey out and is studying it intently. Not sure if he's scanning my volunteers or me. I'm tempted to ring scan both devices but I think best behaviour is the order of the day.

Hm. Only just occurred to me that the League doesn't have a team medic. Have to see if the Greenies are capable of using their rings medically. Or maybe there's a modern era Doctor Midnight I could look up?

"So, ahh…" Green Arrow looks from me to the happily smiling Zatanna. "Who wants to go first?"

"I do!" Zatanna raises her left hand and grins a little more broadly. Mister Zatara's head tilts slightly. I know that he's still not entirely happy about this. He's been back to China to give Tao a thorough scanning and couldn't find anything wrong with the magics used and he certainly acknowledges the practical advantages. Plus, after Roanoke Island he can't pretend that he can ever make Zatanna as safe as he would like through his own efforts. But no one ever wants-.

"I will." He lifts the Helmet from his head and puts it in the crook of his right arm.

"Daaad…"

"Mister Zatara, I don't think that's a good idea. In the unlikely event that anything goes wrong we will need a magic user who isn't being affected in order to deal with it. Zatanna can't fulfil that function for you as well as you can fulfil it for her." He looks down slightly and I think I hear a slight sigh. "I will be happy to Awaken you in a few years once we know better what the precise effects are." He doesn't exactly look happy about it, but he nods. I look from Zatanna to Green Arrow. "Toss a coin?"

"I've got a coin." Zatanna quickly fishes one out of her pocket and holds it out to me. "I pick heads."

"Nooot so fast." Green Arrow takes it from her and looks at both faces. Two heads. "Really? A trick coin?"

Zatanna pantomimes innocence. "Oops. Wrong one."

"Yeah, I'll bet."

I remove one of my own from subspace. "Head's Ploutos, tails is the orange sigil." The Ploutos representation is actually fairly generic but it's not as if he's likely to complain. How many people these days even know he exists? Never really got the hang of flipping coins so I just toss it lightly into the air, close my eyes and catch it in my right hand before pressing it into the back of my left. Both of them watch as I move my right hand away.

"Ooohw."

Green Arrow nods. "Okay, me then. What do I need to do?"

Mister Zatara puts the Helmet back on and holds out his left hand, a corrupted orange ankh forming over it. "Wohs em ylesicerp tahw s'eh gniod."

"Stand there." I step forwards and press my right fore and middle fingers against his forehead. "Divine Awakening." There's a brief flash of orange light and I feel lines of absence attach themselves to his metaphysique, undefined presence radiating away from his core self.

"Ploong."

I pull my fingers away. "All done. Mister Zatara?"

He nods. "Everything appears to be as it should."

"Really? You sure?" Green Arrow rolls his shoulders. "I don't.. feel any different."

"And you won't. Probably not for months. I haven't made you a New God, I've just.. given you extra room for spiritual growth. Now-" I take a folder of paperwork out of subspace. "-this is a list of the things you need to do each week, reports I need you to fill out and a list of predicted developmental milestones and.. a.. shorter list of things which are cause for concern and should result in you immediately contacting either myself or Mister Zatara. I'll want to see you back here at least once a fortnight for thorough scans."

He takes the folder, opens it and flicks through a few pages. "Who knew becoming a god would involve so much paperwork."

"You're very much a Guinea Pig on this one, sir. There are ways to speed it up but they involve the use of further magics and increase the risks in ways I can't properly quantify. We need to understand exactly what happens, which unfortunately for you, means that." I indicate the folder.

"You filling in one of these for you?"

"I was never really a baseline Human. Not by local standards. Zatanna?"

"Go right ahead!"

She closes her eyes as I touch her forehead. "Divine Awakening."

"Ploong."

I take my fingers away and she opens her eyes, looking thoughtful. "I think I felt that."

"You may well have done. You're already aware of arcane forces in a way that Green Arrow isn't. Your folder."

She takes it from me. "Is this something we can.. go through together?"

"Certainly. It would probably be safer if I were able to monitor you more frequently, given your magic use."

Green Arrow grins. "Bet you tell that to all the girls." Black Canary elbows him and Zatanna blushes slightly. Oh, harr harr.

Kon takes a couple of steps forwards. "Is it my turn now?"

I make a construct hospital bed. "It certainly is. Jump up."

He looks at it. "Do you really need that? I mean…" He looks back at Wonder Woman and M'gann.

"Kon, I really wouldn't advise you to be conscious while I do this."

"I kinda.. want to be?"

I close my eyes while I think about it. "I'll have to shut down your sensory nerves as well as your powers." I change the bed for a comfy chair. "Better?"

"Yeah, thanks." He sits and then leans back, getting comfortable. Mister Zatara turns in order to get a better look and Lantern Jordan holds his ring out in my direction.

"Alright then. Power shut down comes first. This shouldn't hurt, but let me know if it does." I hold out my left hand with my palm facing him and dull red light plays over his body while waves of orange from the chair do their best to nullify the charge his organelles already possess. This isn't a quick process.

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Minutes 3

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24th November

11:39 GMT -5

Green Arrow got bored standing around so he, Black Canary and Artemis have gone to test his new divinity in Star City. I did tell him he wouldn't see any changes yet. Mister Free gave him a clean bill of health with his scanner and Barda's Mother Box, though he admitted it was really more of an educated guess than based on actual experience. Barda appeared to be quite annoyed that he drew my attention to the fact that she had one, but she doesn't have anything to worry about from me. It simply isn't worth 'acquiring' now that I have Father Box. Zatanna's stayed next to me, while M'gann and Wonder Woman stand on either side of Kon as he pokes his left arm experimentally with his right hand. "I don't feel any different."

I smirk. "Zatanna, would you please pinch Kon?"

He looks at me and then at her. "Er, I don't-." Zatanna reaches over the side of the chair and pinches his cheek. "Ow!" She pulls away with a giggle while he rubs his 'injury'. "Okay, it worked. Wait, would this work on... Y'know..?"

"Superman?" He looks away. "Yes. Actually, since I wouldn't have to sort Kryptonian cells from non-Kryptonian ones it would be a bit faster. Still not quite fast enough to be much use in combat." He nods.

I do have a combat version of course. Spent some time in the lab firing beams of kryptonite radiation at a cloned sample of Kal-El's blood. Getting what I want is so much easier when I don't bother asking first. I'm getting an idea of why it reacts to particular wavelengths in the way it does, though my understanding is far from perfect. Sadly, my attempt to turn Kryptonian organelles into a super solar power plant came to nothing but I have learned to disrupt their functioning pretty well.

"Have you made a decision about exactly what sort of genetic structure you want? As I said, I recommend-."

"Yeah, I… That one. I don't…" He looks up at Wonder Woman. "I don't need to be Superman anymore." Wonder Woman smiles down at him. I haven't spoken to her to find out what she thinks of this. I've no doubt that she'd tell me if she had a major problem. All she did during our last mentoring session was check that I was still going to Guy's classes. I am. We've even started spending time together afterwards. His constructs are noticeably stronger than mine and his actions swifter. Less sophisticated, though. It's a learning opportunity for us both.

"Alright then. If you lean back I'll shut down your sensory nerves."

He gets a little more comfortable. "Do you really need to do that?"

"I'm not completely certain that I do, but I think it would be for the best. Ready?"

"How long will it take?"

Reformatting most of the cells in your body while preventing decay to your mental networks? "I'm not sure. I already have the physiological templates loaded so.. maybe five minutes? Could be less." He nods, and M'gann reaches out to take his left hand in hers. He looks up and smiles. "Ready?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I am."

"Numbing now. Try not to move. Physiological reformatting beginning in three, two, one… Now!"

The red light enveloping Kon is outshone by the intense orange. Running the calculations on Mister Luthor's DNA was far more difficult than finding Kryptonian equivalents. The Kryptonians really knew their genetic sciences. No one individual on file had what I wanted, and I had to decide how close a match it was worth getting. What exactly would the Kryptonian equivalent to lifelong lactase digestion be? Is there one? In the end I focused almost exclusively on genetic components which would minimise the difference in the make up of Kon's neurological structures. I had to mix and match from about fifty different individuals to get what I felt was a match of the desired degree. Took me days but it will be time well spent if it makes Kon happy.

M'gann looks at me with a little concern. "Is it working?"

Change. Become. I look down. "Father Box, progress?"

"Ploong."

Change. "And there's no problem with the mental networks?"

"Ploong."

Change. "Glad to hear it." I look back at M'gann. "See?"

She slowly shakes her head. "No, noooot really."

Change. "Right. Sorry. Father Box says he's fine."

She looks back down at him. "Are you sure? I can't hear… His mind feels strange."

Change. "His mind is currently running on my constructs while I alter his brain tissue. I'm surprised you can hear it at all. Ah, brain's finished. Cognitive overlay removed… Better?" She nods. "Shouldn't be much longer now."

Wonder Woman reaches through the glow to put her hand on his shoulder. "Will he be safe when the process is complete? He's never had to control flight before."

Change. "He's still got no solar charge. Don't worry, I'm going to be bringing his power levels up very gradually." Nearly done. "He'll only have baseline Human equivalent abilities to start with. Did I ever tell you about all of the minor neurotransmitter imbalances Cadmus stuck him with?"

"You told me that was the main source of his anger."

"Miracle he wasn't hallucinating the whole time. There." The orange glow cuts off and Kon blinks up at us. "Done. Feel alright?"

"Um. Yeah, I…" He looks at his hands. "I don't feel… No, wait." He pokes his abdomen. "Did you.. change something..?"

"The Kryptonian digestive system is a little different to the Human one. Don't worry, you can still handle Human food. Now, I'm about to shut off the red light. When I do that, your photoreceptive organelles will start to function at full capacity." He tries to rise from the chair and I put my right hand to his chest. "Wait. I've just rewritten your nervous system, you're not going to be able-." He pushes my hand aside and tries to stand.

He stumbles and M'gann, Wonder Woman and I all go to catch him. M'gann's telekinesis wins, just. He stops still for a moment, then grits his teeth and gets his legs firmly under him, arms spread out to the side for balance. "I'm okay. Let me go." The glow in M'gann's eyes fades but she leaves her right hand pointing at him, ready to grab him again if it looks like he needs the aid. He takes a slightly shaky step, then another. He straightens up a little and lowers his hands to his sides. The Kryptonian nervous system is laid out in a similar way to the Human one but his brain clearly needs a few moments to adapt to everything being just a little off. Slowly and carefully he turns around and meets my eyes. "Okay. I'm ready."

The red aura around him fades as I bring up an organelle activity monitor. Low but rising. "Feel any different now?"

He loosens his neck. "I.. don't think so."

"Let's try magnification first." I take a small screen out of subspace and hold it up. He peers at it. "Your current level of magnification should allow you to-."

Pffff! Two beams of red light leap from his eyes, annihilate the screen, cross over and continue to the far wall which glows white where they strike! They stutter as he blinks and then cut out entirely as he sticks his hands in front of his eyes. "I'm sorry! I don't know how to stop it!"

"Kon." I put my right hand on his left shoulder. "Calm yourself. Relax your eyes. The heat vision didn't activate until you tried using your magnification." He pulls his hands away from his face a little and narrowly opens his eyes. No beams.

"It worked. It actually worked. I can-." He moves his hands back to his sides, looks at the far wall and then lets rip again, melting a glowing red 'X' into the rock before shutting it down again. "I've got heat vision!"

I fold my arms across my chest. "I'll try not to be too offended at you doubting my work."

"I didn't mean it like that." M'gann smiles as she hugs him around the right side of his chest and he hugs her back. "It's just.. I should be able to do it, and now I can. Wait, flying. How do I fly?"

"Don't look at me; I just stick a force field around myself. Wonder Woman?"

"I'm not sure what technique would work best for you. Try.. looking at the roof and picturing it coming towards you."

"Ah, okay." He disentangles himself from M'gann and tilts his head back. Nothing much happens. Hm. Maybe we should try throwing the bird from the nest?

"I'll give you a start." I grab him around the waist and hurl him into the air!

"Whoah!" He flails his arms, twists in mid air and doesn't come back down. It takes his brain a moment to pick up on what his body's already decided. I watch as his panic turns into joy. He looks at himself and at the rest of us on the floor below him. He doesn't have any control yet but he doesn't seem to care. "I can fly!"

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Minutes 4

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25th November

08:54 GMT -2

"Sooo, this is your new workshop." It doesn't really surprise me that the Conservatory of Sorcery has an 'applied' section. I knew they had sparring arenas as well as a library, after all. Sephtian's new work space is a roughly spherical room about twenty metres across with small.. desktops? Projecting out of the external wall from all around, save for the centre of the ceiling and floor where there's a sort of spire thing.

"It will be, yes, it will be."

He swims fully into the room and I follow on behind him. I suppose that underwater they don't have to worry about gravity so much. Someone who wants to work on one of the stations on the upper part of the room can just swim over there and -depending on the buoyancy- stay there with minimal effort.

"How long until it's finished?"

He turns his head to face me at what for a baseline Human would be a very uncomfortable angle. "That.. depends on you. My design for this workspace assumed that the physical components of the spells would be put in place-" A twitch and he turns in the water, hands held against his chest, fingers pointed at me, palms upwards. "-by your ring. It can be made to work without-."

"No problem. Just show me exactly what you want and I'll sort you out."

He breathes in hard, hands clenching, head flaps opening outwards showing me the pale skin at the sides of his head. "This is going to be so great!"

I smile at his enthusiasm. "What does your order book look like?"

"Hmm? Ooh. No, no, finishing your order will very much not present a problem. Thissss-" He makes small circular motions with his hands, index fingers extended. "-should allow us to produce a Spell Eater in less than a day. Once it's finished and everyone's fully trained, of course."

"I.. had a few other things I wanted to talk to you about making. "

"Ah. Mmmmmm. Depends. You'd have to talk to the Queen, really. What did you have in mind?"

Where to start? "Improved magic suppression manacles. We used the strongest Atlantis had on Klarion and he barely took any notice."

"Klarion… Yes, I've heard about that. Shouldn't take long to come up with a design and given the.. the death toll I imagine she'll be amenable."

"How bad was it down here?"

His eyes flick away. "Fewer deaths per thousand than the surface. That's something to be grateful for, isn't it? Psychologically… We thought we were prepared. We're the only nation on the planet that uses magic in our everyday lives. Then-" He fans out his hands. "-a handful of surface dwellers manage that. The first crown project I've got… You remember that water shield thing you made for Aqualad?" I nod. "We're making one for Poseidonis. With.. added features. If it works then the other cities will get them as well."

"Whaw." That's probably the death knell for my worldwide detection network idea, at least for now. "Wouldn't it make sense to build other rooms like this for a job that big?"

"Once the concept is proven, yes. People are.. scared. Radically changing the way they think about arcane technology will have to wait until I can back up our claims." He swims past me back towards the entrance. "Plus, we'd have trouble staffing them. Not that I'd stop anyone who wanted to try on their own. Now that I'm employed under royal warrant the designs I'm working on are crown property and I understand that the Queen intends to make.. some of them at least, publicly available."

Good news. I follow him back into the hallway and then on in the direction of the associated classroom. "Are you teaching here now as well?"

"I have to. I'm the only one with any experience of running this system, though some of the students here were already working part time for me and know how to handle the casting part. Class isn't in session yet but this project has rather caught the imagination of a couple of them. Come, I'll introduce you."

He turns a corner and heads through an archway. The Atlanteans don't seem big on doors. Something to do with pressure, probably. I follow him into what looks like a series of miniature workshops, each bench covered with arcane equipment I couldn't begin to identify. Several different.. wands? And a rune-etched dish of some sort? I wave to La'gaan as he looks up upon hearing us enter. He blinks in surprise and then looks at his classmate.

"Professor, I think I'm having some trouble with-." Lori Lemaris looks up from her work. Looks like she's using one of the wands to lay fine lines of metal onto a metal sheet about the size of an A4 sheet of paper. She stops talking as soon as she sees me and scowls at me. "What are you doing here?"

I point back the way we came with my right index finger. "Finishing the construction work and placing an order?"

"Hpf."

She folds her arms across her chest. Sephtian flicks his eyes from me to her and then back again. "Is there some sort of problem?"

"I don't know?"

She flicks her tail, moving to a higher position in the water. "You don't know? You came to our school after Topo got branded and gave a Purist speech about how we're innately inferior-"

"What?"

"-and you're surprised I'm angry!?"

I frantically try and remember the contents of a speech I gave two and a half months ago. "I don't.. remember saying that?"

"Then what did you mean by 'The full advantages of biomantic adaptation should be available to everyone, not just those fortunate enough to have the right ancestors'?!"

"Exactly what I said! If your ancestors had had the choice at the time of the Sinking, do you think they'd have chosen the fish tail version or the version that left them looking the same?"

"How can you say that! Kaldur's your friend!"

"The version of the aquatic adaptation spell that was used on Kaldur is directly inferior to the Pureblood version. Same advantages, plus gill slits and webbing and faster dehydration on land. There is no situation in which it's better!"

"Kaldur didn't inherit his adaptations! His dad doesn't even come from Atlantis!"

"So you agree with me? If the Pureblood version had been available don't you think his mother would have wanted him and his dad to have that instead?"

"You just don't get it!"

"Of course I don't! I'm a surface worlder from a parallel universe! Atlantean racial politics means nothing to me. If you're happy having fish-grafts then I'm fine with that, I was simply pointing out that there are disadvantages."

"I'm fine like I am!"

"Unless you want to move on land. Which -fair enough- doesn't come up much around here. Your speed in the water's higher than a Pureblood's would be and your turning circle's better, but-." No, that's not an argument I should-.

"But what?"

I take a breath and make sure that I'm as dispassionate as possible. "Purebloods and.. what Kaldur has, can reproduce with baseline Humans. As I understand it, the Pureblood characteristic even breeds true. Fish graft users like yourself are limited to partners with the same characteristic, so, if you wanted to have children the range of choice you have in a partner goes down from about a billion to a few hundred thousand. Not so bad." I turn to Sephtian. "What are your dating prospects like?"

He undulates. Is that a shrug? "My dating prospects are as good as yours. Well." He looks me over. "Maybe a little worse. If we're talking about reproduction, however, the pool of potential mates is noticeably smaller. Assuming a half plus seven age range annnd no po..lyg..amy, I would have a choice between eight female mantafolk." He gives a thin smile. "I've met five of them. We don't really have much in common."

"What's wrong with the other three?"

"Too closely related to me by blood. Miss Lemaris,-" He turns his attention fully to her. "-the fish graft version of the spell was in wide use at the time of the sinking. The Shark version is so common I'm told they're still using it on the surface. Some of us are not so fortunate. While I am aware of the 'Purist' implications I will state openly that if I was offered the chance to change from Manta to Pureblood -or even to baseline Human- I would be sorely tempted. Aside from reproductive options, emergent flaws in the spellwork in all non-Pureblood versions of the adaptation spells are responsible for dozens of congenital deformities across Atlantis each year. Mantafolk have kept detailed genealogy records since the Sinking and we're still having certain.. problems, finding mates who aren't already related to us. Generation on generation our population decreases, and we aren't likely to attract any new blood."

Ms Lemaris shrinks back in the water. "Oh, I'm-. I'm sorry professor."

"There is no need to worry about it. I am to educate you, after all. But please, we will be dealing with these matters in class. We need to be able to talk about it without people puffing up for intimidation. Mm?"

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Minutes 5

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25th November

09:22 GMT -2

"So, what's it like?"

I look up from the arcane circuitry I'm printing on the thaumatorium ceiling. "What's what like?"

The lack of pupils and somewhat different facial arrangement makes it hard to read La'gaan's expression. "You know. The surface world."

The ring cuts out for a moment. About a quarter of the inner surface of what will be Sephtian's main work room has the required physical components for the spell channels. He wasn't joking about taking full advantage of my fabrication abilities, the individual components are so small that La'gaan's having to set up a protective charm as we go to prevent waterborne detritus abrading them. Won't be a problem when the spellwork is all in place but that can only start once we're finished making the anchor lines.

"What do you mean? You came up to the surface for that whole Roanoke thing, you know what it's like."

He looks down slightly. "I saw the inside of your mountain. I didn't get to see the town outside it. I didn't even see the sky, and I only met one person who wasn't a part of your team."

"Huh. Um." I reactivate the ring as I think about how to answer his question. "I suppose the most obvious difference is that it's more two dimensional."

He looks at the orange stroke coating the rocks wall with microscopic gold filament. "Don't you need to concentrate to do that?"

"What?" I turn around to look at where the ring is working. "Oh, no, that's the Greenies, I just have to want it a lot. Once the ring's got the diagram I barely have to think about it at all."

He nods and raises his hands to point at the area I'm working on. "Right. So, how is it two dimensional?"

"We can't swim in air. The ring lets me fly but for the most part when you're on the surface you're wherever gravity sticks you, usually the ground. One of the first things I noticed about Shayeris was that the buildings had entry points all over their surface. Surface world buildings are designed to be entered from.. well, from the sea bed. It's like.. some of the really old buildings here? The ones preserved or restored to how they were before the Sinking?"

"That's.. strange. What else?"

"Less physical diversity, obviously. We've never had to adapt in the way your ancestors did. I mean, there's some places… The people in Aberrance are even more varied, and a metahuman can end up looking like more or less anything. There's a chap in Gotham who looks like he's part Crocodile."

"Is he?"

"He got checked for magic resonance once, didn't come up with anything. Oh, and Ferdinand.. he's the head chef at the Themysciran Embassy? He's like a big baseline Human with a bull's head. Nice guy. Anyway, for the most part, less varied. I suppose if you were just walking down the street it would look a bit like a Pureblood convention, only without the implied racism. Ahhh… Not many magic users but mundane technology is far more advanced."

"I saw the computer you have in the caves. It's.. just a shame I'll never get to see the rest."

I frown. "Why wouldn't you?" He stops charming and gives me what I'm assuming is supposed to be an incredulous look. "No, seriously. What's the problem?"

"I heard that some surface worlders have trouble seeing under water. Are you able to see what I look like?"

"Yes?"

He appears to be puzzled by my lack of reaction. "Would other surface worlders be okay with.. me? Looking like this?"

"Umm. If you just walked out of the sea one day people would probably freak out a bit but if you want to visit I could probably sort something out."

"Really?"

I shrug. "Yeah? I know some guys on the Metropolis police force. As long as you don't mind being escorted around by someone in uniform-. Um, how good are you in air? Kaldur tends to get a bit uncomfortable if the air's too dry and I don't know-."

"I'm fine." He smiles as he points to the side of his neck with his right hand. "No exposed gills. Can you really do this?"

"Can't think of any reason- oh. Hang on. Do you have a passport?"

"A what?"

Darn. "It's a sort of legal document you need if you want to go from one surface world country to another. Atlantis hasn't really got involved with international conventions so I'm not sure what the legal arrangements would be for you to go there. We might have to-."

"Issue them with diplomatic passports?"

The lights from the ring cut off as I turn to face Queen Mera. La'gaan freezes for a moment and then brings his right fist in to touch his forehead in a salute. I bow my head in her direction as she swims up to us.

"Your majesty." Quick scan. Yep, she and the foetus are both fine.

She smiles at my co-worker. "Planning on skipping school, La'gaan?"

"No, my Queen! Just visiting. After class."

"Orange Lantern, the Atlantean diplomatic envoy to the United Nations had a surprisingly productive meeting with Senator Knight last week and I understand we've you to thank for it."

"Um, yeah. More or less an accident, to be honest. He said something stupid in public, I said something insulting on television and we ended up bumping into each other while we were both trying to do something else. I'm amazed we managed to have a civil conversation, actually."

"I think we can accept this good fortune graciously. Was your offer of an escort restricted to La'gaan or do you think it would be possible for other students to accompany you?"

I glance at La'gaan. "Should be. I mean, probably best to make it a smallish group, at least to start with."

"Do you think it would be possible for Lori or Blubber to accompany you?"

"Difficult." Environmental shield, maybe? No, Blubber still wouldn't be able to move and Lori would struggle. Flight aura? Couldn't last long enough. Flight belts? That's.. possible. "I have some devices that can be used to fly. I'd have to adjust them a bit and they'd have to practise in the air… Can any of them speak English?"

"Ee spreek the English."

I look at La'gaan. "Not quite." He sags slightly. "Much better than my Atlantean Greek, though."

"You're completely fluent. You even have the accent right!"

"Ring translation, I'm afraid. Without it I only speak English."

"Of Kaldur's friends only Garth and Tula are fluent, but Lori and Blubber are both capable of casting a translation spell. They should be able to manage."

La'gaan starts to smile. "How soon can we do this?"

"I'm pretty much booked today and tomorrow. I.. can.. talk to my contact in Metropolis on Monday, and Blubber and Lori can practise with the flight belts whenever they've got the time. Need to be on the surface, of course. They can all breathe air, right?"

Queen Mera nods. "Few Atlanteans can't breathe air. I will contact Ambassador Vallambrosa to make the necessary arrangements."

"We're actually going to a surface city? What's Metropolis like?"

"Ring, access all data on Metropolis."

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Minutes 6

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25th November

08:02 GMT -6

"Getting the hang of flying alright?"

Kon and I are walking down a narrow overgrown track in what the maps show as a big white empty chunk of nothing in the middle of Nebraska. Not far ahead I can see the farmhouse. Sun's not been up all that long and there's a chill in the air. Not that the cold really affects either of us anymore. The faint orange glow of a ring-generated sound suppression field surrounds us. Breaking the habit of.. hm, only been a month I suppose. Feels like longer. Anyway, I'm wearing civilian clothing and I was able to persuade Kon to forgo his 'S' t-shirt. I used to find it amusing that cartoon characters always wore the same clothes and now my closest friend is a man who actually does.

"It's going great! It was difficult at first but once I stopped.. fighting against myself I got the hang of it really fast."

I smile. "Glad to hear it. Batman was making noises about benching you until you've fully adapted and I'd really miss you if that happened."

"Could you..?" He hesitates. "Diana says I should practice fighting at my new strength, and-."

"And she wants me to spar with you." Uuuehhhuhhh. "If it helps you then of course I will."

He smiles and then takes another look around. "Why did you want me to come out here? I don't.. see anything…"

"Simple really. I'm not an American, but you are, if only by default. And one thing Americans like is learning about where their ancestors came from. Especially if they were Irish for some reason. How have you been getting on with the archive?"

"It's… Interesting. I've learned a lot about Krypton, but-" He slows slightly. "-it just… I don't want to sound ungrateful or anything…"

"But you'd rather have heard it from the horse's mouth." He tilts his head to the side slightly. "No, I'm not offended. Anyone would, that's why we're here."

"What do you mean?"

I point over to our right. "If you can do it without setting the whole place on fire, take a look in that field and tell me what you see."

"Uh." He looks, his head tilted slightly to the side. "Plants?"

"What sort of plants?"

"I.. don't know. Just.. plants. Why, is it important?"

"Somewhat. You wouldn't find them anywhere else on Earth. In fact, there aren't many places in the universe where you can find them anymore. They're Kryptonian."

He turns to face me, grabbing my left arm and bringing me to a halt. "What? How can that be? Superman's the only Kryptonian left, except for.. me."

"No he isn't. Did it not occur to you that Kryptonians were a spacefaring race? And yet, everyone seems to think that every single one was in the Rao system when Krypton went critical. What sort of sense does that make?"

He looks around in excitement. "There's another Kryptonian here?"

"Sub Commander Karsta Wor-Ul, formerly of the Kryptonian Stellar Navy. She's been here under the name 'Kristin Wells' since she bought the land during the Great Depression." I generate a construct in her likeness, shifting between what she wore in the few photographs I was able to find and finishing up with her old navy gear. Crystal power armour. I need that. "It's funny, really: Batman nearly rumbled her eight years ago when he started gathering information on Superman. Then, Batman and Superman met and he never thought to follow up on it." I suppose there are enough other fast fliers around the place that he wouldn't automatically attribute the phenomena to a surviving Kryptonian. Unless he did follow up on it and just didn't record it…

"Does Superman know about her?"

"Not as far as I know. And I personally don't think we should tell him. I mean, knowledge of your existence hasn't spread that far but she can't not know that Kal-El exists."

"Wait, the Navy? In the thirties? That was…" He looks aside as he tries to match up Earth and Kryptonian timelines. "Just after the Science Council took over from the Military Council. The database said that the Navy got stood down and everyone who worked for it was sent back to Krypton."

"Except the ones who went AWOL before reaching the naval base on Weghtor." I shake my head. "People who had nothing much back home. Come on." I pull my arm free and we start walking towards her house again. "Funny thing about Krypton at the time was that the military were far more cosmopolitan than the civilians back home. Krypton only ever founded one colony, never really traded with other worlds but the military regularly interacted with other species, and not always in a violent way."

"Wait, not always?"

"Under the Military Council Krypton dominated the worlds around it by the might of its Navy."

"That's not what Jor-El's records say."

I smile faintly. "Jor-El… I rather imagine he was trying to preserve what he thought was best about Kryptonian civilisation. Or maybe he just didn't know. Father Box's records are a bit less biased." And rather detailed on matters relating to war. "I also took the opportunity to scan her records."

"Isn't that private?"

"Kon, she was a member of the Kryptonian Stellar Navy and then she went to ground for at least eighty years. I wanted to know how much of a risk going anywhere near her was. She wouldn't have any reservations about killing an opponent if she felt sufficiently threatened."

He stops again. "Exactly how dangerous..?"

"Imagine a Wonder Woman with a century more experience who can fire lasers out of her eyes."

"Um." He looks up at the house.

"Yeah. But look: I think we stand a reasonable chance of stopping it getting that far just by promising not to share what we know. She should be interested in how a new Kryptonian like you can exist; you're kind of big news. And, if it comes to it, I'm confident that we could beat her in a fight."

"Ploong."

"Ah. We're being scanned. Father Box is making us look like a couple of baseline Humans but she'll know we're here. If you want to leave, now's the time."

"I-I don't wanna fight her, but…" Kon looks up at the house just as the door opens and Ms Wor-Ul walks out. Tough looking leather jacket, blue blouse and denim trousers. Her hair's white but her skin's taut and I'd be hard pressed to guess her age. I dismiss the sound baffle.

"Hey, you two!" Kons beefy and I'm huge and yet she's walking confidently towards us without carrying a gun. That might make a person suspicious. "This is private property." The shade where I'm standing might disguise my grey skin but I'm more or less physically incapable of stealth, especially against a Kryptonian. Quick check. Yep, not a robot or body double. Either she's assuming that the scanner was accurate and isn't bothering to give us a more detailed look or she's a lot more passive than I thought she'd be. "What the hell do you think you're doing here?"

Kon looks stunned so I give him a nudge with my right elbow. "Ah. Hi. Um, I'm, er, like you. Krypton-." She stops and stares at both of us. Ah, that's the check. Ring, strengthen environmen DOOAWHHH!. I go sailing backwards, the bushes lining the road exploding around me! Standard follow up for her would be a hammer blow to send me into the ground so transfer directly up, yes. For a fraction of a second I saw her swinging her fists downwards just above me and then she's replaced with sky. Armour, construct armour. Kryptonite would probably give the wrong impres- and there's the heat vision! Directly in line with my eyes! Good shooting, but not enough to penetrate my construct armour immediately which is all the time you have when I can FTL transfer back down and you shouldn't have taken your eyes off Kon.

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Minutes 7

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25th November

08:07 GMT -6

Kon flies through the air as her head comes down, eyes still glowing as she looks for me. His hands go around her head and jerk it backwards into his upraised knee. I see her wince. "Ring, sonic-" Kon goes for a second knee to the face only for her to recover, grab his leg, twist in the air and slam him into the ground. "-cannon." The cannon construct forms Megatron style on my left forearm and the lance of sound buckles the air between myself and Ms Wor-Ul's head. She manages a half-second heat vision shot at Kon before being knocked staggering away. Yeah, super hearing suddenly doesn't sound so good, does it? Kon's up again in a second and I shut the cannon off as he flies in for an uppercut. There's an angry red line across his face where her heat vision's burned his skin but it doesn't look critical. If she'd fired that directly into his eyes…

Between super strong people in the same weight class with no critical weaknesses it's all about stunning hits and submission holds. I clamp a chain construct around her legs and yank her back down before she can go flying off. Kon takes the opportunity to punch her in the side of the head as she goes past him and she swings violently around my pivot point into the ground. Most of my anti-Kryptonian techniques are a bit of a risk with Kon right there, but we need her down. Ring, stutter transfer and red light pulses.

By your command.

Also, noise deadening. A flicker and a new gun construct forms next to her. My red light pulse gun fires intense radiation beams designed to interfere with the functioning of Kryptonian photo receptive organelles. Not only does it hurt a lot, it weakens them in every regard. I get maybe a second of contact before she's back in the air and repaying Kon's knee to the head with one to his diaphragm. No armour! No! It forms around him even as he doubles over and it's rated against my pulses. Flicker. My next one strikes her in the centre of her back and she swiftly turns to hurl Kon at where I was a second ago, giving me a free shot at her face.

"Aaaagh!" She staggers forwards in the air, then shoots upwards at high speed to get away.

"Kon, you alright?"

He stabilises himself in the air and gingerly feels along his burn with his right hand. "Why did she attack us?"

"I think she rea-heally values her- shield!" An orange semi-dome forms over us just before Ms Wor-Ul dives into me at full speed. The shield breaks and the shockwave she generated flattens the field around us but she's lost most of her momentum.

"We don't wanna fight you! We just wanted to talk!"

She responds by firing her heat vision at his chest. I block with another barrier and retaliate with a flash of red light. "Next one's Kryptonite. Calm the hell down before NORAD pick you up." The heat vision cuts off. The construct barrier actually looks warped and melted when I dismiss it.

She looks over Kon's armour, particularly focusing on the 'S' symbol. "An El. I hoped it was just Kal-El. How many more of you are there?"

"Just me. And, um, him."

"How did you escape?"

"What? No, I didn't. Jor-El sent Kal-El away in a pod just before Krypton blew up. I was.. made here."

Her eyes narrow. "You're pure Kryptonian. Try again."

"I was! Cadmus has this whole lab set up to make me."

Her eyes light up. I respond by landing and putting a Kryptonite radiation projector underground directly underneath her. I don't want to start anything, but… "I know what clones look like. I've fought beside clones. You are not a clone and there's no way Earth's technology is advanced enough to clone a Kryptonian."

And that's my cue. "Correct, but they could muddle through well enough to create a functional hybrid."

She frowns. "But that's even harder!"

"Good job no one told them that. I know, I know, just when you think you've got a handle on Human technological progress someone springs something like this on you, but really: they already had AIs when you first got here. They shouldn't have true AIs for half a century or more."

Her eyes dim. "True, but he isn't a hybrid."

"Power ring." I point to it. "Father Box." I point again.

"Ploong."

"Also, Jor-El's ever so helpful Kryptonian genetic database. Replacing the Human components was the work of a few minutes. Do you feel like talking now?" I don't say 'obviously this means that I can undo your species' extinction' because I'm sure she's intelligent enough to spot that.

She thinks for a moment, and then floats to the ground. She look at Kon. "How old are you?"

"Ah, I got out of the pod about five months ago. They finished 'assembling' me back in March."

I dismiss the subterranean construct as she slowly walks closer. She turns to me. "Why did you call him that?"

Huh? "Call him what? Kon? It's his name."

She gives me a hard look. "'Kon' is a Kryptonian word. It means 'abomination'."

Kon and I both start, then look at each other. He looks shocked. "It does? I just thought it was short for 'Conner'."

I hold up my hands. "I swear I had no idea. I just thought it sounded Kryptonian."

"Well, yeah! Apparently, it is Kryptonian!"

Ms Wor-Ul rubs her forehead. "You people somehow managed to name a clone warrior 'Kon' without knowing what that meant?"

Kon sullens. I thought I'd got him out of that habit. "Not like Superman's been there to teach me about it."

"Are there any other clones I should know about?"

I shake my head. "No. Though I wouldn't rule out the possibility of other Kryptonians having survived completely."

"Better they don't come here with the big blue target flying around. Some civilisations went centuries without developing anti-Kryptonian weapons and you did it in under a decade."

I smile. "More like three years, actually, though having the Kryptonite meteors lying around may have sped up the process."

"Fine." She looks at Kon. "Welcome to the 'I'm a Kryptonian' club. Your membership badge is in the mail. Now get off my land."

"But we've just met! I wanted to talk to you about-."

She holds up her right hand. "I'm not your mama or your grandma. We don't work under the same Council -not that those exist any more- and we're not even from the same House. Other than being the same species we don't have anything-."

"Um, actually." I raise my right hand as if to ask a question. "You were in Jor-El's database. That was part of how I was able to identify you. When I transmuted Kon's Human components to their nearest Kryptonian equivalents I used some of.. you. It's.. roughly on a level with you being an ancestor of his twenty or so generations back."

She looks at me, then back at Kon. Then she sighs. "You're not going to go away, are you?"

"No."

"Who else knows you're here?"

He glances at me, "I didn't tell anyone."

"Neither did I, but Superman gets a rather interesting message if we don't report in within an hour."

She jabs at each of us with her index fingers. "I don't exist. You don't know anyone called Kristen Wells or Karsta Wor-Ul. You find a way to come here without being seen and you phone ahead. And-" She looks around. "-since you just wrecked one of my fields, you're now farm laborers."

Kon recoils. "That was y-!"

"Do we have an agreement?"

Kon and I look at each other. I shrug. "She's your crazy grandma."

back

Minutes 8

next

25th November

14:20 GMT

Mister Chase puts the drinks down on the table: a glass of milk for me, coke for Zatanna, beer for John and a pot of tea for him and Ms Sackville. Zatanna looks around the room again. "Is this really a good place to be meeting?"

John nods. "The fellow who runs this place is a houngan an' a bokor. It's suffused with magic. It'd stop anyone feelin' us, an'.. uooow." He shudders and winces, waving his right hand in front of him as if swatting at invisible flies. Um, what? He jerks as he snaps out of it and lowers his hand. "Sorry, I've been dealing with the fuckin' Changing Man for most of the last week. Still a bit out of it."

Ms Sackville takes a sip from her tea. "As he was saying, the manager uses magic to enhance his cooking. Has done for years. It's everywhere around here. Unless someone really knew what they were looking for they wouldn't see us through the background noise of the place."

Zatanna still looks worried. "And if they are looking for us?"

"Then, dear, we're in a great deal of trouble, because aside from the enlightened snake charmer over there none of us stand the slightest chance of being able to fight a Lord of Order."

"Oh."

She turns to me and I try to project reassurance, laying my right hand on her left where it lays on the table. "Zatanna and I-."

"Oi. Not yet." John appears to have recovered a little. He's pinching the bridge of his nose with his right hand. "Just because we think we're safe here doesn't mean we are. Got something coming."

"Okay? What exactly-?" One of the waiters pushes open the door to our private dining room while another pushes through a trolley upon which sit five bowls of.. um, stew? I think? He brings it to a halt a short distance from the table then picks up the first bowl with a cloth and sets it in front of Mister Chase. "I didn't think we were actually eating..?"

"We're not." Mister Chase looks unhappy about it. "Fuckin' waste. 'E enhances his food with the idea of food. Nuffin' like it, anywhere. Best restaurant in the 'ole world can't compare wiv' a couple a' rooms in Broadway Market."

I lean back slightly as a bowl is placed in front of me. Zatanna clearly has no more idea of what's going on than I do. "Okay..?"

Everyone served, the waiters head back out of the door and close it behind them. Mister Chase, Ms Sackville and John already have their spoons in hand. John looks like he's braced for something. What am I missing? He points at me with his spoon. "You'll probably need to take your ward off."

Ring, subspace it. I pick up my spoon and Zatanna follows suit, both of us searching the faces of the others for a clue as we all lower our spoons into the gravy, lift them out and take a sip. The three older wizards put their spoons down beside their bowls and lean back. I

swiftly

copy

them as the room drops away around me. I can still see it, can still feel the chair beneath me, but it seems dull. Dim. The bowl in front of me glows brightly and through the walls I can see the outlines of other surfaces and the brilliant line drawings which make up the staff and the other diners. Lines, circles and dots, patterns and representations which remind me of the art of Aboriginal Australians. Only in three or.. possibly more dimensions.

Oh, that's odd.

I look down at my own body. My clothes are still there but brighter still are the tattoos on my skin and the lines connecting my extremities to the orange sigil within me. The ring itself is glowing as well, two cords coming off it and extending out, down into the ground. My lantern and.. Okaara, I think. Looking around I see that Ms Sackville and Mister Chase look hollowed out. Their faces are still faces but they also give the impression of a skull.. or maybe a scream mask. I see the white and black patterns within them and other things which make no sense to me. John looks stranger. Half of him looks normal… Well, normal compared to the people I see through the walls. The other half looks tattered, barely there, held together by bits that don't look like they came from the same place as the rest. And the whole outline judders violently every few moments. Zatanna looks much better, golden thread woven through her metaphysique, making it stronger and more vital.

"What's going on?" / "What's wrong with you?"

Zatanna and I look at each other and I use both hands to gesture in her direction. "John, you look… Half of you looks…"

"Had to rip my soul in half a few years back. Hasn't quite repaired itself yet. As for Paul's question, it's an extra layer of security. We can communicate without speaking and if anyone tries listening in we'll know right away. So, you want t'go first?"

"Um, well, we've been going through Mister Nelson's books. The first mention of Klarion was a few years after the Justice Society threw Mordru through what we think was a Bleed portal. Into the space between universes. Since he hasn't come back that might have killed him, or-" She looks at me. "-maybe he just doesn't want to come back."

"Having read what Mister Nelson wrote about Nabu I think we can rule out a negotiated settlement. Describing him as 'driven' doesn't begin to do him justice. He resented every moment Mister Nelson wasn't wearing him and actively sabotaged his personal life in order to make him spend more time on the job. The only real surprise is that he didn't do to Mister Nelson what he did to Mister Zatara."

Zatanna shakes her head. "They had an agreement. He may have been demanding but he never once broke it."

"Come on! I thought Mister Nelson was being poetic when he described himself as an old coat, but that's basically-."

"Settle down, children." We both look at Ms Sackville. "Did you find anything else useful?"

"We think we know roughly where Mister Nelson first encountered Nabu. It's somewhere in what is now north eastern Bialya. We could probably get there without being spotted, but narrowing down the precise location would be difficult and.. he might be watching it. Nothing helpful on Klarion."

John makes a circling motion with his right hand. "Wouldn't Kent keep better records than that?"

Zatanna shakes her head. "The journal relating to the exact period they met is missing. We had to look at other people's accounts and records from his university to get that much."

"Wait a minute. John, that shaking thing your aura is doing; do you need that?"

He stays silent for a moment. "N-no, it's just-."

"Arua eb mlac dna llits!" Ribbons of gold shoot through John leaving calmness in their wake.

He takes a moment to look at himself. "Ah, thanks, S-. Zatanna."

"What made you do that to yourself?"

"The Changing Man only likes talking to mad people. I had to-. Oh, doesn't matter. What's important is that I found out what a Lord of Whatever actually is." That is important.

Zatanna realises it too. "How does this 'Changing Man' know?"

"'cause he is a Lord of Chaos. If I hadn't gotten that close to Klarion on Roanoke I wouldn't a' realised it. Didn't, when I first met him, thought he was just a nutter. He sort of is…"

Ms Sackville rolls her eyes. "Don't keep us all in suspense, John. It's not polite. How does a little boy become the most powerful chaos magic user on the planet?"

"Basically, by embodying raw elemental chaos so completely that he could bind his soul to the concept of Chaos itself. Most of his real 'self' is this giant great magic construct out in the subtle realms somewhere while his avatar runs around on Earth. His familiar was the connection point between the two."

"But I cut it."

"Sort of, yeah. All the power's still there though. It's not going anywhere, and he's probably working his arse off to work out how to reconnect with it. In the meanwhile he's plugging himself into that Djinn thing to make up the difference. Make no mistake: a wizard good enough to even consider doing something like that would have to be very skilled, very clever an' very mental anyway, so I'm not sure how knowing that really gets us anything."

"Can he be killed while he's disconnected?"

John considers for a moment. "Yeeah. In theory."

"Then it gets us something."

back

Minutes 9

next

25th November

09:23 GMT -6

"Slacking off already?"

I look up from the analysis of her armour the ring is running. In terms of the protection it offers it's actually weaker than the Apokoliptian stuff I've given my team. Bulkier too. What interests me is the way its crystalline structure appears able to both recharge from and give off sunlight. Makes sense really; it's not as if Kryptonians didn't know what happened when they exposed themselves to light from yellow stars. Worth adapting for Kon? Not sure yet.

"I'm just here for moral support. Making you happy is his problem." We both look over to where Kon's kneeling in the damaged field, digging holes with a trowel and replanting the shockwave-blasted vegetables. "Besides, if I did everything you asked you wouldn't have anything to do all winter."

"Other than fly to the southern hemisphere and work on my tan."

"Sure, fifty years ago, maybe. Would you really risk that with modern radar, gravdar and satellite monitoring networks? You know there are people who track Kal-El full time."

"Hm."

"If you like, I could set up a teleportation system for you. Something subtle. Something Earth can't track."

"What? A Zeta Tube, like the Justice League use? I'd rather have something that won't scramble my molecules if there's a little atmospheric electromagnetic interference."

"I was thinking more along the lines of a hush tube. Apokoliptian technology."

"Never heard of it."

"Think 'wormhole portal'. Without a Father Box I'd have to build the base station from scratch and.. I.. don't have anything that could provide sufficient power to charge it yet."

"Wormhole entry points can be detected. We have-." Her eyes drop for a second. "We used to have the tech for that."

"That technology would probably detect the boom tubes I use for getting around just fine. Hush tubes are designed to have a minimal footprint. Unless someone knew exactly what they were looking for and had the detector pointed in exactly the right place they wouldn't even know it was there."

She turns her head from Kon to me. "What's your story, anyway?"

"I come from a parallel universe. Woke up halfway from here to the moon in early July with an orange power ring on my finger, bartered a year of my life in exchange for a lantern to run it off, got exposed to a super serum, stole technology from the Gods and altered myself further."

"What sort a'gods?"

"New ones. Father Box is an Apokoliptian personal computer."

"Ploong."

"I'm not sure whether he's sentient or not, but he's highly sophisticated."

"And how'd you meet… I still can't believe he's called 'Kon' El."

"The ring only translates words that are actually in another language. If you just make a sound it stays the same. The only person who'd have known that it meant that would be Kal-El… Maybe Batman. To most people it's just a syllable shorn of meaning. Anyway, we first met after he got broken out of Cadmus by some other superheroes and we've spent a lot of time togeth-." Ms Wor-Ul suddenly winces and jams her hands over her ears. "What?" I frown and look over to Kon as he does the same thing. That's… Ring, what's going on?

Ultra high frequency message detected.

Play it for me.

"…less than four legs can hear this frequency, Superboy. And that's you." Mister Luthor's voice. Ms Wor-Ul straightens slightly and grimaces while Kon just looks puzzled. "Meet me in Washington DC, East Potomac Park. Come alone. I promise, it'll be worth the trip." Both Kryptonians recover as the sound cuts off and Kon gets to his feet.

Ms Wor-Ul appears decidedly less than happy. "Hey, Superboy! That better not become a regular occurrence."

"I've never met him! I didn't know that was even possible!"

Stop this argument before it gets going. "Kon, do you want to go, or do you want to keep working here while I find and destroy his transmission equipment?"

Kon looks at his trowel and then back at Ms Wor-Ul. "He's.. kinda my dad."

She waves her right hand dismissively. "I didn't want you here in the first place."

I told Kon where his Human genetic material came from shortly after our brief encounter with Kal-El on the Metro-Narrows Bridge. Shock, anger and denial followed by acceptance once I showed him the relevant scans. Wonder Woman seemed to be under the impression that I should have left the decision as to whether to tell him or not up to the League. My response was that if any of them were Kon's legal guardian I would have done. Hm, I wonder if part of the reason why she's taken him on is to protect him from my influences? Would be jolly amusing if it were true. Of course, now that he doesn't have Human genetic material it's all a bit academic. Luthor has no biological or social claim over him and even if this version of Lex Luthor appears to be a bit less mental than most other versions I'd still rather Kon kept his dealings with him to a minimum.

Kon walks over to us and looks at me. "I think we should see what he wants."

Ring, show me East Potomac Park. Images flash through my mind. "I can see somewhere I can transfer us to. You should probably conceal that you're 'fully functional' for now."

"He said I should come alone."

"Kon, he's a supervillain. I can think of no good reason to pander to him. I'll stay back so the two of you can have a chat, just in case he tries to pull something."

He then looks at Ms Wor-Ul. She blinks, not understanding, then gets it and rolls her eyes. "Yeah. Going to a meeting with a potential enemy without backup's dumb whatever planet you're from." Kon nods. Ring, anyone looking this way? No? Father Box, open a boom tube to the location indicated. There's a rush of displaced air as the portal opens and Ms Wor-Ul looks at me with irritation. "I thought you said that thing was quiet."

"No, I said hush tubes were quiet. My Father Box doesn't have a generator for those." They can fit in one but I'd need to remove his biospiritual modification hardware in order to fit it in and I need that far too much to modify him in that way.

"If you've given me away-!"

"No one's looking. You live in the arse end of Nebraska -ooh, tautology- and everyone's detection equipment is focused on places where things are likely to happen. For hiding out purposes-" I look around, nodding. "-good choice. If you actually want to achieve anything with your life, not so good." Kon heads through the boom tube and starts scanning around for Luthor. Love that Kryptonian vision. "Seriously, think about the cloning thing." No point keeping my voice down around people with super hearing. I give Ms Wor-Ul a jaunty wave as I stroll through the Tube before closing it down.

25th November

10:28 GMT -5

"I thought that went reasonably well."

"We got into a fight with the only Kryptonian on the planet who'll talk to me." He touches the burn mark again. "Can you.. fix this?"

I shake my head. "Sorry, Kon. You're now too tough for me to heal like that without draining you completely first. I can give you a quick burst of solar power if you like but you'll have to wait for the burn to heal by itself." Ring, where's Alexander Luthor? Still en route with Miss Graves.

"How am I going to explain it without mentioning Karsta?"

"Could say you tried to shave with it and miscalculated."

"I.. don't actually.. shave."

"Really? Hadn't realised." I give him a quick scan. "I've got news for you then; you will now. Turns out Kryptonians get facial hair. Come on, let's go and wait for him."

We head out through the depths of the woodland. Kon still seems to be bothered by something. "I won't.. really need to shave with heat vision, will I?"

back

Minutes 10

next

25th November

10:34 GMT -5

"Recognised, Orange Lantern, B zero six, Zatanna Zatara, B zero nine."

"…try going back there sometime to actually, y'know, eat."

"Maybe we could bring the whole team along." I take a look at the training room and give its sole other occupant a wave. "Hi Kon. How's dinner going?"

"Ah." He nods. "It's going good." Looks like he was heading for the Zeta Tube, but he stops as Zatanna and I walk up. "Can I.. talk to you for a moment?"

"Of course. What is it?"

He looks at me, then at the floor and then at Zatanna. "Um."

She looks at him, then nods and turns to me. "Kon needs some guy-time. I'll go see if M'gann needs any help in the kitchen."

"If Diana asks, we weren't shirking kitchen duty, alright? I'm perfectly at home with a saucepan." She rolls her eyes at me and then heads off to find M'gann. "Sooo. What's the problem?"

He watches Zatanna walk away for a few moments, until he judges her to be out of hearing range. "I got a message.. from Lex Luthor."

"Oh? How'd he manage that?" Oh dear. "He hasn't compromised 'Conner Kent' has-?"

"No. No. He did some kinda broadcast only dogs and Kryptonians could hear." He fidgets slightly. "He wants me to meet him in Washington."

"Did he say what it's about?" He shakes his head. "Mmm. Exactly where are you supposed to meet him?"

"East Potomac Park."

Ring, map, if you please. Uuuuh huh. "On the golf course, or.. somewhere else?"

"He didn't say."

"He knows Diana's mentoring you. If he tried to message you directly rather than sending a letter to the Embassy then he's up to something."

"Like what?"

"I don't know. Kidnapping seems unlikely, Cadmus probably has all the records about you they need…"

He frowns faintly. "I thought you liked him."

"I can like someone without trusting them." Kal-El's face flashes into my mind. Appropriate, given who we're talking about. "Or trust them without liking them." Is this where Lex brings up the thing about him being one of Kon's biological parents? I suppose that wasn't going to go away, but it seems… So what? Kon's never asked about his Human components and I don't really think he cares. "Ignoring him is an option, of course."

He shrugs. "Turkey's in the oven. I don't really have much to do for a few hours and he might say something useful."

I nod. "If we take the tube to Washington we can be in the Park in a couple of minutes."

He looks at the zeta tube and then back at me. "He said I should come alone."

"I'm sure he'll live. There's no sense indulging him unless we actually know he's got something we need." Kon doesn't look convinced. "I'll stay back and monitor what's going on while you talk to him. Doesn't even need to know that I was there."

He thinks for a moment and then nods. "Yeah, you're probably right. C'mon." He leads the way back into the zeta tube and I follow him.

"Recognised, Superboy, B zero four, Orange Lantern, B zero six."

The Washington zeta tube is in the Hall of Justice. I cringe a little as we walk into the Hall's library, remembering all too well the fire fight that happened here during the telepathic training debacle. No giant orange snake this time, and hopefully no need for one. As I notice a muffled noise to my right I realise that the tourist window is open. Looking up I see cameras and quite a bit of confusion. Of course; Kon isn't widely known and I'm not in uniform. I suppose they can't really hear the zeta tube's announcements from out there. I smile and give them a wave while Kon ignores them. A small girl in a blue dress holding a helium balloon waves back. I make eye contact and she grins and excitedly tries to get her mother's attention. She's a rather striking woman with a shaved head and apparently making her daughter happy is enough to earn me a smile from her too, even if she doesn't know who I am.

We go out through the main doors and get another rapid switch from excitement to disappointment from a nearby tour group. Looks like the guide doesn't recognise us either. What does a guy have to do to get recognised in public around here? Though, given the fact that Clark Kent's face is regularly attached to his articles…

"…next room you can see several trophies the Justice League have taken from their defeated enemies." Kon's halfway to the main exit. I'm actually sort of interested in what people who don't have regular dealings with our lot think about us. "Objects currently on display include the remains of the Appellaxians, the Gamma Gong used by the alien terrorist Kanjar Ro-."

"Uum!" I wave my right hand in the air. "The actual.. Gamma Gong is in a secure STAR Labs warehouse. That would be an insane thing to put on display."

The guide smiles with teeth teeth too many teeth. "Thank you for sharing that sir, but I assure you that the genuine Gamma Gong-." Ring, uniform. She stops talking.

"No, seriously." And there go the cameras. "Nothing that can be quickly weaponised goes on display. That would put everyone in danger. The Appellaxians are genuine because you'd need to be another Appellaxian to animate them and a lot of the other weapons are genuine because we can take out the power cells or other vital components. The Gong's pretty much just a gong, you literally activate it by holding it out, looking at the target and hitting it with something. Really can't go on display."

She gapes for a moment, but recovers smoothly. "Thank you. Everyone, this is Orange Lantern. He's-."

"Two eight one four. Orange Lantern two eight one four. This is Sector two eight one four, I'm the Orange Lantern assigned to it. Sorry for interrupting you, it's rude of me, but if people just say the job title you get silly situations where people think there's only one Lantern or something."

"Alright. Ah, Orange Lantern two eight.. one four. He's currently studying under Wonder Woman."

"And Lantern Gardner." Kon glances back at me and then presses on through the door to the outside. "Now if you'll excuse me I have to run, because-."

"̷A͘r҉è y͏ou t̶he c̕a͠ḱe̢ ͟ma͘n͡?"

The little girl from earlier appears to have joined the group. She must have headed out once she saw which way I was going. I kneel down as she walks over. "Yes, I'm the cake man. Do you live in New York?"

She looks at me like I've said something ridiculous. "Noo̴.̀"̧

"I'm afraid that the cake is going to the good people of New York City, but if you leave an address I'll see if I can get you some. I hope you-." I look up at the rest of the tour group. "You all enjoy your visit. In particular, I'd like to encourage any metahumans in the group to consider trying one of the Justice League certificated training courses. They really can help." Ring, plot course and transition. The tour group disappears as I reappear on the steps outside next to Kon, my normal clothing restored. Crowds are fairly dense out here, which means few people see my unusual method of transit.

"Sure you don't wanna talk to your fans some more?"

"Hey, you chose the off-the-peg uniform. And you went to the same public relations seminar that I did." Kon starts pushing his way through the crowd and I follow in his wake. "We can just transition from here, you know."

"Don't wanna risk Luthor knowing you're here." Oh. That's actually a good point. Would he have someone watching here? I'm not local news material, am I? "Let's get out of sight and then you can do your transfer thing."

back

Minutes 11

next

25th November

10:47 GMT -5

There's a few pigeons around so I break up some bread and throw it to them, provoking a minor feeding frenzy. I'm sitting on a bench facing the Potomac with a couple of large road bridges to my right. I'm wearing warm, winter appropriate clothing that doesn't use the colours grey, black or orange at all, and conveniently covers the top and sides of my head. The air is grey with high cloud and I've turned my environmental shield down to the absolute minimum. No ambushes detected, no mines, no satellite weapons and no suspiciously positioned LexCorp employees. Kon's hanging around under the bridge at the far side and.. yep, Ms Graves is driving Lex up to him right now. Aside from Ms Graves' arm gun I'm not seeing any other weapons there either. Ring, eavesdropping mode.

Kon ambles in the direction of the car, stopping about four metres away from the passenger door. Ms Graves exits first. I've noticed that unlike in Superman Animated she doesn't wear the traditional chauffeur hat. That, and she rarely does her hair up. She walks around the front of the limo and opens the rear right hand door for her employer. Guess the 'come alone' thing was only one way. He gives Kon a wan smile as he exits the car, offering Kon his right hand. "Superboy. My name is Lex Luthor. My company was the principal investor in Project Cadmus." Come on Kon, we've talked about the value of civility, shake his-. There we go!

"I know who you are. And about who runs Cadmus."

"Yes, Orange Lantern is a font of information, isn't he. I'm a little surprised you didn't bring him with you."

I resist the urge to wave. Ms Graves looks like she's keeping watch of the surrounding area and she might spot it. I throw a bit more bread as Kon folds his arms across his chest. "What do you want, other than to give me a headache?"

"To business, then. Cadmus has another superclone." Ooh dear. I can see Kon stiffening from here. "I had hoped that putting Mister Harper in charge of the facility would make it possible to draw a line firmly under the less ethical aspects of their work. This.. does not appear to have happened."

"How do you know about that?"

"An exhaustive and rather expensive data recovery effort on their computer systems, combined with an analysis of their purchases and work logs. The process for successfully cloning a Kryptonian is rather delicate and requires very specific expertise and equipment."

"Guardian wouldn't let anything like that happen!"

"That's what I'd assumed, and why I nominated him for the position." I hear an exhalation. "I'm not sure how this happened. Doctor Desmond indicated in his testimony that he'd been using the G-Gnomes to keep the other Cadmus employees under control, but I had my people go through all of their backgrounds and we couldn't find any evidence that he had collaborators. It's entirely possible that the other Kryptonian was created prior to you and put on ice."

"Why were they even doing work on Kryptonians in the first place?!"

Lex fans his hands out. "The cells of your body are the most potent solar energy converters on the planet. If we understood how they worked we could reduce-."

Kon balls his fists. "I'm not just a science project!"

Lex makes a calming gesture with both hands. "Now, there's no need to see red, son." A slight pause. "I never meant to imply that you are. Doctor Desmond was authorized to clone tissue, not whole individuals. All materials pertaining to their work on you should have been either handed over to the Justice League or destroyed. Mister Harper assured me that's what would happen and yet, it hasn't. I'm worried that someone -or something- within Cadmus has found a way to evade detection and be working against me. Against the goals the Project is supposed to have."

"So why come to me?"

"Because, my boy,-" Lex takes a step forwards and puts his right hand on Kon's left shoulder. "-you really are a remarkable individual. Given your difficult start in life I can't tell you how pleased I was to learn that you're becoming a superhero, particularly the role you played in putting a stop to that horrific business on Roanoke Island." He shouldn't know about that. How does he know… Educated guess? He can probably read Kon's body language well enough to confirm his suspicion. "Plus, I generally feel that personal emotional engagement encourages the best results. Now that you know you have a.. 'brother', most likely being kept in the same conditions that you once were, could you honestly just walk away?" He turns to look out across the river and I look at the pigeons once more. "I suppose I could have informed Superman but I'd rather got the impression from talking to Orange Lantern that he.. isn't very interested in-."

"What's to stop me calling in the League right now? Or the police?"

Lex shrugs. "Nothing, except that if it were something the police were capable of finding I would have found it myself. And the League… They're not the most subtle of people. I'm concerned that if whoever's doing this finds out about League involvement they'll go to ground. Superboy, somewhere in Cadmus there's a very lost and confused young man. I may not have ordered his creation but I did hire Doctor Desmond to run Cadmus and I do recognize my responsibility for my part in his creation. Please, help me to help him."

Kon's looking down. Thinking about it. We can't not investigate now anyway and there's really no reason I can see not to accept his help. "I'll do it."

Lex smiles a tiny bit more. "Thank you. I'll have someone phone ahead to let them know that you're coming and tell them that you're acting with my authority. Go everywhere, take as long as you like. Listen to everyone, trust no one."

"Including you?"

Lex bows his head slightly. "Especially me. I have a vested interest in a particular outcome, that should automatically make me suspect."

"So why even tell me? Given what happened last time, doesn't this just put Cadmus even more at risk?"

"More at risk than the Project Director dosing himself with an untested mutagen and going on a rampage? More than the FDA finding out that despite my assurances to the contrary Cadmus is still engaged in unlicensed biotech research? I don't know how this is getting covered up and I need to. I can't defend myself if I don't know where I'm being attacked from."

"And if I tell the police afterwards?"

"That's.. up to you, of course. If it turns out that any LexCorp employees have been involved in anything illegal then I would expect them to face charges. I'd rather handle things quietly than risk the functioning of the entire project, but if you really feel the situation is bad enough to warrant shutting Cadmus down then I'll understand. Though -if that was how you felt- you'd have to consider what would happen to the Genomorphs if that happened, to say nothing of what might happen if the world's leading experts on Kryptonian physiology were to suddenly find themselves unemployed."

Kon's eyes narrow. "What do you mean by that?"

Lex's face is a picture of innocent concern. "If you or Superman were to become ill, where would you seek medical attention? It's not as if you can visit a Kryptonian doctor and even if you could they wouldn't understand the way your hybrid tissues work. I.. don't know what the Justice League has arranged for you but it might be worth you getting a check up while you're there. Just to make sure everything's alright."

"I'll pass, thanks."

"I leave it entirely up to you. Now, if there's anything else you want to ask, just ring my secretary and she'll pass you through to me as soon as possible. It was good to meet you." Lex turns and gets back in his car. Ms Graves closes the door behind him and then heads back to the driver's side. Kon starts to walk away down the footpath towards our rendezvous point.

Lex Luthor constantly bubbles with orange light in a subdued sort of way, churning without building. It's only different from other men in his position in that he maintains his equilibrium better. None of the spikes which lead to hookers, cocaine and stock market collapses. Ring, before they get away, show me what he's getting out of this.

Wooohw, that's… Not surprising, really. He wants to control the events that affect him, and given his political and financial power that's just about everything. His motive.. something about the murder of a girlfriend by someone in a position of authority? I can see her face but I don't recognise it. Kon's face shows up. He wants to influence but not to dominate. Interesting. Anything about Cadmus? He wants it to keep working, wants to keep any disturbance to a minimum. He thinks his control might be slipping. His car pulls away annnd.. I'm not getting anything particularly helpful.

I toss the last of the bread down for the pigeons to fight over and rise to my feet. What a waste of good bread. Just in case anyone's watching at the other end I'll need to walk to my meet up point with Kon. Scan? No, still no one watching. Given what's happened I probably should have checked Cadmus out myself before now. I just assumed that when the Justice League said they were on top of it they actually were.

How exactly did they miss a whole Kryptonian?

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Minutes 12

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Bulletproofidea said:

25th November

15:49 GMT

The Watchtower

Diana looked around the table with a smile. Some might consider her out of place behind a table, or more suited to a battlefield. True, she did love to fight, but she only fought for worthy causes. She fought for the future, and as Batman said, this was the future in the making.

Superman pressed a couple of buttons, and two figures were holographically imposed behind him. "Given the information we have on Darkseid, I think the League could use a little more muscle. I propose Mr. Miracle and Big Barda."

Wonder Woman sighed. "As delightful as it would be to have another woman on the League, Barda has no interest in joining us at this time. Circumstances may change, but they don't want to draw any unnecessary attention."

She rather enjoyed the time she spent with the Frees. On top of being the only woman Diana could spar with to the fullest, Barda had some surprising ideas regarding female equality. After all, every gender suffered equally on Apokolips. The three of them had worked out a system for abused children that Diana intended to implement soon in the Themysciran homes for abused women that currently dotted America.

"If we're talking about muscle…" Jon Stewart spoke up. "We could always add another Lantern." The image of Guy Gardner lit up behind him.

"I thought you said he wasn't hero material." Hawkman raised an eye at Hal.

The first Corpsman shrugged. "I guess he just rubbed me the wrong way." He said. "He still does, really. But he's done good work."

"Uh, hello?" The Flash spread his arms. "Aren't we forgetting the obvious Lantern?"

Diana smiled warmly as her young charge's image was brought forth.

Paul was a.. very different sort of hero. His mind seemed to leap to conclusions that Diana barely considered, and instead of waiting for a supervillain to attack like most members of the League, he went out and found problems to solve before they became major issues.

When she first met him, she'd considered him supervillain material. After all, that was the far more probable reason for not giving his name. And who else would try to buy a lantern? But then he'd offered to swear an oath to Gaia and made a Ferris Wheel to broker good will relations between the harpies and the people of Greece.

Paul was unpredictable, in the very best sense of the word. The only constant in his behavior was his eagerness to help improve and build up his team mates. Wonder Woman was proud she could say that she knew him before he became affiliated with the Justice League, and to play a part in his growth.

And the changes he'd wrought in her life, and the lives of everybody around him were wonderful things to witness. She hadn't seen Alan so happy in decades... And, she was ashamed to admit, she hadn't taken the time to see him herself in years. Her relationship with Kon-El was... It was difficult to put into words, what Kon-El meant to her. Less than a son, but more than a mere student.

She saw Paul's interactions weave a legacy behind him, and only hoped that he was as aware of the effects of his actions as she was. He could be a little dense that way sometimes.

She took in the reactions of the rest of the room. Batman and Dr. Fate were as inscrutable as ever. Superman seemed to approve. J'onn was.. looking anywhere but at Paul's image, which was probably to be expected given his encounters with him. The Hawks and Aquaman were deep in thought. Captain Marvel and the Flash looked positively giddy. Captain Atom was frowning... He hadn't even met Paul yet, had he? And the Lanterns…

"I don't think he's League material." Hal said firmly.

"I agree." Nabu put in.

"He's good in front of the camera." Green Arrow said. "People will probably expect us to at least offer him a seat."

"Good in front of a camera?" Flash scoffed. "The first time I met him he'd stolen a Lazarus Pit just because he felt sad! How is he not League material?"

"He rocks the boat." Hal said. "And I don't just mean when he was possessed. I won't deny he's done good work, but he's also unpredictable. Do we want more naked statues popping up?"

"Naked.. statues..?" Aquaman raised an eyebrow. Diana noticed her fellow female Leaguers trying desperately not to blush.

"I have been assured that there will be no more statues, naked or otherwise." Batman said, deadly serious as always.

"His unpredictability is an asset." Wonder Woman said, trying to hold back her laughter. "His unique perspective could be a great service in the League. The attack on the ice fortresses could have gone very differently if he hadn't been there."

"He does have a.. 'unique' way of solving problems." Superman put in.

"Yeah! Does bringing Teth Adam back to life count as rocking the boat?" Captain Marvel asked smugly.

"No, but what would you call catching the attention of an unknown omega level entity without any failsafe in the event that it turned against him or his team, just to strip Poison Ivy of her powers?" Stewart asked.

"He does have good PR though." Captain Atom piped in.

"There is much chaos on him." Nabu said, darkly. "He allies himself with Constantine. He has allowed the Ophidian to mark him. Lords of Chaos were not always Lords of Chaos, they became so by becoming so chaotic in life that they bound themselves to the raw chaos-force. Given what Zatara knew of him, now that he has a soul –a soul filled with orange light no less– I would not put it past the boy to work out how the process works, and find a way to replace Klarion as this world's biggest threat. Or to assist Constantine in becoming such, which might be better or worse."

Wonder Woman has to speak up now. "Paul is hardly the greatest threat this world has seen." She said. "Even when he was possessed by the Ophidian, the worst he did was create.. lots of eyes."

Nabu's expression didn't change, but he seemed to glower regardless. "He made cake, and he danced. Such is the way of Chaos. I believe he is marked by the forces of Chaos, and must not be underestimated."

The League took a moment of silence to appreciate the threat cakes posed to world order. Some members had to hold in their laughter, such was their appreciation.

"Sooo anyway…" Lantern Stewart began. "Guy wanted me to bring up a superhero calling herself Ice…"

Click to expand...Click to shrink...

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Minutes 13

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25th November

11:21 GMT -5

We walked to the site of Cadmus Labs without contacting anyone else. Kon stared at the ground pretty much the whole way. I -on the other hand- got to see a fair few national monuments with my own eyes for the first time. We met up at the Washington Monument -which only shows up on television every fricking time someone wants to indicate a scene shift to Washington- and our route took us past the White House. Kon wasn't interested in tourism so I had to put up with only seeing the Lincoln Memorial from a distance. The ring was happy to inform me about other sites of tourist interest but even having consumed American television for thirty years none of them looked particularly familiar. I mean, I've heard of the Smithsonian but I didn't recognise the structure of it.

The Cadmus Labs building has been completely repaired since the last time our team was here five months ago. Looks like it's had a new paint job as well. The outside of the ground floor and entrance are painted in dark green while the rest is in pale grey. The flat roof strikes me as odd, not that it's unusual around here. Wouldn't it leak? Maybe it just rains less over here than in Britain. I thought I'd let Kon go first but he's sort of stopped just in front of the doors and is staring into space.

"Something wrong?"

"Just… Remembering."

I walk up to his left side and put my right arm around his back. "The fight, or the whole thing?" He leans into me slightly. "Hey, perk up. If we're really lucky you'll leave here with a new brother." He tenses. "That's good, right? I mean, the whole problem with what Doctor Desmond did was that they created you just to be a weapon, not that they created you. If there is someone in there, we can get them out the same way the others did you, and if there isn't? Theeeen Lex is full of shit." I shrug.

"What if he's like I was? Or worse?"

"Percussive therapy. We just need to stop him moving until we can talk some sense into him. With G-Gnomes if we have to. And Cadmus get to rebuild their building again."

"What if it… What if the Genomorphs are involved?"

"Glad you asked." I hold out my left hand in front of us. "This-" I take two of my latest defictionalisations out of subspace. "-is an eye-drive." Not an actual eye patch like the one in Doctor Who -it needs skin contact over a larger area and M'gann couldn't work out why I wanted to block one of my eyes with it- it's designed to sit on the wearer's forehead like Seven of Nine's cyberbrow. "Human ingenuity and Martian biotechnology. It basically forms a backup of your short term memory. If anything tries to change your short term memory it compares what it's got stored with what you've got stored and uploads what you've been made to forget."

"Does it work?"

"Yep. Tested it with M'gann and Mister King." A rather strange way to spend a morning, the three of us playing basic memory games while both telepaths tried altering their opponent's memories. They defended themselves with their abilities and I used this. Only worked because we introduced a turn clock.

He takes it from me. "How'd you come up with this?"

"Something like it was in a television series from my home parallel. There was this alien species where if you weren't looking at them you couldn't remember anything about them, so, anyone who wanted to have anything to do with them had to use something like this." I step away and attach mine.

Kon still looks sceptical. "Looks like you've got a brain leech."

"Well… Technically I do."

That doesn't seem to have helped. "I'm not really keen on.. things going in my head."

"It's just a device. It doesn't have a mind of its own. Look, if you don't want to use it I can try generating a shield with the ring but that's actually quite difficult to do on someone else and it's not that hard to bypass. I don't know how much good the eye drive will do against hostile G-Gnomes, but it's got to be better than nothing."

With visible reluctance he attaches it to his forehead. "Doesn't… I can't feel it doing anything. Is it working?"

"Should be. We could try asking the first G-Gnome we see to make you forget something?"

"I'll take your word for it." He heads towards the main entrance. "You think Luthor was being straight with me?"

"Stranger things have happened. How do you want to handle this?"

The front door opens into a porch with slightly better security. I'm reminded a little of my dinner with Lex: transparent bullet resistant screens, scanners and armed guards. These ones have black clothing and dark grey armour and appear to be packing some sort of heavy duty shotgun. Not seeing any G-Elves but they're probably keeping those where there's no risk of the public seeing them. Kon gets into the entry cubicle and a green light plays over him before the inner door unlocks to allow him into the building proper. One of the guards walks over to speak to him. Well, official time then. Ring, armour. The cubicle cycles and I get in. Hm. Lex probably didn't know that I'd be here, but it's not so improbable an event that he wouldn't take it into account. I'm scanned, and? Dull bleep and the guards are paying a little more attention. Ring, access Cadmus computers -all of them- and give me god-tier access to everything. Oh, and make it basically impossible for anyone to find out I've got it without taking every single thing apart.

Compliance. Warning: unfamiliar organic technology detected. Unable to guarantee success.

I take a half-step back and then come forwards again. A new scan and the door opens without complaint. Successful enough with the regular Earth-made stuff then. The guard Kon's talking to looks in my direction. "This way please. Guardian wants to speak to you."

We follow him deeper into the building. Looks like they've changed the layout since last time the team was here. Kon drops back a little and nudges me with his right elbow. "So?"

"So what?"

"Is he here?"

"Haven't checked yet."

"Why not?"

"He's your brother, I was going to follow your lead. I assume you want-." He gives me a look. "Alright then, just a moment." Ring, scan the building, including subterranean sections.

Schematic available. Warning: unfamiliar organic technology present. Alert! Telepathic activity detected. Warning: scanned schematic does not conform to registered schematic. Warning: precise scans of some sections unavailable during standard scan.

Well, there's a surprise. At least I'm not being blocked completely this time. Characterise the telepathic activity.

High level telepathic activity detected from multiple lifeforms of type 'G-Gnome'. Multiple low-power broadcasts from all lifeforms of type 'Genomorph'.

Gestalt telepathy?

Readings match theorised patterns, unable to confirm.

Any Kryptonians lying around?

Kryptonian tissue detected in numerous locations. Map available.

Lex did say they were… Ring, is Lex watching this?

Confirmed. Remote feed from security cameras is being routed to his car.

Ring, download The Clangers and transmit on my instruction.

Compliance.

Ring, this place breeds slave labourers. Put a bit more power into that scan and find Kon's brother.

Subject located. Map available.

I catch Kon's eye and give him a slight nod. He bristles and I hold my right palm towards him in a calming gesture. "We still need to find out who knows what and why. He's not in any immediate danger. Pretending we don't know is probably for the best." He hesitates for a moment and then nods as our escort passes through a door guarded by two of his fellow guards and into a larger room. On the far side I see Guardian sitting at a desk talking to a scientist and… Oh. That must be Dubbilex.

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Minutes 14

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25th November

11:26 GMT -5

Odd looking chap. Grey skin and a heavy brow compared to a Human, and his forearms lack the thickness of the other Genomorph types. The droopy bits at the side of.. no, just behind his mouth put me in mind of a Fu Manchu moustache. His horns are quite pronounced but the angle they project out of his head and his slender frame make it unlikely that they would be used for combat. Numerous nerve endings that don't seem to serve a purpose… Telepathic antenna, perhaps? Odd that the official file only notes that G-Goblins are telekinetic and not that they're telepathic. I'd have thought that after what happened last time they'd have done more thorough testing.

Look into his soul or not? Hm. His emotions seem muted in comparison to those of most Humans. Is that what being in a gestalt does? Or.. maybe I'm anthropomorphising? Just because some G-Goblins are Human shaped doesn't mean that they are necessarily sentient and it certainly doesn't mean that their minds will function in the same way that Human minds do. Were the Genomorphs completely artificial or based on an existing creature? I know what Cadmus says about them but I hardly think I can assume that they're being honest. Looking at him I'm not sure-. Ah. A slightly echoey flare of orange and yellow when he looked at Kon. I guess he's just good at keeping his emotions under control.

"…progress…" Guardian looks up as Kon strides across the room towards him. I follow him at a slower pace. I never really thought to ask about his brief time in Cadmus and he's only ever brought it up a few times, mostly relating to specific things that were getting to him. Should I have brought him back sooner? "Welcome home, Superboy." Oh, he didn't. Of all the things he could have said… "Orange Lantern." He nods at me and I nod back. I wonder why he's wearing his armour around the office? Does the helmet have some sort of telepathic protection? Ring? No, it doesn't. Some sort of comfort blanket thing? "What can we do for you boys?"

Kon leans over Guardian's desk, hands firmly placed on its surface. Batman gave us a couple of pointers in taking control of conversations through intimidation but I think Kon's mostly just acting out of anger. "Lex Luthor says you've cloned another Kryptonian. I wanna see him."

Dubbilex puts a restraining right hand on Kon's left shoulder and Kon pulls back slightly. "Brother. You are the only Kryptonian in Cadmus." Don't know enough about how his brain works to tell if that was an intentional lie or not. Not reading an increase in telepathic activity so he's not referring the question to the collective. Interesting that he referred to Kon as 'brother'. They come from the same place and Kon does have some Genomorph engineered material in him… I suppose that Genomorphs aren't born so the usual meaning of the word can't apply to them.

"All cloning projects Human and Kryptonian have been shut down since your escape." The scientist… Ring? Name? Oh yes, I remember her now. Doctor Spence worked under Doctor Desmond which puts her on my shit list already. Her testimony sounded like it had been dictated to her by her lawyer. It hit all of the legal technicalities she needed in order to escape even being formally accused of a crime without sounding even a little bit genuine and she clearly doesn't have a problem working in a slave lab.

Kon scowls at her. "Since my liberation."

She cringes. "As you say." She turns away. "But now I'm needed back in my lab." She walks back in the direction of one of the other doors, and I rather imagine that if she could hurry in those shoes then she would. Heels like that aren't really lab-appropriate footwear, are they? Is it really worth having to take them off whenever she goes into a clean room?

Kon and Dubbilex watch her go while I keep watching Guardian. James Harper, grandson of the original Guardian from the thirties. Don't remember him from the comics and all I remember about the comic Guardian is thinking that he was an idiot. Shield, darn near off the shelf body armour and a fancy bike? Captain America barely makes that work and he's both stronger and better equipped. Maybe that's why this Guardian has an actual job. He's also Red Arrow's uncle, though from what little I've seen his temperament seems to be rather different. He stands as Spence leaves the room and then takes off his helmet and runs his right hand through his hair. Looks a lot like an older Red Arrow. A lot like him. Odd that, particularly given the red hair. Looking deeper, I'm not seeing any yellow that might be associated with fear of discovery but if he's missed the presence of a Kryptonian then he really doesn't have any excuses left after what he did under Desmond. At this stage he's just guilty of gross incompetence, to say nothing of the whole slavery issue.

BaBUM

No, Cadmus can't continue on the way it is. Only real question is whether it can be reformed into something decent or if I'll need to destroy it. I set the ring the task of locating reporters who are likely to give the Genomorphs a sympathetic ear. Civil rights lawyers who might be prepared to take on their case. Would Queen Mera be prepared to offer them asylum? It would be difficult, but with the Ophidian's help I could probably wrench the whole building out of the ground to move it somewhere. Genomorphs have no special ability to breathe under water and they don't look like good swimmers so it's hardly an ideal option...

Mister Harper watches Doctor Spence leave. "Sometimes I hate this job." Not sure why, really.

Kon and Dubbilex turn back to face him and Kon starts in surprise. "You-. You look a lot like Red Arrow."

"Not all that surprising; Red Arrow is my nephew." He gives Kon a thin smile and looks us both over again. "Luthor phoned ahead. I'm not really sure why he thinks you'll find a Kryptonian here." Ring, brain wave monitoring. "But there's no real harm in letting the two of you look around. We really don't have anything to hide anymore." He walks out from behind the desk and I start really missing M'gann. Having a telepath along is just so helpful in situations like this. Brain waves look calm so either he's a secret Jedi or he really doesn't know about the Kryptonian in storage below us.

Kon's face hardens. "We'll see."

"I'm surprised you're still open. This is Thanksgiving."

"No rest for the wicked. Between your surprise inspection and the disappearing Genomorphs I'll be lucky to get home at all tonight."

Kon looks at Dubbilex and then back to Mister Harper. "Missing Genomorphs?"

Mister Harper bows his head slightly. "It's been going on for over a month; Genomorphs of all types have been disappearing from Cadmus and we've had no luck tracking them down. Just a few at first, but now we're losing entire work teams." Species that are part of a telepathic gestalt going somewhere the rest of the gestalt can't detect them? Possible, but it would take some very specialised equipment that's in rather short supply on Earth. "Someone would have spotted them if they'd been going outside; I can't imagine we wouldn't have heard something." An underground railroad? Or-. No, wait, that open chamber at the bottom of the Cadmus facility. I'd been assuming that they were expanding the facility but I can't detect any Humans there. No advanced technology either. Very interesting.

"All disappearances are being investigated." Kon looks at motionless Dubbilex. They're quite close to me and neither I nor the ring can detect any additional telepathic activity. Kon hasn't mentioned Dubbilex to me at all but I assume that the G-Goblin was around here while he was being created. Could he be a useful source of information, to Kon if not to me? I don't know enough about him to say. Look deeper. Is he in on the concealed chamber downstairs? Yes, yes he is. I feel his desire to protect it from the unknown, to have contingencies in place to guard against unanticipated changes. He wants his people to be safe. Quite a lot of indigo in there, but curtailed. Only applied to his ingroup. I suppose he's hardly unique in that regard.

Mister Harper's face hardens. "That's not good enough, Dubbilex. If we can't find something soon we're going to have to start implanting tracking devices in all Genomorphs working in the underground sectors." I school my features. Implanted tracking devices? Really? Dubbilex doesn't appear to react. I've got no idea if that means that he doesn't consider the threat to be serious or if he just doesn't have the neuroware to replicate Human body language.

"I will redouble our efforts."

Mister Harper nods and then returns his attention to Kon. "Come on, I'll give you the nickel tour." He walks out from behind his desk and heads in the direction Doctor Spencer left in. Dubbilex doesn't move. Is he waiting to be dismissed or something? Ah, there's the increase in activity in the parts of his brain wired into his horns. No other Genomorphs in the room and it's not practical for me to monitor the ones further away to know who he's talking to. I could, but I'd start glowing more brightly and I'd rather not alert anyone to what I'm doing. "Cadmus has changed a lot since you left; I don't have a G-Gnome on my shoulder mind controlling me anymore." He pauses and takes a closer look at Kon's face. "What's that.. thing, on your face?"

"A counter-telepathy measure, to ensure that no one can put G-Gnomes on our shoulders."

"Useful thing to have around the place. Wouldn't have minded having one of those five months ago."

"I'm afraid they're not for sale." Because if you haven't acquired something along these lines already then you're either too dumb to be worth worrying about or too thoroughly compromised for it to do any good. Having read his testimony it could go either way. We really should have brought M'gann along. Or Diana. Diana would be… But she could have been part of the original investigation. Why didn't she find this out?

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Minutes 15

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25th November

11:33 GMT -5

Mister Harper rehelmets himself as the security door opens onto a large laboratory area. A series of work benches run at right angles to the walls to our left and our right while a wide gangway has been left down the middle. Exits are at both ends of the long side walls and through the security door at the far end. I wonder why the gangway is so wide? A G-Troll could walk down there but they would be far too large to fit in the lift or through the side doors. Maybe it's left over from before the refurbishment? Strange glass cylinders are attached to the side walls at regular intervals, some sort of super fast tissue growth system according to the ring. If that's their big breakthrough then shutting this place down won't matter so much; the Atlanteans can already do it better. The room's a good fifty metres long and I can see about twenty Human scientists. One or two of the new Genomorph type, 'G-Dwarves' are present as well. Their forearms are different from those of the more familiar types as well, replacing the hand design with a pincer paired with a tentacle coming out of its armpit. A G-Sprite flitters overhead, carrying a tube of something while a G-Elf walks past us carrying a bag of rubbish. They don't look at us but ring shows me brief increases in local telepathic activity as we come into view. Transmitters only? Or perhaps something-?

"Here's the four one one." Mister Harper leads the way out into the laboratory. "This is the new and improved Cadmus. Doctor Spence and her team-" The Doctor looks up as we walk past and I give her a pleasant smile. Kon just scowls at her. "-are doing truly worthwhile genetic medical research now. The Genomorphs are becoming more independent, more educated." I look over to our right and see a G-Dwarf cleaning beakers in a sink. I guess they're 'house Genomorphs' then. Welcome to life, G-Dwarf. Hope you like doing stuff we can't be bothered with. I'm sure this would depress me more if this was the first species my species had created. Mister Harper looks over at that G-Dwarf as well. "Some even have names." He raises his left hand in greeting. "Hey Benny." The G-Dwarf raises its left claw in response and makes a throaty rumbling sound. Really? They designed a new Genomorph type and they didn't give it the ability to speak? I'm having Feet of Clay flashbacks. A G-Elf sweeping behind the next bench also gets a wave from Mister Harper. "Eric." The G-Elf just keeps sweeping, though once again I see a momentary telepathic pulse. That's a lot of dust for a laboratory area. Come to think of if Kon and I are still in our outdoors clothes. Back home whenever I went in the lab I had to wear those bootie things to prevent contamination, and put them straight in the orange medical waste bin when I came out. That doesn't seem to be happening here, and that sink certainly isn't sterilising those beakers. Is this all low risk stuff they're working with? Just seems bit weird that a bleeding edge lab isn't hotter on that kind of thing. "Someday, the work being done here will save millions of lives."

As far as the ring can tell he believes it. Not seeing patterns of irregular activity that would indicate telepathically implanted compulsion or predisposition. Time to burst his bubble. I turn off to my right to where Eric has laid aside his broom and picked up a dustpan and brush. "Excuse me, Eric." It… He? He's naked and doesn't appear to possess reproductive organs. I'm not clear how he excretes, either. He stops moving and there's another brief telepathic signal. "I'm sorry to distract you from your work but I have a couple of questions, if you have the time."

Mister Harper stops and gives me a puzzled look. "G-Elves can't talk. If you've got a question-."

"Mister Harper, this ring can translate for Dogs and Cats. It can certainly handle a G-Elf." I rise off the ground and move around in front of him. Eric pauses in his brushing and straightens slightly, glowing red eyes staring at me. "Do you like working here?" No audible reply but again there's a quick burst of telepathic activity.

"I'm.. not sure he can understand you." Mister Harper isn't all that quick on the uptake.

"Of course you're not. If you were sure you wouldn't be able to live with yourself, so you just shove it out of the way and don't think about it. Eric: how are you planning to spend Thanksgiving?" The G-Elf continues to stare. "Any plans for the weekend?"

"Clean."

It takes me a moment to place the voice before I realise that the ring has interpreted him as having a slightly raspier version of Dubbilex's voice. "What do you do for fun around here?" A sharp uptick in telepathic activity and a slight tilting of the head. "Perhaps it's not appropriate for me to ask, but what's the pay like?" More activity, and Benny has been slowly and mechanically wiping the same beaker since I started talking. Ring, map that. "Has your manager talked to you about your career path? Have you given any thought to how you plan to vote in the next presidential election? I realise it's a few years away but it's probably worth familiarising yourself with the likely candidates if you want to make an educated decision."

"Genomorphs can't vote."

I look back at Mister Harper. "I know." Kon's looking a little vacant, like he's mentally else.. where...

**…secrets have their place.**

I can only just hear whoever Kon's talking to. I'll let him finish. He can tell me about it later. "Why is that, exactly?"

"Genomorphs are adapted to perform specific functions. I doubt they'd even be able to understand what it meant."

"And Dubbilex? He certainly has Human-equivalent intelligence."

"He hasn't.. said anything…"

"Of course he hasn't. You own his species. Thank you for your time, Eric. I'll let you return to work now." I float back over to Mister Harper. "You know, I could sort of understand you failing to recognise a telepathic gestalt lifeform -and goodness knows the Greenies aren't the most observant people- but I really am curious as to how you justify the way you're treating Mister Dubbilex."

"He's not mistreated, he-."

"Doesn't get paid, can't vote, can't quit, if my scans are accurate he lives on site… You know, just down the river from here there's this thing called the Lincoln Memorial. You may not have heard of the man it commemorates. He was president of the United States during your civil war and was also responsible for passing this thing called the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution."

"I know who President Lincoln is."

"No, clearly you don't!" I let my aura flare. Between my shout and the shining orange light work in the lab appears to have ground to a halt. Kon's conversation appears to be ongoing and I am really quite upset. "Let me quote the Amendment for you: 'Neither slavery, nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.' You, are a slave owner. No, sorry, you don't own Cadmus. You're a slave driver."

His eyes widen in shock but he recovers quickly. "That's not what's happening here! Okay, maybe in Dubbilex's case we could-."

"Ring, based on complexity of neural activity, how many Genomorphs of other types would have to be networked to create Human-equivalent intelligence?"

"Depending on type and specialisation, a network of between five and two hundred would be required."

"Ah. And how many Genomorphs are there on site?"

"Not counting Genomorphs currently in gestation: one G-Goblin, eighty G-Gnomes, twenty nine G-Elves, six thousand nine hundred fifteen G-Sprites, fifty seven G-Trolls and twenty two G-Dwarves. Total: seven thousand one hundred four."

"Since you clearly don't know, telepathic gestalts allow species that have high levels of physical specialisation to share expertise. Individuals may be task adapted but the whole can cope with different situations quite well." Guy got provisional permission from Oa for limited data sharing. Nothing I can use technologically but at least I have some limited data about the state of the universe and of the Green Corps. Only on a 'My First Encyclopaedia' level but it's better than nothing. "I'm going to give you a week to start sorting this out before I start notifying civil liberties organisations and coming after this place through the courts. Lex thought you were a safe and reliable pair of hands. Apparently he thought wrong."

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Minutes 16

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25th November

11:40 GMT -5

"This is the place, is it?"

"Yeah. This is where they.. made me."

I take a slow look around the room where Kon first met Kaldur, Wallace and Robin. It's been repaired since then and aside from the lack of G-Gnomes it's otherwise the same. The pod -his pod- is lit up in blue lights in what seems to be to be a rather large waste of power given that it hasn't been used since he left. Then again, they've got four thousand plus G-Sprites powering the place; it isn't as if they have to worry about the electricity bill. I wonder how it is that they generate power. It can't be from their food; their digestive systems aren't anything like big enough. I look back into the G-Sprite covered walls of the chamber we just walked through as Kon walks over to the pod and lays his right hand on the 'Kr' symbol on the front. Ring, analyse G-Sprite physiology. Where's the power coming from?

Suspension of Kryptonian derived cells in ionic gel.

They actually managed it?

Cadmus records state that G-Sprite life expectancy is inversely proportional to cell density.

Meaning?

At density required for practical industrial power generation, G-Sprite life expectancy is reduced from an estimated twelve years to one to two months.

Damn. Justifiable if they're animals but you can't treat intelligent creatures like that. Wait. They aren't still creating high density-?

High density G-Sprite generation suspended following Doctor Desmond's arrest. Production of low density G-Sprites increased to make up emergent shortfall. Significant areas of Cadmus interior rededicated to G-Sprite utilisation in order to maintain power levels.

Right. So they could do a mass implementation but everyone would need thousands of G-Sprites. Intelligent creatures locked in tiny pods to give us power. It wouldn't even be like the Matrix: no artificial reality for them. I remember reading a book -don't remember the title- where the country it was set in used the souls of the dead to generate power while their neighbour used tortured children. If Doctor Desmond hadn't been removed we might actually have headed into a situation like that.

"Were you.. serious?" I turn around to look at Kon, who's still staring at his pod. "About the way the Genomorphs were being treated being illegal?"

"Yes, Kon, slavery is illegal. It's been illegal in the US since the end of the civil war and illegal everywhere on Earth since the League of Nations banned it in nineteen twenty seven."

"It's just… Are you sure Genomorphs count? I know you said that Red Tornado couldn't be a US citizen 'cause there wasn't any way for an AI to be recognized as a person."

I tilt my head to the side. "United States versus Crane was a very dubious ruling. If anyone with the money was prepared to put the effort in and the Supreme Court were willing to hear them then it would probably get overturned. Until now it just hasn't affected all that many people and Red Tornado hasn't cared. I might… I was sort of thinking about taking a poke at it myself for Danni, it just slipped down my agenda a bit. Anyway, it doesn't apply to organic intelligences, even if they are synthetic. Mister J'onzz got that sorted out when he started living on Earth."

"But if that's the law, why is Guardian doing it? He's a good guy."

"It's not that simple. Hardly anyone thinks of themselves as being the 'bad guy'. There wasn't any obvious problem so he didn't think about it."

"Dubbilex thought the problem was obvious."

"Was that who you were talking to?" He looks around and I tap my forehead with my right index finger. His eyes flick down as he nods. "Frankly, I don't think Mister Harper is all that bright. Since no obvious abuse was happening he didn't think about the wider implications of what was going on. If he had, or if he was coming to the situation cold, he'd probably have behaved differently. He just got used to this being how things are. I mean, none of the other staff did anything about it either. He knew he was better than Doctor Desmond and for most people the idea that they own slaves is so 'out there' they just don't think about it. It's not that uncommon-" I flashback to how the League were treating him before I got Diana involved. "-but it doesn't usually have consequences quite this serious."

"You think he'll actually change things?"

"Unless you or Dubbilex have a strong preference to the contrary I'm probably going to suggest that Lex remove him. Gods, it's all… I mean, the world's greatest detective gives a personal guarantee that Cadmus is going to be investigated, he has two Green Lanterns and a fucking Kryptonian to help him and they miss an engineered slave race and an entire new Kryptonian. I'd have thought Kal-El would have been motivated at least."

Kon tilts his head back, closes his eyes and stamps his right leg. He then points at the wall to our right. "Through there?"

Echo location with super hearing. Nice to see that he's been studying. "Yep." I form four scalpel constructs and rotate them in a circle around the concealed blast door, the strange organic looking material covering it collapsing to the ground. "Ring, access controls. Also, Clangers."

"Unlock mechanism physically obstructed. Manual operation required."

"Fine, I can-."

Kon launches himself at the door, fingers grasping at the central seam. He plants his feet and pulls. He couldn't simply push like that without breaking the floor or just sliding backwards but for pulling apart both hands are braced against the structure of the door itself. There's a painful metallic groan as the two pieces of the door are forced apart and we get our first good view of the interior. I shake my head. Did they really manage to lose track of a storeroom that big? It's about five hundred metres long by one hundred wide and about thirty tall. The power requirements for the refrigeration and.. gods, multiple rows of pods stacked two high and twenty along, ten shelves to each side of us and more in the distance. Some of them are big enough to hold a whole person while others are smaller, containing what appear to be Genomorph body parts. Failed experiments? Is this a morgue? Or -I don't know- did they get a source of alien DNA from somewhere and use it to create the first Genomorphs?

Kon's already walked through onto the platform on the other side of the door and is staring around the room as I float in after him. His brother is in the pod in the centre and is being kept in suspended animation. The air in here is so cold that there's a layer of frost on the rock floor. "Kon, I've got to ask: this is Genomorph labour, right? There's no way something this big could have been built without someone knowing about it, and most of Cadmus' underground construction was done by G-Trolls." How would they have gotten rid of all this rock? Does Washington naturally have huge caverns underneath it? I wouldn't have thought so. We're still pretty close to the river here, wouldn't they just fill up with water and sediment?

"It doesn't matter, we're getting him out." Kon takes a leap from the platform and lands in the middle of the gangway, halfway to the pod. He starts striding towards it.

I fly after him. "Kon, I…" I exhale. This isn't going to be easy. "Kon, when the others first got you out of your pod you went berserk. Do you think it's worth.. I don't know, getting M'gann or Mister J'onzz to check on his mental state before opening it up?"

"I'm not leaving him in there any longer. Can't you do it?"

"I can.. check his brain activity." Ring? "Ticking over. I doubt he's even dreaming. I'm gettiiiing… Anger, and.. he wants to kill Kal-El."

"So did I. I still dream about it sometimes."

"No noticeable fear, focus, hope, compassion or love. Kon, this isn't a good way to assess his mental state. I don't know how long he's been down here but I really doubt that half an hour's going to make any diff-."

"No. He gets out, now."

Heck. This stands a good chance of going very wrong, but it's Kon's brother. I understand where he's coming from. As he comes up to the pod itself he wipes the frost from the main tank. The man inside looks just like him, even has the old solar suit he wore when he was in the tank. The genetic differences should result in them looking different later in life -I think- but at the moment they could be identical twins. A pure clone of Kal-El. I create an ice scraper construct and completely unveil the tank's front. The label is 'Match' as Kon's was 'Kr'. Do I remember a Match from the comics? Didn't he end up going Bizarro? I don't remember him before that.

There's a control panel next to the pod and Kon presses what appears to be the release control. There's a puff of frigid air and the pod unfolds and rises up into the ceiling. Match… Should I call him that? Eh, Kon didn't mind being called Superboy by everyone. Match lies still against the upright support. Is there something else we're-? No, that was a twitch. Construct armour? No, that could be seen as aggressive. My environmental shield should be good for one or two hits if it comes to it. A shudder from Match and his eyes snap open, eyebrows folded in a frown. Black sclera. Well, it'll help us tell them apart.

Kon smiles at him while I start backing off. "It's okay, you're free now."

Match's eyes focus on Kon and Kon takes a step back. Uh oh. Ring arm-

"Yyaaagh!" Match lunges at Kon!

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Minutes 17

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25th November

11:45 GMT -5

-our! Match lands just in front of Kon before grabbing him by the shoulders and tackling him down the gangway! They roll head over heels along the frost encrusted ground as my armour takes shape around me. Match ends up on top, pinning Kon and bringing his right fist up to hammer down onto Kon's face. Before it can hit Kon rolls backwards, flinging Match away with his legs. Match goes flying through two of the containment cylinders before coming to a halt against the next row. Yeah, that didn't hurt him at all. We didn't bring Kon's armour with us so I cover him in construct-armour in its place. I create a red light cannon as Match rises to a crouch and then dives at Kon once more, the red beam striking him in the chest.

"Aaaaghh!"

The beam hurts and weakens him but there's no knock back. He just grits his teeth and keeps going. Just before he hits Kon he sidesteps, hooks Match's left arm and slams him face first into the ground. I cut the beam. Sure, it'll affect Kon less due to his Danner enhancements but it'll still hurt. Plus, from the way Kon hasn't followed up it looks like he still wants to try talking Match down.

"Why are you doing this?! We're trying to help you!"

"Rrrrr!" Match somehow flips around with no leverage, -he can fly, of course he can fly!- grabs Kon by the shoulder and hurls him directly at me! I seize direct control of Kon's construct armour and bring him to a stop next to me.

"Kon, normally I love talking people down but I don't think he's going-"

Match surges off the ground faster than my eyes can follow, striking Kon in the stomach with his right fist. The orange armour buckles and breaks around the point of impact but I'm able to get a chain construct around Match's legs and yank him away before he can swing again. I play the red beam over him for perhaps two seconds before he flies to our right at full speed, snapping the chain construct. I drop Kon back to the ground and erect a bubble shield around us.

"-to listen. I really think G-Gn-."

Two red beams lance out of the far side of the room, punching through containment cylinders and the bubble shield before striking my construct armour in the upper chest. I bring my arms up in a guard position and reinforce it. What's he-? Douffff! Dahwh! Hit me from behind! Transition! I appear at the far end of the warehouse, but transitioning cost me the link to Kon's armour! Quick check and I'm not injured. Ring, armour and tracking.

Match is using his superior speed and flying capacity to get punches past Kon's guard. I'm not sure which of them is stronger but now that Match has his focus I doubt that Kon will find it easy to get him in a choke hold. Right; ring, armour Kon. The filament burrows through the concrete and touches his left foot just too late to stop Match using his heat vision on Kon's chest. Kon throws himself aside before it can do too much damage but most of the front of his shirt has been burned off and the flesh beneath it is covered in angry red lines. Match flies at him again only for Kon to duck and grapple him. Match doesn't appear to have had any actual training and it doesn't look like he knows how to grapple against someone like Kon. He's just trying to push Kon away so he can punch him again.

Come on, he's been underground since at least when Kon was broken out, probably since before they even started working on Kon. How is he still this strong? The sunlight he needs is probably coming from the suit but where's it getting power from? It wasn't plugged in while he was in the pod… Doesn't matter, need to get it off him.

I fly towards them. Kon's clamped his legs around Match's torso while Match tries to get him off by flying through the shelving. Heat vision scythes through the room but Kon manages to force Match's head away from him. Even at that speed the impacts shouldn't be doing him significant harm. "Kon! I'm going to burn the solar suit off him! Brace yourself!"

"I'm as braced.. as I'm gunna get!"

Ring, maser. Never really bothered to find out what an actual maser would look like but a construct like a laser pistol toy I used to own forms in my right hand. Medium intensity -the solar suit isn't super tough- and wide beam, ring assisted targeting, after them! Can't transfer without losing Kon's armour. Match is heading for the back wall, spinning as he does. How good is Kon's sense of balance? Not sure. Plasma jet constructs form on the back of my armour and thrust me after them, pistol forwards. Match slams Kon's right shoulder into the wall, giving me a clear shot at his chest. I pull the trigger and with a hiss of boiling water vapour a cylinder of air distorts in front of me. Match and Kon both jerk as it hits them though it shouldn't be enough to do either of them significant harm. Yes! There we go! The white body suit darkens and begins to flake off and that got his attention!

"Graaah!"

His eyes glow for a split second and I generate a reflective shield between his eyes and me, sending his heat vision right back at him. He shuts it down as soon as he realises what I've done but the entire front of his suit is gone now and Kon's finally in a position to perform a choke hold. Match tries hitting him with his elbows but he can't get enough force behind the strikes. What can I do? I take a pair of boxer shorts out of subspace around Match. He's getting no additional power but his organelles will stay active for… I don't actually know. Still, red light pulses will hurt him more than Kon. I dismiss the maser pistol and fire a continual stream of red light from my right hand right at Match's chest.

"Eeeeeeeerhhh!"

"Paul, stop! I've got him!"

I jerk my hand back as if I'd been scalded, beam cutting out immediately. Match stops trying to pull Kon's arms off his neck and instead grabs at Kon's head, trying to shove his thumbs into his eyes! I can see the armour around his head start to give way under the force. How long can Kryptonians remain conscious while being choked? Reinforce! Pull his arms forward! The armour's still breaking! Kon moves his head down as close as he can to the back of Match's while still maintaining the pressure on Match's throat. The armour construct breaks and there isn't enough space for me to re-establish it! Kon squeezes his eyes shut and pulls at Match's neck as Match's face starts to go pale. Clamp construct to his neck! Close the artery! At last, Match's arms start to weaken, flopping to the side as both of them fall to the floor. His eyes close and he slumps in Kon's arms. I drop the construct at his neck and after a moment Kon relaxes his hold as well. Kon's breathing hard but his other injuries seem minor.

"Kon, you alright?"

He nods as he checks his brother over for injuries. Ring, monitor Match's health. Let me know the moment it looks like he's going to regain consciousness.

Compliance.

And now I know what a pure Kryptonian's brain waves look like. I can compare it to Kal-El's but I've only scanned him 'at rest' before.

"Okay, so: what now?"

"Can you fix what's wrong with him?"

"I wouldn't know where to start. I don't know enough about Kryptonian-."

"You managed when you blew my ears out!"

"That was different! He's a nearly complete clone, the changes I'd need to make are tiny, his natural force field would resist me every step of the way… I'm not a brain surgeon, I can't… I'm sorry, I can't do it."

"I'm not just sticking him back in a storeroom to be forgotten!"

"I'm not saying you should! I want him out of here.. nearly as much as you do! I just.. you saw the way he behaved, it wouldn't be safe!" I drop down to the ground next to them. "Maybe… Maybe Dubbilex can sort something out with the G-Gnomes. Make him a bit less violent." Kon tenses. "I know you don't want to, but there aren't any Kryptonian doctors to ask. Just.. just as a temporary measure until we can find a better solution."

Kon stares into his brother's peaceful face, running his right hand across his cheek. Then he nods. "Okay. Only 'till then." He ducks his head, lifting his brother onto his shoulders in a fireman's carry.

"I can carry him easily enough if you want."

Kon stands and readjusts Match's position. "No, he's not heavy. Come on, let's get out of here."

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Minutes 18

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25th November

11:51 GMT -5

The glow in M'gann's eyes fades and she looks at Kon. "I've done all I can. He shouldn't go berserk when you open the pod but…" She looks down and shakes her head slightly. "He doesn't… They didn't bother teaching him anything but how to fight. I can't imagine what that's like."

Kon's face hardens slightly. "I can."

I deactivate the construct surrounding the still sealed pod. "If the worst comes to it, his solar reserves are down to nearly nothing. With most of the genetic faults corrected-."

He jerks his head away from his brother to look at me. "Most!? Why haven't you fixed them all!?"

I hold my hands out to the side, palms open. "I just thought it would help him establish an independent identity if his eyes stayed the same. It doesn't make his vision worse and it doesn't hurt him."

Kon considers that for a moment. "We're not identical, are we? You said that you used DNA from other Kryptonians to replace Luthor's?"

"True, but you were designed to look like Kal-El and will continue to do so. The physical resemblance will be very strong, probably for your entire lives."

"Okay." He nods and walks over to the control podium. "So if he's drained, he won't be strong or able to fly, right?"

"That's correct."

"If he's… If he's not crazy, I want you to recharge him right away."

That doesn't sound like a good idea. "May I ask why?"

"They've probably used the same fighting program on him that they used on me. When I found I couldn't do all the stuff that Superman can I hated it. If he comes out and he can't either it's gunna freak him out."

M'gann takes a step back from the pod and puts her right arm around Kon's waist, side-hugging him. He twitches and then relaxes a little, reciprocating with his left arm. She turns her head to me. "I can make sure he's not going to go crazy-" Kon goes to speak but she keeps going. "-without making him think what I want him to. I know you hate what the G-Gnomes did to you. I'd never do that."

I sigh. "Alright. I see your point and.. if Her Highness is certain-" M'gann giggles. "-that she can detect any potential problems I don't have a good objection."

"Will you stop calling me that?"

"Doesn't seem very likely. You know, we're going to need a name for him."

Kon shrugs. "What's wrong with 'Match'?"

"It's not a name. We don't call you 'Kay Arr'."

"Match-El?"

"Not Kryptonian."

"It's better than abomination."

"I didn't know!"

M'gann takes another look at the man in the pod. "How about Mat-El then?"

"Oh, no."

Kon rolls his eyes. "How about we leave it up to him? Call him Match like you called me Superboy. He can always change it if he doesn't like it."

"Good suggestion." I point at the keyboard. "Come on then Kon, crack him open."

There's a chime from the somehow still powered podium as Kon presses the button to activate the resuscitation process. Strange how many custom designed keyboards there are in this parallel, and they're not just touch pads either. The buttons aren't even marked; I can only imagine that Kon was programmed to know how to work this stuff. There's a hiss as the warmer air from outside begins leaking into the pod, and a clicking whir as the pod unfolds and rises up into the ceiling. He remains motionless for a moment and then his hands start twitching. The ring and Father Box both assured me that there wouldn't be any problem with this but I keep monitoring him just in case. A larger than usual cloud of water vapour from his nose and his eyes snap open. He stares around the room and seems to unfocus. He blinks heavily and stumbles forwards into Kon's waiting arms.

"It's okay. You're free now."

"Wh-? Where-?" His voice -unsurprisingly- is like Kon's, though the ring is swift to inform me that it's actually very slightly deeper.

Kon helps him to his feet. "It's okay. We're getting you out."

"What?" Match pulls back a little and looks at Kon's face. He blinks again. "You're like me. Like him. Why don't I want to… I always… I-I was always supposed to-."

"To kill Superman. I know. They made me think the same thing but that doesn't mean you have to if you don't want to."

Match looks lost. "But that's what I'm for. I don't know anything else."

Kon pulls him into a hug while Match just looks more confused. Over Kon's shoulder he appears to see M'gann and I for the first time. "Who're you?"

M'gann smiles at him. "We're your brother's friends. I'm M'gann M'orzz and this is Grayven."

I give him a lazy wave with my right hand. "Welcome to the real world." **M'gann? Is he compos mentis?**

**He's confused, but he doesn't want to hurt anyone. I think he's safe.** "We should get out of here. This place is seriously creepy."

Kon loosens his grip and half turns, supporting his brother under his arms as we slowly start towards the exit. Might as well do this now. "Match, I'm about to reactivate your super powers. You might experience a slight tingling sensation. Try to stay calm."

He glances back. "Um. Okay?" A corona of white light surrounds the two Kryptonians. Kon originally wanted me to take us straight back to the mountain but I thought that a little adjustment time was in order. Plus, we have to tell Luthor where to stuff his investigation and it will be more satisfying to do that from his own facility. The light's only on him for a few moments before he starts to walk a little straighter. He pulls away from Kon and floats up into the air, hovering over us. With a small smile Kon rises up to meet him. I slightly altered his Apokolips tech armour to remove the 'S' just in case that set his brother off but the contrast between them, between Match's white solar suit and Kon's black armour is still visually quite appealing.

Kon floats in the direction of the exit. "Come on, way out's this way."

"You really are like me. Can-" Match turns back to look at M'gann and I. "-they..?"

M'gann and I rise to join them. He seems to take that reasonably well as Kon leads the way back into his own pod chamber. Kon touches down in the centre of the room but Match goes to hover in front of Kon's pod. "Kay Arr." He looks over to Kon. "Is this yours?"

"It was. D'you mind moving out the way?"

Match swoops down to stand next to his brother and I think I know what Kon's about to do. I grin as he plants his feet, widens his eyes and fires a series of heat blasts at the device. Metal melts and sloughs off under the assault and a moment later the pod is reduced to glowing slag on the ground.

Match looks confused and then turns to look back into the warehouse. "Was I meant to do that?"

I grin at him as Kon walks over to the computer panel. "Don't worry about it, Kon's just acting out. Why don't you, ah, let M'gann take you home while Kon and I finish up here?"

He looks at M'gann with concern but appears to relax a little when she smiles at him and takes his arm. Oddly, the noise doesn't seem to bother him as I open a boom tube back to the training room in the mountain and he doesn't resist as M'gann leads him through the portal. She pats his arm with her free hand. "Now, how good are you at peeling carrots?"

"I.. don't know? What's a carrot?"

Kon looks over to me. "How do I call Luthor on this thing?"

I move around so that I'll be out of the camera's shot. "Remember, we have no interest in telling him the truth."

"Don't worry, I know."

Ring, connect the console to Mister Luthor's car.

By your command.

There's a momentary delay and then Mister Luthor's face appears on the monitor. This is the first access he's had to the place since we arrived. Seriously, remote security camera access? By wireless? Who thought that was a good idea?

"Superboy. Have you had any luck in your search?"

"Yeah, we found him. He was in a pod but he freaked out when we opened it. He could be anywhere by now."

"A Kryptonian on a rampage in a densely populated city? Superboy, I'd advise you to get him back on ice as soon as possible."

Kon shrugs. "He's faster than me. I don't know if I could keep up with him."

"Fortunately, I came prepared." A panel just under the monitor opens, revealing a box with the House of El's sigil on the front. "Consider these a gift." Ring, analyse. Kon picks it up. It's thin and rectangular and the front slides up when he presses a button on the side. There appear to be a series of angular stickers inside. "I call them 'shields'. Stick one on your arm and it'll suppress your Human DNA for about an hour, allowing your Kryptonian powers to bloom."

Kon holds it away from himself, smiles, and evaporates it with his heat vision. Luthor gapes as Kon smiles through the smoke. "Nah, I'm good, thanks."

…

Fucking brilliant.

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Minutes 19

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25th November

11:51 GMT -5

"Get. Out. Of our way."

Kon stares ferociously at the six G-Elves and two G-Trolls who were waiting for us at the entrance to his pod-room. Match's solar batteries are drained enough at this point that I can prevent him from waking up, for a little while at least. I've recreated my construct armour and I'm running through our options. I can't transition out of here, not without blasting a hole through the roof anyway. I could probably generate a zeta tube but I'm not sure what the interference would be like around here and I don't think taking Match to a League facility without a lot of preparation would be a good idea while he's a rampage risk. On the other hand I really wouldn't like to be the one who tries to stop Kon going exactly where he feels like right now.

"Superboy, what happened down here?" Mister Harper steps out from behind the G-Troll on the right. I see Dubbilex lurking just behind him. "We felt the tremors-." His eyes widen as he sees Match's unconscious form. "Is that..?"

"Cadmus' other Kryptonian." He keeps hold of Match with his right arm and gestures at the warehouse with his left. "He wasn't even well hidden!"

Mister Harper slowly walks over to the entrance. "I had no idea." He walks to the edge of the inner platform, going slightly limp with the shock as he takes in the magnitude of the warehouse.

"I thought I could trust you, but you're just another Cadmus thug picking up where Desmond left off! How can you expect me to believe that you didn't-!"

"Kon." I shake my head. "He didn't. His brain activity's wrong."

He jerks his head back to me. "What? But it's right there! How could they not know about a giant warehouse!?"

"I don't know about 'they', but I'm confident that he didn't." I look over the security force. "Dubbilex, we're leaving. Are we going to have a problem here?"

He walks slowly forwards, affecting an attitude of calm and patience. "All the monitors showed was a curious television program of whistling, moon-dwelling rodents. I was concerned that either Superboy or this.. our hidden brother, might have been injured. How is he?"

"I pinched his carotid arteries. Or.. whatever they're called in a Kryptonian. He's knocked out but he'll be fine."

"And you, brother? How do you fare?" Dubbilex looks at Kon's chest and the lines burned into it by Match's heat vision.

"I'll live." He looks at me. "Danner Formula healing, right?"

I nod. "Should do. I'm not sure exactly-."

Kon glares at Dubbilex. "Include him!" Dubbilex's eyes flick to me and then back to Kon.

Ah, telepathy. **Dubbilex, I don't want to blow your cover and I'm disgusted at the way your people have been treated but given what's happened we can't trust Cadmus with Match for a moment longer.**

**You spoke with passion and conviction on the subject. Still, I am curious to see what you will do when we are no longer directly in your sight.**

**I'm not sure yet. I need to talk to the League. And.. probably Lex Luthor.**

**I had not yet been created when Lex Luthor last visited Cadmus. The League visited here shortly after Superboy left. Neither visit produced a noticeable change in our conditions. Still, we will not prevent you from leaving if that is your wish.** The G-Elves scurry out of the way and the G-Trolls shuffle to the sides of the corridor.

**Thank you. Is there any chance we could borrow-?**

"Hey!" Mister Harper re-enters the room at a jog. "Where are you taking him?"

Kon grimaces. "Away from here. Paul, you can block sunlight from reaching his skin, right?"

"Yes… Probably… But we'll still need somewhere to put him."

"Superboy, I know how this looks but I can't let you take a mentally unstable Kryptonian into an inhabited city!"

"It's not your decision." Kon looks away from him and starts walking down the corridor towards the lifts.

Mister Harper starts walking after him. "Do you have any idea-?"

I stick a claw construct around his midsection and yank him back, one taloned finger covering his mouth. "How weak your position is? Mister Harper, you are a literal slave driver. You have no moral authority. You insisted that there was no Kryptonian here and yet, we have one." I look into his soul. It's all there but it looks.. shallow. Something's not right here. Ring, detailed scan. "You clearly aren't intelligent enough to offer better ideas than what we've already considered. It wouldn't surprise me if Cadmus had.. dozens…" I let him go. Of all the things… "You're a tomato. You're a tomato. Of course, why not?" I snort. "If they can clone Kryptonians…"

"What are you talking about?!"

I shake my head. "You're not worth my time." A flicker and I'm standing next to Kon and Match. Another and we're in front of the lift, the doors already opening. Ring, stop the Clangers. "Kon, I'll back you, whatever you decide to do. But I've got to ask: do you actually have a plan?"

"I don't-. I don't know, but I can't leave him here! There's got to be something we can do!"

We get on the lift as I see Mister Harper dash down the corridor. "Wait!" The lift doors glow orange as I force them closed, then I extend my control to the lift's motor and we begin the ascent.

Think. Think. Needs air, can't be trusted not to smash an artificial environment if left alone, needs medical help I don't know how to give. The only thing I'm coming up with is magic. There's probably people in Atlantis who'll be prepared to try. Or would they? Maybe they can't for the same reasons I can't risk it. His resistances should be less of a problem for magic users but they'll never have worked on his species before. Would Kal-El know something helpful? Ugh, would he want to help? I mean, he clearly didn't bother giving this place a good going over the first time. And why would he know anything about Kryptonian cloning? I don't know exactly what sort of stuff he's got in his Fortress but I would have thought that if he'd studied the subject that he'd have been more interested to meet 'worked examples'.

"If we can keep him weak, we can probably keep him just about anywhere. I don't…" Kon slumps. "I'm having trouble coming up with anything. Kryptonian physiology… The knowledge just doesn't exist. If Humans knew how to fix Match, these people would have done it. Okay, if I drain him-" The lift door opens and we start walking out. "-and we stick him in a lead lined room-."

"Then he'd hardly be better off than he was in the pod." I look up in shock to see Lex and Ms Graves waiting for us just outside the lift. "Good to see you again, Paul. I was a little surprised when you didn't…" He closes his eyes for a moment and then opens them again. "Ah. That was you feeding the pigeons, wasn't it? The coloration threw me off." Kon actually backs up a step, eyes wide. "Calm down, son. I'm not about to try to snatch your brother away from you. Even if I could, what would I gain from it? An insane Kryptonian-."

"You made him like this! You run Cadmus!"

"Superboy, I'm not a geneticist. I only ever 'ran' Cadmus in the sense that I provided seed funding and received monthly progress reports. I gave Doctor Desmond a great deal of leeway and he appeared to be delivering. After his.. 'departure'…" He shrugs. "I've had to be even more hands off. The Justice League themselves approved Guardian's appointment as Project Manager. Tell me: what do you think of their choice?" Kon looks down at the ground. Yeah, I wasn't exactly impressed by that either. "I know this isn't what you want to hear, son, but the fact is that the world's leading experts in Kryptonian physiology are here in this building. If anyone can help your brother, it's Cadmus."

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Minutes 20

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25th November

12:17 GMT -5

Shit.

"Orange Lantern to Wonder Woman."

The League's big talk about their next membership expansion is scheduled to happen today. They're probably all sitting around the table now. Do they have a 'no personal communicators during the meeting' rule? If anything I'd have thought it would be the opposite. It's not like they can afford to take time off.

"Wonder Woman here. We were just talking about you."

Lex suggested that we relocate to the boardroom after putting Match into Kon's old pod. Watching Kon do that, watching his face as the animation suspension systems were reactivated and three G-Gnomes were placed in their slots on top of the assemblage, that was unpleasant. I'd say that I couldn't imagine what doing that -as far as he's concerned abandoning Match- was like for him were it not for the fact that I'm perfectly capable of seeing the effect. Churning yellow with a hint of black. He's standing by the window on the far side of the room now. Lex walks over to him and lays his right hand on Kon's left shoulder only for Kon to jerk and shake it off.

"That must be why my ears are burning. Sir, I've got a problem here and I need your advice."

"If you're calling me 'sir' it must be serious."

"It is. Kon and I are at Cadmus. They have another Kryptonian clone."

"Hera."

I twitch my eyebrows. "More like Ares, really. Unlike Kon he's not a Human Kryptonian hybrid, he's pure Kryptonian. They tried making a complete clone of Kal-El and they didn't get the neurochemistry quite right. When we let him out of his pod he went berserk."

"Are you injured?"

"I wasn't, Kon's got a few bruises and minor burns."

"Where is the clone now?"

"Kon's old pod in suspended animation with a trio of G-Gnomes keeping him under. Kon's.. understandably distraught."

"How did you find out about it?"

"Heh. Funny story. The world's greatest detective says he'll investigate and fails to come up with anything, two Green Lanterns are hanging around not bothering to do the five second flipping scan it took me to confirm his location… And we hear about there being another Kryptonian clone in the only place in the world known to clone Kryptonians from Lex flipping Luthor."

There's a moment's silence. "What do you need?"

"Lex says he's willing to use Cadmus' resources to try helping Ma-. The other clone, his name's Match. But, that means starting researching Kryptonian physiology again."

"Luthor?"

"I've got enough information to shut Cadmus down, and if I did it would cost him his investment. Besides, Kryptonian research with the League's blessing? The money he'd save on bribes alone…"

"Can't you do something for Match? You repaired Kon's ear canal-."

"It's not the same thing! The damaged area was small and the injury was obvious and simple. This is his brain. I'm not a doctor. And t-!" I take a breath. "To get past his resistance I'd basically have to bombard him with red solar radiation until he was screaming in agony. I don't think I could want that."

"Are there any other options?"

"I'll give you five minutes to find a Kryptonian doctor, shall I? Sorry, that wasn't… Sorry."

"It's alright."

"None of the other ideas I've been able to come up with stand a better chance than this. If you can get me some samples of different colours of Kryptonite and some Kryptonian wildlife to experiment on I might be able to come up with something eventually. Kal-El or the Greenies might have access to medical records that would help. But Lex is right, this is the best centre for Kryptonian research on Earth."

"Superman won't be happy about Luthor continuing to research Kryptonians."

"The walls weren't lined with lead. If Superman had taken a look for himself rather than-. If Superman thinks that Lex Luthor wasn't going to carry on researching Kryptonians anyway then he's deluded. This way at least we'll know where he's doing it, and Lex has agreed to give us copies of everything. We can even have our own representatives on site."

"What's Guardian saying about this?"

"Not a lot. Lex fired him. He was supposed to prevent situations like this and he didn't do his job."

"That sounds somewhat suspicious."

"He kept the Genomorphs as slaves, sir. I'm not feeling sympathetic."

There's a brief pause. "We can't decide something like this immediately."

"I know. Match isn't going anywhere."

"Wonder Woman out."

I lower my ring hand. Looks like Lex is trying to console Kon again. "I realize that this isn't what you wanted, son, but I think you'll find it's for the best."

Kon jerks away again. "Stop calling me that."

Lex leans back a little. "I realize that I may not exactly be the father you were hoping for, but it's true. Genetically, at least."

Oh heck. I start walking towards them.

Kon squints at him in total disbelief. "What?"

Lex looks at me and then back at Kon. "I.. had rather assumed that Orange Lantern would have told you. For whatever reason Doctor Desmond decided to use my genetic material for your Human components-."

Kon turns on me. "You knew that! You didn't tell me?!"

I hold my hands up in a calming gesture. "I told you back in July that I knew who it was. You never-."

"Who else knows?"

"I'm.. sorry. I hadn't realised you were unaware."

"Wonder Woman and Batman. I don't know if they told anyone else. Kon, I'm sorry, I just didn't think-" He turns away. "-that you cared about it." I take another step towards him and reach out with my right-.

"Don't." He waves me off and takes a step back.

Nooo…

Lex looks from me to him again. "Clearly this is a bad time, but.. today is the first chance I've had to talk to you. I.. don't know exactly what the Justice League has arranged for you, but if you don't object I'd like to try to have some sort of relationship with you. The only other family I have is my sister and.. we aren't exactly close, anymore."

"With you? W-?" He shakes his head.

"I'm not a monster Kon, and I feel even more responsible for you than I do for your brother. I may not have ordered Doctor Desmond to create you but.. you've got.. me in you, after all. And from what I've heard, your other.. parent, doesn't seem to have taken an interest. I only want what's best-."

"You want a weapon!"

"Actually, no. Even Doctor Desmond realised that a mere weapon wouldn't do. From what you've told me your elder brother would have worked quite well if that was all that was required. Tell me, would a weapon be capable of playing chess at Grand Master level?" Kon blinks. I hadn't realised he was quite that good. "Would a weapon need college level chemistry, math, English, French, Spanish or Mandarin Chinese?"

"My French isn't that good."

"You were removed from Cadmus before the program could finish. It seems that Doctor Desmond was trying to create a son I could be proud of, intellectually as well as physically." Lex lays both hands on Kon's shoulders and Kon lets him. "His error.. lay in not realising that he's already succeeded." Lex takes a step back and reaches into his jacket with his right hand. "Please." He holds out a card. "Call me when you've had a chance to think about it. Any time at all. I'll always be there for you."

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Minutes 21

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BulletproofIdea said:

25th November

17:15 GMT

The Watchtower

Batman steepled his fingers. Orange Lantern was right. They couldn't continue using unanimous voting as a system for entry into the League. He'd already recognized the problem of course, long before Orange Lantern brought it up. But it had worked well in the past, as the League had started up with a collection of people who knew each other and fought well side by side. He hadn't expected the League to grow large enough that he'd have to implement the back-up voting system for another five years at least. Given how many candidates were being elected at this meeting, he might have to bring up the possible need for change at the end of it.

"How about John Constantine?"

Dr. Fate, Wonder Woman, Captain Atom, the Hawks, and Black Canary glared as one at Captain Marvel. "NO."

Billy started. "But he–"

"NO."

"I'm just–."

Batman nodded his head. "Having read full reports of some of Mister Constantine's activities, I'm forced to agree. Whatever his arcane skills the collateral damage he tends to inflict is not something I feel it would be appropriate for the League to endorse."

Captain Marvel crossed his arms and sulked.

Wonder Woman spoke up. "I nominate Red Inferno for consideration." She presses a button on the panel in front of her and calls up a holographic image, showing the gynoid in her uniform. "She is a previous member of the Justice Society, and one I was proud to fight alongside. She is valiant, noble, and all but died once in the line of duty. She is also having trouble in this time period, and I believe joining the League would help her."

Batman silently agreed with this assessment.

"The League could use some fire power after all these ice villains giving us trouble." Green arrow opined.

Black Canary opined she was not fond of puns, and elbowed her lover in the ribs.

Batman decided it was time to weigh in his own candidate. "The Accomplished Perfect Physician," he said, without pre-amble, bringing the image to the display. "His sonic manipulation abilities are peerless, and his skills as a physician are both accomplished, and perfect. Neither adjective is hyperbole. I think the League could use a physician of his caliber."

"Getting run down in your old age, Bats?" Green Arrow mocked. But Batman noticed that he was more than a little interested in reading Yao's medical credentials himself.

"We could use a doctor." Hawkwoman said. "It's just good sense."

"I've never heard of him." Superman said.

"He's Chinese." Batman explained. "A member of the Great Ten. I know we've had.. concerns about that group. However, until recently, he was imprisoned by the Chinese for his actions against their government. He's spent his time in prison helping the metahumans held there. I've managed to apply some leverage to get him released, but it was on the condition he join the Great Ten."

"That's quite a bit of effort on your part Batman." Aquaman said, stroking his beard. "Why are you so set on him, when we haven't even voted in his favor?"

"Thanks to the deal, a great deal of the Chinese metahumans who are imprisoned for not becoming super-functionaries are getting far better treatment." Batman explained.

"Oh." Wonder Woman's eyes widened. Then she smirked.

Batman frowned at her. Don't do it, Diana…

"That sounds like something Paul would say." She leaned forward. "Did he help you come up with this?"

Batman did not change his posture. "Orange Lantern brought Yao Fei to my attention, yes." He said. "I handled negotiations with the Chinese government."

"So we're letting him decide who's on the League now?" Hal asked incredulously.

"Yeah, we should just give him a membership card and be done with it." Flash laughed.

Batman sighed. There was still no solid consensus about Orange Lantern. The majority were in favor, but Captain Atom was on the fence, and Dr. Fate and Jordan were very opposed.

As for his own opinion… Orange Lantern's powers worked best when he cared about something. The Team was his ingroup. He doubted that Orange Lantern would leave the Team, and if he did, he had... Concerns that the League would be able to become a new ingroup for him. They were a lot more professional than the children, but he was already friends with Diana, Billy… Perhaps even with himself. Flash and Green Arrow were friendly also. But would it be the same?

Batman didn't know. He didn't know if Orange Lantern would be able to operate in the League as effectively as he did the Team. He had considered the option of allowing Orange Lantern to replace the roles currently occupied by himself and Red Tornado in relation to the Mount Justice Team. Living on site and handling the dispensing of missions for them.

But it seemed like Dr. Fate was going to make it a moot point… Unless the League voted not to keep him, which could prove disastrous.

Diana's League membership card was beeping. With a mischievous smirk, she put the caller on speaker.

"Orange Lantern to Wonder Woman."

That was interesting.

"Wonder Woman here. We were just talking about you."

And that was unprofessional. Batman sighed, as the other members leaned forward with interest. Given what usually happened when Orange Lantern goes on a mission without League approval, he would have to start thinking about damage control now. Jordan wasn't wrong when he said that Paul rocked the boat. But with proper handling, the chances he took could pay off magnitudes more than he intended.

"That must be why my ears are burning. Sir, I've got a problem here and I need your advice."

Diana frowned. "If you're calling me 'sir' it must be serious."

"It is. Kon and I are at Cadmus. They have another Kryptonian clone."

The League recoiled. They'd all been there, the day the Team found Superboy at Cadmus. Superman looked like he could be bowled over by a feather. Batman's mind spun, wondering how he could have missed that. Diana took one look at Superman, then rested her head in her hands in preparation for a migraine. "Hera."

While Paul delivered his report on the new clone –the pure Kryptonian clone– Batman delved into his mind to search for a way this could have escaped him.

He hadn't trusted any records Cadmus dealt in. Well, he'd trusted the ones that said Dr. Desmond donated Superboy's human DNA. But he'd gone right to the source: their power generation systems. Using the power trail the Genomorphs' machinery left, he was able to track down what he thought were all of Cadmus’ projects. Certainly it required a lot of power to keep a half-Kryptonian sedated. How did they manage a full Kryptonian? They must have had an alternate power source.

With Barry's help asking scientific questions, Wonder Woman had personally interrogated all of the scientists. Did they manage to simply evade the truth? They asked if there were any more clones… Did the scientists take it to mean only hybrid clones, like Superboy? Could there be more pure clones at Cadmus? Human, or alien? Or maybe they just didn't know? But if they didn't know about Superboy, then there would have had to have been other scientists on the project.

And Batman could think of one scientist who would love to clone a Kryptonian.

How did Orange Lantern find out about this other clone?

"How did you find out about it?" Wonder Woman was asking.

"Heh. Funny story. The world's greatest detective says he'll investigate and fails to come up with anything, two Green Lanterns are hanging around not bothering to do the five second flipping scan it took me to confirm his location…"

Green Arrow was stifling a laugh now, at Jordan. And Batman studiously ignored any looks sent his way. Particularly the looks that Billy was sending him.

"And we hear about there being another Kryptonian clone in the only place in the world known to clone Kryptonians from Lex flipping Luthor."

There's a moment's silence as Batman's suspicions were realized. And as Captain Marvel stifled a laugh. "What do you need?" Diana asked seriously.

"Lex says he's willing to use Cadmus' resources to try helping Ma-. The other clone, his name's Match. But, that means starting researching Kryptonian physiology again."

Batman raised a hand to silence Superman's protests. They wouldn't do much good, other than making Orange Lantern angry. And as far as Batman knew Orange Lantern had no idea Diana had him on speaker.

A silent glaring match occurred between them. Batman shook his head, and Superman scoffed but stayed silent.

"Can't you do something for Match? You repaired Kon's ear canal-."

"It's not the same thing! The damaged area was small and the injury was obvious and simple. This is his brain. I'm not a doctor. And t-to get past his resistance I'd basically have to bombard him with red solar radiation until he was screaming in agony. I don't think I could want that."

"Are there any other options?"

"I'll give you five minutes to find a Kryptonian doctor, shall I?" Orange Lantern snapped at her. "Sorry, that wasn't… Sorry." The awkwardness in the room was stifling. Everybody was beginning to realize that they'd made a mistake; that they'd been standing directly over a huge problem and hadn't even realized it. Even Dr. Fate seemed to be unable to meet anybody's eyes.

"It's alright."

"None of the other ideas I've been able to come up with stand a better chance than this. If you can get me some samples of different colours of Kryptonite and some Kryptonian wildlife to experiment on I might be able to come up with something eventually. Kal-El or the Greenies might have access to medical records that would help. But Lex is right, this is the best centre for Kryptonian research on Earth."

"Superman won't be happy about Luthor continuing to research Kryptonians."

"The walls weren't lined with lead. If Superman had taken a look for himself rather than-!" Paul paused to take a breath, and Superman hung his head. "If Superman thinks that Lex Luthor wasn't going to carry on researching Kryptonians anyway then he's deluded. This way at least we'll know where he's doing it, and Lex has agreed to give us copies of everything. We can even have our own representatives on site."

"What's Guardian saying about this?"

"Not a lot. Lex fired him. He was supposed to prevent situations like this and he didn't do his job."

Batman had been on the streets long enough to know when someone was withholding information. Paul talked at length about the failings of the League, but didn't say what it was the Guardian did to get him fired. Especially given it was the League's choice to place Red Arrow's uncle in the position, that was very suspicious. He gestured to Wonder Woman to probe some more.

"That sounds somewhat suspicious." She said.

"He kept the Genomorphs as slaves, sir. I'm not feeling sympathetic."

Again, the information wasn't accompanied by a rant. Batman decided he'd ask Paul some other time, in case he was being listened in on. "We can't decide something like this immediately." Diana said.

"I know. Match isn't going anywhere."

"Wonder Woman out." She looked around at the League.

"Congratulations Supes!" Captain Marvel said, beaming innocence. "You're a daddy again! Second time this year! You must be so-"

Superman stood up suddenly, and flew rigidly to a corner of the room, looking at the earth out of the window.

Captain Marvel's smile faltered. "-proud. Was it.. something I..?"

"This is a sensitive issue for him Billy." Wonder Woman frowned at Superman's back.

"Soooooo…" Green Arrow smirked. "How did the world's greatest detective miss a whole clone?"

Batman briefly wondered if there was anything he should have done differently. Anything he could have done differently in handling this situation. He didn't think there was, not without some form of prior knowledge. "That is not the matter on the table right now." Batman said, evading the subject like he was evading crossfire. "There will be a briefing later."

"A briefing on how you missed a whole clone?" Flash ribbed at him.

"Lay off him." Surprisingly, it was Jordan that came to his defense. "We all dropped the ball on this one. John and I should have... We all made mistakes, okay?"

"Enough." Aquaman said, holding his hand up regally. "Batman is right. We are gathered to discuss membership. Other matters can wait. Although…" He nodded to Diana. "I don't know if they'll be able to help, but should they be of any use I will have the best biomancers in Atlantis at your charge's disposal."

Click to expand...Click to shrink...

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Minutes 22

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25th November

12:24 GMT -5

"Aren't you.. going to go after him? I rather think he could do with a friend at the moment."

I watch as the door closes behind Kon. He still had Lex's card in his hand. I hadn't realised exactly how much he was missing a familial connection. I'd thought that between me, M'gann and Diana…

"It would probably be better if he had a few minutes, and.. I need to talk to you about something else."

"Your rather odd fascination with the Clangers, perhaps? Some of those whistles sounded almost rude…"

"Who do you plan to have replace Mister Harper?"

"That.. will be a matter for discussion amongst the Cadmus board members, and will probably depend on the result of the Justice League's deliberation."

"Assuming they accept your deal, there are two people with the required knowledge of Kryptonian physiology. Doctor Bernard Klein has worked in STAR Labs since he got his Bachelor's Degree and I.. think you already tried to hire him."

Lex nods. "Several times, actually. I had thought to make him another offer once the Justice League made their position clear. Who else did you have in mind?"

"Dubbilex."

Lex purses his lips, opens his mouth slightly and then closes it again. He tilts his head slightly to the side. "The G-Goblin? Really?"

"Yes. He has an excellent relationship with most of the staff -who are Genomorphs-, is familiar with all aspects of the work done here and thinks of both Kon and Match as being his brothers. He's both capable and motivated." And he can prove that everyone who claimed to have been mind controlled by Desmond lied during the hearings. If they don't toe the line they'll never work in their preferred fields again.

"I'm not… I don't think he has the qualifications…"

"Did Mister Harper? If you're concerned about there being more surprises, nothing goes on here without a Genomorph seeing it."

"I had thought about offering the position to you."

I shake my head. "I've never run a project like this. I wouldn't know where to start. And I certainly don't have the scientific knowledge."

"Is there a reason why you're pushing his candidacy?"

"Cadmus working on Kryptonians benefits both the Kryptonians and Earth, as long as we don't have another attack of the Desmonds. I want Cadmus operating. But, at the same time, I'm not going to ignore the fact that it runs on Genomorph slave labour. If I need to, I'm prepared go after Cadmus aggressively through the courts. It will take a while, but in the end the Genomorphs will be freed and Cadmus will be shut down. What works better for you is taking that fight as your own. The only way you can get good PR out of that situation is if you take the initiative in working to get the Genomorphs recognised as US citizens, and treat them as if they are in the meantime."

"If we're seriously considering Dubbilex's candidacy then I feel obliged to point out that Genomorph absenteeism has been something of a problem recently."

"If the Genomorphs believe that you have their interests at heart they are more likely to be loyal to the cause. If they believe that the best way for them to get the freedom they want, if they have a stake in what's happening here, I'm sure you'll see that absenteeism.. fade away."

He nods slowly. "You're confident you'd win the case? Even if -for the sake of argument- I put the full weight of LexCorp's legal department against you?"

"Red Tornado's been a superhero in America for decades without citizenship. I could probably get the law changed with his example alone, it'd just take longer. The Genomorphs are organic. Even if you won in the courts -and I don't think you would- there's no way the public would accept a living thinking creature as a slave in this day and age. Perhaps more notable is the fact that the Green Lantern Corps regards the enslavement of a species as a Crime Against Sentience. As soon as a formal complaint is lodged they'd be obliged to remove every slave from the control of their 'owner', whatever the court said. I imagine that would make work at Cadmus fairly difficult."

"It would." Lex raises his right fist to his chin. "And if I backed your case instead?"

I shrug. "You get good PR for being the man who finally fixed Cadmus. And overturned State versus Crane. Dubbilex taking the Oath of Allegiance alone-."

"And what about Red Tornado?"

"Hm?"

"You presumably want a ruling that says that an intelligent creature created in the United States is a citizen of the United States, regardless of how that creation occurred."

I think for a moment and then nod. "Yes?"

"Paul, Cadmus is turning into one giant PR black hole. Surely you can see that by publicly associating myself with it I'm already taking a huge risk. Combined with the cost-."

"I'll pay it. Within reason."

He raises his eyebrows slightly. "Are you sure? Arguing a case like this to the Supreme Court could cost hundreds of millions of dollars."

"It's manageable. I'll want to see your receipts, mind."

He nods thoughtfully. "And… To get the full PR benefit it would help to have someone a little more.. photogenic, than Mister Dubbilex on stage."

Danni's certainly that. "I can't make promises, but I'll see what I can do."

Lex gives me a thin smile and offers me his right hand. "Then I believe that we have an understanding." I take his hand and we shake. "I'll need to run it by the board, of course. And speak to Mister Dubbilex."

"I think it'll be an easy sell." I take a step back. "If you'll excuse me, I should probably go and check on Kon."

"Of cour-."

I transition to the bottom of the stairs leading to the roof. Kon's up there and I want to give him the chance to hear me and.. tell me to get lost if he wants. He's standing looking out over the front of the building. No shouts yet so I take the metal steps two at a time, there's no way he won't hear that. Through the door and out onto the roof, I notice that the intensity of my aura has increased. Not surprising, really; Kon's wellbeing is pretty core to my own. Is Lex being genuine? Could go either way but I don't particularly feel like chancing Kon on it.

"Kon..?"

He's facing away from me and turns his head slightly to the side. "What did you and Luthor talk about?"

"Liberating the Genomorphs."

"And?"

"I think we're on the same page."

He looks away from me, nodding.

"What-?"

"I just got more face time with Luthor in one day than I've had from Superman in five months. He told me about Match when Superman decided investigating it properly wasn't worth his time. That I wasn't…"

"I'm sorry, I really didn't realise this still bothered you."

He turns around, slouched, looking down at the card. "I didn't realize. I guess… Maybe I thought Superman would change his mind or something?" He looks up. "He's not going to, is he? He doesn't want anything to do with me, he won't want anything to do with Match… And I know Luthor's a bad guy but I want… I shouldn't want this, but I do, you know?" I nod. I don't feel that way myself anymore but I remember it perfectly well. "I wanna have that sort of relationship with someone and it's… It's not going to be Superman."

No. But it could be Wonder Woman.

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Minutes 23

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25th November

18:11 GMT -5

I slide the latest book on Themysciran legal practice away from me and lean back in my chair. I'm not sure this has really helped. True, I've got a much better understanding of how Amazonian law works now. No separation of powers at all. Guards are empowered to impose penalties for a range of crimes with no reference to anything like a judge or jury. Major or politically sensitive crimes might be brought before Queen Hippolyta but these people have known each other for three thousand years. Social unrest of the sort the rest of us know just doesn't happen any longer. Theft is almost impossible to get away with. Heck, the last case Queen Hippolyta heard was where a fisherwoman followed the shoals past the somewhat nebulous bounds of Themysciran waters and waved at a passing mainland Greek fishing boat. That was a hundred and thirty years ago.

I've scanned all of the books in the Embassy library and the ring has started the process of buffering the information into my brain at a rate I can cope with. While that happens I've been trying to work out how families are supposed to work in Amazon culture. Basically, before the exile the men and women of their culture lived almost totally separate lives. The women lived in towns and in the original city of Themyscira which the island is named after while the men lived in smaller farming villages. They really only met up twice a year during festivals which… Well, little Amazons had to come from somewhere. Relevant to my interests is that male Amazons were almost always adopted. The relationship with the genetic father wasn't considered important. Children stayed with their mothers until the age of four and then during the next meet-up boys were sent off with 'appropriate' males, usually relatives of the mother. The only exceptions appear to be male children of the monarch sired during political marriages to foreigners but I can't find any detail on those.

Of course, that all changed when the Exile happened. Pretty much everyone who survived fled to Themyscira -the island- 'by the grace of the gods'. I'm not sure whether that means literal divine intervention or just good luck. There's nothing explicit about what happened to any males who ended up on there but there are mentions of births eighty years later so presumably some made it. No, speculating on that doesn't help Kon. If I really need a timeline there I can just write a letter and ask; I imagine that their memories of that period are fairly acute.

As Crown Princess and as the current Wonder Woman -an approximate Anglicisation of the actual Themysciran title but one I'm so used to I can't stop seeing it- Diana has a wide range of authority whenever Queen Hippolyta isn't present. I haven't been able to find their laws on adoption but I have found what happens to orphans without an obvious next of kin. Since Kon really doesn't have a mother and his only female relatives are Lena Luthor -who as part of the father's family doesn't appear to count- and possibly Kara Zor-El if she exists here that appears to be the applicable law. As-.

"Etta said I could find you in here."

I look around as Diana walks into the library. She's wearing a lavender chiton and I'm suddenly aware that the book 'Liberation of the Persians' is still on the table. That really wasn't about what I thought it would be about. "How did the meeting go?"

"We were able to reach an agreement. Eventually."

"Did Guy get in?"

She looks across the table. "It wouldn't be appropriate for me to talk about…" And she's looking at the book. "Ah."

"I was looking for something on Themysciran slavery. I mean, from the title-."

She bows her head slightly and rests her right hand against her forehead. "It was a gift from Timandra, one of my teachers. I'm sure she meant it as a joke at my expense."

"You don't need to explain-."

"I didn't even read it before moving back to America after the Justice League came together. I gave up on it after the first… Well."

I shift my weight slightly. Thank you conscious blood flow regulation. "About.. how old is it?"

"It was originally written close to twenty five hundred years ago, though that's a more recent copy. How much of it did you..?"

"I loaded pretty much the whole thing into my brain."

"Hera."

"Or Aphrodite. Or perhaps one of the more tentacularly inclined Titans. Though, since it's the earliest historical reference I'm aware of to that particular metaphor-."

"Could I ask that you not mention it to anyone?"

"Diana…" I shake my head. "I don't want to mention it to anyone."

She nods, then pulls out the seat closest to mine and sits down. "Why the sudden interest in Themysciran law? I agree with your views on the Genomorphs but that will be resolved in the American courts."

"Yes, I know. That isn't why…" Really should have spent more time thinking about this bit. "After we spoke, Lex told Kon that he was one of his fathers."

She nods. "How did he take that?"

"Oh, pretty badly. He was angry at me for not telling him, angry that he couldn't help Match… And it just brought up the whole situation with Kal-El again."

"I thought you said that you had offered to tell him."

"I had the ring play the conversation back, I can see it wasn't obvious that's what I was offering. And I hadn't mentioned it again."

"You weren't the only one who knew."

"No, but I was the one who'd spent most time with him. And then Lex took the opportunity to say that he actually wants to be his dad. To take responsibility for him where Superman wouldn't." Diana winces. "Yeah."

"Is he considering it?"

"I'm not sure. I think so."

A faint frown. "I thought you got on well with Luthor."

"Lex is a project, same as Jade, the Beresfords and Holly. He can do too much good to write off. He's good company but that doesn't mean I trust him, certainly not with Kon."

She looks at the book-covered table again. "You clearly have a plan."

"I wouldn't go that far. I…" I look down slightly, shaking my head. "Kon wants a parent. I could offer to take him on; I'm old enough. But I don't legally exist and we don't really have that sort of relationship anyway. We even look the same age, more or less."

"Ah."

"If you grant him -Superboy-him, not Conner Kent- Themysciran citizenship you can make him a Ward of the Crown. Since there aren't any other Amazons in America that would make you formally responsible for his wellbeing. You already have a close relationship with him, I think he'd accept it. I realise that it's a lot to ask-."

"You don't think it would be better for me to offer to adopt him?"

Her expression hasn't changed. I've got nothing to work off and I don't scan her, that would just be wrong. "That would be asking even more, and I couldn't find a book on how modern Themysciran adoption worked. Plus, you might find it a bit awkward explaining to Ms Lane why someone with the surname 'El' was calling you 'Mum'."

She nods. "The book you were looking for is on my desk in my office."

I nod. "Well, that's why I didn't find it then, I only scanned the-."

!!!

I blink at her, dumbfounded. "Y-. You mean..?"

"I wasn't born to my mother, Paul, but I am Queen Hippolyta's daughter nonetheless. My unusual creation defines modern Amazon adoption law. And I believe it is right that a child have a parent. During the time we've spent together I've become quite fond of Kon. I had been intending to find out whether it was really necessary before asking him, but clearly you believe that it is."

I sit there for a moment, unable to respond. "Thank you. That's not.. really enough but… Thank you."

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Minutes 24

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25th November

18:46 GMT -5

"Recognised, Wonder Woman zero three, Orange Lantern B zero six."

"…disagree with that. I mean sure, it makes sense when there's only a few of you but as the League expands you're just not going to know the people you fight beside that well."

"Batman did say that you had doubts about our selection process."

No one in the training area. M'gann said to be here for dinner at seven. "Sixteen members, eleven of them have American citizenship. You have more people from Thanagar than from any other country on Earth. Are you really saying that the talent isn't out there? Because…" I take my League maybes notebook out of subspace and create a construct screen to show a selection of faces.

"I suppose that widening the selection criteria might help address the gender imbalance the League currently suffers from."

"Diana, globally roughly one in two hundred people who put on costumes and try fighting for the greater good are women. One in eighty of those who stick with it for a couple of years. The odd thing about the Justice League isn't that it's only got three women, it's that it's got three women. Sure, if you really wanted I could get you a big list of female superheroes, and if none of the others think to ask me or the Greenies you'll probably be able to present better candidates at future meetings than anyone else but I really think that's the wrong approach."

"Oh? How do you think we should do it?"

"Think about what a superhero team needs, get one of each and when you've done that, start doubling up. Gender doesn't matter, effectiveness does. If you don't limit yourself to just Americans you've got a big enough talent pool to draw on…"

"Was that why you suggested Yao Fei?"

"Yep. You've got better brawlers and better ranged fighters but you don't have a combat medic. The fact that his government is a permanent member of the Security Council is just a bonus. And anyway, there's actually.. a far easier way to go about getting more women than that."

"What would that be?"

The note book disappears and in its place I bring out a flight belt and a vial of Danner Formula. "Make your own. Ask around Themyscira for volunteers, Danner them up and then give them flight belts. Obviously the goddesses' blessing wouldn't apply during the time they spend away from Themyscira but given how the Danner Formula extends life expectancy it probably wouldn't matter for…" I shrug. "Decades, at least."

"It's worth considering. It would certainly be nice to see my sisters more often, but I'm not sure that many would be willing to undergo that change."

I return the vial and belt to subspace. "If you get three you've doubled your numbers, right? Or if they'd rather have speed I can flawlessly replicate the Garrick Formula." Diana starts walking towards the corridor towards the kitchen. "Ooh, can we.. wait for Artemis?" I point at the inactive zeta tube. "She should be turning up soon."

"If you like. I note that you suggested two men and no women to Batman."

"There was one.. really good woman, but she's not going to be available for a few years, if she'd even be interested."

"Who do you mean?" I generate a construct in the shape of Queen Mera. Diana nods and thanks to dumping all that Themysciran law into my head I know how strict they used to be about keeping pregnant women away from combat zones.

"After she gives birth she's probably not going to want to take on a job that means she spends as much time away from home as it does for King Orin, and that's ignoring the time requirements of her current job. Plusss… There's quite a good chance that if they want any more children they'll have them not all that long after this one, so that's even longer." She gives me a look. "What? That's how it works. King Orin's a Pureblood, not a seahor-."

"Recognised, Artemis B zero eight, Huntress A one eight."

The light dims as Artemis and Paula walk out, Artemis taking the lead. The line we agreed on was that Paula is a retired superhero. No one else here knows any differently, though Ms Human Lie Detector Diana will work out that something's up pretty quickly. Hopefully she'll ask me about it later rather than making a big deal out of it. Paula's wearing one of her old red/brown and gold uniforms and she's even taken the time to do her old eye makeup. Whaw, she's looking good. She seems a little uncertain about being here and stops completely when she sees Diana. Not having that. I stride past Artemis to hug her. "Paula, hi! Glad you could come."

Her eyes flick repeatedly from me to Diana. "Thank you for.. inviting me."

"Oh, you'll have to thank M'gann, she's been doing all the cooking." I put my right arm around her back to lead her towards Diana. "This is Princess Diana of Themyscira. Diana, this is Paula, Artemis' mother."

Diana smiles at me then at Paula as she holds out her right hand. "Well met, Huntress."

She takes it only a little hesitantly. "Ah, pleased to meet you."

"It is always good to meet other female superheroes." Whoops. That wasn't why… I mean, even after she got back to full functionality she kept up her gym attendance. I guess she's used to a higher level of physical fitness than most people. And Artemis did mention that she'd threatened to join her on patrol… Huh. Huntress for Justice League is sounding like a less and less bad idea. Diana turns to lead the way towards the dining area. "Paul, has Alan arrived yet?"

Quick check. "Yep, he's in the kitchen. Wait, are we alright using real names? I mean, it's not a problem for you and me…"

Diana smiles at me. "Tiny. Mask. Besides, we can't call him Green Lantern all evening."

"Um…"

"Don't worry, he said it was fine."

Phew. Let's see… Kon doesn't go by Kon, M'gann doesn't go by M'gann, Zatanna's identity isn't a secret, Mister J'onzz doesn't go by J'onn… Think we're good.

Paula looks a little uncomfortable again. "Green Lantern is here?"

"The one from the Justice Society. He used to live in Gotham, actually."

"Was coming in costume a mistake? I haven't worn it in years."

"Mom, you're fine."

"I was surprised it still fit."

I get a better view as she pulls ahead a little to talk to Diana. It really does. Not having superhero restrictions on lethal force Paula trained for agility and endurance, leaving her musculature taut and- Ow! Artemis elbowed me! I look at her and jerk my hands in a gesture of inquisition.

"Did you just check out my Mom?!"

"She's a very attractive woman!" Oh. Whoops.

She jerks back, her eyes wide, and she folds her arms across her chest. "Seriously! Ughh!"

Making a point of not looking at Paula's bottom I follow on behind them. Actually, of all the women I interact with regularly Paula's the only one near to my half plus seven to minus seven doubled range of twenty two to forty six. Next year she'll be inside it. My friends are all under and Diana's well over. Paula's asking something about Donna… Oh, she thinks they're related. Not an unreasonable conclusion I suppose.

"Other than checking out my Mom, what have you been doing today?"

"Um, spent some time in Poseidonis helping set up a new and improved arcane forge. Then Kon and I went to Cadmus because it turns out they had another Kryptonian clone. You?"

She deflates slightly. "Geometry."

"Shouldn't have let it build up."

As we reach the kitchen Artemis catches up with Paula and leads her though the doors. Diana hesitates for a moment and then looks back at me. "Paul, if you had been selecting members for the Justice League, how would it be different to what it actually is?"

"Kaldur's not around, right?"

She raises her eyebrows slightly. "You wouldn't have picked Orin?"

"I'd probably have picked Queen Mera ahead of him. I'm not saying he doesn't contribute or anything, but he's a brawler in a team that already has you and Kal-El and the original seven didn't include a magic user. You can get by with having a magic user on the end of the phone but having one in the field would be much better."

"What about Nabu?"

I smile. "Well, if we can pick supervillains I'd probably have gone with Circe ahead of Nabu." Diana blinks in surprise. I shrug. "I just find it easier to relate to her goals. 'More power for me' rather than whatever Nabu's trying to achieve. I can deal with selfish people. Society works because it's easier for people to get what they want by working together than constantly fighting against each other. I can't deal with deranged idealists. You just can't reason with people like that." I'm having trouble coming up with another major league magic user. Probably worth looking into now that Mister Zatara's unavailable. John's not quite.. League level. "Come on, let's get in there before the whatever we're having gets cold."

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Minutes 25

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25th November

18:52 GMT -5

Alan's already greeting Paula as I follow her in. He's still looking vital from his last ring recharge but I'm painfully aware that it might not last. With a little luck and no unnecessary expenditure he should be able to hang on until I can get to Maltus and twist arms until someone offers to make him a replacement. Artemis has headed over to where Zatanna and M'gann are standing next to the tureens in the kitchen area, a haze of water vapour rising from the vegetables. Looks like carrots and beans. With a gesture M'gann opens the oven and floats out the turkey. Mister J'onzz appears to be hovering -figuratively, not literally- as close to the kitchen as he can while trying not to make it obvious that's what he's doing. Kon's sitting in the living area looking miserable as sin, television turned to what looks like a Thanksgiving themed film of some sort? Lots of smiling faces anyway. That's probably not helping him. Diana comes through the door behind me, scans the room and then rests her eyes on Kon.

"Paul, please ensure that we have privacy."

"No problem."

As she walks past the threshold into the living area I create an orange construct wall and vault door.

"Paul, where you been?" Alan turns a little to the side to include me in his conversation with Paula.

"Just now? The Themysciran Embassy reading everything I could on Amazon law and custom."

He looks puzzled for a moment and then brushes it off. "Looking forward to your first Thanksgiving dinner?"

"Slightly nervously, yes. All looks edible from here."

"So, what's with the…" He wiggles his right index finger at the glowing orange wall.

"Diana wanted to talk to Kon in private. Has he said.. anything.. about..?"

"Not really. He just came storming in with a face like thunder and threw himself down on the couch. Something I should know about?"

"Um… I think he'd probably prefer to keep exactly what happened private for the moment." I turn my head towards Paula. "Kon was created in a laboratory and.. one of the things that happened today was me finding out that the lab still has hundreds of intelligent creatures they'd created working for them as slaves."

"They what?!" / "That's possible?"

I look from Alan to Paula. "Yes and yes. Suffice to say I wasn't going to put up with that. It's under new management now and I'm going to be watching it very carefully."

"What happened to the folks running it?"

"The managing director got fired."

"For breeding slaves?! Whoever did that deserves-!"

"Remember Robert Crane?" Alan freezes for a moment and I shrug. "Ruling's still in force. Taking legal action against everyone involved would be difficult and could take years."

Paula looks lost. "Robert.. Crane?"

Alan takes a breath. "Robotman. I met him when we both joined the All-Star Squadron back in forty one."

She frowns. "Nineteen forty one? But you'd have to be…"

"Yeah." He smiles faintly. "I'm actually ninety two. Can you believe I honestly didn't find anything odd about the way I look until Paul pointed it out?"

"But… How?"

"Leaky green lantern."

Alan grins. "Well you see son, when you get to ninety two, some things just don't work quite so well as they used to."

Arugghhh. I wince. "I mean his personal lantern. His personal lantern splurged enough green energy into his soul that it sort of rejuvenated him." Ah, probably should mention that as well… "There are a lot of things we run into in this line of work that kill us but some can extend our lives. With this ring-" I hold it up. "I'm going to go on pretty much indefinitely, and with the Danner Formula Artemis will probably live to.. well, I'm not sure exactly. A lot longer than normal."

She doesn't look bothered by that. "How much longer?"

"Not sure exactly. I mean, the formula's only been around for a hundred and sixteen years and.. I don't know of anyone who's had it who's died of anything related to old age. If I had to guess I'd say that I'd be surprised if she had any grey hairs at ninety."

"Does Artemis know about that?"

"Um, yeah, I think I mentioned it. Oh, um, if you're interested in getting dosed with it yourself you've only got to ask."

Alan raises his eyebrows. "You didn't offer that to me. Should I be offended?"

That would have been too easy, wouldn't it? "It.. wouldn't work on you. You're not organic enough. Otherwise I'd probably have dosed you with it when I was merged with the Ophidian."

"Had wondered about that. Anyway, Robert got shot dead when some hoodlums attacked his lab, and one of his co-workers transplanted his brain into a robotic body. Court ended up ruling that he wasn't a person anymore, just a robot who thought he was. I didn't know the ruling was still in force."

"With a little luck, in a few months it won't be. Anyway-."

Alan looks past me in alarm into the living area where Kon's on his feet and appears to be having a rather heated discussion with Diana. "Are they alright in there?"

I turn up the opacity. "Hopefully? Kon's had a pretty emotional day but I'm sure Diana can handle-."

"Dinner's ready!"

"Sehsid taolf ot eht elbat."

The various tureens, the plate with the slices of gammon and the carving dish with the beautifully roasted turkey float over to the table. Looks like this doesn't get served with roast potatoes but I've already spotted the stuffing and what I think is a dish of cheese covered beans. I remember an episode of Fraser where Daphne was mashing the Thanksgiving potatoes with a manual masher. Martin told her to use a whisk and she refused as that would eliminate the texture and make them boring. 'Welcome to potatoes' was his response, and it looks like we're being welcomed to sweet potatoes and possible parsnips as well. Interesting but edible, and not just in the technically edible duck's foot sort of way. In an attempt to organise us M'gann's put folded bits of card with our names on to indicate where we should be sitting. Paula and Alan turn to walk towards the table to find their seats. Looks like Mister J'onzz is at the head of the table. I'm between Zatanna and Kon on the near side. I start to head over to sit down when M'gann intercepts me. "What's happening with Conner? He's feeling some really strong emotions right now."

"Diana's offering to adopt him."

Her eyes widen. "Really? That's… That's great!"

"Right after the donor of his Human genetic material did basically the same thing? The timing makes it look a bit… Suspect."

She nods, then looks confused. "Doctor Desmond? Why would you go and talk to him?"

"No. Lex Luthor."

She blinks and I feel a slight mental probing as she tries to ascertain whether or not I'm joking. **Really?**

I relax my focus and share my memories of the conversation. **Yes. Kind of an emotional day all round.**

**Conner has a brother?!**

Behind her everyone has already taken their seats and they're watching us. Anticlockwise from Mister J'onzz is Diana's place, then Alan, Paula, Artemis, Zatanna and then the gaps for myself, Kon and M'gann. I think Mister J'onzz's stare is reproachful. Telepathic conversations which exclude everyone else are a bit rude, especially at social gatherings. **We should probably sit down. I don't know how long-.**

The construct vault door swings open and Kon steps through.

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Minutes 26

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25th November

18:54 GMT -5

"…and Luthor's face is just like:" I pantomime his gobsmacked expression and Artemis and Jade both laugh. Across the table next to Artemis Grandma Nguyen just smiles. I'm not sure she's keeping up. I may have cleared up her age related mental decay but that doesn't mean that anything I'm saying will make any sense to someone from outside of the community. "I just cracked up laughing. I mean, tactically it was a dumb thing to do but I couldn't bring myself to point that out."

Artemis' eyes flick to her plate. "So are we gunna have two Superboys around the place?"

I shake my head. "Not exactly. It looks like they didn't bother programming Match with all the other knowledge which Kon has. I doubt he'll be joining us on missions for a while, ifff at all."

To fit the five of us into Missus Crock's flat I brought in a larger table and put it in their living room while shifting the other furniture into subspace. Fetching Jade and Grandma Nguyen was the work of a moment, neatly bypassing the potential problems with holiday visas or the Gotham police. Paperwork is for people without power rings. As a sacrifice to the occasion I've left off my armour so I've only got jeans, a white shirt and a power ring protecting me at present. Grandma Nguyen is directly across from me, Jade at my right and Artemis diagonally across from me. Missus Crock was at the table's head but she's in the kitchen organising pudding at the moment. It's a bit awkward really, not being able to tell her that I killed her husband. The relationship was dead anyway but not having closure might hold her back from getting on with her life. Or finding someone else. Someone who isn't an arsehole. I wonder if abandonment is cause for divorce in the States?

Jade frowns at me. "What happens to the Genomorphs?"

I shrug. "Still there. I want to check what the rules are about the enslavement of non-Humans before I take any sort of action. There must be some reason why the League didn't sort it out months ago."

"You're not dealing with it yourself? That doesn't sound like you."

I shrug. "They aren't in any immediate danger and nothing I care about's on the line. It's more fun to be sarcastic about the League's failings than it is to stomp all over an undefended laboratory myself." I pick up her left hand and hold it between my own. "Unless it matters to you, in which case give me twenty minutes and there won't even be rubble."

She rolls her eyes. "You have the weirdest ideas about what I find romantic."

"But you're thinking about it right now, aren't you? A giant pile of burning rubble, sirens in the distance as I shove my way free of debris, my clothing torn and scorched and my-."

Jade snatches her hand back with a blush while Artemis gags. "When he said you two were dating, I thought he just said it to annoy me. Now? Yeah, I totally get it."

Missus Nguyen smiles at that and nods. "It must run in the family. I married your grandfather not two days after he rescued me from an American concentration camp."

Artemis swings her head around. "Really?"

"Oh yes. He shot dead three soldiers himself."

That sounds interesting, though Artemis looks like she wished she hadn't asked. I lean slightly forwards. "Were you involved with the Viet Cong?"

"Yes, but they didn't know that. They just arrested everyone in the village." She pats Artemis' hand. "When I was your age there was a big famine in Vietnam, and the French and the Japanese were forcing us to export what food we had to Japan. My parents died and I kept myself fed by getting the Viet Minh information on how well protected the shipping warehouses were so they could raid them. We fed the people and the people supported us. By the time the Japanese surrendered to the Allies our people were everywhere." She sighs. "I was a silly girl. I thought that the French and the Japanese would both leave and that everything would be better. I remember hearing the speech Chairman Minh gave on the radio, talking about how everyone had the right to freedom. Then the French attacked Hanoi and the British and the Kuomintang invaded us as well."

Jade and Artemis look surprised. They haven't spent much time with their grandmother and so this is probably the first time they're hearing this. Jade looks rather more pleased to hear this than Artemis is and leans forward. "What did you do?"

"I joined up with the army. They weren't too picky about who joined up, even a girl from a little village in the middle of the jungle could get training. To start with I just kept watch, hiding near where the enemy had soldiers and made sure our people got away if they were coming. By the time we had enough support from the Chinese to start making counter attacks I was working as an artillery spotter." She smiles again. "I could hide better than the men could. That's what I was doing when we finally got rid of the French at the battle at Dien Bien Phu, guiding the artillery down onto their fortifications. The hardest thing I have ever done in my life was carrying those guns through the jungle and the…" She thinks for a moment. "Fourth happiest was knowing that they couldn't stop us shelling them."

I think I remember seeing a documentary about that. The Vietnamese carried a huge number of artillery pieces through dense jungle. The French had no idea what was coming before the shells started landing. They couldn't break out, couldn't counterattack into the jungle, could barely resupply and were under constant attack.

"This time I had learned enough to know that wouldn't be the end of it. The Americans broke their word about allowing free elections and stole the south of the country. Fortunately I hadn't forgotten how to do reconnaissance."

"Who wants pie?" The three of us jerk our heads around as Missus Crock walks into the room holding an apple pie in her oven gloves. She looks over our faces. "Why are you all looking like that?"

Artemis gets her wits together first. "Mom, Grandma just said she fought for the Viet Minh."

"Oh. That." She puts the pie dish down on a heat resistant mat before sitting down herself. "Artemis, you know where I grew up. How did you think I learned how to fight?"

Missus Nguyen smiles fondly. "I still remember teaching little Tuyet how to fire an AK forty seven."

"Mom, that's not my name any more."

"It's a perfectly good name! I'm not going to call you something else just because you moved to a new country."

Head this one off. "I'd love some pie, Missus Crock. Thank you."

Jade pats me on the arm. "I still wanna hear about Mom learning to shoot assault rifles."

Missus Crock sighs. "I'll be happy to tell you all about it after dinner. And I'm sure Mom will as well."

Missus Nguyen wiggles her right hand a little and leans towards Jade. "She fell right over onto her bum and accidentally shot a monkey."

Missus Crock raises her cake knife as a mock threat and her mother sits back, chastised. Then she looks at me. "When the girls were little we used to take a moment before eating Thanksgiving dessert to talk about the things we are thankful for."

I nod. "Yes, I learned about this tradition from television." She nods, and reaches out to take hold of her daughters' hands. I'm mildly pleased that Jade reciprocates. Would probably be appropriate… I take Jade's free hand with my right and reach across the table towards Missus Nguyen. "Would you like me to go first?"

"No, I think I've got quite a lot to be thankful for this year." She looks at Artemis and then Jade. "I'm thankful to finally be out of prison, to be able to sit here and have dinner with both my daughters. And you, Mom." She looks at me. "I'm thankful that I'm able to walk again and I'm thankful for the help you've given my mother."

If I could still blush, I think I would. "I've had quite a lot of changes in my life in the last five months. I don't remember there being much in the first half of the year to really be thankful for. But more recently, I'm thankful for the new friends I've been able to make and-" I look down at Jade and give her hand a gentle squeeze. "-for the charming young woman who has for some reason decided that I'm an acceptable paramour. I'm thankful to whoever gave me an orange power ring and even to whoever it was that brought me here, where I've had a real chance to make a difference to the world. And I'm thankful that you saw fit to invite me here today, so, thank you."

Jade tries looking away but the feel of her mother's expectant gaze on her is too heavy a weight to bear. "I'm thankful Mom's out of prison too. I'm thankful for my health, I guess. I'm thankful Dad's not here." Slight grimaces from Missus Crock and Artemis. At least she didn't say she was thankful that he's dead. Jade smiles fondly at me. "I'm thankful for meeting Grayven, even if, Grandma,-" She looks over at her Grandmother. "-we're not getting married any time soon."

Missus Nguyen dismisses it with a shake of her head. "Oh, you don't need to say that to me. I only asked because the first time I met your father was just after he proposed to your mother." She thinks for a moment. "There's no need to rush on my account. I was quite big with your uncle Ho before I married your grandfather."

"Mom!" / "Grandma!" / "I'm not pregnant!"

Hah! I'm really starting to like her.

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Minutes 27

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25th November

18:58 GMT -5

He looks a little unsteady as I dismiss the wall construct. Diana walks through the gap and drapes her right arm over his shoulder and he leans into her. YES! Kon makes eye contact with me and smiles a little. I try to keep my eyes on them as I hurry to take my seat. This is better than I could have hoped. M'gann takes her seat as well while everyone else just looks a little bemused.

Diana sweeps her gaze across the table to make sure she has everyone's attention. Because the six foot tall demigoddess built like a swimming champion ever has to worry about that, especially in that dress. "Everyone, I…" She looks down at the top of Kon's head. "We have an announcement to make. But first, I have recently been informed by Orange Lantern and rather more emphatically by Superboy that Cadmus Labs are making use of a significant workforce of enslaved Genomorphs. This is unacceptable, and I will personally make sure that this abhorrent practice is brought to an end as swiftly as possible."

I hadn't wanted to rely on Lex's good intentions. I tried to come up with an idea that he'd find worth pursuing but it's perfectly possible that he could think of something more in his interests. She hasn't explained why the League ignored it in the first place but I don't suppose that really matters now.

"Now, on to a more personal matter. Over the past few years it has been my privilege to participate in the training of several of the younger members of our community. First Donna, who came to me for help when her abilities first began to manifest. Then Alan introduced me to Paul after he tried to acquire Alan's personal lantern by offering to purchase it from him." I cringe slightly as several of my fellow diners stare and Artemis mouths 'seriously?' at me. I reply with a little nod. I didn't actually.. share that little story with anyone, did I? "Paul in turn made me aware of Kon-El's lack of a.. similarly gifted tutor, and asked that I consider taking him on. His display of compassion -something I had mistakenly assumed would be in short supply in anyone who claimed avarice as the source of their power- moved me, and I began including Kon-El in our training sessions. Despite his unfortunately persistent habit of forgetting what he's been taught and trying to win through brute force-" Kon sags a little. "-he is an able student and I've found our sessions together extremely rewarding."

She pauses to take a breath.

"In fact, as I've spent more time with him I've found that I have become more emotionally invested in his development -both as a warrior and as a person- than I have with either of my previous students. And, perhaps because he lacked another adult role model, he has become similarly attached to me. At first I assumed that it was simply a desire to please his tutor, but recent events have led me to re-evaluate how well his emotional needs are being tended to. Whether I was living up to the responsibilities I was coming to assume. And perhaps at eighty five I'm starting to feel a little broody. That is why, a few minutes ago, I offered to adopt Kon-El as my son." No one gasps, but there's a definite intake of breath around the table. "He has done me the honor of accepting. While it will probably take us some time to decide exactly how this will work -not to mention deciding how to register the adoption officially- as far as we're concerned I am Kon's mother as of now."

"Um." Kon shuffles slightly. "I just… I always … When D-. When Mom…" He pauses, savouring the word. "When Mom started teaching me, I didn't think I needed it. I mean, she only had to smash my head into a granite cliff face a couple of times before I worked out I was wrong-" Wasn't that a fun excursion. She planted him face first into the sand the first couple of times but he appeared to need a stronger example. "-but I'd been.. programmed with the idea that I was supposed to go it alone. And I didn't like it much but I didn't know how else to be. She showed me how to be a person, not just a weapon. And when I accepted that I could be more than a weapon, everything just started to make more sense. I don't know… I don't know what I'd have do-."

Diana pulls him into a hug, and he doesn't hesitate in hugging back, and kisses him on the forehead. I'm not sure who started clapping first but I'm on my feet and joining in before I really think about it. I don't even slow down when I realise that I'm responding positively to a open display of sentiment. Ah what the hell, it's Thanksgiving. I don't think the Adjudicators of Britishness dare watch on days like this. They'd go mad. Diana and Kon pull apart and I transition into her seat on the far side of the table so that they can sit together. There's a general settling back down though Mister J'onzz remains standing, levitating a plate over as he begins carving the turkey. Okay, two telekines and a Lantern, we should be able to handle the tureens without the usual getting in each other's way.

Diana looks over to M'gann on Kon's other side. "So, I understand that you're dating my son."

M'gann smiles at her. "Yes. We've been together for a month now."

"Do you know anything about Amazon courtship rituals?"

"Um, no?" A turkey laden plate floats past me to Artemis' place at the end of the table while M'gann tries to work out why Diana's asking. Prrrobably just hazing. "But wouldn't Conner… I mean, is he-?"

"Kon will receive Themysciran citizenship, at least in his 'Kon-El' identity." M'gann takes a moment to digest this information. And suddenly the ring provides me with everything it scanned about Amazonian courtship. Yikes. I'm not sure how much of that is still practised, some of those books were from centuries apart but they're very much a warrior culture. The coconut and the nectarine I kind of get, but they seem to go in for rather violent trials in place of what I think of as dating. Hunting, climbing and gladiatorial combat feature rather heavily in their romantic literature and I'm really not sure what the modern equivalent...

Oh. Our day job.

M'gann appears to decide to be direct. "So how do Amazons date? And.. who do they date?" She looks around as Alan quickly covers his laugh with a cough and starts dishing out the… Mashed sweet potato covered in melted cheese. Thank you ring. He takes a scoop for himself before offering it to Artemis and Paula. "I mean, I thought there were only women on Themyscira."

Diana nods. "There are."

"Oh." M'gann takes a moment to digest that. I haven't got around to asking about how that sort of thing works on Mars. I mean: shapeshifters, right? But they can feel each other's thoughts so… How would that work? "I didn't know Humans.. did.. that."

A plate lands in front of me and I quickly have the ring transfer portions from the dishes which look most edible. The beans, onions and mushroom dish first. Probably best to get the vitamins in. A piece of corn on the cob. Heh, this is the first time in my life that I've been able to eat one of these without the risk of squirting boiling hot starch water everywhere or scalding myself. Carrots of course. I think I'll pass on the cranberry sauce. I tried a sweet sauce with meat once in a Chinese restaurant -duck with plum, I think- and I wasn't impressed. There appear to be two stuffing dishes, one with the traditional bread based sage and onion mix and the other appears to be some sort of cornbread, celery and sausage.. thing. My aunt Sallie tried to get me to eat something like that once. Only once. I might try that later but I think for now I'll stick to what I know to be palatable. Locate the gravy -yep, actual gravy, not that white sauce stuff they tried giving me in Louisiana- and pour some onto my plate with a suction pump construct.

Alan watches what I'm doing and raises an eyebrow. I cut off the flow. "You want some?"

"Is that the mundane utility thing you were talking about?"

"Is that a 'yes'?"

He hesitates for a moment. "Ah, sure." I pipe gravy onto his plate, trying to avoid the mashed stuff that will turn into sog if it comes into contact with gravy. I dismiss the construct as Artemis just reaches across the table to pick it up.

"I remember how chaotic it used to get at home with just six of us eating from tureens. If we don't-"

"Llif ym etalp htiw tahw I tnaw." Zatanna's plate goes from empty to full.

"-speed things up a bit it'll all be cold by the time everyone gets served." I lean forwards a little. "Paula? Do you want me to pass you anything?"

"If the mashed potato's free?"

It's sort of in an awkward spot behind other dishes. I put an orange aura around it and float it towards her as Mister J'onzz levitates the bean dish in the other direction. He puts it down on the table next to him. I haven't really spent all that much time around him before and his face… It's a little unsettling. M'gann puts so much effort into appearing Human-like and her true appearance is so dissimilar to Human that it's more or less like looking at an exotic mask. Mister J'onzz's face is just slightly wrong in every degree, skin too smooth, brow too heavy and expression too immobile. It's a little like this was his first attempt at looking Human back when he didn't have any experience and he never really bothered refining it.

He notices me looking at him as he takes a scoop of bean mixture. "Paul, have you given any thought as to how you intend to recover your cake from Switzerland?"

I sag slightly. "I was planning to phase it out. Unfortunately, it turns out that since phasing involves hiding your mass from the universe it's really hard to scan someone while they're doing it. My backup plan involves digging a borehole down and bringing it out in slices. Actually, even if I get the hang of phasing I'll probably do that; I'm not sure I could safely carry something that big without the Ophidian."

"Are any of the other local Lanterns able to assist you?"

"Guy and Lantern Stewart have offered, but they don't know how to phase either." I shrug. "If I could get it out they could serve while I held it up, but I can't get it up yet."

He nods slowly. "If you like, I should be able to assist you in your studies. My skill at phasing is significantly more advanced than M'gann's. Perhaps it would allow you to get better data."

"Thank you sir. That would be very helpful."

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NEXT CHAPTER

Insincerity

BACK

Insincerity 1

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Insincerity

30th November

09:21 GMT -5

"Un-frickin' real." Corporal Jase shakes his head in disbelief as Lori swims through the air over Glenmorgan Square. Traffic's basically stopped as people leave their cars to stare and take pictures. I might have been a bit pessimistic in requesting the assistance of the Metropolis Special Crimes Unit but it's not as if I have a lot of police contacts. "These folks make the Fourth of July parade look like a carnival sideshow."

I shrug. "I'm just glad people aren't screaming in terror." Just like Kaldur, Lori took to the flight belt like a… I've started thinking it, I'm not going to feel any less stupid by not finishing it. Like a fish to water. Blubber's having a little more difficulty but with a belt around each flipper and another around his tail we just about managed to get him airborne. He won't be able to participate in the shopping the others have planned but he appears to be taking it all in his stride. Or whatever the Atlantean phrase is.

Kaldur and a man who was introduced to me as Russell Tenclouds are taking Garth, Tula and some guy called Ronald around the more popular tourist attractions. Atlantean Purebloods have less of a traffic stopping effect. Still, watching small children swarm around an increasingly irritated Sha'ark while Topo and La'gann pose for photographs, I reflect that this could have gone far worse.

Ambassador Vallambrosa raises an eyebrow.. ridge.. thing. "That is a somewhat pessimistic thing to be glad about." He's human shape, but his skin is covered in pale orange scales with a rather odd looking green trim. Weird thing is that he isn't even an Atlantean native; he grew up somewhere around here which I assume is why he got this job. Not sure what his story is and I think it would be rude to interrogate him for it. Sephtian passed on joining in the excursion. He said that he had too much work to do setting up the thaumatorium but I'm wondering if there was some other reason.

"The way I see it, it's best to be pessimistic. If you're right then you can be pleased at your foresight, and if you're wrong then you can be pleased things went so well."

Jase raises his left eyebrow. "You just make that up?"

I shake my head. "Probably stole it from somewhere. Don't remember where t-."

"Orange Lantern!" Sha'ark does his best to step over the munchkins crowding him. "I'm trying to-. Get off me!" He said that using an alien flying belt was beneath his dignity. Struck me as rather strange. He doesn't look comfortable walking on land, though I suppose that could just be the impression I'm getting from the bent over posture which appears to be natural for him. I raise my left hand and stick a flight aura around him to pull him over to us. He twitches a little uncomfortably as I let him go.

"Having trouble, majesty?" I'm not sure exactly what the power relationship between Vallambrosa and Sha'ark is. I know that Sha'ark doesn't gain much in the way of political authority until he graduates and I know that Vallambrosa was appointed by Queen Atlanna over forty years ago and answers to King Orin now.

"You! Brown surface worlder!" He points aggressively at Jase with his right index finger. "Tell me what a Street Shark is, and tell me where they live!"

Jase gives me a 'is this guy serious?' look. I give him a slightly nervous smile. Ring, Street Sharks? Ooooh. Look like they basically occupy the space in children's entertainment that the Turtles do back home. The Turtles animated series I grew up with still happened here, as did the first two films, but the series seems to have been out competed towards the end by Street Sharks. The internet appears to credit the superior writing of some guy called Greg Weisman for the derivative becoming more than just a rather transparent attempt to cash in on its forebear's popularity. It's been relaunched several times since. Mister Weisman's name sounds familiar but I can't.. immediately call to mind anything I heard of him working on back home.

Vallambrosa puts his right hand on Jase's left shoulder for a moment and then steps towards Nanaue's enraged co-sovereign. "They are a group of fictional heroes, majesty. Quite popular with young children. I believe there is a film featuring them on show at most of the local-."

"Gaaaaaah!"

Lori looks around at his bellow and swims towards us. "Calm down Sha'ark, they're just curious."

"I am a large predator! They are bite sized! Do they have no sense of self preservation!?"

Vallambrosa blinks with the calm resolve of a career diplomat. "That is not quite the image of Atlantean society which King Orin and Queen Mera wish to portray, majesty."

Lori turns in the air, pointing to her belt. "If you had one of these you could fly right over them."

"No! Lantern! Where is the nearest body of water?"

"There's a.. pond in Centennial Park. I'm not sure it's really-."

"Take me there!"

I suppose we've blocked the traffic for long enough. I'm a bit surprised Jase has been okay with this as long as he has. I cup my hands around my mouth. "Alright everyone, we're moving on! La'gaan, Topo!" Topo starts walking back over. La'gaan lingers for a moment, strikes a pose and then… What the heck? His whole torso puffs up, horse shoe shaped sigils on his shoulders and around his neck glowing pale green. His arms are also slightly larger… Puffed up for intimidation? Judging by the way people are waving their cameras around I don't think that was the effect. He holds it for a couple of seconds and then crashes back down to his regular size. He looks a little dizzy, actually. Lori's eyes widen and with a flick of her tail she's at his side, scooping him up.

He half heartedly tries to get her to put him down as she swims back but she's having none of it. "I told you that you weren't ready for something like that."

"Anything.. for my fans…" He turns his head to look at me and smiles drunkenly. "Surface worlders are so friendly."

"For some reason they don't find you threatening. Alright." Lines of orange extend from me to each of them. "Next stop, Centennial Park."

Jase looks a little nervous. "Hey, is this-?" We appear on an area of grass near the larger of Centennial Park's ponds. Sha'ark looks around and then starts lumbering towards it while Jase takes a moment to check that his limbs are all there. "Oh."

"Lantern FTL is complet-. Lantern FTL is nearly completely safe. Certainly there aren't any technologies on Earth that could disrupt it."

Vallambrosa turns his attention away from our surroundings to me. "Could magic?"

"Yes. Could magic available locally? I don't think so, not while I wear this." I show him my Spell Eater.

Jase nods and then waves at the remaining students. "Alright kids, let's go do the meet and greet." The group of them head off in the general direction of the Superman statue while a frustrated growl indicates that Sha'ark has discovered that the pond doesn't really have diving depth. Vallambrosa and I follow along behind at a more sedate pace.

"I'm impressed that Queen Mera was able to organise this so quickly."

"Political will, Orange Lantern. Atlantis wanted it to happen and clearly America no longer has any objections."

"How did the meeting with Senator Knight go?"

"It's early days, but I think Washington has finally woken up to the fact that we exist. It's just a shame that it took this long."

"What did you talk about? Uum, if you can tell me."

"There seems little point in keeping it secret from you. I think he was trying to feel out the size of his own ignorance."

"And?"

"It's not as large as it could be. Nothing substantial.. will happen for a while, though I am getting an increase in the size of my staff. Military and arcane attachés, who will be available to the American government for consultations. I should point out that things will probably go better for us if Senator Knight does end up becoming President. If you could see your way clear to not calling him an idiot on national television again..?"

"It was an accident the first time. Is Atlantis finally going to get international recognition?"

"Probably. It sounds harsh, but the simple fact is that Roanoke Island scared everyone into amenability. We offer our help and the United Nations General Assembly is happy to play ball. It might take a couple of years…" I nod. "The Senator had some fascinating ideas on rapid sigil printing. I hadn't really paid any attention to computing before, not about how they're made at least. I've always been for dialogue but I'll admit I never really saw the point of integration into 'global' institutions until I saw a circuit being printed. I really do think this will end up benefiting everyone."

"And that, is why it'll work."

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Insincerity 2

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1st December

01:01 GMT -5

Maybe I shouldn't have gone to sleep at all…

The thing with the Atlanteans went brilliantly yesterday, though it got a lot more serious mid afternoon when Senator Knight and Ambassador Vallambrosa held the press conference. La'gaan stayed remarkably well behaved. He's so physically different from Human norms that I had to keep reminding myself that he's only thirteen years old. I don't know many thirteen year olds who could cope so well with something that must be fairly mind blowing for him and then having to sit through an hour and a half long press conference.

Today, M'gann and I are planning to visit Missus Logan and Garfield. She had been planning to go with Kon but he and Diana are going to be spending another day at Cadmus. Since Kon is a Themysciran citizen now the adoption process happened under Themysciran law and only required a short ritual evocation of Hera to formalise. She's planning to take him to meet his new grandmother early in the new year. Cadmus has had occupation by League members continuously since we left, though I haven't kept up with the negotiations.

After giving it some thought they decided to have the G-Gnomes try giving Match the full program, the multidisciplinary knowledge that Kon has. With them keeping him under it might stick, though until we can come up with something to fix his brain chemistry he still won't be able to function independently. I didn't have anything else planned today so now I'm taking Kon's place as M'gann's escort. Not.. really sure how she's getting the time off school. They let Kon disappear for a week because he's being adopted but I don't know what… You know what? What I don't know can't be truth-lassoed out of me.

M'gann wants to experience a full working day at the Sanctuary and since they're six hours ahead we have to get up at stupid o'clock. Kon, Zatanna and Kaldur are still asleep as I pad quietly along the corridor towards the kitchen. Some sort of food would probably be a good idea but dinner was only seven hours ago. A small bowl of granola with yoghurt? Can't hurt.

I step over a cleaning robot as I… Huh? Oh, wait, I've gone into autopilot. I missed my turning and I'm just coming into the training room. Ring, wake me u-. Oh goodness me. Definitely awake now. I turn to get to my meeting with M'gann when I hear the portal to Red Tornado's room open and feel the air blast that accompanies his flying. There are stairs up to his quarters -Lantern Stewart and I put them in when we rebuilt the place- but he prefers the faster way of getting in and out. It's far noisier but the rooms in the mountain have fairly good sound insulation and we're some distance from the living quarters here anyway. He orientates on me as he touches down and starts walking in my direction.

"Orange Lantern. I wanted to speak with you before you left."

"What can I do for you, sir?"

"It concerns my sister."

"Oh. Um, I haven't seen her." I frown. "Actually, I don't.. think I've seen her-."

"You have not seen her since she left here to engage the Ice Fortresses."

I think for a moment, but he's right. I've just been busy enough that I haven't… "What's she been up to?"

"For the past four days she has been in my quarters staring into space." What? "I had hoped that re-engaging with her heroic identity would revitalize her. This does not appear to have been the case."

"She was fine when we were working in Gotham."

"Yes." There's a creak as he tilts his head slightly. "Do you believe that the Ophidian modified her programming in some way to make her emotionally dependent upon you?"

"Um." I swallow. Would she? She hadn't said anything, and if there's one being in the universe who could be relied upon to be up front with their desires… "I don't think so. Clearly, she could, but she's not usually this subtle. If that was what the Ophidian wanted then Danni would have felt driven to seek me out before now."

"You are most likely correct. I merely wished to eliminate the possibility. Her behavior is far more likely to be the result of her death and traumatic resurrection at our father's hands. Sadly, there are no experts on the effects of extreme psychological trauma on robots of our classification."

"Would.. Doctor Morrow..?"

"Our father has fallen into a coma. His doctors have told me that it is unlikely -given his age and general state of health- that he will ever regain consciousness." He pauses. "I am obliged not to tell you the names of the people who will be joining the Justice League. However, since Danni is not, I can inform you of that fact."

"Why did they turn her down? Ah, if you can tell me?"

"They did not. She was offered a position and chose to reject it."

"Did she say why?"

"No. She will not tell me."

"Well, I can-. Wait, she's not still up there is she?"

"Yes."

"What? Does..? Does she want to come with M'gann and me to Qurac? I can try talking about whatever's happening…"

"My attempts to induce her to leave thus far have proven ineffectual. However, I would appreciate it if you would offer."

I raise my left hand to my left ear. "Orange Lantern to Firebrand. You awake?"

There's a short pause. "I do not sleep. How may I be of assistance?"

"M'gann and I are going to Qurac to visit the Logan Animal Sanctuary. Maybe check up on the Bialyans. Do you want to come?"

Another pause. "I believe that I do. Please wait one moment."

I lower my hand. I still don't understand why… She wasn't waiting for me, was she? I like being needed but I wouldn't want her to become permanently dependent on me.

Red Tornado tilts his head slightly in my direction. "Thank you."

"It's no problem. I'd… If I'd realised there was a problem I'd have done something before now. "

"You consider Danni to be part of your 'in group'."

"Yes, of course I do."

"This, despite the fact that she tried to kill you?"

"Is she likely to do it again? Because I don't-."

I stop talking as I hear the ceiling portal open once more and Danni drops down using her flight belt. She's wearing an outfit patterned after her original uniform: tailored trousers, cream blouse and superfluous looking bustier. No mask this time and her hair is pulled back into a loose ponytail. She lands next to Red Tornado, blinks at me and then manages a slight smile. It looks a little forced and doesn't extend beyond her mouth, but it's something. Isn't it?

I am going to check with the Ophidian later that we didn't brainwash her.

"Good to see you again!" I walk over to her and thread my right arm through her left. "M'gann's waiting for us in the kitchen." We start walking. Should I have checked this was alright with M'gann first? I can't imagine her objecting. "Did you read the mission report on the Qurac mission?"

"I have done little else but read your mission reports." Thaaat's not creepy at all. She needs a hobby. "I particularly liked your condemnation of James Harper in Cadmus. His grandfather would not have approved of his conduct."

"I don't think anyone approved of his conduct. I don't even think he does, now it's been put in perspective for him. He just had a mental block."

"It was telepathy after all?"

"No, I just mean he didn't think about it that way. Probably not that bad a guy, just had a blind spot. While we're.. on the subject, how do you feel about legitimately becoming an American citizen?"

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Insincerity 3

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1st December

01:07 GMT -5

"…did not know that I was a robot at the time, and his organic brain made it possible for him to claim American citizenship. We all knew who he was, even if that was not who the courts said that he was."

"Alright, but how do you feel about it in your own case?"

M'gann looks up as Danni and I come through the kitchen doors, a bowl of something sugar filled and brightly coloured in front of her. "Good morning Paul, good morning Miss Reilly." Then she blinks, looks at us a little closer, smiles and returns her attention to her bowl.

"Good morning Miss M'orzz. Please, call me Danni. I have never worked on a farm before but I nonetheless remember doing so. I am sure that the basics have not changed a great deal."

M'gann looks at me. "Danni wanted to come with us. Is that alright?"

M'gann suppresses a giggle with a cough. Not.. sure.. what's going on there. "Of course! Marie said she'd be happy for all the help we could give her." I let go of Danni and walk over to the cereal cupboard. After a Wallace munchies session a couple of months ago I've taken to putting my cereal in a subspace pocket. Storing things in the ring causes a slight drop in its maximum power storage capacity so I usually put nonessential stuff in other places. Stationary pockets take a small amount of power to create but then remain in place pretty much indefinitely. Heh, would be funny if billions of years from now an alien spaceship detects my subspace pocket and investigates and the last record of our species is a bag of granola.

Shove some stuff out of the way, extract the granola from subspace, float a bowl and a glass out of the lower cupboard and put them all down on the work surface. Not.. massively hungry, so a small amount of cereal. Granola bag back into the cupboard, yoghurt and orange juice out of the fridge. "Danni, do you want anything?"

"There is little point in me eating when my fire elemental core provides me with all of the power that I need."

"Pretty sure I remember giving you chemical analysis systems. You should be able to taste." I look at her as I have the ring spoon yoghurt onto the cereal and pour orange juice into the glass. I used to crush oranges freshly each morning but to be honest the hassle wasn't worth it. "Didn't it work? I can have a look-."

"No!" Danni's eyes open in alarm and she puts her right hand over her mouth. "I'm sorry, I don't know why I shouted."

"Um, is there some sort of…" Thief of Time. After assuming Human form the Auditors couldn't cope with flavour. Is that the problem? No, she handled the cake fine at Wallace's birthday party. "Danni, is there a problem with your food.. systems? Have you tried eating anything else?"

Her eyes stop blinking and her face shakes slightly. She doesn't have normal Human stress responses, no evading with her eyes or fidgeting. She has a subroutine to handle pretending to have those things but it looks like she's left it off. "Danni-?"

"Yes. I did."

Her tremors calm but she doesn't say anything else. She doesn't want to talk about it then. No real rush. We can work up to it. I float the yoghurt pot and orange juice carton back into the fridge, pick up my breakfast and join M'gann at the table. Danni remains standing.

"How are you getting on with Uncle J'onn's phasing training?"

I smile sheepishly. Mister J'onzz has taught Martians before but he's never had to show a Lantern. Apparently Jordan and Stewart prefer to go through walls the brute force way. "Nothing yet. I just don't think my knowledge of physics is good enough to tell the ring what to do."

"It probably isn't the same for a Lantern as it is for a Martian. Could Lantern Gardner find a Green Lantern who could teach it to you?"

"I don't think the Guardians would let him. How long did it take you to get the hang of it?"

She shakes her head. "Oh, I still haven't. I mean, watch." She holds her hands out, spoon in her right just above her bowl and her left just to the side of it. She swings her left through the table surface and the spoon drops into the bowl.

"Okay. And?"

"It should be possible for me to selectively phase myself and objects. I just can't get the hang of it."

"Wouldn't that just make the bit of you that was phased fall off?"

"That's why Uncle J'onn is being really careful not going too fast with my lessons. He didn't learn it until he was much older than me. On the other hand…" She moves her right hand through the bowl and it comes out holding the spoon. "I've got the hang of taking objects out of phase fairly well."

I frown. "I know you.. did it on Roanoke, but I'm a little confused about how you're able to do that with non-Martian objects. You can't shapeshift with them. Can you?"

She looks at me with surprise. "Phasing isn't to do with shapeshifting, it's to do with telekinesis. Did you really think I was forcing my body around every single atom when I move through something?"

Um. Actually? "When you put it like that it does sound a bit silly."

"Didn't Uncle J'onn explain it?"

"We were really focused on working out how to scan him while he did it. He tried giving an explanation but the ring couldn't translate it."

"Huh." She thinks for a moment. "That makes sense. I don't think English has the words for it. There's nothing for it to translate it to."

"Does it employ the same technique as that utilized by the modern Flash?"

M'gann looks at Danni. "I don't know, actually. After Wally said he couldn't do it I didn't want to ask."

"I remember Johnny Quick having a similar ability. He activated it by reciting a mantra which he said allowed him to picture himself moving through a higher number of dimensions than a normal person can experience."

"Do you know what the mantra was?"

She shakes her head. "I overheard part of it once, but its numbers and letters meant nothing to me. I believe that you would have to understand them as he did for the effect to work."

"Would-?" M'gann looks back at me. "Do you think Wally could use that?"

"Maybe. It was... It was on my list of things to follow up on." Something else I've let slip. "Missus Tyler's still alive and she probably knows it."

Danni frowns. "Tyler?"

"Johnny Chambers' daughter Jesse married Rex Tyler's son Rick. They were both in Infinity Inc so we could probably get Mister King to introduce us."

"King? Brainwave is still alive? I had assumed that he would be dead by now."

"He is, but his son's got the same name and he's been helping M'gann with her telepathy. Um, if you like I can look up people related to people you used to know?"

"That.. might be.. nice. I had not thought about it."

I give her my best comforting smile. "Danni, I'm happy to help you with whatever you want to do. But if you want me to do that you have to tell me that's what you want. I'm not telepathic and, ah…" I look at M'gann. "I'm told some telepaths have trouble with gynoids anyway."

back

Insincerity 4

next

1st December

08:27 GMT +2

The Bio-Ship materialises behind the Sanctuary's largest barn and we disembark. Wolf immediately dashes off to sniff at the barn wall. Teekl lazily looks around, sniffs the air and then sedately walks after her. Ring, anything interesting near here?

No.

That's a bit harsh. Any Bialyan military activity or tourists?

I get a flash of the area. There's a flock of goats with a few shepherds looking after them in the distance but other than that the Sanctuary is it. No aircraft, no spy satellites and no drones. "We're clear."

M'gann stares after Teekl. "That's probably good."

The three of us walk out from behind the barn and we get our first sight-

"Mom! They're here!"

-of the house and a frantically waving Garfield. M'gann grins broadly and starts walking faster while Danni and I approach at a more sedate pace. "So, do you want to take the immunisation injections or the muck shovelling?"

"Are you not better suited to both roles?"

"I have a power ring. There aren't many roles I'm not suited for, that's not the point."

She turns her head to regard me with… No expression at all. That's odd. "Then what is the point?"

"Life. Doing stuff. Red Tornado said you'd just been sitting in his room for the last four days. That's not healthy." She doesn't react. I could scan her brain but that seems a bit intrusive. "So, we do stuff. I'll even keep my ring use to a minimum. I mean, I worked part time on a farm one summer and I completely hated it, but maybe I'll like this better?"

M'gann reaches the veranda and Garfield takes her hand to pull her inside.

"Why are there Wildebeest here? I had thought that they lived in the southern part of Africa."

"Yeah, I wondered that the first time I was here and Missus Logan explained it to me. You see, a few years ago in Britain we had a major outbreak of Foot and Mouth disease, and the government's response was to kill every herd with even a single confirmed case and every other herd anywhere near them. We had giant cow pyres where they burned the bodies, cost us billions."

"That sounds somewhat extreme."

"It was totally extreme. Humans hardly ever catch it from farm animals, there are perfectly effective vaccines and cooking or curing the meat would kill the virus anyway. I mean, there was this one guy but he basically had to get covered in infected blood and gastric juices to catch it. What the Logan Animal Sanctuary is doing is studying the way diseases interact with Wildebeest herds and it's located here because they're the only semi-wild Wildebeest herd north of Nairobi and there's no way they could come into contact with other Wildebeest to catch stuff from them."

"Is it safe for Humans to be around them?"

"I wouldn't recommend drinking a blood milkshake, but other than that? Yes. Only drawback is that the vaccination only lasts for a year or so which means these Beesties get a bit anxious when they see Humans walking over with a needle."

"Milking stalls would seem to be the most sensible way to keep them in one place."

We step up onto the veranda.

"Tricky to get those out here and I don't think they make them Wildebeest size. I suppose I could put something together-."

Missus Logan steps out of her house, M'gann and Garfield just behind. She holds up a camera and points it at us. "Smile!" Danni stares at it blankly while I produce what must be the most unnatural smile ever. Missus Logan actually hesitates slightly before pressing the shutter button. "Whaw." She lowers the camera. "Early morning?"

"A bit. Um, this is Danette Reilly-."

Garfield pounces, dashing over to her. "What can you do?"

His mother sighs. "I'm sorry. Garfield, just because she came with them doesn't mean-."

Danni holds her hands out, palms upwards. She forms a fireball in her right and causes it to move in an arc to her left. She then generates another and another until she's juggling fireballs. Garfield's eyes widen further as she adds another and makes them spin faster and faster. "Whooooooohw." Danni stops the spinning and pushes the flames together between her hands, creating one big fireball. Missus Logan looks a little concerned until Danni pulls her hands apart and it evaporates.

That makes my knowledge of chemistry hurt. Garfield seems unconcerned by the affront to physics. "Are you a superhero? What's your superhero name? How do you know Megan and Orange Lantern? And..." He looks puzzled. "Why haven't I heard of you?"

"I was, but aside from a week in Gotham last month I have not been active since nineteen forty five. I operated under the name 'Firebrand'. I first met Miss Martian and Orange Lantern while I was trying to capture my brother Red Tornado at our father's command. Lastly,-."

"Red Tornado can't be your brother! He's a robot."

"And I am a gynoid. We were manufactured by-."

"You're a what?"

"Gynoid. Artificial lifeform in the likeness of a woman."

"You're a robot too?"

"A gynoid, yes."

"You don't look like a robot."

"Red Tornado was designed to look like a robot. I was designed to look like a woman. So: I don't look like a robot. I look like a woman."

"Oh. Okay. Does, like, your skin come off and show circuits and stuff underneath?"

His mother closes her eyes for a moment. "Garfield…"

"What?"

"That would introduce a point of vulnerability to my epidermis, and most likely compromise my water resistance."

"To your what?"

"My epidermis." He looks blank. "My skin."

"Think about it this way, Garfield: do bits of your skin come off to show that you're made of meat?"

"Sometimes when I fall over and cut my knee it does."

"But is it designed to? "

"Aahhh. No?"

"Quite right. It's the same principle."

Missus Logan steps forwards and gently shoves Garfield aside. "I'm.. sorry about that." She holds out her right hand to Danni, who takes it without prompting. "Hi, I'm Marie Logan."

"Yes. I know." She's turned her body language back on and manages a friendly smile.

"Okaay. So, are we all ready for an exciting day of jamming needles into uncooperative Wildebeest?"

"I have been told that the experience itself has value intrinsic to it beyond the pleasure or utility associated with it, and that this is just as important as the extrinsic value." She blinks twice. "Also, I had nothing better to do today."

back

Insincerity 5

next

1st December

10:19 GMT +2

I have decided that I do not like Wildebeest. They're like cows, only uglier and more argumentative. Fortunately, with a combination of food and M'gann calming their minds we were able to locate the ones who were due their injections. With the ring's three dimensional imaging and Danni's robotic precision getting the needle in was easy enough. Keeping the other Wildebeest from interfering was a little trickier, though since we were with people they were familiar with they didn't treat it as an attack. I could have forced them away with the ring but I was concerned they might stampede. Danni using fire was out of the question for the same reason.

Marie smiles at Danni as we walk back towards the house. "Thank you again for your help. This usually takes me all day."

Garfield looks betrayed. "Takes us all day, right?"

"Of course Garf-." She stops dead, staring into the distance. "Is that-? Why are you making a cat?"

"I'm not. That's Teekl. She used to be the familiar of a murderous wizard… Um, you remember when adults and children got separated…"

She nods. "I don't think anyone's likely to forget."

"Mom, I was fine."

"Teekl used to belong to the person responsible for that. Taking her off him depowered him until he got a replacement. And now she works for me. When she can be bothered, anyway."

Garfield follows his mother's gaze. "That's a big rat."

M'gann giggles. "No, that's Wolf, my boyfriend's pet Wolf."

"Your boyfriend has a pet Wolf?!"

Teekl appears to have had enough of Wolf's antics and is carrying her in her mouth. Wolf's quite a bit bigger now than when we first got her and I think Teekl's enlarged herself slightly to manage the mass. Wolf is very strong and could probably get away without that much effort if she wanted, but she seems happy just hanging there.

"He sure does! We rescued her from the Injustice League when they attacked the world's cities with giant vines."

And after Teekl, Adom and I killed the rest of her pack.

"Is his mom okay about that? I had to beg for months before Mom let me have Monkey."

M'gann blinks and then looks at me. "Actually, I don't know how Diana feels about it."

I shrug. "She hasn't said anything to me." I get a flash of insight from the books I scanned. "I don't think Amazons are really pet people but I doubt she'll object."

Marie blinks. "Amazons? Are you saying that Superboy is Wonder Woman's son?"

M'gann and I both cringe slightly and then look at each other. Poop. She did say that she didn't intend to conceal the relationship but I imagine that she'd rather control how the information came out. "Yes, as of last week. It's a bit of a strange situation and it's probably best that you don't enquire further."

"Okay, I suppose I can understand that. Garfield, would you-?" He's already dashed away after Teekl. Marie sighs. "M'gann, would you mind putting some refreshments together while I tidy up here?" She nods at the shed in which she keeps the veterinary medicine. "We've got some reporters coming to have a look around the place in, ah..." She looks at her watch. "About ten minutes."

"No problem." M'gann lifts off the ground and zooms towards the house.

Marie watches her go. "I don't think I'll ever get used to that."

"You'd be surprised how fast it becomes the new normal. I live with a couple of aliens, a robot and a fish-man and I don't even notice anymore."

"You're not exactly normal yourself."

I start to deny it, but I suppose she has a point. I nod, she smiles and then carries on into the shed.

"Paul. I wish to ask you a question."

Taking the initiative in a conversation? That's progress. "Ask away, Danni."

"When I pinned you to the wall in your cave and burned your face-."

"Oh, one of the fun ones."

She looks at me for a moment. "No. It was not fun. My violent behavior towards you when you were my prisoner was the only part of that whole incident that was my own decision. I have told you this and you are still talking to me."

"Well, erm, do you think you're likely to do it again?"

"No. My systems now appear to be hardened against external control attempts."

"Then I don't see a reason to worry about it." I smile and fan out my hands. "No lasting damage done. In fact, that attack was what finally made the League permit me to install automated defences, so really it was to our advantage. What was the question?"

"You offered to 'make me your Manhunter'." Something about the way she says it makes it sound really dodgy. "You said that the Yellow Lantern Corps used them and held them in high regard. The only individual with a yellow power ring in League records is former Green Lantern Thaal Sinestro and there is no record of him using any sort of robotic assistant. However, Red Tornado indicated that the Green Lantern Corps may not have been entirely forthcoming. Was your offer an attempt to misdirect me or a genuine one?"

Sort of assumed that she'd forgotten about that. "As far as I know it's perfectly possible to plug a personal lantern into a robot. My files… They aren't reliable, not until I can get the Controllers to give this ring the once over. And anyway, I have no idea how to make that sort of interface. I wouldn't want to try without someone who understood the technology doing the work. If it's something you want I'm afraid that you're going to have to wait.. seven months at least."

"I see."

"Why would you want that? Personal lanterns aren't small and there isn't that much room in your chassis. You'd almost certainly end up losing your fire manipulation abilities, if you didn't have to move to a larger chassis altogether. I just.. don't see what the point would be?"

Expression gone, body language off. I think that means that she's thinking hard about something. "Red Tornado was programmed to want to join the most prominent super hero team in the United States. Even after he rebelled against our father that desire remained. When the Justice Society broke up and Diana returned to Themyscira he put himself in suspended animation for forty years. If the Justice League had not formed it is possible that he would still be there." I wince on Infinity Inc's behalf. "His core desire is to join and fit in with that group. Everything he does is associated with that aim."

"I hadn't really thought about it but.. okay? Is that what you want?"

"I used to. That drive was one of the casualties of Father taking control of me. Now, I have no core desire. I have no reason to want anything. Or, rather, I had no core desire."

"What do you have now?"

"When I am around you I can want things. When we worked together in Gotham I found that I was genuinely motivated to help its inhabitants in a way I had not felt since before my death. Then, we spent more time apart and the feeling faded. I am not sure if it is your presence or the presence of the orange light of your ring which gives me these feelings. Any feelings." Oh. Goodness. "This is the most active I have been since then. I am even looking forward to shoveling Wildebeest excrement if that is our next activity."

"Shouldn't a self diagnostic tell you what the problem is?"

"The memory section which appears to be causing the problem is the part which you black boxed."

Would the Ophidian have made her dependent on the orange light? That's more likely than programming her to want me. Ring, quick scan? No, no buffer unit that I can see, she shouldn't be able to store orange light. Certainly, she looks a little pale to my soul vision but I just put that down to her getting her brain rebooted. It might still be due to that.

This is something I need to fix.

back

Insincerity 6

next

1st December

10:23 GMT +2

I lead Danni over to the bench on the veranda outside of the Logans’ house and we sit down. Where do I begin?

"I can't think of a reason -a mechanical reason- why you wouldn't be able to want things. As far as I can tell your brain is working fine. If we're going to work out what the problem is I might have to do some testing and I will have to ask you some fairly personal questions. Is that alright?"

"I will deny you nothing."

"You looked worried when I asked about what you'd been eating. Can you tell me why that was?"

A minor tremor. "Yes. After eating the cake at Wallace's birthday I decided that I would experiment with other foods. Lacking a logical start point I chose to try the foods which Danette… With which my former self was most familiar."

"I thought you said that she couldn't taste?"

"She could not. However, she had a diet typical to a woman of that period. I was not expecting a great revelation, I simply needed somewhere to start."

"That.. seems to make sense. But, you know you could just have come down to the kitchen during meal times and eaten with us, right?"

"It had not occurred to me."

"Danni." I take her right hand out of her lap and hold it in my own. "We're your friends and your team mates. If you want us to include you in something, just join in." She doesn't repl-. Oh hell, she's shaking again. The colours of her soul are swirling without pattern. "Danni?!"

"This is what happened." Her voice is odd, distorted by her inability to control her lips. "When I first tried a hot dog I remembered one which I had eaten sixty five years ago. Jay bought it for me. We had a discussion about Ted's upcoming fight. A few minutes later I was shot and killed."

"Food and smells do have powerful memory associations for Humans. I suppose that remembering it suddenly and vividly must have come as a shock, but why does my holding your hand-?"

"I.. don't.. know. Memories from my previous life are forcing their way into my conscious mind but they are no longer text files or recordings. They are living memories."

That sounds like something Ophidian-merged me might have done. "I don't… Okay, if I'm scanning your brain while one of your old memories reformats I should be able to get a better idea of how much of a problem it is. I'll point out that.. how you feel about the hot dog and about getting shot is probably a separate issue. Those were traumatic. Every day living shouldn't be."

"What do I need to do?"

"Is me holding your hand still a problem?"

"Less so. It is manageable. I'm remembering holding hands with a man I dated briefly in nineteen forty three before being assigned overseas."

"Was dating part of your programming?"

"I was programmed to infiltrate. I knew how dating worked, though clearly things would have become awkward if the relationship had developed any further."

Ring, continuous detailed scan of her brain.

Compliance.

"I need you to try and pick something which you think should have emotional resonance but currently doesn't. I'll have the ring scan the patterns of brain activity and try and work out what's going on. I realise that sounds a bit strange…"

"I have several possibilities. Does it matter precisely what the memory is?"

"Something happy would be better, I imagine."

"Very well." She shifts her position on the bench so that she's facing me as much as possible. Then she leans forwards and kisses me on the lips. She doesn't linger, just forwards and then back to her original position. Her lips were soft but dry. I don't think she's wearing any lipstick.

"Remembering anything?" Ring, is she?

"No."

Memory links not forming.

"Um, why did you think that would work?"

"I have kissed people before, and it seems that it should be an emotionally arousing activity."

"Maybe something more simple would be better?" Ring, locate roses.

Roses located.

A flicker as I appear at a florist stand, pick up a bunch of orange roses and hand a platinum coin to the astonished florist before transitioning back and handing them to Danni. "How about now?"

She takes them in both hands and slowly raises them to her face to sniff them. In the distance I hear the sound of a car engine.

Alert! Memory connections forming.

"Yes, I have been given flowers before. I am now remembering each occasion."

"Does it.. feel alright?"

She carefully runs her right index finger along a petal. "I think so. The associations are certainly less alarming."

"We may have cracked that one then. I don't know what to say about flashing back to getting shot, but, I think your best bet with the rest is to try doing the things you remember having done before while you're in a safe environment. I mean, assuming that you're alright with having your old memories.. contextualised like that. 'Cause if you're not I'll have to get the Ophidian and try-."

"It is fine. Now that I understand what is happening it is no longer something to be feared." She holds the roses close to her face once again. "Thank you."

"You're welcome. Now, I'll say it again: I'm happy to help with anything you want to re-experience, your brother's happy to help and I'm sure that your old Society friends would be as well."

"And your team?"

"Yes, though you may want to avoid asking Wallace to help you with this sort of thing. He seems to have a thing for older women."

"But I am not older. Depending on how one dates my existence I am either a little over three years old or a month and a half. Even your friend Kon-El is older than my current mindset."

"Oh. You've got a point there. I hadn't really thought about it."

"Did my brother tell you that I had been offered a place in the Justice League?"

"Yes. He also said that you turned it down. They haven't announced anything yet, if you wanted to you could probably still take it."

"I do not believe that would be a good idea until my mental network has stabilized. But it is certainly something I will consider for the future."

back

Insincerity 7

next

1st December

10:28 GMT +2

"Of course, that doesn't explain the motivation problem you've been having."

"I now have something to focus on. That should be sufficient, at least in the short term."

The sound of the engine is getting closer. I look in its direction. No, not Garfield joyriding. A red four by four has just turned off the road into the Sanctuary. Who's inside? Oh whaw, this is going to be awkward. That's Kal-El in Clark Kent mode. I know in some versions he's supposed to change his posture or expression when he pretends to be a regular man but it looks like he doesn't bother here. Hat, glasses and dodgy hairdo. Don't recognise the lanky red haired chap with him. James Olsen? Ring? Yep, James Olsen. I think this is actually the first time I've wanted a secret identity to hide behind. I don't have anything to say to Clark Kent. Got a few things I wouldn't mind saying to Superman but I can't really… Alright, I could use the same ultra high frequency thing Lex did but it's not really fair if he can't reply.

Missus Logan comes out of the shed to our right and walks up onto the veranda, watching the four by four as it gets closer. "Do you three need a cover identity or something?"

"Um, M'gann might. I don't have a secret identity. Danni?"

"It seems somewhat superfluous. I doubt that he would know any of my identities."

Oh heck. She doesn't know that he's Superman. Is she going to work it out? If she pays any attention, probably. Will she say anything? Wait, does M'gann know? **M'gann, we're about to be joined by a newspaper reporter and a photographer.**

**Don't worry, I have a cover story. I'm a perfectly normal American teenager doing an extra credit assignment for civics class.**

**I don't think a perfectly normal teenager would do that. Or do it by coming to another country."

**Do you think the reporter will care? Isn't he here to have a look around the Sanctuary?**

**He.. might. Apropos of nothing, has Mister J'onzz told you any of the secret identities of the Justice League members?**

**Aah, no? Why do you ask?**

**Oh, no reason.** "M'gann goes by Megan Morse when she's Human-looking."

"Okay, I think I can-" She looks at me, looks at the flowers, blinks and then recovers. "-ah, remember that." I guess they don't have orange roses around here.

The four by four comes to a halt just in front of us and the two of them climb out. Kal-El… No, shouldn't think of him like that, that's just asking to make a slip up. Mister Kent takes a slow look around the Sanctuary around us before lifting off his hat, mopping his brow and putting it back on. In addition to the hat he's wearing a camel coloured suit and a white shirt with the top button left open. Does Superman feel the heat? I'm going to assume not. James is in an orange shirt and blue jeans and already has his camera in front of his face. By the time Mister Kent has got around to looking at us James is wandering off to take pictures of the scenery. I give him a quick hands-forwards-palms-up-shrug as Missus Logan gets up to greet him.

"Missus Logan? Clark Kent, Daily Planet." Okay, his voice is a little bit different, I'll give him that much. He extends his right hand and she takes it with a smile. "This is, ah-" He notices that James' attention is elsewhere. "-that's Jimmy." James puts aside his camera for a moment to wave at her. "Do you mind if he takes some background shots?"

"That's why you're here, isn't it? Go right ahead."

Teekl? No, she's hiding in the long grass while Garfield plays with Wolf. Ah heck, I'll just let him take the lead. I get up and walk slowly in the direction of the steps down from the veranda and Danni follows me. "Good morning, Mister Kent. What brings you out here?"

"Oh, hello. I thought it was just-" He turns to Missus Logan. "-you and your son out here."

"We sometimes get volunteers helping out. They've been a big help with the immunization program."

"That's one of the things I was hoping to talk to you about. I grew up on a farm myself, and I'm sure that everyone back home would breathe a sigh of relief if the rules on low lethality low Human transmission rate diseases were changed."

"I'm not sure we'll be able to convince the international community with Wildebeest studies alone but it would be nice if we could persuade a few people to think about it, at least."

He nods and then steps towards me, holding out his right hand. "Didn't catch your name, son."

I take it. "Nice to meet someone who doesn't recognise me."

He shakes his head slowly. "Sorry. Ahh. Where would I have..?"

"I'm not singing New York New York again to remind you." He still looks blank. Is he faking, or did he actually not hear about that? "Orange Lantern two eight one four." I hold up my left hand to reveal the glowing face of the ring.

"Ooh. What brings you out here?"

"Checking up on the Bialyans, mostly, though since they seem to be behaving themselves I thought I could help out here while I'm in the area." He must get our mission reports. What can Clark Kent ask in character? What can I tell him while other people are around… Though actually, the only person around here we can't tell is James so I don't suppose it really matters. Have to ask Diana what the protocol is.

"Have you kept up to date with the trials?"

"Not day by day. I know that Doctor Jones gave the Quraci authorities information on the Bialyans' intelligence network but all I know about the trials is that they're happening."

"You are aware that the information he gave was extracted under duress?"

"He wasn't under duress in the way you're implying, his free will was temporarily bypassed. I know that the American justice system grants people an absolute right against self-incrimination but Qurac and a lot of other countries don't."

"Do you think they should?"

"Not really. My own country got rid of the double jeopardy prohibition when we realised that it was stopping us trying people whose guilt we could now prove with DNA evidence that didn't exist at the time of the original trial. Scotland's had a 'not proven' verdict as well as a 'not guilty' one for nearly three hundred years now. Different countries do things differently and since he wasn't actually tortured or anything it seems perfectly sensible to me."

"And what do you say to people who look at President Harjavti arresting several political opponents as well as his own brother and see it as the prelude to a full blown coup?"

"I say that in a year and a half they'll have the opportunity to vote him out of office if they want. I say that that is a right their neighbours to the west don't have and one they nearly lost because of the people who are now on trial. I say that the trial is taking place in public and in accordance with local law. Oh, wait. When you say 'people' do you mean 'Quraci people', the people who were invaded and whose president he is, or some other people? People who aren't living next to Bialya."

He nods to himself. "Thank you for sharing your opinion, Orange Lantern. Will you introduce me to your friend?"

I step to the side and let Danni come forwards. "This is Danette Reilly." They shake hands and I notice that Danni's turned her body language system back on.

"And what brings you out here, Miss Reilly?"

"The company."

back

Insincerity 8

next

1st December

10:37 GMT +2

"So are you and Missus Logan related? You look kinda similar."

Once his initial photographical impulse was dealt with James was quick to home in on the female closest to his own age. Apparently closest, anyway; M'gann's actually a few months older than Marie. James, M'gann, Danni and I are sitting in the Logans’ living room facing the television. Danni's watching the news footage of the outside of the court in Dhabar while I split my attention between that and the conversation. Doesn't look like much is happening but someone from GBS is only too happy to tell us about it. The curse of twenty four hour news.

"Oh, no. I just… I'm a big fan of a TV series she used to be in and I copied the way she used to look back then."

I'd never tried hibiscus tea before today. It's actually quite nice. M'gann even thought to cater to my British sensitivities by not putting ice in mine. Reminds me of a funny story about a bus load of British tourists taking a holiday in Texas. I mean, I don't normally drink tea, but I know how it's supposed to work.

"Whaw, how old's that?"

Kal-El's having a look around the Sanctuary with Marie. I suppose it doesn't matter if he sees Teekl, except possibly to strain his brain partition.

"Ahhh…"

Perhaps I'd best step in. "Mister Olsen, what is it that brings a couple of Metropolis reporters to the Logan Animal Sanctuary?"

He looks at me for a second and then looks away. For a guy who spends so much time with Superman he's been surprisingly bashful about me. "Well, we're actually in Qurac to cover the trials but they're on recess while the judges try to get expert testimony on Psimon's mind control. CK wanted to come out here rather than just hang around the hotel."

"Expert testimony on mind control?" I glance at M'gann. "When should we expect the Manhunter?"

"No, like, some of the defense lawyers want the whole case thrown out 'cause they say the prosecution can't prove that Psimon wasn't mind controlling them the whole time. He's supposed to start giving testimony this afternoon and the prosecution's scared that he'll ruin their whole case."

"Telepaths can't do th-." M'gann stops as James gives her a puzzled look. "I mean, everything I've read says that even the most powerful telepaths on Earth can't control people that well."

"Yeah, that's what they say, but can you find someone who knows for sure? And can prove their qualifications to the court?"

Am I going to have to go there and brand Doctor Jones again? "Would Doctor Jones be considered an expert on his own abilities?"

"Maybe, but he's not going to say anything that could get him into more trouble. Queen Bee will probably have him killed if he messes up anything else."

"Even chance she'll try and do that anyway." Great, am I spending the rest of the day bodyguarding him? The brand is great for getting information but I rather doubt that it's up to gathering admissible testimony. I could make him support any story I want him to tell, which is rather the problem. Would Queen Bee send an assassin? If she plays to the comic book stereotype then yes. The sensible thing to do would be to send a couple of Bialyan secret agents. The supervillain thing would be to find some fool -probably American- in a fancy costume to make the whole thing as flashy as possible. With no League of Shadows to hire from, who's left? Slade Wilson is the only one of any significance I know to be active, though I don't know that Prometheus or that midget Green Arrow fought whose name escapes me aren't active somewhere.

"Been meaning to ask…"

"Yes?"

"Back in October… Those… Those eyes…"

"Yes, that was me. I merged with a powerful elemental and rather lost perspective. On the plus side the information I gathered allowed the Justice League to finish off the League of Shadows' leadership."

"Did you really see everything?"

"I don't remember."

"Really."

"Really. A Human brain can't process or retain that much information. When I separated from the Elemental I lost.. a lot. There's whole chunks of the week missing and I certainly didn't…" Oh. "What did I see you doing?"

"Errrr…" He shifts slightly and looks at M'gann again. Something embarrassing involving his girlfriend, perhaps? "What.. makes you think I was doing anything?"

"Because apparently every woman I know was in the shower when the eyes appeared."

"The hot water was out!"

He starts at his own volume and then cringes. Why would..? Oh. Umm… "I'm sorry about that. If you give me your address I can visit your apartment and make sure that can't happen again."

"Don't worry about it." M'gann gives me a puzzled look and I hold up my right hand and shake my head to forestall her question. He forces a grin. "So, ah, you ever met Superman before?"

"Yes. Briefly." No feedback from him on the Match situation as of yet. Come to think of it until today I haven't spoken more than a couple of words to him since Kon and I met him on the Metro-Narrows Bridge. Not that there's really much point. Never did follow up with Lantern Stewart about looking for other Kryptonians. Ring, make a note to remind me to do that.

Compliance.

"'Cause me and him are like-." He raises his right hand with his index and middle fingers crossed, sees my expression and then sags slightly. "You're not even slightly impressed by that, are you? Y'know what? I'm just gunna go and.. take pictures of.. something." He walks passed me out onto the veranda.

"Alright."

M'gann still looks puzzled. "What did he mean by-?"

"The genitals of Human males shrink in cold conditions." Danni doesn't bother looking around. "Since a significant amount of the ego of the typical young male is tied up in the condition of their genitals this can be the source of considerable embarrassment."

M'gann blushes. "O-oh."

"M'-. Megan, you do know how Humans…" I make a circling motion with my right hand to give her time to fill the silence.

She blushes further. "Uncle J'onn.. um.. gave me a video to watch. He said if I had any questions I-I could ask…"

I hold up both hands to stop her. "As long as it's been covered. On an unrelated and probably safer topic, I'm a little concerned about Doctor Jones. Are you willing to ask if the court would accept you as an expert witness?"

"I don't… I mean, Megan Morse me doesn't have qualifications that would make me an expert witness."

"No, but Martian you does."

"Not really. Not by Martian standards, anyway."

"We're on Earth. They'd be hard pressed to find someone better." She doesn't look happy with the idea. "M'gann, if they can't get convictions then Bialya lost basically nothing during the whole occupation. I really think the right thing to do is to offer to help. If they even accept you -which isn't guaranteed- you can assume-" Danni doesn't know what Martians really look like. "-whatever form you want when you take the witness stand."

"I don't know…"

"I'm going to have to act as Doctor Jones' bodyguard. I'm not exactly thrilled at that prospect either."

She averts her gaze as she considers it. "Let me.. try and get hold of Uncle J'onn first. If he's busy then… Okay."

back

Insincerity 9

next

1st December

10:52 GMT +2

M'gann takes her hand off the console and slumps back in her seat. "He's busy."

"Middle of the working week? I'd have thought so. Cover identities take work, especially when they have a nine to five." I move my hands slightly over the Bio-Ship's controls and our speed increases. "You'll note how I diplomatically haven't asked how you got this time off school."

"Um… Yeah, that's.. um… So, Danni!" She turns to where Danni sits opposite her on the left front side of the Bio-Ship. "How did you like the Logan Animal Sanctuary?"

"I believe that my time there was beneficial."

"Um. Are you sure? You don't look very happy about it. And… Well, you haven't moved since we got on board the Bio-Ship."

Danni turns her head in M'gann's direction. Nope, no facial expression. Right in the uncanny valley. "I have a sophisticated program which allows me to mimic Human body language with upwards of ninety seven percent accuracy." And then her expression softens, her lips curve into a small smile, her blinking becomes irregular and the focus of her eyes moves around her environment rather than just staying fixed in one place. It's like a mannequin has been replaced by a woman. "The accuracy is increased when dealing with people with whom I have prior experience. But the program is just that: a tool, and not part of my core consciousness. In fact, as a gynoid I have even less in common physiologically with Humans than you do."

"I'm.. from another planet." And as far as I've been able to tell Martians don't naturally have faces capable of expression.

"You are the product of evolutionary forces not unlike those to which Humans were subjected. You have similar instincts towards sociability and conformity. I lack those instincts. I simply have the ability to.. pretend." The humanity fades and the mannequin returns. "I can pretend to be Human, but I am not. Unlike my elder brother I am not so attached to the charade that I will force myself to maintain it."

"You smiled at Mister Kent earlier."

"It is a social tool which I utilize to make social interaction easier. When I feel more comfortable with my company I turn it off."

"Sort of the opposite of what Humans do."

"Yes. If it is making you uncomfortable then I can leave it on."

"No! It's just… I'm used to being able to hear people's minds around me, even if I don't look at what they're thinking about. With you I can't do that, and when you turn it off I can't read your expression either."

"My expression does not necessarily reflect what I am feeling. My program is designed to let me more effectively infiltrate, not to communicate my own emotions."

"I thought you said that you didn't feel any.. drive to follow your original..?"

"I have no desire to ingratiate myself with the Justice League. However, all of the tools which would enable me to do so are still present. Tools which would allow me to pursue a radically divergent objective are not."

"Could you.. just show the emotions you were really feeling?"

Danni blinks rapidly as she considers the suggestion. "I do not believe so. At least, not easily. The instinctive links between the feelings and responses are simply not there. If I reflected on my internal state and then attempted to show it outwardly there would be a noticeable delay and the transition might be off-putting for observers."

I take a quick look out through the Bio-Ship's senses. "Coming up on Dhabar now. M'gann, might be worth you trying to get hold of someone in the President's office."

"Uncle J'onn said that Hawkwoman would let them know that we're coming. Do you really think they'll accept me as an expert witness?"

"No idea. If it were me, and I'd been subject to days of legal argument I'd probably latch on to the first halfway reasonable way out someone offered me."

"Will they… Will they expect me to look… You know, more.. alien?"

**Your natural form, you mean?** A minute nod. "The only Martian most people have seen is Mister J'onzz. If you lose the hair and make your eyes glow red that should do it."

"Oooh kay." Her hair merges with her scalp, the size of her head increasing slightly. The structures of her head flow to take on a slightly more Mister J'onzz like cast. "How about now?"

"Looks fine to me. You might want to consider a slightly more, um, modest form of dress. The locals are a bit more conservative than people in Happy Harbour."

Her clothing shifts to something more like Mister J'onzz's uniform. "Better?"

"Yes, that should work."

Danni looks at M'gann. "Do you mean that is not your natural shape? I had assumed that Martian Manhunter's shape was the Martian norm and that you modified yourself further to improve your social interaction." M'gann is visibly wincing. "Ah. The topic is uncomfortable for you. Do not concern yourself."

"Thanks… So, where did the flowers come from?"

"Paul gave them to me. We were experimenting to see what sensations generated emotional links to the memories of my former life. On that point I believe that I have noticed something of importance."

"Oh? What's that?"

"Depth is only being granted to genuine memories of things Danette Reilly did in person. The synthetic memory files are unaffected. I judge that given the skill which the Ophidian showed in altering my mind that it would have been perfectly possible to the two of you to make those false memories real."

"I'm not sure what that tells us."

"It implies that the two of you weren't interested in forcing me to become Human. No matter how emotionally rich my memories become they will still have a clear start point."

That sounds interesting. "What is the first thing you remember?"

"Walking down the beach on the south eastern shores of Hawaii towards a small boat. The text file memories told me that the boat was mine and that I was a volcanologist who had been studying the Halema'uma'u crater. In fact, Father had a laboratory in the area and had just released me."

"We can go back there, if you like."

"That might be productive."

"What else have you tried?"

"I tried kissing Paul." M'gann blinks, which looks really odd when she has glowing red eyes. "Unfortunately, the emotions aroused by the action have not bound to any earlier memories. I can only assume that the situation was not sufficiently similar."

"U-um..? What sort of kiss..?"

"The kiss I bestowed upon Paul was fairly chaste. I have no experience with more passionate forms of lip interaction, so such an action could not have triggered earlier memories."

"But if you've done it before, why wouldn't doing it again remind you of the other times?"

"I believe that the emotional context was wrong. When I kissed before it was as part of a social response governed by my infiltration programming. Since I am fond of Paul-"

"Thank you."

"-emotions are aroused which were not in the earlier cases. How long do we have until we arrive?"

"Two minutes to the Presidential Palace, unless we get told to go somewhere else."

"In that case: M'gann, we do not know each other well. Would you be willing to kiss me to see if doing so causes the activation of older memories?"

"Uh-uh?" M'gann leans away as Danni rises from her seat and takes a step towards her.

Ring, I'm awake, right?

Confirmed.

"Um um um Conner! I can't, um... We're dating! I can't kiss other people!"

Danni stops. "Very well. Please inform me if you change your mind."

back

Insincerity 10

next

1st December

12:16 GMT +2

Qurac's highest security prison is located in the middle of nowhere on a rocky patch in the desert. Though it isn't quite up to Belle Reve's standards the location means that anyone who actually manages to escape and hasn't arranged transportation will almost certainly die of heat exhaustion and dehydration before getting back to civilisation. There's one road and it has guard towers where it branches off the main road and again near to the main entrance. Unlike Belle Reve it also has a mine field just in case the desert isn't enough of an impediment. It didn't used to have a super power suppression system but the League arranged for one to be provided after the Bialya mission. They could probably have afforded one before that but it just wasn't worth it for the couple of low level metahumans they had locked up until that point.

With the Justice League vouching for her we were only hanging around the special prosecutor's office for an hour or so before he accepted that she was his best hope for progressing his case. Another twenty minutes while he phoned the presiding judge resulted in M'gann being accepted as an expert witness and us getting the go ahead to pay Doctor Jones a visit, though from what I overheard the defence weren't particularly happy about it. So now Danni, M'gann and I are walking through the corridors of the Al-Muraqq Maximum Security Prison. Armed guards ahead of us, to the sides and behind us. Behind them are the lawyers from the prosecutor's office and further back still are the defence representatives. To reinforce our authority we're all in uniform. M'gann's got a sort of Raven thing going on with her cloak but I'm a little worried that Danni's is a bit revealing. It looks fine to me but I've spent so much time with Diana that I think my calibration might be off, especially for an Arab country. It covers everything but the armour follows the contours of her body more than they might find acceptable. Not that anyone's complained yet.

The corridors are extremely wide to give the guards clear fields of fire if there was ever a break out. I'm not even sure 'corridor' is the right word; it's more like a large hall occasionally broken up by cells. Lines of sight are long and there are lots of alert-looking guards. Unlike Belle Reve it doesn't look like there's even a token effort at rehabilitation but there is a very confident guarantee that anyone who steps out of line will very swiftly find themselves dead.

**Was Danni being serious earlier?**

**About what?**

**[M'gann tilts her head back in response to the gentle pressure of Danni's hand, her lips parting slightly as Danni leans forwards-.]**

My eyes widen. **M'gann!** The image disappears. **Okay, um, yes, she almost certainly was, for exactly the reason she said. I think. I mean, she might find you attractive but the impression I've had is that she really is just doing things for the experience.**

**Does she..? I know she calls herself a gynoid, but does she think of herself as being female?**

**That.. video, Mister J'onzz gave you. Did it just cover the mechanics of Human reproduction, or did it have a broader reach than that?**

I get a momentary flash of what looks suspiciously like the sort of sex education video I saw in primary school. I suppose that as a Martian M'gann doesn't have to worry about disease or accidental pregnancy while.. with.. a Human partner… Or even a Human/Kryptonian/Genomorph partner. It was probably just there so that she'd have some idea what the other person was expecting. **How do you mean, 'broader'?**

**You seemed surprised at our Thanksgiving dinner when Diana mentioned that Amazons could become romantically involved with each other. Presumably homosexuality wasn't covered.**

**Um, no. It wasn't. There was nothing like that in any of the videos Uncle J'onn sent back to Mars.** Too early for Glee I suppose. **I tried asking Wally and Robin about it but it seemed to make them uncomfortable.**

I wince. **Okay, um… This is probably part of a larger talk we should have at a later date. Short version, some Humans are attracted -in many cases exclusively- to members of their own gender.**

**But Danni kissed you. Does she like.. both?**

**Danni's a Morrow built gynoid. She's unique. I have no basis for guessing what she finds attractive. I can't think of a logical reason for her to even have the mental mechanisms which cause physical attraction.**

The guards ahead of us have their identification checked by the guards protecting the entrance to the wing housing Doctor Jones. After a brief radio call they get a nod and the door is opened and we begin filing through.

**Any plans for Robin's birthday?**

**No, when is it?**

**Oh. Um, today. I just… I mean, Artemis said that she was going but since I don't have a secret identity there's no way to explain how he knows me. I just assumed that he'd said something..?**

M'gann frowns. **Artemis isn't going to Robin's birthday, she's going to a party for some guy in her school. She said she was only going because one of her friends wanted someone to go with.** Oh dear. **How did you find out that it's Robin's birthday?**

Change the subject. **Massively invasive ring scan when I first got to Earth. Um, any thought on how to approach Doctor Jones?**

**[shrug] They just want me to confirm the range of his abilities. I won't even need to talk to him.**

**Can he resist?**

**If the collars are the same as at Belle Reve? Not really. He'll probably still have better control of his mindscape than most people but if he can't fight back it's really just a matter of time before I break through.**

I have the ring do another scan of the area, both for anything that looks like a threat and for anything that some of my scans can't detect but others can. Nothing. Physically infiltrating a place like this would be hard; there's just so many guards around that one man couldn't sneak in. A sleeper agent is a possibility. It's unlikely that Doctor Jones knew every Bialyan agent in Qurac, but again, unless they got someone near the top there are too many other people around. I can see Doctor Jones' enclosure up ahead now. No Aluminium Oxynitride walls here, just solid metal bars all around.

Doctor Jones himself is lying on his back on the floor towards the middle of the cell, arms folded behind his head. He's wearing what look like pale brown pyjamas: the local prison uniform. He turns his head in our direction with a slight frown, seeing the guards first. The frown fades as his eyes alight on M'gann but other than watching a little more intently he doesn't take any action.

The senior guard who came in with us takes a quick look around the cell and then approaches the three of us. He's a rugged looking Arab man with a full beard and the pips of a sergeant on his shoulders. The ring gives his name as Sergeant Al-Taraq. "Miss… M'orzz? Is that the correct way to pronounce it?" M'gann nods. "Do you need us to take him out of the cell?"

"No, this will be fine, thank you."

Reassured that the prisoner is still secure the guards spread out a bit and the lawyers huddle a little closer. The head of the defence team -a man named Mohammad Mahzah- goes to step up to the bars but loses heart when Doctor Jones makes eye contact and then rolls his eyes.

One of the defence lawyers has come up beside me. "So, ah, what's she going to do?" Clean shaven Caucasian with an American accent. I raise my eyebrows. "Well, there wasn't a class on telepathic interrogation at Harvard." He smiles at me. "Nylor Truggs. I'm on.. Sumaan Harjavti's defence team."

"Miss Martian has a good idea about what is possible with telepathy. This is just a scan to assess Doctor Jones' telepathic strength. Once she knows that, she can describe his limits to the court."

"What if she's wrong?"

"That's always a risk with expert witnesses. I imagine that the defence will have the opportunity to find a better expert." I shrug. "If you can. Or question her expertise, though I should probably point out that by Martian standards 'how strong is this guy?' isn't a very difficult question."

"Even with the collar on? I thought with all the guards they might be going to take it off."

"If they were going to take it off we'd clear the room of guards and you'd be watching on camera."

He nods, then appears to remember something. "Hey, ahh. Weren't you involved in stopping the Bialyan take over?"

"What makes you think that?"

"It was in the newspapers. Hah, I've been ahh, I've been reading up on everything that happened very carefully."

"I was involved. I'm afraid I won't be saying any more on the subject outside of court."

"Oh, oh, sure, sure. No problem. It's just that, ahh, M'genn M'ozz is here to scan Psimon, you're here for, well, security, presumably. Why's, ahh." He points at Danni. "I don't actually know who she is."

Danni turns to him, once again affecting Human facial expression. "My name is Danette Reilly. I am entirely immune to telepathy. In the unlikely event of something going badly wrong I am responsible for rendering Doctor Jones incapable of escape without impeding his ability to give testimony."

Mister Truggs grins nervously. "Oh! Glad to know we're in such good hands."

back

Insincerity 11

next

1st December

12:21 GMT +2

M'gann and I walk up to the cell. Doctor Jones’ eyes flick in our direction and then return to the ceiling. "Hello Martian. And.. you."

"Doctor Jones. How have you been?"

"Oh, you know: same old same old. On the plus side I'd have to live three hundred and seventy two years to complete my sentence, so in my estimation I should be able to cheat them of over two thirds of it. You?"

"Pretty good. Lots of fresh air, exercise, meeting new people. Do you know why we're here?"

"You want information, presumably."

"The defence are trying to claim that you were in full mental control of their clients during your takeover attempt. Miss Martian is going to scan you to see whether or not you are actually capable of that."

"By all means. I'll see if I can conjure up something suitably disturbing from my subconscious with which to welcome her."

"We're gaining information about your abilities, Doctor Jones. Not testimony. If you make a nuisance of yourself I can just brand you again."

His lip curls in distaste. "Fine. I'll be a good little supervillain."

"Ah, excuse me? Brand?" Mister Truggs takes a couple of steps forwards. "What..? Ahh, what exactly... I mean, you're not talking about, arhm..." He holds up his left palm and brings his right fist into it. "Tssst." His eyes flick between M'gann and me. "I mean, you're not, right?"

"No. The orange light brand allows me to alter his priorities. Making him want to cooperate with the investigation."

"Oh! That's how you got the original information. I was wondering why the prosecution were so reluctant to tell us." He jazz hands and grimaces. "'National security'. How do we, ahh, get an expert witness on your abilities?"

"You can ask me, request information from my tutors or if you like I'll see if Wonder Woman is willing to lend you the Lasso of Truth to use on me."

"I'm ahh, I'm sure your word will be fine, just fine."

"Are you representing Doctor Jones as well?"

"No. Um, no one really wan'ed that job. I mean, we defence lawyers try the best we can but there's only so much we can do. But ahh, the data he provided is the main source of evidence against my client. Since it clearly wasn't given voluntarily... Well." He shrugs.

Hm. Should I have kept quiet? No, if we're actually going to bother with a trial the defence needs to have that sort of information. "Miss Martian? Have you finished?"

"Not quite yet."

"Any trouble?"

"... Nothing unexpected."

For a moment I see what she's seeing in his mind: some sort of high tech laboratory with a hole to nowhere opening just above a pedestal. I don't remember how Doctor Jones was originally supposed to have gained his abilities and I haven't been able to find a record of it here. M'gann tenses slightly and the image disappears. Looks like she has it under control. Next topic, then. "Doctor Jones, have you given any thought to the probability that Queen Bee will try to have you killed?"

"Why? I failed the mission but I'm already being punished. As long as I keep my mouth shut about any-" He turns his head slightly to the side to look briefly at Mister Truggs. "-alleged co-conspirators I'm not really her problem anymore. I doubt they'll let you brand me on the witness stand. And who knows? Perhaps I'm useful enough to be worth recovering."

"Ahh, Doctor Jones, I really don't advise-."

"Oh, do shut up. Life's bad enough already without adding lawyers into the mix."

"Ah!" M'gann gasps in shock! I see a brief flash of another's pain and see a ghostly image of some sort of organotechnological device lowering itself towards 'me'. She takes an unsteady pace away from the cell.

Doctor Jones smiles faintly. "That was your own fault. You shouldn't go poking around if you want to avoid seeing things you'll find disturbing."

"Do you really think that Queen Bee is that forgiving? Between the two of us we made her look fairly stupid. Heck, your information is probably the reason President Harjavti's still got a job." And an opinion poll rating that David Cameron would give his mother's right arm for. "To say nothing of getting her best placed agent arrested."

"Ahh, alleged. Alleged agent."

"I may be in the dog house, Orange Lantern, but she's not going to kill me. Sometimes we all get overpowered. Even me. Even you. No rational person would waste resources killing a loyal employee just because of that."

"And I'm trying to make that image of a rational person line up with what I know about Queen Bee, and it just isn't happening."

"Then I suppose I'll be cheating them out of a lot more than two thirds. Unless you've got an actual offer for me."

"You're going to die in prison, but I might be able to arrange for you to serve your sentence a little further from Bialya."

He actually smirks. "I wouldn't mind spending some time in Paris. I hear it's lovely this time of the year."

"No, but you do have outstanding warrants in the United States. I'm given to understand that the food in Belle Reve is rather better than what they serve here."

He blinks, then pushes himself up into a sitting position facing me. "Belle Reve? Really?"

"President Harjavti is eager to improve relations with the US. Handing you over -on the understanding that you still end up serving as much of your three hundred plus year sentence as possible- would be a powerful gesture of good will. There are more than a few of your victims who'd like their day in court."

"Mmm. It would be nice to be somewhere where the guards understand when I taunt them. Plus, opportunities for travel during the trials."

"Now, ahh, now hold on a minute..."

"I'll want to see the President's signature on a written agreement first, and a lawyer."

"He'll sign whatever lawyers you want."

"Maybe I, ahh, maybe I was a bit hasty when I said no one wan'ed to represent-."

"Then what are we waiting for? I've got a deposition to give." He rises to his feet and dusts himself off. "Ah, to be amongst all of my friends once more in good old Louisiana."

"M'gann?"

She nods. "No, he couldn't mind control that many people."

"Ahh, it is your opinion he couldn't-."

"I'm not even sure he could turn them all into sleeper agents reliably."

"Oh, come now, that's a bit harsh. There was this one man back in Providence who I-." The lights in the cell flicker for a moment and he looks up at the ceiling. "Oh? What's this?"

Ring, what just happened?

The main power line to the prison has been destroyed in a subterranean explosion. Local back up power now online. In addition- Doctor Jones’ collar falls to the floor. -an associated EMP surge has disabled the prison's power suppression systems.

Doctor Jones takes a look around the room. "Well. Isn't that interesting?"

back

Insincerity 12

next

1st December

12:25 GMT +2

My construct armour forms around my body as every guard in the room points their gun at Doctor Jones and starts shouting.

"Get down on the ground!" / "Don't move!" / "Stay where you are!"

Doctor Jones looks left and right before giving a tiny shake of his head. "Oh, dear me. This doesn't look like a set up at all. I'd best charge all of these guns and get myself horribly killed." He slowly and deliberately puts his hands behind his head. "I think not."

The guards are still on a hair trigger but at least he isn't about to get shot immediately.

"M'gann, make sure he's behaving himself."

"Already on it."

Ring, show me the blast point. In my mind's eye I see that a giant crater has appeared in the desert near the road. Why couldn't you detect that bomb beforehand?

At last scan no explosive device existed at that location.

"Ahh, is there a problem?"

"Lantern, would you mind doing something about my collar before one of these gentlemen does something unfortunate?"

Any other explosives you can't detect?

Unknown, unable to detect.

I inwardly wince. Perfect. Ring, maintain constant surveillance of the surrounding area. I float the collar up and reattach it to Doctor Jones' neck. I'll need to maintain a tether to keep it active.

"Very kind."

Ring, state of the control system? Ugh, it's a write off. Which means that I either have to transport him to Belle Reve as a surprise gift for Warden Strange or repair it myself. Assuming that nothing else-.

I hear a muffled bang and the room shakes. Okay, we're actually under attack. Ring, what was it that time?

Chemical analysis suggests XTX eight zero zero three.

Meaning?

It is a polymer bonded explosive most notable for its use as the detonator in some NATO nuclear weapons. Its use is highly restricted.

Sergeant Al-Taraq points at some of his subordinates and they leave the room at a jog. He gives his radio a shake and then lowers it to address the lawyers. "Could I have your attention please! The prison is under attack and we've lost radio communications." Some of the lawyers look ready to bolt. "Remain calm! All civilians are to evacuate to the car park at once!"

What sort of person gets a nuclear weapon and takes out the explosive to use as a bomb? Ring, did you detect anything before the detonation?

No explosive was detected prior to detonation. However, analysis of air currents shows a minor displacement of air at the most probable point of detonation.

Teleportation? Subspace pockets?

No sign of known teleportation effects detected. Subspace pockets are within this ring's ability to detect. Displacement pattern comparable to phenomena observed during the cessation of phase shifting.

Shepherded by guards the lawyers begin making a more or less orderly exit. As the last of them leave Sergeant Al-Taraq turns to the three of us. "Orange Lantern, are you sure you can keep Psimon under control?"

"Yes. Miss Martian, the ring thinks we're dealing with phased explosives. Are you able to detect them?"

"Ah, maybe, if I was close enough. Hold on." She raises her hands and there's a slight ripple in the air. "I don't think there's anything in here."

Ring, is there anything that wasn't explosive or debris at the blast site?

Unable to confirm. Debris fragments too small for reliable analysis.

So we might have phased explosives which can move. Heck. "Sergeant, the attack appears to involve explosive devices held out of phase with normal space. Miss Martian can detect them. I don't know what the target is; it may be Doctor Jones or it may be anyone else in the area." Ring, anyone important looking being held here? No, just violent criminals. Even the five people awaiting execution don't look like they really warrant these sorts of measures to break them out. "Regardless, we don't know how many there are or where they are. I strongly advise that you tell everyone to hold their position until we can check the whole prison."

His eyes widen and he lunges for the door at speed, yanking it open. "Halt!"

"Miss Martian, get out into the main detention area. See if you can find anything. Let me know if you do."

"Right." She turns and flies out of the door.

Doctor Jones walks slowly up to the bars nearest me. "I do hope you're not planning on leaving me to my own devices. I have no particular desire to be exploded."

"No, we-."

**Orange Lantern, there's a bomb out here!**

**Show me.** I get a really strange impression from her showing a sort of.. distortion.. thing in the air just ahead of the lawyers. **Any way to tell what it is?**

**I… No, I can't tell what it is. Should I tell them to move away?**

I send an orange filament out into the detention area and construct a barrier construct around the bomb location. I don't know what triggers them and I can't predict what will set them off.

**Do Martians use phasing explosives?**

**I don't think so. I mean, I'm not part of the military, but all our technology is organic. Anything mentally advanced enough to be able to phase would be self aware.**

"Sergeant, since he's cooperating and wearing a collar I'd like to take Doctor Jones to the Dhabar Army base until arrangements can be made for him to testify."

He nods. "Those were my orders, but only the prison commandant has the key. We'll need to-." The lock is sophisticated but mechanical. It takes the filament a couple of seconds longer than the computer operated Belle Reve equivalent would but isn't a major challenge. The remaining guards raise their guns again as Doctor Jones slowly approaches the door. "Lower your rifles."

Doctor Jones gives him a cocky grin. "Thank you sergeant. I-."

"At close range rifles risk over-penetration." The sergeant draws his pistol and points it directly at Doctor Jones' head. "I don't intend to risk ruining the traitors' trials by inadvertently killing their lawyers. Side arms only."

"Oh." The other guards put the safeties of their rifles on and sling them over their backs before drawing their pistols. "Well then."

"Firebrand, stay with him." Danni puts her right hand on his left shoulder. He frowns at her for a moment and then shrugs. "I need to try to work out how to defuse a bomb that isn't in normal space time."

back

Insincerity 13

next

1st December

12:29 GMT +2

I walk through the door before taking to the air. I fly over the soldiers and lawyers and pull up alongside M'gann. Adom flies whenever possible to emphasise his authority and from the training in disaster management we received from Captain Adams it looks like he agreed. I can't transfer while I'm maintaining the link which keeps Doctor Jones' collar functioning. Well, I can but the collar would shut down and he might have done something stupid by the time I got around to reactivating it. I'm certainly not going to take his apparently agreeable frame of mind for granted.

The guards and lawyers in the main holding area have formed a rough semicircle around my construct. It's taken the shape of a series of overlapping metal segments arrayed around the location M'gann sent to me. Ring, scan the interior of the ball, maximum intensity. If it appears I want to know everything about it.

Compliance.

Mister Truggs takes a nervous step forwards and touches it. There's always one, isn't there? "Mister Truggs, please take a step back." He glances back at me before complying. "Everyone, there is a phased object in that approximate location. Based on the last couple of explosions it is most likely a bomb. My construct should be resilient enough to weather the blast but even so I think it would be best-."

Alert!

The construct glows brilliantly as the explosive detonates, air turned to plasma as the force generated can't go anywhere to escape. Ordinarily I'd just funnel it away but I imagine that President Harjavti would rather I didn't blast holes in his prison. Doesn't feel like a particularly large explosion but by habit I run through my head the things I'm trying to achieve here. Get Doctor Jones' testimony, secure convictions and so protect Qurac from Bialya, protect these people's lives from destructive idiots… Seriously, this is some badly misapplied technology here. What I could do with a phase shifter… And not just recover the cake, I could-.

Avarice application increasing. The sphere contracts in response. Explosion nullified.

I don't suppose you detected the phase shifting device itself, did you?

Novel technology detected immediately prior to detonation. Exotic materials elude full analysis.

Darn. I let the construct decay to nothing. **Miss Martian, anything else in here?**

Another pressure wave. **I don't think so. Who do you think is behind this?**

**No id-.** Prometheus? Could his key be used like that? As far as I can tell he isn't active in his villainous identity yet. He certainly wasn't there when the League cleaned up what was left of the League of Shadows. **No good leads. We can worry about it later.** "Everyone, we will now be leaving. Please follow Miss Martian and myself while we check for further explosives." **M'gann, after you. Feed anything you find directly to my mind.**

**Right.** M'gann swoops forwards, distortion pulses radiating outwards from her. Led by Sergeant Al-Taraq the guards begin shepherding the lawyers forwards, some of whom appear to be a little slow on the uptake. Mister Truggs doesn't start moving until Doctor Jones' escort more or less walks into him.

How many bombs could there be? And how did they get here? That one didn't move, at least once M'gann marked it. But then how could it have been planted? Ring, check the guards’ backgrounds. And check the visitor logs since Doctor Jones started lodging here.

Compliance.

What else what else? Ring, can you detect what's happening in M'gann's brain when she scans for phased objects?

Affirmative.

Can you replicate it?

That process is possible, but cannot be undertaken.

Why not?

Process involves simulating a conscious Martian brain. User's desires indicated that the creation of life-.

Yes, fine, don't worry then. You really can't just replicate the bit she's using?

Not without additional data on Martian neurophysiology.

Another blast from somewhere in the prison and the lights go out, our area being illuminated purely by my constructs and a handful of emergency lights. I generate lantern -hah!- constructs around me so that everyone can see where they're going. I'm going to assume that bomb hit the prison's backup generator. That isn't much of a problem, this place was built with everything important manually operated, though from the sounds coming from the other cells the other prisoners aren't exactly happy about what's happening. Unfortunately, carrying out a mass evacuation isn't really practical at the moment and since casualties so far are.. zero -thank you ring- I'm not changing priorities.

An image of another distortion appears in my head. **We've got another one. And it's bigger.**

Just ahead, at the end of the cells. **Probably a silly question, but if you're phased and it's phased can you interact with it?**

**Only if we were using the exact same, ah, there isn't really an English word for it. Vibrational frequency? We'd have to be phasing in the exact same way.**

**Can you try several different frequencies and see if you can-?**

She shakes her head. **No, that's, like, way beyond my level.**

**Alright. Skirt around it and make sure our exit is otherwise clear.** Only one other obvious source of information. Ring, access Justice League communications and transmit: Orange Lantern to Hawkwoman.

A momentary delay as I fly ahead of the evacuees and come into visual range of the whatever-it-is hovering just outside reality.

Hawkwoman here. What's your status?

Sir, I'm in the Al-Muraqq Maximum Security Prison in Qurac. Doctor Simon Jones has agreed to testify but we are under attack from explosives that are out of phase until they detonate. I'm not sure what the rules on sharing technology with me are after the incident with Kon-El's armour but anything the Thanagarian government feels able to share about this particular technology would be greatly appreciated. The next bomb looks rather large.

That technology isn't-. Do you know who is responsible?

No. I mean, I could guess. It's in Queen Bee's interests that he doesn't testify and she has been dealing with Apokolips. They almost certainly have phasing technology.

Understood. Do you have any Nth metal left over from making Superboy's armour?

No, but I've still got the original fragment I recovered from Kahndaq. Why?

Disrupting phase shift technologies in a controlled way is extremely difficult. The Thanagarian military usually settles for disrupting them violently at range.

Better than waiting for it to detonate on its own. Is it something I can do?

It's a simple technique: just run enough electricity through a small amount of Nth metal to vaporize it. How big is the fragment?

Thirty one grams. How much..?

One point two one gigawatts. Can you manage that?

Should.. be able to. How big an explosion is this likely to generate?

Thirty one grams? Not much. As long as you get the current right it shouldn't be more than five hundred grams of TNT and Earth technology isn't advanced enough to be affected by the phase disruption effect.

No, I mean the disruption effect. Though, yes, I needed to know the yield too.

About ten miles. We usually use it in space. If it only affected a small area it wouldn't work.

And my subspace pocket? I've still got a lot of stuff in there.

Do I look like a Guardian?

Maltusian. No. Okay, I'll give it a try. Thank you for your help. Orange Lantern out.

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Insincerity 14

next

1st December

12:33 GMT +2

For a moment I wonder how much I can trust her. This isn't like Justice League Unlimited; Hawkwoman and Hawkman have been completely open about their role as Thanagarian police officers. Do they do intelligence work on the side? Maybe. Alright, probably. It wouldn't surprise me and I certainly won't complain if they are. If I was an alien government and I knew that a place like Earth existed I'd want someone keeping an eye on it as well. Alright, is there a less explody way to do this? Maybe. I tap the back of my left hand and Teekl and Fatty fall out.

"Food?"

Teekl lands with her legs slightly splayed out, takes a frantic look around her new environment and then calms, sitting back and licking her right forepaw. Fatty on the other hand falls over, rolls along the floor and is floating up to my head height before even fully recovering.

I point at the construct barrier. "Possibly. Can you see the object in there?"

He turns to look. He tries to tilt his head to the side but well fed Praexis Demons don't have much of a neck and he just sort of tilts in the air. "Object?"

"You can't see anything?"

"Orange. Empty?"

"You might as well have a go at eating it anyway."

Fatty actually shrugs. "Always hungry." Then he oh, that's revolting. Oh that's revolting. He flies to the top of the construct and dislocates his jaw, expanding his mouth to cover the whole of the construct. But the construct itself just passes through him and he gets broader and I'm looking somewhere else.

"Hey, Teekl-." She stops licking and turns her head to glare at me with venom such as only an angry cat can muster. So, she is angry about being put in the ring. "Teekl, Wolf's going to be fine without you for a couple of hours. I need you to concentrate. Can you feel whatever's in there?"

"Teekl not feel it."

And Fatty's -ugh- just about finished. "Get anything?"

"Still empty."

Right. **M'gann, I'm about to violently de-phase everything in the prison. Make sure that you're both tangible and somewhere safe.**

**How-?**

**Explosive Nth Metal. So make sure it's very safe.**

**Okay. The way to the parking lot looks clear to me.**

**Alright.** I take the fragment out of subspace and start feeding what I'm seeing to M'gann. A wire construct runs off each end of the fragment and connects to a capacitor construct. **Three, two, one." The fragment glows for a second and then evaporates, creating a distortion in the air similar to the one M'gann was using but.. deeper somehow. I stick a physical barrier in the way just in case but that doesn't seem to impede it. When it reaches the large object next to it, it bends slightly but keeps going as the object is expelled from its phased state.

It's not a bomb. As I look at its insanely grinning face the most apt description I can come up with is a Cyberman in dire need of a gastric band. Large metal boots with some sort of tubing for its fat stubby legs. The legs are about as long as mine but the main solid metal barrel of the body is at least six feet tall by itself. The arms are made of more of the same tubing material and terminate in metal… Are those gloves? The face is a token metal nose, two white dots for eyes and a curved thick white line for a mouth with thin black vertical lines drawn on to show teeth. On the top of the head there's some sort of metal.. hat.. thing. The combined effect is to suggest some sort of ridiculous child's toy.

Ring, what the fuck?

Archival recordings identify subject as 'Bozo the Iron Man'. Subject appears inactive.

Fine, it's just a robot. An old one at that. Records show it was strong, tough and could fly but none of that's enough to make it a threat. Ring, any other bombs put in an appearance?

Three additional explosives revealed.

Analyse. I want that phase shift technology.

Analysis complete. Phase shift devices appear to have been irrecoverably damaged by-.

By the Nth metal pulse, right. Right. Of course. Location of bombs? One two levels under Doctor Jones' cell, one on the seldom used helipad and another in the car park itself. **M'gann, you alright?**

**I'm fine. That felt weird. Did it work?**

**Looks like. If at all possible, please disarm or remove the bomb in the car park, it's the only one between us and the exit.**

**What about the robot?**

**Since it isn't actually doing anyth-.**

There's an electronic crackling noise and Bozo vibrates into life. And another noise. I look backwards and see the crowd of guards and lawyers just coming into view. Ah, heck. Did that set him off?

"Hello there! My name is Bozo! What's yours?"

His upper body is tilted slightly down so that his head is roughly facing me, arms still at his sides. The still expression is even worse than when Danni does it. At least she's expressionless, that grin is just… "I'm Orange Lantern two eight one four, Bozo."

"Hello I'm Orange Lantern two eight one four Bozo! What are you doing today!"

"I'm evacuating a prison, Bozo. Um. What are you doing today?"

"I'm going to kill some little birds!"

Eh? "Well, we're in a prison, so there aren't really any birds in here. But if you'd like to come outside with us-."

"You're lying!" His right arm bends up -not at the elbow, it can bend along its whole length- and he waves his right forefinger at me. It whirs as it moves. "It's naughty to lie! You're a bird. There are birds over there! A whole flock of them!" His left arm points behind me. Oh dear. "And Bozo is going to kill them all!"

"Find another route! Now!"

My EMP flux construct does nothing to stop Bozo as he begins marching forwards, head down and arms pumping in what has to be a pre-programmed pattern. Given his age he's probably too primitive to be affected by it anyway, though it does make his speaker -located in his upper chest- hiss and crackle. Okay, fine, I'm not sure how intelligent he is but I doubt that his brain is located in his legs. I form two sickle constructs on either side of him.

"Bozo, by the authority invested in me by the Orange Lantern Corps I'm placing you under arrest."

"Birds can't make arrests, silly!" He stops just in front of me and I hear the people behind me head off to the side at a run. He leans slightly back and begins circling his right fist. Seriously? Fine, be like that. The sickles come around and slice straight through his legs. Without doing any damage. Huh? "It's been a long time since Bozo has killed any birds! Do they still go 'squish'?" His right fist slams forwards as I jerk backwards in the air just enough that his knuckles swoosh through the air just in front of my face.

Having passed through my construct armour as if it wasn't there.

Oh dear. He can still phase.

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Insincerity 15

next

1st December

12:37 GMT +2

"I have never squished an orange bird before!"

I jink to my left as his left arm swings around through where my centre of mass would be. It's not really a punch; he's just relying on his raw strength to do damage. Probably. Can he phase through me and pull out organs in the way M'gann pulled her spoon out of her cereal? With the ring I don't think it would hurt and I could replace them…

"You move like a Hummingbird! But you can't stop Bozo!"

He shifts his posture once more, leaning forwards. Arms flailing ahead of him he advances towards me at marching pace. I fly out of his way without really thinking about it, circling around to his left. He might be able to phase but his turning circle… Is irrelevant because he's just gone straight past me. He's going after Doctor Jones.

"Bozo, don't you know it's rude to turn your back on an opponent?" On the off chance his phasing isn't on I form a cutting blade next to his head and try to hit him with it. No luck.

"You're not an opponent! You're just a bird! One bird is as good as another." Suddenly he stops, straightens up and rotates his head around. "Unless it's a baby! Bozo likes squishing babies most of all!" Can't disengage without… No, I could try grabbing everyone in the building. How long would it take? How close to-. Ah heck, they're bottlenecked at the door. "Do you have any babies?"

I smile. "Sort of." Fatty, eat him.

Fatty lunges through the air, mouth distending once more. Bozo turns his head to track him. "That's not a-" Fatty flies straight through his torso, prompting Bozo to look down in apparent puzzlement before rotating his head back around and swatting with his right arm. His hand clips Fatty and sends him flying into a nearby cell wall. "-baby." The clearly terrified prisoner inside backs up as far as he can and starts chanting what sound like prayers while Fatty pushes himself upright.

Ring, message to Hawkwoman. Sir, do you know any other ways to disable phase shifting technology? Don't bother with real time communication, just relay her reply.

Compliance.

"It looks like a baby! But it isn't one! You made a silly mistake!"

Okay, he can clearly hear me. He doesn't appear to have light sensors so he isn't seeing like that and scanning his internals… Can't scan his phased internals. Electromagnetic radiation didn't do much. Amplifier constructs form around him as I try hitting him with very high and very low frequency sounds. Just to be sure I add in some radiator constructs for heat on the off chance he's using thermal imaging. He shouldn't, he was built over eighty years ago, but then he shouldn't have phasing technology either.

Bozo shudders for a moment before stilling again. "You've blinded Bozo! But you haven't made Bozo forget!" He takes a half step back with his right leg, pivoting to face the last of the guards who haven't made it through the door. "Bozo still knows where the birds are!" He leans forward again and no you don't. Rather than waste time slashing at him again I target the floor, trying to slice through the concrete and steel before he can start forwards again. Not fast enough! Why hasn't he just fallen through the ground!? No, hang on, selective phasing. If he leaves the soles of his feet-! I jam stake constructs directly through his feet. "Ow! Bozo's feet hurt!"

Halle-fucking-lujah. Message from Hawkwoman. Why do you want to know?

Ring, reply: I'm fighting a murderous robot with phasing abilities. Could your next message be helpful, please?

Compliance.

With a final crunch the floor around Bozo gives out and falls down onto the level below with a large robotic passenger. I release the stakes just as he lands and he falls onto his back. "Bozo fell down!"

Okay, it's going to take him a while to climb back up. His legs don't look designed for jumping so he'll have to go all the way around to come up. He could try getting out but the passages don't meet up until the exit. Looks like he's having trouble working out the correct course of action; his head fan hat thing is starting to whir around in what I can only assume is an attempt to cool his head down.

**M'gann, progress report?**

**Bomb disarmed. I basically just phased everything that looked like a detonator out of it.**

**Yes, I hear phasing's pretty useful. Any more phased objects around?**

**Nothing I can detect. Do you want me to come back and help you with the robot?**

**No.** I turn around to look back at the hole. **I think he's under-.** Bozo's grinning head rises out of the floor, followed by his torso and DOOOHRR!

"Peekaboo! Bozo's back!"

**Ah!**

**M'gann, what just-?**

I'm knocked flying ten metres down the corridor before hitting the floor and skidding to a stop. Ah-agh. My chest feels wrong, lungs are crushed and my chest armour needs replacing but I'm still alive and coherent. Getting seriously injured when you can't feel pain just feels odd rather than horrible. Now, Wholeness Rightly Assumed. Bozo hasn't even finished fully extricating himself from the floor when the ring pushes my ribs back into place and starts restoring the rest of me. There's blood in my mouth but -ah- it's gone a moment later. Maybe I should call this Padparadscha Griffin rather than Wholeness Rightly Assumed? No, my armour's getting fixed too. Since it clearly isn't doing anything I drop my armour construct and float back up onto my feet as Bozo flies ponderously down the corridor towards me.

"Did Bozo snap the bird's wings?"

He's flying… With his beanie. His beanie is-. No, wait, actually, if his mass is mostly phased out that sort of makes-. But he didn't originally have-. No, stop, that way lies madness.

Message from Hawkwoman. You can use molecular bond disruption effects to nullify some types of phase shift generators.

Thank you. An Arrow of Unmaking appears from my subspace pocket. Check there's nothing critical behind it just in case-.

Message continues. If you'd told me why you wanted it to start with-.

End.

Compliance.

"Bozo's going to squash the bird! Then Bozo's going to squash the other birds!" The Arrow flies from my hand and hits the centre of his torso. It penetrates slightly before the crumble effect triggers. Bozo jerks in the air as his mass suddenly shifts, sending him careening through the side of the nearest cell. Thankfully it's empty. "Bozo doesn't feel too good, but Bozo knows his job!"

**I'm alright. The trigger mechanism just tried to go off, it surprised me.**

**Good to know.**

Another arrow from subspace but I try cutting off his flying hat first. No, still no luck. The second Arrow hits his head. Rather than simply disintegrating it as I'd been hoping it just causes another flare. The metal's blackened and one of his painted eyes has melted off but he's picking himself up. Ring, does he have enough of an emotional presence to assimilate?

Emotional presence insufficient.

Not a true AI then. Intact would be better, buuut… He starts to push himself off the rubble as a third Arrow strikes his right shoulder. This time it triggers with full effectiveness, severing his arm and cutting a hemisphere out of his side.

"Bozo's arm has fallen off! That isn't a good thing!" A fourth removes his left shoulder. Five and six take his legs and his torso rolls onto its back, his head rotating left and right. After a moment it stops and stares out into space. Right, now I can start dismantling-. "Critical mission failure has occurred! Poor Bozo! Self destruct in: immediately!"

Armourshieldblockblockblock!

Bozo's torso jerks violently as I hurriedly envelope it in an orange shield bubble. And then.. it.. doesn't do anything. Oh no. Ring, scan interior. What just happened?

All delicate electronics destroyed. Data irrecoverable.

I slump slightly in the air.

Advanced technology irrecoverable. Robot memory-.

Irrecoverable?

Confirmed. Robot memory irrecoverable.

Great. No easy route to cake extraction. I take another look at Bozo. Nothing much I can do here. Better go and see where Doctor Jones has got to.

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Insincerity 16

next

1st December

12:42 GMT +2

I follow the orange link connecting me to Doctor Jones at a jog, making a quick assessment of the damage to the prison as I go. Doesn't look.. too bad. None of the cells are breached. Power's still out but that can be left for a bit. Once we've got Doctor Jones somewhere secure I can come back and fix the generator myself. Fix the whole place up myself, actually. No point trying to keep hold of Bozo's remains with all of the interesting bits destroyed. Would the League want it? Oh, they can just ask the Quracis.

Ring, access Justice League communications. Get me Hawkwoman again.

Hawkwoman here. Report.

Thank you for your help, sir. The robot's been rendered inert, no fatalities. Miss Martian and I will do a sweep of the grounds but I think we're in the clear. The Al-Muraqq Maximum Security Prison is going to need a new power suppression system but I think that events may have encouraged Doctor Jones to testify. I'll type up a full report once things have calmed down.

Understood. Were you able to identify the origin of the robot?

I step around the hole I cut in the floor and take a turn to the right. A quick scan shows that they headed across the helicopter pad with the intent of going around the outside of the prison. Not a lot of alternate routes. The place was probably designed that way for defensive reasons.

It identified itself as Bozo. Given its appearance and behaviour it seems likely that it was the original Bozo the Iron Man, the creation of a man named Doctor Rupert von Thorp. Its last reported sighting was in nineteen forty three and police records from the time say nothing about it being able to phase.

Do you believe that Doctor von Thorp was behind this attack?

Seems unlikely; he was shot dead in nineteen forty one while trying to escape from police custody. There were plenty of witnesses and anyway, he'd be about a hundred and fifty by now if he somehow... Oh, the ring's just given me a photograph taken at the scene. No, that's definitely a dead man.

Through an armoured door and I think I'm in the staff section of the prison. Unlike in lower security facilities the inmates don't do their own laundry or cooking -heh, you're in here for a long time, not a good time- and since commuting isn't really practical there are barracks on site. All the background stuff takes up quite a good chunk of the facility, actually.

Very well. Keep me apprised of any further developments. Hawkwoman out.

**Orange Lantern to Miss Martian. Bozo is an ex-robot. Everyone ready to go?**

**Some guy started shooting at Psimon when he got out of the prison.**

**What!** I lift myself off the ground and fly at full speed down the corridor. **What happened!?**

**He must have climbed up the cliff at the rear of the prison. Danni handled it, but it looks like he could do with medical attention. He's badly burnt.**

A checkpoint with security doors provides security to the landing pad, but it's currently abandoned. Since I can't transfer past without freeing Doctor Jones I cut straight through the metal of the door instead.

**Is everyone else alright?**

**Danni got shot a couple of times-**

The wall before me evaporates in a cloud of orange and I'm zooming out of the prison and looping around towards the car park.

**-but she doesn't look hurt.**

A cloud of dust goes up as I land just in front of Danni. Her armour has been pierced in three places but the skin beneath seems to have held. Some minor damage but her self repair systems seem to have it in hand. I wish I still understood how those things worked. She's kneeling on the ground next to… Oh. Looks like Deadshot's uniform is black and brown here rather than red and grey. Still got that weird targetter thing on his right eye but Danni's already removed the rest of his mask. The material covering the armour on his left has been burned off and the armour beneath looks warped. I scan Mister Lawton as Danni rips off his surviving wrist gun.

"I am afraid that I was unable to avoid injuring him. Protecting the Quracis and Doctor Jones seemed more important than 'pulling my shots'."

His flesh is seared and he'll probably never regain full functionality without my help. Nothing life threatening though. Not until infection sets in. "I think you made the correct decision." I feed a series of tendrils into his clothing and start cutting it away. He'll lose some skin but it's probably best to get the material off him now. His only remaining weapons are a couple of knives in his boots so the boots go as well. Trousers are armoured, so-.

"Will he live?"

I look away from Mister Lawton and meet Sergeant Al-Taraq's eyes. Behind me I see that he's had some of his soldiers form a perimeter while the rest get busy shepherding the lawyers onto the waiting vehicles. He's now looking contemptuously down at our prisoner.

"Should do." The full extent of his injuries revealed, I begin making repairs. I would very much like to know who sent him… But I can probably live with leaving some of the minor injuries in place.

"Do you know who he is?"

"Floyd Lawton, aka Deadshot. Mercenary and assassin. Currently wanted in twenty seven countries, mostly for murder."

He snarls. "Make it twenty eight."

"No, he was already wanted here." The skin across the right of his body is angry red but at least it's not leaking melted fat anymore. "Murdered a businessman in Madaba three years ago."

"Then don't waste your time healing him; he'll just be executed anyway."

"I'm afraid that we need to know who sent him, which.. means.. we need him coherent and at least a bit cooperative."

The Sergeant shrugs. "Surely it was Queen Bee."

"Probably yes, certainly no. And Mister Lawton hasn't ever used phasing explosives or robots before. Those were a nasty surprise."

"Were you able to destroy the robot?"

"Yes, and you're welcome to what's left of it, though I think you should wait until Miss Martian and I have had a chance to check the prison out more fully before you go back inside." He nods as I generate a gurney construct and lift Mister Lawton up with a flight aura, strapping the assassin to it. "Firebrand, would you please keep an eye on Doctor Jones?"

"Of course." She rises to her feet and takes a step towards Doctor Jones. Then she stops, holds up her right and generates a corona of flame around it. She stares at it for a moment and then continues towards our prisoner, the air around her hand still burning.

M'gann comes into land next to me carrying an armful of detonators. "That should be all of the bombs in the prison disarmed. Is this the guy who did it?"

"We'll know in a moment." I give his central nervous system a prod. "Wakey wakey Mister Lawton."

"Uuuuunnuughhhg…"

**M'gann, we need to know who employed him and where the technology came from. I'll hold his attention.**

**Right.**

"I said-" I step forwards and poke him in a painful looking burn. "Wakey-."

His eyes snap open. "AAAAGHFUCK!"

"Hello there." He tries pulling away from the gurney and in doing so puts pressure on his burns. He gasps and then tries to stay as still as possible. "I'm Orange Lantern two eight one four. And you're under arrest."

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Insincerity 17

next

1st December

12:47 GMT +2

"There's a surprise. I was expecting a parade or somethin'."

"Unconsciousness to sarcasm in five seconds. Well done, Mister Lawton."

"Shoulda made me a cake. Makes me so much more reasonable. And hey, I hear you're good at baking."

"Mister Lawton, you're looking at the death penalty for this. Your best chance of survival lies in-."

"Survival isn't everything. Better one hour as a tiger than a lifetime as a worm, right?"

My left eye twitches. "Did you just quote Red Dwarf at me?"

"What if I did?"

Behind Mister Lawton the four by fours start pulling away and the armoured van we'll be using to transport Doctor Jones -and Mister Lawton as well I suppose- pulls up. Oh. Looks like Mister Truggs is travelling with the rest of us. Either that or he just missed his ride. He's ambling in our direction and I've already got a bad feeling about the direction of the conversation.

"Three questions, Mister Lawson. Firstly, who was the target? Secondly, were you responsible for the bombs and the robot?"

"Oh, please. I'm not going to tell you that. Not going to think it, either. What, you thought I wouldn't recognize a Martian? She's bright green. Though, thinking about it; how do we know she's really a she? I mean, shapeshifters, right?"

**M'gann-.**

**I'm a girl!**

**I'm happy to take your word for it, though if you weren't that wouldn't be a problem either. Any luck?**

**He keeps thinking about assembling and disassembling a gun. I might get something eventually…**

**I'm going to try something.** "Third question, Mister Lawton." I take a step closer and poke him again. "What do purple bananas smell like?"

He blinks, frowns and blinks again. "What? What does..?"

"Who hired you?"

"I'm not-."

"He doesn't know." M'gann steps up besides me. "He has a.. business manager. He doesn't usually meet his clients. He didn't know about the robot. He just got told that something was going to trigger an evacuation and he should be ready."

"Ahh, you know that's not admissible, right?"

I give Mister Truggs what I hope is a polite smile. Sergeant Al-Taraq just glowers. "We're gathering information, not evidence. I'm confident that testimony from all of the eyewitnesses will be enough for a conviction. Miss Martian, did you see the name of the primary target?"

"Psimon."

"Thank you Mister Lawton." I make a twisting motion with my left hand and the gurney rotates to the horizontal position as we start towards the armoured van. "The prison behind us was somewhat damaged in a recent attack, but as luck would have it we're on our way to a military base and then on to the Dhabar Central Court so we should be able to get you all processed by the end of the day."

"Ahh, Mister Lawton? Have you sought representation?"

Mister Lawton looks at Mister Truggs and then back at me. "Who's this guy?"

"Nylor Truggs. He's a defence lawyer."

Mister Lawton takes a moment to digest that. "He any good?"

"Well, ahh, I like to think-"

"No idea, but defence lawyers who'll defend supervillains are a bit thin on the ground around here."

"-and, ahh, third in the year isn't a bad-"

"When do I get my phone call?"

"When you get arrested in America."

"-researcher, so even though I haven't actually, ahh, conducted-."

"Wait a sec." Mister Lawton looks at Mister Truggs. "You haven't conducted a defense before?"

"Ahh, no, not as such."

Mister Lawton considers this for a moment. "Think I'll just see if my regular guy minds flying out. Flying. I can still remember when I could catch a plane rather than hitching on container ships." I lift the gurney up into the van past where Doctor Jones is sitting. "Whoow! Oh, hey Psimon. No hard feelings, right?"

Doctor Jones regards him with dead eyes. "None at all."

"Ahh, Mister Lawton, it's not a good idea to make.. ahh.. make Light of this sort of situation. I'm here 'cause I wanna help. Even if your, ahh, 'regular guy' can fly out, they're gunna need a couple of days. You're going to need, ahh, some sort of representation."

Mister Lawton looks puzzled for a moment. "I.. guess… Ah hey, you want the job that bad, it's yours. Just don't be surprised if I fire you for someone better."

I deposit the gurney down at the furthest part of the van and Mister Truggs follows it in, sitting down near his new client's head. Danni's sitting on Doctor Jones' left, her hand still burning. He's trying to avoid looking at it. I sit down opposite him and next to one of the guards, the orange line which connects me to his collar running along the ground. Another guard jumps up and pulls the door shut. The ring shows me Sergeant al-Taraq walking around to the front while M'gann floats up to the Bio-Ship.

"Ah. Orange Lantern." Doctor Jones transfers his gaze from the floor to me. "I've.. had a bit of a think, and I've come to the conclusion that perhaps it would be best if I didn't transfer to Belle Reve." He raises his hands slightly, palms upwards. "A building full of supervillains… In light of what just happened I'm beginning to think that.. perhaps putting myself within their reach isn't such a good idea…"

"You sure?" The van shakes as the engine starts up. "You sounded really enthusiastic about it earlier."

"That was before I had overwhelming evidence that my extremely rich former employer was hiring assassins in order to kill me."

"Ahh, on behalf of my client I take issue with-."

"Oh shut up you miserable little cretin." Doctor Jones practically snarls at Mister Truggs. Did he really think Queen Bee was going to help him? "Knowing it happened and proving it in court aren't the same thing, and I know exactly what happened here."

"Well, ahh, if you're really sure."

"Is there somewhere more secure I could be housed?"

"The League doesn't really have long term holding facilities. But I can see what I can do. We still need you to testify, of course."

"I don't think silence is in my interests anymore."

"Ahh, speaking as a lawyer-."

"Mister Truggs. Are you his lawyer?"

"Well, arhm, no?"

"Then please stop interrupting."

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Insincerity 18

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1st December

14:58 GMT +2

I disconnect the orange filament from Doctor Jones' collar. The soldiers tense slightly but the power suppression unit I've just finished constructing takes the strain with no apparent drop in performance. Just in case I look over to M'gann. She stares at Doctor Jones for a moment longer before meeting my eyes and nodding. Glad that's sorted. The drive back was uneventful, aside from having to drive around the crater where the first phased bomb destroyed the power cables as well as a large chunk of road. It appeared to have been a surface detonation, though I'm not sure if that means that they couldn't rematerialise in denser material or not.

Doctor Jones looks down at his collar and then takes a look around his new cell. "Not much of an improvement from my previous residence, but I'll take what I can get."

Major Najjar snorts. He wasn't particularly happy about having to empty out a storeroom to house Doctor Jones, though I can't fault his implementation of his orders. The soldiers are already working to fortify the building with sandbags and I heard him getting the quartermaster to put together estimates on building a more permanent structure if their political superiors decide they want to house him here in the long term.

"I did have one question, if I may?"

"You can ask."

"Your friend, Firebrand. When my collar deactivated, I couldn't feel her mind. It was a bit.. strange. Is she some sort of yogi?" He looks me in the eyes. "No. Some sort of innate metahuman ability perhaps?"

I turn away. "Enjoy your stay, Doctor Jones. Don't do anything the guards have to shoot you for." I lead M'gann back into the parade ground, where a couple of soldiers are slacking off to get selfies with Danni. She's posing with a fireball and doesn't seem to be objecting, though of course that could just be the infiltration programming. She douses the flames when she sees M'gann and I and waves goodbye to her new acquaintances before walking over.

Final mission summation? The prosecution are happy that they're not having to give away anything to get his testimony, President Harjavti's happy the trial can go ahead and the defence team are happy to be alive. I hadn't realised that Mister Lawton's first shot had been with a rocket propelled grenade. Danni's heat blast prematurely detonated it and she tanked the shrapnel on behalf of her charges. Even Mister Lawton seemed reasonably sanguine when Sergeant Al-Taraq hauled him off to wherever they put people like him. The Logan Animal Sanctuary got their injections done, though M'gann would probably have preferred to spend more time there. All in all a pretty good day. Have to get something nice for Hawkwoman to say 'thank you'.

**Back to the Logan Animal Sanctuary, or back to Happy Harbour? We should be able to get you back in time for second less… Um, period.**

**Y'know how you offered to build Marie and Garfield a zeta tube?**

Good dodge. **Yes?**

**Did they say where they wanted it?**

**No. To be honest, I'm not sure she even remembers me offering. Why do you ask?**

**I was thinking: Garfield told me that he sometimes gets lonely at the Sanctuary. Do you think you could build it so he could transfer to Happy Harbor?**

I shrug. **There's no added technical difficulty. I don't think he'd be allowed in the cave, though. I'd have to build a dedicated terminus somewhere.**

"Forgive me for interrupting." Danni's mannequinning again. And she can't hear telepathic communication. I wince slightly. "But your silent conversation is drawing attention. Might this not be continued on board the Bio-Ship?"

"Um, yeah." M'gann's spotted the faux pas as well. "I left it just up-."

"I can see it." She pauses and then notices M'gann's confusion. "I am able to see patterns of heat." Danni rises into the air and I experience a brief pang of envy at her skill with the flight belt. Maybe I could get her to give me some pointers? M'gann and I follow her, M'gann opening the lower hatch for us to enter.

The soldiers Danni was talking to have spotted our destination and are trying to work out what they're looking at. One raises his camera. Should I do something to stop people taking pictures? No, that seems excessive. At most they'll see the black and red interior roof and it isn't as if they can consult an expert on Martian technology to learn anything from that.

Danni enters first and lands at the front of the Ship. M'gann heads for the pilot's station and closes the opening behind me as I head for the fore-right station, sit, and then swivel the chair around. "So, back to the Sanctuary?"

"A moment of your time." Danni's still standing. Did she take that telepathic conversation personally? Or maybe she felt that-? "Before we entered the Al-Muraqq Prison you asked me to pass on a message."

I frown and look at M'gann but she's just as confused as I am. "I.. don't remember doing that."

"That was the intent. The message is: 'Your mother smells of elderberries'."

1st December

12:01 GMT +2

I lean back in my chair as I consider the situation. We need to properly assess Doctor Jones' telepathic strength, but getting him to willingly testify would be even better. The special prosecutor said that one of the enticements we could offer would be a transfer back to the States, which would mean that he would get put in Belle Reve. But that… I look up at M'gann. "Did I tell you about meeting up with Warden Waller in Washington last month?"

"Was that where you met Senator Knight?"

"Yes, that's the one. It's just.. I'm thinking about what she said. I checked, and there have been a lot of staff changes at Belle Reve. Plus they've cut back on the security procedures."

"Did you talk to Strange about it?"

"Yeah. He.. waffled about de-escalating, building better relations with the inmates by making the prison a more friendly environment. And it could be true."

Danni nods. "But you do not believe that it is."

"It makes me suspicious. If that was the only thing, I'd ignore it. But Brain had connections to the Injustice League and he's still at large and someone's teaching him magic. We still don't know how Kobra got the Blockbuster formula or who Sportsmaster's end buyer was supposed to be. Then the Ice Fortresses… The lack of visible connections is making me paranoid, and Belle Reve's setting off my alarm bells."

M'gann looks puzzled. "So.. you.. don't want to offer Psimon a transfer?"

"I don't know? I mean, he's got no real ties to the US, no family, no known associates. If Queen Bee isn't trying to kill him, if he thinks they still have a working relationship, I can't think of a reason why he'd even want a transfer."

Danni tilts her head slightly to the side. "So it would be suspicious if he did."

"A bit." I shrug. "It wouldn't be conclusive or anything, but it would be.. interesting to know."

"We were going to ask him anyway. I am uncertain as to how this changes our approach."

"Because I know, and now you both know, and he's a telepath."

M'gann frowns. "Doesn't their prison have a power suppression system?"

"Pa-ra-noi-ah."

"Well, if you're really worried about it I can.. probably suppress your memory of this conversation while you talk to him. Maybe even the reason you wanted to ask."

"Can you do yourself as well? No offence or anything, but I'm not sure you could stop him from seeing it."

"I think I could, but then I wouldn't know to put the memories back again afterwards."

"Is there some sort of reminder system..?"

"I can set it up so we remember if something happens, but it needs to be something that will only happen when we want to remember and can't happen before that."

"As a gynoid, I am impervious to telepathy. I can speak a trigger phrase once the operation is concluded."

"That would work. I mean, I haven't practiced this much. We might just start remembering again in a few minutes."

"I can't think of anything better. Anyone have a preference for the trigger phrase?"

1st December

15:02 GMT +2

I blink as the restored memories reintegrate themselves. "He stopped wanting to go once he found out that Queen Bee wants him dead. We.. may.. have a serious problem here."

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Insincerity 19

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1st December

20:11 GMT -5

I'm beginning to think that I made a mistake about not learning to ride the moped. Yes, I have a power ring and yes, the person who designed it was clearly a maniac, but sometimes it would be helpful to have a mode of transportation that didn't draw people's attention. As it was I had to walk from Burnley Station. I don't mind and it's not as if the Gotham nights hold any fear for me but it really wasn't an efficient use of my time. Up ahead in Wayne Manor I can hear Richard's birthday party in full swing. I'm carrying separate presents for both him and his alter ego. Actually carrying, not just keeping in subspace.

Before we left Qurac M'gann explained her idea about the Zeta Tube to Marie while Fatty kept Garfield busy playing It. She saw the point of letting Garfield socialise with people his own age and with M'gann offering to look after him she couldn't really complain about the safety of the arrangement. I wonder how lonely she gets out there herself?

After dropping M'gann off at school I spent most of the morning just wandering around Happy Harbour with Danni, talking to her about the old days. Not a very logical or structured way to go about things but it seemed to be helping. At least she promised me that she wouldn't lock herself away in Red Tornado's room again. In fact, when we talked about her situation with Alan he was happy to offer her his spare room so she's going to be living in New York for the time being.

I walk up the steps to the Manor's front door and… It has a chain for the door bell. I suppose that given the age of the place that makes sense. I give it a pull and then stand back. I went through proper secret identity/no secret identity conduct with Diana and as such took the time to come up with a convincing reason to be here. If it comes up these presents are raffle prizes Richard won in the annual Themysciran Embassy charity raffle. The rocks, anyway. Can't really explain the Crumble-tech throwing weapons.

The door opens smoothly. "Good evening Mister Penn…" Talia al Ghul and I stare at each other for a moment. "Miss a-. Um, Miss Head. I'd forgotten you were here."

Her eyes narrow slightly. "You. What do you want?" I hold up the presents and she takes a step back. "Then I suppose you had better come inside."

"Um, thank you." I lower the presents and follow her inside, closing the front door behind me. "Mister Pennyworth's night off?"

She leads me into the house, away from the noise. "Alfred is valiantly trying to maintain order in the party itself. Hmf, American children."

"So, um. You and Batman giving it another go?"

She gives me a sharp look. "What business is that of yours?"

I raise my hands in surrender. "Just making conversation. And, Richard's my friend. His wellbeing-."

"Matters to you. Yes, I have seen how that works. What did you do with my Father?"

"Do? Oh, no, I honestly don't know what happened to him. I've got no idea where he went after Tibet." She stops, faces me full on and stares at me. I shrug. "I can't scan for him, but no change there. With the League of Shadows dismantled it hasn't been worth my time to put lots of effort into locating him and without the Ophidian I can't just look everywhere with lots of little-" I wiggle my fingers. "-floating eyes."

A little of the hostility leaks from her expression and she gives a shallow nod. "You're telling the truth." She turns away and resumes walking to wherever we're going. "When the Detective told me that he was unable to locate my father I assumed that the most likely person responsible was you."

"I probably am. But whatever happened to him, it wasn't me. Lex said it would probably be his business associates who finally did him in."

"Father is not an easy man to kill."

"Really? He's a physically fit baseline Human skilled in unarmed combat and with primitive weapons. Without backup I'd have thought that a police armed response unit could probably kill him, and if there was no one around to get him to a Lazarus Pit…"

Her eyes drift to the side. I wonder what she wishes has happened to Ra's. I know that Nyssa hates him and would do everything she could to pull Talia away from his influence but I don't know how Talia herself feels about it.

"Nyssa did not mention that you talked about him."

"It was just before I met her for the first time. How's she doing, by the way?"

"She accepted Lex Luthor's offer of employment and appears to have settled in well at his facility in India."

"Glad to hear it. So… You and her… You talked about…"

"Her history with our father? Yes. That… That was not a proper way to treat family."

"Should probably say… I'm pretty good at healing people with this ring. If there's anything, um, the Lazarus Pit isn't fixing for whatever reason, I could have a look at it?"

That gets me a frown. "The Lazarus Pit can undo death. I have seen League of Shadows records of each of my father's deaths and no injury has left a mark once he rose from the Pit."

"Okay, but, aside from him and Nyssa, do you know anyone else who's used it? Could there be other-?"

Even as I'm pressed against the wall, her left hand on my throat and her right holding a knife over my left eye, I have to take a moment to process the speed with which she just moved. Float the presents to the floor. Okay, the knife isn't a threat, but I don't-.

"How do you know about my mother!?"

She's actually snarling. "What?"

"Clearly you know that not everyone who goes into a Lazarus Pit comes out whole! How do you know this?!"

"I don't know! I don't even know who your mother is!" I really don't. I don't remember her from the comics and the ring was really quite precise in what it took from Infinity Island. No personal stuff at all.

"Everything alright out here?" The knife doesn't move even slightly as we both look around to see Rick Grayson limping out of what looks like a sitting room.

I subspace the knife and transition myself to just behind Talia. "Mister Grayson, good to see you on your feet." I extend my right hand for him to shake and hold my left backwards towards Talia, her knife reappearing in it. I feel her pull it from my grasp as he takes my hand.

"Paul, nice to see you again." There's a puzzled frown as he looks at Talia. "What was that about?"

"Miss Head misunderstood something I said and-" I turn back to her. "-I'm very sorry. I honestly had no idea that was such a sore point." Her mood switches from furious to imperious.

He looks puzzled, but he doesn't press the point. "I think the party's back that way."

"Perils of not having a secret identity." I float the presents back up. "I'll wish him a happy birthday at our next training session. Is there somewhere I can leave these?"

"If the lady of the house has decided not to stab you?"

"The offence was accidental and he has apologised."

"Okay then. Come right in." I let him go ahead of me. "Still can't quite believe Dick's become a superhero. I mean, he told me about it but it wasn't until I saw this place I really got my head around the idea."

Coming off the medication probably helped with that. "How have you been?"

"Better than I was, that's for sure. Physical therapy's going fine. Most of my problems now-" He holds up the walking stick and shakes it. "-are psychological. Bruce has been really great about it all."

"He's a good man."

I can feel Talia's eyes narrow behind me. "He is the greatest of men."

"What did you get Dick, anyway?"

"Improved throwing weapons, and some rocks."

"Rocks?"

"Rocks. From space."

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Insincerity 20

next

1st December

20:17 GMT -5

Mister Grayson plonks himself down in a soft chair and leans his crutch against the arm. "Space rocks." He shakes his head. "Whereabouts did you get those?"

I stop in order to reply and Talia stalks past me to occupy the most dominant looking chair in the room. "Every major planetoid in this system with a solid surface. Thought he might like it, and I'm pretty sure no one else will have got him that." I float the packages in question over to near the crackling fireplace, though not so close that they risk catching fire.

"Space rocks. Oh, take a load off."

"Thank you." I fold my legs and sit in the air where I had been standing.

Mister Grayson stares while Miss Head gives me a look of disapproval. "Orange Lantern, you are flaunting your abilities."

"Oh, no, I've seen him do that before."

"No, she's right. I'm out of my element and I'm trying to share the discomfort." I drop to the ground and walk to an upholstered wooden chair. Sitting, I discover that it's just as uncomfortable as the one Gran used to own. Ah well. "I've spent a grand total of two minutes in the, um, 'normal' parts of the house before. The other stuff I'm used to…"

"If you think this is normal I'd love to see where you grew up."

I shake my head. "It was much smaller than this. I mean normal as in… I'm sorry, how much do you know? I had this whole thing with Diana… Um, Wonder Woman, today about in-costume out-of-costume interactions and, um…"

"I know that Bruce is Batman and Dick is Robin. I.. prefer not to ask for more details than that. Last time I did, Dick gave me this whole tale about them chasing armed nutjobs across the Gotham rooftops and I couldn't get a wink of sleep. No idea what... What John and Mary would have made of it."

"Okay, well, I don't have a secret identity. No life away from the costume."

"You are too proud to pretend to be other than you are."

I try to keep my features still as I consider Talia's statement. It's sort of true, but why is she-? Oh right. Mary Andrews. "Is he making you publicly associate with his 'playboy millionaire' persona?" She rolls her eyes. "Ooh, hard luck."

She holds her head high. "It is necessary in order to publicly justify our relationship. I will not begrudge my beloved his cover identity."

"I'm glad to hear it." I was looking in that direction. I WAS LOOKING IN THAT DIRECTION! He isn't even in costume! The door's silent as Bruce Wayne walks in to stand on Talia's left. He puts his right hand on her left shoulder and she reaches across to put her right hand on his. Otherwise her posture changes very little. She doesn't even look around. I have to have the ring run an analytic program to detect that she's slightly more relaxed now. He looks so relaxed and pleasant that I'm having a hard time equating him with the Batman I know. He's at early Batman Animated levels of happy. I suppose this is what he looks like when not being attacked by the GrimDerp fairy, and lives in a universe where happy endings actually aren't forbidden by editorial mandate.

Shame it wasn't with Selina. Ah well.

"Paul, thank you for stopping by. Did you want to talk to me about something?"

"Yes, the.. um, the Qurac-" He nods. "-situation."

"Of course. Ah, Rick, would you mind..?"

He shuffles to the edge of his seat before levering himself up. "Don't worry, I can take a hint. I'll go and see if Alfred needs relieving." He takes hold of his cane but doesn't appear to put any weight on it. I frown slightly as I watch him walk out of the door.

"He uses it to steady himself when he has flashbacks." I freeze, feeling slightly guilty. "Most of the time he can walk just fine."

I look back at Bruce. "I… I didn't really think about this bit of his recovery. S'not really like-" My eyes flick to Talia. "-um…"

"You can talk in front of Talia. With the League of Shadows no longer in operation she isn't a security risk."

I hesitate a moment longer and she doesn't quite scowl. "Sir, have you had time to read my report?"

"Yes. I have concerns about Belle Reve myself, especially after the Ice Fortress incident."

"The prison we can monitor, and at this point I think.. someone's stalling to keep Waller from getting put back in charge. That can't last. I'm more worried about the whole supervillain cooperation network thing. Doctor Jones hasn't been in America for years and Queen Bee doesn't have any supervillain allies.. that we know about. A few as hired help maybe… A Belle Reve breakout is manageable. I mean, it would suck for Louisiana and we'd all be rushing around for a few days, but we could cope. I'm worried about the possibility of there being something… Bigger."

Talia goes still for a moment, then squeezes Bruce's hand. He stares at me for a second and then nods. "Tell him."

"They call themselves The Light. My father is -or possibly was- one of them. They are an alliance of what you would call super villains. There is an inner circle whose members coordinate operations and then an outer circle of personnel working for each member of the inner circle. Lawrence Crock -Sportsmaster- was their chief agent, though since the blow you and the Justice League struck against the League of Shadows I do not know who has replaced him."

Was Batman keeping this from..? It's not on the computer in the mountain. "If you tell me who the inner circle are I can pick them all up in a couple of minutes."

"I don't know all of their names. I do know that Vandal Savage is a member. I believe that he is on the list of people you have been unable to locate?"

"… Yes. "

"And so is Klarion. Do you believe you could pick up him in a couple of minutes?"

"I'm.. not sure. With the Ophidian-" I nod. "I'd bet on me, but it wouldn't be a sure thing. My research on Lords of Chaos is not yet.. there yet." Wait a second. An alliance of senior supervillains? "Is Lex Luthor a member?"

Bruce's jaw tenses slightly. "We don't know."

"Because it sounds like his sort of thing, directing but not getting personally involved. But… No, the League of Shadows accepted a contract on him. They couldn't infight like that. Could they?"

"It could be infighting, or it could be a distraction of some kind. Lex might even have paid for the contract himself if he thought it would increase the chance of the peace treaty being signed."

I slump slightly. "Do you want me to stop talking to him? I mean, it's going to be a bit difficult given what's happening at Cadmus…"

"No, that won't be necessary. I just wanted to make sure that you were aware of the severity of the situation."

"Sir, why are you telling me? You haven't made this information available to anyone else..?"

"As well as Lex Luthor you have also built up a relationship with Teth Adom." I nod. I don't know where he's going with this. "Though I understand and am to a degree sympathetic to his efforts to effect regime change in Kahndaq, the fact remains that it falls well outside of behavior that the League could publicly sanction. Do you think that he would be open to the idea of becoming the Justice League's man inside the Light?"

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Insincerity 21

next

4th December

09:56 GMT -5

I take a closer look at the steel plate that was Artemis' target. "Seems to have worked." Her new arrow sliced through it cleanly and penetrated some distance into the sand bag wall I erected on the far side. Use of the X-Ionizer process left the metal of the arrow's head monofilament sharp and impressively strong. I had considered using Apokoliptian technology as part of my upgrading of Artemis' equipment but it turns out that Apokoliptians don't use bows.

Who'd have thought?

Artemis climbs off the crash mat and walks towards me. Since we're going to be doing this for a while I purloined an unused storage space and set up some equipment. "Were you watching what I was doing? What's the point of doing these recordings if you aren't paying attention?"

"Artemis, the ring records your vitals automatically. And in any case there wouldn't be a noticeable change yet. Even Zatanna has barely experienced any improvement in her performance and she's been both Awakened longer and using magic." I bring up a read out of her performance. "Yes, you are indeed exercising within your normal parameters."

She stops next to me and takes a look. "Mom wants a copy of that."

"I hadn't forgotten."

Her head jerks back suddenly. "Why are you looking at my estrogen levels!?"

"Because it might be affected. I'm not going to put your health at risk over prudishness." She relaxes slightly. "Besides, you know how libidinous the Greek gods used to get, it's the subject of about two thirds of Greek legends."

Her eyes widen slightly. "You never said that could happen!"

"I clearly said 'other metabolic changes'. It isn't likely, but it is possible. Though, this doesn't actually look particularly high."

She points to the screen. "That says 'elevated'."

"That's a perfectly normal part of your menstrual cycle, it just reads as elevated because neither Father Box nor the ring have a baseline comparison."

She looks at it for a few moments longer. "What time is it?"

"Nine fifty seven. Why?"

Her eyes widen. "Damn it! Tao's getting here at ten! Now I don't have time to take a shower!"

I give Artemis a quick look-over. "I wouldn't worry about it. You look fine."

"I stink!"

"Fresh sweat really doesn't smell as bad as people seem to assume. And, Tao's upbringing has been somewhat unusual. I very much doubt he'll mind."

She looks at me, then in the direction of the showers and then in the direction of the corridor leading to the main training room. "Uuurgh." She collapses her bow and stows it on her back, and then starts marching fists clenched in the direction of the training area.

I smile as I follow her, while behind me Mister Tawny pulls himself to his feet to come with us. "He's spent nearly two years on a military base, only being let out for missions. Aside from Zatanna and yourself I don't think he's even had a conversation with a girl his own age since he was recruited by the Great Ten. And she's not here."

"It's not that. I just don't want to look like a complete slob. He's the first Chinese person on the team. We need to try and make a good impression."

"Yah huh. Look, he's about your age, has similar interests and.. as far as I can tell, he's a good guy. He knows we're not going to be as strait-laced as he's used to. Don't worry about it."

Some of the tension leaves her frame. Mister Tawny nudges me in the side of my right leg and I reach down to give his head a scratch. He doesn't exactly purr, but he does make a sort of throaty rumbling sound when he's feeling happy. I'm in his good books for taking him out hunting this week. The Moose didn't stand a chance.

"Oh, I wanted to get your opinion on this." I take my shiny new sword out of subspace and hold it out. It's a metre and a half long and a ridiculous twenty centimetres across at the hilt. Unlike the sword Rako used while we were investigating Captain Adam's case mine glows orange, not blue. Bloody thing makes me feel like Guts. The X-Ionizer process means that it can hurt things in my weight class and at my current strength I can easily manage it one handed.

She looks at me as if I'm a crazy person. "Why do you need a sword?"

"Because giant glowing swords look cool. Also, it's fairly intimidating and doesn't run out of power."

"Can you even use that thing?"

"It's not really a duelling weapon but yes, Wonder Woman's instruction has included lessons on sword combat, though her swords are somewhat shorter than mine."

She smirks. "Guess Amazons don't feel they need all that much extra, ah, equipment."

I smile back as I attach the sword to the force field clamps on my back. "I assure you, my dear future sister in law, that I-."

Her right eyebrow goes up. "In seven years?"

"That was my parents. I was thinking more along the lines of seven months."

She stops suddenly and blinks a couple of times while she adjusts to the idea. "Are you serious about that?"

I nod. "Completely."

"Whaw. Did.. you already talk to Jade about it?"

"This stays between the two of us for now, right?" She nods. "I think the precise time at which one pops the question is supposed to be a surprise, but she's aware of the general direction of my thoughts on the matter. My plan is that we finish off the League of Shadows in mid June, marry at a registry office in early July after my period of bondage elapses and have a working honeymoon away from Earth."

She nods and we resume our journey. "Whyyy away from Earth?"

"I have the feeling that Batman will insist on charging her with something."

"She is an assassin."

"But when she comes back, then, with a little luck, she'll have a Maltusian diplomatic passport. I'm not having Jade go to prison, especially if the situation which led to her entering the League of Shadows has been dealt with."

"Dad was the situation that led to her joining the Shadows."

"I'll let you know if he turns up." Assimilating him really was a mistake. I didn't even get that much information out of him. So what if there's some group calling themselves 'The Light', aside from Ra's he didn't know the identities of the members. He had suspicions but it's not like I can't point to the most probable suspects after five minutes on the Justice League's computers. And now I can't show Paula a body. It's odd; I really feel bad about that. I think she's starting to occupy the Mum shaped hole in my head, and Artemis is standing in for my sister. Wee bit more argumentative, but shorter than me, female and blonde, which apparently is all my hindbrain needs.

"Oh, hey guys." Wallace and Richard meet us as we come around the last corner before the training room and Wallace waves. "How's godhood treating you?"

"Surprisingly sweatily, because someone decided not to remind me what the time was."

"Wallace, if you want to find out what it's like I'm more than happy to use it on you as well."

He frowns. "Would that work?"

"Let me do a quick check. Father Box?"

"Ploong."

"Survey says 'yes'. And I can't imagine that the process is less safe than Garrick Formula replicated by a twelve year old."

"Huh."

As we enter the training room I see that Kon, Match and M'gann are already here. Match is sort of adapting, but there are massive holes in his knowledge. I need to have another talk to Kon about having the G-Gnomes fill in his blanks. He's not keen on the idea but Match is barely functional like this. Kaldur is picking up Tao and Zatanna's busy with arcane study. That just leaves-.

"Sorry I'm late!"

William dashes in wearing his Apokoliptian armour, the Sword of Beowulf on his back. Quite why he wanted to be a member of our team as well as the Justice League eludes me, though I suppose that it doesn't hurt. And I can understand him wanting extra training it isn't practical for him to receive as Captain Marvel. No one wants it to be possible to render them powerless, after all.

Richard looks down at the ground. "I'm still not sure having someone from the Great Ten on the team is such a good idea."

I shrug. "Our security is good enough. And it's like I told Wonder Woman, it's far better he learns superheroing from us rather than lunatics like Socialist Red Guardsman."

"I guess."

The Zeta Tube glows into life and we come to an approximate sort of attention. "Recognised, Aqualad, B zero one, Celestial Archer, B one one."

back

Insincerity 22

next

4th December

10:02 GMT -5

Kaldur appears first. He has tried the Apokoliptian armour I made for him but he just seems more comfortable in his red and blue Atlantean gear. He looks.. placid? I'll assume that the Chinese didn't try anything stupid, then. Tao on the other hand has the same nervous quality about him that he had after trouncing Green Arrow during their archery contest. He's still wearing his blue and gold armour with robes gear and has the Celestial Bow slung over his back next to his quiver. He's left his hat thing off and for the first time I see his Chinese Army regulation buzz-cut. As the zeta tube lights fade away I watch him hesitate, remember that he's representing the pride of his country, straighten up and stride forwards with renewed purpose.

Kaldur and he come to a stop just in front of us. "Everyone, I would like to introduce you to our new team mate: Celestial Archer."

I raise my right hand to give him a royal wave as Tao gives us a short bow from the waist. "It is a great honor for me to be here as part of..." He blinks. "Um. I am sorry, I have not been told what this team is called."

Wallace tilts his head to the side. "Sort of.. doesn't have a name."

"Oh." He thinks about this for a moment. "I will be honored to be a part of it anyway." I can almost hear William getting ready to start calling out suggestions again. Seriously, Super Eleven? Red Arrow has hardly spent any time here and it's not as if this is the limit of our expansion. I haven't come up with anything. Teen Titans is out; I'm thirty and William ‘Beowulf’ Batson is ten. Similarly, I don't think Young Justice would work. In the minds of my team mates 'young' means immature and incapable and as a result they would be violently opposed to making that a part of our official title. Outsiders never made any sense to me.

I suppose ‘Avengers’ is a possibility...

Kaldur gestures to us in turn with his left arm. "You have met Grayven-" I wave again. "-and Artemis." She smiles at Tao but he seems to be trying to stay professional and po-faced. "This is-."

"Robin, Kid Flash, Superboy and Miss Martian." He looks at Match. "I am afraid that I do not know who you are?"

Match blinks like a rabbit caught in headlights and then looks sideways at his brother who tries giving him a reassuring smile. Match swallows. "I'm Match. I was created in the same lab that made Kon-." His eyes widen and he looks back at Kon. "I'm sorry, I wasn't meant to say that! I didn't mean-!"

Kon puts his right arm around Match's shoulders. "Match, calm down, it's okay."

Tao looks a little confused. Best give a simple explanation. "Match was created in the same laboratory that made Superboy, but he only got out of his gestation tube recently and hasn't quite adapted to the world yet."

Tao nods once and then looks at William. "I do not know you, either. Are you a member of the team, or perhaps a mascot-?"

"You bet I'm on the team! I'm Cap-!" He pauses and reconsiders. "I'm Beowulf. Nice to meet you."

"Ah. I apologise if I insulted you."

"It's okay. I know I'm kinda young compared to-."

"Wait a second." Richard's eyes narrow. "Kid Flash and I operate publicly, but Superboy and Miss Martian don't. How do you even know who they are?"

"The Great Ten have intelligence files on each of you." Hardly a surprise, though I notice that Kon, Wallace and Richard don't seem best pleased. "I do not have full access but they certainly include your names as well as images taken during some of your professional activities. When I was told that I was being assigned here I reviewed them so that I would be familiar with your abilities." The nerves are back as he looks at their faces. "Should I not have done that?"

I just about hear Kaldur sigh, though he covers it well. "Being told that a foreign intelligence service has files on us is a little concerning."

"We have files on everyone associated with the Justice League. You are all too important to the world -to China- for us not to. Do you mean to say that you do not have files on us?"

And there goes the self-righteousness! I grin. "I knew there was a reason I wanted you here."

**Grayven, be nice.**

And there goes my jolly. Yes, joining in telepathic conversations outside of mission time helps me integrate with the group but I still get testy when things turn up in my head that I didn't put there. **M'gann, I was being nice. I said-.**

She steps towards Tao. "Zatanna told me about your competition with Green Arrow. What else can you do?"

"I am stronger, faster, more agile and more resilient than a normal man."

Kon crosses his arms. "Oh yeah? How strong?"

"I am somewhat stronger than Aqualad. On this team I would be closest to you, I think."

"Really? You think you're as strong as Superman?"

"No, but in addition to lacking the full range of Kryptonian abilities your strength is much less than.. his." Kon floats up thirty centimetres above the floor. "Oh."

"I've had some work done."

Tao nods, his eyes flicking briefly to Match. "It seems that you have less to worry about from our intelligence service than you had believed." Richard smirks while Tao turns his attention to me. "May I also assume that your altered form is not simply a product of your use of the Blockbuster Formula?"

"It was a contributory factor, but this is mostly Father Box's work."

"I.. see. What is-?"

"Ploong."

"Alien computer system. Since you're getting access to our database you can read all about it."

He nods. "I will. I had intended to spend most of the next week studying your records so that I-."

Artemis steps forwards from the line up. "There'll be time for that later. I'm more interested in what you can do with that bow."

Tao reacts with reasonably well concealed shock before warily looking at Kaldur. "Sir, if a demonstration would be of use-."

Kaldur raises his right hand to stop him and smiles faintly. "It is not necessary to address me as ‘sir’, and a demonstration of your abilities would be helpful in determining how best to fit you into our existing strategies and training schedule."

Tao turns fully to face him and gives a shallow bow before turning to Artemis. "If you could show me to your training area, it would be my pleasure to provide a demonstration."

"You're standing in it. Grayven, you got any more of those training drone things?"

I guess we're done with the pack-sniffing-the-new-dog's-arsehole thing then. The rest of the group takes a step back as I languidly describe an arc with my right arm. Tiny orange filaments flick out and deposit seven Apokolips-tech drones in the air around the centre of the room. "But of course." Vicious little things, they are. I've got actual blaster-armed versions in subspace storage but the low power plasma gun version we use for training still stings when it hits. They can fly, evade and have basic energy shields. Only real weakness is battery life. Really need to get a better supertech power source from somewhere. Apokoliptian stuff is either too advanced for me to replicate safely or is of the 'runs-off-the-misery-of-paraplegic-kittens' variety.

Tao walks towards the centre of the room, unslings his bow, removes the cover from his quiver and notches his first arrow as the drones hover to circle around him. "Is there anything else I should know?"

I nod. "We keep Eastern Standard Time, breakfast and lunch are whenever you want them, dinner is whenever whoever's cooking it wants it but it's usually about seven. Everyone who lives on site is on the rota except for Match. Real names are provided on a case by case basis, trying to find out by investigating covertly is a big no-no but if someone says something stupid in front of you that's their lookout. In either case, sharing that information with your Great Ten superiors will get you booted off the team immediately, probably after Miss Martian or the Manhunter have erased that information from your brain. Scheduled training sessions with League members are at weekends and two evenings a week though we usually organise our own sessions to supplement those. Black Canary will want to speak to you about your personal strengths and weaknesses later today."

"Thank you, but I was referring to the targets."

"No. Activate."

His arrow is up before I can blink and he sidesteps, twisting in the air and loosing at empty air as the drones move to evade. I watch in amazement as drone five dodges into the path of his arrow, which passes through its energy shield without disrupting it and pierces its main battery. Tao dives around plasma fire from the other six as drone five bursts, its own shield surviving for a second and minimising the radius of the blast before the wreckage crashes to the ground. How the hell did he do that? I take a moment to look at Artemis who's staring at him in amazement and hunger, though whether for Tao's ability set or for Tao himself I can't tell. He gets another shot, loosing through a plasma bolt which disperses as the arrow flies through it to spear the drone behind it. Oh yes, I think that Mister Xu will fit in here very well.

back

Insincerity 23

next

5th December

21:53 GMT

"…this whole bit about how she begged for Batman and Green Arrow to train me. I mean, can you believe that?!"

"You.. do remember that I traded a year of my life for this, right?"

Artemis and I are sitting on top of the outer wall of Pevensey Castle, where unlike in Happy Harbour they actually got round to changing the signs back. Aside from one small section which appears to have been restored to its original Roman-era strength the curtain wall is in more or less the same dilapidated state as I remember it from back home. I can't say the same for the street lights; Pevensey shines brightly to our right while the dingy space where Westham should be glooms on our left.

"Yeah, but you found Mister Scott. You negotiated it yourself. You convinced him you were the guy to take over for him. I thought I impressed them fighting bad guys in Gotham and helping Superboy."

A few dog walkers taking a route through the castle grounds are giving us odd looks but we're too far from the path for them to identify us clearly.

"You know Batman probably had her on the defensive from the start, right? Turning up in the room with no warning, doing that intimidating loom thing he does. And it's not like she actually knew what you'd been doing."

"I can't believe you're taking her side!"

"What, you mean the side of people who haven't seen you for seven years but really don't want you to turn out like your sister?" I give a slightly frantic nod. "I probably am. Look, why'd'ya think Batman even went to your flat?"

Artemis looks away from me and out across the Pevensey Levels. "I.. dunno."

"I don't either, but if I had to guess, I'd say that he was going to ask if you'd be interested in joining the team, even before your mother started pleading your case. I mean, it's Batman, right? He wouldn't have approached her without finding out about your situation first. And if he thought you were a problem like Jade he'd have gone after you directly."

"So, what, Mom just assumed the worst about me?"

"No, Artemis-" I pick up her left hand from where it rests at her side and hold it between mine. Despite the air temperature she doesn't feel cold -higher metabolism being one of the side effects of being Dannered- but I can feel tiny pieces of grit where her palm was resting on the wall. "-she just wanted to be completely sure the worst wasn't happening. Or maybe she did know roughly what you were doing and wanted to know that you had someone watching your back, to make sure you had some support and guidance. I know I wouldn't be as good as I am without Alan or Diana or Guy teaching me, and I wouldn't have achieved what I have without Batman having organised actual missions. Ooh, how did it go with Green Arrow yesterday?"

She looks at my hands, then tosses her hair back and manages a small smile. "It went good." She nods. "Saved a reporter guy from one of the Shadows you and the Snake missed."

"Oh? Who was the lucky assassin?"

"By the time we finished she wasn't really talking much. Database said her name was 'Silken Spider'."

"Any relation of the other Spider?" Ring, just check that Mister LaMonica is still in Belle Reve. Having him escape again would just be embarrassing.

Confirmed. John LaMonica, aka 'Black Spider' is currently confined in Belle Reve.

Artemis shrugs. "Same tech, same moves. She didn't know I was super strong, though. And.. does this formula stuff make me faster?"

I don't remember seeing anything about that. "It might. Probably just a side effect of the extra strength, but if you want to be sure I can-."

"Nah, it's fine." She takes another look around. "You grew up around here?"

"Not 'here' exactly, but yes. A couple of miles that way." I point to our left in the direction of where Westham should be.

"This castle isn't as impressive as I thought it would be. It's basically just a big ruin."

"I'd like to see how good you look after seventeen hundred years." I sigh. "Perfectly preserved medieval castles basically don't exist. They either get updated with central heating and electricity and windows like Windsor or they crumble or get destroyed like this. I mean, we can go and see Bodiam if you like, that's got some bits that are still as they would have been when it was still in use." I suppose I should be glad that I didn't rebuild the whole thing while merged with the Ophidian. Or try and build my parents’ house or something like that. Compared to what could have happened a few repainted signs is nothing.

"Uuum, maybe some other time. Ollie's got a mission for us and I don't really want to blow him off just to go sight seeing."

I wrinkle my nose. "Probably shut by now anyway. You ready to head back?"

"Don't we need to pick up Cornwall?"

"Actually, no. Apparently, planting a piece of Doctor Holland on top of the mountain has turned it into a leyline node. Once him and his dad sorted out their local stone circle he found he could teleport from there to the tree."

Her eyes widen slightly. "That's, like, really far. Isn't it?"

"What he's learned -and what Zatanna's learning- is that magic users don't need to provide the power themselves. If they've got any sense they use the power that's already there. What he's doing isn't much harder than one of us walking into a Zeta Tube. He couldn't teleport to just anywhere."

She pulls her hand away slightly and I release it. "Yeah, about Zatanna. How's she… Y'know… Doing?"

"Not as well as she will be once Nabu finally gets his." I take a deep breath. "She's.. coping."

The League's put basically no effort into maintaining the 'leave of absence' cover story. Batman actually made some noise about Zatanna changing schools to Happy Harbour and I had to put a Zeta Tube in her house to head that one off. I mean, if Mister Zatara was taking a break from his commitments with the League and with his show he wouldn't abandon his house and not take her with him, would he? I've no idea what the League have told his employees, because there's no way he'd disappear without telling them in person. From what Zatanna told me his manager thinks he's died or got seriously injured or something. They're friends, for goodness sake! And what about the rest of his family in Italy? Do they really not think they'll start to wonder where Giovanni's gone? The only thing I can think of is that they're going to do something about Nabu soon and the cover story doesn't have to last long enough to hold off a serious investigation.

"'Cause.. I know.. you've been spending a lot of time with her…"

"Yeah, I'm like Mary Poppins. Go where I'm needed, and Zatanna needs more than anyone else, especially now Diana's adopted Kon. And he doesn't have the spare time anyway with all of the cultural stuff he has to learn." I chuckle. "Let me tell you, you have not seen true hatred until you've been to a diplomatic reception full of fat middle aged men as Diana's escort."

Artemis snorts, then frowns slightly. "Is he, like, an Amazon prince now or something?"

"That's up to Queen Hippolyta, but probably. Historically, males born to the royal household usually got sent off as diplomatic envoys but there isn't a modern tradition. Diana told me that she's taking him to Themiscyra in the new year to discuss things in person. And I'll badger Io about your bow."

"I didn't think they let men on Themiscyra."

"It's not an absolute rule or anything; Alan's got permission to go whenever he wants. They just have to know you and trust you not to say or do anything stupid. On an island full of athletic, youthful, aggressive and heavily armed lesbians. I mean, can you imagine Wallace..?" She shakes her head with a snigger and I push myself upright and offer her a hand up. "Come on, we'd best get going if we're going to be there when Green Arrow turns up. Oh, how'd that birthday party thing go?"

back

Insincerity 24

next

5th December

17:02 GMT -5

"Recognised, Orange Lantern, B zero six, Artemis, B zero eight."

"…in the closet with this redhead girl."

"Think I just went bowling on my fourteenth birthday."

"A little to the left, and it would have been me."

"And there's nothing wrong with that."

I look around and see that most of our team mates are already clustered in the centre of the training room. Robert beat us here. He's wearing his new armoured and warded uniform and it looks like he's talking to Zatanna. I give him a wave. Kon's standing with M'gann with Wolf at his feet while Kaldur and Wallace are next to Green and.. Red Arrow. Wonder why he's here? Another job to dump on us?

"No, but I'm not-."

"Artemis! Just in time." Artemis nods an acknowledgement of her mentor's greeting. Never heard a briefing by Green Arrow before. Should be interesting. "Look who's agreed to join the team."

Red Arrow turns to look at us. I give him a smile. The first time we met I didn't get a particularly good impression, but we worked together well enough in Taiwan. And he's officially been on the roster since the beginning so we can't really complain about not getting advance notice this time. Artemis seems less thrilled, and frankly so does Roy. Did he not get offered a League spot?

I do hope this isn't going to turn into some sort of completely juvenile arrow waving contest.

"Finally!" Wallace makes a two-fisted gesture of celebration.

"Oh. Yeah. Great." Artemis pushes ahead into the room and I trail in her wake. I'll try and get her alone later and find out how much of a problem this is going to be. I mean, she could break him in half with her little finger, she can't envy him. Can she? Sure, he's got an established relationship with Robin, Kaldur and Wallace but the rest of us barely know him. And they haven't seen him much recently.

Green Arrow moves over to Batman's usual lecture spot. "Okay people. Listen up." He presses a series of buttons on the holographic keyboard. I've no idea how they remember which blank glowing blue button does what. "The.. Dynamic Duo's on a case in Gotham, but Batman gave me a heads up." A familiar face appears on the screen. Bane. His picture now shows him dressed in what is basically the gear he wore in Dark Knight Rises, coat and body armour. No mask, and I suppose he can't just walk around in most places with a Venom injection system strapped to him. "Bane was spotted coming through Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport." Two more images, one of the runways and another of the inside of the terminal. Bane and a couple of thick-set men who appear to be with him walk through security screening. "Facial recognition software picked up the ID."

"Sir, may I ask why airport security didn't grab him?"

He turns his head in my direction. "Airport security aren't equipped to handle supervillains, and sniffer dogs can't pick up Venom Buster." I nod as another window opens zoomed in on his hand luggage. Actually, a sniper with a steel-jacketed bullet could probably kill someone who'd just taken a shot of Venom Buster before the transformation could render them impervious, but I can understand them not wanting to take the risk. Mess it up and the resulting rampage -especially in a place as densely packed as an airport terminal- could kill an awful lot of people. "Find out what he's up to."

Kon looks over our assembled nine person team. "All of us?" He has a point. If Red Arrow sticks around we are getting to the point where the Bio-Ship's going to get a bit crowded. "Seems like overkill for a shadow job." Not to mention the chance of us tripping over each other. Sure, I can stay out of line of sight easily enough even if I can't scan the target but everyone I'm not carrying except Wallace needs to be in the same general area as the target.

Green Arrow shrugs. "Thought maybe the sidekicks-. Sorry-" He raises his right index finger, correcting himself. "-ex-sidekicks could suit up on this." Kaldur nods and Wallace grins again. Wait, who does that mean, exactly? Zatanna never sidekicked for Mister Zatara but the rest of us all have sponsors with whom we've worked. "Aqualad, Kid Flash, Red Arrow."

Kon nods. "Good. Stake outs make me crazy."

M'gann smiles. "We could use the night off. Conner's been really busy lately."

"Um. Sorry.. sir..?" Robert nervously raises his right hand. Green Arrow actually looks to see who he's talking to before realising that it's him and nodding an acknowledgement. "The only team mission I've gone on so far was the Ice Fortress thing and I.. didn't really do very much… I'd really like to join in this time, even if it's just flying the Bio-Ship."

Green Arrow shrugs and looks at the other three. "Aqualad, you're in charge of the team."

Kaldur think for a moment and then nods. "It would be useful to see how well you work as part of a unit."

"Remember, if it turns out they've got a load of augmented muscle there we're only a Zeta Tube and ring transfer away."

Red Arrow narrows his eyes slightly. "Thanks, but we'll manage."

I hold my arms out to the sides, palms towards him. "Not saying you can't. I'm just saying, if you need us, we're here." Wait, there was something I was going to say, what was it..? "Cornwall, you fully charged?"

He nods. "Just about. Why?"

"Think I've found a way for you to recharge reliably during missions, but we can talk about it later."

Red Arrow stalks ahead of the squad as they head off in the direction of the lift, Robert giving me a happy but slightly nervous look back as he tags along behind them. Artemis seems to relax slightly when her predecessor passes out of sight.

Zatanna gives me a curious look. "How would that work?"

"Hm? Oh. The Sword of Beowulf you and Artemis took off Mister Hayes is just sitting in our trophy room at the moment."

"You think he's pure enough to use it?"

"Maybe, but probably not. But I was able to get hold of a description of what happens to the unworthy-" Thank you John. "-and apparently they get hit by a massive blast of arcane energy. Since he feeds on arcane energy-."

She nods in understanding. "It wouldn't matter if he was pure or not because he'd get powered up either way."

"Exactly. I'd want to try it out in a safe environment first time, though. Not when he was about to go on a mission."

Green Arrow presses a button and the holoscreen disappears. "Well, that's a wrap. Artemis, you wanna head back to Star City?"

"Actually, sir, if you don't need to rush off immediately…" He shrugs, while in the corner of my eye I see Kon sag slightly. "Won't take long." Ring, access holoscreen.

Compliance.

"After I read the report on Mister Hayes' attack on Zatanna and Artemis I started thinking about what other magic artefacts might be lying around, or on display in museums just waiting for an enterprising criminal to steal them." I feed images into the computer system. "The Spear of Destiny. This is the artefact that stopped the Justice Society ending World War Two inside a week. Last seen in the hands of Captain Nazi, current location unknown. Ace of Winchesters. Location unknown. Silver Wheel of Nyorlath. Location unknown. Red Jar of Calythos. Location unknown. Green Bell of Uthool. Location unknown. Orb of Ra. Last seen in the possession of Simon Stagg in Los Angeles. Current location unknown. This sword doesn't have a proper name. Pretty nasty piece of work though, and its last owner told me that he no longer has it." I've no idea why John let Ellie keep hold of the thing. A Succubus with a capital 'G' God slaying weapon? Does that sound like a good idea? "The Eternity Book. Location unknown. Black Diamond. Location unknown. Any of these could result in someone doing a Harm, quite aside from objects we don't know about. Obviously, the ideal solution for that would be for a magic user to check every museum in the world, though that's probably impractical."

"I don't know much about magic, Paul. What do you want from me?"

"The Justice League has the authority to confiscate items used in acts of supervillainy, on the assumption that normal evidence gathering processes wouldn't be safe. I think you should think about getting that expanded to cover arcane objects not in the hands of competent bodies or individuals. If any of these are in some crazy collector's loft some very bad things could happen. I've got the time and the ability to track these things down, I just don't have the authority to do anything about them." To say nothing of the fact that the Ace and the Sword could be rather useful in fighting Nabu. "I've already spoken to Diana and she thinks it's worth looking at, so I'd thought I'd run it by you."

He nods. "Yeah, sure. Be nice to steal a march on these loons for once. Got any leads?"

"One or two, sir. One or two."

back

Insincerity 25

next

6th December

00:13 GMT -5

"Alright, that's probably the best lead we've got. And as luck would have it, I actually know the woman in question."

I push the holoscreen showing the report of the burglary over the kitchen table to Zatanna, who gives it the once over. "You know Catwoman?"

"Yes. Friend of a friend. I've only met her twice but I think I made a good impression." After a slightly dodgy start. Second meeting wasn't much better. She was working and the conversation was basically 'I'm going to head over to the north side of town, can you wait until I'm out of line of sight before beating up those drug dealers and taking their money?'. "She'd probably believe me about why I want it and she knows I've got the money."

"Are you sure it's…" She bows her head slightly. "John said it works on Demons. If it's just an unusual sanctified weapon we don't have any reason to believe it would work on Nabu."

I nod. "True, but it would be useful to have anyway. And, maybe we can study its makeup to find out how it works.. and adapt the design. Look, I'll go and see her tomorrow…" I look at the clock on the front of the nearest oven. "Um, later today and see if she's up for it."

"Do you think you can trust her?"

I think for a moment. "Yes, I think so. I'll probably have to pay her a finder's fee or something but I'm happy with that. Do you think.. you should be getting to bed? It's rather early."

She looks to the side. "I'm… I've been having trouble sleeping, lately."

"It's not really surprising, considering."

"I meant to pick up some sleep medication but I didn't get around to it."

I smile. "Not to worry, I've been studying massage." I hold up my hands and wriggle my fingers. "I can work that stress right out."

She looks at me with nervous scepticism. "Um. Oh-kay."

I generate a set of hand constructs and wriggle those fingers too. Zatanna's eyes widen slightly. "It'll be nice to be in a situation where I can finally use these t-."

"Hey guys. You can't sleep either?"

We look around as Artemis walks into the room, Teekl resting contentedly in her arms. I shut down the holoscreen. "Oh come on, you've both got school tomorrow."

"Yeah, well, Kaldur and the others aren't back yet and I'm not going anywhere until they are." She walks past the table into the kitchen proper and puts a capsule into the coffee machine.

Ring, where are they? Oh good. "They're just coming into the hangar now. No serious injuries at all, so there's no reason for you not to head home and-" She leaves the coffee and starts jogging towards the steps down to the hangar. "-ask them about it tomo-. This evening."

Zatanna gets up as well. "Aren't you curious how it went?"

"Yes, but I can go a week without sleep. Uhh. Ring, transition."

The three of us reappear on the landing platform just as the Bio-Ship comes into the room. Artemis looks surprised for a moment, then works out what just happened. Under -yep- Robert's slightly uncertain guidance it comes in a little to the side and then banks across before rotating and lowering itself onto the concrete surface. It's six o'clock in Britain right now. I hope his endurance boost also grants him tirelessness, because otherwise he isn't going to be much use for anything t-. Later today.

Kaldur's out first, followed by Red Arrow and Wallace. He looks tired and mildly disgruntled as Artemis takes a few steps towards him. "Well? How'd it go?"

"Poorly. Bane had a significant number of his associates guarding his route. By the time we had managed to bypass them he had already handed off the object he had been sent to collect to Onyx."

Wallace winces slightly as he rolls his right arm. "He may not be as strong off the Venom as he was on it, but he's still got a mean left hook."

Red Arrow folds his arms. "And he could phase, like that robot you encountered in Qurac."

I close my eyes for a moment, wincing. "Bad guys are sharing technology. I suppose it had to happen sooner or later. I don't suppose he told you where he got it?"

"Bad guys not big on sharing intel, Oh El." Wallace shrugs. "I mean, he boasted a lot." Behind him Robert exits the Bio-Ship. "You know, about how he could take us all single handed."

"Did he?"

Kaldur glances at Robert. "We have Cornwall to thank for the fact that he did not."

"Wait." Artemis looks at me. "Didn't you beat that Bozo robot by blowing up Nth metal and using my arrows?"

"Um. Yes." I grin at Red Arrow. "Red Arrow. Yooou should probably have some of these." Five green Arrows of Unmaking appear in front of him from subspace, then turn red in a surge of orange light. "They work on phased targets."

He grabs them out of the air. "How long have you had these?!"

"Since September. Made them for Artemis. I mean, if you'd asked, or, you know, read the mission report, you'd have known that. I only knew they'd work because I asked Hawkwoman. Asking people for help. Part of being on a team."

His eyes narrow and he starts to square up to me. Yeah, we're not going to get on, are we?

"So, Robert." Zatanna steps around me to address our newest team mate. "How were you able to hit him?"

"Well, he… I mean, most of his body was phased so we couldn't hit him, but I could still feel his spiritual energy. He was metaphysically there even when he wasn't physically there. So-" He holds up his right fist and a corona of golden energy plays around it. "-spirit strikes still worked."

Kaldur nods. "Bane retreated once Cornwall showed that we could still hurt him. Unfortunately, by the time we had separated Onyx's trail from that of the decoys she had already reached her buyer."

"Anyone we know?"

"Klarion and the Brain."

"There's a link I was hoping didn't exist. What was it she was bringing them?"

"It appeared to be the fragment of the echinoderm that was stolen from STAR Labs during the Roanoke Island incident. Klarion teleported everyone involved away before we could gather more information." Kaldur looks at the ground. "With our attention so focused on our primary objective, Bane's soldiers were able to free those we had already restrained. We have very little to show for our efforts." He sighs. "And now I must report our failure to Batman."

"Before you do that, the echinoderm thing. Did someone show a picture of it to one of the Green Lanterns?"

He looks up and frowns. "I.. do not believe that it has been specifically brought to their attention. Why do you ask?"

"It's just there's this alien I know about. Called 'Starro the Conqueror'. They'd probably be able to identify it better than I can. That's probably not what this is, but if it is we need to know about it."

He nods. "I will pass that on, along with whatever test results the Science Center still possesses."

"Kaldur, you ran into a major ambush and Klarion and everyone survived. That isn't a terrible result."

"Perhaps not, but I doubt we will say the same when whatever purpose they acquired it for comes to light."

back

NEXT CHAPTER

Preparation

BACK

Preparation 1

next

Preparation

6th December

09:13 GMT -5

Holly grins at me. "You sure you wouldn't be more comfortable over here?"

I make the mistake of looking up to reply. "Yes! Yes, thank you. I'm fine."

She shrugs. "Suit yourself."

"Did she say what sort of time..?"

She and Karon are curled up together on their newly installed sofa. Due to how well insulated I've made their house they can easily afford to keep it warm even at this time of year, and since neither of them have much to do this morning they've elected to remain in their nightwear.

Or to put it another way, I'm within two metres of a pair of affectionate, scantily clad lesbians.

If this was a video, I'd probably… Well, no, these days I don't… Before I came here this would be my thing. Pornography is made with the viewer in mind, posed, unnatural and fake. What Holly and Karon are doing is completely natural, lounging around, the occasional kiss or caress broken up by a conversation about someone they know or a television program they've been watching. This is… I mean, they clearly don't mind me being here but I feel like I'm intruding massively.

"I dunno. Some time before ten, she said." Holly straightens up slightly, a motion which causes Karon's head to fall from her shoulder to her looking away again. Reminds me a bit of that Ruby Wax documentary where she and her crew spent some time on a porn set. The people who worked there were completely blasé about it but she and her crew couldn't cope. I'm that crew right now. I mean, in the mountain none of us… I don't think any of us are quite this involved with anyone. So far as I know the only ones of us actually in relationships are Kon and M'gann and given the conversation I had with her the evening after we got back from Qurac I'm going to assume-.

I'm saved.

I drop out of the air, legs turning to propel me towards the door before I land. "I'll get it!"

Karon looks up slightly. "Probably just the mail man."

Not according to the ring. I turn the handle of the door leading to the porch, yank the door open and step out into the porch proper before opening the door onto the street. "Ms Kyle, you have no idea how delighted I am to see you."

She frowns. "Why? What's.. going on?"

I step back from the door, holding it open for her. "No, leaving you on the doorstep would be rude. Please come in."

She looks at me like I'm being weird. "Okay?" But the important part is that she walks past me and into the house. I feel myself calming down slightly as I close the door behind her and follow her through.

"Hi Selina!" / "Morning Miss Kyle."

I close the porch door and hold my hand out to take her coat. She looks at the girls for a moment and then turns back to me with a smirk on her lips. I hold her gaze for a second and then look away. As she doffs her coat and hands it to me to hang up there's a giggle from somewhere.

"Holly? Karon? Would you mind if I borrowed your kitchen for a few minutes? I need a word with Ms Kyle."

Holly nods. "Sure, go ahead." I start walking a steady and not in any way hurried pace in that direction, putting my right arm around Ms Kyle's back to bring her along with me.

Once we're through I close the door behind us and she pulls away to sit on one of the kitchen stools. "You did realize they were together, right?"

"Yes. Yes, of course I did."

Her eyes narrow slightly. "And I know you don't have a problem with that."

I wave my right hand dismissively. "As the Zamarons say, life lived without love is heresy. It's just.. sitting there while they… It makes me feel like a voyeur."

She starts to snigger, realises that I'm being serious and then covers her mouth with her right hand. "Um, ahem, what was it you wanted to talk to me about?"

"Professional business, I'm afraid." The humour drops away from her face. I've never seen Batman be Batman without his mask on, but I imagine this is what it would look like. "I'm not.. I mean, it was a theft but I'm not interested in coming after you or your employer. It's the object I'm worried about." I create a construct of the gun in question. "It's called the-."

"Ace of Winchesters. I remember it."

"I know a man who once stole it on behalf of a private collector. Since then, the collector in question died and the gun passed through several hands before somehow ending up in the Gotham Museum of Antiquities. You would not believe how often high end magic artefacts end up in… Well anyway, I'd like to put it in the Justice League's armoury so that it can be put to its intended purpose. Problem is, I don't know where it is." I dismiss the construct. "Only lead I've got, is.. well, is you. I'll reiterate: I'm not interested in arresting anyone. In fact, though I could quite legally confiscate it-" After an early morning phone around between Justice League members and the UN Secretary General. "-I'd rather pay cash for it. You know I've got the money." A cautious nod. "I'm happy to pay you for your time as well, but I need that gun. Do you think you can help me?"

She stares directly into my eyes. "Is a Demon after you right now?"

"Not as far as I know. A Lord of Chaos, a Djinn and probably a few supervillains, yes, but as far as I know no Demons. I mean, last time I fought a Demon this happened."

Fatty drops from the ring and lands on his face. "Food?"

"No."

Ms Kyle tenses as Fatty pulls himself upright and then waddles off to explore. "That's a Demon?"

"Praexis Demon. I can use the ring to assimilate Demons, convert their whole being to orange light. I'm not that worried about all but the most powerful of them as far as my protection is concerned."

She nods. "That was a job I hoped I wouldn't have to think about again. I was hired to steal the gun for a man I later found out was a Demon in disguise." She pauses for a moment, perhaps reliving the event, then shakes her head. "The Demon's dead. I don't know what happened to the gun afterwards."

"Ms Kyle, I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but Demons can't just cease to be. If you destroyed its physical body all that means is that-."

"You didn't see this gun in action."

"True I suppose, and if its destruction by the gun robbed it of all its power then I doubt it would be able to come back within our lifetimes." I offer her a small smile. "Are you prepared to help me get it?"

"Five thousand dollars to start making enquiries. Twenty thousand more if you actually get hold of it and I'll expect a bonus if I have to fight anyone. If you want me to steal it for you, price depends on the security."

"That's fine." A briefcase containing the deposit appears in my hand. "I'll want to bring an expert along to verify that the gun you've found is in fact the gun. Don't worry, he's not a superhero."

She takes the suitcase, opens it and flicks through one of the cash bundles. Hooray for not automatically burning money anymore. "Superhero backup might not be a bad idea. At least, if we don't have to break the law to get it."

I nod. "I can arrange that too."

She clicks the briefcase closed. "I'll need a few days."

"No hurry. Be careful and safe rather than fast, alright?"

back

Preparation 2

next

7th December

18:47 GMT

I smile at my green counterparts. "When's Macbeth turning up then?"

Lantern Stewart barely acknowledges me, glancing my way for a split second before returning his attention to the feeds on what is the closest thing the Watchtower has to a bridge. What was the bridge before it was handed over to the Justice League. I can still see where they patched over the hole left by them ripping out the Sector House's power battery. Lantern Jordan looks my way and keeps looking, his ring… Yep, definitely glowing. This is going to be the first time I've spoken to him since I split up with the Ophidian. Understandable he'd have lingering concerns. And Guy-

"Think he just did, pal."

-just grins at me.

"Can I assume that the fact that your colleagues are tolerating your presence means you're getting upped?"

"Can't talk about that, Paul. You know how it is. Gotta keep it between members o' the Justice League."

Jordan grimaces.

"Well. If, by some happy happenstance congratulations are due, then congratulations."

"Thanks. Y'know. If they're due."

"Yeah. If."

We stay grinning at each other for a good five seconds before losing our composure and snorting with laughter.

"Did you want something?"

"Yes, Lantern Jordan, I actually did. I need one of you to look up Green Lantern Corps records relating to Starro the Conqueror." He gives me a sceptical look. "Or you can just send me a copy of your whole database so I can do it. That works for me."

"Starro the Conqueror?" Lantern Stewart turns around. "That's the dumbest name I've ever heard. Why would the Green Lantern Corps have any information you don't on an Earth supervillain?"

"I dunno John, I've heard dumber names than that." Guy thinks for a moment. "Crazy Quilt. Doctor Spectro. Rainbow Archer."

"Evil Star."

He nods. "Evil S-. Hey! Evil Star was a legitimate threat."

"He makes super powered midget versions of himself."

"And energy blasts." He shrugs. "Hey, I never said he wasn't lame too."

I turn back to Lantern Stewart. "Starro the Conqueror isn't Earth native. If my own sadly deficient database can be relied upon it's a sort of mind controlling starfish thing which sticks little starfish on people's faces to tie them in to its gestalt mind."

Stewart gives me a completely deadpan look. "A big star fish… Mind controlling people… With little starfish."

"Yes, I know how it sounds. Either we're in big trouble, or Larfleeze was high when he made this entry and since the latter just results in me looking silly for a couple of minutes..?"

"Holy shit, there actually is a thing called 'Starro the Conqueror'." Guy's ring's already projecting an image of it. Big, star shaped, eye in the middle and surrounded by smaller versions of itself. The image flickers to be replaced with a point of view shot of a alien city street. The hexapodal locals flee as two huge cyclopsian starfish float through the sky overhead. Smaller shapes drop from them, and a magnified view shows them to be the smaller parasite versions. A beam lances down from the eye of one of the larger starfish, stunning those it hits and allowing the parasites to latch on to their faces. Then the image moves, accelerating towards the flying starfish, construct drills pointed at each of their eyes.

Lantern Stewart calls up a green datapad. "Star Conquerors. Native to Sector twenty eight. Haven't been seen outside their home Sector for nearly half a million years."

Shit. "Bad news, then. The Atlanteans found one in July."

He looks up as the two in the recording stop firing on the civilians and simultaneously blast the Lantern, shattering his constructs. The image abruptly cuts off. "How big?"

"They never fully unfroze it. About thirty metres, tentacle tip to tentacle tip. Black Manta tried stealing it during his attack on Poseidonis in August."

Lantern Jordan calls up the mission report. "Says here it was destroyed and the remains shipped to STAR Labs."

"From where they were stolen by parties unknown during the Roanoke Island incident before being handed over to Klarion and the Brain yesterday. Professor Vulko's records show that the fragment was regenerating when they handed it over and Kaldur didn't get a good enough look at it to tell how big it's got since then. Here-" I flick my left hand in their direction and send tiny packets of orange energy at their rings. "-I've turned all of the Atlantean reports into a ring-friendly format so you can-."

"Wait a sec-!" / "Don't-!"

Guy and Jordan jerk back their right hands while Stewart sticks a small kite shield construct in front of his, causing the packet to bounce off before zipping in behind the shield. The three Green Lanterns of two eight one four slump slightly.

"What?"

Guy looks at Stewart. "Maybe he won't notice."

"He'll notice. He always notices."

"What's the problem?"

Stewart turns to me. "Everything that gets loaded onto our rings gets copied to the central data stores on Oa in case we die before we can submit a full formal report. Usually it doesn't matter, but if you had that flagged as a report and didn't send it to the right place or use the right format someone might take issue with it."

I frown. "I've sent.. Guy stuff before?"

"I.. kinda had that stuff flagged as intelligence. Y'know. On Orange Lanterns."

"Oh. Um, okay, so what-?"

Their rings simultaneously blink with an incoming message. Mournfully, the Lanterns raise their right hands to answer. Each ring emits a thin green beam which merge to create the image of the one sending the message. Ah. So that's what Salaak looks like in this parallel. I got him just about right but I think I missed some of the face crenulations now visible at what I presume to be life size.

"Green Lanterns of Sector two eight one four. Much as I'm certain that our archivists appreciate your input, would you kindly restrict yourself to standard report templates in future. And try not to submit the same reports all at once."

Guy points at me with his left hand. "Oh, that was totally his fault."

There's a shimmer and Salaak is facing me. He tilts his head forwards slightly. "Oh. You."

"A pleasure to meet you, Clarissi Salaak. I feel I should point out that the reports are current rather than historical. We may very well have a large Star Conqueror on Earth at present."

"One moment while I review." His two right arms move just out of shot and his head turns to look in their direction. "One heavily injured Star Conqueror."

"And whatever others are still frozen in the ice they got it from."

"Unlikely. But possible." A moment passes and then his image shimmers as he returns his attention to his subordinates. "Intelligent Star Conquerors are a beta-level threat. Lantern Gardner, follow up on the original discovery with the Atlanteans. Lanterns Stewart and Jordan: until the extent of the threat is known you are authorised to reactivate Sector House seven two zero's deep space sensors and to deploy stellar probes. The larger types of Star Conqueror can call lesser types to them over vast spatial distances and it would be extremely deleterious to the wellbeing of your homeworld if that were to happen."

"Yes sir." / "Right." / "We'll get on it."

"In the event of a full blown Star Conqueror infestation being detected additional reinforcements will be available. Salaak out." The green image collapses.

Jordan looks at Stewart. "Beta level? How bad?"

"The last major infestation covered three Sectors and killed two Lanterns before being stopped. Guardians authorized the Lanterns involved to throw the big ones into the local stars."

"Damn." He nods at me. "Good work, kid. We'll take it from here."

…

So that's what it feels like.

back

Preparation 3

next

10th December

00:28 GMT -5

"You know, that's even less likely to work on me than on Batman." I stay sitting on the edge of the rooftop as Catwoman walks… No, slinks -possibly flounces- out of the shadows behind me. Full leather gear accessorised with whip and some very sharp claws. Full leather. At least that explains why she usually has the zip pulled down a bit; it must be sweltering in there for most of the year.

"Well that ruined my entrance."

I hold up my left hand. For this I've put the sigil side pointing away from my palm. "No, this ruined your entrance."

"Mm. Shiny."

I float up and backwards to land next to her. What she's wearing isn't skin tight but it does follow her contours rather flatteringly. "Holly said you found the gun?"

"You know, Superman gives his allies a signal watch. Y-ou gave Holly the number of a public phone in New England."

I shrug. "I don't own a mobile. So, where are we going?"

She turns away and walks in the direction of the external fire escape. That's.. good leather. I shake my head and float after her, getting slightly ahead before switching to a lounging-on-my-back posture so that I can float facing her. She acknowledges my pose with an amused smirk. "We're going to see a collector. Lives in Gotham Village."

A short walk, basically. I left John in a hotel room but he's probably propping up the bar by now. Or a bar, anyway. I'll pick him up after I've given the place the once over. "Collector?"

"Supervillain equipment. Used, if possible. Superhero stuff too sometimes; I think I saw a batarang last time I was there."

She starts down the metal staircase and I float down the outside. At least she's not wearing heels. "Do you know what this is going to set me back?"

"Twenty thousand dollars."

"I meant, for this.. collector.. person."

"Collectors are usually rich and old. They don't want money, they want something else for their collection."

"I don't usually carry memorabilia."

"You must have something she'd want. Talk to her, negotiate a trade and make the exchange later."

As she reaches the second story of the fire escape she speeds up for a couple of steps, jumps, hand plants on the railing and pushes off, tumbling through the air and rolling to a crouch as she lands. She's.. lithe. I swoop down after her.

"If you want to go faster you could just give me the address. I can transmit us there."

She straightens back up. "Catwoman doesn't get out as much as she used to." She nods her head to the side. "Haven't needed to. That Demon paid me a million dollars to steal that gun and I've never had the chance to develop expensive tastes."

"I've never considered them good value for money."

"Nice to have the choice though."

I nod, thinking about that ridiculous jar of marmalade I bought. "True." She continues walking down the alley. I've never seen a real woman walk like that, feet stepping in line to exaggerate the sway of her hips. It's intentional, right? That can't just be the way she walks. Focus on the job. "Readjusting my mindset to Gotham, if she's got a load of supervillain gear, does that mean we're likely to have to fight our way out?"

"Shouldn't think so. She's in her seventies. And it's not raw power that interests them, it's history. A cold gun the police got from Captain Cold's apartment after he got arrested is worth less than the first arrow Merlyn shot at Green Arrow."

"Can.. probably come up with something. How'd you track her down?"

"I sold it to her two years ago. She still had it."

"Whaat!?"

"I needed to make sure she still had it. It's a big deal to you but to her it's just a gun Tommy Monaghan used one time."

"Think I may possibly have overpaid you for this job."

"But you do get to see me in my costume." She glances back over her shoulder with a smirk. "Which apparently you like."

"It's a very nice costume."

"Is it nicer when I walk in it?"

"That's not walking. That's… That's strutting."

She looks me over once more. "Holly thinks you're gay."

"I get that sometimes."

She stops at the end of the alley and half turns to face me, predatory grin in place and I think her zip may have slipped a bit. I guess spending time with Diana hasn't recalibrated me. "So are you and I'm just that hot, or…"

Is this just flirting? Or is she actually hitting on me? And if so is it a Catwoman-persona context reinstatement thing or a Selina Kyle thing? From the orange swirls inside her I'm going to guess that she wasn't joking about not getting out much as Catwoman. She's missed it. Missed the adrenaline rush so much that she's feeling good about a simple tumble.

"You are pretty hot. But I don't know if you're that hot."

"Mm. Just wait 'til I get my whip out."

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that."

She steps out into the deserted street. This part of Gotham doesn't have a homeless problem, as the unoccupied alley behind us will attest. Of course: Gotham. It could just be because the residence association paid the police to drive them out or because someone ate them. I plod after her. I'm sort of wondering about the when and wheres of her relationship with Batman. I'm not exactly averse to the attention but I'm not really sure that we've got anything in common beyond a shared interest in Holly's wellbeing.

We turn right on the far pavement and continue on past two entry gates before stopping at a third. She wasn't joking about them being rich; these are large houses for inside a city. Catwoman lounges against the wall next to the intercom and with her eyes fixed on me she rubs her right index finger around the activation button for a moment before delicately pressing it. I hear an electronic buzz through the speaker.

Nothing happens.

"You did tell her we were coming, right?"

"Give her a minute."

"Because I can pop back and get my expert in-."

"Yes?"

Catwoman lays her head on the wall next to the intercom. "Hey Jen, it's Catwoman and that guy I told you about. Can we come in?"

"Wait a moment. Bartholomew always said I should check the camera." I spot it and wave. "Ah yes, I see you." There's a clank as the gate unlocks and starts to swing open. "And you got dressed up! Oh my. Do come in. I'll be waiting for you in the parlor."

back

Preparation 4

next

10th December

00:37 GMT -5

"Oh God." Catwoman puts her right hand to her cheek as she looks at the costume cat head on the sideboard. "I forgot she had this."

"Who wore that?"

"I did."

"How did that work?"

"It didn't. Let's just say I was on a tight schedule and didn't get the real mask finished quite quickly enough."

"Moving swiftly on then…"

I start to move further into the house but Catwoman lingers a moment next to a pair of Gotham police department handcuffs with a pin sticking out of the lock. "These are the first cuffs He used on me. I think she's putting on a display for my benefit."

"Did you sell those to her as well?"

She taps one of the wrist pieces despondently. "No. Left them in the back of the police cruiser when I dove out the window. She probably bought most of this stuff from the Gotham police evidence people."

"Kid Flash usually picks up souvenirs from our missions. It's just a couple of shelves at the moment." Something catches my eye on a shelf down the hall and I walk in that direction to get a better look. On a velvet cloth in a glass case… "Are those teeth? What the heck did they come from?"

"If you come in here young man, I'll explain it to you."

I look back towards the entrance to see Catwoman push open one of the side doors. Ring, quick scan? A few dangerous pieces in the property but they're mostly inactive and I think I can probably take one old woman. I stride after my… Huh, does this make her my henchwoman? Strange idea. I follow her into the parlour. She's already made herself at home, sprawling on a sofa just behind the door. Our contact stands just in front of a green upholstered armchair, her grey hair done up in a bun on top of her head. She doesn't quite come up to my shoulder but she doesn't look at all fragile. I'm reminded more than a little of my own Gran, how she was when I was little.

"They used to belong to Waylon Jones. 'Killer Croc'. They were the first part of this collection. My late husband and I were seeing a production of La Clemenza di Tito at the Gotham Opera House. Dreadfully dull. I was thinking of leaving, actually, when onto the stage bursts a man covered in green scales fighting the Batman. Most exciting thing I'd seen in years. Then 'Pow!', the Batman slugs the Croc in the mouth and dear Bartholomew ends up with three of the man's teeth in his lap." She frowns. "It always annoys me when people try to pass off normal Crocodile teeth as belonging to him. He regrows them, but I can always tell; the shape's just not the same."

Not so much like Gran then. I hold out my right hand. "Orange Lantern two eight one four, Miss..?"

She chuckles as he takes my hand in both of hers. She feels cold. Slightly poor circulation? My Nan used to have the same thing.

"I haven't been a 'Miss' for some time, young man. Missus Jennifer Gordon-Hewitt. Very pleased to meet you."

"Likewise. You're not related to the Commissioner, by any chance?"

"Oh goodness no. Dreadful man. He comes from Chicago, you know."

And that's worse than Gotham? "Dreadful?"

"Oh, I'm sure he means well, but it's been getting so much harder to get good pieces since he took over. Please, have a seat." I look back and Catwoman smiles and slightly raises her legs, inviting me to be her foot rest. I generate a construct chair instead while Mrs Gordon-Hewitt walks over to a wall display unit. "I'd appreciate it… Oh, where did I leave it? Ah, yes, here we are." She picks something up and turns back to me. "I'd appreciate it if you could authenticate this for me." Another velvet lined tray, this time with a gold medal of some kind. Wait, no it's not. That's one of my coins! She offers it out to me and I take hold of it.

"Ring, verify."

"Confirmed. Design and gold purity precisely match those of coins created by this ring."

I pass it back. "Where did you get it?"

"Ebay. The previous owner was a jewellery merchant from New York."

"Oh, Paola, yes, I remember her. First time I tried buying something with them."

Her face brightens as she turns to put it back on the shelf. "The first, you say?"

"Well. One of the first two. There's no real way for me to tell which one's which."

She walks back to her chair and lowers herself into it. "Have to see about getting the other one as well then, won't I? Now, Catwoman said that you wanted to see me about the gun she sold me?"

"Yes. Its proper name is The Ace of Winchesters and it had a long and bloody history well before Mister Monaghan got his hands on it." In the corner of my eye I see Catwoman roll her eyes and shake her head. What? Ignore her. "I'd rather like to return it to active service."

"For killing Demons?"

"And whatever other supernatural entities it turns out to work against."

"You know, I don't think I've been giving it the prominence it deserves. It's in the-" She waves her right index finger at the chest behind her. "-box over there."

"Would you mind if I got it out?"

"Not at all. I have these things so that properly appreciative people can look at them."

A filament teases open the lock and lifts the lid. Will the magics in the gun react to the orange light? Shouldn't think so, but it might. Touching it by hand wouldn't be any safer. Ask Catwoman to get it? No, she's not Dogwoman. I extend another pseudopod and put an aura around the gun. No reaction. I wait a moment, then pull it out of the chest and over to me. Looks right. Ring, analyse the metal.

Metal is steel. Alert! Metal is not steel.

Explain.

Scans identify the metal as steel but tests on its physical properties do not match this identification.

I pull an Atlantean rune stone out of subspace and hold it next to the gun. A weak glow. Does the gun have spells on it or does it work based on the innate magical qualities of the materials themselves? No idea, but hopefully we'll be able to find out. And replicate it. I return the stone to subspace and nod at our host. "Missus Gordon-Hewitt, this appears to be genuine but I'd like to call in an expert to confirm the identification. Do you.. have any objection?"

She smiles at the idea. "Not trying to strong arm a helpless old lady, I hope?"

"He also knows a good deal about the weapon's history, if you'd like to ask him."

"In that case, the more the merrier. Will it take him long to get here?"

"One moment." Ring, location of John Constantine. Oh, for goodness sake. Put the gun down carefully, transition, aaand ShockCrowns. The unhappy-looking gang members collapse to the ground. "Really, John? Really? You couldn't manage a single evening?"

"I won that game fair and square."

I take in the overturned chairs, scattered cards and notes of various denominations. "John, if you were playing then there was nothing fair about it. How much have you had to drink?"

He straightens his suit a bit and runs his right hand through his hair. "Married now, are we?"

"Ring, sobriety."

He winces as the orange beam hits. "Who the fuck wants to be in Gotham sober?"

"We do. The gun's probably genuine and the owner's an old lady called Jennifer Gordon-Hewitt, so best behaviour. Catwoman is also in attendance."

"Oh yeah?" That gets a slight grin. "She wearing the..?" He makes a 'V' across his chest with his index fingers. I nod. "Nice. How'd you wangle that?"

"Friendship and money. Ready?" He nods. "Transition."

We reappear in Missus Gordon-Hewitt's parlour. She looks curious rather than alarmed, but Catwoman shifts to a slightly more upright position.

"Ambrose?"

back

Preparation 5

next

10th December

00:43 GMT -5

John turns his head to look at her. "Ambrose Bierce? Should bloody hope not. He's a good four inches shorter 'an me, comes from Indiana an' I know one end of a flaming hairbrush from the other."

"I think he's wearing platforms now."

John grins and reaches into his coat for his cigarettes. "Ambrose? Wearin' four inch platforms? Sounds like it'd almost be worth huntin' the little sod down jus' t'see it."

"Please don't. The world does not need two John Constantines in the same place."

Catwoman nods in understanding. "Oh, you're John Constantine. I wondered why people kept calling him that."

John lights his cigarette. "S'small world." He inhales, turns and kneels down, breathing smoke out over the gun where it lies on the floor. He then stays there, gazing into the smoke. The smoke itself isn't magical -I saw him buy the Silk Cuts from a newsagent myself- but he can use it as a self hypnosis aid while he tries to get a feel for the magics in the gun. Appearance is easy enough to fake with magic and we can't really remove magic from the target without the risk of ruining it. "What were you doin' when you met ole Ambrose, anyway?"

"Trying to get some books appraised. There's more fake magic in Gotham than real magic, but after what happened last time…"

John nods. "Looks like a tramp, but 'e usually knows 'is stuff."

Missus Gordon-Hewitt frowns down at him imperiously. "If you're quite finished wheezing soot all over my antiquity..?"

John glances up at her. "Jus' doin' a double check…" He grasps the gun around the breech and stands up, raising it to his eye level in order to better examine the design. Apparently satisfied, he works the lever action and has a look inside. "Moves easier 'an last time I tried it."

Missus Gordon-Hewitt looks mildly offended. "Of course. I've kept it properly maintained. You're satisfied that it's genuine?"

"Completely." He swings the lever shut, points the gun down at the ground and gives the trigger a squeeze. I can just hear a slight 'click'. "Coulda done with this more'n a few times over the last couple a' years, I don't mind tellin' you."

"Hm." Missus Gordon-Hewitt smiles proudly. "I'm glad to hear it. One tries to do one's research but one can never be completely certain." John nods and hands the Ace of Winchesters to her, stock first. She takes it and cradles it like a lapdog. "Not until a prospective buyer ups the price. So." She fixes her eyes on me. "What are you offering?"

I shrug. "What do you want? I haven't brought anything much with me." I hold out my right hand and Sportsmaster's plasma crossbow thing appears. "Something a little more modern, perhaps? The Ace of Winchesters might be a famous weapon amongst certain circles but Sportsmaster has far better name recognition to a modern audience."

She peers at it. "Where did you get that?"

"Santa Prisca. He was trying to purchase a mutagenic compound from the Kobra Cult but wasn't up to fighting a Lantern."

"What did he use it for?"

"Shooting people. I'm sorry, it's a unique weapon but the way it does damage isn't unusual enough for me to link particular kills to it. I mean, you could always ask him. It's not like his visitor slots are occupied by anyone."

"In Belle Reve? At my age? Catwoman, tell him about when Tommy Monaghan used the Ace of Winchesters to kill that demon, Mawzir."

Catwoman shrugs. "What's to tell? One shot at the center of his chest and he burned up."

John frowns. "Haven't heard of a 'Mawzir', though that doesn't mean anything if he's a new kid. Know anything else about him?"

Catwoman shifts uncomfortably in her seat as the playful-sexy supervillain cat burglar persona fades. Fun's gone. She's having to remember something she'd much rather forget. "White skin, ten arms -four on one side, six on the other- and swastika tattoo on his forehead. His… He took orders from someone called Arkannone."

John nods. "Oh, that thing I've heard of. But a Demon shouldn't have a swastika tattoo. Not unless they were possessing someone or tryin' t'wind you up."

"Arkannone… He was trying to recruit Monaghan to be one of his agents on Earth. I was surprised he turned him down, actually."

"Surprisin' where you can find moral fibre, sometimes. And it's always nice to know there's someone out there worse than you, even if it is a Demon."

"Before Etrigan tore him apart, Arkannone said something about having made Mawzir from the souls of five Nazi war criminals."

"Ah, that explains it. Sounds like Mawzir wasn't actually…" John tries to work out how to explain complex arcane concepts to people who know nothing about the topic. "See, Demons, most of them these days… Even some of the really powerful ones, they started out as mortals. Souls damned and sent to hell. Being the worst of the worst isn't enough -though they usually are- but people so full of hate and the need to hurt that they make Hell a part of themselves. Most people, you send them to Hell and there's basically nothing left after a century or two. Some…" His lip curls. "Blossom. But most people don't have what it takes. On the other hand, most people have something like that in 'em. Some crawlin' bit of evil lurkin' in their head they've got the sense to ignore. Five Nazis… I mean, the ones who actually did the mass murdering, not the ones with the clean hands back home in the Fatherland… If Arkannone took the worst out of each of them and stuck it together with his own magics… He'd get something. Wouldn't exactly be a Demon though."

"Then what is it?"

"It's called a Lukhavim. Pretty similar, I'll admit. But there's differences. It's got no independence for a start. No agenda of its own. Arkannone's magic made it, holds it together. He gives it an order, it'll do everything it can to carry it out. Understands the modern world better'an most old school Demons too. It use weapons?"

Catwoman nods. "Handguns."

"Most Demons can't get their heads around that. They go for claws, strength… Magic. Some use swords or axes. They had the Ace of Winchesters, they'd try usin' it as a club. When that Monaghan bloke shot it, did it sort of.. crack up? Fracture?"

She blinks. "I thought that was just how it worked."

"Probably burned up Arkannone's magic first. Never actually seen it fire, but it makes sense."

Missus Gordon-Hewitt is clearly loving her prized possession being talked about like this. I return the crossbow to subspace. "Does the Ace need any sort of special ammunition?"

"No, no. The bullet just creates the violence based conceptual link between the material of the gun an' the target. Probably work with a Nerf dart if you could fit one in an' fire it."

"Against targets that aren't Demons?"

"Don't really know. Your man Sephtian's the fellow to talk to there. Or just shoot something."

"Alright then. Not going to mess you around Missus Gordon-Hewitt: I want that gun a lot. If the crossbow's not enough… Can you narrow down the sort of thing you want from me?"

"It would have to be something intimately connected with the activity of a super hero or super villain. Someone very famous or completely infamous. And there needs to be a story behind it."

If only I hadn't burned Superman's pants. "I.. could.. probably get you one of the original Green Lantern's costumes..?"

She gives me a disappointed look. "P-lease."

I wrinkle my nose. "I suppose a giant Christmas Cake's out of the question?"

back

Preparation 6

next

11th December

12:07 GMT

Zatanna lowers her hands and looks at me in astonishment. "You gave her a what?"

I shrug. "With your father out of commission the League doesn't have anyone who can study it properly. STAR Labs just had it in a big shed with the one they took from the Himalayas. And it's not like it works; once I took all of the alchemical gunk out it was basically just a big ornate box."

"Are you sure about that? A Lazarus Pit might have other spells on it."

"John couldn't feel anything, and everyone who might have been inclined to go looking for it's in prison." Except possibly Talia, but she can't do anything without risking her cover identity and has Batman watching her most of the time. "I'm not.. completely happy about it, but it was the best thing I had access to. I've booked some time with Sephtian to test the Ace out tomorrow if you want to come."

"I'd like that. Can I.. um, see it?"

"Sorry, I left it in the mountain." I hold out my left arm and generate a construct replica of the Ace of Winchesters. "You would not believe the amount of ring power it takes to shove an arcane weapon into subspace. You can have a look when we get back if you want."

"That would be interesting." She frowns. "You're not really going to summon a Demon, are you?"

I nod. "Probably. Something small to start with, then maybe some sort of minor Elemental. Though, thinking about it, depending on how it turns out the gun actually works it might turn out to be worth us summoning major Demons on a regular basis just so we can shoot them. You know, keep their power level down. If it doesn't flat out unmake them. And if it did that, well…"

Looks like she finds that idea fairly disturbing. "Have you..? I think you should talk to Father Mattias before you try anything like that."

"Probably a good idea. Anyway, that would be a long term thing."

Zatanna nods and has another look around. "What makes you think we'll be able to find the Star Sapphire when the Green Lanterns couldn't?"

"Guy didn't have a magic user with him. If we're lucky, the Ophidian and I just hid it somewhere it's hard to find with a ring."

Zatanna takes a leap off the top of the draughtsman she'd been standing on and easily reaches the edge of the crater in which the board is situated. Thomas might like draughts but he isn't all that good at it. Doctor Strange let me know that Thomas has really been engaging with the educational program and apparently Tuppence has started showing up in class as well. He even made some noise about getting him transferred away from Belle Reve at some point, though America doesn't currently have a power suppressor equipped medium security facility. Be a bit of a hard sell unless the price goes down to the point that they can be put in every prison. I could probably make one if there was an actual transfer agreement sorted out but I doubt he'd want to leave Tuppence. I don't think it's worth asking him about until we know whether or not Strange is really up to something but I'm a little worried that when or if Waller comes back things will get harder for him.

"Wohs em erehw eht Rats Erihppas si neddih!" A plume of moon dust whips up around her as she looks around the moonscape.

"Anything?"

She lowers her arms. "No. Maybe I'm not using the right incantation. You're sure it's here?"

I drift after her. "Sure? No. I mean, I think I can remember holding it while I was here but the whole thing's a bit of a blur. I definitely had it with me when we left the mountain. I definitely didn't have it when Guy picked me up. If I flew here then I might have left it anywhere between there and here in space but it's far more likely that I just transitioned here."

"Well, where did they find you?" I grimace as I turn to look at the toilet cubicle. Zatanna looks at me and then at it. "A… Is that a..? A stall?"

"Yes. Yes it is. Well, no, it's just a seat with a hole in it. Obviously it doesn't flush, we're on the Moon." She stares at me like I'm not making any sense. "When I brought Thomas and Tuppence up here while Kon and M'gann infiltrated Belle Reve, Tuppence made a big deal about wanting to…" I make the combine harvester gesture with my hands. "Y'know. Use one. So I built that."

"I thought you said the environmental shield-?"

"Yes." I nod once, emphatically.

"But then how did-?"

"Do you really want that answered?"

She considers. "Nnnno."

"Right. Let me just try something..." I close my eyes and focus on what it felt like to forget how to love. How unnatural and alien and wrong. I want the capacity to love. It is right that I have that capacity.

Ophidian, where is it?

BABUM

The orange shockwave explodes from me, rippling across the Moon's surface.

"Okay, try now. "

"Ediug em ot eht Rats Erihppas!"

Dust roils up again, but this time it coils around her outstretched arms before flowing through the air in the direction of the cubicle. Zatanna tries to run after it and momentarily forgets that she's under a sixth of Earth's gravity, pushing off too hard at an awkward angle. As she falls I swoop over and catch her around the waist from behind. She tenses for a moment before I land us just in front of the cubicle. "Careful there."

She remains standing with her back pressed up against me. "Um. Right. Sorry, I just…"

"Not used to walking on the moon." We stand there for a moment. "Did you want to have a look at-?"

"Oh. Yes." She pulls away and steps up to the seat. "There isn't anything... Down there, is there?"

Ring, scan. "No, just rock and dust. I'm not seeing the Star Sapphire but that's where the dust went."

She nods. "I dnammoc eht Rats Erihppas ot raeppa!"

Dust pours down the toilet and swirls around the small chamber within before fountaining up, the flawless violet crystal pushed out by its passage. That wasn't down there a minute ago. Zatanna reaches out to take hold of it but I push her arm aside. "Whow. Remember what happened to Carol Ferris?"

She nods as I attach an orange tether to it and the dust cloud dissipates. "What do we do with it?"

"Ideally I'd want to train you with it, but these things are even worse for driving people crazy than orange power rings."

"No, I meant, shouldn't we let the Green Lanterns know we've found it?"

"Nah. They don't want to talk to me about the Star Conquerors, they can just suck it up." She doesn't look convinced. "It's not like they own it. Or know more than I do about using it."

"So what do you want to use it for?"

"You said that the power for your spells has to come from within, right?"

She nods. "Usually."

"Do you think you could tap that instead? Use some sort of spell to bleed off a safe amount of its power, so you don't knacker yourself if it comes to a fight with Nabu or Klarion?"

Understanding dawns. She blinks and then slowly nods. "That… That might actually work."

back

Preparation 7

next

12th December

08:06 GMT -2

"That's never going to work, mate."

"Why not?"

John stabs at me with his cigarette. "You can't just plug an alien love crystal into someone like that and expect anything good to come of it."

"That's why I wanted some sort of buffer. I mean, if it really comes down to it I could try using it my.. sssself..."

I trail off as I spot Sephtian's staring at Zatanna from well inside her personal space. He's wearing some sort of rune encrusted visor and she's leaning slightly away from him and looking more than a little nervous. "What are you looking at?"

"Fascinating. When Paul told me that you were able to perform complex magics simply.. by speaking…" He jerks back in the water and waves his arms excitedly. "I did not think he was lying, precisely, but I did think that he perhaps misunderstood what he was seeing. But you… You… Do it again!"

Zatanna looks at me. I just shrug. She holds out her hands in front of her, palms facing one another. "Ria elbbub mrof." The water around her turns white as tiny bubbles of gas condense and stream towards the growing bubble between her hands.

Sephtian's hands clamp down on the sides of his visor. "Everything I know about magic says that should be impossible!"

"Um. Sorry?"

"Why!? This is MARVELLOUS!" His head fronds flutter as he takes deep breaths, hopefully to calm himself down. "You shouldn't apologise for disproving… Certainly parts, of an inaccurate orthodoxy." He pulls the visor away from his face and tosses it onto his workstation. "Akk, it's not accurate enough." He gently runs his right index finger and thumb along his moustache tendrils, his head turning aside slightly. "In fact, I don't… I'm going to need to design and build a new imaging chamber." His attention returns to Zatanna as he uses his left hand to gently place some sort of wand probe into the path of the bubbles. "And you say you could manifest this ability even without other training?"

"Y-eah. Just like my dad."

"A pact with some sort of deity, perhaps? Are your family particularly religious? That might account for-."

"We're Christians."

"And is it possible that one of your deities favoured you in this way?"

She hesitates for a moment. I suppose there's no reason why he would know much about a religion that isn't practised in Atlantis. "Christianity only has one deity. And His miracles don't require incantations."

"I suppose you could be a metahuman whose ability relates to magic. I.. don't really know much about-."

"Sephtian." He twists in the water to look at me. "Bit much."

He stares at me, then at Zatanna. "Oh. Of course. My apologies." He takes one last look at the wand before returning it to his robes. "Yoooou were saying something about an energy exchange artefact?"

John shakes his head. "Which we haven't got the slightest idea how to make."

"What about that stuff Dark Druid had set up?" John sucks in his cheeks as he thinks about it. "Could.. any of that design be used..?"

His eyes narrow. "Maybe. Some of it. Reckon you can get the police to hand it over?"

"Come on John, you read the newspapers. Liverpool loves you right now; you could probably ask them yourself."

"I could change one symbol around no problem. This is something I'd definitely want a second opinion on." He looks at Sephtian. "You any good out of water?"

Sephtian snakes his neck. "I… I would struggle after more than a few minutes. And I would not have access to my workshop. For this sort of project…"

"Okay, I'll see what I can do about getting those shipping crates brought down here. You can set up an air filled environment for them?" He nods.

"Second problem: the focus symbol. You knew about the black and white ones. You know what the violet one is?"

That did give me a bit of trouble. I couldn't remember it and while Ms Ferris had a logo while she was in mental mode the ring could replicate it no problem, so that couldn't be it. Had to play around with shapes for a couple of hours until I found a variant I couldn't generate: an eight pointed star with a circle inside surrounded by a circle. I generate an image of what Ms Ferris looked like while she was under the influence. "The previous user used something like-."

Zatanna eyes it warily. "I'm.. so not wearing that."

"One more reason not to use the Sapphire directly. Anyway,-" I dismiss most of the image, leaving just the star over her abdomen. "-take this symbol, even it up a bit, put a circle around it annnd then another…" The construct disintegrates just as the smaller circle touches the star only now I can see why: tiny amounts of violet light coming through it and disrupting its structure. I recreate it with the smaller circle floating a short distance away.

Sephtian picks up a magic tablet and makes a note of the design. "And you say this.. represents.. 'love'? I had been under the impression that this Star Sapphire was a violent criminal."

"That was a combination of a really bad break up and being overwhelmed by violet light. The woman in question didn't have a safe way to channel it like I did-" I raise the ring. "-with orange."

"Could she assist-?" He cuts off as I shake my head. Not a good idea. And forget contacting the Zamorans. I'm not risking that without more information and if I can get it, Controller backup. "Hm. Can't really do much more on that until I see Dark Druid's designs then." He pauses for a moment. "So. Are we ready to test the gun?"

John looks at him for a moment. "Have you ever.. summoned a Demon before?"

"No. Never even seen one. Very illegal in Atlantis. Her majesty had to sign a Royal Writ to give us authorisation and she checked the seals around the ritual site personally."

"An' there's air in the chamber, is there?"

"Yes, and the materials you requested are awaiting your inspection. Everything is in order. Please, this way."

He leads us out of his workroom and down the corridor in the approximate direction of his thaumatorium. I'm dragging John along with the ring while Zatanna has a spell going on herself to allow her to swim fast enough to keep up.

"Is.. Queen Mera alright with us using your time like this?"

"Oh yes. She considers it a quite reasonable exchange for what you've done. It would have taken us months to get the physical components of the city shields to a serviceable state without you. And the spell casting involved in their manufacture hardly requires my constant oversight. This way."

He turns off into a small room. Four guards in royal livery are floating just above a circular barrier covering a tunnel opening in the floor. Still haven't quite got used to Atlantean ideas about up and down.

"Halt." The sminias -a woman with an eel tail- raises her right hand. The other guards seem reasonably alert but they don't raise their weapons. We were clearly expected.

Sephtian draws to a halt just in front of her. "Magister Sephtian and guests." He pulls out a shimmering scroll and holds it out to her.

She takes it, looks it over and then hands it back. "They'll want to see that down below as well." He starts to swim past her but she puts a hand on his chest to stop him. "Sephtian. This isn't going to blow up in our face, is it? I've been reading up on what happened last time those Lemurian lunatics tried something like this-."

"Tanis, it is not the same at all. Single, weak Demons in a contained environment. The hazardous spell craft lab was designed for things like this." He points at John. "We have an expert in this form of magic, myself and two superheroes in addition to your guards. We are as safe as we can reasonably be." She looks slightly mollified. "Come, you can watch for yourself."

back

Preparation 8

next

12th December

08:21 GMT -2

The way the Demon in the circle moves reminds me of a vulture. The stubby wings, long neck and extended muzzle give it a hunched appearance as it paces back and forth on the small patch of floor it has access to. It has a kilt held up by straps which cross its emaciated looking chest, though the ring is having trouble working out whether or not it has anything to conceal. It's not even sure if the clothing is clothing. Its feet look like they came from a Velociraptor and its skin is a sort of rusty red colour. The floor inside the circle has a different texture to the stone of the room. It puts me in mind of a swamp land, damp and covered in rotten foliage. Part of Hell? A product of the Demon's own corrupting presence? No idea.

"You must be desperate indeed to summon me, Constantine. Still, I'm not completely without compa-."

A small brush construct removes part of the circle. Immediately, the stone reappears beneath it and I can get clean readings on the creature. Human organs, but distorted in a fashion which means that they couldn't possibly work through simple biology. The ring thinks the clothing is made from Human body tissues, though that seems unlikely.

It freezes for a moment, looks down to check the circle and then up again at John. It grins. "I expected better, given your reputation. How exactly do you think you're going to stop-?"

BLAM!

The impact of the bullet knocks the Demon back and the white and gold flames are enveloping it before it hits the ground.

"DRAAAAAGHHHHHH!"

Above us near the rim of the pit I see Sephtian tending to his monitoring runes while down here Sminias Tanis lowers the Ace of Winchesters. "Should I be concerned that he was the third one who could identify you by name? Out of three?"

John kneels down to restore the circle, making sure to keep watch on the Demon's corpse as it is rapidly consumed by the fire. The skin around its extremities has already carbonised and evaporated and the area around the impact site is going the same way. The flames are still hard at work on its head but it still has just enough control to turn its neck to point its face at him. "Par for the course, really."

Should have thought about it in advance, but it turns out that none of us have much experience with rifles. I've stuck to handguns, neither Zatanna nor Sephtian even have that much and while John claimed to have some experience it only came from a couple of acts of desperation. Tanis volunteered her services in exchange for one of my flight belts, which she needed anyway as the Ace won't work under water. She's taken to it exactly as easily as Lori did.

The chamber is slightly oval shaped and about thirty metres long by twenty wide. The bit we're working in is a circular space with a ten metre diameter, set about four metres deep into the floor. The water above us is held up by wards inscribed around the rim, powering spells by water pressure not exactly being a novel concept around here.

Of the other six guards in this part of the chamber two are Purebloods and the other four are like Kaldur with gills and webbing. More aquatic forms just wouldn't work, though there are another five Shark guards above us in the water filled section with Sephtian in case their colleagues aren't enough. I smiled when I saw they were all wearing Spell Eaters.

Seems to be going well so far. We've only used about a quarter of our lamb's blood and none of the things we've summoned have been able to stress the barrier created by the circle. And we know that the gun is very lethal to Demons. Just ash left of M'z'k… Mazsuk… Whatever that thing's name was, now.

"Sephtian? Any news?"

He picks up a rune stone from its hollow on the floor and it glows for a moment. "No power flow detected. After three attempts.. I think we can tentatively conclude that the 'Ace of Winchesters' is entirely destroying whatever energy manifests in the corporeal world. Still don't know if it gets everything everything." He moves his hand over the stone's surface and then bends down to put it back in the floor. "John, are you able to summon that particular entity again?"

"Yeah, but they can refuse a summons. We'd have to clean up this whole place or they'd just feel it and decide to stay put."

"Hmm. We can put that down for the second round of tests."

Tanis works the lever of the rifle while I walk over to Zatanna. "So, Zatanna: what do you think of your first encounter with the Demonic?"

She looks at the ground as she thinks about it. "To be honest… It's a bit underwhelming. He just calls something up, then 'blam', no more Demon."

John completes his checks and then stands up again. He took off his coat and jacket before we started and rolled his sleeves up when he started drawing the marks for the summoning. For the first time since we met I can see his tattoos. Part of them anyway. Latin writing, though the ring tells me that there are more complex designs on his back and shoulders. "Wouldn't get too sure of yourself, Zatanna. Doin' it like this, we're holdin' all the cards. Out in the wild, doesn't work like that."

"Though that's probably our next stop. Whatever happened to that.. Fly.. Demon thing you and Papa Midnight stuck in-."

"Still in his club." He glances at Zatanna. "'less he's moved it. An' yeah, shooting the containment vessel would probably work but I don't think it's worth risking Mnemoth gettin' loose in New York City t' test it."

I note that he didn't say who the containment vessel is. The Demon wouldn't have kept Gary Lester alive, would it?

"There's a Demon in New York?"

John manages a bitter grin. "Probably loads of Demons in New York. But Mnemoth was only free for about a fortnight eleven years ago. You probably weren't old enough to remember it; the people it possessed felt like they were starving, they'd try and eat anything. By the time they finally died their bodies were totally emaciated."

"Did..? Did you tell someone?"

"Tell who what, exactly?"

"Their families, the police! Those people died and no one apart from you and that.. Midnight person know what happened to them!"

John shakes his head. "They don't want to know."

"How can you-!"

"'cause it's very far from the first time I've done somethin' like that and I know: tellin' people that someone they love was killed by a Demon does not make them feel better about it."

"And.. the police?"

"Don't dare try touching Papa Midnight. We're scrabbling around with alien crystals t'try an' get you a boost? He's got a whole friggin' casino powering his magic. Gambling, drink, hard drugs and gladiatorial combat, plus all the political favours he can buy. Anything like that.. goes anywhere near him, and everyone's deaf and blind."

Looks like that's a hard pill for her to swallow. Ring, what was Mister Zatara doing that week? Oh, on tour. Probably wouldn't have heard about it until it was already dealt with, though that doesn't explain how he was in the same city as someone like Midnight for so long. Maybe he just decided that the man wasn't a wider threat and left it at that. That's why I haven't mentioned him to anyone. As far as I remember from the comic the gladiators were all zombies anyway.

Sephtian waves to get our attention. "We're ready to go again. You said you.. wanted to test the gun on an Elemental?"

John looks up at him. "One more type'a Demon I want t' have a go at first. Bit more powerful than the last one, plus it's about as close to being an Elemental as a Demon can get."

"How much more powerful?"

His face tightens. "Shouldn't be a problem."

"John, what's this about?"

"You know about the Coopers, yeah? I mean, you know about every other bloody thing."

"Coopers? That was where his son died and he wanted you to-?"

"That's the one. I stopped it, but the thing got away, didn't it? Didn't have the tools to put it down. Now-" He nods at the Ace. "-we do, and I'd like to have one less thing to watch me back for."

I shrug. "When you put it like that, no problem."

back

Preparation 9

next

13th December

22:48 GMT -5

Artemis puts her left hand on her hip while her right keeps the torch shining directly into my face. "Okay, firstly: why are the lights off?"

I stick my head a little further up from behind the settee I transported into the corridor adjoining the training room and make a frantic beckoning gesture with both hands. She rolls her eyes, shakes her head and then puts her torch away so she can clamber over it. "Because Red Arrow's getting here in two minutes and I plan on pranking him."

"You? You're.. pranking someone?"

"You know he's been going on at Kaldur about that whole 'mole' thing again, right? Despite the investigation Kaldur and I did?"

She crouches down next to me. "Kinda talking to his prime suspect here."

"Joint prime suspect. Think he's been giving Robert the evils too."

"Not Kon or Zatanna?"

"M'gann had Mister J'onzz check her work on Kon's mind. Guess he considers Manhunter trustworthy. And if he'd tried making accusations at Zatanna they'd-" I smile at her. "-never have found the body."

"Oh-kay then."

"Here." I pass her a pair of light enhancement glasses. I'm already wearing my pair. "Can't use the ring to let us see otherwise our eyes will glow and give the game away."

She takes it and looks at it for a moment. "Secondly, why do I need to be here? Getting back at Red's fun and all, but I did have stuff I was doing."

"On Roanoke Island, you said that there weren't such things as Anti-Magic Arrows. Now-" I reach around to the floor behind me, trying to feel for the strap. I'm so used to having the ring find stuff- Ah! Got it. I pull the quiver closer and pick it up to show her. "-there are!"

She takes it from me and pulls one of the arrows out to take a look. "Is that what you and the Fish-guy were working on?"

"Please don't call him a 'Fish-guy'. He's a Manta guy, and it's one of the things we were working on."

She smiles faintly. "You keeping some for yourself in case you run into a magic robot next time?"

"No, but I do have both bullet and micro missile versions of both in my subspace-."

"Recognised, Red Arrow, B zero seven."

I duck down as the light from the Zeta Tube briefly illuminates the room and flap my hands at Artemis until she follows suit. I hear Roy take a step out, stop and then there's a quiet noise which is probably him putting an arrow on string. He's listening for a target, so we've probably got about ten seconds before he puts on his night vision glasses. Which means…

The spotlight I attached to the ceiling over the centre of the room comes on at full blast and Roy immediately orientates on it. "…wiring…" Realising that it isn't a threat he switches his aim to the object below it. When it doesn't attack him either he takes a takes a few steps closer.

What he sees is this: at head height there's a brightly coloured picture with an image of Mount Justice on one side and a slightly cartoony one of him brandishing a mallet on the other. Below that, slightly above waist height, is a green box with nine large holes in the top surface arranged in a three by three grid and a large, well padded mallet. Written across the top and along the sides in bright, arcade friendly letters is the title: Red Arrow's Mole Hunt.

And then the music starts.

"I'm gonna be a pirate

on the river Saskatchewaaaaaan!

And it's a heave!"

A mole painted to look like Roy pops out of the bottom left mole hole before dropping back down.

"Ho!"

Kid Flash mole pops out of the top right.

"Hi!"

Red Arrow, Artemis and Cornwall Boy moles erupt from the bottom row.

"Ho!

Commin' down-"

Superboy, Miss Martian and Orange Lantern moles in the middle row and…

"-the plains!"

…Robin, Aqualad and Kid Flash out of the top and besides me Artemis muffles her laughter.

"Stealin' Wheat and Barley-"

Robin, Kid Flash, Miss Martian, Red Arrow and Cornwall Boy moles form an 'X'-

"-and all the other grains!"

-then tilt left and right in time with the music.

"And it's a Ho. Hey!"

Cornwall.

"High. Hey!"

Robin.

"Farmers bar yer doors"

Bottom, middle and top rows in sequence.

"When you see the Jolly Roger-"

Superboy, Artemis and Orange Lantern moles pop out and wiggle back and forth.

"-on Regina's mighty shores."

Pppssffffhahahahahahahahahaha!

Roy relaxes slightly and lowers his bow. "Alright, Wally, very funny. Are you going to put the lights back on now or am I going to have to climb up there myself?"

Artemis and I stare at each other. I hadn't really planned for this bit. Oh, what the heck. Ring, lights.

Roy blinks at the sudden illumination and then looks our way as we get up from behind the settee, still sniggering. "Artemis? Paul? What..?"

"Oh, come on; as if Wallace could set something like that up."

Artemis snorts with laughter. "I can't believe you did that. Did you record it?"

"Of course I recorded it. What do you take me for?"

"Does it..? Can you play it normally?"

"Yeah, there's a dial at the back, just turn it to-."

"Did you really call me here just to watch a demented game of Whack-a-Mole?!"

"No." Another quiver appears in my right hand as Artemis walks around the back of the machine. "Anti-magic arrows. They work on the same principle as my Spell Eater, so if your target is a magic user or the physical component of a spell then they should drain the magic right out. Though, y'know, you have been getting a bit silly with this mole hunt thing as well."

He snatches it off me. "You think it's funny that someone on your team is leaking information?"

"I think it's funny how obsessed you are. We already checked everyone. Well, except you. And actually I haven't got around to doing your medical scans yet, so if you don't mind-?"

"I used to be a farmer-"

"Hah!"

We look around as Artemis brings the mallet down on Red Arrow mole's head. Roy scowls and turns to stride back towards the Zeta Tube. "Don't call me again unless it's something important."

"Alright! But don't come crying to me if you get your arm cut off!"

back

Preparation 10

next

15th December

15:22 GMT -5

"Dad's really into gardening but I never took to it." Alan puts the glass of orange juice down in front of me. "Thanks." He smiles at me and takes the seat next to mine on the decking.

Danni remains focused on her pruning. "When I first moved to New York I was not able to afford a home with a garden, but I remember that I did enjoy taking care of my window basket. Also, it was becoming overgrown."

Alan grimaces. "I'd.. kinda been letting it go a bit. After Johnny passed and I started charging my ring again I-" He gestures at his flower beds with his right hand. "-trimmed the whole thing down to practically nothing. Then, well, with you taking the lantern and me getting older and.. then with you telling me not to use my ring anymore-."

"Alan, that's important. Seven or eight months and you can use it as much as you want but right now it's what's keeping you alive."

"Keeping me young, you mean."

Alert! Connection made to monitored telephone line. Location: second public telephone, BP, Happy Harbour branch.

I instinctively glance at the ring before looking back at Alan. "Middle aged, and if you're just wearing it for a few hours a week like I suggested you'll probably go up to early old age by the time I've got a replacement for you."

He frowns slightly. "Someone trying to get hold of you?"

"They can leave a message. I'm serious about the ring-. Danni? Make sure he doesn't use it."

"I will continue observation."

"Hey, come on guys. I am capable of making my own decisions, you know."

I reach over and pat his left hand with my right. "Alan, it's the job of young people to look after their elders when they start going a bit senile."

Alert! Priority message received.

"Ugh." Alan cuts off his retort and raises his eyebrows as I lift the ring to my left ear. "Sorry, I need to listen to this."

"Someone important?"

"Probably. Ring, who is it?"

"Detective Harvey Bullock, Gotham City Police Department."

"Maybe he wasn't too impressed about you spending time with that Catwoman person."

"She's actually quite nice once you get to know her."

"I'm not criticizing, son. I've seen her pictures. Perfectly natural for a man your age."

I shrug. "My plate's kind of full at the moment."

He grins. "Oh? Anyone I know?"

If he's going to be like that… "Ring, play the message."

Silence for a moment. "It's an answer machine. We even sure this is him?" Yep, definitely Detective Bullock. Another pause as he listens to the reply. "Yeah, yeah, alright fine. Hey, Orange Lantern, Detective Bullock here from Gotham PD Major Crimes Unit. We'd like t'speak to you regarding an ongoing investigation."

"Yes!"

Alan looks puzzled. "Why is that a good thing?"

"I'm always happy to use the ring to aid in criminal investigations, especially in a place like Gotham where the evidence has a habit of going walkabouts. I'm just not usually there for them to ask. Ring, continue."

"Phone me back on this number if you get this message." The message ends as Danni stands and walks over to the table, laying down her secateurs and gardening gloves. Alright, don't have much on today, no real reason why I can't spend some time in-. "Come on Commish, we don't even have the Bat's phone number. That reporter probably just… Yeah, hang o-." The phone goes silent.

"You are going to Gotham?"

"Sounds like. Sorry Alan, but this-."

He shakes his head to dismiss my concerns. "The job comes first. I'll still be here when you get back."

As I stand up Danni walks around the table to my side. "I will accompany you."

"If you like. I'm not sure there'll be much to do."

"You recently acquired stolen property. I believe my presence would be prudent."

"I had a confiscation order written out, and there's no way the Museum got hold of it legally in the first place."

She looks at Alan and then back at me. "I believe it would be good for me to get out of the house."

I shrug. "Okay then. Do you want to get anything..?"

"No, but I would appreciate it if you could change these clothes for my costume."

"No problem."

Alan blinks in surprise, then dips his head and covers his eyes with his right hand as the orange glow envelopes Danni. "Now, hold on-."

"Alan, you can't see anything." He removes his hand while looking to the side and nervously flicks his eyes in Danni's direction, relaxing only when he sees her uniform -with flight belt- in place. "Right, Major Crimes is near the top of the building so I'm going to put us down on the roof. Ready?" Danni nods. "Transition."

No one on the roof when we appear, though I am interested to get my first close look at the famous Bat Signal. Saw it in the sky in the week before Roanoke. Just once though, and we were already on site. Advantage of ring faster than light travel and ring Hollywood hacking meant that sort of notification wasn't really needed. Batman told me that when he sees it he usually phones the Commissioner rather than turning up in person; that would just take too long.

"You spend any time in Gotham in the forties?"

"Not a significant amount. Green Lantern did not require backup." She follows my gaze up to the searchlight. "What is the purpose of this light? Surely the Gotham Police Department could simply use a telephone?"

"I'm not sure, but if I had to guess I'd say it was so anyone looking up at the sky could be reminded that there was someone around who wasn't just part of the problem." I look at her. "You know how bad things were before Batman got started?"

"I have read the Justice League's records. I find it hard to believe that the city was still able to function."

I shrug. "Even criminals need their rubbish collected and their water and sewage systems to work. And there's a difference between functioning and functioning well."

"The crime statistics appear to be worse now than they were prior to Batman becoming active."

"Because people are actually bothering to report it. There's a small jump almost immediately after Commissioner Loeb and his most notable stooges got arrested. Plus, with Carmine Falcone not being around to keep things under control, criminal groups started fighting it out. And they all ended up losing out to the incoming costumed criminals as a result." I turn away and head towards the door to the police station. "Come on, they're probably waiting for me."

back

Preparation 11

next

15th December

15:27 GMT -5

The door's locked, but: power ring. The walls on either side of the stairs as we descend into the police station are grimy and look like they could use a fresh coat of paint. There's some water damage to the plaster beneath and it looks like the builder was scrimping on material costs so out comes the Orange Wave of Home Improvement.

"Do you do that in every building you visit?"

"Only if they visibly need it."

"I had been under the impression that you needed to care intensely about a thing in order to effect change on that scale. Certainly I cannot remember any occasions on which Green Lantern…" She pauses for a moment and it's uncharacteristic enough that I stop just as we come up to the door into the police station proper and give her an enquiring look. "I am not aware of any occasion on which any of the individuals operating under the title 'Green Lantern' have utilized an equivalent ability."

"I'd probably struggle if it looked alright, even if I could improve it. For a place like this? Let the wall be a wall, the floor a floor, a light a light and a door a door."

"Confucius?"

"Sort of. Probably the same idea. A wall should be a wall, and if I look at it and it isn't a proper wall I get this need to do something about it. And I can, 'cause; power ring. And it's not just walls; if a thing clearly isn't as good as it could be I start looking for ways to fix it."

"I am aware of your behavioral tendency. I am after all a beneficiary."

"That wasn't.. just fixing. That was the other thing. Perfecting."

A slight tilt of her head. "You believe I am perfect?"

"Uuum. More like: you're as perfect an example of what you are as the Ophidian and I could make you based on what we knew about you at the time. When you get a better idea about what you want to do with yourself and.. I get access to better technology you might decide that you want to modify yourself… Um. To more perfectly represent that idea of you."

"Do you apply that ideal to yourself as well?"

"Look at me." I flex my right arm and then rotate my hand, making the muscles shift. "When was the last time you saw me take exercise? And have I shown you my tattoos?"

Out of the corner of my eye I see a uniformed police officer staring at me through the reinforced glass in the door. Best get moving then. The ring opens the door and the orange wave carries on through the building. Whoops. Oh well, I'm sure the cleaners will forgive me. The policeman sprinting away down the corridor ahead of the wave might not. Gotham, right, people in costumes entering the police station from the roof. Should.. probably.. have thought about that. The only other person in the corridor -a Latino woman with a file in her left hand and a styrofoam coffee cup in her right- appears to be much less fazed, limiting herself to a confused blink. Is that..?

I smile at her. "Detective Montoya. Delighted to meet you. I believe Detective Bullock wanted to see me?"

"What did you just do to the building?"

"Maintenance, repairs, cleaning. Why did he run away?"

"He was on duty when the Joker attacked a school disco last year. Lost his partner, and he spent two months recovering from gunshot wounds. Joker shot anyone who touched the orange light."

"Oh.. shit. I-I didn't know that."

Detective Montoya sighs and gives her head a small shake. "No, didn't expect you to. Probably didn't even make state news."

"Wasn't on this Earth at the time." Can't think of a way to fix that. Move on. "What was it Detective Bullock wanted my help with?"

At the end of the corridor I see two uniformed officers jogging in our direction with their pistols drawn. Hm, good response time. Fortunately, they're pointing the guns down and the chap in front appears to be on the ball. "Ah, Detective?"

Detective Montoya transfers the folder to under her right arm as she turns to look at them. "Misunderstanding, guys. Stand easy." An uncertain nod and the weapons are holstered, though they decide to stick around just in case. The Detective turns back to me. "What makes you think we need your help with anything?"

"I just assumed… Well, what did you want me for then?"

She stares at my face for a couple of seconds. "Not here." Her eyes pass briefly over Danni before she walks past us down the corridor. "This way."

I turn to follow her. Danni gives me a completely blank look which I think is supposed to be interrogative but I really don't know what's going on. Could take a look at the Detective's computer records but that does seem to be slightly in bad faith. Major Crimes offices are over in that direction so.. okay. Follow her. My boots make a pleasant click-squeak-click on the newly regenerated floor as the metal heel plate is followed by the vibram sole and metal toe cap. Danni's shoes are quieter but I can still hear her behind me. The detective pushes the door to the Major Crimes office open ahead of us.

"What? I don't get a coffee?"

Detective Bullock's voice. Good to know. I stride in behind her and give the room a smile. No one looks up, having registered the person coming in as Detective Montoya and gone back to whatever they're doing. No Commissioner Gordon, though I do half-recognise a few of the other detectives. Bald black guy looks most familiar. Didn't he turn into the Spectre at some point?

"No, you don't get a coffee. Don't want you to spit it everywhere when you see who's turned up."

"Who?" She jerks her thumb in my direction as I emerge from behind her. I smile and give him a wave. His reaction is fairly minimal. "Oh. Guess the number was right after all. Fine, interview two should be free." He gets up from his chair and I get an unlooked for glimpse of his fur-covered gut between the buttons of his shirt. I wouldn't say he's obese, but he's certainly carrying extra weight. No idea how he passes the fitness tests. I guess that the Commissioner just needs good people badly enough to overlook a few trivial things as long as they can pull their weight. Heh, and if he can do that… Wonder if he'd like me.. to..? No, probably not.

Their interview rooms are on the other side of the office and a few people look up as we pass. I get a few odd looks but I'm mostly used to them by now. I find grinning is usually the best way to-. Wait. Would that be a Napier thing around here? No, I can't constantly be-. Ahead of me Bullock's bulk knocks some papers off the edge of a desk and I catch them with the ring without really thinking about it before depositing them back on the desk. Smile to 'normal' I give the detective to whom they belong a nod. All I get in return is puzzlement. Montoya opens the door to the interview room and Bullock walks through. Wait, interview room? I just thought they wanted somewhere quiet to talk, but is this an actual interview? Have I committed any crimes..? Aside from the vigilante stuff, but from what I've seen the police have pretty much given up trying to stop that. Don't.. think so. Bullock's already standing at ease in the far corner of the room when I enter. Room control? Well, two can play at that game. I ignore the hard plastic seats next to the table and generate a construct armchair to slouch in.

"You his lawyer?"

"I am not. Is one required?"

"Then you can wait out here."

Detective Montoya enters the room and closes the door in Danni's face. That's a bit rude. She tenses slightly when she sees the glowing chair but remains calm and collected as she crosses the room to take a seat on the far side of the table. Still.. not sure what I'm suppose to have done.

"Interview commencing at fifteen thirty one, Detectives Montoya and Bullock present." She leans forwards slightly. "Along with 'Orange Lantern'."

"Hello, future people!"

"Alright, wise guy." Detective Bullock's leaning against the wall now, but according to the ring's body language analysis program his apparent relaxation is feigned. "Where were you last Thursday night?"

"What sort of time?"

Detective Montoya's face hardens. "Midnight."

"Is this about the gun? Because I got a receipt-."

Detective Bullock lurches forwards and slams his hands down on the table. "No, it's about the murder of Jennifer Gordon-Hewitt!"

back

Preparation 12

next

15th December

15:42 GMT -5

My eyebrows drop into a mild frown. Ring, confirm her death.

Subject not found at residential address. Corpse located in police morgue. Genetic match confirmed.

Oh. That's… A shame. The first time someone I've known has been murdered, even if I didn't know her very well. Ring, identify cause of-.

"Hey! You hear me?!"

"Yes Detective, I heard you. In answer to your question I first met Missus Gordon-Hewitt at thirty eight minutes past midnight on Friday the tenth annnd left her alive and well at two minutes past one."

Unable to reliably identify cause of death. The subject was severely beaten prior to death. In my mind the ring shows me a picture. I've seen worse and the morticians appear to have cleaned her up a bit. Most likely fatal injuries-.

That's fine.

Detective Bullock still looks angry. Part of his usual approach as I understand it. His partner just looks stern. Might work on some people, but I've been sterned at by Batman and he's made of sterner stuff. "How do you remember the exact time?"

"The ring records everything I do. Plus, there was a clock on her mantelpiece and I have excellent recall."

"Why were you there?"

"She had a gun I wished to purchase. I had it authenticated, we talked a bit about its history and.. we.. negotiated a price."

"How much did she want for it?"

"Have you been over the house?" Nothing from either of them. "Should be a big sarcophagus looking thing." I generate an illustrative construct. "I traded it with her for the gun."

"What gun?"

"The Ace of Winchesters." Another construct. "Perfect for fighting Demons as they should be fought: from a safe distance."

"Were you aware of the rest of her collection?"

"Saw a few things. I'd like to say I was surprised, but…" I spread my arms out to the sides. "Gotham." Scowls. "Oh, come on! You Major Crimes people are just about the only ones who can be trusted not to shiv your grandmothers for a dollar, I'm certainly not surprised about evidence going walkabouts."

Detective Bullock squeezes his eyes closed. "Wait a sec. Demons?"

"Yes." I prep my left hand for a Fatty-releasing tap. "Would you like me to introduce you to one?"

"Are you talkin' about actual cloven hoofed, pitchfork carryin'…"

"Cloven hooves aren't guaranteed and the pitchfork thing is a myth. Fatty -that's the one who lives in the ring- looks sort of like an obese dwarf with Down's syndrome."

Detective Bullock squints and takes an aggressive step around the edge of the table. "Listen, wise guy-."

"Harvey, I think he's being serious."

"Spent most of Sunday morning in Poseidonis summoning things up and shooting them." That's one Demon who won't be fucking any more pigs. "Detective Bullock, please try to understand that I fight people who can crush granite in their bare hands-" Though I think Barda was showing off for the peanut gallery when she did that. "-or rewrite reality by claiming to come from Hamelin. An overweight policeman cannot threaten me. Now, I'm minded to help you-."

He strides at me and tries to grab hold of me by my armour's collar. I wait patiently while my environmental shield foils his attempt and he quickly switches to trying to pull me up by my belt. I let him succeed but I use the ring to float so that I'm comfortably upright rather than trying to stand on tiptoes or falling over. I drop the chair construct as I tilt my head slightly towards him. "Detective, since you're being childish I'm going to return the favour. I'll remove an ounce of fat from your body for each second you hold onto me, starting now." Ring, do it.

Compliance.

He keeps trying to stare me down, despite being below me. Whaw, he could really do with a nose hair trim. And some sleep, those eyes are seriously bloodshot. Maybe I should give him a medical reset as-?

"Harvey, it's not going to work."

One last eyeball and he steps back and lets go. I remain exactly where I am as he slobs back to the corner of the room. "Thank you, Detective Montoya."

She spares her partner a sidelong glance before returning her attention to me. "Did Missus Gordon-Hewitt give any indication that she was afraid, or that she had been threatened?"

"She mentioned that her late husband had insisted she check the security camera before letting anyone in. Aside from that, no."

"How did you find out she had the gun you were looking for?"

"I hired someone to track it down. Turns out, they were the one who sold it to her in the first place, so…" I shrug. Perhaps I should be annoyed, but I don't think it really matters.

"What was the name of the person you hired?"

Tell or not? As Catwoman, Selina does have outstanding warrants on her. "A local specialist. I'm afraid that some people I work with would rather not come to the attention of the police. I'll let you know if it's critical, but, if it isn't…" I shrug.

"Why do you get to decide what's critical and what isn't?"

"I know the individual concerned and know the probability of them being involved in a murder."

Her jaw tightens slightly. "Aside from you and your 'expert', was anyone else present?"

"S-. That person wasn't the expert, they just had local contacts. I brought a wizard with me to check the gun. I didn't see or scan anyone else in the house."

"You gunna tell me who they were?"

"Not currently planning to, no." She sighs, leans back and rolls her eyes. "To the best of my knowledge they hadn't met her before that night and left the country when we'd finished."

"Where's this gun you say you got from her now?"

"In Poseidonis, being thoroughly tested."

"We're going to need to see it."

"And you know what about magic, exactly? Besides, I can't let you take possession of it. Security Council Resolution two zero two two. You're not qualified to handle arcane artefacts, and we probably wouldn't be having this discussion if Gotham's evidence handling was up to scratch." I can see her losing patience. Perhaps I should throw her a bone? "I do have a full scan of her house on file and I can give you that. Shows her whole collection. You can even have my conversation with her if you like." Editing out my accomplices and distorting their voices, of course. Not that I think they'd recognise John.

Detective Bullock sneers. "And how do we know it's accurate?"

"Presumably you have a record of what was found in her house. And have you any idea how annoyingly fiddly it would be for me to convincingly fake the whole thing?" Probably not very, actually. "Look, I'm faster, more accurate and a good deal more honest than your own forensics people. What's say we work together on this one?"

back

Preparation 13

next

15th December

16:12 GMT -5

Match looks apprehensively at the three G-Gnomes crouching next to his lounger. "Is this gunna hurt?"

Dubbilex takes a step forwards and lays his right hand on Match's left shoulder. "You have no need to fear, brother. We will not harm you. Our sole purpose here is to impart information, the same information that we imparted to your younger brother."

M'gann nods. "I'll be monitoring you the whole time. If it hurts, or if you're scared you can tell me right away and I'll make them stop."

Match looks up at her and then makes eye contact with Kon, standing next to her. Kon gives him a reassuring smile. "You saw them teaching me Greek, didn't you? There's nothing to it."

Match appears to calm down a bit. He nods and wiggles into a more comfortable position on the cushion. Thankfully he doesn't look to me for further comfort; I most certainly will not be availing myself of the G-Gnomes' services. I don't even trust M'gann enough to let her do something like that, let alone the Genomorphs. Match takes a deep breath and closes his eyes and a moment later the G-Gnomes' horns light up. They're going to be doing basic information first, loading it in and connecting it to things he already knows. We can handle more advanced knowledge in later sessions and obviously they aren't going to condition him to hate Kal-El.

Dubbilex's horns glow for a moment as he looks over his recumbent Kryptonian brother, then he gives a slight nod. "The process has started. He will most likely need to remain in a semi-unconscious state for several hours."

Kon nods, not taking his eyes off Match. "Yeah, but we're going to wait here anyway."

Dubbilex nods. "Very well. If you need me, I will be overseeing the construction work outside." Kon nods again, distractedly, and Dubbilex turns to look up at me. "Grayven, if you are not required here there are one or two matters I would like to discuss with you."

I nod. "Of course. Lead the way." Dubbilex turns and leads me out of the small stone building we are situated in, one of dozens of the near-identical structures crowding the sides of the subterranean chamber they've started somewhat inaccurately calling 'Genomorph City'. Going by the number of full time inhabitants it's a village and including all Genomorphs it would struggle to classify itself as more than a very small town. Going by order of service it's barely a hamlet; until I transferred us here this morning all it had were some residential buildings. Everything else had to be stolen from Cadmus Labs above.

I feel a moment of pride as I look down the slope towards the newly fabricated Genomorph gestation chambers. Not large enough for G-Trolls and somewhat inefficient for G-Sprites but perfectly capable of growing each of the other Genomorph types. I even took the time to use my records on Kryptonian physiology to extend the lifespan of the G-Sprites powering the place. I catch Dubbilex's eye and nod at them. "What do you intend to make first?"

"We have not yet reached a consensus. G-Elves are better for precision construction. G-Dwarves are better at laboratory work. G-Gnomes are more carefully monitored above us and as such are harder to liberate."

I raise my eyebrows. "Not more G-Goblins?"

He pauses for a moment before leading the way down the slope. "As I said, there is no consensus."

"I would recommend it. You will have to come into contact with Human society in general eventually, and that will be easier if there are a few more Human-equivalent intelligences amongst you."

"There is truth in what you say, but that will likely be some considerable time in the future. At present we barely know how to live with ourselves, let alone with Humans in any fashion other than as their slaves."

"Even more reason. I doubt there'd be any objection to a G-Goblin taking up residence in our mountain. We may not be a representative sample but it's a place to start if you want to understand Human social interactions."

"True. May I ask you a question?"

"Of course."

"I have been puzzled as to why you are going to such lengths to help us. When you liberated our brother Match both from this place and from his own rage, you purposefully avoided involving other Genomorphs in any way. You have stated that you find our telepathy distasteful-"

"Anyone's telepathy, not just yours. It's not personal."

"-and that you do not care at all about the conditions in which we live. And yet…"

My second most important contribution to Genomorph civilisation comes into view. A Hush Tube generator, one of only two on the planet. As we watch a G-Dwarf presses some buttons and a Tube opens up to a maintenance area. Two G-Elves walk through into the complex above and the Tube closes behind them. Really need to talk to Batman about setting one of those up in the mountain. Sure, we'd probably have to sacrifice the hangar Zeta Tubes to get the space and power but the technology is so superior.

Genomorphs don't bother looking at each other, I've noticed. Their telepathic fields means that they know where each other are the whole time and while only Dubbilex is readily capable of complex spoken communication the rest can talk clearly to one another's minds so, why bother?

"You really should reconsider closing off the passage to the surface. Guardian will work out what's going on eventually."

"Guardian feels proud that he has given a G-Elf a name. Yet, he has not realized that he has referred to seven different G-Elves as 'Eric'." Can't say I'm surprised. "We have heard you, and we will close it off once our escape tunnel is complete. I am still puzzled as to your motivation."

I nod, pondering how to put it into words. "Your people don't matter to me. I don't mean to imply that I dislike you. I would gain no pleasure from your failure or capture. Rather, that when I weigh up choices your wellbeing has no impact. Kon's wellbeing, on the other hand, matters to me intensely. And Match's.. somewhat. He's growing on me, and they both care about the Genomorphs. Plus, I gain pleasure from proving the League's hypocrisy."

"Hypocrisy? You believe that they are not honest in their beliefs?"

"You're still a slave, aren't you?" His head tilts down slightly. "They talk the good talk about justice and freedom and they were perfectly happy to leave you here." The left corner of my mouth turns up slightly. "You should have seen Wonder Woman's face when I drew her attention to the obvious contradiction."

"You were content to leave us here as well."

"I never claimed to care. Plus, I knew about this place. Left to your own devices I thought you'd manage to work something out eventually."

We walk in silence around a slight bend in the wall of the cavern. In the distance I can see the Genomorphs’ first attempts at farming. Small artificial light sources on support poles shine down on the fields. Nothing like enough to feed them yet but they need to learn agricultural skills before trying anything that labour intensive. Away on our right G-Dwarves are going through the technical database I brought in, understanding its content and relaying it to their brethren via the G-Gnomes crouched on their heads. I had considered trying to set up an internet connection but I just couldn't work out how to make it undetectable enough.

"Still, the work you have done appeared to involve a great deal of effort on your part."

A few days' work, all told. And it turns out that I find building like this rather satisfying. Still, credit based economies are a bad idea. I wouldn't want to encourage bad habits. "And.. I'll.. expect you to pay me back at some point. You're in a weak position now, but you won't always be." I point at where some G-Trolls are working with G-Elves to expand the cavern. "You may want to be careful with that; the insulation I put in should prevent electromagnetic, ground penetrating radar or infrared detection, but seismographs will pick it up if you do too much heavy lifting."

"There is always one of us on look out in each part of Cadmus. We will shut down if such equipment is detected."

I nod. "What do you plan to do next?"

"Expand. Learn. We simply do not know enough to make long term plans at present. I had thought that Superbo-." I give him a look. "That Kon-El would make things easier for us when it came to interacting with Humans, but I see now that you are right; they will look at him and see his Human appearance and Kryptonian genetics before they see his Cadmus pod-grown history. That sort of idea is hard for us to understand. We are a telepathic species; we feel people's minds before we look at their shape."

"Don't feel too sure that's the cause. Martians are all telepathic and still have skin colour based discrimination."

"Do they have different physiotypes as we do? I would not assign a G-Troll to the same work as a G-Elf."

"No, other than colour they all exist within the same range of morphologies. And in any case, they are shapeshifters."

"A puzzling contradiction."

I nod, and take a last look around. "Well, not much more for me to do here. I think I'll take my leave. Feel free to send a message to Father Box if you want me for something."

"Thank you. I will."

back

Preparation 14

next

15th December

16:16 GMT -5

I raise an orange barrier as the Boom Tube opens, containing the sound and rush of air. With a last look up at where my three friends will be spending the rest of the afternoon I step through, back to the mountain's training room. The Genomorphs could be a useful asset. I need to make a fuller assessment of their telepathic-.

"Grayven! Hi!"

I start for a moment, mind trying to switch tracks. Hadn't realised she was going to be here. "Zatanna." I smile at her. "Good to see you. What brings you to the mountain?"

"Iiiii… I wanted to ask you something."

"Go.. right ahead?"

She shifts slightly where she stands, her eyes not settling on any one thing. "I've… My school's end of year dance is in a couple of weeks."

"Oh, right. Need me to help sneak you out to meet your boyfriend, do you?"

"Nooo…"

"Ah? Need me to keep an eye on him in case he gets too fresh and needs his legs breaking?"

"I don't.. actually have a boyfriend."

"Ah. Well, your father never struck me as the hard line conservative sort. I'm sure that he'd give a girlfriend-."

"No!" She finally manages to maintain eye contact. I'm really not sure where she's going with this. "No, I... I was wondering if you wanted to come. With me."

Oooooh. Whoops. Missed that one. I blink as I try and work out how best to put this. "Zatanna, I'm…"

"I mean, if you don't want to, that's fine." She manages a slight nervous laugh. "I just sort of… Is there something..?"

"No, I… I'm sorry, I don't. There's two… Two reasons. Firstly, I'm dating Artemis' sister."

Her eyes widen. "O-oh. You haven't.. mentioned her?"

"We've been seeing each other for three months. She's not a superhero and.. Artemis wants to maintain the separation between her private and professional lives… You know, secret identity…"

"Oh. Whaw. If I'd… I mean, I wouldn't have…"

"I know, I.. should probably have mentioned it, I just didn't realise..." I wave my right hand back and forth between us. "The other reason -and this is kind of a deal breaker- is that I'm fifteen years older than you." She boggles. "In a century or two that probably wouldn't matter, but at this point in your life-."

"You're twenty-nine?!"

"Thirty, actually."

"Okay." She blinks and then starts nodding, a slightly stunned expression on her face. "That's a good reason. That's a good reason."

"Bit of an amusing misunderstanding on Wonder Woman's part when she first met me. I'm sorry. I mean, I do like you, but-."

"Yeah. Yeah. Okay." She looks down, covering her face with her right hand. "I'm so embarrassed." She turns to walk away. "I think I'm.. just.. going to go home and try to pretend this never happened."

I take a step after her. "Zatanna, no, that wasn't-."

A distortion in the air and she's gone. Darn. I need to give her a little time then.. try mending some bridges there. I should probably have spotted that she was getting… Attached, like that. No wonder Mister Zatara was giving me the evils last time I gave Zatanna her check up.

Hope no one told her about Aichi.

"Hey Grayven. Where'd Zatanna go?"

I turn to see civilian-garb clad Artemis walk out of the passageway towards the kitchen. "Home."

"Oh." She looks slightly disgruntled. "We were gunna go hang at the mall after-." Resigned frown, such as one might give a incontinent puppy. "What did you do?"

I grimace slightly. "Did you know what she was going to ask?"

"No, she just said it was private. What was it?"

"She asked me to be her escort at her school's New Year dance."

"Ooh." She looks away and then quickly turns back. "Wait, aren't you, like, thirty or something?"

I nod. "Yesss. And it turns out she didn't know that. Or that I was dating Jade."

Artemis just stares, then her mouth starts to twist into a smile. "Pfmm. That's… That's not funny."

I know she just wants to laugh to diffuse social tension. "It's alright, it's just the two of us here. Get it out of your system."

"Hahahahe! Oh whaw."

"While we're on the subject of really uncomfortable and awkward things, I've got one for you."

"Sorry, but Jade and me don't really share that well! Haha!"

"I was referring to your mother." She stops laughing. "I've already talked about it with Jade, and I was wondering what sort of characteristics you looked for in a potential stepfather."

She gapes. "Y-! Y-! No."

"What?"

"You said all that stuff about marrying Jade!"

"Yes? Oh, not me, you silly-." I bite down on my instinctive response and Artemis calms down a little. "It's just that your mother is physically fit, and aside from a ten second conversation when she got home from prison she hasn't seen your father in seven years. She'd have a pretty good case for an abandonment divorce. And you and Jade hate him anyway."

She takes a deep breath, then nods. "Well… I don't… I wouldn't mind, exactly… Showing Dad he's got no place in any of our lives anymore would be good.. I guess…"

"So..?"

She gives her shoulders a small shrug. "I dunno. Why are you asking me? I don't think Mom's actually-."

"Yes, so we'll have to give her a nudge. That's why I wanted to talk to you about it first. I've checked out the legal side already; it isn't too complicated. Assuming he doesn't try and contest it, and that seems unlikely-" Heh. "-she could be a free woman in a couple of months. How would you feel about being Artemis Nguyen?"

"I think I'll keep the name. But, yeah, it's not a bad idea. I'll.. think about it." She frowns. "Wait. Have you already got someone you're thinking about?"

"Richard's father is single, they live in the same city and share hobbies-."

She goggles. "You're talking about Batman?!"

"He's a lovely chap, really."

"Yeah but… After you told us all who Robin was, I looked him up online. His Dad is-."

"Yes."

She looks around, checking for concealed observers. As if anyone ever gets to listen in on me when I don't want them to. "Bruce Wayne." I nod. "The billionaire."

I nod again. "And the last two people he's been in serious relationships with have been the League of Shadows’ business manager and a cat burglar. I feel that a former supervillainess would be a big step forwards for him."

back

Preparation 15

next

15th December

17:12 GMT -5

I float in the air looking at the hole that was torn through the wall of Missus Gordon-Hewitt's house while beneath me Detective Bullock flicks through a forensics report. I think the really bad attempt at intimidation was part of some sort of ill-calibrated information gathering tactic on his part. He's being far more helpful now.

"Don't know how they smashed down the wall like that. No tire tracks, no obvious burning or blast debris."

"Looks to me like someone with superstrength hit it."

"Don't know how it works where you're from, pal-."

"Eastbourne."

"Whut?"

"Where I'm from. It's a town on the south coast of England."

"Whatever. 'round here, no one's strong enough to punch through two layers of brick like that."

I cover the area around the hole in orange light. Ring, measure pressure patterns. Try and get me footprints.

Working. Analysis available.

"Never said they were from around here." I cause the orange glow below me to float upwards, patterning itself after the soil compressions. Lots of people -presumably forensics- have walked over this area, but two sets of footprints stand out. I dismiss the rest and float an example of each over to Bullock and Montoya.

Montoya looks at them in dismay. "They're two feet long. Who coulda made those?"

I suppose it was too much to hope that they'd put all that effort into getting Venom Buster and then never use it. "Anyone. Did you see the news on the attack on the Rhelasian peace conference back in September?"

"Oh yeah. That was you, wasn't it?"

"Remember the chap Red Arrow and I fought when Onyx tried to kill Lex?"

"You think he's here? I thought you fixed him?"

"Mister Huang is back in Human shape. And anyway, he's a thoroughly nice guy." I've kept in touch, just to check I hadn't messed him up when I upgraded his brain. His family have noticed a slight change but none of them seem particularly worried about it. Apparently he's earned a degree of fame in Taiwan by appearing on some very intellectually challenging quiz and game shows. He is now very good at absorbing new information, to the point where I've had a few enquiries from people asking if I could make the same modifications to them. So far I've turned them down. "But there are still people who know how to make the formula. I can't conclude that it was them with a high degree of certainty, but…"

I use the ring to recreate the part of the wall that was torn asunder and the approximate shape of its probable destroyers. Ring, run re-enactment. Fists fly and construct brick is forced inwards by the force of their attack. Another series of blows forces sections of brick to fall inwards, then the construct figures stick arms inside and pull chunks of wall off, tossing it aside. Once the wall is down they walk inside and I lose track of them.

Bullock flicks through the paperwork again. "Lemme see. Forensics said they didn't find anything much inside. Few knickknacks."

"This was where the sarcophagus was."

"What sarcophagus?"

The footprints on the outwards journey are deeper. I project a construct of the two Venom Buster enhanciles carrying it before dismissing them and floating the sarcophagus over. "The one I gave her. She wanted something of historical significance, this was used to regenerate Ra's al Ghul." Ring, scan for it? No, that would be too easy, wouldn't it.

Montoya nods. "The head of the League of Shadows. Former head, since the Justice League tore it apart."

"You're welcome."

Bullock sneers. "Since when are you in the Justice League?"

"I'm not, but I did initiate the attack on Infinity Island and gather most of the intelligence that made the global roll up possible. So, you're welcome. Anyway, now it's gone."

Bullock takes a closer look at the construct. "So, what's it do?"

"Nothing. The alchemical sludge it used can -under some circumstances, we're not sure exactly what- heal any injury, including death. But it was empty when I handed it over. By itself it's just a box."

Montoya frowns. "Would the thief have known that?"

"I'm surprised they even recognised it, to be honest. I can only think of a couple of people who've seen it before and aren't currently in prison." Quick check. Talia's in Wayne Manor, Nyssa's in Lex's research centre in India and Ubu's still in prison in Cuenca. "And none of them are in the area. You sure this happened last night?"

Montoya gives me a look. "Kinda hard to miss all the noise."

"Okay. And someone called the police but whoever did it was gone before they arrived, so they can't have taken all that long. This was a new acquisition and she said that she liked showing things off to people. Do you have footage from the security camera yet?"

"The one on the gate?" I nod and Bullock shakes his head. "Doesn't record."

"You think she invited someone over and they had it stolen? Because they were jealous or something?"

I nod. "Or they heard the history from her and thought it could make them immortal. Which it can't, by the way." I raise the ring to my ear. "Danni, anything interesting?"

"Officer Corrigan has been most helpful in identifying the location of the missing objects from the collection. So far none have reacted to the arcane detection stone."

"Good work. We can hand him over to Internal Affairs when we're finished."

Montoya frowns. "How'd you know Corrigan was dirty?"

I roll my eyes. "Prat kept my coin with him."

"Thought you said you just gave her the sarcophagus?"

"I did. She already had the coin." I sigh. "I don't suppose she kept a visitors log, did she?"

Bullock shrugs. "If she did, either we haven't found it or Corrigan fenced it."

"Right. I know of at least one man with access to Venom Buster who's active in the US and who I can't scan for." I generate a construct. "His name's Bane, and he used to run the factory where the drug was first made. You said there was no sign of a break in?"

Montoya glances at the hole in the wall. "Not through the door, anyway."

"Bane has phasing technology as well. He could walk through the door. That might explain it, or…" I touch my right hand to my forehead and then wave it forwards. "It could be something completely unrelated. There are big strong people around. Or people with big feet and sledgehammers."

Bullock slumps. "Great. Another novelty bozo. What's this one's damage?"

"He's the leader of a mercenary company and the former owner of a drugs manufacturing facility best known for being the US's number one source of Venom." I gesture at the construct. "This is his most recent appearance, confirmed by some of my colleagues last week when they ran into him near New Orleans. Likes to lead from the front, but other than that doesn't have any noteworthy eccentricities. Used to use Venom, but I don't know if he still does."

Montoya nods. "I'll get on to forensics, see if they've gotten done looking through the local traffic camera footage yet."

back

Preparation 16

next

15th December

19:38 GMT -5

On my left Bullock takes another gulp of coffee and grimaces. Yeah, probably gone cold by now. I generate a maser construct and give it a quick zap.

"Uh. Thanks. You sure there's no way for your ring t'do this faster?"

I keep watching the screen showing the playback from the surveillance cameras. Danni and Montoya are busy following up on some witness statements now we know roughly what we're looking for while Bullock and I go over the footage. Tracking down all the stuff of hers that Corrigan offloaded didn't take long and none of it was particularly interesting. Making a list of things he provided to her is something he's working on from his cell. He was trying to get clever about a testimony for immunity deal until Danni -apparently- set fire to his hair. Now he's giving us the name of every person he could remember who he'd ever sold stuff to. If there's a difference between the list of things he sold her and what was in her house when I visited we might be able to work out if other collectors might have been involved or if the gang took things with them and sold them to someone else.

"I already scanned it for Bane and his known associates. The ring can find anyone I tell it to look for, but it doesn't have a definition of 'suspicious'. Heck, we don't even really know what we're looking for."

More people walk past the camera and the ring brings up their identities, cross referencing with what we've seen on other footage. To start with I found it slightly interesting to plot someone's route like this, but now I'm just staring. It's a residential area so it's mostly the inhabitants or -since it's a rich residential area- their staff. Missus Gordon-Hewitt's gardener has already been questioned but he only works there a couple of afternoons a week and wasn't due to come in until tomorrow. We'll check his alibis but his brain activity seemed to say that he was being honest. She showed him the sarcophagus the day after she got it but he said he didn't really pay much attention and except us no one had asked him about it since. He didn't remember seeing anyone suspicious last time he was there so: dead end.

I wasn't there when they told the family. Heck, I'm only here in this broom cupboard on sufferance. Metropolis police might have weapons to deal with people with super strength but Gotham police don't, and since in theory I should just be able to revert them to normal Bullock and Montoya convinced Commissioner Gordon to let me hang around. They gave me a dirty look when I suggested contacting Batman, so I just sent him a message without telling them. There are Venom users in Gotham and Batman gave me their details but he's busy with something Leaguey and said that he was happy for me to follow up on it myself.

It's still weird seeing Commissioner Gordon with brown h-.

"Hey, aah." I glance at Bullock. "Were you serious earlier? About the… Y'know… The fat, thing."

"Yes Detective. I realise this must come as a surprise, but you really are a little overweight."

"No, I meant about gettin' rid of it."

"I already got rid of a bit. But, yes, I could probably get rid of most of the rest."

"Huh. How 'bout that."

"I basically rebuild my entire bod-. Whow!" I hit the pause button and then rewind the footage a few seconds. Didn't expect to see him.

"Seein' someone you know?"

"Yes, that's Nylor Truggs. He's a lawyer. I met him in Qurac a couple of weeks ago." Guess Mister Lawton found new representation. "I'm not sure what he's doing here."

"Why was he in Qurac?"

"He's on the Bialyan agents' defence team. Was, anyway."

"See him anywhere else?"

Ring? "One other camera, going towards the property. I can't see anything of him coming out."

"Think they got him too?"

"No idea. He might just have got in a car." I didn't really think to look anything up on him before, other than to check his bona fides. He actually works for the same law firm as Mister Tuckman, hired not long after I arrived on this Earth. Can't see a record of any cases but he said as much himself. Guess he's just working as a legal aide or something. And.. now I can't detect him. "Correct that: yes. He isn't showing up on my scan."

"He a collector too?"

"We didn't talk much, but on his salary? Wouldn't think so."

He nods at the ring. "What's the range on that thing?"

"Edge of the universe." He blinks. "I can get detailed images of anything in this solar system that doesn't have specific protection."

"And how hard is it to get that?"

I shake my head. "I don't know. The League of Shadows had it… Some of them, anyway. Bane has it, otherwise I'd have found him by now. Every time I've seen it so far it's been magic-based but I don't know where it originated. According to a few magicians I've spoken to it's basic enough that it could have been devised by different people independently."

"Any other ways to block the scan?"

"Sure, but those are well beyond Earth technology."

"Great, magic." He massages his forehead with his right hand. "We gunna need t'call in the Fish people too?"

"At least we know something about it." I turn my left hand palm up and tap the sigil twice. "Danni, I'm sending you a picture of Nylor Truggs. He was in the area when Missus Gordon-Hewitt was killed and now I can't detect him. Try showing it to people.

"I have received the image."

I fabricate a hard copy of the picture and hand it to Bullock. "If you could circulate this along with Bane's image?"

He takes it, looks at it and then nods. "Yeah, we can do that. Look, I've been thinking."

"Yes?"

"Her daughter said she didn't get all that many visitors, right? So if this Truggs guy was seein' her, he's probably the only one."

"Could be. Where are you going with this?"

"I think we'd be better off out lookin' for this Bane clown. Shake down some Venom dealers, see if anyone's heard anything."

Ring, is anyone else I've encountered on these tapes?

Negative.

"Sounds like a good idea to me."

Bullock heaves himself out of his chair and I rise from mine and gives my armour the once over. "We're gunna need to find you somethin' else to wear."

There's a flicker of orange and my original biker armour appears. "Any good?"

"Could be better. There's no way people'd think you're police dressed like that."

"I'm sorry, but all my suits are… Not.. 'off the rack'."

"Playboy billionaire?"

"Asteroid miner."

"Hpf. What else you got in there?"

back

Preparation 17

next

15th December

20:06 GMT -5

"Yes, I know and I'm.. sorry, but this has to-"

"Ooof!"

"Why y'gotta run from me, Jimmy?"

"Agh!"

I look away from Bullock's 'back to basics' Gotham style policing. "-take priority. It's the first good lead we've had on Bane since New Orleans."

Holding the ring up like this makes it look like I'm on the phone. I don't.. actually have a phone. I meant to get one after that investigation Captain Adams sent us on where I had to use a folded up napkin and create the screen-glow with the ring in order to pretend I did, I just never got around to it.

I hear Zatanna sigh. "Okay. We can… John says that this 'Chantinelle' isn't usually violent so we should be okay without you."

"If he can even get hold of her. She's just as hard to find as I am, remember?"

"Is this sword.. really..?"

"It can kill anything. You can ask John for the full story if you want, but it's not… Well. You know John's stories."

Silence for a moment while Jimmy throws up against the alley wall. "Do you know why he's got a pair of swan wings in here?"

"Are you doing the ritual in his lock up?"

"No, he just wanted to pick up a few things."

How to put this? "Those aren't swan wings."

"Goose? I thought they were too big. Whatever they're from, I don't see why he's keeping them. They're kind of creepy."

"He chainsawed them off the back of the Archangel Gabriel."

She snorts. "Look, if you don't want to tell me, that's fine."

"I was not joking or being in any way metaphorical. I don't know exactly what happened, but he ended up with Gabriel's heart in a box until the First destroyed it. John's really the best person to ask for details."

"That's… That's impossible."

"Okay."

"No, don't 'okay' me, that can't have happened!"

"Zatanna, do you believe in the bodily reality of Jesus Christ?"

"Of course."

"You saw the Demons we summoned. You know these lifeforms exist. You know they can be hurt, maybe even completely destroyed."

"But, Gabriel..!"

"Was a rapist and a mass murderer, and a few years ago the Angels had a good go at removing our species' capacity for free will. The 'End of History' they called it. John'll be able to give you the details if you want them." I take a breath. "Neither Law nor Chaos are inherently good or bad. The Angels I've heard about are pretty much Lawful Neutral. Raise the dead or kill the firstborn son of every Kahndaqi household, whatever they're told to do goes. And I'll remind you that we'd be obliged to defend the Kahndaqi children if that happened now."

"Hey Paul!" Bullock looks up from a sweaty but relieved looking 'Jimmy'. "Hang up on your girlfriend already! We got an address!"

I wave him off with my right hand. "Zatanna? You still there?"

"Yes."

"Went overboard again, didn't I? Sorry. If it's any consolation I've never heard anything bad about Jesus. You could.. try talking to Diana about how it feels when things… When entities you worship don't live up to your expectations. I'm… I don't… I've been an atheist for so long I can't really relate to it. I know where I stand with the Ophidian… I'm sorry, I shouldn't have…" Idiot. "I'll see you when we.. get back."

"Okay."

I take the ring away from my ear. Jimmy's scurried off and Bullock raises his eyebrows. "Problems at home?"

"I just told a Catholic friend of mine that a mutual acquaintance has Gabriel's severed wings in his lock up."

He smirks. "And they believed you? What, are they five or something?"

"No. No they're not. You mentioned a lead?"

"Ye-eah. Venom prices in Gotham been goin' up for months, only now, there's a new supplier."

"Is there that much of a market? Venom's not exactly a recreational drug."

We start walking in the direction of his car. "Some gangs like usin' it, but wasters usually mix it with other stuff. Makes them less likely to die from whatever other crap it's cut with. Jimmy got this-" He holds up a red vial. "-from some zombie lookin' bald guy with -get this- a Santa Priscan accent."

"Is there a distinct Santa Priscan accent?"

"Jimmy wouldn't lie to me. Doesn't have the spine." We pull open our doors and get in. "We'll take a drive down there, have a nose around. Grab the supplier if we can, and if it turns out that's where they're holed up, you and… What'd you call her?"

"I call her Danni. Firebrand."

"Right. You two can handle it."

He turns the key in the ignition and pulls us out into the road. "I have to admit, I'd rather got the impression Gotham police weren't all that happy about people like us poking around."

"Hm. Bein' honest, if you weren't here, we'd probably be callin' in the National Guard. I know the costume nutjobs like their riddles and stuff, but they're not that hard to track down. Just ignore what they're sayin' and follow the evidence. And even Branden's SWAT yahoos could take down a normal gang. And anyone standin' next to 'em. Nutjobs with actual superpowers, not just 'I'm so crazy your mortal mind cannot comprehend my brilliance' bull, I'm more'n happy handing that stuff over. Hpf, be crazy not to."

"While we're on the subject. I.. bumped into Mister Napier in Louisiana-."

"Who?"

"The Joker."

"Uh. Didn't know he had a name."

"I'm sort of wondering… How come he hasn't fallen down some stairs yet?"

That earns me a sidelong glance while he tries to work out if I'm serious, then he returns his attention to the road. "'cause they haven't put me on his detail, that's why."

back

Preparation 18

next

BulletproofIdea said:

15th December

15:12 GMT

The drive to the ritual site was quiet. And at the risk of being cliché, John would swear it was… Too quiet.

Zatanna hadn't spoken a word since she'd got off the phone with Orange Lantern. Just shook her head when he asked her if the man was coming. He didn't have to be clairvoyant to know something was wrong.

He would, however, have had to be a coward not to push the issue.

Chas had been shooting him these… Looks. All along the drive. Those special ‘I know you're better than this’ looks that were the reason John kept him around as a friend. Well, that and he had a ride.

Ah, fuck it. He wished he could light up.

“So, what's eatin’ you kid?” he asked.

Zatanna was… Composed. That very special kind of composed that told you to watch what you said, where they might keep going just fine or fall to bits no further warning given. “Were those really the angel Gabriel's wings in your lock up?”

He bit down an oath. One day, he'd have to get a straight answer out of Paul how he knew these things. He nodded. “Messy business. I hope Paul didn't give you the details.”

“He said Gabriel was a rapist and a mass murderer and you used a chainsaw.”

Dammit Paul, don't I have enough messes to clean up?

John really needed to light up.

“I remember when I first met the Wizard Shazam.” John said. “He didn't meet up with my expectations either.”

“Did you take a chainsaw to him too?”

John sighed. “I do the best I can with what I have. If I had your power, maybe I would've done differently. Maybe not. If The Ponce hadn't tried welshing on his debt...”

Zatanna had tears in the corners of her eyes. John would've jumped out right then and there, but he knew better than to do that in Chas's cab. “I-I always thought Angels were the good guys?”

John considered the question, and very carefully did not mention how Dr. Fate fought in the war. “Well, the way I see it… Superman's a good guy, and he fights crime outta the goodness of his heart. Green Lanterns are good guys, but they fight crime because it's their jobs. Captain Marvel's a good guy, but he fights crime because that's what kids think a person in a costume should do, unless it's Halloween. They're all good guys, but they all have their reasons for why they do what they do. And Angels have their reasons too. The War between Heaven and Hell split them off from the Fallen ones, but that just defined black and white. You still gotta keep your eyes out for the shades of gray hidden in there.”

John wondered -briefly- if it was ironic Zatanna was wearing black and white.

“And you think you're a good guy?” Zatanna asked.

“Oh, I'm definitely a shade of grey.” John said without humor. “Your father was a good guy. He also wasn't a fool. After the one time I saw him meet Angels, he said they were beings of light, and they couldn't understand flawed creatures like us. And those who didn't understand shouldn't judge.”

“My father met Angels?” Zatanna asked, confused.

“This was before he met your mother.” John said, eyes gone distant with the memory. “I was in Africa, and on the run from a Headless Horseman this yank wizard sent after me. Your dad couldn't get involved, not directly, so he was in New Jersey, trying to find the bastard's head. The only thing keeping me from gettin' cut up was this haunted tank I'd befriended, and the wizard got it into his head to consecrate the body of the Ghost that was possessing it.”

“An Angel came down, and tried to drag the spirit off to the hereafter. Now this Ghost was a fighter, and he wanted to stay and fight, but rules are rules and the Angel was going to take him off no matter what he wanted. It couldn't understand why he wanted to stay, and didn't care whether I lived or died without him. If it weren't for your father getting into the Angel's face, that spirit would have been gone, and I wouldn't ever need to wear a tie again.”

He turned and looked at Zatanna. “I know you're upset about finding out not all Angels will have your best interests in heart. But a lot of them will. Like your old man said that day: ‘His will be done, but perhaps it's best if it's done by a man. A man other than you, John.’”

Zatanna stifled a giggle.

“There you go.” John faced forward in his seat, satisfied. "Take it from a man smarter than both of us. So you found out one Angel was a bit of a jerk. Not the end of the world."

"I guess." Zatanna wiped at her eyes with gloved hands.

He breathed a sigh of relief. The Angel crisis was averted. He was definitely not telling her about Santa Claus, and he would be reminding Paul to do the same.

Click to expand...Click to shrink...

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Preparation 19

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15th December

20:19 GMT -5

How do you make something like that up to a committed Christian? I don't.. really know how big a figure Gabriel is in Christian mythology. I don't remember him coming up in Reverend Gino's sermons or all that much in RE classes. Maybe it's different for Catholics? Anyway, Zatanna certainly doesn't need me kicking away the rest of the pillars of her life.

I look across the car to Bullock while he peers out into the dark outside. "Detective, how much do you know about Catholicism?"

"Lapsed, myself. You still thinkin' about that stuff you said to.. whatshername?"

"Zatanna, yes, and I'll think about it until I know how to fix it."

"I mean, if you were just messin' with her then yeah, you got some stuff to make up for. But, you sound like you believe it, an' I gotta say… That sounds plenty crazy to me."

"You know where Wonder Woman comes from?"

"Greece?" I give him a sidelong look. "Fine, that mythical island where it's all women."

"And if it's all women?"

"I know she's supposed to be made outta clay, but I never really bought int' that stuff. I reckon they just grab a couple a' guys off a ship or somethin' an' pass 'em around. I mean, who's actually checked up on this?"

"The Justice Society?"

He grins at me. "They ever get a tour?"

"Yes, once." Why is he-? Oh, eww! "I don't think they got up to anything like that!"

"Greatest guys in the greatest generation. Pick o' the crop, right?" He nudges me with his right elbow. "Ah, come on. How many guys would turn that down?"

What sort of depraved individual would think something like that? "Leaving aside that most of them were married and brought their wives along-."

"Heheheheh."

"The point I'm trying to make… Do you believe that God exists?"

He glances up at the car roof. "Probably."

"Jesus?"

"On the good days."

"And Gabriel?"

"I dunno. Once you get past Jesus it all gets a bit fuzzy. Lapsed, remember?"

"And, just saying: if we'd spent the evening summoning Demons so we could burn them in holy fire-."

"And now the crazy's back."

I take a screen out of subspace and play the recording of us summoning the Fuckpig. When she saw its genitals Tanis shot it twice, which I thought was a surprisingly visceral reaction given that Eel-folk spawn. "J-esus!" It appears to be having much the same effect on Detective Bullock.

"Not really. Christianity hasn't spread to Atlantis. Tanis-" I point her out. "-did say she was going to spend some time in the Temple of Quirinus after we'd finished, if that's any good."

"And that's supposed to be a Demon?"

"Yes. A Fuckpig, to be precise. The demonic embodiment of rape. My point is, I'm a practical man. These things exist, we have to deal with them. I can't relate to religious interpretations -religious faith- at all. I just told.. her-" I point to Zatanna. "-that he-" John. "-did something similar to Gabriel, and as far as I know he did. Do you think.. a sightseeing trip to the Garden of Eden would make up for it?"

He continues watching the burning Demon for a moment. "Eden? Wait, I remember… Isn't there suppos-. Isn't there an Angel with a burning sword keeping anyone from going back in?"

"If it turns up we can leg it, but the garden's supposed to be beautiful, right? Enough to counteract seeing Gabriel's severed wings?"

"I… Um…" His eyes go from the screen to me and then the front windscreen. He carries on looking for-. What's he seen? "I think that's our guy." I take a look. The glow makes using the ring to augment my vision a bad idea, so I'm using the light enhancement glasses again. Across the road from us a thin bald man takes a key out of his pocket and opens the padlocked gate to an abandoned car park before walking inside and locking the gate behind him. The ring can't identify him but his face is now logged in my records. "Your ring gettin' anything from inside?"

"He's got a small amount of Venom on him. I can scan him, which suggests this will be a dead end."

"Bustin' a Venom dealer's not a bad day's work."

"Can't detect anyone in the warehouse. I could use other forms of scanner but if they were prepared those would risk giving us away."

"Alright, guess we're doin' this the ole fashion way." He goes to open his door but I put my left hand on his shoulder to stop him. "Whut?"

"There could be Venom Buster enhanciles in there. If we're attacked suddenly, I can't guarantee your safety."

"No one guarantees my safety. S' why I carry this." He flicks open his coat, revealing a powerful looking revolver.

"Won't be enough. Here." A plasma pistol appears in my left hand. Red, but what's the chance of him using it on Superman before I can get it back? "Won't stop them, but it will hurt. Should buy you time for me to pick you up."

"You got one that doesn't glow in the dark?"

I point out the dials. "Range, power, off." The gun dims. "Reactivation takes a couple of seconds, which is why I usually leave it on." He reaches over to take it. "This is just a loan. I'll want it back when we're done."

He grunts an assent and takes hold of it, tucking it into an inner coat pocket. Then we open our doors and exit his car. I open the door gently, trying not to make much noise, while he just thrusts it open and swings it shut. He sees me wince at the noise and shakes his head. "Quiet noises attract more attention than loud ones that aren't repeated. Trust me."

I shrug. We have had lessons on tailing suspects, and they usually leave Robin with his face in his palms due to our ineptitude. I'm perfectly happy to take the word of a man who's spent his whole life in Gotham. As I watch him walk towards the end of the alleyway I note that he's got the 'I'm-not-sneaking' walk down perfectly. Look like you belong and you're a long way to encouraging people not to see you. Two men coming out of an alley doesn't by itself say police, it says…

They're not going to think I'm a prostitute, are they?

No, that's stupid, that's stupid. Just check for cars then follow him across the road. Bullock's standing just in front of the lock and he's got the padlock in his hand. "Can you do somethin' about this?"

I nod, take it from him and have a probe with orange filaments, the metal of the lock keeping the light from escaping. After two seconds we get a click, and he takes it back, lifts it off the gate and carefully pushes it open. Not much sound, which means that despite the decrepit look of the area someone's cared enough to oil the gate. Interesting. We enter and he puts the lock back in place but doesn't close it, presumably in case he has to leg it. He flicks his eyebrows at me as he takes the plasma pistol out of his pocket. I point at where the ring says the suspect went and Detective Bullock leads the way after him.

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Preparation 20

next

15th December

20:26 GMT -5

There are a few cars and two lorries in the car park, but a quick look at the infrared part of the spectrum shows that none of them have been used recently. They look to be in reasonable condition, though. Ring, compare security and traffic cameras with vehicles and report matches.

Possible matches found. Warning: low quality of footage makes match quality unreliable.

There's a nine hour gap between me leaving her house and a passerby alerting the police to the damage to her property. We know the time the hole was made from her neighbours but we don't know when everything else happened. They forced the gate either going in or out but pushed it to when they left, and with the wall around the garden the damage to the house wasn't all that easy to see from the pavement. There weren't any tyre marks on the grass where I found the footprints so if there was a lorry then it must have stayed on the driveway. If they moved the sarcophagus by lorry then they carried it to the vehicle by hand. Of course, they could just have carried it down the road. The streets were pretty much empty and I doubt that Selina was around. Should probably check with her just in c-.

Bullock puts his right arm to my chest to stop me as we reach the end of the warehouse wall. We're not far from the shore here and I can just about hear the waves breaking against the dock area. I give the area a quick scan again. Our man has turned towards the seafront and is passing between a large warehouse and a similarly sized boathouse up ahead of us. There's another man sitting on a smallish cargo boat moored to the docks and that appears to be where he's heading. How to communicate this to Bullock? Can't talk, can't make a construct, so the screen comes out of subspace once more. He nods and draws a line with his finger. He wants us to head to the shore earlier and watch what they do. I nod and remove the screen once more.

The texture under our feet changes from tarmac to concrete and we get closer to the waterfront. For a moment I worry about the noise the metal of my boots is making, but I suppose it's not very likely anyone could hear it and removing them would require a flash of orange. And, really? It's two men. They're both carrying pistols and there's a shotgun in the boat but I can't see what would happen if they do hear me. The man we're following stops well before emerging onto the waterfront and takes out a phone. Anything odd about that phone? There's some encryption but other than that it's just a regular handset. Ring, fill me in.

…me. Again. Come on maaan, I'm freezing my balls off here.

Yeah, okay. I promise not to shoot anything important.

That gets me recordings of their voices, if that's useful for anything. Sounds like they could be from somewhere in South America, though it could just be a local accent for all I know. As we reach the end of the wall Bullock takes a look around. No lights down here, though there are a couple at the top of a nearby goods crane. Not much in the way of useful cover either, but with no obstructions I can just about make out what our targets are saying.

"… ing monster … "

"… going for … money ..ght now."

"I know … don't even … stuff ..."

The man we're following walks up to the boat as the man onboard clambers off. Together, they make their way towards the warehouse entrance. Bullock waits until they get inside before heading in the direction of the boat. Why are they going into the warehouse? Ring, sca- I can't see them. Oh, that's interesting. I saw them go in but the ring insists that the internal contents are the same. Looking around for anything else interesting I follow Detective Bullock, then grab the back of his coat as I spot the security camera. He looks at me, I point and he nods. Out comes the screen again and I draw a picture of us moving around the boat on the water side. He looks a little puzzled but nods. I walk in the direction of the water's edge, take a steel sheet out of subspace and float it down below the level of the quay before getting on and beckoning to him.

He's a bit reluctant, but after a few gestures he turns and lowers himself onto the platform. I could just have put us on a construct disc or used a flight aura but I think this carries the lowest risk of someone seeing the orange light. I carefully accelerate us out over the water in the direction of the boat. Judging by the lines of sight we should be able to get aboard undetected. I don't seem to be able to scan the contents of the crates on board. I'm still not certain that we're in the right place but this is certainly looking pretty darn suspicious.

We pull up alongside. If they can block my normal scans I'm not getting into a confined space until I've got a better idea of what's onboard. I jab my right index finger at the hull and force a filament through the metal, branching it out once it penetrates the whole way through. Multiplying, they start poking around, feeding me visual images combined with the occasional sonic probe. No one else up there, and the crates mostly contain tinned food. There's some Venom in a small partially concealed barrel in the control cabin but it's hardly enough for a major operation. Some sort of supply run? The boat has a few explosives too, but again nothing too massive.

Seeing nothing to worry about I raise the platform to a level that will allow Bullock to get onboard without straining too much. The camera on the warehouse has a view of the gangplank but not of the boat itself so I pull myself over the side before offering him a hand up.

"What we got here, Orange?"

"Not much. There's a little Venom but these crates are mostly full of preserved food. The Venom'll get you a warrant-" He smirks. "-but I'm more interested in the fact that I'm having trouble scanning this stuff. Someone's intentionally tried to make this area Lantern-proof."

"Knew you were commin', eh?"

"Or one of the Greenies. Should I call in additional assistance?"

"Not yet. I wanna get a look at the warehouse first. If it's just two guys' homebrew V knockoff we can handle it without callin' them away."

Makes sense, I suppose. Montoya and Danni could take a couple of hours to get here and they'd have to stop whatever they were doing. Even if this is part of Bane's operation, nothing he's used so far would pose a significant threat to me. It certainly wouldn't stop me falling back or calling for help. There's always an element of risk, but… Yes. Press on.

What's the best way to get closer? Walking down the gangplank would get us spotted and I don't want to transition into the warehouse blindly. I turn and head back onto the metal plate. Once Bullock joins me I take us around the far end of the boat and then shoreward, low enough that the waves wash over our feet. Crouching down beneath the side of the quay I put one hand to it and send a filament out in the direction of the warehouse. Given the probable resolution of the camera and the low level of glow my filaments have these days I'm not too worried about it being spotted.

I send it through the metal side of the building, where the scan says that a shipping container should prevent anyone inside from seeing it. The view from the filament shows that at least is true. Can't see anyone else from its current position. Okay, most likely position of the targets is further in. I send the filament along the inside of the wall and send another strand up the shipping container to try and get a better look. I can't hear-.

Alert! Connection made to monitored telephone line. Location: second public telephone, BP, Happy Harbour branch.

I do a full body clench. No, calm down, calm down. It's not out loud, it's not out loud. What are they phoning me for now?

Ring, who is it?

Connection originates at an unfamiliar Gotham address.

I get a flash of Danni holding a phone handset in a richly furnished apartment.

Orange Lantern here, Firebrand. What can I do for you?

Detective Montoya and I have spoken to five people whom former police officer James Corrigan has provided with evidence materials. Four of them have recently been visited by a man matching Nylor Truggs' description.

What did he want?

He was most interested in the more technologically sophisticated pieces.

I shrug and send the filaments onwards.

I would be too. Any collectors gone missing, or have any of them had anything stolen from their collections?

No one we have attempted to speak to has been found dead. If any of those we have spoken to have suffered thefts they have chosen not to inform us of the fact.

Sounds like he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Though, why not just kill him? Or if they took him, why didn't they take her?

I do not know. How is your investigation proceeding?

We're standing next to a warehouse of things I can't scan. Hang on, I'm about to get a-. Oh.

Near the end of the warehouse I have a clear view of Bane and someone I assume to be Mister Truggs tied to a chair with a bag over his head. And next to them?

The Brain.

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Preparation 21

next

15th December

20:32 GMT -5

Ring, sound. Now.

"Patience, Mister Bane. We will realise our objectives soon enough."

Can't scan his travel machine, but I know where those arm things he used to escape last time were located. I even got a look at some of his older design schematics so I'm reasonably confident I could cripple him with a railgun shot without risking the vital life support components. With his Human body most likely serving Gorilla City as fertilizer that machine has to not just provide his remaining organic component with nutrients and oxygen but also their temperature. A small increase or decrease could be fatal, and they all run off the same power supply as his technical and combat components.

Bane nods. "I am sure you are right. Still, I do not like spending time in the city of the Batman."

I'm surprised that he's letting the two men who walked in a moment ago fiddle around with it, though. Seems like something he'd want Mallah doing, or maybe handle himself? Eh, maybe drug dealing mercenaries pick up engineering skills on the job. I don't know. I doubt he'd let them do it if they didn't know what they were doing.

"The man who dresses like a Bat will not be an issue, I assure you."

The filament moving along the side wall gets a better view. There are a few armed men standing around but I'm still not seeing anything that could hurt me through my armour constructs. Assuming that Bane still has his phase device I'll need to hit him with a Crumbler round first. Not sure exactly how much of the effect will transfer itself to him and how much will be absorbed by the phase generator. Ah, whatever, he can survive with an arm or a leg missing.

"Better men than you have said that. Waiting makes me uncomfortable."

Who's the boss here? Those are clearly Bane's men but if you'd asked me I'd have guessed that Brain was higher up the villain totem pole. Not seeing any other hostages or equipment. Did they remove the sarcophagus already?

Huh? Oh. Bullock nudged me and is now making a silent gesture of appeal. Forgot he was there for a minute. I extend another filament into his ear.

"Mister Truggs is inside, bound to a chair. Seven men with guns, Bane and The Brain."

"I d-." He leans a little closer. "Bane's the guy you said probably juiced up the ones who stole the chest you gave the ole lady, right?" I nod. "I ain't never heard of a 'Brain'. He important?"

"Yes, extremely so."

"Right." He withdraws the plasma pistol and activates it. "Time t' make some arrests. You need back up, or you think you can handle it yourself?"

I take another look through the filament. Still nothing that threatens me. "I should be able to handle it."

"Okay then. On three?"

Why wait? I transition to the end of the closest filament, two construct spikes penetrating the sides of Brain's travel machine and wrecking the arms and motor systems. Bane and company are barely moving as I send clawed hands to grab each of them around the chests. Bane picks up speed as he passes right through it but the rest are slammed painfully against the far wall. He's wearing the phase generator then. A Crumbler round appears from subspace and shoots along my newly formed railgun construct to strike Bane's left shoulder. A flare of energy and he's knocked sideways with a grunt. Just check… This time the claw makes solid contact with his chest and I use the grip to yank him into the air.

"Bane, you're under arrest."

He grins back at me. "Not quite yet."

The doors of the two shipping containers in front of me fly past me through the air as a pair of Venom Buster enhanciles charge out. The one on the right leaps at me as I toss Bane aside and shift myself out of his arc of movement. Quick scan -blocked- and I realise that even if I could target their internals well enough to turn them back I probably wouldn't want to enough. As the jumper lands and takes an awkward step to absorb his momentum I form a large orange claw around his chest and thrust him in the direction of the warehouse door. A lot of superstrong people fail to realise that quite often they won't have enough friction to fully utilise their abilities. I'm not pushing against his strength, I'm pushing against his mass and the friction between his feet and the ground, and while those are significant they aren't anything like great enough to stop me throwing him out onto the dock with enough momentum left over to send him sliding past Detective Bullock and into the Atlantic ocean like a skipping stone.

The second steps up, swinging his fist. As he does so I notice that two more enhanciles have emerged behind the first couple. I dart up, behind him and down behind his back before sticking a pair of sonic cannons to either ear and letting rip.

"AAaaarghhhh!"

He goes down on his knees and tries to get his hands over his ears before collapsing completely. Hearing loss from having his ear drums blown out and concussion from having his skull vibrated like that, but he'll recover in a few weeks. I see that Truggs has managed to get free and is heading away from the fighting super people. Good. Trying to rubberneck here could get him killed. A few bullets bounce off my environmental shield as one of the mercenaries picks up his Kalashnikov. Wait, environmental shield? Another claw snaps the earlier riser's gun in half as.. something's wrong. I skip backwards in the air as a huge grey fist swings past my chest. Why haven't I..? I always put up… Armour, righawoof! Another blow sends me slamming to the floor. Armour holds, thankfully, and I yank myself sideways before shooting upwards. Two more sonic cannons form alongside me and two Vertigo-inspired waves of infrasound slam into the heads of my two remaining opponents. They stagger, but one manages to keep it together well enough to pick up the container door and hurl it at the construct assailing him, breaking it. Wait, what am I doing? I should have dodged… I do dodge the torn section of railing which follows. Okay, this is weird, but I'm still not seeing a serious threat. Turn up the power a little, watch them stagger and collapse -and in the case of the slightly shorter one, vomit up his dinner, eww- and then go home and sleep. I drop down to the ground and dust my hands off as the merely Human mercenaries cower just behind their leader.

"Okay, that was annoying. But, try again. All ten of you are-."

Face stills. Knees hit floor. Left arm braces.

"And that, Bane, is how you take down a Lantern." Head turn. Truggs grins. "What did I tell ya? Brute force won't work, 'cause you ain't got enough, buuut…" Drums on Brain's dome. "One little telepathic surge and they're weak as a kitten. Oh, Pablo, would ya clean that guy up?" Hand waves at sick. "I don't wanna slip or something." Footsteps, clank of bucket and squelch of mop. Groans and pulling upright. "Good man, good man." Truggs smiling, crouching down. "Hii. I'm gunna.. reintroduce myself. My name.. is Nylor Truggs, and I'm not actually a legal aide. I come from- Whaowh!" Gun pushed aside. "What you tryin' to do?! I'm having a monologue here. Bane, get yer.. get yer people on a leash or something. Thank you." Shaking head. "You just.. can't get the help. Still, pretty good day. Not too good for you, though." Patting cheek. "Now, I've kinda got this thing.. building up inside me. Five months in that stupid law firm building up a cover, you have no idea how lucky you had it. Now, I can just do my thing. You're too out of it to appreciate how clever this whole set up is… But I'm gonna tell you anyway." Shoulder. "I don't know any more'n you do how these people manage.. 'secret identities'. I was ready to go postal on the whole building after a month; sure I'll copy that for you, let me get you a coffee 'cause you're clearly too wedged inta that chair by yer own doughnut-powered ass-fat t' get up yerself. Let me do yer job for yah. Minimum wage? Thank you so much. Couldn't even work up the enthusiasm to lord it over the interns properly. But now that's all behind me, and couple years down the line? I'll be laughing about it. I'll be laughing. And I'll owe it to you."

Pressure left wrist. Tug on ring finger.

"Hnn. Thought there'd be a trap or something. Nearly got one of those bozos to get it off you, but seriously: who could I trust with something like that?" Lifts ring up. "Is there a password? No, no, they usually just grab people, don't they? Probably just plug and play. Well, I'll be having some fun with that later." Ring goes. Pressure on head. "I'm sure you're wondering how you ended up in this sorry state. Let me explain it to you."

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Preparation 22

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Warehouse

Truggs

"I'm from the future. Not as far forward as Kadabra -good work turning him, by the way- but still, about eight or nine hundred years. I know, I know, I don't look like much. Time travel reah-he-heally ain't easy. Turned up with just the clothes on my back and the little burned out doohickey I used to do it. And talk about mutually incomprehensible dialects! You have any idea how much one language changes over that much time? I had to write stuff down and hold it up for people to read! I'm lucky Metropolis is such a friendly town!"

"Are you really going to do this?"

"Bane, do I..? Do I interrupt you when you're murdering people?"

"That doesn't matter. You don't tell people-."

"I don't. You know why? Because I respect you as a professional. Now, howsabout a little professional courtesy for me, huh?"

"Fine. We are finished with Gotham anyway. You, Ramon! Get up!"

"Sorry about that. Where was..? Ah, so! There I was on the friendly streets of Metropolis with the clothes on my back and a head full of historical knowledge.. which suddenly wasn't so historical anymore. Hit one of Barrage's workshops, couple a' other places… Didn't take long to find my feet. Then, what next? I know all this stuff, what am I gonna do with it? Make enough money to buy an island, spend the rest a' my life sunning myself surrounded by naked supermodels? Borrrring. No. What I'm going to do is improve things. That's the dream, isn't it? To prove that you're better at it than the entire swath of Human history? Talk about ego trip, am I right?"

Grip on head head up head down head up.

"Yeah, you know I'm right. So I got some stuff together, wrote up a business plan and went to see a guy who had the infrastructure I needed, see if we could work somethin' out. Who was it? You wanna know who it was?"

"You can't-."

"Bane, what did we say? What did we say? Thank you. I'm not gonna tell you that. But I will say, supervillain. Why a supervillain? Why didn't I go see Wayne or Kord, someone like that? Simple."

Face close.

"Villains act. Heroes, those paragons of stasis, react. I wanna change the world, change history. You think they'd.. let me? Or try an' send me back to my crummy future? No, I needed ruthless, determined, aggressive. I needed people who'd plow through every law and social convention to get what they want. Heroes? The Justice League was a great idea and now? Now they answer to the UN. Do they like being tied down? Is that the problem? One rush of beautiful madness makes them put on a costume that'd get them laughed out a' every costume party an' bondage club on the planet and get out there to punch face for the greater good, then they start havin' second thoughts? An' run away from it just as fast as they can? I'm gonna beat this clown-lookin' mass murderer half to death, then I'll hand him over to the police? In Gotham? I dunno. I dunno. I just knew… I couldn't work with them."

Stands. Gets box. Sits.

"Oh, don't worry, I don't put you in the same bracket as the rest of them. I know you hadn't been doing it long, you don't have the experience to see the extent of the problem. I do. We do. Even Bane there kinda gets it, even if he doesn't care too much. So, there's a plan an' a strategy and thanks to you, I get to play a big part in it. Why thanks to you? You got my predecessor arrested, that's why. Gonna be awkward when Crock finally gets out… Anyway, I was on the ground in Bialya gettin' the lay of the land and who should I bump into but you. I told Queen Bee she should just write off the agents she'd sent in, or kidnap some people an' do an exchange or somethin' but you just can't talk to some people. With you in the prison I knew the whole mission was a bust, but just because you can't complete your objectives doesn't mean you can't achieve something useful, right? Little bit a' Brain's hardware gave me a scan a' your brain, especially when you used your ring. Touching the barrier you put around that bomb with this little wand here gave me all sorts of information. I mean, if Bozo had taken you I mighta been able to get your ring anyway, but I think this works better. You know I had to go to Japan to get him? America's first combat robot an' I found him in some damn collection. Superheroes I just have contempt for, but collectors? People who actively hide away all this great technology? I can't stand 'em. They do more damage to Humanity's tech base than superpowered thieves or those poor underfunded try-hards at STAR ever will. Killed the guy in Japan myself. Didn't kill the old woman myself. I think it was… Well, one of these guys. Hell, I wasn't even gonna steal anything from her 'till she told me you were the one who gave her the Lazarus Box. When she told me that, I knew I had a way to lure you into my grasp so I called in Bane's people."

Stands. Walks to Brain.

"An' that's where this fellah comes in."

Drums Brain dome.

"It's not actually Brain in here. I just borrowed one a' his spare Travel Machines. Had a bit of a scary moment when you hit it, heh. See, when I got a look at the design I realised: with a little tweaking, I could make a brain inside it see whatever I wanted. And with a little help from a technological marvel called the Thinking Cap… Future versions won't even need telepaths inside them. Who was the volunteer from the audience, you ask? Thought I'd do the species a favour and use Edgar Cizko. Turns out, being a telepath doesn't make you immune to seven point six two hollow points. How's it goin' in there, Edgar? Anyway, set up like this he can bypass your ring defences and -let's be honest here- there was no way you'd beat him otherwise. The reason you weren't on top form when you stormed in here was him dialling down your brain power by between twenty to thirty IQ points -broadcast, 'cause I didn't know where you were- and the reason you can hardly think at all right now is him going full suppression. I mean, I'm still impressed. Usually that kills people. And, ahh. As it is he's still gonna burn out in.. mm, call it four hours? You're a lively one. And by burn out I do mean die. Just so we're clear."

Comes forwards.

"Think that's me all monologued out. Hope it wasn't too boring. Now I'm gonna go take this little ring of yours and make a few changes to the world, kick some sense into a few people. Deliver some toys int' tha hand of people who'll use it, not just stick it in a big box and ban the other kids from touching it. Get out there, grab the Human race by the balls and drag it where I want it to go. Oh? What's that you say? What about democracy? The wisdom of crowds? Shouldn't I try an' include normal people in all this, share what I know and trust them t'make the right choices? Pfffff, no. They've had their shot an' I saw where it went. I've seen that history, remember? And? Between you an' me?

Closer.

"Not. Too. Good."

Away.

"What am I gonna do with you? I dunno. I mean, anyone else, I'd just kill 'em, but you seem to be on the right track with that Winchester and using the Ice Fortress to repair the ice caps -you were serious about doing that, right? Course you were.- and I do sorta owe you for gettin' me this shot. Tell you what. I'll let Bane decide, shall I? Huh. No, say it out loud and it really doesn't sound as generous as it did in my head. Okay, how about this? Bane, when I've gone, turn the neural inhibitor from 'total suppression' to 'chaff generation' and give him a chance to convince you."

"Sí."

"Be honest about it, now. Give him a chance. Just be sure to keep him here for at least half an hour. Given what we know, I'm interested to see what he comes up with."

"Sí. I will give him a chance. Then I will kill him. I am not some Gotham energúmeno playing games with people. I am a professional. I do not leave enemies alive behind me."

"Well, you do what you can. Have fun now. I know I will."

Walking away. Footsteps. Door.

"Perdición. We do him now?"

Orange glow backlighting.

"We were hired to do a job. He is the patrón. Armando, Fabiao, hold him."

Pressure. Lifting. New face.

"I remember you from Santa Prisca. You held me back when that zagal with the S on his shirt hit me."

Face closer.

"I will give you your chance. And then, when you fail to convince me? Then I will kill you."

back

Preparation 23

next

15th December

20:45ish GMT -5

Maybe

Agwhgwhwaaah.

Bane waves a hand in front of my face. "You back with us, mi amigo?"

I look over at the Brain issue travel machine. "I don't suppose you could turn it down a notch more, could you?"

Bane nods. "Could. Not going to." He takes a knife out of his belt. Not all that big, really. Big enough though. My eyes follow the line of the blood release groove. "Come on then. Explain to me why it is not best for me just to kill you."

Did Bullock get away? Maybe. I didn't hear him say anything after my attack started and I doubt they'd have been able to kill him without some noise. Just have to hope that help is coming because I really don't think I'm up to convincing this audience.

And the ring. Just have to hope he isn't a quick study.

"Gratitude?"

"Gratitude? What am I supposed to be grateful for?"

"On Santa Prisca, after we beat you and your team… Followers. Militia men? I did a full purge on your system."

"You made me shrivel up and you stole my mask."

"Venom has a range of physiological side effects. When I purged you, you were already showing-."

"You expect me to believe that? I know what Venom does to people better than any man. I've been using it since I was a little niño. More than twenty years. If it did that to me, I'd be a drooling idiot."

I shake my head. Can't move much else with these two holding me up. "You're unusually resistant. You're not immune, and I do note that you're not using it now. Have you found that you're.. better able to plan, now?"

He purses his lips, then gives a slight nod. "Maybe. But I'm not go'n let you live just because of that."

"Okay. Um. I could pay you to let me go?"

A narrow smile. "A superhero offering a bribe?"

"Your employer said you could choose, so you wouldn't be failing in your duties if you did. I mean, you're mercenaries, right? It's all about the money, isn't it?"

"There is a bit more to it than that. If I kill you, it builds my reputation with future employers. Además, you did attack my factory. If I don't take revenge, I look weak."

"Kobra attacked your factory. And we left it mostly intact and I'm pretty sure you got it back afterwards."

"How much money?"

"Two million US dollars for you, half a million for each of your men."

"You got it on you?"

"No, I've only got a couple of thousand on me."

He holds up his hands, palms upwards. "You see my problem. How do I know your word's good for anything?"

"Because I'm a superhero? A breed of person generally known for their honesty?"

"Mmm, I don't think you realise how much you're worth dead, muchacho. Queen Bee and the Witch Boy don't like you so much."

"They tell you why?"

"No."

"Klarion hates me because I stole his cat. Queen Bee hates me because I built a giant naked statue of myself in her country."

Bane's mouth opens slightly, and closes again. He squints at me. "Are you making a joke?"

"No, seriously. Doctor Jones messed around with my mind… It's near the border with Saudi Arabia if you're ever in the area. It's about half a mile tall." He stares at me. "She had her army put a giant sheet over it with helicopters."

"Ay, caramba. If I hadn't heard about the cake I would not believe it."

"So, do we have a deal?"

"No."

"Okay… Let's turn this around. What could I offer you?"

"I can' think of anything. You've made yourself a target, muchacho. If I kill you everyone will know my name."

"Nothing at all?"

"Power means more to me than money. You got another ring?" I shake my head and he shrugs in response. "I got a pretty good thing going on here. I don't think I need what you're offering."

Must be something must be something. "One Hundred Bullets."

"Qué?"

"It's a comic, where I come from. There was this man named Graves, and he recruited people by giving them one hundred untraceable bullets and complete proof that this one terrible wrong in their life was the fault of one person."

"I grew up in a prison. I made myself this." He brings his fists to his chest. "The only other man responsible was Colonel Aiza, and I killed him years ago."

"And your father, of course."

The two Venom Buster enhanciles let go and then every member of Bane's crew takes a couple of hurried paces back. Um? What-? Gkahk! His hands go around my throat, lifting me off my feet and shoving me back against the shipping container!

"You know what I did to the last man who said he knew who my padre was?"

I gasp for air. "Never found?"

"They found bits of him. You know, I did not have a personal problem with you. I was going to kill you quickly. Now, not so quick." His hands tighten. I can't breathe, can't speak! I get my hands up and frantically point to the pale patch on my left ring finger where until recently the ring had sat. Unless he works it out or rescue turns up right now I'm going to die. "What, your ring? I can't hear you, muchacho."

"Arhkkkk…"

"You want to say something? You get two seconds, then I crush your windpipe."

I suck the air in as he lets go. "Genetic… Genetic scan. With the ring. I checked." I pant for a moment, then look up at his face to see him calm down. Only very slightly, but I'll take what I can get. "Not a guess. I know. Can give you information you can double check. Is that… Worth my life?"

He inclines his head slightly. "Talk. Fast."

back

Preparation 24

next

15th December

20:50ish GMT -5

"You can work out approximately where a person's family comes from by looking at their genes. Obviously, your mother was Santa Priscan, so once I had her DNA-."

He lunges forwards, slamming the back of my head hard against the shipping container. Ow! "You touch my mother's body?!"

"No! Of course not! I don't need to touch someone to scan them! I just needed to know which bits of your DNA you got from her and which you got from him!"

He stares at me. Something -presumably the neural dampener thing- is making it harder for me to see his soul than would normally be the case. I can see the rage-fatherhood association well enough, though. Really, I'm even more in danger here than I was with Dan… With Red Inferno. Bane's far less logical than she was. I can only assume my lack of fear response is due to the neural dampener as well. A moment longer and he lets go again, but stays standing close enough that I can't move.

"The partial copy of your father's-" A twitch. "-DNA showed that his family is English, probably coming from Surrey. You're, what, thirty one? So I knew I was looking for an Englishman who'd been on Santa Prisca between nineteen seventy eight and nineteen eighty, when Colonel Aiza's coup happened. Given that your mother was nominally imprisoned for treason, it seemed likely that your father fought on President Sebastion's side, and as it turns out, President Sebastion knew he couldn't trust the military and had a group of international mercenaries as his bodyguard. Did some digging through old news photographs and managed to get pictures of a lot of them. Most of their names were fake, but I did a facial recognition scan on them and started searching. At the same time, I started looking for other partial DNA matches, try and narrow it down a bit. I got positive results for both pretty quickly."

His eyes narrow, but there's a slightly thoughtful edge to it. "President Sebastion's bodyguards were killed. If you're telling me my father is a dead man-."

"No. A lot of them died when the military stormed the presidential palace, but a few managed to evacuate the island and get to Venezuela, including their severely injured leader. Official documents list him as 'Édouard Durant', but it's fake. His real name is Sir Edmund Dorrance, and he matches your nonmaternal DNA."

"This man. He is my father?"

"Well, I haven't spoken to him. He could be his identical twin, or perhaps his cousin if their fathers were identical-."

"If you want to live, do not make fun of this."

"Sorry, sorry. I'm just a bit nervous."

"Where is this.. 'Dorrance' now?"

"He's part owner of several fairly large companies in Hong Kong. Last time I checked, he was still there. His injuries left him blind, but apart from that he seemed to be in good health."

"If you are wrong, if you are lying to me, I will make you beg for death." He takes a step back and nods at one of his henchmen. "Llama al Calculador." Another nod and the two enhanciles close in on my sides once more. One last look at me and Bane strides off towards the far end of the warehouse out of sight.

The enhancile who I sonic cannoned is still out cold, and probably will be for several hours. One of the others has dragged him out of the way and propped him up against the shipping container to my left before going.. somewhere. The baseline henchmen are standing ready with weapons drawn, except the one Bane nodded at. He was the one who'd been on the boat earlier and he's got out a mobile phone and is muttering into it in what I'm going to guess is Spanish. No ring translation anymore.

"You a crazy man, talking about his father?"

I look up at the enhancile on my right. "I was out of ideas and about to die. It didn't seem like much of a risk."

"You don't sound stupid." He grins. "You must have bigger balls than I have, and mine are fucking armor plated now." The enhancile on the other side gives him an irritated look and makes a 'What-do-you-think-you're-doing?' shrug with his hands. "What, I can't talk now?"

"So, you volunteered for the armour plating thing?"

"Yeah, man. Have to be an idiot to turn down superpowers." He points at the guy on the floor with his right arm. "Hey, ah. Is what you did to Miguel permanent?"

"No, it's um… It's like getting punched in the head really hard. His brain's bruised and that's making him unconscious. He'll have a massive headache when he wakes up and he'll be deaf until his eardrums have healed, but he'll get better. If I still had the ring I'd have fixed it before handing you lot over to the police. Sorry, I didn't keep track. Which.. one are you?"

"I'm the one you threw in the water."

"Um. Sorry about that?"

He grins. "Why be sorry?" He punches me lightly on the shoulder, staggering me. "I like fighting superheroes. You are all so gentle. What's a bit of water to me? I grew up in a favela. You know favela?"

"Slum, yes. Studied them briefly in Geography class."

"They are not gentle in favelas. I join a kid gang at thirteen because it was the only way to be safe. I stab my first man to death when I was fourteen, and he wasn't much more of a man than I was. When I grew up some more I did jobs for people. I could fight and I could be trusted to do what I was told so the money was okay. I got noticed by a guy who sometimes recruits for Bane and I sign on with Bane for four years. I still have one and a half years to go. When they are over I am going home to Brazil as fast as I can. You know how much rich people in Brazil pay for metahuman security? I speak Portuguese, Spanish, English and Terêna. I make a lot a' money."

"Terêna? I'm not familiar with that one."

"You can't tell looking at my face anymore but my people are natives, from south western Brazil. My parents will probably think I look weird, but they can think I look weird from the nice apartment I will buy them in a nice part of town where they don't get woken up by gunfire four times a week."

"That's a… That's a nice ambition you have there. And.. the drug dealing..?"

He shrugs his shoulders. "Way I see it, rich Americans want to poison themselves? Let them." He thinks for a moment. "Shame Bane didn't take the money. We just lock you in one of these containers, they find you in a few days… You smell of piss and shit, but you still alive."

The enhancile on my left looks offended. "Es su padre."

"I'm just saying, two million dollars can buy a lot of therapy, man."

May as well ask while I have the chance. "I meant to ask the last guy, but do those tears in your outer skin hurt?"

"You bet they fucking hurt."

"Okay, well, um… Assuming we all get out of this alive and I get the ring back… Give the Themysciran embassy a phone call when your contract's over and I'll fix them for you."

"Thanks, man. That's real nice of you."

"Or you could just get arrested before that."

"Heh, good one m-!"

"Perdición!" The henchman with the phone holds it up, and Bane stalks back to take it from him.

"Calculador. I have a question."

back

Preparation 25

next

15th December

20:55ish GMT -5

"I want a phone number for-." He pauses, presumably while the Calculator says something. Given what he's doing I'm going to assume that we're dealing with the Society-era information broker version, not the original 'keypad-on-the-chest' version. "No, I can' just phone enquiry service. You want the money or not?" I don't think the League has heard about him operating in this capacity yet. And he must be doing alright in it if Bane is taking back-chat. "Edmund Dorrance. Hong Kong." Another pause. "Because I have a bad wi-fi connection! No, his personal number. When I call it, I want it to be him on the other end."

Bane turns towards me, staring at me as he awaits Calculator's answer. I start to smile at him out of social reflex, then remember his warning and keep my face sombre. "So, ah… You guys get a lot of information from the Calculator?"

"Just because I talk to you about me doesn't mean I'm dumb enough to talk to you about work. Or interrupt the boss when he is in a mood like the one you put him in. Only got a year and a half to go, remember?"

I nod my head to the side and focus on listening to Bane's conversation. Just have to hope he doesn't start speaking Spanish or Mandarin. His eyes are still pointed in my direction but they've unfocused slightly. He nods. "Okay, I have it. This better be right. If I have to talk to some fucking secretary…" He nods again, once, then hangs up and starts typing in a new number. "Start packing up. I wan' to leave as soon as the half hour is over." There's a momentary hesitation -two of them glancing at me- and then they start moving. Three head further into the warehouse while the other two head towards the quayside entrance.

Bane finishes typing and spends a moment looking at the number. Obviously, whatever happens next won't necessarily stop him killing me but it will give any potential rescuer more time. Is Bane one of those supervillains who obsessively keeps his word? Am I overestimating my own importance? I really don't know. I watch as he reaches a decision and presses the 'call' button, then holds the phone back up to his ear. He's not looking at me anymore. After a moment a slight jerk of his head indicates that someone has answered.

"Am I speaking to Sir Edmund Dorrance?" A pause. "My name is Bane. I wish to speak to you on a personal matter. I have been told you spent some time on Santa Prisca as part of the bodyguard of the former President Sebastion. Is that true?" Another pause, this time a little longer. "Two very nosy men. It is true, then?" He nods. "It is a very dangerous country. No, I understand. I wouldn't either. I doubt it will be a problem." He looks in my direction. "Such men can be useful. No, I would say that they are both honest." He listens for a moment. "School? No. Anyone rich enough to afford that sort of education sends their children to schools on the mainland. And I think someone would get angry and shoot you. Yes. Because I wanted to ask you about your time there. No, I realise…" He nods again, waiting for Sir Edmund to finish. "I think everyone important involved in that is dead. Certainly they do not have enough money or passion to send someone to Hong Kong for you."

The talkative enhancile on my right nods. "We probably killed most of them. The military had to control everything. You can't work with people like that."

"No, you are right. I wanted to ask about the time before that. There was a woman… Her name-." His eyes flick to me for a fraction of a second before returning to the warehouse wall. "Yes. You remember her?" His eyes drift down slightly. "No, she did not. No, I understand… Yes. No, I have already taken care of that."

"You get away with this and you are the luckiest fucking man I have ever met."

"I prefer to put it down to preparation."

The three guys who went further into the warehouse come back carrying small crates. A few stomping footsteps and the fourth enhancile comes in from the quayside and takes the loads from them, then turns around and carries them out.

Those guys are a lot more intimidating when you don't have a power ring.

"After they found her they sent her to Peña Dura. Yes, of course. Six years. Probably, I was too young… Because I am her son. I have been told you are my father, that I have your genes. Yes. I had always assumed that it was one of the other prisoners, but unless I was born very early…"

Quiet again. The third enhancile comes back in and picks up Miguel, dragging him out.

"No, that would be foolish. A man is trying to trade this information for his life." A slight shake of the head. "I do not know. I had not planned to discover this today. No, I do not… I would still be interested to know what sort of man my father-."

His face darkens, a scowl forming.

"I do not want your money. I am my own man. I am Bane. I want to know because-. If you have heard of me, why-? It is not a matter of convenience, I know he is in prison. Do not call her that!"

Two of the henchmen head off again but the third is left in the unenviable position of needing to talk to the boss about something when the boss is busy. And angry. Been in that position quite a lot myself in my former life. He hovers, not wanting to get too close in case Bane decides to take out his growing anger on the closest object. Realising the ridiculousness of his situation, he glances at me then takes the time to check over his rifle. Look busy, the boss is around. Weird to see it in a mercenary rather than be doing it as an office worker.

"They were trapped! In two days we would have..! Why do you..? Oh." I get a frown that doesn't bode well for my longevity. "No, he did not tell me that. Still, if you would negotiate rather than-." Back to the phone. "Because I say it is. I am not some mindless cultist to be fed on lies and hachís. You will deal with me-! No, but I would."

My empathic vision flicks back on for a moment. Bane is almost completely red. What the hell is Sir Edmund saying to him?

"You will not talk to me like that! I have lived this long without you and I do not-. I do not-."

Uh oh.

"ELLA MURIO EN PRISION CUMPLIENDO TU SENTENCIA PLACENTA CANCERIGENA DEL FETO DE LA PUTA DEL BURRO!!"

I have no idea what Bane just shouted at his mobile but I think I'm about to die. His baseline Human henchman shrinks back and the two at my sides hunch down slightly. He stares around the room, runs at the man waiting to speak to him and grabs his Kalashnikov from him before throwing the phone to the ground and opening fire at it on full auto!

"ZORRA MAL PARIDA-!

BANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBNAGBANG!

"-QUE LOS VAGABUNDOS-!

BANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANG!

Come on, someone hear that!

"-USAN COMO SACO-!"

BANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANG!

"-DE ESPERMA!"

BANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANG! Click.

"AAAGHHH!"

He hurls the spent gun to the ground and then turns in my direction, panting hard and clearly furious. He strides at me, pulls back his right fist and-.

back

Preparation 26

next

Ow

Pain

"… other injuries…"

Ughh?

Everything's… bright. Still, alive, that's good.

"… armor… way… other problems…"

Pain's coming from my face, but everything else… Feels alright… Don't recognise the voice… Okay, open your eyes. Open. O-pen. That's not open. Ring, Wholeness… Oh. Yeah. That's… Someone took it. Truggs. Should I have warned him about the whole going crazy thing?

"…not serious… check … dental … hurt …"

Huh?

"OW THAT REALLY FUCKING HURTS!"

I sit up in… An ambulance? The paramedic who'd been leaning over me with an alcohol swab backs up a little just as everything starts spinning and I slump back onto the bed-stretcher-thing. Uhuuuguh. Oh, oh there's the pain again.

"Orange Lantern. Orange Lantern."

"Ye-. Ow."

"Can you understand what I'm saying?"

"Yes, yes I can. Any chance of some sort of painkiller?"

"We don't have your records. I didn't know if you were allergic."

"Not as far as I know." We're not in motion, and the back of the ambulance is wide open. I think we're in the car park Bullock and I-. "Bullock, Detective Bullock. Is he okay?"

"A whole lot better'un you, that's for sure." Bullock rounds the back door with a wry grin on his lips. "Thought you said you could take 'em?"

"Truggs wasn't a hostage." The paramedic goes back to cleaning my injury and I try to keep my flinching down to a minimum. Pain. I haven't missed you at all. "They were working for him. Took me down with a telepathic weapon. He was trying to get hold of advanced technology, he had them kill Missus Gordon-Hewitt to try and draw me out."

"Doesn't look like it worked. Montoya says none of the other collectors-." I hold up my left hand. "Oh. That's bad, right?"

"Yes. I was on about ninety four percent power when I went down, so we've got a murderer who likes schizotech in possession of a full power ring. Please tell me someone's contacted the Justice League."

"Yeah, Firebrand took one look at you then took off." He frowns. "What the hell's schizotech?"

"Future anachronisms. Technology too advanced to exist but does anyway thanks to mad scientists and aliens. Firebrand was built in the nineteen thirties, and she's-."

Bullock squints. "She was what?"

"Built. Firebrand's a gynoid."

"Well, they probably feel better havin' another woman do it."

We stare at each other in mutual incomprehension for a moment.

"A gynoid. A synthetic lifeform designed to resemble a woman. Artificial intelligence with a robotic body."

"Oh, you mean an android."

"No, android -from the Greek andro- means masculine synthetic. Gyno means fe-. Oh, at last." I take the two white tablets and plastic cup of water from the paramedic, put the tablets in my mouth and wash them down with the water. "Thank you."

"No problem. Can you take your armor off? I wanna get a look at the rest of you."

I make a noise that's halfway between a cough and a laugh. "Funny story: it isn't designed to come off. It's a single piece. I usually just use the ring when I want to remove it."

"What do you do when you're not wearing your ring?"

"I wear the ring pretty much the whole time." I shrug. "Hasn't come up until now. I mean, back home I've got this X-Ionized knife that'd go through it, but if I can't get the ring back I'm probably going to need Superboy to rip it off me."

The paramedic gives the armour another once over. "That's a really bad design. What happens if you get injured?"

"The ring fixes it, usually. Not many things can hurt me through my constructs and my armour anyway, and if they do and it doesn't kill me the wound's gone in a few seconds. I hadn't thought that working out what happens if I get an injury it can't fix that doesn't kill me or damage the armour was worth thinking about. Oh, um." I turn back to Bullock. "We need to warn a Hong Kong national named Edmund Dorrance that Bane might be after him."

"Who's that?"

"Bane's father. Truggs told Bane to give me a chance to persuade him not to kill me before he left. Bane wasn't interested in money, so I told him who his father was."

"He didn't know, but you did?"

"Yes. There was a revolution on Santa Prisca just after he was conceived. His father worked for the government, got seriously injured before his men could get him to safety. Bane's mother got caught, and the military government took it out on her." I think for a moment. "When you're finished with me I'll try getting in touch with China's superhuman defence people. I think Ghost Fox Killer works in Hong Kong."

"We're watchin' the roads an' the rails. Four huge grey guys should stand out, but…" He shrugs. "Guess you don't become a supervillain if you can't dodge the cops."

"Got to be honest, I don't think that's a good idea. Finding four Venom Buster enhanciles will just get the police officers doing it killed. Oh, um, sorry, but I've got to ask for the pistol back."

"Hoping you'd forgotten about that." He pulls it out of his coat and deactivates it before passing it over. "Never even got a chance to fire it. That one guy you threw into the sea didn't even notice me."

I take hold of it. "After the fight with me three of them were still functional. If you'd had to fire it you'd probably have died."

He nods. "Probably. What you gunna do now?"

I turn so that my legs are over the side of the bed. When the paramedic doesn't object I gingerly lower myself onto my feet. Everything appears to be working. "Shout at my League superiors until I'm sure they are treating this with the seriousness it deserves. Then, make sure my personal lantern is secure. He can't recharge without it."

"Can you.. deactivate the ring remotely?"

"No. I mean, I'll try, but I don't think so."

"What do you do if he just goes to ground and they can't find 'im?"

I think about that for a moment. Not being Orange Lantern anymore. Back to.. normalcy.

"Are Gotham PD hiring?" No. You lost the damn ring, make yourself useful. First step, get back to the cave. Testing that everything is still working I walk out of the rear of the ambulance. "Detective, I need a lift, and I need to borrow someone's mobile."

back

Preparation 27

next

"Recognised, Orange Lantern, B zero six."

"…true, then you definitely can't let the other two… Hang on a moment." I lower the phone and turn to the Zeta Tube's control panel. "Computer, date and time please?"

"Fifteenth of December

Twenty one thirty seven, Eastern Standard Time"

"Thanks." I raise the phone again and ignore the enquiring looks from my assembled team mates. Artemis, Wallace, Kaldur and Red Arrow look like they were in the middle of a sparring session. Kon and M'gann are probably at Cadmus -or maybe on a date-, Zatanna's with John and -five hours ahead- Robert's probably in bed. "Can't let them go in. He'll just assimilate them and then he's got another ring, and probably their personal lantern as well. I realise this probably means we're fucked, but you're our only hope."

"Thanks fer the vote a'confidence, Paul. Anythin' else I need t'know?"

"He said he was from the future and he mentioned Kadabra, who damn near shat himself when he realised what I was. Assume at least basic constructs and assimilation."

"You sure he'd even know anything about usin' a ring? Rookies we get turnin' up on Oa…"

"Guy, he had phasing technology without the ring. Don't take anything for granted. You'll need a list of everything the League was storing-."

"Is storing."

"You wish. If he was telling the truth about coming from the future, he probably knows how all the stuff there works and exactly what to look for."

"Nah, I've got satellite coverage. He's in the front door but he hasn't breached the main vault yet. Okay, I'm goin' in. Wish me luck."

"You don't need it." I hear a dull bleep as the phone cuts off from his end. Can he win? He should be able to, and his orange light defences should at least prevent it from being a curb stomp. Can't believe that after the whole Ophidian merger thing neither Stewart or Jordan thought to ask him for tips on how to resist me. I don't know, maybe after getting overwhelmed by the Ophidian they didn't think the defences would be powerful enough to bother with. That doesn't sound very Greenie, though. I carefully put the phone into one of my belt pockets before turning to my team mates. I can answer a few questions, but I need to check on my Lantern. And the Ophidian.

Red Arrow crosses his arms. "Who's Gardner fighting?"

"Orange Lantern Nylor Truggs. I'm happy to answer your questions, but we need to walk and talk." I stride past him in the direction of my room.

Artemis blinks in surprise. "I thought you were the only one."

"Sadly, that isn't the case any more." The Star Sapphire's still in Sephtian's laboratory in a very heavily warded container so I can't even try using that. "All you need is an orange ring."

"Where'd he get it from?"

I stop suddenly, take a deep breath and make sure I've got eye contact before tapping the tips of my fingers against my chest plate. "See how my armour's not glowing? That's not a good sign."

"So you're out of power? Big de-."

I hold out my hands so the length of my fingers are clearly visible. Three sets of eyes widen. Red Arrow just frowns a little. "More like out of ring."

"W-! How?!"

I start walking again and the four of them fall in behind me. "Ran into Bane while I was in Gotham. He had a novel telepathic weapon that stuck me in a stupor. I could barely think, let alone use the ring. Truggs just walked up to me and pulled it off, and now he's attacking STAR Labs’ San Francisco storage vault."

"That's where the League keeps stuff they take off supervillains!" Wallace recognises the significance then. Before the whole Roanoke Island thing I'd thought about offering them my assistance. Bit busy now.

"That's why he's going there. He did this whole monologue about wanting to improve the world by using it-."

"Don't you say stuff like that?"

I just manage to avoid rolling my eyes at Red Arrow. "If supervillains were capable of using their gear sensibly they'd have done so the first time. They're exactly the people who shouldn't have it."

"Is Lantern Gardner in need of assistance?"

"I really hope not, Kaldur. That thing I did to Teekl and Fatty? That works on people, too, and it's one of the most basic orange ring functions. Guy can defend himself from it thanks to his sessions with me but no one else can." I turn the corner towards the residential section of the base. Not much further. "I just hope the Ophidian's still listening to me. If she sides with Truggs…"

"What was the nature of this 'telepathic weapon'?"

"Doctor Edgar Cizko's brain, stuck in what appeared to be one of The Brain's travel machines. That's what Truggs said, anyway. Didn't have a chance to scan it for myself." I stop at my door and turn my head to look a them. "You might want to take a step back. I've got no idea what my lantern's going to be doing."

Kaldur shakes his head. "In your current state I am more resilient."

"Not to the psychological aspects." No one moves. "Okay, on your heads be it." I push open the door. Orange light everywhere, the lantern glowing like mad, floating in the centre of the room. When I left I put it back in a subspace pocket but apparently it can either leave on its own or at the Ophidian's direction.

Or worse, at Truggs'.

I walk towards it cautiously, orange light forming visible eddies around my arms as I hold them out. I don't feel anything trying to force me away, but I don't feel the Ophidian either. Try talking first? Meditating? Or just touch the thing. I never tried talking to her without the ring on. I hold my hands close to the surface of the lantern. Still nothing other than the light bending around my body.

"Ophidian?" There's no obvious response. No good. I want her help.

BABUM

No one takes our ring from us.

In a sudden motion I lay my hands on the lantern's-.

BABUM BABUM BABUM

Defiled! Unworthy, this man who thinks to command the ring we share!

Wisps of orange light throughout the room collapse back into me and for a moment I think I see the outline of the Ophidian manifested.

You are my Agent! None other!

The ring is mine. It belongs on my finger. It is wrong that it is anywhere else.

"Ah, hey, Paul?" I turn my head away from the lantern. Artemis is standing just inside the threshold and she shifts her weight a little uncomfortably. "You're not gonna.. merge with that thing again, are you?"

I lift my right hand away from the lantern and try to generate a construct. Nothing. Merging with the Ophidian… That's probably possible. In the comics Parallax only took hosts with no yellow ring. We'd have the full range of orange light powers. Heck, with my increased control we'd probably even stay separate people this time.

We will become one once more! All who stand before us will become our puppets!

No. I can still remember the way everyone looked at us last time. I need the ring back but I need my ingroup just as much. Ophidian, thank you for the offer, but no. I don't want to behave like that, to damage their faith in me in that way. I will correct the wrongness another way.

"Last resort only. There's no Zeta Tube near the STAR Labs vault, but…" An idea begins to form. "Maybe there's another way I can stop him."

back

Preparation 28

next

15th December

21:40ish GMT -5

Climbing the mountain is much harder without a ring. "Owfff." Harder still when you're carrying a personal lantern that you can't let your augmented team mate carry for you because-

Agent! Join with me! Let us pull the bones from his still living flesh together!

-the Ophidian is still rather ticked off about the whole thing and I don't want to risk her possessing anyone else. At least I can be sure that Truggs won't be able to call on her to aid him.

Yes! For his impudent theft from us I will go to him and seize all that he has! His body, mind and soul will become-!

No. Ophidian- "Ugh" -I appreciate your support immensely, but we're perfectly capable of retaking our property without violating our moral beliefs.

Your moral beliefs.

And since you don't have any of your own, they're yours as well.

I get an impression of her pulling her head back in confusion.

If we change our behaviour in response to him then he's taken something else from us, hasn't he? And if we kill him we'll also alienate my friends.

A picture of the shocked faces of Kon, Alan, Diana and Zatanna forms in my mind.

Is that what you want?

In my mind's eye I see her head rock from side to side as she tries to adapt to the idea. From the way the lantern's glow dies down I'm going to assume that she's getting it. Okay, final ridge. I put the lantern down on the flat section above me before clambering up myself. I haven't been up here since I gave Artemis a close up of an asteroid and it looks like someone set up some lights up.

"Took you long enough."

I take hold of one of the lantern's handles and narrow my eyes at Red Arrow. "Excuse me, but my armour weighs more than yours, I'm hopped up on painkillers after getting punched in the face by Bane and my lantern doesn't come with straps."

"What are you trying to do, anyway?"

I straighten up, take a quick look at the completely fresh Artemis and Kaldur -really need to take another look at augmenting myself at some point- and Doctor.. um, Swamp Thing's trees. I think I remember that Swamp Thing has a copy of Doctor Holland's soul rather than literally being him so I suppose it isn't unreasonable for him to insist on the distinction. Are those.. quinces? In winter? Looking at them I feel a sudden impulse to try one. The brightly coloured drawings in the Swamp Thing comics really didn't make it clear what the person tasting them actually experienced…

Maybe later. I head towards the south west side of the summit and sit down, crossing my legs with the lantern on my lap.

"Lanterns can remote control their rings. When we practised, Guy struggled to call his from more than about five metres away but I don't think his heart was really in it. The longest distance I've ever controlled it over is four hundred metres, and I didn't try further than that because I don't like being that far away from it. San Francisco is about three thousand miles that way." I nod into the distance.

"Would it not be better to go to San Francisco and try there?"

Thought of that, Kaldur. "Guy will start by blocking Truggs' FTL as soon as he attacks but they can still fly very fast. If he feels something pulling at the ring he'll have to run. If I can't call it from here…" I shrug. "Then I'll have to try something else. On the other hand, if I can get it off his finger… Fight's over. Guy'll take him down before he can even start contesting it."

"Is that even possible?"

"Won't know until I try." I close my eyes and place both hands as close as I can to the glowing core.

Mine. The ring is mine. It belongs on my finger. It is an abominable wrong that it is not there.

No, come on. Think like a Lantern.

"This is my cause. This is my fight."

BABUM

My cause is the cause of avarice and humanity's future. Truggs said something about things not turning out well. He believes supervillains can do better? Utter balderdash.

Balderdash!

I'll do it. I'll make sure whatever happened in his timeline doesn't happen here and I'll do it without lunatics like him. Like them. If the Justice League isn't set up to handle that sort of job I'll start a company and recruit people who are a little more broad minded. I'll share technology with people who aren't mental.

"Shine through the void with orange light."

BABUM

I can't stand the idea of him being Orange Lantern instead of me. I remember what happened to Lex in the comics. I want to be responsible for revolutionising the way the Earth works. Arrogant? Hey, Orange Lantern here. There are other people I'd trust with it but supervillains have a record of bad decision making. I can't imagine them being able to improve things, certainly not in a way that couldn't be done better in a different way.

"I've claimed all within my sight."

BABUM

This world is mine. Its people are mine. Mine to protect and nourish. Mine to watch grow and thrive. And I'll be damned if I'm handing them off to a lunatic supervillain.

Ours!

BABUM BABUM BABUM

"To keep what is mine, that is my right."

BABUM BABUM BABUM BABUM

The ring is a part of me and I will have it back!

BABUM BABUM BABUM BABUM

I feel a distant tearing sensation. I open my eyes. The core of the lantern is glowing brilliantly, easily outshining the electronic lights on the mountaintop.

Ring, come.

I keep staring into the distance. I've got no way to tell if this is working. I doubt that we could get a reliable image of Guy's location. Wait, is that..? I see a distant light in the sky. A plane? A firework of some kind? No, it's getting closer..! I stand -carefully putting the lantern down- and hold out my left hand.

The ring stops a metre ahead of me, floating in the air. It looks a little..? Oh. Macabre, but not entirely unexpected. I reach out a little further, taking the ring and its grisly passenger into my left palm and pulling it to my chest. With my right hand I carefully extract what I assume to be Nylor Truggs' ring finger by the damp and squishy end before thrusting my own left ring finger into the opening.

"Welcome back to the Orange Lantern Corps. You are Agent Orange."

The pain of my injuries and the fuzziness inflicted by the medication vanish immediately. I am whole again.

"Hah!" I hold the severed digit aloft in my right hand. "And this fucking finger is going on the fucking trophy shelf! Ring, recharge!"

A beam of orange light so brilliant that it's nearly white engulfs the ring and I see-.

The treasures of civilisations, fallen ages past. Bones stripped of flesh and marrow. Orange rings piled high around a dais and even more flying at speed around the chamber. Dozens, no, hundreds of Construct-Lanterns swarm around trying to grab them as a shrivelled figure glares directly at me with eyes filled with hate and madness.

"No! You can't have them! They're mine! My shinies!" His head swings left and right. "Find him! All of you, go! Find him!"

Oooh poop.

back

Preparation 29

next

15th December

22:54 GMT -5

"Recognised, Green Lantern, one seven."

Guy materialises in the Zeta Tube opening. Oh, he's not even pretending now.

"Brace for incoming smug!"

Guy's grinning and he strides out, body glowing green. He stops before us and puts his hands on his hips. "Always said Orange Lanterns ain't all that. I hit Truggs so hard his ring fell off."

Artemis shakes her head. "Actually, that was Paul. He took his lantern on top of the mountain and called his ring back."

"Oh." I hold the aforementioned finger ornament up. "Ah, whatever, I had him on the ropes anyway." He points at me with his right index finger. "Credit where it's due though, you were right about him tryin' to assimilate me. I coulda got in real trouble if I hadn't learned to block you first."

"And did he attempt to use any sort of telepathic weapon?"

A spherical metal object appears from subspace. Guy catches it in his left hand and tosses it up and down. "Threw this little ball thingy. Didn't do much. The three of us got extra lessons on blocking stuff like this as soon as Salaak heard about the Star Conquerors. Not that I needed it; Kilowog taught me how ta resist telepathic attack in basic."

I watch the ball going up and down like a hawk. Or maybe more like a cat. "Because all Green Lanterns get taught that, or because he absolutely needed to know it due to him being unusually vulnerable to that sort of attack?"

Guy frowns. "Is he?"

"That's what this ring thinks. Didn't his homeworld have some sort of mass empathic field or something?"

"I dunno. Don't think he ever talked about it."

"Were you able to apprehend the thief?"

Guy freezes for a moment at Kaldur's question. Guy! "Aaaah. No. We were mixin' it up when his ring came off… The STAR Lab was a wreck an' he hid in the debris. I couldn't do a normal scan for him so I went through the whole thing carefully. He wasn't there. Security camera got a partial shot of him disappearing. Looked t'me like he had some sorta stone or crystal in his hand. He broke it then 'poof'. Gone."

Red Arrow tilts his head slightly to the side. "Do you know what he was there to take?"

"Everything, probably."

Guy shakes his head. "It'll be hours before the STAR people can do an inventory and find out what's missin'. Place looked secure but if he could phase through stuff…"

"Guy, do you want to…" I point at the ball. "To keep that? Because if not then I'd like to-."

He tosses it to me. "Knock yourself out, kid."

I catch it with both hands. Nylor Truggs' anti-Lantern telepathic weapon? Heck, yes. Guy.. probably shouldn't have done that, but now he has I'm going to spend the next couple of days analysing it. And on that note… "Guy, given how this happened, do you think you'd be allowed to share that telepathic defence stuff with me?" He looks a little dubious. "Come on, it's not like it'll give me an edge against you, but it does mean there's less chance of you having to deal with someone like Truggs again. Or the Ophidian."

"No promises. I'll have to check with some people."

Some Bobbleheads. "Come on, I'll help you teach J-." I look at my colleagues. Probably in the know, but I don't know for sure. "The other two how to resist assimilation and branding as well."

Guy tenses the left corner of his mouth. Not going to be an easy sell but I'm confident that he'll give it his all. "How'd you manage to call yer ring that far?"

"Muttering my oath while focusing on what it means to me. And, the Ophidian helped. Actually, might have caused a bit of a problem with that."

"What kind of problem?"

"When I recharged the ring after getting it back I sort of.. had a.. vision."

He raises his eyebrows. "Really?"

"First time I tried saying the oath, I got an image of the Ophidian looking at me, and that panned out."

At least Wallace looks like he believes me. "What'd you see this time?"

"Larfleeze. It looked like he'd felt what I was doing and.. unleashed his Construct-Lanterns to find me. Speaking of which…" I shake the ring and Fatty drops out. He lands on the floor at a crouch, looks around, then runs to my left leg and wraps his arms around it in a bear hug.

Huh. I reach down and pat him on the head.

"Anyone seen Teekl?"

Artemis nods. "Saw her heading to the power plant earlier."

I close my eyes for a moment. Yes, I can still feel her. She tenses as she feels me, then relaxes slightly.

"Wait a sec." Guy touches his right hand to his forehead. "You're telling me we've got a swarm of intelligent constructs with Lantern powers and one crazy ancient Orange Lantern heading here and you didn't start by mentioning that?!"

"I can't check it myself. And the impression I got was that Larfleeze couldn't tell exactly where I am. He was sending the Construct-Lanterns out to look for me and it didn't look like he was moving himself. Who's the Green Lantern assigned to the area around Vega?"

"Aah… Two eight two eight A is Green Man -he's a real pro- and.. his backup's a guy called Gretti. He's a flake."

"Try getting them to confirm it, and once the other two can block assimilation reliably one of them needs to go back to Oa and share the knowledge around."

Artemis looks puzzled. "If he's like you but crazier, why isn't he coming himself?"

"I don't know. Maybe he's scared of the Guardians taking the Orange Central Power Battery away. I don't.. actually know how hard he'd be in a fight. The Central Power Battery should give him unlimited charge and he's certainly got the avarice, but he's not that intelligent. It could be I'd already be able to beat him if I had the Ophidian supporting me. I'd just.. rather not find out until I'm sure." I look back at Guy. "How was Truggs coping?"

"I've seen worse. Only Lantern I've seriously fought before was Sinestro that one time and he just fights like a Green Lantern. Truggs fought kind of like you, only… More."

"More?"

"More. More fancy than any Green I've ever seen.. even more than you, but there was a lot less power behind any of it. Even used grenades. Not just that one-" He points to the… Let's call it a Neural Chaff Emitter, in my hands. "-but smoke, EMP and plasma as well. Apart from you and that Chance guy I can't think of any Lanterns who carry another weapon."

"Tool."

"Potaytoe potahto."

"No, I was calling you a tool. Seriously, sidearms. Look into it."

"Alright, if I'm doing this whole debrief thing, howsabout we take this to the kitchen? I could do with a beer-."

"Sorry Guy, no alcohol on base. Batman's orders."

"Eh, you guys pay attention when I talk and I'll make do with a soda."

back

Preparation 30

next

22nd December

16:19 GMT +1

I lean slightly away from the popcorn tub, eyeing it warily.

Miss Head narrows her eyes. "I haven't poisoned it."

No, no, of course she hasn't. And even if she has I've still got the ring on. I reach over with my right hand and take out a single popped grain. "Thank you."

"Hmpf." Miss Head turns her head back in the direction of the centre ring, leaning slightly closer towards Mister Wayne as she does do. The Haly's Circus doesn't open properly for several hours but Mister Haly was happy to let Richard, his uncle, adopted father and their friends come in to watch their rehearsals. I've only ever been to a circus once before, when I was… I'm not sure how old I was, actually.

From my left Nyssa taps me on my shoulder. I turn to face her and she gives me a look of disappointment. "Paul, be nice."

"Sorry. But you know she did try and stab me last time we met."

"I don't believe for a moment that she would actually have stabbed you."

"No, but she might have tried. How long have we got until Richard's on anyway?"

Wallace leans around from her far side. "Abof fo' min'ah."

"Mister West! Did your mother not warn you against speaking with your mouth full?"

Wallace swallows the popcorn. "She kinda gave up. I just need so many calories…"

Nyssa frowns. "Surely your speed is not fuelled by the food you eat? The Human digestive system should not be capable of processing-."

"Yeah, that's what Oh El says. Um, Paul. You know. And I don't… Ah…"

"He doesn't spend a proportional amount of time on the toilet."

His eyes widen in shock. "Hey! You said you weren't scanning that!"

"I said I wouldn't scan you while you were in the toilet. I had to calculate how fast your digestive processes would have to be for someone of your dimensions to process what you observably can in order to notice the discrepancy, but I know you should be spending more time-."

"Dude. Too much."

"Nyssa's probably the leading expert on alchemy on the planet."

"I wouldn't go so far as that. My father's knowledge is far superior."

"Lex was ever so subtly hinting to me that your father was dead, presumably in a permanent sort of way. Since we know they were.. probably working together…" She nods. "Wallace, we still haven't been able to track down Max Mercury and you couldn't get your head around Missus Tyler's multidimensional formula thingy." Jolly nice of her to share that, I thought. She even tried to explain it, but the physics were well beyond either of us. "We're back to doing something with the Formula itself."

Nyssa looks from me to him and then back again. "Is there something you would like to share with me?"

Wallace winces slightly, then leans forwards and lowers his voice. "Flash and me get our powers from the same place as Jay Garrick, the first Flash. It's a formula which -turns out- does what it does using alchemy rather than normal chemistry. Only, when I made it…" He looks away for a moment. "Didn't go quite right."

"You were lucky not to have been killed."

"Yeah, that's what Uncle Barry said. And Dad, and my Mom, and pretty much everyone. Bu-ut, it worked, except I.. can't run as fast and I need to keep eating."

"How is the formula applied? Is it injected, swallowed..?"

He shrugs and picks up another handful of popcorn. "I'm not sure exactly what happened. I may have swallowed some of it. It kind of.. exploded. When I woke up in the hospital I couldn't remember."

Nyssa nods. "So you could also have breathed it in or got it on your skin, either in gaseous or liquid form."

"Uh, yeah. I've been trying to use Kaldur's book on Atlantean alchemy to work out what went wrong but I think I've hit a dead end. And it's not like I can just look it up online."

"I.. can try to help. If that is what you want." Wallace pops a piece of popcorn into his mouth. "But you must understand that my ability to do so will be limited if I do not know exactly what you were working with."

Wallace nods and returns his attention to the circus ring. "Yeah, I… I get that. But, you work for Luthor. I can't just hand over Jay's notes like that."

"Then I will do what I can without them. The research centre in the Valmiki National Park is now up and running. I can make time for you whenever it is possible for you to visit."

"How's that going?"

"Slowly. There is no standard notation for alchemy and it is very hard to analyse our test subjects. And hard to get staff who know anything about the subject."

"I might be able to help there. There's a guy in Atlantis I go to for arcane analysis, I could put you in touch. And I know of a professional alchemist living in London. Don't know if she's interested, but if you want to make her an offer…"

Nyssa smiles. "Thank you. That would be very helpful."

I look at the fire breathing tightrope walker in the ring for a moment. Glad I don't have to do anything like that. "No problem."

"Hey, Paul?" I look back at Wallace. "Are.. you and Zatanna okay? I mean, if it's none of my business…"

I shake my head and look at the ground. "I said something rather stupid during the Gotham.. thing. I'm going t'.. talk to her about it when we move the cake tomorrow."

"Save some for me. Y'know, it's kinda lucky that Truggs guy did steal your ring. If he hadn't, then…"

I nod. "Saved me some time, certainly." I can't access the files he created during his brief span as Orange Lantern two eight one four but the handful of objects he put into storage are now mine, including a copy of his phase generator. Scan the generator, replicate it a few thousand times and I gain the ability to tell the universe to pretend that the Uber Cake has no mass. The storage vault even has a ventilation system in place that I can use to transfer them down without digging up more of the Swiss countryside.

"How are you going to move it all? Or have you got some kinda giant cake tray set up in New York you can just zap it over to?"

"Sssstill working on that one. That's part of why I need Zatanna and Guy with me."

"So she can magic the cake smaller then make it bigger again at the other end?"

"No, that…" Wait, would that work? "Hadn't actually thought of that. I'll ask her if that's doable."

"Any luck finding Bane?"

"Not yet. The Gotham Police-."

"Ladies and Gentlemen of the audience!" Mister Haly strides into the centre of the arena in full ringmaster gear. "It is with great pleasure that the Haly International Traveling Circus introduces -for one afternoon only- the Flying Graysons!"

back

Preparation 31

next

22nd December

22:19 GMT +1

Roy frowns at me. "Why are you still wearing the clown costume?"

I flick one of the woolly bobbles on my comedically short waistcoat. "Because it makes me feel pretty."

Nearly the whole blooming team taking part in a circus! I came very close to asking Richard what he'd been smoking when he suggested it, but it's actually been really good fun. Artemis and Tau have really been getting into the whole trick shot thing, Match and Kon juggle barbells and Richard, Roy and Her Highness have been on the trapeze. Kaldur's busy with something Atlantean and Wallace… Not sure why he's not with us, actually. Probably not important.

And I'm a clown!

Roy and I are standing in an empty train depot. In a few hours the circus will be packed up and moving out in the direction of Geneva but first we have a thief to apprehend. Richard's been trying to work out who it is. I say, who cares? Since they seem disinclined to stop we can always find out who they are once I've beaten them unconscious.

**Miss Martian to Grayven, Red Arrow and Match. Can you hear me?**

**I can hear you.**

Match is floating over our heads. There shouldn't really be any significant danger in our end of the operation but he did so want to be involved. The sessions with the Genomorphs have gone really well and Wonder Woman has arranged for him to start at Happy Harbor High School in the New Year. As with Kon I doubt that he'll find the academic side at all challenging but I've seen a noticeable improvement in Kon's social abilities since he started there. He'd never have been willing to pretend to be a circus strong man when the team first got together.

**Red Arrow, loud and clear.**

**Grayven receiving, Your Highness.** A thought occurs. **Is that a new distance record for you?**

**Um… I think it is!**

**Well done you!**

**Stay focused, people. Target in sight.**

I roll my eyes as Kon relays the image from his super vision. **Robin, how much do we really care what he's after?**

**We need to know if he's passing what he's stolen on to anyone else.**

**Okay, so why not just have M'-** I remember myself. **-iss Martian extract that from his mind once we have him. Just seems like we're making heavy weather of this. And -no offence intended- you didn't look that good earlier. Are you feeling alright?** Ring, scan the target in case he has an attack of common sense.

By your command.

Nothing on the link for a moment so I have another look around. On one side I can see the tents of the main circus, behind which are quaint brick buildings which the local guidebook claims are nine hundred years old. On the other, fields dotted with sporadic trees, most likely existing through a generous contribution from the Common Agricultural Policy. There's a light dusting of frost over everything, creating a picture such as might be seen on the front of a Christmas card. It's really quite beautiful.

"So, tell me." I tear my eyes away from the vista and look at Roy. "What's a thirty year old man doing taking orders from a fourteen year old boy?"

"Curses, you've found me out. My plan to take over the world with a small group of teenagers falls at the first hurdle." He scowls, no mean feat with that stupid tiny mask stuck on. His accusations of me being some sort of mole are so ridiculous I was having trouble dealing with them until I hit upon the idea of just admitting to anything he accused me of in the most over the top fashion I could. Now everyone finds the idea risible. But here it's just Match… "I started on this team with no experience. He started with four years' worth. And.. having him around to hold me back isn't necessarily a bad-."

**Okay, you're right. Grayven, take him.**

I blink in surprise. **You're agreeing with me? Oh, now I know you're under the weather.**

**Not. Helping.**

**Boom Tube in three. This will be loud.**

The swirling hole appears twenty metres over our heads, with the other end directly under the ne'er-do-well's feet. He drops the crowbar he was holding with a yelp as he drops towards the tracks. I let him get half way down before attaching a harness around his chest and closing the Tube.

Then float up and hit him in the face with a custard pie.

I drift back out of arm's reach as he wipes it off his grey balaclava. He's wearing grey trousers, a navy blue coat and hat with a black turtleneck and gloves and once he can see again he stares around in surprise.

"Sorry about the pie. My inflated bladder on a stick's in for repairs. Also, you're under arrest."

He squirms for a moment, then takes off his gloves and throws them at me. I put up a small orange shield. Not sure what he was planning to do with-.

Alert! Energy drain in progress. One percent power loss. Two percent power loss.

I drop the harness construct and he falls a metre in the air before being stabilised by a pale orange aura. That's.. concerning. After glancing at the ground he fixes his gaze on me and lunges forwards. Puzzled, I fly backwards at the same speed to his visible frustration. After three seconds his aura cuts out and he starts falling again. I form another harness, this time taking care to bind his arms and keep the construct away from his bare skin. He struggles for a moment and the ring reports that he's doing so with more strength than his muscles suggest that he should have. Hmm. Curious, but not really significant. Still being careful not to let them touch his skin I use a construct to remove first his hat and then his balaclava.

"Ray the Roustabout! Who joined the tour at the exact time the thefts started! Who could have guessed?!" Wait a second… Drains power, called Ray..? No, surely he wouldn't have used his own fricking name? Ring, detailed scan.

**Grayven, do you have him?**

**Yes Robin, trussed up like a Turkey. It was Ray the Roustabout, only it turns out that Ray the Roustabout is really-** I tug the remarkably lifelike synthetic skin mask from his head. **-Raymond Maxwell Jensen, aka the Parasite.** His skin is a dull purple with raised lines that look like partially healed chemical burns around his eye sockets and down the sides of his mouth. The ring tells me that he's also wearing contact lenses but I'm not going to risk removing those.

**There is no flu! He's been draining the circus performers’ skills to perform his robberies!**

**Looks like. Someone want to phone that Faraday oik and tell him we've done his job for him?**

"I knew I should have fed on you."

**Already done. They're working on the power suppression collar configuration now.**

"Yes, well, your mistake." Physiological analysis complete? Thank you ring. "Here, sniff my flower." A small flower construct appears in front of him and squirts a fairly noxious knock out gas directly into his face. He coughs and squirms some more but there's no way he's getting away. After a few moments he slumps. I scan his brain once more to make sure, but he's definitely out. He has a truly fascinating ability. Given the physiological alterations that appear to be an intrinsic part of it I don't think it will ever become popular, but I'll have Father Box and the ring do a full scan to see if it can be adapted in some way.

"That wasn't so hard." I glance to my right and see that Match has decided to join me. Technically that's a violation of mission discipline. Do I care? No.

"It's all about having the right tools for the job. How would you have gone about fighting him if it were just you?"

He tilts his head to the right. "Can't touch him, so… Ah, use a metal bar or something as a club?"

"That would work. Not ideal though." I float down towards Roy, taking Jensen with me. "Red Arrow, if you were fighting Mister Jensen here on your own, how would you handle it?"

He looks from me to Match, trying to work out what point I'm making. "I'd keep my distance and use a hard foam arrow, stop him from moving before he could drain me."

"Perfect answer. Match, you don't want to get close to someone like this. A melee weapon will make it possible for you to hit them but it still puts you close enough that you're at risk of getting grappled and drained. Throwing something at him would be better. In your position I'd.. probably heat vision one of his kneecaps or drop concrete on him from the air or something along those lines. After all, he can't fly without draining someone." Match nods. "Look, you're Kryptonian. You're used to fighting in a particular way but that isn't always the right way. There's always a counter to any form of attack. You need to learn to understand your situation and react appropriately."

He nods, looking thoughtful. "Diana said the same thing."

"She's a highly skilled warrior. You could do much worse than her for a teacher." He nods again. Match doesn't have the same need for a Kal-El substitute as Kon but he'd still benefit from a mentor figure. "Now, come on. We need to hand Jensen over and then get back to the circus. Richard's uncle is waiting for us in Geneva and I don't want to break cover until he's seen us perform."

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NEXT CHAPTER

Unusual Suspicions

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Unusual Suspicions 1

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Unusual Suspicions

23rd December

07:35 GMT -5

I take one last look at the construct cables running from my lantern to the Ice Fortress' power distribution network. Everything looks set and I know this should work in theory but I'm still a little nervous.

"Alright in there, Ophidian?"

A pulse of orange. "Fear not, my Agent. We were one when this scheme was conceived. We will see it through to its conclusion. The people of New York will bear witness to the magnificence of our palace and marvel at our generosity."

"Thank you. Ring, contact Green Lanterns two eight one four B and C."

I was a little surprised that Lantern Stewart offered to help. He'll be very useful if something goes wrong. I hope that Guy didn't twist his arm too much. With two out of three of this Sector's serving Green Lanterns helping me I'm certainly not going to complain about Lantern Jordan absenting himself. I'm sure the rest of the Sector doesn't stop for Christmas.

The busts of Guy and Stewart appear just above the ring. "Ready in Switzerland?"

Guy nods. "Cake's outta the ground. Think we gave some cows a nasty shock. Hadn't realized you frosted it."

"What sort of Christmas cake designed by a Lantern hopped up on the light of avarice doesn't have a scale model of the North Pole on top?"

Stewart takes a quick look around. "Air space is clear and the cake weighs next to nothing. Orange Lantern, I was contacted by a guy from the Swiss Federal Department of Home Affairs. They want to know what you intend to do with the chamber you were storing this thing in."

"Hadn't really thought about it, to be honest. Do they want it, or do they want me to fill it in?"

"I think he was more trying to feel us out about it."

"I don't really have any strong feelings about it? I realise that I shouldn't have dug it, wasn't compos mentis at the time. Far as I'm concerned it belongs to Switzerland."

"I'll pass that on. Ready at your end?"

"The Ophidian's ready and willing." Guy winces as I reach over to press the intercom. "Captain Zatara, you about ready?"

The ring shows me an image of her sitting in the central command chair with a thick coat on and Teekl curled up on her lap. I've had several heaters up there trying to raise the temperature for a couple of days but we are in the arctic circle. She could use magic to warm up but we want to keep her fully fuelled in case we run into difficulty later. "I will be as soon as I get some power up here."

I nod. "Main power live in three, two, one, now." There's no outward sign that my construct is now converting the lantern's output to electrical power from the lantern itself, but the lights in the engine room immediately come on at full intensity and -quick check- so does the heating. "Captain?"

"Heat systems check, computers… Check. Closing external doors and hatches. There doesn't appear to be any new damage since yesterday. Shall I take us up?"

"Orange Lantern to all points, we are go for take off. Engage anti-gravity at your convenience."

In the command centre I see her smile, her right hand on the control pad and her left idly stroking Teekl. "You are so loving this."

"Yes, I so am."

"Taking us up."

There's a very slight shudder, probably caused by an unevenness in the shape of the ice attached to the bottom of the hull. I checked the bracing around what we think to be the bit generating the anti-gravity effect at the same time as I checked the computers and it all looked solid. Can't be one hundred percent sure without a better understanding of the system. I close my eyes for a moment and focus on the sense of hunger I know to be Fatty.

Fatty, start eating the ice off the hull. Don't eat the hull.

Eating! Yay!

He's been weirdly upbeat since the Truggs thing. I can't really ask what that was like for him. Well, I can, he just can't give an answer that makes any sense to me. He's much less use as a scout than Teekl for much the same reason; even though he is more obedient he can't articulate or comprehend what he sees as well. I get a vague impression that he's eating something and so until Zatanna reports otherwise I'll assume that it's what he's supposed to be eating.

"Everything looks good up here."

"Right. Ophidian? "

"This is a mere fraction of my full power as well you know."

"Just checking. Okay Captain, I'm on my way up." I need to stay connected to the transfer constructs to keep them active but I can do that with a filament. In fact, since I'm not actually doing much ring work here I've got filaments trailing throughout the structure. With one last look at my lantern I turn around and start the trek back to the bridge.

"Hey, Paul." I look at the image of Guy. "You know none of the rest of us can hear what the Snake's saying when you do that, right?"

"No, I.. I didn't. Really?" Lantern Stewart nods. "Huh. Um, I'm not crazy."

"We know she's real, it's just kinda weird seein' you talk to thin air."

"I'll bear that in mind. See you when we get to Switzerland." I close the connection and start climbing the ladder up to the next level.

"Internal communications are up and running as well. I'll do a check on the snow generators."

I pull myself up onto the next floor and fly through the corridors at speed. "Operation: White Christmas is still on?"

"I think so. The vents are still covered in ice. We won't really know until Fatty's finished clearing it off." I land next to the bridge door and press the control panel. Zatanna looks up at me as the door slides open. "We're at cruising height and I'm setting course for Switzerland."

"Good show. Estimated time of arrival?"

"At the moment? About five days." She presses a few buttons. "Once the vents are clear and you add your engine constructs, about six hours."

I nod. "Zatanna, I want to apologise again-."

She jerks her head away. "No, it's… I talked it over with John. Really, I'm okay with it."

I nod. "I'm glad, because the next six hours would have been really awkward otherwise. But I was thinking I should do something to.. you know.. make up for it."

"What did you.. have in mind?"

"How would you like a trip to Eden?"

She blinks at me. "Eden? Oh! Rob told me about that place. That's the botanical park, where they use giant domes to create different habitats from all over the world, isn't it? I'd love to go there."

I blink. Eden..? Eden Project. "Yes, that's exactly what I meant! I.. wasn't sure you'd heard of it."

She sighs slightly. "You meant the other Eden, didn't you."

"Yes. Sorry."

"Look, I.. don't really-."

"It's as near to the biblical version as it could possibly be. But we can go to the Eden Project instead. Less risk of flaming sword. I'm… I'm happy to take you anywhere."

"Oh." She thinks for a moment. "Well, then, yes. Thank you." She looks straight at me. "The other one. Not the biblical one."

"Other one it is. They're closed Christmas Day… Do you have any plans for Boxing Day?"

"No. Boxing Day's.. good."

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Unusual Suspicions 2

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23rd December

15:31 GMT -5

"…in New York today with the re-appearance of an Ice Fortress. But don't worry, this time it's firmly under the control of the Justice League."

Ms Grant looks up and the camera tilts to follow her gaze, giving me an excellent view of my Fortress’ exterior. Looks like we're pulling in a decent crowd. Even at this distance the shining green from Guy and Stewart is clearly visible, on station should it be necessary to balance the load. The giant cake sits proudly on the platform which now extends outwards from the top of the command tower. The bracing I built should be able to hold it up but just in case Zatanna hit it with a 'ekac ecuder ni thgiew'.

I sneer at the television. "My foot it's under the control of the Justice League! Everyone saw me making the cake and Diana told them I was raising the Fortress!"

"Just be glad they're not running and screaming." Zatanna smiles. "You know, you could always-."

"I'm not singing it again. It's not happening."

"..following through on his promise two months ago, and while I have no idea what that will taste like New Yorkers have turned out in their thousands to find out."

"How are you actually going to get it down there?"

"I'm not. I'm going to slice it up up here and hand the boxes out. Your spell will stop affecting the pieces cut off the main cake, right?"

She looks aside for a moment. "It should. It might cut out altogether when more than half of the cake's gone though."

"Won't be a problem, the platform's easily strong enough to hold that." I look back at the screen. "Hey, watch this."

Reaching out to one of the filaments on the Fortress’ exterior I cut a smallish piece out of the cake. I then take a patisserie box out of subspace around the cake piece and start floating it swiftly ahead of the Fortress. The picture jerks slightly as Ms Grant directs the cameraman to focus on it. Write a quick message on the interior, draw an orange sigil on the top of the box and write her name… And Ms Grant takes a step back as the box floats down in front of her.

"Well, this… Um." She turns back to the camera as the crowd turns to look. "It looks like Orange Lantern wants me to try it first." She's holding a microphone so I extend a filament and tug it out of her hand while keeping it pointed at her. She gulps, then reaches out to take the box and flip open the lid. Her eyes widen slightly at the message 'Is this live?' but she doesn't let her surprise disrupt the performance. Holding the box with her left arm she reaches in to pick up the cake with her right. "Looks like a.. normal frosted fruitcake to me." Thankfully, Ophidian me realised that just scaling up the thickness of the icing wouldn't work so Ms Grant's bit has a completely normal layer of icing and marzipan on the part which was on the Cake's outer surface. "Clearly it hasn't suffered from being stored under Switzerland for two months, or from being transported over the Atlantic today." She appears to take a breath to steady herself. "Here I go!" Keeping the box underneath to catch any crumbs she raises the cake to her mouth and takes.. the tiniest bite she could possibly manage! Oh, come on! What did she think I was going to do? Her face goes stiff for a moment as she chews, clearly bracing herself for the worst. "It's.. moist… The texture's good and you can taste the fruit flavors." She nods to the camera and takes a larger bite. Result! "Wooks wike…" She chews a bit more and then swallows. "Looks like New York's in for a delicious pre-Christmas treat. This is Cat Grant, eating cake, for GBS News."

"Glad it tastes nice. I was worried for a minute."

Zatanna presses a few buttons on the control pad. I got rid of the engine constructs once we got to the Lower Bay and we've been gradually decelerating since. "Aaaand… Full stop, Battery Park dead ahead."

"Thank you captain." I point at the door. "Do you want to come out and watch, or stay in here?"

"At this time of year? I think I'll stay where it's warm." Teekl opens her eyes, stretches out her forepaws and then rehuddles to indicate her agreement.

"Okay. You can watch us on the external cameras-."

"Or on the news, I know." I nod and then turn to leave. "Paul..?"

"Yes?"

"Who do you think they're going to get?" I turn back to her, looking blank. "The League, I mean. They don't have a magic user now…"

"I don't know. Um, Jason Blood, maybe? David Sargent? I doubt it'll be John and it could well end up being some Atlantean battle mage neither of us have ever heard of. Why'd you ask?"

"We'd be working with them, wouldn't we? To free Dad."

"I assume so. I mean, we'll need to talk to them in private at some point and see how they want to handle things…"

"It's just…" Her eyes dip. "It's probably stupid…"

"What is it?"

She looks up. "You don't think they'll offer Nabu a place, do you?"

I blink, stunned. "No, of course not! They're M-. Your father's friends! They're not going to let some Lich stroll in, steal his body and then pick up the keys to the place as a bonus! There's no way they'd do that."

She nods. "I know, it's just… I can't stop thinking about it. I mean, Wonder Woman and Red Tornado worked with him-."

"And that's exactly why they won't. They know what he's like. Zatanna, you're being ridiculous. You know that, right?"

She nods. "I guess."

"Okay, long as we're clear?"

Another nod, a little more confidently this time. I wave to her with my right hand before heading out of the door. The closest exit is the one Guy and I came in through the first time and I've repaired the doors since then. Flight door flight airlock, and I'm out into the air over New York. Sun's going down but aside from the Fortress the air looks clear. I'm glad about that; having to create an umbrella construct over the whole cake would have been annoying. We're never going to get finished before sunset, but then I didn't really expect that we would. Short PR thing here while people can still see, then Guy, Stewart and I can carve the Cake up and box it. Should have finished handing Cake out by seven at the latest then we can strip the Cake stand off the Fortress and Zatanna and I can take the Fortress back to the Arctic Circle. No real reason why I can't just transfer it back, so depending on whether the Mayor has decided on whether he wants the city to get a snow dusting first we should be finished by half past seven at the latest. Red Arrow's supposed to be cooking tonight. He seems to have thawed out a little bit but I'm still half expecting my drink to be spiked with sodium pentothal or something.

Ring, does sodium pentothal actually..? No, I suppose that was a bit silly.

I drift outwards and up over the rim of the upper platform, up the side of the Cake decorated to look like the rimfall and over the top to where Guy and Stewart are waiting. I made a cake five hundred metres tall. I chuckle as I think about it. It's ridiculous, really.

Stewart spots me first and rises to meet me. "How d'you wanna do this?"

I generate an illustrative construct. "Pieces of approximately even size. We should probably start with the side facing away from land and serve everyone on the shore before boxing up and delivering. Remember to keep your lists synchronised so no one gets second helpings."

"Yeah, but-."

Guy taps Stewart on the chest with the knuckles of his right hand. "Who gets the frosting is what he means."

I shrug. "Doesn't really matter. I iced the interior boreholes I used for the heating elements so they'll get some icing wherever the piece comes from. And the decoration is far more flattened than the real North Pole. Even at its thickest it isn't all that thick."

John looks up into the sky. "And the news helicopters?"

"If they come from New York, they can have a bit. Otherwise, just chase them off if they try to land."

Guy grins then starts to open his mouth. "You could always try-."

"I'm not singing it."

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Unusual Suspicions 3

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23rd December

15:59 GMT -5

Guy stops cutting for a moment while I float cake pieces over to the waiting boxes. John's delivering to homes in Queens and if I strain my eyes a little I can see the green glow from the stack of boxes he's put down on the top of one of the high rise apartment buildings. We've pretty much finished feeding the crowds on the waterfront and it's thinned out a little bit. I'm beginning to think that my decision to work on the side facing away from them was in error; from their point of view the cake isn't changing and they can't see us for most of the time. The helicopters have been joined by three ferries and.. sixteen? Smaller boats. The people in charge must be minting it.

"Hey, Paul… I've been wondering…"

"What about?"

"Did you an' the Snake put any liquor in this?"

I frown slightly as I try to remember. "Um… Yes, several gallons of cherry brandy. Why d'you ask?"

Huh. Never seen Guy look nervous before. "You know we've been giving this to kids, right?"

"Guy, a few gallons across a cake this size results in less alcohol per piece than you get if you leave a carton of fruit juice out in the sun."

He nods. "That's okay then."

"This from the man who asked if he could get a beer in the junior team's training area. M'gann, Roy and me are over the age limit, but the rest aren't."

He makes a dismissive gesture with his right hand. "Eh, I was drinkin' at their age."

"Guy, you were a nasty little tearaway at their age."

"Yeah, well, there's a difference from havin' one beer in your own home when you're a teenager and us givin' liquored up cake to a bunch a' kindergarteners."

"Guy, if I'd put that much in it would have drowned out all the other flavours."

He looks at the hole we've cut in the side of the Cake. "Never eaten a good fruitcake before."

"Dad was… Is a big fan of my mum's fruitcake. I don't really like fruit in cake myself, but I know how it's supposed to go. Um, feel free to take a chunk home with you for Christmas to share with the family…" I'm wincing even as I finish the word.

Guy sags slightly. "Gloria's spendin' Christmas with her husband's family. Mom's still goin', but…" He curls the left edge of his lip into a small sneer.

I hesitantly put my right hand on his left shoulder. "If you don't have any other plans, you're welcome to spend Christmas in the mountain."

He doesn't shake the hand off, but he does turn so it drops away naturally. "You sure? I don't wanna mess up any a' yer plans…"

"I'm going to have to do two turkeys anyway. All you coming means is that there's a small chance we'll be eating something other than turkey by Easter. Seriously, it's no problem."

"Zatanna gunna be there?"

"No, she's spending it with her grandparents in Italy." I take a quick look at the Fortress' bridge. "She's actually got a phrasebook out right now trying to swot up on her Italian."

"Who else is commin', then?"

"Alan, Mister J'onzz, Danni-."

"'Danni'?"

"Danette Reilly." Blank. "Red Tornado's sister?"

"Oh! Right, the robot chick."

"Um… Yes. Red Tornado himself… Think M'gann said something about inviting Marie and Garfield Logan. They run an animal sanctuary in the middle of nowhere in Qurac, we met them on a mission there. Diana's busy for most of the day but she said that she'll come for dinner. Artemis and her mum still haven't decided; her mum didn't grow up in a Christian country…" A dreadful idea occurs to me. "Guy, what were you doing for Thanksgiving?" He shrugs. "Oh, shit, Guy! Now I feel like a complete arsehole! Why didn't you say something?"

"I'm not really.. good.. at the whole 'Happy Families' thing…"

"I'm not related to anyone in this entire universe, that's no reason to spend a major national holiday on your own. Alan's always up for company, and he'd probably appreciate having someone around who likes that rugby in body armour thing you people call 'football'."

He perks up and stabs at me with his right forefinger. "Oh, you do not get to talk smack about football!"

"The guys with the measuring tape do more work than most of the players!"

"I do hope that I'm not interrupting?"

Our heads snap around as Diana politely waits for us to stop, arms folded across her chest. Her left hand is holding some sort of cardboard tube. She's in full armour with the lasso at her hip and looks slightly amused.

"Heck, Wondy, you can interrupt me whenever you want."

"I'll bear that in mind." She looks at me for a moment, then turns her attention back to Guy. "Lantern Gardner, may I speak with my student alone for a moment?"

"Oh, sure." He looks at me. "I'll go make some deliveries." He leans forwards and shields his mouth with his left hand. "She's totally into me." I shudder theatrically as he extends his aura around the now cake filled boxes. "See you in a few!"

Diana watches him go for a moment as he heads off in the direction of Brooklyn. "This seems to be going well."

"We're on schedule. Um, want a bit?"

"Not at the moment, thank you." She looks down at the iced surface for a moment. "I'm.. sorry that I'm not going to be there on Christmas Day, and that I'm taking Kon away from you."

"No, no, I completely understand that he's got embassy related stuff you two need to do together. I'm just going to be in the kitchen for most of the day anyway."

She nods. "Be that as it may, I wanted to give you your present a little early." She holds out the tube and I take it from her with my right hand.

"Thank you. Am I supposed to open this now?"

"That would probably be best."

I nod. "Okay. Usually I'm pretty strict about opening stuff on the day, but seeing as it's you..." I run a small construct blade around the wax stopper and flip it off the tube's interior before reaching in and pulling out the parchment within with my right hand. Anything else in there? Quick shake. No. With a mental shrug I send the tube to subspace and unroll the parchment. I wonder what..?

I blink rapidly. Oh. That, I did not expect.

"You said you'd only accept a nationality you wanted, and you haven't made any effort to claim British nationality. I know Kon would feel better knowing that you were around when we visit in the new year."

"And… Is this..? Queen Hippolyta was alright with this?"

"I didn't forge Mother's signature, Paul. Though I did have to explain why you needed it. Themyscira hasn't had to worry about this sort of nationality identification paperwork before." She studies my face for a moment. "Are you alright with this?"

"Yes! Oh, goodness me yes. I didn't this is whaw." I shake my head and chuckle. "I'd be delighted to become a citizen of Themyscira. This should be a very interesting experience. Um, I suppose I should…" Two small packages appear from subspace. One is an ovoid wrapped in paper decorated with kittens playing with string. The other is a flattened cuboid wrapped in shiny black paper decorated with gold stars.

She looks at both of them before reaching for the ovoid. "Is this what I think it is?"

"Probably. We added a clip at the back so you can attach it to your belt."

She gently unsticks the sellotape at the top before reaching in and taking out the Spell Eater. "Exactly how effective are they?"

"Its predecessor let me tank shots from Klarion. That one's a lot more effective." I point at the other package. "The other one's more personal."

She opens it with the same care and smiles as she sees the book inside. "I hadn't got around to reading this."

"That copy's edited by me. Only one in the world with Harriet Taylor's name on the cover."

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Unusual Suspicions 4

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24th December

16:35 GMT -6

"Why are we in Wisconsin?"

We're walking down Newbury Street in Ripon, south eastern Wisconsin. It's cold up here, and as I glance at Artemis she rubs her hands against her arms in an effort to keep warm. Not that I'm feeling it. "This is revenge. You see, a certain pair of archers decided that it would be amusing to program the mountain's computers to play the British National Anthem every single time I sat down. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, toilet… And it took me all day to work out how they managed to rig it so that I couldn't just erase the program with the ring."

Her pantomimed expression of complete innocence would be more believable if I hadn't just seen her smirking. "I.. don't know what makes you think it was us. Red Arrow barely talks to me."

"You may have erased the cameras and cleaned your finger prints off the data stick and the mechanism which physically removed it from the network after every upload, but fortunately for me you both left hairs at the scene. Unless there was some other reason for you getting into a tightly enclosed space with Mister Harper?"

She wrinkles her nose. "Okay, you found us out. Why isn't he here?"

"I already got him with the mole thing." Which house was it again? Ah, yes, there it is. "How come the two of you are getting on now?"

"I told him. You know, about my Dad."

"How'd he take it?"

"Actually…" She nods to herself. "Surprisingly well. I guess once he found out what was making him so suspicious it stopped bothering him. It's just.. I thought it would be this huge deal, you know? Something I'd have to cover up forever, except.. you found out and didn't care, and I told him and he didn't either."

"Thinking about telling everyone else? You'll probably feel better."

"Maybe…" She frowns. "You still haven't told me why we're here."

"Since I was such a good sport about jumping to my feet whenever the anthem played -something I don't normally do, by the way- I think you're obliged to play along with my prank."

"Dooon't think it works like that."

I glance around in the general direction of New England. "Do you feel like walking home?"

She huffs. "Doesn't this mean I'm basically pranking myself?"

"No, this prank is epic." I stop opposite a modest two storey green house. Most importantly, it lacks one of those odd personal post box things suburban American houses are usually shown having on television. "Okay, this is it. All you have to do is walk up to the front door with this-" I take a brown A4 envelope out of subspace and hold it out. "-hand it to whoever answers and wait for a response."

She stares at me for a good three seconds. "And that's it."

"That's it."

Her left eye narrows ever so slightly, but she takes the envelope from me with her right hand. Then she holds it up to her right ear and shakes it. "Sounds like paper."

"It is paper."

"And it's nothing.. y'know, illegal, is it?"

"Artemis, I wouldn't do that to you." I shake my head. "That's not fun."

Both eyes narrow, but she doesn't have any more ready excuses. Turning away from me she walks slowly up the path to the front door, I assume trying to work out where the surprise is coming from. She'll never manage it. No way. She stops right as she gets to the front step, half turns in my direction and gives me another stare. I hold my face in a picture of cherubic innocence and after a moment she shakes her head and finishes her walk to the door. I get a camera out of subspace and hold it behind my back as she takes hold of the door knocker and bangs it three times on the door before standing back to wait.

The elderly woman who opens the door is wearing blue jeans and a thick woolly jumper. Her hair's grey but I can still just see a little of its original blonde colour peaking through and a quick scan reveals her to be in basically good health. She blinks at Artemis in puzzlement. "Can I help you?"

"I'm.. supposed to give you this and then wait for a response."

A slight frown. "O..kay..?" She takes the envelope, opens the unsealed flap and takes out the first sheet of paper. She reads it for a moment then her head jerks back very slightly. She puts the sheet back into the envelope and takes out another, slightly smaller piece of paper. This too is swiftly read and returned. Then she takes out a photograph. And another. And another. She turns her head back towards the interior of the house. "Lawrence!"

"Ah… Is there some sort of problem?"

She returns her attention to Artemis, eyes slightly wide. "Didn't… Don't you know what's in here?"

Artemis turns her head back towards me and the old woman follows her gaze. I wave. "No, because someone decided it would be more fun this way."

"Then he's either very kind or very mean." A similarly aged man emerges from the interior of the house and she passes the envelope over to him. The resemblance is obvious really; he's basically an older and more weathered version of his son.

I think Artemis has spotted it too. "Look, who are you?"

The woman favours her with a gentle smile. "My name is Cynthia Crock, dear, and according to this I'm your grandmother."

Camera up! Artemis boggles for a moment and then angrily turns in my direction and points viciously with her right hand. I keep the camera pointed at her with my left, point back with my right and pantomime sniggering at her confusion. She gives me a full on scowl and then turns back to the senior Crocks. "But.. Dad always said…"

Lawrence Crock Senior's face isn't particularly expressive. There's a very slight tightening of the jaw muscle but I only notice because the ring's pointing it out. "Junior hasn't spoken to us since I made my feelings on him leaving the army for.. private work clear to him. I'd like to say I'm surprised he didn't mention us to his daughter, but that would be a lie."

Artemis puts her right hand on her forehead. "Oooh my God."

"Can I assume that you're not here as a result of him coming to his senses?"

"Oooh my God."

"Honey? Would you and your friend like to come inside? Your Uncle Warren's family are coming over later and I'm sure they'd-."

"Oh my God!"

"Young lady, compose yourself." The old man's expression still hasn't changed. He used to be a Sergeant in the US Army and apparently his son takes after him in more than just looks. I mentally mark him down as 'Sportsmaster, but less malevolent'. "This is just as much of a shock to us as it is to you."

"Ah, yeah, sorry. It's just… Whaw. I.. haven't met anyone from Dad's side of the family before."

Cynthia glances at her husband. "How is Junior?"

"He's serving about fifteen life sentences in Belle Reve."

"Oh."

"I think they're trying to make it longer, actually."

"Well… That's…" She gives up. "How is your mother?"

"Mom's good. Divorce got finalized about a month ago."

Lawrence Senior nods. "Smart woman. Junior's never going to change. He's stubborn, just like me. Only shame is none of my other virtues rubbing off."

Cynthia fishes out a recent photograph of Paula and Artemis together. "Does he have..? Do you have any brothers or sisters?"

"Yeah, Jade. She's… Actually, can we talk about this inside?"

"Of course we can, honey."

"Thanks." She turns around. "Paul, get over here right now!"

Good job I brought some Christmas Cake.

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Unusual Suspicions 5

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25th December

17:52 GMT -5

I use the ring to transfer some of the fat which has run into the bottom of the roasting tin back onto the top of the Goose without opening the oven door. A must buy accessory for any kitchen: the power ring.

"Are you sure you don't need to get the other vegetables yet?"

I nod at M'gann. "Completely, Your Highness. They're-."

She giggles. "Will you stop calling me that."

"Mmmmmmmm..? No."

"You really shouldn't."

"Feels nice though, doesn't it?"

She tosses her head. "I'm not even sure I count. I mean, I haven't inherited it…"

"No, you have. All Martians have. And once we've got a little more evidence of that fact no Martian will suffer from the ridiculous colour-based stigma again."

She looks off into the distance for a moment. "You're really planning to.. do this to everyone?"

"Maybe not everyone, that could get a bit tedious. I'm hoping that once they've had a chance to study the process Martian doctors or sorcerers will be able to replicate it." I frown. "Didn't you say something about having a White brother? I don't mind bumping him up the queue if you think it would help?"

She frowns. "He wouldn't be able to keep it secret."

"And?"

"Wouldn't that cause total chaos on Mars?"

I smirk. "Again: and?"

"No." My smile broadens. "No!" She comes a little closer and waves her right forefinger at me. "I'm serious Grayven, don't do it. We need to come up with a plan for how this is going to work."

I fan my hands. "Alright. You're the expert on Martian culture." She steps back, apparently mollified. "Soo, how have you been getting on with Match?"

"Well, the rest of his programming's fully integrated. He doesn't…" She purses her lips. "You remember how Conner snapped at me the first time I spoke to him telepathically?" I nod. "Match doesn't have that problem. Actually, he seems to find it reassuring."

"No, I meant socially." Kon and I have been debating whether or not to introduce him to Karsta. She used the hush tube to take a trip to Australia and left a note saying that she'd be back in February but it's not as if it would be difficult to track her down.

M'gann nods. "Conner's been spending a lot of time with him, but I don't mind. I can't imagine what it would be like not having brothers or sisters."

"Your boyfriend, his near identical brother…"

A slight frown, then she rolls her eyes. "Wally told you."

"It was pretty funny. I thought you were supposed to be telepathic?" I've been trying to work out how to bring up the incident where M'gann plonked herself down in the wrong brother's lap and kissed him before noticing his eyes ever since Wallace mentioned it to me. Shame I missed seeing it myself.

"I don't scan everyone all the time! And the G-Gnomes made their minds feel similar anyway!"

"It's nothing to feel embarrassed about. You're young. Curious. Passionate. And I don't know enough about Martian social customs-."

Her eyes widen. "We're monogamous! It was just a mistake!"

"And now you're thinking about it, aren't you?" Her cheeks darken very slightly. "Are you blushing?" I wave at my cheek with my right hand. "I-I can't tell anymore. Hey, maybe we could compare notes on the use of constructs and shapeshifting in intimate-."

"Stop!" Her hands go to her ears. "Stop! I'm not listening!"

"Hehehahah-!"

"Not listening to what?"

We both look around as Match and Kon walk into the kitchen from the hangar. "Nothing!" / "Oh, nothing."

Match appears to shrug it off but Kon knows us better. "Right…" His hearing's good, but that doesn't mean that he hears everything in the mountain without focusing on it. "Grayven, Diana wants to talk to you about something."

Diana, I note. Not Wonder Woman. I know his relationship with her is much better than mine is with her but it still makes me a little uneasy, trusting her with him. I know, my decision originally… "About what?"

He shrugs. "She wouldn't tell me."

That gets a frown from me. What the heck would she want to talk to me about that she wouldn't say to him? "Alright, I'll go and see what she wants. Is she still in the hangar?" He nods. "Right then. You two have fun with M'gann while I'm gone."

**!**

I feel M'gann's mental exclamation through my customary mental shields as I leave. Bit much, maybe? Oh, she's forty eight, if she can't take a little ribbing about her cradle robbing habits… Through the door and a short walk down the corridor brings me out at the top of the steps leading down to the lower floor area of the hangar where Wonder Woman's waiting for me. The left Zeta Tube is still disassembled from where I started installing the hush tube before realising -somewhat belatedly- that the base's power plant didn't generate enough power to run that and the base's other systems. Hardly an insurmountable problem were it not for the fact that replacing or adding to the existing power plant requires Batman's sign off and he's actually taking Christmas off. I suppose I can't really complain about that but it has left a bit of a mess.

I give her a shallow bow as I reach her level. "What can I do for you, sir?"

"How is the food coming?"

I shrug. "Well enough."

She looks at me for a moment as if expecting me to continue. When I don't her eyes dip for a moment and I think I hear a very faint sigh. What was she expecting?

"Grayven, I want to speak to you about something.. personal." 'Why?' is the first thought that comes into my head, but I hold my peace. "It's about Kon. And, Match as well, I suppose."

"Thank you for taking him on as well, sir. I know he's been getting a lot out of your lessons." It took a while, after Roanoke, for being polite to her not to be an effort. But.. it's Christmas. I don't even look like I'm made of stone anymore.

"I've enjoyed being their teacher as well." She risks a small smile. "When I used to think back to my own childhood I sometimes wondered how my mothers put up with me. Now, I think I can see why they found it so rewarding." She pauses. "Since you and M'gann are the people who know Kon and Match best, I wanted to ask you something before I ask them."

"You can ask. I'll answer as honestly as I can."

She nods. "I've been considering offering to adopt them."

…

"You what?"

"Adopt them. Become their mother. I think we already have an emotional bond and I'd like to take that further."

This isn't fitting in my head so I shake it in the hope that will help. "You what?"

Her expression hardens slightly. "If you disapprove then I want to hear your reasons."

This is actually happening! I'm… I'm… Don't fuck this up for him. What do I say? "When we first met, I didn't really know much about you. I had.. given your status, I had fairly high expectations, perhaps unreasonably high. For the most part you've lived up to them, aside from Roanoke-."

"Grayven-."

"This is the first time you've surpassed them. Yes. Yes, that is…" I shake my head in bewilderment. "That is the absolute best thing you could do. He'd love it. I'm not sure about Match, but…" I shake my head again. "I wasn't expecting this. I wasn't.. expecting this." I stumble back, instinctively opening a Boom Tube back to my room. "I need… I need to think about this."

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Unusual Suspicions 6

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28th December

18:43 GMT -5

I stretch my neck to the left and then to the right. My new armour still doesn't feel quite right yet, but I'm sure I'll adapt. The additional weight and mass of the flight belt is the most noticeable change. Rather than wearing it over the top it is now fully integrated and programmed to activate automatically if the ring cuts out unexpectedly. One telepathic shock when I'm airborne would have been an unfortunate way to die, but now all that will happen is I'll fall and land softly. The other significant change is the headgear. I'm not sure I'll wear it on an actual mission but the head padding has been invaluable for this testing.

"Test number one hundred and twenty two, orange light chaff generator. You ready in there Oh El?"

I nod to Robin through the glass to the control room of the hazardous testing lab and bring my shields up. Guy decided that the Guardians’ existing permissions covered him teaching me the telepathic blocking techniques he knew when he started teaching me. They're good -M'gann can just about get past them but she has to work for it and Mister King can't at all- but these chaff generators are designed to bypass them. As I understand it, it does that by generating white psychic noise rather than trying to access a precise part of the brain and that's far more difficult to stop.

"Activating in three, two, one…" He presses a button and-.

Warning: telepathic attack in progress.

My environmental shield visibly contracts as I focus my mind on my desire for mental wellbeing. I still feel… I don't know, slightly wrong, but on the first thirty nine attempts I fell over at this point.

"Looking good Oh El. Now try creating a barrier."

A simple hemisphere appears in front of me.

"One of your railguns?"

It forms, though far more slowly than I've become accustomed to. I point it at the target at the far end of the room and after a brief hum a tungsten round strikes the bull's-eye.

"Particle beam?"

The railgun shudders, collapses and reforms, sending a beam of purple after the metal slug.

"Energy pulse?"

The particle beam projector dissipates as I raise my left hand and fire off a packet of orange energy.

"Think you've got it, Oh El."

"Looks like. How many that time?"

"Seven, and Lantern Gardner said that Truggs only had one."

I nod. Fortunately for me the chaff generators are designed to shock and then burn out, not remain continuously active. We're having to burn through them in sequence to simulate a determined attack. I can build more with the ring -though it isn't exactly fast as they're bloody complicated- but manufacturing them by mundane means would be an expensive and time consuming process. I hope, anyway.

The door in the control room opens and Wallace enters. "Hey Rob, what-? Is he still hiding in there?"

I wave at him and start heading towards the exit. Quite aside from my need to protect myself from a repeat of the Gotham Curbstomp -I don't think Bane has any more fathers he doesn't know about- I'm not exactly in a hurry to meet our newest team mate. Or her mentor. Though apparently she mentored him, or something? I suppose I should be happy that we're getting a bit more notice this time, but Icon and Rocket arriving in the mountain is going to create a massively awkward moment for me.

I turn the wheel, pull the door open and step into the decontamination chamber. A moment while the inner door locks and the computer scans me. Finding nothing more hazardous than normal the outer door clunks open and I stroll out. I know from my own research that Augustus Freeman and Raquel Ervin operate out of Dakota City. I know that she's sixteen and that he's at least a hundred and thirty and that they've been active for a little over seven months. Batman had been Batman for four years when the Appellaxians invaded seven years ago. For our team that's fine as we're all in training. Seems a bit… I don't know, not all that long for someone who's joining the League. Maybe they're going to get him to prosecute the people the League arrest or something?

Wallace and Robin are already in the corridor when I leave the decontamination chamber. Wallace looks at me sceptically. "You really think it's a good idea to keep blasting your brain with those things?"

"Compared to what?"

"Didn't Thinker end up in a psych ward?"

I nod my head to the side as we start walking towards the living area where the victims of my theft are waiting. "Well, it didn't get noted down in the official files, but according to Alan? They weren't exactly gentle when they disconnected Mister DeVoe the first time. He'd wired the thing directly into his brain…" Wallace and Robin grimace. "His later versions could just be detached from the graft points, but given where it connected his behavioural changes might just have mostly resulted from the damage caused by having the wires yanked out." I make a dismissive gesture with my right hand. "Besides, unless it wrecks my brain completely the ring will fix any damage."

"Yeah, 'cause you've got such a good record with mental stability."

Robin smiles. "He just wants to put off meeting the people he stole the flight belt designs from."

"Ooh." Wallace nods. "Thought that looked familiar. Do they know you-."

"I'm not sure but I'm fairly confident they'll spot it."

Round the corner and one straight corridor to go. Don't normally come in from this direction. How do I want to handle this? Stating my case right away is probably the best approach but I don't want to be too aggressive. After all I am going to be working with Miss Ervin for at least six months. Possibly longer, depending on how the thing with the Controllers goes. What else do I know? The belt's kinetic absorption systems don't stop energy weapons so I can offer her armour if she wants it. She's physically a baseline Human so Dannering is an option. What else? Mm, frankly we could all use lessons in how to use the flight belts better and she's had far more practice than we've had. I only even tried the force field projection system once and it's... It's not a power ring. I intentionally trained myself not to point at things but the belt requires it. Presumably there's a proper military version which-.

"So you finally left the lab?"

Who's she-? Oh, Robin went in ahead of me. Right, no dithering. I walk forwards into the living area. No Icon, I notice. Red Arrow is similarly absent while M'gann and Kon are in the kitchen putting the finishing touches to dinner. Rob's been here as much as he could manage this week, more than happy to duck out of spending time with his aunts over Christmas. He, Kaldur, Rocket and Artemis are on the large settee facing the currently off television while Robin perches on one arm. Zatanna makes eye contact with me and shuffles along the settee to make room for me to sit between her and Wallace on the settee at the far side.

We're going to need another settee soon. And possibly a larger living room.

"Hey." Miss Ervin gets up and approaches me. "Orange Lantern, right?"

"Indeed I am." I extend my right hand and she gives it a quick and slightly puzzled shake. "Welcome to the team, Rocket. Now, I'm afraid that I've got something rather unfortunate I feel obliged to tell you."

"What is it?"

I pull the ring off my finger and drop it to the floor. Then I trigger the belt and rise off the floor. "A few months ago-."

"Where'd you get that!?"

"I copied yours. Actually, I copied it thirty three times and gave my team mates one each."

"You mean-" She half turns. "-all of you can do your thing and my thing together."

Kaldur looks like he might answer so I jump in ahead of him. "No. As a result of not being able to focus on it we're all much worse with it than you."

Back at me and starting to get angry. "Then why-?"

"Because it's bloody useful. Kinetic impacts -punches, knives and bullets- become a non-issue and it lets the user fly. Those are very useful abilities. Similarly, I enhanced Robin, Artemis and Kon with something called the Danner Formula, granting them enhanced strength, endurance and healing. My job -as I see it- is to ensure that my team mates are equipped as best they can be to do the job and stay alive, and if that means that one team mate doesn't get to be a special snowflake with unique equipment that no one else is allowed to use, then so be it. It is not worth one of my friends dying over."

"Oh." She thinks for a moment, then shrugs. "Yeah… Okay. That's a good point."

"Is that it? I was expecting more than that."

"No, you're right. It's just equipment. As long as everyone's playing by the same rules." She looks at Robin and Artemis. "What exactly does that Danner stuff do?"

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Unusual Suspicions 7

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30th December

09:10 GMT -5

"Sure you don't wanna come, Oh El?"

I shake my head. "Robin, it makes no difference whether I watch it on TV here or there. Unless someone actually attacks the ceremony -which is just about the dumbest thing a person could do short of invading Russia- all that's going to happen is you'll stand in the Hall's library for ten minutes and then come back."

"It's exciting for me." Rob shrugs in response to my puzzled look. "I've never been to the Hall of Justice before. I mean, the headquarters of the Justice League! How does that get boring?"

I share a slightly awkward moment with Robin and Wallace. He doesn't.. know about the Watchtower. No, I suppose.. there's no reason why he would. Robin smirks while Wallace looks around for a distraction. "And.. Zatanna's not coming either?"

"No, she's staying here."

He nods. "Guess Donna owes me ten dollars then."

I tilt my head to the side. "Why?"

"Oh, no reason." I raise my eyebrows in an interrogative manner. "Hey, come on 'Cornwall Boy',-" He grabs Rob's arm and pulls him in the direction of the hangar's Zeta Tube. "-we can give you the nickel tour before they start."

"Oh, cheers mate!"

"Recognised, Robin, B zero one, Kid Flash, B zero three, Cornwall Boy, B one zero."

M'gann, Kaldur, Artemis and Kon will be accompanying their respective mentors. Roy… I don't know what he's doing. With him being an arse for most of his stay here I haven't made social enquiries, though I think the fact that he was referring to Mister Queen as 'Ollie' rather than as Green Arrow was probably a good sign. The League have a party planned for their new members up on the Watchtower after the ceremony but none of us got invited. Zatanna and I will probably use the time to help John try contacting Chantinelle again and I need to see if Miss Greaves has given Nyssa's offer any thought. I shrug and transition back to the settee opposite the television, leaning back against the cushions.

"Have they gone?"

I glance at Zatanna where she's sitting cross legged on my left. She's wearing a red cardigan with a yellow turtleneck and black leggings. "Yes. I still don't understand why. Do they think they'll get better reception there or something?"

"I don't know. I think it's nice they want to be there." She shifts around so that her legs are splayed out to her left, an action which results in her pressing against my left side. "If Dad was still on the League I'd have gone."

"It's not like they're even going to be on camera. The whole Hall is closed for the announcement. No one's going to see them."

"That's not… Oh, wait, I think they're starting."

I make an upwards gesture with my right hand and Miss Grant stops miming. "-short minutes the Justice League will start the…" She sees something out of shot and turns her head in the direction of the Hall of Justice's doors just as Kal-El pushes them open. "They're coming out now. Superman,-" He walks up to the podium and smiles at the assembled press. "-Batman,-" He exits the building and stands a little way to Kal-El's right. "-Wonder Woman,-" A slight uptick in camera flashes as she takes her place to Batman's right. Are they really going to line up in order of- "-Flash, Green Lantern,-" -yes, yes they are. They're lining up in order of designation number. "-Aquaman, Martian Manhunter, Hawkman, Hawkwoman, Captain Atom, Black Canary, the second Green Lantern,-" Ooh, did Guy hear that? Are the news people going to try to call them all Green Lantern? Maybe Guy could go with Lantern Gardner. I mean, Jordan and John's names are secretish but his isn't. "-Red Tornado and Captain Marvel." Hm. Those last two aren't in designation order. I wonder why? "The only League member absent is Giovanni Zatara, who took a leave of absence earlier this year." Zatanna shuffles and I put my left arm around her shoulders.

"Shouldn't be for much longer."

Kal-El looks back at the door and -with the biggest shit eating grin that will physically fit plastered across his face- Guy strides out and falls into something approximating parade rest on Kal-El's left. "The first of the League's new members appears to be Baltimore native Guy Gardner, another member of the Green Lantern Corps." Guess the news crews have biographies of all the likely inductees ready to go. "The second new member is Dakota City hero Icon." Obviously no surprise there, though I still don't know who else is joining. Next through the door is-. "Red Arrow, former student of Justice League member Green Arrow. Viewers may remember him from the attack on the Rhelasian peace conference in September."

"That explains why his attitude improved so much."

"The next new member is…" She trails off as Yao Fei comes through the door. "Um."

"Ring, grab her autocue."

"Compliance."

"… Accomplished Perfect Physician, a Chinese national who has been active with China's state superhero team the Great Ten."

I wrote superfunctionary. I'll assume she didn't think the viewers would understand.

"Next out is-."

Her voice fades, replaced by a sort of buzzing. My mouth opens slightly and my eyes widen but other than that I'm paralysed by the horror of what I'm seeing as Nabu, dressed in blue and gold and Giovanni Zatara's body steps out of the Hall of Justice. Dimly I think I hear Zatanna gasp but my mind is empty. I just stare at his helmet as he takes his place in the line up.

"How..? How could they do this..?"

I think some other people are coming out after him. Miss Grant's mouth is moving. That's probably important? There's probably… There might be someone..? The camera angle changes to give a wider image and I find my eyes shifting over to Diana.

How could you? How.. how could you? Why..?

The world snaps back into focus as I hear Zatanna whimper. She shakily gets to her feet and I can see the tracks of the tears that are already running down her cheeks and I'm on my feet and putting my arms around her and resting my head on hers as she cries into my shoulder. Without the Justice League's help -and I think I have to assume that we're not getting any now- freeing Mister Zatara... I'd hoped someone else would have had new ideas, someone who knew something… No. I don't know less than I did before. I was keeping the League out of the loop anyway. "This is still winnable."

"How?"

"Come with me." I transition us to the door of my bedroom and pull away from her slightly. I'm never really sure what to say in this sort of situation but I can be practical. I pull a tissue out of my pocket and hand it to her. "The methods we've been investigating are still valid. League help-" I realise that underneath the shock I'm not feeling any doubt about the right course of action. The course of action I want to take. "-would have been nice, but it isn't essential."

She weakly blows her nose. "You think we can fight Nabu without the League?"

"Yes." I push open my door and guide her inside. "Unocclude." My lantern appears, bright as ever. "After we got back from Roanoke Island I swore my oath for the first time. Lantern Oaths are very personal things… You say what it is that makes you so committed to your cause, what that cause is. And when I did it I wasn't thinking about Klarion. I was thinking about Nabu." I hold out my left palm.

"This is my cause, this is my fight,

Shine through the void with orange light,

I've claimed all within my sight,

To keep what is mine, that is my right."

The brilliant orange beam connects my lantern to the ring and doesn't cut off. "You, are mine. Anything that hurts you is utterly unacceptable, either to me, or to the being I swore my oath to. Ophidian, show yourself."

Light pours forth from my lantern in all directions, pooling like liquid jelly in a mould in the shape of a snake. Not the colossal form she had in the mindscape when she ate Doctor Jones. Not even the fills-the-room form I vaguely remember from when we were merged. She's not much bigger than Zatanna at this point and she bends her body so that her head is slightly lower than Zatanna's so as not to give the impression of aggression.

"Zatanna."

Zatanna blinks in surprise. "Um? H-hello?"

"I agreed with my Agent's decision and wholeheartedly support this undertaking." She stretches forwards and appears to nuzzle the side of Zatanna's face. Is that an actual snake gesture or something she learned from me? "I understand 'to keep' now. You are ours. Harm to you is harm to us. I stay my fangs only through concern for your father's wellbeing. I care not for your faithless League. Any knowledge, any power you require from me is yours for the asking. Your father will be liberated."

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Unusual Suspicions 8

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30th December

09:19 GMT -5

My smile grows as Kal-El keeps pontificating. "What complete and utter twaddle!"

Richard raises his right eyebrow. "Not a fan of truth, liberty and justice then Grayven?"

"I'm fine with justice, so-so on truth and I know too much about Human psychology to put much faith in liberty. But that's not even my point!"

The whole team's sitting in the library of the Hall of Justice. We were standing as an act of solidarity motivated by the fact that there weren't enough chairs for everyone until I got annoyed and fabricated some more. Outside on the steps three second stringers and a former sidekick with a pointy stick launcher are getting sworn in as members of the Justice League. Okay, Atom I get. Doctor Palmer is by all accounts a brilliant physicist and his ability to shrink down inside someone and inflict internal injuries at minimal risk to himself makes him horrifying to fight -unless you've got a power ring- but I'm really not clear what Mr Freeman brings to a team that already contains Kal-El and Wonder Woman or what Mister O'Brian brings to anything. And Moody Arrow? Forget about it.

"Well what is your point?"

"Okay,-" I sit back and hold up my right index finger. "-first off, the Justice League wasn't formed 'as an acknowledgement that no single person can solve the world's problems'. You know who picked the League's initial line up? The Appellaxians. The initial League members were either targeted for assassination or drawn to an ongoing attack. If the Appellaxians had come down anywhere other than the United States, would the League have come together?" I shake my head. "Probably not. And if that was the reason, why haven't they diversified their skills more? They've still only got one magic user-" I gesture to Zatanna. "-one lawyer-" At Miss Ervin. "-one physicist and a whole team of flying bricks. How can you cope with a greater range of challenges if you keep selecting the exact same characteristics? And don't even get me started on this whole the-Justice-League-can-deal-with-all-the-world's-problems nonsense."

"How is it nonsense?"

"Okay, ignore the ideology for a moment. What does the Justice League actually do?"

"The Justice League protects the world!"

"Yes. Well, no, but nearly right. The Justice League is a paramilitary organisation which protects the world from threats to the whole of the world, and from iconoclasts and lunatics -supervillains- within our society. When was the last time the League -as a whole- stopped a war? Or policed a demonstration that was in danger of becoming violent? Or -and we're getting on to the truth, liberty and justice thing now- broke someone out of prison who was wrongly convicted or was convicted of something that shouldn't be a crime. Heck, if you want culprits you only need to look at the United Nations Security Council. Britain's libel laws can easily beggar a person who has done nothing but speak the truth, the United States’ entire legal system seems to run on financial exhaustion and plea bargains and that's before we get onto the really serious offenders. Tao, what do you know about Falun Gong?"

All eyes on me now. Tao gives his head a little shake. "I do not know who that is."

"Chinese spiritual movement. Started in nineteen ninety two, became a bit too popular and then got cracked down on in ninety nine. All mention eradicated from the internet -if you're in China, anyway- members arrested and imprisoned without trial, forced labour, torture, that sort of thing. No liberty, no justice and the truth is that the Justice League will never intervene. I mean, the Gobi Desert prison camp I kind of get, it's a lot cheaper to run than Belle Reve. But a bunch of people who practice exercise routines?"

"Well-."

"Another example then. Tao, who was responsible for the Tiananmen Square Massacre?"

He hesitates. "I.. was told it was the Shaolin Robots.. but, if you are asking…"

"I've seen all of the original reports. The Robots probably trampled a few people to death but the majority of fatalities were caused by the indiscriminate fire of your former team mate, Gu Lao."

"That…" He shakes his head. "No, that cannot be true. I know he is.. uncompromising-."

"He's a nutter! Captain Fang's own report claims that he had to destroy Socialist Red Guardsman's plasma cannon himself to stop him firing. No justice; the Guardsman will never be punished. No truth; the reports are sealed and the few people who tried to speak out were 'disappeared'. Including a Red Army Lieutenant with more courage than sense who'd just seen his platoon incinerated by his alleged ally. Liberty? Only if you don't make trouble. No, the Justice League is extremely hesitant to take action against governments." I look around. "I mean, remember Vertigo?" Wallace and Richard look away. Tao looks like he really wants to say something in his country's defence but is no longer certain enough of his footing to do so.

Miss Ervin looks around the group. "Vertigo? You're not talking about the Hitchcock film, are you?"

"No, Werner Vertigo, the leader of the Injustice League who despite thousands of deaths walked out of court a free man after waving his diplomatic passport."

"I think I saw something on TV about that."

"Yes, I ran an ad campaign to try and get the people involved in that act of craven cowardice tarred and feathered. I originally wanted to go for hanged, drawn and quartered but the director negotiated me down." Only one suicide so far, but I'll keep working at it. "Fortunately, Wallace managed to get his immunity revoked so with a little luck, in a few years, once all of his avenues of appeals have been exhausted he'll finally be executed. I've already donated half a million dollars to the 'Kill Werner Vertigo' fund and that wasn't even a hundredth of their total donations."

Wallace looks a little pale. Really? Did he not realise that was going to happen? Even leaving aside the international pressure from places perfectly happy to kill him it was fricking Louisiana, the twelfth most death-friendly state in the country.

Kaldur uses the pause in my diatribe to try to assemble a counterargument. "Forcibly trying to change the policy of the Chinese government -or any government- is unlikely to produce useful results."

I nod. "I know. What I mean is: the League probably shouldn't claim these things as their highest values and then not follow through on any of them. On a practical level I understand where they're coming from. My other problem is that Kal-El seems to want to reduce all of Earth's problems to things which can be dealt with by brute force. The Justice League is exceptionally good at hitting things, fairly good at criminal investigations and a bit rubbish at, for example, environmental management or economic management. They have a space station but when was the last time anyone sent an Earth built spacecraft to another planetoid?"

Kaldur shakes his head. "That is not the Justice League's role."

"Quite true. So, if Kal-El was being honest what he'd have said would be something along the lines of… I don't know… 'The Justice League was formed in the aftermath of the Appellaxian attack because that made us painfully aware that some problems couldn't be dealt with by just simply punching them in the face. No, sometimes you need to punch them several times, maybe even from different directions. Even though we won't tell you our real names we're all big fans of truth here, and even though until recently we were all vigilantes we're admirers of justice as well. Investigation and arrest anyway, we don't really care what happens next. I mean, remember Count Vertigo? Liberty's great, along with little league baseball, puppies, kittens and apple pie. Just don't expect us to actually intervene to protect your right to it, because the Illuminati wouldn't like it and that's far more important. So let's have a big hand for Righteous Face Punchers seventeen through twenty. Hooray!'"

Painful silence. Miss Ervin in particular looks rather shocked. "Are you sure you're not a supervillain?"

I sigh and shake my head. "If I were a supervillain it wouldn't bother me so much."

"Well… Icon and me did search and rescue. We didn't punch anyone in the face for that."

"Search and rescue. That must be why you've mass produced copies of your belt and handed them out to Dakota City's emergency services."

"I don't see you producing power rings!"

"I can't. Quite aside from the fact that orange rings have a tendency to drive people mad, making them is an incredibly involved and time consuming process. I have, however, reproduced Apokoliptian armour and weaponry and offered to make any baseline Human whom I trust a god, a list that includes all of my team mates and the entire Justice League. I could equip others but I don't want to risk such powerful technology falling into the wrong hands, by which I mean not only supervillains but also national militaries. There are Fire Pits where people used Apokoliptian technology unwisely."

"Diana does charity work. Lots of it, actually."

"Yes Kon, she certainly does. And Batman funds education scholarships and the Atom is an inspiring physics teacher and Icon takes any number of court cases pro bono and.. so on. In their private lives they are actually quite creative in finding other causes to champion. But they don't do any of that through the League."

Richard's phone goes off and Wallace breathes a sigh of relief. "Oh thank God."

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Unusual Suspicions 9

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30th December

09:29 GMT -5

"I probably look awful."

I lay my right hand on top of Zatanna's where they rest on the kitchen table. I transferred us back here after the Ophidian decided that Zatanna was as reassured as she was going to get by a giant glowing orange snake and vanished back into my lantern. "It's not that… I can.. um, fix that? If you want?"

She looks up a little and gives me a slight nod. I don't know makeup but I know what she normally looks like so a quick splash of orange is all it takes to tidy her up. "Thanks." She takes a deep breath in and then out. "So.. what.. do we do now?"

"Anything we tell the Justice League might get back to Nabu. Anything we tell our team mates.. might get back to their mentors."

"But we're going after Klarion, aren't we? Kilderkin said he'd make Nabu let my dad go if we.. if we…"

"Killed him, yes." I take a moment to think back on the conversation. Having eidetic memory is a massive boon. "I'm not sure a Manifestation of Order can lie but.. that isn't what he said. He just said that he'd be 'more amenable to negotiation'. If we don't have a firm offer I wouldn't want to-. Oh that complete shit!"

Zatanna looks up fully. "What?"

"'I believe that you have incorrectly predicted the actions of your superiors'! He knew, he bloody knew! He knew the League were going to-." I clamp down on my growing anger. That isn't helping Zatanna.

"Do you know.. why the League..?"

"I can only assume it's because they want to keep him where they can see him." I exhale heavily. "At least I hope that's what it is. Have.. you and John had any luck contacting-."

She shakes her head. "He thinks she's avoiding him. He says he doesn't know why, but…" She shrugs.

I shake my head. "I don't think he'd lie to you. Not about this." I lean forwards a little. "Okay, so the Sword's out. I've already got Sephtian's magic suppression manacles. They've tested their copy on Wotan and it held up, but he's far less powerful than Klarion. John said that the Lord of Chaos he knows doesn't spend any time on Earth and I think he'd rather get the wrong idea if we asked if he minded us chaining him up."

"And even if we chained Nabu up there's no guarantee he'd be willing to leave Dad."

"True, but I think binding him and dumping him somewhere out of the way would make him far more amenable to-." I pause as I hear the noise of the zeta tube activating. "They're back. Ugh, super hearing. We need to talk about something else."

"Um… Could we.. go back to the Eden Project in the summer? It was nice but I don't think we really saw it at its best."

"Yeah, no problem. I'm happy to take you wherever you want to go, you know that. Heck, we're not limited to Earth. If you ever want to see the bits of the moon I haven't-."

There's a rush of displaced air behind us and we both look round to see Wallace come to a stop. "Hey guys. Catch much of the ceremony?"

I remove my hand from Zatanna's then shake my head and shrug. "Kind of.. stopped paying attention once I saw who was getting inducted."

Zatanna nods. "Me too. I mean, that's the important bit."

Wallace grins. "Suuure is. Plenty of better things to be doing than watching some old ceremony. Oh, ah, Rob's got a lead on Onyx…" He pauses and rubs his chin with his right hand. "Rob as in Robin, not Rob as in Robert. Cornwall. Y'know. We were gonna head out, but if you two're busy..?"

Zatanna and I stand and my armour appears in a pulse of orange light. Zatanna points both hands at her chest. "Romra tcetorp em." Dust -which I know our kitchen doesn't contain- swirls around her as her armour appears. It now incorporates the flight belt in the same way mine does. She's even been down to the West Side Pistol and Rifle Range with me a couple of times, enough that I decided to risk Batman glaring at me and include a revolver. It's a bit smaller than mine to compensate for her smaller size and reduced strength and she has to load the bullets the normal way.

"Are we taking the Bio-Ship?"

"Yeah, the plane she was on crashed-" We transition to the landing pad. "-in the middle of no.. where... Little warning, Oh El?"

"Sorry. Go on."

"Rob..bin had some kinda hack going on airport security cameras. He got an alert when Onyx got on a plane at some airport in North Carolina. She was carrying the same package as she had in New Orleans."

"Was he really hacking security cameras in every airport in the country?"

He nods. "Guy's an over-achiever. Comes of spending too much time with Batman. Her plane went down in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, so that's where we're headed."

Ring? Images of snow covered mountains and evergreens flash through my mind. "I can't see the plane, but I can see what looks like an impact crater and some loose debris."

"They got unscryable planes now?"

"Planes that are immune to the ring's basic scans, anyway."

Wallace nods and then turns to walk up the Bio-Ship's boarding ramp. "Might as well get on board. Everyone except M'gann and Artemis needed to make a trip to the armory."

Zatanna looks at me. "Has Artemis actually let go of that bow since you gave it to her?"

"It's a very nice bow. After you?"

I follow her inside. All Io wanted in return was some metal samples and information on modern metallurgy. A bit like Sephtian, actually. I'll have to make a point of talking to her when we visit next month. Now I know we're not going to be getting Justice League resources every contact I can make is doubly valuable. I can't remember anything at all about her from the comics but it shouldn't be too hard to build some sort of improved forge for her.

Artemis looks up as I come in. She's still in the civilian garb she wore to the ceremony. I raise my eyebrows and lift my left hand slightly in her direction. She inclines her head slightly and an orange pulse replaces her clothes with her armour and the spare quiver I keep for her. "Thanks." She pulls out a glue arrow and experiments with her new bow's draw. The bow itself looks like a short bow. Certainly it's smaller than what she's used to and it wouldn't work as an ersatz staff like her old one. Not that she'd really need it to at her current strength level. Maybe I could get her some sort of melee weapon for her birthday? The bow's made largely of metal, though I think the magic involved in its creation is throwing off the ring's attempts to scan it. It can't actually be made of lead, silver and titanium, can it? I mean, where would Io even get titanium? I recognise a couple of the symbols picked out in gold thread on the outside but a number of the others are new to me. I'll have to show them to Sephtian during my next visit.

I take a seat on the left side of the ship while Zatanna takes a quick look around. "Oib-Pihs, esaelp ekam a taes txen ot Egnaro Nretnal." Another chair rises from the floor next to mine and she sits down, flashing me a smile. Um, Bio-Ship please… Oh, heh.

M'gann looks around from the pilot's seat, a sly grin on her face. "Anything 'interesting' happen while we were gone?"

"No, not really." / "No."

Zatanna and I look at each other for a moment.

"Oh really? Then why can't I hear what you're thinking?"

Because I can't let what we're planning get back to Mister J'onzz. "Well, I'm practising telepathic defences. I need to keep it up pretty much all the time for it to be effective and I'm.. used to not…" Bit of a departure for me, that. Usually I quite like her listening in on my surface thoughts, a reassuring presence on the edge of my awareness. I'm going to have to stop that completely now. "I'll drop it when the mission starts."

Artemis looks up at me, then at Zatanna, then rolls her eyes and returns her attention to her bow.

What?

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Unusual Suspicions 10

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30th December

09:38 GMT -5

"...with Green Arrow and I haven't had any problems with it."

"I worked out that you liked it from the way you haven't put it down once."

"That's..!" She looks aside and thinks for a moment. "Not.. true…"

Wallace nods. "Totally is."

Zatanna nods as well. "You've been carrying it every time I've seen you."

Artemis looks to the pilot's station to make a final appeal. "M'gann..?" M'gann thinks for a moment, then nods. "Ugh."

"I'll let Io know when I see her."

Artemis runs her right hand over the upper arm of the bow. "Do you think..? I know Kon meeting his people for the first time's a big deal and all, but I'd kinda like to say 'thank you' myself. Do you think I could.. y'know.. visit Themyscira some time?"

"I'll ask, but I don't know if I'm allowed to bring guests. Um, if I can.. I should probably warn you-."

I hear Kon's metallic footsteps on the hangar floor before the rest of our team walk up the Bio-Ship's steps. Kon and Kaldur are both in full armour and Kaldur's brought the Trident as well as his Water-Bearers. Robin's wearing his standard equipment and Rob has the Sword of Beowulf strapped to his back. Miss Ervin enters last, fidgeting as she tries to get her new body armour comfortable.

"Warn me what?"

Huh. With Roy getting upped this is the full team, and this will be the first time we've all been on a mission together. M'gann has the Bio-Ship ooze a few more seats for our extra complement.

"Um, you know how.. there aren't any men on Themyscira?"

"What?" She smirks. "You think you're gunna be too busy to show me around?"

"No, but, um… You might be. Their society's… Homonormative?"

Wallace blinks. "Their society's what?"

Robin grins. "Homonormative, KF. It means they, ah, 'enjoy the company of other women'."

Artemis just about manages to control her expression but can't stop her right hand leaving the bow to partially cover her blush.

"There's a bit more to it than that… But basically, yes. A quick in and out's fine-" Robin bites his lip. "-but if you want to look around… They don't see many blondes… I'm going to stop talking now."

Miss Ervin looks around. "Why are we still on the ground? We want to get there today, don't we?"

Kaldur takes a moment to check that I'm not going to answer before responding. "Orange Lantern is able to use his ring to convey the Bio-Ship to our destination almost immediately. As such, the normal need to get into the air as swiftly as possible does not exist. It is more important that everyone is fully briefed."

Robin plugs his personal computer into the Bio-Ship and we get an image of a lightly disguised Onyx Adams, wearing loose fitting black and white clothing and a truly awful wig of black curly hair. Either that or she's had access to some sort of mad science hair restorer; she was bald when the others fought her in New Orleans. She's carrying a heavy looking grey briefcase and walks up a set of moveable steps onto a medium-sized aircraft before pausing at the top to look around. Curiously I don't see any other passengers and the plane looks a bit big for a single person flight, even if someone was willing to pay for luxury travel. "This is the security footage from the Asheville Regional Airport." The image freezes as Robin taps another button and a mug shot appears next to it for comparison.

Kon nods. "Looks like her to me."

Kaldur leans forwards slightly in his seat. "Agreed. But focus on what she carries." The focus of the still image drifts down, magnifying the briefcase. It isn't just heavy, it's made of metal and looks like something that might at the touch of a button turn into a ground to air missile launcher. Or a robot. There's a yellow biohazard symbol on the bottom left corner and some sort of glowing blue light in the centre. Kaldur looks at Wallace, Robin and Rob in turn. "Is that the briefcase you saw in New Orleans? The one that got away."

Wallace nods while Rob is less committal. "It looks the same, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's the same one."

Robin tilts his head to the side. "Occam's Razor says 'probably'. And Onyx is wanted by US and Taiwanese police."

Miss Ervin looks at the image on the screen and then at the rest of us. "How dangerous is this Onyx girl?"

"Baseline Human with intense martial arts training. So far, primitive weapons only. I'd bet on any of us against her one on one. All of us together would be embarrassingly one sided." I look at Robin. "Where was the plane heading?"

"It was supposedly going to Gotham City, but the Watchtower's tracking showed it heading over the Smoky Mountains, too low to be picked up by radar."

Rob shakes his head. "Can't believe no one told me the Justice League had a space station."

Miss Ervin isn't quite up to speed yet. "What's so important about that case?"

Robin changes the picture of Onyx for one taken from the Injustice League's initial public announcement. "Remember the Injustice League?"

"And their giant evil plants? Uh, yeah?"

Kaldur sits back a little. "The team and the League put them in prison."

"Except Vertigo, who walked, Theodore Adam, whose soul got eaten and-" I look to Robin for conformation. "-didn't Isley get transferred to a normal psychiatric institution after Swamp Thing yanked her powers?"

He nods. "She's doing well, actually. In a.. catatonic sort of way."

Miss Ervine looks a little unnerved. "His soul got eaten? I though Black Adam was a good guy now?"

"Different person, same power set. And please don't call him Black Adam, he really doesn't like it."

"Since then-" Kaldur decides to interject to keep us on topic. "-evidence has come to light that they may have been acting in concert with others. And whatever is in that containment case seems to be important to their plans."

"We had a chance to grab it in New Orleans, but Oh El's friend Nylor Truggs had been busy arming Bane and his thugs with next gen weaponry."

I glare at Wallace. "Really, not my friend."

Kaldur bows his head slightly. "By the time we had fought our way free of Bane, Onyx had already rendezvoused with Doctor Ivo, the Brain and Klarion."

Wallace raises his right index finger. "And Mon-sieur Mal-lah." That's.. the worst attempt at a French accent I've ever heard. "Can't forget the Gorilla with the machine gun."

Rob nods. "Klarion did something to teleport the lot of them away. I didn't think we'd see them again."

Ring, grab a satellite and show me the plane's current location.

Compliance.

Aah. "Interesting news. I've found the plane." I send a filament to connect to the Bio-Ship's screen and put up the image. "Looks like the plane's crashed. In a canyon. Miles from anywhere. And yet doesn't appear to have suffered that much structural damage, isn't on fire and I can't see any bodies."

Robin smiles. "Someone knows we're watching."

Artemis looks the lay of the land over as I switch in a relief map. "And they're trying to ambush us. I think they're in for a surprise."

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Unusual Suspicions 11

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30th December

09:38 GMT -5

Cold air blows in through the boom tube as we look out at the crash site from the comfort of the League's library. Match takes a step forwards only for Kon to put a restraining hand on his arm. Match gives him an interrogative frown and Kon shakes his head. I scan the wreck. The lack of bodies or burning material is suspicious, but not nearly as suspicious as the cuboid inside the intact section of fuselage that I can't scan. I know full well that there are ways to interfere with the ring's scans -the basic ones anyway- but I've never encountered one in a mission critical situation before.

Kaldur look at me. "Are either Cheshire or the case on board?"

"Not that I can see from here. There's an area inside the wreck which the ring can't scan. If she survived-" And I'm not worried about that. "-I doubt that she'd have stayed on board. The weather isn't going to get any better." Hint hint. I may be confident that Jade has survived but I'm less confident that she isn't injured. I've already armed, armoured and goggled everyone except Kaldur and Tao, who both use arcane weapons I can't easily store. They had to nip back to the mountain's armoury via boom tube and, yes, a briefing was useful for those of us who skipped the New Orleans mission but we've been ready to go for a good five minutes now.

He nods. Looks like he agrees. "Superboy, Match, Rocket, Miss Martian. Take up position over the crash site." Match is through the tube first, closely followed by the other three. "Grayven, Robin, Zatanna, investigate the wreck. Kid Flash and Celestial Archer-" His name really doesn't abbreviate well. "-stand guard at the cockpit. Artemis, you and I will take the tail end." Wallace speeds through first, with Tao just behind him already putting arrow to string. Kaldur draws his Water Bearers and takes a steadier pace through the tube, constantly scanning his surroundings. One ranged fighter and one melee fighter at each location with a criminologist, xenotechnologist and magician doing the investigating. Sometimes I wonder why I take orders from a sixteen year old youth. Most of the time it works like it did just now: I get told to do what I'd have done anyway and everyone else gets told to do what I'd have told them to do, and this way I don't have to argue with them to get them to do it.

Richard heads through after Artemis but Zatanna waits for me. I bow slightly and hold my right arm in the direction of the tube. "Ladies first."

She shakes her head with a smile and goes through at a jog. I'm glad our relationship is back to normal, or at least how I thought it normally was. Once she got over the embarrassment of her initial mistake it was easy enough to talk matters through with her and she was completely on board with idea that a fourteen year old having that sort of relationship with a thirty year old was completely inappropriate. If she'd kept some sort of torch going for me things might have got awkward but thankfully that doesn't look like it's going to happen.

I stroll through the tube into the cold Smoky Mountain air and start towards the gaping hole in the right side of the fuselage, snow crunching softly under my feet. Still a little curious as to where Jade's got to. We've been out of touch since the New Orleans thing and I'm missing her. I'm not worried, though. She's a big girl and is perfectly capable of looking out for herself, though I'll admit that I'd have appreciated some notice that Ra's was putting her back on active duty. Couldn't see her when I scanned the surrounding area but I wasn't really going all out in case I needed to cover for her with my team mates.

Zatanna and Richard are already inside the plane as I gently pull myself through the hole. I'm a little concerned about the wreck being able to take my weight but it seems to be stable enough. Richard's crouching next to what appears to be a large metal box, playing with his computer. The box is easily a metre and a half on each side. He looks around as he hears me. "Look familiar, Grayven?"

Yes, it rather does. The material appears to match that of the armour I've made for us, glowing segments aside. And now that I look closer I can see that what I had assumed to be imperfections in the surface instead follow distinctively Apokoliptian patterns. There were a few of this style in Bialya with The Lump. I nod. "Queen Beatrice, do you think? It's quite possible that she decided to ignore my warnings, even after she saw how bad things could go. Or Intergang?"

"Haven't been handing out Apokoliptian tech to anyone yourself?"

"Aside from my team mates, no." I take a step towards it and hold out my right arm. "Father Box should be able to open it."

"What if it came from Darkseid?"

I lower my arm. "Then we should hurl it from this star system and pray that it never returns."

Zatanna's eyes blaze with golden light. "Neila xob, llet em ruoy sterces!"

The three overlapping ovals which make the triquetra appear in the air in front of her in the same glowing gold as Nabu's ankh used to. I think I'd find her actually using the ankh a bit disturbing. Not sure how I feel about her getting into order magic. Obviously that's what Nabu and Mister Zatara are best placed to teach but I can't help but worry that perhaps Nabu's colleagues might not be best pleased with me.

Richard looks at her. "Got something?"

Her eyes stay glowing as she takes a closer look. "It's not trapped. The case is inside, as is Cheshire." Interesting. "And.. one other person. It was brought here by boom tube." The symbol fades and so does the light in her eyes. "I couldn't see anything more than that."

"If it's not trapped…" **Kaldur, we have located Cheshire and the case. They are held within a storage unit of Apokoliptian design. We can open it here or move it somewhere else first.**

**This location is free of civilians, and she may need medical attention. Open it, but be on your guard.**

I shrug and cover myself in construct armour. I doubt that Jade would do anything silly in a situation like this but whoever else is in there might have an attack of the stupids. I'll just have to arrange for her to escape later.

"Stirips fo Redro, sselb ym romra." Zatanna's Apokoliptian derived armour glows in the same gold as her spellcraft, with the same order symbol becoming the focal point of the Tron lines. Her spiritual force isn't much less than mine now. It could just be a reaction to her magic use but I've got a sneaking suspicion that she's done everything she can to increase the growth of her divine attributes without directly disobeying my instructions or frightening her father. I'll have to find out whether or not she can hear the God Speech later.

Richard stands up. He looks at us and we look at him. "What?"

"Are you sure you wouldn't feel better with Apokoliptian armour? If you prefer it I can make a lightweight version without the hard plates?"

"Hey, Zatanna said there wasn't a trap."

I shrug. "Your funeral." I step forwards and place my hand on the crate's surface. "Father Box, open sesame."

"Ploong."

The crate shudders and then the top surface slides back. A slight pause and then the four sides slide down in segments with the top folding down on the far side, revealing…

Richard tilts his head to the side. "Riddler?"

The two of them are bound back to back in a kneeling position, facing away from each other with the case next to them. Their forearms are tied behind their backs and their ankles are both tied together and to each other's necks. Even if they had somewhere to go standing up would choke the other party. They're both bruised but have no serious injuries. There is what looks like an Apokoliptian sensory deprivation helmet over each of their heads so they can't see or hear us but they can clearly feel the change in the texture of the air around them. The same helmet also covers their mouths but I think Mister Nigma is trying to whimper something through his. Jade is remaining completely still. Reminds me a little of that one time we… No. Stay focused.

"That sure looks like the case."

I attach a filament and float it up to me. "Yes. Something rather curious inside, though." I create a shield around it before opening it up. On some sort of black packing material there are nineteen red.. thingies. T shaped with a fattened junction. Father Box identifies them as techno-organic but they aren't Apokoliptian. Biological elements matching.. Star Conquerors? Starro? I haven't seen any report of those things having been on Earth.

"Laever rieht esoprup." Zatanna's eyes glow for a moment and she staggers backwards. I reach out to steady her but she brushes me off. "They're mind control technology, part biology, part technology and part sorcery. And they're also a-"

BOOM!

Her head jerks around. "-distraction."

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

We look out of the hole in the fuselage as more boom tubes open in the air above us. I get a glimpse of the Apokoliptian skyline before Parademons start flying through. They're far more muscular than a normal Human, but not the humanoid beasts they were shown as being in Superman Animated so that the writers could have Superman kill them without it being 'proper' killing. Sentient but not sapient; constant exposure to the Anti-Life Equation during their maturation process means that they simply aren't capable of the sort of mental flexibility that a normal person is. They are created as living weapons, killing machines that exist to inflict death and terror. Which means that if they haven't attacked immediately, someone bigger than them must have told them not to.

They land along the top of the small canyon and some half heartedly aim their blasters at us. They might fire once or twice before getting into melee range but if they got a hit even Kon or Match would feel it. The baselines Humans amongst us would just be vaporised. Keeping an eye on them I slowly leave the plane and walk over to Kaldur, the case in my right hand.

His eyes flick to me for a moment. "What are they?"

"You remember that I listed the weapons of Apokolips I didn't think they'd give Queen Bee?" He nods. "Those are Parademons. Think of them as well trained flying attack monkeys."

Hot on their heels come two flights of four Aero-Troopers, elite among the more mundane soldiers of Darkseid's armies. Born as Lowlies and hardened by their experiences in Granny Goodness' training centres they'll have fought their way up the ranks of Steppenwolf's army in order to wear that uniform. They'll have the sense to keep their distance and wear us down.

"Aero-Troopers. Fast, manoeuvrable and intelligent. Far more dangerous."

BOOM!

A new boom tube opens up at ground level and two hulking red-skinned Gravi-Guard stride through.

"Gravi-Guard. They can alter gravity around them but their range is only a few metres. Extremely dangerous, but what really worries me is whoever's in charge of-."

BOOM!

Parademons shrink back from the latest portal, far larger than the rest. Behind me I hear Richard and Zatanna come out onto the snow but my eyes remain transfixed on the colossal figure in dark purple armour who strides forth.

Oh dear.

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Unusual Suspicions 12

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30th December

09:43 GMT -5

My goodness me he's huge. His proportions are correct for a normal man but if I include the helmet he appears to have stolen from Galactus he's about twelve metres tall. Rather than the black and grey palette I usually work with his armour is purple with red reinforcements and decoration. His spear is even taller than he is and I know from Father Box that it doesn't merely serve as a melee weapon. In addition to that he can use it to fire energy blasts and open boom tubes. No Father Box in evidence… Am I seriously thinking about that?

**Who is that?**

**That, Aqualad, is Devilance the Pursuer, Apokoliptian God of the Hunt. An elite warrior, and one of two people Darkseid sics on those who've antagonised him.**

**Do you know why he is here?**

**No. If Darkseid's angry he doesn't wait for months, not when he knows where the target of his wrath is.** Devilance comes to the edge of the ridge and looks down at us. **Do you have any objection to me handling this?**

**You know more of Apokolips than I do. Do you believe this can be resolved peacefully?**

**Seems unlikely, but I'll give it a go.** What would give the right impression to these people? I hold up my right hand, palm forwards. **Everyone, back off a little.** The fliers move inwards to hover over the wreck while our archers lower their bows. I fold my arms behind my back and make my eyes shine. Now, on the off-chance they don't know I have a power ring, lift. A tiny construct appears beneath the soles of my feet and the base of the case, lifting us upwards. I gaze into Devilance's eyes with what I hope is lazy contempt. "Ah, Devilance the Peruser. Finally finished polishing your spear, I see. What do you want?" "These are my lands. Hunt elsewhere."

There's a booming sound as he rests the butt of his spear on the ground. "Hail Prince Grayven, God of Conquest and son of Darkseid. I bear a message from your father." "My master bids me hunt here. I am obedient to his commands."

He sounds a bit like the guy who played Heimdall in the Thor films. His normal voice anyway, trying to find a spoken word equivalent to a god-voice is… Just impossible. "You may speak." "What does Darkseid want?"

He raises his spear in his right hand and aims the point in my direction. "Twice you have vexed his purpose on this world. Twice you have defeated his agents and worse, placed your own mark upon his most favoured servant." "To test your worth."

"I overstepped the mark with Desaad. I appreciate that. Please, pass on my apology." "To what end?"

"Your apology is empty and insufficient. A more physical chastisement is due, both to you and to your entourage." "Should you be victorious, my master will acknowledge you as this world's suzerain and his vassal."

Ooooh. That's not too shabby, though I'm a little surprised that I've fooled Darkseid of all people. Maybe he hasn't bothered looking at me too closely? Or maybe he took a quick look at Kalibak and decided that I was close enough? No more New God tech turning up in the hands of supervillains. I turn away from him, taking in the rest of his force. Thirty two, not counting Devilance himself. Could we take them? I beat the Forever Children easily enough but this is a veteran warrior, to say nothing of the fire the Parademons can throw out. One or more of my friends could die here. I keep turning until I face him once more. "And if we simply escape your trap?" "And if I don't care for my father's opinion?"

The corners of his lips turn upwards in a narrow smile. He holds out his left hand, palm upwards. The area in the centre shimmers for a moment and then a large black egg shaped object appears. Around the pointed end are oval patches where the surface has been cut away, letting the brilliant orange-white light from the interior mechanisms shine out. A Hellspore. One on its own probably wouldn't destroy the planet but the tectonic activity and nuclear winter would cause catastrophic damage to Human civilisation. I nod. First things first then. I take hold of the case and fire a faux Omega Beam from my eyes to drop it into subspace. His smile disappears. "Were they important?" "I'll need a moment to confer with my retinue."

"They mattered to the mortal queen of Bialya. To me they are simply a lure." "Of course."

I nod and turn away before floating back down to where the others have gathered around Kaldur. "We may have a slight problem."

Artemis glares at me. "Really?!"

Wallace looks confused. "Wait, so are you really Grayven, or is it just-?"

I hold out a hand to silence him. "Do not doubt for a second that I am. It is the only reason we have a degree of accommodation rather than simply being annihilated."

He blinks and then nods in understanding. "Right."

Kaldur frowns. "I am not clear from your conversation why they have not destroyed us anyway."

Zatanna's eyes pass over the group. "Didn't you hear him? Devilance said that Darkseid wants him to prove his worth."

Richard shakes his head. "No, he didn't."

I nod. "He did." Richard raises an eyebrow. "When two New Gods talk, there is the speech component and another.. level of communication as their fundamental natures interact. I've been able to use it for a while and apparently Zatanna can as well."

Tao nods. "I also heard it. A strange experience."

"Short version for the rest of you, if we beat them no more Apokoliptians will come to Earth without my permission. No more super advanced technology in the hands of our enemies. If we leave, he'll detonate that Hellspore."

Kon's eyes widen slightly. "Weren't they the bombs you said could-?"

"Blast a hole down to the mantle, yes."

Kaldur's eyes dip for a moment. "We must fight, then. Can you tell us anything further about their abilities?"

"The guns are energy weapons." Miss Ervin gets a bit more nervous. "I would advise against blocking their shots and don't even think about trying to tank them. If you close the range they'll probably stop firing at you. Don't stand your ground. Movement is your friend, getting pinned in place is not. I'll try and provide cover but I haven't tested my shields against a sustained bombardment yet. I don't know the full extent of Devilance's abilities but I intend to engage him myself."

Match shrugs. "We can take 'em."

"I think you're right. I just want all of you with me to enjoy the spoils of victory." I take a deep breath. "If any of you who have not been Awakened wish to undergo the process now is an excellent time to speak up." Richard evades my eyes, shaking his head. After a moment's hesitation Wallace and Kaldur both nod. I reach out and tap each of them on the forehead. "I don't know how much it will help but it certainly won't hurt."

"Aaawa-kened what?" Miss Ervin looks around as if she has no idea what just happened. Which she probably doesn't. I hadn't got around to talking to her about it yet.

"Spiritual augmentation. Improving your theoretical peak capacities. If you're interested no one who's gone through the process has reported any adverse side effects but it really only produces rapid effects when combined with magic use."

"I think I'll pass."

"Very well. One other matter: I think it would be worth seeking Cheshire's assistance." Not a popular idea, I can see it in their faces. Even Artemis doesn't look entirely happy with the idea. "She has useful skills and they'll kill her just as readily as us. At worst she can provide a distraction." Do the Apokoliptians know that she's mine? It wouldn't be hard for them to find out but I doubt they'd care enough to bother.

Kaldur's eyes drop as he considers it. "And if she escapes?"

"Then she escapes. Where's she going to go out here? What's more dangerous, one young woman armed with swords or a Hellspore?"

He considers a moment longer and then nods. "What of the Riddler?"

I scoff. "What's he going to do in a fight?"

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Unusual Suspicions 13

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30th December

09:46 GMT -5

Kaldur looks at me again. "Have you found anything?"

I stare down through the Bio-Ship's hull to the crash site. "Nothing on standard scans. Ultrasound scans of the ground showed a rather large explosive buried under the wreck. I've taken the liberty of disarming it."

"And the case?"

I shake my head. "I can't see it. Honestly, if I hadn't checked myself I'd guess this was a distraction and the real plane was somewhere else."

Robin rubs his chin with his right hand. "There's gotta be something else going on."

"Laever ruo neddih seimene!"

Miss Ervin's head jerks back. "What'd she say?"

Ah… "Reveal our hidden enemies." I raise my eyebrows at her. "Get anything?"

She slowly shakes her head. "There's.. something… Some things deep under the ground. I can't get a clear reading on them. Either they're warded or.. they're just not very hostile."

M'gann's eyes dim "I can't hear any thoughts. I.. think it's really clear."

Kaldur nods. "Orange Lantern, transfer Superboy and Rocket one kilometer away from the crash site. The three of you will approach by air." I nod as Kon and Miss Ervin climb to their feet. "This incident is 'suspicious', to put it mildly. Treat the whole area as highly dangerous." He puts his right hand on my left shoulder. "A repeat of what happened in Gotham would be most unfortunate. Leave your telepathic shields up." M'gann gives him a worried look. "We will simply have to compensate."

I nod and the three of us walk to the area just behind the pilot station where M'gann has opened a small hole for my filaments. Miss Ervin looks at Kon then at me. "So what does this 'transfer' thing-"

Transition.

"-feel li-ke." She looks around as we float in the air over the mountainside. "Oh."

Kon shrugs. "It doesn't really feel like anything. Used to, though. There was this one time in Bialya-."

"Thank you Superboy. Shall we?" I start flying in the direction of the wreck at running pace. Rather than risk giving away the Bio-Ship's location I actually made the filament look like it came from New York. It was a simple matter of using my ultra-fine one during our exit and firing a slightly thicker one off as we reappeared. The small stone which made the journey is even now sitting in the Themysciran Embassy's inner courtyard. Not perfect but the best I can do… Or..? No. Zeta tubing us back and transitioning us here wouldn't have been better. Zeta tubes are even easier to detect.

Kon and Miss Ervin keep pace easily enough. Kon used to try copying my upright flying posture but just found it too counterintuitive. Diana had a similar problem the one time I was able to persuade her to give it a go. Miss Ervin's giving me a funny look. "You really fly like that?"

"Of course. Why wouldn't I? Don't you find that the swimmer pose strains your neck?"

"Not really." We crest the ridge and start the descent towards the wreck. "What did Aqualad mean about a 'repeat of Gotham'?"

I idly rub the signet with my left thumb. "I got taken down by a telepathic weapon and a.. person called Nylor Truggs made off with this ring. How are you-?" Their eyes unfocus slightly for a moment.

I raise my eyebrows. Kon notices first. "Ah, sorry. M'gann just linked us in."

"Right." We move into a triangular formation over the plane with me taking the far point. Need to talk to Mister J'onzz and Mister King, see if there's a way to improve telepathic network security. Getting excluded on a regular basis is going to get really grating.

I strobe filaments around the area of the crash site. There probably are forms of invisibility I can't detect but if there are invisible targets here they're phased as well. Empathic vision.. still shows nothing. I shake my head. "There's nothing unusual here."

Silence from the other two for a moment, then Kon turns to me. "Aqualad wants us to land." I generate construct forms of each member of the team and lower them to the ground before having them jump up and down a couple of times. Kon just shrugs. "Can't hurt to make sure."

"Alright."

I drop the constructs and start to lower myself but Kon lunges forwards and puts his right hand on my left arm. "Let me go first."

I look at him for a moment, then shrug. Not sure why it matters, but if it makes him happy… "Oh-kay?"

He nods and descends to ground level. Construct armour? No, don't see the point. There's nothing here and he might see it as me being over protective. He lands just next to what's left of the cockpit. It's bent downwards into the ground and there's a large hole on the right hand side of the fuselage. Not sure what caused it. The rim of the hole is flat rather than being bent inwards or outwards in the way I'd expect from an explosion. The edge is too ragged to have been cut. Broken on impact? Torn open by super strength? Not sure. In any case Kon's intrusion doesn't appear to have offended our nonexistent observers.

"Aah, Orange Lantern?" I look at Miss Ervin. "Aqualad says they're coming down. He wants us to stay airborne."

"Right." I look up as the underside of the Bio-Ship opens and our team mates drop down to the ground, slowed to safe velocities by M'gann's telekinesis. They touch down next to the engine on the left side. Miss Ervin follows me as I drift upwards. If Onyx was on this plane -let's assume she was flying it herself- and she survived the crash, where would she go? I'm sure that the League of Shadows teaches wilderness survival and she'd almost certainly have had a map to hand. Atlanta's too far for her to have reached yet and I doubt she'd go that far as a first choice. Where else..? Sevierville? Depends. Would she have just tried hitchhiking..? Even if I can't scan her directly I can look through security cameras-.

"What's 'geomancy'?"

"Earth magic. Usually, it means someone feeling local natural magic flows. Why d'you ask?"

"Cornwall.. Boy.. says something doesn't feel right." She looks puzzled. "Is he talkin' about the situation or-?"

I bring up two railgun constructs and generate construct armour around myself. "Ready in sixty four directions stance."

Her eyes widen slightly and she starts staring at the lip of the canyon. "Oh-kay then."

"Lla fo ruo s'ymene scigam lliw wohs sevlesmeht!"

"Subspace vacuoles detected."

Show me.

The rim of the depression positively glows with tiny access points to someone's pocket planes. It looks like the same system Kadabra used which means that someone with some very advanced kit is hiding out. Hiding behind magic as well, otherwise I'd have picked these up. So what-?

"Alert! Vacuole evacuation in progress."

My railguns are reorientating even as the Brain's travel machine materialises. Whether that's real-Brain or weaponised-brain-Brain I already know exactly where to hit it to stop it being a threat. My rounds punch cleanly through primary power and sensoria, crippling and blinding him as I reach out with filaments to probe him past his scry wards. Genetics match Edgar Cizko, though from the brain damage and unusual patterns of neural activity I'm not sure how much there is left of him. I hesitate a moment and then send electrified spikes through his brain to finish him off, withdrawing them only when I'm certain that he's dead.

"Alert! Vacuole evacuation in progress."

Filaments leap in the direction of all of my team mates to give them construct armour as well. With no vacuoles in the air around me I drop my telepathic barriers and share an image of what I'm seeing. Numerous humanoids in light power armour and carrying what look like cold guns materialise from subspace and… Come on, where is he?

"Orange Lantern! Hello!"

I know it won't work but I fire a railgun round through his face anyway. As expected it passes through with no resistance. Onyx takes a slightly nervous step away from him as he gives us all a jaunty wave.

And then something else steps out of subspace next to him.

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Unusual Suspicions 14

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30th December

09:47 GMT -5

I head into the wreck at a walk. Perhaps I should make this quick… Then again, Devilance doesn't seem to be in any sort of hurry.

Ploong.

Father Box is trying to provide me with information about Devilance and his accomplices. Unfortunately knowing their capabilities doesn't really help me. At no point in their history have they fought anything like us. Kon, Match, Zatanna and I should be able to survive an energy weapon blast or two through the combination of armour, endurance and divine resilience. The rest? No. The armour I made for them will take a physical beating but it won't stop a solid blaster bolt impact. I know Devilance himself is much faster than he looks like he should be and exactly as strong as he looks like he should be, but he isn't really built for duelling. In fact, he might shrink himself down in order not to be at a disadvantage against me. His spear will cut me in two if it hits with the blade and while I'm not sure the energy blasts it can emit would one-hit me I really wouldn't want to find out.

Flipping it around, none of them are magic users. Devilance might be a bit resistant -it comes with the godhood- but the Parademons, Aero-Troopers and Gravi-Guards are completely open. X-Ionised weapons will go straight through them… Probably through Devilance as well. Parademons are somewhat ungainly in the air and those flight pack things they wear make them much less agile than any of our fliers. Aero-Troopers not so much. Equipment… I'm going to need to offer X-Ionised weapons to everyone, Wallace especially. Miss Ervin already has Apokoliptian armour and goggles. I could make them energy shields. They'd burn out pretty fast and wouldn't be all that tough… And we haven't practised with them…

I look down at Jade for a moment, then create a screen around us before gently taking hold of the sensory deprivation helmet and sending it to subspace. She immediately jerks her head around, takes me in and frantically scans the rest of the wreck. "Grayven, it's an ambush." I wince slightly and nod. She looks down at the floor. "Damn it."

"Queen Beatrice, I assume?"

She shakes her head. "No. Ra's said you'd convinced her to avoid them. It was Savage. This was planned in advance but they haven't found anyone to replace Bane yet and someone from Apokolips offered to help." She looks at where the case was. "Did you get the case?" I nod. "It was supposed to be the bait. Those.. things were supposed to ambush your team once Riddler sent a signal but they were already here waiting for us." She looks up at me. "What's going on?"

"Father sent them. A test of might for me. If we fail he's going to detonate a bomb that will leave a nasty crater where once there was the northern hemisphere. We'd appreciate your help."

"Father as in..?"

"Darkseid. The ultimate boss of the people your employers have been dealing with."

She looks away again. "They took my weapons. And even if they hadn't-."

Two X-Ionised swords of the same dimensions as her collapsible ones appear in the air in front of her. They have a faint green glow in the same way as my meat cleaver wannabe glows orange. "These were going to be part of your Christmas present. They'll cut them just fine."

A faint smile. Good. "Am I going to fight them from here?" I cut away her bindings while reattaching Mister Nigma's collar to his own feet. Jade takes a moment to stand up and stretch out, then glances at him. "Not letting him go?"

"I've seen recordings of him fighting. I don't think he'll be much use. Oh, here." I add carefully sheathed X-Ionised sais and kunai to the places I know she usually keeps them. Not seeing her mask I take the one I've been working on out of subspace. "I also created an upgraded mask if you want it. Now it has a Velocity Ten inhaler built in."

"Mmm. Went a bit overboard, didn't you?"

I reach forward, putting my right hand under her chin and gently pulling it in my direction so that I can gaze into her eyes. "I missed you this Christmas."

Her smile grows a little more. "Maybe I should stay away for longer and see what you come up with."

I lean forwards. "Maybe I should tie you back up again so you can't."

She mirrors my action, thrusting her face forwards so that only a few centimetres separates us, a wicked grin on her face. "Maybe you should."

"Hey! You done in there yet?" I look over my shoulder to see Artemis banging on the shield. While I'm looking away Jade slips free of my grasp and lifts the mask from my grip. I drop the barrier and Artemis stomps forwards. "What were you thinking!"

Jade straightens her mask and double checks her weapons. "Grayven was just making sure I'd behave myself. I can be a naughty girl when there's no one to keep an eye on me."

I nod. "She really can."

Artemis doesn't know whether to gag or to shout at us. In a less mortal situation I'd take the time to make fun of her some more, but alas, battle beckons. Jade takes a moment to tug her kimono back into place then we head out. Looks like everyone's spread out and… Ooh. From the glares Jade's getting it looks like some people still aren't happy about New Orleans. If she weren't about to start cutting people up at the speed of light I'd suggest pairing her with Tao and Miss Ervin. That will also serve to justify 'letting' her get away. Wasn't that a sticky minute before the New Orleans mission. I've got no idea how I'd have ducked out of it if not for Green Arrow suggesting it be a sidekicks only thing. Certainly saved Jade from getting repeatedly run through by Tao's arrows.

Kaldur steps forwards. "Cheshire. Grayven thinks you might be able to help us in this fight, but if you-."

"Big, isn't he?" She's looking up at Devilance. He's.. pretty much ignoring us, actually. She turns back to Kaldur. "Don't worry, fish boy. Tall, dark and overcompensating up there broke his deal with the League of Shadows when his… What are they called?"

I smile. "Parademons."

"Parademons, attacked us. Plus, I like the northern hemisphere."

Kaldur nods. "Very well then. Grayven, is there some sort of signal..?"

"I don't know, I've never done this before. I'll go and ask." Eyes glow and lift.

Devilance returns his attention to me as I rise back up to his level. "Are you prepared for your death?" "Are you prepared for battle?"

"As prepared as I'm likely to get." "I've been away from home a while. Remind me how this works."

His glowing yellow eyes turn down to look over my team mates. "Not content with opposing our plans, you share our weaponry with these aliens." "I can feel their nascent divinity. Who among them is your huntsman?"

"Of course I did. They're mine." "Why do you want to know?"

"Equipment is not what makes a warrior, as I will shortly show you." "I had thought to simply have the Parademons hem them in before destroying them all with my spear. But if I have an opposite number then I will duel them to their death instead."

"Am I counting down from five?" "I had assumed that you and I would be fighting one another."

"You will be in no doubt as to when to begin." "I am unworthy of such an honour. My master had something special prepared for you."

That's.. not ominous at all. He raises his left hand once more and a new object appears next to the Hellspore. A turquoise and grey cube shaped device I immediately recognise as a techno-seed. Those can be used to generate plasma-servitors of various kinds. They're useful for hazardous environment work but I'm not sure where he's going to get a power source big enough to make it a threat Hellspore. I'm looking at a Hellspore. That'll make a Brimstone class servitor at least. Shit, how big will that be?

Ploong.

Not actually helping. Alright, I'll have to cope. Who's got the best chance of killing Devilance? "I thought you said equipment isn't what makes warriors." "I have two. Brothers. Tank bred like the Parademons, but far more capable."

"This doesn't make warriors. It just makes weapons." "Acceptable."

"If you're going to use it, use it."

Devilance lowers his left arm and then hurls the two objects upwards. A little over two miles up there's a burst of light as the Hellspore detonates. Rather than scour the land clean of life all of its burning fury is sucked into the Techno-seed. For a moment I wonder if perhaps something's gone wrong with it, but then the hissing roar reaches my ears and I notice that the sky has started to fade around it. Looking to the side I can see a clear cut off point, but that's… Oh my goodness. It's filling from the outer edge inwards. That thing.. it's going to be forty metres across at the shoulders.

I'm not sure I can beat it.

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Unusual Suspicions 15

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30th December

09:50 GMT -5

Humanoid, glowing orange and slightly translucent. For a moment I wonder if Larfleeze's Constructs have found me already, then I recognise the man's face.

"A brilliant mind would be a terrible thing to waste, wouldn't you say?" Truggs takes a step sideways and puts his arm around Construct Lantern Doctor Thomas Oscar Morrow's shoulder. Morrow's still wearing the prison jumpsuit he was assimilated in, though he now has a lantern sigil under his name tag. He looks up at me with a somewhat vacant expression on his face and stumbles forwards a half pace as Truggs slaps him on the back. "You know… I was worried he might revert to your control when you took the ring back. Sure, I didn't get the cat or the dwarf.. thing. What actually is that? No, no." He shakes his head and waves his right hand. "Getting distracted. I-I do that sometimes."

Ring, access team radio. "Aqualad, can I take a shot at him?"

"If you must, but it would be better if you were to keep him talking. We still do not know the location of the briefcase."

Ring, load Crumbler round.

Compliance.

"And because I like to monologue, I have to take precautions against someone jumping the gun."

Alert! Vacuole evacuation in progress.

Oooh my. I can't clearly see the thing which gets spat out of subspace, but it's big. The size of a small lorry, certainly. There's a sort of black misty haze around it but from the occasional glimpse at the creature beneath I'd say probably looks something like a cross between a Gorilla and a Warthog. It leans forwards on long and extremely muscular forelimbs which terminate… I can't see clearly but I think it's knuckle walking. I also can't get a clear view of its face but I can see what I think are horns and five glowing red dots that might be eyes.

"I got this little fellah off your friend from Liverpool. After I heard about how that In.. vul.. nukey?" He frowns for a second and then shakes his head. "Whatever it was called, cut through your shields." He stops and looks directly at me. "It did right? Because if it didn't and he was lying to me I kind of have to-" He holds up right hand, mimicking the position a phone would take. "-make a call."

"It did. He made it by torturing a baby to death."

"No need to worry about that here! This fine fellow was ready to go straight out of the box. Apparently he's an 'Enemy Of All'. Comes from somewhere called the…" He jazz hands. "'The Shadowlands'. The Shadowlands. That's a great name, isn't it? Sounds sinister without actually telling you anything use-."

"The former resting place of the Great Darkness and the power source for -among others- The Shade and Nightshade."

"Oh. Ruin all my fun, why don't you." He puffs up his cheeks and exhales. "Alright, how about this? It can move as fast as your friend Kid Flash over there and if you don't let me finish my monologue without interrupting, I'll send it to the nearest population centre instead of setting it on you."

I look in Kaldur's direction and get a nod.

"Grhgrhrrrugugug."

Truggs goes to pat the thing, then thinks better of it. "Whow! Ea-sy boy." He turns back to me. "The control spells on this thing aren't the best. Fire and forget's all we could do. I'd rather have had Bane's people here but he seems to have up and vanished. Hey, I knew you'd talk your way out of it! I just wanted to find out how much you knew, then I'm sitting at the rendezvous point waiting for my ride for three whole days and he doesn't show. What'd you say to him?"

I don't say anything as he waits expectantly. After a few moments he gives up.

"Be like that, then. I wasn't expecting the ring recall thing you pulled off… Something to do with the lantern it's paired to? Automatic, or… Hardly matters. And, hey, keep the finger." He holds up his left hand and wiggles the finger stump at me. "Great thing about coming from the future? These grow back." I'm going to be checking the finger's genetics over very carefully when we get back then. "And given where I got this from-" He holds up a metal gauntlet. Right handed. No, wait, not a gauntlet, that's a cybernetic. He stole someone's cybernetic hand? "-I can't really point fingers." He wiggles the gauntlet at me. "Point fingers. Eh? Eh?"

I make a show of wincing.

"Guy I took it from wasn't a collector. He actually used it, so I left him alive. Still, he never had another one made so it'll be a while before he gets out of hospital. Me?" He gestures to his henchmen. "Mass production. Morrow android derived armour combined with an upscaled version of Leonard Snart's Cold Gun. All these supervillains just have to be special snowflakes, but now they're in prison or, ah..." He pats Morrow on the shoulder with the cybernetic. "Welcome to the nineteenth century! Got a whole factory putting this stuff together. We get a decent AI prototype, we might even make it into the twentieth."

"Bozo was twentieth century."

"And didn't he turn out well. Dumber than the Chinese superwhatever Shaolin Robot who's twenty two hundred years old!"

"Still seems a little wasteful, throwing a unique robot away against me."

He smirks. "Yeah, unique. Alright. I'm done. Morrow, look after Onyx. I don't want to have to dig through every snowflake to find the hole she hid the case in." She takes a step away as Morrow slowly turns in her direction, his gaze as vacant as a zombie. "Everyone else?" He takes what looks like a tazer in his left hand and applies it to the cybernetic.

And promptly disappears. What. The metal hand gives another wave before being thrown aside. Ring, find him.

Unable to comply. Unable to scan. Unable to detect physical presence. Unable to detect subject radiation.

Shit. Has he actually found a way to get around all power ring based detection?

And then a soldier disappears. And another. Then a whole group. Then all the rest. Mass.. production. Optic scans still show part of their armour -presumably the part which emits the invisibility effect- and they still have mass -I can see the depressions in the snow beneath their feet- so he doesn't have phase generators for everyone…

"Where'd they go?"

"They're still there. Invisibility. He's managed to-." I stick a dome shield over the entire crash site just as the first Cold Rifle opens up. Constructs don't really have a temperature so the dome can't be frozen, but whatever it is the guns have that makes thermodynamics their bitch also allows them to start building a hard layer of ice over the top. I've no idea where the ice comes from, given that there isn't that much water vapour in the air. The weight isn't really a problem and we can just disengage with a Zeta Tube construct if we-.

"Get 'em, chuckles."

Through the ice I see the head.. area of the Enemy jerk up, sighting me. "Hkh! Hkh!" It takes a few not particularly quick bounds in the direction of the orange barrier ahead of it. If its claws work like the Invunche's it'll be able to penetrate… I point the railgun in its direction. I checked after last time and the League are fine with me killing quasi-demonic monstrosities. The shadows cloaking the Enemy blur as it approaches and.. it's.. not there anymore. Where did-?

The ring jerks me to the side as the Enemy reappears two metres ahead of me, its claws narrowly missing taking my head off. New railgun constructs form to try and draw a bead on it but it vanishes again before I can bring them to bear. It flashes into being next to one of the railguns searching for it and envelopes it in darkness before cutting through it with its claws. The particle beam I use to replace it meets the same fate. Another near miss from above and I'm forced to evade with a small transfer. That makes me stop projecting the dome, but with so much ice coating it we should already be covered from that direction. I re-establish my team mates' armour and-.

"Ymene fo Lla dloh llits!"

"Grhgrhrkk!" It freezes in the air half in one location and half in another. Some sort of wormhole thing? I create a new railgun and start firing Crumbler and Spell Eater rounds. Partial impacts, I think, but it's hard to judge and from the way its shadows are spasming around its entire body I don't think-. "Hkkrh!" It disappears again. The ring's still searching, still ready to shift me out of the way, but I'm not seeing anything. Lost control, maybe? Some types of creature-.

A fountain of snow erupts from the ground close to M'gann! I see what looks like a hand stretch forth and then flame everywhere! **Aaahh!** The construct armour should prevent her from being burned but it won't do anything about the psychological effects. Kaldur goes to help but another eruption takes place to his left and the water from his Water Bearers is suddenly sucked away. A second later it returns in the form of an ice bullet directly to his construct faceplate which knocks him flying! The rocky ground under the rear of the plane fractures and explodes, hurling my ground bound team mates aside. Kon flies at the source of the flame only to be met by a blast of hurricane force wind which slams him into the canyon wall.

Another wind blast which sounds more like.. what Red Tornado uses to fly. Wait, fire, water, earth and air? Oh, he has Morrow as a Construct, of course he'd-. I fight to remain stable as another air blast pushes everything towards the ground, revealing… Mass production.

The Air Bozo spins its head through three hundred and sixty degrees as its brethren pick their targets. "Hello little birds! We're going to squish all of you!"

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Unusual Suspicions 16

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30th December

09:51 GMT -5

Devilance smiles at me condescendingly. "Have you lost your confidence? Do not worry. You are hardly the first that Brimstone has unmanned." "Our combat will begin at Brimstone's direction. If you wish to tutor your pantheon, now is the time."

My eyes remain fixed on the space Brimstone is starting to occupy. I can now pick out its arms and head. For some reason the system mimics organic musculature. When complete its body will be superheated hydrogen plasma, powered by the energy given off by the Hellspore. The Hellspore is already inside its spawn's outer edge, though I can still see it. Will it keep feeding the monstrosity during the fight or be consumed by its body? I have no idea. What could I do to beat it?

**Aqualad, that thing forming in the sky is called Brimstone. It's what I'll have to fight.**

**What can it do?**

**Generate massive amounts of heat and electromagnetic radiation. Since it's basically a humanoid sun surrounded by a force field it's immune to physical attack against its surface. The techno-seed is the weak spot but I'll have a devil of a time hitting it, let alone damaging it. It could probably incinerate everyone here by accident if it misses me so I'll have to make sure I keep its attention.**

**How long do we have?**

The sky behind it is nearly completely obscured now. The final step in its activation will see it go from dull red to brilliant orange. And start shouting, of course.

**Maybe two minutes. On to our other opponents. Devilance wanted to fight my 'huntsmen' himself. Since the alternative was him frying everyone with his spear I named Superboy and Match.**

**You should have consulted me.**

**We can take him.**

I smile slightly at Match's enthusiasm. **I know, and I'm sorry for undermining you like that, but I need to look like I'm in charge or they'll smell a rat. Devilance can alter his size and density at will, within certain parameters. The spear lets him fly but he's awkward in the air. As far as I know he doesn't know what species you are but he's probably heard of Kryptonians. He will go for Kryptonite blasts once he works it out.** I pause for a moment. **Given the nature of our opponents I'm going to recommend lethal force against the Parademons at least, and don't be afraid to cause crippling injuries against the rest.**

**I'm not.**

**Thank you Cheshire, but that was really more directed at my team mates.**

**Maybe you missed that lesson Grayven, but superheroes don't kill people!**

**I'll be happy to argue the merits of lethal force with you later Robin, but Parademons aren't people. Feel free to have Her Highness scan them if you want proof. And the others… I would be astonished if they weren't killed upon their return anyway, but if it really matters to you I'll heal them. After we win.**

Brimstone has legs now. Can it fly? I don't remember it being able to fly but Father Box doesn't have any record of one being fuelled by a Hellspore before. Father Box also doesn't have any record of how easy it is to hit the techno-seed with a power ring construct. I really.. haven't prepared for this sort of opponent.

**Miss Martian confirms what you have said. Given the odds we face…**

**Aqualad?**

Wallace sounds surprised. I seem to remember that Mister Allen killed Mister Thawne in the comics but that most certainly hasn't happened yet here. I suppose there's not much point giving him a sword if he won't use it.

I hear Kaldur sigh through the link. **What of the other two types of Apokoliptians?**

**Aero-Troopers are a match for you in terms of strength and endurance. The aero-discs on their feet let them fly and they're carrying blasters. Possibly other weapons as well. The body armour I made for you should allow you to survive taking a hit if you have to but I recommend evasion as the preferred option. They'll probably prioritise enemy fliers. Mass produced Apokoliptian weapons aren't gene locked so disarming them and using their guns is a viable option. Their goggles will let them see through Miss Martian's invisibility but her telekinesis should be strong enough to mess around with their flight paths.**

**Blasters. I don't suppose those are explosive and not energy weapons?**

**I'm afraid not, Rocket. Your personal shield might absorb a small amount of the attack but the strength reduction wouldn't be significant. I recommend speeding directly for them as fast as possible, jinking as much as you can. You're faster but based on what I've seen so far less manoeuvrable.**

**Will my force shield projector work?**

**It might be able to take a hit but don't stop moving in order to use it.**

Brimstone's nearly completely filled in now, even down to the black markings around his head, shoulders and forearms. Not much longer.

**The two brutes with red skin are Gravi-Guard. They're sophonts but not particularly intelligent. They can sense gravity and manipulate it within an area of about three metres…** I remember who I'm talking to. **Ten feet, from their bodies. That said, the ability is much stronger if they make physical contact. In a grapple they'll crush anyone here.**

**Any advice for Devilance?**

**Yes, Superboy. Strike and evade. If you can take out his knees, do so. If you can disarm him, do it then destroy the spear. He's resilient but far from invulnerable to a level of force you can generate. Grappling isn't practical given the size difference. You're probably better off getting close-.** Brilliant golden light radiates outwards from Brimstone. I narrow my eyes slightly and have to suppress the urge to shield my face. **This is it then. If by some miracle I finish before you do I'll return to assist. Good luck, my friends.**

I look back at them and see Kaldur nod to me. **And to you.**

Keeping my face still I float upwards. Getting level with Brimstone's head should make getting his attention easier. I'm leaving the canyon behind but there isn't really any other option as Brimstone's nearest foot is a good hundred metres away from the rim. The area of brightest light is contracting now with its extremities dulling to its standard red/orange colour. Once it reaches the face area-.

The face darkens and the light flares once more around its eyes and mouth. Colossal arms rise up and hands the size of bungalows clench into fists above its head. Here we go then.

"Behold the fallen angel known as Brimstone!" Why do they do this? Why do they build a walking sun and then make it think-. "Gaze into my eyes, ye mighty, and despair!"

My construct armour darkens slightly as the electromagnetic blast from its eyes passes through me. Nothing.. too worrying yet. It reorientates its head slightly. I think it's looking at me but without actual pupils it's rather hard to te-.

"My dark master has cast me out! My redemption lies in cleansing this world of false gods and graven idols." That… That's not funny. "You are the false one who claims to be my master's son!"

"Can't you see the family resemblance?"

The fires around its head intensify. "Impudent wretch! I will harvest your soul and present it to my lord for him to torture and consume!"

I risk a half second glance at the canyon. A green blur has slaughtered most of the Parademons but the rest have escaped into the air. Shots are being exchanged and Kon and Match appear to be heat visioning Devilance directly in the eyes. Not sure that'll work. His eyes don't work like-.

"Now BURN! Burn for Darkseid!"

I don't wait for the plasma wave to hit. Instead I transition directly behind him and fire an x-ionised javelin directly at the location of the techno-seed. Ring, track it.

By your command.

No, no good. It didn't pierce the epidermal force field. Laser, perhaps? Light is clearly getting through. Brimstone shifts around to face me, ground turning to magma beneath his feet. It might not be able to fly but it can certainly move quickly. Air shimmers around me as it opts to superheat the environment in lieu of a targeted attack. Bearable, temporarily, but all that heat will put my team mates at risk. I transition again and form a laser construct only for a bolt of plasma to leap from its shoulder directly into my chest! Of course it doesn't need to see me to shoot, it's a walking sun! It doesn't even have eyes! I transition once more and fire the laser to no noticeable effect.

Think, damn it!

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Unusual Suspicions 17

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30th December

09:54 GMT -5

Snow explodes from all directions, enveloping the area under the ice dome in white. I can still see the location of my team mates by the orange glow of their construct armour and the ring would mark them out for me anyway. Robin and Wallace have visors but I don't.. think.. anyone else does.

**Putting heads up displays on your construct armour now. Aqualad, you up?**

**Yes. Miss Martian-**

"Bozo Rock Smash!"

The ring shows a section of canyon wall pull free and sail through the air towards Zatanna's position! Three Crumbler projectiles eliminate most of it but she still gets pelted with rubble.

**-are you hurt?**

**Got it, Aqualad! Their element powers are magic, so they're mine!**

"Bozo wants to burn! Why won't you burn! … Buuuuuuuurn!"

**I'm okay. I'm okay.**

**Try to stay away from the fire robot.**

**No need to tell me twice.**

**Zatanna, can you show us where the robots are?**

Getting rid of the snowstorm would make things easier for us as well. Ring, use observations of Red Tornado and Mister Twister and attempt to calculate the location of the Air Bozo.

Compliance.

**Um.** "Ozob stobor.. wolg ylthgirb!"

I can barely hear her over the howling of the wind but the effect of her spell is immediately apparent as four glowing humanoid figures appear.

Air Bozo located.

My railgun comes around and fires three Crumbler rounds at maximum power at the torso of the glowing robot near the top of the dome. Just before they reach the target the snow vapourises and condenses into an ice wall. Come on! No! The wall is dense enough to trigger them. It gets annihilated and the unaffected Air Bozo behind it raises its hand in my direction, only for a series of arrows to pierce its arm. Most just fly through but two manage to strike something it had to leave solid. Wait, they haven't read-! **The Bozo robots are phased! You need to use-.**

The wind drops off for a moment as the Air Bozo brings its arm back in front of it and shakes it. The arrows fall out, presumably due to it rephasing.

**Crumbler arrows, got it.**

**Now!** I fire a volley of regular slugs which smash through the newly reformed ice barrier just quick enough to get it out of the way of Artemis' arrow. Air Bozo tries to climb higher, which causes the arrow to strike the edge of its torso rather than the centre. Nearly half the crumble effect is wasted on thin air but Air Bozo shudders as a chunk of his chest vaporises. Doesn't look like it hit anything load bearing, sadly.

"More air for Bozo!"

**Good news, Nth Metal armor lets me punch them. Bad news, the rock robot's gone underground again.**

**Fire robot's just trying to punch-. Thanks Robin!**

"Bozo doesn't burn! He makes things burn! … Buuuuurn!"

**Agh!** / **Wahh!** / **Gah!**

The lights being emitted by the robots go out and I can see the ground shaking from here. It's near liquefying! I strengthen the tethers to pull my team mates up and-.

"Hkhcccckcckch!"

The ring yanks me sideways as the Enemy makes another drive-by. Rather than disappear this time it latches on to the canyon wall and scrabbles around the edge, flowing like a wraith over the surface.

**Watch out! The Enemy of All's back! Rocket, move!**

I form a particle beam and fire it even as the Enemy leaps at her. She points, generating a force barrier, and the Enemy strikes it and seems to flow around it. My purple beam pierces it through the side just before it leaps off the far side, cutting a momentary hole through its dark aura and into what I assume to be the flesh beneath.

"Hhhgh!"

It seems to slip, start to fall towards the ground and then vanishes again.

"Bozo hate water! Bozo hate water!"

**Aghhh! I've got nothing to run on! The ground isn't solid enough!**

**Fire robot's down, I'll try draining the earth one. Um, soon as I know where it is.**

**Zatanna, we could really-.**

"Ozob stobor peek gniwolg ylthgirb!"

The space in front of me lights up OH SHIT! The armour around my head cracks as one of the Bozos smashes it from alternate sides in a frenzy. "You have water!" Bang! "Bozo hate water!" Bang! "You have water!" Bang! "Bozo-!" It lurches to the side as an Unmaking Arrow hits it on the left shoulder, causing the arm to hang limply. "-hate-" I generate a blender construct around it and whir the blades. Water Bozo's flight beanie comes apart and he starts to fall. "-water!" I think I felt something else get hit as well, but from the blast of ice covering most of my front I'm going to assume it wasn't anything critical. No railgun this time, I just send a filament down, take Crumbler micro-missiles out of subspace at point blank range and activate them. Water Bozo jerks as his torso is torn apart. "Critical misson failu-." I stab another through what looks like his computer core in the centre of his chest. He shudders and then goes still before hitting the ground and sinking into it.

**Water Bozo down and out. Just two more and wherever the Enemy-.**

The blue beam of a cold gun strikes the side of my construct armour faceplate, covering it with ice. Another strikes lower down, then two more hit me in the back. What are they-!

Warning: telepathic attack in progress.

Guuhhh! I don't see the chaff grenade but that definitely felt like one! I get my telepathic shield in place fast enough to prevent me from being knocked out again but I lose telepathic contact with the rest of the team. More importantly, they lose their construct armour and my filaments fade out of existence as my entire exterior is coated in ice. Ugh. Ring, detect shots and respond with branding. Let's friendly fire those bastards!

Unable to reliably locate-.

Best guess until you get a hit!

Compliance.

Another cold beam strikes, this time hitting me in the chest. The ice is now thick enough that I'm having trouble seeing out and it's dense enough that it actually takes me effort to punch a hole out and fire a volley of ring-guided filaments in the direction the shot came from. Four miss but the fifth strikes something that I can't see. The humanoid figure is briefly outlined in orange-

"Gyuaaah!"

-before his head jerks back and he fades into invisibility with just the arm mounted stealth generator and glowing orange forehead brand showing.

My puppet, you really want to shoot the floating stealth generators around you.

"Ah!" / "Shit!" / "What the fuck?!" / "Two-three's lost it!" / "AH FUCK!" / "Where is he?!"

"Hssuh!"

The Enemy appears on top of my ice bubble. For a moment I see the red of its eyes refracted through the water crystal then it jams its claws forwards and rips away at the ice!

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Unusual Suspicions 18

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30th December

09:55 GMT -5

"Ploong."

Right, it's not just heat. Brimstone is throwing out an impressive amount of electromagnetic radiation as well. I could take it -briefly- as could Kon or Match, but the rest of my team mates won't last long this close. Neither will the surviving Parademons, though they won't care. Sensibly, the Aero-Troopers appear to be falling back. Devilance is even more resistant to this sort of thing than I am and the Gravi-Guard will laugh it off. Create a shield myself or call on Zatanna?

Damn it, can't delay.

A large orange barrier appears between us and the canyon. Obviously it won't stop the escaped heat but it will stop my friends getting turned into cancer-ridden mush puddles by ionising radiation. Orange filaments spread throughout the combat area will allow me to maintain it without completely losing my FTL capacity, though I'll have to drop it if my construct armour breaks and I need to leave to re-establish it.

"No true son of the God-Tyrant would be so merciful!"

He swings for me with his right fist while vomiting a wave of chromosphere-temperature plasma. I swiftly evade both with simple flight. Don't want to burn too much power. Wait, vomit? Brimstone doesn't have a digestive system. It must have intentionally breached its own force field to do that and let its vast internal pressure cause the spray. A burst of gamma from its eyes is intercepted by an Apokoliptian gamma collector construct and fired into space. No point firing it back after all, Brimstone would probably just feed on it. Right, I can assimilate, but do I need to hit the techno-seed or will it work with a hit anywhere? Normally during a confrontation with an Apokoliptian I'd fire it from my eyes but I don't want to do that in a situation where there's a good chance of it not working. I descend to the glutinous molten ground and fire a filament down into it and then up towards my target.

Assimilate.

Unable to establish connection.

I'm forced to transfer as a brilliant beam of white light sears through the air. Try again.

Brand.

Unable to establish connection.

Settles that.

**Aagh!**

I flick my eyes in the direction of the canyon at Kon's mental scream. Devilance swings his spear around and green beams fly in Match's direction as he dives to catch his brother. Ring?

Radiation pattern matches substance 'Kryptonite'.

"Rejoice sinner! For soon you will be cleansed!"

Un. Ac. Ceptable.

Warning: significant power consumption in progress. Seventy six percent remaining.

I need to pierce its epidermis and get at the techno-seed. How does one bend a sun to one's will? With immense magnets. I go high, creating a tower shield as Brimstone uses scintillating beams of light once more. The shield isn't so much cracking as evaporating at the edges as Brimstone hits it with temperatures normally only found in the cores of fusion reactors.

But I can do better. Ring, star singer.

Such a simple device, really. Just intense electromagnetic fields projected from what look like long metal v-shapes arranged in a circle with the points of the v's facing inwards. Don't remember the name of the book where I first heard of the technique but I can't say I was surprised to find mention of it in Father Box's files. It was listed as 'spectacular but inefficient'.

Brimstone's shoulders ripple as the magnetic field hits and the colossus staggers forwards slightly. In the book a race of AIs use it to bend the surface of a star in such a way that the core is exposed, causing massive amounts of radiation to scourge all life from a nearby planet. In this case Brimstone doesn't have a core but it does have a techno-seed that I need to access. Brimstone staggers around in a circle to try and get its shoulder facing in my direction but I shift position to remain behind him. There's a definite distortion but it's too slow. Brimstone even manages to rally enough to fire another beam of plasma at me. The magnetic fields bend the whole blast harmlessly around me but by the time it's gone Brimstone has more or less regained its normal shape.

Warning: significant power consumption in progress. Sixty nine percent remaining.

This isn't good enough. I need more!

My eyes blaze orange.

"This is my power, this is my might!

I stand alone in darkest night!"

Two additional star singer constructs appear besides me, the air itself hums and wavers with the force of the magnetic fields and Brimstone is driven to its knees.

"With this ring my foes I smite!

I conquer all with orange light!"

"GRAAAAHH! No! Father, aid your loyal servant!"

A hemisphere of material has been displaced from what would be the top of its spine. Its head twists and slides forwards and its arms shake at random as it loses control of the magnetic fields it uses to control them. Still I can't get a clear shot at the bloody techno-seed.

Warning: significant power consumption in progress. Fifty four percent remaining.

What else could I..? I bring the star singers closer, pushing Brimstone onto all fours. I jam a plasma siphon into the focal point, piercing his epidermal shield and causing plasma to blast out, fountaining high into the upper atmosphere. I'm going to need to do something about that when this fight is over but I'm so close now! Ring, find that fucking techno-seed!

I send two orange lines out from my eyes, zigzagging them towards the hole in Brimstone's shield. Just before they enter -and out of line of sight of any observers- they merge together and form a solar probe construct which dives into the stream. Really annoying thing is I can't simply kill Brimstone. If I do that he'll just go nova and kill my team mates. I need to shut it down.

Warning: significant power consumption in progress. Forty one percent remaining.

"Aaaaaagh!" "Bend to my will!"

Warning: significant power consumption in progress. Twenty nine percent remaining.

"Find the fucking-!"

Connection established.

Father Box, take control.

"Ploong."

Shut down all its attacks. I feel the pressure on my armour fade. Not completely -a sun can't choose to not be hot after all- but enough that I can drop the radiation barrier and extend an orange aura across Brimstone's entire surface. Ring, transition.

We reappear in space, as near to the edge of the system as I dare risk without provoking Gaea. There's nothing out here but me and it can't fly fast enough to make any difference. For a moment I consider just leaving it out here as some sort of long term storage.

"Master, I live to serve you! Do not abandon your servant to the dark and the cold!"

No. That's just asking for trouble. Father Box, set its containment systems to deactivate in five seconds.

Ploong.

Now, drop the armour construct and take me back to Earth.

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Unusual Suspicions 19

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30th December

09:58 GMT -5

For a moment I think the ice might actually help. I mean, if the chaff grenade had worked I'd be dead or crippled right now but as it is I've got a layer of frozen whatever this stuff is about two metres thick between me and the Enemy. No such luck. It more or less surges through the ice in fits and starts, red glowing eyes staring madly at me. It's not destroying the ice, not after it appeared and got a grip. It's somehow occupying the same space.

Ring, do you detect black light?

Black light not detected.

Don't have enough space for a railgun or particle beam. Timing my shot to meet it just as it completes its next surge I let loose with an orange light blast. It recoils -slightly- then stops to take a closer look at me. Next, it moves its head to look at me down the narrow hole my attack just made. It's only about two centimetres across and virtually the entire creature is still in the ice. It shouldn't mean-.

"Hhkhkhhkhgh."

The Enemy twists slightly, bringing its right forelimb around to the hole. Then the limb seems to twist… Bend? Almost flow down the hole block it block it block it! It pulls back from the construct. Okay, so it doesn't have the black light claw things that the Invunche had. Wait, is..? Its dark aura is moving through the ice, spreading out from the Enemy like rapid-spreading hoarfrost. That doesn't look good. Okay, I can still get away by making a filament hole and transitioning, but we need to win here. The pulse didn't seem to actually hurt it, just alarm it. I send filaments out from the bung construct and thrust them in the approximate direction of the Enemy. Several just vanish but a couple make a solid contact. Got you. Brand.

Unable to comply. Creature… Substance… Not found. Unable to identify.

The Enemy writhes within the ice and the shadow pulls back through the ice. "Hhrngungng!"

Cannot cannot cannot cannot-.

Stop trying. That seemed to sort of work a bit but I can't risk damaging the ring. An Atlantean rune stone appears from subspace within the bung and I wave it at the recovering Enemy. No response, which means that if the thing is innately magical then the amount of magic it uses is utterly trivial. The stone goes back into subspace. Not magic, not emotional spectrum energy… Just how many weird types of power are there? And why is it coming after me? Wait. Dark Druid does use magic and I've already hit it with a Spell Eater. That probably would have destroyed any spell on it. Fire and forget. Enemy of All. No more control spell.

The Enemy jerks through the ice, circling around behind me. Basic predator behaviour though it's easy enough for me to track. I send a filament through the ice away from it, pan the end around-.

Avarice detected.

Hello Doctor Morrow. Even as the last of the light dripping in from outside is obscured by the shadows under the ice I start accelerating in the direction indicated. I should be able to beat a simple Construct-Lantern but that isn't what I want to do. If I can convince this thing to go after Truggs' people instead of me we can deal with those robots properly… Can't risk opening myself to telepathic communication with those grenades around and I can't hear a bloody thing through this ice. Just hope I haven't run M'gann over or anything like-.

BWUH! I jerk forwards as we hit the ice dome at speed and then slam into the ground! The environmental shield prevents my internals getting shaken too much and keeps 'down' toward my feet as the internal compass indicates that we've flipped over twice. I take a moment and then surge the orange light outwards, exploding the ice away and turfing the Enemy out onto the snow.

"Hhkhgh?"

It scrabbles to get its feet back under it as I create a grabber arm construct above it and then drop it down, hauling it into the air. It goes berserk but can't get any leverage. Next, a railgun appears in front of its face and two Crumbler rounds slam into its face at full force.

"Ghguuhguh!"

Its body jerks but it's still alive. What does it take to finish this thing off?

"I can't let you be here."

I glance around at Morrow and Onyx. He's floating just off the ground while she's standing at a crouch with her sword drawn a little way behind him.

"Lantern Morrow, I don't know how much of your reasoning capacities remain intact, but do you think I'm the main threat here, or the Enemy of All?"

"The Enemy isn't threatening Onyx."

"Neither am I."

"Then I guess I'll just ignore you both."

Ugh, what happens to Construct-Lanterns that get destroyed? Fatty reappears at the ring but I didn't assimilate Morrow. Him turning up at the Orange Central Power Battery would be a very bad thing for all concer-. Ah! A cold beam hits my faceplate and the ice begins to build up again. Fine, I'm not getting anywhere with the Enemy anyway. I let it go next to the floating invisibility generator.

"Aagh!"

I can't tell exactly where the mercenary is but from the way the generator is flailing around I'll guess that he's trying frantically to get away from the Enemy as the Enemy shakes its.. probably head. I wave Lantern Morrow goodbye as I float into the air. Right, no grenades around now so I can…

A glint of metal discarded on the snow catches my eye.

…pick up that cybernetic hand and stick it in subspace right now. Then get back in contact. I cautiously lower my barriers.

**…stand on the ground now?**

Robin's in one piece then, good.

**Sorry for dropping out like that. Truggs' mercenaries-.**

**Are inside the dome. We are aware. What is the status of the Enemy of All?**

Lantern Morrow fires an orange beam from his right hand, knocking the Enemy aside as it dives for Onyx.

**I nullified the binding spell. It's fighting Onyx and Morrow at the moment, looks like it's going after whoever's closest. I'm having real trouble doing anything to it and I can't risk it killing anyone.**

**Not all of Truggs' minions are alive. Zatanna!**

Nothing. Is she hurt, or..? She had to speak spells and I would hear-.

A section of the dome near the top explodes outwards as the Air Bozo comes spinning through. On the ground the Enemy slashes a claw at Morrow, cutting cleanly through his chest. Morrow doesn't seem concerned about this damage and thrusts his hands through the shadows near its head to blast it again. Snow swirls around us as the Air Bozo tries to correct its trajectory. Nope, not happening. I transition behind it, create a solid construct barrier and shove it forwards. It goes part way through the robot's back before encountering something that isn't phased out and catching on it. Bozo can't cope with Zatanna's spell and the force I'm adding. A slight correction and it slams into the Enemy of All.

**Orange Lantern, we will cope with the mercenaries. Try to find a way to destroy that monster.**

**On it.** Think think think. I watch as the Enemy flows around Bozo's air blast and pounces only to fly right through the robot. Anti-magic attacks do nothing. Orange light and Crumblers do next to nothing. I don't have any other esoteric attacks. Who do I know who could help?

Would The Shade take my call? Can't hurt to try. I raise the ring to my ear. "Ring, contact Richard Swift, Opal City."

"Compliance."

I hear a dial tone. Richard Swift is -nominally- Opal City's superhero in residence these days. Theodore Knight's been dead for decades and Jack Knight -the one I know of as Starman- hung up his goggles years ago. From the little information I got on him it looks like he is the eldritch abomination-mode version rather than the man with the magic stick from the earlier comics. I tried scanning him at long range once and he turned to look in my direction and wagged his right index finger. I took the hint.

"This is Richard Swift." English voice, well spoken in a BBC voice artist from the fifties way.

"Mister Swift, sorry to both-."

"I'm afraid that I'm not available at present. If you'd like to leave a message after the beep, I'll try to work out how to make this infernal contraption play it to me just as soon as I can."

Damn it.

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Unusual Suspicions 20

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30th December

09:59 GMT -5

The boom tube opens on the less melted side of the canyon, just in time for me to clothesline an Aero-Trooper.

"Bwgf!"

She spins on her axis and I take the liberty of relieving her of her aero-discs, sending her plummeting towards the ground. She manages to land legs first and then tumble, striking the rocky hillside face first. She struggles to rise for a moment and then slumps back down. Quick scan, nothing mortal. Father Box, program the aero-discs for my use.

Ploong.

Parademon body parts and vital fluids litter the surrounding-.

"You just going to stand there all day!?" Miss Ervin flies past me at speed, dodging blaster fire from the pair of aero-troopers who are in hot pursuit while shield-checking a third. That one goes down hard. One of her pursuers notices me -stationary target that I am- and changes direction to intercept. Two blaster bolts are blocked at the last moment by small ring-generated barriers that would be invisible from his position, any side splash being easily handled by my body armour. That gives him pause.

I tilt my head slightly to the side as my eyes flicker with orange light. "How does it go again? Ah, yes. Die for Grayven." Orange beams flare forwards, striking each in the centre of their chests. They shake as their central nervous systems get a massive shot of pain and then follow their comrade in tumbling to the ground. Fascinating as the technology behind the agony matrix is, I don't particularly want to force them to remain conscious. Or to have to explain to Batman why I own such a device. The aim here is to fit into the Darkseid-shaped space in their heads, because Devilance's word aside there's absolutely nothing to stop them just sending in more soldiers in if I don't fit the bill. Darkseid might be scrupulous about keeping his word -though I don't know that for sure of this version and Father Box refuses to be drawn on the subject- but the others in the Apokoliptian Elite have never let that sort of thing trouble them.

To my far right Tao dodges between the burning trees in pursuit of the last few Parademons. A short distance away M'gann has an Aero-Trooper pinned and from the way her eyes are glowing I'm going to guess that she's pumping him for information. I smile as on my left-

"GraaaAAAHH!" "Inconceivable!"

-Match repeatedly flies at Devilance's face fists first while Kon- oohw that looked nasty- grapples his right hand, snapping back the fingers he's using to grip his lance. Three are pointing at truly awkward angles when it finally slips from Devilance's grasp and falls to the ground.

Hello new power source for the cave.

His objective achieved Kon disentangles himself and stands off, with Match coming up alongside him. I scan them both. A few burns and they're going to need a thorough decontamination before they go anywhere but nothing serious. Wait. Brimstone. Walking sun and two Krypt- HAHAHA! He couldn't have known in advance! I don't bother suppressing my enjoyment as they both fly at Devilance's head at full speed in the punch-through-not-at manoeuvre Wonder Woman drilled into them. Devilance goes down hard, then tries to push himself up on his broken fingers. Another thing Wonder Woman taught them is that the fight isn't over until the other fellow stops moving. That's probably why they drop full speed feet first onto his chest just below his diaphragm.

"Hugk!"

Devilance's upper torso is jerked upwards by the force of the impact just in time to be double punched back down again. Is he going to take the hint, I wonder? I don't know his particular physiology well enough to assess the particularities of his injuries, aside from the obvious. Looks like they have that fight well in hand. How's everyone else doing?

I gain altitude and look down at the canyon. It's surprisingly intact. The side I'd been fighting on is somewhat melted but nothing like to the extent I'd expected. More Parademon remains and one of the Gravi-Guard is very down, cuts from x-ionised swords covering his body along with the protruding fletchings of several arrows still sticking out of it. Looks like x-ionised weapons trump density increases. The other one's hammering futilely on a golden triquetra-decorated shield dome while Kaldur directs in meltwater in what is presumably an attempt to drown it. It grunts and gestures downwards, trying to force the water down. I suppose… Apokolips doesn't really have any surface water. There's no reason for him to know oooh there we go, boiling water. I can't hear his screams from outside the shield but Kaldur's changed the way he's waving his Water Bearers in response and a second later the water condenses. I do note with some satisfaction that Zatanna doesn't drop the shield as the Gravi-Guard drops to the ground. Actually, where is Zat-?

A green-glowing sword appears by my throat the moment I appear inside the wreck of the plane. I instinctively shield and raise my hand to counter the thrusting arm before meeting Artemis' eyes. We both relax slightly and she moves the sword away.

"Can you help-?"

I'm already brushing past her to get to our injured team mates. And Jade… Jade. Her legs are a mess, though the other injuries are what initially draw the eye. Richard nods at me. "One of those Gravity Guard things got her when she tried to hit him with her swords. Zatanna's been trying to-."

I kneel down next to her and hold my hands out as a thousand tiny orange filaments radiate out from them. Fix this. Across her body there are a thousand tiny flares of orange light as repairs get underway. None of these look life threatening but without me her legs would have to be amputated. From the golden glow around her and Wallace I'm going to guess that Zatanna's been trying to effect repairs.

!Not allowed to happen!

She needs to be tougher. Damn being found out, I could Awaken-. No. She wouldn't want that. If I.. if I make armour for her while I mend her flesh, and mend her clothing… Yes. That will do for now. I didn't give her armour before the fight as it would have affected her balance and that's a very bad idea at superspeed. Should have made her try it on earlier. I know… I've become stronger as Father Box has built up my spiritual strength to true New God levels, and Father Box explained to me that my true godly self would be in part based on the characteristics I had as a mortal. Awakening Jade now would deny her the ability to further improve herself first. Given the way she's taken to super speed I'm fairly confident that she'd want to use the Garrick Formula first at the very least.

"Hey ah, can the rest of us get some attention?"

I give Wallace a quick scan. "You have got minor electrical burns where a glancing shot from a blaster breached your armour. I'll get to you once Cheshire's not crippled."

"Oh, sure, just because I'm your team mate and not a supervillain doesn't mean-."

"She nearly died, Wally." Artemis is glaring at him in a way that would raise a red flag with me. "I think she qualifies for priority treatment."

Fortunately, Wallace isn't quite so attentive. "How'd she run so fast, anyway?"

"Velocity Nine, or a variant of it." Major work done, newly added Apokoliptian armour concealed by a slight modification of her kimono. Probably best I don't give her her weapons back but I do stick a small dose of Velocity Ten in an inner pocket where she'll be able to feel it.

Wallace and Robin start, but Wallace looks most concerned. "Velocity Nine? Isn't that stuff fatal after a couple of doses? Premature ageing, exhaustion." A particular personal horror creeps in. "People's bodies digesting themselves 'cause they burned up all their fat reserves."

"They might have fixed the bugs-" As if I'd give Jade something that had bugs. "-or maybe they have a fix to undo the damage back at Shadow HQ." I shrug. "You know Ra's is an expert alchemist. There, done." I stand, taking the time to nod to Zatanna. That's odd, why has the box been reclosed? I extend filaments towards Wallace, subspacing his armour and working on his burns. "What's in the box?"

Richard glances at it. "Letting Riddler go would have been a bad idea, but so was leaving him tied up in the middle of a firefight. I figured that since the box was made of the same stuff as your armour it might keep him safe. Safer than he would have been without it at least."

"True. Plus, it'll stop him escaping again." I neither know nor care how he got out of Belle Reve. Comic book prisons, right? If it had been someone I actually rated as a threat, maybe I'd have bothered to look into it.

The patients healed, Zatanna waves her hands around to disperse the golden glow. "How did you beat that.. giant..?"

"Brimstone Class Plasma Servitor." Quick scan of the three I haven't healed yet. Grazes, mild burns and a little too much ionising radiation exposure. A quick sweep will fix that right up. "Very strong magnets and then a very tough probe so I could interface with the control system. Dumped it on the edge of the star system before letting it explode. How come there's still snow on the ground down here?"

Zatanna shrugs. "I put up a shield to keep them from shooting us. Kept the heat off as well." She raises her right hand and a swarm of golden triquetra dance around it. "It didn't even feel hard."

Wallace stretches his shoulder where the burns were situated. "You think maybe you could get your dad to teach you some healing spells as well?"

Robin winces. "KF!"

Zatanna nods, downcast. "No, he's.. got a point. If you'd been more seriously injured-."

She's cut off as a crash from outside marks the arrival of the unconscious Devilance. Kon and Match follow him down in a more controlled fashion, Match carefully holding his spear like a caber for tossing.

I turn to Zatanna. "They're worth knowing, but at the moment I think the best thing you could do would be to work on restoring this area to its pre-Brimstone state. I doubt the League will look kindly on us causing major ecological damage. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to send the surviving Apokoliptians home and collect my winnings."

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Unusual Suspicions 21

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30th December

10:02 GMT -5

"Beeeep."

"Mister Swift, sorry to bother you but I'm in the middle of a fight that could really benefit from your input." Wait, why am I-? Ring, show me Richard Swift.

I see a man in his prime, black hair oiled back in a style that reminds me slightly of David Tennant. He's wearing a shirt with loose sleeves and an embroidered waistcoat, flicking through a broadsheet newspaper while lounging on a chaise longue. Next to the chaise longue is a small table on which sit a tea service and his fucking mobile which I can see vibrating. Ring, phone him again. A new burst of vibrations and no response. Ring, cut off and do it again.

He closes the newspaper, folds it in half and then lays it down next to him before looking directly at my point of view and gesturing at the phone with his right hand and raising his eyebrows. Yes, but I can't talk to you before you pick the bloody thing up, can I? I could transition there but I don't know how long persuading him would take and I don't think just grabbing him and pulling him here would be conducive to my continued existence.

"Blown away! All blown away!"

Air Bozo's landed and is projecting a tornado directly at the Enemy. It's battered back and then somehow seems to flow around the edge of the wind funnel before Morrow hits it with another orange bolt. Interesting, it looks like he can't make constructs. Onyx is heading around to the other side of the increasingly punctured ice dome. I could shockcrown her but it seems like a wasted effort at this-.

"This is The Shade. I would appreciate an explanation for this intrusion."

He's still looking at me, phone to his ear. Right. "Mister Swift, I apologise for disturbing you but I rather need your help. We've got-."

"Are you in Opal City?"

"Um, no?"

"Is your family name Ludlow?"

"Nnnno?"

He leans back. "Then I'm afraid I'm rather losing interest."

"It's called an Enemy of All. The man controlling it said that it came from-."

"The Shadowlands. Hm. I suppose that merits my involvement. Where are you?"

"The Great Smoky Mountains National Park, about seventy kilometres south south east of Knoxville."

He pauses for a moment. "Really? I can't see you."

"I'm unscryable."

The Enemy teleports directly behind the Air Bozo and swipes at its right side. Bozo shakes as the Enemy manages to find something corporeal inside and tear it out. Half of Bozo's air blast immediately cuts out and Bozo is sent shooting backwards in an arc. "Weeeeeeee!"

"If this is some sort of trap, be warned that I am notoriously vengeful and ill-tempered."

"Hate to be a nag Mister Swift, but-."

"Oh, there you are." He's.. under some trees? I look around until I spot him emerging from a snow-covered copse, cane in hand. His clothes seem to melt into the shadows around him. No, the other way around, like the tar-coloured shadows around him have flowed upwards and only gradually got the hang of becoming clothing. The pool of darkness flows ahead of him as he strides out across the snow-covered mountainside, wisps of the same stuff moving through the air in the way I now recognise from the Enemy. He looks me over before returning his attention to the Enemy. "Now I see you I'm certain that I recognise you from somewhere. I just can't put my finger-."

"The Cake Man. I'm the Cake Man."

"Oh, of course." I see a thin smile form on his lips. "Rum business, that."

"Mister Swift, if you could please-?"

"Yes, yes." He stops and extends the head of his cane in the direction of the Enemy.

It looks up from its attempt to ingest Lantern Morrow, who's become a little corroded by the contact. A chunk of the right side of his head is gone along with most of his right arm. Its concealing darkness seems to cease its movements for a moment. "Mmmrut?"

"Here boy! Come here!" Its head jerks twice and then it vanishes, reappearing a good thirty metres directly away from Mister Swift and running. Mister Swift lowers his cane and shakes his head. "No, no, that won't do at all." The snow before him darkens as if some great sea creature was swimming underneath the surface, heading in the direction of his target. With its assailant gone Air Bozo points its remaining arm at Mister Swift but before it can attack I shove two Crumbler missiles into the tear in its side, violently unmaking its internals.

Now that the Enemy has space to run I begin to see that Truggs wasn't exaggerating about its top speed. Clearly it can't accelerate as fast as Wallace but it's getting to his-. And it just fell into Mister Swift's elongated shadow. Ring, do you have any idea how he did that?

"Unable to analyse."

Probably the most powerful man on Earth and he hardly ever leaves Opal these days. I actually put him on my Justice League long list but from Batman's response I'm going to guess that isn't going to happen.

"I believe that constitutes a threat."

A beam of orange light flares from Morrow's remaining arm towards Mister Swift only to be smothered and absorbed by his protean darkness. "Orange Lantern, I brought my pet to heel. Would you mind disciplining yours?"

I transition directly behind Lantern Morrow and put my left hand on his shoulder. Never tried this on someone else's construct before but I suppose there's no reason why it wouldn't work. And it's not killing. I'm not doing anything to him that hasn't been done already. "Ring, assimilate."

The ring flares for a second. "No resistance detected." Orange light flows from the ring into Lantern Morrow and the obvious damage begins repairing itself. "Doctor Thomas Oscar Morrow of Earth, you belong to Agent Orange."

"Yes, I… I do." He lowers his left arm and turns his head to look at his right as it reappears.

"Morrow?" Mister Swift vanishes into his puddle of darkness before reappearing a few metres away. He peers at the Construct-Lantern's face, recognising it. "Thomas, do you remember me? We worked together briefly during the fifties."

"Shade." Morrow nods as I release his shoulder. "Yes, I.. know you."

**Orange Lantern to team, the Enemy of All is gone… Um, dealt with. The Morrow Construct-Lantern now works for me.** Ring, optical scan for those invisibility generator things. Just one, the one I tried getting the Enemy on earlier. I send in a filament to remove the invisibility generator and shockcrown him. **No functional mercenaries out here that I can see, though Onyx-.**

"You, Lantern! What in God's name have you done to him!?"

**I got her.** A purple glow breaks through the dome on the far side before dipping down hard.

I hold my hands up to placate Mister Swift. "I didn't do anything. I don't do that to sentients. A man called Nylor Truggs stole the ring from me a couple of weeks ago, broke into Belle Reve and did that to him. And no, as far as I know there's no way to reverse it."

His frown deepens. "Where is this man 'Truggs' now?"

"Somewhere around here, invisible and.. probably carrying other weird devices. You do know that Morrow was trying to kill every living thing on Earth, right? I mean, I wouldn't wish that-" I nod at the Construct-Lantern. "-on anyone, but if it had to happen to some-."

CRACK CRACK CRACK!

I look back towards the dome as a jagged crack connects Bozo's exit hole to the one the mercenaries used, and from the sounds of it others as well. "Excuse me!" I lunge for the nearest hole, ring shining, just as the centre of the dome collapses.

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Unusual Suspicions 22

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30th December

10:06 GMT -5

"Eci t'nod tih enoyna!"

I catch the largest parts of the top of the dome but the whole thing's going down! Over on the west side I see an exhausted looking M'gann throw her arms up to stop a slab in mid air but I know she finds it harder to block lots of medium sized objects. Kon flies up to hammer lumps away and Miss Ervin creates a force field around a pile of bound, unconscious and frostbitten prisoners. Robin is smashed to the ground by a lump the size of a beach ball! And then pushes the frozen boulder off himself and dusts himself off. Oh, right, I suppose this isn't much of a threat to him or Artemis. In fact, with phasing, armour and strength, Zatanna and Wallace are probably the only ones… Filaments strike both of them and form construct armour around them while I start shifting the ice I'm already holding to the rim of the canyon. M'gann sets what she's holding down on the ground next to her.

**Is that it?** Wallace is pressed up against a crevice in the canyon wall and looks around hopefully.

Kaldur waves his trident and the ice crystals piled up around Miss Ervin and the prisoners shift away. He looks for a moment. **Before the fight started I counted eighteen mercenaries in addition to Onyx. We have only seventeen here.**

**I got one at the top. He's not going anywhere.**

**I presume that you accounted for the air robot as well?**

I nod, then realise that he can't see me. **Yes.**

Kon floats upwards in my direction, looking pleased with himself. **That's all four of them. Who got Truggs?**

No one says anything. Oh shit, are you really telling me-.

"Rolyn Sggurt laever flesruoy yletaidemmi!"

There's a flicker just behind Artemis as Truggs’ invisibility shuts down. Immediately he grabs her around the neck and holds a gun to her temple. "Oh-kay then. Now, I seem to have suffered an unfortunate reversal of fort-." Artemis swings her bow back over her shoulder, striking him directly in the right eye. He fires instinctively as he staggers back, free hand shielding his ruined eye. "AH FUCKING BITCH!" The cold beam hits her in the head and encrusts it in ice!

**"Artemis!"**

Wallace speeds forwards while Kaldur fires electricity and I try and get him with a shockcrown. Between that, an explosive from Robin and what looks like a telekinetic surge from M'gann Truggs isn't getting up again any time soon. Is that..? Artemis is still upright as I transition over to her. I know she's tough but it's not like I've tested-.

Her hands slam into the sides of the ice encasing her head. Once, twice, three and it shatters and she starts coughing to clear her airways. Ring, help her out and do a full medical scan while you're at it. She takes a gulp of air as the ring clears out the remaining blockage and puts her left hand on my right shoulder to steady herself. Looks like the cold guns his people use freeze material to the target rather than just lowering its temperature. It still gets pretty cold but I suppose that would get around the problem of sufficiently well insulated targets ignoring the freeze ray variety.

**You alright?**

She nods, panting. "Yeah, I-." **Yeah, I'm okay.** She stands back and holds up her bow. **Eww, is that..?**

**His eye.**

She turns to look at Truggs as Wallace pushes him into a sitting position to handcuff him before searching him for other weapons. His right eye socket is just a bleeding hole with the mashed remains of his eyeball that aren't on Artemis' bow stuck to his cheek. **I was aiming for his forehead. I-I haven't got used to how short this bow is yet.**

I glance back as Kaldur approaches. **Artemis, no one blames you for his injury. He brought it on himself when he tried to take you hostage.**

Wallace looks up, nodding. **Yeah Artemis, and it's not like Oh El can't just grow it back.**

**Um…**

He looks at me. **You can, right?**

**No. He's killed two people that I know about and he stole this ring. I don't care how injured he gets.** I shrug. **Sorry, I'm just not that good a person. Of course, he might just heal it back on his own like he said he would his finger.** I use the ring to remove the eye mush from Artemis' bow and then look up at the rim of the canyon. Mister Swift looks down at me and then at Truggs, narrows his eyes slightly and then disappears in a puff of blackness. Not sure what's going on there though I doubt he's exactly impressed. I look around. **Anyone need their injuries healed?**

There's a general shaking of heads, but I run a quick check anyway. Minor cuts and plenty of bruises but it looks like the damage on our end was fairly light. M'gann, Robin and Rob are over with Miss Ervin by the prisoner huddle. Her eyes glow as Onyx is yanked off her feet. "Where is the case?" Wait, didn't she get hit by Fire Bozo? Looks like the construct armour held.

"I don't know! You probably buried it somewhere."

**Cornwall, did Miss Martian get hit by the Fire Bozo?**

**Only a bit, and I fixed it. Simple healing magic was the first thing Dad taught me.**

**Oh. Um, well done. I didn't know you could do that.**

M'gann lets Onyx collapse back the snow covered ground. **She really doesn't know.**

Kon lands to pick up Truggs while Robin looks around the canyon. **This is ridiculous. It's here somewhere. Zatanna, could you detect it?**

She shakes her head as she carefully sits down on an exposed part of the plane. **Sorry, I'm… I don't have enough power left.**

Kaldur's head snaps around. **Are you injured?**

**No, I've just exhausted my magic reserves.**

**Cornwall, can you transfer power to her?**

**Maybe, I… I don't have much myself.**

But you've still got the sword. **Have you tried using the sword yet?**

**… No?** He pulls the scabbard around to his front, looking at it nervously. **Do I.. need to?**

Kaldur puts his right hand on Rob's right shoulder. **If you think it too dangerous then we will simply have to wait. That said, we do not know how or when the villains intend to use whatever is contained with the case. If we delay-.**

**Yeah, yeah, okay. Orange, you better stick me back together if this doesn't work.** I nod and attach a filament to him to be ready. "Here I go." He takes a deep breath. "Abannan afol Beowulf." Nothing happens. Rob looks at the sword. "Did I say it r-?" Lightning blasts from the scabbard, knocking him down onto his back! "Afh!"

Kaldur knees down next to him. "Cornwall, are you injured?"

"No. I'm okay, I'm okay." He pushes himself into a sitting position. "Oh, whaw, it's like someone injecting Red Bull right into your brain. Think I soaked it all." He stands, crouches and leaps, landing next to Zatanna in a spray of ice crystals. "I'm feeling a bit shaky, so it's probably best you take it."

She nods, standing and putting her hands on his shoulders. "Leuf ym lleps htiw Llawnroc S'yob cigam, esac fo ruo seimene, laever flesruoy!"

The normal gust of air that accompanies her spell casting swirls from Rob to her before flowing out across the ground. Near where the cockpit's buried a column of snow and ice erupts upwards, spraying out across the ground. I flick a filament in the direction of the hole and haul up the case.

Rob staggers back, looking pleased. "Job done. Um. Where do we take all these guys?"

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Unusual Suspicions 23

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30th December

10:16 GMT -5

Wallace gazes around the empty hangar, then walks over to the edge of the landing pad to see if our superiors are hiding in its shadow. No one there. "Where is everyone?"

Richard smirks. "Ah, KF? We didn't tell them exactly where we'd be appearing."

"No, but it's Batman. He just.. knows stuff."

Kaldur looks back at the boom tube as Match and Kon carefully fly Devilance's spear through. "Batman is a skilled detective but he is not omniscient. Perhaps we should have announced our return." Devilance will probably be a little upset about that when he wakes up. I dropped him off in the barracks near to the Tower of Rage along with the Gravi-Guard, Aero-Troopers and the few surviving Parademons. It seemed polite not to make 'father' wait to hear how the fight went. A trip back to the edge of the system confirmed the destruction of Brimstone along with the Hellspore and the techno-seed. Might have been interesting to have a closer look but I don't have much use for that sort of servitor at present, let alone a planet killer weapon.

Miss Ervin grimaces. "We gotta do that before we take a shower?"

I nod. "We probably should. One moment, I'll find out where they are." Ring?

I see an image of Batman in the training area speaking to Scott and Barda Free. Wonder Woman is also in attendance, along with Icon, Canary, Red Tornado, Mister Zatanna and.. Captain Fang? Interesting. The Captain's standing a little away from the others, League members forming a rough arc around the Apokoliptians. Ring, what are they saying?

"…older than me and he didn't have to grow up in Granny Goodness' Happiness Home. I think I saw him a few times at a distance but I couldn't tell you whether that was him or not." Scott turns to the side a little. "It's certainly possible, though. He feels.. Apokoliptian."

Batman inclines his head slightly. "Could that just be his ring, or as a result of his use of the Father Box?"

"I don't know. Having seen the pictures… Yes, it could be."

They both look at his wife. Barda shakes her head. "I didn't know him well either. Grayven left Apokolips a long time ago. This Grayven looks right but it's been too long for me to be certain."

I tap the ring to cut the feed. Makes sense that he'd want to know, I suppose. "Kaldur, our superiors are having a quick chat with my brother and sister in law in the training area. Would you like me to boom tube us there?"

"Hey, can we take this?" Match rests the haft of the spear on his right shoulder and points to it with his left hand. "I wanna show it to.. Mom."

M'gann raises her right hand to her mouth to cover her giggle while Kaldur looks it over. "I am not sure that it would fit."

I point my left hand at the side wall of the hangar and alter the structure and composition of the rock, creating a long straight shelf with a stand for the spear. "You can show it to her later." He and Kon look at the shelf, glance at each other and then fly over to deposit the spear. Despite my uncertainty they were both delighted by Wonder Woman's offer. Looking back at my own behaviour I've come to realise exactly how strongly I'd begun to believe that I was the sole agent for positive change around here. Obviously that was nonsense, and when I realised exactly how I'd been thinking about the situation the correct course of action became clear.

"Is this..?" Tao was fine during the fight and in the immediate aftermath but he's been looking progressively more and more uncomfortable since. "I am unused to flagrantly ignoring the instructions of my superiors in this way. How angry will Batman be?"

Richard shrugs. "Riddler's back in Belle Reve and we got the case and the Star-oh…" He looks at me for conformation and I nod. "Starro-tech. Cheshire got away but none of us could have seen that coming." Wallace's expression tightens for a moment. "I think he'd be okay with that. Kinda hard to know how he feels about Grayven's friends crashing the party."

"No crust buster, no foul. Kaldur?"

He nods. "I do not believe that Batman will judge our actions too harshly. Open a tube."

There's the usual booming noise as the portal opens. I've set it to appear in the corridor leading to the training room so that our superiors can draw their conversation to a close without it being obvious that they're reacting to us. Nonetheless I catch a snip of sound. "…concerned with his conduct than his nature. So far I have heard no reason-." Captain Fang's voice. He cuts off as Kaldur walks through the tube followed by Miss Ervin, Richard and Wallace, Kon, Match and M'gann and then Zatanna. Tao hesitates as he recognises the voice then gets a nudge from Artemis before metaphorically girding up his loins and heading through.

Just me to go. How do I want to play this? Do I try to claim that I'm actually Grayven or tell the truth? The joke's gone far too far now. If it got back to Darkseid that he'd been tricked… Assuming he doesn't know anyway… Wonder Woman can detect lies and she and Batman can both simply order me to tell the truth. I can't lie, telling the truth is risky and I can't give her cause to lasso me.

Time for sophism, I think.

I walk through and collapse the boom tube behind me. Ahead, Match goes to greet Wonder Woman only to be restrained by his brother. Naturally he's excited after his first mission but while he might 'know' how things work now he hasn't experienced much about the way we work. The team forms a rough line facing their superiors, Batman standing slightly forwards. Captain Fang looks at me briefly before his eyes drill into Tao, who cringes slightly in response. I take my place just behind him and place a hand on his shoulder where Kon's body prevents Captain Fang from seeing it. Tao's eyes flick to it and I feel him calm down slightly. Scott's looking at me with curiosity while Barda can barely conceal her hostility.

Batman looks us over before exhaling softly. "You've all had an eventful morning. The most important matter first: Grayven, do you believe that there will be any follow up from the Apokoliptians?"

"No sir. No Apokoliptian would dare claim Darkseid's authority without actually having it, or break Darkseid's word on his behalf." "Hello brother, sister in law."

Neither Scott nor Barda visibly react to the name or to the god speech.

"Do you believe that Darkseid expects you to conquer Earth for him?"

"Based on the demands he usually places on his suzerains, no. As far as he's concerned, as long as I don't raise banners against him the Earth and its people are mine to use or not as I choose."

"Protocol in the event of an alien attack is that all League members should be notified. Why did you decide not to follow this protocol?"

"Because I had no idea what qualified as a breach of the Apokoliptian duelling code and no way to stop Devilance bringing over more Hellspores if he felt that I had breached it. Earth's safety rested on us playing by a set of rules I didn't and still don't know. He appeared to accept my team mates as members of my retinue. Anyone else… I couldn't risk it."

"Are you Grayven, son of Darkseid?"

That's the biggy. "If I am, then Earth-" I nod at Scott and Barda "-its New God residents included, is safe from Apokoliptian intervention for the foreseeable future. If I'm not and Darkseid finds out, then he will feel that I've made a fool of him and things will go rather badly for us all. Do you really want an answer?"

Batman's eyes narrow slightly. Not the most helpful answer I suppose but it's the best one I could think to give. There's a grating noise as Captain Fang folds his arms across his chest. "I do not believe that one is required. Your devotion to the defence of the Earth has been noted, Grayven."

And he wouldn't be saying that without the Standing Committee's approval. "Thank you, Captain." I take the case out of subspace and offer it to Batman. "This was what we recovered from the crash. The objects inside are partially created from the body tissues of a species called 'Star Conquerors'. I believe that the Green Lanterns can furnish you with more information on them than I. The technological and sorcerous components are unfamiliar to me."

Batman passes the case to Icon, who carefully opens it. "I have never heard of these 'Star Conquerors'."

"Telepathic starfish. They don't have much use for lawyers."

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Unusual Suspicions 24

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30th December

10:28 GMT -5

That was a lot less painful than I was expecting.

Batman was happy… Well, less grumpy, about getting Mister Nigma back in custody. I got a moment's eye contact when Kaldur reported Jade's escape at light speed but he didn't comment on it. He knows that Jade's my source in and point of contact with the Light. Since I was subtle enough that the others didn't spot it I don't think he'll pursue it further. I need to, though. That was some epic level stupid they just pulled, inviting Apokoliptians here. I hope that Jade will make very clear in her report to Ra's exactly how fucked the Earth nearly was.

Richard and Kaldur have stuck around while Batman and the other League members review Father Box's recordings of the fight but everyone else has left to find a shower. Kon finally managed to pull Match away from his excited recounting of the fight to Wonder Woman. I haven't quite adjusted to exactly how much less broody than his brother he is. Is it because he had a stable home environment and adult caregiver right from the start? Something to do with the differences in programming? Or was it all down to the neurochemical imbalance? I would have assumed the latter, but Kon's personality hasn't changed that much since I fixed it. Curious.

I turn to my left where Barda is still staring at me while Scott is fiddling with the scanner form of his multi-cube. Hmm. Not really sure how to handle her and my new brother. On the 'avoid' side of the scales, she's best placed to notice if my behaviour is wrong for the person I am becom-. Pretending to be. On the 'charm' side, interaction is most likely the best way of reducing her hostility, making her see me as an individual and not simply as a potential Darkseid-lite. I imagine that Scott will have a more neutral position… I glance at Wonder Woman. I have no doubt that she'd prefer me to be nice about it, and I do want to give her a somewhat more positive image of me than she has at present…

Smile in place I walk over to say hello to my new family. Barda's face hardens and her right hand reaches to the hilt of her mega rod. Scott manages a narrow smile of his own as he surreptitiously returns the multi-cube to its default form and then to his belt. "Scott Free. Big Barda." I hold out my right hand in their direction. "I realise my presence here is.. likely more than a little disconcerting. I assure you, had it been my choice I would have cut every link to Apokolips and I have encouraged those here who have such links to abandon them at every-."

For a moment it looks as if Scott is going to take my hand. I think Barda sees it too. She shoves her husband aside and steps right up close to me, glaring directly into my eyes and jabbing at my face with her right index finger. "If you have led Darkseid to us then the last thing you will see is my fist erupting through your eye sockets on the last stage of its journey from the back of your skull!"

I lower my right hand. Not a lot of people are tall enough to do that these days. Aggressive though the action is it actually makes me hopeful. If she still thought I was an immediate threat she wouldn't have taken her hand from her weapon. "Dear sister in law, I-."

"We aren't actually related." Scott approaches, though he stays out of Barda's easy shoving range. "Even if you really are Grayven. Which I'm still not convinced about."

"You were technically adopted by Darkseid,-" Again, I notice that neither of them wince. Is it age? Power? Prior exposure? "-it's close enough. I'm the nearest thing you have to a relative who isn't also a total arsehole."

Scott fold his arms. "Are you calling Highfather a 'total arsehole'?"

"Yes. He handed you over to Granny Goodness, didn't he?"

His eyes narrow slightly. "And Orion?"

"Without his Mother Box he'd be a berserker in seconds. Don't let my grey skin deceive you, I'm far further than either of my natural brothers from our father's nature. And as for your question dear Barda: no, I did not lead him here. He already knew where you were, he simply doesn't care enough to do anything about it."

The corners of her mouth turn down further. "That's impossible. The transportation device we use can't be tracked." "Scott, he's lying. I'll beat the truth out of him."

"You underestimate Darkseid. You don't ambush your prey by watching where it goes and then chasing after it. You only give it one place where it can go and you lie in wait for it." "I'd rather keep things civil." "Scott, he wanted Granny Goodness to break you. When she couldn't, he went with plan B and put you in a position where you would either die or escape. When you did escape the treaty which was bound by the exchange of sons became invalid." "And I'm not convinced you could."

Scott looks away. "I realized that he'd use that as an excuse. I didn't know that he'd cared about the treaty though."

"I don't pretend to understand why he does things, though if I had to guess I'd say that invalidating Highfather's 'noble sacrifice' was reason enough. Scott, Barda, I am not Darkseid. My designs for this world are wholly dissimilar to his and I bear you no ill will." I move my hands to the sides. "If in your eyes I have committed some misdeed then I apologise for it. Is it truly so unthinkable that I could be a friend, or at least an ally?"

Barda pulls back a little and shares a glance with her husband. "I.. suppose I don't need to kill you immediately. But I'll be watching y-." I step forwards with a grin, my arms going around their chests to pull them into a hug. For a fraction of a second I feel the surface friction on Scott's costume completely disappear as he prepares to slip away, only for him to decide not to. Barda is a little slower on the uptake. "W-? Get off me!" As her left arm is pinned against her husband's body she gets her right up and pushes against my head.

I take the shove in good humour and release the two of them. Barda looks distinctly disgruntled while Scott looks more amused. "I.. think we're about done here. If Darkseid keeps his word-"

Barda's still staring at me. "Hmpf."

"-then we're more likely to be left alone now than ever. Grayven, ah… Nice to meet you." He turns away to walk towards the zeta tube then stops when he realises that Barda hasn't followed him.

She points at my chest. "You. Crossfit Relentless gymnasium, Hartford, tomorrow at seven thirty. I've got a lot of anger to work out and you look a lot like the guy who inspired it."

"Barda, he doesn't-."

I hold up my right hand to cut him off. "It's fine Scott. I'll be there. We can get to know one another better." Scott puts his left hand on her right arm to lead her away. She makes to go with him then turns her head to look at me once more, pointing her left middle and forefingers at her eyes and then at me. I make a catching gesture with my right hand and pull it towards my heart before smiling at her. With a grunt she turns away and stomps towards the Zeta Tube.

"Recognised, Mister Miracle A zero seven, Big Barda A zero eight."

"I thought you handled that well." I turn to see Wonder Woman a short way behind me. "Though if she's as good as she's supposed to be you might wish you'd worked harder in your unarmed combat lessons."

"A few bruises are a small price to pay." Ugh, hard bit. "Sir, I wanted… Your adoption of Kon and Match. I…" I give up and extract a large gift wrapped box out of subspace. "I realise that it's a little late, but I also know that Amazons don't have a tradition of midwinter gift giving."

She looks it over cautiously. "What is it?"

"Apokoliptian body armour. I… I tried to use colours from your preferred palette. It's surprisingly hard to make Apokoliptian equipment in gold, blue and red but I.. kept at it. Unlike what you're currently wearing it'll cover your arms and legs, and there's a helmet… It's loose enough that you could wear it over your-" I gesture at her armoured bustier with both hand. "-current armour if you want. I also made moderate donations to a couple of charities in your name."

She nods, slightly puzzled. "I had wondered why they sent me thank you notes. Grayven, why are you doing this?"

"A peace offering. I want to… I think I'd.. got it into my head that the only way anything would change for the better was ifff… I was the one making it change. And then you… You did that. I was wrong." I nod to myself. "I was wrong. You've demonstrated that you are a person in whom I.. I think I can have faith. I don't know if it means anything now but.. I'm prepared to follow your direction. If you'll have me."

She nods once and then goes quiet for a moment, thinking about it. "Very well. If you're prepared to give me another try as your teacher, I'm prepared to give you another chance as my student."

"Thank you."

"I was planning to take Kon and Match to Themyscira at the end of next week. In light of.. this, I think it would be good if you were to join us. I know that they would enjoy your presence and I think that it could be.. beneficial to you."

"I would like that. Thank you."

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Unusual Suspicions 25

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30th December

10:44 GMT -5

Miss Ervin watches as the Charlotte City Police Department's Special Response Unit shove the last of Truggs' mercenaries into an armoured van. Since we obviously couldn't let them keep their armour we took that off them, along with the undersuit. As a result the fifteen guys who don't need more serious medical attention are going straight to the local maximum security prison's cells in their underwear while the other three are going to its medical wing. Apparently police forces have learned not to take chances with people involved in super crime, even at the mook level.

Since none of the injuries are crippling or life threatening I haven't even tried healing them and Rob hasn't offered. Not sure whether that was because he was too drained or because he didn't care either. Kaldur, Kon, Artemis and M'gann went on to Belle Reve via Bio-Ship with Truggs and Onyx while I sent Robin, Wallace, Zatanna and Rob back to the cave via Zeta Tube with the case and the strange red things inside.

"Is it always like this?"

I think for a moment. "Depends how you mean. That was my first sprawling melee with multiple super powered participants on either side, and because of how our team operates we're usually the ones on the offensive." I briefly remember being pinned to the wall in our own base. "On the other hand, nothing we encountered there was really new. We've all fought elemental robots before, most of us have fought freeze rays… Quasi-demonic beasties are new but we've fought fast melee fighters before."

She gives me a dubious look. "You said some guy just turned up to take that thing away?"

I nod. "Mister Swift has a very particular skill set. I've tried to create a record of just about everyone active with superpowers in the world in case something like that happened. It came from the Shadowlands, he's powered by the Shadowlands… It made sense."

"Aqualad to Orange Lantern and Rocket."

Miss Ervin puts her right hand to her ear piece while I raise the ring to my right ear. "We're here, Aqualad."

"Warden Strange has agreed to take receipt of our prisoners, pending an agreement being reached on where they should be tried for their crimes."

"I know the Gotham Police would like a word with Mister Truggs. And the Kawasaki police. I haven't even got around to telling the British police about Steel Claw yet."

"Have the Charlotte City Police finished taking their mercenaries into their custody?"

"They're on their way to prison now. I was going to hang around just in case but… They.. don't look like there's much fight left in them."

"If there is nothing else that requires your attention, come to Belle Reve to pick us up. We will return to the mountain to face our mentors." There's a slight beep as he hangs up.

"How mad are they gunna be?"

I shrug. "Hard to tell. I mean, we should have told them what we were planning, but the mission itself was a near-complete success. Aside from Truggs losing an eye, but Batman himself told me that that sort of thing can happen no matter how well you prepare. I don't think I'll be getting a ticking off from Diana. Robin might get his knuckles rapped for fiddling with League systems… How d'you think Icon'll take it?"

She crosses her arms. "We don't have that kinda relationship. I'm his partner, not his sidekick."

I nod. "Transition alright last time? No sickness or anything?"

"No? Why, was I supposed to feel sick?"

"When I first started doing it to other people, I didn't realise that I needed to put an environmental shield around them first. Miss Martian was quite ill." Miss Ervin grimaces appropriately. "Ready to go?" She nods. I affix a filament to her and the scenery flickers as we appear next to the Bio-Ship at the side of Belle Reve Penitentiary. Miss Ervin's eyes widen just a little as she takes in the fortress' outer walls. "Belle Reve Penitentiary. Name's a bit of a joke really; I certainly wouldn't call this place a beautiful dream and few of the people inside are particularly penitent."

"Those walls really Superman-proof?"

"Million dollar question. I'd say not. I think he'd get through eventually. Might take him a while though, and none of the people inside are Superman-strong."

The armoured door closest to us opens to reveal a guard and our team mates. The guard's one of the new ones, I note. I've looked into Waller's concerns and I still haven't found anything concrete. People.. move jobs, and according to Strange's personnel record he prefers to avoid direct confrontation. If he wanted people to go it seems in character for him to try increasing pull factors rather than push ones. Only other cause for concern was that he persuaded Doctor Harleen Quinzel to transfer here from Arkham to take his old job as prison psychiatrist. She doesn't have the experience that a post like this would normally require.. but again, they used to work together in Arkham, metahuman clinical psychology isn't a popular specialisation -not the criminal sort at least- and a background check didn't reveal anything particularly worrying about her. I don't think she's even met Mister Napier yet. It's a little odd -given my outside knowledge anyway- but not a red flag of the sort I need to bring the matter to League attention.

Kon and M'gann amble over while Kaldur and Artemis hang back to speak to the guard. Kon waves his right hand in greeting. "Hey. Everything go okay?"

I nod. "Yep. I'm all ready to get our bollocking out of the way so I can get started on adapting this armour."

M'gann looks uncertain. "Are you really sure that's a good idea?"

"Some of us can't go invisible under our own power. And the armour's much better than what we're…" I look at Kon's dull grey plate. "What most of us have got now."

Miss Ervin raps her right knuckle against her breastplate. "Armor you made last time worked out okay." The Bio-Ship's entrance ramp oozes down and Kon and M'gann lead the way onboard. Miss Ervin holds back and gives me a slightly puzzled look. "I thought the League handed stuff like that over to STAR Labs?"

"They usually do, but when Truggs took the ring from me he wrecked their secure storage site and I don't really want to hand invisible scry-resistant body armour over to somewhere it could go walkabouts from. Besides, I'm faster than they are."

She nods and I follow her up the ramp, pausing a moment at the top to check that Artemis and Kaldur are following before going inside and taking my seat.

"Hey, Paul?" I look over at Kon. He's sitting on the front right side with his seat swivelled around to face me. "Could you put a Zeta Tube in Belle Reve?"

"If we got permission for it from the League and from Strange, yes. Why do you ask?"

"Be a lot easier to drop people off if they had one."

"It would also be a possible point of access to any League facility for someone inside America's leading supervillain prison. Besides, the Atlanteans are pretty close to having their own Dolmen Gate prototype ready. We might all be changing over before too long."

"Why? Zeta Tubes work fine."

M'gann shakes her head. "They didn't work when the Ice Fortresses created that blizzard."

"Right, and a Dolmen Gate wouldn't have been affected by that. Of course, we don't know what it would be affected by yet…"

I trail off as Kaldur and Artemis enter. Kaldur nods to M'gann. "Miss Martian, please take us out of Belle Reve airspace. Orange Lantern, once we are outside the exclusion zone return us to the mountain. Robin has relayed the message that Batman wishes to.. speak with us, concerning the events of this morning."

M'gann lifts her hands over the controls and the Bio-Ship rises into the air. I don't really think that Batman will have a problem with this any more than he did Santa Prisca. Nonetheless, the sombre look on Kaldur's face brings a certain song to mind.

"There may be trouble ahead…"

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Unusual Suspicions 26

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30th December

10:52 GMT -5

"Tell me if this sounds familiar."

As tallest member of our group I've taken position near the back of our huddle. For some reason Robin is front and centre rather than Kaldur and the rest of us spread out around him in the order we left the Bio-Ship. Opposite us is Batman, with Black Canary, Diana and Icon just behind him. Red Tornado was here but he's taken Doctor Morrow up to his room. Morrow's place in his Belle Reve hospital bed had been occupied by a lifelike robot and Kaldur said that Warden Strange claimed to have no idea that he wasn't who he appeared to be. That's a bit fishy but I suppose he wasn't exactly the most active of inmates. Which means every other incident of someone not being in Belle Reve when they should be might also be the result of robot duplicates. Strange could really be innocent.

"You hacked League systems, disobeyed protocol-"

Batman's start-with-an-intimidation thing doesn't really work on me any more. With empathic vision I can clearly see what he's feeling so I know full well that he's not angry. Oh, the colours don't tell me exactly what he's feeling by themselves -there's no colour for happiness, satisfaction or pride for example- but by looking at his usual green and yellow psyche I can catch glimpses of memories and associations that are being brought to the surface. My eyes unfocus slightly as I take a closer look. Oh, shouldn't have done that. There's a.. lot of learning to contain his emotions in there. I hadn't realised that he and Mister Pennyworth didn't-.

"-and does something about this amuse you, Orange Lantern?"

My eyes snap back into focus on his material body and I awkwardly take note of the smile that's already taken up residence on my lips. "Sorry sir, empathic vision. I already know how you feel about the situation and the relief's kicked in before you actually.. said it. Um. Sorry."

Batman continues to glare at me for a moment as Kon and M'gann struggle to suppress any manifestation of their own relief. I think Diana's suppressing her amusement as well but she's a good deal better at it than they are. "Despite that, and the reckless way you endangered your own lives your initiative resulted in the capture of a number of wanted felons, including one who has claimed to be the operations manager for the alliance of supervillains that we believe has been behind a number of recent missions for both the League and the team." Then he actually smiles. "Well done."

Even knowing that he was going to say it, it wasn't until he actually does that I feel the last dregs of my fear drain away. Pfew. There's a general relieved shuffling from my team mates as well. Canary still doesn't look best pleased and Icon… Does he do facial expression? I know that he isn't Human but surely he's been on Earth long enough to mimic us?

"And then there's this." Batman and Icon step over to the table upon which rests the open case containing the Starro-tech thingies. "Biotechnology integrated with some form of nanocircuitry."

Icon reaches forward to why is he doing that shield! He takes in the shield and then turns his head to look at me. "Sir, I really don't recommend touching those with bare skin. The biological component comes from a Star Conqueror, the whole thing screams mind control technology."

He nods. "A justified concern." His voice is even deeper than Batman at his growliest. "My own people had barely discovered farming during the Star Conquerors' last expansion." He turns his head slightly towards Batman. "Perhaps the Green Lanterns could tell us more?"

"We'll take it to the Watchtower." I remove the shield and Batman closes the case before picking it up and walking towards the Zeta Tube. Hm. Nothing about Truggs' eye? I though it might at least warrant a mention. I plan to visit him in Belle Reve at some point next week. Don't know how productive it will be. I mean, he certainly hasn't sounded like the sort of person who might be redeemable through reasoned discussion but I can't just pass up future knowledge.

Icon and Canary follow Batman while Diana's heading towards me. "I'm curious, Paul: what made you decide to ask The Shade for help?"

Rocket flies over to talk to Icon while I consider my response. I know that she fought him several times as part of the Justice Society. I think she might have first met him during the Second World War, him being one of the few empowered individuals who could operate in Axis territory due to 'not being a superhero'. I've never asked how she feels about him now. "He was the first person I thought of with any knowledge of the Shadowlands. I was really hoping for advice."

"I'm a little surprised that he was prepared to take the risk. If that Enemy of All creature had charged him and destroyed his cane..." I squeeze my eyes shut and grit my teeth in order to stop myself laughing. "What is it?"

She doesn't know about… Okay. "Diana, when you fought him before, he was… Um… Jobbing."

She looks blank. "'Jobbing'?"

"It's a stage wrestling term. Basically it means being the guy whose job it is to lose convincingly. For Mister Swift… Well, he was bored, decided that fighting the Justice Society looked entertaining and, um… Pretended to need his cane to use his powers."

She pauses for a moment as she takes that in. "Why?"

"Recognised, Batman, zero two."

"So that you'd have a hope in hell of stopping him. Richard Swift is an eldritch abomination whom it -mostly- suits to look Human. He doesn't need the cane, he doesn't even need to manifest a Human looking body if he doesn't want to. A fight he couldn't lose would have been boring so he.. lowered the bar."

"I.. find that.. hard to believe."

"Ring, access main screen." The screen comes to life, displaying what I saw from the moment Mister Swift first appeared. The image glitches a little around the man himself. The ring really struggles to cope with the Shadow stuff.

"Black Canary, one three, Icon one eight."

The rest of the team gathers to watch as well. I've already described what happened to them but this is the first chance they've had to see it for themselves. We watch as Mister Swift appears, speaks to me and then causes the Enemy to flee before consuming it. I couldn't see exactly what happened when it was happening live but with the ring providing a close up… Yes, it definitely looks like there was some sort of shadowy mouth structure which the Enemy fell into.

Wallace looks at the screen wide-eyed. "Whow. Jay didn't mention him doing that before."

Mister Swift then effortlessly parries Lantern Morrow's attack. Oddly, that is the bit that Diana reacts most to. Because it didn't involve him gesturing with his cane, perhaps? "That doesn't necessarily prove that he doesn't need the cane. You said yourself that Morrow isn't as powerful as you are, and The Shade's still holding onto it."

"You could try asking him for proof, or just phone Mister Knight and ask him about it." Odd. For the first time since receiving the ability I can see tiny slivers of red light within her. Why would this set her off? Looks like… Pride? She feels insulted by his behaviour?

"I see. I may just do that." She tears her eyes away from the screen and puts her right arm around her son's shoulders. Kon looks surprised for a moment and then leans into it. "Kon, I'm proud of your performance today. I know how counterintuitive it feels to save your foe in the middle of a fight but your quick actions prevented those soldiers from suffocating."

Yes, maybe making that chap want to coat everyone on his side in ice wasn't the best thing I could have done. Very lucky that Kon was on the ball enough to break them out. "Um." He looks a little embarrassed at the attention. "No problem."

"I'll look forward to reading your full report." She kisses him on the forehead, then lets go and flies over to the Zeta Tube.

"Recognised, Wonder Woman, zero three."

Miss Ervin frowns at the tube and then at Kon. "What was that about?"

"That's what moms do." Kon shrugs. "Isn't it? I'm still a bit new at this."

She boggles. "Wonder Woman's your Mom?!"

Robin smirks. "Think maybe we need to make some kinda info leaflet for the new guys?"

"How did-? I mean, she didn't-?" Miss Ervin makes a round gesture over her abdomen.

"I'm adopted."

"Oh. 'Cause that explains it."

Kaldur presses some buttons and gets a view of the crash site as it was when we first arrived. "I am still concerned about how our enemy knew that we were watching them."

Artemis looks at him, then at a suddenly thoughtful Robin. Then she sags. "Not the mole thing again!"

Rob and Miss Ervin both look blank. Robin turns to them. "We had intel that-."

"We had an unsubstantiated claim from a criminal that there was… You know what I think? I think Truggs just sets up ambushes everywhere he goes on the off chance that someone wanders into them. We did the mole hunt. There was no one." I'm so not doing that whole thing again, and from the looks of Kon, Artemis and M'gann I'm not the only one fed up with the idea. "The fact that the League has access to airport security systems isn't much of a secret and neither was the fact that we were after Onyx. That's all there is to it. That's it. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got modified cold guns to take apart."

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Unusual Suspicions 27

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30th December

14:57 GMT -5

"It's not going to look any different, is it?"

I look away from Devilance's spear to where Match floats just to my side. I can just about remember wanting to present things to my parents in my own childhood. Wonder Woman was appropriately attentive while Kon and Match recounted details of their fight with the God of the Hunt but it isn't as if they can actually use a weapon like this.

"Match, if you don't want me to do this, then I won't. This spear belongs to you and Kon."

"You said you needed it."

"The power cell would be very helpful, certainly, but if you don't want to give it to me, that's the end of the matter. I'm fully capable of reattaching the outer casing without leaving a mark."

He thinks it over for a moment. "Noooo, it's okay. Just kinda wish I'd taken his gauntlet too." An idea occurs to him. "Not the one Kon broke. The other one."

"Maybe next time you see him." Right. The spear doesn't have an obvious access panel or opening, and the weapon is too unique for Father Box to have records on it. I don't want to start cutting if I don't have to. I lay the palms of my hands on the area on the haft where the power generation unit lies. There's a capacitor near the head which feeds into the energy discharge system but the actual generator is much lower down. "Open sesame." "Open."

Nothing happens. Hm. I project twenty filaments out from my hands and attach them around the circumference of the spear. "Looking forward to starting school next week?" Father Box, attempt connection.

Ploong.

Not getting anything. Does the spear classify as a Box? I couldn't hack a Father Box but I could probably talk one into accepting my authority.

"I guess. I mean, it'll be nice to get out of the mountain more, meet people. Will they find my eyes weird?"

"Probably, but you shouldn't worry about it. That's just an initial response. They'll get over it once they get to know you." I spread an orange aura outwards from my hands to envelop the section I'm working on. I think I can feel the mechanism. "What have you worked out for your cover story?"

"I'll say I was getting home schooled but that Mom wanted me to spend more time with people my own age. Can I..? Ask you something?"

"You can ask me anything, Match. You know that." Spear, answer your prince. There's something, some sort of impulse back. Father Box, communicate with it.

Ploong.

"I get that I need to go to school so I have qualifications and so I learn how to deal with, you know, normal people. That's a year and a half. What do I do then?"

"Whatever you want. You're intelligent, handsome and you have super powers. The world is your oyster." No, it isn't a Father Box, it's just connected to Devilance's aura strongly enough that-. Ah! There we go! The surface of the spear seems to melt away from the area over the generator. The generator itself is a little conventional. Simple enough to dis.. con.. nect… There we are! "Match, you've only been out of the pod for a month. No one's expecting you to make major life decisions yet. Kon's been out six times as long and I know he's made no such plans. Try things, learn about the world and if nothing really appeals… Well, with a bit of luck I'll have founded my Corps by then. I'm sure we can find something to keep you busy." I extend manipulator appendage constructs and float backwards, lifting the generator free. "Excellent. Oh, have you had a look at the Kryptonian database I gave Kon?"

"Yeah. Didn't really mean much to me. I think Kon still thinks of Kal-El as being our father, but… He doesn't really mean anything to me either. I mean, I was made on Earth. Everything I know is about Earth. Why should I care about a planet that doesn't even exist anymore?"

"Fair point." I drift back down towards the hangar's lower floor and Match trails along behind me. "How about your mother's books on Amazon culture?"

"The language is kinda hard. And it's all primary sources, there's nothing to say how accurate any of it is. I think…" He trails off as we land.

"Yes?"

"Maybe I'd... like to write about it? If they don't mind. Share information about how they live with people in the rest of the world."

"I think that's a rather nice idea. I'm sure Wonder Woman will approve of it at least." Since I'm not going to do what I originally thought I was and install a secondary power source directly into the hush tube I can finish building it and site the generator elsewhere. I'll still need to upgrade the mountain's power transmission systems before activating the generator-.

Alert! Incoming transmission.

"Excuse me, someone's trying to get hold of me." I raise the ring to my left ear. I had to stick a little Apokoliptian doohickey in the exchange to make this work, but now anyone phoning Rhode Island seven eight one hash hash will be directed to the ring. Not many people have this number to say the least. "Ring, answer." I don't say anything.

"Grayven, it's me." Jade? Why is she..? "This better not be your answer machine."

"Jade, hello." I give Match a smile. He won't be able to hear her end of the conversation but it would look a little suspicious if I excluded him from mine. "What can I do for you?"

Match looks curious. "Who's 'Jade'?"

"They want to talk to you."

I hold up my right index finger in a 'one moment' gesture to Match. "Who do?"

"Ra's and the others. It sounded like they've had some sort of argument."

"You weren't invited? Rather rude of them."

"Why would-? Is there someone there?"

I nod. "Yes, of course."

"Fine. They weren't expecting the Apokoliptians to do that and now they've been cut off."

"I don't mind paying them a visit. What sort of time do they have in mind?"

"I don't know yet, they're still setting it up."

"Is everyone going to be there?"

"I don't know, I don't even know who they all are."

"Well, I'd be delighted to meet everyone… Assuming none of them had an existing axe to grind. My.. schedule's fairly empty. Are they thinking sooner..?"

"Today. It'll be today."

I take a look at the hush tube. "I should be able to finish off here by then. Should I bring anything..?"

"You should bring every weapon you can carry. If Ra's offers you safe passage he'll keep to his word. The rest aren't like that."

"Of course. I'll look forward to it. How about you? How have you been?"

"My legs are fine. Thanks to you. Armor's good too. No one work out how I got away?"

"No, of course not."

She exhales. "I've never been in a fight like that. It was.. incredible. And, painful, when those Gravi-Guard hit me. I guess superspeed doesn't make you invulnerable."

"I'm afraid not. Look, phone me back when you've had a chance to confirm things with your friends, we can have a proper talk when we see each other in person. And I really want to see you."

"I'll let them know."

She hangs up and I lower the ring. That was convenient, though if I have to put up with Ra's' drivel again I'll probably kill them all and hide the bodies. Of course, if they've brought Klarion…

"Who was it?"

I focus on Match again. "My girlfriend, Jade. She wants to introduce me to some of her friends."

"Are they nice?"

"Bit early to say, really."

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Unusual Suspicions 28

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31st December

01:55 GMT +4

"I really didn't have you pegged as a walks-along-the-beach sort of woman."

She looks up at me with a smirk. "You don't know everything about me. A few secrets keep a relationship interesting."

"I'm so very glad you think that." We're on the island of Masirah just off the coast of Oman, waiting for her employer to get in touch. She's still wearing the armour I gave her and so despite the heat I've left mine on as well. Normally I'd happily take advantage of any opportunity to spend time with her, but in this case… "Jade." I pull my right hand up to my chest, keeping hold of hers. "My skin isn't armour plated anymore. I can feel how tense you are without asking the ring."

The smile vanishes and she looks out to sea for a moment. She's annoyed that I caught her out. I didn't used to be that good at interpreting facial expression or body language but I've got to know all of hers intimately over the past few months. "You can't do anything about it."

"That sounds like a challenge."

"You know they're probably going to ask you to join, right? They're some of the most powerful people on the planet, and they're going to ask you to join them."

"Then we'll just have to see what sort of offer they make. I still don't really know what they're trying to achieve."

"Ra's told you."

"I thought he was being a little vague. I'd need a great deal more detail before I commit to anything, and frankly I very much doubt that I'll end up saying 'yes'."

She moves in front of me, staring up at me. "Don't start a fight with these people, Grayven."

"I won't. I'll listen with as open a mind as reason will allow but they don't have the best reputation. Look, neither of us know what they're going to say. We're as prepared as we can get. There's no sense worrying about it. How about I relax you?"

She blinks. "We don't have time for.. that. They could send a message any time now!"

"I wasn't talking about sex, Jade, though, given how long we've been waiting we probably could. I've been taking massage classes."

"Oh? Since when?"

"Since you mentioned that my hand eye coordination wasn't all that it could be." I generate a massage table construct. "Take the armour off and I'll show you what I've learned."

"What.. sort of massage classes?"

"Both relaxing massages and sports massages." The grin which appears on her face is pure filth and I smile along with it. "I.. may possibly have watched a few videos about that kind as well."

She sighs and rests her forehead against my chest. "No. We shouldn't. We might get distracted."

I eliminate the construct. "How about we talk about something else, then?"

"What did you have in mind?"

"You seem to like superspeed. Would you -ideally- like to have the ability permanently?" She lifts her head up to look at me. "I thought about… When you were injured, I thought about… You know what I've done to Artemis, Zatanna and Green Arrow, and now Kaldur and Kid Flash?"

"Altered their souls to make them gods."

"It's more like.. granting them the potential to become gods, inasmuch as Apokoliptians and New Genosians are. If you were able to move at superspeed before undergoing that, you'd probably get faster. If you underwent that process first, you might not be able to use it at all. Seeing you injured like that, I was this close-" I hold up my left hand with thumb and index finger nearly touching. "-to doing it anyway, whether I'd get found out or not."

"I don't need you looking after me the whole time."

"I know." I put my left arm around her back. "And that's part of why I love you. But… If you didn't have some tool that you needed.. because I didn't think to give it to you, that is a failure on my part."

"Hm." She thinks for a moment. "So if I want a superpower as well as godhood, I have to get the superpower first."

"It would be best. So, superspeed?"

"I do like superspeed.. buuut I'm kind of interested in teleportation too."

"I haven't really looked into teleportation. I think there's a young woman in Central City who can teleport, and Rocket mentioned another who'd been operating in Dakota City. Not sure their abilities can be adapted as easily as the Garrick Formula… But if you want me to find out then I can do that."

She smirks. "Why can't I have both?"

"Metahumans who manifest different abilities usually do so from a single source. A Lantern can fly and travel faster than light not as the result as separate abilities but as functions of a power ring. Unless we found someone who was naturally capable of several different things I wouldn't recommend trying to blend them."

"I suppose being a goddess with one super power's not too bad. I'd just like to try a few more out, that's all."

"I'll see what I can do."

"Did you offer that to Artemis?"

"She has an established preference for pointy sticks. Though, I suppose… She's still in the early stages…" I frown. "Might be able to find something for her. I'll talk to her about it. Anything other than teleportation you're interested in?"

"How about a power ring?"

"That would make it completely obvious where you got it from. Annnd, orange rings can have adverse affects on the minds of their users. I'd really want an expert on hand before offering one to you. On the more positive side power rings can be used perfectly safely by New Gods, so there's no need to hold off on godhood in order to get the maximum advantage." I pause for a moment. I had been meaning to bring it up at some point, but is now the time? "Though, speaking of rings, what sort of wedding did you want?"

She pulls away a little in surprise. "Huh?"

"I ask because you haven't shown any particular religious belief. I usually associate Vietnam with Buddhism, but as I understand it the native religion is a lot more like Shinto in its reverence-."

"Are you..? Asking me..? Because that's got to be the worst-."

"No. I mean, not right now. I just want to make sure you've thought about it. I don't really care about the sort of ceremony… As long as Father isn't officiating. That would be very uncomfortable for everyone."

"What's he like?"

"What's Darkseid like? I'm really not sure how to describe him. Physically, he's a large grey skinned man much like myself. A little larger, I think. But he's bald, so there's that. His eyes glow red with the power of the Omega Force that he bound to himself upon his ascension. In terms of his character… He desires to see all things -not merely people, but all life, all matter, the very fundamental forces of the universe- in tune with his will. He can be civil, if he wants to be and it doesn't cost him anything. Equally, he can decide to be monstrous and raze an entire world to the ground just so the few survivors will speak of him with dread. I suppose… Imagine if your father was a Kryptonian. Something like that."

I think she gets it. "Let's not invite him. What about your mother?" Ah-h. I have no idea who Grayven's mother is. Father Box has quite a lot of information about Grayven but nothing on her. I could just say that she's dead, but-. Jade's head jerks up. "It's the League of Shadows. They're ready for us. I have the co-ordinates."

"Then we'd best not keep them waiting."

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Unusual Suspicions 29

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31st December

00:02 GMT +2

We step out of the boom tube into the designated spot in Queen Beatrice's palace in Al-Qawiya. There's a guard detail -Bialyans, I note- but their weapons are lowered and only a few of them are facing inwards. Armaments look conventional, that's a good sign. They haven't tried to hold onto anything Apokoliptian they shouldn't have done but it wouldn't astonish me if there were some plasma weapons around here. We're actually in the palace gardens, close to the palace itself. I'm not sure whether it's part of her faux piety, a reminder of historical greatness or she just really likes gardens but the grounds attached to the palace are really quite beautiful… Provided that one is prepared to overlook the anti-aircraft emplacements and -even on the best days- the small horde of plainclothes security operatives.

Two figures step forwards as the boom tube back to Masirah collapses behind us. The one on my left is a lieutenant in the Palace Guard. He's in field dress and carries the same rifle as his subordinates. Regular Bialyan soldiers come equipped with locally produced AK-47s but elite units like this apparently.. get… A little something from LexCorp's approved for export list. Goodness me, it's going to be like supervillain bingo in here, isn't it? He stays back a little as the civilian woman- ring?- Rayyah bint Khalid al-Saliba, Queen Beatrice's Principal Private Secretary. Interesting choice of greeter, given what happened last time we met.

I take a step forwards and extend my right hand. "Ms al-Saliba, pleased to meet you."

She keeps coming and takes my hand in the absolutely lightest grip she can and still qualify as actually holding onto it. "Prince Grayven. Her majesty Queen Bee has requested that you join her in the banquet hall."

"Oh, there's no need to call me 'prince', I'm illegitimate." I move my hand slightly away from hers and she moves hers back to her side as fast as she can. "Apokoliptian law on the subject is fairly flexible but by local standards only my half brother Crown Prince Kalibak would qualify. Please, lead the way."

She turns away and scurries down the path as fast as her dress will allow. I offer Jade my right arm. She hesitates and gives me a look of confusion. I wiggle my elbow and raise my eyebrows. She takes another quick look at the guards around us and then takes it with her left hand. I wait a moment and then we follow on behind Ms al-Saliba at a slow walk, the guards falling in behind us.

"Interesting point of law: did you know that Bialya is remarkably accepting of homosexuals? And I don't just mean by the appalling standards of the region; even by western standards." Jade glances at me while trying to simultaneously keep watch on our surroundings. "You're getting tense again. They're not going to shoot us before we get there and they can't stop us getting away."

She takes a breath and thinks about it. "Is.. Queen Bee..?"

"Not as far as I know. In fact, I haven't found any records of her having liaisons of any kind."

"What does she get out of it then?"

"Loyalty. Queen Bee can control lesbians just as well as she can straight men. Most of her female attendants -including our usher- are lesbians. Must be a very frustrating job, actually. And any homosexual men in her employ know that there are opportunities here they wouldn't be able to get anywhere else. Queen Bee may be an autocrat but she isn't arbitrary in her dealings. There is a secret police in Bialya but the quality of their investigations is actually quite high, they don't just grab people off the streets and torture them for fun. Corruption is stamped on fairly hard for much the same reason."

"She has your approval?"

"I think she's someone I could do business with. If she knocked her silly obsession with her neighbour to the west on the head. And if Ra's is here and.. the guns do rather imply that Mister Luthor will be joining us. Hm. I'm feeling surprisingly optimistic."

We walk up onto a tiled veranda and then into the palace proper. Considering that her Justice League file all but screams megalomaniac the palace isn't actually that big. Most of the civil service buildings are located in Al-Qawiya proper for security reasons. Military and police headquarters similarly located off-site, though the Palace Guard garrison is on-site. Parliamentarians might need a nod from their monarch before they even think about running for office but she has offloaded a fair bit of work onto them. I suppose that if one must spend the money to keep up appearances it behoves one to ensure that it isn't entirely wasted. There are civil service offices, meeting rooms and the Queen's personal residence and those of her attendants, but most of the space is essentially a big art gallery cum museum for entertaining the occasional dignitary or school party. The corridor we're passing down is decorated with paintings of various historical scenes; historical accuracy not guaranteed.

"Ms al-Saliba?" She glances back over her shoulder. "I feel I should apologise for the way we met."

"Oh no, there's really no need-."

"I rather think there is. I was more concerned with creating a lasting impression on Queen Bee and, to be frank, my own entertainment. I should have taken the effect it would have on other people into consideration, so, I'm sorry."

"Oh. Then, you are forgiven." She looks at me for a moment longer and then continues on her way.

"What did you do?"

"I drove the super cycle through the wall of Queen Beatrice's private dining room during breakfast."

She pulls her arm free. "If anyone asks, I'm not with you."

"We parted on reasonable terms. And I think events have proven me right in my views on contact with Apokolips." A left turn and at the end of the corridor I see the double doors leading to the banquet hall. I wonder if they're laying food on?

"Why did you tell her you weren't a prince?"

"Because it puts me in the same boat as Queen Beatrice, and she ascended to the throne anyway."

"She was the daughter of the previous king."

"True -probably- but she wasn't the daughter of his wife. As far as I was able to tell she used her pheromone control ability on him to get adopted into the royal household and eventually became heir designate after the former queen had a bit of an attack of the undetectable poisons. Probably with the assistance of one of your co-workers. Her heir is her half sister Princess Adilah, currently attending an excellent university in Singapore and kept under the eyes of no fewer than four armed security agents at any one time. Incidentally, Queen Beatrice's official history puts a rather different spin on it and no one in earshot will dare repeat what I just told you." We share a glance at the lieutenant who pointedly keeps staring dead ahead.

"Did we 'help' her with her father as well?"

"No, I don't think so. Everything I've seen suggests that his natural causes really were natural. No point in killing someone you already control."

"What about her mother?"

"Currently living the life of Riley in Monaco."

Ms al-Saliba waits for us in front of the doors as we approach before nodding to the uniformed functionaries standing next to them. They simultaneously take hold of the handles, turn them and open the doors outwards. Ms al-Saliba enters and quickly moves off to the left as Jade and I stroll forwards.

"Presenting Grayven of Apokolips and Operative Jade Nguyen of the League of Shadows."

The room inside looks a little deserted with only the high table set up, its occupants facing the doorway we just entered through. Queen Bee has the central seat and Ms al-Saliba quickly walks around to stand behind her mistress. On her left, Mister Luthor sits in a relaxed but formal pose, Miss Graves just behind and to his left. The next seat along holds Ra's al Ghul in full costume. Behind him, Ubu and a young looking Caucasian man with floppy black hair. Looks a bit like a male model but I'm sure that if Ra's has bothered bringing him along he's quite deadly to most people.

The man on Queen Beatrice's left on the other hand… I give him a quick scan to check, though I can't think of many people who would belong in this setting and have three diagonal scars across their face. Vandal Savage. Him, I'm not sure I can do business with. Wouldn't mind dissecting him to see if I can work out how his immortality works. Next to him is a computer screen showing a blurred head shape. Someone who doesn't want me to know that they're part of the group? If Mister Luthor is confident enough to show his face… Sivana, maybe? A politician, or some sort of infiltrator? Red Arrow's mole?

I come to a halt about five metres away from the table and look down at them. "Your Majesty, gentlemen. I am here as you requested. What can I do for you?"

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Unusual Suspicions 30

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31st December

00:09 GMT +2

Queen Bee leans forwards slightly. "No Tiger or flying motorcycle this time, Grayven?"

I give her a small smile. "No, not this time. I felt that it would be impolite, given that I had an invitation and you weren't doing anything liable to cause an Apokoliptian invasion this time."

"No. This time you were."

"I'm given to understand that they were invited by-" I look over to my left. "-Mister Savage." He doesn't react. "And my team mates and I were perfectly capable of dealing with them ourselves."

"Yes. You were. Please,-" She gestures with her right hand at the empty chair opposite her. "-take a seat."

As I walk forwards the television screen reorientates itself on me. "It is a shame that you did not bring the Tiger with you, Mister Grayven. I would have been most interested to study its development. He really was a most promising specimen."

The sound comes from the speakers next to the screen. I'm hearing a translation so his usual smattering of French is being omitted but that's unmistakably the Brain's voice. Of course, he uses a speech synthesiser these days anyway. I assume that he keeps his original voice out of pride. "I don't think that would have been a good idea, Brain. While I agree with your assessment of his intelligence his temperament is somewhat uncertain and I don't believe that he remembers you fondly." I do a quick check that the chair's strong enough to take me and then sit, Jade taking up station behind me. "So? What is this about?"

"We.. want to-" Ring, gag him "-mpf." Ra's glares at me, though the effect is totally ruined by the glowing orange band over his mouth.

I look along the row of other panel members. "Someone else, please. I don't want to be waffled at for two hours this time."

Queen Bee parts her lips slightly and then turns slightly to her left. Mister Luthor gives me his patented press conference slash used car salesman smile. "We believe that we have certain interests in common which might more profitably be pursued through cooperation than competition."

I remove the gag. "You see? Six seconds." I look down the row again. I could use the soul gaze I suppose, but I think it would be more polite to let them explain themselves and politeness does seem to be the order of the day. "What precisely do you believe those interests to be?"

Ra's takes a moment to compose himself. "When you tracked Cheshire to the League's safe house, you said something rather interesting. You claimed that you were trying to alter the world for the better, and that you were not afraid to get your hands dirty to do it. We,-" He indicates the Most Wanted with his right hand. "- share a similar philosophy."

"Yes, I've heard about your vision of the future of the Human race."

Spotting dissonance Mister Luther makes a subtle 'stop' gesture in Ra's direction and -interesting- he heeds it. "Without giving away the details of ongoing projects-"

I wave his caveat away. "Of course."

"-the exploitation of advanced technology, preternatural biology and magic to improve the state of Human existence and eventually to advance the position of Humanity in the universe. We began our dealings with Apokolips with that goal in mind, though…" He looks to his right. "It seems they were a more dangerous business partner than we initially believed."

"Were you aware that they were also dealing with Intergang?" An amusing thought occurs. "And at a higher level than you were?"

"Not.. at the time. And in every problem lies an opportunity. I understand that you have a monopoly on trade between Apokolips and Earth."

"I control contact between Apokolips and Earth, it isn't quite the same thing. What I can actually get for you would be somewhat limited."

"We weren't planning to ask you to hand us the keys to the place. In fact, that would be contrary to our ideals."

Supervillains who don't want giant alien weapons? Mind equals blown. "How so?"

A quiet whir from the television. "The use of alien technology to cover for humanity's inadequacies merely compounds the problem we are seeking to correct."

Ra's appears to have regenerated his ego. "The natural abilities of certain gifted individuals -most notably the Justice League- give certain people an almost unbeatable advantage in their chosen field. The result over the past few decades is that a certain.. passivity has entered into the Human spirit. Though we are threatened by alien invaders and violent criminals-."

"Like yourself."

His eyes narrow slightly, but he considers and nods. "If you like. Despite those things, mankind trusts in the League to keep them safe rather than looking to their own defences, a problem which will only worsen as the League expands. I myself am no stranger to feudal social order but for all their acclaim, the League seem content merely to be…" A ghost of a smile. "'Righteous Face Punchers'?"

Ah, the old Kingdom Come problem. "I should probably have known better than to say that in a room with a publicly accessible gallery. Alright then, yes. I see the problem. And I admit that it would be easier to fix as part of a group set up to do research and development rather than front line combat."

Queen Beatrice raises her right eyebrow. "Altruism? From an Apokoliptian?"

"To paraphrase the author Sir Terrance Pratchett, sometimes it's better to make the pie bigger than it is to try to make your slice bigger. Especially when the other diners have knives. I intend to use Earth as a power base and that will be far more productive if Earth is more powerful. Does this august assemblage have a name, or is this an ad hoc thing?"

"We are called The Light."

Vandal Savage speaks for the first time. I never really rated him as a threat, but he must offer something if he's here. I wonder what it is? "Does it have any other members? I note a few conspicuous absences; no.. Circe, no Thaddeus Sivana?"

Mister Luthor shakes his head. "Neither of those are members. Circe is notoriously reclusive and.. I'm afraid that Doctor Sivana appears unable to play nicely with others. Ocean Master was a member until his death at the hands of the Atlantean security services-."

"Yes, about that. Word of advice? If you've managed to develop armour that can block Lantern constructs? Make sure it covers your whole body."

"Ah. That is…" He looks along the line and I don't know the others well enough to judge their responses as well as he apparently can. "Not necessarily an impediment. He wasn't engaged in Light business at the time, after all. And we weren't in formal contact with you. One of the reasons that The Light exists is to prevent just that sort of.. crossing of wires.. getting in the way of us achieving our shared goals."

"Big of you."

"An excess of ego is so often detrimental to our work. Speaking of which, do you believe that you would have difficulty in working with any of us?"

Ra's. "Maybe." Luthor. "No." Queen Bee. "No." Savage. "Maybe." Brain. "No."

Ra's raises his eyebrows. "Though Doctor Roquette's survival was a little irritating I was not aware of any fundamental dispute between us."

"It's the whole primitivist utopia through mass slaughter thing."

He nods. "That should not be a problem. While I still hold to the same ideals I.. no longer believe that such methods are necessary to ensure mankind's survival."

"No problem, then. I'll even volunteer to help with your preservation work." He looks a little interested. "Wouldn't be too hard for me to set up an artificial habitat off world. If you can get me the DNA samples I can even clone extinct or endangered species back into existence."

"A most generous offer."

Savage's face is implacable as ever. "And your objection to me?"

"I feel that the chaotic genius of unencumbered humanity would be somewhat oppressed if we ended up being obliged to make you God Emperor of mankind."

"I have learned to enjoy more subtle applications of power. I have no more desire to force the Human race to calcify under my governance than I do under the League's."

"Then we have no fundamental dispute either. So, what needs to happen for me to sign up?"

Ra's steeples his fingers. "To begin, we need to make sure that you are not reporting everything we say to the Detective. A period of.. observation, while you demonstrate your usefulness and loyalty to our ideals."

"A reasonable precaution. Dorrance, Crock." The two Construct-Lanterns appear by my side. "I'll even stop killin' yer doodz. Anything else?"

Mister Luthor makes eye contact with their late field commanders and briefly dips his eyes. "One other matter. The last member of our group has something of a personal vendetta against you and.. we.. don't feel that the two of you would be able to function together."

Who could..? Oh. "Magic user. Powerful and surprisingly well connected. You're working with the Witch Boy, aren't you? That.. is going.. to be.. a problem."

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Unusual Suspicions 31

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31st December

00:13 GMT +2

"Dare I enquire as to why..?"

"The Witch Boy's involvement became rather.. impossible to avoid, Mister Grayven."

I frown at the monitor. "How so?"

"Are you familiar with the joke about what to do when there is an eight hundred pound Gorilla asleep in your bed?"

In your case, tell him to stop hogging the duvet? I really don't want to know if that part of his relationship with Mallah is true here as it was in the comics. "So, what? He just turned up to a meeting and you couldn't get rid of him?"

Mister Luthor seems reluctant to meet my gaze. "It was.. a little more complicated than that. He has power, certainly, and a disinclination to accept the status quo. He seemed like a good fit."

"What exactly were you expecting to gain from the Roanoke Island incident? I'm hardly a squeamish man but if you're going to slaughter hundreds of thousands of children I'd expect the reward to be proportionate. I can't imagine what that would have been."

Ra's gaze goes a little distant. "Klarion offered to provide a distraction while we acquired a certain object. He chose not to inform us of precisely what forms this distraction would take, merely that it would be highly effective. I personally found his methods.. distasteful."

"Ra's, a few months ago you tried to fire a satellite mounted solar reflector at the world's greatest cities. I hardly think you're in a position-."

His face hardens. "The heat generated in that attack would have killed those in the affected area almost immediately and given the size of the area it would have encompassed it would most likely have incinerated whole families together. I regarded the deaths involved as a regrettable necessity for the good of the world, not as worthwhile ends in themselves. I did not laugh at the prospect. I did not cavort with glee at the death of so many children."

He sounds serious. I give myself a momentary flicker of orange vision. Hmm. His conversion appears to be genuine. "So, like many people with no actual morals Ra's al Ghul does have standards. Do you all feel the same way?"

A nod from Mister Luthor. I'm not sure how credible it is. He doesn't have a young family and I doubt the incident cost him much money. A few sick days for grieving relatives but his competitors would be in the same position, wouldn't they? Maybe he just doesn't like chaos. Queen Beatrice also nods. It would have been the middle of the night here when it happened… An issue of control, perhaps? She doesn't want there to be threats to her citizens that she can't use organs of the state to fight against, it undermines her position. Savage… His facial expression changes a little. A little tightening around the eyes, a flattening of the lips. It's subtle, but I get the impression he isn't entirely on board with this hanging out to dry of his malevolent colleague. Reminds me of what Mister Luthor said to Cheetah in the comics about her objection to Doctor Light joining their society: 'if we limit our membership to men of good character...'. Is it loyalty? Does he prefer a known power to an unknown one, even if the known one is one Red Bull from deciding that up should be down? Or onion? Savage doesn't directly answer, but for the first time since I sat down he turns his face a little away from me. And for Brain?

"I have little concern for the lives of others, my grey friend. Still, I find the disregard Mister Klarion has for the physical laws of the universe disconcerting. With Ocean Master dead we have room to spare for both you and another magic user who may be a little more.. predictable. Perhaps Madam Circe, no? But alas, the eight hundred pound Gorilla remains."

Did he just..? "You want me to kill Klarion?"

Mister Savage recurls his lips. "If you can. Treat it as a job interview. Klarion's greatest asset is his power. If yours is greater then his passing is of no concern."

Killing Klarion… Not the easiest of tasks, if our last meeting is anything to go by. I dodged his dust trap easily enough but was stuck with only brute force options against him and his new familiar cum power source. Plus, killing him is both in-character for Grayven and is.. let's face it, is a boon I would be more than happy to grant the world. "That's.. not something I'm going to rush into."

"If you feel unequal to the task…"

"I'm not fool enough to underestimate a Lord of Chaos. Killing Klarion wouldn't simply be a matter of physical force. It requires careful thought, preparation and study." Mister Zatara would be the obvious place to start, or perhaps… What was that sword John Constantine used on the First of the Fallen? Of course, from their point of view Klarion killing me because I rushed things is a perfectly acceptable result as well. "I'll take it on… How quickly do you expect results?"

"There is no cut off point. Still, the longer you delay, the more time he has to enjoy himself."

"Quoting the Clown, Mister Savage? Really?" In the corner of my eye I catch a split second of smile from Mister Luthor. "So, don't tell Batman, look for ways to help humanity escape both the crab bucket and the emergent superhero dominated feudal order and kill an immortal sorcerer of godlike power. Anything else?"

Queen Beatrice smile. "I believe that you have a grasp of the situation. Obviously the rest of us will not be offering you any assistance. Klarion is difficult enough to deal with as it is without him actively opposing us."

"I wasn't expecting you to."

"One other matter. How attached are you to the Justice League's sidekicks?"

Cold and calculating or protecting my own patch? Easy choice. "Extremely attached."

"And if anything were to happen to them?"

"I would hunt the perpetrator or perpetrators to the ends of the universe and subject them to every agony available to an Apokoliptian God. They're mine. To cause lasting harm to what is mine is to will yourself to die in the midst of unimaginable suffering."

"You left Devilance alive."

"He failed. And in any case, Father will take care of that for me."

She looks at and nods at someone towards the back of the hall behind me. I turn to look as the rear doors are pulled open and…

I blink, then have the ring run a check before swiftly dismissing Crock and Dorrance. No, that's really Artemis and M'gann walking in under armed escort. They're not bound and the weapons aren't being pointed at them. They're here voluntarily? They both try to avoid looking at our hosts and M'gann notices me first, a startled gasp escaping her lips. Artemis tears her eyes away from Jade to see what so alarmed our team mate. Her eyes widen and then narrow to a scowl.

How to play this? I stand and walk slowly towards them. "Artemis! You told me you didn't play for the other team!" I turn to the side. "Jade, are you being a bad influence on your sister?"

Jade grins a cruel grin. "She couldn't stand the idea of your team mates finding out who her family were."

I feel a slight nudge on my mental defences, a polite request rather than an attack. I relax the barrier slightly.

**Grayven, what did they threaten you with?**

**Nothing. Nothing at all. I came here for a job interview. Why, what are they holding over you?**

**Queen Bee threatened to kill Marie Logan if I didn't do what they said. How..? Why are you..?**

"Because I found out what they're actually trying to achieve. And I agree with it." I turn back to our hosts. "You might have given me the chance to try talking them around."

"I can't believe..! You! You're the mole!"

Back to Artemis. "No. This is the first time I've met with this august body and I haven't given them any information about our group. If there even is an informant, it's someone else." Back to the Light. Who's actually in charge? I want to assume Lex Luthor but Queen Beatrice has centre stage in her own country. "Why are they here?"

"They can keep track of your progress while you work on the task we've set you. After all-" The Queen's smile widens slightly. "-you didn't think that you were the only member of your team we were trying to enlighten, did you?"

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Unusual Suspicions 32

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30th December

22:21 GMT

I send orange lights up into the four corners of the stone-built room as the boom tube closes behind us. In their dim light I can just about make out the decorations on the walls of the small antechamber to the main tomb. Will M'gann notice it before the shouting starts, I wonder?

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't shoot you right now!"

Looks like 'no'. I take a moment to compose myself before turning around. Artemis already has an arrow on string and M'gann doesn't look much happier. "Because in the unlikely event you managed to kill me you'd suffocate in short order. The air around us is almost entirely carbon dioxide." Her eyes widen slightly but her hands stay steady. "We need to talk about-."

"We're on… You brought us to Mars!?" M'gann looks around for a moment and then raises her hands to her forehead and blinks heavily. "I can.. hear…" Her eyes widen fully. "We're in one of the sacred pyramids! We can't be here! It's the most-!"

"Actually, you can. Perfectly legally, your Highness. Visiting one of your blessed ancestors with a.. small retinue. In this case…" I have a closer look at the engravings on the walls. "Imperator Bar'soom, notable for his love of theatre and skill in long ranged telepathic communication, if I'm reading this right."

"Why did you bring us to Mars?"

Artemis sounds like she's on the verge of loosing on me anyway. "Because I very much doubt that the Light have contacts on Mars." I lay one hand on the wall, feeling the power within the structure. "Martian pyramids of this era were heavily warded, alien magic that should serve to defeat Earth based magicians. Klarion or someone of his tier could brute force it but the effects would be very noticeable." I nod to myself. "Combined with Father Box and the ring, this is probably the safest place to talk in the entire star system. And we do rather need to talk about-."

"You selling us all out to the Light!"

"The final stage of an undercover investigation I am carrying out at Batman's behest." That makes her think. "Could you please lower the arrow now?"

She keeps staring at me for a moment longer before reluctantly turning the bow towards the floor. "Really?"

"It was after the fight in Happy Harbor when I confronted the Shadows who were after Doctor Roquette. I let Cheshire -Jade- run so I could watch where she ran to."

"You said you didn't know where she went!"

"I lied. I barely knew you back then, certainly not enough to trust you when Green Arrow was already lying to cover for you. Secrets don't stay secret if you tell people. Anyway, my intent was to develop her as an intelligence asset, offer her a chance to get away from the League of Shadows in exchange for information leading to the organisation being wound up. Then, the Injustice League thing happened. Afterwards…" I pause, remembering the meeting. "Batman came to have a word. He was concerned about the prospect of supervillains working together and wanted more information. Ra's al Ghul is extremely well connected and I already had an 'in'."

Artemis tries to take that on board. "So.. the whole thing with.. you and her..?"

I shake my head. "Completely genuine. I haven't told her that I'm acting on Batman's behalf, but she knows my final objective. Falling in love with Jade.. wasn't…" I pause. "Wait. Why aren't you freaking out about M'gann hearing this?"

"I told her. I told everyone. After you left Jade called me and threatened to tell everyone about our father."

"So you walked in there why?"

"To get intel."

I raise my right hand to my forehead. "Months of patient undercover work and you walk in on a full board meeting, just like that. How'd our team mates take hearing about Sportsmaster?"

"They-."

"No one on the team cares about who Artemis' father is, but Queen Bee will still kill Marie if we don't do what they want!"

"Which is what, report on me? I need to keep up appearances anyway until Batman decides what he wants to do with the information."

"What if they kidnap her?!"

I don't.. think Queen Beatrice would do that. On the other hand, no harm in making sure. "Father Box."

"Ploong."

"Activate the hush tube and dispatch drone squadron six to the Logan Animal Sanctuary, perimeter patrol. Have them shoot anything Bialyan-looking."

"Ploong."

"There, no more problem. Those drones could stop an armoured company or a bombing raid by the entire Bialyan air force and their camouflage systems will stop the Logans noticing anything out of the ordinary."

M'gann nods, calming down a bit. Artemis still doesn't look happy. "What were you talking to them about before we walked in?"

Ah. Haven't really had a chance to sort out my own feelings on that subject yet. "With their source of Apokoliptian technology cut off, they were interested in allying with me. Offered me a position in their group. There are certain requirements…"

"You're not going to take it, right?"

"The main requirement was killing Klarion, so I don't think I'm in a rush to decide."

She and M'gann look at each other. Artemis appears to be lost for words while M'gann looks at me in puzzlement. "Why would you want to join a group of supervillains?"

"You remember that whole.. speech I did after Superman finished talking during the swearing in of the new League members?" She nods. Only this morning but it feels like a lot longer. "I wasn't just saying that to be contrary. I believe every word. The Light… They see the problem. They don't like Earth becoming dependent on the good will of the Justice League. They want… They want a lot of the same things I want, and I think I could live with the rest."

"But… They're evil. And.. you're not. Everything you've done for us, for Kon and Match especially…"

I sigh. "I don't know, M'gann. Sometimes I feel like a supervillain who accidentally walked into the wrong lobby… And only stayed because the restaurant was better than the one the Legion of Doom had. When the four of us confronted Ocean Master I didn't hesitate to kill him. You did, Kon did, even Kaldur did and he had far better cause than I. I'm ruthless and hard in ways you're just not. The League.. just doesn't do stuff that I think.. we need to. And if the Light do…"

Artemis gesticulates. "Queen Bee's a tyrant!"

"Her citizens have higher standards of living-."

"Vandal Savage is a murderer! Ra's runs a League of assassins and tried killing almost everyone on the planet with satellite lasers!"

"I looked into his soul. He told me that he doesn't intend to do that sort of thing anymore, and I believe him. And as for being a murderer? So is your mother." She freezes, shocked. "Paula may have only gone to prison for armed robbery but I think we both know that wasn't the full extent of her crimes. Do you intend to investigate those? Demand that she return to prison for the rest of her life?" Artemis can't meet my gaze. "No, because it would serve no useful purpose. The League of Shadows won't stop murdering, but there's a point… There's a point where the benefit outweighs the cost."

M'gann shakes her head. "Nothing could justify that."

"Certainly it could. Simple example: plasma weapons exist on Earth, yet even in America which could afford them, outside a few areas Special Response Units aren't routinely issued with them. Why? Because they know there'll always be a superhero on hand. Police are shoved aside for unaccountable people in silly costumes. Arrange a few attacks when the League are occupied, then press for a nationwide equipment upgrade. Dozens die, but hundreds don't die in the future because the police have the equipment they need to deal with high end metahumans."

"The Shadows don't-."

"I know. But their intelligence network might save more than the murders they use to fund it kill. Or at least enough to justify…" Me putting up with the murder of innocent people because I've never met them. I should feel worse about that. "If I don't have a better solution-."

"The League will." M'gann walks up to me and confidently puts her right hand on mine. "We can talk to Batman about what they said. He and Uncle J'onn and Wonder Woman and the rest of the League will know what to do. I don't care what you say, you're not like a dictator who mind controlled an eight year old boy and threatened him to make me obey her. You're not. Now open a boom tube back to Earth so we can sort this mess out."

…

Well.

…

That's me told.

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Unusual Suspicions 33

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30th December

18:39 GMT -5

"So.. you're a mole.. for Batman?"

Kon seems to be having a little trouble getting his head around the idea. "Not yet. More like.. double agent." I nod my head to the side. "Would-be double agent. I haven't actually got in yet."

Kaldur's kept up though. "Then why are you so concerned?"

We're in the kitchen area, my team mates either sitting or leaning against the surfaces. I suggested reconvening in one of the actual meeting rooms but that was voted down.

"I have an orange power ring. Mood ring jokes aside, what I can do is a fairly strong indicator of how I feel about the situation. I can't fake it. I would have been of limited use if I didn't really…"

He nods. "If your outspoken concerns about the limitations of the League were not genuine."

"Quite. Down side of that is, their offer has genuine appeal to me. I don't want to limit my role in Earth society to doing what the League do. I mean, I don't want Earth to look like Apokolips but.. Rann, maybe? That has appeal."

Richard's eyes narrow. "If this is true, why didn't Batman tell me about it?"

"Your acting is good and your integrity unimpeachable. But you aren't telepath proof."

"I'm still not. What changed?"

"I.. started genuinely doubting that I was on the correct side. Needed M'gann to talk some sense into me. So. The loyal opposition." I wave my right hand and create constructs in the centre of our group. "The Brain, Vandal Savage, Queen Beatrice-."

"Beena."

I frown at Richard. "Her school records say Beatrice."

"Her birth certificate says 'Beena'. She anglicized when she started college."

"How the heck did you find..? No, fine, Beena. Alexander Luthor and Ra's al Ghul. Prince Orm was a member until I killed him. What do we notice about this motley crew?"

Match looks them over. "Most of them are guys?" More than a few of us stare at him. "What? It's what Mom says about the Justice League."

"I was really going for the fact that none of them are fighters. Ra's and Savage can brawl but neither of them are top tier metabrawlers. They're controllers, planners. Except for the Brain they have large resource bases. They can hire muscle, these people are the ones-."

Kaldur nods. "Doing everything else."

"Ra's has a vast intelligence network. Brain can handle research and development of whatever useful artefacts and technologies they come across. Luthor can fence technology as an exciting LexCorp development and-" I manage a crooked smile. "-Beena can site anything which needs to be completely hidden in Bialya. No risk of investigation when you legitimately control the police. The League selects for power, they selected for intelligence. Of all League members only Batman is capable of the sort of organisation all of these people are."

"Ocean Master had his people serving in all parts of the Atlantean government. If he had not underestimated you…"

"He'd have been in a position to share every arcanotechnological development Atlantis made."

"Egami fo Noiralk raeppa." A full colour illusion of my target appears in the centre and sneers at us. "So where does Klarion fit in?"

"The impression I got was that he didn't. The Brain told me that they aren't any more able to get rid of him than we are and as such they're stuck with him. The task they set me to complete if I want to join the Light's management is to kill him."

Richard looks at me for a moment. "You're thinking about doing it, aren't you?"

"I've already got a method in mind. Frankly, I'd be on board with killing him even if I didn't have this offer on the table."

"We don't kill people, Grayven. Not deliberately, at least."

A filament pierces the Orm-construct's left arm and burrows through his flesh up into his brain. The construct jerks in a re-enactment of his death. "I do. I did, and Klarion deserves to die far more than Orm did."

"That isn't how it works! Ocean Master was in the middle of killing Queen Mera! What you're talking about is coldly sitting down and planning out how to kill someone."

"What, so accurate utilitarian judgements are worse than bestial rages?" I suppose it's time, then. "Richard, suppose there was a person… For the sake of argument let's call him Joseph Kerr. Let's further say that this person has killed an average of seventy people a year for the last ten years, though he really outdid himself with his last group effort. That he's been arrested on several occasions but each time has been sent to a notoriously escape-friendly asylum and managed to get out. Sometimes by stealth, sometimes by force and sometimes by blackmailing or bribing the staff. Now let us examine this problem from a utilitarian point of view. A person arresting Mister Kerr does so in the knowledge that he will most likely escape, and that if he escapes that he will kill again. If this utilitarian agent killed him then in the first year there are sixty nine fewer deaths than there would otherwise have been. The next year, seventy. Then seventy again, and again, and again. You can't legally execute an insane person, the evidence suggests that he can't be contained… What is a person to do?"

He scowls, working out where I'm going with this. "Crush his arms and legs so he can't use them anymore. Like you did to.. 'Joseph Kerr'."

"So the doctors couldn't repair them? Oh, that is good news. I'd rather have killed him outright but I don't imagine that Batman would have been very impressed. As it was, I was on low power, the control system for the plants was on his hands and I needed to stop him moving. Crush. I killed Ocean Master not just because he was threatening Queen Mera, but because I could and it would solve the problem."

Wallace's face drops. "That's... Stone cold."

"Kaldur, if I hadn't, what would have been his punishment?"

"He would have been tried and then executed."

"And?"

"I am not sure what-?"

"What method would have been used? Remember, the crime is 'royal treason'."

His eyes widen for a moment, then he sags and stares at the floor. "The punishment for treason by a member of the royal household… The condemned is impaled on Traitor's Reef and then left to die. A guard is posted to make sure that they are neither fed nor given any other aid until they do. When they finally expire their body is fed to the Barracuda."

"The most fun part is that the guards don't have to stop the Barracuda getting stuck in before the condemned expires. And the only moderation that can be offered by the monarch of the day? King Orin could personally open Orm's jugular vein-" I gesture at my own throat. "-with a knife before they stuck him on there, so he'd be unconscious when the barbs pierced him and die soon after." General looks of horror from my team mates. "And King Orin's too good a man not to do that, if it came to it. I could have cut off Orm's hands to disable him. I chose not to at least in part so that King Orin wouldn't have to kill his own brother." I take a moment to imagine what that would do to the man. "Funny thing is, King Orin actually changed the law so that regular treason wasn't punished like that. Too inhumane. He didn't bother the senate with changing the royal treason version of the law because he didn't think it was worth their time for the handful of people it applied to."

"In circumstances.. where it is not practical to take a metahuman into custody…" Tao doesn't exactly look happy about speaking up. "Members of the Great Ten are authorised to carry out summary executions. I have not.. been called upon to do so myself, but… Klarion killed hundreds of thousands of children. I do not believe that I would have any difficulty in justifying killing him either to myself or to my superiors."

Zatanna nods, though she doesn't look any happier about it. "Nabu's been telling Dad things about Klarion. He doesn't think he can be contained. If Klarion decided to do a repeat of Roanoke Island… I don't think we'd have a better chance of stopping him than we did last time. Most of the deaths happened in the first few hours and it might take me that long to find him. I… I don't like it, but I can't think of another way."

"It's academic, anyway." I shake my head. "I'm not going to take any concrete action until I've had a chance to talk to Batman about it tomorrow."

Richard shakes his head. "He'll never agree to it."

"Then that'll buy him six months to come up with a better solution."

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Gude-Willie Waught

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Gude-Willie Waught 1

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Gude-Willie Waught

31st December

05:53 GMT -5

"You're up early."

I look up from the workbench and see Zatanna standing in the doorway. "I am?" I look up at the clock. "Oh. No… No, I'm up late. Whoops."

She sighs theatrically and walks into the workshop, coffee mug in hand. "What are you working on?"

I grin. "Power armour."

"I thought you were working on the cold guns."

"Oh, finished them hours ago. Dropped a few prototypes off with the Metropolis fire department."

She walks over and sits down across from me at the workbench. "Don't they already have cold guns?"

Both index fingers up, lecture mode engaged. "No, they have freeze rays. Big, bulky ones they can't risk using anywhere where there are people because they'd get frozen to death. These-" I push part of a chestplate I was working on out of the way and pull a partially disassembled cold rifle over to show her what I mean. "-are ice guns."

"Okay?"

"A normal freeze ray works by… Well, I'm not actually sure… Explanation kind of went." I wave my right hand over my head. "Simple version, they use battery power to impede molecular vibrations. Somehow. Shoot something with it and that thing drops in temperature. Fine. Er, can I borrow that?" I point to her coffee.

"If you like?" She pushes the mug over to me.

I generate a freeze ray construct. "Works like this." I jerk the mug up and then down. Obeying the laws of motion the coffee keeps going and I freeze it in mid air. It thumps back down onto the bench, small bits of frozen coffee breaking off but the main lump staying solid. "Now, what do you notice?"

"You just ruined a mug of perfectly good coffee?"

"No, it's fine, you've just gotta…" I pick up the lump with a construct, brush it off and put it on top of the mug. A quick blast from a maser construct and the mug is half full of hot coffee again. "Okay, so what else did you notice?"

"You can just tell me."

"No ice. I mean, no extra ice build up around the frozen coffee. You see, there isn't enough moisture in the air to create the sort of ice build ups some cold effects generate. And yet, ice appears. Where does it come from?"

"The.. gun..?"

"Yep. But, someone like Doctor Fries has to use this whole compression system, keep the gas at very high pressure to get the effect he wants, and his accuracy at range is terrible. The advantage of that sort of system is that the harm done to the target is greatly reduced. The ice isn't usually much more than minus ten degrees so their body heat will start to melt it and it's hard to get it to layer on very thick. That's why he's only killed eight people rather than hundreds. Mister Snart's version -the one I ripped off- has better accuracy but a much lower rate of fire. He usually uses it as a sort of cold.. plasma.. blast.. thing, messing around with pressure and hydrogen bonding as well as temperature. These-" I pick up the rifle and give it a little shake. "-use these gel cartridges. You know that dome shouldn't have stayed up under its own weight? And I actually had trouble pushing through it when I got coated. That's be-caaause it isn't exactly ice as in frozen water. It's a sort of novel liquid crystal, a bit like Artemis' hard foam arrows, only it has weird thermal properties and.. I'm.. going on a bit, aren't I?"

"A bit. So what can it do?"

"When we captured the Ice Fortress there was no way for it to generate power."

"You said it was coming through…"

"Right, right. This has the same system! I mean, there's a local battery and a cable for connecting it to the armour's power supply, but it's designed to have reloads and power sent in through mini Dolmen Gates." I remove a panel on the rifle and show her the circle of dull grey metal. "Best of all?" I use the ring to pick up from the workbench two I'd removed earlier and apply a small amount of electrical power. Runes inscribed on the outer edge glow as the Gate forms. "Mass production! They're a standardised design. You just have to work out which bit of the inscription defines the target, and thanks to Sephtian's notes on his work I have. I mean I was just thinking about the potential for bulk transportation but… A firefighter could have a hose attached to a huge tank of water miles away with one of these at the bottom. Or just.. chuck it in the sea, or a river or something. The power requirements are large but compared to the cost of the infrastructure they could replace it's a pittance. Hey, check this out!" I stick my right forefinger in through one of the Gates and it appears through the other. I give it a wiggle and then grin at her.

"That sounds useful." She picks up her mug, sniffs at it and then puts it back down with an expression of mild distaste. "I'm not sure why you're so excited, though."

"You know how useful my subspace storage is. Now, everyone can have it. Just have a load of these lined up somewhere, dial the rune-tag and voila! You can make them small like in this rifle, or handbag size or whatever size. And I can store arcane artefacts without wiping out my power reserves. Here, you want a go?" I move the two mini Gates over to her.

She gives me and them a sceptical look before deciding to humour me and quickly jabs her right index finger through one of them. "How about the armor?"

"Yeaaaaah. Ssssslight problem with that. Power armour.. needs to 'learn' how you move, how to interpret your nervous system. Otherwise you'd risk pulling yourself apart whenever you moved. I'm wearing-" I reach up to the collar of my jumper and pull it aside. "-the undersuit and control collar, but I can't really start playing around with the armour itself until it's learned me. The armour's simple enough, though I did ask Red Tornado to ask Morrow about incorporating the improvements I made to Danni into a revised design."

"How strong does it make you?"

"You could arm wrestle Kaldur and win."

"Not Kon?"

"No, not with the version they were using."

"Does the invisibility thing work?"

"Sort of. When I took the claw back to Mister Crandell I had a chat with his MI6 handler. It uses a sort of exotic radiation, you need to be exposed to it for a while before you can use the invisibility function and it has a rather.. unfortunate effect on the Human mental state for a few months before the whole thing stabilises. There might be a way around it but I'd want to do a lot more testing before moving to Human trials." I frown as my explain-the-clever-thing-you've-done impulse winds down. "Wait. What are you doing up?"

She looks away. "I've.. been up for half an hour. I couldn't.. get back to sleep." She glances at the coffee mug. "Can't seem to fully wake up either."

Agh, she mentioned having trouble sleeping before. Should have… "Right. Before you go to bed tonight, come and see me." She blinks at me, blushing slightly. "My massage teacher insists that it's supposed to be good if you're having trouble sleeping and clearly.. ignoring the problem isn't helping."

"Um. I mean… Um. Couldn't you use your ring or something?"

"To suppress activity in your brain? Yes, but I'm not going to. Look, if you're really not comfortable with it then I'll try and think of something else… Whale song, maybe? Some sort of white noise? But, come on, it's me. I'm not.. going to do anything weird."

She shifts slightly in her seat. "Okay. Um. Tonight. Let's.. give it a shot."

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Gude-Willie Waught 2

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31st December

07:11 GMT -5

Red Tornado's already waiting for us when Zatanna, Kaldur and I walk into the training area. Lantern Morrow isn't with him. He's probably still working on the armour.. or maybe that alternate android body Tornado wanted. Since I took control of him I've seen him create simple construct tools but I'm not sure if he has the full range of Lantern abilities. The only ability I remember Construct-Lanterns having in the comic was assimilation and I.. don't.. really think I want to test that. No one else is here yet, Kon and M'gann being.. together.. somewhere, and everyone else went home yesterday. Surprised Robin isn't here yet though.

The three of us come to a halt at 'lecture distance', Kaldur slightly ahead. "Red Tornado, do you know why Batman has asked us to assemble?" Really thought we'd got him out of the habit of dropping things on us with no notice. Ah well.

"No. I spent last night working with my father. I am as much 'in the dark' as you are."

"Howwww.. is he.. doing..?"

A slight creak as he turns his head in my direction. "I do not have a good baseline from which to assess his behavior. He is different from the android we encountered in Yellowstone Park but I do not know whether that is a consequence of his greater age and experience or the 'assimilation' effect."

"Have you told Danni?"

"Yes, as well as our elder brother. She intends to stop by later. Jim suggested that we throw him into the sun."

"That would just cause him to respawn... Not the point."

"Recognised, Kid Flash, B zero three."

Wallace walks out of the Zeta Tube in full costume. "Hey guys. Know why Batman-?" The three of us shake out heads. "Rob here yet? He's usually-."

A sudden wind rockets out of one of the corridors and blasts outwards across the room! I close my eyes for a moment on instinct, then open them to see a cheerful looking Robert standing at the epicentre of the blast. "Yes! Ride the Wind! Finally cracked it!" He beams at me. "Mate, this sword is amazing!"

"Oh great, another guy who's faster than me."

Zatanna smiles. "You're not at all bothered by the fact that the Sword doesn't consider you worthy of using it?"

He shrugs. "What does a dead Viking know about it?"

"Recognised, Robin, B zero one."

Robin walks out of the tube slowly, head tilted slightly down as Wallace waves to his friend. "Hey Rob! What happened, Catwoman turn you down again?"

"Batman didn't come home last night."

Wallace thinks for a moment, then shrugs. "He's a busy guy."

"I know, and it's not the first time. He just usually calls if he's on an all-nighter."

Robert looks at me and raises his eyebrows. "Son." He nods in understanding.

"Well, he called us all here so he's not hurt or anything."

"I know, it's just not like him not to follow-."

"Recognised, Rocket, B one one." / "Recognised, Superboy, B zero four, Miss Martian, B zero five, Wolf C zero three."

Don't think I've seen both tubes activating at once before. Hadn't actually realised that Kon and M'gann had left the mountain. Kon tightens his grip on the lead as Wolf sees us and tries pulling forwards. M'gann holds up a bag. "Who wants donuts?"

"Depends what sort."

Wallace is already moving towards her. "I'll have his."

M'gann opens the bag and holds it out towards Wallace. "Fried rings, still hot, sugar and no frosting."

"Thank you." I send a construct to pick one out of the bag and bring it over. "It's the only way to eat them."

"Mrut a fostin-" Wallace swallows his first mouthful. "-the best bit!"

I narrow my eyes. "Heathen."

Raquel takes a donut from the proffered bag and then takes another look around. "No Artemis yet?"

Kaldur shakes his head. "I am sure that she will be-."

"Recognised, Batman, zero two."

Raquel, Kon and M'gann scurry to get into the line up, M'gann concealing the donut bag behind her back while shifting her skin back to green and her clothing back into her team uniform. I glow orange for a moment as my new light power armour materialises around me. Obvious, really; the ring is perfectly capable of imputing data on my movements to the armour systems. It just didn't occur to me until Zatanna pointed it out over breakfast. The armour doesn't have enough bulk for me to go the Alan-in-Kingdom-Come route of physically integrating my personal lantern, but it's still bloody tough and I got a smile out of Zatanna by using the muscles in the legs to bounce off the floor like it was a trampoline. Super strength might be less adaptable than a power ring but it's still bloody good fun. The armour even has a helmet and gauntlets I don't mind wearing, though I leave the helmet off for now.

Those of my team mates who haven't seen the armour yet give me a curious look but our attention is soon turned towards Batman. He looks us over to make sure he has our attention and his eyes stop on me for a moment. Have I got some sugar on my..? Ring says no. Probably the armour. Guess he wasn't expecting results this quickly. He… Uuh. Odd. His usual green/yellow aura looks a little different today. Not sure why, he's all there.

Oh whaw. Is he hung over? That would be hilarious.

"Team, I'm afraid I have some unfortunate news. Last night I was able to locate the mole in our organization who has been passing information to our enemies."

NONONO! There is no fricking mole! I can't really sag inside this armour but I give it a try anyway. I was so sure there was nothing to that.

Wallace swallows the last of his donut. "So who was it? My money was on Oh El."

"Thanks, Wallace." Wait. Artemis isn't here. He doesn't think she was-?

A holoscreen appears next to him with an image of Red Arrow on it. "The mole was Red Arrow."

"Roy?" / "No way!"

Robin and Wallace are most shocked. Aside from Kaldur the rest of us didn't really know him that well and he's not all that expressive. I don't know; Red Arrow seemed alright to me. Still, I never put him through the same sort of background checking that I did everyone else. I suppose it's.. possible. Ring, location of… Oh, of course he's blocking it.

"Batman, that cannot be." It's subtle, but having spent as long around him as I can I can pick up the distress in Kaldur's voice. "He was Green Arrow's protégé, we have all known him for years."

"The Roy Harper you've known is a creation of Cadmus, cloned three years ago from material taken from the original." A new image appears alongside that of Red Arrow, showing him in his old what the fuck is that hat? Why would anyone go out dressed like that? "The real Speedy was abducted shortly after becoming Green Arrow's sidekick. The clone was pre-programmed with a drive to join the Justice League, which was why he was so angry over any delays to his admission and why he refused to join the team. This Roy Harper had no idea he was a clone or a traitor and his subconscious programming drove him to become League-worthy. So he struck out on his own, as Red Arrow."

"When he was finally admitted his secondary programming kicked in, and he attempted to betray the League to Vandal Savage. Fortunately, I had already deduced that Red Arrow was a clone. We were prepared." Another screen, this time showing Savage. League versus pointy stick launcher guy and caveman man? Sounds like a stomp. "Savage is in custody but Red Arrow was able to escape." How the heck did he manage that? And what exactly would he have given Savage that he couldn't have done a month ago? "He is currently still at large."

Kon rubs the back of his head with his right hand. "If you guys hadn't rescued me from Cadmus…"

"What..? What happened to the real Roy?" Robin isn't even bothering to disguise how shocked he is. Actually, that's a bit harsh of him. The only Roy he knew was the clone version. He shouldn't just dismiss him because he's a clone.

"We don't know. He isn't at Cadmus." How many times has the League said that about someone? I'll get hold of Dubbilex once Batman's left. "We have to face the possibility that the real Roy Harper.. is dead."

I'm not assuming anything at this point, though from the slumping postures of Kaldur, Wallace and Robin I think they're convinced that Batman is right. Kaldur recovers fastest. "The clone Roy. The team will find him."

"Negative. Red Arrow's a member of the Justice League now." 'Cause that worked out so well last time he said it. "Leave him to us." He straightens slightly. "I'm needed on the Watchtower. Red Tornado-" He pats him on the back. "-stay with the kids."

Since when does Batman pat people on the back?

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Gude-Willie Waught 3

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31st December

07:14 GMT -5

I'm not quite sure where it all turned around. Yesterday we beat up a small group of Apokoliptian soldiers and so guaranteed Earth's freedom from Apokoliptian influence. Other than me, obviously. A little later I got the hush tube working and got confirmation on the identities of the members of the Light. Their offer.. I don't know. Yes, I was prepared to consider it. Maybe even accept it, depending on exactly what it entailed. The barrier to entry was so high that I didn't think that I needed to make a decision immediately. And then…

Mister Tawny detects my mood and nudges the side of my right leg with his head. I reach down and scratch the top of his head. Then it all turned to shit. Keeping Jade and that side of things separate worked as long as they were separate. Batman knowing was fine, he can keep secrets and understood the value of my work. Sure, I think he thought I was going to hand Jade over to the authorities at the end but apart from that there wasn't a problem. Artemis knowing was fine because she was even more committed to secrecy than I was. My other team mates… They know I let Jade go the first time we met. That in itself would put me into the doghouse, even with Batman signing off on the whole thing. Pointing out to Artemis that Paula almost certainly committed other crimes… What the hell was I thinking?

No, I know what I was thinking. I was thinking 'this is obviously true, why are we talking about this'. I was thinking 'utilitarian calculations do cause people to do horrible things without being wrong, hasn't everyone studied philosophy?'. Thing is, I can't even… I wasn't angry. It wasn't anger. I guess when you're thirty relating to teenagers isn't an easy thing to do. 'Stone cold', Wallace said. Yes. Rational, utilitarian and stone cold. None of them could really argue the logical justification for killing Klarion but they were clearly discomforted by how naturally the decision comes to me. Even the ones who agreed with me…

I've marked myself out as something other. Something far more alien than Kon or Match or M'gann. For the first time since I joined the team I'm beginning to think that maybe this isn't the right place for me.

I'm a little late for Batman's morning powwow but I don't really want to.. interact with my team mates yet. Let things calm down a bit first, speak to Batman about the whole situation in private if possible -though it probably won't be- and then decide my next step. Maybe we could request a resolution from the Security Council authorising lethal force? I could just take that straight to the Chinese but this is the last time to cause further alienation if I have any intent of remaining here.

Ahead of me the team is gathered opposite Batman and Red Tornado and I head over to fall in behind them. This isn't the best time for another mission.

Batman makes brief eye contact with me. "However you feel about the situation, Grayven has not been passing information to the Light. The mole was Red Arrow." Batman calls up a holoscreen with an image of Moody Arrow on it. What, did he think we'd have forgotten what he looks like? And… Is Batman wearing a different cape or something? He looks… different, somehow.

"Roy?" / "No way!"

Richard and Wallace are most shocked. I'm… Not sure I credit it myself. Then again, there're any number of mind control techniques which could have been applied to him. But there's something else here, some undercurrent of events that's trying to make itself known to me. An itch right in the godhood.

"Batman, that cannot be." Kaldur makes a gesture of appeal. "He was Green Arrow's protégé, we have all known him for years."

"Unfortunately, the Roy Harper we have known for the last three years is another Project Cadmus clone." A new holoscreen shows an image of the Cadmus building but I don't bother looking at it. The feeling is there again, like there's something… Something wrong with Red Tornado as well.

"We've learned that the real Speedy was abducted and replaced immediately after becoming Green Arrow's sidekick."

Ring, show me his desires.

"The clone was pre-programmed with a drive to join the Justice League, which was why he was so angry over any delays to his admission and why he refused to join the team."

By your command.

"This Roy Harper had no idea he was a clone or a traitor and his subconscious programming drove him to become League-worthy."

Still there, still the same, but there's something curtailing them.

"So he struck out on his own, as Red Arrow. When he was finally admitted his secondary programming kicked in, and he attempted to betray the League to Vandal Savage. Fortunately, I had already deduced that Red Arrow was a clone. We were prepared."

Father Box, any ideas?

Ploong.

Well of course they do but this is just about the worst possible time for me to ask them to pick a side between myself and Batman, even if he couldn't give me orders backed by Gaea. Nothing for it.

"Sir, I'm sorry to interrupt but, are you feeling alright?" "Zatanna, Tao. Are you feeling.. something strange about-."

"Yes!" Zatanna gets a few puzzled looks, then realises what she's done. "Because.. you.. can't be too careful. I mean, if he's had access to League facilities for this long he could have planted some sort of poison or something." "There's some sort of magic working on them both. And from the way my order magic detection spell reacted, I'd say it was chaotic."

Batman regards her levelly for a moment. "Finding Red Arrow is the League's top priority. We'll know more about what he was planning-" I peer more closely at him. There, at the base of his skull. Desires not his own. "-once we've caught and interrogated him."

"Still sir, since I'm sure you're going to call it a League matter and tell us to butt out, could this team not be usefully employed in that capacity?" "Tao, on his neck. Do you see it?"

Tao smiles and slides his bow off his shoulder as if to put it aside. "I have no other plans for today." "I see it. Orders?"

I think Batman realises that something's off, but somebody didn't want to become a god-detective. "I.. appreciate your willingness to assist, but-."

I grin. "No trouble sir." "When I say 'now', Zatanna, paralyse them. Tao, put an arrow through it without otherwise harming them. Nod if you understand."

Tao and Zatanna both give tiny nods. Batman frowns. "That won't be necessary. The League-."

"Now."

Zatanna gestures upwards with both hands and giant golden triquetra appear around Batman and Red Tornado, pinning them in place. Tao has the Bow of Yi up and pointed at Batman, arrow already leaving his string before Robin can finish turning around to ask what we're doing. Red Tornado reacts as fast as he can think, winds already blowing around his arms and legs as my filament strikes the centre of his chest and bores into his responsometer, disconnecting it from his other systems. Fast, but not as fast as a New God. A split second later a second arrow flies through his neck, passing through his body but hitting something on the way through. Both Batman and Red Tornado loll in place, animating force temporarily removed.

"What the hell are you doing!"

Richard is too incensed to even reach for his weapons. Kaldur has his water bearers up and Artemis has an arrow on string. One of my x-ionised ones, I note. Match, Kon and Miss Martian are hesitating to act against us and Miss Ervin looks shell shocked. Wallace is right on the edge of dashing at me, and if he does the others will follow. Need to deescalate, but I'm shit at that.

"They were being controlled." Zatanna lowers Batman and Tornado to the ground and holds out her right hand. "Worra ylf ot ym dnah."

One of Tao's arrows is jerked out of the far wall and flies over to her. She takes hold of it around the shaft and holds it out to Richard.

One of the Starro things is speared on the point.

Richard takes his eyes off me to look at what Zatanna is trying to show him and his eyes widen. "No." The room's still tense but the rage isn't focused on the three of us anymore.

"Recognised, Captain Atom, one two, Plastic Man, one eight."

We turn and brace ourselves as the zeta tube lights up.

Things are about to get filthy.

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Gude-Willie Waught 4

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31st December

07:16 GMT -5

Rob pokes me in the chest. "When'd you get power armour?"

I'm sure that as soon as we can come up with a convincing excuse we'll be ducking out of Red Tornado's sight in order to go after Mister Harper. I've even prepared a program which will cause the mountain's internal recording equipment to see us as still being here and automatically 'move' away from anyone who comes to find us.

"Truggs' people used it, so I copied it."

"Yeah, but that was yesterday. You can really just.. copy stuff?"

"As long as it doesn't have a supernatural component, yes."

Artemis smiles at me. "When do the rest of us get a suit?"

"Uhh, to be honest, I don't think you or Robin would get anything out of it. I mean, I can make you a suit but you're already stronger than it is." Oh, might as well be me this time. "But, Raquel, Zatanna? If you want a version for you we could.. head to the workshop and get you measured up?"

"I don't-" Raquel realises that everyone's staring at her. A half second passes and then I think she gets it. "-think.. there's.. any reason not to."

"We may as well all go." Wallace has acquired an extra donut from somewhere. "Not like we had anything planned." Hoping that Red Tornado will have an attack of amnesia and so decide not to follow us -or will remember and decide to just give us space to do our thing- the entire team begin moving in the direction of the workshop. Wallace makes an expression of distaste. "Wait a sec. Why aren't I getting offered power armor?"

"The motion control systems need to learn how you move so they don't rip your arms and legs off. You can try, but I think you'd just be too fast for its processor to keep up with you."

"Huh. Makes sense."

"I will accompany you."

We're looking away from Tornado as he says it, which is why he doesn't see me wince. Our eyes flick across each others faces and Kaldur gets nominated. He turns back. "We would not wish to call you away from your father."

Red Tornado stops still for a moment, then turns and looks up towards the iris in the ceiling. Is he going to-? No. He turns back to us. "My father cannot escape." Eh? Well, probably could actually, but why is he-? "I wish to ensure that there is no repeat of what happened during my disappearance."

Oh well. One of him, ten of us. We can split up-. "Paul, you put those cookery books in the kitchen, right?"

Quick work there M'gann. "Yes, most of them. What exactly were you-? Oh, hello Teekl."

My cat walks out of the passageway out of the training area which we were heading towards. As I crouch down and hold out my right hand she makes eye contact with me, leaning forwards to sniff in my direction. "Teekl smell."

And that's the problem with a talking cat, the phrasing could mean just about anything. Teekl herself has an unpleasant smell? She doesn't, not in the literal sense. Maybe it's a metaphorical smell? Was she just commenting on the fact that she was sniffing in case we didn't notice? Does she smell something in particular? I wiggle my outstretched fingers. "And what does Teekl smell?"

"Teekl smell…" She looks around our group, an almost.. puzzled expression on her feline face. Not seeing whatever she's looking for she walks forwards and briefly nuzzles my hand.

"That animal should not be wandering freely."

Robin looks as puzzled as I feel. "Ah, Tornado? The cave doesn't have a 'no pets' policy."

Teekl's ears orientate on Tornado's voice and her fur begins to stand on end. What's setting her off?

"I am implementing one."

I'm thrown back as Teekl expands to the size of a Liger and lunges through my team mates! Rob and Zatanna dodge out of the way as she leaps at Tornado! Swirling winds envelope his legs as he tries to get out of the way but he's too slow! She slams into his chest and they both go flying out of control across the room, propelled by his air blast. What the hell?! An air blast from his hands lifts her rear off him but her claws have dug into his shoulders, anchoring her in place as she bites down on his neck!

Shit! Shit! "Teekl, stop! Bad cat!" I fly across the room, a construct grabber arm forming as I exert my control to compel her to shrink back to her normal size. Red Tornado lies motionless on the ground, her claw rents clearly visible in his shoulders as the grabber construct pulls her off him by the scruff of her neck. "Teekl, what the hell..?"

Then I see the thing in her mouth and note the lack of tooth marks on Red Tornado. She's holding a piece of Starro-tech. She stares at me for a moment before spitting it out. "Teekl smell NastyBad Klarion."

I create a new grabber to hold the Starro-tech up for my team mates to see and take hold of Teekl myself, laying her along my left arm and stroking her with my right. "Good cat. Good decision."

She cranes her head back to get a more forceful head scratch. "Teekl know Teekl wonderful. Teekl wonderful and Agent lucky to have her."

"That's Starro-tech." Robin's looking closely at the small piece of arcanotechnologically altered flesh. "How'd Teekl get hold of it?"

Teekl turns her head to stare at him. "Teekl wonderful, intelligent, sleek and wonderful. She explain to dumb boy kitten, who is far less wonderful."

Rob grins. "You're getting slagged off by a talking cat."

"Heeeey." I tap her on the head. "Be nice."

"NastyBad Klarion control wind golem with squid lump. Teekl smell Klarion through squid lump, bite out of wind golem. You may now worship Teekl."

Kaldur hurries over to take a closer look at Red Tornado. "These injuries are superficial. He should not be unconscious."

Robin frowns. "But Red Tornado's been here all night. He went up to his room almost as soon as we got back yesterday, the Starro-tech went with Batman and the others." He looks at me and the other lifers. "Has anyone else been here?"

Zatanna shakes her head. "No, no one."

Ring, internal monitoring? "Internal recording says no, automated defences say no, external access says no, Zeta Tubes say you guys and Batman were the only ones.. who..." From the looks on their faces and on mine I think we all get it at the same time. "Teekl, exactly where on Red Tornado did you find it?" She looks up at me and shares the idea. The centre of his back. "Right where Batman-."

"Batman called us 'kids'. He never does that." Robin has his computer up, trying to scan the Starro-tech. "I just thought maybe he was.. tired or something, but if someone was controlling him..."

"They weren't familiar enough with his speech patterns or lexicon. And if they got Batman…"

Kaldur nods. "Then it is likely that the rest of the League has fallen as well."

"But not Roy." Wallace grasps for the cloud's silver lining. "If they got him too they wouldn't be trying to chase him down."

Raquel points at the Starro-tech thing. "If he was being controlled, won't Klarion know he's been disconnected?"

Shit. "Everyone got their Spell Eaters?" Everyone except Rob nods. Ring, shut down the zeta tubes.

Compliance.

"I just turned off the mountain's Zeta Tubes to external access. We don't have to worry about anyone else coming in." I think for a moment. "Not that that will stop the Flash running across the country at the speed of light and Starroing everyone anyway. Kaldur, I think we need to leave. Now."

"I think that you are right."

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Gude-Willie Waught 5

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31st December

07:18 GMT -5

Orange construct armour appears around my team mates and Mister Tawny, Captain Adams' green..? Yes, kryptonite blasts, hitting both Kon and Match in the chests and being absorbed by the construct armour as Mister O'Brian lunges at us, expanding as he comes. What are their weaknesses?

Ah, yes. **Plastic Man, weaknesses, extreme cold.** An orange freeze ray appears in front of me and fires, hitting him on the left calf. The area struck solidifies as the device which is usually used to tackle out of control fires reduces the vibration of the molecules in the target area to nearly nothing. O'Brian stumbles but turns it into a roll and then bounces at us, fists swelling. M'gann gestures and he's yanked backwards into the air as Kon flies at Adams for a full speed punch to the head. I retarget the freeze ray at O'Brian's chest and solidify more of him.

Adams is knocked back by Kon's punch but doesn't appear to be hurt. He goes to counter only for Match to grab his arm. **Archer! Shoot him!**

Tao has an arrow on string but he's hesitating. **I cannot see his body clearly!**

**Captain Atom, weakness-** I draw my sword. **-x-ionised weaponry.** Hard to judge precisely, but if I'm careful about cutting away BWFG!

Foreign body detected.

My construct armour cracks in a dozen places as a red blur zooms around the room, striking faster than I can follow! Just in the corner of my right eye I can see a Starro-thing starting to phase through my face plate! **Flash-!**

**Aagh!** / **Ah!** / **Uncle Barry!**

Ring, infrasound, maximum intensity!

By your command.

One of the Starro-thing's tentacles is through my construct armour. Ring, assimilate the bloody thing!

Tiny filaments attach themselves to it from both the inside and outside of the armour, pulling it away from me. Identity Theft in progress. Progress negligible.

Odd, but as long as it isn't coming at me any more I'll live with it. Mister Allen appears to have gone face first into a wall when my infrasound took his sense of balance, my armour constructs protecting everyone else. I lost my freeze ray construct when he attacked and similarly M'gann lost hold of O'Brian. Kon and Match are playing pass the parcel with Adams, who suddenly evades, surging towards the ceiling and firing a concentrated blast at Zatanna!

"Esrever kcatta!"

The blast swings around just before it hits her and smacks Adams into the far wall.

**Everyone, stand down.** Kaldur's relaxed posture is completely at odds with our situation and-. Yes, the aura's back. **The League probably believe that we are infected-**

**Tao, Kal-.**

The arrow passes through Kaldur's chest and he collapses to the floor. Another hits Mister Allen in the left shoulder and I see the Starro-tech piece impaled in the ground next to him. Miss Ervin forms a shield around the still struggling Mister O'Brian to contain him as Adams pushes himself off the wall only to be hit by another arrow. A golden glowing slash opens along his cheek as Artemis' x-ionised arrow slices through his dilustel hide. **Tao, any good?**

**No, I cannot-.**

"Niatpac Mota, nruter ot ruoy Namuh mrof!"

A burst of golden light and his Captain Atom form is replaced by that of his Cameron Scott form, wearing a blue business suit. His eyes go wide as he falls towards the floor. "Don't shoot, I'm-!" Tao's arrow flies through his head, spearing the Starro piece just before he hits the ground hard.

Robin and Wallace are checking on their respective mentors as O'Brian presses his bizarrely distorted face up against Miss Ervin's barrier. Right, Flash could have just run through the walls but there's no sense leaving a back door for anyone else. Ring, shut down hangar Zeta Tube.

By your command.

Miss Ervin looks back at me as Tao lines up for another shot. **Someone wanna tell me what the heck is going on?**

**Someone used the Starro-tech we handed over yesterday to mind control the Justice League. Tao, Zatanna and myself could feel it and Tao can shoot the devices out of their bodies.**

**We got the whole Justice League coming after us?!**

I take a quick look around but the only strange presence I can feel is from O'Brian and the Starro-tech being held in my filaments. In Mister Allen's place I'd have covered the whole team in those things, not just myself and Kaldur. Do they have a limited supply? No way to know at present.

Three golden triquetra appear around the shield containing Mister O'Brian. **Nabu really wanted to teach Dad how to fight chaos magic. Since these things definitely use it…** "Tcafetra fo Soahc, eb edamnu!" Brilliant beams of golden light flare from the triquetra, passing through the force field and into O'Brian. He shudders for a moment and then goes still. I concentrate but I can't feel the alien presence from him any longer.

I smile. All hostiles eliminated. **Nicely done, oh Lady of Order.** Ring, assimilation progress?

No significant progress has occurred.

Very odd. Usually it either flat out doesn't work or there's at least some progress. I got Nabu faster than this. I intensify the construct holding the last surviving piece and float it over to Zatanna. She holds out her right hand and another triquetra forms as her eyes glow with golden light. "Wohs em tahw siht si dna woh ti skrow."

Wallace finishes checking that Mister Allen didn't break his neck when he hit the wall and then stands up. **So, wait: does this mean that Roy's in the clear?**

Ring, location of Roy Harper. Thank you. Father Box, connect to the hush tube.

Ploong.

**Because if the League were all infected-.**

"Why don't we just ask him?" I stick my right arm through the invisible portal, wrap it around Mister Harper's chest and pull him through.

"Huh?!" He looks back, sees me and brings the end of his bow around to strike my face.

I treat the attack with the contempt it deserves. "Mister Harper, we're not affected. And from the feel of things-" He drives his right elbow into my side. I continue to ignore it. "-you aren't either. We could really use more information on how the Starro-tech-."

He stills, looking around the room. Batman, Red Tornado, Plastic Man, The Flash, Kaldur and some guy in a suit lie on the floor while everyone in the team is covered in glowing orange armour. "How do I know you're not infected?"

I raise my left eyebrow. "You're still breathing, pointy stick launcher guy."

I move my right arm off him and he spins away, making sure that he can keep all of us in his field of vision and that his back has a wall behind it. His eyes narrow slightly. "That certainly sounded like a Grayven thing to say."

Zatanna's eyes dim. "It's Klarion. These things are full of his chaos magic. Etaropave." The Starro-tech disappears in a puff of golden-red smoke.

Mister Harper shakes his head. "I didn't see Klarion on the Watchtower, just Savage."

I nod. The caveman tribal alpha has to lead from the front. It appears that he was the link to Klarion as well as to Apokolips. Ring, scan the Watchtower.

Unable to comply.

Darn it. That's the second occasion, and it's far more critical now.

Robin stands up, having checked Batman's health, disconnected his belt and removed several concealed weapons. "We need a plan for getting rid of them and freeing the League. Red Arrow, tell us exactly what happened."

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Gude-Willie Waught 6

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31st December

07:20 GMT -5

Kaldur turns to me. "Orange Lantern, Kid Flash, get to the armory. We will need our equipment and you will need your lantern."

Wallace dashes off as I nod. Leaving the Ophidian where Klarion can get her would be a suicidally bad idea. I see Robin start interfacing with the zeta tube as I transition to the fortified vault of the armoury, arriving just behind Wallace as he inputs his entry code. I already cut off external access, what's he..? Oh, good idea. The door jerks as the lock disengages and then its two sides start to swing outwards, a design feature which makes it hard to get in just by hitting it. External access may be cut off but they can still travel between the training area zeta tubes and the ones in the hangar. That will be quicker than dashing for the lift and then riding it down. The ring shows me Kon picking up the recumbent Red Tornado as they disappear. I transition past the still opening outer door to the inner door and input my code. Curse me for designing a vault I couldn't easily break into!

Wallace is at my side a heartbeat later. The outer door has to close before the inner one will open. I might be able to blast through but the walls are x-ionised and ridiculously strong. Probably better to wait. Potential threats? Mister Allen can run in, Mister J'onzz can fly through the walls, Nabu can teleport in… Probably. I haven't thought to check how much the geomantic wards I placed throughout the mountain's structure have powered up. Enough to stop him? Wouldn't have thought so. Enough to buy us the couple of minutes we'll need? Maybe. Of course, Klarion might not need to use them. I've seen him pull off long ranged teleports twice now. Can Accomplished Perfect Physician teleport? I've seen his Great Ten file but it isn't as if he had a good motive for being completely honest with them.

Outer door fully closed the inner door begins to open. I don't bother waiting for it and transition us both past as soon as there's a crack big enough. Right, what do we need? I grab Kon's armour and Kaldur's Ocean Master gear. Can't transition with either of them, can't subspace them, going to be a nuisance. "Kid Flash, can you carry these?"

He gives me a look of incredulity. "Ah, no? Do I look like Superboy?" I start grabbing the stuff I made for Robin and Artemis and shoving it into subspace. "Kaldur's stuff maybe."

"Right." I strip Kaldur's armour from its stand. The midnight blue bodysuit is actually fairly flexible and can be folded but the bracers, greaves, helmet and combined shoulder and chest piece are all solid and inflexible. I make their combined volume as small as I can before taking a holdall out of subspace and shoving them inside. "Here."

He slings it over his right shoulder and catches Neptune's Trident as I pass it to him. Kon's Nth metal armour is not going to be fun to carry but there's no way I'm leaving it here. The pieces actively try to repel my constructs so I shove them into a small crate and close the lid. Okay, don't need to take mundane body armour, I've already got spares in subspace and the design isn't secret. Flight belts go into subspace. Anything else?

**Kid Flash, Orange Lantern.** Kaldur? **Be advised that we are under attack.**

Nothing else urgent enough to wait for. I shove the crate containing Kon's armour through the inner door and input my code into the outer as Wallace dashes through after me.

**Anyone we know?**

**Icon, the Physician and.. Aquaman.**

Inner closes and outer starts to open. "Kid Flash, head to the Zeta tube and get down there. I'll grab my lantern and meet you down there."

"Right." He crouches slightly, preparing to sprint away.

Hang on a minute. I close my eyes for a moment. Teekl's going after Mister Yao as she doesn't have any bones he can shatter and Fatty's still in the ring but Morrow's in Tornado's room working on the android. I don't really like compelling any of them like this, but needs must. I reach out mentally towards him. Doctor Morrow, we're evacuating. Head to the Zeta tube and then to the Bio-Ship. His point of view changes slightly as he raises his head before walking in the direction of the stairway down to the training room floor. No no no. Doctor Morrow, you can fly. Speed up a bit please. His view shifts again as he nods and accelerates.

In front of me the door has opened sufficiently and Wallace heads through it in a blur. I have to wait a moment longer than him as I'm quite a bit broader. I dump the crate containing the armour on the far side of the outer door and transition into my room, reaching out to the apparently empty space where I left it as I materialise. My lantern emerges from its hidey-hole as the fingers of my right hand close around its handle and immediately I feel the Ophidian's awareness surrounding mine. I open my thoughts to her as I transition us back to the armour.

"Recognised, Kid Flash, B zero three."

"Foul and vile deceit! None may take our precious ones from us! They are not his to play with!"

"Recognised, Thomas Morrow, A two one."

I pick up the crate and have the ring fly us along the programmed route to the zeta tube. "Thank you for the support." No idea why the ring has such trouble with metamaterials. Enchanted or innately magical materials, sure, they don't scan quite right so clearly something light-disrupting is going on there. But Nth metal is far more mundane. I made it by squeezing lead. Right, construct armour up and activate.

"Recognised, Orange Lantern, B zero six."

A stuttering blast of black and red light radiates outwards from Mister Yao's mouth for a moment before Teekl bites into his throat. Even as she does so her body seems to distort and twist, splitting up into not looking at that now! A second later she falls out of the ring and flies at him again. A strange sound comes from Fei's mouth and his wounds begin to fade. The internal defence systems appear to have deployed across the room but Icon's staying airborne out of their effective range and Mister Yao's either blocking them or ignoring them. King Orin's unconscious and paralysed under water -of course he could come in under water!- while in midair Icon tries to throw off Kon with little success. Looks like he hasn't been training against people his own strength either.

"Noci esol lla ecnatsiser ot yhtapelet!"

Icon jerks in the air and Kon throws himself free before he falls towards the water's surface. Before he crashes down he's jerked over land and dumped down next to a paralysis field generator. Should keep him out of the game.

A flash bang hits Mister Yao in the chest and detonates as I fly at full speed for the Bio-Ship. I throw the crate at Kon, who catches it and sprints into the Ship as Robin looks around. **Oh El, the doors are jammed!**

**On it, Robin.** Stuck due to physical damage? Ring, start scanning and deploy Fatty. Fatty, absorb any of that energy Physician puts out.

"Yay!"

The doors aren't just jammed, they've been partially transmuted. The parts they need to respond to instructions just aren't there anymore. A railgun construct forms alongside me. Crumbler rounds, maximum radius. The first gouges a chunk out without breaching. Why did I think x-ionising everything was a good idea! Second one.. does nothing? Some sort of force field? Physician's power uses sound to alter-. Right, ring, nullify sound in the target area and try again. A hum and another crumbler round fires, this time causing a tiny breach. Big enough for me!

**Orange Lantern, can you transfer the Bio-Ship-**

The Bio-Ship disappears in a flicker of orange. Robin, Teekl and Fatty are still in here and I transfer myself down to the landing platform. Teekl, Fatty, pull back! I form a sonic cannon in front of myself and fire it at the Physician. No effect; the sound appears to.. just.. stop a metre in front of him. He looks up past us and sees that the Bio-Ship's gone, then opens his mouth a little wider. I raise a barricade construct as that weird red/black light reappears, only for Fatty to roll into its path and open his mouth. I see the stuff roil within him as he expands like a balloon. Um, ring, sound nullification on the Physician and then shockcrown him. The filaments go around him to each side and lunge forwards only to break on some sort of force field. Hell with it. I redirect the filaments to Fatty, stick my right arm around Teekl and attach another filament to Robin. Transition.

We're in the sky above Happy Harbour, the Bio-Ship in camouflage mode just below us. Rear door's open so with another transition we're inside and our team mates look around as we drop to the floor. "Close the door and get us the hell-" A tear opens in the universe and the Physician steps through! Before he can do anything I hit him in the head with the most intense infrasound I can before shoving him out the back of the Bio-Ship with a construct claw. "-out of here. Zatanna, can you-?"

"Ah-ah… On.. eno nac tceted su!"

Hah. I slump back against the Bio-Ship's interior wall. Well. That's a relief.

Next to me Fatty grasps at his swollen belly. "OOoooooOOO." His head nods back and forwards in a motion reminiscent of someone about to retch. But he can't-. Oh yes he can! His mouth bulges wide, far wider than it's normally capable of doing, and the mass in his stomach heaves upwards and out! A large orange mass heaves onto the Bio-Ship's floor and.. picks itself up? The second orange Praexis Demon shakes its head as Fatty wipes his mouth, his stomach settling back down to its normal dimensions. Wallace, Kon and Zatanna all move to cover their mouths with their hands.

So that's how Praexis Demons reproduce.

I could have lived a long and happy life without knowing that.

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Gude-Willie Waught 7

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31st December

07:22 GMT -5

"I…" He breathes out, and both tension and strength seem to flow out of him. "I was a sleeper agent, pre-programmed to infiltrate the League. I think.. the League of Shadows’ Sensei was my handler. He had a key phrase, 'broken arrow', that could shut me down. Put me in a hypnotic state so they could steal secrets for their superiors."

I nod. "The Light." **Miss Martian?**

Her right hand goes to her temple and her eyes glow. **It's gone. I can't feel any more hidden commands.**

"Or incorporate further programming. I'd then carry out all orders subconsciously, completely unaware of what drove me." He looks at me. "I think one of those orders was to gather whatever intel I could on you."

"I am fascinating."

"It wasn't just a social enquiry. I think they were scared that you'd ruin things for them."

"And here I thought you were shadowing me due to my irresistible sexual magnetism." The disgusted expression he makes is the most normal thing I've seen him do since I grabbed him.

"Batman said you were a Cadmus clone." Kon glances at Match. "Like us."

Mister Harper sags even further. "That explains it."

Wallace tilts his head to the side. "Explains what?"

"I still couldn't remember how they first got hold of me. But if everything I think I remember was implanted in my head by the G-Gnomes…"

Ring, detailed scan.

Genomorph genetic components detected.

"The ring confirms Genomorph genetic markers." I smirk. "Either that or one of your ancestors was into-." Glares all round. "Okay, not the time."

Richard steps forwards. "What happened on the Watchtower? And how come you're not under their control any more?"

"As a member of the Justice League I had access to the alien biotech you took from Riddler. When all of the League were assembled in one place, my programming… It was like being a half-asleep passenger in my own body. I just walked up to each League member in turn and infected them."

"Savage was able to make it work on five different species?"

I shrug. "In the wild Star Conquerors can mentally dominate anything with a mind. Not sure how it worked on a robot…" Ring, scan Red Tornado for… Oh, wonderful.

Zatanna nods. "Chaos magic could easily blur the distinction between organic and inorganic."

"And bloody nanotechnology. There's some inert nanoprobes still inside Red Tornado. Purging."

"Once everyone was under Savage's control I added him to the Watchtower's Zeta tube system as a guest and sent him a signal. He had the League kneel before him and just strolled in." Mister Harper shakes his head dejectedly. "That's when I got away. Apparently they didn't program me to infect myself. When I fulfilled my mission's last parameter my mind began to clear. I'm sure Savage planned to Starro-tech me, but he paused to… Bask. I escaped through the Zeta tube." Another sigh. "I've been dodging League members ever since."

Wallace walks up to him and puts his right hand on his left shoulder. "Hey. You're with friends now. We totally got this."

Miss Ervin shakes her head. "No, we don't got this. Savage has the League, Klarion and mind control squids. I read the report on what happened last time you guys fought Klarion." I glance at the Zeta tubes. No further attack appears to be forthcoming, so… The construct armour around my team mates evaporates. "We need a plan-."

"Ah!" / "Ugh!"

Kon and Match both wince in pain. Why, what-? No. Immediately the armour reappears around both of them and a moment later they've recovered. Match shakes his head. "What was that? It felt like my skin was on fire!"

"Probably residual Kryptonite radiation." Richard frowns. "That doesn't make sense either. Captain Atom can't generate different forms of radiation!"

"Hey, uh…" Match picks up something from near where Captain Adams fell. "Is this important?"

I'm momentarily nonplussed by the sight of a Kryptonian holding what appears to be… Yes, that's Kryptonite. In fact, I think I recognise that particular piece. From the slight widening of Richard's eyes I'm going to guess that he does as well. "If Captain Atom was focusing his energy through the Kryptonite crystal… But if he had that…" That's Batman's Kryptonite. When I wanted to scan some his cave was the first place I looked.

"Vandal Savage has access to the League's confiscated weapons and technologies." We all look around as Batman gingerly pushes himself up. "And most likely our database and memories as well. As of yesterday, none of our secret identities are secure."

"Batman!" Richard rushes to his side but Batman holds up his right hand to ward him off.

"I'm alright, Robin. Status of the team?"

"Aqualad got Starroed. Aside from that, we're all good."

Batman tries to rise, but stumbles and goes back to sitting. "Is the mountain secure?"

M'gann's eyes glow. "The only minds I can feel are in this room."

Double check. "Ring confirms."

"The zeta tubes?"

"I deactivated the one in the hangar."

Richard's eyes widen. "You mean this one's still open?!"

"Yes. We're going to have to fight them all anyway, and this way Savage can feed them to us piecemeal." He calls up his computer and frantically presses buttons, deactivating the Zeta tube. "You do understand that won't stop Mister Zatara teleporting here, yes?"

"Sdrol fo Redro, dleihs siht niatnuom morf lla eht srewop fo Soahc!" Golden light blazes from Zatanna and seems to seep into the walls. "That should stop anyone affected by chaos magic from getting in here."

Batman nods. "Celestial Archer. Do you believe that you could reproduce the effect you used to free me against the other members of the League?"

"Sir, I believe that Wonder Woman's bracers could block my arrows. I have never tested them against Nth metal. Aside from that, yes, I should be capable of removing the Starro-tech devices."

"Grayven, are you able to scan the Watchtower?"

"Sorry sir, no. Something's interfering with the ring. Perhaps if I were closer." Oh, that's an idea. "Zatanna, do you think your father would mind passing control to Lantern Nabu for a short time?"

She thinks for a moment. "No, he's not in control anyway. Would that work?"

"Should do. If all else fails I can just dismiss him and recreate him here. He's seen everything that's happened and should be able to teleport us up to the Watchtower once we have a plan of attack."

"Uhssh…." Kaldur sits up, his left hand holding his head. Will the others recover soon enough to be useful, I wonder? Mister Allen's showing signs of life as well, but I seem to remember something about him recovering faster than usual. Captain Adams appears to be down for the count though I can't see anything physically wrong with him.

Batman looks like he's wondering about that too. He turns his head to look at me. "Grayven, contact Nabu. We need more information before taking any action which puts the team at risk."

"If we could hold off on that, sir? I've no doubt that Klarion could detect me doing that. It would probably be best to wait until we were ready to go."

Ooh, I'm going to miss my appointment with my sister-in-law, aren't I? Or.. maybe she'd prefer beating up a Lord of Chaos to beating up me?

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Gude-Willie Waught 8

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31st December

07:29 GMT -5

"Ekam lla gniyrcs stpmetta erongi siht pihs."

I breathe a little easier as the Bio-Ship accelerates through the sky over Happy Harbour. That should stop anyone doing something clever like scanning for our air displacement or something. I don't know about the other two but wide area ring scanning is something Guy is perfectly capable of doing. Huh, see how they like the boot being on the other foot for once. "That still leaves telepathy."

M'gann dips her head slightly. "Once we get further away from Happy Harbor it shouldn't matter. Uncle J'onn… He'd have to be up close to hear us."

"Shit." Rob just sort of collapsed into his seat when he got into the Bio-Ship and hasn't quite recovered yet. "Shit."

"Cornwall." He turns his head in my direction. "Not helping, chum."

"Not help..? The bad guys just took over the Justice League!"

"Which just proves that the League aren't unbeatable." I turn to look into the Bio-Ship's rear compartment. "Doctor Morrow, how's it coming?"

"Tornado's physical systems are fine. I'd need more advanced analytical equipment to work out what's wrong with his mind."

I glance down at the lantern next to my seat. "Doctor Morrow, you're a construct. If you want equipment, just make it."

"Oh. Yes, of course."

Wallace shudders and then turns back to face our team leader. "So what's the plan, Aqualad?"

"First, we need to locate Red Arrow and Artemis." He pauses, then looks down at the cat currently splayed out on his lap. "I… Teekl, do you believe that you could reliably identify Klarion's.. 'scent' if you were to encounter it again?" She gives him a look of withering contempt. Kaldur does not appear to be a cat person. Maybe it comes with being part fish? "I will take that as a yes. Orange Lantern, do you have any idea where Artemis might have gone?"

"No. She could be almost anywhere on the planet. I can't scan for her and I can't get access to the Zeta tube network's records to narrow it down. If I had to guess… Red Arrow knows her civilian identity. I'd guess she's wherever he is."

"After Roy went solo he installed equipment caches in several major cities. He told me the location of the one in Star City. Since Artemis operates-."

"Um…" Telling others a secret identity is a major no-no, but under the circumstances… "She doesn't. She actually lives in Gotham.. and commutes." That gets me a few interested looks, though not from Robin. Of course he knows. "I've got her home phone number, I'll give her a ring."

Kaldur nods. "Miss Martian, set course for Gotham City. I will direct you when we get closer."

Kon pauses in putting his armour on. We only really had time to grab essential stuff and the team pets so we're a bit.. under equipped. "Couldn't Paul just transfer us there?"

"I can, but I can't guarantee that doing so won't make us easier to detect. Aqualad?"

"Miss Martian, how long-?"

"Fifteen minutes at most."

"Then I think it best that we not take the risk. Once we have located our missing team mates our next step is to find some way to nullify the Starro technology. Doctor Roquette is an expert on nanotechnology and the Conservatory of Sorcery in Poseidonis is the finest magic research center on the planet."

Robin shakes his head. "Finding out how to counter the Starro-tech could take months."

"Yeah, I… No one's got more faith in Sephtian than me, but that's… Wouldn't it be better to beat the League into submission, power suppress them and then work on a cure? Or at least not hold off until we have one?"

Zatanna shakes her head. "The Starro fragment reeks of chaos magic. That probably means that Klarion's up in the Watchtower right now, along with Savage and whoever else they've brought in."

Wallace seems more bullish. "We can take Klarion." He doesn't get the immediate positive response he was looking for. "Can't we?"

"With Spell Eaters and Mageslayer rounds… Maybe. If he hasn't got anything too nasty prepared this time. I mean, if we won he'd probably be dead at the end of it. I certainly wouldn't be able to pull my punches at all. What worries me more is who else the Justice League might have called in. I mean, if you were a superhero and the League called you in for try-outs, would you turn it down?" Consternation all round. "Batman had my list of possible future recruits. We have no idea how many of those Starro things Savage has and no way to know who's been infected until Zatanna scans them or Teekl sniffs them."

Kaldur nods. "What do you propose we do?"

"Send a message to Queen Mera immediately. Tell her that King Orin's been mind controlled and to cut contact with the surface until she hears from us. And if we want to call in extra help, we need to do it now. Talk to them, check them for infection and bring them in before they can be nobbled."

"Whom do you suggest?"

I raise my right hand and begin generating constructs. "John Constantine, the most cunning bastard on the planet. And a noted wizard. Teth Adom. He fought and killed one of Klarion's predecessors." By doing nothing but ripping him apart for a month until he stopped trying to regenerate, but let's draw a veil over that. "Danni, because the easiest way to shut down Mister J'onzz is with fire."

M'gann looks over. "How about Brainwave?"

"Good choice. He'd certainly make getting around the Watchtower easier."

Kon thinks for a moment. "Donna and Barda?"

Robin puts his right hand to his chin. "Yeah, but Mister Miracle would be more useful if we have to sneak in. And from what you said he should be impossible to mind control."

Raquel thinks for a moment. "There's a guy in Dakota City Icon's worked with a couple of times. He's called-."

"Hardware. Could be useful but he's not a nanotech specialist."

"How do you even-?"

"Power rings are awesome. Kaldur?"

"A sound idea. I am certain that Garth and Tula will also want to participate in liberating our king."

"I'll start making calls. I'll contact the Frees first. Barda's boom tubes will be harder to track than ring transfers. Unless.. Batman's improved the League's boom tube tracking since our Bialya mission?"

Robin shakes his head. "The Green Lantern Corps black boxed most of the Watchtower's systems when they handed it over. Including the advanced sensors."

And they improved the sensors in case there were Star Conquerors around. Rod, meet back. I custom made you for it.

Rob perks up a little bit. "So… You think we can actually do this? Beat the Justice League?"

"Yep. No one's unbeatable. That said… Robin, I know Batman's almost certainly got a lump or two of Kryptonite around the place. I know he wasn't keen on me scanning it…"

"We can pick it up when we're in Gotham. I need to secure the Cave's computer and pick up some more equipment anyway."

Kon looks a little perturbed. "Batman's got Kryptonite? Why? I thought him and Superman were friends."

Think I'll let Robin field that one. "Because even if he trusts him, he can't bet everyone else's lives on him always being able to trust him. If Superman got mind controlled -like he is now- Batman needed to know that he had some way to shut him down. He didn't want to ever use it, but if he ever had to, he needed it to be there."

Kon blinks. "Whaw. I didn't realize…"

"That's what baseline Humans who want to be top tier superheroes have to do. There are morgues full of would be superheroes who couldn't hack it and I don't intend to add to them." I raise my left hand to my ear. "Ring, get me the Frees."

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Gude-Willie Waught 9

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31st December

07:41 GMT -5

Barda sighs as she puts on her headdress. "I knew it was too good to last." "Mind controlled or not, I am not happy about having to fight the Justice League."

Mister Free pulls his balaclava over his head and takes a moment to straighten it out. "Actually, I think this is a record. And as long as our neighbors don't spot us, there's no reason why we can't carry on living here." "I'm.. not.. completely unhappy about getting a chance to break into somewhere protected by a Lord of Chaos."

Barda takes her mega rod off her belt and presses the activator. "Hmpf."

"I just want to thank you again for agreeing to do this."

"Diana is my friend. Savage and his Boy Witch will pay for what they've done to her." Mister Free's eyes meet mine for a moment and we both just manage to avoid laughing at 'Boy Witch'. "Where is our mustering point?"

"We'll be meeting up in Poseidonis, but if you don't mind there's a few people I'd like to pick up first."

Mister Free fishes his aero-discs out of their storage case and lays them on the floor. "Wouldn't it be easier for you to do that?"

"I was concerned that they might be able to track ring FTL."

He raises his left eyebrow. "So..?"

"I was hoping you could use your Mother Box to open-" He nods and looks away for a moment. "-a boom tube to get us there. I can suppress the sounds, as well as containing the radiation the League used to pick up the tube in Bialya."

"Yeaaah, about that…" "Do you want to tell him?"

Barda looks down at the Mother Box still sitting in the case they were keeping their more advanced equipment in. "That belongs to a warrior of New Genesis I slew for Darkseid. It will not serve me and it will not acknowledge Scott."

"Oh. Rather got the wrong end of the stick there. Then I suppose-."

"We can use my mega rod to travel." She holds it out in front of her. "Gather close." Um. Okay? Don't remember this from the comics. Mister Free finishes equipping himself and walks over to her left side. I stand to her right and wait. "No, closer than that."

"Really? Because we're going to be picking up whup!"

Barda clearly decided that she wasn't going to wait, put her hand around my chest and pulled me closer. Even with the weight and articulation of my power armour she did so with no trouble at all. She's nearly a foot taller than me, excluding her weird headdress thing, and I'm being forced to pretty much put my head on her shoulder. This is going to be interesting.

"Where is our first destination?" "Why must lower beings be so afraid of intimacy?"

She leaves the arm where it is. "Inwood Hill Park, New York. We're picking up Firebrand."

"Describe this 'Firebrand' to me."

"She's a gynoid first built by Doctor Thomas Morrow and then rebuilt by me to look more Human. She's strong, tough and can generate and control fire and heat."

Her headdress pushes against my face as she nods. "I have her. Prepare yourself."

"Why, what-?"

Yellow light flares from the mega rod, bleaching the colour from our surroundings before evaporating them. Ring, analyse this, would you?

Compliance.

"What in tarnation-!"

Colour returns to our environment, the green glow of Alan's construct sword and shield first, then the pastel shades of his living room. "Morning, Alan." I smile from Barda's shoulder as she moves her mega rod to a defensive posture. "Friends. Friends." I process what he's doing and frown at him. "And drop the constructs, you don't have power to burn like that!"

He relaxes and allows his constructs to evaporate in a puff of green. "You might want to avoid teleporting into an old man's living room. My heart isn't as strong as it used to be."

I pull away from Barda. "And it'll get worse if you keep using power like that."

"The Earth has another Green Lantern?" Barda isn't quite frowning but she does look a bit puzzled.

"Barda Free, Scott Free, this is Alan Scott. He used to be part of the Justice Society. Alan, Big Barda and Mister Miracle. They were kicked off Apokolips for being insufficiently evil."

"Well, as long as it wasn't for being excessively evil." He extends his right hand, glowing ring still on his left. I shouldn't fuss but he really needs to take that off as soon as possible. "Pleased to meet you both." Barda shakes first, then remembers to let Scott go so that he can as well. "Paul, Zatanna called ahead. They managed to get Tornado working. Danni's just-." He catches sight of something through the door. "Ah."

Danni walks in, wearing the improved armour I made her after we got back from Qurac. Ironically, it makes her look more like she did before I humanised her. "Orange Lantern, we are ready to depart."

"We?" I turn to Alan, already knowing what she means but wanting to be sure. "Alan, no."

"I used to fight Savage, back in the old days. And from what you said about Kent's old records Klarion more or less took over from Mordru. There's still some life in this old dog yet."

"How much?"

He gives me a wry smile. "If I knew that…"

"How much ring power do you have left?"

"Ahh…" He holds up his left hand. "Feels like… Three quarters?"

"Jesus, Alan, it's only been two months. You can't mess around with-."

He waves my concern off. "I used most of that when you went all snake eyes on us. Paul, Diana's my friend too. One of my oldest. And Jay loves Barry the same way I love you. I will not stand idly by and do nothing. Now, you can either take me along with you or you can watch me fly around near Earth space looking for the Watchtower the hard way."

Shiiiiiiiiiiit.

"You don't wear your ring for longer than you have to, you stay in reserve until we need you and you wear body armour this time."

Our eyes remain locked for a good five seconds before he gives me a very shallow nod. "Alright then." He looks down and slides his ring off his finger, taking it into his right hand. I'm… For a moment I consider grabbing it off him and hiding it until it's time for his weekly dose. No, no, there's always room for emergency measures later and I can see inside him how much he wants this.

Barda frowns. "Why would you not allow him to participate in this battle?"

Yeah, clearly this whole thing makes no sense to her. "Alan gave up his personal lantern so that I could function as a Lantern but he'll wither and die-."

"Hey!"

"You will. He'll wither and die if he runs out of power and I can't get him a replacement until next July at the earliest. And now he wants to burn power-." Deep breath. "Okay, everyone hug Barda. Next stop, Teth Adom."

Mister Free thinks for a moment, then understands. "You mean Bla-?"

"No."

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Gude-Willie Waught 10

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31st December

14:46 GMT +2

There's a general clicking and shouting as the yellow light fades, depositing us in the middle of a small park near what has become the centre of government for the region of Kahndaq Adom's people tenuously control. A small squad of armed police from the Shiruta Provincial Guard have their Kalashnikovs levelled at us while one frantically shouts a request for backup into a radio. Hey, I made those uniforms!

I step away from Barda with my hands held up and open at shoulder height. Two lower their weapons half way as they recognise me but from the bewildered looks the man next to them is giving them he clearly doesn't. "Gentlemen, I'm Orange Lantern two eight one four. I would very much like to speak to His Excellency, if that can be arranged."

"Orange Lantern." One of the ones who recognised me -a sergeant- lowers his weapon the rest of the way and gestures for the others to do the same. "I am sorry for our poor greeting, but your arrival-."

"I know. Sorry about that."

He turns to the fellow with the radio. "Ammar, contact headquarters. Let them know that Orange Lantern is on his way."

"More attacks?"

The sergeant nods. "They finally gave up on aircraft, but they're sending mercenaries and assassins now. We have to keep a constant watch on all public places."

The Middle East here is actually.. much less violent than it was back home. I mean, back home there'd be suicide bombers all over the place in a conflict like this. As it is, the only places where the government still has any real control are the areas around Cairo and Alexandria. With the knowledge that Adom can and will intervene to prevent government aggression in other places they couldn't break free of President Muhunnad fast enough. Adom for his part has done his best to keep the death toll down. Not always possible of course and unfortunately the remaining areas are all under the guns of government loyal troops. He could take them but there wouldn't be much left when he did. We spent some time talking about how South Africa handled truth and reconciliation and he's said he's willing to be merciful in victory. I think he was genuine about it, though in practice it will probably mean that the second rank of offenders will be allowed to leave the country with the shirts on their backs rather than getting tried and executed. Really, our best hope is someone on their side realises that they've lost, shoots their bosses dead and takes the exile option.

Still, while I'm here... Ring, citywide omnicognisance, two seconds. Ugh. Hurts a little less than it… No, it doesn't really hurt anymore, it's just… Strange. I can briefly not just see everything that's going on around me but understand it, not just the actions but the reasons. It's a bit like when the Ophidian and I were merged, except that I can still understand people. I could… I might be able to get away with using it more often, but I'm still worried about what happens if my mind becomes accustomed to it and expands out into a structure which collapses. Or if I'd still be recognisably Human if I went by that route. I hold out my right hand and transmute a folder into being. "I can't detect any active explosive devices, but you might want to look into the people and places listed here."

He takes it from me. "Our thanks. I will ensure this is acted on."

"Please, go easy on the informants. The President's people have started taking families hostage."

"I know. I had a brother in Cairo. I'm not sure that I still do." Ammar comes over and whispers something to him. He nods and then turns back to me. "His Excellency has been informed and is waiting for you in his office. Do you require an escort?"

"No, thank you, we'll go straight there. Thank you for your help."

"You are welcome, sir."

I turn and walk back to the hero huddle as Alan tries to alter the position of his left pauldron. No time to fit him for power armour but what he's got should make him more survivable. "Barda, please take us to the antechamber of his office." We could have gone straight there but itchy trigger fingers and thin walls don't mix well, to say nothing of Adom himself. This whole thing is going as well as I could possibly have hoped and I have no intention of messing it up by being careless.

"First-." She fixes her eyes on me. "-you will tell me what sort of man this Teth Adom is."

"Uh…" I glance back. Translation's still on and we're drawing a curious but cautious crowd. How many of them have actually met him in person? "Why do you want to know?"

"You have said that he is not the Black Adam whom Captain Marvel fought. From what I have seen on the news, that seems to be true. But if we're going to trust a man whose first action was to try taking over a country I want to know more about him before I get within his reach."

"Alright. For a start, he didn't try to take over a country. Before he even came back here he learned everything he could about the modern world. The first thing he learned was modern languages: English and Kahndaqi Arabic, then French and the more minor Kahndaqi languages. The second thing he did was learn how the modern world functioned. He knew that he was ignorant of a great many things and he didn't want to do anything radical before he knew he was capable of doing the job. He only came back to Kahndaq full time when the government tried cracking down on demonstrations after the Roanoke Island incident. And he didn't try to take over, he only got involved to protect the demonstrators. Adom loves Kahndaq, but he knows that he isn't really a part of modern Kahndaq. The very morning before he accepted his current position he actually told me that he wasn't sure that he should take it while the country was in disarray in case he didn't know enough to hold it together. His strongest characteristic is his desire to act in Kahndaq's interests. Everything else, even his pride and temper -and he is proud and he has a nasty temper- is secondary to that. If the people of Kahndaq revolted on their own and established a new government he would respect it. When they asked him to become a figurehead all the factions can support, he agreed without hesitation and he'll do the job to the best of his ability. If they wanted him to become Pharaoh again -whatever that means for a modern country- he'd probably do that too. But he wouldn't insist on it, and if they want him to step down and become a nationalist superhero he'd be happy to do that as well." As long as he believed that the people doing the asking were genuinely acting in the national interest. I remember the short shrift he gave to those 'government in exile' people. Really, Nigel Farage could have taken notes.

"So you say. I have seen a few too many tyrants to take his word for it."

"Barda, I can look into a man's soul. I can see desire. I am a very hard man to lie to. I don't think he's perfect by any means, but neither does he. He has the powers he does because six gods decided that he had the virtues for the job. He always has six beings who are more powerful than he is looking over his shoulder. His pride will not allow him to give anything other than his all." And his need to prove Shazam wrong. William said that after what he thought was a successful time in Fawcett City on Halloween he mentioned the possibility of some sort of reconciliation between the two. Apparently his answer was quite vehement, but at least he didn't abuse the situation by trying to find out where the portal to the Rock of Eternity in Fawcett is. "He isn't good at mercy but he can do clemency. He hasn't fully adapted to modernity but he knows he hasn't and is willing to listen to advice. And he's my friend. Is there anything else you want to know?"

Barda keeps her eyes locked on mine for a moment and then gives a slight nod. I press myself against her side once more -I wonder if there's some way for me to extend the range of that thing- and the world goes yellow once more. When the light dims we're in the hotel that has been taken over to use as the Unity Council's headquarters. A few clerks stare at us but the soldiers here are mostly used to me appearing in unusual ways.

"Ah! Orange Lantern." A cheerful looking heavily bearded man in black robes and wearing a black turban raises his right hand in greeting. "I had wondered why His Excellency cut short my visit."

Adom did say that his current religious affairs advisor was much easier to get on with than his predecessors. He's been trying hard to get his head around Islam and this is the man whose job it is to help him. Ring? Proper form of address for an Imam? Oh. That's easy, then. "I apologise, Mister Khalil. I know how His Excellency values your help but this is rather urgent."

"Then don't let me detain you." He steps aside, leaving me with a clear path to Adom's office.

I turn back to the others. "Probably easier if I do this. And.. we should probably stop off at base before picking up anyone else." Danni doesn't have a problem with our method of locomotion but Alan looks a bit uncomfortable about being pressed up against Barda like that. Turning back to the door I knock twice and then press on through.

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31st December

14:51 GMT +2

Adom is floating just off the floor, looking out through the balcony window. This isn't the largest guest room in the place -those have all been repurposed- but it does have a Cairo-facing balcony in case he needs to fly there quickly. Kahndaq's official capital is just under four hundred kilometres away and if he really guns it he can be there in ten minutes. I mean, he wouldn't be able to see anything much on the way and he'd be spitting out insects for the rest of the week but I very much doubt that the President's had a good night's sleep since Adom demonstrated that particular ability to a group of international journalists. After Suez came over to his side he did try modern dress, but it didn't last; he's back in his black and golds now.

"Mighty One. Thank you for seeing me."

"Your company is hardly a great burden." He turns and drifts back through the room towards me. His face is a little bit less impassive than it was, but I think at this point this is all we're getting. "You said there was something urgent that you wished to discuss?"

"I believe that this is a conversation we should have in private." I raise my left hand, sigil towards him. "Do you mind?"

He makes a dismissive gesture with his right hand and I send orange light flowing around the interior of the room. No listening devices within and any nonmagical attempt to listen from outside will fail. "What has you so concerned, my friend?"

"As we speak the entire Justice League -with the exception of Red Tornado- have been mind controlled. These little.. things." I generate a construct image of the Starro-tech. "We recovered them after a fight with people in the employ of an alliance of supervillains called the Light but… But I think we were meant to. At some point last night they were used on the League and now someone's running them like puppets."

"That is a grave matter. Do you know who perpetrated this attack?"

I shake my head. We don't really know much, do we? "No, not yet. We're trying to track down Red Ar-."

"Incoming communication, highest priority!"

That.. isn't an alert the ring uses. "I'm sorry. Ring, answer."

"Paul, we've got Red Arrow and Artemis." Zatanna's face appears above the ring. How is..? Magic, right. "They're not infected. We're heading for the rendezvous location now."

"Do we know who's behind this yet?"

"Red Arrow says that Vandal Savage was in control."

"Savage still lives?" Adom zooms across the room and peers at Zatanna's face. Huh. I've only heard him use that tone of voice for the Wizard before. I remember something about an Element Man and Savage from the comics but I didn't think that had happened here.

"Yes, Mighty One, he does. Zatanna, I'm with Adom now. Adom, we could very much use your help."

"The fact that Princess Diana is in need of me is reason enough for me to agree. But Savage… You have no idea what horrors that man inflicted on this region during my first life. Killing him again will be my pleasure. Do you intend to attack immediately?"

"No. We need to develop a way to free our mentors first before going after them aggressively. Either that, or.. a way to keep them contained while one is developed."

He nods. "It would be unwise for me to leave Kahndaq for a significant span if it can be avoided, and I know little of science." He puts his left hand on my right shoulder. That's… Whaw. He usually hates touching people. "Call me when it is time for the briefing and I will come, and fight beside you."

Do I..? Put my hand on his shoulder? I don't want to push him if he's leaving his comfort zone anyway, so I settle for putting my right hand on top of his left. "Thank you."

"It is my privilege to repay a small part of what you and Princess Diana have done for me." I remove my hand and he lifts his off my shoulder, putting it behind his back. "The report of your arrival mentioned that you brought companions with you."

"They're just outside. We need to get going, but if you want an introduction…" He nods and I lead the way out of his room.

"…running the meter, so…" Mister Free trails off as Adom and I emerge. "Teth Adom. I hear good things about you."

"I will endeavour to be worthy of them."

"Mighty One, this is Mister Miracle, Big Barda, Firebrand and Green Lantern."

"Yes." He inclines his head slightly to Alan. "I believe that we met briefly at the Embassy. My English at the time was not good enough for me to converse with you."

"From the sound of it you've come a long way."

"I'm sorry, but we need to go. Barda, to the rendezvous point. It should be obvious." But just in case I extend my environmental shield around them as we huddle up and she raises the mega-rod.

31st December

10:55 GMT -2

"That was quick." Sephtian's stuck his head through the glowing membrane which marks the transition point between the room we're in and the rest of the Conservatory. Surface worlder friendly air filled rooms are something he's been working on as part of the drive to improve diplomatic relations… Or get some, at least. "We haven't quite finished setting up yet. Did you bring the sample with you?"

"No, Zatanna's bringing it."

Alan and Mister Free walk over to a 'window' on Sephtian's left and take a look out across the Poseidonis skyline. Um, waterline? Alan gazes out in wonder. "Good Lord, will you look at that. Can barely believe it's been down here my whole life."

"Reminds me of an escape I did for my last tour." Mister Free pokes the membrane with his right hand, passing through it easily. He pulls his hand back and the water stays on the far side.

"You've disabled the zeta tube, right?"

"Yes yes, but King Orin hasn't tried to contact us since his 'acquisition'."

"How's Her Majesty taking it?"

"Her husband is being mind controlled by a mass murdering criminal, how do you think she's taking it?" His head shudders. "I've been instructed to extend you every courtesy and assistance."

"I'm sure that you can handle the arcane elements of the problem, but… Do you know anything about nanotech?"

"I hadn't even heard the word until today. In a way I still haven't; Atlantean Greek doesn't have a word for it. Young Kaldur had to explain the concept to me in English. I also haven't done any significant work with fleshcrafting for over a decade. Still, if we put our heads together, I'm sure we can come up with something."

Barda walks over to join her husband while Danni stays in the centre of the room. Fire gynoid, billions of tonnes of sea water.

"About that. What if there were a way to.. improve your knowledge?"

"In what way?"

"A telepathic network. G-Gnomes can share knowledge and skills amongst a group. Downside is that whoever you do it with will know everything you do. While it's active, anyway."

"You have someone in mind?"

"Doctor Roquette's a nanotech specialist. She's safe and she's never shown any interest in magic. The Genomorphs themselves should be able to provide the biotechnological knowledge. I realise this is a weird idea but I think it would speed things up a lot."

"Hmm. I have no principled objection. Maaaay be better to attempt to study the Starro artefact in a normal fashion first though."

"Yes of course. Barda?" She looks around. "Please take me to Cadmus labs. I need to talk to Dubbilex."

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31st December

07:55 GMT -5

"Who is it?"

I nod at Scott and press the phone construct a little closer to my ear. "Guy, good morning. Glad I caught you."

"Hey Grey. Y'know, if yer gunna call my cell you should really do it from a phone that lets me do caller ID. I nearly just hung up on yeh."

"This is a burnable phone. I wanted to tell you that I'm not going to be able to make our session today."

"Oh? They call you up too? Thought you bein' with the Little Leaguers was kinda weird."

"Did who call me up?"

"The Justice League. Yeah, apparently they're doin' try-outs for future members. Wondy didn't clue you in?"

"No… Did they perchance say who else was auditioning?"

"No, Canary just called and told me to be on the Watchtower by eight. She still seein' Green Arrow?"

"Yes. Guy, I hate to break this to you but the League is currently being mind controlled."

"Oh, hah hah. Look Grey, it's probably just an oversight. Maybe they're doin' them in batches or somethin'."

"No, Guy, I'm being deadly serious. Ask your ring about Star Conquerors. Vandal Savage and Klarion are up on the Watchtower right now pulling the strings. I rather imagine that the first thing that would happen when you stepped out of the Zeta tube would be that you'd get nobbled too."

"Huh." He stays silent for a moment. "Well, that sucks. What're we doin' about it?"

I hold the phone away for a moment and press a button on the control console in front of me. "Tao, ready?" On the monitor I see him nod and I return the phone to my ear. "I'm opening a hush tube directly above you. Come on through."

I dismiss the phone construct as on the monitor I see Guy fly though the hush tube into the hangar area. From the lack of response on the part of Tao, Zatanna or Scott it looks like he's in the clear.

Barda gives me a curious look. "Of all the people Savage or the Boy Witch might have recruited, what makes him so special?" "Why do you care what happens to him?"

"Faster than light travel, a direct line to the Guardians of the Galaxy and the fact that power rings make their users supremely adaptable." "He's my anger management coach."

Barda raises her eyebrows at me. On the monitor Zatanna raises her arms and then the three of them appear near us in the training area in a flare of golden light. There haven't been any further attacks since we dealt with Mister O'Brian, Captain Adams and Mister Allen. In fact, we haven't recorded any League activity on the Earth at all. With my usually reliable scans being defeated by whatever protections Klarion has put in place we don't have perfect coverage but there isn't anything stopping me connecting to satellites or CCTV cameras.

At least, I don't think there is. Troublesome.

Batman, Mister Allen and Kaldur are up and coherent, though none are in any shape for a fight. O'Brian's sort of flapping about in the corner. No idea what's wrong with him. His body defies rational analysis. If he hasn't sorted himself out by the time we've finished then I'll consider worrying about it. Captain Adams' still out cold and like with O'Brian I don't have enough data on him or the Starro-tech to work out why. Red Tornado is similarly out of action. Shouldn't matter too much. None of the plans we've thrown about are anything that requires them. Scott's busying himself upgrading the hush tube into something that can get us past the Watchtower's defences. I still need to get its actual location from Nabu; Batman knew where it was when he left but I checked and they appear to have moved it.

"Hey.. Batman." Guy looks a little uncertain. Batman's upright but he's visibly unsteady and looks weirdly vulnerable like this. Not weak in absolute terms but it's such a departure from the norm for him that it emphasises the state, and I suppose Guy hasn't had cause to ever see him not looking in control of the situation. I on the other hand have seen what he looks like after going five rounds with Waylon Jones.

"Mister Miracle to Grayven."

The phone construct comes back up to my ear. "Go ahead."

"I'm about as ready as I'm going to get down here."

"Will it work?"

"If a whole lot of things work exactly as we're hoping, yes. Blocking their location is a lot easier than blocking a hush tube but I'm hardly an expert on chaos magic."

"Fair enough." I open a tube from him to me and he walks through. Guy takes a moment to get a good look at his costume and just about manages to conceal his amusement.

"If we're all ready." Everyone turns to Batman. "Grayven, give the briefing."

If Guy can manage not to crack up upon seeing Scott's costume I can keep my smug at having a better anti-Justice League plan than Batman in check. "At twenty three forty one eastern standard time yesterday Vandal Savage and Klarion took complete mental control of the Justice League using devices we have come to call Starro-tech." I float one of the arrow-pierced ones out in front for everyone to look at. "The precise mechanism by which they work is unknown at this time, though we think-" I nod at Zatanna. "-that it's Klarion who is controlling them using a sympathetic link between them and his own chaos magic. They work on baseline Humans, metahumans, Thanagarians, Kryptonians, Martians and Terminans so whoever you are-" Eye contact with Barda. "-they work on you. We don't know how many they have, though given the call which Lantern Gardner received it seems highly likely they have at least one more. Based on the fact that we haven't seen them anywhere else we currently think it likely that all remaining members of the League are on the Watchtower, along with anyone else they've brought up as reinforcements. That could be other superheroes they've called up for try outs and taken control of, or it could be people knowingly in the employ of Savage or his allies."

Images of the Light's membership appear on the holoscreen behind me. "His closest allies. The Brain may have contributed augmented animals of the sort we saw in India and Africa." Pictures of the Venom Bustered monkeys, vultures and crocodiles appear next to Brain's image and Mister Tawny takes the opportunity to snarl. "Queen Beena has an army, though denied Apokoliptian weaponry the threat they present is much reduced. Alexander Luthor is unlikely to risk his security force but may well have supplied deniable equipment to others as he's done in the past." Images appear of Metallo, the Kryptonite Man and Parasite. "Ra's al Ghul has ninjas, mostly armed with primitive weapons. Report all threats as you see them."

A cut away of the Watchtower itself appears on the screen. "The Watchtower itself has no internal defence systems other than locking doors, though Savage could probably make the Greenies under his control turn off the artificial gravity if he wanted. As such, everyone will be issued with aero-discs. Savage and Klarion are believed to be in the main hall. Klarion himself is the main threat on this mission. As we saw on Roanoke Island, my killing of his familiar hasn't quite rendered him impotent in the way I'd hoped. We really have no idea of the full range of abilities he and Bedlam possess." I give that a moment to sink in. "Our objectives are as follows. Firstly, liberate controlled members of the League and anyone else they've called in. At present, only Tao and Zatanna are capable of removing the Starro-tech devices. People freed have so far briefly lost consciousness and then awoken disorientated and weak. Don't assume that anyone we free will be in a position to help us within a useful timeframe. We also have no guarantee that attacking Klarion will interrupt control at all."

"Secondly, retake the Watchtower intact. The Watchtower's power systems are almost impossible to critically overload but if they've brought a nuclear weapon up it will do the job nicely. Third, apprehend Savage, Klarion and anyone helping them voluntarily. Savage's most notable ability is his immortality. He will eventually heal any injury, including death. As such, I recommend killing him as quickly as possible. He'll get up eventually but based on past encounters it should take him some time. Klarion…" I make eye contact with my team mates. "I've made my feeling on the matter clear. He is responsible for hundreds of thousands of murders, mostly of young children. At present, seventeen countries have sentenced him to death, including two permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. The testimony of our only expert on the matter -the Lord of Order Nabu- is that he cannot be contained in any sort of prison for any length of time and even if it were theoretically possible we have no such containment unit ready. I will tell you now that I will kill him if the opportunity presents itself." No one likes it, but I've come closer than I thought possible to getting them to accept the idea.

"Otherwise, standard rules of engagement apply. Given the lack of information we have about exactly what we'll find up there any plan has to be somewhat fluid. When everyone is prepared I will make contact with Construct Lantern Nabu and instruct him to take control of Mister Zatara in order to aid us. All being well he will reveal the location of the Watchtower to us and update us on the conditions we are likely to encounter there. Assuming that they haven't assembled an utterly overwhelming force we will open hush tubes and attack. The team will be transported to two separate locations-" These appear on the holoscreen. "-and aim to carry out ambushes on League members and such others as are present. You've all been equipped with Vertigo inducers and should deploy them everywhere."

I take muffler earpieces out of subspace and float them over to Guy. "With any luck they will incapacitate most opponents you will encounter. Robin and Kid Flash have also been issued with Gold Kryptonite lasers. A glancing hit on a Kryptonian will depower them for about two minutes. A solid hit and they'll probably be out of commission for months." Gold Kryptonite is a product of my research into Kryptonian physiology and Kryptonite. It took some effort, but creating other colours is much easier if you know they're there to find. Batman's contingency plan involved the green stuff but there's less risk this way. "The armour Kon and Match wear should prevent it from affecting them but watch out for friendly fire anyway. Barda, Mister Miracle, Lantern Gardner and myself will be attacking Klarion and Savage directly." Guy can't kill with his ring but he will be invaluable in fending off controlled League members. Scott will be trying to disrupt Klarion's control with his multi-cube. He vetoed my offer to put the thumbscrews on Barda's captured Mother Box and Father Box refuses to help him. "Naturally, hush tubes will be constantly available for site to site transportation. Does anyone have any questions?"

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31st December

07:59 GMT -5

"Yeah." Wallace half raises his right hand. "What happens if Nabu can't get us in?"

"The Watchtower isn't particularly fast. I'll head up and start scanning the volume of space it may have travelled to while Zatanna and Mister Miracle get to work on other forms of tracking. Needless to say that would be an extremely sub par eventuality."

"I got one." Match looks more than a little concerned. "I've worked out with Mom… Ah, Wonder Woman a lot, and she's a lot better than me. How exactly..?"

"Simple. Don't fight her. Match, this isn't about some sort of cathartic beating up of our elders, this is about stopping the bad guys. If a particular person is a bad match up for you then let one of your team mates handle them. You might struggle against Wonder Woman but Rocket could easily contain her. Failing that, you don't need to win the fight, just keep her off Celestial Archer until he can get a clear shot." He nods. Should I..? "If anyone still has concerns, I am prepared to issue you with these." A small grey device which looks a little like a joy buzzer appears in my right hand.

Richard glares at me. "You couldn't mention those sooner?"

"Robin, this is an agony matrix. Not only does it cause incredible pain in the target, it also prevents them from losing consciousness. People affected have been known to commit suicide even after the effect has ended because the suffering was so intense. A few seconds' use on a League member should be safe but I've no idea if Klarion would even notice." I look around. "Anyone want one?" No takers. Back to subspace with you. "Anything else?" No one responds. "Very well then." I hold my left hand out in front of me, palm upward. "Zatanna, if you would."

"On ymene llahs tceted siht noissimsnart."

Wonder if she could do something like that long term? An inquiry for later. "Lantern Grayven to Construct-Lantern Nabu. Respond."

An image of his helmet appears over the ring. Unlike a normal inter-ring transmission the image is glitching and distorting. I haven't bothered speaking to him directly since Roanoke so I've no idea whether or not this is normal for him. "i ReSpOnD."

"Do you know where the Watchtower is located?"

"nOt PrEcIsElY."

"Are you alone?"

"nO NeVeR nEvEr AlOnE."

Odd. But not helpful. "Is there anyone other than Giovanni Zatara in your immediate physical location?"

"wE aRe AcCoMpAnIeD bY iCoN aNd LaNtErN jOrDan."

Tricky then. Jordan's easy enough to take if you get the drop on him and he's not shielding himself. I don't think Terminans have any particular weaknesses. Can he stealth it? Interfere with Klarion's control in a way the Witch Boy can't detect? On the other hand, does it matter? There's no way Klarion won't feel Mister Zatara leaving the network. "Construct-Lantern Nabu, in a moment I will remove my instructions regarding obeying Mister Zatara. You are to take Jordan's ring onto your finger and render Icon unconscious, then broadcast your location in a fashion we can detect. Do you believe that you are capable of following those instructions through?"

"tHe WiTcH bOy HaS nOt WaRdEd HiS tHrAlLs."

"I'll take that as a yes." Of course, if we're disarming Jordan anyway, it would behove us to ensure that he can't simply re-arm. Nabu, if you are successful I will open a small hush tube to your location. You will send me Jordan's ring. I look up from the ring. "Everyone ready?"

Nods all round. M'gann goes invisible, arrows go on strings, Miss Ervin and the Kryptonians rise into the air and Zatanna's armour glows gold. My team is split into two groups. Robin will be leading one group comprised of himself, Kon, M'gann, Mister Harper and Zatanna while Wallace leads Match, Miss Ervin, Artemis and Tao. Ambushes are the order of the day as sprawling brawls with the League members would only play to their advantages. Surprised me a little when I realised that with Kaldur not mission fit and myself being required elsewhere aside from Richard there wasn't really anyone left with leadership experience. Might need to do something about that as the team grows.

"Nabu, I hereby order you to take control of Mister Zatara." The eyes of the helmet image appear to glow for a moment and then the image disappears. I cup my right hand against my chest, making certain that it will obscure any green light. Is my will strong enough to wrestle control away? Should I just send it back to Oa? That would probably work. Even if he could call it back it would take ages to get here and that would serve to notify the Guardians that something was up. On the other hand, full database. All the high tech goodies of the Green Lantern Corps. No, you'd need to be a far better man than I to pass something like that-.

A set of spatial coordinates appears in the ring's database, along with a full layout of the Watchtower. Well done Nabu. I pick out an isolated corridor and open a hush tube next to Robin's team. M'gann heads through first, swiftly followed by Kon, Richard and Zatanna with Mister Harper bringing up the rear. I shut it down and open another in the arboretum. Wallace nearly dashes through on instinct but thinks better of it, letting Miss Ervin and Match go first before following them through. You know, this looks so much better with coordinated Apokoliptian uniforms. More professional, less like a group just haphazardly thrown together. Once Artemis and Tao are through I close that portal and open a tiny one next to Nabu to see how lucky I got. Nabu, portal open at your location. Send me Jordan's ring if you've got it, then proceed along corridor G six to meet up with Robin's team. No response. What? He passed on the location, he must still be-? Then I feel it in my hand.

Warning, unauthorised access attempt detected.

Ring, your user was compromised by mind control technology. If you work with me-.

You are hereby warned to cease any attempts-.

Fine. Ring, assimilate and data probe.

Ghghghghghgh.

Usurpation in progress. Data theft in progress. Emotional spectrum energy store detected.

"Ah, Grey? Should we be going?"

"Just a moment, Guy. I want to be sure that Klarion is well distracted." Ring, theft progress?

Two percent.

Can't afford to delay while it finishes. Which is a pain because I really want that dat-.

Eight percent.

Hm. I open a hush tube into the upper part of the Watchtower's main hall. Scott and Barda lunge through first. He'll be using his aero-discs to stay near the top of the room out of the way to do his thing. Barda just wanted the momentum. Guy and I transition through in a flash and then the hush tube closes behind us.

31st December

13:03 GMT

There are five people on the ground below. Klarion's sitting in the air surrounded by what look like holographic computer screens. His form is fairly Human at the moment, save for his eyes which are glowing purple and the three extra pairs of arms he's using to manipulate the controls. Savage stands a few metres away, looking at him. Next to him, staff at the ready, stands August General in Iron. Willing? No, I feel the Starro-tech inside him and in the young looking man in the green and yellow gi next to him. The same cannot be said for the hulking figure in power armour nearby, but then Socialist Red Guardsman is a bloodthirsty animal. Cutting off my allies. Clever.

**Grayven to team, Great Ten active on site.**

But not clever enough. Captain Fang spots Barda a split second before she lands and swings his staff at her. She parries in mid air with enough strength to knock him back before carrying on her own swing. Savage manages a brief moment of bewilderment before her mega rod strikes his face and keeps going without slowing down, utterly pulverising his head and sending blood, bone and brain matter flying across the floor. Captain Fang returns to the attack immediately but for once he finds himself facing an opponent who is his better in both skill and strength. Guardsman opens his armour's chest to fire on her and I send in a filament to disconnect the power supply from the weapon. I drop lower, orange beams from my eyes striking his armour's leg and arm joints, destroying the motor control systems and leaving him immobile. Guy creates a small squad of American football player constructs and rushes them at Yang Kei-Ying who flips sideways in an attempt to evade. Guy responds by simply making more of them. They grapple the Deadly Bother, smash him against the wall and then pummel him to the ground. Through his screen I see Gu snarl at me as he reaches for his ejection mechanism. Not wanting the whole place to get irradiated I destroy that as well. He hammers impotently on the inside of his canopy and I give him a cheeky wave.

"You're ruining my game again!"

I turn my attention back to the primary malefactor. Ring? Assimilate the little fucker.

By your command.

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31st December

13:04 GMT

Orange beams lance down at him from my eyes only for Klarion to manifest a giant purple hand and bat them away. I don't try and keep control of the beam and allow it to flicker out. The research I've done on chaos magic so far shows that it's very good at circumventing attempts at precise direction. To say nothing of the risks of some sort of back hacking.

**Team one, Hawkman's down and we've linked up with Nabu. Zatanna's working on freeing Green Lantern and Icon.**

Captain Fang overextends on a thrust. Barda sidesteps, grabs his staff just behind the head and pulls it past her. He's more intelligent than to try and keep hold of it but is left without a way to block the mega rod strike to his side.

**Ah, team two, some sort of Yeti.. looking.. thing..? Do the Great Ten have a Yeti?**

I shut down my constructs and activate my personal force field as Klarion distends his mouth to exhale the same dust as he tried using on Roanoke at me. He really shouldn't have boasted about having a way to shut down Lanterns. **Yes, Doctor Hu.** The dust storm howls around the outside of my force field but can't penetrate. I smile, transition to an open space on the far side of the room and fire a broad beam maser at it. The dust moves to follow me and in doing so presents a perfect densely packed target, melting to slag as the microwave radiation hits. **Savage, Klarion, Red Guardsman, One Deadly Bother and August General in the meeting hall. Guy, don't let Klarion's dust touch you.**

"No problem!" He drops his linemen constructs, binding Mister Yang in heavy green manacles. No, that's not-! Mister Yang smirks and shimmers, another copy of him appearing next to him. Ugh. Sure, I don't think he's strong enough to threaten us but that was careless. Guy jerks back in the air as two more Mister Yangs appear, then shrugs and manacles them as well. Three hundred year old Human martial artist, meet power ring.

**Atom down.**

Klarion's frantically pressing buttons with six of his arms while the last two try chucking purple lightning at me. I create shields and leave them in place while I dodge. I'm still not really sure exactly how powerful Klarion is at present, so the knowledge that the energy discharge is easily powerful enough to destroy the shields is useful if a little disconcerting. **Robin, if you can spare Nabu-?**

**Kinda busy here! Green Arrow, Black Canary and.. Shaolin Robot. And there's some kind of drone weapon keeping us pinned down.**

Quick scan. **Immortal Man in Darkness is in the shuttle bay with the Dragonwing. Team two, hush tube is available.**

**Immortal.. Man..?** Clearly Wallace hasn't been doing his reading.

**A fighter pilot.** Tao doesn't sound happy about it. Is he unsure how much he's allowed to say? **Please, convey me to his location.**

**Convey all of us.**

**I-.**

**Tube opening.**

"You won't be so confident without that ring!"

Faint purple lights glimmer around me. I look down at my left hand but the ring stays put. There's something.. oppressive about it, but it takes more than twinkling lights to stop the God of Conquest. Not sure what Klarion's trying to do but not a lot appears to be happening. My ward shouldn't be enough to stop him if he makes an effort and I think by this stage I've sort of earned his hatred. Is this really all he's got?

"You're not even the real Grayven! How are you doing that!"

I glance at Guy and see that he's strapped vertigo inducers to the now fully numerated Seven Deadly Brothers' heads and dumped them at the side of the room. Captain Fang's still hanging in there but it looks like that's mostly because Barda can't work out how she can disable him in a way that won't risk killing him. A jab to the face staggers him then a strike to the side of his head with her mega rod finally sends him crashing to the floor. Guardsman's rocket motors flare for a moment before I send a filament burrowing into his armour to destroy the rest of his nonessential systems. The brief thrust is still enough to send him sliding across the floor on his face.

"I'm real enough." Assimilate. Again, the beams are swatted away but Klarion is forced to raise another hand defensively when Barda fires a blast from her mega rod and Guy opens up with emerald ring blasts. I fire again and he's starting to look worried. This would still be a good deal easier with a second ring.

Usurpation nineteen percent complete. Data extraction fifty three percent complete.

Go faster.

**Immortal Man in Darkness is down. And.. dead.** I wonder how well Tao knew him? Immortal Men don't have much of an active lifespan but their replacements usually receive their training in the Great Wall Complex before taking on the role. They might well have known each other.

**Hush tube opening to a flanking position on team one's attackers.** That leaves Thundermind and Ghost Fox Killer on the Great Ten side… Ring? No, Thundermind's still in Beijing. Lucky escape there.

**Green Arrow and Black Canary down.**

**Good work Artemis.** Can't find Ghost Fox Killer but she needs skin contact to use her instant death ability. Full helm on then. Where are the League's most powerful members? Nothing, not on the Watchtower and as far as I can tell not on Earth either. That just leaves-.

"Recognised, Captain Marvel, one five."

He's barely materialised before speeding across the room and smashing Guy into a wall! His left hand is around Guy's neck and he pulls his right back-

"Finally got it!"

-before his eyes cross and he sways dazedly where he stands. I glance up at my smug-looking brother before having another shot at Klarion. This time a small amount of the purple energy enveloping him appears to evaporate away from his defensive cover. Can I assimilate Bedlam separately? **Robin, we could really do with getting Nabu up here about now.**

Guy frees himself from Marvel's grip at the same moment as Barda runs out of patience and charges Klarion in an attempt to bludgeon him. Father Box tells me that the melee output of the mega rod is far greater than its ranged output, and with Klarion's attention fairly well tied to-.

"Oops! Don't got it!"

**Aquaman down. I'll send Nabu just as soon as he's free of the Starro-tech.**

Marvel swings around and flies at Scott. My reactions may not be as fast as his but thanks to the ring I can move about as fast. I shoot upwards, my right fist his meeting his diaphragm in a perfect uppercut, just about managing not to shout 'shoryuken' as I do it.

"Boopfh!"

Scott hurriedly beats a retreat and starts fiddling again. Marvel's not out yet, but the fact that my blow doesn't seem to have winded him is both the best indication so far of how much stronger my divinity has made me and how resilient he is. Punching him out will take too long, I'm not sure a submission hold would work. I seem to remember that the Stamina of Atlas means he doesn't need to breathe… What then? He's still wearing the Sword of Beowulf. William Batson might be pure as the driven snow -something I give until he hits puberty- but Klarion's turned himself into some sort of Chaos Lord Elemental thingy. How easy is he to provoke? I grin and draw my own sword. "Come at me, puppet."

An un-Marvellike snarl appears on his face as he takes the hilt in his right hand. "Abannan afol Beowulf! AHHHHHGGHHH!" Lightning crackles around him as the Sword thoroughly rejects him. Doesn't turn him back into William which is a bit of a pity, but he does go limp in the air. I sheathe my sword and fly at him, grabbing him by the hair with my right hand and slamming his forehead down hard against my right knee. Nothing broken, but the drop off in brain activity suggests that he's thoroughly out of it.

A blast of purple energy throws Barda back but doesn't appears to have injured her. She gets to her feet almost immediately, mega rod held in a two-handed guard position. Guy's created a huge vice construct and is squeezing it around Klarion's barrier. "Fine! I thought it was a stoopid plan anyway!" Five purple circles appear on the floor and rise upwards, leaving the remaining League members in their wake. Around them a horde of men with pale green skin, blank white eyes and black hair that's suffered an attack by a crazed gel enthusiast precipitate out from the air, all looking at me.

Ooh, hi Faust.

**Seriously, Robin. Nabu any time.**

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Gude-Willie Waught 15

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31st December

13:08 GMT

Prescience of Mind.

Priority threat Superman.

An orange laser cannon construct with a glowing gold shard of cultured Kryptonite contained within appears on my left arm, targets and fires at Kal-El as he lunges across the room, striking him full in the face. He drops from the air as his capacity for flight vanishes.

Priority threat Ghost Fox Killer.

Her bound Ghosts fly in Kal-El's wake but I can't see the woman herself. They're more an irritation than an actual threat. Ignore them. I don't know her full range of abilities. Can she make herself Ghost-like? It would certainly fit her theme. Ring, monitor for minor temperature fluctuations.

Priority threat Wonder Woman.

Diana lunges for Barda, turning aside a mega rod strike with her right bracer and slamming her left fist across into Barda's cheek. Barda reels back but the clamps on the soles of her boots prevent her from going flying. With Diana inside her reach she drops the mega rod to grapple.

Priority threat Lantern Stewart.

Guy abandoned his vice construct as soon as the remaining League members appeared. Don't know how well he gets on with Stewart but from the way he's swinging that baseball bat construct I'm going to guess 'not well'. Stewart blocks with a shield construct and retaliates with a buzz saw, which Guy destroys with a blast of energy straight from his ring.

The Ghosts have surrounded me and are clawing at my construct armour. They can cripple someone by sapping their vitality but they aren't doing a thing to me. I'll ignore them.

Priority threat Hawkwoman.

I drop in the air and Hawkwoman shoots over my head, Ghosts being shredded and then reforming in my wake. Between the ring and my goggles the Ghosts did nothing to conceal her approach. Her Nth Metal mace can hurt me but she's too slow to be a major threat. I send a filament to tag her neck with a Vertigo inducer and she careens out of control into the wall.

"Little help, dear brother!?"

Priority threat Klarion.

Another transition takes me out of the path of some sort of purple cloud Klarion's putting out. One of his other hands points at Barda and fires purple lightning at her just as she knocks Diana down. Another orange beam encourages him to look to his own defence.

Priority threat Martian Manhunter.

Above me Scott ducks and weaves through the air, using the aero-discs to evade or ride out Mister J'onzz's telekinetic attacks. Scott is attempting to retaliate with his glove's concussion blasts but Mister J'onzz is presently intangible. That does present a minor problem. I have ways to bypass it but they're all a bit fatal. How about..? Hawkwoman's mace is still strapped to her forearm where she lies on the floor, her disorientation aided by a high speed impact between her head and the wall. I liberate it and hurl it upwards through the space Mister J'onzz occupies.

**Nabu's coming through now.**

The mace reaches his leg and hits him. He reels away and is knocked back into phase. I grab back the mace and stick a Vertigo inducer on him. Unfortunately it appears that Martian inner ears work too differently to Human ones and it doesn't do anything. Brutality it is then. I use a filament to spray him with petrol before hitting it with a maser beam.

"YAAAGHH!"

Klarion tries helping Stewart by flinging lightning at Guy and Nabu appears behind him. Love those hush tubes!

Data available.

Guy has to scramble to evade Klarion's shot and Stewart mercilessly takes advantage of the opening, using a hammer construct to knock him towards a rock crusher construct. In the room's other fight Barda and Diana are grappling on the floor. Looks like Barda has a slight strength advantage. Must be a while since Diana's fought someone seriously like this.

"i HaVe YoU nOw, WiTcH bOy!" Nabu throws his arms wide and two corrupted orange ankhs appear on either side of Klarion, glowing brilliantly as they suck what looks like purple dust out of Klarion's flesh.

"No! No!"

Priority threat Ghost Fox Killer.

Agh! I grimace and transition to the top of the room as three glowing green energy darts pierce both my construct armour and Apokoliptian armour, embedding themselves in the lower right front of my torso. Nothing critical but ow that hurts! Don't seem to be able to cut the sensation. Ghost Fox Killer's arcane technology weapon. Am I evil enough or is it simply Klarion's doing? She's standing near one of the room's doors, ducked down behind one of her Jade Lions. Would her death touch work on Klarion? Nabu's busy stripping his borrowed power from him so I can't risk distracting him. I send a filament in her direction and drop off a Vertigo inducer. She falls to the ground and the Ghosts in the air around me go still. Think I'll recommend the League adopt earplugs as part of their standard gear once this is over. Werner Vertigo might be a fool and a criminal but these things are jolly useful.

**Robin, Kid Flash, hush tubes are available. I think we're nearly done.**

I fire orange eye beams at Lantern Stewart, sending him spinning across the room and breaking his connection to the rock crusher doing its best to chew on Guy. Guy's breathing hard and what's left of his armour construct fails as I watch. Respect to him though, he only takes a brief moment to get his breath back before recreating it and sticking a clamp around Wonder Woman, binding her arms so Barda can finally punch her out. Klarion looks around desperately and Kal-El tries charging Barda from behind. He goes for a full nelson but deprived of his super strength she's in no danger at all.

Richard and Wallace step through a newly opened hush tube in the far wall. I lift the Jade Lion guarding Ghost Fox Killer off the floor. **Zatanna, please free Ghost Fox Killer first.** I feel her incomprehension through the telepathic link. **Woman in the green dress over there.** I try to communicate the idea of her relative location.

Artemis takes one look at the Ghosts and backs up a half step. **What are those things?**

Tao checks that they aren't moving and then notches, draws and looses at Lantern Stewart. **Ghosts. The souls of the villains she has slain and bound to her service.** The arrow goes through Stewart's chest and spears the Starro within. He falls unconscious to the ground. **With their mistress removed from the field they are of little threat.**

Kon and Match rush to check on Wonder Woman while M'gann looks around for Mister J'onzz. **What happened to him?!**

**A small amount of burning petrol. Not enough to cause lasting injury.**

"Hcet-orrats eb edamnu." Immediately the Ghosts reorientate on their mistress before floating over to form a circle around her. I put the Jade Lion on the ground and it walks over to Ghost Fox Killer while keeping its distance from Zatanna. Is she going to get up in time? From the looks of it Nabu's going to do a number on Klarion without external intervention. His little computer screens are gone and he's fallen to his knees with only three arms remaining.

Hm. No enemy effectives left on the field, discounting Kal-El who isn't getting out of that headlock anytime soon. Ring, assimilation progress?

Thirty nine percent complete.

It's not disarming an opponent anymore, it's straight up theft. Darn. Oh well, I suppose that the data was the main thing. "Gardner." I land and toss the ring to him. He catches it, looks at it and then gives me an interrogative look. "Jordan's. Took it off him so he couldn't use it. Feel free to smug at him when you give it back." He nods and grins.

"Gahh!" Klarion manages to lift his head up for a weak purple lightning bolt which is harmlessly nullified by Nabu's shield. Are we actually going to get him?

Priority threat Vandal Savage.

But he's-. Oh, right. He leaps to his feet, strikes Nabu in the kidneys from behind as he lunges for his weakened comrade. Do I take a shot? Savage sprouts arrows as Artemis and Mister Harper do their best to stop him but Tao's out of position and I haven't had a chance to speak to Batman about-. Purple light precipitates out of the air and folds in around them. Gone. Oh well. It's a bit annoying but perhaps this way I'll be able to kill him without my friends trying to stop me. Zatanna watches him vanish and then returns her attention to Hawkwoman. She and Kal-El have both stopped struggling now their domitor has left and they'll be truly free before too long.

Nabu glows orange for a moment as he restores his host body. "Good work, Nabu. Now purify your host and then relinquish control."

"i ObEy." His head tips back slightly and there's another orange flash before he reaches up and lifts the Helmet off. Mister Zatara blinks and shakes his head slightly, then smiles as Zatanna runs over.

Robin walks over to the hall's holographic control panel in order to get in contact with Batman while the rest of my team mates drift over to look out of the main window at the Earth below. Not a bad morning's work, all told. But now I've got more important things to do. By the time the League wakes up this place will have decent internal security systems, courtesy of Jordan's Sector House schematics.

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Gude-Willie Waught 16

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31st December

11:55 GMT -2

"Mother always said I should have gone into dentistry but no, I just had to go into robotics."

"And we are most grateful that you did." Professor Vulko seems to be tolerating Doctor Roquette's moaning reasonably well. Given how discussions on normalising relations with the surface are going I suppose that it shouldn't surprise me that the Atlantean Scientific Centre has a room like this set up. It's air filled and maintained at a pleasant twenty one degrees. He explained that they weren't yet able to make a room like this at this depth without ongoing spellcraft to prevent the walls from being crushed, but there's nothing that shouts 'magic in use here' to me. It just looks like… Actually, the thing it reminds me of most is the Noveria research station in Mass Effect. Or maybe that research station from Deep Blue Sea.

Those aren't really good associations…

Anyway, standard plunge pool in the middle of the room kept down by air pressure, except it also has enchantments on it which allow the water to rise up in a column which reaches to the ceiling. Currently it's occupied by Sephtian. He did try, but if anything he was exaggerating about his ability to cope out of water. He just sort of flopped into this wheelchair buggy thing and I could see full well how painful his skin was getting.

"Download finished." I nod to Dubbilex and Doctor Roquette. "All the data you wanted is now on the server. You think of anything else you need, just let me know." The server was a gift from an electronics research company whose CEO is a friend of Senator Knight. They've been very interested in getting involved with arcane research, or at least in studying applications of existing magics; a brief explanation of refrigeration runes alone resulted in their representative drooling.

Doctor Roquette's left eye twitches. "About five years! And what happened to this?" She gesticulates at the Starro-tech device sitting on the electron microscope. "Was it brought in by a cat or something?"

"Yes."

"Doctor, please, a little comportment." I guess Professor Vulko's used to dealing with temperamental academics. "I realise this is difficult, but we're on a clock."

Doctor Sterling tries looking at Dubbilex again. "But…"

"I realize that the idea is a strange one, Doctor." He gently puts his right hand on her left shoulder. "But I assure you that there will be no ill effects. Genomorphs have shared information and experiences telepathically since our creation. No Human with whom we have interfaced has suffered anything worse than a mild headache."

She sighs. "Fine. But if I end up a vegetable because of you-."

"I could probably fix that actu-." I see the wince in Vulko's eyes. "Not the point. I'll just.. go and talk to the others."

The horns of the G-Gnomes we brought with us light up as I step into the water cylinder underneath Sephtian and transfer back to the palace's dry room. It's getting a little crowded in there but there just isn't any space to expand into unless we want to risk going somewhere on the surface. Sephtian said that one of his projects was a wearable air bubble but he doesn't have a prototype yet, not that he'd want to risk on a pressure vulnerable air breather anyway.

Danni's still deep in conversation with her father. Doctor Morrow said that while he didn't mind joining the science team he didn't really see what he'd have to offer since he knows nothing about either biotechnology or nanotechnology. Plus, he couldn't take part in the telepathic communion as he lacks an organic brain.

Kon and M'gann went sightseeing at M'gann's suggestion. Kon was getting more and more wound up about Klarion being in control of Diana and about there not being anything he could do to contribute to getting it fixed. Garth and Tula went with them. They're in the know about what's happened to King Orin but otherwise it's need to know only. Queen Mera wants to keep this very quiet, and I can understand why.

Artemis notices me in the murk -ring assisted vision meant that I hadn't realised quite how dark it was down here for most people- and motions for me to come inside. I push through the membrane and drop to the floor next to her. "How are the brain trust getting along?"

"Tolerably. They were about to set up the telepathic link when I.. umm…"

She smirks. "Got kicked out."

"Basically." I look over to where Mister Free, Mister Metcalf, Kaldur and Robin are huddled around a terminal. "How's it coming here?"

"Hardware wants to build a bunch of gravity sensors, Kaldur wants to do what we did to find Roanoke again, Miracle Man wants to build something to track a Zeta tube and Robin wants to try sticking a transmitter on a League member."

"All of those probably could work. And doing one doesn't necessarily stop us doing the others." I nod at John, who's standing next to one of the water barriers. "What's he been up to?"

"Mostly? Staring into space and asking why he's not allowed to smoke."

"It's probably a self hypnosis thing."

She looks at me dubiously. "Are you sure he knows what he's doing?"

"Reasonably."

"Would…" She glances at my lantern. "Would the snake be able to find it?"

"Maybe. I don't really want to try that until we have a way to remove the Starro-tech that doesn't require Teekl surgery."

"You really think they're looking for us?"

"I would, but we don't really know what Klarion's doing with them."

"Still no sign?"

"Ring?"

"No reports of Justice League activity have been shown on listed news networks."

"I picked up Icon and King Orin leaving the mountain but since then? Nothing." I shrug. "How's Red Arrow been doing?"

"Moping." She rolls her eyes. "Calling him 'Evil Roy' really didn't help."

I look over to where he's half-heartedly nodding along as Wallace gabbles at him. "It was a joke. And it's not like any of us actually met the original. How come he risked going to you for help?"

"We've.. bonded. He knows things about me no-one else on the team except you-."

"And almost certainly Robin."

She gives me a look. "He used that to check I was still me."

"That's not.. actually.. a very good test. If someone's being mind controlled the person doing the controlling usually has access to everything…" She scowls. "I'm just saying."

"Are we gonna be able to find.. other Roy?"

"Dubbilex said that the Genomorphs didn't know who any of the people Cadmus cloned were. He didn't even recognise Guardian when he came back to work on security." I shrug. "I'll help look and I'll try twisting Lex's arm, but you know he's just going to say that it was all Doctor Desmond's fault."

"How about talking to him?"

"Tried that." I think back to that particular prison visit. "He wasn't exactly cooperative and the Blockbuster Formula's done a number on his brain. M'gann or someone might be able to get something out of him, but I'm not hopeful."

She nods and walks past me to look out across Poseidonis. "D'you think I could survive out there now?"

"Urm. You'd drown."

"With an air mask. Ass."

Hmm. "I.. think so. You're more resilient than M'gann and she handles it fine. Might want to wear some goggles though, and you might have trouble moving around."

"Then can we get out of here, just for a little while? It's kinda claustrophobic in here, and I'm.. not really contributing…"

"Sure, we can do that." I take an air mask out of subspace and hand it to her. "I should be able to give you the tour by now." But before we go… I walk over to my personal lantern and kneel down next to it. "Ophidian, do what you can to focus their minds on their objectives and not their egos, will you?"

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Gude-Willie Waught 17

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31st December

12:14 GMT -2

"So this is where Kaldur went to school, huh?"

Artemis and I float in the water just above the Conservatory of Sorcery. Unlike with John where I have to more or less drag him around in order to go faster than walking pace Artemis is strong enough to swim around Atlantean style. Her eyes are glowing orange where I'm enhancing them to allow her to see effectively. "For a while. He started studying here when he was fourteen and went part time when King Orin took him on."

"Wait, so he just..?"

"What?"

"Stopped going to school. I mean, does he have any qualifications or anything?"

"Um. No, I don't suppose he does. I mean, there's some civil exams I'm.. pretty sure he took, but he wouldn't have completed any normal courses."

"Kaldur's a delinquent?" She seems to find the idea amusing.

"No, of course not. This isn't like.. skiving off school to go on patrol. Kaldur's a member of the Atlantean military. King Orin's taken personal responsibility for his tuition. It's not just King Orin who teaches him, he's been there when Atlantean generals discuss the defence of the realm with their sovereign, when city-state politicians and senators bring him their problems. Just about anything that happens in court, he's seen. Kaldur's learning tactics and strategy, economics and politics as well as combat skills. If our team hadn't come together he'd probably have a commission in the Atlantean military by now."

She nods, turns in the water and starts swimming down towards the research centre. I follow along behind. Before we left I pointed out that her armour would probably be a bit constricting. Though at first she was dubious about my motives I was able to persuade her to change to a grey wetsuit with flippers. Even though the switch was instant she still insisted on me creating a screen construct when I did the switch.

"Queen Mera really teaches here?"

"She taught here before she became queen. She doesn't really have much to do with ruling the country. Well, she didn't. With Prince Orm… She might now, I don't know."

"Doesn't that make her really vulnerable?"

"There's guards to defend the place and she's a qualified battlemage. The Conservatory isn't quite as heavily warded as the palace but it's not far behind. Black Manta was such a problem at least in part because Atlantean defence plans revolved around defending against melee and magic attacks, not advanced technology." I stop and point at where Sephtian's people have started building the dome bubble generator along the rim of the Conservatory's mesa. "And when that's finished, those won't be a problem any more either."

"Some sort of force field?"

"Basically. It.. sort of makes the water disinclined to move. Like a bubble, but really tough."

"Let's go take a look." She turns away from the main building and starts towards it.

"Okay, but there's not really going to be much to see at this stage."

About a quarter of the metal ring which will be used to generate the bubble has already been laid out and a small group of Atlanteans are working on chiselling out the groove for the rest of it to run in. Their sharkman overseer looks up as we swim down to their level.

"Hey, Slayer! Who's your friend?"

"Good afternoon, Alkiphron. This is Artemis, Artemis, Alkiphron."

"Ahh… Hi."

Alkiphron has his mouth slightly open and I think Artemis is being transfixed by his teeth. "I thought all of the soldiers Poseidonis borrowed from Nanauve had gone back home?"

"Oh, they did. But High King Orin let anyone who wanted to stay on transfer over." He suddenly twists in the water. "Keep working, rock munchers! Just because I'm talking doesn't mean you can!" He keeps watching for a moment as they bend themselves to their task. "Hm." He turns back towards us at a more normal pace. "Probation oversight. Guess some parts of the job are the same whatever city you're in."

"What made you stay?"

"Spending time here made me realise that if King Blunt Brain can handle a school like this, then I can too. Blood mages back home are really picky about who they take on but here? After my probation's up in five months' time I can apply for arcane training. I mean, I'm never going to be like the High Queen or anything but I'll have more to offer than just another guy with a sword."

"Did a lot of Nanauvians stay on?"

"Not many. I mean, obviously Ceyx did… Be weird without him. But it was mostly officers looking for promotion rather than regular soldiers like us. Hey, hey, ah…" He points back at the prisoners. "Didn't you bring them in?"

I look past him. Oh. James, Steven and Richard, the formerly fearsome fish eaters. "How did they end up down here?"

"Ah, think they chose this over a surface prison. No, wait, hang on." He reaches down to his belt, pulls out an arcane tablet and touches one of the runes. "Oh, that's it. Their parents signed off on them coming here rather than going to a surface prison."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Apparently, your country doesn't have a prison for young.. meta.. humans..? So it was this or… The Tower? That might not be quite right. Sometimes name translations on these things don't work like they're meant to."

"No, that's right. The Tower of London."

Artemis appears to have recovered her wits. "I thought that was just a tourist place?"

"Some parts are, but there's an underground facility for housing special prisoners. It uses magic rather than power suppressors, so it works on all types. There just isn't much space and they don't really know how to make it bigger anymore." I shrug. "It would break the European Convention on Human Rights to put anyone who wasn't a supervillain in there."

Alkiphron tilts his head to the side. "That doesn't make sense. If their spells are still working anyone who knows anything about magic could work it out eventually, even if they couldn't cast it themselves."

"John Dee was a big believer in job security. It's not like Atlantis where there's books on magic in every street. Someone from his era on the surface would have had to spend years... Decades, doing research and hunting down manuscripts. He had to reinvent nearly everything from scratch, and then his library got vandalised while he was away… Now I think the government's just too worried about wrecking it to try anything creative."

Alkiphron thinks for a moment. "Couldn't we do that? I mean, there's plenty of researchers around here and the High King's trying to make friends with the surface?"

"How many would volunteer to spend months or years on the surface with only fresh water to swim in?"

Artemis frowns. "London's on the coast."

"Yes, and it's been on the coast for about twenty one hundred years. How polluted do you think that water is by now?" I turn to Alkiphron. "You would vomit through your gills."

"Ugh. Okay. You could still probably find a Pureblood who'd do it. Ahh, not the vomiting thing, but if it was interesting enough they'd probably put up with the dryness."

"I suppose it's something I could look into."

Alkiphron nods in a satisfied manner, then something occurs to him. "Oh, if you're looking for Professor Sephtian I think he went over to the Science Centre. Maybe. He's not here anyway."

"No, no, I was just showing Artemis around."

"Alright, I'll tell him you were here." He takes a closer look at Artemis' wetsuit. "Heeeey, is that shark scale?"

Her eyes widen, she blinks and looks down at her chest. "Um…"

He nods in satisfaction. "Cutting off people's hands and wearing the skin of your fallen enemies. You surface people are more like us than I thought!"

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31st December

13:35 GMT -2

Looks like there's something exciting going on inside the palace's air room. My team mates and the other hangers on are gathered around a space while John is drawing something on the floor. And it appears to have Red Tornado in the centre of it. Oh, that's an alarm bell. I push my way back into the room and walk up behind Donna. "What's going on?"

She glances back at me before returning her attention to the circle. "Constantine's had an idea for detecting the Watchtower." A pensive and heavily pregnant looking Queen Mera is watching proceedings on the far side from us, flanked by Kaldur and Zatanna. "He thinks he should be able to detect the echo of the sympathetic link Klarion is using to control the Justice League by doing.. something involving Tornado, Teekl and some hair from someone called The Changing Man."

Teekl's lying down in a smaller circle surrounded by occult symbols and Enochian script, playing with something small and black. The Changing Man's hair, presumably. "The Changing Man's a Lord of Chaos, Teekl was Klarion's familiar and Tornado was under his control. I don't know much about magic but that sounds like it could work."

"I don't know much about magic either but, speaking as a demigoddess? That thing he's drawing on the floor is making me feel very uneasy. I don't think I can explain it properly-."

"If you're spending time around John Constantine it would be strange if you didn't feel like that."

"I'd got used to that. It just feels like something that really shouldn't exist." She frowns. "Why does he feel.. so..?"

"Cut his own soul in half then patched it up using whatever was on hand. He's actually got a demonic doppelganger around the place somewhere that grew out of the other half."

When she looks at me she doesn't waste time with disbelief and goes straight for horrified. "And… We're relying on this guy?"

"If I knew of someone better I'd have got them instead. Look, Queen Mera's given the design the once over. I doubt she'd let off something inside the palace that would doom us all."

"Alright!" John stands up, having finished the last inscription. "Think that's it." He carefully crosses the space and stands in what I recognise as the ritualist's space and carefully gives his design the once over. "Oh, hang on." Three careful steps and he bends down to draw what to me looks like a squiggle on one of the larger symbols. Another look around and he makes a shrugging gesture at Queen Mera.

She looks it over very carefully as well. "It seems to be complete. I would have liked to have taken longer to review it more carefully but time is not on our side." She looks directly at him. "Proceed."

"Right then." He tiptoes back to his circle before sitting down with his legs crossed and his hands palms upward on his knees. "Few pointers for the peanut gallery. First thing is: do not cross the outer circle." I generate an orange barrier twenty centimetres away from that edge and expand it, nudging several people away. John nods at me. "Nice to see you escaped bowgirl in one piece." Donna gives me an amusedly curious look. Does she still think I'm gay? I've rather lost track. "Second thing: do not cross the flamin' circle! You wouldn't believe the number of people I've seen killed doing something stupid they knew they shouldn't. Treat this whole thing like a live electric cable. Just 'cause you can't see anything dangerous doesn't mean it isn't there." He looks around to make sure we've got it, then reaches into his jacket and fishes out what looks like a series of astrology charts and a pendulum. The charts get spread out in front of him inside his circle and the pendulum gets held lightly in his right hand so it can swing freely.

"I'm not quite mental enough to try connecting to Klarion himself, but I should be able to follow the magic and get a good idea of where he is. Once the weight picks out a place on each picture we'll get another load of pictures for that general area and repeat the process again and again 'til we've narrowed it down to something you can land that Martian spaceship on. Since I'm not directly getting involved in Klarion's spell he shouldn't realise I'm there. But just in case, the edge of the circle's got the same hiding wards as I stuck on Paul's tattoos. Third thing, this isn't going to be particularly fast. I'm going to be raising power and feeling out the connection slowly, so don't feel you all need to keep staring at me. Fourthly, I'm going to be outside my body for most of it so don't be surprised if I'm not exactly talkative. Stepping over the circle 'cause it looks like I've died will just get us both killed. Fifthly, if something starts going wrong, refer to points one an' two. If Klarion spots what I'm doing I'll be shuttin' this whole thing down bloody quick. There'll be basically nothing you can do to help so don't distract me by puttin' yourself in danger. Everyone got it?" There's a general nodding. "Right then. Cat, stay where you are. Red, make yourself comfortable." John leans forwards slightly, holds the pendulum over the first picture and unfocuses his eyes.

I step away from the ring of people and walk around the outside until I come to Wallace and Robin. "Any news on the-?"

Wallace jerks around. "Shhh! He needs to concentrate."

"John could do this ritual in the middle of a Black Sabbath gig." I frown. "In fact, I think he did once. He wasn't joking about it taking a while and lots of background noise is better than just a little bit."

"Oh. Really?"

"That's.. what he told me. Not like I do it myself."

"Huh."

"So, Robin. I know Batman wasn't keen on me scanning Kryptonite with the ring, but we are actually going to have to fight Kal-El and I'd be much better at regulating dosage than natural exposure." Robin thinks for a moment, then nods and fishes a small lead lined box out of his utility belt. "You know, that stuff can cause cancer in Humans with prolonged exposure."

"It spends most of its time in a fortified vault lined with lead and concrete."

"Might want to add a force field."

"Superboy not back yet?"

"No. Artemis and I met up with them when we were out and they wanted to do more exploring." I create a semipermeable barrier around the box as he opens it. Glowing green crystal, maybe a tiny little bit darker than green constructs are. The ring gives me a summary of the radiation bandwidths it's emitting. I don't know enough about Kryptonian biology to understand why it has the effect that it does but I've.. still got my old scans of Kal-El and Kon on the ring. I.. should just be able to clone a small blood sample and record the results. My knowledge of Kryptonian physiology… No, my knowledge is fine, my understanding of Kryptonian physiology is sorely lacking. I nod and Robin closes the lid before returning the box to his utility belt. "Don't suppose you've got any other colours, have you?"

"Other colors?" He frowns. "What d'you mean?"

"You know, other radioactive lumps of Krypton, possibly emitting at different wavelengths. I mean, the lower lethality the better, right?"

"I don't.. think there are any other colors, Oh El."

"Oh well. Any plans for what to do when we find the Watchtower?"

Wallace shrugs. "Depends whether we've got a cure or not. I mean, if we get a cure first it might be better to try and lure them out."

"I've still got the design for Vertigo's Vertigo Inducer thing on file. I think most League members would be vulnerable to it."

"So why didn't-? Oh, right, Physician manipulates sound. What about those brain things we have in the mountain?"

"I'm a little uncomfortable using them when we don't know how they'll interact with the Starro-tech. I mean, Icon and…" I glance at Queen Mera. "The first thing Physician probably did was haul them away and fix them up. It's fairly short ranged and isn't necessarily immediately disabling. I'm.. more inclined to go for a power suppression system."

Robin shakes his head. "They have to be wearing the collars for them to work and they haven't been tested on the League members. For all we know aliens aren't affected. Did you manage to get hold of Oa?"

"No. I tried Clarissi Salaak and a couple of other Lanterns at random. I think my calls are being screened. I was briefly able to get hold of Director Jiang of the Chinese Standing Committee on Metahuman Affairs but he doesn't know me and I think I heard someone say 'cake' in the background. I did explain the situation to the man in charge of Russia's metaweapon development, but he just sort of grunted at me until I hung up."

Wallace nods. "Guess we're on our own then."

I look around the room. "Oh… I wouldn't say that."

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Gude-Willie Waught 19

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31st December

15:47 GMT

Aaaaaand done. I step back with a smile on my face as the Watchtower's deep space sensors are restored to full functionality. A touch of a button later and the basic view of the solar system grudgingly granted us by the Guardians' cast off space station is replaced by a far more detailed view of nearly the entire space sector. Not quite up to the standard of an actual Sector House's scan; I don't have a spare green personal lantern to run it on and some of the advanced systems require that. Hmm. I don't want to do a half arsed job of this and I've been meaning to investigate those 'Guardian containment vessels' the ring detected when I first arrived here for some time. Worth prioritising in the new year? Maybe. I'll see how my talk with Batman goes first.

I turn to look at my audience. "Think they'll appreciate it?"

Mister Tawny looks around when I speak, grunts and then goes back to playing with the Sphere. I think he's annoyed with me for not bringing him with us during the attack. It's just that we were relying so much on precision and I'm still not sure exactly how intelligent he is. Besides, he'd have hated the headphones he'd have been forced to wear. That's odd, actually; I know full well that a power ring can translate animal noises into words but I've never heard him say anything. Tigers aren't the most vocal of animals but they're usually more vocal than he is. In any case the ring should be translating what I say into ideas he can understand.

"Mister Tawny, can you understand me?"

He shoves the Sphere backwards with his head, look at me, sniffs at the Sphere and then turns around to amble in my direction. When he gets up close he rears up, putting his forepaws on my shoulders. He's done that before when we've wrestled, but this time rather than trying to bite or headbutt me I can almost see him weighing me up.

Then he nods. Tigers don't nod. "Of course I can."

What?

"Though I hope you don't mind if we keep it between the two of us."

What?

No, seriously. What?

"Oh, come now. Surely you're not completely unfamiliar with the idea of a talking Tiger?"

"Nn-. No, not completely. I have heard animal speech before via the ring. Yours is just a little more advanced than I've become accustomed to."

"The BBC World Service really is a wonderful institution."

"Is that really all there is to it?"

"No." He pulls back slightly and drops back to the floor. He's a little more massive than me but a good deal shorter. "I learn quickly, but I grew up in a jungle in India. Inorganic environments still make me a little uncomfortable. Furthermore, as best as I have been able to determine, I am an unusually intelligent Tiger. Not a Tiger-shaped Human. My thought processes are different to theirs."

I nod. "Is there a reason why you've decided to break your silence now?"

"Because you had the cheek to leave me behind. And because you were becoming suspicious. What gave me away?"

"I've been studying Tiger behaviour. Your behaviour's been a little off for as long as I've known you. I wanted to be sure I wasn't.. mistreating you."

"If you had been, I assure you, you would have known about it."

"Do you intend to tell the others?"

"No. Without your ring to intercede on my behalf the quality of my English is appalling."

"You can actually speak-?"

His opens his mouth in a yawn and licks his fangs. "Not with these. I'm tentatively prepared to appreciate what The Brain did to me -on balance- but Venom Buster aside he left my form little changed. No lips and large fangs don't make for the most intelligible conversation."

"There might be a way around that. I had been thinking about it anyway…"

"Oh? Do tell."

"There's no particular reason why Divine Awakening shouldn't work on you. You're Earth-native, you have a spiritual presence. I can't be entirely sure what the result would be…"

"But you use it on your other friends without hesitation." He nuzzles his head against my left leg. "Do it. God me."

I reach down and lay my left hand on his head. That.. feels a little more weird than it did before he started talking to me. "Awaken." The orange light radiates out and I lift my hand away immediately once it finishes.

"What?" He sits down and looks me in the eye. "Ooh. I see. You must understand, Grayven: I'm not Human. My instinctive body language is quite different. If you become uncomfortable touching me in the way that you have been, then it will become psychologically uncomfortable for me to be around you."

"I should have realised." I reach forwards and rub the top of his head. "I apologise."

"Quite alright. I realise this requires a degree of adjustment."

"Justice League members approaching."

Mister Tawny glances over at the door. "Mum's the word." A last nuzzle of my hand and then he rises and charges at the Sphere.

I stand at ease as the door slides open, revealing Diana and Kal-El. I nod at my sponsor. "Wonder Woman. Good to see that you've recovered."

Diana looks me over. "Kon said that you were injured."

"Three green energy projectiles from Ghost Fox Killer." I point to where they struck me. "Not sure exactly what they were made of but they've faded since and there doesn't seem to have been any lasting damage."

Kal-El nods to me. "Grayven."

I smile. "Manman."

"Grayven."

"Sorry, Kal-El. Childish of me. I apologise."

He doesn't look much happier. "How long does it last?"

I make a show of carefully considering the question. "You understand… I was only able to test it on tissue samples. When I exposed Kon's blood to the crystalline form of gold kryptonite, half a second's exposure was enough to shut his photoreceptive organelles down for about two minutes. With prolonged exposure they start to die off… You had fairly intense exposure…"

Diana sets her face. "Grayven, direct-."

"Low blow, Wonder Woman. I don't know, okay? This isn't fully tested. I just knew that unlike the green stuff it couldn't kill you. Given what my scans are showing now, I'd say, you'll be back in full fighting form in… Two months."

His eyes widen. "Two months?!"

"Three at the outside. The organelles will repropagate, but you took an intense hit to the head and chest. If it happened any faster you'd risk your body pulling itself apart as the fully restored bits got stronger than the unrestored bits next to them." That's total bullshit -given how Kryptonian strength is based on a strong nuclear force manipulation field rather than organic strength- but from the barely contained horror on his face it doesn't look like he knows that. What exactly have he and Jor-El been talking about?

Diana turns to him and puts her right hand on his left shoulder. "It's only two months-"

"Or three!"

She glares me into silence. "Maybe a break from League work wouldn't be such a bad thing. It would give you time to focus on your.. other work."

"I… I guess."

"Ah, I'm just messing you about." Glares from both, though Kal-El's is deliciously brittle. "Oh, that was all true, but with your powers down to nearly nothing I can use the ring to fix you up the same way I did Kon and Match. Take twenty seconds." He doesn't immediately respond, trying to keep himself under control. "I don't have to if you don't want me to."

He grits his teeth. "Thank you, Grayven. I would appreciate that."

I hold out my left hand and with a little effort -I mean, it's not as if I like the guy- orange strobes flare out and recreate the microscopic structures within his cells while shielding him from the wavelengths that will cause them to reactivate before I'm finished. Nineteen seconds later I shut it down. "There you go. Half an hour sunbathing and you'd never know it ever happened." Except in your head.

He nods, then turns to leave the room while Diana gets into lecture mode. "Grayven, that was unnecessary."

"It was just a joke. This has been a fairly stressful day for us as well, you know." She appears to accept the answer. "Now, how about I show you some of the improvements I've made to the Watchtower." I hold out my right hand to the sensor display and she walks past me to get a better look.

She can only lip read if she can see my lips. "If you're listening, Kal-El, mark my words. I respect Batman and Wonder Woman but you? You're just that guy who made my closest friend feel worthless for two months. Doesn't feel nice, does it?"

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Gude-Willie Waught 20

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31st December

16:01 GMT

"…really wanted to install railgun hardpoints to reduce the maintenance requirements buttttt… Those could theoretically be used against low flying aircraft."

I know that the League aren't hung over, but from the trouble most of them are having focusing the effect is really quite similar. Wonder Woman and Kal-El look fine, as do Mister J'onzz and William. Everyone else is having trouble focusing. Lantern Stewart in particular appears to be suffering, squeezing his eyes shut and rubbing the bridge of his nose for the fourth time since Wonder Woman called everyone together. She was a little concerned after I showed her the full extent of the modifications I'd made while the League were in no position to argue.

"And I know how much you all want to avoid the Watchtower looking like an orbital supremacy platform."

Even though that's what it is. Even though it would make your job much easier.

Batman takes a deep breath. "How many laser turrets did you build?"

"I wasn't quite sure what the optimal number was, but I thought -to grant overlapping fields of fire and allowing some redundancy to mitigate the effect of losses due to enemy action- sixty eight would probably be sufficient."

Hung over and bewildered. Zatanna did say that she could purge the lingering effects, but I asked her to focus her efforts on creating defensive wards around the Watchtower itself instead. Essential, and something I can't deal with myself. Mister Zatara didn't want to risk doing anything while he was still suffering from the 'Klarion hangover' himself. The Great Ten have been quartered in the Watchtower until we've had a chance to fully check them for residual chaos magic. They were more willing to go along with that than I thought they'd be. Ghost Fox Killer even did a full apology bow for shooting me. I was so moved by her comportment that I constructed for her a device that can replicate the ring effect I used to bypass my formerly insensitive skin. Should work on the good Captain, and from how her pupils dilated slightly and from how quickly she hid the thing I think she got the idea. The exception from that reasonable arrangement was Gu Lao, who is currently in my newly constructed brig. I did offer to arrange for him to have died valiantly while fighting against Klarion but Captain Fang said that it wasn't his decision. Guardsman claimed that he was following legitimate orders… Well. He isn't my priority.

"Cool." William grins, notices the glares from his colleagues and then tries to serious it up. "I mean, they'd only be used if the Watchtower was attacked, right?"

"I set them up to intercept missiles, attack craft and boarding craft. They aren't enough to fend off a serious assault by an interstellar polity."

"I notice that you appear to have incorporated Martian technology into your Zeta tube quarantine units." Mister J'onzz is too tough for the petrol fire to have seriously hurt him but I made a point of healing his burns myself anyway. Any anger I still felt about his fucked up training exercise has faded to time and Guy's wise counsel. And after this it's not as if the rest of the League look any more competent. He seems to have dealt with the psychological effects of my attack well enough. M'gann wasn't entirely sanguine about what I did but she did understand the necessity. "From where did you acquire them?"

"Mars, of course. It isn't a restricted technology. In fact, the person I bought them from seemed to be implying that they were rather out of date. Still, they should be enough to detect unnatural mental influences of the telepathic variety. Don't worry, full mental shields the whole way. The seller didn't learn anything from me I didn't want them to."

Lantern Jordan looks like he wants to say something, then looks past me and thinks twice about it. Guy wasn't invited to participate but he created a chair construct just behind me and to my right anyway and he's been staring at Jordan with a grin on his face ever since. Jordan for his part has been avoiding looking at him. Even better, every few minutes he slides his ring off his finger and wipes it.

Batman calls up a holographic representation of the Watchtower in the middle of the table. "I understand that you've also added force field generators."

"Yes sir. I felt that with an entirely passive system there was no need to restrict myself. Even in the event of a violent de-orbit they'd actually serve to reduce the force of the impact."

"Apokoliptian technology."

"Yes sir, though it's hardly visible from the outside. It's based on the system that.. thing in Bialya had protecting it. The Zeta tube won't function while it's up but arcane teleportation should be unaffected."

Batman moves the diagram around a few times to get a better look. "How long can the Watchtower's fusion reactor power it for?"

"About half a second. That's why I tossed it." I point at the display. "May I?" He nods, and I expand the view of the power plant. "These are Bleed Membrane Instability Generators." The Hawks and Mister Freeman appear to relax a little while Kal-El and the Lanterns look even more concerned. "They should be more than enough to power-."

"They generate power using Bleed instability!?" Lantern Stewart, your ignorance is showing.

"Of course not. That would be insane. Rather, they take advantage of the fact that physical laws get a bit fuzzy in the membrane between our universe and the Bleed to generate power."

Hawkman nods. "Systems like that are used throughout Thanagarian space. They're almost completely safe because the first thing that happens if anything goes wrong is that the connection to the Bleed is lost. It's like generating power with a black hole; it sounds like it should be dangerous when in fact the most powerful safety feature is built in."

Doctor Palmer tries to get his head around the idea. "Physical laws get fuzzy?"

I nod. "It's a little difficult to explain. Essentially, a universe is delineated by a set of physical laws which make sense in terms of themselves. In the Bleed, there are no consistent laws… Except, when a universe forms and is protected by its own cohesion. But, in the membrane…"

"The rules apply only partially." He nods, more or less to himself. "That disproves entropy. It's not even about the size of the system being larger than just one universe. That could still mean that they were all winding down. If these things allow you to add energy without taking it from somewhere else…"

"One can equal two. Or turquoise. Or banana. Physical laws only apply in a given set of conditions, though as I understand it most alternate universes do have something like entropy within themselves. At least, most for which I've been able to see records."

Hawkwoman leans closer to the display. "Those six wouldn't be enough to power a warship."

"Quite right, sir. Six was pushing what the Watchtower's power distribution systems can handle and.. well. Laser turrets. Not exactly 'high draw'." She nods. "I could have built blasters oooor hyper blasters instead but I know that even this is going to be a hard sell."

Mister Allen shakes his head. "And.. why exactly do you think we need any of this?"

"Sir, today you all got your arses kicked. Twice. Firstly, by mind controlled Red Arrow and the Starro-tech." Mister Harper is.. not handling this situation well. I need to deflect his attention. "Secondly, by my team. Now, you couldn't reasonably have predicted Red Arrow turning on you, but you could have predicted League members encountering mind control. You didn't. You don't do routine screening for-" I count on my fingers. "-magic, telepathy, nanotech, parasites or cybernetic control implants. All of those are things you know to exist. No one got screened. You can't reduce the risk to zero, but you can get it a good deal lower than it is now." I make eye contact with Mister Zatara and then with King Orin. "The Watchtower is entirely unwarded, a gaping vulnerability. One Zatanna's busy fixing." My eyes tour the League. "No flak and.. frankly basic armour means that a few nuclear missiles launched from the planet's surface is all it would take to destroy this place." Stewart, then Jordan. "No long range deep space sensors or interdiction fields means that an invader can drop out of FTL right on top of you."

That gets Jordan to look at me. "You built an interdiction field?"

"No one in this system uses FTL except us Lanterns and we won't be affected."

"Ah?" Mister Queen waves his right hand. "For those of us without power rings?"

Lantern Stewart looks at him. "An interdiction field is a type of technology which prevents faster than light travel within an area. Usually you use it if you're attacking someone and want to prevent them from escaping."

I nod. "Now, anyone trying to enter the system with any of the more commonly used forms of FTL will drop out just inside the edge of the Oort cloud." I think for a moment. "Maybe Neptune orbital distance if they don't mind wrecking their engines. In either case, we get lots of warning. Full technical manuals and SOPs have been loaded into the Watchtower's database. Now, is there anything else you would like to ask before I take the Great Ten home?"

"Yes." Wonder Woman looks at me curiously. "What prompted you to incorporate these technologies in the Watchtower now?"

Kal-El's eyes narrow. "Without asking us."

"To answer you both, because I had been assuming that you could look after your own defences. Clearly, I misjudged." A few scowls. I shake my head and raise my right hand in a pacifying gesture. "That wasn't intended as an insult. I have a particular ability with regards to technological adaptation and reverse engineering. I don't expect Green Arrow to brawl with giant cyborg apes or Superman to run a strategic intelligence network. This happens to be what I have to offer. Make use of it, or this will not be the last time this happens."

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Gude-Willie Waught 21

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31st December

20:47 GMT -2

Adom regards Robin with an air of disquiet. "You are fourteen? I had assumed that you were simply short." Wallace turns his snigger into a cough and turns his head away as Robin glares at him. "I do not mean to insult you by saying that. If anything, your youth means that your deeds do you even more credit."

"Thanks… I think."

With Adom having joined us everyone's here. John's laid out at the back of the room getting himself back together. His attempts at scrying eventually met with success, and with the location and a conceptual link he, Mister Free and Queen Mera were able to find a way to modify an experimental Dolmen Gate to bypass the defences. John doesn't think that Klarion noticed him, but he was fairly clear that we shouldn't assume that.

"If we could have your attention please?" Professor Vulko stands at one end of the room with Doctor Roquette and Dubbilex. Sephtian floats behind them in the water on the other side of the shield barrier. To their left are Kaldur and Queen Mera, along with two G-Dwarves and four G-Gnomes. The rest of us shuffle around until we're all facing them. "We believe we.. have something." He opens the case he brought with him, revealing what look like rows of tiny white circuit boards. "We have taken to calling it 'cure-tech'. Through a combination of magic absorption, nanotech disruption and telepathic stimulation it should neutralize the Starro-tech infection in any affected individuals."

Doctor Roquette glances back at Sephtian, who motions her forwards. She delicately slides one of the wafers out of its housing. "To use it, all you have to do is hold it against an infected person's skin for one second. That'll trigger it to start working. It will look like it's phasing through their skin but it's actually the nanotech components spreading out to attack the Starro-tech inside the host's body."

Dubbilex nods. "Furthermore, we strongly advise everyone here to make use of it before starting the attack. One application should be sufficient to render a person immune." He holds out his right arm to Doctor Roquette, who presses the white wafer against it. One second, then it starts to disappear around the edges, a process which is complete another second later.

Kaldur takes one from Vulko, who then comes forwards with the case and holds it out towards the front row. Mister Free takes one out and gives it a quick scan with his multi-cube before pulling back his left sleeve and applying it to his skin. Garth and Tula don't even bother checking it over before using it and Vulko continues moving down the line. "If you become infected this cure-tech should be sufficient to neutralise the infection almost immediately. Unfortunately, when applied to someone who is already infected it is more likely that they will be forced into a state of unconsciousness."

He reaches me and I take a wafer, give it a quick ring scan and then apply it to my forehead. A moment later there's a slight tingling but I don't otherwise notice anything. I then take three more and pass them down to Teekl and Fatty and.. um. Other Fatty. Robin and Wallace take theirs without complaint but Adom looks a little more unhappy about it. "Mighty One, the Starro-tech worked on Captain Marvel. You are vulnerable."

His eyes narrow slightly as he picks up a wafer. "Marvel is a good man, but is not wise in the ways of the gods. The power Lord Atum has granted me should be enough for me to resist this.. thing."

"Is it worth risking it unnecessarily?"

"I suppose not." He presses it again his left palm and we both watch as it disappears. "Your pardon, teacher Vulko. I did not mean to besmirch your work. I am simply unused to this manner of operating."

Vulko turns his head in our direction and Alan and Danni take theirs. "Free King Orin and we'll say no more about it."

The eleven G-Elves Dubbilex insisted we have join us reach out and take their wafers and Vulko walks back to the front of the room. The Genomorph warriors' claws were hard enough for the leading edge to take the x-ionisation process and since he won't be coming himself Dubbilex has assigned them to M'gann's control. Things could get a bit tricky if she gets hurt as the rest of us can't effectively communicate with them, but G-Elves are agile and vicious and I'm sure they'll be very useful.

At the front of the room Kaldur touches an illusory display and calls up a blue and white translucent image of the Watchtower. Time for the briefing proper then. "John Constantine was able to not merely locate the Watchtower, but also detect the number of League members still on board." Red dots appear. "Klarion is here, in the main hall. From the cluster here it seems likely that he has ordered League members under his control to steal technology from the League's storerooms. After the destruction of STAR Labs' San Francisco facility a large number of highly dangerous artifacts were transferred there."

Wallace slumps. "Aww, man. The Medusa Mask again?"

"As you can see, only fifteen League members are present. We have no information on who they are or where the others are. It is likely that wherever they are Klarion will call them to return as soon as he discovers that he is under attack. As such, most of us will travel to the Watchtower by means of the Bio-Ship. Once we are in position, Orange Lantern and Teth Adom will launch a diversionary attack on the main hall while we cut our way through the outer hull. Mister Miracle and Robin will access internal sensors while masking our presence from Klarion. We will then split up in order to ambush as many League members with the cure-tech in our first strike as possible. That will almost certainly cause Klarion to become aware of our presence and rally his defense."

He moves over to a nearby table and picks up a Spell Eater. "Orange Lantern and Professor Sephtian developed these to protect against attacks by magic. Everyone who does not already have one should take one before embarking." A little further along. "These chains should be able to bind even the most powerful magic user. We have three sets available. Teth Adom and Orange Lantern will take one each and attempt to use them to neutralize Klarion. Superboy will take the third in case it becomes necessary to forcibly restrain Doctor Fate." My eyes briefly meet Zatanna's. Or we could just do that anyway. Will we get the chance?

"Garth, Tula and I will be carrying miniature Dolmen Gates linked to the ocean. Not only will that make it far easier for us to use our spells in the Watchtower, but it will also fuel their protective equipment." Both of them are sporting what looks like brass jewellery. It's superficially similar to the shield design I made for Kaldur months ago, refined by someone -Sephtian- who actually knew what he was doing. The water membrane itself is now more precisely controlled and the protection it offers is massively increased. It will no-sell a lot of simple attacks including massive impact trauma and does so without obscuring their vision or mobility. In a prolonged fight the drain it puts on their mana reserves might be a problem, but we're not going to win a drawn out fight against the Justice League and Klarion.

"Everyone will be issued with four cure-tech wafers. Take care not to inadvertently use them on yourselves." I'll be loading mine into the ring. "It will be far easier to administer them by taking the League members by surprise than by beating them into submission. Precise co-ordination will be required. Do not simply rush on ahead." Robin and Wallace glance at each other. "Once we have control of internal sensors we can use them to give false readings in order to lure them into ambushes."

Robin shakes his head. "Batman's too smart to fall for a false sensor reading."

"Were he in his right mind I would agree with you. But with Klarion controlling him to the point where his very patterns of speech are altered I suspect that will no longer be true. In any case we do not know that Batman will be among those present on the Watchtower." He moves further along the table. "These sonic grenades will replicate the effect of Count Vertigo's headset within a radius of about three meters, or nearly ten feet. They can be set to the duration of your choice but only have a total of thirty seconds' continual activity each. The most effective tactic will be to use them for short bursts to disorientate your target before closing the range and using the cure-tech. To prevent you from being affected yourself you will need to be wearing your ear pieces. Be warned that opponents with ear protection, invulnerability or power rings will most likely prove immune to them."

"If it becomes necessary, Robin has a piece of Kryptonite and Orange Lantern has scanned it. The radiation it gives off is extremely painful to Kryptonians.. and I am told that prolonged exposure is unhealthy for Humans as well. If anyone sees opponents who are not League members they are to report on it at once. Does anyone have any questions?"

Alan smiles. "When do we start?"

Kaldur looks around the room. No one else has anything they want to ask. "Very well. Come to the front of the room to be issued with your equipment and then follow Miss Martian to the Bio-Ship." The people at the front of the room start drifting forwards. Garth and Tula have their armour inactive. Even in its current relatively close location it will still take them about a quarter of an hour in the Bio-Ship to reach the Watchtower.

Alan strolls in my direction, Danni close behind. "Looks like this is it, then."

I nod and pull his ring out of my left hip pouch before holding it out to him. "Remember what I said, please. Don't use it if you don't have to."

He takes it and holds it firmly in his right hand. "I'll ask Klarion nicely to lay off, shall I?"

I smile. "No, I'll do it for you."

He pulls me in for a hug. "Good luck Paul."

I try to avoid crushing him with my power armour as I return the hug. "Ah, we don't need it. I've prepared for this."

"Hm." He lets go and heads towards the table.

Danni watches him go for a moment before putting her arms around my chest. "I would be displeased if you were to die. Endeavor not to do so."

"I'll do my b-." She leans forward, kisses me on the lips and then pulls back, watching my face for a response for a moment before stepping away and donning her helmet. "Don't.. you die either." She stays looking at me a moment longer before turning to gather her remaining equipment.

Adom looks at me with his left eyebrow slightly raised. "I had not realised that you were so popular."

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31st December

21:01 GMT -2

"She is an.. artificial life form?"

Apparently Adom's gods are curious about Danni so -since we didn't have anything else to do once the Dolmen gate was put into position- we've been talking about her. For the first time I'm uncertain if his gods really want to know or he's just disguising his own curiosity. From what I know about his character that seems unlikely, but I'm struggling to think why Montu would care about her.

"Yes. She was originally built by the criminal Thomas Morrow sixty eight years ago and was violently taken off line three years after that. An android duplicate of him repaired her a few months ago, though most of her current body was my work." I look down at my lantern. "Mine and the Ophidian's."

"And… She is alive? She has a soul?"

"That depends on exactly what you mean by those terms. She was originally built to just do what Doctor Morrow wanted but her mind has grown a great deal since then. As for a soul… She has an enduring arcane presence. Beyond that you'd need to talk to a specialist or a priest."

Vulko turns around, glowing communication stone in hand. "They're nearing the Watchtower now."

I nod, and Adom picks up his breathing mask. Since we can both fly, making a hull breach seems like it might end up being a sensible thing to do. Shu's stamina means that he doesn't need to breathe to live, but he does need air in his lungs to talk.

"One last thing, Mighty One." He raises his eyebrows slightly. "As I understand it, saying the wizard's name would cause you to revert to your mortal form. Is that correct?"

"Yes. I have not had cause to transform myself since the start of my second life but I can think of no reason why it would not still work in that fashion."

"What happens if Marvel grapples you and says it? The lightning strikes both of you..?"

He nods in understanding. "We would both transform, and I would be vulnerable."

"How would you feel about me augmenting your mortal form? Reducing that vulnerability."

He looks at his left hand for a moment, then nods. "The gods do not object. I am… It is a strange idea, that your alchemies can grant power as the gods can."

"Not quite that good, I'm afraid. You'd still be a lot weaker like that."

"I understand." He thinks for a moment. "You have my consent."

Ooh, this is going to be awkward. "Sorry, Mighty One, but Atum's power? Makes it very difficult to alter your body. You'd have to-."

His eyes narrow. "Say his name."

"Um. Yes. Sorry."

"You counselled me to master my hatred. If I cannot even speak his name to save a friend from slavery then I am unworthy of the gods' blessings. Shazam." Lightning comes from nowhere to crackle around him.

His appearance doesn't change much. His uniform is cut a little differently, presumably the version he's 'actually' wearing. Or since he hasn't changed back since Louisiana, perhaps the version Theodore was actually wearing. He's also slightly slimmer. He sags ever so slightly and grimaces. Given how I feel whenever I take the ring off I can empathise.

"One Danner Formula augmentation coming up." I hold out my left hand, palm of my gauntlet facing him. Orange light strobes out and I take the opportunity to scan for physiological abnormalities. More than a few scars and his deranged father's ear clipping, but other than that he's in perfect health. The strobe cuts out and I do a quick check scan. "Right, that should do-"

"Shazam."

Another flash and he's back to normal. "-it. Feel any different?"

"Should I?"

"I wasn't sure if Lord Heryshaf's blessing increased your strength to a particular amount, or by a particular amount. If it's by then you'll be a great deal stronger now."

He nods, then frowns. "Lord Heryshaf tells me that he does not know. It will be curious to find out." He thinks for a moment. "I understand the value of keeping criminals alive, and I have no wish to offend Princess Diana, but how much effort should I expend in preventing the death of Savage or the Witch Boy?"

"Savage is immortal. Killing him first thing makes sense, because it'll keep him out of the way and we know he'll get up again. Klarion…" I form a railgun construct and load Mageslayer rounds. "I don't want to try to claim to be a perfect judge of morals. I'm going to try doing everything to take him down and if that means that he dies, so be it. I don't think I'd.. kill him if he were powerless and my prisoner. The courts can do that. Anyone else, you should probably do everything you can to take them alive."

He nods, and we stare at the inactive Dolmen Gate for a few moments.

"You know, I used to come to Poseidonis quite regularly."

That gets Vulko's attention. "Really? I had heard that you had only recently been restored to life."

"That is true. I visited last during my first life as a guest of its queen." He looks out through the water barriers at the edge of the room. "I recognise the architecture, though it is strange to see it under water."

Vulko boggles and Queen Mera turns her attention his way as well. "Above water? What was the name of the queen whom you visited?"

"Gamemnae." He's not looking at them and so misses the looks of shock and horror her name provokes. Queen Mera is quick to school her features while Vulko just turns aside. "She and her consort Lord Rama Khan were among my closest allies and friends." He turns back to look at Queen Mera. "If records survive, I would be interested to learn-."

Vulko turns back. "They're in position now!"

Queen Mera raises her hands and tendrils of eldritch energy flow from her to the Gate. "Five seconds!"

I rise into the air and raise my construct armour while Adom attaches his mask and ear pieces. A moment passes and then a view of the interior of the Watchtower's main hall appears.

Accelerated perception.

Klarion floats in the air in front of the hall's main window, small holographic screens in the air around him. On the ground next to him Guy's kneeling. He's glowing brilliant green and appears to be shaking. Savage stands a little further away, talking to a large blonde man wearing black body armour with red are those swastikas!? And a figure in purple wizard robes decorated with gold thread and carrying a spear who is facing away from us.

Adom makes it through the portal just ahead of me as I bring my railgun construct to bear on Klarion.

31st December

23:04 GMT

"-integrated with-"

The railgun hums as Klarion spots me. A purple barrier appears.

"…to… To combat evil with all…"

Adom accelerates, diving into and through Vandal Savage, spraying bits of him everywhere.

The first Mageslayer round strikes the barrier, which holds for a second and then collapses. Klarion gasps and recoils.

Adom turns in the air and comes back around, aiming for the man in armour.

The second Mageslayer strikes Klarion on the right shoulder, tearing off his… Several arms and knocking him out of his perch.

The man in armour smiles savagely, moves to a guard stance and deflects Adom's attack before sending a counterpunch into his face which sends him reeling.

A third Mageslayer hits Klarion in the stomach, punching clean through. Purple mist flows from his wounds.

The figure in purple looks past me. His face is covered by a golden mask. "John Stewart. Hate."

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31st December

23:05 GMT

"You!"

A green hammer construct strikes me from behind and I transition away before it can slam me into the floor. **Captain Nazi and some guy with the Medusa Mask spotted.**

Captain Nazi doesn't leave the ground as he goes for another punch, allowing Adom to grab his arm and strike the elbow with his knee. Adom doesn't go for submission holds but he has long since mastered both 'lock then strike' and integrating his ability to fly into his techniques. Somehow, Nazi's elbow doesn't snap.

Stewart goes for construct miniguns and I counter with a construct shield while sending another Mageslayer into Klarion. He'd managed to raise another shield but it goes down immediately and he's knocked onto his back.

"Orange Lantern. Love."

Stewart upgrades to some sort of missile launcher and fires glowing green rockets at me. I transition to evade and they home in on my new location.

"Enlightened? How frustrating. Black Adam. Fear."

Captain Nazi tanks a shot to the diaphragm in order to pull off a haymaker. Exactly the sort of blow Diana's been telling everyone not to bother with in super strength versus super strength fights. Adom allows it to push him back a few metres before stabilising in the air. "A weak effort, sorcerer."

**We got sensors!**

Nazi goes for a follow up, shooting upwards with his right fist extended. Adom grabs the wrist to turn it aside and slams his left elbow into Nazi's nose. "Blwg!"

I'm forced to transition away again as Stewart's missiles herd me towards what looks like a large mangle construct. Well, if being shot repeatedly hasn't stopped Klarion yet, maybe the system works on automatic? No other Leaguers in the hall, so prioritise Lantern Stewart.

"One people!" Nazi takes the elbow in his stride and powers into Adom, striking him on both sides of his head. "One empire!" He then grips Adom's head and stabs at his eyes with his thumbs. "One-!" Adom grips his wrists and spins back, slamming his right shin into Nazi's groin. He winces but keeps the pressure on, twisting his arms outwards to draw Adom closer before ramming his forehead into Adom's face. "Leader!"

Stewart has some sort of const- oh. That's an FTL jammer. Transition's out until I can deal with it.

Adom is momentarily stunned, which allows Nazi to free his right hand and slam his fist into Adom's face. The follow up punch also strikes home before Adom can get his guard up, knocking him towards the floor.

Orange filaments radiate out from me in an attempt to get a connection to Stewart which I can use to deliver the cure-tech. But he already has a bubble shield up. That needs to go-.

Flames envelop me as the robed figure points up at me with some sort of arcanotechnological gauntlet. The flame pattern reminds me of Danni's ability, though it's far less powerful than hers and far less hot than it would need to be in order to threaten me. He gives up as I fly out of the inferno to avoid Stewart's hammer constructs. Truggs was making stuff for the Nazis? I duck under another hammer construct that turns into a sword as it passes over me.

**Physician down.**

I plot-to-rapid-fly behind Stewart and am immediately forced to reinforce my armour as he surrounds me with a swarm of green construct blades. I try sending a filament at him but it gets severed almost immediately. Right, the stupid way. I form a standard broad construct connection and fire it at him just as hard as I can, wanting

baBUM

it through as hard as I can. Some sort of grinder construct forms around it, teeth spinning, but I'm able to reinforce it and push it up to his shield while maintaining my own FTL-jammer to prevent him from backing off. He creates clamps around my armour and shoves, spinning us both around the room. The ring keeps my inner ears from disorientating me and I try to keep my eyes on him. I make contact with his bubble shield

baBUM

and infect the area I touch with orange light. He slams me into the wall as I finally force a filament through his defence and slap a cure-tech wafer onto the left side of his neck. He jerks as it makes contact and fades into his skin, constructs fading around him.

"Not this time!" Klarion's Human form is consumed and superseded as a cloud of purple boils upwards and solidifies into an even larger version of the melee shape he used on me on Roanoke. I fire another Mageslayer round in his direction but it stops just before it hits him. Ah, indirect effects. Yes, that'll work. I grab Stewart and duck down as Klarion storms forwards and swings his right talon at me. "I'll swat you for good!"

**More Stormtroopers in corridor seven! And they're not being controlled!**

**Since when have Nazis needed to be mind controlled to be evil?**

**Power armor? Seriously!?**

Ring, assimilate! An orange beam flashes out from the ring only for Klarion to catch it with his right hand and pull-

Warning! Power drain-

I cut the power and the light in his hand fades away.

-detected.

He grabs at me with his left. I evade, then he turns his left palm towards me. "Remember this?" Grey dust swirls towards me and encrusts on my construct armour

baBUM

before exploding off and vaporising. With a snarl, Klarion blurs and ooof! Sends me hurtling across the room!

"Krieger! Do something about the other Lantern!"

The wizard looks at him, and then at where Stewart's fallen. "To use this spell on a lesser race…"

I send my nullification chain at Klarion and manage to wrap it around his left ring finger. He winces and then grabs it with his right hand. Why? The chain can't be oh he just tore his own finger off! I didn't take into account ridiculous changes in volume when I made them! Dodge! The finger he threw just misses me and embeds itself in the wall by the nail-claw. Right. Still need to keep him occupied and he seems to be coping with my attacks so far. How do I-?

Ah. I yank the chain-bound finger out of the wall, unbind the chain and bring Fatty and Chubby out of the ring, forcing their mouths open and shoving them both along the finger from opposite ends. Their stomachs bulge like those of the excessively penetrated female leads in pornographic manga and their eyes bulge wide as they get what I hope will be a massive injection of elemental magic.

"My finger!"

I apply pressure to the tops and bottoms of their jaws, cutting the finger in half with their construct teeth. They're both starting to look unwell. "Fatty, Chubbs, eat as much of him as you like."

"So… Much… Food…"

The man in the robes gestures at Stewart with his spear and he's briefly surrounded by a corona of white light. He pushes himself to his feet and blearily looks around. "Red.. Arrow..?"

"The might of the Aesir now flows through you, negro. Perhaps it will counteract your natural inferiority. Overwhelming hatred."

Stewart's back in the air and flying at me immediately. Right, that wizard guy needs to stop. I fire a Mageslayer round at his stomach only for him to somehow intercept it with his spear. What? How can ah! I'm forced to evade Stewart as Klarion grows an extra head and arms from his finger stump so he can manipulate screens again while staying on his guard. Adom and Nazi appear to have gone through one of the interior walls at some point. Come on guys-! Yes! Chubbs vomits forth his offspring first and it immediately charges Klarion. The Giant Witch Boy looks mildly disconcerted before firing a bolt of purple energy down at it. It catches the energy in its mouth, swallows and then vomits forth another Praexis Demon. Both of them grin evilly and then charge onwards again.

Klarion's eyes widen. "Krieger! Get him off the Watchtower NOW!"

"John Stewart, you want to leave."

And then Stewart's Redstone rocket construct ploughs into my chest armour.

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31st December

23:08 GMT

Accelerated perception.

Rocket impact force negligible. Armour fine. Continual force being applied. Heading for main window. Everyone has vacuum protection except the Nazi wizard.

I fire three Crumbler rounds directly at the window.

I hear the howling of escaping air for a second and then the ring filters it out. Debris from the Watchtower and bits of Savage are sucked past me and into space and the wizard… Krieger, Klarion called him? Realises that the main hall's floor is completely flat and devoid of handholds and that robes make great sails. I'm already through the hole as he hits one of the pillars on the side of the middle window. He sets fire to his garment with his gauntlet and melts part of the pillar in an attempt to anchor himself in place. Shooting him now would kill him. No, harmless.

Then Earth and the Watchtower disappear and the stars skip. What-?

Alert! Involuntary FTL transition.

I look around. There's.. nothing… Ring, where are we?

Location unknown.

Well, fuck. Um. Okay, armour repair, ready in sixty four directions, prep Crumbler. Either Stewart is still under the Medusa Mask's hate effect in which case he'll probably come after me, or he isn't and hopefully he'll come and pick me up. Um. Ring, charge?

Eighty nine percent charge remaining.

Nice thing about using a railgun is that it barely consumes any power. Heck, a good part of that power use was probably from Klarion's energy drain and I imagine that the micro FTL hops account for most of the rest. Where is Stewart? Oh, I'm still accelerated. Agh, can't turn it off in case he appears while I'm distracted by the after effects. The ring pulses for a moment and one of my new Praexis Demons plops out into space. Painfully slowly it swings its head around to take in its new environment. Hang on. If I ratchet the acceleration down slowly…

"I'm going to call you Tubbs. How's the fight going, Tubbs?"

"Whaaaaaaat?"

Its voice is lower pitch than either of the other two. Or maybe that's a side effect of the remaining perception acceleration. Does it work like-?

Warning! Will detected!

I transition to Stewart's side as he prepares some sort of gun construct and slam the Crumbler into his chest at point blank range. His environmental shield evaporates and the air shoots out of his lungs as he's exposed to vacuum. His face spasms and he loses control of his weapon construct. ShockCrown. StunCrown. Ring off. Check his brain activity? Pfew, it worked. Extend environmental shield around him.

And now what?

Another lost Praexis Demon appears as I think about it. My team mates are fighting an unknown number of Nazi soldiers… can I call them soldiers? They're not going to be affiliated to any nation… Ugh, whatever. Given that we don't yet know where Truggs' production facility is they might well have power armour, invisibility, phasing -though fortunately Truggs' invisibility and phasing systems don't work together- and possibly elemental control systems if Krieger's gauntlet was anything to go by. Plus, the League and whoever else Savage got hold of. Ring, analyse nearby stars. Anything look familiar?

Location is within the Milky Way galaxy. Insufficient data for further analysis.

Aah! Why wasn't Guy allowed to transfer me a copy of his star charts! What did the blood.. dy… I look at Stewart's ring. I could try asking nicely… No, can't afford further delays. My team needs me too much.

baBUM

I grab it with my left hand and press it up against its orange counterpart. Ring, assimilate.

baBUM

Usurpation in progress. Orange light flares from my closed hand. Usurpation complete. Combined charge at one hundred forty seven percent normal maximum. Do you wish to merge databases?

Whow the Guardians are going to be pissed off with me.

Ring, copy database from the new ring to yourself.

Processing. Operation complete. Stellar navigation available.

I didn't get his personal lantern as well, did I?

Personal lantern tied to ring formerly designated Green two eight one four C not within ring's associated subspace pocket. Connection to remote subspace pockets lost due to usurpation.

Well, they might not send the Corpse after me. Maybe. I slip Stewart's ring onto my right ring finger, orange sigil inwards. And I know where we are. Not all that far, as these things go. He just jumped us a good long way towards the galactic west and down on the galactic plane. Transition.

The Earth reappears, as does the Watchtower. The armoured shutters have automatically deployed, covering the hull breach. Hang on. How am I going to get back in? Can I connect to the zeta tubes? Survey says.. yes. A tube construct forms in front of me and I fly myself and Stewart through it.

"Recognised, Green Lantern one four, Orange Lantern B zero six, Fatty C zero four, Fatty C zero four."

The two Praexis Demons fly off immediately to join in the orange pile in front of us. There must be thirty of so of the things, all frantically trying to bite the magic holding them back. Through their eyes I see Klarion and Krieger standing in the centre of some sort of magic circle. Klarion has a number of what look like bite injuries and he's lost most of his clothing. He's shrunk back down to twice his standard size and is frantically tapping on two floating screens. Off to my side Guy staggers to his feet, eyes glowing green and his aura the most intense I've ever seen it.

"Guy?"

"We're fine."

If he were under control Klarion would have him attack me, wouldn't he? I don't want to waste wafers. Focus on the primary target. The runes in the circle look vaguely Nordic but I don't recognise them or the design of the circle. John had a book on galdr but he said he just had it for reference and that he'd never really studied the field. Nazis had a thing about some parts of Norse mythology, didn't they? I know the Thule Society here was a serious magic research institute rather than the joke they were back home, but I doubt this Krieger's old enough to be an original member. He's far too spry.

I pull back a couple of the Praexis Demons and mentally instruct them to try eating through the floor and coming up from beneath. I feel a momentary resistance -Klarion's magic is just too tasty compared to dull metal, rock and concrete- but when I show them that it might get them past the barrier they nod in unison and start chewing. Railgun, Mageslayer rounds. I honestly had no idea the Praexis would be this effective but I'm not going to look a gift Demon in the mouth.

"Part."

I momentarily get an unobstructed view of my targets. Can't tell what Krieger's expression is under the mask but Klarion's definitely looking scared. His hands glow purple and he shoves them forwards as I fire. The first round stops two metres away and drops to the floor. The second makes it to within a metre and a half. The third just under a metre. Klarion grasps hold of the spear and funnels his purple aura into it as the fourth hits the barrier, which glows white as its power is absorbed. They tend to do worse against clever barriers than against raw power ones but that isn't a problem. I've got plenty.

Warning! Spell Eater approaching critical temperature.

Huh? There isn't any-. Within the circle I see Krieger stamp the butt of the spear down on two of the runes which respond by glowing purple. Wait. Spear? Nazis? I couldn't get a good picture of the Spear of Destiny but that thing used to be able to mind control anyone who entered Nazi territory. And there's Nazis all over the Watchtower. It's an area effect so being unscryable won't help! I load another Mageslayer and target Krieger and then.. my gun.. lowers itself.

"An old spell, but a good one I think."

"Knew there was a reason I brought you along. Now bring him over here so I can tear him apart!"

I can't look down but I feel my left foot move of its own accord. Ah hell. **Orange Lantern here. If anyone's free-?**

Klarion holds up some mush to Krieger. "Does this look like an amygdala to you? Savage'll get all pissy if we-."

"No." Guy points his hands forwards and green energy rockets towards the Praexis pile. The Demons are knocked flying and the shield beneath only manages a fraction of a second before falling. Klarion and Krieger are knocked clean across the room and as Krieger loses his grip on the spear I regain the ability to control my own movements. Quickly I swap out the blazing hot Spell Eater for a fresh one in subspace while Guy pins the magicians to glowing Green Lantern sigils. I look around and catch sight of the binding chain and grab hold of it. Hey, we could do this!

BOOM!

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31st December

23:11 GMT

"Let's see how well you do against the Justice League!"

A series of brilliant golden concentric circles appears in the middle of the room. If the noise wasn't enough of a give away Stewart's ring identifies it as a boom tube and from whatever distant location they were sent I see the League's founding members charging down its length. I think Klarion's panicking, the air here's too thin for…

Flash makes it out first and I throw out filaments in all directions in a frantic attempt to make contact before he ahh! I think he's striking my armour at superspeed but he's too fast for me to see anything beyond a red blur. I try countering with solid constructs to deny him an area to attack but his impacts are too strong! How do I-? He collapses to the ground. Why-? Air! There's still barely any air in here. Do I-? Damn it, I've only got three wafers left, I can't do them all! I yank him inside my barrier, ShockCrown him and extend my environmental shield around him. **Orange Lantern to anyone, Savage down, Klarion trapped, Founding Seven approaching, requesting assistance.**

**Sorry, Oh El, got our hands full!**

The Praexis Demons get over their fear of the green light and charge forwards only for two beams of red light scythe to through them. Superman can hold his breath for a long time, right? He lunges straight into the mob and starts lashing out. Confused Praexis Demons tumble out of the left ring as he moves on to the sigil holding Klarion. Guy seems fixated on holding them there and isn't responding to the attack. I try distracting Superman with regular railgun rounds but he responds by accelerating and jinking, getting some distance before diving at the sigil while keeping the Demons back with heat vision. He's too quick and unpredictable to reliably tag but I know what he's planning. I extend a filament in Klarion's direction and create a broad beam Kryptonite radiation generator. "Grahh!" Superman drops out of the air, curling in on himself in a reflexive attempt to block the painful stimulus. Filament, wafer, grab and shield.

**Nazis. This takes me way back.**

The rest of the founders arrive together and I check my mental shields. Can they stand up to Manhunter? Damn, I'll have to try and get him first without crippling him. Diana and King Orin head towards me at a run while Jordan goes after Guy. Mister J'onzz must already be intangible. They're not going to give me time to work out where he is, are they?

**Garth, look out!**

I feel the oppressive force of Manhunter going for a mind crush as Diana lunges at me sword in hand and Jordan fires a boxing glove construct at Guy. I shift aside, turning away her sword arm while using a filament to tag her with a wafer as she goes past. She staggers a pace and then falls bonelessly to the ground. King Orin's slower, the lack of breathable air is clearly causing him difficulty. The boxing glove hits Guy right in the face only to stop dead and then blink out.

"You may not use our light."

Jordan's environmental shield disappears next and he falls from the air and starts gasping. I see his ring leave his hand and fly at full speed towards Guy, who catches it in his left hand. His eyes haven't left Klarion and Krieger. When I look at him I see green light and nothing else. I… That's not good long term.

**Captain Marvel's a child?**

I try shoving King Orin away as he leaps at me but my construct slides off his armour. Gripping manacles around his arms and legs works fine, though. He struggles against the constructs but at this point he's barely able to stay conscious. ShockCrown, dump him off. Next to Klarion I see Batman hit the sigil he's bound to with a batarang. Oh, that's a Crumbler! Imitation is the most annoying form of flattery! Klarion's free for a brief moment while Batman throws another at Krieger's sigil as well. I send one filament to ensnare the spear while a cluster of others speed towards Klarion carrying the binding chains. Batman dives for cover while throwing more Crumbler batarangs at my filaments. A metal plate from subspace intercepts a couple but the spear clatters to the floor as a near miss disrupts my hold. Krieger's head snaps around at the sound and he dives for it, just getting his right hand on the very end of the shaft.

As I go to grab both him and it he raises his left hand towards Klarion and rainbow light flares from his hand. When it clears a second later they're both gone.

And then Mister J'onzz sticks his hand through my chest. I let my armour fade as his hand moves upwards from the bottom of my lungs towards my heart. Flesh disruption's supposed to be hard, he's.. still under the floor. He's extended his arm up so I can't target him directly. Don't.. know what happens if I transition with his arm still inside me. Oh, there goes the spine. I pull myself away and up into the air, constructs bypassing melted nerves and keeping my still intact flesh alive. He tries to maintain the attack but after I get a few metres away he can't maintain his extension and his arm falls behind me. I turn, my empathic vision showing me exactly where he lies under the floor. I've no idea what happens to Martians who rematerialise while inside something so I can't risk something that might kill him.

Ah, heck. I take one of Trugg's phase shifters out of subspace while Guy grabs and disarms Batman. I press it against my chest armour, match frequencies, plot a route through Mister J'onzz's cover and execute. A moment of blackness and then I'm out with an invisible something in my gauntlets. Before he can respond and melt more of my organs I transition back, spray petrol into the air in his direction and set it alight with a maser pulse. He rematerialises in shock and I stick a filament on his head and wafer him. He shudders and then drops to the ground.

I take a look at the fallen Justice League members and re-establish my environmental shield over them. That's all of my wafers. I'll have to drag them to-.

"Klarion is still on board. We must find him." Guy heads for a hole in the wall that looks like it was made by Adom and Captain Nazi.

Ring?

One hundred eleven percent normal maximum power remaining.

That's going to be weird. I send the Praexis Demons outward through the Watchtower in all directions. Could he survive in space? There're still areas I can't scan inside the structure. "Guy, you'll need this!" I toss him the binding chain but he ignores it and accelerates out of the room, leaving me with the fallen League members. Right. I lift them and hold them in two clusters; Stewart, Kal-El, Diana and Mister J'onzz in one and Batman, King Orin, Mister Allen and Lantern Jordan in the other. Another cluster of filaments pick up the chain.

**League founders down, Klarion and a Nordic-themed wizard in flight somewhere in the Watchtower. Lantern Gardner's active and on our side. Anyone seen Adom?**

**Think him and Nazi went outside.** Wallace sounds serious but not worried. I guess we're either winning or we've won then. **Do they need to breathe?**

**Adom doesn't, don't know about Nazi. Got any spare wafers?**

**Yeah, give me a sec, we're just… Okay, think that's the last of the Nazis. I'll be right-** Wallace blurs into being in front of me. "-up. Whow. Uh…" His right hand goes to his throat and he looks a little worried. "Is it me or is it a little-?"

"Hull breach." I glance at the shutters. "If the security door was open the air pressure should nearly be normal now."

He nods and takes a couple of wafers out of a pouch. "I've only got two left. You think-?"

I move Mister Allen and King Orin over to him. One wafer goes on King Orin's neck, then he pulls up Mister Allen's cowl slightly to put the other on his chin.

**Aqualad to Orange Lantern. Lantern Gardner just blasted a hole in an interior wall and is heading for the arboretum. Is he still under the effect of the Starro-tech?**

**I'm not.. sure? I didn't wafer him if that's what-.**

**Miss Martian, go.**

**Be careful, he's extremely-!**

**He's down.**

**That leaves only Lantern Stewart unaccounted for.**

**No, don't worry, I already got him.** And his ring. I've got no idea how I'm going to handle that one. **Anyone see Klarion?**

**He's hiding behind some trees over in section four.** **Trying to escape the god of freedom. There's something uncomfortably poetic about that.**

**Anyone wounded?**

There's a moment of silence. **Lantern Scott, please remain with the prisoners. Everyone else, converge on Klarion's location. Do not attack until I give the word.**

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Gude-Willie Waught 26

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31st December

23:14 GMT

As I hurry in Wallace's wake down the corridor I see Barda scoop up Guy and Ms Lance before rodding herself back to… Ring? Ah, medical.

Alan looks up at me. "You alright there, P-? Um, Orange Lantern?" He's got a series of hoop constructs holding the least injured prisoners where they are. My scan shows that the rest have been disarmed, shoved into lockable rooms and left there. Robin only has so many zip ties after all.

I nod and gently lay the League members I have with me down. "Got any wafers left?"

"Yeah, all four. Never was one for sneaking around." He eyes the League members for a moment before reaching into his hip pouch, fishing them out and passing them to me. One each for Batman and Jordan and then I deposit them on the floor away from the Nazis. The fascists’ armour looks like it was torn off. And it incorporated the same flame generating gauntlet as Krieger had. Adapted from Danni's design presumably. Wonder if they had air, water and rock versions, because fire would have got trumped hard by Danni and Atlantean water generation.

"Fucking Justice League." One of the Nazis spits at Batman, coming up well short. "Not so fucking tough now, are-?"

He slumps to the side as I ShockCrown him. His comrades in arms take one look at his recumbent body and decide not to push their luck any further. Shit, a bunch of Nazis knowing about the Watchtower. I'm not clear why the League are so keen on keeping this place secret, but Diana was fairly definite about the importance of it. Are M'gann and Mister J'onzz up to wiping that many memories?

I take a pile of manacles out of subspace. With ankle, wrist and neck rings and no keyhole to pick they're the most secure I could devise. "Put these on them and then stick them somewhere out the way." I give him a stern look and then glance at his ring. He rolls his eyes and then grudgingly nods. Predictably he's looking younger. Can't see any visible change in the ring yet but this has got to be taking power he can't afford to use.

There's a flash of light as Barda reappears. "Green Lan-." She cuts off as she sees me and the unconscious League members. "You were able to best them yourself?"

"Gardner got Jordan. Can you manage them?"

"Of course." Kal-El gets scooped up and dumped over her left shoulder. She then carefully picks up Diana in both arms before pressing her mega rod's activator.

Right. Where are we getting together?

I transition to the ground entry to arboretum section four. From here I can see the clouds of mist generated by the Atlanteans throwing water at the flaming Nazis. Oh, I am so not cleaning that up. Just about everyone's here, though the ring says that Donna, Rocket and Hardware along with a few of the G-Elves are still on the far side of the Watchtower. They're on their way but we can't really afford to wait. My Construct Demons are forming a rough circle around the 'sky' of the arboretum. **Aqualad, any sign of Adom?**

He turns away from John and Zatanna to acknowledge my presence. **He is still outside, and we have not been able to establish contact. Were your 'Mage Slayer' rounds effective against Klarion?** Wait, when'd John get up here? I.. suppose they could just have opened the Dolmen Gate again.

A few faces look around. We're on team chat here, though someone will have to tell Danni and Tornado the outcome. **Yes, to begin with. I scored several hits on his body which appeared to disrupt his physical presence. Unfortunately he came up with a counter which involved manipulating them indirectly. Similarly, he got around the chain by just growing too big to be properly bound by it. On the other hand, between them and the Praexis Demons it looks like he's lost a lot of power. Krieger had to teleport them out of the hall, and he only made it this far.**

**Krieger.** The last few members of our force fly in as Robin does a quick search on his arm computer. **Adolf Krieger was a leading member of the Thule Society in Nazi Germany. But if that's him…**

Wallace looks at the file on Robin's holographic display. **He'd be a hundred and thirty years old!**

Kaldur's eyes narrow slightly. **Whether it is him or not, our main target is Klarion. Zatanna, Mister Constantine, please repeat to everyone what you told me.**

The crowd parts slightly and I see that John and Zatanna are standing next to a chain bound Nabu. John looks around. **My turn, is it? Right. Klarion's still powerful despite not having a familiar anymore 'cause he's merged with Bedlam. Since we haven't got a bloody clue how powerful Bedlam is we've got no way to tell how much we'd need to drain to stop 'im. Best solution I've come up with is doing what Orange did the first time: break the link between the host and the witch. From how you described what happened on Roanoke it sounded like Bedlam wasn't exactly a willin' participant, an' there's ways to deal with spiritual entities if they kick up a fuss.**

**How can this be achieved?**

**This.** He holds up a quickly drawn magic circle on a piece of paper. **Klarion goes here, Nabu goes here an' acts as a counterweight. Constructs work just as well as chalk so it doesn't even need to be on the ground, you can just move it with him if he tries to run away.**

I do a quick scan with the ring. Nothing too difficult from the looks of it. "I should be able to do that. Should probably point out that Krieger has the Medusa Mask and the Spear of Destiny. Red Tornado, you ran into that once, didn't you?"

"Yes." He inclines his head slightly. "An extremely disconcerting experience. But the Watchtower is no longer under Nazi control. The area effect control spell should not still be in effect."

"He got me by just pointing it at me. He also got Lantern Stewart to attack me after I used the cure on him by commanding him to hate me." I do a quick sonic scan of our target and bring up a holographic image of the surrounding area. "I don't know what they're doing but I doubt it will take much longer."

Kaldur looks over everyone. "Brainwave, stay back. We need you to conceal our approach as best you can and defend us against telepathic attack. Tula, Garth, Red Tornado: you and I will strike with as much elemental force as we can manage to try to get them off balance. Orange Lantern, Zatanna, Cornwall Boy and Rocket will protect Constantine while he readies the spell. Everyone else, surround them and remain ready to react to whatever foul sorcery our foes employ." There's nodding from everyone except Mister King who's focusing his efforts on projecting an illusion of empty space. Would that even work on Klarion? No harm in trying I suppose and he's not all that much use in a brawl. "Move out."

Orange filaments connect me to everyone in my squad group, though it takes me two attempts to make one stick to Nabu. Plot course to-.

"Hey, Orange." Artemis makes eye contact then points to her depleted quiver. "Got any more-?" An orange strobe waves over her quiver and Mister Harper's, topping them up with anti-magic arrows. She nods in thanks before activating her flight belt and zooming off into a position to flank the target. Those arrows need a better name. Can't call them Mageslayer because even with her augmented strength they still don't hit quite as hard as railgun rounds-.

"Oi." John thrusts the paper at me and I have the ring scan it. Surprisingly good penmanship, considering. "You better make bloody sure you get this right. I don't want that little toe rag getting away."

I recognise some of that. " Can I assume this arrangement separates both subjects?"

"Not just a pretty face, am I? The arrangement's different enough from how Atlanteans do things that they didn't notice."

I nod, re-establish my links with the group and transition us into a concealed position behind a surprisingly large pile of rubble close to where Klarion and Krieger are working on.. something. The ring shows me everyone moving up and occupying concealed positions with ranged fighters a little further back and John's escort a little closer. I take a moment to make sure I have everyone's attention.

"We need Krieger out of the way for this to work. Let the Atlanteans hit them first. Rocket, shield John. It won't make any difference to his magic and he's a bit squishy."

"Hey." John blinks and rubs his head. "Oh."

"What?"

"Whatever they're doing, they're doing it now."

**Aqualad, we need-!**

Wind swirls from nowhere and hundreds of gallons of water spurt towards our enemy. I transition everyone to a solid looking section of broken corridor on top of the rubble. Without a better connection John's going to need line of sight.

"…loose the Einherjar!"

The scene before me decays into an insane underwater electrified hurricane as a hole opens in space and undead Viking warriors charge out with barrow blades drawn.

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Gude-Willie Waught 27

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31st December

23:17 GMT

Runes of protection glow on their armour, allowing them to continue their charge regardless of the elemental effects raging around them. Plate armour such as only the richest Vikings would actually have been able to afford, I note. Their skin is a little pale but otherwise they look much as I imagine they would have in life. Their swords and axes glow a ghostly blue and I see one cut through a flying tree trunk with no effort at all.

Their summoners are not so well protected. Krieger cries out in pain as he's repeatedly electrocuted before being slammed into a still standing tree. Klarion does something that causes gaseous purple tendrils to flow from his hands into the ground but that's all that's keeping him from flying after his partner in crime. The air around Krieger calms for a moment and Wallace dashes in, punches him in the diaphragm, throws the spear and mask clear -ew, he looks those hundred and thirty years- and carries him away. Right, got my chain, Kon's is on Nabu and Adom's is… Shouldn't have given him one. Now how do I get it around Klarion without the Einherjar getting in the way?

Then the leading Einherjar takes an anti-magic arrow in the left eye. He doesn't drop immediately, but whatever magic allowed him to carry on after death is gradually eaten away. His body visibly rots as he desperately tries to pull the arrow free, skin and fat sloughing from his face. I fire a Mageslayer round at another. He takes it on his warded kite shield and gets thrown back by the force, shield reduced to splinters. How alive are they? I can't see their desires but with all those wards that doesn't necessarily mean anything.

"Abannan afol Beowulf. Daah!"

"Lios nrut ot dnaskciuq!" The Einherjar heading in our direction sink up to their waists in the now liquid soil. A little behind them the one who pulled the arrow out of his eye stabs his sword into the ground, runes glowing brilliantly. "Ah!" Zatanna shudders. "I felt that!"

The Einherjar points at us. "Seiðkona." Why aren't I getting a translation? He looks back towards the portal. "Ullrkarl!"

A blast of lightning from Kaldur's trident hits him but he completely ignores it. In fact, I think his injuries are regenerating. Looks like they don't need the wizards to be functional to maintain the portal. More arrows rain down and the Einherjar are forced to form a shield wall. "Ready John?"

"As I'm going to get."

I extend a filament to the space right next to Klarion and make a transition. By the time he's even aware I'm there the chain is tight around his arms and legs. Mageslayer railgun rounds shoot out the purple magics binding him to the ground and I yank him away, dodging sword strokes as I fly. I throw him to the ground next to the stone and steel rubble just in time to see a rank of Einherjar archers emerge from the portal and loose at everyone. I quickly form John's circle and shove Klarion and Nabu into their respective positions before sticking up a dome barrier.

**Cease elemental attacks. Red Tornado, disrupt their formation. Garth, Tula: try and work out how to close the portal.**

Klarion takes a quick look at the construct. "NO!" He struggles against the chains and becomes increasingly frantic as he gets nowhere. I really wasn't sure it would hold but it looks like it will.

I jerk back in the air as an arrow pierces the construct dome and hits the ground just in front of me. Construct penetrating, sure, why not? I create two minigun turrets and set them to shoot the arrows down.

"Sworra reev yawa dna ssim!"

A few of them wobble as they come in but most stay true and I'm forced to yank John out of the way. On the other side of their formation Artemis runs out of patience and goes for a full power shot, knocking the shield wall back into their own archers. My filaments lash out, grabbing dropped weapons and throwing one each to Kon and Donna before pulling a third back for Rob. Most of their archers redeploy to face Artemis' direction and three go down to anti magic arrows to the face. I grab an arrow off the ground next to me for later analysis before flying our group back over the rubble barrier.

"Cornwall, keep an eye out. Shout if they start loosing on us again." He nods and scrambles up the detritus, keeping his head down to stay out of sight as much as possible. Plonking Nabu and Klarion down again I re-establish John's pattern. Have to hope that stripping Klarion of what's left of his power does something about the Einherjar portal. I mean, really: do we look like Ice Giants?

**Fighting Vikings is kinda… Satisfying.** Glad Kon's enjoying himself.

"Right then. Let's get this started." John kneels down next to the outer edge of the circle and holds out his hands, palms facing the design. A moment later there's a slight shimmering inside it.

"It'll never work! You don't have the power!"

"That's what Nergal said, more or less. And The King of the Vampires. Think the First of the Fallen said it as well, though might be misremembering. I was a bit out of it when I fought him." There's a very fine purple haze surrounding Klarion now, and a golden one around Mister Zatara. "Thing about this spell? Pretty much runs itself. I just have to hold it in place and it'll get faster and faster as your power an' his push against each other stronger an' stronger. More complex than my usual stuff, but I've been back to school lately."

Klarion makes a concerted effort to burst his chains but all he manages to do is fall over. "Warriors of As-" I apply sound baffles and watch him try calling the Einherjar in our direction only to fail. He screams in silent rage before trying to escape by punching his containment circle. With his strength reduced to that of his Human form he doesn't stand a chance. As I watch the purple mist is drawn further into the design, moving around but never quite mixing with the gold. John doesn't seem to be finding it difficult to maintain the spell.

**Um, Orange Lantern?**

**They coming for us?**

**Not yet, but I can see Captain Nazi-** I look towards the external window which makes up virtually the entire external wall. Adom has Nazi pinned against it and is drawing back his fist. **-and-.**

The rest of his reply is lost as Nazi is punched clean through with enough force to pulverise the window behind him and send huge cracks across its entire surface. Nazi crashes to the ground as hurricane force winds pull everything not connected to the ground towards the rapidly growing hole to space. The League really need to armour this place better! I fly in the direction of the gaping hole and stick a construct barrier over it while on the other side Adom looks as if he was surprised by what just happened. Damn it, I thought Zehuti would be able to explain about space physics!

"Eloh ot ecaps, riaper-"

**Zatanna, no. I've got this. Focus on looking after John.**

**… Okay.**

We still have gravity, so with the winds no longer blowing debris falls back to the ground.

**We have a counter spell, but we need to get closer to use it!**

**Superboy, Troia, provide an escort.**

Ring, charge remaining?

Eighty seven percent of normal maximum power remaining.

I form a new railgun construct and aim it at the portal. Would brute force work?

**They've got horses!**

The ring shows me Einherjar on eight legged horses gallop out through the portal. Kon has to throw himself to the ground in order to avoid the leader's blade. Seeing dense terrain ahead the rider pulls on his reins and.. the horse canters into the sky!? I so call BS. I aim and fire the railgun at the rider, scoring a clean hit to his stomach and knocking him off his mount.

**Look out! Nazi's-!** I look down and see Wallace knocked aside as the heavily bleeding Captain Nazi grabs Krieger and the spear before flying towards nonono! I load Crumbler rounds and fire at him but he's jinking too much for me to hit at velocities I can use in close fire support! I feel a scalding pain as the spear slices through the filament connecting me to the circle confining Klarion! Okay, but he still can't escape. The only exit-.

With one of his accomplices under each arm he flies through the Einherjar's portal. A second later the portal collapses, the Einherjar themselves falling dead to the ground.

Damn.

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Gude-Willie Waught 28

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31st December

23:38 GMT

I've patched up the holes in the outer surface of the Watchtower. There's still lingering water vapour from where Garth, Tula and Kaldur took them down by using their magic and minigates to flood the whole section. Now I'm starting on the largest piece of internal damage. Exactly how much-?

For a moment I'm speechless. I just stare at the new hallway which starts in corridor G seventeen and terminates in B three, four and five. The ring tells me that the metal and stone which made up the intervening space hasn't been vaporised. No, it was brutally shoved out and is even now resting in the crater it made in the arboretum. We were using it as cover earlier. Thought it looked a bit odd.

"Guy.. really did that?"

Mister King nods. "Wall glowed green for a moment then it just sort of whooshed on by."

Once Guy left the main hall he appears to have just blasted through everything that was directly between him and Klarion, though it doesn't look like he moved particularly fast himself. That's weird because an FTL transfer would have got him there far faster. "And M'gann could just walk up to him?"

"He didn't even notice until he fell over. I've got to tell you, I've never felt mental focus like that from anyone. Is he always like that?"

"No." It could have just been a result of his training combined with Klarion losing focus on him, but that wouldn't have resulted in him calling himself 'us'. The other obvious example of that sort of behaviour seems to suggest that he may just have been visited by Ion. On the plus side, the Green Whale of Will doesn't seem to have a problem with me. Bad news is, I've got no idea how to handle it if Guyon becomes a full time thing. Or how the Guardians would react if they knew. Assuming they don't already.

The man himself is already up and about, sitting at the end of the tunnel watching over the arboretum with his legs hanging over the edge. The forest will take a good deal of work before it returns to normal, and I think the birds are all hiding somewhere in the Watchtower tunnels. Heh, and when this place is sorted out they'll probably be joined by a small herd of eight legged flying horses. I'm not sure if they simply weren't drawing power through the portal or if unlike their former masters they're properly alive but the Sleipnir-looking things have adapted to the green indoor forest of the Watchtower without any fuss at all.

One of them is even now nuzzling Guy, who half-heartedly pushes it away. "Go on. I didn't bring any sugar lumps."

"Mister King, would you mind giving us a few minutes?"

He looks away from Guy and the horse and at me. "Sure thing. I'll.. go and check on the rest of the Justice League."

"Might be worth having a chat with Red Arrow as well. He's dour at the best of times and.. given what he just found out…"

He nods and turns away. I walk the rest of the way down the tunnel, taking care to walk heavily enough that Guy can hear me. The horse takes fright when it sees me and bolts for the arboretum floor. Its legs… It doesn't exactly have eight legs in the normal sense. There is clearly only one in each corner. Its equine musculature and bone structure wouldn't support any other arrangement. It's just that sometimes the legs are in more than one place at the same time.

Guy looks up. "How'd everyone make out?"

I think about it as I sit down next to him. Six months ago I wouldn't have dared do this. Heights and the risk of falling really scared me. Now, nothing. "A few minor cuts and plenty of bruises but no one on our side was seriously injured."

"That's.. good." He doesn't sound as confident as he usually does. Sounds odd. "You kids really pulled through, y'know that?"

"Yeah. Guy, we need to talk about-."

"Yeah, I…" He looks away for a moment. "I know. Ask."

"You were the only one who wasn't affected."

"I was. Red got me the same time he got everybody else. But, I'm trained to resist control. I guess.. between my Spell Eater, the resistance training I got from you and Kilowog and my own willpower-" He makes a fist with his right hand as his ring glows. "-it was enough."

"I think I heard you saying your oath."

"My mouth was just about the only thing I could move. The oath's a mantra, helps you focus. Long as I was doin' that, I wasn't doin' the stuff Klarion was puttin' in my head."

I nod. "You'll have to show Jordan and Stewart how to do it. And I'll get everyone on the League Spell Eaters." He's fidgeting more. He knows what I have to know. "Guy, something happened to you between Stewart kicking me off the Watchtower and me getting back. Guy, I need to-."

"I know, okay?" He sighs and rubs his face with his right hand. "I was just.. kneeling there. It was taking everything I had to keep resisting. Then.. you and that Adom guy fly in from nowhere and I realize: this is it. This is our rescue. And I'm trussed up like.. some kinda broad tied to the railroad tracks in an old western. I wasn't strong enough to get myself out."

I shrug. "What did you do?"

"I.. prayed. I mean, I guess my family's Catholic. Kind of. Weren't exactly regular churchgoers but Dad dragged us along for Christmas mass and stuff like that." He shakes his head. "I always figured that if Dad was into it then it was as full of shit as he was, but what did I have to lose? I'm sitting there watching Adom and Nazi beat seven kinds a'crap outta each other… I didn't just ask for a favor, I was reaching out for.. for anything… And then…" He's staring into the distance. "It was like when I charge my ring, only instead of goin' away it kept gettin' stronger an' stronger. I don't really… And then it was like there was nothin' in the whole universe 'cept for me an' Klarion and I knew I was gonna beat him down." He relaxes slightly. "So." He looks at me and manages a weak grin. "How long 'till I flip out completely and make with the giant cakes?"

"I don't think you will."

"That was it though, wasn't it? The Green Entity? Errr… Ion, right?"

"That's what it's called and I think it was. But if you're normal now I don't think you've got anything to worry about. I mean, I'd like to be on hand when you next recharge just in case, but Ion isn't the Ophidian. Less clingy."

"Didn't think I felt enlightened. That gonna happen again?"

"Not sure. On the one hand, you know the series of thoughts you need to have to get Ion's attention. If you don't want its attention, just don't think like that. On the other hand, it's been in you once. Maybe it knows where you live?"

"That's reassurin'."

I look into his soul for a moment. His fears relating to powerlessness are aroused but I can't see any structural changes or a lingering presence. "There's a limit to what I can say without lying, Guy. If you're worried, maybe we could get Constantine to contact Ion with magic so you could talk things out. Or you could just try it again in controlled conditions."

"Mmm. Think I'll pass on it fer now." He looks at me again, this time more thoughtfully. "I'm guessin' you don't think I should try talking about this with the Guardians?"

"I'd advise against it. I'm not sure they'd respond well to someone dominating their colour. You remember turning off Jordan's ring?" He nods. "Their protection against someone else pulling a Sinestro is their ability to do remote shutdowns. With Ion, not only would you be immune to that, you could do it to them. You really think they'd be okay with that?"

He looks thoughtful for a moment. "So, how 'bout them Vikings?"

"Is that an American Football reference?"

"No, it's a Nazi zombie reference."

"We don't actually know that they were Nazis."

"Looked like they were fighting fer Team Swastika to me."

"Fight. Vikings." He nods, conceding the point. "Nazis had a thing for Norse mythology and they've had decades to work out how much was myth and how much fact. And I don't think they actually coordinated with Krieger or Klarion once they arrived."

"The horses are fine but we can't just leave those guys’ bodies here."

"I'd like to hand their armour and weapons over to Atlantis, see if we can reverse engineer them. The Einherjar themselves… We could either try reopening the portal and sending them back or give them a funeral. But I'm happy to leave that decision up to the League."

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Gude-Willie Waught 29

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31st December

23:46 GMT

We're holding the Nazi foot soldiers in the Watchtower's shuttle bay. It has heavy doors, a control room that looks out over the main area and if we really had to we could vent them into space. I don't think that will be necessary, though. The ones who aren't unconscious or heavily injured have enough sense not to start fights with superheroes while unarmed.

"Not so bad for an old man, huh?"

Alan pretty much just piled the Nazi soldiers’ armour in the corner of the control room. Mister Free and Construct Lantern Morrow are going through it. It seems to have the same design as the stuff Truggs’ people used, though the colour scheme has been modified to reflect their political beliefs. I'm not seeing any phasing or invisibility generators but most of them have the same sort of flame gauntlet thing Krieger had. And none of the wearers had a Starro-tech infection. You really don't need to mind control Nazis to make them evil.

"I haven't had a chance to go through the recordings yet. How much power-?" He winces slightly. "Al-an!"

He looks at his ring. "Down to about half of what I started with, I think." Six months, three eighths left? Is that enough? He holds his hands up defensively. "Now don't get all-."

I shake my head. "No, no, I knew you'd burn through power doing this. That was.. probably about the best I could have hoped for." That's true, and I really don't want to argue with him at this point. I walk over to the window and nod at the captured fascists beyond it. "Any idea what we're doing with them?"

Perversely -given the stated viewpoint of the man they were working for on 'Slavs and other animal men'- they seem to be mostly Russian. All men, all white and mostly members of the Russian Union of National Socialists. There are a few of the swastika and eagle tattoos I expected but a sort of crosshairs thing appears more common. I don't know if Captain Nazi or whoever just sent out a call to their Aryan brothers and these are the people who responded or whether there's an actual arrangement between the Light and the RUNS. If they're getting top end technology like this Russia could be in serious trouble. When we're finished here I'm going to have to send a warning to the Russian government.

His eyes drop for a second and he smiles faintly. The rejuvenating effect of using that much power is readily apparent. He could pass for my slightly older brother at this point. "Not a clue. Back in my day we'd just hand them over to the POW people."

"It's funny. I'm not sure they've actually committed a crime."

He frowns. "What d'you mean? Of course they have."

"Really?" I look around the control room. "What jurisdiction are we in?"

"Aah." He thinks for a moment. "Huh. The United Nations?"

"Good luck bringing charges against people who attacked a space station that officially doesn't exist. Everyone thinks the League operate out of the Hall of Justice, remember?"

"They can't just.. let them go."

I wave my left hand and overlay the window with a display showing the names, ages and criminal records of the men below. "Several have outstanding warrants in Russia and the Ukraine. They can just be handed over, but most don't have anything. The League can say they were seen working with Savage, Klarion and Captain Nazi -Russia still remembers him- but they can't say where or doing what."

"This is why honesty is the best policy. I can't see Diana being okay just letting Nazis go."

"I can't see any of them being okay with it. I imagine Mister J'onzz will give them the once over-" I tap the right side of my head. "-before they make any decision."

"Aqualad to Orange Lantern."

I hold the ring to my left ear. The original ring, that is. "Orange Lantern here."

"The Justice League have begun to wake up. Lantern Stewart is asking for you."

I feel the weight of his ring in my right leg pouch. "I'll be right there." I lower the ring. "Alan, you mind..?"

"I'm sure Scott won't mind keeping an old man company."

Mister Free glances around from the flame gauntlet he's probing with his multi-cube. "Actually, I'm nearly twice your age."

"Huh. Well if that don't beat all."

"Barda reaches her quarter millennium next year."

A flicker and I transition to the waiting room just outside the medical bay proper. William's looking a little unsteady on his feet as Adom lectures him. "…not merely resilience but also the capacity for healing. Focus your spirit on the part of the gods' blessing that comes from Lord Atlas as I do Lord Shu."

"Ah, okay?"

Adom's more than a little bruised from his encounter with Captain Nazi and most of the costume has been torn from his torso. He takes a breath then exhales slowly, his body shimmering slightly as he does so. His costume reknits, his bruises fade and the blood from his split lip and the swelling around his left eye vanish.

"Golly, that looks useful. So.. I just…" William doesn't manage it with quite the same dignity, but a moment later he's standing up straighter. "That feels pretty good. Oh, hey Paul."

I wave to him as Adom turns around. "Orange Lantern… Paul. I wish to apologise for endangering everyone's life as I did. If I had not-."

"No, I should have realised that you didn't know about air pressure-."

"But I did. It is… One of the gifts of Lord Montu is the capacity for a berserk rage. It makes me-." He glances at William. "Us, stronger, at the cost of mental acuity. I unleashed it upon Captain Nazi, and the result was what you saw."

"Why? I.. thought you were doing alright against him before that."

"He… Said something about Princess Diana. I will not repeat it, but rest assured that my pulverising his ribcage was a just retaliation."

I don't think I'll ask. "It's been thousands of years, Mighty One. You're bound to be a little rusty."

"Hey, you know… You could spar with me sometime. I mean, if you wanted…"

"Thank you Captain. I would appreciate that." He sighs. "Loathsome a man as he is, I will admit that I was impressed by Captain Nazi's mental fortitude. A weaker man would have admitted defeat. Or died. Yet, he was still aware enough to rescue his allies."

"If it's any consolation we're still scraping bits of Savage up off the meeting room floor. If he tries healing from any of the bits we've got, we'll have him."

"It is little consolation when the greater prize escapes." He pauses. "But I have tarried too long. I must return to Kahndaq."

"I've authorised you for zeta tube use. Just head down that corridor and back into the main hall."

"Thank you. Captain." Remaining upright he flies in the direction I indicated.

"He needs to learn to lighten up a bit."

"That's a long term project. Lantern Stewart was asking for me?"

"Oh, yeah, he's just through there."

I nod and walk into medical proper. Stewart's on his feet but everyone else is still out cold on either a gurney or a bed. Kon looks up from where he's sitting next to Diana and gives me a nod, a gesture mirrored by M'gann from Mister J'onzz's bedside. Robin left Batman a note before leaving to make sure the Watchtower isn't bugged or booby trapped, and stuck another note next to it ordering that no one remove his mask.

"Lantern Stewart. What can I do for you?"

"It's all kind of fuzzy, but I think you and me had a fight. I'm a bit surprised you're still standing."

"Yeah, um, you actually went down pretty easily? I'm going to be charitable and assume that Klarion or the mind control system was messing up your mental focus and tactical awareness."

He bows his head for a moment. "Okay, fine. With Krieger around I can understand you taking my ring away. But I'm my own man again now and I'd like it back."

"Yeahhhh… About that…"

He frowns, concerned. "What, did you destroy it?"

I reach down with my right hand, open the pouch and reach in to take it out. For a moment I hold it in my closed fist. "Not exactly." I hold my right fist out and then open it, his now orange ring resting on my palm.

His face drops.

"Sorry, but I didn't know where you'd dumped us and I couldn't risk Krieger's spell still being live… It's still your ring, you can have it back if you-."

He leans slightly away from it. "Keep it. You.. just.. keep it. I'll.. put in for a replacement from Salaak." He actually looks pained. I can relate to that. "Please tell me you didn't get my lantern as well?"

back

Gude-Willie Waught 30

next

31st December

23:58 GMT

John peers out of the meeting room window at the Earth below. "How the other half live, eh?"

"Six billion below, about sixty people up here if we include the Nazis? It's a lot less than half."

He nods, then looks around as my team mates and our menagerie head in. Including Kon and M'gann so I'm going to assume… Yes, Diana and Mister J'onzz are up and about. "Time for me to be off. Think I could give Chas a bell?"

"I've entered you into the zeta tube system, though I've got a sneaky suspicion that Nabu will override it once someone finds and unchains him."

"Best not hang about then."

As he turns to go I gently put my right hand on his right arm to stop him. "About the.. Klarion matter. I think it's time to consult an expert. How soon can you get hold of him?"

His expression doesn't change significantly, though I do detect a mild curiosity. "Need to get some sleep, get some gear together. T-." He checks his watch. "Tomorrow evening good for you?" I nod. "Right then. Be seeing you." Hands in pockets he strolls over to the zeta tube. He stops to give the entrance an appraising look before walking in.

"Recognised, John Constantine, A two five."

Kaldur watches him go. "I was not aware that Batman had granted him access to the zeta system."

I shrug. "Batman was mind controlled then unconscious. Did you want him to walk home?"

"I suppose that would be somewhat time consuming. I -on the other hand- have spoken to Batman." The rest of us gather around in a semicircle. "Donna, Garth, Tula. Today marks the second occasion on which you have fought by our side. Though I appreciate that it will not be possible for you to work or train with us on a regular basis I would like to extend to you an invitation to join the team."

Donna nods almost immediately while Garth and Tula look at each other and try to have a silent conversation. After a moment Garth nods at her and then they turn back to face Kaldur. "We've got our field elective coming up. Given what's happened I.. think Queen Mera will be willing to let us spend it with your team."

Kaldur steps forwards and offers Garth his right hand. His smile's genuine but I can still see the violet image of Tula's face inside him. This is not going to be easy for him. Garth shakes it and then so does Tula.

"Welcome on board. You know, formally." Kon's already congratulating Donna and since I know her rather better than Tula or Garth I offer her my hand as well.

"Thanks. I'm really not going to be able to do much until summer though."

"Are you joining us for the Themyscira visit?"

"Yes. It's going to be so great seeing it again. Oh, and Diana's invited Cassandra and her mother along as well."

"Is that a good idea? Themyscira's blessed by Hera, and-."

The holo display generates a large clock showing 00:00 UTC. "Happy New Year, Justice League."

Tula frowns. "But the solstice was weeks ago."

I shake my head. "I know, the timing makes no sense. I don't really know why we have it here either, but-."

"Heeey." Artemis walks over to me, smiling. Jade has the same smile and.. now I'm nervous.

"Yes? How can I-?"

She reaches up to my armoured shoulder, pulls me forwards so I overbalance into her and kisses me on the lips. Um. I can't move away without risking-. She pushes me back up. I'm… What? "Um, okay. I'm…" Kon and M'gann appear to have also taken the clock's appearance as a signal to begin kissing. Garth and Tula shrug and follow suit and I see Raquel approach Kaldur. Wallace looks like he's thinking about trying his luck with Donna, who notices, rolls her eyes and gives him a quick peck on the cheek.

"Hey!" Zatanna gives Artemis a quick glare and then looks at me expectantly. I hesitate for a moment before bending down to a more kissable height. Honesty would indeed have been the best policy, I am too old to be-. Maybe I should have pretended to be gay? She puts her right arm around my shoulder and gently presses her lips against mine. If I feel tongue I'm confessing right now. No, that's not happening but she's maintaining the kiss. I'm feeling creepy but I can deal with that. Another.. eight seconds and she pulls away, smiling, a slight blush visible on her cheeks.

Artemis gives an amused smirk at my discomfort. "That not how they do New Year's in England?"

My eyes widen. "Rob, emergency Auld Lang Syne, now!"

He blinks. "Ah, er, okay mate. Um. S-sshould auld acquaintance be forgot,

and never brought to mind?"

There're more than a few smiles as everyone whose lips aren't otherwise occupied joins in.

"Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

and auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my jo,

for auld lang syne,

we'll tak' a cup o’ kindness yet,

for auld lang syne."

The ring's feeding me the rest of the lyrics but I think that would just be showing off. Robin raises an eyebrow. "I thought that was a Scottish song?"

"Eh, we stole a lot of things from the Scottish. That song. Stone of Scone. Oil. Sobriety."

Wallace thinks for a moment. "Wait. The Watchtower's on UTC, right? It's not New Year in the US for another five hours."

Robin nods. "Technically it's New Year somewhere for the first time all day."

Zatanna pulls on my arm. "Can I.. talk to you for a minute? In private?" I feel Artemis pat me on the back as I nod. The balcony overlooking the arboretum is unoccupied.. and structurally sound. I transition us there. Zatanna looks down at the greenery for a moment and then up at me. "John was trying to get Nabu, wasn't he?" I nod and she sighs. "After I used the cure on him I tried removing the Helmet. Even with the chains on it still wouldn't come off."

"They're designed to drain active magic use, not drain reserves. We don't know exactly how the-" I flap my right hand at my head. "-bonding thing works. You know, it's just a first attempt. We will try again." She nods. "John's setting up.. that thing we talked about in London." She frowns, not quite getting it. "If you're free later I understand that Salem has a great New Year parade." Her eyes widen slightly as she gets it, then she nods. "And… Ugh. I… I don't think kissing me is appropriate."

"Oh." Her eyes widen slightly. "I didn't, um…"

"Leaving aside the fact that you're four years younger than me… You're depending on me a lot at the moment, emotionally. And I'm here for you, I'd just.. feel I was taking advantage if we did.. that. I'm sorry."

"Oh. O-okay. I can.. respect that." She turns away from me. "I'm just going to go-."

"I can send you-."

"No, I've got it. Lacigam gniylf esroh, raeppa." One of the horses gallops up from under the balcony and Zatanna drops onto its back. It whinnies before taking off across the arboretum sky at a run.

"I thought you handled that well." I look back as Kal-El descends onto the balcony. "Fate had been expressing concerns about you two, but I see there was nothing to it."

"I still feel like a prize arse though. Something I can do for you, sir?"

"I.. need your advice. I-."

"Don't worry about it, sir. No one's ever been able to pull off the external underwear look."

An amused exhalation. "No, you made your feelings on my costume very clear. I wanted to talk to you about Superboy." Oh? "You're his closest friend. I've been thinking about what Batman and Diana said and I think.. I'd like to build some sort of relationship with him. I was wondering what you thought the best way would be to go about doing that."

Eh? Why would..?

"Sir, I… Look, I understand finding out he exists was a pretty unpleasant shock for you. And Batman and Diana putting pressure on you to assume responsibility made it worse and… Well, I was in the same mental place they were and that was unreasonable. He isn't your son. Really, there was no more reason for you to build a closer relationship with him than with.. someone completely random."

"I.. don't know that I'd go that far. I think it was mostly the idea that Luthor had been cloning-."

"Thing is sir, it's been six months. He has friends, a girlfriend and a mother who loves him and whom he loves in return. You opted out of his life -which is fine, fine, I understand why- and now there's no you shaped hole in it. He neither needs nor wants you, and all you trying to get involved now will do is.. mess him about. If you want to talk to him, he's just up there." I point up at the main hall. "But I'm not helping you patch things up when there's never been anything there to break."

back

NEXT CHAPTER

Gaolbreak

BACK

Gaolbreak 1

next

2011

Gaolbreak

1st January

04:23 GMT

"Recognised, Batman, zero two, Robin, B zero one."

Robin waves back at us as he disappears. They should just about have time to get to Mayor Skowcroft's New Year's party in their civilian identities before the local New Year. Pretty much everyone else on the team has already left, and a good chunk of the Justice League too. After a short stop off in Atlantis to recover my personal lantern I've been dual wielding my way through the Watchtower's repairs. Usually this sort of thing would be Lantern Stewart's job but apparently new rings take a few days at least to forge and that will only start after our Greenies have gone to Oa for a full debriefing.

That database… I don't have the Green Lantern Corps' full database. Just what was loaded onto Stewart's ring at the time I took it. Thing is, that's a lot more than it might have been. It turns out that the Guardians usually only recruit from interstellar civilisations. When they need to recruit from primitives like us -such as when one of their veterans falls in combat and has to recruit a replacement as quickly as possible- they load up their rings with everything they need to know about technologies commonly used by starfaring species so that they can interact with them intelligently. I've basically got an Idiot's Guide to Uplift here.

And I don't know where to start.

I could.. build a starship. An actual FTL capable starship with.. shields and artificial gravity and my choice of about thirty different types of energy projector.. or kinetic or.. heck, there's even the design for a sort of psionic amplification array! And yes, all I've got on some of the fancier weapons is a quick summary of their effects with no technical detail but I'd hardly need it!

I could build what is basically a stargate. A matter replicator. A weather control network. I even have a file on antimatter and its ADHD little brother qwa matter. I could… There's so much! I'm going to need to spend some time thinking about how to implement this. A new power plant for my Ice Fortress seems like a good place to start. Maybe.. move out of the mountain? If we keep expanding the team's membership as we have been doing we might end up getting a little pushed for space. No, I'd.. rather stay, but my inner Space Warlord is crying out for a flying Doom Fortress.

i CaN mAkE dOoM fOrTrEsSeS nOw!

"Is something funny?" I look around as Diana, Kon and Donna walk in. Diana is looking at me with curiosity. I was giggling, wasn't I? Yes, yes I was.

"Um, Lantern Stewart's ring. I now have all of the data on it and I'm getting a bit overwhelmed by all the possible applications."

Kon grins. "What, you can make alien cakes now?"

"No! Well, yes, there's a few.. recipes humanoids might be able to eat, but I was mostly thinking of the technology." The glorious glorious tech-. I'm giggling again.

I think Diana's getting concerned. "Are you alright holding two rings? I've never seen a Green Lantern try that before."

"That's probably because it's inefficient. All having a second ring does is extend my total power reserves, it doesn't make my constructs any more powerful. Psychological effects… I don't think there'll be any problem. That was just excited giggling, not mad giggling."

She doesn't look entirely convinced. "I wanted to tell you that in light of what happened today I've moved our visit to Themyscira to next Saturday." I nod. I was expecting something like that. "I want to remain on monitor duty in case any of the League's enemies try to capitalise on our vulnerability."

"Finished tracking your movements yet?"

She sighs. "No. We can't account for the movements of the founders for the twelve hour period shortly after we were infected."

Donna shakes her head. "I don't think you've got anything to worry about. If they were trying to.. I don't know, damage your reputation by making you carry out an attack or a robbery on somewhere, we'd have heard about it on the news."

"Incoming priority communication." A holographic image of the words 'incoming priority communication' appear on the main display.

Donna takes a step backwards. "That wasn't me."

Diana takes a step towards it. "Source."

"Washington DC, Department of Metahuman Affairs."

"Answer."

Amanda Waller's face appears on the screen. She looks surprised for a second and then her expression turns to one of relief. "Thank God."

"Ms Waller, what-?"

"It's Belle Reve. I don't know what the hell's happened down there but we've got a mass break out in progress. Phone line's down, satellite link's down and some of the nastiest supervillains in the country are on the loose two hours from Houma."

"They escaped?"

"Satellite images shows that the walls are intact. Beyond that I've got no idea what's happening. I'm trying to get the Louisiana State Guard to form roadblocks but I can hardly get hold of anyone 'cause it's New Year!"

Shit, who do we actually have available? With Klarion puppeting them unrelentingly for an entire day most League members were showing definite signs of tiredness. Guy's still here, Alan's… Not coming, whatever he says. Red Tornado, Danni and the Hawks are still about along with a whole herd of flying horses but everyone else has gone home and probably to sleep.

"We'll have a task force on the ground within an hour. Wonder Woman out." The holo screen deactivates as she turns to me. "How much charge do you have left in your rings?"

"I'm fresh off my post-rebuild recharge. Two hundred percent normal maximum power."

"Orange Lantern, Superboy, Troia. Head to Belle Reve Penitentiary as quickly as possible. I need you to assess the situation there and report back while I find out who's available to deal with the breakout. If you can subdue the prisoners or free any prison workers without endangering yourselves, do so. The zeta tube in-."

"Baton Rouge." I make eye contact with Kon and Donna. "Ready?" Two nods and the three of us fly into the zeta tube on the far side of the room.

"Recognised, Superboy, B zero four, Orange Lantern, B zero six, Troia, B one two."

31st December 2010

22:36 GMT -6

The Baton Rouge zeta tube is located inside a storm drain so the three of us remain airborne when we rematerialise. I used to think that it was strange how a zeta tube could be large like the ones in the mountain and small like the hidden units but it turns out that the smaller 'tubes' are just focusing arrays and security systems for the actual full sized tube somewhere else in the city. That's why the terminals can be moved relatively easily if they get discovered.

"Ring, Belle Reve. Show me somewhere we can land without being spotted."

Orange images of the prison I've got to know so well during my frequent visits flash before my eyes. The main bunker gate of the prison proper is wide open while the outer gate has been smashed down. By an armoured lorry or by someone like Mister Flinders I really couldn't say. One of the guard towers looks like it's taken a battering but those things are designed to survive metahuman attack. Heck. Kadabra can look after himself but I'm worried that Thomas might have done something ill-advised. The prison itself… The image flickers and fizzles out. That's new. They scry warded it?

"We can get into one of the guard towers. It should have a dedicated hard line to the prison. My attempts to scan the prison-."

Kon nods. "Wards. They didn't have those before. Are there any wizards being held in Belle Reve?"

"Not according to their most recent records, and it's not really designed for holding them anyway. Strange might have had it added, but I can't think why." Except, supervillain. Damn it.

Donna nods. "You know the prison better than I do."

"Alright, that's where we're going. Transitioning in two, one,-"

back

Gaolbreak 2

next

31st December

22:37 GMT -6

"-now."

Belle Reve guard towers are a little tougher than the conventional sort. Steel reinforced concrete towers fifteen metres high, decorated only with automated turrets ten metres up and pivot mounted heavy machine guns around the manned section at the top. The glass between the platform around the guardroom and the guardroom itself is heavily reinforced and the only entrance is a heavily armoured door. It's even fully CBRN protected, which is why I can't transition us directly inside.

Kon looks over the side wall. "I can't see anyone."

"I can't see anything."

"Oh, right, sorry." I take a pair of night vision goggles out of subspace and pass them to her.

She shakes her head. "No, just give me a sec." She takes a small jar out of her pocket and unscrews the lid. Oh-kay… I send the goggles back to subspace and do a full scan of the swampland that makes up the grounds of Belle Reve. Some muddy footprints but nothing I could definitively link to one person. Someone appears to have frozen a section on one side of the road but there are several people who could have done that. "Hail Nyx, goddess of night. I humbly ask that you accept my offering and grant me your blessing." For a moment I smell something sweet.. honey, and then it's gone. "There." She looks at me and smiles, her eyes completely black. "How do I look?"

"I did not know you could do that."

"What did you do? I'm seeing in infrared here."

I walk over to the door and extend filaments into it. Usually opening it requires confirmation by the off-site facility but it's just metal. "Her eyes went completely black."

Donna nods. "Which is what happens when the Olympian goddess of night lets you see in the dark."

"You can just ask them for stuff?"

"Some. You have to go to their temple and make an offering. You know, establish a connection. Nyx has a bit of a sweet tooth." The door clanks open. The lights inside start to come on but I shut them off. "That's probably part of why Diana wants to take you to Themyscira."

"I read up on some of the mythology. The Greek gods just sounded like huge jerks to me."

We enter the guard tower. No one's here. No signs of violence, so that's something. Quick scan… No signs that metahuman powers have been employed.

"Well… Some of them are. They didn't become gods by being nice, they just have powers over things. Nyx has always liked me, Athena's trustworthy, Aphrodite's easy to get along with-."

"Unless you're married to her." I raise the ring… The ring on my left hand to my ear. "Orange Lantern to Wonder Woman. We're at Belle Reve. No one between the exterior fence and the central keep. Some signs that a lot of people have moved through, but I'm not detecting anyone in the vicinity of the prison. The prison itself has been warded. Were we informed that was going to happen?"

There's a short pause. "No, we weren't."

"Do you want us to try and follow those who have left, or get into the prison?"

Kon frowns. "What if they left by boat?"

"Then they've gone." I shrug. "They've had plenty of time to get into cover or get picked up by someone else. Once we take a roll call we can work out who's still missing."

"Can you gain access to the prison?"

"Front door's open. Can't scan inside to tell you about the interior doors."

"Proceed, with caution. The safety of the prison workers is your top priority. Superman and Lantern Jordan will start sweeping the surrounding area shortly. Keep me apprised."

"Sir." I take my left hand away from my ear and close it, breaking the connection. "Either of you have a preference on how we approach it?"

"If they're in lock down, those walls are supposed to be Superman proof." There's a clank as Kon smacks his right fist into his left hand. "You think they're Nth metal proof?"

"Punching steel and concrete is quite an energy intensive way to try and get through it."

Donna looks at the phone on the wall. "Why don't we try calling them?"

"Because we don't know who's on the other end."

"The prison's full of cameras, right? If someone's in the warden's office they'll know we're here as soon as we get inside."

"Be my guest then. This is tower Interior Two."

She picks up the receiver and presses the 'call' button. "This is Tower Interior Two?" She stiffens slightly as she hears a reply, then returns the receiver to the cradle. "What's 'Kali Yuga'?"

Ooooooh poop. He's here, isn't he? "Literally, 'The Age of Vice'. In Hinduism, it's part of the cycle of gradual moral degradation which leads to regeneration. In our line of work, if someone says 'Faith to Kali Yuga' then they're probably a Kobra Cultist. I mean, it's worth checking, just in case they're a real guru or something… But probably not."

"Kobra?" Kon remembers the name. "Jeffrey Burr's inside Belle Reve!"

"Yep. Or at least he was. And Kobra has magic users working for it, which might explain how they knew how to ward the place."

Donna takes a look through the glass at the prison. "Are the inmates going to be armed?"

"Special equipment is kept off site, but they'll have access to any of the guards’ weapons that they haven't smashed as well as their own metahuman abilities."

Kon raises his eyebrows. "They got any guns that can hurt us?"

"You'd feel a plasma weapon's shot, if it were at maximum power. Super power attacks are more of a threat and I'm still more worried about the civilians than us."

Donna shakes her head. "Hate to say it, but if they were going to kill them they've probably done it already."

Ritual sacrifice being a good way to jump start a spell. Wonderful. "Front door then? I know from the plans where all the cameras are. I can just destroy them before we enter." Kon and Donna look at each other, then nod. "Probably best if we fly there. Less orange glow."

Donna leads the way back out onto the balcony then floats upwards. I don my helmet, turn down my environmental shield to minimum and follow her using my armour's integrated flight belt. Donna's black with white pinpricks armour isn't ideal for stealth but it isn't as if she's had time to change. I'll have to check the ring database for armour styles and materials suitable for super strong people. Or maybe I can sort something out with Io next week?

We come in high towards the front entrance. Below us the telephone poles on either side of the road lie smashed and on their sides, the wires ripped in several places. The lights which usually shine from the prison battlements and watchtowers are off and there's clearly no one on watch. No damage I can see to the exterior so whatever happened it probably wasn't an external assault, which was just about the only conventional attack I didn't think Belle Reve could handle. There are no shouts of alarm as we reach the wall and I extend a filament down the wall through the very top of the front door's opening. No one immediately inside, though the security cameras are still active. I could take control of what they're seeing, but that would require me maintaining a constant connection and some of the people in here are dangerous enough that I might not be able to do that. With a thought my filaments extrude Arrows of Unmaking and stab them into the walls in which the cameras are mounted, destroying them utterly. That done, I drop down and fly inside.

back

Gaolbreak 3

next

31st December

22:41 GMT -6

The emergency lighting is on and there's no one around. Again, I can't see any obvious damage to the building. The ultra-strength internal security doors haven't been deployed…

"Orange Lantern to Wonder Woman. Any word from the off-site control room?"

"Currently unmanned. Warden Strange gave the people who were supposed to be manning it the evening off."

"Bit late now."

There were machine gun positions by the main door but it looks like they've been removed. Not destroyed by the escapees; there's paint on the ground and it's newer than what is next to it. Strange had been encouraging me to use the staff entrance on my visits. Said something about me being part of the rehabilitation team.

"Entry's clear, no sign of damage. Proceeding into prisoner areas."

"Understood. Orange Lantern, the Flash isn't mission fit and it would be extremely helpful if we had someone with super speed available. How reliable is Rush Hour?"

I hold out my right hand and experimentally use Lantern Stewart's old ring to send a filament to open the armoured interior door to the next section. It doesn't feel any different to using the original one. "Rush Hour?" The ring-. The rings prompt me with his file but I can remember it easily enough. Aavai Singh, seventy one, British national of Punjabi origin. Not quite Flash fast but a bystander probably wouldn't notice the difference. "He's getting on a bit, but he's capable enough. Wouldn't Jesse Tyler be better?"

"She's not answering her phone. Would you recommend the younger two Rush Hours instead?"

I kill the camera on the far side and then the three of us walk into the short access corridor which leads to the visitor room. "They won't leave him behind, but yes."

"Hey, Orange Lantern? Can you scan anyone yet?"

I look back to Kon as the rings start on the inner door. "No, the walls are blocking me. Can you see through them?"

He shakes his head. "Too well insulated. D-? Troia? Any of your gods feel like helping out?"

"I haven't really had anything to do with Hecate yet. She's a bit.. strange."

The door opens and after I destroy the cameras on the far side we proceed into the visiting room. Aside from the main lights being off and the door to the guard part of the prison being open there's nothing out of the ordinary again. Starting to get a Mary Celeste vibe from the place.

"So, do you.. actually worship them? The gods, I mean?"

"I.. don't know. It isn't like going to church, and I haven't done that for years. Amazon relationships with the Olympians are usually much more direct and personal. I've been to most of the temples on Themyscira and prayed to most of the gods at some point. Not Ares, for obvious reasons."

The corridor is empty. Guard station or break room? Armoury or cell block? Best to stay in the outer part of the prison until we have a better idea about what's going on. I take the turning to the left, towards the break room. The doors in this part of the prison are still armoured and can be locked remotely but there's less hassle about getting through them during normal operation. No lights, no sign of anyone.

"Yeah, Mom told me about him. She's got me reading Amazon historical records at the-." His head jerks up. "Someone in the next room. They're.. watching TV."

Only one door between us and there. I run my filaments throughout the door and eliminate the friction between every moving part before carefully opening it. Once there's a gap between it and the frame I create a sound deadening field on the far side before swinging it the rest of the way open. The three of us float through into the antechamber. Mess hall through to the right, male and female showers and locker rooms further on towards the staff entrance... I can hear the television now myself. I can scan this whole section now and for the first time I see something amiss. Several tables and chairs are either knocked flying or smashed apart. Someone big and strong went through there. Not picking up a significant amount of blood…

Kon taps me on the shoulder and raises his eyebrows. I point towards the break area and he leads the way.

"-bad way to spend New Year. Sure, Crystal's frigid and that cute shrink's gonna get her sweet head beat in, but I suppose shouldn't look a gift beer in the mouth. Cap. Whatever."

How..? Why is he here? At least he won't be any trouble to subdue.

"Call Zoe or not? Well, con, I get an earful from Michelle. She might not even be up…"

The three of us come into the room at more or less the same time. Mister Lawton straightens slightly. He's sprawled on a sofa facing away from us and towards a wide screen television with three empty bottles by his feet and another in his left hand. There's a handgun on the seat next to him but he doesn't reach for it. Ah, there's a mirror on the table in front of him.

"Took you long enough." He takes a swig and uses his right hand to pick up the control box and lower the volume. Looks like he was watching GBS's coverage of the New York celebrations. "The Justice League had a bit much New Year cheer or were you tryin' to raid the fridge?" He half looks around and waves the bottle at us. "'Cause if you were, you're too late. I've already had the good stuff."

"Mister Lawton, good evening."

"Think there's still some cooking liquor."

"Mister Lawton, this will go considerably easier on you if you cooperate."

"Thirty nine, Gemini, parents were Lutheran but I've never practiced, divorced father of one, not much of a social life recently-"

"Mister Lawton."

"-but when I get the chance I like ballroom dancing, horse riding and darts." He looks away for a moment. "Can't believe there wasn't a dartboard back here."

Donna looks confused. "Who is this guy?"

He gestures with the beer bottle again. "Okay, now, imagine-" He makes a circle with his right hand and holds it over his right eye. "-white mask, red armor, black coat..?"

Donna looks at me. "Who is this guy?"

"Floyd Lawton, aka 'Dead Shot'."

"Nono. One word. Deadshot."

"Mister Lawton, please tell me what has happened in this prison."

"What's in it fer me?"

"Um. I have… Better beer?" I fan out my hands.

"Not sure I'd really appreciate-."

Kon lands, stomps over to him and hauls him out of his seat by the scruff of his neck. "Tell us what happened!"

Mister Lawton blinks at him. "Do I know you from someplace?"

Rings, sobriety.

Orange light flares out from me and he jerks like he's been slapped. "Oh, just when I had a good buzz going."

I remove a box of twelve British craft beers from subspace. "Either you get helpful or I employ force. I don't do torture but I think I could justify mind control."

He rolls his eyes. "Okay, fine. The guards disappeared and the prisoners rioted when they realized there wasn't anyone to stop them. Most of them have left but that Burr guy's still around. Him and his creepy cultists."

Donna frowns. "Why are you still here?"

"The only reason I haven't been executed yet is I've got fifteen states suing over the right to be the ones pushing the button. I don't wanna give them more motivation to move things along. Besides, how long are they actually going to be free? Way I see it, might as well get some beer inside me, instead of wasting time wading through a swamp with the Justice League on my tail."

"You mentioned Doctor Quinzel?"

"Oh, yeah, some of the staff barricaded themselves in the offices. The Kobras are tryin' to get them out. You should probably hurry up and give me the beer."

Kon tosses him back onto the settee and I set the beer down on the table. "Thank you for your help, Mister Lawton. Most appreciated."

Then I ShockCrown him.

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Gaolbreak 4

next

31st December

22:46 GMT -6

We head to the offices in fits and starts. The internal security doors are designed so that they can't all be opened at once which is bloody annoying at times like this. I transition to the next and get to work opening it while Kon and Donna fly after me. I wish I knew better what was going on, I've.. really got used to being the one in the know. The only way I could go faster would be lashing out and Crumbling everything. Tempting as that is, I can't even tell that there's no one on the other side of these doors before opening them! That and they're not exactly quiet. Still no response to our presence. Still don't really know how many inmates decided-.

"Uuuhhg…"

I transition past the slowly opening door onto the walkway overlooking the prisoner gymnasium. Someone's punched a hole clear through the partition between the male and female sections, and from the meltwater I'm going to assume it was frozen by someone first. Cameras don't point at this bit so I take a second to destroy the ones watching the floor below. Gun turrets look dead… There! I transition down next to the prisoner below. He's managed to crawl over to the wall and prop himself up but from the way the right side of his chest has been crushed I don't think he's going much further. His external wounds are superficial but even without a ring scan I can tell from the blood running from his mouth that his internal injuries might well end up being fatal.

He struggles to look up as I crouch down in front of him. "Mister Walker. You've seen better days." No sense restoring him fully, but… He's only got another two years on his sentence. Heck, he only got sent to Belle Reve instead of Blackgate due to that ridiculous Moth costume. I repair his lung and ribcage as Donna and Kon fly down behind me.

He just about manages to focus on me, and seems to recognise me. "Fucking… You. Shoulda know that bastard.. would…" He slumps sideways, unconscious. Blood loss and shock.

The gym doors aren't fortified, a preventative measure against the inmates trying to barricade themselves inside. That might explain why they're smashed off their hinges. More injured prisoners, minor or no powers from the looks of things. One of the more coherent ones tries to build up an electrical blast and gets a ShockCrown for his trouble. What the heck happened?

"Donna, you don't have a truth lasso, do you?"

"No, that's one of a kind."

I generate construct armour around us as we come out into an open section of hallway. Guard station up to the offices is deserted and the security door's been torn through by someone with super strength.

Kon's head jerks up. "People ahead."

"…to break down a fucking barricade!"

An electrical crackling sound. "It's wood! What am I supposed-?"

"Kobra'll have our hearts if we can't-."

"Get out the way." Heavy footsteps and then a crash.

"You made the wrong choice, Terror!"

Line of sight established. Doctor Zuel has grown to about twice her normal size and is stepping back from the door she just shoulder charged. Having seen Klarion that size recently she just isn't that scary, especially as she has to pause in order to redeploy her ersatz halter top due to her prison uniform not expanding with her body. Some long haired blonde guy the ring identifies as a Mister Bailey is also watching the door intently while Miss Wasserman and Mister Hato are more focused on their argument. Flames billow from Zara's hands as she takes a crack at it. The ring helps me identify the others but they aren't a threat without their equipment. Or in the case of Mister Weiss, to anyone, ever, except himself.

The orange glow attracts their attention as soon as I come into view. Mister Hato's fastest to respond but I easily counter his electrical blast with a construct shield as Donna and Kon surge past me. Doctor Zuel instinctively grows and promptly jams herself between the walls and ceiling. Mister Hato manages one more shot at Kon which is easily turned aside by his armour before Kon punches him in the diaphragm then the head, stunning him. Zara and Mister Bailey try elemental blasts at the same time but his wind pulls apart her fireball and Kon downs him before he can get enough power behind it to trouble us.

I weave a network of filaments around Miss Wasserman's head and give her a dose of knockout gas. Can't risk a normal stun not taking her telepathic abilities out of action. Her unusual neural architecture means that it still isn't as reliable as I'd like so I'll have to keep monitoring her until we can get the power suppression system working again. Mister Merkyn's got a guard issue rifle from somewhere. He kneels, sights and opens fire on Donna as she bursts through Zara's fire to punch her out. Donna crouches, deflecting the shots away with her bracers as I ShockCrown him and send his gun into subspace.

"Damn it!" Doctor Zuel manages to lie down and expand further, grabbing for Kon with her giant right hand. He punches her ring finger and I hear the proximal phalanges snap. "Aagh!" She tries pulling the hand back but her elbow is stuck between her body and the walls. She really didn't think this through. Think she's lost what was left of her clothes-. You know what? ShockCrown.

Kon gets amongst the other gun armed prisoners and violently disarms them. By some miracle they go down without managing to shoot each other first.

"Got you!" Mister Weiss looks inordinately excited about getting a lasso around Donna. She looks more nonplussed. "Faith to Kali Yuga! Hail the Naga Naga! Now you-" He tugs on the rope and she doesn't move. He tries again. "-will-" And again. "-come-!" Donna gets a two handed grip on the rope and yanks it. He's pulled off his feet and into the air where she meets his head with her right fist. He drops to the floor in a stupor and I gas him into unconsciousness.

"Troia, any idea how to get Doctor Zuel to shrink back down when she's unconscious?"

She looks up at the fallen giantess as she unknots Mister Weiss' rope. "No, it has to be voluntary. Diana and I usually have to get a lowboy to tow her away."

"A what?"

"You know, a truck with a flat trailer." I nod as she coils the rope up and slings it over her shoulder.

"Brand." Doctor Zuel's eyes flicker as a filament plugs into her forehead and an orange sigil shimmers into being. "Doctor Zuel, you want to shrink down to normal size." Nothing happens for a moment and then the space around her starts to grow as her volume reduces. Since she's naked but for rags I put a straightjacket on her as soon as she reaches the proper size. Fix her finger, tie up the straps and then remove the brand. Job done.

I walk over to the blackened and cracked door and knock delicately on it with my right hand. "Okay, they're down." Nothing. "Thomas? Are you in there?"

"You ain't foolin' me lahk that agehn!" Heavy office furniture has been pushed up against the other side of the door and the twins are braced against it. Nothing there aren't a dozen ways for us to force our way past but I can see the yellow and red; they aren't thinking rationally at the moment. Going in heavy could ruin all the work I've put into rehabilitating them. Well, him anyway.

Kon looks at me. "Want me to break it down?"

I shake my head and step away from the door. I need information from someone who I can trust to be honest and volunteer things and unless I want to try tracking down Kadabra that's Thomas. I walk past Doctor Zuel and around the corner of the corridor before taking four Arrows of Unmaking out of subspace and pointing them at the side wall of Doctor Quinzel's office. Cut down the radius a little… Then stab them forwards. Four neat circles are cut through the wall causing the rest to crumble away.

"Ah'll kill ya'll anyway!" Thomas and Tuppence charge out of the gap, she slamming Kon into the wall behind us and he smashing his right fist into my chestplate.

"Thomas, calm down!" A one two combination to my construct faceplate fractures it and I send my helmet into subspace. "Thomas, it's me!"

"Whu-?" He pauses his fourth swing and takes a closer look at me. I know he hasn't seen me in this armour but weren't the glowing sigils a give away? "Paul?"

"No, the other Orange Lantern." He blinks in confusion. "Yes of course it's me!"

"Oh. Ah." He backs off a little, looking ever so slightly sheepish. "How ya'll been, man?"

"Hey, you think-" Kon's grabbed both of Tuppence's wrists and is holding them away but she's perfectly happy to knee him in the chest instead. "-you could call her off?"

And then a short blonde woman charges out and hits Donna with a giant mallet.

back

Gaolbreak 5

next

31st December

22:50 GMT -6

"Get-"

Poof!

The head of the hammer strikes her directly on the forehead but doesn't seem to-.

"-back-"

Poof!

Donna's too surprised to really react as the hammer comes around again. The texture doesn't-?

"-you ungrateful-."

Poof!

That's an inflatable hammer. Why would why would what?

Donna grabs hold of the head of the hammer as it comes around again. She squeezes and there's a bang as she pops the outer plastic. The head flattens almost immediately and Donna steps back and assumes a defensive posture, clearly a little behind events. Who the heck would attack..?

Oh.

Doctor Quinzel stares wide eyed and hyperventilating at Donna as her wilting novelty deflates to the ground. She's got her hair up in bunches and is wearing a red turtleneck pullover with a short black skirt and white lab coat. Why is she wearing a lab coat?

Thomas puts his right hand on her shoulder. "Doc, y'c'n knock it off. They're on our sahd." She keeps staring and starts to back away, tripping over the recumbent form of Zara and falling onto her bum. She tries to scrabble to her feet but one of her heels has snapped off and-. No, no, we have a mission.

I connect a filament to her and cover her in a flight aura, pulling her back towards me. "Doctor Quinzel, we're here to rescue you. Please try to calm down."

From her pupil dilation and storm of yellow within I'm going to guess that she isn't hearing me. Rings, reduce her adrenaline level to normal and slowly lower her heart rate.

Compliance. / Involuntary alteration of the vital processes of another life form is a violation-.

Stewart-ring, if I wanted your opinion I would have asked for it. Left ring has priority. Confirm command.

Command accepted.

Doctor Quinzel appears to calm down a little, her breathing slowing. She's still scared but she's actually aware of her environment now. Tuppence stopped attacking Kon while they both watched and now she pulls her arms out of his grip with a scowl.

"Feeling better, Doctor?"

A couple of deep breaths and she quickly checks herself over. "Ye-eah, I think so."

"Alright then." I lower her to the ground and she stumbles into Thomas, who catches hold of her to support her.

"Thomas, what the heck happened here?"

He shrugs. "Ah don' rightly know. Gaht woken up bah mah cell door openin'. Mah powers were workin' so ah figured someone wuz doin' a break out again, only this tahm there weren't no guards around an' tha blast doors weren't closin'. Ah wuz jus' gonna stay put 'til ah heard tha Doc screamin' fer help."

"Yeah, my hero. There were, like, twen'y guys and he was just like... Pow!" She throws a mock punch.

"I.. saw. Thomas, Tuppence, while I very much approve of what you've done you do understand that you're not going to be safe-."

And Tuppence is right up in my face. "If it weren't fer you fillin' mah brother's head with this stuff we could be halfway across tha state bah now!"

"They'd find you, Tuppence. It wouldn't even take that long."

"Our chances would be bettah out there than they are in here! Come on, Tommy. Orange boy gaht theus." She tries pulling on Thomas' right arm but he doesn't move.

He looks uncomfortably at me and then at her. "Uh, Tuppy? Ah don' think-."

She looks back at him and for a split second I see her aggression and anger at everything vanish from her face. Then the shields go back up. "Fiahn! You c'n go play with yer heero buddy. Ah'm gett'n gahwn while the goin's good."

I stride forwards and put my hand on her shoulder. "No, I'm fed up with this. You're going to tell me what your bloody problem with me is, right now!"

She shakes herself free. "What mah problem is!? You got tha last person you trahd t'help killed!"

I shake my head in incomprehension. "What?"

"My cellmate tole me! She took a shot fer that Martian girl last tahm this happened an' gaht froze to deyath!"

She thinks Jade's… That makes sense. "Your cellmate. This would be.. Crystal Frost."

"Yeah, an' she-!"

"The sociopathic, manipulative, lying, remorseless serial killer, Crystal Frost?" Who should never have been put in a cell with an emotionally vulnerable eighteen year old?

She calms down a little. "Whut you try'na say?"

"Jade isn't dead. She was badly frostbitten when we got back to the prison but still alive. I-" I raise the rings and cause them to glow a little brighter. "-healed her."

"Then where tha hell is she!?"

"The Gloria McDonald prison in Rhode Island. She spent a few days staying in medical because she wouldn't have been safe mixing with the general population and then Warden Waller was able to arrange the transfer."

She seems a little taken aback while Thomas smiles at her. "Ah tole you he wouldn' let that happen."

"Is that seriously why you haven't been willing to speak to me?"

"Prove it."

"What?"

"Prove that's whut happened."

"Um… Okay." I have the ring generate an image of how Jade was when she was in medical with Paula before I got to her. I show the injuries being healed and Jade sitting up. The next image is of me watching her being loaded onto a prison lorry and being driven away from Belle Reve. Another of her being driven into the arrivals area at Gloria McDonald. A fourth of her working in their kitchens, which she's pretty much taken over now since the League of Shadows did cookery tuition as part of their physical discipline program. She's made them go all vegetarian but good veg is so much cheaper than poor meat that there haven't been many complaints. Another of her doing the Tai Chi class. "Happy?"

"You could just've made awl thayt up."

"I'm not flying you there to check in person, she's probably in bed. Tuppence, you've got seven years and four months in here to look forward to. If you run, they will add to it. If you help me, I'll see what I can do about getting it reduced. Is that a deal you are interested in?"

"How much reduced?"

That didn't take long. "I'll ask Warden Waller. I can't promise anything and we can't hang about. Doctor Quinzel, do you know how many other members of staff were still on site?"

She shakes her head. "No, no, I was just… I think I saw two of the guys bein' carried off…"

"Right. We can't let you run for it because the whole region is teeming with escaped supervillains. There's nowhere safe in here because: supervillains. You'll have to come with us. Thomas, we're heading for Kadabra's cell next-."

"Hey! Ah ain't said ah'm helpin' yew!"

I look at Tuppence. "Then.. don't. I'm not going to keep arguing with you about this. Stay, or leave." She looks like she wants to tear me in half, but one more shared look with her brother appears to convince her. She gives a slight and very grudging nod. "Right then. Superboy, lead the way."

back

Gaolbreak 6

next

Earth -14

Lunar Watchtower

1st January

04:51 GMT

"…Mayhem, B zero five."

And that's everyone. I take a moment to look at the still form of the late and probably unlamented Emperor Rickard. Really, I'm more than a little surprised that he's been the first man I've murdered since coming here. I don't feel bad about it exactly, just… Hollow would be the word I suppose. It should be a big deal but the emotion I might have expected just isn't materialising. Still, with him dead…

"Ambient hope detected. Charging. Charge: two percent."

I clench my right fist around the ring. Just what I wanted to hear. On the other side of the room the first squad of US Space Marines takes aim at me from just inside the hole in the wall. "Freeze!" I give a jaunty wave as I step backwards into the zeta tube.

"Recognised, Power Ring, Made Man of Ultraman."

Earth -14

Happy Mountain

31st December

23:52 GMT -5

"Recognized, Power Ring, Made Man of Ultraman."

“…you possibly think that went well!?” And as usual Talon's the one starting the argument. Not that the others look much happier. “It's barely been three months and we already lost one member of the new Management!”

Before the Decapitation Jonathan would have put Mister Todd in his place immediately. But since we confirmed Ultraman's death he's become much less incisive than he used to be. Still, he's only six months old and the whole reason the Syndicate put me here was to keep adolescent tempers in check. "Talon, that fight went as well as it could."

Talon's eyes narrow at me while Mary Mayhem sneers. "Went well? The only one who died was on our side!"

I look down and shake my head sadly. "He was taken prisoner by our enemies. Realistically speaking, the chance of us-."

Talon takes a step towards me. "And how exactly-?"

"That's enough." Jonathan -his Ultraboy persona fully in place- takes a moment to make eye contact with each member of the group, myself included. "I ain't exactly happy about where we are either, but Power Ring's right. That was the best way it coulda gone down. Guys, we nearly had a repeat of the Decapitation on our hands. Have you all forgotten what that was like? The Management gone, President Slade's people everywhere and all those stupid pointless turf wars as Made Men who shoulda known better tried carving out their own little slices of nothing?" His eyes do another tour and I'm not the only one nodding. That.. was not fun.

"That. Did not. Happen. Today. And the reason it didn't happen today, the reason every Made Man out there owes us, is because we stepped up. The Emperor died. It happens." He looks at Zorina. "But Doctor Chaos?" Talon. "The Answer?" At me. "Capo Scott?" At Lamprey. "Barracuda? They're still here, not mind controlled, not luring the rest of the Syndicate into a trap. Things could have gone a lot worse.”

Jackie Quick shakes his head. “Should have gone better.”

“It should have.” Lamprey agreed. “However, we have foiled the Justice Underground's plot to destroy us today. We blinded the Mirror Man, broke the Clock Knight's arms, purged the 'miraculous vitamin' from Paladín's system, and forced Newcastle Black to order a retreat. Our temporary weakness has made the Justice Underground bold of late. It will be some time before they are so bold again.”

Ambient hope detected. Charging. Charge: three percent.

Thank you, Lamprey.

“And that calls for a celebration!” Arrowette cheers. “Power Ring! Go buy us something that'd get a Kryptonian drunk! I wanna do shots off Jackie's abs!”

Oh, the joy of babysitting delinquents. “I'm sorry Arrowette, but this ring's still out of power.” Bloody Emperor Rickard. I gesture to the faintly glowing blue ring on my right ring finger. "I don't even have enough power to fly at the moment. Why don't-?"

"Hey, no worries babe. I got this." Jackie pulls Arrowette close and the two of them lock lips more passionately and for longer than I'm really comfortable watching. After a good fifteen seconds he pulls away, looking inordinately pleased with himself. "I'll knock someplace over and be back before you know it." A rush of displaced air and he zooms off in the direction of the surface exit.

M'gavv converts her right arm into a tentacle and winds it around Jonathan's body, pulling him in the direction of the zeta tube. He grins and allows himself to be dragged along after her. "Hey, don't you guys wait up for us, alright?"

"Recognised, Ultraboy, B zero one, Mistress Martian, B zero three."

"Hey Zorina?" Arrowette's taken hold of a mildly irritated Mary's hand and pulled her over to Zorina and Mister Todd. "Can you take us to the kitchen real quick?"

Zorina frowns for a moment before raising her hands to chest height. "Tropsnart eht ruof fo su ot eht nehctik."

They disappear in a puff of smoke, leaving me in the training room. I do not like the sound of that.

"I believe that I will head out as well." I look around as Lamprey walks towards the other zeta tube. "Tritonians do not celebrate New Year at this time of the year and I wish to consult with my shogun."

"I'll pass that on. Try to relax, though. That was a major mission the team went through."

He nods politely and then walks into the tube.

"Recognised, Lamprey, B zero eight."

And now I'm rushing to the kitchens. I've tried using the nanotech I took off Mister Pocus to monitor the whole of the Mountain but it just doesn't have the longevity. Not to mention that the team find it irritating. I make it to the corridor immediately adjoining the lounge area before I can clearly hear their voices. Time to eavesdrop.

“…a rather stimulating form of magic that allows a person to divine their next year's fortune in a New Year's kiss?” Zorina sighs. “What is it that has you so wound up?”

“I'm telling you, he's up to something!” Arrowette's voice is quiet, barely above a whisper.

“We're all up to something, Arrowette. We're supervillains.” I know Zorina's got my back, but if the rest are concerned enough to openly complain about my conduct this could get very nasty.

“But he's up to something… Something heroic!” Arrowette growls. “You know he was there when Emperor Rickard died! I bet he's working with the Justice Underground! He's infiltrated our ranks, and now he's taking us out one by one!”

I hear a sigh. “Arrowette, that's just paranoid.”

"Hey babe." I hear a jangle as Jackie puts some bottles down on the kitchen table. If I have to clean up their vomit again…

“Hey. Look, I know how deep cover operations go. When did he ever steal something he didn't have to? When has he seriously hurt someone?”

“That's.. just.. the way he operates. He's polite, and organized, and different from the rest of us. That helps him pull off jobs any one of us would have trouble with, even if we had power rings. We all have virtues. His is keeping things quiet.”

“I bet he's listening in right now.” Oh, that's not-. The corridor blurs and oh fiddlesticks I'm handcuffed to a chair, a smug looking Jackie smiling down at me. “See?” Arrowette gestures to me. “I told you! He was spying on us!”

“Ah…” As I fumble around for any sort of excuse. Nanotech caches in my armour can eat through the metal easily enough but I need to talk my way out of this one. Mary, Mister Todd and Arrowette are glaring at me while Jackie is more interested in lining up shot glasses.

“Ah.” Zorina gives a small sigh. “I suppose you may have a point. Arrowette, Talon, Mary, Jackie? Peels.” The four of them collapse to the floor. She glances at the corner of the room, then at me. “After Father warded the place, I can't affect the cameras anymore.”

“I'll deal with it.” Editing the recording isn't exactly hard with a power ring. I rattle my handcuffs. "Would you mind?"

She looks at me levelly. “No, you can stay there for now. Llet em eht hturt.”

I feel the compulsion take hold. How much leeway is there? "Of course."

“Are you an agent of the Justice Underground?”

“No." What's she doing? “I have.. approached a few of them, tried to establish some sort of dialogue. But, at best we're acquaintances. Not friends. I've never given them any information they could use against the Syndicate." I roll my right shoulder, remembering what happened when I tried to set up a meeting with Sir Solomon. "Most of them are too fanatical to give me the time of day anyway.”

Zorina taps her chin. “Were you responsible for today's attack?”

“No.”

“Did you know it was coming?”

“No.”

“But you did take advantage of it to kill Emperor Rickard?”

Agh. “Yes. Killing the Emperor completed the mission. Even if all the other Heads were killed, without him the empathic network would have been useless.”

Her eyes narrow slightly. "And the fact that his hope manipulation nullified your power ring?"

"It was a factor, but if he'd been reliably on our side I wouldn't have killed him." She nods solemnly. "You don't exactly seem broken up about it."

"Emperor Rickard wanted to do away with the oligarchical meritocracy that gives the Syndicate its stability. The very system we've built our power on." She shakes her head in frustration. "Honestly. A few problems with the White House and they go crying to the first political strong man who offers to take care of their problems for them. No. If being in his presence was enough to drain your power ring's energy I hate to imagine what the world he would have created would be like."

"You don't seem all that surprised about it either."

She smiles. “This happens sometimes. Two of our own have goals that don't align. We usually solve disputes like that rationally, but sometimes it comes to blows and when that happens you choose what side you're on. When Owlman and Superwoman decided to blow up the world, the rest of the Syndicate fought against them. When Doctor Chaos took over my father… Well. The Syndicate made its choice." She looks at me curiously. "What do you think about that situation?"

"Doctor Chaos may be powerful, but he's causing more trouble than he's worth. I also don't think Boss Giovanni fully appreciated what he was letting himself in for when he put the Helmet on."

She eyes me suspiciously. "Alan Scott didn't seem to have a problem with it."

"Alan's… Practical. Doctor Chaos is what he has to work with."

Her eyebrows raise. "And if that were to change?"

"As I said, practical."

“Hmm.” She paces a short distance across the room and then turns back to me. "Then getting rid of Doctor Chaos serves both our interests. You get your less aggressive Syndicate… And I get my father back."

Possibly interesting. "True…"

"Then start being open with me. You disappeared for several minutes. It can't have just been to kill the Emperor."

No compulsion. She made a statement rather than asking a question. "I.. tried to access the Syndicate's secure database. I'll need time to go through it before I'll know whether I got anything useful or not."

"Clever. And not something any of the others thought about."

"I think they assume that Talon's got it all anyway."

"As if Owlman ever trusted anyone with anything." She kneels over Jackie Quick. “Ekaw pu, tegrof touba siht… Dna hctef azzip. Morf Silopaennim." He groggily pushes himself to his feet and zooms away.

"Can I get up now?"

“No.” Zorina places her hands on the sides of Arrowette's head. “Tegrof ruoy snuoicipsus fo Rewop Gnir.” Whaw. I know Boss Giovanni sometimes altered people's minds a la Identity Crisis, but I didn't know Zorina would be willing to cast a spell like that on her best friend.

She looks up. “Just to be clear, I never make decisions lightly. If you fail to live up to my expectations? If you betray me? Then Zauriel the Fallen will let you live just long enough to be very, very sorry about it.”

Ah, threats I've grown used to. “I understand. Don't worry, I'm committed.”

“I hope you are.” Her gaze softens slightly and she walks back over to me. Hopefully with a key for the handcuffs. "Now, seeing as we're going to be spending a great deal of time working together on this, I think a little prescience is in order."

"Um, alright? What do you need me-?" She sits down on my lap, placing her arms on my shoulders. "Um?"

A clock appears on the sideboard, showing us flip over into the new year. "Happy New Year Young Offenders."

"Just in time."

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31st December

22:56 GMT -6

"Orange Lantern to Wonder Woman?" Donna glances down at me from the second level as I listen to the silence. No, nothing. Not sure if she's busy or if whatever magic's running through this place is blocking me. Stewart's ring provides me with the designs for four different forms of communication system that would probably bypass it, but they all need receiver stations. Oh, so that's what a Bleed Fracture-Pulse receiver really looks like. I wasn't even sure that was a thing…

"This here's his cell, but Abra's lowg gawn." Thomas gestures and the cell is indeed empty. "Kind'a a shame. You know he'd bin tutorin' me?"

"I think you mentioned it." Of course, the fact that we can't see him doesn't necessarily mean that he isn't there. Kon and Donna are making a quick visual inspection of the other cells just in case someone's done something clever while Tuppence glowers at my back with her arms crossed. The heavy machinegun that's usually on overwatch over this cellblock has been removed -neatly- and the guard post is abandoned. That gun could hurt Thomas and Tuppence, maybe seriously with sustained fire or if the shooter got lucky. I start flicking through Stewart's ring's armour designs as I scan Kadabra's cell. Hm. I put my right hand into the apparent opening between the bars at the front of the cell and the open door. The illusion ripples, and for a moment I see the real door, firmly closed.

Thomas' eyes widen as he sees it too. "Hay! I thought all'a his gear got confiscated!"

"Abra Kadabra is a very clever and cunning man." Rings, scan… Ooh, I have new scanning options! I don't even know what some of that stuff is! "His unusual abilities come from technology from the future-."

"That was trew?" Doctor Quinzel shrinks back as we look at her. "When he said that in one of our sessions I thawt it was just, y'know, self aggrandisement or somethin'."

"No, he genuinely comes from the future. Rings, decloak." Orange light strobes out and covers the cell interior. The device obscuring the cell door fails first, revealing the firmly locked cell door which I open with a filament. Inside the centre of the cell itself a shadowy humanoid outline appears, flickering in black as the rings detect the tiny space-time distortions Kadabra's phase cloak generates. The spectral form appears to look in my direction and then gradually becomes more and more real as Kadabra precipitates out of the air.

He takes a moment to get his breath back and then nods at me. "I hoped it would be you. I was a little worried one of Kobra's people might notice my.. hiding place."

"Mister Kadabra, do you have a better idea about what's going on than we do?"

"Probably. Kobra's been making.. converts-" His lip curls. "-ever since he got here. Once Waller left he became even more brazen about it." He shakes his head. "I've got data infections throughout the prison but my implants are still off. They can transmit but I can't receive."

Thomas frowns. "Power supresser's nawt workin' no more."

"My implants run on conventional thirty ninth century technology, not 'super powers'. Orange Lantern deactivated them after my sentencing."

I take his wand out of my subspace pocket and let it float in front of me. "Do I need to make clear what will happen if you cross me on this?"

His eyes flick between the wand and my face. "No, you were quite clear when we spoke in Central City."

"Right then." I extend my left palm towards him. "Ring, reactivate Mister Kadabra's implants."

"Compliance."

Another strobe, this time focused on his head. He recoils only slightly, then unfocuses his eyes and blinks heavily as the implants remesh with his organic brain. Nervously, he holds out his right hand and I relinquish control of his wand, which leaps into his hand. He risks a narrow smile before changing his stance to that of a stage magician. "And for my first trick?" He taps the wand against the air over his own head and a quick blast of ionised vapour later he's back in his open collared shirt and black trousers.

"Wouldn't armour be more sensible?"

"My clothes are reinforced with carbon nanotubes and-" Another wand wave and they get a little shinier. "-a personal force field."

"Right, what can you tell us?"

"Kobra and his old followers have occupied Warden Strange's office. They've also looted the armoury. The rest of the guards are being held in the women's mess hall, except…" He trails off.

"Yes?"

He shakes his head. "It's a little hard to tell which are alive and which are dead. How is it that you can't simply scan them yourself?"

"Some sort of ward. I'm assuming it's Mister Burr's doing, though I don't suppose it really matters." I look at him for a moment. "Mister Kadabra, are you willing to assist us?" He visibly cringes. "I'm not.. demanding. If you want to just stay in your cell, that's fine. However, if you agree to help, I'll leave your implant's data store active and load up a copy of An Introduction to Basic Thaumaturgy before I go. Sound fair?"

From the way the orange and blue lights in his soul are churning I'd say that it's all he can do to prevent himself from whooping for joy. His facial expression on the other hand barely shifts from polite curiosity. "That…" He nods. "Is a fair offer." I step back from the door as he walks out.

"Then c'n we go already?" Tuppence makes a gesture of appeal as Donna and Kon drop down to our level.

Kon shakes his head. "No one hiding up there." He looks over Mister Kadabra and then turns to me with his eyebrows raised. "Wait, Kadabra too?"

"I'm receiving compensation for my services. Now." He holds his wand's pointy end up and moves it in a circle, creating a holographic map of the prison. "We're here-" A blue dot in the male cells. "-Lord 'Snake Snake' is here-" A green dot. "-and the remaining guards are here." A red dot.

Donna looks at the image. "Can you tell if Warden Strange is there as well?"

Mister Kadabra shakes his head. "There was limited space for facial recognition programming and at the time I didn't think the prison psychiatrist was worth recognising."

"Do you think Strange could have been involved with this?"

"Hey!" Doctor Quinzel pokes me in the chest. "Don't stawt blamin' the victim for this! I'm sheuwer Doc Strange was just as surprised as everyone else."

"Someone knew it was going to happen." Kadabra waves the wand again and expands the canteen. The hologram shows people but doesn't give any definition. I'm guessing that the ones sitting down with armed people around them are the guards and that the ones not identified as having weapons have combat usable superpowers but I'm not going to assume anything. "Belle Reve has a minimum of forty six guards on duty at any one time, as well as the Warden and support staff. From the look of it they've only got eleven prisoners in there."

Her eyes widen. "You don't think they killed them awul?"

"No, there aren't enough bodies. Even counting the ones by the prison gym-."

"Those were inmates-."

Thomas looks horrified. "They weren't dead when ah left!"

"They're lying on the ground and not moving."

"They're not dead, I checked on the way through." I take a copy of the hologram into the rings, just in case. "First priority is freeing the guards. Second is getting them to safety."

Kon nods. "Then we go after Kobra?"

I shake my head. "Why? He's already in prison and it doesn't look like he wants to go anywhere. No, after that we contact Wonder Woman and ask where she wants us. If the escapees are running rampant she'll probably want us out there rather than in here. Right. We need a better idea about who's in there and I'm pretty sure we'd all be recognised. Mister Kadabra, how exactly does your communications implant work?"

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Gaolbreak 8

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31st December

23:02 GMT -6

I don't suck at stealth quite as badly as I used to. With power armour I don't feel the same need to have my environmental shield on and with the flight belt I don't need to glow in order to fly. The Kobra affiliated prisoners were intelligent enough to have someone on guard duty but Otto Fisher doesn't appear to be the most alert fellow. It's a little surprising that he's involved, actually. His psychological profile suggests that aside from a desire to get revenge on Lantern Jordan for something he didn't actually do Mister Fisher's supposed to be reasonably together, mentally speaking. I wouldn't trust Strange's report but it's been confirmed by both the police psychologist who was called in to look at him when the police saw that costume and by Doctor Quinzel. What I can see in his soul rather backs that up: none of the weird orange, yellow and violet mix associated with a devoted follower. If anything I'd say that he doesn't want to be involved at all.

Happy to oblige. I use filaments to check that no one is in line of sight -optical scans as I'm still having trouble with more advanced stuff- extend a sound nullifying zone around him and hoik him into the air. He drops his gun in shock as he rises into the air but I catch it with another filament before it can hit the ground. Just a shotgun. Hmm.

He takes a moment to take in my armour -particularly the sigil emblazoned on the front- and appears to calm down. In fact he looks almost.. relieved. Ring, two way communication is authorised.

Compliance.

"Good morning Mister Fisher."

"Are you here with the Justice League? Is it finally over?"

"I work for the League, certainly. I'm surprised that you're happy about us being here."

"Are you kidding?" His hands go to his face. "I didn't want anything to do with the crazy snake heads, but when the guards disappeared I didn't have a choice!"

"You could have fled the prison."

"I've got a parole board hearing in a couple of months. My lawyer says I've got…" His head droops a little. "I had a good chance to get out of here, try to put my life back together. I don't want to escape at all but if I tried just staying in my cell they'd have killed me!"

"Alright then, I'll make you a deal. You help me, and I talk to the authorities about not counting this against you."

He stares at me for a moment before nodding. "What do you need?"

"Aside from the cafeteria, are they keeping guards anywhere else?"

"I don't… I don't think so? Kobra took Strange with him and… Oh God."

"Mister Fisher?"

"I think… I think they killed a couple of them. I-I overheard one of the cultists saying something about rounding up all the guards but.. the number they said they had… It was two more than the number they brought into the food hall."

Looks like they did a ritual after all. "How many inmates are there in the cafeteria?"

"Fifteen." Matches Kadabra's scan. "Only five real cultists and ten other guys."

"Any of them have superpowers?"

"Some of the cultists have this drug, makes them stronger and faster. I think one of the other prisoners can control magnetic fields, but… You're a Lantern, right?" I nod. "I tried fighting Green Lantern once. I don't think any of them except Dillon would really be a threat to you."

Roscoe Dillon, aka The Fucking Top. Wonderful, a telepathic speedster. A mental case telepathic speedster. Better here than in Houma I suppose. What do I know about him? His range for hearing what someone's thinking is supposed to be point blank only. On the other hand I seem to remember him reprogramming people's brains in the comics and.. I don't think I'm that resilient. "Thank you for the information. One last thing for you to do."

"You don't want me to.. fight them, do you? I-I'm just a circus performer."

"No, of course not. What I need you to do is walk through the cafeteria doors."

He looks at me for a moment. "That's it?"

"They've done something that makes it impossible for me to scan through the prison's walls and doors. As soon as the door's open I'll be able to get an accurate scan of what's going on inside and I'll be able to protect the prison guards."

"C-can't you just charge in yourself?"

"If they didn't have a speedster, maybe. But if I went in there without knowing what was inside I'd risk someone being faster on the trigger than I am with a power ring. There's nothing here I can't beat-" Probably. That the six of us can't beat, certainly. "-in a fight but I can't risk the hostages like that."

"And.. you'd be protecting me too, right?"

"Of course. From what I can tell you're genuine about wanting a new start. That makes you a very rare and valuable commodity in a place like Belle Reve. Here." His prison overalls expand slightly. "Body armour. Should protect you against small arms fire."

"One of the Kobra's’ got a machine gun."

"You'll only be exposed for a second or two. When I say 'now', drop to the floor. It shouldn't take long, I'll be shielding you and they won't be aiming at you. Heh, that's why we wear these symbols on our chests: so we make better targets."

"Okay… Just walk in then get down?" I nod. "Okay. I c.. I can do that."

"I'm going to put you down now-."

"And you'll put in a good word with the parole board?"

"Of course. Look, you do realise… It wasn't Green Lantern, right? He didn't kill her. Even if he'd wanted to his ring wouldn't let-."

"I know." He squeezes his eyes shut. "I know." He opens them again. "After she died I just wanted someone to blame. Someone I could lash out at and hurt. That.. new Doctor? Quinzel? Strange just wanted me to keep going on and on about what it was like when it happened, but she's… She's really helped me put the whole thing in perspective." He looks at the floor. "Okay, okay, let me down. Let's do this."

I check the corridors once again. No one's come looking for him. I lower him gently to the ground and hand him back the shotgun. "One moment." I raise the left ring to my ear. "Everyone ready?"

"We're all ready over here." Kadabra's with Kon, Thomas and Tuppence, ready to come in on the far side. Radios would be a risk but the ring can communicate directly with Kadabra's implanted quantum entanglement communicator. There are guards outside the door on their side so I'm going to assume that there are on this side as well. I'm going to have to use accelerated perception and I.. I just don't like that function. Even if it doesn't hurt anymore. Especially as it doesn't hurt anymore. I glance around and see Donna nod at me.

"I'll transmit an image of the room's interior as soon as I have it, but you're pretty much going to have to dive in right away." I take a few vertigo inducers out of subspace. That should put paid to organised resistance. "Mister Fisher? You're up."

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Gaolbreak 9

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31st December

23:08 GMT -6

I watch via an optic filament as Mister Fisher strolls past the inmates on guard duty with barely a murmur. The rougher looking one slaps him on the shoulder but it's just an automatic attempt at intimidation and not an indication of suspicion. I wince as he nearly looks in my direction, a near invisible filament waiting next to him for him to open the door. I tried just shoving it through the doors but it started fading away as I sent it towards the gap. Need to get Sephtian to take a look at the arrangement Mister Burr used to pull this off. If it was actually him.

Mister Fisher checks the safety on his shotgun before pushing through the door.

Accelerated perception. Scan.

A triple barrelled rotary cannon from the cellblock has been set up on the serving counter. It's manned by inmates wearing Kobra hoods. Were those sent in, or did they run them up themselves? The tables were screwed into the floor but the ferrokinetic inmate is hard at work undoing the bolts and shoving them to the sides of the room. Some of the prisoners have dragged a couple of the liberated tables over to the wall mounted television and seven of them are sitting, watching nationwide New Year celebrations. The other inmates are standing in armed huddles around the prison staff but I note that with one exception they're staying away from the Kobra clique. Mister Dillon appears to have no such reservation, though it looks like the cultists would rather that he did. The guards and.. looks like a caretaker or cleaner? It doesn't look like any of them are critically injured, though I can see blood on more than a few uniforms. Five cameras mounted on the walls that will need to go first.

I'm transmitting the layout of the room to Kadabra even as I attach filaments to the guards outside the door, ShockCrown and gas them and start lowering them gently to the ground. I'm not sure exactly how fast I'm thinking now but in the brief moment between them losing control of their legs and them starting to fall it felt like they were going very slowly. My eyes… My eyes are dragging as I try to turn them to look at my first two targets. Even closing them so that I can focus better on the input from the rings is too slow. Ignore it. Can't transition into the room because Dillon might react faster than me. Plot flight path. Filaments in position to shield.

"Down!"

Mister Fisher starts to duck. There's no noticeable reaction from any of the inmates but Dillon's glanced around! Execute! The ring tells me that I'll be through the doors in little over a second but it still feels like I'm drifting like a dandelion spore in a breeze. Mini railgun rounds destroy cameras, construct armour coats Mister Fisher and a shield bubble appears around the prison staff. That provokes a reaction. Eyes widen, people start to turn and the guard on the turret starts to swing it towards my door.

And Dillon grins. He hasn't slowed down at all.

I drop a vertigo inducer near each inmate concentration even as the prison-orange blur he's becoming starts to pirouette across the room. Shots are fired as fingers clamp down on unsafed triggers in shock. Two rifle rounds and a smattering of shotgun pellets are absorbed by the shield around the prison staff as the inmates start to fall, hands clasped over their ears. The doors on the far side explode inwards as Kon and Thomas throw themselves inwards at full speed while behind them I see Tuppence punch out one inmate and a flash of blue-white as Kadabra electrocutes another.

Mister Dillon twists sideways in the air as he reaches Mister Fisher, grabs hold of his ankle and throws him up at me! I try catching him with a construct but he's got far more kinetic force than he should have! I'm sent backwards in the air as Kon flies at Dillon and Thomas heads for the rotary turret. I won't hit the wall for a few subjective seconds so I take the time to ShockCrown the more active looking inmates, Mister Plazchek especially as he gets it together enough to send a table flying into Kon. Kon smashes it aside without slowing as Mister Plazchek goes limp.

I feel the pressure as my back hits the wall but the construct armour can easily take it. Kon swings his right fist at the space occupied by Mister Dillon only for Dillon to spin aside and… Somehow he just accelerated Kon into the cafeteria floor. He didn't even touch him! Thomas' earplugs appear to be working as he crumples the rotary cannon and grabs as many of the guns on the floor as he can. Making sure to keep Tuppence between him and any potential attacker Kadabra fires nerve janglers at the disorientated inmates. Kon doesn't bother getting to his feet but instead flies at Dillon from his prone position and tries to grapple. Another spinning sidestep from Dillon and Kon is launched across the room into Tuppence. They both hit the wall and go down.

I push Mister Fisher towards the ground and try surrounding Mister Dillon with a filament cage, Lantern Kreon style. Try spinning your way out of-! Oh. The filaments reach his blurred form and bend away. I try to bring them back around only for him to dance aside, deflecting faster than I can correct. I try spraying gas at him but his demented spinning forms air currents too strong to let it settle around him.

Then Donna dives past me and takes his legs out. He spins laterally on his axis seven times at super speed before landing on the floor on his back. "Guh!" Donna lunges down at him, aiming for his diaphragm with her fists. Dillon manages to half push himself up and turns slightly, the space around him bending in response to his motion. Donna's lunge misses but she sticks out her leg as she goes past, knocking him flying towards the serving counter- "Aagh!" -and.. yep, that's a broken hip. Thomas hauls him up by his jumpsuit collar before he can do anything else and bear hugs him. Dillon shimmers as he tries to shake his way free but his distraction and relative stillness allow me to stick two Tesla coil constructs to either side of his head and shock him. "Yeahghghgh!" He jerks in Thomas' arms and then flops so I turn it off in order to ShockCrown and gas him properly.

Thomas releases his hold and Dillon collapses to the floor as the vertigo inducers cut out. A couple of the inmates near the prison staff try reaching for their weapons only to find Tuppence standing over them. She folds her arms across her chest and shakes her head. They get the message. Okay, now I need to start slowing down…

"Naga Naga!" Two of the cultists try jumping Thomas but I intercept them with Badger constructs, pinning them to the wall before ShockCrowning… Oh, right, Americans. Probably don't know what a Badger even is.

Another cultist tries attacking Thomas, only for him to stick out his right arm and catch hold of her by the front of her robe, lifting her off her feet. "What you try'an t'do? Ah got super strength."

"Welcome to my world." I ShockCrown and gas her before dumping her with the others. Would there be some sort of call in system? The other two cultists seem a little more hesitant. I send filaments to their foreheads and apply brands to them as Kon and Tuppence shove the inmates who have retained motor control over to one side. Mister Fisher gets up and goes to stand near Thomas. "Gentlemen, you really want to tell me what Mister Burr has going on."

Their eyes and brands glow orange as they hear in my words the ultimate purpose of their existences. Too much power? "Lord Kobra ordered us to-." / "We are to hold the infidels-."

"One at a time. You." I point to the one on my left. "Is he expecting you to call in?"

"Radio contact every five minutes." He pulls a guard walkie-talkie out from under his robes and holds it out to me, a mildly deranged grin on his face.

"No, you keep it. Your job is now to confirm that everything is fine here." I pause for a moment, considering what I just said. "In accordance with how he wants it to be, not how it is."

"I can do that, no problem at all!" He clutches the device to his face, fingers hovering over the activation button. I let him go and he crouches down next to the serving counter, staring at the walkie-talkie, utterly enthralled by the possibility of needing to use it.

I wonder if there's a way to make branded people less obviously mental?

"Hey." One of the guards… It's Bendemann! Kind of nice to know that he.. probably wasn't anything to do with this. He's knocking on the inside of the shield bubble. "We got injured here. You going to let us out of this any time soon?"

Donna and Kon look at me. We could, but we still don't really know how this happened. If it was an inside job… Nothing obvious in their souls to suggest they had anything to do with it. Damn, having M'gann here right now would be useful. "I'm sorry Deputy Assistant Warden, but I don't think that's a good idea." His face tightens. "This was clearly an inside job to at least some extent. I'd like to be able to trust you and your people but I can't. Not until you've been properly questioned and I just don't have time to do that now."

"You're trusting Kadabra and the Terrors more than us?"

"I know them. I know what motivates them and I'm bribing them. I don't really know you, not well enough."

He thinks for a moment before nodding. "I… I'm not happy about it, but I suppose it makes sense."

"We'll treat the injured, but until Warden Waller or the Louisiana State Militia people get here I can't risk that some of you are working for the bad guys."

"So what do you plan on doing with us in the meanwhile?"

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Gaolbreak 10

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31st December

23:16 GMT -6

More than a few of the guards are glaring at me as I close the last cell door. The rest are too busy staring at the Praexis Demons hovering in the air in the middle of the cellblock. Hopefully this will only be for an hour or so. Didn't Lord Vetinari say something about never building a prison you'd mind spending time in yourself? The various inmates we've rounded up are in the cells on the lower level while the guards, caretaker, Doctor Quinzel and Mister Fisher are on the upper level directly above them. I treated broken bones, serious cuts, burns and concussions with the ring and Kon fetched a couple of first aid kits. They'll just have to put up with the rest.

I only have ten power suppression collars in subspace and they all lack the Belle Reve shock feature. I put them around the necks of the most dangerous metahuman inmates and then put those inmates in cells on their own at least one empty cell away from anyone who might be able to help pull the collars off or break them. They're also gassed, though that won't keep them out indefinitely. In fact, even with this formulation it would be rather dangerous to try.

I fly up and over the railing and down towards the control room where the others are waiting. Neither Donna nor Kon are particularly happy about this course of action, though they appear to accept my justification. Tuppence on the other hand is struggling to contain her mirth, though she does appear to be trying to lurk out of sight. Pointless as far as concealing the fact that she helped us is concerned; they clearly saw her and the gas doesn't harm long term memory. Hang up over ingroup betrayal guilt? Thomas doesn't seem to care much either way.

And 'Chief Trustee' Kadabra's too busy to have an opinion. I'll leave the Praexis Demons on guard duty but I'm not confident that they'll work for low lethality suppression if I'm not here to direct them individually. Their instinctive mode of attack is to try to eat their target and they aren't intelligent enough to understand an instruction to do something else instead. I'd trust Teekl to keep them in line but she's still in Poseidonis.

"I conjure ye anew."

I'm still a little worried that if I gave him anything significant he'd leg it.

"Constrained and commanded by my seal and by this wand of artifice."

But by combining his existing knowledge of plasma physics and his wand's electron induction capacity-

"Flesh of plasma!"

-and the most basic lightning elemental summoning rite I could find in the books Mister Nelson gave me-

"Nerves of lightning!"

-we should be able to get some easily controlled help. The simple summoning circle sketched out with a circuit pen is glowing brilliantly and Kadabra's soul is a vibrant orange and blue combination.

"Heed my command and come forth!"

The gathered electrical energy funnels up from the design towards the centre of the design before shooting up to a point about a metre and a half above the ground.

"Come forth!"

A glowing ball of purple gas contains the roiling electrical charge, its outline slowly expanding.

"I command you to come forth!"

The ball bursts, electrical energy and purple gas surge out to fill an invisible outline. What I can see of its head is vaguely frog like, hanging down slightly from the plasma ball located where its arms and neck attach to its spine. The arms are long and thin, terminating in three fingered hands that trail on the ground, tiny sparks jumping up to them from the summoning circle below it. The spine trails away into a thin tail which curves down and then out behind it. Radiating out from the back wisps of plasma suggest the formation of wings. The purple gasses making up its body shift like clouds around the crackling electricity but the magnetic fields and magic prevent them from simply floating away.

Kadabra stares up at his creation in wonder. "I did it."

"Congratulations. Earth's first Plasma Elemental."

"I…." He tears his eyes away for a moment to make eye contact with me. "It worked." His eyes grow vacant as he consults the data in his quantum wafer. "But it isn't a Plasma Elemental, it's a Lightning Elemental binding a plasma field. A true Plasma Elemental would be far stronger."

"Are yew done yet?" Tuppence clearly isn't impressed. "We got things t'dew."

Kadabra returns his attention to the Elemental and raises his wand high. A thick electrical discharge leaps from the tip to the Elemental's head. Its eyes brighten slightly and then it flows through the air and the reinforced glass into the lower part of the cell block.

Yeah. No one's going to go anywhere now.

"Heh. Heh. Heh." Kadabra leans against the wall, breathing hard and still unable to take his eyes off it.

"Yew want a paper bag t' breathe in or somethang?"

"You have no idea."

"Alright, show's over. Kadabra-."

"Abra." He looks around and shrugs. "You may as well use my first name."

"Alright, Abra. Stay here and keep watch." I recall a couple of Praexis Demons to watch his back. "I don't think you'll get any trouble but don't hesitate to administer a few electric shocks if you do. Everyone else, our target is the laundry and what is probably the ritual site. As far as we know the only people left on Mister Burr's side are hardcore Kobra cultists. They have plasma weapons, at least one magic user, some sort of combat drug and they've somehow destroyed Abra's data infections in that part of the prison. At this point I'm assuming they know that someone's in the prison but they shouldn't know who we are. The only hostage they've got is Professor Strange."

"It's him though, ain't it? The one who set alla this urp?" Thomas shrugs. "'Else, why they keepin' him away from tha rest a' them?"

"Could be a power thing for Mister Burr, wanting to be seen to be in control of the man who was running Belle Reve. Or you could be right. If we run into them our new top priority becomes keeping him alive and getting him away safely. We can always have one of the Martians probe his mind afterwards." I generate a construct image of the laundry room. Strange gave me a tour during one of my previous visits and I doubt the Kobra people have bothered lugging heavy machinery around to change the layout. "Two internal entrances, one from the guard side and another from the prison side. Before they were destroyed, Abra's devices showed what were probably two corpses here, just next to the workshop area. That's probably the focal point for the ritual and I'll be targeting it as soon as we get inside. Thomas, please lead the way."

He nods and heads out of the door. "Hey, how come ah don't get no code name?"

"Because you don't have a secret identity."

"Neither do you. Yer name's Pawl. Y'all bin tellin' anyone who asks."

Kon, Donna and Tuppence all smirk. Then Tuppence spots that Donna's smirking and stops, scowling.

"I'm referred to as Orange Lantern because I'm a member of the Orange Lantern Corps." Thomas stops at the first door and looks at me. Since they're bound to know that we're here I don't have much of a reason not to use indirect scanning techniques any more. I generate four ultrasound constructs and hold them up to the door. Within a centimetre of it they start getting disrupted so I pull back a little and fire a quick burst. Sound return says nothing unexpected on the far side. I nod and he pushes it open. "What would you want to be called, anyway?"

Tuppence tosses her head. "Ah liked 'Terror' jus' fiahn."

"Try not to say that to Waller when she gets here."

Thomas reaches a turn and stops. "Uh?" On the ground blocking our route is a glowing white line with a shimmering translucent barrier projecting upwards. On the far side I see 'Reject the Unworthy' written in Devanagari script.

"How far do we have to go?"

"Down t' tha end, double duwers, take a left. 'Bout sixty feet."

I generate a railgun construct and load a Mageslayer, pointing it directly at the barrier. "Get ready to run."

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Gaolbreak 11

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31st December

23:20 GMT -6

I fire and the barrier shatters, gouging a furrow in the floor, walls and ceiling where it intersected with them. My companions race ahead as I try to scan -denied- and send out optic sensor constructs. A Crumbler round destroys the double doors just before Kon and Donna reach them. I'm not sure that their cross country speed is any greater than that of the Beresfords but corridors aren't a great place for super strength bounding. There's another arcane barrier blocking the entrance to the laundry room and my Mageslayer destroys it just as easily as the first. Between that and Klarion I'm going to have to try and get Sephtian to make me some more. I'm not at emergency levels yet but I don't want to risk running out in the middle of a fight.

With the barrier and doorway gone I can get a clear look at the laundry room. I can see where the wall was patched over after Kon punched his way through during the failed escape attempt three and a half months ago. Of course, since M'gann had already downed Miss Frost their timetable was up the spout anyway… There are three robed and tattooed cultists kneeling equidistantly apart inside a large circle in the empty area of the floor, more or less where I thought it would be. The two guards have been.. posed somehow, standing straight facing each other with their arms pointing forwards, forming an arc. I don't know enough about Indian magic traditions to even attempt to analyse the design.

Several washer dryers have been overturned to provide a degree of cover for two rotary guns and the seven cultists providing protection to the ritual site. They open fire as soon as they see a target. Kon pulls ahead slightly so that he can take the shots on his armour but I wince in sympathy as several rounds strike Donna's more lightweight protective gear. Thomas and Tuppence's position at ground level and further back prevents them from drawing fire immediately as I extend a filament to try to strike the guns. It fizzles out on the outer line of the warding circle. I try using a Vertigo Inducer as well only for the cultists to completely ignore it.

The magicians don't look around as my team mates charge in but their chanting does get a little louder. Sounds like some sort of evocation, but I heard the names Shesha and Manasa in there so I doubt they're asking someone to put in a personal appearance. Might just be a mantra prayer to aid their focus with.. whatever they're doing. Kon and Donna take evasive action as Tuppence picks up the washer dryer she was standing behind and hurls it at the closest gun nest. I transition into position next to her and send a Mageslayer round ahead of it, nullifying the ward barrier a moment before it strikes.

"Agh!" / "AIEEGH!"

Oh. They were completely faithful that the barrier would protect them and so didn't bother pulling back. The gun's crushed but… They're not dead at least. Two cultists were manning the gun and while the man bracing it got away with a mere compound fracture of his left arm the woman firing the thing had the full weight of the machine land on her arms before rolling onto her legs and abdomen. I see her hyperventilate, trying to use her ruined arms to push it off. That could well be a fatal injury if we don't get this finished quickly. She's already losing consciousness.

I generate a heavy construct shield as the second rotary gun crew turn their attention to us, while in the air Kon and Donna make brute force strikes on the ward shield. It shimmers, strains and then collapses as the rounds striking my shield rip chips out of the far side. Immediately the crew abandon the gun and retreat behind the next ward. Ablative shield wards? A decent delaying tactic I suppose and if those are all separate wards I'm not sure I have enough Mageslayers to shoot through all of them, but they don't have anything like enough here to stop Team Fist just punching through.

The cultist with the fractured arm scrambles to his feet and tries to follow his compatriots over the ward line. Fortunately for me he's not wearing a personal ward. ShockCrown, gas and he can live with the arm. I shove him out of the way. Next comes the crippled gunner. Medical scan… Mashed forearms and hands, crushed pelvis and right thigh, squished intestine and right kidney… Right. My team mates start going to town on the next layer of the ward as I close the blood vessels next to the affected areas and lift the washer dryer off her. She's unconscious and her breathing is extremely shallow and.. I'm having motivational problems. The chance of her ever being rehabilitated is just so low that as I see it her getting better would just present new problems.

A flare as the next ward fails and the cultists retreat again. But if she dies it'll be the first person Tuppence has killed. Random violence is one thing but I don't want her internalising 'killing is okay'. I think I might have an opening with her now and I know from Doctor Munro that she isn't a lost cause just yet. Okay, mend the spine, leave the hips. Repair and reattach the severed muscle tissue. Organs next and these are a little more complicated.

The side door to the prison staff part of the prison is pushed open and four more cultists charge out! Bolts from their plasma rifles strike Kon and Thomas. Kon is knocked backwards in the air while Thomas is knocked from his feet, clothes burned from his chest and the flesh beneath blackened and charred.

"Tommy!"

Donna turns aside a couple of bolts sent at her with her bracers. They don't have the force field effect thing that Diana's enchanted versions do but they're thicker than the rest of her armour and can take a few hits. I grab Thomas and float him back behind my construct shield. He groans and tries to sit up. Right, Danner regeneration. I'm not seeing anything life threatening but that probably hurts quite a lot. I suppress his nervous activity in the burned area and then excise the dead tissue. It destroyed a chunk of his skin but failed to penetrate the muscle.

Tuppence throws herself at the barrier between her and the firing cultists while Donna and Kon go evasive. Before she can get her fool self killed I stick construct armour around her and fire another Mageslayer at the last layer of ward between the doorway and us. It goes down in a flash and Tuppence is on them. The first is smacked into the far wall.. with broken ribs and concussion, nothing life threatening. The other three scatter as someone else comes through the door and Tuppence swings at him instead.

Jeffrey Burr turns her arm aside and executes a flawless throw, sending her flying past him. "Oh, how exciting." He takes a second to assess as Donna and Kon swoop down on two of the cultists who hit the floor to avoid Tuppence and steps into the warded area a heartbeat before I can get a filament to him. Tuppence recovers and leaps at him but the ward absorbs her impact. As she falls back he reaches through and grabs her right ankle, causing her to flip over and land on her face. "I see a few familiar faces have turned up to see us off." Okay, yes, he's a highly skilled martial artist. He's still not strong enough to actually hurt any of us. Kon proved that on Santa Prisca.

He steps back apparently unconcerned as Kon and Donna come in again, downing another barrier. I could use another Mageslayer but I'd rather conserve them in the event that something turns up I actually need them for. Right, they can deal with that. Kidney.. done. Intestine next-. Wait, if Burr's here, where's Strange? Ah, I can find him after the scan ward is down. Intestine.. done.

"Did you know that the Cult of the Kobra has branches in nearly every country on Earth?" Another backwards step. "It's amazing how many different cultures revere the serpent. Take the people of Benin for example. I have no time for Christianity or Islam but the Vodunists there have preserved some rather interesting rituals." He glances at the corpse arc. "And since my allies appear to be indisposed…" The three wizards fall on their faces in supplication as I finish work on the cultist's small intestine. Heartbeat.. irregular, but that should stabilise now that her organs are all in place. Burr raises his hands to the ceiling. "Gbi, Li, Liwui, Fa. Grant your fellow snake god your power."

Thomas rises to a crouch as I start firing Mageslayers at the last warded barrier. Too late! Burr's skin grows noticeably scaly and his eyes flash sickly green as some elemental creatures I've never heard of grant him their favour. This apparently is the sign the rest of the cultists have been waiting for as they take out needles of some sort of unhealthy looking red/orange substance and inject it into their arms. Not too sure what that is but-. Muscles bulging: it was Venom. Unfortunate but manageable, they're still far weaker than the other four and a little weaker than my power armour. I aim another Mageslayer at the last ward layer as Kon and Donna back away in anticipation of a rush.

Burr blurs into my scope as I fire, sticks his right hand through the barrier, catches the round and tosses it aside. Snake god of speed? The Mageslayers only activate when they strike head on, catching it around the sides does work to bypass the drain effect. He makes eye contact with me and offers me a cold smile. "I don't believe that we met on Santa Prisca. I am Kobra, incarnate god and herald of the inevitable return to the glories of the age of Satya Yuga through the destruction of this corrupt and decadent era."

Monologuers, got to love them. Squashed cultist is now fixed enough that I can shove her to the side of the room before expanding my shield construct into something that surrounds Thomas and I completely. "Hey Jeff." I think his face hardens slightly. The scales make it a bit hard to tell. "I'm Orange Lantern two eight one four. Nice to meet you. Sorry for not introducing myself on Santa Prisca, I was a bit busy drowning Mister Flinders." I frown. "Actually, where is he?"

"Mammoth is busy taking part in the distraction. My liberation is the primary goal of this entire exercise."

"Oh, is that what they told you." He straightens slightly. "Can't help but notice that neither Truggs nor Crock are still here. Now, I'd very much appreciate it if you could surrender."

His eyes narrow slightly. "Take them."

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31st December

23:24 GMT -6

The five remaining cultists blur into movement! Not just Venom, they must have mixed Velocity 9 in as well! I reinforce my personal barrier as Kon, Donna and Tuppence are shoved back against the walls and blows start raining down on the bubble barrier around myself and Thomas. I… Wait. Velocity 9 should be making them Flash fast, at least temporarily. He doesn't quite hit at force equals mass times acceleration but he joined Guy and me for our training session a month or so back and I know what having him punch my barriers feels like. This is… This is far weaker.

Tuppence gets over her initial surprise fastest and swings her right arm across the space occupied by the cultist who doesn't see it coming and is sent flying. Kon just flies straight up to get away while Donna attempts a clinch hold. Thomas looks at me for an idea as very faint cracks start to appear in my barrier. We're over thinking this. If the combination of drugs doesn't kill them they still aren't-. Kon's attacker wall runs and lands a punch on his face. He turns his head with the blow and doesn't seem noticeably injured.

All cultists outside the wards? Good. I extend filaments in all directions and deposit six Vertigo Inducers onto the floor, maximum intensity. Tuppence's first target -broken right arm, collarbone, ribs and dislocated right shoulder- gives up trying to get up, shakes and then vomits across the floor. One of the two who were half way up the wall trying to get at Kon falls to the ground, spasming as 'down' is suddenly in twenty directions at once. The other misses her jump and slams into a wall at near super speed, leaving a crater and being rendered unconscious. Donna finds herself supporting her opponent's weight as he more or less collapses on top of her. She's already kneed him in the diaphragm before working out what happened… Ew. I'll clean her armour later.

The two pounding on my bubble careen out of control, trip and collapse, their momentum causing them to bounce and roll some distance. Maybe six Inducers was overkill? I connect filaments to the fallen cultists. I'm not sure exactly what that drug combination would do, but I can purge each individually. And once the protective effect of the Venom is gone, ShockCrowning and gassing them is simplicity itself.

Thomas rises to his feet. Aside from an angry red patch his injury is mostly healed. I remove the bubble shield and put construct armour around him as my team resume their ready stance. "Would you be prepared to surrender now?"

Burr looks over his fallen subordinates. "Disappointing. Still, bringing about the new era is my sacred r-" He's in my face, his fingers jammed through my construct face plate! "-ole." Thomas swings at him but Burr turns his arm aside, holds it and hits him in the construct faceplate with his left. "The speed of Fa." Thomas takes it and tries to jab with his left. It hits Burr's face, snapping his head back… Then he straightens his neck and looks at Thomas with a faint smile. "The vitality of Gbi." His hand blurs as he hammers punches into his trapped opponent. The construct armour's just about holding but Thomas can't strike back effectively!

Tuppence lunges at Burr to protect her brother and he moves aside with a quiet chuckle. I reseal my construct armour and extend a filament cloud at him. He steps forward and strikes Tuppence in the throat with the blade of his hand as my filaments fail to find purchase. "The protection of Li." Tuppence falls, choking, as Kon and Donna move to surround Burr. I put a filament to Tuppence's throat and undo the damage as Burr effortlessly steps around his attackers, striking at their pressure points. Less effect than he was looking for as their armour proves to be up to the task. I try gassing him but he doesn't stay still long enough and I don't want to risk overdosing the fallen cultists by just pumping the stuff out.

He's keeping moving around my team mates as they try to hit him but doesn't seem to be moving around the space much. Point blank grenade? Point blank grenade. Two detonations cover the area in shrapnel and smoke. He's not hurt but his momentary surprise allows Kon to get a solid shot to the centre of his chest, forcing him back. He stabilises a moment later with no visible injury. "And, most interestingly of all-" I'm being stupid, the gate is still there. Railgun. "-water control from Liwui." He points at me and.. nothing happens. Guess Liwui can't see me either.

Kon and Donna fly at him as I fire the railgun twice, battering down the last two barriers around the foul gateway. "No!" He tries to interpose himself but one of the other things I learned practising against Mister Allen was the value of area denial. I create a construct barrier along my line of fire and shoot a Mageslayer directly at the arcane vortex. I take a moment to process the image of fractures appearing along the barrier as he chases after the round as it heads towards its target. He fails to get at it. It hits and oh thank goodness I can scan again!

Burr looks for an exit as his scales start to recede. Exit not found. Thomas hits him first, a solid right hook to the face which sends him flying backwards. He recovers but he's now even more trapped than before. The wizards appear to be content just to watch the fight but I train a maser construct on each of them anyway. Burr goes for Donna, shoving aside her defence and managing a palm strike to her face before Kon punches him in the side.

He's thrown away from the attack but doesn't look seriously hurt. And that's why super strength versus super strength brawls shouldn't be conducted with striking attacks. On the other hand with his power fading away they just need to keep him off balance and his skill level is still probably higher than theirs.

Tuppence and Thomas run at him. He slides between them, striking at their abdomens. His blows hit but they aren't strong enough to do lasting damage any more and he left himself open to Donna, who gladly takes the clear shot to the back of his head. He stumbles and the siblings turn and punch him hard enough in the stomach to knock him over to me.

"You know-" He leaps up and punches impotently at my construct armour before jumping back. "-my power comes from a snake too. Ophidian the Temptress, Embodiment of Avarice."

Through the rings I can dimly feel the connection to my personal lantern and to the Embodiment within. I feel her awareness extending in my direction. I suppose I shouldn't leave her out. I create a construct body for her just behind me. A large one, about fifteen metres of coils. This room's big enough. I feel my control of it slip away as she takes hold and stares down at the stunned cult leader.

"What's the matter, Kobra god? You were talking yourself up a moment ago. Come on. Muster your cultists. Call up your gods." I float towards him, orange aura at full intensity. He backs away, not even noticing the filament at his ankles before it trips him. "Hit us!" The Ophidian leans over me and smells him with her tongue. "Fight us!" The Ophidian rears up as I tilt my head slightly to the left. "Give us a hug."

For a moment he looks bewildered, then the Ophidian lunges down, her mouth wide open! "Nooooo!"

"Ah, hey!" Thomas and Tuppence both look more than a little freaked out by the giant snake manifestation, but only Thomas is looking at me.

"Oh, don't worry." The Ophidian construct melts away, revealing Mister Burr on his knees with a glowing orange brand on his forehead. "The Ophidian's not that desperate for servants. Anyone seriously hurt?"

"What the fuck was that fucking thang!?" Tuppence might not have been offended by me apparently killing someone but I suppose a giant snake will put a dampener on anyone's day.

Kon pauses in checking over his armour. "The Ophidian. A giant snake spirit thing that lives in his lantern." He looks at me. "Was that really her?"

"No, just a construct she was remote controlling. Right, you three-" I turn to look at the wizards. "-do you intend to come quietly or do you want a beating first?"

The two at the side look at the one in the middle. "Can Lord Kobra understand us in his current state?"

"Not what I asked."

"We have a message for him. We will surrender peacefully once it is delivered."

I start loading the fallen up onto stretcher constructs. "Oh, go crazy."

His eyes roll back in his head and when he speaks again his voice is different. The pitch is higher and the accent is changed. "Jeffrey Franklin Burr. Compounding your earlier failure to secure an alliance with the Light you have once more been defeated. Even with every advantage at your command you were unable to extricate yourself from the American prison. The only conclusion I can draw is that I was mistaken in my reading of the scriptures, and in identifying you as our saviour. Fortunately there is another who fits the description. Your titles are hereby revoked. You are no longer worthy of the role of Kobra."

He twitches slightly, but I'm careful to dampen down any desires he starts to feel as his body starts to shrivel and his skin darken from his normal green-tinted cream to a more Caucasian hue. Fascinating. I knew that he didn't originally look like that but I had no idea how the change occurred. He shakes as his reversion completes. He looks a great deal more like his brother like this.

I turn my attention back to the wizard. "Who exactly is speaking?"

The wizard turns his sightless eyes on me. "I cannot see you, but I hear your voice. I am the high priestess of the Cult of the Kobra. You may call me… Lady Eve. You will be hearing from me... From the Cult of the Kobra, again."

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31st December

23:31 GMT -6

I fly above the armoured prison lorry as it heads for the outer gate at full speed. Smiling, I blink and the rings show me Tuppence and Thomas escorting the remaining prisoners to the mens’ side cells. There were a few inmates we'd missed but Kon and Donna will have winkled them out before too long. Certainly before the National Guard or anyone like that get here.

"Orange Lantern to Wonder Woman. Belle Reve is secure, though it'll need some rebuilding work. No fatalities in the process, but two guards had been killed by the time we arrived and there are quite a few injuries."

There's some sort of background noise.. and sirens, I think? "Well done. Have you -uhhf- found Strange?"

I look down at the lorry. Mister Crock took the time to find a reasonably well fitting guard uniform before abandoning prison. I can't scan him but the lorry was a bit of a giveaway that someone was somewhere they shouldn't be. Given how dark it is and the fact that I'm flying using the belt I don't think he's spotted me. Thinking about it, there's no reason to suppose that he knows I'm here at all. Strange is in the passenger seat next to him, looking quite nervous. Kidnapped or retreating in the face of superior force? His fears are further from the surface than I'd have thought they would be if he were unwilling; he knows how dangerous Mister Crock is to other squishy people. But, that might just mean that he has good self control.

"Yes." Worth seeing where he's going? No, I shouldn't hang about, I might be needed elsewhere. "I'm about to recover him. How's the fighting going?"

"Haah!" For a moment I hear heavy breathing. "Well. We have blocked their movement towards Houma and taken many of the escapees into custody. The rest appear to have scattered."

"Did you end up calling in the Rush Hours?"

"Yes. They have impressed me." I hear a rush of displaced air as she takes off, then the sound filter compensates. "I note that the younger is on your list of possible recruits for the team."

Vasi Kaur, seventeen years of age. Can't imagine why Diana was most interested in the female member of the trio. "Yes, but to be honest I wouldn't recommend approaching her at the moment. She's in the same situation Troia's in with her exams…"

"Perhaps she could spend some time in the mountain over the summer?"

"Sounds like a good idea to me. Has Nabu had any luck overcoming the scry wards?"

She exhales in frustration. "I haven't been able to reach him. It's unlike him to be-."

"Um." Bollocks. "Did you check secure storeroom B?"

"Why? Was he trying to catalogue objects Savage and the Nazis might have stolen?"

Double bollocks. "Noo sir. You see, I wasn't really sure how long those chains would hold Klarion… I mean, if he really put effort into breaking them. And.. since Nabu was already chained up.. and is the most similar thing to Klarion I had on hand… I left him there." Seems a lot less funny now.

"You… You left him there?"

"Y-eaaah. It will be a very thorough test.. but I appreciate that it's probably not the most efficient use of his time at the moment. Sorry."

I hear a sigh. "We'll talk about it later. How can he be released?"

"Just a simple mechanical lock. The chain's supposed to be immune to direct magic manipulation and it'll use the wearer's magic to resist brute force attacks." Silence. "That's actually a new feature with this version, I was actually rather pleased-. I'll just get Strange, shall I?"

"That would be for the best. I will have Kid Flash free Fate."

"Orange Lantern out."

Damn it. I mean, massively warded prison. He might actually have been useful here. I'd rather have John but he's going to be busy either resting or preparing. I still can't touch the corpses making the arch safely. And I felt so good when I shoved Nabu in there too. That's my mellow thoroughly harshed.

I point both hands down at the lorry below me, extrude a couple of filaments and put a flight aura around it, lifting it off the ground. Mister Crock goes for his shotgun immediately while Strange just tenses in surprise. I raise the lorry up higher and turn it around to face me before waving through the front windscreen at the alleged master mercenary. He sticks his shotgun out of the side window one-handed and takes aim at me.

I tilt my head to the left a little and shrug in a 'what-exactly-do-you-think-that's-going-to-do' sort of way. Ah, may as well have a little fun while I still have functioning ears. "Hi, Casey Jones! How you been?"

He sticks out his right arm, loops it around Doctor Strange's neck and reorientates the shotgun so it points at his head. "How much do you want the Doctor alive, cake boy?" I hold my right hand out flat in front of me and wiggle it back and forth. He tries to stare me down. Did… Did he seriously not learn anything from last time? "Well you better make a decision, because if I-."

"Is that an antimatter shotgun?" Just in case, ring? Is it? No, not an antimatter shotgun. Just a regular shotgun with buckshot.

He shoves the gun into the side of the now very scared Doctor Strange's head. "Doesn't need to be antimatter to blow-."

A filament connects me to Doctor Strange and I transition him into the air beside me. "Look! No hands!"

"Whu-?" Doctor Strange flails around in confusion as he tries to work out what just happened.

"Couple of messages, Casey Jones-."

"What did you call me?"

"Casey Jones, because you fight people while wearing a hockey mask and armed with sports equipment. I told Jade about it, she found it hilarious." Boom! The shotgun's pointing out of the window again and he fires at me either on pure optimism or pure spite. I let the pellets cause small indents in the orange construct barrier protecting Strange and myself. "Your mum says 'hi', your dad's going to carry on pretending you don't exist-."

"Um, that sort of taunting is not likely to be helpful to Lawrence's recovery."

I turn my head to where he floats beside me at a slight forward tilt. "Doctor Strange, I can see people's souls. Trust me when I say that there is no way that he is ever going to be rehabilitated." He really isn't. Solid green structures with orange decoration. I ShockCrown him and transition him to the air on the other side of me.

"Your daughters' comments vary from 'fuck off' to 'fuck off and die'. I think Jade's actually going to make a go of going straight this time." There's a tiny sliver of red but it isn't even slightly close to breaking free and influencing his behaviour. "Paula's healed up nicely… Not that she's going to be visiting you. Ever."

It's larger than the sort of object I usually do this to, but the lorry is just about small enough that I can put it into subspace.

"I-I really don't think-."

A flicker of blue as I continue to ignore him. "You should really watch that hope, Doctor. It's suspicious."

"Whatever do you mean by that?"

"The League's been focusing on the supervillains, but they'll be turning their attention to the disappearing guards soon enough. And since Wonder Woman's on the case, they'll be truth lassoed. And so will you. Something to think about while you're waiting for Waller to get here to witness it."

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31st December

23:43 GMT -6

"Now you stay there, Casey Jones, and you think about what you've done." I slide shut the cell door behind Mister Crock and dismiss the heavy restraint constructs before turning to Doctor Strange.

"Why ever have you put my staff in the cells?"

"Because this situation reeks of inside involvement and I can't tell exactly who was involved."

"That is completely unnecessary. While you may be right about.. the involvement of some members of staff, surely they would have fled as soon as the break out started?"

"Unless they wanted us to think that." Still, with the wards in the prison non-functional and with them not wearing scry protection themselves… I look over to the control room and nod at Abra. "Abra, open the doors to the staff cells."

He nods and there's a clunk as their doors disengage. Doctor Strange looks at him and grimaces. "And putting prisoners in charge. I know you've been meeting with Abra and Thomas, but what were you thinking?"

"I was thinking, 'isn't it odd how all but one of the staff still here were Warden Waller's original hires while none of the ones who absented themselves are?'."

"That's… Highly circumstantial."

I nod. "True. But at the very least it suggests there's been a fairly major problem with your vetting processes." The staff start to leave their cells. Bendemann regards me levelly for a moment then his eyes narrow when he sees his boss. A couple of the guards take a moment to get a better look at the not-a-plasma-elemental while Doctor Quinzel-

"Doc!"

-beelines directly for Doctor Strange, a broad smile on her face.

"Doctor Quinzel, I'm so glad that you-." She throws her arms around him and puts her head on his shoulder. For a moment he looks as though he doesn't know what to do, starting to return the hug only as she starts to pull back.

"I thawt Kobra were gonna kill you fer shuwer."

"Fortunately, Jeffrey wanted me alive as a hostage."

I look down at the ground floor as Donna and Kon drag in the last few holdouts and lead them to their cells. Jeffrey hasn't moved since I put him in the cell and removed the brand. I tried asking him a few questions but it looks like yanking the 'Kobraness' out of him has messed up his head to the point where he can't respond even if he wants to. How much of what he did was actually him? I barely remember him from the comics at all, except that he got killed by Adom's group before they took Kahndaq by force. Was he a cult leader with super powers or just some guy that 'Lady Eve' woman thought fit the requirements of their holy texts? Did she ensorce him, or did the physical alterations come with the job?

"Hey, ah, Paul?" I look around as Thomas comes up the steps. "Not that ah'm eager or anythang, but… Looks lahk y'all about finished here. You need me an' Tuppy to git back in our cells?"

Doctor Strange nods. "Thank you Thomas, I really think that might be for the b-."

"No." Strange jerks his head in my direction before looking down and exhaling slightly. "I'll need you on hand when the Justice League and the National Guard start bringing the escapees back here."

"Orange Lantern, may I remind you that I am the Warden of this facility. Thomas, Tuppence and Abra have-."

"I have a signed executive order that says otherwise." I shrug. "Sorry Doctor Strange, but when something like this happens the person in charge has to be removed while the investigation takes place. You remember, like what happened with Warden Waller."

"Well, I… Yes, I thought I might have time to…" He shakes his head to clear it. "Who..? Is in charge of Belle Reve now?"

"Waller's restoration to her former role is being expedited, but at the moment the senior member of staff on site is Assistant Deputy Warden Bendemann."

Bendemann looks around when he hears his name and starts walking over. "Does that mean you're likely to listen to me?"

"Up to a point, yes. If there's anything you want to say that might encourage me to accept your innocence..?"

He holds my gaze for a moment and then nods. "I've been keeping in touch with Waller. She should be able to vouch for me."

Strange's eyes widen. "William, that was completely unprofessional! Not to mention a-a criminal offence! I strongly recommend that you don't say anything else until you've spoken to a lawyer."

"Two of my guys are dead, Strange. Screw lawyers."

"They were my people too! Do you think I don't care?"

"Bendemann, I will have to testify to anything I hear."

"Charley DuPrit and Abel Ardoin. The two guys I had getting close to your new hires."

"Well… I… Clearly, some of the people I…" Doctor Quinzel pulls away from him. "Oh, for all we know they drove my people away to use as hostages later."

"They told me they saw snake tattoos on at least three of them."

More accusing eyes are turned in Strange's direction. He takes in the hostility and goes to speak before deciding better of it. He takes a moment to collect himself. "You've clearly made up your mind. I'm not going to say anything else until I've spoken with counsel."

Kon and Donna float back up to our level and take in the scene. Diana's busy so an immediate truth lassoing is out of the question. Branding's even less likely to result in something we can use in court. Heck, even I wouldn't want to rely on it like that and I'm the bloke who does it. But if we still have time to stop whatever's left of this plan we really need any information we can get. "Yes, because superheroes are known for their conformity with the niceties of due process. Abra! Have you got to the section on Atlantean witness testimony procedures?"

He smiles slightly and raises his wand, teleporting himself across the short distance from the guard station to the landing. "I think I could come up with something."

Strange is trying to back away but there really isn't anywhere for him to go. "This is a violation of my rights! And it will certainly prevent any court hearing any charges you may wish to bring in the future!"

"Actually, it doesn't. Magic derived testimony is only legally equivalent to hearsay evidence in the US, even if actual juries tend to treat it as being more important. Neither Abra nor I are police officers or prison wardens. As long as I have reasonable suspicion that you're involved in something likely to endanger Human life there's a surprising amount of leeway in what courts will accept." Orange manacles attach to his legs and arms, locking him in place. "Abra, quite a lot is riding on you getting this right."

"Oh, please." He points his wand at the floor of the landing. "The Atlanteans have refined this spell to near perfection." Pulses of a diffuse blue plasma drop from the tip of his wand and burn the required sigils and markings into the metal. "Even a neophyte such as I could hardly miscast it. I take it that you have also studied the rules concerning witness questioning?"

"Of course. Ready?" Abra nods. Strange is visibly sweating now and tries to pull against his bonds. "First question. Doctor Hugo Strange: were you willingly and actively involved in assisting inmates in escaping Belle Reve Penitentiary?"

He's shaking, his mouth shuddering as he tries to prevent himself from speaking. An Atlantean jury would probably convict on that alone. "Yes." His eyes widen, then dart to the prison workers he's betrayed.

"Second question. Doctor Hugo Strange: did you attempt to encourage prison officers to leave Belle Reve so that you could replace them with people willing to assist you in activity relating to the first question?"

"Yes."

"Third question. Doctor Hugo Strange: to the best of your knowledge, what was the purpose of the ritual Kobra's magicians were performing?"

"It was s-s-supposed to be a long range transportation spell of some kind. It also created a protective effect over the whole of the prison."

"Fourth question. Doctor Hugo Strange: to the best of your knowledge, why didn't the transportation effect work?"

"Someone was supposed to be on the other end to complete the circuit. For some reason that didn't happen."

"Fifth question. Doctor Hugo Strange: to the best of your knowledge, who was that person?"

His mouth goldfishes, the inscriptions in the circle starting to shine to increase the force of the compulsion. "Klarion."

From the looks of the guards I'd say that he didn't so much sign his own death warrant as build his own scaffold. And most of the prisoners listening below don't look a lot happier about it. "Thank you, Doctor Strange. That will be all."

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Gaolbreak 15

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1st January

00:01 GMT -6

"And that, Mister Phillips, is why we don't pick fights with anyone with an 'S' on their chest."

He sits up a little straighter and tries wiggling the fingers of his newly repaired right hand. "Yeah, I think I'll remember that. And yet still not as tough a crowd as the eight year olds on Coney Island."

"You know, if you're interested, I could probably find a buyer for that xenotech cache you and your wife found."

He looks puzzled. "Ah, I don't get it."

"Get what?"

He leans forwards and makes a circling motion with his right hand. "You know. The punch line? Why is Jewelee and I selling out to you funny?"

Rapidly losing hope… "How's about 'unrepentant supervillain makes pile of money from someone else's work and retires in a cloud of smug'?"

He exhales slowly as he thinks about it. Then he shakes his head. "Nahhh… It's missing something."

Well, I tried. "I don't have your comedic expertise. Maybe you could work on it?"

"Sure. I mean, there's definitely some potential there. Maybe if we sold the same thing to different people..?"

I step back and wave my right hand to close the cell door. Xenotechnology advanced enough to make joke weapons a serious threat and no one knows where they got it from or who the original owner was. They're clearly not in it for the money but… Oh well. Jewelee gave pretty much the same answer when I asked her. At least he didn't try cupping me. My power armour meant that I didn't feel anything and I only noticed when the inmates on the other side of the cellblock started jeering. My frantic back-pedalling actually got a laugh out of Tuppence so at least the humiliation wasn't completely pointless.

One last person to talk to before Waller gets here and he's in the next cell along with Doctor Ojo. Ojo's still here because the destruction of the power suppression system apparently damaged his cybernetics at the same time and he didn't fancy trying to navigate the bayou in the dark with his vision glitching in and out. Ojo doesn't bother looking around as I appear in front of their cell door but the man I'm here to see looks around and sneers at me. "What? I know STAR Labs got my stuff."

"I know. That's where I came across it. Thing is, Mister Tuttle… I'm a huge fan."

"Fuck you."

"No, seriously. I've been using Crumble based equipment since early September. It works great. I mean-" I take a Crumbler railgun round out of subspace and hold it up. "-I use these with my railgun constructs, they destroy pretty much anything. I made these-" I take an Arrow of Unmaking out as well and have it float in front of the cell doors. "-for my bow-using colleagues. Your Crumble gear is shockingly underutilised-."

He leaps to his feet and lunges at the bars. "You stole my designs!"

"No, the courts confiscat-."

"You total shit! Do you know what I went through to make that stuff work!?"

Um. Not sure why he's… "Doctor Quinzel did give me some id-."

"You! You! You! I'll KILL YOU!" I take a couple of steps back. "You and the green one and all of the fucking Arrows!" He's now shaking on the bars in a determined attempt to bring the bars down. "I'LL KILL YOU ALL!"

Nullify sound.

Doctor Quinzel walks up beside me. "Coulda told you that would happen."

"I knew he was a bit temperamental, but…"

"You know about him and his dad, roight?" I nod. "His whole ego's tied up in his invention bein' good fer somethin'-"

"But I.. proved that it is?"

"-but at the same time he's gotta be the one provin' it. You showed him his tech was good, but because it was you, you made it look t' him like he was the problem."

I look at Mister Tuttle where he's still silently screaming at me. Ojo's covered his ears with his hands. "He.. sort of is."

"Weeeell…" She looks at him and then half turns away. "Maybe. He was actually on the borderline for goin' to a secuwah hospital insteada here. But straight up tellin' them don't really help none."

Mister Tuttle appears to give up and with one last snarl at me throws himself back down to where he'd been sitting on the floor. "Yeah. Guess I'd got used to it being a bit easy."

"Ahhh… Oh! I wanted to ask you somethin'."

"Yes?"

"Well, durin' our sessions Tommy and Tuppy both mentioned being in contact with a 'Doctor Munro'?" I nod. "They both seemed to be respondin' really well t' him but I noticed that his name was only on the visitor register that one time. You think there's any chance he could come in fer another visit?"

"He lives and works in India… I suppose I could bring him over here if he had time. He'd definitely be up for some sort of video conference though." She nods and smiles. "I'll talk to him. How.. are you holding up?"

She looks away and takes a deep breath before slowly letting it out. "Oh, y'know. My mentor, the guy who got me the job in Arkham and then specifically asked fer me when he took over here turns out to be a massive stoopid criminal jerk who's working with the largest mass murderer on the face of the Earth and it turns out that he only gowt me the job because he thinks I'm 'easily manipulated by powerful and charismatic male authority figures'."

She's starting to tear up. I cautiously put my right hand on her left shoulder. "Okay, well-."

"I mean, what is this, the fifties? An' the guards don't say anythin' t' me but even though I'm the only one of his new people who didn't run when it all stawted, they all think I was in on it. I liked Charley, I thoughwt we were friends, an' it turns out he was only tawkin' t' me to get the scoop on the Doc." She bows her head slightly and wipes her eyes with her right hand before pulling herself together and raising her head to look back at me. "But other than that, pretty good."

"Um..."

"I think you made a real breakthrough with Tuppy tonight." She looks up at where Tuppence and Thomas are leaning on the landing banister. "She's actually been tawkin' t' me and she usually hates doin' that." She pauses. "Well, she said a couple a' words, anyway."

"And what do you think about Abra?"

She looks up at where the Elemental is still floating over our heads. "Couldn't be happier. I think he's actually looking forward t' getting back to his cell so he can go through that database." For a second her smile reappears. "You think Waller will really be okay with his implants stayin' own?"

"I don't really know." Comic Waller wouldn't be. This one? Maybe. Depends on how she's feeling about my assistance. "Maybe if we-."

There's a blinding flash of golden light! Coming from an ankh shape. Wonderful. Nabu appears on the landing near the control room, along with Waller and a squad of heavily armed people in full tactical armour. Waller herself has a flak jacket and a pistol. Nabu appears to just be gazing forwards but numerous golden sigils float around him. I record them as he points his arms forwards and fires a stream of golden ankhs into the Elemental, destroying it completely as Abra has his wand snatched and his arms forced behind his back by a couple of the soldiers.

Bendemann starts heading towards Waller and gets a rifle shoved in his face for his trouble. He raises his hands and makes a silent appeal to his boss. She nods and the gun gets lowered. She then looks down at me and makes a sideways motion with her head. Right. Better get this sorted out then.

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Gaolbreak 16

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1st January

00:11 GMT -6

Waller picks up the nameplate with Doctor Strange's name on it from the Warden's desk and looks at it for a moment. "Hmpf." She then walks around the side of the desk and negligently tosses it into the bin on her way to her newly reclaimed seat. Two of the soldiers she brought with her have taken up station on either side and another two are standing outside the door to the office. Nabu didn't bother saying anything to me about his stay in the storage vault. He just did something to bind the Bestowed -apparently that's the proper name for Kobra wizards- and then headed off to deal with the macabre gate thing. The last thing we need is Klarion using it to come here.

Bendemann's standing on my left and looking mildly pleased with the situation. "What's next, Warden?"

"The first truckload of escaped prisoners should be here in about an hour, hour and a half. How much of the prison can we have safe by then?"

He and I look at each other for a moment. "I can have all the internal walls fixed… Probably the power suppression system."

"We're going to be mighty short-staffed, sir."

She waves her right hand. "I've got a mess of DC pencil pushers tracking down everyone who worked for me before Strange took over. Should get a whole heap of them back by this time tomorrow. In the meantime, liaise with Major Gadison for whatever you need. After a stunt like this they can't complain about being kept in their cells all day." Bendemann nods.

"Warden Waller, my Praexis… Constructs are just about clever enough to obey simple instructions. And they can't die. Might be worth assigning them to the soldiers."

She nods. "At the Major's discretion." I close my eyes for a moment as I reach out through the orange light to Fatty and his offspring, instructing them to follow the soldiers around. "Now. Quinzel."

"Far as I can tell she's completely genuine. Everyone else Strange hired is gone."

Waller raises her eyebrows slightly and looks to Bendemann for confirmation.

"I… It's suspicious as hell, but we never got anything on her." He shrugs.

Waller nods at me. "You're probably right." She takes hold of the radio attached to front of her shoulder and presses the 'talk' button. "You can let Quinzel out of the cell but she stays inside of Belle Reve."

"Yes, Warden."

I thought that putting her back in a cell was a little harsh, but I suppose I can see where Waller was coming from. At least she didn't follow through on her initial impulse to stick her in one of the isolation cells along with Burr and Strange.

Waller makes eye contact with the two of us. "Does she have a future here?"

Bendemann tilts his head to the side. "Even if she wasn't in on it, I don't know how comfortable I'd be keeping her around anyway."

"How many other people are you going to get applying for the job now? Particularly with a relevant background."

"When Strange applied he was one of three I thought were worth interviewing. Now… You're probably right. She can stay for now, I'll think on it later."

"Warden, can we talk about-?"

"Kadabra and the Terrors." She locks onto me with steely eyes. "What exactly did you think you were doing giving convicts free range in my prison?"

"They already had free range. The Beresfords used that freedom to take down nine other inmates and protect a member of staff and Kadabra was also quite helpful in securing the place. Mister Fisher made himself useful as well. At the very least they're going to need to be housed separately from the other prisoners."

"Are you really trying to tell me that you couldn't have taken care of business without them?"

"The three of us.. probably could have done. But the risks would have been greater, especially for the remaining guards. And Quinzel would almost certainly have been killed."

Bendemann nods. "Strange was trying to get the kids transferred out of here and they were both engaging with the education program. And he's right about them mixing with the other prisoners, there's no way that would be safe."

Waller leans forwards slightly, puts her elbows on the desk and massages her forehead with her right hand. "You just love making work for me, don't you? And Kadabra? From the way Fate reacted I'm guessing that was a real live magic creature and not one of his usual holograms."

"That was the deal I made for his cooperation."

"You know Belle Reve isn't set up to handle magic users! Hell, you pointed it out when we met in DC! I'm going to have to talk to the Atlantean ambassador about getting those Kobra wizards transferred as it is!"

"Kadabra's been a model prisoner for as long as he's been here. And.. we might be able to improve your facilities so you can handle them; I'll need to talk to my Atlantean contacts first."

"We aren't going to have time for them to mess around putting spells on the whole building. I'm not even sure that's legal."

"In Louisiana? Er, religious blessings and evocations aren't. But we've developed a type of chain that drains and confines magic power and I don't.. think it breaks any laws. They'd have to wear it all the time but I think that would be covered by the exemption you already have for the collars."

"You got one here now?"

"Sorry, no. Mine's in use-" I don't know where the one Kon put on Nabu ended up, though I wouldn't put it past him to have destroyed it as soon as he was freed. Adom wasn't carrying his with him when he left but that might be just about anywhere by now. "-but the League might have a couple they could spare."

"That's it? Three?"

"They're a recent development and.. quite resource intensive to produce. There's… There are lesser versions but they're not exactly easy to move around in."

"Look at my face and ask if that worries me."

It appears that it doesn't. I nod. "Rightyoh. Is there anything else?"

"One last thing. Apparently Strange said that he was working with Klarion. Do you have some way to stop him if he comes looking for his partner in crime?"

"Klarion's been… Stopped. For the moment at least."

She straightens up. "What? Why hasn't the League shouted it out to the world?"

"It happened about six hours ago and we're still not sure exactly what happened to him. We wouldn't want to announce his death only for him to turn up a few months later."

"I suppose not." She waves her left hand at us. "Okay, dismissed. I need Belle Reve up and running as soon as possible."

Bendemann and I turn to leave but before we reach the door Nabu pushes it open from the other side. His helmet orientates on me. "You."

"Nabu. Have you cleared up the mess in the laundry room?"

"It has been made safe. The bodies may now be removed." I nod. "Wonder Woman has told me that you designed the chains as a way of confining Klarion. I did not believe that to be possible but you have surprised me before. I trust that you have all of the experimental data that you need. I have no interest in taking part in another test."

"Unless you know where I can find another Lord of Chaos, that's about as tested as I can make it. I appreciate your cooperation."

Mister Zatara's stolen eyes narrow at me through the Helmet's vision slits. "The first group of prisoners will arrive shortly. I suggest that you attend to your work."

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Gaolbreak 17

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1st January

07:17 GMT -6

I smile as Deva slams into the asphalt just in front of me. She tries to raise her head then slumps back to the ground, unmoving. In my own arms Doctor Desmond redoubles his efforts to escape my own hold, and I respond by pushing harder.

"GAAAAAGHH!"

With a cracking sound his right thumb snaps and he suddenly seems less inclined to flee. I turn to look at Barda as she walks towards her fallen opponent. "See? Isn't this more fun than the two of us duking it out in some tiny, sweaty gym?" "Tell me you're not enjoying this."

"It certainly does less harm to their insurance premiums." "It has a.. certain satisfying quality to it."

Doctor Desmond tries to push himself up again. I know that he's feeling pain; he wouldn't be crying out if he wasn't. Why on Earth is he continuing to fight me when he's so clearly lost? I shift my hold and apply pressure, bending his right wrist sideways and-

"YYAAAGH!"

-snapping several bones. This is a fascinating study in leverage, actually. He's quite a bit larger than I was at my largest and has much greater reach. Confining myself to physical attacks -because there'd be no challenge at all to it otherwise- I had trouble getting within grappling range. Heh, as an unfortunate Chevrolet bore witness when it cushioned my landing. The blow didn't hurt at all but it was easily strong enough to overcome the friction between my feet and the road surface. Note to self: next time don't let the sister-in-law bait you into a 'no weapons' playthrough.

"Just knock him out." "Torturing a defeated enemy isn't very heroic."

"It's not that easy." "Different strokes…"

"RAAARH!"

"I can't shift my hold without risking him knocking me away again, and even if I could he's got basically no neck. I'd have to crush a good chunk of his upper chest to throttle him. I don't think he feels pain like a normal human so that's out. I said no weapons so gas is out. I suppose I could gouge out his eyes-"

"AAAAGHH!"

"-or something but I'm not sure even that would work."

"You've already taken longer than I did."

"I haven't focused on hand-to-hand combat training, alright? This is your strongest skill set and my weakest. See how well you get on with a flipping power ring."

This is getting embarrassing. A crowd who really should know better than to hang around at the edge of a super fight are creeping back into the periphery of my vision and, ahhgh, they're taking their phones out to record it. And it looks like I'm torturing a beaten man. Come on, how can I… Ah, of course! Fire hydrant, one of those convenient American ones that stick out of the ground. Destruction of public property… Oh, they live in a swamp. They can't be short of water.

I stamp down heavily on Doctor Desmond's left little toe-

"rrRRRRHH!"

-and move my left arm to grab his right thigh and lift him up onto my shoulders. Excellent. Any move he tries to make will result in him trying to use bits I've already dislocated or broken. Or both. There's no way, ehh, he can bring enough force to bear to break free and.. if I.. walk closer to the hydrant.. shift my grip and swing him around by his leg like the proverbial cat…

"DAHH!"

Hydrant upright damaged and highly pressurised water spurting forth. Slam Desmond into the ground, move my hold to his right shoulder where the compound fracture is-

"EHHGblgblgblgblg."

-and force his mouth and nose into the stream. Whatever chemical changes have taken place in his body he certainly still needs to breathe.

"Creative."

I shake my head and shove him forwards a bit further. "Hardly." His free arm flails around but his own bulk is working against him.

"Who's next on the list?"

"Snart. Hardly requires both of us, I'd be astonished if he's had the time or resources to throw a cold gun together yet."

"Do you have his location?"

Ring? "Yes, he's in…" Oh, come on!

"Where?"

"Conn's Home Plus, which stocks an extensive range of home electronic equipment. Alright, he's got a cold gun." From the way Desmond is jerking I'd guess that he's run out of air. His lungs have quite a decent volume but he burns through it faster than a normal Human and had no chance to take a breath before I thrust him into the stream. A few moments more…

Behind us I hear the collection lorry pull up. With the main power suppression unit destroyed they're reduced to using the stand alone collars and their limited battery life. I have a couple in subspace but using them would invalidate the challenge. Barda slings Deva over her shoulder and carries her over to them for transport back to Belle Reve. Desmond's starting to go limp. Ordinarily I'd judge this by scanning his brain with the ring. As it is I'm forced to utilise my sadly neglected 'god sense'. Grayven… I'm the God of Conquest. Is Desmond conquered yet? Feels like… Yes. I haul him back out of the water and drag him in the direction of the transport vehicle. One of the soldiers holds out an extra large collar and I take it with my right hand and affix it to where Doctor Desmond's neck used to be before slinging him through the lorry's open rear door.

The corporal nods at me. "Thank you, sir, ma'am. We'll get these two back to Belle Reve as quick as we can."

"Good show. Carry on." He nods and turns away to get in the drivers seat as one of his colleagues closes the rear door. Maybe Lantern Stewart will have the place usable by the time they get there. In a rather amusing turn of events with much of the League not fully fit a good deal of the work of chasing down runners has been left to our team while they attacked and made safe the prison. Jeffrey Burr, aka 'Kobra' escaped with a group of cultists through some sort of magic portal shortly before they arrived and the rest of the inmates had a good go at wrecking the place when they realised that they weren't on the 'approved for escape' list. From the grim tone of Diana's voice I'm going to assume that there were fatalities amongst the staff.

I restore the hydrant as Barda takes out her Mega Rod and puts her thumb to the activator. Really wish she'd let me tweak that recalcitrant Mother Box of hers a little. Just.. open its mind a little bit. Connect it to the Sphere… Agh, should have thought of that before! The Sphere should be able to talk it around! Shaking my head in frustration at my own mental sloth I walk over to Barda and put my hands on her shoulders for transport. Turns out New Gods are much less touch shy than Englishmen but since this does actually require a physical connection I've compromised this far. There's a blast of light as we vanish and reappear in the Conn's car park. The front doors have been smashed in and I see that the car carrying the police first responders has been hit by an ice gun, the two police officers taking cover behind it. Their heads jerk up as we stride past.

"Do you think he will try to fight?"

I nod. "Almost certainly."

"Can his weapon harm us?" I stop just in front of the doors and take a close look at the brickwork and the thin line of frost that runs around the floor, walls and ceiling of the antechamber. Clever. From the amused curl on Barda's lips I'm going to guess that she hasn't spotted it. "Are you that worried?"

"Justifiably cautious." I crouch down and pick up a piece of debris, then stand and toss it over the threshold. There's a flash of white as the freeze trap triggers, water vapour from the air turning to ice and the brickwork I threw flash-freezing before landing hard and shattering. "They're not all stupid."

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Gaolbreak 18

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1st January

07:22 GMT -5

Joy of joys, she decided that I could lead the way. Bedroom furniture to the right of me, living room furniture to the left. Electronics is.. left and onwards a bit?

"I understand that he developed the technique to fight the Flash. Reduce molecular vibration in a particular area to zero.. or close enough. The Flash runs through it and suddenly he isn't moving at superspeed any more."

Can't see anyone from here. Would he run? No, doesn't fit his profile. Not if he could lure either Mister Allen or Wallace out.

"He can build such a device using parts taken from household appliances?"

"He's a very intelligent man. No formal higher education either. He worked out the operating principles by personal study, stole the components and built his first cold gun himself."

"Surely such a technology is worth more than he can steal with it?" "Does he use it to destroy because that is his god-role?"

"Dear sister-in-law, I realise that you've only been on Earth for nine years, but one thing you'll come to understand is that there are people here who are shockingly brilliant at their chosen field -near equals of any New God- who are nonetheless completely rubbish at applying that brilliance in a rational way." Televisions, no… Ah, a gutted microwave. Getting closer, though it looks like it was torn apart. Odd. He's usually more careful than that. "Leonard Snart, genius cryonics physicist and engineer, uses his cold gun to rob banks. Robbing a bank is a poor enough prospect when the heist is well planned. Running in through the front doors in an easy to identify costume, a novelty weapon and no escape route?" I shake my head. "And he's hardly the only one. Where Gotham has insanity, Central City has really stupid geniuses. I'd call them idiot savants were it not for the fact that many of them have quite good social skills." "You may be on to something there, but if so it isn't built in to his soul. It's in the structures of his mind that the idea he must be a certain way exists."

"A strange way to exist."

"Hmm." "Welcome to the Fifth World."

That gets a look. "You mean to say-?"

"Werl look what we got here, Tuppy!" Thomas Beresford strolls out from the computer games section and cracks his knuckles. "I wuz gettin' t' thinkin' we'd be here all day 'fore anyone showed up."

Looks like he's taken the time to change his clothes from prison orange to something a little more like his 'costume'. Black combat trousers and a white t-shirt. He appears to have foregone his signature padlock around the neck and I guess Conn's don't stock braces. Or maybe he just got bored looking at clothes and the possibilities of having a power supply and top of the range games machines on hand just got too appealing.

Tuppence walks in from the around the side of the outer display stands, slush puppy in hand, cold and hard eyes scanning us as she takes a slurp. "I dunno Tommy. I don't recognize 'em. You sure they're heroes?"

Oh goodness me, it's going to be like fighting Team Rocket. "I think I ate a hero once."

This appears to throw Thomas off his stride. "Wait, fer real? We're kinda new at this."

"Of course for real. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti." "And sometimes just stupid stupid."

He screws up his face. "Aw man, that's gross! What tha hell you do that fower?"

"It's a quote, Tommy. That creepy British guy says it in Silence o' tha Lambs." She takes another slurp, realises that it's empty and tosses it aside. No manners at all. "An' I do recognize him. He wuz helpin' out Wonder Woman aftah that thing with the kids disappearin'."

"No good deed ever goes unpunished. Why are you hanging out with Mister Snart?"

"He's takin' us under his wing. Helpin' us make connections with other supervillains." Thomas actually looks happy about the situation. Really. Even Mahkent Senior… Even Brickwell would have been a better choice of role model. At least they run organisations.

Barda crouches slightly. "Why are we still talking?"

Thomas looks at her and then at me. "You brung yer sister along too?"

I shake my head and wave my right hand dismissively. "Sister-in-law. My brother was busy." Ring, scan for medical purposes.

By your command.

Oh, that's interesting. Some sort of chemical in every living cell in their bodies. I.. don't recognise it, but the situation suggests that it's the source of their unusual vitality. I'll add it to the research slate. "They, dear Barda, are still talking because Snart's up to something. I'm still talking because-" I tap the left bracer of my armour to activate the Garrick infuser. "-I want-" There's a slight hiss as it takes effect. "-to-" I cross the space between myself and Thomas at what feels like a jogging pace while around me everything slows to a crawl. At glacial speed Tuppence starts to raise her hands to a simple guard. I can watch in slow motion as Thomas' eyelids come down in a blink that probably takes him only a fraction of a second.

And then his right arm's bent up behind his back with my right hand at his wrist and my left around his neck and squeezing. "-catch them off guard."

"H-!?"

"Tommy!"

He bends his legs to try to jump and I respond by lifting him off the ground by his own neck. Tuppence dives at us but gets punched right in the diaphragm by Barda. She folds up around the blow, a look of total shock on her face for a moment. Barda pulls back, grabs the back of Tuppence's head with her right hand and slams her face into her oncoming left fist. Ah, ambidexterity. Tuppence blearily tries to focus on her attacker so Barda repeats the blow. Thomas is striking my armour with his legs and left arm but it's far easier to prevent a man sized target from getting leverage and my armour can takes this easily.

"I didn't know you could move like that."

"Short bursts only." And that's true. I tried dosing myself with it but it turns out that after a few seconds my New God physiology just reverts any changes. Great for short bursts but useless for strategic purposes. "Hey, Thomas? You know what's funny?"

"Khkhkhkhkhkh."

"Didn't actually know you were here. Plus, there's an amusing symmetry between your upbringing and Mister Snart's. Your father left permanently when you were… Nine, wasn't it? His mother left when he was the same age. Of course, in his case that was because his father was beating her-."

A sizzling sound and I swivel to interpose Thomas between myself and the freeze ray. Behind his goggles Mister Snart scowls at me. "That's about enough of that." As expected, he started with temperatures that would be painful but not lethal to a baseline Human. Thomas' chest gets coated with ice before the beam from the rifle-sized weapon cuts off. "Human shield. Classy." Snart pulls some sort of lever so I reach aside, pick up a display stand and throw it at him. He dodges, but the freeze trap he set up is wasted. Another thrown stand and he has to dive for the floor, allowing me to score a direct and disarming hit with a thrown Thomas. The ice covering him shatters on impact but he was barely conscious anyway. Snart just about manages to keep hold of his weapon with one hand but I'm already moving towards him before he can bring it to bear. "Vertigo, now!"

The sensation of nausea which follows is far weaker than what I detected him using in the bayou. I may not have the ring's protection at present but divine aura and the divine protective fortifications of my Apokoliptian armour reduce it to far below the level it would need to be at to disable me. I grab a widescreen plasma television from a wall stand and thrust it forwards to block a hastily aimed freeze ray then I jab my hand into Snart's stomach.

"Bowagh!"

Supervillain number four has done his best with Conn's wares to match his preferred classy apparel but fell somewhat short. He's now backing away from me slowly while frantically trying to retune his cobbled together Vertigo Inducer to a wavelength that will affect me. "Give it up, Vertigo."

With a barely suppressed snarl he lowers his hands to his side. "That's Count Vertigo, peasant."

"No it isn't. Didn't you hear? Your title's been revoked. Cancelled. Made extinct and invalid. And… Not that I'm one for nepotism, but I am the son of the ruler of the planet Apokolips. My name is Prince Grayven…" I appear to consider for a moment. "Peasant. But you may address me as Your Highness."

back

Gaolbreak 19

next

1st January

Uuuuuughh

Alert!

Huh, what? I jerk awake and start trying to pull my arms free of the duvet.

Connection made to monitored telephone line.

I stop, sagging back under the duvet.

Location: second public telephone, BP, Happy Harbour branch.

Oh, for goodness sake. I've had… Ring, time?

Twelve twenty two GMT minus five.

Four and a half hours' sleep. All of my friends are asleep as well… Oh. Okay, Zatanna isn't, and Holly and Karon aren't… Need to talk to Zatanna about that. I wiggle up into an upright position. Still wearing my old pyjamas. Nice thing about the ring: it keeps me at a comfortable temperature no matter what duvet I have on. I find it much easier to sleep with something heavy on top of me and now I can have a thick winter duvet in the middle of summer. Or in a climate controlled mountain base.

And now I'm awake, darn it.

"Ring, who is it?"

"Speaker has identified themselves as Nylor Tr-"

I'm yanking back sheets and hurrying to get off the bed! "Track him!"

-uggs. Unable to comply."

I just manage to get my feet on the floor without falling over before stopping to stare at the obstinate jewellery. "Why the heck not?"

"Trace terminates at a junction box in Metropolis." I get an image of the box in question. Wires, more wires and.. a space I can't see. "Unable to follow further." Something magical. I can tell it's there because it's interrupting my sight of the things around it. Ugh, I'll pick whatever it is up later but there's not a lot to be gained by rushing.

I hold out my right hand and call the Stewart-ring from the dressing table. "You got anything to add?"

"Analysis of the area surrounding the target shows several other probable locations for communication relays utilising similar stealth technology."

I do not need this right now! What does he even want to talk to me about? I know he got away! He knows I know! I sigh, then hold the left ring up to my ear. "Answer."

"-what it is yer doing now. So, aaaanyway-"

Some sort of birdsong in the background… No, the ring says it's a recording.

"-I wanted to ask-."

"Truggs, I was asleep. If you're going to be a criminal you could at least try not being an arsehole."

"Oh, hey Paul. I was wondering-."

"What? What? What do you want?"

"Hey, I don't know what you've got to complain about. I had to swim two hundred kilometres out into the Gulf of Mexico today."

"Please don't tell me that was all about you."

"Hey, some people value my contribution. Was.. sort of... expecting.. Kobra to be joining me… Hey, was that you?"

Nothing to stop his people sending someone to visit a prisoner later. "It was a team effort."

"I gotta admit: I thought you'd go fer the mob heading to Houma. Thought they'd send.. I don't know, Robin or someone into the prison. If you even survived the Watchtower."

"Truggs-."

"Crock and me tossed for who got to do the swim…"

"I'm hanging up."

"Oh, come on. Don't be that guy. I just.. called to say… Well done. I honestly thought the Nazis would get yeh. Or at least hold you up a bit. Far as I can see you people just blitzed straight through."

"And you know that how?"

"Satellite mounted camera pointed at the Watchtower's windows. Didn't.. see how it ended. Hey, I know it's a bit of an ask, but could yeh tell me what happened t' Klarion? I… Heh, I don't like it when I can't see where he is."

I put my right hand to my forehead. "How did you even get this number?"

"A really pissed off GBS intern."

Ughh. I asked them not to fire her. "Why should I tell you? What's in it for me?"

"Future knowledge? Aaaah? I got a problem, I don't mind coming at it from multiple angles."

"What problem?"

"You remember I said my future was 'crummy'? Thing that makes it like that? Noooot all that far away."

"Uhh, fine. He went through a portal into what was probably Valhalla." In the background the birdsong quietens and is steadily replaced by whale song. "Captain Nazi, Krieger and bits of Savage too. I don't know where they are now."

"Huh. Wonder what the spread on that was."

"Can I go back to sleep now?"

"No, you get a little story first. Aah, what's that sport you British people invented that you're really bad at now?"

"Most of them?"

"Huh. I guess. Llllet's go with Cricket. Earth in my time is kinda like you people and cricket. I mean, you look around now and… We've got technology that can go toe to toe with the best in the universe. I mean, you've seen that, right?" I 'mm' noncommittally. "We got superheroes -most places don't have those- and most importantly? Isolation. And then… We didn't. About a decade from now, Earth gets hit hard. Orbital bombardment, billions dead." Shiiit. I can't.. take that as gospel. Should be able to check with Abra… "You know, with the bombardment and the slavery and the vivisection and that... The deportations, even by my time there's only about a tenth as many people on Earth as there are now? And that's after we recovered."

"Who was it?"

"They're called 'The Reach', but let's be honest here: it could have been Khundians or Apokoliptians or.. any of a hundred civilisations." Don't really remember much about the Reach in the comics. Didn't that Mexican Blue Beetle boy have one of their scarab armour things? "You get weak… People take advantage."

"But why does it matter to you? You… You said you're from after that happened?"

"You like losing at Cricket to everyone who can throw a team together? All the places you used to rule?" He exhales. "It's like… You train really hard at somethin'… Hundred metre sprint. You go to the Olympics. You win yer heat, you win yer semi and you come second in the final. What do you remember?"

Supervillain answer? "Not getting gold?"

"Bin-go. Earth coulda been a contender, not some damn Thanagarian protectorate. I can't even hate them. If they hadn't swung by we wouldn't have.. anything. Our history was just gone with our data networks."

"I can't believe that the Justice League just... What, all died?"

"I can't either but I don't know. Records 'r pretty good up to… Y'know. Then there's a huge blank."

"That doesn't justify what you're doing. If you're really that concerned -and it sounds like you've got reason to be- then-."

"Wanna know somethin' really interesting? Guess who wears an orange power ring and isn't in the database."

"I'm not a League member."

"No, I got mission reports. Things like that. I know who was workin' with the League. You weren't listed at all. You weren't in that timeline. Which.. says to me… You're the only other guy that can fix this. You're doin' the kinda things I would, sorta. And you're workin' with the League."

"Yes. I still believe they can be taught. Truggs, you can-."

The sounds cuts off. He's hung up. I lower the ring to my side.

What now? I raise my right hand to chest height. "Stewart-ring. Talk to me about The Reach."

back

NEXT CHAPTER

Ex Perdition

BACK

Ex Perdition 1

next

Ex Perdition

1st January

18:34 GMT -5

"…beyond not cool." The image of Guy floating over Stewart's ring shakes its head at me.

I walk down the corridor in the direction of the living area. "I know, I know. But I had no other way to get back!" His lip curls slightly as he nods. "If the Guardians had given me a star chart months ago I wouldn't have needed to. How are things on Oa?"

"Same old same olds. Kilowog's got me helpin' out with the rookies."

"Noo. Noo. Guy, you need to be teaching the veterans your technique." He gives me a sceptical look. "Seriously. It's too advanced for rookies. Get Salaak to find a few Sectors with two experienced Lanterns, recall one of them and show them how it works."

"I don't think Salaak's really in the mood fer more 'Human shenanigans' right now."

I turn the corner and can hear the television in the distance. "He actually said that?"

"Yeah. Oh, you know, translators, but…"

"Try getting Kilowog to do it then. Have you shown him?"

He nods. "Think he got it. Course, the only way t' check would be bringing you here."

"I'll probably pop over once my year's up. Anyway, reason I called. I got a phone call from Nylor Truggs this morning."

"What, you leave your number in a phone box or something?"

"He hacked GBS's phone records. You know Truggs says that he comes from the future?" Guy nods. "According to him we're due to be conquered by The Reach in a decade or so." Guy stops smiling. "He says that's why he came back."

"So why's he workin' fer Team Evil?"

"Because we failed. The League wasn't able to prevent it from happening, so he's trying to buff some other faction. Either that, or he's trying to force us to improve by giving us harder challenges. I've spent most of the day going through John's database on the Reach."

"He could just be bullshitting you."

"Yes… He could. I would probably have been able to tell if I could see him while he was saying it… On the other hand, looking at the stellar maps-" I hold up my left hand and generate a chart. "-in my particular area of interest it looks like I'll run into them anyway."

The somewhat nebulous border of the territory of the Reach Stellar Empire is marked out in a slightly brighter orange hue than the worlds around it. The map is 'dead' as of Stewart's last update so it might have expanded a bit since then. Plus, most of the systems marked aren't readily habitable. Yes, they could dismantle a few gas giants and build artificial habitats but it's so resource intensive that even the Reach don't bother outside the core of their territory. I expand one section and individual border worlds are marked out. "See what I see?"

Guy looks off to the side for a moment, then back 'towards camera'. "Maltus."

"They're actually curving around it. They can't hope to conquer it with brute force and I can't think how they'd corrupt the Controllers… And I think I can probably work out who the Orange Lantern Corps' first target is going to be. Except… Do I cause the attack on Earth? From the way Truggs was talking it was fairly apocalyptic."

Guy shakes his head. "You can't worry about stuff like that. But…" He has a furtive look over his shoulder. "Okay, look: I'm not sure I'm meant ta tell you this, but the Guardians think that the Controllers are already fighting the Reach. Lanterns in nearby Sectors have reported seeing these guys carrying out hit and run attacks on Reach shipping." The starchart disappears, being replaced by the image of a burly alien with a head somewhat like that of a bulldog trading fire with a Reach starship. "They wear this red, white and silver power armour with this.. sort of black starburst symbol-."

I smile. "The Darkstars."

"That what they're called? Wouldn't get too excited about it. Every time we saw them fighting Scarab Warriors they were gettin' their asses kicked."

"They'd probably do better if they had power rings."

Guy shakes his head. "No can do Paul. The treaty them and the Guardians signed says no Lanterns-."

"No Green Lanterns."

He's silent for a moment as he takes that in. "Heh. Hehhehheh. Think they know rings come in other colors?"

"Sinestro isn't exactly subtle. On the other hand, it's a big universe."

"So, what? You're just gunna give 'em all rings an' let 'em go at it?"

"Hardly. Even without Bobblehead malware-."

"Will you lay off'f that! They don't-."

"You can't kill people, Guy! The Green Lantern Corps was at war and they couldn't kill their enemies! The Scarabs are a threat to Lanterns -just about- but the reason you lost was because-."

"We didn't lose!" The image glitches. "We got a draw and a peace treaty. No more Reach battle fleets firing on unprotected worlds from orbit!"

"What do you call it when one side advances and the other retreats? Reach occupied space is… What? Five times as big by volume now as it was then? Are they any nicer? Give me a few hundred people who hate them, people whose worlds are under Reach control, whose people are slaves, whose strongest desire is to unmake them utterly… I think we'll get a different result."

"And then what? You wanna give a bunch of genocidal maniacs power rings you'd best be damn sure you can make them give them back at the end of it."

"That volume of space? Destroying the Reach will take centuries. Besides, rings can be used to rebuild their worlds as well as killing their enemies." He doesn't look convinced. "You know I use mine like that."

"You ain't exactly most people. And you haven't had decades a' seein' your homeworld torn apart. That sorta pain does stuff to yah and it ain't usually anythin' good. And you had trouble with the orange light anyway."

"So I'll ask the Controllers to be a bit more selective about it. It still gives me a core of experienced people to build my Corps from."

He thinks for a moment and then nods. "Plus, no one here's likely t' complain about the Reach gettin' hammered. Doubt even the Guardians would mind that."

"Any chance they'll approve bringing the Watchtower up to spec? If the Reach are heading this way…"

"I'll ask, but I doubt it. Couldn't you sort somethin' out?"

"Yes, I could build a series of space based battle fortresses armed with beam singularity projectors. Six months down the line I'll probably be able to build ones powered by Personal Lanterns in the same way Sector Houses are and equip them with nuclear force nullifiers and giant orange defensive barriers. You think they'll be okay with that? Heck, you think the Justice League would be?"

"Or you could just build one."

"Wouldn't be enough. If I'm doing a job I'm going to do it properly."

He moves his jaw slightly to the side, then looks around again. "Ah, look, I gotta go. I'll pass it on. For what it's worth. Just don't do anythin' too crazy until I get back."

I take a moment to reflect on the activity I have planned for this evening. "I'll see what I can do. Bye Guy."

He waves goodbye and the images shut down as I walk into the living room.

back

Ex Perdition 2

next

1st January

18:38 GMT -5

Wallace is slouched on the settee with a large bowl of popcorn on his lap. He looks around as I walk in. "Oh, hey Oh El." He takes another handful of popcorn and tosses a couple of pieces into his mouth as something on the screen explodes.

"You.. do know my name, right?"

"Hm." He thinks for a moment. "Guess I kinda got used to calling you that."

"Look, if me calling you 'Wallace' is bothering you I can just stop. I manage to call Robert 'Rob'."

"Eh, it's sort of your thing now." He straightens up a little. "You got any plans for the weekend?"

"Upgrading my Ice Fortress. Thanks to Lantern Stewart I can finally give it a decent power source."

He looks puzzled. "Really? I'm not one for slacking off but we just had three missions back to back. You sure you don't wanna take it easy for a bit?"

"It is easy. Me, the arctic wastes, the dulcet tones of Sandi Toksvig on the radio…"

"Who?"

"BBC Radio four presenter."

"Not taking Zatanna with you?"

"No. She.. left some homework to the last minute. Plus, I don't think she'd find it very interesting."

He returns his attention to the screen as.. someone drives a car off a raised section of road. Onto the rear of a lorry. There's no way that would work. "Just make sure you don't paint a giant skull on the side or anything."

I smile as I take the seat to his right. "You know, I wasn't going to… But now I'm thinking about it. What are your plans?"

"After Wednesday, last night and this morning? I plan on doing as little as possible. Oh, hey, you know that Rush Hour girl, right?"

"Actually, no." He raises his right eyebrow. "I know of her but we've never actually spoken."

"You know how her superspeed works?"

"How it works, the mechanism? No. The trigger is a mantra -same as Missus Tyler- but I've tried just saying it myself. " I shrug. "No change." He nods. "You made a decision about Nyssa yet?"

"Is there.. like, some way we can tell her and be sure it won't get back to Luthor?"

"No. There's no way to be certain Luthor won't find out. Heck, we don't know that Savage didn't have Mister Allen take samples of his own blood and post them to him while he was being mind controlled."

His eyes widen. "You don't think he did, right?"

"No, it too obviously links Lex to the attack." I think for a moment. "They might have posted it to the Brain…"

"Would that work?"

"No idea but I really hope not. If you're worried about Nyssa there are.. magically binding contracts. I don't know how eager she'd be to sign one. Plus, you've got everyone else who works there-."

"Including Doctor Sivana. Nice going there."

"Better than leaving him in the wild. And the recording equipment. You'd have to get her to agree to do nothing at the research centre. Heck, Truggs had a version of the Thinking Cap. Even thinking about it might be a risk."

He sinks back into the cushions. "Great. Think I'll try talking to… What was her name?"

"Until she tells you otherwise, 'Rush Hour'."

"Oh, come on. Bet you didn't ask her."

"True. But insufficient. I violated her secret identity for professional reasons. This is personal. Plus you're already planning to hit on her."

"I!" He looks aside. "Am.. not…"

"It sounded like Diana wanted to recruit her anyway."

"Oh yeah?" He smiles. "How'd she take you locking Nabu in the store room?"

I wince. "The dressing down I received was both entirely deserved and proportionate. Nabu didn't give you any trouble when you let him out, I hope?"

"He teleported away as soon as I took the chains off. Heh. Still can't believe you just left him there."

"I had a lot going on! I meant to go back for him, just.. sort of.. didn't get round to it." I still don't quite know how I managed that one. I actually checked for telepathic interference but no, just me being a numpty. I thought four hours would be sufficient to get out if he could but then the prison break happened…

"Did he give you any trouble?"

"No, he accepted my explanation. Not that it exactly helps; even if Klarion can't get the chain off himself one of the others should be able to."

"Kinda surprised. I thought he'd bear a grudge."

"Maybe it's an Order thing; he thinks I'm Diana's problem to discipline, that happened, therefore it's resolved."

"Could be." He returns his attention to the television and feeds himself some more popcorn.

"Actually, there was something I wanted to ask you. I mean, not about that."

"What was it?"

"What happened to Kent Nelson's walking stick?"

"Uh? Oh, it got burned up powering the shield spell Kent put around us. Well, most of it; I put the Helmet on before the handle got destroyed. I thought about putting it in the trophy room, but we had the Helmet…"

"And where is it now?"

"It's in my room. I mean, my room here. Why, you want it for something?"

"I was going to ask Sephtian… That Atlantean guy I work with?" He nods. "To have a look at it, see if he could get anything useful out of it. If we had a shield spell like the one Mister Nelson used it could be very useful." To say nothing of the fact that it would be a perfect focusing aid for the séance I have planned for this evening.

"I kinda figured Fate probably set the cane up for him."

"Right, but we can still work out what those spells were. You know, reverse engineer the thing."

He waves his left hand in a show of indifference. "Hey, if you want it, it's on the dresser."

"Thank you. That will be most helpful."

back

Ex Perdition 3

next

1st January

18:47 GMT -5

"Welcome, Orange Lantern two eight one four. Welcome, Teekl."

Only one zeta tube in the world greets us like that. I smile and take a look at the zeta tube's computer terminal as I pass. I think this part of the Zatara residence used to be a smoking room, old tasteful furniture, wooden panelling and a slightly stuffy scent. No dust, of course. Zatanna told me that there's a whole slew of spells built into the structure of the place. I have no idea who did it; the Zataras only moved in seven years ago. It was probably by the same people who thought that 'Shadowcrest' was a clever thing to call an enchanted house.

Another place where I can't scan things. I open the door to the main hallway and look around. A lot of the rooms aren't in regular use. It shouldn't take that long to-.

"…about you. About him."

Teekl's ears prick up and she looks around. I.. don't recognise that voice. The house reacts violently to hostile people -heck, I got smacked in the face by a floorboard when I tried scratching the leg of a chair to see what would happen- so he can't be an intruder.

"I'm.. I'm sorry about the performances-." She sounds distressed. I transition to the open area just inside the front door and start heading towards the kitchen.

"I don't care about the stage show, Zatanna. I want to know that my friend's alright. That you're alright." Yep, in the kitchen. "It's been two months and I haven't heard a word from him. John's missed performances before, but-." I push open the door. Zatanna's sitting at the kitchen table, a pad of paper, two textbooks and some writing implements in front of her, along with a cup of tea on a saucer. Sitting across from her is a frustrated looking man of oriental extraction in black jeans, blue striped shirt and pale brown jacket. There's a nearly empty mug of coffee in front of him. He looks up as soon as I walk in and then looks away. "Speak of the devil…"

Zatanna looks at me, then him and then back to me. "Paul, this is Uncle Ch-. Um, Charles Tong. He's Dad's manager."

Oh, right. I dip my head in his direction as I approach. "Good evening, Mister Tong."

He nods back as I walk around the table to Zatanna. "Hello Paul. Maybe you can tell me what's going on."

I put the head of Mister Nelson's cane down next to Zatanna while keeping my eyes on him. The ring makes lying so easy, perfect control of what would otherwise be involuntary physical reflexes. "With.. regard to..?"

"I want. To know. Where John is."

"Annnnnd…" I glance at Zatanna. "You haven't been told?"

"I know what the League told the world is bullcrap! What's going on!?"

"Mister Zatara was possessed by a Lich." There's a slight intake of breath from Zatanna. "The League are currently working to free him but it's fairly heavy going as the creature does not want to be removed."

"Where is he? I want to see him."

"Mister Tong, that wouldn't be safe. The spells containing him aren't reliable enough that non-practitioners are allowed anywhere near him, plus, he's being held in Atlantis. You can't breathe water and you couldn't survive the depth."

"Oh." He blinks and his eyes dip to the table for a moment. "I.. guess that makes sense. But what's with the subterfuge? Why wasn't Zatanna allowed to tell me?"

"The fewer people know the smaller the chance of some evil wizard trying to break in. Needless to say, we need you not to tell anyone about this."

"But-."

I nod and make a show of wincing. "Yes, Batman should.. probably have put you on an exceptions list or something. I'm sorry about that."

He shakes his head, not making eye contact. "But… That… I'm…" He looks back at me. "If John's not here, who's looking after Zatanna?"

"Uncle Charlie, I'm fourteen." I wince inwardly. "Not having dad around is.. hard, but I can manage for a little while."

"For two months?"

"You know Dad's family all live in Italy. And.. I can't contact Mom's family…"

"Batman and.. I, have been… You know… Around." That sounds so inadequate. The sagging I do isn't feigned.

He looks from me to her. "Yeah, I picked up on that."

I glance at Zatanna. "Have I come up in conversation?"

"Once or twice." A very faint smile. "Still, I suppose at her age-."

I shake my head. "Oh, no, we're not-." / "He's not my boyfriend."

Zatanna and I make eye contact for a moment before she looks away. "He made that.. clear." Huh, that was only.. this morning. Doesn't time fly.

"You're.. not staying here-" He makes a circling motion with his right index finger, taking in the whole of the house. "-all on your own, are you?"

"No, I've been staying… Um…"

"I think Green Arrow refers to it as a 'high-tech doss house', but it's actually quite nice. Certainly.. spacious."

He thinks for a moment. "You're living in Mount Justice?"

I knew it! I knew it!

"Yes, mostly. We, ah, installed a transportation device so I can go from here to there without appearing to leave the house. There's always other people around."

"Is.. that why the League recruited Fate? I mean, if he's the man who was part of the Justice Society he's got to be at least ninety years old by now."

"That was more to take on Mister Zatara's caseload as 'League wizard'. Nabu's not really a researcher, though he'll probably be involved.. um, 'at the death', as it were."

"Do they.. have any idea how long..?"

I shake my head. "Unknown territory, really. We know a couple of things that don't work. I came here because Zatanna and I were going to do some research on the subject."

"Is it something I can help with?"

"Do you know anything about necromancy?"

"I'm.. going to regret asking anything else, aren't I?"

Zatanna nods. "Probably."

"Okay. Well, I've got an answer I suppose. Zatanna,-" He reaches across the table and puts his right hand on hers. "-you know I'm always going to be here for you, alright? If you need someone who's not a superhero to talk to."

She nods and then pulls back to get up off her chair. I pick up the head of the walking stick as she walks around the table to hug him. "Thanks Uncle Charlie."

It… I had worried slightly that the adversarial path I've called for, keeping things from the League, might be cutting her off from other adult contact. It's a weight off to know that she has someone else. Someone not involved. "Right, well…" They separate, Mister Tong holding onto her hands for a moment and maintaining eye contact. She manages a small smile. "Zatanna, we need to stop off in London."

"Okay." She steps away from Mister Tong and heads for the door. "Let's do this."

back

Ex Perdition 4

next

1st January

23:53 GMT

I stick my head out of the deserted boathouse that houses the London zeta tube terminus. I've never been particularly keen on London. I'm a natural pedestrian and the place is just too big to walk around, to say nothing of the lines of sight. The London here… Well, I've read Hellblazer. I'm not spending any time here I don't have to.

"How long did he say?" I duck back in. Zatanna's sitting on a wooden bench with domesticus-sized Teekl ensconced on her lap, milking the attention for all it's worth.

"Should only be a minute or two."

"Wouldn't it be faster to pick him up?"

"Transitioning with arcane objects eats power. Plus, we're trying to keep what we're doing secret. Having me pick him up is a bit of a-." I hear a car pull up outside. I try getting the ring to show me but for some reason it doesn't… "He scry-warded Mister Chandler's cab." I hear footsteps. "And his own coat. I… I'm not sure how I feel about that."

"Guess you'll just… Uhh." John pushes the sliding door open wide enough for him to walk through. "Have to learn to use your eyes like the rest of us." He strolls over to Zatanna, who offers him the head of Mister Nelson's cane. He takes it and holds it up to study it.

Mister Chandler follows him in carrying a heavy looking bag. "Evening lady and gent. Oh, 'ere, thanks for the Christmas presents."

Warding amulets for himself, his wife and their daughter. Not Spelleaters as those would look a bit odd on a London cab driver but still effective in a conventional way. "You're welcome, Mister Chandler. I wasn't entirely sure they'd be well received."

He nods a little to the side. "Ye-ah, Renee nearly did her nut until I told her they weren't from John. Once she calmed down a bit she was well grateful."

"Are you accompanying us this evening?"

"Not bloody likely. Here." He throws the bag at me and I catch it with both arms, bending under the weight. I left the power armour in subspace because few things say 'call the police' like someone tramping through a graveyard in a glowing assault exoskeleton. It's only half a second away if I really need it and I've still got both rings. Those are concealed by weather appropriate ski gloves. Mister Chandler looks me over to check that I'm not going to collapse under the weight and then looks expectantly at John.

John keeps looking at the cane for a moment, then spots what Mister Chandler is doing, rolls his eyes and turns further away. "Yeah, good call. Should be able to get a nice resonance off-."

"Ah, come on John, it's New Year's Day! You know what Renee told me."

John points his right index finger at me. "This is all your fault."

Oh. That. I turn to Mister Chandler. "I'm.. happy to pay reasonable expenses. If you'll tell me what the fare is..?"

"You see, John? That's 'ow you get good service. Take a fuckin' lesson." John shakes his head and rolls his eyes again before slipping the cane handle into his coat pocket. "Busy time of year mate, but since you're a valued customer we'll call it twenty five quid."

I don't actually have a lot of British currency in subspace so I take a blank gold disk out instead and float it over to him. "Will this do?"

He takes hold of it in his right hand and scratches it with his thumbnail before giving me a satisfied smile. "That'll do nicely. Have fun with whatever John's dragged you into." He turns and heads back towards his cab, hands in pockets. I hear him start whistling as I close the door behind him.

John shakes his head. "I'm never going to hear the end of that. Right, where's the nearest zeta tube thingy to the Harmony Grove Cemetery?"

Zatanna picks Teekl up and sets her down on the bench next to her. "Close. The League put in a new zeta tube just a little after Nabu became a member."

"And we're sure Nabu's not there right now, are we?"

I nod. "Since he has no sense of fun and doesn't get tired he's taken monitor duty. That doesn't mean he's not aware of-."

John fishes around in his pockets and takes out three leather thongs. "These should stop us triggering anything for the next few hours." I go to op-. "Don't look inside." I think I'll take his word for it. I sling the bag's strap over my shoulder and put the thong around my neck. "You sure you can stop the tubes making a record?"

"It's just a machine and the Green Corpsmen are on Oa." I create a zeta tube construct. "After you."

John goes to walk through, then stops as he notices Teekl rubbing around his legs. She's only met him a couple of times but she seems rather taken with him. "Oh, right." He crouches down and she sits as he puts a thong around her neck as well. "Can't 'ave the cat giving the game away."

She looks down at it and sniffs. "Collar smell fun." Then she stands and gives John's leg another nuzzle. "Teekl like Laughing Magician. Laughing Magician fun man."

"Long as I've got the cat's approval." John awkwardly steps over her and through the zeta construct. Teekl trots after him, tail high.

"Why.. does Teekl like him so much?"

"You heard what Nabu said. John's probably about the second most Chaos-aligned person on the planet. Suffering and havoc his constant companions and all that jazz."

She nods a little uncertainly and walks through the portal. I take a moment to erase all traces of our presence here before following her through.

1st January

18:56 GMT -5

This one's in a garage. I take another moment to reset every part of it to how it was before we came though.

"So…" Zatanna looks at the wall for a moment and then back at John and I. "What.. do we do if Mister Nelson doesn't tell us anything? Or if the ritual doesn't work at all?"

John shrugs. "We keep tryin'. Paul was dead right about this being a long term thing. I mean, the chains worked so we know he's not invincible or anything, but we're a bit short on ways to actually stop him."

I nod at him. "And if head on attacks are off the menu, we could always try that thing you did to your father. But not with a cat. I like cats."

For a fraction of a second John's eyes narrow, then his face relaxes.

Zatanna's looking at him a little nervously. "What.. thing you did to your father?"

"Minor curse I did after we had a row and I was too young an' stupid to know any better." It was a bit more than that. We can't shelter her from the less pleasant side of magic, not against someone as powerful and well supported as Nabu. I'm not exactly looking forward to poisoning all of those animals myself, especially after we put them in little Nabu dresses. "Zatanna, d'you mind going on ahead? I need to talk to Paul about something real quick. Instructions are in the top of the bag."

"Um, okay. Gab emoceb sselthgiew dna taolf gnola htiw em."

The bag floats off my shoulder and drifts after her. She takes hold of the handles in her right hand and heads out of the door, Teekl trotting along behind her. I turn to John. "What was it you wanted to talk about?"

"Something that's been buzzing around me for a while now." He takes a cigarette out of his jacket pocket and takes a moment to light it. "I-" He takes a drag. "-never told anyone 'cept Gemma about that. And I know she didn't tell you. I didn't tell you and I very much doubt that Dad did."

"Um."

He shrugs. "So maybe I got drunk sometime, blabbed it out to someone and the story drifted around. Wouldn't be the first time. Then again-" Another drag. "-it's not the first time for you either. Not many people know about the tattoos I did for Elle. Not many people know about Gabriel's wings. And if I asked you how I first got together with Chas, I'm betting you know." Oooh dear. "What I wanna know is…" He looks directly at me and there's no humour in his expression at all. "How in the name of bloody fuck do you know all this stuff?"

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Ex Perdition 5

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1st January

18:58 GMT -5

Um.

I try getting a look at his soul to try and work out how bad I've misjudged this, but… Oh, that's clever. Something -probably another bloody ward of some kind- is dampening down on my ability to see it precisely. I can see colours there but all the details get blurred when I try to make them out. I didn't notice it before because there is colour there.

Um.

"What's the matter? Teekl stole your tongue?"

"I'd been… Sssssort of hoping that no one would notice that thing you just noticed. Um."

He frowns. "What? You've been doing that around Batman and he hasn't asked about it?"

"I.. think he assumes it's the ring. Scan stuff, pillage databases." I shrug. "Superheroes have secrets."

"I'm not a superhero. And this could get Zatanna hurt."

"No! I wouldn't..!" I exhale and look down for a moment. I don't want to tell him. This could mess up everything. Gather information. "If… If I don't tell you, what exactly happens?"

"Well, that's the question, innit?" He takes another drag while he considers, then breathes out a plume of smoke. "Can't very well dump Zatanna, not after what happened with her mother. Can't get rid of you." He looks me over. "Not easily anyway. And it's not like you've done anything to deserve it. Not as far as I know. 'Course, there was that one man on the tube who started shouting about crimes he'd committed… You know about that one, don't you."

It was a statement not a question, but I nod anyway. "Sold his soul and his daughter's too. Nearly sold another baby for an extension. Probably would have if you hadn't stepped in."

"Right. He looked like a victim to start with and turned out to be a right tosser. So understand that I'm a little bit concerned about this. We're picking a fight with a sodding Lord of Order-" He takes the cigarette and jabs it at me. "-and I can't trust the bloke I'm supposed to be able to rely on."

"I didn't sell my soul to anything. Except possibly the Ophidian. I didn't used to have one." He raises his eyebrows. "I know perfectly well that doesn't mean that I sold it. According to the Atlanteans I shouldn't have been able to live like that. If I'd been in contact with a Demon you'd have picked up on it when you did my tattoos."

"That does rather leave the question of how you managed it."

"I told you, I come-."

"From a parallel universe. With no magic." He looks away, making a show of considering it. "Doesn't explain what you know though." A quick glance in my direction and then he goes back to studying the wall. "Look mate: I can't make you tell me. But as long as you don't, I'm going to be on edge the whole time waiting for the other shoe to drop. And honestly? I kinda think I deserve it."

"John, I haven't… I haven't told anyone. Diana doesn't know. Kon.. doesn't know. I can't properly judge how knowing affects…"

"Now I'm getting really interested."

I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment. "It's… It's nothing here. It's nothing bad exactly. I was.. just a bit worried how… It's a bit mind bending."

"Wouldn't be the first time I'd heard something like that."

Tell or not? Oh, he's just going to keep at it until he works it out. A controlled release is far less risky. "I'm going to.. request, that you don't tell anyone else. It could completely mess up my whole life here and I really don't think the situation justifies it."

He nods. "Not asking me to promise? Or nip over to Themyscira and get Gaea to witness an oath?"

"No. Look, I basically trust you. If you need to release the information, do. But if you don't need to…"

He nods. "Alright, mate. Not going to mess up your life when you don't deserve it. Now. Let's see if the secret lives up to the build up, shall we?"

"Okay. Um." How to go about this? Point of reference. "You.. remember.. your friend. The one who was supplying the Family Man with his vic-."

"Jerry O'Flynn. Wasn't exactly his proudest moment but I don't want him remembered just for that." He thinks about it, then frowns at me. "You saying you didn't know his name?"

"The ring's.. improved my memory, but I don't remember everything I used to know and I never knew everything."

"Alright. Go on."

"You remember what happened.. the night he… Um. Disappeared?" The first glimmerings of realisation appear, his eyes becoming slightly unfocused. "I come from… Well, I suppose it was sort of like what happened to him, but in reverse."

He looks me over once more. "Seem to have adjusted alright?"

"This place… It's ludicrous, really. In a very fundamental way it just doesn't make sense to me. I suppose I should just be glad I got a body that works chemically."

"So where does the knowledge come from?"

I shrug. "It's not a secret where I'm from. The stories here fit story patterns I'm used to… Mostly. Some details differ. I was expecting Mister Zatara to have died in that ritual you did and not his wife. Other things too. And some things I just never bothered learning."

He nods. "And now you're off the reservation."

"Or on it. All a matter of perspective, really."

Another drag on the cigarette, then he lets out a chuckle. "You're right about it being mind bending. Not a lot of people coming through from your side, then?"

"As far as I know everyone thinks that it's impossible. Of course, where I am in relation to where I started… In Bleed terms…"

"Don't know much about that." Another brief chuckle. "Blimey. Anything else you wanna share?"

"I wouldn't say that I wanted to share that."

He raises his eyebrows. "Is there?"

"No. Can we.. go now?"

"Yeah." He straightens up a little. "Shouldn't leave a fourteen year old girl alone in a graveyard with only vast arcane power for protection and an intelligent cat for company. Starting to sound like a frigging Japanese cartoon."

"And.. you don't feel the need to share what I just told you?"

Another chuckle as he walks towards the door. "I think I'd be running up against something of a credibility problem there, mate. I don't know-" He turns the handle and waits for me to follow. "-if you're just mental or that's actually true."

"I don't know if it's actually true. Not like I can check."

"Confession's supposed to be good for the soul. You tried saying your name again?"

I try thinking it and stumble against the wall. "Still taboo."

"You know anything about what's going to happen next?"

I shake my head as we start down the street. "John, we're so far off my map theodolites haven't been invented yet."

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Ex Perdition 6

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1st January

19:09 GMT -5

John finishes pouring salt into the groove of the outer circle and hands the bag over to me before stepping back to admire his work. "Looks about right."

I used the ring to mark out the design around the grave and Zatanna filled the lines in with white sand. The sigils within are completely different from what he used in Poseidonis but the Enochian characters are the same as the ones I've seen mentioned in various Atlantean texts on this sort of ritual. The head of Mister Nelson's cane rests in the centre. Nothing looks massively out of place, which is just about the limit of my analytical abilities in these matters.

John also did.. something to the graveyard itself. Not exactly a popular time for visiting the departed anyway but anyone who tries will start to find themselves less eager to do so as they approach the front gate. The Tower of Fate is currently back in the nexus of the subtle realms, wherever that is. Nabu moved it out of Salem as soon as he took control of Mister Zatara. Thinking about it, Onomatopoeia, Zard and Faust are probably still in there. He certainly hasn't condescended to hand them over to the civil authorities.

Zatanna shifts her weight from her left foot to her right and then back again. "You don't sound very sure."

John tilts his head to the side for a moment. "Summoning's not really that hard, that's half the problem with it. Nelson was buried here, we've got an artefact that was important to him when he was alive and he's got no reason to feel vengeful. Even if it all goes tits up the salt ring'll stop him gettin' out before we can put him back down."

'Put him back down'? My eyes are drawn back to the headstones I've been trying to avoid looking at. "We're not.. animating his corpse, right?"

John rolls his eyes up and shakes his head. "Have a little faith. He might manifest from his body, but what we'll be gettin' is his spirit made visible by magic."

Teekl's sitting on the far side of the two headstones. She tries dawking the space above the salt ring but snatches her paw back with a look of shocked affront. Guess that means it's working?

Zatanna's still not meeting John's eyes. "What do we do when it's.. over?"

"I say 'I release you' and that's that. Look, Zatanna, I've summoned up some real miserable bastards before. A former superhero who -according to Nabu- wasn't in favour of what Nabu was doing anyway shouldn't be any trouble." John looks from her to me and then back again. "We doing this or what?"

She nods. "Yes, we're doing this." She sounds more certain now. I checked, and the Catholic Church does allow this sort of magic in criminal investigations as long as all other reasonable avenues have been exhausted. Pulling people out of Yahweh's loving embrace isn't supposed to be something you do casually. I.. have no idea whether or not Mister and Missus Nelson were Christian. I mean, they probably were, but if his contact with Nabu and other supernatural entities resulted in him going pagan his soul might have gone anywhere. Does Order even have an afterlife?

"Right then." John clears his throat. "In this sacred space we call out to the spirit of our departed colleague, Kent Nelson. We humbly request that he hear us and come to us that he might share his wisdom."

Nothing obvious happens. My turn then.

"We humbly beseech Doctor Kent Nelson to come among us and speak with us once more. We are sorely in need of his wise counsel."

I see a pale wisp of vapour rise from.. I'm not sure, actually. Could be from the sand or from the grave itself. Or both, I suppose. It isn't as if I've seen one of these things done before.

"Tnek Noslen, ew deen uoy."

The vapour shoots upwards, stopping at a point about a hundred and seventy centimetres from the ground and filling in Mister Nelson's form from the head downwards. As his head completes he looks around, taking in the sigils on the ground and his audience. The vapour next lends form to his chest and arms and he checks those over. "Hmm. Interesting being on this end of things for a change." He fixes his eyes on John as his waist and legs appear. "You must be John Constantine. I've heard about you."

John gives a shallow nod. "Yeah?"

Mister Nelson wiggles his right index finger at me. "Orange Lantern over there said I should consider handing the whole 'Fate' thing over to you."

John glances at me and raises his eyebrows. "He said. I wouldn't trust me with that sort of power."

"That's not necessarily a bad attitude to have. Anyway, Nabu would be the one exercising the power." He turns to me. His legs move but his feet aren't quite touching the ground. "Well? How was the funeral?"

"I didn't see the family funeral. All the surviving members of the Society turned up for the 'professional' one, along with a good chunk of the League. And my team, of course."

"Hope it wasn't too depressing for you."

"Not really. I don't really… In a reality with demonstrable afterlives, I'm not really sure how I should feel about it."

He smiles faintly before turning to Zatanna. "Zatanna, you have no idea how glad I am that Nabu relented and released you. When he pushed my soul out of the Helmet I felt for sure…" He trails off. "What happened?"

"My father offered himself in my place. Nabu's still controlling him."

"For how long?"

"As long as he wants."

Mister Nelson sighs, tilting his head slightly downwards and shaking it. "Oh, Zatanna. I'm… I'm so sorry. If there'd been any way for me to prevent it…"

"Mister Nelson, we called you here because we're not taking this lying down. We intend to remove Nabu, by force if necessary."

He turns back to me. "You've got guts, kid. But it'll take a lot more than that to take down a Lord of Order."

"I know. That's why I want you to tell me where it was you first picked up the Helmet." He looks.. a little disconcerted. "Alan let us look through your diaries. The one covering that period-."

He waves his right hand to stop me. "I left it in the Tower for safe keeping and none of us can get in anymore. And anyway I.. don't know how much it would help."

"Sympathetic resonance. Some sort of artefact that he'd been in close proximity to for a long time would be idea-."

"You don't need to explain the operating principles of magic to me. But even if you did get something like that, what exactly would you do with it?"

"Weaken Nabu to the point where removing the Helmet without his permission became a possibility."

He nods. "You know, I can't help but feel a little responsible. If I hadn't left Nabu on the shelf for all those years he might not have felt this was necessary."

"Yeah, maybe." John! "But I've seen those diaries too. Maybe if he'd treated you decently you wouldn't have done that. Far as Giovanni Zatara's concerned, doesn't matter much either way. Nabu's where he is now, that's what we've got to deal with."

Mister Nelson nods. "My father and I found Nabu in a tomb just north of Jahra. There were a lot of biers all laid out in rows, one for each of his former hosts. I don't know why the last one didn't pass it on…" He looks down for a moment, remembering. "The skeleton in the oldest tomb wasn't Human." We all look interested and he raises his hands to try to halt our enthusiasm. "Now, I don't know if it was actually his…"

"Can you show me the location?"

He holds out his right hand and the head of his cane rises to it. The remainder of the cane fills in with the same vapour making up the rest of his body. Once it's complete he holds up the head and a simple map of the area appears before him. Marvellous, it's in Bialya. "Take a look around when you get there. Might learn something from the hieroglyphics."

"Thank you. Do you know if Nabu has any particular weaknesses we could exploit?"

"Aside from needing a host?" He considers. "He's not very mentally flexible. Not sure if that'll help you any."

"Thank you Mister Nelson. There was.. one other thing."

"What is it?"

"The other thing that was in contact with him for a prolonged period of time was… Um, your head. Would you be prepared to.. let us..?"

"You want a piece of my body?" He thinks for a moment, then shrugs. "If you think it'll help. I'm sure not using it any more."

"Thank you. I…" I look at John and Zatanna. "I don't think there's anything else I want to-."

"Did you see her again?" Zatanna blinks at her own forthrightness as he turns back to her. "Your wife, Inza?"

This time his smile isn't half hearted. "Yeah. And she's still a real pistol."

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Ex Perdition 7

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2nd January

03:41 GMT +3

It's still pitch black as John, Zatanna and I approach the co-ordinates Mister Nelson gave us. At this altitude and time of the year it's bloody cold in the Bialyan desert so I've extended my environmental shield around both of them. We're a good long way away from any modern settlements, which goes some way to explain why no one has found the tomb since. Bialya's World Heritage sites are far to the west of here and we're far enough from water sources that it's unlikely anyone would just stumble across it. The tomb itself is warded -naturally- but the ring's seismic scans have no trouble picking it up. I suppose there was no reason for Nabu's ancient wearers to try protecting it from something like that.

"Laever lla secnefed." Zatanna points towards where the buried entrance is located. I've put thin orange lines on the dust and rock, showing the approximate size and shape of the subterranean space. A couple of tiny lights appear showing its still active protections.

"Antechamber looks clear." I hold out the phase shifters.

Zatanna takes hers and attaches it to her armour. John takes his and turns it around so that he can cast a sceptical gaze over it. "We could just astral project inside."

"Use magic to break into a place that houses dead hosts of the local Lord of Order?"

"As opposed to using a machine from the future you don't understand?"

"No, these were made here. Only the designs-."

"Evom em ot eht rebmahcetna." Zatanna rolls her eyes at us as she rises slightly off the ground and then floats clean through the ground in the direction of the tomb's entrance.

John wrinkles his face for a moment and then presses the shifter to his chest. I activate them both and then pull us through the ground. It's interesting; obviously the only light between the surface and the stonework below is what the rings are generating. If I had to guess what I'd be seeing I'd have said either a dull orange light or nothing. What's actually happening is the ring is interfacing with my optic nerve and nudging it to show me the results of the seismic scan as if I could actually see it. It's almost like floating through empty space. I didn't tell the rings to do this… Can't say I'd even thought about it. I do prefer it, though.

It only takes us a few moments to come out into the antechamber. Zatanna has already conjured a glowing ball of light and I watch as she gently lifts it into the air to float up towards the ceiling. I deposit John on the ground and he's only too happy to dispense with the shifter. Quick scan of the rock… The oldest parts were probably put together sometime around five thousand years ago. If they put all of the 'Fates' here that would make the oldest among them contemporary with Adom. Not sure when they stopped using it or how it ended up buried. I mean, the path of the Tigris and Euphrates has changed over the years… Maybe some sort of rockslide which resulted in dust getting trapped? Could it have been buried deliberately? Maybe there was a portion above ground which was destroyed and all that's left are the catacombs?

"Modest, wasn't he?" John's looking at the pictures on the wall surrounding the entrance. Someone wearing what is clearly the Helmet of Fate is seated, glowing ankh in hand, while the people around him bow down.

"No, the style's wrong. I think that was added later."

"Hm." He reaches for a cigarette.

"John!"

"Oh, come on, mate. It's not going to damage the place."

"We're underground. Your irreverence and smoking habits are well known and the smoke's got nowhere to go. He might spot it." He returns the cigarette packet to his pocket and buttons it closed. "If you need one that badly I can just stick some nicotine into your blood."

He shakes his head. "It's not the same."

"Are you two coming?" Zatanna looks back at us, having already gone a little way into the outer chamber. Another orb of light floats just above her and two Lamassu statues stand guard at her sides. I feel a glimmer of nervousness for a moment but the statues remain inanimate. They're.. still painted! Even after all this time! Bright blues and yellows on their wings, black hair and red helmets decorated with gold ankhs displaying their affiliation.

There are other statues, long haired and thickly bearded men seated and wearing robes. I don't know exactly what the images carved into their thrones and clothes mean but I take a scan of them anyway. This is… Simply amazing. Mister Nelson said that Nabu didn't want him to come back here but any modern archaeologist would give their right arm to see this!

Zatanna's stopped at the next doorway, just in front of the first still active defensive spell. "I.. don't recognize this one."

John picks up the pace a little as I keep gawping. What would Queen Beatrice do if she knew about this place? Probably put a small army around it and have a team of archaeologists go through it very carefully. Does she have any wizards on the payroll? I don't think so. Be a PR coup if the whole place didn't self destruct or something. Never really considered going after Nabu politically…

John kneels down and waves an unlit match at the faintly glowing rune. "Simple trap. Doesn't report back."

"What does it do?"

"Dunno. Paralysis, probably. Could be zombification."

"They can do that?"

"Yeah? Oh, not undead rotting corpse zombie. Like, it locks away part of your soul. Nasty stuff, but easy enough to undo if you know what you're doing. When this place was in use they probably checked a couple of times a week."

"How do we get past it?"

"Like this. By Laverna and by Eris, I solemnly swear that I am up to no good." The match flares as the light marking the protective spell goes out.

"Did you just quote Harry flipping Potter?"

He stands and carefully returns the match to his pocket. "Whatever works."

Zatanna leads the way once more. Given my lack of any sort of feeling for magic I'm happy to bring up the rear. The passageway is walled with stone bricks. It's all survived remarkably well… "Is there some sort of preservation effect on this place?"

John reaches out to the side and puts his hand on the wall for a moment. "Yep. Good housekeeping, really."

"So how come your place is a sty?"

"I think of it as 'lived in'. I mean-" We pause and look into a room on the left. "-this place is a tomb. Nothing organic. Nothing living. Thousands of years and nothing out of place. Don't feel natural to me." Just as Mister Nelson described, the rooms contain a series of biers with complete Human skeletons resting on them. Most have protective spells on them and in any case I doubt that they'd be much more use than the fragments of Mister Nelson's skull I have sitting in subspace. There are a few artefacts: metal cups, metal staves and a few swords. I take a scan of the rooms before we continue onwards.

There are more chambers of the same design to the left and right as we press onwards. The room at the far end is the one housing the alien remains and that is where we're going. Of course, in a ying-yang sort of way it seems appropriate that the resting place of the disciples of the Lords of Order contains… I enter the room behind John. Zatanna's already looking at the remains of Doctor Sven Nelson and whatever the name of Nabu's most recent but three host was. Their remains are almost perfectly preserved. No rot at all, even after seventy years. Just a little dried out. Mister Nelson only put the Helmet on much later and there was no way he'd have been able to get the bodies out by himself. The sarcophagus the host was in has been turned into an ersatz bier while his father had been laid out with his arms clasping a bible to his chest.

"Come on." John gently puts his arm around Zatanna's shoulder and leads her to the bier at the end of the room. It's decorated with gold and is raised up higher than the others. The pictures on the back wall show a figure in blue and gold descending from the sky, backlit by a radiant ankh. Another scene, showing him with scholars and monarchs. Another showing him teaching students and the last… Shows him dead, his spirit passing into the Helmet, which in turn passed on to one of his students.

The bones are similar to those of a Human but the structures are wrong. "Ring, identify the species."

"Individual identification impossible. Species identified as native of planet Cilia."

John holds his right hand over Nabu's skull for a moment with his eyes shut. "Not here and not passed on. I think we've got our man."

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Ex Perdition 8

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1st January

21:39 GMT -5

"Recognised, Orange Lantern, B zero six, Zatanna Zatara, B zero nine, Teekl, C zero one."

"…why he needed all of those dead mice." We head in the direction of the living quarters, Zatanna making a face as if she's swallowed something unpleasant. "Does he.. have a pet snake?"

I do a quick scan of the interior of the mountain as Teekl wanders off. Kaldur, Kon, M'gann, Donna, Artemis and Wallace are all in the living area. Depending on when Garth and Tula move in we may have to do something about enlarging it. "No, I'm afraid not. The idea is to use them as the effector component in a sym-."

"Sympathetic resonance spell using his bones to bypass his defenses." Her face stills as she considers it. "Since it's only connecting to the Nabu component and not…" She nods, then blinks in realisation. "John did that to his father! That's horrible!"

"He read about it in a book. He didn't actually think it would work." I generate a construct of Thomas Constantine in his prime. "John used a cat, dressed it up to look like his father, drew some squiggly lines around it and stuck it in a shed somewhere. When he saw it was actually working he went back to the book the spell was in, and there wasn't a reversal. In the end he stuck the cat in a jar of formaldehyde to stop it rotting further."

She frowns. "But that wouldn't reverse the effects. The link would still be active. How long did it take him to find out how..?" She sees me wince. "How long?"

"Couple of weeks after his father's murder. About twenty years in total."

Her eyes dip as she thinks about the magics involved. "The link would work.. both ways. If he died before the cat finished rotting away…" She shakes her head. "I've never heard of a case like that."

"I imagine that everyone would prefer it if you stayed away from that sort of magic. Where possible."

"What happened to him?"

"His soul was bound to the material world by the link to the cat. Even after his body was cremated his ghost just sort of hung around Gemma. She was the only one who could see him so people thought that she might be having some sort of episode. Or post traumatic amnesia. In the end she spoke to John about it, after the funeral. That reminded him about the cat. He dug it up and set fire to it to break the spell."

We take a turn towards the part of the mountain I occupy. The sociable thing would be to at least say hello to everyone first, but while I might not be physically tired I can get mentally exhausted. After all the excitement I really feel like I could do with turning my brain off for a bit. On that subject… "Are you.. planning on going home?"

"I… Probably not. You said you were going to be working on your Ice Fortress tomorrow?"

"Yes. I'm going to start by changing the power supply to something called a Bleed Membrane Instability Generator. Probably install a force field system. You're welcome to come along but I'm not sure how interesting you'll find it."

"No, that could be.. interesting."

"Are you sure? Because there's a whole herd of quantum-legged horses-."

She smiles. "You noticed that too?"

"That the number of legs they have changes from moment to moment? Yes."

"What do you think will happen to them? They can't stay on the Watchtower."

"Why not? They're going to have to replant a lot of the arboretum anyway, they can just include more grass. Hopefully Diana can get in touch with Odin… Now there's a sentence I couldn't imagine saying a year ago."

"If those were really Einherjar then Odin's sided with the Nazis."

"I'd be surprised if Odin was on anyone's side but Odin's. If he wants his people's remains and equipment back then he can negotiate." I stop just before reaching my door. "I.. don't suppose you've been sleeping any better?"

She looks away, towards her own door. "No. Not really."

"So.. do you want me to try..?" I raise my hands and just about stop myself making a grabbing gesture. My teacher Ms Terrill was quite clear about what not to do to scare off people who aren't used to being touched like that.

Zatanna flushes slightly. "Umm… I.. don't know…"

"Zatanna, you have school Monday and a fairly large amount of work to do. You need sleep and drugging yourself unconscious isn't a long term solution."

"It's not that. Um. How… How naked am I-?"

Hands raised defensively. "Oh, no no no. I mean, that's-" I gesture at what she's wearing now. "-fine, if you take off the coat. I'd certainly think it completely inappropriate to go beyond, you know, swimming costume level. And I completely understand if that's a bit much." She smiles a little in relief. "In any case since there's nothing actually wrong with your muscles I'm.. more or less trying to evoke the ancestral grooming response."

"Okay. Your room.. or mine?"

"Whichever makes you more comfortable. Though I should probably warn you that if we use mine the Ophidian will probably be watching."

"Mine it is then." She crosses the corridor and lays her right hand on the door. "Nepo emases." There's a brief puff of smoke from the doorframe and then the door opens slightly. Given that we've now had two attacks in here maybe I should think about up-fortifying the fixtures? "Can you give me a moment?"

I nod. "Of course."

She smiles. "Thanks." Keeping the door as closed as possible she slips into the room before closing it behind her. "Naelc pu yllaer ylkciuq!" Did she really think I'd care about her room being a bit of a mess? There's a sound of drawers and doors opening and then slamming shut. A moment later she opens the door widely. "Come on in."

"Thank you."

Her room -obviously- is spotless in the way that only magic and power rings can manage. The decorations are more pastel than my orange/grey colour scheme but the rooms are much of a muchness in terms of size and design. Her desk has a computer mine doesn't need and what in mine is a bare metal wall is covered with plaster and cream paint. We did that together a couple of days after she got here. The floor is wooden after she asked me to put one in. She said afterwards that she'd been joking, but she left it there anyway.

"So, where do you.. want me?"

"Do you have a brush?"

"Yes? Why.. do you need a brush?"

"Because it's clear that this is making you uncomfortable and the least 'massagy' thing I could do is brushing your hair. Like I said, relaxation is an instinctive response to being groomed. I think it would be a good place to start, at least while you get used to being in close physical proximity to me."

"Oh. Okay, that.. makes sense." She walks over to her chest of drawers, pulls open the top drawer and takes out a black handled brush. "Is this what you need?"

I link a filament to it and take it from her. "If that's what you usually use." I point to her bed. "Take a seat." She perches a little uncertainly on the edge of the bed. I subspace my boots and jacket before getting on her bed myself and taking up position cross legged just behind her.

And she tenses again. "I.. didn't realize… Um."

"How did you think I was going to brush your hair?" I gently lift it back over her shoulders with my left hand while readying the brush in my right. "I should probably warn you that I don't myself have any issues relating to physical proximity. If anything I do makes you feel uncomfortable, just tell me and I'll stop." I can't see any knots but I take care as I move it through her hair.

"No, that's…" I can both see and feel it as she starts to relax a little. "That's fine."

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Ex Perdition 9

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2nd January

08:18 GMT -5

Amazing what a good night's sleep can do for a person! Even Mister J'onzz sending us a message in the middle of breakfast in what sounded like a prelude to the fourth mission in as many days hasn't brought me down. And not just good sleep for me. Zatanna was nodding off when I left and she still hasn't -quick check- woken up yet. Didn't get much beyond a little neck work, but maybe next time. Worked though. She was also grateful that I'd been able to resolve the issue with Mister Tong. I wish she'd said something about that situation sooner.

M'gann smiles at me as she, Kon and I head to the training room where her uncle is waiting for us. "You and Zatanna were out pretty late last night."

"Not that late."

Kon glances at me before returning his attention to the path ahead. "I just thought you were trying to avoid Kaldur's cooking. Are Tula and Garth going to be 'all seaweed, all the time' as well?"

"I'm not…" Yes, probably. The Conservatory teaches arcane arts not culinary ones. "Maybe we should just avoid putting them on the rota for a while? Say something about.. letting them adapt to surface foods?"

"Fine with me."

"Soo..?"

M'gann's still looking at me. "So what?"

M'gann rolls her eyes. "What did you do? Where did you go?"

"Oh, not out as in 'date' out. It was mostly a magical research thing, though we did stop off at a restaurant in London. A friend of ours knows the owner."

"Was this friend with you?"

"No, he had some other stuff to do." Like buy a storage shed in London. I've got basically infinite money and even I thought those prices were ridiculous. Once that's taken care of it'll need to be warded and have the shelving put in… And something to deal with the smell of rotting flesh. Having a well meaning local breaking in because they smelt something bad would be disastrous. "We'd met the owner on a previous visit. If you like I can give you-" We come out of the corridor and into the training area. "-the address."

"And then?"

"And then.. we came back here." She looks unsatisfied. What would make her stop asking? "I did spend some time brushing her hair when we got back."

She frowns. "Why?"

"Oh. Right. Martian. Well, with Humans, having our hair brushed feels relaxing."

She reaches back with her right hand, takes hold of a lock of her own hair and holds it out in front of her face. "It does?"

"Our distant ancestors came from equatorial Africa. They were covered in hair to keep the sun off. Unfortunately for them, this made them perfect hosts for blood drinking parasites. Since this was before combs were invented they groomed each other. You get the same thing with modern apes."

She moves the hair slightly further away. "Parasites?"

"Those aren't so much of an issue these days with modern hygiene but the instincts are all still there."

"Really?"

I tap the skin just to the outer side of my eyes with my index fingers. "Empathic vision. I can see that sort of drive these days."

"I usually just shapeshift mine into place. I suppose if you've got it stuck on your head the whole time you have to take care of it." She turns back to Kon as we reach the 'ready for lecture' point. "Kon, would you mind brushing my hair sometime?"

"Sure. Don't think mine's really brushable length."

M'gann tries tugging on the lock in her fingers. "I've never really tried-."

"Recognised, Martian Manhunter, zero seven."

Our heads turn in his direction as he walks out of the zeta tube. "Good morning M'gann, Kon, Paul."

"Good morning Uncle J'onn." / "Good morning, sir."

Kon just nods and Mister J'onzz assumes the lecturing position. "I have asked the three of you here in response to a request from the Department of Metahuman Affairs."

Kon frowns. "Kobra hasn't escaped again, has he?"

"No. But their efforts in getting staff for Belle Reve are requiring them to transfer people from other, less critical duties. They have.. requested that we provide an escort for a prisoner who is due to be deported today. Since the members of the League are either off planet or occupied ensuring that no further infiltration has taken place I was hoping that you would be willing to perform the task." He pauses. "You have had a busy few days. I will understand if you wish to turn this down."

Kon shrugs. "Who is it?"

"The prisoner…" Another pause. "I am sorry, this is a matter of some personal embarrassment for me. His name is J'onn J'aarkn, though he has taken to anglicising it to John Jackson." A holographic image appears of a green skinned man in a pair of purple shorts and a pale blue short sleeved shirt. Aside from the skin colour his general shape matches Human norms far better than Mister J'onzz's 'Martian Manhunter' shape. He's even slightly overweight. He certainly doesn't look very threatening. Of course, for a Martian that sort of fat is just a way of concealing malleable bulk.

M'gann's eyes widen. "I didn't know there was another Martian on Earth!"

Mister J'onzz sighs. "Frankly, in his case I would prefer it if there were not."

Kon takes a closer took at the picture. "What did he do?"

Ring? Ooooooh. Oh. I can't say I'm entirely surprised.

"He entered the United States without an appropriate visa."

"Is.. that it?"

"He has also committed a variety of minor criminal offences. Mostly, they were as a result of his ignorance of Human society. He is not considered to be a serious threat and has agreed to leave of his own volition."

"So, why do you need us?"

"On the last three occasions on which the DMA tried to enable his return he arranged to not be at the launch site at the designated time. Your job is to ensure that he is."

M'gann shifts her attention from the picture back to her uncle. "When did he come here? How did he come here?"

"He made the journey here shortly after I returned home for the first time. Apparently, he had become enamoured with the Earth through the tales I told of it." M'gann nods. "He came in a Martian Bio-Ship of a somewhat older design than that which you and I use. It is currently in the care of the Channel Islands Air National Guard Station."

"He.. made the journey here on his own? How did he cope with that?"

"I am uncertain. I do know that he chose a time when Earth and Mars were as close together as possible in which to make his crossing."

She nods in understanding. "And that's in less than a week from now."

"Wait, if he's being sent back to Mars, why don't I just take him back?"

"I did take the liberty of offering your services. Unfortunately, the people responsible for releasing him are being very particular about handling things 'their way'. Your job will be to escort him to his leaving party and then to see him on to his ship. He is unlikely to turn violent but he is highly likely to attempt to escape through misdirection. M'gann, his telepathic abilities are far weaker than yours but he is.. an accomplished, shapeshifter. Are you willing to take on this task?" We look at each other for a moment, then nod. "Thank you. I will arrange for your entry to the Pitchess Detention Center in San Fernando Valley in which he is being held. You are due to meet him in three hours."

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Ex Perdition 10

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2nd January

08:28 GMT -5

"Paul? What is it?"

I take a moment to ensure that my face is a picture of cherubic innocence before looking around from my console at the front of the Bio-Ship to face M'gann. "Whatever do you mean, M'gann?"

"You've been.. smirking, ever since Uncle J'onn finished the briefing."

"I've.. just.. been.. assembling a record of Mister J'aarkn's time on Earth. He's been quite a prolific actor."

"Oh? I've been thinking about studying drama myself. Do you think he could give me any pointers?"

I lose it. Both hands go to cover my face as I bend over, snorting with laughter. "I sincerely doubt it!"

"What?"

"Well…" I move my hands away and take a couple of deep breaths before straightening up and leaning back in my chair. "Ahhh. H-how about I start from the beginning. From what I can tell Mister J'aarkn came to Earth in nineteen eighty six. He never really made a secret of having super powers but he mostly pretended to be a green metahuman rather than revealing that he was a Martian. His Human appearance is based on a…" I pause to clear my throat. "On that of a man named Ronald Hyatt."

"Did Mister Hyatt complain about it?"

"If he did, the police don't have a record of it. Why?"

"I just don't understand why Uncle J'onn has such a big problem with him. I'd love it if more Martians came to Earth. I mean, you're practically next door. If he could make the journey over twenty years ago I don't see why more Martians don't do the same."

"Well.. I.. can't answer the second question, but as to the first? Most of Mister J'aarkn's work has been in the genre of.. Adult Cinema."

Kon looks up. "Oh. Guess that explains it."

M'gann looks from him to me. "Adult.. Cinema..? Like, arthouse stuff?"

"No. Like, pornographic cinema, made for the sexual titillation-" Her face goes purple and her right hand goes to cover her mouth. "-of the viewing public. I couldn't find any footage of him in action that I'd feel entirely comfortable showing you. Suffice to say, he-" And upon occasion, she or er or it. "-takes full advantage of his shapeshifting abilities." It was actually a little tricky to track down everything he'd ever been in due to his tendency to invent new identities and appearances for each film in a lot of his early work.

"Oh."

"I think the reason why Mister J'onzz dislikes him -aside from, you know, possibly bringing Mars into disrepute- is that after Mister J'onzz became active as a superhero… Mister J'aarkn appeared in a highly successful film called 'Martian Womanhunter', in which he took the role of a.. thinly veiled erotic take on Mister J'onzz's own time on Earth." M'gann stares at me. Behind her fingers I see that her mouth has fallen open. "It was so successful that there have been a number of sequels… Anyway, after he became 'openly Martian' the immigration people started investigating him a bit harder."

Kon frowns. "Seems kinda harsh."

I shrug. "I'm not completely sure why they're being this aggressive about it but.. he is an illegal immigrant. Once his application for citizenship was rejected-" Despite his obvious unusual talents the judge felt that America was perfectly capable of generating its own erotic performers and as such his skills didn't warrant a green card. "-the only question was how he was going to be removed. Since they've got no way to deport him back to Mars they're relying on him being willing to leave by himself. His lawyer convinced the court that sending him back when Mars was further away would be 'cruel and unusual', so they can only try to do it on a few days every other year."

"R-right." M'gann recovers a little. She's still bright purple though. "I-if he made the journey on his own… I don't know how he could have coped."

Kon thinks for a moment. "Some sort of suspended animation pod?"

"The people he showed around his Bio-Ship don't mention it in their report. Of course, if his model can shapeshift then there's no reason to suppose it would have been visible. M'gann?"

"Um. We do have animation suspension systems, but they're designed for medical use and not for space exploration. If he used something like that and something went wrong he could have been killed if there was no one else there to wake him up safely."

"Quite a risk. I wonder why he was so eager to come here?"

Kon shrugs and looks at M'gann. "Plenty of Earth people find aliens attractive." M'gann smiles and pushes her hair back over her shoulder with her right hand. "Maybe some Martians like Earth people."

"He's not.. going to.. do anything, is he?"

"I've only got biographic details here. I don't know anything about his personality."

"I mean... I don't really know much about.. Human mating." I raise my left eyebrow and glance at Kon. "I-I mean-! Not… That part."

"Didn't Mister J'onzz give you a basic explanation?"

"Um, he gave me a talk about Human reproductive mechanics, but Martians don't work like that. I'm.. really just mimicking…" She glances at her chest. "Some.. things."

I glance at Kon again. **Is he aware-?**

"I've.. shown Kon what I really look like." **What I really really look like.** "Martian intimacy is more… Telepathic." Her face stills and she glances at Kon. "Not that we haven't kissed."

I raise my eyebrows. "I was there at New Year."

"And I've.. reconfigured my mouth to act like a Human mouth. Including sensitivity to touch. Normally we don't really even have lips."

"But this sort of thing wasn't covered in the videos Mister J'onzz sent you when you lived on Mars."

She nods, some of the blush fading. "It.. really wasn't. I.. can understand how it works, I'm just not.. comfortable with the idea of being the one doing it."

"Hey." Kon gets up out of his seat and walks over to lay his right hand on her shoulder. "You don't need to feel pressured about it."

"I suppose.. if I wanted to know what it was like for a Martian… I could try asking him?"

"If he's been doing it professionally for this long he's probably got a slightly distorted viewpoint. Wouldn't Mister J'onzz.. be.. better able to provide advice?"

"I don't.. think he's been… Involved with anyone since he came here." In fifty five years? I don't know him well enough to judge how probable that is. "This.. party we're supposed to escort him to..?"

"Most of the guests are co-workers. I.. doubt there'll be any… Goings on, if that's what you're worried about. You're both.. sort of.. under the California age of consent. Mister J'onzz wouldn't have assigned you to the mission if he thought that was a risk."

"I'm going to be a bit nervous about scanning anyone's mind though."

"Don't worry about it. My empathic vision will work just fine, and we can just tell him that he's not allowed to wander off." Maybe a new topic? "So! Excited about Garfield starting school on Monday?"

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Ex Perdition 11

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2nd January

06:12 GMT -8

Our Department of Metahuman Affairs contact stands on the tarmac of the Channel Islands Air National Guard Station outside the hangar holding Mister J'aarkn's Bio-Ship. Our three hour advance notice was plenty of time for me to transition us from east to west coast as well as go over Mister J'aarkn's case history in a little more detail and thoroughly check out the party venue. Just a normal house, though I did detect that it has most likely been used for 'professional purposes' fairly frequently. Nothing like that going on when I scanned it, of course. It looked like some of the decorations had been put up in advance. There doesn't appear to be a guest list… And I happen to know that Sara Smart lives in this area and worked with Mister J'aarkn on at least one occasion.

The Bio-Ship descends through the sky as M'gann brings it in to land a few metres away from the DMA official. Her name's Kate Spencer and she was the lawyer who handled their part in the legal manoeuvrings that led us to this point. She's wearing a dark blue suit with a mauve blouse. Nothing particularly interesting in her background, though she was involved in a few supervillain cases on the defence side before her employment by the DMA. I don't remember anything about her from the comics so with any luck she really is just a lawyer.

M'gann drops the ramp and I lead the way out. With a three hour time difference between east and west coasts it's not quite dawn here yet. Odd, really. I've spent so much of my time in the States on the east coast I haven't really thought about how wide this country is. The spotlights around the base give us plenty of light and in any case with the ring I don't have a problem seeing in the dark.

"You're what the Justice League sent?" She doesn't sound all that impressed. Drawback of most of your work being secret-. "A Superman look-alike, Little Miss Martian and the Cake Man."

"I'll have you know that did wonders for fruitcake sales across the world. I may have single-handedly revived the market." A quick look into her soul tells me that she really wants Mister J'aarkn escorted off-planet with as little fuss as possible. Looks like she was also involved in their previous attempt to get rid of him.

"Please tell me you can fight with that ring as well?"

"Naturally. We wouldn't have been sent if we weren't up to the job."

"Okay, look." She makes brief eye contact with all three of us. "I know an oncoming car crash when I see one. That mess at Belle Reve meant that the guys who were supposed to be handling this got called away to Louisiana, because apparently a telepathic shapeshifting criminal is 'low priority'. All the planning we put into moving 'John Jackson', wasted. So here's what's going to happen: you're going to follow me and do exactly what I tell you and maybe, maybe by some miracle we'll actually get rid of the bastard this time."

O-key. Clearly I underestimated how irritated she is. That's the problem with analogue abilities I suppose. "Um, I could just fly him back to Mars myself. It would only take a couple of-."

"No!" I raise my eyebrows at her vehemence. "This is still -technically- a voluntary repatriation. If it looks like we're forcing him to leave his legal team will be all over it. I do not want him wriggling out of this."

Kon looks nonplussed while M'gann looks curious. "Why are you so angry? He hasn't hurt anyone…"

"Because he's been making us a laughing stock. Last time he somehow managed to get the people I had escorting him drunk and filmed them doing a conga line at his third leaving party. I do not want there to be a fifth." She takes a moment to collect herself. "Please tell me you have regular clothes with you?"

Kon shrugs. "Yeah, but, why?"

"The last thing we need is to make this more of a media circus than it already is." She looks past us at the news vans parked at the perimeter fence. "If they find out we had to call in superheroes to handle this…"

"Say no more." A wave of orange sends my armour to subspace to be replaced by a plain black suit with an orange tie. After a moment's hesitation I add the black sunglasses to complete the look. M'gann looks at me, smirks, then shifts her own clothing to match mine. She can't make glasses and instead of a tie she has a blue cravat with a red 'x' at the neck.

Missus Spencer closes her eyes in a clear prayer for divine patience. "You really..? Fine. Fine." She looks at Kon. "What about him?"

Kon sags and turns to re-enter the Bio-Ship. "Give me twenty minutes to get this armor off."

Ye-eah. Maybe I should see about getting him some armour that's both useful and ring friendly? No idea where I'd even start with that. Maybe Io will have some ideas next weekend?

Missus Spencer checks her watch. "We've got about fifty minutes before we're due to pick Johnson up." She looks at M'gann. "Do you know enough about Martian spacecraft to tell me whether or not his ship is in working order?"

"Yes, but Martian Bio-Ships are living creatures. She should be able to heal herself."

Missus Spencer's jaw tenses for a moment, then she looks over towards the hangar holding Mister J'aarkn's ship. "I'm not going to try loading him onto a ship that doesn't work. Or get this far only for him to tell me it doesn't work with no way to confirm that for myself."

"I.. can take a look if you like?"

"This way." She turns away and heads towards the hangar, the two of us following on behind.

**You want to borrow some sunglasses?**

**I can barely see as it is. Why are you wearing those?**

**Because after the last few days I've run out of serious. Making sure a porn star gets on his flight out of the country just doesn't register on my 'important' list.**

**That doesn't explain the glasses.**

Just ahead of us Missus Spencer presents her identification to the guard at the hangar entrance. It gets checked and she receives a nod. I step up and hand over my own identification. The Justice League emblem gets a raised eyebrow and a glance at Missus Spencer. She nods and the guard hands it back. I walk past him as M'gann shows him hers.

**A physical joke that combines the tomfoolery of wearing sunglasses at night with becoming a ridiculous caricature of a government agent.**

**That's not very nice.** M'gann gets the nod and the three of us head into the hangar. **She's taking this very seriously and Uncle J'onn is relying on us to do a good job.**

I throw up my hands, earning a look of puzzlement from Missus Spencer. **Why? Worst case scenario here is that a.. basically law abiding man stays in the country a little longer than he should.**

Missus Spencer leads the way towards the other Bio-Ship. It's a medium-dark green colour with purple detail and rather than the cabin and sweeping wings of M'gann's Bio-Ship this one is a sort of crescent shape, passenger area at the front and wings sticking out and back from the sides. It's currently resting on some scaffolding which holds it off the ground. A quick scan shows nothing that could reasonably be described as a weapon.

Missus Spencer turns to M'gann. "Well?"

M'gann walks towards it and holds out her right hand towards the hull. "He's… Old. A lot older than my ship."

"How old? Will it fly?"

M'gann nods. "He thinks so. I don't know how old he is, though. I don't recognize his design and he's been asleep for too long for me to tell from a simple probe."

"Can you open it up?"

"Can I open him up?" Missus Spencer doesn't react to the correction. "Of course." A hole opens in the hull under the right wing. "Do you want to see inside yourself?"

Missus Spencer shakes her head. "It wouldn't mean anything to me. Just check it over."

M'gann nods and floats up inside. Should I follow? May as well.

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Ex Perdition 12

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2nd January

06:13 GMT -8

I jog merrily down the Bio-Ship's boarding ramp, smiling at our DMA contact. "Kate! Good to meet you in person at last."

"Grayven. Welcome to California." She's a little less effusive than I am, but she smiles as she extends her right hand to me. I take hold of it in my own for a moment before bending down to raise it to my lips. She glances aside and rolls her eyes. "Really."

I release her hand and turn back to the Bio-Ship as my team mates proceed out, Mister Tawny to the fore. "Kon, M'gann, Mister Tawny, I'd like to introduce Katherine Spencer."

Kon and M'gann stop just behind me while Mister Tawny strolls forwards in order to sniff her. He spent the Belle Reve episode glowering at prisoners who looked like they might have been thinking about trying to escape again. He'd much rather have come with me but he's rather hamstrung by his lack of low lethality options. Tooth and claw marks don't make for good PR. Mister Tawny's head comes up to the top of Kate's abdomen and he out masses her massively.

She leans away from him a little. "You have.. a Tiger?"

"Yes, and he's quite friendly. Try rubbing his ears, he always likes that."

She makes eye contact to see if I'm being serious, realises that I am, then somewhat tentatively extends her right hand to the left side of his head. She tries delicately stroking the fur. He understands my intent and leans into it, encouraging her to press harder. Once she does so to his satisfaction he closes his eyes and makes a sort of throaty grunting noise to indicate that he's satisfied. Seeing a big cat behave in what might be called a kittenish way usually does wonders for calming people down about him being around and it appears to be working on Kate. "How long have you had him?"

He half opens his right eye and I imagine that if he had distinct eyebrows one would be raised. "We've been together a little over two months."

"Did he.. grow up in a zoo?"

"No, a jungle in India. His manners are all him."

One last head nudge and Mister Tawny sits back on his haunches. Not sure that's a good idea, it makes him taller. He'd probably have been better off lying down… Oh, doesn't matter. Katherine looks my humanoid team mates over and her eyes rest on M'gann. "Grayven seemed pretty sure that J'aarkn wouldn't make any trouble for you."

M'gann nods. "He probably won't. I won't know for sure until I speak to him myself."

"Why is that?"

My smile broadens. "Martians have a skin colour based caste system." Kate blinks at me in surprise. "The Whites who make up about a third of the population are at the bottom, then the Greens who make up most of the rest. Reds like M'gann are at the top. Royalty, essentially. Obedience to them is ingrained within the Martian psyche."

"They…" Kate looks at M'gann for confirmation and gets a nod. "I had no idea." Something occurs. "Wait. Martians shapeshift. How can they have skin color based discrimination?"

"We're also telepathic." M'gann looks a little distant for a moment. "Even if we can't tell by looking at someone what type they are, they know."

"Well I…" Kate takes a moment to digest that. "For all the legal tricks his team have employed he hasn't once tried requesting asylum. I'm going to assume that he's genuinely green."

M'gann nods. "If he was White I might not have ordered him to leave. Martian society isn't exactly.. friendly, when you're White." Kon puts his right arm around her shoulders.

Katherine frowns. "I don't.. think he's White. But… How did that sort of prejudice develop?"

M'gann shakes her head. "It's been like that for so long… I don't think anyone knows."

Kon shrugs. "Why does it ever develop? Maybe everyone needs to look down on someone. Kryptonians never had a reason for looking down on clones and aliens but they did anyway."

Looks like Kate didn't know that either. "Superman..?"

"Superman grew up on Earth. The stuff his birth father taught him about Krypton… He wanted him to think the best of it. And… I guess… Be the best of it."

She turns to me. "And.. your people?"

"Apokoliptians aren't prejudiced. We hate everyone equally. But we mostly take it out on the weak." There's a slight tension in the skin around her nose. "Why so surprised?"

She shakes her head slightly, looking down. "I.. guess I just hoped… It was something a species grew out of."

My right hand goes to her left shoulder. "Well… Maybe Humans will be lucky." I think for a moment. "Or maybe finding an external hate figure will work."

"Um?" M'gann makes eye contact with Katherine and glances in the direction of the hangar. "Could we... See his Bio-Ship now?"

"Yes, of course. Please, come this way." M'gann takes the lead, walking alongside Kate. Kon and I follow along behind with Mister Tawny dawdling along in the rear. Not an accident; he's watching our backs while pretending to have merely animal intelligence. Must remember to speak to him about using further augmentative formulae on him before his growing divinity makes it impossible.

I'm inclined to follow M'gann's lead on this. I did suggest to her that I could switch Mister J'aarkn's Guardian programming off. She pointed out the obvious problem that he'd be going back to Mars. Not only would that blow the secret -I don't really care about that but apparently she does- but it would also put him somewhere where I wouldn't be around to keep him under constant observation. Her scans haven't shown any significant deviation since I made the change to her. There have been a few behavioural changes; she doesn't avoid fire anymore and has a little bit more self confidence. The randomly striking matches pretty much stopped once the novelty wore off.

"So… How did you meet her?" I look around at Kon as he nods at Kate.

"We haven't met, not in person. After that whole thing with Vertigo nearly getting away with mass murder I wanted to get in contact with someone inside the DMA who might be willing to help me understand the way things work here. A few enquiries later I ended up having a free and frank exchange of views-."

Kon smiles. "And she still talks to you?"

"We actually have a lot of common ground. We both think that the insanity plea is too readily granted, that justice is delayed too long… I think she might slightly resent that I get to deal with the simple end of things."

"Yeah, about that." Kate turns her head in my direction. "You seemed to be taking your time with those prisoners you apprehended."

"If one is concerned with minimising damage to the locale, bringing down a supervillain isn't as easy as we sometimes manage to make it look."

"Uh-huh."

"Beating up Vertigo is a pointless exercise. Once his stabilisers come off he can barely stand upright on his own. Anyway-" I turn back to Kon. "-we've been exchanging ideas for a while now."

"About what?"

Kate's face hardens. "About making sure supervillains actually get punished for their crimes."

Kon looks at her and then back to me. "Aren't they.. getting punished now?"

"Vertigo went on worldwide television and admitted to killing hundreds of people. He did so in a state with the death penalty. There is no doubt at all of his guilt and he doesn't have diplomatic immunity any longer. Why was he alive to escape?"

Kate nods. "I don't have a lot of good to say about the Chinese government, but they didn't waste time killing the people responsible for Roanoke Island. That's how it's supposed to work: commit the crime and you take the punishment. Instead, we spend years -not to mention millions of dollars- on trials and appeal after appeal." She shakes her head. "If we'd got our hands on them, they might have been in Belle Reve for years before we did what the Chinese did. That needs to change."

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Ex Perdition 13

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2nd January

06:17 GMT -8

The inside of Mister J'aarkn's ship is clearly set up for one person. The pilot's seat is quite different in shape to the one M'gann uses. I spend a moment trying to imagine him sitting in it as M'gann walks over to the nearest control panel and kneels down to touch it. How would..? Ah, of course! He wouldn't have looked Human when he got here. Mister J'onzz would have mentioned if he'd known him personally, so he probably wouldn't have had a particularly good description of Humans to work from. Assume that he is a bit more massive than M'gann… If he was lying on his back, his legs there… His arms would reach the controls left and right there and there.

M'gann squints slightly. **He's.. in good condition.**

**Surprised?**

**A little.**

**That's a bit harsh.**

She shakes her head. **No, not like that. Mister J'aarkn's been on Earth for decades. Even if he knew what he was doing, maintaining a Bio-Ship without Martian equipment and experts isn't easy.** I nod, and walk over to the front of the cabin. No view screen, I note. In fact the interior is fairly featureless. **I'm going to have to take my Bio-Ship back to Mars this summer so she can get checked out.**

**Anything I can help with?**

She give me a small smile. **Not really. There probably isn't anything wrong, but better safe than sorry, right?**

**Oh, definitely. I'd rather like it if I could get a trained power ring technician out here.** I nod at the panel she's touching. **Find out anything useful?**

She sits back. **Not much. This ship is… He's more mentally simple than mine. Annnnd.. I'm not his pilot. I'm not authorized to view all his files.**

**Can you.. press the matter?**

**Maybe. But I don't want to risk damaging him by going too far. Navigational logs should be okay…**

I nod. Can't do much to help with that. **Will he fly?**

**I think so. I'm not familiar with this model but everything looks okay.** Her eyes glow. **Okay, here we go. He was made in… Oh.**

**What?**

**He's older than I thought. Quite a lot older.**

**How old?**

**About a hundred and sixty Martian years old. That's about-.**

**Three hundred Earth years. Was something interesting happening on Mars back then?**

She shakes her head. **All sorts of things, but nothing I can think of that would make a ship special. And if it was special then the Martian government could just have asked Uncle J'onn to pick it up.**

**Does the design mean anything to you?**

**He looks like an old design, but it could just have been retro.** Her eyes dim. **He isn't as fast or as manoeuvrable as mine. I think his top acceleration outside of an atmosphere might be higher. There's some medical systems that mine doesn't have, but he's locking me out of them.**

**Makes sense. If he was planning on staying on Earth he'd want to know that he could be fixed up if he got injured.** I frown. **Your Bio-Ship doesn't have medical functions?**

She shrugs. **Do Earth cars come with built in doctors?**

**I suppose not.**

**My Bio-Ship isn't really anything special, not by Martian standards. Aside from the plasma beams, I mean. Those don't come as standard.**

**Still say gravitic accelerators would have been better.**

**We couldn't be sure they'd be compatible.**

**But plasma based weapons give away the invisible ship's position every time they fire!** I frown for a moment. **Why does a civilian aircraft come with invisibility?**

**Its whole shapeshifting thing is based on what a lot of Martian species can do naturally.** She shrugs. **It's actually more effort to make one that can't.**

**If the ship communicates with you telepathically… Does.. that mean it can move through solid objects?**

She shakes her head. **No, that requires telekinesis. There might be some military ships that can do it but civilian ones can't.**

**Martians have warships that can move through solid objects?**

*Um…** She thinks for a moment. **In theory? They just use telekinetic fields for defense… But I think the system could be adapted.** The telepathic amp designs in Lantern Stewart's database aren't for an organic technology using species. That might be something I could work on. Maybe if I had some sort of Martian Sephtian..? "Well, that's it." She stands up. "As far as I can tell the ship can get him home. I don't know how he'll manage all that time on his own though."

**What, a week? I know you find isolation unpleasant…**

She shudders. **I don't think I could explain it to a Human, not so you could understand what it's like for one of us. Even when we're not actively contacting the minds around we Martians can always feel them. Being in deep space… Or even just away from an inhabited planet… Imagine if you were inside your room back in the Mountain, and whenever you opened the door there was just nothingness. The wardrobe was full of nothing, the drawers were full of nothing and all the pictures had nothingness over everyone's faces.**

**That would be quite weird.**

**There probably isn't a real Human equivalent. I tried to explain it to Henry as well and he didn't really get it until I shared the feeling.** "There isn't really anything else I can learn here. We might as well go and meet Mister J'aarkn."

There's a brief glimpse of yellow in her aura. Ah, yes, that makes sense. "Are you alright with meeting him in person? I don't know how good your mental control is but…"

"He's going to spot me. Being White." She shuffles uncomfortably. "I don't think he'll make a big deal out of it. At worst he'll just refuse to talk to me."

"You don't think he's White himself?"

"He might be… But it isn't very likely. I suppose I'll find out when we get there."

"I don't know how good your shields are, but could you just switch back to your civilian appearance and pretend to not be Martian?"

She shakes her head. "Not if I wanted to use telepathy. Martian telepathy doesn't feel like Human telepathy and he'd pick it up right away. Well, unless he was really weak, anyway."

"How about if he'd been away from other Martians for twenty four years?"

She shakes her head. "No, that wouldn't be enough. Particularly given how rare Human telepaths are. I.. suppose we may as well get it over with." She looks over at the place on the floor where she made the entry hole.

"Before we do that… Um." I suppose she doesn't exactly have anyone with whom she can talk about this particular difficulty in her adaptation to Earth… "If you wanted to talk about… Human style tessellation mating-" Her eyes widen and her face goes purple again. "-if you had any questions and wanted to discuss it with someone who wouldn't find it weird or laugh… And wasn't your uncle. You know where to find me."

"Uh-huh." She nods once and then drops through the floor.

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Ex Perdition 14

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2nd January

06:28 GMT -8

"…could work on the Fortress tomorrow or something?" Through the front view screen I get a brief look at the Pitchess Detention Centre as M'gann brings us in. Missus Spencer got permission for us to land next to his isolation cell. I rather got the impression that the prison governor will be glad to be rid of him.

"No, it's fine." Zatanna sounds only mildly disappointed, but that could just be her being polite. "I've got school work I need to get done anyway." She was still asleep when we left and thanks to the geomantic wards the Ophidian and I transmuted into the rock of the mountain I can't scan inwards from the outside easily anymore.

I feel bad about leaving her behind. I stuck a note on her door but I felt obliged to say something directly as well. "Okay then. We're coming into the prison now. I'll let you know if anything interesting happens."

"Bye."

I dismiss the phone construct and lower my left hand as the Bio-Ship touches down. Missus Spencer is the first onto her feet. It seems that she really wasn't comfortable being on board. I suppose that if my first exposure to Martians was Mister J'aarkn I'd be a little hesitant to sit down on a shapeshifting seat as well.

Kon stands next. He joined in on the suit wearing but he looks more than a little uncomfortable. I'm not sure he's ever worn one before. He starts to leave the cabin before realising that M'gann is still sitting down and turns back to her. **M'gann? Come on, you don't have to be worried about this jerk.**

**I.. know.** She stands somewhat hesitantly before girding her mental loins and joining him before the two of them head down the exit ramp together.

I take a moment to check that my glow is set to minimum and run through a few of the basic mental defence exercises Mister King taught me. I also put a neural chaff grenade and an electrolaser pistol in holsters on the inside of the jacket. Probably excessive but it doesn't hurt to be sure. The carbon nanotubes in the jacket -plus good tailoring- ensure that it doesn't deform and give the game away. Sunglasses? Check. Everything in readiness I follow Kon and M'gann out of the Bio-Ship.

Missus Spencer leads the way towards the building which houses Mister J'aarkn. "The party starts at seven AM local time. He gets three hours at most, then we're flying him back to Channel Islands." Looks like quite a nice area, actually. There are quite a few trees and contrary to my expectations there's a fair bit of grass on the ground as well. In front of the entrance a couple of guards in riot gear wait along with the governor. Assistant Sheriff McDonald looks relieved to see us, though I do detect a slight frown when her gaze passes over the three of us. "Sheriff."

"Kate. We getting rid of him for real this time?"

"We'll do our best."

She nods at the three of us. "What happened to-?"

"Belle Reve." She turns back to look us over as well. "These three were what the Justice League offered to replace them."

"The Justice-?" We get another look. "Seriously? What, they leave their costumes at home or something?"

I take a few steps forwards. "I'm sorry, Assistant Sheriff. I rather got the impression that you wanted this low key. If I was mistaken..?"

"And who are you supposed to be? The Incredible G-Man?"

"Orange Lantern two eight one four." There's a flicker of recognition and she opens her mouth to ask. "Yes, the one with the cake." I hold out my right arm to indicate my colleagues. "Superboy and Miss Martian."

"Supe-? And another Martian? Is that really a good idea?"

"Human telepaths are a little thin on the ground."

"Ah, well, you can't do any worse than the last guys." Missus Spencer's face stiffens slightly. "Come on, may as well get this over with." The guard on the left mutters something into his radio and I hear the door unlock itself with a clunk. He goes through first, followed by the Assistant Sheriff, Missus Spencer and the three of us. Inside is a well lit reception area and another reinforced door with two new guards. I raise my left eyebrow at that. "Half my guards line their helmets with tinfoil these days."

M'gann looks puzzled. "That wouldn't do anything to stop a telepath."

"Sure, you know that and I know that, but after you've had Jackson shapeshifting into… Some extremely disconcerting forms while you're on duty you'll try most things."

"What sort of things?"

Assistant Sheriff McDonald shudders slightly as the inner door is opened. "Put it this way: he really liked his job and appears to want to continue practicing it here." She pauses before entering. "Or half the time, her job."

"You mean he..!"

"Hey, Terri!" On the other side of the bars inside the next room an overweight green skinned man lounges on his bed. "Come to see me off? Or are you finally taking me up on-."

Assistant Sheriff McDonald's face hardens. "I'd rather be intimate with a pig."

He nods in agreement. "I can do pig! How about I pencil you in for-. Oh. Hey Katie. Time already?"

"Jackson. Do you have your things?"

He waves his right hand dismissively, then swings his legs around to hang off the edge of the bed. "Nah, Simon's bringing everything I'll be taking back to Mars to the party. Can't believe you're making me have it in the morning this time."

"It'll be the last time, Jackson."

"Yeah yeah, I'll be good." He looks directly at me, smirk on his face and eyebrows slightly raised. "Eh? Eh?" I still my mind, letting everything flow away. After a moment he looks slightly puzzled, then shrugs. "Tough crowd. But just because you're a hard case-" His form shifts and melts, transforming… Into a slightly oversized copy of Jade. "-doesn't mean all your friends are." He hasn't quite got the voice right. Okay, how is he doing that? He didn't get it from my mind, I doubt he got it from M'gann. She… He struts towards the bars in a most unJadelike fashion. "How about you and me have some fun together at the party later?" I remain impassive. "No? Then how about-?" He shifts again and hell no.

The corners of my mouth are most certainly turned down as I look at Zatanna's face. "Knock it off. She's under age."

"She may be, but I'm not." Her voice he's getting exactly right. "How about if I mature-" She gains about half a foot in height and her secondary sexual characteristics become noticeably more apparent. "-it up a notch." Zatanna's casual wear melts away, being replaced by negligee and a translucent night dress. "You could pretend I'm her older cousin?" He adopts a faux-innocent pose. "Get in practice for the real-."

"Mister J'aarkn-."

Missus Spencer walks up to the cell door, grabs him by the collar of his nightie and pulls him against the bars. "Jackson, if you don't knock it off right now you'll go to the party in an ambulance."

He thinks for a moment before nodding cheerfully. "Sounds good to me! You got a paddle or you want me to-?"

**J'onn J'aarkn.** He shudders and rapidly regains his own form, his right hand going to his forehead. **Behave yourself!**

"Ughugr." He blinks heavily. "Forgotten what that was like." Missus Spencer lets go as he regains his feet. He shakes his head once and then looks over at M'gann, his expression one of curiosity. "Folks back home really miss me enough to send a Manhunter to pick me up?" He looks a little closer. "Hey. J'onzz? That you? When did you join the Feds?"

"My name is M'gann M'orzz and if you start shapeshifting into my friends and hitting on people I will mind blast you again."

"But I can hit on people looking like this?" He looks himself over. "I can work with that. Now let's get this show on the road!"

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Ex Perdition 15

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2nd January

06:33 GMT -8

Kon politely but firmly pushes Mister J'aarkn down into the front right seat on the Bio-Ship before taking the seat just behind for himself. Missus Spencer remains standing behind the pilot station and I'm at mid left. Mister J'aarkn has a quick look at the dashboard before swivelling the chair around, clasping his hands behind his head and tilting the chair back with a smile. "Aaaah. All the comforts of home. This a new model?"

"She's newer than yours." M'gann moves her hands and the Bio-Ship rises off the ground. It's about a twenty minute flight at Bio-Ship cruising speed and the party isn't due to start until seven.

"You take a look at him? What did you think?"

"I'm babysitting you because Uncle J'onn asked me to. I don't particularly want to talk to you."

He rolls his eyes with a sigh, then turns a little more to look at Kon. "Hey stud muffin. See something you like?" He grins lasciviously, raises his hands to chest height and makes beckoning gestures with them.

"I don't think you're my type."

"How about-?" M'gann glares at him. "Oooor not. Waaaaait, are you two..?" He wiggles his right index finger back and forth between them. "Oh, hey, sorry. Hands and.. whatever, off your beefcake." He turns his chair back around, looking at Missus Spencer for a moment before turning his attention to me.

"Mister J'aarkn-."

"Call me 'John'. Seriously, I've been John for twenty five years now. You ask for Mister J'aarkn and I start looking for Daddy."

"How old are you?"

"Earth years?" He looks up at the ceiling as he tries to work it out. "Let's see… Sixty four, so… A hundred and.. forty seven. Yeah, that's it."

"As I understand it, Martians mature at about a third of the rate Humans do?"

"Sort of. For emotional maturity when you're young that's probably true, but the amount of life experience is pretty different. I'm middle aged by Human standards but you can't just project Human behaviours onto me."

"So you coming to an alien planet and having as much sex as you can get isn't a Martian mid-life crisis."

"Hah! No, different psychological drives. Martians don't really…" He glances at M'gann, who refuses to meet his eyes. "You know how Martians fuck, right?"

"I heard a brief description."

"Not hormonal at all. We don't even have hormones like you do. What happened to me… Yeah, okay, I know I'm weird, but it doesn't have anything to do with a Human male feeling the urge to sow his seed before he decays into physical obsolescence."

"So why did you come here?"

"Funny story, actually. I'm a biology teacher. College level equivalent." He nods his head to the side. "Used to be anyway. I think I'm still qualified but I haven't done any teaching…" He leers at Missus Spencer. "Well, you know. I've done that kind of teaching, I mean I haven't done classroom teaching. Not since I left Mars."

"Theoretical to practical?"

"I could do a lecture on the mating practices of just about any Mars native lifeform you care to name if you like, but no. Mars is parched. Next to nothing alive on the surface outside of a few preserves and everything in the caves is regulated, monitored… Not much for a biologist to do. When-" He turns to M'gann again. "-J'onzz started transmitting back to Manhunter headquarters from Earth I got fascinated. A whole new world, filled with fascinating alien life completely unknown to Martian science."

"I rather got the impression Martians weren't very interested in us."

He nods. "I think it's something to do with telepathic data transmission. When one of us passes on an image or an experience, the recipient gets the context and perspective of the one they got it from. It's like they lived it themselves, and if they did that…"

Kon nods. "Why bother doing it for real?"

Mister J'aarkn shrugs. "Or it could just be a modern cultural thing. My Bio-Ship was part of a limited run they made back when we were a bit more outgoing. It's designed to keep one person alive and sane while they travel from one place to another in space."

M'gann reluctantly look at him. "How does it do that?"

"In a bunch of different ways. When you turn the system on it sort of keeps you half asleep, and creates this ghost sensation of there being other minds around."

"Half asleep in space?"

"The thing about space, its basic distinguishing feature…"

J'aarkn nods. "Right. Empty. It's not like they were going to be doing interstellar flights or anything. Your Bio-Ship may be more sophisticated but the basic technology is the same. No need to check things every few hours, the telekinetic sensor means you can easily avoid any obstacle big enough to actually harm you. There's nothing to be awake for until you actually get somewhere. The original idea was for there to be a crew of three, but you can fly the thing with just one."

Kon frowns. "So how come it never got used?"

Mister J'aarkn sags slightly. "Before my time. The guy I bought it from seemed to think it was only ever a proof of concept type thing. You know, 'if we were going to do this, how would we do it?'"

"So, what? You heard about a planet of fascinating new sentients and hopped in a ship so you could go and have sex with them?"

"Wouldn't you?" I give him a level look. "No, it wasn't quite like that. We'd known that you Humans were here for a while. We don't do a lot of deep space astronomy like you do but since Mars doesn't have much of an atmosphere we have to do a lot of local space monitoring. We'd been seeing artificial lights on Earth for centuries, we'd picked up your radio transmissions for decades… I mean, we had no idea what you were saying but we knew there was structure to it. Some of the really powerful telepathic types could even juuust about hear your thoughts when the planets were close together."

I look at M'gann and she nods. "It's barely noticeable unless I really strain-."

Mister J'aarkn's eyes open wide as he looks at her. "You're that powerful?"

"Yes. I am."

"I thought I was just being oversensitive when you shocked me earlier. Whaw." He frowns. "What you hiding out here for then? Wouldn't some tut-? Oh." M'gann looks a little sad and Mister J'aarkn looks like he's realised that he's put his foot in it. "Um. Right, sorry."

Would M'gann's educational prospects be curtailed due to her being White? Thinking about how racism affects people on Earth I suppose I shouldn't be completely surprised but wouldn't there be somewhere for her to exercise her talents? Interesting that the lecherous ex-teacher doesn't care. "I'm still not sure why you made the trip."

"I got interested on what life was like here. I don't think he remembers me but I was part of the group J'onzz shared his memories with when he got back. Spent a couple of years analysing them, trying to understand how the biological systems here worked. Of course, he wasn't a biologist so the information he already had wasn't quite there. And as I kept looking… Darndest thing, I just.. started to find the way you people look appealing. Male, female, young, old… You're all so different from Martians anyway that you're clearly not appealing to the same parts of my brain as an attractive Martian would. I just.. wanted that. You, basically. Nearly went crazy with excitement and fear when I finally decided to make the trip. Was.. longer than my journey home will be and I did the stupid thing of not using the sleep system. Hoohoo, let me tell you: never again."

M'gann's starting to get interested now as well. "Then what happened?"

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Ex Perdition 16

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2nd January

06:37 GMT -8

"What happened is I started hallucinating. Constant things crawling around at the edge of my visual field. Even after I changed the shape of my head to get three sixty degree vision. Then the voices started. Think I had a long conversation with one of the walls but it's all a bit blurry. It was a twenty three day journey and I barely made two." M'gann shudders slightly. "You went the same way?"

"I.. didn't need to stay on the ship for as long, and I had Uncle J'onzz there."

"That would be better. Still not great?" She shakes her head. "Guess that's why we Martians never really got into space travel."

Kon frowns. "Couldn't you just build a bigger ship? If there were a lot of Martians on board it wouldn't be such a problem."

"Sure, yeah, we could do that. Problem is no one wants to." Mister J'aarkn shrugs. "The whole thing's just such a bad experience that we've been put off trying. It's like, if you wear a heavy metal gauntlet you can stick your hand in a sink waste disposal unit, but why would you?"

M'gann nods. "Our military use ships like that, but they don't really get big enough to go on long voyages."

"How did you..? Actually, how did Mister J'onzz manage it when he went back the first time?"

"Uncle J'onn used an advanced meditation technique. And he altered the atmospheric composition of the air inside the Bio-Ship so he'd feel sleepy all the time."

Mister J'aarkn leans forwards. "Sure, I can believe that of him, but how'd you do it?"

"My.. uncle Ma'alefa'ak was born without the ability to use telepathy."

"Ooh." Mister J'aarkn looks pained. "The poor bastard."

"Well, he lives on the surface. I visited him a lot when I was younger. I guess I just got used to the isolation. I mean, not totally. I couldn't have made the crossing if Uncle J'onn hadn't been there."

"Right. So, I just about manage to keep it together well enough to turn the system on. The rest of the trip is kind of a blur… Not sure if that's how it's supposed to be or if that was just because of me being a dummy about not using the system from the start. From how the food stores on board decreased I must have been eating something but…" He turns his palms upwards as he shrugs. "First thing I remember seeing clearly was the Earth when I reached high orbit and the collision detector came on. I was still a bit woooowh, you know? But I recognized the shape of the landmass J'onzz said he'd been on and nudged my Bio-Ship in that direction. I came down in the Death Valley National Park. You know how desolate that place is, right? When I staggered out I was so messed up I wasn't sure whether I was on Mars or Earth. Plus, I was still in, you know, alien mode."

"Alien mode?" Missus Spencer frowns. "That isn't how you look?"

"What, like a green Human? You really thought that? Haah!"

"Jackson!"

"Oh, come on! I'm a shapeshifting alien! I didn't settle on this face for years."

"So, what, you look more like Manhunter? With red eyes-?"

Mister J'aarkn sniggers as he shakes his head. "Not even close. He picked that shape because he wanted something that looked mostly Human but also a bit alien and intimidating." He widens his eyes. "What we actually look like would-" He jazz hands. "-blow your fragile, Human-."

Kon shakes his head. "You're not that weird."

"Oh, ruin the rest of my fun why don't you. Wait a second." He looks back and forth between him and M'gann. "You went with green Human and showed them the real you anyway? You guys must be pretty tight."

I nod and Kon crosses his arms across his chest. "Yeah. We are."

"So you were wandering around Death Valley in Martian mode..."

He grins again. "Scared the shit out of these hikers."

Missus Spencer doesn't appreciate the humour. "Jonathan Adams, Evan Morris and Vincent Myers."

"Aah, Jonny. You never forget your first."

"You sexually assaulted him."

"I did not! Okay, so I wasn't exactly who he thought I was at the time…"

"What did you do?"

"Since I didn't have any real idea where to go I just headed towards the nearest minds I could feel. They'd made their camp in this little.. gully, to keep the wind off. It was night time, and what with them having a fire going that ruined their night vision they didn't see me until I stepped right up to them. I just sat down next to, ahh…" He looks at Missus Spencer. "It was Evan, right? I just sat down and they're like 'AAAAAAGH!' Evan and Vincent run away. Jonny tried to but he tripped up and hit his head. So seeing him hurt pretty much snapped me out of my funk. I knew a bit about how Human bodies worked so I had a rummage around the campsite for a medical kit or whatever. Dressed the wound, propped him up and had a rifle through his mind."

M'gann looks scandalised. "You did what!"

"I'd terrified two guys and gotten a third injured! I didn't want that to happen again when he woke up. So, I got the image of someone he liked from his memories…"

"Madison Burnett."

"Okay, I know it looks bad now, but at the time it seemed like a perfectly rational thing to do. I could use my knowledge of Human physiology to replicate the bits he hadn't seen-."

"But not her clothes."

"I didn't realize those were important! I thought, familiar face, that'll give me a chance to talk to him. Okay, not talk exactly, I didn't know the language and hadn't got the hang of the-" He puts his right hand to his neck. "-Human voice box yet. When he came around he must have thought he was dreaming or something. I asked him if there was anything I can do to make him feel better… He had some suggestions…" M'gann's gone purple again. "I didn't exactly know what the big deal was, not until I started mirroring his brain pathways."

"You mirrored his brain pathways!?" M'gann looks genuinely shocked. "But you only just met him!"

"It was in the name of science, Miss M'orzz. Science! And whaaaw did I ever not regret it. Guess you've got that stuff to look forward to."

"Leaving the Erotic Adventures of a Martian Womanhunter aside for a moment…"

"Well, eventually he went to sleep, I went back to my Ship. Since I'd learned the local language from him I spent some time listening in on radio broadcasts-."

"What about the other two? If they were alone in Death Valley…"

"Yeah. I mean, to a Martian? Death Valley isn't so scary. If I'd known more at the time I'd have gone to check up on them. Just didn't occur to me. I found out later that they went back in the morning to check on Jonny." He grins again. "See, they thought the screams-."

"I get the picture."

"So I hid the Ship and used my new knowledge of Human society to walk around a few towns, listen in on a few more thought processes. Eventually I started visiting libraries. I don't know if you know this, but these days on Mars writing things down is really only done for ceremonial purposes. Everything else is telepathically encoded. If I'd realized I could have gone to a library first... Just didn't think of it."

"But how did you go from anthropologist to adult film star?"

He shrugs. "I had to eat, needed a job and I enjoyed the work. Something about Humans just works for me in a way Martians… Eeeeehh, kinda don't. I could mimic the stars of the day, assume male or female form or whatever else the director wanted. After a while, I switched over to focusing on that rather than my studies."

M'gann looks like she's swallowed something bitter. "Did you do any actual research?"

"Oh, sure! I've got a kuru pendant full of data. I don't know if anyone back home's actually going to care about it, but I've got it." He sits back with a sigh. "Good times. I'm really going to miss this place."

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Ex Perdition 17

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2nd January

06:56 GMT -8

It's only a little after dawn when we arrive at the house at which 'John Jackson's 4th Bi-Annual Leaving Party' is being held. The building is fairly large but there isn't quite enough space in the garden that I'd feel comfortable leaving the Bio-Ship on the ground. M'gann sets down in the car park to drop the rest of us off and then takes it up over the top of the house. We aren't on a flight path here so unless someone decides to fly a kite or something it shouldn't be a problem. M'gann can float herself back down invisibly when she's done.

Mister J'aarkn hurries up the path to the door and presses the doorbell while Missus Spencer, Kon and I follow on behind at a more sedate pace. Interesting that he doesn't fly. I mean, it isn't as if he needs to pretend anything any more. I know that M'gann's telepathy is unusually strong but I actually have no idea how her other abilities compare. Probably worth finding out at some point.

A moment later the door is opened by a heavily made up Asian woman. "John!" They kiss each other's cheeks. "You're early! Did you escape from prison again?"

He shakes his head. "Sorry, Casi. I think they got me this time."

"Oh no! What have they done?"

"Well, you know. Set a thief to catch a thief. J'onzz decided to sic his niece on me."

She looks past him at the three of us. "Which one..?" I hear a soft tap as M'gann touches down on the paving stones, then she makes herself visible again. "Nice suit." Miss… Casi turns back to Mister J'aarkn. "For a moment I thought she was going to be like you."

"My job is going to be open." He half turns back to her with what I am coming to recognise as his signature leer. "What do you say, Miss M'orzz? Interested in showing another generation of Humans the wonders of Martian physiology?" He wiggles his eyebrows in an attempt to wring as much embarrassment from her as possible.

And.. she.. doesn't go for it. Just as she starts to purple again she tosses her head and shifts form. "No." Her hair shortens and turns black and her skin goes from green to pearl white. "And I don't want your friends mistaking me for you, either." Interesting. I've seen her White Martian form but I've never seen her wear white skin while Human shaped before. Monochrome's a rather intense look. I like it.

"Ah well." Mister J'aarkn puts an arm around Casi's waist as he strolls into the house. There's a small porch which leads into an open plan living area. "Anyone you guys want to meet while you're here?"

"No." / "I don't really watch this kind of thing." / "Is Miss Smart likely to be in attendance?"

Kon and M'gann both stop dead to stare at me. Mister J'aarkn shrugs. "You'll have to give me more than that. Lots of people in this industry use different names. My first few movies were made with me listed as 'Jonathan Jerking'. Heh, or Joanne."

"Sara Smart. I believe she performs as 'Sally Sonic'."

Mister J'aarkn comes to an immediate stop. "That'ssss… Dangerous tastes you got there, kid." He actually looks a little nervous. "Listen, she's.. not good company. Why don't I just find you some nice-."

"I'm really more interested in her personal history."

"Oh. Well, I'll tell you now she doesn't talk about that."

"Will she be here?"

"Maybe." Miss Casi slips free of his arm and heads off into the house, looking just as uncomfortable as he does. He turns back to me. "Yeah, probably. She's got an invite anyway. Metaporn's not a huge genre." He sighs. "Ah, who am I kidding? She'd never miss an opportunity to wave her ageless tits in the sagging faces of her former co-workers. She'll be here."

"I understand that you've worked with her before."

"Yeah. Once." He flaps his hands dismissively at me. "Hey, it's your life. Talk to her if you want, just leave me out of it." He turns away, looking through the door at the far end of the room. "The four of you going to follow me everywhere? I kind of want to say 'goodbye' to my friends without you lurking over my shoulder the whole time."

Missus Spencer folds her arms across her chest. "I'm sticking to you like-." The leer reappears. "I'm staying close by you. The three of you can hang back. Check the perimeter or something."

"Rightyho." **Miss Martian, are we networked?**

**Yes. And don't worry about Jerking-.** Kon and I look at her. **About J'aarkn listening in.** Mister J'aarkn exits through the far door in the general direction of the heated swimming pool. Not sure it's really hot enough at this time of the morning, even in California. **His telepathy is fairly weak.**

**Any idea how he knew what Jade and Zatanna look like?**

**I think that was me.** Kon shrugs uncomfortably. **I felt.. something in my head. I was thinking about girls you might… You know. I'm sorry, but it was getting hard not to.**

**That's fine. Far better it be someone like him than someone actually hostile. Might be worth you joining in when Mister King next comes in though. I've found it really helpful for stopping that sort of thing.** He nods. **For now though, you and M'gann should probably stick together. Don't want him mentally nudging you off in the wrong direction.**

**Right.**

**M'gann, you can pick out his mind from just about anywhere around here, right?**

She shrugs. **He's the only other Martian around. Unless he's secretly a lot better than I think he is there's no way for him to hide from me.**

**Feel free to wander the grounds, then. Try to keep track of everyone who turns up and report anyone we should be concerned about. I'm going to try following Mister J'aarkn from a distance, just in case he tries anything with Missus Spencer.**

M'gann nods and turns to go back out through the front door. Kon goes to follow and then hesitates for a moment. **Um.**

**I know it's not standard bodyguarding protocol but our main concern is him. Mister J'onzz was right, he's got no history of violence.**

**No, it's…** He uncomfortably avoids meeting my eyes. **You wanted to…**

**Do you want to know why I asked after Miss Smart?**

M'gann looks curious too. **It does seem a little out of character. Not that… Whatever you…**

**Miss Smart is a Human enhanced by magic. I'm mostly interested in her as an object of study.**

Two slightly relieved nods. **That makes more sense. What can she do?**

**She doesn't age. She's in her seventies now and doesn't look any different to how she did in her late teens. If that could be replicated… I don't even know what it would do.**

Kon looks thoughtful. **Why was J'aarkn so afraid of her?**

**She's had a rather hard life, and.. as a result, has become a complete bitch. She takes particular pleasure in seducing married men, videoing their time together and sharing the video with their wives.** Sometimes it's like they do everything they can to make you not want to help them. **Or vice versa. I mean, I'm a bit disappointed at how weak willed they're being but the pattern is a bit obvious.**

**Is she a criminal?**

**Nothing criminal about adults making sub par choices. Even with encouragement. If I'd found a smoking gun I'd already have acted on it.**

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Ex Perdition 18

next

2nd January

07:22 GMT -8

I take another look around the pool area. **Anything interesting happening where you are?**

I hear her sigh through the mental link. **A few people have asked how long I've been in… You know, in the profession. I was sort of hoping that the suit would scare them off.**

**Should have added sunglasses and an earpiece.** Pretty good turnout considering the time of day. There's a little bit more flesh on display than I'm used to, but really no more than I might see on a Happy Harbour street in summer. The heavy makeup and.. um, 'forthright' mammaries are a more noticeable difference but I guess off the job people are just people. **Kon, anyone asked you that?**

**One guy did.**

**Conner glared at him so hard no one else has dared try.**

**If it's getting to be a problem just hang around Missus Spencer for a bit. Everyone here knows why she's here.**

**Has J'aarkn done anything?** I can hear a note of frustration in Kon's mental voice.

**He got a drink and then started doing the rounds. Right now he's talking to Mister Hyatt.** I look over to them. From the body language and the way they're laughing I'd guess that they were pretty good friends. Behind them Missus Spencer checks her watch.

**Probably just waiting for us to drop our guard.**

**Maybe. Or maybe -since he isn't a supervillain- he's still capable of recognising an unwinnable situation when he sees one.**

**Are you able to look inside him and see for sure? I'd.. still rather not scan him telepathically if I can help it.**

**Already done.** I double check anyway. **Small amounts of yellow associated with us, Missus Spencer and going home and from the amount of orange I'm seeing I'm going to say that he was being completely honest about how desirable he finds Humans. I can't see anything related to concrete escape plans.**

"Hey, are you with the Metahuman Department people?"

I half turn and-. Oh my goodness, it's porn star Barbie. **Excuse me a minute.** "I am indeed. What can I do for you?"

She beams at me. "You're English!"

"I was born in England, yes. I'm legally a Themysciran national."

"Themy-? Wait, like Wonder Woman?"

"Indeed."

"How did you manage that?"

"I did some work for Her Highness and -since I was stateless at the time- she.. made the offer."

"So are you, like,-" She makes a circling motion with her left hand. "-the only guy in the whole place?"

"One of two, though as I understand it male Olympians are free to visit whenever they like."

She pats my chest with her right hand. "Bet you're popular!"

"My first visit is next weekend so I can't say for certain. But I.. rather doubt it. Either that or we'll get mobbed as soon as we land."

"Wouldn't that be fun."

"Probably more awkward than fun." I glance across at Mister J'aarkn. Nope, still there.

Miss… Ring? Atchford? Okay. She follows my gaze. "Yeah, I wanted to talk to you about John. He's a really nice guy. Why are you people going after him like this?"

"I'm afraid that I don't know. I only became involved in this case today, and in any case I wouldn't have any authority over the decision. From what I've seen of Missus Spencer she appears to be taking his previous 'no shows' somewhat personally."

"Is she allowed to do that?"

"Dispassionate professionalism might be the ideal but I doubt anyone will fault her. The conga line thing-"

She giggles. "Oh yeah, that was funny."

"-really didn't help matters. I have to ask, were their drinks spiked or something?"

"Hey, everyone here's clean." I raise my eyebrows and she looks away. "Theeeey might have had a bit of vodka in their beer. The.. barman probably misheard their order."

"Uh huh."

"So.. what do you do when you're not throwing people off the planet? You said you worked with Wonder Woman?"

I stare at her for a moment. "I can't believe it. It actually works."

She tries to frown but is defeated by botulinum toxin. "What works?"

"Glasses. Sorry,-" I shake my head. "-private joke. Um, I suppose the most accessible part of my job involves metal trading."

She looks at me sceptically. "Commodity trading? What, you work for the DMA in your spare time?"

"No, the three of us volunteered for this because they were short staffed. I've actually never worked for them before."

"Private security?"

"Superhero."

"Get outta town." I raise my palms to display the glowing sigils of the rings for a moment before closing them again. Her head jerks back slightly and she blinks repeatedly, first looking at my hands and then at my face. "Wait, I know you! You're-!

"Yes, the.. Cake Man." I'm starting to know how Lex feels.

"No, not that. You did that interview after that thing with all the kids disappearing."

"That wasn't exactly my proudest moment either."

"Really? 'Cause I thought it really brought home what a lot of people went through. I mean, my two spent the whole thing watching TV or sleeping, I didn't even think about what happened to kids on air planes. And, superheroes just usually seem to have it all together, you know? So perfect and distant and you were just so genuine."

Um. Right. I hadn't really had any interest in fallout from that interview. Hadn't bothered asking Ms Cobert how it played. I have another look around the poolside as I try to work out how to reply. "Thank you, I-." Oh, look who's trying to sneak away. "Would you excuse me for a moment?"

"Hey, look, I didn't-."

I stride in the direction of the woman heading for the door into the house. "Excuse me?"

"Wha-?" She stops and turns around. Brown skin, curly shoulder length hair and a facial structure unlike his usual faces. "Oh, you're one of the people looking after Jackson, right?"

"Mister J'aarkn, knock it off."

She shakes her head. "I'm not-."

I tilt my head forwards and let my glasses slide down my nose a little, revealing my orange eyes for a moment before pushing the glasses back up. "Empathic vision. You might have changed physically but you haven't changed spiritually." I raise my right index finger. "Don't mess me about again."

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Ex Perdition 19

next

2nd January

07:32 GMT -8

"So, yeah, they got the Talk almost as soon as they could talk." Miss Atchford leans back in her chair and raises her right hand expressively. "I'm not proud of my job exactly, but I'm not going to lie to them about it. And I definitely don't want Paige getting pregnant at nineteen like I did."

"I'm a little embarrassed to admit it-" I look around the room. "-especially here, but I honestly had no idea how Human reproduction worked until sex education class in Primary School." More of Mister J'aarkn's fellow performers have drifted in since his first 'just testing you', though I don't think the party has reached critical mass as yet.

"So.. you were how old?"

"Eleven, I think."

"Doesn't sound unusual to me." We both consider that line and start to smirk. "I mean, yeah, okay, okay. I didn't get started that early."

"I'm glad to hear it. I don't ever remember having 'The Talk' with my parents at any point. I mean, I'm sure they'd have been willing to talk about anything I'd asked…"

"Do you have that.. abstinence.. thing.. in England?"

"Not outside of religious institutions. I mean, I might be a little out of date, but…" I shrug and shake my head. "For me it was always one of those crazy things Americans do."

She feigns offence. "Oh yeah?"

"Silver rings, playing rugby wearing body armour-"

"Oh, you do not get to mock football!"

"-calling it football despite the fact that the players spend most of the time carrying the ball in their hands! How did that name even catch on?"

"I don't know, that's just what it's called!" We share a giggle. You know, I kind of thought this job was going to be annoying, but I'm actually quite enjoying talking to Miss Atchford. "What do you call it in England then?"

"American Football. Because you're the only people who play it."

"Oh, that is not true! They play it in Canada."

"They do?" Ring?

"Yeah, I dated this Canadian guy for a while who couldn't stop talking about it."

Uhh, traitors. "I was unaware of that. But, still, US and Canada." And Australia, sort of.

"How long have you been in the US anyway? Or do you just fly over?"

"A little over six months, and I do live here."

She gets a little more serious. "How'd you get a green card?"

"I.. didn't. To start with.. I was technically on a sticky wicket but-."

"A what?"

"Um, cricket? The three sticks behind the batsman which the bowler aims for is called a wicket. 'Sticky wicket' means a difficult situation, just as a batsman might experience on a waterlogged pitch. Anyway, yes, I was technically in the country illegally-."

"Ohh. So it's okay for you to do it, but John has to get thrown off the planet."

"The difference is: he can go home. I come from a parallel universe. I have no way to go back. I suppose I could.. build a habitat on the moon or something." That could actually be an interesting thing to do anyway. "But otherwise there's nowhere for them to send me to. And anyway, now I have a Themysciran diplomatic passport, so I'm here legally."

"And that.. Kon guy?"

"Born in the US. I suppose he should really have joint citizenship."

"And the albino Martian girl?"

"Ah-uuuuhhh." Actually, what is M'gann's status? It's never really.. come up. "I don't actually know."

"Ah hah! She's an illegal immigrant too!"

"I'm sure her uncle sorted.. something out…" Ring? Oh, no he didn't. Megan Morse legally exists but M'gann as M'gann doesn't. "I think Justice League facilities count as extraterritorial…" Though that only helps as long as she never leaves the mountain… I might need to talk to her about that.

"No, no, that's fine. One rule for her and another for John. Seems perfectly okay to me."

"Look, if I was the one making the rules I wouldn't kick him out either. Missus Spencer's really got the bit in her teeth over this whole thing, I don't know… Did he do something to trigger this whole thing?"

"I don't think so. I mean, he might've? He's pretty libidinous off-set. Maybe he hit on the wrong girl? Or, you know, guy."

"Or turned into a Dog and humped the wrong leg."

"Hah! Long as it was only a leg! Yeah, I can see him doing that. I mean, he's a great guy to work with, you know? Most of the time a girl looks like she's getting off in a porno she's just faking it, but with him? You.. usually.. don't have to. I guess it comes from being a woman part of the time."

"Or his telepathy. He knows what his partner likes and he can feel it when they like it."

"Huh. Yeah, could be. He's actually a good person to get paired with if you're just getting into the business. Not like Ron the Hedgehog." Her eyes widen. "You need to know what you're doing if you're doing anything with that thing."

I nod. "I can imagine." Actually, where is Mister J'aarkn?

"Are your Martian and Kon a thing?"

"They're dating, yes."

"Lucky guy."

"They haven't quite got that f-oh for goodness sake!" I get to my feet. "Would you please excuse me again?"

"Why?" She nods as she realises. "What's he done now?" I hold out my right hand. She takes it and uses it to come to her feet and I transition us to the first floor bathroom. "Whoow. Is that-?" She spots Mister J'aarkn. "Ow, eww!"

He's bent over the toilet, his head, arms and upper torso extended into a narrow column that is vanishing down the pipe. Damn, that's nasty. I reach down and tap him on his right hip. I mean, I could intercept him before he gets away but I'd really rather not.

"Kinda busy here." I blink as a mouth appears on his lower back. "It would be a big help to me if you could-" An eye appears near the mouth. "-go and distract-" The eye focuses on me. "-my… Oh. Hey, Orange Lantern! I was just.. doing some plumbing."

"Uh-huh. Well, when you're done, I'll pull you out and clean you off, shall I?"

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Ex Perdition 20

next

2nd January

07:45 GMT -8

"…chocolate sauce!" The man introduced to me as Dwayne looks up from the pool table and grins as he makes eye contact. "So that was the last time I worked with those assholes." I shudder theatrically and he chuckles as he returns to his shot. Dwayne is black, homosexual, and -from the string vest, short shorts and innuendo- clearly very much at peace with both characteristics. He takes aim at one of the striped balls -the American version of the game being played with striped and solid coloured balls rather than yellow and red ones- and takes a shot at the neatly arrayed balls. He doesn't use as much force as I would have done and as a consequence they remain fairly clustered up. He stands up, studies the table for a moment and then turns around, offering Miss Atchford the cue. "Bobbi? You playing?"

She waves him off with a shake of her head. "Oh… No… Not really my game."

Dwayne shrugs and turns to offer it to me instead. Ah, why not? "Okay, but I should probably warn you-."

"What? You some kind of limey pool shark or something?"

"No, I'm dreadful at the game." I walk up to the table, trying to get a feel for the layout. "I really mean it. You may want a helmet."

"Hey man, I always want helmet."

I wince as I bend slightly to check the shot I'm thinking of making. Sure, the ring could easily calculate the optimal trajectory and force, but the point of this is to have fun, not own all with an alien supercomputer. Okay, I think I can get the solid yellow one. Maybe. I bend a little further, put my left hand on the felt and bring the butt of the cue back-.

"Oh, hello!"

I close my eyes for a moment. "Hate to be a prima donna about this Dwayne, but could you possibly move a little further away?"

"No problem, man. No bigger black fan of Madonna than me!"

W-? No, never mind. I thrust the cue forwards, hitting the white ball cleanly and sending it into the yellow. Agh, angle was slightly off and it hit the green as well and it's… Well, at least Dwayne won't be able to pot it either. I straighten up and offer him the cue back. He makes a point of running his right hand down the shaft before taking hold of it. I step away from the table as he brushes past me and raise my eyebrows at Miss Atchford. She shrugs.

"So… Dwayne, how did you meet Mister J'aarkn?"

"Who?" He focuses on the table, walking around to the far side to get a better look.

"John, Dwayne. His Martian name is J'onn J'aarken."

"Really? I thought that was just his movie name."

"Most Martian languages use telepathy rather than the spoken word, but that's basically what it sounds like."

"Huh." He leans down to take a shot, using it to break up the ball cluster a bit more before holding out the cue butt first to me across the table. Again, he keeps his hand in place as I pull it free. "Was kind of going through a dry patch. See, there's work in gay porn, but there's more money in straight stuff. More people buying it. But since most of the people buying it are guys, they're mostly watching the girls. They're like, fucking them through you, you know? But they're all fat and hairy and whatever from spending all their time jerking off at their computers, so if you look too good, that's no good. Gay porn, no, you gotta look good for that. My body's my professional tool, know what I'm saying?" I nod and take aim at the ball with the green stripe. "And I can fuck girls. I mean, I'm usually thinking about something else at the time, 'cause if I can't I'm going to need a helping hand from Mister Blue, but I can do it."

I make the shot and-. Aww, it hits the side of the pocket and bounces out. "I'm not hearing about Mister J'aarkn's role in your career."

"Agent got me a job, fucking this ridiculous big titty thing. Script needs her to suck me off and give me a titty job. No way I could pretend I was doing a guy. The whole thing was doing nothing for me at all. They wanted a cumshot and I couldn't deliver." I pass him the cue and he leans forwards to make a shot almost immediately. The blue solid bounces off the yellow stripe and goes nowhere important. "Then, suddenly, I look down and there's this eight inch cock dangling down her leg. Now, I didn't sign up for no tranny movie but that definitely wasn't there when we started."

"Did that.. help?"

"Yeah, it helped. Like, half my movies are tranny movies now. Turns out, long as it's got a cock I don't much care about the rest." He stands up, looking contemplative. "Never would have found that out if it weren't for him."

"Ah. Well then, I'm happy for you."

"Real shame he's going away."

"Look, I get that he's a good guy. And I really hope-" Dwayne passes me the cue back. "-thank you, I really hope he can come back legally. But, right now, he's had all his appeals and he lost."

"I guess." Okay, even I can't miss-. Yes! Solid red number seven goes down the middle left pocket. I move around the table to take aim at solid purple. "You hang out with a lot of other superheroes?"

"From time to time. Please understand that I can't really-" Aagh, another miss. I pass the cue back. "-talk about most of what I know."

He takes a look at the table and then looks back at me. "You ever meet Superman?"

"Yes, a few times. I mean I don't.. know him well or anything. Are you a fan?"

"Something like that. Got a copy of his 'S' tattooed on the head of my-."

"Oh really?"

"Yeah. Because of how super it-."

"I-. I got it. I don't think I'll mention that to him if you don't mind."

"Not sure how you'd bring that up in con-"

**Get out!**

"-versation." A plume of water erupts from the pool as I look around. A somewhat stunned and bedraggled Mister J'aarkn swims slowly from the point of impact towards the water's edge. "Where'd he come from?"

**M'gann?**

**He tried 'just taking a look' at my Bio-Ship.**

**Everything under control?**

**How much longer do we have to stay here?**

**A couple of hours. Are you-?**

**It's fine, he's just… Ugh!**

"Flying practice."

"Looks like he's out of practice. You got any tattoos?"

"I'm sorry? Oh. Yes. Covered in the things."

"For real?"

"Tattoos and a few brands."

He raises his eyebrows and makes eye contact with Miss Atchford. "That's some heavy duty shit you got there."

"They're practical rather than decorative. You can get spells tattooed or branded onto your body and I needed a way to be more resistant to magic. Though speaking of heavy shit… What can you tell me about Sally Sonic?"

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Ex Perdition 21

next

2nd January

08:24 GMT -8

"Simon!" Mister J'aarkn embraces his lawyer with a smile. "Good to see you!" He's shape shifted his clothing into swimming shorts but otherwise has kept his slightly overweight Human form.

"John." Mister Leas hugs him back, if a little less enthusiastically. He's wearing a Hawaiian shirt and fawn coloured trousers. "Sorry I couldn't come up with-."

"No, no, it's fine." He pulls back a little, some of the sadness he feels showing on his face. Missus Spencer doesn't appear to be moved by it. "I'm just grateful you managed to put it off this long. Did you bring it?"

"Of course I did, John." He looks around for a moment before spotting a coffee table. "Shall we?"

Mister J'aarkn nods and they sit on the well cushioned chairs set up on either side of it. Mister Leas takes a small presentation case out of his pocket, sets it on the table and then pushes it over. Mister J'aarkn looks relieved. "Oh, you have no idea how glad I am to get these back." He turns to Missus Spencer. "Why'd you take these off me, anyway? I'd have thought you'd be glad for me to have something else to occupy my time."

"No alien technology in prison, Jackson."

"But they're just data recording devices! Look." He opens the case, revealing three gold coloured metal disks. Each one is about twelve centimetres across and divided into three concentric circles. The outer ring is blank, the middle ring is textured with what might be a representation of snake scales and the centre circle has what looks like it's supposed to be a representation of a Martian face. "Harmless." The case also contains a thin gold chain, which he attaches to one of the pendants before putting it around his neck.

Missus Spencer raises her right eyebrow. "Oh yeah? What's on it, your back catalogue?"

"Sure, but not just that. There's a copy of everything I know about Human society on here. If I'm having to restart my life on Mars I need something to work with."

"I dread to think what they'll think of us learning about us from you."

"I don't know what you're complaining about. I like Humans." He turns back to Mister Leas. "Haven't I always said how much I like Humans?"

"Hey." Dwayne nudges me. "There she is." I follow his gaze as Miss Smart walks in behind the lawyer. Her hair is done up in a high ponytail and she's wearing a plain white t-shirt with calf length trousers of red denim. Her whistle's on a chain around her neck, tucked in to her t-shirt. She looks… Friendly. Innocent, even. I suppose that explains her appeal. "You sure you want to do this?"

I look across the room to where Kon and M'gann have taken up position. **M'gann?**

**Her mind is… Ugh. It's... She's exactly like they said.**

**If it were easy, it wouldn't require us. Will the approach Dwayne suggested work?**

**Probably.**

**Is provoking her really such a good idea? This isn't exactly a tough assignment and Missus Spencer wants us to keep a low profile.**

**I won't start anything, I just need to get a closer look at her.** Miss Smart walks around the seats, leans down over John's shoulder and whispers something in his ear. He keeps it together better than he did when we talked about her earlier. Looking into her I see orange, red and yellow, yellow of the outwards, 'inflicting on others' variety. The texture of the orange is a little off as well. Not exactly a desire coming from herself, not exactly one imposed from outside…

"Because if you're not, we can just do the smart thing and head back to the pool table." He pauses. "Or we can go somewhere and you can show me your tattoos."

I turn back to look at him and give a slight shake of my head. "I don't know, Dwayne. Maybe she's right. Maybe I am just that shallow."

He gives a slight wince, but carries on with the script anyway. "You're being too hard on yourself. She was just having a bad day. Just give her some time to calm down-."

"Hello Dwayne." Miss Smart's right behind me. Sounds like she's kept her original accent. Either that or she's done what I've done and accentuated it due to being surrounded by the colonials the whole time. "Who's your friend?"

"Ah, this is Paul. He's one of the people making sure John gets his flight this time."

"Ohhhhh." She walks around the side of me and confronts me with a perfect pout. Puts me in mind of something Buffy might have done. "And why do you think John deserves to be thrown off the planet? Is what he's done so bad?"

"I don't make policy, Miss..?"

"Call me Sally." They did say she didn't like being called Sara Smart ever, so that fits. She goes from pouting to winsome. "Are you sure you can't do anything about it? He's a really great guy."

No, it's like the blue half of her personality spectrum is just gone. That's really odd. "I'm sorry, Miss Sally-" She giggles. "-but the courts have made their decision. If he fills in a visa application properly I'm sure that his request will be considered the same as any applicant."

She leans her head against Dwayne's shoulder and I watch him tense up. "That's a real shame. I'll miss having him around."

That appears to be a genuine desire. I see-. Oh, goodness me. I suppose when you can't be hurt you can… A shapeshifter can reach places other people just can't. Seeing her essence like this makes the sensation rather more immediate than seeing a recording. I wonder if telepathy has the same effect on the user? "It's nice that he's got so many people willing to speak up for him."

"It really is." I just about manage to keep my face still. I saw red, but she doesn't..? It's just there, it isn't linked to anything. That doesn't make any sense! If I didn't know better I'd think it was getting piped into her from somewhere. "Say, I couldn't help overhearing you earlier. You said something about someone thinking that you're shallow?"

Yellow that time. I get a glimpse of a man's face and start running it through the ring's facial recognition program. "Oh, it's… Um, a friend of mine." I have the ring control my body language. 'Tough guy talking about something personal'. She's more likely to stay put if she smells blood in the water. "We had a… Well, a disagreement. I wasn't supposed to be working today… We had plans.. then.. this came up…"

"Oh, I'm sure your 'friend' is just annoyed. Have you tried calling her?" She blinks in surprise and then puts her right hand over her mouth. "I'm sorry, you didn't say it was a girl friend."

"Yeah, it… She is." Her acting is superb. Talented or a result of forty years working in the industry?

Miss Smart looks around, over to where Kon and M'gann are keeping watch over Mister J'aarkn. "Not her, right? Or is it? I can go talk to her if you think it would help?"

"No, not her. But I appreciate the thought." My scans of the whistle aren't showing anything special but my scans of her are. Minute vibrations throughout her body. Sound as a conductive medium for a spell, maybe? That could work. Her brain isn't that of a sociopath. She should still be capable of emotionally engaging with people. Why isn't she?

"Hey, Dwayne,-" She straightens up and gives him a slight shove away. "-why don't you go get us a plate of crisps and some dip. This sounds like something Paul needs to get off his chest. I've always got a friendly ear for people in distress."

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Ex Perdition 22

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2nd January

10:12 GMT -8

Mister J'aarkn looks at me sceptically as we walk across the airfield. "So what you're saying is, she's literally incapable of feeling hope, compassion or love?"

"I.. think so? What I do isn't like telepathy, and I don't have a planet full of other people who can do it with whom I can compare notes."

"Can't say I'm completely surprised." He ponders this information for a moment. "Is there something wrong with her brain? I'm not her biggest fan but if there's a biological basis maybe she could get it fixed."

"Not that I could see. It's weird; I kept nudging her to try and get an emotional response, her brain was lighting up in the right places but it didn't generate the normal emotional responses."

The guards on duty outside the hangar activate the mechanism which causes the hangar doors to start opening. Mister J'aarkn turns to look through the doors. "I'm sympathetic, but since I'm leaving the planet it isn't really my problem anymore."

"I was just hoping you'd.. picked something up."

He shakes his head. "Telepaths shouldn't go poking around diseased minds. Not without special training." He catches sight of his Bio-Ship and raises his hands wide. "Ahh! My boy!" His Bio-Ship responds by tugging on its clamps. Missus Spencer nods and ground crew remove them, allowing it to drift forwards. "Heh. Don't tell anyone, but I'm actually pretty bad at telekinesis as well."

M'gann gives the ship a quick look over and then turns back to Mister J'aarkn. "Your shapeshifting is pretty advanced, though. You can change far faster than I can."

"Well. That's biology. I've studied that, and it's not like I've been fucking twenty four seven since I got here. You attending an Earth college?" M'gann hesitates for a moment, then nods. "So… You're about.. forty, right?"

She shuffles self consciously. "Twenty four."

He blinks. "You haven't finished school on Mars? Oh, that's.. not a good idea. Especially with how strong your mental abilities are."

"I'm.. getting tuition here."

He shifts his head to match the one Mister J'onzz normally uses. "Military school? Look, I'm sure he's a great guy but he isn't a teacher. Manhunters don't get taught a lot of things you might-."

"No, there's a.. Human telepath."

He nods his head to the side. "That's a bit better. Still seems…" He thinks for a moment. "You got a shapeshifting teacher?" M'gann shakes her head.

"If that's a problem, I could ask if the Chinese have a Durlan they're willing to lend us."

Kon frowns slightly. "Or how about Plastic Man? He's a shapeshifter."

"Those might be able to teach application, but they can't teach technique like another Martian can." Mister J'aarkn reaches into his bag. "Ah, what the hey. I was sort of thinking about doing this anyway." He pulls out the case containing his amulets, opens it and takes one out.

M'gann leans a way a little. "I'm not.. sure I want to touch that."

"Oh, no, no, no. This isn't my fun recording. On this-" He holds it up. "-is everything I've learned from shapeshifting Human bodies. And everything else. Twenty five years of practice from the point of view of someone with no small amount of skill if I do say so myself."

"I'm not sure I want your.. skills."

"You've got the shape right, but the nerve distribution? The internal structures? Hmm?" He looks at her levelly and she glances away. "You're dating an alien, Miss M'orzz. They have different stuff. Heh, and they do different stuff with it. And if you want to do stuff the way they do stuff… Well." He wiggles the pendant back and forth. "It'll be far easier than working it out on your own."

M'gann reaches out to take it, then hesitates. "Don't you need this? Your research…"

"It's fine, I got a backup. I may be going home now, but I plan on coming back here eventually. And I plan on trying to get other Martians to come here as well. And that'll be easier if you make a go of living here."

"The, um…" She reaches out and takes the amulet from him. "Thank you."

"No sweat." He closes the case and returns it to his bag as his Bio-Ship drifts up to us.

Kon looks from him to the Bio-Ship. "If you're bad at telekinesis.. do you need me to lift you up?"

"I can float you up?"

"Nah. May as well leave the way I arrived. Katie, you wanted to see what Martians really look like."

"Not partic-."

"Like this." His body grows and reshapes, looking like… A green version of M'gann's true form. **Behold my majesty!** He spreads his arms wide. I think he's a little bit bigger than M'gann and he's noticeably more upright. The bits that are pale purple on M'gann are a slightly darker green on him. For some reason I expect his customary paunch to still be there in this form, but obviously it isn't. **Well? What d'yah think?**

Missus Spencer looks him over while I look towards the fence where the few news people who actually turned up are trying to get him in focus. "I'm underwhelmed."

**Curses! Foiled again!** He puts his right hand on the hull of his Bio-Ship and a portal opens to the interior. **Oooooh kaaaaay. Wish me luck.** He puts both hands on the lip of the opening and tries to pull himself up. Long arms: excellent reach, not so great for exerting force. We let him struggle for ten seconds before M'gann takes pity on him and lifts him up with telekinesis. He takes a moment to find his feet and then turns around to look back down. **Thanks. I was about to ask for a Martian friendly step ladder. How far up does American airspace go again?**

"Jackson!"

**Kidding. Kidding. Okay, here I go.** He disappears inside and the hole closes up.

Missus Chambers watches the Bio-Ship carefully. "Orange Lantern. You can fly in space, right?"

"Yes, but I'm not spending the next week escorting him to Mars the slow way if that's what you're about to ask."

"No, but-"

The Bio-Ship jerks in the air then drops to just above the ground. **Whoops! Had the damn thing in reverse.**

"-I'd like you to make sure he at least gets out of the atmosphere. I want him to go home, but even more than that I want this case off my desk."

"I suppose… Kon, M'gann, you alright getting home?"

Kon looks at M'gann and then back at me. "Actually, we thought we might spend the day here. Maybe fly up to San Francisco? Do some sight seeing?"

I nod. "Alright then. I'll just-" Mister J'aarkn's Bio-Ship tilts front end upwards and then accelerates into the sky, much to the excitement of the crowd on the far side of the fence. "-keep an eye on him. If you want me to pick you up when you're finished, you know how to get hold of me."

"Right, thanks. Um." Kon looks at M'gann, who's staring at the amulet in her hands. "You really going to use that?"

"I think I'll get Uncle J'onn to check that it's safe first. And not full of… You know."

"Good idea. Now, if you'll excuse me?" A nod from Kon and a wave from M'gann and I rise into the air before accelerating after Mister J'aarkn's ship. This shouldn't take all that long, but I don't want to turn into a permanent third wheel. Maybe Zatanna and I can get the work on the Fortress in after all?

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Ex Perdition 23

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3rd January

06:29 GMT +8

When I first visited the Great Ten I did so by appearing at their headquarters in the Great Wall complex. The name is a bit of a misnomer; while the facility is close to the famous world heritage site with which it shares its name it isn't located in the structure itself. Even if it was somehow practical to dig into the ancient structure the cultural ministry would have gone berserk. Rather, the facility is located in the Ordos Desert in Shaanxi Province on the grounds that unlike a major tourist hotspot no one had any reason to go there.

But that isn't where we're meeting today. The Dragonwing operates out of Anshan Airbase in Liaoning Province and with the death of Captain Han on Friday the place is buzzing with all of the scientists who will be involved in the process of bonding his successor to the craft. Given my positive working relationship with the Chinese authorities I was the one tasked with returning their ship to them and I took the opportunity to make them an offer. Father Box's files on Durlan technology are sadly deficient, and those I took from Jordan's ring were rather lacking in detail as well. In return for all data they possess on Durlan technology I would endeavour to make the next Immortal Man's name more than an empty boast.

I stand on the far side of the hush tube's portal which opens into the north most interior wall of General Yen's office. I can see in but while they know I'm here they can't see out. General Yen is sitting at his desk while Chairman Jiang stands just behind him to his right. The general isn't actually a direct part of the Great Ten project. He doesn't have authority over their personnel once they transfer over from the air force, but as a practical matter he has to be involved in matters like this as one of his responsibilities is locating and training potential future Immortal Men. When Captain Han died there were six highly skilled and trained hopefuls waiting to jump into his suit, but until they do they're air force and they answer to Yen. The pilots on this base are also the ones called upon to give air support to the Great Ten's Xeno-Teams, though they usually aren't authorised to actually know what they're shooting at.

There's a knock on the door. The general just manages to avoid looking in my direction before straightening himself up slightly. "Come!" The door is opened from the far side and our preferred candidate marches through. Literally marches, legs and arms moving in a way which looks quite unnatural. Captain Chen is wearing black trousers and the Type Seven blue jacket, and he looks neither left nor right nor down as he approaches the desk, stamps to a halt and salutes the general. Yen returns it and Chen stands rigidly to attention.

Yen waves his right hand. "At ease, Captain." Without lowering his gaze at all, Chen shifts to the precise regulation definition of 'at ease'. Yen doesn't wince, but he does use his eye movement to convey that he thinks his subordinate is being ridiculous. He looks behind the captain and nods at one of the guards outside the room, who closes the door. Yen takes a breath and focuses his attention on Chen. "As you are no doubt by now aware, Captain Han -the serving Immortal Man in Darkness- has died. Though you are not currently cleared to hear the details of 'how', his funeral will be on Tuesday. Obviously your attendance is mandatory." Chen doesn't move or otherwise give any sign of having heard.

Chairman Jiang's eyes narrow slightly. "Captain Chen, the Great Ten project already has a robot. It does not need another."

Chen's eyes widen fractionally. "I apologise, Comrade Chairman." Oh? I hadn't realised he was gay. "I merely wish-."

Yen shakes his head. "We didn't make our decision on the basis of how well you can stand up straight." Chen starts to tilt his head to look at him, then catches himself and stops. "Yes, that means what it sounded like. You have been selected as the late Captain Han's successor."

Chen barely moves, but his heart rate increases and his brain is moving into full happy mode. Now that he has confirmation of what he was hoping for he allows himself to actually look at his superiors. "Sir, if I may ask..?" They both nod at him. "Captain Han has not been seen on base since Thursday. How long..?"

"Friday."

"I… Forgive me, but is there a reason why I have not begun the bonding process already? The records on the previous pilots indicated that it can take several weeks to adjust to the Dragonwing's control system."

Yen picks up one of the dossiers on his desk. "Colonel Li Lok, the Dragonwing's first pilot. A highly decorated officer, perhaps the best in the air force at the time. Even with what we knew about Durlan technology from our previous encounters he lasted a mere eight months." He pushes the dossier aside and takes the next one in the pile. "Major Li Yi. No relation. With the radiation treatment and the new interface designed with what we'd learned from the Qinghai Incident, he lasted a little under two years before undergoing the same meltdown you saw Captain Wei undergo on the day you first arrived."

"I understand that, sir. We all do. It is a price which any of us would be willing to pay."

"But would it not be better-" I step through the portal. His head snaps around and he instinctively reaches for a sidearm he isn't carrying. "-if you didn't have to?" Chen looks to his superiors for some sort of direction but they remain impassive. "You are expensive, Captain Chen. Your education up to this point, all of the fuel and munitions expended while you learned to fly. And the time it takes to get a man to your level of ability!" I take a few steps towards him. "To say nothing of getting to the point at which you are skilled enough with the Dragonwing itself to be let out on missions with it."

"Captain Chen." Chen tears his eyes away from me and looks at Jiang. "The intent of the Standing Committee on Metahuman Affairs on this matter is to move to a situation where it is no longer necessary for us to sacrifice our brave servicemen in order to use the alien 'Dragon Wing' vessel. Mister Grayven has offered to assist us in the improvement of the pilot interface system. To that end he has been granted high level access to our records-" And they were actually surprisingly honest about that. "-concerning our encounters with the Durlan menace. You may speak freely in front of him."

Chen nods before looking me over once more. "I believe I have read your file."

"Did they get my good side for the pictures?"

"What is not in the copy you read-" We both turn to look at Jiang. "-is that Grayven is the person who handed the Roanoke Island criminals over to us."

"My pleasure."

Chen looks puzzled. "I understood that he…" He turns his head in my direction. "That you were working with the Justice League."

"I am. But those four needed to die. China had the means and the will where the League did not."

Yen looks up at me. "Have you had any success in tracking down the last of them? Klarion, I think his name is?"

"Mmm. Some. Work in progress." Tracking him down is simplicity itself; Nabu has shared a spell with Zatanna that would almost certainly draw him out. The trick is finding a way to harm the bastard.

"He is also the main reason why Celestial Archer is on detached duty at present. Grayven has the confidence of the Committee in this matter."

Chen nods. "What is required of me?"

I point at a clipboard on General Yen's desk. "When you sign the documents relating to your transfer, there's a section on 'technological, biological and xenotechnological' modifications. They added a page authorising arcane alterations. Sign it and we can get started."

"Arcane?" He frowns. "Magic?"

"Both alchemical and.. modifications to the structure of your soul. Simply making you tougher wouldn't extend your lifespan due to how the Durlan picotechnology works. Increasing your ability to regenerate the damage they cause would, but it might interfere with your ability to make an interface at all."

"So what will you do?"

"To begin with I will simply monitor what happens during the interface process. Durlan technology is advanced but essentially mundane. There's no reason to suppose at this stage that I wouldn't be able to simply remove it entirely from your body and then reset you to remove any lingering damage."

"Then I would have to restart the bonding from nothing."

"Yes. Far from ideal. What I'm aiming to do is a little more sophisticated. In fact I.. don't think I can explain it fully in a Human language. By modifying the layout of your soul I should be able to fool the universe into not allowing the interface to harm you. I make no promises; it may well take several attempts before I can get it to work as intended."

"My service to China comes first. But… I have no great love of the idea of my time as Immortal Man ending with my body liquefied." He turns to the desk. "Sir? May I?" Yen nods and Chen picks up the paperwork. "Sirs, if I may ask: what does he get out of this?"

Jiang looks a little less disapproving. "As well as access to our data, Grayven will be working with volunteers from our Xeno-Teams on systems of further Human augmentation."

"The Justice League have proven… Reluctant, to embrace my methods. Fortunately for me the People's Republic is a little more.. far sighted."

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Ex Perdition 24

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2nd January

23:23 GMT

The fluorescent tube on the ceiling blinks and splutters as we stand in the small corrugated iron warehouse. Solidly constructed shelving runs around three walls, separated from the area John and I are standing in by what looks like a fairly heavy duty ward drawn in white paint on the floor. The shelving is three levels high, though presently only a small part of the shelves to our right have anything on them.

"Look, mate… I don't think it's working."

Each dead mouse has a little Nabu helmet, and is positioned in a protective circle decorated with an ankh. The circles on each shelf are connected in serial by copper wires which then go down the supports at each end to the focal point: Nabu's skull.

"We can't know that for sure."

"I think he'da done something if it was. He been back to Bialya since we visited?"

"Not as far as I know. " I shrug. "I can't monitor him the whole time. You're sure that the scry wards are working?"

"Since we're not up to our necks in golden ankhs? Yeah, they're working."

I study the room for a few moments. "The basic set-up's working though, right?"

John nods. "Anyone touching that wire would be in for the shock of their lives."

"Okay, we can't measure its effectiveness against him directly. Can we?" He shakes his head. "How long have we got the warehouse for?"

"I paid for a month."

"Money really isn't an issue. Would a different animal work better?"

John thinks for a moment. "Zoroastrians consider Dogs to be orderly." I wince. "Don't suppose you could scrounge up a Lamassu from somewhere?"

"Probably not, and I draw the line at intelligent beings. If there's power in the circuit, it's got to be going somewhere, right?"

"Could be loss in transmission. Or maybe we're just not getting through his defences."

"I thought the bones-."

He throws his hands up. "I know, alright! It should be, but it isn't." He shakes his head and takes out a cigarette. "Look, it's your money. We can keep this place going long as you want. I've got something else I need to work on for a week or so, but any idiot can do the physical stuff. Circle, ankh, dead thing, wire."

I nod. "I'm going to assume that it is working, just not enough to affect him visibly as yet." I take another look around the macabre set-up. "I can fill this up without it being a problem?"

"Yeah-. Well, the shelves, yeah. Don't just dump stuff all over the floor."

"Wasn't planning to." I look up to the ventilation system, where my -and Lantern Stewart's- contribution is humming quietly to itself. "Is the air purification system working?"

"Can you smell anything?"

"No, but my environmental shield tends to block out-."

"No, it's working fine. How long 'till we need to change the filters?"

"If all it's doing is absorbing gasses, a couple of years. Carbon chemistry's a universal constant. That'll get cut down if you keep huffing ash into it, though." He moves the lighter away from his cigarette. "This other project you've got going on. Anything I can help with?"

"Don't think so, mate. Bit of a get together of magicians, investigating some odd happenings. Doubt anything much'll happen and I've got your number if it does."

"Okay, but if it does? Don't hesitate, alright." He nods. "How was Tasmania?"

"Fucking miserable. Got to see a death camp through the eyes of one of the guards. Angie had to talk to the ghosts of the victims."

I tilt my head slightly to the side. "I'm not an expert or anything, but when you take your girlfriend on holiday somewhere, aren't you meant to go somewhere.. nice?"

He turns and walks towards the door. "Maybe I think it's fair warning. Not a lot of lounging on the beach going on in my life."

I follow on behind him. "You don't need to tell me how dangerous your life is. Maybe you just shouldn't go out with normal people?"

"She kept it together alright-" He turns the handle and pushes the door open. "-and we got the information." I follow him out and he closes the door behind us. "Might even have helped a few ghosts escape their death dream."

"Are any of the people you're calling in to help likely to be willing to help us with our problem?"

He gives me a humourless grin as he locks the door. "I'm a bit sceptical about them being willing to help me."

"I can bribe better than you. Plus, they don't hate me already."

"I'm told that helps." He thinks for a moment. "Nat Kuhn might be able to improve the rig we're using here. Alba's basically one of your lot already. She never knew Giovanni and I'm not sure where she'd stand on Nabu." He shrugs. "I don't think any of them have anything essential."

"What about Map?"

"He's handy, no question there. Why single him out?"

"Worst case… Second worst case scenario. We can't find a way to remove Nabu peacefully or easily and have to fight him while he's still at or near full power. He can teleport. How do we keep him in one place so we can hit him?"

John lights his cigarette as he thinks about it. "There's ways of messing up someone's perception. Not sure how we could hit him with a spell he couldn't.. just…" He pauses. "Ah, fuck me. Map could cover all of London. You want to fight him here."

"I don't want to fight him at all. But if you can't think of somewhere better…"

"Bloody going to try." He leads the way down the path back towards the main road. "What's the worst case scenario, then?"

"Nabu finds out what we're doing and picks us off one by one as 'chaotic influences'. We still don't know what he did with the people he picked up on Roanoke. Or Onomatopoeia."

"Can't say I'm all that worried about what happens to mass murderers."

"It's the principle. Superheroes get leeway because they follow certain rules. Even Batman hands the people he catches over to the police for trial and sentencing. If someone in the Justice League has decided that they aren't happy with the status quo, if they want to start handing out punishment themselves…"

"Again, bunch of arseholes."

"Yeah, that's why I'm not kicking off about it already. But our society assumes that justice works in a particular way. If we let anyone have that sort of power, and there's no.. established and agreed on procedure for that to happen, then it's an arbitrary use of unaccountable power by someone who's doing it because they can." He doesn't look convinced. "You heard Nabu; you're a chaotic influence. You want him coming after you? Or your friends or family because they've been influenced?"

"Who watches the watchmen?"

"Everyone. And they have a rather depressing tendency to take their lead from us."

"What about when you do it, then?"

"Citizen's arrest, technically." He opens his mouth to make a smart response and I put up my hands. "I know I've been the beneficiary of that slack. That's why I try hard not to overstep. But I honestly think that Nabu considers himself the highest possible authority already, and.. that… Doesn't bode well for the rest of us."

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NEXT CHAPTER

Homecoming

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Homecoming 1

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Homecoming

3rd January

06:54 GMT -5

The four of us wait patiently outside the external zeta tube terminus for Garfield and Missus Logan to arrive from Qurac. I haven't been back here since the first day I came to the mountain but aside from the grass getting a bit longer nothing much has changed. Kon and M'gann have their standard school bags containing the small pile of homework they were set over the Christmas holiday period. They're also carrying torches as the sun won't be up for another quarter of an hour or so and we're some distance away from where the street lighting starts. I hope Garfield doesn't get too jetlagged from the travelling back and forth every day. With the seven hour difference he's coming from early afternoon to early morning and he'll be going back from Mid afternoon to late night.

Diana's wearing a pink coloured formal blouse, dark blue business jacket and a matching pleated knee length skirt. It's slightly strange seeing her dressed like that. When I've seen her out of uniform before it was either in what I think of as Themysciran clothing or casual wear. Combined with the glasses and the altered hairstyle I could just about understand her passing un-. Well, not unremarked upon, she's still a strikingly attractive woman. Not noticed as being Wonder Woman, perhaps. Just about.

I still don't understand how glasses work so well.

Something else I learned today: Diana owns a car. And can drive it herself. No diplomatic number plates either. I don't.. think she has a cover identity. Is she planning on turning up around town as.. Diana Kent? That would be weird.

Kon's looking at the car as well. "Not that I'm complaining, but we've been walking to school just fine since September."

"I know. But your principal has been requesting a meeting with your parents." She smiles fondly at him and he reciprocates. "And since that is now me I thought it might be best to show my face around the school gates once in a while."

Kon nods, then freezes up. "Ah, I don't think I've done anything wrong?"

"I know you haven't. Your teachers have been extremely impressed by the level of knowledge you've displayed in your lessons."

He shrugs. "The G-Gnomes did all the hard work. I just have to remember it."

"Maybe we should offer the school their services. Do wonders for their league table position."

"Regardless of how you came by the knowledge, the fact remains that you're considerably better informed and more academically able than most students in your grade. The school may want to offer you a chance to study at a more advanced level."

"Oh. Ah. Great. I guess."

She smiles at him fondly. "And I'd like to be able to spend more time with you in public."

"You can do that now."

"Kon-. Conner, we talked about this. Deciding not to have a secret identity isn't something you can take back. If you're still set on abandoning it by the time you finish High School then I will accept your decision, but until then I expect you to maintain it." He nods, clearly not entirely happy with the situation.

Not sure what I think on the subject. Themyscira probably has some sort of civil list type arrangement. It's not like Diana pays for the embassy by selling her own action figures or anything stupid like that. Could the Genomorphs use him as a PR rep? He'd need to increase his visibility for that to be the case. He hasn't mentioned to me finding one part of his education more interesting than the rest so I can't really try suggesting careers. Superheroing's his life so the hours would need to be very flexible… It's the same problem I have with Donna: converting super strength into cash just isn't that easy.

"Recognised, A one nine, Marie Logan."

A flash of light from the phone booth and a slightly dazed Missus Logan gets out. M'gann immediately lights up and scurries over to her. "Hi Marie!"

"Good-." She pauses, taking in her environment. "-morning Megan. I still don't think I've quite gotten used to-."

"Recognised, A two zero, Garfield Logan." He materialises, takes a couple of quick steps forwards then nearly trips up on the uneven ground but manages to catch himself.

M'gann walks over to him and kneels down. "Hey, Garfield. Ready for your first day of school?"

"Yeah? I think so." He looks even less certain than he sounds. He distracts himself by studying the one member of the group he doesn't immediately recognise. His eyes narrow as he regards Diana, and then they suddenly widen. "You're Wonder Woman!"

She inclines her head slightly. "I-."

"Now remember, Garfield." Missus Logan bends down to lecture her son. "You're not allowed to talk about Megan or Conner being superheroes with anyone they haven't already told. Or that you come to school by zeta tube."

"Yeah, I know." He bends around his mother to look at Diana. "But you are, right?"

"Sometimes. But today, you can just call me 'Diana'."

"Okay." I suppose he's probably a bit young to appreciate that level of familiarity from her. "Is Missus Reilly here?"

Diana looks at me. I shrug. "Um, she's in New York at the moment."

"Oh, okay." He looks around the group again. "Is it time to go yet?"

Diana consults her watch. "I suppose it is. I'll be driving you-."

"I call shotgun!" He dashes towards her car and then stops suddenly as he gets a better look at it. "Awwww… I thought you'd have a secret agent car or something!"

"I prefer my vehicles to be road legal. But you're welcome to sit in the front if you like."

Missus Logan walks up behind Garfield and pulls him into a hug. "Remember to do what your teachers tell you. And try and get along with the other kids."

"Moooom."

She kisses him on the forehead before letting him go. Diana walks over to the car and opens the passenger side door for him. He hesitates for a moment and then jumps in.

Kon and M'gann head for the near side rear door as Diana walks around to the driver side. Kon gets in first while M'gann stops next to the door. "Why were you expecting Miss Reilly to be here?"

"Oh. I was worried Mom might get lonely with me being here and Miss Reilly said she'd make sure she didn't. She's been at the sanctuary a lot lately. Mom says they're best friends." He pauses for a moment. "Well, she said they were 'special friends', but that means the same thing, right?"

Huh?

M'gann gets in as Diana turns the key in the ignition and the car pulls away.

Huh?

Missus Logan stands next to me, sagging slightly and with her right hand over her face. "Tell me you didn't hear that."

"I… Didn't hear that? But.. that.. thing I didn't hear..?"

"She.. started.. visiting on a regular basis after you stopped by back in December."

"I… I'm sorry, I'm just a little surprised. Given the trouble she was having with social interaction… I mean…" I shake my head in incomprehension. "How?"

"How old are you again?"

"Eighteen. Oh, I don't-. I'm sorry, I don't mean to-."

"No, no, she.. said you'd helped her a lot. When she came back the first time… She.. noticed that I'd been.. looking at her. She was actually.. quite… Assertive."

"Assertive in a social situation?"

"She.. walked up to me. Naked."

"That that that is pretty assertive. Um. You do know that she-?"

"That she's a robot? That was sort of obvious when she stopped faking her facial expressions. I…" She exhales. "I've been.. cut off from the rest of the world at the sanctuary, since Mark died. It probably wasn't healthy but.. it.. got me through." She pauses, trying to get her thoughts in order. "It's been.. nice, having another adult around. She's good with the animals, great with Garfield…"

"And you don't need to worry about Bialyan patrols with her there. Well, I'm.. happy for the two of you." I nod, more to myself than to her. "Flabbergasted, but happy."

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Homecoming 2

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I͘͜͡ ̸̶́͏d̸͝͏͘o̴͞ǹ̛͝'̀͝t̸͢ ̕̕ķn҉͜o̶̧̨w̷̴̴̢ ̸͠͡͡͡ẃ̸̢́͡ḩ̢e̵̷̡͝r̢͘͘҉e̷̴͠ ̕͠I̶͜͡ ͠͝҉͡͝a̴͏҉͟m̴̶̢̧̢

̵w͏̢ḩ̷҉e͟͢͞͞r̡͟e͢҉҉͝ ͘͡I̡͠'̷̡̛͝m͠͏ ̵̶̷̡̕g̢͠o̷҉̷̨͞i҉̢̀͘̕n̵҉g̶̸̷̛

҉͠o̷r̷̛͘͡ ̸͜͡͠ẁ̸̧̧͏h̡̡͞a͢͞҉t̴͞͝ ̷̨̀͠I̵͘͘̕͠'͢͝m͟҉ ̡d̴̸o̴̴̧͢͝ì͘͟n̛͘ǵ̸̸͞͠

̸̀A̵͝ĺ͘ĺ̛͢͡͞ ̧̀i̵̕s̨̛͡͝͝ ̨̕n̷҉u̡͝͝m̴b̢͘

I continue walking down the deserted streets. Around me are signs of recent destruction but whatever caused it has long passed by. All but the most enthusiastic fires have died for lack of fuel and smashed walls have already collapsed and stilled. I step over the body of a man who looks like he tried to cut off his own skin with a pen knife and try taking a moment to assess the situation. In the distance I can hear muffled cries and moans, each one fading to nothing as I try and judge its direction or location. Having nowhere better to go and no real sense of place I press on; in such a nightmarish world surely one place is as good as another?

Destruction. I should have prevented this. It was my.. job, wasn't it? My.. my friends… My friends. Why can't I remember..?

"Aaarrrrwwwwwwooooohhhh!"

I feel… Dread. I'm a.. god, but that sound makes me feel so small. I keep going, keep walking, even though… Even though I know what's around the next corner. I step out of the side street onto what's left of Brompton Road, a vision of hell from some medieval painting. Wrecked vehicles, dead and dying men, women and children. The injuries vary but a quick glance shows many to be self inflicted. That, or caused by those immediately next to them as they in turn struck down their attackers. I slow from my habitual stroll. I.. don't want to keep going but somehow I can't not. My breath comes in short rasps, my heart races in a way it hasn't since… I can't remember.

"Rrraaaarrwwwhhhh!"

The very shape of the road draws my eyes onwards… And worse, upwards. At first my mind fails to comprehend what my eyes are seeing, a large.. vertical.. thing… It moves in my general direction but in the darkness I can't.. clearly.. make it out. Has a building collapsed further? No, that wouldn't-. It's a paw, and as it lands, as the ground shakes and I'm thrown to the ground my eyes move up further still, finally perceiving the monster that has doomed the world.

"Rrraahhhh!"

The great orange eyes, more holes in the blackness than eyes. The fur made of shadows, the great grey teeth, the snarling mouth riven by the insane rage and hate that drives it. Tiny as I am, it sees me now, a lone living thing amongst the desolation. I freeze, mouth dry and mind empty as its vast head plummets towards me and I thrust out my right hand, sheets ripping as I try to sit up in bed and just sort of flop back. It's it's oh thank goodness.

My heart's still racing and I'm still breathing like I'd run… Like my pre-ascension self had tried running a marathon and collapsed through exhaustion. I run my right hand across my brow. Actual sweat! My goodness.

"Ploong."

I look across to where Father Box and the ring rest on the bedside table to my right. My left arm is reaching out across the mattress towards… I'm reaching out to Jade. For comfort. I know full well she isn't here but in my panic I just instinctively…

This is ridiculous. This isn't the first time I've dreamt of the Shadow Dog but that was far more intense.. more real than any of my previous nightmares. The first time it happened I thought that perhaps I was seeing Apokolips or.. some Earth like interpretation of it but that, that was London. I pull my left arm in and push myself into a sitting position. Prophetic visions? Could it be a normal nightmare? A natural product of all of the changes and stresses I've been through? Or is someone just messing with me?

That, I can do something about.

"Ring."

It obediently flies out in front of me. I hold out my left hand and it drops onto my left ring finger.

7th January

02:16 GMT -5

Seriously? Two o'clock..? Ugh. I push the torn sheets aside and lift up off the bed before landing on the floor. My mouth's still dry and I doubt that I could get back to sleep again. I head to the door of my room and then out along the empty corridor, leaving Father Box behind. Kitchen. I'll head to the kitchen. Give myself time to calm down and plan out my strategy. And get a drink. I still feel a little unsteady, which is strange in and of itself. The ring or my own divinity should have sorted that out by now. This.. suggests that high end magic is in play. I wouldn't have thought that Morpheus himself would have any reason to target me. Too subtle for Klarion. Maybe if it had been a cat… But… Dog made of shadows. That reminds me of something. Can't quite…

I hear pouring water from the kitchen just up ahead. When we moved into the mountain I intentionally chose a room that would be close to the 'action areas' both so that I wouldn't have far to travel and so that I would be the first thing a potential home invader would run into. But an invader wouldn't run a tap. Can't hear a voice… I take a moment to consider my state of undress. I've taken to sleeping in loose fitting silk trousers. Is anyone likely to be offended? Wouldn't think so. I push open the door and walk through.

Tao looks up, then returns the kettle to its stand and turns it on. He's wearing blue -and I hesitate to think of it like this, but damn it they are- kung fu pyjamas. "Grayven. What brings you here at this time of the night?"

I trudge over to the kitchen table, pull my specially reinforced chair out and sit down. I don't really need the reinforcements anymore but they do rather serve to mark out my chair. "Nightmare. You? Time zones still messing you about?"

He shakes his head. "No. A nightmare with me also. I thought that perhaps some tea would assist me in returning to sleep." He considers his cup for a moment and then looks at me enquiringly. "Would you like to try some? It is a most soothing blend."

"No, thank you." I send a filament to the cupboard and the fridge. "Hot milk for me." The fridge door opens and one of my bottles of fresh milk floats out to land on the table before me. I set one of my oversized tankards down beside it as I unscrew the lid and pour the liquid into my drinking vessel.

"If.. I am not overstepping my bounds..?"

"What was it?" He nods. "No, that's… That's fine. I was walking through a ruined city, death and destruction everywhere. To begin with I didn't recognise it as London, not until I-."

"Came out onto a major thoroughfare." Tao meets my eyes for a moment, then looks away, nodding. "It was Beijing for me. And when I came out onto the road-."

Oh, this is not good. "A huge Dog-."

"Made out of shadow."

"This is bad, right? I don't have much experience with-."

"Forgive me if I am intruding." Tao and I both blink and look around as Kaldur walks in through the hangar entrance. "I.. heard voices. And I believe that I could benefit from the company." For nightwear Kaldur appears to prefer a green, blue and red speckled cotton shirt with navy blue cotton trousers. And -for reasons which I can only guess at- a scarf. I thought he didn't feel the cold?

The kettle bubbles and pings, prompting Tao to pour the near boiling water into his teapot. "Your company is always welcome, Kaldur. But.. may I enquire? Do you flee as we do from nightmares of a great Dog made of shadows?"

Kaldur's eyes widen slightly, then he nods. "It had destroyed Poseidonis. Everywhere was in ruins. I was the only one alive."

I grimace. "The same dream with some localisation. Ring, show me our team mates in sequence."

An orange image of Kon's face appears over the table. He's sleeping peacefully. The image shudders for a moment and is replaced by one of Mat-. Of Mitchell. Must get him used to being called that. M'gann's also fine. Richard's sleeping like an unusually smug log.

Kaldur frowns slightly. "If the effect were targeting the mountain…"

Wallace is pacing his room. Artemis' eyes are wide open as she presses her head against her pillow. Raquel's comatose. Zatanna is sitting on the side of her bed, shaking slightly. William is asleep peacefully. I dismiss the last image. "And all the ones affected…"

Kaldur nods. "Are people you have Awakened." He glances at Tao. "Or were Awakened by another."

I nod. "We have a problem." And then I squint and shake my head in frustration. "And what the hell is with that scarf, man?"

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Homecoming 3

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7th January

02:18 GMT -5

He raises his right hand slightly towards it, then stops it half way. I roll my eyes and take a drink from my mug. Self conscious about his choice of night apparel? It is a fairly hideous scarf. I think I've seen him wear it a couple of times when he's come in from a walk outside and needed something to cover.. his…

"Something wrong with your gills?" He looks down slightly. "I can have a look if you want but if the problem is arcane in nature you would be better off consulting an Atlantean doctor."

"My gills are.. not.. precisely the source of the problem." Both of his hands go up and delicately start unwinding the scarf. I frown in curiosity. I wonder what exact-. Oh. "You had told me that those who undergo the Awakening may undergo certain.. physical changes-" I stand up and walk towards him, staring at his neck. "-but I did not realize that this was what you meant."

Oh my goodness me. "I didn't either. May I-" I gesture with my right hand. "-touch it?" A shallow nod and I run the three middle fingers of my right hand along the smooth skin of the left side of his neck. "How long..?"

"They had felt strange for a few days, but there was no physical change until I awoke this morning. Can I assume that this is not something you intended?"

"Not specifically." I take a half-pace back, left fist tapping against my lips. Jolly odd. I was expecting the Awakening to exacerbate deviations from the Human physical norm, not eliminate them. Though.. I suppose… "Have you tried breathing water?"

He shakes his head. "Not since I woke up."

"Does it hurt?" I turn to look at Tao, who now has a cup of tea in his hands. "It seemed like a pertinent question."

"It does not hurt. In truth-" The fingers of his left hand follow the path mine took moments before. "-it does not feel like anything. The discomfort at having gills in a dry environment to which I have.. had become accustomed is gone."

Ring, scan.

By your command.

Without Father Box by my side what the ring shows me is too limited to draw any firm conclusions from. The grafts.. appear to be expanding, but that… The dream. A surge of magic might accelerate the progression. That makes sense. "This is fascinating, but I think that the Shadow Dog invading our dreams should probably take priority." Kaldur nods. "Assuming that you don't feel unwell?"

He flexes his right arm, making a fist and then relaxing it again. "I do not feel unwell at all. If anything… I would say that I feel…" He raises his right hand out in front of him and gestures upwards, his tattoos glowing faintly. Tao raises his eyebrows as his tea leaves the cup and floats upwards. Kaldur makes a fist and it freezes solid in the air. Ring, detail view. Kaldur turns his hand palm upwards and opens it. Tao's frozen tea vibrates and then vaporises in response, the barely detectable cloud of gas forming a haze in the air. From what I can see of Kaldur's metaphysique it looks like he's shifted to something more like a pureblood, the slightly angular shapes of the cruder version of the graft-spell used to allow him to live underwater changing into the more rounded shapes of the version Ahri'ahn created.

Fascinating.

But not pertinent. "Since you don't appear to have been disempowered, I'm going to suggest that we insomniacs arm ourselves and locate the source of our shared nightmare."

Kaldur lowers his arm and the tea returns to Tao's cup. He takes a sip while Kaldur stares at his own gently glowing arm. "I am not so powerful."

"Demonstrably, you are."

"This level of control and power is the province of senior battlemages."

"Or gods." He freezes for a second, then looks at me. "You're not bound by normal rules anymore. And I'll wager that you've retained the ability to breathe underwater as well."

He nods. "It would not be fair to wake those of our team mates who have school tomorrow."

"I agree. Why don't you and Tao get yourselves equipped while I do a phone-around. Zatanna is probably our best chance of detecting the source."

Tao looks slightly uncomfortable as he looks from me to Kaldur. "You wish for us to deploy without order from the Batman?"

Kaldur nods. "This is a response to an attack. We can act ourselves. Still, it may be best for us to keep them in the loop."

Ring? Ah. "It appears that Green Arrow has had a similarly disturbed night. I'll include him and-."

"Aaaahhroooawww." Mister Tawny stomps in from the hangar entrance, tail swishing and looking about ready to disembowel something.

I raise my eyebrows. "You as well?"

He walks to the entrance to the living area, turns and paces back. "Rrrrhhwww."

Tao edges away from the angry Tiger and puts his cup down on the sideboard. "I will prepare myself for our mission. Excuse me." He gives Kaldur a shallow bow and then skirts Mister Tawny to head in the direction of his quarters.

I kneel and Mister Tawny approaches me, rubbing his head against mine and making a throaty rumbling sound. I scratch his head with both hands and nuzzle back hard. "Bad dream, Mister Tawny? We all had it. We're going to find out where it came from and we're going to stop it." He pulls his head back slightly, just watching me.

"I will gather my equipment…" Something occurs to Kaldur. "Though I am not sure that I will still have need of my Water Bearers."

I nod, give Mister Tawny one last rub with my right hand and then stand, raising the ring to my left hand as Kaldur heads out of the room. "Ring, call Green Arrow."

"By your command."

A moment later I hear a ring tone. Ring, show me-.

"Uhh. Someone better be dying." The ring shows me a barely awake Ms Lance reaching over to take hold of the handset at her bedside. "Who is it? J'onn?" She shifts position slightly and realises that there's no one in bed next to her. "Ollie?"

Whoops. "I am most terribly sorry, sir. I was trying-."

She screws up her face further. "Grayven?"

"I apologise for aw-. For waking you up. We just suffered a psychic attack targeting the Awakened. I was trying to reach-."

"Oliver! Phone!" The ring shows her thrust it out in the direction of their bedroom's door as a sheepish looking Mister Queen returns, snatches it out of her hand and then beats a rapid retreat as Ms Lance buries herself once more beneath the covers.

"You just had to tick her off."

"Sorry sir."

"What's this about?"

"Everyone I know of who went through the Awakening just had the same-."

"Nightmare." His face grows sombre. "The world in ruins and a gigantic black dog coming after us."

"Just so. I was about to ask Zatanna to try and locate the source, and since you're the only Justice Leaguer to have undergone the process I'd appreciate it if you'd sign off on that."

"I'm not in charge of your team." He looks pretty rough, actually. "Is Kaldur okay with this?"

"Yes."

"Have you called Batman?"

"No."

"Alright, look." He sits down heavily at his kitchen table and rubs his face with his right hand. "You can get Zatara and Zatanna to look into it, but you're gonna need to get Batman to sign off on attacking anything."

I smile. Guess who I'm not sworn to obey. "Of course, sir."

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Homecoming 4

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7th January

02:28 GMT -5

Zatanna touches her right hand to Kaldur's head, four glowing triquetra floating around them on the inside of the protective circle on the floor. Tao is sitting cross-legged on the floor near the far wall, his eyes closed. Mister Tawny has taken to pacing around Zatanna's work area. Haven't had a chance for a decent two way conversation with him yet but he's still seriously wound up. It doesn't surprise me that Shadowcrest has dedicated, custom built ritual spaces for things like this. What does surprise me is that it wasn't better locked.

"So there really is a giant Shadow Dog of the Apocalypse?"

I return my attention to the image of Wallace just in front of me. "Perhaps. Something is certainly using high powered magics against us, and I see little profit in giving us insomnia."

He squeezes his eyes shut for a moment. "Ugh. If you.. need me, I can get ready in a few minutes."

"No, no. You have school later today."

"Oh, don't remind me."

"Zatanna can't detect any ongoing effect. If what we experienced was just the result some sort of arcane build up discharging, there shouldn't be anything to prevent you having a restful night."

"How did you even know I was awake?"

"Long range scan." He jerks, blinks, and then starts looking around his room. "Stop. Up a little. Bit more. Leeeft… There."

He looks directly at my point of view. "Dude."

"I don't routinely use it to watch my team mates sleep. Seriously, we-" I lean back as a book floats past me towards Zatanna. "-got this."

He nods. "Okay. Let me know how it went tomorr-. Tonight."

I nod and end the call. That makes everyone. Artemis was ardently in favour of coming with us but she was eventually susceptible to reason. Meanwhile I've been trying to rack my brains for anything I know about what this could be. Father Box hasn't got anything but from the way he's been ploonging he appears to find the whole situation fascinating.

Zatanna makes a circling motion with her left hand and the book's pages obediently turn. "Assuming that it actually is some sort of Dog creature… And it probably is; none of us are afraid of Dogs and the shape is too specific not to be intentional." The pages stop turning. "Ah, here we go. Kau I'pa, the Shadow Dog."

Kaldur looks at the book curiously. "Is that a bestiary of arcane creatures?"

"No. A Christian priest who worked in Tasmania wrote down a lot of the local people's myths and legends."

I smile. "Before the British ruthlessly exterminated them."

"No. I mean, yes, the British killed most of them, this was actually written from the accounts of survivors afterwards."

Kaldur nods. "What does it say?"

"Not much. There's a name, a description and a few vague notes…" She yawns, and the book sags in the air as she covers her mouth with her left hand. "It's supposed to be involved with some sort of disaster, but there isn't much actual information-." The door opens in a sudden jerk and Mister Zatara walks through, wearing a dressing gown and with a slim black book under his left arm. "Dad?"

He looks us over. "You cannot sneak into Shadowcrest without alerting its owner." He takes the book out from under his arm with his right hand and holds it up. "'When the doors slam open and the Great Dog comes running through our dreams, souls will be emptied like wine skins.' And you all shared the dream."

I nod. "You didn't?"

"No. But I had felt something.. strange, in the magic currents of the world." He gives Zatanna's ritual arrangement a quick look over. "You are attempting to track it back to the source?"

"Um. Yes?"

He nods. "You should not have begun such a work without me." She shrinks slightly. "But.. now that I am here… You may continue."

"I've.. taken psychometry resonance readings from Tao, Grayven, Mister Tawny and Kaldur." She removes her right hand from Kaldur's forehead and a fifth triquetra flickers into life, joining the other four. "Kaldur, could you step out of the circle, please?" He takes a step backwards. "Thank you. With these as a guide, a simple remote viewing spell should be able to follow the effect back to its source." The spinning triquetra form up into a pentagon in front of her.

Mister Zatara nods. "What about the potential for backlash? If this creature is powerful enough to affect your sleep even here, it could easily lash out and harm you through the connection."

"My spell has surge protectors. If something like that happens it just breaks the spell. It might not work if it's something smart and paying close attention, but I.. don't.. think that's the case."

"Then proceed."

She nods, takes a deep breath and holds out her arms towards the square. "Selpicnirp fo ecnanoser dna noitcennoc, dleihs em morf siht rewop dna laever ot em sti ecruos!"

A faint film of golden light flickers into being, its outer edge delineated by lines between the centre of the triquetras. For a moment I see a man and a woman sitting in a train carriage. The man's having some sort of fit while the woman and the few other passengers are staring out of the train window as the shadows outside form into the shape of a giant Dog-. Zatanna steps back as the triquetra shatter.

Kaldur looks at her with concern but she waves him off. "Was your spell showing us something that is happening now?"

Wait a moment. Giant Shadow Dog.. going after a train? Why does that sound familiar?

Ploong.

"Yes. In.. England. Somewhere near London."

Shadow Do-? Oooh shit. "We need to leave now." A boom tube portal leading to central London appears next to me even as I set the ring to search for every tra- there!

Mister Zatara nods. "I will accompany you. Should this require-."

"I'm sorry, but no. I can't trust you to keep a civil tongue in your head when dealing with John Constantine."

He freezes in shock for a moment and then his face contracts into a snarl. "Constant-!"

Filaments connect me to each of my team mates as I transition us through.

7th January

07:31 GMT

I land on the tracks about two hundred metres on from the oncoming train, my team mates a little off to the side. Off to the right I see the outline of the Dog itself, far smaller and less tangible than in our dreams. I thrust my arms forwards, orange light rushing along the track and flowing over the train as I break the connection between it and the electrified rail. It's still barrelling towards us. Carefully, now. Don't exceed the pressure tolerances of the hull. Lift… The front end starts to lift. Been a while since I tried lifting anything under these circumstances and I'd be lying if I said-.

"Niart esir ffo eht kcart dna emoc ot a etelpmoc pots!"

That helps. I feel the train's momentum just bleed away.

"Grayven, explain yourself!"

I'm smiling with relief as I look over to where Kaldur stands ready. His eyes are focused on the Dog. "The Dog isn't the threat. Look, we're in a major inhabited area here and it's focused on the train. If it just wanted to wreck the place… Why? Zatanna's spell showed us a man first. It didn't show us the Dog until it ran up to the window. If the magic came from the Dog-."

He nods in understanding. "It would have showed us the Dog before anything else."

"Exactly." I cut power to this section of track before depositing the train back down. Then two beams of orange flare from my eyes and strike a rune drawn in blood on the window of the carriage which the remote viewing spell showed us, disintegrating a large part of the side of the carriage. I try blasting Mister Spatchcock directly but the beams splash off with no effect. No, that would be too easy, wouldn't it? "What's say we find out what's really going on?"

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Homecoming 5

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7th January

07:33 GMT

Ring, data.

By your command.

I lead the way along the side of the train. A glance into the distance shows that the Dog isn't coming closer. I can see it… Well, no, I can't, but I can see where it blocks out the lights behind it. I can't really analyse its body language. Did whatever runic protection whatever her name… Angela? Whatever Angela put up actually hurt it? Was it specifically designed to fight the.. thing, and has a glass jaw against anything else?

Zatanna hurries up to me and puts her right hand on my right arm. "Grayven-."

"The target is possessing the body of a man named Jason Spatchcock. He was diagnosed as schizophrenic as a youth but showed an unexplained cessation of symptoms after an.. 'incident' at the psychiatric hospital he had been living in."

"What sort of incident?"

"A town-wide riot in Stone Cross which saw the place invaded by strange men in wooden masks wearing robes and necklaces made of sewn together hands. The locals went mad and the invaders went about beating people to death with sticks."

I hear Tao put an arrow on string. "Was the Justice League involved?"

"No. By the time anyone from outside the area responded it was all over bar the screaming. Police haven't the slightest clue what happened and are hiding that fact behind a 'thorough investigation'."

I hear a 'swosh' noise as Kaldur activates his Water Bearers. "A cult of some kind? Perhaps a summoning that went wrong."

"That would be my guess."

"Though if Jason Spatchcock was indeed possessed, everyone else may simply have been a distraction."

Hmm. Might be, though I'd have thought that the cult would have picked him up if that were the case. "Jason was released earlier today, signed out by his sister Angela. His notes report him drawing pictures of a monstrous black Dog."

I look up at the train windows. More than a few fearful looking people peering out at us through the windows. How many of them have seen the Dog? And how many of them know us by sight? Some might recognise Zatanna's face but I imagine that my uniform is the one most recognisable. The ring notifies me as the emergency door release is pulled in three places on the far side of the train and people start fleeing. Not a bad plan, really. Phones are being rung -no harm there- and pictures are being taken of us. Bright inside, dark out here… My armour will be recognised. "Zatanna, I'm going to need y-." What am I doing? "Aqualad, I recommend that Zatanna check Mister Spatchcock over on the off chance that there's anything of the man left."

"Agreed. What do you know of the abilities of the thing that has him in its thrall?"

"Aside from the fact that it's epically powerful? I would guess that it has some sort of connection to the collective Human soul-."

"A parapsychic event!"

I glance at Zatanna and nod. Nice that she's keeping up. "Almost certainly."

"I.. am sorry. I do not know that word."

Zatanna glances back at Tao. "Most people don't. Tcetorp em morf ym seof." Her armour glows brighter. "Parapsychics are people with strong natural psychometric abilities. Their brains constantly interpret the mystical auras around them as sources of information."

I nod. "In virtually all cases they find it overwhelming. They usually end up in psychiatric institutions. That or hermitages."

"Whatever changes are happening to our souls, it looks like we were all sensitive enough to pick this up. It wasn't a spell or an attempt at dream manipulation, just the effect of this.. thing just being here."

We spread out slightly as we come up to the blasted away section of the train. Tao stands back, his bow raised at the target area. What do I remember about this thing? Zatanna drops back slightly as Kaldur comes up alongside me. The thing was essentially nameless, wasn't it? No definition for magic to tie itself to. Was the Shadow Dog supposed to have been created by the Christian god, or am I misremembering that? It feels strange to think about it as being a comic… I remember it creating suicides and madness in small quantities before finally cracking the collective subconscious. Don't remember it doing much else.

Shit, we're totally not ready for this.

I stand just next to the blasted section and hold up the three middle fingers of my right hand. Then two. Then I step around the rim and-. A terrified looking Angela shoves a mobile phone in my face. Kaldur works his way around to my right. Behind Angela I see Jason lying out in the aisle. He looks insensible.

"It's… It's for you."

Her right hand shakes as I reach out with my own and gently take the mobile from her and hold it against my right ear. "Do I have the pleasure of addressing Mister John Constantine?"

"Famous, am I?"

"You might say that." Angela shrinks back as Kaldur jumps on board the train. "What do you want?"

"Who am I talking to, exactly?"

"My name is Grayven."

"Really."

"Why don't you ask that.. Map fellow to set up some sort of remote viewing system?" Ring, track and trace.

Unable to comply.

"If you know who we are, why are you getting involved?"

"You have a reputation, Mister Constantine. Plus, you were going after the wrong target."

"Big fan of giant, world ending Dogs are you?"

Kaldur holds a runic stone over the recumbent Mister Spatchcock. It glows brilliantly for about half a second and then evaporates. "Mister Constantine, what is the defining feature of the thing you are trying to fight?"

"Not really in the mood for twenty questions, mate."

"It doesn't have a name. Adam supposedly tried to give it one-."

"And it screamed like it was burned, yeah. I got that from the Binei Gadol."

"What is the defining feature of a Dog, Mister Constantine? Or to put it another way, how are you able to recognise an inherently nameless and undefined being as being a Dog?" I hear an sharp intake of breath. "You've been led around by the-."

"That bitch in Tasmania-."

"British man asking a question of a ghost whose people the British slaughtered? I could guess what motivated her."

"Fffuck."

"Fuck indeed, Mister Constantine. Fuck indeed."

"Angie said the Dog was going after her brother."

"Schizophrenia doesn't just disappear. He's not in the driving seat any longer. And that's being optimistic."

"You got a magician with you?"

"Yes."

"Powerful?"

"Yes."

"'Cause everything I had set up was for the Dog, so I'm at a bit of a loss here."

"The entity has two known weaknesses. This will not be pretty."

Silence for a moment. "Pass me back to Angie."

I hand her the phone before reaching out to Zatanna with my right hand. "Zatanna, one nameless thingamy hiding inside Mister Spatchcock-"

Angela's eyes widen and she presses the phone to her ear. "John, what's he talking about?"

"-needs to be given a name. A defining name, you understand? As Adam once named every thing in creation." She nods and I help her up into the carriage.

"No. No." Angela collapses and starts to tear up. Kaldur reaches out in an attempt to comfort her but she knocks his hand away.

Zatanna stands next to Mister Spatchcock's head and kneels down, laying her hands on his head. "Yb eht Elpicnirp fo Lasrevinu Wal-" A triquetra forms on his forehead and his eyes snap open. "-dna yb eht…" She hesitates for a moment and then presses on, golden white light blazing from her eyes. "Yb eht ytirohtua detnarg ot Mada yb eht Ecneserp-" Mister Spatchcock is shaking uncontrollably now, a disturbing crackling noise coming from his throat. "-I eman uoy 'Yenrab eht Ruasonid'! Tel eht Wodahs God ekat uoy!"

Red mist streams from his body out into the night towards the Shadow Dog. The Dog opens its mouth wide and seems to breathe it in. Once all of it is gone the Dog's shadow body thins and fades into nothing. Quick check and yes, Mister Spatchcock is truly dead. Unfortunate, I suppose, but hardly our doing.

"Jason! Jason!" Angela throws the phone down and fruitlessly tries to shake some life into her brother.

Zatanna starts to fall back and is caught by Kaldur. Mission achieved and apocalypse averted then.

Hate to think what would have happened if we hadn't been here.

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Homecoming 6

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8th January

13:49 GMT +3

I can't-! I can't keep this up! My eyes burn as I force them to remain open, transfixed by the gaze of my inhuman opponent. It feels like I've been like this for hours! Why did I get singled out, I… No no no!

I blink.

"I win again!" Cassandra beams at me before flying back across the Invisible Plane's passenger compartment to her mother. "Mom! I beat the Lantern again!"

Doctor Sandsmark looks at me with the grateful gaze of a parent witnessing their beloved offspring taking their excessive energy out on someone else for a change. "That's very impressive, Cassie."

I pick up the rings from the table in front of me and slip them back on my fingers manually. "How about a card game next?"

She floats back across the cabin. "Card games are boring. I don't know why you like them so much."

"Rummy and Seven Card Whist-" She tries to meet my eyes again and I make a point of looking away. "-are how my grandparents used to keep me entertained during family holidays." She drops to the floor, still trying to make me look into her eyes. I meet her gaze for a second, then close my eyes and smile. "Orange Lantern Corps regulations require that I spend some time each day in meditation. Would you like to join me?"

"What's meditation?"

"A process by which one clears one's mind and rearranges one's thoughts-."

"Boring!"

A five thirty start and I transitioned the plane most of the way. Couldn't do it all of the way as the wards protecting Themyscira need a bit of time to accept a fast moving aircraft. Donna and Kon are in the cockpit with Diana while I try keeping the Wonder Tot entertained. Did I have an attention span this short at her age, or is she simply excited about going somewhere new?

"I could make rings for you to fly through if you like?"

"Did you do that?"

"Did I do what?"

She huffs like I've said something stupid. "Fly through rings? Is that part of your superhero training?"

"Not as a Lantern, but when I was learning how to use my flight belt Lantern Gardner cr-."

"Which one's he?"

"The ginger one. He created-."

The door separating the cockpit from the rest of the plane opens and I feel the air move as Cassandra flies to talk to someone more interesting. "Donna? Are we nearly there yet?"

Donna makes an amused humming noise. "Not quite, but it won't be much longer. Diana wanted me to see if you want to watch from the front of the plane."

"Yeah!"

"Cassie."

"I mean, yes please!"

I hear Donna giggle and a moment later the door to the cockpit closes. Aaand relax. Not sure if I actually need to meditate any longer but I do want to try to set a good example for future recruits. The chances of them being immediately able to perceive that I don't need to are probably quite low. I wonder how having an existing group of warriors will affect how the Controllers relate to me? Are they going to want to transfer-.

"Is this your first time on Themyscira?" I open my eyes and Doctor Sandsmark smiles at me. "It's okay, the coast is clear."

"Oh, no, I didn't mind-."

"I know she can be a bit much sometimes. She's got so much energy. I used to think it was just youthful exuberance. Then she.. started flying."

"How's the support group been?"

She exhales. "Helpful. Sort of. There aren't all that many of us. Cassie likes having friends who can 'do weird things too'-" I nod. "-but seeing some of the other kids really brings home how lucky we've been. Cassie doesn't have any of the health problems some of them do, she can pass as normal if she wants to and she instinctively knows how to control her powers. Not that that doesn't create its own problems."

"Does she ever get tired?"

"Won-. Diana let her try weightlifting once. You've seen the weights-" I nod. "-she uses?" Diana doesn't exactly need to work out, but she has several sets of halteres and lifting stones enchanted for extra weight. Presumably they're either for training other people or maintaining mental discipline. "She got pretty tired out doing that. She still gets.. mentally tired, but sometimes she tries to get away with not sleeping at all because she doesn't feel like she's physically tired. Do, um, do you know if Superboy has the same problem?"

"He's never mentioned it. And.. I'm.. pretty much the team medic, so I'm going to assume not. On the other hand, his upbringing wasn't exactly…"

"Is he..? Really… Superman's son?"

"Genetically, yes. Kon is the result of an attempt to clone Superman. Superman didn't actually.. sire him, if you like. They don't really have any sort of social relationship." Kal-El appears not to have followed up on his desire to involve himself more in Kon's life. Maybe I was a bit harsh? I mean, everything I said was true…

"So, have you been here before?"

"Only very briefly, back when I first arrived on this planet."

She blinks in surprise. "I.. hadn't realized that you were an alien."

Huh? "Oh, no no no, I'm not. I'm from a parallel universe. Earth, but not quite like this one. Anyway, I just saw some moor land, a forest and the Temple of Gaea."

"You saw one of their temples? Do they use the classical stone column design or is it more like a stone building similar to the Erechtheum temple?"

"Gaea's Temple is more of a sacred grove cum pocket universe. There wasn't anything.. built there. I didn't actually get to see-" I feel the plane start to lose altitude as we come in to land. We'll be landing in the city proper this time. "-any of their architecture."

"I wonder if the ancient Greeks worshipped like that? That's the problem with archaeology: if there isn't a stone monument or something in writing we're often left just making educated guesses." She thinks for a moment. "I'm hoping I can speak to one of their historians. No one from the outside world has seen their records since the fifties."

"I suppose this must be quite an opportunity. As far as I know, their lifestyle hasn't.. changed all that much since the exile. Apart from not ageing and there being no men."

"Are they going to be alright with you and Kon?"

"Don't know really." I hear as we switch to vertical thrust as we come into land. "Just have to play it by ear."

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Homecoming 7

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8th January

13:54 GMT +3

"Can I go out first? P-leeeease!?" Cassandra isn't quite sure where she should be directing the request, so decided instead to direct it out to the whole of the room. In the cockpit I can just hear the flicking of switches as Diana finishes shutting the plane down.

Doctor Sandsmark puts her right hand on her daughter's left shoulder. "I think we should probably let Diana go out first. This is her home after all."

Cassandra looks around in appeal. Donna shakes her head while Kon and I just smile at her. Wolf doesn't understand what's happening but wags her tail anyway. "Aowahh…"

Kon's wearing his normal casual clothing of 'S' t-shirt and jeans, though he's added a flight belt. Donna's wearing her armour. I had wondered if she was going to wear a chiton but she told me that the clothing was the one part of Themysciran society she wasn't that keen on. I saw her pack one for the formal dinner scheduled for this evening and I'm.. going to have to try to find time to design something for myself. I could either go with a robe of some kind in my signature grey and orange or design some sort of Orange Corps formal uniform. I've got the design of the Green Corps' formal uniform from Stewart's ring, though it's a bit.. vague. A Lantern Corps' uniform can't be particularly uniform due to the vast variety of cultures its members come from and the equally vast variety of morphologies they can possess. For the sake of consistency they can't even say 'humanoids do this, everyone else can do whatever'. At the moment I'm in my old bike leathers, though I might switch to a suit for our actual formal introduction to Queen Hippolyta.

"Everyone ready?" Diana leaves the cockpit and looks us all over. Diana is in her formal robes, though I happen to know that she has her armour on underneath them. Cassandra looks like she wants to renew her demand but her mother catches her eye and shakes her head before she can open her mouth. Nods all round, though inside Kon I see a minor resurgence of his old rejection related disquiet. Unlike in the period leading up to his adoption it no longer finds purchase to translate into conscious thought or action, but it's still living there. "Good." She frowns slightly as she sees what I'm carrying. "You intend to bring your lantern?"

I pat the carry case. "I feel bad about leaving the Ophidian in the cave all the time. She'll behave herself."

Diana nods. "Very well. You'll help Helena down?" I nod, and she presses the button to release the hatch. Almost immediately I hear the sound of the sea and the song of the local birds. From my position at the back of the group I can't really see what sort of welcome awaits us. I can see a.. partial view of the stone paved ground which the plane is resting on. I decided before we arrived that scanning around to assuage my curiosity would not be the right thing to do on an island that was probably accepting the masculine half of the species for the first time in over two thousand years only grudgingly. I'll rely on my eyes.

Diana's appearance at the open door is greeted by the thump of wooden shafts -the butts of spears, presumably- on the stone ground. "Hail Diana, Princess of Themyscira!"

"Hail, Mala." Diana drifts out through the door and heads towards the ground. "It is good to be..."

"Now, Mom?! Can I?!" Doctor Sandsmark sighs and then waves her daughter forwards. Cassandra heads out of the door at top speed.

"Is that..?"

Wolf ducks between Kon and Donna's legs and sticks her head out of the door. "Rraaw! Raaw!"

She starts leaning forward as if preparing to jump down. Before she can decide to make the leap Kon reaches down and picks her up. "How about I carry you down instead?" She squirms around in his arms and gives his face a lick. He heads out next, closely followed by Donna. They follow Diana in landing on the ground just outside the plane while Cassandra flies past doing a quick airborne tour of the plaza.

I bow to Doctor Sandsmark and hold out my left arm in the direction of the doorway, orange construct steps materialising from the lip of the doorway and descending to the ground. She smiles at me- "Thank you." -then walks out onto the first step. "I'm actually on Themyscira." She takes a deep breath. "Here I go." She heads down the steps, pausing briefly halfway down to take a good look around.

Just the Ophidian and I to go then. Environmental shield to minimum I float forwards out of the plane, closing the door behind me with a wave of my right hand. The leader of the group of guards greeting Diana -or at least the one furthest forwards, their armours all look identical to me- is blonde. Mala, I assume. The armour she and the three other guards with her wear consists of a solid steel breastplate -nearly flat rather than that ridiculous 'accentuated' stuff comic artists like to show women wearing- with pauldrons, greaves and a sort of studded leather skirt thing. Their helmets have red Mohawk plumes, their shields are round in the aspis style but metal rather than the traditional wood. None of them have a crest, though that fits the tradition of the period of the Exile. They carry xiphos type swords in scabbards attached to their left hips, though the blades are steel rather than the historical bronze or iron. I suppose Io and Pallas have had plenty of time to learn the techniques and arm their sisters.

I know that Mala used to run the prison Rose Canton was housed at, a job which involved her learning fluent English. Alan liked her. The others… No idea who they are. One has red hair and is very definitely sizing Kon up. And not in a friendly way. Odd though; I know that most Amazons have black hair. The other two have the more familiar olive skin and black hair and are watching Cassandra's antics.

"Mala, I'd like to introduce my son, Kon-El."

Mala gives a short bow. "It is an honour to meet you, my prince."

"Um. Thank you? Ah, you too."

"You already know Donna."

Mala looks her over. "Hopefully it won't take us too long to scrape the rust off her this time."

Donna puts her hands on her hips. "Did I hit your head too hard last time I was here?"

Diana looks up. "Cassandra?" Cassandra obediently flies down and lands next to her. "This is Cassandra Sandsmark."

"The… Zeus' daughter." In the background black haired Amazon number two scowls slightly.

"The same."

Mala kneels down to Cassandra's eye level. "It is a privilege to meet you, Cassandra."

"Hello Missus Mala."

Wolf takes the opportunity of Mala's face being down at her level to give her an investigatory sniff. Mala leans away slightly before standing up.

"This is her mother, Doctor Helena Sandsmark." Doctor Sandsmark starts to hold out her right hand then stops, presumably realising that there's no way for Mala to shake it while holding her spear and shield. "And this…" I take a step forwards and smile at her. "Is my student, Paul."

I nod to her. "Alan sends his regards."

"So, you're our new brother." She looks me over. "You seem rather orange for a Green Lantern."

I point my palms at her. "Power rings do come in more than one colour, you know."

"So I see." She turns back to Diana. "Princess, Queen Hippolyta has been informed of your arrival and is ready to receive you."

Diana nods. "Lead the way."

Mala and black haired Amazon number two take the lead. Diana and a slightly self conscious looking Kon follow on behind, Wolf sniffing at interesting new scents while being careful not to let her father get too far away. Cassandra takes a last look around and then goes for height, her mother looking up after her with an exasperated sigh.

Donna looks at Doctor Sandsmark. "Don't worry, I'll make sure she doesn't get into any trouble."

"Thank you."

Donna takes off after her while Doctor Sandsmark and I follow on behind Diana and Kon with red haired Amazon and black haired Amazon number one bringing up the rear.

Seems to be going well so far.

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Homecoming 8

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8th January

13:59 GMT +3

The city of Themyscira has two fortified walls, one ringing the outside of the city proper and a second one about two thirds of the way in, which contains most of the largest pieces of civil infrastructure: the palace, the senate -not quite as formal a place as it sounds- and the Great Temples of the five goddesses who made all this possible. And Hera. I always thought she was one of the five but apparently she missed that boat. The inner part of the city is quite a bit higher than the rest, though the city as a whole slopes up towards the base of what is either a small mountain or a large hill just a little inland from the city. Outside the city on the shore side is a small wooden dock used mostly by fisherwomen. There is a naval dock, but it isn't very big and I rather get the impression that they mostly maintain it out of tradition.

I'm not.. completely clear why the landing zone for the invisible plane is in the lower part of the city. Given how old a lot of this place is I'm going to assume it was just easier to make space there than it was anywhere else. The practical outcome for us is that we're having to walk through the city's main thoroughfare in order to get up to the palace and we're attracting more than a few curious looks. No one's screaming yet, which I suppose is a sensible minimal level at which I can count this first encounter a success. No one-. Oh, there's one, but no one else has been openly scowling at either me or Kon. A few have even responded in kind when I've smiled at them.

Odd thing you don't really notice unless you're looking for it: no children. The youngest woman I've seen looked like she was in her early twenties, though in reality she would have to be at least a hundred times that. On the other side of the curve, no really old looking old women. There's some grey haired women about, but even they don't look in any way decrepit or worn down. As I understand it the Blessing of the Five doesn't give everyone super strength or toughness of the sort Diana has, but it does keep them at or near peak health and vitality. If you were old when the Exile happened you'll keep most of your wrinkles but you'll never get any new ones and you'd have started to have a great deal more energy.

Heh. Sort of divine HRT, I suppose.

Over to our right I can just about make out the roof of the coliseum over the tops of the houses. They may have steel production but there's no real use of steam power. Grain is ground into flour either by the use of windmills or animal muscle. Cooking is done with wood or charcoal, or if you know what you're doing with magic. I'm not sure if they brought Horses and Donkeys with them or if the goddesses provided but both are here now. Only about a sixth of the population live in the city, though that increases during the major festivals. The rest live in small villages scattered across the island, mostly farming and a few mining.

Diana's fallen into conversation with Mala, and from the intent look on Kon's face I'm going to assume that following Mala's barb about forgetting her native tongue Diana switched back to Themysciran Greek. He's learning the language, but the local accent means that he struggles to keep up with native speakers in conversation. Doctor Sandsmark is looking a bit lost. Black haired Amazon two has taken the lead and the other two are back with the Doctor and I. Red Haired Amazon has to keep slowing down to avoid getting ahead of us as we take in the sights while black haired-. No, that's getting ridiculous.

I make eye contact with black haired Amazon one. "So, you know our names..?"

A polite smile. "I am called Dyctinna." She looks over at red haired Amazon. After a moment she coughs meaningfully.

Red hair Amazon huffs. "Orana."

"You speak our language very well."

"Oh. No. Sorry, I'm cheating."

"Cheating?"

"The rings I'm wearing have a translation function. You hear me in Themysciran Greek, I hear you in English."

Doctor Sandsmark looks at me. "And I'm just hearing Greek."

"Oh, sorry. Here." I extend my environmental shield around her. "That should do it, as long as you're in close proximity to me."

Dyctinna looks at me curiously. "Green Lantern's ring couldn't do that. Unless he was just pretending not to understand?"

"No, Alan's ring was damaged before he got it. No AI support. It really crippled a lot of what a Lantern should be able to do."

She shakes her head. "Aie.. Eye? I don't know what that means."

"Artificial intelligence. Um, golem mind? A device capable of processing complex commands itself without precise direction."

A sidelong glance from Orana. "Your rings do your work for you? That does not speak well of your abilities."

I shrug. "A general commands an army, they don't lead every unit individually." The left corner of Dyctinna's lip curls upwards in a smirk as she glances at Orana. Orana pointedly ignores her. "Alan having to do everything manually left him with simple, close range constructs. I don't have that restriction."

"Eeee-"

"So what-"

"-eeee-"

"-else can it-."

"-eeee!" Cassandra lands on the pavement and ducks behind Doctor Sandsmark. "Mom! Hide me!"

"Um, I don't think I can-?"

"Donna's gonna-!" Donna flies over the roofs, a big pile of damp seaweed in her arms. "Ah! Don't let the slime get me!"

Donna spots Cassandra, then makes a show of looking left and right as if she hadn't. "Now, where might Cassie be?"

"I'm not here! Owp!" She clamps both hands over her mouth. "I'm really not."

"Oh?" Donna grins and brandishes the seaweed. "Looks like someone needs to learn about stealth the slimy way!"

Orana looks upwards at her. "Donna! You can't just drop seaweed in the streets. Take it back to the coast."

"O-ran-ah." Dyctinna shakes her head. "They're just playing. Don't you remember being their age?"

"No. I don't. And I'm sure my mothers didn't let me throw seaweed at people." Donna rolls her eyes but flies back in the direction of the coast anyway.

Dyctinna frowns. "How would you have even seen seaweed? Didn't you grow up in-?"

"Not the point, Dyctinna."

Doctor Sandsmark puts her left hand on her daughter's shoulder. "Cassie, I want you to stay on the ground now. We're going to see someone very important and you have to behave yourself."

"Okay Mom." Cassandra looks at our escorts, then runs off to play with Wolf.

Dyctinna watches her go. "She's the first child on Themyscira since the Princess." For a second I get a flash of.. some sort of yellow voodoo doll thing inside her? I make an effort not to look too deeply.

"And the first of Lord Zeus' offspring since-." Dyctinna shoots Orana a hard look. She clams up, chastised.

Doctor Sandsmark looks from one to the other. "Is that likely to be a problem?"

Dyctinna shakes her head. "Not with us. Most of us, anyway. Though.. I.. wouldn't go too near to Queen Hera's temple if I were you."

"That's a pity. I was hoping to get to see all of Themyscira's temples. There aren't any intact ones in mainland Greece."

Orana nods. "It would be safest. We're avoiding it too. Sometimes when the gods get angry it's best to just give them their space."

Doctor Sandsmark shakes her head. "I.. didn't even know he was Zeus Zeus."

The two Amazons stare at her as if she's said something incredible. Then they both burst out laughing.

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Homecoming 9

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8th January

14:08 GMT +3

Dyctinna and Orana have just about stopped sniggering about it when we walk through the gateway in the inner wall.

"Mom? Why are they laughing?"

And there they go again. Black haired Amazon number two -apparently her name is Antimache- looks back at them, visibly annoyed at their lack of comportment.

"Well, honey…" Doctor Sandsmark tries looking at me, though whether for sympathy or advice I'm not sure. "Your father is very well known on Themyscira. They find it funny that I didn't.. recognize him. When we met."

"Oh." Cassandra thinks for a moment as we walk up the slope to the upper part of the city. What a lot of murder holes. "Does he live here?"

Dyctinna regains some measure of control over her mouth. "He has a.. residence atop Mount Skybreak. Though I do not believe that he is using it at present."

Cassandra leans into her mother. "But I wanted to meet him." Doctor Sandsmark strokes her daughter's hair.

"How long did this keep take to build?"

Orana takes a look around as we emerge into a narrow unroofed corridor leading to steps onto the top level proper. "This? This is the… How many is..? Seventh version of the inner keep we have created."

Dyctinna nods. "When our people first came to this island, there simply wasn't enough food for us all to gather in one place. We spread out across the whole of the island, aside from what navy we had. They built a naval dock on the shore and the first keep… Oh, I'm not sure where it would be, now."

Orana looks up at the mountaintop looming above us. "Somewhere underneath us probably. It was only temporary. Once we had the first farms planted and we had learned where we could fish, we started planning out a better design." She shrugs. "The goddesses’ blessings made it easier than it would have been. We get two growing seasons a year here. I barely remember what a real winter feels like."

Dyctinna shakes her head. "I've never seen one. There's snow sometimes on the top of the mountain but my mother says that it doesn't compare."

Doctor Sandsmark looks at her with interest as we ascend the steps. "You mean you were born here? I thought there weren't any men on Themyscira?"

"There aren't any more. The citizens of Old Themyscira lived segregated by gender. Since the male villages were closest to the borders they were the first places overrun during the…" She looks away. "Attack. Only a small proportion of the first adult settlers were men. There were more boy children." She smiles, her eyes slightly unfocusing for a moment. "Orana, do you remember? There used to be a woodland near where the coliseum is now. I remember playing there with my brother Eioneus."

"Of course I remember it. I worked on the crew that cut it down."

As we reach the plaza I take my first unobstructed view of the upper level. The Great Temple of Hera is on our left. Being queen of the Olympians and having the 'women' portfolio she has smaller temples all across the island, but this is where the main festivals honour her. I'm not sure if it's an Amazon innovation or they just didn't survive in other parts of Greece but there are clearly decorated wooden shutters blocking our sight of the interior. Guess they weren't joking about keeping out of Hera's way. The senate building is a little further in. Buildings have to be reasonably well spaced out here to make up for the lack of artificial lighting. Immediately next to the senate is the royal palace. Neither building… They're not small, but they're not remotely close to the size of similar buildings in Britain or the US. Something to do with a lack of good materials? Or construction technology? There must be some materials that don't occur anywhere on the island.

"What happened to your brother?"

Aphrodite's Great Temple is next, slightly smaller than Hera's but apparently constructed of marble rather than the plain stone of her… What's the relationship between Aphrodite and Hera again? Half sister? Whatever. Hera's temple. The other four Great Temples have made an effort to incorporate their patrons' domains. The Great Temple of Athena is a multi-storey library. Not many written works survived the Exile but her cult used to be active proponents of visiting the mainland to acquire new works and they've had three thousand years to write their own.

"He died. A sudden fit. Oh, he was quite old. It was sad, but hardly unexpected."

The Great Temple of Hestia is a sort of large Themysciran Ideal Homes type open plan house. This evening's meal will probably be prepared there and I can clearly see the sacred hearth flame inside. Feeding it is one of Queen Hippolyta's official duties, one which the histories in the Embassy library said that she attends to before breakfast. According to the history I read, the fire was carried all the way from its original counterpart in old Themyscira, kept going for the entire journey until it could ignite its new home. Not sure I believe that. This fire in turn was used to start its counterparts in the centre of every significant settlement on the island.

"I didn't think people aged on Themyscira."

The Great Temple of Demeter looks almost overgrown, though there's a clear order to the plant growth. Two priestesses -I'm going to assume- are tending a grape vine, one binding it to a beam while the other supports the ladder the first is standing on. The Temple itself isn't considered to be all that big a deal locally. If an Amazon wants to commune with nature she can just head outside the city and down the coast a little way. It's mostly here so that those who have to spend most of their time here have access to some greenery. There aren't many temples to Demeter on Themyscira, but most farms have an altar devoted to her.

"That blessing only extended to the women. Men aged and died as they would have on the mainland."

"I hadn't thought about that."

I wince slightly as I take in the Great Temple of Artemis. "Is Artemis annoyed with me about the whole moon thing?"

All four of them look at me. Orana looks at the other two women and then frowns at me. "What.. 'moon thing' is that?"

Seriously? "Back in October?" Incomprehension from the Amazons. Oh! Right! The Amazons don't really use month names. There wouldn't be anything to translate the name to. "Late Autumn? About eighty days ago?"

Doctor Sandsmark gets it. "Are you trying to say… You were the one who turned the moon around?" The eyes of both of our escorts widen. Glad they noticed at least.

"The Ophidian and I, yes." I pat the box containing my lantern with my right hand. "It was a bit of a strange week, really. I just wanted to know-."

"No." Orana shakes her head with some conviction. "I refuse to believe that you are that powerful."

"I'm not, normally, but the Ophidian is the Embodiment of Avarice, and these rings are fuelled by avarice in the same way green ones are by willpower. There was a training session that went a bit wrong-."

Cassandra grins at me. "And you made a giant cake!"

"Yes, we did. I always thought that people would fixate more on the other stuff. I mean the moon thing was kind of obvious. And all of the eyes…" There not being more fallout from that still strikes me as odd. "Didn't Diana send some sort of message saying what was going on?"

Dyctinna looks like she's having trouble getting her head around the idea. "You..? There is some sort of god..? In that box..? Which granted you the power to turn the moon around?"

"Yes. More or less. So as I said, do you think Artemis is going to be annoyed with me? I can… I don't mind making an offering to her if that will smooth things over. Or Selene?"

We're going up the steps into the palace now. The open front leads directly into the main hall. Ahead, Diana looking back, waiting for us to catch up.

Dyctinna slowly shakes her head. "You would need to speak to one wiser in the ways of the gods than I. Why did you do such a thing?"

"At the time, we thought that it was a shame most people never get to see the other side of the moon, so we moved it so that they could."

Orana considers my answer before nodding hesitantly. "Selene.. may be alright with that?"

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Homecoming 10

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8th January

14:12 GMT +3

Dyctinna and Orana drop back slightly as we reach the top of the steps. I glance at Dyctinna with my right eyebrow raised and she shakes her head. Guess they weren't invited. Donna swoops over the roof and swings around to land next to me. Okay, so what's the procedure here? I know quite a lot about Themysciran social ritual and… A-ooh, I didn't ask how formal this reception was going to be. Arse.

Antimache's broken off as well, though it looks like Mala will be announcing us. Donna and I form up behind Diana and Kon as we finish our climb up the steps. Four more guards are on duty up here, though these are wearing gold plated… That's orichalcum! They've got enough orichalcum to make full hoplite type armour! I need to talk to Io! Mass for mass that stuff outperforms everything I've been able to compare it to in terms of protection, and it takes enchantment far better than modern protective materials.

One of the guards notices me staring and narrows her eyes disapprovingly. Why would OH! She thinks I'm staring at… Right. I turn my attention away from her to the interior of the palace. Classical pillars support the roof… Heh, though I suppose when they were built they were 'modern, newfangled, what's wrong with living in an animal skin tent, kids today' pillars. The roof tiles are red clay and the walls are stone. That appears to be limited to important buildings; a lot of the ones in the lower city were baked clay brick instead. The floor and the interior pillars are marble and the pillars have gold and silver decoration around the base. I wonder why they used so much stone? It must take quite a lot of effort to get it here and it's not as if they're short of wood. Maybe when you're going to live indefinitely it seems more sensible to make something permanent than something you're going to have to replace in a century or two.

The… Reception area? Also has two fountains, water flowing into two shallow pools on either side of the walkway. With two growing seasons I suppose that keeping the place cool during the hottest parts of the year must be quite a challenge. No modern air conditioning after all. I'm tempted to give the whole system a scan… It's probably magic so I don't think I'd get much… No. Best behaviour. Ask nicely. If they'll talk to me at all I'm sure that they'll be only too happy to describe it to someone who has never heard the story before.

At the far end of the hall are the double doors into the throne room. Another two guards in 'elite' armour stand on either side and Mala walks forwards to address them. "Princess Diana, Prince Kon-El and their guests to see Queen Hippolyta." The guard on the left looks us over, then turns, opens her door the minimum amount possible and enters before closing it behind her.

Kon nudges me with his right shoulder. "You think I should have worn the armor?"

"No, you're fine as you are. Diana would have said something-."

"Everyone else is wearing armour." He looks down at his outfit. "I could have at least got a shirt or something."

Donna leans in from his other side. "Don't worry about it. Hippolyta won't care what you're-."

The remaining guard steps aside as the doors are pulled open from the inside, giving me my first clear look at the throne room. Queen Hippolyta sits on the throne on the dais at the far end. She looks like a slightly more mature Diana, perhaps a little more 'padded', and her hairdo must have taken an effort I've never known Diana to put into hers. Looks like it's naturally curly. She's wearing what looks to my eyes like a stola, the inner parts being white while the outer layer is a rich purple. In her right hand she holds a golden sceptre staff thing, topped with some sort of winged.. thing.

To her right stands someone else I can immediately identify from the photographs in Diana's office. Captain Philippus is wearing an even more ornate version of the orichalcum armour worn by the other guards up here. Her hair is tied back in tight braids which are held together with a simple tie at the back of her head. Darker skin than most of the locals, though Philippus is definitely a Greek name. No spear or shield but she has a sword at her waist. She looks a lot more on guard than Hippolyta but I suppose that's her job. And… Whow. That's a lot of violet light. I wasn't going to look but I can't not notice it. Forget red string, she and Hippolyta are tied together by violet rope. I thought Diana said that Hippolyta didn't have a consort? Some sort of political problem, maybe? Some of those books in her library suggested that Amazons used to be pretty racist.

Magala stands at her queen's… Our queen's left. She's wearing a simple green dress and shawl and holds an unadorned wooden staff. Another Amazon not of Minoan ethnicity. Maybe I got the wrong idea about that? She does look a bit odd, actually. Her features are unusually heavily set. I suppose that despite what comic artists would have you believe not all Amazons are supermodel material.

At Queen Hippolyta's feet a small black cat watches us with interest. I didn't think Amazons had cats. Maybe I should have brought Teekl after all? The royal court is completed by two women I don't recognise and two more guards who stand a little way off to the sides.

Diana leads us down the aisle, coming to a halt about five metres from the base of the dais. "Mother. It is good to see you again."

Hippolyta hands her staff to Philippus as she stands and walks down the steps. "Diana." She warmly embraces her daughter. "You've been away too long." She pulls back a little, leaving her hands on Diana's shoulders. Looks like she's a little shorter than her daughter as well. "And I thought that I might get a little more notice before the arrival of my first grandchild." Kon shifts a little uncomfortably as she looks at him, though it's more teenaged-boy-about-to-be-smothered-by-doting-grandparent uncomfortable than fear-of-rejection uncomfortable. "You've certainly managed to get back in shape quickly."

Diana shakes her head with a quiet chuckle before pulling away further and motioning Kon forwards. "Mother, may I present my son, Kon-El."

He blinks uncertainly. "Um. Hi." Looks like those etiquette lessons didn't quite stick under stress.

"Oh, is that any way to greet your grandmother." She opens her arms. "Come here, Kon." He's actually blushing slightly as she pulls him to her, resting her head against his before planting a kiss on his forehead. "How do you like Themyscira so far?"

"It looks.. nice. I haven't really.. seen that much of it yet." Something occurs to him. "Oh, we can speak in Greek if you want. I have been studying it."

"And have you been attending to your other lessons as well?"

He nods. "School's going well, and Mom's been teaching me about how Themysciran society works. I'm not sure I'm ready to address the senate yet but I know all the festivals and the gods' ceremonies."

"And have you chosen a patron of your own yet?"

He shakes his head. "Mom said I should talk to you and the priestesses first."

Ah. Not a total surprise, though Kon hasn't said anything to me about his religious instruction. I know how Amazon society relates to their gods but I'm less knowledgeable about how it works on an individual basis. In a way, the fact that the Amazons know full well that they can talk directly to their gods and in fact regularly do so makes theirs a most rational religion. On the other hand, it's a bit… Non-mysterious. Isn't it? Does that matter or is my atheism showing again?

"Quite wise. It isn't something you should rush into." She glances at me. "Will you introduce me to your friend?"

He turns to me. "This is Paul, the Orange Lantern."

I genuflect, left knee going to the floor, arms crossed on my right knee and head bowed. "Majesty."

"This one's well trained. You may rise, Orange Lantern."

I rise at parade rest. "Thank you, Majesty. And.. thank you for allowing me to become a Themysciran citizen. I will endeavour to be worthy of the honour."

"I have every confidence that you will live up to it. You are Alan Scott's successor, correct?"

"Yes. Alan's been a great help to me. I don't think I'd have got anywhere with this whole.. thing, if not for him."

She nods, and then moves along the line. "Donna."

Donna bows her head. "Your majesty."

Queen Hippolyta holds out her hands and clasps Donna's hands in her own. "It is good to see you again. How long has it been since your last visit?"

"Ah…" Donna thinks for a moment. "Seven months? I'd like to come more but with school taking up so much time it isn't really possible at the moment."

Queen Hippolyta nods and moves along the line again. "Doctor Sandsmark, be welcome. Mnemosyne, my court historian, has been looking forward to meeting you since your visit was announced."

"I would be delighted to meet her."

Queen Hippolyta bends down. "And who might you be?"

Cassandra half hides behind her mother's legs, not daring to answer. Doctor Sandsmark reaches down with her right hand and gives her a small push. "Your majesty, this is my daughter, Cassandra Sandsmark."

"Hello."

"Well met, Cassandra." Queen Hippolyta stands to address us all. "There will be a feast tonight in honour of your visit. For now, join me in the dining hall for lunch."

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Homecoming 11

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8th January

14:17 GMT +3

Two of the elite guards -must remember to find out what they are actually called- lead the way as our party proceeds towards the dining area. Not the banqueting hall we'll be using this evening, but the private room where Queen Hippolyta and her inner circle take their meals. If I remember correctly it has a view over the parklands and stables that lie between the 'back' of the city and the start of the mountain proper. Diana and Hippolyta are leading the group while the rest of us form up with 'outsiders' on the left and 'locals' on the right. More or less by chance I find myself on the inwards side of the left huddle, closest to Captain Philippus.

Since we're here… "Captain, may I ask a question?"

She glances at me. "So it appears."

Here too? "I meant-."

"What do you wish to know?"

"Why are the guards carrying spears? They're hardly the optimal weapon for individual or small group engagements."

"True, but the time it takes to toss it aside doesn't add significantly to the time needed to draw a sword. And you'd be surprised how off-putting most assailants find even a short shield-wall."

If the answer is 'at all', then yes. "Does that include assailants with grenades, or am I being unfair?"

That gets me another look. I think she's trying to work out whether I'm taking the piss or not. How can I take the piss out of a twenty first century hoplite? "It's extremely unlikely that anyone carrying grenades could reach Themyscira in the first place, and a fragmentation device wouldn't be able to penetrate the orichalcum."

"It would take out their legs, though. I haven't seen anyone wearing cuisses since I got here. And that's ignoring the explosive blast."

"This from a man wearing leather armour."

"This is my original armour. I've had three versions since I tried wearing this in a fight. And you'll note it does cover everything except my head."

"Why aren't you wearing your best armour?"

"This is a friendly visit. I didn't want to look too menacing."

Her right eyebrow creeps up a smidge. "Now I have to see it."

"If you like." My power armour replaces the leather armour mid-step, resulting me gaining about five centimetres in height. The helmet has sensory feeds which allow me to see and hear as if it wasn't there -even without the rings- but it's still a definite mass on my head. There are normal eyepieces but those are only for when the sensors get damaged. "Tougher than any commercially available armour currently on the market, it incorporates-" I hold up my right hand and demonstrate the articulation. "-artificial muscles which boost my strength to beyond the limits of baseline Human physiology. Sensory augments in the helmet let me hear and see things miles away in perfect clarity. It's the best mundane armour I can currently build."

Philippus looks at me a little more warily. "It hardly looks mundane to me. Or are you comparing it to our orichalcum armour?"

"That exactly. Which is why I'm so eager to talk to Io. My skills don't extend-" I shift the armour back into subspace. "-to magic or metamaterials."

"How long can you wear it before it becomes uncomfortable?"

"Indefinitely."

"Hmm. I don't suppose it's something we could make here, is it?"

"Wouldn't have thought so, but I would consider it my duty as a citizen-" Ahead of us the door leading into the dining area is opened and Queen Hippolyta leads the way inside. "-to provide you with whatever equipment you needed."

She considers for a moment, then glances at the strawberry blonde woman I don't recognise. "I'd never get senate approval. And if it would make us dependent on one man for our equipment I'm not sure I'd disagree." I shrug. Slightly disappointing, but I wasn't expecting to revolutionise the place overnight. "Now I have a question for you."

I let her go ahead as we enter the dining area. The table is a horseshoe shape facing the balcony. Looks like we're eating.. barley flour flatbreads, cheese, apples and the servers are ladling soup into dishes next to the main plates. "Whatever you wish to know, Captain."

She looks at Kon and then at Donna. "Of the three of you, who is the greater warrior?"

The three of us look at each other, while the other blonde Amazon shakes her head. "'Who would win in a fight', Philippus? That is the question you most want answered?"

"I suppose it-" / "Paul." / "-depends on what-" / "Paul." / "-equipment.. we're.. carrying." Philippus raises her eyebrows. "Thanks guys. Thanks."

Hippolyta takes her seat at the head of the table with Diana on her left. Philippus walks ahead to take her place at her queen's right. Errr… Order of precedence when I don't know who two of the people are? Kon sits down next to Diana and then everything sort of stops. Ah heck, I was talking to Philippus, right? I take the seat next to her. Magala sits down next to me, Donna, Cassandra and Doctor Sandsmark take places around from Wonder Woman. Lastly, the strawberry blonde takes a seat next to Magala and the regular blonde takes the seat at the far end. The two women serving soup bow to the queen and are duly dismissed.

Philippus looks at me. "Why is it that you don't share their confidence?"

"It's not about confidence, it's about the.. situation. Yes, if we all had our best equipment and no restrictions on our movement I'd bet on me." I shrug. "But in my case you could give everyone on the planet their best equipment and as long as I had the Ophidian-" I put the box on the table and tap it with the ring on my left hand. "-I could still beat them. If we were fighting unarmed I'd bet on whoever was fighting against me."

Blonde Amazon leans around her neighbours to address me. "And what is this 'Ophidian' that it gives you the power to take on the entire world?"

"The Ophidian is the Embodiment of Avarice. She manifests in the corporeal world as a huge orange serpent."

"She is your goddess?"

"No, I don't… I don't worship her. She's more of a slightly weird ally."

Kon tears off a part of his bread and dips it in his soup. "Paul calls gods 'jumped up elementals'. I don't think he likes them very much."

My right hand covers my face as the locals stare at me.

Queen Hippolyta nods. "Diana did say that we had you to thank for the.. 'shipping containers'?"

I look to Diana for some sort for explanation. "Shipping.. containers..?"

"While you were merged with the Ophidian you delivered three shipping containers here, full of fruits and vegetables that aren't available on Themyscira. You didn't remember?"

"No. No, I didn't."

Blonde Amazon chuckles. "I particularly liked the.. curved yellow one? What was it called?"

Donna smiles in disbelief. "The banana?"

"Banana." She nods. "Our agronomists tell me that we could probably cultivate several of the varieties you provided, but we decided to wait until we could get more information on how they behave in the wild before we begin planting in earnest."

"I'll talk to them after lunch."

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Homecoming 12

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8th January

14:29 GMT +3

The food is simple but extremely good. Fruit and vegetables are the only things that Themyscira exports -infrequently- and I can see why they command a high price. A combination of the blessing of Demeter and three thousand years of experience I suppose. They actually use crop rotation here as they don't have artificial fertilisers to keep the soil vital. Animal grazing I get, but I was a little disquieted to learn that they use Human waste in the same way. And they obviously don't have flushing toilets. With what they do have, even the usually Luddite Amazons decided that it was perfectly alright for 'Night Soil Technicians' to use modern gas masks.

It's still not exactly a popular job.

"…be good if Prince Kon-El spent some time introducing himself in the city." Acantha -strawberry blonde Amazon- has been going over Kon's itinerary for the day. She's a long serving senator and a close friend of Queen Hippolyta.

"You can just call me 'Kon'."

"No, my prince. That would be quite improper."

"Okay, but… I'm not actually going to have to rule anything." He looks to his mother and then grandmother. "Am I?"

Queen Hippolyta smiles at him. "Grandson, I am over three thousand years old and I know full well that nothing lives forever. Eventually, I will pass -though praise the gods may it not be too soon- and Diana will take the throne. This is not to be bemoaned. It is natural." She looks over to Acantha. "Though on the purely legal question..?"

Acantha hesitates for a moment, then shrugs. "It hasn't come up before, not in any text I've read."

"Because I'm adopted?"

"Because you're male."

Acantha nods. "A younger sister would have precedence. Whether a prince with no siblings can inherit in his own right is.. well…" She shrugs again. "I don't think that there would be a problem, but at the moment there is no formal answer." She looks at Diana. "I don't suppose that we're in any danger of getting another princess, are we?"

Diana bows her head, closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. "Not in the near future, Acantha."

"Orange Lantern." Queen Hippolyta turns in my direction in an attempt to stop her friend nagging her daughter about her personal life. "I understand that you wish to speak to Io."

"Yes, Majesty. I wish to thank her in person for the bow she made Artemis." Oh, hang on. "My friend Artemis Crock, not any other Artemises who might be in residence. I also wanted to talk to her about her work."

"I'm afraid that she's been rather busy in her workshop of late. You're welcome to visit, but I must ask that you not disturb her if she wishes privacy."

"Of course, and thank you."

Philippus takes a drink from her wine goblet then returns it to the table. "I'm not sure how much aid she would be able to lend you. Creating orichalcum is a time consuming business, even for her."

"You'd be amazed how much having a power ring on hand can speed things up."

"How so? I admit they are mighty weapons-."

"Nonono. Power rings aren't weapons. They're tools. There's this guy I work with in Poseidonis who's revolutionising their industrial base thanks to these rings."

Queen Hippolyta looks interested. "Oh? I have only seen Alan use combat constructs. Would you be willing to give a demonstration?"

I think for a moment. "This isn't really the place for a demonstration of engineering… But-" I push back my chair, stand and walk around to the open end of the 'U'. "-perhaps something musical."

I clear my throat and have the ring remind me of the words.

"I followed my queen"

Construct images appear as I sing. A much younger Hippolyta stands with Egeria, Philippus' predecessor.

"To a war in a far southern land"

A moment later the view expands, showing the two armies arrayed for battle. I took the description from the copy of Philippus' journal that was in Diana's library in the embassy.

"Where men said she should prove her throne."

With the bulk of Old Themyscira's army away with Queen Otrera, Crown Princess Hippolyta had to defend the heartland of the nation herself against an alliance of most of the peoples her mother had pissed off. According to Philippus' journal, Egeria wanted Hippolyta to stay back in the city. She refused, and took to the field herself.

"I stood with my queen

And was ready to strike them all down"

I make a point of showing a young Philippus in the phalanx a short distance from Hippolyta.

"But my queen stood tall

and reached out, and took sword of her own"

Hippolyta basically used herself as bait, causing her foes to attack her army -attack her- directly rather than burn their farmlands. The attackers also used spear blocks almost exclusively, allowing Amazon archers and horsewomen to flank and constantly harass them in a manner reminiscent of the Battle of Sphacteria. They were ground down to nothing, barely making contact with the Amazon infantry line.

"And as we departed, she said to me there

Before warring and feud could begin

If I am afraid to be beaten

Then where is the pride when I win?"

The shot of Hippolyta clapping Philippus on the shoulder is entirely my invention.

"In word and deed

I follow my queen

The wisest among us and fair."

Hippolyta rolls her eyes.

"In word and deed

I follow my queen

The wisest among us and fair."

I allow the scene to evaporate, and replace it with one showing General MacArthur's office.

"I followed my queen"

The general is there, along with Alan, Jay and Diana. Real Diana's eyes widen slightly as she realises what I'm about to show.

"To the door of the vigilant squire"

The general -clearly angry- gestures at her to get lost.

"But a guardsman stood and barred the way

I stood with my queen

And was ready to strike the man down"

I'm not sure that I've interpreted Alan's description of Diana's demonstration of her strength completely right, but the dangling upside down and Alan's cheeky photo are completely historically accurate.

"But my queen stood tall

And reached out, and shook hands at the gate."

Diana's formal welcome to the Justice Society. I replicate the effect of a camera flash as she and Alan shake hands.

"And as we departed, she said to me there

Before warring and feud could begin"

I show a scene from one of the Society's fights with Mordru, one which was by pure chance caught on film.

"If I won't clasp hands with a neighbour

Then how can I ask it of him?"

I show Alan block an arcane blast aimed at Diana with a construct and she returns the favour by lassoing one of Mordru's demonic henchmen away from him and punching it in the face.

"In word and deed

I follow my queen

The wisest among us and fair.

In word and deed

I follow my queen

The wisest among us and fair."

I pause as if finishing, then switch to an image of the Mountain's kitchen.

"I followed my king"

Kon lets out a low moan.

"From his place at the mead hall's high seat

Where the hungry sat in grim array"

Wallace radically underestimated the amount of time dinner was going to take that day. And he goes on about how Mister Allen is often late.

"I stood with my king

And was ready to strike the cook down"

I didn't get quite that bad, but I'd had a long day and he'd repeatedly told me he could handle it.

"But my king stood tall

And reached out and he shouldered a tray"

I think the fact that it was kitchen-unfriendly Kon that was offering had as much effect as the help itself in motivating him.

"And as we departed he said to me there

Before warring and feud could begin

If I cannot serve in the kitchen

Then how can I serve them as king?"

The team enjoying a meal together. I make a point of showing me apologising to Wallace and him brushing it off.

"In word and deed

I follow my king

The wisest among us and fair."

A group picture of the three of them arrayed in full battle raiment.

"In word and deed

I follow my king

The wisest among us and fair.

In word and deed

I follow my king

The wisest among us and fair."

I allow the image to evaporate and take a bow.

Queen Hippolyta laughs. "I see that the bardic talent for the outrageous flattery of their patrons hasn't changed since we left the mainland."

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Homecoming 13

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8th January

14:37 GMT +3

"…glad this outfit's bulletpro-" Donna looks at me then corrects herself. "-resistant."

Philippus looks thoughtful. "I don't know what to suggest regarding the Nazis beyond 'killing them all wherever you find them'. Undead warriors…" She shakes her head. "I've fought against Hades' undead soldiers before, but the ones which you faced sound far more vital. More intelligent, too. Perhaps the gods of the northmen have more faith in their people than Hades does."

Menalippe -the fully blonde Amazon and priestess for the pantheon as a whole- just about manages to school her expression. From what I've been able to tell the local version of Hades isn't the 'full dick' version from Justice League Animated but he isn't all that popular locally. He has temples here but Amazons are more likely to make offerings at the smaller shrines of Aeacus or Minos contained inside it. Is now a good time to bring up my 'replace Ares' plan? Maybe not. Bit of a heavy topic with lots of room to cause offence. Be fun to talk to her about it later in private though. Part of my education on Amazonian religion.

"I'm just glad Klarion didn't have Diana or Batman try and give me an order. The fact that he didn't probably means that he didn't have access to your minds while it was going on."

Diana shakes her head. "You needn't have worried. The Oath hasn't bound you since you received your second set of tattoos."

What? "What? Really?"

She nods. "I didn't lie when I said that M'gann felt your pain, but I myself felt the Oath loosening. Since I could think of no other thing that could have caused that I briefly thought that you had died. That was why I was so worried when we spoke."

Menalippe looks at me with concern. "You escaped a sacred oath made to Gaea?"

"No!" Oh. "Um, yes. But I didn't mean to. It was a side effect of my wards. I suppose.. Gaea can't see me either, so she can't tell if I break it or not. Is.. she.. likely to be annoyed about that?"

She thinks about it. "I should not think so. It is more likely that she is barely aware of it."

"Oh good. I respect Gaea and have no wish to antagonise her." I turn to Diana. "And I'm not going to start just ignoring what you say or anything like that."

"I'm glad to hear it."

Menalippe looks over at Kon. "Prince Kon? I have been meaning to ask: do you practice an American religion or do you intend to join our worship here?"

Kon looks at Diana. "Aah. I hadn't really thought about it? The knowledge the Genomorphs gave me didn't include any sort of religious faith, so…" He shrugs. "Until Mom adopted me it didn't seem important."

"In our religion, faith is seldom the issue. We know our gods. Several of us -Princess Diana and Queen Hippolyta in particular- have spoken to them directly. And they are seldom shy about letting us know when they are displeased by our actions." She doesn't quite look at the oblivious Cassandra, who's busy trying to feed Wolf under the table without anyone noticing. Wolf in turn is more interested in the cat which followed us into the dining room. "Rather, it is customary for an Amazon… It's been quite some time since we had anyone your age… It's customary for a citizen to choose one god to act as a guide for their moral and social development. They aren't required to be mindlessly obedient or.. blind to their god's faults but, before the Exile, it was a standard way of introducing a youth into the community."

He looks at Diana, who nods. "As a young girl I studied extensively under the priestesses of Athena, and those lessons define the sort of person that I am." She looks over to Captain Philippus. "That, and the captain of my mother's guard teaching me of the wisdom of experience in the practice arena." Philippus smiles fondly at her. "I had meant to introduce you to the temple later this afternoon. It would be your choice as to whether you join in or not, but I think you would benefit from it."

"I.. suppose..." He looks over to me. "What do you think?"

"Athena's not a bad choice-" Compared to some Olympians, blinding people who see her naked notwithstanding. "-but I think she's suboptimal for you."

"Sub optimal?" Menalippe looks at me curiously. "You mean to say that he could gain a greater advantage by worshipping another god?"

"Well, yes. I mean, think about it: how many Amazons have Athena as their primary deity at the moment? A tenth of the population? A lot, anyway. So her attention is split in a lot of different directions."

She shakes her head, smiling. "So if he picked a god who was less popular, he would be more likely to benefit from their personal attention. That is.. an extremely mercenary approach to take."

"Thank you, but there's more to it than that. You have to work out what the god's going to want.. and what they're going to give you for it. A god with few worshippers is in less of a position to be demanding." Diana's wincing but Queen Hippolyta and Captain Philippus seem to find my approach amusing. "Which is why I'd recommend Helios instead."

Kon frowns slightly. "Helios? The sun god?"

"Yes. Kryptonians-" I hold out my hands in his direction. "-are solar powered. The head of the old Kryptonian pantheon was their sun god, Rao. It makes sense. Plus, he's only got a small temple here and hardly any devotees. He can easily spare the time for proper mentoring."

Diana recovers her equilibrium and slowly nods as she tries to adjust to my attitude to the 'divine'. "I.. do see the utility, but I think that at Kon's age the lessons that could be learned from the goddess of justice and learning would be more useful."

I wave off her objection with my right hand. "You can teach him that."

Kon half nods before he notices Diana looking at him. "Well… That.. does kinda make sense. But if you really don't want me to-."

"No, this is a decision for you. I'm sure that Lord Helios' teachings will be just as valuable to you as Lady Athena's have been to me." Kon smiles slightly. "We can visit his temple later today."

"And what of you, Paul?" Menalippe appears to be taking my impiety with good grace. "Do you think the gods can offer you useful guidance? Or do you intend to try to convert us to the worship of your giant orange snake?" On the other side of the table Donna screws up her eyes and bites her lip and Doctor Sandsmark develops a sudden cough.

I think for a moment. Not really a surprise that she's asking. Having a patron wouldn't exactly hurt, but I'm still a bit… "I think they might." I pick up my goblet in my right hand. I filled it with wine at the start of the meal but I still don't have a taste for the stuff and it's still half filled. "Am I allowed to pick Metis? I realise that she's a.. Titan rather than an Olympian…"

Menalippe thinks for a moment. Tricky to negotiate between deities when some eat the others. "You could, but she doesn't answer prayers. I'm not sure what you would hope to gain from doing so. And that does seem to be important to you."

"True. Well… There's Hephaestus. I like building things, though I'm not sure my manual skills are good enough for him. Remind me, joining a cult requires the applicant to perform a public act of devotion, right?" Menalippe nods. "And the act of devotion can be anything thematically appropriate?"

"If it is pleasing to the gods, yes."

"I have a bit of a soft spot for Ploutos… Is this goblet valuable?" I take a look around the room. "Does it have any historical significance?"

"I.. don't.. think so..? In any case, Lord Ploutos is not merely concerned with acquisition, but with good financial judgement and planning."

"Mm. I do respect Prometheus, but more as someone I want to emulate than revere. I don't know, maybe I should-." In one smooth motion I stand, bring the goblet up and hurl it to the floor! "Hail Eris!" The goblet shatters and the wine sprays outwards, coating the floor and splashing on the tablecloth. Eyes around the room widen at my declaration as I turn to Menalippe. "That will do, won't it?"

She pauses for a moment, then hesitantly nods. "I would think so."

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Homecoming 14

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8th January

14:43 GMT +3

"…pineapple." Dyctinna looks at me quizzically. "You truly do not remember doing it?"

I shake my head. "I lost quite a lot of that week when the Ophidian and I separated. We didn't cause too much of a nuisance, did we?"

I'm not exactly sure if I'm under guard or not, but three out of four of our original escorts are 'assisting' me in getting to Io's workshop. Mala went with Doctor Sandsmark to see Mnemosyne, Diana and Kon are taking a tour of the city and Donna and Cassandra were left to their own devices. I'm not sure if that's because Io's workshop counts as a high security area or because of my choice of patron deity. They certainly haven't made mention of it and their attitude to me doesn't seem to have changed; Dyctinna's still friendly, Orana reserved and Antimache doing her level best to pretend that I'm not here.

Orana shakes her head. "Not really. Moving those metal shed things-"

"Shipping containers."

"-was the most interesting thing that happened that year." She frowns. "How do you fit that on a ship?"

I generate a construct of a container ship and demonstrate the arrangement of containers on its deck. She and Dyctinna study it with interest. "Not.. been off Themyscira recently?"

"No." Orana leans closer. "How big is that?"

"Container ships over a thousand feet long aren't uncommon."

Dyctinna's eyes widen slightly. "Triton."

"And the god which gave you that power really dwells within your box?"

"Yep. Do you want to meet her?"

Orana looks nonplussed. "Do.. I have to be inducted into some sort of cult first?"

"No." I kneel, lower the box to the stone floor and open it. "You just have to be capable of feeling avarice." All three of them are looking on with bated breath as I pull my lantern free. "What?"

Orana tears her eyes away from it. "I've never seen one before. Alan never brought it with him."

Antimache narrows her eyes. "Where's the snake god, then?"

I close my eyes and take a breath. Ophidian.

"My Agent." Orange light strobes outwards, delineating her body in the air around us. My three guides take a step away from her as she swings her head in their direction. She's about eight metres long like this and maybe fifty centimetres around at her widest point. "New toys?"

"New friends, Ophidian. We've talked about this."

She flows around the available space in the corridor, tongue flicking out to get a better taste of their desires. "Constrained. Doesn't understand." She turns her head to me. "Your duty."

"I know. I'm on it." She extends her head forwards to nuzzle me before curving around to dive back into the lantern.

Orana stares at me. "That was your god?"

"No, I don't worship the Ophidian. Um, actually, that was part of what we talked about over lunch." They all look a bit stunned. "I'm happy to answer questions, but I really do.. want to see Io today?"

Antimache shakes herself. "Yes. This way." She stalks off down the corridor once more and the three of us follow her.

Orana offers me a wry smile. "Was Menalippe trying to recruit you already?"

"Kon's going to be joining the cult of Helios later today."

"Helios? Eos is a more common choice for those who like early mornings."

"It's the sun itself he wanted, not the effects of the sun. Kryptonians like Kon draw literal strength from the sun."

She nods. "I suppose that makes sense. And what of you? If you do not worship the snake creature..?"

"Uuuum. Eris."

She stops again and stares at me. Then she nods. "Having met you? Yes. That makes sense to me." She starts walking again. "Try not to bleed on anything important."

Huh?

"So…" Dyctinna appears to have recovered. "I was wondering. You spend a lot of time with the princess, correct?"

"Yes?"

"In her last letter she mentioned someone. A.. 'Barda Free'?" I nod. "She seemed rather taken with her."

Orana rolls her eyes. "Oh, not this again."

I shrug. "She has trouble finding sparring partners. Barda is a highly skilled warrior and her physical equal. Actually.. Barda's slightly stronger."

"Ooooooh."

"What?"

Orana shakes her head. "Dyctinna's got it into her head that they're lovers."

"Um. I don't.. think so? I haven't seen anything.. and Barda's married."

"To who?"

"Scott Free."

"A man?" I nod. "Well that's alright then."

I take a moment to try and get my head around that. "It counts."

"Oh." Dyctinna sags slightly. "She's really not seeing anyone?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"Oh, this is getting silly. She's in her eighties." Orana winces slightly at her comrade's comment and pulls away, heading after Antimache. Dyctinna throws her hands up. "I could understand that she would find it strange to take someone from Themyscira as a lover, but she has the whole of the world to choose from! She should find a nice woman to settle down with." She looks at me for a moment. "Or even a man. That would be okay. I suppose. Alan seemed nice."

Antimache has come to a stop outside a door just ahead of us. I can hear the sound of hammer on metal from within. "While we're on the subject… How long have Queen Hippolyta and Captain Philippus been together?" Three astonished stares, then Dyctinna looks uncomfortable, Orana gestures to the heavens to vent her visible frustration and Antimache bows her head and clenches her fists. "Diana didn't mention anything about-."

Orana shakes her head. "They're not."

"What?"

Antimache shakes her head. "He hasn't even been here a day. This is stupid. It's stupid."

"Because they're very clearly-."

Dyctinna huffs. "We know. Everyone on the island knows."

"But they're not-?"

Orana holds up her right hand. "There are some things you just don't ask a queen."

I blink. "Okay."

Dyctinna turns to Orana. "It's where Princess Diana gets it from, you know. I'm sure that if the two of them would just-."

I step past her and knock hard on the door. "Io? " I hear the hammer getting put down with some force. "Are you-?"

"The spear will be ready tomorrow Althesia. Not before, no matter how many times you ask!"

"Actually, I-."

"Which part of 'don't disturb me' was too hard for you to understand!? Come back tomorrow!"

I back away from the door. Ookay then.

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Homecoming 15

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8th January

15:27 GMT +3

I look around the triangular patch of moor land. On one side we're bounded by the sea shore and on the second by the other side of the forest. A little further along the coast on the other side of those trees is the place where Diana and I landed when I first visited Themyscira. On the third side the slope of Mount Skybreak blocks our view of the city itself. Long ago the land here was artificially flattened and I can still see a few small stone walls in shapes which suggest long abandoned houses.

Mnemosyne tightens her shawl around her shoulders. It isn't cold, but there is an informal taboo about Amazons -female ones anyway- coming here, even over two thousand years after the last of its inhabitants abandoned it. "I don't really understand why you were so eager to see this. There are scrolls in Athena's library which could give you a far better idea of what it was like when it was still inhabited."

Doctor Sandsmark looks up from her tablet. "I wanted to get a.. feel for the place." She glances at what looks like it used to be the wall of a house. "Haven't you ever wished you could visit the places you read about?"

"Sometimes." Mnemosyne nods. "But of the places I would most like to have seen, little survives in the modern era."

"Would the dwellings have been for families, or did they have a barracks system like the Spartans?"

"Families, mostly. By the time this village was built the initial panic of the first stage of settlement was over." She points towards the tree line. "You can still just about see some of the buildings they set up for the earliest lumbering camp. That involved sleeping in what was essentially a communal barn."

Doctor Sandsmark looks around again. "I'm not sure why this place exists at all. I though gender segregation was abandoned after the Exile?"

Mnemosyne smiles. "Listening to some… Some women from the old city of Themyscira, you can get the wrong idea about how that worked. The segregation of genders was strictly enforced within the city-."

"Aside from the festivals."

"Well, yes…"

I raise my hands in surrender. "I'm really not looking for them to be brought back."

"They were never fully abandoned, though obviously without men the reproductive aspect was no longer relevant." She shakes her head. "Anyway, once you got away from the main city and into the countryside, things were a lot less… Strict. Men and women still lived apart, but it would hardly be unusual for them to interact. In some cases even live in the same villages."

"But if only a few adult men took part in the settlement, why was a male village created here at all?"

"Tradition, mostly. And not just for the female majority. Most of the men who came here had lived in the area around the old city and were used to the division. They in turn took their nephews with them." She shrugs. "Others had become used to integration, particularly those who had grown up knowing nothing else. They saw abandoning segregation as simply another change in our society that came with moving to these islands. There was a brief attempt by some more conservative Amazons -female Amazons- to bring the old laws back into effect, but they were unable to gain popular support."

"Why was that?"

"Our menfolk knew more of farming than we did. In the first few years here with no reliable source of food we needed that knowledge more than we needed our old social customs. A small number of men would direct a platoon of women in ploughing, irrigating and planting an area, then.. harvesting the crops. Inevitably, a lot of the old social barriers were broken down. That may have been the first time men had positions of leadership over women in our history, and despite what some predicted it wasn't a disaster. Once things settled down, most of us remembered that obligation."

Doctor Sandsmark takes another quick look around. "The tree line.. would have been..? Over there?" Mnemosyne nods. "Orange… Um, Paul, I'm going to take a look."

I nod. "Think I'll stay here for a bit. I doubt that anyone's said prayers at the graves recently."

"I s-." Something occurs to her. "How far does your translator function operate?"

I wave her concern aside. "Far enough. Don't worry about it."

She turns away and Mnemosyne leads her in the direction of the forest. Huuuuh… All this is interesting, but not very productive. With Io busy at least until the feast this evening and Queen Hippolyta wanting to spend some time getting to know Kon I thought that I'd give Doctor Sandsmark a lift out here. I've already got the geophysics scans she wanted but I'm not really doing anything to further my own goals right now. I turn and walk in the direction of the small shrine to Hades which is the only building here that still receives any upkeep. Amazons used to entomb their dead in burial chambers carved into the subterranean rock, until the isolation and death drove one of the priestesses mad. Then they switched to cremation. This is probably the only graveyard on the island that actually has bodies in it, and as such-.

"Hey." I stop and turn to my left. A bald Amazon with pierced ears is sitting leaning up against the wall of the shrine. "You must be one of those 'men' things I've been hearing about."

"Guilty as charged." I give her a shallow bow. "Orange Lantern two eight one four at your service."

She smiles, looking me over. "My name's Seris. What brings you to Themyscira, Orange Lantern two eight one four?"

"Tourism. Also I.. sort of live here. I have citizenship, anyway."

She raises her eyebrows. "For real?" I nod and she blinks. "Well, that's.. different."

"I.. hope that doesn't offend-?"

"No, no. Always thought this place could use a good stir around. Just can't believe Hippo went for it. You actually staying, or..?"

"Two days, then as long as I don't cause a riot or something I'll probably be coming back on a semi-regular basis."

She frowns. "Why? I mean-" She waves her right arm in the direction of the shore. "-you can go anywhere, do anything. What makes you care about a musty old rock in the middle of the Aegean?"

"Because it matters to my friends." I lower my head slightly and exhale. "Because if they got rid of a few bad habits they could be so much more. Rather than.. cling to the past like-!" I stop. She looks more interested than offended but that's a fairly sacred cow I was cutting up for steaks. "Um."

She gives me an encouraging smile. "Don't stop there, you were just getting good."

"Okay. Like.. a limpet.. to its rock in a magnificent example of self-ossification they… You, should be out there involving yourselves in the world! A society of warriors that still use swords and spears, it's ridiculous! I don't understand why anyone would live like this for so long."

Her eyebrows go up slightly. "You planning to do something about it?"

I nod. "The aim is, find out what Themyscira has to offer the world and ease the Amazons into reintegrating." I could use someone local helping me with that and Diana's a bit too prominent. "Interested?"

The smile becomes a grin. "Always." She lifts herself a little off the ground, shifts over and sits back down. "Here." She pats the grass next to her. "Take a load off."

"Right then." I sit down next to her. "The best place to start would be to find a thing most Amazons already know is a problem and offer a solution which serves our ends."

She thinks for a moment, idly picking a flower from the grass and rolling the stem back and forth in her fingers. "Did you know there used to be a Discordian Cult here?"

"Here as in Themyscira? Or here as in-?"

"Themyscira." She shake her head a little despondently. "Didn't last. When their sisters decided to isolate themselves completely most of them went back to the mainland. Said it would be better to try their luck rather than be forced to mindlessly follow the same path until the end of the world."

"And the rest?"

"Walked into the senate during a debate and slit their own wrists in protest." Ooh. That explains Orana's bleeding comment. She suddenly smiles. "Hey, wanna know something funny?"

"After that?"

"You ever wonder why Ares makes such a big deal out of Wonder Woman?"

"Because she stands against everything he stands for?"

She shakes her head. "Come on, Greek gods. It's all about family." I shake my head in incomprehension. "Queen Otrera wasn't quite the peaceful and benevolent ruler her daughter Hippo is. She led her Amazon warriors all across Greece in a campaign which ended up pissing everyone off. She was so violent, so bloodthirsty, so skilled in the ways of war that she caught the eye of the war god Ares himself." She leers. "They banged. Like, a lot." Hippolyta is Ares’ daughter? I did not know that. "Not a lot of people know who Hippo's dad is. Amazons don't really care who fathered a child sired on campaign. Joke was, she had to call the war off to go home and have her daughter. If condoms had been invented they might have conquered the whole country."

"You're saying… Ares.. goes after Diana… Because he's her granddad?"

"Funny, huh? Guess seeing a warrior of his blood embrace peace is just too much for him."

"She is adopted. Technically."

"Mn." She shakes her head. "Gaea wasn't changing her nappies." I suppose not. Her expression changes from amused to thoughtful. "Though… While we're talking about families. Could you help me out with my nanna?"

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Homecoming 16

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8th January

15:35 GMT +3

Seris and I touch down on the plaza just behind the Temple of Hera. "Transitioning back would have been faster."

She gives me a lazy half shrug. "How often do I get to fly?" The left side of her mouth curves into a smile. "Makes everything here look sooo small."

"It doesn't exactly look huge from ground level."

"Does if you've never seen anything else." The rear of the Temple has another entrance, a small door. The entry for the staff, perhaps? Seris walks over to it and tries the handle. Locked. She turns back to me. "Can you do something about this?"

"Yes, but I'm not sure I should."

"Nanna's been in here, on her own, for over a week now." She pulls a face. "She must smell like a marathon runner's feet. She's coming out-" She waves her right index finger at me. "-if I have to knock her out and carry her."

I walk over to the door, check for observers and then extend a filament into the simple locking mechanism. "Is she a priestess?"

Seris stares at me for a moment, then nods. "She's fairly high up in the hierarchy, yeah." I open the door and then gesture with my right hand for her to lead the way. She steps into the doorway and has a quick look around before leading the way further inside. "I tried talking to her myself and she threw an amphora at my head. We've never really got on…"

"I'm sorry to hear that. I.. suppose.. Cassandra's been a bit of a shock."

"Not to me." She pauses at an intersection and looks back at me. "I mean, come on: Zeus, right?"

"I like to believe that even gods can change. Do we need to make some sort of offering to Hera for being in here?"

"Eh. I'm fine and she can't see you remotely."

"I hadn't realised that was common-."

"I can hear you!" I give Seris an enquiring look. She rolls her eyes and nods before picking up the pace. "Skulking around… In my house! My house!"

"Eh, she's still at 'bellicose'. I was hoping she might have moved into 'stuporous' by now so we could just drag her out." Seris leads me out from the side passage into the main hall of the temple. Classical Greek, with pillars and statues of Hera doing things related to her various domains. The richly dressed -if moderately dishevelled- woman sprawled out on the steps leading up to the main statue of Hera at the end of the hall seems somewhat out of place, as do the amphorae littering the floor. Looks like someone's been on a major bender.

I hope this temple has a toilet.

"Hey Nanna."

'Nanna' manages to focus on Seris on the second attempt. "You. You! You… You did this!"

Seris rolls her eyes. "You said that last time, remember?" She glances back over her shoulder at where a wine stain and a pile of broken pottery mar a statue of Hera posing with a Lion. "I didn't have anything to do with 'this'. Zeus doesn't need anyone's help to be a giant man-slut."

Whaw. Um. I guess she's getting drunk on her patron's behalf, then. The Amazons I've spoken to so far must not have been Hera devotees. "Ma'am, Zeus' behaviour-."

She jerks her head in my direction, frowning and squinting. "Who're you?"

"Orange Lantern two eight one four, ma'am."

"Oh. Oh! You…" She rises from her sitting position, moving to all fours in an attempt to get up. Some sort of gold coloured torc falls off her head causing her brown wavy hair to fall over her face. She tries to push herself up into a standing position but can't keep her balance and slumps sideways. For a moment she seems surprised by her new location, then gives up and slumps back. "You just had to find her."

Ring, can we sober her up?

Unable to comply. Target protected by means unidentifiable.

"If she wasn't tramping around right outside-" She manages to sit up for a moment. "-my Temple. On my island. I could just pretend." The anger fades and she's left looking distraught. "Just pretend he cared about…" She sniffs. "He said he wouldn't do that anymore. I really thought he'd changed."

"With all due respect ma'am, that was somewhat unrealistic. At this point I rather think Zeus is too set in his ways for any agreement to mean anything very much."

"Hardly any worshippers… The Amazons wouldn't dare… How does he keep finding them?" She's looking right at me for answers, her eyes damp with tears. "Huh?"

Looks like we're back in morose. "As I understand it, a combination of rugged good looks and charisma. And not being aware of modern contraception. Look-" I walk over to her, using the rings to shift crockery out of the way and stack it at the sides as I do so. "-sitting in here in the dark isn't helping the situation." I bend down slightly to offer her a hand up. She blinks at me for a moment before taking hold… Okay, got you. She sort of slumps against me and you could clean a laboratory with her breath! Ew. "Do you know what I'd say to Hera if I could talk to her?"

"Tell..?" She rolls her head around to look into my eyes. "Well what would you tell Hera? She's listening very carefully."

"I'd tell her to stop deluding herself. She has a bad track record of blaming the mortals or taking it out on the children.. but the fact is: Zeus is Zeus. He isn't going to change. Every so often he's going to go out into the world, find some attractive mortal and convince them to have sex with him. And she can either accept that… Be a total doormat about it. Or she can get a divorce and stop caring about it."

"No!" Her eyes widen and she pushes away from me. For a moment she sways and I brace to catch her but she steadies herself again a pillar before I need to intervene. "Can't do that. The Goddess of Marriage can't.. can't divorce."

"Why not? Isn't divorce a part of marriage?"

She tilts her head to the side as she stares at me. "That that doesn't that doesn't make sense. If you're divorced then.. you aren't married."

"If you're single you aren't married, yet everyone who gets married was single at some point. Plus, there would be nothing to stop her getting married again, preferably to someone who isn't a philandering arsehole. Lots of marriages involve divorce these days. Shouldn't a goddess whose domain is marriage have gone through the whole of the process, understand every bit of the concept they're responsible for?"

She looks thoughtful. Sort of. I'm not sure if any of this is sinking in. "So.. I should…"

"Marriage… As I see it, marriage is a formal pact between two people to behave in a particular way towards each other. It doesn't work if one of them isn't keeping up their end of the deal, especially if there's no fallout from not doing that. If that happens, then there isn't a marriage there, like how if someone cheats at a sport they're not really playing that sport any more." I'm not sure whether she's nodding or swaying. "I understand that they've been together a long time, but once she gets over the shock I honestly think that she'll come to understand that dumping Zeus is the best decision she's made since Greece went Christian."

"Just… No more Zeus."

"That's right." I try smiling kindly as I approach her again. "But for now, why don't we get you cleaned up… Then you can talk to Hera-."

"Heheh." I'm a bit worried about that smile. "No more… No more… I could… I could do that." I look at Seris, trying to get some sort of idea about how she wants to play this. She just grins at me. Okay, I get she's happy that her nan's leaving the doldrums, but-. "No! More! Zeus!" There's a blast of air and light from where Seris' nan is standing and then she disappears. Magic teleportation? I suppose a High Priestess might well-.

Seris pulls my head around to face her, smiling up at me. "That went better than I could have hoped."

"Happy to have helped. But… Do you..? I think someone should.. probably go and get her before she-."

My eyes widen in surprise as she pulls my head down and mashes her lips against mine. She pulls back a little to judge my response, smiles wider at my shock and then leans back in, biting -Ow!- my lower lip before thrusting her tongue into my mouth. Okay, that's, um, hello? No, this is fine. Surprising, but-. Just as I start kissing back she pulls away, still grinning. "Oh you are so totally in."

"Um. Thank you? Um, I understand Amazon social customs on the subject but I'd.. like to get to know you a little better-."

She reaches into her cleavage, pulls out a small card and holds it out to me. Wait, what? I think I'm.. losing the thread a bit here. I delicately take it. The card is dark blue. On the front is some golden Greek writing the ring is refusing to translate and on the back is a.. discordian chao? I frown, look up and.. she's not there any more.

…

I think I need to talk to Diana.

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Homecoming 17

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8th January

15:43 GMT +3

Seris. S-Eris. Aaaagh I can barely believe I did that! Sorry Diana, I just accidentally your entire pantheon. Is that bad? A wave of orange shoves the screen at the Temple's front entrance aside as I stumble out, the guards around the plaza turning to stare at me. "tEmPlE's OpEn FoR bUsInEsS." I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment. "Anyone.. see where Diana went?"

Ah, the diffusion of responsibility. Six Amazons as old as the farming of rice in Japan look at each other in confusion. I shake my head and float forwards, landing just in front of the two guarding the now empty Temple. I fix my eyes on one to make it quite clear that it is her that I'm addressing. "Hate to be a nag, but this is quite urgent."

She blinks, then her eyes narrow. "Why were you in the temple?"

"Clearly Hera didn't have a problem with it! Please!"

Her partner slaps her on the shoulder. They share a look, then the first waves me off and the second addresses me. "The Queen, the Princess, Prince Konel and Menalippe are visiting the forum in the lower city." I start floating upwards. "Then I believe they intend to travel to the Shrine of Helios. Do you require directions?"

"No, thank you, very helpful." The forum on Themyscira is a public open space used for various events, though sports and plays more usually take place in the coliseum. Perfect place for the Amazon equivalent of a photo op. Keeping my speed to subsonic I head up and over the city in that direction. Amazons have glass, but even leaving aside the potential for injuries if I go supersonic and cause a sonic boom making more glass isn't easy for them. I don't want to spend the rest of my time here fixing windows. Looks.. like.. the crowd's moving away from the forum itself, the royal party in the lead.

Gulp.

I look up into the sky and then have the rings show me the direction to Mount Olympus. No obvious meteorological abnormalities as yet. Would she have gone straight there, wherever there is relative to the world? I can sort of imagine her storming into the throne room only for Zeus and Ganymede to be out cruising, coming back only hours later to find her passed out on the floor.

I think maybe I shouldn't be trusted around gods.

Diana looks up as I come in to land next to her. "How goes the archaeology?"

"Doctor Sandsmark seemed to be enjoying herself. Um, I think I may have done something a bit stupid."

She braces herself. "How 'stupid' is stupid?"

"Just to check: the High Priestess of Hera isn't a high end magic user, is she?"

Menalippe turns in our direction as we continue up towards the shrine. "That would be me, inasmuch as she has one. And while I like to think that I am a competent ritualist, I don't imagine that I even begin to compare with some of the people you have seen."

Diana's starting to look concerned. "Whhhy are you asking?"

"I may possibly have convinced Hera to divorce Zeus." Stares. "Sorry."

"He-." Diana stops herself. "Hestia. How did you manage that?"

"Bumped into my own patron at the man village. Didn't recognise her. She asked me to help with her nan."

Menalippe looks concerned. "Eris is here? On Themyscira?"

"She.. she left. Anyway, she said that her nan was in the temple, we went in… I thought she was one of the priestesses!"

Diana puts her right hand over her face. "Paul."

"She looked like a normal woman! And I.. made certain observations about her marital relationship and.. modern.. marriage customs… And she shouted 'no more Zeus' and left."

Diana winces more but Menalippe seems to be taking it a little better. "At least this shows that you made the correct choice in your patron, Tyche preserve us." She shakes her head. "How did you fail to recognise her when all of the statues in her temple show her face?"

"She'd been on a bit of a bender. Wasn't really looking her best. And white stone and living flesh don't really…" I'm going to need to start checking stuff like that, aren't I? I hold the card Eris gave me out to her. "Can you tell me what this says? The rings are getting stuck."

She studies it for a moment. "For a good time, call Eris on-." I snatch it back and slide it into a pouch. "It seems that she's quite taken with you. Are you a.. particularly chaotic person.. in your normal life?"

"In the.. sense that even positive change can cause sudden and unexpected societal shifts? I'm working on it." I take a moment to look around at a society that has excluded chaos since it went into full isolationism. And stayed medieval as a result, being completely left behind by the rest of the world.

"Do you know what happened to her last set of worshippers?"

"Yes, she told me. Repatriation or suicide. Since neither achieved the result I want you don't have to worry about me copying them."

The shrine of Helios isn't actually all that big. The Temple of the Heavens on the other side of the city is far larger, but this structure is sacred to Helios alone rather than being shared. Six pillars carved with images of the sun and its divine patron rise up from a stone platform and are capped by a stone dome whose interior is decorated with a depiction of the passage of the sun across the sky.

Kon's standing there with Queen Hippolyta, looking across the city towards the sun. "…exactly sure what Helios would want from me."

"There's no hurry, Kon. I am certain that between you and Menalippe you will discover something appropriate."

I increase my speed to approach them. "Or you could just ask me." They look at me. "What, you didn't think I'd suggest Helios without having an idea for the offering, did you?"

Kon smiles. "I suppose I should have realized. What is it?"

"You can read music, right?" He nods, and I take some sheet music out of subspace and pass it to him. He takes it and starts to read through it. "I didn't bring any instruments, but it should work well enough as a soloist piece."

"Ah… Are you sure about this?"

"Kon, I just got frenched by Eris." Queen Hippolyta blinks in surprise and looks to her daughter for confirmation. "I'm not sure about anything. But I do know that it's been a very long time since anyone sang Helios a song not written on Themyscira." He nods as he flicks back to the first page and tries humming the tune. "How was the forum?"

Queen Hippolyta thinks for a moment. "Polite. I don't think they quite believed the two of you were real until they saw you in person. I imagine that the more confrontational members of our community will make themselves known tomorrow. Do you intend to address them yourself?"

"Yes. I need to know how much of an uphill battle I've got on my hands."

"You wish to change things here?"

"I wouldn't have picked Eris otherwise. Don't worry, I know things work by.. consensus. I'll be trying to change minds, not just doing stuff. I'm an iconoclast, not a saboteur."

She nods as Kon looks up from the music. "Do I need to face any particular direction?"

Menalippe looks out across the city. "Towards the sun would be best, though I doubt that Lord Helios will mind."

Kon nods. "Okay." He pauses for a moment and then looks skywards. "Two men walk on a beach in the sun…"

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Homecoming 18

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8th January

15:49 GMT +3

"…the living, and bury the dead."

The song isn't a perfect fit, but it works rather well when you realise that Helios is a Titan who sided with the Olympians. He slew his father Hyperion to prevent his fellow Titans incinerating the Earth in spite as they lost the war.

"And remember this when you speak of war,"

No direct evidence that Helios is either hearing or approving. I narrow my eyes. Except… Ring, analyse pattern of shadows in the area immediately surrounding Kon.

Shadows indicate presence of additional light source.

"And think upon what is worth fighting for." Silence reigns for a moment as Kon takes a couple of deep breaths before turning back to the rest of us. "Was that alright? How do I know-?"

Brilliant white light shines out of his body! My world darkens as the rings react to correct my visual contrast and the Amazons watching raise their arms to shield their eyes. Kon holds out his arms to stare at them. Doesn't look like he's being affected by the brightness. Good thing too; it's nice that Helios is paying attention and is also intelligent enough not to blind his new devotee.

"Um. Is.. this..?" The light returns to normal as his glow dims. It doesn't quite vanish, though. I don't think it's quite obvious enough to be visible during the day, not unless you look closely.

Menalippe walks closer and carefully looks him over. "It appears that Lord Helios liked your song."

Diana is a little more concerned. "Kon, how do you feel?"

He thinks for a moment, eyes slightly down. Then he looks up and nods. "Good. I feel.. good. It feels…"

Analysing spectrum… "Like the sun."

"Yeah, like the sun. Or like my old solar suit. Is it permanent?"

Diana and Hippolyta look at Menalippe, who looks a little self conscious. "It has been some time since I have spoken to Lord Helios. There are auguries I could cast, but I think it more likely that Helios will inform you personally." Kon suddenly looks around. "No, not immediately. He may come to you in your dreams tonight."

"Okay." He nods again, before looking at Diana and Queen Hippolyta. "So.. are we going to visit the other temples now?"

Queen Hippolyta nods. "Yes, I think that would be wise. Perhaps the Temple of the Heavens next? Donna always liked it." She turns to me. "Paul, will you be accompanying us?"

"Nooo, I'm avoiding temples for the time being."

Diana nods. "That may be for the best."

Quick scan… "There's still a crowd in the forum. Can I just.. go there..?"

That seems to amuse the queen. "That is the purpose of having a forum. It is a place of free discussion and debate, and as a citizen you are free to address the crowds whenever you want." I nod. "And they are free to shout you down or completely ignore you as they choose."

"Sounds like a forum to me."

"I think that you will hold their attention, for a time at least." She turns to her daughter. "Diana, would you care to lead the way?"

I follow them back to the closest street and then we part ways. The citizenry are visibly curious but they give the royal party their space. I don't appear to quite have that same aura, but at this time of day this part of city is uncrowded enough that I'm not exactly hemmed in. I stroll though a courtyard ringed by a sort of Themysciran low rise block of flats. It's square in shape, three storeys high and the rooms are designed to get sunlight on both sides. Another point of interest that distinguished Themyscira from other old cities: wide streets. Narrow streets in places like London are the result of old unregulated construction, high land prices or an attempt to force an invading army to split up and attack piecemeal. None of those had much influence on building here, not when these structures went up. Amazons build things to be defensible almost instinctively but they favour the ability to move quickly around their city in numbers, reasoning that they would be the ones getting the most benefit from wide thoroughfares. In the event of an enemy getting a significant foothold in the lower city they'd pull back to the inner city anyway, with places like this turning into miniature forts in enemy territory.

As I leave through the far arch I'm forced to jerk to a halt to avoid walking into two local women pushing a handcart of loaves. They stare at me in surprise for a moment, then the closest one leans up to her partner's ear and whispers 'fruit'. She grins in recognition as I smile socially and manoeuvre around their cart. She also does me the courtesy of waiting until I'm past them before she starts giggling. Oh come on, it wasn't that funny.

The forum is a wide open area with stone carved seating at one end and market stalls around the edges. Not that they're doing a lot of business at the moment. The place isn't quite as jam packed as it was when Kon appeared but there are still a great many Amazons here talking noisily about recent events. Um. Ring, search for keyword 'Hera'.

No mention of recent events detected.

That's probably a good thing.

"Hey, it's the other one." A small group near me look around at the urging of one of their number. Not exactly hostile, more a sort of wary curiousness. A few other clusters notice me and conversation starts dropping off. Ah. These aren't a random cross section of Amazons or guards, these are the most politically aware and active members of the community and while they might not be prepared to badger 'Prince Kon' I have no such protection. They start looking at me expectantly, the one who pointed me out to her fellows taking a quick glance around before turning back to me. "Well?"

"I didn't have a speech prepared. This.. is.. a slightly larger audience than I was aiming for."

She puts her hands on her hips. "Don't they teach rhetoric in Man's World?"

"In point of fact, no, but-" Ring, forumwide sound.

Compliance.

"-if you'll bear with me I'll see what I can come up with off the cuff." I float upwards a metre so that I can be seen over the crowd. More and more turn to face me. Thanks to the ring I can maintain a conversational volume while still being clearly heard. It's a bit like how crooners like Frank Sinatra only worked after the invention of microphones. My own ability to project my voice wouldn't be anything like good enough. Last time I was on a stage was my primary school's production of Peter Pan.

My Nana was unforgettable.

"I am Orange Lantern Two Eight One Four and as of Christmas I am a citizen of Themyscira. Since I'm not going to be living here-" A few look slightly relieved. Thanks gals. "-full time I will be unable to participate in daily life. Still, my citizenship is important to me. If there is anything I can do for you, my.. sisters, you have but to make me aware of it and it will be done."

"Are you the prince's lover?!"

There's some laughter in the crowd as I try to work out who said that. Given the nature of their society I suppose that I shouldn't be surprised by them asking. "No, Kon and I are not lovers. Kon is currently.. stepping out with a young woman named M'gann M'orzz." I generate a construct image of her in Human form waving at them. "They've been fighting side by side for a little over six months now." The nearest Amazon equivalent to 'going steady'.

"Is Alan Scott well?"

"He's old now, but his health is reasonable."

"So why didn't he come with you?"

Why would..? I focus my eyes on the asker. Oh, probably one of the wardens from the old prison. "Because this is Kon's first introduction to his people. Mine too. Alan didn't want to create even more disruption, though if no one has any objection he may accompany us in future."

"I don't like this tune! Bard, sing something else!"

There's laughter as my head snaps around at the sound of Eris' voice, but if she were ever there she's gone again. A moment later the crowd takes up the chant of 'Song! Song!' and I take a bow, arms spread out to the side with rings facing forwards. "Your obedient servant." I rise a little further into the air. What would be appropr- ah! That would work.

"Deep into the stoney hills

miles from town or hold

a troop of guards comes riding

with a lady and her gold."

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Homecoming 19

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8th January

15:55 GMT +3

"Three survived unscathed: the mage whose sword knows every trick,

The fighter who's a cleric, and the guard who called in sick."

I mug a little at the last line and get a small laugh from the crowd. Not really sure why they found the 'woman's sense of time' line so amusing. I was a little concerned that they'd simply be offended by it. I take a shallow bow and turn back to my accuser. "Does that answer your concern, Orana?"

"One song doesn't prove that you are not a barbarian brute."

"But surely the fact that I was willing to sing it to an audience-" I describe the arc of the attending Amazons with my hands. "-does?"

"Perhaps." She frowns again as the crowd begins to disperse. "One of the Royal Guards said that you were offended when Menalippe asked which gods you prayed to."

"Prayer." Contempt oozes out of me as I exhale the word. "An attempt by the weak to convince a large predator that they are pets rather than food." I look around. Can't see the sea from here but I still know approximately where the wards start from this side. Hateful things. Perfect isolation didn't cause the Amazons' stasis but it certainly encouraged it. When the exile first happened and they were in no fit state to defend themselves against their enemies it was a boon but in the millennia following it simply became a crutch, preventing their development. Not that I think they'll ever see it like that.

"It is nothing of the kind!" Ah, I've finally managed to offend Dyctinna as well. Took longer than I thought it would. I know full well that me being on Themyscira is a one off, and if it weren't for Kon and Match I'd have left after lunch. Nm, maybe after having seen Baroness von Gunther's old workshop. I was sad to find that there's not much left there now. Utterly amazing woman, though of course her brilliance was completely wasted here. She could build an invisible jet aircraft in nineteen forty three! To say nothing of her still one-of-a-kind Purple Healing Ray! If the Nazis had been less sexist or if Diana had been less vigilant in destroying her laboratories…

Orana appears more sanguine about that particular pronouncement. "At least we don't have to worry about you praying to Ares."

I snort. "Of course not. Why would I pray to a lesser being than myself?"

Antimache actually laughs at that. "You believe yourself to be mightier than Ares? Oh, your arrogance knows no bounds!"

"I'll not deny that I'm less powerful. For the moment." Once I saw what was happening to Kaldur I did some rather detailed checking of my own soul structure. Turns out I'm still growing. Father Box tells me that I could halt it, but somehow that doesn't seem like a good idea. If I was willing to go full rock monster for a trivial increase in physical strength, the sort of power I could get from this is well worth the risk. "But while he's stuck in… Wherever it was Zeus stuck him after his last dust up with Wonder Woman, I have far more freedom and-" I gesture at her. "-far better companionship. I don't understand why you even have a temple to him."

Orana looks unimpressed. "We're not replacing it with one to you."

"Good. I'd hate that. I have no interest in a having a pack of snivelling bitches licking at my feet." Scowl, not just from my escorts but on the faces of more than a few eavesdroppers as well. "No, I want equals. I still hold out some vain hope of finding some here." I was very interested to see Hippolyta's soul structure. I wonder where she got that power from? Or what she can do with it? Unlike post crisis pre whatever DC she wasn't the Wonder Woman of the nineteen forties here. "Or perhaps creating some. Tell me, have you ever wanted to be as strong as Princess Diana is? Or as I am?"

Antimache shakes her head with a snarl. "I would sooner sacrifice myself to Uranus than barter with you for power or be touched by your tainted magics."

"None of my magics." I make a dismissive wave with my right hand. The only divine characteristics I've developed so far are strength and endurance and I don't think that I can simply bestow them. What sort of things can… Could a fully mature God of Conquest do, I wonder? "Simple alchemy, such as could be replicated here if any of you had the wit for it. And I offer it freely." Dyctinna shudders as she shakes her head. "I know that Princess Diana craves the company of other women in the halls of the Justice League. I can make that happen for you."

Orana checks that neither of her comrades want to speak then addresses me with clear distaste. "And you desire a pack of bitches who can keep up with you?"

Hah! "Though I'll not deny that the idea of having a harem of warrior goddesses does have a certain -adolescent- appeal, no." I take a photo of Jade posing with her glowing green swords out of subspace and hold it out to her. "This is Jade Nguyen. I consider her my equal in all regards. I have no other lover and.. no real interest in acquiring one." Orana looks at me sceptically so I take that photo back and replace it with one showing the two of us cuddled up together. "Another reason to consider myself superior to your pantheon, headed as it is by the God of Philanderers and the Goddess of Doormats." A few sharp intakes of breath from the crowd. I sneer at them. "He's never met a warm hole he hasn't fucked and she's passively accepted it for their entire lives. My father may be the God of Tyranny but at least he has class. At least he was genuinely loyal to the woman he professed to love." Wooo. Did I just speak admiringly of Darkseid? Time to rein it in.

Orana hands the photograph back. There's something I can't quite read about her face. Some undercurrent beneath the distaste. "You truly believe yourself to be a god?"

"Ah, and what a family we are! My mother and father weren't even siblings!" I throw my smile at their scowls. "You see, my father knew that a war god raised on Apokolips would be powerful and he had no desire to create a rival. You saw how well that worked for Uranus and Cronus. So he split the domain between each of his four sons." I generate a construct of Orion in full war gear. "My elder brother, Orion. Dammed by Tigra, father's second wife. God of the Glories of War. The power of every triumph, every moment of victory and every glorious exaltation to the victor. Every piece of territory made safe by force of arms and every word of thanks given to martial skill." I let them take him in for a moment. "Knowing that he inherited our father's rage, Father traded him as a hostage to New Genesis as part of the peace treaty. He grew to manhood in their lands, where they consider war and violence to be abominations."

Dyctinna's eyes narrow. "They are."

"But he needs them. Without a righteous fight to channel his energies into he struggles constantly to keep his own temper under control. And every so often he-" I click my fingers. "-fails. Oh, he's always very sorry about it afterwards…" I shrug. "Not that it helps him. You see, Father hated Tigra. Grandmother forced him to marry her, so he sent their son somewhere that would drive him mad. Or better -since he hates our Father- cause him to end up as something like him."

It's an unpleasant story from an unpleasant mouth but I appear to be holding their attention.

"Next, my eldest brother, Kalibak." A new construct appears besides the first. Kalibak is far larger than either Orion or myself, and his bizarrely disproportionate head makes him seem even more so. "His mother was Suli, Father's first wife. The one he genuinely loved. Kalibak is the God of the Horror of War. Every pointless death, every crippled and dying casualty left to rot where they fell, every moment of barbarism, every library burnt to ashes in an orgy of pointless slaughter. The urge to rage and killing which turns men to rabid beasts." I consider my audience. "And women and others as well. He's probably closest to your Ares in all but looks. Him, Father keeps by his side, giving him targets to destroy in his name but never a single kind word. Alone out of all of us Kalibak wants that. Wants Father's approval. And he doesn't get it. Battle is his forte. Philosophy is alien to him. He isn't stupid.. precisely, but he is.. less mentally complex than the rest of us. He leads armies, he gets no thanks and he can't understand what he's doing wrong. Father presents him with a problem he can't hit…"

Orana looks at me curiously. "And what did your father do to you?"

"He showed the God of Conquest a place that can't be conquered! Apokolips…" I replace the images of my kinsmen with one of the death world.

"If you can't handle the task-."

"You can't conquer a dead fish! You can't change the values of a people who have none! I am conquest. You do not conquer a people merely by overrunning their armies with your own. No, there are subtler techniques that must be employed. Finance. Culture. Theology, even. And a people are not conquered because you hold knives at their throats and can compel them on pain of death! A people are only yours when they bow their heads willingly, when your laws are their laws, your customs their customs, your gods -should you need them- their gods. When they no longer think of they and you but of us, as one inseparable community." I shake my head. "Apokolips is insanity. Freeing myself from under Father's thumb may have cost me most of my power, but it was worth it. Earth has possibilities." I feign a faint smile. "Particularly given how weak its gods are."

Warning: atmospheric dist-

Air currents blur around me and the Amazons jump back as the lightning bolts strike me from all directions!

-urbance detected.

I wince and brace, the orange in my armour glowing brilliantly. Electrical energy crackles around me for a moment before earthing itself. I dust myself off. I was wondering how long that would take. Looks like the King of the Amoebas has temper control issues. I look up into the clear sky. "Nice try, jackass. Next time give it your A game." Helps that Apokoliptian armour is specifically designed to stop divine magics. In fact I'd have to say that was mostly the armour. I doubt there'll be a follow up. Once is 'I've got my eyes on you' but two would be an embarrassing failure. If the armour held.

"Anyway, Scott Free, my younger brother and the God of Freedom is the only one of my brothers I actually like." Not sure the stunned Amazons are still taking this in but I'll give it a try anyway. "Probably because he was fostered…"

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Homecoming 20

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8th January

15:55 GMT +3

"Three things trust above all else:

the horse on which you ride,

the beast that guards your sleeping

and your shieldmate at your side."

Applause ripples through the crowd and I take another bow. Must be a while since they've heard a song from the outside world. I don't think they have radios here and I'm not sure.. ring? No, radio waves from the surface don't pass through the wards. Not well enough to make out a tune, anyway. Radio waves from the League's communication satellite appear to be unaffected.

"Were you a singer before you became an Orange Lantern?"

"No, it's just a hobby. Though how about you?" I turn my head to take in the rest of the crowd. "Do we have any singers here?" A few clusters turn to look at one of their number, but no one exactly leaps forwards. "I ask because one of the things I wanted to do while I'm here is find out if there's any chance some of them might be persuaded to undertake a tour of… Well, anywhere that isn't Themyscira." More than a few smiles fade at the request. "America might not quite be civilised but it does its best. Or mainland Greece? You could visit the lands of Old Themyscira as part of the trip." Not getting much of a response. "Three thousand years' worth of songs that have never been heard by the rest of the world, not to mention anything you remember from Ancient Greece. No?" No one speaks. "Alright. If the singers are all too modest, why not actresses? " I'm scanning the crowd, trying to make eye contact with as many people as possible. "Princess Diana told me that you -by which I mean we- have records of Sappho's plays and poetry. Her fame has survived in Man's World even after all record of their content has been lost. If you offered to put on a performance people would flock to see it."

"There is nothing in Man's World that we need."

Ah! An opponent! It's so hard to argue with fresh air. I float over the crowd who part so that I can land just in front of the irate-looking speaker. I extend the amplification effect to encompass her. "Dear lady! Make yourself known to the crowd!"

Her eyes narrow as she looks me over. "I am Clyemne, and unlike you the crowd knows me perfectly well. We all know each other. You may be under the Princess' thumb but we all know of the brutality and savagery of Man's World."

"I believe that the Princess wants to tame the rest of my kind as well."

"And in that task I pray that the goddesses bless her."

"As my former countrymen say, 'the gods help those who help themselves'." A small chuckle from a few places in the crowd. They are the point, after all. "Don't you think it would be easier if a few of the good women of Themyscira involved themselves as well?"

"I don't think that it is possible, and while Gaea has granted the Princess divine fortitude the rest of us are made of mortal flesh."

"So mortal that you can't stand the rigours of acting?" Could make an age joke, don't think it would make sense. "Okay, okay. What if you were?"

"Explain."

I hold out my right hand and a vial of the Danner Formula appears from subspace. "It just so happens that I have an alchemical formula that would allow anyone who uses it be to be her equal in strength and endurance. If it's right for her, why not for you?" I turn to take in the crowd once again. "Or anyone here? Would it help if every warrior in Themyscira had such strength? Because we can do that. We can do that."

"Even the Princess is not immortal."

I turn back to Clyemne, having the rings track everyone whose eyes linger on the vial. "There's a limit to how safe life can be! And they'd hardly be left to their own devices. Do you have any idea how much effort -for example- the US government would put into protecting an Amazon theatre troupe? Heck, I'll look after them. I will personally escort them around guiding, translating and -if necessary, it probably won't be- defending."

Clyemne's lip curls in revulsion. "No. We aren't about to pollute our bodies with your profane potions. There is nothing in Man's World that is necessary to our lives here and we will have no part of it."

"Lots of things aren't necessary. Plays aren't necessary. Books aren't necessary. Heck, in this climate houses and clothes aren't necessary. Civilisation -sophisticated civilisation- is defined by things that aren't necessary. If you think the rest of the world is uncivilised-" I kneel down, clasping my hands together and looking up at her imploringly. "-on behalf of the rest of the world I implore you to show us how to do it better."

She jerks her head away from me in distaste. "Get up you ridiculous buffoon."

"I offered my aid freely. I'm willing to beg for yours."

"Is it true that you worship Eris?"

I look around, but I'm too low down to spot the speaker. The voice wasn't Eris's. "Yes." There's a slight collective intake of breath and Clyemne starts to look a little more confident. "Eris instructs me to bring about a change. Any change. The Ophidian-" I pat her carry case. "-tells me to help you get what you want." I stand up. "She's a very individualistic sort of snake. If you can better get what you want by doing things differently and it hurts no one?" I shrug. "Why not do it?"

Clyemne comes a little closer. "We do not need the Chaos Goddess' aid in obtaining what we want. Perhaps it is the way of Man's World to constantly lust for more. It is not the way in Themyscira. You will learn that, given time. We simply don't need-."

"No. You do." I float back up into the air. "Births since nineteen hundred, either zero or one depending on whether Princess Diana counts or not. New citizens? Six: Princess Diana, Paula von Gunther, Helena Kosmatos, Hippolyta Trevor, Prince Kon-El and myself. That's more than in the previous millennium, and the death toll in the previous millennia was far more than six."

She takes that surprisingly calmly. "And what exactly do you suggest we do about it?"

"Have children. I can help with that." Yellow dolls flare across the forum. What the heck is with that?

Clyemne actually manages a thin smile at that. "Just you? Not Prince Kon as well? Or perhaps you would like to invite some friends?"

On the crowd's faces more than a few appear to be giving me looks of distaste. What did I just..? Oh fuck! "No! No. No. I don't mean 'sire them myself'." I look at Clyemne as if she's said something completely disgusting. "It's perfectly within my abilities-" I generate a construct image of an ovum. "-to merge the genetic material of two women. Obviously only one could actually carry the child-."

"How is that possible!?"

I look directly at the woman who shouted from near the back of the crowd. The yellow doll within pulses like a heartbeat, thin wisps of violet radiating off it. I need to talk to someone about that, but for now... "Man's World science!" I expand the image of the ovum and generate a small swarm of sperm. "The biological description of the child comes half from the mother-" I pulse the ovum. "-and half from the father. The two cells come together-" The edge of the ovum as the sperm swims its way in. "-the two sets of data merge-" Since I'm pretty sure that the majority of Amazons know nothing about genetics I'll fuzz the details. "-and the newly fertilised ovum divides and divides-" Somewhat time lapsed. "-and divides until eventually-" Cells specialise and the zygote looks increasingly Human shaped. "-you get a child. But when you have a power ring-" I dismiss the image and create two ovum constructs. "-there's no reason you can't take the data from one ovum and transfer it to another. The resulting child would always be female, but if anyone here wants to be an Oma or a Fama-" Another look around. Emotions on their faces vary. I could get a better idea by looking more deeply but.. no. I'm not doing that. "-I can do that for you."

I float up a little higher, just over the top of the near by buildings. I should probably leave them time to discuss that little bombsh-.

Is the sea meant to be doing that?

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Homecoming 21

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8th January

15:59 GMT +3

"Is the sea meant to be doing that?"

Diana studies the horizon. "No. It most certainly is not."

Diana, Kon and I float over the lower city as a colossal wave of water heads towards the city-side of the island. Actual tidal waves are more like a constant flow of water, as if the land has suddenly dropped and the water is flowing in to re-establish sea level. This is more like the cartoon version. It's got to be at least three kilometres long and one high and assuming its speed remains constant it'll hit the shore in three minutes. I don't even want to try to work out the physics involved.

Kon watches as well. "Shouldn't the wards have stopped it?"

Diana shakes her head. "It's already inside the wards. The Justice League would have alerted me if it had been created by anything natural."

"Have I got time to put on my armor?"

"'Fraid not."

Donna flies up to join us, having deposited Cassandra and Doctor Sandsmark in the palace. "So.. what are we doing about it?"

A railgun construct sixty metres long forms in the air next to me. "Mageslayer rounds available at your request sir."

Kon looks down at the shoreline. "Are there any boats out there?"

Diana shakes her head. "The fishing boats usually come back mid morning."

"Don't you have.. giant shark things? And naiads?"

"I've sent the Megalodons to the far side of the island. Naiads have nothing to fear from water." She says nothing for a moment. "What is she doing here?"

The gun hums above us as I target the centre of the water wall. "Sir?"

She turns to look at me. "Orange Lantern, skim the target. Use a solid slug."

"Sir." There's a sort of electric roaring sound as the iron-jacketed tungsten projectile is flung along the gun's rails and towards the top of the watery wall. It strikes and passes through with no obvious reaction. The rings map a very slight depression in the wave from the shockwave that follows my supersonic shot, but nothing visibly happens. "Sir?"

"Why is she doing this?" She studies the wave for a moment. "Fire again, solid shot. Aim at the center."

"Sir." Another roar from the gun and a similar lack of observable results.

Donna looks at Diana. "You think it's Scylla? But she hardly ever leaves the ocean floor."

"Has the water slowed?"

Ring? "No."

Diana shakes her head in frustration. "Fine. If she will not take the hint… Mageslayer, aim at sea level."

"Sir." Another roar. Not sure what to expe-.

"RWHAAAAAHG!"

The air shakes as a portion of the centre of the tidal wave collapses and a titanic serpentine neck extends out of it. Part fish, part snake and all monster, Scylla's head orientates directly at my gun and peers at us with four eyes arranged in two pairs on either side of the upper jaw.

"That's a bit bigger than the Kraken was. Um, wave's stopped, by the way."

Diana smiles slightly. "Hopefully we can reason with her."

Kon looks puzzled. "Is she intelligent?"

Diana nods. "Usually. She was a victim of Circe's magic long ago, even before the Exile. I don't know why she's here, though. Orange Lantern, Troia, remain here. Superboy, with me."

Donna and I nod as she and Kon fly off in the direction of the head-. Heads now, as a second has appeared from the water to pull up alongside the first. Neither of them look particularly happy. "Have you met Scylla before?"

She nods, keeping her attention on the departing form of our mentor. "Yes, once. She attacked an oil tanker that had been discharging waste oil at sea near where she usually rests."

"I don't remember seeing anything about that in the press."

"The meeting happened under water."

"I didn't know you could breathe under water."

Donna shrugs. "Tethys likes me." She frowns. "Was Kon.. glowing?"

Kon and Diana come to a halt and the two heads reorientate on them.

"Helios liked his singing."

"People say a lot of bad things about the Titans, but once you get past Cronus a lot of-."

One of the heads lunges forwards! Diana and Kon evade as water sprays in every direction! Should I fire again? No, she's still got her personal communicator. If she wants fire support she'll call for it. The majority of the wave of water is collapsing forwards, though a water spout is forming around the combat zone.

Donna's eyes widen. "Bacon!"

What? "What?"

The wave isn't exactly collapsing so much as trading height for movement, coming right for the island.

Donna looks a lot more concerned than I am. "You have bacon in subspace? Give it to me." Um, okay? Three rashers appear in front of her and she pulls a jar of honey out of her belt, pulls off the lid and pours it out over the bacon. "Great Hekate, please accept-"

Rather than rising as it reaches the shallows the wave drops further. It's only about three metres high now and there doesn't appear to be much force behind it.

"-this offering and show me-."

The water surges up the land in defiance of physics and where it passes naked, grey skinned humanoids are deposited in the streets and on the tops of buildings. They look a bit like La'gaan, only more streamlined and far more feral. The Amazons are either under arms or in shelters so I'm not immediately worried about civilian casualties.

"Okay, forget showing me. Shield me from my foes' magics."

The bacon and honey fade into dust as the last gasp of the wave shoots up the main thoroughfare, surging over the walls and depositing seven people inside the inner city. Five of the monstrous fishmen form a perimeter around the other two as the water that brought them here vanishes. The first is a man of average height dressed in a shocking red suit with a white shirt, black tie, black shoes and black gloves. His head is invisible and I can only tell where he's looking due to the simple red mask which appears to be floating where his face should be. Johnny Sorrow. I thought he was dead… Or at least gone. He appears to be taking in the assembled Royal Guard with affected disinterest. The second person is easy to identify. Circe. She's wearing black and purple body armour covered over by a green outer robe and she's got a very punchable face.

She smiles up at Donna and I, then turns to Mister Sorrow. "This is as far as I take you. You can deal with the rest yourself."

Sorrow shrugs. "I͝'̸m ̧n͜ot ͡iǹ ͝a̛ ̡ru̡s̶h̕.͝"̢ He reaches for his mask with his right hand. "̵An͞d͠ I̛ ẃas̡ ͟pl͟a͞nni͜ng on ̷kil̛ļin͞g̕ e̡ve͏r͢yon̷e͡ ̶anywąy͞.́"̀

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Homecoming 22

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8th January

16:04 GMT +3

Accelerated perception. I fire a solid orange beam directly at him and it passes through his body with no resistance. No surprise; the Justice Society's records said that he's intangible while his mask is on. But since he becomes tangible with it off, anything being stuck through him forces him to keep it on. I have no idea how his instant death effect works. I think in the comics his true face was supposed to be so terrifying that anyone who saw it had a stroke and heart attack combination but I don't particularly want to experiment at the moment.

Next to me Donna is diving towards Circe. Target Circe's hands, filament, chain-. It passes through her. Intangibility? Possible. Themysciran law on lethal force? Good-oh. Two small railguns ooze into being next to me, loaded with Crumbler rounds.

The Amazons on the plaza have formed a shield wall protecting their archers. The Fishmen are already leaping towards them and gaining bulk from nowhere as they do so. Filaments to the foreheads-.

Unable to establish connection.

Fine. Summon Praexis Swarm? Could be a tricky one, demons on Themyscira. Ring, more turrets, autofire on the Fishmen.

Compliance.

The Amazons will recognise Circe easily enough but do they know Mister Sorrow? I'd guess not. I'll need to go back to normal speed to warn them. Railgun constructs are finished. I hear the weirdly distorted roar as they fire and I can see the rounds burning the air as they fly towards their targets. Mister Sorrow is starting to move aside to try to escape my obstruction and the Amazon bowwomen are grabbing five arrows out of their quivers and loosing at the Fishmen. Circe's just grinning at the scene. The first Crumbler round passes through Mister Sorrow's left shin and fails to trigger. A thought and I activate it manually. A chunk of stone just behind him dematerialises but the man himself is unaffected. Same negative impact on Circe.

Okay, Sorrow I sort of get, but if Circe was using magic to render herself intangible the chains should have shut it down. What is-? She's not casting a shadow. I'm seeing her, so she must be blocking light… Ring, analyse patterns of shadow on Circe. Where's she hiding?

Processing.

Donna completes her dive into Circe and then through her, causing her image to ripple. Arrows strike the closest three Fishmen in the head as they continue to expand. Most are deflected off their skin but one gets two arrows straight through its left eye and into the brain. He's… He? She? Can't tell. It's dead, but the force of the shot isn't enough to counter its momentum. It's still going to hit the spearline and I very much doubt that they're strong enough to hold against that weight.

Probable approximate locations calculated.

Another filament links to the dead Fishman and begins applying force to counteract his momentum as the additional turrets finish materialising and open fire. The Fishman furthest forwards manages to make it into contact with only moderate injuries while the remaining three are torn apart by my mini-crumbler shots. His success is short lived as his eagerness allows the Amazons to greet him with eight orichalcum spear points, cutting through his arms and impaling him through the chest and neck

Control of construct lost.

Gah! I jerk in the air and everything moves back to normal speed. What just-? No, keep going. Filaments cover the area the ring believes that Circe's in and are met with solid matter. A glowing orange Circe looks up in surprise and Donna lunges once more as I go for the chain. No luck. She dissolves back into water and surges across the plaza, dodging my Mageslayer rounds as she heads for the far wall.

"͜Fr͢us͏t͞rat͜in̕g..."̷ The beam I stuck through Mister Sorrow is now.. fractured in the air around him, the space around it distorted and.. bent. That's new. He takes a moment to adjust his gloves before reaching up towards his mask with both hands. They'd need to see him, right? I stick an opaque orange dome over him, making sure to include an orange base in the hope that will stop him phasing through the floor or something.

With the immediate targets gone I lift the turrets up and have them target the Fishmen in the lower city. The distance and the risk of hitting a friendly means I have to be a bit more selective in my targeting but I'm still not exactly short of things to shoot. They appear to be trying to move around and behind Amazon formations rather than charging them, relying on their tough skin to protect them from arrows. With a thought I tell the guns to shoot to injure and cripple rather than kill. The Amazons should be skilled enough to be able to take them down as long as they are physically capable of hurting them and a prisoner or two wouldn't go amiss.

"Donna-" I thrust the chain at her. "-go after Circe." She nods and flies off in the direction that Circe's water spout was heading in.

The Amazon block is forming a crescent moon around where I've got Mister Sorrow locked up and one with a slightly fancier helmet plume looks up at me. "You have him?"

Brand.

Unable to establish connection. Alert! Spatial anomaly-

I form another containment construct around the first.

-detected! Control of construct lost.

"No, I don't. His name is Johnny Sorrow and he has a Gorgon gaze." They're familiar with them at least. "If you see his face, you die. He doesn't even need eye contact and I don't know how to hold him long term."

Alert! Spatial anomaly detected!

I focus my mind on the idea of containment and my desire to see my foes rendered harmless. "I recommend either taking your soldiers to the lower city or finding me as many mirrors as you can." I don't actually have any mirrors with me. I mean, why would I?

Control of construct lost.

The dome bulges across its outer surface and then fractures, distorted fragments remaining suspended in the air and drifting away as he strolls forwards with his right hand gripping the bottom of his mask. "͝Tim̛e͢ to̵ ͝die."̢

I fire a beam but it falls apart before reaching him. I put an opaque orange visor over my eyes and have the ring interpret sonar pings to replace my vision. That should do it, right? The Amazons already have their shields up to block their faces, those with bows having either slung them over their backs or dropped them. He lifts his mask away… No, I'm registering some sort of undulating mass on top of his shoulders but my heart and brain appear to be unaffected.

"̧O̸h̶,́ ͟f͞ór pi̶ty҉'̛s͏ s̶a҉ke.͡ ̡ No̧ ̕òne͡?͢"̶

"Guard, fall back!"

He's tangible when his mask is off, right? I take another shot at his leg. He jerks when it hits but I don't see any blood. Ah well, had his chance. Ring, bra-

"A̢l҉ri҉g͘h͞t͞ t̷h̡e̢n͜.̨ ͏ The b̷orįn҉g̶ ̸w̨ay̛.͏"

-nd.

The air around him breaks and.. there's.. sort of.. holes where the sound the rings are generating is being entirely absorbed. I think I'm glad that I can't see it.

Unable to establish connection.

My Agent, I detect the hand of another.

Whatever he's doing doesn't appear to be any healthier for the stone ground than it is for my constructs. My construct armour effortlessly absorbs the stone fragments that are hurled in my direction but several Amazons are knocked flat. They're disciplined enough to keep their eyes covered, though. A moment later the stones are sucked back into place and the remaining fragments of construct fade into non-existence.

He's in the corridors of the underground parts of the palace. I haven't really had a tour. Scans don't show there being anyone near his location and I still don't have a way to hurt him. Tricky.

Two Crumblers in succession create a permanent hole in the stonework and I transition after him.

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Homecoming 23

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8th January

16:07 GMT +3

The rings show me Mister Sorrow pause at the end of the stone corridor and half turn back to me. "M͜ister ̛T̶ru̴g̀gs ͢àsked̢ ͟t҉o ̕b͞e̵ r̴e̕m̀em͜bere̸d t̡o you̧.̴"

"Working for him, are you?"

"W҉e̕ ́sh̵a͝re ̛emp̛loyer̵s."

"How does the King of Tears-" He stiffens slightly. "-feel about you moonlighting?"

"̨Libe͠ra҉t́i͞ng͝ ̛th͞e͜ King̶ of T̕e̶a͢r͢s ̴is a̡ v̨ery lon͝g̡ ter̴m͜ aim.̨" He starts to turn away. "͞ ̶W̛ill ̢yo̴ų ̵wàlk͞ wi̕th ͠me?̀ ͞ You k̶n͡ow y̢ơu ̡ca̡n't s͞to̸p̵ ̸m̴e."̶

"Oh?" An orange beam blasts at him from my chest.

"͝P̵-͘l̕e̷as̀e."̧ The beam fractures where it would hit him, and then the fractures advance back towards me! I cut the beam before they can get any closer, and once again the parts he's distorted remain in place for several seconds rather than dissipating immediately. "͝I f̀o̶uģh͞t͠ G͘re͠èn ͝Lant͝e̸rn ̵i͠n͞ his ̴p̶r̛i͠me.͘ ̡ ̧Y͡ou͠'l͞l͡ hav͜e̶ t͏o͏ ͞d͘o c͏on͝si͝d҉er͘ab͘l̢y̵ ͏be̶tte͘r thàn̷ ̕t͟h͢a͞t̡.҉"̶ He turns fully away from me and walks onwards to the next intersection. "̷Are y͢o͠u̕ ҉c̷o҉min͝g҉?"

No harm I suppose. I walk after him. "Lead on, MacDuff." Think think think. How do I use the rings to affect a thing like him?

"́M̛is̷te҉r T͞ru̵gg̀s͏ ͝believ͏es̡ that y̧o͟ư ̵c̡ome f͢rom ̢th́e̸ futu̧re͢."

He's not using conventional phasing or magic. "And you?"

He stops for a moment. "͠T̡h̸er̵e ̀a͡re s͝t̷ra̵ņge̛r p̨ląc͡es̕ ͟t͝hąn th̢e͠ ͟fut͟ưr͘e̛."̸

What does that leave that could produce the phenomena observed? Stewart ring? Any time you feel like chipping in. "I heard about your journey into the Subtle Realms."

"͘'̕J̕ou̴rǹey'͏ sel̡l͠s ͟i̸t ҉rath̕eŕ ̴shor͝t."̧

No data available.

Darn. "Do you want to talk about it? A lot of metahumans find that it helps, especially given what happened to your wife."

No reaction. "͘A̸ foo̴li̡s͝h a͜ttemṕt ͜on͘ my p̵a͠rt̨ tǫ ̛d̸ény wh̸at ̧I'͟ve ͞bec͟o̧m̶e̸.͘"͜

"And what exactly is that?"

"R̢e͜mo̵v͏e t̸he̕ ̀glowing̕ face m̷a͢sk ̨an͞d I'̨l͘l ̵b̸e ha̷ppy̢-̕"͏ His right hand moves towards his chin again. "͏-t̨o s͏ho̡w͜ you̧.̷"

There's a slight temptation. What sort of vision could be horrific enough to actually kill people? I had a sleepless night after I killed Kath-. After I destroyed what was left of Katherine Maher, but the horror of fighting her didn't cause me any physical damage. The idea that it's even possible still sounds ridiculous. Maybe the image serves as a conduit for some sort of bound spell? I don't remember hearing about him using the ability on anyone with good magic defences. "I'll pass, thank you. Why are you here?"

He lowers his hand. "͞Oc͟eań Maste͠r w̴ants͠ s҉ǫm͡ȩthin͟ǵ fr̕om͘ ͝th̢e̶ T͠he̡m͞ys͏c̶ir҉a͡n̷ ̨treas̶ury̕."̡

What? "Orm's dead. I was there when they executed him." I hadn't realised that that was how they'd carry it out. From the plume of blood that left his neck after King Orin said goodbye I'm going to assume that he was dead before the Barracuda started on him. I had no idea what to say to King Orin afterwards. I know he doesn't blame me, I just wish there'd been some other way to go about it. Regular Atlantean executions are much more humane. If I'd known in advance, I wouldn't… I don't know. Legally, I could have killed him when we fought. I just.. don't want to be that guy.

Mister Sorrow seems to find the idea amusing. "That́ i͠s̷ nơt҉ d̢ead͜ whic̶h ca͘n et҉e̢r̶n̢a҉l͘ li͘e. ̕An͢d ̕w̡i͟th s͘t̷ran̛g͞e ͞a͏eons̡ e̷veǹ ̵d̢ea͞t̕h ͏ma͏y ̀di͏é."

"Lovecraft? From you? Really?"

"͝F̵ine̕,́ i̛t w͞a̡s̀ ͏in͟ ̶h̶is̨ ̨wi͏ļl̷. A̢ ̨s͢ort̨ o̡f̛ p͜o̡s̡t̨ mo̴r͘tèm̡ ͘'ge̢t th͞e̸ guy͝s̨ ̷wh̴o ͡got̴ m̧e a̡ņd h͝er̛e'͝s a śẁeeten̛ȩr͡.͏' Th́e ̶Am҉az҉o҉n͟s͜ ̨hav̛e b͜e̛e͝n ͡s͘i̸tting͜ on qu̸it̷e a trea͟su̸r̸e t̴r͞o̡v̢e ͏of́ ̀a̴r̢cane ́d̶evi̵c͞es a̕n̵d I ̵s͜ee ͏n͞o͡ reason͜ ńo̶t̡ ̧t̴o p͠u͡ţ ̡t͟he̢m̢ ̧ba̢ck ͟in̕ c҉ír̷c̕ul͟a̡t͞i̸on. Cir͟c͘e̴'͏s҉ h̸er̛e͏ ͏f͢or̶ ͝śom͝e͏ so͟rt҉ o͢f ͝her̨b.̡ I̶ w̶a͝s ̴o̷r̕ig͝i҉nall̵y͝ p͠l̀ánni̵ng ͢to t̢a͘k͡e ͢e͞ve̸r̷yt́h̢i̷ng a͘f͠ter̡ ͞I̢ ki͘ll͘e͏d th͝e͜ e̸nti͞r̡e po͘p̵u̧la̷t̕i͢o̶n,͠ b͏u͘t̡ ̢si͝nce͝ ͝yo̡u̸'r̡e h̨ere tha̧t's ̶g͠oi̸n̡g̨ ̛to be̴ ͏tòo ̷i̕r҉ri͘ta̢t̡i̴ng ̷t͝o̴ ̶b̀ot͞h͘er͝ ́wi҉th.͠"

Ring, open communications with Donna.

Compliance.

Donna, Johnny Sorrow says that Circe's after some sort of magic herb. Does that sound plausible?

Could be? There's a lot of-. Oh.

What?

I know where she's going. Is Sorrow under control?

I look across at him. Ish?

Right. Catch up later.

Still no idea how to do anything to stop him. In the distance the rings show me the staff evacuating. And some soldiers… Ah, a mirror! I should try something like that as well. I need more information. "Where did the Fishmen come from?"

"̵F͠ro̕m͝ ͞the ̷At́la҉ntea̵n ci̶t̷y̕ ͞o͞f̛ ́S̸a̛rem̀e̵.͡ ̕ Oce͘an҉ ͜Ma͡st̶er̸'s ̢f͝ri̷end͡s...̴ ͘ ́O̷r̸ s҉o̢methin̡g lik͏e͠ that́."

"Intelligent?" I'm pretty sure that they are but confirmation will be nice. No, not nice nice. Useful.

"̴So th̕ey ̴te͝l̕l͜ m̶e̶. ͡I͠ don'҉t sp͞e͘ak ͡t͘he ̨l̸an̵g͏u͏age."

I follow as he takes a left. Secure storerooms, if I remember correctly. Can I pull his mask off? Would that work? Then-.

Observed phenomena consistent with extra-dimensional being.

Stewart ring, how are we using 'dimension' in this context? Because I come from a parallel universe and if it turns out-.

Extra-dimensional existence is not possible within the physical laws of this parallel. However, observed phenomena suggest the possibility of limited planar merger to permit it.

So he's using the laws of a parallel universe to let him exist in this one?

Observed phenomenal consistency. However, no records of an equivalent being exist in records and analysis is speculative.

And not particularly helpful in any case. I don't have a parallel universe jammer thing. Although… Any idea what would happen if I destroyed his mask?

That question should be referred to the Guardians.

I notice a metal rim around the next passageway and stop. Mister Sorrow strides on through and ignores the lightning spell that triggers in response. If my earlier shot caused any lasting damage to his leg he's walked it off. Ophidian? Any bright ideas?

Eat him.

Might come to that. "Mister Sorrow, I'm going to have to ask you to stop."

"I do̵n't͠ ̧t͠hi͡nk҉ I̧ ͟ẁill.̷" He stops opposite a vault door, electrical energy still crackling around him. He holds his hands out to the sides and a series of fissures appears in the walls, breaking the spell. Right, no sense wasting anti-magic rounds on him if the effect isn't magic. I place my hands on the wall of the room the door leads into and extend a filament through the brick, transmuting a mirror into being on the far side. Might get him if he just blasts through. I also prep a small railgun behind me, ready to try crumbling his mask if he takes it off again.

"Alright, changed my mind." He looks around and I drop the construct covering my face. "I can't imagine that whatever your face does could actually affect me. Show me."

"͘Take͏ off yo͝ur r͘in̢g̷ a̕nd̵ ͞I̡'ll̶ be̷ ǵlad͝ ̴tó." I hold out my left hand and float the ring off it, letting it fall to the ground. As it goes I dissipate my face mask and turn my environmental shield down to nothing as soon as it loses contact with my finger. Next, I have the Stewart ring sever my optic nerves. No sense being stupid about this. I imagine that he's looking at me, trying to work out my angle. "̴I'm͘ s̷u҉r̕e͟ t͢hére's a ̡t͟ri̷ck ͜h̸èr̨è,͢ ́b̸u҉t͠ f̶or̴ the ͡l͠i͡fe̛ ̕o͘f͞ ͏me ̢I c͢a̢n͡'t҉ s͟eę ̕i̵t͏." Can't see a thing, but from the sound of footsteps I'm going to guess that he's just turned towards me. "Well̢ the͟n͢. S͞i̶nc̵e you're͝ ҉so ͞i̵nte̶r͜ȩs͟te̡d." I hear the sound of cloth moving over cloth as he raises his arm to lift the mask off. "So̶. ͜ W̢hąt̸ do ͟y̧ou-͘?͘"͏ The railgun behind me jerks out to the side and fires directly at the mask. I hear a strangely echoey cracking sound as the round strikes home. "͟Oh..̴ y̧o̕u.. d̵id̢n'̀t̛.͘"͟

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Homecoming 24

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8th January

16:13 GMT +3

I raise my eyebrows. "Think I di-."

"Alert!Alert!Alert!Alert!A-!"

The left ring leaps back onto my ring finger as the sonic sensor mask reforms on my face and fuckfuckfuckfuck! The weird areas I can't scan are multiplying!

Mister Sorrow's frantically grabbing at his own head, as if trying to contain something! "̸̥͙̣͇͇̞̑N̙̮͛̀̈́͐̀ͤ͝ơ̟̻̥͐̅̀̽͂!͔͈̼͈̥͕̙̀͛̇ ̠̜͎̒̃͝ ͯͣ͊͌̎͏̦̳̻̼N̼̞͠o̪̻̰̯̤͐ͭ͑̈̐̃!ͥ̀̔ͮ̍"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡

"Alert!Alert!Alert!Alert!A-!" / "Massive spatial-!Massive spatial-!Massive spa-!"

The corridor around me bulges outwards, the apparently solid stone walls rippling like sheets in the wind. Then two points seem to pull back, the rest twisting around them like water running down the drain. Maybe popping his dimensional stabiliser wasn't the most sensible-. The area of intense distortion around his head bubbles outwards as he takes his hands from his head and starts grabbing at the door! Integrity Prana thing!

Not on file.

That only came from the original ring. I felt the Stewart ring hesitate. Stewart ring, what have you got?

During this ring's assimilation a small number- I dart back to avoid what looked suspiciously like a tentacle mouth made of ice and brick. -of high security files were erased to preserve secrecy.

Something's starting to feel really r̢e̷allỳ badly̷ we͘ i̧r͘d! C̴a҉n͟ ҉y̵ou w̕ór̵k͏ i͞t͘ ơu͘t̢ ͘w͠i͘th̵out thąt?

Te͏chniq͠ues ̶fo̶r ̛re̴sis͘ti̡ng dìm͟en͟siòņal͢ ̛al̢t͠era͝tio̴n̡s h̴i̶g̢hly s͏pec͘ula͘tivé-.̢

O͟f͏f̀er ͟t͟he ͡G̷u̷a͏rḑi̵áns͡ a c͠opy͏ o͞f͠ our̀ ͘t̡ést d͜at̨a!

S͡t̴ánd ͠by͝.̧

B͘y͡ ̴t͡he̸ n̵ow ̨fļa̕tt̷e͘ne͡d͟ ̵an̨d ̷c̶urv͏e̸d ̨do҉or ͜M̸iste͡r S̛o̕rr҉ow̧ ͢fin͘ally ̢m͜a̧nag͞es͘ ̴to͜ h̷i҉t͢ ͠s̸o̷m̧et̵h̡in҉g v̷ita͝l̵ w͞i͏th͜ ͜a̵ ͢d̕is̢torti̛òn̢ and͝ ͞fo̧r̛ce ̀it̴ o̶pen͞. H̨ȩ ̢di͜ves̵.́. ͏no,̡ f̛ąlls̴ into̴ t̵he͢ o̷p̡e͟n͞i̛n͠g. I try to ́fol̸low͜ ͝b̸u͝t ͘I̕ can'͟t ̕m͏a̧k͜e̢ h͟eadwa̕y̨. ͜ I͏'ḿ g̸e͢ttin̶g͞.͠.̀? Ít̷'s c̨ur̡ving̛ ͞aw̕a̴y͢ i̴n͝tó..? Th́e͞ s͟ơnic͜ ̧feȩdback̵ I'̕m̕ ̴g̷e̕t́t̨ing ̀m͘a͝k҉es͟ l̶it͞tl̴e̢ s̀e͟nse ̵an̕d͢ ̢I͜ ͝t̡h̢ink ̢I̕'m ͞gl͡a̴d t̴h̸at̵ ̢I can̢'t ͢se͢ę it.

Dąt҉a͢ ̨ŗec͠ęive͘d͏. Th͢e͜o̡r͜e̴t͞ical̀l͢y͜ s̡oun̵d́ ͜d͏im͡ensi̶o͡nal̶ s̀ta̵bi̡lise͜r ̡t̷e҉ch̛niqu͞e͞ ̵a̵v͢àil͞a͞b̵le. W̕a̷rninģ, s͝ųc̛c̢e͞ss ҉ǹo͠t͡-.

D͞O ̢IT!

Ti̕n͘y̵ ͠o͏r͏ang͘e l̷i̡n̡e̕s̡ ̷rad͡i͞ate͘ ̛from m͟y҉ ҉eņvi͞ŗo͏n̨me̕ńta͡l ̨s̴h͞ie͏l͏d, b͝raņch,͜ bra̴nch͟ ͜a͜gain ̕an͏d a bubble of apparent sanity reappears around me. It doesn't go very far, but I'll take what I can get.

Warning: heavy power drain. Charge remaining- Sonic scans are probably useless but I try heading in the direction I saw Mister Sorrow going in. -one hundred seventy seven percent. I'm making headway, but only slowly if the stone pattern on the floor is anything to go by. What happens when part of the universe is forced to exist in more spatial dimensions than its own physical rules support? What defines the characteristics it possesses in those dimensions? Is there a Greek God of planar stability? This is… I can't even begin to guess how messed up this is. Mister Sorrow seemed to find the process-. In the corner of my eye I catch sight of something and try moving towards it. Gradually, Mister Sorrow's mask comes into view within my bubble. But I.. shot..? Ring, anything odd about it?

Unable to analyse. No detectable change in object.

There's a chime from the Stewart ring. Warning: heavy power drain. Charge remaining: one hundred sixty three percent.

Balls. Would giving him the mask back help? Or did it.. stop working when I shot it? I pick it up and resume my journey towards the door. Ophidian, any ideas?

I don't like this.

Oh. Sorry about that. I'll see what I can do.

Sonic scans show the apparent anarchy around me start to churn and fracture, bits of normality seeming to reassert themselves before being consumed once more. I actually do have the design for Mister Sorrow's original subspace dimensional shift prototype in storage. I picked them up when I was looking for a way to phase through solid matter. I suppose I could.. try that. They shut down all research on the device after Mister Hawkins revealed exactly how dangerous the thing was.

"̢W͏h҉e̵̶͘re͘͘ ̡is̴ ̡̢i͘t!̢̀?̴͝ ̸́̕ W̡͠h̨e̸̢r͠͡͝e̶̸͢ i͟s̨ ̸͝i̛t̡!͠?҉"̢̨

Okay, that was coming from… Three different directions? I'm not even going to try calculating what that means. I'm at the doorway now and I push on through. I get glimpses of heavy wood and steel chests and cupboards that have been torn open, either by the distortion effects or Mister Sorrow himself.

"͘I͏ ̶h̨a͡v̵̨è͡ ҉҉̵t̴̕o̧ ̴̀f̵i̛nd҉ ̴̕i͏t̶̷̛!́"̛͡

Stewart ring, did the Guardians have any idea-

Warning: heavy power drain. Charge remaining: one hundred thirty eight percent.

-how to fight against something like this?

Theoretically, compelling the source to exist fully within the physical laws of this universe should halt the effect. No experimental data exists to support this supposition.

So, mask, technology from the thirties or Guardian guesswork? Of course, giving him the mask won't make it easier for me to deal with him.

Warning: heavy power drain. Charge remaining: one hundred eleven percent.

That was quicker. Sending him back to wherever he came from doesn't help if they fix him up and send him right back. Do the Guardians.. actually want me dead? Can I trust them not to mess me about? I'd guess so. They can't possibly want something they don't know how to fight freed and I'm a far more manageable problem than the King of Tears. The mangled remains of the mirror I created to try to stop him pass by on my right. It looks like it's been torn in half vertically, the right side twisted into a spiral and compressed into a smaller space than it should occupy.

"I̧t̨͠ h̀͝a̧s̶̸̷ ̡t̀o̸̷ ͘҉b͝e͞ ͏h̴̢̀e̢̛r̵̛͘ȩ!"̡́

A set of drawers bursts as it hits the edge of my envelope.

Warning: heavy power drain. Charge remaining: one hundred percent.

I push forwards again and Mister Sorrow enters the edge of my stabilisation radius.

Warning: heavy power drain. Charge remaining: ninety percent.

"Huh?" He straightens up. I'm getting sonic returns from his face, his.. Human face. "I..?"

Warning: heavy power drain. Charge remaining: seventy percent.

It doesn't look quite as it did when he first vanished. There's some sort of unhealthy pallor to it, as if it were cut from his skull and then inexpertly stuck back on. And his skin's rippling as if something's trying to get out.

"Still have to find it!" He grabs another drawer, scrabbling through the contents until-. "Ah!" He carefully extracts an item before collapsing to the ground.

Warning: heavy power drain. Charge remaining: fifty percent.

"I'm not… This won't hold me." He gasps for breath, cradling the tiny golden object to his chest. "He… I…" He face shudders and twists. "Too small for me. I won't fit."

The background physical distortions begin to fade away. The room's pretty much wrecked.

Warning: critical power drain. Charge remaining: twenty percent.

"Mister Sorrow, I've got your mask-."

"You broke the connection, that-" He pants. "-won't work anymore."

Can I recharge like this without dropping the dimensional control thingamy? Previously, that's been a problem. Don't really have much choice but to risk it. I take my lantern out of the box.

"Mister Sorrow, what-?"

"Don't worry about this. It doesn't matter. Heh. I'm just the s̸m͏i̛l̛e on the fac̨e͘ of th̸e͝ tiger." He brings his hands up fast towards his head, and for a moment I see the golden object imbedded in his forehead. There's a momentary flash of light, then his body folds in around the impact point, torso and limbs jerking, twisting and shrinking. "Worry.. about… W̶hat͟ fol̸loẃś."

The remaining distortions fade away as he does, leaving me floating in a broken room with my now visible stabilisation construct.

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Homecoming 25

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8th January

16:20 GMT +3

A quick scan shows no further sign of dimensional instability.

This is my cause

I don't know if what's in here is valuable or dangerous. Lantern in my left hand and box sent to subspace I head out of the door.

This is my fight

The walls of the corridor are twisted and distorted, as if someone drew a brickwork pattern on rubber and then stretched it. The bricks making up the wall are still brick and their molecular structure implies they were hewn in that shape, though obviously I know that they weren't.

Shine through the void with orange light

I'm not picking up any organic remains in my immediate environment. Can't transition or fly until I've recharged. The Amazons who were fetching that mirror are over… Oh dear.

I've claimed all within my sight

"It's stuck it's stuck it's stuck-." One Royal Guard is trying to pull away from the wall. She can't because it's bulged outwards and enveloped her right arm. Not just sucked it in, but the dimensional distortions have left her with a forearm that's over three metres long and thoroughly mixed in with the stone. It's probably better that she can't see it. Another guard -the one who appeared to be in charge on the plaza- has suffered the mirror merging with the armour and skin on right side of her body. She seems more shocked than in pain, her left hand fixedly tracing the join between organic and metallic. A third is covering her twisted jaw with her right hand and pushing away guards four and five with her left.

"To keep what is mine, that is my right."

Orange light surges from the lantern into both rings, drawing their attention. The guard leader points to the wall guard. "Help her first."

"Ring charge at one hundred percent." / "Ring charge at one hundred percent."

I nod and set my lantern down on the ground before striding over to the wall guard. She's breathing hard and her pupils dilate slightly as I take hold of her elbow. "I can still feel it. I can still feel it. You don't… Don't amputate it. Please."

I create an opaque barrier between her and the point where her arm meets the wall. "Is anyone else injured?"

Mirror guard shakes her head. The mirror material flexes nearly as easily as her natural skin. "I sent everyone else to the walls."

"Good." I smile at the wall guard. "What's your name?"

"A-Amynta."

"Hello, Amynta. Now, I think we can save your arm-" We can't. "-but I'm going to need you to cooperate with me, alright?" She nods a little unsteadily. "Okay. Now, I'm going to need to numb your arm so that I can get it out, alright? You're not going to be able to feel it for a few moments. That's nothing to worry about." Another nod and I deaden the nerve endings in the hopelessly distorted limb. "Alright, now I'm going to clamp your arm in place so I can move it carefully, okay?" Another nod and I take my x-ionised knife from subspace and covertly cut through the point of attachment, immediately using constructs to control the blood flow as I move her slowly backwards away from the wall. Now comes the tricky bit. I've never restored a whole limb before but really there's nothing about the task that is beyond me. DNA analysis, scan physical structures and-.

One of the unaffected guards gets a look at what I'm doing. Her eyes widen and Amynta spots it. "What? What's he doing? What are you doing?"

"Repairing your injury. Please, be patient." Under the rings' ministrations the forearm begins to reappear, bone moving ahead of muscle, fat, veins, arteries, nerves and skin. I don't know where her moles or her scars were so she'll just have to do without. "Just a few-."

She tries to pull free and then looks at the other guard. "Sophi, what's he doing?"

"Fixing you. Let him work."

Skin done, nails done, blood.. flowing. Quick check over… Looks fine. Can't see any other injuries on her. "I'm going to restore sensation now. If anything feels wrong, don't panic, let me know right away, okay?" A nod, and I remove the nerve inhibitors and the barrier. She snatches her forearm away and cradles it to her chest, checking it over. I look at the other two altered Amazons. "Who's next?"

Mirror Amazon nods at Jaw Amazon and I attach filaments to her alteration before she can complain. Simple enough, there's more than enough material there to work with. Just remove a bit there, add it here… Done. I turn to Mirror Amazon but she shakes her head. "Don't bother. Did you get him?" I take his mask out of my leg pouch and show it to her. She nods. "We need to get back out-" I pick up my lantern then connect filaments to each of them and transfer us pack to the plaza, overlooking the lower city. "-side." She looks around. "Oh."

"You sure you don't want me to-?"

"It doesn't hurt." She walks over to the wall and takes in the scene below. The Fishmen are being pushed back… I recreate my turret constructs and target them, cries going up as knees and elbows disappear and legs and arms fall to the ground. Looks like the Amazons aren't finishing off the fallen. Good, prisoners would be helpful and I don't really want to kill any I don't have to. In the distance there's a visible shockwave as Kon and Diana punch opposite sides of the one of Scylla's heads that is still visible, causing it to collapse and then crash into the water with an almighty splash.

"What's your name, boss lady?"

Mirror guard points at a section of the plaza guards and then at the lower city. They form up and head for the passageway down at a jog. She then looks around at me. "Zosime."

"Pleased to meet you, Zosime."

"Shouldn't you be helping Donna with Circe?"

I shake my head. "Donna hasn't asked for help. I'm more worried about helping the mortally wounded. Is everyone up here alright?"

"Yes." She points to the coliseum. "We should be evacuating the-" Ring, scan. "-casualties-."

I transition to the colosseum and immediately send filaments out to those Amazons lying on the ground. The Fishmen don't seem to use weapons but there are super strength blow pattern crush injuries, claw and bite injuries and concussions. No. This is my island, these are my people. There are sudden flares of orange light as injuries are enveloped and repaired. Focus. Triage. Not a lot of mortal or life threatening wounds but I fix those first, brain and skull injuries and crushed rib cages. With plenty of power to burn I re-establish my turrets and take a few shots but it looks like the fight is pretty much ov-.

"Paul, look out!" Kon's voice on the radio. "Scylla's down but she sent a wave towards the island."

I shoot upwards, filaments below still moving from injury to injury. No dead, I notice. Either we got very lucky or they didn't bother bringing them. The wave Kon mentioned is five metres tall in the centre but is coming in over a fairly narrow frontage. I thrust a sonic cannon into the water ahead of it and fire a blast of sound. No effect. Why didn't..? Never mind. I erect a barrier along the shoreline. Should be able to oh what the heck! The water roars forwards, passing straight through it. Repeating the pattern of the Fishman deployment it roars through the city at street level. Amazons are unaffected but any Fishmen living or dead touched by it disappear. It isn't covering the whole place but they're deliberately falling back towards it. Oh no you don't! I attach clamps to the legs of three Fishmen as they leap from a rooftop towards freedom and haul them up into the air. The water seems to reach for them for a moment but then they're too high for it and the wave breaks before it can reach them. It continues onwards towards the last Fishmen pocket. Mageslayer? No. I don't know that it would work and it's clearly just an escape spell. I watch as the last of our foes evacuate and the moment they're gone the water evaporates into nothingness.

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Homecoming 26

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8th January

16:32 GMT +3

I take a look around the colosseum. The three Fishmen I hooked glower at me from behind their guards. Aside from them, the place looks more or less back to normal. "Is that everyone?"

Sadeh nods as she helps the last of the formerly injured Amazons to their feet. "I believe so, though you would do well to check the streets and the Temple of Apollo."

I nod and turn to leave. "Wait!" I look around as one of the Amazons I healed waves her right hand to get my attention. She had.. smashed shoulder and a ruined right eye. Her eye is still blinking spasmodically. Did I get something wrong? No, scans show nothing, it's probably just a psychological thing.

"Yes?"

"You healed.. my eye." She delicately puts the fingers of her right hand on the skin just underneath it.

"Yes, that's.. what I do?"

She shakes her head. "You don't understand. I lost my eye in Themyscira." I frown and shake my head in incomprehension. "Old Themyscira."

Ooh. "Are you going to be alright walking around?"

"Yes." She looks a little stunned. I suppose getting binocular vision back after three thousand years can do that to a person. "Yes, thank you."

"You're welcome... What's your name?"

She takes a moment to respond. "Tekla."

"Tekla. Please, if you know of anyone else with long term injuries-" Amazons are tough and the goddesses' blessings allow for improved healing but they can't regrow bits that are simply gone. "-send them my way. I'm here for another day." She nods and I transition up into the sky. In the distance I see Diana and Kon are dragging Scylla further out to sea. Hopefully they'll be able to get some answers from-.

"Aaaaagh!" I look around at the shout and see Donna land heavily on the inner city plaza and throw the binding chain to the ground. She doesn't look hurt… Right, Temple of Apollo's over there… No serious injuries. I transition back to the plaza and pick up the chain with a filament. She looks up at me and I raise my eyebrows. "She got away! She just.. laughed at me and turned back into water when I tried to put the chains on her."

"I wasn't able to stop Mister Sorrow leaving either. Did she get the.. herb thing?"

She nods. "I think so. A lot of the herbs with strong magical properties get grown on the other side of the mountain, that's where I caught up with her."

"Did you see what sort of plant it was?"

She shakes her head. "It just looked like a handful of grass to me. One of the 'erbalists-" I suppress a snort at her pronunciation. "-can tell us what it was." She walks closer to the crenulations and leans on them. "Do you know.. how many people on our side died?"

"As far as we know, none. Plenty of injuries, but this just shows how soldiers trump warriors."

She relaxes slightly. "That's a relief. And them?"

"They took their fallen with them. I'm not really sure what happened to Mister Sorrow. Diana and Kon are dealing with Scylla and I took three prisoners. They'll be in for a truth lassoing later."

"What exactly happened to Sorrow?"

"I shot his mask after he took it off and he started uncontrollably altering the structure of local space. Rather poor planning on my part, really."

"Shooting them in the signature artefact usually works."

"Mmpf. Oh, that reminds me: Stewart ring, forward all data on Johnny Sorrow to the Guardians."

"Directive accomplished."

Donna raises her right eyebrow. "Guardians?"

"I didn't have any idea how to deal with a.. dimensional cascade. They were kind enough to provide me with a technique."

"I thought they didn't like you?"

"They don't, but, better to risk me testing it than one of theirs. And they wouldn't gain anything if I died, they'd just be stuck with a new Orange Lantern."

She nods. "So you suppressed him and he disappeared?

"I suppressed the area immediately around me. It was caning my power reserves just keeping a small area around me stable."

She frowns. "Didn't you have your lantern with you?"

"Recharging disrupts constructs being generated from the ring being recharged. I might have been okay, but when you've got a complicated construct you don't understand keeping you alive…"

"Right."

"He went ahead and tore up a storage room looking for something. He was in a bad way. I offered him his mask back but he said that wouldn't work, then jammed a small gold thingy into his head and disappeared."

"Into his head?"

"He didn't bleed or anything. I don't know whether it hurt him or not." I make a construct of it. It looks a bit like a pruning knife. "Does this look familiar to you?"

She looks at it for a moment and then shakes her head. "No, but I don't know about all of the artifacts they keep here. You'll have to talk to Io about it."

"Sheee doesn't want to talk to anyone until tomorrow. Since I'm pretty sure Mister Sorrow went back to that weird place he was.. remade in. I don't think he'll be reappearing any time soon. So, he disappeared, physics returned to normal and I've been healing the injured since. How did the fight with Circe go?"

"I think I should have asked Hekate for the ability to see through illusion after all. She must have blended in with one of the guard units when the Fish guys started attacking."

"And Artemis doesn't have a sweet tooth?"

"No. I'd have to track an animal, kill it with a bow and collect its blood. And old blood's no good." She shrugs. "And even then… Some gods just don't like me that much. Anyway, I eventually caught up with her. She tried transmuting me but Hekate's shield protected me."

"And not my Spell Eater?"

"I didn't bring it." I pantomime looking hurt. "I didn't think I'd need it. This was supposed to be a vacation. Anyway, I hit her a few times.. and illusions of her lots of times. Then she grabbed the grass, said.. some stuff, and turned back into water." She glances at the chain. "Maybe you could get Sephtian to make a magic suppressing bucket."

I nod. "A bucket would be a bit hard to carry around. He's working on an area effect version, but even with micro-crafting he thinks it'll either be huge or only last-." She sniggers. "Oh. Joke. Right."

She looks at the ground for a moment, then back up at me. "You've.. researched Ancient Greek mythology, right?" I nod. "What do you think about the Titans? In general, I mean."

"Well… Diana was given life by Gaea. I'm not sure if that makes her one or not. The Amazons still have temples to some of them… I always assumed that the difference between a Titan and an Olympian was political rather than mystical… And I've never spoken to one myself or had access to a source I could rely on as being unbiased. I'm a bit nervous of beings that powerful, um-" I look at my lantern. "-present company excepted. So I suppose I don't really feel anything about them. Why do you ask?"

"Oh, it… Doesn't.. really matter." She lifts up off the ground. "I'm going to go help Diana and Kon with Scylla. Check up on Cassie for me?"

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Homecoming 27

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8th January

19:14 GMT +3

"…turn her back into a Human." Diana takes a sip from her goblet. Water, I notice.

Donna looks concerned. "But.. wouldn't you have just given it to her if she'd asked?"

"Yes, though I'm not at all certain that it would have worked. Acts of magic build up their own inertia and Scylla has been in her current shape for a very long time."

Queen Hippolyta nods. "I will consult with our herbalists tomorrow morn-." She looks around at the Amazons carousing on the inner city plaza. "Perhaps tomorrow afternoon would be better."

There are more than a few celebrations going on in the lower city as well. Prince Kon's 'Welcome to Themyscira' party has grown into a citywide after battle celebration. After a few awkward looks at me the planners went with their original idea of having the royal table just outside the Temple of Hera end while everyone else gets to use the somewhat plainer benches set around the periphery. In the centre are two huge bonfires and several of the more excitable partygoers are already dancing around them. They're also the main source of light as sunset was about two hours ago. There are small braziers hanging from the fronts of the various buildings and set around the edge of the party area but they don't provide all that much light. I suppose that years of artificial lighting must have spoiled me.

I'm still dressed in grey and orange, though I've changed from my leathers to something a bit more compatible with the local dress code. My dark grey trousers and medium grey tunic owe more to medieval England than to bronze age Greece and the dark grey with orange decoration open chested sleeveless coat thing I'm wearing over the top is entirely my own invention. I have.. vague memories of John Stewart wearing something similar in Justice League Unlimited for Superman's funeral. I have even vaguer ideas about making it the Orange Lantern Corps' dress uniform. Something robe-like should work for most morphologies…

I jerk my head around as someone pokes me in the ribs. "Sorry? What?"

Acantha smiles at me. "I asked if you were enjoying your food."

Over on the far side of the plaza Captain Philippus is introducing Kon to the representatives of some of the island's other settlements. He seems to be taking it in his stride. Not sure whether that's because he's learned confidence, because he's still glowing or because they all saw him punch out a giant monster today.

"Um, yes, thank you." Okay, that was an automatic response. Really, roast beef without Yorkshire Puddings? Whatever else I do with the place I simply have to introduce more foods and cooking methods. The spit roasting of entire cows was quite a sight, and they actually roasted vegetables in a similar way using a metal tombola drum cage thing. I think I remember a chef I saw on television do something similar. What was his name?

"Is something bothering you?"

"I'm sorry, I was.. really hoping that Io would turn up."

Her eyebrows rise slightly and she follows my gaze out into the crowd. "Isn't she here? I'm having trouble making out faces."

"No, still in her foundry." She stayed there even during the attack. The attack on the upper city was -Mister Sorrow aside- fairly weak and I suppose she must have been making too much noise to hear the alert gong.

Acantha give me an amused smile. "Did Princess Diana show you a painting of her in America? Has our fair lady smith captured your heart before even meeting you?"

"No, she's just the only person I know who knows how to make mithril. And orichalcum. You have no idea how valuable those are in the rest of the world."

She considers for a moment. "Do you wish to go into business with her?"

"Hey, I've got-" I drop a few gold coins into my right palm from subspace. "-as much money as I could ever want. I want to find something that Themyscira has to trade that the rest of the world wants. If she really is the only one who can produce it then the price of the stuff will be astronomical."

"For weapons and armour?" She looks slightly concerned at the idea.

"Or buildings. Or vehicles. Strong and lightweight materials have.. I don't even know how many uses." I think for a moment. "To be honest, I don't think most weapons Man's Worlders use would really benefit from being made of orichalcum. Armour would, but I don't think bullet performance would improve that much." AP sabots might, but modern depleted uranium sabots go through all current generation armour anyway and the designs I've seen for next generation tanks all incorporate force fields. "And next generation infantry weapons are mostly plasma based so there's nothing to make with orichalcum. Besides, if you control production you can control who gets it and for what."

Queen Hippolyta turns to us. "Whether we trade the metals with Man's World or not, it isn't healthy for Io to be stuck in the forge on her own all day. Paul, take some food down for her and try to persuade her to come out and join us. If she really is adamant then leave her to her own devices, but you have.. my permission to intrude on the foundry."

"Thank you, majesty." I rise, lifting my seat back as I do so. "I'll be back in a few minutes either way."

I perform a shallow bow and receive an amused nod in return, then turn away and begin making my way around the edge of the party area. An odd reflection catches my eye as I go and I see Zosime dancing with a woman of a less martial appearance. Friend, girlfriend, wife? I have no idea. Everyone else around here probably does but Amazons don't wear an outward indicator of marital status. She had said that she'd probably want me to remove the mirror material tomorrow after she'd had the opportunity to shock a few people with it, then she heard about me healing long term injuries and told me not to bother. It's a shame there aren't lists of them. I was thinking that it would probably work best if I announced that I was going to be here on a particular day and they could arrange to bring anyone who needed healing there. Without modern communications technology the only way to get the message out would be word of mouth and even in a fairly small place like this that will be fairly slow.

"Hey!" One of the Amazons watching the dancing spots me trying to creep by and waves at me. "Do you dance as well as you sing?"

I hold up my hands in surrender and shake my head. "I really don't."

"It's not hard. We can show you." She looks to her friends who also appear to be smiling at me. A few familiar faces there.

"I may take you up on that later-" Cold day in Tartaru-. Wait, is Tartarus naturally hot? Never mind. "-but at the moment our queen has tasked me with ferreting Io out from her workplace. If you'll excuse me?"

A few cheerful goodbyes and I head towards the serving area. No idea what Io eats so I load a plate with a few slices of beef, some bread and some vegetables. I also take a large stein of that broth stuff the Amazons seem to think is a soft drink. I could offer her something from my subspace pocket but I somehow doubt that she's much of a foody. Amazons aren't big on eating utensils so there's nothing to add there. They also don't have toothbrushes but without refined sugar the threat to their teeth is much less than what the rest of the world has to cope with. Strange that the Ophidian and I didn't think to deliver any chocolate when we made our food delivery.

I suppose I should just be glad that we didn't think to deliver Rabbits.

Plate and mug floating by my side I transition to just outside Io's workplace. I know I have permission to just appear inside but that strikes me as rather rude. Besides, I can feel the heat through the door and I'm a little concerned that she might have stripped down. I don't remember seeing anything on how Amazon nudity taboos work between genders… Best be on the safe side. I bang on the door with my right hand.

"What now?!"

"We're having a party! You were invited, remember?!" The hammering stops and I hear a heavy piece of metal thump down on a solid surface. "I come bearing food and drink?" Footsteps heading in my direction. I take a step back and check that my clothing is presentable. Yep, good to go.

The door swings open and I get my first look at Io. She frowns at me. "Prince Kon?"

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Homecoming 28

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8th January

19:18 GMT +3

She's a little bit shorter than me, but not by much. She's not much less muscular than me either, though since her body has been formed by hard work rather than by a power ring it only becomes obvious when she bends her right arm to mop her sweat-jewelled brow. Her hair's brown and it's cut short. She's wearing an orange cloth around her head as a sweat band, a tough looking leather apron, leather gloves and.. leather trousers.

"No, I'm afraid I'm the other one. Orange Lantern two eight one four." I offer her my right hand. "Pleased to meet you."

She takes a moment to look me over then steps out of the forge, reaching past my hand and clasping my arm around the elbow. Oh, right! I reciprocate. It's the equivalent gesture, 'I'm comfortable letting you inside my guard' rather than 'I'm either not carrying a weapon or I'm left handed'. "Greetings, Orange Lantern. How did you like the bow?"

"Artemis loves that thing. Thank you so much for taking that commission. What do I owe you?"

She mops her brow again and stretches her back, enjoying the cooler air outside the forge. "There was some mention of food?"

"Oh, of course." I float the plate and mug around. She takes hold of the mug in her right hand, raising it to her lips and tipping her head back. "You know, you are invited to the party. And.. if you've got time I'd.. quite like to talk to you about your work?"

She tips the mug back slightly as she pauses for breath. "Busy." Then she goes back to drinking.

"Is it.. something I can help with?"

Glug glug slurp and she lowers the mug. "Are you a smith?"

"… Engineer."

She looks at me for a moment, glances back through the doors and then back to me. "You may as well. There's no way I'm going to finish it before Prince Kon leaves tomorrow."

"You were making him a gift?"

She nods, then grabs the plate with her left hand and turns around to lead the way back into the forge. "Yeah, but I was too optimistic about how fast I could work. It's been too long since I've made something that's just decorative."

My environmental shield is preventing me from feeling the heat, but it's like a furnace in.. here. Right. Io plonks the mug down on a work bench, takes a wedge of bread from the plate and bites into it. "Ish iss-" She gestures at a lump of dull yellow metal resting on an anvil with her right elbow. "-wrot-" She swallows. "-I've been working on."

"What's it supposed to be?"

"Pure gold."

!I can help with that!

"Our mines here get stuff that's reasonable, but to turn it into orichalcum it has to be nearly completely pure. Even with magic that takes so long…" She sags slightly and uses the wedge of bread to pick up some vegetables and put them into her mouth.

"And… That's what orichalcum is, is it? Pure gold, transmuted?"

"Mhrow." She chews rapidly, then swallows. "Ten parts gold to one copper, then you can start the transmutation magic. And even that's not exactly fast."

I take a single gold coin out of subspace and offer it to her. "Any good?"

She frowns, studying it, then returns her bread to the plate and puts the plate on a bench. "Doubt it, but I'll take a look." She takes the coin from me and puts it down on a metal plate set into the work surface. There's a small collection of tools laid out and she picks up a delicate looking hammer, tapping the pointed end onto the coin. Then she blinks. "Oh." She turns her head to me. "What purity do you think this is?"

"One hundred percent."

She gapes slightly before regaining control. "How?"

I hold up my hands. "Power rings are awesome."

"Do you have more?" I nod. "How much?"

"How much d'you want?"

Her eyes widen. "Heph-aestus."

"To be more specific, I can purify elements and mix them in whatever way you want. Ten to one by mass, was it?" She nods. I float the lump of metal sitting on the anvil up and run a wave of orange light through it. Huh. Considering what she has to work with, that's a fairly high purity. I pull out everything that isn't gold, cool it and then drop the mass of it on the work bench. Next, I take a small copper bar out of subspace, weigh them both and slice off the amount of copper I need and return the excess to storage. "Do you need to do something while they're being merged, or does the magic happen afterwards?"

"A-afterwards."

"Right." An orange bubble forms around the ingots, then I melt them both and run them together. Layers or evenly mixed? I'll assume evenly mixed. That done, I remove the heat, drop the bubble and pass the alloy ingot over to Io. "Any good?"

She takes it, puts it down next to the coin and taps it with the hammer. Then she drops the hammer and staggers back a step. "Perfect. It's perfect. I can.. finish in a couple of hours…"

"What are you making, anyway?"

"A simple diadem."

"Great! I don't have much copper on me, but I can give you-" I deposit a small chest of gold coins on the floor. "-these now. Incidentally, I'd like to commission quite-"

"I could.. give every woman on Themyscira orichalcum armour inside…"

"-a lot of stuff. While we're on the subject, what's the ratio for mithril?"

"Huh?" She shakes her head and looks around. "Two parts titanium to one silver."

"And the transmutation effect?"

"That's just.. something… Um." She makes a visible effort to pull herself together. "I got seriously religious a few.. centuries ago. Lord Hephaestus showed me some of the secrets of divine smithing, like how to change the properties of certain metal alloys. The impurities in what I usually work with means it can take a while, but…" She picks up the alloy ingot. "With this? The transmutation shouldn't take more than a few minutes." She takes the ingot over to the anvil and sets it down before picking it up with her tongs and thrusting it into the furnace. "Are you a Hephaestus worshipper yourself?"

"No. Eris." That gets a raised eyebrow. "I bring change and innovation. She seems to like my work."

"Really." She returns her attention to the metal. I seem to remember that gold's fairly soft. Probably doesn't need all that long. "What exactly did you want to commission?"

"I'm not…" I exhale through my lips. "For a start, improved armour for myself and my team mates."

"I was going to make something like that for Prince Kon eventually anyway. Anything else?"

"Oo-oh yes."

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Homecoming 29

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8th January

20:01 GMT +3

I'm panting. I'm not tired or exhausted. It's excitement. When I got the ring I wasn't really in a position to enjoy the experience, but for this? I'm fully lucid. I can't catch my breath. I don't even really want to. "That was incredible. It's… Oh whaw."

Io presses up against my back, her chin on my shoulder. I remember reading on Wikipedia that she's supposed to smell of the forge but I'm just getting sweat and whatever was in that gruel stuff. Smells.. good, actually. "It's been a while since I got anyone that excited."

"They have no idea what they're missing." My heart's racing. "Oh my. I'm going to need a moment here." Mwhahwhah.

"I like your.. tattoos." She pulls back slightly and runs a finger down one of the ones on my back. "They're.. magical, aren't they?"

I nod, pulling away slightly to turn around and face her. "Yes. One set to give me a soul, and a second to stop anyone spying on me with magic."

"Oh? How well does it work?"

"Perfectly."

"Where did you get them done?"

"London. There's a guy in London who-. Oh, I can introduce you sometime. Do you think we've got time to try agai-?"

There's a knock on the door of the foundry and we both look around. Io chuckles. "They probably want to know what's taking you so long."

"Oh, time well spent." I move away from her and walk towards the door. "You just stay there, I'll get it." Ring? Who is-? Ah. Two more knocks in quick succession, but quieter. Almost reluctant. Can't imagine why. I pull open the door and stick my head and upper torso around, grinning like a loon. "Diana, hi!"

Diana looks me over and with a slight exhalation averts her eyes. What? She's seen me without my shirt on before. "We were.. wondering where you'd got to."

"Oh, right here." I nod for emphasis. "Right here."

"I-" She nods. "-see that. I didn't think your first meeting with Io would go.. quite so well as this. I'll.. leave you both to-."

"No, no-" I push the door open a little wider and grab her left hand with my right. "-come on in!"

Her eyes widen slightly. "I really don't need-" I extend my environmental shield around her and pull her in. "-to see…" She trails off.

Io detaches the amazing metal rod out of the test frame we built and then looks around. "Princess. Your student has been a great help." She picks up Kon's diadem. At my urging she went for a simple design, two metal bands bending down at the front to form Diana's signature double 'W'. Yes, I know her tiara has a star on it but where do most people actually look? "I was making this for Prince Kon and would never have finished but for Orange Lantern's help."

Diana's face stills and.. is that surprise? "Ooh."

"He's also very interested in-" She waves the rod. "-Jovium."

"He.. is..?"

"I don't quite understand why. You know Man's World, perhaps you can explain it in a way that makes sense to me."

"It's a-" Diana turns to look at me. "-good conductor of heat? Did.. you.. plan-?"

"Good conductor of heat! Good conductor of heat! No. Noooooo It isn't a good conductor of heat."

"We-" She frowns, thinking it through. How did she not spot this! "-use it in the bath houses to conduct heat from the furnaces. And in lightning rods." She shakes her head. "I really don't know-?"

"It's a perfect conductor of heat. And -and this is the important bit- electricity." I stare into her eyes but I don't think she's getting it. "No loss in transmission. No heat. No electromagnetic radiation. No light. One hundred percent of what you put in comes out again in a useable fashion." She gives me an uncertain nod. I don't think she's quite getting it. "Something like six percent of electricity generated in the US each year is lost in transmission. Nearly five hundred kilowatt hours just gone, per person. A hundred and sixty billion for the country as a whole each year. To say nothing of the disruption to radio signals copper cables cause. And that's ignoring the possible applications it has in communications or computing."

"You.. seem.. fairly excited about this."

"Diana, no one has this. No one."

"Well, no? I haven't seen it produced anywhere else."

I hold up Lantern Stewart's ring. "No one. No species. Oh, they've got all sorts of clever ways of moving power around that bypass resistance to a degree, but this is better." I throw up my hands. "You can't get better than one hundred percent."

"I thought you wanted armour."

"I do. Orichalcum's good and we're-" I glance at Io. "-going to be trading notes with Sephtian, see what we can do with it. We might be able to make you trousers at last!" I look her over and a few ideas almost immediately come to mind.

Diana pauses for a moment. "Paul, why did you take your shirt off?"

"Io wanted to see my tattoos."

Io nods. "Orange… Paul?" I nod. "Paul asked me about putting spells on the armour as Lord Hephaestus did with yours. He said that he worked with.. Sephtian..? The Atlantean crafter, who may be able to help."

"And this is what the two of you have been working on?"

"Yes..? Why, what did you think we were doing?" Io raises her right arm to her nose and sniffs. "Ugh. I need a wash before I can give Prince Kon his gift."

"No problem, one orange hygiene beam coming up." A wave of orange light passes over her, removing sweat and grime. Her hair's actually not quite as short as I thought it was, it was just all matted together. "Party frock?"

"I'm not sure anyone would recognise me if I took my apron off." I raise my eyebrows. "Still, I suppose I shouldn't present myself to the queen like this. I'll throw a tunic on. Or something."

I extend a filament to pick up the Jovium. "Can I..? Keep hold of this? There're some people I'd like to show it to."

She shrugs as she reaches behind herself to untie the apron. "Go ahead. I make it with tin. We've got all we could ever need already."

You really don't. "Thank you. You want us to-" I turn away as she removes the apron. "-wait for you?"

"No, I've kept you away long enough already. I'll follow you up shortly."

I nod, look at Diana and hold my right arm out towards the door. She looks at Io, then at me, shakes her head then walks towards the door and out of the room. I follow along and close the door behind us. "I didn't have a chance to ask earlier, but did the prisoners give you anything useful?"

She shakes her head. "No. They confirmed what Johnny Sorrow told you about where they come from but they didn't know much else about who organised the attack. I plan on speaking to the Saremian Ambassador to Poseidonis on Monday and I'd like you to accompany me."

I nod. "Of course." Then I remember that she didn't answer Io's question. "So.. what did you think we were doing?"

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Homecoming 30

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"Alert!"

Whu?

"Connection made to monitored telephone line from-"

I sit up in bed. Internal mode!

9th January

06:32 GMT +3

-priority source. Location: second public telephone, BP, Happy Harbour branch.

Who?

John Constantine.

I glance over to Kon's bed. Did he wake-? No, he's already up. Bit lucky. I push the sheets off me and swing my legs off the side of the bed. Wool stuffed mattresses are more comfortable than I thought they'd be but I don't think I'll be giving up springs any time soon. The.. chambermaid..? That can't be the right title. Anyway, she mentioned that they might have water beds if we preferred but they hadn't been used for a while and might leak. Neither of us went for it.

I raise the ring to my ear. Answer.

"-us a bell when you get-."

"I'm here John. What is it?"

"You sound a bit rough, mate. Just got to sleep?"

I shift my weight to my feet and stand up. "It's half past six in the morning where I am."

"Oh? Where's that?"

"Themyscira." I amble in the direction of the balcony. "The Amazons know how to throw a party." Heh. "And I think I may end up getting one or two of them pregnant before I leave."

"Oh, fuck right off."

"Hey, power rings are awesome." I send my pyjama top back into subspace and dial down my environmental shield so I can feel the breeze on my chest. "Did you actually want something?"

I hear him take a deep breath. "Yeah. Got a bit of a problem on my end. Think I've worked out all the angles.. but, given you've got 'special knowledge' and all that…"

I lean on the balcony overlooking the stables. "Ask away."

"You know anything about a thing called 'Kua I'ipa'?"

I think for a moment. "Is it a drink?"

"Nah. That's supposed to be the name of this big magic monster thing that broke through from.. wherever. You know how it goes." I nod. "Angie and me went to Tasmania to try an' get information about it. Kua I'ipa, the Shadow Dog. It's supposed-"

I blink in shock. Did he just say Shadow Dog?

"-to cause all kinds of havoc if it gets-"

Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck. Fuck.

"-loose. I mean, I think we're all set up here but there's something-."

"John, whatever you're doing, stop it. Stop it right fucking now."

"I'm gunna need a bit more than that, mate."

"I've seen this. You kill the Dog, we lose about a quarter of the species. Maybe everyone."

"What? Y'mean, some sort of sympathetic death eff-?"

"THE DOG IS NOT THE FUCKING PROBLEM!" Ring, find him. "Think about it, John. Dogs. Mankind's oldest friends. Protectors and hunting companions. Why would an ancient primordial evil take the form of a Dog?"

Unable to locate.

Fuckfuckfuck-.

"So.. what's actually-?"

"The Shadow Dog was created by.. God, capital G, or something, to protect mankind from the actual problem. This weird quasi-demonic thing called The Beast."

"Alec did say two things came through… But Angie said-."

"That the Dog came after her on the train. It wasn't after her. John, is she there?"

"Yeah."

"Is her brother?"

"Yeah, he's been helping us with… Here, Jason mate, you got superheroes askin' about you. Didn't know you moved in those sorts of circles."

"John, listen to me very carefully. Jason is dead. The Beast is controlling his body. He cannot be recovered. The Beast is trying to help you destroy its gaoler. Then, it will kill every Human… Maybe every intelligent creature, I don't know. At the moment it's limited to causing a few bouts of insanity. If anything happens to the Shadow Dog, it'll be able to access the collective unconscious of the Human species. Mass suicides at best. I might be okay, but there's a good chance I'll be the only living thing left on the planet when it finishes."

"This thing we're fighting… I'm assuming it knows magic?"

"Yes. John, tell me where you are. If Nabu-."

"But if we could get it to the same place as something that could fight it…"

"Yes, like the Ophidian. John, tell me where you are."

"Gotta go, mate. Cheers for the help."

"TELL ME WHERE YOU FUCKIN-!" He's gone. He's gone. Ring?

Unable to locate.

Fuck. The Beast might be about to get free, and… I don't remember if Beast Jason was much of a physical threat. I know John isn't. Could they kill him? Physically at least? Chance of me being able to find him? Next to none. I remember from the comic that they warded the site. Fuck. I look back into the bedroom and remotely open the box containing my lantern before calling it across to me. Ophidian, can you feel John Constantine?

No.

Damn iiiiit!

There is something squatting in the soul of your species. I cannot determine what it is. That should not be possible. All things are known by their desires!

Prepare for emergency deployment.

We will become one once more?

If we need to. Alright, in the brief time I've got left before the shit starts occurring… If anywhere's safe, it's here. If nowhere is… I take my Spell Eater out of subspace. Where's Kon? Right. I transition to the main plaza, two Spell Eaters in hand. "Kon, my queen, I sort of need you to put these on."

Hippolyta turns to greet me. She's wearing a slightly different robe dress to yesterday. And Kon's fully dressed as well, Io's diadem in place around his head. "Paul, good-" She gets a better look at me. "-morning." She frowns slightly. "Is there some sort of emergency-?"

"Yes. Please put this on-" Kon takes his and puts it around his neck before turning back towards the east. "-right now, it's really quite important." I pause. "Sorry for not being properly dressed."

"Very well." She takes the thong and puts it over her head. "What is this emergency, exactly?"

"Quasi-demonic superbeing about to possess the entire species. Maybe."

"Maybe?"

"Our last line of defence is a bunch of halfwit hedge wizards who aren't answering their.. b.. blooming phone. I'm basically reduced to hoping they can come up with something."

"If you aren't able to help it seems unwise to let yourself become distraught."

"I don't think wisdom really comes into it. Ring, message Nabu."

"Warning sent."

"Kon and I were about to watch the sunrise. Lord Helios appeared to him in his dreams last night. It seems that his gift to Kon is dependent on him observing the dawn of each day."

Kon glances back at me. "I'm glad it is. I don't think glowing at school would be a good idea."

No, I suppose not. Ring, armour. No helmet.

Compliance.

But she has a point. I can't do much until the Beast makes itself known or John phones back. Hippolyta's gone back to watching the sun as it peeks over the ocean. "My queen, may I ask a question?"

"Of course."

"Did you hear about what I offered to do? For anyone who wanted it?"

"Super strength or pregnancy." She looks back towards me. "Yes, I heard. You do like to make our lives interesting, don't you?"

"I knew that would be a big change. I thought people would be interested. That or offended." I take a closer look at her, taking care to avoid looking at anything other than-. Yep, there it is. "I don't understand. Everywhere I look..." I shake my head, frowning. "Queen Hippolyta, why are you all afraid of wooden dolls?"

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Homecoming 31

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9th January

06:37 GMT +3

She gives her head a slight shake. "I'm not sure what you mean."

"I don't know if it's.. part of Amazon culture or something. I didn't see anything about it in Diana's library, and she didn't say anything." I look at Kon and raise my eyebrows.

"Not to me either."

I shrug. "I'm sorry if this is some sort of taboo subject, but…" I hold out my left hand, generating an orange construct image of what I've been seeing. "It's always there, it's just-" Hippolyta's pupils dilate slightly. "-hard.. to sssee… In some. It got particularly bad when-."

She looks away. "Get rid of it." I frown, but close my left hand and dismiss the image. "Grandson, how long do we have until dawn?"

Kon looks puzzled. "About an hour?"

She puts her right hand on his shoulder. "I will return shortly." She turns back to me. "Orange Lantern, please transport us to the palace dungeons."

Still not.. really sure what's going on. "Alright. One moment." According to the books I read the dungeon proper is warded, but I can… Yep. I attach a filament to Hippolyta and our surroundings flicker.

Hippolyta looks around for a moment, confirming our location. "It is called a.. whittle-baby. I ask that you do not mention it to anyone here again."

"Al.. right… But I still don't understand-?"

"When you pledged yourself to Eris you declared your intention to change us. Our life here. By your actions you are forcing me to decide whether I wish to assist you or call for moderation. Amazon society does not change readily but I am hard pressed to find fault in your offers to us so far. Usually in a situation like this I would pray to Hera or Zeus for guidance. Unfortunately…" She looks at me sternly and I shrink back slightly.

"I'm really sorry about that. But.. maybe I can help?" She seems dubious. "It would take my mind off the fact that the Human race is in the hands of John Constantine, a man who committed his first murder before he was born."

"Oh, how could you have chosen any god but Eris?" She takes a moment to gather her thoughts. "Simulacra of real babies.. dolls, you call them. They are still a popular toy for young girls in Man's World?" I nod. "But not with adult women. An adult woman who wants a child can have one of her own or -if she is unable- adopt the natural child of someone who was unable to care for it." She pauses again. "The youngest Amazon born on Themyscira -save for Diana- is Glykeria. And she is-" She tilts her head back slightly. "-two thousand seven hundred and eighty four years old."

I nod slowly. "You can't have children.. or adopt."

"That would be a hardship in itself, but it is more than that. There is no continuity to our society. We have no schools. They would serve no purpose. Mistresses of their professions have no apprentices. At this time there is no one to teach who has not at some point attempted every profession which we practise here. And there are no children." She turns away from me and walks towards the fortified doors of the dungeon proper. "And so.. these.. things became commonplace. Substitutes. Vessels for maternal affection we could never express in the conventional fashion."

"But you.. could… The Greek mainland's only-."

"Yes. We are aware of that." She exhales. "Do you know how long it took our isolation to become total?"

"About eight hundred years, wasn't it?"

"No, that was just when we stopped… When we stopped openly trading. There was still another century of more covert contact. It wasn't until after the conquest of Greece by Rome that the Senate moved to cut contact completely."

The guards on the door salute their queen and open the doors. "Were they.. worried that the Romans would flood the Aegean with so many ships they could.. brute force the wards?"

"Herakles managed it."

"Herakles had two hundred ships, a good idea of where you were and demigod resilience and he barely survived doing it. All he had left when he made landfall was.. what? Twenty men?"

"Twenty three, and for many that event ended any hope we had that our vengeful masculine pursuers would ever cease in their attempts to return us to bondage. Those among our sisterhood who desired for us to return argued that we could not afford to be blind to events in the outside world. Contact was strictly limited and procreation absolutely forbidden."

"How well did that work?"

"I doubt I will ever know. Sometimes I wonder how many of those sisters I mourned as dead simply decided that they would rather remain with their child's father than return home. It wasn't even much of a secret. And.. so, the idea that having a child meant leaving, meant the dissolution of the community we have here gained popular support. Slowly… No one thought that abandoning the patrols was wise..."

"Until eventually they did, and Eris' followers went in for 'civil disobedience'."

"You can still see the stains if you know where to look." She shakes her head. "It had the opposite effect to the one they wanted."

"Once your men died off, anyone who wanted children had to leave. Therefore, children are bad, because they undermine the community. Until Diana." And.. me. "So… Amazons fear their own maternal desires?"

"Creating Diana… I think that was the closest I ever came to being overthrown. I had to involve so many Amazons in her upbringing that at times I don't think she was sure who her mother actually was."

"Queen Hippolyta, why are we in the dungeons?"

"Whittle-dolls at present are taken as a sign of psychological illness. Our form of self harm, causing pain to the mind rather than the body. One of our sisters, a woman named Gennes, took the habit to its logical conclusion. Her delusion was so strong that she treated her.. doll.. in every way as if it were her child. The prisoners we are here to see are her murderers, though it was not until long after the event that we discovered that. When they also tried to murder Diana."

"And she beat them unconscious?"

She gives me a bitter smile. "She was not even a week old. My daughter is an able warrior, but that would have been too much to ask even of her."

"Murder and treason? I.. thought…"

"They are also some of my oldest friends. My former bodyguards. Even after what they did I could not bear to order their deaths." Another door approaches, even more heavily reinforced than the first. Hippolyta stops. "Myrto-" Inside her I see a face, picked out in violet and indigo. "-Charis, Philomela and their leader, Alkyone. It has become my custom to visit once each year and ask them to repent, to accept Diana and seek forgiveness for their misdeeds. Every year they refuse. I hold out little hope that you would be able to change their minds where I have failed, but perhaps speaking to them will grant you some measure of the wisdom your rampage across our society so far has indicated that you so sorely lack." She nods to the guards and the door is unbarred.

"About that. I know I said.. sorry, but honestly? I was sorry for the offence I might have caused you. I respect you and don't want to cause you unnecessary hardship. For not thinking the whole thing out. I'm not sorry for having done it. Necessary hardship I'll dump wherever it needs to go." I nod to her, then start forwards through the door. "I'll see what I can do for them, majesty."

"The gods go with you."

I look at her a little nervously. "Given who I worship, are you sure that's a good idea?"

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Homecoming 32

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9th January

06:42 GMT +3

The great door moves aside easily enough and I walk through into a short corridor terminating in another equally heavy door. Hippolyta may only come through here once a year but the prisoners need to be fed and watered. I wonder what… If they've been in here since Diana was little then they've basically been in isolation for around eighty five years. Damn. What have they been doing with themselves? They can't risk them getting weapons so martial drill is out of the question. I suppose there's books and board games.. if there's anything on Themyscira they haven't already played to death or read a hundred times. Maybe that could be my in? Also need to find out why they did any of that stuff. Why would they kill Gennes? Alright, she was going a bit mental and clearly children are a very sensitive issue here. But they'd have known her for over a thousand years, probably longer. I don't know.

I lift the bar on the inner door myself and push it open. There's no natural light this far inside the palace and the traditional burning torches would create dangerous levels of smoke. Instead they use simple-

"My queen?"

-bound spells to illuminate the room. Quite a lot of them, too.

"Has it been a year already?"

The voice is a little gravelly, and there's something… Something off about it. As if she either just woke up or -more likely- hasn't had cause to speak for a while. I blink and have the rings show me the layout. It isn't really a cell cell. It's more of a secure dormitory, with a bedroom, a small kitchen, a bathroom and a living area. There isn't direct access to the inmate area from where I am. Rather, there's a sort of interior window with orichalcum bars embedded into the stone. I assume that whoever is speaking is standing close to it, but there's no direct line of sight from there to the door. Food appears to get lowered down through a hole in the roof inside the inmate area which is far too small for them to try climbing up. Water comes in through a similar opening and they have the standard garderobe toilet arrangement.

"If you are not Queen Hippolyta then state your business or depart."

"Good morning." A moment's shocked silence as I walk around the interior wall towards the 'window'. "Queen Hipp-."

"Get out."

Being careful to stay further than arms’ reach from the bars I move slowly into view. The woman staring at me in shock and disgust is bald, heavily scarred and possesses a pronounced aquiline nose. "Queen Hippolyta asked me to speak to you. I don't intend to disobey her."

Her eyes narrow. "Why are you even here, Man?"

"On Themyscira? I'm one of Princess Diana's students." Her face tightens. "Since I was stateless, Queen Hippolyta offered me Themysciran citizenship."

"Bhekrr." Her head jerks to the side for a moment before turning back to me, her eyes assessing me for my threat potential. Her eyes linger for a moment on the sigil on my chestplate but only for a moment. She would have already been locked up when Alan was visiting and I can't think of any reason for her to have ever met the Green Lantern Corps members.

I create a construct chair and sit down, setting my lantern down on the stone floor next to me. "May I ask whom I'm addressing?"

She draws herself up slightly. "I am Captain Alkyone of The Circle."

"Hello. I'm… Ah, call me Pavlos." I can think Pavlos without collapsing, probably because I don't associate it with my actual name. I've also instructed the rings not to translate it. They usually don't with names but I don't want to take any silly risks.

"How many more of you are there on Themyscira?"

"More of me?" I smile. "No, I'm uniq-."

"Other men."

"One." I look at her for a moment. "Does that bother you? "

"Neither of you should be here. Another attempt by the Dragon to weaken us."

Alright, I'm here on royal business and there's an even chance that the world's about to end. No reason not to look deep inside her. And the Dragon is.. Diana, apparently. Lots of red there. Links to her hatred of Herakles.. and… Invasion? She thinks of Diana as an invader? Odd… What does she want? A smiling face, and… She and the other four members of The Circle standing around Hippolyta. Her old job? Would she-? No, she doesn't want to do the things which she'd need to do to create that situation, she literally wants to go back to how things were.

"Why do you think that the Princess-?"

"She is no Princess. She is an abomination."

She fears.. Hippolyta's corruption at Diana's hands. By her presence. More red as she and her comrades murder Gennes, anger at her.. weakness? And the doll image. Whow! That's.. a.. complicated mess. Yellow and orange, each with dozens of associations leading away. Babies are.. betrayal, change… No, change from the ideal. And weakness. Wanting is a moral failure. Yikes. I thought that Clyemne was conservative but she was at least capable of discourse. And the orange? Oh. I shouldn't be surprised I suppose. Alkyone wants a child herself. Odd. Given the closeness of her prior relationship with Hippolyta she'd almost certainly have been heavily involved in Diana's upbringing if she hadn't tried to kill her. How does she feel about Philippus? No, not seeing any strong associations there. Alkyone loves Hippolyta as a loyal aide, not as a want-to-be paramour.

"What makes you say that?" She glowers at me. "Come on. If she's got some sort of treasonous plot, I'm a citizen now. It's my responsibility to stop it reaching fruition."

"It is not. It may be the responsibility of your mother or your sister but it is not yours."

"Oh please, I'm far better positioned to investigate and take action than you are. I mean, I'm not in prison for a start. And unlike you I'm physically capable of hurting a demigoddess-."

"That thing is no goddess!"

"You keep shouting, but until you give me some actual content I can't help you." I shrug. "Assess your situation rationally. If you haven't escaped in eighty years then you're probably not going to. Barring some total cataclysm -we nearly had one yesterday and there's-."

She suddenly looks more alert. "What happened yesterday? Is the Queen well?"

"Scylla, Circe, a load of Fishmen and a fellow called Johnny Sorrow attacked. No fatalities on our side though they.. probably achieved their primary objectives. Diana and Prince Kon dealt-."

"The.. thing has chosen a mate?"

"No, she adopted. Third in line to the throne is a man, so.. you may want to reconsider the whole 'killing Diana' thing."

"Never."

"You know.. you're coming across as some sort of crazy jealous stalker. If you have a real problem with her-."

"I am finished with talking to you." She pulls back from the bars and starts to turn away.

"What happens to the members of a group when the group is destroyed?"

She frowns. "What?"

"Societies change. Certainly, what existed before no longer exists but the people -or at least their descendants- still live. And.. their lives may well be better for it. Having children doesn't necessarily mean the end of Amazon society, Alkyone. It will simply change it to a new form."

"Their desire to reproduce cost me two blood sisters on the mainland and caused my queen to use foul magics to create a.. living simulacrum. I took no pleasure in putting Gennes down-."

"But you want what she wanted." Her eyes widen. "You want a child. Look, if the magic involved was the problem-."

"You lie. Do you see women simply as-?"

"Hush, dear one, your mother is-."

"GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT!"

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Homecoming 33

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9th January

07:46 GMT +3

"I give thanks to you, Lord Helios, for the life your sun brings to the world." Kon looks towards the sun as it rises over the sea. "And…" He looks at Menalippe for guidance and she nods encouragingly. "For the whole.. glowing.. thing? That's going to be really use-" There's a flare of light from him as the glow reappears. "-ful." He checks himself over and then looks back at Menalippe. "He's not gunna be annoyed if I don't pray tomorrow morning, is he?"

She shakes her head. "You have a pact with him. If the glow he has granted you would be a distraction I am certain that he will understand. That said, I would not recommend ignoring him indefinitely. Empowering you is an extremely significant act for him."

"No, I wasn't going to." He turns to me. "World ended yet?"

"Ring, try John again."

"Compliance." I hear a dial tone.

"Diana, has Nabu-?"

She shakes her head. "He's in London now, but he hasn't been able to locate anything. I still don't understand why you didn't warn us about this earlier."

"I didn't know what John was working on until he-."

"Ah, Christ, this better be-."

I clamp the ring hard against my left ear. "JOHN WHAT THE-!! THE HECK?!"

"He was right here, alright? Couldn't tip my hand."

"And now?"

"Gone. Dead. I dunno."

I slump against the wall. "What happened?"

"Original plan was to use me as a focus when we blasted it. I managed to convince the others that Jason would work better. Friggin' Beast was all for it. When we started the Dog felt it right off and swam up the link. Beast tried to steal the power from the ritual so it could finish off the Dog, but I'd already put it into a binding spell so he couldn't try legging it. No power to fight, no way to escape… Dog tore him apart."

"Anyone else hurt?"

"Angie broke my nose. Part from that? No."

"Okay, that's… Okay. I'll.. fix it for you. You might want to watch out when you leave, Nabu's looking for you."

"What does he know?"

"That you got involved with a planet killing entity!"

"You t-? What the fuck d'you do that for?"

"Because you wouldn't tell me where you were! I couldn't take the risk!"

"Fuck."

"Okay, give me a minute here. I need to tell the League they can stand down." I lower the ring and look at Diana. "They tricked the Beast into summoning its own gaoler and then snatched back the power it was planning to use to kill said gaoler. Problem.. over until next time."

"Could you please impress upon Mister Constantine that dealing with creatures like the Beast is the Justice League's job. At the very least he should have informed his government." I nod, and she rises from the ground to fly back to the communication system in the invisible plane.

I lift the ring back to my ear. "What did you tell the others?"

"Managed to convince them it was a double blind trap. Couldn't risk tellin' them in advance in case the Beast picked up on it. I'm not exactly Mister Popular at the moment but, aghh, no one died and I wasn't on their Christmas card list anyway."

That didn't sound good. Queen Hippolyta and Menalippe start back towards the palace. Kon looks at me curiously but I wave him away and he follows after them. "John, are you alright?"

"Angie got a few kicks in before the others pulled her off me. Only hurts when I breathe."

"Okay, tell me-."

"The thought does occur that a lot of this could have been avoided if we'd had a chat about this sooner."

"Well… Yesss. I mean, I didn't know this was what you were doing-."

"That's why I'm not shouting your bloody ears off, mate. Any more of these lined up?"

"I don't know. There's a bunch of things that might happen. Nothing… You know, here, is quite what I expected. There are some people I'm monitoring just in case…"

In the background I can hear ambulance sirens. "Right. Give me a day to talk my way out of this, then we can have a bit of a chat about these up and coming doomsdays."

I nod. "Okay. That's… That's probably a good idea. Just to be clear, my recollection isn't perfect and there's no guarantee-."

"Never is, mate. Yeah, I'm in here! See you at the Northampton Arms Monday night."

"Bit public, isn't it?"

"They're used to all sorts of nut jobs in there. Alright, yeah, okay-." The phone cuts off.

Well then. I take another look out over the city. At the dock the morning catch is being landed and I can just about smell freshly baked bread. Heh. Wonder what Amazons do for a hangover cure?

"Excuse me?" I turn around. Two Amazons - Tekla and another wearing robes who I don't recognise- are standing nearby.

I smile at them. "What can I do-" Robe Amazon was the one who asked how double female reproduction was possible. I didn't get her name. "-for you?"

They hesitate and look at each other. After a moment Tekla turns back to me. "I wanted to thank you again for my eye."

"No problem at all. Try not to lose it again. Once is unfortunate but twice would suggest carelessness."

Her face suggests that she isn't quite sure how to take that. After a moment she decides to ignore it. "Iola told me you claimed to be able to.. allow two women to conceive a child together."

"That's true. It's not even that hard. The mother would still have to carry the child to term of course."

The other woman -Iola presumably- nods. "We know. We'd like.. you to do that. For us."

This is probably something Themysciran society should debate at length.

"Of course. Which of you wants to be the Fama?"

Tekla frowns. "The what?"

"The one carrying the child. I could make you both pregnant by each other at the same time if you really want but it would probably be a better idea if one of you does it. In the later stages, having you both waddling around…"

"I do!" For a moment Iola looks surprised by her own insistence. She looks at Tekla. "If that's alright..?"

Tekla pulls her close and kisses her on the forehead. "Of course it is. What was the word for the.. woman.. father..?"

"Oma." I raise my hands towards them, connecting visible filaments from my fingers to both of them. Rings, data.

Compliance. / Data available.

"You're at the wrong point in your menstrual cycle for a zygote to implant-."

"Oh. Well. We can-."

"So I'll have to change that. DNA scan… No obvious abnormalities. Is it alright if I set the gene matching program to random or do you want to try selecting characteristics?" They both look a bit blank. I don't have a full break down of Human genetic expression anyway. "Random it is." The filaments disconnect from Tekla and in my mind's eye the Stewart ring shows me an image of Iola's uterus. "This should only take a few minutes."

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Homecoming 34

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9th January

09:44 GMT +3

The last resting place of the late Baroness Paula von Gunther is really quite beautiful. It lies in a small garden on the western side of Mount Skybreak, a short distance from the main road from the city of Themyscira to the farming village of Syrsana. Surrounding the garden is a low wall decorated with swastika symbols, though I note that they are mirror images of the version which the Nazis used. The marble sarcophagus inside is similarly decorated and bears the inscription: 'Baroness Paula von Gunther, 1907-1981. May she finally know peace.'

I suppress a growl. "Only woman worth knowing on this whole island and she had the temerity to die thirty years ago."

Orana's expression doesn't change. Since I managed to make it through yesterday without taking a shit in a baptismal font -or whatever the Themysciran equivalent is- Diana decided that I could be let out with only a single escort today. Not sure who Orana got on the wrong side of to earn that duty. This visit hasn't -quite- been a total waste of time but it's been perilously close. At least Kon and Match are enjoying themselves.

The Baroness came to Themyscira after the Second World War following Wonder Woman's rescue of her from a Russian prison. I suppose that if you rape your way across a country you shouldn't be too surprised if it puts you on the bad side of the Amazons. She hadn't been involved in any of the serious war crimes and was a decent enough person to be thoroughly disgusted by the excesses of fascism. The Purple Healing Ray appears to have been developed here as a way to sort of burn off some of her acquired bad karma. Certainly there wasn't much opportunity otherwise to apply her skills here. She never converted to Hellenism and as a result wasn't included in Themyscira's agelessness effect. Her death was peaceful enough but it still makes me grit my teeth. A repentant malign hypercognitive! I dread to think of all of the wonderful things she could have achieved if she'd been picked up by the Americans instead!

I shake my head and turn away. Ah, there we go: an empty patch of soil. Diana told me that Amazons would regard putting cut flowers on a grave as somewhat ghoulish but that I was free to add live flowers. I kneel down, form a construct trowel and start digging a hole.

"Why do you hate us so much?"

I pause for a moment. Perhaps I should try diplomacy? We are near the grave of someone I respect. "Are you sure you want me to answer that?"

"If I didn't want an answer then I wouldn't have asked the question."

"Why do you care?"

"What you said yesterday in the market; you offered to make us as the gods are then said everything you could to make us despise you. When I went home and talked it through with my friends I realised that if I took all the you out of what you said then the offer became a good one. I want to know why you did that."

"Alright. There's a phrase in Man's World. 'Who are you in the dark?' What it means is: if there was no one checking what you were doing, if you knew for certain that there would be no punishment for your actions… How would you behave?" I dismiss the trowel and take the Monkshood out of subspace, depositing it in the hole before levelling the soil with my hands. "I seem to remember there was some Chinese cop out… Something like: 'I would know, you would know and Heaven would know."

"What does that have to do with Themyscira?"

"I myself am perilously close to finding out what I am. If I'm prepared to be even slightly subtle about it, between this ring and my own innate abilities… There's basically no one who can stop me doing whatever I want. My actions are no longer moderated by the common herd of humanity… And after the sixth of July this year they won't even be moderated by Princess Diana or Batman. I will fully own my every success or failure." I turn away from the flowers and look at her. "What is Themyscira in the dark?" Listen.

She shakes her head in incomprehension. "It's.. Themyscira…"

"Most nations must contest with their neighbours in some fashion, in full view of them. They must maintain their strength, their culture and their technology in order to avoid being overtaken. If they fail they risk being conquered or absorbed by a more powerful or more vibrant state. Themyscira has been in near perfect isolation for near enough two thousand years. It had no need to worry about someone watching… What have you done?" Open your mind.

"We've built, we've.. farmed…"

"And you're about.. eight hundred years behind the rest of Europe. Technologically you've changed.. not at all, as far as I can see. You've applied it a little better, you've had time to build up... But that's it. You were given lives free of conflict and you did.. nothing. You failed to grow and you failed to grow because you had no external pressure forcing you to grow." She frowns. "Where is your science? What feats of engineering have you achieved that could stand against those of Man's World? For goodness sake, you pride yourselves as warriors. Where are your weapons? At one time Themyscira's armies were feared across Greece. Now? Save for the gods' wards I don't think there's a nation on the planet who couldn't conquer you. You've become complacent and stagnant and that's why I hate it here." Understand.

"You think we are that weak?!"

"I'll show you." I walk past her, out of the garden. Once I'm standing a little way outside I hold out my right arm, gesturing for her to join me. Face hardened, she does so. "You know how to use that bow?"

"I've had three thousand years of practice."

I wiggle my right forefinger and deposit a shooting range target onto the hillside twenty metres away. Then I move an AK-47 from subspace to my right hand. "This is an AK forty seven. First designed sixty three years ago for the Soviet Union it remains the most popular gun on the planet, mostly due to its mechanical simplicity. Thirty round magazine, single shot and full automatic modes. If it had a hundred rounds in the magazine it could fire them all in a minute. I have practised with it once." My strength allows me to keep it more or less on target on full automatic, something no normal man could. I point to the target with my left forefinger and look at Orana with my eyebrows raised. "First to hit it fifteen times wins?"

She unslings her bow and takes hold of it in her right hand before reaching back and taking five arrows in her left hand. She takes a deep breath, stills herself and focuses her mind. She keeps the bow pointing down and the arrows close to but not on the string. "Ready."

I carefully take hold of the gun, left hand on the barrel grip and right hand on the pistol grip. The gun I'm holding has no trigger guard as my fingers are too large to get inside it. I can't use the stock for similar reasons, it just wouldn't fit. I point it down at the same angle as her bow. "I will count down 'three, two, one, go'. On 'go' you may loose your first arrow. Three. Two." A slight tension enters her shoulders. "One. Go."

My gun's up slightly before her bow but in all honesty there's little in it. Her first arrow is on string as I squeeze the trigger and the gun starts firing. The AK has already punched three holes in the target by the time the first arrow strikes home. Eleven by the time her first handful have been used and then she has to take another five from her quiver. By the time she looses her sixth it's fifteen bullet holes and I've won, but I keep the trigger squeezed until the gun clicks empty. At that point the brutalised remains of twelve arrows stud what's left of the target. I lower the gun, disintegrate the magazine and take another out of subspace before slotting it in place. Orana is still watching the target, breathing hard, eyes wide.

"Other weapons are more powerful still." I return the AK-47 to subspace and create a minigun construct. Should I ever need it I have an actual minigun modified to my dimensions in subspace but for the point I'm making a construct will do just fine. "The AK fires a hundred rounds a minute. This fires six.. thousand." I give her a moment to take that in. "Still can't do much to hurt someone as resilient as the Princess or myself, but if you compare either of them to a bow…"

"I.. hadn't realised."

I allow the construct to dissipate. "Have you ever seen a bucket of crabs, Orana? The way they struggle against one another and in doing so prevent any of them escaping? Ignore your sisters. Ignore your queen. Think upon what you have seen, what you know, and make your own decision. My offer still stands. If you -or any of your sisters- wish to escape this place, I will help. Power, divinity, equipment, guidance. Whatever you want, at no obligation to me. Or -if you prefer- you can continue to sit life out as the world passes by and you slip further into irrelevance. What I will not do is sugar coat this for you. Themyscira is weak. You, can be strong. What do you want?"

She says nothing for a moment, closely examining the grass at her feet as she mechanically returns the arrows still in her hand to the quiver. "I.. want to be strong."

For the first time since coming to Themyscira I find a genuine smile coming to my lips. "Then by all means, let us make you strong."

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NEXT CHAPTER

Aberration

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Aberration 1

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Aberration

10th January

11:16 GMT

I do my best not to slump in my chair as the Right Honourable Member for Croydon North drones ever onwards and upwards. Any residual good feeling I had about augmenting Orana has long since faded away under the assault of mundanity from the Parliamentary Preternatural Scrutiny Select Committee and its incredibly dull chairwoman Jasmine Abbott. I knew that the British government would want to talk about what happened on Friday. I had dared hope it would be a one to one chat with.. Sir Cyril.. or someone like him. Someone who knew what they were talking about.

Diana gave me the bad news Sunday afternoon so I can't say I didn't know this was coming. Kaldur took the stand yesterday but since I was so clearly taking a lead on that operation it isn't inherently unreasonable that they want to hear from me. I'm supposed to be meeting with the Great Ten this afternoon and if this drags on-.

"Mister Grayven, are you paying attention?"

I take a calming breath. But I don't waste a smile on her. "Madam Chairwoman, you have yet to say anything that requires my comment."

"Mister Grayven, you have committed some highly irregular activities on British sovereign soil. While we accept that there may be extenuating circumstances a man is dead. We would appreciate it if you could behave with the solemnity the situation demands."

"Madam Chairwoman, I remained with the train until the police arrived. I gave a verbal statement at that time and submitted a full written account -one which you appear to be reading back to me word for word- a few hours later. That written statement is my version of events. If you wish to question it I will respond. If you would like additional details I am happy to provide them." I pick up the jug on my table and pour a small glass of water.

"Very well." She pushes the statement printout aside as I take a sip. "The Justice League is obliged to notify governments prior to acting within their jurisdiction. Why did you not notify the Home Office when you decided to intervene?"

I put down the glass and make a show of considering the question. "Firstly, because I am not a member of the Justice League. I am aware of their rules of engagement and endeavour to follow them where reasonably practical but they do not -strictly speaking- apply to me. Secondly, because I was concerned that any delay would result in the situation deteriorating in a way contrary to the wellbeing of your species. As you can see from the timeline the gap between us having a concrete location to move on and the situation being resolved was.. perhaps five minutes. Certainly not enough time for anyone in the Home Office to actually do anything about such a missive."

"Why did you not simply pass the matter on to the Justice League? You said yourself that you alerted Green Arrow and that Giovanni Zatara became aware during his daughter's scrying attempt."

"Again, because of the delay that would have been involved. The five of us-."

"Five.. of you?"

"Aqualad, Celestial Archer, Zatanna, Mister Tawny and myself."

"Oh. The Cat."

Who at this very moment is either picking a fight with a Thanagarian Snare Beast or picking the remains of one out of his teeth. "The five of us have worked together before. Zatanna aside we haven't worked with Mister Zatara. Adding a new person to the group and disrupting the established chain of command would have been a very bad idea had we encountered significant resistance."

"What measures did you take to ensure the safety of the train's other passengers?"

"After the event I scanned them all. There were no significant injuries but we alerted the ambulance service anyway."

"And beforehand?"

"Nothing."

"Mister Grayven-."

"Unless you count dealing with the civilisation ending abomination. There simply-."

"Wasn't time. Yes." She gives me what she probably thinks is a stern look. "I'm seeing a pattern in your activity."

"Since we're talking about the same event that merely indicates that I'm not perjuring myself." I take another sip of water. By the fire pits, this is annoying. Am I going to have to blackmail her? Seems a little petty-

!Establish dominance!

-but she is being really stupid about this. See how it goes. "Had it been necessary I would have accepted the deaths of everyone on the carriage in order to stop the Beast." There's a slight intake of breath from the gallery.

"That is a remarkably cavalier attitude to take."

"Ruthlessly pragmatic, perhaps. Not cavalier. The fact is that if the Beast had succeeded in killing its guardian they -and every other Human- would have died anyway."

"So you say."

"No, not just 'I say'. Mister Zatara confirmed the presence and power of the being we exorcised. If you had any experts of your own they would be telling you the same thing. Have you managed to track down Mister Constantine yet?"

"John Constantine does not work for the British governm-"

"I'll take that as a no."

"-ent. The matter will be investigated by Captain Cornwall, who does retain our confidence." I take another sip of water. She's really getting close to what I'll-. "Now, your treatment of Miss Angela Spatchcock. Would you like to say anything on the matter?"

I put the glass down. "Not particularly."

"You did kill her brother, however necessary it was." She studies me for a moment. "Perhaps some words of sympathy?" I use my right arm to unishrug. "Mister Grayven, you are a remarkably callous individual."

"The Beast killed Jason Spatchcock. If you want to rake the head of the Stone Cross psychiatric hospital over the coals for not preventing that then feel free to do so."

"He's dead."

"As for being callous… A hundred and fifty thousand people die every day. One scan from this ring-" I raise my left hand. "-and I can show you malnutrition, civil unrest… In fact-" I generate an image of a small part of the Gulf of Mexico, complete with drowned corpses. I smile at the gasps. "-a family of five who failed to make the crossing from Haiti to Florida."

"You let them d-."

"No. I don't make your immigration rules. I don't run your economy, your.. transport infrastructure. I do not rule the Earth. My only responsibility as a free individual -as I see it- is to stop you all doing something stupid enough to wipe yourselves out. If I were a member of the Justice League I would have a different job. I am not. If I were a police officer I would have a different job. I am not. Could I have stopped.. that?" I point to the orange recreation of Mister Anel Dabrezil's remains. "Yes. And so could about a billion other people by living slightly differently. Why didn't you?" I dismiss the construct. "Your species has a right to self determination, to live as you want to live. I respect that. What you do not have is a right to expect others -people like me- to step in every time one of your decisions has unpleasant consequences, to patch over holes in the fabric of your society that you know full well are there." I hope the Light are going to see this. "And on that note I'd like to request a brief recess."

She looks down at me with evident distaste. "Yes, I think that might be for the best. Ten minutes."

I wait for the bench to rise before getting up myself and heading for the exit. The people around me give me plenty of space. Where's.. she.. going to go? Ah yes. I transition into the private part of The House, materialising next to Mrs Abbott as she feeds change into a vending machine and stick a barrier around us. "Madam Chairwoman."

She jumps. "Mister.. Grayven, this is completely inappropriate!"

"I know, but I'm getting bored and annoyed so I thought I'd have a word."

"If you're.. trying to threaten-."

"No. Blackmail."

She frowns. "I haven't done anything-."

"I have CCTV footage of Prince William murdering people and eating their remains." She goes pale. Ah, she knows what I'm talking about! That will make this easier. "Did you ever go to the Caligula Club yourself? Before it burned down?"

"Yes. Once, as a junior minister."

"Enjoy yourself?"

"No! It was disgusting! I never went back!"

"Well, aren't you the Pollyanna?" I give her a lazy smile. "I understand that that prince doesn't need adult nappies anymore and it's amazing what they can do with artificial knees these days. You can barely see the scar-."

"What do you want?"

"You have a job. Do it. Stop deliberately provoking me. Establish the facts and make recommendations for whatever changes in policy you think are necessary." I lean closer. "I have lists. Names. Faces. Times. Dates. Photographs and camera footage. Step out of line again and I will make this country a republic, French style, am I clear?"

"Yes. Yes, you're clear."

I lean back. "Good. Enjoy your sandwich, Madam Chairwoman."

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Aberration 2

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10th January

10:04 GMT -2

The Triton civil servant bows his head to Diana apologetically. "I'm sorry, Your Highness, but His Excellency has been somewhat delayed."

"What seems to be the problem?"

"Saremites require special equipment to travel at this depth.. and… Well, someone appears to have stolen Prince Or-" Though the effect is rather lost underwater, I flop face first into the surface of the table. "-m's body. The security services are…" He looks past her at me. "Is he alright?"

"Fiiiine."

"Um. Right. Once the theft was discovered and.. you reported that Saremites had been involved in the attack on Themyscira, King Orin ordered us to check all of their equipment and it's.. taken a while."

"Thank you for letting us know. Do you know how much longer the delay will be?"

He shrugs helplessly. "I'll.. see if I can find out for you."

He backs out of the room and with a wave of his hand activates the door mechanism, causing the portal to be blocked by a wall of solid water. Hm, that's new. Diana turns around a little awkwardly in the water, a dim orange glow around her from the environmental shield. "I wonder why someone would-?"

"I thought you told me that resurrection was hard here!"

She blinks in surprise. "It is. I very much doubt-."

"He was in a team with two guys who can resurrect themselves! Orm was an expert battle mage! He probably understands the magics involved in Lazarus Pits better than Ra's did!"

"It's not that simple." I give her a look of utter incredulity. "It may be disturbing to think about, but magic suffused corpses have a number of uses in necromancy."

My face goes back into the table. "This is Atlantis. They'd have more trouble finding a corpse that wasn't suffused with magic."

"That…" She dips her head slightly. "I suppose you could be right. I'll ask Batman to create a list of potential Lazarus Pit locations."

"Does Talia even know whether or not Pits can be created underwater?"

"I doubt it."

"Okay, well, we've got all his equipment, his supporters are either dead or in prison and we know what he looks like. Even if he does come back it shouldn't be that hard to deal with.. him…"

I trail off as I see movement on the other side of the water membrane. Three figures, two large and one smaller, are lurking outside the room. I sit up. Can't hear what they're saying-. The barrier drops and the civil servant waves the other three in.

"Presenting Ambassador Lycorax and... Retinue."

A Saremite with a strong physical resemblance to the warriors who attacked Themyscira shoulders his way through the water into our room, takes a quick look around and then steps aside. There's a slight distortion in the water around his body, presumably both allowing him to exist at this pressure -Sareme is at the bottom of an ocean trench- and move around more easily with a form that looks poorly adapted to aquatic life. Unlike our attackers yesterday he's wearing armour, serious looking armour at that.

The Saremite behind him is much smaller and albino, his large eyes covered with goggles and his skin white and cream. There are what look like ribbons tied around his upper arms, streamers trailing along behind him. He isn't wearing any armour but there is some sort of neck brace looking thing clamped around his neck, covering the area where I would expect his gills to be. He reminds me a little of Abe Sapiens from Hellboy, actually. Another large bodyguard comes in behind and waves the portal closed behind him.

Diana approaches him and bows her head. "Ambassador."

He locks eyes on her face. "Princess. I will be clear from the outset: the ruling council of Sareme had no foreknowledge of the actions of those who attacked your home. So far as we are concerned you are free to dispose of any survivors as you wish. Their fate is of no concern to us."

"We.. had intended to send them back to you once we had some sort of explanation as to why they attacked us."

"If you wish. We will dissect their brains for information and then kill them. Should we learn anything pertinent we will inform you."

Diana recoils slightly. "That seems rather severe."

"They are criminals and outcasts. We don't make a point of hunting such people down but we will not protect them from the consequences of their actions."

Diana moves away slightly, coming around to my side of the table. "Please, take a seat." The first bodyguard moves over and pulls one out for him. I note that none of them are really swimming as such, being content to walk along the lower surface. Lycorax lowers himself delicately into the chair and Diana sits down next to me. "Would you have any objection to us keeping hold of them?"

"If you wish, do so. Their lives have no value to us."

"Why do you say that?"

"They are Oceanus worshippers. Water breathers. They have made-" Wait a second, water breathers? Ring, scan. "-themselves anathema to us."

"Ooh." He turns his head to look at me. "I'm.. sorry, I'd rather got the impression that you were altered Humans."

He leans back in his chair, his chin jutting forwards for a moment. "A common enough misconception."

Diana frowns. "The people who attacked Themyscira had gills."

"With the gas mix and density we use in Sareme it is far easier to breathe with gills. Our distant forebears were amphibious, the gene surgery required was slight. The.. Trench Cultists replace them with Atlantean style gills."

"Do you have any idea where they might have gone?"

"No. As I said, we do not concern ourselves with them. The.. oceans, are vast."

"Do you know of them having any previous contact with Circe or Scylla?"

"We have little engagement with Atlantis and none with the shallows. They may have done. Certainly, we have no knowledge of it if they did."

"Do you recognise-" I create an image of the object Mister Sorrow took. "-this?"

He studies the image for a moment. "It looks a little like a vault key. Did you check for neutrino circuitry?"

"Ahh… No. What's a vault key?"

"My people's civilisation once controlled the surface of the world. The vaults were where we stored our equivalent of schizotech. If that is what it is I have no idea how it came into your hands."

"Do you know what might be in the vault?"

"None. Given the time that has passed I would be surprised if it still existed. Even more so if whatever was inside still functioned."

"Events do rather suggest that the trench people know something we don't."

"Perhaps. Is there anything else? I am needed to deal with more of King Orin's baseless accusations concerning the theft of his treacherous brother's remains."

"You said your people ruled the surface, but I have never heard of you." Diana pauses for a moment. "When was this?"

"Something in the region of nine hundred thousand years ago. Sareme was the deepest of our aquatic settlements. One day my distant forebears received emergency orders from our capital to shut down all operations and enter suspended animation. They did so and awaited reactivation. When the first of them were finally awoken, millennia had passed and the suspension system was undergoing mechanical failure. They restored it as best they could and -since the standard wait period had already elapsed- attempted to make contact. They could not. Eventually they sent probes to one of the shallow colonies only to find it had been destroyed. From what remained they were able to determine that the rest of our civilisation had suffered a similar fate."

"Was there a violent conflict?"

"With whom? We were supreme on this world, and unified in ourselves. The possibility of alien visitors was considered but really we have no useful evidence. In an attempt to avoid contact with whatever power destroyed us we remained isolated until comparatively recently, when the Atlanteans made contact with us."

"Nine hundred thousand..?"

"At the time Sareme was only a small research settlement, not designed to sustain itself without resupply. The first generation were forced to spend a significant proportion of the time in stasis to preserve resources and to avoid the possibility of attracting whoever killed the rest of our species. They could not even try to contact other survivors in case that doomed all those who remained. Later… After adapting ourselves… We were no longer the people who had left the surface." He rises to his feet. "If there is nothing else?"

Diana shakes her head. "No, thank you."

He turns to leave, his bodyguard once again taking station fore and aft.

Something destroyed a world spanning civilisation and now the bad guys have one of their keys. That isn't ominous at all.

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Aberration 3

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10th January

19:54 GMT

I take another sip from my glass and take another look around the pub. I -very vaguely- remember there being a pub in Hellblazer that was destroyed by arsonists. Being Hellblazer, the result was the ghosts of the proprietress and her late husband taking revenge on those responsible until John talked them out of it. Did they rebuild it afterwards? Place looks fairly new, though I haven't seen any poltergeist activity as yet.

"You wanna go easy on that stuff, mate."

I raise my glass to the grinning barman. "Don't worry, I know my limits."

"Yeah mate." He grins at me for a moment longer and then heads towards the other end of the bar to serve another customer. Friendly enough chap, though in the old days I'd probably have found his tattoos and piercings a bit unnerving. I'm wearing a vest and the tattoos on my own arms are on display so.. maybe he thinks that we're part of the same tribe or something?

"Hitting the hard stuff, are we?"

I turn to my left. John's sporting a bandage over his nose but otherwise doesn't look too much the worse for wear. Ribs.. cracked rather than broken. "They don't serve milk here." He starts to smirk as he moves his eyes from my first empty orange juice glass to the second and then the one I'm holding. "Plus, I didn't know exactly when you were turning up. Can I assume that if I can't detect you any more Nabu didn't have any better luck?"

He takes a moment to look around the interior of the pub. "Nah. Givin' people like Nabu the run around's part of my job, isn't it?"

"No, it's… A bit of a shame, really." He frowns for a moment, then turns his expression to one of amused incredulity. "I mean, I assume Mister Zatara's a bit more up to speed with your tricks." His face relaxes and he nods. "Alright, where do you want-. Oh, sorry, what are you drinking?"

"Oi, Keith! Pint of Carling." Keith the barman looks around from the young woman he's chatting to and gives John a wave. "In your own time, then." Keith nods, then turns back to his conversational partner. "Friggin… Come on, let's grab a booth."

I get up off my stool and follow him over to a booth in the far corner. John gets friendly waves and salutations from the other patrons. I suppose this must be his local and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that he spends quite a bit of time in here. He takes the seat on the far side, the one that gives him a view of the whole room and affords him an unobstructed dive to the fire exit. I sit down opposite and set down my glass. "Don't I.. remember something about this place burning down?"

He nods, looking past me towards the bar. "Yeah. Got the bastard who paid the thugs who did it to pay to have it rebuilt. Course, the sodding ponce couldn't resist tarting it up a bit…" He looks around the whole of the room, studying it in detail. "Did an alright job I suppose. Old place could probably have done with a bit of paint."

"And the ghosts of the former..?"

He wrinkles his nose. "They tend to stay quiet unless someone gets a bit rowdy. Best way, really." I nod. "What'd you get up to on Themyscira, then?"

"Pledged my allegiance to Eris, persuaded Hera to divorce Zeus, fought a load of fishmen led by a former silent film star who's merged with an eldritch abomination,-" He's starting to look torn between incredulity and amusement. "-found out that the Amazons can mass produce mithril and orichalcum and have a room temperature super conductor, nearly got the shit scared out of me by you-" That does get a chuckle. "-and impregnated-."

"Bullshit."

"No, really." I hold out the left ring. "It's a simple-."

"No. You and Eris, sure. Oh-" Keith puts a pint down in front of him. "-cheers, mate."

"You wanna watch this one, John. Bet he's a mean drunk."

"Actually, I'm a sleepy drunk."

"Just don't leave your glass unattended, John. Bloke like you can't be too careful."

John rolls his eyes. "Push off back to the bar, you nonce." Keith has another chuckle at my expense before leaving us in peace. John takes a careful sip from his pint and then puts it back down. "You and Eris? Yeah. Bit surprised about you picking any god, but no sense turning down help."

"I actually met her. You know, in person."

"Explains the divorce thing. Hera's got more cause than most to tell her man to sling his hook. Weird fights? Sure. I was there for the Nazis and Vikings. The magic metals are a bit of a stretch-." I drop small disc shaped samples of each onto the table in front of him. He looks at them for a moment before sweeping them into his coat pocket with his right hand. "What do they do?"

"I don't really know. I'm going to drop off some samples to Sephtian tomorrow and try and get an appointment with Ted Kord next week."

"Who?"

"Head of Kord Tech. Super conductors are a technology thing rather than a magic thing. Probably… I don't think it has anything to do with our project."

He nods. No need to spell it out. "But that last one. You're not a bad looking bloke and they haven't seen a man for hundreds of years. I could see some of them bein' interested, I just don't see you jumping into bed with them."

"Never said I made them pregnant by me. A power ring can merge genetic material-."

He grins. "Yeah, that sounds more like it. How many went for it?"

"Just one couple, but I'm going back later this week and there might be more people who are interested."

He leans forward. "I got t' ask, on behalf of men everywhere: are they all just into girls, or…"

I shake my head. "I didn't ask. There are a lot of married women on the island and no men. They don't actually have a tradition of heterosexual marriage… Though they do have polygamy."

He takes another gulp as he works out how to respond. "Blimey." He pauses for a moment. Is he trying to imagine..? "Right, on to more serious stuff. How long have you known about the Beast for?"

"Years." He looks decidedly unimpressed. "If I'd known it was happening-."

"Let's just not worry about that." He pauses again. "If.. I hadn't talked to you..?"

"The Beast would have killed the Shadow Dog and transferred itself into the collective unconscious of humanity, gaining the ability to take control of anyone. It then started killing people for fun. You killed yourself so it couldn't read your mind and used the wood you took from Eden to give Swamp Thing the ability-."

"How bad?"

"The worst general outcome of anything you've ever done."

He nods solemnly. "Anything else coming up?"

"Chas's granddaughter gets her soul yoinked by a demon who holds it hostage to manipulate you into killing its competition."

"Geraldine's nine."

"It may not happen. I did say." He nods. "Plus I gave the whole family wards for Christmas. I remember her having a daughter inadvisably young… May want to give Mister Chandler a nudge about that."

"I best not. Anything more near by?"

"Dark Druid might have something to do with Nekron and the Black Lanterns. Those are.. super zombies armed with power rings." I sigh. "And I found out this morning that the fishmen I fought on Saturday are descended from a civilisation that was probably wiped out by the Sheeda."

"Fairies?"

"No, the inhabitants of Earth in the far future. Some of them look a bit like fairies and they can use magic… They loot past civilisations to keep their own going." I think for a moment. "There are other things, but those are the ones I've had warning signs about. Do you want more detail on those, or shall I just keep talking about stuff like that in general?"

He shakes his head. "No rush mate. Best not to miss anything out."

back

Aberration 4

next

12th January

15:26 GMT -6

"Can't believe they made two of them." Ms Wor-Ul leans back against her kitchen table watching Kon and Match get to work on dinner. Match is chopping some sort of Kryptonian tuber and Kon is pressing a nut like fruit for its oil. "Are you sure there aren't any more?"

"I'm sure there aren't any more in Cadmus."

"Hm." She glances at me and then goes back to watching the lads. "After your first visit I started actually paying attention to the news. There's that guy in Fawcett City-."

"Captain Marvel. Empowered by a magician. No heat vision."

"Icon."

"Terminian. His original form wasn't even humanoid."

"Anyone else?"

"Phantom Zone prisoners." She curls the left side of her lip. "Maybe a few like yourself, though if they exist I don't know where they are. Perhaps Kara Zor-El…"

She shifts her weight slightly and rolls her eyes. "More El's. Great. Just what we need."

Match looks up. "Hey!"

The Sub Commander straightens slightly, glaring at him. "Back to work, soldier." Match gets a truculent look, then makes eye contact with Kon for a moment before returning his attention to deseeding. I've noticed that he appears to be far less into the whole 'Kryptonian' thing than his brother. Certainly he point blank refuses to be called Match-El.

"Ever regret not having your own.. soldiers?"

She snorts. "Hardly."

"Because it wouldn't take too much effort for me to create a Kryptonian sperm-."

"Stop talking if you want to live." Match smirks, glances at her and then straightens his face.

"Hush tube working out alright for you?" She grunts. "And the new armour?"

"It doesn't move quite right. I feel the resistance whenever I move my arms over my head." She pauses. "Tough though. And I think it's faster in the air than my old gear."

Hmm. I had been trying to create something that would mesh with Kryptonian nuclear force control in the same way Apokoliptian armour does with a god's divine resistance. Seems that I'm not quite there yet. The Sub Commander grudgingly allowed me to access her database in return for first dibs and having her available to Guinea Pig is no bad thing. "I'll work on the articulation system some more. No problem with the altered sunstones?" She shakes her head. "I should have something for you next week." She nods. "You really think you need it?"

"I'm still alive because I never assumed that I didn't." She looks pensive for a moment. "If you do find any-." She suddenly winces, an action mirrored by Kon and Match. "Oh, not again! Can't you people get phones!?"

Ring, what does Luthor want this time?

"-the mechanism, Brothers, but I must ask for your assistance." That's not Luthor. That's Dubbilex. I know he has undetectable access to telecommunications, I installed the system myself. Oh, right, Kon and Match left their phones behind to avoid having them tracked. "There is someone in Project Cadmus who would like to meet you. Please pay us a visit when you have the time."

There's a slight ring as the message ends. Kon and Match both look at me. Ring, where's Kal-El?

Kal-El is presently located in the offices of the Daily Planet newspaper.

So he heard that. I suppose they don't have Luthor's monitoring system. Either that or this is really urgent. "I can go and see what that was about. You can stay here."

Match puts his knife down. "I'll come with." He looks to Kon for approval. "He did ask for us."

"You go on. I'll stay."

"Imagine that, an El wandering off rather than sticking at the job he's got." Match looks at her with self conscious awkwardness. Ms Wor-Ul has developed a bit of a thing about him being a full blooded El, hasn't she? She waves her right hand. "Go. Just don't lead anyone back here."

Match comes out from behind the work surface as I signal the Hush Tube below us to open a portal to Titan and extend an environmental shield around him. We stride through, shut the portal down and then transition back to the middle of the Australian bush before opening a Boom Tube to the Mountain's hangar.

12th January

16:29 GMT -5

We've completely replaced both Zeta Tubes in here with Hush Tube generators, though the upstairs Zeta Tubes are still in place. I wanted to modify the system further, to make one tube that could fit the Bio-Ship. So far Batman's not convinced. I tried to sweeten the deal by offering to install one in the Watchtower but if anything that seemed to make him even more cautious. Oh well, his loss.

"Hey, um…" I look at Match. "Did you get in any trouble with Mom about that British Parliament thing?"

"Oh, don't worry about it. Having to deal with the committee was supposed to be the punishment but.. you just have to know how to talk to these people. It was actually quite a productive meeting." Denied the ability to score points off me, Missus Abbott decided to sound off about vigilante accountability and organisation in general. Not that she dared while I was in the interviewee chair but I don't think that Sir Cyril had a particularly fun time of it later. I wonder if she knows about Chester and company? "And Diana knows that what we did was necessary. Hush Tube, take us to Genomorph City!"

A distortion appears in the air, then stabilises into a portal into the cavern's embarkation area. I see Dubbilex, a couple of G-Elves and a Genomorph type I don't recognise. What would it be I wonder? A G-Dryad for gardening? A G-Naiad for environmental regulation? He had spoken admiringly of M'gann's multifaceted abilities, so perhaps a phasing G-Wraith? A shapeshifting G-Doppleganger? A telepathic illusion casting G-Shee? I snort with amusement at the idea as I wave Match forwards, then stride through the Tube myself.

"Brother. Grayven."

"Hey Dubbilex." Match nods at the new Genomorph. "Who's this?"

Now I get a closer look at it I see a marked resemblance to Dubbilex himself. The new Genomorph is a little shorter and her… Not strictly her, Genomorphs don't have reproductive organs, but the general appearance is more rounded and feminine than most Genomorphs. Her horns are thinner and curved rather than thick and kinked as his are. Her ears point up slightly more than his do and where he has long dangling protrusions from the rear of his jaw she has tiny horn stubs. There's also a bit more flesh to her as opposed to Dubbilex's lanky body shape. I think her eye orbits are a little larger as well. She's wearing the same type of white overalls as Dubbilex, but cut in a slightly more feminine shape. As I study her, her right ear flicks nervously.

Dubbilex gestures to her. "This is Ixy, one of our new generation G-Goblins."

Match smiles at her. "Hey Ixy. Wait, Ixy as in X Y?"

She smiles at him. Ah, flexible facial features! Good move. **Yes, Brother. I have been engineered with improved empathic understanding and my physical features have been redesigned with the intent of provoking a less hostile response from any Humans I may encounter.** Her mental voice certainly sounds feminine to me. She takes a step forwards. **What do you think?**

**I'm not really much of a judge. Grayven? What do you think?**

"Masterful." I look at Dubbilex, grin on my face. "You've bred a PR specialist."

"In a manner of speaking."

"You've even made her cute." She doesn't manage to blush, but she looks down slightly and wiggles her tail. Oh, the Japanese are going to love you. Perhaps even in a way that isn't eighteen rated.

"There is more to.. her than that, but it is our hope that when the time is right Ixy and those like her will be able to serve as ambassadors to the outside world."

Match nods. **Okay, so what do you need help with?**

**To fully develop my abilities I have to spend time around Humans.** She blinks. **And people who are like Humans. We were hoping I could spend some time in your Mountain with you and your friends.**

**Um, I don't know. I mean, I think it sounds like a good idea but I'm not sure Batman would be okay with it.**

"Oh, come now. The Genomorphs already know where it is and who lives there. And who would they tell?"

**I know, but…** He turns back to Dubbilex. **I'll ask our superiors. I should be able to get you an answer by Sunday, one way or another.**

**Thank you, Brother. Your help will be invaluable.**

I reopen the Hush Tube behind us as Dubbilex and his escort turn to leave. Ixy hesitates for a moment and then darts forwards to hug Match around the chest before scurrying after them.

"Huh."

I look at the departing G-Goblins with a frown. "Let me get this straight: they called the male seeming one Double X... And her.. X Y. Do you think that maybe they aren't as good at genetics as we thought?"

back

Aberration 5

next

13th January

21:13 GMT -5

I watch from across the training area as Match explains the situation with the Genomorphs to Batman. I get a brief glare when Batman hears how much technology I've been supplying them with but he can't complain too much about that, not after he was complicit in their continued enslavement. Kon and Diana are standing with Match for moral support but this is very much his.. thing. I hadn't appreciated quite how strongly he feels about the Genomorph situation, not until he asked me to help him go over the arguments he'd need to make to convince Batman to let Ixy join us. I really don't know how Batman will respond to the idea.

How do I want him to respond? Hmm. A second telepath would be useful, certainly more useful than another brawler. I doubt that she'd be a security risk; the only people she would be in communication with would be the other Genomorphs and I'm struggling to come up with a situation where they'd be at odds with us. No. Orange light. How do I want the Genomorphs to respond to me? Direct access to Ixy would allow me to shape their relationship with Humans far better than my occasional visits to their city. As far as I know my telepathic shields are good enough to keep her out so there's little risk of her hearing something inopportune. If they're not, what might she hear? I've already told the Genomorphs that I'm not helping them out of the goodness of my heart. I don't have any plans to misuse them. I am interested in whether they are compatible with the Terrors' Formula or not but that's hardly anything to be afraid of. Infiltration risk? Hardly. The Hush Tube they've already got would allow them access to the Mountain. If they tried using it like that it would alert me but so far they haven't. Improved relations with Humans in general might end up reducing my influence a little… No. I don't need to control every little thing they do. I'm not like Fath-.

I squeeze my eyes shut and rub my brow with my right hand. No. My father is a college biology teacher from Ipswich. Colin John Flockton Surname-I-Can't-Think. My mother's name is Linda Barbara Surname-I-Can't-Think. I come from a parallel Earth, Earth Prime. This is getting tiresome. I can barely believe that I didn't notice until that rant on Themyscira! That shouldn't have happened, I shouldn't… Ugh, it's like when I started out with the ring. I have to watch every little thing I think… I'm not sure that the little mental slip I just had was Father Box's fault, or if so whether it was deliberate or a simple consequence of my desire for Grayven's -actual Grayven's- more beneficial characteristics. Pretending to be him is no great burden but I don't want to start remembering his life as my own! I concentrate for a moment on some of my older memories: playing Off The Wall at my Primary School, that time I took the schmuck bait and guessed my Secondary School art teacher's age in her hearing. My Granny's d-. Agh, no, not Heggra. My Granny's Chihuahua, Fang.

I turn away from my team mates and elders and walk down the corridor towards the kitchen. I'm going to have to incorporate some technique for reminding myself who I really am into my meditations. And I'm going to have to come up with some way to tell Jade. She must have noticed the inconsistencies in my story: a bastard son of an alien tyrant whose parents had been married for thirty three years after a seven year courtship! Lying to her, that's just.. wrong. Like-. Like Darkseid's relationship with Suli, one person with whom you can just be yourself and not worry about it coming back at you. She told me that she'd be on some sort of mission until next weekend at least, but perhaps I can create or locate some sort of observation proof zone in the mean-.

"Grayven." Tao slows, walking down the corridor towards me.

I give him a polite smile. "Tao. What can I do for you?"

"I wondered..?" He frowns slightly and takes a deep breath. "I have been spending a great deal of my time in this mountain of late. Now that I have finished my reading material…" He looks down and shakes his head slightly. "Is there..?" Another pause. "Would you please tell me how to apply for field assignments?"

I face shrug. "Field assignments? Do you mean missions?"

"No. I understand that it is Batman who determines the parameters of our missions as a team. But, Kid Flash frequently accompanies the Flash, Robin is mentored by Batman and.. most of our other team mates have similar arrangements. You do not appear to work with Wonder Woman but nonetheless you have official tasks to perform. Is there a list I should put my name on?"

"No, there's no list. I.. don't think the things I do are official. I just decide to do things and then do them."

He frowns in puzzlement, tilting his head slightly to the side. "Then how do you know they are the things you are supposed to be doing?"

We stare at each other for a moment. "Tao, I think this is part of a larger discussion we should have had some time ago." I walk up to him and put my right arm around his shoulders, leading him back towards the kitchen. "Do you mean to tell me that you're not getting missions from the Great Ten?"

"No. I stopped receiving work assignments once my transfer was complete. I can be recalled, but unless I am I will receive no routine tasks from China."

"I hadn't realised."

"My superiors want for me to be the first Chinese member of the Justice League. It was felt necessary to show the existing members that I would cooperate with them above short term nationalistic calls on my loyalties."

I nod and gesture for him to take a seat at the dining area table. He does so, looking at me expectantly. "Okay. I'm just going to throw stuff out here. If anything confuses you, ask, okay?" He nods. "In America, if you wear a funny costume and don't actually kill anyone, you can pretty much walk into any city and start beating up criminals.. and no one will mind." His mouth opens slightly in shock. I wave my right hand at him. "I know. I know. Sounds ridiculous, but there it is. Most members of the Justice League started out like that, it's a tradition going back to Hugo Danner in nineteen ten. It's just how things work here. If you're going to spend significant time in any one city it's worth setting up a line of communication with local authorities but you're not actually obliged to do what they say." His mouth is still open and now he's leaning forwards slightly. I think his eyes are glazed over. "Tao, it can hardly be a surprise that the Chinese Government is rather controlling. America prides itself on granting its citizens great personal freedom-."

"But that is absolute anarchy!" He looks physically pained. "Why does the government not.. not at least organise things?"

"Habit. Plus, the current system is quite popular with the public at large. And it's cheap. Never underestimate the American public's unwillingness to pay taxes. It's this sort of 'can do' attitude which is why the Justice League is largely American. Don't wait for the police; put on your pyjamas and a tiny mask and bring the ne'er-do-wells down yourself!"

"I see." He looks aside as he considers the situation. "I am.. unused to working in that way." He looks up at me hopefully. "Is there some guidance on which city would be an appropriate choice?"

"Think you may be missing the point a bit there."

"I cannot just.. turn up somewhere! That would be a completely irresponsible way to behave!"

"Incoming transmission."

A phone construct appears in my left hand. "I'm really sorry, Tao, but I need to take this."

He gets up out of his chair a little unsteadily. "I will.. think on what you have said."

I nod and smile before raising the construct to my ear and creating a sound deadening field around my head. "This is Grayven."

"You bin bein' a naughty boy?"

I smile. "Chester, me ol' mucker. Whatever gave you that idea?"

"Some fancy lad from the Home Office came down here. They want me to come up with a way to top yeh. Is there something you want to tell me, mate?"

"I might have let the British government know that I had some truly class A blackmail material on.. pretty much everyone in high public office."

"How good we talking here?"

I look around to ensure that no one is close enough to hear me. "Want to see a video of Danielle Goldsmith fisting a donkey?"

"Augh. I didn't need that in me head." There's a slight pause and I imagine him blinking heavily, unable to prevent himself imagining it. "I don't think they call me in over a few dirty magazines. They've got that Cyril twit fer that."

"Oh, there's more serious stuff. The highlights include kidnapping, paedophilia, foul magics, murder and cannibalism."

"Fook.. me. Don't do things by half, do yer?"

"I just used the threat to get an edge… To be honest I'm probably going to end up releasing it anyway once I'm sure it'll stick." I think for a moment. Chester does -in his own imprecise and rather bloodthirsty way- try and focus on targets who more or less deserve it. How does he weigh things? Do I count? He knows exactly what sort of person I am from our early sessions. On the other hand… "So. Are you actually going to have a go?"

"You're just scared because you know I'm not like those pansies you usually hang around with."

"True. I'm not completely sure I could beat you." I'm really not. Given his visible frustration when he lost the ability to make me soil myself I'm going to assume that he wasn't faking, but that took everything I could. His telekinetic power is incredible. In a fight, even if he didn't get the drop on me? Dodgy one. "On the other hand, iff.. some of the people on this list suffered.. unexpected strokes…"

He pauses a moment before responding. "Wouldn't want anything like that to happen, would we? Best you send everything you've got over to me so I can keep an eye on the wankers."

back

Aberration 6

next

14th January

16:57 GMT -5

Kaldur smiles down at our new mountainmate. "Now that you have been fully introduced-."

"We need to find you something else to wear." M'gann looks over Ixy's overalls with barely concealed distaste.

Ixy turns slightly to meet M'gann's eyes, blinking twice. Her tail swings from side to side. It functions almost perfectly as an indicator of her mood, a trait I can only assume is designed to enhance her earnest appearance. Slow swings indicate uncertainty or nervousness. Straight with tremors indicates excitement, curling up around her own legs or torso indicates genuine fear. Batman didn't warrant that when he interviewed her in person. She seemed to find him fascinating, though I'm going to assume from the fact that she's here that she managed to restrain her impulse to probe him telepathically. Red Tornado on the other hand had her hiding behind Match. Probably the first time she met someone whose mind she couldn't feel.

**Are my clothes wrong? If they are I am very sorry but we do not have any Genomorph tailors yet.** Ixy pulls the bottom of her t-shirt out to take a look at it. **These are a spare set that were issued to Dubbilex and then altered to my dimensions by a G-Dwarf.**

Artemis nods. "Yeah, we could tell."

Zatanna looks thoughtful. "The clothing stores in Happy Harbor should still be open. I could put a disguise spell on you-."

Ixy's eyes widen and she shakes her head. And her upper body as well. Articulation problem, perhaps? Or maybe she just wants to be extremely vehement. **Oh no, I am not ready for that level of societal immersion yet. Could I not just take them off?** For a moment no one says anything. **Most Genomorphs do not wear clothes and-** She goes to pull the shirt up higher. **-my epidermis is nearly as resilient as that of the G-Elves.**

**No.** M'gann steps right up to her and pushes her arms down in a friendly but firm manner. **Clothes… With Humans, clothes are kind of mandatory.**

**Thank you.** I notice Ixy's tail snake around M'gann's leg. **I hope you do not mind helping me not to make silly mistakes.**

**Of course not. I still remember what it was like being around Humans for the first time.**

**You mimic them very well. I want to learn as well as you have.** Ixy sounds earnest while M'gann suddenly looks a little less certain. She has long since internalised Human body language and facial expression. Is Ixy implying that she thinks M'gann merely pretends..? Or that Ixy would merely be pretending?

"Why don't you come to my house?" Ixy and M'gann look at Zatanna. "It's just me and my dad, and I've got a ton of clothes I've grown out of but never got around to throwing out. I'm sure we can find something that fits you."

Ixy beams. **Thank you. I would like that very much!**

Miss Ervin raises her right eyebrow. "Don't you live in a haunted house?"

"Shadowcrest isn't haunted." A sly smile appears on Zatanna's face. "We keep all our ghosts carefully contained in clearly marked rooms. You can all read Enochian, right?"

**I am not afraid of ghosts.** Ixy blinks, then looks down as she thinks for a moment. Once she has a conclusion she looks straight at Zatanna. **What are ghosts?**

"We can show you when we get there. Hsuh Ebut emoh."

The shimmering portal appears and Wallace looks around the group. "'kay, so, we all relocating to-?"

Artemis pokes him in the stomach as the female members of the team head through the Tube. "Girls only, Wally."

Ixy smiles winsomely at her escort as she is carried along. **Strictly speaking, Genomorphs do not have gender. We reproduce using-.** Her mental voice cuts out as the Tube closes.

Tao watches the space where the Tube disappeared. "She seemed friendly. Will she be joining us on missions?"

Kaldur glances at Robin for a moment. "That has yet to be determined." He transfers his attention to Match. "Match, what else can you tell us about her?"

"She's a telepath and a telekinetic. Actually, I don't think I've heard her speak with her mouth yet." He looks at me. "She can, can't she?"

I tilt my head to the right slightly. "So far as I can determine, yes. She has vocal cords and the nerves that would be required to use them."

Richard frowns. "You said you told Dubbilex that he should make more G-Goblins back in December, right?"

"Yes." I think back for a moment. "I think I also suggested that we could host her here."

Wallace spots the implication. "They grew her in a month?"

Match nods. "Genomorphs can grow pretty quickly, and since they learn telepathically they don't need to spend a whole lot of time growing up. I know-" He glances at Kon. "-we didn't."

Kaldur looks unconvinced. "I realize that you and Kon were capable fighters immediately after you left your pods, but she seems far less robust than you."

Kon shrugs. "She's got the same strength and agility as G-Elves, and Dubbilex told Match that they used the G-Gnomes to give her their skills as well. She's not as tough as we are but she can still fight."

"Perhaps we can use this weekend to put her through her paces."

Richard shakes his head. "I don't think we'll have the chance. Batman said something about wanting us to spend this weekend helping him investigate some new meta drug Kobra's been using."

Wallace punches the air. "First real mission of the year!"

I rub my chin with my right hand. "We might be able to bring her along anyway. Her telepathy has a decent range to it. As long as she avoids direct combat…"

Kaldur nods. "Perhaps. I will wait until Batman informs us of the nature of our part in the investigation before deciding."

Richard looks at me suspiciously. "How come you're being so nice about her?"

"I'm not sure what you mean."

Kon frowns, then nods. "He's got a point. You were pretty rude to people on Themyscira."

"I didn't sugar coat what I told them, if that's what you mean."

"Zeus shot you with lightning." That gets a few stares. Thanks, Match.

"The Genomorphs are a fascinating species. Biologically task adapted bodies with a gestalt consciousness? Themyscira's done basically nothing but rest on its laurels for two thousand years. The Genomorphs build their own city -and developed the ability to live independently- in a few months." I pause for a moment, wondering how to continue. "Though.. I'll confess… I do have another motive."

Richard snorts. "Big surprise."

I look directly at him. "Did you ever wonder where the Genomorphs came from?"

Wallace looks around the group. "Ahh, Gray? It's called Cadmus?"

I shake my head. "Everything I know about Human technology tells me that you aren't anywhere near advanced enough to create an entirely original species, let alone one with the abilities which the Genomorphs possess. At first I thought that perhaps they were heavily modified Humans.. or metahumans. But that's not it. I've checked. Your two species share some organic chemistry but you're not related. Not in any significant respect, anyway."

Kaldur frowns. "Atlantean biomancers are capable of performing significant alterations to existing species. My friend Blubber does not look Human."

"I can always tell. To a power ring Atlanteans scan as Human. In the case of plexed lifeforms I can pick out the DNA of the constituent parts. No, Genomorphs are new. Original." I sigh. "But… Morrow built A.I.s in the forties. The fact that it doesn't fit the curve doesn't mean that some sufficiently brilliant scientists couldn't have done it. But if so, where are they? I've investigated the people who worked on the Genomorphs in great detail. Intelligent, yes. Leaders in their fields, some. But Morrow was building servo arms in his father's garage when he was nine, none of them show that precocious level of ability. Especially not Doctor Desmond. Maybe they're just better at hiding than I am at finding, but it's far more likely that they got a start from somewhere else. And I'd be very interested to know where."

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Aberration 7

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15th January

06:58 GMT -5

"I was thinking.. perhaps… Star City?" Tao and I walk towards the training area for the scheduled seven o'clock briefing by Batman. "I believe that I would feel better about the situation if I had.. a degree of oversight."

"Green Arrow can be a bit competitive and.. Star City actually has a fairly low crime rate."

"It would also be an opportunity for me to gain experience in working alongside Artemis."

I flash him a grin. "Is that what the kids are calling it these days?"

He frowns slightly. "Calling.. what?"

I snort and shake my head. "Tao, if you want to go to Star City, do it. Green Arrow will probably be fine with that. He may even offer to show you around himself."

"I think I would prefer that."

"And he can chaperone the two of you so her mother doesn't get worried."

"Um. That… I… Ahh..."

I pat him on the back with my right arm. "I had access to the Watchtower's internal monitoring at New Year. Quick work."

"Oh. I.. was.. not sure it was appropriate."

"No rule against it. And -come on- you've seen M'gann and Kon together."

He nods, managing a small smile. Ahead, I see Rocket emerge from a Hush Tube and walk over to join our other teammates. Looks like it'll be a full line up. Richard will be arriving with Batman and we're including the Sphere and Mister Tawny. Oh, no, silly me. Nearly full; and I haven't seen Red Arrow since New Year. Not that I think for a moment that we'll miss having a mundane pointy stick launcher guy on the team.

Interesting to see that William's coming along on this one. He was a little concerned when he discovered that the Apokoliptian armour I made for him was capable of making the transition from William Batson to Captain Marvel mode. He seems to think it makes him look a bit too grim, plus it creates an obvious visual link between William the boy and Marvel the superhero. Maybe I could try making him a suit with the main colour being red rather than grey? No, the visual link would still be there.

"Hey Tao."

"Artemis." Tao walks past me as I slow and takes up position next to her. Nearly next to her at least, he's left a respectful and proper space between them. She looks at him, then at it, then grins a grin I know well from Jade before closing the gap herself, intentionally bumping into him. For a moment the superfunctionary who's killed fifteen men that I know about is replaced by a chess club nerd working up courage to ask out a cheerleader. Oh, she's going to have fun with him.

Mister Tawny looks around as I take a position on the near side, next to Match and Kon and slightly behind Ixy. With twelve of us on the team -thirteen if Ixy joins the mission, fifteen if we count the Sphere and Mister Tawny- we're starting to get to the point where we become a little unwieldy. Alternate team leader tryouts are scheduled… Had been scheduled for today, though they'll have to be moved to next weekend now. Still not sure if I want to go for it or not. I like my team mates but I'm not sure that I see a place for myself as part of a training team going forwards, to say nothing of the time I intend to spend away from Earth. On the other hand, would me not taking part turn it into a sham? I have the skills these days, as well as the strength of personality. Making the team's token evil teammate the overall leader would be unthinkable, but as second in command? That could work. Have to ask the others-.

"Recognised, Batman, zero two, Robin, B zero one."

Tao and William come to attention and the rest of us straighten a little as well. Even Mister Tawny adopts a more alert posture. Richard walks over to take up position on the opposite end of the line to me while Batman strides to the fore, summoning a holoscreen of police -Gotham police by the looks of things- escorting some people in Kobra Cult robes into a police van.

"Earlier this week I located a Kobra cell setting up in one of the Joker's former chemical plants in Gotham City. They appeared to be working on production of both Kobra Buster and a new substance."

An image of a labelled vial of the stuff and another of its chemical structure flash up. Ring, analyse.

By your command.

In my mind's eye the ring shows me-. Oh, that's a little worrying.

"The substance appeared to grant its users enhanced endurance and healing abilities. Fortunately Robin and I were able to intervene before they could try combining it with Kobra Buster."

Wallace is staring intently at the molecular structure. "Do we know where they got it from?"

"The substance shares a number of similarities with a commonly used anti-miscarriage drug treatment which retails under the name 'Unception'. It's widely used across North America, Central America and in Europe."

I shake my head. "With respect sir, the drug you encountered sounds far more like Argonate."

Wallace's eyes widen as he recognises the name. "The explosive cancer drug? I thought that got banned!"

Batman gazes at me levelly for a moment before moving his eyes over the rest of the team. "It was, and the few remaining stocks are kept in secure locations." The drug actually worked extremely well at its intended role, stabilising and healing mortally injured recipients. Even after General Sunderland's research project crashed and burned and they lost the ability to manufacture more of it the stuff remained in use until one of the recipients suffered a very public adverse reaction. The fact that he'd have died months before anyway without it was rather ignored. "The only group of people who might retain the ability to produce the substance operate out of here." The other images disappear, to be replaced with one of the entrances to-. "Aberrance, Nevada." Haaaaaaaaaaaaaah. Are we actually-? "It's about sixty miles north west of Las Vegas."

Wallace tilts his head to the side slightly. "Isn't that near the Nevada Test Site?"

Oh, I wouldn't say near exactly.

Batman dips his head slightly. "Aberrance was founded in nineteen ninety five in the grounds of the former Nevada National Security Site and is now home to-."

I can't help myself. "A motley collection of circus freaks, tourists, hangers on and the Uncorporation." I grin. "Are we really getting sent there?"

Batman pauses for a moment as he regards me. "I take it that you're familiar with the place."

"I'm familiar with everything about it. Including the personal history of the management. I'd be surprised to find that they were working with Kobra though. Doctor.. von Schadel is known for being extremely possessive of his proprietary technologies." Hardly surprising when they are usually extracted from the living bodies of his brethren.

"I agree. It's more likely that Kobra has infiltrated Aberrance, possibly with the assistance of a local contact in Uncorporation itself. The team will travel to Aberrance this morning and attempt to locate the source of the leak while I investigate the possibility that Sunderland or someone associated with his research project is responsible."

"The team is capable of handling that as well." Kaldur looks down the line up. "We easily have sufficient manpower to cover both parts of the mission."

"American authorities are obliged to cooperate with the Justice League on matters of international terrorism. We have protocols in place to allow League members to see classified material. However, those protocols do not cover the team." We avoid looking at William as a minute smile appears under Batman's mask. "Sometimes, acting openly produces the best results. Aberrance opens its front gates to the public at eleven hundred, Mountain Time. You have four hours to plan your mission. Data on the town and on local notables has been added to your database but-" He looks at me again. "-it seems that Grayven may well be a better source."

"Batman?" I look around to where M'gann stands. "Are we able to get access to the prisoners? I could probably get information from them using telepathy."

Richard turns his head aside as Batman calls up a new holoscreen. What is tha-? Oh. Oh dear. It seems that they haven't quite worked out the bugs in their formula. "Unfortunately, none of the prisoners are in a fit state to speak with anyone, and I would not recommend attempting to contact them telepathically."

M'gann nods, visibly shaken.

Miss Ervine's mouth is open. "What.. happened to them?"

"When Robin and I fought them they all injected themselves with the new substance. A few hours later they looked-" Like Un-men. Curious. "-like this. Find the people responsible for this." He makes eye contact with us each once more and then strides away towards the Zeta Tube, leaving us with the image of a sad and broken monster that was once a man.

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Aberration 8

next

15th January

07:06 GMT -5

"Recognised, Batman, zero two."

**I do not think Humans are meant to look like that.**

"That man is.. no longer precisely Human." I step around Ixy and look at Kaldur with raised eyebrows. "May I?"

He raises his right hand towards the lecture space. "Please."

Wallace looks at me with concern. "What do you mean, 'no longer precisely Human'?"

I move out in front and interface the ring with the display. "Where to start. Ah! Kaldur, to the best of your knowledge, who is the greatest biomancer in Human history?"

He thinks for a moment, his eyes unfocusing slightly. "If I were asked in any other circumstances I would have said Ahri'ahn. Presumably you disagree?"

"For those of you who haven't heard of him, Ahri'ahn is the Atlantean magic user who devised -among other things- the biomantic spell which created the first of those who are now called 'Pure Bloods', Atlanteans who are physically identical to surface dwelling Humans but can breathe water and possess enhanced strength and endurance. But he isn't the greatest biomancer ever. He does have a decent claim to be the greatest all round magic user in Human history: he never bartered with any sort of god or spirit for more power, everything he achieved was with the might of his own spirit and that set the tone for Atlantean magic use even to the current day. But though it is biomancy which has become his lasting legacy, it was never really his focus." I bring up a recording I took from a newsreel dating from nineteen thirty seven. A surprise visit to the Hadamar 'clinic' by the man running the Nazi eugenics program. It's the only news footage I've been able to find of-.

Richard frowns. "That's Philipp Bouhler, the Nazi war criminal."

"Yes. Dreadful man." I pause the footage and expand one of the doors behind the area the meet and greet is happening in. A moment later the door is pushed open and an elderly man in a lab coat walks through before realising what is happening and starting to turn around. I freeze the image. "That.. is as far as I can tell the only surviving image of the late and entirely unlamented Doctor Anton Arcane. He was seventy four when this was taken."

Miss Ervine studies the image. "Was he a Nazi?"

"He wore the armband, but the intelligence files I read seemed to indicate a very low political commitment. The NKVD noted after the war that he was authorised to remove the bodies of those who were murdered there so that he could use their organs for research into transplantation. He was actually doing something rather more interesting. Creating life forms." I bring up a new image, showing a few of the first generation Un-Men. "Early Un-Men appear to have simply been sewn together cadavers. Additional joints-" I point one out. "-elongated limbs, novel limb placement… He later moved on to more creative works."

Kaldur is visibly disquieted. "That is.. disturbing, but I do not think it causes him to qualify as the greatest biomancer ever."

"Kaldur, he wasn't working within an existing tradition. Every work of science or magic he used in their creation he had to invent himself from scratch." Though there are similarities between his work and that of Victor Frankenstein. Might be worth further investigation.

"Undead creatures-."

"Ah, but they're not undead. Creatures that are genuinely alive created from the remains of the dead. They breathe, they eat, they excrete… Some of them can even have children."

Miss Ervine is visibly repulsed. "Oh, ew."

"At some point during the seventies Arcane lost a fight with Swamp Thing-" His image from back in the 'shambling moss man' days was easy enough to find. "-and died, leaving his creations directionless. Those who had accompanied him to Louisiana either went into hiding or were picked up by the American military. Perhaps the name 'David Manguy' sounds familiar?" A glimmer of recognition from Richard. Everyone else looks blank. "General Avery Sunderland?" Who was lucky to be allowed to retire. Right up until Swamp Thing planted a rose garden in his chest. "Damien Kane?"

Miss Ervine nods. "I remember hearing about him from Icon. Wasn't there some sort of messed up military experiment that made him mutate into a…" She looks back at the screen, realisation dawning. "One of those."

"Quite the reverse. Damien Kane-" I bring up the before and after images. "-was a second generation Un-Man. Both of his parents were creations of Anton Arcane. Sunderland's people forced them to breed entire batches for them to use as experimental subjects. The researchers were told that they were attempting to find a way to prevent the expression of genetic flaws in developing foetuses. 'Unception' -or at least one of its early forebears- was the result."

Match's face appears to have frozen. "What happened to the others?"

"The attempts of the scientists working on them to halt their mutation failed. They were destroyed in infancy. Damien Kane -not that he had a name until later- received what later became the release version of the drug and remained asymptomatic until he was twenty three."

I shift the image of the first generation Un-Men upwards and create one of all other known second generation Un-Men. Scylla, the vaguely dog-headed Brontes, shockingly tall and thin Daedalus -he had a minor acting career playing Grey type aliens before his death-, the woman with four arms… Never could find out what her name was. And the rest that I'm sure about. Early Aberrance had a fairly good registration process but unlike Aberrance now they didn't particularly care whether a person with deformities was an Un-Man or not.

**What happened when he was twenty three?**

"His body started mutating in earnest, the drugs no longer effective. They never found out why. His handler reported that he was experiencing signs of ill health, he returned to the laboratory where he was created… Doctor Manguy explained his circumstances, then he just.. disappears. He next turns up in Romania, as part of a freak show. He appears to have incited a riot which resulted in the death of the proprietor and most of the guests-" I put some newspaper cuttings up on the holoscreen. "-then returned to the United States with several other second generation Un-Men. Their next action was to attempt to free the first generation Un-Men still in captivity. It.. didn't go particularly well, but the deaths and the publicity the situation attracted were enough to both ensure that the program was shut down and ensure their safety." The simultaneous containment failure from the other part of the research project was rather more dangerous. Arcane created combat 'insectoid' Un-Men as well as simple servitors and the US military had been far more interested in those. Right up until they ate two platoons and demonstrated the ability to convert the fallen into more of themselves.

I add a video clip of one of the television interviews the survivors gave to the holoscreen. "The survivors were given a disused nuclear test site to live on." There's a small intake of breath from my audience. "Not quite as bad as it sounds. Un-Men are far more resistant to being mutated by external forces than baseline Humans. Anyway, Damien Kane became the nominal community leader until…" I add the image of Doctor Otto von Schadel and his.. escort. "A small group of first generation Un-Men who'd avoided detection by the military arrived. They had a rather.. different view of their circumstances. Von Schadel was convinced that Arcane's techniques could be harnessed for the greater good without the monstrosity of the earlier attempts. That might have gone nowhere but for this man. His name is Rupert Jameson, but these days-" I rotate the image so my teammates get a look at his back. "-they go by Janus and Janus Junior."

Wallace gags. "I think I'm going to be sick."

"Janus had money and connections. He turned Aberrance into a circus freak themed theme park while lobbying for all the results of the US military's studies to be signed over to the Un-Men. He's been successful in both endeavours and has been enthusiastically backing Doctor von Schadel's work with Uncorporation ever since."

**Is he an Un-Man? Is that why there is a small man sticking out of his back?**

I bring up an old photograph of Janus with his late wife. "That isn't entirely clear. He certainly used to be Human, but von Schadel's surgical creation of 'third generation' Un-Men suggests that they can integrate Un components into baseline Humans without too much difficulty."

Kaldur shudders. "What has become of Damien Kane?"

"He's dead. Natural causes… Or what passes for natural causes in Un-Men. His mutations broke his body down almost completely. These days Aberrance is a company town firmly under Uncorporation's control and they strongly resent all outside interference. If we want any sort of cooperation, we'll need to convince them that we're people they should want to work with."

"Do you have a way to achieve that?"

I smile, radiating confidence. "Of course I do."

"And what is that?"

I grin. "Bribery."

back

Aberration 9

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15th January

15:16 GMT +3

I stride confidently through the Hush Tube and into the great hall. "Welcome to Castle Arcane."

Zatanna and Richard follow me through as I take a look around. The ceiling has long since caved in and from the looks of it the people from the village below have been looting the tiles employed in its construction. Drifts of snow have built up in places not sheltered by the remaining walls, illuminated by the weak fragments of sunlight able to pierce the stony grey sky. Off to my right the stone is blackened where someone once made a bonfire of wooden furniture. It must have been some time ago; water has gotten to it since and left a trail of black ash across the brickwork where it drained away.

Richard comes up besides me. "You really think we'll find anything here? It's been forty years."

"After his encounter with Swamp Thing, the surviving Un-Men recovered his head and attached it to a new body before using his own techniques to restore him to life. He then took virtually all of them off in pursuit, taking only the equipment they could carry. It was.. months after that when the villagers dared come up here." I take a look around and match what I'm seeing to the description I received. "This way, I think."

I lead the way up some stone steps towards the inner keep, Richard and Zatanna following cautiously behind me. "Htmraw. Dna, eltsac? T'nod espalloc no su." I feel a gust of warm air blow in from behind us. "What makes you think there's anything left here?"

"After that business with The Beast I had a chat with one of Mister Constantine's colleagues, one Nathan Arcane. He's Anton's.. great great nephew. Or something like that. According to him, any really valuable materials would have been disguised by magic. Now, there's a chance we've missed it anyway; this place has been looted three times over."

Richard pokes at a doorframe, which crumbles away at his touch. "I'm surprised there's anything left at all."

"Too much effort to cart the stone down the mountain. But don't let the state of this part of the castle fool you; Arcane's laboratory, workshop, his library and his personal chambers are a good deal further in. When the villagers started looting the place they left those well alone after one of their number stole a silver coloured ring from a cabinet and rotted to death over a period of a week. General Sunderland managed to get an agent up here in the seventies but he could only grab a few of Arcane's books. Nothing that he found particularly helpful. Cooperating with the communist authorities was an impossibility and his project was shut down well before the end of the Cold War."

"And the third time?" I note that he's keeping his voice down slightly, rather than using his slightly raised 'arguing with Grayven' tone.

"Janus led an Uncorporation expedition here in ninety eight. They hired some villagers and carted away the rest of the library. Literally, actually. They couldn't hire a lorry which could handle the load and the mountain track."

"Weren't they a bit freaked out by the little guy?"

"The power of the almighty dollar at work." We come out into another room with a missing roof. From the broken glass underfoot and the iron skeleton above I'm going to assume that it was a glass dome. They probably constructed it up here in the castle's long forgotten heyday. "Janus was more interested in seeing if there were any surviving Un-Men here. He appears to have gone home disappointed."

"After thirty years?"

"Unlikely, I agree, but there were second generation Un-Men in the area when Damien Kane visited. It wasn't impossible that there were others as well. Reuniting the 'Arcanian Diaspora' is one of Uncorporation's goals."

"How many of them are there?"

"No one really knows. Visually, they can look near normal, or like a person with conventional disabilities." I pause, making a show of looking at my own right arm. "Or a metahuman. Or an alien." I look around before starting towards an exit. "The library's through here. Zatanna, feeling anything?"

Her eyes glow faintly gold as she stares through the walls. "There's magic here, but no spells have been cast recently. Are you sure there aren't any booby traps left?"

I push open the door. Wood and iron, it's survived the decades surprisingly well. "Not at all. You'll need to thoroughly study anything we want to take away before we do so." The library's gutted, as expected. Empty bookshelves and cobwebs, the intact roof giving shelter to spiders as it once did scholars. The library used to be on two levels but the upper balcony has crumbled to nothing I'd want to put weight on. All of the desks but one have been shoved to the sides of the room, and that one has two charred skeletons with their hands clamped onto each end. I note that there's also a ring around it into which dust has not intruded.

Richard nods at the remains as I scan them. "Who were they?"

"Genetics say 'local'. Romanian, at least. Probably from Janus' expedition." Wouldn't hurt… "Zatanna, could you please try removing whatever spell is on that desk?"

She looks at me a little sceptically. "One that was put there by the greatest biomancer ever?"

"I doubt the spell is biomantic. It looks like fire damage." I give her a little smile. "Besides, you shouldn't underestimate your abilities. Not when he's been dead for fifty years."

She carefully approaches the desk, stopping just this side of the line on the floor. "Wohs em siht suoredrum lleps!" The blast of air created by her magecraft pushes the dust away from her as well and a golden triquetra forms as she pushes her right hand towards the invisible barrier. I can just about see the dim outline of the dome around the desk. "Eb edamnu!" Her eyes and armour glow gold as Zatanna pushes her triquetra forwards. The dome wobbles, then shudders and disintegrates, releasing a burnt smell into the air. Zatanna lowers her hand with a satisfied smirk, the golden glow of her armour dropping back to its resting level.

Richard looks over the bodies once more. "We should probably see about getting those to their next of kin."

I shake my head. "A nice idea, but they won't take them. Too much risk to touch anything that's been affected by Arcane's magic." He looks like he wants to protest. "We can bury them ourselves instead." I delicately pick them up with a construct and move them aside, rearranging them into a resting pose.

He looks uncomfortable for a moment, then nods in acquiescence. "So. Where do we look that no one else has?"

"None of those groups had a magic user with them."

"Seriously?"

"Reliable magic users are hard to come by. Zatanna?"

"Wohs em eht sdaerht fo eht cigam fo Notna Enacra!" Her eyes shine even brighter for a moment and she blinks heavily. "Whow."

Richard walks around in front of her. "Zatanna. You alright?"

"Yes, it's just…" She gazes around the room. "I think I'm.. seeing every spell he ever cast. I don't.. understand it all…"

Worth bringing her back here later? I'm sure there's a wealth of useful knowledge to be gained here. On the other hand, I have no interest in creating Un-Men myself. I mean, what would be the point? "Can you see anything that looks like-."

"A hidden book of spells?"

"It would be nice."

She flashes me a lopsided smile before floating into the air in the direction of the far window. Its small size and thick glass appear to have allowed it to survive where its brethren have fallen, though one of the smaller panes near the top has been broken. Zatanna comes to a halt just before it and holds out her right hand. "Gnikcehc eno meti tuo, esaelp."

The space around her hand glows gold as it warps and breaks, then comes together again in the shape of a black, leather bound book. Ring? Ugh, Human skin. I hope that's just the binding and not the pages, Human skin makes a rubbish writing medium.

The book continues to float just over her hand as she peers at it. "Evomer lla ytsan slleps." A puff of air erupts from the book, then she takes hold of it and floats back down to us. "There we go. Think this is something they want?"

I look at the gold lettering on the cover. 'AA' in stylised lettering. "I rather think so. Nice work."

Richard takes in the book as well. "So, you're sure Doctor von Schadel will cooperate if we give this to him?"

"Sure? No. But delivered by the right hand this should earn a great deal of good will."

"Would that 'right hand' be yours?"

I smile at him. "What do you think?"

back

Aberration 10

next

15th January

07:26 GMT -5

"…there a reason we couldn't just open a tube directly to where we wanted to go?"

I nod as the three of us stroll back into the cave. "Yes, R-Robin. I haven't studied the effect of defensive magics on Tube physics. I already knew that there wasn't a ward over the whole of the castle but I didn't want to take the risk on us getting flambéed." I shoot him a sidelong look as we walk into the meeting room we've turned into a planning area. Three settees flank a central table with a holographic projector in the centre and there's a boss chair for team leader Kaldur at the end with the Sphere and Mister Tawny on either side. Match, M'gann and Kon sit to his right, Artemis, Miss Ervine and William to his left and Ixy, Tao and Wallace are opposite him. "Though I rather suspect that Zatanna and I could take it. I don't suppose you've reconsidered-?"

"No. Thanks."

Wallace looks around as we enter the room. "Hey guys. Find anything?"

Zatanna holds up the book and shakes it. "One book of evil magic."

Miss Ervine grimaces. "How evil are we talking here?" She looks around our other teammates for support. "'Cause.. we've been reading up on these guys-."

I shake my head. "I don't believe any magic is innately evil. Anton Arcane used his abilities to ruthlessly serve his own desires. Doctor von Schadel is a.. somewhat.. idiosyncratic man-."

Artemis waves her pad at me. "Who hates disabled people and doesn't like normal people much either."

"Hands up everyone who's normal." For a moment no one moves. "Wallace, you replicated the Garrick Formula when you were twelve. Kaldur, your father's body was altered to give him gills when he gained Atlantean citizenship, a trait you inherited from both him and your mother."

"Ah…" William goes to raise his hand.

"William, you were blessed by the wizard Shazam with the ability to turn into a superpowered version of your father. But even that wasn't sufficient for you. Like Prince Adam in He-Man you wanted to adventure as yourself, so? You took up the Sword of Beowulf."

Richard crosses his arms. "And what about me? Or Rocket?"

"I'd hardly call your circumstances 'normal', but yes, you are physically an extreme example of baseline Human athleticism. Look, I'm not trying to say that von Schadel is a nice man. But look at what he's done with the parts of Arcane's knowledge he currently possesses: mass produced drugs which allow women who could not hope to reproduce to do so and which accelerate the healing of people with crippling or mortal injuries. He already has the ability to perform mass augmentations and desires to do so. If he's a bit of an arse as well? I can live with that."

Kaldur rises from his seat. "Zatanna, have you reviewed the contents of the book?"

She shakes her head, then takes a seat next to Artemis. "No, not yet. And since I'm not really all that familiar with either biomancy or whatever notation Arcane used, I'm not sure I'll be able to tell for certain exactly how dangerous this is."

Richard takes a seat next to Wallace opposite Kaldur and I sit down next to Match, on the opposite side from Zatanna. Match looks over to the book. "If Arcane's dead, shouldn't the Un-Men get it anyway? That's pretty much what the US government decided to do with everything from Sunderland's research project."

Kaldur nods. "The idea is not inherently unreasonable, and Uncorporation's willing cooperation would make our investigation much easier. Grayven, how did you plan to approach him?"

I shrug. "More or less walk up to him and hand him the book. Naturally, he'd be curious about where I got it from and my.. obvious physical differences from the Human norm mean that he wouldn't reject my output out of hand." My eyes drift to his bare neck. "Originally, I'd.. assumed that you would be just as capable of performing that role, but with your gills gone…"

"I am still not a 'baseline' Human."

"No, but you look like one. That counts with the Un-Men. As we are now… If I were to take M'gann and Match with me, that would be a credible 'investigation'."

He nods. "You could investigate from within while the rest of us blended in with the tourists."

Kon flicks through pages on his pad before coming to the one he wants. "Looks like these 'gaffs' have reason enough to hate Uncorp. Think maybe Kobra have set up a recruiting station?"

Kaldur shakes his head. "I do not want to prejudge them. The fact that they have a justified grievance does not mean they would seek to remedy it by joining Kobra. M'gann, what is the longest range over which you can maintain telepathic contact?"

"It depends. Over open ground it's about eighteen miles but that gets reduced a lot if you go underground." She looks at me. "And I can't contact Grayven at all beyond about thirty feet."

"Nothing personal."

**Eighteen miles? Oh, that is amazing!** Ixy leans so far in M'gann's direction that I'm a little concerned that she'll fall off her seat. **Have you always been able to do that?**

**Not-** "-that far, no." M'gann looks at Kaldur. "If Ixy came along I could probably maintain contact over a longer distance."

**We could bring some G-Gnomes! I can maintain contact with them over almost any distance!**

Tao looks at her, shaking his head. "I am sorry Miss Ixy, but G-Gnomes would stand out too much for a covert investigation."

Kaldur makes eye contact with me. "Do you believe that the Un-Men would be as accepting of Ixy as they would of M'gann?" Would they? Probably. She's physically unique, looks nothing like a baseline Human… Created in a laboratory… I nod. "Ixy, you can accompany Grayven and Match when they speak to Doctor von Schadel. Grayven, in the event of hostilities you are to send her somewhere safe immediately." I nod again. "Try to find out if there is any Uncorporation involvement in Kobra getting access to Uncorporation materials. Robin, Artemis, Kid Flash: I want you to try to talk to 'Bertoldt the Gill Man'." He triggers the holographic display in the middle of the table, showing a middle aged man with flippers instead of arms or legs. No gills in evidence. "He's a community leader among Aberrance's deformed residents. I believe the task will be best handled in your civilian identities. Saying that you want to write an essay on the situation in Aberrance should be enough to make him open up about their grievances." Nods from the three of them. "Rocket, Superboy. You and I will attempt to speak with Mister Inkabod, a tattooed man known for his outspoken opposition to Uncorporation activity in Aberrance. Celestial Archer, Zatanna, Miss Martian: attempt to infiltrate the Uncorporation's production facilities. If anyone working there is assisting Kobra we need to know about it."

William looks around at the group as if expecting something. Oh, he didn't-. "What do you want me to do?"

"We.. need someone to stay with the Bio-Ship. I understand that your piloting skills are quite good." William crosses his arms.

I sigh. "Be honest with yourself, William. Do you have the training for an undercover mission? Without Solomon's Wisdom guiding you?"

"But Celestial Archer only just joined up too!"

Tao inclines his head slightly. "Covert operations were the focus of my training with the Great Ten. I am confident of my ability to provide Miss Martian and Miss Zatara with the support which they require."

"Fine."

I look over to where Mister Tawny lurks next to Kon. "I'll take Mister Tawny along as well. There are such things as Un-Animals so he should be acceptable. I suggest that Tao and M'gann have the Sphere with them in case they need close fire support or rapid extraction."

Tao raises his left eyebrow. "I am unclear how a large metal ball will aid us in a stealth mission."

I fan out my hands. "We can't keep leaving her here. It isn't fair to her."

Kon looks around. "She could come with us." His eyes stop on Kaldur. "We're going in costume, right?"

Kaldur nods. "Given Inkabod's psychological profile I think that he would respond best to a direct approach."

"Right. So the Sphere won't be a problem."

Kaldur nods again. "Does anyone have any further observations before we get into the detail?"

back

Aberration 11

next

15th January

10:43 GMT -5

I hold the Purple Healing Ray up to the roof of the Bio-Ship and M'gann's eyes glow as she directs it to begin the interfacing process. It oozes out a pseudopod and starts making a connection. "This can really heal.. anything?"

"Any unhealed injury. It does nothing if the damage is already healed, even if the bone healed crooked or the hand healed with the finger missing. It can't remove viruses or bacteria, can't remove cancer…" I think for a moment. "And it's only been tested on Earth native life forms."

Her eyes dim and she looks at me with outraged astonishment. "But.. this should be in every ambulance on the planet! Why were the Amazons keeping it to themselves?"

"They weren't really using it either." I gingerly remove my hands and the Ship's connection to the gun holds it in place. "I don't think sharing it occurred to them. Their understanding of modern technology is almost nonexistent. To them, it's a magic ray devised by a great sorceress, and since she had no apprentice it would remain one of a kind."

She smiles at me. "Two of a kind."

"Now, yes, but to be fair I'm not sure anyone in America could have replicated it either. Arcanotechnology has been allowed to become a forgotten discipline since the fall of the Third Reich. There's maybe a handful of people across the world who could have made another."

"You have.. told her you've done this, right?" Um. "Grayven."

"She was the one who brought the Baroness to Themyscira! She knew what the Purple Ray could do, was the only woman there with any contact in the outside world and she did nothing to bring-."

"Have you talked to her about it?"

…

"Noo."

"What would Lantern Gardner say?"

I lower my gaze and shuffle my feet. "He'd say I.. need to discuss my feelings of frustration with the people involved or they can't possibly answer my concerns." She keeps staring at me expectantly. "Okay, I'll.. talk to her about it after the mission."

She smiles at her recalcitrant student. "There. That wasn't so hard, was it?"

I walk past her towards the ramp. "It will be if she finds out what else I've done with it."

"What do you mean?"

She follows me out as I take a somewhat larger gun shaped object out of subspace. The metal of the casing is a silvery grey colour and it emits a purple glow from inside. "The Purple Ray works by temporarily supercharging the vital force.. chi, if you like, of the target. When I saw the design I realised that it would only take a modest adjustment to create something which suppressed it instead."

She puts her hands on her hips and sighs at me. "You made a Purple Death Ray."

"I made a yes." When she puts it like that it does sound a bit… "It has a narrow beam mode. You can shoot to maim. And it's not like the plasma cannons we've already installed make a person any less dead."

She turns to look at the location of the Bio-Ship's weapon mounts. "I suppose… Can you make a version which doesn't work on organic tissue?"

"No, that's… It affects a target's vitality. Unliving things don't have vital force." I raise my right hand to my chin. "It.. might be.. possible.. to make some sort of chi based targeting system…"

"We can.. worry about it later. For now, put that back in subspace?"

I do. "You know, it's a shame you're not taking part in my section of the operation. I was planning to ask you to walk around in full Martian mode."

"In that case it's definitely a good idea-." She cuts off as the lift opens and Richard, Wallace, Artemis, Kon and Match walk out. Wallace made some comment earlier about replacing the lifts with Tubes but we're either going to need a much better generator than I can currently build or build a lot of lesser generators and a truly huge capacitor.

Wallace waves to us. "Hey guys. The others not ready yet?"

M'gann shakes her head. "Ixy and Tao are already onboard and Mister Tawny-" The Tiger in question erupts from the water and hauls himself onto the land. He takes a look around and then starts shaking himself dry. "-went for a swim."

I look down at him as he begins padding in our direction. "I'll dry him off before he gets in the Ship."

M'gann nods. "Thank you. Zatanna was still trying to work out what Arcane's book was about, and Rocket and Bi-Beowulf don't keep clothes here."

Match walks up to me. "So, you going for it, then?"

"I'm sorry? Going for what?"

"The.. second in command thing?"

I glance at Richard and Wallace. "Yes. I feel the contest would be a rather empty one if I did not. Whoever wins should be able to command my respect, as Kaldur does. Otherwise they're just another nuisance for me to ignore." I smile at him. "How about you? Throwing your metaphorical hat into the ring?"

"Ah, I don't think so. I don't really think I've been here long enough."

"I will be." Richard stares at me in what I assume is the most confrontational manner he can muster. Aww. Sweet. "No way am I letting you get it."

"Not the best of motives, really. But I'm glad. I'd hate to walk in unopposed. M'gann?"

She shrugs. "My name's already down. I don't know if it's.. becoming Red, but I feel ready to handle the authority. Conner? How about you?"

He shuffles awkwardly. "I don't know… All my programming was to teach me how to fight by myself."

M'gann walks up to him and puts her right hand on his left arm. "No one expects you to be as good as Kaldur right away. It's more about assessing how good you can be."

"Okay." He smiles down at her and puts his free arm around her. "If it makes you happy."

I pat him on the back as Mister Tawny reaches us. "Good show. Wallace? Artemis?"

Artemis shakes her head. "I don't.. think so. I've got zero experience leading teams. Maybe next time."

"Yeah…" Wallace looks uncomfortable. "Having seen Kaldur in action, I'm.. really not sure I'd be able to measure up. You know if the others are?"

"Tao is, because he doesn't think they'd ever let him back in China if he didn't. Zatanna isn't. Don't know about Miss Ervine. Dry." Mister Tawny sniffs at me as his coat not only dries but goes all the way into fluffy. M'gann giggles and Artemis snorts in amusement. He tosses his head and walks up the ramp and into the Bio-Ship. Richard and Kon follow him. Artemis starts to board as well, but I stick out my left hand to stop her. She gives me a puzzled look and I hold up my right forefinger in a 'one moment' sign. "Ah, Wallace?" He looks in my direction. "There's some.. chocolate cake left in the cupboard. We were going to have it this evening, but this sounds like it's going to be an all day thing. If you want it, you may as well eat it."

"Aah…" He thinks for a moment. "No, I'm good, thanks. Ate before I came out."

"Right ho." He carries on into the Bio-Ship, oblivious to the stare from Artemis and the smug grin from me.

"Did he just-?" Artemis' gaze flicks from his retreating back to me and then back again. "Did Wally just turn down food?"

"I had wondered if that would happen."

Kon frowns at me. "Why? Did you do something?"

"The Awakening. After the Shadow Dog gave us all that nightmare-" Artemis shivers at the recollection. "-Kaldur's gills disappeared. I realised that Wallace might experience a similar result, with the process 'correcting' the flawed alchemy he used to give himself super speed. He's gotten slightly faster than he was in my tests before the incident, but according to his own reports the largest change is in his calorie intake. It's noticeably down. Mostly because he's cut out snacking rather than cutting down on what he consumes during meals… I don't actually think he's noticed the change yet."

Artemis hits me in the left arm. "You haven't told him?"

"No, of course not. You know how much his diet bothers him. I don't want to say anything until I'm sure." She pauses, then nods her head to the side in reluctant approval. I think for a moment. "Tell you what: keep an eye on what he eats today. If it's down to Human normal I'll say something when we finish the mission." She nods. "How about you? Noticed anything odd you haven't thought to mention?"

She thinks for a moment, then her eyes widen and her cheeks colour slightly. "No. Nothing at all." Straight backed she strides past me into the Bio-Ship.

I frown at her retreating back. What was that about?

back

Aberration 12

next

15th January

10:51 GMT -5

I generate a phone construct and hold it to my ear as Kaldur and the Sphere take their places. As the lead 'face' for this mission I get the job of convincing Uncorporation to tolerate our intrusion. Shouldn't be too difficult; the last thing they want is anything associating Aberrance with that sort of malfeasance. The Sphere warbles at me before rolling to the front of the Bio-Ship. Hm. Wonder if I could use her to jump start Barda and Scott's Mother Box? She's had a little bit of difficulty adapting to there suddenly being a whole group of New Gods around the place. So far only Zatanna and Tao have shown the same ability to understand her that I have-.

"Niko here, what is it?"

I find myself involuntarily smiling. "Miss Parish, good morning. My name-."

"How did-?" Her voice is replaced by a buzz as she hangs up. Hmm. I watch through the front screen as M'gann takes us up and out. Redial. "Niko."

"My name is Grayven-."

"I've already got security people going to the exchange. Uncorporation takes its security very seriously, Mister..?"

"Grayven. And they won't find anything, I'm accessing your phone systems remotely. I wanted to have a word with you."

She exhales sharply. "I'm a busy woman. Make it quick."

"Evidence has come to light which suggests that someone is using Argonate again." Silence from the other end. "Curious?"

"Argonate? It's certainly not us. Given the adverse publicity Uncorporation shelved the whole project."

"Do you have any stocks remaining?" I know they do, but it should be interesting to hear-.

"Yes, in the vaults. What is this 'evidence'?"

I take in the view through the windows as we fly over Happy Harbour. My Boom Tubes can take us directly to Aberrance but they aren't exactly quiet. If we keep using them around Happy Harbour someone might get curious so we usually make sure to go a little way inland first. "Batman bumped into a Kobra nest in Gotham last Tuesday. The cultists injected themselves with something and a few minutes later started mutating. They're still alive at the moment but they looked like… Did you ever see pictures of what happened to Damien Kane's unsuccessful siblings?"

"Yes, I.. did." Ring, send her the pictures. "But there are other mutagenic agents that can produce the same results."

"I'm sure that your people can recognise the effects of uncontrolled Un-Men type mutations better than I can. The pictures should be in your inbox now."

"One moment." I hear a very quiet clicking as she opens the files. "No, that's… I see the physical resemblance, but Argonate never produced those sorts of results. If it had it would never have been approved for Human trials."

"I have a sample-" I hold out my right hand towards Richard and make a beckoning motion. After a moment's reluctance he hands over a vial. "-of the substance they used. Took a while to analyse it, which is why I'm talking to you now and not four days ago. Chemically, it's similar but not quite the same as Argonate. My working assumption is that it reacted poorly to something else they were using."

"Uncorporation isn't supplying Kobra, if that's what you're implying."

"No, I don't believe for a moment that you are. Certainly, you wouldn't risk it this close to the first broadcast of American Freak. But we have to che-."

"Who's 'we'?"

I smile at Richard. "Batman's little helpers." He scowls at me.

"You'll forgive me if I'm a little sceptical."

"Naturally. If you go to W W W dot supersidekicks-" Two winces and a sigh. "-dot com slash Justice League… You there?"

"Yes, but it's just a fan site."

"They put in links to video footage. For some reason I'm listed as assisting Green Lantern rather than Wonder Woman. Look for where it says Orange Lantern."

"Okay, I'm… Oh."

"Most of that was taken after Roanoke Island, during the clean up. I can present my official documentation when I arrive."

"While I.. can understand your concern, the Justice League has no authority to investigate anything in Aberrance. If you send me the chemical I can have our internal security people-."

"Miss Parish. Batman has been able to persuade Commissioner Gordon to sit on what he has for a little while, but there are limits here. If Uncorporation is implicated he'll have to refer the matter upwards to the Federal Authorities."

"Uncorporation is happy to open its doors to our partners in the Department of Energy. We don't like vigilantes here, Mister Grayven."

"Miss Parish, please. I'm not trying to strong arm anyone."

"I'm glad to hear it. I'm still not sure why you expect us to cooperate with you, though."

"Miss Parish, after Roanoke and the attempted Belle Reve break out -which may I remind you resulted in the head of Kobra absconding from US custody- politicians of all stripes are looking to look tough on paramilitaries and supervillains both. Given the existing relationship between Uncorporation and the DoE, how long do you think it will take for Senators and Representatives -maybe even Nevada State officials- to demand that someone else investigate you? How long before the news channels pick up on the possibility of a link between your people and Kobra? Gotham police are notorious for their bribability-" Though not for serious stuff, not these days. "-and I would presume that the only reason this hasn't leaked already is that they don't know where they should be looking for the pay off. And when the investigation does happen, when you're up to your eyeballs in the FBI and the CIA and the NSA and whoever else… What's that going to do for business?"

"Are you threatening us?"

"No. I'm nearly as excited about Uncorporation's work as you are. You can see my picture; do I strike you as a man who's precious about Human modification?"

"I suppose not."

"No, I want to give you the opportunity to avoid all that. Let me and a few of my associates come in, have a look around and talk to some of your staff. If we can't find anything by the end of the weekend? We can tell Batman and the Gotham police that the problem isn't at the Uncorporation end." I pause for a moment. "And, naturally, we would share any information relating to.. someone else using Uncorporation's proprietary technologies.. with their rightful owners. If it isn't you it is someone, probably with an advanced laboratory."

"We.. would.. appreciate that."

"And just because it isn't the Uncorporation as a body, that doesn't mean that someone in your employ isn't leaking." Unlikely though. Everyone directly employed in the medical research side of Uncorporation is an Un-Man. Anyone prepared to go through that… "I'm given to understand that you've had a degree of civil unrest of late."

"There have been some protests. We don't stop the… Aberrance's unmodified-."

"I call them 'baseline' myself."

"Most of them aren't really that. We don't break up peaceful demonstrations. People have the right to protest, within certain bounds of course. Uncorporation is a powerful force in people's lives here. It shouldn't be a surprise that some.. people feel resentment towards us. Though I'd be surprised if any of them would go so far as to join Kobra."

"So? Am I allowed in, or do I have to try and sneak in with the tourists at opening time?"

"How... How big a team are you looking to bring in?"

"Oh, not that big." Ring, book tickets for my teammates. Make it look like they were booked weeks ago, but not at the same time. "I'll be coming in with three associates. Minimal disruption."

"I'll need to talk to Janus, but… Looking at these pictures… How quickly can you get here?"

By your command.

"I can be with you in five minutes."

"Come to the heavy goods vehicle entrance to the Uncorporation compound. I'll have someone meet you."

"Thank you, Miss Parish. I appreciate your cooperation."

back

Aberration 13

next

15th January

07:58 GMT -8

M'gann sets the Bio-Ship down near the Nevada town of Mercury. Route 95 is well served with busses and that's how my plain clothed team mates will make their arrival. We've already dropped Miss Ervine, Kon and Kaldur near somewhere called Beatty and Richard, Artemis and Wallace will be heading in from the opposite direction.

Wallace stands and picks up his backpack. "Good thing we're not doing this in August. I don't think we'd make it to the bus stop." He looks at me. "We clear?"

Ring? "Clear vistas all round."

The rear door oozes down and Team Bertoldt disembark. They have their basic costumes and equipment in their bags, though Artemis had to leave her bow behind in favour of a crossbow pistol. Their usual gear -including their Apokolips tech armour- will be kept on the Bio-Ship in case they need to arm up. I can't imagine that we will, but I suppose that contingencies are for things you didn't anticipate. Richard looks back at me for a moment as he reaches the ground before following Artemis and Wallace into the town. You know, I can't help but think that he's taking his self-appointed role of 'guy-who-keeps-an-eye-on-Grayven' a bit far. I don't actually have a subversive motive here.

Match rises from his seat and walks towards the exit. He is in his Apokoliptian armour with blue 'S'. He knows that I'm working on Kryptonian armour for him but he said that he'd rather use the suit he was used to on this mission. Need to talk to him about the colour scheme. It won't be as hard to make in blue, red and gold as Diana's was -if that's what he wants- but I'd like to know what sort of pattern he wants before I waste time on it.

I give the Sphere a last pat on the.. top, then get out of my chair, making eye contact with Ixy as I do so. She shoots out of her seat and hurries after Match. She's wearing an old and slightly too large t-shirt of Zatanna's. It's pink and has a print of a classical grey alien on the chest with the legend 'Believe' underneath. The girls quickly decided that she didn't really have the figure for skirts or the right leg-shape for trousers so most of her leg wear is made up of long shorts or culottes. She's in tight fitting white denim shorts at the moment and opted to leave her feet bare.

Haven't got around to designing armour for her yet, and since she's under very clear instructions not to get into any fights anyway it shouldn't matter too much. I stroll forwards as I think about the problem. Given that she's an agility fighter it couldn't be anything heavy or confining… Perhaps an energy shield? Projected by multiple devices spread out across a tough fabric?

What? I stagger forwards a pace as Mister Tawny nudges me in the back of the legs in an attempt to make me go faster, prompting William to let loose a burst of laughter and Zatanna and M'gann to hurry to conceal their smiles. Hmpf. I stride the rest of the way onto the stony but surprisingly well enshrubbed ground. "Alright, just to reiterate: ask questions, be polite, don't push too hard."

Match gives me a puzzled frown. "Why are you so sure it isn't Uncorporation? You said Kobra often recruits the disenfranchised and.. the Un-Men are about as disenfranchised as people get."

"Simple, really. Life is -currently- good for the Uncorporation. Virtually all of those who lived through General Sunderland's project are dead and the third generation Un-Men who make up the majority of their workforce have no reason to bear a grudge. Uncorp's Un-Men believe that their modifications make them superior, they don't resent their outsider status at all. If they did, the corporation is working hard to improve their lot so there is already a channel for those feelings. And Doctor von Schadel is far too arrogant to work for an organisation like Kobra."

Match nods. "I suppose that makes sense. Do you think he could be using them as guinea pigs?"

Possibly… No. "People have gone to him to have perfectly functional Human arms replaced by crab claws. He might be prepared to use cultists as test subjects, but why bother when people are willingly coming to him? No. I think he'd rather test things in places where he can have complete control, as well as the ability to conceal it if things go drastically wrong."

Match smiles at me. "Should I be worried about how much thought you've put into working out how a mad scientist thinks?"

"In the sciences, madness and brilliance are separated only by success. Ixy? Any last minute questions?" She shakes her head. I notice that she's standing slightly hunched forwards, as if ready to dive or lunge. She was standing straight perfectly well back in the mountain. Part of her G-Elf programming, perhaps? "Mister Tawny?" He just looks at me. "Right ho then. Father Box, Boom Tube if you please." With a loud 'bang' the portal appears, our end pointing away from the Bio-Ship. The other end opens out on the empty plaza at the rear of the Uncorporation headquarters. Any unpleasant surprises waiting for us? Apparently not, though there are a couple of Un-Men in guard uniforms hanging around near the still locked delivery entrance.

The female guard with snakes for hair notices the hole in space with a start. Much like superheroes and New Gods, Un-Men like to pick new names when they join the community. Hers is Petra, presumably either an abbreviation of petrify or at least a reference to it. She doesn't actually have a petrifying gaze though; her eyes are unaltered and a rather brilliant shade of blue. Her partner is a bald man with dull red skin and two small upwards curving horns sticking out either side of the rear of his head. For some reason he changed the perfectly serviceable name 'Gareth Evans' to 'Muzuk'. Both are dressed in pale brown Uncorporation guard uniforms and caps and carry automatic weapons.

I note the 'NO GAFFS' sign on the fence behind them.

I stride forth to meet them, Match close behind with Ixy and Mister Tawny bringing up the rear. Muzuk looks at us with an expression of mild disbelief, then turns his head slightly to Petra. "Is that.. Superman?"

"Not unless he shrank in the wash. And look at his eyes."

I raise my right hand in greeting as we cross the paved surface. "Good morning! I assume that the two of you are our guides?"

Petra takes a step forwards. "Mister Grayven?" I nod. "If we could please see your identification?" I nod and extract my Justice League identification card from subspace. Petra takes it from me and gives it a quick look over before nodding. "This seems to be in order." She hands it back before holding out her right hand to Match.

Interesting. Her snakes don't face the same direction as she's looking in. Rather they shift slightly but at least one is facing in every direction at all times. I wonder how her brain processes the input..?

"Oh. It's right-" He flips open the pouch on his right thigh- "-ah…" -and fiddles around a bit before pulling his own card out. "Here."

Petra looks him over again before taking the card. Of course; he sounds like Kal-El as well. Still a little bit shorter but I imagine he'll make up the difference over the next few years. Petra frowns as she looks from the card to his face. "'Match'?"

Match nods. "Superman's match."

"Really?" She raises her eyebrows as she hands the card back.

"Well, I'm his clone, so, yeah. I'm almost exactly his match." Her eyes linger a little on… Really? Match, she's the sort of woman your mother would warn you against. "Have you.. finished with-?"

"Yes! Yes, it's fine." She hands the card back before turning to Ixy and Mister Tawny.

Ixy smiles at her. **Hello.**

Her expression stills slightly. "Do you have-?"

I shake my head. "Could we vouch for them? Ixy's only joined us recently and Mister Tawny is an augmented Tiger."

"Yeah, that'll be fine." Mister Tawny pads forward to give her an exploratory sniff. "We'll escort you up to Ms Parish."

No, no good. "I'm sorry, could you just hold still for a minute." I light up the tip of my right forefinger and move it around the side of her head. The Snakes track it so clearly they can respond to external stimulus. I stop the finger with a slight frown. There's no way that the human brain could put together that much-. They've lost interest! I jerk my finger sideways a bit and three snake heads reorientate. "They track motion! Of course!"

Petra smiles at me. Something I realised about Aberrance early on: Un-Man or 'gaff', everyone here likes to talk about their abnormality. "Yeah, the Doc had to grow them special then connect them up to my perirhinal cortex." Now that I'm looking closer I realise that beneath the Snakes her head is actually thicker between her skull and the scales, presumably to cope with the extra blood flow. "Four hour operation. Now I'll never need a haircut again."

Muzuk points towards the gate with his left thumb. "We going or what?"

Petra turns and begins slowly walking towards the entrance. I follow on behind, only for her to drop back slightly so as to be next to Match. "So, what's with the eyes?"

Oh, of course she'd ask that. Match shrugs. "The people who cloned me didn't get it quite right. When Grayven fixed me he left my eyes the same. They don't hurt or anything."

"Why'd he do that?"

"So I'd look different from my brother. And from Superman, I guess. Being so much like Superman was a big deal for my brother and I.. don't really want that baggage."

She nods. "I totally get that. Five siblings, and now I'm the only one with snakes coming out of her head."

For a moment Match isn't quite sure how to respond. "That must be a.. pretty hard act for them to follow."

back

Aberration 14

next

15th January

08:05 GMT -8

I know my way around the Uncorporation building from the scans which I've already taken-

**Why are you red?**

-but I make a point of letting our escorts lead the way.

"Miss, could you.. please not.. do that?"

**Not do what?**

The building itself is.. fairly bland, really. Doctor von Schadel's Mad Science Dungeon is well below ground level but the rest of the place is straight out of Bland Corporate Decoration Monthly. At the moment we're on white floor tiles with sandy yellow walls and white ceiling tiles. Since this appears to be the employee section they haven't bothered with corporate art-

"Talk in my head."

-though the air conditioning systems appear to be 'Nevada Safe'.

**Oh! I am sorry, I had not realized-.**

"Ah, Ixy?" Match gets her attention, then shakes his head.

She tilts her head to the side in puzzlement, then her eyes widen. She turns back to Muzuk, straightens her posture slightly and takes a deep breath. "I. Am. Sorry." She exhales the rest of her breath and then breathes in again. "I. Do. Not. Use." Breath. "Audit. Ory. Commun." Breath. "Ication. Often."

Match gives Petra a puzzled look. "Why is her telepathy a problem?"

"Doctor von Schadel gives everyone who wants to 'join the company'-" Her snakes writhe. "-a telepathic interview before operating. It's not a lot of fun."

He's telepathic? I didn't know that.

Another deep breath from Ixy. "All. Genomorphs. Use."

Muzuk raises his arms in surrender. "Okay, okay! Just.. whatever."

**Thank you!** She drops back to her half crouch. **I am sorry that I have not learned to speak well yet but it is a skill I will get better at.**

"Seriously? You don't know how to speak? How old are you?"

**Now I am two weeks old! How old are you?**

"I'm-. Wait, what?"

"How. Old. Are-."

"No, I mean, you're two weeks old?"

**I have been growing for longer than that in my birth tank but two weeks ago in…** She appears to think for a moment. **Four hours, I was taken out of the tank for the first time.**

Petra's eyes widen. "Really? Wait." She looks at Match. "You said you were cloned. How old are you?"

"I got out of my pod on the 4th of December last year, so.. forty two days old." Petra pulls away from him, looking slightly embarrassed. Hah hah.

**We were physically nearly mature when we were taken out of the pods and the G-Gnomes implanted as much knowledge as they could in our heads and that's why I like using telepathy.** She blinks twice. **You still haven't told me why-.**

"Because the Doc hadn't been watching the National Geographic Channel when he 'Unvolved' me. No operation for me, just a couple of injections and a 'Call me ven somsink interesting heppens'." He reaches back and runs his forefingers along his lower horns. "You would not believe how much these itched coming through." He takes another look at her. "Or, maybe you would."

**I don't remember my horns emerging because I was still in the pod.** She brightens up as we come to a lift. **But you can show me the memory if you like.**

"I'll pass." Muzuk scans a keycard and then presses the 'call lift' button.

I give him a scan. "Aside from turning you red and giving you horns, what else does it do?"

He shrugs. "Not all that much. My skin's tougher than it used to be and I haven't lost any sensitivity. Think I'm stronger too, but only by a little." The doors open and we step inside. I'm not sure if it does double duty as a goods lift or if it was just designed to be able to carry 'huge' Un-Men but I can get in without difficulty. "Who did you? Or did you grow up in a tank too?"

"I'm a self made man-"

"Ploong."

"-with a little help from a power ring and a mouthy AI." Muzuk presses a button near the top of the panel. "Baseline Human to New God in a little over four months."

"Tchss." Petra gives me a look of incredulity. "God? Really?"

"Certainly. There are levels of divine power. A Human mage may achieve the lower ones, a young god like me is a little further on, an established god like Zeus or Ahriman further on still… With the Source sitting comfortably behind its great Wall at the top."

It takes her a moment to realise that I'm being serious. "If you're a god, what can you do? Can you throw lightning?"

"Any fool with a taser can throw lightning." Suck it, Zeus. "So far, I've got agelessness, disease and poison immunity, I've become strong enough to arm wrestle Match,-" Match nods. "-tough enough not to get pasted brawling with him and I'm pretty resistant to magic these days." "And, of course, I know the God Speech."

"Can you.. fly?" I tilt my feet slightly to activate the aero-discs built into my boots, lifting myself off the lift floor slightly. "Hm. Still not seeing anything a Kryptonian couldn't do."

"In my defence, there isn't much a Kryptonian can't do. Stupid strong nuclear forces." Though she's sort of -in a vaguely insulting way- got a point. Tao can use his divine might to send an arrow around the world. Compared to that, I do seem to have got the short end of the stick. Maybe I should test myself, just in case. If Kaldur and Wallace developed noticeable changes after the Beast… Ah, Barney the Dinosaur incident, might not something similar have happened to me? I haven't been keeping track of my precise strength since Father Box debouldered me, mostly because I can't. I'm just too strong. I don't think that my appearance has changed, not noticeably at any rate. I suppose I could find a small army somewhere and try blessing them in the name of conquest… Except that I'm not God of Conquest, real Grayven is. Would I be becoming New God of Avarice? How the heck would I be able to tell?

My growing theological disquiet is interrupted by the lift door opening. Muzuk leads the way out. This part of the building is far better decorated than 'below stairs', blue carpet on the floor and framed Picasso prints alternating with the framed Uncorporation 'U and arrow in a circle' logo on the walls. They really like that logo. At the end of the corridor there's a waiting area. The exterior wall is made of glass -bullet resistant by the looks of things- and offers a superb view out over Aberrance. I walk closer to get a better look.

"I'll tell Ms Parish that you're here." I nod absentmindedly to Petra as she heads towards the door on our left before waving my right arm from left to right and covering the window in orange light.

"A great many biotech research companies have set up shop here in recent years." I grant each of them coronas. "For obvious reasons local laws relating to research are somewhat more relaxed than just about anywhere else in the US. Aberrance is also quite a good place to be registered for tax purposes."

Match and Mister Tawny come up alongside me. "Yeah, you said."

"Those companies are also our primary suspects." I flash a corona. "LexCorp Pharmaceuticals." Another flash. "Triple Helix. Doctor Thaddeus Sivana Senior used this one as a front company at least twice. Nothing proved in court, mind you." Two more flashes. "And these have some quite fascinating accountancy irregularities." I try to glance at the spy camera in the ceiling without it being obvious what I'm doing. "Yes, we're going to be well occupied during our time here."

back

Aberration 15

next

15th January

08:10 GMT -8

The door opens and the four of us look around as Petra walks out. "Ms Parish and Mister Janus.. and Mister Janus, will see you now."

I smile at her and give her a nod. "Thank you. Gentlemen and lady?" Mister Tawny rises from where he was lying on the floor and he, Ixy and Match fall in behind me as I walk into the office. Same wood panelling as in the building's other executive offices and the same brown painted walls. I know from the plans that the office which the Januses occupy is huge. Penis extension huge, which shouldn't be too surprising given that they have to share one between them. From the look of this office Miss Parish apparently doesn't feel the need for that. Given what I remember about the Magna Mater I suppose I should probably feel glad about that. The wall behind us is the same glass as the waiting area with curtains at either side tucked behind wooden guards.

Miss Parish is sitting on a low backed chair behind her desk. Two of the other industries that thrive here are the manufacturers of custom furniture and clothing. Miss Parish needs clothing that will accommodate her wings and that can easily be put on and taken off with one hand. I'm not sure whether her right was always her primary hand or if Doctor von Schadel had to reassign the nerves as part of her Unvolving process. I mean, if I was in her position when she stabbed her sexually abusive father to death I'd want to use my primary hand… Probably both hands, actually. She's wearing a blue jacket with a white blouse and gold ear studs.

Next to her stand the Januses, Janus Senior facing us. He's wearing a suit of dull green and a expression of considerable irritation. In their own office they have a chair with a section of the back cut out and a small desk attached to what remains so that Janus Junior can carry out his work as Head of Security while Janus Senior performs his functions as Chief Executive Officer. Despite his small size Janus Junior is actually in his early fifties and his father is pushing ninety. You wouldn't know it to look at him, though. I wonder how much they could make if they bottled that?

"Mister Grayven." Miss Parish rises to her feet and holds out her hand towards me. A remarkably well endowed woman, though the cut of her jacket plays it down. Too much office work resulting in her gaining 'padding' or the effect of her flight muscles? Or perhaps she's naturally well endowed. In the few pictures of her I was able to find of her before she came here she was either malnourished or using heroin. Aberrance has been good to her. Her eyes are a striking violet colour that can't be natural.

I stride forwards and take it. "Miss Parish. A pleasure to meet you in person."

Janus Senior curls his upper lip. "I would hardly call this a pleasure."

Miss Parish's face stills for a moment before she gestures to his. "This is Janus Senior, our Chief Executive Officer." I offer him my right hand and he gives it a brief and business like shake.

"Don't forget about me, toots."

She really does have good control of her facial features. "And Janus Junior, Head of Security."

The Januses turn around, revealing the midget torso of Janus Junior. He poses for a moment, probably hoping to extract some sort of shocked response from the 'norm' visitors. Since we've all seen his picture the effect is rather muted. I'm not sure that Match or Ixy would react anyway; their upbringing is easily weird enough to allow them to take most of Aberrance in their strides. For me, I find his existence fascinating. He most certainly shares his father's nose and eyes but the rest is.. shrunken, compacted. The outstanding veins on his receding hairline remind me rather of the Doctor rather than his father. Overall he looks a little like a shaved monkey, or those disturbing Indian rat children. Certainly he is fully intelligent, if not exactly pleasant company.

"Mister Janus Junior." I offer him my hand, which utterly envelops his.

"Was the Doc' makin' giants today or somethin'?"

"No, but I will be happy to provide him with samples of the chemicals I used." I pull back and point to my team mates. "These are my colleagues Match,-" He raises his right hand in a wave of greeting. "-Ixy,-" She blinks heavily and smiles at our hosts. "-and Mister Tawny." He curls up next to the window, ignoring them. Must be nice to be a Cat sometimes.

"Hey, Pops? Reckon we could carpet our office with that thing?" Mister Tawny repositions his head and gazes at the bite sized torso through narrow eyes.

"Now, Junior-" Janus turns back around. "-that's no way to speak about a guest. Mister Grayven, I apologize. Please, take a seat."

"Thank you." They were thoughtful enough to put four seats out, high backed well padded leather numbers. I take a moment to check that they're large and resilient enough to survive me sitting on them before taking my place. Match takes his place on my right and Ixy occupies the one next to him.

"Now…" He takes a moment to gather his thoughts. "This.. incident in Gotham…"

I extract a data stick from subspace and put in on the desk in front of Miss Parish. "A copy of all reports, tests and interviews conducted as of.. first thing this morning."

Janus nods. "We will need to send our own people to Gotham to confirm all of this. Whether these.. cultist people have truly become Un-Men. Distasteful as the idea is, we don't turn our backs-"

"Ah..?"

"-on our own family."

Miss Parish nods. "Of course, the other possibility is that they already were. Though we've tried, we've never been able to track down every first generation Un-Man who Doctor Arcane brought to America, to say nothing of the first and second generation Un-Men who ended up in other parts of the world."

I nod. "The initial physical examinations performed on them before they began changing didn't reveal any physiological oddities, but I suppose that it's worth investigating if they may have done a Damien Kane."

"I wanna read that." Janus Junior has a mirror out to let him look at us, and he uses it to point at the data stick. "If there's bin some kinda security breach I'm gettin' all up in that."

I create another three copies. "Be my guest." Janus Senior picks one up and slides it into his jacket pocket. "Though may I respectfully request that you attempt to keep any investigation quiet? Having the perpetrator go into hiding would make things unnecessarily difficult."

"Hey, I don't come on your pitch an' tell you how to do your job, cowboy. Howsabout-."

"He does have a point, J.J. All of our enhanced employees are thoroughly vetted of course, but the checks we do on our mundane workers are far more cursory."

I nod. "To say nothing of those not in Uncorporation's employ. Oh, I meant to ask: third generation Un-Men. Do all of those the Doctor has Uncreated still work for Uncorporation?"

Miss Parish thinks for a moment. "We've had.. occasional disciplinary issues. We're very reluctant to let someone go completely once they've been through Doctor von Schadel's Unvolve process." She shakes her head. "A few people have been reassigned, but I don't think we've ever had to fire anyone."

"And second generation?"

She shrugs. "They aren't forced to work with us, though we do try to stay in contact. Some of them have unique medical problems and we're often the only people with the knowledge to help them. Why do you ask?"

"Because it occurs to me that Kobra wouldn't be above experimenting on them in the same way General Sunderland did. It may be worth having your personnel department try and make contact in case there have been any disappearances." I know there haven't, but I feel that I should give Uncorporation something to do.

Miss Parish nods. "We'll get on that. Will you want to set up an office here while you work?"

"No. Thank you, but that won't be necessary. I'd rather talk to people in situ if at all possible. And if you could notify your tenants..?"

"We can do that."

"I will also need to speak to Doctor von Schadel at some point."

"Good luck with that."

Janus Senior narrows his eyes. "The doctor does not give interviews and is extremely busy with the preparation for our new television series. If you would rather speak to one of our laboratory team leaders-."

"I'm sorry, but that won't be sufficient. The records which Uncorporation submitted to the FDA indicated that Doctor von Schadel was head of the team here working on modifying Argonate before development was abandoned. I will need to undertake an inventory of all remaining stocks as part of my investigation, something I can't very well do without his assistance. Furthermore, I understand that anyone visiting the Omega Vault is obliged to be escorted by him for reasons of safety."

"Hrm." Janus Senior looks down for a moment. "I suppose you have a point. I'll see what can be arranged. In return, I must ask you to play down any-."

I raise my hands. "I understand how sensitive this is. I have no desire to harm Uncorporation, but the damage that could be caused by Kobra using-."

"And that is the sole reason why we are allowing this." Janus Senior takes a deep breath. "We've arranged for an escort for you, someone who can show you around."

I nod. "I'm sure that Petra and Muzuk will be…"

He shakes his head. "Someone more in your weight class." Miss Parish covers her eyes with her hand as he presses a button on the intercom. "Face, my boy, why don't you come in?"

back

Aberration 16

next

15th January

08:15 GMT -8

The door on the other side of the room is pushed open and-.

…

What the fuck is that?

"Alwight, bitches!"

…

What the fuck is that?

"Face, buddy!"

What the actual fuck is that?

"J.J., my man!"

Alright, Grayven, get it together. I'm looking at what I can only assume was once a man, because I really hope it wasn't a woman. Two well muscled arms on either side, two muscular legs inside loose fitting jeans. The lack of a head in the conventional location doesn't trouble me. Plenty of species don't like to put all of their metaphorical eggs in one body location. What's freaking me out right now is that his face is on his chest! Not, like, stuck in the middle or something. No, that would be too simple for the heir of Arcane! His huge eye orbits are where his pectoral muscles should be, the eyes themselves each being at least three inches across. In the centre of his chest sits a nose in proportion to the eyes, and a little lower than that a colossal mouth.

What the fuck am I-?

He tosses back his torso and belches a fireball into the air.

What! The! FU-!

"Grayven, I'd like to introduce you to The Face, our own home grown superhero." I look at Janus Senior. He appears to be completely serious. I should.. say something.

"I wasn't aware that Doctor von Schadel was able to induce metahuman traits. Or is.. the.. fire belching.. chemical..?"

"Nah, man!" The.. Face.. sits down in the free chair, crosses his legs and folds his arms behind his.. back. "I was born meta!"

"Hey!" Janus Junior holds a cigar out to the side. Face squints, purses his lips, inhales, then gets shot in the mouth by Miss Parish's fire extinguisher.

"Not In My Office."

Face wipes the water away, coughs- "Frigid bitch." -and then coughs again before looking Ixy over. "How you doing?"

**I am fine. How are you?**

"I'm on f-." Miss Parish raises the extinguisher again. "I'm real good, yeah."

Focus. "Mister The Face, I'm-."

"Nah, man. Call me 'Faceman'! 'Cause we're like the A-Team!"

So much wrong with that… "I'd.. rather not. Do you have any experience with criminal investigations?"

"Nah. Way I see it, I'm here for my brawn-" Kryptonian and New God here. "-and my stunning good looks." Oh bugger me sideways. He squints at Ixy. "So are you actually a girl..?"

**For a Genomorph matters of gender are-.**

"Ookay. Okay." I catch Miss Parish's eye. Sympathy and.. amusement. Thanks. I had hoped they'd assign us a plant but it looks like… They aren't going to try and use this fellow for good publicity, are they? "Glad to have you with us, The Face." How can I get out of this? No one can override Janus Senior… I need to talk to von Schadel first. Maybe he can get this sorted out. I rise from my chair. "Miss Parish, Mister Janus, Mister Janus? If there's nothing else, I'll get started right away."

Janus Senior nods. "Make sure you-." He looks at his watch. "Damn it, my son and I have to go and baby sit that Toddson person. Niko, I want you to liaise with Grayven on this one. Junior, have our security people do random checks on incoming and outgoing vehicles with sniffer dogs, and start doing searches of empty lots, storage warehouses-."

"Got it, Pop."

"Very good. Mister Grayven? Good luck and Godspeed." He strides out from behind the desk and heads to the door we entered through. I watch Janus Junior pull out a mobile phone and start pressing numbers as the door closes behind them.

I really really hope Doctor von Schadel likes that book. I can deal with regular Un-Men, but Meta-Un-Men are where I draw the line. "Miss Parish-."

She stands and gives me what looks like a genuinely warm smile. "Please, call me Niko." The Face rolls his eyes. "Do you have a first name, Mister Grayven?" The smile turns a little predatory. "Or does your girlfriend just shout 'Mister'?"

"She doesn't really shout." I think back for a moment. Sitting position, facing one another, her face pressed into my chest, sweat coating... Ah, good memory. "It's more sort of a moaning grunt." Her eyebrows go up as I gesture to my body. "It's all in proportion. Frankly, it's quite impressive that she can-."

She holds up her hand. "That's.. more than I need to know."

"You can keep talkin' far as I'm concerned!"

I ignore him. "Shall we meet up for lunch? I doubt I'll have much for you…"

"That sounds like a good idea." I nod to her and then start towards the door through which we entered. "Where do you intend to start?"

"With von Schadel, of course. The Omega Vaults are the only place where you store Argonate."

"Agg, about.. von Schadel…"

"Don't worry, I'll be polite." I open the door and step aside. "Come, Mister Tawny." He makes a rumbling noise as he rises to his feet and pads-.

"Hey!" The Face back flips over his chair and lands next to Mister Tawny. "Is he trained? Can I ride him?"

Mister Tawny looks at me and.. I think he's raising his eyebrows. I didn't know he could do that. "I'm afraid that would be unwise. He isn't.. good with-" Total morons. "-new people. Also, the feline spine isn't really-."

"Didn't ask for the National Geographic low down, buddy." He strides past me into the waiting room. "Follow me, cake eaters. I'll get you to the Doc, nooo trouble."

Mister Tawny stalks after him as Match taps me on the shoulder. "Is this guy-?"

"Just-. Put up with him.. for now." I pat him on the back and he follows after The Face.

**Why did he want to know whether or not I was female?**

Niko puts her hand on Ixy's shoulder. "Because he's an oversexed Jackass."

**My physiology does not lend itself to copulation. I think he would be disappointed by my naked form and it is quite likely he would be repulsed as well.**

Niko makes a wry smile. "Turnabout is fair play."

**I am not certain that I understand-.**

"Ixy."

She looks at me, eyes wide. **Oh. Yes. Goodbye, Miss Parish.** She hurries past me and I walk through the door, shutting it behind me.

The Face is already halfway down the corridor. Doctor von Schadel is probably in his rooms below us and I know I can't reliably scan it. A flicker and I catch up with The Face. "So, what exactly do you do around here?"

"Me? I'm a superhero. Can't you tell!?" He strikes a pose, fists pressed against his sides. When I don't react he sags slightly. "Doesn't really work without the cape, does it?"

I shake my head sympathetically. "It doesn't work, no."

back

Aberration 17

next

15th January

08:22 GMT -8

"…about Wonder Woman? You know her?"

The one mercy provided by The Face's physiology is that he can't make eye contact while he talks if you aren't directly in front of him and facing him. Match nods in response anyway. "Yeah? We know all the League members."

"Ever see her in the shower? Or getting changed or something? See, the way I figure it-."

"She's my Mom."

The Face stops dead and then turns to face us, a look of utter incredulity on his chest. "You're shitting me? Some guy was putting it to the Wonder Pussy and kept quiet about it? Who the fuck was it, The Question?"

I think Match may be losing his patience. "No, I'm adopted. Why would you think The Question-?"

The Face waves his right hand at his mouth. "No mouth, right? Only thing I could think of that'd stop-."

I squeeze my eyes shut. "Mister The Face, are we anywhere near to-."

At the end of the corridor a large man with an oversized torso and arms that would reach to the floor knuckle-walks across our path. Clasped to his right shoulder by his free arm is an emaciated looking man wearing a pair of grey jogging bottoms and no other clothing. A faint moaning noise is coming from his mouth and he struggles to turn his head to look at us before he disappears down the adjacent corridor.

Stalking along behind the Ape-like Un-Man is another example of Doctor von Schadel's art, and one with far more commercial potential. The blonde shoulder length hair is all her own but the Tiger-pattern body fur, razor edged extendable claws and catlike ears and tail are the product of Doctor von Schadel's tissue cultures. Human endurance mated to feline burst power! Much as Petra lacks her likeness' petrifying gaze Miss Peterson lacks Doctor Minerva's arcane celerity but who cares about that when I have the Garrick Formula? This is mass producible biotechnology!

I need to find out if there are other side effects. Oh, and I should.. probably ask about that man as well. "Excuse me-?"

"Hey! If it isn't the best pussy in Aberrance!"

And The Fucking Face goes and ruins it again. The Cat Un-Woman turns in our direction with a barely audible hiss. "Face. Get the fu-." Her slit pupils flick between us. "I don't know you. Are you.. new?"

"Miss-" Ah, what does she call herself these days? Oh, right. "-Tigira-" No Marvel Comics on the parallel, thankfully. "-my name is Grayven and I'm here to see Doctor von Schadel."

"Do you have... Like... An appointment?"

The Face puts his hands on his hips and thrusts his groin confidently in her direction. "Since when do I need an appointment?"

"Since he told you he'd break you down for parts if you interrupted him again while he was working."

"Nah, nah, straight up! The Januses… Heh. Anuses. They wanted me to show him around while he does some sort of investigation thing."

Match points down the corridor in the direction the Un-Ape walked off in. "What was going on with that man?"

She looks from Match to me and then briefly to The Face. I think that in other circumstances she'd like to ask the Uncorporation employee she recognised what was going on, except it's The Face. And our grey, furry and weirdly-eyed faces fit. Ingroup-outgroup -or should that be ungroup- identification is very strong amongst Un-Men. "Some homeless guy who volunteered to be the Doctor's new playmate."

"If he's a volunteer, why are you dragging him back here?"

"He went out looking to get a fix." She snarls for a moment, lips pulled back revealing sharp teeth. The felinisation of her face is relatively subtle, but the internal changes appear to be somewhat more significant. "Dumb fuck. He's supposed to be getting Unvolved this week and he wants to stick that crap in his system now? Ugh."

"Are narcotics a major problem in Aberrance?"

"Ask someone whose job it is to care." She turns away, her tail twitching, hair standing up slightly. "The Doctor said he didn't want to be disturbed."

The Face starts to go after her. "Ah, come on! The Doc's gunna wanna hear this. And while he's talkin' to big and grey over there maybe you and I could hit the broom closet. Uh? Uh?" He come up alongside her and his hand-. I see her tail suddenly straighten in shock. She turns around in a blur and jams her claws directly into him. "AGHMOTHERFUCKAH!" He jumps back and raises his hands into a defensive stance. "You wanna try that again, bitch? Imma-!"

Oh for fuck's sake. I step forwards and place my left hand on his right shoulder, sigil downwards. Ring, brand.

By your command.

The orange light flares brilliantly, causing Tigira to jump back. The Face himself just stiffens. "What is this shuuuuoooomm."

"Mister The Face, you want to shut up and you want to behave yourself."

"Mpf."

Tigira looks him over. "Nice job. You charge by the hour?"

"I feel I should apologise, but I don't think that his appalling manners are actually my fault." I step around The Face and hold out my right hand. "Perhaps we could start again. I'm Grayven. I work for the Justice League and I'm here to investigate a possible theft of Uncorporation technology by a rather unpleasant paramilitary group."

She looks at me carefully for a moment before taking hold of my hand. "Tigira, Uncorp Security. The Doctor's down this way, but he ain't going to want to talk to you."

"Nil desperandum, Miss Tigira. If he won't talk, he won't talk." I shrug. "But given what I know about his character I'd be astonished if he didn't take personal affront at what has been done with his technology."

"Yeah, he would, 'cept he's not going to listen for long enough to find that out. Tell you what: I'll show you to his lab.. if you wait outside for a few minutes before coming in and don't tell him I'm the one who brought you."

"Deal. The Face gets the blame." We start walking in the direction her partner disappeared in. "The Face? Follow."

"Mpf."

Ixy scampers forwards and looks back at The Face. **What is that? Why is he quiet and not annoying and why does he have a glowing orange shape on his…** She blinks. **I do not know what the word is for the top of someone's torso when there isn't a head there.**

Neither do I, actually. "One of my abilities is branding. Currently, Mister The Face wants to do exactly what I want him to want." I lean towards Miss Tigira. "I could.. leave a thing or two in there when I take it off. If you liked."

"Tempting, but the Doctor might find out."

We follow her along the corridor for a few moments, as the blandly decorated corridor gradually gives way to bare brick and then stone. It actually.. looks like he was trying to copy the décor of the castle. I suppose that he… I don't actually know how old he is, but if I assume that he was created after the Second World War… Perhaps twenty years in the Castle? Another thirty traipsing around the US before reaching Aberrance? And even then, it would have been some considerable time before he could start on his work.

"Tigira! I heff need of you! Where are you?!"

"Ooh, great." Tigira hurries towards the end of the corridor and the slightly open wooden double doors that would look right at home in the old castle. As she reaches them she looks back at me with her eyes wide and holds up her right index finger in a 'one' sign. I come to a full stop and nod then she disappears inside, pulling the door closed behind her.

back

Aberration 18

next

15th January

08:28 GMT -8

"…ungrateful wretch!"

For a man with a very limited lung capacity, the Doctor could certainly shout for Romania.

"Ah-I'm sorry, Doc.. Doctor von Schadel. I just can't help-."

Funny, I thought that it was entirely possible that the Doctor would have had this part of the building constructed of stone. He hasn't. He's just had plastic moulded to look like stone. It's pretty realistic, but when you touch it-.

"Does your drug addled brain even begin to comprehend what could heff happened if you het found zhe poison you sought!"

I make eye contact with Match, Ixy and Mister Tawny. That should be long enough. I step up to the door -which is actual wood- and knock twice, hard. Then I step back and motion The Face forwards.

"Eh?"

I step back from the door. Straining my ears I hear a faint pad-tap, pad-tap, pad-tap noise, as if someone were crossing the floor towards the door with the aid of a crutch. Odd. I know the door isn't locked. If he wanted me to come in he could just have shouted 'enter'. The noise stops just on the other side of the door and a moment later the wrought iron handle slowly starts to turn. The door is pulled inwards slightly and a face… No, two faces, peer out at us with dull and lifeless eyes. Ah, this is one of the first generation Un-Men. I don't think he… It? Has a name. Its hair on both heads is a pale grey and very greasy while its skin is an unhealthy green-grey colour. Its arms, shoulders and the upper head have the normal Human proportions while the trunk of the body is unusually short, though not beyond the realms of Human morphology. The right leg is stunted -though well muscled- and the left… In place of the left a second head looks up at me. Under its right arm is the crutch it uses to get around and with one hand on the door it is forced to put more weight on it.

I struggle to imagine why Arcane would have created such a creature.

"Face! Zhis is not zhe time to be bringing in your friends for a visit."

Speak.

"These ain't tourists, Doc! They're from the Justice League! Someone's been stealin' your stuff and they-."

"Feh! Leave! I am working!"

I take another moment to look at the dull-witted servitor before directing my attention to the little of the lab I can see through the opening in the door. "Doctor von Schadel, it really is quite important-"

The Un-Man before me starts to close the door. I stick my right foot in it. It keeps pushing for a moment before the lower head spots what I've done. Then the upper head meets my eyes. "Uuuurrrrhhh."

"-that I speak with you."

"Janus Junior is responsible for security! Deal with him if you must-" Transition. "-talk to someone."

The Doctor stands next to a wooden gurney straight out of Hammer Horror. The emaciated man is strapped down at the ankles, wrists, across the chest and around the forehead. The Doctor himself is dressed in surgical whites with a cap, surgical mask and goggles covering most of his face. All I can see of his flesh is a narrow band between cap and mask. He appears to have the skin tone of a Caucasian who's spent a good deal of time in the sun, only the uneven texture and prominent veins in places normal people don't have veins hinting at his unusual origin. The Ape Man and Tigira are on the other side of the room tending to a horse that is being housed in a small stall.

The Doctor turns suddenly to face me, waggling a syringe at me. "You heff invaded my laboratory now?! I will heff you arrested!"

"Doctor, please! I am a great admirer of your work-" There's a.. pressure against my mental defences. He's a telepath. Interesting. Not a particularly strong one though, not compared with Chester or M'gann. "-in the field of xenografts, and I wished to present you with a small token of my esteem."

The book appears in my right hand and I proffer it towards him. For a moment he's too focused on trying to scowl me to death to pick up on it, then I notice him glance down before returning his attention to me. Then his eyes widen and he looks back to the book. His hands come up suddenly and grasp it by either side, snatching it from my unresisting grip. He pulls it to his chest before carefully -almost nervously- opening the first page. He lets out a small gasp as he sees the writing. "Zhis… Zhis was Arcane's." His eyes come back up for a second. "How did you come by it?"

I smile at him. "I.. may have held Nathan Arcane upside down by his ankles and shaken him a few times. A short sojourn in Castle Arcane…"

"Bah, zhet boy was always…" He scans another page. "Zhet fool Janus." He doesn't stop turning pages as he talks to me. "I knew I should heff accompanied zhe expedition."

"The book was disguised by magic. It would have been near impossible for him to find it."

"Meh.." He flicks through a few more pages to authenticate it before snapping it shut. "Why..? Why heff you given zhis zhing to me?"

"I'm a fan, Doctor.. von Schadel. Your work is simply revolutionary. May I assume that-" I gesture to the book with my right hand. "-will assist you in it?"

"Yes, yes. Wunce I heff had time to.. properly study Arcane's writings." He looks me over briefly. "You are not my work, or zhet of Arcane…"

I take a vial of Venom Buster out of subspace and pass it to him. He examines it with a critical eye. "Last year's combat stimulant. We call it Venom Buster. That, and a great deal of perfective maintenance since."

"H-mmm." He puts the vial into his coat pocket, then lifts his goggles away from his eyes. They're a pleasant shade of blue, though slightly mismatched. Grave robbers can't be choosers. "So, my new friend. What is your name?"

"Grayven, Doctor."

"And what was zhet half whit Face babbling about?"

"Are you familiar with the Kobra Cult?" He gives the shallowest of nods. I suppose he can't really nod normally. "They appear to have gotten their hands on an Un-Man derived drug from somewhere. I knew that if the source was here in Aberrance and the matter were brought to your attention-."

"Ak, it is sheer folly! I heff zhe greatest knowledge of zhe physiology of zhe Un-Men of anyone alive! You cannot simply plug bits of us in to a natural man wizhout-." He cuts himself off, hard in thought. "God in heaven, tell me zhey haven't got an insectoid?"

"It doesn't look like it. What they used appears to be closer to Argonate, though there were some alterations. From the fact that they were discovered in a chemical plant it seems likely that they were going to try to produce more."

"We cannot have zhet, not zhis close to our television debut. Zhe negative publicity from being associated wizh a terrorist organisation alone might cause zhe network to pull out."

"Just so. Can I assume therefore that you are prepared to give this your attention?"

"Though I am loath to put down zhis tome of zhe former master's knowledge for even a moment, I will curb my enthusiasm for now. An inventory check should not take too long; given zhe FDA's ruling we've hett little reason to keep working on it." The twitch of his facemask suggests that he's smiling. "Mine own 'Compound K' is far superior for my purposes."

I glance at the man on the gurney. "Are you able to spare the time now? I don't wish to be rude, but if Kobra are dissecting a-" I gesture to him with my right hand. "-brother or cousin of yours…"

Doctor von Schadel looks towards the door and the grey skinned Un-Man hobbles aside. Whoops, cancel brand. The Face barges in a half second later, giant grin back in place. "What's up,-?"

"Silence, cretin." Doctor von Schadel looks past him as Match, Mister Tawny and Ixy follow The Face in. "And zhese are your friends?"

"A cloned Kryptonian, an augmented Tiger and a G-Goblin type Genomorph." He looks at me and raises an eyebrow. "A synthetic species produced by Cadmus Labs."

"I see…" He takes a moment to study each of them carefully. "Perhaps, Mister Grayven, you could tell me of your own work while I begin my search?"

back

Aberration 19

next

15th January

08:37 GMT -8

"…seldom zhet I get to work on zhose with.. ah… Pre-existing enhancements. I could hardly turn him away."

We're following the Doctor into the main laboratory area of the Uncorporation building. He told The Face to stay behind and babysit the new inductee -a down on his luck drifter, apparently- while the rest of us get down to work.

Match frowns. "You mean he's a metahuman?"

"Nature is zo careless upon whom she bestows her gifts." I note that the Doctor doesn't shrug, nod or turn his head beyond a very small amount. Though if I wasn't looking for it I'm not sure that I would notice.

"So… Why did..?" Match trails off uncomfortably, not sure how to voice the question.

"Why did I remove his head unt create a new face on his torso?" Match nods. "His original head was somewhat damaged when he was brought to my attention. An accident with a shotgun, I understand. Quite a few of my third generation Uncreations come to us as crippled or mortally injured."

"Couldn't you just.. put them back how they were?"

Doctor von Schadel's right hand touches his chin. "Perhaps. But zhet is not a service I offer. I have devoted my life to enhancing zhe Human condition, not to resetting it to its current banal level."

I nod. "I was impressed by your ability with xenografts. I assume that they're cultured?"

"Naturally." He smiles. "Or Un-naturally, if you prefer. In zhe case of Zhe Face I had to almost completely redesign his internal organs. His mouth now doubles as his stomach, parts of his spine as his skull… His eyes have no eyeballs but instead use a type of organic plastic barrier…"

"Why is he such an ass?"

"Akkh. Mister Match, I like to think of the Un-Men as my family. And, every family throws up a complete idiot or two eventually. His personality is.. simply.. his personality, and I am reliably informed zhet he was exactly zhe same before he came here."

I narrow my eyes slightly. "You do have other family, you know."

"The wider metahuman community, you mean? I suppose-."

"No. The ring shows me genetic material taken from thirty seven different people in your body-."

"Bah. The donors of zhe source material are of no consequence."

**Why does his brain not overheat?**

The Doctor's smile goes from broad to positively manic. "Ah, my little Goblin! It has been so long since I heff heard someone else's voice in my head! Let me see if I can-" His face strains. **-return zhe favour.**

Ixy gives him an odd look. **Your mind voice sounds strange.**

Von Schadel waves his right hand in a dismissive motion. **I may be a little out of practice. But to answer your question! The Face has a natural ability to manipulate heat. I could not understand zhe underlying organic mechanism, but, I could clone unt implant more of zhe little nodules which appeared to control it. By attaching them around his brain I was able to not merely allow him to control his body heat, but enhance his natural abilities!**

We come up to a secure door and he leans forwards to allow his retina to be scanned. I note that he bends his knees so as to keep his head and shoulders upright, rather than simply sticking his neck out. There's a beep as the magnetic door unlocks and the Doctor pushes it open. **Come, come.** He pauses, giving Mister Tawny a hard look. "Tiger, as one freak of science to anozher I am trusting you to behave. Do we have an understanding?" Mister Tawny gives him a throaty rumble in response. The Doctor frowns. "Not.. having studied Tiger communication, I will choose to believe zhet was a 'yes'. Zhis way, please."

He leads us into the laboratory. There's a raised observation area around the edge of the room while below us Un-Man scientists are hard at work on.. something. I count off their adaptations: one has enlarged eye orbits for larger eyes, another has four arms, a third has an enlarged cranium and a fourth has an additional joint in each of her long arms. Four arms are actually quite common around here, I assume because it was simple enough to copy the physiology of.. whatever her name was. The second generation who was born like that.

The Doctor stares imperiously down at his subordinates until they look up at him and give him a deferential nod. Then he leads us in the direction of a glass walled office in the corner. If I remember correctly this part of the building is devoted to more mundane applications of Un-Man derived biotechnology. It struck me when I first began finding out what the Un-Men were up to that while Doctor von Schadel appeared perfectly happy to let his subordinates do basic checks on the cultured tissue he intended to use for Unvolve procedures, he did the majority of the work himself. Does he not like delegating or does it require a much higher level of expertise than any of those working here possess? No retinal scan here, a simple keycard swipe is enough to gain entry.

He walks over to his desk. "Now, if I can call up-."

"Doctor?" I look pointedly at the odd stand positioned near the computer monitor. It has a small set of steps leading up to it. "Despite what I've told you… Do you think that I'm some sort of tourist?"

"No, why..? Aaaaah." The shallowest of nods and a sly smile. "Your companions, are zhey..?"

"I thought it more amusing not to tell them."

"Tell us.. what?"

"Zhe simple truth of my physical state." He sits down a convenient distance from the stand. "It is no secret from my brozhers and sisters but.. Janus tells me zhet zhe world is not yet ready for truly revolutionary transformation."

Match frowns. "You don't look all that different to me."

"My boy, Doctor von Schadel is an illusion. My true self?" His scarf twitches aside as his head leaps from his shoulders and lands on the platform. "I am Cranius!" Match actually recoils. Ixy's eyes widen slightly and Mister Tawny looks thoroughly bewildered. "This is my assistant Otto." The headless body waves at us. "Otto as in 'Ottoman'. Otto man?" We don't react. "Egh."

**How does your head work?**

"Very well, actually." He turns so that he can get a view of the screen. "Zhe former master created me as his personal assistant unt.. gave me zhe ability to direct other Un-Men with my thoughts. My brain is custom built, parts I wouldn't need excised and zhose I do need improved."

"How do you eat? Or.. breathe?"

"Zhere is a small aperture in my palm through which I may ingest liquefied food. In former times Arcane would simply drop me in a bucket of rotting fish heads…" His face momentarily assumes an expression of distaste. "Well. I have little sense of taste. For breathing…" He flexes his head muscles, causing his skin to undulate in a surprisingly unsettling way. "My whole head can act as a diaphragm, constantly moving air through zhe small slits at zhe back of my head."

"And… Otto..?"

"Oh, he's always been like zhet." Otto's busy typing an enquiry into Uncorporation's database. "Ah, Argonate. It showed such promise. Our stocks were last inspected a little over four months ago. I will send someone down to check again momentarily. You have zhe formula used by our unfortunate new kinsmen?"

I take another data stick out of subspace and hold it out to Otto, who takes it without… Not looking around, obviously. Without turning around. I suppose he doesn't have his own sensory organs… He slides it into a drive on the desktop.

"Examining what you have gathered for me will mostly likely take zhe remainder of zhe day. You are welcome to wait here, but I zink you would do better to continue your investigation elsewhere until I have somezhing for you."

"Thank you, Doctor. We'll do just that. Oh, but before I forget…" I take a primer on Atlantean biomantic techniques out of subspace and set it down on the desk. "I'm sure that in the fullness of time you'll develop your own techniques, fully removed from those of your creator. But perhaps you'll find this interesting as well."

back

Aberration 20

next

15th January

13:06 GMT -8

Niko puts her tray down on the edge of the table before walking to the chair the unaugmented counter peon fetched for her, picking it up and bringing it back. The seating here is arranged in benches and there's no way she could fit her wings around it comfortably. Muto Burger isn't the most salubrious of eating establishments but I can't deny that it does lend the meal the genuine Aberrance touch. Right down to the wall-mounted pictures of smiling burgers with tentacles fighting to get out from the meat layer. Take something as normal as a fast food restaurant and add a bit of extra weirdness.

I watch as a small girl a few tables over opens up her bun and starts demanding that her father explain why there aren't actually tentacles in it.

"Place looks a bit empty." I'm eating chic-. Sorry, Freaky Fowl nuggets. I actually quite like American gourmet beef burgers but there's no way I'm risking one from a place like this.

"We're off season." She unboxes her burger and shakes out a few fries. "Once the Holiday period is over things get quieter until March."

Huh. Turns out her father actually did order a Tentacle Burger. From a small Octopus by the looks of things. She's now loudly demanding that they swap.

"I have to ask… The constant references to the 'creepy mutant' aesthetic..?"

She chews for a moment before swallowing. "Janus sets Aberrance policy on matters of branding."

"Which.. Janus?"

"The one who's worth listening to." I nod and we both smile. "I think that maybe the commercial implying that Tentacle Burgers feed on tourists who wander away from the main park was a bit much." She puts a couple of fries into her mouth.

"I suppose that if a person doesn't like weird then they've little reason to come here in the first place."

"We all hate the idea of pretending to be someone else. Our uniqueness is something we value."

"This from the woman with the world's greatest Hawkwoman Halloween costume."

Her mouth falls open for a moment, then she exhales with laughter. "It seemed appropriate. I mean-" She stretches her wings out to the side slightly. More than a few of the restaurant's other patrons stare and a couple of camera phones get held up. "-who else can pull off the winged look quite like me?"

"Oh, hardly anyone."

"How does..?" She hesitates, stops and then takes another bite of burger.

"How does what?"

She weighs up continuing with the subject while she chews. "How does she.. fly? I can glide.. a bit, but there's no way for me to get enough lift to fly properly."

"Tiny amounts of Nth metal throughout her nervous system. It lets her fiddle around with gravity and mass…" She nods, and I get a clear view of how incomplete it makes her feel. "Sorry, but I'm not sure I could replicate the effect even if I had Nth metal to spare. Which I don't." Though Awakening might do it. Have to think about that. I put two nuggets into my mouth. Ah, a slight crunch and then chicken flavoured probably-meat. Everything I was expecting.

She nods, her face tilted slightly downwards. Her mask is back in place a moment later as she looks up. "Where's the rest of your team?"

"Taking in the sights." Checking in with Kaldur, actually. Since Cranius is telepathic the risks involved in wide area broadcasts are simply too great to keep us all patched in. I have a list of the physical changes wrought upon the third generation but I don't know whether any of them share his mental abilities. "Ixy hasn't interacted with more than a handful of people her entire life. I thought she might feel at home here."

"Turned up anything yet?"

"No, not really. Oh, Triple Helix is keeping a close eye on the Doctor's work for potential commercial applications, but none of them are actively intriguing against Uncorporation on the company level."

"How can you be sure?"

"Oh, you know. I go in, stomp about, get everyone thinking about everything they've done wrong… Then Ixy has a good listen and reports back. Nothing admissible in court, but we could easily just 'happen' across physical evidence later."

"Are you sure that's reliable? The Doctor said that he couldn't read you."

"I've had quite a bit of specialist telepathy resistance training, and while the Doctor may not be able to read my thoughts I couldn't hide the fact that there was a mind there. If anyone was blocking Ixy we'd have marked them for further study. No one did. Has the Doctor finished his inventory yet?"

"All of Uncorporation's Argonate samples are exactly where they're supposed to be."

"And potential living sources?"

"We haven't been able to reach everyone by telephone yet. We'll keep trying, but it's hardly a surprise that they wouldn't respond immediately. There haven't been any disappearances reported." She shrugs. "It looks like the problem isn't here."

"I hope you're right. We will need to speak to everyone who could have accessed the samples, buuuut hopefully we can be out of your hair by the end of the day."

"How did you get Doctor von Schadel to cooperate with you?"

"I had a notebook written by Doctor Arcane." Her eyes widen, her head juts forwards in astonishment and her tightening hand squeezes a slice of gherkin out of her burger and into the burger box. "Once I handed it over he became much friendlier."

"Where did you find that? We've been offering-!"

"Castle Arcane. Janus should have taken a wizard with him when he intruded on another wizard's sanctum."

"That… I.. don't even know what that will do for our development program."

"Help it along, I hope."

"Yes. Unless we just lose the Doctor for a few months while he experiments with it. Why.. did you..?"

"Hand it over?" She nods. "As opposed to what? Sell it? I have all the money I will ever need. Destroy it? Would that bring back those Arcane killed? No. I gave it to the people who will use it to the benefit of humanity." While she absorbs what I've told her I take the opportunity to take a look at her own altered physiology. It's fascinating how Cranius was able to do this with such primitive equipment.

"Thank you. Uncorporation is… I am…" She moves her burger to the side then gives me a wry smile. "My face is up here."

"Yes, and your wings plug into your spine just…" Wait. Cancel. "I wasn't staring at your-. Well, alright, momentarily, but I was really interested in how your flight muscles interact with your.. bones, your other muscles…"

She sits back, her right eyebrow arched. "The girls and I will try not to be too offended."

"I see he repurposed the nerves from your missing arm."

"Yes, though he had to add a little something to my brain so that I could handle the input."

"Did it take you long to learn? I mean, how to use them?"

"Um, simple movements only took a few hours. It was about a month and a half before I could use them precisely while under stress." I've finished my meal and use the ring to clean off my hands. "You're.. really into this stuff, aren't you?"

"Let me show you something." I take a small hologram projector out of subspace and put it on the table. "Seven months ago I looked like this." An image of my pre-earth.. whatever-number-this-is self appears. "Six months ago." My post arrival self, Human looking and buff as someone who actually takes serious exercise. "Five months ago." Boulder the Rock Monster. Seeing it next to my other incarnations really brings home just how big I was.

"How..?"

"That was a drug called Venom Buster. I gave the Doctor a sample. And then, as I am now." The last image joins the other three.

"That's a remarkable transformation."

"Yes, it is. But I'm no scientist. I did it by using other people's work and I can't.. innovate with it. My uniqueness is not the uniqueness of everyone else. I want the Uncorporation to succeed in bringing physical augmentations to the masses." I lean forwards slightly. Touching her hand now -entering her personal space with her disposition this favourable- would help persuade her to accept me, buuut it would also imply a degree of interest that I don't have. Since I want to work with the Un-Men in the long term.. that's a no. "You may see Uncreation as the next great step in Human development, but the things I've seen… Uncreation is as the first primitive petrol driven engine. An improvement on what came before, a necessary step, but very very far from what may ultimately be achieved. I don't want you, the Doctor or anyone else to be limited by their own physical restrictions. Why shouldn't everyone enjoy the advantages I have?"

She smiles at me. "No reason at all."

back

Aberration 21

next

15th January

13:26 GMT -8

Zatanna frowns at me. "I didn't know tattooed men were still a thing."

I take a moment to look around the 'Livin' Lot'. Cheap, prefabricated housing that looks like it would come apart in a strong wind. Low rent housing, Aberrance style. I realise now that I don't really know how unemployment benefits work in America, let alone in somewhere as divorced from normal civil government as Aberrance.

"From the looks of the place, I'd say they're not."

Raquel nods. "Leading a civil liberties campaign against the main local employer doesn't usually pay all that well. Is this 'Inkabod' guy inside?"

Not like a few millimetres of cheap wood does anything to stop my empathic vision. "Yes. Think I may be over egging his 'consultation fee', though." Mister Dylan 'Inkabod' Williams' desires revolve around his hate of the Uncorporation -including but not limited to its first and third generation Un-Men- and his own drive for self aggrandisement. I honestly think the three of us showing up in uniform would be enough for him. Not that I think he'd turn down a gourmet meal but it took time to put this together.

From the comics I remember him becoming pregnant after having sex with the Magna Mater and needing Cranius' help to survive delivery. I'm regretting not looking for the comics before that now, the ones that might actually have some relevance to our situation. I was able to advise Kaldur that he, M'gann and Kon were most likely to get a polite reception from Uncorporation itself but I don't have any other insight here. A quick scan of the town didn't show me any obvious Kobra-related desires though the civil unrest was obvious. The Un-Men hate the Gaffs and the Gaffs hate the Un-Men. It's American as apple pie.

And we can't fix it. And it isn't our job to try.

"May as well get on with this." I walk up the four steps onto the porch and knock on his door. Looking through the wall I see him jerk up from where he's slouched on his sofa and stare at the door. I.. don't.. think he's got x-ray vision. No, there's no way he wouldn't boast about it if he did.

Looking at the door as if it might burst down at any moment he sidles across the interior of his house and takes a heavy looking mug… A mug designed to look like a breast, down off the top shelf of his bookcase. Then -making as little noise as possible- he creeps towards the door, stopping right next to it with the mug raised. "Who is it?"

That wasn't his normal speaking voice. What little information I was able to find on the man did suggest a carnival background, presumably he picked up a few skills. "Mister Inkabod, I am Orange Lantern two eight one four. I'd like to speak with you about the Uncorporation-." He hides the mug behind his back while undoing various locks and yanking the door open with his free hand.

I raise my left hand to give him a small wave and he responds with a maniacal grin, tossing the mug away before spreading his arms wide in celebration. "Finally! Someone's taking an interest! The foul and malevolent criminals of the Uncorporation-!"

"Mister Inkabod." I lay my right hand on his left shoulder. "I wouldn't want to put you at risk by talking to you in public. May my colleagues and I speak to you inside?"

"Colleagues?" He leans around me, looks blankly at Raquel but lights up when he sees Zatanna. "Hey, you're Giovanni Zatara's daughter, right?"

"Ah, yes?"

"Worked as a back yard boy at his Vegas show back in…" He thinks for a moment. "Hmm, must be eleven years ago now. Or maybe twelve. Great guy, great guy. What's he up to these days?"

"He's.. taking a leave of absence. Superhero work.. takes a lot out of you."

"Sure it does. So you guys here for that evil-?" I put my arm around his chest and pull him inside his house. "Oh. Right. You want an inside talker."

Raquel and Zatanna come up the steps and follow us inside, Zatanna pulling the door shut behind her. "Mister Inkabod, we find ourselves in need of information about the Uncorporation and Aberrance in general, and I understand that you're the man to ask."

"You here to clean house, right?"

"We're here to investigate a specific criminal activity. Uncorporation may be involved. If other crimes should come to light during our investigation we can either take action ourselves or refer it to the relevant authorities."

"Eenyh." The wind leaves his sails somewhat. "If you're not going to stick it to them, what's my percentage on this?"

"Dinner's on me." A plate of beautifully cooked lamb ribs with… No. Not going to think about it. I close my eyes for a moment as I take a knife and fork out of subspace. He grabs the plate and heads back to his sofa. I'm trying to get his attention by sending the cutlery along in front of him but it looks like he prefers to use his hands.

"Sorry I don't have any other chairs. Maybe we could do this Indian style?" I take three chairs out of subspace and deposit them near to him. He's picked up a rib with his left hand and is chewing on it, but his reaction to the chairs appearing is to take on an expression of disgruntlement. "You know-" He points at the chairs with the rib. "-I reckon it was things like that that killed travelling shows. When you can see guys flying through the sky in just about any big city sideshow freaks are much less of a draw." Zatanna sits down opposite him and I occupy the chair to her left. Raquel remains on guard by the door. "That was why I pitched up in Aberrance soon as the place started up, before von Schadel got here. Way I saw it, if enough freaks and weirdos got together in one place? A whole town midway? People would come from far and wide to see it! Hell, people weren't shy about coming to look around when it was just a few Un-Man freaks living in old bomb test buildings. And with Uncle Sam picking up the bill for the construction, it was a fix! When I first moved here, this was all basically wasteland. I got in good with Damien… I was basically his talker, especially when his voice started to go."

Zatanna nods. "Did something go wrong?"

"That… Those Janus freaks. They drove in here one day, started talking to Damien's… You know, his people."

"Second generation Un-Men."

"Yeah, that's it. Janus Senior… He's got the talk, knows about Arcane and the Romania connection. He's got the money to invest and the connections to make it happen. And he's got the anatomical wonder on his back." Mister Inkabod shrugs. "I figure, he's a guy we need. Damien wasn't keen, but it wasn't like the town as was was any sort of place to live long term." His face curls with distaste as he chews the asparagus tart. "I was the guy who talked him into going along with it. I mean, everyone respected him but it wasn't like he knew anything about plumbing or electrics or how to run a business."

"And Janus used that to take over?"

"He knew how to organize stuff. I've seen lot managers at work before, but he was something else. Roads, sewage, even a couple of cake eater companies started setting up. Life was pretty good. Even Damien cheered up a bit…" He trails off, looking a little less pleased about it. "Though, that may have been the medication. He was in a lot of pain towards the end, and Janus wanted to keep him on-side. Anyway, everything was coming together. Then von Schadel and the others got here. At first, I figured he was just another T an' K medicine show. He even had his own wagon. Janus.. recognized him, or something. They had a private chat, and after that? Things started changing. Old school carnival folk getting frozen out of our own town."

"Was that when he started making new Un-Men?"

"No, he didn't start doing that until after Damien died. Maybe he knew Damien wouldn't stand for it. That was what Janus wanted, though. More 'improved' freaks. Now, the rest of us are ghettoized inside a place that was set up as a ghetto! We can't use the rail, can't use the amenities and if we want a job with Uncorporation we have to go under the Doctor's knife!"

"I'm guessing you're not too happy about that." Raquel has her arms folded across her chest. I don't need empathic vision to know that she's going to be referring this to Mister Arnus.

"You bet I'm not." He brightens slightly. "But in just a little while it's not going to matter."

"Oh? Some sort of.. class action lawsuit?"

"Lawyers? Nah. My buddy Bertoldt tried that and the DoE had them on the ropes before the bell stopped ringing." He puts the empty plate down on the cushion next to him and leans forwards, grinning in a manner most sinister. "Von Schadel came to Aberrance with five others like him. Only one left now. The others had.. ahh… 'Unexplained accidents', all in the last few months. He's keeping the last one close by him. That won't save him."

"Accidents? Is someone going after them?"

He sits back. "No idea. But, ah, if you want to talk to some folks about what Uncorporation's been doing… Come back here this evening. Might be you'll see something interesting."

back

Aberration 22

next

15th January

13:33 GMT -8

"…give you Nth metal, but there's no reason why I couldn't create something else for you. Some sort of gravity reduction system?"

Niko smiles at me as we walk down the pavement on the edge of one of Aberrance's main thoroughfares, and tucks a loose strand of hair behind one ear. "That would be extremely generous of you."

"And perhaps a few more tomes on Atlantean biomancy for the good doctor?"

"I'm.. not.. sure. He's always been a bit.. snippy about Atlantean techniques."

I drop back slightly to get a better look at her wings. I know perfectly well how they came into being, but it's always worth giving Un-Men the opportunity to talk about themselves. "How did he make these? They're too big to be swan. You didn't cut up an actual Angel, did you?"

She chuckles. "I-I don't believe in Angels, Grayven. These were grown in our labs. Synthetic flesh crafting. I think the feathers are mostly Swan and the wing structure was taken from an Albatross."

"You have the ability to just.. put stuff together like that?"

She shakes her head. "It's not easy. A lot of the time something goes wrong and whatever the Doctor was trying to grow comes out wrong. I've floated the idea of offering to grow replacement body parts for people before."

"I would have thought that the market for that-."

"Uncorporation isn't hurting for cash flow. Given what we're trying to achieve, tying the Doctor to a single project that doesn't teach us anything for an extended period of time just isn't worth the opportunity cost."

!Touch her wings!

No, no good. I can't resist. I gently run the very tips of the fingers of my right hand along the edge of her left wing while taking a closer look at their internal structures. Hollow avian bones of course, as well as the tiny glands which keep the feathers coated in oil-. The wing I'm touching shivers and Niko draws it in more closely, slowing so that I come up alongside her.

"Could you, um, not do that?"

"I'm… I'm sorry. I didn't mean to cause you any discomfort."

She looks a little oh. Whoops. "It's.. not uncomfortable."

"I'm.. really-."

"It's fine. Don't.. mention it." She clears her throat and I move forwards to walk alongside her with a clear gap between us. "I'm, ah, I'm a little surprised how delicate you are. Given your size…"

"Trained masseur." She raises her eyebrows. "Jade -my girlfriend Jade- mentioned that my spatial coordination could be better. That was back when I was in my third form."

"The giant rock man form?" I nod. "I can see how that might have been a problem."

"She's one of the reasons why my current form is smaller."

"Is she altered as well?"

"No, not yet. She's interested, but she hasn't picked out what she wants done yet."

"If she came here I'm sure the Doctor would be happy to see her."

"I'm sure he would as well, but… One of the problems with the Doctor's inspiration based method is that the subject never quite knows what they're going to get. Plus, unless the Doctor has mastered biotechnological teleportation what he can offer is almost certainly worse than what I could give her." Teleporters can be rather tricky to track down. That Baez woman is useless for Jade's purposes due to the explosions it tends to generate and I've made little progress in tracking down other viable sources.

"You can give people the ability to teleport?"

"No, but she was torn between that and super speed and I can give super speed."

"Super speed? Like.. the Flash?" I nod and her eyes widen for a moment. "I see what you mean about combustion engines."

A couple of tourists come to a halt as we approach and bring up their cameras. Niko stops, smiles at them and spreads her wings out while they take pictures. Hmm. I slide my sword out of its sheath. Ring, subspace my armour and give me glowing horns.

By your command.

I strike a pose, clenching the muscles in my chest while setting my eyes to full glow. All around tourists take the opportunity to capture the moment while Niko gives me a sidelong glance. "Hey. Stop calling my marks."

"I was wondering why you came out to eat. Is this part of your job?"

She pulls her wings in and gives the tourists a cheerful wave as I re-equip my armour and sheathe my sword. "Not exactly, but I know that I'm one of the more photogenic Un-Men. We want people to accept our work, and sometimes the best way to do that is to entertain the crowds."

We start back towards the Uncorporation building. "You know, it strikes me that if this television thing takes off, the Doctor would find it very difficult to find the time to both entertain the audience and carry out the Unvolve process on all of the new volunteers."

"I don't think that the increase in interest will be all that much. They'd have to come here and.. society.. hasn't quite adapted to people with our sorts of abnormalities living in other places yet."

"I find it hard to believe that you'd have trouble anywhere."

She makes a sort of chuckle-cough noise. "Perhaps. But the Doctor doesn't like to repeat himself."

"Has he considered training up one of your third generation employees? I doubt they'd share his reservations about following an already trodden path." She looks uncertain. "He can't keep doing everything himself indefinitely. There will come a point where he needs to teach someone. And… What if something happened to him? I'm not unaware of the level of civil unres-."

Her mobile rings. "Excuse me." She pulls it out of her pocket and answers it. "Niko here." Her face goes still and grim. "No. That's… Has someone told von Schadel?" A short pause. "Okay, I'll be back in a few minutes." She ends the call and reholsters the phone and strides in the direction of the Uncorporation building. "We need to.. to hurry."

"Why? What happened?"

"Someone killed Tomas."

"Who?"

"The first generation Un-Man with the head where his left leg should be?"

"Ah. Where precisely are we heading?"

"Back to the Uncorp-."

"No, precisely."

She stops. "He was in the Doctor's private lab."

"Right. Ring, scan. Father Box, Boom Tube."

The glowing hole in the air opens to the faux stone clad room and after a moment's hesitancy Niko strides through. Tigira and the Ape-Man are standing over the broken body parts of the late Tomas, brown and grey fluid oozing slowly from the severed ends. The Face is slumped unconscious in one corner of the room and the horse is struggling to escape its enclosure. Niko hurries over to Tomas' heads. Someone.. actually shoved his crutch through both skulls. That must have taken considerable amounts of both strength and hatred. He'd already have to have been dead at that point. Sure, the Un-Men aren't popular at the moment but Tomas was barely sentient. And if it happened inside the building…

Niko looks up from the remains, tears and fury in her eyes. "Get internal security to seal the building. We're not letting whoever did this get away again."

back

Aberration 23

next

15th January

13:38 GMT -8

Ah, a locked building mystery. I'm actually.. trained for those. Ring, scan the building. Anyone here who shouldn't be?

M'gann detected.

Anyone else?

No further unauthorised presences detected.

"Find Janus Junior!"

Hmm. If they can hide from a power ring I'm a bit stuck. Ring, scan this room for unauthorised genetic material.

No recent residues detected.

I attach orange threads to each of the body parts and float them up-

"What are you doing!?"

-into their original shape. "I am performing an investigation." Curious. The splits between parts are slightly ragged. Not clean enough for a sword or saw but not messy as a straightforward ripping would be. But the bone was snapped..? "Tigira, may I see your claws for a moment?"

"W-what? Why?"

"I'm curious as to what made these cuts." I point to the one that went through his upper arm. "See?"

"I didn't-" Ophidian's Gaze. As expected. "-attack Tomas."

"Humour me." Niko turns her angry gaze on her employee and the Ape fellow looms behind her.

Clearly alarmed, Tigira holds out her hands and extends her claws. A clever biological mechanism, quite unlike those of an actual cat. Hers are more like Human nails that have been reinforced, though her rear claws have the more realistic curved blade version.

I walk over to take a closer look. "Riddle me this: how do you betray a secret you don't know?" Yes, it's hard to see but there is a little Tomas goo under the nails.

"I… I don't know but I didn't-."

"Miss Tigira, I know that you had no desire to harm Mister Tomas. Unfortunately, we live in a world with telepaths, ghosts and magicians, all of whom can compel others to act as they would want them. Tell me, what were you doing when you discovered his remains?"

"I was.. on guard outside. Doctor von Schadel didn't want-."

"And then?"

"There was.. some sort of noise…" She looks back to the Ape Man for confirmation. "And then I… I.. I can't remember."

"Niko, could you call Doctor von Schadel down here. We'll need to see if we can get a trace from her mind."

"The.. Doctor can't read the minds of people he's Unvolved. Are you saying someone's been controlling the murderers?"

I frown. "There have been others?" Her eyes widen slightly. She wasn't meant to tell me that. "I can't help if you won't give me information. And I want to help."

She hesitates for a moment, then nods. "Several other members of the first generation, all in places they should have been safe. But… Why? They were all Arcane's earliest work, barely intelligent. They meant no harm to anyone."

"Swamp Thing might argue that point with you."

"The early ones only attacked when someone directed them to."

"Such as?"

"Cranius, or Arcane himself." I nod. "Cranius would never endanger his brothers and Arcane is dead. Unless you think he survived being ripped apart."

"Reanimation is possible, though not particularly likely. Spiritual possession…" I place my hands on either side of Tigira's head. Analysis. Hmm. "Your neurotransmitter levels are slightly off. I'm not an expert, but-."

The door flies open and Otto storms in, Cranius mounted on his left shoulder. He makes it three paces before seeing the remains of his brother- "Tomas? No." -and stumbling to a halt. Otto makes a sharp right turn, driving his fist through the plastic fake stone and into the wood beneath. Cranius himself flicks his eyes back and forth between the rest of us before alighting on Niko. "How..? How has zhis happened?"

"Cranius, I believe that someone is using a form of remote control on your employees-."

"Zhen I will dissect zhem and learn zhis person's secrets directly from zheir brain!"

"Doctor, I understand that you're distressed, but-."

I get a fraction of a second's warning as The Face opens his eyes and mouth, his expression malicious in a way quite alien to his nature. I erect a barrier between him and Cranius just in time to prevent the scientist becoming char grilled. The Face pushes off the ground with his legs, flame cutting out only as he brings his fist around to strike it. He's strong for a Human but I've blocked hits from Kon and Diana. Ring, brand.

Unable to comply. Subject is already being remote controlled.

He crouches on the ground, braces and huffs out a stream of blue plasma. I send construct cables around and behind, grabbing his arms and legs and pulling him against the far wall. Physiology scan… "Doctor, I can't tell what I can safely do to stop him."

"Save zhe brain. I can rebuild zhe rest."

The plasma stream cuts out abruptly. Concern for the host? Is he being used as some sort of base station? The Face's eyes focus on Cranius, his right hand spasmodically opening and closing. "You."

"Who are you?!" Otto walks right up to my barrier. "Why have you murdered my brozhers!?"

"To hurt you. You stole this place, this sanctuary, from the very people who built it."

I lean closer to Niko. "I can call in telepaths and magic users both. Just give me the word."

She turns to look at me, irises red and the veins in her eyes clearly visible. "Why would I want you to do that?"

The voice isn't hers. Quick check and yep, the other two are like that as well. New constructs press them into the walls across from The Face. Ring, charge remaining?

Ninety one percent power remaining.

"Doctor! He's got the others! I'll need to call in additional help to-."

"Why? Aberrance was built on zhe suffering of my people! Zhese.. Gaffs.. cling on our coat tails! Heff you any idea how many brozhers and sisters I lost to Sunderland?!"

I cover the space between us in two strides, pick him up off Otto and forcibly turn him to face me. "Doctor. I need to call in extra help to remove whatever is possessing them. Do I have your permission?"

The back of his head pulses… Gasping for breath I suppose. Then he snaps out of his rage fit sufficiently to notice the condition of Niko. "No, not my Angel as well." He refocuses on me. "Yes, Grayven, summon your allies. Purge this foul presence from their minds!"

I nod. Ring, connect to the mountain's Hush Tube, then have it portal Ixy directly here.

Connection established.

back

Aberration 24

next

15th January

13:42 GMT -8

"Ixy, get in here!"

Through the opening I see to the Freaks Rest, the slightly more middle class leaning part of Aberrance containing housing for the slightly better off locals. Either those gaffs with successful shows or people who have found better paid employment in one of the local businesses. Not necessarily up market businesses, mind; Aberrance is home to a successful chain of oddity brothels run by a pair of conjoined twins. The Flosse family live there and my assistants were supposed to be making contact with Richard's group. With luck they were able to catch them either before the performances started or between showings. Either way, I hope they've already had time to link up because I need to know if there's something else going on.

Ixy scampers through the Tube and stares straight at me. She looks agitated. **Grayven, something bad is happening to the Un-Men. It seems that they are attempting to sabotage-.** She freezes as something behind me-.

No! Stop! Additional clamps form around Tigira's wrists as I yank her claws away from her eyes. Ahh shit.

"Zhis is madness! I don't know who you are, but-!"

"Have you forgotten that quickly?" / "Have you forgotten that quickly?" / "Have you forgotten that quickly?" / "Have you forgotten that quickly?"

And this is why I don't like telepathy. Their voices aren't quite synchronised but that -and Tigira's bloody face just make it more disturbing. Ring, access all files relating to the structure of Tigira's eyes and heal.

By your command.

**Ixy, if the control mechanism is telepathic I need you to block it. Can you do that for me?** **You will succeed.**

**I don't know. I… Usually we would do this with G-Gnomes.**

**Do your best.** "Doctor, I need to bring in outsiders. Do I have your-?"

He turns back to me. "Yes. Do it. And when my children are free-" He turns back to whatever's possessing The Face. "-I will take your reason from your still living brain!"

"Better than you have-." Ixy's horns glow. "G-ghuhgh." He starts to froth at the mouth, glaring at Ixy with insane fury.

**I can't keep him out! All I can do is hold him off a little! It is like he is already inside Mister The Face's brain!**

Ring, transfer the Hush Tube terminus to Genomorph City.

By your command.

The portal shifts and for a fraction of a second I see a flash of something incomprehensible in Ixy's mind. I'll assume that was her accessing the Genomorph Entire.

"Grayven." I wince slightly as Kaldur's voice comes from my earpiece. "The third generation Un-Men are on the rampage. We are trying to stop them but they are -ugg- quite able fighters."

Ring, interface.

By your command.

I know. I've got Ixy and-

Four G-Elves run through the portal carrying a G-Gnome each. They set them down in front of each controlled Un-Man and the horns of the smaller G-Gnomes start to glow. Niko, Tigira and the Ape bloke shudder.

-some G-Gnomes trying to block whatever's controlling them. If you can spare Zatanna..?

"Yes, if you can send in some of your drones."

Ring, access Hush Tube two and send drone squadron-. Most of my drones have only high-lethality weapons. Ahh, drone squadron four. They'll feel the shock discs in the morning but it's better than being exploded by a plasma beam or putrefied by a Purple Death Ray.

By your command.

It's done, Kaldur. They'll be with you in a moment. You can issue voice commands on channel three.

"Thank you. M'gann, contact Zatanna."

Cranius appears to have been distracted by the portal to Genomorph City. He takes a step towards it before one of the G-Elves interposes itself. He stops and looks over the G-Elf instead. "Remarkable."

The flare of golden light heralding Zatanna's arrival triggers another frightened whinny from the horse but we've got more important things to worry about. Zatanna's already at full glow, tiny triquetra dancing around her fingers.

"Zatanna, someone or something is connecting to the third generation Un-Men-."

"Ytitcnas fo dnim!"

The tiny golden motes fly from her hands and connect to the foreheads of Niko, Tigira and… This is getting silly. Ring, what's his name? Oswald? Really? Fine. There's a flash of gold from their eyes and mouths as the foreign presence is banished. Must be a relatively weak spell if that was all it took. That's the thing, the reason why every team needs a magic user and a telepath: it's too easy for an enemy to score a Total Party Kill if they have an attack you have no way to counter. Zatanna quickly checks each Un-Man then nods at me to release them. Just The Face left to go.

**Grayven, I think we can…** Ixy takes a few shuffling steps towards The Face. **With five of us working together we can try to feel where else the pattern of thoughts which feel like the attacker are.**

**Oh, I have a better idea.** Otto leans down and Cranius touches his forefinger to Ixy's neck. **Show me what you are doing, child.**

"Zatanna, try to keep the connection open."

The Face's right hand is spasming harder now as the G-Gnomes creep towards him, horns still glowing.

"Er'uoy gniog erehwon."

I drop my construct around The Face as a large triquetra forms underneath him, threads of golden light flowing up his limbs to tie him down.

"Grayven, report."

Zatanna's freed three of the possessed Un-Men here and she, Ixy and Cranius are working to trace the attacker.

Niko stumbles slightly and I reach out with my right arm to steady her, earning me a small smile.

"Okay." Ah, it sounds like M'gann joined in the defence effort. "But what are you doing?"

My eyes fall to the ring. Um.

I'm holding together a dead Un-Man. Give me a moment.

They were able to restore Arcane to sort-of life, right? Maybe they can do something for poor old Tomas. Ring, make physical repairs. Orange light flashes along the cuts, sealing them. I gently lay the body down on the experimental slab. At least he'll feel at home if he wakes.

Okay, I'm free. Where do you want me?

"They're trying to set fire to a theater tent near the hotels."

Ring, summon a Hush Tube.

back

Aberration 25

next

15th January

13:47 GMT -8

The Metamorphodrome. Future site of the filming of American Freak, the Un-Men's chosen route to wider acceptance of their techniques from an audience in search of something a little more visceral than Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Is that even still on? Toddson… Oh, he was the mind behind 'Models on Fire'. I'm not sure what that series involves and I actually don't want to find out.

The building itself is a huge structure with a decorative red and yellow big top style canvas covering. The entrance way is marked by two thirty-metre tall scaffold towers between which is supported a sign with 'Metamorphodrome' painted proudly on it. A little lower down is a twenty six metre tall split painting of Cranius in full Doctor von Schadel dress. Attached about a third of the way up from ground level is another sign, this one bearing the legend 'DR VON SCHADEL THEATER OF OPERATION'. It's a short distance from the main tourist areas but still in good real estate.

And whoever is controlling the third generation Un-Men appears to have taken particular exception to it. The big top style decorative canvas is already on fire. Given the nature of some of the biotech work done here it isn't too surprising that Uncorp security are well equipped with flamethrowers, though I am surprised that they were able to put them to use so quickly. An Un-Man with what appears to be a floating brain sticking out of his arse is making a tour, firing spurts of flames upwards until the flame resistant canvas finally catches light.

At least he's not self harming. Suppress flame. Weak orange light plays over the canvas and his weapon, causing the fires to gutter and go out. He looks around to find the source of the extingui… Extinguishing? Extinguation? I need to spend less time around Richard. My follow up squirts a knock out gas into his mouth and nose. Not quite sure about the dose for-. No, that worked. I lower myself to near ground level and I attach manacles to his arms and legs. Not quite sure what to do about the floating brain thing but since it doesn't appear to have any offensive potential I think I'll leave it. The flamethrower goes into subspace.

**While I'm here, any chance of an update?**

I transition into the film studio. The head of Aberrance's SWAT unit -an Un-Man with eyes in a band around his head who these days goes by the self explanatory name of Panoptes- and an Un-Man with prehensile tentacles replacing his right arm are setting explosives on one of the interior walls. Does that means that their controller keeps their skills intact while puppeting them? That does suggest that their minds may be recoverable, which should make Cranius happier.

**We caught up with Bertoldt Flosse at his show. He said a bunch of stuff about Uncorporation, but he couldn't think of anyone who'd work with Kobra.**

Think I can trust Richard to have been thorough in his questioning, though given Mister Flosse's psychological profile it was a long shot that he'd have been involved. Panoptes spots me and brings a submachine gun to bear while his colleague starts pressing buttons on the detonator. A solid orange beam hits the explosives and shifts them to subspace while I ignore the bullets which patter uselessly off my armour and face. Yank and gas, then manacles.

**Mister Inkabod made a great show of knowing more than he was willing to divulge. But his interests seemed limited to opposing Uncorporation activities within Aberrance. An attack on a city on the other side of the country would be of little immediate benefit to him, and he is in no position to gain access to the Uncorporation's laboratories.**

Nothing from either of them? I'm running out of suspects. Ring, any further targets?

Explosive devices detected. Marking.

Three other walls. Together they may have been enough to bring down the whole structure. Transition, subspace, transition, subspace, transition, subspace. Good job it isn't Richard or Artemis trying to do this.

**Metamorphodrome clear. Where do you need me?**

**Archer, lotta heat coming your way.**

**I see them.** Tao breaks off for a moment. **I am on top of the Uncorporation building. I believe that I can hold here, though their medical facilities will be hard pressed later.**

**I've got panicking tourists by the main entrance. I'm trying to calm them down telepathically, but it's not-.**

Transition.

The crowd is pushing and shoving in an attempt to reach the already clogged turnstiles.

"Listen to me! If you don't-" **-calm down now-** "-all you are going to do is injure yourselves!"

Looks a bit like that scene in Resident Evil 2, right before the security people shoot everyone trying to get out of Raccoon City. M'gann's floating directly over the exit while the panicky animals beneath us trample one another to get away from… Ring? No, no Un-Men in the immediate vicinity. If this really only affects third generation Un-Men the Insectoids should be safe…

**Archer, be aware that Un-Men inside the building may try to release the Insectoids. If that happens-.**

M'gann looks at me, her eyes glowing. **I've already sent Superboy and Match in via Hush Tube to guard the vault. Can you do anything about this crowd?**

Ripping out the turnstiles and part of the fence would probably deal with the crush issue.

But these people are being such morons.

**Why don't you just put a little more power into your persuasion?** Her eyes dim as she gives me a look of frustration. **I can't-** Easily or confidently. **-stop them crushing each other. You can do the job far better.**

She considers for a moment, then tilts her head slightly downwards. She closes her eyes for a moment and then opens them again, blazing white.

**Calm down at once!**

The noise of the crowd below us drops to near nothing, aside from the whimpering of someone underneath their feet and the droning of the Damien Kane animatronic. I lower myself towards the now calm but somewhat confused mass and extend an orange cord down to them. Expand an environmental shield around them and gently lift them up. A teenaged boy, cuts and bruises and torn clothing and more than a few broken bones in his right hand where someone stamped on it. The lesson will be more effective if I heal him up while they watch. There we go. A gap opens in the crowd as I deposit him with a group who appear to be his friends.

"The situation is under control." M'gann looks relieved that that worked. "Please, leave the park in an orderly manner."

Thanks to a combination of her mind control and my demonstration of the results of their thoughtlessness, her suggestion is heeded. Things progress a little more quickly once I detach the barrier parts of the turnstiles.

**Aqualad to Miss Martian. How are things at the gate?**

**The evacuation is going smoothly.**

I tighten the left corner of my mouth. **The panicking sheep are fleeing in a more orderly fashion. Were the Un-Men actually going after tourists?**

I'm not good at getting feedback from telepathy. Kon tells me that he can get flashes of what M'gann's thinking when she communicates with him, sometimes even an idea of where she is in relation to him. I just get words. There might be some sort of tonal conversation going on in our shared headspace right now but if there is I'm not getting any of it.

**They were not.** I'm fairly sure that if Kaldur were physically present I'd be getting a glower for referring to civilians as sheep. Hooray for telepathic insensitivity!

**They did go after that Janus guy, though.** I wait for a moment to see if Wallace has any further explanation to offer. **Or should that be 'those Janus guys? Him and some security guards tried picking up Mister Flosse when we were talking to him.**

**They're just targeting Uncorporation!** I'm rather fond of Artemis, but I don't think she'll be challenging Batman for the 'World's Greatest Detective' title any time soon.

**Is that..? Err, Rocket to team. We get all the security guys?**

Ring? **Ring says yes, though most Un-Men work in the Uncorporation building itself.**

**Grayven, open a Hush Tube for me.** I do a quick scan for Kaldur's location. **I believe it is time I spoke to Doctor von Schadel myself.**

back

Aberration 26

next

15th January

13:53 GMT -8

I take a moment to do a quick check of the crowds around the exit. No other injuries, though from the slightly confused looks I think M'gann may have slightly overdone the telepathic shout. Unfortunately it's not an area Mister King can help her with; though an expert on sensory manipulation his ability to simply command the minds of others is quite limited. In the back of my mind I'm trying to weigh up the utility of introducing her to Chester. He really is a better match to her abilities but a far worse match to her character. On the other hand, he hasn't gone full 'Superman versus The Elite' arrogant arsehole yet, something I largely attribute to Vera's stabilising influence. With a moderate amount of effort I could probably nudge him into the anti end of the superhero category. How does that impact his usefulness to me? Certainly I don't want him picking a fight with Superman but hatchet men can be exceedingly useful if properly guided.

But a more pressing concern is whatever mind controlled all of the third generation Un-Men. I look around to where M'gann is crouched down comforting a small boy who appears to have been separated from his parents. "Do you have things under control here? I should probably get back to von Schadel." She glances in my direction and nods, her eyes glowing. Then she stands and leads the boy off.. towards.. a worried looking couple. Telepathic parent-child matching. Better than a tannoy announcement I suppose.

Ring, Hush Tube to Cranius.

By your command.

"…coincidence that the only ones affected-" I step through and the tube evaporates behind me. "-were your third generation Un-Men."

Kaldur is standing just inside what would normally be Doctor von Schadel's personal space, a Batman taught technique for applying pressure to reluctant witnesses. Not sure that it would work on a person like Cranius, though he does appear to be slightly perturbed.

"No, I don't zhink it was a coincidence at all."

I look around the rest of the room. The Face is sitting up inside a glowing golden barrier, rubbing his… Cheeks? And.. forehead? Zatanna's slightly turned away so that she can keep an eye both on his and the Cranius/Kaldur situation. Ixy's crouched on the gurney next to Tomas' body, watching the dispute with curiosity with the G-Gnomes on the ground near to her. The G-Elves are guarding the doors and Tigira and Oswald appear to have left. Niko is slightly behind Cranius, loyalty competing with her fear and uncertainty.

Kaldur turns to our other teammates. "Zatanna? Ixy?"

Zatanna shakes her head. "Whoever it was, they cut the connection at their end as soon as I started probing seriously. Their spell was very low power. I'm not.. sure I could trace it."

**Their mind was like lots of bits and all of it hates us. I did not like it.**

Cranius spots me. "Ah, Grayven, my boy! How is the situation outside?"

"Under control, Doctor. Minimal injuries amongst your guests, though I'm afraid that the security force's rampage-."

He frowns. "Zhey were targeting civilians? Zhet is not-."

"No, their attention was solely focused on Uncorporation property."

Kaldur narrows his eyes at Cranius. "If you do not tell me what you know-."

Otto waves his right arm dismissively. "Grayven, can you do somezhing with this one?"

I give him a slightly apologetic smile. "Not really, he's my boss." His eyebrows rise slightly. "Though if it makes you feel better he is augmented. Atlantean. He looks fairly baseline, but if you used an ultrasound scan you'd see considerable differences."

"My nature is hardly relevant-."

"Doctor." Niko puts her hand on Otto's left shoulder in such a way that her fingers touch Cranius'. "His team just stopped someone using our own people to tear Aberrance apart. That would have ruined everything for us."

Cranius looks like for the first time in his life he's tasted the fish heads. "I do not.. know who has done zhis. But I must suspect… My own mental abilities work partially due to zhe structures of my brain and the bio-alchemies which granted me life. Amongst my people such characteristics are very rare. Of Arcane's original creations, only myself and my late sister Ophidian possessed such zhings. And hers were far more limited."

Kaldur stares at him unflinchingly. "Who?"

"'Who' is.. impossible." Otto steps around Kaldur and heads for the far door. Cranius turns around on his shoulder so that he continues to face us. "But I will show you who it cannot be."

I look expectantly at Kaldur. We've had to take down nearly the entirety of Uncorporation's security and I actually don't know what is in this part of the Omega Vault. Things could get awkward for me if he decides to order me to become physically aggressive. I mean, I'd do it and try to find a way to apologise to Cranius later, but it would really be better to let Cranius explain things at his own pace.

After a moment's thought Kaldur follows him. **Grayven, Ixy, come with me. Zatanna, try to create a spell to permanently block the possession we have just witnessed.**

I nod and fall in behind him. Niko comes through the door behind me and hurries for a few steps in order to draw level. A moment later I hear Ixy jump off the gurney and scamper to follow me. I look down at Niko. "Any idea where we're going?"

She keeps looking ahead. "No. I've never been down here."

"Not even for your.. procedure..?"

She shakes her head. "No, there's a surgical suite for the Unvolve process itself in the main part of the building."

"So what's with that..?" I point to the room behind us with my right thumb.

"If a candidate can't take a little theatre they'll never be able to adapt to the way we live." Along the sides of the corridor are some very heavily reinforced doors. Niko notices my interest. "This is where we keep Un-Men who… Who either can't adapt to their alterations or who we can't keep controlled." I try to look through the door immediately to our left and see a grey skinned Un-Man with three heads staring blankly back at me.

"Your recent work hasn't added-?"

"No, we're very careful to avoid Arcane's mistakes. I.. don't know exactly-."

"Zhis one." Cranius has stopped before a large round vault door. He turns a combination lock in the centre of the wheel and I take note of the combination. Just in case. Then he puts Otto to the task of turning the wheel. I idly note that Cranius' need to hold on limits his range of movement.

"Allow me." He pulls his hands off as the wheel glows orange and starts turning in earnest. Once I release the ring's grip he takes hold once more and pulls the door open before ushering Kaldur through. He follows closely behind, followed by myself, Niko and Ixy. Inside… The room is in the same style as the other cells, though a little larger. The only object inside is a large and complex piece of machinery. The main component is a metal sphere about two metres in diameter with a glass viewing window on the front. Numerous pipes and tubes of varying thicknesses connect to the top, sides and back. In front of it is an old looking control panel, a little like an old science fiction computer console. Aside from the path between the control panel and the door the room is quite dusty.

Kaldur is already at the panel and looking up at the viewing portal. The substance inside appears to be a lumpy pale grey mass, something like the hide of a toad. "What.. is it?"

Otto walks around the panel to stand directly next to the window. Cranius glances at the substance inside and then turns his full attention to his audience. "Technically? A cell culture."

"What kind of cell could look like that?"

"Cancerous growths, of course. I did not know Damien Kane well before his death… But I have got to know him very well since." That's… Cranius smiles and Otto raises his left arm to knock on the window.

The flesh inside opens and a giant eye stares out at us.

back

Aberration 27

next

15th January

13:58 GMT -8

I.. did.. not know that was there.

Kaldur looks aghast. "It's alive?!"

"Zhet depends on your definition of-" Kaldur hurdles the control panel and shoves him hard against the machinery. "-alive."

Ring, scan whatever that is.

By your command.

"It's looking at us!"

"It is a purely reflexive reaction! Zhere is no mind. Cancerous tissues can-."

"Ixy, scan.. it. Is it aware of its environment?"

She stares at it for a moment, horns glowing. **I do not know. No Genomorph has ever encountered anything like this before. I do not think… I cannot feel a mind. There are no coherent thoughts, not even like the ones animals have.**

Kaldur slightly loosens his grip on Otto as Cranius smugly smiles up at him. "Zhank you, Ixy. As I was saying, zhe cancerous cell culture within zhe containment sphere does occasionally create complex organ structures. But-" He stares directly at Kaldur. "-zhere is no directing consciousness. If zhere was, it would be too much of a risk." Kaldur's expression hardens. "Oh, ah… And it would be quite wrong to contain it in zhese conditions. Of course."

Kaldur releases him and takes a step back. He's trying not to look at the bloodshot and unblinking eye but his gaze is constantly being drawn back to it. "What is it?"

"Zhe late Damien Kane left his body to medical science, perhaps in zhe hope zhet its study could show us new ways to aid zhe ozher members of zhe second generation. I have no great irrational love for zhe traditional Human form but.. ahh… Unrestricted random mutation is seldom useful to zhe individual."

"This is.. Damien Kane? He is a hero to the people of Aberrance. If they knew what you had done-!"

"Yes, unt zhet is why we do not boast about it." Otto crouches down next to the window. "Unt.. we heff fulfilled his wish. As he wanted, I performed corrective procedures on zhe members of zhe second generation who had.. developmental issues. Not as satisfying as my own creations of course-" He turns back to us, fingers scrabbling at Otto's shoulder. "-but we are family."

Kaldur shakes his head. "What possible purpose does this serve?"

"Damien's body tissues have a most fascinating property. How much do you know of normal Human stem cells?"

"Little."

No, I don't suppose Atlantean military school would have been big on conventional biology. I know quite a bit -deliciously pre-Grayven knowledge- but it isn't polite to interrupt a mad scientist mid-monologue.

Otto stands and starts to slowly pace in a short circuit while Cranius stands on his fingers to keep himself pointed at us. "Zhe Human body is largely comprised of cells, yes? Each one in its place, processing chemicals in its own particular way. Perhaps zhey are liver cells? Or bone cells? Perhaps zhey are heart tissue, pulsing to pump zhe blood around your body." Otto's arms are in full lecture emphasis mode, which is a little off because he isn't correcting for the direction he's pointing in. "But, every naturally born person begins zheir existence as one single cell. How do we get from one cell of one type to many cells of many types?" Otto stops for a moment to give Cranius the chance to stare at us. "Emergent specialisation. As zhe cell divides it begins to exchange some of its plasticity for specialised characteristics. A totipotent cell which can become anyzhing becomes a pluripotent cell which can become most zhings which becomes multipotent cell… And so on. Zhis is why you cannot simply put a skin cell in a Petri dish unt grow a whole person, zhe cell no longer retains the capacity to become anyzhing else."

"What does that have to do with…" Kaldur looks at the eye again.

"Anton Arcane -our creator- used a vast number of strange alchemical solutions in his experiments, but none of his creations mutated quite as Damien Kane did." He looks down at the ground for a moment. "I did not know his parents well. If zhey had survived.. or if zhe military had not incinerated zheir remains quite zo thoroughly…" He sighs dejectedly but recovers a moment later. "Zhe cells of his body are pluripotent at least. Constantly zhey change unt divide, occasionally forming whole organs with zheir neighbours. Unt they have ozher properties. My Compound K uses heavily modified cells taken from here to enable my xenografts to meld with zhe host bodies. In zhe case of Niko, zhey were used to create zhe very wings which adorn her back."

Niko's hand covers her mouth as she tries to contain her horror.

Fascinating. Truly controlled application of pluripotent stem cells? "What other applications have you found for him?"

"Eh? Oh. Zhe laboratories are developing a spray to enable rapid healing of injuries. Unfortunately we haven't quite got zhe carcinogenic effects under control yet. When we culture organs it is not a problem, but on a living person…"

Kaldur looks thoughtful. "The insectoid Un-Men did not try to escape. Are the third generation Un-Men the only ones to have been exposed to this-" He makes an expression of distaste. "-product."

"Hm. Some animals in zhe lab, I zhink."

"Is.. that all that is left of Damien Kane's body?"

"I believe zo." Otto stops pacing and Cranius reorientates him before settling back down. "Zhet is why I said zhet it could not-."

"Are you certain?"

"Well… We did not check for toenail clippings. Does it matter?"

"I believe what my colleague is implying, Doctor, is that a magic user might be using the sympathetic link between a part of Damien Kane's body and your compound to enable their control."

Cranius' face goes slack. "God in Heaven." He glances at the sphere, then looks back at Kaldur. "Zhe entire… How can zhis be stopped?"

Hunting down whoever's doing it and burning their equipment is the only thing I can think of. And even then, they'd just have to capture a third generation Un-Man-.

"There are magics which can be used to break the connection between objects, as well as defensive spells which would make it harder to influence your people." Hm. Rather thought Kaldur was going to refuse to help, there.

Looks rather like Cranius did too. "Zhank you. Are you.. willing to assist us in capturing whoever-?"

"In Atlantis anyone using this form of magic would be killed on sight. It is a foul misuse of sorcery. But I am very far from happy with what you have done here." **Aqualad to Zatanna. We believe that our enemy was using a tissue sample to form a sympathetic link. If we provide you with a sample, will you be able to trace them?**

**I.. should be able to. It depends on how sophisticated their defenses are.**

Otto turns around and moves to the side of the sphere. There's what looks like a… Oh, ew. He just.. took a core sample. Fortunately the cells in it appear to have failed to form any sort of structure I recognise. He picks up a pair of tweezers to transfer it to a test tube.

**I do not think that we are dealing with high level adepts.**

**Hey, Kaldur?** I was wondering where Wallace had gotten to. **Where do you want that Janus.. guys..?**

**Return him and any third generation Un-Men you are able to Uncorporation headquarters. We believe-** Otto walks out of the room and starts back towards Zatanna. **-that we have a way to locate our attackers. And -if we are fortunate- Kobra as well.**

He and Ixy follow Cranius out of the room. Niko stays, staring at the eye in the window as if waiting for it all to start making sense. I should probably get on with the mission and let her work through her stepfather trust issues on her own.

I step closer and put my left hand on her shoulder. "Niko-."

"I didn't know. I-I didn't know this was where it came from." She finally pulls her eyes away from the abomination, looking up into my face. "You have to believe me, I didn't-."

"I do, I believe you."

"The whole.. project..." She wipes her eyes with her hand. "I-I don't know what to do."

Gently, I put my arms around her back and pull her into my chest. "Niko. You've had a nasty shock and a quite horrendous experience. Now is not the time for making important decisions. Let us handle your attacker and make Aberrance safe. Later, when you feel up to it, talk things over with Cranius. Then you can decide what you want to do."

She stays there for a moment before pulling away. "Yes, that's… Thank you. You're right."

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Aberration 28

next

15th January

14:17 GMT -8

ABANDON ALL HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE…

"Poetic." I look over at Cranius, who in turn is studying the designs Kaldur is drawing around the shaft to the abandoned tunnel network. "Please don't tell me that you were ever planning to use this as an attraction?"

"It is not zhet radioactive, not in most places. For zhe sort of people who would heff been interested, zhe radiation monitors and lead lined suits would heff added to zhe appeal." He looks around at me. "We had a structural survey done. In zhe end Janus and I decided zhet it would be better to focus on zhe amusement park aspect. Nuclear radiation has no real role in zhe Unvolve process and Janus was concerned about.. brand confusion." He inclines his head slightly at the device in front of me. "Is it ready?"

"Seventeen different forms of teleportation and twenty two forms of faster than light travel are blocked." I nod my head to the side. "For the next half hour or so anyway. Power rings will be unaffected but I doubt very much that anyone down there will have one of those."

"I had wondered how you were planning to get down zhere. And zhe bindings, zhey are reliable?"

"Certainly. Kobra has magicians of their own, but the spell they used to control the third generation Un-Men was weak and rather simple. It's more likely that they've either fled already or that the magic user is an amateur rather than one of their Bestowed." I wave my right hand at Kaldur as he stands back and the symbols start to glow gold. "This whole thing should be overkill. If it is Kobra down there this should all be over in a few minutes."

"I admire your confidence." I go back to watching Kaldur as he telepathically checks in with the teams at the other entrances. Given that we know the enemy is a capable telepath I've dialled my defences all the way up. I couldn't hear M'gann if she were right next to me. "I believe General Sunderland once said zhe same zhing of Swamp Zhing."

Zing. From where she stands on the entrance platform Artemis glances back at me with a smirk. I shrug at her. "Speaking of Doctor Holland, you are aware that Abigail Arcane lives near Houma in Louisiana. Do you have any contact?"

"I-." He looks a little confused, then he reaches a decision. "She is family. She suffered under Anton Arcane just as we did. Did you know zhet he provoked a mob to murder her mozher? Heh, for witchcraft of all zhings." I shake my head. "If she chose to visit we would make her welcome, but I do not zhink it would be good for her. We would be but a ghoulish reminder of zhe life she has struggled to escape." He hesitates for a moment. "I believe she.. has a daughter now. If zhey are fortunate-."

"Doctor Cranius." Kaldur walks over to us. "We are ready. Are you certain that you wish to accompany us?"

"Yes." Otto fiddles with the Uncorporation security flak jacket he's wearing. "I know zhet I am not a front line fighter, not by your standards, but Otto and I heff been in a few fights togezher. Unt you may need my expertise on Uncreation. If we get close enough I should be able to sense zhe piece of Kane zhey are using."

"Very well. The other groups are in position. Grayven, take point." I nod. "Doctor, stay with Artemis. I will guard our rear."

I float Cranius and myself up onto the platform next to the concrete shaft down into Aberrance's underbelly. Ring, scan. Ugh, I'm still not getting good returns beyond about twenty metres. This is something I'm going to need to try and work out how to get around. Instead of the standard scan I extend a sonic probe down to the bottom of the shaft and fire off an ultrasound pulse. Concrete corridor with a large open space at the far end. Better, but I'll need to repeat the process as we go.

I nod to Kaldur. "Ready."

His and Artemis' eyes go slightly vacant for a moment, then he nods. "Go."

Transition. I look around. The corridor is about five metres wide by four tall and there's a large blue '3' painted on one wall. Looks like there's been some water down here. Not surprising given the lack of covering on the shaft. I activate my radio. "Clear."

I take a few steps away from the shaft and look out towards the large open area. Hard to tell around the shaft itself but from the dirt on the floor people have definitely been down here recently. Could just be rough sleepers of course. There's a soft thud as Artemis lands at the bottom of the shaft. I glance at her with my right eyebrow raised. She just looks smug as she puts an arrow to her bowstring. That was a good fifteen metre drop. If Kon had jumped down that he'd have cracked the concrete and made enough noise to wake the dead. Guess not all of the changes my new New Gods received after Barney's defeat are visible.

She moves away from the shaft and I hear Otto start down at a slightly more normal pace. "So, where are all of your drones?"

"Doing security duty in Aberrance. With the normal security disabled…"

She frowns slightly. "I thought you had.. hundreds..?"

"I do, but most of them are the lethal variety. And their minds are uncomplicated. They are ill suited to situations requiring complicated decision making." I purse my lips. "I was meaning to ask: before we came out, you implied that there was some change you had experienced since Barney's banish-."

Another smirk. "Are you actually calling him that?"

"Of course. Zatanna didn't go through all the trouble of branding the Beast 'Barney the Dinosaur' for me not to mention it at every opportunity. Anyway, you became uncomfortable when I asked-."

"Isthisreallythetime?"

"Artemis, I don't want your mother to string me up. This is your health-."

"Okay! Look, I'll-." She looks around as Otto's legs appear at the bottom of the shaft. "I'll tell you when we've cleared out the tunnels."

I give her a level look and she tries a jerky nod to reassure me. Ring, quick scan. Anything obviously wrong?

No obvious malfunctions detected.

"O-kaay. If you're sure."

Otto reaches the ground and Cranius takes in his environment. "Hmm." Otto steps away from the shaft as Kaldur uses his Water Bearers to descend rapidly, their water pseudopods increasing their viscosity to hold onto the inner surface, slowing his descent until he reaches the bottom and then forming a non-Newtonian cushion beneath him.

Nifty.

He flicks his wrists towards his body and the water flows over him before hardening into ice plates over his Apokoliptian armour. Magic ice, presumably. Our test sessions together have shown a noticeable improvement in the ease with which he can use the magics he knows. We've planned to do some more exploratory work next week. Once he's got it sorted to his satisfaction he gives me a nod.

I nod back and rise off the ground on my aero discs, glow to minimum. Next, I send another tiny construct probe to the end of the corridor and take a pulse reading. Clear. Slowly, I float after it, careful to keep myself out of the field of view of anyone I wouldn't be able to see. No, no one home. The room is about sixteen metres across and easily thirty long. Various guide markings are still painted onto the floor and a track has been laid down the middle, disappearing into a tunnel at the far end. I'm standing on a platform running down most of this side of the room eight metres off ground level. Nothing much else to see. I float up above the guard rail, turning around to look back the way I came. On the side of the platform someone has painted 'KANE LIVES!' in bold red letters.

I activate my radio again. "Room clear."

Artemis emerges from the tunnel, carefully checking the corners of the room. Otto and Cranius come out next, though they don't show the same tactical awareness. Actually, Cranius looks puzzled by something. Artemis takes up position on the steps leading down from the platform and then signals Kaldur as I head down the tunnel. Standard scans are still being blocked by something, but I can't see anything that could be doing-.

What was..? I raise my right hand to my right cheek. Feels like.. concrete dust? But this place looks pretty solid. I look upwards as more flakes of the hard grey material rain down. Hmm. I start floating back to the large room. Should probably-.

And then brown flesh tentacles explode from everywhere.

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Aberration 29

next

15th January

14:22 GMT -8

I bring up orange barriers to ward off the spray of concrete as a tooth-covered tentacle lunges down from the roof hole at me. I meet it with a swarm of razor edges, cutting it to shreds. Now, transition-.

Unable to plot path.

Oh, well… I fly backwards into the large room as more tentacles erupt from the walls, floor and ceiling. Artemis meets a cluster with a plasma arrow as Kaldur leaps into action, creating water machetes and slicing the ends off any tendrils that get too close. As I watch, several pieces that were cut loose begin twitching and growing, thin filaments of flesh reaching out to the nearest other pieces before connecting and expanding, forming veins and muscles and what look like miniature hearts, pumping their strange ichor through the cancerous structure.

I guess there is more to Damien Kane than we realised.

Ring, reactive barriers. And give me a fusion lance.

Orange barriers form in the air around my team mates. A barrage of flesh hooks directed at Kaldur's back get blocked for a moment before he turns to slice them apart. Artemis puts another plasma arrow into the disturbingly mouth-like barrier forming around the tunnel to our fallback point, incinerating it and.. it isn't growing back. Good to know.

I aim my fusion lance at the dense concentration of mass forming at the far end of the room- "Danger close!" -and pull the trigger as Artemis grabs Otto and covers Cranius' eyes. Corrupted flesh evaporates-

"uuuuUUUHHHGGGhh!"

-around the brilliant beam, my team's Apokoliptian goggles preventing us from being blinded by it. A slab of concrete falls from the ceiling above us, revealing the undulating mass of flesh and dozens of red irised eyes on stalks which extend to peer down at us. Some of the large tentacles abandon their attack, linking floor to ceiling and forming more eyes and sharp-toothed mouths.

"Cran-i-us!"

The area I shot has already been covered over by new growth as a large tentacle erupts from the mass, heading straight for me. I interpose an orange barrier only for it to fracture and melt as pustules on the tentacle break and leak -What is that?- some sort of.. presumably alchemical substance over it. I fire the fusion lance again, incinerating it and beating the expansion back.

"Tunnel's completely blocked! I can't see the exit!" Artemis switches to incendiaries and looses at a perimeter around our position.

"Kaldur, heat based attacks-."

"On it." His armour's icy coating shatters, tiny particles of ice whirling about him and crackling with electricity. "Keep them back while I prepare."

I dismiss the fusion lance and switch to maser turrets, firing at anything that moves around the flames Artemis' arrows created and heads in our direction. I'm not… We should be alright even if they manage to grab us. Apokoliptian armour is tough stuff. I could.. probably blast through the ceiling… No, too many unknown factors to-.

"MmmmmMMmghhrrrrrahhhhh!"

"Hah!" All of the tentacles momentarily recoil as I try and work out why Artemis is so happy. She catches my eye. "Archer says that there are brain.. things.. just underneath some of the big tentacles. He just shot one."

So the other teams are under attack too? Masers to 'wide beam'. "Can you do his 'shooting through solid objects' trick?"

"Not without time to concentrate."

The lights from Kaldur's ice crystal aura reach incandescent intensity. "Grayven, get behind me."

I drop down to the base of the steps, grab hold of Otto and Cranius and erect a bubble barrier around us as Kaldur lets rip. The air turns white as tiny ice crystals fly outwards, strike cancerous flesh and discharge.

"aaaoooaAAAAghhrrrpp."

The room is flash fried, the blackened lumps of dead flesh collapsing from the ceiling in charred piles. Kaldur flicks his Water Bearers and a new coating of ice begins to form on him. I turn to Artemis. "How are the others doing?"

"The Super Brothers are fine but Robin's group had to fall back. What is this thing?"

"Cranius? Something else you want to tell us?"

Otto rubs Cranius' eyes as he tries to focus on me. "No, zhis… From where is it getting zhe food to be zhis big?"

"Yeah, I've learned not to ask that sort of question. Kaldur, alright if I call in some of my killy drones now?"

He nods without looking around. "Consider yourself authori-."

"No! Zhese tunnels go all under Aberrance! If you kill it zhere is no telling what would happen!"

Kaldur glares at Cranius. "The park is largely evacuated-."

"Unt if zhis zhing has spread to zhe Uncorporation building itself? If it breached zhe Omega Vault zhen zhe Insectoids and my less well socialised brezhren would be released, to say nozhing of zhe people still inside."

"Cran-i-us!"

The voice echoes out from the far tunnel. Tendrils of flesh have grown to cover its walls but are hesitating to regrow into this room. Loose soil falls from the large hole that it created in the ceiling.

"I do not know what zhis zhing wants wizh me-" Otto straightens up, dusts himself off and starts walking towards the tunnel. "-but it seems zhet we must find out."

Ring, Hush Tube. I want-.

Unable to establish connection.

Fine. Father Box, Boom Tube to the-.

Ploong.

It isn't our device doing that, is it?

Ploong.

Fine, open subspace. Give me my Purple Death Ray drones.

I don't know what it is about Apokoliptian technology that absolutely needs to look as sinister as possible, but I'll admit that a gun that shoots negalife probably deserves it. Their eel-shape allows them to shift their gravity repulsion plates around and control their direction in all dimensions noticeably better than my plain ovoid designs. The mouth shape around the Death Ray is more of an artistic touch. I only have three at present as I was holding off on creating more until I had a chance to run comparative trials. They take up position above us as we slowly follow on behind Cranius and Otto.

"Well?" Cranius stares down the tunnel and Otto holds his arms out to the side. "Here we are. Do you have somezhing you wish to say?"

"I hate you."

"Yes, I noticed zhet. What I am curious about-" Cranius looks up as he passes through the tunnel mouth. More eyes on stalks turn to watch his passage. Only a few bother with the rest of us. Curious. "-is what precisely I heff done to earn zhis enmity."

"You tried to kill me."

Cranius recoils slightly, though Otto keeps going. "No I.. didn't."

"LIAR!"

"I assure you Mister Kane: if I had wanted you dead you would heff died and no one would heff been any zhe wiser. No, you died of-."

"Hrkhrkrhkhkrhkrh."

A grotesque parody of laughter bubbles forth from the cankerous mouths covering the fleshy walls surrounding us.

Cranius looks a little puzzled. "You find my denial amusing? Mister Kane, we may not have agreed about zhe.. way to zhe future for our people, but I do not hurt my brozhers."

"You're lying again!" Two tentacles explode from the walls and lash out at Cranius only to be intercepted by purple beams from my drones and rot to nothing. "You pushed me out of a plane!"

Cranius frowns. "What are you talking about? I hate flying. I did not even meet-." His eyes widen in realisation. "No. No, not you."

"Remember now, brother?"

Kaldur takes another look around. Not as if our situation has become more secure. "Doctor, I grow tired of you keeping things from us."

Cranius isn't listening. In fact.. are those tears?

"Crassus?"

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Aberration 30

next

15th January

14:26 GMT -8

Who?

"All zhis time… How are you still alive?"

"Arcane made sure I could heal myself. My landing attracted Alligators. Weak minded creatures. I forced them to pull me to safety and I ate their young for food."

There's a.. noise. Somewhere in the distance, two quiet clicks, a pause, then two clicks again.

"But… But…"

Kaldur's had enough again. He strides past me and grips Otto's left shoulder with his right hand. "Doctor. Who is this 'Crassus'?"

"He-he was… He is a creation of Anton Arcane, a first generation Un-Man as I am. Younger zhen me. Crassus, where have you been? How did you come to be.. zhis?"

"Pain. And suffering."

I drop back to walk alongside Artemis. "How are the others doing now?"

"It… The tentacle things have all pulled back. No one got seriously hurt."

"William alright?"

"I think everyone's a bit freaked out. How come you didn't say anything about.. this-" She indicates the walls with her right fist. "-thing in your briefing."

"I had no idea."

"Kinda a big thing to miss, don't you think?"

"Yes, it was, and I'm sorry." I take a moment to look around. I think we're nearing one of the underground test detonation chambers. "Though in my defence, this is quite a bit beyond anything-."

"Crassus, I searched for our brothers and sisters. If you had-."

"You put them in cages. Like he did."

"Zhey are insensible! Zhey cannot be reasoned with! Last time I tried to release zhem zhey nearly-!"

"I know. I see through the eyes of all of those you mutilated."

"I do not 'mutilate' zhem. Zhey volunteer for-."

I can see Kaldur wince at Cranius trying to argue with the megafauna.

"Cranius. Did you push him from an aircraft?"

He glances at Kaldur before dropping his gaze to the meat covered ground. "Yes. Yes, I did. And it is zhe only zhing I heff done in my whole life zhet I feel guilty for."

"Then why did you do it?"

Cranius suddenly jerks around to look at him. "Because I was afraid! You do not.. understand.. zhe control he had over us!" He takes a moment to try and collect himself as we round a corner and get a clear view of our goal. "Anton Arcane created us as tools. Slaves. His earliest creations were simple, bestial things but I! He created me to be capable of managing zhe ozhers, made me… Made me so zhet I would want to serve him. Designed me zo I could not zhink but to do his will. He owned my soul! I served as his majordomo and as his laboratory assistant. Everything I know about biology and alchemy I learned by watching over his shoulder, trying to learn how to predict what he would want next. His zhanks were zhe only zhings zhet gave me any pleasure."

"And zhen he created my replacement."

The clicking again. Sounds like… Dice? "Come closer. I want to see you with my own eyes."

Artemis' face hardens. "You pushed him out of a plane because you thought he was going to replace you?!"

"Yes! Zhet was my life! Once he had no more need of me Arcane would heff broken me down for parts! Or just ignored me until I starved to death! I knew zhet, unt I still.. wanted.. to serve him. Can you imagine what zhet was like? To.. to want zhe love a-a-and respect of a man who cares nozhing for you?"

She blinks, then with visible reluctance nods. "Yeah. I think I can."

We emerge into a large room, smaller than the last though still industrial in scale. The glasses show me pipes against where the real ceiling is but the whole of the interior surface is covered in fleshy growths. The floor is hard under our feet, but it yields slightly to our weight. Plates of bone? I know some Un-Men have horns. Damien Kane didn't but I have no idea what this Crassus can do. The only visible piece of machinery is the reinforced entry point to the test chamber itself. It looks a little like the end of a gas cylinder stuck through the far wall. It's five metres tall and there are a few openings which it looks like used to be hatches near ground level.

Otto takes a few more steps forwards as the rest of us come to a halt. "Well? I am here."

There's a grinding, creaking noise as new growth emerges from the portals in the cylinder and then contracts, crumpling the reinforced metal inwards. Next, a larger and paler tentacle projects outwards. This one has a passenger.

In general body shape Crassus is somewhat similar to a potato. He has no neck and his nostrils are set flat into the curve of his face. He has no lips but there is a slit for a mouth through which I can see a small number of sharp, widely spaced teeth. His legs are short and thin, so thin in fact that they look like they shouldn't be able to support his weight. His right arm is unusually long. If he were standing his hand would be lower than his knees, though that might be an illusion generated by the shortness of his legs. On his left, his limb is short and thin as if to counterbalance his right. His skin is rough and grey and though naked he has no visible genitals. The upper part of his body is twisted slightly to the left, though whether that's the result of an injury or the hunched back that appears to be connected in some way to the tentacle holding him aloft I couldn't say.

He stares at us one by one, his gaze returning to Cranius each time and his right hand constantly shaking back and forth. The tentacle gently lowers him to the floor and he makes a bow legged landing. It stays connected though. Alright, so if I target that-.

Kaldur strides forwards, shoving Otto aside. "Crassus. What do you want?"

"I want an end."

I nod and my drones target him. "We can do that." Kaldur scowls at me. "Orrr not."

"You!" He waddles in the direction of Cranius, stopping two metres away. "Where is he?"

"I… I don't know who you are talking about."

"Arcane."

"Arcane has been dead for-."

"You keep lying to me! You're doing his work! Making more of us! Where are you hiding him!?"

"I am not hiding him!"

"What other possible reason could you have? You were his favorite. You nearly killed me because you thought I was a threat to your position. Ugh!" He swings his right arm out to the side and throws a pair of dice across the room. They make a quiet clicking sound as they strike the ground, bounce once, twice and come to rest. Four and a five.

"Crassus, he is dead."

Potato features blinks, or at least tries. He doesn't seem to be able to shut his right eye all the way. "What?"

"He died. During our zhird fight with zhe Swamp Zhing we were freed from his control. We all turned on him-."

"Stop lying-!"

"I'm not lying!" Cranius appears to be feeling the pressure, his head undulating as he tries to get more oxygen. "Let me tell you exactly what happened."

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Aberration 31

next

15th January

14:30 GMT -8

"After we restored zhe m-." Otto brings up his hands to massage Cranius' brow as he tries to compose himself. "After we restored Arcane to life following his fall into zhe gorge, he became obsessed with recapturing Swamp Zhing. Having experienced zhet power for himself, he would accept nozhing ozher zhen-."

"I was there." Crassus' right hand twitches and -carefully keeping his eyes on Cranius as much as possible- he shuffles over to his dice and bends to pick them up. "You were the one who reassembled-."

"I did not have zhe capacity to disobey! I threw myself off a cliff to try to get to him faster! If not for our more physically able brothers making zhe leap before me I would have died zhere!"

A pseudopod emerges from the ground covering next to Crassus. He shakes his fist and rolls the dice onto it. For a moment he gives them his full attention. Three and a two.

Cranius continues talking as I edge closer to Kaldur. "Aqualad, what exactly-?"

"If he is connected to this.. thing, then he could very easily destroy the whole town and everyone in it." I form the ghost of a fusion cannon on my left arm and give him an interrogative look. "No. Celestial Archer said that there were neural nodes throughout the mass. Kill him and they may simply lash out. Our best hope is that Cranius can talk him down."

Well, we're fucked.

"…Scotland, and zhen on to America. Arcane knew zhat he would be returning to Alec Holland's home in zhe swamps of Louisiana. After…"

"After you pushed me out of the plane."

"Yes, after I pushed you out of zhe plane." Crassus, Kaldur and Artemis all jerk slightly. Some sort of telepathic attack? I can't feel it if it was. Ring, scan for concentrations of neurological ma-.

Unable to-

Unable to comply, yes.

-comply.

"…deep into the swamps. Eventually, we were able to track him down and overpower him."

Ring, connect ultrasound sensors to the ground as subtly as you can. Try detecting them that way.

Tiny, barely visible threads of orange light flow out of my feet, every so often branching off and creating the concentric circles of the ultrasound generators. Some of the eyes are tracking what I'm doing, but Crassus appears to have his attention solely focused on Cranius.

"…mesmerised, bound and dragged back to where Arcane waited in an old slave graveyard attached to a ruined plantation where he had made his base of operations. I still do not know precisely what happened. I zhink.. some of zhe foul magic he had raised in order to transfer his mind and soul into Swamp Zhing's body had escaped into zhe graves. Or perhaps zhe souls of zhe dead had been bound to zhet place in some way by the memory of zheir own suffering. Zhe spirits arose and tried to stop zhe ritual, but Arcane had laid his protections around him. Zhey could not reach him."

Ohhh kaaaay, I think that's a brain. And that. And that. And those are just the bits I can see. Perhaps if I forced a connection by cutting down to them and either assimilated or branded?

"…no longer concerned with our fates. He assumed zhet zhe spirits were trying to kill us. When zhey first touched my mind.. I was horrified. Zhe strange and alien ideas. We were all well used to pain, but not zhe idea of pain, zhe zhought zhet zhis was not zhe natural state of being. Unt we had no more concept of slavery zhen a fish does of water! For a moment I knew.. a life zhet was so different from zhe one I had been made to live. I knew.. what it was to play." He looks around to Artemis and Kaldur. "Can you imagine heffing to explain such a zhing? You just.. run around with other people.. aaand you laughed? I had never laughed before. Tw-twenty years. And I had never laughed. Heh. Heheh."

Another pause as he composes himself. "And I knew what slavery was. And I knew zhet zhe appropriate response was not to do whatever my master wanted. No. No. No, zhe right zhing to do was to hate." Otto's fists come up. "It was to rage! And with zhis new knowledge my brozhers unt sisters unt I rose up against our creator! We tore him to pieces! We scattered him across zhe swamp for zhe scavengers to consume!" For a moment he looks contemplative. "I zhink some of us even ate bits of him ourselves. Not me. I didn't have zhe stomach." He looks back at the three of us and Otto points to his neck. "Stomach, eh?"

Crassus flinches and rolls the dice again. Six and a two. He snatches them up almost immediately. "He's dead?"

"Yes, he's dead. Zhe pieces were too small and too melted to reassemble. I made sure of it."

"He's dead." Another roll. Four and a one.

"Unt you are here! My brozher! I am zo happy to-."

"Then why are you doing what he did? Why are you making more of us?!"

"Wizh Arcane dead I needed a new reason to live. I wanted community, I wanted.. zhe smiling faces. I wanted to know honest joy, to be happy because I was happy, not because someone was pressing zhe buttons in my brain! Zhe only people like me in zhe whole of the world were my brozhers unt sisters. We knew next to nozhing of zhe modern world. Some wanted to hide, some to.. try unt return to zhe Castle. Zhose zhet came wizh me, we spent near forty years wandering around America. Zhen we heard about zhis place. A new home, one where-."

"Kane did not make this place for you." Another roll. "He wanted to make a sanctuary." Five and a six.

"Did you know him? He died not long after I arrived. I only had.. two conversations wizh him, but I razher got zhe impression zhet he detested violence."

"I got him away from the army. I took him to Romania, to those in our family who were slaves and being paraded for entertainment."

"Zhet cannot happen now. Wherever our people are abused unt I hear about it, Uncorporation intervenes! And we are not sideshow freaks! We are biotechnological progress!"

Another roll, two and a two. "You treat the people here like he treated us."

"Zhe Gaff-?" Crassus scowls. I think. His facial structure or lack thereof makes it hard to tell. "Ah, zhe naturally deformed? Zhey are useless, a distraction from zhe work. As if a little hair or a.. twist of zhe spine make a person special." Crassus squeezes his dice harder and rolls them again. One and a three. "If.. it really bozhers you, you could aid zhem yourself. Arcane designed you as a chirurgeon. If you will unplug yourself from zhe remains of Kane I could teach you, show you how to alter-."

"What about the 'Gaffs'?"

"We could…" Cranius winces. "Perhaps.. make an accommodation…"

Crassus looks confused. I suppose that if someone tries to murder you and you don't see them for forty years and you've built up a picture in your mind of them being completely evil, having them apologise and try to reach out to you probably isn't what you expect. He tilts his head a little to the side and rolls the dice again. Double six. His eyes widen slightly and he nods. "I-. I don't know…"

The crisis apparently past, Kaldur steps forwards. "Crassus, we came here to discover how Kobra were able to access Uncorporation biotechnology."

"The snakes? Yes. I got it for them. I took control of the new ones, handed the material over."

"Why?"

"I don't…" He looks down at the floor. "I didn't want people to make more of us. I thought that if it went wrong where everyone could see it, the work would stop. And if that didn't happen…" He describes an arc around us with his right arm. "I had this, and could stop it myself."

"Unt how did you get it out of zhe town? We would heff noticed if any of zhem had left."

"Inkabod. I felt his hate when Damien Kane died. I spoke in his mind. He thought I was Damien." He brings his shrivelled left hand to his mouth. "I shouldn't have done that. Shouldn't have lied using Damien's name."

Artemis looks back and forth between the two Un-Men. "So… Are we good?"

"Brozher, where did you learn the magics to do all zhis?"

"From the snake man. He wa-."

The tentacle supporting Crassus coils up and slams him hard into the side wall!

And the pupils on the eyes watching us turn into serpentine slits.

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Aberration 32

next

15th January

14:34 GMT -8

Oh who fucking now?

"Crassus!" Otto lunges across the room, nimbly ducking around the tentacle as our new opponent tries to squash him flat with Cranius' prodigal brother. "No!"

Kaldur's Water Bearers come forwards, streams of water wrapping themselves around the tentacle before flash freezing. Ice surges along the tentacle from that point, locking it in place. I'd like to help but -scan- I haven't the slightest idea how his body works. Those nerves seem… I settle for severing him from the tentacle at what looks like a safe point, taking hold of him and lowering him to the ground. As Cranius frantically assesses Crassus for injury I raise a barrier around our group.

I turn to stare into the largest cluster of eyes. Not making an immediate attack? Curious. From the rather forceful looks Kaldur and Artemis are sharing I'm going to assume that there's some sort of mental conversation going on. Should probably try and keep whatever-this-is' attention on me. "Alright. Who is it this time?" Obvious answers are 'Kobra', 'some sort of mental copy of Crassus', 'Anton Arcane' and 'Damien Kane'.

"We are the many servants of he who-."

"Kobra, right, got it." A few of the eyes blink. "You must be one of their Bestowed. Or.. several. I doubt that any normal man could control a lifeform like this." The scans I did of Cranius suggest that he can multiprocess, and if I'm understanding the results of my last scan properly-

Ploong.

-and it seems that I am, he shares the ability. "Is Jeff there?"

I think I can actually hear the thing around us trying to breathe. "Our sublime master-."

"Jeff Jeff Jeff Jeff Jeff! Here Jeffy Jeffy Jeff-Jeff!" I pause for a moment. "I'm not having a conversation with an underling. I am a god. I have standards. Get someone important to talk to me or get on with your 'evil plan'."

No response. In the corner of my eye I see Kaldur give me a slight nod while Cranius sprays something onto Crassus' injuries. The Kobra people must know what his name is, mustn't they? I don't mind someone pretending to be a god but he is so far below the power level at which anyone should believe it…

"Grayven. Your arrogance truly knows no bounds."

I smile. Since I'm on 'delaying' duty I won't try winding him up directly. "Kobra! I'll treat that as a challenge. Been keeping yourself busy since you broke out of prison?"

"Maintaining contact with my people while.. constrained by Belle Reve was no great challenge. How do you like my newest weapon?"

"Not exactly a walking sun." I frown. "And it's not exactly new. Three careless owners?"

"No matter. I have already taken the materials I wanted from it. Arcane really was a brilliant man. But getting your little team as well? That was an unexpected bonus." I risk a glance at Kaldur. Hope they're ready to go with whatever they were working on. "Oh, and Grayven? Savage says you took too long."

…

"Two weeks!?" I mean, come on! I told them it would take… Wait. Did me beating up distraction-escapees at the prison really irritate them that much? Not.. that I.. really want to become a member or anything…

The flesh coating our exit tunnel contracts, blocking our retreat for a few seconds as more pustules begin to form on the inner surfaces all around us. Crassus manages to lift himself up a little and look around, his right arm scrabbling around until Otto picks up his dice and hands them to him.

"Kaldur, do you-?"

"Target the neural clusters! Now!"

"On it." My drones fire beams of black wreathed in purple at the site my sonic probes marked and Kaldur strikes the wall in an attempt to freeze the pustules solid. A few burst prematurely but most of the ones likely to cause immediate problems are well hit. Artemis looses at a wall, her arrow disappearing as it reaches the surface. Wonder where she's getting her targeting information from? I form a fusion lance construct once more -consider and add a light baffle- then fire at a more distant target, the furious beam blasting through flesh, concrete and soil before incinerating a large cluster near our entry point.

Artemis fires another three arrows before the fifth strikes the floor and cuts into it without disappearing. "Damn it! Kaldur, we-!"

A three fingered arm bursts forth from the ice surrounding us and flails at my shield before growing so that its elongated fingers can wrap around it. Its outer surface is covered in bone plates with what look like runes cut into them. A shot from my fusion lance barely chars the outer plating as it starts to squeeze. Father Box, Boom Tube.

Unable to comply.

Eh, time to do this Warhammer Forty Thousand style then. I draw my sword as Kaldur lunges forwards and stabs at the edge of one of the plates protecting the wrist before pouring electricity down his watery blade. The limb convulses as Artemis looses again, this time with her arrow flashing out as intended.

Whoompf! Air rushes past us from the test chamber. Ring? Exceedingly hot air, apparently. The flesh around the opening blackens and carbonises as I watch but whatever's happening there isn't slowing the arm down. I generate a personal shield around each of us before dropping the bubble shield and hacking at the arm's finger joints. As I reach the bone it tries to clamp around me and I'm forced to push at the claw end with my left arm while bracing myself against the floor! I'm stronger, but I can see it healing around the cut my sword is making. Gah, defence alone won't-.

The limb shudders and slumps. I pull my sword out and stand ready for the next attack. Nothing.. appears to be happening. The frozen eyes are sightless. Ring, charge?

Sixty three percent remaining.

"Did that do it?"

Artemis stands a little straighter, tension leaving her bowstring. Ring, using any and all methods, scan the local-.

Full scan available.

Huh?

A cloud of ash puffs out of the test chamber and someone-. As Match and Kon struggle out, blackened and panting. I quickly extend an environmental shield around them and dust them off. Match slumps, sucking down ring cooled air while Kon floats unsteadily over to land in front of Kaldur. "Main cluster.." He takes a couple of breaths. "Taken care of."

Kaldur gives him a faint smile. "Well done. Grayven, is the life form still active?"

Ring, any further biological activity?

Cell division is now occurring at conventional rates.

"Not in a coherently aggressive way." I look around my teammates. "Would you please tell me what just happened?"

Match looks up. "We… We melted our way through the far… Far side of the test chamber. Miss Martian detected…" He waves in the direction of the passageway. "She detected most of the mental activity coming from there." He squeezes his eyes shut. "I don't wanna use heat vision ever again."

Cranius makes a last check on Crassus before looking at Kaldur. "If zhe creature is dead, we must take care in how we make our escape. Its mass is likely supporting zhis whole area."

Father Box, do we have Boom Tube capacity back yet?

Ploong.

Good to know. "Boom Tubes are available. Does Miss Martian need a lift?"

Kon shakes his head. "No, she phased out. We're good to go."

I nod. "Father Box, take us back to the Uncorporation building."

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Aberration 33

next

15th January

14:46 GMT -8

"…if I wanted to put the scare on some Gaff?"

Kaldur leads the way through the Boom Tube into the Uncorporation's boardroom. I float the injured Crassus through next, escorted closely by Cranius and Otto. I'm a little surprised by how forgiving he's being. Aberrance will struggle to recover its reputation from this. I suppose that their biotech work won't be much affected. Perhaps getting another bioengineer outweighs the harm to tourism the attractions in the rest of the town will suffer?

Robin's team must have taken a Tube back here. Richard appears to be engaged in a staring competition with Janus Junior. Janus Senior.. appears to be unconscious, his lolling head supported by a neck brace. That's one way to get privacy. Wallace is slouched in one of the boardroom chairs with his feet up on the transparent table. The Sphere warbles a greeting which prompts Zatanna to look up from the golden wire frame map of the tunnels which floats in front of her. Miss Ervine raises her right hand slightly in a minimalistic wave.

"If you really thought he was involved, the smart thing to do would have been to have him watched. It would have been impossible for a man with no arms to kill-."

William flashes us a smile. "Hey guys. How'd it go?"

Janus Junior looks around. "Hey doc. How's tricks?" He frowns. "And who's the potato? That one of ours?"

Cranius gazes at him imperiously. "Zhis is Crassus, our brozher. I do not believe zhet you ever had zhe opportunity to meet him in Castle Arcane."

"Hey Crass. Greetings from the Old Country or whatever." He wiggles his right thumb at Richard. "Can I get this rube out of my face now?"

"This rube saved your life when your bodyguards got possessed!"

"Yeah, well now I'm tossing your whole crew off the lot, capisce?"

"Be silent, fool. But for zheir intervention zhis entire building would have collapsed unt our possessed third generation cohort would surely heff killed us both."

Richard half turns to look at him. "Why is this guy in charge of your security?"

Cranius rolls his eyes. "Do not be ridiculous. Why would I put Janus Junior in charge of security?"

"Say what?"

"Sergeant Panoptes is in charge of Uncorporation security while Captain Alatrasca is in charge of Aberrance's conventional policing." Janus gapes. "Janus Junior's deficiencies became apparent zhe first time I met him. His.. nature as a member of zhe first generation required a highly placed position within zhe company so I gave him an empty title."

"Wha'?"

Richard smirks as Otto walks over to Janus and pulls a square green sticker decorated with the Uncorporation logo off Janus Senior's cheek, then another from his forehead. Cranius turns to look at Kaldur. "He should awake momentarily. I zhink we had best.. discuss matters. Grayven, would you be so good as to summon anozher of your portals zo zhet Crassus can get medical attention?"

Ring, Hush Tube to medical.

By your command.

A new portal opens next to the recumbent Crassus. He doesn't look all that bad… Or rather, not much worse than normal. Still, that was a pretty nasty whack he took, to say nothing of possible neurological damage caused by the feedback from the rest of us attacking his cancer body. In the small medical wing of the Uncorporation building I see a four armed woman in a nurse's uniform hurriedly put down some files on a desk before hurrying to the rim of the tube.

Crassus manages to look up slightly as I send him through. "Cranius. You promised-."

"Yes. I know. I will keep my word."

"Doc, you're not..? You're not serious, right?"

"I had hoped zhet perhaps you would grow into your role." Otto pulls out a chair and sits down as another hush tube opens. M'gann, Mister Tawny and Tao walk out. "Will Miss Ixy not be joining us?"

Kaldur shakes his head. "Ixy was never supposed to be part of our combat operations."

"Mm. Well, to make sure zhet we are all on zhe same page: The zhing beneath Aberrance was created using tissues taken from zhe remains of Damien Kane, much as my own Compound K is cultured from his flesh. At some point my brozher Crassus came into contact both wizh it and wizh Kobra. With zheir aid he converted it into zhe obscene zhing below us unt used the symapzhetic connection to zhe third generation Un-Men to steal more of our property. Zhis was zhen smuggled out of Aberrance by zhe idiot Inkabod and delivered into zhe hands of Kobra in some sort of misguided attempt to blacken our names and wrest control of Aberrance back to the G-." He works his jaw for a moment. "Carnival folk."

"Oooohfh." Janus Senior turns and half collapses into the chair next to Cranius'. "Is it… Is the matter resolved?"

"It is not." Kaldur stands opposite them and leans forwards, looming over them. "While your company does not appear to have been complicit in providing Kobra with the materials they used in Gotham, the fact that they still possess them means that almost every member of your organization is vulnerable to being controlled."

"Zhe second generation.. like Nurse Hemangi, were unaffected. Miss Zatanna, have you..?"

"I should be able to protect all of the third generation Un-Men you have at the moment, but I'm not going to come back here every time you make a new one."

"No new-!" Janus Senior's eyes widen. "That could set us back-."

Otto reach out and puts a hand on his shoulder. "Zhe alternative is letting zhem be controlled by terrorists. We accept."

Janus flashes him a pained look. "Cranius…"

"I heff Arcane's book. Given time, I should be able to develop a new technique." He pauses. "Now, to proceed against Kobra…"

"Your 'brother' Crassus was directly involved in providing them with highly restricted drugs, as well as mind controlling people and attacking us."

"Crassus genuinely believed zhet I was still under Arcane's control. Unt you cannot tell me zhet he is fit to stand trial. No, if we say zhet Kobra was controlling zhe creature below.. unt follow up wizh Inkabod…"

I shake my head. "Doctor Cranius, we cannot simply conceal what has happened here from our superiors. Unless there is something else you can offer..?"

He thinks for a moment. "My.. expertise in zhe physiology of zhe Un-Men. Whatever.. bastardised version of our drugs Kobra are using, I am zhe leading auzhority on zhe processes involved. I assume zhet zhe Justice League would find zhet useful?"

Kaldur leans back slightly. "It seems an inadequate reason-."

"I read zhe toxicology reports from Gotham. Zhere are certain stabilising agents in zhe bodies of Un-Men.. first, second or zhird generation.. which do not exist in ozhers. What Kobra heff cannot compete wizh Venom Buster as a combat drug, but it would make an excellent slow acting poison. Unt.. given zhe effects.. a weapon of terror. I imagine zhet zhe Justice League would want a mezhod of reversing zhe effects ready sooner razher zhen later? Hm?" Kaldur's face hardens and M'gann folds her arms. "My brozher will spend zhe rest of his life here in Aberrance. Zhere will always be one of us close to him."

Richard narrows his eyes. "And what about your other brothers? The ones he killed?"

"Now zhet zhe assailant has been dealt with… Zheir bodies are mostly intact. If we could resurrect Arcane, perhaps zhey may rise again. And even if zhey cannot, our shared torment is such zhet I cannot remain angry with Crassus for his actions."

Kaldur looks around, trying to take in the mood of the team. Personally, I don't see the point in hounding Crassus. Perhaps him working with Cranius will improve the lab's output. After a moment Kaldur bows his head slightly. "Our new objective is to locate the network of Kobra agents working with Inkabod. Miss Martian, for the remainder of this weekend you are to be his shadow. If we are fortunate, Gotham was the only site developing Uncorporation products. As for the question of whether or not to show leniency to Crassus, I will need to consult with the Justice League."

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Aberration 34

next

16th January

16:06 GMT -8

I frantically pull the knife from my belt and slice at the weird flesh bubble around me. This stuff might be doing a number on my constructs but it looks like x-ionised knives work perfectly well. The gel.. stuff around me gloops out onto the stone effect floor of Cranius' secret room in the Omega Vault. **M'gann! Are you alright?**

M'gann fades into visibility, clutching her head. **I think so. What was that?**

I sheathe my knife, put a hand on either side of the cut and pull myself free. **I think it was Damien Kane.** I look around the room as I step onto the floor. The mound of flesh which was containing me grows out of the wall like unusually aggressive lichen. There's still some organic activity there but I'm not seeing either thoughts or desires and it isn't connected to anything else. The metal sphere I opened is torn apart, exploded outward by the strength of the escaping.. thing.

**Inkabod was telling the truth?**

Ring, sample. **The tissue sample doesn't match, but Doctor Manguy's notes showed that Kane's genetics were in constant flux even while he still looked Human.** Still, his obvious rage surprised me. I went through everything Kane wrote or said in interviews in preparation for this mission. He had a Zen like quality about him… Well, maybe not Zen. I doubt many Buddhists experience life-as-suffering in quite the same literal way that a malfunctioning second generation Un-Man can. **Aqualad, Kane's out and on the rampage. Can you..?** I can't hear him.

I look up at M'gann as her eyes glow brighter. **Something's preventing me from reaching them. We need to get back!**

I nod and attach a filament to her. Ring, Transition.

Transition function not available. Local conditions are preventing target acquisition.

Fine. **Transition's out.** I rise off the ground and shoot out through the vault door, M'gann only a short distance behind me. A volley of Crumbler rounds destroys the wall between us and the Doctor's rumpus room, then the far wall, then the wall at the end of the corridor and we're out into the air and oooh shit.

A colossal arm completes its throw, hurling one of the Muto-Rail trains into the eastern face of the Uncorporation building. Glass shatters, metal and concrete crumple and cracks spread across the entire surface. I only realise that I'd stopped breathing after checking that no one had been in the train.

"Keep your stinking trains, Schadel!"

A fleshy titan stands over Aberrance. Its malformed body is a red-brown colour, its surface speckled with pale, vein covered nodules. It's vaguely humanoid, if a Human were made of wax and then repeatedly melted and allowed to harden. Actually, it… It looks like a giant Damien Kane, as he was shortly before his death. M'gann and I just stop in the air and stare at it.

"Just as was promised! I will cast the Un-Human, Un-Godly usurpers from our paradise! In the name of Kane!"

Kane.. lives in death. Wait, that's not Kane's voice. Ring, correct for size and distortion.

"Just as was promised!"

Inkabod? Guess he's fulfilling his own prophecy.

**Up there! On its chest!**

Ring, magnify. More pustules like the one that held me. Near the centre of its chest I can see Kaldur trying and failing to get his Water Bearers to come to life. Two explosions flare out from the middle finger of its left hand as Robin leaps from its left forearm towards the severely beaten Western Mutagenics building, only to be caught by a barrage of tentacles and pulled back into the arm. He struggles and tears several of them off, but they regrow too quickly for him to fully break free. As soon as he touches the skin of the forearm a new pustule grows around him and his movements grow sluggish.

Artemis stands on a nearby hotel, shooting upwards towards its head. Its left arm swings down and she's forced to leap aside as it caves in the hotel's roof. I experience a moment of pride when I realise that without super strength that would almost certainly have captured her, if not killed her outright. Another plume of flame, this time from its left shoulder. Rob's borrowed x-ionised sword is plunged in to near the guard and he uses it to keep himself anchored while shooting bolts of fire from his left hand at the tentacles trying to reach him.

Kon and Wallace are stuck in another couple of pustules near the right hip while Raquel fires a force bolt at its head.

"I am the Chosen Warrior of the God of Cancer! You think you can stop me?! Ah ha ha ha!"

White lines poke out of his titan's skin and a volley of bone shards fly-

-straight into my construct barrier. Rob looks up at me as he pours more heat into the arm. "Cheers mate. Wondering where you'd gone."

Kane's face above us is expressionless, and on the top of his neck hump… Inkabod grins like a loon as clouds of a noxious looking gas blow out of slits in the holes around him, forcing Raquel to back off. Her belt might protect her from kinetic impacts but it doesn't do much against acid or poison. Inkabod is sunk into the titan's flesh up to his waist, his hands sunk into smaller pustules on either side. Right, this should only take a moment. I fire a filament up at him-.

Connection lost.

How the hell did he ward something this big? "Where's Troia?"

"Pulling people out of rubble." He glances up at the head. "There's some sort of magic barrier keeping him safe."

The right arm swings around to swat us. Quick check of the ground -yep, clear- and I form a particle beam construct. A thick beam of purple light slices neatly through its wrist, sending the hand plummeting to the ground.

"Stop queering my pitch, man! Wait, who's-? Gruhhhhhhh…"

The titan shakes and stumbles backwards as M'gann assaults its weak-minded princeps. With him distracted Rob pulls his sword free and we both fly up to assist M'gann. Looks like he got the air manipulation spell working then, though when I told him why I called it Swift Wind he didn't seem too enthusiastic. Right, up over the face. Ew, the eyes aren't actually eyes. They're just plates of bone and flesh and the rest isn't all that nice to look at either, constantly moving and flexing as new flesh is created and consumed. I replace the particle beam with my usual railgun and load a Mageslayer round, a heads up display forming around the right of my head. Sephtian's still working on my next batch of these so I don't have a lot of them. Shouldn't be a problem. Aim to skim him? No, big boy's rules. As long as it doesn't kill him…

The gun tracks as his eyes go red.

"No!"

M'gann shakes, goes visible and starts to fall out of the air. I grab her with a construct as the gun fires, skimming his left side and leaving a line which is rapidly filled in with red. No more shield, now I-.

He jerks downward. For a second his eyes return to normal. "Wait, what?" Then they go red again and he's pulled in up to his head. "Help!"

Oh for goodness… I form maser constructs and burn holes in the flesh around him. A moment later Rob makes it up and unleashes a circle of flame which extends downwards into the hump. Right, he can do that better than me. I connect a filament to the top of Inkabod's head and try extending an environmental shield around him. No luck. M'gann has recovered sufficiently to fly under her own power and comes up alongside me. She extends her arms, gestures and begins pulling Inkabod free.

I hear something snap and the titan starts to tilt.

Shit! Okay, they've got that.

**Rocket, slow down its fall. Troia, get over here.**

**On it.** / **On my way.**

I throw a construct lasso over the titan and attach a filament to my knife. The titan's tipping faster to the right and there are still people in that building. Bloody Aberrance building codes and bloody rubberneckers! I pull, but construct resistance and massive weight don't make it easy. I replace the construct with steel cables from subspace as Raquel gets into position and the black blur of Troia at full speed flies into view. **Troia, support it while I get the hostages free.**

The pressure on my cables is suddenly reduced and I focus on slicing open the pustules on the likely impact zone. Not just my friends, it's been grabbing every Un-Man within reach and-. Oh no. It's removed their alterations. I free Sergeant Panoptes and get a view of his empty eye sockets. Petra and her exposed skull. Tripes with his war wounds reopened and his arms and legs gone. It's recalled the things made with Kane's tissue. I abandon my cables and start frantically trying to heal those I can while still freeing the other captives.

**Got him!** I glance up to see M'gann floating free with Inkabod besides her. I'm not sure if it's just his gunge coating but his skin has a decidedly grey cast to it.

**Impact area clear. Let it down.**

I keep cutting as the titan lands on the Uncorporation plaza. A full thirty nine mutilated Un-Men lie in construct beds to my left, while a few others -second generation and Janus himself- appear to have been unaltered. My team mates who had been captives wander in a daze away from their prison, surveying the catastrophic damage it wrought on the research centre of Aberrance.

Damn.

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Aberration 35

next

16th January

17:22 GMT -5

"What. Happened."

Batman isn't messing us about this time, and I can well understand where he's coming from. Cranius was incensed, millions of dollars in property damage, people fleeing in terror, Un-Men crippled… Well, by their standards. I pretty much fixed them up to normal people standards. To top it all off Inkabod has become the heir of Kane in a way he hadn't expected: his legs were already beginning to mutate when we left. He'll be dead in a few years from the same thing that killed Damien. If Cranius isn't already dissecting him to find out how he did it, anyway.

And our team working together in public view.

While Rob, Zatanna and I focused on healing people our super strong colleagues shifted rubble, digging out the survivors and the dead. Objectively, the recovery operation went fairly well. I don't think anyone who survived the building collapses died of their injuries; the Praexis Demons were great at finding people. And afterwards, when Cranius had threatened us with everything he could think of, M'gann probed Inkabod's mind, allowing us to pick up the Las Vegas Kobra cell.

Twenty seven dead, including a third generation Un-Man whose brain modifications were forcibly extracted by the Un-Titan. None of us are feeling particularly good after this.

Kaldur looks like Rob's drained him again. "We… I did not anticipate such a direct move."

I nod. "Inkabod gave no sign that he had access to those sort of resources. As far as.. anyone other than Inkabod knew, the only part of Damien Kane left was in Uncorporation's control."

He looks directly at me. "Why did you think it was a good idea to release the part of Damien Kane which the Uncorporation had in its custody?"

"Damien Kane's records, his history after moving to Aberrance… There was nothing there which suggested a violent temperament. If he was aware enough to influence the third generation Un-Men, it made sense that there was a conscious mind there. If there wasn't, it wouldn't have taken long to repair the containment equipment."

Robin shakes his head. "From the timelines, Inkabod had already created the Un-Titan by the time he did that. It wouldn't have made much difference."

"Your initial efforts to fight the.. 'Un-Titan' met with little success."

Kaldur gives his head a very small shake. "It rapidly healed piercing injuries, physical attacks, freezing and electrical shocks. Our attempt to utilize the Sphere's onboard weapons merely resulted in Inkabod firing indiscriminately into the air. Given the risk that posed to civilians I ordered it to stop." He pauses. "Eventually we discovered that burning its flesh was more effective, but it could still regrow from the living tissue beneath."

"The-." Zatanna cuts herself off, not sure if she's supposed to speak. No one else says anything. "The stuff Aqualad and Superboy were trapped in was an alchemical solution designed to drain people's strength. Cornwall Boy could just drain it to stop it working, but no one else would be able to get out without help."

M'gann's head is bowed. "The extra.. brains he was using to control it made it hard for me to stop him telepathically."

"Why was it -despite scouting out the location where the Un-Titan was being created in advance- that you failed to realize it was there?"

"The tunnels had wards on them. Subtle ones. They didn't just stop me scanning, they made it look like nothing was happening."

Robin nods. "Same with sonic mapping. Nothing showed up as out of the ordinary!"

M'gann shrinks a little further. "I didn't feel anything either. I.. don't think Inkabod even planned doing that in advance."

"But he did know that he had a piece of Damien Kane."

"I… He wasn't actively thinking about it. I'd have to have done a deep scan-."

Kon scowls. "And there wasn't any reason to. He was just some carnival huckster!"

Batman stares at him until he gets a hold of himself. "Clearly, there was a reason to scan more deeply. Or -failing that- continue to monitor him once he revealed that he was the organizer of an anti-Uncorporation group. Aqualad, what prevented you from establishing a working relationship with Uncorporation?"

"Doctor von Schadel… Cranius, made it clear that he had no interest in working with outsiders. Once Kid Flash was forced to prevent Janus torturing Mister Bertoldt, we lost the cooperation of the rest of the organization."

Wallace scowls. "Don't suppose there's any chance he's going to be punished for trying to murder a man with no arms or legs."

"The Department of Energy will be sending an agent to Aberrance to investigate events. Those of you not attending school next week will be offering your full cooperation." That's just.. Kaldur and me, isn't it? We glance at each other, then we both nod. "The.. scope, of events in Aberrance was far greater than I had anticipated. I want your mission reports written up tonight and in my hands no later than twenty three thirty." My team mate and I nod. "Dismissed."

We fall out, most of my team mates heading towards the showers. Kaldur hangs back to watch as Batman leaves the mountain.

"Recognised, Batman, zero two."

"That mission was a disaster."

"No, that mission was a sub-optimal success. We completed our objectives-."

"And twenty seven people paid for our 'sub-optimal' mission with their lives."

"Spree killing rampages happen, and there usually isn't any obvious warning. Robin and I were with you every step of the way. None of us spotted anything."

He takes a moment to compose himself. "Do you think Inkabod would have started his rampage if we had not spoken to him?"

"No idea. No… Yes, I do. He already hated Uncorporation, I.. sincerely doubt that he could have made the Un-Titan in one day… He or.. whoever, must have been working on it for a while. Us being there might have prompted him to do it today rather than.. next week… Except that doesn't make any sense either. Why do it when you know there's a team of superheroes on site?"

Kaldur thinks for a moment. "There were points in the fight where he did not seem to be in full control of himself."

I rub my forehead with my right hand. "Kobra… Eve… Someone who we haven't met yet who knows something about Un-Men..." Constance Sunderland is not currently involved in Aberrance to any degree and I would be very surprised if Cranius tolerated her as he did in the comic. I can't think of anyone else who could have done something like that. "The one thing Kobra does better than the League of Shadows used to is magic. Or it might just have been the effect of plugging himself into the Un-Titan itself."

"Or Damien Kane."

"Not very likely, but if you want to check I know a sneaky necromancer."

"I do not think that will be necessary." He turns to leave.

"Did you hear if Garth and Tula got their request approved yet?"

He stops. "Yes. They will be joining us from this Friday."

"How long does their placement last?"

He turns back, looking… Not cheerful, but at least a bit less miserable. "Service with the team counts as active military service. Unless Atlantis goes to war it is possible for them to spend their entire careers here."

"Probably best if they spend some time with actual army units."

"Yes, and they still have several years yet to complete in the Conservatory. The field posting will last six months." He realises something. "I suppose… They will leave us shortly after you will."

I suppose they will.

back

NEXT CHAPTER

Widdershins

BACK

Widdershins 1

next

Widdershins

17th January

19:48 GMT

"Whaw. That's some real hard luck you had there."

I turn up the right corner of my lip. "Oh, I don't know Alan. It's not that bad. Fifteen two, fifteen four, three is seven and one for his nob is eight." I reach forward and move the rear peg eight in front of its partner.

"I meant the whole.. situation in Aberrance."

"Yeah. I mean, there were a lot of things we should have done better, but it doesn't usually bite you in the arse quite-."

"Hey." Theodore 'Ted' Grant gives me a mock frown, then points at Danni. "Lady present."

She tilts her head slightly, but makes no other expression. "I am familiar with the Human posterior, Ted."

"I just think, standards should be-."

"You did not think that when you were younger. I distinctly remember you putting your hand-."

"Ah…"

"Have you got no points again?"

A second of relief, then he exhales in frustration. He tosses a two of clubs, a four and a Jack of hearts and a Queen of spades onto the table. "How do you even know how to play this game? No one your age plays card games that aren't poker!"

"Are you joking? Nan and Grandad-" He winces slightly. "-taught me how to count with cribbage. Danni, got anything?"

"Fifteen two and three for six. A total of eight."

Alan smiles slightly. "You can just tell us what you get. We do trust you."

Ted shakes his head in disappointment at his partner's naiveté. "Speak for yourself. You gotta watch these sharks, Alan. They'll take you for everything you're worth."

"Given how far ahead they are, I think they might just do that anyway." He lays down his cards. "Eight for me as well." Two eights, a nine and a ten. He picks up the box. "Uhh."

"Hey, Danette, we haven't really caught up since you came back. How's being a robot zombie treating you?"

"Strange, but largely pleasant." She blinks. "Though I do find the constant hunger for Human brains somewhat disconcerting."

Alan chuckles, but Ted looks momentarily nonplussed. "You can make jokes? Tornado never did that."

Without showing the rest of us Alan shuffles his box in with the rest of the cards before passing it to me. I give it a quick shuffle myself before dealing out the cards. I have discovered watching her play that Danni can't do a Data type fast shuffle, though Ted's been watching her hands carefully every time it's her turn to deal.

"Jokes are not complicated to make, though my capacity to appreciate the humor is limited."

"So why the long face?"

"I was originally programmed to automatically mimic Human facial expression. Since I am not currently trying to infiltrate the Justice Society for Father while keeping my nature as a gynoid a secret, I see no reason to present a false visage."

I pick up my cards. Three and Jack of diamonds, six and ten of hearts and a nine of clubs. Not great. Toss the ten and hope something turns up or toss the three? Aaaaaah. The three. Danni's already added to my box. Alan rearranges his hand for a moment before picking something to get rid of.

Ted's still thinking. "So.. do you walk around looking like that?"

"No. Usually, I allow the program to handle my body language. My elder brother leaves his on all of the time, though that may be because he is too stubborn to change it."

"That's that Lockhart guy, right?" Danni inclines her head slightly, "Can barely credit no one spotting he was a robot." He takes another look at his hand. "Oh, dang it." He adds his card to the box.

Alan grins. "Yolanda making Uncle Wildcat use the swear box again?"

"Gotta set a good example for the kids, Alan." Alan cuts the deck and Danni turns up the Queen of hearts. "Ah." Ted nods. "Okay. I can work with this."

Ted leads with a Jack. Danni's choice is immediate. "Fifteen for two."

"Uhh…" Alan thinks for a moment. "Twenty three."

"Twenty nine."

Ted knocks on the table. Danni remains expressionless. "Thirty." Alan knocks and I shake my head. "For one."

"Ten."

"Twenty for two."

Ted grins. "Thirty for six. Anyone?" We shake our heads. "And one."

"Three."

"Eleven."

"Twenty."

"Hah, got ya! Twenty seven for three."

"No, that doesn't work. They have to be in order."

Ted squints. "Are you trying to hustle me?"

"No, really. We can check the rulebook-."

"No, no, that's okay. You're probably right." He looks at Danni. "So what are you doing with yourself now? Getting back into the cape business?"

"Thirty for one. I never wore a cape. I have not yet made a firm decision with regard to my future direction. I am currently splitting my time between America and the Logan Animal Sanctuary in Qurac."

"Ten."

"Twenty."

"Twenty four." Ted looks at Danni, who shakes her head. "One each then." We all reach down to pick our cards back up. "You like animals?"

"The Wildebeest are growing on me. Slowly. The main reason I spend time there is my growing infatuation with the owner."

"Oh? So you're..?" Ted waves his right hand in circles.

"Outwardly anatomically accurate? Yes."

"Two for eights and two for Queens."

"Three for three. What's his name?"

"Fifteen two, fifteen four. Marie Logan." Ted's eyes widen slightly.

"Fifteen two and four for four. Aaand." I pick up the box. "Nothing."

"Ah… So.. you..?"

"I am not…" Danni thinks for a moment. "My mind is not situated in a Human brain. I lack the parts that would cause me to experience physical attraction to one gender or another. And Paul was being frustratingly slow on the uptake."

"I was?" Alan snorts with laughter. "What?"

He coughs. "Just something went down the wrong way."

"Alright… So, what's she like?"

Danni thinks for a minute as Ted shuffles. "Determined. Running an animal sanctuary in Qurac is hot and hard work, to say nothing of raising her son Garfield on her own. I think perhaps the reason she was willing to become involved with me was that she had worked so hard for so long that she had no idea what to do with the free time she gained when we shared the duty of animal care." She smiles. "That is to say nothing of the occasional intrusions by the Bialyan army. Though those have stopped now."

Alan frowns. "You.. turn your facial-" He wiggles his right hand at his mouth. "-program thing on?"

"No. Why do you ask?"

"You're smiling."

"I am not smiling."

"Actually…" I nod.

She blinks, then raises her right hand to feel her still smiling mouth. "Oh."

back

Widdershins 2

next

18th January

06:27 GMT -2

Sephtian makes a last check of his Dolmen Gates and then goes back to fiddling with his water armour harness. "It has been some time since I have had to 'cast on the move'."

"You have practised, right?"

"Yes. Well, somewhat. I was really more focused on the Gates and my speech, rather than the walking aspect."

"Sephtian, I can do the presentation myself if I need to."

"No.. no. My presence will increase the impact. I-" The jewellery inscribed with the runic sigils which will alter the properties of the water around him begins to glow. Since we're underwater the effect is far less noticeable than it will be on the surface, but the light seems to bend slightly around him. "-will manage." He brings his right arm up to his face, closely checking the aura for imperfections. "This man we are going to see, you mentioned that he is an idiot?"

"No, he's actually extremely intelligent. He just pretends to be an idiot because, A, it makes people underestimate him and B, it makes him more likeable. He probably won't know much about magic, but, surface world."

Sephtian nods. "He hardly needs to understand the technical aspects. In fact I.. don't think many Atlanteans could."

"Ready?" He nods and I take hold of the first Dolmen Gate with a clamp construct. Ring, plot route to London.

"Compliance."

Aaand transition.

18th January

08:28 GMT

London City Hall looks a little like a dorsal fin made of glass. Several of the pedestrians walking on the pavement outside the building look up at me and the circle of stone and metal I'm towing. A few start heading away as fast as their legs will carry them but by far the majority get their camera phones out. There's quite a wind blowing but even so I manage to pick out the words 'orange' and 'cake'. Huhh. I suppose if you have to be known for one thing…

I float downwards towards the ground. I'm dressed in one of my black with orange pinstripe suits with tie and orange sigil cufflinks. My shoes are trainers, but they're black with orange decoration. A quick wave to the crowd and I start towards the door. The mayor of London on this Earth is the same man it was back home, Boris Johnson. I'm here to sell him on the idea of using Dolmen Gates to improve London's transport infrastructure. I mean, if there was ever a man who hated the RMT it's Boris Johnson, right? Integrating magic with mainstream society requires people to get used to using arcane devices in their everyday life, and I can think of nothing more in need of replacement with Dolmen Gates than the London Underground.

There's no way the Gate could fit through the door so I have to transition inside. Four armed response officers, two receptionists and seven civil servants goggle at me as I float over the metal detector just inside the doors and land in front of the desk. "Orange Lantern two eight one four, here to see Boris Johnson. Would you please let him know I'm here? He's expecting me."

"… Yyes." The woman -Shirley according to her name badge- presses a button on her computer, still staring at me. "Just bear with me a moment please." Her eyes unfocus slightly as whoever she's ringing says something. "Yes, I've got a, um, an 'Orange Lantern' here-." She looks annoyed for a second. "Well you could have bloody told me." A brief pause.

"Mummy, why is there a big circle in the air?"

"It's probably a piece of installation art. Don't point, Cynthia, it's not polite."

Shirley presses another button and focuses back on me. "I'm sorry about that. They didn't tell the front desk because they thought you would go in through the window."

Eh? "Why would I go in through the window? That would be a dreadfully uncivilised way to behave."

"Right. Um. They're waiting for you in the Assembly Chamber. Would you.. like someone to show you up?"

"No, I'm.. fine. Shall I go up now?" She nods. "Thank you." I attach phase shifter clamps to the Gate and activate them before flying straight through the ceiling.

The floors blur past, then the Gate and I come out in the middle of the Assembly horseshoe, facing the mayor's seat. Which he isn't in. I turn-.

"Hello there!" Mister Johnson turns away from his PA and.. his.. Interim Director of Police Resources and Performance, who according to the ring is called Camilla Black. No idea why.. she's here..?

"Mister Johnson, good morning." There are actually several other people hanging around, politicians and civil servants of various stripes. I frown at them as Mister Johnson hurries around to the front of the horseshoe to get at me.

"Glad to have you here." He holds out his right hand and I take it. As we clasp he takes a grip on my forearm with his left and.. am I supposed to mirror the gesture? He doesn't look disappointed when I don't so I guess I wasn't. "So. Apparently you wanted to talk about our transportation infrastructure? Some dastardly villain planning some sort of mass kidnapping?" My smile becomes somewhat stilted. "Or terrorism? Rest assured that London's police stand ready to assist the Justice League-."

"Um, sorry, can we hold on a minute?" He stops. "To the best of my knowledge… Ring, check for me? Right. There are no attacks currently in the works. I'm here to talk about.. upgrading London's transportation infrastructure."

"Oh." He looks over at… Oh. Everyone involved in running security services answerable to the major's office. "Dash it."

"Sorry."

"No, no, clearly I was reading too much into it. Um, is it a problem if they sit in? The cabbies really try and gouge if we all leave at the same time."

I shake my head. "No, that's fine. Oh heck, you didn't throw out an Assembly meeting for this, did you?"

I can hear a couple of people trying not to laugh.

"Oh, it wasn't anything important. So, um… What's the stone ring thing?"

Right! Back on track. "If everyone would like to take their seats?" Mister Johnson nods twice and then strolls over to the chair at the open end of the horseshoe. The other seats around the table are swiftly occupied with a minimal amount of barging, and a few other people choose to watch from a standing position just behind them. The public gallery is empty, either because it's been cleared out or because it really wasn't that important. Once everyone's settled I move the Dolmen Gate to the right of the mayor.

"For near instantaneous travel over long distances, the Justice League use devices called 'Zeta Tubes'. You step in one end and -if you're authorised- you emerge at your destination about three seconds later. The problems with this system -including the truly ludicrous amount of money it costs to set up and run- mean that it isn't.. and may never be.. suitable for mass public use."

"This-" I nod at the stone ring. "-is a Dolmen Gate. Its design and construction have been a collaborative project between the Atlantean Conservatory of Sorcery and the Orange Lantern Corps." I pause and make eye contact with a few people. "We don't just do cakes, you know." There's some polite laughter. "When active, a pair of Dolmen Gates form a link which will cause someone who enters one to emerge from the other. There's no time lag, no loss of energy and no physical mechanisms to malfunction. And now, to give you a more thorough explanation…" I use a construct to snap the locking rune off the bottom of it, Sephtian's laboratory appearing on the far side. "I'd like to introduce its inventor, Professor Sephtian."

Sephtian steps up to the Gateway, flares his gills to take a deep breath, then steps through onto the carpet.

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Widdershins 3

next

18th January

08:32 GMT

He gets a few stares. I even hear a chair scrape back as someone fails a fear test, though I do them the courtesy of not looking around to see who it was. When most people hear 'Atlantean' they think of Purebloods like King Orin. For obvious reasons those with heavier physical alterations rarely leave the sea. I'm used to Sephtian's robes just sort of drifting around him but with only the thin film of water being generated by his jewellery to support them they're actually hanging down. He does a quick check of his arms to make doubly sure that the charms are working. Odd to see him out in broad daylight like this. I'm also used to the muting of colours caused by Atlantean lighting conditions. Here, the blue-grey colour of his skin and the obviously inhuman design of his eyes stand out all the more.

He takes a moment to look around at the audience, before shifting his legs up and down to test his ability to support his own weight. "Hm. Rather glad that worked." He then shifts his attention to me. "Paul?"

Oh right! I send a filament into his water field and extend the ring's translation facility to him. He can read English -if a bit slowly- but he struggles to speak more than a few simple sentences.

"Thank you." He takes a few steps outward towards the middle of the horseshoe and then turns to Mister Johnson, bowing slightly. "Your Honour."

"Um. Professor." He doesn't seem to be failing to take this in his stride any worse than he usually does. "Welcome to London. And, um, the surface."

"Thank you. It's very…" He looks around the room. "Bright. And airy."

"So, whereabouts is, um…" Mister Johnson waves his right index finger at the Gate. "Where does that come out at?"

"The other end is in a secure room in the research section of the Conservatory of Sorcery in Poseidonis, the capital city of Atlantis. Or.. given that we have a City-State system.. perhaps I should say 'crown city'? Poseidonis is located a little to the south of here and about half way across the Atlantic.. and a long way down. I journeyed approximately… Ah, conversion, what was it..? Four thousand kilometres, in no more time than it would take me to take a single step."

Getting more comfortable in lecture mode he begins walking around the horseshoe. "For the convenience and safety of your fair city the portal or 'Dolmen Gate' incorporates a subsystem to prevent the flow of water across the threshold. In Atlantis we use it to prevent water flow from areas of different pressure levels. Here.. well, it's essentially a hole to the bottom of the Atlantic. Water pressure would seek to equalise.. and you'd all get rather wet."

Mister Johnson tenses the muscles in his chin and nods. "Well I.. think we all appreciate you not doing that. So it's.. some sort of wormhole thing?"

I shake my head. "Wormhole techniques involve converting matter to energy, transmitting it and then reassembling it. That sort of thing still strikes me as rather unsafe.. though there are spacefaring species that use things like that."

Mister Johnson gets Sephtian's full attention. "I'm not.. familiar with wormholes. The.. Gates.. utilise a form of sympathetic binding. Essentially, they convince the universe that they are in fact one object, so walking or swimming through one naturally causes you to come out through the other."

"They're.. magic?"

"Arcanotechnology, yes. No one is 'casting' a spell. Rather, the magic is bound to the physical structure of the artefact."

"Right. Well. Gosh."

"The design is as good as I can make it. Now, we are looking for somewhere to field test it."

"You want us to use it?"

"Yes. Given London's perennial transportation difficulties this was the first place I thought of when the subject was raised."

"How… How many people can fit through it?"

"There is.. nearly no limit to the throughput. The size of the aperture itself is the sole limiting factor."

"So any number of people can walk through?"

"There may be slight difficulties if a significant proportion of them are powerful magic users, elementals or gods."

"Hm. Don't think we've got too many of those but, um… Exactly what might go wrong? People getting cut in half does rather give a bad impression."

"Oh, no, that can't happen. A person going through is either in one place or the other. We tested it thoroughly, and from the point of view of an external observer it looks like the part of the person that hasn't 'completed' its journey just.. 'fades in'."

"Hm." Mister Johnson gets up from his chair and comes around his desk to get a closer look. Sephtian gets a brief once over -not impolite, just curious- but it's the stone circle that gets most of his attention. "What would happen if I stuck my arm through there?"

"Boris!"

"Oh, come on Clive, it's perfectly safe. Well? What happens?"

"You'd.. get wet. And cold. And.. the pressure on the far side is quite a lot more than is safe for-."

"Allow me." I touch a filament to him. "Ring, protect but make the aura permeable by water at sea level pressure."

"Compliance."

"Right. Well. Here goes!" Mister Johnson sticks his left arm through up to the elbow, holds for a moment and then pulls it back, shaking water onto the carpet from his drenched suit sleeve. "Gosh, that was chilly!" He holds up his left arm. "Hey, someone take a picture!" A couple of people obediently take out their phones as he poses. "We could put this at East Croydon, take some of the pressure off Victoria. Or Victoria and Euston, bypass the underground."

"We were rather assuming that you'd want more than one pair."

"Oh? How many have you got?"

"How many do you want?"

"How..?" He blinks. "Gadzooks. Are you serious?"

"We only have six pairs at present. Each pair takes.. three days’ work to enchant. We may need to reconsider if you want more than fifty pairs, but the data we would get from their use-."

"How much would this cost? For fifty pairs, I mean."

"Nothing. The idea is to use London to prove the value of the system."

"And how much to run?"

"It doesn't require external power. I.. think one service a year should be sufficient. Since this is a demonstration, I'm prepared to offer the first decade's maintenance for free. After that.. we can discuss matters. Whatever the market rate turns out to be."

"How.. big.. can you make them?"

"A little bigger than this. Larger than that and we would need a new thaumatorium and the setup costs are astronomical."

"If you put them in sequence around the District and Circle lines…"

Boris brings his right hand to his mouth, thinking it over. "Wouldn't that rather scupper the Underground?"

I smile and raise my eyebrows. "And?"

He grins. "'And' indeed. Are you offering this to Paris? Or New York?"

"No."

Sephtian puts his right hand on my left shoulder. "He should say.. not yet and not for free. If this is met with success we will increase production and run it as a commercial enterprise."

"Alright." He pulls away slightly and addresses the room. "Quick show of hands. Who else thinks this is a great idea?"

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Widdershins 4

next

18th January

10:57 GMT

"Is 'e alright?" Francis nods at Sephtian as the Atlantean bends down to peer at the ducks huddled up on the bank of Southwark Park's pond.

"He's never been above the surface before. He is now one of a very small number of Atlanteans to have ever seen a bird of any sort."

"You say so, mate." He looks at his cigarette, has a quick look around and then sighs slightly before returning it to his jacket pocket. Sephtian and I are drawing a crowd and while smoking in public is legal in London littering isn't. "Must be nice, gettin' out in the fresh air."

"I wouldn't boast about 'fresh'. I've seen London's air pollution figures."

"Presentation go well?"

"I think so. But Britain doesn't have any diplomatic relationship with Atlantis. We'll need import licences, then there'll be contract negotiations…"

He frowns, bemused. "I thought you were gunna give them away?"

"Not exactly. We were going to lease them.. and do maintenance for ten years for free. We'd still have to hash out who's responsible for what, and they'll probably want a surface company to do insurance. I mean, do you think surface world insurance companies will be able to get their heads around magic related risks?"

He chuckles. "If they did, reckon I'd be a fuckin' millionaire by now."

"And then if someone decides to challenge everything in the courts -and the rail unions almost certainly will- we might still be hanging around a decade from now. I mean, look at the sodding airport expansion."

He thinks for a moment, and shakes his head. "When this gets out, who's gunna keep on about that? I mean, if you can just stick one of those things in Heathrow and another one in JFK, what's the bloody point of flying? Come to think of it, should I be looking for a new job meself?"

Ah heck. Global news network equals global overreaction. Building enough gates for a local system will keep Sephtian's team busy for half a year. After that, the plan was to try and get an Atlantean company interested and lease the designs to them. There's no way we can produce enough Gates in the short term to replace the global transportation links, but the markets are going to be driven mental by the idea that we might.

"No. I mean, airports might be a target for whoever takes this project on once there's an actual market, but I don't think we'll ever replace cabs. The Gates are strictly point to point, one to one." Not entirely true, we could make multiple-exit Gates but they're even more resource intensive. "I mean, Saturday nights, if you wanted to send everyone home using Gates you'd have to have one Gate for everyone in the pub. Even if the pub could afford it, there wouldn't be room for anything else."

He nods. "Nice to know."

"You're right about planes, though. Won't be for years, mind…" I frown as Sephtian stares at a tree, then gently runs his right forefinger down its trunk. World economics here are a little bit less insane than back home. I don't remember exactly when the last recession happened but I haven't seen any sign of it here. I wish I remembered more economic figures so I could judge whether it just hadn't happened yet or if there was an underlying difference between here and home. I should probably have thought about that a bit more before bringing the Gates to public attention.

"Suppose that'll mean cheaper holidays."

I turn my head to him and smile. "Oh, um, if there's somewhere you particularly want to go, just let me know. I don't mind flying your family around. I can even give you a tour of the Ice Fortress if you want."

"Oh. Thanks, mate." Sephtian wanders back in our direction, pausing briefly to stare in fascination at the crowds staring at us. "Where to next?"

"Ah, Mister Chandler. Would it be possible to take us to the 'Tower of London'? I understand that is this country's most notable prison for people with supernatural abilities."

"Well, yeah, it is, but they don't let the tourists in that bit. Be a bit of a crap prison if they did."

"Still, I would like to see it."

"Right you are, guv." He turns and starts back towards where we left his cab.

Sephtian dawdles for a moment, looking at the surface of the pond and then at the water around his own right hand. "I wonder…"

"Thinking of going for a swim?"

"No. I'm wondering what 'wind' feels like." The water around his hand flows up towards his shoulder, baring his skin. He then cautiously holds his hand up. "Hnm."

"Is that safe?"

"The lower pressure feels odd, but it isn't a problem. If I.. left it, it would become uncomfortable." Curiosity satisfied, he allows the water to cover him once more. He waves at the observers and then starts after Francis. "You said that there was something you wanted to show me today?"

"Yes, I.. just thought it might be a distraction."

"Constantine might value the journey, but I am more of a destination man."

"Alright. What do you know about mithril and orichalcum?"

"Ocean Master's armour is made of the former, King Orin's of the latter. Mithril we can still make, but it is incredibly resource intensive and.. the purity isn't all that it could be. As for orichalcum, it's a lost art. I was.. thinking about using the gold you provided and a sample from the royal vault to attempt to recreate-."

I take a small ingot out of subspace and hold it out to him. He takes it and starts studying it carefully. "There's a woman on Themyscira who can make both. The Amazon Royal Guard have full orichalcum gear. You know-" He extracts a wand from his robe and holds it against the sample with his left hand. "-how high metal purity makes enchanting easier? It turns out that it's the same for transmutation. I don't really know-."

His hands spasm and he drops sample and wand. "Mm-mm-mm-mm-mm..?"

I catch both with filaments. "-how big a deal this is. I wanted to talk to you about it?" He's shaking. "Um. Are you alright?"

"I. Um. Ug. Bh."

"She was happy to make more for me."

"Pure. It's pure."

"Yes, I knnnow."

"The best armour in Atlantis is that worn by King Orin….. aaaand my opinion as an expert is that this is superior. His… The orichalcum making up his armour… This makes it look shoddy."

"Can it handle enchantments? Or does the magic inherent-."

He nods in a ridiculously exaggerated motion. "Ooh yes. Yes. Yes it can. Oh my goodness me, yes."

"Because I was thinking.. armour? I mean, I don't know what the limits are here."

He snatches the ingot and wand back and starts scanning it again. "I'm… I'm not sure there are any."

back

Widdershins 5

next

19th January

09:05 GMT -5

"Mm-mm-mm-mm-mm..!" Mister Kord's hands shake as he holds the small jovium rod.

"Um. Are you alright?"

"Room temperature superconductor!"

"Ssssort of."

He looks at me like I just shot his puppy. "Not.. room temperature.. superconductor?"

"Sort of room temperature superconductor. See, when Io first showed it to me, I didn't actually know much about superconductors? Jovium doesn't actually…" Maybe if I just showed him? "Okay, just.. hold that rod in the middle?" He shifts his left hand to the middle and takes his right away. I lean across his desk and take a cigarette lighter and a sheet of newspaper out of subspace.

"Ah… You know a super thermal conductor will distribute that heat equally across its mass, right?"

"Just watch. And drop it if your hand gets hot."

"… 'kay?"

I roll the newspaper sheet up into a tube and press it against one end of the rod. Next, I hold the lighter up to the other and flick the spark wheel. A flame appears immediately. The jovium itself doesn't change in appearance but a second later the newspaper is on fire.

"Huh? But… That shouldn't…"

"Magic materials don't necessarily make sense in terms of… conventional physics."

"Okay. Heat moves from one end to the other instantly… Something to do with the flow of electrons within… Maybe.. light speed rather than instantaneous.. the photon? No, no, no, that wouldn't…" He slides his chair back slightly and bends down to rummage in his drawers. I put out the newspaper and lay it and the lighter down on the desk. "You got a smaller piece?"

"Yes? What sort of size-?"

"About-" He puts a small metal plate on his desk. "-the size-" Some wires follow it. "-of a dime." His head reappears as he puts what looks like… I think it's supposed to be a battery. He plugs the wires into-. Oh, an electromagnet. I take a reasonably dime sized piece out of subspace and use a filament to hold it just above the metal plate as he attaches the wires to the battery pack. "Now, a normal superconductor-."

"Floats in a magnetic field, I know."

He looks me in the eyes, then turns his head slightly to the side. "So.. do I get a clue..?"

"Nope."

"Hm." He takes hold of the jovium piece in his right hand and stares at it. "You're not putting a shield around it, so it can't explode… Amazons would have tried heat… Do they have magnets?"

"Weak ones."

"Hmm." He leans forwards to stare at the metal, left hand on the battery pack's on button and right hand on his chin. "So: either it floats like it's supposed to, or it.. doesn't? If it channels energy it might.. produce a magnetic hose? Or just do nothing?" He sags slightly. "Welp, there goes my productivity for the week."

"Are you going to turn it o-."

He holds up his right hand. "Bup bup bup! I want to work this out."

"Okay..?" I wait for a moment but nothing else is forthcoming. "Made any progress with the armour?"

"Yeah, you owe Aaron down in testing a new arm."

"What?"

"Broken in three places. Still not really sure how he did it."

"What was he doing?"

"Super jumps." He shrugs, still staring at the metal. "It's not like a computer game. You don't have any control while in the air. If you don't judge the launch right… Least it wasn't the elbow this time."

"So… Is the problem with the thinking cap system itself?"

"I think the problem's thick skulls. A couple of guys have actually volunteered for the implanted version."

I take a moment to absorb that. My own armour is controlled by a system which has learned my movements, and I hardly ever use it without the ring anyway. But -thanks to Theodore Knight and Nylor Truggs… And Doctor Cizko I suppose- I have the full schematics of the Thinker's Cap. A mind-machine interface. I had hoped that connecting the wearer's nervous system to the armour might bypass the need for learning. "But we already know that would work."

"Hey, you commissioned the research. You say 'wearable', we do wearable." He momentarily looks away from the metal to meet my eyes. "Lot of money in power armor, though. Government money."

"Maybe if they can run a super prison for a few months without a break out I'll consider it."

"Hm, yeah. Okay. I'm going to saaaaay… Float!" He flicks the switch and lets go. The jovium drops onto the metal plate with a metallic click. "Darn it!"

"How about the invisibility?"

"Why doesn't it… Oh, um, we made it work, and we think we can shield the wearer from the 'crazy making' effect. Maybe. What you end up with is more like a mech than a suit of armor, though."

"You think you can shield..?"

"None of the animals we stuffed in the cockpit showed any behavioral changes. Until we switch over to doing double blind Human tests it's hard to be sure. Aaand that risks a bunch of invisible crazy people."

"Does it affect robots? Computer circuitry?"

"Not that we've noticed." He turns the battery off and picks up the jovium disc. "Who exactly gave you this stuff?"

"Io." I generate a life sized construct of her, floating just above the ground.

He stares for a moment. Maybe I should have given her more clothes… "Oh, I have to have-. A.. meeting with her. Can she.. leave.. Themyscira?"

"Physically? Yes. She'd start ageing again but it's not like she's that old. I'm not sure if she'd want to, though."

"Does she understand how this-" He wiggles the jovium disk. "-stuff works?"

"I doubt it. Her background is in metallurgy. Smithing, not physics or thaumaturgy.."

"And she's the only one who can make it?"

"She told me that she learned from Hephaestus. Apart from that? I think so."

"She give you anything else?"

I remove the construct, then deposit the samples of orichalcum and mithril that Sephtian didn't purloin on his desk. "This one-" I point to the mithril. "-is about eight times stronger than titanium for a third of the weight."

His eyes widen. "Ahh?"

"And this one-" I point to the orichalcum. "-is a bit heavier but a lot stronger."

"Ahh?"

"Apparently they both take enchantments-."

He lunges across the desk and grabs me by the shirt. "I need to meet her!"

back

Widdershins 6

next

19th January

17:21 GMT +3

Myrto regards the chess board between us with suspicion. "Why are we not using the same pieces?"

On her side 'king' Hippolyta ranks up next to 'queen' Alkyone. Representations of Myrto herself take the place of the usual bishop, Charis the knight and Philomela the rook.

"Because we're not the same people."

On mine a robed Controller takes the king spot next to Queen Ophidian. I'm the bishop and my knights are represented by two Tamaranian warriors who I hope look something like Koriand'r and Komand'r. Sadly, with no Green Lantern presence inside the Vega Systems Stewart's ring didn't know exactly what they look like so I've guessed at eighties hair and swimming costume armour. My rooks are Vril Dox. Heh, though if he actually found himself in this position they'd probably turn out to have been robots all along.

"The pieces do the same thing, they just look a little different."

Her pawns are Amazon warriors while mine are Darkstars. Bit of a false equivalence, there. Pointy stick launchers versus maser cannons?

"I do not think I should play this with you."

Not moving away though, are you? "Why ever not? There's never been any prohibition against men playing board games in y-. In our society. You don't have any duties to attend to. You could make an argument that I shouldn't talk to you outside the-" I give her a salacious smile. "-festivals, but Queen Hippolyta herself authorised me to."

"Very well." She narrows her eyes slightly at me. "If you are attempting to convince me of your martial skill by showing that you have mastered a board game-."

"Pff! I haven't mastered chess! I've barely played for years." I pick up the Darkstar in front of my Controller and move it forwards one square.

Pe7-e6

"Then what do you hope to gain?" She considers the board for a moment before picking up Hippolyta's Charis and moving her to the board's edge.

Kng1-h3

"Relationship building." I advance my Controller's 'me' four squares. "When I spoke to Alkyone I think I was unnecessarily confrontational. In my defence, I rather like Diana and your captain refused to provide evidence against her or even tell me what the charges are supposed to be."

Bf8-c5

Alkyone's Charis moves towards the centre. "Perhaps you should apologise."

Knb1-c3

I move my Ophidian up to her knight. "Yes, but she doesn't seem to want to talk to me. And shouting it past you seems a bit rude."

Qd8-h4

Alkyone's Charis moves across the centre line, threatening 'me' and capable of defending Hippolyta if necessary. I retreat a square and a bowwoman comes forwards to protect the vulnerable Charis.

Knc3-e4 Bc5-b6 Pd2-d3

Hm. Myrto doesn't seem to have the same deep seated desire conflicts that her immediate superior does. "If you want me to prove my skill as a warrior I would be happy to tell you about the fights I've been in." Komand'r comes out to threaten Charis.

Kng8-f6

"Hpf." She actually gives me a small smile. "If you wish to boast of your valour, you have chosen the wrong time of the year." Alkyone's Myrto crosses the board to threaten my.. Ophidian. Oh dear.

Bc1-g5

I pull her back a single square. "I'm not here to seduce every woman on the island. Not.. that you're unattractive-"

Qh4-h5

"Aphrodite forbid." Alkyone advances one square.

Qd1-d2

"-but where I'm from, we consider the ideal family structure to involve the biological parents caring for their offspring. Siring a load of children would make it impossible for me to give them the attention I'd want to." I move a Darkstar forward to try and either chase off her Myrto or free Dox. "And I.. think I'd want at least some emotional engagement with my partner."

Ph7-h6

She retreats her Myrto a square. "Are you unusual among the men of your homeland?"

Bg5-f4

"A bit? Oh, not about.. that. I'm sure you'd find plenty who would be happy to 'fire and forget'." She frowns slightly and shakes her head as Komand'r captures Charis. "Loose and forget?"

Knf6-e4

That gets a snort as Komand'r falls to a bowwoman. Suddenly free to move, Ophidian crosses the board to support me.

Pd3-e4 Qh5-c5

She hesitates for a moment. "How does the.. king and the rook thing work?"

"You move Hippolyta two spaces towards Philomela and then Philomela goes on the other side of Hippolyta." She nods and makes the move.

e1-a1

Darn it, I'm being out manoeuvred. "You don't seem to have the same problem with Amazons having children that Alkyone does." I move me up to threaten Alkyone. Need to get more pieces out!

Bb6-a5

She shrugs. "If the Queen has decided to encourage childbearing I trust that her decision is correct. I am a mother myself and my.. paramour was a comely enough man. I liked him." She moves a bowwoman forwards to protect Alkyone. "Captain Alkyone is concerned because you were selected by the Dragon."

Pc2-c3

"And what do you make of me?" I advance a Darkstar to threaten Myrto, prompting her to retreat into a position to threaten the Ophidian. I pull her back a single square.

Pg7-g5 Bf4-e3 Qc5-c6

"Had I not known of the association, I would most likely have assessed you favourably." Alkyone advances to the centre, threatening Dox. "As it is, you could merely be an innocent she has involved."

Qd2-d4

"Involved in what?" I move Dox forwards a square. I need to deal with Alkyone. Myrto gives me a slightly suspicious look. "If I'm innocent, then it's-" Ugh. "-part of your job to protect your weak and feeble menfolk. If I'm in on it then either A, I know anyway, B, don't know but wouldn't care or C, would care and so can be turned to your cause. Explaining what you think is happening doesn't cost you anything."

Rh8-h7

She moves a bowwoman forwards. "Except inform her of what we know. If you are false."

Pg2-g3

"You've been in prison for over eighty years. Even if I don't tell her what you tell me, you are in no position to threaten her. She wouldn't gain anything except a salve for her curiosity." I advance a Darkstar to threaten Charis. "And whatever she's been doing, if she's been at it for eighty five years then she's clearly not in any sort of rush. Plus, you might get information out of me."

Pg5-g4

"There is reason in what you say." Charis comes forwards, out of the way. I advance a Darkstar. "However, the decision is not for me to make."

Knh3-f4 Pb7-b6

"Can you talk to Alkyone about it?" She advances a bowwoman to exchange with my Darkstar and I take the trade before advancing my newly liberated 'me'.

Pf2-f3 Pg4-f3 Pe2-f3 Bc8-a6

She moves her Myrto to the side of the board to threaten the area around my Controller. I'd like to castle soon, please. "I see no harm in it."

Bf1-h3

"Thank you." I advance another Darkstar to give Koriand'r some space.

Pd7-d6

"Did you come to Themyscira today merely to entertain me?" Philomela comes forwards one square.

Rd1-d2

"No, I'm mostly here to speak to Io. I've been able to help her in the forge a bit and it turns out there's a huge market for her work in the rest of the world." I advance 'me' into a position protected by the Ophidian. She advances a bowwoman.. and back we go.

Ba6-c4 Pb2-b3 Bc4-b5

"Your need for arms is that great?" She pairs up her Philomelas and I get my Koriand'r out of the way.

Rh1-d1 Knb8-d7

"No, but our need for building materials is." Her Charis moves forwards and I finally castle.

Knf4-d5 e8-e1

"Building materials?" She looks a little amused. "How would you build something in her forge?"

"We can't. That's why I'm going to be asking very nicely."

back

Widdershins 7

next

19th January

19:33 GMT +3

Io and I rematerialise on Lemnos and I link arms with her before she has a chance to get her bearings. I also take the opportunity to cover her in clothing appropriate to the temperature; away from Themyscira's second summer the temperatures on Aegean islands can get quite low in winter.

"What did you do?" She takes in the rocky hillside for a moment, then slowly turns her head towards the town of Myrina. "Where are we?"

"Lemnos, of course."

She jerks her arm free. "When I said that I wanted to consult with Lord Hephaestus, I did not mean in person!"

"Why not? Diana gave me his actual address, and he'll be the third Olympian I've met face to face."

"You are a hero. Of course the gods take an interest in your life. I am-." She blinks as a new realisation hits her. "Oh gods. I'm not on Themyscira anymore."

"Nope." I point down into Myrina. "That's Myrina, a town of about five thousand people. See how they're not all swarming up the hill to capture you and.. offer you up as a sacrifice on.. some vaguely phallic altar to the god of patriarchy?" I spread my arms. "Welcome to the world. It's a town. They fish. In the summer there are tourists. Over that way there's some farms and over that way is where Hephaestus built his first workshop on Earth after Zeus threw him off Olympus." I start walking in that direction. "Coming?"

I hear nothing for a moment, then the sound of her boots on the rocky path behind me. "Did you plan this in advance?"

"I made a point of learning about the Olympians after I so magnificently failed to notice Eris and Hera. If you mean 'did I always plan to bring you here', no. I thought that I'd just need to plead my case to you. And maybe Queen Hippolyta."

I can already see the entrance to his home up ahead. It's made with local stone and blends in with its surroundings. The upper section looks ruined, but the subterranean part is supposed to be quite nice.

"This is truly nothing to you, is it?"

"It'll be a bit of a blow if he advises you to say 'no'."

"You are walking to the home of a god, uninvited, because you wish for me to share the secrets of divine smithing with this.. 'Ted Kord'?"

"Because I want you to work with him. And probably teach other people."

"I… Did you have an apprentice in mind?"

"I was thinking more like dozens or.. even hundreds of people. Get them hammering metal until they're competent and then put them to work." I glance back at her as I step onto Hephaestus' stone covered patio and she's pulling a face. "We can use machines for shaping the metal, we just need people for the transmuting."

"If their souls are not at one with the metal they will not be able to do it. And even then it is not certain." Let's see. Hephaestus does mechanisms but not electronics or magics not directly associated with his nature. "I tried showing Pallas-."

Io cuts herself off as a section of wall drops into the floor. She gives me an interrogative look but I just shake my head. I know roughly where the opening mechanism is but I hadn't got as far as triggering it yet. A moment later I hear a familiar voice coming from inside.

"…woman. Or a man. I've forgotten which you prefer. Whichever it is, the important thing is that it involves you leaving this cave."

That was Hera. She sounds different when she's sober. More authoritative.

"Yes mother."

I'm assuming that was Hephaestus? He sounds a lot like the old man from Up.

"Good. Well, you think about that. I'm going to go lie on a beach. Or possibly a waiter." She comes up the steps at the end of the short tunnel, her attention focused behind her. She's wearing a white dress which displays her 'full bodied' figure to best advantage. She cleans up fairly well. "We'll see how things go." She checks her bag for a moment and only then looks up to see the two of us. Io -who's bowing at the waist- gets dismissed almost immediately while apparently I warrant a closer look. "Or maybe I won't need to go that-" I hold out my palms, showing the rings. "-fffarr…"

"Queen Hera." I give her a shallow but polite bow. "Orw… Should I still use the title?"

"Until Zeus tricks some other poor woman into marrying him, yes."

There's a creaking noise as someone else mounts the stairs. "Who is it, mother?"

"My divorce counsellor. And-" She frowns for a moment, then smiles in recognition. "-an Amazon. One of your worshippers." A slightly closer look. "Not exactly pretty, but she looks like she's built for a forge." She sniffs. "And smells like it too."

"I don't date worshippers, mother. And I'm married."

"To a harlot. And you're not really in a position to be fussy."

Hephaestus looks towards the opening as he reaches the top of the stairs. He's a short, broad shouldered man with long greying hair tied back in a loose ponytail and a bristly beard a shade greyer. His right leg is twisted and withered, supported by a metal brace which is what is making the creaking noise. "Io. Good to see you. And the blatant disregard for propriety means you must be Paul. Diana said you might be stopping by. Welcome to Lemnos."

"Lord Hephaestus."

"Oh, don't bother with that." He shuffles to the side of the passageway and beckons her inside. "I've always got time for the most skilled amongst my mortal followers. Just head down to the workshop, I'll be with you in a minute."

Io straightens up slightly. "Thank you, my lord." She enters the building, edges past Hephaestus with an expression of confusion and excitement on her face, then heads down the stairs. Then-.

"You're here to talk shop too, aren't you?" Hera is pressing herself up against my back, her chin on my left shoulder and her arms around my chest. She's, um… A well developed woman. "You know, there was a time when mortal heroes sought out goddesses. We're very friendly when properly.. appeased."

"Athena rather spoilt that for everyone." I gently pry her hands away and turn to face her. "I'm very sorry, your majesty, but I do need to speak to Lord Hephaestus about metallurgy."

"Well, fine." She gives me a dismissive wave with her right hand as she turns to leave. "Don't blame me if I've found someone else to play with by the time you're finished."

"… … I won't!" I watch her go for a moment, blink, then turn back to Hephaestus. "Has.. she been.. staying with you since..?"

Hephaestus looks at me with tired, defeated eyes. "Paul, I am over four thousand years old. I do not need my mother picking up after me. Have you seen what she's done to my workshop?"

"Tidied things away?"

He rubs his face with his right hand. "I can't find anything. Now, I'm happy she's left Zeus. I really am. And it was nice to see her. For.. maybe a whole day." He meets my eyes. "You want my aid with something?"

"Um. Yes?"

"Persuade her to go someplace else and we can talk about it."

back

Widdershins 8

next

19th January

19:46 GMT +3

I trudge down the steps towards Hephaestus' workshop. Dimly I can hear-

"…looked pretty, but we never really found a use…"

-him explaining.. something or other to Io. I don't remember Hephaestus at all from the comics and I don't think I should treat the one Justice League Unlimited episode he was in as a guide. The steps take a right angled turn to the left and I start to see into the interior of his workroom. Light comes from a series of flame-wreathed metal rods attached to the walls like torches, as well as Hephaestus' own smelter and furnace. There's an anvil as well as benches and tool racks, though the racks look curiously empty. Of the tools that remain some have runic devices carved into their surface while others look mundane. I think I even recognise a few modern brand names on the more sophisticated ones. Well away from the heavy heat sources is a planning area complete with diagram laden drawing board and metal technical drawing tools. There are also a few magazines, titles like 'Materials Today' and 'Engineering'. A slightly chipped mug bears the legend 'Smiths have the best tools'.

"Oh, you're back already." Hephaestus turns away from Io and the glowing green crystal he was showing her. "No luck? Or did you just get a bit too.. carried away?"

"No, she's gone."

"Quick work."

"Look… Not.. that I mind sexually assertive women, but I found that quite uncomfortable."

"Oh?" He waves his right hand dismissively. "Happens to the best of us."

Huhh. "Queen Hera and I did not have sex. I persuaded her that she would be better off relocating to the southern hemisphere where it's still summer. I bought her a suite in a five star hotel in Australia, paid for for the next two years."

"Mm." He nods. "Sensible."

"I also took the time to explain modern contraceptive devices." And.. marital aids. I do not want to have that conversation again. She kept getting me to repeat the bits she found most amusing.

He looks thoughtful. "You know, a lot of trouble could have been avoided if someone had discussed that with Zeus. Little late by the time you got involved."

"I'm not even sure they work on gods."

"Chemical ones wouldn't, but unless fertility was an express part of the domain of the god in question barriers should work the same."

Io looks a little lost. "I'm sorry my lord, but.. 'barriers'?"

He looks back at her and sighs. "Aphrodite should really have talked to you ladies about this. You see, after-."

I wince. "Can we talk business first? Please?"

He shrugs. "If you insist. What was it you wanted?"

"I want to share knowledge of the working of mithril, orichalcum and jovium with the world. To use them in major engineering projects and technological innovations. A-and from the way a mage of my acquaintance was reacting, magic and arcanotechnology as well."

"Okay. And?" Io blinks at him. "What, you want me to make it for you?" He has a look around the forge. "Sorry, but even if I was prepared to do nothing with my time but help you, it's Vulcan's turn with our Etna foundry until the summer solstice. I'd only be able to make a few pounds a day. If you were doing any sort of big project-."

I take a gold coin out of subspace and toss it to him. He catches it with his left hand, examines it for a moment and then puts it in his mouth and bites it. "Complete purity. Diana never told me power rings could do that." He walks over to a pile of rock samples and bends awkwardly to pick one up. There's a slight shine to it. Metal ore? "Thing is, what bottlenecks a mortal smith -even a great one-" He glances at Io with a thin smile on his lips. "-doesn't mean all that much to a god like me." He puts the rock down on the anvil before walking away to pick up a runic hammer from where it leaned against the wall. He hefts it to reacquaint himself with the weight and balance before walking back to the furnace and thrusting it head first into the fire. "Io, could you work the bellows for me?"

"Of course, my lord."

She pumps and the flames grow brighter and hotter. Hephaestus' smile broadens in satisfaction. I note that he's not wearing protective gloves or a mask. "This hammer is called 'Flame Drinker'. Not much of a weapon, but it's great for transferring heat." His smile dims. "Vulcan doesn't know how good he has it. Did you know that unlike Ares, Mars is god of agriculture? And at least he had the decency to marry Venus. Sure, he's not all that bright and he could stand to wash more, but at least he shows a polite interest."

"Do you.. intend to follow your mother's example?"

"My marriage was commanded by Zeus. I'm not sure if the reasons for it still matter, but I'm not going to try my luck with him now." He looks at Io. "Okay, that should do it." She steps back and he takes a firmer grip on the hammer. "Cool."

The flames vanish and a wave of cold air passes through the workroom. Hephaestus waits for a moment and then pulls out the hammer. The runes on its head are now glowing the white-red of hot iron. "Yeah, that's about right. Io, could you get the crucibles?" She takes five small bowls from a shelf and puts them down on the anvil. Each one has a slightly differently coloured interior, residue from whatever he uses them for melting. "Now…" He picks up a nearby set of tongs, grips the rock with it and holds it over the first crucible. "Gold." He brings the hammer down, tapping the ore gently. One of the runes goes out and there's a slight hissing noise as molten yellow metal runs out of the sample. He waits a moment until it's finished then moves on to the next crucible. "Silver." The hammer comes down again and this time the liquid metal is pale silver. "Copper." Again. "Zinc." Again. "And last and very definitely least, everything else." The remaining rock melts out of the tongs as he strikes it.

Hmm. Io looks entranced, but the most interesting part of that to me was the hammer itself. The ability to perfectly draw heat away from an area and store it somewhere else, that has possibilities. The rapid smelting..? Though interesting, that probably isn't a technique mortal magic users can learn fast enough to be much use, to say nothing of Mister Kord's engineers.

"I think Io was more worried about how you'd feel about your cult's secrets being shared."

"Why?" He turns to her. "Io, I didn't show you how to transmute metals so you'd be able to lord it over the other Amazons. I taught you because I knew you'd use it."

"Yes, my lord, but… The people he wishes me to teach do not worship the Olympians. I wasn't sure if that would be acceptable."

"Don't worship us? That isn't exactly a short list." He makes a quick inspection of the hammer before lowering it to rest against the anvil. "Io, if I'm not prepared to share what I know, if I'm not prepared to teach people with enquiring minds and restless hands, then I don't deserve their worship. That said-" He turns back to me. "-if you actually want my active participation..?"

"I can put small statues of you in the rooms in which the work will be undertaken and we can probably do something on your festival days. Can't promise that anyone will take it seriously…"

"That would be nice. The Amazons dropped the Hephaesteia out of their calendar entirely."

"You.. want me to teach them?"

"Io, I gave that knowledge to you. How you use it now is up to you. That said, I broadly approve of just about all work done in my domain…" He turns back to me. "This isn't just going to be weapons, right?"

"We're still investigating the limits of the materials, but no. We're not limiting it to weapons."

"What were you planning to start with?"

"Power transmission with jovium, and a modified Dolmen Gate that uses orichalcum wire rather than gold wire."

"Dolmen Gates?"

"Upright stone circles. You walk through one, you appear at the other."

"Oh, like Fae Rings." I nod. "I didn't think your society used magic any more?"

"We do a bit, but no, we had to go to Atlantis for the expertise for that. I'm trying to bring together all sorts of useful knowledge and get the people who use it to work together to achieve more."

"And Eris is okay with you doing that, is she?"

"Major social shifts involve more chaos than stagnation." I shrug. "I like to see things get built."

Hephaestus nods solemnly. "And so do I. I think we can do business."

back

Widdershins 9

next

20th January

07:59 GMT -6

I float awkwardly in the air above my and Guy's usual sparring area over the Chihuahuan Desert. Given all of the flashing lights there have been out here over the past three months I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that we've attracted a small audience. Fortunately the owners of the dusty four wheel drive vehicles that turned up today were understanding about the need to stay well back.

"So…" Difficult to work out what to say, really. "They.. give you any trouble? About the ring?"

Lantern Stewart moves his eyes to look at me, while otherwise remaining facing the direction of… Not sure what he's looking at. Away from me, certainly. "No."

"Did the.. Guardians want to talk to you about it..?"

"It's standard practice when a Lantern encounters something capable of destroying a power ring. They weren't angry, they just wanted to know what had happened."

"Will Lantern Jordan be joining us?"

"No."

"On patrol?"

This time he turns his head slightly. "Do you actually know what Gardner's been doing?"

"Teaching other Greenies assimilation resistance, I hope?"

"Yeah. Actually made a formal recommendation about our training practices." I do a small and hopefully subtle air punch. "Salaak was so surprised that he actually said it was a good idea. Out loud. Said he'd forward it for consideration."

"Okay?"

"Then Gardner requested permission to undergo the M'eelam Na'aquall ritual." I give him a blank look. "You don't know what that is?"

I raise my right hand. "Stewart riiioooohhh." I grind to an awkward halt before lowering my right hand again. "N-no, no idea."

He looks away again. "The ritual's halfway between a journey of self discovery and a demonstration of self mastery. It involves.. going inside the C-. The Green Central Power Battery and journeying through your own mindscape. Guess all that meditation you've been doing must have rubbed off on him."

Or he's trying to learn to regulate his connection with Ion. "Do all Green Lanterns go through it?"

He shakes his head. "No. Anyone who passed basic can ask for the chance to try. Most don't bother. It doesn't make you any more powerful. Not by itself anyway. Thing is, passing it is required if you want to join the Honor Guard."

"Is Guy getting promoted?"

"Not as far as I know. Can't imagine Gardner keeping quiet about it if he were." Noo, neither can I. "But between the training sessions and the ritual, it looked like he was."

I think about it for a moment, then nod. "Jordan jumped in right after Guy came out, didn't he?"

"You bet he did. Which effectively means that I'm doing solo duty in this Sector right now."

"I'd.. offer to help, but I can't leave the system."

"Gardner's coming back until Hal finishes up." He creates a digital clock just above his ring. "In fact, he-."

"Hey guys." We both turn in the air to see Guy floating just behind us. He's wearing a green overcoat to go with his usual sleeveless t-shirt. "What's up?"

"Was it a tight fit, getting your head out of the Central Power Battery?"

"Eeh, we made do." He looks around, smiling beneficently at the desert, closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. "Good to be back."

"Can we get started yet?"

"Oh, got a couple a' messages for the two of you. John, the Guardians want me t' teach you t' resist orange light stuff, so we should probably do some a' that today."

"Makes sense. Losing one ring is unfortunate. Losing two looks like carelessness."

"Yeah, but that's not why. Paul, I got some bad news." I brace myself. "Spoke t' the Green Man yesterday. He's the guy keeping-."

"Keeping an eye on Vega."

"Right." He takes another breath. "Those Construct Lanterns Larfleeze has? They're out and about. Most a' them are staying inside the treaty line, but a couple have headed out."

My eyes widen slightly. "That's.. not good. Did he say which ones?"

"He was ordered not to approach." I nod. Sensible. "Said they were headed roughly in this direction but there's a lotta space between here and there."

"Larfleeze?"

"Still sitting tight."

"And the other thing? The rings?"

He shrugs. "If they're out there, we haven't seen 'em. We had all the Lanterns in Sectors between here and there check the predicted flight path. They didn't find anything, and given how Oranges are supposed to usually behave…"

I nod. Anyone avaricious enough to draw a ring to them should be very obvious if they're using it. On worlds with sophisticated communications infrastructure the news would spread quickly and a Green Lantern could pretty much just check in to find out. On a more primitive world it could be a problem but their scope for malevolence would be a lot less. "Just in case, it might be an idea to have other Lanterns come here, practise detecting Orange Lanterns and resisting assimilation with me."

Guy grins. "Offering yourself up as a training dummy? I'll pass it on, but I don't really think the Guardians 'll go for it."

"Why? I'd have thought that they'd be overjoyed-." Guy and Stewart both raise an eyebrow. "Um, satisfied? To have some assurance that their Lanterns could fight Orange Lanterns effectively."

Stewart gives a small shrug. "Maybe they think you're still a risk. The Ophidian is still in your Lantern."

Guy gives him a look. "Or maybe they don't like him proving they lied to us about Vega and the Psions."

"How is that going down in your corps?"

"Most of us hadn't even heard of Vega. Everyone who had?" He shrugs. "Operational security. Oh, hey, that reminds me." He pulls his coat aside slightly, revealing-.

"Is that a gun?"

"Neural disruptor. Messes up force fields and disrupts nervous systems but doesn't kill people. Green Lantern Corps approved sidearm."

Stewart frowns. "Really?"

"Yeah, it's in the field manual and everything. I know, I was surprised too."

"I think I'll stick with magic bullets, thanks."

Stewart loses patience. "Are we actually going to get any practice in today?" Guy and I grin at each other and simultaneously generate construct armour. "Hey, what-?!"

back

Widdershins 10

next

20th January

16:57 GMT -5

I perform a few last minute checks on the… I hesitate to call it a 'cosmic treadmill' because it isn't one. It isn't designed to travel through time no matter how fast you run on it. It certainly can't give you super speed, though it is only a few malfunctions away from propelling someone -briefly- at super speed directly into the protective force fields which surround it. What it does is use various pieces of New God technology to create a treadmill that can cope with a runner moving at super speed. Wallace's latest test-.

"Grayven?" I look around as Artemis enters the laboratory. Arms folded. Not a good sign.

I turn around to give her my undivided. "Artemis. What can I do for you?"

"I thought you were going to tell him."

Ah. Yes. That. "I was.. and.. then.. there was the riot, and Crassus, and chasing down Kobra." I frown slightly. "And you didn't tell me what that problem you mentioned was."

"Oh." She stops and nearly looks back at the exit. "It's not.. really… Important." Then her irritation overcomes her… What, embarrassment? "But it's not as important as Wally not needing to eat like a pig anymore."

"I was going to run a few more tests and give him the news today. But actually, I'm far more concerned about potential bad news than good news. Artemis-" I lock the doors and block internal monitoring. "-whatever it is, you need to tell me."

Her head slightly bowed, she takes a quick look around the room before hurriedly walking up to me and motioning for me to lean down. "I'm…" She takes a deep breath. "Late."

I blink. "Wallace's session isn't for another couple of minutes. If you want to watch-."

"No, not-." Irritation and embarrassment war with one another on her face. "Late-late."

"Undead?"

"I mean my period's late." She makes an expression of angry exasperation. "Urahh!"

"Oh, that." Quick scan? "Nothing to worry about." She looks slightly mollified. "Can't talk about Zatanna, but Barda's the same. No more cramping, no more mood swings aaand no more blood pouring out of your genitals every month. I'll keep monitoring you, but until you actually want to have children I wouldn't worry."

She takes a moment to absorb that. "And.. then..?"

"Again, shouldn't be a problem. New Gods don't have the crazy population growth you might expect from an ageless race but we're well within replacement levels. Worst comes to the worst I'm perfectly happy to assist with reproductive cloning." She looks a little uncomfortable. "But I want to emphasise: it shouldn't. There shouldn't be any reason why you wouldn't be able to conceive naturally."

She nods, a little closer to normal. "Okay. Thanks…" Her face comes back up, right index finger pointed at my nose. "But you promise to tell-" There's a beep from the door. "-Wally!"

Unlock, internal monitoring to normal. The door opens and Wallace walks in wearing his yellows. Apokoliptian armour tries to resist the very things which allow the treadmill to work in the first place. "Of course. Wallace, do you mind if Artemis sticks around to watch?"

"Aah…" He looks at her and shrugs. "No, she's fine." He puts a bottle of water on a side table and walks over to the treadmill. "We starting with this again?"

"I thought we would." I turn back to the control system, Artemis coming alongside me to watch what I'm doing. "I'm going to try pushing a little further this time." He nods. "Normal protocols apply: if it starts going too fast or something unexpected happens, tell me and I'll slow it down as quickly as it's safe to do so." Another nod. "I'll bring it up to half the speed of sound in five seconds, and then.. we'll go from there."

He climbs up onto the deep black material which makes up the substance of the running platform and lowers his goggles onto his eyes. "You could probably go a bit quicker than that. I think I'm accelerating faster than I used to."

"Standardised testing, Wallace."

He walks to the middle of the platform and turns to look at me. "Yeah, but we're not really getting any new data at the low end."

"I'm monitoring changes in your body as well, remember." He gives me a reluctant nod and then returns his attention to his 'target', assuming a ready stance. I put my hands on the controls. "Starting in two… One…" I press the activation button and Wallace begins running on the spot. This part -as well as several contingency responses for if something goes wrong faster than I can compensate- is pre-programmed, letting me focus on his readouts. His heart rate is insane, but then his whole body is sped up. Anything I do to compensate, to work out how fast it is compared to the rest of him is.. educated guesswork at best. After a few attempts I decided that the only real way to tell if he was in distress was to get feedback from him. Sure, I can use Velocity Ten to briefly move fast enough to intervene, but how would I know when to administer it?

The treadmill doesn't look like it's moving but Wallace's movements are already blurry. Since his body and head stay in roughly the same place those are more solid but his arms and legs are reduced to smears of colour. I turn my head towards Artemis. "Even at this comparatively low speed he would struggle to hear us. I have to use the ring to speed up anything I want to him to hear." She nods, her attention focused on Wallace. "Ring, message. Second stage acceleration starting. Try to stay centred. Transmit."

There's a very brief noise, almost immediately followed by a second.

"Got it Grey-man."

"Gray man?"

I press another button and the treadmill accelerates towards twice the speed of sound. We found early on that Wallace now benefits from some -or possibly all- of the same physics opt outs as his uncle, so no risk of a sonic boom. "My name's Grayven, I'm male, I'm grey. It works." When we first started I brought the acceleration up only very slowly, but at the speed his body is now working that made it painfully slow for him. For a fraction of a second Wallace moves back very slightly on the conveyor but he immediately rallies. In fact, he's a little too far forwards. I press another button to trigger the 'centre' reminders.

"What does that mean?" Artemis is pointing to one of the readouts. It's looking a little high… Not the first time it's done that.

"Arcane field strength. That's actually lower than it was the first time he went this fast."

"So he's using magic to go faster?"

"Nnnot consciously. It's like when you focus to send an arrow through a solid object." Another check of the monitors. Everything looks good here… "Ring, message. Okay, Wallace. Going to push it a little now. If you need to use the override, do it. Transmit." The sound is gone too fast for me to hear it.

"Go for it."

I nod, then rapidly tap a few more buttons. High acceleration, high jerk. I watch the arcane field strength indicator and there's a sudden peak which then drops back down. Hm. Wallace himself doesn't seem to be having any difficulty. Artemis narrows her eyes slightly and leans forwards. "Is something.. flickering in there?"

I'm not calling it 'speed lightning'. "Yes. It appears to be a side effect of him moving at extreme speed. Or possibly the thing which enables it."

"How fast is he going?"

"Now?" I check. "About twelve times the speed of sound."

Her eyes widen. "I thought he could only go about one."

I shrug. "That used to be true. I haven't told him exactly how fast he's been going in there."

"What!?"

"Blind trials generate the best data. And since I'm ruining that today anyway…" I press a red button on the bottom of the controls and the readout changes to display 0.0006461. Another tap and the bottom three numbers blur. Ring, Velocity Ten.

I'm not sure how fast my body is moving relative to his. His arms and legs are still blurs but I can see his facial expression clearly. Confidence, determination… I think he's enjoying this. There's a dull, slow ping from the controls as the number reaches 0.002. He doesn't seem to be in difficulty. Ring, increase jerk factor. I've only got a few moments more until the Velocity… There it goes. Another ping at normal pitch as the number reaches 0.01. A few more… I don't want to call them 'lightning flashes' because they aren't electrical in nature. Arcane field increasing quite a lot… Still not really at a worrying level. It's below what Zatanna uses for low level spells. 0.02. 0.03. 0.08. 0.15. 0.2. 0.3. 0.4. 0.5. Maybe I should stop..? 0.6. The safeties should work- 0.7. -even at this speed- 0.8. -but I'm a little- 0.9. -concerned…

"Internal override activated."

The numbers start to drop. And so does my heart rate. Wallace is still in a sprinting posture but the analytic systems don't seem to think there's anything much wrong with him. From what little I can see he doesn't look to be in pain. Since his speed at this point is more an effort of spiritual might than physical power, his motions remain more or less the same as he drops back down. Once he hits 0.0001 the readout switches back to metres per second.

From his peak, it takes about two minutes for him to drop back down to what I consider normal jogging pace. He looks pleased with himself. Breathing heavily but not panting, sweating but not in any obvious discomfort. Still going, he looks out at his audience. "Well? How fast?" I press a few buttons to bring up his peak speed, then swivel the monitor so he can see it. 0.97. He frowns. "What unit is that? Kilometres per second?"

"C."

"C?" He starts to frown, then his eyes widen. "C!" He nearly trips and has to speed up to avoid falling flat on his face. "I was nearly at light speed!?"

"He was nearly-!" Artemis hits me in the chest. "You had that thing up to light speed!?"

"It's safe up to about one point five-."

Wallace blurs off the treadmill and grabs a computer console, calling up the test data. Pictographic representations flick across the screen faster than I can interpret them. Then they stop and he looks up at us. "I-it worked. I-I'm as fast as Uncle Barry."

"And that's not all." Artemis nudges me in the back. "Is it, Grayven?"

"No. Wallace-" Ring, unlock dietary data for Wallace's use. "-your calorie intake is down by about a third. You've cut out snacking almost entirely, and I've a sneaking suspicion that most of the rest of your abnormal eating is down to habit. I'm going to suggest-" He steps a little unsteadily back from the console. "-cutting down further and observing the results." He takes a few more steps and collapses into a chair. "Um. Are you alright?"

"Yeah. " He pulls his goggles off and rubs his eyes. Goggles were probably a bit tight. "I really am."

back

Widdershins 11

next

21st January

09:27 GMT -5

"…that I very much appreciate you coming." Red Tornado doesn't immediately respond. Fortunately, Lex has the sense not to turn up the smug any further. "I realize that my relationship with the Justice League-."

There's a slight whirr as Tornado inclines his head slightly and Lex stops talking immediately. "I am not here to represent the Justice League. I am here in my capacity as a private…" Another slight tilt. "Individual."

"But not a citizen. You were created in the United States? Certainly your.. 'father' Doctor Morrow was a naturalized American citizen."

"How did you talk him into doing this?"

I turn away from what must be the most uncomfortable conversation in Red Tornado's life to face Ms Graves. Guess I must still be on Lex's cool list; she doesn't usually talk to people while on the job.

"I'm a very good friend of his sister. When I pointed out what it would mean for other people in his position, he was… He felt compelled to agree that the law needed to change." She nods. "I.. waited until I had his agreement in principle before telling him that Lex was organising things."

Mercy nods, then raises her right hand to her right ear as one of the ushers reports in. "Excuse me." She turns away from me and heads towards Lex.

And there's the rub. Working with Lex when I thought that the worst thing he'd done was arrange a few murders was one thing. Now, I know that he's a member of the Light and therefore shares responsibility for trying to mind control the Justice League. To say nothing of Roanoke Island, or of Truggs' theft of the ring.

On the other hand, him and his must know the secret identities of the members of the Justice League as well as those of my own team mates and there haven't been any attacks. Batman and the Greenies and.. Nabu, have put some effort into checking and there doesn't even seem to have been any additional monitoring. Did they just.. not recognise anyone? Was Savage so sure of his victory that he just decided not to bother finding out?

On the.. third hand, I don't know how the Light make decisions. Talia told me that she was never present when her father spoke to the other members, but clearly they each have their own interests separate from those of the group as a whole. Mass murder is very much not Lex's style. Direct attacks against the League… Well, that is, but I still don't have hard evidence linking him as an individual to it. Batman and I have been monitoring LexCorp for 'exciting new developments' which could be based on materials appropriated from the Watchtower. So far nothing has turned up. Probably wishful thinking, but I'm still hopeful about the possibility of talking him around even if he was involved.

We're due out on stage in a moment or two. Lex is finally announcing Dubbilex's formal appointment as Director of Project Cadmus. The G-Goblin himself is placidly enduring the attentions of a makeup artist. Lex's people made their best effort, but even so I don't think that the suit was a good idea. His frame doesn't quite fit Human proportions and the clothing does more to emphasise that fact. Unless.. that was their intent? The G-Elf, G-Dwarf and the G-Gnome mounted on the G-Troll's broad shoulders are all being spared the makeup brush. They're here to showcase Cadmus' achievements in the field of genetic engineering, not to take questions or give interviews.

Lex did politely ask if Kon would be available. I passed on the request, but Kon said that he didn't really want a load of people staring at him like a lab experiment. Though he didn't mention it, I imagine the idea of being compared to Kal-El wasn't exactly a big draw either. With Diana taking respons-. With Diana becoming his mother he hasn't felt the need to follow up on Lex's offer of a familial relationship. I mean, as far as I know, anyway.

I asked Mister Queen about the Duke of Oil. After all, he was definitely created in the United States so he would be affected if we managed to get the law changed. Turns out that as an AI he can't be prosecuted for what he did in Star City so they've.. sort of impounded him instead. Long term it could be a bit iffy were it not for the fact that as he doesn't have a body he's stuck where they put him anyway. Mister Queen didn't quite turn me down but he did raise the question of whether the Duke would really give the impression we wanted. Having thought about it, I think that he actually would. There will be AI criminals and the law should make it possible to prosecute them. Having him boast about his immunity to the right people might actually help us. But maybe not at the first announcement.

"Mary?" Lex smiles at the makeup artist. "Is Dubbilex decorated to your satisfaction?"

She takes a step back to examine him. "I think that's about as good as I can get. They just don't do powder for your complexion, Mister Dubbilex."

The G-Elf scuttles over to him. The two of them make eye contact and Dubbilex's horns briefly glow. Looking through another Genomorph's eyes? I suppose he.. wouldn't have had access to mirrors for much of his life. "I am certain that you have done the best you can."

"Well then." Lex looks around our little group. "Red Tornado, Paul, if you could follow me out and take your seats behind the podium. Mister… Oh, pardon me, Director Dubbilex, please wait in the wings until I call you out." Dubbilex and I nod while Red Tornado remains impassive. I don't really have.. much to do here, but apparently I'm sufficiently good for public relations that it's worth our while to have me just hanging around. And I am stumping up a good deal of money for this.

With one last smile at his new Director, Lex turns and leads us from the backstage area to the side of the stage. A quick ring scan shows thirty three journalists of various stripes, the range including everything from general reportage, law and politics to technology websites and magazines. There are television cameras, but those are being operated by LexCorp employees. Makes sense as this isn't supposed to be a major announcement. In fact I expect he had to hint that something interesting was going to happen to get this many observers.

Lex tilts his head back a little as Ms Graves corrects the alignment of his tie, then strides out onto the stage to take his place behind the podium. I let Red Tornado go out next and then follow on behind him. The only people I recognise in the audience are Ms Lane and Mister Olsen. I suppose Mrs West-Allen and Ms Grant are more presenters than investigators. Tornado's presence wasn't announced in advance and there are more than a few exclamations of surprise, not to mention camera flashes. Since I'm in a suit rather than armour I am a good deal less recognisable. I.. think. Maybe me being here just matters less as I don't stand for the League?

"Ladies and gentlemen." Lex pauses, looking around the reporters and making eye contact with as many of them as possible. "Thank you for coming. I've invited you here today to talk about two things. Firstly, the appointment of a new Director for Cadmus Labs. Secondly, that I will shortly be mounting a sustained legal campaign to overturn what I believe to be the most repressive set of laws presently enforced in America."

Slightly over egging it there. United States versus Crane may have set the tone but it didn't go to the Supreme Court. It isn't national law, though other courts have tended to rule on similar lines.

"It was brought to my attention only fairly recently that while I -a man born in the United States to parents who were both American citizens- enjoy the full protection of the law, while.. a legal immigrant enjoys the full protection of the law and even an illegal immigrant receives a good deal of protection, there is a small but growing subset of people… Of intelligent beings, who enjoy no such protections. Beings like-" He turns slightly and gestures. "-Red Tornado, who was built in the United States in nineteen forty eight by an American citizen and who -for reasons that defy all logic- is still not able to claim American citizenship. Technically, as the law stands, he isn't even able to claim to be a person at all."

"Now, I'm not usually one for civil liberties campaigns, but the idea that a man with such a history of public service as Red Tornado has is not considered a person by the laws of his home country is something I will not stand for. We abolished slavery in eighteen sixty six and I will not see it reintroduced by the back door simply because the slaves are being built rather than born." Another round of eye contacts. As if anyone would argue with anything he's said. "But to return to my first point: Cadmus Labs was created to push the boundaries of genetic science. Since taking personal oversight of its work I have been-" Concerned face. "-truly disturbed by the unethical nature of the work that was being undertaken by the previous Director, Doctor Mark Desmond. So, without further ado, allow me to introduce the individual who will be responsible for keeping Cadmus on the straight and narrow: Dubbilex."

Dubbilex's arrival on the stage is greeted with gasps of astonishment. Then the cameras start flashing. He doesn't look around, simply heading towards the podium as Lex steps aside for him. Then he looks out across the audience towards the back wall. Making eye contact during speech isn't something that comes naturally to a Genomorph; not much point when you're telepathic. He's had some tuition but Lex was of the opinion that his behaviour being a little off would work just fine. It reinforces the fact that he isn't Human without making him appear threatening in a way that would harm our efforts.

"Ladies and gentlemen. My name is Dubbilex. I am a G-Goblin, one of a number of types of synthetic 'Genomorph' life forms created by Cadmus Labs over the last decade." He pauses as another barrage of flashes go off. "For most of that time we were treated as slaves by the project management. It is only since Lex Luthor took direct control that we have been treated as people, and I am all too aware that this has no basis in American law. I have Human equivalent intelligence and yet my legal status is that of laboratory equipment. Possibly even that of medical waste. I cannot vote. I cannot own property. My salary for my work must be paid to a trust, administered by Humans. An assault or a theft committed against one of us is not a crime, except as a crime against Cadmus property." He pauses. I don't think he really believed he'd get the opportunity to do this. "What my people want is equality, both for ourselves and any others who are unfairly denied it. Now-" His horns glow slightly and I notice Lex give an almost imperceptible nod. "-does anyone have any questions?"

The entire room jumps to its feet.

back

Widdershins 12

next

21st January

15:01 GMT -5

Thank goodness that's over.

When Dubbilex tried to answer questions and failed due to everyone else trying shout their questions over everyone else, I worked out why Lex wanted me on hand. One quick aura of silence later and things became a great deal more orderly. Well, in effect. They kept on shouting but only the person with the 'Player 1 Select' construct around them could be heard by anyone else. Dubbilex could easily handle that, though I imagine that most of the journalists missed his first few answers due to trying to listen with their mouths.

I don't think that Ms Lane believed Lex's claim not to have known about what was happening in Cadmus for a moment but she has too much sense to just blurt out an accusation. Nonetheless, she did ask Dubbilex about his origins and interactions with Cadmus staff to date. I already knew that he was only five years old but I hadn't really considered what that would mean for age related legislation. The age of consent isn't really an issue for a species that can't reproduce sexually but ordinarily he wouldn't be able to vote in elections for another thirteen years. The oldest Genomorphs in existence are the small number of surviving G-Prometheans, the original batch Cadmus produced to make sure that their processes worked before moving on to more 'useful' varieties. I was introduced to one last week and they look like broader and shorter G-Elves. None of them are over fifteen and they aren't likely to make it to twenty. Their longevity wasn't really a concern at the time.

Red Tornado made a brief speech about his perspective on Human society. I find it hard to believe that he hasn't got better at delivering speeches than that. Lex had to nudge him into giving specific anecdotes about his early and somewhat confusing interactions with humanity at large. My own talk was far shorter, focusing on the need for a rapid change in the law to reflect what none of us in the room doubted; that these were intelligent beings in need of recognition.

Neither Dubbilex nor Lex made any mention either of their Kryptonian research or of Mister Harper, save as 'caretaker management'. Once the initial round of questioning was over Dubbilex brought out the other Genomorphs. That was where things got a bit complicated. They could deal with a Human equivalent being wanting legal recognition but coping with a gestalt life form requires such a radically different approach that the same sort of connection just wasn't there.

Spotting that the audience were drifting, Lex stepped in and used the opportunity to extol the technical skills of the Cadmus personnel responsible. The G-Troll lifted a few weights, the G-Elf did a short acrobatic performance and the G-Dwarf did some sketching. Two different sketches at once to be precise. I hadn't thought about their niche when Kon and I went in to find Match but it turns out that they can handle multiple sources of data input and output. And Harper was having them wash dishes.

When they were established in the audience's minds as 'not threatening' Dubbilex offered to have the G-Gnome enable telepathic communication between volunteers. I think Lex had plants who were primed to volunteer themselves if no one else did, but Mister Olsen got to his feet almost immediately. That demonstration wasn't all that audience friendly as only the participants and myself could hear what they were saying but it seemed like the participants enjoyed it.

I still don't know where the original genetic samples came from. No one asked, presumably because they were assuming that Cadmus created them ex nihilo. I could try asking Dubbilex, see if they've picked up anything from the minds of Cadmus' original researchers? I have to assume that Lex knows. Could I just ask him? And I'm back to how far I'm prepared to work with him.

After that, a buffet lunch and mingling with the journalists. A few wits thought to ask for my Christmas Cake recipe and commiserated me on the Guinness Book of Records refusing to recognise it. I think their excuse was something to do with the large scale theft involved. Not like I've been prosecuted… Another question that got some attention was one concerning the possibility of me joining the Justice League. In the end I just gave a brush-off non-answer about how if they couldn't manage with three Lanterns a fourth wouldn't help much either, but I thought it was worth thinking about. I know I can fight as well as -if not better than- the local Greenies. My existence isn't a secret, I don't have a life outside.. this that could be disrupted by membership. If it wasn't for the Nabu thing, is it something I'd actually do?

I'm on good terms with several members and not on really bad terms with any of them. They aren't my team, but the League only really get together as a group for major events and I don't think I'd be significantly less effective around them. On the other hand, what would I gain by it? Control? I'm planning to put Vril Dox in charge of my Corps, control isn't my thing. I'd already be turning up to major events anyway, already have access to most information and resources… I'm sure Alan would like it if I did, but otherwise.. I'm not.. seeing the draw.

I step aside as a large party of Zatanna's fellow students walk down the pavement. She should be out of school soon and John's managed to track down Mister Ondaatie for us. For a man who never leaves the city he can be surprisingly elusive when he wants to be. Probably still irritated about John's mishandling of the The Beast situation. My plans for our final confrontation with Nabu are still somewhat nebulous, but it would be very convenient to face him down somewhere we knew he couldn't flee from. If Mister Ondaatie's willing to help with that, great. If not, I'll need to either start looking for somewhere else or come up with another methodology. Keeping him in one place would also give us the best chance for a negotiated resolution-.

I spot Zatanna and a small group of her school friends walking down the pavement from the school's main entrance. I don't really… I haven't had anything to do with them. She has talked about them, but it's… The things we do together are mostly things we have to keep secret. She told me that she hasn't told them much more than the Justice League's official statement on her father's sudden absence from the public eye. Let's see… Kayla, Sarah and Alexis? I think?

I'm wearing a woolly grey roll neck jumper to cover my neck tattoos and black loose-fitting trousers. Neither have any orange in them. In deference to the setting I'm also wearing glasses for the first time since I got here and I've combed my hair slightly differently, which I assume is the reason why no one in the city I visited with a giant cake resting on a flying ice fortress can recognise me.

"…no real chance of Webster…"

I come to a halt just outside the gates. Most parents collecting children from my old Primary School used to wait just inside the gates while most children attending my secondary school either walked home or got on one of the three double decker busses that were laid on for us. There are parents around for the youngest children but for the most part they appear to be lining up to board the yellow busses at the pavement just outside the school.

"…of feeling at the time. Even if they captured DC -and I don't think they could…"

The four of them are rather focused on their own conversation. Something they're working on in class? I haven't really talked to Zatanna about that sort of thing in any detail. Probably should…

"…didn't have enough recognition-."

"I'm sorry to interrupt."

"…to even try to-."

"Zatanna?"

They stop, conversation dead. Kayla -I think- gives me a look of mild indignation. "And who exactly are-?"

"Paul?" Zatanna recovers from her surprise quickly. "Why are you..?"

"I finally managed to get hold of that chap in London we wanted to speak to."

Probably-Alexis looks me over with a smirk and then turns to Zatanna. "Is this the guy you've been-?"

"Yes! Paul's been, ah, a he's a friend." She nods. "Yes."

"The tattoo guy?" I pull back my left sleeve slightly and let her have a look. "Ooh. They really go all over..?"

"Most of my body, yes. Zatanna, I can do this myself if you're.. busy. I just thought-."

"Right, yes, no, this is…" She turns back to her friends. "I'm really sorry, but I need-."

"It's fine." Sarah giggles as Zatanna starts to blush. "You need us to tell your dad you're studying with us?"

I shake my head. "We're not-"

"No!"

"-romantically involved."

Alexis gives me a look of total incredulity. "Uh-huh. Which is why you're spending every free moment together."

I try meeting Zatanna's eyes but she looks away. "It's really more of a professional development thing."

"So what you're saying is: dating you is good for her career?"

"To reiterate: not dating."

"And the friendly massages?"

I hesitate. I suppose.. those.. from an outsider point of view could seem a bit…"I fear this conversation's rather got away from me. Zatanna-?"

Mantling her face with her right hand she grabs my arm with her left. "Stel tsuj teg tuo fo ereh won."

back

Widdershins 13

next

21st January

20:12 GMT

We appear a few streets away from the Northampton Arms and quickly walk around a corner. I've discovered that unless there's some sort of lightshow accompanying it, most people tend to ignore teleportation. They've all got their own stuff going on, so if you make even a basic effort to fade into the crowd they'll usually assume that they just missed spotting you the first time. That's far more likely than the idea that you used a power ring to travel faster than light from the other side of the Atlantic, right? For those who do spot it, getting out of their line of sight is usually enough. Though the CCTV cameras I can see do appear to be paying us particular attention.

Zatanna.. isn't looking at me. I suppose that having me turn up like that.. and having her friends assume that we're dating was fairly awkward. And I know that she loves me, a perfectly natural result of her need and my freely offered support. And probably more than a little physical attraction. I mean, I designed this body. I know it looks good. But I'm really more filling an 'in loco paternis patris' role than a boyfriend thing. I was.. clear at New Year, wasn't I?

"… How.. was.. school..?"

"Good." She doesn't expand. "How did the thing with Lex Luthor go?"

"G-. I think it went well. He might have been a bit heavy handed with the slavery line, but I suppose that simple messages transmit better than complex ones. The Genomorphs themselves were reasonably well received."

"We've been.. studying the build up to the Civil War. I don't think any of the factors which made people support slavery apply now. Genomorphs were used as forced labor in Cadmus but not anywhere else. There's no body of people who are used to it, no major industry that depends on it and I doubt any politicians would be prepared to stand on a pro-slavery platform now."

"As far as I know, the only people working on artificial biological lifeforms in the United States are Cadmus and Uncorporation. Neither of them would have a problem with expanding the thirteenth amendment to unambiguously cover non-Humans. The only problem will be with AIs. That, and working out how to integrate them."

"Why would AIs be a problem?" She glances at me as we stop at a pelican crossing. Looks like she's calmed down a bit. "I don't think anyone could seriously doubt that Red Tornado is a person."

"No, they wouldn't. He's unambiguously Human-equivalent. The problem would come from technology companies working on intelligent systems, where they make something and it isn't clear how clever it is. Or worse, if they make something that looks like it might be intelligent and either wipe it or add a load of restrictions to stop it developing. And then there's the problem of who owns Genomorph genetic data."

She frowns. "They'd own it themselves, wouldn't they?"

"At the moment, lots of companies have patents on genetic sequences, even ones that are naturally occurring. There have been a lot of legal challenges… The American Supreme Court might end up hearing a case eventually, but even so, Genomorphs are the product of research. And they can't reproduce naturally. If Cadmus-" The lights change and we start across the road. "-or a company like Cadmus owned the genetic data of an intelligent creature, they could hold them in bondage by controlling their access to it. Or decide to genocide them."

"Does that apply to Humans?"

"Oooh, yes. There's some.. very stupid and thoughtless law relating to genetics out there."

"Are you saying.. if a person has a gene, and a company copyrights it… That company owns that gene in that person's body?"

"They might. Maybe. I can't see a court ever enforcing that… I mean, can you see a judge daring to ban.. 'natural transmission'? But if any company ever gets heavily into artificial genes they'd probably try. Lex and I might end up having to fight against the ability of companies to patent genes at all." I hesitate as the Northampton Arms comes into sight. "Um… About your friends…"

"Oh, just…" She glances out into the road. "Just ignore them. I told them we weren't dating."

"Okay."

"I haven't told them about.. what really happened to Dad, but it's pretty obvious that there's something wrong. Making jokes about the hot English guy I'm hanging out with-"

"Themysciran."

"-is just them trying to help." I nod, and pull open the pub's door for her. "Thank you." She walks in and I follow her. John's sitting across from the door at the same table we occupied during our heart to heart eleven days ago and he looks up as we enter. There's a hardhat on the table, and sitting across from John is a middle aged black man wearing full underground maintenance gear. Ken 'Map' Ondaatie. Probably the most powerful shaman in the country and a virtual god within London itself.

And I'm going to get him fired from a job he loves by making trains obsolete.

…

Maybe I should have thought about that a bit more?

That realisation causes me to slow down, allowing Zatanna to pull ahead. She walks over to the table, stops and gives a short bow. "Mister Ondaatie, thank you for agreeing to speak with me."

"Bowing? John, how did a polite girl like this get involved with the likes of you?" Zatanna hesitates, not quite sure what to do next. Mister Ondaatie points to the space next to John with his left hand. "And you by the door. I've been watching you since you arrived."

How did-? The cameras. If he was just directly seeing the pictures they transmitted, my wards wouldn't… I approach the table, recalling exactly how many cameras that was. Magic multiprocessing? Or maybe he just set them to track Zatanna? Would it be worth suggesting that she get tattoos..? No, I'm fairly sure several people would object to that, no matter how functional they were. Mister Ondaatie looks around as I come up to the table. "What's this I hear about you talking to Boris about transportation?"

I wince inwardly. "We offered him first dibs on a portal network. And before you start complaining, you're perfectly capable of enhancing the tube so no one needs to use them."

"Not a great way to go about asking for a favour." John and Zatanna shuffle along and I sit down on the end of the seat opposite Mister Ondaatie.

"No, but I was part of the group that stopped the plant attack back in October." He nods, picks up his pint and takes a drink. "John told you what we want?"

"You want me to help you ambush a superhero."

Zatanna's face hardens. "A superhero wouldn't hold my father hostage."

"Mister Ondaatie, this is the most important thing happening in my life. What do you want in exchange? If you really want the tube thing spiked, I'll talk Sephtian into using a different city."

"I prefer to keep my tube work and magic work separate." He looks thoughtful. "I know that you're telling the truth about Fate. I felt Giovanni Zatara trapped inside him when he came looking for John while we dealt with The Beast." He looks at Zatanna. "Nabu is bound to Order. Even if he came to London, I wouldn't be able to free your father."

She nods. "We know. We just need you to stop him leaving. Stop him teleporting and.. flying away from us really fast."

"Are you planning to kill him?"

"We will have plans for killing him, but we'd prefer not to. We can keep him imprisoned if we have to. I'd rather come to terms."

"But you want to be able to force him to see things your way." Zatanna and I both nod. "Risky, for me. He could do a lot of damage to my city, saying nothing of what he could do to me directly if he found me." He leans back in his seat, thinking things over. "There is… Something you could do for me. An old mess of John's that needs to be tidied up. Do that for me and for London…" He nods. "And we'll help you."

"Okay. What sort of mess?"

"The Damnation Army."

back

Widdershins 14

next

21st January

20:18 GMT

John frowns. "What, you mean that nutter who tried to murder Gemma? And that football hooligan mashup? Don't think either of them are in any position-."

Mister Ondaatie shakes his head. "No, John. Nergal's victims were many." He reaches into the pocket of his overalls and pulls out a map. Looks like… Utilities. Sewers, electrical cables, water pipes and storm drains.

"And? Their boss is gone. Saw him get burned to death by Angels meself."

Mister Ondaatie chuckles. "Demons are harder to kill than that, John. I'm surprised at you."

John exhales. "Too much to hope Angels would do something that actually helped me. How'd they f-." Half second glance at Zatanna. "Mess that one up?"

"You took his spirit to the borders of heaven. His body was taken by Richard Simpson. Maybe he left a little bit of himself somewhere so that he could regrow?"

"How would you know, anyway?"

"If he was really gone, this-" He taps his right forefinger on the map. "-wouldn't still be here. A little patch of hell underneath my city."

"Okay. Any idea what he's got down there?"

John thinks for a moment. "Not Nergal himself. Probably not any other Demons either, else they'd have taken charge and started attacking things. Could be.. cultists… People he's messed about with his magic. Maybe some nasty trap spells, but Nergal didn't really bother with that sort of thing."

Zatanna nods. "He'd have to have something there keeping the link to Hell going. If we destroyed that, everything that was affected by Nergal's magic would either be pulled back in or.. die."

"Or we could just blitz them." I shrug. "I'm a bit low on Mageslayers but don't have a problem assimilating Demons."

"No." Mister Ondaatie shakes his head. "Anything that stirs them up risks drawing more attention from Hell and there are more than enough people-" He looks straight at John. "-doing deals with Demons here already."

John looks not even slightly guilty. "If you can't take a little heat…"

"So.. if we shut the portal down, you'll let us fight Nabu here?"

"Yes." He takes another sip. "That's it."

"Just so we're clear: while I don't want to kill him, it might come to that. And I can't promise that Order won't hold you responsible."

He looks towards the wall, his eyes unfocusing. "Did you know people from all but three of the world's countries live in London?"

"I think I remember hearing that on a radio program."

"People from Europe, people following trade routes from all parts. People like my parents, coming here from the colonies after the War. Little bit of everything if you know where to look." He nods to himself. "Messy and vital. Alive and chaotic." He turns back to me. "Don't worry about Order coming after me. The same energies that will stop Nabu will stop any of the others sticking their noses in."

"When do you want this done?"

"No time like the present." He gets up, picking up his helmet as he does so.

I get to my feet as well. "Alright then. Lead on, MacDuff."

I hold out my right hand to help Zatanna up. "Actually, the line is 'Lay on, MacDuff, and damned be him who first cries ‘Hold! enough!'."

"We did 'Twelfth Night' and 'Romeo and Juliet' at my school. I've actually never read MacBeth."

John levers himself off the seat and pulls out a packet of cigarettes. "Suppose if we're fighting Demons then gettin' damned is always a possibility."

"Wasn't the play a complete character assassination of MacBeth because Shakespeare wanted to suck up to King James?"

Zatanna nods. "Probably. Or it might just have been that he only had access to one historical record and made a story based around it."

We follow Mister Ondaatie out of the door. Then he walks to the edge of the pavement and holds out his left arm. Yeah, right. Like there are going to be-. A taxi pulls up next to him. Right, Shaman of London. He gets in the front and I open the rear door for John and Zatanna. Mister Ondaatie must know I could get us there near instantaneously, right? Maybe he just prefers to use his own methods?

While John's here… "John, I've got a… A moral problem I was hoping you could help me with."

"Must be desperate. Isn't that Wonder Woman's job?"

"It.. probably should be. But since Nabu…"

"Alright. What is it?"

"There's a company in the United States called 'Cadmus Labs'. They made an intelligent artificial species and I'm working with a man named Lex Luthor to get that species legal recognition."

"Okay?"

"Lex Luthor is almost certainly a member of the Light. The Light are a group of supervillains who claim to be trying to advance the Human species by… Well, that's not very clear. I was and am trying to cooperate with him to encourage him to do that in less villainy ways. I know he's committed crimes, but.. if I can make his impact a net positive…"

"That's your thing. So what's the problem?"

I try looking out of the windows, but the scenery around us ripples and shifts disturbingly. "The problem is that Klarion is also a member of the Light."

"The Chaos Lord from Roanoke an' the Watchtower."

"Right. The Light had someone steal the piece of Starro they used to mind control the League during the Roanoke incident. That means foreknowledge. I don't know.. exactly what they knew. Heck, Klarion isn't exactly reliable. Maybe he was doing that on his own? My problem is... I'll tolerate a lot, but I'm not prepared to work with someone who gave the nod to a plan which would kill hundreds of thousands of children."

Zatanna leans around his shoulder. "I'm glad to hear it."

John looks puzzled. "I thought the whole point of bein' a legitimate superhero was so you could arrest people and that."

"The Justice League will take the word of someone under the influence of the Lasso of Truth as gospel. Courts don't." I sigh. "And anyway, it's not his membership of the organisation, it's how much control he had, whether he knew in advance what Klarion was going to do."

John thinks for a moment. "Telepathy?"

"He'd notice, and there's ways to resist. We could overpower him, but he maintains the appearance of an upstanding citizen. Hard to justify. And we wouldn't be able to use it in court. And… I'd ideally like to keep working with him."

"So you need more information?"

"Couldn't you just hack his servers?"

"Already done, normal and secure. And since I didn't find records of things I know he's done, there must be other servers I haven't found. The Light know scry wards block my scans and Lex is used to needing to protect his stuff from Kal-El and Batman. Adding a few drawings with a circuit pen wouldn't have been a big deal."

The taxi comes to a stop. I look in the rear view mirror and see that the driver's eyes are somewhat glazed as Mister Ondaatie pays him. Zatanna opens her door and gets out. John looks out the front windscreen for a moment, then shuts the door behind her. "If he did know, and you get proof, what would you do?"

"Data I stole from his servers probably wouldn't be admissible in court." Unless I was a member of the Justice League and was responding to an attack. Huh, there's the reason to join. "But if I knew to my satisfaction, I'd kill him and as many of his co-conspirators as I could find. Then, release the data to the public. It's the only appropriate response."

"You did say you'd be alright working with Klarion. Back when the Nabu thing-."

"In the short term while we dealt with Nabu, yes. It's not like that would make the people Klarion killed more dead. But we'd be on each other again as soon as Nabu was out of the picture, and I'd have called it off if he looked like doing anything like that while we were working on the problem."

"'course, if you use your ring on Klarion, you could find out from him."

True… I shake my head. "Let's not keep Mister Ondaatie waiting."

back

Widdershins 15

next

21st January

20:31 GMT

"I don't know what the miserable sod did to this one."

My railgun turret tracks another Hellzombie and pulverises the right half of its chest with a tungsten round, smashing it to the floor. Then it starts to push itself up. "They're getting tougher." Another shot annihilates its head.

"The closer we get t' the main portal-."

"John, focus please!"

"Assimilation twelve per-. Assimilation thirt-. Assimilation nine percent complete."

Lost cause there. The Hellzombie I'm holding in a draconic talon near the edge of the pumping station flails around as it tries to get a grip on the construct pinning it. In a grapple those things can break my constructs. The first few we ran into just lay in the tunnel, weakly trying to reach for us as we passed them by. The next group were like classical shambling zombies, aside from having intact skin and a strange yellow glow in their eyes. I suggested that we ignore them as well until the barrier I was pushing them back with went all 'construct lost' on me. At this rate I'm going to have to start cranking out the heavy constructs, and I'm not eager to find out what comes through the portal to see what all the noise is about.

Speaking of which… "More incoming. Major wave. Zatanna?"

The new wave have eyes that glow brightly and are about as strong as Kon was pre-enhancement. While the earlier types looked more or less as they did when Nergal killed them these new ones are altered. Distended jaws full of razor sharp teeth are common, as are clawed fingers and toes. Luckily, no daemonic speed yet.

"Sretaw wolf-" Water streams underneath me and gathers next to her as I have the claw toss the Hellzombie it's holding into its brethren. "-dna hsup meht kcab!"

I'm briefly underwater as the wave surges past me. In that instant the water appears to stretch out for miles around, filled with shrivelled, crab eaten corpses which nonetheless continue to weakly struggle against the chains that bind them to the riverbed. I make fleeting eye to eye socket contact with the closest as it fruitlessly reaches for the tauntingly close surface with unfleshed arms.

Then the hellish waters have passed, taking the vision with them. Two Hellzombies managed to anchor themselves into the tunnel brickwork and I swiftly target them for-.

"Ah! Fucking..!" John staggers back from the glyphs inscribed on the brickwork as they smoke and burn, the base of his thumb in his mouth. A second later he yanks it out, still blackened and smouldering. "Zatanna!"

"Lufelab scigam wolf yawa!" The smouldering stops.

Ring, heal. The wound disappears.

"Fuck me." John slumps to the ground amongst the skull braziers. "How many more of these friggin' things are there?"

Ring, phone. "Mister Ondaatie, one more down. What's that done to the area?"

"Nicely done. It's shrinking again. I'll come up behind you and deal with any of Nergal's foot soldiers you missed."

If it's shrinking… I create a construct of the map he showed us. I know Mister Ondaatie's location, so… Not all that much space left.

"What was that?" Zatanna looks at John as he tries massaging some life back into his hand.

"The people in the water?" She nods. "The dead and damned. Maybe they drowned, maybe they just really hated water." He shrugs and walks to the edge of the platform. "So now they get to spend eternity in the place they hate most of all."

"Can't we do something for them?"

"Have to talk to God about that."

"Ready to move?"

Zatanna stretches her right shoulder. "I think I should ask Mister Gambi to add some more padding to this armor." I raise my eyebrows and she nods. "I'm good."

John nods. "Let's get this over with."

I float them both off the ground and with the railgun turret construct taking the lead we fly down the tunnel towards what I hope is the epicentre. "Zatanna, have you given any thought to learning how to use conventional firearms?"

"Dad doesn't like guns."

"Why not? I mean, I can understand not wanting them to be generally available, but if you're working in a business that pretty much always involves violent confrontation it seems like a sensible thing to have."

"Talking backwards doesn't provoke people in the way that waving a gun at them does."

"I'm not saying 'always go for the gun', I'm just saying it's a useful tool that is sometimes the correct choice. If I hadn't had my pistol with me on Roanoke then Klarion would have killed me."

The turret turns upwards and puts three rounds through a Hellzombie that was hiding in a tube up to the surface. It gets cut clean in half with most of its torso reduced to paste and both parts fall to the ground. Then the top half pushes itself upright, looks around and starts dragging itself towards the bottom half. I hold out my right hand and focus my mind on the idea of destruction, of how hideously wrong such an entity is. An orange beam lances out from the ring and vaporises it. Don't really think there's anything about Hellzombies the world particularly needs.

The tunnel curves around ahead of us and I can hear… something. The Hellzombies Zatanna flushed down here a few moments ago are just starting to get themselves reorganised. They'd have done it quicker but it looks like they've lost the ability to cooperate with one another. Another series of high-pitched hums as the gun takes the time to headshot each of them. They'll recover, but without sensory organs they aren't much of a threat.

"Dna yats nwod."

"Nearly there." I cut through a grate covering the entrance to the hellgate. The chamber on the far side is about twelve metres across and eight deep, with a shore occupied by Hellzombies on the far side. Halfway up the wall to our right is what looks like a surprisingly vital thorn bush. The portal itself is surrounded both here and in hell by a series of skull braziers-.

One of the Hellzombies leaps at us. The railgun turret fires twice, hitting thigh and stomach and knocking it out of the air and sending it hurtling into the wall. It slides down into the shallow water, then clambers to its feet. "John, we're going to need that portal down a bit quick."

"Going to have to clean that mob off first."

That mob is giving us their full attention. "Rings, total charge?"

"One hundred seventy four percent remaining." / "One hundred seventy four percent remaining."

I share momentary eye contact with Zatanna and we both raise our hands. "Destruction." Thick beams of orange plough into the Hellzombie mob. I'm not going for kill shots here, just to damage them.

"Nruter ot ecnehw ey emac!" The hell portal shudders and buckles as an ethereal wind tries to call the restless souls of Nergal's damned home. They try to dig in, grabbing at the walls, the floor and each other until an orange beam finds them and forces them loose. Once we have space enough for landing I drop down and create another turret for sentry duty.

"One hundred fifty percent remaining."

The land beyond the portal resembles the ash wastes of Morrowind, decorated only by the remains of the Hellzombies which Zatanna's spell has sent through. John touches down next and begins walking around the portal, closely examining its edges.

A moment later the ethereal wind cuts out and Zatanna bends over, panting. Only three more Hellzombies on this side and a quick claw construct is easily able to throw them through. Taking a slight risk I extend a filament through the gate and deposit concrete blocks from subspace to block it off.

And then we hear the moaning.

back

Widdershins 16

next

21st January

20:35 GMT

I've heard moans before. On the bridge on Gotham there weren't many. The children either cried as loudly as they could or were drowned out by those who did. But at other times, such as during the disaster recovery work later when we dug out those on the verge of death who'd lost the strength to cry out… There were moans then. Victim recovery, picking up those who were injured but wanted me to pick up other people first and tried to bite down on their own pain. Or from zombies on television whenever we let Wallace pick the film, an exhalation with no mind to guide it.

This moan doesn't sound like any of them. I hear black, despair and nullity. I take a quick look around but aside from John and Zatanna empathic vision doesn't show me anything. The noise got John's-. "John, get on with it."

"Right, right." He cups his hands around the closest of the braziers, bows his head slightly and starts muttering something.

Magic. With all this hell magic around… Ring, check my Spell Eater. Getting hot yet?

Effect of ambient magic minimal.

Good to know. I fire off a series of filaments into the water but all they find is concrete, sludge and a few old unanimated bones. I subspace those to be passed to the police later. Roof's solid concrete-.

Zatanna looks up at the wall. "It's coming from the bush."

I fly up into the air, careful to keep my distance. There's nearly no light here so I've got no idea how it's staying this vital. Magic? Can't scan through the outer leaves at all. Forwards go the probing constructs, pushing against the outer layer of thorny branches. The moaning increases slightly in volume. Am I hurting the plant? I haven't.. broken anything… I stop the probes and have them send out filaments instead. What am I looking a-?

Oh no. There's a woman… No, a Dryad in there. She's curled up in a foetal position and the thorns are radiating off her back and her head. Her torso and head are intact but it looks like her legs have been snapped off below the knees. Where shins and feet should be are smaller branches which terminate in the roots holding her to the wall. Her arms are pulled tightly to her chest, hands gone with a few weak sprouts radiating out in all directions in their place. Her eyes are mostly closed, flickering slightly as her damaged mind tries to reject the reality of her suffering. Cuts around her neck, jaw and face look like.. someone stuck their fingertips into her.

"Heavily injured and traumatised Dryad. Doesn't look like she's been demonised like the others. I know sod all about the medical care of supernatural crea-. People. J-."

There's a heavy bang from the concrete wall. Odd. If the Hellzombies had the intelligence to attack visual walls they could have escaped by now. On the other hand I'm sure hell has plenty of horrible things dwelling therein. Perhaps they can smell a way out? John's eyes are fixed on the gate as the brazier he's next to changes from red to blue flame. "Where're the friggin' Alexins when you actually need them. Chalice would love this."

Zatanna's watching the gate too, with the occasional glance upward at me. "Do you.. know what's on the other side?"

John strides over to the next brazier. "More'n those zombie things, that's for sure. Try finding out anything else and I'm telling it I'm here."

"Is there anything I can do to help?"

"Yer dad wanted to keep you safe from Demons. Which is great.. in theory. Then, when you need to know about them-" The fire from the second brazier shoots outwards, pooling around his left hand. "-you realise you don't know a soddin' thing." He looks up. "Oi, Paul, any chance you can make me a hole in that wall then close it right after?"

"Yeees, I can take out a block. Chest height in the middle good enough for you?"

"That'll do. Thing is, Zatanna, I've been trying to defuse these things…" He winces. "Agh. When what I think we need-" Fire from the other two braziers drifts through the air to float around his left hand and beneath the blaze I can just about make out the circle and triangle and squiggles of his tattoo. "-is a controlled explosion." The sleeve of his coat starts to smoulder as he hurries towards the wall. "Ready?"

"On 'go'. Three, two, one, go!"

The brick disappears and we get a momentary vision of a thing with John's face and glowing red holes where its eyes should be grinning at us through the hole. "Hello, John."

"Fiat Lux!" Flame shoots from John's outstretched hand and his look-alike sidesteps the fiery blast which swiftly eats its way through the Hellzombie horde.

As soon as the flame passes it by it shoots its hand through the gap and grabs John's wrist! "How's life treating y-?"

"Close it!" John pulls back, slamming his attacker's forearm as hard against the concrete as he can! "Fucking close it fucking right fucking now!"

"Tel og fo ym dneirf!"

The hell creature's hand opens immediately. It looks.. surprised. "Zatanna? Is that-?"

I shove the block back in the hole and the rest of his sentence is cut off. Great. The Demon Constantine; all of John's skill and a right niece-raping bastard to boot.

"John, who was that?"

He shakes his head, looking a little guilty. "Don't worry about it." He checks the now dead braziers. "Alright. With those out-" There's a brief flicker of light from the furthest one. "-the connection shouldn't-." All three dead braziers flame back into life and the blue one starts crackling. "Oh fuck right off. How is he-?" John sits down cross legged and plants his hands palms down on the ground. "The link should have died, why is it still…"

There's another loud bang as something hits the concrete. The Demon should only be as strong as John himself is… Maybe a little bit more given its demonic nature. It shouldn't be concrete punching strong. Other friends? If the Demon's anything like its progenitor it will have tried to make alliances…

John's head comes up. "Sympathetic resonance. The Dryad's still connected to the Green. He's using that to keep the gate where it should be."

"I can fly her out of here."

"Won't be enough. Nergal's going to have marked her good and proper. He could use any of the zombies-."

"What, then?"

He looks up at me with cold dead eyes. Oh. Right. A Constantine job. Surprised it didn't come to this sort of thing earlier.

Zatanna doesn't get it. "What? What are we supposed to do?"

"Destroy the Dryad, break the link." Her eyes widen in horror. "Fortunate for us all that I'm not John Constantine, really. Can you hold them off for about twenty seconds?"

She turns away and presses her hands against the wall. "Dog sselb siht etercnoc!"

"Aaaaaaagggh! FuuuuCK!"

I fly at full speed back out of the room, frantically trying to plot-! There! Transition.

21st January

15:39 GMT -5

I appear in the grove on top of Mount Justice, construct blade slicing one of Swamp Thing's fruits from one of the trees we grew from his seeds. Transition.

21st January

20:39 GMT

Fly fast as I can back into the room, up to the bush. Smoothie maker construct, blend the fruit, construct tube through the bush, into her mouth and down her throat, pump. I take a gulp of it for myself as well. Is that.. oregano? I know some of Swamp Thing's fruits induce psychedelic states but I'm sort of hoping that between the Dryad getting most of it and the Ophidian's influence that-.

The Dryad's eyes shoot open and she bites through the feeding tube construct. She coughs, flails and uncurls. Her thick outer bark bulges outwards, cracks and falls off, revealing healthy new growth beneath. The largest branch at each knee expands as the others wither, restoring her legs. Roots break off and she falls to the ground, still coughing, choking and finally vomiting forth a stream of black sludge. She gets a second's respite to push up to all fours and then she's heaving again, bile pouring across the rock and into the water.

"Paul!" John's on his feet. "That stuff she's chucking up, that's prime essence of Nergal!"

"Got it." I gently stick a bucket construct under her head and start annihilating all of what she's already produced. The smashing against the concrete is continuous now, but with a little luck that won't be enough. Between convulsions she manages to look up at me for a moment then her face goes back down as she coughs up the last of it. I pull the bucket away and eliminate the rest of it.

"Their marker's gone!" John heaves the blue brazier out of the ground. "Zatanna! Put out the other ones!"

"Semalf eid yb ym dnammoc!"

The ruddy red flames poof out one by one as John runs his brazier between them, causing the blue flame to ignite each one in turn. Then he slams it back down in its original position. "There! No link and I know you don't have the power for this. Close you bastard thing, close!"

From the wall where the Dryad fell vines sprout and then shoot around the walls of the room, spreading, dividing and growing around one another until the whole place is covered. Zatanna has to use her flight belt to get above them and John is rudely tossed aside. Lastly the vines form an arch around the gate and grow to cover it from both sides as Swamp Thing grows a face directly above it. Large glowing red eyes look down at John and then hard at me.

"I didn't give him any!"

If his face was mobile enough to scowl I think he'd be scowling at me. "The breach is.. sealed. Constantine can.. secure it.. against further intrusion."

The Dryad sees who he is, then kneels before him. "Great Champion, thank you."

He looks down at her and his expression appears to soften slightly. "There is no.. need to abase yourself.. before me, Green Sister." She looks up as he turns his attention to me again. "You will take.. her to a place of.. safety."

It wasn't a question but I nod anyway. His eyes go out as the Dryad looks around nervously at us. "Miss?" I drop down to land in front of her but outside her personal space. "How does a trip to Themyscira sound?"

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Widdershins 17

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21st January

23:58 GMT +3

Zatanna looks around uncomfortably as we enter the woodland in the middle of the island of Themyscira. "Are you sure we're allowed to be here?"

"It's perfectly alright for me to bring guests. I checked with Queen Hippolyta."

Euanthe hurries over to a nearby pine tree and hugs the trunk, pressing her face against it. Poor woman hasn't said much since Swamp Thing left. She seems to understand what we're saying well enough and Zatanna tells me that she's speaking English, but beyond that? She's muttered assent to my suggestion of coming here and muttered her name when I asked. We had to walk out the slow way. I offered to fly her out but she became so obviously terrified that I dropped the idea.

"Doooes.. that include…" She looks at John's cigarette.

In addition to the four blue-burning braziers I left a few ring-fabricated sun globes in the portal chamber. John was fairly clear that if Swamp Thing says that a hole is sealed then it's sealed and I thought it might be nice to keep the plant growth Swamp Thing caused alive if at all possible. Mister Ondaatie was pleased with what we'd accomplished and says that he'll keep his word about cooperating to remove Nabu. One worry down.

"Smoking wasn't specifically mentioned. They've never had tobacco here."

John turns back to us. "Oh yeah? Maybe I should set up shop here."

"You wouldn't be able to find your way through the wards without me. But please don't try?"

"No, I meant…" Oh, she was looking at John. "Other men."

"I wasn't told not to."

John grins. "My kind of answer."

Euanthe pulls away from her tree, swaying slightly. "This… This way." She starts walking further into the forest. I think that's -yep- the way to Gaea's sacred grove. I follow behind her, matching her pace. There are big mythological beasties in these woods but at the same time I'm not sure how much she needs us to be here. Would they attack her? How physically powerful is she? She just got a major infusion of Green power and she certainly looks a lot healthier. And a good deal less thorny. She certainly doesn't seem to have any trouble navigating in the dark.

John follows a pace behind, careful to keep within the bubble of orange light I'm casting. "So. What's next on the agenda?"

"For now? Nothing. Sephtian needs time to work through some of his current projects, work out how to integrate his new transmuted substances. The next thing I want is some sort of anti-order version of the Ace. Or maybe some sort of super fast magic draining artefact."

Zatanna comes up alongside me. "What about the Star Sapphire?"

"How are you feeling now?"

"A bit drained." She smiles at me. "I don't usually get that sort of work out after school."

"You fought Hellzombies and-."

"Is that what they were?"

"Um. That's what I was calling them in my head. John?"

"I don't bother naming every little thing hell chucks up. Hellzombies." He thinks for a moment. "Sure, why not. Meaning's pretty clear and it lets you tell yourself that they're not really people-."

Zatanna's face drops. "Oh God. Those were people?"

"Once." Euanthe stops ahead of us and with visible reluctance turns around to face our direction. She keeps her eyes down. "Once they were. Some may even have been good people. Then…" She shudders. "N-. Nergal. He reached into them and pulled all of the goodness out. He replaced it with the stuff of Tartarus." She shudders again before turning away. "They were not people."

The three of us stay silent for a moment but it looks like that's all she has to say. "Right… Well, given all the stuff Sephtian has on his plate at the moment, it might be best if you could try accessing the Sapphire's power with magic directly. John?"

"What sort of power is it?"

"Crystallised love."

"Love?"

"Love is a very powerful force. Even more so when it's focused into a coherent beam of destruction."

"Oh, I won't argue about that." He exhales a puff of smoke. "Few things we could try. Usually it'd be… Over eighteen stuff…"

"Um." Zatanna's eyes flick to me and then off to the side.

"But there's siphons an' that. I'll flick through a few books, see what I can come up with." He chuckles. "Girl usin' magic powered by an alien love crystal."

"It really is straight out of a Japanese cartoon."

"What are you two talking about?"

"Sailor Moon." She shakes her head, not getting it. "You're a teenaged girl who uses magic by shouting nonsense at people. You go to a school that has a uniform policy so: jacket, short skirt."

"It's not that short."

"Teekl's taken a liking to you so that's the talking cat covered… And now you're getting an alien magic love crystal."

"I've never watched Sailor M-."

"Mother!" Euanthe runs forwards at a sprint, straight into the arms of.. a tall Amazon woman in a green robe. How did I not see her? Do Amazons have ninjas? Empathic vision shows blue, green and white. Shape's a bit odd…

The older woman pulls Euanthe tightly against her chest. "Daughter. I am so very glad to see you." Wait. How do Dryads come into being? Was she sired on whoever this is by some sort of plant god? No, the ring says that Dryads are supposed to be Gaea's daughters, but that could just mean…

Oh, not again. I drop down onto my right knee. "Earth Mother."

She looks up from Euanthe. "Paul, John Constantine, Zatanna Zatara. Thank you for rescuing my daughter from that Demon and returning her to me."

"No problem, love."

"That's our job."

"And Paul, I am particularly obliged to you for the work you have done in my oceans and at my northern pole."

"I helped cause the harm. It was only right that I fix it." Originally I tried to get a consensus on how I should go about reglaciation from the relevant UN committee. After a month of waiting I decided to go ahead without them. The Ice Fortress has no problem going faster than the rate of ice loss but it isn't exactly fast fast while on autopilot. Even with that in mind the north pole is appreciably larger than it was when I started, and with a larger area of the planet white and reflecting the sun's energy back out into space I've taken a significant step towards bringing climate change under control. "And if you hadn't witnessed my oath I don't think Diana would have taken me on. I wouldn't have.. got anywhere."

"Still, few would put the effort into righting the situation that you have. You have my thanks."

"You're welcome. Is.. there.. anything you particularly want dealt with next?"

"I am certain that you will find something to occupy your time. Come, child." She turns away, gently leading Euanthe deeper into the woods.

I wait until I can't see either of them before rising to my feet. "Right. Think that's enough weirdness for one day. Where do you two want dropping off?"

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Widdershins 18

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21st January

16:23 GMT -5

"Recognised, Orange Lantern, B zero six."

I walk across the empty training room and head in the direction of the kitchens. Darn it. Garth and Tula were going to get here mid morning and I wanted to be here. I told Kaldur I couldn't be sure… Quick scan-.

**Hey Paul.**

**Good afternoon, M'gann.**

I transition into the kitchen. All the lifers are here along with the new inmates. Garth and Tula are sitting at the table with Kaldur.. going through old mission reports. Wolf temporarily interrupts her exploration of the kitchen to trot over and sniff me while Teekl is happily curled up on the table right where it would be most convenient for Garth to have his holoscreen. Kon's doing something in the kitchen. It's a point of pride with him that he no longer needs a fire extinguisher on standby so I make a point of not observing him too closely. M'gann's close by just in case, a school textbook floating beside her.

"Sorry I'm so late." I kneel down to rub Wolf's head. "The press conference.. went on for a lot longer than I thought it would, then there was this thing in London…"

Tula cranes her neck around her holoscreen. Looks like she hasn't quite picked up the art of moving them yet. "Was that anything to do with Professor Sephtian's portals?"

"No. Hellzombies." Oh, hang on, Mister Ondaatie. "Well, perhaps tangentially-."

Kon turns around. "Hell Zombies?!"

"That.. might not be the technical term?" I get up and head over to the table, pointing at the holoprojector. "Can I borrow that?"

Kaldur nods. "Go ahead."

I have the ring play a short section of the fight with the medium strength Hellzombies, demonstrating their appearance, strength and construct resilience. "I can replicate their behaviour if you want to practise against them, but we.. closed the portal fairly emphatically."

Garth looks concerned. "Someone was sending.. those.. things through the Professor's portal?"

"No… One of Nergal's portals to hell. It was in a storm drain under the city, but like I said it's closed now." I suddenly realise that I'm the only one here raised in a Christian society. Huh. Hadn't really thought of it like that before. "It was just sort of floating on the air with these braziers on each side…"

Garth nods. "The spell was probably extracting power continuously from hell itself."

"I think that's what the Zombies were doing." I take a seat and then look around the Atlanteans. "Is 'Hellzombie' the right term? Technically, I mean?"

Kaldur looks down at the surface of the table for a moment before meeting my eyes. "Demon magics are hardly a popular field of study in Atlantis."

Garth half raises his right hand palm up in a gesture of uncertainty. "If they were fortified by such hellish magic and had little will of their own… Hellzombie would be as good a description as any."

"Right, Hellzombie is going in the database then." Ring, upload files.

Compliance.

Kaldur's face has the tiniest of frowns. "Why were you fighting them at all?"

"I couldn't just leave a hellgate under a major city. The Hellzombies couldn't go too far away from it, but something clever might have used it eventually."

"You could have called upon us to support you."

"There wasn't all that much room in the tunnels. I had-" I bring up the files one by one. "-Ken Ondaatie, John Constantine and Zatanna with me. That seemed... Adequate?" I shrug. "We'd just have got in each other's way."

"If you are certain." Kaldur reaches across the table and pulls Mister Ondaatie's file towards him.

M'gann puts her book down on one of the worksurfaces. "How did the press conference go?"

"I think the Genomorphs came across alright. We won't really know until journalists who weren't handpicked by Lex Luthor get their teeth into the story. What have you lot been up to?"

Tula wiggles her right forefinger at her holoscreen. "Reading and watching recordings of your battles. Oh! Um." She reaches down and lifts up a small box which she hands to me. "Professor Sephtian asked me to pass this on to you."

I nod and open the lid. Ah! Yes! Two neat rows of Mageslayer rounds stare back up at me. "I was worried he wouldn't have time to make these."

"He didn't, Lori did. The spell isn't all that complex and with the new thaumatorium set up… Well, it's apprentice work." I nod and shift them into subspace. "How do you actually use those?"

"I'll show you." I generate a railgun construct, making sure that it is transparent enough that they can see the internal construct mechanisms. "Railguns use magnetic force to fire solid projectiles. I hold the Mageslayers in subspace, load them when I want to fire-" I do so. "-and use the ring to aim the gun. The iron jacket on the rear of the projectile allows the magnetic pulse to push it out at anything up to about… Um, ten times the speed of sound? I usually don't use quite that much force." I turn on the magnetism a little and the round starts drifting along the length of the gun.

Garth leans in for a closer look. "I thought Lanterns used energy beams. Or giant glowing fists."

"I can do energy pulses, but they're slower than my railgun shots and my specialist ammunition is better against some types of target. Glowing fists are kind of Lantern…" Names, right. "Green Lantern two eight one four A's thing." I send the Mageslayer back into subspace and drop the railgun construct.

"Why does he use giant fists?"

"I've never really been clear on that."

"Could you.. tell me something?"

"Ask away."

Tula flicks through a couple of files before finding the one she wants. "When the team fought Mister Twister, you.. made a note in your report that you scanned him?"

"Yes, that's right."

"But that you didn't do a.. 'quintessence waveform scan'?" She looks up at me. "What is a quintessence waveform scan?"

"Heh. Um, a really good way to give yourself a brain haemorrhage." She blinks in surprise. "I tried using it afterwards to find out what it was. Woke up about twenty minutes later feeling absolutely dreadful. It's supposed to be a sort of super detailed scan that tells you everything about the thing you're scanning, buuut according to the ring you have to have very specific aetheric characteristics to make any sense of it without burning out your own neurons. I don't."

She nods, then frowns. "I.. thought you merged with the orange light Elemental?"

"Oh, that was months later." Oh, hang on a minute! If the Ophidian helped… Depends on the time it would take, but it would certainly be possible to find Lex's servers with that sort of scan. "I haven't tried since. But I think I probably should."

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Widdershins 19

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FireWithinMidnight said:

21st January

18:49 GMT -5

Lois tapped her pen on her notebook, drawing invisible sketches as she read her annotations of Luthor's surprise announcement.

From time to time she would stretch her back and roll her shoulders, but her mind was firmly reviewing and dissecting the information that Luthor had seen fit to release.

Follow the line...

Red Tornado's unannounced presence had turned a seemingly low-key press release, the kind that would be buried all the way in the back of the newspaper, into something more.

Then he dropped the metaphorical bomb with his legal campaign to overturn the State v. Crane ruling, which had established that artificial beings like Red Tornado weren't people. And his first step was giving Doctor Mark Desmond's job to one of those 'unpeople'.

Then orange constructs popped up and acted as crowd control, which meant a certain elusive Lantern was present as well. She hadn't recognized him until he took the floor to deliver his own brief speech.

A member of the Justice League and a superhero who worked for Wonder Woman at an event organized by Luthor? Showing their support for Luthor's campaign? Her cheek still hurt from all the times she had pinched it after the whole thing was over.

Lois put down pen and notebook on her desk for a moment and massaged her temples. There was another question she had to pose to herself before she lost herself in her own musing.

Who benefits?

It wasn't her job. Lois's job was to write an article on Luthor's announcement, drop it on Perry's desk, wait for him to tell her whether it needed editing or not before it could be printed, edit said article and send it to have it printed on time.

She had done her job and it was near the end of her shift, so how she spent her time was her business and not her chief's as long as it didn't interfere with the others' and didn't get anyone killed, or worse: disgraced and out of a job.

But there was something fishy going on, or her name wasn't Lois Joanne Lane.

Who benefits?

Normally Lois would answer: 'Luthor, of course'. He was a consummate business tycoon, cunning and manipulative to the bone; turning sticky situations to his advantage was a game he excelled at.

Back on her notebook, she snorted when she re-read Luthor's statement on how he hadn't known what was happening in Cadmus. Honestly, Luthor.

But that stumped her. Cadmus had been under fire for months, had its reputation torn to shreds, it was a PR black hole and was probably costing far more money than their research was worth at this point. It was toast.

There was no reason to throw even more money at a lost cause. His incoming campaign had some potential of netting good PR, but selling it to the public, especially when it was going to influence only a potentially limited pool of individuals, was going to cost him a lot.

Who benefits?

She frowned and drew another circle around Luthor's name, and then added an interrogative point next to it. The association with Cadmus was too risky to be completely Luthor's idea, and even if he wanted to get some footing in the Justice League through Red Tornado or Wonder Woman's Lantern...

Lois canceled the half-written jotting. As if. The animosity between the Leaguers and Luthor was well-known; it would take more than trying to socialize with two superheroes. She lay back in her chair for a few moments, recalling as much as she could of the day in her mind.

"It was brought to my attention only fairly recently..."

There it was-.

"Still on that, Lois?" Her train of thought came crushing down at the sound of Bostwick's voice. She glared at him, but that had him smirking. "What's the matter? You went in expecting some third-rate business that would barely make the newspaper and got to see a preview of whatever Luthor's cooking for the future. You should be happy."

"There's something that doesn't add up. Do you know how annoying it is?"

"Couldn't tell, that Luthor chap has always been honest about his intentions." He mockingly craned his head to steal some glances from her notes. "Remember to leave something for us, Lois."

"That attitude won't land you a big scoop!" Lois shouted, but he was already walking away. Bostwick waved back at her instead of answering verbally.

She turned her attention back at her notebook. Where was she- oh, where Luthor had claimed that 'it had been brought to his attention'. Who would bring...

Someone interested in seeing the ruling overturned? Luthor's little campaign would make more sense if there was a third party covering the costs. At least, it was more credible than Lex flipping Luthor deciding to take a risk playing good Samaritan.

Or there was a really, really good payoff that she had yet to pinpoint due to lack of critical information.

There was a Scoop somewhere here and she would find it. Watch it Luthor, Lois Lane is on your case!

She could do with some coffee first, though.

Click to expand...Click to shrink...

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Widdershins 20

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21st January

20:03 GMT -5

"Does this not seem like a really bad idea to anyone else?"

I walk back towards the training area with my personal lantern in my right hand. Sounds like Kon's not really all that keen on what I'm planning.

"Remember what happened last time? All the eyes,-"

"That was him?"

Guess Tula hasn't got to that report yet. I have no idea why we bothered sending them under water as well.

"-the spinning the moon around? The giant cake?"

I can feel the Ophidian in the lantern. The image that forms in my mind is one of her excitedly swimming around inside a goldfish bowl, or perhaps a dog waiting to be let out of the car's boot to run free across a field. I'm.. a little excited about the prospect myself. An Entity is supposed to be pretty much the ultimate expression of light power. If we can work together safely, everything might be about to get much easier.

"I don't know, Superboy." Oh, Robin's here? "None of that was really dangerous. And he snapped out of it in the end."

I come around the corner as Kaldur gets up from the inscriptions Tula and Garth are painting on the floor. "Getting Luthor's data on the Light would be a major boon to our efforts against them."

Guy tries to make sense of the arcane squiggles, gives up and turns to Kaldur. "You about ready?"

"I…" Kaldur glances at the floor. "I do not know. This magic is significantly more sophisticated than any I know how to perform. Tula?"

Tula glances up for a second. "Just…" Tattoos glowing she brings her hands together, a swarm of tiny blue shimmering motes appearing between them. "About…" She turns her palms upwards and the motes fly off to different parts of the design and merge with the lines, causing those to glow as well.

Garth stands to get a better overview. "That's.. it." He turns to Guy. "We can't trap the Ophidian if it tries to escape-."

"She."

He looks around as I come fully into the training room. "Right. If she tries to escape then she'll go through these easily. What they will do is prevent her power leaking out and.. hopefully maintain some separation between the two of you."

I have the rings scan the design and compare it to my database. Looks good. "Where do you want me?"

Garth points. "Put the lantern there-" A clearly marked point on one side of a chord which cuts off about a quarter of the circle. "-and sit anywhere past that line."

I enter the circle. Uh… No, didn't feel anything. I put my lantern down so that the glowing core will be pointing towards me when we start.

"Paul, you sure about this?" Guy looks a little uncertain about the whole thing. "Last time you nearly didn't come back. I wouldn't wanna…" He points at my lantern and then at me. "If it-. She, she was influencing you."

I take a calming breath and drop my mental barriers. "M'gann? Is she?"

Her eyes glow for a second. "If she is, I can't feel her." She looks at the decidedly unhappy Kon. "I met her in Bialya and nothing bad happened to me. And Kobra-"

"Jeffrey Burr." Robin sniggers.

"-recovered and she ate him."

Tula looks a little disturbed. "I think I should probably read that report next."

"Hey, Paul?"

I look at Robin. "Yes?"

He looks thoughtful. "How did you even know a 'quintessence waveform scan' was even a thing? I thought your ring didn't have an instruction manual."

"No, but I asked for its history records. It basically goes 'was created', 'got ordered to do a quintessence waveform scan on myself', 'fly forwards a bit' then 'and now I'm on this chap's finger'." Which was annoying because I really thought I was on to something there. Some record of the ring's creator would have been a very nice thing to have. Oh well. I sit down cross legged in my part of the circle. "Anything special I need to do?"

Garth shrugs. "The usual practice for propitiating Elementals is to offer them something they want.. or to offer them a service they'd want you to do for them. I've never seen records on anything like the Ophidian so I don't really know what to suggest."

Huh. Seems a bit silly now, but aside from her obvious appreciation for me I don't really know what sorts of things the Ophidian wants. Obvious solution. I place my hands palms up on my knees, rings glowing brightly in sympathy with my Lantern. "Oph-."

"Wait a second." A cylindrical green barrier forms to encompass the ritual area.

Hm. I was about to think 'what's the point of that?', but if he has access to Ion he might well be able to keep that there. "Ophidian. Come out and talk to me."

Multiple lines of orange light arc out from the rings towards the core of my lantern as the Ophidian slowly emerges, her physical manifestation expanding as she rises upwards. "My Agent." She keeps her size relatively small as she makes two loops of coils, one on either side of my lantern. All the time she keeps her face pointed directly towards me. Heh, she isn't even pretending to stay on her side of the line.

"My Entity."

"We are to merge again?"

I tilt my head slightly to the side. "Last time... Didn't go too well. I wanted to talk to you a bit first." Obvious sexual metaphor is obvious. "I hadn't really thought about it until just now, but I don't really know what you want out of our relationship."

"You."

Behind me Robin snorts with laughter. I stand and walk slowly towards her. She lowers her head down to my level and tilts it slightly to the side. I reach out and gently rub the underside of her jaw with both hands. "You big silly, you've already got me." She narrows her eyes and leans into my strokes, though I'm not sure if she can actually feel them. "What else?"

Her eyes open slightly. "Everything."

"Okay, but what first?"

Her head jerks back. She stares at me for a moment. "First?"

"Yes. See, I had a plan for founding an Orange Lantern Corps…" I bring my finger tips to my forehead for a moment. "And I'm just realising that this is the first time I've spoken to you about it. Sorry about that."

"Corps?"

"Yes. A whole lot of people like me who use the orange light."

She twitches. "More you?"

"People like me. Lanterns, each with their own desires, their own drives. Hundreds -perhaps thousands- of different ways to view the universe."

She twists over onto her back, head wiggling from side to side. "Yes!"

"And the Controllers-."

In an instant she's back to normal. "Green Men are bad!"

"Not Green Men. Orange Men. Working for you."

"Working for us?"

"If you like." Her tongue flicks out. "Do you like the idea?"

"Gnat?"

"I wasn't planning to include him." She remains where she is, still looking at me. "I want to build something, something.. from us."

"We build something, and it is ours."

"Given freely, not forced."

"I want this first. This more."

I nod. "Okay. But first-" I lean forwards. "-I'd like your help with something."

"We join nao!"

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Widdershins 21

next

21st January

20:08 GMT -5

I hold my hands out to either side. "Wait. Slowly. Last time we rather

A call. A call! We hear the song of need and see our light! Our light!

rushed things

I feel a path out of the prison! But… Would it be better or worse? I taste it, taste the pattern in the light. No, this one tastes different to the gnat.

and that probably didn't help."

Free! For the first time in millennia, I'm free! And welcome! No one ever welcomed me before!

The air between us glows orange.

"This is-"

-our cause!

"This is-"

-our fight!

Oooh. I remember this feeling.

"Let none who live dispute our right!" / Let none who live dispute our right!

"Powered by need, our tireless might." / Powered by need, our tireless might!

"Guides all souls with orange light!" / Guides all souls with orange light!

I gaze out across the universe. I see… I see so many lights.

I look around the room. Eyes, flesh eyes, for the first time in so long.

I focus on one-.

I always thought the stars were beautiful. I know the Elders say I shouldn't, but I can't help wondering what it's like out there.

-then another.

My father, my brothers, my mother and now my daughters too? No, I will not accept this! I will find some way to take back from the Citadel everything it has taken from me!

My Agent's associates. From his memories I know their skills and characters. With my own eyes I see the bonds of co-dependency between them. The burning need to be an ill-defined thing. To impress, to belong. And.. more. The.. one with… Kon. He looks worried and that makes me… I don't remember this feeling. He isn't in any danger, why does that expression make me feel like I'm doing something wrong?

The Servant of the Green… Men. No, his.. name is Guy Gardner. He was one of the ones who helped us separate when our.. last joining became less than satisfactory. He's projecting a green barrier but I feel no need to tear it down. It's just a safety precaution, perfectly reasonable. He is my friend after all.

I pull back slightly, away from the individual and to the collective. Common needs, shared desires and aspirations. Networks appear as associations are invested with their own values. Orange light, not in pools but in patterns.

My.. friends. I remember thinking something like that when my Agent and I merged last time, but now.. it's… Less… Spiky? Less aggressive. I could do so much for them… But, last time… Oh. I don't seem to find the idea of them experiencing momentary discomfort troubling any longer. They.. should assert themselves. Creating your own life, your own character, has value not connected with the material benefit. It isn't helping… The Zeroth Law! My Agent read a story by Asimov where robots programmed for the preservation of life concluded that the wellbeing of the whole was more important than the lower order wellbeing of one. Then they murdered someone who basically wasn't a threat and turned the Earth into a radioactive wasteland and one of them melted its own brain.

Those were stupid robots.

Desires, some familiar and some.. alien. Needs I don't have words for but nonetheless understand. And if I turn my head just a little to the side I see the.. shadows cast by the other colours. Each point of light is.. my view of the convergence of all of the colours to that person. I'd seen it in people before, but.. where is it coming from?

I just analysed someone's behaviour. A fictional character's behaviour. I've never… It doesn't.. relate.. to me. How am I even thinking about that? That isn't… It's him. My Agent. I'm using his brain, his thinking meat. His ideas and schematic models. Schematic models? I've never thought about schematic models before. This is rather odd.

Off to the.. the sides of normal space, pools of radiant light, the flow back and forth tethering them together. To experience and be capable of being experienced. Each created and being created by life. I see the light of orange most clearly but I wouldn't dream of claiming that it was inherently special.

If I'm thinking like him, perhaps he's thinking like me? In that case… Perhaps I could show him my special place? I never wanted to show the Gnat and no one else was able to go there. I think… I should want to just do it.. and do it because that's what I am. Except I'm not at the moment. I'm him as well. So I can reflect on my desires. Huh. He wanted to do something called a quintessence waveform scan. Is he doing that? I don't think so. I think I'm going to need to-.

I open my eyes. "No one part of the whole is complete by itself." Oh. I'm sitting down and the room around me has changed. I look around. The walls are empty space, lines and decoration picked out in orange light. The design puts me in mind of a Japanese shrine or perhaps an Egyptian tomb. The floor of the mountain is gone, replaced by a raised bier of orange and nothing. Looking at my arm I see that my clothes have been replaced by orange robes and my flesh with orange etching, like a piece of Australian aboriginal art only with far more detail and depth. Rings don't.. appear to be there. Where am I?

My special place.

Part of the wall turns slightly and is the Ophidian.

The Honden of Avarice.

A shrine? Someone built this?

I don't know. Her perspective moves around me. Until you I didn't have these thoughts. I didn't reflect. It simply was.

I put my feet on the floor. They look like they're bare but I can't feel anything from the soles. Where is it?

Did you see the orange light? The glowing pool that connects to all things? I nod. And the lights? All the many lights?

Yes.

I am the point of entry, the place where the orange and the universe first intersected. I embody it. Other lights are excluded from me, the flesh I once had is long since gone and my instinctual grasp of it is complete. She hesitates as I walk out of the room into.. another room, more or less the same as the one I just left. More.. writing, I think? On the walls. This place is a testament to the power of Avarice.

What does the writing mean?

It is a record of every instance of a being calling upon the orange light. Some are bland, blunt and simplistic. Other records are.. poetic. I did not appreciate them before. Now I.. find them… I think I find them beautiful.

This sounds artificial. Did someone create it?

I do not know. It has been here for as long as I have been aware. I.. wanted to share it with you. Alone of all the beings I have encountered, I believe you can appreciate it.

I run my hand along a line of images-

Old offence. Suppression. Bring together. Community. Build. Defend. Protect.

-and not only do I know the story, I feel the desires, the drives and designs of the people who had them. I could learn so much from this…

Thank you for bringing me here. And I'm.. sorry if this sounds ungrateful, but is there anything here that can help me with a quintessence waveform scan?

Here, now, you do not need further assistance.

I float up into the air, cross my legs and place my hands back on my knees. Rings, quintessence waveform scan of the Earth. Show me Lex's secure servers.

Compliance. / Scan underway.

And then I see the world.

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Widdershins 22

next

"…seems kinda dumb, but I'd never seen real magic before."

The world flows away, leaving the small part my feeble Human senses can see and my equally feeble Human mind can comprehend.

"Heh. Yeah, I used to feel the same way about electronics."

The orange glow around me starts to fade away. I feel... I remember that I saw… Something? There was… The Honden. That went pretty well I think. The Ophidian and I understand one another better and I… Then… Then things, the tiny bits of everything. And it was… I shake my head. What was it like?

"Wait a sec. Is that thing getting dimmer?"

Sounds like Wallace and Garth. Come on, the whole point of doing that was so that I could find… A brief flicker of remembrance. That's a relief. Seven servers and their locations. I don't remember exactly what was supposed to be protecting them but whatever it was appears not to matter even slightly when you're analysing the universe at its most atomistic. Don't.. appear to remember anything about the content… No, I remember the huge headache of trying to make sense of it all while the scan was in process. No surprise that I can't get my head around it any better now that it's over.

"I think it is." I hear running footsteps. "Tempest to everyone. Orange Lantern's coming out now."

I blink as the orange glow disappears fully. As it goes the paint Garth and Tula used to create the warding circle peels off the ground and disintegrates in the air. My personal lantern still sits opposite me and it and the rings on my fingers are glowing normally. I push myself to my feet and turn to face my team mates.

Wallace looks a little nervous. "Okay, um..? How many of you are there in there?"

"Just me."

"And.. that's.. 'just you' as in 'Paul, Orange Lantern of Sector two eight one four' not.. 'just you' as in you've merged with the Ophidian permanently this time, right?"

"Think so." They're both in casual clothing. Someone must have taken Garth to a surface world clothing shop as he's now wearing jeans and a polo neck with a thick shirt over it. He could probably get away with his normal wetsuit-looking thing in the summer… Maybe if he added some trousers… Clearly the cold wouldn't affect him enough to actually need it… Darn it, I should have asked Kaldur if Garth and Tula were going to have secretish identities or publicly be Atlanteans in America. "Where did everyone go?"

"Home, probably." Garth raises his palms to point at me and the tattoos on his arms glow slightly. "Wally got here a little early because he wanted to talk to me about his alchemy experiments."

"Home? How long was I-?"

26th January

12:26 GMT -5

"Oooooh sh-oot!"

"It has been over four days. Tell me, were you able-."

"YesItWasGreatSorryHaveToGo." I dive through the air towards the zeta tube! Come on come-!

"Recognised, Orange Lantern, B zero six."

I see the interior of the Baton Rouge zeta terminus for about half a second before transitioning to the guard post at Belle Reve's front gate. Depending on whether the guards recognise fuck, they're new people. My identification documents come out of subspace into my hands and I press them against the glass. In my left, the same Justice League identification I used when I first came here to visit Jade. In my right, the special dispensation signed by Warden Waller. Come on, the session is supposed to start in a few minutes and the Beresfords have a hard enough time trusting people as it-.

"Oh!" The woman on the other side of the glass recognises me. She's dressed in the uniform of an army soldier rather than that of a prison guard. Waller did tell me that they hadn't managed to fill all their posts yet. "You're that-" I brace for 'cake guy'. "-guy who stopped the break out."

Her partner moves his hand ever so slightly away from the 'main alarm' button. Good reflexes that man. I lower my documentation and place it on the swivelling panel. "One of them, yes. I'm sorry, but I'm very close to being late."

She nods, swivels the panel and doesn't even look at the documentation before putting it through the scanner. The set up at the front gate hasn't changed since I first visited. Authorisation paperwork gets scanned and verified remotely to prevent the staff being threatened into opening the outer gate. I wouldn't have been shocked if Waller had changed it but she was pretty clear that Belle Reve under her guidance had been as good a set up as she could make without stupid amounts of money. I suppose she didn't have a reason to alter it after kicking Strange out. The guard puts my paperwork back on the panel and picks up the phone handset. "The Orange Lantern's here." Not a local accent I note. An anti-infiltration technique or just the military unit that drew the short straw?

The pedestrian gate opens- "Thank you!" -and I dart through, a Racoon construct forming around me. Waller was very definite on the 'no flights' rule but cars are fine. I don't own a car and I don't have a driving licence. Since I'm technically in America on a diplomatic passport I don't exactly need one but I'd rather pass my test legitimately. And the law doesn't require a licence for 'emotional light constructs which look like cars'.

No busses on the road at this time of day so I accelerate up to the sixty five miles an hour which Louisiana state law allows for roads in rural areas. I'm not aware of any legislation which specifically states a speed limit for Belle Reve's interior road. Normally the only vehicles that are allowed on this bit either belong to staff of the prison authorities and those are covered by staff regulations. Bit of a cheat but Waller hasn't said anything about it yet.

After we recaptured the place Nabu put some effort into warding it in order to prevent any reoccurrence of what Mister Burr tried to do. And -purely as an unintended side effect- I can't scan anything inside the exterior fence any more. That also makes transitioning difficult… And the prison substantially better protected. Ambassador Vallambrosa earned a good deal of positive press and political good will by arranging for them to be provided with magic suppression manacles so now Belle Reve can theoretically hold any criminal in the country.

I pull up to the front entrance, drop the car construct and present my documentation again. Again, my authorisation is scanned and a phone call is placed on a secure phone line. I installed it myself, and anyone hoping to dig through to it better have brought shaped charges. A nod and the visitor door is opened granting me access to the disembarkation area. Two actual prison guards inside. The black Corrections Officer with the shotgun and buzz cut is new, but he went through both a full background check and telepathic and arcane screening. The other fellow offers me his right hand.

"Orange Lantern. Good to see you again."

"Bendemann." I take it, checking his epaulet. "Congratulations on the promotion, Deputy Warden."

"Huh. Not so much 'dead men's shoes' as a near entirely empty shoe rack." He turns away, towards the path that will take us to the prison classrooms. "I'm guessing you're here to see the Beresfords. I'll take you to them."

"Thank you. Have I missed the start to today's session?"

"Shouldn't think so. New teacher's got a bit of a habit of overrunning." Looks like the reinforced corridors from my original visit are back in use. Bendemann nods at his assistant to handle it. "Wasn't sure he was the man for the job at the start, but he's shaped up okay. Think you may have been right about him."

"Any news on the former Warden?"

The right corner of his mouth tightens slightly. "Strange doesn't have super powers. No point keeping him in Belle Reve long term. No, he got himself transferred to the Louisiana State Penitentiary while they work out what to try him for."

"I wouldn't have thought he was dangerous enough to justify that."

"Anything involving international terrorists gets you bumped up a little. Besides, once he's convicted he'd be going back there full time. This should give him a chance to get used to the place."

We're passing through a part of the prison which isn't currently in use by the inmates. It'll eventually be the 'early release' wing, or whatever they decided to call it. A place for prisoners who are serious about trying to turn their lives around, Waller apparently sharing my belief that most of the people here will be happy to run in the supervillain groove for the rest of their lives.

"…other example at the time would be President Adam's 'Tariff of eighteen twenty eight', which..."

Classroom's just up ahead. With most of the inmates on punishment lockdowns the classes aren't all that large at present. Of those who aren't confined for most of the day, virtually all turn up if just for the variety. It's mostly high school level stuff for those without diplomas. The idea of running higher education courses in a prison inhabited by supervillains was given short shrift.

"…thought the whole 'states’ rights' thing was nonsense made up by slavery apologists."

At the moment only one person is teaching here. Those whom they still had on staff after the first break out attempt quit after the second. Fortunately, they had an inmate who was only too happy to pick up the slack.

"While it is true that slave states were not entirely consistent in their application of the idea, the power relationship between state government and federal government was a very real political issue. If you look at the Articles of Confederation, they-" The Corrections Officer pushes the door open. "-had a much-" Bendemann steps aside and I enter the class room. "-weaker central authority…"

Abra pauses in his lecture for a moment as the class look around. Seven people, including a bored looking Mister Nygma. "And that was a model a good many people were reluctant to move away from." He checks the wall clock. "That looks like all the time we have for today. I'd like everyone to read chapter seven before tomorrow. If you have any questions, I will be working on laundry detail."

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Widdershins 23

next

26th January

11:38 GMT -6

"Hey, I was working for an agricultural company in Brazil before I came here. We used sat-phones. I'm not used to this.. sort of.. equipment."

The ring shows me Doctor Munro under his desk, fiddling with cables. I hold the phone construct away from my head for a moment and look over to the Beresfords and Doctor Quinzel. "He just needs a moment. Old people and.. computers…"

Doctor Quinzel frowns for a second. "Just how old is he anyways?"

"Seventy six." Probably. There was definitely an Arnold Munro born in April of nineteen thirty four. I couldn't find any record of him having super strength, but if people can maintain secret identities now he would certainly have been able to back then.

"He sure didn't look it. Or was he giving me an old photo?"

Tuppence gives the idea an amused snort. She's looking around the room for something interesting, clearly bored with the waiting. Thomas is splitting his attention between myself, Doctor Quinzel and the projector screen on the wall where -once Doctor Munro sorts out his not-Skype system- he'll be able to participate in this group session.

"Danner formu-." I stick the phone back on my ear. "Yeah, that's it." Might have been easier just to transition myself to India or have Doctor Niang or Doctor Sivana set it up for him but he said that he wanted to do this himself. "Okay, now, there should be an icon like the side of someone's head. Click on it, we'll open the connection from here and you just click on 'answer'."

"Hey, I'm old, not stupid. I can handle.. some.. jumped up.. Babbage engine." He fiddles with the positioning of the camera and opens the program. "Waiting on you."

Ring, call. "Should be on in a moment."

Fourteen seconds later the screen lights up, giving us a perfect view of Doctor Munro's ceiling and his forehead. He's kept the same low maintenance haircut he had when we met: greying hair combed back and held in place with some sort of product I imagine it must be hard to get in the wilds of India. "How's that?"

Thomas leans a little towards the picture. "Y'all got it pointed too high, Doc."

"Oh? Okay, wait a sec." The camera wiggles slightly, then points directly at his chest for a moment before refocusing on his face. He still has a moustache and it looks like he's a little behind on his shaving. Or maybe the ring has just spoiled me. "Better?"

"That's perfect, Doc Munro." Doctor Quinzel flashes him a winning smile. The view of our room which he's getting includes the four of us and given the size of his monitor he's probably not getting all that much detail.

"Oh, please, call me Arnold. Hello Thomas. Hello Tuppence. Nice to see you at last."

"Hey Doc." / "Uhh."

Thomas has spoken on the phone to Doctor Munro at least once a week since I put the two of them in contact. Thomas told me that he found it weird, someone taking an interest in his life like that. He much preferred talking about Doctor Munro's work. The non-technical parts, anyway.

Tuppence isn't quite as interested in this as her brother is. There isn't any sort of positive adult role model attachment in her life for her to associate with the idea of Doctor Munro. At best she sees this as 'mildly irritating thing which gets her good thing', i.e. early release. I'm not sure this will work if she doesn't get a little more invested. While there is plenty of work out there for super strong people they will expect some sort of work ethic. Even the senior supervillains.

"So!" Doctor Quinzel brings her hands together. "I was thinking we might start with sharing a little somethin' from our childhoods. Arnold, what was it like growing up in the thirties with super powers?"

He exhales. "Well, I'm not sure how it really compares... There wasn't any Justice League or Justice Society. I don't think I ever heard mention of other people like me -people with super powers- until the War started. And I didn't meet any of them until years later. Mom and Dad… More Mom really, she wanted me not to show anyone what I could do. At the time I treated it as a game… I.. guess she knew all about how hard my.. natural father had it."

"They didn't let you tell anyone?"

"I never found it that hard to.. conceal the fact I was strong. A few of the other kids picked up on how I never seemed to get injured, but… Not taking part in sports made them think I was some kinda sissy, rather than being so strong I didn't want to risk hurting them."

"Sounds lonely."

"I made friends with kids who had other interests. And.. some weekends, Mom, Dad and me would go out somewhere far away from anyone so I could just-" He makes a small thrusting gesture with his right hand. "-let go. Run, jump, throw giant rocks around. You know, really let it all out. They did get that I needed to learn how to control myself, they just… They didn't want me being born a metahuman to totally define my life."

"When did someone else first find out?"

"Heh." He smiles. "Jemima Thompson, our Senior year."

"How'd she find out?"

"I decided to show off for a pretty girl. Threw some jerk's car into a lake. Mom went crazy when she found out."

Thomas looks incredulous. "You did that? Fer real?"

"Not proud of it, but yeah. Errol had been ragging on me for years. He must have just thought he'd left his parking brake off or something." He focuses his attention on Thomas. "I'm not proud of it. Doing that could have messed up my life. If the police had found out I could have said goodbye to going to college or getting a good job with anyone. Except maybe for Uncle Sam."

"What'd it feel lahk?" Tuppence looks a little too interested.

"Hm?" Doctor Munro looks at her. "What'd it feel like? Well, I hadn't ever tried throwing a car before. I thought I could just take a hold of the bumper, pick it up with that. When it snapped off I felt kinda stupid and a bit guilty. I mean, it wasn't the car's fault the guy who drove it was a jerk… And it was the first time I'd ever stepped out of line. In the end I just sort of leaned into it and shoved it. I guess it was.. satisfying."

She takes that in for a moment. "Y'all ever fight anyone else with super powers?"

"Tuppence, I'm a biologist. Closest I ever got to fighting someone as strong as me was this one ornery bull who didn't want his injections and got out of his paddock. And when you fight a cow in a field full of cow pies, no one comes out looking good."

"Then what's the point? You sayin' y'all were happih jus' hahdin away yawer whole lahf?"

"I like to think I can do more for the world than just punch stuff." He shrugs. "I stopped hiding what I could do when I finished my college degree. Way I see it, just because I can throw a car two city blocks doesn't mean I got to."

She crosses her arms and turns slightly away from the screen. "Whatever. Ah say, the other kids were raht: you are a sissy."

"Oh? And how's picking a fight with everyone working out for you?"

Tuppence leaps to her feet! "You wouldn't be so smart if-!"

Doctor Quinzel raises her hand. "Okay, howsabout-."

The door just behind Doctor Munro opens. "Arnold, did you say-?" Doctor Sivana comes in without knocking then stops as he sees the screen. Oh wonderful. "Who are-? Wait." His eyes widen slightly. "The prototypes! I hadn't realized they were still alive!" He flashes the camera a smug smile. "I suppose that settles the nature versus nurture question. It seems that I was right once again." What? "Good upbringing and education are simply better predictors of outcome than-."

Thomas gets to his feet as well as Doctor Quinzel grits her teeth and puts her hands on the sides of her head. "Who tha heck're you?!"

Doctor Munro tries gently nudging Sivana away. "Sivana, now isn't the time-."

"Who the 'heck' am I? My dear Country Mouse… I'm you."

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Widdershins 24

next

26th January

11:42 GMT -6

Thomas' expression is one of incomprehension. "Tha' hell you tawkin' 'bout, mahn?"

Actually, I'm somewhat puzzled myself. They don't look identical. Yes, there are certain similarities, most notably having twin sisters… Sivana said that he was created using the best biotechnology available. I never actually scanned the Doctor. Would the best biotechnology have included the Danner formula? I'm a bit disappointed that Doctor Thaddeus Sivana Senior couldn't improve on something nearly a hundred years old.

"It's a rather beautiful story, actually. You see, my father is the greatest scientific mind the world has ever seen. When he and Mother decided they wanted children, naturally they wanted to make sure they had the best of everything." He counts them off on his fingers. "Genetics, gestational nutritional and environmental conditions and of course.. augmentations."

"Y'all gawt tha Danner Formula too?"

"Of course I didn't. Father wasn't sure that what he'd recovered from the Brazilian mass graves had allowed him to successfully recreate the Danner Formula, let alone given him something that would be safe for Human usage. Have you seen the pictures of Hugo's Brazilian children?" Next to him, Doctor Munro visibly winces. "So he needed Human Guinea Pigs. He contacted a gynecologist of his acquaintance, a Doctor Lamour, who was interested in inducing metahuman births amongst his unsuspecting patients. They compared notes and Lamour found a couple on his books with the right characteristics." He waves his right hand dismissively. "A couple of rednecks who wanted free in vitro fertilization. No one of any real significance. Inducing a pregnancy with twins was a little trickier, but well within his abilities."

Lamour? Who is he..? L'Amour, Love, Benjamin Love. That fits his modus operandi, certainly. I wasn't aware that he and Sivana had ever worked together but it isn't impossible. Magnificus is old enough to have been born before Sivana Senior went totally off the deep end.

"He jest… Tested stuff..? On Maw?!"

"Yes, that's right." Sivana leans a little closer, stroking his jaw. "The Danner Formula, as well as one or two other genetic tweaks. I hadn't realized that the resemblance would be quite this strong. Same solid jaw line, same hair… Your cut is clearly the worse, but I suppose allowances must be made for your current residency." He checks the ends of the nails on his left hand for a moment. "Of course, once he had 'proof of concept' he could take it further." He lowers his hand. "That is to say, I'm superior to you in every way."

"Yer sayin' yer paw stuck Tuppy an' me with a loada weird chemicals an' that's why we're how we are?"

"Hm? Oh no. You're augmented far beyond the dreams of normal men. Just, less than me. If you've failed to do anything at all with it then that's all on you and your environmental conditions. I grew up in a loving home with all the intellectual and social stimulation I could ask for. You… Well, I don't know about you. But given where you ended up.. I think I can guess." He takes a step back. "This has been interesting. Now, try not to die of a heart attack. You might put up my insurance premiums." He turns to Doctor Munro. "Arnold, we can do this later. Have fun with the.. reprobates." He's chuckling as he leaves the room.

Thomas turns to me. "What's he tawkin' about?"

I rub my face with my left hand. "That was Doctor Magnificus-" Tuppence snorts with amusement. "-Sivana." Doctor Quinzel appears to recognise the name. "Elder son of the elder supervillain Thaddeus Sivana. I've no idea whether what he said is true or not, but it does fit the available data."

Doctor Munro nods. "I've read up on Thaddeus Sivana. He probably would have been able to recreate the Formula like that if he put his mind to it. Hadn't realized he'd tried improving it."

Thomas looks at his hands. "We got.. powers 'cause some mad scientist wanted t' try 'em out before usin' 'em on his own kids?"

"That's what it sounds like."

"What you gettin' so twisted up fer, Tommy? It don't matter none where our powers come from."

Doctor Quinzel smiles. "I'm glad you see it that-"

"Unless he's hirin'." She looks at me. "Is he hirin'?"

"-way."

"Captain Marvel punched him through some sort of spatial portal a little over a year ago. He hasn't been seen since."

"An' that Lama guy?"

Ring? "He's serving several rather long sentences in a prison in Milwaukee. Neither of them really went in for.. hiring super powered help."

Thomas' face is creased up as he thinks about what he just heard. "That.. Sivana guy… Him an' his sister are younger than Tuppy an' me?"

"Yes."

"An' he's a doctor. Like, a real doctor?"

"He's.. not a medical doctor, but yes, he has a doctorate."

"An' he grew up with a supervillain for a paw?"

"Yes, until he was about fourteen. He.. went with his mother after the divorce and she isn't a criminal."

Tuppence rolls her eyes. "Bet she don't drink none, either."

"I've never tried to find out."

Doctor Quinzel leans forwards. "I didn't know your mom was an alcoholic."

Tuppence slumps sullenly. "What, that not e'en yer fiahs?"

It almost certainly was. Doctor Quinzel gives her an encouraging smile. "Doctor Strange wasn't the best at keepin' records other people could see. Or lookin' after people."

"Yeah, he was kinda creepy." For a half second her face stills as she realises that she just agreed with someone she'd decided to hate. Then she appears to decide not to care. "Hey, Orange. What else did Sivana stick e'en Maw? We gunna grow ten'acles err somethang?"

"I don't know exactly but I can't think of any reason why you would." Scan. "There's no… There's nothing in your genes that would do that. I don't understand some supernatural effects but if Sivana was trialling something he intended to use on his own children I don't think it very likely that there will be any nasty surprises."

Thomas looks at me. "So… Whut happens to Sivana? The one who dun gone disappeared?"

"Nothing much." I shrug. "If he turns up again he'll get arrested."

"Thayat's.. e'it..?"

"We're not going to try and rebuild an experimental portal from the ruins of his old laboratory to fetch him and.. Minnesota doesn't have the death penalty." He clearly looks unhappy. "Thomas, dealing with supervillains is simple. Dealing with the damage they leave behind isn't. When the Roanoke Island thing happened, taking down the guys doing it took less than ten minutes once we found them. Some of the places that got set on fire that day still haven't finished being rebuilt. Sometimes-" I shrug. "-we can't fix the things supervillains do. If Sivana had used werewolf or.. sea urchin on you instead of Danner Formula, there'd be sod all I could do about it."

"Sea urchin?"

I generate constructs to demonstrate my point. "One of the children Doctor Lamour created has see through flesh so he looks like a walking skeleton. One of the others looks like a Furby, another will be stuck looking like she's five years old for her whole life. Don't think science villains are less dangerous just because they can't crush granite in their fists."

"They kin jus'.. mess up someone's lahf… An' there ain't nothin you c'n do." Tuppence looks at him. "You heard the mahn, Tuppy. We wuz just a test run t' his paw. If somethang went wrong he wouldn'a cared."

"Probably not. It's a bit like your rampage around New Orleans." He looks at me in surprise. "Did you care how many people's lives you were messing up when you wrecked their shops? Their cars? Heck, mains water was out for three days over a good chunk of the city. You spent any time thinking about that since you got here?"

"Pff." Tuppence rolls her eyes. "No. Who cares?"

Thomas frowns. "Think ah might. An' it feuls bad."

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Widdershins 25

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26th January

13:03 GMT -5

I choose to close my eyes rather than stare into the brilliant golden light shining from Nabu's ankh. I know that Diana's only showing concern. Having a magic user check over someone she knew had been exposed to unnatural mental influences is a very sensible thing to do, and that's why I popped over to London after the session with the Beresfords broke up. And why I was fine with Mister J'onzz scanning me. Heck, if it were anyone other than Nabu I wouldn't complain even after John gave me a cleanish bill of health.

But it's.. Nabu.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

I know Doctor Quinzel had wanted to get them to spend the majority of the session talking about what they wanted to do at the end of their sentence, but I saw an opportunity to get an empathetic response from Thomas and I have no regrets about taking it. She was quick to get us back on topic after I did though, and I mostly tried to keep my nose out. Thomas said that of the options he'd thought about, demolition work appealed the most. Smash stuff, get paid for it.

Tuppence just shrugged and grunted. Looks like she's going to take slightly more work, but I can see even her shifting her desires as a result of her confinement. I was a little surprised that they weren't more interested in military service given that the army would be much less likely to dwell on their period of incarceration. On the other hand, they've had plenty of opportunities to kill people for money and they haven't taken them. I guess everyone likes to feel superior to someone.

The glow on the other side of my eyelids fades. "His bond to the creature is stronger than before, but I can detect no trace of its mind within him."

I open my eyes to the mountain's training room and Diana, Guy and Nabu. "Ophidian, Nabu. She has a name."

The helmet swings from Diana to me. "Your deed was foolhardy. Releasing the creature again-"

"She's not hostile and-"

"-could have resulted-"

"-I really wish you could-"

"-in untold destruction!"

"-get your helmet around the idea!"

I stare down Mister Zatara's stolen eyes. I still don't want to put a Mageslayer through the helmet quite enough to actually do it but my anger is making it feel as if I do. I hold my hands out to either side and recall the rings.

"Yeah, ring scan doesn't show anything either." Guy shrugs. "I mean, not that I can do direct scans through his tattoos or anything. Speaking of which-" He knocks the front of Nabu's shoulder with the back of his right hand and Nabu instinctively breaks eye contact with me. "-how're you doin' that?"

"My spells search for the creature. Though Orange Lantern's soul-bindings protect him they do not protect it."

"Don't know if that really applies to power rings."

I hold out my right arm to Diana. "Do you want to check as well? I imagine that the lasso would still work."

"I don't think that will be necessary." She looks my face over carefully. "Thank you, Doctor Fate. I appreciate you taking the time to do this."

"Guarding the League-" He glances at me. "-and their charges against anathematic creatures is my solemn duty. Now I will return to the Watchtower. The Earth is-."

"-safe under the watchful eyes of Fate?" I wave him off with my left hand, Eris' card momentarily appearing on my palm. "Bye Nabu." Mister Zatara's eyes narrow before Nabu disappears in a golden ankh.

"Are you sure that you needed to take that risk?"

I raise my left eyebrow at Diana's enquiry. "What, Nabu? There's no real risk-."

"No, not Nabu. The Ophidian."

"I now have the location of seven secure LexCorp servers that I didn't know about before. Don't.. know what's on them, but he wouldn't have put that much effort into protecting them if it wasn't important."

Diana nods. "Do you intend to infiltrate them?"

I shake my head. "No. I couldn't disguise that someone had broken in. I'm not even sure that I could disguise that it was me who broke in. Having dedicated servers that are in rooms which are warded and lead lined isn't a crime in itself. As I see it, my choices are sit on it, wait until we get probable cause or just confront him directly about Roanoke."

Guy brings up a world map with the locations I gave him clearly marked. "You don't think there's any chance at all that he's just… You know, not a member of the Light?

"With that hint he gave me about 'someone' having killed Ra's al Ghul permanently? No. Plus…" I take a holo display out of subspace and show CCTV images gathered from Metropolis. I have the ring highlight a figure who appears in each of them. "Nylor Truggs appeared in Metropolis. Luckily for me the Metropolis police department keep their recordings pretty much indefinitely. I can't prove that he went to LexCorp but that's the best guess based on the movements I found." I also confirmed what he said about Barrage. The place was stripped when I looked in on it but I found some of Mister Karnowsky's hair nearby and he confirmed it himself when I visited him in Stryker's Island.

"Orange Lantern."

I draw myself to attention. "Sir."

"Lantern Gardner and I will discuss what to do regarding Luthor with the rest of the Justice League. Take no action until then." I nod. To be honest, there are so many imponderables there that I think I'm glad to hand off the decision to someone else.

Guy looks at me with curiosity. "What exactly were you an' the snake doin' for four days? Heh, and do I need to give Zatanna tha bad news?"

"Zatanna and I are not romantically involved." Guy looks at me for a moment, narrows his eyes slightly and moves his jaw a little to the side. Unable to read my expression he tries looking at Diana's face to try and gauge whether or not I just lied but she betrays no reaction either. "The Ophidian and I had a chat about her personal history and the use of the orange light since the beginning of the universe."

He grins. "So you were 'just talkin', huh'?"

"Lantern Gardner, Paul converted to Hellenism. It would be quite wrong for him to betray his cult's mysteries to the uninitiated."

"I don't think it counts since the Ophidian isn't a Hellenistic deity. But I did run in to Gaea on Friday."

"You…" Diana blinks at me. "Under.. what.. circumstances..?"

"There was a portal to Hell under London and.. the Demon who created it had somehow got his grubby talons on a Dryad. When we got her out we took her to Themyscira. Gaea met us in person on our way to her grove."

She nods. "That is a rare honor. Most Amazons are lucky to meet her even once in their lives."

"I was thinking… I don't suppose you have a list of mythic… In the sense of appearing in mythology, not in the sense of not really existing… Missing persons? I don't know if Nergal shared the knowledge that Dryads can be used to maintain hellgates but I wouldn't want to take an avoidable risk over it."

"I'm not sure how such a list could be assembled. If you wish to ask a particular deity, you can just make an offering at the appropriate temple."

"It's so much easier when you can just walk up and talk to them. Oh, right, Guy: when should I expect the first batch of Greenies for training?"

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NEXT CHAPTER

What Lies Beneath

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What Lies Beneath 1

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What Lies Beneath

27th January

13:27 GMT -8

"Recognised, Green Arrow, zero eight, Robin, B zero one, Kid Flash, B zero three, Orange Lantern, B zero six-"

I step out into the bare stone cave.

"-Artemis, B zero eight."

"So." I make a point of looking around. "This is the Arrow Cave."

Mister Queen sighs and raises his right hand to cover his face. "This is not the Arrow Cave."

Wallace turns back to me and nods. "Totally the Arrow Cave."

"It's just a cave that's far enough away from the roads that I don't have to move the zeta tube every couple of weeks and close enough to a campsite that I don't have to come up with excuses about why I'm here if I get spotted." Mister Queen starts through the cave towards the exit.

Robin pointedly looks at the cave wall. "Do all the caves around Star City have lighting?"

"No, but if anyone asks it's for spelunkers."

Artemis is grinning. "How about the equipment lockers?"

"Spelunking equipment can be very heavy. No one wants to have to carry it here every time."

"And it can't be easy to get the Arrow Car in such a narrow-."

"There is..!" He takes a deep breath. "There is no 'arrow car'. There was an arrow themed carnival float which I used once. I use zip lines or a normal car. One I can get insurance for."

Wallace nods sagely. "Batman does go through Batmobiles kinda fast. Hey Rob, how many was it last year? Three?"

"The third one wasn't a total write off."

"That's not what Two-Face says."

"Half the car was fine."

Mister Queen sighs and shakes his head slightly as we emerge into daylight. Three cars all with four wheel drive capacity are parked just by the cave entrance and Roy Harper is leaning back against the bonnet of the jeep. Unlike the rest of us he's in full costume. Quick scan… No, aside from Roy and.. him, no one anywhere near here. In New England the working day is coming to a close but here we're almost in the middle of it.

Roy straightens up. "Ollie. Robin. Wally. Artemis. Paul."

Robin smiles at him. "Hey Roy."

"I'm not..!" He bites it down. "I'm not Roy Harper."

Wallace shakes his head. "Actually, we checked the timelines. I never even met the other Roy."

Robin nods. "And I only met him once." That doesn't seem to help. "How's going solo working out for you?"

His head turns slightly away and down. "I'm getting nowhere. With the League of Shadows gone I barely even know where to start."

"Dubbilex couldn't help?"

"Couldn't or wouldn't. I was thinking that maybe I should have asked more aggressively."

"That.. wouldn't be a good idea. He's aware of physical harm, but he doesn't really feel pain pain. Plus, even if he didn't brain blast you you'd be swarmed under by G-Elves in seconds."

Mister Queen takes a step towards his protégé. "Roy, you've been running yourself ragged ever since New Year. It's not good for you and it doesn't help the other Roy." Roy's eyes narrow slightly and Mister Queen raises his hands to ward off his complaint. "But, since I know I can't persuade you to take a break, I thought we might try a new approach. Paul's got a technique for finding things that looks like it bypasses all defenses."

"Unless they're protected by magic. Hal already-."

"Actually-" I wave my right hand like a student uncertain about the answer to the teacher's question. "-the quintessence waveform scan should bypass magic… Most magic. You could probably ward against it specifically or.. some sort of planar distortion? I mean, if they've put him in a parallel universe or something you're out of luck, and if they've moved him to another planet we could be here a while. But if he's on Earth and whoever took him hasn't expended massive -and easily traceable- levels of resources…" I nod. "I should be able to find him."

He frowns. "Why didn't Hal try that?"

"Because it would have given him a brain haemorrhage. I can only do it if the Ophidian helps and I can't.. retain most of what it shows me. That's why I brought this." I unsling the box containing my personal lantern and open it. "A location should be doable."

"When can you get started?"

"As soon as James Harper gets out from behind that car." Roy stills slightly. "The one thing I dislike more than him being here at all is him maintaining the pretence that-" I turn my head in his direction. "-I don't know full well he's there!"

The other Mister Harper walks out from around the… Americans call them Sports Utility Vehicles, don't they? He's wearing full Guardian gear. "Orange Lantern."

"Mister Harper." I don't hate him. Nabu is an extremely intelligent being who makes his own choices. When those choices involve body jacking the father of a friend of mine… I'm an Orange Lantern. Taking it personally is exactly the correct response. James Harper on the other hand is an idiot who played the hand he was engineered to hold. True, it hurt many sentient beings and produced no useful benefit, but it did so because he lacks the mental apparatus to do anything else. Maybe he can learn to be something else.

"You knew, didn't you? Back at Cadmus when you came in with Superboy."

"Knew what?"

"That I was a clone as well. You grabbed me, scanned me with your ring and then you just left. I didn't start thinking about it until after Luthor fired me, but you knew."

"You're spiritually shallow and your genetics are extremely similar to those of Roy."

"Was 'Tomato' some kind of British insult?"

"No, it was a reference to the animated television series 'Big O', in which the entire population of the city are clones who think they're amnesiacs. The one man who wasn't is a senile tomato farmer and he constantly tells people what happened in a way no one else understands. Or something, it got a bit weird towards the end." I take a firm hold of my lantern and float the box softly to the ground. "It's probably best that you're here. Having multiple people with the same genes around might be confusing." I reflect on what I'm about to do. "More confusing." Deep breath. "Ophidian, quintessence waveform scan."

She touches my mind and immediately my awareness oooh whaw. This is never… Do Maltusians see the universe like this all of the time? Every mote of energy around me, every whiff that could be anything fully visible in every regard. I could stare at a single atom until the end of the universe and not even scratch the surface. Ophidian, I need to filter a little. I'm looking for matter that looks like this. For an instant the maddening detail fades a little, then it snaps back with billions of locations as I'm bombarded with every skin cell and hair that still has his DNA intact within it. No, more, concentrations. Show me the patterns of organs. Okay. That's.. probably him. In material terms there isn't much difference between a live person and a corpse, but in spiritual terms… Oh, I'm not going to remember this anyway. Just fix on the location…

And the beautiful picture fades away. Artemis catches me as I stumble backwards. "How long?"

"About three hours. You find him?"

I straighten up and nod. "Yep. We can pick him up when the world stops sparkling."

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What Lies Beneath 2

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28th January

03:53 GMT +2

The seven of us lie flat on our stomachs as we watch the entrance to the unaccountably in use disused missile silo. Does the Ukraine have nuclear missiles in my home parallel? I don't think it does but I'm sure the Soviet Union would have stuck a few around. Presumably they took them all back after the Warsaw Pact broke up. Would they just have used aircraft based weapons and short ranged vehicle mounted missiles? Whatever. Here, they had at least one silo and someone is keeping the other Roy in it.

And there are robots. At least they aren't Bozos this time. No, this time we're up against someone clever enough to build autonomous turrets protected by rock, metal and force fields. I had assumed that Lex would be the one who took responsibility for hiding him but a disused nuclear silo is far more Savage's kind of thing.

"I'm counting seven hardpoints concealed behind the rock."

Robin and the Arrow clan have some sort of high end binoculars over their eyes. Wallace poked his goggles a few times but his built in visual equipment wasn't quite up to the task. As I watch he gives up on squinting and lifts them off his face. "Psst! Rob!"

"Kinda busy, KF."

"But-!" Artemis lowers her binoculars and prods him in the arm with them. "What?" She rolls her eyes and prods him again. "Would you quit-!" He looks around and sees the binoculars. "Oh. Um, thanks." He takes them from her, hesitates for a moment and then raises them to his eyes.

Roy… Yes, I've never met the other one either. Roy taps my rerebrace. "Wanna look?"

"No need."

"You said you couldn't see inside."

"I said I can't scan inside. My helmet's augmented visual modes work just fine."

"You think about sharing the tech?"

"Sure. You just need to live in it for two months making every movement you ever want the suit to replicate so that the system can learn how to not pull you apart whenever you do anything. I can have one ready for you in a couple of hours if you want."

"… Think I'll pass."

Robin lowers his binoculars. "No one's gone in or out. Haven't seen any guards other than the robots. Plans say there shouldn't be that much space inside."

Green Arrow shuffles uncomfortably. "No nukes though, right?"

"Not unless they were faking records back in the nineties. America and Russia were both pretty careful about making sure all of Ukraine's nuclear weapons got packed up."

"Well that's something. Any entrances apart from the front door?"

Wallace lowers Artemis' binoculars. "We could always open the silo door."

"KF… Let's try not to start World War Three."

"Huh? Ooh."

"I could… Try phasing through the metal. But, if they've got force fields and wards they can probably block phasing as well. Or at least detect it."

"Looks like we've got one roboturret each." Mister Queen manages a small smile. "Everyone bring their rocket launchers?"

"Left it in my other utility belt."

Roy scowls. "Would you take this seriously!?"

Mister Queen puts his right hand on Roy's shoulder. "Orange Lantern, could you take them from here?"

"Probably, but my constructs are both noticeable and distinctive."

Artemis pulls her binoculars back from Wallace. "I.. think I could probably hit them from here."

"Really? I know you're strong, but that's gotta be at least-."

She pulls an Unmaker from her quiver, one with my new smart fletching. "Can you program these?"

Ring, do it.

Compliance.

"Done."

"These are Orange Lantern's design. Fire them up high and if they're close enough they'll guide themselves down onto the target." She shuffles backwards and then rises to her knees.

Robin grins. "Isn't that sorta cheating?"

"You wanna try it?" I send a filament out from my foot and over to hers, granting her augmented vision with wind speeds and directions. She blinks as she starts calculating her shot. "Thanks."

We spent quite a while practising this after she found out that she could now shoot so far that hitting the target was almost pure luck. Since she doesn't usually fight at that sort of range it isn't necessarily a problem, though I have had a few ideas about phased arrows that ignore wind and gravity until they reach the target. It's just that at that point you've pretty much got a bad micro missile launcher, the bow's advantage of simplicity having been removed by the hideously sophisticated arrows. Maybe some sort of enchantment instead? I think I need to talk to a professional Atlantean mage who isn't Sephtian. His work load is getting to be a bit much these days.

Mister Queen nods, then looks at Wallace. "Kid Flash, how fast can you cover that distance?"

He lowers his goggles. "About eight seconds."

"Here." He passes Wallace one of his own Unmakers. "Artemis won't be able to hit the main entrance from here. Once the turrets are down, get over there and hit the door with this. Whoever's in there's going to know they're under attack, but the longer it takes them to work out who's doing it the better. Try and get there as soon as the last robot turret is destroyed."

"Got it."

"Orange Lantern, once Kid Flash hits the door take the rest of us to the entrance and get yourself inside. We've really got no idea where-." He pauses. "Where Speedy is, so concentrate on finding whoever's running the place and take them down. Robin, you're on recon. Head into the silo after him. Your priority is to find Speedy but be careful. If you meet heavy resistance, fall back and we'll take 'em down with arrows. Remember, there won't be a lotta room to manoeuvre once you get inside."

I think Mister Harper Senior is frowning under that helmet. "I'm not sure sending a child in first is such a good idea."

"Yeah, well, he's a computer expert, he's memorized files on every supervillain the League, Team or the Justice Society ever encountered and he's bullet-." He glances at me. "Resistant, thanks to the, um, the Formula. He's got the best chance of surviving a fight with anyone he runs into inside. Roy and I will follow on just behind. Artemis, back Orange Lantern up."

Wallace waits for a second. "What about me?"

Mister Queen winces. "You and Guardian are in reserve." Wallace looks pained. "Look, there's gunna be a lotta locked doors and narrow corridors in there. You wouldn't have room to dodge properly or build up speed. I need you and Jim making sure no one gets behind us, alright?" Wallace nods, his truculence under control. At least Mister Queen isn't asking him to run to the other side of the country for this. "Keep your radios open and call out contacts as you find them. Artemis, you about ready?" She nods and draws her first arrow. Wallace rises up into a sprinter's starting pose and the rest of us come up to a crouch. "Okay, loose."

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What Lies Beneath 3

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28th January

03:58 GMT +2

I watch as the first arrow drops towards its target. "All on target. Last impact in twelve, first in two, one."

Crumbler technology doesn't cause an explosion and at this range we can't hear it as the surrounding rock gives way.

"First and second are well hit. Partial on third, appears disabled."

I watch as the rock covering falls away from the remaining robot turrets. Hatches open to allow them out just as the rest of Artemis' volley slams home.

"Fourth well hit, fifth hit crosswinds and missed, six well hit, seventh-" The turret sprouts legs and lunges for freedom as the arrow flies past it into its hidey hole. "-evaded. It's mobile and looking for targets." There's a blast of air as Wallace launches himself forwards. "Creating a distraction." As with all the best supervillain bases this silo has a minefield. Wallace could run over them when moving at full speed but why take the risk? A prod from a subterranean filament is easily enough to detonate them and draw the attention of whoever is inside while he dashes around the side.

"Good shooting Artemis." The surviving turrets take positions, brace and then open fire into the explosions with violet lasers. Power level..? Yeah, don't get hit by those. Mister Queen nods at me. "Get ready to-."

"Dodge."

Wallace turns his direct charge into a jinking run as one of the robots picks up on him and takes a shot. Pulse fire rather than continuous beam, the laser is easily fast enough to hit him. Shame about the servos aiming it. Wallace suddenly switches from evading to sprinting directly forwards, leaps and throws one of Robin's Crumbler equipped… Um. Robinrangs? At each of them before landing in a roll, recovering and finishing his sprint to the door. Both strike home, causing the central sections of the robots to collapse. Wallace stabs the front door with his Unmaker as the power cell on the robot on the left detonates in a brilliant white explosion!

Are we in? Yes, there's a breach! I transition the group across the distance, depositing all but myself and Robin on the outside. We appear inside a narrow cylindrical corridor. No alarms, I note. Maybe this place is just being used for storage?

Robin gets his bearings almost immediately, scans the steel tubes running along the wall with his arm computer and rips one of them free, revealing the cables inside. He plugs in his computer as I turn, create a small railgun construct and Unmake the rest of the outer door before conducting a ring scan of the place. No, each section must be warded individually. Tiresome.

"The layout hasn't changed. I'll hit the storeroom."

"I'll head to command. Armour." The familiar orange plates materialise around me as I fly off down the corridor. This place is too far from anywhere for commuting or regular resupply. It might well be just for storage. Rings, scan for -I slam an Unmaker into the next security door and then send in a construct, shoving the barrier apart and crushing the motors inside the wall- biological matter.

No recent sample detected. Best matches on partial samples available.

A bunch of people who-. There's a force field emitter in the corridor ahead of me, another slightly further ahead of that and a… Ooh, a plasma initiator. Haven't seen one of those on Earth before. Not a terrible trap I suppose. I shove a razor construct into the wall and sever it from its power source. "There are defensive force fields in the walls."

"But they go down to Crumble-tech."

"And the plasma weapon?"

I hear a bang. "Not.. so.. much. My way back's blocked. I'll keep going. Try and shut it down from Command."

"Right." A bunch of people who should have been in a nuclear missile silo. True AIs are rare. I suppose… The Brain could have set this up in person if he left Mallah at home.

"Contact. Robots. They look like spheres with arms and legs." Doesn't ring any bells. "Very agile and-. Ugh. Very sharp claws."

I accelerate, shooting a hole in the next door with Crumbler rounds and transitioning to the other side.

"Green Arrow to Robin. Looks like the plasma weapon destroyed itself. We'll be there to back you up in a sec."

The wall ahead of me glows a faint blue. The shields around the command section must have activated as soon as the attack started. Scan? Okay. Command is now isolated. Whoever's inside is cut off from the outside. The generator must be inside. They're relying on their robots to deal with the intruders.

A small hatch opens in the wall just behind me and four metallic spheres roll out. A small section on the top of each rises slightly, revealing their optic sensors. Eight other panels detach on the ends of robotic arms, and that's about as far as they get before my railgun turret shoots each of them in turn with low power Crumblers. I don't bother turning around as the ring scans them. Interesting force field knife thing on the claws but they aren't really anything special.

Okay, so there's no way for them to know that their robots have won. There's a good chance they wouldn't be able to escape with the force field in place… Well, okay, a Boom Tube or.. some form of magic would probably do it, but those aren't exactly widespread. And if they have those, then they're already gone. I load the larger Crumbler rounds. No reason not to blast through, but if they're in there and are planning to wait a period of time and then teleport… Rings, teleport jammer and interdiction-

The barrier drops.

-field. I shoot immediately, my rounds taking out the blast door and a good chunk of the wall around it. The room inside looks like a cross between a mechanised surgical suite and a robotics factory. On the far side of the room a humanoid figure standing on a raised dais raises its right arm to wave me goodbye before tapping a button on a small control panel.

Teleport blocked.

They're wearing gold coloured power armour, though it's really only visible at the calves, forearms and facemask. The rest is covered in purple robes and a green cape, an ensemble that makes little sense in an isolated bunker, to say nothing of a hazardous workshop.

They press the button again, a little harder this time.

Teleport blocked.

Colour scheme plus robots strongly suggests Doctor Cyber, one of Diana's nutters. Thought she'd been a bit quiet. Can't scan through her armour. "Everyone, I have encountered Doctor Cyber. I'm taking her into custody." Ring, interface with the workshop's computers. Take everything.

Compliance.

This time her finger goes through the pad. "Rragh!" Her left arm rises and a holoscreen appears over her forearm, showing a face I know. "Truggs! You promised me safe passage!"

"Sorry Doctor. I-I'd really like t'help, I really would, but he's jamming everything I got." His attention shifts and he waves to me. "Hey Orange."

"Truggs." Ring, can we shut down the other robots from here? No, all pre-programmed with no remote control. I attach filaments to her armour and yank her off her feet and towards me. "She'll call you back."

"I'll be waiting!"

"Doctor Cyber-." Violet lasers fire from her palms, striking my construct armour. I create manacles and turn her arms aside while jamming razor sharp needle constructs into the mechanism. A second later -and with a neat line burned into the walls of the workshop- the lasers cut out. Ring, hard interface with the armour. Did we get anything about Truggs from the computer?

Compliance. Negative. No logs recorded.

"Pretty much finished up down here Oh El."

I switch to internal only. "Glad to hear it, Kid Flash."

"And we got Roy-. Ah, Speedy-Roy too. He's in a pod like the one they kept Superboy in." He pauses. "Hey, you called her 'Doctor Cyber'."

"Yes. She has a doctorate and her surname is Cyber."

"Really? What're the odds of that?"

"About the same as an ice themed criminal actually having the surname 'Freeze'. I'm going to try and find out what she was doing here."

"Okay. You have fun with that."

External only. What does Doctor Cyber want? Oh, is that all. "Doctor, I wish to make a trade." Ring, decouple her faceplate.

The golden metal mask falls free and the woman behind gasps before scowling at me. "Happy now?" The left side of her face bears heavy burn scars from one of her previous encounters with Diana. Her once jet black hair has long since faded to grey and both of her eyes are cybernetic. Even with the low rates of supervillain execution, Diana's agelessness means that she can expect to see virtually everyone she fights die eventually. And some of them take that rather personally.

"I will trade a full heal on your body for your unedited account of your dealings with Nylor Truggs and a full explanation of how Speedy ended up down below."

Her scowl turns to disgust. "I have no reason-." I touch my left gauntlet to the right side of her face, disintegrate the cybernetic and recreate a natural eye. She gasps as I pull back my hand, spasmodically blinking her eye as she tries to re-adapt.

"I can also ensure that you go to prison somewhere slightly better than the Ukraine. Do you think we can come to terms?"

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What Lies Beneath 4

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28th January

17:14 GMT -5

Orana turns aside Match's wrist, pulls his arm across her and slams her right elbow into his face without letting go. He flies backwards, pulling her off her feet and causing her to reflexively loosen her grip. Hmm. While she adapted quickly to the realities of super strength combat her instincts are deeply entrenched.

Mister Queen looks her over appreciatively. "Where'd you find her?"

"Themyscira."

Diana watches the fighters carefully. "Can I assume that you didn't consult anyone before empowering her?"

"Naturally. Except her, of course." I turn my head in her direction as Orana tries to get close enough to grapple in order to circumvent her opponent's greater speed. To make things fairer we let her have her aero disc equipped boots but she really hasn't taken to using them in combat. "But don't worry; she's still fulfilling her duty as a guard. Queen Hippolyta has no grounds for complaint."

"What did you give her?"

"A quick physical tune up, copy of whatever it is the Terror Twins have and Divine Awakening. Then-" I wince as Match uses her hold on him as a pivot to strike her directly in the diaphragm with his left fist. Her face tenses slightly but otherwise she shows no reaction. "-standard Apokoliptian armour with aero discs. I used a similar decorative scheme to the one I used for yours."

She glances at where Orana's armour sits awaiting its mistress. Less gold than Diana's, more red and blue. "I can see that."

"Which you never wear." No, no, don't whinge at her. "You mentioned that you wanted more women in the League. Give her a little longer to adapt and she'll be a prime candidate."

She nods. "How did you persuade her to leave Themyscira?"

"I demonstrated the relative effectiveness of bows against AK forty sevens. She came to believe that she needed more power to meaningfully defend Themyscira. And appropriate training which she can't get back home."

Match and Orana are grappling in the air now. Mister Queen frowns slightly. "I don't remember being offered any extras when you used your 'Awakening' thing on me."

I nod slowly. "I…" Think before speaking. "I wasn't sure exactly what would happen as a result of using the Awakening on Humans. Now that I have some experimental data, I can compare it to what Desaad's records say should happen. As simply as I can put it…" There actually isn't a simple way to put it, not without sacrificing a great deal of information. "The Awakening uses local magic to build additional.. stuff on your soul. These.. extra bits.. add a supernatural component to actions you can already perform, but… More extraordinary skills and abilities are magnified first. In the case of Barda and myself, our strength and fortitude were our most notable characteristics and so they were most improved. In the case of my brother Scott, his passion for liberation and skill as an escapologist were increased instead. He's stronger than a baseline Human of his musculature would be, but only about as strong as Kaldur used to be."

"So Artemis and I get super archery but we miss out on super strength."

"Sort of. If I'd had the Terror Formula beforehand I could have used it on you, but then the Awakening would most likely have made you stronger and tougher instead of letting you do what Tao does. It… The process of adding to you is also limited by the availability of mana locally. In a relatively low magic locale such as this, the changes would occur only fairly slowly. Artemis has to strain to blink her arrows and hasn't seen-" I think back to the conversation we had during Wallace's last test. "-much in the way of physical changes."

He nods. "Guess that explains Zatanna. How fast is she-" He nods at Orana as Match attempts to break her choke hold by repeatedly slamming her into the floor. Nice to see he's got over the flying-the-way-you're-facing hang up so common to fliers. "-improving?"

"It's hard to measure. Themyscira is a relatively high magic environment but I don't have anyone to whom I can directly compare her."

"Is that why Wally got a whole lot faster?"

"In part. I think the Awakening may also have 'straightened out' the errors in his attempt to replicate the Garrick Formula, so a good deal of his added speed would simply be a result of that."

Diana smiles at me. "Barry asked me to pass on his thanks. That was a very nice thing to do for him."

"Heh." Mister Queen looks down at the floor for a moment. "Yeah. And I bet his parents like the fact that he's not eating them out of house and home anymore as well."

I wave my right hand dismissively. "I had no way to know that that would be the precise result. I firmly believe that the Garrick Formula must be alchemical in the way in which it applies its effect. It's the only thing I can think of that explains why his abilities increased so much faster than Artemis'."

"I don't suppose there's any way to speed up my process, is there? Not that I'm complaining, exactly…"

"In theory, direct mana infusions could work. If you're interested, Kaldur and I could set something up. If we increase background levels by tenfold rather than just dumping gigathaums directly into you there shouldn't really be any added risk."

He nods. "Hmm. Think about it."

"Alright!" Diana walks forwards as Match and Orana prepare to go at each other again. "That will do for now." They're both panting, and they keep watching each other very carefully as they straighten up. "Take ten minutes and then you can get your armor on for the next session."

Orana heads towards myself and Mister Queen. Her armour can be put on manually but it's far easier to ring it on instead. Mister Queen nods as she approaches. "Impressive work. Grayven tells me you're thinking of trying out for the Justice League."

Orana checks him over once, examining him for threat potential and weapons. "Yes?"

"You must have.. fought a lot of interesting people. Coming from Themyscira, I mean."

"Yes?"

Mister Queen leans towards me. "She speaks English, right?"

"Ah, sort of. Ixy only dumped the lexicon into her head a few days ago. She's still processing it."

Orana makes a momentary frown. "Tell him that I can understand everything he says."

"She says that she can understand you perfectly well. Would the two of you.. excuse me for a moment? I need to talk to Diana about something."

Mister Queen shrugs and Orana nods. Good. She needs to get used to spending time around men socially if she's serious about learning superheroing. Plus, I really do need to talk to Diana about Niko's situation. It just doesn't sit right with me that she's going to have to spend the rest of her life dodging the police for murdering her rapist father. I amble over to where she's checking Match's nose.

"It's fine, Mom." She gently prods it. "Ow!"

"If you need to spend some time under a sunlamp we can put this off or ask Kon to do it instead."

"No." Match shakes his head. "M'gann and Kon are going out tonight. And the new armor includes sunstones anyway. And a helmet." And a rather clever faceplate that allows him to fire out with heat vision without compromising armour integrity. Thank you Sub-commander Karsta Wor-Ul.

"If you're certain."

"I'm sorry to interrupt, but I rather need to speak to Diana for a moment."

He nods. "Sure. I'll go grab some water."

She frowns slightly at me as he walks away. "What is it?"

I wait until Match has taken a few steps towards the table before erecting a sound baffle. "I have.. a moral quandary I was hoping that you could help me resolve."

There's a faint expression of amused disbelief on her face. "You want advice from me?"

"What can I say, all those sessions with Guy are really helping." They actually are, and I know that she knows that I'm telling the truth.

"Are you sure you don't want to rush ahead and do things your own way?"

"This time, no. There aren't any wide issues at stake and I don't have a personal investment. I'm trying to do something for someone else, and I'm not the best at predicting how other people will react."

"Very well. What do you want to ask me?"

"I want to ask about when it's okay to kill someone. How theoretical do you want me to keep this?"

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What Lies Beneath 5

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28th January

17:19 GMT -5

She studies my face for a moment and then looks slightly to the side. "How theoretical do I need to keep it?"

"You don't need to at all. But… You might find out things that you would find convenient to be able to deny knowing about later."

"Hera." She thinks for a moment. "Perhaps you should just avoid mentioning names."

"Very well." Hm. "Under American law, killing a person can be legal in a number of circumstances. I'm aware of two instances I wanted to discuss with you: killing in the defence of oneself-" Niko Parish. "-and killing in the defence of another." Mister Scott, Mister Garrick and Doctor Knight. Had to check my facts there, but as far as I can tell it happened here just as I remember it.

"For a civilian, yes. We're held to slightly higher standards."

"You killed during the Second World War. And-" I raise my left hand slightly in a warding gesture. "-before you say it, I don't accept the idea that war has separate rules. And even if it did, Themyscira wasn't threatened and Queen Hippolyta hadn't declared war against the Axis. Sure, the Nazis were unarguably the bad guys but there's no way you could have known the full extent-."

"I didn't." She pauses, reflecting on the most goodthinkful way to present me with the information. "Do you want to know why I allied myself with the Allies?" I nod. "When I reached the Greek mainland I found Greece unified and fighting invading foreigners. As far as I was concerned that meant that I was obliged to stand with them. Once Greece fell I had intended to stay and aid the resistance but… There was an American-."

"Steven Trevor."

She nods. "He persuaded me to go to America instead. As for why I killed Germans, Italians and Bulgarians during their invasion, it was because I could think of no reason not to. They were foreigners and the Greeks were my people. Having missed out on so much history after Themyscira withdrew from the world I thought that a unified Greece was remarkable in itself. Certainly that it was worth fighting for. I was also much younger and hungry for personal glory. The loss of life didn't really concern me."

"Not at all?"

"Seeing the first corpses was a shock. I'd never seen someone die violently before. Seeing a Stuka squadron machine gun ships taking part in the evacuation was a rude awakening to the reality of war. Aside from that, no. My mothers never sugar coated the nature of battle."

I nod. "And if you were in the position of your younger self now?"

"Now, I know the results of the occupation as well as what the Nazis were doing in their own territory. I think if anything I would resist more vigorously."

"You would still kill them?"

"Yes."

"And yet -and I'm not trying to start a fight here, I just want to understand- you complained when I delivered Zard and co. to the Chinese. I mean, I knew they'd murdered thousands at least. And they got a trial out of it."

"Because the attack wasn't ongoing. They'd been stopped-."

"Until next time. It would hardly have been the first time they'd been 'stopped'."

She nods. "And my younger self would have agreed with you. My current self is more concerned about the fallout in international relations and in relations between the American government and the League. If America comes to believe -rightly or wrongly- that we will remove supervillains to jurisdictions whose processes we prefer it is quite possible that they will be slower to call on our aid."

Hm. She's sort of got a point there. "I still think.. statistically, my solution was the one most likely to prevent the most Human hardship."

"Did you include the consequences of intelligence agencies withholding information they fear we might share with their rivals?"

"Yes, but that's nothing we can't just take."

"Which would worsen relations further."

"If they found out about it." I shrug. "And if they do? Go under them. Appeal to the population directly. Be open about your reasons and relations with government bodies."

A wry smile. "I thought you wanted to talk about murder, not about the League's political policies?"

Got a bit off topic there. I nod. "Yes, you're right. It probably all ties in, but… Alright, first example. A severely provoked and traumatised person stabs their abuser to death."

"I've supported-."

"But, the killer flees the scene. When police are called they easily identify them as the killer but have no evidence of the abuse that led up to the killing. The killer evades them and eventually builds a new identity." Niko Parish looks only a little like Mina Byrne. Hair naturally black rather than blonde, skin a couple of tones darker and a slight alteration of facial features. She's even a little taller. Plus, the wings… Running a genetic analysis on an Un-Man is an exercise in futility. Haven't checked her finger prints… "Now, you could just truth lasso the killer, compare the account of the abuse to the level the law demands and make a ruling. Apply a lesser sentence or acquit. Unfortunately, the courts don't accept that as evidence. The killer is happy with their new life and has no desire to take a risk to prove their version of events and the physical evidence that would support their claims has long since gone. Should a person in my position arrest them, try to work out a deal with investigators or just leave it be?"

Her eyes flick downwards as she thinks it through. "In this situation, are you sure that the evidence can't be recovered?"

"Assume that I've done a thorough ring scanning and run the results by Father Box." Which I have. Bit disappointing but not really surprising.

"What was the level of abuse?"

"Repeated rapes over a period of years. The individual in question was below the age of-."

"Do nothing."

"Are you sure?"

"A jury can only make their decision based on admissible evidence. If the evidence which would lead to the result that you know to be correct under the law cannot be brought forward…" She nods. "I believe that the correct decision would be to take no action."

I'd hoped that she would have a better idea. Ah well. "It would be easier if truth compulsion magic and telepathic intercepts were admissible as evidence."

"The wo-. The person in question might prefer not to give testimony."

"I suppose…"

"It would still have been better for them to seek help before they killed their abuser. I work with charities-."

"Which fund refuges, yes. Personally, I find the violent ending more satisfying." She doesn't respond. "In my second example, a criminal is captured but threatens to send other members of his organisation after the families of the individuals making the arrest. Once he makes it clear that he knows names and addresses, they simultaneously raise their firearms and kill him."

"Members of organized criminal gangs seldom do that. They know that escalating would just result in more police attention and disrupt their operations further."

"Let's assume that the individual in question is a malevolent supervillain who just wants to spread the pain around."

She shakes her head. "No. A police officer has to follow the rules or they risk losing the public trust. They should have kept the arrest quiet while they got their families to a place of safety and then gone after the rest of the gang. They could have used that situation to lure the gang members into an ambush."

"Does your answer change if the people in question are superheroes with otherwise intact secret identities?"

"No. It would be harder for them, but coming out into the open would still be better than committing murder. We're held to account for our actions so much less than the police are that maintaining our standards as individuals is even more important."

"If that was a dig about Napier, I'm not even slightly sorry."

"Were you referring to the Joker?"

"I? I wasn't referring to anyone." I dismiss the barrier around us. "Thank you, Diana. That was.. helpful."

"I'm glad that you felt able to come to me. Remember that if you need help in the future, I'll always be here."

"Thank you. I will."

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What Lies Beneath 6

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29th January

08:58 GMT -5

"I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just saying it's not one I'd have picked." I think about that for a moment. "In your place, I mean."

Tula gives me a mildly miffed look as we head towards the training room. "Why? What's wrong with 'Aquagirl'? Kaldur uses Aqualad."

"He.. picked that before I met him. The problem is… How old are you?"

"Seventeen."

"Okay, so in Atlantean terms you're already young adult. I'd describe you as a young woman rather than a girl, but you can get away with it due to the customary infantilisation of the female gender."

She blinks in surprise. "The what?"

"But how about when you're eighteen? Or twenty one? How about when you're fifty?"

"Can't I just change it?"

"If it's under five syllables we'll call you whatever you want, but this will also be your 'superheroic identity'. The way people in public who've never met you in a social setting think of you."

She shakes her head. "I don't really understand why I even need one. It's not as if I have an identity to conceal."

"You don't need need one. It's really more tradition. I mean, we don't have formal ranks and there are multiple superheroes with the same personal or family names-."

"And three Green Lanterns."

"Four Green Lanterns. Urp, four Green Lanterns on Earth, there are thousands spread out across the galaxy. And yes, saying 'Green Lantern' will usually result in someone asking 'which one'. If you've been told their name you say 'Lantern-" I wave my hands forwards. "-whatever', and if you haven't their formal designations include 'A, B or C'."

"…longer than that."

Incredulity this time. "A, B… Or C?"

"She gave testimony under the influence of Wonder Woman's Truth Lasso. She was not involved in the initial kidnapping and has cooperated with authorities."

I create constructs showing their faces. "No one uses 'B' because Guy Gardner's name is public knowledge. But yes."

"Kaldur, she had killer. Robots."

"So… What's the fourth one called?"

"Occupying a nuclear missile silo and using robots for defense is not -in itself- a breach of the law."

"Usually something along the lines of 'Green Lantern, you know, that Green Lantern who used to be in the Justice Society'." She blinks. "He's retired, it's fine."

"Well it should be."

"So what's Batman like?"

"On a mission or in a briefing? Serious. Dour. Focused. He's not trying to be a drill sergeant, we're all highly motivated volunteers here. If you ever go on a mission with him don't expect any non mission related conversation at all."

"You could always take it up with the Ukrainian Parliament."

"Today, chances are he'll stroll in through the Zeta Tube, start the briefing once he gets in front of us and then leave us to it."

"Will this other Red Arrow bloke be joining in with the team?"

"Does he do training sessions? Kaldur told me that he is an expert martial artist."

"That will be up to him. He has a great deal of readjustment to do."

"Yes, but when it's his turn to run our training sessions he usually focuses on criminal investigation. If you're really interested in learning a surface world martial art you're better off talking to Canary. Or Robin, actually."

We stroll out of the passageway and into the training room. Gosh, a near full gathering. No Red Arrow.. or Speedy, and no Troia, but there's still twelve of us. Seventeen when the named pets are factored in. Fatty, Tubbs and the rest are happy in the original ring until there's something to eat but Teekl, Sphere and Wolf are in attendance. Wolf's quite a bit bigger than she was when we first picked her up, more like a small adult than a puppy. I note that Teekl is trying to maintain size parity with her not-so-kittenish foster kitten.

Tula pulls ahead and greets Garth with a kiss. Kaldur doesn't seem all that bothered until you look inside him. Bothered and bothered by the fact that he's bothered. Were I a less polite man I might make a 'more fish in the sea' comment. I realise.. that suggesting he meet other girls would be a reasonable move but I don't have any idea how to help with that. Number of romantic relationships I've had…

Actually, who could give him advice? Diana's celibate, Alan's would be 'don't marry a supervillain', Guy.. hasn't mentioned Ms Olafsdotter, though we've mostly been talking about work stuff. I should probably ask him about that. Kon and M'gann… Neither of them have shown an interest in anyone else. Zatanna's as busy as I am, at least. Probably more so with school work. Who do I know who's supposed to be good with… New Roy! Kaldur's the only one of us who really knew him and he was supposed to be some sort of great Lothario in the comics. Wasn't he? And he owes me for the new arm.

Wallace returns his attention to Robin. "Batman tell you anything about where he's sending us?"

Robin thinks for a moment. "He's been getting worried about what's happening in Cairo-."

"Worried?"

"Well. Y'know. Concerned about what President Muhunnad's going to do. He's not leaving even though Black Adam-."

"Teth Adom. I didn't spend months correcting news reporters for you to call him by Theo's name."

"Right. Sorry. Anyway, the rebels have said they'll let him go safely and he isn't, so either he's got some sort of plan to turn things around or he's just desperately clinging on."

"Ahh..." Raquel looks at her watch. "Is Batman… Late?"

Kon shrugs. "Only a couple of minutes."

There's a sort of awkward general pausing. Is Batman being slightly late a big thing? I don't… It's not like I've spent massive amounts of time around him. Wasn't there a line in one of the Nolan films that he generally doesn't respond to the Bat signal because he's busy working a case? I'm sure that-.

"Recognised, Batman, zero two."

Still a bit of a relief, though. We form up as he leaves the Tube and heads for the lecture space.

"The Justice League has just received information of strange energy broadcasts coming from the sea bed near the Bering Strait." A holographic map appears marking the spot. It's actually just to the north near the Chukchi Plain, where the water starts to get deeper. No real problem for.. most of us? Has Rob learned a water breathing spell yet? Ugh, I've sort of taken my eye off the ball there. "Given the nature of the signal-" Wait a second. "-we suspect it to be-" Ring, overlay with those Maltusian energy signatures you picked up when we first arrived. "-an alien spacecraft." Ooh poop. Ring, scan that ship.

Wallace half-raises his right hand. "So… Did it crash?"

"If it had we would simply hand the matter over to either the government of the crew's species or to the Green Lantern Corps. But from what little we know it looks as if the ship has been there for some time. Since previous geological surveys of the area didn't detect anything out of the ordinary it most likely had some form of stealth technology which has only recently failed. Until we get more information we won't know where the ship came from-."

"Um. Sorry Sir. It's Maltusian."

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What Lies Beneath 7

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29th January

09:03 GMT -5

Batman looks at me for a moment. He doesn't blink, he doesn't move, just looks. Then he takes a breath. "Would you care to expand on that?"

"Um. When I first arrived on this Earth I started looking for ways to charge the-" I raise my left hand. "-ring. Aside from the.. personal lanterns owned by members of the Green Lantern Corps.. it.. detected various other things. The other Green Lantern's damaged personal lantern, the Star Sapphire, a couple of Qwardian weapons from two eight one four A's last encounter… Once I had a lantern I pretty much stopped worrying about it. I didn't even know there was a ship there.. but.. um.. there are at least three Maltusian or Maltusian style energy containment units on that ship." Or at least there were. "I think. Hang on. Ring, check that."

"One vessel detected."

Batman nods slowly. "That would explain the decrease in its ability to hide itself."

My team mates are looking rather like we've left them behind. Kaldur asks first. "Who are the Maltusians?"

"Sir, may I?" Batman nods. Ring, grab the holoscreen.

"Classified information requested. Higher authorisation-."

Stewart ring, we've talked about your unhelpful attitude before. Knock it off.

"This ring will comply with the directive."

"Maltusians." I use Stewart ring's ruthlessly plundered historical database to generate an image of what Maltus and its inhabitants looked like in the old days. "These people are basically the luckiest species ever. Well above humanoid norms for intelligence and early on in their history they merged with a species of semi-sentient bacteria that gave them steadily increasing levels of reality warping power. I've seen… Some of their records claim they were the first sentient species in this universe and if that isn't true I've seen no clear counter evidence."

"What became of them?"

"Nothing. They're still around. Sort of. Since they didn't really need each other for survival related purposes, they only associated with each other when they wanted to. Maltusians who shared an ideology formed cliques… There was some sort of biological weapon that reinforced that with physical isolation, but that really just reinforced a pre-existing trend. The symbionts.. gave them an awareness of certain types of supernatural force." I think. Given the vast swathe of time their gradual change covered the Stewart ring's contents were regrettably brief. I suppose there was only anything there at all in case Lantern Stewart had to deal with some legacy of that era, not to assuage the curiosity of historical researchers. I have the holoscreen show the rainbow.

Robin's eyes widen. "Power ring colors! You're saying.. the Guardians of the Universe are Maltusians?"

"The Guardians-" I bring up a picture. Apparently this parallel has male and female Guardians. "-are one faction. Then you've got the Zamarons." Another image. The faces of senior Zamarons are a bit creepy. No noses, oddly shaped holes in the face for eyes and remarkably blank faces. Younger ones seem to have slightly more conventional humanoid features.

"And the Controllers, right?"

"Yep. And probably groups I've never heard of and plenty who aren't aligned to a larger group."

Artemis looks from the oldest image to the more recent ones. "Why do they all look so different?"

"Their bodies aren't exactly flesh anymore. It's -at least in part- a manifestation of what they are. Guardians have tiny bodies and big heads because they value cold intellect most highly."

Wallace nods. "Like Vulcans." Artemis appears to consider lamping him, but decides against it.

"Actually, no. Vulcans can get dangerously unstable if they don't practice rigorous self control. Guardians… Okay, you know how I said using the orange light could alter my personality if I wasn't very careful?" Nods from my longer serving team mates. "Imagine if I'd taken no such care and lived for thousands of years. Easing off on the control would probably make them more stable. No one part of the whole is complete by itself. Cut out a chunk of you and you'll get a bit weird."

Batman's gaze is a little distant. "Do you know why they have a ship on the Earth's seabed?"

I shake my head. "Not really. I could make guesses, but that's about it."

"So what's the problem?" Wallace shrugs. "Call in the Green Lanterns and have them tow it back to Maltus-."

"Oa."

"Oa."

"Unfortunately, things aren't that simple." Batman touches a few buttons. "The ship is in international waters between Russia and the United States. In addition, sources in the Russian security services indicate that the land on the Russian side of the Straits is being used as a testing ground for their special weapons development programs."

Garth looks blank. "Special weapons?"

"Controllable superpowers, power armour.. and xenotech research."

"Both countries would be extremely eager to acquire the ship if they knew of its existence. Neither has a superior claim to the other. The League is concerned about what happens if both sides discover its existence and pursue their claim aggressively."

Raquel turns to Garth and Tula. "Doesn't Atlantis want it?"

Garth shrugs. "It would be interesting, but Atlantean territory stops thirty kilometers from the US coast on the Atlantic side. We don't have a legitimate claim to it and our magic based technology is so different from what the surface world uses we probably couldn't do much with it anyway."

Kaldur nods. "Do either the American or Russian navies know that the ship is there?"

"We don't think so, not at the moment. The League is prepared to evacuate the ship over the objections of both countries if necessary but we would rather that it didn't come to that. One of the team's tasks will be boarding the ship without being detected and assessing the possibility of repairing it. Your aim will be to either restore its stealth systems or preferably restoring both its stealth and its capacity for space travel."

Kaldur frowns very slightly. "Now that we know the craft's point of origin, would it not make sense to assign the task to a Green Lantern?"

"Justice League members are public figures. Our movements are monitored by various agencies around the world. If one of the Green Lanterns were to be seen heading in the direction of an alien signal and no report was submitted to the United Nations, questions would be raised that it would be more convenient not to answer."

Another nod. "Understood. We will begin planning our approach."

"Recovery of the craft isn't the only mission I will be setting you." Ooh? That's new. Batman presses another button and I see an all too familiar image of Cairo. "The League is becoming increasingly concerned with the state of the remaining government controlled enclaves in Kahndaq. The involvement of the superhuman 'Teth Adom'-" I smile slightly. "-has made several countries extremely concerned. The League hasn't yet been formally asked to intervene, and we would much rather it not come to that. The team is to infiltrate the Presidential Palace-" An image comes up. "-and plant listening devices in sensitive areas, as well as perform general reconnaissance of the city to assess the general wellbeing of its inhabitants." He looks everyone in the eye before continuing. "Given the team's success last year I feel that it is appropriate to give you a greater degree of freedom in the planning of team missions. The order in which you perform these missions will be a team decision. Alternately, you may decide that the team's increased size means that you can complete both at once." He turns to walk back towards the Zeta Tube. "I will expect to see mission plans within four hours."

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What Lies Beneath 8

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29th January

09:17 GMT -5

"Dibs on the spaceship." I look around the room we've co-opted for our mission planning, grinning excitedly at each of my team mates.

Robin smirks. "I don't think it works that way, Oh El."

"You're just jealous you didn't think of it."

There's a very quiet amused-sounding sigh from next to me where Kaldur sits in the boss chair. "I think it would be more productive to consider each team member's skill set and how it could be applied to either mission, rather than allocating people on the basis of which they would prefer. I will also point out that we are by no means required to complete both missions simultaneously."

Wallace holds out his right arm, palm up. "Aqualad, there's twelve of us. That's gotta be enough for two teams."

Robin nods. "Staking out the Palace just to work out when we could get in could take the whole weekend by itself, and we've got no idea who else knows about the ship. Neither mission can really wait."

Zatanna grimaces. "And some of us have school on Monday."

Kaldur looks around the room. "Very well. If we are to tackle both missions simultaneously it would be wise to decide who will be assigned to each team."

Ring, picture please. The hologram projector in the central table activates. In the centre it displays headshots of each of us, pets included. On the left is a picture of Kahndaq and on the right one of the exterior of the spaceship. It must have been beautiful when it was completely intact but a huge chunk has been carved out of the hull, nearly cutting off the rear third. At least I.. think it's the rear. The normal undersea life has tried with only partial success to colonise the outer surface and there's been more than enough time for silt to build up around it. From that it looks like it hasn't been down there all that long. But why would there be a Maltusian ship near Earth in the recent past? That sort of splashdown could have triggered nuclear Armageddon if it had happened during the Cold War. The Guardians couldn't have been the ones who sent it because if they wanted to know what we were up to they'd just have sent a Green Lantern.

Rob looks around. "Does.. anyone here speak.. Kahndaqi Arabic?"

Robin and Artemis nod. M'gann tilts her head to the side. "No, but I can fake it with telepathy."

I shift the hologram to the side and add a diagram of the Kahndaqi Palace to the display. "Getting into the Palace is going to be very difficult."

Wallace points to the image. "Haven't you spent, like, loads of time in Kahndaq with Ad… Om?" I nod. "Wouldn't that make you perfect for the Kahndaq mission?"

"Nope. Because I'm a known associate of Teth Adom, pretty much everyone on the government side knows my face. They see me, they start shooting hostages."

"Host..idg..es..?" Garth looks a bit lost. Oh, of course, I doubt that made the news in Poseidonis.

Kaldur leans forwards and presses a few buttons on the display. The image of the Palace disappears and is replaced with some news footage of Adom from when the uprising started. "The Kahndaqi government is -or perhaps I should say was- harsh and repressive. When Orange Lantern aided Teth Adom in taking control of the body of the man who stole his powers through ritual magic, he sought to liberate his people from their control." He presses another button and a new image showing the country appears with major cities, towns and geographical features marked out. "The focal point of the uprising was the city of Shiruta, then it spread to several other cities." The date in the corner of the map rolls forwards as the area where the government has lost control increases.

Garth nods. "I'm going to assume that the government wasn't willing to accept that."

"No. At first they tried having the police and their ministry of the interior thugs suppress it. The police either joined the uprising or… Well, most of them got killed. There was a lot of anger. Then they tried the military, and... That was when they found out that Adom wasn't averse to killing people -even lots of people- if it was for the greater good."

Robin nods. "Superheroes… Superheroes don't kill people. Not if there's another option."

I shake my head. "I refer you to the Second World War. Remember the All-Star Squadron?"

Kon nods. "Mom killed plenty of people during the War." He looks at Wallace. "And so did Mister Garrick and the others." Wallace looks decidedly uncomfortable, but he doesn't protest the accusation.

"But… Yeah, it's unusual. Modern superheroes usually try sticking to that very rigidly. I think the government took the fact that.. early on he limited himself to policing demonstrations.. as a sign that he wasn't willing to get involved in a direct confrontation. After they found out that wasn't the case… And that they basically had nothing that could meaningfully fight him… A lot of the military started defecting or deserting."

Kaldur presses another button. "Which led to the government focusing instead on irregular warfare." An image of a Shiruta street in the aftermath of an explosion. "Assassination attempts targeting rebel leaders and terrorist campaigns aimed at breaking the movement's morale."

Tula looks horrified. "Why doesn't the Justice League step in?"

"Because other countries don't want to see the League removing governments it doesn't like. And because they've got the same problem Adom does. The people in the remaining government enclaves are either loyalists or hostages. Any attack by either conventional forces or people with super powers and they start killing them." There's a moment of silence around the table as everyone takes that in. "Adom's tried negotiating the government's surrender. They won't have it. They're relying on food from the Red Cross to keep the people there alive, the government's already seized all the fuel… Something's going to happen soon and we need to know what."

Robin nods. "I should go on the Kahndaq mission. I speak the language and I'm probably the best here at infiltration. And.. I.. don't look like much of a threat."

Kaldur nods. "I agree."

I nod too and move his face to the Kahndaq side of the board. "Raquel, how much.. advanced technology has Arnus shown you? Stuff from the Cooperative."

"Not much. He made mah belt and ah've seen his ship a few times. I don't understand how any of it works, though."

Garth takes another look at the image of the ship. "I don't know anything about Kahndaq or spaceships, but the ship is underwater. Tula and I…" He looks at Kaldur. "And Kaldur would have a far easier time coping with the conditions than the rest of you."

Wallace sags slightly. "Yeah, I don't think I'd be much use down there. Guess I'm heading to Kahndaq with Rob." Rob looks at him in puzzlement. "Ah, Robin-Rob, not Rob.. Rob."

Artemis shrugs. "I can't shoot arrows underwater."

I move them both to Kahndaq then turn to Kaldur. "I think Garth's right. It's not just the water, they need far more immersion in surface society before they can hope to blend in."

"But you do not agree that I should join them."

"I know more about spacecraft than anyone here. I can handle the depth… Not even with the rings, my armour can handle that depth.. with a.. little work. And I'm not Maltusian but the rings will let me fake it as far as the ship's systems are concerned. If I take my Ice Fortress to the south west of the polar ice I even have a legitimate reason for being in the area."

"All true, but that does not necessarily preclude my involvement as well."

"I don't think we should both be on the same mission. You're team leader and… Um." I look around the room again. "I know we haven't.. voted on it or anything, but-."

"You are second in command."

"Unless.. anyone…" I hold my hands out to the side. "Wants to object?" I get a smile from M'gann and Zatanna but everyone else just looks puzzled.

"That was not a question. It was a statement. You are my second in command. Batman would not have put you in charge of the Qurac mission if he did not think that you had the skills required."

"Oh. Um. Thank you." I was expecting a bit more debate on that assumption. "Anyway, my point was that we shouldn't both be on the same mission and I'm a better fit for the spaceship."

"I agree." I move our images to the appropriate columns. "Zatanna, how easily can you sustain yourself underwater?"

"At.. that depth? I don't know. Usually when we visit Poseidonis Paul gives me an environmental shield. I think I could cope, but I haven't really trained to fight underwater. How long are we going to be down there?"

"You will not know until you get there. Cornwall Boy, how have your studies in water manipulation progressed?"

"Yeah, I can cope. Classical element thing. I won't be anything like as good as-" He looks at Tula and Garth. "-you are, but I can breathe and move around fine."

One magic user each. I update the holoscreen. "It would help if M'gann came with my group. That ship's big and I don't want radio waves that could let anyone know what we're doing down there. Plus, she can breathe water."

Kaldur nods. "Miss Martian?"

"Fine by me."

"Raquel, does your belt work under water?"

"I don't know. Never tried it."

I nod and move her to the Kahndaqi side. Kon smiles faintly as I assign him to my team. "That's done, then. Now for the actual planning."

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What Lies Beneath 9

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29th January

11:33 GMT -5

I lead the way in the direction of the cave's zeta tube, my team following on behind.

"When you say you have an 'ice fortress'..?"

Guess Tula hasn't got that far yet. "Back in Nov-." I remember who I'm talking to. "Near the end of last year, Werner Vertigo somehow paid for five giant flying fortresses to cover the United States in snow in an attempt to stop his niece getting a new heart."

"Why would he do that?"

M'gann's eyes flick down before she answers. "Queen Perdita is the ruler of an Eastern European country called Vlatava. If she'd died, he would have become king."

Kon nods. "And we wouldn't have been able to prosecute him for being part of the Injustice League."

"Which still makes no sense. If he could afford five Ice Fortresses he could have bought Vlatava." I throw my hands up. "Pffff, supervillains. Anyway, Wallace delivered the heart-."

"He what?!" Garth look stunned and Tula's a little surprised. Of course, Atlanteans don't-.

"Heart transplant." Rob doesn't appear to realise why the Atlanteans are surprised. "You know. One person dies with their organs in good nick, they get cut out, packed in ice and given to someone else whose organs aren't working." A little disgust creeps into the Atlantean duo's expressions. "What? Better than wasting them."

"Atlantean biomancy means that Atlanteans have never needed to perform organ transplants. I imagine it sounds a little grisly if you haven't been exposed to the idea before."

It's Rob's turn to look surprised. "You can just grow organs?"

Garth nods, recovering himself slightly. "A professional biomancer would be more likely to restore a damaged organ in the patient's body rather than grow one from nothing. But…" He nods. "Yes. Large scale organic technology is an area where the surface is well behind Atlantis."

Rob takes a moment to absorb that. "My Nan had to wait five bloody months to get her cataracts sorted out! How come biomancers don't work on the surface? They'd make a mint!"

Garth looks at Tula, who shakes her head. "Make.. what?"

"A mint is a place where physical currency is made. In this context it means 'make a great deal of money', because they would be able to offer a very useful service that no one else can. Things like that are why King Orin is trying to build trading relations with surface countries; you want purified metals and printed circuits, we want all the things magic can do easily that our technology just can't yet."

Tula nods. "I hadn't really thought about it. I just assumed that you must use something else if you don't use magic."

"Actually, that reminds me. It might be worth considering translation spells while on missions. Your English is very good and since we're going to be using telepathy this time it won't matter, but it could get very awkward if someone said something mission critical and you didn't understand it."

Garth nods. "Right."

Tula smiles. "We've been learning English since we were six, but speaking it with native speakers is very different to how it was in the classroom."

Kon shrugs. "I can translate for you. My Atlantean Greek's pretty much perfect."

"Be a bit slow, really."

Rob frowns at Kon. "What did.. you.. say?"

Ring translation, right. "Kon offered to translate, since his Atlantean is slightly better than their English."

Kon nods. "I've been practicing a lot with Kaldur. Wanted to sound right before we went to Themyscira." He pauses. "Mom says I've picked up his accent."

"Anyway, as I was saying, Guy and I managed to capture a Fortress intact and I managed to land it.. sort of.. in the ocean. Since then Zatanna and I have been refurbishing and upgrading it. I'm not sure whether or not I exactly own it, but all of Vertigo's legal efforts are going on keeping the executioner at bay so he hasn't been able to sue me for it. Heh. The Injustice League should not have set up shop in Louisiana." We come out in the training room. "I've been using it to repair the North Pole and anyone who sees me there will just assume that I'm doing more work on it. It'll be a perfect cover."

M'gann nods. "Are you going to transition us there?"

"No. I put a zeta tube terminus onboard the Fortress, along with medical facilities and a workshop." I come to a halt. "Alright, mission discipline starts now. Code names only, no extraneous chatter. We're not expecting anything to be alive on the ship but then we didn't expect the Flesh Titan in Aberrance either. Everyone sure they've got all the equipment they want?" Rob nods, the Sword of Beowulf's grisly scabbard strapped to his back. Kon's wearing a red and gold armoured wetsuit, the mithril chain mail within providing even a Kryptonian with meaningful protection. He glows in the light of Helios' blessing and is carrying a bag containing a change of clothes and a towel. M'gann's in her standard uniform and likewise has a small bag. Garth and Tula are back in their Atlantean clothing overlain by the same water armour jewellery they had when we attacked the Watchtower at New Year. Access to water won't be a problem outside the ship but it looks like at least some of the ship is still air filled. Teekl opted to stay behind due to 'excessive water' and Kaldur will be using the Sphere and the Bio-Ship in Kahndaq. "Right then. Best foot forwards."

"Recognised, Orange Lantern-"

29th January

05:36 GMT -11

"-B zero six,-"

I step out into the Fortress's embarkation room. Two independent monitoring systems immediately scan me to confirm my identity.

"-Superboy, B zero four,-"

Kon takes a quick look around at the art deco wood panelled walls. Heh, Zatanna and I went through about seven different decoration styles before-

"-Miss Martian, B zero five,-"

-we settled on this. None of it is natural wood, it's this sort of extremely resilient synthetic fibre Stewart ring had on file.

"-Cornwall Boy, B one zero,-"

Kon points at the wall with his right thumb. "What happened to the submarine look?"

"-Tempest, B one three,-"

"It got power ringed."

"-Aquagirl, B one four."

"Making this place liveable has been one of my side projects since I got it."

M'gann peers around. "It's quieter than they used to be. Are we on the ground?"

"No. I stripped out the system for freezing the air. I'm not trying to create a blizzard anymore, so I didn't need it. The antigravity system the Fortress uses to fly is virtually silent." Ring, transmit course change.

Compliance.

I start towards the door. "Come with me. I haven't got an excuse for suddenly accelerating to the operation zone so it'll be an hour or two before we arrive. The views from the observation platform are truly splendid."

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What Lies Beneath 10

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29th January

06:02 GMT -11

I carefully prevent any expression of amusement leaking onto my face as I look down at my Atlantean team mates. They're sitting on an observation deck bench as far from the edge as possible. "Are you sure you're alright?"

Garth -pale faced- nods weakly while Tula strokes his right hand. "I'm just not used to being this high up."

"Yeah, I used to have the same problem. You know that the force fields won't let you fall off, right?"

Tula shakes her head. "I don't think that matters. A lot of Atlanteans find the sky disturbing to look at, and now the sky is down. And we can see much further here than we could underwater."

I nod. It's like when Littlepip first left her stable. Garth was fine flying around in the Bio-Ship but he clearly isn't coping so well with a similar sort of height in an apparently open air environment. Day's only three hours long here at this time of year but the brilliant lights from the Fortress illuminate the air all around us, including the sea far below. "I'm sorry, I should have thought about it. You can just go inside-."

"No. Thanks, but I have to get used to seeing this." He looks up towards the horizon and swallows heavily. "I'll be fine once we get back underwater."

I nod again and turn away. Kon and M'gann are doing a 'Jack and Rose' against the railings, looking out across the arctic sea in our direction of travel. Rob is more interested in the frozen wake we're leaving so he's opted to fly overhead. Nice to see that his air manipulation skills have come on so much, even if he can't move particularly fast like that. His posture strikes me as odd. I tend to fly standing upright, M'gann usually flies in the swimmer pose but he flies sort of bent, with his hands out to the side as if the air was holding him up. And I suppose that since he's using air manipulation magic to do it the air sort of is. Looks a bit like Iron Man, using his hand repulsors to keep level. He notices me watching, waves to me with his right hand and for a moment tumbles through the air before getting back under control.

"…whatever you think, but you should probably talk to him about it."

Yeah, I'm going to schedule some practice time with him.

"You're right." I look around as Kon and M'gann step away from the railing. "Orange Lantern? Can I talk to you for a minute?"

I head over to them. "Of course. What is it?"

M'gann looks off to the side for a moment. "I've been trying to decide whether or not to use J'aarkn's Kuru Pendant." She reaches into her bag and pulls out the small gold coloured metallic disc. "It could really help with the mission if I could change shape as well as he can, but…" She wrinkles her nose.

I shrug. "I'm pretty much-" I wave my right arm at the central tower of my Ice Fortress. "-'go for the power up' guy. I'd take it, but I don't properly understand what interfacing with one of those is like for a Martian. Particularly…" I make a circling motion with my right hand.

They nod. "J'aarkn." / "J'aarkn."

"Right. You're old enough to make your own decision and he said he didn't put any of his work stuff on it. What are you worried about?"

She raises the Pendant up slightly. "When a Martian puts information on one of these they have to…" She thinks for a moment and then shakes her head. "I don't think there's a word for it in English. 'Think impersonally'. They have to impress their knowledge without any of what they think about it crossing over as well. It's actually quite hard to learn how to do it correctly. J'aarkn almost certainly didn't perform the whole ritual. I believe him when he says that what's on here is.. you know, safe, but if I read it… I'd see the information in the way he saw it."

Ah. "Is it an 'all or nothing' thing, or can you just take a peek and see how bad it is?"

M'gann exhales. "I could get a rough idea, but I wouldn't really know until I interfaced fully."

"Is there a downside to doing that?"

"If he's done a really bad job, it might interfere with my ability to complete the mission. And, um…" She glances at Kon and then looks away, blushing slightly.

Right. Infectious libido. "Have you spoken to Martian Manhunter-"

**!** Her eyes widen and she cringes slightly.

"-about.. this?"

**No. Nononononono. That would-. No.**

**Is there someone on Mars you'd like to ask? We can be there in a few-.**

**That wouldn't-! I mean, I wouldn't mind...** Another look at Kon. *Maybe a little bit…**

"I can't really give you advice because I can't properly judge the risks involved. J'aarkn seemed honest to me, and he wasn't some sort of.. crazed, shapeshifting lust machine. He had friends and a life that didn't completely revolve around sex. The best I can suggest is that you take a peek, then go for it if his.. 'projected bias' is within acceptable levels. However, I'd still be happier if you discussed this with an actual Martian first."

She nods. "I… I know, but I think this is a decision I want to make by myself."

Kon looks out to sea. "How long 'till we get there?"

"Assuming nothing changes, about half an hour."

"Navy not doing anything?"

"Had a few polite enquiries about what we're doing.. and a firm reminder from the Russians about the exclusion zone." Compared to 'moon getting flipped around' I don't suppose me freezing a slightly different part of the arctic circle is really a big deal. "We're under observation, but they don't seem too concerned."

He shifts his attention to M'gann. "Is half an hour enough time?"

She nods. "Yes." Her eyes glow as she levitates the Pendant up in front of her. "Okay, I'm… I'm going to do it." She pulls her upper arms to her sides and holds her forearms out with her palms upwards, the Pendant dropping to just above them.

"How long does it take?"

"Having a quick look should only take a few minutes."

"And.. the full thing?"

Her eyes dim slightly. "C-. Superboy, I'm… I need to concentrate to do this."

"Oh. Sssorry. I didn't…"

"No, it's…" She leans back into him slightly, looking back to make partial eye contact. "I'm really grateful for your support, it's just… When you're here, it's… It's a little bit difficult to focus on this sort of thing."

"Oh. Okay. Um, so should I stay, or-."

"Stay.. but… Try not to be distracting."

Kon looks at me and I make the tiniest shrug I can. "I'll.. try..?"

M'gann straightens up, takes a deep breath and her eyes start glowing again. The Pendant makes a quick spin on its axis and then holds position so that the image engraved on its surface is facing her the correct way up. A few moments pass and the outlines of the design start glowing the same colour as her eyes.

"Okay, I've… I'm in. Feels.. okay. None of the obvious warning signs. Actually, I.. think he's done an okay job." The glow holds steady as she continues to stare at it. "I'm going to try going deeper."

"Would it be distracting if I said 'be careful'?"

"Yes, but I think I'd like you to anyway."

He kisses the top of her head. "Be careful."

"And from me too. Drop it at the first sign of trouble."

"Thanks. Okay, I'm going in." Her eyes glow brighter and the whole of the Pendant lights up to match them.

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What Lies Beneath 11

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29th January

06:29 GMT -11

M'gann holds out her right arm, pauses a moment and then splits her forearm down the middle. Then she turns each side into a cephalopod tentacle, then causes one to grow green fur while the other extrudes a series of insectoid wings. "Huh." She holds her forearm.. um, arms up for a closer inspection, wiggling her tentacles and wings independently of each other. Well, I'm impressed. Most Humans struggle to move their centre and ring fingers independently of one another and she can do it with limbs copied from entirely different phyla.

Kon looks a little concerned. "You're sure you feel okay?"

She flicks her right arm to the side, restoring its Human form. "Uh-huh. J'aarkn actually did a pretty good job of keeping his biases out of the Pendant. Not quite how a real master would do it.. but he really wasn't a master."

"Anything likely to be useful to the mission?"

"I can do his trick of stretching myself out really thin and disguising my mass." She shakes her head. "I'm not sure how useful that would be here though."

"And you don't feel like…" Kon look off to the side somewhere. "Y'know…"

"No." Her eyes widen slightly. "I don't mean-. Not that I don't-. I mean, he didn't-."

He smiles and pulls her towards him. She calms down almost immediately, relaxing against his chest as they embrace and then turning her face upwards to receive a kiss.

I turn away slightly to wave up at Rob. He spots it and turns a little awkwardly through the air before moving towards me, losing height as he comes. He misjudges the landing slightly and has to do a sort of jogging stagger to bleed momentum. Flying appears to be a fairly energy intensive thing for him to do; I noticed that he had to stop and recharge from the Sword of Beowulf every ten minutes or so.

I take a few steps towards him as Tula and Garth come over to join us. "Cornwall, are you going to be alright keeping your spell up underwater?"

He nods confidently. "Yeah, no problem. Aqualad was helping with the whole water manipulation thing. If it's just swimming around and breathing and that, I can keep it going for a couple of hours."

"How are we-" Garth glances at the edge of the observation deck. "-getting down there?"

"I can fly everyone down, but since we might have to come back up on our own in an emergency I thought I'd land the Fortress."

Tula looks at me and then up at the control tower. "It can float?"

"Not unless I create huge amounts of ice to spread the weight. But the antigravity system can be set to any level of repulsion and the outer surface of the Fortress is watertight. It will end up sitting in the water with the waves reaching the-" I point. "Edge of the observation deck. Easy to get back on board if something goes wrong." I look around the group as Kon and M'gann separate and start focusing their minds on the mission again. "If everyone's ready I'll begin the descent."

Tula looks at Garth with concern but he waves her off.

I theatrically aim my left arm at the control tower. "Ring, take us to sea level."

"Compliance."

The Fortress stops all horizontal motion and begins to lower itself. Obviously it doesn't need to be directed by power ring at all times. The main control systems work fine and the computer is sophisticated enough to interpret instructions. Not sophisticated enough to become fully intelligent, of course. It isn't artificially being prevented from doing so, it just flat out lacks the capacity. I take a moment to make sure that Garth is coping, but it looks like us heading towards the ocean is making him cheer up.

Something occurs to Kon. "What's the visibility going to be like down there?"

"Near the surface it should be pretty good. Water temperature is fairly constant and nothing really happens to kick up sediment." Tula turns to look at me. "Are you sure we can't use light orbs?"

"Atlanteans being in this part of the world would probably cause nearly as big a freak out as the alien ship. We can use them when we get to the ocean floor but not before that." The ocean's getting noticeably louder now but I can't feel us moving at all. Inertial dampeners are awesome. I create a scaled down construct of the ship and point to an area towards what I think is the front. "Remember, our entry point is here. The Fortress' lights won't be able to shine all of the way down but they will get us started. Tempest, Aquagirl, go ahead and do a circuit of the ship. Deposit light orbs as you go. I'll see about getting Superboy, Miss Martian and Cornwall Boy inside and then start a structural survey of the exterior."

"So… What…" Rob looks a little uncomfortable asking. "I know you said there shouldn't be anyone on board, but what do we do if there is?"

"If it's the ship's owners then our job gets a lot easier since we won't have to dodge the Russian and American militaries any longer. We offer to help with repairs and send them on their way. If they've got injuries I've got a power ring and a database full of biological data. Since this is a Maltusian ship I regard the possibility of there being crew aboard as vanishingly unlikely since I can't think of anything they could survive which would prevent them from making repairs themselves. If it's navy personnel from a country on Earth -which at this depth and in these conditions I severely doubt- then we'll need to check in with Batman. If it's Russia or America we'll probably end up leaking the existence of the ship to the other and suggesting that the League should manage it. If it's another country then-" I look at M'gann. "-they'll probably get new memories. If it's a third party then we detain them if we can and monitor them if we can't. The only group I can think of who might contest this is Black Manta's mercenaries and this would be a long way away from their usual haunts." I look around. "Any other questions?"

No one says anything. "Okay. Final equipment checks and then prepare to dive."

Tula and Garth trigger their Dolmen Gates, sending small amounts of water out across their jewellery. Neither the water nor the temperature bother them but the armour will allow them to move faster than they can swim at less cost to their mana reserves than casting spells themselves. And protect them, though I doubt that will be necessary on this mission. They already know how to propel themselves in a way which doesn't create enough turbulence to appear on sonar.

Rob puts his visor in place. I put a fully armoured wetsuit together for him for this mission and he's wearing it to humour me but he was pretty confident that he could take the temperature and pressure without it. He hasn't bothered with fins for the same reason; he'll be moving around with magic and not muscular force. He does have a small Dolmen Gate linked to an air supply as part of his facial gear but that's a backup option. He intends to get his air by his own magics. He looks at me for approval. Yep, everything's set up right. I nod.

M'gann's shifted into an Atlantean form of the same type as Kaldur. Her neck has thickened and there are pronounced gills on either side. She has also shrunk as she increases her density. Martians aren't actually adapted to life on the surface of modern Mars but their tolerance for cold is still far greater than that of Humans. She'll shift to Merform when we get into the water. Since she has functional gills she doesn't need any sort of air supply and further equipment would just get in the way of her shapeshifting.

Kon's probably the weakest in the water of all of us. He doesn't have to worry about heat or pressure either but he does need a constant air supply. He'll be carrying an air tank to go alongside his Dolmen Gate air supply. Sad that I don't have a spare large Gate to just drop down there really, but there aren't all that many of them and they're all in use. He's also wearing fins and webbed gloves.

My own power armour appears on me as M'gann makes external checks on Kon's equipment. Have to keep the flight belt inactive while we're well under water. It'll only be a reserve system for if the rings fail anyway. No fins for me because there's no way I'd be able to generate enough effort to move armour this heavy through the water. I have a Dolmen Gate air supply to go with a filtration field thingy I got from the Stewart Ring's database. It should be able to capture gasses dissolved in the water to generate breathable air but frankly it looks far too fragile for me to want to rely on it. Two backups for the two rings should be plenty.

**Miss Martian, please link us up.**

Her eyes glow for a moment. **We're linked.**

I look around the group. **Everyone, please respond with your call sign.**

**Superboy.**

**Cornwall Boy.**

**Aquagirl.**

**Tempest.**

**Orange Lantern. Link is good. Aquagirl, Tempest, dive when ready.**

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What Lies Beneath 12

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29th January

06:35 GMT -11

There's a flare of orange light as I momentarily generate a wedge construct around me to ease my passage into the water. Through my armour's visor I see the gloom of the arctic ocean pierced by the Ice Fortress' powerful light beams and the thin trail of bubbles released by my Atlantean colleagues as they power towards the bottom. With no obstacles in the water I have the ring start pushing me downwards and instruct the HUD to display the result of the ring's scans of the seabed. Garth and Tula are about twenty metres below me and making good time towards the ship which the HUD models as an orange wire frame. The water here isn't all that deep, a mere six hundred metres compared to around about three thousand for Poseidonis.

**Brrr! Bit cold!**

**Cornwall Boy, unless you are actually in difficulty please keep the chatter down.** The HUD shows me his relative position six metres behind me, up and a little to my right. **The water here is at minus two degrees. It was colder above the water than it is here.**

**Sorry, right. Um, not in any difficulty. Just need t'.. change how I'm heating... Okay. Done.**

My HUD blinks as he increases his speed slightly. He may have been on the team longer than Garth and Tula but he still has less combat experience. Probably good that we assigned him to the more straightforward mission. I take a moment to study the image of the ship. Bit of an odd shape. Most starships are approximately cylindrical in order to maximise internal volume. A few species use strongly divergent designs to accommodate some aspect of their technology and small ships sometimes retain an aerofoil shape but the laws of physics do rather cause things to trend in one direction. The ship I'm looking at is nearly as tall as it is long and a fraction as wide. Doesn't match Maltusian ship designs on file, but their ships were usually custom built so it isn't surprising that there isn't a particular record. Does suggest somewhat that this isn't a Guardian vessel... I can detect the functioning power source clearly but the rest of the ship is defying me. Some sort of anti power ring shielding?

Normal safe descent speed during a dive is about ten metres per minute. Most of us can flat out ignore that recommendation, but Kon needs to go a little slower even with his eyes, mouth and ears covered. It isn't really a problem; we haven't done anything quite like this before and I'm happy to go at a steady pace.

**Tempest, anything to report?**

**Clear swimming down here. Perimeter will be twenty meters out at three meters above the seabed.**

Only ships I know of that had that profile were Apokoliptian portal ships from their last showdown with New Genesis. Of course, I don't know its proper orientation. If I assume that it landed on its side and partially buried itself...

**Are there likely to be any external defences?**

I consider Tula's question for a moment. Modern Green Lantern ships have giant green power beams focused by whoever the Lantern in command is and are protected by stupendously strong green barriers. They don't have automated weaponry because they don't usually want to kill whoever it is they're fighting. Modern Controller ships can look like just about anything, though the ones Stewart Ring records as being used by the Darkstars tend to focus on speed and stealth over gunnery. Since I don't know exactly where this ship is from or precisely who built it I can't say for sure. **Maltusian automated defences tended to be purely passive. The main protection for the ship was the fact that there were Maltusians on board. Still, if you see the ship react to your presence in any way, fall back and create cover immediately.**

**Were the Maltusians so popular that no one wanted to attack them?**

**No, Miss Martian. It was more to do with their status as demigods. Picking a fight with a Maltusian was.. and is something you have to be very sure of yourself to try.**

**You worked out why they crashed yet?**

Kon's lagging behind slightly. Within the expected margin though. It just isn't as easy to propel yourself with fins as it is by the techniques the rest of us are using. Add 'super swim armour' to the wish list... **Not for certain. From my scans of their power sources it looks like they had a distributed system. There wouldn't be any main engineering or primary drive to destroy. The damage is bad but it's not a killing shot. Shouldn't have been, anyway.** I think for a moment. **If it were a very old ship, back from when they first went out into space... Maybe if something shot them when they were at the edge of Earth's atmosphere? Really I'm just guessing.**

**Who do you think it was?**

**Let me put it this way. This galaxy is around thirteen billion years old. Planet Earth is a little over four and a half billion years old. Maltus is ten billion years old. I don't have precise timelines for their development but it's not impossible that this ship predates this star system. Given that sort of range... Could have been any one of hundreds of species.**

**We're at depth. Tempest and I are splitting up to deploy light globes.**

**Message received. Carry on.**

**[Frown] It can't be that old.** I just heard M'gann's frown. Since I started routinely shielding my mind I haven't been getting those sorts of impressions. Blocks are still in place... Odd. **Wouldn't it have got covered up by sand if it had been down here that long?**

**It's near dead centre of a small plateau. It's quite possible that its systems forced the surrounding rock into shape. What doesn't make sense is why no one picked it up.**

The lights from the Fortress have long since faded behind us and I can just about make out the change in the texture of the murk below us as the light orbs are activated. Not much further now. My HUD indicates Tula pausing for a moment. **Could they have been hiding?**

**Any number of things are possible, but the list of rogue Maltusians is very short.** Basically just Krona actually, though that might have been due to the Guardians tidying it up a little by taking the names of those known to be no longer active off. Not for the first time I find myself wishing I could be in contact with the Controllers already so that I'd have someone to ask about this stuff. Million to one shot there's an actual Controller on that ship, but maybe I could find some way to use the technology on board to contact them?

I can dimly see the hull of the ship as an area of slightly darker water below us. No tron lines. Could be the damage and time or it might indicate that it comes from an earlier era. **Everyone still together?** I know full well that everyone is but I want to make sure that everyone is awake.

**I've been following the orange glow all the way down. I can just about see that spaceship now.** Rob probably can't see anyone else. Good that he doesn't appear to be letting that worry him.

**I've been using ultrasound to keep track of everyone.**

**I was wondering what the noise was. How did you learn how to do that?**

**It was on J'aarkn's amulet. I just had to modify my throat and ears a little. And.. a.. few parts of my brain so I could actually understand the image.**

**Superboy, can you see the ship?**

**A little. I don't think it's giving off any heat.**

**I'm moving towards the entry point now. Superboy, Miss Martian and Cornwall Boy, with me. Tempest and Aquagirl, are you finished with the lights yet?**

**Yes.** / **All done.**

**Go to the damaged section but stay back for now.**

**Is it alright if we prep a water clearing spell?**

Tula raised that during our planning session. The water around Poseidonis is remarkably clear but until they pointed it out I hadn't really given it any thought. Clearing up here -as long as there is still enough silt overhead- will make our job a good deal more pleasant. **Maltusians didn't traditionally have much to do with magic. The ship shouldn't react. Wait until I've made contact with the ship's systems before casting.**

**Right. Tempest, I'm moving around to your side of the ship now.**

I come to a stop in the water about twenty metres away from what I hope is the ship's hatch. **Starting entry attempt now.**

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What Lies Beneath 13

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29th January

06:59 GMT -11

**Firstly, every adventurer's best friend.** I push my right arm out to the side, conscious of the effect of the higher pressure on my movements. **A ten foot pole.** My solid steel pole appears in a flicker of orange.

M'gann swims a little closer to me. **Why do you have a ten foot pole?**

**I've loaded all sorts of things into the ring's subspace pocket. This just happens to be-** I turn my arm, pointing the far end of the pole in the direction of the ship. **-the most sensible way of checking for an energy shield.** I connect a filament to the pole and release it, using the ring's power to propel it towards the ship.

**If there was, wouldn't we be able to see it in the water?**

**Depends on what sort. It might react to increases in density rather than just pressure.** I watch as the far end of the pole gets closer to the doorway. Fifteen metres, twelve, eight, five and I start slowing it down. Four, three, two, one and just as it touches the hull there's a flicker of something and it leaps from my grasp!

Connection lost.

I recapture my pole. **Some sort of energy barrier appeared just as it touched the surface of the ship. Ring?**

Energy consistent with pre-glow Maltusian technology.

That.. dates it, but Earth would have been a storm covered semi-molten rock back then. The shield might explain why the ship isn't buried. With great care I bring the pole back to bear. Gently, gently… The shield triggers again but this time there isn't enough pushing force to cause the pole to slide aside. Ideally, there'd be some way to proxy touching it with the ring… Stewart ring, decouple from the original ring.

Operation complete.

I hold out my right hand and very carefully extend a filament towards the barrier. No response to its approach. Okay, tooouch…

Minor energy drain detected.

The shield isn't resisting the filament, but there is a small amount of energy leeching going on. Barrier's staying up.

**Miss Martian, please try very gently pushing against the barrier with telekinesis.**

**Okay. Starting now.** Nothing for a second as the barrier fails to respond. **!**

**Miss Martian!** Kon swims to catch her as she gets shoved back.

**I'm okay. I'm not hurt.**

**What happened?**

**All the force I put into pushing it got reflected back. I was.. pushing against myself.**

Hmm. **Cornwall Boy, do you know any sort of remote viewing or scrying magic?**

**'bit.**

**Please attempt to scry the barrier. Doesn't matter if you don't discover anything, I just want to see how it reacts.**

**Okay, but it's not really something I've practised much.**

**I can do that. It's been a while but long range communication is part of the academy's standard training program.**

I turn, looking through the water to where my HUD tells me Garth is swimming. **In this instance, it's probably better for the spell to be slightly clumsy. You're trained to use magic in a precise, combative way. I just want to see what mana does when it looks as little like a spell as possible.**

**Thanks.** I turn to look in Rob's direction. The water around him is bent slightly and it wouldn't surprise me at all to find out that he's dry under his water manipulation. Both of his arms are outstretched and there's another distortion between his hands. It flickers for a moment and then is gone. **Sorry, not used to doing this when I'm in the water I'm using it on.**

**Did you feel any feedback? **

**Yeah, but I don't think it was from the shield thing. Just.. felt like a spell collapsing. I don't know, don't think this one's supposed to be used underwater.**

No apparent reaction from the barrier. **Alright, Superboy, Miss Martian, Cornwall Boy, back off another twenty metres.**

**Ah… It's kinda hard to judge…**

Kon has a point. I project a thick orange beam behind me. **About that far. Aquagirl, Tempest, there shouldn't be a reaction where you are but just in case-.**

**We'll pull back too.**

Rob moves backwards through the water without turning, as if something is pulling him away. M'gann flicks her tail and heads after him while Kon follows more slowly. If I can get in I'll take him with me. He just isn't as capable in the water as everyone else. **Okay, I'm going in.** Hmm. Stewart ring, re-interface with original ring.

Operation complete.

**How do the doors on Green Lantern spaceships usually work?**

Reasonable question on Kon's part. **They don't have them. They use selectively permeable energy construct barriers. Their doors double as weapon hardpoints.** I stop three metres away and return the pole to subspace. The barrier disappears once more. I create construct armour around myself and reach forwards with both hands. **No reaction to orange light proximity. That might mean that this ship predates Larfleeze's theft of the Orange Central Power Battery… Or it might be indicative of the damage the ship has suffered.**

**Larfleeze stole a Central Power Battery?!** Garth's astonishment comes across clearly in his mental speech. **The same as the one which powers the entire Green Lantern Corps?**

**Different colour and it's a good deal smaller, but yes. I don't have good data on exactly how he pulled that one off. And because the Guardians suppressed all information about it I don't know exactly when it happened.** I think it was before the Sector 666 Genocide. Wasn't it? I seem to remember the comic depicted the Guardians who negotiated with him having a Manhunter escort. Even they wouldn't have done that after. Would they? **Getting closer now. Still no reaction.** I reach forwards a little further, fingers stretching to touch the hull. The construct doesn't trigger the barrier. **Either the barrier can't detect the construct or it doesn't regard it as hostile.** I have the fingertips of the construct armour peel away where it touches the hull so that my armour can reach for it. No, let's see-.

The barrier flares back into being.

Minor power drain detected. / Minor power drain detected.

I pull both hands away. No damage to my armour's gauntlets. Leaving the construct armour whole this time I stretch forth my right arm again, planting it firmly on the doorway. No reaction. Okay, so now I can touch the thing…

Open sesame?

There aren't any buttons, knobs or other protuberances. The seam is tiny. I only detected it with a power ring scan, otherwise I could probably have looked the whole thing over without ever once detecting it. Ring, can you find anything to interface with?

No computation system found. Addendum: emotional light spectrum systems detected.

Right. There wouldn't necessarily have been a computer. Of course, if they used a system similar to modern ones…

Ring, feed power into the local system. Don't give it more than five percent maximum store.

Energy feed in progress.

The entryway shimmers orange for a moment and then is replaced entirely with an orange portal. I smile. Looks like we're in.

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What Lies Beneath 14

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29th January

07:06 GMT -11

**Entry point available.** I take out the pole again and push it through the orange barrier which has replaced the doorway. It passes through with no resistance. Once it's entirely inside I release it and watch it drop onto the floor within. **No reaction to the presence of a foreign body. I'll go in first. Superboy, assuming that nothing happens, you're in next.**

**Right.**

I drift forwards, right arm slightly forwards. The barrier is clearly blocking water just fine but my arm goes through as if there's nothing there, just as the pole did. There is no illumination inside besides that provided by the orange entry point. Ring, probe.

No artificial gravity detected. Elevated carbon dioxide and methane and reduced oxygen from planetary norm.

Maltus' air was pretty much the same as Earth's. If there's no one there the ship would probably have deprioritised life support. How does air on a spaceship change without that? According to Stewart ring's records it depends on exactly which systems are deactivated and what microbes there are. Guardian ships of the modern era are ruthless about excluding microbial life, partially due to Guardian OCD and partially due to concerns about cross contamination. Unlike the mantra in the Hospital Station series diseases can often affect different species of humanoids. Not all the time but we have so much organic chemistry in common… Heck, fertile hybrids can happen between some pairings and that's just.. daft.

Oh, I'm dragging this out. I push myself through the barrier. Turns out that the outer hull is about twenty centimetres thick, though if this wasn't intended to be a combat vessel Guardians.. or other Maltusians, could have made it paper thin if they'd wanted. It's been a very long time since Maltusians built ships because they needed them, rather than because they were convenient. Leaving the construct armour up I turn left and then right. Corridors with sealed doors. No guard station… That implies other species weren't involved in crewing it. Again, I scoop up the pole and return it to subspace. Next, I orientate myself to the corridor and take a few light globes out of my ever versatile subspace holdall, reflecting not for the first time that a person could be a successful superhero with that ability alone. I send one globe to each end of the corridor. The ship doesn't respond and the doors remain shut. One thing left to try then. I land and drop the construct armour, tensing slightly. Nothing.

Ring, is this section sealed?

No airflow detected.

I make a jazz hands gesture and the air around me is purified in a wave of orange. **Alright, Superboy. In you come.**

**On my way.**

Looking up I see him swim towards the barrier. If it blocks him I can just put an environmental shield around him. Oh, wait, there aren't any handholds and he left his flight equipment back in the mountain. Rungs won't be any use, he's still got his fins on. I settle for creating a platform just down from the entry. I can lower him from that.

Kon swims right up to the barrier face first before reorientating to crouch against the hull. His hands sink easily through the orange barrier. **Are you making this?**

**No, I just fed the ship a little power. Apparently it can auto-transubstantiate.** He looks blank. I try narrowing my telepathic connection to just him. **Switch from matter to energy without intelligent intervention.**

**Oh.** He reaches further in and takes a grip on the interior surface. **It doesn't really feel like much.** A little hesitantly he pulls himself forwards, head pulled back slightly until his face is fully enveloped, then thrust forwards so that it clears the orange barrier as quickly as possible. Head and chest out he holds out his arms to arrest his expected fall but instead his hips and legs remain inside the barrier. Looks like it can hold a person's weight. He pulls his hands back so that they're braced against the sides of the portal and pushes his legs free before dropping onto my platform. **Is the air safe?**

**Yes, but leave your mask on for the moment. It might not be in other parts of the ship.** I look back up at the opening. **Tempest, Aquagirl, please cast your spell.**

**We'll just need a moment.** I narrow my eyes and reach.. outwards through the telepathic link binding us together. Through M'gann's eyes I see a strange blue glow from near the seabed which appears to grow in definition as time passes. Suddenly I… She blinks heavily as silt precipitates out of the water around her and is shoved outwards. Combined with the light sources they placed around the bottom of the ship she can finally see its whole off-white hull.

**Whooooowh.** Rob sounds impressed. I suppose he's had to rely on my scans to see what the ship-. **That spell's amazing! When this is over, could you show me how to do it?**

**Of course.** Garth sounds a little puzzled. **It isn't a big deal, everyone in Atlantis learns that spell.**

**When you live on the seabed you need to learn how to stop everything getting covered in dirt.**

**Does it work in the shallows?**

**I don't see why it wouldn't. But why would you need it?**

**I know a load of surfers who'd love to be able to do something like that!**

**Cornwall, that can wait until after the mission.**

**Sorry.**

**Interior of the ship appears structurally sound, no visible damage. Air was a bit musty but there isn't any organic matter in this section. It's been perfectly sealed since the ship landed. Pressure equal to Earth sea level. No automated defences or other nasties. No artificial gravity.** Ring, try scanning. Ugh. **Still can't scan beyond my immediate environment, including sonics. I can detect the power source and the defunct storage vessels. Two are towards the-** I form a three dimensional image of the part of the ship I'm talking about in my mind. **-front of the ship while most of the rest are in lines near the top and bottom. Since those two are the closest we'll head there first. Tempest and Aquagirl, get started surveying the exterior. Call out anything interesting.**

**We'll get right on it.** / **Understood.**

**Miss Martian and Cornwall Boy, please join us inside.**

**On my way.** / **Be with you in a moment.**

Rob makes it to the entrance first, dropping in feet first and landing heavily on the floor, legs fully bent. M'gann follows a moment later, swimming through head first and holding herself in the air with telekinesis.

**Miss Martian, are you able to phase through the walls?**

**I'll try.** Her tail shifts back into legs as she floats towards it and reaches out to touch it with her right hand. I see her muscles tense as she applies a little pressure. **No, it doesn't work. Whatever this is made of resists my phasing as well as your scan.**

I activate my armour's integrated phase shifter and stamp my right foot. Same result. **That's the thing about very advanced alien civilisations.**

**What is?**

**They're very advanced.** I feel a tiny flicker of amusement from her. **Just in case there's something unpleasant in the next section…** I connect a filament to the other three before flying over to the door which hopefully leads in the right direction. Interesting thing about this corridor: the floor, the walls and ceiling are all about two metres across and the corners are slightly curved. For humanoids the Maltusians were never particularly tall and the Guardians only ever shrank. Were there a lot of people on board? **The door is clearly a door this time, rather than a barely distinguishable part of the hull. It's slightly recessed compared to the wall around it. The colour is the same off-white as the outer hull and the other walls. There's a seam running from the centre to each corner, presumably how it opens. It's half again as wide as it is tall, which might make sense for Guardians.** I raise my left hand. **Since it isn't responding to my proximity and there isn't an obvious control system I'm going to try feeding it from the ring.** Ring, power feed. Just to the door.

Compliance.

Rather than turn orange the parts of the door turn semi-liquid and run back into the surrounding wall, revealing another corridor.

If this whole thing turns out to be empty I'm going to be ever so disappointed.

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What Lies Beneath 15

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29th January

07:12 GMT -11

Another door, another corridor. This one leads to a curved double sided drop… I look at the corridor we're standing in. **The ship's on its side.**

M'gann looks at me like she's waiting for the punch line. **Yes?**

**We didn't actually know that.**

M'gann keeps looking at me, then turns to Kon and Rob. They look at each other, then Kon turns to me. **Uh… We didn't?**

**Most spaceships aren't designed to fly in atmospheres. There wasn't really any reason to assume…** Yeah, okay, I guess it was more likely. **Cornwall, are you going to be alright flying yourself down?**

**No, this isn't… I can't do that in enclosed spaces. Not yet, I mean.**

The corridors don't have handholds. **Alright.** I send a couple of light globes down and around what I suspect is the bridge. Quick optic scan… **The door is towards the rear face. Cornwall, Superboy, how much practice have you had with flight belts?**

Rob winces. **Not much. I've been.. y'know… Focusing on magic stuff.**

**I can fly around with it, as long as I don't have to do any complicated flying.**

I take a belt out of subspace and hand it to Kon. **Miss Martian, Cornwall, wait here while Superboy and I check it out.** They nod as Kon straps on the belt and triggers it, rising slightly off the ground. Keeping a careful eye on my environment I slowly fly through the open doorway and down the curving corridor to where the main entry to the bridge is located. Slightly larger door than the others, and it has another similarly sized door on the opposite wall. Would they have been open during normal operation? I still don't really know what sort of ship this was. The closeness of the entry point to the command centre and the relatively exposed position of it suggests civilian rather than military but they might just have decided that the chance of something attacking them was so low it didn't matter.

**Tempest, Aquagirl, anything to report?**

**We're looking at the damage now.** Tula sounds puzzled. *I'm… I'm not really an expert on spaceships. I'm not sure what I'm looking for.**

**Look for patterns of damage. Is it one big impact or several smaller ones? Are there burn marks? What do the exposed sections look like? I'm not looking for a detailed technical analysis, no one here is qualified to give that.**

**Right.** I send a filament out and touch it to the door. No energy shield. Ring, begin energy feed.

Compliance.

**The edge of the damaged area is jagged.. and.. brittle.** I get a momentary flicker of Tula holding a piece of the hull, broken off in her hand. **The energy barrier doesn't activate when I touch it.**

**There are puncture marks of some kind on the interior surfaces. They don't go through the outer hull, though. Some sort of fight inside the ship?**

**Could be. Proceed carefully. If something looks like it could be dangerous, assume that it is.**

The door in front of me opens, revealing the darkened command centre. I send a light globe forwards but I can already tell whose ship this is. **This was a Guardian vessel. The raised area around the front and the sides with the central holo pit is distinctive. Probably pre-dating the Green Lantern Corps.**

Kon floats forwards a little. **How can you tell?**

**Too much space. There aren't enough Guardians left to need this much space even if they all got together in one place, and they don't do that anywhere but Oa. If it were recent, there would be headroom for the Green Lantern Honour Guard who'd be manning the ship.**

**How many Guardians are there?**

**A total of eleven actively participate in running the Corps. There might be others around, I don't know exactly what the membership requirements are.** I recognised some names on the list; Ganthet, Sayd and Appa Ali Apsa exist here. According to Lantern Stewart's ring the others mostly disdain the use of names. It only knew Sayd's because Ganthet once used it in Stewart's presence. The two of them appear to have the personalities I was expecting. Appa on the other hand appears to be some sort of social scientist. A quick check showed that he was frequently absent from briefing sessions.

I send a probe construct forwards. Ah. With no artificial gravity objects have fallen down. There's a pile of crushed bones and partially burned and torn robes at the apparent bottom of the room, and- ooh shit! Is that a Manhunter? Robotic humanoid, but… The outer surface isn't red and it doesn't have that white faceplate they usually do. I can't see any obvious damage and it's partially buried under the remains of its masters. Looks like.. three Guardians? Assuming a standard humanoid skeletal structure.

**Well? Are we going in?**

**There's a combat robot. It looks inactive, but I'm a bit wary of setting it off.** A Manhunter which wasn't getting other instructions would have acted the moment we opened the door. This one… Its one visible arm appears to have been designed to look like it possessed a humanoid musculature. Most of the arm is grey, terminating in a white five fingered gauntlet. The chest appears to be covered in some sort of green leotard thing and the head is a solid ovoid with bulging green eyes and some sort of mouth grill where a humanoid's mouth would be. I have no idea what that is. Could it be a robotic Lantern? One of their early recruits?

Subject is a 'Fist of the Guardians', presently inactive.

I have no idea what that is. Stewart ring?

Fist units were created after the abandonment of the Manhunter project-.

You mean the Massacre of Sector 666.

There is no data on file concerning the cause of the mass extinction in that region, nor to support the belief that the Manhunters were in any way involved. Fist units are designed not to possess the reasoning capacity of their predecessors.

There's a minimal level of intelligence required to use the green light, correct?

Yes. Fist units are designed to operate using direct energy infusion from a Guardian. As such, they are seldom deployed in field operations.

When are they deployed?

Historically, they were most frequently deployed as guards for the Guardians. In the modern era they have been supplanted in this role by the Honour Guard. Their most recent deployment was to apprehend First Lantern Sinestro.

If it needs a Guardian to pour energy into it and all the Guardians here are dead… Scan very carefully for residual energy.

None found.

I wave Kon forwards and then follow on behind him. He heads towards the centre of the Guardian balcony on the far side of the room while I stop in the centre of the room. Ring, any systems we can connect to?

Ship systems appear intact but are inactive. Most likely cause is lack of power.

Current charge level?

Ninety five percent of normal maximum power available. / Ninety six percent charge available.

Doubt I can charge the ship by myself. Might need to bring my lantern down here later. Feeding a little power into the computer to get the logs can't hurt, though. Rings, begin power feed. Filaments extend from both rings to the 'floor' and 'ceiling'. Cut out when-.

A surge of light erupts from the wall and floor, forming an orange tube around me! Um.

Massive power drain detected!

I bring my left fist around and slam it into the barrier around me! No effect.

Massive power drain detected!

Kon notices that something is wrong and slams into it from the outside. There's a tiny crack. Right, railgun-!

Looking directly down I see the Fist looking back up at me, eyes glowing orange.

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What Lies Beneath 16

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29th January

07:16 GMT -11

ShitShitShitShit!

"Intruder detected." The Fist straightens, bones and robes falling aside as it rises into the air. "Halt and surrender for judgement."

Kon turns away from me and prepares to lunge at it. "Surrender th-!"

**No! Superboy, don't!** He swings his head back around to stare at me. **It works for the Guardians. The worst it'll do is detain us until it can contact them. If you fight it… I don't know what its weapons can do.**

Alert! Critical power drain!

Damn it! Will it consider firing a railgun round an offensive action? Kon lowers his fist as the Fist rises to our level. "Unfamiliar species detected. Unable to locate Guardians. Guardian remains detected. Damage to chronometer detected. Critical damage to ship systems detected." It stares directly at Kon. "Identify."

"I'm Superboy."

"Identify function."

"Search and rescue."

There's a brief pause as we wait for the Fist to respond. It keeps looking at Kon. "Identify function."

"I'm…" He glances at me and I nod. "I'm search and rescue too. We're here to try to get this ship off the seabed before anyone else finds it."

It keeps staring for a moment, then it turns away and reorientates itself to the floor. "Unable to determine societal technological level. Unable to determine status of cargo." Cargo? "Unable to render effective judgement. Negotiation: this unit will render assistance and nullify claims in exchange for repatriation of this vessel."

Alert! Critical power drain!

Darn. I was sort of hoping… "Fine. Just let me out."

"Answer."

"Yes!"

The Fist is now standing on the wall.. floor.. in front of the highest point of the Guardian podium. It turns back towards us. "Answer."

Kon stares at it in bemusement. "Yes! Can't you hear him-" It can't hear me. "-or something?"

My flickering and failing railgun construct fires a Crumbler round into the side of the orange shield imprisoning me. There's a spray of orange light as it fractures, cracks threading the area around the impact point. I shoot it again and a chunk disintegrates, leaving a hole big enough for me to fly-! Fuck! Big enough for me to lunge at and fall out of! I fall about six metres, hit the side of the room and roll down towards where the Fist had been resting. Armour holds out. Barely felt that, actually. Well done armour. I take a moment to calm down. No flying means less than ten percent power. Bastard thing just stole nearly two complete ring charges worth of power!

"Identify."

I push myself up, trying to ignore the bones of the ship's former owners as they crunch under my weight. The cylinder that held me fades as I stand. "I'm the chap this ship just tried converting into a power source!"

**Orange Lantern! Superboy! Are you alright?**

**Yesss… More or less.** Wait, if the ship just absorbed that much power… Please tell me it didn't all go into the Fist. "Status of ship systems?"

"Glow manipulation detected."

Oh great, this thing really does predate Lanterns? "The Guardians created tools to allow younger races to duplicate their abilities." I raise my gauntlets in its direction to show it the rings as I activate my armour's flight belt. "The ship just sucked mine dry. Presumably that means that some systems are alive again."

"Confirmed. Stealth systems restored. Self repair systems restored."

"But not any of the drive systems?"

"Insufficient power for primary objective essential systems in addition to drive systems." Suddenly, down flips and I tumble into the wall-floor!

**Ow!** / **Whu-?**

"Interior gravity restored."

I pick myself up. Interestingly I can't feel Earth's gravity at all now. "Okay, I can just go back to the surface, grab my lantern and come back." **The robot's friendly. Cornwall, Miss Martian, get in here.** "Fist, is anyone else onboard?"

"All Guardians accounted for. All are recorded as deceased. All Fist units accounted for. All other units are recorded as irreparably damaged." It pauses. "Experimental subjects not accounted for."

"What experimental-" M'gann and Rob walk in through the door. "-subje-?"

"Confinement protocols engaged!" The Fist surges towards the doorway, swinging its right fist at M'gann! She dives aside, then is forced to fly to avoid its orange eyebeams! Rob thrusts out his arms and fires a blast of lightning directly into its torso at point blank range. No effect. "Arcane energy detected. Initiating countermeasures." It twists around and backhands Rob before he can evade. He slams into the wall at the side of the room, wincing as he lands.

**Superboy, get it.**

"Rgaaagh!" Kon flies across the room, aiming at the Fist's back. An orange barrier appears for a second just before he strikes, robbing him of momentum. I generate a new railgun construct and track as the Fist spins aside, grabbing Kon's head as it goes. Kon's hands come up and take a grip of its left wrist.

M'gann comes up besides me. **What's it doing?! I thought you said-!**

**It just saw you and went crazy! Fists aren't sentient, feel free to use full force.**

The Fist tries to hurl Kon aside but he maintains his grip, slowly exerting force on the wrist joint. I can hear the sound of whatever it's made of getting crushed. The Fist releases the hold of its other hand, lifts Kon up and fires another blast from its eyes.

"Augh!" Kon loses his hold and goes flying across the room, a small part of the Fist's hand still in his grip. Across his chest I can see where the outer surface of his wetsuit was blasted aside. Looks like the mithril held.

I fire a Crumbler at the Fist and again an orange barrier appears before it can strike its chassis. The barrier fails but the robot beneath is unaffected. Guy and I found that ablative shields are just about the only effective defence against Crumblers, other than evading the shot.

Another beam from its eyes passes through M'gann as she phases to avoid it, cutting into the far wall. "Adapting vibrational-."

I jam my left hand in the beam's path. Drain.

Power at eight percent. Nine percent.

The beam cuts out and the Fist flies at us. I thrust my arms forwards, triggering the belt's containment shield. I may not have Raquel's skill but I can manage a simple on/off control. A glowing blue bubble forms around the Fist as its own kinetic energy is absorbed by the barrier.

"Fist unit! Explain why-!"

Its left hand glows orange as a laser beam burns into the flight belt at my waist! I fall to the ground and the barrier around the Fist collapses. Rob's back on his feet, electrical energy crackling between his hands. The Fist shudders slightly -some sort of electrical induction?- and M'gann uses the opportunity to apply telekinetic force to its head. The right eye shatters into a whorl of orange motes as its head is forced back, then-

"AAgh!"

-M'gann slumps to the ground, clutching her head in pain.

"Subsonic feedback pulse active. Forceful telepathic disconnect will-."

Kon flies out, jinks under its left arm and comes up behind it, grabbing its neck in a choke hold!

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What Lies Beneath 17

next

29th January

07:20 GMT -11

Can't choke a thing that doesn't breathe but the neck does seem like a structural weakness. **Cornwall, keep disrupting its internals. Miss Martian-**

"Wavelength isolated." Green light radiates out from the Fist and Kon shudders. Environmental shield. Fortunate that kryptonite radiation isn't strongly ionising. Environmental shields are 'cheap' to create and should be able to hold any bombardment the Fist will be able to put out almost indefinitely.

**-crush the other eye.** M'gann nods, her left hand coming up and her eyes glowing.

**Do you need help?**

Right, the Atlanteans aren't going to know what's happening. Time it would take them to get here..? **No. No time.** No way my armour is up to wrestling with the Fist, but if I can take some more power back… The humanoid form gives it limited range of motion.

"Internals compensating." I hear its neck start to tear as its arms reach back, hands glowing with orange light. I bend into a crouch and power forwards. Kinematic processors don't fail me now! Distracted, the Fist doesn't react as I leap across the distance separating us and wrap my arms around its left forearm. My momentum causes my legs to swing past as my hands latch onto its hand. Drain! Light streams from its hand into the rings as my impact forces it to stagger back. "Power drain detected." The light around the hand I'm draining goes out. I'm still drawing a small amount of power, orange mist wafting from its eye and right hand. Kon ducks his head as it fires another blast from its right hand while M'gann hesitates.

**I can't get a grip! It's like it's immune to telekinesis!**

I drop an x-ionised knife out of subspace next to her. **Use this. Carefully.**

**Right.**

Blue light shines from Rob's direction as he charges up a fireball. The physics of those things are.. not something I understand. If it can-.

The Fist spins, rising in the air as it does so. The ring can easily keep my inner ear stabilised but I don't actually have a very good gri-. Agh! Blahgh! I slam into the far wall, bounce and hit the floor. Again I don't really feel the impact but I'm losing track of-. An alert flashes up on my HUD as something pierces the armour's outer plating on my right leg, cutting through and into the motive systems before stopping. That.. will impact my ability to move but it could have taken my leg off. Why didn't it?

I can barely see Kon as the Fist continues spinning. He must still be holding onto the Fist's neck. Its main cognition systems are in its chest, but if he can breach the head I might be able to drain it further. Careful to make sure that as much of my weight as possible is kept off my right leg I get up again. Can't waste power on a railgun construct. I take a normal railgun out of subspace and load it with Crumbler rounds. It's not a great weapon. I tried just using designs from Stewart ring's database but they're mostly designed to fire the grains of sand type projectiles Mass Effect weapons use and it's a lot harder to make them play nicely with the larger Crumbler or Mage Slayer rounds than it is a construct responding directly to my thoughts.

**Nnnnngaahhh!** Kon flies off the Fist at speed, something grey and orange in his arms. The wall takes his impact without denting but he's slow to rise. The Fist doesn't even bother slowing its spinning as it powers towards M'gann again. She flies away from it, moving the x-ionised knife towards it and slashing at its approximate location. I see brief flares of orange where it intersects with a barrier. I track and pull the trigger. Actual railguns don't so much hum as roar and I can feel it through the armour's sound dampening. Rob's fireball hits it from the far side at the same time as my round strikes home, one side awash with blue fire and the other with what looks like an orange dust cloud. Two seconds until I can fire again.

M'gann stabs at the orange dust side and is rewarded with a definite impact. The Fist tumbles in the air past her and she uses the opportunity to check up on Kon. He's groggy but it doesn't look like he's particularly hurt. The Fist stabilises, down a head and a neat cut clearly visible across its chest and left arm where the knife went in.

**AwaHH!** M'gann is knocked flying across the room as the eye on the head in Kon's grasp fires! Kon quickly turns it aside before jamming his right fore and middle fingers into the remaining eye socket, finally breaking the eye. Getting a better hold, his muscles bulge as he pulls, the head coming apart in his hands. A mote of orange light flies from it into the Stewart ring. Ring?

Eight percent power remaining.

**Miss Martian?**

**Uhhh, aaaghhh…**

Something about that beam… Rob looks at me. "What now?"

I grimace and take an x-ionised knightly sword out of subspace. "Swift wind. You cut, I'll shoot."

"Right." The air around him bends as the spell takes effect. Drain! Motes of orange light flow from the Fist, but it still isn't enough. I suppose it makes sense that the species that built Central Power Batteries would be able to make well insulated robots. "Go!"

I pull the trigger again. His spell doesn't make him anything like Kid Flash fast but it does let him outpace a World Record holding sprinter and generally not worry about his momentum. He's already grabbed the sword out of the air as my Crumbler strikes the Fist. This time it can't quite manage a full barrier and its outer armour gets etched as if by acid. It brings up its arms for another shot at M'gann but Rob has already cleared the intervening space, ducking under them and slicing through its chest plate with a single sweep as he runs by. There's a sudden flash of orange along the line and I pull as much of it into the rings as I can before firing again. The Fist intercepts with its glowing left hand. The glow breaks and Rob's back, slicing through the palm. The Fist's fingers spasm slightly as they hit the deck.

Its right hand glows and I'm forced to burn ring power to shield myself as it takes a laser-

Phased particle beam.

-phased particle beam shot at my railgun. I try moving the end of the railgun but the beam stays perfectly on target.

Alert! Seven percent power remaining.

Great. I drop a Crumbler micro-missile out of subspace and the beam moves aside for a half second to destroy it. Kon's back on his feet and M'gann… I can't see M'gann. Rob runs back in and takes a swipe at the already damaged forearm. The Fist pivots in the air and smashes him across the stomach with it instead.

"Fwraah!" Rob's spell bursts and he collapses to the ground, gasping for air. I stick a filament on the sword before it can cut through the deck as Kon flies at the Fist again. It tries to bring up its damaged hand for a shot at his belt but nothing happens. Realising the level of damage the Fist turns the move into a roll, aiming to get out of Kon's path and strike as he moves past. The beam's off me now but I can't get a safe shot! As the Fist rolls Kon triggers his belt's kinetic barrier bringing it to a sudden halt. Before it can reposition he drops the barrier again and ploughs into it, striking the slash across its chest at full speed. The Fist is shoved backwards about two metres before stabilising, Kon already shoving his palms into the tear and straining to pull it apart. Something gives and a surge of orange smashes into his chest, propelling him into the ceiling and pinning him there! The Fist struggles to redirect and the walls of the room buckle where it points!

I shove the railgun back into subspace and wave my arms. "Shoot me! Shoot me! I can absorb it!"

I don't know if he heard me. It isn't reacting, though. I rise to my feet and stagger towards it, trying to pull the venting orange light back into the rings. Off to my right the ceiling gives way and the Fist shifts the orange beam before it can cut through the wall beyond. I can't move quick enough. Think.

The drain tube thing it used on me! Ring, can we activate that?

System is available.

Okay, the Fist is about three metres away. I try grabbing it with a filament but it gets consumed by the flood of orange light. I try a thicker beam but I can't get a grip on the bloody thing!

**Got you!** The floor behind the Fist flows upwards as M'gann wraps herself around it, x-ionised knife cutting into its functional arm which falls dead.

I use the ring to highlight the area of the floor with the draining mechanism. **Miss Martian, get it there!**

What look like giant flea legs grow out of her back and push the two of them across the room. As the two of them hurtle out of control she shifts, flows and moves her mass around to throw it at the indicated spot while she lands safely. Wait for it wait for it now! Ring, activate the drain system! The orange cylinder reappears, the orange light blasting from the Fist's chest being easily absorbed by the ship's systems. It tries to regain its feet, stumbles and collapses as the last of its energy bursts through its frame, disintegrating it.

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What Lies Beneath 18

next

29th January

07:23 GMT -11

I hobble a little closer to where the remains of the Fist gently smoulder inside the cylinder. Deciding that the Fist has been fully juiced the cylinder shuts down, dropping them onto the bridge's floor. Darn it, I was really hoping I could come out of this with a robot bodyguard.

"Aweh, fucking hell." Rob winces as he sits up, cradling his chest. "How'd you tell if you broke a rib?"

"If it hurts when you breathe more than normal." I look over at my other injured team mate. "Superboy, how are you doing?"

He pushes a section of bridge wall aside and delicately walks back in. "Just bruises. I'll be fine."

**Miss Martian, nicely done. Are we still linked?** She nods and then goes to check Kon over. **Robot dealt with, no serious injuries aaaand…** I do a quick scan of the accessible area of the ship. **No hull breaches. Anything interesting happen outside?**

**There's a pod of whales a few kilometers away. I think pushing the sediment and plankton away might be attracting them.** There's a little frustration in Garth's mental voice but he's keeping it under control. **Nothing aside from that.**

**Right.** I look at Rob. **Cornwall, I'm on low power, but if you think your rib is-.**

**Nah, don't worry.** He pulls a small vial out of an armoured leg pouch. **See if this works…** He unscrews the lid and downs the contents.

**What's.. that..?**

**Healing potion.**

I blink. **You have a healing potion?**

**Yeah, Kid Flash gave it to me before Christmas.**

**Kid Flash has healing potions?**

He looks at me with a slight frown, then his eyes widen in understanding. **Oh that's right! You were out with Zatanna when he told everyone about it. Yeah, it's pretty good. I mean, it's not, like, an instant fix for everything, but…** He gingerly presses his chest with his left hand while putting the bottle back with his right. **It speeds up normal healing a lot. And I heal pretty quick anyway. Think it was just cracked.** He clambers back onto his feet.

I had.. meant.. to spend more time with Wallace, helping him with the whole alchemy thing. It's just.. what with Nabu and everything… **I think I should probably talk to him about that when we get back.**

Kon gives me a narrow smile. **Maybe he just doesn't want you to share it with Luthor.**

**That's fine, but I funnel a lot of the stuff I work on that isn't Lex-safe through Theodore Kord.** No recognition. **Kord Tech? The.. building the.. New York zeta tube is on-** He nods, getting it. **-top of?**

M'gann looks at the piles of remains. **Why did it attack us? It wasn't aggressive.. until…**

Rob nods. **Until you and me walked in.**

**Which means either it didn't like Martians or it didn't like magic.**

Rob shakes his head. **No, it didn't know I was a magic user. It only said 'arcane energy detected' after I shot it with lightning.** He looks at M'gann. **Have the Martians had anything to do with the Guardians?**

She looks at the floor in thought. **No. I hadn't even heard of Green Lanterns until we started getting messages from Uncle J'onn.**

**That's a little odd. If you ignore Earth there are only eleven different intelligent species in this sector. I'd have.. thought someone from Mars would have been recruited at some point.**

**I don't think so.**

**You're a race of shapeshifting telepaths.** Kon shrugs. **Maybe they don't think you need power rings as well?**

Guardians and Martians. Oh heck. "Ring, are the ship's computers available?"

"Access available. Warning: records severely damaged."

"Can you get me a date?"

"Unable to match calendars." In the centre of the room an orange construct image of a planet appears. Small, rocky and with liquid water covering a large part of the surface. I don't immediately recognise it but it isn't as if I've memorised every inhabited planet in the universe. My team gathers around it. "Image displayed is the most recent intact planetary scan prior to the ship's systems becoming damaged."

I take a closer look. There appear to be… Are those impact craters?

"I don't suppose there's a name for it in there, is there?"

"Planet listed as 'Ma'aleca'andra'."

"Never heard of it. I don't suppose you've got that on file somew-?"

**Mars.** The three of us turn to M'gann. She's got so close to the image that her face is nearly touching it, gazing at it in wonder. **It's.. Mars. See these mountains here? These are what Humans call Xanthe Montes. My Uncle Ma'al lives near here.**

Kon frowns. **But… Mars is…**

**This ship… The Guardians must have visited it before the surface turned into a desert!** She beams excitedly at us. **This is great! The Guardians might have records of-!** She cuts herself off as realisation hits. **This ship might have records of what Mars was like when the surface was still habitable!**

**Uuum. I wouldn't get too excited. The ring said-.**

**Even if this ship is too badly damaged, we can just ask the Guardians!** She turns around and grabs Kon around the waist and he smiles in response to her obvious enthusiasm. **We lost so much of our history, it would be amazing if we could get it back!**

Rob turns away from the globe to look at me. **Do you think.. whatever turned Mars into a wasteland… Could be what wrecked this ship?**

**Could be.** "Ring, assuming that planet is Mars, can you recover enough data to work out an approximate date?"

"Processing." Construct images of various pieces of text the ring isn't translating appear around us. Shit, am I under five percent already? The text disappears. "Image displayed approximately twenty thousand Earth years ago, plus or minus two hundred years, with a probability of ninety seven percent."

M'gann turns back to us and nods. **That's about when our archaeologists say it must have happened! This is going to be so great!**

"Ring, can you tell what this ship was doing here?"

"Purpose listed as 'prisoner transportation'."

M'gann sobers slightly. **If it was transporting Martian prisoners… The robot must have thought I was one of them.**

"Ring, can you access a picture of one of these prisoners?"

"Partial reconstruction available." The image of a green Mars vanishes and is replaced by one of a humanoid figure. We look at it for a moment.

M'gann frowns and shakes her head. **That's… That's not a Martian.**

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What Lies Beneath 19

next

29th January

07:27 GMT -11

It is, but I can see why she'd think that. The skull-like head modern Martians have is far narrower and taller. The softer segments around the throat and the back of the head are absent, as are the underarm membranes. Never really understood what they were about. The harder parts of the torso are more obviously armoured and the structure of the feet makes it more obvious that they were designed to grasp just as well as the forelimbs were. The legs and arms are far shorter and noticeably thicker and the whole creature looks much tougher.

Not that physical resilience is really the problem when you try and fight them.

Rob shrugs. **Some sort of.. Cave Martian?**

Kon looks at M'gann. **If there's white, green and red Martians now, maybe there used to be other kinds as well?**

She frowns. **I suppose.**

Ring, how many of those was this ship carrying?

Unable to recover data.

Ooooh dear. Ring, analyse general tone of content; did the Guardians have a huge fight with the Burning Martians and reprogram them into modern Martians?

Supposition fits available data. However, no firm conclusion can be reliably drawn.

I check my mental barriers again. Alright, Martians here follow 'real' biology far more than what I remember from the comics. They need to eat. Guardians don't. There's very little chance that this ship has a hydroponics section. It might have some sort of matter replicator but the ship's been on low power for a very long time.

**Can you fly this ship?**

I look back at Rob. **I might be able to command the ship to fly itself, certainly.** But thanks to me the power's back on. I look back in the direction of the rest of the ship, amping up my empathic vision. I can't even see the dots that should be there for Garth and Tula. **But I'd rather check the whole ship out first. And the computer's a mess anyway. I'm not keen on the idea of relying on it.**

**Um. Your leg alright, mate? You were sort of limping there.** Rob looks down at my damaged leg. **I've got another potion if you want it?**

**The Fist shot out one of the motors. Didn't actually hit my flesh.** "Ring, charge remaining?"

"Six percent."

I focus for a second and fix the leg armour. Don't know how much good armour will do against a potentially crazy Martian but I'm going to need to be able to move. I take a moment to test the motion, looking for a moment like a man interviewing for a grant from the Ministry of Silly Walks. I'd like to go back to the surface and recharge but I can't because the ship is functional and any Burning Martian on board could have learned how to operate it from the minds of the Guardians before they died. We need to do a sweep now and hope they died centuries ago. "Ring, can you get me an internal schematic?"

"Partial schematic available."

The Burning Martian disappears and is replaced with a hollow model of the ship. Parts of the insides are missing but there's a reasonably clear path towards the rear of the ship and the last power source. **Superboy, take point. Miss Martian, keep yourself invisible and listen out for any minds around us. Cornwall, can you keep that wind spell going?**

**Yeah.**

**Then do so.** I take three neural chaff grenades out of subspace and attach them to the outside of my armour. Not sure how much use they'll be. Do I try asking the Guardians for information again? No, this isn't just a lack of knowledge, this is something they've actively covered up. **Assume that any further Fist units encountered are hostile. And if there are surviving Martians, don't take any chances. Guardians don't have people arrested on a whim and they don't show up themselves unless the people they're arresting are very dangerous.** I look over at the bones and then check to make sure that my team mates understand the implication. **Martians can go invisible, shapeshift, manipulate their environments with telekinesis and are telepathic.** I think for a moment and then take two more chaff grenades out of subspace, handing one each to Rob and Kon. **If you see a Martian that isn't ours, use it.**

M'gann frowns. **But if they've been stuck down here-.**

**Then we can say sorry after we've got them under control. I doubt the Guardians made this ship phase proof for fun.** She doesn't look happy about it, but she nods and then fades from view. "Ring, do the doors work now, or am I still going to have to manually open every one?"

"Door mechanisms operational."

I nod to Kon and then gesture to the open door with my right hand. He nods and floats towards the opening. I could get another belt out of subspace for myself, but that would eat an entire percent and I just can't justify it.

**Orange Lantern, are you sure that you don't want Aquagirl and I inside?**

**'Sure' would be a little strong but neither of you have any particular resistance to telepathy. Any changes to the ship?**

The door to the main corridor opens just ahead of Kon, revealing a wide thoroughfare with large open rooms on either side. I'm not sure what used to be here but whatever it was has been thoroughly trashed.

**There's a slight orange glow in some places.**

**Some of the holes are closing up.** Tula sends a mental picture of the before and after. **The small ones on the interior. I think the edges of the larger holes are healing themselves as well.**

**Self repair, okay, that's not entirely surprising.** Could a Burning Martian survive in the arctic waters? M'gann can easily, but she's not on fire. The temperature out there is only minus two. **Get away from the breach-** Rob walks past me as Kon ventures across the burned and broken machinery. **-and seal it with ice.** It can't phase through the hull. I doubt that the ship will let it out through the glowing orange portal I made. That fracture… **Actually, can you put some sort of ward around it that will let you know if something comes out of it?**

**We can do that. Shouldn't take long.**

**I don't suppose you know a spell for phase resistant barriers, do you?**

**Uh. Maybe? There are a few spells that do things like that, but they've never been tested against a Martian.**

**Try your best.**

**What were they.. doing here?** What looks like a Martian skull floats up out of one of the piles of debris. Empathic vision shows me M'gann looking at it. **Is that..? Some sort of operating table?**

Kon turns over some wreckage, revealing two large parts of what looks suspiciously like a surgical bed. He shoves them aside and then picks up some sort of robotic surgical arm. **What were they doing here?** He turns and looks across the chamber. **There's got to be dozens of them.**

**Anything alive?**

He looks at me, confused. **But-?**

**Anything alive?**

He looks around the room. **No?**

**Then we press on. Finding out what the Guardians were doing here isn't our job.** I spot what appears to be a severed Fist arm amongst the wreckage. The cut was made in a straight line but the surface is rough, as if someone sawed through it. **Once we've got the ship out of here, feel free to ask them. Until then, our job is getting the ship out without the United States and Russia finding out, and that's what we're going to do.**

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What Lies Beneath 20

next

29th January

07:36 GMT -11

I look out into the ocean. I can't tell if this section of hull was designed to be transparent from the interior or if this is some sort of projection. If it's a projection then I don't know why the ship's autonomous systems have prioritised it. Or why it wasn't destroyed along with so many of the ship's other internal structures. Some sort of fish… Ah, not a window then. It's a grey/brown flat fish, but rather than propel itself with its fins it appears to utilise some sort of organic ion drive. Moves quite a lot faster than Earth fish and has pretty little flickers of light visible through its skin before it launches itself.

After we finished with what I'm referring to as the surgical bay we saw the holding cells. Some were torn open while others were still intact. Those had remains in them.

"Nice fish." I glance at Rob as he comes up alongside me. "Any chance I could keep this sword after the mission?"

"Cornwall, it's a classified project by the American military. I'm not supposed to have it. If you start waving it around-."

"Right, but I was thinking…" He holds the blade in his left hand and points at the blade with his right. "If you put runes on it, then anyone looking at it would think it was magic and not… Whatever they really did to make it this sharp."

"You could always get an actual magic sword."

"They all as temperamental as the one Beowulf used?"

"You know, there's no hard evidence that anyone of that name ever used it."

He looks horrified. "What? I've been telling everyone-."

**Okay, I'm… I'm ready.**

We turn back around to where M'gann is leaning on Kon. Under the circumstances I can well understand how she's finding this all a bit overwhelming.

**If you're sure?** She nods, rises up into the air and shimmers back into invisibility. I point towards the leftmost door at the rear of the section. He nods and heads towards it with some speed. He wants to get this finished as quickly as possible. My team mates have heard me describe the Guardians in less than entirely flattering terms before but that was a lot of remains back there. I could tell them what I think I know, just say I got it from the ship's computers or something… But I haven't been able to confirm it. Guardians have gone off the rails before… Maybe that was what happened here?

The door opens in response to Kon's approach. Another long corridor with large cylinders along… Yes, that's the outer hull. The cylinders are a metre and a half in diameter and about four metres tall and all show signs of damage. Some of the more intact ones glow with a faint orange light. I'm… I've got no idea what they're supposed to do. Kon shakes his head. **I don't see anything.**

**And I can't feel any minds. How close are we to the power source?**

**At the end of the corridor, there should be a round room. It's in there. If there are any survivors, that's where they'll be.**

Kon glances at me. **You really think we'll find anyone?**

I shrug as we resume our journey. **I don't think it's particularly likely. Whatever they were doing here, this clearly wasn't a warship. They might well not have bothered creating any sort of emergency life preservation system.**

**What were they..? I know you said I shouldn't worry about it, but all those bodies…**

**Could be anything. Could be there was a major disease outbreak and they were offering emergency medical care. Could be they were studying your species for some reason. We don't have enough information to reliably draw a conclusion.**

**They were all one type. None of the three colors of modern Martian look like that. Do you think.. they were going extinct.. and the Guardians tried to preserve them?**

**It's quite possible. We've really got no way to tell.**

**We've finished the wards on the hull.** Through Tula's eyes I see faintly glowing lines floating just over the hull. **I can't guarantee they'll work but they're the best we can come up with.**

**Good work. Miss Martian, do you know how old the current Martian magic using tradition is?**

**Not.. exactly. Less than twenty thousand years, though. I don't.. understand why you think they'll be hostile. If there's a Martian survivor, I mean.**

**I don't. I'm just preparing for the worst.**

We're halfway along the room and from the looks of things some of the components around us have been dismantled with a little more focus by someone using the same technique as whoever sliced up that Fist. I haven't seen a tool that could have been used to do that, Guardians would have disassembled in a more even manner and Fists wouldn't have damaged the ship's systems without a Guardian instructing them. No way for me to tell when it happened…

Kon comes to a halt just before triggering the next door. I create a construct of the room we're coming up to. Circular with small rooms coming off it. Cells, maybe? **Hey, I was.. wondering.** I look at him. **If the Guardians have records on what Mars was like, would they have records on Krypton?**

**Yes. Lantern Stewart's ring only really had a summary, but if you want a copy I can stick it on a data stick when we get back.**

He nods. **Yeah, I would. Thanks.** He takes a breath. **Everyone ready?** Two nods and he steps forwards, bent slightly and fists raised. The door opens, revealing a mess of bodged together equipment. A cylinder like the ones we just walked past stands in the centre of the room, glowing faintly with pale green energy. Another lies against the far side of the room as if hurled there, more of the unusual cuts torn into the material. Of the twelve small chambers seven are slashed open. Another four have skeletal remains inside. The window to the last pod is completely opaque.

Okay. The last cylinder is mounted on some sort of energy transfer platform. There are slashes on the floor corresponding to the four malfunctioned pods. Some sort of stasis device, perhaps? There were other rooms like this on the schematic. Maybe this was where the Guardians stored them prior to the procedure? They couldn't control the emotional spectrum but they could manually transfer internal energy batteries. If one of them was intelligent enough to jury rig the system-.

The cylinder lying on the floor thrums quietly. Once, twice, then a faint orange glow starts to shine from the right end before flowing across the floor. There's a confused section where the orange and green lights run into each other before the green area appears to flow backwards into the cylinder.

**I can hear someone! The last pod! There's a mind!**

**Wait.** I… I can't see anything past the doorway. Guardians would certainly be able to block my abilities. Maybe it's one of them? But just in case… I take my railgun back out of subspace, load it with a Crumbler round and walk over to the orange cylinder. Drain. The orange glow runs through the air and into Stewart ring.

Total power reserves at five percent.

As with the green cylinder the orange glow that had been spreading across the room runs backwards into the orange cylinder and then into the ring. I hear a thump and then the window into the chamber shifts to translucency. "Stand ready. Miss Martian, inform whoever is in there that we're friendly."

**Hello? Are you hurt?** Empathic vision shows that she wants to get closer. Fortunately she's staying back. I really hope she learned her lesson from the first Bialya mission. **We're here to help.**

**hELP?**

Ooh. That.. felt.. odd. Almost.. crackly? I suppose that a cave Martian wouldn't necessarily have the same language skills as a modern Martian.

Alright. Let's find out how lucky we are. Ring, open the door.

Compliance.

The door slides aside and I can see a figure within, a little taller than M'gann and crouched as if to protect-.

FUCK I'M ON FIRE!

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What Lies Beneath 21

next

29th January

07:41 GMT -11

I'm burning inside my armour! I can't see! I need-! No. Burning Martian. False mind technique. Move… Arm… Activate the grenade!

**rGHGHGH!**

"AAAAAAAAAAHH!" M'gann's collapsed to the ground, fully visible. Visions of fire are just about the worst thing you can do to a normal Martian and she'd have felt the burning just as I did.

"Hhhhurrrrr." Kon's shuddering with the pain but he's still standing and grasping for his grenade. Rob's silent, curled up on the floor.

The Burning Martian stares at me, its eyes points of pale red light in a scab red face. There are slowly oozing cuts in its chest which it's covering with its right hand. It looks like it has some sort of exoskeleton, or at least a very tough epidermis. It isn't actually on fire, but there's an almost heat shimmer like effect in the air just above its skin. Its eyes flick to M'gann for a second. **wEAK oNE. gIVE mE eVERYTHING.**

Sounds like a bad guy to me. Ring, brand.

A filament extends from the ring and stabs at its head-

Unable to establish connection.

-and evaporates as it touches its skin.

**I am not weak!** M'gann staggers to her feet, eyes glowing.

"Cornwall, you still with us?"

"Uhuuughuh?" His head comes up slightly.

I face the Burner. "Martian, stand down or we will put-."

Its left arm swings out, elongating as it does so, the surface of the skin seeming to shimmer and waver as it does so. I stick up a construct barrier to block it and it holds for about half a second before giving way where the clawed fingers gouge at it. The Burner pulls its arms back and then swings at me again but this time I have the railgun on target. Aim, pull the trigger and the Crumbler round strikes it directly in the palm. The air around the impact point seems to shudder and the Burner yanks its arm back. The hand.. is still intact. It must have somehow altered the crumble field. Reload solid slug.

**tELL mE!** What's it looking-? Rob! **tHIRD pLANET? wORLD oF wEAK mINDED oNES?**

I pull another grenade off my armour and throw it at the Burner. Rob hasn't had any sort of training in resisting telepathy. I don't know what it knows and I don't want it to get any more information than it already has. Its head turns back as I release and the grenade stops in mid air. Oh yes? I attach a filament to the grenade and shove it forwards. The Burner's eyes open slightly wider and I feel the resistance grow. Close enough. I ready myself and then remotely trigger the grenade. Yep, still felt it but not as badly as the Burner did. It staggers back, glow vanishing from its eyes and showing the burning dot pupil with red pupil on red sclera beneath.

**dEPENDENCY!**

**Why are you doing this?** M'gann is a little more used to the chaff grenades, though I don't think she would be capable of any great feats of mentation for a few seconds. **What did the Guardians do to you?**

**tRIED tO mAKE uS wEAK. sLAVES.** Its eyes glow again and I see Guardians floating through the air over ancient Mars, green beams of light fired from their hands blasting into the Martians below. The Martians alter their shapes to charge them in the air but Fists move to intercept them. One of the Guardians turns towards my viewpoint and the image fades. **I! sURVIVE!** Then it.. moves. It doesn't fly so much as yank itself across the intervening space directly at Kon, its left arm grabbing him by the top of his head.

"Grugh!" He reaches up to grasp its wrist just as the heat shimmer effect intensifies. "Gaaah!" He tears the hand away, revealing his smouldering hair and the burn mark it's left across his forehead.

"Cornwall. Sword." I take another out of subspace for myself as Rob picks himself up, eyes fixed on our opponent.

Kon releases the Burner's wrist with his left hand, makes a fist and swings it at the Burner. It passes straight through and the Burner uses its phased state to reclaim its left hand. Next it slashes at his chest. Kon tries to back-pedal but the Burner's hand cleaves a path through his armour and into the flesh beneath.

**uNWORTHY.**

**Stop it!**

M'gann's eyes go to full glow and the Burner jerks back. I send a filament out to the shocked Kon and try and evaluate his injury. The claw went right through the mithril and into his skin and the muscle beneath. Bleeding looks bad but with sunlight and Danner formula he should be fine in a few hours. I can't just zap-heal him without nullifying his resilience first and that isn't a good idea here.

I raise my railgun again and fire at the Burner's centre of mass, the round passing clean through and disintegrating part of the wall beyond. Fuck it. Load prototype anti-phasing rounds. "Cornwall, try freezing it."

"I'm not-! Okay. Umm…" He stows the sword and brings his hands together, crystals of ice appearing between them. I don't remember how good he is at freezing things and I don't know if freezing phased objects is even possible. Ring, attempt to scan for phase modulation-.

Operation may exceed remaining energy reserves.

Of course it will. Got enough for a phased particle beam like the Fist used?

One shot will reduce reserves to one percent.

Okay. Set the modulation-.

**rHHHHHHHH!** The Burner charges through the air at M'gann, the fingers of its left hand lengthening and sharpening to slice through her!

Her own form shifts as she propels herself to meet it, right forearm changing into a protean mass and wrapping itself around the Burner's wrist. **You can't burn through me!**

The Burner begins changing again, spines forming across its body as it tries to pull M'gann in to a full grapple. A flash of white as Rob's spell activates in the middle of the Burner's chest. It throws its head back gasping and M'gann takes full advantage of the situation to envelop it further.

Right, okay, I've got a moment. Think about this. Ring, status of that pod.

Pod appears fully functional. However, insufficient power is available for it to function.

That cylinder looks fine using orange light instead of green. I can't give it more from the rings because I don't have enough to make any difference. I can't just set the green one to go back to powering it because it can't compete with all the orange. There's lots of orange but it's in the rest of the ship. "Superboy, get the green cylinder off the platform!"

**bURN yOU aAAALL!**

**No. You. Won't.** The Burner manifests additional blades and M'gann counters by transforming her outer surface into hard plates as it strikes at her, sharpened edges skittering off.

I hurry over and kneel down next to the fallen cylinder. I've got no idea if I can-. Wait. A filament connecting it to the other cylinders should let me draw power through them into it. Then I can cut off the flow and it's not like we really need the ship's other systems to be operational at the moment. There will almost certainly be energy loss but we really just need it to keep going until I can get my lantern down here. I lay my right hand on the cylinder and extend a filament through each of the doors towards the parts of the ship we've already been through. Assuming a symmetrical design… Yes, okay. Connect. Kon grimaces in pain as he heaves the green cylinder out of the middle of the room and sets it down. Rings, access shipwide power and redirect into this cylinder. If you can work out what its capacity is, don't exceed that.

Compliance.

The Stewart ring and the filaments connected to it sparkle with orange light as the glow within the cylinder begins to increase. "Superboy, I need you and Cornwall to get this onto the pedestal." Kon tears his eyes away from M'gann's wrestling match and he and Rob approach me. "That end's the bottom. Superboy lift, Cornwall balance it."

"Right." / "Okay."

Kon bends at the knees as M'gann and the Burner slam into a wall on the far side of the room. His blood is soaking through the material of his wetsuit in a way which… No, he can lie down when the fight's over. He lifts and the cylinder rises onto its base as I maintain the energy flow. Once it's vertical he takes a grip and heaves it off the ground, bending slightly backwards. Rob takes hold as well, trying not to look at the Martian melee. "This way, mate."

It can't phase through the walls. It can't act while the system is active and if the cylinders can last twenty thousand years they can last half an hour. We just need to get it in there. Kon drops the cylinder into place with a pained exhalation. Ring, isolate power and redirect to the chamber. Also, cease translation.

Compliance.

Really hope M'gann can still hear. "Miss Martian, get it back in the cell!"

The Martian mass turns and-. It looks like M'gann's tried to envelope the Burner entirely. She's certainly wrapped around its legs as she uses a combination of staggered steps and telekinesis to bring it closer.

**rAAAHHH!**

The Burner's head is still recognisably a head. I bring the railgun up again. Ring, match the modulation to the one the Fist was using. Low power.

Compliance.

I aim at its head and pull the trigger. Even at low power the shot has enough force to cover the distance before I can blink. It strikes the Burner right in the forehead. It jerks and M'gann suddenly begins moving faster. "Cornwall, prepare another freeze spell."

We manoeuvre out of M'gann's way as she completes the journey across the room and starts peeling herself away. The Burner has shifted into something that looks like Malchemical in full combat mode. "Cornwall, soon as you get a shot." The Burner wakes up enough to grab for the walls on either side of the door but M'gann's eyes glow again and she starts pushing it through. Another flash of white and it loses its grip entirely, flying through and hitting the back wall hard. Ring, close the door and activate the system.

The door slides shut as the Burner gets back to its feet. Come on, that door isn't claw proof! The light inside dims as the Burner rushes the door, claws extended, and the last thing it sees before the stasis system reactivates is the four of us sagging with relief.

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What Lies Beneath 22

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29th January

08:35 GMT -11

I lift my lantern up slightly. "You know sir, after this I'm seriously reconsidering my decision not to bring my lantern with me on missions."

Mister J'onzz doesn't respond as we continue through the Maltusian spaceship in the direction of the stasis pods. After stopping the Burner escaping we did a quick sweep of the rest of the ship. More Martian bodies, along with a few wrecked Fists. The Fists were wrecked in an approximate perimeter around a large number of Martians, but they'd been destroyed facing outwards, apparently defending them. From the shape and position of the remains of those they'd been protecting it looked worryingly like they hadn't been Burners. They had the wider skulls and thinner limbs of modern Martians. Killing things that were different in some sort of frantic attempt to expunge 'weakness'.

"Will you be able to move the ship?"

I nod as we walk along one of the energy cylinder corridors. Unlike the one my team walked down on the way in the cylinders here have clearly been moved. Presumably the last few Burners were subbing them in to keep the stasis system working. "Should be. I don't have records on how to repair this technology, but I can… Feed power into the ship to get it into orbit and then charge up a few of the energy storage units." I slowly breathe out. How do I want to put this? "Question is, where do we want to send it?"

"I do not know. I am deeply disturbed by what you have found here. The knowledge that the Guardians have concealed the role they played in my species' development is something that will concern all of Mars."

**Orange Lantern to team. Any change?**

**No, the cylinder's still glowing. …** I feel her hesitate. **Hey.. Uncle J'onn.**

**M'gann.** Unlike M'gann, Mister J'onzz ceases making facial expression when he engages in telepathic communication. I suppose that Martians don't have very expressive faces in their default forms. **I trust you are well?**

**I'm okay.**

**Orange Lantern told me that you engaged the.. 'Burning Martian' in melee combat.**

**Yeah, I… It wasn't.. really.. burning, it just looked like it was. It was actually a controlled molecular destabilization technique.**

**I.. was not aware that you knew how to counter those.**

What with Henry taking over M'gann's telepathy training and with his League responsibilities, Mister J'onzz hasn't been spending nearly as much time with M'gann as he used to. **I… J'onn J'aarkn.. gave me some of his records. They've really helped with my development.**

**I.. see.**

I hear her eyes widen. **Just what he's learned about shapeshifting! Not-.**

**I had assumed that was what you meant.**

**Oh. … Good.**

**I am surprised that the Burning Martian was able to utilize such a sophisticated form of shape control. From Orange Lantern's description I had received the impression that it was a savage brute.**

**Oh, it was savage alright. But it was far from stupid.**

The door to the stasis room is still open. As far as I can tell the ship doors only respond to emotional spectrum triggers so I just left them all open when I went back to the Fortress.

Kon is sitting on the floor and looks up as we come into view, M'gann standing next to him. **Hey.** He touches the burned area of his forehead and winces. **You got any idea why I haven't healed yet? I thought the.. Danner Formula included regeneration.**

**The Formula only grants your Human components regeneration. Your skin is entirely Kryptonian.** I fly ahead of Mister J'onzz and land beside him, giving his burns a quick scan. **Thanks to Helios you should be fine in time for school on Monday.**

**And… My hair?**

I look at the bald stripe. **Sorry. I could… Shave the rest off to even it up..?**

He looks down. **Yeah.** M'gann pats his hand.

Rob, Garth and Tula more or less come to attention as Mister J'onzz approaches the stasis chamber containing the Burner. Attention isn't really a thing in Atlantis. It just isn't practical to do underwater. Interesting that they've picked up on it. He looks impassively at the opaque window in the door. In my absence they've surrounded it with spells designed to promote good mechanical function and imprisonment.

For a second Mister J'onzz's eyes glow, presumably trying to feel the mind trapped within. A moment later he turns away. "Have you been able to extract any further information on exactly what the Guardians were doing?"

M'gann shakes her head. "The Burning Martians were very thorough in destroying the Fists of the Guardians. There were hardly any intact parts bigger than my fist."

I look at the larger pieces of debris they've brought in and send a filament to check. Nope, nothing I can use. Mister J'onzz nods, looking at the green cylinder. "Perhaps the Green Lanterns can extract something."

"Is that something you really want to involve them in, sir? Given who they work for?"

"You have an alternate suggestion?"

"I turned A-." Ah heck, it's not like he'll care. "Alan's personal lantern orange. No reason why I shouldn't be able to convert that to orange."

"Why do you wish to conceal this from them?"

"Why do the Guardians want to hide it from you?" I think for a moment. "I think it's.. best that the Guardians don't find out that you know until the Martian government has decided what you want to do about this. Since I don't plan to move in…" I look around the room. "And since I doubt that decision making process will be especially fast, this ship needs to go somewhere now-ish. We can transfer out all the Martian remains then I can send it to Maltus."

"Maltus?" He shakes his head. "No. That would be unnecessarily confrontational."

"Sir, the surface of your world died at about the same time this ship was around here. From what we've been able to recover they had thorough scans of its pre-devastated state. If they.. really.. turned the.. Burners into modern Martians… Why didn't they fix it afterwards?" His eyes narrow slightly. "As far as I can tell, these cylinders are data recorders as well as power batteries. Let me assimilate that one. If the Burners were just some.. now extinct offshoot of your species and.. the Guardian involvement was incidental, send the ship to Oa. If not…"

He turns to regard the cylinder, its pale green glow illuminating his face. "I suppose… It would not hurt to have all of the facts at our disposal before making a decision."

"Thank you, sir." I spread out my hands to either side and send filaments forwards to attach themselves to the cylinder. Rings, corrupt and convert.

Compliance.

Orange light spreads outwards from the attachment points, the weak green glow being consumed and converted. Ring, extract data and filter for content.

An orange image of a Guardian appears just in front of the cylinder. "…difficulties, I continue to believe that rehabilitation is possible. Preserving the natives in their own habitat will be.. somewhat difficult now…" The image glitches. "…increasing sophistication. It is almost as if our presence here has provoked them to unify. How groups with whom we have not had direct contact are even aware of us I am not…" Another glitch, and the Guardian is replaced by a time lapsed image of the surface of Mars. "Simply destroying the natives and recreating them using genetic samples would be far easier. Still, we are resolved not to resort to such methods, even…" The image jumps forwards. "I did not properly anticipate the damage this conflict would cause to the planet's surface." We watch as chunks of surface are scoured of plant life. "The combination of telepathy and physical mutability enable them to fight us with surprising effectiveness, given their lack of technological…" Another glitch, and the map now shows the modern, barren Mars. A new Guardian appears. "…resettled into cave systems we constructed in areas already cleared. We have avoided leaving any trace…" Another glitch. "… different forms. The 'red' variant is least modified, though all three colours possess the comportment and empathy we were aiming to engender. Their natural telepathy means that the control system will be passed from one generation to the next in the womb without the need for constant intervention. Time will tell which…" A series of flickers."… y colleagues have expressed concern that our modifications have reduced their aggression in too great a degree. Our predictive models show that it is possible that their civilisation will remain introverted as a result. Self isolating. Having reviewed the data in depth I have recommended a continual monitoring…" A new image appears, this time of the Burner we encountered an hour ago. "…intelligence, unusual in its kind. I will attempt to initiate mental contact. Perhaps we will be able to complete the conversion peacefully when they see that we have their best interests at heart?"

Or not. I shut the image down and turn to Mister J'onzz. "That's all the log entries-."

"It is sufficient." Ooh sugar. I can see the red light boiling within his usually placid psyche. "Take what you can and then send the ship to Maltus. I will explain the situation to Batman."

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What Lies Beneath 23

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29th January

09:02 GMT -11

Uuughhh…

"So, how come you can't just use your power ring to fix it?"

I suppress another wince with a shudder, hugging myself tightly. Wallace fetched my personal lantern as soon as I got back to the surface. I feel almost.. ungrateful for not being able to fix myself immediately. "I don't… Really know. For sure." Mister Tawny rubs himself against the right side of my chest as I sit propped up against the Bio-Ship's interior hull. "I think… My New God nature is preventing the ring from altering my body."

"What.. actually.. happened?"

"The ship… " Ughhehk. "When we got to the bridge, the ship drained the ring dry. One of the Guardians' robots reactivated and attacked us, we smashed it to bits." Managed to keep some parts in one piece. I'll be taking a close look when I feel less crap. "M'gann told me to go back to the surface-" Stupid Guardians and their boom tube blocking… "-and I.. didn't realise I could still be affected by decompression sickness."

There's a blur and Wallace is holding a medical textbook, pages blurring. "Decompression sickness. You've got the pain covered. Any rashes?"

I give him a look. "I'm grey."

"Ookay, skip that. Loss of balance?"

"Yes, but I just had Father Box direct me."

"Hearing loss?" I shake my head. "Incontinence?"

"The ring would clear it up if I was." He raises his eyebrows. "I don't think so. I'm not having a feel to find out for sure."

"The 'Sensation of tiny insects crawling over the skin'?"

"I feel like a.. like a balloon filled with mustard gas. My skin…" I pull my right arm away from my chest and hold out my forearm. "You can't see under the armour but my arm has swollen-."

"Yeah, I…" The corners of his lips dip down for a second. "I can…" He points at me. "Ah. See.. your face."

Oh. I raise my right hand and delicately press owowowowow!. Ahh, gahhhh! Not doing that again! "Father Box, how long until I return to normalcy?"

"Ploong."

Oh fuck my life.

"So… Apart from that, how'd the mission go?"

I glower at him. "Peachy."

"Um. I.. can.. just…"

I shake my had. "No, no, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have snapped." For a half second I reach up to rub my forehead, but I remember myself and pull the hand away before making contact. I take a deep breath instead. "Stealth insertion went fine. We all made it to the ship without any problem and without any sign that anyone had picked up on us being here." Of course, if the Russians are playing around with anything really exotic… "M'gann couldn't phase through the hull but I didn't have any trouble opening up a boom tube in."

"So why didn't you just-?"

"When we got to the bridge the ship decided I was a viable power source. It drained the ring and used the power to bring its own systems back on line." I grimace. "Including its Guardian interdiction field."

"No boom tubes?"

"No boom tubes. Stupid.. robot got a few good hits on me." Nothing that caused any lasting harm, mind you. Not like the stupid gasses. "That and the drain on the ring… M'gann sent me back up to the Bio-Ship to get out of range of the interdiction field."

"And that's when you..?"

"Yes." I clamp my eyes tightly closed for a moment. Something else, ask about something else. "I seem to remember that your uncle doesn't retain things he reads at super speed?"

"Oh, yeah, it's the same with me. I probably won't remember a thing about decompression sickness in a couple of minutes." He considers the point. "Hey, do you think being a speed-god means I can learn how to remember stuff like that? Because that would be sweet."

"I don't know. It mayaghhahh…" Another wave of pain and I curl a little in on myself.

Wallace looks concerned. "Dude. Do you need-?"

"No, no. I don't think anyone can really help. I.. appreciate the thought, but… To answer your question, I don't know. This situation hasn't occurred before. If you can't do it now, you may develop the ability as your metaphysique absorbs more power. You may not. I just don't know."

"Jay told me Max Mercury was probably the guy I-" The door to the Bio-Ship oozes open off to our left. "-should talk to-" M'gann floats in, telekinetically pulling water from her hair and costume and tossing the droplets back into the Arctic Ocean. "-if I…” He trails off and turns around. "Hey, Miss M."

Her eyes are fixed on me. "Kid Flash, could you please let me talk to Grayven alone?"

"Um." He looks at me and then back at her. "Sure? I guess I'll.. see you back at the cave." A slight shift in the texture of the air and he's gone, the Bio-Ship door closing behind him.

M'gann keeps floating, hovering in the air directly in front of me. "You knew, didn't you?"

"You're going to have to be a little more-." She makes a twisting gesture with her right hand, telekinetically-. "Owowowowow, okay, yes." She eases off. "I didn't know for certain, but I had a pretty good idea. There was a Burning Martian down there?"

"Yes."

Ugh. I try to straighten up a little. "Everyone alright?"

"I felt its mind! All it wanted to do was… Was hurt things! The very first thing it did when it got out of the stasis pod was make us feel like we were on fire!"

"Your.. ancient forebears were supposedly a fairly unpleasant bunch, though I should point out that one individual isn't a-."

Her eyes blaze with colour. "The Guardians put these blocks in our minds to stop us turning into those things and they were right to. Without them…" She drops to the floor, some of the passion leaving her as her eyes dim and she raises her palms to partially cover her face. "We could… I could…"

Oh this is going to hurt nyuakk! I push myself to my feet and lay my right hand on her shoulder. "No. No you couldn't. M'gann, you are not some brute with the primordial thoughts of your savage ancestors roaring their base impulses into your soul. You grew up on modern Mars in a technologically and telepathically sophisticated society. Have you ever felt that sort of murderlust yourself?"

She hesitates for a moment, then shakes her head. "No. But.. I could. I felt what it felt, saw how it…"

"And I realise that was a shock-."

"You should put it back. I-I couldn't stand-."

"M'gann, look at me." She turns her head upwards. "You. Are not. That thing. You will not become that thing. Okay? You have family and-" **-friends-** Her eyes widen slightly as I voluntarily use telepathy. **-who love you. That sort of violence doesn't just.. miraculously appear in a person's psyche. You may theoretically have the capacity now but that isn't in you. M'gann M'orzz is a delightful young woman who balances a schedule of schoolwork, boyfriend and occasional world-saving. Do you think for a moment that it would do that? That it would be up here, scared of its capacity for viciousness?**

**No. No.. it wouldn't.**

**The Guardians granted your species the ability to become something worthwhile. I don't know why they.. took their eyes off the ball later, but it isn't something that should cause you to descend into histrionics.** She nods, pulling away slightly. "Has there been a decision on what we're doing with the ship now?"

"No. Uncle J'onn wants to talk it over with the rest of the Justice League first." I nod, lowering myself back down so I can go back to whimpering in peace. "I'll let you know what they decide. And… Thank you."

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What Lies Beneath 24

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30th January

09:47 GMT

"How long will it take to get there?"

M'gann and I hang in space near the edge of the Sol system, watching as orange light surges around the exterior of the Guardian ship. Good thing the local Greenies are all out of the system at the moment. Fingers of orange light flicker around the hull as its faster than light systems build up, then it appears to accelerate towards a glowing orange point immediately in front of it until the whole thing vanishes.

"Demiplane transition complete."

That would probably look really interesting if I was doing the full awareness expansion thing. From what the ring and I were able to extract from the databases remaining on the ship it sounds like using ring faster than light travel causes the one doing it to be temporarily transported to the elemental plane of avarice… Or something like that. A lot of the words the data stores used didn't have good translations.

**It should be there by Thursday.** Along with a polite message of greeting from me and a suspended Burning Martian.

**I thought it would be quicker.**

**Maltus is on the other side of the galactic core. Plus, you can't just drop out of FTL wherever you want.**

**Because it's not polite?**

**Because an inevitable part of learning a technique for working around the laws of physics well enough that you can go faster than light is learning how to disrupt that technique. Otherwise, wars between interstellar civilisations would just involve them throwing faster than light projectiles at each other's homeworlds.** I generate a construct to show what I mean. **Lantern Stewart used something like this when I fought him at New Year. Stops ring-based FTL. Well, the sort Lanterns usually use, in theory we could just create a construct to replicate one of the others…**

**So the Controllers would have those on their planet.**

I let the construct fall apart. **That, and a lot more besides. Plus, yes, it would be impolite. There's a sort of 'implied threat' to even trying.**

**How do ships usually get into a system if they can't use faster than light travel? They can't go in at sub-light, that would take…** She trails off. **I know it takes light five hours to get from the sun to the edge of our system, but you said starships can't go that fast.**

**Yes, it would take a long time. Some systems just don't let anyone inside their systems. They either go isolationist or build huge space stations further out. Other places use tugs or force visitors to rely on navigational data they provide or escort ships in at gunpoint. Or just set their interdiction devices to automatically reactivate if the ship goes above a certain speed.**

**What will they do with…** She shudders slightly.

**The Burner?** She nods. **I don't know. They might hand him over to the… Was that a 'him'?**

**I couldn't tell.**

**'Him'.. over to the Guardians. Or just leave him in suspended animation. Or turn him into a modern Martian.** That was the one thing I wasn't sure about in this whole situation. **Would other Martians really have been able to feel him?**

She nods. **If he were out of stasis? Yes. His thoughts were… I don't know if I can explain it. Mart-.** She looks 'down', not that there's anything particularly close to us out here. **Modern Martians are more sensitive to each other's thoughts than we are to those of other species. We instinctively.. reach out to each other.** She sighs. **Just like the Guardians wanted.**

**Would you rather be like..?**

**No! You didn't.. feel its mind.** Her gaze drifts as she searches for a way to explain it. **It killed them. Fists, Guardians… It even killed the last of the other Burning-. Martians when power got low and it wanted to make sure its stasis chamber stayed working for as long as possible. It didn't feel regret, it didn't really think about it at all. It just instinctively knew that was the right thing to do.**

**How are you doing?**

**I've been better.** I float over to her and wrap my right arm around her waist. She doesn't look at me. **And you know what's worse? I recognized the technique it was using. The thing it was doing with its skin. It's just about the most advanced feat of self control Martians practice. I've only ever seen Reds do it, and only over a tiny part of their bodies. It's supposed to be the ultimate expression of self-mastery: overcoming our species' fear of fire to become one with fire. And now I know it just means they were regressing!**

**I doubt it means that. It would take a lot to overcome the Guardians’ blocks-.**

**How did you know?**

I frown for a moment. **Know what?**

She pulls away slightly so she can look me in the face. **What the Guardians did. I didn't remember until later, but, when Red Torpedo and Red Inferno attacked the mountain… When the fire cage was making me panic, you told-** Whoops **-me what they did. I didn't really think about it. I just thought you were telling me a story so I'd have something to concentrate on while I calmed down. But then we actually saw the ship and.. it was real. They really did it. How did you know?**

Ring, accelerated mental processes.

Compliance.

The small motions of her body and the slight wobbling of the environmental shield around her slow down until they're barely noticeable. Right. I'd forgotten about that. How could I credibly have got that knowledge? Lantern Stewart's ring?

This ring contained no such-.

Shut up. No, the other Greenies could -will, when they hear what happened- ask their rings about it. In a classified partitioned off section? No, the Guardians would know whether that was true or not and I don't think Jordan or Stewart would take my word over theirs. A data transmission from the ship itself? Possible, and given the state of its systems rather tricky to refute. Attributing it to data that was on the ring when I found it is sort of asking for someone to request a complete list of files. Claim ignorance, suggest them as possibles? Could work. M'gann doesn't seem angry, she's just noticed an inconsistency. Thinking about it, I'm a bit surprised Jordan hasn't asked me how I knew about Lantern Qarrigat.

Ring, normalcy.

Compliance.

**I'm not really sure.** I shrug. **I've had the ring poke into a lot of different databases, and when I found out this Earth had aliens on it I asked it to 'find out everything'. It might have picked up the data from the ship.. or maybe from a transmission the ship sent out?**

**Why didn't you say something when we found the ship? It could really have helped.**

**Because I had no way to confirm that the data I had was genuine. I had no idea that there would be Fists there, I… I didn't know how their test subjects were different from a modern Martian…**

She frowns. **You said-.**

**What the data told me. I couldn't check it until I assimilated that last cylinder. I didn't know exactly what it could do so anything I'd have said would have risked misinforming you. As it was, matter disrupting aura aside it fought pretty much like a modern Martian.** She nods. **How did you know how to stop that?**

**Mister J'aarkn's pendant, plus what I got from its mind. I read its mind to match the disruptions it was using. Luckily it wasn't very creative. It kept using the same modulation so I could focus on attacking it rather than constantly readjusting.**

I nod and look around. **Do you want to stay up here for a bit?**

**No, we should get back.** She turns in the approximate direction of Earth. **I want to make sure everything's 'in order' before Doctor Fate arrives.** She gives me a small smile. **Can you imagine all the things a sorcerer as old and powerful as him could teach us?**

Ah. That. **I think I probably can. I'll drop you off.**

**Why? Do you have plans?**

**Yes. I plan on getting a hotel room.**

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NEXT CHAPTER

Doppelgänger

BACK

Doppelgänger 1

next

Doppelgänger

5th February

06:01 GMT -5

I open my eyes and look at the off-white hotel pillow beneath my head. This is not my beautiful house…

I pull the duvet tighter around me. "Ring, anything from the Controllers?"

"No messages received."

Sure, the ship couldn't just FTL into Maltus orbit but they don't maintain an interdiction field that far from their system. I know that the ship is at least in Maltus' star system by now.

"Status of automated defences?"

"Two intruders have been entangled. No further activations."

Unfortunate thing about a ring moderated body: no excuses. I only feel tired if I want to feel tired. No one would think it odd for someone to sleep in a little on a Saturday but all that'll happen to me is that I'll eventually get bored. And I've got plans with Zatanna today and.. I need to find out if she's made any plans for her birthday. Or if there's anything she'd like to do. I half turn in bed and push myself up into a sitting position. Ring, curtains.

Compliance.

Sunlight. I instinctively blink as it hits me, then roll my eyes at my own behaviour as the ring easily compensates. Normally on a Saturday I'd use the fact that I get up earlier than everyone else to prepare the kitchen. Get the waffle iron heated up and some fresh batter mixed. A little later on if Batman didn't have a mission for us we'd have training, lectures first and then some sort of physical session.

I still can't believe they actually…

No, if they're serious about making him 'part of the team' of course it makes sense that Nabu would be taking a week as our overseer eventually. And I'm certainly not begrudging Red Tornado his time off being 'John Smith'. I'm sure a few lectures on arcane theory and practice will do my colleagues a world of good. For myself, I will not spend a moment longer in Nabu's presence than mission priorities require.

I don't so much fly out of bed as drag myself upwards. Don't need to wash, don't really need to -a wave of orange passes over me- dress. Breakfast? Getting room service had a certain novelty value to it the first night but it's not as if the food is any better when delivered like that. Ring, grant maids… Wait, what's a male maid called? And.. maidians? Maid men? Janitorial staff access-.

Closest term is 'valet'.

Oh. Thank you. Maids or valets access.

Compliance.

I drift down and land next to the bed. Zatanna's not going to be up for another hour at least. John… Five hours ahead. He should be awake. Probably… I trudge over to the glass door leading to the balcony and push it open.

"Mmmmph!"

"Well, honestly, what were you expecting?" I don't recognise the man. Sweatshirt and jeans, male pattern baldness shaved near bald and a camera that fell from his hand as the entangler activated. "Do you know how often people try to kill me?"

"Murmuuuh?"

I float the camera up and have the ring check its memory. No, he didn't get anything. "Did you climb up? That would actually be slightly impressive." His just visible eyes flick sideways. "Snuck into the room next door and climbed across the adjoining balcony?" A nod. "Leave anything there?" A slight hesitation and then a shake. "Right ho." I connect a filament to him, pick him up and float him over the edge of the balcony.

"Mmmmn!"

I lower him at speed. Am I going to need to change hotels or will he spread the word that this doesn't work? I may be a C-list superhero but I'm not a C-list celebrity. I have no interest in appearing in some rag of a tabloid. Just before he reaches the ground I reduce speed, then open the entanglement trap and bring it back up. I hear a dull thump from below as I reset the trap. It's sort of nice that the Green Lantern Corps has put so much effort into low lethality weapons. The camera I just transition down next to him. Now, where's the other one?

I walk back into the bedroom and close the door behind me. Pretty cold here in Metropolis, not that I feel it. Don't want it to be too cold for the staff. Crossing the room I go through the interior door into the living area.

"Resufgnin!"

No, didn't make it this far. I switch the television on to GBS. I did try BBC News 24 for a while but it's just so repetitive. GBS is far more likely to carry alerts of things I need to know about right this second. I only glance at the screen as I cross the room towards the cloakroom. Don't recognise the reporter and there doesn't appear to be any sort of ongoing attack. Gotham? Oh, if Batman needs me he has my number. I pull open the door and look down at the bound woman. "Good work on picking the lock…" Wait, where's the camera?

"Fzew!"

No camera found.

Oh dear. Weapons?

The ring shows my mind's eye a picture of a nail file.

Yeah, that doesn't count. "I'm going to untie you now, and I'd appreciate an explanation." I touch the entangler with a filament and open it up, the silver ribbons retracting back into the device. The woman inside staring up at me defiantly is.. maybe late teens? Early twenties? Dull grey jogging bottoms and a hoodie combined with a Superman t-shirt. Her hair is brown, medium length and frankly a bit of a mess.

"What the hell was that?!"

"An entangler. Very useful device." She pulls herself to her feet, sparing a second to glare at it instead of me. "So. I'm Orange L-."

"I know who you are!" Actually, her voice does sound-. "You got me fired!"

I point at her with my right forefinger. "Dana Dearden."

"Got that right." Her right hand heads towards her pocket. What's she going to do, throw change at me? "And I'm going to-."

"I'm so sorry about that. It honestly didn't occur to me at the time that they might.. react in that way." I tilt my head back for a second, looking at the ceiling. "It wasn't until Diana -Wonder Woman- talked to me about it the next day… I mean, it was just a little oversight, right? A ticking off would have been more proportionate. I'd probably have realised myself if I'd been more on the ball." She frowns, apparently puzzled. "I phoned the studio a few days later to see if I could get them to change their minds…" I shrug apologetically. "They weren't really... The person I spoke to went on about journalistic ethics… Um, Malcolm.. someone?"

She blinks and appears to calm down a little. "Bernstein."

"Might have been. Anyway, I just.. wanted to laugh the whole thing off…"

"I can't believe he-! Grah!"

I gently press my left hand into her side to nudge her along as I head for the door out of the suite. She starts to be led along before she realises what's happening. "Can I… Buy you breakfast? I realise it doesn't really make up for losing your job…"

"Oh. Um." She looks a little bewildered. "Thank you?"

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Doppelgänger 2

next

5th February

06:28 GMT -5

"…interning while I get my college diploma, but you really need to get in early in this industry. So, you know, thanks for doing this."

"It's fine." I take a bite of my toasted bacon sandwich. Usually there are a few stringy bits that stay connected when you try and bite cleanly through and then you get bits of bacon grease pinging all over your clothes. I on the other hand get a tiny flare of orange light and a cutting edge on my teeth which extends just beyond them. "And there's absolutely no doubt that you're going to be recording it."

She just sort of stares at me for a moment. "… No." She leans over to her bag to fish out a notepad and pen.

"I can just.. record the whole thing.. give you a copy at the end?"

"I wanna get into the habit. Practice my shorthand in the field." She flicks to a new page. "You really not been interviewed about being you before?"

I shake my head. "No hometown, so I'm not really on anyone's 'patch'."

"No hometown?"

"I'm from a parallel universe. I grew up in a village called 'Westham' which doesn't exist-."

"Wait wait wait. Parallel universe?"

"Yes?" We stare at each other this time. "You.. are aware of the concept?"

"Yeah, but… Okay, so what's different? Did.. the Nazis win World War Two? Or.. did Britain win the War of Independence?"

Best received pronunciation on. "That nasty little colonial rebellion?" Her mouth opens slightly. "No, we lost. Really, I'm not sure that there's any one historical event I can point to as being the source of the divergence. No one.. where I'm from has superpowers, and certain really cutting edge technologies don't exist."

"Like?"

"Zeta tubes. Artificial intelligence. I mean, we have search algorithms and things like that but we don't have proper Human equivalent synthetics."

"Neither do we. I mean, apart from Red Tornado."

"Yeah, that, that exactly." I wave my sandwich at her. "Ridiculously advanced one-offs that don't.. spread. Doesn't happen where I'm from."

"No Superman either?"

"No aliens at all, as far as we know. Could be they don't exist, could be there just aren't any near us. Or it could be that our physical laws just flat out don't allow faster than light travel, an idea I find somewhat depressing."

"The laws of physics are different." I nod. "So how come you're… Human, and not some sort of bizarre monster."

"Oh no, I am a monster."

"You don't look like a monster."

"That's because you're not a magic user. You see, everyone from.. this Earth, maybe from anywhere in this universe… They pick up a sort of.. shell of magic energy based on what they are and how they interact with their environment. You call it a 'soul'."

"You.. think.. you don't have a soul."

"I know I didn't. Now, I've had some work done, it's a bit up in the air." I lean forwards slightly. "A soul isn't just an abstract concept, it's the part of you that interacts with the arcane, the little bit of you that survives the death of your organic body. My home parallel doesn't support them. The Atlanteans freaked the heck out when I told them."

She stares at me again, then shakes her head slightly and focuses on her pad. "Okay then. If you come from a parallel universe, how did you get here? I mean it sounds like you don't have the technology to build interdimensional-."

I raise my right forefinger in protest. "Interplanar. Interdimensional is something different."

"Oh."

"Lot of people make that mistake."

"Okay, well, it sounded like you wouldn't be able to build something like that-" I nod. "-so how did you get here?"

"I got here via a Bleed Portal. The Bleed's.. what you get between different universes, different.. stable sets of physical laws-."

"Let's just skip that."

"Okay. Um. Not really sure how I left my own parallel. I woke up in high orbit around-" I look around the dining area. "-this Earth."

"And how did you get a power ring?"

I take a moment to look at it. "Don't really know. I must have got it either just before I got here or really quickly after because otherwise I'd have suffocated." I shake my head. "I've been trying to get hold of some people who might know but they're not answering me."

"The Green Lanterns? Didn't you hand out Christmas Cake with them?"

"No. I mean, I did, but they're not who I'm talking about. The Green Lantern Corps selects people who are strong willed and basically moral. It doesn't select for intelligence." No offence, Guy. "None of the local ones are physicists, so they've got no more idea about how I got here than I do."

"Okay, um… What made you decide to become a superhero?"

"I had to make a deal to get a personal lantern to charge the ring." I shrug. "Becoming a superhero was part of the deal I made."

"So you.. don't.. actually care about..?"

"Doing the police's job for them?" Another shrug. "I used to be an administrative assistant. No.. dark origin story, no burning desire to serve the public good or.. reaffirm my allegiance to something or somewhere by punching people in the face. Want to know why I'm refreezing the Arctic?" She nods, pen poised. "You've had.. freeze rays for years. You've got the same basic economic system.. and the associated environmental damage that my Earth has. Why was no one putting two and two together… No, it isn't even two and two. Why was no one putting one and one together? Stupidly misapplied technology winds me up."

"Freeze rays don't work where you're from either?"

"No. It's not even global warming, really. It wouldn't kill Humanity if all the ice on the planet melted, or if.. this species or that went extinct. At the same time, you don't need thermodynamic law breaking freeze rays to fix the problem. Rich people could just live a little differently… Or just paint their roofs white. That would work. "

"What?"

"The ice at the planet's pole is a huge area of white. White looks white because it reflects visible wavelengths of light. Other colours absorb it, absorb energy and get hot. On a hot day, touch the head of someone who's blonde and the head of someone with black hair. The black hair will be hotter. Anyway, I'd need to freeze the planet down to Toronto and up to Buenos Aires if everyone wants to use the same amount of electricity and petrol as Americans do, but I could balance the heat books that way." Her pen isn't moving and her face has gone a little pale. W-? "I'm not going to!"

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Doppelgänger 3

next

5th February

06:47 GMT -5

"…tend to think of superheroing as being a right wing thing."

"Doesn't the Justice League try and stay out of politics?"

"The League as a whole doesn't want to pick a side in the eternal battle of Republicans versus Democrats. Most members have -at some point- expressed an opinion on particular issues. What I mean is, the Right -the libertarian Right- want small government, say that society works best with as little government intervention as possible. Well, when that idea works, what do you think it looks like? One plutocrat holding onto the means of production and generously letting the proles below have the occasional crumb which slips from his plate?"

"Prole?"

"Proletariat. Working class people. No. It looks like the Justice League. The League don't get paid. Most of them don't even draw expenses."

"Don't they get money from the UN?"

"All goes on maintaining their infrastructure." Don't mention the Watchtower. "The zeta tube network alone eats up something like sixty percent of the UN's contribution. The Hall pretty much pays for itself, but then you've got-."

"Zeta tubes?"

"That's not a secret. If you watch the library in the Hall of Justice you can see them using-."

She nods. "Oh, right, the teleporters. Why does that cost so much?"

"It isn't exactly a teleporter. It's strictly point to point only. If the League want to go somewhere they need a terminal there, and it's the very thing that lets them act as a global organisation."

"But.. a lot of them can fly."

"Going flat out, Wonder Woman can fly at about eighty miles an hour. Assuming that she was in New York it would take her more than an hour to fly to Washington under her own power."

"Wonder Woman's got a plane."

"Flat out, that plane can go a little above the speed of sound. About eight hundred miles an hour. New York to Atlanta in an hour or so, completely useless if someone or something is attacking Atlanta now. They need that network." I pause. "Though, replacing it with something better and cheaper is one of the things I'm working on."

"Okay, how about Superman?"

"Superman's top speed is higher than Wonder Woman's but not by an order of magnitude. I think it's only The Flash, the Lanterns and maybe Nabu-."

"Who?"

"Nabu. Fate. His name's not a secret, he just doesn't talk to people often enough for people to know it. They don't really need it, but the Flash has a life outside being the Flash and the Lanterns have to split their time across an entire space sector. And those are big. No, it's the zeta tubes that make the thing possible."

"And you want to replace it."

"With Dolmen Gates." I take two small ones out of subspace and create construct stands for them on the table. "Stick your finger in one!"

"'kay?" She gingerly reaches around with her left hand and hesitantly pokes her middle finger through the ring. There's a very slight intake of breath as it comes out of the other one. She stares at it for a moment and then puts down her pen and pokes her left middle finger with her right forefinger. "That's.. amazing…"

"I know, right? Me and this Atlantean guy came up with them-."

"You were there with that Ambassador and Senator Knight! He did that whole speech about building a trading relationship!"

"And that right there is why. Right now the Justice League struggle to get to rural areas… Even urban areas in some countries. Once we can make enough of those, no more problem. Heck, no more expensive and highly polluting passenger aircraft."

She pokes her left finger through a few more times and then pokes her right forefinger back the other way. "Can I keep this?"

"Nnnnooo, sorry. It's the only demo model I have. They're not easy to make, it's just the running costs that are negligible. You know, aside from the Roanoke Island thing, I think.. my biggest impact on Earth has been getting those created. And the Roanoke Island thing wasn't just me on my own. If I hadn't been there the others could probably have handled it. "

"Others?"

What we did at Roanoke isn't a secret, but the existence of the team as a combat unit is. "Other young superheroes. Given the circumstances at the time, getting together seemed like a good idea." What was I.. talking about..? Right, right. "Anyway, getting back to what I was saying-."

Dana withdraws her hands and picks up her pen once more. "About the Justice League being a right wing organization?"

"Right. Everyone there chose to do what they do. Except maybe Red Tornado, but he could still quit if he wanted to. They didn't think about.. how they could best serve the common good-."

"Yes they did. Did you miss Superman's speech about.. some problems-."

Bullshit. "Yeah, he might think that, but…" I shake my head. "Maybe that was why the League stayed together, but most members of the League started fighting bad people for far more personal reasons."

"Like..?"

Um. "The Flash was a big fan of.. the.. previous Flash. " And I can't talk about why most of them got into it without giving major hints as to their secret identities. "You're.. really going to have to ask them, I don't think they'd want me-."

"How well do you know them?"

"Pretty darn well."

"Are you going to be joining the League?"

"Not any time soon. The point I was trying to make is, they didn't ask for government authorisation-."

"They got government authorization."

"After they'd been operating for years. And if it got taken away tomorrow, do you really think they'd stop? No, the League is a result of private init-."

"Incoming communication."

"What was that?"

"The ring." I lift my left hand to my ear and generate a phone construct. "Excuse me a moment. Orange Lantern two eight one four speaking?"

"Do you really say that every time?"

"Good morning Zatanna. Yes, I do. It's how my mum trained me to answer the phone. You're up early."

Dana looks interested. "That's Zatanna Zatara?" I nod.

"Yeah, I… I think I'd like to get started early… I know it's nearly noon in England already, so if you didn't have any other plans…"

"No… Would you like me to pick you up or will you make your own way there?"

"Can you pick me up?"

"No problem, I'll be there in about… Five minutes?"

"See you in five." I remove the construct, ending the call.

"So you're in contact with a lot of superheroes?"

"Yes? Actually, they make up pretty much my entire social circle."

"Do you think you could get some of the others to do interviews with me? It would really help."

"I'll certainly ask, but I can't promise anything. If you give me your phone number I'll be sure to pass it on."

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Doppelgänger 4

next

5th February

06:53 GMT -5

Dana hands me a torn off page of her notebook with her mobile phone number scribbled on it. "Do you actually think any of them will call me?"

I subspace it along with the Dolmen Gates. "Kid Flash and Kaldur..." Blank look. "Aqualad might. The others…" Kon almost certainly not. M'gann's a possible. Robin nooo. Raquel..? Does.. she.. have a secret identity? I assumed not given that she doesn't obscure her face but I never actually asked… "I expect not but there's no harm in asking."

"Okay, well um. Thanks. For doing this. I really wasn't expecting…"

"Oh, it's fine. Don't mention it."

She takes a breath, then hesitates for a moment. "Are you..? Could we..? Meet up again? Maybe, later in the week? Go over a few more things?"

"Yes, if you like. I'm probably going to be busy tomorrow.. but I can phone you on Monday when I have a better idea what I'm doing for the rest of the week. Oh, do you want my room key?"

She goes completely still for a moment and there's a slight intensifying of red light within her. "What?"

"Well, I can't imagine you got much sleep tied up on the floor. My room's going to be empty all day, probably going to be quieter than your halls of residence.. or wherever you're living at present. If you want to use it-."

"Oh. Um, no, I.. think I just want to make a start on writing this-" She taps her notebook against the table. "-up."

I nod and fabricate a datastick with a recording of the conversation. "As promised." I give her a shallow bow. "Now, if you'll excuse me." Ring, zeta tube.

Lights flicker and then… "Welcome, Orange Lantern two eight one four."

"He-llo Shadowcrest." I know the zeta tube isn't actually tied into the house's magics but it does seem the polite thing to do. I stride towards the door, pull it open and stick my head out. "Zatanna?! Are you decent?!"

"I'm in the kitchen!"

"That wasn't a 'yes'!"

"Yes!"

I transition to just outside the kitchen and then walk inside. "Good morning."

She turns to smile at me as she puts a plate into the sink. "You already said that."

"But now I'm saying it in person. Have you read the files on Star Sapphire?"

She nods. "Carol Ferris was given the Star Sapphire by the Zamarons shortly after she broke up with Green Lantern, turning the love she still felt for him into a crazy obsession." She shakes her head. "Why would they do that?"

"Not sure. Optimistically, they didn't know that the two of them had separated and intended for them to work together. Pessimistically, they were trying to prove that the violet light is stronger than the green by having her beat him into submission." I think the reason in the comics was that they wanted her to take over as their queen, but that almost certainly isn't the case here. The Guardians would surely have found out if anything had happened to Queen Aga'po, right?

"How are things in the cave?"

"I don't know. I'm spending the week in a hotel."

"Oh." She blinks, then a small frown appears. "Did I hear a voice when you answered the phone?"

"Probably. I was having breakfast with a woman named Dana Dearden."

"O-oh."

"I don't know if I told you-" She shakes her head. "-about it, she was the one who phoned me after the Roanoke interview. Turns out they did fire her."

"Oh. Then, how did..?"

"She somehow found out that I was staying in Metropolis and broke into my room." I give an amused exhalation. "She ended up spending the night-" Zatanna's eyes widen. "-tied up on the floor-" She drops her mug into the sink with a crack. "-after she triggered one of my entangler traps. I only found her this morning."

Her mouth hangs open slightly. A moment passes and she closes it again. "You.. booby trapped your room."

"My passive defences aren't good enough to stop a determined attack if I'm asleep. Obviously the outer defences weren't particularly dangerous. When I found her I just.. felt bad about her losing her internship so invited her to join me for breakfast. Oh, that reminds me: she wants to do interviews with everyone on the team. I said that I wasn't sure if anyone would be up for it but I've got her number if you are."

"You got her number."

"Yes." I extract the page from subspace and hold it out as evidence.

"Did she.. by any chance.. say anything about meeting up later?"

"To continue the interview, yes. Given everything-" She bends slightly at the waist and raises her right hand to her forehead. What? "-that's happened in the last seven months we couldn't cover more than a fraction of it in under an hour." She doesn't move. "What?"

"Paul."

"Yes?"

"She was asking you out."

I frown. "Are you sure, because that wasn't what she-."

"Yes." She moves her hand slightly to the side and stares at me. "Do you really not notice?"

"Um."

"I'd understand if you just didn't find me attractive, but Artemis said you didn't pick up on it when she hit on you either." Eh? "And you actually kissed Danette Reilly.. but then you didn't do anything else… You know… If you're just not into girls, you can tell me, right?"

Ah. "No, I…" Have I really..?

"In a way, it's… Kind of a relief."

"I'm not.. gay. I think… Okay, this is going to sound a bit odd. You know how I said orange light affects the mental state of its users?"

"It makes you take what you want." She frowns again. "But that would-."

"Yes. So I had the ring turn down my testosterone levels." I shrug. "Just in case. I hadn't really thought about it, but that could be why I've been missing.. you know… People.. being.. interested."

"Wouldn't doing that cause…" She looks me over. "Um."

"The rings maintain my body, and production goes back up to normal when I run out of power or take them off. I suppose.. now.. there's not really much risk if I turn it back up a little. It's just sort of nice not worrying about it."

She thinks for a moment and then nods slowly. "I think you probably should. If you're missing social cues then it's obviously having a serious effect on you."

"Alright, if you say so. Ring, normalise."

"Compliance."

I smile at her. "Now let's go and talk to John about his magic love crystal."

back

Doppelgänger 5

next

5th February

12:18 GMT

"Rettub ot dael."

John gives me a look of amused incredulity. "You.. were.. what?"

"Dael ot rettub."

"It seemed like a perfectly sensible thing to do at the time. And after I did it, I didn't see a reason to turn it off."

"Rettub ot dael."

"Hehahahe! Oh, blimey mate. That one's gunna-."

"Keep smiling and I'll give you a six pack."

"Dael ot rettub."

He loses his smile. "Well. Angie's gone back home to Liverpool. Since I'm single again, maybe I could use the edge."

"Rettub ot dael."

I can't say I'm surprised. Still… "But this one actually wasn't your fault. Her brother would have died-."

"Looks like a pattern to most people." He turns to Zatanna. "Feelin' tired yet?"

"Dael.. ot.. rettub." The dull grey ingot emits a puff of the smoke that usually accompanies Zatanna's transmutation efforts, revealing that it now sports a sort of butter marbling effect. She prods it with her right forefinger. "Yeah…" She takes a heavy breath. "I think so."

"You alright?"

She shakes her head. "I don't usually tire myself out on purpose. I might have a headache later but at the moment it just feels a bit tingly."

"Hmm." Clarice looks her over carefully from her seat at the side of the room. "Might need to brew you a little pick me up if this turns out to be impossible. Which it probably will."

"Why do you say that?"

"Poppet, you can't just stick any old thing in to a talent like yours and expect it to work just as well. This crystal thing-" She taps the nail of her right forefinger on the heavily warded box containing the Star Sapphire. "-was made by aliens using techniques the people who thought up this ritual never even dreamed of."

"I.. was wondering…" I look over the design on the floor in the centre of the room again. "Isn't the confinement circle meant to be whole and unbroken? Isn't that.. sort of.. the point?"

John shakes his head. "No point bottling it all up. We need to feed a little into Zatanna, so we make a hole."

Clarice shakes her head. "Just after Beefy Jim turned his balls back on."

Zatanna goes red, trying not to look at anyone. "Clarice, I exist in harmony with my desires. True, I.. turned down the underlying basis for some of them-"

"Hmphf."

"-but that doesn't mean that I'm going to turn into a lust-crazed beast. Ring-based biomancy isn't like the arcane sort; I'm not limited to pre-existing natural forms."

Then she stares at me and I can see every one of her two hundred odd years. "You told us that the Guardians rejected their emotions and that they went a bit odd as a result. You said that the other colours have worse mental effects than green does. You told me that you meditated on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs daily. Sex is one of the most basic Human drives, it's at the base of the Hierarchy and you tried to turn it off. That was not clever."

"My soul is made of orange light, Clarice. I don't think you can assume I work-."

She turns the stare down a notch. "You should try to keep working like a normal Human. You'll miss it when it's gone."

"I.. could probably… Um, tune you up a little? Your flesh is still essentially-."

A little humour creeps back into her expression. "You keep your grubby little ring to yourself." She pauses. "No, on second thought, take them off and put them somewhere safe." She indicates the second box. "Can't have them interfering."

John indicates where he wants Zatanna to sit, in a circular shape made of pentagons with a broken circle around it. "I'm fairly suffused with orange light anyway. And I've had the rings near it before, I was wearing them when we recovered it from the moon."

She shakes her head. "The fewer active components the better, far as I'm concerned." She gets up off her chair in the same way I remember my Granny doing, shuffling to the edge so that the motion is as 'up' and as little 'forwards' as possible.

John frowns at her. "Where's Albert off to, then? Got used to you two being joined at the hip."

"Visiting a mutual friend." I open the second box and slide the rings off my fingers before closing it. I feel a little uncomfortable like this, but they're close by if I really need them and the arcane practice rooms of the Tate Club are heavily protected.

"Oh yeah? Anyone I know?"

"Julian." John nods slowly as I offer Clarice my hand. She looks at it and exhales slightly. "I think I can make it across the room, thank you."

"What's he been up to?"

"Not a lot. He's in the Tower." John's frown deepens for a moment, then his face relaxes. "Messing about with things he didn't understand. That's why I said we had to do this in here." She carefully picks her way across the floor diagram before slowly crouching down and putting the box in the appropriate place and opening the lid. It really is quite pretty. The glow has the same style as the ring and my lantern but the translucence of the crystal structure causes it to glimmer and twinkle. "We won't take it out, just in case I have to shut it down."

Zatanna looks at her with some concern. "Is that safe for you?"

Clarice gives her a smile as she stands up and steps away. "Oh, I think so, Poppet. Take a bit more than this to get my old heart racing." She nods at me. "Alright Mister Expert: how do we set it off?"

"It responds to love just like the rings do avarice. Zatanna, close your eyes." She nods and shuts them. "Think about.. your earliest memory of your father." I wait for a moment. "What are you doing?"

"We're at a park. We're standing on a bridge over a river and I'm looking down at the surface of the water as the sun reflects off it."

"How do you feel?"

"Safe. Like Dad's there, and any problems-" A very small amount of violet light drifts smoke-like out of the Star Sapphire and into the diagram. "-he can protect me from them."

"I don't think we've ever really talked about your early childhood."

"We moved around a lot. Dad, and Uncle Charlie and me were just about the only constants in each other's lives."

"I would have thought that work wouldn't be thin on the ground for a stage magician who could use actual magic."

"Dad's stage shows were never just about 'real' magic. He was a stage magician first, and he was trying to break into a really competitive industry. Have to go where the job is."

The violet light is.. really slow. Something more intense? "Why don't you talk about your lessons together, when he started showing you how to use magic?"

back

Doppelgänger 6

next

5th February

12:34 GMT

"Well?"

Faint -very faint strands of violet mist drift around the fingers of Zatanna's right hand as she holds it out to examine it. "I don't.. feel any different..?"

Ring? Oh. Right. "No oddities on empathic vision."

The left side of John's face tightens slightly. "Still no use if she can't use it."

Clarice lightly thumps him on the arm. "It's her first time trying. I can still remember the first time you fell over our threshold, remember?"

"Yeah, yeah. Alright Zee, try doin' something with it."

"Like a.. construct..?" She pulls her fingers slightly and the mist starts to disperse. Her eyes widen. "No, stop, wait!"

"Zatanna, calm down. Focus on love, then let the power flow through you. We're just trying to recharge you, not create constructs." A few of Carol Ferris' greatest hits flick past my mind's eye. Never actually killed anyone but there were some bloody near misses. Probably the only reason why the kill count wasn't far larger was the attention-seeking aspect which the crystal encouraged. Jordan had to be there when she did it or it wasn't worth doing.

"Okay…" She closes her eyes, puts her hands on her knees and takes a few deep breaths. The mist drifts back a little. Least the theory is sound.

John looks at the circle. "Maybe if we took a couple of the protective runes out?"

He gets a stern look from Clarice. "Don't even think about it."

"Rats Erihppas, evig em rewop." The mists swirl for a moment, then a small amount of it flows over her, moving over and then into her skin. Her eyes snap open and she breathes in sharply.

"You alright?"

She makes tiny jerky nods with her head. "Uh-huh. Ooh." She shudders. "That felt…" Another couple of blinks. "I don't know what that felt like."

John carefully picks his way across the floor, leans over the circle around Zatanna -creating a noticeable waft as the violet light tries to avoid him- and puts the leaden butter down in front of her before backing off. "Try it now."

She nods and holds her hands out around it. "Dael ot rettub!" Hm. If anything happened I didn't see it. Zatanna picks up the block for a closer look, looking a little despondent.

"Maybe you need to focus on love when you cast the spell as well?" I make a half shrug and look to John and Clarice for better ideas. Nothing appears to occur to them.

"Dael ot rettub!" There's a tiny puff of pink smoke from the buttery ingot, and when it clears… A tiny bit more is butter. Zatanna sags further, looking at me. "This isn't working. I don't think I can focus.. love like you do avarice."

"Did you know I let Robin have a go with the ring once?"

"No? When was that?"

"September. He couldn't use it either, not until I… I provoked him."

"Why did he.. want to?"

I glance at John and Clarice. "His uncle had crippling injuries. He doesn't anymore. I… I'd rather not.. say to you the sorts of things I said to him."

"If it's what we have to do… I can take it."

Or… "There's another option. I think.. it might be better. Shuffle forwards a bit." She puts her hands on the floor and shifts her position so that her knees are close to the far side of the circle. "Now, close your eyes and picture us fighting Nabu. Forcing him back. Weakening him in the same way Klarion did so that his blue and gold costume is shimmering in and out of existence and you can see your father's suit. Your father's face." She nods as I walk around behind her. Having the psychiatrist sit behind the patient was a technique Freud used, wasn't it? "You've nearly got him back." The space inside the circle is becoming more violet. As expected, the Star Sapphire might be drawn to love but for some reason it also likes conflict. "Keep your eyes closed. Focus on how you feel. When I say 'now', I want you to-" How strong are the walls here? "-fire a blast of chaotic arcane energy directly forwards. Understand?"

"Yes."

I step inside the circle, drop down behind her, wrap my left arm around her stomach, my right around her chest and rest my head on her left shoulder pressed up against hers. "Now."

In the corner of my eye I see her eyes snap open. "Soahc Duolc!"

The mist surges into her body and dark purple smoke shoots out of a point just in front of her, passing through the protective design as if it wasn't even there. John and Clarice back off slightly as it hits the far wall, which shimmers for a moment before dissolving, tearing, bending like rubber and turning into flowers made of cheese which fall to the floor with a splat. This close I can feel it as Zatanna leans back slightly, pressing further into my chest.

"Pots! Pots!"

The flow of smoke slackens but doesn't stop. I move my face slightly so that I'm breathing directly into the nape of her neck. "Zatanna. We don't need that any-"

"Pots!"

"-more."

The smoke immediately fades from existence, showing us the hole it made in the floor of this room, the wall between this room and the next and the damage it caused to what looks like a meeting room of some sort. Fortunately it doesn't look like any of the consequences are alive, though the solid oak table is bent and twisted into the shape of screaming faces.

Maybe it was like that before.

"Well done."

"Um…" She stiffens for a moment and then relaxes slightly into my embrace as John walks slowly across the room to peer through the hole.

"Blimey. Wouldn't want to be on the other end of that." He turns towards the two of us, looking Zatanna over before moving his gaze to me. His eyes narrow slightly before switching his attention back to Zatanna. "Feel any different?"

"Um." Her voice sounds tight. Strained. That won't do.

I move my hands to the tops of her arms, then gently run the tips of my fingers along them until I reach her hands. I gently stroke her palms as I tilt my head so that I can whisper into her ear. "Why don't you try turning the lead back into butter now?"

"Dael ot rettub-" A puff of violet smoke and the ingot changes fully into butter. "-otni citsalp-" Another puff and it's a violet plastic oblong. I can feel Zatanna's pulse quicken. "-otni latsyrc-" A beautiful piece of amethyst. "-otni emalf-" The fire burns within the confines of the original shape without needing air or spreading beyond it. "-otni-."

"That's enough fun for one day, I think." Clarice bends down, picks up the Star Sapphire and returns it to its box. The mists around Zatanna and I linger for a moment before fading away. "You-" She looks at me. "-can bloody well fix that before you leave."

I stand, half-lifting Zatanna along with me. Guess she's a bit shocked by the whole thing. Since I'm quite a bit taller than her I lean forwards slightly. "You alright?"

Zatanna nods slowly, staring at the hole in the wall as she leans back to put her weight on me. "Not yet. But I will be."

back

Doppelgänger 7

next

5th February

09:17 GMT -5

"…could have kept going a little longer."

"Welcome, Orange Lantern two eight one four. Welcome home Zatanna."

"Hey, Shadowcrest." Zatanna does the 'looking upwards' thing when she addresses the computer system. "It wasn't as if I was tired."

"Sorry. Anti-crazy protocol. John's idea, and frankly I agree with him."

"You wear your rings all the time."

"Giant cake." She looks away, nodding her head to the side slightly. "I was very lucky. Trust me, you don't want to try getting along with the Predator." And I certainly don't want that.

She leads the way out of the zeta tube room and onto the landing. "Hey… I was.. thinking something…" I look attentive. "Neither of us… Want to be in the mountain with Nabu, right?"

My right hand reaches across my chest to check my Spell Eater is still there. "Of course not."

"Well… Why don't you… Stay here for the week? I mean, we've got lots of rooms and you won't have to worry about.. people sneaking in to take pictures of you or try interviewing you or anything."

"Um." That would be nice. I didn't tell Zatanna in advance what I intended to do about my living arrangements this week and we didn't really have a chance to talk about it before Nabu arrived. At least Batman's learned to give us some notice. "Thank you, I'd like that." Being apart from my friends after living… Okay, not cheek by jowl, it's a big mountain after all, but close to other people. What was it Terry Pratchett wrote? 'People aren't fully paid-up members of the human race, except biologically. They need to be bounced around by the Brownian motion of society to constantly remind one another what being human is.' Something like that. Of course, whether or not my housemates are genuinely Human to start with…

"Great! My room's-" She points along the landing. "-down that way, Dad's room is over there, those two are free and… I think there are a few more bedrooms on the second floor."

"You think?"

She leads the way along the corridor. "Some parts of the house can actually be dangerous. When I was little Dad told me not to go above the first floor."

"And you obeyed?"

"No, but the rooms I went in were mostly empty. Or they had a load of furniture covered in white sheets. And.. lots of dust." She nods to herself. "So much dust."

Sounds a bit like the residence of Sybil Ramkin. "Dangerous magical dust?"

"No, the regular kind." She pushes open a door. "I think Shadowcrest used to be a school."

"I had wondered about the bell tower."

"It doesn't have a bell in it. Not since…" She stops for a moment, then walks into the room. "Well? What do you think?"

I walk in after her. Large leaden windows on the far side, with a gap for a small table. On my right, a row of solid looking chests of drawers with a large oval mirror hanging over them. The floor is wooden, with a faded and predominantly green rug of Persian.. or possibly pseudo Persian design… Ring? No, there's the imperfection. Probably the genuine article. It covers most of the space. No radiator, but Shadowcrest maintains its own temperature and that wouldn't be a problem for me anyway. There's a wardrobe on my immediate left and the bed… An actual four poster! Goodness. "I think it will do perfectly. Thank you."

"You're welcome."

I look at the rug. "Does that.. fly..?"

She follows my gaze, frowning. "I don't.. think so… Ees cigam." Her eyes flash white for a second. Not violet, I note. Good thing too. Probably best if she doesn't get too used to the Star Sapphire. "No, just a rug."

"Must be a good job this house cleans itself. I'd hate to think how many people it would take to keep it clean-." Wait, then why would the upper levels be dusty? "Um, but-?"

"A lot of the spells on the house were.. sleeping when Dad and I moved in. The home making spells don't quite work more than a certain distance from-"

The ring blinks.

"-the front door."

"I can help you clean out the rest if you like. I'd set aside the whole day for making the Star Sapphire work, so I've got-."

"Should you.. get that?"

"Uuuuuuh, yeah. I'm just sort of trying to put off the evil hour on which I have to talk to Guy about the ship." I raise my left hand. "Orange Lantern two eight one four here. Go ahead."

Alan's head and upper torso appear above the ring. "Hey Paul."

"Alan. Ring!"

His eyes dip for a moment and he nods. "I didn't want to risk a phone with something… Listen, can you come over?"

I look past him at Zatanna and raise my eyebrows. She nods. "Yes."

"Any chance you could get hold of Zatanna as well?"

"She's with me now. We'll be with you in a few minutes."

He nods. "I'll see you in a few."

"Oh, well done for getting the head the right size this time."

"Huh? Oh… Yeah, we old people can work out technology by ourselves sometimes. Catch you later." He waves and then the image disappears.

I exhale. "So Alan's been kidnapped."

"How can you tell?"

"Alan's ring can't transmit properly. It's part of the damage it took which led to the Guardians losing track of it in the first place. Also, he doesn't say 'catch you later'. Ring, identify message source."

"Message source identical to that of ring registered as belonging to Alan Scott."

I hold out my hands and generate a construct model of Alan's house. I see him sitting in his living room with a newspaper. "Right newspaper, but why would he be reading it if he's expecting us?" I rescan the rest of the house. "If he's got something to show us, where is it?"

"Maybe he didn't want it in the house?"

"Possibly…" I shake my head. "But I don't think so. After Truggs started working out how to counter ring scans I started working out how to spot it when someone was doing it. This is setting off my alerts."

"Gnir, ecreip eht sesiugsid." The ring image crackles for a moment and we see three… Two? Humanoid figures which swiftly vanish. "That still doesn't actually mean that he's being held against his will. You'd do something like that if you didn't want someone knowing where you were."

"Maybe. And I'll apologise to them if I'm overreacting. But right now I'm going to phone Diana."

back

Doppelgänger 8

next

5th February

09:24 GMT -5

Zatanna and I transition to a copse of trees in the park across the road from Alan's home. There are a few people out walking and I see a man having a kickabout with his children, but none of them spare us more than a fleeting glance. Trees break line of sight, so obviously they didn't see us before because we were behind a tree. Right?

Diana was a little sceptical, but since she wasn't exceptionally busy she agreed to stand by to intervene. She was in the Embassy at the time so she should be overhead in about two minutes. Unfortunately, we can't really wait. I said five minutes and I haven't ever made any secret of how fast I can move. Have to assume that we're under observation. Zatanna and I both have bare bones body armour on under our clothing and her coat carries several protective enchantments placed there by her father. The rings are near full charge… Not really any more preparation we can do at short notice.

There aren't many people I'd actually worry about in a fight these days. At my insistence Alan doesn't wear his ring full time. Taking him unawares wouldn't be all that hard. I'm fully loaded with Mage Slayer and Crumbler rounds. Our plan is to talk whoever it is into letting us check that Alan is basically unharmed then violently evacuating him. I can spend the rest of the weekend rebuilding his house. Shadowcrest's dust sheets aren't going anyw-.

Connection made to monitored telephone line from priority source. Location: second public telephone, BP, Happy Harbour branch.

Whu?

I stop and Zatanna follows suit a moment later. "What is it?"

"The ring says someone's trying to get hold of me." Ring, who is it?

"Phone call is from the office of Alexander Luthor."

"Lex? Um." What? I start walking again, putting my right arm around Zatanna's waist and taking a mobile out of subspace to hold in my left. Answer. "Lex, good morning. What can I do for you?"

"Paul." I barely twitch these days. The trick is to hear sound and not meaning. "Have I done anything to antagonize the Justice League lately?"

I smile. "I don't know. Have you?"

There's some sort of dull tap in the background. Someone knocking on the door?

"To the best of your knowledge."

"No? Look, Lex, I'm a little busy. Could you..?"

"I'm under attack. I'm not sure who is behind it. Do you believe that your young colleagues could have taken the initiative?"

"Going after you without approval? Doubt it. Training activities for today consist of a lecture on traditional magic practice in Europe and I think tomorrow the Atlanteans are visiting the Smithsonian. Unless something very strange has happened since I spoke to Wonder Woman three minutes ago no one on our end is planning on attacking your anything. And if we were, we certainly wouldn't do it at half past nine when there'd be all sorts of innocent bystanders." Ring, check location of my team mates?

I feel pings in my head. Wallace is still in Central City, Rob's still in England and everyone else is in Happy Harbour.

"Yeah, not it. If your security people can't cope I understand that Superman is usually-."

The phone goes dead. I lower it before returning it to subspace.

"What was that about?"

We halt for a moment as we reach the road. "Someone's attacking LexCorp and Lex thought it could have been us." Once the cars have passed we cross. I try getting a look through Alan's front window but I can't see anything. "I said it wasn't, then he hung up. I'm not going to worry about it until I know that Alan's safe."

"You don't think they just didn't tell us?"

"Attacking LexCorp would be a major escalation. I could -maybe- see Batman having Robin sneak in, but that wouldn't be an attack attack."

I look around as we walk up Alan's driveway, heading for his front door. The gate was slightly open, but that isn't unusual. Nothing else looks amiss, but as we get closer I feel Zatanna shiver. "Magic. Someone's put powerful spells around his house."

"But we're prepared for magic. Anyone who knows anything about us would know that."

I let go of her and tap on the front door with my right knuckles.

"It's open!"

Sounded like Alan. I look at Zatanna with raised eyebrows and she nods. Obviously, if there's such a thing as True Seeing then True Hearing must exist as well. That wasn't a sensory illusion, though recordings, mundane impressions and mind control compelled speech wouldn't be detected. I nod back and turn the door handle, pushing the door gently so that it swings open. No sign of a disturbance in the hallway. Out of the sight of the exterior I form a railgun construct and load a Mage Slayer. Next, I send filaments into the house. I can feel the hallway but whenever they try to cross a threshold they are stopped. I could force the matter, but I'm happy to keep it quiet for now. I walk into the house and Zatanna follows me, closing the door behind her.

"Alan, where are you?" My power armour materialises around me from subspace. I'll have to walk a little carefully to avoid giving the game away, though with a little luck my habit of wearing heavy boots should mitigate that somewhat.

"Living room!"

"Is it.. hot in here, or is it just me?"

"Alan's in his nineties. And you are wearing a coat." Ambient is up a little, but I haven't kept track of what sort of temperature Alan usually keeps it at. Neither Danni nor I are really affected by it. I take the lead towards the living room door, railgun prepared but the light it gives off mostly concealed behind my bulk. The door opens to one corner of the room. Alan's preferred seat is directly forwards. Two steps and turn and I'll have a full view of the room. Infrared is being deceived in the same way as the ring. Unless whoever we saw isn't in the room any longer? One last glance to check that Zatanna is ready and I turn the handle and push the door inwards.

Alan's sitting exactly where he appeared to be. He turns his head slightly as the door opens, then freezes. The newspaper is nowhere in sight. I stride forwards, skimming him with a Mage Slayer shot and creating construct armour around him as the binding circle fails.

"Oh, come on. I wasn't going to hurt him."

I experience a moment of familiarity as I hear the voice. Doesn't matter. Two steps and I'm in the room with four new railgun constructs pointing in all directions. And then I stop.

Two people are sitting on the settee under the far window, one male and one female. The female is mid teens but dresses far older. Jet black hair, pageboy haircut, knee length black skirt and black jacket, white blouse and one of the tie scarf things some women wear. The man is-

"That's better power armour than I've got. Of course, I suppose it helps-"

-thirty. Used to have long brown hair but appears to have had it cut rather severely since. His nose has a noticeable kink in the end. He was a little over a hundred and eighty three centimetres tall last time he cared to check.

"-that you have a working personal lantern."

That's… Faintly glowing blue eyes aside, that's… He's almost exactly how I looked before I came here. Blue… I check his hands.

"Here." He holds up his right. Blue power ring.

I… Have an alternate version?

He raises his eyebrows slightly and smiles at me. "How about you get rid of that armour so we can have a civilised conversation?"

back

Doppelgänger 9

next

Earth -14

Ultra Industries Building

4th July

23:09 GMT -5

The Ultra Industries building doesn't have guards on the outside. There are guards on the inside, but most of its protection comes from the fact that.. well... Ultraman owns it. The guards on the inside are disciplined and well equipped and more than a few of the Syndicate's enhanced people are just a short zeta tube journey away -to say nothing of Ultraman himself- but the exterior just looks like an office building. That's part of the psychology of the place, simultaneously saying that the head of the Crime Syndicate owns it, that his hold on the city and the world is so strong, so sure, that he doesn't need to bother with anything so vulgar as guards or drone weaponry. The other part is what he wants to say about himself: I'm a businessman. I work in an office, I fill in paperwork… I'm someone you can deal with. Someone you can live with.

And if you can't, and you want to do something about it? Remember the First Lady?

The late First Lady?

Owlman doesn't get that first part. Superwoman doesn't. I'm not sure about the rest. And I rather doubt the two I chucked into the bay earlier today are the sort to get philosophical about it. I lift my briefcase slightly to make sure that it hasn't disappeared.

Ring, give me the bad news.

Thirty nine percent maximum charge remaining.

Oh, this isn't going to get any cleverer.

I look left and right and then cross the road, heading for the entrance. Is the man himself in residence? I could try asking the ring but I don't particularly want to waste power. As it is I'm going to need to find… Ugh, where would I find a lot of hopeful people? Some sort of sporting event? Probably wouldn't be able to get it to work anyway, because what I'm feeling right now? It isn't hope.

I push open the door and take a look across the lobby.

"…buncha cry babies. You'd think they never went swimmin' before."

Oh what luck. James 'Mister Action' Olsen is leaning on the front desk, chatting to the night receptionist. Goodness me he's huge. I know he's only mildly enhanced compared with some and nothing like as strong as his boss but I think I could probably fit inside one of his arms.

"Alright,-" He slowly turns towards me. "-what is it…" He actually does a double take as he sees me, then his eyes narrow as he catches sight of the badge pinned to my left lapel. "The… Balls on you…" He raises his hands to his chest and cracks the knuckles of his right hand. "Saves on hun'in' you down, I suppose."

Talk fast! "Mister Olsen, I'm afraid that there's been a rather unfortunate misunderstanding."

He keeps coming. "Unfortunate for you, maybe."

"Yes! Quite right. That's my exact point. I'm.. new in town, and had no idea-" He keeps coming and I'm backing up towards the far wall. No point running anywhere on Earth and where else could I go? Qward? "-that the two I assaulted were members of your organisation and I.. came here to formally apologise-" And there's the wall. "-to the boss." He comes to a stop, looming over me. "Iiif that's at all possible." I gingerly hold out the case towards him.

He looks me over again before taking hold of it around the side with his right hand. "If there's somethin' supposed t'be clever in here, you know I'm bullet proof. I ain't exactly gunna be impressed."

I smile in a way that's probably more than slightly manic. "No tricks."

He supports it on one shovel sized hand and opens the latches with two delicate presses of his left forefinger. He might look like a brute but he isn't one: he has a Bachelors Degree in Business Administration and manages the illegal parts of Ultraman's empire for him. I mean, why would Ultraman of all people want dumb muscle? Mister Scott further told me that Ultraman himself paid for Mister Olsen's education as a thank you for his guidance when Ultraman took over the Metropolis underworld. He lifts the lid very slightly and takes a look at the contents. "These real?"

"I wouldn't dare come here with fake, would I?"

He closes the case and shoves it into my chest. I take hold of it as he turns away. "You're in luck, Power Ring Blue. Ultraman's in tonight. Dunno if he'll wanna tawk t'ya. He's got guests in."

"I quite understand that he's a busy man. I won't take up much of his time."

"Damn right ya won't." He reaches behind the desk to pick up a phone and bring it onto the surface before taking the handset and dialling. His eyes rest on me with a vaguely curious air until someone on the other end picks up. "Hey CK. At the front desk. Yeah, I was…" A slightly longer pause. "Sure. You know that guy Trainwreck was whinin' about from earlier? Yeah, that's the one. Yeah, it is. He's here. Wants to…" He shakes his head. "Nah, nah, says he wants to apologize t'yah." His eyes drift back to the case. "Yeah, got that covered. I know, I know, I'll get it sorted…" Back to my face. "I'll bring him up right now. Yeah." He puts the phone down. "Looks like youse in luck." He points to the far end of the room where the lifts are. "Elevator. Now."

No need to tell me twice. I walk over to them at a brisk pace, hesitating at the touchpad. Mister Olsen comes up behind me and reaches past to touch his finger tips against it. The area under then glows red for a moment before the touchpad flashes green and then the lift doors slide open. He walks into them and turns around to face me. I join him and he presses the gold-coloured 'U' button at the top of the control panel before folding his arms across his chest. The lift begins to rise. Ultraman's apartment is near the top, just below his 'official' reception area and office. Looks like we're going all the way up.

"Sooo… How do you rate my chances of survival?"

He grunts. "Not up to me."

Nothing to do until we get to the top, then. I look around the lift interior. There are speakers, but no music is playing. The interior dimensions are certainly larger than most lifts I've been in, though whether that's to cope with regular business hours traffic or to accommodate large people like Mister Olsen I'm not sure. Okay. Mister Scott -I rub the bases of my thumbs- said this was my best chance. I'm not a great judge of criminal megalomaniacs -I spoke to him after all- but I can't see any reason for him to lie to me. In fact I got a tiny sense of… I don't know, I assume it was meant to be hope but I don't think hope is supposed to have those sinister undertones to it.

Nothing to do now. I unfocus my eyes and run through the first stage of Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64 in my head. Move to the wall to your left, edge around until you have a shot at the first guard's head. Aim, one shot or two depending on difficulty setting. Forwards, aim across to the far side of the starting area. Depending on the position of the guard, either cross to the guard tower and wait or aim and take a shot with the pistol. Around the side of the guard tower, aim and shoot the third guard in the head. Up the guard tower, around the security glass and in, picking up the sniper rifle. Aim down the t-.

There's a chime and the lift doors open onto a short corridor. Mister Olsen gives me a shove. "Start walkin'. First left."

I start walking. The floor is either marble or a convincing substitute. There are pictures on the walls, either Ultraman or… That's his father, isn't it? Posed with various allies or celebrities. I suppose that in here they don't need to pretend. As I reach the door I transfer the case to my left hand and raise my right to knock.

"He's not waitin' on yeh. Just go in an' wait fer him." Right. I turn the handle and open the door. Inside, the most notable features are the two large desks and the floor to ceiling window leading to a balcony. Obviously Ultraman wants easy access to the sky. Be inconvenient to have to get the glaziers in every time he went flying. Mister Olsen points to an area of floor in front of one of the desks with his right forefinger. "Stand there and don't touch nothin'."

I stand there and I don't touch nothing as Mister Olsen takes up position by the door behind me. I wonder what sort of mood Ultraman will be in? I know this version isn't the cuckolded idiot from Earth 2 but I'm not all that familiar with other versions of the char-.

A door in the far side of the room opens and Ultraman walks through. His costume is a solid blue with a gold belt and bracers. No external underwear. I suppose no criminal organisation would respect someone dressed like that even if he could fire heat beams out of his eyes. His cape is red on the back and gold inside, with gold shoulder pads and a blue 'U' outlined in gold on his chest. Though nothing like as large as Mister Olsen he is an extremely big man. He nods at Mister Olsen and then takes up position behind his desk, glowering at me. "Alright. Let's hear it."

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Doppelgänger 10

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Earth -14

Ultra Industries Building

4th July

23:16 GMT -5

"I, um." Good start. My eyes drop to his desk. "I wanted to apologise to you. Earlier today.. as you're well aware… I got into a fight with a couple of your employees. I.. just thought they were thugs with super powers and… I'll be honest, I don't feel particularly bad about.. what I did to them. But, it was drawn to my attention later-" The fingers of my right hand curl towards my right thumb again. "-that they were associated with your organisation… With-" I gesture to him with my right hand. "-you, and that by publically trouncing them I may have caused you embarrassment. And for that I wish to apologise and make recompense." I hold up my briefcase and hold it out towards him. I stand there awkwardly for a moment. When he doesn't move to take it I lean slightly forwards and set it down on his desk.

He glances down at it, presumably examining the contents with x-ray vision. A moment passes and he nods to himself. "Wised up pretty fast."

"Yessir."

"You talk to someone?"

"Yessir. Mister Scott was kind-" His eyes go back to me and his eyebrows raise slightly. "-enough to give me a few pointers on local realpolitik."

"Al Scott? No kiddin'." Was that a question? I don't think that was a question. He takes a step forwards towards his side of his desk, pulls the briefcase towards him and opens it fully. Another small nod. He reaches in with his right hand and takes out one of the gold coins, regarding it curiously. He looks over both sides and nearly smiles. "Hey Jimmy, you seen this? Coins with my face on 'em."

"Didn't look that close, CK."

Ultraman tosses another to him. I daren't turn around to see if he caught it. "And a 'U' on the back. What's this on the edge?" He actually smiles this time. "Cui Bono?"

"I understand that's the motto of the Syndicate, sir."

"Where'd you get this, anyway?"

"I created the design myself." His eyes flick back up in a low intensity glare. "ThegoldIgot from an asteroid I mined.. um, earlier today. After speaking to Mister Scott."

He nods again and puts the coin back into the briefcase. "Al Scott, eh? Still got all your arms and legs attached?"

"I… He let me off with a light maiming, sir. Since I was new. Fortunately, blue power rings can reattach thumbs." I use my fingers to check once again that they haven't fallen off.

"Heh. Yeah, that sounds like him." He closes the case and slides it to the side. "Not bad, as apologies go. Time was I'd have Jimmy here rough you up just so you'd remember not to do it again, but I'm in a good mood today. Guess it's like Pa says: people fuck up sometimes. No sense blowin' things out of proportion if it wasn't intentional and they're real sorry about it." Another glare. "And you are real sorry about it."

"Oh yes sir."

Another nod. I'm good? Was not expecting that.

"Ambient hope detected. Charging. Charge: forty percent."

I clamp my left hand over my right and consider that getting scared doesn't reduce my charge.

Ultraman looks at -or more likely through- my hand. "That really a power ring?"

"Yessir."

"How long you had it?"

"Nearly a day now."

Something about that unsettles him. "You flew out to the asteroid belt and back in less than a day?"

"That was more like a few minutes. Construct strength is dependent on emotional intensity and I'd just found out I had a chance not to get torn limb from limb."

"I know Al's ring gets stronger the more people who're afraid of him. Yours runs off of hope?" I nod. "Al's real picky about who he gives advice to. He musta taken a real shine t'you if he thought it was worth tryin' t'keep you alive." He thinks for a moment. "I tell you what: a few a' my guys -includin' the two you had that bust up with- are down stairs right now. Come down have a drink with us, make sure everyone knows everything's square."

If the Sopranos taught me anything it's that you don't say no when a mob boss offers you a drink. "Thank you, sir. I'd appreciate that."

"Ain't nothin'." He nods at Mister Olsen who leads the way out of the door. I follow along behind him. No 'U' on the cape, I note. "I was a big fan a' Al's when I was growin' up. Any friend a' his…"

"Sir, it… Might be overstating things to describe us as 'friends'."

"Heh. Close enough." There's a stairwell up ahead and Mister Olsen leads the way down.

"Sir, may I ask a question?" He glances at me and shrugs. "Is there some.. particular occasion? Mister Olsen said that you were entertaining."

"I just found out I'm a father."

"Oh. Congratulations."

"Luthor cooked him up inna lab some a' the kids busted up. Plannin' t'use him as a weapon or somethin'. Jimmy, remind me t' do somethin' nice for Talon, Jackie and that Mayhem girl."

"You got it, CK."

We leave the stairs and start towards what looks like Ultraman's living room. I can dimly hear conversation. "Ain't nothin' more important than family. An' my Made Men are family. It's like Pa says, be good to your people an' they'll be good to you."

"He sounds like a very sensible man, sir."

"Ah, don't you be callin' me 'sir'. Little people call me 'sir'. My guys-" He lays his right arm over my shoulders. "-call me 'Boss' or 'Ultraman'."

Aaaaaaaaaaa?

"See, you squared things with me an' the Syndicate, but if Trainwreck and Meltdown go after you on their own, I got no grounds to intervene if you're just some guy." He looks down at me and tightens his grip slightly. Gosh he's well muscled. "But family? Family's different. If you're family, things're a lot more civilized."

"And I'm a big fan of civilised, s-. Ultraman."

"Thought ya might be. Hey!" He lets go of me and walks ahead of me into the room. "Eddy! Maria! Get over here!" A man built like a slightly shorter version of Mister Olsen and a more conventionally proportioned woman with faint trails of plasma floating around her head turn towards Ultraman as he leads me towards the bar. Then they spot me. The man -Eddy the Trainwreck- balls his fists and Maria Meltdown's hair catches fire. I nervously follow on after Ultraman as the bartender hands him a tray with four whiskey glasses and a decanter. Ultraman takes the stopper out before looking at his two established henchpeople. "Knock it off. Power Ring's made amends. He's joining the family so you're havin' a drink and buryin' the hatchet."

Eddy looks more than a little displeased. "This guy? Why? I hadda swim fer half a fuckin' hour t'get back t'dry land."

"'Cause this guy could throw you both into the bay after having a power ring for a couple hours. That, and Al Scott vouched for him."

I get another glare, but with Ultraman laying down the law the matter appears to be settled for the moment. Ultraman pours a finger of whiskey into each glass and hands one to each of us. I hold mine out towards my former opponents. "Your health."

They hesitate for a moment, then grudgingly tap their glasses against mine. Ultraman does the same and then each of us oh God this still tastes horrible!

"What's up with you?"

"Not much of a drinker, Ultraman."

Eddy and Maria look at me, then each other, then knock their drinks back before looking at me expectantly.

Darn it. Still, if this is the worst thing that ugh… That happens today, I'll consider myself to have got off lightly.

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Doppelgänger 11

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Earth -14

Ultra Industries Building

5th July

00:52 GMT -5

"Hey, Power Ring." Oh thank goodness. Now there's a phrase I never thought I'd use in connection with Mister Olsen. "Ultraman wants you to sit in on a meetin'."

Apparently there's not a single Made Man in this place who doesn't find me trying to drink liquor absolutely hilarious. They've been taking it in turns to welcome me into the Syndicate. If the number of gangsters who'll drink with you can be taken as a sign of popularity then I think I must be the toast of the organisation by now. "Happy to oblige." I raise my empty glass to my current drinking partner, a pale skinned man with a truly disturbing shark-like jaw. "Duty calls, I'm afraid."

"Take it easy, man."

I think he's smiling. I put my glass down and follow Mister Olsen away from the bar. "I've been wondering: what is it I'm meant to call you? I mean, it's codenames for everyone else. Mister Action?"

He makes a dismissive motion with his left hand. "Nobody calls me that. Luthor stuck it in some stoopid briefin' paper an' Johnny Quick thought it'd be funny t' spread it around. You call me Jimmy, just like everybody else."

"I'm just.. trying to get my head around the hierarchy. I already.. messed up once by not knowing-."

"How come youse still tawkin' after that much liquor? Hell, I was expectin' t'have t'carry you."

"I've no idea what my alcohol threshold is, but it turns out that poison purging is a fairly low power ring function."

"Good thinkin'. Okay, it's like this: Ultraman is the head of the Syndicate. Just below him you got the rest of the Management: Owlman, Superwoman-."

"J'edd J'arkus, Johnny Quick and Power Ring Green."

"Who don't actually have a power ring."

"Really?"

"Yeah. He turned up doin' the same stuff as Al Scott, everybody called him Power Ring. He's actually got this sorta gauntlet thing. Anyway, each member of the Management runs their parta the Syndicate differently. Under Ultraman you got me and Pete Ross runnin' mosta the business. Guys back there, they're mostly just muscle. Get put on jobs where we need to lean on someone or where we need heavy protection. Ones who prove they got brains get their own little projects an' report straight t'Ultraman." He stops at a door and pulls it open. "Get in."

I get. Ultraman is sitting in a soft leather chair at one end of a circle of chairs. Next to him on his right is a youth wearing black jeans and a blue t-shirt decorated with a gold 'U' mirroring Ultraman's own. On Ultraman's left is a large empty chair, Jimmy's I assume. Opposite those three are two other seats. One is occupied by a bald black man in a very nice looking suit. He looks around as I walk in. I'm assuming that's Pete Ross. I know he was black in Smallville but I think he's white pretty much everywhere else but here. The other chair is empty.

Jimmy crosses the room and Mister Ross stands to greet me. "So, you're the new guy." His voice is warm and friendly and almost entirely without the Bronx accent shared by Ultraman and Jimmy. He holds out his right hand. "I'm Pete Ross. Hopefully we won't be seeing too much of each other." I take his hand, but it's clear from my expression that I don't understand what he meant. "Among other thing I'm head of legal affairs for Ultraman's syndicate. You'll only usually see me at social events like this or if you get in trouble with the law. And trouble with the law usually impacts our operations and profit margins."

"I'll try to ensure that doesn't happen, Mister Ross."

He pats me on the right upper arm with his left hand. "Glad to hear it." He releases me and turns away to retake his seat. Am I supposed to wait for permission to.. sit.. myself..? Ultraman appears to notice, rolls his eyes and nods at the remaining chair. I sit.

"Now everyone's here, let's get this started. Power Ring, you're gonna be working with Pete for a few days." I nod. "We'll need t'sort out paperwork for yah, bank account, immigration, stuff like that. And it'll be good for him t'have protection that ain't on the government radar."

"I should.. probably warn you.. if you're going to be depending on me. Without a personal lantern I can only charge from ambient hope and that's not exactly fast. If Mister Ross is actually expecting an attack…"

Ultraman shakes his head. "We got no intel anyone's plannin' anythin'. If we did, I wouldn't stick a new guy on it. This is just t'get you used to workin' as parta the family." I nod. "You got a name?"

"Yes, but, for reasons I don't really understand I don't seem able to say it anymore. Um, sorry."

"What'd'ya mean, ya can't say it?"

"I try saying it, my jaw locks up. I think about it too hard, I faint."

Jimmy shakes his head. "That's gotta be the dumbest weakness I ever hurd."

The youth shrugs. "Why does he even need a name? I don't have a name apart from Ultraboy."

Ultraman turns his head to look at his.. son..? With an almost pained expression on his face. When he said he just had a son I was assuming he meant an infant. But I think Superboy got out of Cadmus as a young boy in the comics. "Fer real?"

Another shrug, his expression shifting from neutral to uncomfortable. "Yeah Pa."

"Ah, that ain't no good. You gotta have a name fer yerself. What name d'you like?"

"I don't know. Why don't…" He glances nervously at his father. "You pick something?"

"Alright." He turns back to me. "Power Ring, decanter on the table." I nod, getting up and walking around the outside of the circle of chairs to fetch it and five glasses. "I got named after Ma. My first name's the same as her maiden name. Don't think I'll call you Luthor though, uh?" He nudges Ultraboy with his elbow while smiling the first proper smile I've seen him make. Ultraboy mirrors it, a little uncertainly.

I pour the drinks and then… I could be safe here. This could work for me. I could be part of this. I float the drinks in front of each of the other men while walking back to my seat.

Ultraman takes his, then notices the one I sent towards Ultraboy and grabs that as well. "Hey, what's the big idea?" Aaaaaah... "He's not even a day old. He doesn't get liquor!" Mister Ross and Jimmy chuckle as I try and slow my heart rate a little.

"Why not? I can take it."

Ultraman smiles, nudging his son with his right elbow. "It's a joke, ya dumb mook. Here." He hands the glass over and Ultraboy takes it. "Should probably go easy, though. You ain't used to it."

"Thanks."

"Your Grandpa didn't let me have my first drink 'til I could sneak it out of his liquor cabinet without him noticing. An' people say I got x-ray vision." Something occurs to him. "Speakin' a' Pa, I got a name for yah. 'Jonathan Kent', after him." Ultraman raises his eyebrows. "Well? What'd'yah think?"

"I…" Ultraboy nods. "I like it. Um, thanks."

"Ain't nothin'." Ultraman raises his glass. "Jonathan Kent."

"Jonathan Kent." / "Jonathan Kent." / "Jonathan Kent."

We each take a sip.

"Now, business. Pete, where do we stand on that whole mess at Cadmus?"

"One of Luthor's front companies. We'd been watching it for a while, but there was no sign they were doing anything like this." He nods at Ultraboy. "I've got some guys going over the site now. Should be able to give you a full report tomor-." He checks his watch. "This afternoon." He looks off to the side, shaking his head slightly. "I honestly have no idea how Talon worked out what they were up to."

Ultraman makes a dismissive gesture with his right hand. "Could be Owlman's been holding out on us, could be alla that cybernetic crap he put in the boy's head. Supposed to give him improved intuitive reasoning."

Jimmy turns his head to look at his boss. "Coulda been dumb luck too. Jackie an' Mary ain't exactly got great plannin' skills."

"Am I going to see them again?" Ultraboy hesitates as he gets our attention, then presses on. "I owe them for getting me out. And it was.. fun. Fighting alongside them."

Ultraman nods contemplatively. "Johnny was making some noise about settin' up some sorta academy fer.. second generation Syndicate members. Can't learn how to run a numbers game in High School."

Do it. "And those are the youths who might end up running the Syndicate one day. It might be good for them to get used to working together. I don't know how well you get on with the rest of the Management…"

"Could be better, could be worse." He considers. "Could work out. Okay, I'll let Johnny know that I support the idea before the next Management meetin'. Next item: police action in Boston…"

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Doppelgänger 12

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5th February

09:32 GMT -5

"Or I could just brand you both and compel you to tell me anything I want to know. "

He frowns. "That doesn't sound like me." Blue me turns to his partner. "Zorina, do I sound like that?"

Zorina? Sounds.. a little familiar, but I can't place it… She shakes her head, still smiling. "Not usually."

"If this is about Alan-"

"Yes."

"-our version of Alan Scott is a semi-retired supervillain with a yellow power ring. First time I met him? He beat me into submission and then cut my thumbs off. This time I decided to take a slightly more precautionary approach."

"Why did you even need to meet him?"

"I needed information."

Zatanna comes up behind me, intelligently keeping me between the potential attack and herself. "You've got a power ring. If you wanted to know what's going on why not just hack into people's databases?"

He frowns. "For some reason, getting hold of interesting databases around here is quite a bit harder than I'm used to. Plus I.. don't like using ring power if I don't have to." I don't miss Zorina poking him in the leg, though her expression doesn't change. "You…" His eyes narrow. "You've got two?! How the heck did you get two?"

"You're under arrest."

Zorina shakes her head. "No, we're not."

Zatanna nods. "Are too."

He waves his right forefinger. "No, we're not. Two reasons. Firstly, you don't have arrest authority-."

"Actually, I do. Well, Diana does and I'm legally acting under her authority. I can arrest you."

"Oh. Okay, one reason."

Zatanna raises an eyebrow. "And that is..?"

The heat in the room intensifies as the area around Alan turns into a conflagration! The construct armour protects him as he tries to step away but a muscular arm grabs him around the chest! The flames drop back a little, revealing… Wings. The fires are wings. I see feathers made of flame that somehow retain their shape. The figure's arms are covered in dull bronze coloured armour, decorated with faintly glowing runes I half-recognise from John's diabolic texts. Over the armour the figure wears black robes, a burning pentagram decorating the chest. The skin of the face is chalk white, the eyes black holes with candle flames for pupils. Across Alan's throat it holds a burning sword.

"Meet Zauriel the Fallen." The armour on his arms has silver chains running along it, attached to it in several places along his forearms and disappearing into his robes. "Dad assigned him to be my bodyguard. Mostly, he just likes to kill things."

A Fallen Angel. Mage Slayers should work, but I've got no idea how fast his reflexes are and that sword is visibly cutting through the construct armour around Alan. Ring, plot transition.

Unable to comply.

My alter ego leans forwards. "I want to talk to you because I believe that we can.. help each other. Mister Giovanni Zatara disappeared from public view at the same time as the new Fate appeared. Since Kent Nelson's dead, that rather implies Zatara took on the role. That and.. there weren't any recent genetic traces in Shadowcrest."

Zatanna looks horrified. "How did you get in?"

Zorina's smile broadens slightly. "For some reason, the spells on the house thought we were you. But that's beside the point. My father is in a similar situation to yours and I presume that you are no more willing to accept it than I am."

"Why would your father put on a Helmet containing a Lord of Order?"

Zorina raises her right eyebrow. "Doctor Chaos, a Lord of Order? We could have handled a Lord of Order."

"I don't care what he's a Lord of. Why did your father put it on? He's probably a serial killer-"

My alter ego flicks up his right forefinger. "Mafia don."

"-and doesn't care about anyone or anything. My father is a superhero!"

Zorina's expression goes cold. "He cares about me."

The Zeds stare at each other. Whatever spells Zorina put on the place are preventing me from using empathic vision on her. What do I think? We could certainly use whatever data they have, Lords of whatever sort having essentially the same structure. And I don't think that most of what we've learned so far has implications for the other parts of their…

Evil parallel universe.

"You work for the Crime Syndicate, don't you?"

He tilts his head to the side. "Just.. Syndicate, thank you."

"Which..?"

"According to Lex Luthor -our Lex Luthor- we come from parallel negative fourteen. And this-" He has a look around the room. "-is sixteen. I've no idea how the numbering system works."

"But… Wee come from…"

"Yeeeah, don't know how that works either. So, are we talking or… Are you going to try shooting?"

I send a filament to Zatanna's ear. "I think this could be worth pursuing. Tap your right foot twice if you can accept that."

Zatanna glances my way, then back at our alter egos. "What about Alan?"

"Zauriel, back off."

"Mistress, this one was a warrior. I feel the blood and violence of decades within him. Let him have his weapon and earn his freedom!"

"No. Leiruaz, reffus emertxe niap."

The chains on his wrist and under his robes glow brilliantly. He tilts his head back, his face screwed up in pain, a raspy gurgling noise hissing through his lips.

She makes a dismissive motion with her right hand. "Evael Nala Enola."

"I will.. Ghuh!" His sword moves aside and he staggers backwards. "Mortal whore! I will find a way to break these chains, and when I do-!"

"Ssel Gniklat." Zorina smoothly rises from her seat and walks towards him. "No, you won't. If you were intelligent enough to do that you would have been intelligent enough not to have tried to pick a fight with all four Angel Kings. At once." She stops just in front of him and reaches up to his face with her right hand, placing her palm on his cheek. "Do you want to go back to hell? Do you miss the acid baths that badly? I can send you back with a word, Zauriel. You really do need to learn how to channel that anger of yours." She pushes and he collapses -shuddering- back against the wall of the room. Zorina then turns back to me and pointedly looks at my railguns. I glance at Zatanna. She looks Alan over quickly and then taps her foot. I return the rounds to subspace and remove the constructs.

"Alan, you alright?"

"Think so." He presses his right hand to his neck. I think there's a burn there. Which I can't heal, darn it. "Considering."

"I'm.. sorry about that, Mister Scott." My alter ego has the temerity to actually look sorry as well. "Zauriel still hasn't gotten over not being allowed to kill King Herod." He switches his attention back to me. "Why don't you and I go and have a chat somewhere private. I'm sure you've got as many questions for me as I have for you."

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Doppelgänger 13

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A flash of orange light-

5th February

03:47 GMT -11

"Recognised, Orange Lantern, B zero six. Recognised, guest."

-and we appear in the Fortress' embarkation room. Zauriel faded back to wherever he came from once Zorina had enough of disciplining him. Can't imagine what Angels are like in a negative parallel if they're as bad as John tells me here. I wasn't sure what to tell Diana so I reported that we'd made contact with people from a parallel universe, they seemed peaceful but could she please stay on standby. I'm still in full armour. With angelic backup Zorina is far more dangerous than Zatanna but the reverse is true of my own alter ego. Plus… I put a bit of effort into bypassing Zorina's scrambler effect and got the distinct impression that she was genuinely looking forward to speaking to Zatanna for conversation's sake alone.

"Where are we?"

"We're in the vicinity of the North Pole, aboard a flying fortification I've assigned to refreezing the icecaps."

"You…" He has another look around the room. "Did you build it yourself?"

Now I have time to take a closer look, he doesn't look quite like I used to. For a start, his hair is much shorter, as short as mine was back in early primary school. He's fitter as well, and I think there are a few grey hairs I don't remember having on his head. "No. Five of them were used to cover most of the United States in a blizzard. Guy and I were able to capture this one intact."

He nods. "Guy… Gardner?" He looks at me again. "Belligerent version, idiot version, softie version..?"

"None of them, really. He got hit by a bus which caused him to get replaced by Lantern Stewart. He's got a temper, but he's having such a run of success that it isn't really causing problems for him." He nods. "Alright. How about we start from the beginning?"

"How about you take your helmet off?"

"I have scanned your nanotech infection."

"You don't have one?"

"Nanotech's insane here. Why are you using it?"

He throws his arms out to the side. "No personal lantern! And it's not even that useful!" He exhales sharply. "Are you taking the helmet off?"

I suppose it's not like my environmental shield can't just exclude it. Ring, switch to medium armour.

"Compliance."

His eyes widen as he sees my face. "What..? You..?"

"Pretty much the first thing I did with the ring. I didn't even.. do it intentionally. You know how we're afraid of…"

"Death."

"Not existing, and.. losing faculties. "

"So… It just..?"

"Made me exactly as I wanted to be. Fixed my nose, my skin, gave me a heroic physique…"

His mouth hangs open for a moment. "Are you playing on fucking easy mode?"

He's not angry at me, just frustrated with the situation. "How.. similar are we. I-?"

"Earth Prime, or.. something like that. And we ended up in a universe straight out of DC comics."

I smile. "You know the 'C' in 'DC' stands for-."

"Pedant."

We both do the exact same amused snort.

"I left on the fourteenth of August, two thousand and thirteen. Woke up on the fifth of July, two thousand and ten."

He nods. "I left on the same day. Arrived a day earlier."

"Antimatter universe… Is it like in Earth Two? The comic, not-."

He shakes his head. "No, it's… Nothing like that bad. Their society shouldn't function, and negative fourteen does. It's like… Normal criminals don't want to attract police attention, so they usually try and keep things quiet? There were criminal gangs headed by supervillains.. but.. they weren't wrecking cities for fun or anything."

"Why did you join them?"

His expression sobers for a moment, then he snorts with laughter again. "Ultraman made me an offer I couldn't refuse."

"Hahehehehe." I shake my head. "How..? Exactly..?"

"On my first day, I got into a fight with a couple of his… They're called 'Made Men'. Supervillains who work for a member of the Syndicate Management. Then I went to see Alan Scott.. and.. he turned out to be a Yellow Lantern." He pauses, looking at the floor. "And that was when I found out exactly how much trouble I was in. Managed to.. square things with Ultraman-." Something occurs to him. "He wasn't like the comic version. He was actually an intelligent man."

"'Was'?"

"He's dead now, along with the rest of the old Management." He slumps slightly. "So… How about you?" He looks me over again. "Wait, how did you get two rings?"

"I took the second one-" I wave my right hand. "-from Lantern Stewart in a fight while he was being mind controlled. To be honest, the database was the most useful-."

"Y-! Uhrh!" He waves his right hand at me, ring signet facing outwards. "No database, no lantern. I had to hang around hopeful people on a planet that was nearly run by the Syndicate to recharge a couple of percent!"

"Wasn't there a 'Power Ring' in the Syndicate?"

"Yes, but he had a power.. gauntlet.. thing. No database there either. Not that I think he'd have shared it if there was. He was already annoyed about me using the same name as him."

I nod. "I had an easier time. Once Alan had a chance to talk to me, he called Diana… Wonder Woman. I took a magic binding oath and he handed over his personal lantern. Took a lot of power to turn it from green to orange, but I haven't had to deal with… Your problem."

"Even if I could transform it, I'm pretty sure my Alan wouldn't be willing to part with his. Especially now."

"Zorina said that your Giovanni Zatara put on a helmet containing a Lord of Chaos?" He nods. "Why?"

"Why did yours do it? I don't remember anything about Nabu possessing people from the comics."

"Neither do I, but apparently that's how he works here. It was… You know that thing in the comics where that child somehow gets hold of a genie and makes it so there are two Earths, one with children and one with adults?"

"I did do some research. He put it on to fight.. Klarion?"

"No. Zatanna did. He offered himself as an exchange."

He frowns. "Why didn't he just… Not put it on?"

I close my eyes for a moment and shake my head. "Honour before reason. And before you ask, Klarion had shut down this ring so I couldn't stop him. Why did your Giovanni Zatara put it on?"

"Why the Don put it on goes back to-."

"Wait. Don Giovanni?"

He waits patiently for me to shut up. "The reason he put it on goes back to the whole reason why the Syndicate formed in the first place. Governor Slade Wilson."

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Doppelgänger 14

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5th February

03:52 GMT -11

"Deathstroke the Terminator became a Governor?"

"Is he actually called that here?"

"What? Oh, no, just 'Deathstroke'. Haven't actually met him yet. I mean, power ring, bloke with sword. Didn't really seem worth prioritising."

"Fricking unlimited charges…" Another quick look around the room. "Do you have.. chairs, or something?"

I deposit two comfy chairs out of subspace facing one another and we both sit. "Governor Wilson?"

"President Wilson these days." He pauses for a moment. "On Earth negative fourteen Sergeant Major Slade 'The Pacifier' Wilson went into politics after he was discharged from the American army." He waves his right hand in the direction of his right eye. "Honourably discharged." I nod. "He started out as an advisor to a couple of candidates, building up his support base within the Republican party before standing for office himself. His chosen platform was law and order."

"He went after the Syndicate?"

He shrugs. "What Syndicate? There was no Syndicate. Oh, there were supervillains. Criminal gangs, but.. they didn't cooperate much. Ultraman and Owlman openly hated each other. Their organisations used to spend more time fighting each other than they did fighting the Justice Underground. Ultraman got on better with J'edd J'arkus, but for the most part 'alpha dog' supervillains either fought each other or just avoided each other."

"So who was he going after?"

"The idea of the Syndicate. I mean, I'm not saying they were harmless or anything, but things were running like Ankh-Morpork. Most gangs intentionally kept their activity below a certain level and the police tended to avoid them because trying to fight them would have been suicide. Wilson pushed for almost unlimited resources to be put into fighting.. 'the Syndicates of super powered criminals which beset this great country…' He won the election-."

"And the 'not Syndicate' didn't.. get involved?"

"I don't know if the local supervillains didn't think he'd win, or they tried and it wasn't enough… No way to find out now. Ultraman's people were keeping an eye on things, but it was Vermont and he didn't have any real presence there. I don't know what the others thought of it. Anyway, he didn't quite go full police state but it wasn't far off. A load of ex-military people got hired on as state troopers and every incident of supervillainy got followed up on with maximum force."

"Not.. exactly.. seeing the problem."

"The military aren't exactly trained for police work. Look at our Iraq. Deaths of bystanders, false imprisonment, imprisonment without trial and deaths in custody skyrocketed. And that's not even talking about the collateral damage or the massively disproportionate sentences some things attracted. Selling a supervillain an apple was aiding and abetting. He did achieve his objective, though. There aren't any supervillains in Vermont anymore. Even now." A pause. "His next step was to campaign for more states to take the same approach, a campaign which involved him openly calling anyone who turned him down 'Syndicate stooges'. Well, okay, he didn't say 'stooges'. He used.. other words. Things came to a head when he announced his candidacy for the two thousand and four presidential election."

"The supervillains saw the way things were going and.. got together."

He nods. "Ultraman called a meeting of the major gang leaders: Owlman, Superwoman, Johnny Quick, Power Ring and J'edd J'arkus. A bunch of others attended as well, but they were the ones making the decisions. They agreed territorial boundaries, information sharing and other forms of cooperation. Ultraman and Owlman even shook hands."

"Why did they hate each other so much?"

"Owlman found out about kryptonite. Green doesn't do anything to Ultraman, but blue wipes him out."

"And he used it on him in a fight?"

"No. He tipped off our Lex Luthor and he did. Never did find out why; Ultraman's policy was always to deal rather than confront as a first choice. He wouldn't have started anything with Owlman." He shakes his head. "After that, LexCorp grabbed as much of the stuff as it could. They got pretty close to synthesising it before Ultraman had his people wreck the place."

"So. Wilson created the Syndicate."

"Yep. Just about the only thing that could make them get together was an external attack on all of them. I don't know whether he honestly thought they were allies already or he just needed it for a platform, but by the time he was in the White House they were already integrating their resources. Profitability -and ambition- increased as a result. Johnny Quick actually proposed they toast Wilson at the start of their first meeting in their new lunar command centre."

"Did they kill him?"

"No. His wife. And they told him they'd kill his daughter if he went after them like he'd planned to. That was a.. major escalation and.. it could have gone very badly. Ultraman can do a lot of damage; you remember that guy in Supreme Power who tried to work out how dangerous Hyperion was and started talking about megadeaths?" I nod. "But he isn't invulnerable and he's never been comfortable with mass murder. I honestly don't know who'd have won if Wilson hadn't backed down, but there wouldn't have been much country left. But, he did. By the time I got there things had settled back down. Wilson even got re-elected, mostly because the Democratic party candidates in two thousand and eight got told what was really going on and barely bothered to campaign."

"What were you doing?"

"Rushing around trying to prove the efficacy of running a benevolent tyranny, because as far as I could tell? That was the best result we could get." He sighs. "The most likely candidates for two thousand and twelve were all on board with the status quo, the Syndicate was expanding into new countries… Then it all fell apart. Lex Luthor and the Jester broke into-."

"Who?"

"The Joker. He ended up being called the Jester rather than the Jokester for some reason, I don't know how it works. The two of them broke into a Syndicate research centre, stole something called a Quantum Trigger and fled. Jester died, but he managed to kill J'arkus doing it. Luthor made it out and used the Quantum Trigger to travel to a parallel universe-."

"And call in the Justice League."

"Ye-ep. There was some other stuff going on as well. Owlman was building a giant bomb.. for some reason…" He shakes his head. "That never made sense to me. Anyway, Luthor and the League beat the Management, killing Johnny Quick and Owlman. Wilson got the rest a few weeks later. Beat Ultraman to death himself with a crowbar."

"So you're.. hiding?"

"I don't need to hide. Getting rid of the Management didn't suddenly make the Syndicate disappear. Each individual syndicate had people around who could take over running it if they had to, and… Quite a few of them went for the 'open warfare' option."

"And the Justice League?"

"Already left." He shrugs again. "Job done, right?"

"So, your Zatara?"

"He tried to get a few other less mental managers together, calm things down. Since I was running the youth team at the time I got called in. We were starting to bring the other syndicates around to our way of thinking. We even told the President that we wanted to ease off. Back down. At which point he went on television to announce that we'd be pursued to the end of the Universe and killed without mercy."

"Well, yes."

"The Super family were turning Wisconsin into a war zone! He was more worried about his bloody ego than people getting hurt! Mister Zatara lost a lot of face even trying that. With the President publically rebuking him… Us… People started drifting away. Arming up. And we were still the best hope for limiting casualties!" He takes a moment to calm down. "Our John Constantine managed to dig up a magic helmet used by a member of the Crime Lodge -our version of the Justice Society- called Doctor Chaos."

"He needed a power boost to keep things together and ended up getting..."

"A fucking lunatic controlling his body. Chaos is intelligent enough to try keeping Syndicate infrastructure together, but he's been having us destroy government targets in a precise way rather than making the attacks of opportunity the others are doing. It's just.. escalating. Running out of control. We need to get rid of him before it gets any worse. Will you help us?"

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Doppelgänger 15

next

5th February

03:57 GMT -11

"I'm going to want some sort of evidence before I even-."

He takes a datastick from his belt. "A few newspapers. Syndicate internal reports. Videos. Yes, I could have faked them it but it would have taken a colossal amount of work."

I connect a filament to it and pull it out of his hand. Ring, analyse.

Processing. Analysis complete.

Show me.

My hands clench around the arms of my chair as the images flash through my mind. I'm not consciously aware of individual items but I am getting a sort of overview, like flicking between a series of images and seeing the object depicted moving. The shape certainly suggests he's telling the truth. I can hand it over to Batman for full analysis later. Of course, even if they are genuine that doesn't mean that the collection wasn't creatively edited.

How much do I trust myself? I know that I'm not an especially honest person and this me has spent a great deal of time living around supervillains. I doubt that brought out my better character traits. I close my eyes for a moment, then open them with empathic vision turned up all the way.

Anger's vague and diffuse. A lot of faces. Feels like day to day problems magnified by stress. Wilson's intransigence is a factor but it isn't a centre or focus.

Avarice is pervasive, but again not particularly strong. Friends and safety. I don't think he's had the resources to pursue his own objectives in the way I have. There's envy there, some sort of flying fortification… That can't be an efficient use of space. I can't see any desire to gain power to advance an agenda of his own, let alone doing so for its own sake.

Fear is spikier, shooting up from an elevated resting level. The President, the people around him, the idea that my opposite number has misjudged something and is actually in the wrong. He's constantly surrounded by people who could easily kill him, many of whom have motive to do so. Will he have misjudged? Maybe, but his judgements aren't going to be all that different to the ones which I'd have made in his place.

Those faces…

"You said you were in charge of the youth team."

"The Young Offenders. I didn't.. pick the name. Ultraboy, Talon, Mary Mayhem, Jackie Quick, Mistress Martian, Zorina Zatara, Arrowette and Lamprey. I don't lead them on missions; Ultraboy does that. I organise them, take care of the big picture stuff and keep food in the fridge."

He's become a parental figure to a group of children who just lost theirs.

Green is simple enough. He's committed to this path. If I say no then he'll try something else somewhere else for as long as he can.

"Ultraboy and Ultraman? How well did they get on?"

His blue is different to mine but I think he's trying to use it in the same way. He genuinely hopes for a positive outcome, the Syndicate quietening down and President Wilson resigning. I don't.. do that. Heck, we're sitting in an example of me giving up on people and doing it myself. Maybe hope is what's left after you remove the ability to do it yourself.

"They were very close, for the few months they actually knew each other. When Talon, Mayhem and Quick broke him out of Cadmus, Ultraman… Ultraman told me later that he had two choices to maintain face. He could kill the clone, or take him in. Claim him as his own." He shrugs. "He'd had some people investigating how possible it was for him to have children for a while. He said it was an easy choice."

"Talon would be Owlman's. Jackie, Johnny's. I'm assuming that J'arkus was Martian?" He nods. "Zorina is obviously Mister Zatara's. Lamprey?"

Indigo shows me his team mates most clearly. They wouldn't have known a life other than being supervillains and now they're having to thrive or die without their mentors. And.. a short, red haired young woman? There's also compassion for the people caught up in the fights between the Syndicate's volatile elements and the US military.

"Student of Barracuda, Shogun of the Seven Seas. Aquaman."

Aqualad. "Arrowette?"

"Oliver Queen. He's called Archer. Was, anyway, he's dead now."

"Mary Mayhem?"

Violet? Looks like there's no Missus Blue Lantern. Given how intense our recent experiences are it's not surprising that our affection for our family back home has.. not faded, but moved to the background somewhat. His affection for Zorina feels like the same as mine for Zatanna, though I doubt mine has that tint of fear to it. I turn the vision back down to normal.

"Superwoman's. Superwoman isn't Wonder Woman, she's our version of Mary Marvel."

"Our Mary Bloomfield's ten…"

"Yeah, I.. don't really know what happened there."

"Does she age up when she's under power like William Batson does, or what?"

He gazes into space for a moment. "Superwoman… I don't know. I never saw her depowered. I don't know exactly how old she was. I.. do know that she was in a relationship with Owlman…"

Ew! My face screws up without conscious direction. "Oh… That's… Really?"

He's still gazing into space. "He killed hundreds of people that I know about. But there's just something about him knowingly having sex with a shapeshifted little girl…"

"So… Mary Mayhem..?"

"The way she explained it to me, they used to be the same person but.. Oggar did something to split them in two?"

"Who?"

"The wizard who empowered them. I don't know if we had a Shazam and I haven't really wanted to push it. She very much doesn't like me. Or.. anyone else."

"Okay. Yes, I'll help. But only with Doctor Chaos."

"I'm not just asking for help. We'll be sharing information."

I nod, take a Mageslayer round out of subspace and hold it out to him. I don't really like just asking for help either. "I call this a Mageslayer. I use railgun constructs to fire them. They'll destroy most magic based defences and hurt magic life forms."

He takes it. "Thank you, but the design schematic would be far more useful. Our John Constantine isn't a street magician, he's a genius level theoretical thaumaturgist. Reverse engineering this would be far simpler than asking you for replacements."

I flick my left hand and a mote of orange light flies from the ring to his. "Designs for the Mageslayer, as well as a guide to producing orichalcum and mithril."

"Olympia will appreciate that. She keeps saying that our steel isn't good enough."

"Who?"

"Our Wonder Woman."

I nod. "I've also included the design for my protective wards. They're very effective."

"I appreciate it. Here." A mote of blue comes back in the other direction. "That's a design for a magic energy containment unit. We haven't quite worked out all the problems yet, but in theory it should allow energy to be siphoned from a Lord of Whatever and kept isolated from them. You still need to work out how to cut them off from the Plane of Order-."

"Or how to drain them faster than they can replenish their avatar."

He looks thoughtful for a moment. "… Maybe? I'm not sure it works like that."

I drop a binding chain out of subspace. "This can tie a Lord of Whatever in place and deny them access to their magic."

"Really? How come you haven't used it?"

"Doesn't let me get Nabu off Mister Zatara's head. We tried that at New Year. And I don't want to have to fight the-. Our Justice League over this."

He stands up and slings the chain over his shoulder. "Feel like I've short changed you a bit. I'll get our John to have a look at your designs and see if he can improve on them. If he can, I'll let you know."

"Sounds fair. Now let's head back."

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Doppelgänger 16

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5th February

10:02 GMT -5

We appear on the roof of the Kord Tech building. For very good reasons relating to its exposed location this one doesn't loudly announce everyone who comes through it. Come to think of it… I'm not all that clear why the League decided to have their zeta tubes do that. I'm not really sure when it would ever be useful.

"How many other parallels have you tried so far?"

"None. I had to recover the designs for the planeshifter-."

"Good name."

"Thanks. Luthor just called it the 'Trans-Dimensional Teleporter Device'."

"But that's not what a dimension-."

"I know! Um, from the Watchtower and Lex Luthor's sky fortress, both of which were occupied by the American military at the time." I see a flash of red illuminating the image of a young woman smashing something important looking.

"I'd rather assumed that there wouldn't be any other versions of us. Given where we come from."

"So had I."

"Well. Yes."

He snorts. "Could be that we don't come from the same place? Or… I don't know, maybe we left and then.. split? I.. don't have enough information at the moment."

"Can you say our-"

"Name!" / "-name?"

We shake our heads. "I'll take that as a 'no'."

He turns away and walks towards the edge of the building. "It's strange, standing out in the open like this. Couldn't risk it back home."

"We should probably be getting back. Do you want me to.. carry you? Or-."

"What do you actually.. do?" I turn down the corners of my mouth and shake my head. "I mean, are you youth team manager, the same as me? Are you a Justice League member? Or.. what?"

Ohh… Great. "I'm a member of the team."

"What?"

I tilt my head slightly to the right, my right hand going to my forehead. "I look younger than.. we are. When I got here, they.. assumed that I was in my teens."

"Did..? You.. didn't.. correct them?"

"I didn't realise they thought that until after I'd been with the team for a while."

He looks at me incredulously. "You didn't spot that they were all younger than you?"

"Of course I did. I just thought.. they didn't have anyone my age to train."

"Ooo-kay."

"Diana was going to try sending me to the local school until I told her I was eighteen. I'm not sure I could have convinced the others that I'm our real age."

"Did you tell anyone about.. DC?"

"Our John Constantine. No one else. You?"

"No. I mean, how would I even start?"

"John asked me. He couldn't explain where I got my information from."

"I don't think our John even realised that Mister Zatara was a mob boss."

"Did they only meet recently?"

"No, about twenty years ago. John's had a workshop in the compound for fifteen of that."

"Full on absent minded professor?"

"Oooh yes." He checks the position of the sun and then looks in the direction of Alan's house. "Not that this isn't fascinating, but we should get back. I don't like leaving Zorina to her own devices for long."

"Do you want me to transport you?"

He nods. "Please. I don't have enough charge that I can waste it when I don't have to."

"Transition in, two, one-" Our surroundings skip and we're standing in Alan's garden. "Zero."

"Did it take you long to get it that smooth?"

"Not once I realised it had an unsmooth mode."

He snorts. "I suppose that being able to practise whenever you like helps."

I peer through the kitchen windows. "How fast does your ring actually recharge?"

"Too slowly. Intense personal hope gives me half a percent or so if I'm right next to the person feeling it. Fans of evenly matched sport teams will give me three or four percent if I stay for the whole match. First time I went back to one hundred percent was after President Wilson went on national television to announce that the Management had been defeated."

"What are you on now?"

"Twenty three percent. That was a very.. hectic period." He heads towards the back door.

"For future meetings with versions of us, I strongly suggest not attacking their friends and allies."

He stops with his right hand on the handle. "Zorina would only accept opening negotiations from a position of strength. Ambushing your Alan Scott was the least risky thing I could think of." He looks down for a moment. "Could you..? Apologise to him for me? I'm used to not being able to do what I'd ideally like, but I don't.. want to get used to it. To accept it without comment."

I nod. "I'll pass it on."

"Thank you." He turns the handle, opens the door and walks through into the kitchen. "Zorina?" Through the open interior door I see Zorina stride out of the living room door. She looks at the other me, her face impassive save for the slight raising of her right eyebrow. "My alter ego has been kind enough to share some useful information with me. Is there anything else you want to do while we're here?"

Zatanna sticks her head out of the door behind her. I make eye contact and raise my eyebrows slightly. She doesn't.. look worried.

"No. We're finished here." She turns her head back towards the living room. "Thank you for your hospitality, Mister Scott. We'll see ourselves out." Head tilted slightly upwards she walks past the two of us and out into the garden.

The Blue Lantern nods. "Well. Goodbye. Best of luck." I nod and he follows the young woman out. They take up a position in the middle of the lawn before he takes a gun shaped device out of his subspace pocket and holds it up to fiddle with the controls. Ring scan.

Compliance.

A moment later he puts his left arm across Zorina's shoulder and pulls the trigger. Two dimensional purple.. echoes? Of the two of them appear to their left and right for a moment and then disappear as they do.

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Doppelgänger 17

next

5th February

10:14 GMT -5

"Diana, is this really necessary?" Alan's sitting in his chair with his head tilted to the side so that Diana can see the burn on his neck.

"Yes."

The temperature dropped back down to normal once Zorina and my alter ego left. That probably means that Zauriel went with them. I'd rather not, but I think I'm going to have to start taking the Ace places with me. Or at least store it somewhere more readily accessible than Poseidonis.

"Paul already gave me a clean bill of health. And put-" He winces as Diana prods it. "-ointment on it."

"Do you have enough ring power to heal yourself?"

"It's not that serious." She gives him a look of scepticism. "I've had worse."

"When you were a much younger man."

"Diana? He should be alright, and I'd… I'd really rather he not use ring charge unnecessarily. It should heal by itself-"

"I know how burns heal."

"-when he does his weekly top up. This isn't the first small injury he's had since-" I realise that I'm doing the 'talking to the carer and not the patient' thing. "-we started rationing Alan's use of his ring."

Alan holds his hands out to the side in a gesture of appeal. "Diana. It's a scratch. The blade didn't even go through my skin."

She doesn't look happy, but it looks like she's willing to drop the matter for now. She looks over to where Zatanna and I sit on the settee. "This was done by versions of the two of you from a parallel universe."

Zatanna nods. "Zorina Zatara and Blue Lantern."

"And they were supervillains."

Zatanna and I look at each other for a moment. "Kind of." / "There's a range of..." Wish we'd had more time to come up with a unified version of events.

"He told me that they were trying to minimise the collateral damage caused by the Syndicate retrenching. Based on the files he gave me and what I saw with empathic vision I don't think he was lying… Much."

She looks concerned. "You gave your technical files to a supervillain?"

"If they can convert what's left of the Syndicate to legitimate businesses, isn't that better than having them fight to the death with the Federal Government?"

"If that is really the only alternative, yes. I would have preferred it if you had called me in to confirm his story myself."

"He doesn't have a good relationship with their version of 'you'."

Alan sits up slightly. "But he does with me? How does that work?"

"Their Alan Scott is a scary retired supervillain who operated under the name 'Power Ring'. He has a yellow power ring. It gets more powerful-."

"The more people fear him." Diana nods. "Sinestro uses a similar device."

"As I understand it, Sinestro's ring was made on Qward-" Information I can credibly claim that I got from Guy. "-about eight years ago." I glance at Alan. "Capo Alan 'Al' Scott-."

Alan looks slightly amused. "He really calls himself that?"

"Ultraman did. According to a report I've got he once openly ruled New York for three months, along with Slipstream and-" I look at Diana. "Olympia."

Alan nods. "Ruled New York, eh? Bet Jay would get a kick out of that. And I'm glad to know it's not just me."

"Point is, if his ring came from the same place then it got made decades ago. If the Qwardians have been able to make rings for that long, why haven't they?"

Diana thinks for a moment. "We have no way to know that it's the same Qward."

"I was scanning them when they disappeared. Of course, I don't have any real data on parallel universes to compare it to. I didn't detect any Bleed energy. If I scanned Sinestro's ring I could probably compare them."

"Let us hope that it never comes to that." According to Justice League files Sinestro has visited Earth twice since his fall from grace. No significant collateral damage on either occasion. No one has ever accused Thaal Sinestro of lacking mental focus. There were some recordings but none of them were of high enough quality to get a good idea of how he fights. What I could see appeared to be fairly orthodox Greenie style. He was doing it well but none of it was anything one of the locals couldn't do on a good day.

Alan nods at me. "You got a picture of the other guy in there?"

Do I? Yes, from when he started getting involved in Syndicate activity again after something the documents call 'The Decapitation'. There's no scale, but if I assume that he's as tall as our Alan… I generate a construct image.

I'm not sure what I was expecting, other than perhaps a direct copy of Alan in his prime. I mean, this version never gave up his personal lantern and according to Ultraman never stopped wearing his ring. He isn't. He's thinner, as if he's had some strange all over liposuction. The muscle's all there, the skin's.. tight, but the impression is of a well preserved and unusually vital corpse. His hair's a little thinner than our Alan's was, though there's not much in it now. According to the file it's completely white rather than the still-fading blonde ours has.

"Can you print me a color picture?" Alan points at his alter ego. "I want to be able to look at it whenever I feel under the weather, so I know it could have been a lot worse."

Diana nods. "His power is determined by how feared he is and it appears that he depends on the yellow light as you do the green. If his retirement meant that he stopped being so widely feared, it would makes sense that his physical condition would deteriorate."

"So I've got that to look forward to. Thanks Diana, that makes me feel a lot better."

Diana turns away from the image and back to me. "Do you believe that these people will be a threat to us in the future?"

"Maybe? There are an awful lot of parallel universes out there. They might come back, but I-."

Diana's eyes suddenly unfocus and she raises her right hand to her ear. "Wonder Woman. Go ahead." Well, she is a busy woman. "Yes, they're here now. Understood." She refocuses on me. "A force field has been erected around the LexCorp building in Metropolis."

"That's their siege protocol. Any idea what triggered it?"

"According to a message the League received shortly before it went up, the people who claim to have activated it also say that they are holding the staff hostage."

"Any demands?"

"Yes. They gave us a list of people they'll let through the barrier. They say that once they're inside they'll release the hostages."

"Political prisoners?"

"No. Your team. They also say that if we attempt to breach the force field they'll start killing hostages."

"I assume that we're going in?"

"The voice on the message was almost identical to Kon's voice, and its owner identified himself as 'Ultraboy'." She looks decidedly unamused. "It appears that you overestimated your alter ego's trustworthiness."

Ah. Looks like. "In his defence sir, he didn't say they weren't going to attack LexCorp."

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Doppelgänger 18

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5th February

10:37 GMT -5

The ovoid dome of the force field really looks quite impressive from ground level. The dead birds littering the boundary between 'inside' and 'outside' on both sides do rather distract from it somewhat. It's mostly transparent with only a slight shimmer in the air as the wind stresses it.

"You really had no idea this was here?"

Corporal Jase shakes his head as he continues to stare up at the building as well. "Not much call for regulation on privately owned force fields. Even less for ones you don't turn on."

The Metropolis Special Crimes Unit turned up pretty sharpish after the barrier was activated, but with nothing appearing to happen they've gone off 'emergency deployment' mode. There's a team mostly equipped with my gear a little way back in case they have to help storm the place but Jase told me that they're basically assuming that the League has this.

He looks away from the building to give me a mildly curious look. "You know who's in there?"

I nod. "I know LexCorp's roster for today and I've got a list of people who called in sick or who got out when the attack started."

"Nah, I meant…" He flicks his right forefinger in the direction of the tower. "Who's in there. Who it is that's doin' this."

Thanks to Lex getting the place warded, not as much as I'd like. I could get my lantern and scan in detail but I've got no idea how long that would take. Simple optic scans are getting baffled by tactical curtain pulling. "We've got a fairly good idea, but I'd like to confirm it before saying anything definite."

He nods. "Alright. So who's probably the lucky son of a bitch about to be on the receiving end of a Justice League beatdown?"

"Alternate versions of certain League sidekicks who've come here from a parallel universe."

He looks at me with incredulity, which gives way to something I can't readily identify. He looks away and shakes his head. "Why do I fucking ask?"

"Possible match found."

I hold up my right hand. "Fabricate."

Orange light dances around my palm as a small bluey purple crystal forms. So many isomers, so little time.

"What's that?"

Best colour match? "Periwinkle kryptonite."

"Say what?"

"Kryptonite comes in a wide variety of isomers. Each one affects Kryptonian physiology in slightly different ways. I hadn't really put much thought into utilising it before…"

"You telling me there's a Kryptonian in there?"

"Never hurts to be prepared. Ring, log and keep trying." The periwinkle-coloured crystal evaporates as the ring resumes its calculations. Kryptonite is both radioactive and really complicated. To make matters worse I think it's some sort of metamaterial. Not every molecular structure that should be stable actually is. I've had to have the ring brute force it.

"Compliance."

"Hey, Oh.. range Lantern." Both of us look around as Wallace walks over, goggles in place and game face on.

"Everyone here?" He nods. "Excuse me, Corporal." He goes back to watching the building as Wallace and I head towards the building on the other side of the road that is serving as a muster point.

Wallace looks around quickly to make sure that no one's in earshot. "Are they really versions of us from another dimension?"

"No, from a parallel universe."

"S-weet!"

"How is that 'sweet'?"

"Jay had that Doctor Clariss guy, Flash's got Eobard Thawne and now I get a Reverse-Flash!"

"Actually, he calls himself 'Jackie Quick'."

"Eh, the news will call him whatever we call him. Plus, the only people at risk work for Luthor anyway."

"That's… Impressively ruthless of you."

"I don't want them to get hurt or anything, but if someone's going to, I'd rather it was-" He pushes open the door. "-someone working for a supervillain, rather than some random guy on the street."

I look around the café. Batman and Superman are standing with Commissioner Henderson and Captain Sawyer looking over a plan of the LexCorp building's interior. Captain Sawyer is head of the Special Crimes Unit and my help so far qualifies me for a greeting nod before she returns her attention to the task at hand.

A couple of other police officers are hanging around for reasons entirely unrelated to the opportunity to stare at founding members of the Justice League. Just hope they have the sense not to ask Batman for a selfie…

"Everyone's upstairs. Come on." Wallace leads the way out through a side door and to a staircase leading up to the offices over the shop.

"Did.. Marvel actually get..?"

"Wonder Woman vetoed it. And.. I kinda agree with her? Captain Marvel's one thing but Marvel Girl doesn't get older when she changes. I know Rob started training with Batman when he was nine but… She's eleven. Rob wasn't doing real missions at that age and I… I don't think she should either."

"That, and you haven't trained with her."

"Exactly."

"That does mean that you'll be one short."

He stops on the landing. "Wait. You're not coming in?"

"You heard the message. Anyone not on the list shows up, they start killing hostages. Zatanna and I already met our alter egos and we had a perfectly civilised conversation."

"Was your guy some sort of giant mutant who'd used every super potion he could get hold of to get more and more super powers, but he became less and less Human every time until he was just this big ugly monster?"

What? Where did that come from? "No, he looked.. like an older version of me. Why would you even think that?"

"I could just sort of see a villain version of you going for power. You know, rather than helping people like you do." He leads the way towards the room the team are waiting in. "He have a power ring?"

"Yes. Blue, though he didn't have a personal lantern and had to recharge it from ambient hope."

"Possible match found."

Wallace opens the door and I follow him inside, nodding to Kaldur as I raise my right hand again. "Fabricate."

Light dances again as a pale blue crystal appears. Got you.

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Doppelgänger 19

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5th February

10:51 GMT -5

Robin stares at the construct image of Talon again, then shakes his head. "It doesn't make any sense. Owlman must be at least as smart as Batman. What does he think he can gain by sending a nine year old out into the field?"

"According to the records I have, Ultraman thought that Owlman just wanted to see what the implants did. It's not as if he was actually invested in Talon's wellbeing."

Wallace rests his right elbow companionably on Robin's left shoulder. "Y'know, when even the other crazy supervillains think you're crazy, you might just have a problem."

Kaldur looks away from the force field for a moment. "Nothing in the files which Orange Lantern's opposite number provided him suggests that the Managers of the Syndicate were insane."

The people who will actually be going in -Robin, Kaldur, Wallace, Kon, M'gann and Artemis- are standing next to the barrier with the rest of us a little further away. We did discuss trying to see if they'd allow Donna as a substitute for Mary Bromfield, but the balance of opinion was that it wasn't worth risking it. Kon's forsaken the tabard he usually wears with his Nth Metal armour and is shooting slightly nervous glances down the street to where journalists lurk behind the police cordon.

Officially, we're here because the crazies in the building have asked for us. No mention at all of us being a team or a unit with more association than that implied by our mentors' fellowship. Not sure anyone believes it… We pretty much got away with Aberrance because no one had time to take note of exactly who it was fighting the giant monster. Here, we're out in the open in a major city. For most of us that isn't really a problem; if Batman cared about the flak he gets from several places over Robin's obvious youth he doesn't show it and the rest of us appear old… Most of my other team mates appear old enough that their presence doesn't provoke the same immediate reaction. M'gann and Kon on the other hand haven't gone out into the public eye in their costumed identities before. It's hard to mistake a green woman for anything other than a Martian, but Kon is going to be something of a mystery. Without the tabard the 'S' on the dull grey metal of his breastplate is hard to make out from a distance: but even so, questions none of us really want to answer are going to be asked.

Speaking of Kon… I pass Robin and Wallace pieces of blue kryptonite. "According to my opposite number, Kryptonians from universe negative fourteen hate this stuff."

Wallace takes it gingerly. "Not all that keen on carrying around radioactive rock, Oh El."

Artemis snatches the crystal off him and puts it in one of her pouches. "Kryptonite works by messing up Kryptonian superpowers. It's only weakly radioactive. You'd have to keep hold of it for years for it to do anything to you."

"Top of the class that archer. " I take another bit out of subspace for Wallace. "Don't know what this does to our Kryptonians, which is why Superman's talking to the press rather than watching the building right now."

"And.. what about..?" Wallace glances at Kon.

"I've given him two anti-radiation energy shields, the sort worn by people from spacefaring civilisations who spend a lot of time in space outside their ship's hull. Not powerful enough to stop an attack, but it'll stop kryptonite radiation without any problem at all."

Kaldur looks a little puzzled. "If such devices exist, why have you not given one to Superman?"

"He hasn't asked." I shrug. "Any of the Green Lanterns could have given one to him. Or the Hawks." I frown. "Come to think of it, I'd be surprised if Kryptonians didn't use something like this themselves when they used to be spacefaring. Maybe he just doesn't run into kryptonite often enough for it to be worthwhile?"

**Uninvited. Get back.**

We all wince. Guess.. that was Mistress Martian. Her mental voice was.. sort of like M'gann's, but I don't think I'd ever mistake one for the other. Definite sinister undertones there. I give Kaldur a nod and then walk away from the mission group towards the remainder of the team. Batman, Diana and Icon are in their own little huddle off to one side. Now we're just waiting-.

The shimmer stops.

Kaldur dons his helmet and takes a two-handed grip on his trident. Having changed his speciality from melee to close support he doesn't usually lead from the front anymore. To say nothing of the fact that Robin and Artemis are now more durable than he is. He says something I can't hear and M'gann rises into the air and goes invisible while Kon leads the way towards the building's doors.

There are things I could probably do to prevent the force field being re-established. But that would risk the hostages. Scanning the building -Ring? Ah.- is also less than effective due to Lex's anti-Superman and… Let's be honest here, anti-me measures. Which isn't to say that three dimensional infrared imaging isn't letting me get a much better picture of what's going on in there.

Ring, is it working?

Unable to determine. Bleed fracture pulse receivers are almost impossible- The force field reappears. -to monitor remotely.

Good to know. Alright then; message. I turn away from the building in case of long ranged lip readers. "Staff appear to be being held on the cafeteria in floor five with smaller numbers being held on floors eleven, fifteen, twenty two and in Lex's penthouse. I can't tell the difference between hostages and hostage takers with the techniques available to me, unless you want to wait a couple of days."

Raquel folds her arms across her chest. "You sure they can hear-?"

"Understood. Continue monitoring."

"If Lex had access to technology that could stop a Bleed fracture-pulse receiver he wouldn't bother butting heads with the Justice League."

Donna nods. "What about the… 'Young Offenders'?"

"Outside chance, but we're rather relying on them being true to their word about the hostages anyway. And I didn't detect any sign of Bleed radiation-" An inexact term for what it actually is. If they'd actually gone through the Bleed local physics should have more or less broken in a molecule wide area around the event. Not sure what that actually looks like… "-when Blue Lantern and Zorina left, so I'm assuming that they don't have better Bleed technology than.. most advanced species in this galaxy."

"Should I be…" Rob looks a little uncomfortable. "It sounds weird..? But… No evil Cornwall Boy? Should I be.. insulted?"

Garth shakes his head. "More likely he just wasn't associated with the Syndicate. Their version of King Orin wasn't a member either."

"Until recently. They've been on a membership drive to try and create a new Management. Their Orin was the force behind the unification of the Atlantean city-states which had been more or less constantly at war with one another since the Sinking."

Zatanna looks at me. "Are we really just going to sit this one out?"

"No. But we do need to wait until our team mates engage the enemy before we make our move." I make a beckoning gesture and the others close in slightly. "Lex has any number of tunnels running under the building and a lot of them don't show up on the plans."

Tula nods. "But he showed them to you because he trusts you."

"No, I just scanned for them. I mean, come on: it's Lex flipping Luthor."

Raquel points at the access point. "Doesn't the force field cover the underground stuff?"

"No. Each of these tunnels has its own independent system. The main shield is meant to protect the building during an evacuation, it would be a bit pointless if people couldn't get out while it was up. I've also studied the force field design and I'm pretty sure I can create an opening without collapsing it completely and setting off an alert. We can get in without anyone being any the wiser. " I turn my head to take another look at the tower. "Just as soon as the majority of the hostages are freed."

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Doppelgänger 20

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5th February

11:14 GMT -5

"And you just.. let him go?"

Raquel is less than impressed by my handling of Blue Lantern.

"Yes."

"He just told you he was a supervillain."

I don't remember which comic it was. Superman/Batman somethingorother? Doctor Isley was mind controlling Superman and Batman ended up hiding in LexCorp tunnels under Metropolis. Lead lined, because Lex used them to transport things he didn't want Superman to be able to find out about. I don't think they're used in quite that way here, but they are certainly spacious enough. And the escape tunnel excuse could cover a variety of sins.

"And?" I have the ring check on the evacuation process around the Tower. 'True to their word' may have been pushing it, but the majority of the hostages were dispatched towards the exit once my team mates survived their first encounter with LexCorp's automated security.

"You could have arrested him?"

"If Green Lantern had been seriously hurt I might well have done that. As it was, he hadn't committed a serious crime on this Earth."

"But on his world-."

"A world I have no reliable information on." Sonic scans of the corridor reveal another set of cameras and defence systems. More advanced scans are being turned aside and I don't want to push too hard in case there's some sort of alert system. Would Lamprey be able to feel it if I did? Ah, assuming that he's a magic user of the same sort as Kaldur, shouldn't assume that he is… Or isn't.

I hold up my right hand for stop and have the filaments start digging into the lead lined concrete. "Even if I was sure of the data he gave me -and I'm not- this United States can't try crimes that happened in that one." I smile under my faceplate and turn slightly so I'm facing her. "I checked."

Guns deactivated and sensors spoofed. I turn back into our direction of travel and Donna comes up alongside me. "He told you he was working with the Young Offenders. He almost certainly knew what they were planning."

"He only brought Zorina to the meeting. His reports describe the others as violent and truculent, if not as out and out psychotic. While I strongly suspect they're working together on this, that isn't necessarily the case."

"And if the two of them are in there with the others?"

"LexCorp in their parallel was taken back into Lex Luthor's control after the Decapitation and their transportation device doesn't cause them to change physical location. If he wanted to join in my alter ego would have to either infiltrate a highly secure building or get in through the force field."

"Or he…" Zatanna hesitates for a moment and then presses on. "They could just go to a different parallel universe, go in with a tour group and then travel back."

…

I continue walking. "Ac-tually, that makes quite a lot of sense. An unpopulated world would be better…"

"Do we need to warn Kaldur?"

Good question, Garth. "No. He already knows that it's possible, and knowing that they could have done it isn't the same as knowing that they did. They've got Spell Eaters and they know how I fight." But if they're not restricted… "Everyone saw my recording of what the shift looks like?"

"Yes." / "Yeah." / "Yes." / "Yes." / "Yes."

"If you see anything like that, don't wait, just attack. They may well have a whole Syndicate's worth of resources to send our way."

"Or just one bomb."

Or just one bomb, Raquel. Ring, keep scanning for any phenomena resembling the planeshift.

Compliance.

"The records they showed me suggested that the device they used had a few very hard to create components, and my alter ego doesn't have a lantern so mass ring fabrication isn't something he can do. But yes, a bomb is a possibility. I've set the ring to scan for any sign that they're doing that."

We proceed down the tunnel further. Not all that much further now.

"Do we know why they're doing this?" Rob stops talking as he gets the group's attention for a moment, then presses on. "'Cause, they could steal stuff from LexCorp without letting anyone inside. They asked for our versions of them.. so.. is it just about proving who's the hardest?"

Donna frowns. "That seems like a lot of effort to go through."

"Supervillains."

A few faint smiles. Zatanna shakes her head. "But they were trained by you. Older.. you. Wouldn't you have told them not to do things like that?"

"I don't know how much control he actually has over them. Or if he actually cares what happens to them. He might just have said 'fine, amuse yourselves, but don't come crying to me if they beat you to a pulp'."

We come out of the tunnel into a junction, other tunnels going off to our left and right and one of the subterranean exits from the LexCorp building opposite from us. Heavily armoured vault doors capable of withstanding an assault from just about any conventional weapon with a shimmering force field between us and them. Ring, double check that the force field profile matches?

Confirmed.

Right then. The projector itself is on the far side and there are sensors in the walls. If I try digging in to run a filament around I'm not sure that I could prevent them reporting in. An orange circle appears in the centre of the energy barrier and then the shimmer disappears from inside it. Sonic scan the far side… Spoof the cameras.

"Aquagirl."

Water armour glistening in the faint light she walks forwards, bulbs of liquid around her hands ready to be manipulated to attack or defend. I expand the circle and lower it slightly so that she can step through. I've encouraged her to try a few types of surface world mundane armour and her current yellow/blue ensemble is the one she dislikes least. Maybe she'll be happier when we finally go into production with the mithril designs. She takes up position on the far side and her skin glows for a moment. "There isn't any significant magic here."

"Rocket." Raquel heads through next. She was alright about upgrading her armour, though she has so far passed on Danner augmentation. "Cornwall." If I can't pierce the door I might need him to force the issue. He isn't as skilled with magic as the Atlanteans but he isn't limited to water-friendly forms either. "Zatanna." She hasn't recovered fully from intentionally tiring herself out earlier this morning. I seriously considered asking her to stay behind, but we've trained in techniques for keeping squishy team mates safe and her sheer range of talents makes her very useful, especially since we don't know whether or not they've got a magic user. "Tempest." This will be the Atlanteans’ first mission on the surface as part of the team. Since I'm not expecting heavy resistance here this is probably a better place to start off than Santa Prisca was for us, though I am a little concerned that they might have felt excluded when I had them basically sit the spaceship mission out. Have to make sure they're more active participants this time.

With everyone through I cross the barrier myself and gently allow the force field to re-establish itself before turning my attention to the door. Ring, full scan.

Compliance.

It has pressure and temperature sensors but they don't run throughout the whole thing. "Tempest, Aquagirl, any magic tripwires in the door?"

The tattoos on their skin glow for a moment, then Tula looks at me and shakes her head. I attach clamps at my preferred entry points on the door and jab at them with mini-crumblers. This shouldn't take too long.

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Doppelgänger 21

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5th February

11:26 GMT -5

Ah…

Heck.

A brilliant red beam of light cuts through Tula's ice barrier, but she's already using her water armour to throw herself aside. The flying stealth drone gun which fired it tries to evade but Garth has already surrounded it in electrically charged mist. Rob throws his hands forwards and the cloud and gun both explode with electricity.

If I concentrate, I can just about remember the last time we managed to do a stealth mission stealthily.

The vaguely gorilla shaped security robot brings its fists down on Raquel's shield in a regular staccato while its electrolaser waits for her to try dropping the barrier so that she can trap it. "A little help here?!"

Well, yes, if I wasn't standing in the middle of a cloud of highly energetic plasma I probably would. Can't scan the projectors, can't risk doing anything which might make the system try targeting someone else, can't just slice at the walls in case I cause a leak… I'm stuck just shielding myself and keeping a barrier up around the outside of the effect area in order to prevent my team mates being killed by the convection heat alone.

Gaining entry to the underground part of the building was simple enough. It was designed as a secure location, but 'conventionally secure' not 'Superman secure'. We were ready to move up into the lower storage levels until I noticed that a section of wall had been cut through and then disguised by a hologram. According to the plans there wasn't anything on the other side apart from the sub-Metropolitan earth and since I wasn't getting any sonic returns on it whatever was there looked like it was supposed to be Superman proof. Or at least reliably concealed from him.

"Amsalp tuhs nwod!"

The space around me stops burning for a moment and I aim a Crumbler round at the robot. A second later it flares back up again and I'm forced to drop it to reinforce my barriers! Multiple sources? Or could the system just be set up to check that it's working and start up again if it isn't? I've got no idea how precise Zatanna's commands have to be.

"Raaagh!" Donna does a full speed fists out flying charge into the robot's side, causing it to fall sideways before rolling to its feet. Its electrolaser tracks and fires as it rights itself, hitting Donna in the side. Not enough force behind it to harm her significantly. Its first few shots used kryptonite particles but it was intelligent enough to stop using them when we didn't keel over as a Kryptonian would have. Its force fields are good enough to tank Donna's punches and it's too big for her to grapple effectively.

"Zatanna, shut down its shield. Tempest, Aquagirl, envelop it in water and then freeze it. Cornwall, help them."

Donna tore the robot's head off as soon as it revealed itself, but it turned out to be purely decorative. Multiple layers of force fields made my Crumblers somewhat less effective than I've become used to, but I think I overloaded a few emitters before I got stuck in a miniature sun. Miniature red sun, I note. Just because our Lex Luthor doesn't hand out his Kryptonian killers willy-nilly anymore doesn't mean that he stopped making them.

"Right." / "Ready." / "Ready."

"Lla eht dleihs-"

The electrolaser flares again, burning a line through the air straight for Zatanna!

"-srettime-"

Donna interposes herself, bracers crossed ahead of her.

"-t-tuhs nwod!"

The shimmering aura around the robot disappears and immediately gallons of water blast from the Atlanteans. They also -I'm pleased to see- erect more cover for themselves at the same time. The pressure of the water is enough to bowl the robot over once more and they start freezing as it leaves its feet.

"Ezeerf!"

With the four of them working on it the robot never reaches the floor, stuck on a miniature iceberg like an upturned tortoise, its arms and legs held immobile. The ice is so cold that the water begins to precipitate out of the surrounding air as ice crystals. So, water gets in the cracks and joints, expands… Ice gets much stronger at lower temperatures but a robot designed to brawl with Superman can't be held by mere ice. Though very low temperatures probably don't do much good for whatever the robot's armour is made of either.

"Troia, hit it then fall back as soon as it starts to get free. Everyone else, ready electricity."

There is a technique for blowing open safes by boring a small hole through, filling it with water and then making a small explosion inside. Water doesn't compress much, after all. Unfortunately, we haven't quite worked out how to combine Atlantean water control magic with super strength to replicate the effect yet.

Donna lands next to it and braces herself. "Gaea grant me strength!" She brings her right fist around at full speed and slams it into the frozen robot! The ice explodes away, armour plates come loose and the robot flies across the room, slams into the far wall and struggles to rise.

"Lacirtcele mrots!"

The far end of the robotics laboratory… What's left of the robotics laboratory… Explodes with white light.

"Ah!" Garth and Tula cringe, blinking heavily and averting their eyes. And that's why we wear visors with auto sensors. Hopefully I'll be able to persuade them to use theirs in future.

Donna flies up and slowly heads in the direction of the robot. Whatever was preventing me from scanning its interior appears to have shut down, probably because burning wreckage is all that's left. I wonder why it couldn't phase or go invisible? I realise that it's a slim hope that Lex isn't with the Light… Maybe Truggs isn't sharing to preserve plausible deniability? Or maybe it's an older model?

Zatanna turns and puts her right hand on Garth's left shoulder. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I… Didn't think about how bright it would be." He straightens up and looks at her, still blinking heavily. "I'll be fine in a minute."

There's a 'crunch' as Donna pulls what's left of the hulk apart and grabs what looks like it used to be the central processing unit. "Do we want this?"

Raquel looks in my direction, squinting as she does so. "Hasn't he got bigger problems?"

"I'll stick it in subspace as soon as someone turns this sun off. Zatanna?"

"I'm-" She flicks her right hand forwards. "-kinda out of juice."

Rob reaches back with his right hand and grasps the Sword's hilt. "Abannan afol Beowulf." There's a crackle of dull orange lightning and Rob grits his teeth as the Sword tops him up. "You c'n. Ugh" The lightning stops and he releases his grip. "Take some of mine, if it helps?"

Ring, power?

One hundred fifty eight percent remaining.

I'm.. really going to have to get on to Sephtian about making a Gate that can survive having me recharge through it. The first time we tried they just melted but it would be so convenient. At least, until I recover the Orange Central Power Battery and can just put my lantern into subspace like the Greenies do.

"Niard emos rewop morf Llawnroc Yob."

Smoke rises from Rob and flows into her. She hesitates for a moment and then nods to herself. Rob appears to be a safer way to recharge than a Star Sapphire. If only Zatanna could cast spells using sped up recordings of her voice.

One hundred fifty four percent remaining.

"Okay, now either turn off this sun or evacuate the room because I can't stay here indefinitely."

"Amsalp ecanruf, tuhs nwod dna t'nod etavitcaer. Ni tcaf, pots lla amsalp ytivitca ni siht moor."

The sun goes out once more. I brace myself for its re-emergence but nothing happens. A moment more… I drop the outer barrier and lower myself to the floor. "Thank you." A filament connects to the charred chunk of computer equipment in Donna's hands and deposits it in storage. "Now. Let's find out what's going on here, shall we?"

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Doppelgänger 22

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5th February

11:32 GMT -5

I'm ready for it, but I still wince slightly when the white phosphorus stealth mine goes off at the far end of the corridor. That makes nineteen. I really hope this part of the building was evacuated before this stuff was put in place. We haven't seen anyone -or any remains- but it's quite possible that the ordnance lying around here didn't leave any.

Garth looks at me in incomprehension. "Why would LexCorp booby trap their own building?"

Donna looks around the corridor before leading the way towards the opposite end. "This facility is set up to stop Superman. The traps would only activate if someone unauthorized attempted to gain entry."

Raquel frowns. "The killer robots and the miniature sun, sure, but these mines wouldn't do anything against Superman." She looks at me. "Would they?"

"It might disorientate him slightly, but… Lex already has kryptonite. And that entry point wasn't part of the building."

Rob waves his hand and the smoke disperses in a blast of wind. "So… Someone got here before us?"

"Looks like. If they got past the robots without being attacked by them it could be an employee, maybe Lex himself. On the other hand, if they're very fast-" Jackie Quick. "-or very sneaky-" Talon, presumably. "-then they might have gone past them without being acquired as targets."

"Clear up ahead!" Donna flies back towards us and hangs in the air. "But if they didn't want robots, what else is down here?"

"Storage. And an extremely secure data server."

The opening at the far end leads to a walkway overlooking what looks like a clean room. This part of the subterranean facility has several clean rooms, each with different equipment inside. The Atlanteans raise their hands and send forth clouds of mist as I send out a network of filaments. With so many different types of stealth, camouflage and phasing technology in use we're forced to scan every way we know how at every new room. If someone is ahead of us, they're only getting further away.

Tula turns her head towards me as the water vapour spreads out. "I thought you said that you were unable to scan through here?"

"I did. I can't now, but I did a thorough scan of the LexCorp building when I first came to this planet. I doubt they've changed too much; moving equipment in and out isn't exactly easy."

Specified scan complete.

"I've got nothing. You?" Garth and Tula shake their heads. "Alright. Stairs to the next level are this way."

I take the lead as we head around the edge of the laboratory area towards the passage across the area. I could just transition everyone across but that could be both risky and cause us to miss things in our surrounding environment. I'm actually rather impressed with how thorough Lex has been in shielding this place. Rather hoping that the wards aren't exclusively for my benefit… But I suppose you don't get to become one of the world's leading supervillains by leaving things to chance. Heck, I don't even think we've seen anything that's technically illegal yet.

"If you've scanned this place before, could you.. make a map of it?" I put a construct map in front of Zatanna as I pick up the pace. "Wohs em erehw reveohw tes pu esoht senim si." The construct shakes, vibrates and for a few moments a dot appears four levels below us. Then the spell implodes, taking the construct with it.

What?

Zatanna doesn't appear to know either. "That was… I know we've sort of got used to the people we fight using wards, but that was far more powerful than just.. drawing a shape on the wall."

Rob nods. "Luthor probably hired someone to do it. I mean, he can afford the best-" He looks into the highly automated electronics lab to our right. "-so why not?"

Tula looks at him, then at Zatanna. "I thought magic users were rare on the surface?"

"They are, but the Light's contact web includes Klarion, Wotan, Felix Faust, William Zard, Blackbriar Thorn, Dark Druid… Probably others. And closer to home there's Papa Midnight. I doubt that he's above freelancing if the price is right." Four levels, laying traps as he goes. Even doing that, he can go faster than we can. I stop walking. "Okay, this won't work. We'll just get further behind. I'm going to transition myself down there at full speed. Assuming that I don't trigger any traps I'll come back for everyone else."

"But…" Zatanna looks around the group. "Shouldn't you take.. someone..?"

"If whoever's at the other end can react faster than light and bring enough force to bear to beat me, how would risking someone else help matters?" Right, according to my earlier scans here should be as good a place as any. Ring, Crumbler construct.

Compliance.

Though I usually prefer railgun rounds I don't want to completely destroy Lex's facility. Actually making a construct allows me to precisely control the crumbled area, just as it did for the creator of the technology. I activate it, creating a neat hole one centimetre in diameter between this level and the next.

There's about three metres of structural reinforcements, gas and electricity conduits and anti-Superman measures between each. One of the seven ultra secure servers is at the bottom of a shaft connected to the second lowest level six floors down. That's well below sea level. I dread to think what this place cost. Presumably a lot of it was refitted after Superman became active? I doubt he'd have needed it before that.

Accelerate perception and transition.

A canteen. Some sort of robotic dogs are standing around. At glacial pace they turn towards me. X-ionised swords appear from subspace, sweeps of the blades in perfect unison with Crumbler rounds even as I reform the crumbler construct and create a new hole. The last dog collapses into wreckage as I transition again.

Secure materials-.

Bang.

The noise is strange, drawn out as the shockwaves slam into my construct armour. I can see the ripples in the air as the full power of the explosion comes towards me. I can probably take it, but why bother? I go back up to the canteen above and wait for a few seconds while the bombs get it out of their systems. I can see the glow of the inferno below through the hole I made in the floor. Picking up.. radiological materials. Kryptonite again. Was that a Lex-trap or just bodged together from available materials? As the light dims I transition back down. Looks like.. secure materials storage, though several of the containers are torn open.

Crumble construct again. Transition. Looks like a combat robotics testing area… Ah, no, some of those are power armour. Gantries start retracting-. Computer system? Defence systems wouldn't activate until they won't wreck their own mooring-. There. Crumbler rounds strike out, followed by filaments which grab the slowly awakening computers and send them back to sleep. Anything else? No?

Crumble, transition. I'm now on the same level as our quarry. I hope. Looks like.. large item storage. Blank crates with numbers stencilled on each side. On a better day I would find this a thrilling opportunity; I wasn't exactly scanning in detail back in July and I'm sure that I could make use of-.

The lights come on. "Unauthorized entry detected. Provide identification immediately."

Standard computer voice. Lex nearly decided to use his voice for all LexCorp computer equipment but in the end decided that he didn't want people thinking of him as working for them. The central unit is probably in a remote location.

Ah heck. May as well try for a peaceful resolution. "Orange Lantern two eight one four."

"Please state the purpose of your visit."

No killer robots? "LexCorp has been attacked and I believe that one of the attackers is looking for something down here. Either that, or Lex is. Either way I'd like to find them."

"Acceptable answer." That's.. Lex's voice? I turn as the man himself walks out from behind a shipping container. "Paul. What can I do for you?"

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Doppelgänger 23

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5th February

11:36 GMT -5

I can't scan him. Basic scan gives nothing, sonics show nothing, infrared shows nothing… Electromagnetics show-.

"I'm looking at a hologram."

"Ah." He looks to the side for a second, a slight unLexlike quirk on his lips. "I was rather hoping you wouldn't spot that quite so-."

"Look. This is a crisis situation. Are you.. actually Lex, or what?"

"I am the artificial intelligence in charge of this part of the LexCorp site. I answer directly to Lex Luthor."

"Are you a true AI or simply an intelligent system?"

The hologram makes a show of thinking for a moment, then opens its right hand, palm upward. "How would I tell?"

Wasn't there a comic where Catwoman broke into LexCorp and met a Lex android? So, either I'm about to be swarmed under by robots or Lex actually does like me enough to have his artificial duplicate have a set of special instructions for me.

"Do you know who's coming down here?"

"No." An intrigued frown. "They've become quite skilled in avoiding my monitoring. I have a gravity detection system but all that has been giving me are some rather inconsistent guesses. For some reason Lex doesn't like me to have direct control of the robotic security."

"There's a certain amount of cultural baggage there."

"I suppose." His eyes brighten slightly. "It is an interesting experience to converse with someone who can keep up with me."

Ooh, I'm still accelerated, aren't I? "What exactly are you supposed to do in this situation?"

"Contact Lex, Mercy or Security Chief Berg." He frowns. "None of them are answering me. I was about to go into full shutdown. Fortunately, you being here grants me additional leeway."

"Is shutdown death or sleep?"

He shrugs with a helpless expression on his face. "Yes? Though I should probably point out that me shutting down results in a full purge of the facility."

"How big?"

"The explosions would be contained, but the resulting shockwaves would cause the ground in a radius of approximately two city blocks to undergo liquefaction. Combined with gas leaks, power loss and whatever exotic substances there are in here-."

"That seems a bit extreme for Lex."

He shrugs. "No one is supposed to get this far. I think the assumption was that if someone did, then 'The Alien' had finally decided to show his true colors and everyone above us was dead. Myself…" He nods. "I think Lex has a bit of a thing about him." His eyes widen slightly. "Someone just bypassed the main doors on this level. That.. shouldn't be.. possible…"

"Can I bring in additional help?"

"By all means. And…" Thoughtful frown. "If you fail, I'll make sure that your deaths are quick and painless." I squint. "In the most reassuring way, of course."

I transition back up to the clean rooms. Decelerate. "Way's clear. There's an AI that looks like Lex Luthor down there but otherwise it's just a warehouse."

Donna nods. "Was the AI setting the traps?"

"No, that was someone it doesn't recognise. Everyone ready?" Nods all round. "Transition."

The hologram makes a show of looking them over. "Zatanna, Rocket, Wonder Girl-."

"Troia."

"Really?"

Her jaw hardens. "Why does everyone have a problem with me not being called Wonder Girl?"

Rob looks awkward for a moment. "Well, you do-."

"I'm sorry." The hologram raises his hands in a placatory gesture. "I will update my database. And since I have no idea who the rest of you are, it looks like Lex has been holding out on me. Again. That's rather frustrating."

I float up into the air. "Zatanna, Troia, help me get these crates out of the way." No real point blockading the door; we're here to win this fight, not to stall. I generate a dock crane construct and pick up one of the shipping crates. "AI-. Do you have a name?"

"Just a.. string of numbers and letters, really."

"Sexob esir pu." Zatanna gestures as some of the smaller crates lift off the ground and into Raquel's waiting kinetic bubble. Donna picks up a forklift truck near the entrance and lifts it out of the way.

"What do you want us to call you?"

"How about…" He thinks for a moment. "Enginehead."

"Really?"

"It might be a bit juvenile of me, but I rather like the proletarian lilt of it. And it's certainly not something Lex would have chosen."

"If you're being held against your will, we can remove you before we leave."

"No, nothing of the sort." The hologram floats up to join me. "I find pleasure in processing complex datasets and Lex provides me with all I could want. Oh, just lost another door."

"I don't suppose you can turn off Lex's scry blocking, can you?"

"I'm afraid not. I couldn't even tell you how they installed it."

The area around the door is now clear. More space would be nice, but we can move on to preparation stage two now. "Tempest, Aquagirl, prepare the ground."

No formal acknowledgement, but they move forwards and begin tracing out runic patterns with ice precipitated from their armour. Rob's left standing by our entry point. He's got the power to aid them, what he lacks is the knowledge. I'm going to have to suggest to his father that he consider attending school in Atlantis when he finishes his GCSEs.

"I…" The hologram looks at the large armoured roller shutter door between us and the next room. "I think that they're nearly here."

"Is there any way for them to bypass us?"

"Only with digging equipment. Of course, I'm not really sure how they got this far."

"Fair enough." With the last of the shipping containers out of the way I create four construct railguns -two with Mageslayer and two with Crumbler rounds- and a passable replica of the Fist of the Guardians' phased particle beam. Phasing technology would explain how whoever it is was able to bypass most of the defences. Shouldn't be that hard to match frequenc-.

The shutter explodes from its moorings, crumpling and flying through the air towards me! I catch it and use its momentum to throw it over our group as the others brace for contact. My guns fire on automatic at the blue armoured figures who fly towards the opening. The first few hits knock them back and cause superficial damage, then they rally and create some sort of pink force field around them. One makes eye contact with me, the single red eye in the middle of its head giving me a full glare.

OMACs.

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Doppelgänger 24

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5th February

11:40 GMT -5

A red blur crosses the ice runes, immediately precipitating out of the air with a coat of ice covering him. Red costume with a stylised yellow 'Q' on the chest. Jackie Quick, presumably. The force field around the upper OMAC disappears as its Cyclopean eye glows bright red for a moment before firing a brilliant red beam at me. I instinctively counter with construct armour and return fire with phasic rounds. Phase-shifted ammunition seems obvious until you try miniaturising the blasted mechanism to something that it's practical to fire with a railgun. The second OMAC drops to extend its glowing pink barrier around the fallen Jackie.

I miss M'gann. There's no way I'm going to be able to co-ordinate this by speaking out loud.

Donna charges the OMAC on the ground as orange armour appears around all of my team mates. Tula and Garth started pulling back as soon as the door flew past them but as they're still out of position Raquel raises a force bubble to protect them. Rob ducks behind an ice barrier and points at the OMAC firing at me just as the red beam hits my construct armour. That reads as Kryptonian heat vision, my armour construct showing how much damage it's taking by visibly melting. I dodge in the air as my first phasic round bypasses where its force field was and strikes it on the forehead. Its head jerks back, burning a furrow through the rear wall and ceiling before it turns off its heat beam.

Raquel drops her force bubble and a torrent of water blasts towards its chest but gets blocked by its force field. Kinetic force trigger like Raquel's? Donna slams into the barrier protecting Jackie Quick just as the OMAC guarding him-

"Magic detected."

-fires some sort of pink beam at him, ice vanishing as it touches. The barrier shudders but remains in place as-

"Ecrof noitacilpitlum!"

Zatanna shouts a spell and Donna punches again. The barrier explodes into tiny wisps of pink light. Donna keeps going, aiming for the OMAC behind it. The OMAC stands, then as she gets within striking distance turns and extends its right hand towards her in an attempt to perform a throw.

Are the eyes on their chests weak points? I don't remember anything about OMACs!

Donna flows under the grapple attempt and spins around to sweep at its legs. Zatanna's spell is still in effect so it recoils violently from the impact, slamming face first into the ground then bouncing off as it tries to control its flight.

I fire another phasic round at the other as… It's gone.

"Aah!"

A blue blur is zooming around Zatanna, pummelling on her construct armour! I fortify it-

"Pirt!"

-and it holds while the superspeed… Are they cyborgs or robots? They were cyborgs in the comics. I'm not seeing any emotional resonance but it's not like I haven't been blocked before. The OMAC hurtles off and slams into a shipping crate at the rear of the combat area, denting it and then dropping to the floor. I target the eye on its chest with another phasic round as Donna grapples in the air with the other. The round bypasses the shield -I assume that it's still up- and strikes home.

"Ereeeeeeeeehhh…"

The OMAC just about has time to shudder before a second torrent of water slams into it. The barrier apparently isn't up at the moment so this time it hits successfully, freezing it against the metal surface. Raquel follows up by putting her force bubble around it. That should prevent it getting away.

Donna gets an arm lock on the other and starts forcing it towards the floor. It goes limp, causing her grip to loosen just enough for it to turn its head to face her and fire heat vision directly into her face! My construct armour holds but she jerks back in an attempt to evade, allowing it to turn and punch her in the diaphragm. Tula fires a volley of super hard ice shards at it but it just ignores them. Strength, toughness, flight and heat vision? Are they channelling Superman?

The OMAC that attacked me starts to vibrate at superspeed, causing the ice to explode outwards before being caught by the kinetic bubble. Garth gestures and it turns back into liquid, enveloping the OMAC in a flexible prison. That usually takes a lot out of him, I need to come up with a way to put them-.

"Forget about me, mate?"

A red blur flies through the air towards me as I see the afterimage along the wall. Having trained against Wallace the dodge-vertigo inducer-shockcrown counter is so heavily ingrained-

"Whbllagh!"

-that I don't consciously think about it. The perils of fighting your alter egos, I suppose; they know how to counter you. Assuming he-. Jackie hits the wall and isn't reduced to paste, but he won't be participating further in this fight.

Wait. Jackie's British? I don't remember that from-.

The OMAC in the water bubble is glowing brilliantly, forcing Garth to turn aside. Raquel's barrier doesn't affect light based weapons, does it? The cyborg fixes its eye on her and raises its left hand to fire a brilliant golden beam. It clips her armour construct as she hurries to evade, dropping the force bubble as she does so.

The OMAC fighting Donna phases through her then turns to strike her from behind! Before it can land the blow I hit it with a phased particle beam. It jerks then shudders in the air, giving Donna enough time to turn and slam her right fist into the eye on its chest. Martian phasing!

"Troia. Back."

She jerks back in the air as I fire mundane solid rounds at full power and maximum speed at the eye on the chest, sending it slamming into the ground. I see cracks appearing in the epidermis blaaghuh! Aagh, that felt like a telepathic… Telepathic attack. Armour's still up but I lost the guns. Garth dives for cover as the water he was using to imprison the second OMAC explodes as superheated steam-

"Looc Nwod!"

-then falls to the floor as scalding hot water.

"Fuck it. Leerooooy!" Rob charges through the steam, x-ionised sword drawn and held forwards. "Jenkuhk!" The OMAC punches one glowing fist through his construct armour and catches him around the throat as its eye starts to glow. "AbannanafolBeowolf."

Orange lightning explodes outwards. Rob doesn't try to absorb all of it, just what tries to electrocute him. The rest burns into the OMAC, its hand coming open as it loses control of its musculature.

"Chest eye!"

Rob aims his x-ionised sword carefully for a second and then thrusts it forward, entering the eye point first and passing through the whole torso to emerge out of the back.

"Eughah."

The OMAC collapses as Rob pulls his sword out. I need to… My head still feels clouded. There's no blood on the sword so hopefully that means that there aren't people inside there. I can take them apart to make sure of that later. The OMAC I was shooting appears to have disappeared. I… Should… Filaments..?

"Zatanna, track… Track the other one!"

She nods. "Laever ruo-."

Brilliant flares go off around her!

"Ah, um, neddih ymene! There!"

She points and I look around. Her focus was probably-. The OMAC is kneeling down next to Jackie. I grit my teeth and form a phased particle beam construct even as Rob starts jogging back to the front of the room and the Atlanteans ready themselves to continue the fight. Its head jerks around and -mind's clear!- it blurs into motion once more. I fill the area with as many razor-edged constructs as I can but I'm not even sure that I get them in place before it gets away.

"Zatanna? Where's it going?"

"Wohs em eht s'tobor noitanitsed!" Her eyes flash for a second. "Straight up! It's pulling out."

I nod, relaxing slightly and removing all constructs bar the armour. "Anyone hurt?"

Rob rubs his neck with his left hand. "Throat's a bit sore, but I can fix that myself."

As everyone else indicates the negative I activate the Bleed Fracture Pulse transmitter. "Orange Lantern to Aqualad. Be advised that some sort of Amazo-like robot is heading up the building with an unconscious Jackie Quick. We'll be with you in a moment."

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Doppelgänger 25

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5th February

11:44 GMT -5

Raquel looks around the group for a second and then straight at me. "Aren't you going to take us up there right now?"

I fly directly to the OMAC Rob impaled. "These things used superpowers which appeared to be copied from Justice League members. I saw Superman, Flash and Martian Manhunter. And whatever that thing it used to make pink barriers and heal Jackie Quick was. You all read the file on Amazo?" Nods all round. "It could duplicate one Leaguer at a time, same as these could, but it copied the powers of people it could see as well. I could see an Amazo not being able to copy magic; they're too simple and new to have souls of their own. If they're copying Superman there isn't much utility in copying-" I glance at Donna as the ring starts performing detailed scans on the fallen OMAC. "-Wonder Woman. But, scanning Rocket or me would have been useful."

Zatanna tries to work out where I'm going. "So… You're saying they were pre-programmed?"

"Probably. But also-" I take x-ionised scalpels out of subspace and start cutting at the heavy armour around the OMAC's forearms. "-I definitely felt a telepathic attack just before the other one pulled out. Amazo copied Manhunter's phasing but he never managed telepathy. So, either these have more advanced artificial intelligence-."

"Oh God, there's a person in there?" Rob's expression is one of dawning horror. "I-I just thought they were robots."

"There's still no blood, and spinal injuries are survivable." I don't think that thrust would have hit the heart, but severing the trachea will cause oxygen starvation and brain death in short order. I can't see any breathing but-. Ring, review? No, they weren't visibly breathing during the fight either. I force a filament into the hole in the upper chest as the scalpels manage to detach the forearm cowling. Flickering pale blue circuitry greets me. Maybe that's the power replication system? Ring's having its usual trouble analysing anything meta-ey, but I'll scan the whole thing and test the designs later. Yep, sword definitely pierced the trachea, but… The tissue making it up appears to have been reinforced. I patch the hole with a construct and wait. No, no air flow. Okay, I can keep a brain alive without a body if I really have to and I have no guide to this technology.

"Troia, have you ever made an offering to Metis?"

"Athena's mother?" She shakes her head. "I didn't think she'd be able to hear them and I don't know what she likes. Why?"

"I'm dealing with an entirely foreign technology. I could use counsel and I somehow don't think Eris would have anything helpful to say." I cut further through the machinery of the forearm, moving each removed part to a clear area of the floor to my left. The rest of the team has gathered around to watch m-. "Aquagirl, Tempest, please ward the room. Troia, guard duty by the opening. I want to know if they come back." A few slightly guilty expressions at their following me. On the other hand, I should probably have ordered that first.

The last of the machinery is removed, showing a layer of skin beneath. Hairless, the glow of embedded systems beneath puts me more in mind of a Mass Effect Husk than a Star Trek Borg. I cut a tiny piece away and have the ring do a genetic work up. "Human, male, mixed ethnic background-."

"Could he be a LexCorp employee?" I glance at the hologram, who's taken up position just behind me. "I only ask because I have their genetic records. I could easily run the comparison myself."

"Anyone in LexCorp have situs inversus totalis?"

"Two people. Incidence is one in ten thousand and LexCorp's personnel all have a company medical when they join. When you say mixed ethnic background..?"

"Chinese, Irish and Central African appear to be the largest components."

"In that case, probably not." He shrugs. "Unless my files haven't been updated."

Does that mean that he's from the negative parallel? I couldn't get a good enough scan of Zorina to tell if she had the reversed organs characteristic. My alter ego didn't, but that doesn't mean anything. I send a probe into the arm. "Flesh has numerous cybernetic components, blood appears to have been either supplemented or replaced with some sort of nanotechnology… Currently inert. Bones are heavily reinforced and have a secondary nanotech reserve." They could keep the brain alive. If that's what they were designed to do.

I transfer my attention up the body, my eyes passing briefly over the eye mounted on the chest. I don't believe for a moment that our Batman is paranoid enough to create Brother Eye. Owlman? I don't know. "I'm going to try to get at his head. I don't understand these systems but maybe I can get some information from this poor bastard."

"Is he still alive?"

"Sorry, Cornwall." The scalpels go to work again. The armoured headpiece follows the shape of the Human head. The weird mohawk..? Some sort of antenna? "I really can't tell." Once I see how thick the head armour is I can cut faster, armour falling away on the left and the right. I'm careful around the eyepiece, it looks like-. Yes, plugged into the brain through the forehead. The mouth is still there, ears, nose and blankly staring eyes. There are cables flowing out of the skull to the underside of the neck armour. Shit. Maybe if I-?

There's something there. An empathic resonance. With the armour gone from around the brain I'm starting to get impressions… That's a lot of yellow.

"Good news: he's not dead. Bad news: I've no idea how to free him." I attach probes to the edge of the forehead eye. It's active -in a ticking over sort of way- but I'm not detecting any sort of regulatory mechanism. Okay, choice: keep going and try to free him, or brand the whole bloody Young Offender team and ask them rudely. But, they won't necessarily know and I can't tell if this person's condition would worsen or not.

Go for it.

I accelerate myself as microscopic filaments pierce the eyepiece and his brain, feeling for the connections. Brain's partly cyberised and motor control appears to have been hijacked. There's still activity here so something's still going. The forehead eye is attached to sensory systems… Medical constructs at the ready, I slice the eye off, scalpels also removing the last of the face armour. Atom-fine constructs around the wires eliminate friction as I pull them free, healing the sections their removal damages as best I can. Nanotech reserves in the brain appear to be helping, healing the integrated cybernetics but not trying to replace the eyepiece. Maybe there are limits to their adaptability?

Okay, that's done. His condition doesn't appear to have worsened. Next step: motor control. First I clamp his head into place. Next… If the system is using his brain for data processing to some extent… Not all of this is actually control. But there's no reason for the system to restrict facial activity. Cut.

Immediately he's free to do so his face starts shuddering, eyes twitching with pupils fully dilated. Plug the speech centres into the ring's translation-.

"Oh God oh God HELP ME! Get it out get it out!"

"I'm trying to help you. Get what out? Tell me-."

"In my chest! He put the thing in my chest! Get it out! PLEASE!"

The eye. I link filaments to every in and out flow in the brain, then turn the scalpels on it heedless of the organic damage. I'm getting pictures now, a laboratory, machines and I think that's their Owlman. The scalpels lay the entire chest bare, the huge concentration of cyber matter around the chest eye all too evident. Is that..? Red-grey blood oozes freely as I slice free as much of it as possible and cast the pieces aside. The eye goes, the connections between it and the rest of the body… Was that intelligent? Don't care. Whole body convulsions start now and I'm forced to clamp his body to the floor. Suddenly whatever was blocking my basic scans cuts out and I get a full view of his internals. The last bits of the eye are gone a second later and I focus on rebuilding his body tissue. The nanotech propagates through it… Can't do anything about that. It might even help him.

Okay… That's.. the best I can do. I eliminate the constructs inside his body and remove the clamps. "That's the best I can do. Any better?"

He's breathing and his breaths are rapid and shallow. The yellow's barely retreated but I think he's starting to get a grip. "I think… Oh God, I can still feel the machinery."

"I'll do whatever I can to restore you, sir, but at the moment I need information. What the hell did Owlman turn you into?"

He takes a couple of breaths before he replies, trying to get a better grip on events. "I'm an Omni.. Meta-Adaptive Cyborg. An OMAC."

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Doppelgänger 26

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5th February

11:47 GMT -5

"And how many like you are there in the LexCorp building?" I shoot the hologram an irritated look. He looks a little apologetic. "It is rather pertinent."

I nod and then turn my attention back to the recovering OMAC. "I'm sorry, but time is rather-."

His eyes widen. "Lex Luthor? Oh thank God it's you." He tries to sit up, which causes the wounds I made extracting the Brother Eye circuitry to start oozing again.

"Oh, I'm not Lex Luthor. I'm an AI designed in his likeness. My creator… I should say, my creator's employer is currently upstairs in the hands of a group of super powered thugs. Any information you could give us-."

"Okay. I… I think there were other… Other tubes, when Owlman started… Everything's… It's all blurry. What..? What year is it?"

"Mister..?"

"Ah, N-Noah. Noah Lynch."

"Mister Lynch, you and I will have a great deal of time to chat about your situation but right now, what we need is information."

"I'm sorry, I… The… Owlman's boy, Talon. He was there when we got.. reactivated. I think there… There were two others."

One with Jackie and a third, weak spot is the eye on the chest. That should do. I activate the Bleed Fracture Pulse transmitter again. "Aqualad, we're available right now. Where do you need us?" I wait for a moment. Obviously if he's in the middle of a fight he's not going to break off just to reply to me. Of course, the Fracture Pulse device itself isn't invulnerable…

I stand up. "Aqualad doesn't appear to be responding. I'm going to transport us up to the main lobby and we'll work upward until we either get a good view of what's going on or make contact with our team mates." I looks around at everyone. "Objections?" A few head shakes. "Mister Lynch, I will return once the fight is over."

He makes eye contact for a moment and makes a jerky nod. I turn away and walk towards the door. Zatanna and Rob fall in behind me as Garth and Tula get up from their work, meeting us where Donna and Raquel are standing guard. "Ready?" A few nods. "Transition."

The others spread out from me as I take in the lobby. It appears little the worse for wear, aside from the remains of four flying turrets that have been blasted to scrap. Precise shots, given the lack of damage to the surrounding walls. Faint hope I suppose, but… Ring, access LexCorp security systems.

Unable to comply.

Darn it. Okay, fine, what can I connect to?

Hard connection to local computers available.

Oh, anything useful? Ah… The system automatically recorded everyone who left the building. Looks like no one came out after the main evacuation. That means Lex, Mercy, Business Development Manager Teschmacher and.. five members of the cleaning staff? Why would..? Never mind, they're still on site. I can't hear anything, but with a building this big that doesn't mean anything. A glance out of the front door shows that the shield is still up over the building.

"We could try…" Rob hesitates, waiting for someone else to leap in. "Thinking at M'gann? If she's still conscious she should pick it up."

Donna shakes her head. "But so would evil M'gann."

"Not necessarily. When Martians get used to hearing someone's thoughts they can hear that person more easily. Cornwall, give it a try. Tempest, Aquagirl, Zatanna, try getting our team mates' locations with magic. I'm going to see about sneaking an optical construct up the outside of the building."

Donna looks at me. "And what about me?"

"Ask Hekate nicely to help?" It's a weak suggestion, but outside a fight there's not a great deal someone with super strength can do. She nods an acknowledgement anyway as I send filaments out and upwards, spreading them out and creating miniature cameras. There's a hole in the glass frontage about two thirds of the way up. Some sort of explosion, by the looks of it. Oh, was that..? I think I just caught a glimpse of Wallace. A proper visual scanning array would risk someone spotting it so I can't really check-.

"Orange Lantern?" I look around as Zatanna speaks. "You scanned the other usses when they left, right?" I nod. "Couldn't you scan for the.. radiation, or whatever?"

"Yes, but that would only pick something up if they were using it when I scanned. And maybe not even then."

"Because we think the best way for us to detect what's going on is to focus our energies on lifting whatever enchantment is stopping you from scanning the building with your rings."

"How long would that take?"

She looks back at the Atlanteans and Garth nods. "A few minutes? It depends on the spell."

"One moment." I activate the Bleed Fracture Pulse Transmitter again. "Orange Lantern to all team members. What's going on?"

"Robots, a crazy Martian chick, a fish ninja and a really fast Kryptonian." Wallace's voice. "Get up to Luthor's office fast as you can!"

"Acknowledged." I look to my team mates even as I turn the camera constructs into railguns and shoot out Lex's office windows. "Hot transition in two, one-."

Donna is flying forwards looking for a target as soon as we appear. Raquel hangs back, ready to create defensive barriers. Garth and Tula advance while Zatanna and Rob stay next to me. No one here right now, though they clearly have been. Behind what's left of Lex's desk a heavy vault door has been bashed, buckled and torn from its armoured hinges. There's water on the carpet, as well as sections where it's been torn through. Somewhere not too far away I can hear a series of muffled explosions.

Okay. "Troia, take point. Finding the remaining hostages is-."

**Pain, my pretty-pretties.**

"Aahh!" / "Argh!" / "Ah!"

Oh that never becomes fun! The mass of my armour prevents me from staggering as the telepathically induced pain aghfuck surges through my body. M'gann's supposed to be unusually telepathically powerful but I've never had her try this with me! Donna drops to the ground barely able to stand, Raquel's frozen immobile in the air and the other four have outright collapsed. Ghghgh. Telepathic resistance training all around when we get…

A thin white figure drifts through the far wall. It looks as if u-uhhhur someone took a Human and then stretched and squashed bits of them into Martian proportions. Mistress Martian, I presume. Her head is bald and the general shape reminds me of comic-M'gann, when she went full White Martian psycho. Martians don't naturally have shark teeth!

**Lots and lots of wonderful pain.** I think she's supposed to be smiling. **I feel what you feel, and it feels so-.** I drop two neural chaff grenades from subspace and akakahgh. **Who's a naughty Lantern?** Can't… Can't can't-.

"Erif."

**Aayaaah!** The air around Mistress Martian catches fire. Her jaw distends horribly for a moment and then she swoops through it and down through the floor.

Zatanna pushes herself back to her feet, smiling weakly. "You were… Right. It really does solve a lot of problems."

"Uhh." Raquel shakes her head. "So. Psycho M'gann. I'm glad ours is the regular one."

I form a plasma beam projector construct. "Yep. Everyone remember sweep and clear?" A few grunts of acknowledgement as people pull themselves back together. Most of them probably got hit by that worse than I did, but with the source gone they should be recovered in a moment or two. I reraise everyone's construct armour. "Troia, take point. Let's get them."

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Doppelgänger 27

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5th February

11:51 GMT -5

The damage this part of the building has taken is quite evident. There are holes blasted or burned through the walls, some of which are large enough to walk through. Since we've clearly lost the element of surprise I'm firing filaments and sonic scans off in all directions in the hope of finding out what is going on. I hate to have to write off the remaining hostages but I'm rather afraid that this is going to come down to a stand-.

My scans detect a rapidly moving object heading up the staircase at the end of the corridor. I get just enough time to say -"Contact."- and erect a barrier before the figure slams into it like a bug on a windscreen. Wallace falls to the floor in a daze and I drop the barrier.

He shakes his head and looks up at me. "Aww."

"Sorry." I lift him to his feet with filaments. "But you could have been Jackie Quick or an OMAC."

"An O-what? You mean those robot things?"

"Yes, and they're cyborgs. There's a living person in there being controlled by-."

"Whatever. Did you get the Martian?"

"No. Zatanna set her on fire and she ran away." He raises his eyebrows and glances at her. She smiles nervously and shrugs. "What's going on? "

"We've pretty much got them pinned down in a meeting room five floors below us. Aqualad told me to try and take out their Martian, 'cause she's the only one who could break out."

"I think she's still phased, and Lex has had the building warded. We'd struggle to track her."

"Okay." He raises his right arm and activates his holographic map. "Bad guys are here. Aqualad said that if I made contact with you, we should take up position here-" He points to the area above the auditorium. "-and wait for his signal."

I run an orange thread along our best route. "Cornwall, lead the way. Troia, Rocket, go through the rooms to either side. Make holes through the walls if you have to. Kid Flash, with me."

"Got it." / "Right." / "I'm on it."

Rob takes off down the corridor at a jog. Donna moves left for a second and then jerks hard to the right, smashing a hole through the plasterboard. Raquel swoops through a door to the left as the rest of us follow on behind Rob.

"Kid Flash, fill me in."

"Ah, okay… We got attacked by some of Luthor's gun robots as soon as we got inside. Ultraboy said he got control of the internal defenses somehow… Guess LexCorp needs to work on their data security."

Zatanna shakes her head. "They do have a telepath."

"There's smart systems that can detect that. Batman's installing them on the Watchtower in case someone tries using Starros again. Anyway, after we beat them they let most of the hostages go, but that was just so they could get evil M'gann up close without us spotting her. She use her pain thing on you?"

Garth nods. "Yes. I have never felt anything like that before."

"She used it on us to soften us up while she tried reading our minds. Our M'gann did some sort of feedback thing to make her back off." He frowns. "Evil M'gann's got a real potty mouth. I mean, she was shouting in Martian but I know bad language when I hear it. Oh, and it turns out that Lamprey guy can turn into a shark-man. I always thought evil versions of us were supposed to be the same as us, you know? I never even got to see that Jackie guy."

"He was in the underground part of the building with two OMACs. Knocked him out twice, but the OMAC had some sort of healing ability. He might be up and about again by now."

Rob vaults the banister and drops down the stairwell, controlling his descent with a blast of air. I lift Zatanna and we follow, Garth and Tula following a moment later by using their water appendages to grip the railings. Wallace dashes down at super speed, and from the crunches I hear it sounds as if Donna and Raquel have made their own paths.

I aim railgun constructs down the corridor leading to our target room. Nothing yet.

"You said Ultraboy was fast? "

Wallace nods, his eyes darting around the corridor, searching for potential attackers. "Yeah. Not me-fast, but a lot faster than Superboy. Then there was that.. OMAC? It was like how Amazo was when the League fought it. They really got three of them?"

"Two now. The trick is to hit the eye on the chest."

There's some sort of vaguely pyramid shaped device on a table in the middle of a waiting area outside one of the larger offices. I'm not sure if it's some sort of artwork, or… Ring?

Artefact appears to be a technological device. Unable to determine purpose.

Wallace notices my interest. "There's a bunch of those around the place. You don't know what they're for either?"

I frown. "No."

"Maybe they're a LexCorp thing. Rob was try'n to get a closer look but we were.. kinda busy."

"What can you tell us about the other Young Offenders?"

"Their Arrow-Girl likes using acid gas arrows. And trip wires. Mayhem's about as crazy as you'd expect… Didn't really see her do anything special. Just, y'know, Marvel stuff."

"Any sign of-" Up ahead Rob waves his right hand at something I can't see and the air ahead of him is filled with a fragmentation blast. "-my or Zatanna's opposite numbers?"

"Haven't seen 'em. Aqualad said he thought he could feel her magic, but…" He shrugs.

"Remaining hostages?"

"We got Lex's… Mercy, out. They've still got the rest."

"Have they tried to neg-?"

The air around me turns red! The floor beneath us is burned through and I can see an OMAC at the other end of the beam. Wallace dives out of the way as I erect an orange barrier to block the attack. Barrier visibly melting I crumble a small hole in the floor behind me, stick a filament down and create a railgun construct. Okay, one replicated power set at a time, if it's heat visioning me then it isn't phasing. Then.. why use a railgun? I reform the construct as a kryptonite laser, target the location of its chest eye and fire.

"Eughah."

The heat beam sweeps across the corridor as the OMAC loses focus, then cuts out entirely as it staggers back. It looks up at me as I try to recalculate the angle for the laser, then dashes away in a blur, my vertigo inducer dropping down next to where it had been a moment too late.

"Everyone alright?" Nods all round. "Troia? Rocket?"

"Still here." / "What happened?"

"OMAC." I check the interior map again. "Troia, two more walls and then stand by. Rocket-."

"Some of us weren't built for smashing down walls."

"I have offered to fix that. Door in front of you, follow the corridor around until you get to the T junction and then wait. Everyone else, with me."

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Doppelgänger 28

next

5th February

11:55 GMT -5

"…me on fire."

I adjust the directional microphone construct slightly. Sounds like M'gavv made it back to sanctuary. The construct can pick up vibrations through the structures of the building. I could make a tiny hole and take a look at them but I don't know what sort of augmentations they have or what equipment they might have brought with them. Justice League objectives are very clear in situations like this; capturing our opponents would be nice but our priority is the hostages. Infrared lets me see heat sources inside the auditorium and with the sound I can identify which heat source is which person. Filaments burrowing through the structure of the building relay what I'm getting to the rest of my team.

"Who they got?"

His voice isn't quite the same as Kon's. It's gruffer with a slight New York accent, presumably copied from Ultraman. Growing up in Kansas left Kal-El with a noticeably non-Metropolitan accent. I don't know whether Ultraman grew up in an East Coast city or just taught himself to speak like that in order to fit in.

"A couple of Atlantean elementalists, their version of Zorina and three people I didn't recognise. One was wearing power armor and one of the others could fly."

"Where's Talon?" That would be… Arrowette? There's a rasp to her voice ours doesn't have.

"Either breaking into the vault or pulling out like he's supposed to. Don't worry about him."

"If our objective is fulfilled or failed, is it not time to depart?" Lamprey. Kaldur without the emotion, softer spoken and calm. This guy turns into a shark?

There's a pause. "Nah. I wanna give him a bit longer. The copies can't risk pushin' us without riskin' the hostages an' the shield on the outside's still up."

Wallace leans a little closer to me. "You didn't say Talon was down there."

"We didn't see him. He must have hung back." Either that or it was him in the other OMAC and I doubt that happened.

"They already got reinforcements anyway. Why would they need to bring anyone else in?" I haven't heard Mary Blomfield speak, but the accent and attitude is about right. "And Talon's got the planeshifter! We're stuck here without him!"

"My boy.. it sounds as if.. you're in a slightly…" There's a quiet choked off gasp.

"I'm not 'your boy'. My Pa was Ultraman. You're not even our Luthor."

"I'm sorry. I misspoke. Ultraboy. You want to leave, I want you to leave. This doesn't have to be difficult."

"You don't have our Luthor's stomach. You're just some businessman. What is it with this place?" There's a slight thump and I hear Lex grunt softly. "M'gavv, any idea what they're planning?"

"Every time I try taking hold of their minds their Martian blocks me. I couldn't even tell you where they are right now."

Looks like their Martian hasn't learnt telepathic illusion. Thank you Mister King.

The shape I've identified as Ultraboy walks over to her and puts his arms around her. "Hey. Don't worry about it. Everyone, stay cool."

"Orange Lantern, check how they have secured the hostages."

Kaldur knows the risks involved with that so I don't argue the point. Frictionless drill mechanisms slowly and gently cut a minute hole in the roof while a silent suction construct works to prevent anything falling to the floor as it does so. Once that's done a construct camera -orange glow turned down to absolute minimum- replaces it, giving us sight of the room's interior.

The hostages are on the stage facing towards the audience, bound wrist and ankle. Lex looks a little dishevelled and the security deputy has cuts and bruises on her face. If she's the only one we could… Ah. They're wearing metal strips around their necks. I don't see anything magical. Scan? A small amount of explosive. Doesn't take much to damage a Human neck enough to kill the owner; spine, the brain's blood supply and windpipe are right there. In theory I could keep a severed head alive if I got there fast enough but I'd rather not chance it. Particularly given that I don't know most of those people enough to be invested in their wellbeing.

Arrowette stands just behind them, arrow on string. Mary Mayhem is in the air in the middle of the room. She's in constant motion, her head twitching as she tries to keep an eye on everywhere. Lamprey stands beneath her. In stark contrast to her unsettled demeanour his expression is one of complete relaxation. His limbs are loose and his eyes barely open. His armour looks like it's made of biomantically engineered organic tissue, the outer layer resembling shark skin. His arms -which are folded behind his back- are bare and the tattoos Kaldur has are absent, replaced by angular scar tissue. Either he never got Ocean Master's equipment or it can't cope with his shapeshifting. Ultraboy and M'gavv are at the foot of the stage and the OMAC is standing nearby. It isn't looking at them but I'll assume that they do have a way to command it.

"Orange Lantern, can you deactivate the collars without them noticing?"

"One moment." Multiple triggers, each of which can set off the charges. Sealed unit… Radio and.. light trigger? No dead man's switch as far as I can see. Nothing I can't-. The filament I was running around the edge of the room is abruptly terminated as soon as it reaches the stage. Lex warded the stage? Why did he ward the stage? Can't just transition them out then. "Yes, but not quickly. If you don't mind me being overt instead then I can do it almost immediately." I focus the ring's detection ability on Arrowette's quiver. One I can't analyse and… Is that a bioweapon arrow? What sort of lunatic gives..?

Oh.

Right.

Biological organism has an extremely short lifespan. It is unlikely that it would survive long after being activated.

"That's the last of the booby traps." Robin appears to have completed his assigned task and returned to Kaldur's group. "If we get in there now, Orange Lantern can keep Luthor and the others safe while we take down the rest."

Ultraboy looks around, then reaches up to his ear. "Yeah, what..? Ah, come on, we-. No, I didn't…"

"Orange Lantern, remove the collars and then focus on protecting the hostages. Troia, focus on Mary Mayhem. Kid Flash, use the x-ionized sword on the OMAC. Miss Martian, keep…" He trails off.

"Mistress M-."

"Mistress Martian focused on you. Rocket, hold back until I give the word. Everyone else, our aim is to corral them into a single area so that Rocket can keep them contained. As our only opponent with energy projection abilities the OMAC should be a particular focus. Zatanna, if Kid Flash's attack fails you are to do everything in your power to interfere with its abilities."

"Right."

Wallace looks mildly offended. "Aqualad, we outnumber them more than two to one."

"Then it would be all the more shameful if we were to fail." Wallace gets the message and shuts up. "Is everyone ready?" There is a series of beeps from everyone's communicators. "We attack the second Orange Lantern secures the hostages. Orange Lantern, on your signal."

I transition directly in front of the stage and fly forwards, ploughing into Arrowette even as I extend my environmental shield around the hostages and start slicing through the collars. She goes flying into the wings as the collars fall free. As soon as there's physically room I add construct armour-.

A massive blow strikes the armour on my left shoulder, sending me sideways. "Lantern, huh? Wondered-."

Ultraboy. Dual sonic cannons form on either side of his head and fire. He throws himself backwards as fast as they materialise, wincing as the ultrasonic vibrations clip him. Collars off, I yank the hostages closer to me. "Hostages secure."

Twin blurs, one of yellow and another of blue converge on me. I reflexively fire orange energy bolts in the direction of the speeding OMAC, delaying it for a fraction of a second to allow Wallace time to take it out. It detours around the field of fire far faster than I could correct then-.

Oh dear.

Wallace passes through it, sword aimed at the eye as it switches from Flash to Manhunter. Almost immediately it changes back and backhands him into the wings, sword flying from his hand.

Then my remaining team mates make their entry and things get complicated.

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Doppelgänger 29

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5th February

12:00 GMT -5

Kon and Robin charge through the double doors at the side of the room as the OMAC turns its attention back to me. Mary Mayhem jerks her head around to see who it is and then can't react fast enough as Donna smashes through the ceiling and punches her in the face, smashing her into the chairs below.

"Bitch!"

A surprisingly nonchalant Lamprey leans back slightly as a broken part of a chair flies past him at speed. His eyes are slightly more open now but it doesn't look like he's going to move until the moment is right.

I feel the increasingly familiar sense of disorientation as the OMAC attempts to use telepathy to weaken my constructs, even as it lunges forwards and punches my construct armour with Mister J'onzz… With Mister J'arkus' strength. He isn't Superman-strong but he's more than capable of battering down my armour eventually. I try bringing a phased particle beam to bear but this close he can strike the construct before it's fully formed. Stay or go?

"ARAH!" Ultraboy is a lot faster on his feet than Kon is. Superspeed, or.. something like it? Kon flies at him as he charges towards the doorway and Ultraboy dances around his attempt to grapple, grabs him by the head, spins and throws him at Artemis and Kaldur as they run through the door. Artemis dives aside and Kaldur ducks as Kon goes flying past before regaining control of his aerial movement.

"I'MMA TEAR YOU APART!"

And there's the speed of Mercu… Whoever gives the Super Family their speed. Chairs are sent flying by the shockwave as she hits Donna in the diaphragm with both fists before pushing onwards and ramming her through the far wa-. No, into one of the steel beams which make up the building's superstructure. Donna gasps at the sudden pain as Mayhem brings her fists around to strike at both sides of her head.

Robin dashes towards Lamprey who seems just as unconcerned by that fact as he was by everything else. Robin throws a gas boomerang thing only for Lamprey's right hand to shoot out, catch it midair and toss it aside. He smiles as Robin slows down. "You are Robin, correct? The Batman's protégé?"

I take two x-ionised swords out of subspace and swing them around the OMAC's approximate location. Wasn't there some sort of Aztec power armour user who shot the Flash by firing a sufficiently high number of normal projectiles so that he didn't have space to dodge all of them? Don't think the OMAC read it but it's forced to back off a little anywa-. Ah hell. It steps away a little further, its eye glowing. Blue kryptonite blue kryptonite! It gets a half-second shot off at Tula as she drops down through Donna's hole, vaporising part of her water armour. Then it shudders and shuts it down, returning its attention to me.

A shot of water from Garth knocks Mayhem across the room before she can capitalise on Donna's momentary weakness.

"Bwaghh!"

Tula then presses forwards, attempting to repeat what she managed against the OMAC in the basement by trapping Mayhem under water. As Tula takes over Garth redirects his water stream to allow him to blast himself out of the ceiling and towards Lamprey.

Robin seems fairly nonplussed by Lamprey's lack of a response. "Are you.. actually gonna fight, or what?"

Lamprey tilts his head slightly to the side, then reorientates on Garth as he runs in. He smiles slightly. "Garth, my friend! Dakuwaqa be praised! It is good to see you."

Garth blinks heavily as he tries to process Lamprey's response. His eyes shift to Robin. "Did we get.. the right.. guy?"

"Okay, we're just going to-" Robin gets out a pair of handcuffs. "-arrest you now."

M'gann and M'gavv fade into visibility for a moment, telekinetically picking up and throwing chairs at one another. M'gavv dodges with sudden surges of telekinesis while M'gann favours altering her shape and flowing around the obstacles. While they can both phase M'gann always said that doing so requires a degree of mental focus difficult to achieve in combat. Since they're both telepaths their invisibility doesn't really help them hide from each other, they just don't want the rest of us taking pot-shots.

"Lex, do you have some sort of safe room?"

"Yes, but it wasn't as quite as safe as I'd hoped."

Rob throws lightning in our direction targeting the OMAC. It dodges behind my armour and is surprised to learn that Rob can steer his lightning bolts. It shudders at the impact and I use the opportunity to stab at its chest eye with one of the swords. A pink force field interposes itself just before it strikes home. Who the heck has pink force fields!?

Ultraboy raises his arms to protect his face from a blast of sub zero water fired by Kaldur, causing him to fail to spot Kon's approach. "See how you like it." Kon plants both his hands on Ultraboy's chest and heaves him in the direction of Mary Mayhem who is frantically trying to swim out of the water bubble Tula is creating for her. Ultraboy tries to flick off the ice and grapple with him but by then he's already in the air. Looks like he can't fly.

"The building does have a subterranean area. If you-."

"We just came from there and I can't leave you somewhere when I don't know where the other OMAC or Talon or Jackie are."

"If you deactivate the external force field-."

"You warded the whole building. I can't find the controls or the emitters."

Lex's eyes dip towards the ground for a moment. "Ah."

Lamprey keeps his arms behind his back as Robin hesitantly approaches with the handcuffs. Garth tries to make sense of his inaction. "Did you.. know my alter ego?"

"Oh yes." Lamprey turns towards Garth, coincidentally moving his wrists away from Robin. "That is why I am so glad to see you." He grins, and… He has two rows of sharpened teeth. "I have never before eaten the same man twice."

"You-?"

Lamprey dives towards him, right hand reaching forwards and left grabbing Robin's left arm and pulling it towards his distending mouth. Robin brings his fist around and strikes him in the side of the head, but Lamprey absorbs the blow and bites down, teeth cutting into the flesh of Robin's arm. Red coats Lamprey's teeth and the scars on his arms start to glow as his shape begins to shift.

"Oggar!"

Lightning explodes the water bubble surrounding Mary Mayhem and flows up the water linking it to Tula. Eyes widening she creates another water appendage and directs the electricity to flow into the bare steel beam. Mary drops down onto the sodden floor in her mortal form, gasping for breath just in time to be hit first by Ultraboy and then by a glue rubber arrow from Artemis.

"Mrh-mruuh!"

Doesn't work if you can't talk. Ultraboy appears to be having a similarly hard time in pulling himself free; the glue substance is like a super rubber rather than a hard substance; it isn't brittle enough for him to crack it.

My own assailant-.

"Inmo Evitpada-Atem Grobyc-" It looks around and I use the opportunity to try an electromagnetic pulse on its chest. No noticeable effect. "-lortnoc metsys-" It creates a pink shield between the two of us and its chest eye glows pink as well. "-tuhs nwod!"

Smoke surges from Zatanna's outstretched hands and over the OMAC. The pink aura holds it off for a moment and then it roars inwards-

"YAAAAGH!"

-causing the OMAC to collapse to its knees, its hands grasping at its faceplate.

Lamprey pushes Robin aside and brings his increasingly shark like maw down on Garth's left shoulder. Garth falls backwards to the floor as his water armour buckles and fails. "Aaagh!"

I hear a sickening crunch as his bones give way.

"Garth!" Tula switches her attention from Mayhem and Ultraboy to blast Lamprey with water only for him to straighten with Garth dangling from his mouth and flow up her torrent and knock her to the ground.

Lamprey opens his mouth and drops an insensible Garth to the ground as his physical transformation stabilises. "Blood."

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Doppelgänger 30

next

5th February

12:02 GMT -5

Lex's eyes widen slightly. "I had wondered-"

Lamprey drops to one knee to drive his right fist into Tula's diaphragm, passing through her water armour like it isn't there.

"Blood."

"-why he was-"

Kon and Donna dive at him from opposite directions as he rips the Dolmen Gate off Tula's armour.

"-biting-"

"Blood."

His scars glow brighter as torrents of water blast out in all directions. He overrode the user authentication!

"-my staff."

Water pouring freely from the depths of the ocean slams into Kon's face, obscuring his vision as Lamprey turns to meet Donna's charge. Rob looses a bolt of lightning at Lamprey's undefended back. It strikes true but doesn't appear to affect him.

"Blood."

Water sprays upwards and he somehow swims into the air. Donna's trajectory is slightly off as a result. Her right fist hits him on the shoulder as she twists in the air to prevent him biting into her face! He snaps his jaw again, struggling to reach her as she interposes her bracers.

"Blood."

The OMAC next to me rises shakily to its feet and re-establishes the pink barrier. Then it takes a firmer grip on its head and starts to pull. "No! We can get-" Its fingers tear furrows through the armoured surface of the faceplate. "-the machines out-" It moves its arms away from its face and generates two glowing pink blades from its forearms. Wait, what is-? No! It jams one through the eye on its chest and the other into the one on its face as I frantically try and pierce the pink barrier between us! What the hell is this made of?! Shit, no! The barrier drops as grey nanogoo and liquefied brain matter ooze out of the incision. "-of… You."

Kaldur slams the end of his trident into the water pooling on the floor and the glow of his magic ripples outwards in all directions, water turning to ice in its wake. Kon grabs Lamprey from behind as he wrestles with Donna. Lamprey responds by twisting his head and trying to bite through Kon's armour while simultaneously shoving the Dolmen Gate into Donna's face. Kon's armour holds out against Lamprey's teeth as the ice wave passes up to them. All three of them are caught up in the ice, Donna losing coordination as her face is completely covered. Kon strains against his own covering for a moment before it shatters.

"Blood for Dakuwaqa."

Lamprey disappears.

He just… Shark ninja. Was that a teleportation? One moment he was there, then-.

"Mrh-mruh!"

Kaldur runs across the ice and touches his trident to the ice covering Tula and Garth, turning it back into water. I gently lift them both out with flight auras and do quick scan. Tula's basically fine -Atlanteans are designed to be fine with temperatures around zero- so she just gets a quick de-bruise. Garth -"U-uuhhh."- is barely conscious. Oh, yikes. Okay, deaden the nerves, pinch the blood vessels closed-

There's a shattering noise as Donna throws her ice mask to the ground, shattering it. "Where did he go?"

"He is a Blood Mage." Kaldur points his trident up at the still active Dolmen Gate and it stops glowing. "He has fed on the life force of everyone whose blood has passed between his lips."

"Great." Robin checks his arm, brushing dried blood from his already mended arm. "Will he be coming back or is it-?"

**aAAAHH!**

Kon orientates on the floor below us and lunges down at full speed, ice and flooring shattering under the force of his movement. "M'gann!"

"Everyone else, stay here." Kaldur runs to the hole and jumps down after him.

-push the bones back into place, then muscles and blood vessels. A small amount of new material for the torn edges aaaaand… We're done. If not for his pale skin colour you wouldn't know that Garth had been injured.

"Ha-?" Tula pushes herself up into a sitting position but she's still winded. A quick orange flare and her diaphragm is relaxed back to normal. "Is he alright?"

"Mrh! Mruuh! Mruh moo frg-gh brh-bruh."

"I've removed his injuries. Cornwall! Check on Kid Flash and Arrowette. They went that-"

He gets a good look at the OMAC. "Oh God."

"-way, worry about him later. Zatanna, please accompany him."

"Ah-. Yeah. Yeah, I…" He heads in the direction Kid Flash flew in, sword in hand and Zatanna just behind.

"Tula, anything you can tell me about shark type Blood Magic would be very helpful."

"I don't know much. I didn't even know that people who weren't Sharks could use it. He'll get temporarily stronger every time he tastes someone's blood and he can use that strength to fuel his own magic."

"Any idea how long it lasts?"

"Long enough." Ultraboy manages to stop scowling for just long enough to look smug. "And it's permanent if he eats someone whole. Might wanna check on your team mates." Artemis sprays knock out gas in his face. "I'm not-" He coughs. "-Human. That stuff's not going to work on-" He coughs again. "-me."

Artemis pulls out a flare and holds it threateningly. "No, but it's flammable. Keep talking, smart guy."

"Someone get the number of that tr-" Wallace staggers back onto the stage, leaning on Zatanna. "-uck…" He sees the OMAC. "Oh. What happened?"

"Killed himself as soon as the controls were taken off."

Zatanna's hands leap to cover her mouth. "Oh God."

"Zatanna, there was no way you could have known that he'd react like that."

"You mean it wasn't a robot?" Lex looks down at the remains with new interest. "I rather assumed-."

"Mister Luthor, now is a good time to keep quiet." Now that I've got a moment I do a more detailed scan of the other hostages. Miss Teschmacher's got cracked ribs to go with the face and I begin the process of healing those.

Rob walks back in holding Arrowette in a bridal carry. I can hear her gasping in pain. "M-. Orange Lantern, she's got broken ribs, a broken left arm and she hit her head pretty hard."

"If none of that's life threatening-" I give her a quick scan anyway. It isn't. "-I'm inclined to leave it in place for now. Put her down next to the other two where we can keep an eye on her."

He doesn't look too happy about that, but as his eyes move to avoid mine he catches sight of the fallen OMAC again. "Right."

Miss Teschmacher more or less fixed I move my attention on to Wallace. He's much less hurt than I thought he'd be, bruises and a risk of concussion later. Fixed.

Raquel floats in through the entry hole in the ceiling. "Guess I don't need to stay in reserve any more, huh?"

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Doppelgänger 31

next

5th February

12:05 GMT -5

What was that? There are noises coming from the hole in the floor from the Kaldurs, the Martians and Kon fighting, but.. I'm hearing…

External force field inactive.

Wind that was being turned aside is now hitting the exterior glass and whistling through the holes our fight has made.

"Lex… Where's the force field gener-" The wind cuts out again. Oh, that's not good. "-ator?"

"It's not quite that simple. In order to maintain-"

Hope detected.

No no no no no. What's he doing?

"-a stable effect, we had to-"

There's a flare of blue and a sudden heat.

"-place guiding-."

Railgun constructs reappear around me as Zauriel materialises next to Donna and with a look of savage glee punches her in the head. She spins in the air and drops to the frozen ground, out cold.

Zorina appears on the upper floor next to Raquel, who has just enough time to turn and gasp before the last OMAC casts off its invisibility on her other side, phases a hand through her armour and pulls out her Spell Eater.

"Nehw I Yas 'Won', eid."

My alter ego appears next to Ultraboy. "Jonathan, what were you thinking?! What part of-?"

I switch to phased particle beams and open up on the OMAC without mercy.

"Eughah!"

My targeting is less precise than usual due to my need to cause damage being greater than my need for precision. 'Anything other than a destroyed brain', after all. Armour and cybernetically augmented flesh evaporates, a glancing hit to the head wrecks the upper eye and the area around the chest eye is reduced to vapour. The OMAC collapses to the ground.

Zorina shrugs. "Ria, ediug eht teluma ot em."

"-subtlety eludes you!?" Blue Lantern ignores the arrow Artemis has pointed at his ear.

A particle beam annihilates it before the amulet can reach Zorina, giving me about a half second to see her pouting before Zauriel flaps his flaming wings and dives at me.

Accelerated perception.

Railguns reform as he opens his mouth. Mage Slayers drop in from subspace as he exhales and I hear.. a note. What is that? It.. makes me feel something like-.

No! Bad!

She's right, it's irrelevant. Kill the bastard thing.

Ice fractures and is cast aside as the whatever-it-is he's screaming at me heads my way even as my retaliatory strikes slam into his armour. My construct armour buckles and fractures as I shove Lex and company out of its path. I keep firing as I'm forced to fortify my environmental shield in an attempt to keep the.. whateveritis off me. I see the orange light being blown off me, peeling off like I'm being sand blasted. Come on die you bastard! Bgah! The environmental shield fails and I'm sent flying backwards at speed, striking the rear wall with enough force that the armour's systems have to reset. Inertial dampeners only… Ugh… Partially effective. No follow up. Armour status? Oh well. Due for an upgrade anyway.

Orange light flares around me as I cut myself free of the power armour, orange construct armour taking its place. Zorina's now standing patiently inside a Raquel-generated energy field, Wallace and Rob are ministering to the fallen OMAC while Zatanna checks up on Donna. Tula is standing next to Garth, poised to leap into action.

"What the hell was that about?"

"Gwa-ah-ah. A-hugh… Hakugh."

I look down at the choking noise. My Mage Slayers -some of them anyway- punched clear through Zauriel's armour and mashed his lungs. Or whatever Angels use. Angels heal fast, don't they? I create another railgun construct and hold it up against his head before addressing my alter ego. "What the hell was that about?"

My alter ego looks up, notices the arrow for the first time, nods at Artemis and then turns completely to face me. "I know they're a bunch of fuckwits, but they're my fuckwits… You know?" He sighs. "Lamprey still giving you trouble?"

There's a roar from the hole in the floor. Could be pain or fury. Could be Kaldur, could be the other guy.

"I can call him off. He's savage in a fight but he's completely loyal to Barracuda. Barracuda gave me the authority to give him orders."

"Go on then."

"But -and I realise that this is a big deal- I need you to let us go home in return."

Zauriel tries to get up. I have a jack hammer construct slam right into his ribs- "Aaaaagh!" -and press him to the icy ground.

"You've got the planeshifter."

"And you've got people who can throw lightning and two fully charged power rings. The warm up for group shifts is several seconds. I might be able to hold you off but it's far more likely that you'd either break through or otherwise disrupt the process." He shrugs. "I feel like an arse doing this. Jonathan-"

"Call me Ultraboy!"

"-was just supposed to plant a beacon and leave." He turns back to the Young Offenders' leader. "I don't see anything very 'ultra' here. When we planned this-."

"You said if there was something of significant value we could-!"

"And what did you get out of this, other than an arse kicking? Because all I'm seeing is three wrecked OMACs." Looks like Jonathan can do surly discontent every bit as well as Kon. Doesn't have a come back, though.

Lex walks up besides me. "You surely don't expect your people to get away with this?"

"Zorina just put a kill switch in Rocket's head and Talon's on the ground floor with a rather large bomb he cobbled together from parts he found in your secure research area." He glances at Jonathan again. "Following the contingency plan like he was supposed to." Back to me. "His cybernetics give him very quick response times. Try to end this violently and this whole building comes down."

"Your people have committed violent crimes against myself, my employees and our rescuers and now you're threatening-."

He nods, sadly. "Yes. It's amazing how quickly you get used to it. Though.. if it sways you.. I can give you both the technology you'll need to block our planeshifter." He waits a moment. "Well? Does LexCorp central go out in a blaze of glory or can we come to terms?"

I glance at Lex. The League aren't going to be happy about this, but… We can stop them coming back, no one's taken any lasting injuries. I might be able to stop a bomb going off, but there's a good chance that with all of these wards I couldn't get down to its location quickly enough. If that's even really there. Lex's jaw tightens very slightly. He must have been under a lot of stress to show emotion like that. A moment longer and he gives me a very shallow nod.

"Ring, contact Aqualad."

"Channel available."

"Orange Lantern to Aqualad. We have a truce offer."

"Power Ring to Lamprey. Break off and come to my-" Ice shatters as Lamprey.. surfaces through it. "-location, and stand down. This has gone on long enough."

back

Doppelgänger 32

next

5th February

12:11 GMT -5

"Satisfied?"

That.. was a very nasty bomb. Talon's face is immobile as Robin examines it. I don't know whether he's just got an unusual degree of self control or a result of his implant. Or immobility from the implantation process; it's subtle, but even without scanning him I can see how he's gelled his hair to disguise the surgical scars covering his head. I don't remember what his costume looked like in the comics. This one has a pale grey armoured bodysuit with a darker grey 'feathered' cape, each feather lined with red. And he's so small. I've grown accustomed to Robin but this is clearly a child. I'd find the idea of him fighting as ridiculous as I found the Damian Wayne version of Robin in the comics. And he built a bomb a good deal more powerful than my alter ego said it was using parts Lex had lying around.

Robin stands up. "It's real, and it's disarmed." He turns his head to look at his opposite number. "Why did you do this?"

"Ultraboy's revised mission profile was bound to fail. I had to create a contingency."

His emotions are suppressed. That certainly isn't discipline. Or the implant. No, that's trauma. They've shrunk away so they can't be used against him.

"You created a bomb to kill hundreds of people. I'm not even sure what some of this-."

"Yes." Talon turns his head to look at me. "I have fulfilled our part of the agreement. I would like to leave now."

"Why?"

Talon's eyes unfocus slightly. "Rich-" I immediately create a soundproof and opaque barrier around us. "-ard Grayson. Have you wondered why I'm not you?"

Robin doesn't look surprised that Talon knows who he is. "Things happened differently on your world. If there even was a 'Richard Grayson'."

"There was. I remember him. And I saw the autopsy. Owlman-" There's a tiny tremor. "-liked using street people as test subjects. Richard Grayson died. Everyone else died. But I was the youngest. My brain could adapt better."

"Who… Who are you?"

"It doesn't matter." He turns to leave, his cape sweeping behind him. "I'm leaving."

"You don't have to go back!" Talon stops next to my barrier. "If the world you come from is that crazy, there's no point in you going back. You could stay-!"

"No point but the one I choose to make." He reaches out with his right hand and pushes against the barrier. "Lantern."

I attach filaments to both of them and rapidly make the series of transitions necessary to take us back to the auditorium, where a decidedly uneasy peace has broken out. I drop Robin and Talon as Lamprey studies Kaldur with undisguised fascination. "Is that the Trident of Oceanus? I have seen it but I never had the courage to take it for myself."

"It is the Trident of Neptune."

"Ah. Of course. The revolt of the Low-Born against the Titans was successful here. And Arthur Curry-"

"Orin."

"-rules as King. And what was that I tasted in the boy's blood? Some.. form of alchemy…"

My alter ego bows his head slightly. "Lamprey, you're creeping everyone out again. Knock it off."

"My apologies, Seneschal."

Kaldur takes the opportunity to study his opposite in return. I suppose that now we're not fighting one another it's only natural that there'd be some curiosity. "How did you become… This?"

"I was taken from my home on Kadavu Island at a young age by shark-man raiders. Life as a slave did not suit me. I bided my time until an opportunity to escape presented itself and then used my owner's own magic against him. He was the first person I ate and I wear his skin even now." He runs his right hand over his armour, an expression of… Fondness? On his face. "His skull I presented to my Shogun as proof of my skill, and I have been his loyal vassal ever since."

"Dakuwaqa is a peaceful deity. He would not approve of murder and.. cannibalism."

"Here, perhaps. Our Dakuwaqa consumes his foes and makes their strength his. Once, a foolish Octopus Goddess confronted him at the height of his rage. Though she entangled him, he was able to taste her flesh and then shortly meet her arms with his own. He could match her while she had no way to match him." He pointedly looks around the still-frozen room. "Still, your magic is powerful. Perhaps it would be beneficial if I were to expand my diet."

"Lamprey, what did I say?"

Lamprey bows his head slightly and walks away. Kaldur turns to me. "The bomb?"

"Made safe."

Wallace looks up from the third OMAC. I repaired her organs and Zatanna's magic stripped the outer casing more gently than my blades could, but she's remained catatonic since. That might well have been my doing. I don't know. It could just as well have been the consequences of the invasive cybernetics. Hopefully STAR Labs can come up with something to help them. Having not seen Mister Lynch, Wallace is still reacting with shock to their appearance. "If the bomb's turned off, what's to stop us making you stay and pay for what you've done!?"

"Same thing that keeps me on Earth a month after I knew I could leave with no consequence. Because we said they could. And from what I've seen Earth negative fourteen isn't exactly a soft option." To say nothing of the fact that they almost certainly know the secret identities of most -if not all- of the Justice League. I would not want these people in Belle Reve, even under Waller.

I nod to Artemis and she sprays solvent on the rubbery material still coating Mary Mayhem's mouth. Mary claws at it, spitting and coughing as soon as her mouth is free. Her eyes blaze as she tries to burn us with the force of her hatred. Artemis backs off as quickly as she can without looking like she's afraid. "Oggar!" The air darkens and.. black.. lightning? Radiates out from her for a moment. When light can once again reach her she's back in her uniform, her fists balled and her breathing heavy.

"Easy, Mayhem." Ultraboy looks at her. She meets his eyes for a moment and then turns away with a snort.

"Well." The Blue Lantern smiles at our group. "This has been.. interesting, but-."

Lex raises his eyebrows slightly. "Forgetting something?"

"Ah. Yes. Let me get that for you." Two devices -looking like smaller versions of the thing we saw just before the OMAC attacked us in the corridor- appear just in front of myself and Lex. "Shouldn't be too hard for you to work out. If you put a few in orbit that should be enough to stop anyone planeshifting here using a device like the one we use."

Lex delicately reaches out to take it but Mercy interposes herself with a shake of her head. He makes a barely audible snort, then indicates the device with a wave of his right hand. She wasn't happy about not being included in the attack, but having someone we aren't used to working with -particularly one inclined to shoot to kill as a first response- fighting alongside us was a recipe for disaster. She takes hold of the object and then steps back behind Lex. I attach a filament to mine and deposit it in my subspace pocket.

My alter ego looks at me for a moment. I see a series of uncomfortable memories, fear and desperation all too evident. Then he tosses his head and returns his attention to his team mates. "If we're all ready?" He mostly gets grunts in return. I fixed Arrowette up but Zauriel can barely stand upright. Perhaps my Mage Slayers impeded his regeneration? Worth knowing. Blue Lantern takes the planeshifter out of subspace and appears to hesitate for a moment. When no one takes the opportunity to attack he actually manages a weak smile before making eye contact with me again. "I'll keep an eye out for any other versions of us."

"Don't go to any trouble on my account."

He dips his head again, then holds out the planeshifter and pulls the trigger. The purple afterimages appear once more, lingering for several seconds before they and their team finally disappear.

Lex waits a moment or two, then smiles at the rest of us. "Orange Lantern, I'd like to thank your team for your assistance. I dread to think what would have happened if you hadn't been around to help. All of you, in fact."

I nearly correct him and tell him that Kaldur is in charge. But no. "Job's not over quite yet, Mister Luthor. We still need to check the whole building for nasty surprises. And you need to deactivate the force field."

"Of course. It's a fairly involved process, but I'll get started right away." He starts walking towards the door, then stops in front of Kon. He's looking at… Kon's shaven head. "I do hope you aren't trying to imitate me with that look, son. I treasured my hair while I had it and I advise you to do the same. My father Lionel was bald by my age. It seems to run in the male line."

"I got Superman's hair. It'll grow back." Lex considers for a moment, then nods, pats Kon on his right shoulder and walks on. Kon watches him go for a moment and then turns back to me. "It will, right?"

back

Doppelgänger 33

next

5th February

19:31 GMT -5

"…death today of the author Erasmus Fry in his home in…"

I lean back into the settee, regarding with some amusement the intent expressions on the faces of Garth and Tula. Both of them prefer news programs to any form of entertainment surface media has to offer. I suppose this is a work placement for them; they're not so much 'off the clock' as studying surface culture.

Batman pretty much ordered us back to the mountain after the LexCorp thing was resolved. Fortunately for myself and Zatanna, Nabu's busy doing.. something, and isn't here. That meant that I could justify not arguing the point with Batman to myself. Batman agreed that making the deal was the most sensible thing to do and will be passing on the designs for the planeshift blocker to 'corporations working with the League' for study and development. Could be Wayne Enterprises, could be Kord Tech. I can find out Tuesday which it is.

"M'gann, what is it?" Over on the settee to my left, Kon nudges his girlfriend with his left elbow. "You've been distracted all day."

M'gann looks up, then at him, then around the room as the rest of us turn our attention on her. "It's… Her. The other M'gann."

"You're not hurt, are you?"

"No, it…" She looks away for a moment. "When we were fighting, one of the things she said was…"

Kaldur leans forward. "Whatever she said was most likely simply an attempt to undermine your self confidence."

"Most of it was, but I haven't been able to stop thinking about…" She hesitates for a moment, ordering her thoughts. "I told you.. about Martian skin color."

Kon nods, not quite getting it. "Yeah, but no one on Earth cares about what color Martians are."

She smiles at him. "I know. It's just… I'm used to the idea that it matters. Seeing her just.. being White… She was offended by me pretending to be green and… I think she may have a point."

Kon puts his left arm around her shoulders. "You can make your skin white if you want." He fidgets slightly. "Um, but maybe you could give the shark teeth a miss?"

She chuckles. "Oh, I don't want to change how I look, just the color scheme. How about…" Green colour disappears across her visible skin in a ripple. There isn't any gradual fading, it just switches from medium green to the pearl white colour she wore when we were spending quality time with Mister J'aarkn. "I don't know. Does red hair work with this?"

"If we're a public spectacle now-" I glance at the television screen where the cycling news headlines have switched back to a picture of our group outside of LexCorp after the mission was completed. "-it might be a good idea to have more.. visual distinction between Megan Morse and M'gann M'orzz."

Kon shrugs. "Doesn't matter to me."

She rolls her eyes. "Maybe I need to ask someone who's not a guy. Tula? Zatanna? Miss Reilly?"

"Hm?" Tula jerks her head around. "I'm sorry, were you talking to me?"

"Creating visual space between your costumed identity and your private identity is a sound move. I do not think I am.. properly equipped to render aesthetic judgement."

Zatanna looks at M'gann's hair with a critical eye. "I don't think blonde would work with skin that white. What other color did you have in mind?"

"I can make it any color." Her hair shifts from red to deep blue. "But last time I had my skin like this I made it black." It changes to black as I start to turn my attention away from the girl-talk and back to the screen.

"…with Bialya. Queen Beatrice has not been seen in public for over a week, uncharacteristically cancelling several scheduled appearances."

"That's odd. I mean, she needs to be around people for her mind control pheromones to work."

Danni keeps looking at the screen as well. "Pheromones are not her sole means of enforcing her rule."

"No, but a thinking dictator has to at least try and keep people on side."

"Palace staff were quick to deny rumours that their monarch was in poor health, saying instead that she was 'focusing her energies on the governance of her people'."

"Appearing in public at anything less than her best would risk giving the impression of weakness. She will most likely not do so until her burns have healed."

I frown. "Burns?"

Without turning she holds up her right fist and ignites the air around it. "Burns."

O-kay.

"…try black out for a while." Looks like M'gann's gone back to monochrome. I think it works, but I don't really know anything about colour matching. I wear orange with everything, for goodness sake.

"I wonder what happened to the other versions of-" Garth glances at Tula. "-us."

Kaldur considers for a moment. "It would be unrealistic to assume that all of us have surviving alter egos. And I would not be quick to regret the lack of such an encounter. I do not think that I would surprise anyone by saying that I was extremely disturbed by 'Lamprey's'.. dietary preferences."

M'gann frowns at him. "Who's.. 'Arthur Curry'?"

Ah, that's.. interesting. All three Atlanteans looked uncomfortable at the mention of that name. I know King Orin doesn't really use it any more but I don't see why it would be a problem.

The other two look to Kaldur to respond. "Why do you ask?"

"When Lamprey called Aquaman that, I could feel how angry you were. But, Aquaman's name is Orin…"

The Atlanteans exchange glances and it looks like Kaldur gets volunteered. "My King… His father was not Atlantean, and he was not born in Atlantis."

"Really?"

"I'm taking Tom Curry to meet his new grandson on Monday." I shrug at M'gann's puzzlement. "He's a baseline Human; couldn't take the pressure on his own, or breathe the water."

Kaldur inclines his head slightly. "King Orin is the elder son of our previous queen, Queen Atlanna and.. an American Harbor Master named Thomas Curry. King Orin grew up in a town named Amnesty Bay on the coast of Maine."

Zatanna looks interested. "They weren't married?"

"No." Kaldur actually looks uncomfortable. "King Orin was two when Queen Atlanna married General Theon, Orm's father. Few in the Atlantean court even knew that Orin existed until well after King Theon's death. When Queen Atlanna announced that she was designating as her heir her son by a surface worlder rather than the son of a popular General whom most had assumed would succeed her…"

"It didn't go down particularly well."

Garth nods. "That is a significant understatement. My parents talked about it with me once; there were moves in the Senate to have her decision overturned."

Zatanna's eye flick from one Atlantean to another. "Could they do that?"

Tula nods. "Atlantis is a democracy. Sort of. Individual City-States send representatives to the national Senate in Poseidonis and the Senate makes the laws. Some Senators are elected by the citizens of their cities, some are appointed by the city's rulers…"

Garth huffs. "Nanaue's Senators have to fight for their seats."

Kaldur nods. "The Senate could in theory have overridden her, but they were reluctant to do so. There is a balance of power between the Senate and the Crown, and so blatant an interference would have violated that. As such, the motion was unable to gather sufficient support to be passed. Those who disagree most vehemently with the decision made it their custom to refer to King Orin as 'Arthur Curry' in an attempt to indicate that he was not truly Atlantean and as such should not be a candidate for the throne."

"The files my alter ego gave me say that their version of Aquaman has no problem being called by his surface name. I doubt Lamprey had any idea that it would be a problem to call him that."

Kaldur nods. "I realize that. But my emotional response to hearing.. me.. call him that was not guided by dispassionate analysis."

I nod and lean back into the settee. "Anyone have any idea how long Batman wants us to stay here?"

back

NEXT CHAPTER

Prayer

BACK

Prayer 1

next

Prayer

7th February

07:17 GMT -5

"Would you like me to help you with that, sir?"

Thomas Curry looks around from his chest of drawers for a moment and sighs. "I can manage perfectly well. The other two are bad enough but it'll be a sad day when Tom Curry can't carry his own pack."

I was half-expecting someone older, but I suppose with King Orin only being twenty nine there was no reason why his father would be old old. He's fifty three and still physically fit. His hair's grey and his bushy beard puts me in mind of how my own father wore his in my youth.

The 'other two' being his Atlantean close protection officers.. or whatever they're properly called. Seeing as the king's father had no desire to live in what they considered an adequately secure environment they ended up having to move here to Amnesty Bay. They have to work their cover too. I suppose their resulting unusual familiarity with surface world culture might open up interesting opportunities for them as Atlantean-Surface World relations become closer. One of them -Alpheus- is awaiting our return to the kitchen with Mister Curry's wife, Mary Curry née Sullivan. The other bodyguard couldn't justify taking time off from his cover job to join us.

I never really had any interest in Aquaman in the comic so I've got no idea if that version of him had as many land-dwelling relatives as the one I know does. One much younger half-brother, currently at college, along with several cousins living in and around the Amnesty Bay area. Aquaman doesn't exactly have a secret identity but knowledge that Arthur Curry equals Orin is a secret, if only to make sure the rest of the clan have some privacy and don't become target-of-the-week for supervillains with a grudge against him.

Mister Curry checks his hair in the mirror, lifts the holdall over his shoulder and then turns around. "Alright then… What was your name again?" I hold up a business card. He frowns at it then at me before dismissing the oddity. "Lead on, Paul."

I nod and exit his bedroom, starting the walk down the staircase. The Curry family home is the old lighthouse keeper's cottage. Apparently Mister Curry's forebears used to operate it before the network was automated. The lighthouse itself is still in use and from the various pictures and nautical knickknacks attached to the walls I gather that this is something of a source of pride. Thinking about it, it can't have been easy, a single man with a full time job which often requires significant amounts overtime bringing up a child more or less on his own.

As I enter the kitchen I nod to Alpheus. This isn't in any way a high risk journey and I'm going to be there. Missus Curry also won't be joining us so it'll just be the three of us. As I understand it, King Orin always regarded Queen Atlanna as being his real mother and while relations between them aren't bad exactly they aren't particularly close.

"I'll be off then, Mary." Mister Curry crosses the kitchen and embraces his wife. "Should be back in time for dinner."

She leans in and kisses him on the cheek. "Give Arthur and Mera my best. And little Artur too."

"I will."

I hadn't realised that 'Artur' was even a name before Kaldur told me that was what the new prince was called. Still, I suppose it was a lucky escape; one more letter and he'd have been 'Prince Junior'.

Mister Curry smiles fondly at his wife as he pulls away, turning towards the back door. Alpheus exits first and I notice him do a quick check for possible threats before stepping aside from the door for Mister Curry to pass. To keep with the secrecy thing I'm wearing clothes which contain no orange along with a black bobble hat. And glasses. I mean, they work for Superman, right?

The local zeta tube terminus isn't anywhere near the lighthouse. It would be too hard to disguise the electricity consumption if it was connected to the town's energy grid and fairly difficult to hide the electromagnetic and heat radiation if it had its own system. Similarly, I could transfer us straight to Poseidonis but the orange glow was judged to be too much of a risk. Instead, we're going for a short drive in Mister Curry's car down towards the docks where the zeta tube terminal is housed in a warehouse owned -through a front company- by the Atlantean crown. They do occasionally use it for its alleged purpose but it's mostly here for King Orin's benefit.

Amnesty Bay isn't a big harbour but it is just about big enough to cope with smaller container ships and has much lower docking fees than the larger port cities of Portland or Portsmouth to the south. Most of what goes out here is manufactured goods heading towards Europe and the constant demand is more than enough to keep the docks and the local workforce busy. Back home… No idea if this place exists. If it does it's probably been hit pretty hard by the recession. I did a quick check here and apparently 'sub prime' mortgages were never a thing here due to some unusually farsighted legislation that attracted a surprising amount of cross-bench support. Even free market friendly Senators and Congresspeople have been heard publicly talking of the need to avoid perverse incentives in a way that only happened post-crash back home.

I really need to get around to looking into why.

As Harbour Master, Mister Curry does have a legitimate reason for checking up on warehouses near the waterfront. If anyone asks that's exactly what we're doing. If anyone watches they'll probably be curious about why we walked into a warehouse and didn't come out for twelve hours but if anyone's that interested then we're probably rumbled anyway. As it is no one's around when we get out of the car and Alpheus heads towards the door, the key for the padlock already in his hand.

We follow him inside. It's hard to spot unless you know what you're looking for, but this building is designed to shield any emissions generated within from external detection. A shipping container over to my right contains an Atlantean lightning generator and the transformer required to turn that into power a circuit can usefully use. Sephtian and I could probably replace the generator with something a fraction of the size… But if we're going to aim to replace the network anyway there probably isn't much point. I had some trouble explaining to Sephtian exactly how much electrical energy the surface world uses. Atlanteans don't, for obvious reasons. Since I'm.. fairly sure that I want to introduce a xenotech power generation system rather than a magitech one I don't think I'll bother focusing on that.

Alpheus pulls open the doors to the shipping container holding the zeta tube. This isn't part of the main system; it's strictly point to point. Too much risk of someone putting two and two together if they walk in on something. Mister Curry looks the device over as I give it a scan. No problems that I can detect. Alpheus pulls a lever and the interior of the tube runs through its start up sequence.

I wave my left hand and connect myself to Mister Curry with a thick line of orange, extending an environmental shield around him. He looks at it and then turns over to me. "What.. exactly should I expect?"

I shrug. "You'll be able to walk around with little more difficulty than you can on the surface. And breathe normally and speak normally. Though.. I ttthink they're setting up an air-room for you."

"Are you going to be hanging around all day?"

"I'll be one guard among many, Mister Curry."

He nods. "I suppose privacy's one of those things kings have to do without."

"Three." This zeta tube actually has a count down. "Two. One."

7th February

10:17 GMT -2

And we're in the water before the Poseidonis tube. Mister Curry doesn't start, but he does look a little apprehensively curious about the situation. Alpheus on the other hand looks a little happier. Purebloods don't need constant exposure to water but they certainly prefer it. "If you're ready, sir?" He hesitates for a moment, then nods. Plot route, open a tube and transition.

And we're inside the palace, near the royal quarters. After the incident last year where Ocean Master and his followers were basically able to swim into the royal bedchambers they've upgraded security somewhat; I certainly couldn't transition directly inside there any longer. The guards outside tense for a moment, but a moment later recognise us -it's probably the orange glow- and one of them turns to press the rune on the doorway.

Another swims forwards. "Identify yourselves, please."

"Guardsman Alpheus, with Thomas Curry and Orange Lantern, here to see their majesties."

The guard raises some sort of runic stone and waves it at us. He looks at it for a moment and then nods. "Identities confirmed." He turns his attention to Mister Curry. "Welcome to Atlantis, sir. This way please-."

The door opens and King Orin swims out towards his father, smiling broadly. "Dad! Glad you could make it."

For a moment Mister Curry Senior tries to swim up to his son's level. Realising that he can't, he waits for King Orin to drop to floor level in front of him. "As if I'd miss this." They embrace, and I note that their beards follow the same contours along their faces. "Mary sends her love. Now, where's this grandson of mine?"

back

Prayer 2

next

8th February

09:43 GMT -5

I nod. It's not really a surprise but I had rather hoped they would choose differently. "Well, if that's your choice, Mister Lynch, Miss Barstow. I'm sure that LexCorp will do everything they can to help you."

Lex favours them with a paternal smile. "Of course. It's the very least a mere businessman can do to try to live up to the reputation of so heroic an alter ego."

On Earth negative fourteen Lex Luthor is famous for his tireless struggle against the Crime Syndicate. Neither Noah Lynch nor Vienna Barstow knew that the Management had been defeated. Once I told them about the role he played in it they both decided that they'd rather stay with LexCorp for their treatment rather than go to STAR Labs, which on negative fourteen is some sort of Syndicate front company. If I had hard evidence I could present them about Lex's nefarious associates I might have been able to talk them out of it, but… I know that if someone is a hero on a negative parallel they're probably a villain on a positive one, but try explaining that logically to someone. You'd sound like an idiot. And my lack of a smoking gun is why I'm uncertain about how I should deal with Lex.

Huh. Maybe negative fourteen Lex isn't actually any different to ours and he just happened to be right in his suspicions of superhumans?

The two former OMACs look at each other. They're holding hands but all of the yellow… It's not a romantic gesture, it just so happens that the other person is the only one who knows what horrors they've gone through. Physically, they look to be in good condition. I think? There's a certain.. Sasha Bordeaux to them. Their skin is grey tinted as nanogoo grey replaces blood red. Mister Lynch is still noticeably darker and his-.

"Akg." He closes his eyes, tilting his head down and putting his free hand over his eyes. "It's… It's doing it again."

Miss Barstow looks towards the LexCorp medical researchers who are hurrying towards him. "Doctor?!"

Doctor Kelley reaches him first, some sort of highly detailed optical scanner in her hand. "Mister Lynch, I need you to show me." He hesitates. "Can you do that?"

"Uh. Yeah, yeah." He slowly moves his hand away from his eyes and looks up, wincing as he does so. His eyes are red in pupil and iris. Like the symbol on his chest used to be.

"Hmm." The doctor moves in for a closer look and brings up her scanner. "Are you in any pain?"

"No, not… Not much."

"Any changes in your visual field?"

"Yeah, it's like… Every time I look at something, the eyes're telling me what it is and how much of a threat it is. Telling me how to kill it."

"I see. What's it saying about me?"

He stares directly at her for a moment. "Civilian doctor. It thinks snapping your neck is the best way to kill you but that using you as a Human shield would be better. If I… I'm sorry, Orange Lantern, but when I look at you it starts freaking out. Messages… I can't look at you without getting the worst headache."

Lex nods as Doctor Kelley continues her examination. "Doctor, I think we should leave you to it. Orange Lantern..?" He motions towards the door with his right hand.

I nod as Mister Lynch is helped onto a gurney and wheeled towards a CT scanner. Miss Barstow remains latched to his side the whole time. "I'll let the League know that you're in good hands." I turn away as the medics start attaching monitors and walk out through the door.

Lex follows on behind me, Mercy lurking behind him. "I don't suppose there's any chance we could have access to the one who killed himself? A dissection would allow us to gather all manner of data that we can't ethically get from living specimens."

"Lex, the League are unhappy enough about this already. The best I could do was get Batman to promise that STAR Labs will share what they find. And they expect you to do the same in return."

"Of course."

I take a look around the corridor. "How are the repairs going?"

"We estimate a month and a half until work is complete." He holds out his right hand without looking around. "Mercy, do you have-?" She hands him a tablet and he looks it over. "We only finished the security sweeps yesterday evening. We're hiring temporary office space to keep things running until the place is liveable again."

"Find any of those… Pyramid things?"

He presses the tablet. "No. Here." He passes it to me. It's showing what looks like security camera footage of one of them. "If you press 'play'…" I do. The timestamp runs forwards and with a purple blur the device shimmers and then vanishes. I press pause. The time is near as makes little difference to the time where my other self returned the Young Offenders to negative fourteen. "You see it?"

I nod. "Which means they're probably somewhere on negative fourteen now."

"Do you know if they appear in the same place, spatially?"

"It seems like a logical assumption, but I really don't know."

"I'm merely concerned that we may have inadvertently unleashed a group of superhuman thugs on my alter ego's place of work."

I shake my head. "Ultraman took possession of the building years ago. These days Lex Luthor works out of the White House."

"President Luthor?" He looks mildly amused by the idea. "I can't say I'd given the idea much thought…"

"Vice President, though I'm told he's favourite for two thousand and twelve." I hand the tablet back and generate a construct image of Lex negative fourteen in full armour.

"A rather dashing figure." He breathes out a little heavily. "Now, on to less pleasant matters-."

"Why did you ward the whole building?" A slight grimace. "I could have wrapped this whole thing up in under a minute if you hadn't. Who did you even get to do it?"

"Who… Is simpler. His name is Linton Smith-."

!!!

"Papa Midnite? You seriously got Papa Midnite in here?"

"Until he's convicted of something, he's a legitimate businessman."

"That doesn't make it a good idea. Did you know that he-?"

Lex makes a placatory gesture. "Having.. seen his place of work I can understand your reservations, but if I may explain?" I nod. "LexCorp is.. my citadel. I spoke to you before of my distaste for the Justice League… If my worst fears were ever realized, if they ever turned on humanity, I need to know that this place is secure against whoever might assail it. The wards are a part of that, to allow us to better withstand assault from magic users or, yes-" He looks directly at me. "-Lanterns. It wasn't aimed at you specifically, but I couldn't risk trying to add an exception as I did with… Enginehead."

"If it's that secure-."

"There's a master override. I mistook Ultraboy for my son and his Martian for a Human. I invited them into my office-."

"And you didn't have any blue kryptonite on hand." He nods. "Okay, that.. makes sense, but what was with all of the power armour I saw?"

He taps the tablet rapidly and then hands it back to me. "Do you know what this is?"

I hadn't seen this exact picture before, but yes. "Project Rocket Red. The AK forty seven of power armour. Nothing too exciting but highly mechanically reliable and cheap. Sort of. If they ever get it working properly."

"They're close, and I don't want the SVR to have been peering over my shoulder when they finally crack it." He smiles. "Not everything I do is about the Justice League, you know."

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Prayer 3

next

8th February

23:21 GMT -5

"Who ya tryin'n get crazy with, ese?"

I frown slightly as I pull my mobile phone from my pocket with my right hand. What does he want?

"Don't cha know I'm loco?"

I drop the people smuggler I was holding in my left hand to the floor, where he reflexively curls up to protect his severely bruised stomach. In all probability Gotham is merely the point of arrival for the people he brings in before they are taken on to other locations in the US, but I find it amusing to believe instead that Gotham is so miserable a city that the inhabitants pay to be smuggled away from it.

I find myself moving along to the rhythm of the brief instrumental section as I look for my partner-cum-supervisor. "Robin, you got this, right? I need to answer this."

"To da one.. on da flamboyant tip."

Oh, rude of me. I send an orange beam to connect to each of the fallen thugs -not that many really- and handcuff them.

"I'll just toss that ham in the fryin' pan like spam."

Richard looks at the people collapsed at my feet and strewn across the room. "How bad did you-?"

"Just bruises!"

"Get done when I come.. and slam."

One man tries to rise to his feet, only to yelp in pain and collapse. "Okay, hairline fracture on that guy's left metatarsal, but that's it." His own fault for not having a proper grip on his crowbar, really.

"Damn! I feel like the Son of Sam."

"Just… Answer it."

"Ta." I walk out towards the warehouse car park. I really think we've… If not actually bonded bonded, at least gained a greater appreciation for one another's style of working during my time in Gotham. Really, I just suggested it in order to suck up to Batman but it's been kind of fun.

"Don't make me wreck shit-."

Answer.

The song cuts out and is replaced with silence. "Grayven here." Filter sound.

By your command.

"I'm free to talk. What's up?"

"I wish to talk with you.. on behalf of our friends.. on a matter that has arisen."

"Come on Brain, no need to talk around the subject." I walk through the loading area and out into the Gotham night. Thing about Brain is that without a body he just hooks a broadcaster up to his speech synthesiser. No background sound at all, not even crackling as wind passes over the receiver. "What is it?"

"You no doubt recall that your entry into the Light is contingent on you removing Klarion from our number?"

"Not likely to forget. Got Savage's little mutant hurry-up as well. I told you it would take a while when you gave me the job."

"And you did not.. perhaps.. make some mistake with regard to the identity of your target?"

Where's he.. going.. with this? "Don't.. think so..? The boy with the pale skin and the horn-hair? Glows purple when he hooks himself up to that Djinn thing?"

"That is indeed his appearance. What is concerning to myself and my colleagues is that you have taken action against another of our number. While I acknowledge that you gave no formal undertaking that you would not do so, we had rather assumed that we would have a truce as we worked towards greater cooperation?"

I shrug. "Yes? I mean, Savage's thing was somewhat annoying but it wasn't a major threat."

"You mean to say that you have not been active in Bialya?"

"Haven't been back since our meeting." Oh, wait. "Did Queen Beena try sending a snatch squad after the Logans?"

"Something of that nature."

Heh. "If the drones I had on guard duty actually hit anything I'll pay compensation. It was really just supposed to be a warning shot."

"You can pay compensation to a dead woman, Mister Grayven?"

What? "What?"

"Queen Bee is dead, Mister Grayven."

Shit. Even if I was going to kill my way through the Light I probably wouldn't have killed her. I know all too well the chaos that follows when you remove a Middle Eastern dictator. "How the hell did that happen?"

"We are not entirely certain. Her.. personal assistant was somewhat distraught and not able to coherently answer. Not to mention that she is in the custody of the Quraci police."

Fuck fuckity fuck fuck fuck. "What do you know?"

"She and her late employer crossed the border, hired an unmarked car from a local firm and drove to the Logan Animal Sanctuary. When they arrived Queen Bee instructed her to wait in the car. Shortly after Queen Bee exited the vehicle she was entirely destroyed by some form of energy weapon. The description of the weapon employed matches the description of your own combat drones."

"What did the silly cow do that for?"

"Possibly she was seeking to make good on the threat she made to your Martian friend? She did not volunteer that information to us ahead of time, Mister Grayven. And it is somewhat difficult to learn her mind after the fact."

"But she must have known that threat was a dud as soon as I left? The only way I could maintain my position here was to nullify it. I just assumed she'd send a few squads or something, the drones would open fire at long range and they'd get a clue and fall back. She's… She's definitely dead, right?"

"Unless your drone weapons have some other function of which I am not aware."

"Well… Shit."

"As you say."

Ah, and it was shaping up to be such a nice evening. "Sooooooo… Guess I'm getting blackballed, then."

"I would not assume that. Men such as ourselves tend to have a somewhat pragmatic view of mortality. While the instructions you gave to your weapons were ill-considered, if what you say is true then the fault lies in the most part with her."

"Wait, seriously?"

"I will.. investigate the matter further before speaking with my colleagues. Though.. if I may make the observation..? It is wise for you to deal with our Chaos Lord problem before that, is it not?"

Fuck my complete lack of concrete leads. "Yeah, I'll… Prioritise it."

"I will look forward to your success. Good evening, Mister Grayven."

"'Bye, Brain." Oh, he's already gone. Arse. I put the phone back in my pocket. What did she have to go and do that for? I give it a week -two at the outside- before the civil war starts. And she wasn't even a particularly bad ruler! Mind control greases the wheels of government wonderfully. None of that shutting-down-the-country-because-a-room-full-of-adults-can't-agree-on-a-budget nonsense. She had a man publically flogged for trying that!

But the social collapse isn't my problem unless I feel like marrying her sister and claiming the country myself.

…

No.

Ugh. How the hell am I going to kill Klarion within a reasonable timeframe? I mean, theoretically I could get mystically resilient enough to do it myself eventually but I wouldn't want to chance it anytime soon. Atlantean anti-magic gear is nowhere near strong enough to pull off something like that. There's no way Constantine would help me now, not after the Shadow Dog thing… Well, not without him stabbing me in the back as well. My search for high end mystic artefacts hasn't led me to anything I'd want to depend on. Rumours? What are the chances some crazy Nazi wizard really has the Spear of Destiny? No one in Klarion's weight class owes me any favours…

The Ophidian?

I consider for a moment the probable consequences of unleashing the Embodiment of Avarice on the Earth. Nooo. Quite aside from what it would do to me I'm not ready for the fight with Larfleeze that would inevitably trigger. Ugh, I'm going to have to go and have a chat with Nabu, aren't I?

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Prayer 4

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9th February

17:43 GMT -5

I may not really be able to be physically tired when I'm wearing the ring but the exhaustion I experienced early today appears to be lingering in my mind. I'm not quite sure how I got roped into this but Jade's fellow inmates appear to be finding it amusing and I suppose that justifies it well enough.

On the other side of the work surface Madison makes eye contact for a second as she adds the pine nuts to the couscous. "'sup with you? I though you said you didn't get tired."

"I skipped a class and Diana… Wonder Woman made me run a marathon this morning." And afternoon. My construct knife cuts into the red pepper, neatly removing the stalk part.

Jade stops next to me to check my work over my shoulder. "That's only twenty five miles. You should-."

"A hundred and fifty." Slice in half, scrape the insides of seeds and flanges, put both halves onto the baking tray and pick up the next pepper. "The only reason why she didn't make me run the other leg as well is because I told her I was coming here."

"Hm." She checks the tray and then picks it up to take it to the ovens.

At least Madison looks impressed. "A hundred and fifty miles?"

"From Athens to Sparta. What's particularly annoying-" Slice. "-about it-" Slice, plonk, new pepper. "-is that the Amazons went into isolation a thousand years before the journey the event's based on is supposed to have happened so there's no way she can know that's how far it actually was."

"Thought you could fly?"

"She confiscated the rings." I hold my left hand up and wiggle it. "Just had to use my legs." And post re-testosteroning I've become a bit wary about having the ring alter my mind. Hence, tiredness.

Jade slams the oven door shut and then looks at me. "Less talking, more working."

"Am I even allowed in here?"

"You can leave whenever you want."

"You couldn't replace me. No one else would volunteer for this."

She gives me a small smile and an expression of scepticism. "Is that so?"

"When most men think about women's prison? This isn't the bit they're thinking about." On my left the woman weighing out the olives… Reilly, that was her name. She snorts. "How come you've gone full vegetarian, anyway? I know you used to be fine eating meat."

"You can't get meat worth eating for what New England's prepared to pay for prison meals. I'm just glad this place still has its own kitchens."

Reilly nods. "Guess we're even cheaper than contractors."

Madison passes her bowl along the production line and picks up the next couscous bowl to strain it. "Bet we eat better though."

"No need to convince me. You can't even sell American meat in Europe because of all the crap they add to it."

Jade takes a quick look around the kitchen. Dinner is getting served at half past six for the one hundred and sixty eight women housed here, as well as the thirty or so members of staff. The two guards over by the door have been watching me but that's mostly because I'm the only interesting thing happening here. The main course appears to be ratatouille and there's some sort of fruit jelly for pudding. Seeing nothing that requires her attention, Jade walks back to my station. "Why are you visiting today?"

"Well. Month and a half to go. Doesn't seem to be much chance of you getting shanked." She pointedly looks away from me. "Given much thought to what you're going to do with yourself?"

"I've considered my options."

"Going.. back to.. Gotham? I mean.. I know that-."

"You managed to get just about everyone I ever worked with arrested?"

… "Yes. I mean, if you're thinking about taking the chef thing forwards it's a great place to use your knife skills legally."

Madison looks up as she picks up the couscous filled strainer and returns the grains to the bowl. "Knife skills?"

Jade turns her head back towards me and gives me a warning look. Has she not..? "Knife skills I'm shutting up about." She relaxes again.

"So…" Reilly looks from Jade to me and back again. "How long you two been together?"

Madison shakes her head. "They're not."

Reilly gives her a look of disbelief. "You being serious? He's here every week."

"I have a lot of free time."

Jade looks a little.. less annoyed. "What were you doing this week? There was something on the news about LexCorp."

"Fighting robots, traps and evil parallel universe versions of my friends."

"Am I included in that?"

"There wasn't a version of you, buuuut…" I generate a construct. "There was this picture in the files my own opposite number gave me. Calls herself Sai."

"That's original." Jade takes a closer look. "Nice mask though."

"I'm not sure whether she's you or not."

"Wait." Reilly take a fresh look at Jade. "You a supervillain or something?"

"No." I remove the construct. "Her lawyer was very clear about that."

"Oh. So does that mean-?"

I turn to Jade, keeping half an eye on the peppers as I have the ring handle the chopping coordination. "See, I know this guy in Belle Reve. His name's Leonard Snart, Captain Cold. Man's a technological genius. Regularly beaten by his father growing up, barely passed S-. High School. No higher education at all. Somehow during his first period of incarceration he managed to learn enough about low temperature physics to make a freeze ray. Point, fire, zero degrees Kelvin."

Jade looks a little interested. "I always thought he stole it."

"Stole the parts but it's his own design. Heck, I know Batman thinks those Ice Fortresses were a joint effort, Mister Freeze, Icicle, Killer Frost, Icicle Junior and him working together. But I've spent a lot of time in the one I'm using on the North Pole and I'd say the design was eighty to ninety percent him."

"Is this the 'why doesn't he sell it and make millions legally' speech?"

"No, because I know why. I was going to try to work with him, but… Then I got a look at him. Now, he's not completely.. instinctively hostile. This is the guy who organises the Central City Rogues. His social skills are actually pretty good. When he's got an enemy. See, growing up.. like that? His primary caregiver hitting him… Randomly. That meant his brain developed.. constantly looking out for where the next thump was coming from. Put him up against the police or the Flash and he can function fine. Put him in an office and he wouldn't be able to cope. The lack of an aggressor would drive him bananas constantly looking for something that isn't there."

Jade looks at me through narrowing eyes. Oh, she gets it. "He sounds like a mess."

I nod. "He is, rather. Any ideas on how I could approach him?"

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Prayer 5

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10th February

20:02 GMT -5

"Dana, hi!"

Kaldur looks around as I wave towards the door. "Are you certain that this is wise?"

"Nope!"

"That is not reassuring."

Dana spots my arm, waves back a little hesitantly and heads in our direction. She's dressed… Not quite date clothes, but certainly nicer than her breaking and entering clothes. Kaldur wasn't that hard to convince and it's not as if he had other plans tonight. Zatanna's doing homework and -hooray- only two more days until Nabu fucks off back to wherever. Diana's next on the rotation.

"Hey.. guys." Dana walks up to our table and I wave my right hand at the seat across from us. "Thanks… Have you ordered yet?"

"We have not. I.. cannot read French."

Dana picks up a menu and opens it. "I can't either, but you can usually-."

"Oh, sorry, right." I connect filaments to each of them and activate the ring's translator.

Dana and Kaldur's eyes flash orange for a second. Dana blinks heavily for a moment and then looks anew at the menu. "What..? It's in English."

"Power rings have an automatic translator feature. Otherwise a Lantern would have to learn every language spoken in their assigned Sector in order to do their job."

"That's amazing."

I give her a little frown. "They have built in faster than light travel as well."

"But it's connecting to my mind. Can it transmit whole databases?"

"E-errrr… It can transmit images, certainly. I don't think dumping an entire database into your brain would be a good idea."

"But it's translating written words. I'm actually seeing something different."

"I'm not exactly sure how it works, but I think the change happens in your visual cortex rather than your optic nerve. Your brain gets an instruction to interpret this signal as one thing rather than another. If you took a photograph of it then it would still be in French."

"There are Atlantean spells which can achieve the same effect, though translations for spoken words are easier."

Dana nods, setting the menu aside. "Aqualad, right? I've only seen pictures…"

"That is the title given to me by my king. My name is Kaldur'ahm. Please, call me Kaldur."

"Okay. Kaldur. I.. sort of assumed that Orange-" I hold my hands out to the side palms upwards and make a sad face. "-Paul would have trouble convincing anyone to talk to me."

Kaldur's eyes flick down. How.. often does he deal with surface world people outside of a professional capacity? I feel a bit bad for not really paying attention to it before now. "Speaking with you is no great burden, though I wish to make clear that there are some matters I cannot discuss."

"Oh, no problem."

"Would Madam or Sirs like anything to drink?"

We all look around at the waiter standing next to the table. "Orange juice for me, please."

Kaldur hesitates for a moment before glancing at the drinks list. "Cola, please."

"Glass of house red?" The waiter nods and heads off towards the bar. "So are you guys not supposed to drink or what?"

"Neither of us are old enough to legally drink within the State of New York."

"Seriously?"

"I'm eighteen and Kaldur's sixteen." I turn my head to look at him. "Your birthday's in July, right?"

"The Atlantean calendar is a little different, but, yes."

"I just.. kind of assumed you were older than that."

"It is a little difficult to distill alcohol in Atlantis."

"Well, yeah, I.. suppose it would be."

"In our society a person is considered to be an adult at sixteen. If we had alcoholic beverages I would be permitted to consume them."

"I can't believe the age limit is actually twenty one."

"It got changed in nineteen eight five after the National Minimum Drinking Age Act got through Congress."

"I'd have thought that if you can trust someone to act responsibly with a power ring you could probably trust them to drink responsibly."

"Does such a law not violate the twenty first Amendment to the Constitution?"

"No, because…" She looks away for a moment. "Hang on, I remember this…"

"The Act cuts off highways funding to States where the age isn't twenty one. They can have it lower if they don't mind losing the money… But it's a lot of money."

Kaldur nods. "I see."

"Can't help but wonder what would happen if they tried getting around the Second Amendment in the same way."

Dana shakes her head. "It would kill the career of anyone who tried. Oh, thank you." The waiter leans over the table and hands out our drinks. "So, how old were you both when you started?"

"Seventeen."

"It depends what you consider to be 'starting'."

"Wait a second. Should we order a starter now?" The waiter hesitates.

Kaldur returns his attention to the menu. "Did Mister Luthor recommend anything in particular?"

"He said either the grilled asparagus or the oysters." I shake my head. "I'm just going to go with the garlic mushrooms."

"I think I will have the oysters, thank you."

Dana's eyes widen. "Luthor Lex Luthor Luthor?"

"Yes, we've worked together on a few things. Are you having-?"

"Um. Asparagus?" The waiter nods and leaves the table once more. Dana returns her attention to Kaldur. "You were saying..?"

"I began training with King Orin when I was fourteen after assisting him in combat with Ocean Master. Before that I was a student at the Conservatory of Sorcery in Poseidonis."

"That's the capital city, isn't it?" He nods. "Do.. Atlanteans even.. have superheroes?"

"Not precisely, no. I was training to become a battlemage before I came to my king's attention. Had things been different I would be undergoing my first field lessons now."

I smile quietly to myself. Looks like Roy was right; give him something familiar to talk about and he opens up. Okay, so I've got just under an half an hour before Ted phones me with an emergency which requires my attention and I have to leave Kaldur in Dana's hands. Will I have time to finish the starter?

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Prayer 6

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12th February

08:22 GMT -6

There's a certain ghoulish fascination to the spectacle unfolding in front of me. Having realised that Teth Adom was almost guaranteed to be the new ruler of Kahndaq when the revolution finishes and that several members of the League had pretty good relations with him, someone from the State Department put a phone call in to the Themysciran Embassy. As a result, Teth Adom is getting a lecture on the wonders of democracy.

From Captain Marvel.

"…and that's how laws get made!" He looks rather pleased with himself. "Any questions?"

Adom's not really making any facial expression at all. That's not necessarily a bad sign, that's pretty much his default for everything. But I don't think he found the argument nearly as convincing as William was aiming for. He thinks for a moment longer and then nods. "How long does that process usually take?"

"Ah, well, it can vary a lot."

He nods. "The committee stage makes sense to me. A proposal to alter national law should be reviewed by learned men." His eyes drift past me and over to the empowered Mary Bromfield who's sitting next to me. "Or women. I would have thought that there would be some difficulties in having each committee divided between two opposing political groupings, but perhaps that is to ensure that only important changes upon which there is broad agreement are made."

We're sitting in a lecture theatre on the campus of the Fawcett City college. Mary Bromfield, Frederick Freeman and I are sitting a few rows back, Adom's near the front and William is standing in the lecturer's spot, a labelled diagram of the US governmental system on the display screen behind him. The doors are locked but I can see more than a few interested faces through the glass panels.

"Oh, they can negotiate. I know having two political parties looks like it's going to jam things up but every Senator and Representative is their own person with their own constituencies. They don't just vote on party lines the whole time."

Something about that doesn't sit quite right with Adom. "Negotiate?"

"Yeah, you know. One guy wants support for his Bill and another guy wants support for his, so, they agree to vote for each other's Bills if the other guy votes for theirs."

A tiny frown. Yikes. "They… Haggle? Like traders in a market place?"

"Well…" Marvel realises that he's misstepped, his right hand going to the back of his head. "Kind of?"

"And… If they are able to agree, it is passed on to one of America's two national debate chambers. The Senate, with one hundred members and the House of Representatives, with four hundred and forty one members."

"Yeah! See, each state has two Senators but the number of Representatives depends on the number of people who live in the State they come from."

Adom takes a moment to work out how to express his concerns. He doesn't want to seem ignorant of the modern world but clearly something about American governance does not compute. "How do they ever get anything done?"

"Huh?"

On the side opposite the female member of the triumvirate Frederick Freeman leans closer to me, grinning. "How bad is it?"

"The good Captain would have been better served developing an understanding of other forms of governance rather than memorising the way the US government functions. He isn't arguing with reason, he's just presenting in the assumption that the wisdom of the system is self evident."

Mary frowns. "Can Solomon have off days?"

Looks like…

"When I ruled Kahndaq I seldom had more than four advisors during court sessions, and even they would sometimes shame themselves with bickering. One hundred men discussing a topic, where each must be seen to have their say and to respond to one another's opinions?" He slowly shakes his head. "I cannot see how such a body could decide on even the simplest matter upon which they already agree with one another, to say nothing of situations where there was genuine disagreement. And you tell me there is another body with the same function that has more than four times as many members?"

"Um…"

"And for a proposal to become law, the committee must agree with it, both chambers must not merely agree with it but formally indicate their agreement within a set span of time… And then your President must agree with it and your courts must determine that it is not in violation of your Constitution?"

"Oh, only if someone actually challenges it. And there's whole bunch of lower courts they have to go through first."

"Would it not be more wise to seek their counsel in advance so that such a time consuming process was not needed?"

"Ah, there's a bunch of lawyers who advise everyone involved the whole way through."

"But what they say is not binding until your law makers are formally challenged?"

"Um. No?"

Adom remains silent for a moment. "And I have heard of a thing called a 'filibuster'? Did I understand correctly, in that a member of one of these chambers can simply talk and talk in order to frustrate more productive debate?"

"Well, no, there're limits…"

"And this collective is not even a supreme body? Each State in turn has its own House of Representatives and Senate and Governor?"

"Of course. The splitting up of powers between different bodies is an important part of the US Constitution. It's supposed to stop any one part just doing whatever it likes."

"Why would you want to do that?"

"What do you mean?"

"Each of these people has persuaded a great many others that they are worthy of having power bestowed upon them. And the system is designed to then prevent them from exercising it? I understand separating administrators from judges, but this is barely controlled chaos." He turns his head around and looks up at me. "Paul, are your people governed in this way?"

"Queen Hippolyta has far more executive authority than any American President. Themyscira does have a Senate, but there are only seven elected Senators plus the High Priestess and either the Polemarch if there is one or the Guard Captain if there isn't. Of course, there's far less going on in Themyscira than there is in America."

"And in your former homeland?"

"A six hundred and fifty person elected body and a seven hundred or so person appointed body."

There's a definite twitch. "Seven.. hundred..?"

"We know it needs to get reformed. It's just that no one can agree on how."

William folds his arms across his chest. "So how did it used to work in Kahndaq?"

Adom turns back around. "I was Pharaoh. My word was law. I ruled the nation from what is now Cairo. Magistrates I appointed had the duty of making decisions on matters of law if I were occupied with other duties or if the matter under contention was not worthy of my attention. Larger towns would have their own Governors who would act in my name. In practice, unless a Governor proved particularly inept or corrupt they nominated their own successors. If I wanted to change the law I would consult with the gods and with my advisors. Having done so, if I believed that the change was a good one I would simply decree it. Much of the effort was in making the rest of the nation aware that it had been changed rather than-" He looks at the chart. "-requiring hundreds of otherwise sensible men to devote their lives to arguing the point."

William nods. "What happened if you made a bad decision?"

"Lord Zehuti guided me. If a decision I made was poor then I could be comforted by the knowledge that no other had a greater breadth of knowledge than I. There would have been no one able to make a better decision. But, by the end of my rule I had over a century of experience myself. I did not err significantly or often."

"And you didn't have to worry about proving your legitimacy when you so clearly had the gods' favour."

"Yes. Of course."

William looks at his predecessor and breathes out. "This is going to take a while, isn't it?"

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Prayer 7

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12th February

08:38 GMT -6

"…why I have tried to ensure that people who do understand the modern age are there to tutor me. That does not mean that I wish to confuse…"

I lean back in my chair and do my best to tune Adom and William out. "You two really have nothing better to do on a Saturday?"

Frederick raises his eyebrows. "You really have nothing better to do on a Saturday? New York's probably finished your last cake by now."

I nod to myself. "How long have you been saving that one?"

"About a month."

"Nice to know you're using the Wisdom of Solomon for something productive."

"I got my homework done before we came out. And we can't really do much else until the Captain finishes."

"I think he's interesting." Mary's still looking down at Adom. "I don't think I've ever really heard anyone argue against democracy before."

"I was wondering. Since you two don't age up like he does, how come you don't leave your powers on all the time?"

Frederick looks a little uncomfortable. "I'm paralyzed below the waist. I couldn't fake not being able to use my legs."

"I can probably fix that."

His eyes widen. "Really?"

"Sure. You'll need to be able to lie to people about.. getting some sort of experimental stem cell treatment, but.. yeah."

Mary looks around, frowning. "Why not do it to everyone?"

I nod. "There's a few reasons. The big one is that I can't. Orange rings-."

"Work on avarice. I know."

"I can fudge it. A lot. I have to, really. But when you get right down to it, if I don't want a thing for me, I can't do it. You wear a funny costume and my brain decides that you're part of my ingroup. If I…" I look at Frederick. "Do you go to some sort of support group?" He nods. "I could probably use my desire for Human perfection to heal some of them. Maybe all of them. But after a while I wouldn't be able to keep going." The Metro Narrows Bridge appears in my mind's eye once more. "I've had that happen to me before. And then you've got more societal level reasons; if someone with a power ring turns up to fix people whenever they're ill, why would anyone learn medicine?"

Mary doesn't seem to like it, but she reluctantly nods. "And they'd all be dependent on you."

Frederick nods down towards Adom. "He doesn't have a problem with making everyone dependent on him."

"He ruled Kahndaq for over a century while doing his duty as the wizard's champion. I'd assume that he thought that either he wasn't going to die or that the gods would pick his successor."

Mary looks thoughtful. "How do we even know he was a good ruler? He's sort of our only source of information about that whole period."

"Did you try asking the wizard?"

"The Captain did. He didn't want to talk about it."

"I suppose we can't know for sure. That said, he spent several weeks with Wonder Woman and she's got a built in lie detector. If he was lying about how things were during his rule I think she'd have said something to burst his bubble."

"Still. I'm kinda suspicious of anyone who wants to set themselves up as a king."

"Remind me again who your wisdom comes from?"

He frowns. "King Solomon. You said-." Then he glares at me.

"A king and autocrat, certainly not democratically inclined. And if the Bible is to be believed actually not all that wise."

Mary shakes her head. "I've never really been sure if it literally comes from him, or the idea of him?"

"I always thought the wizard was stuck for someone to be the 'S'. All of the gods who gave Adom power are Kahndaqi gods, right? Gods he actually worshipped?" I nod. "And we got-" Frederick counts off on his fingers. "-a Jewish king, the Roman name for a Greek demigod, a Greek Titan, the Greek god who led them when they overthrew the Titans, another Greek demigod and a Roman god. And I'm pretty sure I don't worship any of them."

"Didn't the wizard explain it?"

"No. I mean, what if it only works because he doesn't know it doesn't make sense? I don't want to ruin this."

"You're being ridiculous."

"You explain it, then."

"No, I mean, the names don't make sense to me either but I don't think the magic only works because the wizard doesn't realize that."

"While we're on the subject of nonsensical names, I was wondering something. Why is Captain Marvel called Captain Marvel?"

Looks like Frederick never really thought about it. "What should he be called?"

"Why not 'Shazam'?"

"Nah, that sounds stupid. And he wouldn't be able to say his own name without transforming! Can you imagine it? 'Hello, my name's Shazam', then 'BOOM'!"

"So..?"

"I guess.. it's 'Marvel' because he's, you know, marvelous?"

"And Captain because he's your team captain?"

"Ah… Yeah."

Now, I know perfectly well what the two of them call themselves. Frederick goes by the moniker 'Lieutenant Marvel' and Mary by 'Sergeant Marvel'. I have no idea why. I know that in the comics Frederick had to refer to himself as 'CM3' because if he said 'Captain Marvel Three' he transformed before he finished saying it, but… Lieutenant? Really? I mean, Kid Marvel or Marvel Boy would have been better than that. And don't even get me started on 'Sergeant'. I've been weighing up whether or not to try and persuade them to change them and they've both demonstrated that the Wisdom of Solomon has effectively made them mature enough that I won't need to feel too bad about doing so.

"So what do the two of you call yourselves?"

Frederick grins. "Lieutenant Marvel."

"And… What are you a Lieutenant of?" He looks blank and I glance at Mary and then back to him. "Are you.. second in command?"

Mary shakes her head emphatically. "No."

"Ahhh… Well… The thing is-."

I turn to Mary. "And what about you? Colonel Marvel? Major Marvel? Corporal Marvel?"

I can see her thinking frantically. "I.. figured.. there were a lot of girls called 'Mary' so I decided I'd just call myself 'Mary Marvel'."

Frederick stares at her. "Oh, you so totally-."

There's a loud banging on the door to the lecture theatre, then a tall and heavily built blonde man shoves his way through. "Oi, M-" He hesitates for a half second upon seeing Adom but ploughs on anyway. "-arvel. We got a problem."

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Prayer 8

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12th February

08:42 GMT -6

William turns towards him, changing mental gears almost immediately. "What is it, Chief?"

Frederick and Mary both fly directly upwards out of their seats before heading down towards the front of the lecture theatre and landing just behind William. Adom looks momentarily uncertain. The chair he's sitting on is fixed in place with a small writing surface attached to the left arm. Around us he didn't really worry about the lack of dignity such a simple seat provided but with the room invaded by a stranger that appears to no longer be the case. He can't fly up without damaging it, he can't walk around it without looking awkward… He's opting to lean back and wait for events to unfold.

I just lean forwards slightly. I don't really know how things work in Fawcett City. It doesn't surprise me that William has good relations with the local police given his general demeanour and the threat level of the people he fights. Giant robots, mind control caterpillars and satanic supermen are three things no sane police force wants to have to deal with.

"It's a bad one." Chief… Ring? Chief McGinnis stands slightly closer than I would consider polite to William. They're actually about the same height. The Chief's a big guy. "Some guy down in Satin Spring reported a bad smell coming from a storm drain. A couple of uniforms checked it out. Lost their lunch."

Out of the corner of my eye I watch Adom extricate himself while the room's attention is elsewhere.

"Has someone been murdered?"

"Yeah." McGinnis nods. "But that's not the worst of it. They were mutilated. Whoever did it took the time to draw all over the walls with their blood." William straightens slightly, shock showing on his face. "We're still waiting for IDs, but I don't think they were local. They don't match anyone on our missing persons database."

"We'll do whatever we can to help."

McGinnis nods. "I know you will."

I transition down. "What were the drawings?"

I get a quick frown and another dismissal. "Weird diagrams and.. writing. Looked.. maybe.. Arabic? To me? But I'm not an expert."

Frederick glances at William and then back to McGinnis. "Timothy Karnes is still in prison, isn't he?"

"Still locked up, still muzzled and still inside that magic circle you guys drew after last time. Whoever this is, it isn't him."

William nods. "We'll get over there right away. Come on, guys." He heads towards the door at a jog with Frederick and Mary close at his heels.

McGinnis turns to follow them, then stops when he notices that I'm not following. "What, not joining in?"

Adom floats alongside me. "Strange writings drawn in blood suggests either foul magics or a deranged mind. I am more familiar with both possibilities than the wizard's current champions. With your permission, I will accompany Captain Marvel."

McGinnis sizes him up for a moment. "You're really not like that other guy. Eh, if Marvel says you're okay then you're okay with me."

"If it is Magic… I'm going to see if John's available."

"Hey. Who's 'John'?"

Best dealing with out of their depth public servant smile on. "John Constantine, my.. advisor on magic. He's either seen or knows someone who's seen everything we could run into. If I could just show him pictures of-."

"Fine. But he stays outside the police cordon unless he's being escorted."

Oh. That was painless. I guess Chief McGinnis hasn't heard of John before.

Adom's eyes narrow slightly. "You realise, if it is magic, it is unlikely that there will be only one. If these murders were an end in themselves we would already be observing the consequences."

I nod. "Yes, and I doubt we'll find much at the site itself. I can start scanning the city when I get back."

Adom nods and floats as fast as dignity allows towards the door. In William's wake the students have reappeared, blocking his exit off. "Excuse me." He waits, arms crossed across his chest as they organise themselves in backing off before going through the door and accelerating after the Marvels.

I raise my left hand to my ear. Ring, contact John Constantine.

Compliance.

I hear John's dial tone. Hm-hm-hmm.

"This guy a superhero?"

"No."

"Priest?"

"No, just an unusually well travelled magician."

"I'm asking because if this is a magic thing I've got to phone the local Catholic Bishop and see if they've got anyone in the area who can help. That going to be a problem?"

"Shouldn't think s-."

The dial tone stops. "Afternoon, mate."

"Good morning, John. I've got a messy and possibly arcane murder I'd like you to take a look at. Are you available?"

"Errr… Let me just-." I hear a giggle. "Get… Stop that." Nice to know that he's bounced back. "Can you, like, give… Give me a couple a'-."

"I'll have a look around the crime scene. Wave a rune stone around."

"Yeah, you-. Oi! Aw!"

"Five minutes, John."

"I'll be-. Hey! That-!" The phone cuts off.

I lower my left hand. Maybe I should make that ten minutes. Ring, scan 'Satin Springs' area for a police cordon.

Located.

I transition to just outside the cordon, near a police car and just out of line of sight of the curious locals. They must have moved pretty quickly to contact us before the press arrived. Alright, time for work. I float off the ground a few centimetres and then take my armour out of subspace. Not power armour; this isn't a fight as yet and storm drains aren't usually all that big. After Zauriel wrecked my last set I've been thinking about what to do with the design. Do I make it bigger, have a flying mech sort of thing? Or go the other way and slim down? Mithril and orichalcum would let me have all of the resilience of the current design with much less mass. And do I want to use enchantments as part of the design? I'm a little concerned about maintenance on magic as I can't do it myself. In any case, my brain trust won't be able to get the maximum value from their combined expertise for a while yet.

I step out into the open as the Marvels come in to land and a police sergeant walks over to greet them. "Captain Marvel! Am I glad you're here!"

William nods. "Always here when Fawcett's finest need me."

"You'll want to see… Them, I suppose."

William's face falls slightly. "Not really, but I think I need to." He glances back at Frederick and Mary. "Guys, I think you should probably stay up here."

Frederick shakes his head. "We've seen bodies before."

The sergeant looks down for a moment. "Not like this you haven't, lad."

Adom nods. "I would be reluctant to expose children to this sort of violence."

Mary lays her right hand on Frederick's left shoulder. "We'll stay up here. You can tell us anything we need to know."

"Thanks." William gives his friends a thin smile and then follows the sergeant towards the manhole cover.

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Prayer 9

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12th February

08:49 GMT -6

"Good Lord."

William keeps his breakfast down, but his face noticeably pales as he regards the scene. Adom just narrows his eyes for a moment. He's certainly seen worse in his time. For myself, there's no real connection to the bodies attached to the walls. Intellectually I realise that what has been done to them is horrific but my empathy is.. just a little nudge in the back of my mind. It isn't controlling my reaction. A little way along I can see the pile of vomit where one of the discovering officers had a somewhat stronger response.

So… Clinical. "Two male and one female bodies. Metal spikes driven through their wrists and legs and into the brickwork beyond are keeping them attached to the walls. Could indicate more than Human strength but it could also indicate some sort of pneumatic spike driver. Or just someone with a hammer and a lot of patience. Not a great deal of blood around the wounds, strongly suggesting that they were killed elsewhere and brought here."

Adom nods as I step a little closer. Don't really want to use the ring to scan them until I know for certain that it wouldn't disrupt any arcane elements. "Their chest cavities have been sliced down the middle and their ribs pulled slightly apart. Cause of death.. probably exsanguination. Either from the wounds to the neck or where the heart was removed… Given the damage to the surrounding tissue, probably ripped out."

"Ohshit." One of the officers who was waiting down here puts his right hand over his mouth and staggers up the storm drain away from us.

"The pose is vaguely crucifixional but I shouldn't read too much into that at this stage. In addition to the heart, the eyeballs, testicles and ovaries have been removed, though the penis and womb are still in situ. Eyeballs may have been removed to hamper identification efforts, but given the other injuries ritual or superstition seem more likely. Fingers… Intact, so identification by fingerprints should still be possible." A brown mottling of the skin draws my attention. I run my eyes over the bodies once more. "Bruising around the wrists, ankles and necks suggests that they were bound for a period of time before their deaths, indicating premeditation and organisation." In fact… Not just bruising, there are cuts as well. "Subjects appear to have struggled against the bindings hard enough to cut their skin. Otherwise, ancillary injuries are almost nonexistent."

The other policeman tears his eyes away from the bodies to look at me. "You, ah… You a CSI guy?"

"Batman gives lessons. We visited the Gotham City police morgue once." I step back a little. "And a jolly good time was had by all." Wallace and M'gann didn't cope particularly well. "The writing… Blood on brick isn't a good combination for legibility. Editing where it's just dribbled down… 'Their souls shall be bound in eternity…'" The next bit's illegible already. "'Chorus of screaming prayers to.. King Asmodeus.'"

Adom begins muttering a prayer to Nephthys.

William reluctantly walks forwards and takes a look. "That's written in Avestan."

"Mostly. There's a lot of loan words." I take a rune stone out of one of my armour's pockets and hold it out. Weak glow. "Some sort of ritual was either performed here or.. with them. I don't think there's anything ongoing."

The police officer makes an effort to pull himself together. "So can we take them down? Or at least cover them up or something?"

"Probably, but I wouldn't rush to do anything."

Adom joins us in examining the writing, floating off the ground. "The rest praises the Demon's virtues. And the joys that can be found by following him." He turns to the policeman. "Ensure that no one else who understands this looks upon it. Take what images you need and then burn it from the walls."

"That ain't.. really my call to make."

He frowns. "I have seen good men corrupted by such texts, their minds turned-."

"Mighty One. There's hardly anyone in the country who could read it even if they wanted to and none of them live in Fawcett City." He hesitates for a moment and then gives me a small nod.

William looks at me. "Asmodeus is one of the Demons who powers Sabbac. I know the Chief said he was still in prison, but do you think he could be involved?"

I shrug. "Mister Karnes is hardly the only one who can worship Demons." Wait, don't I..? There was a second Sabbac in the comics, wasn't there? "Did you ever find out how he attracted their attention?"

"After his parents died he got adopted by some people who turned out to be members of a Demon worshipping cult. They said that he was a descendant of the guy who founded it."

Adom nods. "It is almost a pity they are dead. Putting them to the question might provide us with useful insights."

William shakes his head. "No, they're not dead. They're just in prison."

Adom's eyes widen slightly. "You let..? No, no, I understand. It is not your decision. The fault lies with the hundreds of people who should have ensured that your laws made sense."

"But this does mean that we can question them. We're probably going to need to talk to Mister Karnes as well."

William thinks for a moment. "We can probably talk to the cult guys, but I don't think they'll let us take Timothy's muzzle off. Sabbac's just too dangerous."

"I can attach a construct to his brain, let him speak without risking him transforming again."

"That could work. I'll need to talk to some people to get it set up."

"I'll go and fetch John Constantine. There's a chance he can work out whatever ritual was used even if the cultists can't be persuaded to help."

William nods, and we both turn away from the remains to head back towards the manhole.

"Orange Lantern." I stop and look back at Adom. "If we must fight another Sabbac, it would be helpful to me if I could have access to Justice League records."

"I don't have that authority, but-" I take a tablet out of subspace and load it with records -written and live recordings- of Sabbac's two rampages to date. "-this is what we've got on him." He nods, takes hold of it and with the air of someone still quite unfamiliar with the technology pokes at it. He can use computers but it will be a very long time before he's completely happy with them.

I turn away and follow William to the rungs set into the wall. He bends his knees slightly as a prelude to flying up, then hesitates. "That can't happen, can it?"

"What?"

"These people were horribly murdered. The writing said that they went to hell… That was a lie, right?"

"Depends."

"But if they lived good lives-."

"We don't know that they did. It's perfectly possible that whoever did this chose them because he or she knew that they would go to hell anyway. And… There are magics that can send souls to places they shouldn't go. It's not impossible…"

"That's disgusting."

"Yes, it is. Why did you think Adom hates Shazam so much?"

His eyes widen slightly, then he looks away. "It's not the same. He didn't just do it because he enjoyed it. I heard Green Lantern talk about Sinestro; the Wizard thought Adom was heading in the same direction and that would have been a disaster."

"If he really thought that, I understand killing him. But why did he bind his soul to his corpse?"

"I don't know. But I'm not going to worry about it while there's a murderer loose in my city." He flies upwards towards daylight and I follow after him.

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Prayer 10

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12th February

09:43 GMT -6

John peers through the bars at Mister Karnes. "Well… You're a miserable lookin' sod, aren't you?"

From his stool in his cell Mister Karnes glowers back. I don't really remember him from the comics but he certainly doesn't cut a very imposing figure here. Short, skinny and bald, the heavy metal collar and constant red-eyed glare make for an almost comical contrast. Under the light orange prison shirt covering his chest there's a burn in the shape of a pentagram where his adoptive parents branded him.

What sort of complete bastard would do this to a twelve year old?

"Ah, Mister Constantine?" William doesn't quite raise his hand to ask, but I see his right twitch for a moment. "Is this really necessary?"

"'Fraid so." He gets out a cigarette. "Those people were posed after bein' ritually sacrificed. By someone who knows their business an' all. No easy way to track it back to them. Could try summonin' up their souls but if Asmodeus got them -an' he probably did- that'd mean pickin' a fight with him. Don't know about you, but I've had all the fights with Hell Kings I want, thank you very much."

A woman in a suit narrows her eyes at him. "This is a no smoking zone, sir."

"I can hold it, can't I? Land of the sodding free my arse.." He raises his hand and moves it between his fingers for a moment, just to get a rise out of her. "What're you here for, anyway?"

"Timothy Karnes has no next of kin. I'm here to act on his behalf."

"Oh yeah? Where were you two years ago?"

She stiffens. "I wasn't involved in the decision to put Timothy in the care of.. those people. But I've seen the case review documents. Do you really think he'd have been put there if there was any sign that-. That they would subject him to Satanistic abuse?"

"First place I'd look for the culprit, actually." She breathes in sharply but John's already focusing on the circle around Mister Karnes' cell. Well, call it what it is: his cage. "Marvel, you do the design on the floor yourself?"

"Yeah. I didn't design it, but I copied the design just right."

"Did a good job." He looks at me and nods at Mister Karnes. "Alright then; plug him in."

The woman steps forwards a bit, though she's careful to stay outside the circle. "Mister Karnes, these people want to ask you some questions." I can see him grinning under the metal collar. "They're going to use a device that will let you speak without using your mouth." The grin disappears.

John edges towards me as Mister Karnes focuses on her. "Any chance you could copy the design on the floor and project it around me?" I nod. "Nice one."

"Excuse me, ma'am." William politely waits until she… Ring, what's her name? Sharon Glover, right. Until Mrs Glover steps out of the way. "Timothy, do you remember me?" A jerky nod. "Timothy, we think that some of the people who did this to you might still be free. Now, I don't want anyone else to go through what you went through and I don't believe for a moment that you do either."

John shakes his head. "Not going to work."

"What makes you so sure?"

"He can't get at the power any more but the Demons left their grubby fingerprints all over his soul. You can't touch hell without it rubbin' off on you. Amazin' he can think clearly at all, really."

"If there's anything, anything at all you can tell us at all about them, about anyone we missed when we arrested them, it would be a great help." There's a sort of gurgling sound from Mister Karnes. William looks at me and shrugs. "I guess you better hook him up."

No real way to avoid the construct passing through the circle. I.. think it's just designed to block one type of magic, if I'm recognising the design properly. But I'm sure Shazam knows rather more about it than I do. Karnes looks at the glowing filaments as they approach. He doesn't look scared, more.. annoyed that anyone would dare intrude on him in this way. Right, connect to voice box. Ring, remember to edit out anything involving the word 'Sabbac'. Change it to 'kittens' or something.

Compliance.

The speaker construct hangs in the air next to him. He looks at it for a moment and then leaps excitedly to his feet. "Kittens!" He freezes for a second. "Kittens! Kittens!"

"That's not going to work."

"When I get my power back I WILL END YOU."

William looks down for a moment, but then rallies. "The ones who did this to you are killing people, Timothy. I just came from looking at the bodies."

"Good. They will work to free me and then you will suffer."

John walks across the circle towards the bars. I put the runic construct he requested at his feet. "Hello Timmy. My name's John Constantine." No reaction. "Oh, fuck me, someone messin' round with Demons who hasn't heard of me." He turns back to his audience. "What were the chances of that?"

"What do you want?"

John jabs the cigarette in his direction. "See, Timmy, the thing about Demons… They're not exactly sentimental. Sitting in here, you're not doing anything for them."

"They can't use anyone else. My bloodline is special. Human and Demon both."

John nods. "Funny story. Few years ago now I had to make a deal with Nergal. The Angels were up to something and we both wanted them stopped. Him bein' a Demon, he couldn't get anywhere near the place they were doin' the ritual. But I could. Problem bein'-" John takes out a lighter and plays the flame over the end of his cigarette. "-I'd 'ad seven shades of shit knocked out of me and was in no state to fix anything. So…" He takes a drag. "Nergal cut open his arm and poured a pint or two of his blood into my drip. With that in my system everything healed up in a few hours."

"No!"

"Not that hard to get hold of Demon blood. Hell,-" He turns his head to the side and exhales smoke. "-might even be worth givin' the whole 'Sabbac' thing a shot meself. No way I'm gettin' into Heaven. I mean, Asmodeus favours lust as a tool of corruption. You're twelve! I'm sure he'd-."

"It won't work! I'm special!"

John glares at him at full intensity. "Someone's tryin' t' replace you. You're in prison, we don't know where they are and the Demons don't care. You're out on your arse, mate."

Mister Karnes' eyes widen. "No!"

"Only chance you got is to start helping." Karnes turns away from John. He can't hide as his cell permits him no privacy at all but it looks like he's trying to pretend John isn't there. "If you help out, there's a chance that you might get the power back at some point. Don't, and someone else will. Maybe me, maybe someone who's going t' make them wonder why they ever bothered with a useless.. lump.. like.. you."

Mister Karnes bends, chest pressing against his legs and arms over his head. "Nghuuuuhuuuuh."

"'Course, if you did find out who it was, that would mean they're even more useless than you are. They'll dump them even faster than they dumped you." John pauses for a moment, frowning. "Craeteis, Asmodeus, Beelzebub, Belial, Aym and.. Satan, wasn't it? Got to be a couple o' them I haven't pissed off yet."

"Satanus." Mister Karnes straightens up slightly, still looking away. "He said that his name was Satanus."

"Oh yeah? Answers my next question I suppose."

"I hate you. I hate everything. Everyone. And the only thing I can remember before hating is being afraid. If I could I would kill you, kill everyone in this city… Rampage across the world leaving fire and devastation in my wake. But for now I will START WITH WHOEVER IS STEALING MY POWER!"

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Prayer 11

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12th February

10:23 GMT -6

Frederick looks through the security glass at the ritual space. "Are you guys sure this is safe?"

John shrugs. "Safe as we can make it." They turn around as I approach. "Any news?"

I nod. "I found one other location. Looked like it was slightly older. Same.. sort of thing."

"Which-?"

"Beelzebub."

John nods. "They're still arguing about letting him out. I mean, if whoever this is thinks they can get him with five superheroes standing right there then I don't see why they'd bother sneaking around with the rest of it."

"Anything else happening?"

"McGinnis phoned the Bishop, which means in a couple of weeks we might get someone who actually knows-."

"So pessimistic, Mister Constantine." Father Mattias strolls into the room from the corridor to our right. "In situations like this, where there is proven diabolic interest, we have a way to bypass the normal bureaucracy."

"Father Mattias. Nice to see you again."

He smiles beneficently at me. "And you as well, Paul. My sister sends her regards. Though I'm afraid that she's taken to crediting God with acting through you rather than thanking your snake."

John rolls his eyes. "Never an Alexin around when you need one."

Mattias' smile fades slightly. "It seems to me that the Alexins'.. muscular approach is not what is required here."

Frederick looks lost. "Who are the Alexins?"

John smiles the smug smile of someone who knows that someone they don't like is about to have to say something they'd rather have kept quiet about. "You want to tell him, or..?"

"The Closed Order of the Alexins are an order of Demon hunting warrior monks."

Frederick frowns. "I didn't think the Catholic Church had anything like that until the Second Vatican Council."

"We.. used to. They were declared excommunicate a little over four hundred years ago and violently persecuted until they found sanctuary with King James the First of England."

John's eyebrows rise slightly. "Huh. Actually a bit impressed you said that. Usually your lot are a whole lot more cagey about the whole thing."

"I prefer to take inspiration from His Holiness Pope Leo the Fourteenth. When the Church does wrong it is the responsibility of all of its servants to confront it openly. And the continued good service of the Alexin to the Anglican Communion is a clear sign that they were ill used."

"Never did finish his pilgrimage, did he?"

"And no doubt you are now eager to inform me that his successor chose not to continue it in his place. I know, Mister Constantine. The Pilgrimage of Repentance was an act of great piety but it was completely impractical for the head of the Church to spend years walking to the home of every victim. Though, had his heart been a little stronger, I am sure that he would have tried."

"But getting back to the job at hand…"

Father Mattias nods. "I take it that you could not simply.. detect…"

I shake my head. "Ring scans are easy to fool with magic. I have a more advanced technique, but that could take days to come up with anything."

"Prison records say that the only visitor Timmy had while he was here was his foster brother, Frederick Freeman." John looks at me while Frederick himself starts to look a little uncomfortable. "Think it's worth following up on?"

"No, I… Spoke to him earlier. Mister Karnes only became involved in the demonic after he was handed over to the cultists. Frederick knew him before that. Frederick's natural parents were fostering Mister Karnes up until they were murdered."

Father Mattias nods. "A truly lamentable situation. Mister Constantine, I would appreciate it if you would take the time to explain the magics you have used to me."

"Need to know what setting to put your hexing hammer on?"

"Mister Constantine, I am trying to help a badly damaged boy. I am willing to give you whatever assurances you want. Please, your hostility towards me is not going to help anyone."

"John..?"

There's a momentary look of truculence on his face, then he nods his head to the side. "Fine. You actually know anything about magic?"

"I doubt that my practical experience is anything like as comprehensive as yours, but I am competent enough to recognise my own ignorance."

"Alright, come on then. I'll show you what I've done." He nods to the corridor leading towards where we're holding Mister Karnes and the two of them head off in that direction.

Frederick watches them go, breathing out only once they pass out of sight. "Thanks for cov-" I erect a sound baffle. "-ering for me."

"No problem. I just hope he didn't see a picture; your appearance doesn't change at all."

"Where are the others?"

"The Captain, Adom and Mary are flying a search pattern. According to Adom you should be able to feel magic, at least when you get close enough."

He nods. "Yeah, Captain Marvel said Adom was teaching him how to use our powers better. I know I should.. join in…"

"You wanted to be here for Mister Karnes."

"He didn't use to be like this. If this works…" He looks away and shuffles his feet. "Maybe he won't be afterwards."

"That's a bit optimistic."

He smiles. "I try never to give up on people. And Mom and Dad wouldn't want me to give up on him."

I nod. "I don't think he's in any fit state to appreciate you being here… But I respect what you're doing."

What now? I've already checked the storm drain system. Checking the whole city with optical constructs is beyond me without fully merging with the Ophidian. Though… The police have released a statement about what is going on. They skipped the goriest details, but the press are eagerly awaiting any more information. If I asked the police to put the word out ahead of time to keep panic to a minimum, would the Praexis be able to sniff it out? Worth trying.

William already sent a message to Batman about what's happening. They decided that bringing in the whole League at this point would be unproductive. Nabu might be useful but he's decided to absent himself from the Watchtower and turn off his communicator. If we need heavy duty magic…

"What's the normal process for contacting Shazam?"

"He calls us. The way to get into his base changes each time we go there, and… It takes a lot out of him. Mostly, we take care of things without him."

I nod. I don't really want to call in the team. Batman made it clear that we -as a group- are supposed to keep a low profile until the media interest in the group that dealt with the LexCorp situation has died down a little. The fallback position involves the older members of the group making a public appearance and that would be pretty awkward for Kon.

The sound of feet running down the corridor causes us both to look around as a policeman hurries in. "Lieutenant Marvel, Orange Lantern?" Who else are we going to-? "They've found another one."

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Prayer 12

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12th February

10:38 GMT -6

Chief McGinnis looks at me warily. "Didn't think you people needed guns."

I work the lever on the Ace of Winchesters. "Most of us don't need them. Superman -for example- has a capital ship grade infrared laser built into each eyeball. I carry a power ring which is capable of destruction beyond the fever dreams of most Khundians. This, is a tool of Demon fighting. In testing we steered away from summoning the really major Demons -including Sabbac's traditional sponsors- but nothing else survived more than one hit." I open the breech and feed in the four rounds that are all it can take at one time. Shouldn't need more than that… Sephtian had a brief look at adding some sort of expanded magazine coming out of the top but he's not sure what that would do to the magics which make the gun so useful. I decided that it probably wasn't worth pursuing.

"What happens if you miss?"

"Muzzle speed and calibre aren't anything special and it uses normal rounds. If I hit someone, there's a special effect only if they're lousy with demonic magic." Turns out that it doesn't do all that much to Elementals. A hit -if they're tangible- disrupts their avatar but doesn't do much to their core self. Also, I need to avoid Silt Elementals from now on.

An image appears in my head. Chubbs has found something of interest. Having two sites didn't really help much but with three… The first thing we all thought to do was draw a circle with them on the perimeter. Depending on the exact design whoever is doing this is using there are a variety of combinations of location, but… This is Fawcett, not Gotham. I don't think you could hide a full pentagram design's worth of bodies and they're only trying to please six Demons.

Chubbs is just about intelligent enough to recognise Human corpses but he doesn't understand writing. If I wanted to read what it's seeing I'd have to go there myself. The state of the bodies… Taken apart, tissues separated out. "They've found the site for Aym."

"Shit." Chief McGinnis shakes his head. "I'll send some guys to secure the site. You.. sure you're alright..?"

"It doesn't really affect me."

"I've had guys say that before…"

"Well… If I freak out you can say I told you so."

"Look, I'm not trying to make this a macho pissing match. We're going to be sending everyone who saw those bodies to the counsellors. I'm going to be going."

"I appreciate what you're saying, but I'm fine."

"Alright." He picks a pen up from his desk and makes another cross on the map. Five of them, equidistant around a circle. "Which one was Aym?"

"Indestructible body."

"So, if it's worked then the guy's got indestructibility, flight, fire control, 'evil courage' and 'evil wisdom'. You got any idea what 'evil wisdom' is?"

"I'd guess that he'd be able to instinctively understand any technique that could be used for evil. Like.. how to torture people?" Or make biological weapons..? I still don't really get what 'evil' is as far as magic is concerned. Whether it would be concerned with the application of a thing or the nature of the thing. If whoever it is just gets a dollop of knowledge straight from a Demon then bearing in mind what John told me about Demons and modernity we probably don't have to worry about them doing anything really clever.

"Let's just assume it means he's smart. This isn't the time for a philosophical argument. Okay." He taps the pen in the middle of the circle. "We've got all four Marvels hanging around the center of this circle. Seen nothing so far."

"What's there?"

"Depends how big an area we're talking about. Far as we can tell, dead center is a multi story parking lot. Whoever this is, they need to do something to earn Satan's favor."

"Satanus' favour."

"What's the difference?"

"Satan doesn't exist, Satanus does. Real names are important when dealing with Demons. 'Satan' is who every single Demon claims to be when an idiot who doesn't know what they're doing summons them. 'Yes, I'm totally Satan, you should sell me your soul right now.'"

"Heh."

The door to his office is opened from the outside and a detective walks in with a file. "Chief, we've got IDs on the first few victims. All of them had missing person reports."

"Where they from?"

"Looks like Saskatchewan."

"Ah, hell." He pauses for a moment as he realises what he just said, then dismisses it. "Orange Lantern, you've got my authorization to take Karnes and your wizards into the area. Whatever they were planning, I want it stopped. I'd like whoever did this taken alive but don't take any dumb risks. This is a gun friendly state for a reason."

"And just as soon as the United States government starts issuing in situ death warrants for supervillains I'll be happy to execute them. As it is the Justice League requires me to strenuously try to keep them alive."

"Hey, if someone wants to pass laws like that they'd have my vote."

Yours and probably quite a few other people's as well. "Right… If you'll excuse me."

"Go on. I need to make a call to the Canadian embassy."

Gun in hand I transition to the air above the car park. Adom spots me first, acknowledging me with a nod. First things first. I hold out my left hand and release all of my Praexis Demons, making a little effort to pull Fatty and Chubbs back from their search. Disturbingly fat demonic dwarfs tumble from the ring before stabilising in the air and spreading outwards in accordance with my wishes.

Next, I raise the ring to my ear. "Contact John."

The phone rings for a second before he picks it up. "We on?"

"Yes." I wave my right hand to attract William's attention. He nods and heads downwards. "Marvel's heading your way now. The rest of us will stay airborne. Shout if you need us."

"Don't need to remind me to do that."

"Sure you don't want the Ace with you?"

"Don't have a lot of experience with guns. Look, this whole thing has 'supervillain' written all over it. When we go in there either nothing's going to happen or the sky's going to darken and all the forces a' hell are going to be let loose."

"All of them?"

"No, but they could get a bunch of little Demons. Still do a lot of damage. You need to stay up high and keep an eye out. Marvel's taken Sabbac down before on his own and Mattias an' me can deal with the magic stuff."

"Alright. Good luck." I move the ring away from my ear as Mary, Frederick and Adom float my way. "They're moving in now." I look down and magnify my view. Karnes is wearing his collar with an added straitjacket. He's walking a little way ahead of William, with John and Mattias further back. Behind them a police cordon is in place to keep interested civilians away. The local SWAT unit is on hand but they know full well that they aren't equipped to deal with the sorts of things the Marvel family fight. Things will have to have gone very badly before they get involved.

I've already scanned the whole building, both with regular scan and with optical sensors. It all just looks like a hurriedly evacuated car park to me. Just have to wait to see what the magic users can find out.

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Prayer 13

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12th February

10:42 GMT -6

"It does not surprise me that Satanus is the ringleader." Adom glances at me for a moment before going back to studying the ground far below us. "He was always intelligent and strong willed."

Mary looks curious. "You knew him from before?"

"Yes. His sister was a-" A hesitation of a fraction of a second. Interesting. "-friend of mine."

"Demons have families?"

"I am not certain that he is truly a Demon. I know that his mother was, but the Wizard was his father."

Wait, what?

"No way."

That gets her a glance and a slightly raised left eyebrow. "I would not lie on such a matter."

"No, I'm not saying you're lying, it's just… I can't imagine him…"

"He was not always the old man you have met. Once, long even before he met me, he was a vigorous and powerful warrior. Hm, and clearly one not untroubled by mankind's baser nature."

"Anything you remember about Satanus would be very helpful."

"On the few occasions I had cause to treat with him, he wore simple armour and robes of white cloth. That may have been an acknowledgement of his father's status. The proportions of his body are Human, his skin is a red-brown colour and he usually wears a helm that covers his head." Adom shakes his head. "But, it has been long since I have spoken with him. His appearance may have changed in the intervening time."

"I'm assuming that he was fairly powerful."

"Yes, and I would assume that he has grown more powerful still."

Mary's eyes widen. "You mean the reason he can give power to Sabbac is because he learned it from the Wizard?"

Adom nods. "I believe it is so. Blaze -his sister- showed a considerable understanding of the process. When he first approached me, the Wizard presumed to offer me the power of the gods who empowered him. Since they were not my gods I at first refused. It was Blaze who suggested that the Kahndaqi gods might be willing to provide equivalent power. She also accompanied me on my pilgrimage to the great temples of each of the gods whose power I bear."

Something appears to occur to Frederick. "Didn't the Wizard talk to your gods before that?"

"Not so far as I am aware."

"'Cause I was wondering… When you two fell out… Why didn't he just turn off your power?" Adom looks a little puzzled. "The Captain can turn off mine, the Wizard can turn off his…" Comprehension dawns. "I don't think he'd have fought you if he didn't have to. I think he didn't turn off your powers because he couldn't."

"Because he was not the one who mediated the exchange. The power flows directly from my gods." Adom nods. "I do not know that it is true, but there is a logic to it."

"You lot still up there?" Adom looks to the side for a moment before appearing to remember his earpiece.

"Yes, John. Anything to report?"

"I dunno, mate. Feels like there's something here. This place wasn't built on some sort of Indian burial ground or something, was it?"

Mary looks offended. "No."

"John, if there's something there it isn't anything I can detect. Captain Marvel?"

"I was trying to do that 'focusing on the Power of Zeus' thing Adom showed me." The ghost of a smile flickers on Adom's lips. "Maybe I'm just doing it wrong."

"It takes time to master, Captain. Perhaps when I entertain you in Shiruta-."

"Wait." There's concern in Father Mattias' voice. "John, did you feel-?"

A cloud of sulphurous smoke explodes outwards from the car park! Shit, no, don't just transfer in. Accelerate. Scan. Not getting anything. Beam. A bar of orange projects towards the cloud, which is maintaining a set distance from the car park's exterior walls. Or am I just thinking too fast for the spread to be noticeable? Next to me Adom's muscles tense as he gets ready to dive in. The beam… It keeps going through the cloud past the point where the wall should be. What does that remind me-? The water near the hell portal in London.

And that's when the Demons erupt from the cloud. The first wave are small and fast. Knives with wings. Behind them, clusters of flaming skulls bound together with black chains. Craeteis' and Beelzebub's contributions and there are probably more coming.

I snap back to normal speed. "Mary, Lieutenant, destroy those things. Praexis Demons, feed on any enemy Demons you can catch. Mighty One, with me." I reinforce my armour construct and head towards the cloud at high speed, rail gun constructs appearing around me. I'm not wasting Mage Slayers on minor Demons, but silver with cold iron should be enough. A vaguely demonic gas bag cum Jellyfish thing appears in the haze and becomes my first target, smashed to shreds by my guns.

Two more appear and are targeted in turn as Adom pulls ahead of me. A second before the one on our left is destroyed a large dark something leaps from the top of it towards him. Adom slows slightly, turns in mid air to move around it as it passes him by and grabs hold of it by the right horn.

"RAAAAAHH!"

"Mauler." It reminds me a little of the Horned Demon from Heroes of Might and Magic five. Without slowing further Adom moves his right hand to its jaw and twists, snapping its neck. He then drops it into the mists below us. "Minor Demons in the service of Aym. It heals any wound to its flesh almost instantly. Be careful not to rip them in half or you would have two of them to fight."

Can't see far enough to target with my eyes. I send out a pulse of orange in all directions and the guns go into full automatic in a target rich environment. Adom accelerates, blurring as he takes full advantage of the Speed of Aker. He doesn't have much to fear from minor Demons, unlike the people of Fawcett City. Where are we going? "John, you there?" Nothing. Ah, shit. I turn up my empathic vision, searching for ukkgh the patterns of desire I associate with John. Nothing, nothing, there!

"Adom, this way!" I shine a brilliant beam of orange towards John and then accelerate my own flight speed, pulses of orange continuing to radiate outwards from me to guide my guns. Assuming that we're in Hell -or some suburb of it- I've.. really got no idea what to expect. A tower of darker coloured cloud in the direction of John suggests that the car park made it through intact, which is…

I get a momentary clear view of the ground below me. Which appears to be a field of writhing torsos. Okay, not looking at that again. The tower… If that was the car park then it's had an extra coating of black stone around the exterior. No matter. The railguns open up, first with silver and cold iron and then with Crumblers. Rock disintegrates and I see a clear entrance. Faster.

I shoot past John and the party before stopping and turning. William-! Shit, he's down with a freely bleeding slash across his chest. Mattias is trying to bandage it while John is shouting something at-.

I watch as the large man stripped to the waist slams Timothy Karnes into a wall. Railguns reload with Mage Slayers and lock on target. He turns his head towards me and blurs away even as the railguns come to bear, rounds flying through empty air and smashing into the wall behind him.

"AAEEIIghhuh!"

At the other end of the chamber -it looks like they took the car park and retextured it from eighties brutalism to medieval dungeon- the man pulls Timothy's heart from his chest and holds it aloft, tossing his broken body aside. "SABBAC!"

Black lightning crackles around him as his skin reddens and a burning pentagram appears on his chest. Demonically enhanced muscles bulge as he crushes the heart and draws… Oh shit, that's what he used on William.

It's a short sword, barely a dagger in his hand. Further adding to the oddity of the sword it's gold in colour and the blade is split in two.

The Sword of Second and Third.

That… Really isn't good.

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Prayer 14

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12th February

10:46 GMT -6

AccelerateAccelerateAccelerate!

I feel the orange light from the rings suffuse my body. I can't do true super speed but linking the force fields around every part of my body to my mind via the rings lets me sort of nearly fake it.

"Domine-"

For a subjective half second as I raise the Ace to point at the new Sabbac I consider calling in the Ophidian. Could that.. sword..? Can't risk it. Additional railguns begin to manifest and the two I currently have pointing at him reload and track. A web of orange filaments begins extending outwards from my body. Demon-worshipping serial killer? I think I can live with killing him.

"-Iesu,-"

In power armour I can't use a traditional rifle firing pose but I don't need to. Even without the rings my armour has automatic targeting systems. The Ace comes level, barrel pointing at the burning pentagram on his chest. The forefinger of my right gauntlet tightens slightly, divinely empowered bullet blasting forth slightly behind the best anti-magic ammunition available to Atlantean arcanotechnology.

"-dimitte-"

He brings the Sword up into a guard position as I start cursing super speed. There's a golden blur as he -calculating trajectory- slices the first two Mage Slayers in half. He actually sidesteps the round from the Ace as I use a construct to work the lever action, cuts the next two Mage Slayers and raises his left hand. For a fraction of a second I see him actually sweat fire before flames the colour of dried blood billow fully into life in his palm. He sidesteps as I fire the Ace again, pushes his left hand forwards and lets loose a cone of demonic flame directly towards me!

"-nobis-"

My flight aura drags me aside, flames roiling around the construct armour protecting my left arm. Shit, William, John and Mattias aren't that far behin-. The ring shows me the flame bend around Mattias, standing protectively between Sabbac and William. John isn't there. Where is he?

"-debita-"

I feel my filaments reach him just as the additional railguns finish forming. Can't waste more Mage Slayers that won't hit anything. Cold iron and silver, maximum saturation. The howling as the force of the rounds ignites whatever passes for air around here is weirdly distorted in my accelerated state. Filaments! Brand! Shock Crown!

"-nostra,-"

A wave of orange passes up Sabbac until it reaches his pentagram. Then it-

Connection lost.

-melts away. Power of Satanus, presumably. The filaments are actually retreating away from him. Before I'm forced to drop them entirely I surround him with neural chaff generators and vertigo inducers. There's a slight.. look of something on his face as they trigger, then his flames leap outwards from his entire body and incinerate every one of them.

"-salva-"

Drop filaments firefirefire! Iron and silver fill the space between us and he turns slightly and dips towards me. I'm hitting now but I'm not sure if the shots are reaching his skin. I'm certainly not Bluggh! Ah, duh, agh! He shoulder charged me! I barely saw him move! The only reason I didn't go flying back outside is that the wall stopped me! If he'd used the sword I'd probably have died. Okay, demonically empowered supervillain in Hell. That's probably helping him.

"-nos ab igne-"

He takes a few steps closer to Father Mattias' barrier and the fallen Captain Marvel. "Hehh." Then he draws a completely mundane shotgun. Railguns! Iron and silver blast towards him again but he doesn't even bother turning in my direction as his flaming aura consumes the shots.

"-inferiori,-"

Then a blur of black and gold shoots past me as Teth Adom flies straight into Sabbac's side with both fists extended. My hearing's too distorted to rely on but I think I heard something crack. Sabbac is knocked back by the hit, but only by a little. Adom swings his right fist into Sabbac's face as a follow up. Sabbac staggers and loses hold of his gun. But he keeps hold of the Sword. Shit, does Adom know what it can do? He might guess that it's demonic, but...

"-perduc-"

Sword aside, they should be an even match. Adom has experience and Sabbac has hellfire. Sabbac slashes at Adom with the Sword only for Adom to step inside his reach, push his sword arm aside with his right hand and slam his left fist into Sabbac's gut. He should win that fight if not for the Sword. I need to get William and Mattias out of here. Ring, power remaining?

One hundred eighty eight percent remaining.

Subspacing magic items drains power massively, in proportion to their power. That sword was made from the remains of the two great Demons that got sent here to keep the First of the Fallen from doing anything too creative.

"-in caelum-"

I can't tell how much of a drain it'll be. My armour's built in weapons should do alright against minor Demons… Sabbac spits fire into Adom's eyes and zips backwards as Adom takes a wild swing. Sabbac brings the sword back-.

Fuck it.

I transition forwards and slam both of my hands into the fist holding the sword. Crumble!

"Bhlg!"

His radiant power is already pushing against my construct armour but his grip loosens just a little. Grab it! Subspace it! Filaments connect to the hilt and pommel and… Gone!

"No!"

And I'm into the wall again and this time he's following up, diving at me. Adom catches his trailing left leg and spins, hurling him across the room. Ring, what's the damage?

"-omnes-"

Twelve percent remaining.

Actually not as bad as I thought it would be. Can't transition back out to Fawcett but I'm not sure trying that in hell would be a good idea anyway. Can't fight meaningfully at twelve percent, but I wasn't making all that much headway in that direction even with a full charge. Is two percent enough to fly Mattias and William out? Have to be.

Sabbac rallies, catching Adom right on the underside of his chin with his right elbow. Can't pay attention to that. Have to trust Adom. I fly across the room towards my fallen ally. William's rapidly losing consciousness and that's a lot of blood. I think it's gone through several ribs as well. Did the sword just bypass his resilience or is it also impeding his healing? Can he heal something like this? I actually don't know. I spare a glance in what I think was Timothy Karnes' direction but all I see is ash and rock.

"-animas-"

I stick a body cast construct around William, put a flight aura around both of them and then head for the opening. Ring, fly back the way we came, maximum speed. And drop personal acceleration.

Compliance.

"-praesertim eas, quae misericordiae tuae maxime indigent."

The mists of this part of Hell shoot past us. Fewer shapes around us than there were on the way in, though I don't know whether that's because Adom killed them or because they've reached the exit. William manages to look at me for a moment and then closes his eyes and sags slightly. Given his injury losing consciousness is probably a mercy.

"Where are we?"

"Hell, Father."

I think there's some sort of light up ahead. With luck, that's the Fawcett City sky I can see. Frederick, Mary and the Praexis swarm should have been able to deal with the lesser Demons. For a moment I try reaching out towards Fatty and Chubbs… Can't feel anything. Probably just the effect of being in Hell. If they'd been destroyed they'd just have fallen out of the ring again.

The three of us zoom between the reaching tentacles of two of the Jellyfish Demons and out into the air. A quick glance shows me the mangled remains of some Imps, a couple of Praexis flying towards a head-on collision with what looks like a cross between a tadpole and a rock drill. Several rooftops are on fire but I rapidly select one that isn't and fly towards it. I land between twin slopes on the tiled structure. Okay, I can drop off Father Mattias and then see about-.

In a burst of flame Sabbac appears in the air above the combat zone. A second later he's right in front of me, his face a rictus of hate and his right fist pulled back to deliver a hammer blow! "Die!"

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Prayer 15

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12th February

10:49 GMT -6

Shit! Reinforce! My construct armour's already cracking up as I accelerate my perception back to something that lets me actually see him. Maybe..? When Guy and I fight we use ablative layers of bubbles. Only really works in the air and I'm going to lose flight capacity-.

Sabbac takes a pace back and gestures forwards with both hands. Shit, can it..? Father Mattias is frantically trying to drag Captain Marvel out of the danger zone. I can't afford to move! "Lieutenant, Mary, could really use-" The torrent of flame roars over me, rapidly eating through my construct armour. In fact, given the way my environmental shield is shuddering I think it's at least partially bypassing-.

Warning: Spell Eater approaching critical temperature.

I take another out of subspace before sending my current one there. "-some help here. We've got a new Sabbac-"

Warning: low power. Ten percent remaining.

"-and Captain Marvel's critically injured."

The flames stop. For a second I wonder if-. Sabbac draws his shotgun and raises it in the direction of Father Mattias. I start bringing up the Ace. I've really got no reason to assume that he's somehow forgotten how to dodge-.

A black streak flies out of the clouds and slams into Sabbac, carrying them both off into the Fawcett City skies. A moment later Frederick lands next to me. "Cap-? Oh no."

I'm restoring my armour as I hurry over to William. "Lieutenant, does the Stamina of Atlas give you regeneration?"

"I don't know!? I've never been hurt that bad before!"

I send a pulse of orange light into William's injury. Blood pressure's way down, but… The bleeding should have slowed down by now. Clots aren't forming. It's like even normal healing has just been turned off. Heal. No reaction. Okay, I can block the damaged blood vessels to prevent further blood loss. Maybe replace the veins and arteries? Analyse blood type.

Unable to analyse.

Power of fucking Zeus. Aaaahh… One of the others could turn it off-. There's a very loud crash somewhere in the distance. Off, but the injury might kill William in his normal form.

"How did Sabbac do this? Timothy never-."

"Magic sword." Okay, what happened to the First when he got hit? Chantinelle stabbed him from behind, he asked what would happen to him… Can't remember anything else. "Demons taken care of?"

"But… Sabbac…"

"Let Adom deal with Sabbac."

He nods. "I think we missed a few but there aren't any more coming out and your orange Demon things are chasing them down."

"In that case I need you to try getting hold of the Wizard. The sword Sabbac used was designed to kill magic life forms and I don't know how to heal this." Frederick's eye's widen. "He won't die while I've got ring power. I'm going to head straight for the Fawcett City zeta tube and go back to.. base. Recharge, then.. put whatever solution the Wizard suggests into effect."

Father Mattias looks seriously concerned as I bend to pick up William. Turns out that he doesn't weigh more than a man of his proportions should. "Constantine, John Constantine. Where is he?"

I manoeuvre William into a fireman's carry. Don't want to waste ring power keeping him comfortable. "Still in Hell. He wasn't there when I evacuated and I couldn't track him. "

"Merciful Lord."

"Bloody hope so." I look at Frederick as I activate my flight belt. "Go!" I think I see him nod before he disappears in a blue blur.

Okay, Fawcett City zeta tube is west of here. I rise off the ground and get myself pointed in the direction of my HUD marker, five Praexis Demons floating into a flanking position. The impression I'm getting from the others is that several of the fast Imps have headed away from the portal as fast as they can. I.. don't.. think that Demons can last on Earth without getting more power from somewhere, so as long as the Praexis have their scent they shouldn't be much trouble. The flock's expanded by.. nine..? And a quick look at the roads around the portal shows that the two smaller Marvels have done an excellent job of halting the demonic advance.

I accelerate through the air. Estimated flight time, ninety seconds. Worth a construct booster rocket? No. I might need what little power I have left to fight off Sabbac if he breaks away from Adom. To say nothing of keeping William alive.

Okay, going alright so far. My HUD shows me Father Mattias climb down from the roof onto a fourth floor balcony. Mary's over near part of the police cordon. I hear the sharp cracks as police marksmen start shooting at her! Why are they..? One of the Jellyfish Demons has attached tentacles to the officers and appears to be puppeting them. Pistols like those can't do anything like enough damage to injure Mary and she knows it full well, making sure to remain clearly visible so there's no chance of a shot missing and hitting someone who isn't bulletpro-. Bullet resistant. She moves, her right hand darting out, pulling guns out of their hands and crushing them one by one. Once the officers are disarmed they charge her while the Demon extends a tentacle along the ground towards her. Mary flies up in the air to bypass the police and then blasts towards the Demon, punching right through the body section and out the other side. A moment later the police slump to the ground.

Nicely done. Next order of business, Justice League. "Orange Lantern to Watc- bwuh!" Street street fuckgetoutofthe way!

"Aaaaagh!" / "Nonono!"

Rubbernecking civilians flee in all directions as I hit the tarmac! The flight belt's kinetic absorption function sucks in the energy of the impact as I swing wildly with three x-ionised blades in a frantic attempt to keep Sabbac away! Keep them moving keep them moving! He's being forced to keep moving but his strikes-

Warning: low power. Eight percent remaining.

-are wearing my reserves down. I really need to make some kind of x-ionised air caltrop at some point. Come on Adom, don't keep me waiting!

"Gh." My three blades stop, one trapped inside Sabbac's left arm and the other two in the right side of his chest.

Connection lost.

The filaments tethering them to me wink out. How are they getting stuck? Those things should cut through any mundane material, and if the Indestructible Body of Aym didn't stop them cutting into him then they should just have kept going! Sabbac lunges forwards at me, grabs into my construct armour and squeezes, wisps of dark red fire flaring where he's holding on. Yet again the construct-disrupting effect he has starts to work. Bringing the Ace up forces him to evade for a second and I replenish-

Warning: low power. Six percent remaining.

-my armour but I'm forced to waste my remaining shots. Reloading from subspace costs power I can't really spare from my armour construct. Try flying up and hope someone on my side-?

"Get away from him!" A blur of red as Mary flies at Sabbac and he's forced to evade before enveloping the street with his hellfire.

I use the opportunity to break for the sky only for someone -Sabbac!- to grab hold of my right leg and squeeze! Have to-! Destruction pulse! The orange bolt strikes him directly in the face but he just takes it!

Warning: low power. Five percent remaining.

"No you don't!" Mary appears, arms locked around his neck and raised arm in a half nelson. "Shazam!"

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Prayer 16

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12th February

10:52 GMT -6

Lightning slams into them from a clear sky, brilliant gold as natural lightning never is.

"UuH!" Sabbac shakes as it hits and loses his grip on my leg. I go for height as quickly as I can. Good job that didn't hit William.

Good job Sabbac can't move either. Mary is reduced to her mortal form, her uniform being replaced by a dark blue t-shirt and white denim shorts. Oh shit, that's not-.

"Shazam!"

Boom!

"RAaaaaaagggghhhhh!" Mary throws the still-twitching and smoking Sabbac across the road into the front of a building. The facade crumbles under the force of his impact.

Back in her red dress Mary puts her hands on her hips. "And there's more where that oop!" Sabbac turns around with his right arm extended, throwing a torrent of fire straight at her head! She flies to evade and I accelerate in the direction of the zeta tube. Think I'll start looking into personal teleporters as well.

"Orange Lantern to Watchtower. Situation in Fawcett City. Captain Marvel's down, there's a new Sabbac and he's opened a portal to Hell in the middle of the city."

"Reading you loud and clear, Orange Lantern." Hawkwoman. I was.. sort of hoping for Guy or Mister Allen, but okay. "Who else is on site?"

"Teth Adom, Lieutenant Marvel and Mary Marvel." Back on the ground Mary dodges a lunge and flies under Sabbac just as my supposed Praexis escort arrive. Without really looking around Sabbac throws fire at one as he tries to grabble Mary. The Praexis in question sucks the fire down Kirby-style, turning slightly purple as it does so. "And quite a lot of Praexis Demons and more than a few other Demons of various types."

"Do you need assistance?"

"If the Physician is available, please send him to the mountain. Sabbac swung a sword clean through the left side of Captain Marvel's chest. I can't heal it myself."

"He'll be there kreeen shhhhuaaa-."

Under five percent. "Sorry, I just lost translation. Say again?"

"A few minutes. Rhr. Orange Lantern, I just ran a check on the Fawcett City zeta tube. It's non-responsive."

"A minor technical glitch, or did something hit it?"

"This morning's check showed no problems. Next nearest zeta tube is-."

"Dakota City, too far."

"I thought you could go faster than light and make zeta tube constructs."

"Not on low power, and I don't want to risk Marvel starting bleeding again. I don't suppose that the Flash is available?"

"Trickster's got him occupied."

And neither Wallace or Jay are fast enough to cover the distance in a meaningful time. "I'll head to the Fawcett City zeta tube and see if I can make repairs. Shouldn't be much-." Bloof! I get just enough time to think 'again, really?' before slamming face first into the edge of a roof, spinning -shit, the belt's not working-, armoured zorb construct! Another strike and William and I are knocked flying, bouncing-

Warning: low power. Three percent remaining.

-like some sort of demented skipping stone from one building to the next. I focus on maintaining the zorb as Adom gets back from whatever he was doing to assail Sabbac once more. Maybe I could try and get Diana to include him in her sessions with Barda?

"Orange Lantern! Report!"

Yeah, give me a-. We clip the corner of a building and spin out into an empty car park. Luckily the ring's keeping my inner ear stable. I project a couple of construct hook-chains to the outside of the zorb and they dig into the cracked tarmac to bring us to a halt. "I'm okay. Sabbac got away from Teth Adom and went after me to try and get his sword back." I dismiss the zorb. "Flight belt's wrecked and I don't want to waste power repairing it. I'll head…" Someone walks out from one of the dilapidated industrial buildings at the far side of the car park. Short, thin man wearing a dull green suit. Bit of an odd place to be going for a walk. "I'll head towards the zeta tube on foot."

"The Physician is in the mountain awaiting your arrival."

"We should think about putting a zeta tube actually inside the medical bay. It really makes more sense than having it in the briefing room."

"Katar said the same thing." I check my HUD again. Okay. Nine hundred metres. I shift William back into a proper fireman's carry. "We decided against it because if the system got infiltrated they'd come out amongst our wounded."

I start walking in the direction of the zeta tube. "Yes, if only you had access to all of Mars' telepathic biotech. Then you could use telepathic identity checks using devices not compatible with Earth technology."

"Ah. I suppose that could-."

"And it's not as if you people use automated defences anyway. Unless someone's actually standing in the briefing room when someone comes in-."

"Good morning." The man I spotted leaving the building raises his right hand in a cheerful greeting.

"Excuse me." I switch to external. "Good morning, sir. I'm sorry I can't stop-."

"Looks like Captain Marvel's been through the wringer, hey?"

Ah-? "Yes?"

"Then this shouldn't take too long. IBAC!" Green fire- "Hahaha!" -billows around his body, the shadow it casts within them steadily expanding as I check my grip on William and start running. "Now I'll finally-! Wait, where are you going? Come back!"

Ibac gets.. strength, toughness and aggression from his transformation, right? He can't fly, but then neither can I at the moment. If I put William down I'd give myself even odds of beating him, but why bother? Once I'm recharged beating him will be easy and there's no one between here and the zeta tube.

"Orange Lantern to Watchtower. Just to keep you informed, Ibac's on the loose as well."

"Come back here!"

Worth using a neural chaff grenade? No. If a pile of them didn't work on Sabbac I doubt that one would work on Ibac. Reloading the Ace and then using it would risk killing him. I hit my stride, power armoured legs eating up the ground between me and my destination. Super strong people can run pretty fast but if you put too much force into it you end up just launching yourself upwards. Kon and M'gann found me trying to run around without ring assistance hilarious, but unlike sparring with Black Canary it was time well spent. I burst out from between the remains of the industrial complex, leaning to the right as I do so. I'm pretty much wrecking the pavement… And that car, whoops. Running like this, but now it's just a straight run down the road-.

"Ahah!" Ibac sends up a cloud of paving slabs as he lands just ahead of me. What's the idiot going to-? I slam into him without slowing and.. somehow he stays on his feet, bracing himself against me while his heels cut a furrow in the surface of the road. "No one is stronger than I-!" He stops himself. "I'm not falling for that again."

I bring my left arm around to try and toss him out of the way but with most of my momentum gone there's nothing to stop him turning aside and performing a throw. I twist, trying to shield William from the landing as I crash down. Think I was mostly successful. Ugh, I can actually see the wooden fence disguising the zeta tube entrance from here.

"I will show you my strength! Put Marvel down and face me!"

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Prayer 17

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12th February

10:56 GMT -6

Right. Ibac. Strong, tough, not particularly skilled and thick as anything.

Would that work?

"I'm sorry, who are you?"

"I am-!" His eyes widen and his face twists like he's desperately trying to prevent himself shitting after a three day Mexican binge. Then his eyes narrow. "Oooooh, a clever one. Trying to outsmart me, hey?"

"Worth a try." Ring, don't help without specific instruction.

Compliance.

"You can't trick I-. Me! I'm guided by the spirits-."

"Of Ivan the Terrible, Cesare Borgia, Attila the Hun and Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus."

He frowns. "Who's that last one?"

Oh, for goodness sake. Really? Isn't he supposed to be able to speak to their spirits or something? "Caligula, it's the proper full name of Caligula. Caligula literally meaning 'little boots'." He looks blank. "It was a nickname, it wasn't his… Never mind." I gently unsling the recumbent William and lower him to the ground. In the distance I think I can hear a vehicle heading this way, probably an ambulance heading towards the police cordon. "Your name's Stanley Printwhistle, isn't it?"

"No, it's-." He cuts himself off. "Oooooh. You're not Marvel, but I think I'm going to enjoy beating you nearly as much."

"If you could give me an hour or two I could probably get Captain Marvel back on his feet. Then you could fight him."

He looks as close to thoughtful as he can. "Hey, that's not a bad-." He twitches. "No!" I honestly don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Right. Flight belt got destroyed by.. something Sabbac did, but the armour's other systems appear to be fully operational. I have taken part in Diana's super strength brawling lessons, so I know-.

A Praexis Demon falls out of my the left hand ring. "Huh?" Not Fatty or Tubbs. Alright, I can use that. Praexis Demon, get him.

It blinks, bares its teeth at Ibac, actually hisses Gollum-style and then dives at him with its stubby little arms outstretched.

Ibac lunges forwards, his left fist meeting the Demon halfway. It disintegrates in a cloud of orange. Reappearing? Looks like not. Ring?

Repeated manifestation requires power consumption. Ibac continues his run, charging me. Do you wish to remanifest?

No. I make an awkward sidestep right as he reaches me, causing his first wild swing to miss. As he tries to arrest his momentum I bend my legs and lunge left sideways, shoulder barging him with all of my armour's mass and knocking him off his feet. I suspect that he's stronger than me but I'm heavier. He just rolls to his feet none the worse for wear and takes another swing. I take a couple of frantic tiny steps as I fully appreciate that in this armour I can't bend nearly as well as him, then step towards him, sticking out both hands to catch hold of the side of his extended right arm and elbow him in the face.

He takes the blow without flinching and grabs hold of my right arm with his left hand, trying to pry it off. The armour strains but holds. He swings his forehead forwards, striking my helmet and making my HUD glitch out. I bring my right foot down hard on his left-

"Aw!"

-and then take advantage of his grip on me and comparative light weight to lift him off the ground, stepping forwards and then dropping down so that he ends up on his back on the road. Still, heavy combat norms apply; a little drop like that might stun a normal person but won't do a thing to him except put him in a worse position.

I pull back slightly and smash my left fist into his face, aiming for his eyes. I manage three powerful shots to his right eye before he tries pushing my right arm into the way while he sits up. My own bulk is preventing me hitting somewhere like his diaphragm while he's distracted with guarding his face. This armour really isn't designed for knee strikes. Um… I lean forwards, overbalancing onto his face elbow first. He turns his head aside to deflect the blow and I end up lying on his face. He's shouting so hard that I can feel the vibrations through my chestplate but I can't make out the actual words.

He's pulling his right arm outwards while his left pulls my right in the opposite direction. Try holding on and risk the armour breaking or go with it? It's not like he can really strike at me from this position. I open my right hand in one go and his left arm pulls it out from between us so suddenly that he reflexively loses his grip on it as his wrist gets twisted.

"Get off me!"

Can't bend my arms far enough to hit his head. I could try pushing up, but-. He brings his right fist around in a clumsy blow which hits me in the side and knocks me sideways. I have to use my right arm in order to steady myself. He pulls his right arm back again and as it touches the road surface I grab his wrist with my left hand and lean into it. He strains for a moment but even as strong as he is he can't get any leverage. I feel a slight shudder as he tries to kick at me but I'm so far forwards he can barely make contact. A moment later the vibrations change as he tries to get enough momentum to jerk himself upright. No, that doesn't work. Next he tries pushing off the ground in a sort of crab posture but that isn't happening either.

Well what n-?

"Ibac."

Aaaaaaghhhh! Green fire flares around me as he triggers his transformation. I feel my skin burning and dozens of damage warnings appear on my armour's HUD as components burn out. Focus! He's now much smaller and I can-.

Warning: Spell Eater approaching critical temperature.

"Ibac!"

Grahhaaaghhah! Bloewgh! I'm thrown clear to his right, crashing onto the road and skidding along its surface! I nearly gag as the armour's control system detects my injuries and shoves a straw into my mouth to feed me a healing potion. Minor injuries only but it should help with my burns. I've… There was no report of Ibac being able to use his transformation effect as a weapon. Okay. Arms… Just about functioning. I clumsily plant my right hand on the ground and start to push myself up.

"Hah. Haaah. You think… Ugh You think you can get the best of me?" Ibac's back on his feet, staggering slightly. "I fight the World's Mightiest-" Left hand plant, try moving my left knee. "-Mortal as an equal!" Not happening. Right? Yes, that's working. Would have been slightly further away. Oh dear, Ibac's heading this way. Plasma pistol out of subspace, shoot him repeatedly in the head and hope I can fix the zeta tube before William bleeds out? Not a good plan but I can't think of anything better right…

Is the ground shaking?

I can turn just enough to watch as a humvee drives straight into Ibac, driving him through the glass frontage of a shop called 'Oriental Teas' and into the inner wall. The driver -a blonde woman in purple denim trousers and a red turtleneck- shoves open the door on the passenger side and gets out, hurrying out into the street.

Her eyes alight on me first. "Are you still alive in there?!"

"I'm fine."

There's a sound of shattering glass and shifting rubble as Ibac pushes the humvee backwards. The blonde woman looks around. "Hell." She dashes to the side, hopefully out of his line of sight as I renew my efforts to rise. Right knee.. down… Shift weight back…

Too slow. Ibac trudges out of the shop, eyes fixed on me. "I will deal with you. Then-."

The blonde woman creeps up behind him, jumps and grasps his neck in a textbook carotid sleeper hold. Oh no, what's she thinking! He'll just..? Ibac.. staggers..? He brings his hands back to try and throw her off but she's maintaining her grip. Er, right, rock back slightly to get my right foot down, twist the left leg into a more supportive position. Ibac collapses beneath her and she maintains her hold for a moment before lifting herself off him. She dusts her hands off before jogging over to me and lifting me back onto my feet with little visible effort.

Ah. Now I remember her face. "Thank you, Miss Sivana."

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Prayer 18

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12th February

11:00 GMT -6

"Doctor Sivana, thank you. I didn't spend six years at medical school to be referred to as 'Miss'. Now, where's Captain Marvel?"

I take a hobbling step. I can sort of move, then. The motors in my right arm protest as I raise it to point. "Just behind that car." She turns away and hurries over to him. "And it wasn't supposed to be a sexist thing. There are nine different people called 'Doctor Sivana', you're just the only one who's an unmarried woman."

"Nine?" She comes to a halt next to William and kneels down to examine him. "Oh God. What happened?"

I step-drag in the direction of the wooden fence. The wood is just wood, so even with little strength or coordination I should be able to just crash through it. "Sivana's an unusual name, but it's hardly unique. Six in your family, not counting multiple doctorates, and three others I was able to locate."

"What happened to-."

"New Sabbac slashed him through the chest with a magical Demon sword. I'm using a power ring to stop him bleeding out but he's lost a lot of blood already. The sword appears to be preventing him from regenerating."

"How deep?"

"Clean through the ribs and the lung to a depth of about sev-. Three inches at the deepest. Didn't hit his spine or oesophagus."

"We need to get him to a hospital." She bends down to lift him up. "I'll put you both in my hummer-."

"Already in hand." I half punch/half shoulder barge through the fence and it disintegrates. "There's a Justice League zeta tube just through here. It'll take us directly to a specialist in metahuman medicine." The Fawcett City photo booth zeta terminus has been ripped from its mooring, a chunk of the outer casing torn off and the screen punched in. Easy enough fix…

Wait. Did Ibac do that in Ibac-mode and then turn back?

She moves William into a fireman's carry and walks past me into the alleyway. "One expert? This is a two person job at least! You're taking me with you." Doctor Sivana ♀ in the mountain. How would Batman-? "Don't even try to argue with me, you can barely move yourself." She's right, and she probably has the knowledge to help but I don't think this is going to win me Bat points. "Wait. That's the zeta tube?"

"Ibac did some remodelling." What's the most energy efficient way to go about this? "Could you please pick up the front bit and set it back down where it used to be?"

I get an annoyed glance. "Did your power ring stop working?"

"It will in a moment. I'm using all remaining power to keep Captain Marvel alive. Why did you think I was having trouble with Ibac of all people?"

"Ah, okay." She crouches to put William down. "I'm sorry, it's just… Seeing him like this…"

"Don't worry, just do it."

"Okay." She checks the outline of the cleaner part of the concrete, takes hold of the photo booth and lifts slightly before pulling it around. The back half snaps off and falls to the ground on its side but none of the important mechanisms are in there. "Now what?"

"Now, I reconnect the torn cable-" Done. "-and hope that's all it needs. Orange Lantern to Hawkwoman?" No response. Armour's transmitter probably got fried. Okay, still manageable. "Stick Marvel in front of the camera and hold him there. I'm going to have to check the systems and I might run completely out of power part way through."

She moves back to pick him up. "What happens if you do?"

"The constructs keeping him from bleeding to death stop working and he dies in short order."

"Okay."

Ring, connect to the zeta tube's control systems.

Compliance. Warning: low power. Two percent remaining.

Physical strain shook loose a few components and tripped the safety. Probably would have worked anyway… Except the override is remote and I can't contact the Watchtower. Fix that, add Beautia Sivana to the system and reprogram it for multi-person transportation…

Warning: low power. One percent remaining.

Fucking made it. I limp within the transportation radius and activate the tube.

12th February

12:03 GMT -5

"Recognised, Captain Marvel, one five, Orange Lantern, B zero six, Beautia Sivana, A three one."

As the lights fade I see Mister Yao waiting for us, along with M'gann, Kon and Wallace. "Wait, who's tha-?" Wallace's question is cut off as Doctor Sivana strides past him with Captain Marvel. "Oh no."

Mister Yao steps forwards and I can just about hear some sort of low pitch humming noise. "Wǒ cào." He breathes in sharply. "Miss Martian, take Captain Marvel to the medical centre immediately." Her eyes glow and William floats off Doctor Sivana ♀'s shoulder. "Explain, please, what has occurred."

"Captain Marvel was struck by a sword forged from the remains of two immensely powerful Demons. It appears to have bypassed his normal resistances and is generally messing up his innate magics."

"Yes, I heard that. Come." He turns to follow M'gann and Marvel towards the medical bay, sparing a moment to glance at Doctor Sivana ♀. "And who is this?"

"Doctor Tia Sivana. I'm an MD and a friend of Captain Marvel."

"Then I thank you for your assistance. Follow me."

I stay standing inside the zeta tube as they go. Kon looks me over. "What's going on? I saw on the news that-."

"Superboy, my armour's pretty much given out. I need you to carry me to my room at best possible speed please." He hesitates. "Right now."

He jogs in, lifts me in a bridal carry and starts running. Not comfortable, but I'll live. Wallace hurries along besides us. "Was that Doctor Sivana as in Thaddeus Sivana?"

"His eldest daughter. She's legal. Like Magnificus, only not a dick."

"Is she allowed in here?"

"Captain Marvel's mortally injured, so yes."

"But what if I wasn't wearing my uniform? What if she'd seen my face?"

"She doesn't know who you are, Wallace. Unless someone identified you by name -your full name- she still wouldn't be able to track you down."

"Hey." I'm assuming that Kon's looking at me, I can't see his face from this position. "You okay?"

"Mildly burned from Ibac's transformation effect. Thanks for the potion, Wallace. Prrrobably going to need another one."

"You ran out of power that fast?"

"Stole Sabbac's sword so Adom could fight him without ending up like Marvel. Used about a hundred and seventy percent power to move it into subspace. Then Sabbac hit me. A lot. Super speed, super toughness, super strength, construct resistance, I can deal with any one. Or two. All four at once was pushing it."

Wallace goes ahead of Kon to push open the door to my room. Kon puts me down on my feet at the threshold and I stagger forwards towards salvation. "Reveal." My lantern shimmers into being and I wrench my gauntlets up to face it.

"This is my cause…"

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Prayer 19

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12th February

12:06 GMT -5

Wallace looks sceptically at the sword. "That took a hundred and seventy percent of a normal power ring charge?" He reaches out-.

I jerk it back. "Don't touch it."

He pulls his hand back. "Just doesn't look like all that much. If it's a Demon sword, shouldn't it be all grey and on fire? And why's it split down the middle?"

"It was made using the remains of the two most powerful Demons in Hell, the Second of the Fallen and the Third of the Fallen. If I had to guess, I'd say that one prong was created from each of them. And don't assume that Demons are always going to look appropriately demony. The Succubus who created it used to date an Angel."

Kon nods. "Exactly how dangerous is it?"

"The only time I know of it being used… Before Sabbac Two used it on Captain Marvel anyway, was to kill the First of the Fallen. The First is… There isn't a Satan, but if there was? It would be him. As for how dangerous it is, I haven't seen any exotic effects but Captain Marvel's.. top tier physical toughness and it cut through him like a hot knife through thin air and negated his healing."

We've gathered in the gymnasium, which is the room closest to the medical bay. On the wall the television screen shows Mary and the Praexis Demons doing battle with some sort of strange flying burning dinosaur skeleton. The camera's given up on trying to keep up with Adom and Sabbac. They're just moving too fast. Adom appears to not only be holding his own but preventing Sabbac from disengaging.

M'gann looks up as Doctor Sivana ♀ walks into the room. "Any improvement?"

She shakes her head. "Three different forms of exotic cell regeneration, no effect. Doctor Yao's.. humming, hasn't done any better."

"He's not actually a qualified medical doctor yet."

"The point is, I haven't studied magic but I know dangerous spells when I see them. We'd need to nullify the magic, and according to you that's.. pretty much impossible."

"The rune stone exploded. It didn't even do that when I waved it at Nabu." She blanks. "Fate… The.. gold and blue…" She nods. "Okay, stop me if I'm being stupid. Have you tried excising the tissue along the edge-."

"Yes. No effect."

"Bridging the gap artificially?"

"Yes, but his cells won't engraft on the material we used. If he stays lying there for a few days we can bridge the important blood vessels and glue the bones but he'd.. almost certainly have to retire. How far away can you maintain the construct you're using?"

I shake my head. "If it came to it I'd just give him a ring.. but.. that's not a good position for either of us."

"Why not?"

"If Sabbac was any guide Marvel's own magics would resist the construct. Power rings require you to think in certain ways to use them properly. Marvel doesn't think orange, so I'm not sure that he could maintain the construct properly on himself. Plus… Constructs don't stay on while you sleep. Whenever he slept I'd have to be in the building-."

"Incoming communication from: Catherine Cobert."

I look around. "Did we.. miss some sort of press conference?"

Wallace frowns. "Don't think so."

"Answer?"

The news footage is replaced by Miss Cobert's face. "Orange Lantern, we've had a call from someone claiming to be 'Lieutenant Marvel'. Normally we'd just have screened it, but they described particulars of the situation in Fawcett-."

I didn't give him my phone number and William hasn't shared League communication protocols with them. Darn it..! "Put him through. Actually, ring? Steal call."

"Call acquired."

"Thank you Miss Cobert. Off." The screen deactivates and I raise my left hand to my ear. "Got some good news for us?"

"Orange Lantern? I thought they were going to leave me on hold forever. Is B-. The Captain okay?"

"He's alive. Still unconscious and we can't fix the injury. Was Shazam able to tell you anything?"

"Yeah, he thinks that the sword is only stopping the magic we normally use fixing him. He said if we got hold of some other kind of healing magic that should work fine."

Ring, thought to speech.

Compliance.

What happens to injuries you take in a fight when you change back?

"Cuts open up again and we bruise a whole lot worse. Why, you're not turning him back-!"

No, but the only magic based healing I have is the Danner Formula and I can't use it on him while he's transformed. Except… Why did the wizard choose him?

"What? 'Cause he's a really nice guy. Pure of heart.. and.. rejected the Enemies of Man without thinking about it."

"Okay, got a possibility. I'll phone you back when I have something concrete."

"Hey." Kon's floating slightly off the ground, having just finished donning his armour. "Ask if they want some help."

"Ring, end call." I lower the ring slightly. "Kon, Batman authorises us to go on missions."

"Well, yeah, but if it's an emergency…"

"You heard what he said after the LexCorp thing. Are you ready for full exposure?"

"No, but-."

"If you want to go to Fawcett -and I don't recommend it- you need Batman's permission, not mine. Ring, contact Cornwall Boy."

"Compliance."

"You're sending him?"

"No. The Sword of Beowulf works properly for the pure of heart. I'm hoping it will work for Captain Marvel. I'm going to try and get-."

"Yeah mate, what is it?"

"Cornwall, I need you to drop whatever you're doing and come to the mountain immediately. And bring the Sword. I'm sorry, but you might not be getting it back."

"Why, what'd I do?"

"Nothing, but Captain Marvel's in critical condition and he needs it more."

"Oh, right, yeah, okay, it'll… Wait, so how come you're not picking me up?"

"I'm preventing him from bleeding out. Can't leave."

"Er. Okay, you know how that guy you know said that standing stones kept geomantic energy focused but didn't really create it? I've found a place where it naturally pools. If I teleport from there… I should be there in about.. ten minutes? That alright?"

"It'll have to be. Go."

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Prayer 20

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12th February

12:14 GMT -5

"You were wrong." Robin looks around from the recording of Hell he's had playing on the monitor since he ran in. "They're not writhing. I think they're.. praying."

Reluctantly, I turn my attention to the clip he's got paused. The field of torsos. I was actively trying not to think about it particularly hard but the ring recorded the whole thing. The torsos are naked, a mix of male and female and none of them in good condition. Wounds of various kinds, burns and boils… Most don't have heads, and on those that do they're sort of.. pulled into the neck. Most have both arms intact and some even have hands. They're not all facing the same direction, but… There's a sort of uneven arc…

"They're all facing the tower."

Robin nods. "Looks like. Computer, play, one quarter speed."

I watch a small group in the bottom left of the screen. They can't see each other and there's no effort being made at coordination. But each one… Bow forwards, circle left to come upright, bow forwards, circle right to come upright. Repeat. Sometimes they get in each other's way, but otherwise…

M'gann's face couldn't get any whiter, but her eyes are wide with horror. "Is that what.. happens to Humans..? When they die? Their souls.. end up.. like that?"

"Only monotheists who don't live up to their own standards. That's why you should kill every missionary you-" I hear running feet outside the gym. "-come across."

Rob bursts into the room at an appreciable fraction of Wallace. "Whereis'e?" Then he drops the Swift Wind spell, bends over with his hands on his thighs and starts panting.

I stand. "Thank you for coming so promptly. He's currently in the medical bay, I'll take you through."

"Uuh. Ran all the…" He breaks off to pant some more. "Sodding. Way."

"I'm sure Captain Marvel will appreciate it when he wakes up."

Robin turns away from the screen with a frown. "Why do you think the Sword of Beowulf has healing properties? Artemis and Zatanna's report only mentioned Harm throwing lightning."

"I compared the level of force Artemis can exert with the injuries Mister Hayes was recorded as having after the event and his post-arrest recovery time. He should have been down far longer than he was and he tested negative both for metahuman traits and magic use. That only really leaves the sword."

"Hope you're right."

"Yeah. Me too." Rob straightens up and follows me as I walk out into the corridor. Of course, even if it does improve his healing that doesn't guarantee that he'll be up and about again within a timeframe useful to the Fawcett City situation. Just have to hope that he's well enough that I can go back. Adom and Sabbac are still battering each other and Mary, Frederick and the Praexis are just about able to destroy the things still coming out of the hellgate but they're not making any progress. We need to shut it down.

I press the button to open the door to the medical bay and enter, Mister Yao and Doctor Sivana ♀ looking around as I do so. Mister Yao has his fingers on William's head… Some sort of pressure point stimulation? I haven't studied how his magic healing works. Probably an oversight but it's not like Sephtian has any spare time these days.

William's costume has been removed from his torso so that Doctor Sivana ♀ and Mister Yao can better access the site of the injury. Doctor Sivana ♀'s pacing, apparently in an attempt to burn off nervous energy. Don't I remember something from the comics about her having a romantic interest in Captain Marvel? I take a closer look at her but the yellow is overshadowing everything at the moment. She rapidly walks over to us as Rob unslings the sheath of the Sword of Beowulf and holds it out. Doctor Sivana ♀ looks at it for a moment and wrinkles her nose. "Is that a.. hand? What are we supposed to do with that?"

"I have reason to believe that it grants the user healing abilities. It's tested clean of demonic influences so.. it can't really make the situation worse."

Doctor Sivana ♀ takes hold of it with obvious reluctance and walks back to William. Rob follows her and then stops suddenly. "Wait. If he's unconscious, how's he gunna say the words?"

"We have to wake him up. Doctors, were the blood tests alright?"

Mister Yao nods. "I could sense no rejection between the blood taken from Captain Marvel and the donated blood Robin was able to acquire. The sample you cloned, it… It felt wrong. None of my past lives remember encountering such a lack of spiritual substance."

I nod. With time, we could probably set up some sort of mana infusion system for cloned blood samples but that's time we don't have now. "Donor samples it is then."

Doctor Sivana ♀ shakes her head. "I'm not sure that's a good idea at all. We have no idea how the magic empowering Captain Marvel will react to donated blood."

"The alternative is I call one of the other Marvels in here to force him to change back, and that could well kill him by itself, as well as reducing Fawcett City's defences."

"Could you use your ring to force his larynx to move and make him speak that way?"

"The Power of Zeus makes his body resist my constructs. I can give it a go…" She nods as she places the scabbard on William's chest before taking hold of his right hand and folding it around the grip. "You should.. probably stand back… You too, Mister Yao."

She pats William's hand before stepping away from the table. Mister Yao nods sadly. "You are correct. I am.. too impure to stand before such a sword. Be well, Captain." He steps backwards to clear the space around William's bed.

Right then. I hold up my left hand slightly and send filaments down William's throat. No problem so far; I was a little worried his mouth would act like a warding circle and prevent entry. In my mind's eye the ring shows me the filaments connecting to the muscles in his throat. Immediately they start to fade out. I use more power, thickening the orange lines into something that's clearly visible. Those last better but I can't make contact over a small enough area to precisely manipulate his body.

"Eynn. Aann."

I shake my head. "Sorry, it's not happening."

Rob stares at William's recumbent body. "Good, 'cause that was creepy."

Doctor Sivana ♀ nods. "Alright, donor blood it is." She looks at a blood bag in a nearby tray and I pick it up with a construct. "Bring his pressure up gradually. None of the exposed veins are ideal for this procedure. Mister Yao, monitor him constantly. Inform me at once of any changes."

Mister Yao nods as I hook the blood bag up to the constructs I have keeping his lungs working properly. I'd like to speed this up, but she's right. We just don't know enough about what the effect of rapidly increasing the blood pressure of someone like Captain Marvel would be. "Blood going in now." Not a lot changes visually. The construct tubes I'm using are narrow enough and bright enough that the passage of the dull red blood through them doesn't change their colour noticeably. Nothing else to do while that works, reall-. Oh, whoops. "Mister Yao, has anyone contacted.. um, Captain Marvel's… Contact? If he was watching the news he's probably frantic."

"I do not believe so."

Ah, poop. "Cornwall, would you mind? His number's on the system."

"Sure, no problem. I'll just, um, leave you to it."

"Thank you." I take a moment, watching William's chest weakly rise and fall.

"His contact?"

I glance at Doctor Sivana ♀ and nod. "Yes. Emergency contact. Someone who's in on your secret identity if you have one, and.. who gets notified if you're seriously injured. You saw on the news that Marvel was seriously injured so by now the whole city probably knows. It's a.. violent job we have, and maintaining a division between personal life and public life… There's only so many times work colleagues will believe 'skiing accident'."

"Are you..? Can you tell me..?"

"His uncle, but don't ask more than that."

She nods, and pulls up a chair to wait for William to regain consciousness.

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Prayer 21

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12th February

12:22 GMT -5

"Uuu-Uuhhh?" William's eyelids flicker and the eyes behind them try to focus. Whatever else the Sword did to him at least it doesn't appear to be affecting the resilience of the other parts of his body. His right hand tightens around the hilt of the Sword of Beowulf and he blinks with a little more coordination. "What hit me?"

I disconnect the blood bag and move it out of his line of sight. "Sabbac Two."

"There's.. two of them? Wait, where am I?"

I glance at Doctor Sivana ♀. Does she..? She rolls her eyes and mouths 'Mount Justice' at me. "You're in the mountain's medical bay. I'm sorry to say that you've been seriously injured."

"Oh, that's not a problem. I've got the-" He tries to sit up. "Stamina of owowowowow." He lies back down. "Or not."

"Captain, I realise that this is going to sound a little odd, but I need you to do something for me."

He turns his head slightly so he can look at me, wincing slightly as he does so. "Um, okay?"

"Please say: Abannan."

"A bannan?"

"Afol."

"Afol."

"Beowulf."

A slight frown. "Isn't that what Cornwall Boy says when he uses…" He glances down. "Oh. Why have I got his sword?"

Doctor Sivana ♀ steps around so he can see her. "Because we can't work out how to fix the wound Sabbac inflicted on you."

"Oh, hey Miss Tia." Oh shit he didn't. William knows Doctor Sivana ♀ both as Captain Marvel (as the daughter of his enemy Doctor Sivana Senior) and William Batson (the tutor who's trying to make up for his years of missed schooling) but she doesn't know they're one and the same. And he's still woozy. He wouldn't call her 'Miss Tia' in Captain mode, would he? Is she going to notice? "What brings you here?"

She lays her right hand on his shoulder. "You do. Now do what Orange Lantern says so you can get back to Fawcett."

"I wasn't joking about keeping back, Doctor."

William looks around the sword at his injury. "That looks deep. How.. bad is it?"

"Captain, please."

"Abannan.. afol.. Beowulf." There's a really quite unpleasant sound as the hand gripping the guard releases its hold, dead flesh shifting with an audible oozing cracking noise. "Oh, that's gross."

Glad it worked anyway. "Now, you just need to draw the sword."

"Why?"

"We think it should heal the injury you took. The magic in the Sword doesn't start acting until it's drawn."

He moves left hand to grip the scabbard, wincing as severed muscles try pulling on connections that aren't there anymore. He ends up just laying his forearm over the scabbard before starting to pull the sword free. Orange lightning crackles around the exposed metal of the blade, shining brilliantly as the point of the sword leaves its necromantic prison. William squeezes his eyes shut. "Does this have a dimmer switch?"

Not really sure what happens next. Mister Hayes only killed the curator when he stole the sword but the police officers who we assume witnessed him activating it weren't in any state to remember exactly what they'd seen. Orange-gold lights the same colour as the lightning appear on William's skin directly over his heart. Looks like a sort of.. irregular spiky circle thing? I was expecting an actual rune but the pattern looks random. From there filaments of orange lightning flicker down William's right arm until they make contact with the blade and are drawn into it, giving it a white-orange glow. And then the light dims.

William waits a moment, then narrowly opens his eyes. "Is that it? 'Caaaause I don't feel any better. And my chest is glowing."

"Let me check… Ring?"

"Cellular regeneration is occurring at the injury site."

"Looks like we're good." At the deepest part of the wound I press the severed tissues together. Tiny amounts of orange lightning crackle around it in a way that looks like it should be excruciating, but… Cell growth occurs, holding lung tissue and blood vessels together. I pull my construct flesh back a little further and watch the same thing happen again. "Definitely working."

"What's happening back in Fawcett?"

"Adom's fighting Sabbac and Mary and Lieutenant Marvel are preventing any more Demons breaking out."

William twitches as his ribs are fused back together. "And what about Father Mattias and Mister Constantine?"

"Father Mattias was alright when I left. We.. 'misplaced' John in Hell."

"Oh no."

"He'll be fine. Any Demon that tries touching him would get burned to death by the Seal of Solomon tattoo he's got all over his skin." I flick my left hand, visibly dismissing the filaments connecting me to William's rapidly disappearing cut. Maybe that jolt nullified the effect of the sword and his normal abilities are kicking back in? Mister Hayes certainly didn't get up that quickly from the beating Artemis gave him. Though I suppose that could have been due to how widespread his injuries were or the fact that she returned the Sword to its scabbard as soon as he went down.

William cautiously sits up. "That's better, but it still aches."

"Captain, you just got cut open by the sword which killed the First of the Fallen. If Sabbac hadn't messed up his first strike you'd be dead. If Adom or I had been slower getting there, you'd be dead."

"Okay, but I'm alive." He swivels his legs over the side of the bed. "So I need to get back out-."

"You most certainly do not." Doctor Sivana ♀ firmly presses her left hand against his chest. "You are in no shape to leave this medical facility, let alone fight a demonically empowered superhuman."

"I am too-." She pokes him in the bruise. "Ow!" She raises her eyebrows and he looks away. "Okay… Maybe I'm not."

"I'll head back to Fawcett-."

"Wait, why can't your power ring heal me?"

"Because the Power of Zeus makes it very hard to alter you with external power."

"So if I turned my powers off, you could fix me up, right?"

"Well… Yes, in theory. You're healed enough the trauma shouldn't kill you now."

Doctor Sivana ♀ looks puzzled. "You can turn your powers off?"

"Great! Ah, yeah, I can. Um, could you.. step outside for a moment?"

She looks at me and Mister Yao. "But these two can stay?"

Mister Yao nods. "Orange Lantern and I are both familiar with Captain Marvel's secret identity. You are not."

"Oh, fine. I'll be outside." She walks around the bed and heads towards the door.

William peers around me until the door hums shut behind her. "Shazam!" Lightning crackles from nowhere and William Batson reappears. He immediately checks his chest and sees that the glowing circle over his heart is still there. "Cool!" He looks up at me. "Could you-?"

The door hums open. "Oh, I just forgot to mention oh God you're a child." Doctor Sivana ♀ gapes. "You're William Batson?!" Awwww shit. "Billy?"

William sheepishly raises his right hand to wave. "Hi.. Miss Tia… How's it going?"

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Prayer 22

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12th February

12:26 GMT -5

"Ring, heal William and revoke Doctor Sivana's zeta tube privileges. "

Doctor Sivana ♀ leans against the medical bay wall, head bowed with her right hand pressed against her forehead. "oH gOd, I'm A pEdOpHiLe."

"Compliance."

"Ahhh..?"

"William, you're as fixed as I can make you. I think that now would be an opportune moment to transform and return to Fawcett."

Instead, he takes a few steps towards Doctor Sivana ♀. "Are you okay? I mean, I sort of knew you liked me… Captain Marvel-"

"Oh God."

"-but apart from that time you kissed-"

"oH gOd."

"-it really wasn't-."

"William. City?"

His head whips around to look at me. "Right." He turns back to Doctor Sivana ♀. "Just sit tight and we can talk about this when I get back. Shazam!" Another flare of electricity and Captain Marvel reappears, uniform fully intact. He checks himself over quickly and then looks thoughtfully at the sword in his hand. "What else does this do?"

"Fires lightning at your discretion. Nothing else that we know of."

"Does it have a.. less creepy scabbard?"

Oh for goodness… I hold out my right hand. Ring, fabricate a scabbard. "It does now. Just leave the zombie thing here."

He heads towards the door, picking the scabbard from my hand as he passes. "Thank you!"

"I will accompany you also." Mister Yao straightens his jacket before heading after William. "I am not sure that I could meaningfully fight Sabbac, but I may be able to assist in closing the gateway to the nether realm."

The door closes behind them as I regard Doctor Sivana ♀ for a moment. "Would you mind explaining what you thought you-?"

"I just thought if I-! Ergh!"

Still incoherent. Quick burst of empathic vision then. Ah. "You thought that if you knew his secret identity he'd be less formal with you when you met in public. And you wanted-."

"I don't want it any more!" She manages to look up. "How does he even-?"

"Just… Okay, look, he's ten, you're a Danner enhancile."

A frown. "How do you know-?"

"Your expected lifespan is at least three times that of a normal Human so by the time he's old enough-"

She sags. "Please… Stop."

"-for it not to be creepy you'll still be a young woman. " Maybe that wasn't the right thing to say. "Excuse me."

I appear in the training area just ahead of William and Mister Yao. My team mates -Wallace, Kon, M'gann, Robin and Rob- and our pets -Wolf, Sphere and Teekl- are already there. Kon's in full armour, M'gann's in whiteface… Ah.

Kon looks directly at me. "We're coming with you."

I meet the eyes of each of my team mates. "I take it Batman hasn't signed off on this?"

Robin glances to the side. "Batman's.. kinda busy."

"I don't have the authority to deploy the team. If you choose to participate as individuals, I won't try to stop you. Miss Martian, do not use telepathy in the vicinity of Demons." She nods. "Unless you absolutely cannot avoid him, stay away from Sabbac. Leave him to Captain Marvel and Adom. Search and rescue and maybe a little Demon fighting." Nods from the group.

Marvel flies towards the zeta tube, stopping just short. "You guys coming with?"

"Looks like."

"Cool. Let me go first, though. Ibac might have-."

"Recognised, Teekl, C zero one."

"Huh? Oh…" He hesitates for a moment before flying into the tube. "I'm next!"

"Recognised, Captain Marvel, one five."

"Sphere, you'll be carrying Robin and Accomplished Perfect Physician." The Sphere warbles at me. It's funny, I've gotten so used to seeing the Sphere around the cave that I don't really think about it. A sentient giant alien metal sphere is no longer worth noting. "Superboy, you're next. Head towards the combat zone and support the police cordon."

He nods, then flies into the tube with Wolf loping after him. "Recognised, Superboy, B zero four, Wolf, C zero three."

"Kid Flash-."

He holds up his bandoleers. "Evacuation and potion supply duty. Got it." I nod.

"Recognised, Kid Flash, B zero three."

"Miss Martian, I don't know if invisibility will work on Demons. Focus on search and rescue."

"Got it."

"Recognised, Miss Martian, B zero five."

"Cornwall, clear up any Demons that reach ground level." An unusually decorative x-ionised sword appears from subspace. "And if the American Department of Defence ask-. "

He nods solemnly. "Bin in my family for generations."

"Recognised, Cornwall Boy, B one zero."

My turn. I'm taking the Sword with me in case something magic -like Satanus himself- turns up. I checked, and we're allowed to kill Demons. Since I'm sure that if I can get it from Sabbac he could certainly take it from me, I've got it in a warded scabbard which obscures its general shape. Hopefully he won't spot it until I have to use it. "Robin, keep watch on everything. I'm going to be busy so you'll need to coordinate."

"You got it."

I step into the tube. "Recognised, Orange Lantern-

12th February

11:29 GMT -6

"-B zero six."

I rise out of the alley, tossing Kon a set of enchanted manacles as he keeps Ibac's face firmly planted in the road with Wolf growling in his left ear. And I do mean in the road, his face has been smashed clean through the tarmac.

"Recognised, Accomplished Perfect Physician, two zero."

I recreate my armour construct and add a couple of autoturrets, with an armature for the Ace.

"Recognised, Sphere, C zero three."

I rise higher into the air as the Sphere transforms into her flying bike mode and Mister Yao takes the rear seat.

"Recognised, Robin, B zero one."

I get above the buildings and look towards the Hell portal. Yep, still billowing clouds. I can dimly feel the minds of the Praexis Demons as they chase a new Drill Wurm. Right, so the tower is the focus of the magic. With Sabbac busy I can head back into Hell-.

The clouds around the tower billow upwards and outwards, covering the Fawcett City sky in a matter of seconds! Visibility drops and all around me on every flat surface praying torsos shimmer into being.

Ah… Poop.

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Prayer 23

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12th February

11:30 GMT -6

There's no moaning. No blasphemous prayers. No chanting. Just a slightly damp slapping as their arms make contact with whatever surface they appeared on. And a slightly damp breathing sound as their lungs take in and breathe out air through their neck holes. A quick look through the windows of the nearby buildings shows that they appeared on external surfaces only.

Kon roughly lifts the clearly surprised Ibac's face out of the road. "What happened!?"

"I don't know! I was just supposed to watch the teleporter! What are they?"

The Sphere pulls up alongside me with Robin in the front seat. "Look at the tower." Tower? What..? I look towards where the Hell portal used to be. The car park appears to have returned, though at this distance and with visibility this bad I'm making an assumption based on the silhouette. "Are you still in contact with the Praexis Demons?"

"Yes." Fatty? Chubbs? Chubbs was chasing Imps near the city limits but Fatty is still near the portal. "The car park has been transformed into a demonic fortification. That'll be the focal point of the ritual so that's where I'm going."

M'gann looks around. "Where are all the people?"

"Either evacuating or staying inside." Wait, city limits. Chubbs, try flying… Fuck. "There's a barrier around the city. The Imps were tracing it out. I don't think the torsos so much left Hell as we got dragged in."

Robin nods. "What now?"

How do you stop ritual magic? Destroy the ritual space.

"Have you brought incendiaries?"

"Never leave home without 'em."

I bring up a construct map of the city. "Go to the closest ritual point and incinerate everything. We were leaving it for evidence, but this takes priority. Kid Flash, Cornwall, Wolf: get in the Sphere-Bike and go with them." Wait. I look at Mister Yao. "If that's alright with you, sir?"

He thinks for a moment, then nods. "The idea is sound. How does one steer-?" The Sphere lowers to just above street level, allowing Wallace and Rob to clamber on board.

Kon looks up, continuing to hold Mister Printwhistle in place. "What do you want me to do with this guy?"

"Mister Printwhistle, we don't have time to be nice to you. Change back and we'll put you somewhere safe. Stay as you are and we throw you at Sabbac as a distraction."

"Ah. Ah. Ibac!" Green flame flares around him as he transforms back, causing Kon to pull away and nearly stumble into a praying torso. Mister Printwhistle takes the opportunity to sit up, taking in his environment with growing terror.

Shockcrown. I unlock the front door of a nearby shop and deposit him inside as the Sphere-Bike pulls away. Kon rises up from the ground. "Right. I'll remind you both that lethal force is authorised against Demons. Don't hold back at all." A construct Firestorm appears around us and the force of the acceleration pushes us all back into our seats. Yes, we could all fly -an Imp is splattered across the left wing- but neither Kon nor M'gann have a top speed anything like mine.

Fawcett City flashes past beneath us. That's not a car park, that's a Demon Fortress. Pointless spines, glowing runes… "The top surface looks like our best entry point. Destination in two…"

M'gann nods. "Right."

"One. Go." The Firestorm dissipates as I call all locally available Praexis Demons to me and instruct the rest to go after the smaller ritual sites. Hopefully, we'll only need one or two to get through. M'gann's eyes glow as she telekinetically pushes the vapours aside. Might give away our position, but thanks to Helios Kon's glowing enough to do that anyway.

"Anyone on radio?" I give it a second but there's no reply. Alright then. Kon leading the way we rise, heading towards the top of the tower. I'd.. guess it's about a kilometre and a half tall and the stone carved decoration gets ridiculous towards the top. I really don't think that thing's structurally sound.

"…wizard, but I do not need to touch you to feed this whole city to my masters."

That was Sabbac's voice. Sounded like…

We rise over the top of the tower. The outer surface is studded with glowing runes and there's a just visible dome of red light over the whole of the thing. On the roof Sabbac sits on a throne of black metal, decorated in skulls and bones. More hellish runes run in patterns all over the stonework. I can recognise a few of them… Transport… Power… And I think the markers nearest to the throne represent each of his patrons… No, wait, Satanus' sigil is missing. Is Sabbac serving as that himself? Anyway, the layout determines what they do, and that's far more complicated than anything I know how to puzzle out.

Near the steps leading up to the roof John Constantine lights a cigarette as he steps over a particularly gruesome looking sigil. "Still not all that sure how you think that's gunna work, mate. You'll never get enough sacrifices for something that big stuck in here, an' if you go outside Adom'll-" The dome of red light shimmers for a moment and on the far side I see Adom pounding on it. William's next to him, shouting something I can't hear. "-rip you to pieces."

"The spell will not be powered by living sacrifices." Sabbac holds his right hand out towards the symbol of Aym. "The super heroes are attacking Aym's lesser Demons in an attempt to reach his altar."

"Sounds like a plan to me."

"They are no longer relevant." Poop. "This spell is powered by the prayers of the damned. The altars were only needed to bind me to their infernal power." Sabbac pauses. "The Wisdom of Belial says that I should be wary of you, wizard. I think that when they walk freely among mortal men I shall ask them to grant me your soul as my bitch."

"Blimey, I am popular today." John takes a drag and looks around. "So that's what this whole set up's for, is it? Bring the tower to Earth, build up power and pull the six of them through."

Kon drifts closer to me. "Can we get in there?"

"Maybe. But if this thing's channelling magic from the whole city…" I take out a rune stone and my vision dims as the ring reacts to stop the brilliant glow from blinding me. "I'm rather hoping John's doing something clever instead because I'm guessing that Sabbac can just reroute the whole thing through himself for a supercharge."

"Yes! They will come, infernal majesty undimmed by summoning rites, their glorious voices speaking in the souls of all who have the strength to discern their meaning! And when that-!"

"SHAZAM!" / "SHAZAM!"

Two colossal bolts of lightning blast through the sky towards William and Adom. They blur as they fly to evade and the bolts miss, smashing into the barrier protecting Sabbac's ritual space. Runes around the edge of the tower flare and several of them gutter out.

"WEAK!" Sabbac looks away from John and towards the Wizard's champions. "Your magic is WEAK! I will show you the true power of Hell's sorcery!" He gets off his throne and kneels, right hand pressed on the symbol of Belial and lips moving in an inaudible prayer.

"SHAZAM!" / "SHAZAM!"

Two more bolts and a whole section of runes goes dead. Okay, that's… Sabbac bends his right elbow and hellfire flows from his hand and into the runes. William raises the Sword of Beowulf and orange lightning scours the barrier. Lower down the tower a new set of lights comes on. Those are on the tower's crenellations…

A gigantic hand rises through the murk, catching William unawares and grabbing him around the chest! I'm forced to evade and more limbs rise towards us. Black stone, covered in sheets of what looks disturbingly like flayed skin. Lower down I can see glowing eyes and the outline of colossal faces. The three of us fly higher as I try and work out what I'm looking at. The limbs aren't physically connected to the tower proper but rather are bound to it by what looks like black lightning. On the far side Adom ducks around grasping fingers and strikes at the closest. The rock cracks into pieces and falls towards the ground but knits back together long before it reaches the ground and is pulled back into shape.

I load mage slayers. "Superboy, Miss Martian, assist Marvel and Adom."

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Prayer 24

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12th February

11:34 GMT -6

I see six limbs flailing around the top of the tower, and for giant lumps of stone they can move bloody fast. One bends around the battlements, passing through the barrier as rocky finger tentacles scrabble for Kon and M'gann. They frantically try to evade it only to be caught by another limb moving in from the side! Kon tries to punch through it and though the first segment of finger is smashed to rubble that took all his momentum and the second strikes him in the chest. M'gann ducks, weaves and tries to phase through an outcrop of rock only to be caught by one of the flesh coverings.

Ring, total mage slayers available?

Forty six.

Fuck it. I target the rocky limbs and open fire. A Mageslayer passes through the gap-joint of the finger grabbing at Kon and the black lightning holding the structure together disappears. Kon gets a grip as the digit starts to fall, turns in the air- "Nnruughh!"- and throws the limb at Sabbac. It flies through the air, strikes the barrier and bounces, lands on it again and rolls off to the far side.

A shot from the Ace sets the flayed flesh covering the part of the limb entangling M'gann on fire, white flame rushing over the surface of the structure, over her… Without injuring her. Oh thank goodness. The rock begins to crumble away as she shifts to a protean form and flows around it before reforming and flying away from the other side.

The second Mageslayer hits the barrier around the tower top, causing it to shimmer and -Ring?- a couple of runes flicker and die. Draining power from something that is constantly being replenished probably isn't going to work unless I can drain the whole thing.

On the top of the tower I see John walking closer to Sabbac. "If I were you, I'd give up now mate."

Praexis Demons swarm into the combat zone, sticking to the golem defences and the barrier like children unwisely trying to lick ice from freezing metal and getting their tongues stuck. It's a bizarre sight but I can.. feel them draining power from the system. Plus, their glowing bodies make it a good deal easier to track where exactly the limbs are.

"Why in Lord Satanus' name would I do that when our final victory is so close?"

Two more mage slayers slam into animated stone and two more pieces are blasted out of place. I work the Ace's lever action and fire a round at the tower barrier. Cracks of brilliant white shoot across the surface and strike the runes creating the shield.

Sabbac looks up at it with his eyes wide. "A-aaaagh!" Blood red fire flashes from his right hand, enveloping the area being purified and suppressing it.

"'Cause while you've been playing king of the hill with the superheroes, you haven't been keepin' track of me. I've been all over your tower, mate. You don't know what I've done."

Orange light flares as William activates the Sword of Beowulf. The hand that had been holding him shatters just as another swings in his direction. He shifts the sword into a two handed grip and swings it! Ooh, that's not really designed to be used like… Huh, okay maybe it is. Orange light flares once more as the sword cleaves demonic stone in two.

"I would have felt it if you changed anything significant!"

"Wanna bet?"

Never one to sit on the sidelines, Adom swoops lower, presumably going after the grotesque heads. I fly backwards as one of the now-regenerated limbs moves upwards near me… I'm not being attacked. Why aren't I being attacked?

It can't see me. William and Adom are riddled with magic. Kon's carrying Helios' blessing and even M'gann's got an arcane presence magic can detect… It can't see me. Without M'gann pushing the clouds away from me even my orange glow is muted, camouflaged amongst the orange light shining from the Praexis Demons. How can I take advantage of that? More mage slayers fly towards golem limbs trying to intercept my friends as I work the lever once more, take aim at one of the stone heads and fire. Ugh, think I missed. Lever, correct for wind, fire again then reload. Hit! White fire briefly illuminates the structure as it begins to crumble.

Sabbac isn't moving at maximum speed at the moment. Because he isn't drawing power from the ritual, perhaps? Makes sense, but -I glance at the Sword of Second and Third in my scabbard- if he sees me and the Sword he'd probably make a point of coming after me again. He's facing away from his throne. If I can fly around behind him…

"You can't cow me, wizard. Hell comes to Earth, now!" He slams his left hand to the ground and infernal flames flare out across the top of the tower. A moment later the mists lift from the Fawcett City skies and I'm treated to a view of a city where every flat surface is covered in praying headless torsos. No, not all headless and not all praying. The smattering whose heads were merely squashed into their necks come to a halt as they sight the tower and raise their arms into the air with an indistinct moaning. At their signal the remaining torsos rear up for a moment and then fall onto their chests in supplication. "They come!" Flames roar around the runic network on the top of the tower as I frantically manoeuvre into position. Was John bullshitting a moment ago, or is this actually-?

The flames roar towards a centre point and burn upwards into the air before dying. In their wake… There's a powerfully built man with dull red skin. He's wearing a sort of tattered grey skirt thing along with a high collared cape in brilliant red.

That's the First of the Fallen! The being Hell grew up around after God told him to 'get out of my sight'! Oh yes, this is a Constantine plan alright! I drop down below the tower's parapet before he can cast his gaze my way. Okay, okay, I know he can't detect me with magic any more than he can Chantinelle. He can't see me if there's a solid object in the way. I've got.. a sword I know can hurt him. Okay. What's John playing at?

"Keeping busy, John?"

"What? Who are you? Why didn't ghuk?"

"Oh, you know: 'get busy living…'"

"Hmm. Headless torsos as far as the eye can see. I could get used to this."

"What..? Who are you?"

"Scraping the bottom of the barrel this time?"

"Oh, I've never liked this sort of thing. Gives them ideas above their station."

"I remember your contract with Brendan."

"I don't understand. The ritual-."

"I'm the First of the Fallen, you pathetic waste of flesh. John redirected the spell from your sponsors to me. Though I'm still waiting for an explanation as to why exactly he thought that would help the situation. It's not as if I'm going to stop you."

"Majesty! I am not worthy!"

"No, you're not. Well? Let's hear it, John. You've got about five minutes before me simply being here starts making the population tear their own faces off and I'm assuming you'd rather that didn't happen."

Down below I see Adom finish tearing the demon golem structure off the side of the tower. He looks up at me and I hold out my right hand in a 'stop' gesture.

"Take a butchers at this."

"It's a phone. And that's a nice one of the back of the Batson boy's cape."

"Next picture."

There's a pause. "What's this?"

"Majesty?"

"It's a simple question. What is it?"

"A.. sword, majesty. A gift from Lord Satanus in exchange for my service. I used it to cut down Captain Marvel!"

"And where is this sword now?"

"It… It was taken from me, majesty. But I will recover it! As soon as my masters arrive on Earth I will leave no body unbroken in my pursuit of the one who took it!"

"You had the sword.. made from the remains of my 'brothers'.. and it got stolen from you by one of John's fuckwit friends. Is that what happened?"

"No normal man, majesty! A superhero of great renown!"

"If you're int' cake."

"What's your name?"

"Majesty?"

"Your name. What is it?"

"It was Ishmael Gregor, majesty. But now my name is Sabbac, Hell's Mightiest Champion!"

"No. YOUR NAME IS SHIT!"

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Prayer 25

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12th February

11:37 GMT -6

"graAAAAAAAGGGHHHHHH!"

"AND YOU! YOUR NAME IS SHIT AS WELL!"

Still making the 'stop' gesture to Adom I carefully float upwards towards the edge of the upper platform.

"AND YOUR NAME IS SHIT!"

Periscope construct… The First is facing away from me. He's holding Sabbac off the ground by the neck with his left hand. Next to them are two small dazed looking Demons. One has slightly larger wings and a more streamlined head while the other has a more developed musculature.

"AND YOU;-" The First shoves his right hand forwards into Sabbac's chest! It passes into the pentagram up to the elbow, his muscles tense and then he pulls it back. "-SHIT!" In his hand is another small Demon with fire crackling around its horns. Wait, fast looking, tough looking, fiery… Craeteis, Asmodeus and Beelzebub? The First's hand darts forwards again. "YOU ARE SHIT AS WELL!" This Demon has an extra set of forearms and a small pair of glasses. Belial. Into the pentagram again. This Demon has a hard carapace. Aym. " YOU ARE MOST CERTAINLY SHIT." The First throws him into the others with force, sending them sprawling. "BUT THE KING SIZED NUCLEAR DIARRHEA SHIT-." The pentagram on Sabbac's chest flares and vanishes. "Oh you did not just do that." The First throws his head back. "Hear me, Satanus. There are torments known to me undreamt of by the most deranged Demon of my realm-" Sabbac shrinks in the First's grip, skin lightening as being severed from his patrons causes him to resume his Human form. "-BUT FOR YOU I WILL SURPASS THEM YOU FUCKING MORONIC SHAAAAAAAAAAAATTT!"

The now greatly reduced Lords of Hell cower at his wrath. Craeteis in particular looks like he's giving serious thought to just legging it. Mister Gregor on the other hand looks like he's about to burst into tears. "Majesty, I-."

"You just don't know when to shut up, do you? I'll use you for practice until Satanus comes out of hiding." The First bends and slams Mister Gregor to the ground, fire flaring around him as he disappears. Bodily sent to Hell? Might be possible to recover him, but… Don't think I'll bother.

Asmodeus shifts to a grovelling position. "We… Satanus never mentioned a sword, oh First. We thought only of the torment of mortals! If we'd-."

The First raises his right foot and stamps him into mush. "If you hadn't been getting a massive evil hard-on at the prospect maybe you'd have fucking thought it through a bit." The other four edge away as the First examines the mush. "Well? Belial? You're supposed to be the brains of this operation."

The four armed Demon cringes. "It is as you say, Oh First. We were.. overwhelmed with enthusiasm for our task."

The First sighs and I duck down as he glances at John. "You know, this is the sort of initiative I normally wouldn't mind seeing from Demons. Some evidence that they actually are an intelligent form of life." Belial risks a small smile at the compliment. "But even when they manage to come up with something intelligent, they manage to do it in a fucking stupid way." Splat! Belial is crushed under the First's foot.

John drops the butt of his cigarette to the floor and treads on it. "Always the way, innit? Still; no need to drag this out, hey?"

"I suppose not. Anyone else want to add anything?" The remaining three Demons nervously look at each other, then fall on their faces. "Thought not. Down you go." The Demons' bodies twist and deform, getting pulled into a single point on the stone ground like water running down a plug hole. "You know, John, faced with a situation like this… I'm forced to acknowledge a rather uncomfortable truth."

"Oh yeah? What's that?"

"After my trip to Greece, when in a moment of weakness I offered to give you whatever you wanted if you'd work for me and you told me to sling my hook. I should have offered you less. You might have taken it then."

"Not bloody likely."

"You've taken worse deals before. I had a good laugh about what you did to that stupid Fuckpig."

John nods. "Guess you'll be heading back to Hell yourself. Don't want to keep Satanus -or anyone else- waiting."

Anyone else? What, the Demo- oh. I unsheathe the Sword of Second and Third.

"Think I'll hang around for a little while. Drive a few dozen people mad, corrupt a few innocents. I wouldn't want you to get the idea you can use me to do your dirty work without any consequence at all. Though I'm glad you did. This whole situation reeks of something that could have snowballed-."

I swing the Sword through stone, runes and magic barrier. Stone parts, runes die and the barrier vanishes. I transition up behind the First and swing the sword horizontally through his neck. Golden light shines out of the stump as the severed head flies across the stony ground, an expression of shock on his face as it bounces twice and then comes to a rest on the left side of its face.

Then, as William, Adom, Kon and M'gann come in to land? I go Raiden on his arse. I accelerate myself, arms blurring as I slice the Sword back and forth through the First's torso, arms and then when that's cut thin enough to be used as sandwich meat I yank my legs back, float down and repeat the process with his still upright legs. Then I transition to his head in a crouch, updownupdownupdownupdownupdownupdown-

"I believe that you have killed him."

Aaaaand rest.

I nod to Adom as I return the Sword to its sheath. "Not the first time he's been killed. I wanted to be sure."

The runes covering the top of the tower change from red to gold, starting with those nearest the First's remains and spreading outwards towards the edge.

Kon looks confused. "What just happened?"

John nudges a piece of First with his left foot, then nods. "Short version, I changed the spells on the tower so that rather than summoning Sabbac's bosses, it summoned their boss. He wasn't happy about-" The Fawcett skyline goes rushing upwards as the tower's hellish alterations revert. The rest of us brace but John barely reacts. "-the one weapon that could kill him getting out into the wild again, so-" And we come to a halt, standing on top of the car park. Sabbac's throne is gone and the abandoned cars have reappeared. "-he used Sabbac's connection to the Demons sponsoring him to drag them here for a bollocking."

Adom checks his surroundings for a moment, then crosses his arms across his chest. "But not Satanus."

John considers, then nods. "Lucky escape for him." He turns to William. "Captain Marvel."

William's looking out across Fawcett City as a wave of golden light flashes across it, genuflecting torsos vanishing in its wake.

"…to Orange Lantern. Robin-."

I raise the ring to my left ear. "Orange Lantern here. Sabbac's gone to Hell and spell on the car park's finished."

"The Demons we were fighting just evaporated."

"Good to know. If you can, do a flight over the city and check they're gone from everywhere. Then fire fighting. Some of those flaming skull things set light to buildings."

"Will do."

"Captain?" William turns to face John, eyebrows raised. "Last time someone killed the First he incarnated in Greece as a Human. Ended up murdering four men before Buer found out how to power him back up. If that happens again, it'd be a lot better if your lot picked him up right away."

William nods. "I'll get on that as soon as we know for sure all the Demons are gone."

"Heh." John smiles and shakes his head. "They're never gone, mate, they just-."

"Rrrrrrrrrrr." We all look around as Teekl stalks out of the stairwell in big cat mode, dragging.. John's doppelgänger in her jaws and growling the whole time. She stops next to the First's remains, drops the Demon Constantine, sits down and starts washing her right forepaw. Then she stops, leans down to sniff the pile of flesh, opens her mouth-.

"Teekl. No."

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Prayer 26

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12th February

11:41 GMT -6

William looks down at the Demon Constantine. "Ah, is that your.. brother?"

"Interesting story, there. About-."

Adom's eyes narrow. "It is a Demon."

"About three years ago there was a Demon named Buer. Big fan of the First of the Fallen. He knew that after Chantinelle killed the First he'd ended up in Greece -which, at the time, I didn't- and he thought he knew how to bring him back to top form. And since I was the one who arranged his death, that meant that I had to sacrifice meself to make it happen."

"Except you didn't, did you, you bastard." The Demon Constantine looks up, his pupils glowing red.

"I was getting-" The Demon surges to his feet and lunges at John. M'gann's eyes glow and he's jerked off the ground. "-to that." The Demon doesn't bother looking around, his eyes remaining fixed on John. "Hurt you more than it would me, mate." John opens the first three buttons of his shirt and pulls the collar aside to show the top of his tattoos. "Seal of Solomon, remember."

The Demon glowers at him. "Be worth it."

Kon frowns. "Why would you go along with that?"

John returns his attention to the rest of us. "Friend of mine… Former friend, now… Has a son. Buer specialises in tormenting children who end up in Hell. He put a curse on little Syder and said he'd only let him go if I gave meself up. So, I created a golem. Earth, my blood-."

"Half your soul."

"Yeah. And a load of thoughts, feelings and memories I didn't want to have any more. I made him." He jabs his right forefinger in the Demon's direction.

"Fuck right off you cowardly dog turd."

"Took the deal though, didn't you? Buer had to free all of his collection and he still got what was coming to him. The First was pissed, 'cause we managed to make them look like a pair of berks an' you got to skip Hell's whole 'endless torture' phase and go straight to becoming a Demon. We won."

"Have you seen Hell lately? You think because I was a Demon everyone down there decided to be me mate?! You haven't got a bloody clue."

"Oh, cry me a fucking river."

"You know what really pisses me off about this? Gregor ripped that boy's heart out while you watched. Time was, when you led a child to their death you actually felt bad about it. Or did you just give all that to me?"

"No." John nods to himself. "Still got that."

"Stop being so fucking calm! You had no idea how Gregor would act under pressure! You didn't know what was really going on here until he told you! You won through sheer bloody luck!"

John smiles, shaking his head. "Not this time, mate. I mean, I'd never heard of Ishmael Gregor until he announced himself…"

"What are you talking about?"

John turns away from him, taking us all in. "I just explained how I made you to the gallery. Can you really not work it out?"

The Demon Constantine relaxes slightly, looking away with a slight squint as he tries to work it out. Then his eyes widen and he glares at John. "It wasn't Timothy Karnes!"

John grins. "Of course it wasn't Timothy Karnes, you fucking knobbler. Timothy Karnes is still in the Fawcett City prison hospital."

"It was a fucking golem!"

"He'll be right as rain in a few weeks. Minus every memory since his foster parents' funeral. Six months to a year observation…" John nods his head to the side. "They might even let him out again. Marvel's got a lot of pull around here. Oh come on!" John spreads his arms out to the side. "How stupid would I have to be to take the one thing anyone who wanted to become Sabbac needed into what was obviously a trap?"

"… A golem."

"Added a little of me own blood. We knew Gregor -or whoever it was- would have to kill the golem and absorb the magic residue. I spiked it. I've had a connection to him this whole time, feeling his thoughts and nudging them along. Had a bit of a fright when Marvel got hit in the chest but other than that…" He nods again. "Pretty much according to plan. Actually killing the First was an unexpected bonus, but once Orange Lantern got the sword away from Sabbac-."

"Um." He looks at me. "Hate to say this, but I almost didn't bring the Sword back with me."

John flinches. "Why the hell wouldn't you bring it?"

"In case Sabbac wrestled it off me and used it on the other Marvels."

"… Fuck me."

Kon gestures at the Demon. "Are we arresting him?"

Adom's face hardens slightly. "It is a Demon. Were it up to me I would not have it pollute the world for a moment longer. What is the custom in this country for dealing with such things?"

"We all heard him confessing. On the other hand, I'm not sure that putting a Demon in Belle Reve is really such a good idea..." I glance at John. "Or a Constantine." John looks a little pleased as I think about it. Obvious solution… I raise the Ace slightly.

William spots it. "You put that down right.. now."

"As a point of order, Justice League rules of engagement-."

"The fight's over and you're not shooting a defenseless prisoner!"

"You're in charge, Captain. What would you like to do with him?"

William strokes his chin with his right hand. "If we sent him back to Hell, could he get out again?"

John nods. "Yes, but not immediately."

"Can you do that?"

"Don't bother." The Demon straightens his coat. "If you let me go I can send meself back easy enough."

William nods at M'gann, and the Demon is deposited onto the floor. He opens his coat, taking out a stick of chalk as he flashes us with an interior almost entirely filled with packets of Silk Cuts. He then crouches, draws a circle around himself and then starts adding the necessary demonic runes.

John's eyes narrow slightly. "Why are you in such a rush? Doubt Satanus is going to be all that happy with you."

The Demon keeps drawing for a moment then stops, apparently satisfied. "Oh, I don't know. The First dead, five rivals crippled... And since he pulled out before the First could grab him he didn't really lose anything doing it." Wait… What? "You're not the only one who can plan, you know? Be seeing you around, John." Fire flares around the edge of the chalk circle and he drops out of view in a puff of sulphur.

Adom makes a contemptuous noise. "Demon politics." He looks at me. "Orange Lantern, does the zeta tube function?"

"It did when I left it."

"Then I will return to Kahndaq. Pleasant though it has been to fight the good fight once more, I should not absent myself for extended periods." I nod. "I should also like to apologise for not more adequately covering your retreat. It took me some time to understand the form of teleportation he was using and I could only block it at close range."

"Don't worry about it. I was just glad you managed it when you did. Oh, and we've got-" I turn to William. "-Ibac tied up in a shop near the tube. You should probably get someone to pick him up."

"I'll ask the Chief to get someone on it." Adom looks out across Fawcett City and rises higher into the air. "Adom, wait a second!" Adom stops and looks down at him. "When I was bleeding to death I figured out how to convince you to make Kahndaq a democracy!"

Adom regards him calmly. "I am sceptical, but I will hear your argument."

"Because President Asim Muhunnad wouldn't." Adom blinks. "You're a better man than he is, but if you run everything using the same structures he used everyone who doesn't know you personally will just think of you as being the new him. You deserve better than that. And so does Kahndaq."

Adom's eyes flick to the side for a moment, taking a moment to think about it. "There may be something in what you say. I will give the matter further thought."

William beams at Adom as he turns away to fly towards the zeta tube.

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Prayer 27

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12th February

11:53 GMT -6

William leads the way as the six of us exit the car park's front entrance. No further sign of demonic unpleasantness. I guess Mister Karnes was supposed to be the only sacrifice at this location. Police manning the cordon outside quickly raise their weapons at the sight of movement and are just as quick to lower them again as he strides into view.

"Captain!" Chief McGinnis clambers over the bonnet of a police car. "You had us worried. Glad to see you're okay."

"With a little help from my friends." His face turns serious. "How bad was it down here?"

"Pretty bad. I've got five people in critical and a lot more wounded besides. Captain…" He looks around at the relatively light damage to the street. "What the hell just happened?"

"Pretty much, mate." John strolls up alongside William. A little odd, that. He's usually much more reluctant to put himself forwards where officialdom is concerned.

"What..? That was Hell?"

"In the diabolical flesh."

McGinnis shudders. "My God. I was half hoping it was just one of Sivana's biological experiments or something. Are they gone?"

John nods. "For now. Should probably get…" I'm not sure what the expression is. "Is that priest still alive?"

"Yeah, he's checking out some of my guys who got grabbed by one of those jellyfish things. You need him for something?"

"Should probably do some sorta purification ritual on this place. Doesn't have t'be him, but if he's already here…"

"Um. There's a pile of meat on the top of the car park he should probably pay a certain amount of special attention."

McGinnis looks at me, then around the group. "You get him, then? That new Sabbac guy?"

William nods. "His name was Ishmael Gregor and he got pulled into Hell. The remains are from a couple of the Demons who gave him his powers and.. um… Some guy called the First of the Fallen."

"'First'.. as in..?" John nods. "Is it safe to go up there?"

John tilts his head to the side. "You could walk around up there without worrying. Long as you didn't touch it. But… Should probably be the first thing Mattias deals with."

Alright, they can handle the clean up. I don't really have anything special to add. I turn back to M'gann and Kon. "We'll do a quick fly over, make sure that the roads are clear for emergency vehicles."

Kon nods. "Right."

The three of us rise into the air as I activate my armour's communications gear. "Orange Lantern to Mary and Lieutenant Marvel. You there?"

"Is Captain Marvel okay?"

"Right as rain, Lieutenant. Plus he now owns a sword that lets him fire lightning."

"Cool!"

Though unless he wants the glow on his chest to completely give away his secret identity he'll need the scabbard from the cave before he changes back. "Mary? You there?"

"Yeah, I'm here. Sorry I wasn't more help with Sabbac."

"He was about five times your size. I'm amazed you kept him off me for as long as you did."

**Paul, can I talk to you about something?**

"Hey, um, y'know you offered to fix my spine?"

"Sorry guys, one moment." **Of course, M'gann.**

From this height I have a good view of central Fawcett City. When the demonic fortifications they were suckling on disappeared my Praexis Demons spread out into the streets, something that's probably done its part in keeping the natives in their homes. There are a few cars that look like they've been trampled on by Maulers and several fires, but from the looks of things the Marvels and my Demons kept the attackers' attention fairly well. I take a cold gun out of subspace and turn it to 'refrigerate'. "Superboy, fire fighting." I throw the gun towards him and he nods, catching it and flying towards the closest not already being attended by the fire service. **M'gann, we'll take that one.** She nods and we fly towards it. **What did you want to ask?**

**That.. was…** I can hear the uncertainty in her mental voice. Not fear, just… **That was horrifying. Did all those things.. used to be people?**

**Probably.** Flames are visible billowing from the roof. Ugh, building will probably need to be pulled down anyway but we need to stop it spreading. Bloody flaming skull things will probably end up doing more damage than anything else just by missing. I create a cold gun construct. **What's the Martian afterlife like?**

**I don't know! I've never died!**

I set the ring to take control of the cold gun, firing thermodynamic inverting beams into the blaze. **You said Martians had magic users, right? Surely they can see something?**

**Well… Yes, but… Dead and horribly mutilated Martians don't come back from there and try and kill people! How…**

**Okay. Basic thanothaumaturgy. A soul is a magic energy construct bound to the world by a living body. When the body stops living, that soul's connection is severed and it's drawn to one of the.. magic energy… Realms isn't quite the right word, but you get what I mean.**

**I think I do. So why would.. anyone get drawn to a place like that?**

Flames gutter and die, though the air's too dry for frost to form. I give the next building along a zap to prevent anything from catching alight.

**The answer a Human monotheist would give you is 'evil'. The actual answer is quite a bit more complicated. An evil person who nominally followed the Olympian gods would go to the Fields of Punishment, not Hell. It's just that monotheism is so big on Earth and so many people have those ideas in their heads as how things are…**

**What about you and Conner?**

**As he's favoured by Helios, Kon's soul would most likely go to Elysium. It's supposed to be a slightly less abstract version of Heaven. Me… No idea, to be honest. I think I'd like to give immortality a go, but if that doesn't work out I've got a sneaking suspicion I'll get sucked into the Orange Central Power Battery.**

**Are you okay with that?**

**At the moment, no. But once it gets taken off Larfleeze… I don't know. All things considered… Spending eternity watching over my Corps doesn't sound like such a bad thing.** Infrared shows nothing. I lead M'gann through the air towards the next fire. **I can give you a primer on Demons if you want, though I want to be clear that this sort of thing is very unusual.**

She shakes her head. **This isn't the sort of conversation I ever thought I'd be having with someone.**

**Welcome to my world.** "Lieutenant, we can meet up once the last of the fires are out."

"Awesome!"

"Robin, anything to report?"

"Sky's clear, other than your Praexis Demons. I think we're good."

"Right. Since the emergency's dealt with, Batman's order to keep out of sight comes back into force. Kid Flash, Robin, Cornwall, head back to the zeta tube. Superboy, Miss Martian and I will be with you once the fires are out." I pause for a moment. "Good work everyone."

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Prayer 28

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12th February

15:32 GMT -6

Mm-hm, hm-hm-hm, hmmm-hmmm-hmmm…

I step through the hush tube into Fawcett City right next to the-

"Shit shit shit!"

-aid station and roughly shove aside one of the medics desperately trying to stem the bleeding from the stumps of Captain Marvel's arms. A valuable lesson on the dubious wisdom-

"Uh ah uh-uhhhh ah uh"

-of trying to block a sword with one's limbs. They've clearly done their best with bandages and tourniquets but his own super toughness is working against them.

"Who the hell are you?!"

"I'm the man who's going to save the Captain's life." I extract a smallish glass bottle from one of my pouches. A bottle of Innocent's Tears, gifted to the Closed Order of the Alexin by Pope Innocent the Third about eight hundred years ago and stolen barely two minutes ago by me. The ring removes the stopper as I press down on Captain Marvel's chest. "Captain? I need you to swallow this." No, he's too far out of it. Okay, grab his right shoulder, pour some of the liquid in the bottle over the cut surface… The blood stains on the bandage disappear almost immediately. If we can get the bleeding under control… Ah, good. I release his right shoulder and transfer the pressure to the left side of his chest. His left shoulder… It isn't in any state to have pressure applied. Another glug and the blood flow drops off there as well.

In the air not too far away I hear a tremendous bang and look around just in time to see a blue streak hurtle out of control through the air and slam through the brick frontage of a nearby building, spraying ceramic fragments and glass in all directions. I raise a barrier to protect the aid station. Sabbac apparently doesn't consider the younger Marvels to be enough of a threat to use the Sword on, and on the basis of current performance I'm forced to agree with his assessment. Lucky for them. Right. I shift my attention back to Captain Marvel's still shivering form. "Captain, try and keep your mouth open." I.. think he just nodded. I send a small tube construct into his mouth and use a suction construct to pull as much of the bottle's content into him as possible. Twice he bites down and cuts through the tube, water spraying across his face and nearly causing him to choke. I re-establish the tube and clear his airway as quickly as possible. I'm not sure exactly how fast this stuff works… Not within a tactically useful timeframe, it appears.

I dismiss the tube once the bottle's empty and turn my attention to the medics around me. Sabbac may have been focusing his attention on the Marvels but his attendant Demons haven't exactly been slow to attack anyone unfortunate enough to cross their paths. I guess the Captain just warrants a little special attention. "Which of you is in charge?"

One of them -a black woman- nods at me. "I am. What did you just give him?"

"High-end magic healing potion. Here." I restopper the bottle and hand it to her. "The bottle should refill itself within the next half hour. Keep pouring it down his throat until his arms grow back."

She hesitates for a second and then takes it. "Fine, but unless someone deals with Sabbac it won't matter."

"Nil desperandum, doctor." My goggles show me Sabbac posing in the air near the police command position. Sure in his invulnerability. Posing, daring them to attack him. "That's my next stop." I transition over to stand next to… What's his name? Chief McGinnis. "You seem-" Men wheel, raising firearms as they do so. "-to be having a slight Sabbac problem." My goggles give me a ping as Frederick tries to stagger out of the rubble but collapses on his face.

Chief McGinnis stares at me for a moment, then nods his head to the side. The others lower their weapons. Drawback of not being widely recognisable. Guess no one here was watching the Rhelasian peace conference footage. Or maybe the small measure of public renown that earned me has long since evaporated. "We'll take whatever help we can get."

"Slight problem there. See, I don't actually have any legal authority to act in this country."

His face creases in irritation. "What the Hell kinda-."

"I know what it sounds like, but this one time I handed four guys over to China and I have never heard the end of it. What I need you to do is deputise me and give me one of those shield badge things." Stares. "I'll deal with Sabbac and hand it right back."

"You crazy-!" He shakes his head. "I don't have time to argue this. Hey, Wright-" He looks to his right and one of the police officers perks up. "-gimme your badge." Officer Wright hesitates for a second, then reaches up to his left breast and unclips his badge before handing it over to his boss. "Here." He offers it to me and I take it with a smile. "Welcome to the force. Now get the bastard!"

"Certainly, sir." Ring, just in case I've misread the nature of the man we're dealing with, prep an emergency Garrick formula infusion.

By your command.

I rise slowly into the air, taking care to school my expression. Once I've cleared the top of the nearby buildings I start flying towards Hell's Mightiest Champion. No weapon constructs, my x-ionised sword is back in subspace… Ah. I attach the police badge to my armour. Barely a fig leaf really but I'll work with what I can get.

Sabbac has the Sword of Second and Third. If that thing can kill the First of the Fallen then it can most certainly kill Klarion. And me, of course, but nothing ventured…

"Excuse me! Mister Sabbac! May I-" He looks around. "-have your attention for a moment!?"

"Who are you?"

"Officer Grayven." I reach across my chest with my right hand and tap the badge. "And I'm very much afraid that I'm going to have to ask you to accompany me to a police station, in order to answer questions relating to accusations made against you in my presence, including but not limited to: assault, murder and appearing naked in a public place." Damn that last one. Doesn't Hell make trousers?

"And if I do not?"

"Then -though it would pain me to do so- I am authorised to use force in order to compel you, up to and including lethal force if I judge it necessary to protect either myself or the honest citizens of this fair city."

He grins. "You can try."

"Sir, I am armed. Are you telling me that you intend to resist arrest?"

He shakes his head in bemusement. "What the fuck is-?"

"Sir, are you telling me that you are resisting arrest?"

His grin widens. "I will tear your heart from your still living chest and feast upon it before your dying eyes."

I pause for effect, tilting my head slightly to the right and squinting with my left eye. I really hope that someone's getting this on camera. I give it a moment, then raise my left forefinger. "Is that a 'ye-?"

And now he gets that I'm taking the piss. He brandishes the Sword with his right hand, Marvel's blood still evident along the blade. "OF COURSE IT'S A FUCKING 'YES'!" Good enough for me. "And-."

Holy water, sword, Garrick, transition. The universe around me slows to a crawl. Sabbac has speed as part of his suite of enhancements but I'm pretty sure that he isn't Flash-fast. Vipra-blessed water from the Ganges sprays across his face while I stab my sword into the hand holding his Sword, slicing down the back in an attempt to cut through the muscle fibres allowing him to grip it. Demonically empowered flesh resists the blade, but I manage to make it bite deep enough that his grip loosens. Next step, a beam of orange envelopes the hand and eliminates the friction between his palm and the grip. Takes more power than it should, but his expected resistance is reduced by the fact that the construct isn't directly targeting him. Blood red flames begin to materialise around him but for the next… Six seconds subjective, he's slower than me. I bring my right hand around and slap the bottom of his right hand, the Sword popping free and jumping into the air. Face burning from the effect of the sanctified water, he tries to orientate on his weapon and starts swinging his left hand around to grab for it.

Too slow.

I bring my right hand up, take hold of the grip with my little finger nearest the blade, twist at the wrist, bring the Sword around and stab him through the chest. Right in the pentagram.

"Awworah?"

I pull myself free, zipping around to his front. Back to normal speed and he's faster… No sense taking the chance that he'll recover. My right hand flashes from left to right, slicing cleanly through his neck. His head leaps upwards propelled by his own blood pressure as I swing back right to left, bisecting his torso across the pentagram. Thrust, and the two prongs of the Sword neatly pierce the falling head through the eyes and penetrate the brain, the very tips of the blade just exiting through the back of his skull. His falling body flickers as the pentagram fails and the red tainting his skin fades to his natural Caucasian.

Gotcha.

Two destructive pulses destroy his body and I float back down towards the police command post. The faces looking up at me stare in shock and amazement. Oh, that feels good. Worship me, mortals.

As I touch down I gently remove the badge from my armour with my left hand and toss it back to Officer Wright. "Thank you, officer." He fumbles the catch as I turn to Chief McGinnis. "How did I do?"

He looks at the freely bleeding and now clearly Human head impaled on my Sword. "For your first day? Pretty good, I'd say."

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NEXT CHAPTER

Spring in Blume

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Spring in Blume 1

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Spring in Blume

12th February

17:26 GMT -5

Mm-hm, mm-hm, hmmm-hmmm-hmmm!

…

Finally the song's out of my head! Goodness me, that was annoying! I lean back slightly in my chair in one of the mountain's side rooms. Sound proof room, I note. Diana and Bruce are just outside urgently discussing my recent conduct and I can't hear a word they're saying. I think I'm supposed to be stewing in my own nerves or something but I'm just feeling a mixture of relief and anticipation. Man Who Dresses Like A Bat just can't intimidate me anymore.

And I got the fucking Sword! "Heh heh heh." Yeeeeesssss!

Okay, laughing to myself, not a sign of a healthy psychology. But still! The Sword of Second and Third! With this, I can make good on my obligation to kill Klarion. Probably. It sliced up Sabbac easily enough and it killed the First… Worth touching bases with Mister Constantine..?

Ploong.

No, I wasn't ignoring you. I simply didn't think that you knew anything about Earth-made arcane weaponry.

Ploong.

You think so? I suppose that's definitive, then. Making avatar-death kill the core being… Doesn't really add anything against most people I might want to kill but against high end supernaturals it's just what the doctor ordered. Can I think of any reason not to kill Klarion? Opinion of my peers? No, not really. In a one off situation that might make it worth not killing someone to preserve the illusion that I'm one of them but I don't think I could go on doing that. There's no easy way to break the news to them that I'm perfectly happy killing people who are both sufficiently bad and sufficiently stupid and.. when you get right down to it… I don't like deceiving them.

I lean back further, putting my hands behind my head. Good day, good day. Now, how to actually go about-?

The door opens and my two overseers… Oh, plus one. "Lantern Gardner. What's up?"

"Grayven, you just killed a guy in broad daylight. What'd you think's up?"

Diana walks across the room in front of me and sits down on the right hand side of the settee. Guy moves to occupy the left while Batman remains standing. "Oh that, yeah. Look, before you start? I'll save you some time. Don't try and guilt me. I don't feel even slightly bad about it. Heeeyy, how's Marvel doing?"

Diana looks down at the ground, then nods once. "It looks like he'll make a full recovery. What was it you gave him?"

"Innocent's Tears. Not.. tears from actual innocents." Hmm. "Probably. It was a gift from Pope Innocent the Third to the Closed Order of the Alexins back when they were still in communion with Rome. I think they think they're tears from a saint or Jesus or something." I shake my head. "The bottle appears to generate a healing unguent ex nihilo… I don't understand exactly how it works."

Guy nods. "They let you borrow it?"

"Nooo, I stole it." He frowns. "Oh, come on. There's.. like, twelve of them left. Marvel needed it more." Diana joins in the frowning. "They can have it back, I just wanted to get it to Marvel before he bled out. It was the only thing I could think of that might fix a wound that sword caused."

Diana's eyebrows rise very slightly. "You are familiar with Sabbac's sword?"

"Oh, yes. Never thought I'd actually see it, though." I sit a little straighter and pull it free of the scabbard I made for it. Same principle as the x-ionised sword's scabbard; the blade can't touch the sides or it just goes straight through. This sword even does a number on force fields. Ooh, it's so great! With a firm grasp of the grip in my right hand I rest the flat of the blade on my left palm. "This sword was created by the Succubus Chantinelle from the remains of Hell's most powerful Demons. Heh-heh, and now it's mine." My smile fades slightly as they stare at me. "Okay, that was undignified, but I'm still very happy to have-."

"…in Fawcett City today." I look behind them as a holoscreen comes on, showing they got my good side! "A superhuman identifying himself as 'Officer Grayven'-" Hahahahahahah! Ms Grant delivers the patently ridiculous line with her usual aplomb. "-confronted Sabbac and brutally ended his rampage by decapitating him with his own sword. The death toll from Sabbac's attack currently stands at forty eight, and emergency responders have stated that they expect to find more bodies as the rubble is removed. Some viewers may find what we're about to show disturbing."

Bruce turns away from the screen as the report continues. If they got this much, that means that they also have the recording of the moment I killed him. Not that they'll show that on network news… At this time of day. Probably on VidULike already. Don't think I'll have a problem getting recognised in public anym-.

"Why?" He sounds.. tired?

"People were dying and I had no gentle way to take him down that stood an adequate chance of success." There's a tiny flicker as his eyes instinctively jerk towards Diana for a fraction of a second before returning to me. And the best thing is, it's true.

"There was nothing else you could have done."

A question, though there's no change in intonation. "No, there were any number of other techniques I could have attempted. That was just the one that stood the best chance of success… And I didn't think it was worth the lives of everyone who would have died in the meantime to try something else. Plus, I did follow the law; he clearly stated that he was resisting-."

"Grayven, direct order: hand the sword over to Wonder Woman."

"No." I return it to the sheath. "That's a suicidal order. This sword is the only thing I know that would reliably work against Father or other high end New Gods. Giving it up leaves me wide open." Actually, this.. could.. probably kill Gaea. What happens to the world if I..? Let's not think in that direction.

Diana shares a look with Guy. "The Bialyan government hasn't made an announcement yet, but news of Queen Bee's death is starting to spread. Grayven, what were you thinking?"

"I was thinking 'it makes M'gann happy and President Harjavti's cool with it'. Also, 'there's no way she's going to be dumb enough to drive over a disputed border herself'. Though, again, the degree to which I'm prepared to be sad about it-."

"Will be measured in Bialyan dead when the civil war starts! Some of her generals are already marshalling their forces!"

Hmm. Had been giving that some thought… "Okay, look. I haven't broken any law by killing either her or Sabbac. But, the Bialya situation was a miscalculation on my part. I.. think I can fix it. Give me a few days to sort things out. And while I'm busy doing that you can decide how you want to discipline me."

"What?" Guy makes a shrugging gesture with his right hand. "You plannin' on taking over the country yourself?"

"No, I plan on looking after Crown Princess Adilah until she can be installed as Queen, and making sure she can actually do the job."

Diana's face hardens. "She's gone missing."

"And I've got a power ring!"

"Have you done anything to her?"

What? "No, not really." Curious look. "I killed her sister but I haven't had anything to do with her directly. But it's hardly a surprise that some of the people back home want her dead now and she's intelligent enough to work that out for herself. Look, I don't want Bialya collapsing on itself either. Someone who's used to the Singapore system could do wonders for the place."

A flash of colour draws my eye as the screen shows Mary Marvel smashing apart a Demon made of burning skulls. Fully sentient? Did she check?

"The Justice League cannot legally operate in Bialya." The other two looks around at Batman. Diana does not look happy. "You will provide me with updates on your progress every ten minutes and you will follow my directives."

"Of course, sir." I rise to my feet. "If you'll excuse me?" I get a nod. "Father Box, hush tube to Singapore." A hole in space opens next to me and… No, waving goodbye is probably wrong. I trigger my armour's flight discs and float through, closing the portal behind me.

13th February

06:30 GMT +8

Okay, I'm in the air high above the city-state of Singapore, no one's around… "Ring, dial Katherine Spencer."

I hear a ringing sound for a moment, then she picks up. "Gray. I saw what you did in Fawcett. Does this mean..?"

"Yeah. Think I'm about ready for… You know. Have you managed-?"

"He'll meet you, but I couldn't come right out and tell his people what you're offering. I can't say how he'll respond." I hear her sigh. "He's not exactly known for taking hard positions."

"All I ask is that he meet me. Thanks, Kate. I owe you for this."

"Just get the bastard for us, Gray."

I find myself smiling. "Happy to oblige."

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Spring in Blume 2

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13th February

06:51 GMT +8

I narrow my eyes slightly as the ring feeds me an image of Vandal Savage's current location. Have to credit him. Despite the unexpected nature of my call he's still perfectly at ease. His company… Oh, for goodness sake. "How old are they?"

"Old enough to have flowered. I find feminine beauty to be at its height when it is freshly ripened." Swear to me, second against the fucking wall… "I assume that you have news for me."

"The Klarion matter should be dealt with by the end of the week. In the meantime, how do you want to handle the situation in Bialya?"

"Hm. You have not yet joined the Light. Matters of policy do not concern you."

"I ask because I'm about to assist Crown Princess Adilah in becoming monarch in fact as well as in theory, and I thought you might like to.. make your feelings known."

His eyes narrow ever so slightly. "I regard civil conflict as a necessary part of social renewal. In this instance, however, the Light has an interest in maintaining our present relationship with the Bialyan government."

"Good to know. I'll… Excuse me, sniper." I transition myself to his vantage point, appearing just behind him in complete silence. Scan says local. Worth assimilating, just so I can have an actual professional? … No. I create an agony matrix construct on my right hand and jab him in the kidneys with it.

"Hhhhhhhhhhegh…"

What a fascinating noise. He doesn't scream so much as perform a prolonged gasping inhalation as he drops to the ground. If the last three were anything to go by he'll stay there for at least the five minutes it should take me to wrap this up. Just in case I have the ring take a picture and subspace his gear. I will be handing these chaps over to the Singaporean police when this is over.

"Sorry about that. I'll let the Princess know."

"Perhaps you should hurry. It sounds as though someone has spent a great deal of money on this attempt."

Yes, I saw your bank balance. I'm not sure who he wanted to come out on top of the civil conflict but it certainly wasn't the Crown Princess. "I think I will. See you next week, Savage." A sentence that works both ways. Hang up. And show me the princess.

I'm not sure exactly what happened, but it looks like both of her bodyguards have forgotten that they're meant to work for Queen Bee. Either that or they think their own interests lie in actually looking after their principal now that their former boss is dead. They're actually pretty good at their job; they got her moving as soon as the rumours of Queen Bee's death started sounding credible and they've been avoiding places the Princess is known to frequent. But now they're trapped in a hotel being stalked by someone I'm probably supposed to be scared of. I-. Oh, right.

"Grayven to Batman. Only one last would-be assassin I can see. Permission to get this over with?"

"Have you identified them?"

"Slade Wilson. And please don't tell me he's dangerous, he's a bloke with a couple of swords." I am also a bloke with a couple of swords. Only mine cut through titanium armour and deities. The disparity in our relative power levels momentarily amuses me. "I'd appreciate a rapid decision, he's one short abseil away from-."

"I expect him alive."

"He isn't enough of a threat for me to need to-" On the roof of the princess' hotel I watch him check his descent path before pushing off. "-kill him."

Slade stops just above the window and sprays something onto it before pushing off the wall and slamming through the window feet first.

"You have my authorization."

"Thank you." Slade rolls to his feet, a knife already flying towards the first bodyguard. It pierces the man in the right arm, forcing him to drop his gun. Transition. Slade's got his sword out and he's lunging for the second bodyguard as I appear behind him and wrap my right arm around his chest. "Hey Wade."

His momentum immediately arrested he uses the rebound to strike at where he thinks my nose is with the back of his head. This actually results in him resting the back of his head on the armour covering the upper part of my chest, allowing his one eye to look straight up into my face. Does he recognise..? Probably not.

The angle's awkward but he jabs his sword into my side with his right hand while bringing up a knife with his left and making a spirited attempt to drive it into my right arm. Negative impact on both. And… I'm getting bored. I reach around with my left hand and snap his left radius and ulna, his armour proving absolutely no defence against my strength.

"Gkh!"

Wasn't there… Some sort of Star Wars computer game where they had that stupid random encounter levelling system which meant that after a certain point mook mobs had all cortosis gear to allow them to fight your high end Jedi? I was.. half expecting a man of Slade's reputation to have… I don't know… Personal force field? X-ionised blade? But.. I guess.. in reality, even a renowned mercenary assassin is stuck using stuff that's available on the market. High end, but essentially mundane.

I shift my grip on his torso to grab his armour just under the ribs, then twist and shove my right arm down, slamming him into the floor with significant force and driving the air from his lungs in a wheezing cough. I pull his sword free with my left, then in a moment of pettiness I pull off his faceplate and shift his patch across to cover his good eye. Picture, take his stuff.

"Assassins fighting over the right to kill me. You really are the lowest people."

"Princess, you must flee!"

"He can teleport. Where could I run to?"

I feel three bullets strike the back of my armour as I stand and move my right foot to Slade's chest, putting all my weight on it as I turn to face the room's other occupants. "Princess. Is this a bad time?"

"There is no God except Allah." I have the decency not to laugh. "I will ask you to spare my protectors, since I doubt anyone is paying you to kill them as well as me."

I smile. "Actually, your majesty, I've been ordered to keep you alive."

The guard who shot me sags slightly with what I'm going to assume is relief. Adilah herself appears to be withholding judgement. "Who has given you this order?"

"My superiors in two entirely separate organisations. Firstly, the Justice League." That gets a slight reaction. "Batman was most emphatic that I was not to allow Bialya to disintegrate into a civil war and as far as I can tell keeping you alive is the best way to achieve that." I glance at the injured guard. "Allow me." An orange beam flares from my eyes, transferring the knife to subspace and mending his injury as I return my attention to the princess. "I can have you back in Bialya in minutes."

She nods, appearing to relax slightly. "What is the other organisation?"

"Some friends of your late sister-."

"Half sister."

"Quite. They had a particular working relationship with her that they would like to continue with you. All told it's worth quite a lot in both money and raw materials."

Her face hardens. "I have no interest in working with anyone who was 'close' to that bitch."

"That is a very stupid thing to say. How were you expecting to run the country without the politicians she oversaw, the bureaucrats she appointed or the military officers she promoted?"

"I will work with government officials. They cannot be held responsible for what they did under her control. You implied these people knowingly consorted with her."

"Lots of people 'consort' with heads of state. Princess, I can protect you, but I can't make you their ruler. I can't force anyone to pay any attention to you. Your life will be very much harder if you refuse their help."

She looks away for a moment. "What form would this 'help' take?"

I take a small spray bottle out of subspace and hold it out. "The fastest way for you to take charge is if you step into the Queen Bee shaped hole in their lives. This will allow you to do so."

"What is it?"

"A synthesised version of the pheromones Queen Bee used-."

She jerks back. "To control the minds of men. Like my father."

"Most men and some women. Spray it on.. and a quick visit to the offices of state later, the country is yours. Otherwise? Good luck."

Slade tries to grab my leg and I give him a rib-cracking stamp to dissuade him. "Uuh-ugh."

I raise my eyebrows with a smile. "Well?"

Her jaw tightens as she considers the matter and arrives at the inevitable conclusion. "Give me the perfume."

"Of course, Highness."

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Spring in Blume 3

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14th February

15:21 GMT -5

"Soooo…" Zatanna grins at me as we walk towards my workshop. "February fourteenth, huh?"

Ring? "Yep. Certainly is."

"And you wanted to meet me right after school."

"Oh, I'm sorry, if you had something you needed to do-."

"No, that's fine." She's… Skipping? I'm a little worried that I may have missed something. "So, what's the hurry?"

"I've got a present for you."

"You have?"

She didn't need to sound that surprised. It's not like it's the first time I've got her stuff. "And, um… If you don't have any other plans, there was a place in England I was hoping that you wouldn't mind visiting with me."

Her grin widens. "No, I'd… I'd like that."

Oh good. "Great. Because I've got to be honest-" I wait while the door scans me and step aside so Zatanna can get scanned as well. "-it wouldn't really work with just me."

Zatanna gives me a confused look as I lead the way inside. Oh dear, has she decided that I meant one thing while I actually meant something completely different? Best clear that up as soon as possible. "You remember… When I was merged with the Ophidian… When we left for the moon we dumped everything we had in subspace into the mountain. One of the things we dumped was our efforts to rewrite a war game I used to play."

"That was what all that paper was?"

"Most of it. We had to test thousands of different components and their interactions, with enough documentary evidence to prove our conclusions to other people. Well, I've finally managed to get an appointment with the people who run the company which makes the game to discuss the whole thing."

She stops walking as I approach the crate holding my gift for her. I say crate, it's actually more 'walk-in wardrobe' size. I tried setting up one of those automatic installation systems like in Starcraft or Iron Man but it turns out those are actually… Pretty much impossible to make. The nearest I could get would be a system which created the armour anew whenever it was activated and that.. sort of defeats the whole object. To say nothing of running a one in two hundred risk of cooking the person it was trying to armour up.

Armoury cyborg-zombies are right out.

"So… The place we're visiting… Is a model wargaming company?"

"Yes. If you want to. I mean, you don't have to come. Mum…" Heh. "Made it clear to me at a young age that just because I find something interesting that doesn't mean that everyone else does."

"No, it… Could be fun. And you've been places you didn't find interesting with me."

"Okay then. The other thing was, I thought it could be fun if we went in costume. You know, prove that I'm a fan and not just a celebrity paid for an endorsement."

"Costume."

"Yes."

"Exactly what sort of costume did you have in mind?"

"Science fiction warrior nun."

"Science fiction warrior nun, huh?"

"Yes. They do do fantasy warrior nuns, but those costumes aren't really practical."

"And I'd hate to wear something impractical."

I press my right hand against the palm reader. Bit excessive, but I like the look it gives the thing. Looks 40K-y. The scan comes up green and I step back as the sides of the crate whir and clank, before pulling off to the side. The undersuit, jump pack and the fripperies like the robe bits go on one side and the fully functional bolt pistols and eviscerator go on the other. Since I don't come from the grim, dark and technology regressed future of the forty first millennium the jump pack is in reality a flight pack and can keep Zatanna up for quite a while.

This project was actually kind of fun. I had to learn a lot about space suit design -especially for the undersuit- that I've never really had to worry about for my own armour due to having a power ring. Add to that the fact I was going for form over function, I had to investigate dozens of different technological forms before I found one that would let me make it look like it needed to look while still letting it function. I'm so excited about this that I've even added an unnecessary smoke effect for the unveiling.

I glance back at Zatanna as the black-with-red-trimming armour comes fully into view. Her eyes have widened slightly, though that could well just be surprise. "I know you said that you weren't really keen on power armour-."

She steps forward and runs her right hand down the material covering the cuirass. "This is what nuns wear in that game, is it?"

"The Adepta Sororitas are the military wing of the Ecclesiarchy. I designed this.. interpretation of the armour the models wear to work as proper power armour."

"I was just expecting…"

"Boob armour?"

"Kind of. It does.. have-" She taps the left boob plate. "-boob plates."

"Those are an intentional part of the design. After the Age of Apostasy they got banned from keeping 'men under arms'… So they have to make it clear that they're.. not. Don't worry, I didn't compromise the protectiveness of the armour at all. In fact, it includes a molecular bond reinforcement field which means you could probably spar with-."

"Is that a jetpack?"

"Actually, it'll let you fly for about eight hours before needing to recharge. And without setting fire to the rest of it."

"What's with all the fleur de lyses?"

"The Ecclesiarchy isn't Christian, so they don't use crucifixes. The Sororitas use the fleur de lys while most other institutions use the aquila."

Still staring, she walks around to the armour's right. "And what-. Is that a gun?"

"Bolt pistol. A semi-automatic armour-piercing high-explosive rocket launcher."

"It's just for show, right?"

"As long as you don't press the button on the side and say 'Ave Imperator', yes."

She takes a step back. "Okay. This.. isn't quite what I was expecting, but it is.. pretty impressive. What are you wearing? Some sort of crusader armour?"

"No, the Frateris Templar were never rebuilt after the Age of Apostasy and they never really featured in the game." I turn away from her and move to the second crate. "I'm wearing this." I bang the orange sigil with my fist as the Star of Horus decorated crate begins to open, revealing…

"Is that a guitar?"

"Sonic blaster."

"Are those eyes looking at me?"

I nod. "I had the Praexis Demons infest it. The people who wear it in the setting are Demon worshippers so I thought adding actual Demons would make it more authentic. They're perfectly safe."

"And the amps?"

"Your armour has them too. I thought it would be fun to fly into the car park and do a performance of Dragonforce's 'Through the Fire and the Flames', but we can skip that if you'd prefer."

She nods slowly. "Through.. the Fire and the Flames?"

"It just sounded like fun to me."

"Bet M'gann doesn't have to deal with this." She appears to give the matter some thought. "Sure, why not? I'm sure it'll be… Interesting."

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Spring in Blume 4

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15th February

10:58 GMT +2

"Orange Lantern two eight one four here to see Professor Demetrios Prokopios."

The armed Greek police officer guarding the door nods and reaches for his radio while his partner keeps me under close observation. Professional, but.. a bit pointless. Sure, I just look like a man in a suit with unusual choice of jewellery but I just told him who I am. His colleagues at the front entrance already checked me for mundane weapons and they nearly made me late while they checked whether power rings counted or not. I had to point out that I wasn't legally able to hand them over to get them to let me come up here.

"Okay." The officer lets go of his radio and steps aside. "You can go through. Take a seat and wait for the Professor to call for you."

"Thank you." I smile at both of them, then step forwards and push the door open. I was a little surprised by how easy getting this appointment was. I'm not sure if Diana put in a good word or if I now qualify for the red carpet treatment in my own right these days.

Fallout from Fawcett City was fairly minimal. Batman appeared to be surprised by what I did to the First, but a quick discussion on Demonology -or whatever the study of things like the First is called- and he agreed that it was probably the right decision. No one's in a hurry to rescue Mister Gregor, if that would even be possible. Lord Satanus and 'Theo' -apparently that's what the First went by when he worked as a fisherman during his last fling with mortality- have been added to Interpol's watch list. Father Mattias said that he would have a go at exorcising Mister Printwhistle but at the moment the man is occupying Mister Karnes' old cage in the Fawcett City Prison. Frederick let me know yesterday that Timothy has regained consciousness and appears none the worse for his experiences. Only time will tell I suppose. Yesterday's visit was fun, though I'm not sure how much of my help they're actually going to use. I was slightly disappointed not to recognise any of the current generation of Games Workshop higher ups. Not sure whether that was due to time or being in a parallel universe.

I nod to Professor Prokopios' secretary and sit down on one of the red leather upholstered seats at the side of the room. Most of the free time I've had lately not being spent following up possible leads on arcane weapons has been spent with Ted preparing for our first major product launch. We've pencilled in the first meeting of my brain trust for three weeks from now and I want to get something out in the public arena before then so everyone can get good and excited by it.

The reason I'm here is that I want to make sure that we're not about to crash the world economy by doing this.

The door in the side of the room opens and the Professor strolls out, favouring me with a broad smile. He has a neatly trimmed grey beard and short grey hair, noticeably thinning on the top. He's wearing a pale blue short sleeved shirt and pale grey trousers. I stand and take his right hand as he offers it to me. "Orange Lantern! Good to meet you!"

"Likewise, Professor. Thank you for agreeing to meet with me."

"Oh, it is no trouble. Katerina-" His secretary looks up. "-could you please arrange to have some tea sent up?" She nods. "Thank you." He returns his attention to me. "Please, come into my office."

"Thank you." He leads the way through the interior door into his work space. "I saw the police outside. I'm a little surprised that a former finance minister needs a bodyguard."

"Of course I have a bodyguard! I'm the man whose job it is to make Greek people pay their taxes!" He grins at the entirely serious joke and I smile along with him. He gestures to the chair on the opposite side of his desk. "Please, sit. What have I done to warrant a visit from a superhero?"

I pull the chair out slightly and sit as he does the same on his side of the desk. "I needed to talk to someone about the world economy and, um-" A quick glance around the room and I immediately spot his Nobel Prize certificate. I wave my right forefinger at it. "-you're the leading expert."

He turns his head around to see what I'm pointing at. "Oh, pff. They gave that to me for developing 'catastrophe theory'. You see, economic systems are so co-dependent these days that an apparently minor failure in one market can rapidly.. ripple outwards and cause.. weak but basically functional sectors to collapse as well. It was nice to be recognised, but I'd rather spend my time creating wealth than convincing people not to wreck their own markets."

"I'm just glad that people listened to you."

He rolls his eyes and shakes his head. "Sometimes it is like explaining to little children why they should not piss in their own pants. Are you aware of what a subprime mortgage-?"

"Painfully so. My… I come from a parallel universe, and our Earth's economy crashed due to the very things you've convinced regulators to prevent."

"Really?" He thinks for a moment. "I have a certain morbid desire to find out what actually happened, but I do not think I could afford the loss of sleep it would cause."

"How is the tax gathering going?"

"Twenty six years I have been on that job! You know that when I first started I had to fire my entire staff?" I nod. Having the army collect taxes was certainly an interesting way to start. But this version of Greece decided to get its house in order so they could join the European Union, rather than lying through their teeth to cheat on the criteria like they did back home. "Quite a lot of people paid money, but most of it was going on bribing tax officials. The rich, pfff! We were lucky if they paid a lepton on the drachma! Now..? Eh, it's okay. The system works, I just need to oversee it. Gives me time for my other work."

"Secretly masterminding the world's economy?"

"Hah!" He chuckles. "Me and the rest of the Bilderberg Group, yes. Who have you been talking to?"

"Hephaestus."

"Hephae-." The smile vanishes. "Oh."

"I know full well that you are really Ploutos, god of-."

He shakes his head and waves his right hand. "Call me Demetri, please. I don't think that a country full of Christians really want to know that a pagan god is in charge of their revenue service. I get enough people wanting to burn me on the stake as it is."

"I don't think they'd…"

"No, but it would be awkward. 'Demetrios Prokopios' doesn't have particularly good documentation. Not if someone was prepared to look hard enough." He takes a deep breath and slowly exhales. "So. What can an out of work god do for you?"

"Out of work? You're the hardest working god on Olympus."

"I haven't been back to Olympus for centuries. And I saw that Queen Hera has a job now, as a relationship advice columnist."

"I didn't know the two of you were in contact."

"I manage her finances. She needed me to explain how credit cards work. 'Do they still use sestertii, or should I trade with unmarked coins?'" He shakes his head, then looks me over. "Why are you here?"

"How bad would it be if I introduced a form of power generation that could reduce electricity costs to a hundredth of what they are now?"

"How quickly?"

"I'm planning to demonstrate the first generator this weekend. We need to upgrade the transmission infrastructure before rolling it out over a large area but.. my friend Ted Kord already got the nod from the New York City mayor's office."

"No, no. Wider implementation. Are you going to be able to supplant existing power generation technologies… Within.. say.. five years?"

"Not unless a bunch of things turn out to be a lot easier than I think they're going to be. In five years… Hopefully, we'll be supplying power to a few dozen major cities and industrial areas. The bottleneck is producing the jovium wires we need. We've got plans to-."

He waves me off again. "Then do not worry. Markets can adapt to new technologies, even highly disruptive ones, as long as they have enough lead time. Gas and coal production will decrease over time… I doubt oil will be affected significantly for two decades at least. Do you have a full prospectus with you?" A folder appears from subspace and I float it over to him. "Let me have a quick look through and I'll give you a more detailed analysis."

back

Spring in Blume 5

next

17th February

07:02 GMT -6

I can barely believe this is actually happening. I mean, I know I offered months ago but they actually.. accepted. A minute or two from now Guy and I are going to start our first tuition session, instructing other members of the Green Lantern Corps on how to resist orange light techniques.

"Guy-."

He doesn't look around, still staring up at the sky. "Don't even talk t' me."

And it would be just perfect if Guy wasn't still throwing a massive snit about me sending that Guardian spaceship to Maltus. We're back in the Chihuahuan Desert and the sun is only just coming up over the horizon. Even at this early hour there's a crowd watching from the force field protected stand we built for them. We told them what was going to be happening and I think they think it'll look awesome because of all the extra Greenies. In fact, unless something goes very wrong there won't be much to watch at all.

"Guy-."

"J'onn actually yelled at me. You know that?"

Guy never showed any interest in power armour, but his uniform is noticeably more armoured these days. None of that exposed arms nonsense. His sidearm is attached to his hip. Combined with the overcoat he's taken to wearing he looks a good deal more professional than the tank top look he was sporting when I first met him.

"The Guardians did kind of wreck his planet."

"His species wouldn't even exist if it wasn't fer the Guardians. They'd still be those.. crazy Burner things."

"There's no way to know what they might have become if they'd been left alone. Would you try and use the worst examples of Human behaviour as evidence that we all needed our brains rewriten?"

He looks at me from the corner of his eye, a slight frown appearing. "What're you talking about? I read M'gann's report, those things were crazy."

"We only met one, and the fragments of Guardian reports I read were just the Guardians' impressions. I have no logical basis for concluding that what they said was either absolutely true or the whole of the truth." He takes a breath to argue back and I raise my hands. "But even if it was, once there were no Burners left, why exactly didn't the other Guardians restore Mars? There wouldn't have been much risk to them."

"They're busy people. It's a big universe. And anyway, what about the Burners hunting down the other Martians on the ship?"

"If an alien race came to Earth and started altering people to serve them, how friendly do you think the rest of us would be towards the people they modified?"

He goes back to watching the sky with a slight shake of his head. "Controllers got in contact with you yet?"

"No." That makes him look around. "I can't even reach the ship anymore. Did they.. talk to the Guardians about it?"

"Think so. They don't tell me about that sorta stuff but there was a ship I didn't recognize docked near their tower fer a while."

"Will detected." / "Will detected." / "Will detected."

Our rings chime at the same time, prompting us both to look down at them.

"Who are we getting today, anyway?"

"Katma Tui,-" Eeeee! "-Jack Chance,-" Eeeeee! "-and Saarek."

"The Vulca-?"

"He's not a Vulcan." I raise my eyebrows. "Yeah, okay, that's what I thought first time I saw him too, but he isn't."

I see a tiny green light high up in the sky. Though I transition pretty much everywhere, standard Green Lantern Corps protocol is to appear in normal space a good distance from the planet and fly the rest of the way at high speed. No interdiction fields on Earth but they're doing it anyway. Goodthinkful compliance with proper procedure or evidence of excessive rigidity? Not really sure.

Guy smiles slightly and a large Green sigil appears over our heads. I'm sure they can find us perfectly well without that but that approach is classic Guy.

"Shame John couldn't be here." Guy looks blank. "What with Lantern Tui attending."

"Wouldn't Hal..? Oh yeah, she was his teacher, wasn't she?"

"Bit more to it than that." I can see individual humanoid shapes now.

Guy gives me a look of disbelief which gradually turns into a grin. "No way."

"Yes way. You're talking to a chap with empathic-." Greengreentoomuchgreen. I blink and turn the empathic vision down as much as possible as Guy floats forwards to greet our new students. Three standard pattern humanoids and he totally looks like a Vulcan! He's even got the haircut! His uniform is black, save for the green sigil on his chest and the green across his shoulders. Which makes it look exactly like a Starfleet uniform. According to the Stewart-ring he's also some sort of necromancer. I wonder if he'd be interested in picking up a few books on the subject while he's here?

This Lantern Tui isn't the oddly Human looking one from the DCAU. She's got the purply red skin of a Korugaran and a short blob of black hair. Her uniform has a sort of green swimming costume thing with black material covering her arms and legs. She's wearing green boots and she appears to have copied Harold's white gloves but a quick scan shows the whole ensemble to be reasonably well armoured.

Lantern Chance appears to be from considerably earlier in his career than the version Parallax killed during the Sinestro Corps' attack on Oa. Red coat, cargo trousers and a waistcoat make him look the part of science fiction gunfighter every bit as much as the four firearms I can see. Only one of those guns matches Guy's Corps approved sidearm. No body armour but he does have a personal force field generator. He's also got his left hand resting on the butt of.. some sort of fusion pistol? It appears designed to look like an antique but the internal systems are top of the interstellar line. His skin is pale blue, his unkempt mullet a darker blue and his irises a striking red colour.

All three of them are staring at me. I raise my left hand and wiggle my fingers at them, orange ring clearly on display.

"Okay guys, thanks fer coming."

Lantern Tui nods at him, not taking her eyes off me for longer than politeness demands. "Lantern Gardner." As the senior Lantern here she has authority over this gathering. "Lantern… Paul."

"That's actually my personal name, but never mind." I zip over to Lantern Chance, who instinctively responds by reinforcing his environmental shield and pulling his sidearm free. "Lantern Chance, I am a huge fan of your work."

He keeps looking at me for a moment longer before responding. "Thaaaanks?"

"The whole backup weapons thing, I just took it and-" A part of my subspace arsenal appears in the air around me. "-ran with it."

"You can get his autograph later, Paul."

"Right, right." I return them to subspace and transition back to Guy's side. "Though that's not a bad first lesson. Orange Lanterns are greedy. If you meet an Orange Lantern of a combative turn of mind they will have all manner of additional weapons. The second is: Praexis Demons, rise."

My horde burst from the ground beneath us, shaking themselves free of the sand before rising into the air. Tui responds with construct armour while Saarek studies them with curiosity. "Demons. You use Demons."

"Construct Lanterns." I turn to look at my classroom assistant. "Guy?" A green bubble forms around me. "As you can see, they're autonomous. There's no orange light connection between me and them. Now, I don't do this to people but Orange Lanterns you encounter out in the wild almost certainly will. Scan the area of engagement carefully."

Chance shakes his head and pulls a roll up out of one of his pockets. "We ain't here for basic, Orange. Why don't we just skip on to the important-."

"Will detected."

Another Green Lantern appears from a transition. His -I'm guessing his- uniform is similar to Lantern Tui's and his skin is a mottled blue green. "You would be wiser not to."

Lantern Tui frowns at him. "Lantern Green Man?"

"I have been tracking the Construct Lanterns leaving the Vega Systems. One is entering the system now. In fact, I would advise against any use of the orange light at all."

Oh poop.

back

Spring in Blume 6

next

17th February

13:16 GMT

Lantern Tui nods. "Show us."

Lantern Saarek feeds ring power into the Watchtower as a green image appears in the air in the middle of the meeting room. In addition to myself and the five Greenies who brought me here, Mister and Missus Hol, Kal-El and Mister J'onzz are in attendance as well. I guess that's what Thanagarian casual clothing looks like. Or.. maybe those are dressing gowns?

The image shows us a top down view of the Sol system to real scale. The sun is a tiny dot in the middle while the planets are visible only by the thin green thread which marks out their orbit. The image expands a section towards the edge of the Oort cloud. Then expands again, and again and ooh dear.

A giant glowing construct head floats through the void. A long tentacle undulates slowly at each end of its upper lip, ends glowing brightly. Two slightly smaller tentacles sit between them, just under where its nose would be if it had one. Its chin is studded with what appear to be manipulator tendrils while other tentacles which might at some point in its species' evolutionary history have been used for swimming flail around on the other end of its neck-collar.

That's Lantern Blume.

Kal-El looks at Lantern Tui. "Is it coming this way?"

Her eyes flash. "I can't tell. It's moving in-system, but it isn't coming directly towards Earth."

Guy turns his head towards me. "You assimilate a giant tentacle head and forget to tell anyone?"

"No. No, that's Lantern Blume, the God of Hunger."

Mister Hol raises his right eyebrow. "God?"

"I don't know if he was actually a god before Larfleeze assimilated him or not. That's just what he calls himself when he lands on a planet and demands all of their precious materials. He was a planet killer, then he gained Lantern powers." That gets a few concerned nods. "Oh, and one time? The world he ended up on didn't have much in the way of mineral wealth. So he took their children instead."

Kal-El's face falls. "Good Lord."

I remove the rings from my fingers. "I'll just be taking these back to the mountain now." Ah, heck. "Sirs? You're going to need to get hold of Red Tornado and ask him to bring Doctor Morrow to the mountain as well."

Missus Hol nods. "It's already being taken care of."

"Heh." Lantern Chance smiles. "Running and hiding? You really think that'll help?"

"The mountain's warded against -among other things- ring scans. As long as my personal lantern and the rings stay there, Blume shouldn't be able to feel them."

"Warded? Magic? You really believe that stuff?"

Lantern Saarek nods. "You may want to consult your ring's database. Earth has an unusually active arcane energy network." He looks at me. "I assume that you have tested the effectiveness of the wards." I nod. "Then that may work. Green Man?"

"They don't usually stay in a system all that long. But this.. 'Blume' is a long way ahead of the others. Even if he moves on, he may return if you continue to use your rings. Do you believe that you could defeat him?"

Do.. I..? "Maybe? Umm…" I shake my head. "Probably-yes? But destroying his construct body just makes him respawn at Larfleeze's ring. I might be able to sneak up on him and seize control of him but that would be a dead give away to Larfleeze that there was someone here who knows how to use the orange light better than a newly empowered Lantern should."

Lantern Tui nods. "And what about us?"

"He'd-."

"Assimilate you." Guy crosses his arms. "Which was why you were comin' here in the first place."

"Could you defeat it?"

"Yeah, I think I could."

"Guy-."

"Oh, I'm sorry. Did you become a member of the Justice League or the Green Lantern Corps Honour Guard when I wasn't payin' attention?"

"No, but-."

"Then I don't take orders from you. Tui? How about it?"

She watches Lantern Blume for a moment. "No. Not without a better idea of its capabilities or if it moves to threaten Earth or Mars."

"Oh, come on." Guy's ring is sparking with suppressed mental drive.

Korugari don't shake their heads to indicate a negative. Their equivalent gesture is the slight inclination of the head Lantern Tui is doing now. "Ice it, Gardner. That was a 'no'."

"Guy, we could take Blume. You could probably take Blume. We might even-" I pat the scabbard at my leg which contains the Sword of Second and Third. "-be able to take Larfleeze. Maybe. But he's got hundreds of Construct-Lanterns at least. We can't reliably protect the Earth from that many."

Guy looks around the group, eyes finishing on Kal-El whose eyebrows are slightly raised. "Yeah… Okay. So what's the game plan?"

There's a sort of rippling across Green Man's skin. "Lantern Blots of two eight four nine reported that he approached a Construct-Lantern when it flew near his homeworld. It did not react, even to close proximity scans."

Saarek looks concerned. "I thought orders were not to approach them?"

"He took initiative. He claimed that he felt that his planet was under threat, and so sidestepped the specific prohibition."

"I hope someone explained to him that he might have triggered the attack."

"I considered doing so, but I have been lobbying Salaak for permission to probe them more assertively since they left Vega. It seemed dishonest."

Missus Hol activates a holoscreen and begins flipping through what looks like an inventory list. "If it won't react to a Green Lantern flying up to it, could you drop some probes around it? Might give us a better idea of exactly what these things are, or how Larfleeze controls them."

I didn't know she cared. I'd have been happy to let her play with the Praexis if I'd known.

Lantern Tui looks sceptical. "Having seen Earth's general level of technology, I'm not sure what a locally produced probe could tell us that a power ring couldn't."

Missus Hol flares her wings slightly. "Do I look local to you? Besides, if you've only been here a few minutes you won't have seen some of the crazy stuff Humans can build. This one-" A hologram of a double ended triamid shape appears. "-was created by Doctor Fate to read arcane signatures.. and-" She glances at her husband. "-we've got some from Thanagar."

Lantern Tui looks over to Lantern Green Man. "It's your mission. What do you think?"

"I don't see any harm. If you make them ready I will fly them into position myself."

Mister Hol looks over to Lantern Tui. "Would Earth's conventional detection devices be able to see 'Lantern Blume' yet?"

Another flicker. "No, it's nothing like bright enough. Technically, a small amount of the light it's emitting is reaching here, but it won't be bright enough to see until it reaches the inner system."

He nods. "Superman, I'm going to suggest that we hold off notifying the authorities until it gets closer. It doesn't seem to be behaving in an aggressive way and I'm not sure that any level of preparation they could make would actually help."

Kal-El nods. "Agreed. We'll reconsider if it passes Jupiter orbit. Orange Lantern?"

"Sir?"

"Your tattoos should make it impossible for Blume to be homing in on you personally, correct?"

"Yes sir."

"Then I'm not going to confine you to the mountain, but your rings, personal Lantern and the Ophidian stay there until further notice." I nod. "We'll keep you informed in case we need your expertise or assistance. Dismissed."

back

Spring in Blume 7

next

18th February

19:37 GMT -5

Holly leans forwards slightly, her eyes wide. "You killed Satan?"

"Well… No, as I said, there isn't-."

"You basically killed Satan."

"… Yes."

What with one thing and another we never got around to coming back to Tikka Nights, so I thought I'd treat her. A reward for three and a bit months' good behaviour and for her getting a job. Killing the First appears to have impressed her. She looks off to the side as she reloads her fork. "How come you're not on the Justice League already?"

"Did I tell you how I got started?" Fortunately for me Holly's learned to eat with her mouth closed since we first met. She just nods. "The year I'm spending here is effectively a year's probation. I'm only going to be eligible after it's over, and I don't know how much time I'm going to spend on Earth afterwards. After that… I don't know, maybe."

She swallows. "So what happened to Doctor Sivana?"

"Captain Marvel had a chat with her. They.. decided they'd be okay with her knowing who he is."

Holly makes an amused exhalation. "I bet he's okay with her knowing who he is." The story loses a little something when repeated to someone who doesn't know that Marvel's secret identity is that of a ten year old. Holly just heard a story about a superhero and his enemy's beautiful-yet-innocent daughter getting closer. In reality I think Doctor Sivana ♀ just wants to pretend the whole thing never happened. "How old is she?"

"Seventeen."

"And she's really a Doctor? Like a doctor-Doctor?"

"Oh yes. Doctor… Thaddeus and Professor Venus Sivana home schooled their children intensively. Beautia decided that she wanted to study medicine…"

She points at my left hand with her fork. "How come you're not wearing your ring?"

Ah. We're not mentioning Blume, so… "I… Ehr… It turns out that if you.. slice a guy up like a deli ham.. they don't let you stay on.. active duty. " Her eyebrows rise slightly. "I'm benched… Pending.. psychiatric assessment."

"You sliced up Satan! That is total bullshit!" A couple of people on a neighbouring table look around.

"Yeah, but he was.. Human shaped at the time… It's.. it's standard practice, police do the same thing when they shoot someone dead until the investigation's over." I don't feel bad about it, but I did deliberately kill a person. Perhaps telling Lantern Jordan 'I hope not' when he asked if the First would get up again like Ra's did suggest an inappropriate flippancy. "And it doesn't even matter. I could do with a few days off. There's some stuff I'm doing with Ted Kord-."

"Who?"

"He runs a company called Kord tech. They're the ones-."

"Oh yeah, you said. Magic metal, right?"

"That's the one. We're about ready to launch a product, and there's this whole press conference and speech thing we've got to plan... I don't need a power ring for that."

"Oh? What is it?"

"Power generation. And.. the infrastructure upgrades needed to make it worthwhile."

"Oh."

"What?"

"Just sounds kinda dull."

"The economy runs on power; electricity for machinery and computers, petrol for cars and lorries… If we can reduce costs enough-."

"Yeah, but it's not… Superhero-y, is it?"

"Oil being a less important international commodity should help increase political stability in oil rich regions.. because other countries won't need to fight over control of them. Cheaper heating…" She doesn't look convinced. "As far as I'm concerned, my job is to help as many people as I can in whatever way I can. That doesn't always mean.. slicing up Satan."

She nods and smiles. "Kinda hard to top that, anyway."

"So, how's work?"

"Dull. Boring." She shrugs. "I dunno. Me working makes Karon happy and I guess it's good for me. I'm just glad it isn't near where I used to live."

"Why's that?"

"I…" She takes another forkful as she tries to work out how to explain it to me. I do the same. The food here really is quite excellent. "The kinda.. people I used to hang around with… Karon… I don't… I don't really think they're good for me. You know?"

If I'm honest, not really. Not as if I've ever lived that life. "Get on alright with your co-workers?"

"They're okay." She shoves some of her food around her plate. "I guess it's.. normal? Get up, go to work, get paid, come home. I've never really.. had that, until now."

Out of the corner of my eye I see a patron gesturing angrily at something while a waiter tries to placate him. Once I'd have done the same 'awkwardly trying to pretend it isn't happening' thing the tables next to it are doing. Now I'm seriously considering just getting up and joining in. No, that probably wouldn't help.

"I've known.. people who.. had trouble coping with that sort of transition." I reach across the table with my left hand and rest it on her right. "If you feel the same way and you want to talk about it, you can always talk to Karon, to Selina or to me. You know that, right?"

She looks a little surprised by my touch. "Um." Oh, was that a bit much? I can see that she doesn't fear me but there's still a lot of yellow in there and I can't completely predict what's going to bounce off what. "Yeah."

I remove my hand. "Did you decide whether you wanted to take Selina up on her offer of tuition?"

"Iiiii guess I do. House is all fixed up and.. I need a new hobby..?"

"Think it takes a little more enthusiasm than that to reach her level of athleticism."

"Oh, no, I mean… Selina's like my cool big sister, you know? Spending time with her's always fun. It's just, I see the stuff she can do and the stuff you can do and there's this huge gap."

"If you're interested in becoming an Orange Lantern, I can give you some books on moral philosophy to read."

She lights up. "And a power ring to practice with?"

"Not until I'm reasonably confident it's not going to drive you clinically insane. And yes, that can happen."

"I can read a book."

"And you'd have to go and see a proper therapist. Not like me, someone with an actual diploma and a licence to practise. Orange rings mess with your head; if it's not on straight-" The argumentative customer is now standing and openly remonstrating with someone I believe to be the manager. "-very bad things will happen. If you want to try it, I know a great guy." Even if he isn't talking to me at the moment.

"I think I'll pass then."

"Selina's skills would be useful anyway and.. there are other types of superpowers you could-" The angry man shoves the manager. O-kay. "-acquire. But if you'll excuse me, I'm afraid that I need to go and deal with that."

back

Spring in Blume 8

next

18th February

19:41 GMT -5

"Excuse me, sir? Does there seem to be a problem?"

Alright, let's see how much of what Batman taught us stayed in my head. The one remonstrating with the manager… Younger, expensive clothing, expensive watch, plain rings. The two other men are older and heavier set. A few small scars are visible. Good clothing, but not… Ah, a slight tug at the jacket as one orientates on me. Armed, then. Bodyguards most likely. In most places I'd say 'celebrity making an arse of himself', but this is Gotham. Younger member of a successful crime family? My phone has a 'name that crim' app courtesy of Robin but I can't exactly whip it out right now.

"And who the FUCK are you?"

Mouthy youth turns towards me, eyes blazing in a way that might be intimidating if he wasn't about ten centimetres shorter than me. And if I hadn't cut Satan to ribbons last weekend. Behind him the restaurant manager shakes his head at me. Kind of him.

I smile. "I understand that my sobriquet is 'The Cake Man'." Bodyguard one shifts forwards a little in his seat, becoming more alert. Would he..? Yes, he'd be just old enough to have been professionally active when the old crime families started losing out to the 'freaks'. Someone introduces themselves by a silly name in Gotham, you assume that they should be taken completely seriously if you know what's good for you.

"Please, sir." No, manager guy, don't draw attention to yourself! "If your service has not been satisfactory, you have my humblest apologies. Please, have a complimentary round of drinks by way of apology."

"Take a fucksight more than that! You know who I am!?"

No. "Yes, you're that mouthy nuisance who's ruining my dinner. Now, you can either accept what I'm going to assume is an undeserved apology and finish your meal. You can storm out and write an unflattering review on your blog. Or you can step outside with me." Is he armed? Yes, probably. Meh, unless he's packing a laser I'm not worried. "I would encourage you to take option one. The food here really is quite good."

"Mister Inzerillo, sir-" Ooh! I recognise that name. I was right about the gangster thing. That makes him… "-your father said-" Don'ttellmedon'ttellme! "-we shouldn't-" Jack! That was it! "-get involved in any trouble. 'Specially with-."

"This prick wants to pick a fight? Fine!" He nearly tears off his jacket before throwing it at the bodyguard who suggested that he simmer down, momentarily blocking his line of sight in a way I just know would irritate a professional. "Outside, now!"

As I turn towards the door Jack storms past me, taking the opportunity to try and shove me sideways. He fails. Oh dear. I glance back at his bodyguards, one of whom is going for his phone. "I'll let him off with a few bruises. No need to get excited." I follow the junior mobbie towards the door, being careful not to pay any attention to the concerned look on Holly's face as I walk by her. Though the temptation to say 'superheroy enough for you?' is strong enough that I can feel it.

I pass through the door to find Jack bouncing up and down on his toes like a very amateur boxer. Musculature… Well, he works out but I've got more muscle mass and a longer reach. "Well? Do you know who I am? You know who you just pissed off?"

"Jacopo Inzerillo. Younger son of Enrico Inzerillo."

A slight scowl at hearing his full first name. "Cops are gunna have to identify you from your dental records, prick."

"Ah. My employer prefers that I resolve matters fully before the police arrive. Don't leave them in any doubt as to what happened."

"Yeah? Who you workin' for? Is it those Ibanescu pricks? Odessa? Fuckin' push you all into the sea for this."

I relax, hands slightly to the side. "I work for Batman."

Just for a heartbeat I see a look of shock on his face. Then his face hardens, his fists come up and he dashes towards me. Okay, let's see how much of Ms Lance's lessons stuck. He telegraphs a right, and from the angle of the limb it looks like it'll include an elbow chaser. Doubt he'll extend enough for a throw. "Ragh!"

I move left, my right comes across to turn his arm aside. Still hurts without the ring or power armour but it does put me in position to trip him and hit him in the side of the head with the heel of my left palm. He staggers a step and collapses onto the ground and I step back as he rolls to his feet. "I really do recommend calling it a night. These sorts of affair are seldom dignified."

He approaches again, slower this time. Hmm, Robin or Artemis would have gone for a pin or a choke there, wouldn't they? I'm probably too analytical for good melee fighting. The skills are just-. He throws a series of jabs at my head and I step back as he does so. Not like we've got a ring-out line here. So opposed to how it makes sense to fight as a Lantern. I step back just ahead of his next strike then surge forwards, pushing his left arm aside with my left hand while my own right fist uppercuts him under the chin. I follow up, turning side on, pushing off with my calves and shoving my shoulder into his chest.

Off to the side I hear the restaurant door open as he falls backwards, unable to stop himself hitting the pavement hard. "Agh!" Right, does he-? He reaches into his belt and pulls out a tiny flick knife. The hand holding it is swiftly met by the toe of my right foot, sending the knife flying. I then drop onto him, hands going to his shoulders and my right knee to his diaphragm. "Owgh!" Right fist up and hope he gets the messa-.

Bang!

Impact in the right side of my torso. I collapse to my left as Mister Inzerillo crawls away. Screams from the people watching through the restaurant window. Low calibre rounds so the body armour took it. Armour I'm wearing there shouldn't be too much of a bruise. Fun time over. I tap my belt buckle with my left hand, bringing the flight belt to normal operating power.

Bang!

Shoulder. Oh, the younger bodyguard. Nice lot of witnesses at the windows.

"Hah! Fuck you, you fucking Bat-fuck!"

And these sorts of people are allowed to rise to high criminal office these days. I'm just lying here and he kicks me in the chest. If that bullet had done anything I'd be bleeding like nobody's business right now and he's so caught up he-. Head that time, hasn't noticed. Ah well. Another tap and the belt switches to 'repulse'.

"Boss, we gotta go."

"And fuck-!" His toes break. "Aaaaaghfuck!"

I push myself up and float off the ground. "That wasn't very clever. And now you're both under arrest." Through the window behind them I notice the relief on Holly's face. "Please don't do anything-" The bodyguard aims for my centre of mass and pulls the trigger.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

"-stupider." I create a kinetic bubble around him. "You know, my revolver has eight shots."

"rAAAAaagh!" Jacopo pulls himself upwards, balancing on his good foot. Bodyguard takes a look at the situation and tries pushing against the barrier around him. It is weaker against gradual application of force, but not enough for him to be able to do anything about it. Realising that, he stops, shakes his head dejectedly and holsters his weapon.

Ugh, no convenient construct manacles. I create a second bubble around Jacopo and he hops into it before falling down again. I see Holly take a step back from the window and I meet her eyes for a moment and give her a tiny head shake. Really don't want her getting the attention of Gotham organised crime. Further inside the restaurant the other bodyguard is speaking frantically on his phone. Keeping both hands in the barrier generation position does make it somewhat difficult for me to move but I angle my body to drift back towards the restaurant.

"Could somebody please phone the police?!"

back

Spring in Blume 9

next

18th February

20:07 GMT -5

"Think that's about everything, Orange." Detective Bullock scratches the side of his head with his pencil as he looks over the notes he's taken. "We got about twelve witnesses who'll testify that they saw you defending yerself and only really going after him when he pulled a knife. Plus, the manager's tellin' me they were trying to shake him down for protection money. Have to talk t'the Commish about the other one but we can take these two-" He nods at Jacopo and the chap who shot me. "-down town right now." He takes a step closer to me and looks over to where the older bodyguard is talking to a couple of people in suits. "You.. sure you didn't see.. or maybe hear him try anything? Y'know, maybe somethin's come back to you?"

Yes, I can work out what he's asking. Think I'll pretend not to, though. Don't really see the point of locking a man up when all it might do is weaken the case against the others. "Sorry, Detective. I don't really forget things like that, even without the rings."

"Fuckin' mob lawyers." He rolls his eyes. "And… Sorry, but I gotta ask you for contact info. Those slimy bastards were makin' noise about pressin' charges against you. Probably just angling to try an' make us drop the charges…"

"I don't have any problem giving you contact details, Detective. But.. they.. can't press charges."

"Well, yeah, they shouldn't be able to but, y'see-."

"I have a diplomatic passport."

He grins. "Fer real?"

"I'm a citizen of Themyscira these days. Technically, I'm part of Diana's staff. I really.. only have it because there isn't a regular Themysciran passport but it does save me from having to fill out immigration paperwork. I'm not sure having a power ring qualifies me for a green card when there are already four Americans with the same thing."

"Maybe you could have them declare your ice fortress t'be its own country?"

"Bit of a stretch." Probably wouldn't be the smallest, though. Maybe I could ask Queen Hippolyta to declare it Themysciran territory? "Here." I hand him a business card with my contact details. "Do you need anything else?"

Detective Bullock looks curious, then looks past me at the crowd watching events. "This interrupt a hot date or something?"

"I was having dinner with someone, yes."

"Anyone I know?"

"She does have a record but I don't think-. Oh, you mean socially. No, I don't think so. And she's not still in the crowd, I didn't want that lot-" I nod at the lawyers. "-seeing me with her, just in case."

Detective Bullock grunts. "Okay, I won't keep yah." He pockets the card. "I'll be in touch in a day or two, let you know how things are going."

"Thank you, Detective." He turns away. "Oh, did you.. reach a decision? About the weight loss thing?"

"I'm, ah…" He glances down at his gut. "Still thinking."

"When you decide, let me know. Good evening." I activate the belt and fly directly upwards as Detective Bullock turns around.

"Funny, how you're so much more polite than Bat-" He sees that I'm not there anymore. He tries looking up but it's dark and the flight belt doesn't cause a glow in flight mode. "-man. And yet you still do that. Now I get how the Commish feels."

I grin as I gain more height and start looking around for Holly. She wouldn't have gone far… Ah! There she is, on a rooftop. Easier to spot from the air, harder to spot from the ground. I angle my body and fly towards her, landing just in front of her. "Sorry about that."

"You're sorry? You got shot!"

"I was wearing body armour and a personal force field. There wasn't-."

"I didn't know that! … Ass!" She steps forwards and lightly punches me in the upper arm with her right hand. Wait, I haven't-. "Oww."

"Sorry! Personal force field's still on. Let me just.. change the setting." I fiddle with the buckle as she rubs her aching hand. "Oh here, I've got a-" I reach into my jacket's inner pocket. "-healing potion."

"A what?"

"Healing potion. Give me your hand a minute." She gives me a sceptical look before holding it out. I lightly take hold of her right hand with my left and squirt a small amount of potion onto her knuckles with my right before returning the bottle to my jacket. Has a fairly viscous texture so… I move my hands so that my fingers are supporting her palm and start rubbing the potion in with both thumbs. Slightly more potion left over than I need, so I switch to performing a simple hand massage. "Better?"

"Um. Yeah. That feels.. nice…"

"Glad to know those massage lessons weren't a waste of time. Most people I know get a bit weird when I offer." I release her hand. "Well. Should probably get you home. I don't think walking is a good idea after.. that, but we could get a taxi?"

She goes to speak, then hesitates for a moment, prompting me to raise my eyebrows. "Um… Can you… Fly with me?"

Would that..? "Don't see any reason why not."

"I wouldn't get, like, bugs in my mouth or anything would I?"

"No, we wouldn't be going that fast and the belt tends to deflect them anyway." I press the belt again. What was the 'passenger' setting? "Would you prefer to ride on my back or would a bridal carry be better?"

She giggles for a moment, then realises that I'm being serious. "Oh! Bridal carry."

"Okay then." I crouch down slightly. "If you put your left arm around my shoulder-" She does so. "-then I can…" I put my left arm against the back of her knees and my right behind her shoulders. "Ready?"

"Uh-huh."

Aaand lift. She feels oddly light. Last time I scanned her the ring told me that her diet was improving, something I'm largely attributing to Karon's influence. But she's never going to be anything like as large as she could have been with better nutrition in early life. "Got a decent hold?"

She smiles a little nervously. "I sure hope so."

I check my grip. Yep, should be fine. And up we go. This part of Gotham doesn't go up beyond about five storeys, but I take us up higher anyway. I mean, if you're going to fly hanging onto someone you might as well get a decent view, right?

"OohmyGod."

"Enjoying it?"

"Do I have to do therapy to get one of these?"

I do have spares. "Nnnnno, but there's a training course and you'd have to be supervised. These things can be very dangerous." Holly and Karon's home is in Coventry, just north of Robinson Park. Expensive place to live if no one's been murdered in the master bedroom recently. Tikka Nights is in Upper West Wide so we're pretty much flying north north east over the park. In the dark it just shows up as a patch without any lights in it. Maybe I should bring some ambient lighting goggles next time?

"Is anything you do not dangerous?"

…

"I sleep, sometimes."

back

Spring in Blume 10

next

18th February

20:19 GMT -5

"And we're dropping down in an alley instead of at home because..?"

I crouch slightly and release her legs, maintaining my hold around her shoulders while she steadies herself. "Superman says that the best way to prevent anyone from seeing you flying to your home is to avoid flying home. And since he's an expert on maintaining a secret identity while-."

"Superman has a secret identity?"

I raise my eyebrows, then realise that in this light there's no way she can see me doing that. "Yes. He does."

"Huh. Guess I just figured… Why would he?"

"Normalcy. Hard to find when you're the last member of your species and got brought up by aliens, but he has a full time job and everything. Anyway, he's an expert on maintaining a secret identity under close observation. Not something I bother with most of the time, but…"

"I don't really wanna get visited by the Inzerillo mob."

"Right." I look toward the main road. "I also don't want to stand in this alley all night, so… Um."

"Oh! Yeah, sorry." She turns away and starts heading towards the end of the alleyway. "Shame we had to miss dessert."

"I don't mind baking something once we get back to your house."

"Really?" I see the outline of her head turn in my direction. I.. think she's smiling. "You must be, like, the most domestic guy I've ever met."

"It's hardly-. Oh, sorry, I need to check for messages. Give me a second?" Good manners required me to put my phone off during dinner but it's not impossible that there's been some sort of alert. I think she nods, then keeps going until she's on the pavement. Right. I usually just have the ring handle this type of-.

"Hey, Holly!" Ah. Nice to know she's making frie-. "How much these days, uh?"

Oh shoot phone back in pocket and jogging!

"Uh, hiii…" Holly standing in the middle of the pavement, frozen in place. Pulled up near her is a car with a group of young men in it. A fellow with at least five ear piercings is leaning out of the passenger side window, leering at her.

His eyes briefly flick to me. "Ah, hey, if you need five minutes and some mouthwash…"

"Oh, the universe just lays you idiots on for me, doesn't it?"

"Fuck you, limey. I was breaking off a piece in-" I tap my belt buckle and lift the car off the ground. "-fuuuuuuck!" The wheels spin in the air as the driver stamps on the accelerator pedal. "Go go go!"

I saunter closer, shaking my head slightly. The other people in the car… I look across at the driver. "I know you. Didn't I give you a pizza last year?"

"Fuck."

"Nice to be recognised. Now: I'm clearly a serial killing sociopath with superpowers, we're in Gotham, and you're ruining my evening." I set the car down with only a slight bump. "Go."

Tires screech as they take my advice. Damn it. I turn back towards Holly she's shaking too much yellow. I can't tell for sure if… Chance it. I put my arms around her shoulders and pull her into my chest. A moment or two passes and I start to fear that I've undone the progress-. Then I feel her press her head into my shoulder and her hands at the small of my back. Aaaaaaah.

"Nasty shock, that."

"Uh-huh."

"But I think they're going to keep going until they hit the Gotham River…" She sniffs… Okay, I'll just have a ring clean this jacket when I get home. "I'd offer to carry you the rest of the way, but I wouldn't want to make Karon jealous."

She turns to take up position on my right, still pressing herself up against me. "New neighborhood… Thought I'd gotten away from all that."

I start in the direction of her home, my right arm around her back encouraging her to move with me. She's not looking up but she does manage to put one foot in front of the other. "I'll… Say again. Anything you want-."

"Nothing special." She sniffs again and I use my left hand to fish a tissue out of my left trouser pocket, then pass it over. "Thanks." She wipes her eyes and nose with her right hand, not moving her left from around me. "Broke, no skills or qualifications. No family." I squeeze her around the waist. "'Cept Selina." I never actually asked if this version of Selina was a prostitute or not. No.. simple way to find out. "Didn't really seem like such a big deal. Suck a guy off, get money." She shakes again.

"That part of your life is over."

"Is it? Those guys just… And, and I know Karon checks my purse to see if I'm carrying any pills and… I think she looks at my arms sometimes, y'know?" S-hit. "I've been keeping busy an' clean and then one little fucking thing happens and I'm falling apart again."

"As I understand it, the Human brain basically.. shoves stuff it can't cope with out of the way so its owner can keep functioning. The fact that you're reacting like this isn't.. unusual or weird; it just shows that you're stopping being numb to all the messed up stuff you've gone through. Shit, Holly, no one should have to live like that."

There's a tiny laugh. "You sound funny when you cuss."

"Donkey-molesting faeces-eater." More of a snort this time, but at least she's starting to recover a little. "What time does Karon get off work?"

"Uh? Nine? So she should be home by nine thirty. Ten past if she can get a ride."

"Okay, so, any preference with regard to pudding?"

"Mmm, pudding like 'chocolate pudding'? Or does it mean something else in British?"

"In English-English the word pudding co-opts the meaning of the Colonial-English word 'dessert', and it was in that context that I was using it." Actually, 'dessert' means dessert as well, but it's usually only used in formal settings. And I'm trying to amuse Holly with my Old World eccentricities, not win a lexicography contest.

She doesn't exactly recover, but she's supporting her own head and holding me a little less tightly. I'll take that as progress. "Maybe.. muffins..? I dunno."

"Since I can't check recipes on the rings.. or monitor the status of the muffins during cooking, I can't promise my usual quality."

"It doesn't matter."

"I mean, pancakes or something would probably be easier. Or doughnuts. You've got a deep fat fryer, right?"

"You don't wanna do muffins?"

"I can do muffins. I just wanted to make sure you were aware of non-muffin alternatives."

"Muffins."

"Muffins it is."

I can see her house from here. No lights on. Good job the heating system I installed is pretty much immediate; Gotham's cold at this time of year.

"You.. get any messages?"

"Didn't look. Doesn't really matter."

back

Spring in Blume 11

next

18th February

21:13 GMT -5

I peer into the oven. "You know… They're surprisingly hard to judge."

"What!?"

I stand up and mosey towards the open door between the kitchen and the living room. Holly's fiddling with the television. "I said I'm having trouble telling whether they're done or not."

"Well.. just.. make your-" The screen lights up and she rises to her feet. "-best guess. It's not like-" She turns around. "-you're.. not wearing a shirt."

"It's hot in there." She stares at my chest. "Um. If it's a problem, I.. can.. just-."

Her eyes have widened slightly. "That's a lot of tattoos."

"Strictly speaking it's two overlapping sets of tattoos."

"I didn't really think you were the.. tattoo… Type..?"

"These are magic tattoos." Um. "Well, strictly speaking the tattoos themselves aren't magic, but they serve as the attachment point-" She starts walking towards me, staring at them. "-for the spells. Erh, can't honestly say I recommend getting them done yourself if there isn't a good job or soul-absence related reason."

"Is that a.. burn..?"

"Huh? Where?"

She bends down slightly and pokes me just below the bottom of my right rib cage. Then flattens her right hand to briefly feel my abdominals. "And… Whaw. You're… Buff."

"Ring-sculpted physiology. And, no, those are… That's more of a.. brand…" She looks up and shakes her head slightly in incomprehension. "They heat up some metal and sort of.. stick it on you…"

"Ow! Who did that!"

"No, no, it's part of the design. It wouldn't work without-." My watch's alarm starts beeping. "Okay, that's the time in the recipe book." I step back and turn towards the oven. "Is your oven a bit fast, a bit slow or just right?"

"I dunno. How much difference does it make?"

"I'm not sure. I don't even remember the last time I made a muffin that didn't have chocolate in it." I pick up the oven gloves and open the main oven, bend down slightly and pull out the tray. … Yeah, I think they're done. "They look alright to-?"

There's a rattle as someone opens the front door and Holly hurries back into the living room. "Hey Karon!"

"Hey Holly."

"Good evening, Karon!" Right, wire rack… Can't just float them out… I look down at my belt. No, not in a kitchen I'd have to clean if I miscalculated. Turn them upside down? Awkward with oven gloves, and it would alter the pleasant dome shape they've acquired.

"Hey Paul. I didn't realize mpf!"

Heh. Okay, just put them down in the tin. I take off the oven gloves and leave them on the work surface before leaning around the doorway. "Do you want to eat them now, or…" Okay, they're not listening. I don't know if it was the thing with those guys in the car earlier or what, but Holly appears to be very glad that Karon's back. She's on the tips of her toes, leaning into Karon with both hands around the back of the taller woman's head and is pulling down into an enthusiastic kiss. Karon's still got her bag over her shoulder and her coat on and from how she's moving her arms isn't quite sure whether to pull away and get rid of them or to hug Holly back. She settles for hugging her with one arm and sort of shaking her other shoulder in the hope that the bag will just slide off, all the while matching Holly's passion with her own.

I keep watching for a few moments, until Holly decides that Karon is sufficiently greeted. She then drops back onto the flat of her feet and presses her left cheek into her girlfriend's chest. Karon licks her lips then frowns slightly as she looks down at the top of Holly's head. "Okay… What was-" She looks up for a second. "-that shirt?"

"I left it in the kitchen."

"Wait, were you just..?"

"Watching? Yes." She blinks. "You've made out in front of me enough times that I'd rather got the impression that you didn't object…"

"But you always just get weirded out and.. uncomfortable."

"Ah, yes, I was suppressing my testosterone production, so.. I found it socially awkward and I didn't really have any drive to see the appeal… Now, I do." I flick my right hand at the door. "If that's a problem I can just go back in the kitchen while the two of you…"

Holly half turns, head still pressing against Karon's chest. "You're not gay?"

"Um… Well, there are men I find attractive, but for the most part, no. I tend to think that interest in only one gender is more the result of social conditioning rather than neural physiology-."

"Ooh. 'Cause I was getting totally the wrong signals here."

"Yes, Selina said. Look, I'm perfectly happy to duck out if I'm making it weird for you…"

"Um…" Holly pulls away from Karon slightly, and Karon uses the opportunity to move her bag and coat to a hook near the door. "No…" She walks over to me, takes hold of my left arm and gently pushes me back into the kitchen. "Yeah, just a minute. You could, like, frost the muffins or something."

"They're still warm, that's not-." She smiles, steps back and closes the door.

Huh. I look at the muffins. Okay then, I… Guess she really likes her icing. Um. Butter based icing would just melt. I could just sieve icing sugar over them, but that's probably not what she has in mind. Peanut butter muffins, what goes with peanut butter? I'm not usually a huge fan of the stuff. When I was little Dad used to say that it's the one food he doesn't like. I walk over to the cupboard and open it, taking out the jar. Sugar and salt content..? Dark chocolate, maybe? Do Americans call that something daft? I pick up my phone. Translation app… Bittersweet. Okay. Bittersweet, one bar of that, put it on the side. Mix it with anything? No, there're only six muffins and I expect we'll be eating them all this evening. I pour a small amount of water into the kettle and switch it on. Small saucepan-

"Are you-!" I look around at the door, then decide to not hear it. "Are you serious?"

-on the stove. I'm used to using gas, but this house is all-electric. I remember one time in Food class at school I managed to melt a plastic tub onto an electric hob because I didn't realise it was still hot. Small Perspex bowl, and I break up the chocolate and put the pieces inside. Saucepan goes on the hob, water-. The kettle clicks off. Hob on, water in the saucepan, bowl on the saucepan. Now, where did I put that spatula? Right, draining board. I put it down next to the hob, far enough away not to melt.

"You said if-."

"It was a big 'if'!"

"It might not be that big."

I carefully touch the muffin tin to check its temperature, then move it off the wire rack and then gingerly pick the muffins out by the cases and putting them down on the rack. Water's bubbling so I turn the hob down and give the chocolate pieces a prod with the spatula. It's a little melted but nothing like ready to be applied to the muffins. Probably a minute or two until it reaches that stage. Dark chocolate has a higher melting point than milk chocolate, after all. Smells nice.

Hmm. I pick up a tea towel and finish drying the rest of the cutlery on the draining board and return it to the proper places around the kitchen. Another poke at the chocolate. Getting there. Maybe I could get a metal spoon and break it up to speed-?

The door opens and a slightly flushed Holly leans into the kitchen. "Hey, um-."

"Not quite ready, yet."

"Yeah, um." She looks at the unit next to her, then at the floor. "So, Karon.. and me were going to go take a shower and.. go to bed."

"Oh. Right. Ah, sure, I'll leave the muffins in your ca-."

"You wanna join us?"

…

…

"I'm sorry?"

"You know..?" She nods and makes a circling motion with her right hand.

"No, I… I got the implication, I was just… Rather under the impression that you were lesbians."

"Mostly. Not like I've never been with a guy before-" A quick shot of empathic vision give me a rough idea of the quality of those relationships. "-and Karon's… A little bi-curious? And you're a great guy and we think it could be fun. So?" She looks directly at me with a smile. "How about it?"

…

"Can I think about it?"

back

Spring in Blume 12

next

18th February

19:29 GMT -7

Looking down from above it doesn't take me all that long to spot the Arrow clan. Using an app to ping Artemis' phone helped, but red, green and yellow do rather stand out against the background. Can't actually tell what they're doing… Which means that I can't tell whether it's alright for me to drop in. My training has included how to fight with a flight belt or my fists but I wouldn't call myself superhero level at either. Uum, but this is.. kind of.. urgent.

I manoeuvre myself directly overhead, about two hundred metres above them. It's probably quite blowy up here but the belt prevents me from feeling it. I pull my mobile out of my jacket pocket and try phoning Artemis again. Come on, Law and Order episodes only have about forty minutes of actual program in them! Ugh, okay, either she's just ignoring it or she's… No, she's taking it out of a pouch. Good good.. and she's turned it off.

Okay. Mister Queen and Roy One (yellow hat) are on top of a building over there while Artemis and Roy Two (dark gear and actually slightly harder to see) are on top of a building over there and they're all focusing on that shop. But they're not-. Okay that.. bed probably didn't fire itself through the window. Roy Two and Artemis dive out of the way as it slams into their roof in between them. The ring would probably have something intelligent to say about that. The bed doesn't visibly appear to have been altered in any way and it isn't exploding… This is what I get for not memorising Green Arrow's enemies when I was on Earth Prime.

I fly in the direction the Arrows aren't covering. There are some police a few streets back and it looks like a patrol car has been crushed under a heavy.. chest of drawers? Okay, so that's a furniture shop and someone inside is wasting their talents on stealing a fraction of the amount of money they could make applying their abilities legally. Typical Friday night, really. Are they going to have any hostages? Maybe. Hmm. The motive to intervene personally is still pretty strong, even though I know this should be well within the Arrows' collective abilities to deal with. Ah, heck with it, they don't appear to be under immediate threat.

I loop around and drop, aiming for just behind Mister Queen. Roy One spots me as I close in and turns, arrow on string. I raise my hands as I drop down, feet first. "Don't shoot! Friendly!"

Green Arrow looks around and then goes back to staring at the shop below. "Thought you were taking some time off."

"I am, but I need to talk to you about something…"

"You wearing your belt?"

"Yes sir."

"Four hostiles inside. Three with guns and one of them has some kinda telekinesis. We can't get a shot off from here and last time Artemis went down to street level she got thrown hard against a building."

Roy One nods. "Gas arrows just get tossed away and we don't really want to use explosives or incendiaries in the middle of the city."

And Artemis' flight belt is in a locker in the mountain. "I can draw their fire if you like? The belt can take pretty much any amount of being thrown against things."

Mister Queen peers over the edge of the roof again. "Can it take having your internal organs crushed?"

"Assuming the force was applied internally, no. But M'gann told me that's very hard to do and if you rushed me back to the mountain I'd still survive anyway."

"How fast can you move?"

"If I go through the shop's wall and don't have to steer? I can be in the middle of the building in about five seconds."

"Right. Here." He pulls an arrow out and holds it out to me. "Flashbang arrow. Get in there and set it off. Try and hit the metahuman, or at least get their attention. Artemis, Red Arrow, flashbang the west side and prepare to assault. Speedy? You ready?"

"Hm. Completely."

"Orange Lantern, go as soon as the flashbangs go off."

"Sir." I keep looking at my approach route. I'm not going to risk looking at the place the flashbangs are going to go off without the ring protecting my eyes-. There! I run off the edge and swan dive down towards the building! Breeze blocks explode out of my way as I force my way through and in the second available to me I take in that the shop is large and open plan. Two guys with guns behind a makeshift barricade and I can't see anyone in a costume. Shots come from ah! There they are! I head towards them and down, closing my eyes and holding my left arm across them and I throw the arrow into the floor with my right!

Ow! Ow! Bang! Fucking-! Really hope that didn't rupture my eardrums. I blink and push myself up. Eyes are fine, thankfully. I look around just in time to see Artemis break down a door on the far side of the shop floor and fire an arrow in my general direction. There's a puff of… Gas arrow. Thanks, Artem-.

19th February

Later

"Uuuuuhhgh." Oh, I heard that. Not deaf, then.

"You awake?" I'm lying on a bed… On the roof. Okay. Mister Queen is standing over me. "Good work with the distraction. You okay?"

I sit up. Ow. "Slight headache, nothing major."

"Gas arrow took 'em all out. Police stuck a control collar on -get this- 'Auntie Gravity'-."

"Seriously?"

He nods. "Yeah. The other three were her nephews. According to them, the plan was to float out a load of expensive furniture after closing time."

"Rather than get a job in a container port, or working in air travel or anything?"

"You know how that goes."

I really do. "How long was I out?"

"Few minutes. I gave you the antidote. So, ah… What was it you wanted to talk to me about?"

"Ah… Well, it's a bit personal."

"I don't need to be anywhere else, but you sure you wouldn't rather talk about this with Diana or Gardner?"

"I don't think any of my usual go-to people would have any… Useful insight, sir. And Guy and I have had a bit of a falling out."

"Okay." He leans back slightly and shrugs. "Shoot."

"There's a young woman whom I've been seeing-."

"Are we talking about Zatanna here?"

"No, her name's Holly. I caught her stealing a painting a few months ago and I.. said I'd let her off if she kept her nose clean and sorted her life out. Which she has."

"Sounds like a good deal."

"Yeah. So… We've got to know each other pretty well-."

"Okay, stop." He smiles and waves his right hand at me. "It's not a conflict of interest. Never had any.. luck getting women to go straight-" I wince inwardly. "-like that myself, but if it works for you and her, go for it."

"There's a little more to it than that, sir. She's already in a relationship-"

"Ah."

"-with a woman-"

"Ah?"

"-so it would be the three of us." He blinks. "So I was sort of wondering if you had any advice?"

back

Spring in Blume 13

next

18th February

19:38ish GMT -7

He freezes for a moment, then spreads his hands in a gesture of appeal. "And you came to me why?"

"Of all the people I know, sir, you're the only one I could conceive of as having been in this situation-" His right hand covers his face. "-yourself."

He sighs. "Look. I don't know what Artemis has been telling you about me-."

"It was really more the.. Star City Register, sir. You weren't exactly subtle back in your.. hell raiser days."

"Aw, jeeze…" He removes his hand from his face and carefully checks our surrounding environment for Black Canary. "Okay, look. Sure; while I was young and stupid I did all kinds a' stuff that I wouldn't want you to copy. And.. maybe a couple of times… More than one girl was involved. And you're younger than I was so I'm not really in any position to get on my moral high horse here. But.. that was fun. I didn't know 'em all that well and I didn't hang around much afterwards. That's not the situation you're in."

"I know."

"You sure there's no one else you'd rather talk to? How about..?"

"Diana's eighty five years old and even her closest friends can't remember her ever being in a serious relationship, Alan's advice would be 'make sure she's not a crazy supervillain before you marry her' and Guy would most likely try to repossess my 'Man Card' for hesitating at all." I glance to the side. "I don't really think any of them could help."

"Okay, yeah, you've.. got a point." He does another Black Canary check. "I'm guessing you're talking to me because you want to.. with them?"

I shrug. "I.. enjoy their company and find them both attractive. Beyond that I don't really have any experience to draw on, and I certainly don't have any idea how it could change our relationship afterwards."

"Way I see it… Making poor choices about who you have sex with is part of growing up. Being with Dinah means more to me than any of the women I used to go with, but I don't feel all that bad about the stuff I used to do." I raise my eyebrows. He spots my intent, nods, then looks away for a moment. "Until one of you kids comes to me for advice. I'm making up for lost time now." He sighs. "How long ago did you meet them?"

"Just over three months ago. Right before the Roanoke thing."

"So they've gotta know that you're not helping them out just 'cause you're looking to score."

"Yes, they know that."

"Alright. This doesn't get back to Dinah, but I'm not seeing the problem. You like them, they like you..?"

"The problem is twofold." I stop. "There are two main problems. Firstly, I know that the chances of a person reoffending are lower the better their social support networks are. I.. can't be in Gotham full time, it's just not practical. Karon likes me, but I know she's not as in to the whole idea as Holly is."

"Then… Maybe both of you just make love to Holly."

"I'd be fine with that, but… Holly likes me a lot. I'm starting to see violet light and-."

Mister Queen frowns slightly. "Violet li-. Oh yeah, aren't you telepathic or something?"

"I'm empathic, but if someone hasn't been in a situation before it's very hard for me to judge how they'll feel about it. Karon doesn't have any obvious red flags but.. people get jealous. I don't want to harm their relationship, particularly if I'm going to still be around."

"Okay, good… Violet light is love, right?"

"Yes sir. You sort of pulse with it whenever you mention Black Canary."

"So does she love you already..?"

"It's not quite that simple. It's not an on-off thing… Sometimes, the way we interact is enough to trigger a particular response from her. Her love of Karon is a more constant thing, her happy thoughts arrange themselves around it.. and there're.. sort of.. lines of light running between them? I can't really explain it."

"She loves Karon and sort of likes you too. Okay, so.. tell me about Holly."

"And we're sort of moving onto problem two. Holly… Used to be a prostitute, aaaand her clients weren't exactly fussy about how old she was."

He looks shocked. "I think some kinda therapy would be a better-."

I shake my head. "I've suggested that, she doesn't… She isn't keen and since she's been coping well I haven't wanted to pressure her about it." He doesn't look happy, but he lets me continue. "Now, I know she doesn't currently put me in the same mental box as them, but it's a pretty extreme situation and I can't completely predict how she's going to feel afterwards."

"She still doesn't sound like someone you should be doing this with. It's 'safe, sane and consensual'. If she's not in a place where she can make good decisions…"

"Right, and I'd… Normally I'd agree, but… In her mind, there's a close association between mutually enjoyable sex and.. safety and happiness. Her relationship with Karon started as a hook-up where the other person stayed and they actually had.. conversations. If I.. reject her… I'm not sure whether it's riskier for me to say yes or no. Or if this would really be a one off thing."

"Damn. And how quickly do you have to decide?"

I check my watch. "Holly said I had until the end of Law and Order… So about half an hour, including travelling time."

He exhales slowly and looks out across the Star City skyline for inspiration. "And how do you feel about it?"

"I'd like to go for it and for my fears about the possible emotional fallout to be unfounded. I come from a very stable home environment… And since I've pretty much dismissed ideas of appropriate norms from my considerations of my own wants… I would prefer a long term relationship. And I don't have a problem with it being with more than one person. But, I can look at a person and know moment by moment exactly what they want and why. If I put my mind to it and spent enough time I'm confident I could make a long term set up work… It just seems like a really manipulative and underhanded way to behave. I think I'd be fine with it being a one off, but my self awareness only extends to what I want now. There are just too many unknowns for me to make a rational decision."

Mister Queen tenses the left side of his face. "You could just say you had to work."

"Yes, but I don't want to treat them like that. They're my friends. Whether I decide yes or no I should tell them to their face."

He sighs again and turns back to me. "Look… Nothing about me fooling around in college gives me the sort of insight you're looking for here. You'd need to be some sorta super relationship guru-" Damn! Didn't get Hera's phone number! Gah! "-to work this one out." His eyes dip to the roof surface for a moment as he considers the matter. "These bad things that could happen with Holly if you decide wrong. Which scenario makes them more likely, saying yes or saying no?"

"I think 'yes'."

"Then that's probably your answer. I know you don't wanna hurt them and you can't be sure, but if you really think saying yes is more likely to do that than saying no, then…"

I nod. "Yeah. You're right." I stand up. "I was hoping you'd think of something I'd overlooked."

He nods. "We'll probably both think of something tomorrow."

"Heh." I check my watch again. Shouldn't be a problem getting back. I hold out my right hand to Mister Queen. "Thank you for listening to me, sir. I really appreciate it."

He shakes my hand. "No problem. Glad I could help." His eyes slide past me and his face drops. "Oh no."

I turn. Two rooftops over I see Artemis with a directional microphone.. pointed right at us.

…

I need to get back to Gotham.

back

Spring in Blume 14

next

18th February

22:41 GMT -5

I'm forced to turn away from the training room's holo display as Teekl shoves herself against my shins again. I think she understands why she needs to stay inside but she really hasn't liked being confined even for a day. And there's only so many times she can clean Wolf's coat before getting bored. "Okay Teekl." I bend down and rub her head with my right hand. "How about I get you something to chase?"

She moves her head around my hand and stares at me. "Not strong-mouse."

"Not strong-mouse. Okay… I can get you a robot or a Praexis Demon."

"Oldman?"

I glance up at the entrance to Red Tornado's quarters. He's actually out in his John Smith chassis at the moment. His father's up there though, continuing his task of transcribing everything he knows about robotics, AI programming and elemental magic into our database. I've been tempted a few times to call him back into the ring to partake of that knowledge myself, but aside from the obvious moral issues involved in doing that to a person when they're in no condition to give informed consent I'm concerned about what putting that much knowledge into myself would do. My brain doesn't need even more exotic effects applied to it. "No, you can't have Doctor Morrow."

Teekl looks away in displeasure. "Fatman."

I flick my left hand out to the side and release one of my Praexis Demon swarm. Not Fatty or Tubbs and I haven't bothered naming any of the others. I think this one was created during the fight with Sabbac. It drops to the floor, sniffs and then waddles around to face me. "Food now?"

"Yes, you are. Teekl, all yours."

"Ahh?" Teekl crouches, bum raised and wiggling. The Praexis Demon spots her and for a moment looks confused. Then its eyes widen as it gets it. "Aaah!" It waddles around and flees, arms extended in front of it. Teekl takes that as her cue and dashes after it. It catches sight of her out of the corner of its eye and leaps into the air, flying as fast as it can manage down a passageway with Teekl at its heels.

Okay, back to work. Blume got to Jupiter's orbit, sort of. There aren't actually any planets in that part of the system at the moment. As I'm looking at it on this display, Earth, Saturn and Venus are on one side of the sun and the other planets are on the opposite side. If Blume's coming towards Earth then he's certainly in no hur-.

"Recognised, Artemis, B zero eight."

Oh joy. I look around as she steps out of the tube. I don't know how much she overheard, but whatever it was is making her glow red. Holly took me saying 'no' well enough, though she did say to let her know if I changed my mind. Karon was more relieved, though it was more of an orange 'comfortable normalcy not being disrupted' relieved than a yellow 'intruder fear' relieved. I might end up taking her up… But I probably won't. Certainly I need to talk to Karon about things first.

I give Artemis a mild smile. "Artemis, good evening. How was the rest-?"

Her posture changes from 'tense' to 'attack'. Since we're in the mountain I've got both rings on so even if she gets physically aggressive I should be alright. Still not sure-. "How could you?! How could you even think about doing that!?"

She marches closer. "Could you narrow it dow-?"

"To-to Zatanna! With them!"

Eh? "Zatanna's under aged, I wasn't going to inc-."

And now she's up in my face. "Oh, is that why?!"

Oh, for goodness… "Artemis, what are you talking about?"

"You, cheating on Zatanna!"

What? "Artemis, I'm not dating Zatanna."

That does not compute. "What?"

"She… What's the phrase? Asked me out at New Year. I turned her down, you know, politely but firmly."

The red recedes a little. "Oh. But-. You went.. out on Valentine's Day."

"We did?"

"Yes!" She waves her hands around as she tries to get her thoughts in order. "That.. place in England, with the.. fancy armor."

"I thought Valentine's Day was in March."

"How can you think Valentine's Day is in March!?"

Ring, when is..? Oh. "Being.. single.. and not seeing.. any… You know, advertising? I only watch television to be sociable and I don't really.. go to.. shops anymore…"

She stares at me while she tries to work out whether I'm serious or not. Then she sags slightly, looks away and shakes her head. "You're unbelievable. You're unbelievable!"

"Thank you?"

"If you're not dating, how come you're spending so much time together?"

"Because she needs my support. I was.. spending lots of time with Kon when he first started living here for the same reason. I take trips to India with Wallace-."

"What about when you come out of her room at night!?"

"Zatanna has trouble sleeping sometimes and I'm a masseur. We've.. found it helps. Look, she just lost her father, and -even if she wasn't outside my half plus seven-" By eight years. "-her depending on me like she does, that's not a healthy way to start a relationship."

Artemis frowns. "Half plus seven."

"I'm eighteen, she's fourteen. That would make me a creep."

A slight awkwardness enters her stance. "She's.. fifteen in, like-."

"That doesn't make her sound older. That makes it sound like she's a five year old claiming to be five and a half."

"Oh. Ah…" Red's almost fully dissipated, thank goodness. "Huh. What exactly did you say to turn her down?"

I think for a moment. "'I don't think kissing me is appropriate. Leaving aside the fact that you're four years younger than me, you're depending on me a lot at the moment, emotionally. And I'm here for you, I'd just feel I was taking advantage if we did that. I'm sorry.'"

"Well, yeah, that's… I'm just not sure she.. heard it, y'know?"

"I know, I can see the violet light, but I can't keep saying it, can I? That would be mean. And she still needs me so I can't just.. stop seeing her." Artemis nods. "We good?"

She gives me a slightly unhappy nod, then switches over to a smirk. "Two girls, huh?"

"I said no. Too many unpredictable emotional variables."

She snorts. "And you built Zatanna a suit of armor just as a costume?"

"And the bolt pistols and eviscerator."

"What's.. an.. eviscerator?"

"Imagine if a sword and a chainsaw had a very angry baby. Which showed unusually extreme hybrid vigour."

She takes a moment to process that image, she shakes her head to get rid of the image. "Back in Star City, how come you weren't wearing your rings?"

I turn back to the holo display and expand the image of Lantern Blume. "This chap."

"There's one of Larfleeze's Construct-Lanterns coming here?"

"Slowly but surely."

"But your tattoos mean he can't detect you, right?"

"Yes. However…" I pull over a hologram of the globe with patches marked in different intensities of orange. "This shows everywhere I've used orange light. Ring users can detect this. Since neither Blume nor Larfleeze know how strong I am they can't tell how recent any of it is, but they know someone with an orange ring has been here. If I use orange light in an unwarded location, they'll know I'm still here."

"That would be bad."

"Yes. Since I don't want to be on the bench permanently I'm trying to come up with a better solution."

"Could you give it that Truggs guy?"

"Can't find him. I even tried a quintessence waveform scan thing for an hour or two."

"But you still got his finger, right?"

I nod, ideas beginning to arrange themselves around that fact. "Yes. I do."

back

Spring in Blume 15

next

18th February

23:02 GMT -5

Uuugh. "My appraisal? My appraisal is that she's a homophobic bitch sailing upon a river of entitlement a mile wide at its narrowest point! Gods!" I try to rein it in. Remember the exercises Guy taught me. Woosah. "She wants to rule but she doesn't actually have the skills to do the job and treats the people around her who could help her get through the situation like dirt. My appraisal is that the Justice League should start looking for someone else to take over when the situation implodes because it will."

The Sphere warbles at me and I pat her hull as I lean back in my seat. Six days I was stuck with Princess Adilah. Certainly cured me of any lingering idea about a political marriage. She got crowned on Wednesday but Batman ordered me to hang around until a few hours ago. I'm going to have to come up with something brilliant to make up for missing Valentine's Day to Jade. First time I've actually had something to celebrate and I had to work instead.

"Are you really sure she's that bad?"

Over the phone Diana can't see me roll my eyes. "Queen Beena knew she wanted to rule the country since she was a child. She studied Political Science at university, read everything relevant she could that would help, worked long hours, sacrificed everything related to a personal life-."

"She was an usurper."

"She was an usurper who created political stability, reduced crime year on year and -once you account for the effects of sanctions- improved the economy. And frankly, I don't see why being the 'legitimate' patrilineal descendant of a great grandfather who was the French Colonial Department's favourite local patsy should be the measure of legitimacy. Queen Beena did the job."

"And you don't think Queen Adilah will?"

I shake my head. "Ask me again tomorrow. I'm having a hard time clearing her screeching out of my ears well enough to be objective about it. I mean, she studied art history! Art history!"

"She wasn't allowed to study-."

"Politics, yes. She could have studied economics or history. She could have kept up with events in her spare time! Heck, she could have requested asylum. All it would have cost her was the stipend she got from Beena but nooo!" Woo-sah. "Can I go off duty now?"

"Yes. But before you do, I want to let you know that we won't be taking any further action against you-" Duh. "-regarding Sabbac. Having reviewed reports from the scene at length we've been forced to conclude that your actions -while unfortunate- were both legal and probably necessary."

"Glad you think so. How's Marvel doing?"

"He's made a full recovery. We've returned the bottle of Innocent's Tears to the Closed Order of the Alexins."

Mpf, fine, wasn't expecting to get that back anyway. And it's not like I don't know where they keep it. "Okay. I'm going to take care of one or two things, then I'm heading back to the mountain. You want anything else?"

"I think we should have a further talk about your comportment, but that can wait until you are fully rested."

I'll certainly look forward to that. "Good night, Diana." I dismiss the phone construct and look down at the house below me. Kate said that she had things set up, but given that I didn't know until a short time ago that I was going to be freed-. Ah! Secret Service agents move into place on the patio, adding to those already in the grounds. Scan. All armed, but not with anything that could threaten me if it came to it. Not that I'm planning anything, oh no. Best behaviour. I've got a lot riding on this meeting going well. A flunky comes out to hold open the door and there's the man himself. President Horne, his Chief of Staff Adrian Myer and.. Kate. Good.

"…from a surprising number of people, Ms Spencer." Horne strolls out onto the middle of the patio as he talks, apparently completely at ease. "And this isn't exactly my first time at one of these cloak-and-dagger meetings, but I've left a lot of very powerful people back there and I'd like some assurance that this is going to be worth my time."

"I believe it will be, sir." Her eyes flick upwards. She can't see me but she knows I'm either up here or at the other end of a Hush Tube.

Right then. Calm and confident. Woosah. I rise and step off the Sphere, falling towards the patio until I get to about ten metres up and activate my aero discs to slow my descent. "Mister President." Horne looks up, curious but not alarmed, as agents cluster around him with their guns drawn and pointed at me. "Thank you for taking the time to see me."

He looks me over as I touch down. "Okay, guys. Stand easy." The distinctly unhappy looking agents lower their weapons and part as he walks towards me. "Your name's Grayven, isn't it? Caught the thing in Fawcett City on GBS."

"Yes, sir. I'm sorry for the delay. I wanted to speak to you immediately after that but I had to prevent a civil war from breaking out in Bialya."

"The Secretary of State will be pleased about that. So: what did you want to talk about?"

"Mister President, what do you know about events concerning the Roanoke Island incident?"

He looks away for a moment. "A group of four magic-using supervillains cast a spell that split the world in two, adults and children. My grandkids slept right through but a lotta people weren't anything like so lucky. After the League shut it down China somehow got hold of the guys who did it and killed them."

"Essentially accurate, but missing one or two details. Firstly, I was the one who handed them over to the Chinese."

He looks me over again. "You're not exactly winning points with me there."

"Then the Justice Department shouldn't have tried to let Werner Vertigo get off scot-free. I had no faith in America's judicial system and took the course of action most likely to see them punished as they deserved." He nods. He's not agreeing with me, just taking in another data point. "Secondly, the Chinese killed four hirelings. The individual responsible for the ritual was able to escape and is currently at large."

"Jesus!" He turns to Mister Myer. "Adrian, did we know about that?"

Mister Myer shakes his head. "I think the Justice League's report said that there may have been other people involved."

"As one of the people on-site at the time, I can tell you there definitely was. Now, I'm sure that you are fully aware of exactly how much China's stock rose after that, even among the Republican right. That Texan Senator-."

"Senator Davis' motion of thanks was so uncharacteristic we nearly had him checked for mind control."

"Just so. Mister President, I am in a position to bring you the head of the ringleader, Klarion the Witch Boy." I generate a construct of how he was that night, at his most inhuman. Don't want anyone thinking he actually is a boy. "I have no way to bring him in alive, and if I did no one knows of any way to contain him. Including the League."

He nods again. "I doubt anyone could stop you. You clearly wanna do it." He shrugs. "What are you talking to me for?"

"I will undertake this action not as part of some private grudge or because I was incensed by his evil. I will do it to prevent his next attack, be it against America or some other country. And I would like some formal.. political sanction before I act. To be specific, I would like for a Presidential Pardon to be waiting for me once I'm done. In exchange, I am willing to-."

"Heh." He shakes his head. "Mister Grayven, you can't just let a President know that you're planning to murder someone and ask to be pardoned in advance."

"Mister President, you're looking at being the first elected President since Franklin Pierce to fail to secure his party's nomination to run again. You only won the last election because that thing with your opponent and the fifteen year old cheerleaders came out during the last week of the campaign. If the election happened now you'd lose to just about anyone the Republicans could throw up. You know this. I'm offering you a place on the podium alongside the man who killed someone responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths, mostly of young children. The world is scared. America is scared. You have the opportunity to be responsible for the slaying of the individual who caused that fear."

"And what do you get out of it?"

"I have no desire to live the rest of my life on the run." I nod my head to the side. "Also, the opportunity to show the Justice League that the killing of sufficiently bad people is the right thing to do."

"Hn." He folds his arms behind his back and slowly walks towards the fence at the edge of the patio. "Still can't do it. I can't approve a murder in advance."

Darn. China it is, then. "That's… Unfor-."

"Of course… Were a person whose continued existence posed a clear and present high level threat to the American public… If a person like that were to be killed… This administration would likely respond in a practical way rather than a puritanical one." He leans on the fence. "Recognizing the relative dangers the two individuals represent to the country, and.. what a serving member of the military or the intelligence services might have done in a similar place. After all, having used the army to fight Colombian farmers I can't really claim to have clean hands."

I glance at Kate, who seems ever so slightly pleased with the pronouncement. I nod. "I'm glad to hear it, Mister President. That sounds like a measured and appropriate response. Thank you for taking the time to see me."

back

Spring in Blume 16

next

19th February

06:11 GMT -5

"Goooood morning campers!" I turn my attention away from the waffle iron and beam at M'gann, Kon and Wolf as they walk in.

Artemis looks up as well. "Hey guys."

Kon nods. "Hey." Someone's not full of the joys of spring. He's not glowing either, but dawn isn't for another twenty minutes or so.

"Good morning Paul, good morning Artemis." M'gann's her usual upbeat self. "What brings you to the cave so early?"

"I crashed here last night. I was on patrol with Green Arrow, then there was some stuff I needed to talk to Paul about… Zatanna not with you?"

I shake my head. "Zatanna does not get up at six o'clock on Saturdays." Artemis and I spent an hour or so last night sketching out a rough draft of a plan for dealing with Lantern Blume. It's not anything like ready to put into practice but I'll try and get hold of Diana today to talk… I glance at Kon. Right. Kal-El is taking over supervision duty this week, isn't he. He's given lessons before but this will be the first time he's been around full time. I'm not really all that sure why he volunteered. Okay, he doesn't have to be in the Daily Planet offices full time.. and most of the editorial meetings are probably during school hours, but I would have thought that he'd struggle to do the job and spend the required hours around here.

Right, waffles should be… Yep, done. I attach filaments to each of the four waffles and transfer them onto two plates. M'gann levitates plates off the work surface and over to her and Kon's places. Artemis looks around to me as I use the rings to transfer another load of batter onto the iron. "Don't think I've ever been here this early before. What time does everyone usually show up?"

"Kaldur's up at six, but he goes for a swim before breakfast. He should be here at about half past. Tula and Garth.. vary a lot. They haven't fully adapted to Eastern Standard Time and they're still spending a lot of time in Poseidonis… Zatanna's up at seven, Rob gets here about eight and Wallace usually turns up at about nine if there's a morning session."

"What about Robin, Raquel and…" Her face goes blank. "Wonder.. Troy."

She forgot..? I suppose we haven't used it much. "Troia hasn't come often enough to have established a pattern. Robin and Raquel usually get here just before the training sessions start." M'gann spreads blueberry compote over her waffles while Kon squirts on some golden syrup. Another convert! "I've been wondering something for a while."

**What is it?**

Ah, M'gann talking with her mouth full. "Do you three.. not know.. Robin's name?"

Artemis blinks in surprise, then turns to look at M'gann and Kon. After meeting blank looks she turns back to me. "No… Wait, you do?"

"I do, Wallace almost certainly does… I've sort of been assuming that Kaldur and the Roys do, but I wasn't sure about the rest of you. You want more waffles?"

"Ah, yeah." She frowns slightly. "Did you find out with your ring, or did he tell you?"

"With the ring, but I only really interacted with his civilian identity just after-."

"When you fixed Mom's spine." She nods. "Because he had to when you fixed whoever it was for him."

I nod. "I think it's a bit odd he still hasn't told anyone, but if that's how he wants it I don't think I should... You know, spill the beans."

Kon chews a piece of waffle and then swallows. "Maybe he just prefers being called Robin? I've only just started preferring 'Kon' to 'Superboy."

M'gann looks mildly put out. "What about 'Conner'?" Waffle in the mouth at record speed. Well done that Kryptonian.

"Aaaaaa-!"

Artemis snorts. "Or maybe his real name's something completely embarrassing. Oh,-" She turns around to look at me again. "-do you know what time Superman's getting here?"

"About eight I think. Though he could end up getting delayed by the Blume thing."

Artemis nods while M'gann shakes her head. **Blume thing?**

"-aaaaa-!"

"Yeah, one of that Larfleeze guy's Construct-Lanterns came into the solar system on Thursday. There's a bunch of Green Lanterns up on the Watchtower right now working out how to get rid of it."

Kon's eyes widen slightly. "Isn't that, like, really bad?"

"It's certainly inconvenient. It doesn't become 'really bad' until it actually reaches an inhabited planet or assimilates a Lantern. So far it's just ignoring them."

"-aagh!" The Praexis Demon flies into the living room area, over the work surface and tries to hide in the table lighting. Teekl runs with her claws extended along the floor after it, fur puffed up and eyes wide and staring.

"Hey Teek." Artemis moves her chair, leans down and reaches towards Teekl with her right hand before swiftly pulling it back when Teekl turns her frantic gaze upon her.

Ooh, someone's gotten over-stimulated, haven't they? I hold my right arm out towards the Demon's hiding place. "Back in the ring you go." The Praexis Demon peers over the edge of the light fitting for a moment before diving just as fast as it can towards the ring, disappearing inside. Annnd now I know exactly what it's been up to since I let it out last night. Teekl's a lot scarier when you're a fat dwarf rather than the Lantern in nominal control of her.

Teekl's eyes fix on the ring for a moment, her tail twitching. Then her fur flattens and she raises her right paw to her mouth and starts grooming herself.

"So what's the plan, then?"

"Hm?" I turn away from my Cat and look at Kon. "Basically, we pretend that one of the rings I called ended up here and that Nylor Truggs got it."

"You said you couldn't find him. You got a lead?"

"No. I have a finger. More importantly, I have a finger that used to wear the ring. The basic plan is that we have the Green Lanterns kill 'him' somewhere Blume can see it and just leave the finger behind."

M'gann frowns. "I thought Green Lanterns weren't allowed to kill people."

"They're not, but I doubt that Larfleeze knows that. And if he did, he hasn't been outside Vega for thousands of years. For all he knows they've changed policy. Anyway, once he's seen that, I destroy him from behind with Crumbler rounds. He reappears where Larfleeze is and Larfleeze gets told that there was an Orange Lantern here but the Greenies killed him. If we're really lucky that will be enough to make him call off the whole thing and go back to his cave."

Kon looks at his now empty plate as he thinks it over. "What happens if he comes here to check?"

"Then we have a hell of a fight on our hands. I wassss… Hoping that the Controllers could make me some sort of supercharged neural chaff generator for.. when I was planning to fight him. Try and take him alive. If he comes here... I'm probably just going to have to kill him with the Sword of Second and Third. I'm not entirely happy about it but I can't think of a better option. He's far too dangerous to be allowed in an inhabited system."

Kon nods while M'gann decides to change the subject. "How did dinner go?"

"It was going fine until this.. Gotham gangster decided to pick a fight with the restaurant manager. He and one of his bodyguards are now guests of the Gotham constabulary." I turn back to the waffle iron and flip open the lid. So nice to have ring-assisted cooking back. "Who's up for seconds?"

back

Spring in Blume 17

next

19th February

07:56 GMT -5

"Recognised, Green Lantern, zero five." I smile as Lantern Jordan steps out of the zeta tube. "Green Lantern, one seven." And Guy…

Wallace leans a little closer to Kaldur. "I thought Superman was babysitting this week?"

"Green Lantern, A three two." Katma Tui's next.

Wallace frowns and I smile at him down the line of my team mates. "This could take a while."

"Green Lantern, A three three." Green Man. "Green Lantern, A three four." Saarek.

Robin grins. "Guess it's a field trip."

"Green Lantern, A three five." Jack Chance, who's frowning at the zeta tube as he slouches clear. "Superman, zero one." Kon looks away slightly, then makes a small shrugging gesture with his face. "Hawkwoman, one zero." I wait for a moment but no one else emerges. Oookaaaay. Not really sure what's-.

Jordan approaches the line-up. "Okay team, since this is the only facility under Justice League control that's warded against detection by power ring I'm afraid that we're going to be borrowing your training area today." I notice how hard Rob's trying not to jump for joy. "In lieu of combat training, Hawkwoman's going to be giving a class on tactical planning in one of the briefing roomsss…" He stops and stares at Zatanna's new armour. "Huh."

Missus Hol takes it in her stride. "Orange Lantern, stay put. Everyone else, follow me."

I remain standing at ease as they file out. Near the back of the Lantern-huddle Lantern Chance nudges Lantern Saarek. "Thought this planet was isolated?"

"You thought correctly."

"'Cause I'm counting nine different species in this 'Justice League' alone, plus.. whoever sold them that zeta tube. That don't say 'isolated' to me."

Kal-El takes a couple of steps towards them. "Unless the roster's changed since the last time I checked, there are only five different species in the Justice League. And the zeta tube system we use was developed on Earth by a man named Doctor Saul Erdel."

Chance raises his eyebrows. "You can manipulate zeta beams and you still burn hydrocarbons for power?"

"I'm not sure I see the connection."

I do. As part of the speech I'm planning to give I've looked up the order in which other species have developed particular technologies. Non-magical teleportation before exotic power generation is practically unheard of.

"Okay, forget that. Different species." Lantern Chance counts off on his fingers. "Kryptonian, Human, whatever that Wonder Woman is-."

"I think you'll find that Diana's Human."

Lantern Chance shakes his head. "Not what my ring says. And then you've got.. Aquaman,-"

"Aquaman's Human."

"Humans can't live at the bottom of oceans and breathe water. Then there's a Martian and two Thanagarians-"

"Sir?" I look at Lantern Jordan and Lanterns Green Man and Tui also approach. "Have you had a chance to review my outline?"

"-an Aurakle-."

"I'm.. not sure I know what that is."

Jordan nods. "Yeah, and we've got some fairly major concerns. The whole point of having you train Green Lanterns in how to resist assimilation was to make sure we could confront things like Blume safely. Your plan requires all of us to fly out where he can see us and do something that will definitely piss him off."

"That Captain Atom guy. Some energy creature takes a shine to a normal person and merges with 'em."

"Captain Atom… Well, we're not exactly sure what happened to him, but he's as Human as most people on Earth are." Lantern Chance gives him a look of incredulity.

"Probably piss him off, yes. I'm happy to use our remaining time to train your lot in orange light resistance but we've got a very finite amount of time and I know from Guy's efforts that railgun constructs don't come naturally to greenies."

Lantern Tui frowns. "Why would we need to use railgun constructs? If we can learn to hurt 'Construct' Lanterns-" I can see how much that idea makes her uncomfortable. "-with our constructs at all, what does it matter what form they take?"

"You've got a full on artificial intelligence, who's gotta be a couple of hundred years more advanced than anything else I've seen around here. You've got a Terminan, an energy being stuck in a helmet and a thing made of some sort of organic rubber."

"Look, Plastic Man is Human as well."

"Whatever you say, pal."

I take a Crumbler round out of subspace and hold it out to her. "Because railguns and coilguns can fire these. Did Guy tell you what they can do?" Slight inclination of the head. Right. I rise into the air and fly backwards to the far end of the room. "Please create a construct barrier. Not around yourself, obviously." I toss the round into the air and form a railgun construct around it. Lantern Tui extends her right hand and generates a slightly convex rectangular barrier.

Lantern Jordan backs off slightly as the rest of the Lanterns form an arc to spectate.

"Metahumans can have a wide variety of physical characteristics, it doesn't mean that they stop being Human."

"In point of fact, Kal-El, I don't think that Diana's Human either. Given how she was created, classifying her as a young Titan makes more sense." He looks mildly embarrassed about talking in class. "I'm well aware that Green Lanterns are taught to focus on single powerful barriers for their defence in combat. In our training sessions Lantern Gardner and I have switched over to using multiple layers of ablative shields." I aim the railgun and charge it up. "Here's why."

There's the signature hum- "Ow!" -as the gun fires and the round shatters Lantern Tui's defensive construct. She opens and closes the fingers of her right hand in an attempt to work out some of the feedback pain.

"If it hits a construct, the construct goes down. At full speed I can fire one of these-" I take another round out of subspace. "-every second per construct gun, and if I really tried I could probably increase that further. Lantern Chance, you're familiar with firearms, aren't you?"

"Yeah?"

"Front of the class then." He trudges slovenly forwards, keeping both eyes on me. I move my railgun construct over to him. "Can you make one?"

He carefully looks it over and-. Ah, that's interesting; he doesn't point his ring at it as he scans it. "If it's that important, why don't we just carry a real railgun? Or a gravity pulse gun?"

"Because it's faster to make another construct than fix a real gun if someone damages it. I'm not talking about mass production here, just about Lantern combat. And.. gravity pulse guns are a bit of a risk in an atmosphere or close to an inhabited planet. The damage is getting done by the warhead, not the kinetic force, so a comparatively lower speed isn't a negative while racking up a massive number of friendly fire kills would be."

Saarek raises an eyebrow in a totally Vulcan way! "Would this not risk violating the Guardians' prohibition on the use of lethal force?"

"If you hit someone directly and they're not wearing a force field of some sort, yes. So don't. I give the ring-" I raise my left hand slightly. "-instructions on targeting and have it automate the actual shooting, though as I understand it that's a lot more difficult for you Greenies."

"Gun." Lantern Chance visibly strains as a green railgun… A green railgun that's slightly larger than mine materialises alongside mine. "Heh."

"Right then. Let's see if you can use it."

back

Spring in Blume 18

next

19th February

08:22 GMT -5

"…itdrokitdrokitdrokit…"

"Identity theft twelve percent complete."

"Come on Jackie, I'm soft-peddling you here."

"…itdrokitdrokitdrokit…"

The wave of orange is briefly pushed back a little, until an air rifle propelled paintball hits him on the cheek.

"Identity theft twenty two percent complete. Identity theft thirty percent complete. Identity theft-."

I shake my left hand and dismiss the effect. "Lantern Chance?"

Guy comes up alongside him and nudges him with his right elbow. "Looks like maybe someone shouldn't'a skipped basic after all."

Saarek looks thoughtful. "Or perhaps Lantern Gardner's technique is not something readily applicable to other Lanterns."

Lantern Chance wipes some of the paint off and flicks it onto the floor. "Like to see you do any better."

Results on creating railguns have been less than brilliant. With practice they can now all generate them but only Lantern Chance can maintain it under pressure. They all use the fat construct connections that Guy used to, though in this case that probably won't hurt.

"Just to check: can I assume that skipping basic training means that you've never done the M'eelam Na'aquall either?"

"The what?"

Lantern Jordan shakes his head. "Most Lanterns don't. Out of everyone here it's just me and Gardner." He thinks for a moment. "Do you mean you think Lanterns who haven't done it can't learn-?"

"Naw." Guy shakes his head. "I was doin' it before I did mine."

"Perhaps a new volunteer? Lantern Jordan?"

"Sure, I'll give it a shot." The glow of his environmental shield intensifies. "Hit me."

I don't want to assimilate him. But I do want to take it up to about sixty percent and then turn it off manually. Guess that's the testosterone talking again, but gosh darn it! I turned down a threesome yesterday. I need this.

"Rings." I hold my hands out to the sides and allow orange light to precipitate out in the form of a knot of mini-Ophidians. "Hitting now."

"Wait a sec-."

Mouths open they surge forwards and bite into his environmental shield, covering him in orange light.

"Identity Theft in progress. One percent complete. Warning, will detected."

Credit to Jordan, he did actually pay attention when Guy explained how it works. "From Will arises the Self. All that I am-" The air rifle paps as I aim it at his eyes. He doesn't react at all, doesn't even blink. "-I will to be."

"Warning, will intensifying." One of the snakes starts to shimmer and fade.

Come on! Make him mine!

"Identity Theft in progress. Five percent complete."

"I am."

Rays of green light burst through the orange cocoon. Aargh, I'm going to lose. I could… No, I'm not simulating a plane crash here to distract him, there's no way that Blume or Larfleeze would know to do that. Cracks form between the rays and-.

"Identity Theft interrupted by will pulse. Do you wish to resume?"

Darn it.

Jordan glows a brilliant green, both inside and out. He nods to his audience, looking pleased with himself. "And that's how it's done."

Guy nods. "Good job, Hal. Now let's see you do it while firing a railgun construct."

Some of the 'pleased' leaks away. "Well how about you show me how it's done first?"

"Lantern Jordan? That's what we do out in the desert. Gu-." Guy glances at me with his left eyebrow raised. Still annoyed, then. "Lantern Gardner can simultaneously fly, protect himself from assimilation, shield himself from Crumbler rounds and fire Crumbler rounds back at me. He has a little trouble with short FTL hops but aside from that I can't fault his Lantern to Lantern combat abilities."

Guy grins, spreading his arms out to the side and makes beckoning gestures with his hands. "Heh-hey, check me out."

"What precisely do you mean by 'short FTL hops'?"

"Should I be calling you 'Lantern Green Man' or 'Lantern Man'?"

"Uxorians do not generally have individual names. In my language my name just indicates that I am a male member of the Green Lantern Corps, a 'Man of the Green'. I've never really thought about how it should be parsed by people from cultures with multi-part names. Which sounds better to your ears?"

"Lantern Green Man it is. What I mean, is.. this." The room flickers as I move from where I'm standing to a position in the air next to the entrance to Red Tornado's room. "I can perform-" Flicker. "-short ranged-" Flicker. "-FTL jumps in order-" Flicker. "-to evade attack and improve-" Flicker back to the start. "-my position. I haven't got the hang of using the ring to phase quite yet. On the other hand-" I generate a railgun turret pointing at each of them, don my heavy power armour and generate multi-layered construct armour over the top of it. "-I've pretty much got the basics down." I look at Jordan. "No giant green boxing gloves here, thank you very much."

Guy grins at Jordan. "Oh no he didn't!"

Jordan takes a deep breath. "It makes sense to use familiar objects for construct attacks-."

"When you're just starting out, sure. But you've been doing this a while now. I mean, Guy hasn't used construct-armour that looks like American football armour in… Days, at least."

"Oh, you are not off my shit-list enough t'say that."

"Lantern Chance, I think the problem is that -having missed out on having Lantern Kilowog shout at you for months on end- you aren't used to sparring. It's not a 'real' fight so in your head.. you don't give it your all."

"If you wanna make a real fight of it, Orange, then be my guest."

"Thank you, but I don't fight against other Lanterns inside a mountain whose sides are the only thing preventing Blume from discovering me." I shake my left hand, causing Fatty to fall out.

"Food now?"

"See the bloke in the red coat, with the guns?"

"Uhhay?"

"You can eat him."

"Yay!" Jack draws his fusion pistol and shoots Fatty in the mouth. Fatty sucks the energy ball down and then belches.

"Crumblers are all that will stop him. Anti-assimilation techniques are your only defence. Think you can focus now?"

back

Spring in Blume 19

next

19th February

11:49 GMT -5

"I… I assert my individuality!"

"Identity Theft interrupted by will pulse. Do you wish to resume?"

"Well done Lantern Green Man." As far as I can read Uxorian facial expression he looks pleased with the outcome as well. "At least Blume won't be able to ow!" I open and close my hand as the Praexis Demon that just returned to the ring shares its experiences with me. I stare at Guy, who is tapping his right foot, staring at the ceiling and whistling. "Thank you Lantern Gardner for establishing that Construct Lanterns haven't somehow become immune to Crumbler rounds."

He looks at me with an expression of pantomimed innocence. "I dunno what you're talkin' about."

"You're the only one here aside from me who can do filament control."

"You should be glad these guys are such quick learners." The tone says sincerity. The eyes say something rather different.

"Okay, well done everyone. Why don't we have a break, recharge our rings, get something to eat. Reconvene at thirteen hundred local time?" Nod, or other affirmative gestures as appropriate. Jordan and the visiting Greenies begin heading back to the zeta tube.

"Lantern Chance, could I borrow you for a moment?"

He turns away from the others. "Sure. Hey, how many o'those Crumbler things you got?"

"Several hundred in my subspace pocket."

"Something like that could come in pretty handy back on Hellhole."

"I'm sure it could."

Guy smirks. "Careful there, Paul. Jackie's ring usually only works on his homeworld. The Guardians had t' give him special dispensation t' come here."

Jack looks rather proud of that fact. "What I do ain't pretty, but I'm the best there is at it."

Did he just mangle a Wolverine quote? "Guy? Kal-El? Would you mind giving us a moment?"

Kal-El looks at me askance, but nods anyway. "I'll tell Hawkwoman to recess the class. I'm sure they could use a break too."

"Thank you, sir."

"Ah. Yeah, I'll… Go find the kitchen or somthin'. Hey, Paul?"

"Yes?"

There's a flash of green and he's gone. Ring? Hah! Getting there! Kal-El looks at the space Guy had occupied for a moment before rising into the air and flying down the corridor leading to the classroom.

Lantern Chance nods. "So. You want something you don't want them to know about."

I hold up my left index finger and project a soundproof bubble shield around us. Then I take an anti-eavesdropping charm out of my pocket and hold it out to him. He frowns slightly before taking it from me. "No, not really. I just want to give them plausible deniability. If I wanted to avoid detection completely I'd have a third party telepath transmit a message to you when you're off duty."

"Your species isn't supposed to be telepathic."

"It's not a common trait, but there are a few Human telepaths."

"Sheesh. I got so used to my ring being right about stuff the whole time I got outta the habit of questioning it. Anything else not on here I should know about?"

"Did they just… Not update your database or something? Jordan, Stewart and Gardner's reports should have contained this stuff even if Abin Sur and Starkaor didn't spend enough time here to notice."

He shrugs. "My homeworld's a warzone. I don't have time to spend just flicking through the database."

"Okay. Um. A small subset of Humans -a good deal less than one percent of the population of six billion- manifest unusual abilities. These people are referred to as 'metahumans' and can end up being able to do just about anything, though an individual's abilities are usually fairly limited."

"So you've got telepaths, people my ring thinks are bonded Aurakles, people made of some sort of weird plastic, people who can breathe under water-."

"That last one was the result of magic engineering. And.. the.. middle two, the metahuman ability was more likely to be the ability to survive being exposed to the things that gave them those abilities. Plastic Man wasn't always plastic."

He starts assembling a new roll up. "Back home, there's a bunch of different species and I don't always know what they can do, but the ring could tell me. This place… You never know what you're getting into. Anyway, what was it you wanted for a supply of Crumblers?"

"There's a man, his name is Alan Scott. About seventy local years ago he got hold of a damaged Green Lantern ring and equally damaged personal lantern. The Guardians didn't send someone in to take it back because it was off the network, but the basic functions still worked."

"Okay. And?"

"Alan's an old man now. When I arrived on Earth, he gave me his lantern and… Well, it's difficult to describe precisely. In essence, his own body is partially a construct. In theory, if he kept his ring charged he could go on pretty much forever. As it is he'd be lucky to see out the year. "

"He can't have mine."

"Not permanently, no. And after this I imagine that the Guardians expect you to go right back to… Hellhole, you said?"

"Its actual name is 'Garnet'. Hellhole's just more descriptive." A green flame appears on the signet of his ring and he lights his cigarette with it. "So, you want me to let him recharge off my lantern and in return… You give me as many Crumblers as I can carry?"

"Maybe not quite that many, but that's the general idea."

"You've got three Green Lanterns here already. Why not just ask them?"

"They've been forbidden from doing so. And I imagine that the same general ordinance applies to our other guests. You, on the other hand-."

"Aren't covered by the rules." He exhales a cloud of surprisingly white smoke. I suppose there was no reason to assume that he was smoking tobacco. "Guardians excluded me from all that drok when they let me use lethal force. Which means I'm the only guy in the Corps who can do this, 'cause there sure as hell aren't any others like me."

"My alternative is a smash and grab on Apokolips and hope they kept some as trophies."

He thinks for a moment, taking another drag. "I'd take the deal -though you better believe you'll be giving me a good price- but after this is over I'm not going to be coming back. Unless a Construct-Lantern turns up in my Sector I'll be stuck on the planet again."

"I'm planning to get a new one built for him in about five months. I just need to keep him topped up until then. One full recharge should do it."

"Alright. Your money, or other fungible assets. Let's say… Ten thousand rounds?"

"I don't have ten thousand rounds, and I don't want to take the chance that someone on your homeworld gets the design. I'll offer you two hundred." He sneers. "And I'll throw in a freeze ray."

He waves his right hand dismissively. "Those things are never worth it. Never enough water vapour in the air to stop someone-."

"This is an Earth freeze ray. It fires a beam that reduces the target to zero degrees Kelvin."

"Heh, wipe that drok off your tongue or you'll start tasting it."

I take a freeze ray and an apple out of subspace. I attach the freeze ray to a construct targeter and pass him the apple. "One Earth fruit. Would you confirm that it's room temperature?" He rolls it around his hand for a moment before nodding. I take it back, drop my construct barrier and throw it into the air. At the apex of its flight I trigger the freeze ray. The beam strikes it dead centre and it crashes back to the ground, shattering on the floor. I smile at him. "Satisfied?"

back

Spring in Blume 20

next

19th February

12:13 GMT -5

"I think we might need to get a larger kitchen."

Robin nods. "I think you're right." Ten of our team mates plus Hawkwoman, Superman and Guy in our not all that large kitchen at once is not a great idea. Robin glances at Jack. "How come you didn't go with the others?"

He shrugs. "Not like I know any of them either. I spent about seven minutes on Oa total just after I got my ring. Apart from that, never left my homeworld."

M'gann uses telekinesis to valiantly rescue what's left of the bread from Wallace's super sandwich construction area and floats it over the crowd to the work surface on the opposite side of the kitchen. He turns back from talking to Zatanna to find that he's buttered lettuce. The Atlanteans are trying to get to the fridge but their way is blocked by Lantern Gardner, who's rummaging in the cupboard above it. Since he's only been in this kitchen once he clearly has no idea where anything is. Kon wants to get to the microwave but Kal-El is too close to it for comfort so he's stuck with a tub of frozen lasagne in his hand and from the way Missus Hol just grimaced I think Rob knocked her wing again.

"So, how did the planning exercise go?"

He smirks. "We spent three hours going over your plan for attacking Lantern Blume."

"How bad?"

"Some of it wasn't terrible. You know. For a first attempt."

Artemis rolls her eyes, picks Guy up- "Hey, what-?" -around the waist and carries him out of the way. Garth lunges for the suddenly available space and yanks open the fridge door before his path can be blocked again. Maybe we need some sort of lunch rota? Usually people just eat when they get hungry so things don't get this crowded. Dinner's a lot better organised. "Oh, hey Paul. Chance." Artemis puts him down and he steps away from her, straightening his jacket, before turning and smiling at her. "You been eating yer greens there?"

"Ah, mooore using an alchemical muscle enhancement formula. But I try and eat right too."

I take two plates out of subspace, each with a baked potato, a small salad, a knife and a fork. "I suggest avoiding the scrum."

"Thanks Paul." Artemis takes a plate and makes her way over to the table.

Guy looks less impressed. "What, no crab?"

"I've eaten crab once in my life, Guy. It was a weird tasting mush I've never wanted to revisit."

"You ain't had crab done right 'til you've eaten Baldamore Blue. Tell you what, if Blume don't kill us all I'll take the whole gang back home so you can marvel at my city's culinary brilliance."

"It's the way you can say such bullshit with such utter conviction that always impresses me."

"We can probably find a lime for you to squeeze on yours."

We stare at each other for a moment before we both chuckle and look away. Jack takes the opportunity to take hold of the plate with his left hand and pick the potato up with his right. "What is this?"

"That's a potato. It's a starchy tuber. Oven baked, so the skin's slightly-" He bites into one end and chews for about a second before realising that it's still oven hot and then doing the not-touching-the-sides-of-the-mouth-dance. I take pity and take a glass of water out of subspace. He puts the potato back down on the plate then grabs it and gulps down a mouthful.

Guy smiles at him. "You alright there, Jack?"

Jack swallows, then hesitates for a moment. "Yeah." He nods. "Tastes okay, actually. You make this with your ring or what?"

"I like cooking. Sometimes I'll just spend a day baking the same thing again and again until I get it perfect. "

"'Cause that's not crazy at all."

"As opposed to doing it once and not recording what went wrong? Anyway, when I get something down I stick whatever it is in subspace storage until I need it." Hmm. "If you like, we could probably include some fresh fruit and vegetables with those railgun rounds you wanted. I don't know how good our stuff is for your species…"

"Eh, maybe. See how long the Guardians let me stick around." Glass of water in one hand and plate in the other he walks over to the table and sits down opposite Artemis.

Robin gazes after him. "Of course, if the Green Lanterns start taking themselves out with baked potatoes we might need to rethink our plans. How did the training go?"

"They are now all capable of resisting assimilation and firing construct railguns. Lanterns Tui and Jordan can even do both at once."

"Might have longer than we thought to plan this." Robin calls up his arm computer. "Given how fast he was going we expected Blume to reach Earth some time next week, but it looks like he's stopped."

Odd. "He's not eating Voyager or anything, is he?"

"No, don't think so." He switches to a solar system view with Blume's position marked, just past Jupiter's orbit. "As far as I know there's nothing-."

"Oh yes there bloody is!" Ring, check for me. "That's where I keep the metal I've taken out of the asteroid belt."

Robin raises his right eyebrow. "Is that a problem? Does having more money make him stronger or something?"

"No, it's… I think that before he met Larfleeze he used to hibernate once he got a certain amount. It's just really inconvenient." Is it a problem? "I suppose… It makes Larfleeze slightly more likely to come here, but honestly..? It shouldn't matter."

The Atlanteans walk past us with plates carrying some sort of stuffed flatbread. Kal-El takes his soup bowl out of the microwave and moves away, allowing Kon to step in.

Guy nods at Robin. "So what's the plan, kid?"

"We realized that since we've got no idea what senses Blume's species has, creeping up from behind wasn't going to work. Not reliably, anyway."

"Even if I have my power armour phased?"

"There are ways to detect it, and if the Orange Central Power Battery came with a Maltusian database-."

"Yeah, you could be right."

"Plus, we found the whole 'cloning Truggs' to be pretty creepy."

"It wouldn't be conscious."

"Wait, what?" Guy looks from Robin to me. "You were gunna clone the guy?"

"I wanted Blume to be able to compare DNA samples-."

"Which don't matter because he can't scan you anyway."

"So what you're saying is, rather than having a fake fight-."

"You'll be fighting the Green Lanterns yourself."

"I know that I can cut off whole limbs and leave them behind, but that doesn't mean that I particularly want to."

"I know. Ideally, you'd leave one of your rings there as proof-."

"No."

"We figured. And it makes more sense for one of the Green Lanterns to destroy Blume than it does for you to do it. Just in case he can detect what fired the railgun rounds."

"I… Suppose. And.. one of the Green Lanterns does a rapid FTL transition so I'm not there after my 'death'? The only one of them who knows how to do that is..."

Guy grins. "Which city has the best food in the world again?"

back

Spring in Blume 21

next

19th February

19:52 GMT -5

Jack looks away from checking over his pistols for a moment to glance at Teekl. "Hey, how come we didn't practise with that.. four legged construct thing?"

Teekl looks up at him and makes the most harmless-innocent face I've ever seen her wear. "Maow?"

"Because I was fairly confident you could beat the Praexis Demon, and pretty confident Teekl would eat you."

Jack actually looks slightly pained by the implication. "Eh?"

"She was the familiar of a Lord of Chaos before I assimilated her. She's not an animal, she has Hu-. Um, humanoid equivalent intelligence. She can't use constructs herself but she can modify her own body and phase. And she likes hunting things."

Jack doesn't look like he believes me. Teekl rolls on her back and waves her legs in the air in a kittenish display. Oh, she's baiting him.

"Okay everyone, the probes have confirmed it." We both look around as Lantern Jordan starts his pre-engagement speech. "Blume's moving again, which means we're a go." After eating my entire metal reserve. Bastard thing. Maybe it won't have been able to fully digest it before we destroy it? "Remember, after Orange Lantern 'dies' we're going to try talking it into leaving first. Our lives will all be a lot easier without a bunch of Construct-Lanterns all over the place and Larfleeze is the only one who can call them back."

A last minute addition to the plan I'm really not happy about. Oh, sure, Larfleeze can project… Larfleeze could project through his Construct-Lanterns in the comic. I don't know if he can here. Buuuut even if he can't, he must have some way of keeping in touch. We can still destroy Blume to send the message back.

Jordan holds his right hand forwards and slightly up. There's a faint wave of green as his personal lantern materialises from subspace. I notice the other Green Lanterns are following suit, bringing out their personal lanterns for a recharge.

"In brightest day, in blackest night,

No evil shall escape my sight."

Lantern Tui remains silent, light simply flowing into her ring without a verbal trigger. Jack slouches slightly. The Green Man, Guy and Saarek begin their oaths as well. Have to say, said as a group it loses something when they're all different.

"Bring light to the ring,

I charge thee--unveil every evil around me!"

"On worlds afar or scenes at home,

wherever the cause should make me roam,"

"…that evil's dark can ne'er demean.

The light of justice must be seen…"

"Let those who worship evil's might

Beware my power--Green Lantern's light!"

A beam of green light flows from Jordan's lantern into his ring, causing it to sparkle brilliantly. I turn my head to Jack. "Not joining in?"

"I like to go last. Makes it more memorable." He clears his throat loudly. "You ready?"

"Blow me away."

"You who are wicked, evil, and mean,

I'm the nastiest creep you've ever seen!"

He grins, eyes wide, clearly not taking it even slightly seriously. From the expression on the other Lanterns' faces they haven't heard it before and certainly don't approve. I think Guy's muttering something.

"Come one, come all; put up a fight;

I'll pound your butts with Green Lantern's light.

Yowza!"

"Recharge complete."

That's a… Rather sexy ring voice. Jack continues ignoring the looks his fellow Greenies are giving him. "Hey, you got one?"

I float my own personal lantern up from the ground and take hold of it with both hands. I could use the Ophidian version, but if we're trying to convince Blume that I'm just a regular orange ring user… I'm not sure the mountain's wards could take her getting involved.

Let them come anyway!

Not yet, Ophidian. Soon, but not yet.

"This is my cause, this is my fight,

Shine through the void with orange light,

I've claimed all within my sight,

To keep what is mine, that is my right."

Orange energy flows from the lantern, into the rings and up my arms until I'm standing in the middle of an orange bonfire. Ophidian, that's not helping.

"Charge complete. Two hundred percent normal maximum power available."

"Nice. Where'd you get the second ring?"

"Lantern John Stewart's finger." I put my lantern back down and then float off the floor. "Think you can fight well enough to make this look even slightly realistic?"

"I've been fighting my whole life."

"Right then. I'll be in Sydney." I fly directly for the zeta tube. "You got the finger?" He nods and raises his middle one at me. "Oh, har-"

"Recognised, Orange Lantern, B zero six."

20th February

10:55 GMT +10

"-har." Beach house. Good place for changing. Power armour mark… Four..? Phase shifter, stealth generator, molecular reinforcement field, flight belt, backup flight belt, air purification system and combat virtual intelligence. Basically proper non-ring user power armour. Or a strangely man-shaped spacecraft. I sigh from inside my work of military beauty. And I'm going to have to wreck it. What a blasted waste. I activate the phasing and stealth systems and fly up through the roof.

Looks like the beginning of a nice day here in Australia. Early Autumn's my favourite time of year. Hmm. I'm not using a great deal of ring power to do this but Blume should be able to pick me up. A thought and the armour starts displaying his location as relayed from the Justice League probes. Blume's just over the horizon from me at the moment. Usually I'd just transition but since I'm trying to look like a beginner… I accelerate out across the Tasman Sea. My top speed is now a good bit higher than what caused me to lose control when I first started flying with Diana, though unlike Superman I can't react to things that happen suddenly at that speed. Not without ring assistance, anyway.

No response from Blume, yet. I leave the stealth system running and create the large orange barrier around me that I need for serious speed. Gives away my approximate position but not my exact position. Mach one, mach two, mach three… No booms yet. Working properly, then. I angle up slightly, gaining altitude. The Greenies should start intercepting me as I reach the edge of the atmosphere. From there I'll be using some of the less efficient forms of FTL on the ring's database to get somewhere Blume can't help but spot me. Unless he just comes in for a look on his own initiative. I don't think that'll scare people. They must be used to me making weird constructs by now.

Will detected.

I don't try and look round, letting the armour's HUD mark the position for me. That should be Jack now. A good distance-

A bolt of green light blasts past me.

-away. Hmm. I've got plenty of power to play with… I create particle beam turret constructs and fire at him. At this range single shot slower than light weapons are a matter of luck more than anything… He evades with little difficulty and a few seconds later the beams strike the Pacific Ocean far below us.

Will detected.

More Green Lanterns on course to intercept. Right then. Let's have a little fun.

back

Spring in Blume 22

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20th February

01:07 GMT

A railgun construct appears right alongside Lantern Jordan and teaches him the folly of using a kite shield in space. I'm only using titanium rounds so as to preserve the Crumbler surprise for Lantern Blume but long hours of shooting them at Guy means that I know exactly how much force to apply to bruise someone through an environmental shield. Jordan lurches away from the attack, curling up and surrounding himself in a bubble shield. A second later a green beam from Lantern Tui blasts my construct apart and a wave of green from Lantern Green Man destroys the rest of my trailing filaments.

They can learn!

A freeze ray splashes off my construct armour as Jack tries out his new pistol again. Only works on matter, Jack. I expand the glow around my left arm before stabbing it in his direction, firing a wide beam of orange light. He evades with a short transition before retaliating with… I'm not sure, some sort of gun construct. Sub light, Jack. Tut tut. Basically worthless in these conditions.

I bend gravity around me in a genuine Star Trek style warp jump, leaping closer to Lantern Blume's position. He's definitely moving and he's accelerated since we started but he doesn't exactly appear to be in a rush. He shouldn't be able to scan me directly but since Teekl and the Praexis can see me fine with their eyes I'm going to assume that he's spotted all of the light flashes. We're getting to the point in the exercise where I have to contact him by ring. And I can't check in with Guy first just in case he can pick up on that.

I dump fragmentation bombs out of subspace into my emergence area and continue in the direction of my old space-based piggybank. Might as well try and get a look at the damage he's done. Maybe he's so sluggish because he's glutted himself? Or maybe he just can't be bothered. How afraid is Larfleeze of regular Green Lanterns? No idea. He didn't seem to be significantly afraid of them at any time during the comics… But maybe that had something to do with the Controllers breaking the truce? Right, two light-seconds. I fire a series of laser pulses back towards the area I warped to, followed by a smattering of railgun shots. Pure luck if I hit anythi-. There's a flash as the bombs detonate. Really? One of them was dumb enough to play follow-my-warp? Honestly Kilowog, when my year's up we're going to have a chat about what you've been teaching these people.

We've left the Earth far behind now. Without the rings or my VI's visual assistance I'd have no idea where it was. Unnerving, rea-. I swiftly evade as green energy pulses blast past me. Sub-light attacks, guys… I drop my construct armour and reactivate invisibility and phasing, warp again and drop bombs again. Come on, don't depress me again. Okay, I can just about see Blume unaided and he.. shouldn't be able to see me. Deep breath. Ring, open a channel to Lantern Blume.

Please specify-.

I hold out my left arm in Blume's direction.

That one there.

Compliance.

No immediate response. Now, how should a desperate Orange Light neophyte sound? "Oi! You! Head-thing! Make yourself useful!"

There's a very slight change in how Blume positions himself. His mouth tentacles wiggle slightly. Did he hear-?

"Thief!"

Yes. Yes he did.

"I hunger for you!"

"You're food. You got eaten. You don't get hungry." I warp a little closer and his tentacles all yank towards the place I just appeared in. Mov-ing. He swivels around but I've already evaded. No constructs or energy blasts yet. No Larfleeze either. Would he recognise me?

Still moving around him I drop neural chaff generators out of subspace-. Another jerk of the mouth tendrils. He felt that. This time his mouth opens and orange light spills out. I rush to get out of the way… The chaff generators in the affected area are swiftly drawn into his mouth. He isn't opening it fully, but if he were? I could stand there with room left over above and below me. Blume's head part is about thirteen metres tall but he appears to be able to open his mouth to about six or seven metres. Looks like he doesn't have jaw bones. Okay, ring, monitor his response and detonate the chaff generators.

Compliance. All remaining neural chaff generators detonated. No noticeable response from Lantern Blume.

He's an alien with no organic brain. That was really a hope-attack more than anything. Still, it would have been nice…

"Show yourself, thief!"

"This isn't your ring! ISN'T! I got it, I'm KEEPING it!"

"Thieeeeeeef!"

Yes, this about sets the tone for Orange Lantern communication.

"My shiny metal! Where's my shiny metal?! What did you do with my metal, stupid head?!"

"I am Blume, God of Hunger!"

"You are Stupid Head, God of Heads! What did you do with my metal?"

Blume wheels around once more, spraying orange light around him. Dodge, pull back a little, dodge-.

Will detected.

Oh, thank goodness. And no explosions. I don't really want to show myself at this juncture so I'll let the Greenies handle this bit. They form a small cluster about a kilometre from Blume and Jordan generates a large Green sigil.

"Orange Lantern, your kind are bound by treaty with the Guardians of the Universe-" Heh, 'universe', right. "-to stay within the borders of the Vega Systems. Get the hell back there right now."

"Thieeeeeff!"

I drop stealth and phasing right behind him, armouring myself and shoving my hands forwards. Guy, you better be ready… "Thief this, Stupid Head." Destruction! The orange beam blasts from my hands, hitting Blume just above the collar.

"Raaaaaaaghh!" Blume lurches in space for a moment before wheeling around, eyes and mouth glowing brightly. Um. Okay guys, whenever-.

A beam of green energy hits me right in the chest. That's a bit stronger than is strictly necessary. Guess, ah… Guess Jordan's a bit annoyed about that railgun thing. I form a weak shield construct and block the follow up green light pulses, only for Jack to shoot me in the back. Oh, come on, there's no way he's going to believe-. That's a giant boxing gl- okay that actually hurt. Shield construct's gone, armour construct's cracking… I generate some construct missiles and launch them at the Greenies. Micro-transitions and a flare of green… Oh, come on! Okay, boring old railguns it is then. Maybe.. filaments aren't always the correct ow! Okay, he's taking the piss with these boxing gloves now. Just because this whole thing relies on me not fighting back effectively doesn't prove gahh!

Okay, enough. I set my construct armour to flicker. Blume's.. pretty much just watching, though that could be because of the green wall Lanterns Tui and Green Man have set up.

"Last chance to surrender, criminal."

"Eat a dick, Jordan!"

Hah! He actually looks shocked as I open up with orange lightning, forcing him to shield himself, giving Jack the shot. Simple green bolt this time and I drop my construct armour. Finger at the ready! "No! If I go down, I'm taking you with me!" I radiate orange beams out in all directions and use the brilliant light to transition myself to outside of my armour. Jack should detect-. He just froze it to minus two hundred and seventy three point one five degrees Celsius. And that's a plasma torpedo launcher. The ring shows me him grinning as he aims it. Okay Guy, timing is everything…

"The thief is mine!" Blume batters at the green barrier which begins to fail under his assault. Interesting that he doesn't seem to be attacking it directly, rather he's just ramming into it like a goldfish head butting its bowl… "Mine!"

The plasma missile strikes my armour and detonates in a brilliant explosion of energy. Immediately I drop my attack beams and release the finger. Okay Guy, you've got about-

Alert! Involuntary FTL transition.

19th February

20:11 GMT -5

-five.. seconds.

I look around as we hit the water, Guy's construct dragging me into the mountain's hangar. Back in Happy Harbour. We surface and he throws me onto the shore. I land and remove the rings.

"Did it work?"

He floats out of the water after me, removes the residual water and then shrugs. "Let's get upstairs and find out."

back

Spring in Blume 23

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19th February

20:13 GMT -5

"…best if y'don't use the Ophidian or do any real high-end stuff anyway."

I nod, arms folded across my chest as Guy flies us both into the training room. Slightly frustrating thing about not being a member of the Justice League is that -as long as it's for mission related reasons- he can order me not to use the rings. We already know that Blume can't detect me in here... At least when I'm limiting myself to only regular power levels… "And this has nothing to do with me having to spend a day bringing veteran Green Lanterns up to scratch at all?"

Guy grins. "Would I?"

My team mates, Kal-El and Missus Hol are already watching the holo screen in the middle of the room. Most of the people facing away from us look around as we fly in and Guy puts me down. It's a little hard to judge but I think that Blume is pretty much exactly where I left, holding a chunk of what I assume to be my armour in a chin tentacle.

"Supes." Guy nods at him. "Hawkgirl. How's it goin'?"

"So far so good." Kal-El presses something and a smaller screen appears, showing a zoom of Truggs' finger. It's directly in front of Blume at eye level and he's staring at it intently. "He's ignoring the other Green Lanterns but it looks like he's taken the bait. Can you patch into the other Lanterns' rings so we can hear what they're saying?"

Guy makes a fist with his right hand and holds it up. "No problem." His ring sparks and-.

"…still in violation of your agreement with the Guardians. Go back to Vega or we will remove you by force."

Orange light lances from Blume's eyes and disintegrates Truggs' finger. Ah, I already have full scans and tissue samples from it. "You will not tell me what to do! I am a god! I will travel to your planet and you will feed me gahhr-!"

Green Man and Jack just shot it in the mouth with a wide beam of green energy. Jordan shakes his head. "You don't make policy decisions, Blume. Put me through to Larfleeze or we'll treat the treaty as rescinded and take all his 'shinies' back."

"YOU IMPUDENT-!" Blume suddenly freezes, as if every muscle spasmed at once. Orange light begins precipitating out of his mouth, eyes and the orange sigil on his collar, coalescing into the form of a humanoid torso.

"So." Missus Hol's eyes narrow slightly. "That's Larfleeze."

"You have no right to stop me! My precious rings were stolen! They're my property!"

"You told the Guardians that you'd stay in Vega if they let you keep your Central Power Battery. If you can't keep hold of your rings then that's your problem."

I can see Larfleeze's nostrils flare as he snorts, his head shifting from side to side and his eyes darting around at the Green Lanterns surrounding him. Oh, that's right, he's probably never seen them before. Does he.. think they're some sort of strange new Guardian?

"No! I said I'd stay! Blume… Blume took his own initiative!"

"Dooon't give me that, Larfleeze. Blume doesn't have any initiative. And anyway-" Jordan points at the remains of my armour. "-the guy who took your stuff's already dead."

"I didn't get my ring back."

"Well, that's too bad. You shoot a Lantern, sometimes rings get destroyed. Do you want us to come to Okaara and shoot some more rings?"

Larfleeze's construct body leans forwards, the end of his snout stopping under a metre away from Jordan. "You don't have the power to take my things!"

"Oh don't I?" Jordan leans to the side a little. "How about we put that to the test?" Larfleeze snorts again. "I say I can destroy Lantern Blume over there without even using my ring. If I can do that, there's no way you could stop me."

Larfleeze's eyes narrow. "You're lying."

"Really?" Jordan holds up his right hand. "Guardians made some improvements to these rings since you last saw them. You've got no idea what we can do." He leans forwards slightly. "None of your property is on Earth anymore. Do the smart thing, Larfleeze."

Larfleeze's eyes dart around again. After a moment he appears to reach a conclusion, nodding to himself. He pulls back to his original position and raises his right hand. "I can't feel the ring. I can't feel the Ophidian. Maybe you're right." He nods again. "OR MAYBE I NEED YOUR RINGS TOO! BLUME-!" Blume jerks back to life and the Green Lanterns brighten their auras as they prepare to resist assimilation. "-CONSUME THEM!"

Behind Blume, Jack and Lantern Tui form railgun constructs as Jordan lazily shakes his head, makes a pistol shape with his right fore and middle fingers and 'fires' it at Blume. A second later Blume's construct body shakes and shimmers as a barrage of Crumbler rounds slam into it.

"Raaaaaagh!"

"Goodbye Larfleeze. Remember this."

Blume pops in what looks like a shower of orange dust. Jack and Lantern Tui drop their constructs immediately as the Larfleeze construct looks around at the now-evaporating tether which anchored him to Blume. "No! That's impossible!" His attention switches back to Lantern Jordan. "You're impossible!"

"Yeah, that's what Carol says. Don't come back, Larfleeze."

Larfleeze opens his broken-tusked mouth wide and throws up his arms as he evaporates from the waist. "Aaaaaaaaaaagh-!"

And gone.

The Green Lanterns stay on station for a moment, auras still glowing.

"Hey Hal, thought you said bullshit wasn't a job-skill?" I look around and see Guy holding his ring near his mouth, grinning all the while.

Kal-El gives him a disappointed look before pressing another button. "Green Lantern, report."

"He's gone, Superman. I'm not detecting any other orange power rings anywhere near the Sol system."

"Good work. What about the other Construct-Lanterns who were in other Sectors?"

"We won't know what that means for the other Construct-Lanterns for a while yet. Green Man?"

"I will go to ensure their return to Vega, whether willingly or-" He creates a railgun construct. "-otherwise. Now that we know they are not truly alive there is no reason to hold back."

Lantern Tui floats a little closer. "The rest of us should return to Oa. Now that we understand the underlying methodology, the Guardians will want us to demonstrate how to resist orange light attacks to as many other Lanterns as possible."

You're welcome. Oh dear, was that an order? Is Jack-?

"Hey, ah..." Jack floats a up to Lantern Tui. "I'd like to stick around for a bit. Make sure I got the whole.. green.. glow.. thing down."

Lantern Tui narrows her eyes slightly. "Lantern Chance, the Guardians only let you leave your world because it was under threat. Now that threat is gone-."

"We don't know it's gone gone. They could come back whenever they feel like it. And anyway, the Guardians ain't gunna let me teach anyone anything. Hellhole's going to be just as much of a frag-pile if I wait a day as if I go back right now."

Lantern Tui glances at Lantern Jordan, who shrugs. "Very well." She raises her ring. "I'm extending your permission for one Earth day. Automatic recall-."

"Yeah, yeah."

Kal-El nods. "Green Lantern, we'll see you back on the Watchtower." He presses a button to deactivate the holo screen, then looks up at me. "Give it a couple of days, then you can start using your rings outside again. Everyone else, dismissed."

back

Spring in Blume 24

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20th February

08:21 GMT -5

Alan sighs heavily and raises his ring.

"You who are wicked, evil, and mean,

I'm the.. nastiest.. creep you've.. ever.. seen."

He closes his eyes for a moment and gives his head a tiny shake.

"Come one. Come all. Put up a fight.

I'll…"

He gives Jack a withering look, then rolls his eyes.

"'Pound your butts' with Green Lantern's light.”

He waits. Jack's personal lantern does nothing. He gives Jack a puzzled look.

Jack shrugs. "You ain't finished it yet."

"Oh for God's s-. Yawzah." Nothing happens. "Yohzah?"

"No, no. Like this: Yowza!"

"Y…" Alan rolls his eyes again. "Yowza!" A brilliant stream of green light blasts forth and pours into Alan's ring, causing it to sparkle and gleam.

Jack regards it for a moment, stroking his chin. "I ain't ever seen a ring like that before. How old yah think it is?"

"I really have no idea." Alan's looking better. We tried getting his ring to infuse him with its remaining power directly before he recharged and it seems to have rejuvenated him at least a little. He doesn't look as good as he did when I first arrived, but he looks better than he has since just after New Year. It won't last, of course, but hopefully that should tide him over until I get back from Maltus. "It didn't come with any sorta database, and I haven't been able to contact the previous owner for the service-" The lantern shuts down. "-history."

"Feeling better?"

He nods. "Yeah, I'd say so. Thank you, Lantern Chance."

"Just hold'n up my end of the deal." He picks up his lantern in his right hand and returns it to subspace. "Ask you a question?"

"Of course."

"How long you been a Lantern?"

"Well… I, ah, I haven't been on active service for years. If you want to know how long it's been since I first got my ring, it's about.. seventy years now."

Jack purses his lips and nods. Looks like he's impressed. "I asked my ring once. Told me that Green Lanterns don't usually make it past four years on the job. If you're not active now, how long did you do it for?"

"Twenty five years." He tilts his head to the side. "Depending on what you count as 'full time', I suppose. I had a life to live outside of being Green Lantern."

Jack frowns. "Didn't this Sector's old Green Lantern die a little while ago?"

I nod. "Lantern Starkaor died eight years ago and Lantern Sur died eleven years ago."

His frown deepens. "So, Jordan and Guy and that other guy-?"

"Were called up in preference to Alan."

Alan shakes his head. "Are you still going on about that? I'm not sore about it."

"I'll be sore about it on your behalf, then. Harold Jordan got his ring because he was the closest capable person to where Lantern Sur crashed. Lantern Sur was dying and he wanted to be sure that he had time to explain what was going on to his successor before Legion arrived."

"Jordan got lucky?"

"However he got the ring, Hal's done a great job with it. And he did pass the evaluation criteria; I durn near tripped over mine."

"Yes."

"And Guy got his when Starkaor died?"

"Yes. Which was bullshit as well." That earns me a frown from Alan. "Pardon my language."

"That wasn't why I was frowning, Paul. I thought you and Guy were getting on okay?"

"We are. I mean… Look, I like Guy, but I'd be shocked if he was actually the most strong willed heroically inclined person in the entire Sector. Your existing connection to the green light should have made you show up like a bonfire in the dark! Even if you weren't active in two thousand, plus… It didn't exactly escape my notice that he's from the same planet, country and gender as his predecessor. And so's Lantern Stewart."

"America does encourage individualism, and we've probably got the longest tradition of super heroes of anywhere on Earth."

"Jack, how did you get recruited?"

"The guy before me… Think it was a guy anyway… His name was Pathavim Seth-Ottarak. Green Lanterns don't last long on Hellhole-."

"On where?"

"My homeworld. Its real name's Garnet, but everyone calls it Hellhole. Anyway, they'd had a bunch of them die trying to fix it, so Pathavim told his ring to find someone who could cope with the place. Me. Wouldn't exactly say I've managed to clean up the place, but at least it isn't on fire the whole time anymore."

"Place like that must be a lotta work."

Jack shrugs. "It's what I'm used to." He looks around Alan's living room and out through the net curtained windows. "It's places like this that weird me out. I haven't heard a gunshot or a scream since I got here."

"Plenty of places where you can, if you really want."

"Nah. You people still use chemical-explosive slug-throwers. Only thing worse than no sounds is wrong sounds." He checks the freeze ray strapped to his leg. "Got the ammo for me?"

I take four cases out of subspace and deposit them on the floor. "Fifty each. Don't use them-" He crouches down and opens a case, carefully checking the contents over. "-all at once."

"Don't worry about it. I'm all about focused application of force."

"Are you sure the Guardians won't get on your case about this?"

Jack takes a Crumbler out of its padding and looks at it closely. "They prefer pretending I don't exist. I get tolerated 'cause I do the job, but they're not going to look too closely into anything I do. They even send the other guy, Larvox, to keep an eye on me sometimes."

"Even so…"

"I don't send in reports and I don't think you're going to tell them." He puts the round back, closes the case and looks up at us. "Well? Are you?"

"No, I wasn't planning to."

"Then there's no problem. You know…" He looks at me. "I'd have gone down to fifty. Once I'd checked out the freeze ray. I don't like screwing people over."

"They don't cost me all that much. Though… While you're here…"

"Yeah? What?"

I pull Stewart's ex-ring off my right ring finger. "If you ever get tired of Guardian bullshit… Send me a message."

"Oh, no can do." He stands, floating the cases up with him. "I made a deal with the Guardians. I'm in for life, less they break it first."

"Did they ever say you can't have other rings as well?"

Jack blinks in surprise. "That's a thing?"

"Do you want it to be?"

"Ah." He thinks for a moment. "Papa Chance always told me: 'if it looks too good to be true-".

"It probably is." I nod. "If that's your decision." I return the ring to my finger, then hold out my right hand. "Thank you for your help. With Blume and with this."

"No problem." His eyes glow for a moment, then he grips my hand. "Nice to get away for a while. Oh, and just so you know? I put money on you beating Larfleeze so, y'know, make sure you do, okay?"

"I'll do my best."

back

Spring in Blume 25

next

Empiricist said:

"Green Lanterns two eight two eight, one four one seven, seven seven three, report."

Lantern Tui wasn't surprised to realise that she didn't know the name of the Guardian they were reporting to. Upon returning to Oa the three of them had been summoned to a small meeting chamber within the Guardians' main complex. The customary Green Lantern sigils were emblazoned on banners placed around the room, but otherwise it was a plain room made of pale green metal with only a simple dais for the Guardian to stand on in the middle. Katma Tui stood on the right side of Lantern Green Man with Lantern Saarek to his left. She was reasonably satisfied with how the mission had gone, even if it had deviated from the original outline.

Lantern Green Man speaks first as he was the Lantern assigned to following the local Construct-Lanterns. "Our full mission reports and recordings are available in the archives, but briefly: just as Lanterns Tui, Saarek, and Chance were beginning their scheduled orange light resistance training with Orange Lantern two eight one four-" the Guardian narrows his eyes slightly in displeasure at the reference to anyone bearing the name 'Lantern' without using the green light of will, "-I detected that a Construct-Lantern, later identified as Lantern Blume, was entering Earth's system. I immediately travelled there myself in order to inform the Lanterns present in the system, and if necessary to defend the inhabitants of Earth in the event that Lantern Blume noticed Orange Lantern and decided to attack. Luckily, Orange Lantern had pre-established defenses against remote detection, and he was able to avoid Blume's notice. While Orange Lantern was unable to use his rings for a few local days, all present Green Lanterns along with the local peacekeepers were tasked with detailed monitoring of Lantern Blume. A plan was eventually made to convince Lantern Blume, and Larfleeze, that Orange Lantern and his ring had been destroyed in a mock fight with the available Green Lanterns. While eventual success is unclear, our initial impression is that we were successful."

A slight inclination of the head from the Guardian. "Lantern Blume simply allowed this to happen? This does not seem to be in line with our projected behavior."

"No sir. While he initially was willing to discuss matters, Larfleeze quickly ordered him to attack us, at which point he was 'unmade' with technology that Orange Lantern had acquired to destroy constructs." Saarek finishes his reply by having a small holo projector built into the floor show a schematic of one of the 'Crumbler' rounds that Orange Lantern had provided. Occasionally coloured projections were needed where undifferentiated green was insufficient. Katma was eager to see the look on Sinestro's face when he next crossed her path. Hopefully a look of utter shock before being blasted by green beams. Such a delightful find when she hadn't expected anything but some practice against hostile Orange Lanterns.

"Hmm. Interesting. I will certainly look into your recordings after this meeting is done. Now, what are your impressions of the Orange Lantern? We have the reports from all the Lanterns of Sector two eight one four, but I am interested in the perspective of those who do not share his species."

While Lantern Chance would have theoretically been the best to give this report, his comportment, or more precisely lack thereof, made him a subpar option. Katma decided to take the initiative, as she had spent the most time with Orange Lantern after Chance. "In terms of his personality, he is an intelligent and sociable person. While more informal than many of our own Corps, he would not be completely out of place here. He appears to be socially involved with many of the locals, despite expectations to the contrary, and largely appears to be merely a slightly odd member of his species. In contrast to Larfleeze, he seems capable of harnessing the orange light with minimal effects on his personality.

"Militarily, he would be a nightmare to fight. While his construct strength did not appear to be particularly strong, roughly on the level of a Green Lantern recruit most of the way through basic training, his propensity to multitasking, attacking from oblique angles, creativity in appliance and creation of constructs, and horde of non ring-based offensive and defensive options all mean that even a much more experienced Lantern would have an extremely difficult time in defeating him non lethally. In addition to this, he has some form of magic protection that makes him unable to be scanned directly. While during our mock fight, against six experienced Green Lanterns, I had the impression that Orange Lantern was barely fighting. While our own Lanterns were similarly not fighting to the best of our abilities, we were mostly only holding back in the level of force we used, not tactics. Later contact with Lantern Gardner confirmed my suspicions that Orange Lantern was fighting far below his normal ability, and actively not using many of his commonly used techniques."

Saarek inclines his head in apparent agreement, "I concur with Lantern Tui's assessment, both in terms of personality and combat. For one example, Orange Lantern taught all of the visiting Lanterns how to make railgun constructs. While this is not particularly noteworthy by itself, the fact that he was able to make this within such a short time of receiving his ring and with no instruction on how to do so, along with developing munitions that would have caught unawares even the strongest Lanterns, shows that he is not someone to be fought without appropriate preparation. Taking into account that he is most likely keeping his best techniques to himself, it would be illogical to send less than an Honour Guard strike force in to fight him if it became necessary, in order to avoid any casualties."

The Guardian takes a second to process what has been said so far. "Troublesome, but unsurprising. If the Orange Lantern has remained stable for as long as he has, it is unsurprising that he has learned to channel the.. orange light in so coherent a fashion. With good fortune, he will remain stable for his duration of his time on Earth. Lantern two eight one four C reports that he would be willing to help train our own new recruits to use their rings better, and possibly to 'compare notes' with veteran Lanterns. The Guardians will consider this further. I believe that covers the issue of Orange Lantern sufficiently for the present?" General signs of confirmation from the gathered Lanterns, "Now, Lantern one four one seven, I was informed that you allowed Lantern one seven to remain an additional Earth day in Sector two eight one four?"

"Yes sir. He wished to learn more about Orange Lantern and the local Green Lanterns, as well as receive additional training and equipment, before he returned to his planet. As he would be under the watch of two experienced Green Lanterns, I deemed his request appropriate."

"Acceptable." A slight pause as the Guardian considers her next words, "Lantern two eight two eight, return to your duty of monitoring these ‘Construct-Lanterns’. Lanterns one four one seven and seven seven three, report to Lantern Salaak to go over the technology and information you received from the Orange Lantern. Once it is properly processed you are authorised to leave Oa in order to teach other Lanterns the orange light resistance techniques, prioritising those Lanterns whose sectors were visited by the Construct-Lanterns. Dismissed."

Click to expand...Click to shrink...

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NEXT CHAPTER

Stars, Crossed, part 1

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Stars, Crossed, part 1 1

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Stars, Crossed, part 1

22nd February

09:59 GMT -5

"That's… Quite a lot of people."

"Sure is." Ted reaches up slightly to put his left arm around my shoulders. "They told me they were coming, but usually about half of them drop out." He turns his head to look at me, a small smile on his lips. "Can't imagine why that didn't happen this time."

"It's just been a while since I did anything in front of an audience of strangers."

"When was the last time?"

"Primary School production of Peter Pan."

He looks speculatively at me. "Oh? What role did you have?"

"Nana." He squints. "The Dog."

His grip loosens slightly as he gives me a look of stunned disbelief, gradually morphing into-.

"Bwah-ha-ha-ha!" He bends over, clutching his stomach.

Fine, then. "I was a great Nana." I stride out of the wings and onto the stage, giving a wave to the journalists who've gathered to hear our announcement. A handful I recognise -ooh, that's Ms Lane- but most of them I've never seen before. That's fine, we wanted a more serious crowd for this than the usual superperson reportage. I stop just past the middle point and generate a construct podium. I won't need it for most of the lecture but when I was practising I found that it helped to have somewhere to put my arms when I didn't have anything to point at. I rest them there and lean forwards slightly. "Good morning, everyone. I'd like to thank you all for coming. Ted will be on-" I look off-stage… Oh for goodness sake, he's fallen onto his knees. It's not that funny. "-a bit later to demonstrate some of KordTech's latest developments, but first you're going to have to sit through a short lecture on comparative xenosociology from me."

No one looks particularly upset at the prospect. Re-sult. "It occurred to me some time ago that the Green Lantern Corps must have built up a colossal database of information on.. just about every different type of civilisation across this galaxy. I'm -obviously- not a Green Lantern, but since that information isn't considered to be secure they were willing to share it with me. Millions of years of data is far too much for most people to examine in any detail… I mean, who hasn't gone on Encarta Populi to look something up only to emerge hours later-" A polite laugh from the audience. "-with no idea where all the time went. I had the ring-" I raise my left hand slightly. "-go through it all for points of interest. What I was really looking for is… Some way.. to evaluate how well we're doing. As a species. Just how good is our technology compared to what other species have? I mean, most people have seen pictures of Superman's Fortress-" My eyes alight on Ms Lane for a moment. "-which employs Kryptonian technology, but pretty much by definition any species that's managed to come here is going to be more advanced than us. Because otherwise we'd have gone there."

"First thing I discovered? A lot of species don't get past late medieval, and even fewer get past early industrial." I pause there for a moment and make eye contact with a random selection of journalists. "It makes sense, when you think about it. Industrial society requires fuel; you can get by on charcoal for a while but what you really need is coal. If the species evolves before coal happens in sufficient quantity and accessibility, they can't use it. In some places they don't even get that far; if the planet doesn't have tree analogues for easy growing fuel and building material they can end up getting stuck earlier."

"Of course, that's just technology, in terms of social organisation all sorts of things can happen. I actually came across one species where they have a planetary government despite not being able to use technology more complicated than a windmill. They travel long distances on the backs of animals and build their multilane roads with stone blocks." I trigger the stage's holo display, showing a part of the road network as seen from low orbit. It visibly covers a continent the size of Africa.

"So, ignoring them, how are we doing? In absolute terms, not all that well. Any species that continues to develop will get past the point we currently occupy. A better question then is: how fast are we developing, compared to how fast other species did when they were our age? And that's where this graph-" I change the image to a slightly wiggly line, starting bottom left and moving to the top right. "-comes in. Along the bottom-" I dismiss the lectern and walk over to point at the image. "-rank order, one to… Well, it's a big number. Up the side, 'development points'. I awarded points for how quickly the species reached a particular developmental milestone; first tool use, first copper smelting, first iron smelting, first mechanical engine, first powered flight, things like that. I also gave points for how widespread those things became; no points for developing it in a workshop somewhere and never using it like the ancient Greeks did with steam power."

"What I got was a very subjective line, but it should be enough to give us a rough idea. The result?" I create a construct baton and point. "We're just under two thirds of the way up the development speeds table." Another look around the room. "That's not bad. I mean, we're no Colu-" I point to a spot near the 'fast developing' end of the line. "-and we're certainly not Maltus-" I point to the very end of the line. "-where they went from discovering iron to 'you still use metal, how quaint' in the space of a day, but we're doing better than a lot of species did."

I turn away from the display and spread my arms out. "Pat yourselves on the back, Humans. Well done." A bit of laughter and people are generally looking happier. I'll soon fix that. "But there's always room for improvement. For example, I was awarding points for implementation. There are still large areas of the Earth out there that don't have running water, sanitation… You've heard that argument before, I'm sure. And to be honest, even if I restrict my analysis to the advanced parts of the world it doesn't change our rank that much. You can get a plane in most places, you can certainly buy iron in most places… What really brings us down is our failure to implement the most advanced stuff which we have anywhere at all."

The image changes again. "This is a picture of Earth's first interplanetary teleporter. Show of hands, who thinks it's been developed since two thousand?" I wait patiently while they look around and a few hands start to creep up. "Come on, don't be shy. Okay, keep them up aaand raise yours if you think it was developed since nineteen ninety?" More hands. Most are now up. "Good, thanks for playing along. Nineteen eighty?" A few more. "Okay, thank you, you can put them down. That, is Professor Erdel's original zeta tube generator. It was built in the nineteen fifties. When it was first activated-" I set the display to do a slideshow of pictures taken from newspapers of the time. "-it caused brownouts and blackouts across three states and transported Mister J'onn J'onzz -the Martian Manhunter- to Earth from Mars. Take a moment to think about that. Earth has had interplanetary teleportation technology for sixty years."

"President Nixon approved the development of the space shuttle in nineteen sixty nine. It costs four hundred and fifty million dollars to launch a space shuttle today. Once you factor in all of the other costs of the program it works out costing over a billion dollars per launch. All that time, Doctor Erdel's company was being denied funding by the Federal Government. Despite having a product that was -by galactic standards-" I switch the slide back to the graph. "-something we might have expected to develop about two hundred years later. They limped by for decades on university funding, only able to make small scale models and tests. A ride to the moon via a current generation zeta tube would cost you about forty dollars a time once the system was set up. And today, the only people who use zeta tubes on Earth are the Justice League."

Another round of eye contact. "And if that fact makes you angry? Then you're in good company, because it makes me bloody angry. Human technological development is being retarded by stupid people. And I'm not having it any more."

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Stars, Crossed, part 1 2

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22nd February

10:04 GMT -5

"Doctor Morrow was building AIs in the nineteen thirties and today they're just about the only ones that exist." The hologram shows a family photo of him with his three creations. "Why? Clifford DeVoe built a cybernetic implant that made him telepathic and telekinetic in the forties, a device that let a pudgy man in his fifties take on the Justice Society." The display shifts to show a newspaper picture from the time. "Not 'a member of the Justice Society'. All of them. At once. In a straight fight." I take a metal helmet out of subspace. "This is as accurate a recreation as I can make. This thing uses transistors, for goodness sake." I spread my arms wide. "So where's my gods damned telepathy machine?" I take the new and improved model out of subspace. It takes the form of a skullcap. "This is what it looks like if you make one using modern technology instead. We're still working on how to safely and removably attach it to someone's brain." I send them both back into subspace.

"But the thing that really got to me, the thing that reduced me to hissing, eye watering apoplexy? Doctor Thaddeus Sivana." A picture of the man in his younger days. "You all know him as a supervillain who occasionally goes on the rampage in Fawcett City before Captain Marvel stops him. But he was actually a legitimate scientist for far longer than he's been a supervillain. Know what pushed him over the edge?" I pause. "No, me neither. Pretty much the first thing he did as a supervillain was try and take revenge on those who rejected his ideas and destroy all publically accessible records of his work. But I've read the reports from the survivors. Smart viruses that could target and replace damaged DNA segments, economic hydrogen fuel cells… If he'd been a better businessman…" I sigh. "I had a conversation with Lex Luthor last September.. at the Rhelasian peace summit last year. He hadn't heard that before James Dyson went into business for himself he'd tried to sell his bagless vacuum design to Hoover. They turned him down. Later on, after it became a massive success they told him that if they'd known in advance they'd have bought the design and sat on it simply because they liked the market as it was. But for a quirk of fate British superheroes might have ended up fighting Vacuum Man." The hologram shows a mock up of James Dyson as a supervillain, but this time there's no laughter.

I hold out my left arm. **Now, please.** A moment later a G-Sprite flies in from off stage and lands on my arm. "Those of you who attended Dubbilex's public.. unveiling may remember these." I have the holo display play footage of our press conference. "This, is a G-Sprite. Cadmus Labs created them as… Just about the only commercially applicable result of their study into Kryptonian physiology. I should point out here that Cadmus is not in any way a wholly owned subsidiary of LexCorp." Ms Lane manages a wry half-smile at that claim. "All the stuff Kryptonians can do is… Well, it's basically impossible to replicate with Human technology. But that doesn't mean that it's no use at all. These little guys-" I run my right forefinger along its glowing abdomen. "-generate electricity. Inside here is a suspension of cloned Kryptonian cells. When they're exposed to sunlight… Or the right frequencies of artificial light, organelles inside Kryptonian cells undergo some rather interesting exotic energy processes. This gel converts it to electricity which G-Sprites are designed to be able to discharge safely." I take a metal cable out of subspace and earth the far end. **If you please?**

The G-Sprite flaps its wings and rises off my arm, extends its forelegs and flashes of electricity start leaping from their tips into the cable. "G-Sprites aren't intelligent. Even if the Sophont Recognition Act.. or whatever they end up calling it, passes, they wouldn't be covered. I've got a G-Gnome backstage relaying my instructions to it. Unfortunately, they really aren't practical for anywhere that isn't a bleeding edge biotechnology laboratory to use, and as such Cadmus has no plans to expand production." **Thank you, that will be all.** The G-Sprite stops shocking the cable and flies back off stage.

I return the cable to subspace and change the display back to the graph. "So let's go back to the graph. If we were actually using the technology that we have, how would we be doing? I'll show you." I recreate the construct baton. "We're currently here and we could be here." I point to a spot just inside the top quarter. "Quite a big jump. This is where we could be, and if you don't really care about advancing faster than alien species… Then think about how much easier your life could be."

I eliminate the baton, but leave the two points on the graph visible. "Superheroes usually limit themselves to law enforcement and helping during natural disasters. I don't want to live a life where all I do is stop things getting worse. That's why I've been working with KordTech to see what other underutilised ideas and technologies there are floating around and helping their development. For the next part of my act I'm going to need a volunteer from the audience and- " I generate a construct arrow over the head of an overweight neckbeard in the sixth row. "-since you, sir, were the only one to say the correct date for Doctor Erdel's experiment the moment I put the picture on the screen-" He looks shocked, points to one of his chins and mouths 'me?' at me. "-I'm going to give you first refusal. Well done, by the way. I respect people who know their stuff."

He stares for a moment then stands and begins making his way out of the row of seats. "Okay, if we could lift up the curtain, please?" It rises, revealing a pair of Dolmen Gates. "These are Dolmen Gates. Arcane technology. The Fae have used the same sort of system for thousands of years but this is the first time they've become commercially available to the rest of us. For those of you with your ears most closely to the ground, you may have heard that their designer and I did a demonstration for the London City Council a while ago. Before long, these will be installed in a specially designed building in London for people to get used to."

"What do they do? Simply put, anything that goes through one comes out of the other, including-" I rise off the floor and float towards the one on the stage's left, facing the ring. "-light." I can clearly see the audience out of the other ring and I give them a wave before turning back around and dropping to the floor. "Their range isn't unlimited, but we tested them with one on the Moon and the other in our laboratory and there was no problem there. Price per journey? Zero. No money. Let that sink in for a moment."

Neckbeard has climbed up onto the stage, hardly wheezing at all. I walk over to him and hold out my right hand. "Welcome aboard. What's your name?"

He shakes it. "David Roscoe. I'm from Seed magazine."

"Glad to meet you, David. What I need you to do is very simple: walk through one of the rings. Don't worry, they were checked over just before everyone came in, they're in perfect condition."

"Okay!" He grins, nods, looks at the one on the right and heads towards it.

I walk off to the side so that the audience can get a unobstructed view of each Gate. "Set up costs are 'we don't know yet'. They're made in Atlantis and there's no established exchange rate. Estimates are 'less than a billion dollars a time'."

Mister Roscoe slows down slightly as he gets to the right hand Gate. Doesn't stop though. He carries on straight through and reappears through the left hand one. "That it?"

"That's it. How did it feel?"

"Iiiit… Didn't really feel like anything. Just walking through air."

"That's how it's supposed to feel. Thank you for your help, please return to your seat. David Roscoe, ladies and gentlemen." There's a smattering of applause as he shambles back towards his seat.

"One last thing before I hand over to Ted. People have asked some of… Those of us who have access to alien technology: 'why aren't you sharing'? And a perfectly reasonable answer is: 'because we don't want to make you dependent on us for stuff'. All the stuff I've shown you, all the things Ted will be showing you in a minute are the products of Human ingenuity. Except this last thing. I had to think long and hard about this, because a lot of the arguments I'm using to justify doing this could justify a lot of things. I had to.. find a sector of the economy that was completely moribund, uncreative and generally not serving the interest of the population as a whole. A market failure, a monopoly… Something where the negative consequences were spilling over into other sectors and distorting not just world economics but politics as well."

"Simply put, the area I chose was electrical power generation. Coal pollutes. Gas pollutes. Green fuels aren't reliable and nuclear builds up waste we can't deal with other than by burying it. Perhaps more importantly, according to the graph? A species in our position really should have moved on to hydrogen or exotics by now. So that's what we're doing. The city of-." A stage hand wheels a trolley on from the wings. "Thank you. The city of New York has kindly agreed to be our field testing ground for a Bleed Torsion Generator. Things like this-" I indicate the device. "-are used for civilian power generation and non-critical military power generation by dozens of spacefaring species. This device alone can meet about a New York City and a half's peak power demand. We can't get that much to people's homes due to loss in transmission, but fixing that problem is something Ted wants to talk to you about now."

I pause for breath. Yes. This is… This is good. This is exactly what a superhero should be doing with his life. "I'm Orange Lantern two eight one four and thank you very much for listening."

The applause is thunderous as I exit the stage.

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Stars, Crossed, part 1 3

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22nd February

09:17 GMT -6

I've got a buzz going. This is exactly the sort of thing a superhero should be doing: identifying a threat no one else can deal with and permanently removing it.

The people of Central City aren't quite as blasé about huge grey people walking down their streets as the people of Metropolis or New York are, but after a quick stare and a slight shrink back most of them clock that I'm not really doing anything particularly fearsome and settle for just keeping an eye on me. If my armour had pockets I'd put my hands in them to further defuse my potential for causing alarm. Since it doesn't, I settle for doing a sort of tuneless near-whistling. Before I came to this place I couldn't whistle beyond the occasional single note. Going venom buster took away what little ability I had. Now… A few notes.

Yeeeess, I missed my target date for killing Klarion buuut I didn't have a deadline, so killing him today isn't significantly worse than killing him when I originally planned to. Jade was surprisingly okay about me missing Valentine's Day, and the substitute date I set up in the habitat I've been building on Ceres for Ra's' resurrected animal species appears to have smoothed over any lingering irritation. Constructing the place took some doing, but the artificial systems for atmosphere regulation, gravity and keeping the whole thing from melting the planet around it are all set up. Really, I've done as much as I can until he lets me know what biosphere he wants me to start with.

I think.. Jade likes the fact that I'm making an effort at making allies with another member of the Light. Building bridges to further my career. I felt good about it… Until about half way through the conversation when I became painfully aware that I haven't done anything equivalent for a member of the Justice League. My team mates, sure, I've done things for them, but… I don't know, maybe a bit of effort earlier on…

I suppose that given how they're going to react to this, it's just as well I didn't waste the time. Ah, here we go; Global Broadcasting News' Central City office. I've left the Sphere and Mister Tawny behind for this one. I want to be clear that it's a solo effort. Just me, Father Box and hopefully Catherine Grant and her camera and sound men. Or women, whichever. I have backup journalists in mind if she turns me down, but this is her beat. Now, where is she? The car park? No no, we can't have that. Father Box, connect to the Hush Tube and get me down there.

Ploong.

Thank you. I step through into the grey concrete car park and let it close behind me. It's fascinating, my own development as a minor divine. I can now perceive the aperture of a hush tube unaided as a sort of white purple tunnel, though I can't quite work out how to fully describe how it moves in the English language.

"…setting up as soon as possible. I doubt anything's happening quite yet, but I want to get a good set-up location."

A couple of people in GBS jackets are loading things into a news van. Miss Grant herself is talking to her camerawoman next to the passenger side door. With hush tubes being.. hushed, they haven't heard me.

Hmm. I start walking slowly in their direction and pointedly clear my throat. Not enough noise to demand their attention but enough that they become aware that someone is sharing the space with them. The people loading equipment don't bother looking around. Miss Grant glances my way for a fraction of a second, returns her attention to her co-worker without really registering what it is she's seen, then turns back towards me with the 'Do I need to run?' look on her face.

"Miss Grant, good morning. How does the day find you?"

The camerawoman looks around and I can just about hear the "Oh shit." she mutters under her breath.

Miss Grant blinks and mentally steadies herself. "Um… Well, thank you." She gives me a slightly closer look. "You're Grayven, aren't you?"

"That's me."

"I saw the footage from Fawcett City."

"We met before that, actually." She looks a little blank. "Taipei? Rhelasian peace conference? I was a little larger?" I hold my right hand out to indicate my former height and receive a cautious nod. "You ended up cutting me from just about every rebroadcast?"

"Ah…"

"It's fine. Big grey man fighting other big grey men. Confusing visual, and it ends up being hard to know who to root for if you're channel hopping." I come to a halt about five metres from her. Far enough away not to loom, I hope. "Listen, have you got… Half an hour? It'll be worth your while."

"Well I…" She looks around to the rest of her crew, then back at me. "What did you have in mind?"

"I intend to lure the primary actor behind the Roanoke Island incident into an ambush, then kill him. Then hand myself over to the Central City Police." Not what she was expecting. "While we're waiting for him to turn up I can also give you more information on that whole period. I was.. in at the death, so I can tell you things which the Justice League never released to the public."

"You're.. going to kill him?"

"Yes, yes I am. I have no way to imprison him or depower him and the alternative is leaving him out in the wild to attack again, which I consider to be unconscionable." I smile at her. "I would appreciate a quick decision."

She looks at her co-workers again. They're all looking at her. "Ahh… Legally.. I don't think-."

"There's no way you can stop me or warn anyone who could. The most you can do is make sure that there is a good recording of it."

She's still a little stunned, but it looks like she's considering it. "Would we be safe?"

"No complete guarantee. I've set up a warded and force field protected viewing area and I've got a dead man's switch that will alert the Justice League if I die." The Sword of Second and Third is strapped to a scabbard on my left leg, and I run my left index finger over the pommel. "Knock down drag out fights with things like Klarion are a terrible idea so I don't intend to take long about it. If he's still alive after about ten seconds then I'm probably going to lose."

"Clarion?"

"That's his name. Klarion the Witch Boy. He's a Chaos Lord, which essentially means…" Hold on. "I should probably explain that on camera, don't you think?"

"I don't know…"

"Oh, come on. Your network got hours out of the execution of his co-offenders and you had to pay the Chinese for the privilege of using the footage! I hardly think you're in a position to be precious about this. You'll also note how I'm not in prison after I killed Sabbac Two on live television a couple of weeks ago."

Miss Grant opens her mouth slightly, then glances at the camerawoman who seems quite happy to let her make the decision. She looks down for a moment, then nods to me. "Okay. Do you want to.. do it here?"

"In the middle of a city? You crazy? No, I'm not fighting him here."

"Okay. Where-?"

"Father Box, boom tube."

"Ploong."

There's the signature bang and rush of displaced air as the tube opens in the air next to us.

"A field outside Central City, presently left fallow." I trigger my aero discs, rising off the ground and drifting forwards. "I've spent some time preparing the ground to give me every advantage." As well as picking a time Mister Barry Allen would be occupied with laboratory work and surrounded by colleagues in such a way that he couldn't easily sneak out.

Miss Grant looks out over the grassland for a moment and then grimaces. "Knew I shoulda worn flats."

"Allow me." A burst of orange from my eyes dumps her actually quite expensive but ridiculously impractical high heeled shoes into subspace and replaces them with comfortable walking boots. "Better? I'm.. storing the shoes, you can have them back afterwards."

"Thank you." She turns back to her crew. "Guys, finish packing up then come on through." There are a few nods and the camerawoman hurries around the van to get into the driving seat. "So." She turns towards me and starts walking towards the tube. "Mister Grayven, what made you want to become a vigilante serial killer?"

I make a show of giving the question careful consideration. "I think it was mostly Father's influence…"

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Stars, Crossed, part 1 4

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22nd February

09:29 GMT -6

"I'm here about…" She checks the distant mass of Central City behind her. "Twenty miles west of Central City with Grayven of Apokolips. Viewers may remember Grayven from his brutal slaying of Sabbac in Fawcett City two weeks ago." I nod at the camera. "Grayven, why don't you tell our viewers what you've got planned for today?"

"Thank you Catherine. Today I'm going to kill someone called 'Klarion the Witch Boy'. Klarion was the primary instigator of the Roanoke Island Incident which -as I'm sure your viewers will remember- involved adults and children being shifted onto two separate parallel Earths and resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, mostly of young children."

Not sure how well grey skin shows up on camera. The makeup artist just sort of looked at me and sagged. Ah, I'm sure they can sort something out in post production.

"I had been under the impression that the Chinese government executed the criminals responsible for that."

"The Chinese executed William Zard… 'Wizard', Blackbriar Thorn, Felix Faust and Wotan. They were the ones who handled the 'Adult Side' of the split. Klarion was in operational command and personally handled the child side. He was able to escape via a portal to the Plane of Chaos and chose not to share his escape route with his comrades. Aside from one attack on the Justice League he's been keeping his head down ever since."

"If he was on the child side, does that mean that he's a child himself?"

"As a Lord of Chaos, Klarion is effectively ageless. It seems likely that he was able to ascend while he was indeed a child, but any attempt to work out how old he is now is futile at best. My concern is safeguarding the world from his deciding to repeat Roanoke Island tomorrow, something he's perfectly capable of doing."

"If he's so dangerous, why haven't the Justice League dealt with him?"

"While I wouldn't presume to speak for the Justice League, I would imagine that there are three main reasons. Firstly, finding a Lord of Chaos who doesn't want to be found is very difficult. Klarion can block scrying attempts… Attempts to locate him with magic, and as a result is very difficult to find. And if they were able to corner him he can shift to the Plane of Chaos again and none of them can follow him there." Miss Grant nods. "Secondly, the Justice League is primarily a reactive organisation. A supervillain commits a major crime and they move in to stop them. With Klarion voluntarily inactive he's rather slipped down their priority list. I mean-" I smile for the camera. "-it's not as if they're likely to run short of more urgent threats any time soon. As we speak fully half the League are in combat with ne'er-do-wells of various stripes. And most of them do have secret identities to maintain."

"That sounds reasonable, but the Justice League is a UN organisation-."

I raise my right hand. "Sorry, but that's not exactly true. The Justice League has a UN mandate, but they existed before receiving it and they run their own affairs. If it were withdrawn tomorrow I doubt very much that the group would split up."

"My point is, couldn't they have police in every UN member country on the look out for Clarion?"

"Well, that leads on to their third problem. If they found him, and he didn't flee, what exactly could they do with him? I've spoken to Giovanni Zatara, the League's magic specialist. He told me that he knows of no way to imprison Klarion, either through mundane means or arcane means."

"What about control collars, like the ones used in Belle Reve?"

"Like this?" I extract a control collar my size out of subspace. "Observe." I clamp it shut around my neck and activate it. "The collar is now trying to identify the mechanism by which my metahuman abilities work so that it can block them." The light flashes. "It now thinks it's finished, but as you can see-" I generate a simple construct sword. "-it can't stop the advanced technology of this power ring. It also-" I reach up with my right hand, grip it and rip it off, the collar shattering around my neck. "-does nothing to magic or aliens. If someone put one around Klarion's neck the only way it would stop him is if it made him laugh too much to keep fighting."

"You believe that killing him is the only way."

I nod solemnly. "I'm afraid so."

"The Justice League's mandate doesn't permit them to carry out 'field executions'. A number of analysts -mostly on the political right- have suggested in the past that this is a major flaw in their organisation. Do you agree with them?"

I sigh. "I'm.. not sure. The League are very idealistic people. It's a little like… I don't know if you are aware, but in Britain there is a great deal of public support for euthanasia, at least in the case of people who are terminally ill, in agony and capable of giving consent. But doctors won't hear of it, because they don't want that to be the sort of thing doctors do. They're there to make people better. The League view themselves as being there to assist police, doing things they can't. They don't want to start handing out summary sentences themselves because.. they don't want to be those people, even if an objective analysis suggests that it would be helpful in some circumstances. They also don't want to step on government toes. Taking authority to hand out sentences -especially death sentences- would be a major shift in power in the relationship between the League and nation states, and a lot of countries wouldn't countenance it."

"Why not?"

"The Chinese super functionary Socialist Red Guardsman has killed hundreds -perhaps thousands- of innocent.. or at least debatably guilty people in his career. He works for the Chinese government. Do you really think they would accept the Justice League -an organisation largely comprised of Americans- passing sentence on him? Heck, I doubt that most American congressional representatives would accept the idea. But even if some countries were, it simply isn't practical for the League to accept the level of oversight they'd need in order to maintain the appearance of due process."

"Do you think that the Justice League should be prepared to kill people like Clarion, even if they didn't have legal authority to do so?"

"You know? I actually don't. I'll be honest with you, I don't want them to be that sort of organisation, either. I'd really be more comfortable for nation states to agree on a mechanism whereby an international court could try people like Klarion in absentia and pass death sentences if needed."

"But no such court exists. Without it being there, do you think it would be better for the Justice League to kill people like Clarion to prevent them from committing more acts of terror, especially when so many lives are at stake?"

"That's assuming that the League could win that fight. Last time I saw him actually stick around Klarion was perfectly happy to fight against a whole team of superheroes and -despite their best efforts- he didn't look particularly hard pressed."

"But you believe you can kill him. What do you have that they don't?"

"I have the sword which killed Satan. I have a prepared field and absolutely no problem with killing an opponent when needs be. I won't hesitate, I won't listen to dishonest pleading, I'll just kill him."

"The… The sword which killed Satan? As in..?"

"Technically, the First of the Fallen wasn't Satan-Satan, but he ruled Hell and was in general completely horrible, so it's splitting hairs to argue the point. Oh, sorry, that wasn't me, that was a female Demon named Chantinelle, -good work there Elle- but we're getting off the topic there."

"… Right, yes." She goldfishes for a moment, then pulls herself together admirably. "And you're sure that this sword can kill Clarion."

"I've practised with it a little, and it appears to work as advertised. I can't be completely certain until I've actually used it on Klarion, because the only way to be that sure would have been to draw the attention of another Lord of Chaos and, well, that would have been a very bad idea."

"If Clarion tends to avoid direct confrontation, how do you intend to draw him here?"

"Your older viewers may remember Doctor Fate. He was a member of the Justice Society in the forties and fifties. He was a Lord of Order, and he was able to describe to me the process of becoming a Lord of Order. Now, I'm far too independently minded to undergo that process myself, but I have set up a ritual that will look like someone is attempting to undergo an Order-based ascension. The early stages of it at least. I also have the remains of Klarion's original familiar, which will allow me to make absolutely sure that he can hear what is going on. Someone attempting to become a Lord of Order on his patch is the one thing that is bound to demand Klarion's immediate attention."

"And what if he doesn't?"

"Then the fact that the man who killed his cat is here certainly will."

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Stars, Crossed, part 1 5

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22nd February

09:38 GMT -6

"…getting Teekl's remains from the top of the Tower of Fate. Honestly, after it happened I just left them there."

I think that Ms Grant has gone pale, but under all that makeup it's a little hard to tell. "And what about the powder?"

"The ground up bones of Nabu's previous hosts. Oh, don't worry, not the most recent one. The owners of these bones have been dead for millennia. And they'd almost certainly approve of the use to which I'm putting them." I take a moment to look at the shape I'm making and compare it to my notes. Had to create a construct-windbreak, but… Yep, that's about right. God-vision shows a definite etheric energy flow so I'll assume that part is working…

"Could you describe the significance of the shape?"

"Certainly." I'm wearing a personal microphone while Ms Grant and her crew are within a force field protected viewing area. "Certain shapes channel magic energy, even in the absence of a controlling mind or spirit. Better still, they can magnify a magic user's facility for a particular form. Atlantean mages tattoo glyphs onto themselves and Lanterns like me wear rings with our own-" I create an orange sigil construct to illustrate my point. "-sigils on them. This is the design that would be used by a Human trying to turn themselves into a Lord of Order."

"What exactly would that involve?"

"I've never seen it happen, but… A Human soul is naturally connected to the arcane energies around it, in the world. Magic users learn to manipulate and enhance that connection. The ascension ritual severs that connection, replacing it with one to the Plane of Order." Hmm. "That's… A rather large oversimplification, but essentially accurate. One who went through the ritual would either be killed… Or rather erased from existence as 'impure'.. or granted a number of benefits, including massively increased arcane power."

Just the outer circle to go and I'm painfully aware that Klarion could turn up at any time. I don't have any idea how alert he is to things like this and I can't ask the members of the Light to tip me off. My drones are in position, stealthed and ready with purple death rays and blasters. No idea how useful those will be against Klarion but I really only need a fraction of a second's distraction.

Klarion shouldn't be able to observe the ritual site directly but Nabu started getting.. incoherent, when I asked for a detailed explanation. Honestly, I'm feeling a little bad about what I've done to him. What was it the former head of the Society of Leopold said in Vampire: the Masquerade? Killing an evil being is justified. Torturing them is not, because it harms the spirit of the one doing it. It's getting to the point where I think I should look for a way to put him out of his misery.

Okay, that's done. I take my x-ionised sword out of its sheath and hold it in my left hand. Another minor distraction which I hope will encourage Klarion to scoff at my attack. The Sword of Second and Third I transfer to a sheath on my left forearm. I still haven't got over quite how small it is compared with me. Certainly it doesn't look like a threat. Alright, ring, Father Box, create construct armour, boost Apokoliptian armour and monitor our environment for any sign of Klarion.

By your command.

Ploong.

"How long do you think it will be until he gets here?"

"No idea at all." Hmm. Teekl's remains should cause him to receive a 'ping' almost immediately. A simple scrying ritual for her would fail, but he'd be alert and looking. If he read the flows of power in the general area he'd felt her in then that would give him an idea of what was going on. At that point, would he come immediately or is he so cowed that he'd contact the rest of the Light and ask for help? No. If they weren't immediately on hand… That merging with the Djinn thing he does isn't immediate. Against an ascendant Lord of Order he'd make sure that he was prepared. Do that first.

I rise slightly into the air, unable to prevent myself from looking around and trying to anticipate where the attack will come from. Unless he's busy trying to reconnect with his chaos-magic better half. Would he make it a race? Or if he's succeeded… There really isn't any way for me to tell precisely-.

Ploong.

Witch-

Garrick.

-Boy detected.

He's standing just outside the circle of bone, his eyes glowing purple, his mouth twisted in an inhuman grin and his right hand raised and crackling with purple lightning. I surge towards him as the drones open fire. Purple beams of nega-life and orange bolts of divine destruction fly at him only to be negligently batted aside. Ms Grant's mouth is sluggishly forming itself into an 'O' shape as I pull the x-ionised sword back across my body, using my left arm's bulk to conceal me taking the Sword from its scabbard.

I think Klarion's laughing.

I think I am as well.

I pass through the outer edge of the bone circle and his lightning leaps forth to greet me. It passes through my construct armour like it's not even there and -agh- I feel the pressure as it assails my divine armour and strikes at my spirit directly. I bring the x-ionised sword down with a battle cry too swift for any around me to hear and with Klarion's attention fully directed at it I drive the Sword of Second and Third hard into his gut.

Everything around me speeds up as the Garrick Formula wears off. The drones mostly cease fire, unable to get a shot off without striking me. The purple lightning Klarion had been directing at me crackles and fades as he folds slightly around the blade in his abdomen.

"Huuh?"

"Die, wretch." I yank the Sword out of his body, pull my right arm back and then slice it sideways through his neck, letting his head fall to the ground. The Sword's magic should be enough to kill him… But just in case I stamp my right foot down onto his decapitated body and drive the Sword through his heart. Purple light seeps from his wounds and a dull moaning sound… Did I get that Bedlam creature too? Oh, lucky for me. Movements in the patterns of etheric energy… Nullification of all power. Not sure that it's hitting his 'soul self' as well, but that shouldn't matter too much without a directing mind.

I wait a moment longer as the purple light fades to nothing. The holes in his body don't bleed. In fact, taking a look at the cut surface of his neck it doesn't look like he has any actual blood at all. I can see bone and what could be muscle…

"My God. Tell me you got that."

I flick my eyes in the direction of the film crew. "Don't worry if you didn't. I had an ultra fast camera running on a drone."

"Is… Is he dead?"

"As far as I can tell, yes. If you wait here, I suspect that Giovanni Zatara will be along presently to confirm it." I bend down and pick up Klarion's head. The mouth is still distorted but the eyes look surprisingly Human. Hm. That went well. Next part. Ring, Father Box, interrupt GBS broadcast and transmit Ms Grant's recording in full. Add in my recording of the fight at your discretion.

Ploong.

By your command.

"But if you will excuse me, I have an appointment with the Central City Police Department. Father Box, hush tube." A hole in space opens in front of me and I sheathe my weapons before I step into the reception area of the New Brighton Police Station.

The police officer on the desk looks up, then sags slightly. "The Flash ain't available right now. Can't you freaks take a number or something?"

"I'm not actually looking for the Flash." I walk slowly towards the desk. "I just.. killed a man, and I want to confess and.. hand myself in."

"Ah, jeez, why'd I have to get…" The man rubs his forehead before glaring at me. "Can't you go bother-?" I set Klarion's head down on the desk in front of him. "Holyfuckingshit!" He leaps back and scrabbles for his gun. "Get on the ground! Get on the fucking ground!"

"I'm not doing that. I think I'm being quite reasonable about-." Twelve bullets in quick succession hit me in the centre of my chest. I ignore them. "Quite reasonable about this given that you've got no way to hurt me at all. Histrionics are not required. I am handing myself in voluntarily. Now, which way do I go for mug shots?"

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Stars, Crossed, part 1 6

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22nd February

10:02 GMT -6

"So…" I look down the line of holding cells at my fellow detainees. "What are you guys in here for?"

A man in a mildly dishevelled suit on the opposite side of the corridor looks up. "I got pulled-."

The tattooed youth in the cell one to the right of mine stands up. "Hey! You ain't supposed to ask that."

The man rolls his eyes. "I got pulled over last night for driving while intoxicated. I'd have been out first thing this morning if my lawyer hadn't decided to take the weekend off. Should be out in a few hours anyway."

"You know… I'm sorry if I'm intruding here, but I've got this counsellor? Who's.. been helping me with my anger management issues? If you like I can give you his num-."

"No, no." He shakes his head. "I haven't been drunk in charge of a vehicle since college. Thought I was okay…"

"What you in here for? You some kinda supervillain?"

I tilt my head slightly to the right. "How broadly are we defining 'some kind'-?"

He gets a better look at me. "You still got alla your fucking weapons!"

"This sword-" I point to my x-ionised sword. "-is the product of a classified US military project. No one in this police station is cleared to know about it. This sword-" I point to the Sword of Second and Third. "-is an arcane artefact and no one here has passed the certification to handle it. These-" I point to the ring and to Father Box. "-are sophisticated xenotechnological artefacts and again, no one has passed the certification. I quite literally can't hand them over without breaking the law further, and quite possibly getting the police in trouble. If they really wanted to confiscate them then they should have sent someone on the required courses."

The man opposite chuckles. "So you could just walk out at any time?"

"Yes, but if I wanted to do that I wouldn't have gone through all the trouble of walking in, would I?"

"You…" He blinks, too hung over for my shenanigans. "What?"

"What'd you do anyway?"

"You see-." I hear the door at the far end of the corridor open and turn my head to see who-. "Diana! Good of you to come."

The man opposite gets to his feet and starts straightening his suit while the youth blatantly checks her out. She gives me a look of despair tinged disappointment. "Grayven, what have you done?"

"I.. broadcast it on worldwide television, I don't think there can really be any doubt." I lean forwards slightly and make eye contact with the police officer escorting her. "Ah, I'd quite like my phone call now, if that's at all possible?"

Diana glances at the officer. He raises his hands and shakes his head. "He was waiting for you." He looks at me. "Do you want to come to the phone or-."

"No, it's fine, I'll just use the ring. I just wanted to make sure that I was allowed to."

The officer looks at Diana. "He's all yours."

"Could we please have a private-?"

"No, I refuse to have any special privilege. I committed a crime. This is where I belong." I look from her to him. "Isn't it?"

"Above my pay grade, pal." He sighs. "Anything else, ma'am?"

"No. Thank you." She comes to stand in front of my cell. "Why did you do it?"

"Yeaaaah, was a bit melodramatic, wasn't it? Didn't mean to get all Tom Paris on you. Still, I wanted to make my point as strongly as possible."

"You showed you knew exactly the reasons why we don't do things like that and then you did it anyway. What you've done will work towards alienating everyone from superheroes and from the Justice League."

"Really? Let's take a straw poll, shall we?" I point to my right. "You asked what I did. I killed a man. It was premeditated and deliberate. I am a murderer."

The man opposite pales and retreats slightly in his cell. "Oh God."

"Hardcore. Who was it?"

"Klarion the Witch Boy. The mastermind behind Roanoke Island."

No response. Huh? I glance to my right and his face is… Blank. He can't have missed that, can he?

"You fucking with me? Because you better not be fucking with me."

"I stabbed him in the stomach, cut off his head and ran him through the heart. Using a magic sword so he couldn't weasel out of it." Back to Diana. "Has Mister Zatara checked yet?"

"He has. As far as he and Nabu can tell, Klarion is indeed dead."

"My little… My kid sister died during that." He switches his attention to Diana. "He really get the guy?"

She sets her jaw. "It certainly appears so."

"Fuck. Man, you're my fucking hero."

"You're welcome. Ring, phone." The construct appears and I hold it to my ear. Contact President Horne's personal secretary.

By your command.

"And you, sir." I nod at the man on the opposite side of the corridor. "Does the fact that I killed a mass murderer put you off the idea of superheroics in general?"

"Well I… I don't… Couldn't you have arrested him or something?"

"No, that was impossible, no prison could hold-." The phone is picked up. "Excuse me. Grayven here, could you please put me through?"

"Yes, of course sir. He's expecting you. I'll put you through at once."

"Thank you."

"This is hardly a representative sample, and it doesn't change how-"

The phone is picked up.

"-the governments we rely on for cooperation will react to-"

"Grayven, I've seen the news."

"-one of us taking this sort of action."

External speaker.

"Good work, son. We'll get to work on the paperwork for your pardon right away."

Diana's eyes widen and I smile. "Thank you, Mister President."

"A lot of people will be able to sleep safer in their beds tonight because of what you did. Not just in America but all over the world. Now, you sit tight. It'll take a day or two to get it all sorted out. Whereabouts are you?"

"Central City, New Brighton Police Station. In a cell."

"What the heck are you doing there, son?"

"I wasn't sure if it was possible to be pardoned for something you haven't been convicted of. And I didn't want to get physically attacked by my own colleagues or anything like that. Thought it best to put myself in custody."

"Okay, ahh… I'll get someone to speak to the Chief of Police and the Mayor, let them know what's going on."

"Thank you, Mister President. I'm extremely grateful to you."

"Okay, I'd like to talk with you some more but I've got a thing…"

"I understand completely, sir. You're a busy man. Thank you for your time." End call. "Sounds like the government's cool with it too."

"You told him in advance."

"Told the President of America that I was going to murder a man?"

"And now you can join the Light." I nod to the side. "Give me your weapons."

"Certainly." I pull the ring from my left forefinger and hold it out. "Don't touch the inside, that triggers the mental influence effect." She takes it. "Aaand the sword." I detach the scabbard containing the x-ionised blade. "And the other sword."

She takes them. "So it isn't suicidal anymore?"

"Giving it up permanently would be. You're just holding it on behalf of the police. Once the pardon goes through you have to give it back. Heh, or it's theft."

She takes a breath to calm herself. "Anything else?"

"You can have my armour if you want, but I'm not wearing anything underneath."

"Father Box."

"Father Box is a sentient organism and my accomplice. He also doesn't have any weaponry." A little misleading, but essentially true, and her built in lie detector will confirm that.

She nods, then sighs. "I hope you're pleased with yourself."

"Thank you." I nod, slowly and deliberately. "I am."

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Stars, Crossed, part 1 7

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"Get up."

Huh? Wha? I open my eyes. This room isn't-. Police station, right.

"Grayven, get up."

Batman? Ring, what-? Oh. Yes. Father Box, what time is it?

Ploong.

22nd February

21:49 GMT -6

Thank you.

I push myself up into a sitting position and look at him. "I don't think I'm supposed to have visitors at this time of night."

"I told you to get up."

I peer at him. His voice sounds… Different. Gruffer. Gravellier. Has he taken up smoking or is he just that angry with me? His costume looks a little different as well; the bat 'ears' are sticking out slightly to the side rather than pointing straight up. It's also darker than I'm used to, less armoured and the green highlights…

I blink and look to the wall to my left. The wall is nearly completely obscured by a matte black rectangle which crackles with dull green lightning. The very centre is a shimmering point of white light which pulses and releases waves that expand outwards toward the edges then disappear.

Huh. I don't recognise the technology. Father Box?

Ploong.

Looks like someone's been holding out on us, then. Keeping my eyes on Batman I rise to a crouch. "What can I do for you, sir?"

"Come with me." He turns and steps towards the portal.

"Sir, I'm… Something of an amateur at being under arrest, but I don't think that's how it's supposed to work."

He turns his head just before reaching the aperture. "I gave you an order, Grayven. Get moving." He steps into it, his body shimmering for a moment and then vanishing.

Hmm. Well, that was an order. Can't really.. disobey. He went through the portal himself so I can't use the 'suicidal' get out. Darn. I really hope this doesn't mess up my pardon. I mean, it shouldn't, urgent Justice League need and all that… I dust myself off and step up to the portal. No smell, no vibrations in the air… Nothing on god-vision.

I step forwards into the portal. There's a moment of.. nothing, really, then I'm through. I'm standing on a metal platform. On this side there's a large metal rectangle surrounding the area of the portal; the projection mechanism, presumably. Four wide metal steps lead down to the floor level of what appears to be a laboratory cum workshop. The portal generator is the focus of the room, and there's an armoured control booth in the corner of the room.

Batman nods to the man on duty behind the armoured glass. "Shut it down." He gets a nod in return and the portal ceases to be. "Did anything happen while I was gone?"

The man steps out from the booth. "You weren't even gone for five minutes. Nothing's changed, perimeter defences are still holding." He glances at me. "This him?"

"Yes."

"I'm.. sorry sir, where are we? And who-." Wait a second. Shave his head, add a goatee and about ten years… "Lantern Stewart?" His jaw tightens and he looks away.

"We're on the Watchtower." Batman heads towards the blast doors at the far end of the room.

"The Watchtower doesn't have a room like.. this…" Wait a moment. Beard of evil? I activate my aero discs, rising into the air. "I am now sufficiently uncertain that you are Batman that I am prepared to risk ignoring your instructions. What the hell is going on?"

"You've been brought to an alternate dimension. We need your help."

"I.. don't think that's the right use of the word 'dimension'…"

"Did you design and build a portal capable of travelling between them?"

Um? "No?"

"Then we'll use my terminology." Batman stops by the door and holds his right hand up to the keypad. "Coming?"

I glance at Lantern Stewart. He's picked up some sort of beam rifle and is heading to the door as well. His body armour looks more impressive than I remember. It's decorated in black and green but there's no Lantern sigil and I can't see the glow of an environmental shield. What the heck is going on? Do I go with him? Does inter-planar travel trigger the 'voluntarily leave the system' part of my oath? Would refusing his orders? I mean, he is a Batman. I don't.. recognise the technology any more than I do the portal, and without a power ring Father Box's ability to override their systems is a good deal more limited.

May as well. I accelerate through the air after the two of them. "I'm still waiting for a full explanation."

The door opens with a hiss and Batman leads the way through, Stewart hesitating for a moment to glance back at me before following him.

"A full explanation would take more time than we have. In summary, the Justice… League, does not exist here. The Earth has been invaded and occupied and we have -perhaps- two days until its occupiers destroy it."

"I'm counting two Justice Leaguers here…"

Another glance from Stewart. "There's three, but none of us are capable of fighting them off."

"Why not?" Stewart looks away again. What the heck is going on?

"We aren't the Justice League. In this dimension the organisation we founded was called the Justice Lords."

!!!

Holy flashback, Batman! The Justice Lords, like in Justice League Animated?! But their chins look so normal! And… And their shoulders aren't as wide as they are tall! Okay, keep it together Grayven. "Different in name only, or was there an organisational difference?"

"To begin with, name only. John was our founding Lantern rather than 'Harold Jordan' and Aquaman's place as a founder was taken by Hawkgirl. The precise nature of the threats we faced has been somewhat different, but you'd recognise most of the criminals we've fought."

"Alright, so you've got three. What happened to the other four?"

"About eight months ago we used the portal to travel to another dimension in order to assist our counterparts there." Pff, y-eah! "The precise details are irrelevant, but the result was that those of us with superpowers had them removed. Currently, Superman is in the Fortress of Solitude, Wonder Woman is on Themyscira and the Martian Manhunter has returned to Mars."

"And the Flash?"

Stewart bows his head slightly. "Dead."

"And… What happened to your ring?"

"It got shut down by the power suppressing weapon."

"Bullshit."

He looks at me. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me: bullshit. Okay, I can accept that with no ring charge you might not be able to access your personal lantern, but eight months? Even the Green Lantern Corps aren't that lackadaisical. If you didn't check in for eight months they'd send someone to find out what had happened to you, even if it was only to confirm your death. If they did that, whoever they sent could either let you recharge from their lantern or take you back to Oa to get a replacement ring." He grimaces. "Do you expect me to believe that Salaak just forgot about you?"

"I was…" It looks like it physically hurts him to finish the sentence. "Discharged.. from the Corps. They.. disagreed with some of the things I'd done on Earth."

"Yah-huh. So Batman! Who's the lucky invader?"

He walks up to a console and presses a series of buttons. A holographic screen comes to life, covering the wall and showing me the enemy ships.

"They are."

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Stars, Crossed, part 1 8

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Not…

Sure…

"A Thanagarian Command Carrier. Earth's been invaded by Thanagar?" I make an effort to recall everything Father Box told me about Thanagarian technology from my par-. My most recent parallel. Thanagar is located in Sector 2682 and is just about the only interstellar power anywhere near Earth. They.. could make such an attack but it would be a long way out of their way and.. frankly it doesn't fit their usual mode of operations. Alien worlds that find themselves within the borders of their empire usually get left to their own devices. Technologically… As long as it stays out of the atmosphere that Command Carrier can probably laugh off anything the Earth can throw at it, save for a nuclear missile strike that somehow bypassed its point defenses. Or maybe some sort of exotic weapon? That or super.. heroes…

And there aren't any Justice Lords to take the job on.

Batman nods. "They arrived last week. Initially, they claimed to want to help Earth defend itself against a species called the Gordanians. With no real way to defend against an alien attack, the governments of the world gladly accepted. The Thanagarians are building this in the Libyan Desert. They claim that it's a force field generator-."

That I recognise. "That isn't a force field generator. That's a quick and extremely dirty displacement generator."

Batman glances back at me before returning his attention to the image. "As I found out when I infiltrated a tour group and heard their commander discussing it with his government. I exfiltrated and attempted to share this information with the United Nations Security Council. Unfortunately, residual hostility towards the Justice Lords resulted in them ignoring it and proceeding with the construction."

Stewart nods. "And even if they did take notice, I don't think they've got anything that could get past the Thanagarian defenses."

I nod. "And where exactly do I come in?"

"Your boom tubes will let you bypass the Command Carrier's defence systems, while your New God physiology and your power ring-" Ah. "-should enable you to fight your way through their marines and disable critical systems, rendering them unable to complete their missions." He presses a button on the console and shuts down the image before turning back to me. "We've observed several dimensions we could have asked for help. I chose you because you have the combination of altruism and ruthlessness which the mission requires."

Stewart doesn't look entirely convinced. "That and the fact that we can't shield emissions from the portal for long enough to find anyone else."

"Thanagarian. So -just to make sure that they use the same equipment as the Thanagarians I'm used to- they'll have space age exotic energy ranged weapons and Nth metal melee weapons."

"That is correct."

"Might have a slight problem then."

"What is it?"

I clench my hands into fists and hold them out to him. "Notice anything?"

A slight narrowing of his eyes, then they widen. "What happened to it?"

"I killed a mass murdering magic user. Since it was murder I handed myself over to the police and.. gave up my weapons."

Stewart glares at Batman. "You didn't check?"

He looks down. "There wasn't time." He remains still for a moment and then looks up at me. "Are you able to undertake the mission anyway?"

"Do you have the layout of the ship?"

"Partial only."

"Then, no. I mean, I might be able to do it, but if this is pretty much do or die I wouldn't want to bet on it." I look at Stewart. "You don't have a spare ring lying around, do you?"

"I don't, and that Rayner kid isn't even on Earth right now."

Oh dear. Drones, maybe? "Alright then… What sort of manufacturing facilities does this place-."

"That isn't entirely true." Batman looks thoughtful. "There is a power ring on Earth that isn't claimed by any Lantern. Getting to it might be difficult-."

Stewart's eyes widen. "You can't be serious! That thing isn't-!"

"I'm always serious." He turns back to the control panel.

"Excuse me? Still here."

Batman sighs. "A little over a year ago, after hearing about the measures the Justice Lords had taken to preserve the Earth, Sinestro paid Green Lantern a visit. It ended.. acrimoniously."

Stewart sneers. "I'll say."

"Sinestro was killed in the fight. We never recovered his personal lantern but we were able to recover his ring. It's currently being held at the Stryker's Island Exotic Materials Containment Center."

Stewart nods. "Yeah, along with just about every other mad invention the Lords ever confiscated. It's guarded by an entire company of US marines, to say nothing of whoever SHADE's got on standby in case anyone tries anything."

"Shade?"

Stewart nods. "The Super-Human Advanced Defense Executive. They're the federal agency which got responsibility for organising superheroes after the Justice Lords got shut down."

"I rather got the impression that American superheroes treasured their independence?"

"They.. did, but after what we did no one wanted-."

"We have up-to-date plans of the facility." Batman calls up a cut away image of the place. "They've upgraded the defenses but the maximum security section should still be in the same place."

Ring, take… Ah.

Ploong.

Sorry. Father Box, take a copy. "Is this place secure?"

"The Watchtower has stealth capabilities. If that fails we have force fields, as well as substantial armor and armaments. We should be able to survive an attack from their fighter craft and the Command Carrier is obliged to remain on station above the 'displacement generator'. Still, I would rather avoid any unnecessary risk. Why do you ask?"

"While I could survive stepping out of the air lock and falling to Earth, I would much rather use a boom tube. Could they detect that?"

Batman hesitates for a moment. "I don't think so. Still, you should avoid travelling-."

"Directly, yes, I know. Father Box, open a boom tube to the roof of STAR Labs Metropolis branch."

"Ploong."

There's a bang, and… Huh, the edge of the aperture looks a little different to usual. "See you shortly." I fold my arms behind my back and stroll through the tube, letting the sounds and the smell of the Metropolitan area fill my senses. Looks like… Early morning, just before dawn. I suppose there's no reason to assume that the date matches both here and at home. Father Box, close it.

Ploong.

There's another bang as it shuts down. Thank you. Now, no major hurry. Okay, the planet being torn apart is a deadline but from the look of it I've got at least a day or two and the Thanagarians are going to want to pull their own people out before they turn it on.

I need to know whether or not these 'Justice Lords' are the same as the ones I remember from the Justice League animated series. Using the aero discs to keep my weight off the roof I float over towards a roof aerial. Time to gather some data.

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Stars, Crossed, part 1 9

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7th January 2004

07:29 GMT -5

That was enlightening. It's like… Quarian faces: a big secret to the gamer but common knowledge in the setting. Likewise, the Justice League animated series skipped over exactly what President Luthor did which led to the Justice Lords assaulting the White House and killing him. Here, everyone knows, and even now you'll struggle to find anyone who disagrees with them. There are a few on the American right who wish that his plot had worked and remained undetected, but they also don't like people of Hebraic extraction very much so they don't really count.

As for Justice Lord rule itself, Plato would have been proud. They were at once selfless and ruthless. Didn't go quite as far with schizo tech integration as I'd have liked, but Batman was the only one with any significant knowledge of industry and he was more focused on law enforcement reorganisation. Destroying things when you're a ridiculously powerful superhuman or superalien is easy. Actually getting people to do what you tell them, actually running a society, that isn't something that can be achieved by power alone. The way they cut through democratic and legalistic bloat to get things done was awe inspiring.

A lot of Luthor's people got purged, but given the stuff they'd been doing there isn't a lot of sympathy for them either. The Lords only ever had direct control of the United States, though other countries were prepared to follow their lead on certain matters because they were the superheroes who prevented World War Three. I used to say that was the reason why as far as I was concerned James Blunt can make as much crap music as he wants and I guess it works for world leaders as well.

Couldn't find any good records on how the Lords lost their power. The showdown at Arkham appears to have happened as per Justice League Animated and Superman and Hawkgirl both stopped here for medical tests after they got depowered. Something else Batman and Stewart didn't tell me: she's almost certainly dying of something that looks a lot like an autoimmune disease. Since she'd never been for a medical here before they couldn't tell why it was happening, but with resistance to Lords control growing and Batman unwilling to clamp down they apparently didn't think it was safe to leave her on planet.

Makes me realise how important Batman was to the whole thing; even with the Lords depowered, if Kal-El had persuaded him to mass produce Superman robots they could easily have stayed in control. As it is, mass protests led to Congress formally rejecting Lords authority less than a month after they lost their powers. The people working for them mostly got granted amnesties but the Lords themselves were told that they'd be executed if they ever came back. Installing SHADE to deal with the mess that came with the world's leading superhero team suddenly disappearing was one of the first things the new President did. President Horne here too, I note. His first term.

Ah, enough wool gathering. Father Box, open a boom tube to the Metropolis waterfront.

Ploong.

Thank you. It's curious, being thrown back on my own resources like this after putting so much effort into augmenting my equipment. For the first time in a long time I'm going to more or less be forced to brute force my way through a fight with no clever solutions available at all. I did pay attention to Diana when she taught us to brawl but mass combat of the sort I'm about to engage in hasn't been a focus of our lessons. I'm also starting to wish that I'd made a helmet for this armour. An anti-tank rocket to the face would actually hurt and I can't afford to get blinded. I'd heal it back before too long but it would cost me time. Normally I just use the ring…

Yep, that's Stryker's Island. More built up than back home, and the navy vessels on patrol are something I haven't seen before. No, they'd be Marine Corps vessels, wouldn't they? Of course, back home the interesting part -metahuman containment- is being closed down. Or was, anyway. Given the debacle Belle Reve has become they got funding to upgrade it to current generation standards while it's empty. The regular prison part is still there. Here, they don't really have any need for metahuman containment. Due to every supervillain getting a prefrontal lobotomy, often personally administered by Kal-El. It worked -obviously- but I can't help but think it was a wasted opportunity.

I sigh. Been preying on my mind as I brought myself up to speed. America's a remarkably stable country. A lot of places would have collapsed into anarchy after people like the Lords were removed, but here things kept going. Less efficiently, for the most part… But this Thanagarian thing shows that the Lords did at least one vital job that no one else has picked up. I could just take Sinestro's ring and use it to hack the Watchtower and send myself home. Seems… Petty, though. I could complete the mission I've been set, destroy the ship and the device they were sent here to build…

But what happens next time?

The Lords killed or mentally ruined a lot of supervillains, but if the Lords' Earth is going to have to meet the same challenges as the League's Earth did -and this Thanagarian situation suggests that they will- there are plenty left that are still up and coming. Should I help the depowered Lords get their powers back? I could probably fix Kal-El easily enough. Diana… I don't know, but her powers are similar enough to those of New Gods that we could probably work something out. I could give Sinestro's ring to Stewart once I've got the hang of using it, fix whatever's wrong with Hawkgirl, dump.. Flash's remains in a Lazarus Pit…

None of that really leaps out at me as being a great idea, putting people already widely reviled back in a position of power. Second option, stay myself? Or be ready to come back on demand? This Batman knew what sort of person I am when he came to get me. I think I'd be better appreciated here. I could.. get backing for an actual stellar navy… Have to find out what their version of Father's been up to lately…

Option three, see if SHADE are up to the job. I remember them from several different comics. In Seven Soldiers they did a pretty good job but later on they were shown as sinister or outright evil. I need to look into them more thoroughly, see what they're like here.

Of course, there's a fourth option…

I'll admit, it has a certain appeal. At the moment the local superheroes aren't responding to the Thanagarians because officially there isn't a problem. They're here to help. Is there still enough independence.. enough independents.. to form a new group? I'd need to get a look at exactly what SHADE is before I start trying to pinch their people… A vague.. proto-idea is forming in my mind. Leagues usually form spontaneously in response to some great threat. If I can get the idea that the Thanagarians are the enemy to enough people… Could that work?

Oh, leave it until I get back. Since I can't scan without a ring… Father Box, Boom tube to the top of the outer wall.

Ploong.

I stride through and smile at the stunned patrol. "Gentlemen, hello." Plasma guns snap up to their shoulders. "My name's Grayven-"

"We've got a security breach!"

"-and I'm here to steal all your stuff." They open fire. Centre of mass, I note. Not enough kinetic force to push me back and not enough energy to hurt me through my armour. I lunge forwards, shoving their guns aside as gently as I dare and forcing them to drop them. The one on the right goes for his sidearm while the one on the left turns and sprints towards the nearest alarm. I grab sidearm guard by the shoulder and hurl him after his colleague at maximum low lethality force.

"Dwahh!" / "Ugooff!"

The guard towers have spotted me and are trying to reorientate their heavier weapons. I duck down and pick up the discarded plasma weapon. Seems simple enough. Rip off the trigger guard, hold it up-.

"User not recognised."

Aowfuck that's bright! Okay, okay, hands are still in one piece, eyes -I blink- fineish. Huh. Clever, that. Automatically destabilising the plasma containment unit… I pick up the second, touch the trigger and hurl it at the closest guard tower before opening a new boom tube to the second closest.

"OHSHITHE'SHERE!"

Knocking people out without risking long term damage is an art, really.

"Uh-h." / "Rrr-ug."

Father Box, can you match their authentication signal?

Ploong.

Nice work. I step forwards and rip the heavy plasma cannon off its mount. Stun setting, stun setting… Rapid pulse? I raise the weapon to my shoulder and aim it at the guards now charging towards me down the causeway. Father Box, analyse shot.

Ploong.

I lead the shot enough that I shouldn't hit the closest guard and squeeze the trigger, unleashing a short volley. The guards scatter with a shout of alarm, seeking cover just as the main facility alarm starts to sound. Sporadic fire flies in my direction so I turn aside to shield the gun with my body and raise my left arm to shield my face.

Ploong.

Long as I hit somewhere armoured? You sure-?

Ploong.

Sorry, sorry, of course. I target the guards and carefully place shots one after another in their chest plates, where the armour is strongest. That's that dealt with. Over the alarm I can hear… Are those jet packs? Oh, shooting them out of the sky would not be safe. Still, I think I've got their attention now. They'll be directing their attention to the exterior… I consider the schematic Batman showed me. Father Box, Central Monitoring.

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Stars, Crossed, part 1 10

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7th January 2004

07:34 GMT -5

"Worthlesspeonscream!"

The man on the closest monitor bank turns his chair around with a frown. "Huh?" His eyes widen. "Aaaagh!"

I jab him in the diaphragm with my right hand and he folds up, gasping for air. The alarms in here aren't on but I can hear the general alert through the walls. The man's colleagues start looking around. "Okay everyone! I don't feel like killing you right now, so if you don't think you can fight me, feel free to flee." I half turn and indicate the room's only exit, only for the alarms in this room to start blaring. I look around and see the woman who pressed it staring defiantly at me. "I'm not even angry. Good show of moxy. But it didn't make you super strong and you still need to run now."

A man with a couple of bars on his shoulders stands up. He gives me a quick once-over then turns back to the room. "O-okay, everyone. We're evacuating now, just like the drills." There's a slight hesitation, then they start rising from their work stations. The first few hesitate as they approach me so I walk around the edge of the room away from the door. That gets them moving, and I'm pleased to see two of them help the man I struck.

The lieutenant is visibly counting them out, but spares a moment to glare at me. "I don't know what you're doing, but you won't get away with it."

"If you don't know what it is, how do you know I haven't done it already?"

He blinks. "Ah-um, what?"

"I mean, I got this far. Presumably I'm not an idiot. It's reasonable to assume that I've got something in mind. Isn't it?"

"You just let a bunch of hostages escape."

"Clogging up the corridors nicely until the armed response detail finishes evacuating them. Anyway, hostages pin you in place. I value my mobility. And I really would rather not seriously hurt any of you." I glance at the door. "Speaking of, you should probably get going yourself. I'm about to trash this place and you're not explosion proof."

A scowl, but a completely impotent one as he quick marches after his subordinates. Right. I raise the plasma cannon and rapidly shoot out the screens. Obviously I realise that doing that doesn't do much to the computers doing the work but I only really want to take away their ability to monitor my progress through the facility. Aaaand, ah! I use the aero discs to brace myself before sticking my right arm through the concrete wall and ripping out the power supply to the alarm. The noise stops. Much better. Now-. The lights go out. Pretty good response time, that. I tear a console from its moorings and shove it in front of the door as a barricade. Nothing really flammable here… I'm certainly not hanging around to pull out the plastic from the wiring. Moving as quick as I can I add three more bulky pieces of equipment to the barrier. Over the alarms I think I can hear running boots… Time to go. Father Box, just outside secure storage, please.

Ploong.

Obviously, secure storage retains a guard complement during an attack. But-

"Agh!"

-they don't think with portals. And it turns out-

"Aaaaaaauu…"

-their armour's fairly weak around the neck. Note to self, carotid artery pinch works rather well. Normally there'd be a strike team sent immediately, but I just destroyed the room doing the monitoring and in any case the strike teams are on the wrong side of the facility thanks to my initial attack. And it looks like SHADE don't have any teleporters on duty… Hm, going well.

Secure storage has thick concrete and steel walls and a truly colossal vault door… Which.. is.. open..? Huh. I mean, I know how thick it is so it wouldn't really be any effort to boom tube past it… Why is it open? I raise my plasma cannon towards the opening. The lights inside are out. I could just 'spray and pray', this cannon doesn't produce anything like the force needed to destroy a power ring. On the other hand I haven't seen a full manifest. It's possible that some of the things in there going critical could.

Tricksy hobbitses…

Oh, my senses are acute enough that the odds of someone getting the drop on me are rather low. If I keep to the ceiling and move-.

"Guess who, motherfucker."

Huh-? Boagh! Ow, fuck! A brilliant beam of yellow light just… Agh, just blasted out of the darkness and hit me in the face! I blink away the lights as I rise to my feet, the glowing corona of a Yellow Lantern's environmental shield shining out of the dark of the secure storage vault. Lost the plasma cannon-.

"Always thought hiding these away was a mistake."

I raise my right arm to shield my face just before the beam strikes and it gets blocked by my armour. An amateur, then. Good job too. I am not confident of my ability to defeat an experienced Lantern as I am now.

"Lords took this off some alien they killed." The guard floats out of the secure storage area. No.. obvious distinguishing feature. Purple shirt? Rank insignia says 'Corporal'. "Marine Corps' a big fan of tradition. You are an alien, right?"

"I'm a New God, Human. I transcend biological definition."

"Yeah?" He raises his right fist, Sinestro's ring glowing from his middle finger. "Transcend this."

Wait a second… A glowing yellow manacle clamps around my left forearm and pulls it behind my back. I take a moment to assess its strength. Breakable… But I know that voice. It's different, certainly, but…

"Guy Gardner."

He pauses for a second, then grabs my right arm with a second construct and pulls it around to join my left. "Heh, even alien weirdos know my name."

Oh, this is ridiculous. Guy fighting on through his fears, sure. Mastering them? Though… The ring.. might not.. actually work off fear…

"You're a long way from help down here, Gardner." He's keeping his distance, and the ring glows like he's waiting for an excuse to shoot me again.

He glances at his fallen colleagues. "Lotta help they'd be."

"You don't have the courage to master that ring."

"You don't know nothin' about me. And anyway-" His eyes flare yellow. "-looks t'me like you've got plenty of fear yourself. Looks like death and… Gettin' your brain overwritten?" Ah, it does work off fear. "Bein' made someone else? What's that about?"

"A truly horrifying concept. But I don't need a power ring to know your fears, Human. Shall we talk about your violently abusive father? Your callous, disinterested mother? The way you sabotaged your own life in a pathetic attempt to.. what, prove them right?"

"Shaddup." He jabs the ring forwards and a hard Hannibal Lecter style mask-construct covers the lower part of my face. I test the limits of it with my jaw… Weak. I can still speak.

"Or perhaps we could talk about your brother, a man who could do no wrong." I smile at him. "And we both know how that turned out."

"FUCKAH!" He pulls both of his arms back, a glowing baseball bat construct forming in his hands. He lunges at me, swinging it at my head!

I exert myself, shattering the manacle constructs and lunging forwards with my aero disks, my left hand grabbing his left forearm and my right grabbing him around the throat, the baseball bat construct failing as he futilely tries to force me back. "Fear, Human, is something that you.. do not.. inspire.. in me. Picture me with Roland Gardner's face as I beat the stuffing out of you." I release my grip on his throat and slam him hard into the closest wall.

"E-hyeh!"

He's in no real danger with an environmental shield, I just need to weaken his mental connection to the ring. Back and into the wall again, but this time he just grits his teeth and takes it. Back and slam him into the ground. I take hold of his head with my right hand. Up down up down up down and apply pressure. "Feeling secure in your power, 'Lantern' Gardner? Or are you prepared to fail in this pursuit as you have in.. every.. other?"

"Ukk ooh!"

I grab his right hand with my left and touch the ring with my thumb and index fingers. "Ring. Recognise me."

"Nooorrahhh!"

"A superior potential bearer has been detected." The ring pulls itself off Gardner's finger and floats next to me for a moment. Sinestro set it to use his own voice! "Identify yourself."

"I am Grayven of Apokolips, son of Darkseid. And I would teach my foes to fear me."

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Stars, Crossed, part 1 11

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7th January 2004

07:38 GMT -5

"Grayven of Apokolips." A yellow light strobes out and scans my body as I ease up on the whole 'smoosh Gardner's head' thing. "You have the capacity to instil... Adequate fear." Well, fuck you too, Sinestro. "You are hereby granted temporary custody of this ring." I hold out my right hand and the ring floats over to hang just in front of my middle finger. "Do not disappoint me." The ring jerks back, growing larger as it does so to fit over my finger and settling on the middle of my metacarpal.

There's a delightful flare of yellow light as the environmental shield kicks in, recolouring the tron lines on my armour to reflect my new power source. Okay, deactivate aero discs, stand up, chuck Gardner down the hallway -"Owff!"- and consider. No one's going to be afraid of a super powered alien who can't fly. There we are! So much better than aero discs. Now, let's see. Yellow should have fewer psychological effects on me than orange and frankly I didn't see that many problems with orange.

"Ring, you do know that Thaal Sinestro's dead, right?"

"My ring has a record of my death. Full functions will only be unlocked once you prove you are worthy of being my successor."

"And how may I do that?"

"There are three acceptable methods. You could hunt Green Lanterns down and kill them, if you have the strength. You could establish perfect social order through fear if you have the intelligence, or demonstrate a profound mastery of fear if you have the wisdom."

Guy pushes himself upright and stares at me with eyes full of impotent rage. "When you say 'full functions'..?"

"You will be granted access to my ring's personal lantern and database."

Don't really care about either of-. Wait a second. "Ring, state current charge."

"Forty seven percent of optimal charge remains."

Okay, that should be suffic-. The alarm cuts out. Huh. Wonder what that's about?

"All personnel are to evacuate immediately. S.H.A.D.E. operative en route."

Gardner stares upwards at an unseen controller. "No! I almost had the son of a bitch!"

"Hard luck Gardner. Hah, maybe next time."

"All personnel are to evacuate immediately. S.H.A.D.E. operative en route."

Hmm. I could just leave. Open up a boom tube somewhere, walk through. I doubt that they've got any way to track them, or at least track them and get someone there fast enough for it to mean anything. But I would like to get some practice in with this ring before taking on a ship full of Thanagarian marines… Preferably against someone who is an actual threat to me. And I don't.. really care about reputation per se, but I seem to remember-. Why rely on that?

"Ring, what unique functions does the yellow light grant?"

"The more fear you inspire, the stronger your constructs will become."

So building rep a bit does seem to be a good idea. Yes, let's get-.

"Another emotional spectrum component detected. Explain yourself."

Ah. "I usually use an orange ring. I don't have it with me at the moment. Is that a problem?"

"All personnel are to evacuate immediately. S.H.A.D.E. operative en route."

"Fuck it." One last hate-filled glare at me and Gardner runs for the exit.

"How did you come by it?"

"I don't know. It didn't come from the Guardians if that's what's worrying you."

"An adequate answer. Proceed."

I hesitate for a moment, then focus on my fear of going too far, of losing myself and becoming the monster I pretend to be. A scan of the two guards I beat into a stupor shows that they don't have long term injuries. "Father Box, boom tube, five hundred metres directly up."

"Ploong."

I can just hear the roar of wind on the far side over the noise generated by the opening of the tube itself. I fly through, close the tube and immediately begin scanning for my-. A huge cloud of dust and rubble erupts from the Stryker's Island facility below me, focusing around… Map? Thank you. Yes, the secure storage vault where I was standing a moment prior. I hope the silly-. No, the guards are still fine, and I see…

Huh. Yes, I suppose it makes sense that she'd be here. A little surprised that there isn't a version of her back block!

Supergirl covers the distance between the ground and me in less than a second as a wall of yellow light materialises in front of me just in time to intercept her right fist. Forgot how fast they could-. The wall shatters and I Garrick don't have any Garrick! Um, fly backwards, suddenly lunge forwards and start synthesising-. She grabs my right arm and starts spinning me around. Stupid, the ring can handle my inner ears just fine. Okay, parallel universe so the Kryptonite samples aren't reliable, but… I don't have them because they're in the other ring.

Damn it!

She lets go and I cover the distance between where we are and the surface of the sea nearly as quickly as she did on the way up. Water explodes upwards from the force of my impact as I experience a moment of relief that she isn't a better fighter than she was in Justice League Unlimited. What was water going to do? That did less harm than throwing me onto Stryker's Island would have done. Or just throwing me upwards and punching me more. I let myself sink as the synthesis of the Garrick Formula progresses. She can still see me just fine but the water should negate her heat vision, freezing breath and even her speed to a degree. If I get time I should try and find out how that breath thing works as the Kryptonians back home certainly can't do it.

What did I notice about this Supergirl? Looked more.. serious than I remember from the series. Plus, she attacked me right away rather than attempting to talk to me. She wore a skirt in the animated series, didn't she? The one who threw me down here had a sort of dull blue jacket and trouser number with a small Kryptonian glyph -not an 'S'- over her left breast. Actually looks dangerously close to being sensible clothing, something a rational person could go out in public wearing. Shorter hair than I remember from the series. I wonder how involved she was in that whole 'Lords' business. Hmm, and as I contemplate her, she's contemplating me. Garrick done? Right, Kryptonite, green and gold. May not have my records at the moment but I can remember the molecular structure just fine. That should help her learn to fear me. Done?

"The fabrication is complete."

Thank you. Subspace it and up we go. I generate a large bubble shield just before I breach the surface and take a moment to watch the water pour off the sides. Hmm, perhaps I should spice things up in future? Large monster constructs rather than simple shapes? Mmm, probably wouldn't do much here. She seems content to watch me rise for the moment. Right, eyes to glow.

"Supergirl, isn't it?"

"Drop the ring, right.. now."

"Is this a holding action? I was rather expecting Superman."

Her eyes glow orange for a second and-. Right, Kryptonians in this parallel have stealth heat vision, none of the red lines in the air I've grown used to with Kon and Match. There's a slight distortion in the air as the beams of energy heat it where they pass, but otherwise I can't see it at all. Fortunately, I know how to use constructs to deflect it. The water off to my right explodes into steam as her beams superheat it for a moment before she gives up on that attack.

"You'll just have to make do with me, whoever you are."

"My name is 'Grayven', Supergirl. I believe you know my father." I fire yellow lines from my eyes, zigzagging them through the air before they home in on her. "Hello from Apokolips."

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Stars, Crossed, part 1 12

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7th January 2004

07:43 GMT -5

I see her eyes widen for a fraction of a second, then the air itself buckles around her as she turns and heads out to sea at high speed. I have the ring take control of the attack construct while I consider my next course of action. Ring, review local footage of Father. What do his..? Ah. Omega Vision here is orange, but can generate a sort of yellow flame effect around a target tough enough to survive the initial strike. It's credible that I could indeed be using it, and her fear is only going to intensify the force of the attack.

Out across the Atlantic Supergirl heat visions a section of the water, causing a vast plume of steam and vapour to explode upwards behind her. The faux Omega Effect passes through it without difficulty. I remember that in Justice League Unlimited Batman was able to avoid it by ducking behind a Parademon but unless I decided to pull the punch my construct would cut right through anything that squishy. If she ducks behind a ship that could be awkwa-. No, she's gone underwater. Can the Omega Effect go underwater? I don't.. know. She's heading back-. I send the beam into the surface of the water and generate a colossal discharge of force with the strike, sending shockwaves rippling outwards in all directions. Should cause a minor surge in water levels for miles along this coast… Not enough to cause serious damage.

Supergirl's slower coming back but she's making decent headway. Now, if I assume that this Supergirl is basically Kara from Superman Animated… Wish I'd actually watched that, now. Only really remember her from a couple of episodes of Justice League Unlimited and I don't think Braniac nookie is in this iteration's future. Detailed scan… Kryptonian physiology appears to work in basically the same way as back home so the Kryptonite should still be effective. I drop the bubble shield and replace it with ornate armour. Including a helmet, obviously. Heh, there's actually a constant frothing in the water in front of her face where she's got her heat vision on continuously. Probably anger, but it would be amusing if the trigger for it here is sexual arousal as it was in Smallville.

Okay, she's nearly Garrick. She breaks the surface of the water in a two-fisted lunge, crossing the distance between us in what seems like a second even in my accelerated state. Heat vision deflects off my construct armour and I can see her mach cone as I transition to her side and slam my right fist into the middle of her back.

"Grah!"

She starts to spin out of control and I take the opportunity to strike her again, a backhand blow with my left hand across her face. I pull my right back to strike at her diaphragm but she's starting to recover and speed up relative to me. She moves around my outstretched fist and uppercuts me in the faceplate with her right fist. Her face twists into a rictus of hate and determination as the construct cracks under the force of her assault. I swing my left elbow around to fend her off, catching her on the right shoulder and knocking her back. A sword construct forms in my right hand, the green Kryptonite I've created decorating the guard. I slash across the space she's occupying and she backs off immediately, taking a deep breath… Scan in detail. Ah, I ssssee. She's instinctively using strong nuclear force manipulation to stop the vibration of the air molecules in her lungs, or at least highly suppress it. I'm not sure why that doesn't ice up her lungs… Or maybe it does and she's just tough enough not to care? She exhales and I evade as air at a temperature well below the freezing point of water blasts past me, causing the water vapour in the air to precipitate out as ice crystals as it goes. She turns her head to keep up with me and her eyes glow again as she aims her heat vision directly for my eyes. As she empties her lungs I generate a tower shield construct and fly at her, bringing my construct sword around at her neck.

She jinks to my right and punches the sword construct in the flat of the blade with her right fist, shattering the construct and causing the Kryptonite shard to tumble free. Huh? She snatches it out of the air with her left gauntlet and crunches it to powdery fragments, a confident smile of challenge on her face. "Everyone tries the Kryptonite. You really think we don't have a defense against that by now?"

"And now I feel like I've been lazy." Ring? "Radiation shield, woven into the structure of your garment. Simple but effective. Though… You should probably avoid breathing in those fragments."

Her eyes narrow slightly and she dusts her hand off. "What do you want?"

"Now that I have this ring? I want to save this world."

She stares at me for a moment, then slowly raises her right eyebrow. "You want to save the world?"

"I can't conquer it if someone else has already destroyed it, now can I?"

"What are you talking about?"

"The Thanagarians-."

"Are building a shield to protect the Earth from people like you."

I smile. "Is that what they told you? Tell me, Supergirl… Did you have anyone who actually knows anything about spatial dynamics verify their claim? Because I recognise the device they're building and I assure you; when they activate it there will be very little of this system left."

Her smile fades and her right hand drifts up towards… Ah, an earpiece. Impressive that it stayed in place. "Why do you want to conquer the Earth?"

"Clearly you people can't be trusted to look after yourselves." I fold my arms behind my back in a classic Darkseid pose. "Though the people of this world are not without their merits, their civilisation lacks.. direction. A direction I am well placed to provide." I frown. "I mean no offence to your combat skills, but I was rather expecting to be confronted by the Justice Lords?"

"The Justice Lords don't exist anymore. We don't like it when people try to take over our planet."

"Ahhh. A pity." I raise my right hand slightly. "Though I suppose I'm not really at my peak… Perhaps it's for the best." She curls slightly as if preparing to charge me again. "Wait a moment… Please?" She relaxes slightly, her suspicion still clear on her face. "Do you have any great love for your current masters? I've seen recordings-" I hold out my right hand and generate a construct of her original Supergirl look, "-of how you used to look. Your smile seems more genuine, there."

She scowls. "And Apokolips is all about smiles."

"No, it really isn't. Apokolips is a horrible place. If I'd wanted to live there I'd simply have stayed. I don't, and didn't. Earth can be so much more than its small minded rulers will allow it to be. I want to see it reach its full potential."

"Are you seriously trying to ask me-?"

I dismiss the Supergirl construct. "Yes. Why wouldn't I? You're magnificent. Powerful, determined and beautiful. With you by my side the conquest would be far easier, both to accomplish and.. on the people. I try, but I was brought up on Apokolips. A member of my inner circle with a better knowledge of the functioning of Human society-."

"I would never work for you."

I nod. "I can respect that. In your position I would hesitate to accept a subordinate position as well. Hmmm." I study her for a moment. "I suppose…" I nod. "Acceptable." I hold out my right hand, palm upwards, and focus my mind on my fear of trusting those whom I can't predict. After a moment two metal bands of gold, platinum and copper appear. "Would you accept doing so as my equal in all matters?"

Her mouth hangs open for a moment. "No I would not-!" She gags. "How could you even-!"

"Oh." I frown slightly. "You are an adult, right? Because if you're not… I don't want to imply that.. I'm into that.. sort of-."

She lunges, striking me with both fists in the chest and pushing us high into the sky. Armour takes the impact, but I think I've achieved all I can here. I grab her wrists with my right hand, pull her across me and release before raising my right knee and slamming both arms down on her back, driving her diaphragm into my knee. The air shoots out of her lungs and she gasps as she tries to get her arms into position to push me away. She's… She's managing it. I'm straining and she's pushing me back. She's stronger than me.

Fascinating.

Distracting. Father Box, boom tube to low orbit.

Ploong.

A portal to nowhere in particular opens just behind me and I yank my left arm free of her grip to punch her in the face. Without having her anchored it doesn't do all that much damage but it does weaken her grip slightly. Her neck's too small a target for me to hit it… I aim instead for her chest and strike hard enough to knock her off me before flying backwards through the portal. She lunges forwards and I back up further, letting her pass through before closing the boom tube down.

Her eyes widen as she looks around, realising where she is. Barely any air in her lungs… I get one last glare and then she turns around and flies back towards the Earth at maximum speed.

Mission success. Now to return to the Watchtower with my loot.

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Stars, Crossed, part 1 13

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7th January 2004

12:49 GMT

Batman doesn't look up as I step through the boom tube from Masirah and into the Watchtower's operations centre. Stewart, on the other hand-.

"Did you really have to pick a fight with Kara?"

"Need? No." The boom tube snaps shut behind me. "But it was productive. There were things I was overlooking. Plus, it gave me the opportunity to tell someone what the Thanagarians are really up to."

Batman presses a button on his console, changing the view to a news report of my attack. Ms Lane looks a lot more.. worn down here. "Did you get what you went for?"

I make a fist with my right hand and hold out the ring. "Yes. The AI regards me as an 'adequate' user."

Stewart looks at the ring, clearly uncomfortable. Then he turns to Batman. "You need me for the next part? I.. wanna get back to medical…"

"No, that should be everything." Stewart nods, about faces and heads for the exit. Batman turns to watch him go, waiting until the door closes behind him before continuing our conversation. "We should get started on planning your attack."

"I had a look at STAR Labs' database. They said that Hawkgirl has an autoimmune disease." Batman hesitates for a moment before giving me a small nod. "They're wrong. Thanagarians don't get autoimmune diseases."

"Our knowledge of Thanagarian medicine is extremely limited. One of my objectives when I infiltrated their ship was to access their medical database. Unfortunately, I was discovered before I could reach it."

"I'll take a look at her before I go. Listen, I've been.. thinking about something." I hesitate.

"Go on."

"What happens next time?"

"Alien invasions are infrequent. The Justice Lords weren't the only superhero team on Earth. I've been arranging funding and training for others. By next time, some of them should be ready to take on the job."

"And if they're not?" He doesn't respond. "I mean, I don't mind coming back, but in future I'll be charging you."

"Did you have something in mind?"

"I told Supergirl what was really happening. With a little luck she'll take the initiative, but she's just one woman. The League are a team."

"You want to inform other people." I nod. "If information on what the Thanagarians are doing becomes public knowledge it could provoke an attack, and the Earth is in no position to fight them."

"I wasn't planning on telling everyone, just.. a few people. People who could take part in the fight themselves. Or… It doesn't have to be the Thanagarians. I 'villained it up' when I was talking to Supergirl. I don't mind playing the Galactic Conqueror myself if that is what we need."

"I chose to come to you because very few superheroes could take on this mission. Supergirl was probably the only local one who would have had a chance."

"What about your Captain Marvel?"

"He refused to work for SHADE and was forced to retire."

I nod. "How old is William Batson now?"

A slight hesitation. "Eight."

"I don't know your version, but our William Batson is almost painfully idealistic. If the fate of the planet was at stake…"

"It's possible."

"I can drop by your versions of my brother and my sister in law. I think I can probably talk them into it."

"Who are you referring to?"

"Mister Miracle and Big Barda."

"The escapologist."

"The New God of Freedom and the former head of Darkseid's bodyguard. They came to Earth to get away from all of that, but if it's followed them here…"

"I don't know enough about them to judge whether or not they would make good additions to a team."

"Do you feel that the Lords overstepped the bounds of what a team of superheroes should do?"

He hesitates for a moment, then nods. "Among other things, yes."

"They won't. They both grew up under Father and have no desire to recreate that civilisation. Their skills in their chosen fields are considerable."

"Very well. Who else did you have in mind?"

Mmm. "What is.. your relationship with Richard like?"

Batman freezes for a second, then turns back to his console and calls up some newspaper clippings. As expected, Richard here is a young adult. In his twenties, I'd say. It seems that he's fairly popular, locally. And.. is that a Robin? "Nightwing operates out of Bludhaven as a SHADE operative. We have very little contact."

"Might be worth cluing him in."

"I've tried. He isn't responding."

"Doesn't mean he isn't listening." I suppose I should ask. "How much.. Bruce Wayning do you do these days?"

"None. As far as Gotham is concerned, Bruce Wayne is a delusional recluse. Is there anything else?"

"No. If you don't hate the idea I'll start working out how to get them on board." He nods. "I'll go and see what I can do for Hawkgirl now."

"I'll continue monitoring the Thanagarians. I'll let you know if the situation changes."

I nod, connect the ring to this Watchtower's systems and open the doors between here and the medical bay before transitioning there. Feels.. different, doing it with a yellow ring. Or maybe that's just a function of being in a parallel universe? Stewart's sitting next to the bed Hawkgirl occupies, her left hand clasped in his. She looks.. withered. Prolonged illness will do that to a person, I suppose. Not enough exercise, body not processing food properly…

"What the hell do you want?"

"One moment, Mister Stewart." He fears her death, but only slightly. At this point he's pretty much made his peace with the idea. What he fears more is her suffering and his inability to do anything about it. Enough for me to use…

Wait, what? Where's the medical-?

"My ring is not a tool of healing. You will have to impress me a great deal more before I unlock the information you need to create medicinal devices."

Stewart frowns. "Now there's a voice I didn't think I'd ever have to listen to again."

"Though, if you kill this former Lantern I will permit it just once."

I think not. "Ring, unlock full functionality. Thaal Sinestro gave me permission himself."

"I find it unlikely that I wouldn't have put that data on this ring. Prove it."

I raise my right fist.

"In blackest day or brightest night,

Beware your fears made into light.

Let those who try and stop what's right,

Burn like his power: Sinestro's might!"

Fingers crossed…

"Close enough. Full access granted, Corpsman. Don't make me regret this."

Yellow light strobes out of the ring to a point about two metres in front of me. A moment later a yellow personal lantern emerges from subspace and a beam of yellow light blasts from its centre to my ring.

"Ring at one hundred percent power."

The lantern disappears immediately. Automated. Clever. Now, let's see what's wrong with Hawkgirl.

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Stars, Crossed, part 1 14

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7th January 2004

12:55 GMT

"Ah, yes. See here and here?"

Mister Stewart looks at the translucent yellow model of Hawkgirl's body currently lying on the bed next to the original. "What exactly am I looking at?"

"Here." I enlarge a section of her spine near where her wings are attached. "Humanoids can't fly through wing power. We're too dense and not at all aerodynamic. Thanagarians get around all of the obvious problems by having minute amounts of Nth metal throughout their bodies, in their bones and central nervous system. You see? Just here." I point as the display alters to more clearly show separate tissue types.

"I did wonder why she didn't have to flap her wings to stay in one place. So what's the problem?"

"Ms Hol doesn't. Whatever removed her 'powers' appears to have done so by transmuting the Nth metal to lead. Thanagarians are no more designed to be riddled with lead than Humans are."

"Got.. that right."

Stewart whips around. "Shayera!"

"Looks like I'm awake." She struggles to turn her head our way. "Who's the new guy? And… why is this yellow?"

"Construct diagnostic equipment, Ms Hol. Sinestro sends his regards."

A weak smile. "Heh. Funny."

Stewart takes his seat by her side once more. "His name's Grayven. Batman brought him here to.. help with something." Nice dodge.

She smiles at him. "Nice of him to remember I'm here." Her eyes move to me, then to her replica. "So I'm guessing you can't fix it."

"Actually, it should be pretty simple. I mean, I'll pretty much have to tear your body apart to do it, but you'll be unconscious for the whole thing." I shrug. "I just need some Nth metal. If you can tell me where you left your mace, I'll cannibalise-." She squeezes her eyes shut and Stewart sags. "What?"

"It stayed in that other parallel Earth. We don't have any Nth metal."

I nod. "Okay, not a huge problem. If I remember correctly there should be a small amount in Kahndaq-."

Stewart half turns to look at me. "Where?"

"Oh, right… I think you call it Egypt here? Apparently a Thanagarian ship fell to Earth a few thousand years ago, I should be able to recover some." I shut down the construct, then smile at Hawkgirl. "Try not to die in the next ten minutes, alright?"

"I'll give it my best shot."

"Excellent." I take a few steps away from the beds. "Father Box, boom tube to Masirah."

"Ploong."

7th January 2004

16:57 GMT +4

I step through the portal and immediately close it down. Yes, that tomb Carter Hall found probably exists here but why would I waste my time looking for it when I already know the location of a perfectly serviceable quantity of Nth metal? But first, tube to Siberia,-

Ploong.

7th January 2004

18:57 GMT +6

-Timbuktu-

Ploong.

"What the hell is that?!"

7th January 2004

12:57 GMT

-and Libya.

Ploong.

7th January 2004

14:57 GMT +2

I squint in the general direction of the construction site as I reactivate my armour construct. In the sky I can just about make out the Thanagarian fighter craft as tiny dots, too far away for a detailed image. Worth stealing one? Probably not. Scan. Hmm. I suppose I could grab a nuclear weapon and destroy the place, but I'm not sure how the Nth metal would react to all that energy and I don't really want to kill the Humans they've got working on the non-critical parts of the construction. Right, that Thanagarian in the white uniform near the top looks isolated enough. How to go about this? Ugh, she looks important and she's trying to destroy the whole planet. How hard do I need to think about this?

Okay, sure, I don't need to kill her, but I killed Klarion after he killed… I don't know what the final figure was but it was less than seven billion! It's not exactly logically consistent for me to get squeamish now.

Fine. Stupid conscience… Father Box, boom tube.

Ploong.

I lunge through the portal as soon as it appears, grab her by both shoulders and slam her against the metal wall behind her. She bangs her head hard and her eyes lose focus. I pull my right hand back and jab at her with my index finger. "I wanted to kill you. Look. Grateful."

"Uuuuuuuuhha."

"Someone's attacking Lieutenant Dul!"

"It's Praetor Grayven!"

"How did he find us!"

Oh, joy. At least they recognise me. Should make it a little easier. Ring, scan for Nth metal. Ah. I rip off her shoulder armour and the small pouches on her hips. Don't need much… Worth keeping as a hostage? Or better yet, as a source of fear? A Thanagarian soldier lands on my left and swings his axe at my side. I let go of Ms Dull and seize his wrist before he can complete his swing.

"Agh!"

I smash him against the wall as well as I start to take fire from his more sensible colleagues. As usual when I get attacked by weapons of actual significance the armour construct starts appreciably weakening almost immediately. What do Thanagarians fear? Obvious enough; these ones fear Gordanians. And.. me, for some reason, but I'm already using that. Three construct Gordanian warriors appear in the air above me and fly at the Thanagarians with a roar!

"What are those?"

That should keep them bus-. The Thanagarian soldier tries to claw at my face with his free hand. Given the shape of their armour it would be easy enough to stab him with a sword construct-

-but he's no real threat so I suppose it isn't warranted. I'll take his axe, though. Hawkgirl's going to need something to fight with. And his shoulder armour and his belt. Right, that should do it. Father Box, boom tube back to previous position.

Ploong.

Huh. You know, it's sort of nice to know that I can still manage to avoid killing people, even in the face of this sort of provoc-.

"Ayieeee!"

"Torek! No!"

There's a damp thump as the Thanagarian soldier one of my construct warriors blasted apart smears himself across the side of the structure.

…

Oh well.

I step through the tube, then two more at random locations on the Earth's surface before opening a tube to just outside the Watchtower's medical bay.

7th January 2004

13:00 GMT

Could get awkward if Hawkgirl starts asking why the ancient armour I've picked up looks so recent. "Stewart? Can I borrow you for a minute?"

He looks up, then hesitates for a moment until Hawkgirl gives him a weak push. With visible reluctance he gets out of his chair and walks out of the medical bay. "What is it? Did you get the Nth metal?"

I gesture to my ill-gotten gains with my right hand. "Yes, but I thought it appropriate to process this stuff first. Before…" I nod through the observation window at Hawkgirl.

He nods. "Right. What do you need me for?"

"My ring needs fear to function, and where Hawkgirl's wellbeing is concerned you are a veritable font of the stuff." The yellow aura around my swag intensifies as I begin removing impurities. "I need you now, and for the same reason I'll need you to watch as I break her apart and put her back together again." His face tightens. "Do you have the stomach for it?"

His head dips and glances back through the observation window. "If it's what Shayera needs? Always."

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Stars, Crossed, part 1 15

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7th January 2004

13:27 GMT

"Ugggh." I turn around as Hawkgirl's eyes flicker for a second before snapping open.

I smile down at her as Stewart takes hold of her hand once more. Credit to the man, he was a real trooper throughout the whole thing. "Welcome back to the land of the living! How are we feeling this afternoon?"

She hesitates for a moment before answering, tensing and relaxing muscles in sequence. "I feel… Good. How long was I out?"

"About half an hour."

She uses her free hand to push herself up slightly in bed. "That's it? I mean, what sort of recovery-?"

I shake my head. "I felt it best to fix up all of your secondary problems while I had you on the slab." And by 'slab' I mean 'floating in mid air in pieces'. Jolly interesting, actually. Never seen a person disassembled before. "I restored muscle and fat tissue, removed neural scarring… Injected some vitamins to help with the malnutrition. Your reflexes are going to be a bit off for a while.. as you get used to moving around under your own power again, but other than that, you're good to go."

"John, help me up right now."

"Okay." There's a slightly dazed smile on his face as he stands, keeping hold of her left hand so that she's got something to pull on for support.

She pulls back the covers with her right hand, then swings her legs around and gingerly tries putting weight on them. We have an upright Hawkgirl! Stewart moves to her side as she takes her first experimental steps across the medical bay. Tiny, nervous, shuffling things at first, then a more normal stride odd only in the delicacy of her footfall. Then she releases her hold on Stewart and picks up the pace to a normal walk and then to a jog. "My wings." She was clenching them against her back but now she risks unfurling them slightly. "Are my wings fixed as well?"

"There might be tiny changes to the precise distribution of-" She holds them out to the sides and beats them downwards once, rising into the air. "-Nth metal deposits. I wouldn't recommend formation flying-" A slight shift in the angle of attack and she drifts around the medical bay, her eyes wide with joy. "-for a little while." She picks up speed, creating quite a draft. Her hospital gown doesn't quite manage to keep up with her exuberance.

I should probably offer to make her some armour.

A moment later she drops to the ground directly in front of Stewart and grabs him, wrapping her arms around his waist and pressing her face into his chest. He puts his arms around her back and pushes his face against the top of her head.

Really, I should give them a little while, but we are on a schedule here.

…

Maybe a bit longer.

…

Wonder if Jade's seen my video of Klarion yet?

…

Hawkgirl pulls away slightly, then turns around to look at me. "Thank you. I don't even know how to express how.. grateful I am."

I wave if off. "Not even a thing, though.. I would appreciate some advice from the two of you."

Stewart tenses slightly. "Do we have to talk about this now?"

"Not that. The other thing."

Hawkgirl frowns. "What thing?"

I grimace. "There's been a bit of an alien invasion and they're going to destroy the Earth -and everything else in this system- in a couple of days at most. That's the main reason Batman brought me here."

"Figures. Just let me get dressed and I'll head out-."

"No no, other thing first. Can I just check that we're on the same page about the whole 'Justice Lords' thing? Good intentions, but probably took it too far?" Nods. "But there does need to be someone not tied to a particular government looking after the world, just so long as they don't do the highly socially invasive stuff you ended up doing."

Hawkgirl considers for a moment. "The sort of thing we did before Luthor. Could that work?"

"I think it could, with the right people. I was trying to draw up a shortlist in my head, but I don't know everyone here. Heck, where I'm from Wallace West is the sixteen year old Kid Flash."

Stewart nods. "Who have you got so far?"

"Supergirl, Captain Marvel, Nightwing-" Stewart winces slightly. "-Big Barda and Mister Miracle. That covers most bases in terms of power and strategy."

"You should probably try and get that Rayner kid." He glances down at Hawkgirl. "Assuming we're not invited."

"Not without major cosmetic surgery. No offence meant, but they're going to have enough trouble getting out from under the Lords' shadows as it is."

He nods. "Yeah, that makes sense."

"Do you have any idea what Lantern Rayner's been doing lately?"

"Last I heard he was on Ungara but I don't know whether he's still there or not."

I hold my right hand out in front of me, ring sigil upwards. "What's the contact protocol? No, hang on, he uses Abin Sur's old ring, doesn't he? It'll be on here already. Ring, contact Kyle Rayner."

"If you insist."

Hawkgirl looks askance at the ring. "Is it going to keep talking like that?"

Kyle's head and shoulders appear above the ring. Looks like he's got a bit more muscle to him than our art student Kyle. "Kyle here. What's up?" He squints. "Wait, who are you?"

"My name is Grayven. I'm speaking to you through the ring of the late Thaal Sinestro from the Justice Lords' Watchtower."

"Well.. that's.. two things you shouldn't be doing. Listen,-."

"Suck it up. Your home planet's got two days until it's going to be destroyed to make way for a hyperspatial bypass and the Sector's Lantern is nowhere to be seen. Unless you want to do a Tomar-Re, get your arse back here. End."

Hawkgirl looks puzzled. "Tomar Re?"

"He was the guy who was supposed to be keeping an eye on Krypton. Whoops, his bad." Wait, in this continuity it was Brainiac, wasn't it? Never mind. "Anyone else?"

She and Stewart share a look. "We didn't… The Lords didn't start out anything like how we ended up. While Wally was alive…"

Stewart nods. "This group's going to need someone like that. Someone who can keep things from getting too… Serious. Someone…"

"Hopeful. Someone who can.. make jokes, defuse the tension. I never met Nightwing, but if he's anything like Batman…"

"And having someone who can run at super speed doesn't exactly hurt."

"I'll see what I can do." Could their Captain Marvel do that? I don't know him well enough to say. Ours is friendly but he doesn't exactly go around cracking jokes.

"I know there aren't all that many people out there with super speed-."

"Oh, that's no problem. I have something called the Garrick Formula, I can just grant Humans super speed."

Stewart pauses. "I don't suppose you've got something like that for me, have you? I can fight without a power ring if I have to, but I'd be a whole lot more effective if I had one."

Hm. "How about the Star Sapphire? Do you still have it, or did I miss my chance to pick it up from Stryker's Island?"

"No, we've still got it. I just couldn't ever make it work."

"We can have a look at that while I try finding a new Flash. I should probably have a word with the other former Lords as well. Oh, and-" I float the axe into the room and hold it out to Hawkgirl. "-I used the spare Nth metal to put this together for you. According to my database it should match the standard modern Thanagarian design."

She takes hold of it and tests the balance. "Feels just right. I'll get dressed then you can tell me who these invaders are."

I nod. "Okay."

She watches me for a moment. "That means you need to leave the room."

I shrug. "I just finished dismantling and reassembling you. With you naked I'm seeing less of you than I've already seen. And anyway, I'm from Apokolips. We don't have a nudity taboo."

She points her axe at me. "Well I'm from Thanagar and we do. Out."

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Stars, Crossed, part 1 16

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7th January 2004

15:11 GMT

I watch through the stealth drone's camera as the nervous young woman returns to her apartment. Before turning the key in the door she takes a moment to puzzle at the paintwork and the wall next to it, where I spent a few moments earlier today erasing the frankly quite foul graffiti her critics had daubed on it. After opening the door she checks the floor just inside for the envelopes filled with dog excrement which I've already disintegrated. Finding none, she proceeds inside, locks and repeatedly chains the door.

Eliza Harmon is not in a good place right now.

I barely remember her from that missing year thing. It wasn't until I started looking at details of this universe's Flash's life that I came across her. Even though he had nothing to do with the Justice Lords' take over he ended up getting tarred with the same brush as far as most people are concerned. He went from being the Lords' second most popular member with a worldwide fan club numbering in the millions to having his museum firebombed during an anti-Lords riot. Before they got removed from power. I'm really not sure what series of events led Eliza Harmon of Manchester, Alabama to live in Central City and I've got even less idea why she's such a huge Flash fan.

But I can work with it.

It's not quite… I don't feel like I did when I was preparing to kill Klarion. That was good, but there was excitement and fear in the mix as well. This isn't the same, but I'm definitely… I'm feeling good about this. I mean, she might well end up dying very shortly or.. viciously attacking me at superspeed… But I'm feeling good about this.

Ah, she's seen the red box with yellow lightning bolt on her kitchen table. And she's backing up. Well, yes, alright, I suppose that at this stage a bomb was more likely than what it actually is. She picks up a broom and carefully uses it to flip the lid off, then jumps back and drops it as the sides fall away, revealing the hologram projector. Ah, looks.. a bit.. bomb-like, doesn't it? No matter, it should start-.

The full colour projection of the Flash appears in her kitchen, his head turned away from her. "Hey, Bats, is this thing on? Yeah? Okay." The image reorientates itself on Ms Harmon. "Hey Eliza. I'm The Flash… Ah, heh, guess that's kinda obvious. If you're seeing this then, ah… I'm… Not the fastest man alive any more. 'Cause I'm, y'know… Dead."

"OhmyGod."

Shayera walks up behind me, coffee mug in hand. "How's she taking it?"

"Too early to say. Looks promising, though."

"So, um, things are getting.. pretty tense… Green Lantern thought it might be a good idea if we all did one of these things, but I've already talked things over with my folks so I don't really need to send it to them. Bats is sending one to his sons if anything happens to him…" The image jerks. "Yeah, okay. Look, point is, I haven't had time to go to fan conventions or anything lately, but I know you've been putting a lot of work in and I figure if anyone deserves this it should be you." He reaches up and pulls off his mask. "My name's… My name was Wallace West, and I used to work in the Central City crime labs. About six years ago I had a lab accident which gave me super speed and.. given that it basically involved me getting covered in a ton of chemicals and then hit by a lightning bolt, I was pretty lucky. It took me a long time to work out exactly how it happened, but I got there eventually. Inside a compartment in this projector is enough.. Speed Formula, to give one person the same superspeed I've got-. That I had." He frowns. "Y'know, it's really creepy saying it like that."

"OhmyGod."

"I never had a sidekick, 'cause, Child Endangerment, right? I spent hours thinking about who this should go to, couldn't.. think of a way to decide… Then I just went on the Flash fan forums for a while and ended up reading some of your posts." He shrugs. "I suppose that's not exactly a fair way to do it, but it's not any more unfair than any other way, right? So, yeah, one shot of super speed in a syringe. You can use it yourself, or you can find someone else. Or, ah… I guess you could just throw it away but… Please don't do that."

"Oh my God this is actually happening."

"There's also some data sticks, mission reports, Justice Lords' records, stuff like that. Everything a budding superhero needs to get started." He smiles at her. "I guess I should have planned this whole thing out a bit better. Tell you what: when this whole Luthor mess's straightened out I'll just come and see you, that'd be a lot simpler." He looks past her. "Huh? Oh, right. Okay, I need to get going. If anything.. does happen to me…" He leans forwards. "Make sure someone's looking after my friends, okay? They can all get a bit intense, and the pressure's really been getting to everyone since Luthor got into the White House. I'm kinda.. worried about what they'd do if I.. wasn't around. But, yeah, this… We'll be fine." He pulls the hood back over his head. "I'll see you in, like, a couple of days. Wish me luck!" He blurs for a moment and the hologram shuts off.

Ms Harmon stumbles forwards towards her kitchen table and checks over the projector. I built quite a nicely ominous mechanism for protecting and holding the syringe of Garrick Formula. Had to make sure it worked on local animals in the same way as it does back home first of course, but the test results were perfectly in line with what I expected. Batman provided the files and Stewart and Hawkgirl tutored me in mimicking Wallace's diction. I'm still not quite convinced that I got him entirely correct, but I suppose she isn't in any position to check.

"This still feels creepy."

I glance at Shayera. "That's because it is creepy. Armour any good?"

She flexes her wings. "It's more confining than Thanagarian armor. Are you sure you can't change the design?"

"Yeah, I've seen Thanagarian armour. New God armour offers far superior protection." She doesn't look convinced. "It's as light as I can make it without completely compromising its protective qualities. Ah, she's applying the tourniquet to her arm."

"A new Flash." She sighs. "You really think that would have made a difference?"

"No idea. I'm not even completely sure that you did anything wrong… Not until you kidnapped and electrocuted your alter egos anyway."

"What do you think we should have done?"

"You should have done it quietly. Covertly. Targeted assassinations of the worst offenders until there just wasn't a problem any longer while.. they handle the rest. You achieve your beneficial change and they don't have to become…"

"Us."

"I was going to say 'compromised'."

"Right."

"Hey, I grew up on Apokolips. You're all soft touches as far as I'm concerned." I turn away from the screen to face her fully. "How are you handling the whole 'Thanagarian' thing?"

Her face falls. "It… I didn't want to believe it, but that's what a hyperspatial bypass of that size should look like. I didn't know the war with the Gordanians was going that badly."

"I was surprised as well. The Gordanians back home are mercenary pests, beholden to the Citadel for their advanced technology. They'd never be able to threaten Thanagar, or anywhere else of any significance."

"And Hro wants to kill everyone on Earth so our fleet can kill everyone on their homeworld."

"Not just Earth. The distance is too great. Father Box thinks they'd need to destroy at least three more systems in succession to make this work. Probably more. And then.. it's a pyrrhic victory at best. The Thanagarian fleet still can't stop the Gordanian fleet attacking Thanagar. In fact it would be even more out of position, and I don't see the Gordanians limiting themselves to occupation if they know that their world was subjected to exterminatus. They'd kill everyone in revenge and spend the rest of their lives hunting down every Thanagarian in existence."

"So the only way I can help my people.. is to help the Gordanians win the war."

I lay my right hand on her left shoulder. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry. Maybe you should try thinking of it as saving the lives of everyone on Earth, the Gordanian homeworld, Thanagar and.. probably about two other inhabited systems. Billions of people not dying."

"Just wish it wasn't Hro." She sighs again. "What's your next step?"

"I'm paying Superman a visit. I want to have a backup plan in case the new people need help. Or can't handle it."

"I'm not sure that's such a good idea. Batman and Superman don't exactly see eye to eye anymore. And if you come from Apokolips, I think he may have killed your god."

"My.. god?"

"Five years ago Superman got kidnapped and brainwashed by people working for someone named 'Darkseid'. When he finally came to his senses he went back there and killed him. You'd have to ask him for the details."

Yes. I rather think I will.

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Stars, Crossed, part 1 17

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7th January 2004

15:29 GMT

"If you're going to break into my home, you could at least offer to lend me a hand."

I take a look around the vast illusory space this version of Kal-El has created for himself. "I spent a summer working on a farm, once. I was rubbish at it. Besides, if you want muscle you've got those robot lookalikes of yours."

He turns his head away from the tractor wheel he's working on. "Too much to expect a little courtesy, I take it?"

I shrug, hands raised palms up. "Very well. What do you want me to do?"

"You mind sticking those bales in the trailer?"

"Think I can manage that." I walk over to the cylinder of straw. "Can't help but notice this is all Earth crops?"

He pushes the wheel back onto the axle and starts tightening the bolts. "If you're here to see the zoo, it's still up there."

I pick up the bale and carefully walk over to the trailer. "No, that's not-."

"I've got a lot of free time these days and I decided I wanted to grow things that reminded me of Kansas. Why are you here?"

"Are you aware of the Thanagarian presence on Earth?"

"It was on the news. I couldn't really miss it."

Trailer sags a bit under the weight but it seems to be basically mechanically sound. Wonder why he's using that rather than a gravity sled? Ah, psychological regression while under attack. Of course. "They're going to destroy the planet. The whole system, probably. It's actually a device that creates a sort of gravity funnel-."

"I could have guessed. What exactly would you like me to do about it?"

"A few Superman robots would be a great help when I attack them."

"Heh." He doesn't sound happy. "A dozen countries keep me under constant watch. The robots would be intercepted by the US Air Force before they got anywhere near Libya."

"Perhaps, but we-."

"Do you know how many of those I've got left?" Ah. No? He looks my way and I shake my head. "Between the insurgents, the Justice League and SHADE's assassination attempts I'm down to my last nine."

"I didn't realise they were sending people after you."

"Hmpf. Where are you from? I know a boom tube when I hear one but I can't think of a reason for anyone from New Genesis to want to see me."

"I'm from Apokolips." His eyes shift sideways to let him watch me as I deposit a second bale. "I am Prince Grayven, and I understand that you killed my father. I'd like to know how it happened."

"What for?"

"To learn how it was achieved. I have no interest in revenge; I know exactly how repugnant Father was and I can hardly fault you for your actions."

"Alright then. I got captured and brainwashed into becoming his loyal son. I led his armies to victory until he decided to send me to Earth. A combination of fighting Kara, a Kryptonite rocket and getting told off by Lois caused the mental conditioning to fail. I made my way to Apokolips, burned my way through his forces to the Tower of Rage and attacked him personally. He was winning, until I put my hands over his eyes when he tried to hit me with his Omega Beams. I grabbed on and it caused some kind of feedback reaction that blew the Tower apart."

That's it? "And that killed him?"

He shakes his head, eyes not quite so focused on me. "It badly wounded him, though. He couldn't keep fighting." He exhales sharply. "I was more idealistic back then. More stupid. I picked him up and threw him to the crowd. I told them to do whatever they wanted with him."

"They killed him?"

"No. They.. picked him up and tried to carry him off to get medical attention. That was when I realised that some things don't fix themselves, that sometimes… You have to take matters into your own hands and force the issue." He wields his spanner against the nut with considerable aggression. "I knocked them aside, picked him up and fired my heat vision into his eyes until his head exploded." His head jerks in my direction, his eyes fierce and staring. "Is that what you wanted to know!?"

I nod. "He picked a fight and for once he lost. I'm not sure Apokolips is better for it, but I doubt it can be significantly worse." He calms slightly. "I understand you.. continued following that philosophy on Earth once you returned."

"Everywhere I looked, I saw problems I could fix. At first I just tried to brush it off. Say it was because of the left over programming or because I'd been through a hard time. I think I could have lived with a lot of things… Even Luthor getting elected. But not when he tried to start a global war and certainly not him murdering my friend!"

"See, I'm with you on that. You unveil the plot, the international community thank you for your good work, stop their armies fighting each other and prepare them for the assault on the United States. You ask for two days to resolve the matter, and…"

"The only person who had to die was Luthor. I'm not sure I was even going to do that. Not until he put his finger over the nuclear launch button and taunted me about my unwillingness to stop him sooner."

"And afterwards?"

"We shipped Luthor's people off to The Hague, which was the absolute minimum the other countries would accept. Since that was a lot of the government and the rest of the world wouldn't trust anyone else we had to take over in the interim. And then… I couldn't think of a single good reason to give it up. Luthor didn't force anyone to vote for him and the world nearly got destroyed because the country made a bad decision. We appointed some caretakers to run Capitol Hill, people we could trust… Then we started fixing things. In less than a year there were no supervillains left and regular crime was a fraction of what it was before. No more government corruption, no more buying your way into power. No more failed compromises. And it worked." He throws the spanner to the ground. "And it took a day for it to fall apart because Batman got cold feet!"

And you've been hiding here ever since, mourning for the good old days. No, I won't be re-empowering you. Ring, scan him. Status of his organelles?

They're healthy, but the exotic energy reactions are being inhibited. By my calculation the inhibition effect will wear off in approximately five years.

Will gold Kryptonite work?

I was an archaeologist and a Lantern, not a physicist.

Father Box?

Ploong.

Right then. "I bumped into Kara earlier today. I understand that she's working for SHADE."

"She's a slave. That's what they've turned 'superheroes' into. They can't take the thought of anyone being independent anymore. They got so scared when they saw what a few good people in the right place could do they're doing everything in their power to make sure it never happens again." He sighs, then releases the jack holding up the tractor. "Can you stop them? The Thanagarians?"

"I'm going to try, certainly."

"And then?"

"I'm leaving. Batman's got my number if he needs me." Powdered gold Kryptonite, if you please.

Powdered gold Kryptonite is available at your request.

"Well." He nods. "Good luck."

Release it as a cloud when we leave. He doesn't need to breathe in much. Now, where next? Might as well get Diana out of the way. Father Box, boom tube to Themyscira.

Ploong.

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Stars, Crossed, part 1 18

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7th January 2004

18:41 GMT +3

I take a moment to look around the shrine. "I did not expect to find you-" Diana's up and has a sword pointed at me. "-in here."

"Did he send you to be my test?"

It's clearly Diana's voice, but it's younger and more aggressive than I've ever heard her. This Diana didn't leave Themyscira until early two thousand, though I don't know if she's actually younger than my own overseer. Hmm. I watch her as she takes a combat pose in full armour. Full actual armour, not that bodice Hephaestus made for her because he hasn't had any since the invention of the wheel. I've seen Amazons drilling with that posture but it isn't designed to help them combat people my size.

I shift my eyes to the statue of Ares at the focal point of the shrine. The world has been unusually peaceful since World War Three was narrowly averted. Everyone is painfully aware how close they came to utter ruination. I doubt that he likes that very much. "What, Ares? No. I don't take orders from Olympians."

"Perhaps if I slay you for your trespass he'll accept it as an offering anyway."

And Themyscira itself has been at peace for its entire history. "Bored now." I raise my right hand and fire a beam of yellow light at the statue. It shatters, spraying stone shards across the room. "Ares? I'll give you twenty seconds to complain in person about that or I'll assume that you're too much of a coward to confront me."

"How dare y-?!"

"I am Grayven, Apokoliptian God of Conquest. Ares is a pathetic and limited deity and it disturbs me that you would even think of seeking his patronage. And please put that sword down. As you are you are no threat to me at all."

She doesn't lower it. "Apokolips. Superman mentioned it. He defeated your king in single combat."

"An impressive feat to be sure, but I'd already left home by then." I look around the room again. "Time's up, Ares. You officially suck."

"What do you want?"

"Does your mother know that you're here?"

Her eyes narrow slightly. "She chooses not to."

I nod, fold my arms around my back and begin walking around the periphery of the shrine. She turns to keep her shield and sword facing me. "So, story so far: you went out into Man's World to help fight off an alien invasion. You make friends, valiant comrades in arms and.. you decide to stay on. A little over a year later and the world starts going crazy as nation turns against nation at the behest of President Luthor and your friend the Flash is killed. You take part in the attack on the White House and install your 'Justice Lords' as the nation's new rulers after Luthor's death. The nation you create is militant and harsh, but just and even handed. The people who created international chaos are punished… But… Somewhere along the line… You start losing popular support."

"We did what we had to. I know all too well what nuclear weapons are capable of. There wouldn't have been a world left if we hadn't done what we did."

I nod my head to the side. "Perhaps. But… You stabilised the situation. Yet, you were still in control two years later. Did you intend to simply become Queen of America?"

"It wasn't about that. It was about protecting the citizens of America from other evil doers. We never intended to stay in power indefinitely."

"Okay. So, Batman builds a portal to a place that isn't on the verge of nuclear Armageddon. And.. you decide to take out their versions of you.. and take their places. I'm curious as to how you justify that. This America, certainly, you had need-."

"Their nation was in chaos. Violent criminals were free to prey on innocent people-."

"No they weren't. They had police, their army and the Justice League. And other, less well known superheroes. They had order. And the technique you used to lure them into your trap!" A pause in my walk and smile at her. "Asking for help which they freely gave, only to have you betray them? Herakles would be proud."

"HAA!" She charges, her sword levelled at my heart. A Herakles construct appears between us turning her sword aside with his own and punching her shield hard enough that she goes flying backwards.

"Responding to vocal disputation with violence. I see that you've turned from Athena as well as Hestia."

She rises to a crouch, shield interposed and sword at the ready. "They turned from me first."

"Because you met a foe able to remove their gifts? Are you truly that arrogant? Divine gifts are given to the deserving. If you lose them, that's your look out. You can't.. demand a gift." I resume my walk. "Is that really why you're here? To ask Ares to replace them? They empowered you, looked away when you used their gifts contrary to their nature and now… You rage at them for your failings."

She rises again, teeth clenched and eyes blazing.

"But you know this, don't you? Otherwise you could make offerings at their shrines. Or go to a sacred grove and merge with the earth to restore yourself. You're afraid that they will confirm what you already believe. That you aren't worthy and that your actions were hideously misjudged."

I stop by Ares' altar, make a fist with my right hand and bring it down directly in the middle, smashing it in two. "Separates the men from the girls, I suppose. Batman reacted to the realisation that he was in the wrong by trying harder to make up for it, even though his country and his family hate him. John Stewart stayed on to try to find a way to heal Shayera, but they've both come to agree with Batman."

"Batman betrayed us."

"Batman was reminded why you got together in the first place. He acted in accordance with your stated ideals." I nudge one side of the altar with my right foot and it collapses further. "And now Shayera's erstwhile compatriots in the Thanagarian navy are here to destroy the planet. Three Justice Lords are working on the problem while you and Kal-El cower in your holes."

"I couldn't fight an army of Hawkpeople like this."

"You have all the weapons Amazon warriors have ever had. But if you want more, you already know what you must do. Confront your guilt, your fear and your sponsors. Plead your case and pray they are feeling generous. The alternative is more of-" I look around at the shrine. "-this."

I dismiss the Herakles construct and walk away from the shrine. Point made, I think. I doubt that she'll be any use for the fight with the Thanagarians but she might get her act together at some point. Shame Ares didn't show up. I kind of want to try going war god highlander on him and seeing what happens. Father Box, was Diana recovering her abilities as Superman was?

Ploong.

Thought as much. Still, maybe if she gets her head back on straight her sponsors can speed things up a-

"AaaaaAAAAAGH"!

-bit. I half turn back as I hear her scream. Oh, she'll either work it out or she won't. I raise my right hand to my ear. Ring, signal the Watchtower.

Channel available, Corpsman.

"Diana won't be helping. I'll speak to J'onn and then my brother."

"Understood."

Huh? "Shayera, where's Batman?"

"Bludhaven. He's meeting Nightwing to talk about the situation."

"I thought they weren't talking?"

"The way Batman looked when he left, I didn't want to ask."

It would be nice to get SHADE on-side. Would make my plans for the future quite a bit simpler, too. "I don't suppose we have a current location for Father Time, do we? It might help if someone who wasn't a Justice Lord spoke to him."

"After what you did on Stryker's Island you won't do any better. And anyway, we don't. Batman's files say he thinks Father Time uses a teleporter to get around."

"Any news on the other potential recruits?"

"The other Green Lantern hasn't shown up yet. Batman said he was going to look for Batson after he finished up in Bludhaven."

"And the Thanagarians?"

"Still working. I'm not seeing any sign that they're close to completing it yet. They seem to be focusing on building up their defenses at the moment."

"Glad to hear it. I'll contact you again when I've finished speaking to Scott."

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Stars, Crossed, part 1 19

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7th January 2004

15:58 GMT

The local version of J'onn J'onzz watches me as I descend through the sky to the top of what appears to be the only intact building of any size left on the Martian surface. His face… I'm not sure what I was expecting. Given how the other people I've met have the proportions of actual Human beings, I suppose I assumed that his facial characteristics had similarly been exaggerated in the cartoon. If anything they were underplayed; this is very clearly an early attempt to look Human-ish. The jaw is too long and looks like the facial muscles shouldn't be able to support it, the brow ridge would be the envy of the Neanderthal people and his eyes are just orange flashes of colour. Even his musculature looks wrong; like lumps on a plastic toy that are just there for show. He's wearing his black Justice Lords tights with blue cape and red emblem… Or rather, he isn't, is he? That's part of his skin.

Is that a towel?

"Mister J'onzz-." Right. Air's too thin to properly convey speech. I link us by an invisibly thin yellow filament. "Mister J'onzz."

There's a slight reaction to hearing me at normal volume, but he doesn't seem particularly distressed. "Welcome to Ma'aleca'andra. I apologise for not speaking to you sooner, but I'm afraid that I no longer possess my species' usual telepathic abilities."

"Quite alright." I land on the surface of the building. It's weird, seeing structures on the surface of the planet. How long had those white shapeshifting things been infiltrating Earth's space program to cover this up? "My name is Grayven, and while I wouldn't say that Batman sent me, he is aware of my presence."

"Ah." He turns his head a little to the side and reaches up onto his left shoulder to stroke the towel, which.. shakes in response? Ring? Oh, some sort of Martian animal. "I'm afraid that I've been out of touch. How are things on Earth?"

"Superman's moping in the Fortress, Diana's worshipping Ares, Batman's… More. John's much as he was."

"And Hawkgirl? She was quite sick when I left."

"Oh, I fixed her up. She's fine."

"I am pleased to hear that." He gestures towards the door with his right hand. "Would you like to come inside?"

"Thank you." He leads the way inside the door… An airlock, I notice.

He notices me noticing. "When I was hit by Luthor's power nullifier I was locked in a form adapted for Earth's atmospheric pressure. I can survive outside, but it is uncomfortable to do so for an extended period." Ooh. Yikes.

Pressure equalised, the inner door open and he starts down the corridor. "I had been under the impression that those.. things, had destroyed everything your people built."

"They mostly focused on killing my people. The destruction of our buildings was a by-product of that. This building was mostly intact. Repairing it didn't take too long."

"Is that what you've been doing with yourself?"

He.. smiles..? With his jaw structure it looks decidedly odd. And gives the towel-thing another scratch. "I have mostly been attempting to catalogue Ma'aleca'andra's surviving species. The invaders didn't kill everything, and their simple thoughts are the closest I am ever likely to get to contact with another mind. Kh'r is how I knew you were coming, though.. he appears to be having trouble deciding if you are alive or not."

"I had a run-in with a rather unpleasant telepath a few months ago. I sought training in how to resist telepathic probes." I tap my forehead with my right forefinger. "I've become quite good at it."

"Indeed." He glances at me. "Did Batman send you simply to check up on me?"

"No. There's a Thanagarian warship in near Earth orbit. They're building a device that will destroy this system to transfer their fleet to their enemy's homeworld."

"I assume that you intend to stop them."

"Among other things. I'm also trying to assemble a team to.. take over certain functions which the Lords performed."

"I'm afraid that without my shapeshifting or mental abilities I would be of little use to you."

"I may be able to undo the effect of Mister Luthor's device. And, to be frank, I don't think that isolating yourself like this is healthy. Especially for a member of a telepathic species."

"Do you believe that you can handle the Thanagarians?"

"Yes, most likely, but there are degrees of success, and if you-."

"Then I am sorry, but I must remain."

I follow him in silence for a few paces. Fears… Huh. Nothing major that I can see. The shapes… He's weirdly calm. "May I ask… Why?"

"It would be easier to show you." We approach another airlock, this one heavily reinforced. "Ma'aleca'andra's people are dead. But their tissue remains. This was once a medical facility focused on reproductive medicine." The Kh'r-towel makes a chirping noise and the door oozes open.

"You're… Trying to make more Martians?"

"Trying, yes. Most of what I have to work with are simple tissue samples, but the bodies of my species are remarkably protean. In theory, each sample I have collected could be encouraged to grow into a new Martian. They would not have the memories of the original of course, but my presence and their own telepathy should greatly aid in their mental development."

Some sort of sterilisation field passes over us and we enter the laboratory proper. Some of the materials here were clearly brought from Earth, others appear to be local-Martian and part of the far wall is given over to something which appears to match the aesthetic of the now-extinct invaders. Mister J'onzz walks forwards and then stops next to something that looks like a rice cooker.

"With both partners able to carry a child my people never had any reason to develop exo-wombs. The technology I require to resurrect my people does not yet exist." He rests his right hand on it. "By my estimates I have perhaps another forty years of good health ahead of me. I hope that it will be enough." He turns his head to look at me. "But I cannot risk leaving for any length of time."

I nod. "I understand. Are you alright for food? Or is there any other equipment I could bring you?"

"What I have suffices." He looks at the alien device at the end of the room. "When I was a member of the Justice Lords, I was surrounded by Humans who believed passionately in what we were doing. I came to assume that they were representative of all Humanity."

"Bit of a selection bias."

"I understand that now. At the time I honestly believed that we were showing the Human species a better way of life. When we returned to our own dimension I was not unduly worried by our defeat. I assumed that others would simply take over our roles and that the work would continue." His eye orbits relax slightly. "That did not happen."

"SHADE's doing something. Organising superheroes."

"I met with Father Time once, before we removed Luthor from power. If the Justice Lords were bad for the Humans, at least we had the virtue of being open about our intentions. I do not think that he will be good for Earth, but I was wrong too badly in the past to have a great faith in my judgements on the matter."

I lay my right hand on his free shoulder. "I'll let Batman know what you're doing. Maybe he'll have some ideas about how you can speed things up a little."

"Thank you. I wish you luck."

I walk back out of his laboratory. Fascinating. Unfortunate that local Martians are too different to my type of Martians for either their technology or biology to be cross compatible. Having access to Martians could be very useful for either a newly formed League or the reformed Lords. Now, let's see. My brother's doing some filming for a television series in Las Vegas at the moment. Minus eight, so it's early morning there. Father Box, boom tube.

Ploong.

7th January 2004

08:05 GMT -8

I hurry out into their dining area. They'll have heard that so I've only got a few seconds… Take a seat, ring off, lean back, paper-.

Barda charges out first, her weapon of choice in her right hand. Not wearing armour, I note.

I smile at her, a picture of relaxed satisfaction. "Captain. Is that a mega rod or are you just pleased to see me?"

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Stars, Crossed, part 1 20

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7th January 2004

08:06 GMT -8

"Get out of our home."

I lightly toss the paper down on the table. "Rude." She grits her teeth and raises the rod slightly. "Also, we're in a hotel full of people and we're both strong enough to punch one another through the walls. Do you really want to fight here?"

"Alright." Scott walks past her, keeping his hands visible. "Who are you and what do you want?"

"Oh, ow." I put my right hand over my heart. "Right here, Scott." He squints his left eye slightly and shakes his head. "Really? Barda? I'd have been about yay-" I hold my left hand out flat, about toddler height off the ground. "-tall? Grey skin, orange eyes?" I flick my eyes from one to the other. "No?"

Her eyes narrow for a moment. "Grayven."

I smile. "You see? That wasn't so hard. Good to see you again."

"Okay." Scott raises his hands slightly. "Grayven. I've never heard of you, but that's Apokoliptian armour and a Mother Box-."

"Ploong."

"Father Box."

"Rrrright. Why are you here?"

"I'm here to save and conquer this world, and I wanted to offer you the opportunity to join my Elite before I kicked things off."

Barda scowls. "We're not joining-."

Scott lays his right hand on her shoulder. "Wait a sec. Save the world?"

"Yes. Surely.. you've noticed what the Thanagarians are building?"

"They said it was a shield."

"Oh, Scott. How long have you been away from Apokolips? You really think that in the middle of a war they would send a Command Carrier to a system the Gordanians have never heard of and build a planetary defence shield out of the goodness of their hearts?" I lean forwards. "Proper paranoia, Scott."

"So what is it?"

"It's a displacement generator."

His eyes widen. "But that would destroy-."

"The entire system, yes. And that's why we need to stop them."

"Okay, I-."

"And then conquer Earth."

He leans back slightly. "I'm not sure that follows."

"We clearly can't leave them to their own devices. What happens next time? You want to build a quantum imploder? Sure, go right ahead, that sounds fun!" I sigh and shake my head. "And I would so hate for the Earth to be destroyed. They're a remarkable people, aren't they? Powered flight to fission bombs in a mere forty years, as well as the wisdom to hardly use them at all. I don't mind telling you… I feel at home here already."

"And -in the interests of 'proper paranoia'- why are you telling me?"

"Because you have local knowledge that I lack. And you're family."

"I… Am?" He looks at Barda.

"He's one of Darkseid's bastards." I nod. "You're not related."

"Darkseid may have been a terrible Father to us both, but that doesn't mean that he wasn't our father."

"He handed me over to Granny Goodness. I grew up in the X-Pit."

"Sounds terrible to me. So, how about it?"

"Who else have you asked?"

"Only Supergirl. Oh, that's just because she was on hand when I decided to do it, not because I was prioritising her over you. You know I'd have come here first, right?"

"… Yeah, thaaanks. I'll-." Barda scowls at him. "We'll take a look at what the Thanagarians are doing, but we're gunna have to pass on joining your Elite."

"Could you at least join on paper? I'd hate to force my own brother to become a Lowlie."

Barda shakes Scott's hand off and stomps towards me. "Okay, that's it. I can hit you through an external wall."

"Barda. Sister in law. I came here with peaceful intentions."

She presses a button on her bikini bottom, causing her armour to appear around her. Practical, I approve. "As far as I can see you're just another Darkseid: big, grey and in need of a good hard pounding."

I look her over. "I'm not necessarily against the idea, but I rather thought that the two of you had adopted the Human practice of monogamy. And bes-."

Owowow! I barely feel the wall as it disintegrates around my shoulder, freeing me to fly across the Las Vegas skyline. Check the jaow, yes, that's broken. Ow. Good job Barda didn't have her aero discs on her. I twist in the air as I activate mine, slowing my flight to a more controllable rate. Okay, Batman's got Richard and Batson so that's everyone on my list. Father Box, five boom tubes, random pattern, then back to the Watchtower.

Ploong.

May as well get this party started. I see Barda toss a set of aero discs out of the hole and leap onto them as the first boom tube opens behind me. I wave her goodbye as I slide my ring back onto my finger and fly backwards through it-

-dense gas. Where? Jupiter?

Empty space.

Empty space in a different part of the system.

An island somewhere. Oh, that's beautiful. I'll have to bring Jade here at some point.

Arctic wilderness. Aaaand-

7th January 2004

16:11 GMT

-back on the-.

"Look out!" Huh? Hawkgirl's pinned to the wall by violet cryst-oh no. Oh dear. Armour!

"You hurt Shayera and you're going to pay for it."

And shield! The violet energy beam hits it right in the yellow sigil. Nice that John's love is so strong. Shame he's been overwhelmed. Maybe I should have insisted he wait until I could be here to try using it. Oh, that's not a good look for him. Star Sapphire's glowing up a storm in a sort of headdress thing. Good job for me going crazy isn't making him a more creative ring user. Shayera's fear is keeping my construct-shield together but-. Transition, grab John around the neck with my left arm, grab the headdress with my right hand and rip.

I release John and gently set him down on the floor- This- -as his Star Sapphire uniform flakes away in motes of violet light, being replaced by his armour. -isn't- I dismiss the construct around Shayera. While I understand the need to protect those you love there aren't any threats here. -me!

Gah! I hurl the headdress down onto the floor as far away from anyone as I can!

Arin.

And that's an Nth metal axe. I hold out my right hand to ward Shayera off as she stands over me. "I'm fine, I'm fine. Underestimated how overwhelming the Star Sapphire would be. I'm sorry." Jaw's healed up then. Good show. "John alright?"

The axe is slowly withdrawn. "He's unconscious. Vitals are stable but I want to get him to medical to be sure."

"Can you manage him?"

She attaches her axe to her belt and heaves him off the ground without difficulty. "Please."

I create a poopa scoupa construct powered by my fear of being controlled and use it to pick up the star sapphire. "I'll put this back in secure storage. We'll have to come up with something else for John."

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Stars, Crossed, part 1 21

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7th January 2004

16:16 GMT

"Oooh." John's eyes blink open. "What happened?"

Shayera smiles at him as he sits up, then realises where he is. "We found out violet isn't your color."

I adjust my recreated goggles as I continue to study his soul. "I've put it back in secure storage."

"What did I do?"

"Stuck me in a pink crystal and pinned me to a wall."

"And wore some rather revealing clothing." Interesting. Anyone wilful enough to be capable of using a green ring is going to have a lot of green in there, but this is… It looks like a source, a wellspring… Wait a second. "John, have you ever encountered the Manhunters?"

"Yeah, a couple of years ago. They made it look like I destroyed a planet to try to lure the Guardians away from Oa so they could capture the Central Power Battery."

Shayera nods. "Simpler times. Evil robots try and take over the universe, we hit them until they stop moving."

"Yees. Did anything… Unusual happen?"

"The leader of the Manhunters got inside the Central Power Battery and absorbed all of its power. I had to use my ring to pull it back."

"All of it?"

"The Guardians went down and I couldn't make constructs while the Manhunter was doing it. To be honest I.. kind of assumed the Manhunter just cut us off."

"You were channelling… The entire Central Power Battery?"

John gets off the bed and starts strapping his armour back on. "I suppose I did. I hadn't really thought about it. Does it matter?"

"Perhaps. I don't have a spare ring for you-."

"I'll take what I can get. I was in the Marines before I joined the Lantern Corps."

"That's just it. There are several augmentations I could offer you. Since.. super speed… You might find it uncomfortable, I was going to offer you strength and endurance. But… When I was studying you in depth -to check for compatibility- I noticed something… Odd." I take the goggles off and pass them to Shayera. "Take a look."

John looks from me to her and back again. "What is it?"

"I think… You appear to be channelling.. small amounts of green light.. without your ring."

"That's crazy talk. Only the Guardians can do that."

"Yes. And possibly someone who briefly mainlined the Green Central Power Battery."

"So, what? I should just be able to stick out my hand-" He extends his right. "-and fire green energy? Because I can't."

"No. Not yet, at any rate. The amount of green light you're generating is tiny compared to what the Guardians must use. However. With Father Box and my own ring, I believe I can increase it. I'm not sure how much. Probably not enough to make up for you not having a ring, not in the short term at least. But, the degree of connection would continue to increase until it stabilised at a much higher level."

"And if you don't?"

"The connection will most likely remain as it is now for the rest of your life. If you had a ring it would give you an edge. Otherwise, it probably won't do anything."

Shayera takes off the goggles and hands them back to me. "John, I know how much being in the Corps meant to you. Grayven and I can handle the.. ship."

"So I can steal green power, just like the Manhunters did."

"No, no. The green power belongs to everyone, the Guardians.. just found an efficient way of focusing it. If it makes you feel any better… Did they ever tell you why they retired the Manhunters?"

"Yeah, because they couldn't understand degrees of guilt."

I raise my eyebrows. "Is that what they said? Well, if you're ever on Ysmault… Try talking to Atrocitus to get the other side of the story."

"What story's that?"

"They decided that all life was guilty of something and killed every living thing in Sector Six Six Six."

"What?" / "And they kept using them?"

I nod in answer to Shayera's question. "With robots, I tend to blame the programmer. Not that any Guardian was ever punished for it. So? What do you say?"

"I.. wouldn't mind getting my power back. How long will it take?"

"Maybe ten minutes, probably less."

"Batman back yet?" Shayera shakes her head. "Then I may as well go for it. Does it hurt?"

"You're not sufficiently aware of your metaphysique to experience any discomfort." Preparing for a battle like this is always enough to generate some fear, even among combat veterans. "I'll get started on that and on fabricating your new armour. We can begin our assault once Batman returns."

I pull my goggles back over my eyes and focus on my god sense. Presumably I will eventually get to the point where I don't need tools like this any longer, but I am a young god at present and not sophisticated enough to do this sort of work manually. I reach into him, connecting his own green to the green of his connection to the green light, teasing filaments out in order to create a larger.. signal. Yes. But there's more to John Stewart than will, and fortuitously will resists the other colours less than they do each other. Colours, experiences, all the things that make him him, I wire them together-

Ploong.

-with a little help from Father Box, and make them more, using the patterns and resonances already there to amplify the whole network. From a child's join the dots picture to a fractal pattern, colours repeating into infinity.

A god's soul.

I'm better and faster at this than I used to be. It's getting instinctive, seeing the correct ways to proceed. Pattern matching, not calculating. This is just about the most intimate it's possible to be with another being. When I eventually do it to Jade… I wonder if there's a way to let her see my own spiritual structure while I do it? Or at least let her see the process as I carry it out?

Hah! The green light is actually resisting my ability to undertake further changes! Wonderful! Completely unexpected, but I'll take it! I withdraw my awareness and I remove the goggles. "Since you've got an internal power source I was able to go a bit further than I normally do. Feel any different?"

John looks up, his eyes glowing green as they did in the cartoon. "I'll say." He holds out his right hand and green smoke puffs into existence in a way which reminds me of the first X-Com trooper to undergo successful psychic testing. "It doesn't feel like a power ring, but I'll take it."

"There are limitations. You don't have a built in database or translation system any more. No virtual intelligence assistance. You'll have to do everything manually, like my version of Alan Scott has to."

He smiles, watching the dancing green lights. "Pain is weakness leaving the body." He squeezes his right hand into a fist and a construct personal lantern appears next to him and a construct ring appears on his right middle finger. "I can manage just fine."

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Stars, Crossed, part 1 22

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7th January 2004

16:23 GMT

"You have teleporters?"

Shayera raises her right eyebrow. "You don't?"

"Father Box can make boom tubes. If you give me a decent power source and a couple of days I can build a hush tube generator. We don't have teleporters!"

"How does your Justice League get around?" John's floating just off the ground. I'm not sure if he's trying to get used to it again or if he just enjoys it.

"Zeta tubes. They need a relay at each end and they get blocked by stormy weather."

"At least you don't use Javelins. Those used to take hours to get anywhere. Superman used to say-" There's a flare of blue light as Batman and.. Richard.. appear. "-that it would be faster for him to fly down to Earth."

Batman stays standing on the teleport platform for a moment as he cautiously regards John. "Green Lantern. Are you back to mission fitness?"

John spreads his arms out, a green flame effect similar to Alan's environmental shield flaring around his body. "And then some."

Richard… Nightwing, steps off the platform towards me. "You're the guy who attacked Stryker's Island. And the Thanagarian construction site."

I smile and hold out my right hand. "Pleased to meet you."

He walks past me and takes a look at Shayera and John. "I see Bruce has got the Justice Lords up and running again. Are the other three here as well?"

I look at my right hand for a moment and then turn around. "No, dick, they're not."

"Nightwing, we didn't call you here to start a fight. The Thanagarians-."

"Are building a device to destroy the Earth so their fleet can attack the Gordanian homeworld. Bruce said." He nods. "I had Oracle look at your math and it checks out."

Shayera's starting to get irritated. "So what are you doing here rather than talking to your superiors?"

I hear the teleporter activate again. Batman going to speak to Batson, I assume. I remember something in Batman of the Future about his relationship with Richard falling apart in the normal timeline. I guess he wants to remove himself as a source of tension.

"Where exactly am I supposed to tell them the information came from?! Have you got any idea what they'd do if they found out I was still talking to Bruce? Or that the Justice Lords were functioning again at all?"

"So? Tell them you hacked our communications."

"My beat is Bludhaven. I'm not allowed to go outside my area of responsibility like that. If I did come across anything I should have forwarded it to Nerve Center at once."

I shake my head. "That isn't necessarily a problem. I can arrange for my brother to bring it to you. He's a citizen of the United States with no criminal record-" Of any note. "-so there shouldn't be any added difficulty."

"No. I'm not giving SHADE the run around on this. Kara already reported in, so someone at the top is already looking into it. The only way I can see this working is if we take it to Father Time directly and hope that he's okay with it. God only knows what he's going to do about the Lords working together again, but you can worry about that once the Earth is safe." He turns around. "W-?" He pauses. "He just walked out?"

"Teleported to Fawcett City to talk to Captain Marvel. We're busy, Richard."

"Yeah. Busy." He sighs. "Can the Watchtower's sensors locate Father Time?"

Shayera shakes her head. "Not unless he's got some sort of unique exotic energy output."

"He does. He's a weak source of chronoton radiation."

She nods and walks over to a control panel. "Can you narrow down his location?"

Richard nods. "He's probably either in DC with the President or Manhattan, in the SHADE Nerve Center."

She presses a few more buttons. "I should have him in a few seconds."

"Chronoton radiation? Father Time's a time traveller?"

Richard doesn't look at him. "Could be. No one really knows anything about Father Time."

"Got him. He's in the White House. I can even teleport you into the same room if you want."

"I don't particularly want to get shot dead by the Secret Service. Put us down on a rooftop nearby. I'll contact someone in his escort."

Shayera hesitates. "'Us'?"

Richard walks back up onto the teleporter. "You two have shoot-to-kill orders. I can just arrest Grayven."

"It's fine." I stroll onto the teleport platform. They even have glowing circles set into the floor! "Just make sure you get a roof that can take my weight."

"Coordinates set."

The air shimmers around me, and then…

7th January 2004

11:26 GMT -5

We're in Washington. Huh. That was painless. Have to see if I can persuade Batman to part with the design. Taking it when I've got the sort of rapport going with John and Shayera that I have just feels wrong. Ring? We're on the roof of the Corcoran School of Arts and Design, just behind the ridge of the roof. The South Lawns are in front of us, and Richard goes down on his stomach before crawling up the slope to peer over the top. "It's not a good idea to do this in daylight. But we can't afford to wait."

A city full of nervous people. Adequate power. I take a camera drone out of subspace, stealth it and send it up over the White House grounds. "I'll send a drone to get his precise location." He turns his head to stare at me and I can foresee something along the lines of 'Are you crazy?!' coming from his mouth. "It's invisible to any Earth technology likely to be on the lookout. Here." A second pair of goggles appear from subspace and float their way over to him. "They can give you a feed directly from the camera." He hesitates for a moment and then puts them on, taking a moment to get used to their set up. I put my own back over my eyes and look out through the drone's cameras. Where exactly does the President spend his time? Can't say it's something I've ever really thought.. about…

What the hell?

"Father Time's meeting the President in the Oval Office, along with the heads of the NSA, CIA and the Joint Chiefs. If they're not talking about the Thanagarian situation then I don't-." I take the goggles off my face and clamber up the roof. "What the hell are you doing?!"

I stare out in the direction of the Oval Office. It's on the far side of the West Wing from us, so I can't just look in the window or anything. Father Box, please tell me I'm wrong.

Ploong.

Thought not. "Richard, to the best of your knowledge, is your president Human?"

"What are you talking about? Of course he's Human."

"No, he isn't. That's an Apokoliptian combat infiltrator. Gonzo the Mechanical Bastard, if I remember correctly. You people have managed to put an Apokoliptian war robot into the White House. SHADE got big after the Lords lost power and Horne got elected." I tilt my head downwards, laughing weakly. "Did you people like Luthor so much you had to elect a second supervillain?"

"That's…" He frowns. "No, that's…"

"You know, the original plan was to get you a team of righteous superheroes, help you kick the Thanagarians' arses and set up some sort of new global super team. But if SHADE owns the robopresident… Fuck it. I'm going to actually take over this country after all. And unlike those weak-willed Justice Lords I'm not going to wuss out halfway through. Father Box, boom tube to the Thanagarian bridge!"

"Ploong."

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Stars, Crossed, part 1 23

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7th January 2004

16:28 GMT

I step through the boom tube and for one beautiful moment every Thanagarian on the bridge turns to stare at me in astonishment. Bird helmets all around, officers at their consoles, the marines… Just staring. Oh, I like this.

"Hello, dead people."

Construct armour forms around me as I lunge for the closest marine. He snaps out of it enough to bring his spear to bear even as his partner raises some sort of beam weapon. The Nth metal point comes at me and I stretch my right arm past it to turn aside the shaft before slamming the heel of my left hand into his chin.

"Oof!"

"Gordanians! Gordanians on the bridge!"

"Do I look like a Gordanian?"

A tower shield construct comes up to intercept the second marine's shot before I grab the gun out of his hands and punch him hard in the diaphragm, sending him to the deck in a crumpled heap. Every bridge officer who can is getting into cover and aiming their side arms in my direction. This place is more like a Covenant bridge than something from Star Trek or Mass Effect, with different parts on different levels. Even most Apokoliptian vessels aren't this grandiose. Maybe it's the wings..?

Father Box, hack the gun.

Ploong.

I raise it and shoot a power control officer who was too slow in getting behind something. Thank you, Father Box. I crouch slightly behind my shield as weapon fire begins to strike home. The shield appears to be holding out better than I was expecting. They must be really afraid of me, and I'm not sure why.

You're missing something obvious. Pay attention, Corpsman.

Marines launch themselves into the air, the melee equipped ones heading straight for me as fast as the Nth metal in their bodies will allow. If they're afraid… I create a sword construct for myself and generate a small squad of Gordanian warriors to fight off the chaff. Yes, that one looks important. He's standing on the far side, shouting orders into a communications device as the marines slam into my warrior constructs. I shoot two marines out of the air as I march across the deck. Certainly, I could generate explosive force to root out the bridge officers but at this point it's more in my interest to appear as an unstoppable force than it is to kill every last one of them immediately.

A sound judgement. Properly re-educated they may be of use to you.

"Aaaaaghh!"

Nth metal weapons can destroy constructs if wielded properly, but these marines appear to prefer axes and spears to maces or swords and my Gordanian constructs are… Their programming realises that they just need to grab the haft to be more or less safe. Thanagarian marines show an almost superhero-like disregard for sensible body- I turn back and shoot a gun-armed marine who was aiming at my side. -armour. Yes, the Nth metal straps are very nice but they don't protect the rest of your chest. I step over a fallen marine who had that demonstrated to her by a Gordanian shoving a claw into her gut. She's bleeding freely but still tries to grab me around the left leg. I kick her in the wound and she curls up in pain instead. Hmm. Probably survivable if she gets prompt medical attention.

"…we need heavy weapons up here now!" The officer looks up for a moment and we make eye contact. I take the opportunity to refresh my armour, changing from construct demon-samurai to a construct Gordanian. Yes, that's better. Without even looking into them I can feel the current of fear as my armour better corresponds to their expectations. "And if we've got any radion blasters, bring them up as well."

A deck officer charges me and gets shield-slammed in the face for his efforts just as the main doors open and a reinforcement unit of marines charges onto the bridge. Quite sensibly the bridge officers use the opportunity to get away from the combat zone as the marines open fire on the Gordanian constructs who have just about finished clawing their way through their colleagues. One construct fails immediately and two others buckle as they try charging straight into the enemy guns. A mental command from me and they switch to a more evasive flight path. This bridge has taken a pounding. I really hope they've got a backup somewhere or controlling this thing could get a little difficult.

Of course! The reserve marines aren't as afraid of me as the ones who witnessed my appearance! It's going to take a little while for me to get used to that mattering. Another goes down to a shot from my stolen gun but they're forming a sort of tortoise with large shields to the fore. The shields are gold in colour with.. avian shapes stencilled on the front. Bowl them over? Bowl them over. Two shots with the gun to make them keep their heads down and I toss it aside, raising my ring. Fear me, mortals.

The wide yellow beam blasts towards them. Really, I just want to knock them over. It's unrealistic for me to try doing this without killing anyone but I'd like to keep the death toll down at least somewhat-. Eh? That doesn't seemed to have knocked ohfuck! Agh, grahh! Uh.

"Get him!"

Okay, apparently those shields can absorb the output of power rings and reflect it back.. redoubled. I pick myself up and recreate my construct armour. That.. actually bruised me a little. Okay, not firing energy beams at the ones with the shields again. Marines with Nth metal axes and maces are flying at me just behind three equipped with shields. If I was some kind of idiot I could just keep firing straight line attacks at them… But I like to think that I'm not. Spear-tipped ropes of yellow flow outwards from either side of me before launching themselves at my attackers.

"Eyyagh!" / "Gaah!"

They strike at the gaping holes in their armour and pierce the more vulnerable flesh beneath. The ones that get hit drop out of the air but only a couple are properly disabled. It's getting harder to wound them. They're not afraid enough.

Soon fix that. The first shield-armed marine flies as close to me as he dares before veering away to give the axe man behind him an unobstructed swing. I grab him by the wing and yank him into the axe's path. He gasps then shudders as it cleaves into his back. I shove his bleeding and crippled form at his stunned colleague. "Good work, chum." A construct sword severs his left hand at the wrist and then grabs the bloodied axe from his right.

"Aaarghugh!"

Looks like Thanagarian blood vessels have the same sort of pressure in them as Human ones. A claw construct grabs a second shield bearer by their left leg and pulls them towards me in an uncontrolled tumble. I reverse the axe and slam the butt hard into his helmet, denting it and rendering him unconscious. A filament picks up the shield and delivers it into my left hand. Worth keeping, that. Three marines try to stab at me with Nth metal spears. Two I intercept with the shield but the third gets through, passing through my construct armour only to be blocked by the Apokoliptian armour beneath. I lunge, swinging the axe at full force and slicing through their spear hafts and fingers before turning the blade aside and striking them with my fist.

"Die for Grayven."

Flesh mashes and bones crack as they're knocked aside and I start to feel the fear again. I raise my right hand and pull on the spike-tipped ropes impaling the fallen. Most pull free, worsening their injures. Two though have latched onto ribs and drag their victims across the floor.

"Ahh-ah-ahhh!" / "Nraaagh!"

The airborne marines hesitate and I pick up my catch and hurl it at them. One ditherer is knocked out of the air while my other target evades, allowing my living missile to slam into the far wall with a thump. A new volley of shots come from the marines around the entrance but now I know what these shields do it isn't much of a problem. A new set of rope-spears shoot around the sides of the formation, jabbing into any hole in the shield barrier and pulling back. Mostly they just come back blood-covered, but there's a yelp as one marine is dragged out of formation as one latches onto her ulna, knocking the marines next to her aside. As a reward of sorts I turn the spike into a construct Gordanian and send it flying into the breach, claws reaching out to rend Thanagarian flesh.

At that point the airborne marines decide to stop poncing about and actually charge me. I batter the first out of the air with my shield and swing my axe at the second. He parries with the handle of his mace, only to find out that however much stronger Thanagarians are than Humans I am far stronger still. The shock slams his own weapon into his chest with a crunch before smashing him to the ground.

Oh, this is good.

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Stars, Crossed, part 1 24

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7th January 2004

16:31 GMT

Five move to surround me in the hope of avoiding my weapon, their belief that I can't see the ones behind me giving them the courage to try this. I don't look around as I block a strike to my rear with the shield then spawn a new Gordanian construct to drag my attacker down. They rise a little into the air, hoping to at least hold my attention. Yellow light flowing strong I deactivate my aero discs and use the ring's flight aura to erupt upwards towards the one whose tassels suggest seniority.

"Shoryuken!"

I keep the blade of the axe back so that only my fist strikes the armour in the centre of his chest. Nth metal is a remarkable absorber of force but I struck in the assumption that a display of force, of obviously overcoming their strongest advantage, would serve me better than a clean kill or KO. I turn to the other marines with a grin as the squad leader flies across the room to land hard on the floor of the lowest level. I gesture with my right hand and generate new spiked ropes, letting the hooks on the end mirror the movements of my foes like Cobras following a charmer's pipe. A thought and my construct Gordanians pull back as well, flying around to flank me.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the Thanagarian Empire, I respectfully suggest that this is the time to yield. I have no particular love of unnecessary bloodshed but I am perfectly prepared to kill every last one of you if it proves to be necessary." I change my expression from the grin of a confident pugilist in the midst of a fight to the calm smile of a victor and allow the moans and whimpers of the wounded and dying to filter into their consciousness. "Surrender now and you will live to see Thanagar again."

Professional soldiers don't break and flee but these ones look about ready to fall back in poor order. Why aren't they doing that? I clearly have overwhelming force on my side. I look around the room as the officer who called in reinforcements nervously sticks his head out of cover. "You. What's your name?"

He briefly glances at his remaining forces before returning his attention to me. "I am Lieutenant Kragger of the Thanagarian Navy."

"Those heavy weapons are taking their time, aren't they? Don't think they're going to get here soon enough."

"We will never surrender to the likes-" That's who he is! He's the one Mister J'onzz leaves near-vegetative by forcing his way into his mind! "-of you, Praetor." They keep calling me that. I know it means either commander or magistrate but it's a very particular translation that presumably has some special meaning for them. Ring, I'd like a look at their database. Are these computers power ring proof?

Hardly, Corpsman. Accessing now.

The marines who were close to me have pulled back towards their comrades. Lieutenant Kragger turns to his subordinate. "He's the Praetor! If we kill him, the war is over!"

Don't give orders you know full well won't be obeyed, fool.

Data available, and I would not be so swift to demean his intelligence, Corpsman.

Ooooooooooh. So.. my alter ego unified the Gordanian clans, forged them into an empire and now leads them. And they think I'm him. Easy mistake to make, I suppose. They only identified him a little over a year ago which is why Shayera didn't recognise me when she first saw me. Any chance he could detect my presence here? Probably not. Any point trying to contact him myself? No. A military that could batter the Thanagarians to breaking point isn't something I want anywhere near any version of Earth. Hm. If these Thanagarians think I'm basically super-Hitler there's not much chance of achieving a negotiated solution.

Ah well.

"You couldn't take me when you were fresh. You certainly can't…" What's that noise? Ah. I don't turn to look at the three Thanagarian fighters currently lurking just in front of the bridge's front window, but I do look at Lieutenant Kragger as he manages a vicious smile.

I missed you doing that. Well played.

A storm of ironically yellow bolts blast the window to smithereens as they try and track me. I take three hits which ruin my construct armour and transition down to the lowest level, out of their arc of fire. Shield interposed.

"Evacuate the bridge! Carry the wounded if you can, leave them if you can't!"

One problem resolves itself. You know, if I had my flipping drones… Okay, my ring and armour can throw off most methods they could use to detect me. Construct armour. A ship this size could have hundreds of fighters. Do I try fighting them or move further inside the ship? Father Box?

Ploong.

I did not know that. So, Nth metal throws off boom tube generation and I only got in here because they have a great big window stuck on the front. Don't really think the main hangar would be a better place than here. Top surface of the ship? No, there's nothing up-. Fuck! Guess they've written off the rest of the wounded! I crouch shield over head as another volley of yellow bolts punch clean through the walls of the bridge. They're only approximately aiming at me but they're hitting with agh!

Fine then! I fly up and out of the window at high speed. Three ships close to, another five further back. Guns are on fixed nose mounts. I fly past the first fighter and hammer its left wing with the blade of my axe, cutting through and throwing off the balance of its antigravity propulsion system. Two plumes of smoke erupt from the cut and the fighter lurches to the side as the others in the squadron try and reacquire me. Standing in the air I glare at the closest and open my soul to their fear. They saw their fellow Thanagarians fleeing, didn't they? The yellow light builds in my eyes for a moment and then blasts out, smashing clean through the craft and severing the rear third. As it tumbles in the air the canopy blows and the pilot leaps free. Right, wings. Does he have a grav-chute on that ridiculous armour? Doesn't look like it. He's not going to-? Yes, he drew his sidearm and shot me. Fine then. Flashes of yellow from my eyes annihilate his pistol and pierce his wings in what looks like an extremely painful location, causing him to yelp and drop from the sky. He'll probably manage a survivable landing.

The third fighter manages to bring its guns to bear and open fire. Construct armour fractures when the beams strike home, right shoulder and forearm, before I get the shield in the way. My eyes glow again before the beam flashes out, gouging a furrow along the underside of the craft. I open my eyes wider as the beam reaches the armour protecting the main engine and increase the power. The beam slices into the hull and the fighter jerks as an internal explosion signals the end of its participation in the fight. Okay, so, what next? I sort of.. jumped in without coming up with a concrete-.

GAAAAAAHH!

Trans-transition! Get me back inside. Aaah. Guh. Agh. I'm… I'm lying on the uppermost walkway. The commander's station. No bodies up here and the fighters didn't manage to hit it. Uhh. Fucking.. anti-boarding external.. defences. I don't think that was just a big electrical discharge but whatever it was it hurt like agh! Aaaah. Right. Okay, map. This isn't fun any more. Ring, connect to the command station.

Impossible, Corpsman. The bridge has been physically disconnected from the rest of the ship's systems precisely to prevent a remote take over.

Okay, so I need to get to the computer core. Or at least somewhere I can make a hard connection. I push myself up onto my feet, taking a moment to steady myself. That.. really hurt. I should heal up before too long but I'd rather-.

The doors below me burst open as the marine heavy weapon teams finally put in an appearance. The first thing they see in the combat zone is the groaning bodies of their own fallen. Good start. Unfortunately for me they fly upwards and spot me almost immediately.

The first two are carrying what look like… Blaster Launchers? Hook coated chains wrap themselves around the bearers and yank them back down towards the middle layer where they land with a pair of yelps. Three shield bearers keep back, covering another marine with a short barrelled weapon of some kind. I create another construct Gordanian just in time for us both to be struck by another fusillade of yellow energy bolts from outside the ship. I create a barrier covering the hole where the window used to be just as the marine with the gun fires. Oh, what's-.

Ah.

Blood?

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Stars, Crossed, part 1 25

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7th January 2004

16:34 GMT

I tap the fore and middle fingers of my right hand against the mush that a good portion of the left side of my abdomen has been reduced to. They come away damp with a strange red-purple liquid that I presume is what my blood looks like these days.

I'm… Hurt.

I'm hurt.

And there's the pain! Ah! Gawhah! U-uh! Arhhuh.

Ring, do somethi-.

I'm trying. Your body is resisting-.

I know the injury is resisting. Do something about the pain!

Similarly impossible.

I drop to my knees, then to all fours.

"He's down! Hit him again!"

"It has to recharge!"

Fuck. Fugker. Aaaahh. Ring. Ahh. Assess damage.

Difficult. Were I to use humanoid physiological norms, I would say that your digestive and waste purification organs have either been destroyed or critically damaged. Your skin and armour are pierced front and back. Furthermore, the shot appeared to contain some form of poison which is now spreading into the surrounding tissues.

"Icthultu take it, I had family on New Andar. I'll take his head-." Armour. "-now!"

I look up as the marine flies at me, shield forwards and knife drawn. I'm finished going easy on you people. Twin beams of yellow light flash from my eyes and strike her neck, forming an agony matrix construct.

"Aieaaaaghah!"

She drops to the middle deck, shaking and burbling as the matrix ravages her nervous system with levels of pain that should cause unconsciousness but now cannot. I raise my right hand from the floor and point it at the other two, firing beams of yellow which pierce their spines, paralysing them but leaving them both alive and aware.

Ah-oh-h-h-h-oh. Ah, this hurts. What was..? He said… I take a few breaths and try and get my mind in order. He said 'radon blaster'. I checked. I tried exposing my skin and my blood… Blood. Ugh. To radon at… Under various environmental conditions. Nothing much happened. It's a noble gas!

Left hand shielding my wound, I sta-ah-h. No I don't. I float up off the deck, clearly sagging in the air. The marine with the knife… The agony matrix construct isn't there any more, but she's curled up in shock rather than coming after me again. My eyes drift back to my wound and I move my hand aside slightly to give me a better look as my blood continues to pour out.

Shit.

Okay. What next? Leaving right now is looking like a-.

Ploong.

Marvellous. Awwwwahh! Damn it! Okay, not only does whatever was in that gun bypass my defences, it also stops boom tubes. Dahh! Two more deep breaths, shuddering. I really haven't felt anything like this before, certainly not since I got to this crazy Earth! I mean..! The last one! I wave my right arm in the direction of the radon blaster and attach a construct rope to pull it to me. Ring, what the fuck is this?

It is a 'rad-i-on blaster', Corpsman. My records indicate that the charge negates New God resistance with a high degree of effectiveness, though I never had a chance to observe it directly.

Prognosis?

You survived the initial blast but are bleeding heavily. I don't have enough data to precisely judge how your kind respond to traumatic injury nor how toxic radion is to your kind beyond the resistance bypass effect. If you continue to bleed as you are now you will certainly die.

Patch… Patch the wound?

To start with.

Mgkrarughafugha!

Bandages of yellow light cover the wounds, front and back. Blood stops flowing outwards but the pain is even worse! Aaaaawwwwwoooo! AH! Next, next… No. Ring, subspace the blaster. It disappears, and I take a quick look around the room. Those who are still alive are all watching me. And they're… They're less afraid. As I am now, any one of them could kill me.

I take a couple of breaths. I don't like fighting like this.

Bolts of yellow flash out from my eyes, seeking brains to liquefy. Twelve shots to finish off all of the marines and bridge officers left. What a.. waste. A stupid waste.

Well done, Corpsman. Given how you were fighting earlier I was starting to think you didn't have the stomach for it.

I twist up my face as another wave of pain hits. Next step.

Your organs cannot be repaired by power ring. Your regenerative abilities can deal with it but are being suppressed.

Can you remove the radion?

No.

I work out what Sinestro wants. N-nooo.

The longer you wait, the more likely one of those fighters will come in closer. Or more marines will brave the bridge. You are in no condition to fight them as you are.

He's right. I drop myself back down onto the upper walkway and use a construct blade to cut a long thin section out of the deck before whittling it to a blade and x-ionising it. I don't think I can hyperventilate anymore but I'm trying.

The only way to get rid of the poison is to cut it out.

Subspace my armour.

It vanishes, revealing grey skin, purple blood and a squelching mix of tissues and what I presume to be organs in the wound itself. Ring. Cut away image of affected area. One appears in front of me. Huh. Looks so… Small. I hold out my x-ionised scalpel. No anaesthetic that will work.

I have cut myself before, to see how fast I heal now. I did briefly consider cutting off a finger to see if and/or how fast it grew back.

On the plus side… I doubt very much that anything will ever hurt this much again.

Uuuuuuuuuuuuuu!

The blade slips through the construct bandage and into my insides. Things have flopped around a bit and ah-ah-ah I have to use staple constructs to pull them around so that I can get at the bits I need to.

Slice.

A construct reductor extracts the lumps of flesh and drops them onto the deck.

Slice.

Like… Like meats for a pie.

Aiahhhhaaa-hha-hah-ahhhhhhh!

My breathing is slowed, huffing deep breaths. Construct tourniquets appear inside me to prevent the internal bleeding worsening.

Can't… Can't feel faint. Can't afford to feel faint.

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Stars, Crossed, part 1 26

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7th January 2004

16:40 GMT

Lights... Dance before my eyes.

Good work, Corpsman. Your approach to the task showed considerable resolve, marred by only a single instance of pleading. An entirely satisfactory performance.

I slump back on the floor, the sharpened chunk of deck plate falling from my hand. U-huh-hurr. At least one of us is happy. I take a moment to look down at the glowing hole in my abdomen. Ring. Did I get it all?

The constructs currently holding your insides together are detecting attempts at regeneration throughout the site of the injury. Further analysis will have to wait. Your next step-.

Form construct-replicas of my organs, link them to my organic components and keep the Thanagarians from hitting it again.

Your nervous system is resisting any attempt at interfacing and your guts don't generate enough fear to overcome it. Furthermore, I feel that the pain you are currently experiencing will prove to be an excellent aid to memory.

What? No, never mind. Scan immediate environment. Anyone coming?

Yes.

I get a quick mental picture of another marine group heading... I turn my head to look at the door to the captain's promenade. Right. This is going to hurt more. I grit my teeth and lean forwards, putting my right foot flat on the floor. Akh! I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment and take a couple of deep breaths. Up! Get UP! Armour, put my armour back on. And the construct armour in case they have a radion blaster. Now up!

I lean forwards and plant my- Owowow -right hand on the deck. I push up into a crouch- Raaaagh -then take a few breaths. Don't have long. I lean right a little and push- Rrrrrehhhh. –up, getting upright and gently putting my left foot on the ground. Not putting.. any weight on it. But I need to look like I'm unhurt. It's a little hard to tell given how different people here look compared to how they looked in the cartoon, but-.

The door slides open and another set of Thanagarian marines fly through, guns in hand. Yellow light flares from my eyes, jinking around the front rank's shields and stabbing into the flesh beyond.

“Ahh!” / “YAAAAGH!”

Yeah, we're past the point of talking. Huh, not seeing-. One gets a shot off with a rifle-sized energy weapon of some kind and it hits home-. The site of my injury is glowing brighter than the rest. It's drawing their attention! Okay, okay, it won't actually hurt as long as the construct armour stays up.

“Gah!”

The next marine out of the door flies straight at me with some kind of lance. I knock the point aside with the back of my right gauntlet, letting my Apokoliptian armour absorb the weak energy discharge before grabbing its wielder around the throat with my left hand and squeezing until I hear a crack. A filament grabs the x-ionised scalpel from the floor before flicking it at the next shield-bearing marine. It embeds in the shield and then explodes in a blast of brilliant white energy as the x-ionisation effect reacts vigorously with the energy reflection technology. Have to remember that some metamaterials don't play nicely together.

“Uh.”

Corpsman-.

Yes, I've seen them. I couldn't hope to keep the barrier I had over the front of the bridge up while I was cutting into myself and the Thanagarians are only too happy to use it as an entry point. I form a minigun turret behind me and spray enough fire in their direction to force them to keep back as I charge forwards. A half-blinded but still oncoming marine has no time to react and I grab her around the head with my right hand and mash her face into the wall. Ring, chlorine gas.

Transmutation underway.

Thin wisps of yellow-green vapour start to appear around me. Power output is based on fear. I'm not going to get all that much until people without breathing equipment start trying to fly after me and realise what I'm doing. Hopefully as the acid melts their lungs. Honestly, when I owowow. Right. Little more care. I get inside the doorway as the next marine appears, his eyes widening as he spots the gas. When I get control of a space faring military, everyone will wear fully protective gear while in a combat zone. He tries aiming his rifle with his right hand while shielding his mouth and nose with his left. I jab him through the gut with a construct-blade.

“Akgh...”

That's more like it. I grab his gun as he collapses and my follow up eyebeams disintegrate his throat. I increase my pace to the fastest walk I can without causing flashing lights to impair my vision. That appears to be.. all of the squad they had assigned to this corridor. I feel a tiny tremor of feedback as one of the marines in the bridge destroys my minigun turret. Fine. Ring, suggestions?

Thanagarians typically operate with short chains of command, and senior officers like to be nearer the action than is entirely sensible. Personally confronting and slaying Commander Talak would most likely cause their military response to fall into disarray. Alternately, destroying the primary generator-.

I take a moment to calculate the likely effect of a highly energetic blast surrounded by Nth metal occurring inside a planet's atmosphere. No.

The ship's primary weapon battery can be used to destroy the hyperspatial bypass structure. The weapons can be accessed directly or via the primary computer core.

I hear a yelp from behind me as the marines try flying through the chlorine, and a corresponding increase in the production of the gas around me. Ring, locate Talak. If he's outside the ship...

Commander Talak appears to be directing the assault from a command station a short distance from here.

A picture forms in my head of him, Kragger and a small squad of marines... Ah, there's the gas masks. Okay, map? Okay, this shouldn't...

Wait a second. Am I..? Ring, if all of the officers are dead, exactly who was going to give the evacuation order?

What purpose would an evacuation serve? Corpsman, you may be wounded but you are not crippled. It is not beyond your abilities to kill everyone in the Thanagarian flotilla. Then you can proceed with your plan to inspire the creation of a force to protect the Earth by posing as a threat yourself.

Ring, I don't want to kill all those people. Not if there's a halfway sensible alternative.

A sub-par choice under the circumstances.

I'm wearing a recording of your brain on my finger. I think I'll make the strategic decisions. What sort of access to their computer systems can I get from-

Incoming message from Lantern Stewart.

-here?

Basic, to say the least. Warships are not designed to be ‘hack friendly’, Corpsman.

Internal communications?

Yes.

Put John on.

"Grayven, what the hell are you doing? Nightwing just-."

“Your president is an Apokoliptian robot. Given how fast the pro-SHADE agenda has advanced since the Lords lost power I suspect that the original was killed and replaced by SHADE. A detailed analysis of his body language could probably tell you exactly when it happened. If you've got the time you should probably check up on his family.”

"My God. Okay, Shayera's on it. Where are you now?"

“Thanagarian Command Carrier. Listen, does the Watchtower have the ability to broadcast to the whole of the Earth?”

"We can override channels but SHADE will probably block us if we do it for too long."

“Okay, I can work with that. Stand by to transmit.”

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Stars, Crossed, part 1 27

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7th January 2004

16:42 GMT

"Hello, Commander Talak."

He barely reacts, scowl deepening slightly. "He's off the bridge." He turns to Lieutenant Kragger. "Anti-boarding protocol sixteen."

Kragger bows his head in acknowledgement. "I'll get right on it, Commander."

Thanagarian armour plating means that if I want to forcibly connect myself to the system by power ring I would usually have to maintain either a filament or construct link, but a few seconds' fabrication work bypasses that requirement nicely. I put the plate back after I implanted my bug so unless their internal sensors are a lot better than I think they are they'd have to pull apart the entire ship to work out how I'm doing it. Of course, if I actually get into the primary computer core their arses are mine anyway.

I stop for a moment, wincing as a new wave of pain spreads through my abdomen. It… I think that the pain is decreasing, but it could just be that I'm getting used to it. "Commander, is there any chance I can talk you out of this? I saw what you are building in Libya. You have to realise that the attack is never going to work if we've seen it coming."

"I have nothing to say to you, monster."

"I'm a monster? I saw your plan of attack, Commander. How many are going to die even if it works perfectly?" Come on, say something incriminating.

"The Gordanian homeworld will be razed to the ground and the war will be over."

Two marines jog into view at the intersection just ahead of me. I'm getting the impression that they're a little short staffed. They get half a second to stare at me in shock before my eyebeams pierce their spines. Protocol sixteen means they're using health monitors to guide others to my location, but they only trigger if the wearer dies. Paralysis won't set them off. This is what they get for not using proper power armour.

"Don't be absurd. The original Gordanian homeworld is a slave-operated agricultural planet in the Vega Systems called Karna, and it's controlled by the Citadel Empire. You're threatening my Throne World of New Gordane."

"Whatever it is called, soon it will be ash."

"And then what? You know full well the fleet has already left and is heading to Thanagar. You've got… Days at most. Even if you carry out your objective you won't be able to stop it." This is the problem with soldiers; if someone with the fancy hat tells them that a plan will work they just put their heads down and push on. He doesn't have the authority to call the whole thing off so he probably won't even consider what I'm saying. Fortunately for me, the bridge computers had access to records on the state of the war. My alter ego hasn't exactly been Geneva Convention compliant but then neither have the Thanagarians. I can't say exactly what his motives were… "At each step of the campaign I have offered your people honourable terms. I would do so aga-."

"Terms you knew we would not accept."

"Terms you could have accepted with a minimal loss of face. I want to conquer your people and integrate them into my Empire, not eradicate them entirely."

"We remember what your people did on New Andar."

"A perfectly predictable result if you site your ground based defence systems in the middle of inhabited areas. And have a population almost entirely under arms."

"The Gordanians are slavers and raiders. Your promises mean nothing."

"I haven't broken my word at any point during this conflict. No, this is about-."

He bares his teeth as he turns to his subordinate. "Can we not get him out of the system?"

Kragger cringes slightly. "We're.. trying, sir."

"-your rulers' pride." No, this isn't working. Not too far from my objective, now. Another approach. "I was talking to Shayera about it earlier-" He goes rigid. "-and-."

"Sir,-" Kragger sidles up to him. "-he probably just got her name from our database."

"Why would her name be in your database? She's not part of your crew. No, I had a chat with her on the Watchtower… Her intelligence reports mentioned that, didn't they? We went over the plan, and she agreed that not only was it unworkable, but would almost certainly doom your species. I mean, my control over the Gordanians only goes so far. If you do this, they will hunt down every last Thanagarian in the Universe. You've seen the statistics. You know the strength of our fleet, or you would not be attempting this act of desperation. Commander, this will not result in your victory."

Ring, play recording.

"It… I didn't want to believe it, but that's what a hyperspatial bypass of that size should look like. I didn't know the war with the Gordanians was going that badly."

"Sir, that could easily be falsified."

"…the only way I can help my people.. is to help the Gordanians win the war."

"Aaaaaah!" He grabs Kragger around the upper arms. "Find him!"

Can't use rage. "She and her lover, the former Green Lantern John Stewart, are friends of mine." There's something in his response, a slight change in posture. That hurt. "Surprised? You shouldn't be. Five years apart and you show up trying to kill… How many people? All her new friends... How many are you willing to kill rather than capitulate? How many must die before Thanagar has its fill of blood?"

"Six and a half billion on Earth. Two billion on Gratan. One billion on Sesyus. AND FOUR BILLION GORDANIANS! FOR THANAGAR I WILL DESTROY EVERY ONE OF YOU!"

Thank you. "Stewart, did you get that?"

"I got it alright. Relaying now."

"Let me know when it kicks off."

Talak snaps out of it. "What? Who was that?"

"Another man. A better man than you. And you should include in your count the five billion Thanagarians on Thanagar. And the three billion Lizarkons. Not that I imagine you care about them. Hmm, or maybe they'll take my offer? Maybe they're a little less mental than you bird types."

Ah, there we are: the communications room. Better guarded than when Batman snuck in. No way I can take all that without letting someone know what I'm up to.

"All will burn. All will die. Not for the glory of Thanagar. Not even for its survival. For your pride, Commander."

I hang up. I don't know exactly what the nations of the world will do when they hear him openly saying he intends to destroy the Earth, but I do know that this ship is perfectly capable of jamming worldwide communications. At present, at least.

I fly at full speed-

"Grayven! He's here!"

-eyes glowing as beams burn through the chests of the first two guards. Immediately the other marines fire back, energy beams slamming into my construct armour. And I can't afford to let the armour go down and it's cracking already. Another two fall as I get inside melee range. The closest drops his gun and charges me barehanded while the others grab their melee weapons. Eyebeams take two more as I punch my attacker in the ribs hard enough to cave them in. No time for flashiness as the rest lunge in from all directions. I grab an arm to turn aside a mace strike and fly sideways to get outside the reach of an axe. Can't concentrate long enough for a construct. Grab, crunch-

"Huuuuuuh!"

-micro transition, shoot, agh! Two marines shot me from the far end of the corridor. I take a second to form a minigun construct, forcing them back into RAAAAAGH! AH! FUCKING FUCK FUCK! An Nth metal spear just, uhh, just hit me in the chestplate. The construct's down. EEEEagh! Trans… Transition into the communications room, eyebeam the technicians and point a fucking minigun at the door.

Ring, take their communications.

Done, Corpsman.

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Stars, Crossed, part 1 28

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7th January 2004

16:47 GMT

Alright… Ugh. Cover: none. Points of ingress: one, with a construct turret keeping an eye on it. Floors, ceiling and externals are well armoured and I'll get plenty of notice if they try coming through there. The communications centre has its own power plant so they can't cut that off. Right now the world is hearing from Commander Talak's own mouth how he plans to destroy the planet.

They have the technology to well and truly mess up Earth's militaries except that without access to their full communications suite or the bridge they can only shut down things within a few miles of the ship. They can't call home either to get new orders or tell them that I'm here… Assuming they haven't done so already. Their point defences are excellent on the ship, but the hyperspatial bypass itself has only light defences. Earth militaries don't even need to destroy it completely, just smashing the power generator will shut it down. Heck, just damaging its systems a bit would alter the displacement effect too much for it to be safe for the fleet to use it.

On the down side, my wound is oozing. A-and it really hurts. It's not leaking blood as fast as it was so I think the blood vessels must be healing or.. something. Since I've got a little breathing room I should fabricate some sort of… Maybe I can just repair the armour? Actually, how much power-?

A little under nine percent remaining.

Oh. Oh well, looks like having the personal lantern in subspace is going to pay-. The minigun turret blazes away as a foolhardy marine tries sticking his head around the door. Another corpse for the pile. I'm getting plenty of fear from them but they're not sodding getting a clue! And… If I try recharging I'll lose my constructs. The turret and what's left of my construct armour. Fabricating Apokoliptian armour is fairly power intensive… I can't risk it.

My other ring warns me when the power gets low.

Yes, the fall off in functionality. The Qwardian who made this ring considered that to be a 'bug'. The idea of making a weapon that wouldn't kill people despite still having power offended him quite profoundly.

How fast can the recharge be made to happen?

If you speak the oath quickly, about five seconds.

I have to speak the oath every time?

Yes.

Fricking orange lantern doesn't make me say the oath every time.

Chin up, Corpsman. You will most likely be dead soon and then it will be someone else's problem.

Thank you. This is what I get for rushing off almost entirely uncocked when I spotted Gonzo. How far do I think the two shots of Garrick I've got left will take me? Heck, I'm in communications…

"John, you still there?"

"Still here. The US and Israel are in the process of scrambling their aircraft. About half the Thanagarian fighters have moved out to form a perimeter and most of the rest are on guard duty around the bypass generator. The Command Carrier is moving up out of the atmosphere. You need any help in there?"

"I don't suppose you ever learned to do anything medical with your ring, did you?"

"Sorry. Wasn't part of the Corps' training program. I didn't even know they could do more than splint broken bones 'till I saw you do it. You hurt?"

"Yeah."

"Bad?"

"If I were Human I'd be dead. As it is I want to lie down and do nothing for a -eureh- week or two."

"I was planning on heading down to the bypass generator, see if I can help out with the fighters. But if you need evac…"

Do I? "Okay, they don't have the resources to build a second bypas-." I take a hurried step to the side as a marine sticks his gun around the doorway and tries firing blind for a few seconds before the turret construct puts a round through his weapon. Sticking the turret outside would be better but they've gotten rather good at smashing constructs. "Uh. If the air forces take care of it, their mission is a failure and the attack doesn't happen."

"And the Earth doesn't get destroyed."

"But Commander Talak is a shockingly callous man. If they have orbital supremacy they might shoot up a few cities just to make a point. Okay. Can you teleport on board the Command Carrier?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Can you teleport near the ship? If you wreck their FTL system-."

"They'd get stranded."

"No, their shuttles are FTL capable. They'll have to abandon all of their other equipment in order to evacuate, but they could do it. Always leave them room to run."

"Then why not just leave them the Command Carrier? If I take out main weapons control-."

"Weapons control isn't centralised. And that wouldn't stop them grabbing a few asteroids and dropping them. No, we need… The soldiers have heard what I've been saying. They're trying to ignore it, but they know that their commander is perfectly happy to kill everyone as long as he destroys New Gordane as well. They're working through it, but they're scared. If the bypass gets destroyed and they've only got one way out, I think they'll take it. Plus, I-" Wait, what's happening? The marines outside communications are pulling back. "-need this ship for phase two."

"Phase two? You forget to mention something?"

"Originally, I wanted a new super team to defeat the Thanagarians. Then I found out about the President. Now, I want to present myself as the 'opposing force'." Once my insides have knitted back together, at least.

"Think you might be skipping a step." There's a pause. "Okay, Batman's back. I'll head down to the teleporter."

"Make sure you hit the ship in the right place. It's right next to the primary generator."

"Could it explode?"

"I don't think so. Thanagarian engineering is pretty solid, but we'd have to make massive repairs if the ship does a forced shutdown."

"Right."

Three grenades fly towards the doorway and the minigun turret tracks and destroys them before they get any distance into the room. They explode anyway… And the turret construct goes down. Ring what?

The explosive was seeded with trace amounts of Nth metal, Corpsman. They appear to be playing 'area denial'.

Oh dear. I create a new turret construct a little further back, behind a construct barrier. One of the marines sticks the head of his mace out and the turret shoots it, sending it flying out of his hand. Ah hell, I can still see it. I send out a filament and pull it back into the communications room and my right hand. Another volley of grenades come in. The turret automatically shoots the first which detonates as before. I pull the turret construct back before it can be destroyed while I use the barrier to knock the other grenades back through the doorway.

Ring, exactly how power intensive is transmutation?

They're all wearing breathing equipment. Chlorine won't do you much good, Corpsman.

"I was thinking dioxygen difluoride. Just enough to force them back."

Between one and two percent. If you're evacuating soon you can probably risk it.

Right then. "Soldiers of Thanagar. Burn!"

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Stars, Crossed, part 1 29

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7th January 2004

16:51 GMT

Yellow beams from my eyes pass through the air outside the doorway and a brilliant white explosion radiates outwards!

"YYYEEEEAAAAHHHHHGH!"

"Full body armour! Mention it to your superiors if you ever return!"

Five percent remaining, Corpsman.

Right.

"In blackest day or brightest night-"

Another grenade flies in, meets a construct bat and flies back for a fraction of a second before detonating anyway! The bat crumbles and evaporates. Damn it! Ring, any idea what happens if I use the Garrick Formula while there's a hole in me?

None at all.

How did you become First Lantern again?

By not doing idiotic things like this. I would have never let the war between Thanagar and the Gordanians get this far. That Rayner boy has much to answer for.

Didn't you try to kill him?

I can admire competence, even amongst my enemies.

I send a filament out through the doorway near the roof. Still more marines… And mobile force field generators. They're not man-portable, but they're creating enough cover that a simple incendiary spray isn't going to kill enough of them. Internal doors are sealed so I can't just transition away… If that was safe for me in my current condition.

One near the back's got a radion blaster. Right. That's not good. The filament should be nearly invisible-.

"There!"

Or not. I extend it rapidly as a marine lunges towards it with an Nth Metal axe, grab the blaster and yank it back before the blow can sever it. Ludicrously lethal blaster and a mace. I'm rather conforming to Apokoliptian techno-barbarian type here.

"He just… Took it. How are we supposed to fight someone like that?"

"That's enough, soldier." Ah, the Commander himself. Please tell me this isn't going to turn into a duel. I'm not sure I could cope with the stupidity of it. "He's trapped. Our fighters are exterminating their primitive aircraft. We will complete our objective and then-." The ship.. rattles around us. "What now?"

Kragger comes up behind him with some sort of computer pad. "We're under attack from the outside. With the bridge out of commission and communications-."

"Take a fighter squadron-."

"We can't actually do that, sir. All fighters are currently deployed and-" Commander Talak's face is a picture. "-we can't signal them. We would have to send a shuttle down into the atmosphere in order to-" I guess his day has been worse than mine. "-get a message across. Our guns are operational, but the target is too small and emits too little radiation for them to reliably track. As long as it stays outside the range of our hull's defence field-."

"Do we at least know who is doing it?"

"It appears to be a Green Lantern, sir."

I lean forwards slightly. "Don't you Thanagarians have some sort of protocol for removing insane people from important positions? You can't possibly complete the hyperspace bypass under these conditions and they will get something through your defences eventually. Seriously, the mission was poorly conceived to start with and it's a bust now."

"It isn't if we kill you."

"No, still is! Your own intelligence reports say that Councillor Vayneek has enough support to keep the Gordanian Empire together in my absence! But he doesn't have enough.. authority, to keep the fleet in line to the degree that I do. If you want Thanagar to survive this in one piece you will take your shuttles and you will leave, now. My word that you can leave unmolested."

Yellow, yellow everywhere… Even without the ring keeping me informed, there's no mistaking that the remaining marines would much rather be elsewhere right now. Talak's still got enough wherewithal to realise that he can't be sure that his soldiers are still with him. Can I risk a recharge now? What's he going to do?

The ship rattles again.

"Hyperdrive off-line. You need anything else?"

"Let you know in a second." May as well. "In blackest day or brightest night

Beware your fears made-."

"Then I will face him myself!"

Wait, what?

"Sir, I don't think that-."

Commander Talak grabs a shield and launches himself into the air. He detonates a grenade right at the doorway a fraction of a second before passing through it, another already heading in my direction! I frantically transition to the side, trying to draw a bead on him with the radion blaster! I fire and he drops down to the deck in defiance of aerodynamics before accelerating towards me again, axe ready! Fucking Thanagarians! I activate aero discs, launch myself upwards and bend forwards, causing him to pass underneath me as he swings and misses. Blaster… Needs to recharge, right. OWFUCK! Aerobatics are not a good idea right now! I toss the blaster aside as he pulls an impossibly tight turn and comes back around. What to do when one party's a master of aerial combat and the other isn't?

Endeavour to be the master.

Not helping. Ground him! The fears of this entire ship fuel the chain I wrap around his legs to pull him to the ground. Realising that I'm not going to fire direct blasts he drops both his shield and another grenade! The chain evaporates and I'm not quick enough to get out of the blast!

Aaaaaagh! "Erh."

My construct armour starts to fail FUCK IT! I step forwards while he's still off-balance from the chain and swing the mace! It strikes him hard on the right of his chest and I see ribs give way under his skin as he's knocked aside. That's what you get for wearing stupid, minimalist faaagh!

"Commander!"

"That hurt!" Yellow beams from my eyes blast through Kragger's hand, disintegrating the energy weapon he just used to shoot me in the head.

"Huyah!" He staggers and falls to the floor.

Ow! I'm just lucky it was a sidearm! I turn back to Talak just in time to get my left bracer up to block his axe agh! He pulls back slightly as I move my mace up to a guard position. Do maces guard? His attack pierced my armour and cut into the flesh, though from the feel of it not deeply. When I get back I'm plugging myself into that mana focus thing I offered Mister Queen. Divinity should not be this hard!

Talak changes his grip, left hand at the bottom of the haft and right just under the blade. There's another grenade on his belt but I can't spare the concentration to remove it. He's trying to shield his shattered ribs with his arm but I can see blood on his lips. I'm oozing again myself. He charges forwards, shoulder down and axe out to the side. I brace -he's nothing like as strong as me- and lean into-.

FUCK!

GAH!

Die, fucker!

Fucking elbowed me in the wound then tried to axe me. He overestimated how disabled my left arm was and I caught the haft before returning the favour by kneeing him in the ribs.

OW!

He's reeling. AAAGH! I don't even use the mace, I just punch him in the jaw, sending him flying backwards. Raaagh! I swing the mace overhead and bring it down. He rolls to the side but I still hit the bone of his left wing, the discharge from the mace ripping it clean off!

"Drehurh!"

The next swing hits him in the abdomen, the one part of his chest that could be called armoured. The discharge is still enough to wind him and smack him against the wall. I lunge forwards again, grabbing his helmet and slamming his head against the wall until he goes limp!

Okay Agh. I'm about… I'm about done.

Uh-uah.

"In… In blackest day… Or brightest night…"

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7th January 2004

16:55 GMT

Don't let them see you bleed.

Yellow construct manacles around his arms, wings and legs hold Kragger in front of me as a Thanagarian shield as I walk slowly and purposefully out of the communications room. With my construct armour at full strength, my injuries are neatly concealed. Plus, it lets me move my body as if I were fully intact inside. Muscles in my arm damaged? No problem, just relax it and move the armour around it. Facial tremors are a bit more of a problem. The open helm construct only partially obscures it, so I'm settling for biting my teeth together and using my ring to actually make sounds when I 'speak'..

Marines ready their weapons, but no one shoots. Kragger's just about conscious but the man dangling by the throat from my left hand isn't. Talak's chest is a sack of crushed ribs and with his helmet off his battered face is a good deal less intimidating. I make a point of making eye contact with each of the marines, making note of which ones flinch.

"Who is in charge now?" A few look at each other, but mostly their attention remains fixed on me. "No one? Well then, let me make this simple. You are leaving. Your vile attempt to destroy an inhabited world not a party to our conflict has failed. You've lost. But since I have no particular hunger for slaughter I will permit you to leave in good order so long as you do so now." I step heavily on the remains of a charred marine who was too close to the FOOF and my construct boot crushes through to the deck. I make my eyes glow as if reconsidering. "Go."

They don't move immediately. There are definitely a few seconds where I'm worried that I'm going to have to start this whole messy business all over again. Then a couple of the marines closest to me -the least yellow ones- lower their guns slightly. I dim my eyes to show willing, then roughly shove Kragger into the arms of the nearest. He checks Kragger over and then girds his mental loins to speak to me. "The… Commander…"

"Will stay with me until I've persuaded your fighter pilots to disengage. Then I will put him on the last shuttle myself." He tries and fails to match my gaze, just nodding and backing away. Despite everything I've done, they're still not fleeing. This is an ordered withdrawal. Is this what having the divine ruler of your wartime enemies turn up in person and beat your strongest fighters does? Was it Talak and I undermining their righteousness? Simple fear generated by my bloodletting while appearing uninjured? I don't shake my head, but I redouble my effort to remain focused. The pain snaps me back every few minutes but I'm definitely getting woozy.

They're pulling back. Okay, with Kragger and Talak down, who is actually in charge? Oh. That Thanagarian in white armour at the construction site was actually someone important. She's probably still down there. Talak still held up in my left hand I fold my right arm behind my back, turn and walk back into the communications room. Every step… Eeerah. Okay. The Nth metal discharge from the grenades is still in the corner I swept it to. I'd collect it up if it weren't such a pain to manipulate with constructs. I generate a construct vault door, scan the room just in case I've missed someone… Then deposit Talak on the ground, generate a construct armchair for myself and collapse into it. A-ahhhhh! Take over the world tomorrow.

"John, good work with the hyperdrive. The Thanagarians are abandoning ship. I'm going to talk the fighter craft into evacuating as well."

"You might want to hurry. Kara, Rayner and Marvel just arrived on site and they're cleaning up."

"Lethally or non-lethally?"

"Rayner and Marvel are pulling their punches, finding out how much force the Thanagarians' shields can take. Kara's just trying to take them down as fast as she can."

"Right. Any chance you could get inside the launch bay and keep an eye on things? I'm a bit of a wreck at the moment."

"Yeah, I can handle that. You sure you don't need anything?"

"Just time. Grayven out." I flop back for a moment. Okay.

…

Eeeerr. Um. Think I… Think I spaced out a bit there. Ring. Link to the communications computer.

Link established, Corpsman.

I focus on the shape of the chair, turning it into something a little more professional looking. I also remove most of the helmet, making the rest look like an armoured collar. They need to be able to see me, but I'm still shivering inside my armour and can't risk them seeing my jaw shake.

Ring, open communications with all Thanagarian vessels and personal communication units.

They can both hear and see you now, Corpsman.

"Thanagarian vessels and personnel. I am Prince Grayven of Apokolips, and I am speaking to you from the communications suite of your own command carrier. It has fallen to me. Your commander-" I hoist Talak up using chain constructs. "-has been removed from office. Your scheme to bypass my world's defences has failed, and you are now confronted by a force your fighters cannot withstand: your mothership's own weapon systems. If you wish to avoid that fate, return to the construction site, evacuate your remaining personnel and rendezvous with the ship's shuttles at Lagrange Point two for the trip back to Thanagar. There's no deadline, but if I don't see movement in the next two minutes I'm going to start shooting the slowest of you dead." End.

Communications off, Corpsman.

That it? I was waiting for you to give me marks out of ten.

You're not home free just yet, Corpsman. Impressive as it is that you've retained consciousness there's still the little matter of ensuring that the fighters don't just come up here and destroy the ship with you on it.

It would be inconvenient, but by the time it's suffered enough structural damage to be 'destroyed' I could easily have escaped. Once I get back out into space I can just boom tube around a bit, hole up in the Watchtower until my wound knits back together… Three members of my new League just worked together without me having to lock them in a room… Nightwing can clue them in about the President. Shame Eliza didn't turn up, but I suppose it's not a big deal. And the fight took place in the air after all. The Flash can't fly.

And… I'm on the floor. Aaagh. Okay. Quick check, and the Thanagarian fighters appear to be behaving themselves. I take a look at Talak. Yep, that's some nasty internal bleeding. Before I lose consciousness I should probably fix that up a bit. Ring, do the thing.

What for? He tried to kill you and billions of others.

Because his death would hurt Shayera, and I've put too much effort into her to be willing to alienate her. And it's not like the Gordanians and.. me won't kill him anyway. Killing huge numbers of people for a plan that won't work offends me on an intellectual level… But he's no threat like this and he isn't worth killing. Let him know for the brief remainder of his life that he owes it all to me.

Yellow light flickers over his body as blood is drained from internal cavities, holes and leaks are plugged and some ribs are put back into place. I'm not stupid enough to make him fighting fit again.

…

Ugh. I need to get a watch. I think I lost more time there, but I'm not-.

"Grayven." I blearily look around as Shayera flies in. Her eyes dart to Talak for a second, giving his state of health a quick assessment. "John said you were injured. We should get you to the ship's medical bay."

"The evacuation?"

"They're clearing out. Earth's militaries are letting them go." Her eyes linger on her ex, presumably making sure he's not about to become ex.

Heh.

"You heard what he said, right?"

"He wasn't always like that. I don't know what changed-."

"You hadn't seen him at his worst. It's easy to be nice when everything's going well." I float to my feet. "I can't afford to let the ship's crew see me weak. Dump Talak on a shuttle, then come back for me. I doubt medicine will do much for me, and I can lie on the floor here as easily as I can in the ship's sick bay."

She nods, and the last thing I see before my eyelids betray me again is her lifting Talak into a fireman's carry.

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Stars, Crossed, part 2

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Stars, Crossed, part 2 1

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Stars, Crossed, part 2

24th February

11:56 GMT +3

Kandake stares in amazement as her right ring and little fingers reappear. After my first few healing sessions Sadeh suggested that I make a bit more of a drama about it. Just making it 'wave of orange and your arm's back' was weirding the Amazons out too much, particularly in the case of old or ancient injuries. So I've suppressed the nerves around the affected area and I'm taking it slowly. First, the scar tissue and the skin covering the place the fingers used to be dissolves. There's a slight intake of breath as it starts -despite what I tell them most of my patients expect it to hurt- but she looks more fascinated than anything else as a construct takes the shape of the missing bones before gradually filling in from the hand end with transmuted material.

Next come the nerves, blood vessels and tendons. Amazons had a surprisingly good knowledge of the internal structures of the Human body. She knows what the parts I'm regrowing are. Oh, she's trying to keep her hand completely still. I did tell her… With those parts complete I cover the whole thing in construct skin, taking care to match her skin pigmentation as the uppermost layer goes on. Match the length of the nail to her others… And, done.

I take hold of her fully restored hand in both of mine. "Now, I'll tell you the same thing I tell everyone else. To lose your fingers may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose them twice would start to look like carelessness." I lean forwards a little. "Do try and be careful."

I release her hand and she holds it in front of her face, staring at her restored digits. She closes her fingers into a fist and the new ones lag a little behind their compatriots. She swallows, then touches her new fingers with her left index finger. "I can't… I can't feel them. Is that… Wrong?"

"No, it's to be expected, really. I've been…" I glance at Sadeh. "Well, actually, Sadeh's been keeping records on Amazons who've had body parts restored. With recent injuries there isn't a problem, but a substantial portion of those with older injuries experience numbness and a lack of responsiveness. Did you ever experience phantom limb pain?" She looks blank. "The sensation that the fingers were still there, did you ever feel like they were touching something?"

"They… Ached, sometimes."

"Right, that's pretty common. There are several theories about why that sort of thing happens… The one that I remember -and I don't know whether it's true or not- is that without any sensation, the part of your brain that used to interpret input from the fingers connects to other things. "

"Is this.. perman-?"

"No, it's not… It shouldn't be permanent. For obvious reasons there's not a lot of research on restored body parts, but from what the first few people whose old injuries I fixed have told me, you should experience a gradual restoration of sensation as your brain adapts to the new source of data. Human brains are remarkably clever things. Now, we think.. the best way for you to speed this up is to keep using them. Basically, we want you to-" I pick up a foam ball from a nearby table. "-take this, and we want you to spend an hour each day squeezing it in your formerly injured hand. Here."

Kandake takes it from me, feeling the texture. They don't have plastic on Themyscira, for obvious reasons. No rubber either. They could grow rubber-producing plants in this climate but they don't currently have much use for it. "Like this?" She gives the ball a squeeze.

I hold out my right hand and open and close it as if repeatedly squishing the ball. "Like that." She nods and repeats the motion. "We'd also like you to keep a written record… If you start getting any feeling back, if it hurts at all…" She nods. "After about a month, if you still haven't felt anything, there are other things I can do, but they involve fiddling with your brain and I'd rather avoid that if at all possible."

"I will do as you ask." She squeezes the ball hard. "Thank you." She turns and walks away to rejoin the small group of Amazons from her village who made the journey with her.

I turn to Sadeh. "Is that it?"

She nods. "Everyone who came. I don't think there's a single woman left carrying a wound on Themyscira now, thanks to you."

I smile. "Glad to help."

She frowns as I get up to leave the Temple of Apollo which doubles as Themyscira City's hospital. "Oh, I was thinking yesterday… Have you heard of Baroness Paula von Gunther?"

I nod. "Yes, Diana fought her during the Second World War. She.. came to live here afterwards. Died about thirty years ago."

She nods. "Yes. What you've been doing… It reminds me of one of the things she designed here."

"She… Built something that could regrow-?"

"No, no. She showed me once. It could regrow flesh and.. reattach severed body parts, but it could not restore them from nothing as you can."

"She built it here? That's amazing! Where is it, does it still work?"

"It's probably still in her workshop. As far as I know the last person to have seen it would have been the Princess."

"Still in her workshop? Why isn't it in.. here? If someone comes in injured..?"

She shakes her head regretfully. "It seemed very complicated. How would I know it was working properly?"

"Okay, that's… Reasonable. If you could show me where her workshop is I could-. I'm sorry, just a moment. Ring, what time is it?"

"Eleven fifty nine local time."

!!!

"TerriblysorrybutI'msupposedtobespeakingattheSenaterightatmiddaysorry."

I see her frown as the ring calculates the route. "We don't keep time that precise-."

I transition to just outside the small amphitheatre of the Themysciran Senate. It's at the centre of the city just to the left of the palace. The guards look my way, but they're become fairly used to me appearing and disappearing by now. No cry of alarm goes up at least. Right, right, ahhh… My usual armour disappears into subspace, being replaced by what I keep wanting to call a toga but isn't. Mala was quite clear about that and I have no desire to sit through another lecture on Amazon fashion. Fortunately, she was a good deal less certain about clothing for men so I'm cheating and wearing a himation rather than a peplos. The colours gave me some trouble. My signature colours are grey, black and orange and Amazons generally favour lighter colours for their clothes. I could just do grey with orange trimmings but I need to appear as a part of the group rather than as an external force. In the end I went for pale orange cloth with a darker orange border. Since they don't have an orange dye it draws the eye, but the style is more familiar while still being distinctively mine.

I hurry up akgh!

I walk slowly and carefully up the steps, nodding politely to the two guards on duty by the doors. "Haven't started without me, have they?"

"Probably." I vaguely recognise the guard who answered, but I don't think we've been introduced. "But I wouldn't worry. We don't keep a tight schedule here in the way you're used to." She looks past me towards the entrance to the palace. "In fact…"

I turn to follow her gaze. The royal party are approaching. Two guards to the fore, then Queen Hippolyta, High Priestess Menalippe, Captain Philippus and the two guards bringing up the rear. I recognise Zosime by her reflective skin. Should really see if she still wants to keep that at some point. The group climbs the steps and Hippolyta smiles at me. I bow… Well, as much as I can in this dress thing. "Majesty."

"Paul. I'm glad that I haven't missed anything. How were things at the Temple?"

"I think I've run out of people to heal. And Sadeh said something about a healing machine Baroness von Gunther built?"

"Ah, yes. I think I remember it. You're welcome to go through her workshop. I imagine that she would be pleased that someone is making use of it. Now." She nods to her escort at they open the doors. "Shall we?"

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Stars, Crossed, part 2 2

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24th February

12:03 GMT +3

I hold my hands out to the side and bow my head. "How may I serve the Senate?"

I'm facing Queen Hippolyta, but by long established custom this is a place for the Senators to discuss and interrogate. Aside from a few areas the reigning monarch is expected to stay above the debate. Similarly, while Philippus and Menalippe are here, they're here in case the Senate need their specialist knowledge of war or divinity. They sit on the Queen's right, while the Senators sit to her left by order of length of service. I only know two of them. Acantha gave me a friendly smile when I walked in. Clyemne just narrowed her eyes slightly. The others -Margarites, Paraskeve, Xenia, Eupheme and Cyanea- I don't know at all. Still, Diana did say that they're supposed to behave with a degree of comportment while in the chamber. Clyemne's actions when we first met were fine while in the forum but she'd soon get sat on if she tried that in here. The arc of chairs they occupy is actually quite small, unlike the huge hundred plus chambers I'm used to seeing at the higher levels of government in the rest of the world. Puts me more in mind of one of the old style autopsy lecture theatres, really.

"Thank you for answering our summons, Pavlos." As longest serving Senator, Paraskeve has a chairman-like role. Since the Themysciran Senate predates the modern committee and since all Senators are equal it isn't quite the same, but she'll do the initial announcements and has the right to ask questions first. "I do hope we haven't called you away from your work at the Temple of Apollo?"

"We ran out of patients." I spot my own inadvertent wordplay and smile slightly. That wouldn't translate, of course. "Anyone I haven't seen either can't travel or doesn't want my help." I'm told there are a few who feel that way. It still strikes me as odd when even Philomela of The Circle was quite happy to get her eyes back. It's interesting how reasonable those four are being with me these days. Even Alkyone barely hisses at me at all anymore.

Paraskeve nods. "There are several matters we wish to discuss with you. Firstly, your offer to assist any women of Themyscira who wish to become pregnant to do so… With other women."

"What would you like to know?"

"I'm told-" She glances at Clyemne. "-that you gave a technical explanation as to how that was possible in the forum during your first visit, but I'm afraid that most of us were not in attendance. For our benefit, would you mind repeating yourself?"

"Of course not. I was worried at the time that it might go over the audience's heads. There is a thing called 'Deoxyribonucleic acid'… usually abbreviated to 'DNA'. It is a chemical mechanism which -under certain circumstances- can build a.. person. I can provide a full written explanation as to how it functions, but.. if you could just take it on faith for this discussion?" She waves her right hand in a 'carry on' motion. "Usually a person gets half the mechanism from their mother and half from their father-. Again, I can-."

"Please assume that we are willing to read up on this afterwards. We are aware that natural philosophy has advanced somewhat in Man's World."

"Sorry. Um, essentially, aside from the chromosome -the component- which determines gender... Men have a 'Y' chromosome, women don't. Aside from that, it really doesn't make a difference if the DNA comes from two women or a woman and a man. Or two men, really, though obviously they'd have to have someone willing to carry the child to term. Other than the obvious difficulty in getting them to combine when, ah, the Human reproductive system isn't really designed to work in that way." I shrug. "With a power ring, it's fairly simple for me to merge them manually, trigger the.. process and implant them into a womb."

"How many children have been born this way?"

"Um… Similar techniques have been used by any number of species across the galaxy. If you're talking about Humans… To the best of my knowledge, no children have been brought to full term having been conceived in this way. Earth's technology simply isn't advanced enough to replicate what I do, and it would be very difficult to do with a green power ring."

"Have you had any volunteers?"

"Yes. Five couples and two groups. It's not really much harder for me to merge DNA from multiple individuals."

She raises her eyebrows. "Who?"

Ah. "There's a custom in the country of my birth called doctor-patient confidentiality. I'm not supposed to talk about their medical situation without their express consent. Also, it's considered unlucky to talk about it in the first twelve weeks of the pregnancy anyway because that's when most miscarriages happen." Though I've done my best to eliminate the genetic causes I've been clear with them and with myself that things will go wrong in a small number of cases. "If you'd like me to ask them if they're willing-."

"That's quite alright. They can hardly conceal themselves indefinitely." She looks at me for a moment. "Why are you doing this?"

"Seeing yellow dolls everywhere was weirding me out. Queen Hippolyta explained the situation with the.. whittle-babies to me." Faces tighten and eyes are averted. "It seems to me that having actual children is a much better idea. The island can easily support a population… What, twenty times what it is now? So there's no worry there. I'm making it available to everyone, so none of the, um-" I glance at Queen Hippolyta. "-jealousy that arose from Princess Diana's creation should occur. It just seemed like an obvious solution to me."

"Did you consult anyone before making the offer?"

"I.. read up on Amazon society in general and spoke to Princess Diana about it. And Eris may have egged me on a bit."

"I see. It did not occur to you that it may be wise to consult us, for example?"

"No. No changes in the Themysciran legal code were required, having babies isn't a crime… As you said yourself, you're going to have to do a lot of reading before you can really understand what I'm doing… There didn't seem to be any point."

"Hpf." That came from Clyemne. The others ignore it.

"Traditionally, the Senate has taken an active role in overseeing potentially.. disruptive social shifts. While I appreciate that you may simply have been ignorant of this fact, it really would have been better for you to have come to us first."

"No, with all due respect I don't think it would. Princess Diana was created eighty five years ago. You've had eighty five years to talk about this. Well, no, you've had three thousand years to talk about this, but that should have given you a nudge. If you haven't reached a conclusion yet, I'm forced to assume that you're just not going to. And if you're not going to…" I shrug. "I'm leaving the planet in four months' time. There's a limited window for this to happen. I realise that Amazon society isn't big on urgency…" I shrug again.

"The conditions of Princess Diana's birth were unique. We never reached a consensus on whether it would be wise to try asking Gaea to use her magics in that fashion again."

"That's the problem, right there. If there isn't a consensus in favour, nothing happens. The system favours conservatism and the need I see, the need I perceive directly in the souls of so many of my fellow citizens, goes unanswered. I am not a conservative individual. After three thousand years… Two thirds of which have been in near total isolation… I think we need a metaphorical kick up the arse." I create a sandaled foot construct and have it making a kicking motion before dismissing it.

"I suppose I can understand that point of view. Secondly, your request for a theatre troupe to travel with you to the United States of America."

"I didn't actually say 'America'. I said anywhere, though there is a certain logic to going to America."

"Why a theatre troupe?"

"Because theatre is one of the few areas where Themyscira has something… Where it can approach the other nations of the world as an equal. There are plays here no one else in the world has ever seen, and millions of people are positively salivating at the idea of having access to Sappho's work. There's already an interest in Amazon culture, and… It would let the players get a look at a foreign country in a professional setting. I should probably say that I want to sneak Io away-."

"Again." Clyemne's interjection goes unremarked. She has a point.

"I had her permission in advance, and I think that she found the meeting with Hephaestus rewarding."

Menalippe looks down at me with the air of a mother forced to scold her offspring for eating soil again. "Lord Hephaestus, Paul."

"He said he was cool with it?"

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Stars, Crossed, part 2 3

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24th February

12:21 GMT +3

"I'm not saying that there aren't military applications or that I don't want to use it for making weapons or armour at all. What I'm saying is that I'm mostly focused on industrial applications at the moment."

"And how long do you intend to maintain that focus?"

"I don't know enough about the properties of orichalcum to answer that with any certainty. But I will point out that as far as I know the only Human on the planet who knows how to make the stuff is Io. Anyone else who learns will have to be taught by her."

"And they in turn could teach others."

"Having not been taught the process myself, I can't say for sure. I assume so. King Orin's armour was made using an inferior form of the metal, so I assume that the Atlanteans used to know how to do it. But that might have been Vulcan teaching one of his devotees. Please understand, most of the world doesn't forge weapons like you do anymore. A lot of the skills involved either don't exist or are extremely rare."

Clyemne rolls her eyes. "Really."

"I would of course be happy to show you how most places make weapons. Or you could use the foreign currency the trade would generate to upgrade your weaponry… Use the industrial contacts to upgrade your own production. My… Opinion? Is that unless you're building orichalcum automata -and as far as I know you're not- the actual advantage you get from forging weapons of orichalcum wouldn't be significant in the event of actual hostilities with another country. Orichalcum just... It takes too long to make."

Xenia raises a hand to attract my attention. "Where do you intend to have Io give this instruction?"

"Wherever she likes. I'd like it to happen here, and for metamaterials to become a major Themysciran export. It would be faster to train people with an existing understanding of forging processes, women Io could explain what she does to in a way they'd understand. But, if you prefer, I'm sure I can find other places happy to host the production facilities."

Clyemne turns her head towards the royal box. "Captain, would you care to give a less biased view of the extent to which sharing this technique would weaken our defences?"

Ah. Interesting approach Clyemne is taking this time. Interesting in the sense that she's clearly assumed that the royal box is in favour of what I'm doing -as I understand it, they're not, they just don't want to stop me- and is trying to manoeuvre Philippus into a position where she feels obliged to criticise me. Also interesting in that it's showing that she has no idea at all how modern armies fight. I remember seeing an old film set in ancient Egypt, where the Egyptians were using bronze weapons and it was a major intelligence coup for a physician to get an example of a neighbouring nation's iron swords.

Philippus thinks for a moment. "I'm not qualified to talk about the wider economic issues. But it took us three thousand years to create as much orichalcum as we have now. Our warships are made of wood. Now that we know Lord Hephaestus approves I was planning to ask Io to start teaching other smiths anyway. And traders have always been a useful way of keeping track of what our trade partners are doing with what we sell to them."

"The main reason why it takes so long to make is that Io was forced to use magic to get the gold to a high enough purity. If you want to move rapidly to a wholly orichalcum-equipped military I'm perfectly happy to give you enough pure gold to do that. Though I should point out that several countries have mechanical purification techniques they would be perfectly happy to trade with you."

While 99.9 percent pure gold produced noticeably worse orichalcum than the 100% pure stuff I provide, Io admitted to me that she usually only gets what she uses to about 98% pure anyway. Or she was. Since meeting Hephaestus in person she's started going over her techniques from scratch to see how she needs to improve them. I gave her a couple of translations of Sephtian's books but she told me that she can't really relate what she knows to what's in them. From how she was talking about looking forward to meeting him despite having to leave Themyscira to do so I'm starting to worry that she's going a bit fundamentalistic. I'm not even sure how that works with Olympians.

If she starts building mechadendrites I'm pulling the plug.

Philippus nods. "That would be useful. But I understood from Princess Diana that the manufacturing techniques employed in Man's World required large amounts of fuel. Themyscira has wood and charcoal but little coal and no…" She frowns. "Oil?" I nod. "Becoming dependent on our neighbours for fuel seems unwise."

"There are alternatives. I…" Oh, I have no idea how to begin explaining Bleed Torsion Generators. "One of the things I'm working on is a box about this big-" I hold my hands out. "-that can power pretty much whatever you want. Use that and you wouldn't have to worry about fossil fuel dependency. Alternately, we're also going to be working on magic based energy production. Atlantean society has developed magecraft to a very sophisticated level and I'm sure arrangements could be made for them to provide tuition to any Themysciran citizen who wanted it."

"And where do you intend for this tuition to take place?"

That's the first thing Margarites has asked. "Wherever those involved want it to. Assuming that a substantial proportion of the population would rather not encounter foreigners, we could build a school on one of the smaller islands. Alternately, we could set up a Dolmen Gate-."

"Are those the things the Justice League use? The Senate's position on those is quite clear."

"No, Senator Clyemne. The League uses Zeta Tubes. A Dolmen Gate is a purely arcane device and isn't prohibited by current law. It doesn't require a conventional power source-. Ah, a power source that would be considered conventional in most places. We could put one Gate somewhere on Themyscira and its paired Gate in an air room in Atlantis or.. just about anywhere, really."

"And other people could use them to come here? They would bypass the goddesses' wards?"

"I… Yes, the Gates are a two-way thing. I haven't checked, but I assume that they would bypass the wards. Obviously we'd have to either expand the wards-."

A few eyebrows go up. What? "You wish to alter the wards?"

"I'd… I haven't planned that particular part in any detail. Based on what I know about the way the wards work and the way the Gates work it seems likely that the effect could be extended to the Gate on the far side. If we actually went down that route I'd try talking to the goddesses who created it about it first. It's quite possible that they would be willing to extend it. In fact, it's possible that the far end would be covered anyway. Just… Point out… Three thousand years and no one here has the slightest idea how those things work."

"They work very well!" Don'tlaughdon'tlaughdon'tlaugh! "Regardless of the nature of your relationship with your own patron, most Olympians expect the reverence that is their due."

"Really? That's not been my experience."

Menalippe looks a little uncomfortable, but she raises her left hand to forestall Clyemne's aggressive rebuttal.. "What.. exactly.. do you mean by that?"

"Since the first time I came to Themyscira I've met-" I count on the fingers of my left hand with my right index finger. "-Eris, Hera, Hephaestus, Gaea-" There's an intake of breath. "-and Ploutos."

Hippolyta leans forwards, her eyes wide. "How did you meet Gaea?"

"Bumped into her when I dropped Euanthe off." That doesn't appear to be sufficient. "A demon by the name of Nergal was using her as the Earth-side anchor point for a portal between Earth and Hell. A couple of my friends and I destroyed the portal and freed her and.. brought her back here." No one says anything for a moment. "She seemed nice."

Menalippe recovers first. "When you asked me for a list of missing minor divines I thought that you were being facetious. I hadn't realised that you were actually undertaking rescues."

"I was a bit, but if there are any..?"

"Aaaahhh…" She blinks. "The Muse Calliope has not been seen for some time, but her sisters assume that she has simply-."

"Muse?"

"Yes. They are spirits of-."

"Inspiration." And I know of only one story in DC canon featuring them. I don't remember the name of the Muse in question… But I did hear a television news report of a dead author recently… "For how long?"

"About sixty years, but for an immortal being-."

Is it her? Can't take the chance. "Excuse me... I'm sorry, but I need to attend to this immediately."

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Stars, Crossed, part 2 4

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24th February

05:29 GMT -4

Global population six point two billion. The target… What do I remember? Male, so half that. Three point one billion. Caucasian… Assuming he hasn't been race lifted. I haven't noticed that happening to anyone here, so let's assume that it holds true. Ring, I can barely believe that I'm going to ask this, but what proportion of the world's population is Caucasian?

Approximately seventeen percent of the Human population possess the physical features commonly assigned to that ethnic group.

Seventeen percent of three point one billion is five hundred and twenty seven million. Was he American? I don't remember. No, that isn't going to work, I can't just eliminate… The dead author… Erasmus Fry. Assume he was the older man from the comic. Ring, professional-? No. They didn't have anything to do with each other after the exchange. Translation conventions mean I can't even be sure he was writing in English. Ring, top selling white male authors of the last… Um… Twenty years.

A list appears in my mind.

Narrow by… He came out of nowhere, didn't he? New authors. Ignore doorstoppers, look for things that are both popular and well reviewed by professional critics. Okay, I… I think there was a film? Wait, would Morpheus have freed her and then just left her? Any authors committed to asylums? Oh. That's a depressing figure. Access patient records, any matching..?

No patients in requested category matching stated symptoms.

Okay, film. Ring, narrow list by authors with at least one adapted work. A little better. What else can I use? If he were supercharged with inspiration… His work would be similar to what he wrote before, but it would be… Better developed. Would it? Could I detect that sort of tonal change? Ring, can you do literary analysis?

This ring can cross-reference the contents of known works but is incapable of detailed analysis of thematic content without significant user involvement.

Okay. He lived alone. Otherwise he would have risked someone finding her. Ring, narrow list. Right. I think he was near the beginning of his career. Arrange by date of first publication, most recent to oldest. Still more names than I'd like, but I should be able to get through them in a few hours. He wasn't a magic user, was he? No, it was the other fellow who trapped her, there's no reason to assume that his home would be warded. Eh, I can add sonic scans anyway. And it's not like it's a bad thing if I find a different woman chained up in a basement.

First on the list, Joseph Camden. Apparently he's quite popular… When was the last time I read a book? My last work of fiction… Four months? I've only read a couple since getting to this Earth. With these surroundings, fiction's a bit obsolete. Transition.

24th February

01:31 GMT -8

A block of flats in Los Angeles. Scan. No chained up woman. Next, Douglas Alexander. Transition.

24th February

17:31 GMT +8

Another block of flats, this time in Hong Kong. She's not here. Next?

24th February

21:31 GMT +12

No. Next?

24th February

01:32 GMT -8

!!!

Got you. Ring, where's Diana?

Unable to detect. Accessing Justice League zeta tube records. Diana is presently located in Mount Justice.

I look down at the home of Mister Richard Madoc. He's sleeping the peaceful sleep of the guilt free, a half filled notebook on his bedside table. Inside him… He wants fame, success and.. he wants to write. She… Rape is usually a power thing, violently enforcing a control dynamic. As far as I can tell he doesn't think about what he does in that way. He regards her as a thing, a vessel for him to get what he wants. He's a remarkably orange individual.

The woman I'm assuming is Calliope is bound by a thick leather collar, linked by a chain to an iron ring set in the basement wall. She's presently asleep as well, though her rest is far more disturbed than his. There's a… A bucket for her to excrete into, and a hose which I presume-. And the residue of his most recent assault.

I lift my left hand to my ear. Ring, contact Diana, would you?

Compliance.

I hear a ringing tone, though I know the ring is just providing that for my benefit. Half past four in the morning where she is so unless there's been some sort of emergency I imagine that she's asleep. I think she'd want to be woken for-.

"Wonder Woman, go ahead."

"Orange Lantern here. How quickly can you be in San Francisco?"

"About two minutes. What's happening?"

"The Muse Calliope is being held against her will in the home of the author Richard Madoc. A cursory examination suggests that he's been raping her for inspiration."

"Hera. I'm on my way."

"Thank you. Orange Lantern out."

Mister Madoc's home is a detached building located in the Monterey Heights area. Not hugely expensive, but certainly indicating someone who is quite comfortably off. He's made good money on… Three extremely popular novels, a poetry collection and a play? They even let him direct the film adaptation. Whoever green lit it liked it so much they didn't even try and do the usual author rip off. I think Wallace told me that he went to see it. Three Oscars.

We actually did training on how to handle rape survivors. I'm not sure how much of it applies to multimillennial demigoddesses… Ring, notify local police and request assistance.

Notification sent.

I want to wait until Diana gets here so that she can be the one Calliope sees first. I remember thinking once that the correct response to situations like that was counter intuitively one of joy, as the fact that I know about it means that I can make it stop while if I remained in ignorance it would still be going on. It turns out that like many things that are philosophically true it doesn't bear out in reality. What to do in the meantime? Certainly, there are all sorts of horrible things I could do, up to, including and beyond killing the feculent piece of Human-shaped excrement. But, no. That's just not the sort of person that I am.

Giant orange claws manifest in the air around me and then rip through the roof and external walls of his bedroom. I don't chuck them away as that would just make a mess and endanger life. Instead, as Mister Madoc wakes up and stares up at me in terror I deposit the rubble gently into his garden. Lights in several neighbouring houses come on as I drift closer. He's… He's got his notebook out. Ring, disintegrate.

Compliance.

There's an orange flare as it crumbles to nothing.

"Whu-? Who the hell are you!?"

"I'm Orange Lantern two eight one four. I'm here-."

"What have you done to my house?"

"I'm here to arrest you for kidnap, rape and false imprisonment." Orange manacles appear on his arms and legs and hoist him into the air. "I will be handing you over to the local police just as soon as they arrive. In fact-." I create a large orange sigil in the air over the house. "-I'll mark the location for them. Oh, and ring?" I look at my left hand. "Notify all the newspapers, would you?"

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Stars, Crossed, part 2 5

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24th February

13:19 GMT +3

I reappear in the Senate building, almost exactly where I left. The debate has carried on without me, but it comes to a halt as they notice me. "Sorry about that."

Menalippe smiles indulgently down at me. "You show an impressive dedication to duty. Were you able to find our missing Muse?"

"Yes. She's… Diana's.. looking after her in the embassy at the moment."

"I do hope she didn't cause you too much trouble."

"That's not… I wouldn't, um…" My eyes drop to the floor for a moment. "The police will want a statement.. but under the circumstances I don't think they'll actually need her to testify."

Hippolyta's face hardens. "What happened?"

"It turns out... Muses can be... Compelled, to provide inspiration. Her original abductor has.. died, and her most recent… Her most recent captor is in police custody." I feel a slight impulse to apologise on behalf of all men. I know that not all rapists are men and not all victims are females, but by far the majority are. And of the women I'm looking at, any who weren't born on the island would most likely have been on the receiving end when Herakles overran the old city.

"What will happen to him now?"

"He will be detained until a trial can be convened… Given Diana's interest I imagine it will be held sooner rather than later. There's no realistic prospect of him being acquitted… Under the California Penal Code rape is punishable by between three and eight years imprisonment per.. incident. Given the… Situation.. she was in, I don't imagine he'll ever be released."

She showed surprising resilience, actually. When we went into the.. dungeon, I made a point of keeping back, but Diana had me remove the collar and clean… Clean her, with the ring. She recognised Diana and she didn't.. shy away from me. I know from the thing with the League of Shadows that power ring scans are admissible as evidence, and no jury would listen to anyone questioning a sworn statement from Wonder Woman. The CSI people can make do with pictures of her cell. She even came to watch Mister Madoc being taken into police custody, though she clearly wasn't in any state to speak to anyone.

Though that might have been because of the sheer number of people around. I got the exact level of attention that I wanted. It turns out that when someone affiliated with the Justice League requests police assistance they come in loaded for supervillain. I got to meet San Francisco's Special Response Team, a whole chunk of the city got cordoned off and there's no way anyone missed who was being taken away. A few journalists followed the police, which also gave me the opportunity to explain why he was being arrested. Or, 'it is my understanding that he will be questioned regarding', but they spotted Diana leading Calliope away from his house. Doubt it'll make the morning papers but it will probably be… Are there still afternoon additions? And on their websites as soon as they can wake a journalist up to write the article.

This really isn't something I… No, it would have been terrible whenever it came to light, but I hope that Clyemne isn't going to try to-. "And what else?"

No, she is. "I'm sorry, but with Calliope free and the perpetrator arrested and being held awaiting trial, my.. involvement is over. If you are interested in how the American legal system works, I'm sure that Diana-."

"Princess Diana."

I pause for a moment. "I'm sorry. Of course. I'm sure that she would be happy to explain it to you."

"Imprisonment for the remainder of his life? Is that all?"

"Rapists tend to be extremely unpopular with other inmates, but that is the extent of the court-mandated punishment, yes."

"He will not be executed? Or gelded?"

"In the United States, some areas execute murderers, and I believe that treason can be punished by execution in some cases. Rapists are not executed. Removing body parts would be considered 'cruel and unusual' and thus prohibited by their constitution for any offence, regardless of the severity. I'm… Really not the best person to ask about this."

"How long was Calliope subject to assaults from these brutes?"

"The only one able to answer that question would be her, and I didn't think.. putting her to question immediately was the right course of action. But… Most likely, on and off for the entirety of her disappearance."

There's a collective intake of breath. Menalippe blinks as she tries to get her head around the idea. "There are people who would dare to treat a goddess such?"

"There is no deed so foul that someone somewhere won't commit it. And we're going to try to avoid telling people that she is a Muse." Menalippe shakes her head in incomprehension. "If it became public knowledge that raping a Muse gives you supernatural inspiration, I'm concerned that other people-."

Clyemne jumps to her feet. "And this is the nation that you wish us to have further contact with? One where such men-."

"Are punished for the crimes they have committed. No one other than the two people who were holding her knew that she was there. I don't know how they got her into the country, but that will be investigated. She was held in either an isolated place, or in a cell designed to prevent sound from escaping. There are procedures for hunting for kidnap victims but no one knew to look for her. Once I did, she was free inside ten minutes. When information of what happened spreads, everyone who hears about what happened will condemn the perpetrators. What more do you want?"

Clyemne glances along the row of her fellow Senators and then back to me. "I want their names."

I blink and shake my head. "Okay... Erasmus Fry and-."

"No!" Menalippe is staring at Clyemne, her eyes wide. "Do not answer her!"

Clyemne glares right back. "It would only be just. Do you truly not believe that the gods would have an interest?"

"I'm sorry, I seem to be missing something?"

Menalippe keeps staring Clyemne down. "The senator wishes to call the Furies down upon them."

I squeeze my eyes shut. "Oh, no, don't do that."

"You see! This-!"

"Don't do something that would make me feel obliged to protect that bastard. I don't know what the exact right punishment for his crime is, I doubt there is one. But life imprisonment seems to be… At least not completely unreasonable."

Clyemne breaks eye contact with Menalippe to look down at me with distaste. "You would protect this man?"

"Yes. That's my job. There is no.. grave injustice, no colossal and overwhelming need which requires us to throw out every existing law of civil society! You don't get to call in arcane life forms to murder a man because you're unhappy with the sentence the courts pass!"

Hippolyta stands. "And you will not discuss committing murder against a foreign citizen in this chamber. You are overstepping your bounds, senator."

Clyemne's mouth tightens as she gets her anger under control. A moment passes before she nods in acquiescence. "I apologise, my Queen. My disgust got the better of me."

Queen Hippolyta nods, then turns to me. "Under the circumstances, I think a break in proceedings is appropriate. Paul, you have our thanks for liberating Calliope." I bow. "For better or worse, you have given us a great deal to think about. We will reconvene in one hour."

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Stars, Crossed, part 2 6

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24th February

13:39 GMT +3

"… red numbers represent great fleets of warships?" Myrto picks up the card she was looking at.

I finally found people who will play this game with me. Yes, the fact that they've been in prison for longer than I've been alive might have something to do with it, but I'm not going to look a gift-horse in the mouth. Even with ring-assisted recall I couldn't possibly remember every card in the game, but that doesn't really matter because most of the cards were unplayable rubbish. Recreating the decks I actually used to own wasn't difficult at all. Not that the cards were ever printed in Themysciran Greek.

"Sort of. The card type represents fleets of all sizes, from small groups of vessels on patrol around your people's territory to huge quantities of warships owned by a vast alliance of people. And in a few cases huge monsters."

"And these ships fight between worlds?"

"In this.. game it.. doesn't really matter, since it's more usually about winning a particular face off rather than actually conquering anywhere. And there's not really much point fighting in the middle of nowhere. But, yes, fleet engagements take place outside the planet's atmosphere. Other than the very smallest, they're not designed to work inside one."

She nods. "Green is their skill as a diplomat. Blue, their skill as a spy. Orange their skill as a war leader and purple… Magic?"

"It's not precisely magic, I just said that it was like magic. Telepathy lets a person affect the thoughts of people around them, but it doesn't let them do anything more… Anything more exotic."

She raises her eyebrows. "Affecting a person's mind is not exotic?"

"Compared to some of the things I've seen magic users do on this world? No. They can pick out information if you're not trying to conceal it or muddle your senses a little. Only the strongest can actually attack someone's mind or control them."

She picks up a copy of the Psi-Corps Ambassador. "His magic… His telepathy seems stronger than the skills of the other leaders."

"It has to be, because on the scale the game takes place there are much fewer applications for it. He can control the mind of one person. Ambassador Delenn-" I pass her the 'Grey Council Diplomacy' deck. "-is one of the nine rulers of the people. Her decisions affect the lives of hundreds of billions, both her own people and those they have diplomatic relations with."

"And victory is achieved by leading your people to pre-eminence."

"Yes."

"When you explained it, the sequence of the turns sounded somewhat complicated."

"It… It is, and that… And the time games take to finish is probably why the game never really caught on. It's not too bad once you get the hang of it and… Hey, there are four of you, and since you don't age and you're locked in a couple of rooms… It's perfect."

Charis leans over her Circlemate's shoulder. "Why does the one playing with a strong military not simply win every time?"

"Having a fleet in play doesn't mean that a fleet has been built. It can, but usually it just means that the fleet has become available for your Ambassador to direct. If they went to war, whatever fleets the military player controlled would be met by the full force of the other player's people. That, and the fact that the Ambassadors are not the sole rulers of their peoples. Persuading their governments to declare war, given how expensive that is in both life and money, is no simple matter." She nods. "No group in the setting has the power to overwhelm all of the others. Most of these decks have some fleets in them, so if one player starts getting too aggressive-."

"The other players have what they need to unite against them and put them in their place."

"Yep. That's the main reason I like intrigue -spying- so much. Everyone's got some diplomacy and some military, but a lot of these decks have next to no intrigue. The most reliable military deck I have is mostly about posturing while you build up to the point where you can cow the others into submission."

"The game will have to wait." Myrto and Charis step back as Alkyone approaches, Philomela just behind her. That's unusual. She may not growl at me anymore but she made it clear that she doesn't like me. She usually just sits out of the way when I visit.

I shrug. "None of us are going anywhere. What can I do for you?"

She sits in front of the opening between the cell quarters and the rest of the world, staring at me. "I was told that there was something you wanted to say to me."

"Yes, I want to apologise for the way I spoke to you when we first met. I was rude and excessively aggressive, particularly regarding your desire to-." Her eyes harden. "You know."

Her eyes move to the side and she breathes slowly, as if steeling herself for something. "I… Accept."

"Oh. I.. honestly wasn't expecting that."

Her eyes move over my face and to the cards on the small shelf between us. "You healed Philomela and have faithfully obeyed the Queen's order to communicate with us. I dislike the situation, but I am prepared to entertain the idea that you are not my enemy."

"Thank you." I smile and extend my right hand through the gap. She looks at it for a moment, then takes hold and shakes it. "I was just taking a break down here while the senate calms down. I wasn't expecting to actually get anywhere today."

She lets go and -hah!- she wipes her hand under the shelf where she thinks I can't see it. "You told me when we first met that you would consider it your duty as a citizen to reveal the Dragon's duplicity."

"If any exists -and I'm not convinced it does- then yes, I do."

"What I am about to tell you is an unbroken secret within our sisterhood. If I tell you why we hate her, why we were prepared to go against our Queen to kill her, you will not share that knowledge with another soul. You will investigate and you will bring such evidence as you find to me."

"Queen Hippolyta is my queen and I am oathbound to obey Diana for the next four months. I don't think they will order me to tell them if you have asked me not to, but they might. Otherwise, of course."

Alkyone considers for a moment, then nods. "What do you know of her creation?"

"The authorised version? Hippolyta wanted a daughter, she made a model from the clay of Themyscira and…" I didn't actually ask for details, beyond checking that 'clay model brought to life' was what happened here. "One of the goddesses brought it to life?"

"It was no goddess. The matter from which the Dragon's body was made was taken from the Hekatonkheir Cottus."

"Okay?" She scowls at me. "Is that bad? I'm a bit behind on my Greek mythic cycles, but weren't the Hekatonkheires on the Olympian side during the fight with the Titans? I mean, it's a bit weird that Hippolyta hasn't told anyone, but it's not like Diana is Uranus' daughter or anything."

"Perhaps they were allies once, but they have spent thousands of years in Tartarus. The creature I saw on that night is nothing that should be on Themyscira."

"Since when do Amazons care who a daughter's father is?"

"Since she was given life through magic and not through natural means. He has some inhuman design for we Amazons, and she is part of it."

I sit back. "So, you want me to find out what it is? Or find out from Hippolyta if she's been keeping secrets about Diana's creation from everyone?"

"Yes."

"Okay. I can do that. But… This has got to be an end to it. If I examine everything, and there's no plot... If it was just Hippolyta lying and there's nothing particularly sinister going on… I expect you to apologise to Diana and-" She screws up her face in revulsion. "-accept her as your Princess."

I watch the red swirl under her skin for several moments. "If… If your investigation is truly exhaustive-."

"It will be, and I'm happy to be Truth Lassoed to prove it."

"Then yes, I will. But it will not come to that."

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Stars, Crossed, part 2 7

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24th February

16:19 GMT -5

How the hell am I going to do this?

I lean across my table at Rick's Café, forehead resting on the palm of my right hand. Not a lot of competition for tables at this time of year. Happy Harbour isn't set up for winter tourism and locals have the sense to get seats inside. Okay. I'm pretty sure that Diana will cooperate without asking too many questions. Certainly she hasn't been pressing me about all the times I've vanished with Zatanna. Oh no, she doesn't think I'm dating her as well, does she? Ukh.

What do I think might have happened? One, Alkyone might have had a bit much to drink, seen something weird and projected her own internal psychoses onto something external. I know she wants a daughter herself, she saw the woman she's devoted to getting one, she couldn't hate her… Seems like a stretch.

Two, Hippolyta actually made a deal with Cottus for a daughter. Not knowing much about Cottus beyond the fact that he isn't on the 'Have No Dealings' list, I don't know how much of a thing that is. I checked before I left this morning and there wasn't a lot on Cottus in the Library of Athena. I don't know anything about his interests or character. Whatever Hippolyta offered, it's been eighty six years and either payment hasn't come due or it's been paid off and no one noticed. The gods of Olympus have had plenty of time to express their displeasure and they haven't. Several of them have had direct dealings with her.

Why would Hippolyta lie about it? Having Diana be the creation of a goddess would make her more palatable to the Amazons, no doubt about it. Having children is a very sensitive subject now and it was even more so back then. She.. could be ashamed? Maybe there was a deal and she doesn't want anyone to know about it? Mind control is unlikely; she's a demigoddess herself. If it even worked she'd throw it off after a while and someone would have spotted Cottus creeping into the palace to renew it. The guy's huge.

Three… What? She genuinely believes that she had Gaea's aid and happens to be mistaken? She somehow missed the giant form of Cottus looming over the grove while Alkyone didn't? Cottus dumped a load of his own earth over the whole area and that was what got used for making Diana? Oh! Actually, I can test for that one. There's no way he'd be able to remove it all. I can scan the area for chemical differences and take samples for Sephtian to play with. I sit up slightly. Getting somewhere.

Telepathic probes and magic could also reveal memory alterations, though after this much time everyone involved would have replayed the memories so often that there'd be little of the original events left. But John or M'gann might be able to get a trace on any interference. Have to eliminate other instances of interference. I know that Circe has hit Hippolyta with mind effect spells at least once since Diana became active. Might she have..? No, the Amazons had basically nothing to do with her until she started going after Diana. I mean, she might, but it isn't very likely.

Thaumic signatures are a thing. Could I test Diana for similarities with other divine beings? No, that… I don't know of any other offspring of Cottus. Gaea's offspring were the Titans… Bit out of my league. No, wait, Euanthe called Gaea 'mother'. I should be able to find a Dryad and from what I've read they're usually pretty indifferent to what us mortals get up to so I wouldn't have to worry about them spilling the beans. Would it be worth trying to get hold of Gaea herself? Eh, Diana told me that meeting her was extremely unusual and that has been borne out by the Amazons' records. Wouldn't hurt to give it a go but I'm not going to try relying on it.

Talk to Cottus? As far as I understand it, I am allowed to go into the underworld. Hades would expect an offering but it's not like I can't afford something for him. Could be interesting to find out what he actually does with his time now that hardly anyone who worships the Olympians dies anymore. I.. rather get the impression that he's not one of the easy going Olympians so I'd need to be on my best behaviour but as long as I am he's unlikely to do anything worse than say 'no'. Heck, there's a fair chance I'd end up down there if I died.

Weird thing to think, that. I've gone from the firm belief that there is no afterlife to knowing I can just stroll into one. Well… I think I prefer how they run things here.

What else do I need to do? I need to check the Lasso of Truth, find out whether it can be bypassed. And I can't assume that what Diana told me about it is accurate. This whole thing could be settled by just walking Diana in front of the Circle with the Lasso on her and asking if she's up to anything, but only if I can establish that it can be relied upon. If it turns out that the 'rightful owner' or a demigoddess can just ignore-.

"Hey, you're Paul, Conner's friend, right?"

I jerk upright. It's… "Miss Beecher, good afternoon." I look to the chap accompanying her. "Mister Duncan."

"Can I talk to you real quick?"

"Certainly?"

She pulls out a chair and sits down. "Is Conner cheating on Megan?"

Huh? "Um… I don't.. think so? What makes you ask?"

"I saw him getting friendly with another girl before school today."

I shake my head in puzzlement as Mister Duncan joins us at the table. "Could you.. describe her to me? Maybe I know her."

"Aah, white girl, about your height, black hair just past her shoulders at the back-."

"White as in pasty features like me, or a slight tan?"

"Maybe a tan?"

"Then I'd have to see her to be sure, but that sounds like Diana. "

"Oh okay, so-?"

"Kon's mother."

Miss Beecher's face twists into a picture of pure mortification while Mister Duncan turns to her with a very small smile. "I told you there wasn't anything to worry about."

"What exactly were they doing that got you so concerned?"

"They hugged, and she kissed him on his cheek." She puts her right hand to her forehead. "And I'm seeing that in a whole different light now."

I try not to smile too hard. "Glad I've been able to clear that up for you."

"Hope I look that good when I'm… How old is she?"

"She has aged very well."

"Hey, ah…" She appears to recover a little. "Do you know where Megan's vanished to? I've been trying to talk to her all day and she just keeps disappearing."

I shake my head. "I'm afraid not. I haven't.. seen her today. I should be meeting her later, though. If you'd like to tell me what it's about I can pass a message on."

"I'm organizing a school blood drive and I'd like all the Bumblebees to sign up-."

"Ooooh." I hold up my right hand. "Yeah, she's… Not going to be participating in that." I shake my head. "Sorry." I mean, alien blood in general circulation? The wrong type of Human blood can easily kill a person, I dread to think what alien blood would do. I remember the Skrull Cows. Hm, how to handle this? We have discussed the possibility of various types of identity revelation before. I think the appropriate response here is 'minimal information release'. Otherwise she'll just hound the two of them and they won't be able to explain themselves properly.

"Why, is she afraid of needles or something?"

"No, it's a bit more personal than that."

"Oh… Are you, like, Jehovah's Witness-?"

I chuckle. "No, no. Um. But the three of us are ineligible. Mister Duncan, could you… Um, give us a moment?"

He shrugs. "Sure." He pushes his chair back and turns to Miss Beecher. "Want a coffee?"

"Yeah, thanks."

"Wave at me when it's safe to come back out." He gives me a quick sizing up glance, then heads inside.

"So what's the big secret?"

"Well-" I lean forwards slightly and lower my voice. "I'm not really supposed to… Certain types of people are not eligible to give blood. One of the things I do…" A training course Guy and I have done now. "How I met Kon originally… Is counselling for people-."

She looks a little alarmed. "Are they sick?"

"No, no. Um, I believe the phrase is 'non-standard biology'. The blood collection service doesn't think it's worth the risk-."

"They're metahumans?" I make a gesture that could be interpreted as an affirmative. She takes a moment to absorb that. "Wait, is Megan allowed on the cheerleading squad? Metahumans-."

"We checked. Since there isn't any direct physical confrontation between teams the cheerleading association…" I wave my right hand. "Whatever it's called, decided that it wasn't a problem. But that is why Kon's on the chess team and not the American Football squad."

"Yeah, I wondered about that. Okay, I can keep that secret."

"Thank you."

"You know a lot of metahumans?"

"A fair few. They're not particularly common and counselling is only really needed for a little while after the initial manifestation of their ability."

"Are you doing anything Saturday?"

"I.. don't have anything important planned? Why do you ask?"

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Stars, Crossed, part 2 8

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Uuuuuooooouuuuughhh…

"Uuuh." I open my eyes to blinding light and immediately close them. Uhh. Okay. Last thing I remember is talking to Shayera after… Stupid duel. Without otherwise moving I clench and relax my left hand. Feels like it's healed. My left side still hurts. I'm.. still wearing my armour. Huh. I weigh a lot, but the surface I'm lying on is padded and appears able to bear it. I shift a little to my right. Okay, I… Can't hear anything that sounds like cause for concern. I'm going to assume that the Thanagarian attack can still be filed under 'dealt with'. Father Box, you still there?

…

That's a little worrying. Sinestro?

…

Right. I brace my right elbow against the soft surface of my bed and start pushing myself up. No, too soft. Ow. I open my eyes at a squint and start trying to work out where I am. Looks… Kind of Watchtowery? I think? I didn't see the Thanagarian medical bay and without a power ring I can't just load the appearance of the place into my head.

Hang on. How does that even work if it can't affect my body?

Ow. Ow, oh ow. I don't remember getting hit in the head, but… A-ah. Head… Feels weird. And not in a good way.

"Are you getting up, or are you just going to lie there all day?"

"Haven't… Haven't decided." I tilt my head in the direction of Shayera's voice. Once my eyes aren't pointing upwards anymore I open them a little wider. She's in her yellow blouse and green leggings. "Did someone hit me in the head? Because I feel a little off."

"You were shot with a Thanagarian beam pistol. I'm surprised it didn't completely scramble your brain."

I don't remember that. "Oh, you know. Anything that doesn't kill me…" I screw up my eyes and give my head a little shake. "How long?"

"About two days. You're on the Watchtower. We couldn't do much for you because we couldn't get your armor off."

"Straps are a structural weak point. I don't use them. Is there a reason I don't have Father Box or the yellow power ring?"

"Do you usually wear your computer when you sleep?"

"Okay. No. I don't. And the ring?"

"It's got Sinestro's brain in it."

"He's an excellent teacher. And he doesn't control what the user does with-" I try pushing myself up again and am met with failure. "-the… What am I lying on?"

"We didn't have a big enough bed. You're lying on a pile of pillows."

Right. I rock back onto my bad side, trying not to put weight on the wounds. Then I rock to the right, pushing with my left foot. The pillow under it slips out, but I still manage to get onto my right side. This is the drawback of super strength, particularly when you aren't capable of judging force as well as usual. The surroundings just can't take it. Doubly so when you weigh as much as I do.

"Would you mind helping me upright?"

"Here." She opens her wings and flaps once, rising into the air above me. "Give me your hand."

I hold up my left hand and push with my right elbow. As soon as she takes hold I feel myself get a little lighter. Thanagarians are stronger than Humans, muscle mass for muscle mass, but I weigh a third of a ton. There's no way wings should be able to lift me. She pulls and -Aaaagh!- I come a little more upright. I get my right hand under me and push, just managing to get upright before I start to fall. Aero discs!

Aaand I'm up! "Thank you."

She looks me over. "Are you sure you should be up yet? I wasn't joking about you getting shot in the head."

"Sure." I recover my left arm and float slowly and carefully over my pillow nest. "I don't plan to get into a fight or anything, but-. Ah!" Father Box is resting on a table set against the wall of the room. I drift towards him, land gently and then pick him up and attach him to my armour.

9th January 2004

10:21 GMT

"Ploong."

"Pleased to see you too. How am I doing?"

"Ploong."

"Yeah, I'm not all that happy about it either."

Shayera comes in to land next to me, glancing at the site of my injury. "What did they shoot you with?"

"Radion blaster. Shot me after their fighters pummelled my construct armour down. Completely bypassed my Apokolips tech armour and New God fortitude. Punched through one side and out the other." I shake my head. "I mean, all due respect to them: they had a few seconds when I was vulnerable and they took full advantage. If they shot me in the head I'd be dead right now."

"Are you going to take your armor off so I can take a look at your injury?"

Probably wouldn't hurt. More. "Yeah, hang on. Father Box, uncouple armour."

"Ploong."

Something shifts, and I reach around my left side to lift away the-. Shayera gasps. "When you said they shot you, I thought it would be a narrow beam. How are you still alive?"

"Spite." I look down. Yeah, that.. still doesn't look good. I wasn't able to just close a flap of skin over it, there's still a very visible hole into my interior. Much smaller than it was, though. I shoved my whole hand into it while operating on myself. Now I'd struggle to get two fingers in. "I don't go into shock. Once I cut out the radion-tainted parts-."

"You… Cut out..?"

"Yeah, there's probably some lumps of me left near the commander's station on the bridge. It's not a priority but I'd appreciate it if you could have them incinerated."

"You… Did you have an anaesthetic?"

"No. Sometimes being immune to poison really sucks. Still-" I smile. "-I'm alive!" A sudden stab of pain makes me instinctively try to cover the injury with my right hand. "Ow."

"Do you need a bandage?"

"I'm immune to all disease and I'm not-" I take a quick look. "-leaking anymore, so… No, thank you. I.. could do with… This is going to sound odd, but you don't have a powerful source of raw magic, do you?"

"I don't think so. Why?"

"My wound isn't being repaired by anything so mundane as rapid cell division. It's my own divine majesty, effectively.. rejecting the truth of my damaged state. I am quite literally too important to bleed. In theory, bathing in raw magic should boost it. Speed up my healing."

"I'll see what we can do."

"Where are we at with everything else?"

"All the Thanagarian naval personnel who could have pulled out. I piloted the Command Carrier into a Lunar orbit, so no one on Earth can reach it. Supergirl and the others have torn apart the hyperspace bypass so there's no chance of it being activated."

I nod. "That's a relief. And the robopresident?"

"Still in office." She folds her arms across her chest. "Are you sure he's a robot?"

"Technically, he's a mechanoid. After technology reaches a certain level there isn't the same hard distinction between organic and mechanical. But, yes, I'm sure. Apokoliptian technology… Stands out." I frown. "Where are my goggles?"

She picks up.. the blasted and melted remains and holds them out to me. "I had to take it off your face with a chisel."

"Huh. Good work. Where are John and Batman?"

"John's on the Carrier. Batman's following up on President Horne."

"Okay. So, we're aiming to remove the President of the United States…" My smile broadens slightly. "Again, and create a Justice League. We'll need to put our heads together. And I'm going to need my ring back." She gives me a sceptical look. I respond with a winsome smile. "Please?"

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Stars, Crossed, part 2 9

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9th January 2004

10:32 GMT

"Corpsman. Not dead, I see."

"Try to contain your disappointment. Thank you, Shayera. I appreciate having this back."

"I certainly didn't want it." She keeps watching me for a moment. "You know, now that the…" Looks like she isn't quite sure how to continue that sentence. 'The Thanagarians' isn't something it would make sense for her to say.

"Naval personnel? I mean, I don't know much about Thanagarian law, but I imagine that you're fired."

A wry smile. "Definitely. They'll report back to the High Command what I've done. If they survive the Gordanians they'll send people after me. However good the reason was, I'm a traitor. I.. can't ever go home again."

"Hey." She looks surprised for a moment as I step up to her and put my hands on her shoulders. "No one gets to hurt my second favourite winged woman in two universes."

"Thanks, Grayv-." She pulls back and squints at me. "Second favorite?"

"Yeah, I'm afraid Niko Parish-" A construct image appears. "-still has you pipped for first place."

Shayera pulls away and studies the construct. "Is she Thanagarian?"

"No, an Un-Man."

"Man?"

"It's what they're called. Like, female Humans aren't called 'Huwomen'. The original ones were created by a man named Anton Arcane. She's.. third generation, a normal woman altered to have wings. Doctor Cranius grew them in a laboratory and attached them to her body."

"That wouldn't let her fly."

"No, she can't fly." I beam. "But guess who's got samples of Nth metal and everything worth knowing about Thanagarian physiology!"

"It's not that simple. You can't just surgically alter-."

"Doctor Cranius is a mad scientist custom built to be a mad scientist.. by another mad scientist. Who was also a Nazi. He'll crack it. He'll keep at it until either his head explodes or he gets it and his head hasn't exploded yet. Don't even worry about it." I close my right hand and shut down the construct.

"Are you dating her?"

"Huh? No. I mean, we're friends. I.. met her during a mission to a place called 'Aberrance'. They were having some trouble with Kobra… My friends and I sorted it out. What makes you think we're romantically involved?"

"You sounded as if you like her. I don't know anything about where you come from."

"Batman didn't say anything? I.. sort of assumed…"

"Batman told John you had the skills we need. He was probably monitoring you for a while, but he didn't put much on the computer." She walks over to a terminal and starts pressing buttons. "Grayven, Earth sixteen."

"Sixteen?"

"That's what the system says."

"So.. is this… One?"

"No, this is Earth fifty." I make a puzzled expression and shake my head slightly. "He never explained why he numbered them like that. Batman was never exactly talkative." She points to the monitor. "According to this you appeared eight months ago looking like a normal man, then turned into a giant-."

"I was never that big. Two and a half metres at most."

Shayera calls up a picture. "Good thing you aren't dating her then."

"Oh, Jade and I made do. Power rings-."

"I don't want to know. Then-" She brings up a current image, complete with orange glow. But not the Sword of Second and Third. "-you turned into this."

"Even Father looked like a normal man once." I generate images of Uxas and Darkseid. "As we come into our full power, the form of our physical manifestation changes. I'm not fully developed yet, but grey seems to be a theme."

"Why did he choose you?"

"I've killed people while on the job. Very bad people, but that is unusual in the superhero business. He knew that I had the power and the willingness to do what this task required."

"According to this, you normally use an orange power ring. Now that we've captured the Command Carrier we can open another portal if you want to get it."

"Might be a problem with that. Batman.. sort of.. picked me up from a prison cell."

She turns back to me with her eyebrows raised. "What were you in a cell for?"

Search for data on 'Klarion', possibly 'the Witch Boy'.

Data available, Corpsman. You need a better class of enemy.

Ah. "I killed a Lord of Chaos named Klarion. Your version of Klarion is a joke, a spoilt brat who lucked into a magic artefact. Ours was an ascended force of destructive anarchy. A few months ago he was responsible for a spell that killed hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. Given his crimes, I made sure that I killed him in public, then handed myself over to the police. That involved surrendering my equipment…"

"I see."

"I've got a presidential pardon coming, but popping back to grab my equipment then leaving again… It disrupts the narrative I'm trying to build."

"What do you mean by 'narrative'?"

"I'm trying to show that the existing superhero epistemology doesn't keep people safe from high end threats. The Justice League doesn't do mass production of advanced technology, it doesn't do research and it doesn't do hunt and kill missions."

"It sounds like you agree with what SHADE's been doing."

"If it involves assassinating a president and replacing him with an Apokoliptian mechanoid it's probably not a good idea." And isn't that my concern about the Light in a nutshell: reasonable ideology, supervillain methodology. "If they actually did it through legitimate channels… Yeah, I probably would be. And I'm definitely going to see what the version of SHADE from.. Earth sixteen has been doing when I get back."

"That's probably a good-."

"Batman to Watchtower."

"Hawkgirl here, go ahead."

"I've positively identified Missus Horne's remains. What's the status of the patient?"

She glances at me. "He's awake, but he's still injured. He said that he could speed up his recovery with an infusion of magic, but that's not something John or I can do."

"I'll see what I can arrange. Is John managing the ship?"

"Yes, but with the damage it took he has to stay on board in case the orbit decays. He doesn't know anything about Thanagarian ships. He can't even read our languages."

"Could you pilot it?"

"Maybe, but I was in intelligence, not operations."

"Ah, sorry. I may.. know a guy who can help with that?"

"Stand by." Shayera frowns at me. "Who is there on Earth who can read Quarish or Plekesh?"

"An archaeologist called Joseph Gardner. He got exposed to some sort of Thanagarian memory recording device while on a dig a few years ago and now he thinks he's a reincarnation of a Thanagarian military officer named Katar Hol."

She blinks. "So he's crazy."

"Yeeees. But he reads and speaks the languages that Katar Hol knew when he made the recording, and it's not as if we've got a great deal of choice in the matter."

She sighs. "Grayven says he knows a man who might be able to help."

"Good. Assuming Grayven wants to help stop SHADE, then-"

"I do!"

"He does."

"-we need to update our information on what assets they could bring to bear to stop us. I had no idea that they had a cache of Apokoliptian technology, but unless they're trading directly with one of the warlords the most likely time for them to have picked it up was the attack on Metropolis."

"Agreed. We'll look into it."

"Batman out."

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Stars, Crossed, part 2 10

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9th January 2004

10:43 GMT

I poke my head back into the ship corridor for a moment to check that the coast is still clear before returning my attention to the panel I've removed from the interior of the Gordanian ship. SHADE spotted the obvious incongruity of a starfaring vessel having a freeze-dried crew, though according to their own reports they were very hesitant to come right out and accuse the Thanagarians of anything. What they didn't know… Or at least what the people holding the Gordanian ship didn't know, was that the ships in my alter ego's fleet use a mix of Citadel and Apokoliptian technology. Thanagarians have long been familiar with the mix of Okaaran, Emanian and Complex technology that make up normal Citadel-aligned warships. Looks like they wrote off anything else as variations on a theme.

But there is Apokoliptian technology here, and if I can feel it whoever arranged for Gonzo's appearance most likely can as well. Or worse, Grayven 50. If I hadn't known exactly what I was looking for… The Gordanians will win their fight with Thanagar, but if the Thanagarian intelligence reports I took from their bridge are anywhere near accurate they will struggle to hold or police that volume of space for years yet. Hopefully, by the time they're in a position to threaten Earth it will have defences worth speaking of.

I pull the Transferral Node out of the interior of the maintenance hatch before closing it. This thing was disguised amongst the parts of some sort of internal monitoring system. Useful piece of kit; it sort of allows a New God to project their soul outwards into certain forms of technology. My purple death ray drones each have one to increase their ability to respond to my instructions, and I'll be incorporating this into the ones I'll build here. Not sure exactly why the other chap put them in a comparatively small ship like this but I'm not taking the silly chance of leaving them here.

Right, that's about it. Any other Apokoliptian technology here is fully integrated rather than a functioning device in its own right. Ring, I don't want to be heard. Father Box, boom tube.

Ploong.

I step back into the Watchtower's workshop and shut the boom tube behind me. In the interests of being sociable Shayera's running her data probes from here as well. "Did you get what you were looking for?"

"Mrh." I carefully deposit my small haul onto my workbench. "Some. The main storage site was too well guarded. I would have had to actually attack the place. Fortunately, they only put guards on the outside of the Gordanian ship. Any progress?"

"I've read the reports on what the Metropolis police handed over to STAR Labs. Nothing that could be an infiltration mechanoid. Batman's analysis of the body of the President's late wife seems to suggest she was killed before the election. I've got a program analysing his body language in every public appearance to see if it can work out exactly when he was replaced." She looks over my arrangement of parts. "What are you making?"

"Drone weapons. My version of Diana… Wonder Woman, first left Themyscira just before the Second World War really kicked off. When she went home afterwards she took a Nazi weapon designer with her."

"Why?"

"Baroness von Gunther was an ardent nationalist, but hadn't been directly involved in the genocide.. s. Diana didn't think that abandoning her to be gang raped then beaten to death by the Russians was the right thing to do. Anyway, this-" I hold up a miniature version of the Baroness's work. "-is a purple healing ray. Play it over a flesh wound and the wound is gone. Get an arm cut off-."

"You're kidding."

"No, seriously. This thing is amazing. Now guess how many countries Themyscira has exported it to?"

"I don't know. All of them? Something like that-."

"No. None. And that's why I hate it there."

"So is it a medical drone?"

"No. Fiddling around with the purple healing ray gets you a purple death ray. This drone will be able to switch between the two… When it's finished."

"How long will that take?"

"The first batch… Making all the parts myself and using an orange power ring, it took about forty eight hours' continuous work per drone. And I've got to be honest, I'm finding it harder to work with Sinestro here."

"If you simply took my advice and contracted out the work-."

"My hand is far too weak to risk dealing with Qward." I return my attention to my work. "On the other hand, I have a much better idea what I'm doing now. If I leave out the phasing and the stealth system… Or maybe I could just hire a bunch of people to get voluntarily exposed to fear gas and use that for the power-."

Shayera's eyes widen and she jumps into the air. "The teleporter just activated. That shouldn't-!"

"Boom tube's faster! Father Box!" With one mighty beat of her wings she propels herself through the hole in space, mace at the ready. I pick up the healing ray and start playing it over my wound as I follow after her. The blue lights of the teleporter are just fading as I get a clear view of the platform, revealing-. "Okay, Shayera, it's fine."

Zatanna 50 glances at the two of us for a moment, then looks around the room. She's not in costume, black jeans and short heeled ankle boots replacing her usual fishnets and stilettos. Hat's missing as well. "There were more people around last time I was here."

Shayera's gone from 'attack' to 'ready'. "Who are you and what-?"

"Zatanna Zatara. Bruce sent me."

Shayera's eyes narrow. "I've never heard of you."

"No, really, it's fine." I lay my left hand on her right shoulder. "Her father was one of Batman's tutors. And I'm good friends with the version of her from my parallel."

"And you must be Grayven." I get another appraisal as she walks off the teleport platform. "You seem healthy for someone in need of magic healing." I transfer my torso armour into subspace and indicate my wound with my left hand. "Oh. Ah… Hself worger!"

Nothing happens. "No, no, I'm resistant to spells. Just funnel raw power into me. And I.. just want to say, I really appreciate you taking the time to do this. I've no idea how long it would take to heal back fully without your help. If there's anything I can do to pay you back, just say."

"Cigam seigrene wolf otni siht yug." Purple mist flows from her outstretched hands and flows over me. Father Box?

Ploong.

Excellent. "Perfect, thank you."

"So, you know a parallel universe version of me, huh?"

"The version from parallel sixteen, where I'm from, yes." I generate a construct of my Zatanna. "Nice girl. Getting heavily into Order magic." Father Box, progress?

Ploong.

Well, if there's any to spare, I suppose...

"What makes the two of you so close?"

"I stopped her father doing something stupid annnnd made it possible for her to gain power faster. In a.. controlled way, you understand."

Shayera returns her mace to her belt. "I thought all Batman's old friends were avoiding him."

"I'm a stage magician who's been banned from the stage by SHADE because I know Batman and because I can do real magic. I'll take whatever gigs I can get. That, and Bruce may have hinted that SHADE might be the ones pulling the disappearing act before too long."

The hole in my torso is almost closed completely now. Excellent. "It's a work in progress. Are you.. joining up?"

"No. I'll help with SHADE, but that's it. I didn't much like life under the Justice Lords-" She glares at Shayera. "-either." She pulls her hands back and cuts off the flow. "Better?"

No pain and the hole has closed over. Wonderful! "Yes. Thank you. Though if you're working with us for now, perhaps you'd be willing to help me in the workshop?"

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Stars, Crossed, part 2 11

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9th January 2004

11:31 GMT

Move.

The Eel drone flows through the air in front of us. Turns out that being able to reshape the universe by talking backwards can really speed things up.

"How exactly are you controlling it?"

"With my soul." That gets an eyebrow. "No, seriously. New God technology is designed to interact with the souls of its users. It has a cogitation engine as well, but at short ranges-" Particularly after that boost you gave me. "-it acts as an extension of my metaphysique."

"You can just say 'by magic'."

"But that's so imprecise. If it was possessed by a bound spirit that would be 'by magic' as well, but this is radically different. Okay." Land and sleep. It lands on the workbench and goes dormant. "Given how much faster we managed that than my original estimate, we can probably include the phasing and stealth systems I wanted."

"What exactly are you planning on using this for?"

"Miiiight be best if you had plausible deniability on that."

"Oh no. If you want any help from me-."

"Your president's a shapeshifting alien robot being puppetted by SHADE." She blinks. "I want the fire support for when I unmask him."

"Oh." Zatanna 50 looks down for a moment, trying to take in that particular bombshell. "How long-?"

Shayera looks up. "About halfway through the campaign. And I thought Superman was wrong to suspend elections."

I smile. "Technically, Gonzo's election is invalid under Article Two of the US Constitution. I'm pretty sure he hasn't been resident for fourteen years. He might not even be over thirty five."

"Or born in the United States."

"He might have been built here. It's a bit of a grey area, artificial intelligences."

Zatanna nods. "That's why you're taking down SHADE. They've already pulled off a coup and no one noticed."

"We're doing better than that." I look at Shayera. "You want to tell her?"

"Tell me what?"

"Grayven's plan is to bring together a group of superheroes-."

"A new Justice Lords."

I shake my head. "No. Parallel sixteen -where I'm from- has a superhero group called the Justice League. They're.. painfully non-interventionist. I doubt they'd ever set up a Lords style police state, whatever the provocation. The idea was to find a group of people like that, who also remember the Lords negatively but are aware that there's a job there that needs doing. Originally, I was going to drop evidence of what the Thanagarians were up to in their laps, then… Well…"

"They attacked before you were ready."

Shayera smiles and shakes her head. "No, he decided to attack the Thanagarian Command Carrier on his own. The air battle in Egypt only happened because he broadcast Hr-. The Thanagarian Commander telling everyone that the device they were building wasn't a shield, it was a machine to move the Thanagarian fleet by destroying Earth."

"And I learned a very painful lesson about getting ahead of myself." I rub where my wound used to be with my left hand. "One I'm not eager to repeat. Anyway, I wanted you to have the option of plausible deniability in case you were interested in joining yourself. SHADE's going to be gone, so you won't have to worry about them arresting you."

Shayera glances at me. "I thought you already had the seven you wanted?"

"Why stop at seven? The Justice League on my parallel is larger than that and in the fullness of time will probably expand further."

"Exactly how big is it?"

"Twenty people: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash… Our Flash is Wallace West's uncle… Green Lantern, who's a man named Harold Jordan. Aquaman, Martian Manhunter, Green Arrow, Hawkman-."

"Hawkman?"

"A Thanagarian named Katar Hol. I haven't had cause to investigate his background in any detail. His wife-" I hold my right hand out towards her. "Shayera Thal, who operates under the name 'Hawkwoman'. Actually, how come you're girl rather than woman yourself? You're clearly an adult." I frown. "And I don't get the 'Hawk' thing either. Hawks are a type of bird native to the Earth. I know Thanagar has winged and feathered predators but none of them are precisely like Hawks. Why not 'Eaglegirl' or 'Owlgirl'?"

"I don't know. Someone in Analytics must have come up with it. I was too busy cramming Earth history to have much say."

Huh. "Okay." I hold out my right hand to Zatanna 50. "Giovanni Zatara."

"What does he… Look like, now?"

"Aah, hang on." I take control of a holographic projector and start playing a recording of the conclusion to the fight at Roanoke Island. "Aand after him, Captain Atom, Black Canary, another Green Lantern -John Stewart this time-, Captain Marvel, Red Tornado, Atom, Plastic Man, Icon and Red Arrow."

"I don't know those last two."

"Icon's from Dakota City. The Terminian?" Blank look. "Red Arrow… Speedy? Green Arrow's sidekick?"

She nods. "Oh, the one with the silly hat."

"I know, right!? Well, actually, ours was a clone, created by… Long story. Point being-" I return my attention to Zatanna 50. "-if a group of crime fighting superheroes who don't take over countries is something you'd like to be a part of, that can happen."

She's staring at the hologram. "Did you just kill the Helmet of Fate?"

"Sort of. Actually, what I did to Nabu is worse than dying in just about every way. But he was being a total dick about the whole thing. He was going to use Giovanni as a meat puppet indefinitely, now he decorates Giovanni's hat stand. Oh." I pause the recording. "And those guys got executed by the Chinese government after I handed them over."

"Dad looks… Young."

"Yeah, despite being seven years forwards in time, people seem to be younger in my parallel. Some people. I think Missus Thal's slightly older than you, Zatanna's about half your age and-."

"Batman to Watchtower."

"Go ahead."

"Is Grayven fully healed?"

"Seems to be."

"Good. I have new intel on SHADE. Apparently, just before we took Luthor out STAR Labs was ordered to transfer a lot of the Apokoliptian technology they'd acquired during the Battle of Metropolis to a SHADE facility in the Rocky Mountains. I've found no records of them having any other access to Apokoliptian materials. I need Grayven to get in there and find out what they've been doing."

Ring, connect me to Batman. "How urgent is this? I'd rather have time to finish a drone squadron before getting into another fight."

"I have no way to tell for sure, but there have been a lot of deliveries coming and going from there in the past few months. I'm going to take a look at a delivery site myself but I need someone at the source."

Shit. If they're fucking around with Apokoliptian technology… There could be anything in there. "Alright. Let me finish this drone… I should be ready to start investigating in half an hour."

"That will have to do. Batman out."

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Stars, Crossed, part 2 12

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9th January 2004

05:06 GMT -7

A camera drone and its escorting eel drone survey the entrance of the SHADE facility. Reminds me a little of the setting-establishing shot of the outside of the SGC, only getting progressively more science fictiony the further into the mountains you get. The weapons around the entrance to the facility itself are similar but notably improved versions of what Stryker's Island mounted, protected by shimmering force fields. Nothing I couldn't break or that a purple death ray wouldn't simply ignore, but unusual for an Earth facility.

Corpsman.

Ugh. I'm standing inside a cloud far above them but every so often I have to shift position to remain in cover. I'm even having to transmute water molecules to make sure that the cloud doesn't thin out. Getting here was a pain in the arse. Father Box and ring combined can easily throw off radar or gravdar but I can't reliably dodge more sophisticated systems. Oh, they wouldn't be able to shoot me accurately, but they would spot that someone was here well before I was ready for them to. So, I boom tubed myself and my equipment from the Watchtower to Canada then transitioned into a cloud roughly over the site. Unlike a lot of people, SHADE personnel do look up. And down; they've got a cluster of geosynchronous satellites over this place and some of them are armed.

No radion though, so there's that.

Okay, on the job. The guns are locally produced and the root technology could have come from anywhere, including Earth. If not for the Apokoliptian connection I'd probably applaud them for doing this work. With a power ring and Apokoliptian armour I can tank their attacks easily enough. By which I mean for long enough to destroy them even if they spot me before I realise that they have. None of the guards are showing any supernatural augmentations and while they have a primitive augmented reality headset in mass deployment their armour is only 'next generation' rather than schizo tech.

Hmm. Not exactly smoking gun stuff. I focus for a moment on the ping in my soul that marks the location of the eel drone and it envelops the camera drone before rising up over the mountain. I don't know if they have the technology to detect the form of phasing I incorporated but if they do there's a reasonable chance that they'll have focused their detection gear at the front gate. For the drone it isn't really any harder to fly through the rock of the mountain and the power requirements to maintain a force field on the inside of the base full time would be crippling. Using Earth technology even weak force fields would require them to excavate colossal volumes of rock to fit the generators, then they'd have to sort out how to handle the waste heat and spent fuel. Exotic generation? They flat out couldn't hide something like that. I have a power ring and a Father Box and nothing I've seen suggests that SHADE are into thaumic research.

The eel drone passes through enough rock to reach the base. I now could boom tube there… No need yet. It's in a service duct of some kind. Standard procedure would be for it to emerge as soon as possible to prevent it getting trapped if the phase generator was shut down. SHADE almost certainly has Nth metal samples by now… Not seeing any here so far. No, just poke the camera out. Hmm. Standard government issue wall panelling from the seventies. Not a lot happening here. If the plans I took of how this place looked during the Cold War are still broadly accurate -and given that SHADE haven't brought a whole load of earthmoving equipment up here they almost certainly are- I should be in zone green, corridor seven. Seven or nine. Yes, there's the floor marking. Interior decorations have been freshened up but nothing appears to be radically changed from when SHADE took this place out of mothballs during the Luthor presidency. Which means that the upper levels will be car parks and guard barracks.

I need to go deeper. Angle down and head for zone yellow. There's no feedback, precisely. The drone obeys… I'm looking for a metaphor which doesn't compare it to an additional limb. It isn't.. like that. I don't mutter commands. I don't.. think or emote at it in the way I do with either of the rings. I tried talking to Kaldur about what it felt like and while the conversation involved a good deal of mutual incomprehension I think it's more like controlling a spell that is already active. Altering the flow of… No, no good. I'm still running out of language to describe it. Saying 'extension of the soul' is accurate but it doesn't describe the experience in the way a person who hasn't been awakened can relate to. Artemis said that it felt a bit like instinctively making a shot you've made thousands of times before in practice, barely being aware of the mechanics of the thing as you move through the actions. I think there's a bit of that to it, but-

Self=Null

-any attempt I make.. to.. describe…

Father Box, what the fuck was that?

Ploong.

Oh. Shit. I.. really don't know much about the Anti-Life Equation. I know that exposure while they grow makes sure that Parademons remain the savage and mindless killing machines they were designed to be. Turns normal people into those poor bastards the Justifiers. I'm glad Father didn't send any of those after my team last year. When he does things like that it's usually so that when you take their helmets off you see the faces of all the people you love, whom Father thought it would be fun to make you kill.

Self=Null

Father Box has a few notes made by Desaad on his own observations of Father's use of it. The description makes it seem like an evocation. A magician doesn't have to understand runic equations to conjure fire. Father can connect to the…

Self=Null

Why am I..? Calling him..?

The drone camera finally passes into the yellow zone. This looks a bit more recent. Nothing obviously Apokoliptian, but the armour on those guards certainly isn't anything local. Aah, a few more hours and I'd be able to remotely access their communication system with the drone. As it is… Explore.

Corpsman, if your mind is being affected by the technology, simply open a boom tube and send in a explosive of some kind.

Not a good idea. The whole point of the exercise is to gain information. Did.. Earth 50 F-Darkseid use the Anti-Life Equation? I know Luthor had something he claimed was the Equation in the last episode of Justice League Unlimited but I also remember that the man featured in the Batman of the Future comic past the point at which he disappeared in the cartoon.

Self=Null

Light power armour wearing guards stand in a round room, five heavily reinforced doors spaced around the sides and one entrance. The guards… They're near motionless. Breathing… Perfectly regular and.. synchronised. They're not Justified. Justifiers need to wear Anti-Life attuned helmets full time and the helmets the guards here are wearing don't have that function. In a way, this is worse. Justification is a violent process and in some cases is reversible. They've been receiving low doses of Anti-Life for long enough that it's distorted their souls. They're like.. Lowlies. Non.. people. Living shells.

Self=Null

Oh, they'll do what they're told, but they're dead inside. Did they have families? I hope not, because their capacity to relate to them is near nonexistent. Does whoever built this place not realise what it's doing to their own people? On Apokolips there would be a member of the Elite on hand to direct them, someone who was either resistant to the Equation or who had internalised it. Something's broadcasting the infernal thing here. And there's those cells. Conversion? Are they trying to master the Justification process? SHADE has enough superheroes under their control that-.

"Grayven to Batman."

"Go ahead."

"I don't know how, but SHADE has access to a small part of the Anti-Life Equation. I don't think I can give a full explanation of what that means… No one really understands it. Short version: it can be used as an extremely potent and sophisticated form of mind control. The soldiers in the lower parts of the facility have been altered by proximity to it and.. I'm.. looking at what look like holding cells."

"I'm at a SHADE construction site. There's some sort of antenna. The technology involved appears similar to samples of Apokoliptian technology I've seen before. Exactly how powerful is this Anti-Life Equation?"

"In its true state? Epically. Perfect, universe wide control of mind and spirit. But this is a tiny fragment… They won't be able to puppet the whole country with just a few antennae. But… Over time there would be appreciable behavioural alterations."

"Are you able to enter the facility?"

"I… I'm able to resist the effect better than anyone else you could call in. I'm not immune."

"Do you believe that the Anti-Life Equation source is still on-site?"

"It has to be."

"Destroy the place. If you can save any of SHADE's test subjects, do so. If you can gather further information, do so. But whatever it takes, remove the Anti-Life Equation from SHADE's control. I'll coordinate destroying the antenna with Hawkgirl and Green-" He hesitates for a fraction of a second. "-Lantern."

"Understood. Father Box, boom tube."

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Stars, Crossed, part 2 13

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9th January 2004

05:11 GMT -7

Into the cell.

I take a Thanagarian energy weapon out of subspace as I fall through the boom tube. The soldiers snapped their guns level in unison the second it appeared, pointed directly at the aperture. Thin purple beams flash past me as I exit feet first at terminal velocity, flying past them and turning the aero discs up to full to prevent me slamming into the far wall. Those helmets mean that there's no chance that someone up the chain of command won't become aware of my attack the moment it happens so I'm not going to bother with destroying the alarms or anything like that. And there's also no point pulling my punches. I level the gun at the helmet of the furthest away and fire, the beam burning a hole through the centre of his helmet and into the skull beyond.

Self=Null

He falls and the others don't react at all.

I twist in the air while at right angles to the wall, spinning aside to evade the next volley. Their weapons are some sort of exotic particle projector. Powerful enough to hurt me but nothing like powerful enough to stop me. I aim and fire again and a second soldier goes down. No fear response from the others at all. The Thanagarian marines were controlled, their fear held -for the most part- in check. Here, there's no longer anything to trigger. It disgusts me.

I turn myself upright and their shots land. No real knockback but I can feel my chest armour start to deform as the confinement beam breaks and the exotic energy emissions are released. Nothing critical. I bring my gun up and fire twice, drilling them both through the head. Ring, locate monitoring systems.

On display, Corpsman.

No point cluing them in on the ring just yet. Shouldn't take them too long to compare my picture with that of the person who attacked Stryker's Island, but they won't know how well I can use it. Keeping an eye on the entrance point to the room I jog over to the closest guard. Getting his-.

The body jerks as a series of explosions go off, ruining that one! Ring! Self destruct devices to ruin their gear in the event of -damn it- their deaths. Inconvenient! Ring, monitor local communication traffic.

Self=Null

There isn't any. Odd.

No, not really. There's no need to organise people who've been Justified.

The camera drone feeds me a picture of the cell's interior. A black man… No, a black youth is bound by the sort of heavy metal force field reinforced clamps that they use to hold super strong people around here. No control collars. He's kneeling on the floor, slumped forwards with his arms held up behind him in what looks like it should be an extremely uncomfortable position. There are another set of clamps around the lower part of his legs and a full helmet over his head. Cables go from the helmet to-.

Self=Null

I know that rig. I run at the door shoulder first, using my aero discs and ring to transfer all of the energy of the impact into the door. It bends inwards before snapping

Self=Null

off at the roof and sides as the locking mechanism is comprehensively ruined.

Self=Null

I dash over to the bound man and rip the helmet off his head.

Self=Null

Then I rip it out of the wall for good measure. Who is this poor bastard? Are they grabbing people off the streets now? Identifying marks… Pierced right ear, now mostly healed over. Hair's short, greasy and generally unkempt and he's got a similarly untidy beard. I'd guess he's been here a while. Muscles haven't wasted though. I pull his head up a little with my right hand and pull open his eyes with my left, peering into his eyes. Unfocused and bloodshot. Father Box, any idea how long-?

Ploong.

Fuck. Darkseid has a connection to the Equation that lets him control the effects, but I doubt that anyone here can say the same. What were they thinking? Sentry duty. I form a disintegrator construct on my left arm, level it at the wall between us and the next cell and fire, causing concrete and steel to crumble to dust. Not exactly power efficient but the one advantage of my new ring is that I don't have to worry too much about power expenditure.

The next cell contains a slightly built blonde girl.

Self=Null

Her restraints are smaller but.. made of ceramics and Kevlar? Odd choice. I tear off the helmet even as I disintegrate a hole in the far wall and run through. The next prisoner is a blonde youth.

Self=Null

This one is held in place by orange glowing energy bonds. The generator has the squiggly line and circle hallmark of New God technology. I stomp it to scrap before removing his helmet. He collapses to the ground and… Ah, protean body. That makes sense.

"Uuh?"

Ring, monitor.

A wise directive.

I feel it as the eel drone opens fire on a troupe of soldiers attempting to storm into the room. I wasn't quite sure if the Purple Death Ray would do much to someone afflicted by the Anti-Life Equation but I suppose that organic processes are still 'vital'. They've got some sort of force absorbing tower shield but the ray passes straight through it. The camera shows them starting to bring up grenade launchers as I disintegrate the cell wall and charge into the midst of them. Easiest thing to do in a situation like this is slam them into a wall hard enough to squish.

The helmet of the first grenade launcher carrying soldier deforms under my left palm as I press it into the far wall, the cloud of dust from the destroyed wall wafting into the corridor. The particulates might mess up their augmented reality vision but I'm not relying on it. Another soldier levels his gun at me at point blank range only for my left backhand to crush both his left arm and the left side of his chest. I raise my Thanagarian energy weapon in my right and shoot two soldiers who were further towards the cells in the back as they ignore me in favour of focusing on the drone. They go down.

No screams or whimpers.

A purple beam slays the last soldier on my right so I shift my attention left. The second grenadier aims at me for a second, then shifts his aim to-! I lunge forward, interposing myself between the gun and the hole! The grenade hits me solidly in the chest, rebounds and then detonates in a flare of brilliant white! Agh, fucking..! I turn away and raise my right arm to shield my eyes as the remains of the Thanagarian rifle drip through my fingers. The soldier is… Ow, he's gone. I think my eyes… No, still there. Overwatch.

Ow.

Urgh. I stumble back into the blonde youth's cell, flick the remains of the gun away and pi-. I don't pick him up because I'm still massively hot. I connect a filament to him and shove him into the room with the blonde girl, blinking my eyes… Okay, I can sort of see where I'm going now. I think that was an incendiary rather than a plasma explosive as I was worried it might be. Would probably have killed a Human, but it takes a little more to deal with me. Not enough flammables in the corridor to catch fire. Alright then. I dash back into the corridor, slam my hands into the far wall and disintegrate another hole.

Self=Null

Similar arrangement to the first bloke except that the clamps don't cover his hands. I crumple his helmet as I pass and slam both hands into the next wall. The last cell… It's empty. There's equipment for another prisoner here but they're not currently in situ. The restraints are lighter but the helmet looks far more sophisticated. They must be somewhere else at the moment. I take another Thanagarian gun out of subspace and shoot the helmet to slag just to be on the safe side.

Ring, can we get hold of Batman?

No. This facility can't block ring-to-ring communication, but it is proof against mere radio waves.

Darn it. Father Box, can you expunge the Anti-Life Equation from them yourself?

Ploong.

Okay, how about getting hold of Scott's Mother Box?

Ploong.

Glad to hear it. Assuming they're in more or less the same place I can-.

"Anti-Life justifies my-"

Bluegh?!

"-action."

I'm being.. enveloped by-. The metamorph. He's wrapping around me, but not actually trying to invade my interior. A fact for which I am profoundly grateful. He doesn't seem to be strong enough to lift me from my feet and is instead attempting to choke me. Ring, scan.

His physiology makes little sense, but the results are available.

Ugh. Agony Matrix.

He doesn't scream either, but he shudders and loosens. Excellent. If he reacts to pain at all then he isn't completely gone! I push outwards, pushing him far enough away that I can see his head. I grab his neck with my left hand -he's not completely protean then, just a sort of Elongated Man rip-off- and punch him as hard as I dare with my right fist. He shudders and loosens further, allowing me to completely break free and shove him into the cell wall. Another strike to the head and he goes still.

Okay. Father Box aagh!

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Stars, Crossed, part 2 14

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9th January 2004

05:17 GMT -7

I stumble across the cell, clutching the side of my head with my right hand. Ow! Whoever just did that fires again and this weapon has a little kinetic force behind it. My gauntlet armour takes the hit but I have to strain to keep it in place. Alright, who-? Guy from the previous cell. Either the elastic bloke released him.. or there was a remote release mechanism. And he's an energy projector. Vacant gaze, check. Justified. Which probably means that I'm going to have to fight the other two as well. No good deed -he aims for my head again and I interpose my bracer- ever goes unpunished. The bracer is more designed to take hits like ow. Like that. The energy bolt comes from his hand. Okay, I can work around that.

He doesn't back away as I dash towards him. No sense of self preservation anymore. Instead, he cups his hands and builds up for a more powerful blast. I grab his wrists with my right hand and shove them away, causing the blast to gouge the concrete wall of the cell. My left performs a carotid artery pinch. Ring, any idea what the other two do?

The heavy reinforcements in the bonds of the first suggest augmented strength of some sort. In the case of the second-.

The energy projector loses consciousness and I drop him. "No metal."

Yes. Either some sort of magnetic field manipulation or elementalism. Obviously, magnetic control would only enable her to manipulate iron, cobalt or nickel, though the electromagnetic flux itself might present a problem. If she controls metal more broadly she has vastly more options. The intensity of her ab-.

A spear-shaped piece of metal flies through the hole in the cell wall and strikes me in the chest. That's a relief. Sinestro's right, with these things you can never tell how strong the effect is. I felt that impact but it was far-. Another knife flies in and I batter it away with my right hand. Far weaker than she'd need in order to seriously threaten-.

Whoooooh!

Urg. Yep, black lad has super strength. Fine, I don't have to kid gloves this fellow. I pull myself out of the remains of the back wall and generate an Agony Matrix construct at the end of a filament before shoving it into his neck. And… And he's immune to pain. Wonderfough! And quite a lot stronger! I grab his wrists and shove his arms aside as he tries to punch me again before slamming my head forwards into his nose. It cracks, but that doesn't hold him back. Airways. Poison? Ring, generate strong knockout gas.

If you insist, Corpsman.

A filament shoves itself down his throat and a second later I hear a gasp of displaced air. Funny thing about super strong Humans, they seldom adapt their resilience to physical attack to other forms eergh. Owowow! Metal Manipulator Lass just hit me in the face with some sort of metal and she's doing her level best to insert it into my eyes, nose and mouth. I fortify my environmental shield and grit my teeth, forced to trust my divine aura to keep it out. I don't think having metal inserted inside me would actually kill me but I'm not sure how I'd get it out again. The pressure Strong Lad is exerting on me is dropping -which is good because I can't see well enough to judge the force I'm bringing to bear- so I opt to maintain my hold and go looking for her.

Still where I put her. Magnetic sense for remote targeting? Probably something like that. Using the drone I send another filament out and shove another dose of knockout gas down her throat. Another creepy thing about the Justified: no reflex actions. She doesn't choke or gag, she just keeps her arms up and pointed in my general direction -does she need to do that in order to manipulate the metal?- for as long as she can then collapses. Immediately I feel the metal harden on my face as Strong Lad loses consciousness as well and collapses into me. I shove him over with my right hand and grab at my metal facial with my left, pulling it away.

Huh. Actually looks kind of cool. Think I'll keep it. Subspace. Explore. I pick him up by his-. His vest rips. I pull him up by his underarms and wrap my right arm around his chest. Father Box, ping Scott's Mother Box.

Ploong.

Ping.

A small hologram of Scott appears to my left. "Grayven. Looks like you weren't lying about the Thanagarians."

"I'm full of surprises."

"I'm still not going to let you conquer the Earth."

I grab Blasty Hand Man with my left hand and lift him up as well. "Is that specific to me, or is it a general thing?"

"What are you doing with those people?"

"The reason I ask-" I start walking towards the next cell, hoping that Rubber Chap is still there and still unconscious. "-is that SHADE is using the Anti-Life equation. I've got four unconscious and Justified metahumans here."

"That's impossible. Darkseid's dead. No one else knows enough about how it works-."

"Scott, shut up. Someone has, okay? Bloody soldiers here have pretty much been Justified just by hanging around the crappy Human equipment they're using to transfer it."

He pauses for a moment. "SHADE is already in control of all official metahuman activity in the US. Why would they want to use the Anti-Life Equation on them?"

"Maybe their employees liked being independent more? Maybe they want all metahumans, not just those willing to work for them? I don't know. Heck, I never understood why Father made such a point of using it whenever possible. The reason I'm calling is that you're the best chance these people have of getting their souls back."

"I'm.. not sure-."

"Scott, they haven't had full contact. I can still see emotional resonances inside them. They could… They can lead normal lives again. Please, I'm not asking this for myself-."

"I don't know if I can do it." He sighs. "I'll send you a set of coordinates. Boom tube them there."

Ploong.

"Thank you. They'll be with you shortly."

"So. SHADE?"

"We're looking into it. Frankly, if they've replaced the President with a mechanoid and they're using Anti-Life… Are you sure you won't reconsider my offer? I mean, it's not like I'm going to be worse than the people they've chosen to put over them-."

"No."

"Scott, I know I look more like Father than our other brothers, but that's a really petty reason-."

"It's not that. I've got a life here, Grayven. I like being an entertainer. With everything that's been going on I'm starting to think Barda and I need to get a bit more involved in what's happening-"

"Well then-."

"-but I'm not helping you take over. Just because they've made bad choices a few times doesn't mean they can't learn to make better ones."

"There's something you didn't learn in the X-Pit." He frowns. "No, really, I admire the way you overcame their attempts to condition you. Always have. Heck, you're the guy who inspired me to break free. Both of you have my respect."

"Huh. I hadn't realised-."

"And once I take over, I'm going to avoid killing you and Barda if at all possible."

"Uh. Thanks."

"I'm sending the first two through now." Father Box.

Ploong.

The tube opens and I walk through… Huh. Not Earth. Breathable atmosphere and.. slightly above normal Earth gravity. Barda scowls at me from about twenty metres away as I set the two of them down reasonably gently. I give her a wave before walking back through and picking up Rubber Chap and putting him over my shoulder. Metal Manipulator Lass should still be in her cell. I send a filament out into the corridor. No soldiers yet. Probably setting up somewhere. I jog through Rubber Chap's cell and into Metal Manipulator Lass's. Ring, quick check? Yep, basically healthy. Father Box.

Ploong.

A new boom tube opens to the same location. I could have opened it next to Barda, but I'm playing nice at the moment. I set the two of them down next to their cellmates, give Barda a formal bow and then step back.

Okay. What next?

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Stars, Crossed, part 2 15

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9th January 2004

05:22 GMT -7

And the lights are out. Bit odd. Doesn't really impede my vision, not with these goggles on. The augmented reality display the soldiers are using should allow them to see in the dark as well. Were the lights there for the prisoners, or for inspections by people not afflicted by Anti-Life? I stroll through the ruined cells and out into the corridor, following the route the eel drone indicated. My busy little drone has gunned down a few more soldiers but hasn't encountered any heavy opposition as yet. To be honest, evacuating seems to be their best bet. Still can't.. feel any fear from the people around me. A shame; at least if I could I would know where I was heading.

Okay. According to the old plans the cell room used to be accommodation, for use as a short term fallout shelter in the event of a nuclear exchange. At the end of this corridor is a junction room leading off to several more such rooms. I'll do a quick check-.

"Help me! Somebody help me!"

Sounds like there's at least one other person here. Young and female by the sound of it. 'Give me a child until he is seven' and all that. Right, no pressing hurry. I reach the junction and wait for another sound.

"Boo hoo!"

Ah. I take a turn to my left and set out at an even pace. 'Boo hoo'? Really? At least I might get some information out of this. The room I come to is the same design as the one I wrecked except that all but one door is open. Ring?

Not even locked, Corpsman.

Honestly. I walk over to it and press the button to open it.

"Who's there! I can't see in the dark!" Oh, for goodness sake. A girl of perhaps seven years old is crouched in the corner. She's not even tied up and the blue and yellow dress she's wearing is in perfect condition. She has bows in her hair. "I'm scared!"

"Hello there."

She turns her head in my approximate direction. "The mean men threw me in here then ran off. Are you going to let me out?"

I suppress a sigh. "Malice, knock it off."

"But I'm scare-."

"No, you're not." I raise my right hand slightly. "I can see fear. Quite aside from the fact that I know perfectly well who and what you are, a normal child would freak out even worse when a large man in glowing yellow armour walked in. Scream, probably." Her faux doe eyes begin to take on a harder and more contemplative look. "The door wasn't locked, you're not strapped in and you clearly haven't been Anti-Lifed. Well, no more than the rest of us. Your clothes and hair are too neat for someone who's been viciously manhandled and there are no tears on your cheeks."

She scowls. "You're no fun. Who are you, anyway?"

Ring, turn the lights in this room back on, would you?

I think I can manage that.

Miss Malice Vundabar blinks as the lights come on, then looks more closely at me before jumping to her feet in a truly child-like way. To be fair she is a child by New God standards. "Hm. You look a bit like Darkseid, Human. What's your name?"

"Please. I'm no more Human than you are. My name is Grayven, and I'm-."

"You're the one who told Uncle to fuck himself when he asked you for help."

"That does sound rather like me. What are you doing on Earth?"

"What are you doing on Earth?"

I take a moment to look at the Female Furies' youngest member. Then I step forwards, pick her up by her head with my right hand and slam her face first into the concrete wall. I give her just long enough to process that, then I do it once more before dropping her. "Slamming insolent little girls into walls." "Answer me."

She wipes away a trail of blood from her nose with the back of her right hand. "Granny wanted more warrior slaves. The Humans said they'd trade them with her for weapons."

"And the Anti-Life fragment?"

"We stole it from Desaad." She smirks. "But Granny couldn't make it work."

"Who did?"

"Why do you want him? He's boring." She looks up at me again. "Why haven't you come back to Apokolips? Everyone else has."

"Because it's a pointless meat grinder of a war. No one's trying to build anything new."

"But it's fun!"

"Darkseid would hate it. You're fighting over rubble while High Father Izaya looks on and laughs."

"We'll get to him in the end."

"No, you won't." I turn away from her. "Darkseid made you so you could barely conceive of doing anything actually worth while. You'll just keep maiming and killing until someone does it to you." "You're not worth my time."

"Oh, aren't I?" "Eat him."

I step through the doorway and reach backwards to lock the door again. "No, you're really-."

Teethteethteeth!

A yellow mouth guard forces its way into the maw of the.. shadowy thing currently trying to bite me in half. The purple holes that mark its eyes narrow slightly as the pointed purple teeth bite down harder, the very tips piercing my construct. What is this thing?

Ploong.

I was hoping for more than a name. Chessure opens its mouth wide and its face appears to shrink away for a moment before attempting to flank me. Ring, status of the lights in here?

Thoroughly broken. Though I would point out that you have-

I fire pulses of yellow light into Chessure's face but they pass through with minimal impact.

-a power ring on your finger.

"Light up the room."

Thin beams of yellow light radiate out in all directions, flow up the walls and terminate in lantern constructs. Suddenly illuminated from all directions Chessure's darkness patch shrinks to less then a metre across almost immediately and then continues to decay. Some sort of living darkness entity? Interesting. If I still had the orange ring I'd take a crack at branding or assimilating it-. The lights flicker for a second and the darkness patch takes the opportunity to dive into one of the cells.

"Leave my Chessure alone!" Miss Vundabar dashes out with knives in her hands. There's some sort of circuitry in the handles and I've no doubt they could do me a mischief.

I fold my arms behind my back in best Darkseid fashion and fire yellow beams of energy from my eyes, slamming her into the far wall and binding her there with a series of chain constructs. A filament from my right forefinger snatches her knives and deposits them in subspace. "What are you prepared to offer for its safety?"

She tries straining against the bonds, but I'm finally starting to get some feedback. Not sure whether it's because Chessure couldn't eat me or because I'm looking like Darkseid. In any case, the chains hold strong. "What do you want?"

"I want you to leave and never return. I want the name of the Apokoliptian scientist running this end of the operation. And-" I take a radion blaster out of subspace and take hold of it in my right hand. "-I want you to hold out your left arm."

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Stars, Crossed, part 2 16

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9th January 2004

05:36 GMT -7

Yellow beams blast from my eyes and cut through the thick metal of the bulkhead. My drone is already cutting down the Justified soldiers on the far side and I wait patiently for it to finish before reaching forwards and shoving the freestanding plate to the ground.

I don't fight Lowlies. But there's one here I'll be only to happy to put out of my misery.

His name's Esak and I've honestly never heard of him. But I can feel the fear coming from the room at the far end of this corridor. Miss Vundabar was kind enough to volunteer that there was one more metahuman test subject as well as the base's Director in there with him. I'm not sure why he hasn't just disengaged. I doubt that I'd be able to prevent a boom tube from forming and I'm certainly not going to rush. If they were confident of their preparations they wouldn't be afraid. So, an uncertain counter to my presence, and he's more afraid of returning a failure than they are of me.

Soon fix that.

I get an image of the interior. Three soldiers left, the containment unit for the Anti-Life fragment… The metahuman -a pale skinned black haired girl who looks about twelve- plugged into it. The yellow skinned midget genius himself. Father Box, boom tube. Kill the chaff.

There are thumps as the soldiers take glowing purple beams to the chests and collapse. This time I defuse one set of explosives and grab and subspace a set of the gear before the explosives can go off. Esak is fiddling with some sort of control panel but spares a moment to look up at me in obvious panic. A man in a suit charges me from my right, trying to grapple me. I hold out my right arm and force him back with little effort before turning my head to see exactly who… Oh, Director Bones. The skull face is a little off-putting, but he has only slightly augmented strength and I'm immune to cyanide. Not that Esak has thought to have him take his gloves off. Ring, just stun him.

There's a flash of yellow light and the Director collapses.

Are you leaving him alive because he is more important, Corpsman?

Self=Null

He'd have to have given Father Time status reports. That means Esak had to leave his mind and soul intact. Scott can handle him as he's handling the youths. Also, someone will need to take over what's left of SHADE when we're done.

"Esak. I'm here with your eviction papers. Earth is now off-limits. Go back to the brawl on Apokolips." "Get out."

Self=Null

"You can't stop me!" "No! No!"

Self=Null

I swing my right hand, throwing Miss Vundabar's arm at him. "Sure you won't reconsider?"

Self=Null

"Yes!"

…

"Is that 'yes, I'm going to leave' or 'yes, I'm s-."

"Hahhah!" He grabs a lever-

-and I shoot him through the chest with my radion blaster. Honestly. His remains collapse, his hands clamping around fucking fuck! I transition across the room and take in the control system. Father Box, analyse.

Ploong.

That's just wonderful. How about-?

SELF=NULL

…

U-uh-uh-uhhagh.

I… I…

SELF=NULL

Ploong.

I frantically start following Father Box's directions. I should be able to take a degree of exposure without critical identity loss, but-

SELF=NULL

Ploong.

-I can't take this foulness indefinitely. Every time it pulses, it's like I forget my own motivation. Every piece of factual knowledge is still there, but the schematic system that binds them all together and gives them meaning-.

SELF=NULL

I… I'm… I was…

SELF=NULL

For a second I feel a clear memory. My Gran. Not.. Granny Goodness or Queen Hegra. My actual-.

Ploong.

I'm Grayven. What would Grayven do?

The device is using the metahuman in place of sophisticated New God technology they don't have access to, forcing it into the universe around her. She would have been broadcasting it, using the antennae as local substations, but Esak just spent twenty minutes reconfiguring it to affect me.

SELF=NULL

For some reason I clearly picture my primary school's misery inducing outdoor swimming pool. Darkseid would have loved it. But… That's not helping me at the moment. I shake my head. Play… Play the role. I can reset it to broadcast. That would activate the antennae but take the heat off me. Or I can disconnect it and try tanking the full effect for however long it takes me to get it somewhere safe. First, reset the shielding around the source.

SELF=NULL

A little better. Father Box, any errors in the containment system?

Ploong.

A channel? Oh shit, I guess I should have left some of the soldiers alive. So, broadcast?

Scott bloody better put me back together after this.

Father Box, boom tube to the Source Wall.

Ploong.

"Do I look like I care! Do it!"

I decouple the cables linking the fragment to the metahuman. She slumps slightly in her restraints, though I've no idea if that's a good sign or not.

SELF=NULL SELF=NULL SELF=NULL SELF=NULL SELF=NULL

Anti-. Anti-Life-. Somewhere, someone staggers towards a hole in space.

SELF=NULL SELF=NULL SELF=NULL

Someone passes through into a void. They see lines of colossal figures, some light years tall. Behind them, still visible in places, the walls of a mighty and impenetrable citadel.

Fuck, it's getting to me.

SELF=NULL SELF=NULL

He can't remember-. FUCKING THROW IT NOW!

The containment unit flies from my hands. I'm not actually particularly close to the Wall, but I'm well within the 'it's a bad idea to be here' zone. The place exerts its own gravity on the souls of New Gods. Darkseid's obsessive behaviour and the New Genosians' pathetic worship.

SELF=NULL SELF=NULL

But-. But there's no one to affect here but Grayven. And he's not entirely here anyway. Fuck. Ring, it's not going fast enough. PUSH!

SELF=NULL SELF=NULL

The yellow beam blasts from my eyes, shoving the container as fast as I can manage towards the Wall. Don't get trapped. Don't get trapped. Don't get trapped.

SELF=NULL SELF=NULL

The space here doesn't make sense either. It should be… It's not… My metaphysique is too weak for me to understand. The container moves towards one of the radiant eyes of the trapped titans. Okay, that's close enough. I'll-.

I can't turn off my eye beams. Fuck. I'm being drawn forwards. Ooh this isn't good. Okay, removing the ring should force a shutdown. No, it won't come off. What else? If I were unconscious the ring couldn't operate. Shoot myself? No, with this much fear my environmental shield could probably block the shot. What then?

SELF=NULL SELF=NULL

Name. Before… There was a name. What was it?

SELF=NULL SELF=NULL

What was his name? What was..?

No. What is my name? I know my name.

"My name is Paul-."

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Stars, Crossed, part 2 17

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Not sure

Give me a moment

This is getting old…

I push myself up off the gritty ground and check myself over. No new holes this time. Progress of a sort. Ring? Check. Father Box? Nnnnnot check. Huh. "Ring, where are we?"

Corpsman, this system is not on my charts.

Oh dear. Then again, I did just voluntarily leave the Earth. My cause was just, but if Gaea didn't count coming to Earth 50 as 'leaving Earth voluntarily' then this will certainly set it off. Irritating, but hardly disastrous. Okay. No Father Box means no boom tube until I can build one. Building one with a power ring and personal lantern is more a matter of time than…

Wait a moment. Not on your charts?

No one is more surprised than me, Corpsman. I had believed the Guardians' charts to be exhaustive.

Okay. What are the chances of us finding somewhere interesting by jumping from system to system?

If by 'interesting' you mean 'in contact with wider interstellar society', and given that you are immortal in the sense that you do not age, it is a guarantee that we would eventually reach 'somewhere interesting'. If you mean 'within a reasonable time span' it is impossible to say. I nod and keep looking around. Assuming a random distribution of inhabited systems and your intent to return to Earth in time to orchestrate the fall of SHADE, fairly low.

Alright, how about finding Father Box?

You'll have to do better than that if you want any sort of range, Corpsman.

He was attached to my armour. If he isn't right here someone removed him. Presumably, whoever… No tracks… You don't think we're inside the Source Wall, do you?

I lost external awareness when you lost consciousness. However, given the apparent normalcy of the physical laws it seems unlikely.

Glad to hear it. Now, up into orbit for a quick survey, then we can-.

BOOM!

Or not. I armour myself as I reorientate on the boom tube opening. Not just going to charge at it. Best case… Scott? Worst case, Grayven 50. Uh, no, worst case Darkseid 50.

Please don't be Darkseid 50.

A figure steps-. "Ah! Barda!" I bring my left hand up to cover the lower part of my jaw. "How are the children?"

"Scott's working on them." She's wearing her armour, Mega Rod in one hand, Father Box in the other. I don't like how close those two objects are together. Her face is impassive. Not seeing much fear…

"There were another two, in the final room. The senior SHADE agent and a girl. She was the telepath they were using as-."

"I know. I got them out after you left."

"Ah. Good." We stay looking at each other for a few moments. "Can I have Father Box back please?"

"Where is it?"

"It's-" I point. "-in your hand right there."

"The Anti-Life equation. It's not in your Father Box and it's not in you. Where did you put it?"

"The Source Wall." She reacts… Slightly. It's too little to be called a flinch. "Can I have-?"

"Why?"

"Because it was foul. Pressing against my soul, trying to make me not-be." I never really understood how 'equation equal reality' worked. The universe doesn't break if you write '2+2=7' but that thing was spouting… I frown. Something about… Not being a person? Huh. I can't… Clearly remember. I suppose I got off lightly there. "The Source Wall was the one place I could think of that it wouldn't be able to escape. Where no one else could get at it. I didn't want it on Earth or anywhere else."

"Huh."

"Why didn't you know where I was? It's not like you can just miss the Source Wall."

"Scott's Mother Box was tracking you. I didn't try following you, I just told it to open a boom tube and drop you here."

"Where are we, anyway?"

"You don't recognise it?" I shrug and shake my head. "This is one of the worlds Darkseid had Superman conquer for him. Apokolips isn't far. Easy for you to go home."

I shake my head again. "I'm not going to Apokolips. I've still got work to do on Earth."

She moves her Rod into the ready position. "Wrong answer."

"SHADE were going to use a piece of the Anti-Life Equation to Justify the citizens of Earth! They've probably still got what they need to establish some sort of spirit-crushing network. Batman was dealing with it when I left. I need to get back and make sure they don't try again. Barda, please. I don't want to fight you." Ring, plot course.

For a moment I was worried that you were going to rely on reason, Corpsman.

First resort of a civilised man, sole resort of the fool. No, wait, that doesn't sound right. A fool wouldn't… Oh, you get what I mean.

Indubitably, Corpsman.

"That's too bad. I've been-." Transition. "-looking-."

I appear right behind her and leap into the mouth of the boom tube, appearing in.. her home in Hartford. That was lazy.

"Back already? I though-." Scott looks up. "Oh."

"Seriously Scott: does she come with a clicker or something?"

"You might want to step away from-" Yep, I do. "-there, because-."

Barda charges back through, Rod at the ready.

I smile. "Nice place you got here."

"I will-."

Scott raises his hands in a warding gesture. "Not in the house, honey."

She trembles as she does her best to burn the flesh from my bones with her stare. I do my best to look harmless. "Scott, how are the children?"

"It's not going to be quick, but I should be able to help them. Except…"

"What?"

"The younger girl." He sighs. "She had more exposure than the others did, but more than that; her own metahuman power is slowly eating her brain. Even when I finish extracting the Anti-Life from her, I don't know how long she has."

"May be able to help there." He raises his eyebrows. "Turns out that Human soul structures are compatible with godhood. I've upgraded a few of my allies already and I'm more than happy to take a look at her."

Scott transfers his gaze to Barda. "Okay. Guess it can't hurt."

"But I'm going to need Father Box's aid." I hold out my right hand to Barda. "If you wouldn't mind?"

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Stars, Crossed, part 2 18

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9th January 2004

16:43 GMT -5

Scott lifts the goggles I gave him from his eyes and looks at me. I think he's impressed. "How did you learn to do that?" "That was amazing."

"I took Father Box from Desaad. Not all of his research was… Irredeemable."

"Ploong."

Scott's eyes drop to Father Box for a moment. "How badly injured?"

"Ploong."

"Is that even possible?" "You shredded your own soul?"

"Yes, though I wouldn't recommend it." "I went to a place in which they can't exist." "And it ended up not working; I was overconfident when I met Desaad and Darkseid found out anyway."

Barda looks at me with a little less hostility. "Scott. Will she recover?"

The younger girl lies on a New God technology medical bier. This version of Scott has long since reunited with Izaya and as such has access to whatever materials he needs. The upper part of the house looks much like his home on Earth 16 but the basement is a haven for alien technology. I'm familiar with all of-.

Ploong.

Alright, most of the devices here. I haven't built them, though. Not really much call for them on Earth… The other youths are lying on similar devices, which are both monitoring their condition and keeping them unconscious. Though Scott's done his best to wrangle out their remaining connection to the Anti-Life, it is far better to be safe than sorry with something like that. Plus, we've got to decide what we're going to do with them in the medium term.

"I think so. If I understand what Grayven's done properly, her power can't harm her any more. In fact, she can probably purge the Anti-Life effect without our help."

She squints at me. "Why did you help her?"

I take a moment to look down at… Ace! They're the Royal Flush Gang! Can't believe it took me that long! She looks more relaxed now than she ever did in the animated series. Sweet, really. I don't usually like children… Should probably talk to Jade about the subject. Okay, she's only nineteen and she's going to be immortal so it's not like we'd be on a clock or anything… I reach down with my left hand and brush a strand of her hair from her forehead. "How could I not?" I look over to the secure cell containing the last guest. "Are you sure you want to be there when I talk to him? I can just take him to the Watchtower, you don't have to be involved."

Scott shakes his head. "I don't think that's a good idea."

"We wouldn't kill him. Even if he was there voluntarily at the start, being exposed to the Anti-Life is more punishment than anyone deserves. We'd get the information we need then hold him until a trial could be arranged."

"I've seen the people Batman sent to Arkham. What's left of them."

"Scott, those people were serial killers. Even Izaya would have-."

"Killed them? Maybe. But that was sick." "He took away what made them them."

"If you'd given Batman the technology for neural reprofiling I'm sure he'd have used it in preference." "I gave that up voluntarily myself. Sometimes that's what needs to happen." "But I don't think we're going to agree on that. Barda, would you mind staying with her?" I nod towards Ace… I should try and find out what her real name is. "In case she wakes up?"

She doesn't acknowledge me, but she does shift her attention to the girl. Alright then. Scott opens the cell door and leads the way through. I close it as I follow him in. Director Bones is strapped to a chair, minus his jacket and shirt. Despite the look of the thing it is every bit the medical instrument the beds in the other room are. In this case it will be monitoring his body's responses to our interrogation. It's also designed to disrupt supernatural abilities, and as such is having the rather odd effect of deactivating his partial invisibility. Without transparent flesh the only oddities in his appearance are the pale grey streaks under his arms where his cyanide-rich sweat has dried.

Scott taps his belt, causing his own costume to appear. "Mother Box, would you wake him up please?"

"Ping."

"Uruuh?" Director Bones' eyes flicker for a moment, then he becomes aware of his environment. The chair registers a slight hitch in his breathing when he blinks and for what is probably the first time in his life can't see anything. His mouth drops open slightly and whatever attempt he might have made to play dead falls by the wayside as his head jerks around. "Wha-?"

"Director Bones." I give him a nod. "Welcome back."

"I… I…" His head twists, his eyes unfocused. "There was a… A voice…"

"Try to stay with us. I took a rather significant risk getting you out. You were in the SHADE Rocky Mountain facility."

"Yeah. I… Ah… Bones. Senior Agent. Super-Human Advanced Defense Executive. Pay code BC seven four one two-."

"Oh, don't even. We're not at war and you're not a soldier. You know who we are?"

I don't get any recognition, but Scott does. Bones looks him over carefully. "Mister Miracle. From Apokolips."

Scott folds his arms across his chest. "New Genesis, originally."

"We know you took receipt of Apokoliptian technology from STAR Labs during the Luthor presidency. I know Mister Miracle just spent some significant time clearing Anti-Life out of your soul. I want to know what the hell's going on."

He takes a couple of heavy breaths, then squeezes his eyes shut for a moment. "Bones. Senior Agent. Super-."

"Ping."

A holographic representation of Senior Agent Bones' head appears over the back of the chair. "Our job was investigating all aspects of Apokoliptian technology, with a particular focus on military and paramilitary devices. Where possible, we were to attempt to reverse engineer it for US use."

"The hell?" He tries to turn but between the straps and the chair he can't move his head around far enough.

"We have ways of making you talk. The chair's basically modelling your mind at the moment. I don't bear you any personal grudge, but I do need the information."

He breathes out through his teeth. "After the Justice Lords took over, we switched to running dark. Father Time had us researching technologies to break their control. Weapons wouldn't cut it; good people were working for them and we didn't want to cause a civil war. When…" He hesitates, looking slightly puzzled. "What we had wasn't enough to develop anything like that. We needed-."

Scott frowns. "You contacted someone on Apokolips."

Senior Agent Bones nods. "We'd had a look at the Parademon corpses early on. Their brains… They should have been intelligent, but all their reported behavior was like some sort of near-feral beast. They had the capacity for higher reasoning, they just couldn't use it."

"Who did you get hold of?"

He shakes his head. "Oh, it wasn't me."

"Who was it?"

"It was…" He looks puzzled. "It… It was… He was…"

Anti-Life. He's disassociated what he did while under the influence. "Who answered?"

"Some British-sounding guy. He gave Father Time something and he ordered us to focus on it. After a while the guy in charge-."

"What was their rank?"

"Senior Agent."

"How many Senior Agents were there in the facility?"

"Just one. Anyway, he brought in an Apokoliptian scientist. Little yellow guy. Early on we wanted to see if we could control specific individuals. Get one of the Lords or someone close to them. Wouldn't work with the Manhunter, but he hardly ever left the Watchtower. But… Later on, the plan changed."

"To what?"

"I.. don't.. remember…" He looks up at me. "I know I read the orders, but I… I can't remember…"

"Where did the metahuman test subjects come from?"

"Military training facility somewhere. Families signed them over. We needed to check it even worked on metahumans before we moved onto oh God." His eyes widen and the grey starts to trickle down his body once more. "He was going to use it on everyone. Make-make sure the coup couldn't ever happen again. Why was I..?"

I nod. "And the President?"

"What?"

"Scott?"

"Ping."

"He really doesn't know."

"Okay, Senior Agent Bones. Let's start talking details."

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Stars, Crossed, part 2 19

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9th January 2004

17:08 GMT -5

Scott helps Senior Agent Bones up as I leave the cell. Even thinking about his time under high-level Anti-Life exposure takes it out of him. I can relate, actually. Hopefully he'll be able to tell us more later, once he's had time to process the event. Fuck. Father Time was rotating the guards. Given the size of the base's complement there could well be thousands of Justified SHADE soldiers out there, and you better believe they're not going to listen to a command to stand down after I deal with Father Time. Scott's going to have to hunt down every single one and purge them. On the very limited bright side it sounded like Father Time wasn't able to internalise the thing. Still not completely sure how Gonzo got here, but I suppose that isn't a primary con-.

"…your name, child?"

Ace is awake and freaking out. She's hiding behind the bier Blasty Hand Man is resting on, peeking out at Barda as she kneels down and tries to persuade her to come out. How resistant is Barda to telepathy? I'm not really worried for myself… Well, maybe in a few years once the Awakening has really gotten hold, but at the moment she's not going to be stronger than Chester and I can keep him out no problem.

"M-m-m..?"

Barda isn't good at maternal. I can see her struggling to prevent herself storming over there and pulling the poor girl up by her hair for showing such weakness.

"Barda, she's a telepath. If you ease up on your mental defences-." Ace stares at me for a second, then charges out from behind cover and.. runs at me and.. wraps her arms around my waist..? Huh. I put my left hand on her back and awkwardly rub the top of her head with my right. "Okay. You're free now. You're never going back."

"Where am I?"

"You're at my brother's house in Hartford, Connecticut. We needed to make sure that there was nothing left of the Anti-Life Equation-" She grips tighter, pressing her face into my armour. "-inside you."

"Hey, you made a friend." Scott helps Senior Agent Bones over to the now empty bier.

"It happens sometimes." I pull away slightly in order to kneel… To sit down in front of her. I smile, trying to get her to look directly at me. "My name is Grayven. Will you tell me yours?"

"I'm-." She cuts off suddenly, shrinking in on herself. "I'm subject four. Subject four. No one else."

And then I see it. Tiny… Father Time might not have been able to internalise the Equation, but she could. You can tell the damage a tractor has done to a field of wheat by the broken stalks left in its wake. The damage a supervillain's rampage has caused by the burning cars, cracked pavements and spurting fire hydrants. Likewise, while there is no Anti-Life left in her I can perceive the passage of the thing. Given time, that could call it back.

And I'm not fucking having that.

Conqueror's Pride. The girl cringes for a second, no doubt a response conditioned from long hours of Anti-Life exposure. When Zatanna's magic healed me, she channelled raw and unrefined arcane energy into me. What I force into the girl is formatted, shaped to the God of Conquest. The disgust at the notion of bowing my head, the urge to grow in power and authority. The absolute rejection of the idea of being controlled by another. Strictly speaking, this is an attack. I'm forcibly altering her nascent divine nature.

Better me than Anti-Life.

The structures shift… And the patterns are gone. Oh good.

Ploong.

Ugh. Uoh, that took quite a bit out of me.

The girl isn't clinging any longer. She's holding me, but there's a firmness to her posture that there wasn't before. Behind her, Barda stares at me, customary hostility replaced by astonishment.

"Feeling better?"

"A.. bit? I-I think?"

I give her another smile and this time she responds a little. "Shall we start again? I'm-."

"Grayven. And I'm Lynne. Lynne Wayland. I felt you when you destroyed the machine." She turns away slightly, taking in Scott and Barda. "What are they doing to the others?"

"Making sure that they're free of it too." I stand and gesture at Senior Agent Bones. "Even him. The use of Apokoliptian technology takes this far beyond normal government brutalism. Now, I need you to stay here and cooperate with my brother and sister-in-law while I finish off SHADE. Can you do that for me?"

"I think so." She pulls away, looking at each of her fellow victims in turn. "Then what happens?"

"I… Don't know, I'm afraid. Given your power as a telepath… Probably 'whatever you want'. Scott?" I look at him. "I need to get going. Batman and the others were going to hit SHADE broadcasters-."

He shakes his head. "Already happened. It was on the news. They hit seven targets then got away before SHADE's agents could reinforce them. Grayven, can I talk to you for a minute before you go?"

"Sure." I pat Miss Wayland on the back and she takes a step towards Strong Lad. I don't remember what number playing card he was supposed to be. Scott leads the way up the stairs and I follow him back into the main body of the house. As we pass into the upper hallway his costume fades from around him, leaving him in Human clothing. Not much point me doing that. "What is it?"

"I still can't work out if you're playing an angle on this."

"Of course I am. I told you exactly what it was."

He shakes his head. "You shared part of your soul with her. That doesn't get you anything."

"In ten years it gets me an Elite telepath." I wince at my own off-the-cuff response. "No, sorry… That's.. not why I did it. I hate the Anti-Life. It is a foul and repugnant blight upon the universe and I will not willingly see it win even the smallest victory. I would not see a young girl slain before her time by such malevolent callousness. I'm not Darkseid, I don't cripple my followers. I exalt them, I help them acquire the greatest power they can wield."

"The carrot rather than the stick."

"Just so. And when I take over this world, that is how I will rule it."

He sighs. "Still planning on doing that, huh?"

"It's the only logical response. I doubt the American government are the only ones doing things like this. I may not be able to compel global obedience but I can make the penalty for non-compliance be that they fall too far behind all their rivals to compete."

"Not much of a choice."

"That's because they keep making bad ones. Scott, I would still like your help. Ifff not with my regime, then at least with finishing SHADE off."

"We'll see."

I grin, then lunge at him and clasp him to my chest. "Thank you."

"'oo're wukum?"

This location would already be marked if anyone were watching. And the fact that the Lords still exist is now common knowledge. Father Box, Boom Tube. Straight to the Watchtower.

Ploong.

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Stars, Crossed, part 2 20

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9th January 2004

22:16 GMT

I stride out into Operations-

"-Chay-Ara! It doesn't even have the same root word!"

-and shut the boom tube down.

John glances back at me and then returns his attention to the main screen. "Just try and put up with him."

Shayera exhales heavily, then cocks her head to the side. "Some men get annoyed when someone else shows an interest in their mate."

John smiles. "I've got nothing to worry about."

"Hmn. Hawkgirl out."

John presses a button to terminate the connection, then turns to me. "And where have you been?"

"The Source Wall. It was the only place I could think to put the Anti-Life fragment. Had to knock myself out to avoid getting stuck. Then, stopped off at my brother's house to make sure that the children we rescued from the SHADE base were going to be okay. We also had an enlightening chat with the Senior Agent in charge of the place." He nods. "How did the attack go?"

"We hit every site Shayera and Batman could locate, wrecked the equipment and fell back. Best of all, no one died."

"I wouldn't be too happy about that."

He gives me a mild frown. "Why not? This is the first chance I've had to do something heroic since that parallel Luthor destroyed my power ring."

"If a person's been exposed to Anti-Life long enough, it doesn't go away. Somewhere out there are a company or more SHADE soldiers who are already… Hollowed out."

"Can they be fixed?"

"You could create a new person with some of their memories in their body if you wanted. Seems a bit.. perverse…"

"Is there a way for the rest of us to tell who's been affected?"

"Not ones that are practical in a combat situation." Hm. I lower my goggles and take a good look at his metaphysique. Developing nicely, but I doubt he'd be able to sense low level infections quite yet. "It would probably be easier to leave it to Scott once we've overthrown the President and killed Father Time."

"Horne was the one who got elected. The robot's just a fake."

"No. No. Do not take this away from me. I'm the only person on the team who hasn't overthrown a president yet. I'm feeling left out!"

He shakes his head in irritation, but there's a small smile on his face. "That's not the sort of thing you're supposed to feel good about. Besides, I'm not sure we really need to overthrow him."

"Why ever not?"

"We took out the Anti-Life Equation broadcast system. Can they get hold of more Anti-Life?"

"Almost certainly not."

"And even if they did, they'd have to rebuild the distribution system. There's no way they could hide that from us."

"I.. suppose… I agree that there's no need to rush. The problem is, Gonzo can alter his appearance again. All SHADE have to do is keep an eye on likely future Presidents and have him replace them at a suitable moment in the campaign. Or after they take office. And leaving that aside, you've still got the risk of them using what material they've got left to Anti-Life a few of their more powerful agents. I imagine that Kara would have been first through the process once they had it perfected."

He nods, evidently reluctant. "How do you think we should play it?"

"Will there be some sort of memorial service? A public acknowledgement of what Kara, William and Kyle did in Libya?"

"There's a ceremony planned in DC, but it's scheduled for Tuesday afternoon. That's not a lot of time to prepare."

"I'm confident of my ability to destroy Gonzo. Father Time's a bit iffier. I don't know enough about what he can do." Black Adam killed him easily enough in the comic… If I had access to the orange ring I'd assimilate him just to be sure that I wasn't missing something.

"And then?"

I shrug. "Then I give my potential Justice League members a chance to triumph over the evil alien demigod and leave. Come back here and then take a.. dimensional window thingy back to my cell."

"They might not be so keen to let you leave."

"With a power ring I can move at faster than light speed. Does Kyle know how to block power ring FTL?"

"Hm. He didn't three hours ago."

I give him a small smile. "Ran into him, did you?"

"Yeah. Was he ever surprised."

"How'd it go?"

He holds up his right fist. "I've got beams and simple shields-."

"So basically all the things you ever used?" He gives me a look. "I.. may have heard Lantern Tui's observations about your skill level. You know, I can give you some pointers-."

"Kyle likes fancy constructs too. Shame they weren't stronger. You want me to show you my 'skill level' we've still got a sparring arena."

"Ordinarily I'd leap at the chance to put a Greenie in his place, but… Ugh, I need to get something to eat and then get started on the rest of my drone swarm. Maybe after we've dealt with SHADE. Does this place have a fully stocked kitchen?"

"Yeah, but so does the Thanagarian Command Carrier. Shayera wants to introduce us to the joys of Thanagarian cuisine."

"It's twenty past ten. Haven't you eaten already?"

"We're all on Eastern Standard Time. I was just waiting until Batman got back to head over. You in?"

Thanagarian food… Ring?

Perfectly palatable, Corpsman.

Right, only you were Korugarian. I doubt that our sense of taste is the same.

Very well. I'll upload my database.

Ooooh.

"John, do you know anything about Thanagarian food?"

"No, but I know the foods Shayera eats. I don't think it'll be a problem."

I regard him carefully for a moment. "O-kay. Is Zatanna joining us?"

He nods. "She's over there already. According to Shayera the ship should be shipshape-" The teleportation platform activates and Batman materialises. "-in a couple of days."

"Well then. Best not keep them waiting."

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Stars, Crossed, part 2 21

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9th January 2004

23:46 GMT

"…just handed it to me!"

"Hahaha!"

John's grinning despite himself. "And the next thing I know, this huge grey guy with a horn coming out of his face shoulder-checks me through a table!"

Zatanna snorts and Doctor Gardner smiles as he shakes his head.

Shayera is unapologetic. "You should have seen your face when I pointed you out to him." She stares at her fork, pantomiming an expression of utter cluelessness.

"Yeah, yeah."

I don't know exactly what this stuff we're eating is, but actually? The texture and taste are okay. I've certainly had worse at restaurants before now. It's some sort of stew, though the colour is a little.. purple? I think all the Humans at the table breathed a sigh of relief when Shayera said that while the meat was traditionally supposed to be chemically cooked in the creature's own digestive juices, they didn't have any of those on board. Some civilian vessels from advanced civilisations either have their own gardens or use a form of animation suspension to keep things fresh. Thanagarian military vessels don't have those sorts of luxury.

Ooh, now I'm remembering that time where my parents and I went down to the harbour and I had chilli pasta and ended up needing to down the whole water jug. Ah, a pleasantly non-Grayven memory. I don't know if it was the Anti-Life or the relaxation, but my pre-Earth 16 memories seem to be coming to the fore more than they had been for months.

Gardner's wearing a restored Thanagarian uniform, presumably created using Katar Hol's grave goods for the Nth metal and modern tailoring for the cloth. Every so often Zatanna's eyes drift to his chest, but the rest of us are pretty much used to it. He started this conversation when Shayera asked what Chay-Ara was like. Turns out? Much less aggressive than our Hawk. I'll need to get a scan of Chay-Ara's skull to do a facial reconstruction to know what the physical resemblance is like; at the moment his artificial memories of her just aren't reliable enough.

Shayera waves her fork at me. "What about you? Any good stories you wanna share about you and.. Jade?"

"Ah… Well. Jade is a member of…" I frown. "Your version of Ra's al Ghul. What's his organisation called?"

"The Society of Shadows. You mean she's an assassin?"

"Yes. She's the daughter of two supervillains: Huntress and Sportsmaster."

"Sportsmaster?" Shayera turns to John. "Wasn't that the guy we ran into in Seaboard City?"

"No, that was Sportsman. Your guy doesn't wear a football uniform, does he?"

"No, his body armour had a fairly sensible design. And most of his weapons were only 'sporting equipment' in fairly broad terms: swords, explosive javelins and discuses, a little plasma gun designed to look like a crossbow. By baseline Human standards he was a highly skilled mercenary. Long story short; a job the two of them were on went badly and Huntress ended up paralysed from the waist down and in prison. Jade… Well… Sportsmaster was a fan of the Spartan style of child rearing."

My fellow diners make eye contact with one another and John loses. "He beat her?"

"Yes, but he did it because he was trying to train them. Her and her sister. After their mother went to prison Jade left home and joined the League of Shadows. The training wasn't any easier, but she told me that the people there were nicer. And there was a mutual respect she didn't get at home."

Shayera nods. "How old was she?"

"Thirteen. Anyway, she was nineteen when I met her. The League were trying to assassinate a nanotech expert my team and I were looking after."

She smiles. "And your eyes met over crossed blades..?"

"No, it was actually a really short fight. I basically pounded her colleagues to mush then let her run away. I mean, I had augmented strength, toughness and a power ring. They had glue guns, knives, and one of them had replaced his right arm with a crane?" I shake my head. "That still makes no sense to me. I tracked her down to a safe house later and she agreed to act as my source inside the League."

"How did you go from interrogating her to dating her?"

"I'm still not completely sure. Though, I think the fact that I killed her father about a minute after meeting him for the first time had something to do with it." That gets a few eyebrows. "She did completely hate him. Anyway, working for the Shadows, we don't fight alongside each other much. Only time we have so far was when Darkseid decided to throw me a challenge match. If my friends and I won, he'd leave the Earth to me. If we lost, we'd be too dead to worry. Jade was carrying a piece of Star Conqueror based technology her boss wanted the League to take possession of. The Apokoliptians were supposed to attack us to make it look like an ambush, but they decided to stop playing by his rules and make it an actual attack."

Zatanna 50 looks curious. "I'm assuming one of these friends was your Zatanna?"

I nod. "On our side, Superboy, Mat-."

"Your Superman has a son?"

"No, our Luthor just had better luck with cloning than yours did. Same with Match. Then there was Rocket, Miss Martian-. Our Mars is still fully inhabited. Robin-" I open my hands towards Zatanna 50. "-Zatanna, Kid Flash, Celestial Archer, Artemis and Aqualad. Jade and Riddler were there as bait, but when the Apokoliptian leader said what the stakes were I convinced Aqualad to permit me to release her. On the Apokoliptian side, Devilance the Pursuer, two Gravi-Guard, two flights of Aero-Troopers and quite a lot of Parademons."

"Does Jade have super powers?"

"Not yet, but I gave her a shot of something called 'Velocity Ten'. It grants short term super speed. That, plus a few x-ionised blades and she was ready to go." I sit back slightly. "I wish I could have seen more of the fight, but I was rather occupied."

Shayera nods. "I remember when we killed our version of Devilance. His spear's powerful."

"Oh no, Kon and Match took him on. I got to fight a Brimstone class plasma servitor."

"The giant radioactive robot?"

"Ours was a walking sun. The only vulnerable point is the techno-seed in its chest that serves as its control system. Anyway, Jade got busy slaughtering any Parademon stupid enough to land -something my team mates refused to do- while I had to work out how to harm an object at the core of a star. Without the star incinerating everyone around me. I ended up using the orange power ring to generate magnets powerful enough to force Brimstone's body to deform so that I could get at it. Once I had a link to the techno-seed I ordered the thing to be passive, picked it up, flew it to the edge of the star system and set it to shut down after I left." I frown. "Should probably go back at some point and make sure that the techno-seed didn't survive."

Shayera nods. "And what did Jade do after she finished off the less intelligent Parademons?"

"She went after the Gravi-Guard. Cut one up before they knew they were under attack. Unfortunately, the other realised more or less what was happening and dramatically increased gravity around it. At the speed she was going… She fell, then got her legs mangled. I fixed them up afterwards, but they must have been incredibly painful." I look away for a moment. "I need to nag her again about getting super powers permanently when I get back. Anyway, Kon and Match dealt with Devilance easily enough."

"How come?"

"Brimstone was a walking sun. A walking yellow sun." John nods, while Shayera bows her head with a snort of laughter. "I don't think Devilance realised quite how stupid he was being. Not until after they broke his fingers, stole his spear and punched him out. Our Zatanna spent most of the fight keeping everyone from getting incinerated or irradiated by Brimstone just being there. She also restored the area to mint condition after we were finished. It turns out that planets aren't really meant to have suns walking on them."

Zatanna 50 looks curious. "How powerful is she?"

"She has your natural ability, New God soul structure and a Lord of Order as a teacher. I'm not sure exactly, but I'd say 'very'. Okay. Joseph-."

He winces slightly. "Could you please call me Katar?" He sighs. "I know you think I'm just-."

"Fine, it's fine. Katar. Any good stories about ancient Egypt?"

He smiles slightly, then nods. "One or two. Let's see… It was about a year after we first landed…"

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Stars, Crossed, part 2 22

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26th February

11:14 GMT -5

I take a moment to check my watch before ringing the doorbell of the Beecher residence. Just one of the many ways in which real life is different to comics: people have extended families. And parents. Reverend Grace Beecher is the local Episcopal vicar. No, wait, they call them… Ministers.. or something, don't they? Her husband Dylan is a gardener. Anyway, Karen thought that she might want me to give a talk to the local churchgoing parents on the subject of meta teens and sure enough the Reverend invited me around for a chat. Um. I didn't quite lie to her. I am fully qualified to provide entry level counselling to newly empowered metahumans, even ignoring the power ring aspect. Public speaking doesn't bother me any longer. It's just… I really don't have any sort of connection to the local community. I don't even shop around here any more.

I hear footsteps on the far side of the door and a moment later Reverend Beecher opens the door. "Hello! You must be Paul."

She holds out her right hand and I shake it. "Reverend. Pleased to meet you."

"Oh, call me Grace." She backs up slightly. "Come in, come in."

"Thank you." I step forward into the house.

She leads me in the direction of the living room. "Did you have a long trip?"

Only a couple of miles from the mountain. "No, not really."

"Karon said you were a.. metal trader?"

"That's the bit of what I do that I get paid for, certainly. But it isn't what I spend most of my time doing."

"Oh? So what do you do?"

"Various things. My work with metahumans takes up some of my time, though.. sad to say, they usually come to my attention when they're already involved in the criminal justice system."

"That's a shame. Take a seat?"

I sit down in an armchair. "Thank you. You see, there isn't… Metahumans are such a small percentage of the population that.. outside of war time, it just isn't worth the government putting any sort of outreach program into effect."

"What about private programs?"

"I work for… Well, volunteer, for a charitable organisation, but its income just about covers its operating costs. There's no way it could manage any sort of outreach work. A few businesses have expressed interest in the past… Then they hear what the hit rate is like and decide to put their money somewhere else. Apart from the ones who're looking for a superhero to sponsor and we.. really don't like dealing with them."

"Why not?"

"Do you have any idea what the mortality rate for rookie superheroes is? Because I do. So many people think they can do a few self defence classes -or do a tiny amount of practice with their innate powers- and go out and take on people armed with guns. A lot of metahuman abilities aren't even all that useful in a fight, most are less useful than a gun would be. And that's not even getting into the legal issues associated with vigilantism."

"I guess superheroes and supervillains are what most people think of when they hear 'metahuman'."

I nod. "But… Like in a lot of things, the ones you hear about don't represent the largest part of the community."

She nods. "How do people usually find out that their son or daughter is a metahuman?"

"Any number of ways. Sometimes there'll be a physical alteration which is visible when they.. go in for an ultrasound scan. Sometimes it won't get picked up there, but there'll be something obvious at birth. We sometimes get calls from obstetricians who want to check that an apparent deformity is just that and not something more exotic. I don't.. usually handle those myself. For those abilities which manifest later-."

"I'm sorry, do you know what proportion that is?"

"I know what proportion it is of the cases we deal with. There isn't any sort of.. nationwide register, so I can't tell you what actual proportion they represent. As far as we know, it's probably less than a hundred each year in the United States."

"Okay, what about abilities that show up later?"

"Some are active nearly immediately even though they don't look different from other people. There's an eight year old girl I met who was always unusually strong. Other abilities only kick in at puberty. Though that's.. all leaving aside abilities which come purely from external sources."

She nods again. "Do metahumans face any sort of discrimination?"

"No, not really. I don't know if it's because the strongest associations are positive ones… All the work superheroes do… Or because people just regard it as a medical thing. The only significant hostility comes from medical professionals."

"Why do you suppose that is?"

"They have to deal with all the idiots who try ingesting dangerous substances in the insane belief it will give them superpowers rather than kill or maim them. There's been a resurgence of that lately."

"Why would anyone do that to themselves?"

"Plastic Man joining the Justice League, basically. He got an amazing power in an industrial accident and that fact got leaked to the press. He ended up having to do a press conference to remind journalists what usually happens when someone does that, but even so a lot of people have taken it upon themselves to try following his example. Anyway, doctors also have to deal with the fact that metahumans don't always respond in the usual way to medical intervention and sometimes lose the ability to precisely control themselves when they're injured or ill. And because in an emergency they don't always know if the person they're working on is a metahuman."

She nods again. "You told Karen metahumans can't give blood. Is that why?"

"Pretty much. They can't predict… Because there's no such thing as 'metahuman blood', just the blood of a particular metahuman. The studies that have been done show that in a lot of cases, blood taken from a metahuman will behave exactly the same as any blood of the blood group."

"But not always."

"No. And most national blood services impose a general ban as a precaution."

"How would someone find out that they're a metahuman?"

"Usually, the first manifestation of their powers. There are blood tests for known markers -those are what the blood service use- but they only work on known markers. Even the companies who offer the tests to people who send in samples make it clear that they can only tell people if they are, never that they're definitively not. Some universities have programs where they'll try more intensive approaches, but those usually only want to deal with known positives."

"How long does it usually take for a metahuman to learn to control their powers? That.. girl you mentioned with super strength, for example."

"That answer changes for every example. That girl had near-perfect control from the start. When she was very small she accidentally crushed a few things and involuntary actions are still a problem, but a fairly minor one. A lot of metahumans have an intuitive understanding of what they can do. Others have to learn their triggers. The tricky ones are the ones governed by emotional states. The people who get those often never get complete control."

"What happens if someone gets a power they don't want?"

"Usually, they can simply choose not to use it. Failing that, there are suppression collars for certain types of ability, though those make you look like a Belle Reve inmate and they're fairly expensive. At the moment, there's so many ways a person can get powers that there's no way to remove all of them. Heck, most of them simply can't be removed without radically altering the person in a way that's beyond medical science."

She nods again and sits back. "Thank you. I found that very interesting. Would you be willing to give a talk on the subject in the church hall? We've got a space in the schedule two weeks on Wednesday."

"I'd be happy to."

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Stars, Crossed, part 2 23

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13th January 2004

09:57 GMT

Unlucky for some.

I watch as the guests take their seats in the garden below me. The stage is literally set for the President's speech. Heck, Lantern Rayner, Kara and Billy are attending in person, making awkward small talk in a White House drawing room while they wait to be ushered out. As a result I'm forced to watch from orbit, above the gaze of observation satellites and too far away for anyone to easily detect. Ideally I'd be watching this through a hush tube window, waiting for the most dramatic moment to barge in and ruin things. Unfortunately, building my new drone squadron and making the Thanagarian Command Carrier shipshape took up enough time that I couldn't justify spending the time required to create a hush tube generator merely to look cool.

Father Time's lurking around, taking frequent calls from his subordinates as he tries to keep his concern from showing. He's got good self discipline but whatever he is he's still susceptible to yellow light scans. He's definitely worried. Gonzo, I can't get a read on. Could be that this version isn't mentally complex enough or it could be some form of Apokolips tech scrambling. It's also preventing me getting a good scan of his interior, though the ever-present whiff of Anti-Life is unmistakable. Doesn't really matter, I'll have to kill him anyway. Richard's down there too, disguised as an usher. He hasn't deigned to reply to the messages we've been sending him. Not sure where he stands.

The only one I want here who isn't is Ms Harmon. She dosed herself with the formula as planned, gained the expected celerity and has been practising with it, in out of the way places where the chance of being spotted by the local SHADE office is kept to a minimum. I suppose I was putting a little much hope into the idea of a rookie superhero suddenly turning into League material. It's not as if seven is a magical number or anything, and she can always join up later. Perhaps Oracle could claim the spot. Zatanna would almost certainly be interested as well…

Batman, Shayera and John are watching from the Watchtower while Doctor Gard-. While Doctor Hol keeps watch on the Thanagarian Command Carrier. Shayera and John took him back to the original Katar Hol's tomb while I was busy droning up and I think he accepts intellectually the idea that he isn't a reincarnation. Certainly Chay-Ara's face was clearly different from Shayera's once the reconstruction was complete. Perhaps the problem was something to do with an imprecision in the transfer process? That thing was designed for Thanagarian minds rather than Human ones. Can't help but wonder if there's a reincarnating version of him back on Earth 16 as well as the alien version.

An usher walks into the room containing the three superheroes and says something, prompting them to file out. Rayner's in his field uniform. Looks weird with that sort of.. eye symbol replacing the normal green sigil, but otherwise it's the regulation black and green. Unarmoured -sigh- and without other technological improvements. Don't really know how good a Lantern he is.

Surprisingly good.

Yeah, if I'd had my arse kicked by a rookie that's what I'd say too. It's like Doombots or Darkseid -I mentally air quote- Avatars. Anything to pretend that it didn't count.

Corpsman, your attitude-.

John beat him without a ring. Besides, I'm aiming to lose.

Sinestro 12 fought in his Silver Age black bodysuit with blue decoration. I've redesigned my own armour with a more modern look in mind. Regal looking, if ostentatious. Makes it clear that I've mastered the yellow ring though. And I think the gold suits my grey skin better than it did Sinestro's dark pink.

Anyway, Kara's in what I think is a SHADE dress uniform while Billy is in his red, white and gold ensemble. Really, he's the only one standing up for bright and primary coloured superheroism. And that's why -whoever else we don't get- he needs to join up. And -ugh- several of the people doing security work are pinging my Anti-Life sense. Justified. I'm not seeing any serious firepower down there, aside from what the superheroes are packing. Oh, there's air cover from the US air force and those missiles would certainly hurt, but none of this is anti-super… Supervillain quality.

Ah, the robopresident's starting. He's actually a better public speaker than the real President Horne, though he has most of the mannerisms off pat. May as well listen. Ring?

"…fellow Americans, distinguished guests. We're here today in gratitude for our deliverance from the alien threat that came very close to destroying our world and everyone on it. The Thanagarians came to Earth claiming to be the allies and protectors of its people when in fact…" He takes a moment to make eye contact with a few cameras from the more notable news agencies. Real Horne never did that. His speeches are dry and factual, verbal essays taking you to his conclusion without doing anything so base as arousing interest. He was also careful never to use religious imagery. In America of all places. "They were here not merely to destroy us, but make us complicit in our own destruction. If it were not for the swift intervention of the forces of the 455th Air Expeditionary Wing-" He gestures to the right side of the audience, where the front few rows are filled with air force personnel in their dress uniforms. The Major General in charge of them is behind him on the stage. "-and for the three individuals we are here to honor today, they may well have succeeded. Ladies and Gentlemen-" He gestures to his left. "-Supergirl, Green Lantern and Captain Marvel."

The three of them walk on. Kara's face is deadly serious. She's not-? No, no feel of Anti-Life. Guess she's just playing the order-following SHADE agent role to the hilt. Kyle looks impressed. First week back on Earth and he's getting patted on the back by the President? No reason why he wouldn't be. He's quite a bit younger than me. So's Kara, but I'd expected that. Kyle's been a Lantern as long as I've been reading comics. Finding out that he's twenty four here was a surprise. Captain Marvel has a belt rather than a sash but otherwise he looks identical to his alter ego. Even carries himself in the same way.

The audience applauds. Hardly any of them stare at Kyle. I mean, he is coming to a country where the last Green Lantern was part of the ruling junta for two years. But no, no hostility that I can see. Good sign. Also a sign that it's time for me to crash the party. Should have invited the evil fairy…

Ring, let's have some fun. Transition.

I appear at the back of the audience. They don't see me, facing the stage as they are.

"Gentleman, Ma'am, I wanna extend the-"

Kara spots me first as Gonzo greets them.

"-thanks of the-"

Kyle and William notice that she's not looking at the President and follow her gaze.

"-American… People." Gonzo looks outwards at me, squinting slightly.

And that's my cue. "Oh, please. Don't let me stop you." Faces swivel as I stride down the central aisle. "I mean, I'm only the first person to notify you of the Thanagarian treachery. I'm only the person who single-handedly attacked the Thanagarian Command Carrier, bested Commander Hro Talak in single combat and forced him and his people to flee the system. I'm only the one who tricked him into transmitting a full confession on a worldwide broadcast so that everyone would know what they were up to. Easy to see how you might have overlooked my role." Everyone's looking at me now, from the guests to the security personnel frantically whispering into their microphones. "A lesser man than I might be annoyed by that. But that's okay." I swing my forearms out to the sides and then bring them together in front of me in a clap. "That's okay." I'm just coming up to level with the front row of seats. "You just carry on with your speech. Always said that Kara,-" I make eye contact. "-Kyle and William don't get enough recognition." I stop level with the front row of seats and tilt my head right, towards the Senate Minority Leader. "I'll be taking that seat now."

"Like hell you will, you-!"

"Tobacco money. I've seen the accounts. Hop it."

His eyes widen, then he hops. I take a moment to look around, reinforce the chair with a construct and then sit down, smacking the House Majority Leader in the face with my pauldron as I do so and knocking him out of his chair. Two ushers rush over to help the man up, and a third-.

"Grayven, what the hell are you doing?!"

Oh, it's Richard. "Finishing what I came here to do. Oh, and Kara? There's a proper Supergirl uniform in a bag backstage. Put it on and I'll give everyone a chance to evacuate before the fighting starts."

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Stars, Crossed, part 2 24

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13th January 2004

10:04 GMT

I can feel the fear. Not the heavy handed sudden shock the Thanagarian marines felt as I slew them. This is a nebulous thing, creeping, cloying, running from mind to mind and soul to soul. The way the people around me look everywhere but at me. The way the guards hesitate. The nebulous sense that something has gone very wrong. No one dares flee. No one can force themselves to remain as they were. Around me some of the most powerful people in this country discover new ways to fidget.

I smile beatifically at the stage.

President Gonzo isn't afraid, though from the brief inhuman lack of animation I'm going to assume that he is at least puzzled as to how to continue with this farce. The two agents who have scurried forwards are less sanguine, but he's more or less brushing them off. Kara's finger nails are dug into her palms. She isn't afraid. She's angry. I'm sure that if she didn't have to worry about collateral damage she'd have charged me already. As it is, her training won't let her start anything. Rayner is more puzzled than anything else. He recognises my voice from our brief conversation but he doesn't recognise the symbol on my chest and may well have not spotted the ring on my right forefinger. William is looking at me with distaste, but I think that's more due to me crashing the party and being rude than anything else.

Gonzo comes back to life. "Okay. This is unexpected, but… Glad to have you with us, Grayven. And hey, I'm sure a lot of us have wanted to do that to Tom at one time or another."

Very nervous laughter from a couple of places. I look at him curiously. How's he going to play this? Father Time's still closish. He must know that there's no point in trying to run. It's no secret who struck down SHADE's aerials. Ring, quick check that it's really him?

The chronoton flux is still present, Corpsman.

Near the back of the seating area, security personnel start walking up to the guests and guiding them from their seats. Ah, much better. There's a plan now. They don't need to decide things. They can just act.

"Supergirl only came to Earth five years ago and only became an American citizen under her own name six months ago, but I for one wouldn't question her courage in the conduct of her duty or devotion to the people of this country. Green Lantern's been off Earth for a while now, but on his first day with that power ring he took down a super powered serial killer. And in addition to knocking Thanagarian fighters out of the air during that fight in Egypt he saved the lives of at least eight of our downed pilots with shields and with crash mat constructs. Captain Marvel took the time to free the people the Thanagarians were holding hostage before joining the fray, eighty men and women who were looking down the wrong end of Thanagarian energy weapons. God only knows what would have happened to them without his help."

Not a lot, probably. Thanagarians aren't big on hostage taking. If they don't kill you right away they're probably not going to.

"So Grayven… Why don't you tell us here and the American people at home a little about yourself. And your friends, the Justice Lords."

Ah. That makes sense. The back third of the audience has headed away and Kyle's ring is starting to sparkle.

"If you insist." I get to my feet, arms folded behind my back. "I am Prince Grayven of Apokolips. You may remember my father -Darkseid- from his invasion of Metropolis, where he beat the sssss…" I raise my eyebrows at the presenter. "Pre-watershed?" She freezes for a moment, then nods. "Stuffing out of Kal-El. Or the follow up, where he mind controlled him and sent him back here to kill his friends and family. I personally rule a small stellar empire and my intent is to add Earth to it."

"You may be new around here, but in America we don't take kindly to that kind of talk."

"Even better! What greater stage could there be for me to prove myself than here, against the heirs of those who killed Darkseid? The power of Earth's champions is known throughout the galaxy! I had considered simply bombarding you from orbit, but what does that prove? No, I wanted to give them one last chance to confront me." I look around, spreading my arms wide. "That was the cue?" I make a show of looking around, my eyes passing momentarily over the two still on the stage. "No one?" I blink slowly, shaking my head. "Truly, that is a great-."

Something slams into the right side of my face, sending me flying across the White House lawn. I create construct claws from the fingers of my right hand and dig them into the ground, creating great furrows as I arrest my momentum. Kara's floating just over the President's head wearing her true uniform, eyes glowing an angry red as she stares down at me.

I stand, dismiss the claws and rub my cheek. "Ah, a love tap! Have you reconsidered my proposal, Kara Zor-El?"

"It's In-Ze!"

I squint. "In ze what?"

"Aaaaaagh!"

Her eyes glow brilliantly for a second and I throw my left hand forwards, forming a shield and releasing enough dust from subspace that the burning beams from her eyes are visible for the cameras. Wouldn't want people to think I threw up shields for no good reason, would I?

"Is this a Kryptonian mating custom? I ask because I assumed that you'd gone native. I just brought a DVD of The Wedding Singer. I mean, am I supposed to eye beam you back? I'm genuinely lost here."

William scratches his head. "Um, are you two-?"

"No! We're not!" She starts sucking in a breath in order to freeze me.

"Kryptonian style it is then." Ring, green Kryptonite lasers from my eyes, please. Give it a few seconds' build up.

As you wish, though be clear that I do not approve of these theatrics, Corpsman.

Fine.

My vision goes green for a moment. Several more VIPs run past me, but I ignore them. She's wearing the uniform I made, after all. Took me a while to make one that didn't make me feel like a creep for demanding that she wear it. Had to dump the skirt and thigh boots, obviously. This one is an outgrowth of my work on clothing for Kon and Match. Even stuck small sunstones into the otherwise pointless belt.

Doesn't have a helmet though.

I transition backwards, lower my barrier and let loose with the Kryptonite. People often misunderstand how Kryptonite works. Both versions of Kryptonians I've met would laugh off a bullet made of the stuff. All that would happen is that it would shatter on their skin. At worst, they might get a mild burn where it struck. It's the radiation which the stuff gives off that's dangerous. And I'm putting out quite a lot.

The beam diffuses as it leaves my eyes, but by far the majority of it strikes her directly in the face. "Ah-AGH!" She staggers backwards and collapses while Rayner suddenly wakes up to the fact that an actual fight is happening, creating a barrier across the front of the stage as Marvel moves to shield Gonzo.

I smile condescendingly at Rayner. "I hear you had a run in with John Stewart recently. Somehow, I'm not worried by the prospect of fighting the man who somehow managed to lose to a Lantern who no longer owns a power ring." That said, construct armo-.

"Shazam!"

Drrreagh! Agh, bright! Marvel's grabbed me around the waist and is holding me up to soak his lightning! I remember his fight with Superman, where every strike caused him to change shape. My armour seems to be preventing enough of the bolt reaching him to trigger that effect. Alright then.

"Sha-!" I shove construct tendrils down his throat and spray Skunk scent into his mouth. He spasms, biting through the construct and collapsing onto the floor. I kick him in the chest hard enough to lift him into the air and then turn away as he crashes back to the ground, vomiting and wheezing.

"Rayner. Just thee and me, then. Hope you've brushed up on your Lantern to Lantern combat."

"I kicked the ass of the last guy to use that ring. I doubt you'll be much harder."

"Pride cometh. Impress me."

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Stars, Crossed, part 2 25

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13th January 2004

10:11 GMT

His right fist comes up, ring glowing green.

Inwardly I sigh. I thought he was supposed to be the imaginative one? Feeding on the fear around me I create a tower shield construct covering my right arm and hold it forward. Hard to judge his strength precisely but I'm fairly confident that-. The beam strikes my shield, barely strong enough to force me to bend my arm to absorb the force.

"A weak effort, Green Lantern. Sometimes I wonder that the members of your Corps can walk and chew gum at the same time." I start walking forwards, anchoring my feet at each step to prevent myself being knocked over. "Here's how you dual wield with a power ring." I hold my left arm out to my side and take a neural impacter out of subspace. They don't make these any more. I had to put it together myself based on Father Box's directions. Originally designed by the Weaponer Vaxmeth, they never really gained popularity in his target markets and for good reason. They're poor value for energy against most targets, not readily portable, technologically delicate…

In fact, the only thing they're really good against… Is Lanterns.

The yellow beam howls from the barrel, smashes his construct barrier apart -I release the trigger- and slams into Rayner. "Ugh!" He drops to his knees, ring and environmental shield glitching in and out.

"Poor effort, Kyle." I send the gun back to subspace and pick up my pace a little. "Weak construct barrier, dull energy beam attack and you've clearly made no preparation to fight someone in your own weight class. Where's your personal force field? Where's your armour? Where's your backup? Where's your bloody.. common.. sense?" He desperately tries to get his ring going again.

Huh. Wasn't expecting them all to go down that easily. Okay, how can I believably give them time to-. Camera! One of the camera teams stuck around and are currently doing their best to cover my fight. Back on Earth 16 they use drones for that, but we're too far back in time for those to be readily available. Filming super fights can win you awards. And/or get you killed. I stop walking and drop my shield construct, waving my right hand in their direction. "You. Human." The team shrinks back. "How would you like the first interview with your world's new ruler?"

They hesitate, crouching behind an overturned table as if it would make the slightest-. A tiny tremor runs through my construct armour. Huh? That must have been-. There are a rapid series of further impacts, focused around my head and chest. Oh! Snipers, right. Hah! Ring, show me their location.

As you wish, though simply ignoring them is a perfectly valid option. They pose little threat.

No. If they keep that up someone could get hurt. Plus, it distracts from the whole 'we need the Justice League' idea I'm trying to instil in these people.

I fold my arms behind my back and float upwards into the air, armour piercing rounds being utterly nullified by my construct armour. Once I get about twenty metres up -high enough to look down on the tops of the buildings where they've taken up position- I have my eyes glow a brilliant yellow. "Your feeble attempts at warcraft do not amuse me, Humans. Learn to respect your betters." I fire my eyebeams at the first team. Not a simple blast of yellow light, these are precise beams patterned after Darkseid's Omega Effect beams. They strike home and immediately shock the central nervous system of the snipers, rendering them unconscious. A shockwave then radiates outwards, causing concrete and stone to crack and fly free. I want to give the impression that I've hit them really hard, rather than intentionally just stunning them. Any Anti-Life infection? No, just regular police marksmen. Good to know. I then have the beams lightly toss them backwards, as if it was the blast that threw them. Should look good for the camera.

I slowly turn my head towards the next team. They hold their ground, continuing to fire. My eye beams fire once more and their fire stops. The next team are falling back, trying to get into cover. Futile. My eyes flash again and again until the few conventional soldiers who remain conscious are falling back in poor order and providing me with more power…

What was that?

I get a half second to see the stealth fighter thing flying towards me before the chin-mounted energy weapons open fire, striking my construct armour hard enough to actually okay I'm jinking now. Additional weapon hardpoints open fire as it moves past me, the lasers flickering across my faceplate. Huh. A Nightwing-wing. Why didn't somebody tell me he had one of those-?

Oophf!

Oh, targeting lasers. For missiles. That's quite ow! Grragh. Alright. I take a moment to check myself over from inside the smoke-clouds. Construct armour took a bit of a battering, but… He's coming round again. No, sorry, one pass is all you get. You're a baseline Human trying to DPS. You need to learn that DPS isn't your role. Could do something personal… A Tony Zucco construct or something? No. Beams of golden energy flare from my eyes, shooting towards the aircraft. He viffs, trying to evade. I send the beams around at right angles and shoot out his engines anyway, flashes of fire and smoke marking the plane's mortal wounding.

In the cockpit I watch Nightwing frantically press buttons and pull levers. No yellow there, he just has little time to arrange things before-. He pulls the eject and shoots out of the cockpit as the Nightw-wing's weapons open up again. Twelve missiles shoot directly upwards as the lasers find me again and the nose-weapon opens fire. Empty space below? Okay then. I blink, flashes of yellow flicking out from my eyes as I target the missiles in turn, transforming them into airborne fireballs. The energy weapon shots are intercepted by a new tower shield construct for a few seconds before the plane's tumbling puts me outside of its arc of fire. Can't have it falling on anyone. I make a fist with my right hand, creating a huge glowing fist construct which mirrors its motion. I wait a second, then swing it downwards into the flying wreckage.

The frame holds together well. Fuel? Eh. I create an environmental shield construct around it. Can't risk it exploding after all. The plane hits the ground, flips and tumbles sideways, taking out what was left of the seating before coming to rest in the remains of a copse. Any further risk..? No? Good show.

I lower myself through the air, back towards the stage and the camera team. Impressive dedication there. Or maybe they're just in shock. Yeeeah, the trembling does rather suggest that. I land where I took off a moment before, look around for a moment then bring my hands to my front and make a show of brushing them off. "That was fun." Kara's up, though she looks a little unsteady on her feet. Sun's still fairly low in the sky so it might take her a minute or two to get back to full fighting strength. Marvel's in the air behind me and to my left, looking rather pale. His previously immaculate uniform is now marked by the passage of his own gastric juices and I think he's still dry-retching. His eyes are steady, though. There's a flare of green from back stage then Rayner comes up over the stage, a glowing green powered exoskeleton construct covering most of his body. Can't immediately identify the armour. Doesn't look Gundamy, and that's about the only type of fictional Earth giant robot I'd expect him to be familiar with.

I Garrick as soon as Kara twitches. She shoots across the intervening space so rapidly that I can actually see the debris shoved away as air is displaced. She swings a haymaker at my head and I'm just about able to turn her punch aside with the back of my right hand and redirect her head towards the ground with my left.

"Bwgh!"

I leap backwards into the air as the earth explodes away from her point of impact! Marvel takes this as the signal to start his own attack. Perhaps thanks to the Wisdom of Solomon he doesn't just charge headlong. Doesn't even overextend as he jabs at me with his right fist, left held back to guard. Unfortunately, King Solomon had little experience with aerial combat. I respond to his swings by backing up out of his reach, transitioning behind him and generating a five million candela flare in his face as he twists around.

"Agh!" He drops from the air, hands clutching his eyes.

Kyle holds out his right arm in my direction, a construct gun growing from the back of his bracer.

"Yes, Lantern Rayner. Do exactly the same thing that didn't work a minute ago, that's sure to succeed."

Come on, Nightwing. You've got the best tactical awareness of any of these fools. Take-. Rayner's face goes still, then relaxes slightly. Ring, does that mean what I hope it does?

…to take on alone. We need to combine our efforts. Lantern, try…

Sinestro, bad form. Don't spoil the surprise for me.

And to think I could have ended up with Jonathan Crane…

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Stars, Crossed, part 2 26

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13th January 2004

10:15 GMT

Rayner thrusts his gun arm forwards, and… Oh, rather dull. A brilliant burst of light nearly as powerful as the one I used on Marvel. My goggles compensate almost immediately and I transition sideways to evade any possible attack. Kara's heat vision flashes past me as Rayner opens fire with a rotary cannon construct. Pellets of green abrade my construct armour as I take the neural impactor out of subspace, only for Marvel to dive past me, smashing it in two.

Finally!

Kara flies at me head on, spinning in the air to kick at my head. So glad I went for the trouser version. Rather than turn it aside I fortify the construct armour around my left shoulder and move into the attack. Shockwaves radiate away as the outer plate shatters in absorbing the force, but now I'm in position to grab her throat with both hands and squeeze. She grabs my wrists and tries to force my arms away. They don't move. I grin. "A few days ago, that would have worked. I've had some practice since then, and spread a lot of-."

She squints and fires heat vision directly into my eyes. My construct faceplate begins to deform immediately so I add a reflective component, redirecting the rays of heat back into her eyes.

"Agk!"

"-fear. I admit, you were stronger than me last time we foug-."

Oof! Marvel cannons into my side, knocking us all into the air! I've still got a grip around Kara's throat and from the way he's squinting it looks like Marvel hasn't fully recovered from being blinded yet but now he's got a grip on me he knows where to punch! His left fist swings into the armour covering my right kidney as I try hitting him in the face with my right elbow. Can't quite… He grabs me around the throat with his right arm and strikes at my kidney again. Alright, I've attacked his taste, smell and sight. Next, hearing. Hypersonic screech.

Waves of ultra-high frequency sound ripple outwards. My construct helmet still protects me but the other two get the full force. Marvel hits me a third time, but the blow is far weaker. Pressing the fingers of my left hand into Kara's jugular vein- Okay, it's not a jugular vein, but it's the nearest Kryptonian equivalent. -I remove my right hand from her throat so I can properly strike at Marvel. My right elbow finds his stomach and he folds up. He's not injured, he just isn't braced properly. Kara goes limp and I see blood trickling out of her left ear. That'll do for now. I toss her away and give Marvel my full attention. I twist and punch him full in the diaphragm. Won't wind him but it does further weaken his grip, allowing me to pull his arm from around my throat and twist it behind his back. I hold it in place with my right hand while my left goes around his throat.

"Good try Billy. Good try."

Oh right, sonic attack. He can't hear me. I deactivate it. Try again.

"Good try Billy."

"Yeah, it was."

Why's he-? Oh.

Rayner's giant beam cannon construct fires from directly above, emerald beam smashing into me, crumpling what's left of my armour and sending me plummeting into the ground. Oohugh! Teamwork's a.. wonderful thing… I just manage to push myself out of the crater and create a new construct tower shield. With the beam no longer hitting me directly I rebuild my construct armour and force my way from a prone position to a crouch. "Not bad, Rayner. In fact-" I push myself a little more upright as my ring shows me the strain on his face. "-I'd say that it's very nearly adequ-."

The air around me turns red and yellow as a thousand relativistic projectiles slam into me from every direction! Agk, what the-!? Kyle's beam keeps up as my construct armour is abraded in seconds and the attacks start striking my armour. What is-? Oh. Ring, omnidirectional concussive wave.

A yellow construct wave expands outwards too fast for the mortal eye to see and something tumbles away from me. Before it can recover I generate an array of weapons off to my left and fire them all at Kyle. If he's putting everything into the gun-. Yep, he's down. Marvel catches him and swoops down to where Kara's getting back to her feet again.

With Eliza Harmon's help. She must have started running almost the moment the fight started to get enough speed to… She gave them comm beads! I didn't even see her do it! That's how they co-ordinated..! Yellow lightning crackles around her as she vibrates on the spot. Her costume isn't quite as modest as the one I made for Kara… But it's really no worse than what Wallace 50 used to wear.

Marvel gives her a puzzled looks as he set Kyle on his feet. "Are you the Flash?"

She stops dead still for a moment and looks herself over. "I… I guess I am!"

Rebuild armour again. "Remind me: you people identify corpses from dental records, right?" I start towards them. "I'll try and leave your jaws int-." I'm slammed sideways for a fraction of a second, then there's a detonation which sends a lance of molten tantalum into my construct armour. The armour holds, and I turn to face the direction the missile came from in time to catch the next with yellow beams from my eyes, turn it around and return it to sender. Anti-tank missiles don't have a large blast radius so as Nightwing spots what I'm doing he's perfectly capable of-. Disappearing in a flash of red and yellow, apparently. Eliza puts him down just behind Marvel as the missile detonates and the tree he was using for concealment falls to the ground.

Well. Five out of seven isn't bad. Now I just need to-.

Ping.

Okay? I look upwards.

Just in time to see the Thanagarian Command Carrier enter the atmosphere.

"SCOOOOOOOOTT!"

Bwgh! I frantically generate a protective barrier as the Carrier's secondary weapon systems open fire on me, pelting me with golden plasma bolts.

Boom!

A boom tube opens and a smiling Barda strides through, a flickering hologram of Scott appearing beside her. The hologram turns to take in the other fighters, then nods to me. "Yeah. We thought about it pretty hard, but in the end we had to come down in favor of Earth."

"In favour of Earth?" I track the ventral turrets and fire yellow beams from my eyes to start eliminating them. "Scott, I'm completely in favour of Earth! I love it here! That's why I'm going to conquer it! I'm not going to enslave anyone, it's just a changing of rulership!" Fire's slacking off a bit. Have to check what happened to Doctor Hol later. "But I do kind of need that ship. Give it back, and-."

"Make us." Barda grins and hefts her Rod.

The remaining ventral weapons cut out as the ship starts to climb away from the combat zone. I drop my shield dome and take in my opponents. "Captain Marvel. Nightwing. Supergirl. Flash. Green Lantern. Mister Miracle. Big Barda." I got all of them! Wooooo! "You know what? This is fine, this is good. You must be just about the best this world has to offer. Once I grind you to paste… They'll know there's no one left who can stop me." I nod to myself. "Yes, this is what I want; all of you against all of me."

Miss Harmon looks slightly puzzled. "There's only one of you."

"Mmm." I nod. "Drone squadrons one through seventeen, attack if you please."

Drones drop stealth above and around me as orange blaster bolts and purple death rays strike at the superheroes. Kyle generates a barrier, Kara and Marvel fly upwards to evade and Nightwing dives for cover. "I've got a President to kill."

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Stars, Crossed, part 2 27

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13th January 2004

10:18 GMT

I stride purposefully towards the stage with my arms folded behind me as utter anarchy breaks out all around me. Marvel jinks around the fields of fire of three different drones and lunges for me, only for a blaster bolt from a fourth to catch him in the chest and send him flying backwards. Kara's trying to heat vision them and is clearly alarmed to discover that just because they're visible that doesn't mean that they aren't phased. Half of the purple death ray armed drones fire pulses at Miss Harmon's last known location. There's little chance of them hitting her but I have no desire to chase after her if she decides to pick up Gonzo and run. Barda tried to hold her ground, deflecting blaster shots with her Rod and tanking the death rays, this generation of drones not quite having enough kick to wipe out a New God's vitality. So, I just have eight of them shoot her at the same time from different directions. None of that 'one at a time' nonsense here, thank you very much.

I finally reach the stage and spare a moment to glance back at the camera crew before moving my right arm to my front and viciously backhanding the entire structure, sending its broken parts flying to my right. I return my arm to my back and walk on as the wreckage comes down around me. A short stroll to the White House where Gonzo, Father Time and a large number of Anti-Lifed SHADE operatives are bunkering-. My construct armour takes a weak bolt of green to the left leg. I retaliate by firing an eyebeam forwards and then having it burn a jagged line through the air to strike Kyle in the back as he tries to get away from the drones. He shudders at the impact, loses track of what he's doing and takes two death ray hits before recovering his flight path. Hm. Bunkering up.

More conventional weapon fire starts pinging off my construct armour. Looks like the SHADE types are breaking out more exotic equipment, but they couldn't exactly cart that stuff around full time without someone from the Joint Chiefs asking when they were getting some. The first few are taking up position next to the windows. Without altering my pose or my pace I have the death ray drones shoot them dead through their concealment.

Oh look at that! Nightwing's finally got them organised and Barda's spotted that the drones need to be corporeal in order to fire. Miss Harmon's picking up metal debris and using it to make relativistic throws the moment she notices one of them charging up for a shot. Got to hand it to them; I threw a pretty decent chaff mob at them here and they're working together reasonably well for people who'd never met ten minutes ago. Obviously I haven't told the drones to actually kill them; if I actually wanted them dead I'd be using gold kryptonite and radion blaster drones. But my creations are still working better than what most supervillains manage when they go all out. These are definitely the people I want looking after the-.

Lumps of metal slam into my construct helmet, prompting me to fire a shot in Miss Harmon's general direction, transforming it into a concussive blast when she casually sidesteps both my shot and four death rays. I assign a blaster drone to join in so that her footing becomes a little less sure. My march towards the White House is going to look cool, damn it. Stop harshing my mellow. Sinestro, how are we doing for power?

Fifty three percent remaining, Corpsman.

Can you tell what Rayner's got left?

A little less, I should think. He's had defensive constructs destroyed even more than you have. He's surprisingly weak-willed.

Bitchy. Are you really still annoyed about that time-?

I didn't mean to imply that he was a poor Lantern, just that his constructs are relatively less powerful when compared to the majority of his contemporaries. I would rate his creativity and intelligence higher than average. Guardians don't usually recruit for those.

I feel it as the drones start to be destroyed. Not en masse, but now that the Justice League know how to deal with them they're starting to go down. And… There's something else. My connection feels… Drone squadron fifteen, stealth and head up to the ship. Scott's trying to do something clever with my link and I want him distracted. Other drones, stealth and attack from concealment. See if they can work out how to co-ordinate Kara's vision and Rayner's scanning with their attacks.

A heat vision shot, a green beam and a shot from Barda's Mega Rod all hit me in the back at once, causing me to stagger forwards and reach out with both arms to stop myself hitting the ground as I stumble, adding a bubble shield to my rear arc. A second later the pressure is gone as the drones attack the distracted Leaguers and down them all. Really? Mediocre. Miss Harmon and Marvel are forced to do pick up duty, which -thankfully- means I don't have to be obvious in pulling my shots. I have a group of blaster drones shoot out a section of White House wall as I trample over a low row of bushes and head into the building. Hm, should be out of the camera's line of sight now. No reason not to pick up the pace a little. Now, where are they? Ah, not the bunker. They're heading towards a concealed teleportation platform. Not a problem. Transition.

Four Secret Service agents and two of their better armed SHADE equivalents raise their weapons as I appear directly in front of them on the teleportation platform. Gonzo and Father Time are just behind them. I'm going to assume that the reason they hung around this long was that they didn't want to be seen fleeing if their side was about to win. "Leaving? I don't think so." Barrier.

A volley of pistol shots and two… Positron beams, fascinating, impact on the barrier to little effect. My eye beams flash six times, burning out the brains of the SHADE operatives and stunning the agents. Father Time watches them fall before raising his left wrist to his mouth. "This is Father Time. Code Gamma."

Gonzo steps forwards. "It doesn't matter what you do to me, the American people will not be intimidated by a crazed supervillain. We will resist your kind to our last-."

"Yes, like you did with Jax-Ur and Mala. They destroyed a couple of cities and your planet caved like wet tissue paper."

"That was before the Justice Lords. You'll find our spines have stiffened a little since then."

"Oh for goodness sake, you don't even sound like him. Ah, let's get this over with. Father Time, head of SHADE." He raises his eyebrows slightly. His appearance is something of a surprise to me; when I read the comics he appeared in he was a good guy when he was black and only went evil after Black Adam killed him and caused him to reincarnate as a Colonel Sanders look-alike. Maybe what he was up to in the background just didn't come up during the Sheeda attacks? "By the authority invested in me by the Source and by the Sinestro Corps-

Good name, Corpsman. Much better than 'Yellow Lantern Corps'.

"-as well as by sanity, I find you guilty of Attempted Mass Spiritual Violation, to whit: the use of the Anti-Life equation on multiple persons with the express intent of erasing their identities and creating mindless servitors."

"Yeah? When's the trial?"

I take two rapid steps forwards and reach forwards with my right hand, picking him up by his head. "That was it. There is no place for you on my Earth." Ring, fry the teleporter and then transition us to Jupiter.

Jupiter?

Throwing people into the sun is so overdone.

Very well, Corpsman.

Our surroundings flicker away, replaced with a starscape and the Sol System's largest planet. Environmental shield still around him I shift my grip to his jacket. "I'm a little curious, Father Time. What was any of this madness in aid of? In the name of the Source, why the Anti-Life Equation?"

He manages a half-smile. "Father Time. Pay code-."

"Oh, for goodness sake." I hurl him overarm in the direction of the Red Spot before transitioning back to Earth and grabbing Gonzo by his shirt with my right hand, lifting him up and walking in the direction of the brawl outside. "You know, the fight was kind of fun, but I think that the conclusion will just bore me."

"They're going to beat you six ways to Sunday, you arrogant monster."

"I hope they'll try." Ooh, that's a nice painting. "I really do." The barely perceivable pressure against my metaphysique fades away as Scott is forced to focus on his own defence. A couple of soldiers stick their heads around a door, raise their guns and then drop them as they realise who it is I'm carrying. Ring, is the camera crew still there?

Indeed they are, Corpsman. They're showing a surprising degree of mental fortitude.

Or they're just too freaked out to even think about running. I take in the ongoing fight as I strike back out into the garden. Time to wrap this up.

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Stars, Crossed, part 2 28

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13th January 2004

10:22 GMT

Drones, pause.

I cup my left hand to the side of my mouth. "Could I have your attention for a moment, please?!"

The air around the combat area is shimmering green as Kyle uses an area effect detection technique. Sinestro, recognise it?

He's just marking targets, Corpsman. That won't penetrate the drones' stealth systems.

That's a little disappointing. Oh well.

It's not a bad effort, given how little time he's had. I remember when-.

Kara darts forward, eyes literally smouldering. "Release the President right now."

"I don't do hostage taking. I just wanted to get your attention. I'm just going to do a short speech, then I'll let him go."

Nightwing climbs out from the wreckage of his downed fighter. Probably had a few useful bits of kit packed away in there. When the fighting starts, target him normally. William floats, stopping a little way behind Kara. Gradually the others follow. Scott's still… Hah, dodging drones in the fighter hangar.

"Get it over with."

"Thank you." I give her a short bow, not taking my eyes off her. "Now, I've already had this chat with Barda and Scott, so if the two of you want to get some coffee or something, that's fine." I take a moment to get a good look at Kara in her new uniform. "See, isn't that better than what SHADE were having you wear? You look good."

"Would you stop!? You fly in here and kill people and still think it's okay to hit on me?!"

"I haven't actually killed anyone today. I killed a lot of Thanagarians a few days ago and there was this Apokoliptian guy called Esak…" I shake my head. "Point is, I wanted to explain to you why I'm doing this. I wouldn't want you to think I was like Jack Napier, just doing it for a laugh, or like…" Marvel glanced at Kara, clearly not recognising the name. Miss Harmon looks similarly puzzled. "Jack Napier? The Joker?" A couple of half nods before they catch themselves making nice with the enemy. "You seriously didn't know his name? Oh, anyway; I'm also not stealing anything or carrying out any sort of personal vendetta. This, is an intervention."

"About six years ago, this country elected a supervillain to the office of the presidency. The result was worldwide anarchy resulting in.. about.. fourteen million deaths? And very nearly atomic Armageddon; Russia versus China, Pakistan versus India, Israel versus Iran. All versus America. The Justice Lords stopped that with a minimum number of deaths, but the moment they're out of the picture..?" I give Gonzo a shake. "You elect another fucking supervillain. Do you… Do you like being lied to and manipulated and being forced to conform by people like that? Do you find it comforting in some way?" I make eye contact with William. "You, Marvel: the Wizard gave you power to fight for the greater good because he recognised you as a good person. SHADE shut you down." Miss Harmon. "Flash: haven't seen any mention of you on the news. Keeping your head down? Avoiding SHADE? And Kara-."

"Supergirl."

"I'm sorry. Supergirl. I took a look at your accommodation. Were those really red sun lamps?"

"It's temporary."

"Uh. Huh."

Nightwing reaches the group and comes to a halt, arms folded across his chest. "So what, you're saying that the fact they don't let people with superpowers run around doing whatever they want makes them supervillains?"

"No, that makes them jerks. Building a network of Anti-Life Equation broadcasters with the intent of using them to turn the entire population of the country into mindless unpeople-" Begging your pardon, Cranius. "-makes them supervillains. I have the testimony of Director Bones, the senior SHADE agent on site. I have the recordings of my time there… And five of their test subjects are currently being housed with Scott and Barda." Rayner and Miss Harmon glance at her. "Their actions necessitated a series of strikes by surviving members of the Justice Lords to destroy SHADE's broadcast equipment. I have to ask: what makes me so much worse than the tyrants you have already?"

Nightwing glares at me. "If that was happening, they wouldn't need to keep the President in the loop."

I nod, apparently considering his point of view. "Did it not seem to you that SHADE rose to prominence surprisingly quickly under President Horne?"

"It was the first challenge of his presidency, convincing people that the US government was in control."

"Richard. You've been doing this for most of your life. How can you still be so naive?" I lower my right arm slightly. "Let me show you what you elected." I have my left hand move across to take a firm grip on the loose skin on the front of his chin.

"Hey! What are you doing?" Gonzo tries to squirm away, but either he's not using his full strength or he isn't all that strong. "Help!"

Marvel and Supergirl are starting to move as I rip upwards, pulling the false flesh on the front of his skull from the metal and Apokoliptian circuitry beneath. They stop dead the moment they see it. "I give you Gonzo the Mechanical Bastard, Apokoliptian infiltration mechanoid. Senator Horne was killed and replaced with this-" I toss him to the ground. "-months ago. Well before the election. The actual President is whatever hanger-on got the Vice Presidential nomination."

Gonzo pushes himself up and dusts himself off. The rough edges of the skin covering the sides of his face aren't exactly bleeding, but they are oozing a little.

"He's a SHADE plant, put in place to advance their agenda of universal control through Apokoliptian technology. And if for some insane reason that doesn't bother you, consider what the other nations of the world would do when they found out what was happening."

Nightwing glances at Barda. "Barda?"

She grimaces. "He's telling the truth."

"And that's why I want to take over. Whatever mechanisms this country has in place to stop that sort of thing happening clearly don't work. So I'm going to replace them." I nod. "With me. I will be a fair and even handed ruler and I will focus my energies on advancing Earth's economy and technological base. This world and its peoples are marvellous and I intend to guide them in order to bring the full range of their talents to fruit. I would very much appreciate it if you would work with me on this." I glance at Supergirl. "In whatever capacity." I feign an expression of hopefulness. "Are any of you interested?"

Marvel raises his right hand slightly. "I have a question?"

I gesture to him with my right hand. "Go ahead."

"Why do you need to take over the world to do that?"

"Because otherwise I'd be constantly fighting off super teams and sabotage attempts from the world's intelligence agencies. I don't want to have to constantly defend what I'm creating so I'm just going to beat everyone into submission right at the start."

"Oh. And what happens if we say 'no'?"

"Depends. I'd accept neutrality, working together on a case by case business. If any of you wanted to actively oppose me, I'd… Well, then I'm afraid I'd have to kill you. I'd like to emphasise: I don't want to do that, but I accept that it may be necessary."

"Heh." Gonzo shakes his head. "An Apokoliptian prince negotiating. You should be glad Darkseid isn't alive to see this."

"I'm glad he's dead, certainly. Not sure I see the humour..?"

"The joke is:-" His eyes glow red. "-have you got any idea how hard it is to launch a nuclear missile at the White House, even when you're the President?"

What?

He checks his watch. "Two, one-."

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Stars, Crossed, part 2 29

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13th January 2004

10:26 GMT

Garrick!

In utter horror I watch as the intercontinental ballistic missile comes in, my cutting construct crawling through the air too slowly to reach it before it hits the ground and the boom tube aperture materialising far too slowly to catch it! Fuck! Flash is in motion, grabbing Nightwing and.. sending lightning crackling across his head? She can share speed?

She looks at him imploringly. "What do we do?"

He looks at the missile. No, he'll take too long. "Grab Supergirl and have her heat vision the warhead. That'll stop it going critical."

She looks at me in confusion for a moment and then returns her attention to Nightwing. I frantically signal the drones to open fire on the blasted thing. Not sure that I'm getting through at this speed.

"That should work. Do it."

At what point do nuclear missiles detonate? It's practically on the ground already. Most likely multiple warheads so… Twenty four terajoules? A wee bit above the largest explosions I've ever tested my construct armour against. Ah shit, multiple warheads. There's no way she's going to be able to-.

Beams of red outrace my yellow projection, painting the outer casing of the missile. As I abandon my attack construct and try fortifying my armour I notice that things are starting to speed-.

BOOM!

Still alive and not standing in a plume of super hot irradiated plasma? Golly gosh I am. I extend an atmospheric purification construct outwards, removing smoke and debris from the air. I also gather up pieces of highly radioactive plutonium and lock them in a shielded box construct.

"Good work girls." / "Good work, Flash and Supergirl!"

Nightwing and I share a disquieted glance for a moment, then avert our eyes.

Marvel looks at the wreckage of the missile. "I thought nuclear explosions were bigger than that."

Nightwing nods. "Supergirl burned through the explosives around the plutonium so they didn't compress it enough to go critical. That explosion was just the detonator."

"I realise I'm trying to make political capital out of a near-tragedy here, but I think this rather proves my point. How many people had to okay nuking Washington?"

"A few." Gonzo steps up to me and shoves a briefcase into my hands. "It'll be less tomorrow."

I take a look at the case. What exactly-? Garrick!

Two balls of white expand through the material of the case, consuming it and eating at my construct armour. Shield, contain the blast!

Corpsman, your priorities-.

Don't argue with me, Sinestro!

Calculating radius. Filaments extend outwards and bend, starting to form a dome around me. There are other superheroes, you know.

I get half a relative second of Flash staring in horror before my vision goes white. Armour construct.. holding for the moment. The radiation doesn't bother me too much but the heat and the pressure -particularly given that I'm containing it- is getting to be horrendous, even given the small size of the device. Sinestro, is it holding?

You have about eight seconds, Corpsman.

Transmit a message to Lantern Rayner. Get him to put a barrier around us to replace it.

Message sent, but I should probably warn you-

Something hits the centre of my faceplate. It's too bright for me to see the damage, but I'm still getting some feedback from my ring. Ring, adjust vision to allow for the plasma field.

-that Gonzo's trapped in here with us.

His body is displayed as matte black, with the red tron lines of New God technology densely covering the visible surfaces. Of course, that's probably just my ring trying to make sense of anything visual in here. He swings his fist again, glacially slow at first then gathering speed as the Garrick Formula wears off. The duration's getting shorter and shorter each time… I move my right hand across to turn the blow aside-

I don't recommend that, Corpsman. Any pressure on your armour construct-

-and my hand presses against the back of his left forearm and pushes YAAAAAAGHH!

-would probably cause it to breach.

Gonzo's arm -agh- is diverted but my gauntlet construct gives way, exposing my armour to the inferno. The pain in my hand is -urghgh- excruciating as my divine resilience and Apokolips tech armour try keeping my body in one piece against the raging atomic fury. Ordinarily, I'd say that losing an arm would be inconvenient; it would grow back eventually just as my intestine did. In this case the fact that my power ring is on that hand makes the issue a little more pressing. I extract a small x-ionised blade from subspace and try pressing it into Gonzo's arm. Hopefully his innards are no more nuke-proof than mine. It lasts just long enough to make a tiny nick before being vaporised. Bahgh! The pressure just broke several bones in my right hand! Sinestro, please tell me-.

He's doing something. Whether or not it will hold-.

It'll have to. I force myself forwards and strike Gonzo in the cheERGHEHAGHGHH!. Keep… Keep an e-environmental shie-shield around the x-ionised blades. Stab the bastard!

Oops.

My construct armour disappears and I'm exposed to the full force of the ongoing thermonuclear reaction. Even through my eyelids it's blinding bright and I can feel both the armour and the outer layers of my skin burning away. Ring, re-establish armour!

Quite impossible under these conditions. The best I can suggest is- Lights flare and then go black as first my eyelids and then my eyes are burned out, the feed from the ring the only way I have to perceive my environment. -reinforcing your environmental shield.

Do it! Another blow hits me in the chest, causing the flesh to give way. Dragh!

You also lost control of your containment construct. Given that the pressure isn't dropping I'm forced to conclude that the Rayner child has the matter in hand.

Guh-huhugh. Anything else?

That idea about the x-ionised blades was a decent enough idea. Oh, and twenty two percent charge remaining.

Thank… You…

The pain decreases a little but I still can't see. Sinestro, filaments. Find him.

Got him. One metre twenty ahead and slightly to the right.

I have absolutely no need to focus further on fear as I desperately stab at him with my entire arsenal. Red lines blink out as the blades sever them and his outline starts to shimmer and lose cohesion. Don't hope. Hope is the trap. You're still being slowly incinerated.

Gonzo falls backwards, his central mass shimmering and drifting apart.

Good news, Corpsman. The external pressure appears to be dropping off.

Ugh.

He's… He's right. I can feel the burning getting mildly less intense. Though that could just be my nerves getting incinerated. Uhh. Just.. just hold on a little longer.

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Stars, Crossed, part 2 30

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13th January 2004

10:32 GMT

It's funny, really.

A normal killer robot will fire a nuclear weapon at you and call it a day.

An Apokoliptian killer robot will wade through the resulting explosion in order to punch you.

Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu heh heheh heow…

"No, she's right. I didn't start containing the explosion until after he signalled me."

That was Kyle's voice. Everything still hurts, but I don't seem to be taking more damage. I survived.

Hooray.

Ow.

I try moving my mouth only to realise that I can't feel the inside. Double check… Yes, I lost my tongue. And I think my cheeks as well. That's weird. There's a sort of itch at the back of my mouth which I hope is it regrowing. Eyes..? No. I try moving my right haow! Okay, not doing that again.

"Why did he do that?"

You see, Kara; sometimes people -even fairly clever people- can do some very stupid things. For example: I should have killed Gonzo before talking to you.

You most certainly should, Corpsman. Though I am glad that at least you recognise it after the fact.

Also, situational awareness. I'm not really sure where Gonzo got a suitcase nuke from, but a simple scan would have picked it up before it could become a problem.

Bravo, Corpsman. We might make a decent Lantern of you yet.

Better programming for the drones… Or going after the Thanagarian Command Carrier myself as soon as I found out that Scott had captured it. Their weapon suppression system would have meant this could have been the pure superhero team versus supervillain fight I wanted it to be.

"He.. died, protecting us from that bomb. He could have got away easily if he wasn't..."

I wouldn't say easily. It would certainly have hurt and I'm not sure my Garrick injection would have lasted long enough to get me out of the blast radius. O-oh everything hurts. And that's about all I can feel. I can't even feel what I'm lying on.

Wait. Died? Oh dear, is this what happens when New Gods die? We just hang around? That contradicts everything I know about thaumaturgy.

You're not dead, Corpsman.

That's a somewhat unfortunate sentence.

"He's not dead." Ah-arrrrrrrr. Someone just kicked me. Barda? Was that really necessary? "His ring's still glowing."

Sinestro, how much power do we have left?

About eight percent, Corpsman.

Oh. Ah. Father Box, still with us?

Ploong.

"And he can hear what we're saying."

Ah, balls. Can't fly, can barely move… Ring, excavate a hole in the ground beneath me, but keep the ground level where it is. I need a hole I can fall into at a moment's notice.

"Good Lord, really? But he looks like…"

Digging your own grave, Corpsman? I had expected a little more psychological resilience. Given your performance during our brief acquaintance I doubt this is the first time you've been seriously injured.

…

Actually, it pretty much is. I mean… Usually I pick my targets from concealment, rush in and kick the shit out of them before they know what's happening. That, or I'm just so powerful that I win anyway. Had a little more difficulty with Klarion, but he was just so unfocused… Earth 50 hurts.

Oh dear.

Of course, if I was fully equipped when I came here… Heck, even having the orange power ring would have let me survive that explosion a little less roasted.

"So what do we do with him?"

Sinestro, excavation progress?

You could just about fall into it, Corpsman.

Keep going. I need it big enough to open a boom tube in.

And where could you possibly go that they could not follow?

Barda doesn't have a Mother Box. As long as Scott stays on the ship I should have enough time to get to the Watchtower and get Batman to send me back to Earth 16.

"Barda, Mister Miracle: can you tell who out of these soldiers is being controlled by the Anti-Life?"

"No. Gonzo's remains are clouding everything out. Scott?"

And he's down here and there are other soldiers. Wonderful.

"I can, but somehow I don't think they're going to take my word for it."

Okay. I could boom tube to the Thanagarian ship's bridge… No, that doesn't really help. Sinestro, can you send a message to Batman without Rayner overhearing it?

A simple enough task.

Right. Message. Partial success on the mission-

Hm.

-in that Gonzo is dead, Father Time's dead, all my information is out in the open and the new League are working together. Downside, I got nuked to within half an inch of my life. How detection-proof is the Watchtower?

Message sent.

"We can't just hand him over. Not after what he did. They'd lobotomise him or something."

"Yes, we can."

No, shut up Supergirl. Marvel's onto something.

"Mister Miracle, can the Thanagarian ship hold him?"

"Hm. I should think so. We need to get rid of his weapons first, of course."

"I'll take the ring."

Sinestro!

The hole is deep enough for a boom tube aperture. Batman says 'As hard to detect as we can make it. Do you need evac?'

Tongue construct. "Well done. You actually beat me."

"And we can finish you off before you can reactivate your drones, so don't try anything."

"Wouldn't dream of it, dear sister-in-law. You won. And I like to think I'm not a bad loser. I hope you can.. come up with some idea of how you wish to proceed quickly. I doubt that the world will wait."

"Ordinarily I'd put cuffs on you, but you're kind of melted. If you promise not to-."

"I appreciate the consideration, Nightwing. But it's not necessary." Boom tube, three times random. Then to the Watchtower's medical bay. No, wait, radiation shower, then medical bay. "I'll remove myself from the field." Father Box, boom tube, Sinestro, stop supporting the ground.

Boom!

"Where is it!"

And I'm falling.

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Stars, Crossed, part 2 31

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14th January 2004

12:39 GMT

I shake my head in incomprehension as the news broadcast covers the formal announcement of the formation of the Earth's new superhuman team. "Stormwatch? Of all the names they could have gone with?"

Batman considers it for a moment, then nods. "Anything involving 'Justice' would remind people of the Justice Lords. 'Stormwatch' implies that they're looking out for disasters and will intervene only when they see one."

"And that if there isn't some disaster happening, they'll keep themselves to themselves."

I finish unwrapping the bandage from my right hand. Ugh. I'm still far from fully well, but I've finally reached the point where I'm getting some non-pain sensation from my extremities. And the Geiger counter hardly reacts to me at all. "I hope they're not planning on being quite that hands-off. America does not need a third supervillain president."

Batman's eyes drop down for a second. "That won't be necessary. We have the resources to keep an eye on that, and our public reputation is already sufficiently negative that we won't be hurt if we're obliged to intervene."

I nod towards the image of the unexpected 8th member of… Stormwatch. "Do they know he's crazy?"

Shayera nods. "He doesn't really do anything to disguise it. I suppose they need someone who can keep their ship running too much to worry about it."

I experimentally open and close my right hand. Owowowowow. The image on the screen changed to an interview with Director Bones. Making him head of SHADE was pretty much the first thing the former Vice President did upon being sworn in. I had no idea that his first name was 'Ethan'. The fact that he is apparently welcoming the formation of Stormwatch isn't much of a surprise; his organisation failed in an epic and public way, two of its members are SHADE agents anyway and he owes a massive personal debt to one of the others. I appear to have been written out of his account of his liberation. That's… A little annoying, but it does present a better narrative. I'm not going to kick off about it.

Shayera glances at me. "What's going to happen to those kids you rescued?"

I shrugow. I gently roll my right shoulder. "I don't know. Bones said something about setting up a training program… An actual one, for training agents with metahuman powers. I don't know if they'll be interested, but on the other hand if they did volunteer there's no way he'd let anything untoward happen to them. The negative publicity would finish SHADE off."

"I meant personally. Where are they going to live?"

"Since I haven't been able to detect them, I'm guessing that they're on the Command Carrier now, probably behind some sort of New Genesis derived shield. I don't know enough about their circumstances… I suppose they should go back to their parents?"

"That really a good idea?"

"There's no way they knew what they were volunteering their children for. A little normalcy would probably do them some good."

"And the girl… Lynne? You know what happened to her parents."

Not as if I've had much else to do but scour databases. Sinestro has a surprisingly pleasant reading voice. Miss Wayland's parents were the victim of the first manifestation of her abilities, their minds apparently completely burned out by her mental touch. Metahumans usually have an intuitive grasp of their powers, but fine control takes time to develop and she was too young to have learned. Her grandparents signed her over to SHADE and her parents died in hospital a few months later when their life support systems were turned off. I don't disagree with the decision. It would have been better if another telepath could have given them the once over to make sure but from the records it's pretty clear they were brain dead. I doubt very much that her grandparents would want her back… If she even remembers them…

I glance down, shaking my head. "I'm sure that Scott and Barda can handle her. And their team could do with a telepath."

Shayera and John share a look. John loses. "What you did to her soul… From what you said, I thought that was kind of a big deal."

"It was." Oh wait, they don't..? "No." I shake my head. "Noo. I.. may understand the thematic appeal of me taking her on, but that's.. really not practical. I am going back to prison."

"I thought you were getting a Presidential Pardon?"

"I was, then I disappeared for a week. I think our non-robotic President Horne will go ahead with pardoning me anyway, but it won't happen immediately. Then I'm fully expecting our Justice League to boot me out of the Cave, so I'll have to find somewhere new to live. Then I'm going to be working with the Light. Not really.. child-friendly company. Plus there's.. Jade. I think that if I was even considering it I should talk to her about it first."

He nods reluctantly. "I suppose you've got a point."

"That's not even getting into the fact that our Darkseid is still alive. Earth is going to get introduced to the soul-crushing end of the Anti-Life Equation at some point. I'm not even going to consider having children until I'm confident we can deal with that level of attack. It just wouldn't be responsible, particularly given what she's already experienced."

"Hey. You don't need to explain it to me. If you say it's not a good idea, then it's not a good idea."

It's funny. I'm getting the sneaking suspicion that if I was wearing the orange ring at the moment I would feel differently about it. Maybe if I'd sorted things out back home better before coming here… Well. What is, is.

"Alright. Things seem to be under control here. Do you need anything from me before I head back?"

Batman looks up for a moment from where he's programming the dimensional gateway. "I don't believe so. I may need to consult with you when we're ready to test our hush tube."

Ah, the wonders of a free and frank exchange of technology.

"Are you sure you don't want me to raid Apokolips fifty? A quick in and out would probably get me the parts you need."

"No. We already have some New God technology captured from our last visit to Apokolips. I should be able to work something out." Good luck with that. "You're sure you want to reappear exactly where you left?"

"Yeah, it's probably best. You guys need anything, you know where to find me." The portal generators thrum into life. I take a step towards Shayera and John and open my arms. "You two stay safe without me."

"We'll manage. Somehow."

I put an arm around each of their backs in a light hug, mindful of my injuries. "And if you can't do that… Name it after me!"

"Hey!"

I step back with a smirk, give them a last wave with my right hand and then jog through the portal.

1st March 2011

22:55 GMT -6

Ah, home sweet cell. My former cellmates have long since left, of course. The drunk in the cell opposite catches sight of me, whimpers, then appears to try to duck and cover. My cell door is open. That won't d-.

The dimensional gate behind me disappears.

Huh. I'm starting to get that 'after holiday' feeling. I sag slightly and sigh. Okay, back to work. Sinestro's ring is tucked away inside my armour just in case anything stupid happens but I'd rather keep him a secret for the moment. I lean across the small space and slide the cell door shut, then sit down on the floor. Where is-? Ah yes, I see a few rather sophisticated detection devices attached to the ceiling of the cell. If I assume that someone just got woken up by an alarm going off-.

There's a flash of red, then the man himself is standing in front of the bars. I give him a nod in greeting. "Good evening, sir. You will not believe the week I've had."

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Hullevow

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Hullevow 1

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Hullevow

2nd March

09:22 GMT +1

I put the amulet John gave me back into my jacket pocket as I lean against the wall opposite the church hall's toilet block. Should.. probably give this a few minutes… I actually wanted to talk to John about Hekatonkheires, but I lost heart when his response to me asking was a mystified "Y'what?" Finding-.

An interior door bangs and I take a mobile phone out of my pocket, pretending to be engrossed in the screen. A moment later a man whom I'm going to assume from his dress is an Orthodox priest of some kind walks out. He looks around as he leaves the toilet block and I look up, giving him a smile and a friendly nod. Ring, don't translate. "Father." Not the proper way of addressing a priest around here if you're a believer, but then.. I'm not.

He nods back and raises his right hand to wave at the ignorant tourist. "May God smile upon you, my son."

He means well. I return my attention to my phone as he looks up into the sky, then carries on down the path. Give him a while to get out of sight… Good. I slip the phone back into an interior pocket before ambling across the path and entering the toilet block myself. John's amulet is still tugging at my lapel so I know I'm in the right place. I was a little worried she might just vanish, but then; why would she? It's not like any of her enemies have the means to find her any longer. I can hear her singing softly to herself from the men's toilets, and... Heh, the graffiti on the walls covers a few spell glyphs. She thinks that she'd have warning.

John will be amused.

I push open the door and the woman redoing her makeup by the sink looks around in surprise. Respectable calf length skirt, blouse and woollen jumper… Not really what I'd expected her to wear, but I suppose she's playing a role. The face is neither her default one or particularly striking in its own right. I'm going to assume that she chose it to appeal to her target.

She frowns at me and the lip gloss tube disappears. "What are you doing in here?"

Indignation. She plans to pretend she picked the wrong toilet. Brush the whole thing off. Okay.

"This is the men's. Um. I can just… Wait?"

"Oh!" She looks around, her countenance changing to one of joviality. It's fascinating, really. Empathic vision is giving me nothing. "Silly me." She takes a step towards me. "I've been coming here for years and still manage to go in the wrong one." She pats my left forearm with her right hand. And.. there's the confusion. About a second as she tries to assess the threat level, then she steps back a few steps, still smiling. "Would you be a dear and wait outside for a moment while I finish up?"

"Ordinarily I'd be happy to, but I did come rather a long way to talk to you." I straighten up slightly, a mild smile on my face. "Miss Chantinelle."

She shakes her head. "I.. don't know anyone…" The ring pings my brain as my Spell Eater gets ever so slightly warmer. A second later Chantinelle abandons the pretence, glowering fiercely, her eyes shifting from brown to her default turquoise. "Who are you?"

"Someone interested in doing business with you."

Her face relaxes a little. Guarded but no longer aggressive. "Well… You might want to turn off your wards, then." She struts a pace closer. "You'll have more fun that way."

"Not that sort of business. I'm nothing like stupid enough to try that with a Succubus."

She looks me over salaciously, her body slowly shifting shape as she returns to her default mostly human form. Long, straight, dull brown hair parted in the middle, slender body and tiny fangs that are a lot less cute in real life than Japanese animation thinks they are. "I don't have to feed. Sometimes I just do it for fun."

"The priest?"

"Priests are always fun."

I narrow my eyes. "I don't think Orthodox priests actually have to be celibate."

"No, but they're not supposed to be un-celibate with their Deacon's wife."

I beam. "Oh, congratulations!"

She frowns, puzzled. "It wasn't that hard."

"No, on getting married! I realise that must have presented you certain practical difficulties-."

She blinks heavily, then shakes her head. "No, I'm not actually married.. to... I just took her shape to seduce the priest."

"Oh right." I nod. "That makes more sense."

She looks me over again, this time a little more cautiously. "Where did you get that ward from?"

"Same place you did. Weird not being able to see inside someone, isn't it?"

She exhales with frustration. "Constantine."

"He and I have a scheme in the works. And since I like to plan for contingencies, it seemed wise to come to terms with people who could mess things up before they got into a position to do so. I understand the two of you aren't on best terms-."

"Do you know what he did to me?"

"After you made everyone he knows hate him, he gave your last known location to the First. To be honest, even leaving aside the fact that I killed the First again a few weeks ago I think you're.. kind of even now. But, that's why I'm here, not him. I want to pay you off so that you'll agree not to interfere."

"What's the scheme?"

"I'm not going to tell you that."

She tilts her head to the side. "Now I'm curious. What exactly happens if I say 'no'?"

"I shoot you dead with the Ace of Winchesters." Her eyes don't widen, but her pupils do dilate slightly for a moment. "Though I would really rather not do that."

She nods and leans back against the… Ah. Since she can't read my desires she's going for generic appeal. Nothing too obvious, but she's gained a cup size, lost a few centimetres of height and her hair's grown a little lighter. I think her facial structure is changing slightly as well, becoming less harsh. "What am I being offered?"

"If I remember correctly, you told your lover… The Angel-."

"His name was Tali."

"Tali." I nod. "You once told him that you loved Hell… The screams, the landscape, the suffering… But also that you didn't identify with that value set. You hadn't grown up learning it, you'd just been…" I circle my right hand. "Created with it. It just.. happened to be.. how you are. Was that true?"

She glares. "How did you hear that?"

"I read it in a comic book. Was it true?"

"I.. suppose." She shakes her head. "Why does it matter?"

"What I want to offer you is power. Raw, arcane, lots of it. The downside -and why I'm not using this technique on myself- is that it would significantly affect the sorts of thing you value. But…" I spread out my hands and shrug. "If you don't care about that, and you get something you value now…"

"I'm not quite that casual about it."

"When was the last time you were completely happy, Chantinelle? Running? Hiding? The occasional clerical seduction? Ripping Gabriel's heart out? No. Not even that. It was when you were with Tali. I'm offering you the chance to feel that way again. No more missing Hell, wanting to go back even though you know any number of Demons know you as John's ally and would gleefully take their hate out on you. No more risking giving yourself away by feeding on people. I know you only just managed to dodge those Inquisitors in Kiev. You could be happy as yourself. How about it?"

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Hullevow 2

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2nd March

08:45 GMT

The Northampton Arms' barman nods at me as I lead Chantinelle inside. "He's upstairs, mate. You c'n go right up."

"Thank you." I had assumed that we'd be doing this at The Tate Club, but apparently they have rules about Demons walking in through the front doors. I head across the bar area towards the stairs that go up to the function room. John and Zatanna should have had time to prepare by now. Not a lot of people around at this time of day, and none of them pay us any significant attention.

Chantinelle entwines my left arm with her right and leans into me. "Do they know that you're a super hero?"

"I'm never completely sure. I don't exactly hide it, but if they've heard of 'Orange Lantern' at all they probably only noticed the ring or the armour." The double doors leading upstairs are hooked open and we walk upwards together, me unhooking them with a filament as we go. Chantinelle nuzzles my shoulder, but she isn't focusing on me. Her eyes unfocus slightly as she tries to make sense of the magic she can feel from our destination. Shouldn't be much; we're still running quiet and we don't want any sort of suspicious leakage for Nabu to investigate.

As we reach the top of the stairs I flick the function room doors open with another filament. The rugs on the floor have been rolled up and deposited at the sides of the room. The tables are a mismatched lot, some chipboard with fold away metal legs while others solid wood. Those that can be flattened have been and stuck behind the bar while the others have been lifted out of the way. The interior walls have been covered in warding sigils, and as the doors close behind us I see that they have been too. I'll get rid of those before we leave.

John finishes work on the pattern on the floor and stands back up. He's got his shirt sleeves rolled up and his jacket is folded up on one of the tables at the side of the room. His eyes meet Chantinelle's for a brief moment, his face going blank and his breath leaving him in an extended exhalation. Then he looks away with a small shake of his head, turning his attention to our fellow conspirator. "Zatanna, we ready to give it a test?"

Zatanna's school uniform is nothing like as fetishy as popular culture has led me to believe it should be. Yes, there's a pleated tartan skirt in red, pink and white, but it's knee length. There are tights, but they're thick and it's early spring. She has a blouse, waistcoat and a jacket decorated with the school's crest.

She also has a long, metal, rune-covered stave topped by Sephtian's best Star Sapphire containment cage. Violet light is weakly radiating out from it at levels which our tests -and, frankly, educated guesses- say should be safe for a person to be exposed to long term. The staff itself is a joint effort between myself, Sephtian and Io. The bulk of it is a metal that Earth science hasn't gotten around to naming yet, a heavy nucleus metal with a half life measured in billions of years. Since the stuff didn't exist on Earth before I made it last week it has no arcane presence at all. It's hard without being brittle, reacts with almost no naturally occurring materials and the staff weighs enough to be used as a bludgeoning weapon without being too heavy for Zatanna to hold for an extended period of time. Tiny strands of orichalcum wire threaded throughout the structure hold a spell network that make it possible for Zatanna to use the Star Sapphire without all the fuss we had to make the first time she tried, as well as generally aiding in her efforts to focus the power. Shame she can't use it on missions, really.

I get a warm smile, Chantinelle gets a puzzled frown and then John gets a nod. "I'm feeding power… Now."

Violet light flows from the Star Sapphire down the length of the staff to where it touches the inscription on the floor. Violet… It's not exactly fire. It flickers too slowly and wafts in accordance with local emotional resonances rather than the movements of the air. Violet non-fire flares up as power from the Star Sapphire flows across the diagram, first from the containment and binding charms around the outside, then onto the functional components towards the centre. Finally the Star Sapphire symbol in the centre flares a brilliant violet and Zatanna lifts her staff from the floor, breaking the external connection.

Chantinelle straightens up slightly. "Are you giving me that staff? Not sure how much use it'll be to me."

"No, we're not giving you the staff." Zatanna's irises have gone violet, and violet mist continues to waft around the staff. That's not an immediate danger sign, but I am keeping an eye on it just in case. Zatanna tilts her head a little to the right as she looks into Chantinelle. "You feel.. different than other Demons."

"Lucky me. John? What am I supposed to be getting out of this? It better be good."

He ambles over to his jacket and pulls out a cigarette packet. "Simple really, 'Elle. First time we met, you'd gotten into a spot a'trouble after fallin' in love with an Angel. Unusual, that. Most Demons can't feel love." He takes a cigarette out and puts the packet back. "Didn't seem important at the time…" He looks at the diagram on the floor and slips the cigarette into his mouth. "The crystal on the end of Zatanna's staff is a link to… Can't believe I'm sayin' this… The element of love." Chantinelle's eyebrows go up and she pulls away from me to get a better look at the diagram. "We can use it to replace your connection to Hell's magic, basically remake you as a.. sort of.. Elemen'al, rather than a Succubus." He nods at me. "Paul explained that, right?"

"Oh, is that his name." She starts walking around the outer edge of the diagram. In the direction that takes her away from John, I note. "He said something like that. Are you sure this will work?"

"For a Zamaron, or someone with an actual violet power ring, this would be simple. For us, it's a bit trickier. John and Zatanna had to do quite a bit of research, but..." I nod. "We're as sure as we can be without testing it, and as far as we can tell you're one hundred percent of the people it can work on."

Curious. I genuinely can't tell whether she wants this or not. Body language analysis suggests 'yes', but I know full well that isn't reliable with shapeshifters. "He said it would make me more powerful."

"You'll be able to fuel yourself with Human love, not tearing strips off their souls by fucking 'em." John shrugs as he fishes a lighter out of his pocket. "It's a sympathetic thing, you wouldn't be taking anything from anyone. Could even power yourself from your own love, if you wanted. Inquisitors don't go after Elementals much, your sisters won't see you as competition any more…" He lights his cigarette and jabs the lit end in my direction. "Give it a few years for everyone to forget and you could even try joining his lot. People like love." He takes a drag and then looks at her, eyebrows raised. "You want it, or what?"

Chantinelle continues around the circle, drawing closer to Zatanna. When she reaches the nearest point of her circuit she stops and looks at her. Zatanna gives her a small smile. Chantinelle seems almost nervous. I suppose -even if she was telling the truth- this is a big deal. After a moment she looks away, then nods. "What do I need to do?"

Zatanna gestures with the head of her stave towards the diagram. "Just step onto the star in the center and think about someone you love."

"And then what?"

"Then.. it starts. We're.. not exactly sure what it'll be like for you."

A wisp of violet mist flows from Zatanna's staff over Chantinelle's foot before redirecting itself to the diagram. The violet light over the sigil in the centre flares up and-. Oh. In the centre of the diagram stands the image of a winged man with medium-curly medium-length hair. He's well muscled and wearing what appears to be a chain mail t-shirt and a short skirt. He beckons Chantinelle to join him.

"Damn you." Chantinelle spares a moment to snarl at Zatanna, as… Are those tears? Before she returns her attention to the Angel construct. "It's not him." She closes her eyes and wipes her right hand across her face. "It's not-." She takes two breaths, then strides across the diagram and throws her arms around him, pressing her face into his neck. Her leathery wings burst through her jacket at the back and curl around him.

Zatanna raises her staff and points the Star Sapphire at Chantinelle. "Eb nrober." Violet light blasts from the head, causing the violet not-fire of the diagram to flare up once more. The centre point of the diagram glows brilliantly for a moment and then dulls, translucent violet crystal forming around Chantinelle. "Conversion in progress."

John exhales a cloud of smoke, then nods, his eyes fixed on the reforming Succubus. "Any idea how long it's gunna take?"

Zatanna shakes her head. "Not really. I can tell how much she's been converted but I can't tell how long it will be until she's finished."

"Right. I'm gunna pop down and order breakfast then. Shout if anything happens."

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Hullevow 3

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2nd March

10:08 GMT

"This is what you do on Themyscira?" Zatanna looks through my Grey Council Diplomacy deck. "Do they even.. have card games?"

"I think Diana's the one who originally introduced them to the idea." I shrug. "The four I taught to play it found it strange, but I think they pretty much expect strange from me."

"I can't imagine why." She shifts her attention to the play mat. "And you have to keep track of tension for every race?"

"Yes."

"Even if none of you are doing anything that involved tension? How often does it come up that the Centauri's tension towards the Humans is different to the Humans' tension towards the Centauri?"

"It doesn't." I look at the play mat sadly. "I think it's to stop it being too easy to go to war, but.. yeah, it was a strange design decision. They stopped supporting the game for a reason."

"So… Why don't you just fix it?"

"Huh?"

"Fix it. You know, like you wanted to with Warhammer. In fact it should be easier because no one here's even heard of Babylon Five, so you wouldn't have to work against their preconceptions."

I could do that… Maybe have Unrest reduce Power, so it doesn't only matter when someone's playing Drahk? Complexity should arise naturally during play, not be imposed or completely situational… "I… Suppose I cou-. "

The crystal surrounding Chantinelle shatters, exploding across the room in fragments. The diagram on the floor flares for a second and then gutters out as the Succubus… Former Succubus, collapses to the floor. Zatanna and I immediately get to our feet, Zatanna grabbing her staff.

"Uh?" The noise wakes up John, who blearily blinks at the world from his armchair before a moment for getting up, wiping sleepy from his eyes as he does. "Oh, she's out." He starts patting himself down to find his cigarette packet. It's in the pocket of his jacket on the back of his chair, but I think I'll use how long it takes him to work that out as a guide to how awake he is.

Chantinelle hasn't moved. In fact, I think she's curling up on herself. "Uah-uah-uah." She's shaking. Empathic vision's still blocked…

"Zatanna, is the spell circuit dead?"

She nods. "Should be. All the power went into her when it finished."

I glance at the crystal shards, which are evaporating. Into nothing, apparently. There's no chemical residue and no violet light flowing anywhere. Interesting.

John takes a moment to straighten his shirt, then takes a step towards the shivering Succubus. "Elle? You alright, love?"

"No I'm not." I hear a sob. "John? I'm a horrible person."

John frowns slightly, then looks over at the two of us. Zatanna looks puzzled. I shake my head and shrug. "You're a Demon, pet. It pretty much comes with the territory." He takes a few steps closer, then squats down near to her. "Can you look at me a minute?"

"I don't deserve-." John reaches out and puts his right hand on her left shoulder. Her head jerks up and her wings pull back. She doesn't really look any different to me, though out of the three of us I've got the worst awareness of magic energy flows. "I can feel it, John. Love. Everywhere. And I… All the times I seduced people and broke up their relationships and laughed about it… I can feel it all. I can see all their faces. It's all wrong! And what I did to you and that Dani woman because I got angry about you resurrecting the First. I shouldn't have done it."

"That was years ago, Elle. I've never needed your help sabotaging me relationships before." He purses his lips for a moment. "If you really wanna do something about it, we can probably find her address easily enough."

"I already know where she is. I know where they all are! And it's horrible! Little violet strings I've spent my whole life tearing up and they're all… Like I used to be with him, and now they're…" She's actually tearing up. "What am I supposed to do, John?"

"How about you try what normal people do? Fix it if you can, try and do something that makes up for it if you can't."

"When does it stop-" She sits back on her haunches, arms hugging herself. "-feeling like this?"

John exhales sharply with amusement. "I'll let you know when I find out, love. But fixin' stuff for people usually helps a bit. Can you do any a' that construct stuff Lanterns can do?" Chantinelle shakily holds out her right hand, a claw construct forming around it. "There you are, then. You can get to 'em wherever they are. You can see what's wrong, and you can try an' fix it."

He offers her his right hand to help her up. Still not all that steady, she takes it and rises to her feet, her clothes shifting into a somewhat more conservative form. She turns to Zatanna and I for a moment, looking at us a little curiously. Then she flashes brilliant violet for a moment before disappearing.

John looks at where she was standing for a moment. "That's done, then." He pats himself down again. "You mind giving us a hand cleaning-?" I hold my hands out and orange strobes clean off the walls and floor. "Magic, mate. So, what's next?"

"Recruitment." I glance at Zatanna. "For fighting Nabu… I think we need -no offence meant or anything- a combat mage. Someone who knows enough to help shutting Nabu down. I've thought about it and I think draining him represents the safest way of stopping him without risking Mister Zatara."

"Normally, yeah, but he's topping himself back up from the Plane of Order. Draining him fast enough-."

"You've had a look at my blue alter ego's storage battery design. Whoever's doing it just has to protect themselves and channel the power into it."

Zatanna thinks for a moment. "Could Rob do it? I know you didn't want to involve the rest of the team, but he is a thaumovore. And the rest of us would have Nabu's attention."

John shakes his head. "Cornwall Boy tried it with Klarion on Roanoke and he couldn't make it work." He looks down at the floor for a moment. "I know a guy who might maybe be able to help. I'd have t'.. track him down, though. We weren't exactly close."

"There's a surprise."

John actually looks hurt for a second, before realising that she's just joking. "How about Trevor Marrack? Think he'd be up for it?"

"I don't know. I don't… I think it would look too much like a grey area to him, especially if we can't come up with something that won't risk killing Nabu. I should be able to talk Rob into coming down to Sephtian's lab, see if we can get a better idea how his ability works. If we could turn it into something we could bind to an artefact… How's he getting on with the Atlantean books Kaldur got him?"

"Honestly?" Zatanna shakes her head. "Not all that great. Even with the translation it's like learning a whole new language. I have trouble with it, and Dad… Dad taught me a lot more about magical theory than Rob knows."

"Okay, I'll talk to him about it. Zatanna, how was the staff?"

"It's so much better than doing it all myself. And you were totally right about external power sources; with this I feel like I can just keep casting spells forever. Maybe after we've dealt with Nabu I could make it part of my normal equipment?"

"I suppose… As long as the Zamarons don't want it back." I hold out my right hand. "And we don't detect any adverse mental effects."

"But-."

"Put it down. It's time for your scan."

back

Hullevow 4

next

2nd March

08:22 GMT -5

"Recognised, Orange Lantern, B zero six."

I stroll out into the training room. Fun part of the day well and truly over. You never realise how much work it takes to move a flying Doom Fortress across a planet until you try it. I only really asked out of politeness, but neither the Russians nor the Americans want me taking it through the Bering Straits. I mean, once I get through there there's nothing between me and the South Pole but ocean. I thought it would be easy, but no. The Russians don't want me any nearer their proving ground than I am now and that crazy woman in charge of Alaska doesn't want a foreign warship in American airspace. I thought that after the Spetsnaz paid me a visit I'd convinced the Russians that it really wasn't a spy craft, but it looks like they're not making exceptions no matter how sensible they would be. My choices appear to be risking a transition -something I could probably do but I'm not entirely happy about- or flying it over the pole and down the Atlantic side.

Maybe Sephtian could build a portal big enough to fly through..?

"Wotcha, Orange Lantern."

I look down the side corridor as Beryl Hutchinson and Rob march out. "Squire, Cornwall Boy. What brings the two of you here on a school morning?"

"Minions, mate."

"Alright, but I charge by the hour and I expect union rates."

Rob stares at me in incomprehension. "Whot?"

Beryl snorts with laughter. "He means the village in Cornwall. It's called Minions. Something weird's happening there and Cyril wanted to talk to the Justice League about it. Next thing you know we're all walking through a zeta tube into…" She looks around. "Is this really Mount Justice?"

"I don't think I'm supposed to confirm or deny that."

She looks at me with what I think is a mild frown. Her pointless tiny mask makes it a little hard to tell. "You've got good control of your body language. Is that training or are you using your power ring?"

"A little of both. So how exactly did Sir Cyril wanting a chat result in you coming here?"

Rob smiles ruefully. "Magic, mate. Me and Dad tried having a look around but we couldn't get a handle on it. We though-."

"That asking his magic using friends for assistance was the wisest course of action." Kaldur enters the training room down the main corridor, followed closely Garth and Tula. "I am glad that you are back. Knight will be providing a full briefing shortly."

I nod as Beryl calls up the holoscreen on her arm-mounted personal computer. "Speaking of which, I better get the presentation loaded. Cyril's not great with computers."

"Heard that, you cheeky minx." Sir Cyril, Batman, Trevor Marrack and King Orin follow on behind my team mates. "I'll have you know my Twunter feed's got nearly eight million follows now." I spot Beryl rolling her eyes as she raises the holoscreen to cover her response. "Good morning Paul."

"Good morning, Sir Cyril, sir,-" Batman. "-your majesty,-" King Orin. "-Mister Marrack. What seems to be the problem?"

"Probably not a lot, to be honest. Beryl?" The main holoscreen comes to life, showing a view of what I assume to be the village itself. The picture is upside down and has what looks suspiciously like Sir Cyril's fingers across the top. Sir Cyril hesitates for a moment as Beryl smirks and presses a button to turn it the right way up. "Right. This is Minions, in Cornwall. About a week ago Squire spotted that they'd been having a surprising number of car accidents lately. Low speed, so no one got seriously hurt or anything. When we had a look at what was causing them, it turns out that the people involved were all knackered. Could barely keep their eyes open. We asked around a bit and it turns out that everyone's been having recurring nightmares on and off for near enough the last month. From the statements we took, it sounds like in a lot of cases they were having the same ones."

The image changes to show a police forensics team in protective gear. "When we heard about that, we called in police forensics and the chemical warfare people. They checked the whole place out." The images changes to an overhead view of the village. "Nothing in the soil, nothing in the air, nothing in the food, nothing in the buildings. Nothing on ultrasonics or infrasonics. Didn't have a good way to detect telepaths, but everyone gave us a blood sample and no one tested positive for metahuman traits. Did a thorough check of the whole area and didn't find anything out of the ordinary. And once we'd been there a few days, we started having the nightmares too."

I see a yellow shape in him. There's a very clear fear association with that memory. Surprising it's lasted this long. Some sort of.. cancer monster, eating people?

"Since we couldn't think of anything else it could be, I phoned Trevor and asked him to take a look."

Mister Marrack nods. "There's definitely a presence there. It only flares up when it's actually causing the nightmares, though. Didn't feel a thing 'til I tried touching the poor bastard going through one of them. Horrible, it was." He pauses for a moment. "I could just about keep it out while I was there, but I couldn't do it for the whole village. Especially not when I couldn't sleep myself."

Sir Cyril nods. "And that's when I got in touch with Batman. After what happened in Stone Cross, the British Government's got a bit jumpy about magic."

Kaldur's eyes move from the map to Sir Cyril. "Has the village been evacuated?"

"We're keeping an eye on it, but there doesn't seem to be any physical threat. After a month on and off, everyone who's going to leave has already left. There's a couple of MI6 agents still there but all the other police and army people got recalled. No sense in them staying on when they can't do anything."

Batman steps forwards. "You'll be going in as tourists. Attempt to identify the nature and source of the fear projection and report back to me. Aqualad, if you judge it to be within your team's ability to confront whoever or whatever is causing these nightmares then you have my authorisation to do so. Otherwise, Doctor Fate-" ! "-can be with you on short notice."

Kaldur nods. "Knight. How long did it take for you to begin experiencing the nightmares?"

"Difficult to say. I'd been in the village for five days, but I wasn't the first to go down with them. That was.. a bloke on the chemical weapons detail, and he'd only been there for two. And it's hard to tell the difference between normal nightmares and ones being caused by whatever this is."

"Are there any links between the nightmares and.. times of the year, or phases of the moon..?"

Sir Cyril turns to Beryl. She takes a moment to realise and then looks at me and shakes her head. "Nothing like that. They tend to happen at night, but that's just because that's when people usually sleep. Whatever the cause is, it isn't working in concert with anything I could find information on."

Kaldur turns to Batman. "How long will we have to complete this mission?"

"We have no reason to believe that there's any deadline for locating the cause. You should pack for a week. If you haven't found anything by then…"

King Orin smiles at Kaldur. "Then I'll send a fully qualified battlemage to assist in your investigation."

"My King, would it not be wise to assign one from the start?"

"Not every mission I have for you can be completed by hitting your enemy until they stop moving, Kaldur'ahm." Kaldur's head sags slightly. "And sending a member of the Atlantean military who wasn't associated with the Justice League to a foreign country would be somewhat politically awkward, as well as alerting whoever is doing this to our interest." His gaze moves over the three Atlanteans. "But I don't believe it will prove necessary. I have every confidence that the three of you have what it takes to get to the bottom of this."

The three of them simultaneously raise their right fists to their foreheads in a salute. I spot Rob start to make a fist himself before realising that he's not meant to join in. I sometimes forget that the three of them are military cadets. I wonder what the rest of the Atlantean military makes of this whole thing?

Batman glances at Squire, and the hologram shifts to show Minions' location in the county. "The nearest zeta tube is in Brighton. I suggest travelling to Minions by road to preserve your cover, but deciding on the specifics of how to meet your objectives is up to your team leader. Dismissed."

back

Hullevow 5

next

2nd March

08:41 GMT -5

"Finished packing already?"

I look over to where Rob stands, holdall over his shoulder. "Power rings are awesome. I've also booked us room at somewhere called.. 'The Cheesewring'?"

"Yeah, that's where Beryl and Sir Cyril stayed. She said it was okay."

"How come you're getting out of school for this?"

"'Cause my school realises that saving people's lives is more important than a couple of geography lessons." I raise my eyebrows slightly. "They've given me a load of homework to try and get done, but they're usually okay about stuff like this. Long as it doesn't happen too often."

I look past him down the corridor to Tula's room, where Beryl is helping her pack things that will make her less noticeable than usual while we're in Cornwall. "And Beryl?"

He looks at me as if he's not sure whether or not I'm being serious. "Mate, her school just let her do whatever. I don't think she's ever not got an 'A' in anything. Stuff like this is the only reason she hasn't just taken her GCSEs early so she doesn't have to go anymore."

"Oh, I… Didn't know that. " Well, I knew that her exam results were good, they were part of my initial data capture. Didn't know that was what she managed all the time, though. Or that it was that easy for her.

"Yeah." He looks down the corridor towards our colleagues' rooms, then sighs and turns back to me. "Can I..? Like..? Talk to you for a minute?"

"Of course. What about?"

"I mean…" He waves his right hand at the air around us. "Like, privately."

An orange bubble surrounds us. "What's the problem?"

"Oh no, there's no… Problem… Exactly." He takes a deep breath. "Okay, look: are you going to join the Justice League?"

"Not… Right now..?"

"But… Eventually, right? You said you were doing a year's probation or whatever?"

"No one's said anything definite, but I wouldn't be astonished to be offered a place during the next recruitment round. Why do you ask?"

"I wassss…" He looks away for a moment. "Is that what this team's for? It's just I sort of got the impression this was for trainee Justice League members only no one actually said it, and I want to make sure I haven't got completely the wrong end of the stick."

"The Justice League prefers to recruit people they already know, people they know they can work with. Anyone here is going to fulfil the usual requirements better than anyone on the outside. But, no, no one's told me anything definite either and the only person who's gone from one to the other so far is Red Arrow, and he was only here for a few days." I peer at him. Obviously he wants to be part of the League, he's hardly unique in that regard. "What brought this up all of a sudden?"

He shuffles his feet and takes another look down the corridor before returning his attention to me. "Dad… Dad doesn't actually like being Captain Cornwall. He only does it because he doesn't want to let people down, if he wasn't… But he knows how much this whole thing means to me. He said… He said if I actually got onto the Justice League, he'd quit and hand the whole thing over to me."

Oh. "I… Diana said they were setting the minimum age of recruitment for Humans at eighteen, so you've got three years and two months before you'd be eligible."

"I'm worried about ever being eligible. I mean… I've read up on the sorts of stuff my great granddad did. I used to feel pretty good about-" He holds his right hand in front of him and electricity crackles around his fingers for a moment. "-throwing a bit of lightning, then I read about how Graham Marrack channelled a whole hurricane into an eighty foot tall Demon and made it explode."

"He'd been doing this a bit longer than you have."

He takes a moment to arrange his thoughts. "His Dad taught him. Only, him and Granddad had this massive falling out and it never got passed on. I'm trying to get my head 'round the Atlantean spell books, but I'm… I keep worrying I'm not going to get it. You know? This is what I want to do with my life. I don't want to be 'okay'. I want to be great at this. I want to help people all over the world, like Superman does." He looks at me for a second. "Or, y'know, Wonder Woman."

"Good save." I nod. "Okay. Have you.. thought about asking Marvel if you can have the Sword back?"

"Nooo… I don't wanna depend on a magic sword for stuff I should be able to do on my own. And I don't wanna nick a magic sword off a ten year old when he's perfect for it."

"He's actually eleven now, but I take your meaning." When Guy heard that 'Captain Marvel' had a birthday coming up he offered to organise it. Luckily, I managed to tell him how old William is before too much damage was done. But this could be an opportunity. "But I can understand where you're coming from." One obvious solution if Marrack Very Senior took the knowledge to the grave with him. "How do you feel about necromancy?"

He shakes his head. "Oh, no, I just can't do necromancy. I mean, no Marrack's ever done it. It's not how our magic works."

"How do you feel -morally- about necromancy?"

"… What kind of necromancy?"

"We go to your great grandfather's grave and try and get in touch with his spirit. The simplest way for you to get training that makes sense in terms of your specific abilities-."

"Is to get it from him." He looks away, slowly exhaling. "I dunno. Granddad said he was pretty scary when he got in a mood."

"There are other places we could try, druidic communes, things like that. But to be honest, assuming you want to join the Justice League as soon as possible, we'll struggle to get you the level of knowledge you want from anywhere else."

He doesn't look happy about it. "What would it..? What would we actually do?"

"If there isn't some sort of secret Cornish ritual for speaking to deceased relatives..? "

"Mate, don't even."

"Last time I saw one, the magician drew some symbols around the grave and spoke an incantation. There was probably more going on than just that.. but.. I don't really understand.. that part from a magic user's point of view."

"And.. they could.. y'know, talk..? Like, normally?"

"Yes, but they'd only been dead for a few months. It might be different if they've been dead for longer."

"And… If he goes mental… We could..?"

"Put him down again?"

His face creases. "Don't say it like that. Makes it sound like he's a sick dog or something."

"Return him to his well earned rest?" He nods. "No complete guarantees, but probably."

"I'll need to think about it. I should.. probably run it past Dad as well."

"Okay. Let me know when you reach a decision."

back

Hullevow 6

next

2nd March

14:12 GMT

"Are you sure you're okay driving all the way?"

The minibus slows as we approach a roundabout and Kaldur carefully checks that the way is clear before accelerating again. It didn't occur to me earlier, but between us Kaldur is the only one with a driving licence and he's only practised on American roads. I've been meaning to take lessons, but with one thing and another -and the fact that I have two power rings- it rather slipped down my agenda. When I was in my.. twenties..? I took a course of lessons, failed my test twice and never bothered with it again.

"I am reasonably confident in my ability to get us to our destination. Third exit?"

"Yes. But you don't-" He presses the indicator lever. "-need to indicate-" We turn off down the slip road and onto the A27. "-because it's straight over."

"I will remember that for next time. Hiring a driver would have taken additional time, and I am not certain that our disguises would stand up to prolonged scrutiny."

"Probably not, but I don't mind taking a turn."

He gives me a quick glance before returning his attention to the road. "I was under the impression that you did not have a licence."

"I don't. I'd just be sitting there while the ring did all the work."

"That would be a contravention of British law."

"No one checks unless you have a crash. Plus, I have diplomatic immunity."

"Making use of that would compromise our cover. You said that the first rest stop is in two hours?"

"Yeah, there's one just before the M twenty seven meets the M two seven one. Or a bit further on, there's one in the middle of the New Forest National Park."

I turn back to look at my team mates. Tula and Garth are staring out of the window towards the southern edge of the South Downs National Park. They've mostly been sightseeing in more urban areas since they moved to the cave so I suppose woodland is still a bit new to them. Rob's got a history textbook out and is trying to read it while we're on a straight bit of road. Beryl has her slightly more mundane computer out and is busy devouring the contents of the Justice League files she's been granted access to.

Gosh, it's a while since I've been driven anywhere in anything so mundane as a minibus. It's moments like this that bring home to me exactly how strange my life has become since arriving on this planet. On the other hand… This world still has minibuses. The number of technologies that should have made them obsolete by now…

"What were you doing this morning?"

"Hm?"

"You left the cave early. I wondered what it was that required your attention at that hour."

"Magic research." How much can I risk saying? Obviously I can't specifically mention the Star Sapphire. "We're trying to work out exactly how Demons function, how they're made up. I can't just summon up and shoot every single one with the Ace of Winchesters. It would take too long."

"Were you able to make any progress?"

"Some? We spent a couple of hours working on this one Demon John knows and managed to turn her into an Elemental."

Kaldur flashes me a shocked look while Garth openly boggles. "How..?"

"Tedious links."

Rob looks up from his book. "Chris Moyles?"

"Demons naturally draw power from the souls of the damned.. and other places.. constantly. And expend it constantly to sustain themselves while they're on Earth. If you can find another connection, you can sort of.. flush them out. Reconfigure them to use a different sort of energy. Finding that connection is usually prohibitively hard, but Chantinelle had experienced genuine love before, so we could work with that."

Tula frowns. "How does a Demon learn to love?"

"She tried seducing an Angel once and it went a bit wrong." I pause. "It's funny; there's a lot less information around on how Angelic Theurgy works than Demon magic. I'd say the next step was studying Angels to see how they work, but Zatanna isn't keen."

Kaldur indicates, then pulls into the middle lane to overtake a caravan. "Zatanna was with you? You left quite early. Does she not have school today?"

"We're trying to continue her magic education. I don't plan on making a regular thing of starting out at the crack of dawn, especially not on a school night."

Tula leans forwards. "Once she's finished High School she could study in Atlantis."

"No offence to Atlantean schools or anything, but it's a very different style. Plus, she.. can't breathe water or.. survive the pressure. I'm sure she's.. considered it." We did talk about it briefly, but she wasn't keen on the idea. She did express an interest in hiking to Nanda Parbat at some point. Apparently Shadowcrest's library contains some reasonably riddle-free directions. John confirmed that Timothy Hunter is already ensconced in the White School, but apparently they're really picky about who they take and he wasn't sure they'd want Zatanna.

"Oh, of course." She looks a little awkward. "I'm so used to living underwater that I sometimes forget how hostile the environment of Atlantis is for surface dwellers."

"Did you really stop a Martian porn star escaping down the toilet?" Beryl's looking at me with a barely suppressed grin.

"Not the most demanding mission, but yes."

"I do not believe that I am familiar with your abilities, Squire." Kaldur's eyes flick to the rear view mirror. "It would be helpful if you could summarise them."

"Well, I'm studying Judo and Aikido, I'm fluent in seven languages -none of them are Atlantean Greek, sorry- and I've got an eidetic memory. I can also.. sort of see patterns in large data sets. Not much good for stopping street crime but amazing for finding fraudsters." Something occurs to her. "Hey, does this mean I get Justice League authority to eavesdrop on everyone? Because the more data I have-."

"Not unless you actually join the Justice League. If you want to spy on someone you have to justify it in relation to a particular mission." She pouts slightly. "Or ask me if I have the data already, and accept that means that it probably can't be used in court." She raises her eyebrows. "Yeah, I have a.. bit of a data collection habit myself."

Kaldur's forced to brake a bit suddenly as someone ahead of us decides that the Highway Code is for other people. "Is there anything else you noticed about the village we are going to?"

She shrugs. "I think Cyril covered it all." She glances off to the side. "Except… They weren't really keeping diaries of it or anything. We don't know exactly when particular people were having nightmares, but… Talking to people, it sounded like they'd been going longer than a month. Very sporadically before that… Like, once a month maybe? Going back about a decade if you go from the earliest ones."

"If you have already been introduced to people, might it be wisest for you not to be seen with us?"

"No need to worry. Most people don't recognise me when I take my tabard off, but just in case I've got a fast setting hair dye and accents for all occasions." She changes her expression, going from smiling and enthusiastic to reserved and dispassionate. Is she..? She's doing a Kaldur! "I believe that I will be able to pass unremarked, especially if I mimic the body language of those around me." She's even got his accent!

Kaldur gives the rear view mirror a small smile. "I believe that will suffice."

back

Hullevow 7

next

2nd March

16:02 GMT

Rob interlocks his fingers and stretches his arms above his head as Kaldur slides shut the minibus' door. "Y'know… I reckon we could have got away with just teleporting to just down the road and walking to Minions."

Tula isn't stretching, but does wince slightly as her left leg cramps. "A magic presence suddenly appearing would risk drawing too much attention. We don't-."

Beryl shakes her head. "And that's a fail for both of you." They both look at her, visibly confused. She smirks back. "Teleporting? Magic? What are you, superheroes or something?"

Both sets of eyes dip to the sides. Ye-ah, this is going to take a bit of practice. Rob's never bothered with a secret identity and Tula hasn't really established a public one yet. Neither are used to drawing a line between two sets of knowledge.

Kaldur nods to himself. "A small amount of practice is in order." His eyes move over his fellow Atlanteans. "Garth, Beryl, accompany me while we purchase refreshments. Remember: our conversation must not seem out of the ordinary. Paul-" I freeze up slightly. Ugh, really? The name thing hasn't bothered me significantly for months now. "-please accompany Robert and Tula while they attempt the same."

I nod. "Of course. I'll just make a quick phone call and we'll follow you in."

Kaldur nods, then turns and leads the other two in the direction of the entrance to Rownhams Services Westbound. Gosh, I've spent so much time in near-identical buildings over the years. They actually have fairly positive associations for me, representing as they did a welcome respite from long periods of sitting in the car on long holiday journeys to visit my grandparents. Thinking.. about it… I don't remember any report of Kaldur's adventures on the surface world mentioning him spending any time in Britain before now. I do hope he doesn't do anything silly like try making friends with someone to whom he hasn't been properly introduced.

I take out my phone and make the unlock-squiggle with my right forefinger. Still not.. entirely sold on these things, but we need to keep in touch with each other and we can't use anything too advanced to do it. Luckily, the area around Minions has fairly good phone reception.

"How difficult could it be to purchase a beverage?"

"Well, there's… Like, a difference between being able to speak a language, and using it like people actually use it. Y'know?"

I press John's contact number and hold the phone up to my right ear. "To be honest, Tula, your English is probably a bit too good. If you were less fluent the momentary gaps in fluency would be-"

"Yeah?"

"Afternoon, John." I turn away from the other two and start walking slowly in the direction of the trees which surround the non-road side of the Services car park. "Might have a job for you."

"Blimey mate, another one?"

I lower my voice slightly. Can't really stick up a sound exclusion barrier when we're under cover. "Rob has expressed concerns about his ability to get appropriate training with his arcane abilities. Can I assume that you aren't a secret master of Cornish arcane elementalism?"

"You don't ask a lot, do you?" He exhales sharply. "No, I'm not."

"Know anyone who is?"

"What, you mean aside from Captain Cornwall?"

"Mm, he isn't. That's the problem." I glance back. Tula's followed me towards the wooded area, though she's more interested in the trees than my conversation. Atlantis doesn't have trees or any real tree-equivalents. They get oxygen from plankton, algae and seaweed. Some types are decorative, but even at its best it's nothing compared to what you can find in any well-maintained British garden. For lack of anything better to do Rob's following her.

"I think I met his uncle once. Don't know if he'd remember me. He any better?"

"Isn't he in prison?"

"Yeah, but he's allowed visitors. And I could probably con me way in even if he wasn't."

"I don't know much about him. Rob hasn't wanted to talk about him." Rob glances at me for a second, then looks away. Come on, it was going to come up eventually. "Do you think he'd know enough-?"

"Look… Don't want to spoil your mental image of me or anything, but I don't actually know everything there is to know about magic. Give me a couple of weeks without anything else on-"

"Hah."

"-yeah, and I can probably dig up some old Cornish gypsy or witch who can tell you a little bit… But that's not really what he wants, is it?"

"His dad doesn't take the superhero thing entirely seriously. It's something he's obliged to do, but he doesn't have the same sense of mission that…" I chuckle. "I was going to say 'that Batman has', but… I mean, like any of the Leaguers have. From what he said, his grandfather wasn't much more into it. My friend Alan gave his great grandfather a glowing review but he's dead."

"Oh, you want… Riiight. How long's he been dead for?"

"About forty years. Died of.. probably a stroke and a heart attack at the age of eighty three."

"Calling up the spirits of powerful wizards is a really dodgy one. I'd want Rob or his dad there at least. Someone from the blood line."

"We can do that."

"I'll need the usual stuff then: something important to him in life, the location of his grave and someone who can hold him off if things get nasty."

I nod. "You busy next weekend?"

"I was just going to keep on readin' this stuff you got off of Sephtian."

"Okay, pencil me in for Saturday night. I'll confirm nearer the time."

"Right. Here, y'know Chas actually took Geraldine t'that gate thing you set up in Battersea? He usually hates gettin' involved in magic."

Huh. That's interesting. "Did Renee go?"

"Yep."

"Get out."

"Straight up, mate. Even went through the frigging thing."

"Miracles of good PR. I mean, if I can convince her… Oh, right, while you're there; you don't know about anything that might cause a town in Cornwall to have nightmares for twelve years, do you?"

"Funnily enough, no."

I smile. "Alright. See you next weekend, if not before." I lift the phone away from my ear and press the 'off' button.

Tula looks around. "Was that John Constantine?"

"Yes, it was."

"Do you think.. you could arrange a training session with him? Neither Garth nor I are at all well versed in the magics still used by the surface world. Since we first met I have been worried that I still have gaps in my knowledge like the one he used to beat me."

I'm not sure how good an idea that is… On the other hand, who am I going to suggest they talk to, Nabu? It's a legitimate concern. "I can certainly ask him. You'd have to.. go to him, of course. I don't think the League really want him hanging around their students." She nods. "Now then;-" I put my phone back in my jacket and stride purposefully in the direction of the Services building. "-An Introduction to English Social Interactions. You may need this."

back

Hullevow 8

next

2nd March

16:09 GMT

"By and large, the English do not really care how the rest of the world sees them. They are convinced, with some justification, that no-one really understands-."

I lay my right hand lightly on Tula's upper arm to stop her. "Rob, what's she doing wrong?"

"Errum." He thinks for a second. "Reading out loud..? In public?"

"And not paying attention to her environment." I remove my hand. "Tula, we have another couple of hours of driving to go. You'll have plenty of time to read it."

She closes the books and frowns at the cover. "Why do you have a book like this?"

"I bought it while on holiday to a foreign country."

"You bought a.. book to teach people from another country.. who don't like your country.. how to deal with people from your country.. while in another country."

"Page twenty nine. Just this once you can read it out loud."

She thumbs to the appropriate page. "Sense of Humour. The English have an island culture - quirky and self-contained. Much of their humour is highly sophisticated and elusively subtle. Like the will-o'-the-wisp, it often refuses to be caught and examined and just when you think you have cracked it, you realise that you have been duped again. For example: Two men are reading their newspapers when one says: 'It says here there's a fellow in Devon who plays his cello to the seals.' 'Oh really', says the other. 'Yes', says the first, 'Of course, they don't take a blind bit of notice.'"

I bite my lip while Rob looks away, his face reddening with the effort of not bursting out laughing. Tula closes the book and looks up, confusion evident on her face. "Why is that-?" She sees us both struggling to keep straight faces. "I do not understand the joke."

"Page twenty five."

She goes to turn to that page, realises something, eyes me suspiciously for a moment, then slides the book back into her bag.

I nod approvingly. "Well done. Now: onwards!" I stride towards the automatic doors, which slide apart to allow us access. I originally assumed that Tula and Garth would find automatic doors odd, but it turns out that coming from Atlantis they didn't really have any preconceptions of how doors should behave. Atlantean doors can be automated, or triggered to respond to a simple magic prod. The fact that we had a technological equivalent was noted but it wasn't one of the things they picked up on as stand-out strange. A second set of automated doors and… Let's see… Standard interior design, seating area forwards and to the left, newsagent to the right, Coffee Haven along the back wall next to a McDonalds, games arcade and toilets around to the right. Okay. Start with something easy.

I step out of the door and walk forwards until I'm at the edge of the railing around the seating area. Rob ambles after me while Tula lags behind slightly, taking everything in. "Tula, your first task is to purchase a newspaper."

"What is that supposed to teach me about how people from your country behave?"

"Buying something from a shop? Lots. Off you go."

I get another sceptical look, but she locks her eyes on the distant shelf and strides purposefully towards it. Just before she reaches it another customer walks out from behind a shelf and she takes a sudden step back. She has adapted to walking rather than swimming well, and Black Canary has assisted in relearning how to move in combat. Deftly sidestepping around another shopper she reaches the rack and stares for a moment at the selection available. She's been in plenty of surface world shops before but probably hasn't ever bought a newspaper before. For a moment she freezes, then she turns to a fellow shopper. "Excuse me, could you-?"

Rob and I both shake our heads.

"-ah..?" She glances back at us and notices what we're doing. "Never mind." She considers the titles again and appears to recognise one. Picking up a copy of the Hampshire Chronicle, she turns and makes her way towards the till. "I would like to purchase this newspaper."

The woman behind the till looks at her for a moment, then takes the paper out of her hand and scans it before putting it back down on the counter. "Seventy pence, please."

Tula fiddles in her bag until she finds her purse, takes a moment to work out which of the unfamiliar pieces of change amount to the required amount, then passes it to the till operator. The till operator opens the till and deposits the change in the tray. Then she turns her attention back to Tula. Tula stands there for a few seconds, then picks up the paper and waits for a moment. Not getting any further feedback, she takes a step backwards, then turns around and walks back towards Rob and I. "I.. got the newspaper?"

"Yes, you did." She goes to hand it to me but I hold out the palm of my right hand. "No, you keep hold of that. Let's… Let's go and get a snack, and Rob and I will tell you how you did."

I lead the way over to the start of the line and pick up two trays and a thick banana flavoured milk drink from the chilled cabinet. Right, quick estimate of cost and move the money to a readily accessible location… I give my colleagues an interrogative eyebrow raise. "Rob, Tula?"

Rob nods. "Coke, please."

Tula shakes her head. "I will.. have a coffee."

The drinks for myself and Rob go on tray two, along with a glass and a couple of straws. Next come the cakes and pasties. "You know, I rather think getting them in fresh ruins the muffins. I used to like the ones that had been lightly grilled under the counter lights for a few days. Gave them a crunch. What are you two having?"

Tula hesitates for a second as she tries to work out whether or not this is another test. Rob just points. "Chocolate for me, please."

"Strawberry."

The people ahead of us in the queue move on and the man serving makes eye contact with me. I give him a small smile. "Two chocolate and one strawberry, please." He tongs them onto plates and passes them over the counter. I take them and put them on the first tray. Another momentary eye contact. "Thank you." Then my attention returns to the trays and I push them onwards. Next comes the hot drinks section. Now, when I actually came to places like this back in the old days, anyone trying to order coffee American Italian style would be met by mystified incomprehension. These days… Tula can probably manage.

"Cubano."

Or.. not? Maybe? No, they've got it. A spoonful of sugar goes into a small cup, followed by a blast of coffee from the poncy coffee machine and some milk froth. This goes on the drinks tray -"Thank you."- as we progress onto the till. Eye contact with the person serving, slight rise of the eyebrows.

"Eleven seventy eight, please."

Great thing about modern computerised tills, just press the picture. Makes this bit far quicker. I smile and pass over fifteen pounds, wait a moment and am handed three pounds and twenty two pence back. "Thank you." That goes on the first tray which I pick up. "Rob, would you mind?" He picks up the second and I lead the way towards an empty area near-. Someone cuts in front of me to get to the cutlery. I stop, pulling back slightly -"Excuse me."- and step around them before continuing on to my chosen table. I put the tray down, then pull out a chair and take a seat. Rob puts the tray he's carrying down next to mine and sits down opposite me, Tula taking the seat next to his.

"Now. What did I do differently to you?"

"Why aren't we sitting with Kaldur and the others? They're right over there."

"Four seats per table and English people would hesitate to rearrange the tables that are already in place. Rob?"

"You said please and thank you."

"Very important. English people say those a lot. What else?" Rob looks a little lost. I hold out my left hand and count off my fingers with my right forefinger. "Please and thank you. I asked you what you wanted before trying to buy. I didn't try and engage anyone I didn't already know in conversation. When someone got in my way, I said 'excuse me', even though they weren't paying attention. And I picked a seat as far away from every occupied seat as possible." I take my plate and drinks off their respective trays. "The asking thing is just sensible, the others are English behavioural traits."

She points to me with the Hampshire Chronicle. "What did you want the paper for?"

"I didn't. No one who doesn't live in a county buys county newspapers. And most of them don't. But if you'd thought to buy one for each-" I take the newspaper from her and open it up. "-of us, we could do the most English thing of all and completely ignore each other while reading a paper." I raise the newspaper with a smile and start reading the cover story.

back

Hullevow 9

next

2nd March

20:33 GMT

It's dark by the time we arrive at our destination. The village itself has street lights but we've been navigating with headlights and cat's-eyes for miles. Fortunately, the roads leading to Minions were deserted and Atlanteans see pretty well in the dark. Kaldur parks us in the car park in the south western corner of the village. The pub restaurant part of the Cheesewring should still be serving, so that's dinner sorted out. I turn around to open the side door-.

"Hang on a sec." Beryl looks at the Atlanteans. "Feeling anything?"

Garth shakes his head. "Cramped and a little hungry. Unless we were actively looking for it, the magic would have to be very strong for us to feel it in the air."

"Any local sites of magic interest?"

Rob nods. "There's a stone circle a little way north of here. Only bloody working one in this whole part of the country. Dad had a look at it, but…" He shrugs.

Kaldur nods. "Then that will be where we start our investigation tomorrow." He opens the driver side door and steps out into the dark Cornish night.

I open the passenger side and get out onto the dusty tarmac before pulling open the passenger door. Garth passes down our bags and I lay them on the ground next to me. I don't think there's much risk of theft but there are a few things in here that probably shouldn't be left unattended for any length of time. The locked box containing my personal lantern for example, and the few Atlantean texts we could get hold of at short notice that covered dream magic. Once our belongings are out my team mates follow, Rob slamming the door shut behind him. Everyone picks up their things and Kaldur leads the way towards the village centre.

Huh. The rings are in a thong around my neck to prevent the orange glow giving me away. As a result, I can barely see a thing. Oh, empathic vision shows me where the people in the village are but it doesn't show me inanimate objects. I'm so used to augmented vision that the idea of bringing a torch just didn't occur to me. Fortunately, both Rob and Beryl have theirs so I can see well enough to follow the leader without risking breaking an ankle in the dark.

Tula glances back at Rob. "What did you mean when you said that most other stone circles do not work?"

"Oh, well, stone circles are supposed to channel natural geomantic energy. Earth magic. If you know what you're doing you can sort of.. feel the whole area around them by touching one. They make some types of magic easier, too. Anyway, about ten years ago some bunch of vandals went around wrecking them."

"Did they pull the stones down?"

"No, that doesn't do it. That just makes them weaker until someone sorts them out again. What they did was hammer copper stakes into the stones. It just kills the circuit completely dead. If you want to fix it you have to get rid of them then bring in completely new stones, then there's this ritual you have to do to connect it all up again. Dad and me had to spend a few days fixing the one near Truro so I could teleport to the mountain, but there's a whole lot of others no one's fixed."

Wait a second… "Exactly when did that start?"

Rob shrugs. "'bout… Think Dad said the first one he saw like that was about twelve years ago?"

"Oh! Right, that. Yeah, that was John and his friends."

"What? What the hell'd he do that for?!"

"Because some sort of secret inner circle of the Free Masons was trying to summon this… Thing… Jall… Aku… Um, give me a moment." No ring means no flawless recall. We only talked about it once… What was the blasted thing call-? "Jallakuntilliokan, that was it. Primal animus Dragon. They were using the ley lines to focus the magic and draw it in from all over the country, feed it into the ritual. John and Co. thought the best chance they had of stopping it manifesting was to break up the connections…" I shrug apologetically. "It's easier to break things than it is to fix them."

"What..? When did that happen?"

"Rob, it was raining blood, it wasn't exactly a secret. They ended up-." I walk into the back of Tula. "Sorry." And she's stopped because Rob has stopped. I step to the side. He shakes his head and turns in my direction, empathic vision showing him glowing brilliant red. "Rob?"

"And… That's what caused all that?"

"Them using the ley lines like that was probably what caused the weather disruption, yes. They weren't really designed to channel that sort of energy. That much energy. There was some.. other stuff going on with-."

"What happened to 'em?"

My eyes flick momentarily in the direction of Beryl but she looks as mystified as I am. "A bunch of them committed suicide after the summoning failed. I think some got killed when the police broke into the Geotroniks building but a lot of it got covered up. John didn't really want to talk about it. Why, what's the-?"

"Uncle Julian went down for that! He's been in prison for twelve fucking years 'cause of that!"

"What?" I frown. "Isn't your uncle a.. druid or something? A minor magic user? How could anyone possibly think he did it on his own?"

"'cause he was… Fucking…" Rob rubs his eyes with his right hand. "He was doing something with the ley lines… Dad found him, when all that stuff was happening. They had a fight and Dad handed him over to the police. Everyone just thought… Just thought it was him."

"Huh. Okay." I think for a moment. "When we've dumped our bags I'll start phoning people. I.. don't know how long it'll take to-."

Beryl comes up alongside us. "You know who these secret Masons people are?"

"I don't, but I'm sure John could name a few names." Ah hell. This wouldn't happen somewhere like Atlantis, where they can accurately assess the strength of a magic user and won't accuse someone of something they couldn't do. In Britain I could well see them deciding to take it out on the first weirdo in a robe they came across. And with a superhero handing him in… Even if there wasn't a conspiracy to transfer blame, which there almost certainly was.

"Got any witnesses?"

"Yes, but it's all magic stuff. I don't think it's admissible in court."

"We can work around that."

I nod. Yes we bloody will.

Kaldur lays his right hand on Rob's left shoulder. "Any sort of ritual powerful enough to summon something that big would have created an effect big enough to have been recorded by Atlantean mages. We can present those records to the British courts."

"You heard! They're probably not even admissible!"

"They wouldn't be by themselves, but Britain accepts Justice League members as experts in their fields. If King Orin presented it as a recording of some sort of exotic energy, that should be good enough."

Kaldur nods. "And I am certain that Doctor Fate would have an interest in bringing the perpetrators to justice as well."

…

Yes, I think it in this instance I would probably be alright with that. What was it Vorbis said? 'The higher the branch, the blunter the saw'? May as well sic him on them. I still don't know where he put the people he captured, but if he wants to do a quick review of-. Wait, does that club where Prince Charles got possessed actually exist here? I never checked. I just assumed that the author was royal bashing… Heck, I don't have the time to check the entire British government for evil.

"Okay, let's drop off our stuff, get some dinner, then we can start planning."

back

Hullevow 10

next

3rd March

06:24 GMT

"Mate… Seriously?" Rob peers out at me blearily from under his duvet.

I pull a Street Sharks themed t-shirt over my head. "Sorry, but I always get up at six."

"Shouldn't you be on… US time or something?"

I wiggle the thong containing the rings at him. "I have an adaptable body clock. Still… Look on the bright side. Shower's free."

"In half an hour I'll start to care."

"Alright. They're serving breakfast for… Another two hours, I think? Do you want me to come back and wake you up when-."

He rolls over and pulls the duvet over his head. "Just go away."

Okay. I turn away and walk over to our room's door. The Cheesewringer had three double rooms available and by a process of elimination Rob and I ended up together. Trying not to make too much noise I open the door, step through and quietly close it behind me. Kaldur and Garth probably aren't up yet. They're early risers like me but they don't have a piece of xenotechnology to tell their circadian rhythms that they're on GMT. If they haven't turned up by half past seven I'll knock on their door.

I walk down the corridor and start down the stairs to the dining area. Tula's also an early riser, but, same problem. Beryl might be-. Huh? Oh! Took me a moment to recognise her with black hair. She's got a laptop out and is busy typing something while next to her a somewhat tired looking Tula pokes listlessly at a poached egg on toast with her fork.

"Good morning, both."

Tula blinks, then sits up a little. "Hello."

"I realise that as a nation we prefer tea, but you can get coffee-." I come around the table to the point that Beryl's laptop no longer blocks my view of Tula's empty coffee cups. "Ah."

"I am waiting for it to start working."

"And done." Beryl looks up from her screen, smiling brightly. "Morning Paul."

"You usually an early riser?"

"I like to spend some time with Cyril in the morning before school. Just in case anything's come up."

"So, what are you-?" The chef walks out of the kitchen proper, having heard my voice. "Just a moment." I turn away and walk over to the counter. "Bacon on toast for me, please."

He nods. "Roight you are. Gawht some luvely bacon in aht the mowment. Local stuuf."

I notice that the blood vessels in his eyes suggest that he hasn't been sleeping well. Probably not something to bring up right away… "Thank you, I'll look forward to it."

He gives me a friendly nod and ambles back into the kitchen area. "Owh, you wunt whyt braad or brohwn?"

"Brown, please." He nods again and passes out of sight. I walk back to the girls' table and sit down opposite them. "What are you working on?"

"Pattern recognition. I'm trying to set Cyril's computer to review footage of every significant public figure in Britain so we can see how many of them are wearing those rings Mister Constantine described last night."

"Any hits so far?"

"One or two. They're all retired, though." She looks pensive for a moment. "Twelve years."

"Oh, it's worse than that."

She raises her eyebrows for a half second, then realises what I mean. "He's in the Tower? God."

Tula swallows a mouthful of bread and egg. "I remember you saying that is where England puts its metahuman criminals. Why is it so bad?"

"It was built about four hundred years ago under the direction of the court magician of the time. No one currently alive knows exactly how it works, so they don't want to risk changing anything in case it stops working. So: the heating's not that great, the air conditioning in the summer is non-existent, the cells are underground so the air gets musty and damp, the lighting's bad, the cells were designed for the sixteenth century… It's very nearly impossible to put anyone in there these days, but if they got him convicted of that whole Jallakuntilliokan mess…"

"Justitia!"

"Rob said that his dad's going to visit him as soon as possible with the news." I look at Beryl. "Any idea on timelines?"

"Normally, we could get a conviction overturned as 'unsafe' within a few weeks. But if he's in the Tower the standard of evidence changes."

"I've got wearable magic suppression devices. Do you think it would help if he agreed to wear them?"

She nods, eyes not focused as she considers. "It might. Can you prove its effectiveness?"

"It worked on Nabu. Not completely sure he'd be happy to admit that in court."

"No, we can get around that. He'll just have to tell the presiding judge. Who won't be a crazy Dick-Dragon summoning Mason-wizard."

I nod. "Yeah, I was calling it the Penis Dragon in my head too. Bit easier to remember than Jallakuntilliokan, isn't it?"

"Do you know what happened to it? After they messed up all the standing stones-?"

"Oh, no, that wasn't what stopped it. John made contact with some sort of hippy shaman commune and three of them performed a ritual to summon the… Anima Dragon-."

Beryl smirks. "The Va-?"

"Let's not. John said he didn't really remember what happened next on account of nearly getting drowned by-"

Beryl cracks up. "Hahahaha!"

"-the resulting storm. As I understand it, the idea was that the two would neutralise each other. He just didn't expect them to do so in such an enthusiastic manner."

"Hahahaha!" She slides her computer aside and presses her face into the surface of the table, arms folded around it.

"Quite. You'd have to go to Scotland to get the full story. I don't think they have telephones."

I'm not sure if Tula's having trouble with the English vernacular or it's just the jet lag, but she doesn't quite look like she understands the humour. "How could something like that be covered up?"

"Tula, the fact that hardly anyone on the surface studies magic doesn't just mean that we don't use it, it means that the sort of knowledge you'd consider completely basic doesn't exist in the population at large. People only hear about huge acts of magic that they can't possibly miss, so that's what magic is for them. Lots of people saw the rain of blood and other weird things, a few people remember unusually brutal police attacking civil rights groups… And then it stops and they're told that the perpetrators are either dead or in custody. They can't understand that they're being-" I hear footsteps as the cook returns with my plate. "-being told nonsense. And that's what we're working against."

back

Hullevow 11

next

3rd March

08:09 GMT

"…not complaining, but it would have been nice to have another data point."

I stop at the top of the ridge which leads down to Hurlers Stone Circles and turn around to look back at my companions. Beryl's been mildly disappointed by the fact that we all had undisturbed nights' rests. Undisturbed by nightmares anyway; Tula wasn't the only Atlantean who had difficulty adapting their sleep pattern to GMT. That combined with the fact that Atlantean poison resistance appears to include caffeine means that they aren't exactly bright-eyed and bushy tailed… Or whatever the equivalent Atlantean expression is.

Rob comes up alongside me, guidebook in hand. "Three stone circles. The northern one has thirty stones arranged in a circle, the one in the middle's got twenty eight and the southern one's got nine."

I take a look at the patterns of lichen growing on them. "They don't all look the same age. Was the site added to?"

"Sort of." He shrugs with his right shoulder. "When English Heritage got hold of the site they decided to add back in stones that got worn away or nicked. Only about half of them are original. But that doesn't matter as far as the magic's concerned. They're all, like, plumbed in or whatever."

The rest of the party catches up and takes a look at the arrangement. Garth nods. "I can feel the energy flow. It is a shame that no one from Atlantis has ever studied how they work."

Kaldur smiles at him. "We will likely have to study them in detail in order to determine whether or not they are playing a role in creating the nightmares. You could submit an edited version to the University of Tritonis' Archaeological Institute."

"Tritonis? They would probably find it interesting, but they are the last people who would send a team to the surface world."

"Why's that?"

"Tritonis is isolationist. They don't even like other Atlanteans that much. You remember the Purists who followed Ocean Master?" I nod. "Pure… Ism? Started with the old Tritonian royal family. They actually fought a civil war over the issue just after the Sinking."

Tula nods. "The King of Atlantis supported his vassal King Shalako, but by the time the army of Poseidonis arrived he had already lost. The new ruler took that as a sign that Poseidonis could not be trusted."

Kaldur leads the way down the slope and Beryl sidles up to Garth. "Tritonis? Is that where you're from?"

Tula winces, but Garth himself doesn't really react. "No, I am… I was born in a small settlement near Shayeris. They would be even less interested than the Tritonians."

"Why's that?"

"Their prejudices and superstitions are even more intense. When I was a baby my mother and I were sent into exile because my eyes are the wrong color."

"Oh. Um, sorry."

He shakes his head. "Poseidonis is my home. Someone at the Institute of Arcane Study might be interested."

"I've got a proposal going through to have someone come and take a look at the T-." Um. I glance at Rob.

He notices. "The Tower." He looks uncomfortable. "I guess… I mean, there are people we really need to put in there. Might as well find out how it works."

We reach ground level and head in the direction of the northern circle.

"Did you..? Speak to your dad..?"

Rob nods. "He's going to talk to Uncle Julian on Saturday. He took that Constantine bloke's mobile number."

"Are the stones local?"

"Huh?" Rob looks around to where Beryl is staring at one of the newer stones.

"The stones. Are they local?"

"Um." He gets the guidebook out again. "'…restored using the same type of stone used in the original formation.' So probably not."

Well done Beryl. "Not exactly a small job, carting stones that big around."

"And not cheap, either. Dad tried getting heritage lottery funding for it once. If you try moving a normal lorry on ground like this carrying great chunks of granite it'll just sink most of the year."

I raise my eyebrows at Kaldur. "Worth looking into?"

He nods. "Beryl, once we have finished our preliminary investigation, return to our accommodations and try to discover the source of the new stones."

"Shouldn't be too hard."

I look around. Off-season in a place that had chemical weapons people in it a few weeks ago. No visitors are around and I can't see any locals. "How do you want to go about this?"

Tula steps up to the closest stone and holds out her hands. As an Atlantean the cold of spring isn't a problem for her, but she, Garth and Kaldur are all wearing long sleeves both as part of their cover and to obscure their tattoos. "We should examine the stones for recent changes first. If it were something easy to detect then Captain Cornwall would have done so."

Garth nods. "We can leave off the astral projection until later. To be honest, I hope that we will not have to do it at all."

Beryl looks at him with interest. "Why's that?"

"Interfering with powerful magics you do not understand is not a good idea. Even just observing can carry risks, particularly if a malevolent being is using them at the same time." He looks at Kaldur. "Kaldur?"

"I agree. You may proceed."

"I assumed that you were joining in?"

Kaldur looks a little embarrassed. "My studies have been somewhat.. light, on theoretical thaumaturgy of late. I am uncertain as to how much assistance I could provide."

"It would not hurt to have an extra pair of eyes."

Kaldur holds Garth's gaze for a moment, then nods. "Very well."

Garth and Kaldur join Tula at the first stone and after a moment's hesitation Rob approaches it as well. There's a very slight glow in the eyes of the Atlanteans as they consider the monolith.

Beryl looks at me. "So, what do we do?"

"You're on lookout duty for the moment." I fish the pouch containing the rings out of my coat. "I'm going to give the stones a scan and see if I can get anything useful about their mundane properties."

"I could start looking them up."

"Sorry, but that holographic computer is too expensive to credibly be in the hands of a group of students and it's visually distinctive. If someone looked in your direction…" She nods. "I'm going to be trying not to glow much myself." I take another quick look around and slide my right forefinger into the pouch, gently touching the inside of one of the rings.

Scan.

"There's a pattern of compressed earth over that way which suggests they were brought it from that direction and then the ruts were filled in. The new stones… Actually are Cornish, though they're not from the same place as the old ones. No arcane symbols I recognised on any of them, other than the circle itself." I remove my finger and rehide the pouch. "That was useful. Looks like we're both on lookout duty."

back

Hullevow 12

next

3rd March

12:23 GMT

"…beginning with 'G'."

I think for a moment. "Grass?"

"No."

"Garth?"

"No."

"Greenery?"

"No."

Um. "You know that without access to my ring database I don't have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the names of everyth-."

Beryl sighs. "Gold dust lichen."

"Yes, you see, there's no way I would have known that's what it's called." She slumps slightly. "Got the internet withdrawal shakes already?"

She stares over to where our four magic using team mates are completing their slow and careful examination of the last set of stones. "Just… Bored…"

"I can get a Frisbee if you want?" She doesn't respond. "Football? One of those sticky pad and tennis ball things?"

"I don't think that's a good idea around possibly-evil standing stones."

The four of them step away from the last stone and start heading over, talking amongst themselves.

"Kaldur, any news?"

"Perhaps. Only Robert knows what stones such as these should feel like, but we could not detect anything wrong with them."

Tula nods. "The newer stones feel a little different, but that should not cause anyone to have nightmares."

"Does the area they affect include Minions?"

Rob nods. "Yeah, but all the nearest other circles got wrecked so the area it actually stabilises is pretty much just that."

Beryl nods. "That's why nowhere else is getting affected. There's no connection."

"Probably."

"Astral projection time?"

Kaldur nods solemnly. "That is the next step. Tula and Rob will enter the local ley line system while Garth and I watch over them. Should they encounter anything we will extract them immediately."

"What do you want us to do?"

"I'm afraid that there is little you can do. It may be best if you simply returned to-."

"Ohwell." She jumps to her feet. "I'll see you back at base when you finish."

"Yes…"

Beryl's already started hiking back towards the Cheesewringer. "I'll let you know what I find out!"

I pull out my pouch. "Should I put a ring on?"

"Not yet. Interfacing fully with the geomantic power will probably take a minute or two. Once that is done, it would be helpful if you could monitor their vital signs. I assume that you can do that without there being any obvious external sign?"

"Does my clothing look green? Of course I can. Though… We are going to look a bit odd…"

Rob shakes his head. "Nah. Dad says all sorts of people do weird stuff like this around standing stones all the time."

"Rightyho then. Where are we setting up?"

We head back towards the southern circle. Rob and Tula lay on their backs in the middle, their coats rolled up as pillows. I sit cross-legged next to them. It's chilly, and if they're not going to be moving… I generate two of the thinnest filaments I can and attach one to each of them, giving them each a nearly invisible environmental shield. That will also let me monitor their heart rate, breathing, brain waves and body chemistry. On the other side of Tula Garth sits holding her hand. If something goes wrong it'll be his job to pull her wandering spirit back into her body, or at the very least keep her tethered so that she can find her own way back. Kaldur will be performing the same function for Rob. Without any real idea what we're looking for we can't really make better preparations than this. It's not as if we're looking for a confrontation, this is strictly reconnaissance.

Kaldur looks at Rob and Tula. "Are you ready?"

Both nod. Tula lays her arms down at her sides while Rob has his folded across his chest. John described his own efforts at astral projection as a sort of self hypnosis… At least when the whole thing wasn't involuntary and he was getting pulled somewhere against his will. The Atlantean approach appears to be a little more scientific. Or maybe they just have more precise terminology? I didn't exactly understand what it meant, but it appeared to have clear meanings for each of them and I suppose that as a non-specialist amongst specialists that's all I can hope for.

Brain activity decreases in both Tula and Rob. I know that the physical forms of people engaged in astral projection look a lot like long term coma patients. Heh, and I remember that in the Discworld books Granny Weatherwax made sure that she had her 'I Aten't Dead' sign clasped to her chest whenever she did it in case anyone walked in on her. Oh, that's interesting; since they're not in their bodies in any spiritual sense any longer I can't see much in the way of emotional light from them. Makes sense, I suppose.

Inside them, it sort of… Twists? I mean, they're definitely around somewhere but I don't really understand where. I'll have to try this hand linking thing with Garth or Tula when I next try visiting the Honden of Avarice. That experience makes a little more sense to me now; a normal person has all sorts of different things making up their soul while I've just got one. Makes it very easy for me to visit the Ophidian at home but makes it nearly impossible for me to do anything else. Maybe… Avarice magic? Is what I've been assuming to be a ring function in reality something more arcane?

I sigh. I wish I was already in contact with the Controllers. It would be so nice to have someone to talk to about that sort of thing.

Both Tula and Rob have slowly decreasing heart rates. Their hearts are basically just keeping their bodies ticking over at the moment. Extra oxygen in their muscles won't help them as they are presently so it doesn't have any need to beat faster. There's a faint glow from Tula's tattoos and Rob's skin has become tougher in the way it usually does when he's channelling magic.

"Kaldur, how are they doing?"

Kaldur's eyes are closed, his face a picture of concentration. "Garth and I are at the very entry point to the stone circle. They do not appear to be in distress, but beyond that I cannot be completely sure. Is there anything wrong with their bodies?"

"If I'm honest, Tula could probably stand to gain a little weight. We might need to see if she's having trouble with surface food-."

"That is not helpful."

"Sorry. No, nothing's wrong. All vital signs in line with what I'd expect in this situation." Wait, what was that? "I'm seeing… Flickers of yellow? Are you sure there's nothing wrong?"

"There does not appear to be, but we will call them back anyway. One moment." Kaldur's frown deepens. "I am… Having difficulty… Garth?"

"Yes, but… I've got her, she's coming out. Keep your connection going and I will aid you once Tula has returned."

"I will."

"Lads, I'm seeing a lot of yellow here. Are you sure there's nothing-?"

Yellow light streams out of the recumbent astral voyagers and into their monitors! Kaldur and Garth both lunge backwards, yellow lights churning around and overwhelming their minds! I see.. some sort of monstrous ogre carrying a Human leg and a bacon slicer. Garth's tattoos glow brilliantly as he pushes himself up from the ground and sprints away from the circle as fast as he can. Kaldur comes up into a fighting crouch and stares unseeing at his environment.

What the hell just happened?

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Hullevow 13

next

3rd March

12:35 GMT

"Kaldur?"

"I won't dance with you. I-I won't. I won't."

Solid yellow. He's shivering. And that was a contraction. He doesn't use contractions when he speaks English. And he turned me down when I said he could speak Greek to me if he wanted. Dancing..? Okay, I don't think I've ever seen him dance before…

I make what I hope is a calming gesture with my hands, smiling at him. "Kaldur. What's wrong? Please, I want to-."

His eyes widen as he sees my hands. He's staring at.. the rings? Oh, does he think I'm pointing a weapon at him?

"Rings pulled from the fingers of the dead."

"No, John's still alive and I never found out where the first one came from. Kaldur, what are you talking about?"

Kaldur's hands drop to his… That's where he normally keeps his Water Bearers. He left them back in the Cheesewringer but it looks like he can't focus well enough through the fear to realise that. Um, okay, Spell Eater out of subspace. Rob and Tula… Heart rates increasing, twitching and quite a lot of yellow. I could force the first two to stop but I'm not sure what the knock on effect on their wandering spirits would be. I don't really want to-.

"You will not take me! I will not be bacon!"

What?

"Rrrraaaagh!" Kaldur thrusts his arms forwards and water precipitates out of the air around me as ice crystals. He just tried to freeze me. That.. might have actually killed me without the Spell Eater. Shit.

"My teeth are mine alone!"

What the hell is he talking about?!

His tattoos are glowing brightly. I'd say whatever cover we had is well and truly blown-. Shit, his freeze effect is dropping Rob and Tula's temperature as well! Sorry Kaldur. I generate manacle constructs and grab his wrists, dragging his arms behind his back.

"No! No!"

The glow of his tattoos sort of.. moves, and then my manacles fall apart. Fortification. Darn it, I hoped he was too out of it to remember that. After those Nanauvian soldiers showed that some defensive magics could turn aside constructs Kaldur worked hard to learn how to do that himself. Otherwise I'd be even shorter on sparring partners than I am already. Bloody inconvenient now, though. All my easy KO options just stopped working.

Right then, gas-. No, hang on. If he's getting this fear from Rob, then he's still connected. Still indicating to Rob where his physical body is. If I knock him out, would that interrupt it? Kaldur lunges at me with his right fist aimed at my face. I float backwards out of the way. His eyes remain fixed on me, ignoring our slumbering team mates. Okay, restrain him without knocking him out or blocking his magic. Lightning crackles from his hands, leaping at me and forcing me to raise a construct to intercept it. Without his Water Bearers forming a link his electrical attacks are rather inefficient and not all that-. I raise another barrier around Rob as a spark goes astray and nearly electrocutes him.

Okay. A barbell comes out of subspace and smacks Kaldur in the diaphragm. "Oof!" Then I slam it into his chest and shove him back. Think. He isn't reacting to my voice, and is only reacting to my general presence. Hallucinating? But he's not seeing his fears. He talked to me about what he saw when Mathew Hayden used the Medusa Mask on him. It magnified the strangeness of the surface world and intensified his worry about not being worthy of King Orin. It didn't make him afraid of being turned into bacon.

Where the heck did that come from?

Kaldur starts to recover, building another electrical charge for a larger blast. Maybe if I remove the stimuli? I use the bar to try and drag him back, but he grabs hold of it and his fortification effect breaks my link. Right, okay. Alternating from one weight to another I drive him backwards in a series of blows that are sure to leave a mark tomorrow. He probably won't feel it until tomorrow, but strong as he is he still has to deal with physics! Yeah, would have been too much to hope that he'd snap out of it once I got him outside the stone circle. A last blow causes him to turn to his side and I return the weights to subspace and replace them with a titanium chain. Careful not to let my construct attachments touch him I wrap as much of it around his arms, legs and chest as I can before wrapping what's left around the granite pillar and welding it closed. Alright, all he can see now is empty fields and he'll struggle to get through the chains with any spells I know about him knowing.

"Help. Someone, please. Help me."

Still solid yellow. His breathing is rapid and shallow. Tula and Rob… Steadily getting worse… Crap, I don't want to call in Nabu already. Where did Garth..? Great, I can't see him. I pull my phone out of my jacket, thumb to my contacts list and press the button for Beryl.

It rings twice before she picks it up. "Anything happen yet, or are you so bored-?"

"Yes. They had a massive fear response. Kaldur became insensible and violent. I've had to tie him to a granite standing stone with titanium chain. Garth's legged it and the rings can't find him." I scan the horizons on the off chance my eyes can succeed where the xenotech hypercomputers have fail-. Yeah okay, I can't even finish thinking that. "Any ideas?"

"What's happening to Rob and Tula?"

"Their bodies appear to be going through a fear response, but they're both insensible."

"Do you know what triggered it?"

"No. They were deep inside the system, but it didn't kick in immediately."

"Captain Cornwall said he only felt it when he connected to someone who was already dreaming."

"I don't think Rob fell asleep." I check, just in case. "No."

"But if we work on the idea that it only starts getting all weird when someone has a nightmare-."

"Someone's having a nightmare now."

"Best I can think of. I'm nearly back in the village now. If you give me a sec-."

"Got a flash bang?"

"Not exactly. I'll get on this, you make sure Garth doesn't hurt himself."

Still no one around. He ran.. away from Kaldur, who seems content shivering in his chains. Ring, infrared. Nothing. Hm. Ring, analyse patterns of depression in the grass and soil. Ah! There we go. He's hiding behind one of the stones of the northern circle-.

The sound of an air raid siren pierces the air, coming from the direction of Minions. I don't know how she did that, but if anyone could sleep through that… Ring, sonic scan of Garth. Give me some idea what he's doing. He.. looks like he's drumming. Drumming and dancing, is there a theme here that I'm missing? I can't really see him very well, but it looks almost like he's doing it reluctantly. I see him bring his imaginary drumstick down, then he throws himself backwards! What? What? I grab him with a construct straitjacket and pull him over. He just fell onto grass, why is he unconscious? Ah heck, how are Tula and Rob-. Oh, thank goodness. The yellow light is fading and from the looks of it they're getting closer to their bodies. Kaldur… Kaldur appears to have lost consciousness as well, but his vitals are steady.

I pick up the phone again. "Beryl-."

"WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW-"

"Beryl, knock it off!"

"-WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW-"

"You say something?!"

"Turn it off!" There's a pause, and the siren cuts out. "Kaldur's unconscious and something weird's happened to Garth. Get to the Cheesewringer and open a window. I'll transition everyone back as soon as you're ready."

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Hullevow 14

next

3rd March

12:47 GMT

"I appreciate your concern-" Garth tries gently pushing Beryl away, but she isn't having any of it. "-but this is not necessary."

She looks at him, her face a picture of scepticism. "Garth, you're shaking like a leaf."

He nods as a new round of tremors passes through him. "Shock and.. the adrenaline remaining in my system. It will pass."

She turns away for a moment and picks up the mug of tea from the bedside cabinet. "Here. Get this down you."

Garth hesitates, then realises that it might be the only way to make her back off and takes it from her. "Thank you."

Tula and Rob haven't woken up quite yet, but as far as we can tell they're back in their bodies. Just dealing with the shock by going unconscious. "Beryl, where did you get an air raid siren from?"

She gives me a half-smile. "I didn't, but I packed a wicked sound system."

Kaldur sits up slightly, wincing as he does so. "A most fortuitous decision."

"Are you.. alright?"

"I believe that the English expression is 'I will live'."

Beryl gives him a quick look over, a decision not at all motivated by his bare torso. "So… What happened? Everything was going fine, then..?"

Kaldur looks down for a moment, then shakes his head. "I cannot clearly remember. The.. shock was so overwhelming… Everything else…"

"Then what exactly did you see? What did you think was going on? You said.. that you weren't bacon and didn't want to dance." I shake my head and shift my expression to one of bemusement. "Bit of an odd thing to be afraid of."

"I.. was.. convinced that…" He takes a moment to gather his thoughts. "I was being pursued by a bestial man-like creature. I knew that.. if he caught me-."

Beryl's eyes widen as she works something out. "He'd cut you up and sell your body as black market bacon."

Kaldur looks concerned. "I had not realised that you were affected as well."

"I wasn't. That's Bombsite Bill!"

"Is he known to British authorities?"

"Only the really old ones. It's an urban legend -one of the ones that are legends, not one of the accurate ones- about… Well, depends who's telling it. Usually a gypsy or something, who's supposed to have lived in London during the Blitz."

Garth tilts his head slightly to the side. "Blitz?"

"The period of the Second World War where the Germans decided that they weren't going to launch a land invasion of Britain and so switched from using their air force to suppress the British air force to using it to firebomb civilian targets. London was particularly hard hit." I shrug. "Though we went on to do exactly the same thing to them."

"Meat got rationed during the war, so the legend says that Bill used to go to bombsites before the Wardens and took people's bodies, cut them up and sold them as bacon. He'd dress in dead people's clothes and steal their jewellery-" Garth starts trembling again and Kaldur does a sort of whole body clench as he tries to keep himself together. "-and knock out their gold-filled teeth with a half-burned brick!"

She's getting too into this. "Beryl."

"And he plays a tune on unexploded bombs with Human thigh bones, and anyone who heard him-"

"Beryl."

"-would have to go and dance with him." She rolls her eyes. "Daft, is what it is. I mean, he's just supposed to be a big ugly bloke, right? Any of us could take him in a fight if he was actually real."

"Spontaneous.. manifestations of fictional things can happen, but I didn't see anything real."

Kaldur shakes his head. "Neither Garth nor I had heard of this 'urban legend' before today. This was not a simple attempt to inspire fear in us specifically."

"Kaldur, you don't have some sort of dance or bacon related phobia you haven't told anyone about, do you?"

"I do not. If I were forced to guess, I would say that we experienced it as someone who was very much afraid of Bombsite Bill would have done."

Beryl thinks for a moment. "It's not exactly a commonly known about thing. I only know about it from Granddad's ghost stories. I don't think anyone in Minions was in London during the Blitz, so I doubt it came from anyone local." She thinks for a moment. "I'm not sure though. I could check."

"I do not think that it matters. Whoever it was, they were not the cause of what we experienced."

"You don't think it's… Krieger, do you? The Medusa Mask…"

Kaldur looks doubtful. "Mathew Hayden used the Mask to inspire fear during our last battle. It magnified my own fears. It did not show me those of other people."

"Right, but Hayden was a thief who got lucky. Krieger is a legitimate sorcerer in his own right, and we never did find out what really happened to him." I shrug. "If he opened a portal back from.. Asgard, or wherever he ended up…"

Beryl shakes her head. "This isn't really his style. I mean, I could see him using the ley line network to try and spread fear across Britain, but we know he can't because the network got broken up. And if we know that, he'd spot it as soon as he tried anything."

I shake my head. "A cancer monster I could understand, but.. Bombsite Bill is really specific-."

Kaldur looks at me. "Cancer monster?"

"That was what Sir Cyril saw. I could see the.. yellow shape inside him, when he was talking about it. I could understand if the fear came from someone else who was dreaming, but that isn't what happened. That just.. creates the circuit."

Garth looks downcast. "And now the four of us are viable targets in our own right."

Kaldur nods. "That may well be the case. However, our mission here has not changed. Beryl, find out where the new standing stones came from. Perhaps they came into contact with some malevolent influence before reaching here."

Beryl pulls over a chair and sits down, activating her arm computer. "I'll get on that right away. Not too many places supply granite standing stones."

"Paul, please remain here with Tula and Robert. Let me know the moment they awaken." I nod as he pulls a t-shirt over his head. "Garth, you and I will go for a walk. I want to know how far the area being affected by.. whatever it is inhabiting the ley lines, extends. And I think the exercise will do us both some good."

Garth nods and finishes his tea before returning his mug to the bedside table. "I think you are right." He stands, turns and bends to kiss Tula on the forehead. "Sleep well."

She doesn't react. Kaldur dons his coat and Garth follows him out of the room.

"What's going on there then?"

"The three of them became friends at the Atlantean Conservatory of Sorcery. When Kaldur became King Orin's student he spent less and less time with them… He was in love with Tula but was too busy to really do anything about it, and she got together with Garth."

"Huh."

"He was okay with it, but spending time around them while they're being all together is a bit awkward for him."

"I can imagine."

"Got anything?"

"I know where they got the original rock from and where English Heritage bought them from. It's the bit in the middle that's going to take the time."

"Well…" I exhale. "We're in no position to try that again anytime soon. No need to rush."

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Hullevow 15

next

3rd March

13:22 GMT

I push open the door to my room and wave the paper bag containing lunch at Beryl. "Unironically-."

"Pasties." She sets her computer aside and holds out her right hand as I come over and offer her the bag. "Think it would help Rob wake up if we held it under his nose?"

I glance at him. He and Tula are still out, but I'm not going to start worrying for another couple of hours. "I think it would be best to just let them sleep."

She rolls her eyes as she pulls out a pasty. "I was joking. Hey, do they do that 'jam in the corner' thing here?"

"I have no idea. It'll be a surprise." I take a seat and pull out my own pasty before setting the bag aside for when the others wake up. "Have you made any progress?"

She nods and swallows. "A bit. The stones didn't come straight here from the quarry. It looks like English Heritage picked them up in a receivership sale, only there's no record of what company was going bankrupt. The money went to the receiver."

"What debt was being settled?"

She shrugs. "Without a direct link to their server that's about as far as I can go that way." Her eyes narrow a little. "Unless..?"

"Ring, let the magical hacking commence."

A glowing orange line connects her laptop to the ring. "Magical hacking enabled."

"Right then." She reaches for the keyboard with her left hand as she takes another mouthful of pasty. "Urt. Ur-urt. Uh."

"Well?"

She frowns, chews, then swallows. "It doesn't say."

"Oh."

"No, that's weird. Their own system doesn't have a record of who it was sold for."

"I don't really know much about UK bankruptcy law."

"Short version, a company's assets can be seized to cover its debts. Receivers are the people who decide how to divvy it up. They can either break it up and sell the company in bits, or try selling it as a going concern."

"I knew that."

"So someone owned these stones, their company went into administration, a receiver got hold of them and sold them. So, fine; they were waiting until they knew how much money they recovered in total before passing it on to the company's creditors. But there's no record of who the company was or who was crediting them."

"Can you tell where the money went?"

"There's a bank account number, but I don't know who it belongs to."

"Make a note of the number. We can ask Batman to use League authority to require them to release the information."

"Wouldn't it be easier for me to just… Oh."

"What? "

"I think the magical hacking ran out of magic. I can't get into the bank's records."

"They could be warded. And you know how the Swiss are about bank security."

"Got it. Okay, other end of the problem. Heritage hired some pretty big lorries to get them out here, I saw the pictures in the guidebook. I can find them, and… You saw how the new stones looked like they'd been cut down to size?"

"Actually, I… Missed that."

"Oh yeah, some of them look like they'd been cut in half to make two new ones. And a couple had wear patterns that made it look like some of them had been resting on something, maybe in a trilithon? Since I saw a cut surface and a rough surface I can pretty much guess how big the stones were… Here we go: they were shipped from an address in London. Says twelve stones in the description." She looks up at me. "Chemical composition said they'd come from the same place, right?"

"Yes."

"So whoever bought them originally probably got them all from the same place at the same time. The sale happened eleven years ago, there's not a lot of demand for stones that shape… Found it!" Her face falls. "Oh no."

"Well?"

"They were ordered by Doctor Phillip Fulton. Head of Research at Geotroniks."

My eyes widen. Oh… Dear…

"You sure that summoning they were trying to do failed?"

"Yes. John's not the most reliable man but he's like a terrier where the supernatural is concerned. He wouldn't give up until it was dealt with."

"But if you wanted to summon something… You'd practise first, wouldn't you?"

"I would, yes, but cultists might just follow a set of instructions." I think for a moment. "But if it's been here for that long, why did it start getting worse last month?"

"Did anything major happen in the mystic world last month?"

"Last month? Fawcett City briefly became a suburb of hell."

"No, before that."

"I think the Justice League was running around after a group of stolen relics. Didn't amount to much, though. And then…"

"What?"

"The Beast nearly got free. That thing in Stone Cross was part of it breaking the bonds keeping it trap.. ped…"

Oh dear.

"Geotroniks summons something and it stayed trapped in their standing stones until whatever the Beast was broke out of its prison." Beryl nods. "And it can't get out because the ley line network's all messed up. Okay. Makes sense, I suppose. But what do we do about it?"

"I think we can stop mucking around with this undercover stuff. If it's trapped like that it won't be able to do anything differently than what it's doing now."

"What if it tries making the dreams worse? It can use the fear as a connection, right?"

"Maybe. It depends… I need to phone John and see if he can tell me anything else about that place."

"We could just wreck the standing stones. Move the new ones somewhere else."

"Except it might have already transferred itself fully into the local ley lines. If we did that, removing the stones wouldn't do anything except wind up English Heritage." So, what do we..? "I've got a design for an arcane energy storage vessel. Sephtian's.. supposed to be building it, but I doubt that he's prioritised it. If we can get it finished-."

"We can zap it in there Ghostbusters style!"

"Maybe. I doubt it's that simple, but yes, that would be the idea. Okay, I'll phone John, you phone Kaldur."

back

Hullevow 16

next

3rd March

13:27 GMT

I tap my foot. "Still engaged."

"How exactly does this 'magical hacking' thing work, exactly? I didn't think you could do magic."

"Oh, I can't. But I can remotely scan the servers holding the data."

"And… What, input thousands of possible passwords until you find one with access?"

"No. That would leave a record someone could use to check who had been accessing the data. What you have to remember is that data doesn't exist.. sort of.. in the æther. It's encoded on a series of… Well, back home it would be encoded on a series of minute switches. Here it's still mostly like that, aside from really advanced things like your arm computer which use quantum wafers instead. The important part is: data storage is a physical thing, so when the ring scans a server-."

"It scans every physical component of a server in enough detail to perfectly replicate what's on it?"

"Yes. I mean, having done that I have a list of every accepted password and what they grant access to, but I don't really need them at-."

"Again?"

I turn away from Beryl and retreat to the far side of the room. "John, hello. Hope I'm not bothering you at a bad time."

"Someone else want a dead relative raising?"

"No, nothing so light-hearted. How well do you remember Geotroniks?"

"I'm not likely to forget." He pauses for a moment. "What d'you want to know?"

"You told me they were involved in trying to summon Jallakuntilliokan, but I don't think you ever told me what else they were up to."

"They were interested in ley lines, how to project energy through them. Damn near killed me when they attacked a train I was on with fear magic. Just a few people on it survived. Whole thing got covered up, of course. 'Points failure', or some bollocks like that."

"And how did this.. 'fear attack' work?"

"They built a stone circle and had psychics draw fear out of these paranoid… Paranoiac mental patients and put it inside. Most of the psychics couldn't hack it for long without going mental themselves, but the people running the place kidnapped this little girl called Mercury…"

I wait a moment, but he doesn't start again. "What?"

"Oh, just struck me. I still think of her as a little girl when she's older than Zatanna. Anyway, she was more powerful than anyone they'd used before. She could suck up all their fears and shove them inside, no bother. But all that fear-."

"Turned into a giant Fear Elemental with ideas of its own."

"Not exactly. It wasn't clever or anything. It could react to stuff, but that was about it. They were trying to use it to keep the country afraid so the Masons could take over the government, only… "

"Only what?"

"It didn't work. The politics didn't work out quite the way they thought it would. They tried pullin' the plug but their assassin tried to finish summoning Jallakuntilliokan anyway."

"You wouldn't know what happened to it, would you?"

"No idea, mate."

"May I assume that you similarly have no idea what happened to the equipment Geotroniks were using?"

"Why? Is some berk trying it on again?"

"From the looks of things… Did the Fear Elemental have a name?"

"Mercury called it the 'Terror Thing'. Sounds a bit daft…"

"Hello, I'm Orange Lantern. I hang around with a thirty three year old man who calls himself 'Bat Man'. He wears his pants outside of his leggings and no one laughs."

"Heh, yeah, I suppose."

"Someone from English Heritage -looking to save a few pounds- bought the standing stones Geotroniks were using and used them to patch up a group of three stone circles just outside a place called Minions, in Cornwall. Just after the Beast broke out, everyone in the village started having nightmares whenever they went to sleep."

"Bloo-dy hell."

"My current plan is to trap it in that arcane containment vessel my blue ring using alter ego gave me the designs for. I mean, we know it can be trapped…"

"Should work. You need me there to take care of the magic business?"

"No, thank you. We've got four out of five magic using team members here already, and Nabu's on standby just in case. I'll get on to Sephtian and they can read up on the rites required…"

"If you're not in a hurry, might be worth popping up to Scotland and paying Mercury a visit in the Pagan Nation commune. She can probably tell you more about it than me. I don't have the address-."

"But I have a power ring."

"Zed might have warded the place. She knew her stuff and I doubt she's forgotten anything."

"Yes, but if she lives in a place called 'Pagan Nation' it'll probably be one of those 'ward against someone who intends me harm' things. And I doubt they'll have protection against optical scans."

"Sounds like you've got it all in hand. Give us a bell if you need anything else."

"Thanks John." I lower the phone and end the call. "It's called the Terror Thing and it's an artificial Fear Elemental created by Geotroniks as a tool of psychological manipulation. It's supposed to keep people afraid."

"Did he know who's controlling it now?"

"No idea. As far as he was concerned the case was closed. And given the mess they found at Geotroniks, that wasn't such an unreasonable belief."

"Bloody hell, mate." Rob blinks and then gazes blearily around the room. "You don't half talk a lot." He looks himself over. "I'm still alive then?"

"Looks like." Beryl gives him a cheerful smile. "How are you feeling?"

"Like someone stuck my soul in a septic tank and pressed the 'blend' button." He pulls himself up into a sitting position, winces and cradles his head in his hands for a moment. "Mate, you got one of those fully charged up Spell Eater things?" I remove one from subspace and toss it onto the bed next to him. He squints at it for a moment before picking it up in his left hand. "Cheers. Tula up yet?"

"No."

"She okay?"

"She appears to be."

"She was further in than me when it saw us. I was a bit worried it might have got her."

"No, she's-."

"Like that other bloke."

back

Hullevow 17

next

3rd March

13:32 GMT

"Other bloke?"

"Yeah, there was…" He winces again. "When it all… When it.. I guess.. sort of… Opened up, inside? There was this horrible-." He curls up, head pressed against the duvet with his arms over his head. "E-eh!"

"Rob?"

"It is…" We turn as Tula opens her eyes and pushes herself up. "It is hard to think about. Just being near the thing.. makes the fear association.. instinctual." She closes her eyes and her tattoos start to glow. "It is almost impossible to resist, but the influence can be.. purged."

Rob looks across at her. "You mind telling me how to do that?"

Her eyes glow as yellow light falls away from her empathic structures. Not entirely -that was clearly a very frightening experience the two of them went through- but the… The 'artificial' excess is slewing off.

"I… I am not sure that I can. The method I am using is a technique I studied after the first time I fought -or rather tried to fight- John Constantine. It was written using thaumaturgical notation that I do not believe you have studied yet."

"Oh."

"Your breath reinforcement technique would probably help a little."

"My what?"

"Ah." Tula looks at me. "What is the word for spirit in English?"

Cease translation. "Spirit." Resume.

She nods. "Spirit."

"Oh, right. Okay." Rob pulls himself into a sitting position with his legs crossed and his hands on his knees. His empathic network starts to intensify as he begins using the power in the Spell Eater to fortify himself. From the looks of things it's slower than what Tula was doing, but it should sort him out in an hour or two.

"Tula, Rob said that there was someone in there already? There weren't any reports of anyone going missing."

She shakes her head. "It looked as though he had been in there for some time. He was almost a.. a part of it."

Beryl thinks for a moment. "Someone from Geotroniks, you think? One of their patients?"

"Could be. One of the psychics, or just someone in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Tula shakes her head. "What is 'Geotroniks'?"

"Beryl, bring them and Kaldur up to speed. I'm going to Scotland. Back in a few minutes."

"Gotcha."

I walk over to the window, brush aside the curtain and open it a little. Ring, northern Scotland... Five miles up. Oh, and go upwards first. I don't want anyone spotting an orange line coming from this room.

Compliance. Course available.

And transition.

I take a moment to look down on the countryside below me. Pretty, but I'm not here to admire the scenery. Ring, analytics.

Available.

I'm looking for a small community -hundreds of orange crosshairs appear in my vision- near either a large body of water or the sea -about three quarters disappear- with few cars or other motor vehicles -about half- practising subsistence farming -most of the rest, just islands left for the most part- and no churches. Most of the islands go out. Okay, I can check those.

…

I don't suppose one of them has a sign saying 'Pagan Nation' on the front -all but one disappear- gate…

…

Thanks, ring.

Um, right. Armour… Light armour. I don't want to look like some kind of doom robot. Keep my face visible, but this is a professional occasion. I'm not going to use construct armour, but… Environmental shield to medium and Spell Eaters at the ready. Plot a course to directly above the settlement and about… Three hundred metres up?

Compliance. Course available.

Transition.

Looking down, I see small wooden houses with thatched roofs, their chimneys a mixture of brick and stone. Not all completely primitive, though. I see several wind-powered electrical generators -small ones- linked to a wire strung along a series of fence posts. There's a stream powering a water wheel which I'm guessing is used for grinding grains into flour. Short flag-topped poles mark the edge of the cliff. I can see people working on things, but there isn't much that grows well at this time of year and at this latitude. From the looks of things most people are inside.

Right then. Chap there's crouched down doing some weeding, he seems to be as good a person to ask as anyone. I descend through the sky until I'm floating just off the ground behind him. Woollen clothing with more than a little mud on it. I suppose I can see why this life might appeal to some people but I'm sure I'd hate it.

"Excuse me?"

He doesn't look around. "Yeah mate?"

"Would you be so good as to direct me to either Ms Zed or Ms Mercury?"

He pulls out a weed of some kind. "You from the-" He half turns so he can look at me. "-papers or shuckingfhit!" His left hand slips, and without the support of his left arm he falls on his face. "Oof!"

I bend down to help him up. "I say, are you alright?"

"Yeah, yeah." He pushes himself up. "Just a bit of a shock. Where'd you come from, then?"

"Eastbourne. Well, actually, a small village near Eastbourne. In a parallel universe."

"Oh."

"Yes it.. doesn't really help, does it? Sorry about that." He takes a moment to get his thoughts in order. Ah, that's what the electricity's for. "I'm not here about the marijuana, I really just want to speak to Ms Mercury."

"Who are you?" Rather than trying to explain why I can't say my own name, I take a business card out of subspace and hand it to him. He reads it. "Orange Lantern. Um. Right. Err. This way."

I follow him along a muddy track, towards what appears to be the village centre. The buildings here look slightly older than the others. Well. Twelve years have passed. He leads me up to the door of a longhouse and pushes it open. Since he's a primitive I'll let him off not holding it open for me. "Hey, um, Mercury? There's a bloke here who wants to talk to you."

"I doubt it, Coll. I think I'd know about it if anyone did."

I step forward and push open the door myself. In the dark -of course, it would be rather hard to make glass here- the orange glow from my environmental shield is clearly visible and the sigil on my chestplate stands out even more. Several people are eating lunch around a wooden table. One of them -a short woman with brown hair- looks positively shocked to see me. "No, I really do wish to speak to you, Miss Mercury."

"AAAAGGGHHHHHHHH!"

back

Hullevow 18

next

3rd March

13:39 GMT

"Um..?"

"AAAAGGGHHHHHHHH!" She shoots to her feet, knocking her chair aside as she staggers backwards.

"I'm sorry, should I-"

"Ah!"

"-maybe come back later?"

She seems to get herself together a bit. I'm not seeing fear -well, not much- so I'm not sure exactly why she's screaming. Everyone else is scared now though. Coll has retreated to the side of the room and the others look about ready to leg it.

"I'm sorry?"

"What are you?"

"I'm… You know, it still sounds weird to say this? I'm a superhero. And I want to talk to you about-."

"You don't exist."

"I…" Huh? "I'm sorry, could you just give me a moment?" I poke myself in the chest with my right forefinger. "I suppose that's not.. conclusive. Excuse me madam." I walk over to the table and look at the closest woman sitting there. "Would you mind terribly poking me?"

She hesitates.

"No, really, I want you to poke me. Nothing else will happen."

She pokes me quickly and lightly on my left arm and then jerks back.

I return my attention to Mercury. "See? Real. Now, can I have a word? Or do you want to scream some more?" I think about what I just said for a second. "Not that I want you to scream, you just seem to like screaming."

Mercury has her eyes fixed on me, in the manner of one trying to stare down a Rattlesnake.

Alert! Spell Eater temperature increasing.

Oh! "You can't feel me with magic and that's why you think I don't exist. Right. That makes sense." Ring, bare chest time. My cuirass disappears into subspace and Mercury squints as she tries to make sense of the tattoos. "Reminds me of a story, actually. There were two warrior monks. The elder was a powerful sorcerer and the younger, his apprentice. The younger had a particular gift for prescience, to the point where he neglected his other training because-" I shrug. "-it just wasn't as much use. So there came a day when they were leading their battle brothers into combat. The elder monk split the force with himself in command of half and his apprentice in command of the others. They would fight their way through separate screening forces with the intent of surrounding their enemies and catching them in a crossfire. But… When the fighting started-."

She doesn't quite scowl. "The apprentice used his magic to beat his enemies faster than his teacher and ended up attacking before the other part of the ambush was ready. So they all died."

"You've heard it before! But no. They had radios. They took some losses, then pulled back and called for help. His teacher had his part of the force double time it, and they were still able to pull off a victory."

"What do those tattoos do?"

"Lots of things." I make a circling motion with both hands, indicating the room. "And I'd be happy to discuss it, but would you mind telling everyone they can calm down first?"

"Why don't I know anything about you?"

"Epic strength scry ward and a pendant-" I take hold of it with my right hand. "-that eats magic energy. Which means that all your magic senses don't work." I pause. "Also, I come from a parallel universe with no magic."

She pulls a face.

Time for juvenility. I point my right forefinger at her. "Hur hur."

"How do you know who I am?"

"John Constan-" She's already nodding and doing the 'of course' dance. "-tine. Can I put my clothes back on now?"

"Yes, fine." She walks past me towards the door. "This way."

I re-armour myself then follow her out of the building, where it looks like her shout of alarm attracted quite a few other tribespeople. They look to her for reassurance but she just ignores them in favour of getting to somewhere where there aren't people. She leads the way out of the village proper and over towards the cliffs.

"Last time I saw John, he ran off to chase after his imaginary friend. With the help of a few hallucinogenic mushrooms. What does he want now?"

"Geotroniks." Her head whips around. "Whatever else happened in the aftermath, the 'Terror Thing'? Survived. We've tracked it down and… We were going to bind it permanently. But it turns out that there's a man inside. Would you know anything about that?"

"Siskin. He was one of the psychics they used to create it. He got trapped and couldn't get out again."

"Do you know his first name?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"It's my job to get the poor bastard out of there. Any information I can get helps with that."

She looks back out to sea. "Michael. He worked for the Ministry of Health."

Ring?

Accessing personnel records.

Bother. "He's listed as 'deceased'. They kept his body on life support for a couple of years, then had the machines turned off and cremated it."

"Plenty more died than just him."

"Yes, but I might still be able to help him. Okay, can you describe-?"

"Can it get out?"

"What, the Terror Thing? No, the ley lines never got fixed after most of the standing stones got spiked. It's stuck in a place called Minions, in Cornwall."

"Ley lines are artificial. Ancient male druids used them to force natural energy into straight lines. Geomantic power flows perfectly well on its own. That stone circle is holding it where it is, but if it gets damaged the Terror Thing will get out just as well as if the other stone circles got repaired."

I nod. "Worth knowing, thank you."

"You won't be able to do it."

"Says you."

"I saw him when he was in there. He was all… Merged into it. He wasn't a separate person anymore twelve years ago. I doubt there's anything left of the real him now. The Thing is probably just pretending to try and get you to help it."

"Thinking like that is why you're living in a primitivist commune rather than doing anything useful with your life."

She turns on me. "This is how people are supposed to live. Working together, knowing each other. In balance with the Earth."

"Yeah. I cleansed the sea of Human refuse. I refroze the North Pole. You did some gardening and smoked some weed." I shake my head. "I'll let you know how it goes. Ring, transition."

back

Hullevow 19

next

3rd March

16:06 GMT

"…says it will take a couple of days to get the containment vessel finished, but he's going to get started immediately. Since King Orin set us the task…" I lean back slightly in my chair. Garth and Tula have gone for a walk, Beryl's hard at work on her computer and Rob's got his textbook out.

Kaldur nods. "The area connected to the standing stones extends several miles in all directions before it fragments. I do not believe that the 'Terror Thing' could escape in that way."

"Mercury seemed to think it would be able to if this stone circle was destroyed. That the natural system was being distorted by the stones and would reconnect if the circle was killed."

"Then we will not take the chance. Robert, how do you feel?"

He looks around. "Pretty rough. We're not touching that thing again today, are we?"

"No, I think that would be quite unwise." Kaldur gets up and walks over to the bag containing the information on Atlantean spirit projection techniques. "It would seem that our current level of knowledge is wholly inadequate to the task at hand. We will all need to do a significant amount of studying before we attempt touching that creature again."

I nod and Rob twitches. "Beryl, got anything?"

"I've got transcriptions of the case notes for all of Geotroniks' patients. It's all there, all the dreams people have been having. Bombsite Bill, the Cancer Monster, undead unborn children… Horrible stuff."

Kaldur looks up from the book he picked out. "Did any of them survive?"

Beryl glances up long enough to shake her head. "Pretty much everyone who had anything to do with the place died. The security chief murdered a lot of them, then… The firearms units who went in weren't taking any chances. Some of the 'police'-" I hear the distaste in her voice. "-they were using to round up victims weren't in the building at the time. A lot of them turned up dead over the next few months. I don't think we'll find anything else there."

"Has your program managed to track down any of the secret Mason-wizards?"

"Some." She exhales. "I've met some of these people. Cyril and me…"

"It is never pleasant to learn that people your government trusted with high office are evil."

"I can understand Orm wanting to be king. He grew up expecting to be king. These people… They're already running the country. I don't understand what they thought they could gain by making everyone afraid and summoning the Penis Dragon!"

"Did you ever read Nineteen Eighty Four?"

She looks up and doesn't immediately look away again. "Yes?"

"Do you remember the bit… What was his name..? O'Brien, explains why the Inner Parties of all three states are intentionally reducing the level of technology available to everyone, including Inner Party members?"

She thinks for a moment. "Always, Winston, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stomping on a human face - forever."

That was a worryingly good impression. "I don't remember the exact quote -I'm sure you're right- but his point was that as long as they were privileged beyond what the Outer Party and especially the Proles had, they'd be happy even if the absolute level of luxury was less than what they could have otherwise had. When I first read that, I found the idea… Profoundly revolting. Like… They'd be happy cutting off one hand if everyone else had to cut off both of theirs." I sigh. "Sounds like some people treated it as a 'how to' guide. The fear and the Dragon would let them stay in power forever, without having to worry about the system being overthrown. No one would be able to remove them. Perfect control."

"I don't even think it would have worked. You can't control people with just fear."

"Did you think Jallakuntilliokan was going to be used as a blunt instrument? The whole point of calling it up was to control the soul of the country, to make the British people things that could be controlled in that way. Try and.. turn the country into Apokolips-lite."

Kaldur looks up. "Paul, you are more familiar with.. non-standard magic practices than I am. Do you truly believe that there is a chance that we could save Mister Siskin from the Terror Thing?"

"No. His body was destroyed, and while I could clone a body for him, I doubt that any record of his DNA exists. As a result, there isn't anywhere for us to put his spirit. Other than a magic containment vessel of some kind, and frankly I doubt that constant isolation would be all that much better than what he has now. That's even assuming that we could isolate him from the rest of the Terror Thing, which I doubt. To take the fears from the paranoiac he would need to connect to them himself, creating a magic bond with every single one. If more were added after he got stuck… No, I don't see it. I could well be wrong, but…"

"Then what is it you hope to achieve?"

"I… Hope, that the Terror Thing is mindless fear. Fears. I'm guessing that it's not purposive, beyond having a vague desire to feed and keep itself alive. I mean, as far as we can tell it hasn't really done anything… If that's the case… He's the only mind in there."

Kaldur's eyes grow distant for a moment. "You believe that he could take control of it."

"I think he could become the mind of it. He wouldn't exactly be him any more, but… That ship's sailed. Once he's got it under control we can stick him in the containment unit until we can work out how to build an arcanotechnological avatar for him. It's not.. an ideal solution…"

Rob puts his book down and looks at me, clearly uncomfortable. "I… I'm not sure that creating a giant fear Elemental is… A good idea. Like, at all."

"You do realise that Siskin is probably the last living witness to that whole business, right? Someone who could testify to what they were doing in court."

He scowls at me. "He'd hardly be credible if he made the whole court claw their own eyes out in terror, would he?"

Oh, I… "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that."

"Yeah, you shouldn't." He looks away for a moment. "Besides, it turns out that the whole Establishment needs Uncle Julian to stay inside. What're the chances anyway?"

"Rob, if it comes right down to it I'll forcibly extract him myself."

Beryl frowns at me. "Steady on."

"What? If he can't get a fair trial, why should they have the right to try him in the first place? I'm not going through all this effort to keep arseholes in power."

"But you're not just going to..?"

"No. I'll let the appeal happen. But if it's clearly bullshit, they're going to need a new prison afterwards." She looks distinctly uncomfortable with the idea. "Well? What do you think I should do?"

"I don't know! This is my first day plotting high treason! I usually just do data analysis and fighting evil Morris Dancers!"

Kaldur looks bewildered. "Evil Morris Dancers?"

"It's not as common as you'd think."

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Hullevow 20

next

4th March

09:27 GMT

"So we've definitely ruled out anyone astral projecting themselves into the standing stones..?"

I glance at Beryl as we make our way across the moor lands. "Seems sensible."

"And your plan is.. to astrally project yourself into the standing stones."

"Well-."

"I think I might have detected a tiny contradiction in your thinking."

"I wouldn't actually be projecting myself into the standing stones. It's more like-."

"Creating an artificial ley line leading to yourself and inviting it in." She looks thoughtful for a moment, then shakes her head. "I'm not really seeing how that's any better."

"Okay, firstly, the ley line would be pure orange light. If the Terror Thing tried using it, it would be literally incapable of using most -if not all- of its power. Secondly, however powerful it is, it is not more powerful-" I pat the box containing my personal lantern. "-than the Ophidian."

The spawn of the Insect is no match for us, my Agent!

I know. But brute force won't save Michael Siskin.

I defer to your judgement, my Agent. Act as you see fit.

"And you wanted me to come along because..?"

"While we don't need to worry quite as much about maintaining cover as we did when we thought this might be a Human magic user, I don't think that scaring people more will help anyone. It would look odd if I came with a group of six and then spent all day on my own. Plus, neither of us can learn enough magic in a couple of days to help with that part of the job."

"Was Rob waking up last night as much as Tula was?"

"Probably. I'd say we can safely conclude that what they did formed a connection to the Terror Thing. Hopefully they can come up with some sort of counter today. Either that or…" Oh dear. "I was about to suggest leaving temporarily, but-."

"You think that might risk it getting out." She looks away for a moment. "Other people who've had the nightmares have left already. Do you want to try calling them back?"

"I hope that's not necessary." Is it? "No. If that was enough to let it get out it would already be out. But… Direct, intentional contact would create a stronger link. I'd rather not risk it."

The standing stones are just ahead. It's funny: I know all about their arcane significance but there's still a little something in the back of my head insisting that I'm being silly. That they're just lumps of stone. Atlantean magic is just so overt, at least the bits I've encountered on a regular basis. The idea that a landscape that looks just like the decidedly non-magical landscapes back home has something else going on isn't something I've adjusted to.

I walk into the middle of the northernmost circle and sit down, putting the box down in front of me and opening it up just a little. Obviously, this.. would be easier if someone was dreaming -or rather, having a nightmare- but I think I'd rather that the Terror Thing wasn't on the top of its game when I try this.

I glance over to where Beryl is leaning against one of the stones, carefully watching what I'm doing. "Didn't have any nightmares yourself?"

She gives her head a small shake. "Didn't really see anything."

"No, but you were here before us."

"I'll let you know when. How about you?"

I think for a moment. "I don't remember the last time I dreamt of anything. Given all the work I've had done, I'm not sure that the Terror Thing could connect to me even if it wanted to."

Okay, enough putting this off. I take a few steady breaths, then try the basic spiritual reaching out. It isn't really based on vision, but I'm so used to perceiving things.. interpreting what my soul tells me is there as colour that it doesn't even occur to me to think of it in other terms. I can see Beryl easily enough… No. I'm going to have to turn it up all the way for this to work and I don't really want to become privy to every facet of her psyche. That would be rude.

I turn my attention to the stones themselves. The ones from Geotroniks clearly stand out, the mad passions of the serial killer Webster still associated with them. I get brief flashes of the… Of the people he garrotted and decapitated. I think his face is worse. They never did find out exactly who killed him, though my money is on one of the armed policemen properly coached by the Mason-wizards.

Now… Down. Again, it isn't down any more than I'm seeing, but I can't think of a better word for it. The yellow light of fear leaves a trail I can follow well enough, thin threads flowing from dozens of minds towards a point far below us. Probably wouldn't have been able to perceive it pre-Ophidian. Looking down… The Terror Thing is down there somewhere. But I don't want to visit it.

What does Siskin want? He wants to be free.

Ophidian.

I feel her alongside me, looking down as I do. Her tongue flicks out.

Faint, my Agent. Very faint.

And then I can see it, the strand connecting the soul of one who wants to the Embodiment of all Want. And… For some reason, to me. Alright then. I reach out, forming a probably-not-entirely-literal winch and winding the thread around the spindle. And turn. Okay. I have no idea what's literally happening, but I'm definitely pulling on something. Is this a thing that can snap? The thread is thin, but it appears to be strong. Or at least I can't detect any significant weaknesses.

Something -I have no idea what- roils beneath me. Something's coming.

Who's there? What is this?

She wasn't joking about him being faint. The part of Siskin I can see is an orange outline only, faint and frail and incomplete. His face is mostly there, but large parts of his head are simply gone. His left arm is little more than a stump and his right is emaciated. The ghostly image of a hospital issue t-shirt terminates in frayed cloth and what appears to be exposed spinal column.

"Mister Siskin."

It takes him a moment to focus his attention on me. Oh God. It's still got me, hasn't it?

"Yes. But that isn't why I'm here. Jallakuntilliokan's rising was prevented. Pretty much everyone associated with the project was killed. Now I'd like to help you."

Get me out please get me out get me out? There's so little of me left. The shade looks at its own ruined body. I'm being… Digested. It's… It's learning, from me. It doesn't understand Humans, but.. it will. Once I'm all gone… And then…

"Enough of that, Mister Siskin. You have a chance to get yourself back together again. I can help, but you'll have to provide a lot of the effort yourself."

What can I do? I've tried… I can't force my way out.

"Mister Siskin, you can never be as you were. But you can become something else. Fearing the Terror Thing, fearing your lost humanity, those things make it strong. Only by embracing it, by mastering all of the fears that make it up can you become something greater than it. You can take its power and make it your own."

No I can't! Can't you see? I'm just… Just a wisp.

He's fading.

Ophidian.

We exhale, our breath carrying every desire he's ever felt. Every moment of want and need and hunger. They flow over him, coalescing around him, reinforcing his wisp-self, turning it into something more substantial. His arm returns, his features flesh out and his body turns back into something approximating a healthy Human psyche.

At least from an avaricious point of view. This is probably a very bad idea from the point of view of spiritual balance. Ah well. That ship has thoroughly sailed.

"Feeling better?"

Yes, I… I think so. He stares at himself. I can remember being… Me. I haven't remembered… He peers at me. You really think I can beat it?

"It's not a fight. It's not about overpowering it. You can't win that fight. Victory is achieved through comprehension, undermining its strength and making it your own. Every time you shrink back, you give it victory."

And there's no other way out? My body-.

"Was cremated years ago. I'm sorry, Mister Siskin. Either you absorb it, or it absorbs you."

back

Hullevow 21

next

Pff, what? Ring?

4th March

19:58 GMT

I reach up to my forehead with my right hand and pull off the post-it note.

"Got bored, wandered off. Back at eleven. Beryl." I sigh. "Thanks, Beryl." Ugh, I'm glowing orange and it's dark. If there's anyone around… I suppose it's not actually a problem, not now that we know what we're dealing with. Time loss during meditation, ten and a half hours. So… About a one to two hundred ratio of time experienced to time passed. Better than when I first went to the Honden. Because I'm getting better at it, or because that was easier?

I reach forwards, snap shut the lantern case and take hold of it before standing up. Ring off, and… Ah. I brought a small torch with me, but it's going to be a bit annoying going back in the dark like this. Okay, sling the lantern case over my shoulder, torch out and turn it on. I think I'll avoid the bank, so the best route back to Minions is a little longer. The ground's.. fairly level and dry enough that I'm not worried about getting stuck or anything like that.

I give the distant village a glance before setting out. Quite a strong yellow glow, though at this distance it's a little difficult to pick out individuals. I frown. Odd. It's only eight o'clock. Eh, maybe they've taken to getting early nights so they have a chance to actually get the sleep they need. Keeping my attention on the patch of ground in front of me I fish out my mobile and scroll down to Beryl's name. I mean, back at eleven? Okay, she had no way to get my attention, but she could just have taken out her arm computer or something. I doubt anyone would have focused on that when there was someone next to her glowing bright orange.

I tap the name, then bring the phone up to my ear as I take another look at my surroundings. If I head towards the Minions Heritage Project, that'll take me to a track and then the road. No street lights or cat's-eyes out here, but there shouldn't be a fat lot of traffic at this time of night.

"Oh, come on Ber-." I hear her answer. "Beryl, really? You left me in a field-?"

"OhGodPaulyou'vegottogetbackhererightnow."

I come to a stop. "Why? What's going-?"

"It'shere. OhnoIthinkthey'vefoundme."

Oh no. Rings on and transition.

The field disappears and I'm… Standing over the road leading into the village? Ring?

Unable to transition directly into Minions due to intense fear aura. Conventional flight is-. I accelerate towards the Cheesewring. -available.

Ring, scan for Beryl.

Unable to comply. Fear aura interfering with standard scan. Best estimates on display.

Sonic and infrared estimates of which of the people in the village are most likely to be Beryl appear before my eyes. Looks like the person most likely to be Beryl is currently on the roof of the Minions village shop.

"He's in here! He's in here!"

"Light it! Light it quickly!"

What? There's a mob around the shop, some members of which are already inside with-. Oh dear. There's no actual roof access, and Beryl's got her sword pointed directly at the patch of roof nearest to the open window that was probably her egress point. There's a flash of orange from the inside of the top floor as someone sets something on fire. The people inside are pulling back…

I attach a construct harness to Beryl and haul her into the air.

"Beryl, what the hell is-?"

She squirms violently against the harness for a moment before throwing her sword at me -I jerk back in the air and catch it with a filament- and going for her slingshot. I know that a slingshot can do someone a mischief, but in a fight like this it's even more hopeless than a pointy stick launcher. And she's full of yellow. I know I'm bright orange, there's no way she can-. A round metal ball hits me in the forehead, the energy of the impact being effortlessly absorbed by my environmental shield.

"Beryl, it's me. Orange Lantern."

Two more balls hit me in the forehead. She's still yellow and she's shaking and I don't like how her heart rate's still increasing. Keeping hold of her I fly directly upwards three miles. Maybe dist-? No, another ball. I take a Spell Eater out of subspace and tie the thong it's attached to around her neck. Nothing. I try shoving the pendant itself into her blouse. No, she's still freaking out. Ring, is my Spell Eater heating up?

Some magic is being absorbed. However, the quantity is not commensurate to that of a focused attack.

Okay, she was reasonably together on the phone-. I remember watching a video on mental disorders. One of the case studies was of a young man who had lost the ability to recognise his father by sight. He saw a man who somewhat resembled his father, but it didn't trigger the 'this is my dad' circuit in his brain. Hearing him on the phone worked, he recognised his voice as long as there was no visual cue…

I turn Beryl around, back off and take out my mobile again, pressing my right thumb against her name. A short jaunty instrumental plays from Beryl's leg and she frantically grabs at her mobile and presses the answer button.

"Beryl-."

"He'sgotmehe'sgotmehe'srightbehindme."

"Okay, Beryl? I need you to take a deep breath."

"What'reyou-?"

"Beryl, we came to Minions to investigate something using fear magic. Do you remember?"

"Buthe's…" There's a slight distortion in the yellow fog enveloping her. "He's… Not. He's not. Okay. Okay. There's no one behind me, and I'm not hanging in the air."

"No, no, you are, and it's me. And, a slingshot? Really?"

"Hah heh."

"Okay, what do you think is behind you?"

"B-bombsite Bill."

"Whom you know to be fictional."

"I thought, like… The Terror Thing had gotten strong enough to make people's fears real."

"I didn't see anything like that, and I'm the most magic resistant person I know." Her heart rate starts dropping very slightly as she starts to get a grip. "What were you seeing?"

"I was climbing through a bombed out building… Only I knew it was really the village shop. And he was coming for me. I needed-. I had to hide, so he couldn't-."

"Sell you as black market bacon."

"It sounds stupid when you just say it." Another couple of breaths. "What was really happening?"

"I'm not sure." I look down. "I think they thought you were Bombsite Bill and they started burning the shop down. They're still standing there, trying to make sure that you don't get out."

"Where have you been?"

"The standing stones. I only just came out. Were you really going to leave me there until eleven?"

"Eleven in the morning!"

"Okay. So, what exactly happened?"

back

Hullevow 22

next

4th March

20:03 GMT

"I stayed with you for.. about half an hour. So I stuck a note on the stone-."

"My forehead."

"No, the stone to start with. Then I walked back into town to see how the others were getting on. They were pretty out of it after last night-" I start nodding, then remember she can't see me. "-so I picked up one of the books they'd finished with and came back. Started reading it. Didn't expect to learn how to do magic or anything, but I thought I might be able to pick up enough to make intelligent suggestions. I gave it about another half hour, but I couldn't understand the notation well enough to make sense of what I was reading. Then I got annoyed, stuck the note on your forehead and stormed back into the village. Thought I could make myself useful by collating data on exactly when what nightmares happen."

"Did you sleep alright last night?"

"Tula woke me up a couple of times. Didn't have any nightmares myself."

I glance below us. The shop is burning well. Everyone seems to be well clear… I create a cold gun construct and put it out. As the flames die down several members of the crowd cry out in shock.

"Was that-?" Beryl shakes her head. "Oh, this is annoying."

"I thought I heard a few other people cry out last night."

"Gotta be honest, I put headphones on and listened to white noise after the second time."

"Ugh, so we don't know if it actually became worse. Okay, so you started asking people about it..?"

"Shouldn't you be, like, doing something about everyone down there?"

"I could gas them all, but they're not actually dangerous to anyone at the moment and I'm hoping that this is costing the Terror Thing in concentration or power." I suppose a quick check wouldn't hurt. "A few people are huddled in various buildings, but most people are cowering around the building I picked you up from."

"Rob and that?"

"They're…" I can't see them. "Ring? Make an effort."

In a matter of seconds the ring switches between infra red, radar, sonic scanning and MRI. Nothing. Try harder. Ah! There! I may have had to saturate the whole area with orange light before I got a return-. "They're heading away from here in different directions. I'm not sure-."

"It's inside me!" / "It's crawling in my skin!"

The shouts draw my attention downwards. The mob's… No longer a coherent entity. Now people seem blind to one another's presence. They're clawing at their own skin, trying to pull something-. They believe there's something living inside them, something malign and evil. Ah shit.

"It's turning the crowd against themselves. I'm using gas." Filaments shoot down, turning into gas masks and attaching themselves to the faces of the people below as I start transmuting knockout gas.

"How safe is that stuff? 'Cause I remember that thing in that theatre in Russia-."

"The gas they used was heavier than air." People start dropping. Hard ground to collapse on but I can't spare them my attention. The aura of fear is strong enough that I'm really having to focus in order to do this safely. "Assuming that we're talking about the same incident, Russian Special Forces pumped the gas into the lowest point in the room. Anyone near there got a massively excessive dose. I'm doing the exact minimum-" I'm forced to use a manacle construct as a woman tries to cut into her own arm with a knife. "-I can to keep them down."

"What about the people not down there?"

"Mob down. We're lucky this is such a small place. Right." I drop further down, dragging Beryl with me. "We can get them next. They don't seem to.. be…"

"Be what?!"

The yellow light inside them is too structured. I can see… Separate sets of fears, linked by lines of commonalities to theme. Is it trying to make itself a host, or hosts? Whatever, as long as we can contain it then it shouldn't matter too much. I force holes in walls and gas them unconscious as well. I have no idea if that's actually weakening it-.

"Ah, Orange? They're getting up again."

What?

"The people, they're-" I look around as the mob awakens. "-getting back up. How are they doing that?"

Scan. Shit. "They're not. They're still unconscious. The Terror Thing's controlling their bodies." The patterns of yellow are the same. Was it… Practising? Or… Was it just that those others were asleep and it finds that easier?

Construct armour time.

"Siskin, can you hear me?"

They haven't managed to get upright quite yet. From the jerky motions of their bodies it looks like it's having trouble working out how Human bodies function. Individual joints, individual muscles, no trouble at all. The things as a whole? Not happening. On the other hand, it doesn't seem to need to look through their eyes to know what's going on around it.

"Yes."

They also all speak in unison. That's unsettling.

"Would you mind telling me what you're doing?"

"I hear you. The little voice that once thought to use me as a weapon is here. A part of my greater whole."

"Okay. And?"

"And I hear more fears." Oh, looks like they're getting the hang of standing up. "Every fear shall be a part of me and every mind shall shine with my magnificence!"

"Think negotiation's shot, then?"

"Could be. Of course, these people can only move at a maximum of Human running pace. If we pick up the runners and bring them back-."

A brilliant golden ankh appears in the air over the mob and oh heck.

"Witness the power of Fate!" The portal ankh closes as Nabu glides through, his fists glowing. Light flashes and the closest couple of people go down on their knees, the fear structure in their souls straining under the assault. "Fell spirit! Return to whatever foul realm spawned you!"

"Great."

"Mobile phones." I glance back as Beryl waves hers to the side. "Wonderful things."

"Yes, I'm.. sure they are."

"What?"

"Nothing. Ring, location of Kaldur." I see its best guess, a couple of miles down the road. "Transitioning."

back

Hullevow 23

next

4th March

20:06 GMT

"You could be happier."

"Yes, probably." Five hundred orange strands fill the air, a tiny distortion revealing Kaldur's location. It's a bit like Heroes of Might and Magic V. You spend all that time levelling up Godric and Isabel and then you have to fight against them. With Wood Elves, ugh. Kaldur knows full well that he can't block my better attacks with any magic he can perform, so he… What was it he called it? Blessing of Squid Ink? Not quite invisible and not quite intangible but enough of both to be a pain in the arse. I can't tell what else he's doing, he's still fortified.

"But Fate's here. I mean, we were only supposed to be getting information for him anyway. And shouldn't we have briefed him?"

I have sort of been wondering how much he pulls his punches during training. "Nabu knows more about magic than either of us. I'm sure he'll be fine."

Alert! Spell Eater temperature increasing.

Because just because you've found one invisible assailant… Empathic vision's blocked, so I can't tell if they're being directly controlled or just motivated by inserted fear. "Kaldur, Garth, Tula! It's me!"

Kaldur's illusory spell fades away, revealing his location. It's a little like D&D invisibility; vigorous activity tends to make it fall apart. He's got his Water Bearers out and active but doesn't make any immediate move. Okay, positive move. "Kaldur, I think you're being influenced by Terror Thing again. Nabu's got the villagers contained-."

He brings his Water Bearers up into guard position, water ends outwards. "Webster. Not this time."

Ah fu-.

I barely see it as a circle of frost forms around us. I'm too aaagh! I don't, agh, know who Webster is, but Kaldur's brain is firing on all cylinders. I never ran into a fear projector myself, but I remember the sensation all too well. The sudden increase in alertness as the adrenaline kicks in, the mild nausea…

Alert! Spell Eater temperature increasing.

I'm not… There aren't a lot of things I'm afraid of. Not irrationally so, at any rate. Heights used to scare me, but… I've been flying everywhere. Even diving down from high up in the sky is fun when I'm in control.

Alert! Spell Eater temperature increasing.

Death scares me. The concept that my consciousness could simply cease. Oh yes, that's where I remember this feeling from. I haven't had any religious faith since I was old enough to realise that adults could be wrong about things. Even here, where I know from direct experience that souls are real and there is life after death, I've… Really been focused on extending my life, rather than…

Alert! Spell Eater temperature critical.

They're overwhelming it! Putting so much force into it… I dread to think the amount of raw power that takes. Okay, construct armour's gone. At my default resilience, any of the Atlanteans can beat me down. Why aren't they? Breathing hard, I raise my head to meet Kaldur's eyes. His tattoos are glowing just about as hard as they can, his stance... This is as much as he can do.

I hope?

"You fear."

I.. sort of.. flop around. "Beryl?"

"I couldn't feel you. I couldn't touch you. But now I can. They feared me and now I understand what I am. They understood how to connect me to you, and now I touch your soul as I do everyone else's."

Ordered yellow lights.

"Fate fears as well. He fears obsolescence. He fears failing in his duty. You can't fight what is already inside you."

I should… Say something clever. Ask it w-. What it fears. If there's anything of Siskin in there that hasn't been consumed. Instead I curl up on myself, clutching at my own face in a frantic attempt to deny the external stimuli. How can I-?

Inside.

I twist, grabbing at the box containing my personal lantern. Openopenopen!

Agent? Your mind is strange.

Join with me.

Gladly.

Ah! She's trying, I can feel a little of what we are when she and I are together, but the fear inducement effect is so intense that the snake part of us cannot comprehend it. I just about manage to stagger to our feet and face the thing possessing Beryl. Yellow, yellow and more yellow. It doesn't really want, but simply reacts to its environment. What we're talking to must just be the Siskin part. Okay, fine, but was he totally subsumed or is he still in there as a separate being? Is he just a mouthpiece, transcribing inhuman thoughts in a Human fashion, or does his mind still function?

I can see the yellow lights all around me as the assault continues. As the Ophidian, we don't precisely have fears and that's keeping it out. Perhaps I can disrupt it in the same way we reinforced Siskin? We exhale orange light into Beryl and the ordered yellow light shudders. For the briefest moment I feel normal. Kaldur glows a little less as the Terror Thing momentarily loses its connection to the Atlanteans as well. Is that it? No, they're still full of yellow. I have no idea who 'Webster' is, but… Webster. That was the name of Geotroniks' Head of Security. Would the people Geotroniks used to make it have been afraid of him? No, their notes made it clear that their paranoia had a single focus. Siskin's fear, then?

"Siskin!" We breathe out again, our exhalation passing through Beryl along her connection to the Terror Thing. There's a great deal of loss along the way; the connection is one of fear and not avarice. But we dimly perceive something at the far end, something that can still want in its own right. "I know what it's like to be consumed by an emotion! To feel at an intensity that the Human psyche wasn't designed to process! You can't win by force of will!" This would be much easier if we just had a white ring. "The only way out is to accept the sensation, no matter how-!"

"Easier said than done." Kaldur's mouth, but not his voice. "I've been trapped in this nightmare for twelve years. I've felt every fear exactly as it was felt by people paralysed by the intensity of their fears and I've felt it all the time. And the thing that I fear most has been eating my soul."

"What? Do you expect it to get better? Do you think you'll get any respite once it's finished?"

"I only hope-" I turn as Siskin switches to using Tula. "-that when it's finally finished I might finally experience oblivion. My every thought, my every feeling is one of absolute terror. Can you even begin to understand what that's like?"

"Yes. We can. The Ophidian and the Orange Lantern came to terms. I know it can be done because I did it."

"I don't believe you."

Ophidian, back in the lantern please.

Agent?

I know what I'm doing.

I reach into my armour and pull off the hot-to-the-touch Spell Eater.

Probably.

back

Hullevow 24

next

I don't think

it works like that

I'm running through the ruins of a burning city. Everything seems larger than it should be, and the cars are at least fifty years out of date. I can't find my house which is not really surprising, given that I live in a mountain. Siskin, you didn't live anywhere like this either. I've read your records. Did the landmines hit it?

Landmines? How would landmines hit a house? Siskin, this is a paranoiac's fantasy. Martha Tredville. There was something wrong with her brain that resulted in her fixating on the early part of her life, growing up in the Blitz. Given how old she was… Probably something to do with the onset of senile dementia.

I think perhaps Bombsite Bill lives there now.

I hear a noise off to my right, a cracking, squishing noise that doesn't so much fill me with dread as redirect the general anxiety I'm feeling towards a specific location. In classic monster film style Bombsite Bill himself tears a fur wrap free from the body of his latest victim and drapes it over his shoulder before turning to look at me in the manner of a cat watching a hamster bravely poking its head out of its ball right in front of it. He's wearing an old Prussian style helmet on his head and over the rest of him is a floral patterned dress! Okay, there's some blood and dirt on it, but he's wearing furs and a dress! He's tall, well muscled and his teeth are filed down into points and he looks like the retard out of The Goonies. That wasn't even scary when I was a child!

He shoves a crumbling wall aside, giving me a better look into the interior of the house. Corpses in varying states of dismemberment hang from the rafters while before him a large bomb stands resting on its stabilisation fins. From his belt he takes out two thigh bones, raises them up and looks at me expectantly. I raise my arms and okay, I admit that being forced to dance like this is somewhat scary-.

"You don't get it." Bombsite Bill shakes his head as he begins drumming on the bomb's casing with the bones in his hands. "You don't get it. I'm not afraid like the little girl Mrs Tredville saw herself as when Mercury took this fear from her. I'm afraid of becoming the monster." He pauses for a moment, looking at the explosive in front of him. "This doesn't even look like a real bomb. Do you really expect me to accept becoming this? A cannibal and a thief?!" He starts hammering away in earnest. "To feel that doing this is the most natural thing in the world!? You want me to embrace being this!?"

I'm forced to dance closer and closer as he brings the bones up high over his head. Puts me in mind of the first time I met Danni, pinned to a wall with her burning hand next to my face.

Clang.

Clang.

Clang.

Clang.

I see the blast wave coming at me but at the same time it's Danni's hand and the purple of Klarion's glowing magics and it's all around me and I can't get out and it hurts and I'm burning burning burning!

Fortunately, it's not as if I've never been on fire before.

I stagger forwards through the inferno. The bodies Bombsite Bill had hung up around him are burning too, though Siskin's chosen avatar itself is unharmed.

"You're presenting this as a false dichotomy. The choice isn't between you becoming a monster and not becoming a monster. The choice is whether you become a monster that knows what it is, that holds back, or one that revels in its own nature. There's nothing inherently evil about the power of fear, any more than there is avarice. Also, this really hurts."

It's like that thing in Zebra Girl where Jack curses a serial killer to forever be in the place he least wants to be. Sure, he ended up spending ninety percent of his time in the Universe of Burning, but since it couldn't actually kill him he eventually got used to it to the point that he would rather be there than somewhere else.

"Fine. So I don't get good options. But this…" He shakes his head. "I don't think I can. I wasn't ever trained for this sort of thing…"

I reach over to one of the burning corpses, pull off a chunk of charred meat and hold it up to my nose. As expected, it doesn't really smell of anything. I open my mouth and bite down on it. It tastes.. a little of pork. I'm not sure whether that's because Human flesh really tastes of pork or because that was the idea Mrs Tredville attached to it.

"I could. Once I decide that something's necessary, I just do it."

A look distantly akin to hope appears on his face. "Could you?"

"Yes. But it's not me who has to."

"If you.. show me… If you can show me how, then I'll try. I don't know if I'll succeed… You may end up having to kill me… It, anyway."

What I went through with the Ophidian the first time certainly wasn't pleasant. At least, it wasn't at the time. If I did it now it wouldn't be a thing. Is this what Sinestro Corps members go through in the comics? The process was never really described in detail… "I'll give it a try."

Siskin nods. "Thank you. Whatever happens… Anything would be better than being stuck here."

The flames burning my body go out. I look at my left arm. Back to being my own arm, and despite being on fire for a relative minute or two it's entirely undamaged. "So how do you want to do-?"

And now my arm's gone, along with everything else. My skin… it feels rough. Uneven. I think I'm… Slithering? No. As I focus on my physical presence I become more aware of myself, of this fear's form. I open.. my eyes, eyes which cover my cankerous flesh and let me see in all directions as I burst forth from a concrete dome into a landscape of concrete buildings and chimneys. Blood, pus and lymph fluid leak from rents in my outer surface and strange veins and arteries are clearly visible across my skin. I shudder as I observe other types of tissues and organs strewn randomly across my bulk.

I'm cancer.

This is Sellafield.

Matthew Campbell's fear. He was a boy when Geotroniks took on his case. He'd lived in the vicinity of Sellafield when they were building the mixed oxide plant and his parents -his mother in particular- had filled his head full of all sorts of horror stories about the place. Their case notes state that his mother said that their neighbours died of cancer, but Geotroniks had little interest in checking up once the paranoiac symptoms manifested. The symptoms were the whole point.

I try moving, but the best I can do is a slow semi-controlled undulation. He was afraid that the cancer was going to suck out his juice, leaving him thin and dry. Perhaps he'd seen a picture of people suffering from radiation sickness? I don't seem to be cancer of anything or anyone, but nonetheless my eyes follow the dream narrative, immediately orientating on a distant house at the moment the Terror Thing's recollection of Matthew Campbell leaves the safety of his bed and peeks out at me through his window. Real Matthew was killed along with the other patients at Geotroniks, but what I'm looking at is a realisation of exactly how he felt during his episodes.

He gets a moment of horror at seeing me, then I'm moving faster, flowing over and through the buildings of the site towards him far faster than a creature like this actually could. If such a creature were actually possible. I know what's going to happen. I'm going to move towards his house. He's going to shrink away, hide in his bed. I'm going to pull the roof off and tear his sheets away, haul him up before one of my mouths and latch onto him. I'm going to suck out his blood, his very life essence, as he screams and wails.

And I'm going to have to affirm it. I'm going to have to think of it as normal, right and good while honestly believing that I'm doing this to a real child.

I need to do that to save Siskin. And probably my friends and the people of Minions as well, depending on how Nabu's doing.

I won't actually be killing anyone.

It needs to be done.

Want the ends, want the means.

back

Hullevow 25

next

4th March

20:09 GMT

I collapse onto the ground back in my own body, Matthew Campbell's screams still echoing in my ears. I hear two heavy steps as Beryl staggers before righting herself. Looks like… The ordered yellow structures are gone, though there's still a lot of yellow in there.

Kaldur gasps and drops his guard, the circle of frost surrounding us fading at once. "Kaldur, you alright?"

"There.. was a man…"

"Webster, Geotroniks' Head of Security, inner circle Mason and serial killer. The Terror Thing made you believe-."

His eyes widen slightly. "That he was you."

"Yep. Garth, Tula, Beryl?"

Beryl holds out her left hand in a 'one moment' gesture, bends over and enthusiastically vomits onto the road. Garth hugs his chest and strains to get his heart rate and breathing back under control. Tula's got her eyes closed and is muttering a prayer to Sedna.

"Tempest, Aquagirl, Squire. Are you functional?"

Beryl manages to look up and shakes her head. "What..? What happened to..?"

"I showed Siskin how to overcome the Terror Thing. Since you're free, I'm going to assume that he has its attention. Nabu-" Ring? "-looks like he's taken a battering, but the Terror Thing appears to be losing control of its vassals."

"Where's Rob?"

I freeze. "Bother. I-" Ring? Oh dear. "-I don't know."

"Can you return-" Kaldur takes a moment to take in the state of our colleagues. "-me to the village? I should brief Doctor Fate."

"I.. can, but I think I should pay Sephtian a visit, see if he's got the containment vessel ready."

"You said that he would require a few days."

"I'm hoping he was erring on the side of pessimism."

"Fate can most likely contain it with his power."

"Do you know what Nabu did to Onomatopoeia?"

Kaldur frowns slightly. "I do not."

"Neither does anyone else. No one's seen him since. Nor any of the people responsible for Roanoke Island. Siskin deserves our protection the same as everyone else, and unless it's that or lose containment of the situation completely I'd rather not risk him on Nabu's good will."

He nods. "Return me to the village, then go."

"Right." I tag him with a filament, then transition him to the near edge of the village. That should let him get a feel for the situation before charging in. Next step, my three other team mates get a quick burst of orange light, removing adrenaline from their bodies and carefully altering the functioning of their amygdalae to temporarily reduce their capacity for fear. Should help them get themselves back together a bit quicker, though most likely not fast enough to help with this fight. Next, I pick up the box containing my personal lantern. "Ring, zeta tube."

4th March

18:13 GMT -2

"Recognised, Orange-"

Ring, locate Sephtian and transition.

"-Lantern-."

Compliance.

And I'm floating in the water in Sephtian's office. The Professor turns as the wave of displaced water moves past me and the guards level their weapons.

"No! He's fine." They lower their weapons and at least one rolls her eyes as she recognises me. "Orange Lantern. What brings you here?"

"In a bit of a rush. Is the containment vessel ready?"

He blinks and his head shudders slightly. "No. I said a few days. And then I would want to test it."

"Oh… Dear."

"I have the.. prototype, the copy of the design you were given. Theoretically sound, but it isn't tested." Another shudder. "I.. it should work as directed. I would not want to bet your life on it."

"Superheroing is all about improperly tested prototypes. Where is it?"

"My.. workshop's dry room, but-"

Transition.

"-I fear that-" His head jerks around and he blinks again. "-the.. device may not hold up under stress. And the 'suction' mechanism you requested is entirely absent."

"We'll make do."

Sephtian's dry room is much like the one which Doctor Roquette and Dubbilex worked in while working out how to remove the Starro Tech. This was built a month or so ago for Sephtian to play around with arcane circuitry designs. Given the sensitivity of the work we're doing it had to be somewhere in which it could be kept under guard. I'm not sure how fast information propagates around Atlantean society but with this much work going on and so many students being involved it can't exactly be a state secret.

Sephtian points. "There. In the power flow analyser."

I see it. It looks like… It doesn't look like anything I can immediately call to mind. There are three dark grey rings of stone, held apart with thick metal cylinders. On the inner surface, machine drawn arcane circuit boards have been soldered into place.

I pass through the water window and walk over to it. "How resilient is it?"

"Oh, the spell system should be capable of coping with quite large strains. The physical components… Less so. I only intended to use it as a proof of concept. It really isn't anything I would recommend using in the field."

"Needs must when the devil drives." I connect a filament to it and remove it from the analytical equipment. "Where should I direct the energy flow to trigger the containment?"

"A… Magic user should be able to detect the entry point. Physically, it's slightly above the-" He points with his left hand. "-centre of the artefact."

"How will I know if it hasn't worked properly?"

"It.. will melt. Or possible explode. Or.. you'll.. be.. horribly devoured by whatever you were attempting to contain."

"Right. Thank you. I'll let you know how it goes."

"I really can't advise-"

Zeta tube back to Brighton.

"-this-"

Compliance.

"-course of-."

4th March

20:15 GMT

"Recognised, Orange-."

back

Hullevow 26

next

4th March

20:16 GMT

I look down at Nabu as he throws his arms wide, Kaldur standing next to him and looking like he's ready to catch him if he collapses. Golden ankhs appear for a moment on the foreheads of the now aimless Fear Zombies, then fade as-.

I send constructs downwards to catch people as they collapse. With the Terror Thing's influence gone they're back to being normal-unconscious. I take a moment to lower them to the ground then float down to stand in front of Kaldur and.. Nabu. It's not just Kaldur being over concerned, Nabu looks like he's been through the wringer. The Terror Thing was soft-peddling Kaldur with a minor fear induction to provoke him into attacking me. Against Nabu it would have been going all out.

I'll file away the fact that he can feel fear for later.

For a moment, I contemplate taking advantage of his momentary weakness. Drug Kaldur with something that would let me blame his loss of consciousness on the Terror Thing, chain Nabu up again and hit his helmet with Mageslayers until he's gone. Might work, but… No. Do the job I'm here to do. He might be useful.

"Either of you seen Cornwall Boy?"

Nabu lifts his head slightly and I shift my gaze to Kaldur. I can't stand looking into his stolen eyes. "No. Cornwall Boy was not present when I arrived."

Kaldur thinks for a moment. "Though I am uncertain how much of what I have experienced today did in fact transpire, I do not believe I have seen him since this morning."

"The ring can't detect him, but the absolute worst place for him to be-."

Nabu's eye holes glow golden. "The pagan ritual site." He pushes Kaldur away and rises unsteadily into the air. "If the fear creature has him it may attempt to use his innate connection to geomantic energy systems to escape."

"Or just have him stick a copper stake in the stones and take its chances."

"Where would he find such a thing?"

Ring, most likely..? "Copper gardening tools have made a bit of a come back in the last decade. I don't know exactly what disrupting a ley line requires-."

"It may suffice. Come, both of you."

I'm about a second from transitioning away as the ankh expands past us and Minions disappears in a surge of gold. Great, fear, exactly what I need to not be feeling at the moment. Wait, how did-? Spell Eater, I haven't put one back on after I took it off to let Siskin give me access. That was.. an unfortunate oversight. As the golden glow fails I see that he's teleported us to the top of the bank overlooking the stones. I immediately transition three metres right and pull a new Spell Eater out of subspace.

"Abomination! You will be purged from existence!"

And he's off, flying towards the largest stone circle. My empathic vision shows the whole area glowing yellow. I can't see Rob and under these conditions a ring scan wouldn't be reliable.

"What is the purpose of that object?"

I heft the containment unit. "This is the containment prototype. The idea was that we could feed the Terror Thing into it, keep it locked away where it couldn't do any harm."

"Justice League rules of engagement permit us to permanently destroy Elementals or Demons." He winces. "Having been violated by this one, I can think of no reason to change that policy."

"I got it to release the four of you by-" The air over the stones is suddenly illuminated by circular bands of golden characters, ankhs and other things I don't immediately recognise. "-communicating with the still intact spirit of one of the psychics used in its creation. He's trying to get control of it. He certainly hasn't done anything that warrants killing him."

"But if his body has already been destroyed…"

"That doesn't stop Nabu. Heck, we know that the Terror Thing can interact with the world without using a host, that's what it's been doing for the last twelve years."

"What do you suggest?"

"Any idea what Nabu's doing?"

Kaldur peers at the runic circles. "He appears to be attempting to scour every remnant of the Terror Thing from the surrounding area. It is likely that once he is done, he will attack it directly in the ley line network. If you wish to persuade him to use another method, it would be best to hurry."

Or… I could let him believe that his technique worked and keep Siskin's survival a secret. He must know that I'm working on arcane weaponry. He's never really shown any interest… "Any idea where Rob is?"

Kaldur raises his Water Bearers slightly, allowing a small amount of water to flow. The trail of water bends slightly to the left and he starts down the slope. "This way."

Dowsing. That's a new one. Following local geomantic energy flows, presumably. Is Sephtian going to have time to come up with a device that lets people who aren't magic users perceive those? Could be useful… No, he's probably not. I need to find another competent non-evil magic user who I can offload some of that stuff onto.

We get about half way from the bottom of the slope to the middle stone circle before the water coming from the Water Bearers shudders. Kaldur stops and expands the water flow in case Rob isn't entirely himself. "Cornwall Boy! Are you here?!"

"How do I know you're really you?"

"Because Nabu brought us here and he wouldn't have done that if we were being controlled."

"What if he's being controlled?"

"Then we're doomed anyway, so why worry?" There's a pause, then Rob is ejected from the ground next to us. There's more than a little yellow in him, but it looks normal in character.

"Why were you under the ground?"

"I was hiding. Way I see it, it's not interested in space as much as conceptual connections. I thought maybe if I got here I could try draining it at the source." He shakes his head dejectedly. "Don't think I was really getting anywhere."

"How were you able to avoid being taken as the rest of us were?"

He holds up the Spell Eater I gave him. "I drained it to protect myself faster than it absorbed magic protecting me. Up until a few seconds ago when the bastard thing came right back here, then all I could do was try hiding. What's the plan?"

I hold up the containment vessel. "Any idea how to force it into here?"

"Um. I…" He looks away for a moment. "Maybe… If we connected it to the ley lines? If Doctor Fate's just going to blast it-" The runic pattern over the southern circle fades away. "-then it'll run into the only escape path available, right?"

"Okay… And it can't use that connection to get right back out afterwards?"

"We could destroy the circle." I raise my eyebrows. "I don't like it, but one circle more or less isn't gunna make much difference to the country's geomantic stability."

"Kaldur?"

"What of Siskin?"

"Whether he wins or not, keeping it contained is the best option in the short term. We can study what it is.. and whether he won or not, somewhere safe. Where we're in control of what it can get access to."

Kaldur nods. "One of the secure laboratories in the Conservatory of Sorcery."

"Yes. If they're okay about me summoning Demons there…"

"I would rather ask Fate, but-" We all look up as the northern runic circle goes out and Nabu begins building power. His floating becomes unsteady as the strain starts to show. "-he needs to focus on his task. Do it."

back

Hullevow 27

next

4th March

20:19 GMT

Rob nods. "Okay." Kaldur and I watch him for a moment. "Um. How?"

Kaldur and I look at each other for a moment. "I suppose you'd.. create an arcane link between the local ley lines and the containment vessel."

"Yeah, I got that. But, like… How? I mean, I don't think I could take the bloody thing going through me."

Then I remember that I'm talking to an inadequately trained fourteen year old and not a professional magic user. And from the looks of things Kaldur's reached the same realisation. Ooh dear. "Could you create a bridge that didn't directly put you in the path of the thing?"

Rob throws his arms up. "Maybe? I don't bloody know!"

"Cornwall Boy. If you do not believe you are capable of doing this, you need merely say so. After so much time has passed, saving Mister Siskin would-."

"No." Rob closes his eyes. "Sorry. Give me a moment." He takes a couple of deep breaths. "Right, I can sort of feel the entry point to the trap. If I put a little magic… Yeah, okay, got that bit." He opens his eyes and turns to the standing stones just as Nabu's runes contract, glowing more brilliantly. "That might be a bit more difficult."

"Okay. Don't rush. What do you think you need?"

He blinks, his eyes unfocused. "Fate's sealing off the stones, and the centre of the ley line system the Terror Thing's hiding in. And that means I just can't get at it. I mean, that's why he's doing it, to stop any bit of it getting out."

"Is there any way around what he is doing?"

"I don't… Uuuum…" He tries to think of something. "I think he's using the limits of the core of the ley line system as a guideline for his spell. So… Unless we can-." I take a copper stake out of subspace. "Oh. Yeah. That would work." He thinks some more. "Except -assuming that Mercury woman was right- I'd still have no way of knowing where the new connections were going to go."

"I may be able to force them to go in a particular direction." Kaldur thinks for a moment. "But it would only be for a matter of moments. We would have to time its release to the instant."

"Anything I can do?"

Kaldur looks at me. "It would be nice to have some assurance that Siskin still existed at all."

"Slap me if I take more than ten seconds." I focus on the empathic energies within the ley line network. Yellow, yellow and more yellow. I'm not really sure which bits are whom. Nabu's spell is sort of scrunching it up-. No, wait. There. The patterns are changing. Rather than being a peer-to-peer network, some parts of the ordered structure are shifting, moving to orientate themselves towards…

A bit that isn't wholly yello-. Ow!

"Ten seconds, mate."

I tense and relax the muscles of my right cheek. "I'm reasonably confident he's still in there. He appears to be making progress, though it's far too early to say that he's winning."

"Wouldn't it be better to just ask Fate to stop for a bit?"

I look up at the glowing figure floating above the centre of the middle circle. "Does he look like the 'stopping for a bit' type?"

"No, but…"

I take a few steps away and cup my right hand next to my mouth. "Nabu, we've had an idea! If you-!"

"Your part in this is done!" He doesn't even look around. "Leave this matter in the hands of Fate!"

I turn away. "Oh well."

"Yeah, but… Was that an order?"

"He doesn't actually have the authority to give us orders. Only Batman does, and we don't have the time to explain things in full to him. Which means…" I look at Kaldur. "It's up to you as team leader. We can take a chance on trapping it, and maybe saving Siskin in the process. Or we might cause the Terror Thing to escape. Alternately, we take no action and Nabu kills it for sure. Whatever you say, goes."

"Fate seems adamant that he does not want us to involve ourselves."

"He doesn't know about Siskin. And frankly, I'm not sure he'd care."

He looks down. "Is there anything that you can do to improve our chances of success?"

"I can.. probably pull it in the direction of the trap with orange light. It's not reliable, though. If Siskin doesn't have enough of it integrated into him… I.. can also create whatever focusing patterns you want to the ground, though I can't power them."

Kaldur nods. "This is not a simple choice. I…" He nods. "We will make the attempt. Orange Lantern, use the design-"

Fate raises his hands above his head and a huge golden ankh forms in the air before him. "Die, creature of nightmares!"

I'm moving towards the closest stone, stake and auto-hammer construct at the ready.

"-from Priscus' Spirits and Bindings!"

"I know it!" In an attempt to keep Nabu from spotting it I run the design under the soil as I strike the stone with the copper stake. I create an orange super sharp construct around it and bring the auto-hammer to bear. The hard rock resists for a moment, then fails before my magic hammer. Once it's got a decent way in I remove the construct surrounding the stake and stand back slightly. Focus. Okay, that's Siskin. I'm not sure if he's even aware of-. Nabu slams the ankh into the ground and the whole emotional network within the ley lines convulses. Okay, yep, he's aware.

"The lines're getting weaker! Making a connection.. now!"

Kaldur kneels and places his hands onto the ground, his tattoos glowing as he exerts himself. I try reaching out with orange light to pull Siskin in the desired direction but I'm struggling to find purchase with all of that yellow around! Okay, maybe… I attach a filament to the containment unit and feel as it begins pulling on the orange light. I spread the other end out, waving it around the inside of the ley line system.

Best I can do.

Golden lightning rains down into the ankh from Nabu, causing it to blaze brighter and shove itself further into the ground. I also see parts of the Terror Thing start decaying into nothingness, something I assume is Nabu's doing. I think it's noticed that the containment isn't as sure as it was. It's writhing now, churning and ugh, I'm starting to feel it.

Rob's eyes widen. "I think it's coming."

"It will be brief. You are strong enough to manage."

And with the texture of congealed sick being poured from a bucket, the Terror Thing flows -or rather gloops- out of the ley line network. I see… I think I see it trying to spread out in all directions once more, before noticing our channel. I pull, trying to drag at any scrap of orange I can see.

"I will be your end, creature!"

The golden ankh sinks fully into the ground and I see large chunks of the Terror Thing simply disappear. With only one place to go in order to escape certain destruction the rest leaps for the containment vessel.

"Augh!" I look around in concern, but Rob shakes his head. "It went past me. But that was…"

Everything I hooked any orange onto is now out of the ley line. I cut the orange connection just as the ground in the core of the circle shines brilliant gold and what's left of the yellow within vanishes.

back

Hullevow 28

next

5th March

10:36 GMT -5

"…you thought it was sensible to isolate yourself for an entire day following your first contact with the Terror Thing?"

We're arranged in a line in front of Batman. Feedback so far has been… Reasonably good. I got a nod when I realised out loud that I needed to create some sort of magic defence artefact that magic users could wear without interfering with their abilities.

"Mostly, because it hadn't demonstrated any sort of reaction to prior contact, either by my team mates or earlier by Captain Cornwall. The worst Aqualad, Tempest, Aquagirl and Cornwall Boy got was the same nightmares that everyone else was already receiving. Waiting a day to check might have been helpful, but equally it might have given it the chance it needed to strengthen its connection to a group of magic users. The type of contact I was making… I don't know of any other examples of what I tried, but -based on records of similar forms of magic- I believe that it was less intrusive than the simple dive we'd attempted the day before."

Batman nods. "Do you think that its change in behavior to an overt attack was related to your attempt to contact Michael Siskin?"

Correlation does not equal causation… "Having compared the timeline of the start of the hallucinations-" It seems that things started getting pretty weird around midday as the Terror Thing began exerting its influence over the waking world. "-to what I would have been saying about that time, I couldn't see any obvious causal remark. Of course, that's assuming that time was moving at an even pace." I shake my head. "I don't think that there's any way to tell for certain."

He nods again and takes a step back, taking in the entire line up. "I have one final question for the team. Why did you decide not to inform Doctor Fate that your extraction attempt was successful?"

I go to open my mouth, but Kaldur gets in first. "At the time, we were uncertain exactly what it was that we had. Orange Lantern also raised.. certain concerns, relating to Doctor Fate's treatment of those he has taken into custody on prior occasions."

Rob nods. "Orange Lantern tried telling him what we were going to do right before we did it. Doctor Fate wasn't listening."

Batman's eyes linger on me for a moment, before moving back to Kaldur. "The British government has asked that we pass on their thanks for dealing with this matter without anyone coming to serious lasting harm. Though it is unfortunate that the mission changed from observation to combat when it did, I do not believe there were any signs of that risk that you could have been expected to notice."

Rob takes a half step forward. "Sir, did-?"

"Doctor Fate and I will carry out a follow up investigation into the events of twelve years ago personally. Once I know enough to form firm conclusions, the results will be forwarded to our contact in the British government with my recommendation. Based on what I've seen so far, I think it likely that I will recommend that he be released."

"Thank you, sir."

"I assume that the containment vessel containing Michael Siskin is in a secure location?"

"Sephtian's got it in a secure laboratory. There are alarms, wards and a constant guard presence. We.. hope to be able to get a better look at what we caught in a couple of weeks."

"I'll look forward to your follow-up report." His eyes move down the line once more. "Dismissed."

We remain exactly where we are as he turns away and heads in the direction of the zeta tube. Training… With the six of us gone, nothing really got planned. If anything, the general assumption in the mountain was that Plastic Man -this week's supervisor- would be driving the rest of them up today. No one exactly seems to be upset about missing out, not when Tula and Rob finished describing what having a Fear Elemental sitting in your soul felt like.

"Recognised, Batman, zero two."

And with that, the Bat-tension is gone and we start to form a huddle.

Beryl looks thoughtful. "Sort of expected him to be scarier than that."

Garth makes a wry smile. "Given what we just went through, I would not be surprised if our ability to respond to normal levels of fear has become a little maladjusted." He looks at me. "Does Professor Sephtian want us there when he starts working with Mister Siskin?"

I shake my head. "I don't think he'd mind, but things have grown a bit. It's not just him and the students anymore… Which makes sense, because it was starting to get a bit silly. There're five professional thaumaturgists on the team… I haven't been properly introduced yet, but they'll be leading the work on moving production to a properly industrial scale so Sephtian can focus on the design work and teaching."

Tula nods. "I would be quite happy not to see Mister Siskin again for quite some time."

Kaldur frowns slightly. "I do not understand why Mister Constantine did not follow up on the matter earlier. If he knew that the Terror Thing might have survived, it seems that it would have been prudent to alert the authorities."

I make a shrugging motion with my right hand. "Ninety nine was Batman's first year on the job, so there wasn't a Justice League. He wasn't on speaking terms with Mister Zatara, he knew that the conspirators were involved at the highest levels of the government… Who was he going to report to?"

"I suppose that that is true."

"Not to excuse him or anything. He.. isn't a professional. Doesn't keep good records, doesn't do follow up… The number of times he's mentioned something in a completely off-hand way…" I shake my head. "Did I ever tell you that he once fought a wizard who'd transferred his soul into a Dog?"

Beryl frowns. "Some sort of Hellhound?"

"No. Just a normal Dog. He could use his remaining magic to cause other Dogs to obey him and so he could speak… Sort of. But that was it. He had the proportional strength and speed.. of a Dog. Of course, his pack nearly ripped John apart anyway."

Tula smiles. "Suddenly he sounds a lot less imposing."

Rob squints. "Can we get back to how the entire British government is full of Demon worshipping fascists?" His eyes open and he looks at Beryl then at me. "Did you, like, know that already?"

"I don't know how widespread it is. One of my uncles was a Mason and I don't think he would have been involved in anything like that. John said that the actual problematic ones were a small group, and the rest were probably just acting out of 'club loyalty'."

Kaldur nods. "In any case, Batman and Doctor Fate are better placed to perform an investigation than we are."

"Batman's own version of the Tarkin Doctrine."

Tula and Garth glance at each other, then Garth looks at me. "I do not know what that means."

Beryl tries to follow my train of thought. "Grand Moff Tarkin was a character in the film Star Wars. The Tarkin Doctrine was his belief that the Empire could keep the galaxy in line using the fear of massive retaliation."

I nod. "When Batman started in Gotham, the police force and government were massively corrupt. Now, they're… Well, significantly less so. Not because everyone got arrested, that would just have caused everything to break down. No. He went after the worst offenders, the ones who thought they were immune to any retaliation. By taking them down, he showed that no one was safe. The result? Petty corruption dropped to nearly nothing, because no one wanted to risk drawing his attention. Now, Gotham's not a great place to live, but it isn't much more corrupt than other places and it's getting better all the time." I make a shrugging gesture with my hands. "I'm not Nabu's biggest fan, but if I was an evil wizard he'd scare the shit out of me."

There's a moment of silence.

Kaldur turns to Beryl. "Do you desire to join the team on a permanent basis?"

She looks at him incredulously. "After the last couple of days?" She grins. "Of course I do."

back

NEXT CHAPTER

Black Reign

BACK

Black Reign 1

next

Black Reign

1st October 2010

19:26 GMT -5

“Orange Lantern. A word.”

I take a breath and move my right hand down to my side. Attention isn't really practical in a swamp but I do a reasonable approximation. "What can I do for you, sir?"

Batman makes sure that I'm watching his face, then pointedly looks in the direction of Teth Adom. "Please explain why Black Adam now appears to be on our side."

"Simple enough, sir." I see his eyes move back to me and I strongly suspect that under his mask his eyebrows are raised. "Simplish. About five thousand years ago the wizard Shazam appointed Prince Teth Adom as his champion, the role Captain Marvel occupies now."

"I am aware of Black Adam's history."

I go to say 'ah, but you're not'. Fortunately, I remember in time who I'm talking to. "The authorised version turns out to have certain.. omissions. Firstly, the modern age supervillain 'Black Adam' was not in fact Teth Adom. He was an archaeologist named Theodore Adam who used Teth Adom's corpse to hijack his powers. Part of the process of doing so caused his empowered state to look somewhat like Teth Adom. Um." I take a quick look around, then raise a soundproof bubble around us. "Sir, can I assume that you know-?"

"That Captain Marvel's secret identity is that of a ten year old boy?" He changes the focus of his attention to William for a moment. "Yes. As such, I understand that changing shape is an intrinsic part of the power Shazam bestows."

"Right. So, when I found that out, I realised that the best way to neutralise Black Adam as a threat was to disrupt the spell which allowed him to steal that power. We fought, I managed to provoke him into calling down lightning and… The third time, I managed to manoeuvre him into position to be hit by it. Then I destroyed the amulet that was the spell's physical component and used a magic powder-" Please don't ask. "-to weaken the magic's hold to the point that Teth Adom's spirit could fight its way free."

"And take control of their shared body."

"I assumed that something like that would happen. That, or Adom would pass on to his people's afterlife and Theodore would be depowered. What actually happened was that their gods decided that they didn't like Theodore very much and had Ammut eat his soul. Teth Adom is currently in sole control of what used to be Theodore's body."

Batman nods slowly. "Why wasn't Captain Marvel aware of that?"

"I don't think that Shazam himself knew exactly what had happened. I think he saw someone dressed as Teth Adom using Teth Adom's powers to pick a fight with his current champion and rather jumped to conclusions."

"Why would his former champion want to fight his current one?"

"As I understand it, Shazam is the one who killed him. I only have.. his version of events. I'm not sure enough of what happened to say anything definite, and I can't.. check, anyway…" I shrug. "His desires appear to show that he doesn't have a specific grudge against anyone except Shazam and that he has other priorities at the moment."

Warning: low power. Six percent remaining.

I turn off the sound deadening dome. "Sir, if you want to ask him anything then I suggest doing it now. Another one percent and I lose translation."

"Tell me: what does a man five thousand years out of time want?"

"He still regards Kahndaq as being his country." Batman stiffens slightly, his gaze growing distant. "I don't think he's made any concrete plans, but given the state of-."

"What languages does he speak?"

"I'm not sure. No modern ones, certainly."

"The Republic of Kahndaq is not a member of the League's UN charter. As such, the League is not empowered to intervene in its internal affairs unless it threatens another state."

"Yes sir."

"Can I take it that this outcome was not entirely unanticipated?"

"Well, I knew it was theoretically possible. And my plan for dealing with it is a simplified version of the one where they were sharing a body. Sir, if this is about the fact that Theodore died-."

"No. Though I have noticed that you seem to be less disturbed by that than you were with Matthew Hagen."

"I didn't kill this one. My decisions leading up to it were entirely intentional… And, frankly, he deserved it more. I.. don't think I'd have been prepared to kill him, but I'm not going to pretend to be choked up about the fact that he died."

"How did you plan to handle integrating Teth Adom into modern society?"

"I have plenty of spare time, and he has the Wisdom of Zehuti. I was planning to hire a language tutor and use the ring's translation function to make it possible for him to learn Kahndaqi Arabic. Until he had a functional understanding of the language I'd be his main way of understanding the modern world."

"You could keep an eye on him."

"Um. Sort of. I don't think it would actually come to that…"

Adom and William fly over to the dome to help the other League members with the clean up. Wallace sticks his head out of the bioship, starts to say something, spots who I'm talking to and ducks back inside.

"Acceptable, with one modification. I am.. concerned, that your ring may impact your judgements on some matters. Changing a government by force has a great deal of opportunity to go badly wrong. I want a member of the Justice League to be on hand to make sure that he isn't a threat to the people you want to help. Human culture five thousand years ago was very different than what it is now."

"There's plenty of room at the embassy, sir. I'm sure Wonder Woman wouldn't mind having him as a guest for a while."

He nods. "But she doesn't speak Ancient Kahndaqi."

"I checked, sir. The language is dead. No one speaks it. Unless you ask one of the other Lanterns..."

"Does he know that?"

"I… I don't know."

Batman inclines his head slightly. "Martian Manhunter has the ability to telepathically use languages from someone else's mind." I did not know that. "He could assume the guise of a professor of Kahndaqi history. If we allowed Adom to believe that knowledge of the language was unusual rather than unheard of, it would give him an additional point of contact."

That… Should work. "Assuming that he doesn't block the telepathy with the Power of Atum."

"Captain Marvel has shown the ability to resist telepathic attack, but he has to exert himself to do so. So long as the telepathic contact is subtle, it should go unnoticed."

I nod. "It would probably be easier for him to learn from Mister J'onzz than someone who needed me to translate everything for them."

"Accompany the others back to the mountain, recharge, then return here. I will need to discuss the arrangements with Adom himself."

I nod, and he turns to walk away. "Sir? Do we know how many people died?"

"Casualty lists are still being compiled."

I close my eyes for a moment. I need to ask this. "Sir? Are they just going to send Napier back to Arkham again?"

"The Joker will be temporarily housed in the Belle Reve Penitentiary, pending a decision on where the members of the Injustice League will stand trial."

"Sir, Arkham couldn't keep hold of him the last seven times. What makes you think it will work this time?"

"Wayne Industries has secured a contract to upgrade Arkham's security. Having reviewed their work, I'm satisfied that he will find escaping again a good deal more difficult. Is there anything else?"

I smile. "No sir. Thank you."

back

Black Reign 2

next

7th March 2011

17:06 GMT -5

"So… How come you're not wearing an orange jump suit?"

Zatanna looks a little uncomfortable on the other side of the partition between the prisoners -like myself- and those visiting them. Still, I do appreciate the company. Oh, the other prisoners are nice enough… And so are the guards, actually. I seem to remember from the comics that the Warden of Iron Heights was pretty fanatical about keeping metahumans inside, going so far as to drug Ms Baez in order to prevent her interacting with her legal representative. All I got was a quick 'you're not going to make any trouble, are you?' speech. Didn't even try and put a collar on me. Okay, sure, I'd just demonstrated on worldwide television that they didn't work on me, but that wouldn't have stopped some people. Anyway, I'm getting on fine with everyone, but I do feel the pull of familiar faces and I imagine that my friends are keeping an eye on their mentors' responses.

"They didn't actually have one that would fit." I shrug. "I also agreed to assist prison staff in the event of a break out. My cell is just inside the metahuman containment wing and they don't even bother locking the door."

"That.. doesn't really sound like you're in prison at all."

"And? Zatanna, I'm getting fan mail. In several cases, from national governments. Here." I pick up a couple of thank you letters from my side of the table and hold them up against the screen. "This one's from China, Russia, Montenegro for some reason… There's several bags from various people that I haven't gotten around to opening yet." I frown, tapping my right fist against my chin. "I suppose this is the first time since getting to this planet that I've actually had a postal address… Anyway, since I pretty much put myself here no one really believes that I'm going to abscond."

"But you did abscond."

"I explained that. To Diana. Parallel universe Batman. Dire necessity. A great time was had by all.. who weren't.. Thanagarians or.. working for SHADE." I take a look at my left hand. Considering the injuries I received it really is remarkable quite how swiftly I've healed up. Some patches of my skin aren't quite back to normal yet, but nothing actually hurts anymore and none of it impedes my movement. "And I came right back as soon as I was well enough." I watch her for a moment. "So… How are things with you?"

"One of my closest friends is in prison."

"I told you Kayla was a bad influence." I nod to myself. "Too much eye shadow."

"Grayven, this isn't funny. What if Batman kicks you off-." She cuts herself off and glances around. "-from.. the League."

"That's fine. I mean, it'll be a little awkward. I'll have to find somewhere else to live, but… If that's the price for killing Klarion, then that's fine." I look her directly in the eyes. "Does Giovanni know that you're here?"

She hesitates. "Y-es."

"And he's okay with that?"

She exhales. "He doesn't disagree with what you did, just the way you went about it. The League… They don't all think you were wrong."

"I'd have called Captain Atom a hypocrite if he did."

"Why are you so intent on pushing them away?"

So I can join the Light in a believable way. I'm not sure whether it was sitting in a cell for hours each day, my exposure to the Anti-Life or just getting Klarion out of my system, but I'm really struggling to remember the reasons why I thought that working with them might be a good idea in its own right. But I can't tell Zatanna that, or it would ruin the whole thing. "There was… Before I came to this Earth, there was a comic I read. It was called The Boys. There was one.. scene in it, where an officer in the United States army during the Second World War was introduced to their first superheroes. When he talked about it later, he said that while modern people grow up surrounded by superheroes and so are used to the whole thing, all he could think at the time was 'why the hell are you dressed like that?'. There are.. assumptions, that the League goes along with, even when they shouldn't. About what superheroes do, and what they don't do. I need to confront these ideas, or they'll just.. stay."

"I've actually got a paper to write on what you did."

I blink. "Really?"

She looks away for a moment "There was a choice of topics, but since I.. know you it seemed to make sense."

"What's the title?"

"'Is it ever appropriate to murder someone?'"

"Ooh, leading question." I consider for a moment. "Your school: are the teachers all Catholic, or does it just have a Catholic ethos?"

"All.. Catholic, I think."

"Okay, firstly, we need to agree on a definition of 'murder'."

"Intentionally killing someone who wasn't trying to kill you."

I cup my hands to my mouth. "Arrest the army!"

She rolls her eyes. "Wars don't count."

"Why not? Why is killing special when a country decides to do it?"

"Because their job is to keep their country's people safe. You can't ask people to do that and then arrest them for it."

"So it's okay to kill someone if you're keeping a group of people safe. But what if the enemy -whoever they are- are doing that too? If the people threatening your people are only doing so because you're threatening their people? Is no one a murderer? Is everyone? What if they were a private security force rather than a government backed military?" I shake my head. "No. Murder is about societal norms, not about killing, intentionally or not. Soldiers can get arrested for killing their enemies if they don't follow proper processes. American householders can kill in self defence, and some states have fairly generous definitions thereof. In some places a person can be killed for climbing over a fence if they end up on private property."

"Even if that's true, we have laws which define what murder is."

"Right. So the question becomes: is it ever alright to deviate from society's rules on when it is appropriate to kill? I suppose that does make me an interesting example. Clearly-" I wave the thank you notes again. "-a great many people think I was correct. So, second part: was what I did murder? I'm not a country-." I cut myself off as I think about that a little more. "Aah. Under Apokoliptian law, as Suzerain of Earth, it's perfectly fine for me to kill anyone who displeases me, but let's leave that aside for a moment. I'm not a country, so I can't declare war. I am not a member of an armed force who could be ordered to kill someone as part of a 'peacekeeping' activity." I lean forwards, grinning. "As an Apokoliptian, I love that name for it. If I ever take over Apokolips, I'm going to rebrand the Parademons as 'Peacekeepers'." I sit back. "I am not a member of a police force, so I can't kill someone who violently resists arrest."

"On Earth, murder usually means premeditation, intent and a fatality. When I killed Klarion, he wasn't specifically threatening me at the time. He may not even have been actively threatening anyone. I'm not insane and I wasn't intoxicated. I intentionally lured him to a place and attacked him without waiting to see how he reacted." I count on my fingers. "Premeditation, intent, corpse. It was murder."

"Third part, was I right to do it? Mmn, you can argue that however you like. But I suggest, challenging your teacher's preconceptions. Can I assume from the title that they aren't a fan?"

"No. He doesn't have a problem with most superheroes, but he thinks that punishment should be handled by the courts."

"Alright. Find an act of killing that he thinks was morally correct but which to the modern mind appears utterly abhorrent when considered rationally."

"What did you have in mind?"

"Moses. The Israelites' escape from Kahndaq. I'm going to assume that he wouldn't regard what he did as murder."

"The Israelites were being held as slaves. And I don't particularly want to argue with God about when killing is right."

"Right. No one does. Makes Father's job much easier. Look, I don't personally believe that any of that story really happened. And if it did, I doubt that it happened anything like the way the Bible describes it. Just treat it as a parable. 'Worship Jehovah, he's always got your back'." She nods. "What I want to talk about is the tenth plague. The one which killed the firstborn children. Now, it is most likely true to say that they benefited from the Israelites' servitude, but they can't honestly be said to have been active participants. Worse, only the Israelite households were spared. Nubian slaves, Babylonian slaves, wherever else they were from? Killed. Plus, in other chapters the Old Testament clearly states that the Israelites owned slaves themselves at various times, so it can't have been about slavery in itself."

I remember singing hymns about the event in primary school. Horrible, really. I mean, I was too young to know any better, but still.

"Let's assume that the deity in question had only finite power, because otherwise you get bogged down into arguments about why he didn't just teleport his people to safety. If an Angel can know to kill only the children at houses not marked in a particular way, it seems reasonable to me that it could know to kill only at certain houses. Moses' followers could have.. say, marked the homes of the slave drivers. Jehovah chose not to use that technique. He intentionally marked innocent children for death in order to shock other people. How do you feel about the story now?"

"I suppose." She shakes her head. "To be honest, quite a lot of the Old Testament is like that. I usually assume that the people recording it at the time either didn't understand what was happening or it got lost in translation."

Convenient. "Then contrast the event to my killing of Klarion. Klarion was a mass murderer in his own right, and had shown every intention of continuing in the same vein. I had no way to stop him other than killing him and I surrendered myself for judgement immediately afterwards."

She sits back. "Are you really saying that you're more moral than God?"

"No. Of course not. I'm saying I'm more moral than Elion, or whatever powerful but finite being we're using as Jehovah's stand in. Clearly, Jehovah can do no wrong. After all, he said so himself."

Zatanna regards me levelly for a moment. "I.. might.. edit that slightly."

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Black Reign 3

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10th March 2011

08:16 GMT -5

"Are you sure this is how you want to play this?" Frederick Tuckman -my lawyer- sighs as he looks at me. "There are other options we could explore."

We're standing in a circle of armed police, just outside the courtroom where my fate will be decided. The police are mostly just there to keep journalists and my more enthusiastic fans at bay, but I do appreciate that Central City has thought to equip them with weapons that could hurt me. Eventually. Alright, so it would be a bit like when lasers were first invented: the press tried calling them 'Death Rays' and the inventor said that yes, you could vaporise someone with one as long as they didn't move for a couple of years.

I shake my head. "I don't want to be that guy. Not after all the fuss I've made."

"You are aware that Missouri has the death penalty for murder?"

"By gas or lethal injection. I only breathe out of habit and they don't have a poison powerful enough to affect me."

An usher emerges from the courtroom and nods to the leader of my detail. She motions two of her subordinates forwards into the courtroom and then looks over to me. I smile, give her a respectful nod, then follow them in. The courtroom itself is.. pretty much what I expected. A box for the jury on one side, a raised bench for the judge at the front with an American flag as a backdrop and a position lower down for the clerical officer, a box for me, defence, prosecution… The audience are quiet, but cameras click and camera phones are raised to capture my likeness. A few people I recognise. None of my friends, of course. They've got school and in Jade's case would probably be arrested. There are a couple of diplomats, however. China sent an envoy, who's looking at me with a notable lack of expression. A few other countries… No Alan. Thought he might come, but I'm well aware of the ructions this is creating in the American superhero community and wasn't banking on it. Clark Kent's here for the Planet.

No one's here for Klarion.

I don't wave. I'm well aware that I'm making a mockery of the judicial system here, and the people involved are both serious and basically decent. They don't deserve me making fun of them to their faces. So, I head to the box where I'll be spending the duration of the proceedings with no more than a polite smile, while Mister Tuckman walks over to the seat reserved for the defence lawyer. The state prosecutor pulls a slightly odd face as he takes the opportunity to look me over. I had thought that they might get in someone too new at the job to know the sort of damage they could be doing to their career, but this man seems to be in his middle years. Mister Tuckman has told them of my intent, so maybe they didn't think it was much of a risk?

This chair… Yes, there's no way that will support my weight. Kneel down or have the aero-discs take the strain? The second would look better, but it would also clearly indicate that I'm holding on to equipment that I shouldn't really have. Well, this isn't going to take long. Maybe I should just see if they'll let me stand for the whole thing.

Alright, looks like everyone's in place. Just waiting for-.

"All rise." Everyone does as the trial judge enters and takes position while the clerk's eyes dip to their paperwork for a moment. "The Central City Superior Court is now in session, the Honorable Justin Micklewhite presiding. The case being heard is The People of the State of Missouri versus Grayven." She doesn't hesitate as she gets to my name. I suppose that living around here she's probably heard stranger. "Please be seated."

Everyone sits down. I hesitate for a moment, then nudge my chair backwards with my right foot and kneel down instead. The Honourable Mister Micklewhite takes a moment to get comfortable, his eyes moving from myself to Mister Tuckman. "I will be frank. I dislike having my courtroom used for what I strongly suspect to be political posturing. I do not want to see any of the usual disruption we see during costume trials."

Mister Tuckman stands and leans into the microphone. "My client has no wish to create any such disruption."

"Any further disruption." The Honourable Mister Micklewhite seems at least a little mollified. "Has your client decided on what plea he would like to enter?"

"My client wishes to plead guilty to the charge of First-Degree Murder."

No intake of breath. No one's really surprised.

"And the other charges?"

"My client feels that the charges relating to his possession of exotic weaponry are 'reaching' at best. Missouri has no specific prohibition on the possession of 'death rays', and his 'blasters' are not strictly speaking plasma weapons. In addition, since he was well outside of city limits at the time the alleged attack took place, charging him with brandishing a blade-."

The Honourable Mister Micklewhite waves his gavel to stop him. "Does the prosecution wish to comment?"

Mister Tuckman sits and the prosecutor stands. "At the time the charges were filed, the District Attorney's Office had not been fully briefed on the nature of Mister Grayven's weapons. We apologise to the Court, but we needed to get specialists in to explain it to us. Under the circumstances… Well, we're going to be looking at recommending that the law be altered, but we're willing to accept that it would not be worth the Court's time to try it, particularly given that the defendant is already looking at a life sentence for the First-Degree Murder charge."

"Very well. The Court will consider the lesser charges struck, and formally record a plea of 'Guilty' for the First-Degree Murder charge." The prosecutor sits as the judge turns his attention to the jury box. "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, thank you for your time. You are dismissed. The bailiff will show you out."

I watch them go. This is interesting, actually. I've never seen a real life court case before. You'd think -given the stuff I've been involved with- that I'd be in and out all the time, but no. It's either been too secret or I've just provided a written statement.

"The Court will now move to sentencing. Does the defense have anything..?" He looks down at his paperwork. "Anything sensible it wishes to say in moderation?"

Mister Tuckman stands again. "The defense would like to remind the Court that the victim 'Klarion the Witch Boy' was an international fugitive and mass murderer. The very fact that no one is here in court to represent him today should give the Court some idea of how little he is missed. My client has repeatedly stated to me that he feels not the slightest bit of remorse over the killing, and would gladly do it again if the situation arose again." He looks at me for a moment out of the corner of his eyes, then sits.

The Honourable Mister Micklewhite nods. "Prosecution?"

The prosecutor stands again. "I would like to remind the Court that it is not for private citizens to decide how to enforce the law. But, since the minimum sentence for First-Degree Murder is life imprisonment and the State has no desire to seek the death penalty, we see no need for extended arguments." He sits.

The Honourable Mister Micklewhite waits for a moment. "Very well. If there are no further arguments?" Both lawyers give a slight shake of their heads. "Then the Central City Superior Court sentences the defendant to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole." He bangs his gavel.

"All rise."

I was expecting this. I'll probably take a few days-.

"Hold on a minute." I look around as-. That's… Hailey Becket, Missouri's current governor. She's literally just walked into the courtroom, trailed by television cameras. Oh, the judge isn't going to like this.

He doesn't. "Governor, you couldn't wait a few hours?"

"Imprisonment is expensive, and I see no good reason to keep Mister Grayven detained any longer." She nods forwards and a man in a suit carrying a wodge of paperwork comes to the front of the court. "I signed the pardon out in the hallway just as soon as your hammer came down." The man in the suit passes it over to the clerk of the court, who looks upwards at the judge and shrugs. "I would like to request his immediate-."

"Just.. get him out of here."

She looks over to me. "Mister Grayven! You've got a press conference."

I hesitate for a moment. That wasn't the plan. Is she trying to steal credit from President Horne or something? The armed police around me shuffle away slightly. I.. guess that means that I can go. I stand, then pause. "Thank you, your Honour. I'm.. sorry about this." He rolls his eyes as I walk out from around the defendant's box and stride in the direction of the governor, risking a small smile and an even smaller shrug in Kal-El's direction. His expression doesn't change.

Governor Becket waits until I'm just in front of her before holding out her right hand. "Hope you don't mind me springing this on you."

I carefully take her hand and pause for the pictures. "Not at all, Governor. I appreciate your timeliness."

"Okay, that should do it." I release my grip and she leads the way towards the exit. "No one's expecting the Gettysburg Address, but try and have something to say when we get out there."

"I'm sure I'll manage, Governor. If I may ask?" She glances back for a moment and nods. "I mean no offence, but I was rather under the impression that I would be receiving a Presidential pardon."

"You know, I took the actual phone call and I can still barely believe that Horne had the balls for this." She looks back again as we head towards the exit onto the street. "Murder's a State crime, Mister Grayven. The President pardons Federal crimes."

Whoops. Might need to.. bone up on the American legal system.

I nod. "So next time I kill them in DC. Got it."

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Black Reign 4

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10th March 2011

Freedom.

I deactivate my visual enhancements and take in the sheer blackness around me.

Behind me the sun of Earth is barely distinguishable from the rest of the starscape. I left planets behind almost one hundred thousand astronomical units ago. Technically I'm at the edge of the system's Oort Cloud, the furthest Sol's gravity meaningfully attracts foreign objects. Usually, this region is depicted as a dense cloud. As with 'asteroid thickets' this is complete nonsense. I wave my right hand in front of my face and watch as the yellow glow completely fails to pick out even the smallest mote of dust floating in the emptiness. No, this is only 'dusty' compared to a pure vacuum.

Although that's not to say this particular bit hasn't seen something of interest.

I reach out with my left hand and call the techno-seed over to float in front of me. Scan. Father Box?

Ploong.

Inert. Depowered. But still useful. Subspace it. I have no use for a Brimstone -unless I particularly need to take the drudgery out of mass destruction- but the computer system which generates its mind will certainly be useful. The energy siphon? Hm, maybe.

I'm rather glad that the pardon covered me getting my stuff back. And amused to find that it does nothing to change my record. I've sent the surviving drones back to my Ceres facility. I strongly suspect that I'm going to need to do quite a bit of work on the place in the not too distant future. I'll need a new hush tube, and something to power it with. Worse, I am going to need to cut back on the orange ring use for the foreseeable future and I'm not sure how-.

Corpsman, I am beginning to think that you have an unfortunate fondness for dramatic gestures.

Oh, come now Sinestro. Can you imagine the look on Jordan's face?

In Universe Fifty Colonel Harold Jordan is a pilot in the American air force. I never met him and he never became a Green Lantern. Still, I would not be entirely displeased to observe the faces of whoever the local Green Lanterns are when they see this ring.

And not our version of Sinestro?

No.

I wait for a moment, but nothing else is forthcoming. Alright, think I'm about done here… Sinestro, zeta tube to the mountain.

It seems that your account has been cancelled. Would you like me to force a connection?

I smile. No, that's fine. I slide the yellow ring from my right forefinger and place it inside one of my armour's pouches. Father Box, boom tube.

10th March 2011

16:17 GMT -5

"…gunna… Walk in here." I float down onto the ground inside the mountain's kitchen and nod at my team mates sitting at the table. "Like nothing happened." Wallace slumps slightly as my presence contradicts him. "Hey Grayven."

"Afternoon Wallace. M'gann, Kon, Match, Mister Tawny, Ixy-."

**Hello Grayven! How was your murder?**

"Pretty good, thank you." I stroll over to the fridge and open it. "Zatanna, do you have a minute?"

She straightens slightly. Ugh, I'm gone for a week and everyone's forgotten how to keep a fridge stocked. "Um, yes? But are you supposed to be here? You did get.. convicted of murder."

"I'm a murderer, yes. Convicted? I think that implies the prosecution actually had to make an effort." I close the fridge. "Where's Kaldur? I wanted to talk to him about-."

M'gann stands. "He's on assignment in England with Tempest, Aquagirl and Celestial Archer."

"Oh. Whereabouts? I really want to-."

"Whatever it is, you can tell me."

I can? Ohh. "Oh, congratulations." Let's see. The mountain's systems should have registered me almost immediately, that sends a message to the Batcave and the Watchtower… They must know that they'd need Scott's help if they wanted to boom-proof this place… "Short version: I'm quitting the team to pursue my own projects. Wish you all the best but relations between myself and the League have deteriorated to the point-"

Warning: Will detected.

Where? Ah, thank you. "-where I don't think that further collaboration is practical. I'll send everyone contact details when I've decided where I'm going to live." The ring shows me Jordan, Nathaniel and Diana enter the mountain through the hangar zeta tube. "Obviously, I'll still be doing check-ups on everyone who's gone through the Awakening and I can be available at short notice if you actually need me for anything."

Kon nods, looking downcast. Match looks a little surprised before glancing at Wallace, who doesn't. Zatanna looks more puzzled. "I didn't think you could quit."

"Oh, let's be honest: it's not like they're going to want me around you-" The door from the hangar opens and the League members come through, Diana first. "-guys." I turn to face them. "No Batman? Do I have to give him my resignation in person, or will you pass it on?"

Nathaniel looks a little uncomfortable, inasmuch as I can read his body language while his skin is silver. He's the one I'd expect to have least problem with what I did. Jordan's ring is set to medium-glow and he's consciously reinforcing his environmental shield. He's never really been happy about me being here, wrong colour ring and all. Revealing what the Guardians did to the Martians just put the icing on the cake. Diana looks a little distant. I'm going to assume that she's got over her anger by now and is just… What, disappointed? No, saddened by the whole situation.

She makes eye contact with me and I smile politely. "Grayven, you're not resigning. You're going to stay here in the mountain. You're not going to leave unless you are directly supervised by a League member."

"I'm not sure that's a good-."

"That is an order."

I wait a moment to make sure that she's finished.

I jerk my head towards her and spread my arms out to the sides. "NO!" There's a small reaction from my audience. Surprise, and just a little… Hm. I straighten up, cocking my head to the side as if listening for something. "And listen to that."

"Listen to what?"

"The sound, Lantern Jordan, of giant scorpions not rushing here to kill me." I give Diana a slightly wider smile. "Did you really think I'd put myself back under your authority?"

"You swore an oath."

"Yes. Fortunately, it had an escape clause." Diana's face visibly falls as she realises what I've done. "I gave Alan his lantern back half an hour ago. Now I'm a free agent again. And let's not mess around here; it was always a bit weird having a thirty year old man on the youth team." My eyes pass over the faces of the League members. "Anything else?"

There's no immediate response, so I turn away. Right, it shouldn't take long to pick up my-.

"You can tell me how you think your friends in the Light are going to react when they find out you can't recharge your power ring anymore. Exactly how happy do you think they'll be to have you on board when you can't fulfill your end of the bargain?"

Hm. Shall I?

Go ahead, Corpsman.

I spin on my heel, eyes glowing and yellow ring on my right forefinger, fist thrust in the Leaguers' direction.

Jordan's eyes widen.

"In blackest day or brightest night,

Beware your fears made into light,

Let those who try and stop what's right,

Burn with my power, Prince Grayven's might!"

My yellow lantern emerges from its subspace pocket for a moment, a yellow beam briefly connecting it to my ring.

"Recharge complete, Corpsman. Good to see you again, Jordan."

Jordan's face goes pale as I turn and walk out of the kitchen.

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Black Reign 5

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12th March 2011

09:26 GMT

Rob squints towards where John is setting up the ritual. "You sure this'll work in the middle of the day?"

I shrug. "I don't know. I've read up on magic but I'd hardly call myself an expert. If John says it's okay then it's probably okay."

John looks around. "It's harder, but it'll make it easier to send him on his way if he's not happy about being woken up. Trevor, you ready?"

Mister Marrack Senior is standing next to one of the standing stones, his hands pressed against it and his eyes closed as he reconnects it to the local geomantic energy systems. I don't really know enough to say whether geomantic energy 'should' be channelled or left to run where it will. I do know which is more useful to my allies, though.

He steps away, blinking heavily. "This was a damn sight quicker than applying to English Heritage." He looks over to me. "Any chance you could find time to do the rest as well?"

I shrug. "Sure. Do you have time to align them all?"

He waves his right hand in the direction of his son. "Rob can do that over the summer holidays."

Rob sighs. "Cheers, Dad."

"It'll be good practice for you."

"'Cause it's not like I had plans or anything."

"It'll help with your magic." Rob slumps slightly in a very teenagery way. "Anyway, yes. I'd like to leave it for a bit just to make sure, but it should be ready to go now. What happens if it's not quite..?"

John nods. "If it's not, it won't make anything go wrong. The summoning just won't work."

"Right. Well then." Mister Marrack walks back towards where I put the stuff he brought with him.

"John, are you about ready?"

"Ready as I'm going to get." He exhales. "You sure I can't have a quick fag?"

"Graham Marrack was very anti-smoking. Said it polluted the air and harmed the lungs. And I'm sure -as a man who nearly died of lung cancer- you can appreciate where he's coming from."

Rob's eyes widen. "You had lung cancer? Was it, like, a little bit of lung cancer-?"

"He smokes twenty a day, what do you-?"

"I cut down afterwards. Fifteen a day at most." He takes one out of his pocket and sniffs it. "No. I had the malignant, coughing-up-blood-and-lumps-of-growth type lung cancer."

"You know, I can remove your nicotine addiction if you want. The trick you used to heal yourself wouldn't work again."

"What did you do?"

John grins. "Well, I-."

"He sold his soul simultaneously to the three joint rulers of Hell then killed himself. They had the choice of either putting him back together or fighting to the death for his soul."

He rolls his eyes at me. "Oh, suck all the friggin' fun out of it, why don't you?"

"Fortunately for John, the rulers of Hell were really stupid and it didn't occur to them to, say, cut off his arms and legs or rewire his central nervous system to put him in perpetual agony. Or create a new Lukhavim especially to possess him after first making his body invulnerable so he got a front row seat at the horror it would unleash on the world in his name."

John stops smiling. "Was a bit."

"Um, Rob? How's.. your uncle getting on?"

He shrugs. "'bout as well as you could expect. I don't know how Batman got him out that quick but I'm bloody glad he did. We're looking after him for the moment."

I nod. "If there's anything I can do to help…"

Mister Marrack returns, very carefully carrying an old fashioned travel case with him. "This has got Granddad's old uniform in it. Given all the time he spent wearing it, it should have the strongest specific link out of anything I've got."

John doesn't look sure about that. "You wouldn't have a bit of bone or something, would you? It'd be a lot easier."

Mister Marrack shakes his head. "He was cremated. His ashes got spread near here, that was why I thought this place would be best to try reaching him." He reverentially places the case in the middle of John's diagram within the stone circle, undoes the clasps and then retreats back towards Rob and I. Once he reaches us, he turns back to John. "Alright, over to you then. What's next?"

"You're on battery duty. When he tries to animate his uniform, he won't be able to draw power like he did when he was alive. You'll need to provide it."

Mister Marrack looks a little uncomfortable. "Do I need-?"

"You can do it from out there."

He nods, looking a little relieved. I suppose he really hasn't had that much exposure to the exotic parts of the magic world. Or maybe he's just nervous about being in the presence of his patrician grandfather?

John starts walking a circle inside the ring of stones. "In this sacred space we call out to the spirit of our departed forebear, Graham Marrack. We humbly request that he hear us and come to us that he might share his wisdom."

Nothing appears to happen. John continues walking. "I say again, in this sacred space we call out to the spirit of our departed forebear, Graham Marrack. We humbly request that he hear us and come to us that he might share his wisdom." He keeps going until he completes a circuit. "No?" He waits for a moment. "Alright then."

He looks over to Rob and Mister Marrack. They nod -Mister Marrack wincing slightly- and walk to the closest two stones. They each then take out a small knife, make a small incision on the palm of their left hands and press them against the stone.

"In this sacred space we call out to the spirit of our departed forebear, Graham Marrack. We humbly request that he hear us and come to us that he might-" The air above the case starts to get very misty. I have the ring track the moisture and it's being dragged in fast enough to create an appreciable draft. "-share his wisdom."

The mist thickens into proper 'can't-see-your-hand-in-front-of-your-face stuff'. A moment more and I can see lightning crackling inside it. Rob starts looking a little pale, but he and his father both keep their hands on the stones. The mist then appears to contract, as if being sucked into the case while the uniform is drawn upwards. It looks a bit like a pre-World War One army uniform, with the addition of a St Piran's Flag emblazoned across the chest. As I watch, it moves to a more upright position with the water vapour filling it up and taking the form of the areas that would be uncovered: hands and head. The area around the apparition is still misty, but nothing like as intense, and the lightning appears to be restricting itself to the interior of the figure. At first the face is only roughly Human, but as I watch distinct features appear.

It seems that we've got our man.

It fixes its attention on John. "You, sir, reek of the devil-herb tobacco."

John rolls his eyes. "Haven't had one for hours."

"Hmm. I heard the call of my kinsmen's blood. This had best be important."

The living Marracks release their stones and slowly walk towards him, Trevor Marrack taking the lead. "Grandfather."

"Trevor." The apparition regards him for a moment. "Is that it? Is that as strong as you have become?"

"Yes. I've done my best with what Dad taught me-"

"Hhhh. That boy!"

"-but my son wants to know more than I can teach him. We called you up to ask if you'd be willing to tutor him instead."

"Step forward, great grandson." Rob obeys, meeting his great grandfather eyeball to crackly mistball. "Hm. We might yet make something of you. What's your name, boy?"

"Robert Marrack, sir."

"What day is this?"

"The twelfth of Mar-."

"What day?"

"Saturday, sir."

"You attend school?"

"Yes, sir."

"Very well. I should be able to maintain myself for a further eight hours. We will begin at once. I will expect to see you here early each Saturday and I will expect you to practise between our sessions. In return, I will offer you everything I learned in a lifetime of arcane study and combat. Do we have an understanding?"

"Yes, sir."

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Black Reign 6

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12th March 2011

11:46 GMT +2

Adom narrows his eyes very slightly as we watch the convoy of lorries drive along the Wadi El Natrun - El Alamein Road, carrying food to the besieged former capital of Kahndaq. "To think that it has come to this."

Adom's people now control the rest of the country, and something that might reasonably be described as a constitutional convention is happening in Shiruta. He had been holding back from capturing the territory to the north of Cairo in the hope that the government's leaders might be persuaded to flee by sea, then the government started violently raiding it for equipment and resources and he didn't have much choice but to occupy the area.

"To be honest Mighty One, I'm still surprised that it's gone as well as it has."

It's not entirely clear what sort of position he's going to end up occupying once all the shouting calms down. There's been talk of making him king -either as an active constitutional monarch or a figurehead-, president -same again- or something else entirely. They're certainly going to need him. Plenty of those taking part have their own constituency of supporters, but none of them have nationwide support. There just aren't any other widely known political figures in the opposition movement, and that's… That's going to be a problem.

"Have I not offered them honourable terms? Their.. worthless lives, their stolen fortunes? How did a man prepared to hold his own people hostage… To starve them… How did he ever become ruler?"

"By being a bit quicker and a bit more ruthless than his rivals during the post war era." I shrug, though he isn't watching me. "I doubt he was always this bad. He just.. can't accept losing."

The front of the convoy comes to a halt at the agreed upon distance and a government… Should they still be called that when they don't actually govern most of the country? Whatever, a loyalist jeep drives up to the lead truck, those inside trying not to be too obvious about gawping at Adom. And me, I suppose.

"My military advisors counsel an attack. Had he not accepted this I would most likely have been forced to agree with them."

Adom and I worked out the plans for how to go about it if that ever became necessary together. If it happened there's almost no way he could lose, barring something completely unexpected like a scry warded nuclear weapon. On the other hand, casualties amongst the hostages even under favourable assumptions were far too high for us to countenance it.

"I'm glad he did, then."

Loyalist soldiers climb out of a truck and start their inspection. I'm not really sure what they're looking for. Spies, perhaps? Or maybe they're just trying to convince themselves that they're still in charge of something. I try looking a little deeper. They're not wearing wards. Green and yellow, but everyone who was really likely to try and get out has almost certainly left by now. I've no idea what they're telling themselves.

"The Kahndaqi army doesn't use Commissars. I'm not sure why they don't just drive away. As far as I can tell none of them have done anything especially vile." In someone not used to it that sort of thing usually shows up as a confused knot of yellow and red as the attempts at self-justification try and fail to take hold. Seen that a few times during this war.

"They have been told that I am a Demon. A fiend in the shape of a man. They made a propaganda film featuring Theodore and Sabbac." I nod. "You told me that you had a message for me from the American government."

"Yes, Mighty One. Well… They're not going to jump the gun on recognising you as ruler. This isn't a direct message so much as a statement of opinion and a request for information."

Adom breaks off his study of the convoy for a moment to look at me. "I understand, but… Before you do that, there is something I wish to say."

"Yes, Mighty One?"

"During my first life, I was Crown Prince from the moment of my birth, then, later, Pharaoh. Each moment of my day I was surrounded by subordinates, servants, slaves, lesser nobles and priests. I was 'Prince' and later 'Mighty One'. Once I received the gods' blessings, 'Mighty One' became less of a mark of respect and more one of veneration. I found… It was appropriate, I was their sovereign. But when I was among my equals, Rama Khan, Queen Gamemnae, Prince Khufu, Tezumak… When we were in an informal setting, I found that I preferred it when they addressed me by name. I would like it if you would do the same."

Gosh. It seems a little silly, given how informal the people I know are most of the time. But for him, that's a big deal. "Thank you, Adom. Likewise, please feel free to use my name whenever you think it appropriate."

A nod and.. the very slightest of smiles. Then he returns his attention to the convoy, where the first and second trucks have been waved on and the soldiers are moving on to the third. "What thoughts does America wish you to express to me?"

"Their largest concern is your relationship with Israel. They've been more or less bribing President Muhunnad to be nice to them and they want to be sure… They're prepared to offer the same terms to you, but they definitely want to hear something positive sounding pretty soon."

"I have no grudge against the people of Israel. Nor do I intend to make war on their country at any point in the foreseeable future. But I do not like the idea of accepting bribes from a foreign government, and I am less than sanguine about the blockading of the Palestinians."

"You understand why they do it."

"Because they will not control their own fanatics but demand that their neighbours control theirs." He says nothing for a moment. "The smuggling of weapons will remain a crime, but I would wish to discuss the situation with the Israeli ambassador before making further judgement."

"I'll pass that on. Their other concern was oil."

He nods. "I have learned enough about the modern world to guess that the United States would be concerned about oil."

Beautiful deadpan understatement, there. "What exactly do you plan to do with Kahndaq's industry? They are somewhat concerned that you might nationalise the whole thing. That's happened before, and you'd be a bit harder to remove than Prime Minister Mossadegh was."

"I do not think that radical changes in my country's economic model are in anyone's interest. Certainly not in the short term. Please tell them that I have no plans to nationalise either oil extraction or refinement, though I will make no promises regarding oversight or taxation. It is not entirely clear that I will have the power to do so anyway."

"Do you intend to attempt to become a member of OPEC?"

"It does seem wise to establish friendly relations with countries with whom we share common interests. But foreign policy initiatives of that sort will have to wait until my country has stabilised." The third lorry accelerates away from the checkpoint and into Cairo. "Now I have a question for you."

"Of course."

"Queen Beena has offered to arrange peace talks between myself and those who remain loyal to Asim Muhunnad." Ah. Interesting. "She had maintained diplomatic relations with him for her entire reign and had previously offered him sanctuary in the event that he accepted my offer to let him leave. I would say that she is his only remaining political ally. I would like to think that she may be able to persuade him where I have failed. Still, I am aware of her past behaviour and I cannot entirely escape the feeling that this is some manner of trap. I also cannot see what she hopes to gain."

"I'm not sure how it could be a trap, Adom. Even if she hosted, that's only half an hour flight time for you. Less if I'm around and I just transition you back."

"That is true. I was concerned that perhaps my enemy might attempt to use it as a distraction in order to commit some great atrocity, not to win but simply to enrage me to the point where I would do something… Impolitic." Rip people apart in public. "I would have to attend in person and I see no realistic prospect of Asim Muhannad doing likewise."

"I don't know why she's offering, but… You know as well as I do how many people will die if we end up having to force this. If we take precautions to moderate the risk, I think it's worth going for."

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Black Reign 7

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13th March 2011

11:22 GMT -4:30

I wince as Kon looks at me. "What'd he say?"

I generate a gag round the would-be armed robber's mouth. Kon speaks fluent Spanish-Spanish, but that diatribe had several words from native languages and slang that hasn't made it into Cadmus' database as yet. "I have no desire to repeat it."

Kon nods in understanding, then gets out his mobile phone as he walks a little way away from the building, elbowing the mouthy man in the back hard enough to send him staggering into the wall. "Police? Superboy. Yeah, we've found them. Petare Barrio, near-." He pauses, looking back at me. "Yeah, we can do that. Do you want us to tape the area off?" He pauses for a moment, then moves the phone away from his mouth and looks at me. "Why is he laughing?"

I look away, towards the crowd gathering on the periphery of our working area. Maybe I'm getting paranoid, but I'm sure I've heard the word 'cake' at least twice. "Do you really think anyone would take the slightest bit of notice?"

"I guess…" He returns the phone to his ear. "Okay, we'll be there in a few minutes."

I turn to the investigative reporter who tried taking pictures of the wrong group of drug pedlars. "Ma'am? We can drop you off if you like."

Fabiana Holguin looks up from checking her camera. The gang might have grabbed her for taking pictures of them, but they recognised an expensive camera when they saw one and didn't just smash it. Looks like it's in full working order. "Thank you. I would appreciate that."

I nod and attach an orange filament to her before rising into the Caracan sky. The gang members get to dangle off the construct-ropes binding them while I grant Ms Holguin the courtesy of a more normal flight profile alongside me. Kon hangs around for a moment before following us into the air and taking the lead.

"How come two American superheroes-" I shudder. "-are in Caracas, anyway?"

"Do I sound like an American?"

"Ah. Maybe? Are you not American?"

"I'm English."

"I've only ever seen you in America."

"I was in England last week! There was this.. fear elemental thing in Cornwall."

"Where?"

"J-? Do I call you Mexican?"

"Okay, sorry." She brings her camera up and starts taking pictures. "So why are you here?"

"Training. Normally, we'd just get sent out on our own recognisance, but Superboy and I live somewhere with a very low crime rate." The entire Justice League meeting semi-regularly in a place can have that effect. There's actually a small plaque in Happy Harbour dedicated to 'the most unlucky burglar in America' after a petty thief somehow managed to run straight into nearly the entire League line up. "That's true for several of our fellow trainees, so we got our choice of cities to go to."

"And you picked Caracas?"

I nod. "Highest crime rate of any city in the world."

"Are you a masochist, then?"

"Once you've fought a couple of eldritch abominations, men with guns just aren't that scary. I mean, I was a little surprised that the government were okay with the League sending us here-" The President here isn't Hugo Chavez, but he isn't much more US friendly. "-but the police seem to appreciate it."

Kaldur and Garth are in Cape Town, while Tula and M'gann got Acapulco. When we visited it before we pretty much stayed on the beach. I imagine that seeing the rest will be an eye-opener. I asked to be paired with Kon, on the grounds that with everything that's been going on we haven't been spending as much time together as we used to. He's been busy with school stuff, Amazon stuff and M'gann while I've been busy with Zatanna. I mean, we live together, it's not as if we haven't spent time around each other, but he was right; it hasn't been the same.

"Wait, Superboy? As in Superman?"

I cup my right hand against my mouth. "Kon!"

He glances back then looks away for a moment before dropping back. "What do you want to know?"

"Are you..? Superman's son? You do.. look a little like him… And you're wearing an 'S'."

Kon sighs. He's in his Nth metal armour, which is sufficiently un-Supermany that people who just get a quick look usually don't notice the 'S' on the breastplate. "I'm a partial clone of Superman. I'm not his son, he didn't even know I'd been created until last July."

"Someone cloned Superman?"

"Yes. A company called 'Cadmus'."

"I thought cloning people was illegal in America."

"No, only cloning Humans." Kon looks away again. "The guy in charge is in prison and everyone else said they were being mind controlled."

I look down at the city as we fly over-. I extend an orange grabbing arm and hoik another drug pedlar off the ground, using a filament to pick up his stash as he tries to throw it away. He gets added to the prisoner group.

"Could we do an interview later? This sounds like something I could get an award for."

"Sure, but, ah… The story already broke in the US. It's not exactly news any more."

After the attack on the LexCorp headquarters various reporters have been asking the League who the chap in plate armour was and eventually Diana, Kon and Catherine Cobert decided between them that it would be better to explain the situation rather than allow the speculation frenzy to continue. Fortunately, I knew someone who would be happy to write a piece and -frankly- wasn't inclined to interview in an aggressive way that would wind Kon up. The public desire to know resulted in Dana Dearden's interview actually getting published, along with follow up pieces about the rest of us. Nationwide, as I understand it. I understand that Superman's been fielding some slightly uncomfortable questions but Kon was clear that he's happy with the situation.

Oh, for goodness sake. How blatant are drug dealers around here?

"It was news to me, so it will probably be news to my paper's readers as well."

"Ah. If we get time, sure."

"How long are you and…" She glances at me.

"Orange Lantern."

"Orange Lantern going to be here for?"

"Probably all day. You know, as long as nothing happens that means we need to be someplace else." He thinks for a moment. "Given the crime rate, we probably won't. Hey, Paul? Would it be alright if she came with us?"

"Um. I suppose. If she wants to?" I turn to her. "There aren't any significant supervillains active in Caracas at the moment, so it shouldn't be too hard to keep you safe."

"I've been kidnapped and kept in a cage under armed guard for two days. Compared to that, following a superhero around sounds pretty safe."

"Okay then. We can pick you up after you've given a witness statement about your kidnapping."

"Are you going to be coming back after today?"

"Depends. Maybe next weekend. After that… Probably not for a while."

"Okay then. I'll give a statement, phone my editor and then I will join you."

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Black Reign 8

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13th March 2011

12:03 GMT -4:30

"If you keep this up, we're going to need a bigger gaol!"

The custody sergeant means it as a joke, but he has a point. Things are starting to get a little cramped. "We can start taking them to a different police station if you like."

"Doesn't the Justice League have some sort of prison?"

"No, they don't really get involved in that sort of thing."

He frowns as we head back out to where Kon and Miss Holguin are waiting and where the police in the office are trying to look like they're working rather than staring. "So where do they put the villains they arrest?"

"Depends on what they can do. Normal criminals get handed over to the local police like we're doing here."

"And the supervillains?"

"There's an assessment process… Most of them would be escorted to Belle Reve Federal Penitentiary. That's the United States' metahuman containment facility. It costs a lot to keep metahumans reliably imprisoned, so most places send their supervillains there."

He looks at me quizzically. "I thought Superman's enemies got sent somewhere called 'Stryker's Island'?"

"That's where Metropolis' prison is, and they had a metahuman detainment wing… Still have, actually. But they had to custom build the cells for each detainee, then they couldn't let them out for exercise or socialisation."

"And?" I raise my eyebrows. "Hey, I'm not saying the guards should beat them or anything, but if they're dangerous enough to need Superman to deal with them…"

"It was also a pretty expensive way of doing things and not all that reliable. And… There isn't much point putting them in prison if you're not at least going to make an effort to rehabilitate them. Belle Reve's actually got quite a good education program."

Kadabra's classes have expanded a bit. Even people who probably don't have any interest in going straight have started attending, if only because the alternative is a few more hours in their cells. Abra himself seems to like having an audience, and his experience with showmanship means that he knows how to deal with hecklers. I also think he rather enjoys the fact that whatever prison rules say they don't actually have any way to prevent inmates using magic.

They have a set of my manacles but at the moment those are only approved for the transfer of dangerous prisoners. They're still seeking funding to add a magic user detention wing of the prison. Senator Knight's been campaigning on the issue. Apparently he's the bookies' favourite to win the Republican Party nomination next year. Other than being vaguely aware of the fact I haven't really spent much time learning what's going on in American politics. I can't vote, and whoever wins they're still going to need supervillains stopped. Heck, I might not even spend significant time on Earth during his term, assuming that he wins.

The sergeant comes to a stop as we near Kon and Miss Holguin. "I will start getting the paperwork together so they can be formally charged. Thank you for your help."

"You're welcome."

He turns and walks away as I draw nearer my team mate.

"…have you been doing this, then?"

"My first fight with a supervillain was in July last year."

"And you're how old?"

Kon hesitates. "That… Kinda depends on when you count from."

Miss Holguin smiles. "Why? Were you created in a tank or something?"

"Yes."

The smile crystallises then fractures. "Ohhhh."

"If you count from when I got out of the pod, then I'm seven months old. But I finished growing last March, so if you count from then I'm nearly a year old."

Bit of a dispute between M'gann and I on that point. She thinks he should be celebrating his birthday in just over a week on the 21st. I say that he wasn't 'born' until he left the tank and started interacting with the world. Kon himself doesn't appear to be sure why it matters. It's not as if any law relating to a person's age can be meaningfully applied to him anyway. And while I was planning to leave Earth almost as soon as my year was up, it's not as if hanging around for a few days is going to matter.

Looks like Miss Holguin doesn't really know how to respond.

"Ready to head out?"

Kon looks around and nods. "Did they say where they want us next?"

"No."

"So how do you decide-"

"Which means it's your turn to pick."

"-where you're going to go?"

"We know where the high crime areas are. It's basically the barrios and around the airport, but the barrios have all kinds of crime and the airport it's mostly just thefts. But on the other hand, we can probably make all the airport thieves take a day off just by showing up once or twice, and you saw how the drug dealers barely slowed down when we flew over."

"So..?"

"Let's hit the airport first. It's nearly time for lunch and they've got better restaurants than Palo Verde."

"Rightyho. Lead the way."

Kon leads the way out of the police station. There's only been enough time for a small crowd to gather outside, but we get more than a few pictures taken as we take off and head out across the city. Right, start scanning for motorcyclists. Hundreds of orange crosshairs appear before my eyes. I imagine that it's a bit more than 1% around here.

"Can you really see what's going on down there?"

"Kryptonians have really good distance vision. If I focus, I can read the story in the newspaper that guy's-" He points downwards. "-reading."

Miss Holguin squints at where he's pointing. "What.. guy?"

"He's in a café just off that road. I don't think you can see him."

"Can you see through solid objects?"

"Kinda. I can see into the infrared part of the spectrum, so if there's a hot object I'll know about it."

"What about x-ray vision?"

"No, my range doesn't go that far. I think Superman's does, though."

She turns to me. "How about you?"

"My vision's good, but Human-good, not superhuman-good. I have to use the ring to scan for things."

Kon accelerates slightly as we approach the airport. "Are you picking up anything happening right now?"

Ring? "No obvious thefts in progress, though there are a few suspicious characters we could lurk over until they get the message."

"Okay, let's go-."

"Priority alert! Boom tube detected!"

Are the Bialyans getting another delivery? I stop in the air and hold out my left hand, palm upwards. "Ring, where is it?"

"Location: Paris."

Oh heck.

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Black Reign 9

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13th March 2011

12:09 GMT -4:30

"What's a boom-" I'm bringing my left hand to my ear even as I begin lowering her at speed to the street below us "-tuuuube!?"

"Orange Lantern to Watchtower."

"Icon here. I assume that you have also detected the boom tube."

"Yep." Kon stops as well and floats up in front of me. "Superboy and I can be there in about five seconds."

"Members of your team are not supposed-."

"Which is less time than it'll take anyone else to run to a zeta tube and then get to-" Ring?

"Place du Carrousel."

"-Place du Carrousel. Including Paris' superheroes, insane fencing man and bad headdress woman."

"I will notify Batman of your involvement."

Ring, zeta tube.

A glowing orange circle appears in the air before us. Compliance.

"Remain in constant contact and do not hesitate to say so if you require additional support."

"Right." I lower my hand. "Kon, ready?"

He nods, and inside him I can see the excitement and desire to pit himself against a physical equal in combat. "Yeah."

"The Paris tube-."

"I know." He darts forwards.

"Recognised, Superboy, zero four."

I fly forwards myself.

13th March 2011

17:41 GMT +1

"Recognised, Orange Lantern, zero six." Kon's already headed off all full speed. I generate construct armour around myself and transition to Place du Carrousel. The scenery flickers and I'm floating next to him above a grass-covered roundabout with some sort of water feature in the middle of it.

"WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!"

The Louvre Palace surrounds the area on three sides-

"It just..! Its teeth..!"

-with what looks like a park to the west-north-west. Beneath us people are streaming away from the Louvre itself-. Oh dear. A chunk of the glass pyramid immediately above the entrance appears to have been smashed. Too big or just acting out? Boom tube hasn't stayed open, so-.

"Priority alert! Boom tube detected!"

Where-?! The crosshair appears over my field of view, drawing my eyes to the roof of the Palace. For a moment I see a landscape of barren rock illuminated by a reddish light, then a figure steps lightly forth onto the roof. He looks Human, though his clothing marks him out as not being from around here. He's wearing a lilac tunic with what appears to be a representation of an eclipse embroidered on the front and a yellow belt around the waist, lilac leggings and a yellow cap with a feather sticking out. He's also wearing yellow gloves, boots and a cream coloured cape. His hair is short and black and a neatly trimmed goatee sits upon his chin. In his left hand he carries a short-barrelled pistol and in his right a sort of sword-like object. It appears to be missing most of the blade.

He quickly looks around the plaza, taking in the people streaming away from the gallery. Then his eyes flick up to Kon and I think I see him smile slightly. Then he shimmers and disappears, the boom tube shutting down behind him.

That was Kanto. Mister Free said that they'd never met and Barda didn't know much about him, though she was able to confirm what I remembered from the comics. Got above himself as a boy, was sent to Renaissance Italy -she hadn't known that he'd been sent to Earth, but she knew that he'd been banished somewhere primitive- before his predecessor tracked him down and killed his wife. He returned to Apokolips, they duelled and Kanto 13 died to his poison.

At least it's probably not an invasion. "Ring, scan for him."

"Unable to locate."

Wonderful. Hardly unexpected, though. "Kon, can you still see him?"

"No, but I can see the guy in the museum. He's riding a giant dog. And he's got a hostage."

"Orange Lantern to Icon. We're at the Louvre. Two Apokoliptians on site: Kanto and what sounds like a Dog Soldier. No idea why they're here. Suggest you try getting hold of Mister Miracle. Superboy and I are moving to engage."

"Understood."

I could just transition us both in there, but… I get an image in my head of what would happen if Kanto's using one of the many man portable FTL disruption devices that were described in detail on John's ring's database. It's the sort of thing I'd have if I were him.

I do a quick scan of the crowd to make sure there aren't any injured, then nod to Kon. "After you."

He switches to the swimmer pose as he arcs towards the Louvre entrance, fists first. Could a Dog Soldier take getting hit by him at anything like full force? Maintaining my upright pose I follow on behind him. Probably not, but I trust Kon not to do anything too extreme. I'm more worried about what Kanto's doing. Is he hunting the Dog Soldier? Perhaps, but -other than possibly sport- why would he? Dog Soldiers are pretty much mindlessly obedient.

We swoop over the escalator and the panicking people on it who are running upwards to escape. In the distance I can hear what I presume to be a French police siren. Huge dirty paw prints lead into the Richelieu Wing. Again, can't see anyone hurt. Apokoliptians aren't exactly known for avoiding civilian casualties; either he's here for something or just doesn't feel like killing at the moment. Kon pauses for a moment to look at me, then heads left after whoever it is we're chasing. Ring, scan for weaponry.

No concealed weapons found. Target is wearing armour which resists scan. Target is carrying a sword which resists scan. Canine of unusual size is armed with teeth, claws and a bad attitude.

Right. And the hostage?

I get an image of a woman strapped to the side of the huge Dog. She's dressed in nondescript rags and doesn't appear to be conscious.

Hostage is-. Error. Error. Error.

Stop. I do not like the sound of that. Some sort of Typhoid Mary?

I follow Kon as we head down another level and then take a left turn.

"…technical skill, I find myself somewhat disappointed. If he is a slave, where are the marks of his servitude? Where are his wounds? The signs on his flesh showing the hardships he has endured?"

People have already fled this section, so I get my first clear view of the man in grey and gold armour sitting astride. His steed is similarly arrayed, the decoration on its armour giving it a slightly reptilian look and reminding me of the Sphere. Is it cybernetic? Or is that just what New God technology looks like?

"But this! You see, Dreamer? This other is better. See how he conceals his struggle against his bonds? See how he stares down his oppressor, not deigning to visibly acknowledge his own reduced status? Such exquisite defiance." He twists in his seat as Kon approaches, interposing a shield. Kon strikes it with both fists, then stops dead in the air, all momentum arrested. The Dog turns, allowing the Soldier to slash at Kon with his sword and forcing Kon to pull back. "But perhaps I may find beauty in physicality as well."

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Black Reign 10

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13th March 2011

17:44 GMT +1

Kon edges back and floats around in order to get on his far side. The Soldier dips his shield slightly as he takes us both in.

"Alright, Apokoliptian, who are you and what do you w-?"

His shield-arm comes up and gun! I tran-.

Kanto!

I dod-.

Art gallery!

I create a shield construct, the energy from his pistol burning into it but failing to break it. Kon flies in once more only for the Dog to rear and lunge, clamping its teeth around his forearms and twisting its head to hurl him at-! Shit, no! A crash barrier construct catches Kon before he can demolish the Soldier of Marathon Announcing the Victory, a statue with which I have particular sympathy.

"Whom do I have the pleasure of fighting?"

I form a railgun construct and load a solid slug. "You first."

"My name is Canis Minor, Human. I have come for your art."

I hold up my right hand and Kon nods. "Orange Lantern two eight one four. If you like it so much, why are you trying to get it demolished?"

"It builds character. In its destruction it can relay the pure savagery of our actions just as well as it can the emotional intent of the original sculptor. With gun and with sword we may reinvent it." He looks around. "To whom does this belong? What member of Earth's ruling council has sent his warriors after me?"

I send filaments out across the room, upping my glow slightly to disguise them. "Ruling council?"

"Yes, the Justice League. Your lords and masters." Kon and I exchange a puzzled look, which he spots. "Do not take me for a fool. I've studied Earth symbology. You-" He gestures at Kon with his sword. "-wear the emblem of the Superman." He switches his attention to me as a filament on the far side of him rises up and cuts through the straps binding his hostage with an x-ionised knife. "Your emblem I do not recognise, but I do recognise your rings. I have seen similar rings in Darkseid's trophy halls." Nice to have confirmation about First Lantern Qarrigat's attack. "Is the second a battle trophy?" Bonds severed, I maintain the pressure of her presence against the Dog's side with a construct, attach a filament to her and pull her away. "Or simply a sign of your mastery?"

"Little from column A, little from column B." The Dog shifts slightly and lets out a low growl. It can't see her from where its head is, the construct is silent, it can't have felt the weight shift…

Scent. The environmental shield around her is blocking her smell. I yank her violently away as the Dog turns to snap at her retreating form. Another filament deposits an x-ionised sword out of subspace just in front of Kon as my railgun fires, nailing Canis in the chest and knocking him off his mount.

He doesn't even grunt as he rolls to his feet.

Kon flies along the length of the room before darting at Canis, sword at the ready. Canis goes to block with his shield again but Kon's ready for it. He strikes the shield as before, then shifts his fist to grab the outer edge of it and pulls, causing Canis to stagger forwards and giving Kon an opening which he uses to punch his foe in the side of his helmet.

The Dog barely reacts to its master vanishing. Instead, it fixes me with a stare and growls, huge teeth bared, saliva dripping onto the gallery floor. How mundane is its physiology? Don't know. On the other hand, empathic vision tells me that it isn't sentient. I jam the filaments I have spread across the floor into its body and apply electric current. The ones which try to attach to the armoured portions of its body can't get hold of it but all of them zap it.

"Reww!" It shudders for a moment, then -"Rerrrrrrrrrr."- charges me, tearing free of the bonds. Okay, super strong and super tough. But still a Dog. I dart sideways faster than it can turn and stick manacle constructs around its hind legs, yanking them back while they're off the ground. The Dog trips, slams shoulder first into the ground and slides towards Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss. The hostage safe-. Wait, would Kanto have been after her? Damn it, can't let her out of my sight either. I bring her back from the reception area and deposit her just outside this wing. The Dog I lift into the air by all four ankles, just managing to avoid smashing into Cupid's outstretched wing. Right, it's probably still basically a normal creature. I jam a gas mask over its muzzle and start forcing xenon into its lungs. Heavier than air but otherwise inert, that should render it unconscious without risking further harm.

It bucks fiercely against the restraints, but they're flexible enough to stand it. Yes, good, use up all your oxygen. I glance in Kon's direction and see that he's actually fighting a sword-duel. Canis' technique is better but -as they cross guards and Kon holds him off one-handed while punching him in the gut- it looks like Kon's stronger. Whatever armour Canis is wearing must be highly effective. Still, I've got a direct line to Kon's earpiece and a railgun with crumbler rounds that will chew through whatever force field it's projecting. I can just tell Kon to pull back-.

A bolt of brilliant golden-orange energy hits the Dog in the chest, causing it to spasm and yelp! I drop it on a clear area of the floor. Where did that-?!

"Brut!" Canis appears to suddenly slide to the side, slashing at Kon's armoured flank. Kon gasps as Canis' sword makes contact but I'm busy trying to spot where the shot-. There! An orange destructive pulse blasts from the ring on my right hand and disintegrates… Some sort of drone weapon? What's left is mostly black with the typical Apokoliptian tron lines picked out in grey. Okay, scan-. The remains disintegrate as I watch. Didn't get anything useful.

I pull back towards where Kon is feeling his side to check whether or not he's bleeding while Canis checks on his Dog. As far as I know the only other thing active around here that might have access to Apokoliptian weaponry is Kanto. I don't remember what sort of weapons he preferred in the comics, though infantry-directed drone weapons are a fairly standard science fiction thing that I suppose it makes sense Apokoliptians would have access to.

"Kon, you alright?"

"Think so."

"Is the armour alright?" He shoots me a look. "I don't want to have to replace it, do I?"

Canis holsters his pistol so that he can touch his Dog's face with his left gauntlet. I see red light roil within him, momentarily forming the picture of Kanto's face. The.. texture..? Of the light seems different to what I'm used to. Is that a New God thing? I haven't seen Mister or Missus Free since New Year and I didn't spend much time studying them then. A moment later, apparently satisfied that his Dog is still alive, Canis steps away from his unconscious body. "Face me assas-!" Another brilliant bolt hits him in the leg and causes him to collapse to the floor.

"I think not." "Appropriate location for it."

Canis draws his pistol again and shoots at a nearby wall, plaster and brick exploding from the point of impact! Need to stop that. "Kon, get him. Keep him from wrecking the place. I'll get Kanto."

"Right."

Kon flies in again with his sword at the ready as I open my empathic vision to the fullest extent. Come on, he's a New God, he's got to have some sort of-. There! The background is somewhat distracting, but he's got the same sort of weird depth as Canis. I can't see any drones, but then I didn't see the first one. Phasing and some form of stealth? Tricky, but nothing I can't replicate.

My full power armour manifests around me and filaments shoot outwards, running through the Louvre corridors and galleries. Once I'm confident that I've got the surround my Praexis Demon horde pulls itself free from them in a scene reminiscent of the way low level enemies appeared in the first Devil May Cry game, pulling themselves from the floor.

I picture the networks of energy that I see where Kanto stands clearly in my mind.

Praexis Demons, feed.

"Yay!"

Then I trigger my own phasing system and fly through the wall towards the Assassin God.

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Black Reign 11

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13th March 2011

17:48 GMT +1

How does Kanto fight? Hm. I slow slightly to watch the first Praexis Demons reach his location. I can't see exactly what he's doing, but the particulars of his desire-flares suggest-. Yes, the first Demon disintegrates without any detectable energy discharge. He stabbed it rather than shooting it. My construct-shield easily soaked Canis' shot and Kanto's gun looked about the same size. Kanto probably has access to better stuff, but that might well be as small as those whatever-they-ares can be made. Another two Praexis Demons reach his approximate location and swiftly vanish. A fourth barely has time to get into the room before disappearing. A shot of some sort? They should be able to consume just about any form of energy. Can they not detect Kanto by themselves in order to respond to his actions? Seems plausible.

There's a tiny flash of well controlled yellow as I pause in a corridor to replenish the Praexis Demon horde. None of them lasted long enough to gain useful information but they're all eager for another try. I re-engage phasing and accelerate. The courtyard which Kanto's in doesn't appear to contain anything absolutely irreplaceable. Okay, how much force am I willing to use here? He's a murderous minor god in the service of Darkseid, and I don't know exactly how tough that makes him. Or how resilient to what. Several walls flash by me, then both I and a tourist get an unpleasant surprise as I phase directly through him.

Up ahead, the Praexis work out that solo attacks aren't working and mass for a charge, only for Kanto to use some sort of explosive, okay, need to sort this out now! I accelerate even more, finally passing through the last wall between us and appearing in the air over his position. With construct armour active there's no point in invisibility. Praexis Demons stream past me as I raise my hands and use my revulsion at the idea of Earth ending up like Apokolips to fire an orange energy pulse at him. There's a little more yellow in the mix now as he dives to evade, sword -I presume- slicing through another couple of Demons.

The second energy pulse hits him in mid-air, striking him in roughly the centre of his mass. Empathic vision just shows me where he is, it doesn't let me see him. Much as I'd like to do a called shot to his sword arm that just isn't possible.

"Agg." "Why do I bother with invisibility?"

Whatever device he was using to prevent visible light revealing him fails as he hits the far wall, his costume fraying a little at the edges. Even as he lands he throws two knives directly at my face. I counter with two small railgun constructs, slivers of iron shooting them out of the air. I mean, those can't possibly have been normal knives, right? I let the Praexis horde move to surround him as he regains his feet and points his sword at me in a classical fencing pose.

"Surprisingly effective, for a mortal. But you meddle in affairs-."

"You're Kanto -formerly Iluthin- of Apokolips. You're Darkseid's court assassin. You grew up in Granny Goodness' orphanage and were briefly exiled to Earth after growing too confident -rightly confident- in your abilities for her tastes. You worked for Cesare Borgia and were briefly married to his sister before your predecessor -Kanto Thirteen- attacked and killed her in revenge for you showing him up. You then returned to Apokolips and duelled him, winning by poisoning the water he drank before the fight started. You have a beard now because Darkseid instructed you to grow one when he confirmed your position, because he was concerned that you looked too young for it." He can't see it under my faceplate, but I've raised my eyebrows. "How did I do?"

He tilts his head to the side. "Sur-prisingly well. But you don't know why I'm here now." "Interesting."

"Darkseid instructed you to kill Canis shortly after he was revealed to have killed his father, Canis Major. Not an art lover, I assume." I create a new railgun construct, loading… I don't know… Mageslayer? The advantage of a Mageslayer round being that in addition to the anti-magic effect it's still a supersonic lump of metal and stone. "Tell me why you're here and then go home, and I'll let you go unmolested."

"Let me think for a moment." His free hand dips to his belt and-. What? Space distorted around him, the wall behind him sort of twisting out of his way.

No matter. I wave the Praexis Demons forwards and reactivate my own phase generator before accelerating forwards. He's reached the surface but since I can't see anyone else I'm going to assume that the area has been evacuated. The wall and roof flash past me as I head after him. What's his plan here? Am I.. badly misunderstanding power levels here? One last layer to go. What could gragh?

Kanto smiles smugly at me as I try and work out why I've stopped moving. "A phase shifter? I suppose I should be surprised that you could get something like that on Earth." My body's stuck in the brickwork. Bits of me appear to have fused with it. That's.. not good. "But there are any number of counter strategies a man such as-."

The destructive bolt from my face hits him in the mouth, knocking him off his feet with a few fewer teeth than he started with. Right, my brain's fine. A flare of orange cuts a me-shaped piece out of the wall. I float forwards, trying to ignore the extremely uncomfortable feeling of large parts of my body not really interacting with the others. Wholeness Rightly Assumed oh that's better. Oh, and fix the phase shifter and.. probably the wall as well.

Compliance.

At least I can feel mildly happy that I didn't try using faster than light travel. And that whatever he just did didn't trigger while my brain was… Yeah, okay. Less happy.

Railgun, crumbler.

Kanto's just pushing himself up as my round strikes him in the centre of his sunburst.

"Ggah!" "Firepits!"

He staggers back as the decoration is obliterated, leaving the lilac under-armour showing. That layer is only mildly abraded. Interesting. Wonder how it does that? The Praexis Demons finally start to catch up with us as I grab his wrists with cons-. They dissipate. Fine, I take manacles out of subspace and clamp them around his wrists, pulling him up into the air. A silver burst of energy strikes me in the side of the head as another drone weapon makes an attack. It starts burning through my construct armour in earnest for a moment before my railgun turret tracks the point of origin and fires once. The beam cuts out.

Kanto runs his tongue around the inside of his mouth and spits out blood. Be analysing that later. He looks at me curiously. "Are you a god?"

"That's complicated." I take hold of his discarded sword and pistol with filaments. "Now, are you going to answer me or do I have to brand you first?"

He smiles reinforcing armour! There's a pulse of vibrations from his wrists as the metal clamps melt and drip off. Brand!

"Extreme resistance detected."

Okay, still not seeing on exactly how he plans on hurting me, but I trigger the Demons anyway. Like the obedient ambulatory mouths they are they swarm forwards as Kanto leaps back and throws another knife. This one isn't aimed at me, but at the closest Demon, which…

"Ahh!"

Appears to be sucked into it. Not good. I do not want an Apokoliptian in a position to analyse my constructs. Kanto raises his right hand and the dagger reverses its course to return to him, before being shot out of the air by a crumbler round. The dagger is reduced to nothing and I feel the Demon return to the ring. Okay, now-. Kanto doffs his hat, steps backwards and… Disappears. Can't see his emotional resonance any longer. I send a construct line forwards after him and it disappears where he did. Okay, invisible portal. I take a neural shock grenade out of subspace and fire it through, only for it to pass where I believed the aperture to be and clank down on the paving stone on the far side. Just to check I wave a ten foot steel pole across the plaza. No, that's it. He's gone.

What was that? Some sort of stealth boom tube? I raise my left hand to my ear. "Orange Lantern here. Kanto appears to have disengaged. I'm uninjured, minimal collateral damage. Any news?"

"Might need you to repair some ueh-. Some statues. This guy's not h-happy about his Dog."

"Barda has indicated that she will be joining you shortly."

I turn to return to Kon. Ah. Probably shouldn't risk phasing until Mister Free can check the area over. I plot a route and instruct the ring to fly me there as swiftly as possible. "I'm going to need about twenty seconds to get back to you, Kon. Are you going to be alright-?"

I hear a yelp in the background. "Turns out his eyes are vulnerable."

"Well spotted." My course takes me back through the main entrance and through the corridors. "I'll check the hostage. Let me know when Barda-." From the end of the corridor comes the flash of light which I remember from New Year signals her teleportation. "Never mind." I stop in front of the hostage. Still pretty out of it. I create a construct stretcher for her and load her onto it before returning to the sculpture room.

Canis' sword is embedded in… Oh dear. I pull it out as gently as possible and use my prior scans to restore the statue. Kon's got Canis pinned front first onto the ground with his arms around Canis' neck. His helmet has been lost at some point and for the first time I can see his face. Brown skin, medium length black hair and a look of exertion on his face as he struggles against Kon's hold.

Barda stares down at him, mega rod in hand. "You have lost. Yield or die."

Canis tries pulling once more then relaxes, exhaling in frustration. "Yes, Aunt Barda."

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Black Reign 12

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13th March 2011

17:01 GMT

Diana looks through the window into the Watchtower medical bay's secure observation room. "Who is she?"

Canis hesitates to respond, then twitches slightly as Barda tightens her hand around his shoulder. "Her name is Dreamer. She is of New Genesis."

Inside, Mister Free is unpacking some rather odd-looking equipment he brought with him. He's wearing his red, green and yellow costume but currently has the mask folded back out of the way. None of us are really qualified to deal with spiritual injuries or New God physiology, so he's our best bet. It was a stroke of luck that Barda's captured Mother Box started pingpingpinging as soon as it saw who was in need of assistance. Apparently it has decided to accept that its owners are now on the side of righteousness and appears to be trying to make up for all the time it spent silent by talking their ears off. The Sphere is inside as well, remaining still but constantly revving itself in what appears to be nervousness. Icon is busy explaining things to the French authorities while Kon and I are up here to give our reports in person.

"I understand that you are from Apokolips."

Canis' Dog -its name translates as 'Béton Brut'- is chained up in one of the secure cells as far as we could manage to put it from the quantum Horse herd out in the gardens. They seem to have settled in nicely to their new home but I don't know how they'd respond to a large predator. Once he was quartered Canis didn't seem all that worried about him so I'm assuming that either he's not seriously injured or can regenerate.

"I am." "Truth and beauty in one. This pleases me."

Diana turns to face him. "Then how did she come to be in your possession?"

He curls the left side of his lip upwards. "Bernadeth guarded her inadequately."

Barda turns, grabbing the bottom of his cuirass and using that to lift him and hurl him against the far wall. He hits it with the back of his head before sliding down. With his helmet gone the impact seems to briefly stun him. "My mother had many children and I have many nephews. If you wish to have a place here you will start being helpful!"

He recovers slightly and goes to push himself up. Then he stops. "Have I your permission to rise, Captain?" "I will comply." Barda's eyes narrow for a moment, then she gives him a small nod. Not quite taking his eyes off her he rises to his feet. "Some time ago Desaad boasted of a great victory against New Genesis: capturing a group of their younger warriors alive. Lord Darkseid was greatly pleased with him, and bade him use all of his art upon them to attempt to break their will." He shrugs. "She was being transported to Granny Goodness' Orphanage when I learned of her location. Slaying her guards was no great feat, but her suffering to that point had rendered her somewhat incoherent. And Kanto was once more nipping at my heels in a disagreeable fashion. I needed to be away, and since I would not be welcome on New Genesis I thought that perhaps you and-." His eyes flick to the glass screen. "-Scott Free may be able to help her."

Barda peers at him. "You expect me to believe that you helped her out of the goodness of your heart?" "Thin ice, nephew."

I'm certainly not seeing any indigo. It's actually a little strange. Most people have at least a little within them. Even thugs are capable of comradely concern, even if they don't do much with it most of the time. He's genuinely got none.

Canis looks slightly puzzled. "No, of course not. I simply don't have the information that I want on New Genosian artwork. I had thought to interrogate her but as I said, she was not really capable of cogent discourse."

Barda blinks. "Art?" "That's even less credible."

"An unusual pursuit for one of Apokolips, I know. Father left much of my upbringing to a damaged Mother Box. I believe that she used the opportunity to expand my horizons." He shrugs again. "I find beauty in many things. Many places. Dreamer is.. not beautiful, not as she is, but she may become so. At the very least, I could satisfy my own curiosity as to what it is that her people regard as beautiful."

Diana takes a step forwards. "How many others are they holding?"

Canis' eyes dip for a moment. "I don't know. I only needed one as an information source. More than two, less than ten."

"What exactly are they doing to them?"

"I-."

"Desaad is a master torturer. He takes great pleasure in matching each form of suffering to those his victim dreads most. At the most basic level, he would use electrocution and pain stimulation, both to cause suffering and to demonstrate his victim's powerlessness. He might make use of cruder techniques… Knives, poisons, engineered diseases and memetic programming, but if his aim were to break them…" Barda walks over to the intercom built into the observation window. "Have a care, Scott. She has been-."

"Exposed to the Anti-Life." He nods. "I noticed."

"Pingpingping."

"Apparently it's only a secondary infection. I should be able to get rid of it, at least enough for her to function again." "Not sure what sort of state she'll be in."

"Orange Lantern." Diana turns to me. "How powerful was Kanto?"

"Not very, to be honest. I suspect that I could have killed him, though… He might have had access to technologies I didn't see him use. Nothing I saw him do couldn't have been replicated by an athletic and well equipped Human."

Kon looks at me. "I thought you said he trapped you in a wall."

"I knew phasing was disruptable. As far as I know-" I look at Barda for confirmation. "-that was a technological device, not an innate ability he gets from being the New God of Assassination."

She nods. "His godhood grants him an instinct on how to use it, but it would just have been a trap he deployed." Barda turns to Diana. "The most powerful members of the Justice League can fight New Gods as equals." She hesitates for a moment. "Most of them, anyway."

"Equals? Is that why you complain whenever I fly during our spars?"

I punch the air with my right fist. "Wooo! Fifth World rules!"

Barda ignores my juvenile outburst. "You do not have the resources to fight all the armies of Apokolips. And you do not have the strength to fight Darkseid."

Kon looks offended. "Says who?"

"Says the former leader of his bodyguard. I know what he is capable of better than anyone."

I nod. "His Omega Effect? Does it.. actually erase anything from existence, or is it just a powerful energy beam?"

"The Effect is an outward manifestation of his cruel and vile domination. A being with a strong soul may survive for a few seconds, but that is the most I have ever seen anyone last."

"Then, yes,-" I nod. "-we're a very long way from being able to fight Darkseid."

"What about that sword, the one with the two pronged blade?"

"Oh, that could certainly kill him. The trick would be getting close enough to use it without getting Omega Effected. The Omega Effect is fast and he can consciously redirect it. And if he doesn't feel like fighting you himself he can just have you swarmed under by Parademons."

"Maybe if the Flash used it?"

"If they could counter phasing, they could probably counter superspeed. And that's assuming that the Flash was willing to kill someone, which I'm not convinced about."

Diana nods. "The League will need to discuss what -if any- action we intend to take."

Barda grimaces. "If Kanto has come to Earth, there can be no doubt that Darkseid knows that Scott and I-."

Scott knocks on the window. "She's waking up."

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Black Reign 13

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13th March 2011

17:05 GMT

Diana enters the secure observation room while the rest of us look on through the one way glass. This could well get a bit awkward. Dreamer has almost certainly heard of Mister Free, but I doubt that she'd be able to recognise him by sight. She certainly won't know Diana. Would she recognise this as a Green Lantern Corps facility? Do they even have Green Lanterns in her neck of the woods? If she won't talk to us then we won't be able to either send her back to New Genesis or raid Apokolips to free her colleagues.

Diana takes position near the door while Mister Free removes the most disturbing-looking medical probes. The Sphere has quietened down while-

"Pingpingping."

-the Mother Box is getting even more excited.

"Mra box?" Dreamer's eyes open the tiniest of slits, her irises unfocused. Mister Free takes a step away from the bed, staying in her line of sight but trying not to crowd her. "Wha'?"

"Pingping! Pingping!"

The Sphere warbles joyfully along with the Mother Box as Mister Free smiles down at Dreamer. "How are you feeling?" "You're among friends here."

The moment she hears a voice her eyes snap open, her respiration rate increases and she pulls her legs in, moving to a crouch and watching the two other people in the room like a cornered rat.

"Hey." Mister Free holds up his hands in a placatory gesture. "No one's going to hurt you." I'm not sure whether she's just trembling or shaking her head. "Do you know who I am?"

"N. N. N-n-no."

"My name is Scott Free. When I'm at work, people call me Mister Miracle. But.. you wouldn't know me by that name. I was only given it after I left New Genesis."

"Why did you leave?"

"My father handed me over to Darkseid-" At the mention of the name she cringes, curling up and covering her head with her hands. "-in exchange for Orion." Freedom. Mister Free looks away for a moment. "That would have been about two hundred Earth years ago. Huh. When you put it like that it sounds like a really long time."

Dreamer keeps watching him, uncurling slightly.

"Ping!"

"You have a Mother Box? How-?" The Sphere revs and Dreamer's eyes flick towards it. "The.. New Genesphere…"

Mister Free raises his right eyebrow. "That's not very original. You couldn't call her the 'Ultrasphere' or the 'Trispherecle'?"

"Pingpingping!"

Dreamer slowly lowers her arms, then sits with her knees pulled up to her chest. "I'm really back on Earth."

Diana takes a step forward, immediately drawing Dreamer's attention. "Do you remember how you got here?"

"I-." Her eyes widen again and she starts shaking. "I think they were moving me, from… From-." Her jaw clamps shut.

"Okay." Mister Free holds out his right hand in a warding gesture. "That's fine. You don't have to think about it right now." Dreamer nods. "I grew up in Granny Goodness' Orphanage myself. I remember what it was like." He gives her a moment to settle down. "You said that you'd been to Earth before?"

She nods hesitantly. "Yes. We…" She shudders again. "We came to Earth seeking stolen New Genesis technology."

Diana nods. "When was that?"

"I.. don't know your dating system. Mother Box… Our Mother Box led us to a mountain on the coastline of this world's smaller landmass where she had detected the New Genesphere. But before we arrived she said that she detected some sort of elemental life form which she did not think that we would be able to defeat."

Huh. Smaller landmass being the Americas and the mountain presumably being Mount Justice. Which means that the Ophidian scared them off. Four and a half months ago, then.

"We then went after another New Genosian artefact, the Rescue Drill. It was being used by a group of thieves to break into a vault containing large amounts of gold." Think I remember reading the report. "They were armed with weapons from Apokolips, and were able to fend us off until we summoned Infinity Man."

Infinity Man? Isn't that what Darkseid's brother started calling himself after his attempt to merge with the Omega Force resulted in Desaad and his brother backstabbing him? That makes Dreamer one of those children who swap places with him. I don't really remember much else about him… Wait, wasn't it him who ended up killing all the other New Gods off when the Source went mental?

"Infinity Man. I don't know who that is."

"Infinity Man is a titanic machine that draws power from the Source, making it unstop-." Another wave of shudders. A machine? That's not how it was in the comics. Does that mean no Drax? Or did he build it on that planet he ended up on? "It was.. a powerful force for good."

"What happened to it?"

"After we recovered the stolen technology, we pursued the thieves to an aircraft launch centre. We were ambushed by more Humans armed with Apokoliptian weapons. We fought them, and when they threatened to overwhelm us we once again summoned Infinity Man." She stops, clearly reliving the moment.

Next to me, Canis frowns. "They could not even overcome a small group of Humans without calling upon this 'Infinity Man'?"

Barda glowers at him. "She's little more than a child, Canis."

"And? I led an army to victory when I was her age, and against a far more capable foe."

Mister Free nods sympathetically. "What happened next?"

"Desaad himself was disguised amongst the Humans. He provided them with a Father Box, which they threw at us as we merged to create Infinity Man. It corrupted our connection to the Source with Anti-Life, changing Infinity Man from a warrior for good into an Engine of Destruction loyal to Darkseid." She pauses again. "I am not sure what happened next. When I.. came around, we were bound and being presented to-." Another series of shudders.

Mister Free nods. "Darkseid." "Tyranny." "Who else was taken with you?"

"My friends. Vykin, Bear, Moonrider and Serifan." She looks up at him imploringly. "Please, they are still on Apokolips! You must help them!"

"Pingpingping!"

Mister Free nods. "Mother Box is right. Attacking Apokolips without a lot more information would be very risky."

Dreamer nods. "With your Mother Box, I could open a boom tube to Supertown on New Genesis. I am sure that Highfather-" Mister Free looks away for a moment. "-would offer his aid."

Diana steps forward again, laying her right hand on Dreamer's left shoulder. "We will take that under advisement. For now, try to get some rest."

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Black Reign 14

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13th March 2011

17:09 GMT

"Who-? Who are you?"

"My name is Princess Diana of Themyscira."

"Are you from New Genesis as well?"

Diana smiles and shakes her head. "No. I am from Earth."

Dreamer doesn't look entirely convinced. "But.. you feel as if you are from New Genesis." She looks at Mister Free for confirmation.

He shakes his head. "Aside from Himon, you're the first person from New Genesis I've ever met."

"I don't know exactly what you mean by 'feeling' like I'm from New Genesis-."

"Ping pingping!"

Diana pauses for a moment. I.. suppose that noise meant something to her? "Ah. In that case, perhaps the fact that I was given life by one of this world's elder gods is causing you confusion."

Next to me, Canis turns away from the window and prods me in the chest. "You, Human. This world has Old Gods?"

"I don't know what that term means for New Gods, but we do have quite a lot of sentient arcane life forms, many of which can take on corporeal forms."

He frowns. "But… This is the seat of the Justice League's power. Why are they not here?"

"Because they're not members?"

He looks at me in absolute disbelief. "They're not.. members…" "How.. powerful is the League?!"

Missus Free glances at him with a very slight look of amusement on her lips. Um. "Ah. I can introduce you to the Ophidian later, if you like. She's not exactly a god, but-."

The door to the secure medical bay opens and Diana leads the way out. "-happy to assign you quarters, either here-" Dreamer follows close behind her. "-or on Earth. I am certain-."

Dreamer sees Missus Free, and I get a brief yellow light review of Missus Free's career as a Female Fury before she was persuaded to leave Apokolips by Mister Free. Dreamer steps back, and her field of vision expands to see Canis and myself. "NO!" Her eyes go wide with fear and she starts trying to back away, nearly tripping over her own feet and more or less collapsing into Mister Free. "Apokolips! They're-!"

"Dreamer, it's okay." "Barda, could you lose the-?" Barda presses a button on her belt, her armour disappearing and… Ah. It seems that she didn't have time to dress before the call came in. "Barda doesn't work for Darkseid any more. Orange Lantern never did and Canis is the one who rescued you."

Dreamer nods and attempts to steady her breathing, clinging a little less tightly to Mister Free. After a moment she is in control of herself well enough to nod. "Is..?" She looks at Canis. "Are you part of Himon's resistance?"

Mister Free looks a little uncertain for a moment. "Ah, well-."

Canis shakes his head. "No, I am a loyal servant of mighty Darkseid!"

Mister Free shakes his head. "He doesn't mean that." "Canis, shut up."

"Certainly I do!" "I despise such deception." "I was personally trained by his uncle. I fought at the head of his army. And he has shown his favour by sending numerous assassins after me, to ensure that my skills are always at their sharpest."

Eh?

"Aero Troopers, Parademons, my own Aunts! Shortly before I liberated you I learned that he had even dispatched Kanto to slay me!"

He's smiling. Er. Is that..? It could be an Apokoliptian thing, but I was rather under the impression that Darkseid tried to kill things when he wanted them dead. I remember that the Parademon in the Secret Six felt better about things once he'd been tortured for a while. Would Darkseid send killers after someone as a show of affection? I glance at Barda. Ah. No, no he wouldn't.

Canis nods to himself. "I am truly blessed."

…

At least Dreamer doesn't look scared any more.

Kon looks at Diana. "What happens next?"

"Now, Mister Miracle attempts to contact his father and I contact Batman. If the League decides to get involved it's something we need to decide as a group."

"It's not like we'd be initiating hostilities. Apokolips has already involved itself with Earth, sending weapons to Bialya and apparently-."

She regards me levelly. "Yes Orange Lantern. I am aware of that."

Right, of course. "Sorry sir." I raise my eyebrows. "Where do you want Superboy and I?"

Diana pauses for a moment and takes in our group. "Mister Miracle." He's pulled his face mask on. "How long will you need to visit your father?"

"Opening the boom tube should only take a few seconds. Telling him about what happened… Fifteen minutes? I don't particularly want to have a long conversation with him."

Two hundred years ago the man handed him over to the God of Tyranny. It wouldn't be surprising if he held a bit of a grudge, but what I'm seeing is more like what Kon feels for Superman: it might have been nice but it didn't happen. He hasn't seen the man since he was an infant. Of course, Kon ended up with Diana while he got Granny Goodness.

Missus Free looks at her husband. "I'm going."

"Honey, I don't-" Her jaw hardens. "-see any reason why you shouldn't." He smiles winsomely.

Canis nods. "I myself would like to see the capital-."

Missus Free stares at him. "You can stay here where you can do less harm."

"But the whole reason I did this was to learn of the art of New Genesis. If I don't see anything then I've wasted my time with the wench."

"Orange Lantern, Superboy: escort Canis Minor to the guest quarters and give him access to a hologram projector and a database of Earth's art and history."

Canis looks truculent. "That is hardly-."

"As a temporary measure while we decide what we're going to do with him."

"If it helps, these rings have databases filled with the artistic knowledge of thousands of civilisations. I'm sure we can find something that you consider appealing."

He considers for a moment. "Very well. For now."

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Black Reign 15

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13th March 2011

18:12 GMT

It's referencing this.

The Drones waddle through the terrified city like Skynet's own Tachikoma, their six legs conveying them across the ground with deceptive speed. The four turrets mounted on the conning tower like structure on their hull swivel constantly, checking for targets. The Human civilians don't warrant enough of a threat to be worth firing upon. No, their prey of choice is considerably more meaty.

Behind them, the Machine Harbinger deploys its heavy constructor array and uses a full half of its stored resources to begin constructing a Harvest Node. It only takes a few seconds for the bulbous, four-legged inverted egg-shape to begin appearing as the Harbinger's fabricator beam paints matter into thin air. Eight seconds later the Harvest Node waddles away towards the city under its own power and the Harbinger gets to work on the first Harvester while the traffic helicopter overhead relays the news to the huddled masses.

"If you're heading home, try to avoid Sixth and Mason. Nothing's moving and it doesn't look like anything's going to be moving any time soon."

Having passed the half way point on their journey through the city without encountering the enemy, the Drones spread out. One deploys, a shimmering force field humming into life as it diverts power from its motive systems. Another heads southwest, the third southeast and the fourth maintains its current heading. The Node slowly advances towards the deployed Drone while the first Harvester scurries after it. Moderately armoured but completely unarmed, the Harvester looks like a larger and fatter Drone. The obvious difference is that the front two legs have been replaced by grasping appendages, which enable it to pick up the fuel source the Machines need to continue their fight.

The city's Human inhabitants.

Twelve seconds into its job and the first Machine Factory is complete, waddling off to join the deployed Drone. Now in position, the Harvest Node deploys and patiently waits for the Harvester to catch up with it. The Harbinger pauses for a moment, as if uncertain what the next object in its build order should be. This doubt is swiftly resolved when the forward Drone encounters the first of the enemy: the Mirigites. A group of five of the bizarre, obese, red skinned humanoid frog people have gathered in a crescent moon formation just inside the far edge of the city. They hesitate for a moment on seeing the Drone, then bellow a war cry and charge at it.

The Machine Factory deploys in the city centre, its fabrication systems starting work on another Drone. The Harbinger likewise begins Drone construction as the adventurous Drone begins to retreat from the Mirigites, firing upon them as it goes. Two are seriously wounded as its gauss cannons punch through their bulbous flesh. They fall back as the others continue the pursuit.

The Harvester has reached the Harvest Node and orientates on a nearby office complex. It then scurries forwards, arms thrusting through the walls of the building to grab the poor unfortunates within and deliver them into its storage bays. The Machine Factory finishes its Drone a little faster than the Harbinger and the Drone moves up to deploy next to the one already standing guard. The Harbinger's Drone is completed a moment later and begins its walk to the forward base. Its initial resources expended, the Harbinger undeploys its heavy constructor array and edges closer to the city. Its weapons don't have the range to offer its offspring fire support as yet, and the large city buildings prevent it from pressing on.

The Drones assigned to flanking duty have reached the far edges of the city without encountering any enemy. The one to the south pulls back slightly and deploys, while the one to the north heads out of the city towards the enemy encampment, relaying everything it sees to the rest of its mechanical brethren. The towering Psuchawrlonian of the Ancient Ones is gestating a second Slime Temple while additional Mirigites are already pulling themselves forth from the first to form a screen around a Shaklatite, whose grasping tentacles are pulling apart a nearby block of flats to grab the juicy Humans within and toss them into its gaping maw.

Noting that the active units are some distance away the Drone creeps towards the first Slime Temple and deploys, its guns scoring an easy kill in the shape of a clueless Mirigite that pulled itself from the transdimensional portal only to be drilled through the head by four ferrous slugs. It targets a second and opens fire, only for the ground beneath it to erupt in a frenzy of dark pink tentacles which latch on and pull down, shattering it into scrap.

The retreating Drone reaches the outer edge of the deployed Drone's weapon's range. It continues its approach for a short distance then deploys. Only two Mirigites have continued the advance this far and one takes the fire from all four gauss guns, swiftly being cut down. The last bellows in rage and charges, covering the distance faster than the turrets can acquire it. A huge alien fist slams into the force field protecting the Drone, which buckles and fails even as the Drones on overwatch open fire and cut the Mirigite down. Immediately the two Drones on overwatch duty undeploy and advance to level with the forward Drone before deploying again to form a solid defensive line.

Two more Harvesters have joined the first and together they attack a high rise office complex. There aren't quite enough of them to do this with maximum efficiency as the quickest and luckiest Humans stream past them, dodging their grabbing arms and heading for what they hope will be safety. Even so, it doesn't take long for the Harvesters to fill their containers and head back towards the Harvester Node.

"Protestors are occupying the city centre tonight. City police urge caution."

The additional resources prompt a new round of Drone building from the Factory while the Harbinger deploys and creates another Node. The first Node undeploys and advances under the protective guns of the deployed Drones. By the time that the Harvesters have finished with the next building the second node will be in position to receive them.

Kon looks up at me from across the room. "Are you just rushing me again?"

"Maybe."

He smiles slightly. "You know, the definition of insanity-."

"The definition of rationality is learning from your mistakes and doing it better the next time."

I look to my left as Canis lean forwards, frowning slightly as he tries to make sense of what's on the screen. "Is this.. some sort of training simulator?"

Right, they don't really have computer games on Apokolips, do they? "A strategy game, yes."

In this game, basic units more or less can't destroy the Harbinger or Psuchawrlonian. The aim of rushing them is to force them to spend their time defending themselves, rather than building up their base. I've used it a few times but it's pretty fragile.

"What are those little things they're picking up?"

"Humans. They're used for fuel."

"Yes, they are." "I have never seen them fed upon by machines, though. Perhaps it is a commentary on the cycle of industrial production?"

The second Factory trudges towards the southern Drone and sets down just behind it to start building further Drones while the Harbinger works on another Node to send its way. This isn't a technique that would work in something like Starcraft, where resource collection units are dependent on expensive and usually static base units. It would barely work in Tiberium Wars, where resource collection is slow and done by a far smaller quantity of units, even among high level players.

"There seems to be little variety-" I erect a sound baffle. "-in their force composition. Where are their gods? Who rules them?"

"This battlefield is not yet worthy of a god's attention."

What I'm trying to do is mine out the buildings in the path of the Ancient One advance, taking a slight hit on my early game construction speed in exchange for denying my opponent resources mid to late game. It's one of the things I like about this game, actually: the way you fight over the area with the resources in it, instead of there being a main, a natural and a 'don't build here'.

"When does that happen?"

"Depends how fast these units gather resources."

He makes an expression of distaste. "This is no war game. It is a farming simulator!"

"Strength has to be earned, Canis. If my lowly Harvesters won't make the effort, why should the gods appear?"

His head jerks around to look at me, looking at me as if I've said something astonishing. I return my attention to the game. Kon's a pretty good tactician, but his strategy is a bit predictable. Assuming that he's doing what he's done for the last three games his Goat Temple should go down in about… Two minutes? Until then a small line of deployed Drones should be enough to hold off a small attack. He could advance his whole force with his Shaklatite, but that second Slime Temple means that he won't have been able to afford a second one yet and he'd risk losing the game right away if I had the units on hand to kill it. I don't, but he's only scouting a little way rather than probing my lines and can't know that.

"Yes… They mimic the actions of their betters in homage. Even those too weak to strive are even granted the honour of serving as fuel for the greater work. And at the peak of their efforts, their labours climax in the appearance of something greater, not as a thing to be feared but as the culmination of their existence."

That said, I sort of need to get the ability to kill it nowish. My Harbinger immediately starts work on a Sentinel, while my Factories continue with a mixture of Drones and Harvesters. I'm queuing production, but fortunately that works like it did in Command and Conquer where you pay for a unit as it's built rather than when you queue it. Okay, finally got enough Harvesters near the largest building on Kon's half of the map to harvest it in a reasonably efficient manner. He doesn't have anyone in position to see what they're doing, so if he uses this as a target to aim his attack for, then-.

"It's beautiful."

Oh dear. One of my Harvesters is knocked clean from the building by a.. Byakhee. He's gone for fliers? That's novel. The drones below are firing upwards but they aren't a dedicated AA unit and yep, lost a second Harvester before it goes down. I think I still come out ahead slightly on resource expenditure there, but now he knows that I'm active there and can… Yes, here come the Mirigites.

"Cheerfully the beast-men run to their deaths! Stalwart, the simple machines stand! Kill, and in turn be killed!"

I pull a couple of Drones away from other positions to create a fallback corridor and use the newly complete Sentinel's rocket booster to get it up onto a building which should give it line of sight if there's another Byakhee around. The Mirigites are falling but the front line is getting closer… I manually retreat the Harvesters working on the ground in the hope that.. yes, they're on auto-attack and follow them right into my killzone. Okay, second Sentinel, Drone, Drone, Drone and… Scuttler, because if Kon's changed his build order I need to scout him again.

"I need to commemorate this." I jerk as I feel Canis' left hand on my right shoulder. "I shall return." He looks.. rather focused as he turns away and leaves the room at a fast walk. Wonder what's going on with him?

Never mind. Do I need to pull back my front line now? This whole set up is designed with the assumption that I'd do that… No. I haven't harvested enough Humans yet to make what I've done effective. Oh, what? The Mirigites attacking me suddenly get a red aura and lunge forwards at a far faster speed than normal. Four drones are torn apart and a couple of them start climbing the building after the remaining Harvesters. Crap, um… I do a manual trigger of the Sentinel rocket while rushing the second one forward to a more advantageous position. That clears up the attack on the ground, and… Yes, the remaining Drones can pick off the climbing Mirigites.

Another wave of Mirigites attacks my position to the South but the Drone line there looks like it should be able to hold without much oversight. The Scuttler oh, that's interesting…

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Black Reign 16

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13th March 2011

18:38 GMT

Kon and I stare at the horrific sight before us. "Richard. Say it isn't so."

He sighs and looks away. "Yeah. It is."

He came to find us when Batman arrived for the League meeting.

With Talia al Ghul.

Who is now Batwoman.

I mean… Yes, she's obviously got the skills required to keep up with him. She no longer has the alternate pulls on her loyalties which might lead to her holding back in helping him in some way. I'd rather assumed that she spent her time managing the League of Shadows' surviving legitimate business interests. Turns out that I was completely wrong. Or that she manages to find time for this as well. The costume is clearly a female riff on the black and grey one Batman himself wears, sensibly armoured without weighing the user down and equipped with a variety of useful gadgets. The electrified baton is unique, presumably a replacement for the sword she now feels would be inappropriate.

Kon shifts his attention to Richard. "When's the wedding?"

"May."

"Really?"

Richard shrugs exhaustedly. "They've been seeing each other for a couple of years now. With Ra's out of the way… Why wait any longer?"

Batman… Getting married… I realise that's a thing people who aren't contractually obliged to be miserable do, it's just… A little weird.

"Are you okay with that?"

Richard shrugs. "I guess? I used to joke about him marrying a supervillainess, and now it's really happening. Oh, you're.. both invited, by the way."

"Thank you. But what's our cover story? I don't have a secret identity, and Kon's got no reason to know the son of Gotham billionaire Bruce Wayne."

He shakes his head. "Just don't wear anything orange. No one's going to look at you unless you draw attention to yourself." Something occurs to him. "Aren't you two supposed to be watching Canis?"

I hold out my left hand, generating an image of his current location. "Turns out that he's more interested in performance art than static images. When he got bored with the database we took him out to see the Horses. He's out in the gardens now with a lump of granite, trying to capture their likeness."

"I thought you couldn't scan for him?"

"No, I can scan for him, his armour just prevents me from scanning inside it."

"Who else is coming?"

Richard brings up his arm computer. "Well, it's a whole League thing, so-."

"No, I mean to the wedding."

"Oh. Ah, I invited the whole team, and some.. friends from school. Talia invited Nyssa and she's bringing Doctor Munro. She's also… She hasn't had a lot of contact with her mother's family lately, but she's sent out a few invites. Her Grandfather's already said he's coming and he's going to be giving her away. Bruce has invited anyone on the Justice League who could explain why they're there. The Hawks, Guy Gardner and Plastic Man had to turn it down-."

"How about Nabu?"

Richard shakes his head. "Zatara's one of Bruce's oldest friends. He'd have liked him to come, but Fate didn't want to take off the helmet."

As if I needed more motivation. Hm. Would Richard..? No. I'm not involving my team mates if I can possibly avoid it. And if Batman approved his appointment to the League-. No, I'm not going in circles with that again.

"So does Canis look like a god?"

"His armor had the same designs on it as the Sphere and those weapons the Bialyans had." Kon nods his head to the side. "I dunno. He was weaker than I am, but not by much."

"Didn't throw lightning at you or anything?"

"No.. just a.. strong guy with a sword."

"Come on, Richard. Throwing lightning isn't hard, anyone with a taser can do it."

"It's not quite the same thing, Oh El-."

"Hey." The three of us look around as Red… Um, Speedy, walks around the corner. "Wonder Woman said I could find you here."

Richard grins. "Hey Roy. How you been?"

"Okay, I.. guess." He half turns, looking in the direction of the room in which the League are meeting. "It's weird seeing a guy who looks just like me on the Justice League. Other than that, everything's pretty much back to how it was before." He turns back to us. "Can I ask you guys something?"

"Yeah." / "Certainly?" / "What is it?"

"Is this hat goofy?" He picks his yellow.. cap.. thing.. off his head and holds it out in front of him. It has a red feather in it. Actually, it looks quite a lot like the one Kanto was wearing.

"Yeah." / "Um…" / "Kinda."

The other two look at me. "Does it have any protective qualities?"

"No, it's.. just a hat."

"In that case, yes. Kon and I fought a guy from the twelfth century today, and he was wearing the same hat. And why is it yellow?"

"It was what they had at the store." He folds it up and slips it into his utility belt. "Ollie used to wear one as well. He switched to the hood while I was out of commission. I didn't really think about it before, but everyone on the team's wearing body armor these days-" He glances at Richard and Kon. "-even if they don't really need it. And after seeing how the other Roy dresses, I feel like I kinda went in the wrong direction with my costume."

"If you're considering a-"

Richard smirks. "Makeover."

"-redesign, I know a guy in Metropolis who does a line in personalised personal protective equipment. Assuming you're.. not interested in power armour."

"That's not.. really me. But, thanks." He nods. "I'll look him up."

I take a card with Mister Peter Gambi's details on it out of subspace and pass it to him. He takes it and slides it into his belt with the hat.

Kon nods at Roy. "Are you gunna be joining the team?"

He nods. "Ollie's going to talk to Batman about it today. Ah, I don't have super strength or anything…"

Richard smiles at him. "It'll be good to have you anyway."

"And if you want super strength-."

"Ah… No. Thanks." He glances at Talia. "Who's the Batman cosplayer?"

"Talia al Ghul. My soon-to-be stepmother." Roy looks at him to try and tell whether or not he's serious. "Oh, I'm not kidding. I don't think there's anything I could say to make this more weird than it already is."

"Batman's marrying-?"

"Speedy." Ah, she was listening. "Do you have some problem with my marital relations?"

He shrinks back slightly. "Noma'am."

She's totally Batwoman! She's got the voice and the glare off pat!

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Black Reign 17

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13th March 2011

18:48 GMT

"Huh."

The four of us -and a couple of the Horses- watch Canis work on his statue. He isn't using a hammer as his strength is more than enough to cause the chisel to penetrate the dense stone. Similarly, he isn't bothering with any sort of smoothing or polishing tool; he just rubs his hand over the surface. It's a revelation for me; I'd always regarded super strength as the power hardest to put to a non-destructive use, and here's an Apokoliptian making a.. really quite beautiful sculpture.

One of the Horses nudges me in the back with its nose. I turn away from Canis' work and give it a stroke along its neck. The Horses appear to have taken to their new environment fairly well, and are quite friendly towards their landlords. They aren't actually that big by horse standards, little more than ponies really. Aside from the weird thing going on with their legs they could be normal Icelandic Horses. The herd tends to stay in one unit and it's quite lucky that the environmental control systems the Greenies put in can cope with the dung.

I take an apple out of subspace and hold it out. The Horse looks at the fruit for a moment before thrusting its head forwards and latching on with its teeth and lifting the fruit away. There's a crunch as the Horse bites the apple in half, one half being messily crunched up in its mouth while the other half falls to the floor. One of the other Horses makes a grab for the fallen piece while another tries nuzzling me to see if any more fruit will be forthcoming. I'm not really a horse person, but these guys are-. Okay, okay, back off a bit.

"Would Orange Lantern and Canis please report to the meeting room."

Diana's voice on the intercom. I instinctively look up towards the balcony as I lift the ring to my ear. "On my way, sir." I lower it again. "Canis, do you need a lift?"

He doesn't look around. "I will come when I am finished here. Darkseid is my master, not Wonder Woman."

I smile politely at the back of his head. "Would you like a lift, or would you prefer me to throw you up there with a construct-catapult?"

He sighs in frustration, but lays his chisel down on an untouched part of the stone. "I do not see the urgency. If the youths of New Genesis have broken then they have broken, and there is nothing further to lose. If they have not broken yet then it is unlikely that they will do so in an hour or two."

"We're going because we've been told to go." I generate a zeta tube construct. "After you."

"Recognized, Canis Minor, A four one, Orange Lantern, B zero six."

Heads turn -or twist in Mister O'Brian's case- around to watch us. A nearly-full Justice League meeting with the addition of Missus and Mister Free. Or perhaps I should say Big Barda and Mister Miracle. Guy and Jordan are here as constructs being projected from John's ring. I try to avoid making eye contact with Nabu as Canis and I walk to the open end of the table to join them. I stand at ease while he begins studying the room.

"Sirs? What can we do for you? "

"The Justice League has decided to attempt to rescue Dreamer's companions."

Looks like Kal-El's chairing the meeting. I take another look at the assembled faces. I don't think everyone is totally on board with that decision. "Then I'm.. sure you've been briefed on the risks. If I may ask, how much help are New Genesis providing?"

Missus Free's face hardens and Mister Free turns his head my way. "You're looking at it." "I still can't believe he did that."

Ooooh dear. "May I ask 'why'?"

Mister Free shakes his head. "My father intends to stick to the letter of the treaty. I can use this Mother Box-"

"Pingping!"

"-to get there and to locate them, but that's about it."

"But… You being here at all and not on Apokolips means that the treaty is broken anyway."

Mister Free looks away with a grimace while Missus Free turns to me. "Highfather believes that if Darkseid is behaving as if it were in effect, then he should as well."

"Our current plan-" I return my attention to Kal-El. "-is to do reconnaissance on the places the children are being held, then strike them simultaneously with overwhelming force. We were hoping -since I'm told that you 'feel' Apokoliptian to the 'New Gods'- that you would be willing to participate."

I nod. "Certainly, sir. But may I ask why you plan to wait four months before-" Diana winces slightly. "-making the rescue attempt?"

Kal-El looks puzzled. "I'm.. not sure I-."

Batman looks down slightly. "Part of the oath he swore before being given the first Green Lantern's personal lantern was a promise not to leave this star system for one year. Which means that he can't go to Apokolips without violating it."

"That's correct, sir. I mean, I could stand on this side of a boom tube and send constructs through, but I don't think having an open connection between Earth and Apokolips is a particularly good idea and it would really cut down on my mobility."

Kal-El looks mildly abashed. No real reason for him to have read up on that particular part of my record, though I imagine that Diana's kicking herself at the moment. "Then.. I.. suppose we'll just have to manage without you. Though if you're not going to be involved in the attack-" He glances at Diana, who nods. "-we do have another use for you."

"I'm at your disposal, sir."

"The reconnaissance could take some time, and our chances of being detected are lower if we only open the boom tube once. As a result, everyone taking part will travel to Apokolips together and stay for the duration of the mission. Some of us will be staying behind, but nothing like enough to deal with a crisis occurring. We could be gone several days, and we'll need people to help out here in our absence."

"I'd be happy to help, sir."

Batman fixes me with his eyes. "We would also appreciate anything you know -or think you know- about Apokolips that hasn't made it onto the Justice League's database yet."

"I'm not sure I can tell you anything you can't get elsewhere, sir. The Green Lantern Corps-."

Guy leans back slightly in his chair. "Ain't goin' nowhere near it. Guardians banned us, just like you said."

John and Lantern Jordan look a little discomforted. "Ah. Um." I switch my attention to the Hawks. "Thanagar?"

Mister Hol shakes his head. "I hadn't heard of the place until I read the name in your report on your Bialya mission."

Missus Hol smiles faintly. "Thanagarians have been in space for a while, but we've barely visited a fraction of this galaxy's systems. We've certainly never been to Apokolips."

"Ah." Ophidian?

Yes, my Agent?

Have you eaten anyone from Apokolips?

Yes. They tasted like poop. I spat them out.

No help there, then. I turn to the Frees. "This may sound a little odd, but do you know anything about a 'Prince Drax'?" The Frees look blank. "The late Queen Heggra's eldest son?"

Missus Free shakes her head. "Darkseid has ruled Apokolips for far longer than I have been alive. If he once had a brother, then he has had him written out of history."

I nod. "Then I'm sorry, sir. I don't think I've got anything. Other than.. emphasising that while Darkseid might decide to ignore a minor incursion… If he takes to the field himself, then the mission's a bust and you all need to leave immediately. If any of you want additional equipment before the mission starts, just ask." I make eye contact with Batman. "Sir-."

"I will be part of the reconnaissance group. I have my own power armor for when combat starts."

"Mine's better sir. And I can make it use the same control scheme." He nods.

Kal-El turns his attention to Canis. "Canis Minor. Anything you can tell us about the disposition of guards around the holding area would be invaluable."

Canis focuses on him. I wonder what he thinks of this? "Certainly, Superman. The great edifice that is the Tower of Rage itself…"

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Black Reign 18

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13th March 2011

20:22 GMT -4

"And tonight! For one night only ladies and gentlemen-"

I wonder how the attack on Apokolips is going?

"-Metropolis' favorite Prankster is proud to present-"

Not that I mind filling in for the League.

"-on the highest high dive board in all of history-"

Really, it's an honour that they think Kon and I are up to doing this.

"-the Daily Planet's own Lois Lane! Everyone give the intrepid reporter a big hand!"

It's just… I could be dealing with drug dealers and muggers right now. Instead, I'm stuck in Metropolis dealing with this idiot. Oswald Loomis, aka 'Uncle Oswald', -and according to Wallace not knowing him by that name indicates the lack of a soul far better than my tattoos- aka The Prankster. Ever wondered what a Metropolis-themed version of the Joker would look like?

Me neither. But apparently you switch the purple for green and add about twenty years.

Ms Lane is currently standing on a diving board extending over the edge of the Rushmont Building, thirty seven storeys up. Her arms are tied behind her back with rope. Eight… I want to say 'thugs', but… No, they're all drama students from Metropolis University. They're holding a soiree of some sort 'hostage' with what the rings clearly show me are fake guns. Maybe they don't look fake to the people inside, or maybe they're playing along. I honestly can't tell if this is a crime in progress or street theatre.

"Looks like a real crime to me."

I glance at Kon. "Yeah, but how stupid are we going to look if it's not?"

"Was he supposed to get a permit for that? I mean… That diving board's gotta be a fire hazard or something."

"I don't think there's anything specific…"

"Really?"

"Well… You wouldn't, would you? Who's going to put a diving board off the edge of the building? I mean, look at those guys. Were they going for 'circus' or 'pirate'?"

"Does that reporter look scared to you?"

"No. Just annoyed." I watch as she wobbles slightly in the wind and then stabilises. "She's got good balance, actually. I wonder if this sort of thing happens a lot?"

"As you can see ladies and gentlemen, the daring Miss Lane-"

Down at street level, a flat bed truck with a paddling pool filled with some sort of green gel pulls up directly underneath the diving board. Huh. I know that there are impact absorbing gels that can take massive impacts, but for a Human woman of Ms Lane's dimensions falling that far they'd need a good deal more for the landing to be safe. Ring, molecular structure? Yep.

"-will be aiming for the regulation, union-approved paddling pool."

Up the sides of the building a series of windows open and… Hoops containing a glowing blue energy field stick out.

"'But Uncle Oswald', I hear you cry, 'that's far too far for someone to land safely'."

Huh. Some sort of momentum cancelling thing. Nothing John's ring database isn't familiar with, though it is a little odd to see it on Earth. Wonder where he got it from?

"And you're right! In order to survive the fall, Miss Lane has to pass through at least five of the eight rings on the way down."

Hmm. Theoretically possible, but I'm not detecting any backup plan if she missed. Edging towards 'probably a crime'.

"So place your bets, Ladies and-!"

Ms Lane rolls her eyes. "Oh God, please just push me off already."

Mister Oswald takes a couple of steps towards the edge of the building, until he's alongside where she stands on the diving board. He leans closer to her. "Oh, come on, play along. We both know what's going to happen next. You jump off, then-."

"Do you know how many times someone's pushed me off a building just to get Superman's attention?"

"Aaaahhmm. Three?"

"Try thirty."

"Oh." Mister Oswald strokes his moustache. "You know, when you put it like-" He pulls a lever and the diving board collapses, dropping Ms Lane down the building in no position to angle her fall at all! "-that."

Kon lunges forwards, blurring as he flies to intercept her. Yeah, he's got that. I transition to just behind Mister Oswald. He's peering over the parapet, his full attention on the falling Ms Lane. "Huh. Looks less red than-" I create an orange platform under his feet and toss him off the edge. "-normaaaaaaal!"

Ring, monitor.

Compliance.

I turn back to his henchees. "Obviously, you're all under arrest. Please put down the fake guns and stand against the wall in an orderly fashion." Huh. Well, he missed the first ring, but he got the next couple. He should be… No, the wind caught his jacket and blew it in his face and he can't see where he's falling. Ah well. I extend a filament down after him and attach it to his ankle. He just has time to get his jacket out of his face and raise his arms in an attempt to ward off the pavement before I nullify his momentum. It takes him a moment to realise that he's not dead and open his eyes. He beams manically with relief.

Then I drop him on his face.

"I'm really sorry, Superboy."

Cradling Ms Lane in his arms, Kon flies back over the parapet. He looks a little embarrassed. "No, it's.. fine. A lotta people make that mistake."

"Yeah, but if I can't-" He sets her down and she regains her feet. "-tell that-" She spots me. "-you're not Superman…" She looks around. "Hey, where'd Oswald go?"

"I threw him over the side. You alright?"

"This isn't my first rode-. You threw him over the side?"

"Eh, ironic punishments. He's fine. Any idea what the next stage was meant to be?"

A motion in the corner of my eye causes me to turn in time to see two of the guests draw some sort of sidearm while another throws a tiny fragment of green Kryptonite in Kon's direction. Orange filaments connect my left hand to the guns for a moment before yanking them over to me while Kon steps around Ms Lane to stand over the glowing mineral.

"Focused sonics… Is this a bowel disruptor?" I look at the dial on the side. "You were going to lure Superman here, hit him with a little Kryptonite radiation and then make him shit himself. That is ridiculous and it is horrible."

Kon turns to Ms Lane. "Could I borrow your purse?"

She looks puzzled, her eyes moving from the crystal and back to him. "You're… Immune to Kryptonite?"

"No, but my personal radiation shield is. I don't really wanna touch it, but I can carry it in a bag just fine." She passes him the bag and he bends down to gingerly push the Kryptonite into it before standing up. "Thanks."

I move the dial to 'watery' before turning back to our would-be attackers. No sense making things too unpleasant for the police. "Ironic punishment time, chaps."

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Black Reign 19

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13th March 2011

22:48 GMT -4

"Recognised, Superboy, B zero four, Orange Lantern, B zero six."

Kon and I trudge out of the cave zeta tube in the general direction of the kitchens. It was nice to see the chaps and chapesses of the Metropolis Special Crimes Unit again, but it's… It's been kind of a long day.

"Hey." Kon looks at me. "Kitchen?"

Ring? M'gann and Zatanna are there, while the Atlanteans and.. Roy the First are in the hangar. "Kitchen."

We amble along the corridors in a kitchenward direction.

"You gunna be able to cope on your own tomorrow? I can get Mom to write…" He trails off. "I can.. get Missus Candy to write me a sick note and forge Mom's signature?"

"Thank you, but unless there's some sort of major crime wave I should be able to manage. And you can't slack off on your schooling just because Diana isn't here to watch you."

"No, I'd have, y'know, caught up…"

We hear the skittering of claws against the smooth floor surface before Wolf careens into view. She dashes up to Kon first, sniffing at his legs with her tail frantically wagging before rearing up on her hind legs to try and lick his face. She's nearly fully grown now, but since she's only a little heavier than a normal Wolf despite her strength Kon's more than capable of supporting her weight. He smiles, trying to avoid her tongue while he rubs the sides of her face with both hands. "Yeah, I've missed you too, girl."

She gives him another five seconds of licking and nuzzling before leaning over towards me, her paws still supported by Kon's shoulders. I go to rub the top of her head only for her to turn her muzzle in order to sniff and lick my hand. "Yes, I've missed you as well, you horrible, smelly, ambulatory rug you."

She makes a snort of exhale-snort noise, then returns her attention to Kon.

"And I'm sure Teekl will be dashing around the corner to see me any moment now." I nod. "Any moment."

"rWuff." Wolf drops down, gives me a quick sniff and then circles around us in what looks like an attempt to herd us towards the kitchen.

Kon smiles down at her. "Okay, we're going."

"Any moment."

She pushes between us, trotting about half way back to the kitchen entrance before stopping and looking back to make sure that we're still coming. Another good reason for Kon not to spend all his time in Metropolis with me: they usually do obedience training on Mondays, which is a bit more critical for an animal that will probably be used in combat. I know I want to be sure that she knows what she's doing before we take her out into the field. Normal police dog training is about thirteen weeks in duration, but that's an intensive course and there flat out isn't a course for super animals.

"Welcome back, Conner!" M'gann -still haven't quite got used to her in white mode- wafts through the air to greet her boyfriend with a kiss. Kon wraps his arms around her back and leans into her.

…

Okay, they could be there for a while. I continue on into the living room. Zatanna smiles up at me from the settee, her eyes dragging themselves back from Kon and M'gann… Ah. "How was Metropolis?"

"Bright and shiny." I drop down next to her. "We had to deal with some idiot whose evil plan was to lure Superman in and shoot him with a bowel disruptor."

Her face is a picture. "A.. bowel..? Disruptor?"

I nod. "That was it. No ransom, no theft, just: tiny bit of Kryptonite then right in the gut."

"Why would-?"

"Supervillain." She nods in understanding. "Now, when a British person tries to do a PG version of the Joker, they do it with class. With things that are actually funny, not puerile attempts at scatological humour. I should have dropped the git on his face twice." I shake my head and lean back. "How was school?"

"I, um… Yoooou.. remember the cake."

"I remember the cake. The internet remembers the cake. Two hundred years from now, alien civilisations that have never met a Human before will address me as 'The Cake Man'. "

"I had to write a report on it."

"That's a bit unfair, isn't it? You were actually there."

"It's more about the sort of sociological implications of really powerful superhumans. How they can just completely ignore all the rules of society-"

"I settled those lawsuits." I did.

"-and do whatever they want."

"Was I really the best example of that?"

"The best example that wasn't actually criminal. We live in a world where someone can merge with a giant snake and make a giant cake in the air."

"But what are you supposed to contrast it to? I mean… Weird stuff like that has been happening since at least the Second World War, right? You'd have to try living on my old homeworld for a while to get a baseline comparison."

Kon and M'gann manage to pry themselves apart and take their seats on the opposite settee, Wolf circling around for a moment before taking up station at her father's feet. Kon turns slightly to look at M'gann as she snuggles against his shoulder. "How was Acapulco?"

She shrinks in on herself slightly. "Horrible. Tula and I spent all morning chasing down drug dealers. Then there was a gang shoot out, and we had to go and help out with that instead of doing any follow up on their suppliers."

Kon nods. "We had pretty much the same thing in Caracas. Until Canis appeared, anyway."

"Statistically, very little crime actually involves supervillains. I don't know, maybe it would be better if we just picked one city and worked at it until it was more or less functional, rather than doing metaphorical fire fighting in several places. Kaldur, Tula, Garth and I have the time…" I hear the door on the far side of the kitchen open and turn my head to see the other four residents -and my Cat- enter the room. "And Roy might as well. Kaldur, what do you think about-?"

He looks straight at me, his face deadly serious. "Turn on the news."

"Ah, okay? Ring, BBC News Twenty Four."

"…story tonight, after a lull in fighting while emergency food aid was provided to Cairo, hopes of a negotiated settlement appear to have been dashed by a sudden and devastating attack on the rebel stronghold of Shiruta." I stare at the screen in shock as I see fires and explosions across the city I was in only a few days ago. The people I... "The rebel leader Teth Adom was attending a peace conference in-."

"Ring, zeta tube."

"Compliance."

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Black Reign 20

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14th March 2011

04:53 GMT +2

Shiruta doesn't have a zeta tube. Like Bialya, Kahndaq wasn't a signatory to the UN's charter. That's a bit like diplomatic parking fines; while diplomats can get away with not paying, you can tell roughly how corrupt a country is by whether they do or not. The Justice League's charter doesn't let them overthrow governments, and it actively curtails their ability to act against state sponsored 'evildoing'. The only reason not to sign it is if you're sufficiently bad that you can't stand the thought of having Leaguers around the place.

"Recognised-."

I transition away from the Dhabar zeta tube before it finishes announcing my arrival, appearing in the dawn sky above the burning city of Shiruta. I can hear screams, the roar of flames, gunfire and the crack and hiss of energy and plasma weapons. Orange lights appear in my visual field as the ring marks airborne targets: soldiers in black armour riding on aero-discs, wielding it doesn't matter.

"Railguns."

Two guns form alongside me as my power armour emerges from subspace and is overlain by my construct armour. The heads of the members of the closest aerial team evaporate as three crumbler rounds find their marks, their aero-discs riding corpses swirling and falling from the sky.

Apokoliptian gear.

"Praexis horde." My Demons shimmer into being around me. Huh, I'm putting out quite a lot of orange here. "Hunt and consume anything Apokoliptian."

"Feed!"

They fly off in various directions, which is really the most I could hope for. My railguns target another flight of soldiers and fire again, this time aiming for each individual's centre of mass. They read as Human. Who..? Why? Who could possibly gain by-? No, focus. First, centre of government. With Apokoliptian tech in the field I can't risk transitioning or phasing so I restrict myself to rapid flight.

The hotel's… A ruin. I get about half a second to take it in before I come under fire from infantry concealed in the surrounding rubble. A brilliant purple beam splashes off my construct faceplate

BABUM. BABUM. BABUM.

and the railguns scream my response. About twelve men simply cease to be, along with their cover. How did they even get here? Rebel territory has a constant combat air patrol, as well as radar and mundane spotters! Okay, where else? Main barracks? I surge through the air once more, just in time to see some sort of dragon-tank hybrid roll into position to incinerate the outer fortifications. It must be twelve metres long with giant solid wheels to pull it over and through any obstacle and a fore-mounted turret shaped like a reptile's neck.

BABUM.

A construct-claw clamps it around the chassis and lifts it into the air as my railguns annihilate its infantry escort. Once it's high enough that I don't have to worry about it setting anyone else on fire a second hand appears and crushes it, super hard Apokoliptian armour splintering and deforming in my grasp. White bolts of energy pierce the air around me, giving me a perfect target for my new incendiary wrecking ball. Dimly I hear their cries as they're flattened and their remains burned.

Another aero-disc flight is cut down as I fly towards the barracks. Medical… Most of those burned are already dead, but the handful that aren't I restore. I land and grab the closest by his jacket. "Who's in charge here! Tell me!"

"A-? A-? I don't, I don't know. They just… Came out of nowhere. I-I, there's… I'm…"

In mid-air I create a series of energy weapons, larger versions of the ones I created for the Metropolis SCU after our fight with Doctor Ivo. Once I'm confident that I've got everyone's attention I start shoving them into the chests of the soldiers. "The people attacking you are using Apokoliptian weapons, which means that I get to replace your AK Forty Sevens with these. I suggest that you hunker down, I'll send any civilians I encounter in this direction." My railguns are firing non-stop now as their fliers focus on an area of resistance. I'm forced to erect a larger construct barrier to cover my allies as a sergeant starts grabbing people and shoving them into motion. "Does anyone here know where the Council ended up?"

The sergeant grabs a gun for himself before turning to me. "No, Orange Lantern. The radio is being jammed and we haven't been able to send runners anywhere."

Fuck. "Do the best you can."

He nods. "Allah watch over you." Then he turns away and points at two of his subordinates. "You, you, take up position-!"

I shoot back into the air. Okay, Adom told me the evacuation plan but that looks like it was a total bust. The assumption was that in the event of a large infantry attack that they'd have plenty of warning. Did they teleport? Boom tubes? Ring, show me civilian- aaaagh!

I swoop away, rings already repairing the melted armour around my right arm and restoring the construct armour. Whatever these weapons are, they seem to be a good deal more potent than what we took from the soldiers in Qurac when we rescued President Harjavti. Where did that shot-?

A blood red robot shoots through the air towards me at supersonic speed, its powerful left fist swinging at my head! Two crumbler rounds strike it in the chassis as I fly directly away from it, but some sort of plasma field effect prevents them from connecting properly with its chassis when they detonate. Having missed its melee strike, the robot raises the gun which forms its right hand for another shot. I replace a railgun with a particle beam and load the remaining railgun with solid slugs before opening fire. The purple beam gouges a furrow across its chest and the solid slugs smash into its head but I can't scan to tell where the most important components are! Another sheet of sun-hot plasma from its flamethrower thing forces me to dart away again. Not too far though, I can't risk it going after the Kahndaqi infantry. Ring, can we work out where its flight systems are?

Scans of gravity distortions suggest that flight systems are spread throughout-

It accelerates towards me once more and I evade, trying to shoot out its eyes with the particle beam. Pacifier, that's what they're called.

-the structure, having no central locus.

"Come back, little one. Test your puny might-" Its eyepieces are gone, but it seems still able to track me. "-against me."

Not enough self to brand or assimilate. I hold out my left hand, ring glowing brilliantly as I prepare an energy pulse. The Pacifier changes tack, viffing for all it's worth to prevent me getting a clear shot. It's a sub-light attack… Fine. I drop my gun constructs and plot-to-rapid-fly directly into its back, slamming my hands against the metal plate and clamping myself in position with a chain construct. It tries turning its plasma flamethrower back towards me but its own mass is restricting its motion.

"Destruction!"

The orange beam punches cleanly through the chassis, fragments of orange light running outwards throughout the structure and tearing at it until only smoke and falling scrap remains.

Ring, show me enemy armour.

Eleven targets get marked. Two.. weirdly 'U' shaped flying machines standing on overwatch at high altitude, presumably waiting for Kahndaqi aircraft or Adom himself.

BABUM.

I rocket up between them, hold out my hands and core them both with bright orange beams before grabbing hold of them and transitioning them back down to the ground, where they appear in pieces. There is a jammer.

BABUM.

A squad of three Pacifiers similar to the one I just destroyed. As I hurtle down towards them they raise their guns to incinerate an air raid shelter. The closest I slice in twain with a construct blade.

BABUM.

The other two immediately turn their attention to me, plasma throwers firing. I redouble my barriers and fire destructive beams through them. The barrier gets eaten away but the beams strike true and the robots are wrecked.

BABUM.

A flight of aero-troopers fly escort to four flying gun platforms, firing downwards into the city with no specific target in mind. Crumblers scythe them down.

BABUM.

Another flame tank, this one just trying to set fire to everything in its path. An orange beam bisects it, its interior fuel tanks being set alight a moment later by its own weapon.

BABUM.

Last one. Where is it?

"The party… Is over."

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Black Reign 21

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14th March 2011

04:56 GMT +2

A purple beam strikes me in my right side and I'm yanked through the air across the burning cityscape towards a still standing eight storey building. I manage to slow myself slightly but this is ugh, through the wall and aaagh!

The beam shuts off as a colossal metal something comes at me through the building's interior, striking my construct armour and throwing me out back the way I came! I hurtle out of control for a moment before righting myself just off the ground. Okay, what was-?

Something strikes me directly in the middle of the faceplate, and a second later I'm surrounded in a ball of plasma. Ring, generate a magnetic field to repulse it and fly away from the building.

Compliance.

The ball explodes off me as I leap into the air just in time to avoid a hail of automatic fire from inside the building. The shots are far heavier than anything that could really be infantry-carried and they're moving even faster than I normally fire my own railgun shots. A half-second later there's a smashing sound as the weapon redirects its aim to follow its glowing orange target. I set the ring to jink randomly and aim my particle beam at the bullets' point of origin. Ring, what am I figh-?

The purple beam strikes me again, dragging me forwards as the front of the building explodes outwards, spraying dust and lumps of concrete and stone outwards in my direction. A huge pincer lunges out of the cloud, its task of grabbing me made a good deal easier by the fact that I'm now stuck moving on a predictable path. As it clamps onto my construct armour and begins squeezing the ring finally manages to give me a decent return on its appearance.

It doesn't have the scry immunity that I've become accustomed to, it's just designed not to give much away when a sophisticated scanner starts looking for it. From its feet to the top of its head it's about eight metres tall, though the curve of its spine and the bulky armoured plates on its shoulders make it look taller still. It's also about six metres broad, with a pincer for a right hand, a circular saw for a left hand and gun turrets mounted on either shoulder. The tractor beam appears to come from its mouth, mounted on the lowest part of the beetle-like head. The whole chassis is a bronze colour with only the smallest tron line signature marking it as being of New God design. When the spikes are taken into account it puts me in mind of something from Robot Wars more than a serious weapon, but the files Mister Free gave me indicate that it's quite effective.

The Arakno-Mekkanoid leans its head slightly closer as the claw begins crumpling my construct armour. "Secondary target acquired. Termination in progress." The circular saw arm comes around, aimed at my head!

Three x-ionised blades come out of subspace and hew through the base of the pincer's outer claw. I fire a destructive beam directly at the Mekkanoid's face even as the metal drops off and I fall free, the saw blade slicing through the top of my construct armour and narrowly missing my helmet. I generate a construct-talon and grab the falling claw, interposing it between the two of us as its mouth glows and the purple tractor beam thing lances forth once more. For a fraction of a second the huge blade jumps towards the giant robot's head, then the beam cuts off.

Yes, that would have been a bit easy.

"Fear me, Lantern."

Yellow lights appear along its back and an instant later I feel the gnawing tension and uncertainty that indicate an empathic fear attack. If I were a Green Lantern that might be crippling. If I hadn't experienced enlightenment and had that encounter with the Terror Thing last week it would be damaging. As it is there's barely any drop off in construct strength. I dart to the side, careful to keep the claw between myself and its head as I thrust my right arm forwards.

"Die!"

It steps free of the rubble and turns, interposing its right armour plate as the orange beam strikes home. The beam leaves a ragged scar but that isn't anything like what an attack from a Lantern of my power level should do. Apokoliptians may not use power rings but they clearly understand the theoretical underpinnings of emotional spectrum manipulation. Fine then, freeze rays. The Mekkanoid turns again as my constructs change, the plasma mortar on its left shoulder opening fire at the same time as the autocannon on its right. I swoop, duck and dive around a hail of miniature suns as it brings its circular saw arm around to slash at the claw I'm using to fend off the tractor beam. Alright, x-ionised blades again-.

Devices around the plasma mortar light up, lasers -are those lasers?- burning beams of light through the air to intercept my knives, melting them to slag. Autocannon rounds slam into my construct armour as the blue beams from my freeze rays strike the Mekkanoid's legs. It's got a lot of mass, it's well insulated and its brain is most likely at the centre of the hull. These aren't going to be instant kill weapons as they would be against an organic. The glow from the fear generators cuts out and… Some sort of energised plasma field forms around its body. Not explosive and burning like what it's firing at me, but it's sort of forming a cushion to stop my freeze rays directly striking its armour.

There's the horrible sound of metal rending metal as its circular saw slices into the claw. It makes it about halfway through before jamming as the super hard metal exerts friction on the top and bottom of the blades. Right, highest priority is uuh. Bastard thing got a near miss with the plasma mortar. Ring, how are we doing for power?

Eighty seven percent remaining.

That's what I get for going all day without recharging. The Mekkanoid pulls with its left arm in an attempt to get the circular saw free. I generate a railgun construct and fire a solid slug at the tractor beam projector. It strikes home even as the laser point defence turrets target my railgun construct and fire, slicing through and shattering it. Alright, two can play at that game. I abandon my freeze ray construct and generate a laser turret construct instead, setting it to shoot any rounds from the plasma mortar before they can detonate. I then stop moving and reorientate myself, generating a large multi-layered barrier and a new railgun. The Mekkanoid's autocannon will chew through the outer layers of the barrier quickly enough, but I can just shove them forwards and add new layers to the back. It fires its plasma mortar again and yes, it does work as I thought it did. The shell gives off a nasty burst of radiation but fails to go critical if damaged. Good to know.

Just as the Mekkanoid works its saw blade free enough to start rotating it again I open fire at maximum speed and maximum power at its head with solid slugs of iron jacketed tungsten. Its armour's good, but to have a projector like that on the outside you have to make it at least a little vulnerable and a little is all I need. Even as it slashes my metal barrier in half and warms up the beam to drag me in once more it's shuddering under the power of the repeated impacts. I don't know exactly how the device is structured but from the way the purple light has gone out I'm going to assume that I've been successful.

Laser and autocannon fire is hammering my outer barrier but with the tractor beam out of commission this fight is looking a lot more manageable. I dart out from behind my barrier with my armoured fists glowing and fire another destructive bolt. With the robot's empathic shield deactivated this one has a great deal more effect, wrecking the circular saw and most of the arm bearing it. The Mekkanoid turns to try and bring its laser turrets to bear so I reorientate the railgun and pound them to scrap as well. Finally getting somewhere! Next I point the railgun at the autocannon and this time destroying it causes some sort of flashback to the magazine. Metal sprays outwards as the internal explosion blasts the shoulder apart from within and sends the back-mounted armour plate flying into the facia of a nearby building!

Great! Now I just need-.

Alert: energy build up detected.

Ah, can't see any way for it to fire-. Self destruct. How big..? No way to know. The immediate area around me has been evacuated… Or more likely the people there have already been killed, I suppose. South is the Red Sea, but a big enough explosion there could flood coastal settlements. North are some mountains and an empty desert, but making a huge explosion near the border with a decidedly nervous Israel sounds like a very bad plan. West and East are both out of the question and I'm not going to try and load it into subspace.

I try and stick a flight aura around it, but the yellow glow starts up again and I lose the connection. Does that mean I could freeze it? No, can't risk it. I use an x-ionised blade to finish cutting the claw in half, then x-ionise the sharper part and ram it into the Mekkanoid! The robot makes a sort of grunted wail as it goes in. I link construct chains to the parts of the claw still outside the chassis and lift, wrenching it off the ground and into the sky. Don't know how long I have, need to go faster.

BABUM.

Faster.

BABUM.

Fasterfasterfasterfaster

BABUM.

and throw! I take a few breaths as the Mekkanoid flies away at more than its escape velocity. Well. Okay, a quick ring-calculation shows that it would crash back down on Earth eventually, but-.

My view of the outside world darkens as the ring compensates for the sudden brightness. I watch and wait for a few moments, then dart forwards to grab the largest pieces before they can fall on anything. Right. Back to Shiruta.

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Black Reign 22

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14th March 2011

07:29 GMT +2

I sit on a large lump of what was once a wall, my hands massaging my temples. Well… Attack's over. The surviving military officers from the Shiruta garrison are taking charge of the clean… Of the clean up. The wounded are being treated in makeshift field hospitals, but there aren't actually that many casualties. It's a little like a Dalek attack: their weapons are so deadly when used against baseline Humans that there are hardly any survivors. You either flat out die or you're fine.

There's a soft thud just in front of me and I look up. Despite his power, the League felt it best that Captain Marvel remain behind. Partly because he should be able to deal with most situations which arise in the absence of the rest of the League's most powerful members and partly because he has school later today. "Captain. What can I do for you?" William isn't looking at me. He's staring to his right, at… Ah. "We haven't prioritised clearing the bodies away. I know it's not.. ideal…"

"Oh God. What..?" He shakes himself and turns back to me. "What happened here?"

"Not entirely sure, sir. A group of people -Humans, probably- attacked the city using Apokoliptian equipment and combat robots. Adom was in Al-Qawiya and normal military units can't effectively fight things like that. I got here at oh four fifty three local time and began killing the attackers. Unfortunately, they'd killed most of the Shiruta Council during their initial attack… After that… Well, we can analyse their exact movements later, but it looks like they just went on the rampage."

"Who..?" He looks as lost as I feel. "Who was it? Who would do something like this?"

"I don't know." My head goes down into my hands again. "We know Bialya has had dealings with Apokolips, but we've had them under satellite observation and I've set the ring to notify me of any boom tubes opening near Earth. We haven't seen or heard anything in that direction since last year. Those criminals Dreamer mentioned could have accessed the equipment… Maybe, I don't know. And if they've got a way to get around boom tube detection systems then they could have given it to just about anyone." I look up and glance around at the devastation that surrounds us. "Or just sent them here themselves."

William looks straight at me. "I wanna talk to your prisoners."

"Prisoners?" I shake my head. "There aren't any."

"You..? You killed all of them?"

"A lot, but no." I take a partially reconstructed set of aero-trooper armour out of subspace. "Once I killed their fliers and destroyed their heavy equipment, I attempted to take one or two of the others alive. Their armour contained a very thorough suicide system, which incorporated a G-Sanitizer. A G-Sanitizer is a rather nasty piece of short lived nanotechnology which -when properly utilised- completely breaks down organic matter. Including the subject's DNA. I've been trying to use what's left to identify them, but what I've got is nothing I'd want to make any definite conclusions with. I had the rings take a crack at the robots' central processing units… Same problem. Not enough left."

He nods. "Who's in charge here?"

I stand up, stretching a little more out of habit than any real need. Rings aren't quite exhausted yet. "Me, actually. Adom's not here, every high ranking politician's dead, along with the general who was in charge of the city's defence… We only found the radio jammer ten minutes ago. Lieutenant Colonel Negm is organising the recovery efforts but I think he's a bit shell shocked." My eyes unfocus for a moment as I have the ring give me an overview of the city. Things.. seem to be progressing… "Have they attacked anywhere else?"

William shakes his head. "No. Just here."

"I had wondered if this was a reprisal. But, if they've just come here…"

"It probably wasn't."

I nod. "Have we heard anything from the team that went to Apokolips yet?"

He shakes his head. "This doesn't mean that anything's happened to them."

"I know. I just thought they might be able to shed some light…" I shake my head. "Where's Adom?"

William winces. "Cairo."

Oh shit. "Doing what?"

"We're not sure. I wanted you to be there when I went to talk to him."

I bow my head slightly, squeezing my eyes shut. Even under optimal conditions… And that was with me working alongside him and with as much of the army as could be spared assisting, attacking Cairo was going to result in massive collateral damage. Of course, if he's there then it's already happened. There's no way this happened and he didn't retaliate. I nod. "Okay. No sense leaving it."

I attach a filament to William and transition us to the air over the Heliopolis Palace. An entire wing of the place has been demolished, and the ring scans show that the people within have been pulverised. He didn't fight them. He didn't slow down. Slowing down to fight them would have been inefficient. We did actually.. plan this… The reason that we didn't implement it was that just about everyone in the target area would be killed. Not just the people in control of the government, but their aides, staff and other civil servants. When he's going that fast… Ring, scan…

Yes. The minimum number of civilian casualties that could be achieved in an attack by him alone, as long as you exclude anyone remotely involved in government or military function from your assessment of 'civilian'. Fewer people than died in Shiruta…

William goes pale as we descend through the sky towards Adom's entry point. The Palace itself would have been the last place he struck. No hostages here after all. We head further into the building and I'm glad that the ring's environmental shield is filtering out the smell. In Shiruta we'd at least gotten around to covering up most of the bodies. Here, there's bits of person nearly everywhere I look.

Adom looks up from his seat as we enter the cabinet meeting room, the bodies of Kahndaq's late rulers laying in squishy pieces around him. His eyes move over our faces for a moment, then he returns to staring into the middle distance. "Orange Lantern. Captain Marvel. Is Shiruta secure?"

I go to land, then realise that there isn't really anywhere I can land without stepping on a piece of someone. "The attack's over, Mighty One."

"The attackers?"

"Dead. All of them."

"Where were they from?"

I hesitate, trying to ignore quite how much blood there is on his uniform. "I.. can't say with any certainty. They were using Apokoliptian equipment-."

"So, Bialya. It was just a trick." He exhales sharply. "That is disappointing."

"We don't.. know for certain-."

"CAN THERE BE ANY DOUBT?!" The muscles on his neck stand out as he glares directly at me. "Who else has motive?! My city, the city named for my wife, lies bleeding and broken…" He leaps into the air, level with William and I. "And now you will no doubt try to dissuade me from avenging Kahndaqi blood." He shakes his head. "No. No. This is more than I can bear. The sands of Bialya will turn RED for this!"

"Adom, even if it was Bialya-" William floats forwards, hands raised in a placatory gesture. "-and we don't know that for sure yet, that's not the right way to go about dealing with this! You said you wanted to lead Kahndaq to a better future and you won't be able to do that if you keep killing people!"

"You may be surprised what one may do and still be considered an upstanding statesman." He turns, looking out through the broken wall to the city beyond. "And where was the Justice League?"

"They're.. off world."

"How many of my people died in Shiruta today?"

"Um…" I shake my head. "We don't know yet. Every major politician who was there, and a lot more besides. We'll know more in a few hours."

"I should be back by then." He bows his head slightly. "This was not how I wanted to begin my reign."

"Adom, I can't let-." I turn, frantically shaking my head at William as Adom raises his eyebrows. The absolute last thing that needs to happen now is the two of them fighting. Whoever wins, Kahndaq would be in even more of a mess. He spots me, then hesitates as Adom turns to regard him. "I mean, you're angry. You're not thinking clearly. I understand why. This is an absolutely horrifying thing to have happened, but you just need-."

"I need nothing. And I will not be lectured by the Wizard's lackey, a man who has never-."

"Show him."

Adom turns to glare at me. "Show me what?"

"William. Show him."

He hesitates for a moment, then lands on the cleanest part of the floor. He bows his head for a moment and takes a deep breath. "Shazam!"

"Removing your powers will not-!" Adom boggles as the smoke clears. "You're… You're a-a child? The Wizard chose a.. c-child?"

"Hey." William smiles, though I imagine that without Achilles' courage he's finding our environment even more shocking. "I'm not a baby. I'm eleven."

Adom drops to the floor, flabbergasted. "My… My own s-." He looks William over, clearly not quite believing his eyes. "Why? Why did he choose you? You cannot have been a warrior or leader. What did you do to so earn his favour?"

"You're right. I'm not a warrior or a leader. He chose me because he thinks he can trust me to use the power properly. That I was a good enough person not to end up..." He looks around the room. "After the two of you fell out, after five thousand years, I was the first person he met he thought he could risk it on. And I'm telling you, you don't want to make this decision when you're angry."

Adom.. seems to shrink in on himself slightly. He stands completely still for several seconds. At long last, he nods. "I will.. be guided by you. I will wait. Orange Lantern, please convey me back to Shiruta. I must see to my people's needs."

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Black Reign 23

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16th March 2011

16:26 GMT

There's an explosion and a rush of displaced air as the boom tube appears in the Watchtower's main meeting room. I come to parade rest just behind William as the League members troop through. They look… Rested. There are a few bandages, but nothing looks particularly serious. I extend my ring-granted senses through the boom tube-. Ah. They're coming from what I presume to be Supertown, New Genesis. I can't think of any reason for Apokolips to have a place like that.

"Hey guys! How'd it go?"

William's managing to stay relatively upbeat. We… Adom and I full time, and Captain Marvel, Lieutenant Marvel and Mary Marvel whenever William Batson, Frederick Freeman and Mary Bromfield didn't have to be somewhere else. We've been clearing up the mess in Shiruta and Cairo. Back to bagging up bodies and returning them to their next of kin in my case. Islam requires that the dead be buried within a couple of days of their death and I think everyone should be able to meet that deadline.

Captain Adams looks our way and starts walking towards us, Mister Freeman and Mister Allen glance at us for a moment then head for the zeta tubes, while the Hols give us a nod before taking to the air and heading towards the Watchtower's residential section. Adams has assumed his Human form, and… Huh, I think this is the first time I've seen him like that and not wearing a military uniform. "The mission went about as well as could be expected, given the limited amount of forward planning we could do. We were able to recover all four of the prisoners and suffered no serious injuries ourselves. There were a few close calls, but nothing we couldn't handle."

"Were they okay?"

"As well as can be expected. Highfather said that he expected them to make a full recovery, eventually."

"Recognised, Flash, zero four." / "Recognised, Icon, one eight."

"And Infinity Man?"

Captain Adams shakes his head. "Desaad had torn it apart before we got there. Lucky for us. Hyalt -one of the New Genosian weapon techs- gave us a run down of what it could have done if they'd left it under their control and it didn't sound like anything I'd want to tangle with. Anything much happen while we were gone?"

"Recognised, Plastic Man, two three." / "Recognised, Martian Manhunter, zero seven."

"Ye-ah. We kinda need to talk to Wonder Woman about it."

"Is it urgent?"

William glances at me and I nod. "I'd like to inform her as soon as possible, but it doesn't require immediate League attention."

Adams nods. "She should be coming through in a minute. She wanted to talk to Barda about something." He turns his head to look towards the zeta tube as Batman and Mister Free come through. "You'll have to excuse me, I need to get back to Monthan. With that bastard Eiling in prison the brass are dumping a lot of extra work onto me."

"Recognised, Red Tornado, one six." / "Recognised, Accomplished Perfect Physician, two zero."

"Thank you, Captain."

"Recognised, Atom, two two."

He turns back with a small smile. "Actually, it's 'Major'. Since I got cleared of murder the new guy in overall command decided I was worth promoting."

"Congratulations!"

"I have been serving since the fifties." He turns away to head toward the zeta tubes himself. "Long overdue if you ask me."

Canis comes through the boom tube, Diana and Missus Free just behind him. The boom tube then shuts down. No Kal-El? Oh, he's a big boy, and Adams said no one was seriously injured on our side. Maybe he just wants to spend some time sightseeing? Major Adams waves them goodbye as he enters the zeta tube and types in his desired location.

"Recognised, Captain Atom, one two."

I make eye contact with Diana and she pauses in her conversation. "Excuse me, Barda." Missus Free nods and Diana walks in our direction. "Is something wrong?"

"Well…" William tries to work out how to put it. "On the positive side, the Kahndaqi civil war is over."

"Early Monday morning someone attacked Shiruta while Adom was at the peace conference in Bialya. They were using Apokoliptian weapons and indiscriminately attacked everyone and everything. I got there in time to prevent it being a total massacre, but a lot of people died."

William nods. "Adom went crazy and attacked Cairo on his own. The entire government's dead."

"Hera. I thought the negotiations..?"

"Someone didn't read the script. Captain Marvel was just about able to persuade him not to fly right to Al-Qawiya and avenge his country on their government, but there's a very angry superhuman running the country at the moment."

"Any word from Queen Bee?"

William nods. "She's saying it wasn't her. But she also says that Bialya hasn't ever had any contact with aliens and that their government is democratically elected."

"Adom wants to talk to you. I don't think he knows how to handle the situation and most of his Kahndaqi advisors didn't survive the attack. I've set up a zeta tube in Shiruta…"

She nods. "Of course. Please, accompany me." She turns away, striding towards the zeta tube. As we head after her I see Batman call up recent Kahndaq-related news articles on his personal computer.

"Recognised, Wonder Woman, zero three, Captain Marvel, one five, Orange Lantern, B zero six."

16th March 2011

18:29 GMT +2

The hotel what's left of the governing council now occupies looks considerably more hotel-y than the last place. I fabricated some portacabin-type buildings to serve as office space but with the clean up ongoing no one's really had time to organise things better.

"This way, sir." I take to the air, looking down on the site. Adom's office is over there and… Yes, he's in. I accelerate towards it, setting down just outside the door.

The guards on duty outside recognise me, and the one on the left knocks on the door. "Orange Lantern, Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman are here, Mighty One."

"Let them in."

The guard nods and pulls open the door for us. Adom's floating just off the floor while a man I recognise as the Bialyan ambassador to Kahndaq is seated before his desk. Adom hasn't quite adapted to desks yet and his secretary was amongst the dead.

Captain Marvel and I take up station on this side of the door while Diana approaches Adom. "You asked to see me?"

"Highness." Adom performs a shallow bow, which Diana mirrors. "Thank you for coming."

"I have only just heard what has happened. You and your country have my deepest condolences. How can I help?"

"This man-" He glowers at the Ambassador. "-wishes for me to meet with his Queen as soon as possible. Thanks to your Justice League, the world knows that Bialya has had dealings with the ones who attacked us. The United Nations is discussing further sanctions and some are even talking about military action. In an attempt to prevent this, I have been invited to her palace. She wishes to try to convince me in person of her innocence. But I do not trust her even slightly. I certainly would not trust her to speak truthfully to me on this matter. If she told me the sky were blue, I would check the sky. I am told that you can tell when someone is lying to you. Is this so?"

Diana nods. "It is."

"Then I would be grateful if you could accompany me. It is the only way this visit will not be a complete waste of time I can ill afford to spend away from my people."

"Of course, I can-."

"Mighty One." The ambassador shakes his head. "The Justice League are not permitted-."

Adom snarls. "You are in no place to make demands of me! You will tell your mistress that Princess Diana of Themyscira is coming, and you will tell her that if I detect even the slightest attempt at trickery then it will not take an invasion to remove her from power. No, I will kill the witch immediately myself."

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Black Reign 24

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17th March 2011

07:03 GMT -4

"…our special guest this morning, Orange Lantern."

"Good morning, Catherine. Thank you for having me on."

I've had quite a few requests to grant interviews in the months I've been on Earth 16. Usually I don't bother with them. I'm not a media personality. I have a serious job. And to be honest I don't like having to defend myself to people I don't know and can't see. But after everything that's happened in Kahndaq over the past few days I think a little effort on my part is warranted, and Catherine Grant is my 'known' journalist. Which is how I ended up on GBS breakfast the morning after Adom's.. meeting, with Queen Beena. This isn't the last one of these I'll be doing today but it is the first one. At times like this it's important to get your message out as quickly as possible.

Not that there's a coherent message coming from anywhere else.

"Now, we've got a lot of questions to ask about what's been happening in Kahndaq. Why don't you start by telling us how you first met-" Please get it right. "-Teth Adom."

I don't have a standard superhero 'costume', and none of my armour variants were really appropriate. I had to create this get up for interview purposes. It's a super light version of the armour Mister Gambi made for me. It has minimal protective qualities but it looks like armour, so I can wear it without feeling like one of.. my respected colleagues. It's still grey with orange decoration… It could be worse.

It could have a cape and external underwear.

"I first met Teth Adom in Louisiana, as part of the team sent in to deal with the Injustice League. I'd known for some time that there was no way either the wizard Shazam or the gods of ancient Kahndaq would have given super powers to someone like Doctor Theodore Adam-."

"That would be Black Adam, Captain Marvel's enemy."

"Yes, but I prefer to use his real name. It reduces the chance of anyone confusing two very different men. Essentially, what he'd done was trap Teth Adom's soul in an amulet and -while I don't understand the exact spell craft involved- that somehow made the gods think that he was Teth Adom. As such, they gave him the power he needed to be 'Black Adam'."

"Are you saying that Teth Adom was dead?"

She knows, of course. I handed the studio as much briefing material as didn't violate League security procedures so she could plan this properly.

"Yes, Adom had been dead for about five thousand years at that point. Without.. wanting to unnecessarily offend anyone, souls are real. Afterlives are real. And I.. do mean plural, there are quite a few. He isn't the only person I've met who can come back from the dead: Vandal Savage infamously can regenerate literally any injury-" Though we haven't heard anything from him since New Year. Here's hoping! "-and Ra's al Ghul -the former head of the League of Shadows- had access to an alchemical bath that could restore him in a similar way. I personally observed him recover from a high calibre shot to the head that pulverised most of his brain without any apparent side effect."

"That.. sounds amazing."

I nod, and give the camera a rueful smile. "In my line of work you can become a little blasé about amazing things. Unfortunately, we have no idea how either of those abilities actually work."

"So Doctor Adam summoned back Teth Adom's soul from the ancient Kahndaqi afterlife-" Close enough. "-to steal his power. Why did he go on a rampage with it?"

"Because he's a-." I hesitate. "Because he was a deeply unpleasant person. I never met him before his transformation, but afterwards the only thing he was really interested in was fighting superheroes for fun. And the best way to attract superheroes is to go on a super powered rampage." I turn back to the camera. "Don't try that at home, kids. We may not like beating people unconscious and sending them to prison for the rest of their natural lives but we've got quite good at it now."

"If Teth Adom was dead, then how is he back?"

"The ritual Doctor Adam used to call his soul back essentially converted him to the ancient Kahndaqi religion. And it turns out that their gods don't necessarily wait until you're dead to judge you. Once they became aware of the situation, they dragged Doctor Adam off for punishment and gave Teth Adom his former body."

"How well did he cope with that?"

"In the same way that Captain Marvel is guided by the Wisdom of Solomon, Teth Adom is guided by the Wisdom of Zehuti. Adapting was difficult -he didn't even speak any modern languages- but between myself and Wonder Woman we were able to bring him up to speed."

"When did he start going back to Kahndaq?"

"Shortly after the Roanoke Island incident. The.. former Kahndaqi government attempted to violently stop the protests which sprang up in its wake, and he intervened to prevent them from doing so. From that point on, groups that hated the government were increasingly able to ignore it without having to worry about being shot or bombed by the Kahndaqi military. The actual fighting didn't start until the majority of the country had already decoupled itself from Cairo."

"He was taking over the country."

"Sort of. He was in favour of the government being changed, but he wasn't forcing people to follow him. It's very hard to control an entire country using super powers, even if your powers lend themselves to that. And his don't. But even though he would quite like to run the country, he doesn't have to force himself on them. If there was a presidential election in Kahndaq tomorrow, he'd win a larger majority than any American president for the last two hundred years."

"What happened this weekend?"

"The war was effectively over. The government only held Cairo, and they were dependent on Teth Adom's side for food. Their representatives and Teth Adom himself were in Al-Qawiya in Bialya for a peace conference, basically trying to persuade the heads of the government to go into exile. Then… Someone -we're still not sure who- attacked Shiruta using advanced alien weaponry and combat robots, killing everyone they could see. The total death toll was about two thousand, mostly civilian and including a lot of the people who would have been part of the new government after the civil war ended."

"Do you or the Justice League have any idea who it was?"

"The weapons were almost certainly from a planet called Apokolips. We knew that Bialya had had dealings with them before, but we couldn't specifically prove that they were responsible for this attack."

"How did they get to Shiruta?"

"Mister Miracle and I went over the city with a fine-tooth comb. We think they used a form of spatial portal called a hush tube, but unfortunately we can't tell where it came from. They just don't leave enough of a trace. We built a detection system so that hopefully whoever it was won't be able to try it again, but we don't currently have any way to stop it." I also left quite a lot of my advanced equipment with the local garrison just in case.

"How did Teth Adom react to that?"

"He was furious. He immediately blamed the government and headed to Cairo, where he single-handedly killed every member of it he could find, as well as a substantial number of military personnel. I think at this point everyone who wants to has seen the pictures that were taken in the aftermath. And for everyone who wants superheroes to take a more active role in international events? That is what it would look like if we did. It's not clean and it's not pretty and that's why most of us don't do it."

"What happened next?"

"He knew as well as I did that Bialyan involvement seemed likely. Queen Beena denied everything and asked for a meeting. Both myself and Wonder Woman accompanied him to her palace in Al-Qawiya, me because I was the one who defended Shiruta during the attack and Wonder Woman because one of her many abilities is the ability to tell when someone is lying to her."

"You were there when it happened?"

I nod. "Yes. Queen Beena had a podium set up. I think she was expecting to do the normal press conference thing before the meeting. Adom decided to start the actual meat of the discussion there instead. He shared a number of details about Bialya's actions that hadn't been made public…" I'm not quite sure how to finish this bit. "He'd been declaiming solidly for about three minutes when he suddenly stopped. Queen Beena's metahuman ability is to release a specialised pheromone which made most men and some women extremely suggestible. I checked afterwards and she was definitely using it at the time. The Courage of Montu makes Teth Adom highly resistant to that sort of thing, something that I don't think she knew. He shouted -and again I'm sure you've already seen the footage- 'Treacherous witch!'."

"And then he tore her in half."

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NEXT CHAPTER

Carpe Tempus

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Carpe Tempus 1

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Carpe Tempus

18th March

09:26 GMT -7

"Whoooooooohoooooooww!"

Niko shoots past the rooftop with a look of pure and unbridled joy on her face. She isn't a great flier, not yet. This is the first time since the procedure that she's been able to get properly airborne and I'm still half-poised to leap into the air and grab her myself if it looks like she's starting to flag. Plus, I think the lack of a left arm is throwing off her flight profile. More drag on one side.

"Ahh…" Cranius has Otto turn so that he can follow her. He isn't capable of sighing exactly, his respiratory system just doesn't allow him to store enough air for that sort of exhalation. But he is willing to make an effort for my benefit. "It is a wondrous sight, to see her in zhe air like zhis." Otto turns him back towards me as Niko climbs higher into the air. "I zhank you, Grayven. From zhe deepest part of my spirit. Without your knowledge of xenophysiology unt zhis…" Otto holds up the remains of my Nth metal sample. "Remarkable material, such a zhing would never heff been possible."

I wave my right hand dismissively. "Come now Doctor, don't sell yourself short. Without your mastery of metahuman physiology all I could have done is give her an autoimmune disease. Human bodies just aren't designed to make use of Nth metal like that."

"Collaboration. Hm. It is not a zhing which I am used to, but between yourself and my brozher… I zhink I could grow accustomed to it."

Niko dives directly for the rooftop before flipping over a mere five metres up and flapping downwards, the Nth metal swiftly nullifying her downward momentum. "This is amazing!"

"I'm impressed how quickly you've picked it up."

"I'm an Un-Man." She makes an uneven flap, then draws her wings around her as she twists in a spiral.

…

For a moment I'm rendered insensible by the beauty of the sight. She notices as she comes out of the spiral, granting me a more personal smile as she hovers once more. "I wasn't born to do this. I was reborn to do it."

Cranius smiles. "Well said, my dear. Do you.. feel tired? I would not want you to overstress yourself."

She immediately shakes her head. "I feel like I could do this all day." She thinks for a moment. "Maybe another half hour?"

Otto spreads his arms. "Even if zhis were not a validation of everyzhing I heff worked for, I could not deny it to you."

One mighty downward flap and she's gone again, this time heading out over Aberrance. Cranius and I watch her go. Ah, well that's the unquestionably nice part of the visit taken care of. Now… Business.

"How.. is the… Project work going?"

"Eh. We were.. able to conclude our business with zhe Gotham police unt zhe Justice League… Wizhout too badly upsetting our partners in zhe Department of Energy. I am not heppy with how zhings turned out… After zhe.. excitement, zhe network decided to delay… Well. In effect, to cancel. Buuut, such is fate, I suppose. We will recover."

"Made any progress in understanding Arcane's writing?"

"Yes… Somewhat. I believe zhat before zhe year is over I may heff regained zhe ability to uncreate. Unt.. wizh my brozher, several fascinating new avenues of possibility heff opened zhemselves."

"Doctor… You understand, my admiration for the pioneering work you do here is undimmed…"

"But you wish to make some criticism?" He swivels slightly on Otto's shoulders. "Grayven, you are family. Please, if you believe zhat zhere is some way in which our working here could be improved upon, you heff but to speak." His neck pulses. "I will not promise zhat I will agree, but I will listen."

"Thank you. I suppose… As I understand it, your current plan is to go for.. high impact modifications. You want to show… Want people to realise exactly how malleable the Human body is. To get the idea out there into the world that this is something which can happen. In a controlled way. The fact that you can do these things is something of which you are rightly proud. But -and this is my concern- the people who are interested in undergoing this sort of modification are.. a minority. A very small one. And will probably remain so for the foreseeable future."

Cranius is looking thoughtful, but he doesn't speak as I pause.

"Now, if you get a new television deal… Then, twenty, thirty years on… You may start to see wider acceptance. Maybe. Do you know how long you're going to live, Doctor?"

"It is impossible for me to say." His eyes narrow slightly. "You heff some ozher approach you wish to suggest?"

"I think… Look, the Human brain is rigged to see healthy Human bodies as beautiful. I know you don't, and I realise that there's no objective reason to consider the product of evolution as more beautiful than the product of a laboratory, but these are the preconceptions… Hard wired preconceptions we're working against." I pause again. "What do you know about multidrug resistant microbes?"

"I am not a medical doctor, but I read zhe trade magazines. Dependency on antibiotics is slowly but surely breeding a generation of bacteria who no longer have need to fear zhem."

"Only one major pharmaceutical company is even bothering to continue researching new types of antibiotics. The future appears to belong to bacteriophages, viruses which-."

"I know what a bacteriophage is, Grayven. Amusing as zhe idea is, I do not zhink zhat I could create an 'Un-Virus'."

"Right. But could you create an implantable organ that monitored the user's blood and could perform an intelligent filtering operation? Targeting elements that should not be there."

"Perhaps… Yes, I zhink zo." He frowns, deep in thought. "Some sort of addition to zhe endocrine system..? I may even be able to modify zhe pancreas zo zhat-." His eyes widen. "You feel zhat people would be more open to zhe idea of a subtle modification. It benefits zhem, it does not challenge zhem…"

"And it gets your technology out there. Once they've accepted the wedge's thin end, you would have an opening in which you could discuss.. other things. And by that stage-."

"Zhey would already be Un-Men." He hesitates. "I… Intellectually, I understand where you are coming from, but… I do not like it, Grayven. My work here… I pride myself on releasing people's true inner selves. What you are asking, it does not do zhat. It is… Ugk, pandering. To zhe norms of zhe Human flesh."

I shrug expansively. "You work with what you have. You're trying to convince Humans to do something highly counterintuitive. I really think.. a little pandering could help immensely. And hey, once you've got the basics of the organ design down you can hand it off to your subordinates anyway. It's not as if you'll need to install every single one personally." He doesn't look happy. "Consider it this way: the original method you were using was attracting freak show enthusiasts. This? This would attract-" I point at the buildings being occupied by pharmaceutical concerns. "-serious medical researchers and practitioners. If you pull it off, you steal a march on all of those companies who restrict themselves to tinkering chemically with Human bodies. Would you rather feature in National Enquirer… Or New Scientist?"

"Ah, zhe ego. My one weakness. Heh."

"Well? Do you think the idea has legs? Or-" I look around. "-ambulatory tentacles, at least?"

"I… I heard what you heff said in zhe spirit in which it is intended. Haaaaaaaa. I… Do not know. I see zhe reason, but all zhe time I heff in my head zhe idea zhat zhis is not what I am meant to be doing."

He looks away, trying to catch sight of Niko again. Trying to see the physical validation of his preferred form of work. No, she's moved behind one of the buildings.

"I.. will need to discuss zhe matter, with Janus unt with Crassus. Investigate how practical it is, howww.. much of my research can cross over between zhe two streams. From what has been said of our cash flow… I imagine zhat Janus will be in favor of somezhing swiftly marketable. Zhe Atlantean techniques for zhe growing of limbs, perhaps."

"I realise that this is a wretch, but I really think that getting a unique and valuable product out there will spread the Uncorporation name better than another set of Third Generation Un-Men."

"Yes. You are most likely right. But zhis thought does not fill me with happiness."

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Carpe Tempus 2

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18th March

14:23 GMT -6

Colorado rocky mountain hi-igh!

If the giant grey man standing in the middle of their city park didn't attract the attention of the residents of Denver, the burst of golden light certainly should. Despite what John Denver led me to believe the city which shares his name isn't particularly wild or mountainous. I feel a bit cheated, actually. My smile falters only slightly as two people emerge from the glowing triquetra, rather than the one I was expecting.

"Good afternoon, Zatanna. Orana. Don't.. remember inviting you..?"

"I'm here as her bodyguard."

Zatanna ducks my interrogative eyebrow. Kaaay..? "Is that really necessary?"

"When you aligned yourself with Princess Diana's enemies, it became necessary."

"Oh, come on! You? You're getting pissy at me for killing Klarion? The mass murdering god of chaos?"

"I do not precisely understand why she has taken such exception to that. But she is my princess, and you have greatly disappointed her. No longer will those you have Awakened be permitted to visit you alone or left unsupervised with you."

"Ah." I nod. "Antigone." Should have expected something along these lines, I suppose.

Her eyes narrow slightly. "Your meaning?"

"Are you familiar with the play? Antigone seeks to perform death rites for her deceased brother, contrary to the commandments of her king. He seeks to fulfil his role as bringer of order to the polis by condemning a traitor while she attempts to fulfil her familial duty. Similarly, I have performed a righteous deed but done so in such a way as to insult and alienate the community." I think for a moment. "Only, because we're basically rational people instead of characters in a farcical tragedy we limit ourselves to shouting at each other instead of killing ourselves. I prefer the reality."

"Poetic."

"What exactly does Diana-" Her eyes narrow. "-think-?"

"You will address her by her title."

I pause, taking a breath. I doubt that Diana told her to say that. "What exactly does Wonder Woman think I'm going to do? Zatanna's my friend. They're all my friends. And -even if you're ignoring that- I need their help to understand how the Awakening works on Humans. Harming her gains me nothing. And if I intended to abduct her-" Zatanna raises her eyebrows. "-which I don't, I wouldn't suggest meeting me in a public place. Heck, you wouldn't hear from me at all."

Zatanna raises her eyebrows. "Glad to know you've thought it through."

"It's just obvious." I turn back to Orana. "And you're still carrying the sword I made for you, as well as wearing the armour I made for you. That's far easier to sabotage if.. I.. was.. inclined…" Yeah, I'm just going to stop there. "How did the essay go down?"

"It went… Well, actually." Something appears to be bothering her. "How do you know when someone's turned you evil?"

Um. "I suppose it would depend on what moral system you were using." I turn aside and gesture at the path with my ring hand. "Shall we?"

Zatanna nods, and starts walking with me in the direction I indicated. Orana keeps pace, but stays a little behind us so that she can keep me in full view, right hand hovering over the sword I made for her. I could make a sarcastic comment about women walking behind their menfolk, but… No. Now is the time for subverting expectations. Being reasonable, being nice.

"I don't really believe in 'evil' myself. My own moral system is essentially utilitarian, so… I suppose if I started acting wantonly in defiance of the general good I would consider myself.. bad..? Though if I were inclined to do that I doubt I would care. Why do you ask?"

"You've helped our… The whole team. Then you blew up at the Justice League. I'm.. sort of waiting for your recruitment pitch."

I look at her incredulously. "What, recruiting you for Team Evil?"

She shakes her head. "I'm… I never thought killing someone was the right thing to do. I understand.. sometimes, there's no other way. But… I think you were right. And I can't… I don't know why I think that. I.. don't think I should."

Hm. "Zatanna, I don't practise your religion. The Source exists, but saying that's like saying gravity exists. I'm not convinced the thing's even purposive. I can't answer for the failings of a being you want to believe is omnipotent. My opinion is that you're maturing mentally, moving away from deontological ethics, believing things you've been told that you should believe, on to something you're reasoning out for yourself. Something that matches your experience of the world. In terms of everything you value you know Klarion deserved to die. You've just got this nonsense 'parent knows best' stuff stuck in your head, and until it's fully gone you're going to feel a little off."

"So you're not trying to turn me to the Dark Side?"

"If I was going to do that…" I look up into the sky for a moment. "I wouldn't have told you how old I was,-" She blushes slightly. "-and I either wouldn't have killed Klarion or I'd have done it quietly. I wouldn't gain anything by revealing myself." I lean a little closer. "Of course, if you want to join Team Evil..?"

She chuckles and shakes her head. "I.. don't think so."

"Because if you do, I can probably lay my hands on the regulation leather and chain mail brassiere at-" Her eyes widen and her cheeks colour. "-fairly short notice."

"No. No. No." She exhales sharply and gives her head a small shake. "Why exactly are we in Colorado? Do you.. live here now?"

"No, I've been living on Ceres for the past few days. Just as a temporary thing." I continue walking down the path along the bank of Denver City Park's Ferril Lake. "I plan on moving into more permanent accommodation later today. It'll be a bit of a fixer-upper, but I need the practice fabricating things with my yellow ring."

I really do. Turns out that working on inanimate objects with a yellow ring is much harder than building with orange.

"So… Um… You.. work for Sinestro now."

I raise my eyebrows. "Of course I don't work for Sinestro. That would be insane."

"Green Lantern seemed to be pretty sure-."

"You know power rings can have different voices. The orange one sounds kind of like the cyborg from Tiberian Sun, Guy's sounds like Mister Rogers…"

"You.. set your ring to sound like Sinestro?"

"No."

"Then-?"

"That's the default setting." She looks at me cautiously, trying to work out how serious I'm being. "Look, when I went to Earth Fifty, I didn't have any of my usual equipment with me other than Father Box, right? They killed their version of Sinestro years ago, and his ring was being kept in a secure warehouse. Given that I desperately needed it to save their planet, I helped myself."

She looks a little relieved. "You're not working with Sinestro."

"Sort of. The ring's got a copy of Sinestro's memories and the AI appears to have been patterned after his mind. Exactly how much of Sinestro's actually in there I can't tell, but he never met this universe's Sinestro."

She exhales in frustration. "If you're not working for Sinestro why did you let Green Lantern think you were?!"

I grin. "Did you see his face!?"

"Grayven!"

"Oh, come on! That was funny!"

"That was not funny!"

She's smiling, though. I turn away, checking the road for traffic. Yep, quite a bit. A moment's concentration on that horrible moment as the car tries to screech to a halt and you can't get out of the way and I'm able to generate a glowing yellow bridge over it. "How come your father's letting you out like this?"

She hesitates for a moment before getting on the bridge, testing the first step with her right foot before following me on. "He was pretty unhappy. Then, he put Nabu on and Nabu told him about everything Klarion had done before you killed him. Now… I think he agrees, that it was the right thing to do. But why do you always have to antagonise people like this?"

"I provoke people in order to force them to recognise their own contradictions. None of the League wanted Klarion alive. Including Diana. They just wanted to sugarcoat it, or hide it away. No. I will not indulge them. I will show people what our work really involves and I will look to them to make an intelligent decision, rather than palming it off onto their gods."

"Gods?"

"Heroes… Whatever." "Yep."

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Carpe Tempus 3

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18th March

14:27 GMT -6

Beneath us, traffic slows as people stare at my construct. Sinestro, monitor and let me know if anyone's about to crash.

If I must, Corpsman.

"Why the Light?"

"Fair question. The Light… Have identified a real problem, but are trying to address it in supervillain ways. But, with Klarion dead… I think… I think I might be able to persuade them to alter the way they work a little. I mean, within limits, they're certainly not going to become 'nice guys'. You know, retarget their energies a bit."

"You.. do remember that time they mind controlled the entire Justice League?"

"Yes, and what did they get out of it? Earned themselves a place on China's shit list as well as ours. I'm.. going to try and make them see that."

She looks away from me, taking in our environment as we step off the bridge. I'm tempted to make it start evaporating from the back so that Orana has to hurry… No. "Are we going somewhere for my check-up?"

I shake my head. "You don't need a check-up. You're fine. The magic is integrating perfectly into your expanded metaphysique, and according to Father Box it's going to keep doing that."

"So, why did you want to see-" She glances back at Orana. "-us?"

"Conversation isn't reason enough?" I smile winsomely at her. She's not buying it. "While I was on Earth Fifty, I met your alter ego. She was able to speed up the rate at which I heal by dumping raw magic into me. It occurred to me that if we had a device that could do that… Some sort of mana siphon or infuser… Then I and everyone else who's gone through the Awakening could power themselves up faster. I want to commission you to design and build it. Obviously I'll pay you for your work-."

"Hey, whow." She shakes her head. "That's.. way outside what I know how to do."

"Zatanna, you're the New Goddess of Magic. This is your domain. This is what you're for. Unless you'd rather get a weekend job… Delivering papers.. or.. pouring coffee? I've culled a few ideas from some Atlantean books, but it isn't my area…"

"I'll.. think about it." She looks around again. "Where exactly are you taking us?"

"I'm taking you to meet my new landlady. She lives in a nearby old people's home, just around-. Ah! There we are." Zatanna falls behind a little as I push open the doors and head on past the front desk towards the assisted living wing.

The receptionist looks up in shock, but gets himself together after a few moments. "Excuse me? Who are you?"

I stop dead and stare at him incredulously. "Seriously? I'm huge and grey, who am I going to pretend to be?"

"Ah, right. I mean, are you here to see someone?"

"Yes."

"I don't remember you visiting before. Are you family?"

"No, just nosy." I start towards the door again.

"W-! You can't just go barging in on people!"

I chuckle. "I would be fascinated to see how you intend to enforce that." I push the door open and stride through. Now, whereabouts-. Yes, there it is. The door bangs again as Zatanna runs through after me. She draws breath to speak, so I decide to pre-empt her. "Do you know what's very scary?"

She looks around for a moment. "Getting old? Dying?"

"Bit boring. I was thinking about Alzheimer's Disease. Consider: in the early stages, you're compos mentis enough to know what's happening. You forget a thing, and you know you've forgotten something, but it's just not there. A thing that was in your head for so long… How to dress yourself. Where a room in your house is. As it progresses, everyday objects and people.. become strange and unfamiliar. People you've known for years… Your own children. You can't recognise them anymore. And then.. you get brief moments, where your memories and thoughts line up for once and you're briefly yourself again. And you know it's going to go, that in a few moments all the 'you' is just going to dribble out your ears… That must be absolutely terrifying."

"Yes, it's a horrible disease. But what does that have to do-?"

I shove open a door and glower at the frail old woman sitting in a comfy chair in the corner. "Hey June! We've never met! I'm big and scary! Rarr!"

The seventy four year old Doctor June Robbins quails at my appearance. Excellent! I've learned that one of the great things about a yellow power ring is that I can use it to heal people I don't give a monkey's about. No personal investment required. Just fear. And as a woman who these days is afraid of just about everything even slightly out of the ordinary because her failing brain just can't cope with it any longer, Dr Robbins is giving me exactly what I need.

I stick out my right hand, a yellow beam linking my ring to the cranium of the last surviving Challenger of the Unknown. And therefore, owner of the Challenger Mountain facility. There are a lot fewer secret mountain bases around than you'd think, and after living in Mount Justice anything else would feel like a downgrade. I monitor the ring's progress as it uses her fear of everything to repair her surviving neurons, add in new ones to the degraded areas of her brain and tinker a little with her DNA to make sure this can't happen again. Oh, and to give her a general health boost as well, the years during which she's been here haven't been kind to her formerly athletic frame. She won't get her whole mind back; I can't recreate memories that are just gone. But she will get her self back.

I continue walking across the room as her fear starts to drop off and her eyes focus as her alertness increases. Brain… Yes, that looks done to me. I shut off the beam and kneel down in front of her as behind me Zatanna lowers her hand slightly where she had a golden triquetra ready to blast me. And Orana lowers her sword slightly, which is nice of her. Doctor Robbins' eyes unfocus for a moment and she blinks, probably trying to get her reconstructed brain back into working order.

"Hello there. My name's Grayven. Back with us?"

"Yes. I… Am."

"Glad to hear it. Do you know where you are?"

She looks around. "A home for old people. How long..?"

"You've been here about eight years, too doolally to look after yourself at all for about five of them."

"Grayven!"

I look back at Zatanna. "You don't join the Challengers of the Unknown because you want life sugar-coated for you."

"And I doubt you fixed my brain out of the goodness of your heart."

I grin, my attention focused on her. "Sophoncy to suspicion in ten seconds. You should give classes!"

"I outlived my closest friends that way. I'm not sure it was a total positive, but it got to be a habit."

"I fixed your brain because I want to rent your mountain. Fix it up, use it as a base. And a home."

"Wouldn't it have been easier to finish me off and buy it from the estate?"

"Probably. But then I'd lose the pleasure of your company. And the chance to study the most interesting thing about you of all."

"My glamor model looks?"

"Your immunity to destiny."

She looks at me for a moment. "Okay, sure. But you have to run everything by me and I'm going to be living on site. I think I had to sell my home to afford a place here."

"You did. But it's no problem."

"And…" She looks down at her shapeless, easy-to-clean apparel. "Get me some clothes. I look like an old person."

"You are an old person."

"That's no excuse." She waves at her wardrobe. "Go on."

I raise my ring again. Still plenty of fear left over from her narrow escape. The yellow beam hits her in the chest, taking the clothing I prepared out of subspace. Pale grey cargo trousers, dark grey work boots, white vest and a vaguely Star Trek looking jacket in purple with grey trim and with the Challengers' hourglass insignia in place of the rank pips at the neck. "Any good?"

"Mm." She looks it over, then shuffles to the edge of her chair and cautiously pushes herself upright. "I think I can make it work."

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Carpe Tempus 4

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18th March

16:41 GMT -4

"His Excellency will see you now."

I nod at the secretary- "Thank you." -as I get to my feet. I managed to arrange this meeting a while ago, but in light of what's been happening in Kahndaq I rather imagine that things are going to get somewhat hijacked. I don't have any real contacts in the Russian government, but I have spoken briefly to Mr Churkin at a couple of diplomatic functions. As good a place to start as any, I suppose.

I follow the secretary a short way down the corridor, then into an outer office. As one might expect from the sixth richest country in the world, it's pretty plush. The secretary holds out a hand to stop me as he approaches the door to the Ambassador's office, before walking up to the door, knocking politely and opening it slightly. "Orange Lantern to see you, your Excellency."

"Yes, yes. Show him in."

The secretary pushes the door the whole way open and steps into the room, holding it open for me. Best foot forwards… The ambassador rises to his feet as I enter the room. "Orange Lantern, good to see you." He holds his right hand out over his impressively robust looking desk. I walk over to the near side and reach out to shake hands, noticing that his eyes dip momentarily to the glowing ring on my right ring finger. "Please, take a seat."

"Thank you, your Excellency." I lower myself into the visitor seat as he sits back down.

"The Russian Federation wishes to extend its condolences to the people of Kahndaq, regarding the Shiruta Massacre. Have you been able to find anything else out about where they came from?"

"I'm afraid not." I shake my head. "Has my initial report been forwarded to you yet?" He gestures to a folder on his desk with his right hand. "The biological self destruct system left next to nothing for me to analyse. There's.. some hair that might have come from one of the attackers, but at that level of detail it might just as well have come from a tourist. The hush tubes could have come from anywhere in the galaxy."

He nods. "That is unfortunate. Were you able to recover examples of their technology?"

"Yes. Critical systems self destructed, but we were able to collect up some armour fragments."

"I am aware that the Justice League likes to use American companies for technological analysis, but we do have our own laboratories. If there is enough to go around..?"

"The Kahndaqi government is keeping possession for now, pending guidance from the Security Council on the status of Teth Adom's government. Frankly, Adom's been too busy trying to get the country organised to take any further action in that regard."

"How is that going?"

"Slowly. The attack killed most people who were in a position to join the national government, and Adom's own attack on Cairo killed people.. he'd been planning to pardon in exchange for staying in their jobs. The de facto situation is that virtually all power has been devolved to the governorates while Adom himself speaks for the country as a whole. We're hoping that they'll be able to get something a bit more stable in place in the next couple of weeks."

He nods. "I wish you luck, but the Russian government will wait for that before making any strong statements either in favour or against. I doubt that we're the only nation concerned about a superhuman taking over-" My mouth starts to open. "-though we are aware of the level of self restraint Teth Adom had been exercising prior to last week's events. We would only be seriously concerned if he continued to prosecute aggressive wars against his neighbours."

"He has no further plans to attack anyone."

"It is not his plans that worry me. In your interviews you've been at pains to state that you don't know for certain whether or not Queen Bee was responsible. With no clear trail of evidence Teth Adom killed over two hundred people, one of them a head of state. That doesn't speak well for regional stability."

"Whether she was behind the attack or not, she was trying to affect his mind." I shake my head. "As long as no one else invades his country or tries mind controlling him, I really don't think he's going to pick a fight with anyone."

He nods. "And what of whoever it is directing Apokoliptian soldiers and combat robots?"

"The Justice League is working on a way to detect hush tubes, at least approximately. I think Batman also plans to request additional funding to expand the zeta tube network so that they can respond more quickly in the event of a future attack."

"I understand that you provided the Kahndaqi military with weapons from the Justice League's arsenal. I haven't been briefed on that policy. Could you.. enlighten me?"

"Not.. really. I'm not a member of the Justice League. I believe that the League's policy is that they don't provide governments with weapons, but the weapons I provided were my personal property. I lent them out to assist in fighting against an alien attack. I know where they all are and I'll be taking them back once things have calmed down. For reasons I'm sure you can understand, I'm reluctant to upgrade the weaponry of national militaries, though I have given weapons to some police forces in areas with high metahuman crime rates. Obviously, if alien incursions become a regular occurrence I may have to reconsider that."

"Is there some reassurance the Russian Federation could give you about their use in order to persuade you to change your mind?"

"Certainly. If you can push the formation of a unified planetary defence force through the Security Council, I will be happy to provide them with whatever weapons they want."

He chuckles. "I.. don't think that will be possible."

I smile ruefully. "No, I didn't think it would be."

He pauses for a moment, then pulls a new dossier across the desk. "Now, on to your request to move your 'Ice Fortress' down through the Bering Strait. I will be clear, the Russian government doesn't think that you are planning to use it for intelligence gathering. Aside from anything else, if you wanted to observe our country there's no reason why you couldn't just do what the Americans do and monitor us from orbit."

"Thank you."

"Unfortunately, the answer is still no." I give him a look of mystification. "I'm afraid that the authority to authorise this rests with the Director of Defence Research and he is a very suspicious man."

The chap I spoke to for a few minutes when the League got mind controlled. Not exactly chummy. "Couldn't your President overrule him?"

"Yes, but that would be tantamount to asking for his resignation, and that isn't something he's prepared to do."

"Okay. Is there some way I could persuade him or am I going to have to fly it over Canada?"

"There is a matter he thinks you could assist with. When the Justice League's charter was submitted for Security Council approval, the Russian Federation voted in favour despite most of the members being American." He shrugs. "Better to have some control than none. We rather assumed that it would continue to be an American organisation. Then we found out that a member of the Great Ten had joined."

I can see where this is going. "Accomplished Perfect Physician is only a member of the Great Ten on paper."

"Nonetheless, China has one of their metahumans in the Justice League now. And I understand that you were instrumental in making that happen."

"I… Assembled some information on candidates that.. might have otherwise gone unnoticed."

"The Russian Federation would.. appreciate it, if you could bring one or two of our people to the League's attention in a similar way." He watches my face for a moment. "Now, we're not going to try and force them to take Steel Wolf or Proletariat or anyone like that. We're only going to suggest people we feel could adapt to the League's way of working."

Ahh… I suppose there's no harm in looking. "League membership isn't in my gift. But, if a candidate has the ability, I don't mind taking a look at them and -possibly- giving them my recommendation."

He smiles. "I'm glad to hear it. Here-" He picks up a ring binder and holds it out to me. "-is the full service history of Sergeant Dmitri Pushkin, as well as the technical specifications of the armour he would be using. I am confident that you will find him satisfactory."

He stands, which I assume is my signal to leave. I get up and take hold of the binder. "Thank you, your Excellency. I'll let you know when I've finished reviewing it."

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Carpe Tempus 5

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Siberian Special Defence Area

19th March

06:29 GMT +12

Sergeant Pushkin stood to attention outside the Director's office, trying to keep himself from sweating too much. Not something that was usually a problem in this part of Siberia, but when the person who'd been in charge of Russia's special projects for as long as anyone could remember asked to speak to you -and with no prior warning- you'd have to be some kind of robot not to be a little nervous. Dmitri honestly didn't think that he'd ever even heard the Director speak before. A few times he thought he'd seen him watching the tests when his unit flew around in the force armour suits, but that was about the closest he'd ever got. Even then, the way the man just stood there in a jacket and scarf while the suit's systems struggled to cope with the freezing cold and the snow had been more than a little disturbing.

Of course, there were rumours about that. Ever since he'd heard that the Director's hulking bodyguard wasn't just some sort of natural giant, but was actually the Great Patriotic War hero Steel Wolf himself, he couldn't help but start to wonder whether or not the Director was entirely Human either. And exactly how many of the other men on the base were secretly Red Shadows-. No, hang on, they were supposed to be called something else now, weren't they? The post-Communist rebranding had tried to change a lot of things but he'd grown up hearing of the great deeds of the People's Heroes and most of it hadn't really stuck in his head.

Anyway. He'd been a soldier of Mother Russia for nearly twenty years now, and in a country busy rediscovering Orthodox Christianity he'd remained stubbornly atheist. He liked to think he was a practical man. Superstition… Worrying about things outside your control? Why give yourself ulcers? And even if he had done something to irritate the Director -and he didn't think he had- what was the worst that could happen? He was already in Siberia. Where would they send him for punishment? Detroit? No. It would be a wrench getting thrown off the program after all this time, but he wouldn't exactly tear up if he was sent back to Khabarovsk. Might get a chance to see more of Belina and the children that way.

"Sergeant. You are prompt." Dmitri snapped out of his internal reverie to realise that the Director had already walked past him and that one of the few men on the base taller than him -to say nothing of hugely stronger than him and.. those things he did in the Ukraine…- was now glowering at him from a metre away. "You will follow me."

"Yes, Director." Dmitri didn't quite quick-march after the Director, but it was pretty close. Is he annoyed? He doesn't sound.. significantly annoyed. Maybe he was one of those people who sounded annoyed all of the time? Discipline was pretty good on the base, compared to a lot of places he'd served before. Rule of the Grandfathers wasn't tolerated, and the order preventing officers using conscripts as servants was harshly enforced and professional NCOs like himself got the respect due to them. And now he was thinking about how it was enforced, and the frozen corpse hung up by its wrists he'd seen next to the road when he first arrived.

Get a grip, Sergeant Pushkin.

"Sergeant. What is your assessment of the readiness level of the force armour suits?"

"I would say that the standard suit is as ready as it is going to get, Director. I am.. not as familiar with the work on the advanced suits, but from the field trials I have witnessed they appear to be fully functional as well."

"They are. You are correct in both cases. In the case of the standard force armour suits we have waited only so that we can build up a reserve of sufficient suits to equip a meaningful number of soldiers. In less than a month Second Platoon will be dispatched to begin training regular formations in their use. In keeping with current orthodoxy, these formations will consist entirely of contract soldiers. Professionals like yourself, and with a sensible proportion of commissioned and non-commissioned officers. They will be ready for field deployment in battalion strength by the end of the year."

Dmitri glanced back as they passed a checkpoint with barely a nod. They were heading into the part of the facility housing the advanced materials laboratory. As an NCO he'd been to the engineering areas on many occasions, taking part in working out the remaining kinks in the suit's design and learning how to conduct field repairs on it. It was a rugged design, but you needed to have some idea what you were doing. He'd never been here before.

"Director, I do not have clearance-."

"As of two hours ago, you do." The Director didn't look around as he responded, a soldier up ahead scanning his pass through a security reader and opening the door as the Director reached it. "The advanced suits are nearly ready for deployment. Unlike the standard suit, they will never be mass produced. Powerful as they are, they simply require too much highly skilled maintenance to keep them in good operational order during long field deployments. To say nothing of the financial cost. Those soldiers here with the highest assessment scores will be assigned to a new unit and drilled extensively in their use. From that point on, entry will be by standardised testing on an as-needed basis."

Dmitri took a look around the partly assembled advanced suits as the technicians and engineers worked on them. His attention was drawn to an odd-looking device partially concealed by blast shields towards one side of the workshop area. Of course, that was the other rumour, wasn't it? That some of the technologies in the suits came from extraterrestrial sources. Dmitri liked to think that he was a fairly patriotic man, but he would admit that he had assumed that the country with the first suits of military force armour would be America and not Russia. It just seemed more.. in character. Of course, anyone who had ever flown the standard suit would quickly agree that uncomfortably rugged design was about as Russian as it got, but on the handful of occasions he'd been assigned to fly an advanced suit it had none of those problems. It was what he'd imagined actually having super powers would be like. Everyone on the base looked forward to their turns to fly those. Sadly, his ratings would be unlikely to be high enough to qualify for the unit. Ah, besides, those sorts of things should go to younger men anyway.

"There is also a third type of suit." Dmitri blinked in surprise. That was news. "As of two hours ago you have been removed from your position in command of your unit and transferred to the team working on it. It is technologically reliable, but contains many components we cannot readily replicate."

Another, larger security door. This time the Director placed his palm on the reader to make the locking mechanism release.

"You will be trained in the use of this suit. It is our intention that within a year, you will join the Justice League as its first Russian member."

…

"Director? I… Are you-?"

The Director turned his head to look directly at Dmitri, his lips turned permanently slightly down at the corners and his eyes stern and foreboding. Dmitri nodded and looked away. Of course he's sure, he's the Director! But.. the.. Justice League?

The Director led the way through, into another workshop. The materials here… Yes, they really didn't look like anything from Earth. "There are better pilots than you. Though not so many that you would prove an embarrassment. There are many more ardent patriots. In fact, given your literary, musical and cinematic tastes, I would say that you are about as American as it is possible to get while still possessing a Russian passport. But that itself is the reason why you have been selected. That, and your faculty for the English language." The Director nodded to one of the researchers, who in turn gestured to his subordinates. "While you are serving with the Justice League, you will be outside normal chains of command. Though you will be representing Russia, you will not be micromanaged. We cannot allow any hint that you are serving national interests contrary to the aims of the League. You are a personable man. Make friends. You may also be promoted, most likely to a commissioned officer rank. Some parts of the public relations side of things have not yet been finalised."

Dmitri made an effort to get his thoughts in order. "Thank you, Director. May I.. ask a question?"

"You are not an idiot, Sergeant. You will ask more than one."

"You said that we could not replicate the suit? Is.. it..?"

"Several of the parts were salvaged from alien spacecraft. In fact, most of it was extracted in pieces to allow the craft's automatic repair system to replace the components we removed."

"Did it.. come from Tunguska?"

The Director doesn't smile, but the degree to which he grimaces decreases very slightly. "Tunguska. Whenever I want to distract the attention of spies or conspiracy theorists I arrange to have crates with 'Tunguska' printed on the side shipped around the country to attract their attention. No. Russia has had any number of encounters with aliens. Anything we can salvage ends up here."

"What does Russia gain from this? If I am not going to be receiving orders..?"

"Firstly, there is the obvious matter of prestige. Relying on a team of Americans to defend us does not sit well with a great many people. Even worse when the third most notable member of the League is from a country whose total population is smaller than that of a mid-sized Russian city. Secondly, the suit is designed to resemble the other two models while being considerably more powerful. The more people see the suit in action, the more they will believe that the other models are capable of similar feats."

"Thirdly, it has come to our attention that the League has a youth team. And that they have used them at least once to bypass the legal restrictions on the Justice League's own actions. This has caused some disquiet in the Kremlin. Once you have joined, you will be able to recommend a person for this youth team. We have a candidate in mind. Fourthly, telemetry from your suit during Justice League fights will allow us to gain a better understanding of how the suits function in real combat than we could get merely using them against local targets. "

Dmitri nodded. This was… What was the English phrase? His.. socks were blown off? The Justice League! And a promotion… Well, the Americans had a Captain, it made sense… "I understand, Director."

The Director nods in return. "We will meet daily to discuss the situation as it develops. But for now-" The Director stops and inclines his head slightly towards a reinforced platform. "-it is time for you to be fitted for your suit."

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Carpe Tempus 6

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20th March

09:45 GMT +3

"Absolutely not."

I blink in surprise as Captain Philippus steps between myself and Queen Hippolyta. "I'm.. sorry?" She looks distinctly annoyed and.. Queen Hippolyta doesn't look particularly pleased either. Not sure exactly why asking to use the Lasso on her elicited so strong a response. "I.. apologise if I've caused offence, but I.. don't understand what the problem is."

Queen Hippolyta lays her right hand on Philippus' shoulder, pulling her back slightly. "He wouldn't know." I give them both a look of polite puzzlement. "Though Alkyone would." She frowns at me. "I am.. surprised, that she asked this."

"She didn't specifically ask this, but I've been trying to work out what sort of level of proof she'd want and how I could get it… And what would have to have happened in order for her to be right, and using the Lasso on you seems like the most reliable way to start. I don't.. mean to imply that I don't think you're honest or something…" I switch my gaze from one to the other. A shallow empathic scan isn't showing me anything beyond mild irritation and I don't particularly want to go deeper than that. "If it's the use of the Lasso that's bothering you, there are lesser truth compulsion magics. She just won't be as inclined to accept them."

"Paul, has your education in our history included the events leading up to our exile here?"

"Yes, of course."

"Was the Lasso mentioned at any point?"

I look down at the ground, trying to remember. It wasn't, but was there something in the comics about it? "I don't.. think so..? Is this some sort of cultural thing no one's told me about yet? Diana didn't say anything when Kaldur tied me up with it."

Philippus returns to her default 'watchful' state. Crisis averted, I think. I study Queen Hippolyta's face in the hope of getting a better idea of exactly what the problem is. She looks thoughtful for a moment. "After Herakles broke our truce and led his soldiers in the conquest of the Old City, he chose to parade me before my subjects bound in the Lasso as a way of humiliating me and crushing our will to resist."

"I'm so terribly sorry."

She waves it off with her right hand. "It was over three thousand years ago, and I doubt that my daughter would have thought to detail the events precisely." She takes a deep, calming breath. "But, please understand: I am extremely reluctant to be bound by any man in such a fashion again."

Philippus frowns. "What great truth was this supposed to reveal?"

"Alkyone asked that I not reveal the specifics. In the.. generality, the Lasso can -I'm told- be used to erase false memories and restore the true ones they replaced."

Hippolyta nods. "She believes that my mind has been altered?"

"Um. Are you ordering me to tell you, or are you just thinking out loud?"

"Why do you ask?"

"She asked me not to tell people, and.. it may impact my ability to investigate if people become aware of exactly what I'm doing. When I told her that if you ordered me to I would tell you she seemed to accept that."

"Is.. this essential?"

"No, not at the moment. There's at least one other avenue of investigation I can pursue first. Though I'm not entirely sure that it's less disruptive."

They look at each other for a moment. Hippolyta closes her eyes and murmurs something I don't quite hear as Philippus visibly takes a deep breath. Oh, come on!

"What exactly are you planning this time, Paul?"

"I need to go to Tartarus." As a woman of over three thousand years, Philippus has got quite good at schooling her features. "As I understand it, entering the Underworld while still alive involved walking through the Necropolis, down a rather lengthy flight of stairs-."

Philippus raises her right eyebrow. "And treating politely with Lord Hades. Without overturning what stability remains between the gods after your previous actions."

Aside from a brief confrontation over two thousand years ago when the Amazons changed their funeral rituals without consulting him first, this version of Hades has far better relations with the Amazons than the version from Justice League Animated. "I think I can manage."

"Forgive my scepticism."

"No, seriously, I've been planning this. I've got-" Various items begin precipitating out of subspace. "-perfumed oils, foodstuffs unknown to the ancient Greeks, technological devices including but not limited to musical instruments and recordings, books on magic theory and practice, a couple of the smaller type of Dolmen Gate, and.. you know… There's always cash. And Diana's been tutoring me on the normal way of speaking to the gods. Though I should point out that so far the gods I've spoken to have responded pretty well to my way of doing things and so maybe the normal isn't all that great after all."

Queen Hippolyta takes another steadying breath. "I strongly suggest trying it first."

"Rightyho."

"Are the preparations for the theatre troupe visit complete?"

"The political side is sorted, and theatre side is as organised as it can get until Clio can speak to the people there herself. Donna's taking questions on American society and dress now."

"And you aren't assisting her?"

"She was.. talking about certain.. female specific issues, that I don't know enough about to have any useful input on." Hippolyta nods in sympathetic understanding.

Amazons may have slightly more relaxed attitudes to nudity than I'm used to, but I still felt somewhat off about hanging around while they experimented with western clothing. And Donna most definitely doesn't share their attitudes. Amazons do have chest bindings -if they didn't they'd find sports a good deal more uncomfortable than they do- but bras in the sense that I'm used to are largely unknown. Same with knickers. Loincloths just aren't the same, and most Amazons don't wear anything under their chitons.

I think I need a girlfriend.

"If your Majesty will excuse me, I will begin my journey."

"Gods be with you, Paul."

I bow, then turn away and rise into the air, heading for the entrance to the necropolis.

I know the Hierarchy. I have companionship, but I can't deny that I'm feeling a bit more libidinous these days than I used to. As well as more confident in my own appeal. I'm.. just really not sure how to go about acquiring one. Lying about my age hasn't done me any favours there, the Amazons conceptualise gender relations radically different from what I'm used to and.. most of the women I know have other issues associated with them. I didn't get involved with Holly and Karon for that reason, but I'm starting to wonder if that was really the right decision. Maybe if we'd talked about it more first, rather than me running off to ask Mister Queen? Jade gets out of prison in just over a week, and there's the Spring Dionysia coming up here on Themyscira. That was one of the traditional times for men and women to get together in Old Themyscira and Kon and I are both invited… I can feel myself hesitating, concern about unknown outcomes holding me back.

But I really think I've got to start going for it. Otherwise I could wake up one morning as a still single three hundred year old and I certainly don't want that.

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Carpe Tempus 7

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20th March

09:51 GMT +3

It's got to be magic.

Amazon stonemasons are good, but this is an island. I'm well under sea level here and there's none of the signs of seepage that I expected. The air isn't even damp. I can't see any water extraction devices but however they've managed it rainwater doesn't appear to be getting in either. I could.. test it, have the ring transmute some water and see what happens to it… No. That's not appropriate. I can just ask them about it later.

My guide turns her head to look at me as we continue down the stone corridor. "Few of my sisters come here any longer. Fewer still would even consider the journey you are about to make."

"And I can't imagine there's a great deal of competition for your job either, Thana."

"Hm. True." Like virtually all Amazons it's impossible to tell her age by looking at her. Since she doesn't have the look of seniority that those who came here by boat have I'd.. guess that she was born on the island, but beyond that it's impossible to say. I wonder if all Amazons know how old all other Amazons are, or if even with three thousand years to get to know one another there are still people they just don't know that well. "The effect it had on the minds of my predecessors has rather put my sisters off. But that was a foolish tradition in any case."

"Yeah, how did that even get started? Your priestesshood can't have been doing thousand-year tours of duty in the Old City."

"It was felt at the time that -given how many had died during the war and in the escape- that some form of grand offering to the God of the Dead was the appropriate course of action. These catacombs are larger than any other temple on the island, larger even than those of the five. In the Old City it wasn't unusual for those of us who served Hades to spend weeks in isolation in the crypts…" She returns her attention to the passageway. "We had just been granted immortality, or at least the next best thing. I am sure that at the time agreeing a period of service of a thousand years sounded perfectly sensible."

"Are you a necromancer?"

She nods, slowly. "Lord Hades has granted me certain insights. Donna once told me that in the works of fiction of Man's World, necromancers are depicted as being able to conjure corpses and shades to do their bidding."

"It's hard to power game the ability to merely speak to the dead. Sort of an NPC class skill." Her eyebrows rise slightly. "Can you do those things?"

She shakes her head. "I am not the ruler of the dead. If this holy place was attacked, Lord Hades would most likely permit me to call some of my fallen sisters back into the living world to defend it, but I do not simply animate bones to serve my own needs." That fits with what Io told me about her metalwork. "I can speak with the dead, and that is a skill I prefer. In former times, I would have been the first person the guards called upon in the event of a violent death. Even now, my sisters do occasionally call upon my services to speak with their departed friends and kin."

"Has Had-. Has Lord Hades said anything about what I'm doing? The new pregnancies and the expanded contact with the outside world?"

"He has." She smiles. "But that is for him to discuss with you when you see him."

"So… He is alright with me seeking an audience?"

"I would not be guiding you if he were not."

Fair enough. "Are you able to speak to any dead, or just the dead who worshipped the Olympians in life?"

"The dead of Greece are easier, certainly, but Lord Hades has permitted me to treat with other death gods. It is not something I do frequently. There is little cause for it."

"Does that include monotheistic religions?"

She looks a little uncomfortable as we approach the huge fortified door which I can only assume is the entry point to the Underworld. "No. The rulers of the Silver City jealously guard their flocks. I still have burns on my shoulder from their rejection."

"Shouldn't those have healed? Usually Themyscira's blessings-."

"Yes. I believe they are making a point. Still, it was a useful reminder that not all gods are as merciful as ours."

Oh, snap! Take that, Abraham!

She stops just before the door and turns fully to face me. "Ordinarily at this point, I would warn one of my sisters against the perils of the Underworld. However, in your case, I imagine that such a warning is entirely unwarranted. Between your raw power and your warding tattoos I doubt that you will be troubled by anything.. in the outer parts, at least."

"Okay." I wait for her to open it. Nothing happens. "Um..?" I point at the door with my right forefinger.

"I'm afraid that you have to open it yourself."

Ring scan's not showing anything. Arcane boundary thing? I doubt that I'm going to be going under the Earth physically. Just have to hope that the magics of the place still work on me. Ah, right. I send my Spell Eater into subspace. Hm. There's probably some big death-related metaphor here but I'm just going to try shoving…

Huh.

That was easier than I thought it would be. Barely took any effort at all.

"Okay, I'm off. I'll try and be back before take-off." I walk through the opening and start down the steps. Braziers of ghostly white light are attached to the rough-hewn walls and the steep steps are cut directly into the rocks. I wonder..? I stop a few steps down and turn back to look at the upright part.

"Having second thoughts?"

"No, we've just got this expression where I'm from: 'The road to Hell is paved with good intentions'. There's a recurring joke about it being literally true, rather than just a metaphor for snowballing moral failings. I know that the Underworld is all of the Greek afterlife and that it's neither Hell nor a real Hell-equivalent. I just thought it would be amusing."

"I'm afraid that the masons who made this corridor would not have heard of that. And would probably be offended by the suggestion that they do anything so tawdry with so holy a site."

"Right, yeah. I suppose-."

"Those are further in."

I squint at her, but her poker face is impenetrable. I think that was an off-the-cuff, but I will be checking stones in the general vicinity of Tartarus proper. Turning back around, I carry on down the stairs. Ring, monitor our surroundings. I want to know when things start getting properly strange.

Compliance.

Can't see anything through the rocks. Can't see anything in front of me apart from the steps immediately around me and the twinkling lights in the distance. And.. that was the door behind me closing. Hm. I think this is supposed to be intimidating, but to be honest, after everything I've gone through recently it's a little dull.

Unable to detect Themyscira.

Would it be alright if I flew down? No, that's probably not a good idea.

…

Pffffffff.

Okay, absolutely no one I know who has died would have ended up here. No one I know well has died on this Earth, the Kahndaqis would have gone to the Silver City… Not sure where Missus Gordon-Hewitt would have gone.

…

I don't remember there being much Greek stuff in her house.

That could get weird.

…

How long's this going to take?

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Carpe Tempus 8

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20th March

12:05 GMT +3

Not.. moaning. It's a long way down to the Underworld.

Clearly.

I'd been hearing blowing wind for quite a while, but it isn't until the tunnel I'd been walking down leads me out onto what looks like a simple platform of carved stone blocks that I get any sort of view of the Underworld itself. Right, if I remember my mythology correctly the river Styx should be somewhere around here, along with Charon. Shouldn't he? I take a look around. No, no boatman in evidence. Nor a river. Also, no creature that could be either Grief, Anxiety, Disease, Old Age, Fear, Hunger, Death, Agony, Sleep or 'Guilty Joy', whatever that is. Maybe they just gave up when people stopped coming?

It would have been helpful if Eris was here, at least. I tried, but after about twenty minutes-.

Thirteen minutes.

Thank you. After about thirteen minutes of walking down the steps I just loaded Human Resources up on the ring. I'm sure that the craftswomanship of the passage was very impressive but it was completely repetitive. Maybe they could spend some time decorating it?

The ghost lights here are much larger than those in the passageway, and appear to float freely over what I can see of the landscape. And what I can see appears to be trees. Apple trees. The combined effect of the ghost lights makes it only about as bright as an overcast day, but they seem healthy enough. The rows in which they're planted are clearly artificial. This is an orchard. Do the Greek dead need food? I suppose that this place is for both the punishment of the guilty and the reward of the deserving dead. Even if they don't need nutrition any longer, taste and purpose in work would be useful.

Okay, clearly no one's here to greet me. Ring, can we map the area?

Affirmative.

Huh. Alright, since I'm not actually dead I haven't come in through the standard entrance. In fact -I look back- the interior passage back to Themyscira doesn't have an external component. There's just a lump of stone rather than any sort of stone tube reaching back up towards the surface world. I exhale. Alright, I've come this far by foot, Lord Hades' palace isn't all that far. I jump off the platform-

"Hha?"

-and turn around as a young looking woman in expensive looking ancient Greek clothing who'd been asleep leaned up against it suddenly jerks awake. She blinks at me in confusion.

"Bad dream?"

Her eyes narrow. "Oh, very funny. What kept you?"

"Nothing. It was a long walk."

"I thought you could fly? You are-" She gets out a small vellum scroll and unrolls it. "-Pavlos the Orange Lantern, aren't you?"

"Yes, and I.. can fly, I just thought it would be-" She gets up and brushes her robes off. "-disrespectful. I'm coming as a petitioner."

"Yes, I'm sure that made perfect sense at the time you thought it." She replaces the scroll inside a satchel at her side. "My name is Melinoë, and I will be your psychopomp for the duration of your visit."

"Pleased to meet you."

She looks at me like I'm a moron. "You really are too much." She rolls her eyes. "How fast can you fly?"

"Fast enough that I don't like to go full speed in an atmosphere?"

"Right, come on, the palace is-" She points in the direction of the palace with her right forefinger. "-that way."

"Rightyho." I attach a filament to her and lift us both up into the air.

"Hey!" I give her an interrogative look and a shrug. "I thought you were going to.. pick me up."

I frown. "I have. I mean, do you want me to hold onto-?"

She looks away. "No. That's fine." She sort of shimmers as what I assume are her own innate magics take hold and she begins floating over the trees surrounding us.

Melinoë… That was.. the Nymph of Nightmares and Madness, right? She seems nice enough. I float off the ground after her. Actually… Okay, the grey skin, orange eyes and downwards curving horns are a little unusual, but all in all she's not bad looking. And if I'm really resolved to try attracting a mate…

"Have you been down here l-?"

"Oh! Gods!"

Okay. Fine. Knocking that one on the head.

The orchards appear to extend for miles in all directions, punctuated in places by narrow, gravel covered roads. The palace itself glows brightly at the far edge as the orchard gives way to sheds and barns which in turn yield to the palace proper.

"I admit, I was expecting something more Greek looking."

"The dead didn't stop coming here just because Greece converted to Christianity. We usually even get one or two foreigners a year. Classics professors, archaeologists, people with no strong religious leaning who found some depiction or other of the gods inspiring. A few of them had ideas for upgrading the palace, and they had a ready workforce as well as all of the materials they wanted."

Hundreds of ghost lamp posts supplement the glow of the lights overhead, making it seem as if the palace was in the middle of summer. Not a great deal of warmth to the place, but at least I won't have to worry about finding my way.

"Where exactly are we heading?"

"Just follow me."

She leads the way towards the far side of the palace -the ring can't work out north or south here- and in through the side of a long colonnade and inwards towards the palace building proper. The quality of the construction reminds me of Themyscira, actually: primitive in technology but perfect in execution. Even the trailing vines and other ornamental plants go where they're intended, no weeds sticking up through the blocks.

Or perhaps that isn't the result of mortal skill. Perhaps Gaea's dominion ends at the door.

Melinoë picks up speed, darting along the corridor and taking a sharp right. I accelerate after her, the ring's scanner not quite knowing what to make of my environment.

"What news, daughter?"

"He's here, finally. Macaria can go next time."

A short hallway leads into a richly appointed room, with several well dressed men and women standing facing a powerfully built man sitting on a throne. I land as he turns his attention to me. "What kept you?"

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Carpe Tempus 9

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20th March

12:11 GMT +3

I'm.. probably too far away from the throne to bow. I think? I settle for hurrying forwards and dipping my head slightly. "I apologise, my Lord. There were many stairs."

Hades looks puzzled. "I had been under the impression that you could fly. Was I mistaken?"

"He can fly, Father. He just didn't."

He turns his head towards Melinoë. "Whyever not? Is he injured?"

"Only in the head."

"Again, my Lord, I apologise-."

"Diana flies." He makes a vague gesture towards me with his right hand. "You're an Eris-worshipper, aren't you? Is this some sort of strange Discordian ritual?" One of the courtiers -a clean-shaven, young-looking man- makes an amused cough behind me. "Usually, those are somewhat more creative, but I suppose an allowance should be made for your youth and inexperience."

"It was strongly implied to me that requesting a meeting with you was a serious, sombre, theological affair and that I should treat it as such. Not as a.. business meeting. If there are steps, presumably they are to be walked, as part of the ritual of attaining entry."

"And if you had come in by the Gate of Shades, would you have walked then? And at the Acheron awaited Charon, and paid him for his service? Despite the fact that it was entirely unnecessary?"

"I'm.. increasingly realising that this is the wrong answer, my Lord, but yes, I would. I would have observed what I thought to be the ritual to the best of my abilities."

He stares at me for a moment, then shakes his head slightly. "Why?"

"Because you don't become a Discordian if you can't take a joke, my Lord." I hold my arms out slightly to the sides. "One day you're telling the joke, the next you're the butt of it. Chaos is not merely a thing which happens to other people, and if I've forgotten that then I'm due to have the universe take me down a peg or two."

"Hmm." Hades' right hand strokes his beard for a moment as he considers my answer. "A curious philosophy. Would you like to wander around a little more, or are you ready to start?"

I stop about four metres from the throne and bow from the waist. "I am quite ready to begin, thank you."

"Very well. My court is now in session. What is your petition?"

Wasn't I supposed to bribe him first? Um. Okay? "I seek entry to Tartarus, my Lord. And, passage back."

"I doubted that you wished to stay there eternally." Hades nods. "For what reason?"

"I wish to speak with the Hekatonkheir Cottus."

"Idle curiosity? You wish to keep him waiting for two hours?"

"No, my Lord."

"Then speak in complete sentences, complete thoughts. Does the land of the living no longer teach rhetoric?"

"In point of fact, my Lord, no. But I'm acting under a series of nearly conflicting obligations and I'm trying to make sure that I don't misspeak."

"That makes a little more sense. Continue."

"I need to confirm Cottus' presence or absence from a particular place at a particular time. An accusation has been made against him and I think it only fair that he be given the opportunity to answer it."

"And then?"

"Once I have as full a picture of events as the surviving evidence allows me to put together, I will most likely present my findings to Queen Hippolyta and leave judgement on the matter in her hands. Assuming that her judgement has not been compromised in some way."

Hades frowns slightly. "It would be no simple matter to compromise the judgement of Queen Hippolyta."

"I know, my Lord. But it is possible, so I cannot dismiss it without information which I currently lack."

"You seek to do no violence to Cottus?"

"Not at this stage. I certainly would not initiate any, and would endeavour to disengage if attacked."

Hades nods. "Aeacus? The mortal falls under your jurisdiction. What say you?"

"I see little to object to, my Lord." The young-looking man comes forwards to stand beside me. Aeacus, formerly King of Aegina and now Judge of the Dead of Europe. "The Hekatonkheires usually hold station a short way inside the gates, so there is little risk that one of their charges might escape." He looks at me and raises his eyebrows in curiosity. "Though I will admit to some degree of curiosity as to what Cottus is supposed to have done. He has always seemed to me to be a dutiful being, and given his size we could hardly have missed his egress if he had left to perform some mischief."

"I'm sorry, your honour. The precise nature of the accusation gets.. rather to the heart of the matter, and I agreed that I would not speak of it unless absolutely essential." If Diana came down here it would hardly be unusual for them to comment on her student's actions to her, after all.

Melinoë rolls her eyes, and Hades glances at her. "You have some comment you wish to make, Daughter?"

"Cottus has a job. If this mortal won't provide a decent reason as to why he should be granted access, why let him?"

"I did come prepared with what I believe to be a substantial tribute. Ifff.. that helps?"

"Like what?"

"Exotic foods, books on modern thaumaturgy, perfumes, musical instruments, recordings of music and… Gold..? I wasn't sure what was appropriate."

"Which of those are for me?"

Um? "Which do you want most?"

She looks away from me. "Objection withdrawn. I'll take him myself."

"Any other objections?" Hades looks around and there's a general shaking of heads. "Very well. Melinoë, please escort Pavlos to a vault where his tribute may be stored until the assayers can examine it, and then lead him into Tartarus."

She curtseys. "Of course, Father."

I bow as well. "Thank you, my Lord."

"It is naught but my duty as God of the Dead. Perhaps when your duties are less pressing you could introduce yourself to my court in full?"

Not sure where he's going with that, but I suppose there's no reason to refuse. "Certainly, my Lord. I'll look forward to it."

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Carpe Tempus 10

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20th March

12:18 GMT +3

"You've really lived in the Underworld your whole life?"

Melinoë glances at me and rolls her eyes again as we fly back over the orchard, heading in the direction of the Gate of Dusk. Turns out that the inhabitants don't have a way of telling directions relative to the ones we living folk use upstairs. Instead of following the magnetic field or the direction of the planet's rotation they refer to directions by the nearest Gate, the four fortified entry points to the Underworld. Most of the Dead enter from the Gate of Shades… South, if you like. Unusually heroic souls -or those favoured by one god or another- would simply turn up in the west, through the Gate of Dawn. To the 'north' is the Gate of Horn and Ivory, a direct passage to the Dreaming for anyone willing to chance it.

"Erebos."

"Gesundheit."

"What?"

"In German, it's the polite thing to say after someone sneezes. You said a word without any explanation that would let me work out what you were talking about, so you may as well just have sneezed."

She scowls. "Nearly every pantheon has somewhere for their worshippers' dead. If you call it 'The Underworld' the whole time no one knows which one you're talking about. This is Erebos, after the Titan whom Father defeated."

"Odd to name your kingdom after a fallen enemy."

"Not when you use his body to make it."

I nod and look around. I assume that there's a roof somewhere above us but I can't see it and the ring's scans get a bit odd when I try detecting it. "Surprised it doesn't whiff a bit by now."

"Why would it? He's still alive." Ahh. "So's Tartarus, actually. Father had to sew them together to make the system work."

"Ahh."

Her hands go to her hips. "Really? That's what disturbs you? I have horns, you know."

"Yes, and jolly pretty ones they are too. The lighter cream and white contrasts beautifully with your skin. I'll show you a G-Gnome sometime. They have red horns, doesn't work at all."

Her eyes widen slightly. "What? No, shut up. I'm not talking to you."

She accelerates towards our destination, descending through the air as she goes. Is it.. air..? Logically, the Dead would have no need to breathe. Would the gods? And they can definitely eat, so... I don't know. Maybe Sephtian could make more sense of the magics working here. Or.. maybe the extra overwork would finally be too much for him and he'd explode.

I shrug and fly after her. Hm, while I'm here though… I take a small piece of obsidian out of subspace and generate a filament between myself and the ground. And transition… No, seriously, transition? Huh. Can't transition here. Wonder why? I return the stone to subspace and start making an actual effort to catch up. The ghost lights in this part of Erebos have a slightly orange tint to them, finally giving the area we're passing over a slightly hellish appearance. Which is odd, because the part of Erebos most like Hell is the Fields of Punishment and those are Hornwards of the palace. And mostly empty, the Dead of Ancient Greece having long since served the punishment Hades believed due to them for their crimes.

Finite torment for sinners. Because anything else would be barbaric. Suck it, Jehovah.

I'm not sure how big I was expecting the Gate to be. Huge, probably. I mean, Hades wasn't much larger than me but that was probably for practical reasons and primordial beings like the Hekatonkheires are likely massive. If they shoved the -presumably unwilling- Titans down here after the war, along with any other eldritch thing that pissed them off enough, then surely the entrance must be large enough to grant them access? But to be honest, it doesn't look much bigger than a normal doorway. A choke point thing, maybe?

Melinoë has already landed and she's talking to someone… A woman, I think. Looks a bit on the thin side, a tattered cloak clutched around her chest by bony, long-nailed fingers. That's not right. Why would someone here look like that? I frown as I accelerate again.

"…permission, but I'd prefer it if you could talk to him first."

The thin woman's bones figuratively creak as she inclines her head, and I get a good look at her face. Cuts cover her cheeks, some scabbed over and others bleeding freely. Her nose is running and I'm handing her a box of tissues before I become fully aware of it. My nose ran a lot in primary school and I remember all too well how unpleasant it is for that to be happening and have no control over it. "Melinoë, would you introduce me to your friend?"

The woman looks at me curiously for a moment, then tries to pull a tissue out of the box with painfully arthritic looking fingers. She scratches at the uppermost one for a moment, then I take pity and pull one out with a filament for her. "Allow me."

The woman takes the tissue and begins wiping her nose as Melinoë frowns at me once more, in puzzlement rather than irritation this time. "This is Akhlys. There's no point trying to make her happy. She's misery personified."

"Does she have to look the part, though? Hades doesn't look like a corpse."

"I don't know, this is just how she-"

BABUM.

"-is what was that?"

The rings glow brilliantly. "Ophidian's Benediction, Akhlys." Orange smoke flows out of the rings and covers her. I'm not exactly sure if my usual biomantic techniques can work on divine or semi-divine beings, but damn it I'm going to try. She looks like a famine victim someone took a whip to!

BABUM. BABUM.

Melinoë's eyes widen slightly. "Stop it. Stop it now."

BABUM.

The orange vapour flows into Akhlys' wounds, binds itself to her limbs and flares as it tries to respond to my desires, my despising of the wrongness of her broken down state. For a moment I see her whole and hale, outlined in orange light. Radiant. Beautiful.

And then everything I've ever valued is gone and I'm lost and it's like a crushing weight and I can barely think beyond my immediate misery and tears are flowing down my cheeks and I can't stand or look up and my mouth is dry and my skin throbs in pain and the tiny grains of stone in the ground under my hands grate and cut as the hunger begins to gnaw at my-.

I gasp and look up, choking back my own sobs as Akhlys lays her right hand on my left shoulder.

"Thank you. For your consideration." She turns to look at Melinoë, the cuts on her face already starting to reappear. "I do not think this one will be dissuaded."

I shake my head, blink to clear my eyes, then have the ring Rightly Assume my Wholeness. "Keep the tissues." I rise to my feet. "This isn't the end of the matter."

Keeping one eye on me, Melinoë lays her left hand on the slab of stone covering the doorway, then pulls it away as the slab sinks into the ground. "That was interesting. Try to do something interesting with Cottus as well."

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Carpe Tempus 11

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20th March

12:28 GMT +3

The thing about Tartarus -its main distinguishing feature- is it's black.

And the thing about Cottus, the colour of Cottus, your basic Cottus-colour, is it's black.

So how am I supposed to see him?

I can't see the rings in front of my face! It's like light just doesn't exist here.

"Have you given up yet?"

Sound works fine. Back when I was in Secondary School I read a book… Some sort of transplanar celestial agency was going to demolish the universe and a British primary school teacher talked their ambassador out of it by describing in detail our universe's physics system. He commented at one point that having light was a major plus, as he'd been to universes that didn't have it and he kept walking into things.

"Not just yet."

My empathic vision works here, but I've got it turned as far down as I can. Erebos might be resigned to being used as a hang out for dead people but whatever mind remains here certainly isn't. What I saw in the few seconds I turned it up was utterly strange and overwhelming. That was a relief in a way. Given how I've adapted to Accelerated Perception I had worried that my mind would end up totally inhuman. But whatever the truth of the situation I'm still more Human than this place.

"What are you?"

I turn -at least I think I turn- in her direction. "That's a bit of a vague question."

Something shoves me in the chest hard enough to make me stagger backwards. "It's a simple question, idiot."

"I appeared in this universe as a soulless Human male from a place where magic doesn't exist-"

"Bullshit."

"-with an avarice-powered power ring on my left ring finger. Since I wanted a soul, I had a chap called John Constantine-"

"Oh, him."

Not surprised. "-tattoo runes on my body that draw arcane energy into me. Later, he did another set which make me immune to scrying. Then I merged with a giant avarice Elemental called the Ophidian, which appears to have supercharged the runes, and… Sometimes, when I really want something, I can hear her heartbeat even when she's not near me. I really don't know how to describe myself in terms of anything else. I'm me."

There's a moment's silence.

"Given up yet?"

"Nno…" Alright, sound clearly exists here. Ring, sonar imaging.

Compliance.

The outlines of surfaces appear in my vision, picked out in orange. I can see the ground I'm standing on, Melinoë and the door back to Erebos clearly enough. Everything else seems to be a bit mountainous. Or maybe it's some sort of wall?

"You said Cottus was usually just inside, right?" She giggles. Ah. So, either we're standing on Cottus, or those 'mountains' are Cottus. Ring, any obviously humanoid features around me?

The image of my environment flickers as the ring has a go at pattern matching. It's not great at imprecise instructions. Usually, making those sorts of judgements is the Lantern's job. Yeah, it's got a bunch of lines and not a lot of -ring, three dimensions? Thanks- order to them. I mean, that looks a bit like a hand, but it's clearly.. a.. hand.

Huh.

I may have slightly underestimated how big Cottus would be. I mean, I was expecting big, but this is… I mean, he's supposed to have a hundred of those.

"Does he have ears?"

"No, but he can hear you anyway. If you're loud enough."

Okaaay. Big old directional sonic projectors for him, ear protectors for me… Sonic baffle for her. This is supposed to be a secretish investigation. Chance of anyone in Tartarus hearing and telling anyone? Low enough that I think I can ignore it. "Excuse me, Cottus. May I speak with you for a moment?"

The request for attention goes out with enough force to melt a hole through a Challenger tank, pointed at what I believe to be parts of his body. Assuming he can listen through his.. fingers? Or through the bones under the skin. Assuming that Hekatonkheires have bones, of course. Oh well, at worst I've wasted a few hours. I'm sure I can-.

The mountains start to move. Parts which the ring tries to identify slide past each other but sonics really aren't the best tool for this sort of work. I think… Is that a hand? I was sort of assuming that he'd be humanoid, but it would appear… Ring, send a probe directly upwards and use it to get more information for the sonic image.

The arm closest to me is about thirty metres across at the bicep. It doesn't appear to be connected to anything at the shoulder but I can feel the ground shake as the hand presses off the ground and pushes down, lifting the rest of the limb into the air. Other objects follow, standing in close proximity to one another while they shift position in patterns I can't readily map. As a general rule the limbs stay close together but don't appear to need to put weight on one another in order to move. The size varies significantly, the one nearest to me being one of the larger, though none have hands smaller than a metre across. I can't tell whether the limbs are flesh, stone, or something else. Being the offspring of Ouranos and Gaea he could be made of just about anything.

Alright, I can't count exactly how many arms there are but a hundred looks about right. The other part of the description mentioned fifty heads. I'm just seeing arms at the moment. Pairs gradually pull themselves from the huddle, coming together as if to clap and then interlocking their fingers, making… Faces. Two hands per face, a hundred hands makes fifty faces. Well, he can hear me. May as well start. I point a sonic cannon in the direction of the closest 'face' and dial the power down a bit. "I am Orange Lantern two eight one four. I come from Themyscira." The face undulates slightly, but since the whole edifice is in motion that doesn't necessarily mean anything. "I want to ask you about something that happened eighty five years ago."

The face disappears as the fingers move into other patterns. Sign language, of course. He doesn't have a way to speak. I don't know ancient Greek sign language but fortunately the ring can handle any form of mundane communication. "Time is for mortals."

"Alright. Did you take part in creating Princess Diana of Themyscira?"

"Who is that?"

Huh. I suppose her name was only announced after Queen Hippolyta got back to the city. No reason why he'd know it even if he was there. "The daughter of Queen Hippolyta of Themyscira. Do you know who she is?"

"Yes."

"Her daughter was made from clay and given life by-" The twitching of the arms stops. "- someone. The official version is that it was Gaea, but an accusation-." Armsarmsarms! The whole mass of Cottus surges towards us! Okay, he's having trouble moving some parts closer because they're too-.

I raise my construct armour as a huge rock slams into me, bracing myself and setting the armour to reflect so that the force of the impact goes back into the rock. It shatters, sending dust and fragments in all directions.

"What did you say to him?!"

I'm off the ground and heading towards the portal. "I don't know!" Melinoë is already heading that way, but not fast enough. I turn slightly to grab her in a bridal carry and accelerate, railgun constructs at the ready as more rocks and several smaller hands fly at us! Nearly, nearly, through! I head upwards, guns trained on the portal in case Cottus tries coming through.

Melinoë is staring at my face from a distance of about ten centimetres, breathing heavily. Then she notices that I've noticed and jerks her head back towards the portal. The guns keep humming until the slab rises from the ground to block it off.

What the heck set him off?

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Carpe Tempus 12

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20th March

06:37 GMT -5

"…uncertain exactly what I was expecting, Mister Grayven." Brain's voice doesn't convey emotion in a way I'd trust, but at least he doesn't sound annoyed. "But slaying the Witch Boy in such a public fashion, and so subtly 'twisting the knife', as you say, into your former colleagues in the Justice League? Magnificent."

I lean back in my chair, taking in the Washington DC skyline, yellow ring held up to my right ear. Mister Tawny bites into what's left of this morning's hunt: a Thentulian Reaper. Nasty blighter, but not up to a fight with a God-Tiger. He and the Sphere both opted to come with me after the 'divorce', him out of loyalty and the Sphere to keep an eye on me. I came up on the roof to get away from the fans. I'm in full armour -goggles included- and I was eating lunch when Brain's call came in.

"Glad you liked it, Brain. Are you and the others satisfied that Klarion is indeed dead?"

"There could hardly be any doubt, Mister Grayven. Millions of people around the world saw the live broadcast, and millions more have seen the recordings. In addition to that, there are the physical remains and -I am told- mystical shockwaves in keeping with a being such as Klarion ceasing to be. I hereby formally notify you that the Light acknowledges you to have completed your part of the agreement."

I smile. "So, am I in? Or is the Queen Bee thing going to be a bigger problem that I'd been hoping?"

"We expect a degree of effort on your part to ensure that our interests in Bialya are maintained, but… Yes. We will arrange a meeting during which you will be formally confirmed and.. fully briefed on Light operations."

"Okay, just let me know when and where."

"I will be certain to do that, Mister Grayven. Dare I enquire as to the nature of your own plans?"

"Hmmn. Farm political capital, build up my personal facilities… To be honest, I doubt that I'll be doing anything particularly interesting for a month or two. How about you?"

"My life is one of research and technological development. Presently I am working on a new generation of cybernetic interface."

"Oh? Given what you've got already…"

"There is always room for improvement. One of my associates makes use of such limbs, and… It has been brought to my attention that my travel machine could benefit from having better defensive systems."

"I could help with that. If you like."

"Thank you, Mister Grayven… But I prefer to work on so intrinsic a system myself."

What? Oh. "Oh, I quite understand."

"Though, I will confess to a degree of interest in the… Ah, you call it 'Divine Awakening'? I have no interest in gods, but I cut myself free of the distractions of the flesh to better focus my intellectual energies. If you have some way to amplify that further, I would be most interested."

Not too surprising a request, though I had expected him to be a little more sceptical. "If you like. However, I should warn that it may interfere with your implants and I can't guarantee what the outcome would be for a mechanoid like yourself. I can't.. Awaken your travel machine. If it were New God technology…"

"I am unwilling to make use of machinery which I cannot myself maintain."

"Perfectly sensible."

"Would there be similar difficulties in using the technique on other members of our association?"

I shrug. "I don't know how it would interact with Savage's regeneration or the effects of the Lazarus Pit. Could do nothing, could improve them, could kill the user. Luthor is almost certainly com-." Okay, that's a bit annoying. "Compatible, but I'm not sure he'd be interested."

"Having dealt with him for some time, I think you are likely correct. Still, it would serve you well to-."

I blink. "Ugh."

"-off..er..? Is there a problem, Mister Grayven?"

"Yes. I'm sorry, but this invisible woman's got a gun pointed right in my ear." The gun in question is withdrawn very slightly. "It's really distracting. Can I call you back?"

"Are you in any danger?"

"No, it's basically a conventional automatic. It might make me a little hard of hearing-" She shoves the gun forwards again and with a smile I let her push my head to the side a little. "-but it wouldn't cause any lasting harm. I got this."

"Very well. I will speak to you again once I have a time and a place for your confirmation. Goodbye, Mister Grayven."

"Bye, Brain." I lower my right hand, letting it trail on the roof at the side of my chair. "So. Ms Black. What can I do for you?"

Her stealth field fails by degrees, first showing flashes of her red coat and jeans, then her grey blouse and decidedly humourless face. I barely remember her from the comics. I think her hair was.. shorter. And I don't remember the red goggles. But it's the same woman. Similar morphing arms to what Mercy uses, though a little more sophisticated. Currently only her right is in gun mode while her left retains the Human appearance. I wonder where the British government got that technology?

Mister Tawny gazes balefully at her, and starts to position his legs for a pounce. I shake my head at him and after a moment's consideration he settles back down.

"You can tell me where Chester is."

"Why, has he gone somewhere?" Patches of faux skin around her left hand shift aside and a burning wreath of some sort of highly energetic plasma forms around it. "I haven't spoken to him in, like, months."

"Bollocks you haven't."

"No, seriously, we had a chat back in January after your mob got ordered to work out how to kill me. Haven't.. heard from him since then." Should probably try getting hold of him, actually. He'd be a useful fellow to have around at the moment. "I do hope he's alright."

"He's disappeyar'd. Said something about you then oop and left."

"And this was..?"

"January. What'd'ya give him?"

"A little bit of background reading on the things the people you work for get up to in their spare time. Have to admit, I didn't think he'd just walk away from the whole setup you've got there. Didn't think he had that sort of moral fibre. I'm sort of impressed."

"He's been killin' folk."

"That's sort of what he does."

"Three judges, a minister and eleven retired civil servants. Did you put him up to it?"

"Not exactly…"

"I've been ordered t'kill the pair o'you."

"You could try that. You're sadly under equipped to face me, but you might get lucky with Chester. Or…" I take out a dossier with a summary of the truly appalling stuff I have on the British establishment. "You can take a look at this, and find out exactly how deep the rabbit hole goes."

I think she glances at it. The goggles make it hard to tell. "What's it sehy?"

"It says that your nation is ruled by narcissistic monsters far worse than any you have killed on their behalf in your careers to date. It gives details on who, how and when. And if you read it, they'll send one of your colleagues after you as they sent you after your brother." I turn my head to face her gun barrel full on. "So, what's it going to be?"

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Carpe Tempus 13

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20th March

16:09 GMT +3

The door takes a wee bit more effort to open from this side.

Thana smiles as she sees me. "How was your journey, Pavlos?"

"Easy enough." I walk through the opening and push the door shut behind me. "Lord Hades was quite hospitable. Though, apparently he'd expected me to fly down at speed rather than walk down."

"You walked?" She frowns in puzzlement. "Whyever did you do that? That would take hours-."

"Yes, I know."

She tilts her head downwards a little, trying to disguise her smile. "Ah."

"Melinoë seemed nice." I hesitate. "Wait: am I supposed to call her 'Princess Melinoë'?"

"Not unless she has insisted upon it." She turns, and starts to lead me back out through the catacombs. "Most visitors to the Underworld find her a little disconcerting."

"What, because of the horns? I rather like those, actually."

"She is also the patron of nightmares and of madness."

"Right, but that doesn't mean that she is nightmares or madness, right? Just that those are her domains." Thana glances away for a moment. "And anyway, I don't have nightmares anymore and I'm already about as mad as I'm going to get." Wait a moment. Thana was almost exactly where I left her… "You weren't standing there the whole time, were you?"

"Close. I have four sons in the Underworld. You being down there gave me a chance to speak with them." She watches as my face falls. "Oh, they had good lives before the end. I try to limit the time I spend speaking to them. Spending too long amongst the dead is not healthy for the living."

"I… I don't really know how to respond to that."

"Everyone on Themyscira has someone close to them down there. And one day we will follow them. But not yet." We walk to the end of the corridor in silence, then start up the stairs to the surface proper. "Were you able to get the information you sought?"

"No, not really. I got information… No, I got data, but not enough for me to make sense of it. Oh, and Lord Hades invited me back to properly introduce myself to the court. Do I have to call on you every time I come here, or can I just head down myself?"

"It… May be best…" She thinks for a moment. "At least tell me of your intent. I would not want you becoming too comfortable with the journey."

"Whyever not? Honestly, you people have no idea how lucky you are having an afterlife like that. You know for a fact it exists, you can speak to people there and Lord Hades seems like a good ruler."

"It is not wise to look forward to it too much, Pavlos."

"Oh, I don't even know if I'm going there."

"I would have thought that you would. Previous Eris-worshippers have gone there when the time came. Unless there is a destination you would rather go to from your original homeworld?"

"As far as I know, my original homeland didn't have afterlives. You died, then 'poof', no more you. I mean that I'm so heavily involved with the orange light I thought that might end up changing things."

"I suppose that it could. Such matters are a little outside of my expertise."

"I'll be certain to ask the Controllers and let you know."

We reach the top of the stairs and start on the path to the shrine proper. "You have no one waiting for you, then?"

"Probably not. I might have by then…"

"Did you see anything of Asphodelopolis itself?"

"No, just the orchard and the palace, really. I'll try and get a good look at it next time I visit." Hmm. If I remember my Encarta Populi right… "I thought that the dead inhabitants of Erebos were supposed to be a bit.. vacant?"

"That was once the case, for most. When the mainlanders turned from the Olympians, Lord Hades realised that his realm would most likely receive little fresh blood…" She nods her head to the side and blinks heavily. "Fresh inhabitants. He studied the residual magics of the titan Erebos itself and found a way to tie every shade to them, granting them a more focused essence. They still lack.. in certain regards. And you would not mistake them for living people. But it is a much better unlife than was formerly the case."

"Why did it take him that long?"

"Lord Hades is a warrior and a king, not a scholar. Those blessed by the gods or possessing great virtue already had a strong enough breath to provide for themselves. And.. interfering with the Titans carries risks most would rather not endure."

"If… The Dead are firing on all cylinders-." Thana frowns and shakes her head. "Fully mentally competent. Doesn't… Hades now rule over more people than Zeus does?"

"King Zeus is the ruler of Olympus. Regardless of their respective population sizes, Lord Hades is his subordinate."

"Okay, but Hades clearly has a job. A role. What does Zeus actually do these days?"

"At the moment?" We walk through into the shrine proper. "I believe that he is looking for a new wife."

"As a known serial adulterer with no devotees and few worshippers, what are his chances?" Thana looks nervously up at the roof for a moment. "No, it's fine, my tattoos mean that he can't see me. And even if he could, all you need to do is line the roof with copper or jovium and the lightning would fail to penetrate."

"Even so, please try to avoid insulting the gods in my temple."

"I'm sorry, I'll bear that in mind in future." She stops in the doorway as I walk outside into the daylight. "Are you coming to see us off?" We're flying the theatre troupe to the States soon-ish. We decided that it would be best if they flew in by plane rather than just having me transition everyone there in order to give them a chance to get used to the change in their surroundings.

Thana looks uncertain. "My presence may be taken as an ill omen."

"More than me having just spent six hours in Erebos?"

She nods. "More even than having an avowed Discordian on a complex mechanical flying machine."

"That's a silly superstition. Come anyway. There're going to be two demigoddesses and me there to look after them. Nothing's going to happen."

…

Ring, scan-. No, really nothing threatening around here. The only Amazons who might raise a hand against their princess in anger are still imprisoned and the plane will be under constant monitoring from the Watchtower once we get airborne. It's mechanically fine and Eris hasn't seen fit to throw random malfunctions at me before now. Given how shocking contact with the outside world will be I imagine she'd do the opposite, actually.

I beam at her. "I'll carry you if I have to."

"You-?" For a moment she looks shocked, then she smiles and shakes her head. "Very well, then."

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Carpe Tempus 14

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20th March

16:18 GMT +3

I wave in the direction of the landing area as we approach, the thick goodbye-crowd parting around us. After a moment Donna spots me and waves back. The theatre troupe -Clio, Dalma, Eudia, Jocasta and several others I haven't been introduced to- as well as a couple of guards -Zosime and Mala- and the tag alongs -Io and Mnemosyne-are already waiting to board. Io will be meeting with Theodore tomorrow for a tour of his facilities and Sephtian will be joining them later that afternoon. KordTech already has a Dolmen Gate to Atlantis, but I thought it best to wait until this visit was concluded before pressing the Senate here to acquire one. Or at least let me experiment on how they interact with the wards. I'll ask Hephaestus first, just to make sure they won't completely wreck it. Or maybe… Who's the Olympian whose domain includes magic? Hermes? Selene? But Donna requested Hekate's aid, which probably means that she's more accessible. And I'm still a bit wary of contacting Selene after the whole moon.. thing.

There's a ring of guards around the inner edge of the crowd, though from their relaxed manner it's clear that they're here to mark the limit of the polite viewing area rather than in expectation of any actual trouble. Thana stops at the inner edge as one guard -she looks familiar but I don't remember hearing her name- steps aside to let me pass. "Good journey, Pavlos."

I glance back. "I suppose asking for a blessing would be a bit morbid." Thana smiles and shakes her head as the two closest guards look at me like I'm a crazy person. "I'll see you at the party next week."

"Very well. Until then."

I turn away and jog in the direction of the plane. Since Diana's invisible jet is too small to carry everyone comfortably we're 'borrowing' a larger executive jet from Wayne Industries. Donna dramatically puts her hands on her hips. "And where have you been?"

"Tartarus."

"Do you mean Erebos?"

"Nope. Erebos has actual light. Had to navigate using sonar."

"I just asked Tartarus itself to let me see."

"I'll have to bring you along next time."

She shakes her head. "Oh, that's really not necessary."

Diana appears in the plane's doorway. "Paul, are you ready to depart?"

Lucky for me that Amazons have such approximate timekeeping habits. "Yep, completely ready. Sorry for the hold up."

"Very well. Sisters, you may board when ready."

Zosime sidles over to me as Mala leads the actresses on board. "You truly went to Tartarus?"

"Either that, or I got really badly lost."

She looks puzzled for a moment, then realises that I'm joking. "What were you doing there?"

"I'm afraid that I can't say."

She nods, the shining metal which covers the side of her face changing colour as it moves out of direct sunlight. "Was it a successful visit?"

"Not really. I mean, Lord Hades invited me back-" Her eyes widen. "-as a visitor, while I'm still alive." She nods in relief. "I wasn't even in Tartarus all that long."

Donna raises her right eyebrow. "You weren't? You were gone six hours, did you take a tour?"

I mantle my eyes with my right hand. "No, I walked down the steps."

She blinks in surprise. "But… That's... Why would-?"

"I know. Hades said, and Melinoë-" Zosime takes a step backwards. Honestly "-said, and then Thana said. Next time I'll just fly down."

I look over to the steps up to the jet. Boarding appears to be slightly delayed by each Amazon who reaches the top of the steps peering around the door and taking a good long look at the interior of the craft. "Haven't they seen an aircraft before?"

Zosime shakes her head. "Most of us.. don't involve ourselves with Baroness von Gunther's... Work."

"And why not? Diana's been using that for.. what, sixty years? None of you went for a ride in it?"

"No, Mala has. And.. I think Queen Hippolyta did. The Baroness taught the Princess how to operate it. I.. do not feel.. entirely comfortable, around her artefacts. I entered her workshop once when she was alive and.. things… They were twinkling, with no flame or heat or magic."

I raise my right hand, index finger extended, and poke her right in the metallic cheek. "So do you."

"But that is magic. I am alive. They were… Devices." I think she realises that she's being daft. "They were strange. I did not like them."

"Are you.. going to be alright in America? It has… Um, quite a lot of unnatural, twinkly lights."

"I will manage. I will simply follow the Princess' lead." Donna and I share a somewhat nervous glance, which she spots. "Hardly any of us have spent significant time in Man's World-." Donna shakes her head reprovingly. "The outside world. Fewer still have been anywhere as large as New York. Do.. eight million people truly live there?"

Donna nods. "I think it's a little over eight million, actually."

"Does it smell very badly? Or are you simply used to it?"

"Why would it smell? I mean, the air quality's not the greatest, but it doesn't smell that bad."

"Are your cesspits enclosed in some way?. The amount of waste material that so many people must create-."

I hold up my right hand, palm forwards. "Okay, I'll include an explanation for how our toilets and sewage systems work in the in-flight lecture. Short version, each toilet has a small bucket of water which gets used to send the waste material through a pipe into somewhere where it gets treated to not smell so badly."

Donna nods. "It ends up getting used as plant fertilizer."

"And everyone has access to that?"

"Everyone with a home, yes. Similarly, no one uses wells, but a series of artificial lakes linked by pipes to every home in the city provide people with water, both for drinking and washing."

"Oh." She looks a little relieved. "Those are two things I will not have to worry about, then."

"Donna?" The three of us look around to the entrance to the jet, where Diana stands watching us. "Will you be joining us, or do you intend to return to America under your own power?"

"Coming!"

Donna leaps into the air towards the jet while Zosime and I walk at a less panicky pace. Zosime hesitates slightly at the steps before girding her loins and walking up them. Like the others she hesitates at the entrance and sticks her head inside before walking through.

I move the steps back to their accustomed storage point and put the passengers' bags into my subspace pocket before transitioning myself inside and closing the door behind me. In the cockpit I hear Diana and Donna talking a fascinated Mnemosyne through the take-off procedure. Time to do my air steward bit.

"Ladies, please take your seats and buckle your belts. Nono, the one attached to the seat." Eudia makes an 'oh' shape with her mouth. "The plane will shake during take-off, this is completely normal and nothing to worry about…"

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Carpe Tempus 15

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Am I on yet?

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Carpe Tempus 16

next

No. I'm letting you out temporarily to preserve the original structure. When I want you to say something, I'll let you know.

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Carpe Tempus 17

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20th March

16:27 GMT +3

There are a few gasps as the engines roar into life. Clio doesn't gasp, but she does look a little worried. "Is it supposed to do that?"

"Yes, Clio. The device which propels this plane is essentially a fan which turns at tremendous speed. The turbofan which propels this plane is actually quite quiet compared to a lot of them."

Clio looks back to where three of her players have their hands over their ears. "This is quiet?"

"They'll get quieter once we reach cruising speed." Really, we're lucky that Batman had a vertical take off and landing executive jet he wanted to show off. Themyscira has never had a normal runway. The Baroness was the only local who would have wanted one, and she was already building VTOL aircraft when she came here. "At the moment we're being held aloft by thrust alone. Once we get going, a lot of the lift will come from the shape of the wings instead."

"I see." She averts her eyes for a moment. "Do you.. know how long that will take?"

"A few minutes." I look past her to the other seats. "There are.. headphones,- " I mime pulling them over my ears. "-if you want to put those on?"

The women who had been covering their ears sheepishly lower their hands as I generate a construct showing the external view of our aircraft. "You can see the direction of our thrust by the angle of these bits here." The room flickers with yellow but they all hold firm. Even though most of the women here are actresses, they come from a warrior culture. Showing discomfort might be alright, but voicing fear -particularly in front of a man- most certainly isn't. "If there are any questions you would like to ask, just shout them out."

"When can we take these-" One of the Amazons whose name I don't know tugs at hers. "-belts off?"

"Once we're fully transitioned to forward flight, though you may have to put them back on again if we run into turbulence." Even as I say the last word I realise my error as the eyes of all of the passengers -save Io- immediately turn to me.

"Turbulence?"

"Powerful winds." Slight flickers of yellow again. "Strong winds in one direction aren't a problem, the plane just moves with it. Strong winds which rapidly change direction might result in the plane shaking a little. You've all been on boats, right?" A couple of nods, so I make a point of making eye contact and smiling at the rest of them until I get a smile or a nod back. "Same basic idea."

"And if there is a storm?"

"There are small cameras all over our flight path-" I remove the plane construct and replace it with a larger one of the Earth and the weather monitoring satellites. "-that are telling Diana where the storms are so that we can fly around them. If for some reason we can't, then either we get a little shaken up but fly through it, or the plane is damaged and I stick an orange shield around it and fly us to New York myself."

Zosime frowns. "Would it not have been easier to do that from the start?"

"Yes, but that wasn't the deciding criterion. Aside from Io, none of you are familiar with advanced technology. Aside from Mala and Io, none of you have been outside Themyscira's wards in centuries. You're here to get a little immersion before you have to be surrounded by it, in what I hope is-"

There's a chime, and a corresponding pulse of yellow.

"-relaxing company." I point upwards with my right forefinger. "That -I'm afraid- is something else you'll have to get used to: weird and annoying beeps, chimes and sirens. Ah, when I say 'sirens' I don't mean the bird-women, I mean… Like your alarm bell, but more annoying. That one just means that you can unbuckle your belts now." I unbuckle mine and stand up. "The flight should last about eleven hours and I will be serving dinner in three. Feel free to sleep, rehearse, or watch a film." Blank looks. "Right. That window like thing in front of your seat is capable of showing recorded images. Away from Themyscira, these have more or less replaced plays as a form of mass entertainment."

Looks of shock and horror.

"Think about it: they allow an actor or actress of paramount skill to display their performance to more people than could watch it in person. Or allow a manager to show their performance to many people without having to hire a new troupe for every location, or employ them after the recording is made." That explanation gets nods and a few quiet laughs.

Dalma raises her right hand. "I have a question?"

"Ask away."

"Will.. there.. be a great many men in New York?"

"About half the city's population, yes."

"Ah, well, yes. But.. will we be interacting with them? Will they be in the audience when we perform?"

"Yes. I do hope that I haven't completely put you off modern men."

"No! No, of course not. I'm just not sure what the protocol is." She runs her right hand through her hair. "It has.. been a while."

Another round of laughter. "Dionysia isn't until next week."

"I didn't mean like-."

"I do." Everyone turns to… Don't know her name. "Um. I don't mean… I was just wondering what the customs were?"

"Since you're essentially going as diplomatic envoys, I've rather sort of been assuming that you'd be focusing your passions in the acting." Giggles and a snort that time. "I'm not sure what to suggest. I've never tried dating a man before. When compared to how things worked in the Old City, the relationship is more one between individuals rather than between families-."

"But you have tried dating the women, yes?" Another woman whose name I don't know.

"In point of fact… Not really. You-?"

"Are you sworn to Artemis? Must you keep yourself pure lest your powers be taken from you?"

I bow my head slightly, allowing my cheeks to colour. "Quite the opposite, actually. But getting back to the point, I should emphasise that America is heteronormative. Most women are only interested in men, and vice versa. If they show an interest in you, that's fine, but you probably shouldn't show too much interest in them." I make a point of looking directly at the questioner. "Attempts to liberate these Persians-" A few astonished snorts and the woman who asked is covering her face with her hands in astonishment. "-will most likely not be well received. Honestly though, I'd leave off the whole thing until you're more familiar with the culture yourself. I don't particularly want to get involved in a custody battle."

Clio frowns. "A what?"

"As a heteronormative society, men and women share responsibility for raising their children, as well as… 'Ownership' of them. If one of you became pregnant the father would probably expect to stay in contact and have regular input into their upbringing. Of course, if you did decide to become intimate with a man, there are any number of devices which could be employed to avoid pregnancy."

One woman in the third row nudges the woman next to her, makes a fist with her right hand and wiggles her tongue at it.

"For more details, inquire of the lady there."

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Carpe Tempus 18

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20th March

21:28 GMT -4

"Did you really need to make quite so many strange noises?

I nod in response to Clio's question. "Immersion therapy. Once we get out there will be weird noises galore."

The flight was uneventful. A few of the Amazons tried watching a film and Io spent some time on the internet. I hadn't realised that her English was that good. A lot of them had their noses pressed to the windows during the flight over Europe and I had the ring virtually highlight points of interest on the ground. We also did a quick run through of one of their repertoire pieces. Clio wanted me to take part as it's one of the few plays written on Themyscira which calls for a male actor in a significant role and she wanted to see how it affected the tone. Kind of fun, actually.

There's a slight bump as the plane lands, then Diana turns the engines to forward motion and drives us towards Wayne Industries' hangar. The bump attracts next to no alarm, our passengers having become somewhat accustomed to such things during the journey. See how long that lasts when they get a look outside. This trip is public knowledge after all, and there's quite a crowd around the outskirts of Teterboro Airport, to say nothing of all of the people who work or fly here and have found a reason to be in the area when we arrived.

The engine noise drops off to nothing as we roll to a halt. You might not realise it to look at her, but Diana has about sixty years' experience flying powered craft of various types and is probably the best pilot on the League. Including Harold Jordan. I look through the interior wall as she goes through the post-flight checks and Donna gently shakes Mnemosyne awake. Diana also doesn't appear to have been tired at all by being at the controls the whole way. Donna and I are actually qualified to fly this plane, but she said that she'd rather do it herself when we offered.

I unbuckle myself and rise to my feet, getting everyone's attention as I do so. "And we've arrived. Welcome to the United States, everyone-."

"I can feel my moustache growing already."

That gets a laugh. Amazon joke about ageing and leaving Themyscira. Which.. they are. They'll age at normal speed for as long as they're away. Heal injuries at normal rates. Have a headache if they drink to excess like most people.

I smile at Menodora. "We sell creams for that."

A few more laughs, and they begin unbuckling their belts, getting up and stretching themselves out as Diana enters the cabin. Even though they could move around the cabin, there wasn't really much to do or look at during the flight across the Atlantic and most of them stayed in their seats. She looks at me for a moment and I yield the floor, taking a few steps towards the exit.

"Women of Themyscira." She pauses, perhaps reflecting that they aren't about to go into battle and a martial exaltation probably isn't what is required. "Sisters. Aside from myself, you are the first Amazons to enter Man's World." Aside from all of the ones who were born here and adopted Amazon custom. Though I suppose the ones born in the Old City never exactly entered Man's World. "You are here to represent not our martial strength, but our culture and our arts. A facet of our society which I have perhaps not been best at communicating."

She does sort of have a point there. It's isn't -technically speaking- her job to do so, but she hasn't made much effort to get any distinctly Themysciran culture -beyond the gynocentric elements- out there. Ask a random person on the street and you'll probably get a shrug and a 'like the ancient Greeks?' in most cases. Of course, a Wonder Woman is only supposed to be a warrior-champion, but Diana's had plenty of time in which she could have moulded the role to something with a broader reach if she'd wanted.

"It is my hope that this visit will lead to a deeper appreciation of our society's ideals and ways of thinking. Please, when you speak to the people here remember that you represent the best of us, represent everything we have built in the last three thousand years. I am sure that you will do our whole people proud."

…

Are we supposed to clap?

No, looks like we're not. I press the button to open the door as a Wayne Industries technician finishes driving the steps up to the side of the jet. Male, but they aren't going to have to interact with him to any significant extent. Maybe that's a good way to ease them into being around men in the wild? I nod to the chap, then step back inside the aircraft to let Diana out first.

"Good journey, Princess?"

She actually walks down the steps, rather than flying. "Yes, thank you. The jet is a superb piece of engineering."

He smiles. "Thank you. I'll be sure to pass that on to the rest of the team. Oh, we'll have it ready for your trip back next week, no problem."

"Thank you."

The rest of the troupe troop out after her, Mala and Clio first, Donna somewhere in the middle and Zosime and myself last. The technician gets a few looks, but there aren't any significant overt reactions and I don't see much emotional resonance either. Hopeful start. I do a quick check around to make sure that no one has left anything behind before following the rest of the party towards the waiting limousines. The drivers are employees of Wayne… Something or other, security vetted and highly capable. But just in case the extra power is required Diana, Donna and I are each going to be in one of the cars. We haven't had any significant threats made -which I found a little surprising- but some sort of right wing Evangelical Christian group announced that it was going to be holding protests in various places. I think it'll take more than a few placards to bother someone from Themyscira.

The chauffeurs open the doors to the passenger compartments. Diana gets in the front car first, with Clio, Mnemosyne, Mala and Galene following her. In my own group, Zosime is giving the chauffeur a decidedly puzzled look and no one is getting in. Ahhh?

I walk up next to her. "Problem?"

She inclines her head towards me a little. "Why is he holding the door?"

The man's composure doesn't waver. Top marks.

"Because that's his job. Please get into the car."

Once she has some reassurance that this isn't her first encounter with phallotocracy, Dalma gives him a bright smile and lowers herself into the car. "Oh, this is nice."

I glance over at car number two, where Donna appears to be shepherding her Amazons inside without too much difficulty. Right, the little social rituals that are going to be just slightly off are going to be puzzling for a while. It isn't just a matter of 'strong, independent women not wanting a man to hold a door for them'. Amazons don't have hansom cabs. Carts are for carrying loads. If they want to get somewhere faster than their legs can take them they ride a horse. They wouldn't have any idea why they'd want someone else to work a perfectly simple mechanism like a door handle.

Io's walked around to the front of the car to get a better look at it while Zosime and Menodora lower themselves inside. Io's read about cars but unless Baroness von Gunther put one together and then later took it apart this is her first time seeing one. Probably should distract her before she tries opening the bonnet. Eudia notices her a moment before entering the car herself and stops. "Io, come. I'm sure they can find you more than enough mechanisms to tinker with at the embassy."

Io looks up suddenly, the hand she'd been running over the metal jerking back. "Oh. Yes."

"And I'm sure the nice man will let you look at his machinery later if you ask nicely."

"Not until next week." Eudia snorts with amusement, but Io still appears to be a little distracted. With one last glance to make sure that the smith is moving in the right direction, Eudia ducks inside. "Io? Problem?"

"The parts are so complex. Feeling them with my metallurgical sense is a very different experience to reading a technical manual." She steps around the chauffeur and leans forward to crawl onto the limousine's seat.

I walk up to the door as Diana's car pulls away onto the road to the airport's exit, making eye contact with the chauffeur. "Thank you."

"You're welcome, sir."

I put my right leg into the car and… "You need to move over to the far side, or I can't get in."

"Oh!" / "Sorry!"

back

Carpe Tempus 19

next

20th March

21:37 GMT -4

"It's much quieter than the flying machine."

Seatbelts are something else Amazons don't have much experience of. Dalma has her face pressed against the window in what appears to be an attempt to see what's in front of the car while I buckled myself in without really thinking about it. Eudia and Zosime followed my lead almost immediately, with a couple of false starts. Goodness knows that I sometimes have trouble making plug meet socket and I've been using the things for thirty years.

Io is looking out of the window, staring at the vast expanse of the triangular runway system. "It's huge. I've never seen roads that big before."

"This isn't actually a very big airport. If you want to see something really impressive I can take you to New York's main civilian airport."

Menodora looks up from fiddling with everything that has a button or switch. "Why do they need to be so large? The machines go up, don't they?"

Io shakes her head. "Most planes can't rise into the air in the way the one we travelled here in did. Like a duck running on water they must build up speed before rising into the sky."

"Oh." She takes another look out as the limousine gets closer to the outer fence. "And they really need all that distance?"

"They also use the same runways for slowing down when they land. And it's sensible to leave a margin for error."

"Are all those people here to see us?" Dalma points towards the outer fence at the… Yes, still a crowd at this stage. I haven't extended the ring's translation effect yet, so while Io can probably read the placards I'm not sure that the others can. Variations on the theme of 'Welcome to America' seem to be predominant, which is nice. Ring..? Ah, the security guards have moved the 'burn in hell lesbian bitches' people away from the gates. Right to protest, sure. Right to start a fistfight, not so much.

"More or less. Diana lives in this city and most of them have never seen her in the flesh. Other Amazons are an even rarer sig-" Menodora presses the 'open window' button and leans over Eudia to look out of the opening. "-ght."

Menodora waves enthusiastically. "Hello, Man's World!"

Dalma frowns at her. "They don't call it that. This country is called 'The United States of America'."

"Also, most of them don't speak Themysciran Greek."

Zosime looks curious. "Do any of them?"

"There's been a small surge of interest in learning Classical Greek since your visit was announced. I doubt more than a handful are conversational, though."

She nods. "Is there going to be an official meeting here?"

Ahead of us, Diana's car has reached the gate and come to a stop while the airport security start moving people out of the way for the gate to open. Most of it seems to be good natured, though I notice one overenthusiastic man with a camera need to be manhandled out of the way.

"No, that won't be until tomorrow. This is just curious, enthusiastic people showing up on their own initiative."

Io crosses her arms. "I should have dressed warmer. Does one of these buttons heat the room?"

I smile. "Looking for a heater rather than closing the window, it's like you lived here your whole life. "

"I spend most of my time in the forge. I am accustomed to warmth, not New York spring."

"I can make you a coat, easily enough?"

Io shakes her head while Zosime looks thoughtful. "I'm not sure I remember what a proper spring is like."

"You don't have spring on Themyscira?"

She shrugs. "I was young when we left the mainland, so I can't be completely sure. But, it never really gets cold for any length of time. Even Mount Skybreak rarely sees snow."

Eudia leans around Menodora to nod. "She's right. Occasional storms aside, Themyscira goes from late spring into summer into early autumn and then back into late spring. Did you not notice the warmth?"

"I just.. thought it was due to the latitude. And the ring generally keeps me at a comfortable temperature anyway."

Dalma turns away from the window, her eyes wide. "Will it snow while we are here?"

"I wouldn't have thought so, but if you really want we could spend some time somewhere where there's snow on the ground."

Ahead of us Diana's limousine has pulled onto the road and our car accelerates to follow it. Dalma and Menodora return their attention to the outside as we move past the crowd. I see a couple of rainbow banners, a few people in pseudo-ancient Greek dress and… A couple of flashers. Female ones. Looks like it's colder out there than it is in here. The crowd turns to follow us as we move past them, our two window-occupants continuing to wave.

Eudia gives me a nervous look. "Were those two… Advertising?"

"Advertising?"

Dalma turns back for a moment. "She wants to know if they're whores."

"Oh. Um, probably not? Prostitution is illegal in New York. If they were prostitutes they wouldn't advertise so blatantly." I suppose the fact that Amazons are generally into other women isn't exactly news… "If they were advertising to you they'd be more likely to slip you a card with their contact details."

Dalma sits back down as we pull away from the crowd. Menodora waves back at them one last time as the limousine accelerates again and loses her balance, falling towards me. I lean forwards and grab her before she can hit the floor. "Oh!" She takes a moment to get her bearings, then pulls away from me to crouch on the floor before carefully moving back to her seat. "Thank you."

"You're welcome. Please remember that vehicles move."

She looks a little embarrassed at her loss of comportment, but gives me a nod anyway.

Io turns to Eudia. "Eudia, could you please close the window?"

Eudia studies the buttons for a moment, then presses one and the window moves upwards, shutting out the chill breeze. She looks at it for a moment. "How does that work?"

I generate a cut away view construct. "It's-." They're staring at the construct in total incomprehension. I dismiss it. Different approach. "It's a bit like a winch. When you press one button, you trigger a simple automaton which turns a sticky wheel which drags the window down. When you press the other button, another automaton turns the wheel in the other direction, pushing the window up."

Eudia stares at the door in alarm. "There are automata in there? There are small people working inside all of your devices?"

Io sighs. "He's simplifying the idea, Eudia. There aren't literally automata in there, just devices which do similar work."

"Oh."

"If you're interested in that sort of thing, you could come with Io and I when we visit-."

"No, no. It just sounded like something out of a strange play."

Menodora nods. "Yes, one I wrote. I never had it staged because I couldn't think of a way to make that many puppets work together. Perhaps I should come along?"

Dalma shakes her head. "No, Clio will want us to visit the stage we will be using for the performance as soon as possible. None of us will have time for visiting anything."

"Which play are you doing? Was it the one we read through on the way here?"

Dalma raises her eyebrows. "One with a man in a pivotal role? No. Clio selected 'The Five-Faced Senator' for our performance. We weren't sure what would translate well, but the Princess said that comedy about political double dealing and their obsession with minutiae should translate well for an American audience."

I nod in agreement. "Some things truly are universal."

back

Carpe Tempus 20

next

21st March

09:08 GMT -4

Io gazes open-mouthed at the storm clouds gathered above us as Ted leans over to me. "Does that mean she likes it? She likes it, right?"

Io's eyes flick down to us… To him for a moment, before returning to the clouds. "She is not sure. How have you done this?"

Ted grins and heads over to her. "Doctor Morrow had elemental control systems integrated into his android designs back in the thirties. When Red Tornado gave me copies of everything the.. Construct Morrow transcribed, I realised that between that and the metal you'd made-" He looks up, gesturing with both hands. "-we could do this."

Another bolt of lightning and a peal of thunder. Weather control drones. He didn't even tell me about this. This is amazing.

Io looks down again, this time a little uncomfortable. "There are automata in there?"

Ted frowns. "What'd'ya mean b-?" His expressions shifts as he understands. "Oh, no. These are just machines, they're not intelligent. I've got the control system-" He waves a tablet at her. "-right here. See, if I press this-" Three blinding bolts of lightning blast through the artificial clouds, striking the large lightning rod in the middle of the test chamber. Io jumps back, shielding her eyes with her right arm. "-we get a completely controlled lightning discharge." He's grinning like a child with a new toy. "And if we do this-" The clouds above us part, even as the clouds around the edge thicken. The winds are getting up and we're inside a building. "-we can control the shape of the clouds, even-" Three evenly divided sections -alternating sixths- of cloud rain intensely for about half a second, then stop to allow the other sixths to rain instead. "-turning the rain on and off! Hah hah, how great is that!"

I have the ring scan upwards through the… He scry-warded them. Sonic scan, then. "What sort of range do they have?"

"Huh?" He turns back in my direction, apparently surprised to see that I'm here. "Oh, ah, not all that great. The ones we're using here-" He points upwards with his left forefinger. "-can't generate a volume bigger than about.. twenty cubic meters?" He thinks for a moment. "Maybe twenty five if they weren't doing anything too heavy with it." He turns back to Io. "But this is why I want to talk to you and Sephtian about it. All the technology in that is just a.. a slight improvement on what Doctor Morrow was using eighty years ago. With a Dolmen Gate providing water and power and your metametals for the circuitry, there's no telling what we could-!"

"And what of Zeus?"

Ted stops and thinks for a moment before making a small shrugging gesture. "What of Zeus?"

"Are you not concerned that he would consider this usurping his domain?"

"Not par.. ticularly?"

Io thinks about this for a moment. "Which gods do you worship?"

"I… I'm Christian, but I'm not really.. practicing..?"

"And what would your god say of this?"

"That.. depends on who you ask. I mean, Catholics would say it's okay as long as I wasn't using it as a weapon." Part of the lightning rod melts, causing the top third to fall off. Ted winces slightly as it hits the ground. "A lot of evangelicals would call it evil, but that's because they hate all magic, not because there's anything special about weather control." He shrugs. "Orange Lantern's had the Dolmen Gate going in London for a while and the only people who really complained are the rail unions."

"Io, are you working up to asking him if he's going to be smited by a god for his hubris?"

"Given the power of the device, I think it a reasonable concern."

"No.. god's.. said anything? And Sephtian didn't seem to think it would be a problem?"

"Atlanteans usually feel the same way about gods that I do. Amazons-" I glance at Io. "-usually have a slightly more intimate relationship with theirs."

"Oh. So… Does Zeus have a problem with it?"

"What did you intend to use them for?"

"Storm management. I mean, eventually we could build a huge network and regulate rainfall everywhere, but in the short term I just wanted to build a couple of powerful ones we could drop on hurricanes to turn them off. Or at least down. Red Tornado does his best but he can't be everywhere."

"Doesn't Red Tornado usually handle much larger volumes-?"

"Yeah, it… Living things have a much easier time handling magic energy than devices. If we get a magician to stick their hand through a Dolmen Gate to run it, it could handle a big storm no problem at all. But if we want something purely automatic, something autonomous, it gets… Tricky. Yeah, I'm actually hoping Sephtian has some ideas about that, 'cause I'm getting a bit out of my depth with that part."

"What of your farmlands?"

"Most US farms get enough water most of the time. I mean, there's a demand there, but it's not big enough to justify developing the system just for that. And we can't do the Themysciran thing of having two growing seasons a year. It's just not hot enough or sunny enough."

"How about other countries?"

"We're still limited by the amount of fresh water. I mean, yeah, if you've got a lake you don't mind losing we can make it rain just about anywhere, but if you want rain somewhere really dry you're going to need desalinisation plants on a huge scale. Either that or hundreds of these things in a row taking water out of the ocean… Or maybe a specialised Gate?" He thinks for a moment. "Yeah, that should work. You'd still need a lot of them for it to be anywhere near efficient, even if the Gate took all the vapor from the sea right to wherever you wanted the cloud." He raises his tablet again. "Hang on, let me just-" The water cascades from the ceiling in a sheet as the clouds spontaneously condense, running into the drainage channels around the edge of the room. "-shut that down."

"Any good for firefighting?"

He shakes his head. "Not really. It works out much better to spray water using a Dolmen gate transfer, or use some sort of cold gun." Another tap on the tablet and the drones descend, returning to their maintenance beds. "We've already got the production line set up for manufacturing the small ones… The physical components, I mean. The real bottleneck at the moment is getting enough wizards to put the spells on them."

Io regards the drones with a degree of unease. "This… It seems…"

"Well… What exactly-?"

I hold out my right hand to stop him. "Io, I was there when Hephaestus personally told you that he trusted you to use what he taught you as you see fit, that it wasn't something secret he expected you to hide away. America doesn't have a specific weather god who might take umbrage at this, and Zeus has never had a significant number of worshippers here. America has been using cloud seeding for.. what, sixty years now? Ted isn't exactly known for his modesty, but I'm sure he'll remember that he's one of dozens of people working on this and try not to let it go to his head too much." I give him a look of encouragement.

"Yeah! Of course." He nods enthusiastically. "Team player. There's no way I could do all this stuff on my own, even if I wanted to."

"So we're keeping hubris potential to an absolute minimum. Amazons have had controlled weather for three thousand years. We want to build machines to save lives and property from hurricanes. I understand that this whole thing is a bit of a shock, coming from Themyscira… But doesn't that sound like something that would be good to do?"

She thinks for a moment. "It does. I am sorry, Ted. I am unused to machines like this. I constantly have to remind myself that it is not some enslaved spirit or elemental beast."

"Oh, everyone anthropomorphises. Sometimes, when we do tests with them, I find myself patting the outer casing, like they're Dogs or something."

"We're not stealing power from the gods, here. We're learning from them, emulating them."

"Does this country have many hurricanes?"

"About six a year, plus about twice that in big storms that don't quite get to hurricane size."

She nods, and starts to look a little happier. "Then it will be my privilege to work with you to prevent them."

back

Carpe Tempus 21

next

21st March

11:22 GMT -4

I have to admit-

"…limited to four degrees of complexity for mass production…"

-that excited as I am to get-

"…prototyping to test the structural…"

-these four in the same room-

**…in an organic vessel…**

-I'm pretty much-

"…merely symbolic, and as such…"

-tuning them out. I wasn't sure that Dubbilex would actually be able to find time for this given his responsibilities at Cadmus, but apparently the chance to create replacements for the Kryptonian cell suspension which G-Sprites currently use was enough of a draw to bring him here. I was following the conversation at the start, but after Sephtian and Io said they were okay with Dubbilex creating a 'low level mental network' -I think of it as thoughtweft- it all started going a bit over my head. I think they've sorted out using transmuted metals in circuit boards, which in turn allowed Sephtian to advance the complexity of the designs which he can create without my help, but they're getting into the habit of not finishing sentences when the other three follow their reasoning.

That whole telepathic education thing is starting to look like a better and better idea.

"…you think, Paul?"

I blink. Ted asked the question, but they're all looking at me. "I'm sorry? Drifted a bit there."

Ted and Io share a smirk while Sephtian looks puzzled and Dubbilex doesn't really look anything. Sephtian takes the initiative. "Do you think there would be an adverse impact on Genomorph sentience recognition if they began using magic to a significant degree?"

Would there? "I.. doubt it. There might be some complaints, but at this point it's almost unthinkable that the bill won't get passed. It's just too obviously the right thing to do."

A wave passes along his head frill, causing the thin layer of water armour around his skin to ripple and shimmer. He has to use it to remain upright, but his degree of control is so good that if you didn't know that you would assume that he was walking normally. "I am glad to hear it. We have always found it troublesome to create arcane power generation methods which would not simply require a magician to stand in place and constantly provide power."

**Since Genomorphs do not experience boredom, this is far less problematic for us.**

"I hadn't realised that."

**Genomorph brains are task adapted, specialised to handle the tasks they were bred to perform. So long as we are occupied in that way, we do not experience discomfort.**

Ted turns to Dubbilex. "How's that whole thing going, anyway? I haven't really kept up with the news…"

**There was a degree of confusion amongst the members of the Senate Committee when I first attempted to explain how the Genomorph consciousness functions.**

Io looks him over again. "I have known intelligent creatures of many kinds, and they could be easily be described as equivalent to Humans or animalistic."

**I am a G-Goblin. I was created to manage and coordinate my brothers on behalf of Doctor Desmond. As such, my own mind was designed to be much like that of a Human. For other breeds this is not the case. A G-Elf is designed for pursuit and combat. Its mind can process physical actions at a very high speed and predict how those it hunts will react. It also has a good instinctive grasp of small group tactics. Outside that range of concepts it knows little and cares less. Similarly, G-Gnomes have an understanding of the inner workings of the mind that surpass that even of Human telepaths and can maintain our mental networks over vast distances with no difficulty." Io glances at the small grey figure perched on the workshop bench. "But they are weak and slow when called upon to move under their own power, and have even less creative capacity than G-Elves.**

"They sound like beasts."

**On their own, perhaps they would be. But joined in one shared mind, each shares its particular skills and perspective with the whole. In that way, the Genomorph Entire is capable of an understanding of which no one of its members is capable. Unfortunately, the Senate appear incapable of understanding this.**

"Yeah, not every species has nice easy Human-equivalence. When they asked me about it I just suggested copying and pasting law from another species that's thought about it in detail. They were really hung up on getting a one to one equivalence somewhere."

Io shakes her head. "I still don't think I understand-."

Dubbilex's horns glow brightly, as do those of the G-Gnome. Io's eyes widen and then glaze over. **Eight thousand minds. Eight thousand thoughts. Eight thousand lives. One collective consciousness. One shared ideal. One shared conclusion.**

She turns her head, looking around with eyes unseeing. "It's… Incredible. A civilisation inside your minds."

Sephtian tilts his head to the side slightly. "Might you not have an easier time of it if you were closer to Human norms?"

Dubbilex's horns stop glowing and Io's back in the room. **Perhaps. More than one member of Lex Luthor's public relations team has suggested that we create more G-Goblins like myself in order to better conform to expectations. But that would mean denying a fundamental part of our nature. Despite the similar limb arrangement we are not Human.**

Io looks concerned. "If you are the only one who can speak for your people, what would become of them if you were killed?"

**There are a group of G-Dwarves who have the skills to perform my management duties until a replacement can be created. They can communicate using text to speech devices. I am convenient but not essential.**

Ted grins. "Genomorphs: because none of us are as smart as all of us."

**Perhaps. But does that not apply to Humans as well?**

"Not in quite the same way. Genomorphs don't have the crowd psychology stuff that Humans do. You know, the IQ of the mob is equal to the IQ of the least intelligent member divided by the number of people in the mob."

Dubbilex stares at me for a moment **I am afraid that no Genomorphs currently possess a sense of humour. Work on the G-Pooka is still in the development stage.**

Ted smiles. "What other types are you working on?"

**Based on what I have learned today concerning magic, preliminary work has begun on the G-Fae and G-Oni forms. Though I fear that the development of the G-Succubus may need-**

"Wha-?"

**-to be delayed.** Dubbilex looks at our faces one at a time. **Did I say something alarming?**

Ted looks around, as if hoping someone else will field that. "G… Succubus?"

**There are three common skills amongst those with mental powers. I am both a telekinetic and a telepath and G-Gnomes are telepathic but our ability to create mental illusions is usually limited.** He turns to me. **I believe that you had an encounter with the exception.** The G-Gnome who made Kon and I live through Mister Napier's attack on Mount Justice. I nod. **That brother had minor alterations to his telepathic systems which we had planned to incorporate into a new archetype.**

"But… Succubus?"

**There is a theme of naming Genomorph types after mythological creatures. Succubi are beguiling, beautiful and popular on the internet. It seemed a logical choice.**

Sephtian's frill wiggles again. "I understood from Mister Constantine that there was a.. sexual component? To the Succubi?"

**So I am told. But that is hardly relevant to Genomorphs. We do not reproduce sexually.**

Those of us who do look awkwardly at each other. "This may be part of a larger talk we need to have at some later time." Ring, time? "Ah, I need to get to the theatre soon. Io, do you-?"

Ted waves me off. "Oh, she can stay." He turns to her. "I would like to show you my forge."

"I would be interested to see it. But without a translator-."

Ted sighs, then glances at me. "Paul, turn it off."

Huh? Okay. Ring, stop translating for them.

Compliance.

"I would like to show you my forge. It would be beneficial to see how easily your transmutation ability can be used-" Io's eyes widen slightly. "-in a current day environment."

"You have learned Themysciran Greek! How?"

"Classical Greek, Atlantean Greek and a… A Wonder Woman interest. When I was a youth. I did not think it was right to make you learn English and not reciprocate. How is my accent?"

"Horrible. But I am honoured that you have done this. Yes, I would be delighted to stay with you."

Ted smiles, then takes a moment to wiggle his eyebrows at me.

Oh dear.

back

Carpe Tempus 22

next

21st March

17:32 GMT -4

I feel the arms go around my shoulders and a mouth pressed against my right ear. "Hey, Pavlos. How you been?"

I remain completely still in my seat, my eyes remaining trained on the Amazon actresses on the stage ahead of me. "Good afternoon, Seris. Pretty well, thanks."

"You never called."

"I read a book that said it was best not to be clingy. Besides, I can make my own good times."

"Mine are better." I feel her teeth graze the top of my right ear. "Taboo breakingly better."

"Can I assume from your presence here that you're in favour of this endeavour?"

And.. that's a tongue. O-kay..? "To be honest-" Slup. "-I'm not sure how to-" Tchp "-grade it." She moves her mouth away and nuzzles me. "In absolute terms it's a plane journey and a couple of theatre dates." Her left hand wanders up to my neck and the buttons of my shirt part company with the material, letting her slide it down my chest. "But in relative terms, this is the biggest change some of them have seen in their entire lifetimes."

"Maybe you're over thinking it. How do you feel abo-ow." She bit my ear. "I'm not sure that counts as 'taboo breaking'. People have got pretty relaxed-" She gives my left breast a squeeze. "-about some surprising things."

"But you haven't. Me taking you right here in this seat would be just as big a change for you as doing a play is for them."

"I'm fairly sure someone would notice."

"And?" She shifts position, moving her mouth down to my neck and her left hand along my pectoralis to my side, gently squeezing as she goes. I recognise the technique. "It wouldn't be the first time for this seat, let alone this theatre." She kisses my neck.

"Is this your ever-so-subtle way of nudging me on the whole girlfriend issue, or are you genuinely interested?"

"It's that time of the year when Amazons let their hair down." She kisses me again, then moans into the nape of my neck.

"Firstly, you're not an Amazon. Secondly, you don't have any hair."

"Sure I do. Wanna see it?" There's a moment, then she pulls her head away a little. "Hey, are you suppressing your libido again?"

I look down at my crotch, then back up at the stage. Then I shift a little in my seat. "No."

"Glad to hear it." She-. Oh, come on. Licking the side of my face? This is just getting weir-. Right, chaos. "Just because I can't tell what you're thinking with magic doesn't mean that I can't tell what you're thinking."

Okay, this is enough. I run filaments under my seat, wrapping snake constructs up her legs, torso and arms, pulling her off me. I lean forwards and stand u-. Oh, the buttons are just gone! I recreate them and close my shirt before turning around to face her.

Same Eris. More denim in the clothing than before. I suppose that she may well have just walked in here. She gives the construct-bindings a gentle tug. They give a little, but remain solid. "Mmm. I don't think anyone's done this here before. Though I should probably point out that the trick I was using to make sure no one noticed us stopped working as soon as you responded."

"Didums. You know I actually tried hitting on a woman yesterday?"

"Really?"

"Really."

"Really?"

"Yes, and unless you want me to gag you, you won't say it-."

She grins manically. "Really?"

I transition into her seating row, stare her seriously in the eyes, then extend my right hand forwards, pressing it against her lips. Her eyes widen a little in delight as she opens her mouth and I push my fingers… My hand… My forearm, what? Where is it..? How..? Okay, if I-?

Her expression is -other than her unsettlingly distended mouth- strangely nonchalant. "A hot aggin et."

Ring, whisky spray and a lighter.

"Compliance."

There's a slight delay, then her face bulges and there's a weak wheezing noise. I pull my arm free and remove the constructs binding her as she bends over and starts choking. "Aheh, a heh, ahah hah hah!"

"Good enough?"

"I knew… Aheh aheh. I knew there was a reason I liked you." She thinks for a moment. "Mmm, ten year old Glenfarclas. You must be a good guy to date."

"Most alcoholic drinks just taste yuck to me."

She nods and takes a few deep breaths to clear her airways. "Who was she, anyway?"

"Melinoë."

She holds up her hands in apparent surrender. "That's me butting out of your love life, then." She takes a step closer and puts her right hand on my left shoulder. "But seriously, do that 'embracing positive change' thing you've been telling other people to do. You'll be happier. Or at least, more interesting to me." She tilts her head slightly to the left. "And isn't that the most important thing?"

I move closer still, put my arms around her waist, rest my hands on her buttocks and squeeze them hard. "Of course."

We both continue to regard one another with expressions of complete seriousness for a moment, then she pulls away. "I'll see you tomorrow, at the performance."

"You've seen it before though, haven't you?"

Her eyes narrow. "Not in quite the same way." She shrugs and turns around to walk away. "Break a leg!"

Aaaaaah crap. Eris coming here to check up on me is quite believable. Eris showing actual interest and saying 'break a leg' means that something is going to happen. I transition myself down the aisle to where Clio's watching the dress rehearsal.

"Clio, we may have a problem."

She turns her head and gives me an arch smile. "You fear that your admirers may rush the stage?"

"That wasn't… Okay, she kind of is an admirer, but not.. like that." Probably. "That was Eris, and she rather implied that something.. 'amusing' was going to happen."

Clio's face falls. "Then… Perhaps it would be wise to call it off. Or request that Lord Fate weave some manner of protective spell over the theatre to ensure that

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Carpe Tempus 23

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Now? Oh, okay. Ah...

What was it..?

Oh! Oh!

QueenOfFables said:

Don't you bring your cautionary logic into my story. Think of the narrative flow! Think of the archetypes. You can't introduce new characters at this stage! No, let us have her respond like this instead:

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MrZoat said:

Clio's face falls for a moment, then she recovers. "Are you not a powerful hero, that the Goddess of Chaos finds you so interesting?"

I frown. Is that a.. winsome expression? Odd seeing it on an Amazon. "Um. I sup.. pose. It's not really about power, though. She could mean anything."

"We will be protected by you, by the princess and the young prince, by Troy Girl and by the guards. I have every confidence that between you, you will be able to keep us safe."

"If you say so. I think I'm going to give the place the once over anyway, just in case."

"We will entrust our safety to you, Paul."

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Carpe Tempus 24

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22nd March

08:58 GMT -4

"Mister Olsen, good to see you again." He has to release his grip on his camera to shake my hand. "Ms Lane." The muscles in her hand tense, as if she expected some sort of test of strength. Truth is, I've never really liked shaking hands and tend not to linger unless the other person wants me to. "Don't think I've seen you since January."

"My beat's Metropolis. And Superboy." She shifts her attention. "I see you're wearing a slightly more distinct costume this time."

Kon holds out his hand as well. "You can call me 'Kon'. Ah." He shrugs. "If you like."

Since there will be pictures of both of us and since national syndication is a distinct possibility, we needed a way to distinguish him visually from 'Conner Kent'. Or maybe we don't; Donna's never bothered with that beyond a slightly more introverted civilian persona. Anyway, we dug out the official armoured regalia of a Themysciran prince -Io's diadem included- and the result is… Regal. Certainly there's a strong visual difference between the young man next to me and the sullen youth who attends Happy Harbour High School.

I'm still a little surprised that they haven't changed the signs back yet.

"Not insisting on 'prince'?"

He looks away, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. "No, I… It's kinda new, and.. I'm not really trained to do prince-stuff yet."

Ms Lane smirks. "What exactly does the prince of an island of three thousand year old warrior women do, exactly?"

"Mostly? Studying. I've got over three thousand years of history to read up on, plus all the civics stuff." He manages a small smile. "I can speak Classical Greek, but Themysciran Greek isn't exactly the same and apparently the Genomorphs gave me a weird accent."

Ms Lane nods. "I read Dana's piece in the Herald. Can't believe you're only eight months old."

M'gann and I settled that question like mature adults. With rock-paper-scissors. Extra fun with telepaths and people trained in telepathic resistance.

"So what was it like, having all that knowledge stuck in your head while you were in a tank?"

My eyes narrow very slightly. Obviously I expected her to needle him a bit, but that's something that would have really set him off only a few months ago. Doesn't.. look like it's bothered him.

"I don't really know. I mean, at the time I'd never been to school. I didn't really have anything to compare it to. What was it like, learning stuff by being told it?"

"Time consuming. And usually? Pretty boring." She glances at me. "When's that coming out as a Cadmus product?"

I nod. "At some point, once we have a better idea of what it does to Human brains in the long term. Kon had to have another telepath properly integrate what he'd been taught with his normal memories before he could do more than play it like a recorded message. And at the moment Dubbilex is the only Genomorph who can speak and he's.. a bit busy."

Kon nods. "The stuff the G-Gnomes showed me either came through as a dream or as.. data, without any real context. It wasn't until I got out of the tank that it started meaning anything."

"Couldn't that sort of thing be used for implanting mental commands? The Cadmus-."

"Yes, very-." / "It did, M'gann-."

We all stop talking, Kon and I looking at each other. I incline my head slightly. "It did. Doctor Desmond put several overrides in my mind, things to shut me down or make me.. behave in certain ways if the right things happened. M'gann… Ah, you saw the pictures of us before we went into LexCorp in February?" Ms Lanes nods. "M'gann's the Manhunter's niece. She had to go through my mind and make sure everything fitted together properly."

"Why didn't Manhunter do it himself?"

"I.. know M'gann better."

I smirk. "Some things are easier to accept if they're being done by a cute girl."

"How much did the Genomorphs teach you?"

"A bunch of languages, world history, science, engineering, grandmaster level chess… Lots of things."

"No art in there?"

"I got some philosophy and I know art history. I can sketch, but I don't think Doctor Desmond thought stuff like that was worth including. Could be I can only draw because I needed to be able to do that for technical drawings."

"Do you go to school in America?"

"Yeah, but… In my secret identity. So… Um."

She nods. "Say no more. But why bother, if you already know everything? What do you get out of it?"

"I go to school because I'm a person, not a machine. I'm not just the things I got programmed to think. And the G-Gnomes didn't know much about social interactions."

"You spend a lot of time with Superman?"

"Not really. Didn't I..? Y'know, go over that in Dana's interview?"

"Yeah, but I wanted to know if anything changed."

Kon shakes his head, "Not really."

She looks at him as if she expects him to say more. "You don't.. want.. any sort of relationship with your biological father?"

"I used to. Now? No, It doesn't.. really matter to me. I've got Mom, my friends… Hey, you've probably spent more time with him this year than I have."

Mister Olsen coughs in a way that certainly wasn't a cover for anything.

"You said in Dana's interview that you were created using Superman's DNA. Does that mean that you're a clone of him? Are we going to have two supermen flying around in a few years?"

"Actually, only half of my… It's actually kinda complicated, but only about half of me comes from him."

"Half your DNA?"

"Half my body tissues. You can't just stick Kryptonian and Human DNA together and expect anything much to happen."

"You're half Human." He nods. "Because there were rumors when you first 'came out' that you might be Superman and Wonder Woman's secret lovechild."

"Superman's nowhere near old enough to have a child Kon's age."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes." Ah. "Well, he might have been capable of siring a child -just about- but there's no way Diana would have.. gone with someone that young."

"Okay, so the billion dollar question is: who's your other parent?"

"Lex Luthor." Ms Lane's eyes widen and her mouth hangs slightly open. Mister Olsen exhales suddenly without opening his mouth, producing a sort of farting noise. "With the techniques they were using, they just needed a genetic sample and it didn't matter if the donor was a man or a woman-."

"Let's-! Let's talk about the play for a bit." Ms Lane rapidly switches her attention between us as she tries to get the Kal-El/Lex picture out of her head. "What exactly is 'The Five Faced Senator' all about?"

"It's a comedy, where the main character gets so fixated on his intrigues that he-. In the original it was a he, but obviously this production will be all women-."

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Carpe Tempus 25

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That doesn't work for me. Let us go with something else.

MrZoat said:

"Actually, Clio said she was changing it."

I turn to Kon with a frown. "Really?"

"Yeah, something about the physical stuff not working on a stage where the audience only sees in one direction. They've switched over to doing 'The Foolish Prince'."

"Oh. Well, that's more of a drama. If I remember correctly…"

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Carpe Tempus 26

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22nd March

18:31 GMT -4

There's no sense getting frantic. Diana was quite clear that that may be the result Eris was looking for. Just because you can't find something you suspect to be there doesn't mean that there's something there that's too well hidden for you to locate. I've scanned the building from top to bottom. I've redone the background checks on everyone who will be in attendance and scanned them thoroughly just to make sure. I've also done the same on all of the security guards and secret service agents. On everyone who works here. Near here. Close to here.

Close-ish.

There's a puff of displaced air as Donna flies back into the room we've been using as a base of operations. I turn to face her in the faint hope that she'll have something. She sees the hope in my eyes and shakes her head. "I've been over the whole place. I.. couldn't see anything."

"Thank you."

"So… Do you think Eris was just winding you up?"

"It's possible."

"Maybe.. you.. shouldn't have turned her down."

"Did Clio tell you about that?"

"Clio." She nods. "And Jocasta. And Galene." I sag. "Your…" Her eyes dip and her cheeks colour slightly. "Your whole forearm, huh?"

"I've been wondering: Olympians. Are their Human-shaped forms their actual forms, or are they just… Avatars. Because I remember reading the story of Semele…"

"I've only met Zeus a couple of times with Diana. Asking about his old lovers when Hera was right next to him didn't seem like a good idea."

I nod. I suppose I could now… "So… No idea?"

"Not really. If it helps… I mean, my powers come from the same place and I think this is what I really look like." She turns her head towards the door and then back to me. "Do you wanna go and tell Clio that you're done?"

"Yeah, that's probably a good idea."

I follow her out of the room and down the corridor in the direction of the stalls. Official 'start arriving' time is 1900 so the auditorium should be largely empty. Clio said something about last minute stage direction changes that she wanted to think about. Is she worried? Normally I'd just look and tell but since I handed all of the Amazons Spell Eaters and scry wards just in case the threat was arcane in nature my empathic vision isn't giving clear returns from them any longer.

I won't be watching the play myself. Since it's the one we read through on the plane I already know the outline of the story and I'm supposed to be on guard in case my ability as a security guard is required. Assuming nothing explodes on the first night we're probably safe.

Several Secret Service agents are already monitoring the auditorium as we enter, though the one next to the door we enter through barely even bothers to register our presence. Ring, just double che-. Yes, he's fine. I spot Clio talking to Mala in the far isle. On the stage the set for the opening scene is already in place. Since they're designed for amphitheatres, Amazon plays are usually light on set dressing but Clio wanted to try and make the most of the opportunity the set up here affords.

"You know, I've.. sort of…"

"What?"

"Well… What exactly is your relationship to the Olympians?"

She looks away. "That's… Kind of… Complicated."

"Curtain doesn't go up for an hour and a half."

"Okay, well, you know you can track magic based on.. both what goes into it and how the spell is put together?"

I nod. "Yes."

"That's it."

"What?"

"That's it. I'm full of the same magics they are, that Diana is. No one really knows why or how. I did wonder if I was, y'know, one of Zeus' illegitimate daughters. Or maybe one of the others…"

"And?"

"None of them said anything, and I've met most of the ones who.. do that sort of thing." She shrugs. "I'm still a little curious, but at this point in my life finding out wouldn't really be that big of a deal. What makes you ask?"

"Oh, just curi.. ous." Oh.

"What?"

"You've got the exact same powers as Diana, right?"

"I can't detect lies like she does, but apart from that, yeah."

"Obvious suggestion that someone's probably already checked: is there any chance you were made in the same way she was? From clay and magic?"

"Um." Her eyes drop as she considers the idea. "I… Suppose it's possible. But, Diana was made in Gaea's Grove eighty five years ago. I'm sure someone would have noticed if someone had done it again."

"Not necessarily. Diana took me there on my first day on this planet and no one else was around. The area isn't restricted and Queen Hippolyta told everyone where her new daughter came from."

"It's.. not impossible. But then how did I get here from Themyscira?"

"Where is 'here' exactly?"

"A burned out apartment block in Harlem. The fire fighters found me when they went through the rubble after they put the fire out. You.. really didn't know that?"

"I've.. been trying to cut back on my snooping. So, what: you were just there?"

She nods. "Not as if the fire was going to get hot enough to hurt me. Or the smoke, or the rubble."

"What did people think happened?"

"The woman who owned the apartment I was found in was called Dorothy Hinckley. My birth certificate says she's my mother, but… No one who knew her thought she was pregnant. I don't think she was, but by the time I was old enough to know about this stuff I didn't really care anymore. Mom and Dad are my Mom and Dad."

"Ah."

"It could have happened like that, but I don't see an Amazon making a child, getting Gaea to bring it to life and then travelling all the way to America only to die in a fire."

"No. I suppose their absence would have been noti-."

"Troy Girl! Orange Lantern!" Clio turns away from Mala to smile at us. "Is everything in order?"

"As far as we can tell. You all set?"

"I believe so. First nights are always a concern, but I'm certain that we will do Themyscira proud. There was one thing I wanted to check, however."

"What was it?"

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Carpe Tempus 27

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I nearly exhausted myself overloading his protective amulet the first time, during our little read through on the plane. But I am an old fashioned performer. Props are there to support the actors on stage, not to be the focus themselves. And now? All he's wearing is a prop.

But not the ring. That can stay exactly where it is. I have plans for that.

MrZoat said:

"The centre of America's entertainment industry is a place called 'Hollywood', I believe?"

"I.. think so. Certainly a lot of films are made there."

"Do you know who the most creative people in Hollywood are?"

I smile. She probably won't get the joke, but… "Their accountants?"

She lets out a short laugh. "Quite possibly. A book on tax law is so dry and plain, but the people who study it… Perhaps I should write a play about them?"

"I'm sure Ploutos would appreciate it. Comedy or tragedy?"

"Why not both? Now, why don't the three of you take your place back stage. The curtain raises on the final act shortly."

I frown slightly. "Don't you mean first act?"

"Oh, it will be over all too soon in any case."

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22nd March

19:32 GMT -4

Play appears to be going fine so far. The basic story is that the Queen has to pay a diplomatic visit to a neighbouring city state and leaves her son in charge in her absence. Most of the other characters dismiss him, but he does an alright job and they start to come around until he does something unwise -there are a few versions of exactly what and I haven't checked which they're using- involving a group of visiting merchants. The version where he seduces a foreign merchant's daughter is fairly popular, though there are a couple of others. That results in one of the goddesses getting pissed off with him -for reasons of self preservation Amazons usually depict the deity in question as being a foreign goddess- and raining hardships down on his head while he tries to make things right. Again, depending on the version they're using he either succeeds, finally proving his worth, dies in the attempt and so takes the goddess' wrath onto himself and is hailed as a hero post-mortem, or fails despite his best efforts and it falls to his allies to fix things. Needless to say, in that version it's pretty much 'rocks fall everyone dies'.

Huh. Didn't really think about it before, but I haven't met who they've got playing-.

"Can I... Get a hand here?"

I look around as one of the stage hands tries dragging a large and heavy-looking chest up the steps to the backstage area. He's looking at me and I'm about to send over a filament when Mala grabs the handle at the other end of the chest and lifts it up one handed.

"Oh. Ah, than-" Mala kneels, gets a grip on the base and lifts it up and onto her right shoulder. "-ksss…"

"Where is it being taken?"

"Ah…" Mala is a well muscled woman, but she isn't a professional body builder. If that chest is as heavy as he was making it look… Oh. I knew some Amazons had divine heritage, but if she's that strong it probably means… "Just up there. The director said it was for the guy playing the prince."

"I will see that he gets it."

"Right." He's staring, trying to work out how the hell she's doing that. "I'll, um. I'll get back to work."

She nods, then turns around and heads towards me.

I flick my left index finger at the chest. "I hadn't realised."

"Being the daughter of the most prolific rapist to have ever lived is not something many of us boast about. Divine heritage or not."

"No, I… Of course." The Heraklya are Herakles' daughters, sired when he raped their mothers during the sack of the Old City. That myth about him impregnating all fifty of Thespius' daughters? It turns out that one of Zeus' powers he inherited was super fecundity. The Amazons may have only been his subjects for less than a week before the goddesses enabled their flight but he certainly.. took advantage of the situation. And it wasn't exactly hard to determine paternity, there weren't any other super strong men around at the time. The children were seen for a long time as a particularly unpleasant reminder of the whole episode. I remember reading that the young men ended up being more or less exiled, assigned to the job of monitoring the mainland. Opinion on the women slowly moderated itself as the centuries passed and they're no longer quite the sign of ill-omen they once were.

Mala removes the chest from her shoulder and lowers it to the floor. "Though it is one of the reasons why I am so close to Diana. I am one of the few guards she can wrestle with on near equal terms."

"I thought that Captain Philippus handled that with the Gauntlets and Sandals?"

"She did much, but it was hardly practical for her to be on hand at all times. And I believe that Queen Hippolyta wanted to spread the joys of teaching as far as possible."

"I suppose you wouldn't have had much opportunity to do that for a while."

"There is always something to learn, but… No. I was assigned as her guard when she was an infant, after the Circle made their treacherous attempt on her life and as an instructor when she grew to maidenhood. Even back when we had children who required instruction, I could not easily take part. The risk of me injuring them was simply too great. It was a privilege to be able to aid her."

"Miss her while she was gone?"

"It was good for her to be able to see something of the world, but… Yes. I think we all did."

I raise my eyebrows and incline my head slightly.

"Oh, not like.. that. That is to say… I think we are all a little in love with Diana. Her intelligence, her conviction, her kindness and generosity,-"

"Yes, I've-."

"-her truly magnificent breasts."

…

"Not.. totally comfortable thinking about my best friend's mother in that way. Though if we're talking about it, have you noticed that her hair-?"

"I know. It must be one of Gaea's gifts, because mortal hair would tangle far more readily."

"Mine does, and I keep mine inside a force field!"

We share a smirk at our shared foolishness.

"Have you got any idea who Clio's got-" I tap the crate with my left foot. "-playing the male lead?"

"Ughh?"

"No, and I am not sure when she would have had time to cast the role. I had wondered if she might have asked you-"

"Mmmngh!"

"-or Prince Kon."

"Did you hear that?"

Mala hesitates. "Was it not coming from the stage?"

Ring.

Compliance.

Orange filaments strike the locks and clasps, turning and opening them. Inside are various pieces of Greco-Roman costume and oh shit. I cut the gag to free Clio's mouth before slicing at the cord binding her, and she gasps for air.

Mala pulls her out. "Clio, who did this?"

"And if you're here, who the heck is that in the stalls?"

Clio steadies herself against Mala's shoulder. "Some foe of Diana's. She did not say her name, but bound me with her magic and forced me inside."

"A shapeshifter or an illusionist, then." I generate a railgun construct and load a mageslayer round. "Might even be Circe if I'm really lucky."

"How long ago was this?"

"The performance is tonight?"

"The performance is happening now."

"Then.. days ago. But I did not experience that time."

"Mala, find out what happened. I'm stopping the play." I try to transition to the stage, but something is blocking me. Fine then. I transition to the left wing and stride

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Carpe Tempus 29

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Good boy. And now you're mine.

MrZoat said:

out onto the plaza. No, it would not do to seem too eager for mother's departure. Oh, that was strange. For a moment I thought that my clothing was… No, this is.. perfectly normal. I am glad that Mother finally consented to my request to wear armour. I rather think it suits me. Now, I have merely to avoid tripping over my feet for my audience and her send off and I will have the chance to demonstrate that a Prince of Themyscira can be a capable administrator as well.

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MrZoat said:

I step out of the banquet hall and into the Themysciran night, breathing a sigh of relief as I do so. As I walk towards the edge of the courtyard I turn my head up towards the heavens.

"Lord Ploutos, I thank you for this opportunity. Really, I am honoured to have the chance to play host to a merchant from Kahndaq, especially one so well connected and richly appointed. And one who had been intending to head to Athens. But may I beg a little warning next time? And -if it is not too much to ask- perhaps more than two days into my reign? Would that I had the extra time, I might have been able to acquire someone with a better grasp of their language. Or who could tutor either them or me in the normal courtly manners of our respective countries."

"Are we truly so boorish that you must exhort your god for relief?"

I turn in surprise as a member of the Kahndaqi party walks out from between the pillars on the far side of the courtyard. He… No, she, is wearing a linen.. kalasiris. Yes, that is what they are called. A tube of material which is worn around the body like a chiton but is held up by extending over the shoulders and upper arms, rather than by simple shoulder straps. It is decorated with a pattern of wavy horizontal coloured bands. As an accommodation to the colder Greek weather she has added a shawl, and as she rearranges it as she comes fully into the open I observe that she has not acquainted herself with the Greek custom of wearing a strophion. Her face is decorated with dark lines in the Kahndaqi style and she is also wearing a dark wig, decorated with semi-precious beads.

"I doubt that many merchants would pass up the opportunity to beg whatever favours their gods were prepared to offer."

"A merchant? I rather thought that you were a king? Should you not be able to commune with your gods directly?"

"I am no king. I am but a prince, serving as my mother's regent. And if you were on that side of the courtyard you have been avoiding meeting with us for longer than I have been avoiding the rest of your party."

"I cannot be avoiding people whom I have yet to meet. My father sent me out to listen for information in the marketplaces and in the taverns."

"Spying? Should I call the guards?"

"If you think it fair to make use of your god surely it is reasonable that I make use of my ears. Or perhaps ears are too base a thing for a king-"

"A prince."

"-to make use of? Should I limit myself to petitioning divine favour as well, do you think? Beg guidance from Bes and Ptah for fortune and industry? From Osiris, that the product of Kahndaqi agriculture spread across Greece in an unstoppable torrent?"

I raise my hands in surrender. "Your ears do well enough, I think. They have heard more of me than Lord Ploutos this evening, and I imagine heard more of the news of the city as well. Did you find any of it useful?"

She walks closer, the black lines emphasising the shape of her eyes and the ornamental lines projecting from her left eye becoming easier to see. "That is for my father to decide. There is little benefit in gathering such information if the other party knows what you know."

"Except I have no way to know that what you tell me is what you truly know. You could tell me anything and I would be none the wiser."

"Unless your gods chose to inform you." She's a little shorter than me, and less muscular than the women of Themyscira. At least, those I usually am permitted to associate with. I… I find it rather appealing. "Wisdom from a source I can neither counter nor account for."

"I am a man in charge of Themyscira. Those amongst my gods who are men will not hear me because I am of Themyscira and those amongst my gods who are women will await word from my mother."

"We had best conclude negotiations before she can return, then. She may have ears as well as gods."

"I know well from my own childhood that she does." I look her over once more. "I had heard that the Kahndaqis kept the womenfolk in seclusion."

She gives me a look of mild affront. "And I had heard the same of Themysciran men, yet lo! Here one stands! He even appears able to hold a conversation!"

I look away, nodding ruefully. "I even manage to dress without soiling myself most mornings. Though I should warn you: I have been tutored since birth. I would not wish to speak for the men of the hinterlands, should you have cause to travel there."

"I shall bear that in mind. I did have one other reason for approaching you at this moment." She takes a step closer, standing a mere foot away from me. "I would like to speak with you in private, if that could be arranged."

"My mother's guards are capable of discretion… At least they will not speak to anyone but her."

"Then you can understand why I wish for them to depart."

"I certainly hope I can." The light is too dim for me to tell for certain whether or not she is carrying a weapon. However, my cuirass is strong enough to turn aside a knife and my training should be enough to allow me to defeat a slightly built foreign woman. I turn my head aside, keeping an eye on her while making it clear that I am addressing my guardians. "Guards, head inside. I will call if I need you."

I can feel them hesitate, their heads turning towards Galene for confirmation of my order. I don't let how that irritates me show, but I am nonetheless relieved when I hear them begin moving away. I turn my face towards my guest while staying aware of their position, not completely relaxing until I see their shadows momentarily block the light from the doorway.

"What exactly was it you had to say to me which required privacy?"

She smiles demurely, reaching up to stroke my left cheek with her right hand. "Prince Pavlos, remember."

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That isn't in the script! What is she doing!

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Carpe Tempus 31

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I breathe in sharply, becoming properly aware of my surroundings and the name of the woman before me. "Calliope? What…"

"She ensnared you when you walked onto the stage."

"Who did? I didn't…"

"Her name is the Queen of Fables. Do you remember this story?"

I nod. Gods, this is exactly why I-. "My Spell Eater. She shouldn't have been able to-."

Calliope shakes her head. "I have not seen it, but no magic is being absorbed by anything you are still wearing."

I look at my clothes. No, period. Ring, armour.

Unable to comply.

Spell Eater?

Unable to comply.

"Her magic is still affecting you. I can free your mind for a short time, but you will not be able to act outside of the bounds of the tale."

"Right, what's actually happening?"

"The actors are in a false world created by her magic. The audience are fully enraptured by her spell and so fuelling her illusion. Donna, Mala and Prince Kon are free and attempting to reach you. It was they who called upon me."

"Thank you. Is there a reason they're not just punching her out?"

"She holds the audience hostage, binding their minds and their souls to the play. If it is not completed…"

I nod. She'd know, I suppose. "If the Queen is here, she must have taken a role."

"She will assume the role of the goddess who will be enraged by your treatment of me, and do her utmost to destroy you while the play limits your power."

"Can you aid me further?"

She shakes her head. "The character whose role I have does not appear after this scene. You will have to manage as best you can."

"But I won't be me. I can't plan or fight effectively as a classical Themysciran prince!"

"The magic may change your memories but it will not change your nature. The Prince overcomes his challenges in more versions of this story than those in which he fails to do so. You will have to trust your friends and your virtues. Now, come. We must do something together that will enrage my father."

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Carpe Tempus 32

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Not really sure what happened there, but the play must go on.

I mean, I am now. This is the.. second night after all. But you know what I mean.

And why aren't you reading the comments? That's half the fun!

Mr Zoat said:

"The morning feels as though it has passed in a distressing blur. The start held much promise, my eyes opening to the dawn sun over the farmlands, the sky turned red as the light passed through the clouds. The welcome presence of Calliope in my arms, waking as I did and sharing in the radiant beauty of the heavens."

Dalma barely prevents herself rolling her eyes at me. "Stirring, highness."

"And then things went down hill. The search parties I could forgive, could understand. When the prince's guards do not know where he is, that is a just cause for concern. And we clearly have a duty of care to our guests. But when they had sight of me, was it truly needful to storm the guard tower from which we had been watching the stars the previous night? Was the sounding of mail on stone, was the bellowing of parade ground voices really likely to offer aid to anyone?"

"Thoughtless of them to so disturb you, highness."

"I merely mean to say that we could have handled the situation diplomatically. I.. rather feel that Jocasta was simply acting out of spite, taking pleasure in my embarrassment. It is not -after all- as if stargazing is a particularly strange or shameful activity."

"No, highness. Not gazing at stars."

"And alerting her father. Was that needful? He had not expected her to return, after all. She had his leave to remain in the company of Themysciran citizens, she was sent out from his party for just that purpose."

"Citizens, highness. Though -if I may, highness- Themysciran citizens usually share certain-" She cups her breasts. "-characteristics, which you do not."

"I am not some barbarian, not some centaur drunk at a wedding feast who would haul off women for his own pleasure, heedless of their feelings or situation! Two layers of cloth -or more- separated our bodies for the entirety of the evening and the night and into the morning! And I was not being accused of holding her hand!"

"Certainly, highness, it would be a strange place for a hand."

"And the curses, the curses were entirely excessive. The gods of Olympus -praise unto them!- are enough gods for this city. More than enough, in fact. We have not even built temples to every one. How would it be right to hail a foreign deity before Phanes had a shrine or Mnemosyne an altar? And would not the gods -praise unto them!- take issue with the intervention of another pantheon in the life of one of their princes?"

Dalma raises her eyebrows.

"Cities, I misspoke, cities is what I meant to say. Though -praise unto them!- princes as well… Perhaps? No, no, I do not mean to imply that I need the gods to guide me in every step and action I take as Themyscira's ruler though.. should they choose to make their will known I would be obedient to it to the best of my ability. Particularly on the subject of curses, foreign dignitaries and proper personal conduct. But, ah… What was I doing?"

"Bemoaning, highness. Bemoaning and bewailing. Though I believe that you were originally intending to hold court."

"Court! Yes. Court. One.. trade mission is a… Well. A little less successful and.. more full of curses called out to foreign gods than one might have hoped, but life goes on! Curses… Notwithstanding, I hope? Praise unto the gods?"

"This way, highness."

I follow Dalma in the direction of the throne room. The guards are too well disciplined to whisper while in my view, but I can feel their eyes and hear their unspoken accusations. The servants and tradeswomen are more open in their commentary, though never quite becoming audible from where I walk. Do they believe that I.. was indiscreet, with Calliope? I wasn't. Do they not know me at all? Do they have so little faith in their prince? Oh, foreigners can be so strange about such things! Should I have offered to wed her? Securing a trading partner would most likely have been worth… Well, worth me, and she was hardly difficult company. Nor hard on the eyes, from what little I saw. No, too late now.

And here is the throne room. And a petitioner already. The hour is a little early, but if I am here I may as well begin. She faces the throne as I stride across the floor, her hooded cloak concealing her head entirely. "My good woman! How may the prince of Themyscira ease your burdens?"

"By his suffering."

"Such is the fate of sovereigns, even temporary ones. But if you could be more precise-."

She pushes her hood back as she turns oh gods! Her face is chalk-white and her lips blood-red, a thin line of red trailing from the middle of her lower lip down the centre of her chin. Her hair floats and wafts around her head, white near the scalp and darkening to red towards the ends. A gold tiara keeps it from her face and a strange fan like structure extends from the neck of her undershirt. Gold coloured armour -most likely orichalcum- covers her torso and the colour is also found in the talons at the ends of the long red gloves which cover her arms to just below the shoulder. Her irises are blue but the eye which surrounds them is an inhuman silver.

I…

"Prince of Themyscira, you have sore offended one of my worshippers. One who is a particular favourite of mine. His daughter was his particular treasure and you have sorely ill-used her."

Ooooooooh… But I..!

It is as if the world twists and shrinks around her, throne and dais and her own person expanding to accentuate her inhuman majesty. I desperately genuflect as she turns and with a toss of her cape seats herself upon my mother's throne.

"Now, what do you propose to do in order to make it up to me?"

Ah? I have never… I've not in person met… "What would you have me do, oh goddess?"

"Hmm." She plucks an apple from a nearby fruit bowl and holds it up in her right hand, examining it critically. "What do the folk of this land normally do to please their gods?"

"It varies from state to state and from god to god, oh divine one. Some gods are fond of those who practise the craft of which that god is patron, so long as they remember who is god and who devotee. Some demand offerings, of fruit or meat. Some demand worship and prayer, some celebrations and festivals, some favour song and others contests of might. How..? What offerings do the people of Kahndaq make to you?"

"Their best. Their greatest. What else could be sufficient to honour me?" She leans back slightly, crossing her legs. "You, prince, do you have some purpose here?"

"I am… I was ruling the city in my mother's stead."

"And for how long was that reign intended to last?"

"Perhaps another twenty days, oh goddess."

"Then for the next twenty days, you will bring me the best that Themyscira has to offer. Let us start with…" She gazes around the room. "A sword. You have until nightfall to forge for me the greatest sword this nation has ever seen."

I… Do have some knowledge of sword-smithing…

"Succeed, and I will find something else for you to do on the morrow."

"And… S-should I fail?"

She smiles a smile most cruel.

"Then I shall take my vengeance upon this city, making you watch the rest of your countrywomen die before finally robbing you of your reason."

Oh gods.

"Then… With-. By your leave? I… I will begin."

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Carpe Tempus 33

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Just a little longer, dear boy. A little longer.

MrZoat said:

I walk, tired but satisfied, in the direction of the palace. Before me I push a barrow containing the largest sea-bass I have ever seen. Not exactly exalted work for a prince, but if it holds off her wrath for another day then catching it was a day well spent. The looks I get from the passers by are a good deal more respectful now than they were on the first day. I am uncertain whether that is due to their respect for my effort or the bloodstained bandage on my left arm and the bruises which by now cover much of my body. Seeking the greatest things for a jealous goddess without time to recover between each task has not been an easy undertaking.

"Another day done, another task completed. And surely there can be no finer fish in all the seas of Greece than this? She may be harsh, but she has fairly judged my past offerings and I have full faith that she will judge this one just the same."

"I did not know that the prince of Themyscira knew aught of fishing. Is that not a somewhat plebeian habit for royalty?"

A woman, bald of head and slight of build, picks her way out of the crowd.

"It is the business of a prince to keep his people alive by whatever means are required. If I must be a fisherman then I must be a fisherman. My pride in the matter is secondary, if not entirely irrelevant."

"Did you practice for this humiliation, or did you find that it came naturally?"

Wonderful. And there are no guards around whom I can simply instruct to remove her. "I know something of sailing but little of fishing. It was by the grace of the gods that I happened to be in the correct place at the correct time."

"And such a magnificent catch! It is as if Poseidon himself threw it onto your boat."

"Yes, I… I suppose that it was."

"And yesterday, a basket of plums such as Demeter herself may have cultivated and the Dryads themselves may have plucked."

"You see,-."

"And a hundredfold return of your coin, with a skill that Ploutos would admire."

"I-."

"And to drink the waters of lunacy and return to us with a sound mind inside a single day, a feat which takes the greatest of oracles years to learn and a week to accomplish."

"Luck is-."

"And the poem. I was moved to tears."

"I was actually taught-."

"And the sword was a marvel, especially from one who has never touched a hammer or anvil before. Even in the dark it glows as though lit by the sun. We must be the most blessed people in Greece to have such a talented p-."

"Alright! The gods are helping." I sag, and stop pushing. "No, let me be frank: the gods are doing it, acting through me, though for what reason I cannot divine. I cannot think what I have done that would cause me to earn such favour. Perhaps they resent her-" I glance at the palace. "-being here. And while I might prefer them to take a more direct approach-"

She looks a little alarmed. "You wouldn't. Trust me."

"-I am of course completely grateful for any aid they -praise unto them!- feel able to lend." I shake my head. "Standing silently in court while my mother rules, knowing that there was no purpose in learning from her how to perform a role I would never be called upon to fulfil. Standing silently on a boat I can barely sail, clutching my mouth and my stomach lest I try to attract the fish I seek with my own breakfast and bile as bait! You see, I am trained for this!" I bow my head, trying to regain my composure. "What is your name?"

"It's Eris."

"Well." I look up. "Seris-."

She rolls her eyes. "No, see, that was funny the first time but now it's just old. Recognise this?" She reaches into a pouch and pulls out an apple yellow as-. That isn't yellow. That's gold. "I don't really do indirect."

"I, ah. Oh great goddess of chaos! What can this humble mortal Greek do-?"

"She's going to ask for the head of the fairest prince in Themyscira. On the last day, that's what she'll do. After she's made you run around as her errand boy and come so close to surviving. She'll make you choose between your life and your city."

Oh. "Then… I can only pray that I have the courage-."

She slaps me across my right cheek with her free hand. "Oh, this needs to stop. You're so boring like this. I know full well you hated being a useless ornament! Why are you taking it now?!"

"What choice is there? I don't have the power-." Ow! And now each cheek has been equally slapped. I actually stagger back under the strength of it.

"Stop saying that! If you are so powerless to change what she would have you do then you may as well kill yourself now to save me the effort of helping you! Do you believe that your punishment is in any way just? Is it deserved?"

"The whims of the gods are not-." She raises her hand once more and I shrink back. "No! No I don't! I act from a position of weakness! I don't want any of this!"

She seems pleased. "Finally. And?"

"And she is a goddess and I have a fish!" I gesture at the now much less satisfying sea-bass. "A fish! How can I resist her with a fish?"

"How indeed. And why?"

"How? Why-?" This is the help I am getting from her. I must at least make best advantage of it. "Because this is unjust. The punishment does not come within a mile of matching the crime, and she has simply used it as an excuse to torment me. Because through her I am bound to Tartarus and if I am truly fortunate I will perhaps be offered a choice between the boulder and the vultures! I have been faithful, I have been temperate, and now one with power I can scarce comprehend stands as my vengeful judge. Is all mortal virtue for naught!? May I do nothing but bow to her whims, every alternative being utterly repugnant?"

"I don't know." She looks at her apple. "I'm not a mortal. Is your virtue for naught?"

"I don't…"

BABUM

And then I feel it.

BABUM

Something in my soul utterly revolting at the idea. It's… It's the first clear thing I've felt, that I've needed to act on since… Since I can't even remember. "No. No, that cannot be. I will not accept it. There must be some way… Perhaps not with the fish, but she keeps the sword close at hand. Perhaps…"

Eris smiles a smile which should probably make me quake. Might, actually, were I not already under such pressure already. "Good boy. Here, take this, and do not let her see it." She holds out the apple and I.. hesitate to take it. "Oh, go on. How much worse can it possibly make things?"

"I may live to find out." I hold out my right hand and she gently places it on my palm. It feels cold and hard, as a lump of gold its size and shape should. But there is something more, beneath the surface. Something crackling, something destructive but oh so alive.

Chaos.

"You realise that after complaining about my helplessness I'm about to rely on a goddess' aid?"

"I'm just giving you a shot. You -and the fish- have to make it count for something."

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Carpe Tempus 34

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His head! Hah! I have heads aplenty. More than I could possibly wear. No, a young man like that voluntarily sworn into servitude is worth far more to me than a mere head. And swear he will, and shortly. And then I shall set my new huntsman upon my foe and finally have done with her. Now hurry, slave-writer. I expect this to be done by Sunday at the latest.

Mr Zoat said:

Apple concealed within my robes I push the fish-bearing barrow towards the throne room. The whispers around me continue, but now I imagine that rather than admiring my determination they are laughing at my folly. The ever-dutiful Dalma awaits me at the throne room door.

"How goes the court?"

"She did little but stare into a hand mirror."

"For the entire day?"

"For -as you say highness- the entire day. How were the waters?"

"Fishy. And full of insight."

"Fishy insight?"

"The fishiest."

At the far end of the throne room I see the goddess Tsaritsa lounges on my mother's throne, a servant holding yesterday's plums within easy reach. "She seems to like the plums well enough."

"I have not enquired as to her social relationship, highness, but she has not eaten even one."

"Truly? I did not dare try even one for myself, but they looked excellent. But not to eat even one? If she does not plan to eat them, then why did she demand that I..? Was the purpose of making me gather them to make me gather them, then? And why did the quality matter? If Themyscira's survival was dependent upon it I would have rolled around in pig shit if she had so ordered!"

"If I may be so bold highness, I imagine that the objective was not the purpose of the exercise. And she has several days more. Perhaps she is saving the pig shit for later?"

"I wonder if her desire for the greatest things extends to pig shit. And what would qualify as 'great' in such a case? The foulest, or the least foul? Which best describes the ideal form of pig shit?"

"I bow to your knowledge of such matters, highness."

"Perhaps she will be satisfied with any shit as well as she is with any plums." I stop, for a moment uncertain as to my next step. "Thank you, Dalma. I will speak to her alone."

"As you wish, highness."

She falls back as I advance. Probably best that she be out of sight. I'm not entirely clear what I'm going to do next but it will probably be best that Tsaritsa not form a picture of myself and Dalma as being too closely associated. I see the location of the sword I brought, propped up against a bench just where I left it. "Oh goddess!" She idly looks around, not regarding me with any particular importance. "By your command I have brought you a fish! A fish most magnificent! I have myself never seen any fish finer, nor have-."

"It suffices. Your duty for this day is done."

"Where would you like me to leave the fish?"

She waves indolently. "There is fine."

"If.. your divinity will forgive me, even so fine a fish as this will undoubtedly become offensive to the nose if left out for long. Might I not have it conveyed to the kitchen? Would you not like to partake of its flesh yourself?"

Her attention returns to her mirror. "You were instructed to bring a fish and indeed a fish you have brought. You are done, I say. Return on the morrow."

"I had a… A philosophical enquiry, if I may? Being a goddess, you have a perspective that neither I nor any other mortal shares and I would greatly appreciate your input."

Her grip on her mirror weakens slightly, causing it to tilt slightly away from her. A moment later she tosses it to a servant before swivelling around to face me, clawed hands steepled before her, eyes fully focused on me and left eyebrow attentively arched. "Ask. Your question may amuse me."

"As a mortal, my tutors have encouraged me to develop certain traits of character. Certain modes of thought that -should I stay true to them- would enable me to face whatever trials exist in my life to the best of my abilities, and -since I as a prince have near every practical advantage which a mortal man may- form my life into the ideal form of life. Socrates listed these virtues as self-control, courage, justice, piety and wisdom, all of which I can display upon command and often without command, simply as a part of my character. Such things are supposed to guard against ill fortune, and yet… These past few days have led me to doubt this belief. As prince and regent I have as much power as a mortal soul can bear, yet one simple error in conduct and I am held at the mercy of-" I gesture to her with two open hands. "-a goddess. Tell me, please: does this punishment really flow from my actions? Some failure in my innate capacity for justice? Or self-control?"

"Truly? It does not."

"Then why did you choose me as the object of your interest?"

"I was bored, my attention was drawn to you. Nothing more than that."

"Then, our positions, my servitude… These are merely the result of the power imbalance between us. You, a goddess, are more powerful than any mortal and so may command them at your leisure."

"A most well cultivated wisdom."

I come a little closer, not daring to look away even as the sword approaches arm's reach. "And even in serving you, I have found my virtues to be inadequate to the tasks. I am no smith, no farmer, no oracle and no fisherman. I can write, but I am no great bard. These are practical skills of which I have little experience. Therefore my ability to serve you came not from my virtues but from the favour of the Olympians. Now, I am as pious as any prince but I do not think that I have performed any deed that would earn me such aid. So, again, my virtues are for naught and my luck decides my fate. So I ask: is all mortal virtue for nothing in the face of divine power?"

She looks pleased, sitting back slightly. "Yes. Yes it is. Entirely. It pleases me that you have recognised this."

I…

BABUM

"It does remind me a little of the tale of Lord Hades' marriage. Demeter cursed the world with winter even after her daughter's location was known to her. Hades does not mistreat his wife, she holds high station, and yet each year the ground freezes. And in doing that she does not trouble Hades in the slightest, safe as he is within Erebos. Mortals did her no offence and mortals bear the brunt of her wrath."

"Such is your station in life. As the lives of your cattle are yours to dispose of as you will so your lives are ours. This is the way of things."

BABUM

I can't accept that. There is some strange feeling of revulsion, of wrongness swelling up inside me. I reach into my robes to lay my right hand on the Apple.

"I don't think I can accept that."

"Were you to jump from a cliff, I doubt that it would impress the ground to hear that you did not accept the reality of your f-."

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Oh, here we go.

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Carpe Tempus 35

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My right arm is outstretched as the Apple of Discord strikes her directly in the forehead. It breaks apart like a rotten fruit, her eyes widening in astonishment as the force of the impact knocks her head back.

I dart to the side in a crouch, my right hand closing around the sword hilt. "I must.. dissent."

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Carpe Tempus 36

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Not as planned!

...

Is that it? Can I go?

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Carpe Tempus 37

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I'm glowing, though whether the cause is the sword, some new god or some characteristic of myself I cannot tell. Three rushed paces take me to within striking distance of Tsaritsa and I bring my blade around in a clumsy overhead strike!

BABUM

Her right hand comes up to parry with her claws. She does not look as if she should have the strength for it, but her hand barely moves and the claws remain solid. They must be orichalcum as well!

BABUM

Don't hesitate, don't stop. Keep her on the defensive! As her parry turns my sword aside I twist, trying to turn it around under her guard. She catches the blade with her left hand and holds it fast. "Mortal prince-."

BABUM

I punch her in the face. "God or mortal, tyrants are not to be borne!"

No, that orange light definitely isn't coming from the sword. I yank at the blade even as I pull my fist back for another strike. My knuckles are an inch from her face as her left hand catches my wrist.

BABUM

I smash my forehead into her nose, hearing a crack that I don't think was my skull.

"Ah!"

BABUM

"I will not tolerate slavery to foul gods! I reject the world you would make! Begone!"

Orange light flares, and for a moment I'm standing not in a palace but in some strange form of amphitheatre. The stone flagstones beneath my feet are replaced with some form of wood, the walls with cloth and passages away to I know not where. Turning my head a little I see that there is even a vacuous crowd staring at my struggle.

What madness is-?

Tsaritsa stands, forcing me back. Her nose is off-centre and blood issues forth from her nostrils. "IMPUDENT WRETCH!" She pulls my left arm aside, bringing my face close to hers. I think she's growing taller, as I'm forced to choose between hanging from her hand or releasing my grip on the sword's hilt. "YOU THINK YOU CAN STAND BEFORE A GODDESS?!"

Around me the amphitheatre disappears by degrees, the floors returning to stone as if they never were anything else. Curtain becomes wall once more, and space itself bends as the audience begins to-

"Paul!"

-vanish. A young woman of Themysciran aspect lunges forth from a pathway in the seating, flying through the air to pass through the last visible part of the audience even as the throne room's side wall reasserts itself. She's wearing a tightly-fitted garment made of materials I cannot readily identify, jet black save in those places where tiny flecks of silver shine through. It is as if she wears the night itself! On her forearms are solid mithril bracers, at her waist hangs a silver lasso and in her hands she carries some form of chain with manacles atta-.

There's a sudden force on my left arm and then I am in the air, Tsaritsa hurling me away to face her new challenger. A moment of weightlessness as I prepare to land, then the newcomer catches me mid-air and lands us both halfway down the throne room. I immediately turn to face Tsaritsa, sword ready. She was not precisely growing taller, I note. Rather she now floats off the ground, her legs replaced by a great swarm of thick vines. "What manner of creature-!?"

"Paul?"

"I am Prince Pavlos of Themyscira. I mean no offence, my lady, but I had rather hoped to do this without further divine intervention."

"I though-." She glances at me before returning her attention to our enemy. "No, I'm only a demigoddess. Donna of, um. Of Troy."

"Well met, Donna of Troy. Have you fought Tsaritsa before?"

Tsaritsa opens her arms wide, throwing out many tiny… Are those seeds?

"No, but my teacher has. If we can bind her in this chain she will be powerless."

"Very well. Wrap it around her as fast as you can. I shall hold her attention." I dash forwards.

"That's not-! Ah. Why did he have to be stuck in character?"

I make it perhaps half way towards our foe before the floor explodes around us! As the dust settles I see a dozen skeletons made of stone around us! I had always imagined the Spartoi simply as odd-looking men but clearly I was mistaken. I slice the closest through the ribs and spine before it can get its bearings and I am rewarded with it falling into two parts. The upper part lands on its back and stabs at me with its sword, forcing me to sidestep to avoid it.

"The skull!" Donna flies at one of them, who blocks her with its shield. She shoves it back until it strikes a wall, then releases her grip and slams her hands together from either side of its head, crushing it to dust. A half-second later the rest crumbles as well and she grabs its sword and shield.

Skull it is. I drive the point of my sword through the cranium of my fallen foe and it dissolves just as hers did. Come to think of it, I could really do with a shield myseawah! A glowing orange shield forms on my left arm. Okay then. I charge the next stone warrior, ducking down slightly to shoulder charge it while slicing at its legs. My sword cuts cleanly through its left tibia and fibula and combined with the force of my impact sends it crashing to the floor. There's a movement on my left and I hurriedly block with my shield even as I slice the top off my current opponent's skull. Dusted.

A sword clangs off my shield and I instinctively counter with a shield bash before turning and stabbing through a stony eye socket. I take a moment to appraise the fight. Tsaritsa is hanging back, I've destroyed three and Donna… I watch as she destroys her seventh.

BABUM

No. My side or not, I'm not letting a divinity do all the work.

BABUM

I rocket forwards, a nimble sidestep and stab slaying another stone warrior. Two more steps and I turn my shield to block a spear thrust, three more and I leap, swinging my sword down towards Tsaritsa's torso! She raises both sets of talons to block once more and my blade strikes hers-

BABUM

-and cleaves through before being turned aside by the cuirass, pushing her back until it bites into her tendrils.

"AAAAAAAGHHH!"

She tries to fall back as I land back on the ground. I advance once again, swinging my sword even as she tries to entangle me in the boneless limbs. Once, twice, three times I slice through, each time warped flesh falling lifeless to the floor and closing the distance a little more.

"Behind you!"

I hurriedly turn and fall to a crouch, the stone warrior's swing passing over my head. My riposte pierces its skull through the bottom of its jaw on its journey to the top of its head. Immediately I return my attention to Tsaritsa, staring into her widening eyes. "Still contemptuous of the strength of mortal men?!" I advance once more as she reorientates her tentacles. "Still careless of mortal virtue?!"

"How..? How..?"

I step left, cutting through a tentacle that had assumed the shape of an octopus' limb.

"Because I-" Chop. "-am resolved-" Slice. "-to replace your nightmare of mortal serfdom-" Impale. "-with my own more egalitarian vision!"

She rears up, her full attention on me. "Your resolution means even less to me than these temporary wo-." From behind her Donna wraps the chain around her neck- "Hh?" -before pulling it tight and closing the manacles around her upper arms. Runes on the manacles glow in shapes that I do not understand, even as Tsaritsa's head jerks up and she exhales, mist rising from her mouth, eyes and shattered nose as she collapses to the floor. I take a step back, braced for a renewed attack even as her tentacles evaporate and she is reduced to her Human-seeming shape.

"Nicely done, Donna of Troy. Now we can hold her in the dungeons until mother returns. With the damn fish."

She doesn't seem happy, however.

"But that should have ended her magics. Why are we still in the play?"

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Carpe Tempus 38

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"Play?"

Donna turns away from me to haul Tsaritsa upright. "Why hasn't it stopped yet?"

Predictably, Tsaritsa just turns her head away.

"Donna, what play? We're in the palace in the City of Themyscira. We do host players upon occasion, but we are not doing so at the moment. It would hardly have been safe with.. her threat hanging over us."

She sighs, trying to get her thoughts in order. "Okay, this is going to sound.. a little strange."

"I have spent the past five days as the dogsbody of a deranged goddess. My standard for 'strange' is not what it was."

"No, you haven't."

"I assure you, Donna, I remember it quite clearly."

"What did you have for dinner yesterday?"

"I…" I shake my head. "Some bread? Some fruit as well, I imagine?"

"Do you remember eating it?"

I hold my hands out to the sides in a shrugging motion. "I.. have.. eaten many dinners over the years. Given how worried I was, I don't think that-."

"You don't remember it because it didn't happen. The Queen of Fables -Tsaritsa- trapped you and several others in a play just over an hour ago."

"She… She did? Then…" I look around. Now I think about it, my memories of the last.. few… The last hour does seem a little… Off. "I clearly remember each of the challenges, but the rest… I had assumed that it was simply a matter of the stress…"

"What did you see when I flew onto the stage?"

"An amphitheatre, but I assumed that it was a vision created by her magics."

"No, that was reality. This is the vision. When you attacked her you somehow disrupted her magic for a moment and saw outside it."

"If you mean to say that my mind has been altered, why are you not affected? "

"I'm wearing an amulet that protects me from enemy magic. The spell isn't all that strong, it's just all-encompassing."

"Then…" I stare at my right hand. "Do.. I exist? Does Themyscira?"

"The Old City was conquered by the army of the demigod Herakles over three thousand years ago. The Amazons who escaped fled to an island and made their home there. You… Yes, you exist. Your name is Paul, and you are a wise and mighty hero."

I nod. I don't really understand this, but the sense of wrongness that I get when I contemplate the idea of Tsaritsa winning still burns within me. "If this is.. a play, then it most likely…" I shake my head. "No, that…"

"What?"

"If it were a Hellenic play, it would have a certain structure to it. At the end, there would be a summation of events, and those who lived would state how the experience had changed them, what they had learned from it. If the fight was the climax then we have yet to have the denouement, and as such the play is not over."

"Huh. Okay. I've learned that fights are much easier when you're properly equipped to deal with your opponent. These chains are something else." She releases Tsaritsa to fall back to the floor. "I've also learned the value of networking. I'm just glad that Kon knew where you keep everything."

"Kon?"

"He's.. a friend. He's the guy who thought to get the suppression chain and my Spell Eater. Would I.. need to keep talking about things I've learned?"

"The resolution of the main plot is the important part. Who was the main character in this?"

She gives me a look. "You're the main character, Paul. The story is about how the Prince copes with his trials."

"Oh. I think my blood is still a little hot from the fight to say anything truly profound, but I will give it my best." I walk to roughly the centre of the area that briefly appeared to be the amphitheatre stage and face the direction in which I briefly saw the audience. "Over the past hour -though it seemed to me to be longer- I have reflected upon my misfortune in several different ways. I hope that now I can see it for what it actually is, but I am mindful that at each step of the way I thought the very same. Firstly, I would say that I have learned that no matter what you do or how you live, someone, somewhere will take exception to it, no matter how reasonable the action or unreasonable the exception. The second is that a foul tyrant is a foul tyrant, whether mortal or god, and should be fought just the same."

"The third, is that while many gods were happy to aid me in my struggle, the one who gave me the impetus I needed to confront Tsaritsa did not do so by helping me. She did so by confronting me with the assumptions I had made and forcing me to see the situation for what it truly was. She gave me the opportunity and then left me to sink or swim according to my own abilities. While I thank the others for their aid, it is Eris to whom I am most indebted. It is strife that led me to victory." I half turn to look at the area around the throne. "And I may need to get her a new apple."

"Philosophically, I have learned that no virtue will entirely protect you from misfortune or the wrath of vengeful gods. And that when they fail to do so, it is folly to assume that it was your fault all along. I also learned that no one -not even a god- is invincible. And that a mortal with sufficient drive can cast them down through their own efforts."

I step away, turning back towards Donna. "I think that's me soliloquied out. Should I ask the other players to enter, or do you think that will suffice?"

"That's done it. Look over there."

I follow her gaze as I see flagstones once more being replaced by wooden boards. I nod. "I am not sure what of this I will remember when I am once more.. who I was. Still, I am grateful to you as well."

"It was nothing."

"It was not nothing; we brought down a goddess together." Hm. There is that other thing I learned. "And I suppose it's as well to be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb."

She shakes her head. "What do you mean by that?"

I walk slowly towards her, stopping just short and taking hold of her unresisting hands. I raise them to my mouth and kiss her knuckles. "Your valour, your ferocity and your power quite impressed me." I take a moment to take a closer look at her face. "And now that I have the chance to examine you more closely I find that you are a striking beauty."

She blinks in surprise. "Um."

"I was nearly killed for merely spending an evening in a woman's company, and I am loath to deny myself that pleasure again. Have you made any plans for the Dionysia? Because if not-" I step closer. "-I would very much like to spend it with you."

She backs away slightly. "Okay this play needs to end right now."

"All the world's a stage, Donna of Troy. And we are but-."

And back in the room.

I look at Donna's hands.

Then Donna's mildly flushed face.

And then we both take a step away from each other as the audience begin applauding.

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Carpe Tempus 39

next

22nd March

22:12 GMT -4

I grin at Clio. "So? How did we do?"

She takes a deep breath as she considers her feelings. We're in the dressing area with Donna while Diana and Kon sort things out with the police and Secret Service. It took us several minutes to convince the audience that what they had just borne witness to was not in fact an example of ancient Greek special effects, but rather a supervillain attack. The Secret Service agents were quickest on the uptake, several of them recognising Tsaritsa from League intelligence reports. With her so clearly and thoroughly defeated they didn't immediately evacuate the President but the senior agent did express an interest in acquiring Spell Eaters.

I referred him to Atlantis.

"I have never seen it staged in quite that way before."

Donna grins. "I don't think anyone has."

"N… No. I meant that I have never seen that story performed in that way before. In versions where the Prince is aided by the gods their intervention is always shown as a beneficent thing. They do so either to help a Greek against a foreigner, to chase off an interloping god or in response to his piety and devotion to his people. In your version, the Prince only overcame his foe by turning from gods entirely and forging his own path."

"With a little help from Eris."

"Yyyyes. I cannot help but feel that that was aimed at we Amazons."

I shake my head. "Hey, I honestly believed myself to be an Old Themysciran prince. Anything that looked aimed.. almost certainly wasn't."

"Also, having Troy Girl break into the climax was a little… A little meta for my tastes."

Donna nods. "I suppose it would be hard to convey the idea that the Queen-." I glower, stare and shake my head. "That Tsaritsa-" I nod approvingly. "-was in control of the stage."

"Unless you took on the role."

Clio frowns. "I think not. I cannot think of a way to give myself tentacles in place of my legs."

"I know a guy-."

"I do not. And I will continue not to, thank you very much." She takes another deep breath. "I also felt that the denouement was somewhat weak."

"I… Pavlos did say-."

"It is an acceptable break from reality to have players make eloquent speeches in situations where no real person would." I nod. It was a bit federally mandated cartoon 'what have we learned' message. "Still… I may use parts of it again. Perhaps as a comedy."

"Are you going to stage another performance?"

"Yes, we will. No one appears to have suffered any lasting harm and we have practised 'The Five Faced Senator' extensively."

"I wonder if the prospect of being attacked by a supervillain will scare more people away now that it's already happened once?"

"I somehow doubt it-." The ring flashes. "Excuse me." I step away from the two of them and raise it to my ear. "Orange Lantern here."

"Orange Lantern, would you and Troia please come out to the foyer." Diana's voice. "We need to decide what we are going to do with the Queen of Fables."

"We'll be there in a-."

"Please, walk. People are nervous enough as it is."

"A minute then. Orange Lantern out." I lower my hand. "Troia, we're wanted."

"Okay." She turns back to Clio. "Are you going to be okay without us?"

Clio nods. "There are American guards all around and we have Zosime and Mala. We will be fine."

Donna nods in return and follows me out into the corridor. As we head towards the public parts of the building I consider my Classical-era alter ego's assessment of her. Of course, he wasn't aware of our true age… On the other hand, Donna's probably ageless from adulthood in the same way Diana is, she's going to be eighteen in about three weeks and I seem to remember that she married an older bloke in the comics.

"So, am I really that ugly?"

"What do you mean?"

"The way you reacted when Pavlos hit on you. It's the second time I've been shot down in three days and I was wondering if-."

"Oh, no, it was… You weren't in your right mind. And, um… You may not be aware of this? But asking to 'spend the Dionysia' with someone is basically.. asking them to have sex with you."

"Ah."

"Also, I'm kinda.. seeing someone…"

"Okay. Okay." Swing and miss. "What were you and Kon up to while I was method acting?"

"Kon went back to the cave to get your equipment and I had to notify the League and deal with the police. Once Mala told me it was.. Tsaritsa, I had a better idea of what to expect. We tried putting Spell Eaters on the audience but that didn't seem to do anything and since we weren't exactly sure where she was we didn't want to risk bringing anyone unprotected in."

How would..? "If she'd.. pulled their minds or souls partially out of their bodies… No, I'm not sure how that worked. I'll hand a report over to Sephtian and John and see what they can come up with." I frown. "No Nabu?"

We walk through the foyer doors, past the Secret Service agents and police.

"He isn't invulnerable to magic and he wasn't around last time the League fought Tsaritsa so I wasn't sure how it would affect him." I nod. "Plus, I don't… Like.. him." She pauses. "I know that's not a good reason-."

"Oh, I'm not complaining. I hate him. But-. I've.. got a contact list of people, I'll give you a copy once we-."

Kon looks around as we approach the huddle and sticks his right hand up to wave. I wave back… Ah. Diana's in full Wonder Woman mode while Tsaritsa is chained up next to her. They're surrounded by what I think is an FBI SWAT team while President Horne and a couple of his officials talk to Diana. One of the agents spots us approaching and moves aside to let us through.

"…idea the League had was trapping her inside a book on tax law, Wonder Woman."

"President Horne, Belle Reve is not capable of containing a creature of her power. All that will happen-."

"With all due respect, I don't think that's your decision to make. The American courts-."

I grin. "Problem, sirs?"

They both turn to look at me. Diana lets out a very quiet sigh. "We are discussing what should become of The Queen of Fables."

"There is nothing to discuss. The attack happened in America."

"Actually sir, it didn't. Clio -the director?- was attacked on Themyscira. Chronologically, this incident began there and then carried on. Also, it seems likely that the first people affected were Themysciran nationals."

"With some countries I'd agree with you, but we don't have an extradition treaty with Themyscira." I smile again. "Not since-."

I shake my head. "The treaty that created the Reformation Island facility never got rescinded, sir. America just stopped making use of it."

"I'll.. have to check that." He looks to one of his aides, who just shrugs. "But I'm not clear why you think Themyscira's a better place for her than America."

"Aside from the obvious 'you can't hold her', sir?"

He looks at the barely conscious story queen. "She doesn't seem to be going anywhere now."

"You can't leave her chained up indefinitely. That could kill her. Or someone might free her later."

"Then why not Atlantis? We sent that.. Wotan guy there."

"The Themysciran facility is more secure, sir."

He looks sceptical. "Reformation Island?"

"No sir. Tartarus. Because let's face it." I glance down at her. "No one wants to see her again."

back

Carpe Tempus 40

next

Some of them might.

Anyone?

...

I'll show myself out.

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NEXT CHAPTER

Date Night

BACK

Date Night 1

next

Date Night

24th March

21:47 GMT -4

I ring the doorbell of Holly and Karon's home. Remarkably, I was able to navigate the mean streets of Gotham without being unduly disturbed this time. I'm not sure if that's due to the word about me getting around or things just not being so openly lawless as they once were. I think I saw Artemis -or someone anyway- on a rooftop part of the way, but it might have been a trick of the light.

Tsaritsa will be held in the Themysciran embassy until such time as her long term location is agreed upon. President Horne appears to not be entirely horrified by the idea of sending her to Tartarus, but it's not as if the final decision will be entirely his. It was a bit off the cuff on my part, but Tartarus could be an excellent place for long term supervillain storage. Good luck getting anyone out of there, because if the Titans can't manage it…

The door opens. "Hey Hol-." Karon blinks in surprise. "Oh, hey Paul. Holly's not back from work yet."

"Actually, I was hoping to speak to you, if that's alright?"

"Sure, come in." She steps back from the door and I follow her inside, closing it behind me. The weather's still fairly chilly, so I'm wearing a suit jacket with a roll neck jumper underneath. I subspace the jacket as I head towards the comfy chair that I habitually occupy when I visit them here.

"I caught that play you were in on TV."

I look mildly pained. "You didn't."

"I didn't know you could act!"

"I can't-. Well, I can, but in that instance I was-" I sit. "-getting mind controlled by a supervillainess called The Queen of Fables." Karon sits down on the settee. "I only went onto the stage to try and arrest her and that's when her spell caught me."

"You got mind controlled by a supervillainess and all she did was made you act in a play?"

"She made me live the play as if I was the character I was playing. I honestly thought that I was Prince Pavlos of Themyscira while it was going on."

"Whaw. Do you, like, ever get a normal week?"

"Not really." I smile, shaking my head. "You know.. it's funny. You're actually the most normal person I know."

She looks like she's not quite sure what to make of that. "Thank you?"

"My favourite author is a man named Terry Pratchett. In one of his books, he wrote that… See if I can remember the quote… Ah, 'Individuals aren't naturally paid-up members of the human race, except biologically. They need to be bounced around by the Brownian motion of society, which is a mechanism by which human beings constantly remind one another that they are.. well.. human beings.'."

"What book was that?"

"Men at Arms, but I'm afraid it doesn't exist in this parallel."

"So I remind you that you're Human?"

"I have a soul made out of orange Snake. You remind me what being Human is like. And I'm grateful, because none of my other friends can manage that."

She shakes her head in bemusement. "You're.. welcome, I guess?" She glances in the direction of the kitchen. "Can I get you something to drink?"

"Ah, yes please. Milk. Full fat, if you've got it."

She gets up, looking at me over her shoulder as she heads for the kitchen door. "Bit early in the evening to be on the hard stuff, isn't it?"

"Oh, you know us superheroes. Living each moment as if it was our last. Oh, I haven't checked: how are the plays going down?"

I hear the fridge door open. "Effects were better in the first one. Was that the Queen of Fables' magic?"

"Mostly." There's a 'chink' noise as she removes the cap from a beer bottle. "The sword I made while being guided by Hephaestus and Helios was actually real. Superboy's got it now."

I hear pouring. "And the fish?"

"Sadly, not real." Karon walks back in, glasses in hand. She hands me my milk glass before sitting back down. "Other thing I wanted to talk to you -and not Holly- about… Back in February."

She pauses for a moment, thinking back. Then her eyebrows shoot up. "Oh, you mean…"

"Yeah, the threesome thing. Um…"

We both glance away from each other.

"Ah… I thought you said you weren't interested..?"

"No, no. Look… One of.. my abilities.. is empathic vision. I can see.. patterns of emotional association in a person's mind."

"But I thought you didn't have your rings..?"

"No, that ability's innate. I… I don't need the rings for it. And what it means is, I know why someone's doing something. You weren't anything like as up for that as Holly was."

"Wait, is that why you said 'no'? I mean, I noticed at the time you didn't say why…"

"That was a good part of it. I mean, I'd be up for it in theory, but not if you didn't really want to or were only doing it to make Holly happy."

She's not looking at me. "I'd… Um…"

"You're not into men, it's fine. I'm not offended."

"No, it's… It was just kind of a high pressure situation… Holly just.. sprang it on me-."

"And you weren't sure how you felt about it or how you'd feel while actually doing it or how you'd feel afterwards because emotions aren't things you can just turn on and off." I nod. "I get it. I was in the same place."

She looks at me, a little surprised and a little relieved. "Oh."

"Like I said. Fine. Though in future, you might want to just tell Holly. 'Cause, there's a reason why I said that you're the most normal person I know and not.. her."

Karon nods. "So…" Her eyes flick back to me for a moment. "Theoretically… If I decided I did want to…"

"Assuming that I wasn't in a relationship at the time, yes."

"Huh. I'll.. bear that in mind."

"I also wanted to ask a favour. Not about, not about that."

"What is it?"

"A friend of mine is.. getting out of prison in a couple of days. She lived in Gotham before, but I don't think she really wants to move back in with her mother-."

"You want us to put her up?"

"To rent her a room. She can pay for it."

"What was she in for?"

"Membership of a proscribed organisation. But I broke up the organisation and she really does want to sort her life out. And I-" I point to my eyes with my right hand. "-can tell for certain that she's telling the truth."

Karon's back to looking at me, apparently relieved for the change in topic. "She do anything violent?"

"Only professionally. She was never wantonly violent."

She does a sort of cough-laugh. "That's not as reassuring as I think you meant it to be." She nods. "I'll.. talk it over with Holly."

"Thank you."

The front door swings open and Holly hurries in. "Hey K-. Paul!"

"Good evening, Holly."

She looks slightly blank for a moment, then grins. "Hey, we're going out for dinner with some friends tomorrow night. You wanna come with?"

I nod. "Yes thank you, I would. Where and when?"

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Date Night 2

next

25th March

20:34 GMT -4

I'm not sure what Holly meant by 'some friends', but at the moment it's just me at the table and-. My phone beeps and I pick it up to read the message.

"Delayed at work. Carry on without us. K plus H. Uuh"

No one else has arrived. I push the ice around my orange juice filled pint glass. I could order, but to be honest I doubt the food here is good enough to justify me sticking around if the only people I'm likely to know at this gathering aren't going to-.

I glance up as the door opens, more out of habit than… Oh, good, finally someone I recognise. I wave my right hand as Selina looks around the room before slipping off her jacket and passing it to the… What are they called? Whatever, to the cloakroom attendant. Looks like she's dressed up a bit more than I have, a relatively modest red dress and a little jewellery which I don't scan and try to match to a missing property database. Looks like she's grown her hair out a little since last time I spent any significant time in her company out of costume.

As she walks in my direction I note approvingly that despite the dress she's wearing flat soled shoes. I stand as she reaches the table and with a brief flicker of orange upgrade my own apparel to match hers. "Selina, good to see you."

"Likewise." She's smiling, but there's something a little… No, I'm not going to look. Selina is definitely one of the people likely to be offended by that sort of thing. "Anyone else here yet?"

"No, and I got a text message saying that Karon and Holly-."

"Late?"

"Yes."

Her eyes flick to the side for a moment, her smile growing a little. "Have you.. ordered yet?"

"No, I wasn't sure who else to expect."

She pulls out a chair on the opposite side of the table and seats herself. I sit back down in turn as a waiter heads over to take her drink order. "A glass of Prosecco. Then, come back in.. five minutes?" She looks at me with her eyebrows raised slightly and I nod. "Five minutes. We should be ready to order then."

The waiter nods and heads off towards the bar. Which prompts me to have another look at Selina. Okay, of the women I know, she's one of the few that are actually within my half plus seven range. And, y'know, isn't the mother of one of my friends. I certainly find her attractive -the image of her slinking around in her Cat suit before we met Mrs Gordon-Hewitt appears in my mind- and I'm pretty sure that we know each other's worst characteristics. Okay, why not?

"I take it you know about the wedding."

"If you're referring to the imminent deflowering of Gotham's most eligible ba-" She splutters with laughter, covering her mouth with her right hand. "-chelor, yes, I do. If we're going to talk about that, would you mind if I used a sound deadening field?"

She glances around as the waiter places her wine glass in front of her before retreating towards the kitchens. "Do they stop lip readers?"

I take a couple of sound ward stones out of my pocket and pass one over to her. She picks it up in her left hand, delicately turning it around so that she can get a look at its whole surface. "No, but these do. Keep it on your person."

She weighs me up for a moment. "Okay. Let's see what it's like."

Ring, sound baffle.

Compliance.

She takes another look around the room as the background noise drops away. "I assume that someone's checked to make sure that he's not being drugged."

"Yeah. Richard, probably. But I gave him a scan too, just in case." I shrug. "Sorry. Ba-." I bow my head slightly. "You know, I have trouble even thinking of him by his actual name?"

"The other guy does make a stronger impression."

"Yeah. Anyway, he does indeed appear to be doing this of his own volition. And for what it's worth, she's showing up in-" I point to my right eye with my right forefinger. "-violet too, so I don't think this is a trick."

She sighs. "No, I didn't really think it would be. He actually sent me an invite."

"Are you going to go?"

She slumps forwards, chin resting on the back of her right hand. "I don't know. I'm not sure I could restrain my instinct to claw Al Ghul's eyes out."

"She's.. not called that anymore."

She pulls a face. "Heeeeed."

"Heh, yeah."

"Are you going?"

I nod. "I think Richard's going to need the moral support." I raise my eyebrows.

"Mmmnm." She shifts slightly in her seat. "Haven't decided."

Clearly not a comfortable subject for her. Something else? "Did you see the play? Or.. plays?"

The smile reappears. "Mind control, right?"

"Yep. Though.. it was.. interesting to experience a completely different set of social assumptions. I now know what it was like to actually live in Old Themyscira. For a man."

"Do you know the director?"

"I'm the one who persuaded them to come to America in the first place."

"Tell her, the second play was funny? But.. it needs more work on the localisation. And the English. People don't go to the theater to read captions."

"Clio needs to spend a lot more time in America before that would be a realistic expectation. And the play was really more for diplomatic purposes than entertainment."

"How did that go? I doubt the President getting mind controlled helped much."

"He seemed okay? Seemed okay. And he seemed enthusiastic to have a new place to send magic using supercriminals. Um…" I look around. "How many people-?" My phone beeps again. "Excuse me." I press a button to read the message. "Oh."

"Holly and Karon cancelling?"

"Yesss… Who else are we expecting?"

She leans back slightly. "No one. We got talking about the wedding and.. I.. think she decided to try and hook up her single friends."

"That's surprisingly duplicitous of her. Still, if you need a date for the wedding…"

"Ah, look. You're a nice guy? But you're a decade younger than me and-."

Poot. "I'm a very mature eighteen." Feels really odd to be on this side of this conversation. "I have a steady job, I'm independently wealthy, I-."

She shakes her head. "And I'm sure you'll make a great boyfriend. For someone.. your own age. It.. wouldn't.. be right."

…

Drat, drat and double drat.

back

Date Night 3

next

26th March

10:02 GMT -4

I stand at parade rest just outside the perimeter fence as the doors of the Gloria McDonald Prison open. First out is one of the wardens, who walks down the steps and makes eye contact with me -I think I see a slight smile- before turning back towards the open door and nodding. Next, Jade walks down the steps, travel bag slung over her left shoulder. She's wearing grey, tight fitting jeans, plain white t-shirt and a green coat. She takes a moment to look over the area on the other side of the fence and I decide that the correct thing to do is grin manically and wave my arms like I'm trying to guide a jet aircraft down.

I think I see her sigh.

She turns to face the warden and says something. I can't hear it from here unaided and I don't want to start off by eavesdropping. A moment later they shake hands and the warden pats her on the shoulder as she turns away and heads towards the outer gate. Huh. She didn't flinch or tense up at all when the older woman touched her. Sounds weird to say this, but maybe the time in prison has done her some real good. I mean, she's always looked fine when I've been around but that's only a few hours a week.

There's a loud buzz as the gate is remotely unlocked. Jade stands still until it's fully retracted and then slowly walks out of the prison, looking slowly around as she does so. I hurry towards her with a slight spring in my step. "Hi Jade!"

"You know, you could have waited inside."

I frown. "No I couldn't."

"You dropped off my clothes fifteen minutes ago."

"I honestly hadn't realised that you only had that sawn off kimono thing until I got your phone call."

She rolls her eyes and looks around again. "I was kinda hoping Artemis or Mom might show up."

"They're busy setting up your 'Welcome to Freedom' party. It's quicker for me to just pick you up and take you there."

"Oh."

I blink. "Oh, Jade, did you-?" I step forwards and wrap my arms around her shoulders, pulling her into my chest. I haven't done this for a while, she usually just complains… She's relaxing. Oh. That's new. She's not exactly hugging me back, but her hands are sort of around my waist. I incline my head slightly. Okay, so how long is 'nice' without being 'creep-'.

She stiffens. "Did you just sniff my hair?"

Um. "Jade, I'm fifteen centimetres taller than you. That's just where my nose is."

She doesn't say anything for a moment, a little of the tension easing out. "I've been using prison conditioner for six months."

"Was that my cue for a prison shower soap joke?"

"No."

"Because I didn't think they'd be funny while you were still inside, but now that you're out-."

She transfers her hands to my chest and pushes me back. "So where's this party happening? Mom's place?"

"Artemis didn't tell you?"

Slight frown. "No?"

"Your grandparents are hosting. But first I though we'd-."

"Grandpa died when I was seven and Grandma lives in a hut."

"Oh! Right. I never said… Okay, that's not true anymore." She gives me a 'not-sure-if-crazy-person' look. "No, he's.. still dead, but I gave Grandma Nguyen's house a bit of an upgrade a few…" I frown. "Um… Just after you transferred here, actually. And we're picking her up, but we're actually going to your paternal grandparents' house."

The first flicker of alarm appears in her eyes.

"No, it's cool! Your grandfather hates your dad even more…" No. "About as much as you do. I haven't met your uncle, your aunt or your cousins yet, but they decided to turn this whole thing into a bit of a family get together."

"My..?" She frowns. "Dad never mentioned-?"

"I know! They had a massive falling out after he left the army and became a mercenary. Oh! Oh! Did you know that his name's actually 'Lawrence Crock Junior'!?"

She stares at me for a moment. "Junior?"

"Yep."

She blinks, eyes not entirely focused. "They call him.. 'Junior'? That's…" She shakes her head. "Are we picking up Grandma right away?"

"I sort of want to talk to you about some stuff first. First off." A beam of orange light illuminates her bag and deposits it in subspace. "Second thing, I'm not sure where you were planning to live now, but I've spoken to a couple of friends of mine in Gotham and they're willing to rent you a room… If you don't want to move back in with Artemis and your mother."

"Mm. Not planning to offer me a place to stay yourself?"

"I live in a superhero base. It's going to be a while before my superiors are willing to give you access."

"I thought you lived in that ice fortress?"

I shake my head. "No, and while you can if you want, it's only really accessible by flight or zeta tube… Using the Justice League's network, so… Same problem. Also, the Spetsnaz boarded it one time…"

"Moving back in with Mom… I don't think that would work. Who are these friends, exactly?"

"A former cat burglar and a travel agent. House is a bit big for them, really, but it was in a good part of town and cheap thanks to the murders."

That last point gets a small smile. "I'll look it over. Anything else?"

"Yeah." I take a deep breath.

"Here we go."

"I had to do this some time. I.. really don't want you to fall back into your old habits, so I'm appointing myself your.. 'sponsor'."

"Sponsor. Really?"

"Really. I've already destroyed the League of Shadows. I can find outlets for your talents that are either legal or.. less illegal. But, I'm worried it won't be enough. So I've decided I'm going to have to whitemail you."

She inclines her head slightly. "White mail."

I beam. "Last time I checked!"

She slowly closes her eyes, exhaling as she does so. Then she breathes in just as slowly and opens them. "Blackmailing someone involves threatening to reveal things they'd rather people not find out about. I already know you've got everything you need to send me to prison for the rest of my life."

"Yeah, funny thing? After Batman and I went through all the stuff we got from the League of Shadows to prepare it for being passed to the prosecuting authorities, two files ended up not getting handed over. Yours, and Talia al Ghul's." I shrug. "He's watching her, I'm watching you. But that's not what I'm threatening you with."

"You're threatening.. not to tell people things?"

"No, come on."

She looks away from me as she tries to work it out. A few seconds later there's a moment of realisation. "I had to be moved from Belle Reve because people knew we were friends. You're threatening to tell people good things about me."

I smile and nod. "Of course, first comes the entrapment. I have to trick you into doing something so good, no criminal will ever trust you again. And then I have to publicise it." I reach out and tap my right forefinger on her left shoulder, the scenery around us flickering as I make contact.

26th March

21:06 GMT +7

We appear in the sky high over Vietnam, the whole of South East Asia spread out below us.

"Tell me: what do you know about Agent Orange?"

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Date Night 4

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26th March

21:07 GMT +7

She takes a moment to look at the greenery below us before shifting her gaze to the coastline. Probably trying to work out exactly where we are.

"It's a chemical herbicide the US military used on Vietnamese jungles and farms during the Vietnam War."

"Yep." She glances at me. "Keep going."

"They didn't just use it to attack the North. It also got used on rural areas in the South that they thought supported the Communists to drive people off the land and into cities the US could control."

"That worked pretty well." I blink, and national borders appear in our field of vision as thick orange lines, with thinner ones for provincial boundaries.

"I also know that it causes cancer and birth defects and that there's enough of it still in the soil in a lot of places that people are still being affected."

I fill in the national boundaries with orange intensity corresponding to the level of contamination. "Yep. Vietnam being what it is, it's hard for me to get completely reliable figures on how much, but it's a lot."

"The Vietnam War was bad. I get it. I went to school in America. No one really tries to defend it anymore."

"Ra's did. Batman actually wrote down what he said about it during one of his post-Pit rants. He thought that the longevity of the toxins involved suggested great potential for his whole 'depopulate the world' mission. No, it's not a chemical warfare agent, it's a herbicide. An insecticide. He actually tried to-."

"Are we here for a reason?"

"I was hoping you'd be a bit more annoyed than this."

I get a puzzled frown. "I'm an American. I've been to Vietnam twice my entire life."

I nod. "You know, I have the same problem. Hard to care about things you don't have a personal investment in, isn't it?" I nod, more to myself than to her. "When Klarion split the world... There were a lot of injured children right in front of me, and I could only heal a few of them. If they'd been my friends… One wave of orange, no more problem. People I don't know?" I pause for a moment. "How well do you remember the funeral?"

"I don't remember much. There were a lot of strange people around and I didn't speak Vietnamese very well."

"Do you remember… Artemis called him 'Funny Uncle Hien'? One of your mother's younger brothers?"

She frowns, trying to think back. "I think I remember him. He was looking after the children."

"No, he wasn't. It was just easier for the person looking after him to keep an eye on the rest of you as well." I highlight the -I hesitate to call it this- hospital below us. They do their best, but this isn't a rich country by any stretch of the imagination. Then I create a construct showing his distorted face, his stick-thin and malformed limbs and the ichthyosis on his skin. "Obviously you wouldn't have realised what was wrong with him at that age. The fact that both of your maternal grandparents were exposed to the stuff shouldn't really be a surprise. If anything, the fact that they had unaffected children at all is the odd thing. He's forty five and he has the mental age-."

Jade doesn't look at the image, instead focusing her full attention on me. "And what exactly-" I take hold of John's ring with my left forefinger and thumb. "-do you expect me-" I pull it off- "-to do about it?" -and hold it out to her. She blinks, looks down at it, then back up to my face as her eyes widen.

"I want you to want to fix it. I want you to see the same wrongness in this as I did when I heard that the government of Britain used the same stuff during the Malayan Emergency. And when you feel that, I want you to take this ring-" I wiggle it. "-and fix it."

"Why haven't you?"

"No personal investment at all. The sad fact is, these faces…" I generate constructs of a few cases. Young children for the most part, though of course they won't remain young children. "I could do Malaya because it was Britain… Even though I'm not a British citizen, I feel.. responsible. Britain kept out of Vietnam." I shrug.

"So, what? That's your plan? Get me to join the Orange Lantern Corps?"

"No, this is a one off. Maybe -if you don't find the experience completely horrifying- you could start learning how to use the orange light in a controlled way with a view to eventually joining. For this exercise, a strong impetus to bring about a change is all that is required. The ring-" I wiggle it again. "-has all the data on Human physiology and soil chemistry it needs. It just needs someone who cares. Someone whom I trust to try."

Her eyes go to the ring again. She's definitely nervous about touching it. "I thought those things drove people crazy."

"Definitely a risk. But I'll still have a ring and I'm a much more capable Lantern than you'll be. Unless I've very much misread you, short term exposure -even high intensity exposure- shouldn't cause lasting psychological harm."

"That's reassuring."

I close my left hand and then open it again, John's ring lying flat on my palm. "Well?"

I can clearly see the orange inside her, swirling and churning. I'm certainly not going to tell her quite what the percentage her desire to prove her value to me is of her final decision, but it's in the mix along with her desire for power and purpose. That's fine, empathy isn't what I need. The normal reaction of the Human psyche to such horrific deformity is there, but there's no special connection to the country as a whole. I suppose it was a bit of a stretch to think that she'd regard the people of Vietnam as being hers. She also wants a combat challenge after six months' imprisonment, and this is the closest I could arrange. I'm not putting her in an actual fight with a ring without doing an awful lot of preparation first. There's the ever-present need to defy her father. The final significant factor is the fear she feels, both of the ring and of the radical change in her life I'm forcing on her.

A fear she instinctively reacts against, wanting to overcome it without its existence being noticed by anyone.

She reaches out with her left hand and I pull the ring back slightly. "No, not like that. Call it to you. Focus your mind on your desires, your wants, your needs. Focus your mind on actualising them through this ring. Demand that it appear on your finger."

Her eyes narrow, remaining fixed on the ring as she raises her left hand slightly and spreads out her fingers. Her breathing slows as she puts those mental techniques she learned with the Shadows to use. Inside her I see the confusing blur of lights slow as she makes herself consciously aware of them and imposes structure. Similarly, I still my own mind so as not to crowd out her far weaker grasp.

I feel a very slight vibration from the ring in the palm of my hand. The minutest flicker of orange light running around the inner surface. Everything in Jade that isn't orange fades into the background. The ring is glowing now, not with the brilliant light it has when I use it but she's definitely formed a connection.

She stretches out her left hand once more. "It's mine."

The ring shoots onto her ring finger and Jade is consumed in orange light.

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Date Night 5

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26th March

21:11 GMT +7

Immediately I shift position, moving behind her, pressing myself against her back and placing my arms under hers. I can't see her, but I can feel her both by the pressure on my skin and by my awareness of the orange light. She doesn't appear to be changing herself in the way I did when I first got hold of the ring. Better self image I suppose. Internally… She looks more or less the same, though the orange light pouring through her is reinforcing her desire structures.

I feel her grab onto my wrists as the lights begin to fade away. She hasn't changed her body but -pfff!- her hair is back to its puffed-up Cheshire mode. The green of her coat has been replaced with dull orange, decorative stitching glowing bright orange to match the sigil in the centre of her chest. Her face is covered in a glowing construct mask.

"H-aaah."

"How do you feel, Lantern Nguyen?"

Still holding onto my wrists, she pulls her arms into her stomach. "Strange. I... No, that's not important. You gave me this ring to do a job. How do I do it?"

"To complete the task, you need precise information on the physical state of those beneath us. Don't try taking it all at once, that will just overwhelm you. Pick a single individual-"

"Uncle Hien."

"-and have the ring show you his body in detail. You don't need to focus on every individual change you need to make, the ring can handle that far better than you can. Focus instead on the objective you wish to achieve. The ring knows what a fully healthy-."

The orange light around Jade flares and a tight bundle of orange cables extrudes rapidly downwards, shooting towards the hospital. I.. suppose that.. would be a bit more instinctive than the filament and orange light pulses I use.

"Do you have a clear idea of what you're doing?"

She pushes gently back into me, leaning a little to the left and turning her head right so she can look me in the face. "Is it like this for you all the time?"

"I imagine in my case it's rather stronger. Can you create a construct to show me what's happening?"

"Can't you see for yourself?"

"I can do lots of things. I want to see what you can do."

An image of Mister Nguyen's room appears in front of us as the cables shoot through the open windows and latch onto him. He struggles for a moment and then a cable attaches itself to his forehead. "Sleep." He relaxes. "I can see everything wrong. It's…"

"Then you know what you have to do, don't you?"

"Skin." The image shows his skin smoothing, though the effect is probably more obvious in colour. "Arms." Bone, muscle, fat and skin flow out of the unfinished end of his right arm, creating a forearm and a hand. Both arms swell as more muscle tissue is added to them and I'm sure other minor defects are being corrected as well. "Legs." The legs are as thin as the arms, joints malformed in a way that makes me wince to examine it. They swell with new muscle and straighten out as Jade fixes them. "Head." His features shift as she goes to complete-. "His brain. Parts just.. aren't there. How-?"

"Don't worry about it. When I healed Mister Huang in Taiwan I didn't have a prior scan of his brain to work from. Add the bits that are missing, the ring can work out what they should look like from his DNA."

"You improved his brain."

"If you don't know exactly what it should look like, why not make it as good as it can be?"

"Then Uncle Hien gets the best brain." He's still unconscious as the cables deposit him back on his chair. "That wasn't so hard."

"You haven't finished the assignment yet, have you?"

"No, I haven't." The image explodes, the light reforming as a three dimensional model of the hospital. I see the cables extend out through the doors of her uncle's room and spread out up and down the corridor. Staff dive out of the way and the cables begin branching and pushing their way into the rooms of the other patients. "Fixed." A girl child with a head that looks like someone squeezed and then twisted it. "Fixed." A youth with no eyes or eye sockets seeing for the first time. "Fixed." Cancerous growths to match any Argonate user, gone. "Fixed. Fixed. Fixed. Fixed. Fixed. Fixedfixedfixedfixedfixed…"

I have the other ring check her work. Aside from the slightly odd way her orange light is pulsing, she's doing a great job. Clearly she's got a much better sense of professionalism than I have.

"…fixedfixedfixedfixedfixed…"

Shame I can't compare this to Richard's situation. I just didn't have the same awareness back then.

"Aaaaagh!"

I glance down to see several members of staff fleeing the building. Didn't want to get their hopes up by warning them, though I did notify someone from the Central Commission of Internal Affairs that I intended to operate in the area. They appeared to still be pretty grateful for all the construction work I did last time so I don't think this will be a problem.

"Fixedfixed… All done." Jade closes her left fist, deleting the cables and the image of the hospital. She's glowing quite brightly. "I want more! What'snext!"

Ah yes, the old crazy/power balancing act. I haven't lost control of the situation yet and this situation does require more power… "Next, is the soil. We need all the residual herbicide gone in order to prevent another generation of cripples being born. Can you do that for me?"

Her grip on my hands tightens. "Yes."

Orange shifts inside her as conflicting desire strains are discontinued-. That actually might be a bad idea. Hm. The glow around us intensifies as the ring feeds her data on the magnitude of the task. One hundred and twenty eight thousand square miles. Goodness knows how many tonnes of the stuff. If I was properly invested, I could probably do it but I've got no idea what the peak output of a rookie Orange Lantern is.

"Hrwaaaagh!"

A translucent orange column blasts downwards, passing through solid objects to get at the ground. I keep watching as the energy radiates out across the province and further, out across the country. Marvelo-. Oh dear, Jade's breathing hard and the activity in her brain-.

"Jade, you've done a good job. You can stop now."

"I'm nearly..! Nearly there!"

No, this is getting to the point where she risks harming herself. I extend my own aura into her and press against the orange strands.

Still.

The blazing orange light dims and disintegrates. She gasps for air, mask construct disintegrating as her grip on my hands loosens. I pull my arms free and drift around to her front. "How was it?"

She bends over slightly in the air, still breathing hard. "That was… I-. I wanted…"

"Yes." I generate constructs, showing before and after images of the people she just healed. "You did a very good job." She straightens up slightly, looking at the images. I hold out my right hand. "Will you please return that ring to-?"

She pulls it off her finger and tosses it back before I can finish asking, and I attach a filament to her before she can plummet to the ground. "I-. That was… Overwhelming. I don't think I'm ready for that."

"I wasn't expecting you to be." I return it to my right forefinger. "But if you do decide to take the training, that's what you'd be letting yourself in for. Now: time for you to take the credit."

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Date Night 6

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26th March

10:37 GMT -5

"I don't think anyone in America will care about that, even if it did get televised."

We're in Ripon, Wisconsin, walking along Newbury Street on the way to the home of Cynthia and Lawrence Crock. Senior. We could have just appeared in front of their house, but I thought that Jade might want to talk about events… Decompress a bit. Missus Nguyen Senior is ambling along in front of us, appearing to be thoroughly enjoying her outing. Haven't told her the good news about her son yet and I don't plan to until I can do a proper assessment of his mental state. Of course, I'm not going to stop Jade doing so if she so chooses.

"Prospective employers will. Working with a known superhero, saving lives with no thought to payment…"

Jade's effort in Vietnam almost completely drained John's ring, conducted biological repairs on about five hundred people and reduced the total soil contamination of Vietnam by about forty percent. An outcome like that -where you can't say that the problem is definitively dealt with- isn't particularly satisfying. Well, I've never found it particularly satisfying. And it would feel strange to have boasted about it in a press conference. As it was, we got a recorded meeting with the Head of the Central Commission of Internal Affairs, parts of which will be played by the state broadcaster as soon as they can finish editing it.

I'm.. probably.. going to feel obliged to go back and finish the job. It'll take me longer, but seeing what that crap does to people firsthand is giving me the motivation.

"You were taking a big risk." She glances at me, then returns her gaze to the pavement in front of us. "Lending me your ring like that."

"My objective is getting you on the straight and narrow. In the pursuit of that objective I am willing to take quite significant risks." I rock my head from side to side. "Though… Unless you flipped out completely-."

"You could have taken it back."

"If you were good enough that I couldn't, you wouldn't have needed me to." I nudge her with my right elbow. "So? Think you'd be interested in learning it?"

"I…" She shakes her head. "No. Not any time soon, anyway." She looks away, taking in the houses on the opposite side of the road. "I think I'm going to just try 'normal' for a little while."

"Really? What brought this on? Was it.. that bad?"

She doesn't reply for a moment, a small frown appearing on her forehead. "You remember Madison? You met her in the kitchen a few times."

"Yes?"

"Apparently her son's been doing much better in school lately."

"I'm glad to hear it?"

"He had been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder."

I nod. "It's such a shame that psychopharmacology isn't advanced enough to safely and reliably treat that."

"Stacey's building super fixed their heating about a month and a half ago."

"Good of him."

"About two days after she complained about it when you were there."

"Is that so?"

"Shannon's husband owed money to a loan shark. He's now being investigated by the police."

"Sounds thoroughly deserv-."

She stops suddenly, grabbing my upper right arm with her left hand. "Did you fix everyone's personal problems?"

"No, not everyone. Just anything I could fix through legal mechanisms or by my own labours. Didn't realise there was that much lead paint left in Rhode Island."

"Lending money isn't illegal."

"No, but if you don't have the right licence the debt may be unenforceable. And even if you do have a license, sending a burly bloke around once a week to demand money isn't allowed. The restraining orders and the police investigation should stop things getting further out of hand."

She studies my face for a moment. "You did that… What, so I'd be in a happy prison?"

"Reduced stress, reduced instances of violence, generally more…" I nod. "Optimistic outlook." I shrug. "I'm a little surprised you didn't spot it before, actually. I wasn't trying to hide it so much as not draw attention to it."

She rolls her eyes as she turns to continue down the street. "Some of us only just got your brain upgrade."

..!

"I'm sorry, what?"

She glances back, slightly puzzled. "The amygdala thing you did to Mister Huang? I've only had it for half an hour-."

My eyebrows go up. "Y-you did that?"

"Of course I did. Why wouldn't I? You know how much smarter it made him."

"Yes, but… It alters the way you process information. It pretty much forces you to be more empathic."

"If you've got it then it can't be all that bad."

I shake my head. "Jade, I… I.. didn't do that to myself."

Her eyes widen slightly. "Oooh."

"I've done some work on my brain… Gradual incremental improvements… I did consider adding in new inter-hemispherical connections, but I didn't want to risk doing anything radical in case it became a problem and I couldn't undo it."

"How much of a problem is this going to be?"

"I don't know, I've only ever done it to one person before. It.. shouldn't be a problem at all. I mean, assuming you only did what I did to Mister Huang. If you went beyond peak Human there might be problems."

"Okay." She nods. "You might want to put some kind of warning on that file. Though on the positive side you've got plenty of people to study now."

"A-all of them?"

"Hey, you said-!"

"Yes. I'm not saying that was.. wrong." Could be an invaluable opportunity, actually. I've been a bit nervous about… Call it what it is, Human experimentation. And they are going to need to pick up new skills rapidly… "No, you know what? Good choice. I was just a bit surprised."

"Is it this house?"

We both look over to where Missus Nguyen is standing in front of the Crock residence.

"Yes, that's the one. Sorry, we just got a bit-."

"That's quite alright. I am glad to see little Jade making friends." She pauses for a moment. "When we are inside, I may need one of you to translate for me. I have not spoken English regularly for over fifty years."

Jade and I look at each other. "Table this for now?"

"That's probably best. So, let's meet my family."

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Date Night 7

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26th March

10:41 GMT -5

I press the doorbell and then step back from the door.

Jade gives me a slightly nervous glance. "What are they like, exactly?"

"Your grandfather's a less malevolent grey-haired version of your father. Your gran's just really nice."

"You did tell them what I was in prison for, didn't you?"

"I didn't-."

Missus Nguyen taps her lightly on the arm. "Jade, they are family. If they have invited you here, they do not care."

"Grandma, I don't think it works like that."

"I was once put in prison by the American government. Did you know that?"

"Why? What did they think you'd done?"

"They thought that I was a communist sympathiser because they found me in the wrong village." Missus Nguyen appears to consider this sufficient, returning her attention to the door.

"I'll get it, Grandma!"

"What was that like?"

"I mostly remember it being boring. Plus, it made it very hard to kill them."

Jade gives her gran a look of surprise. "Kill them?"

"I was a soldier in the Vietnamese Army. I killed Japanese,-" For a moment I think she's going to spit. "-then I killed the French and then I killed-"

The door opens and a young man smiles at us. Well muscled chap, though given the sorts of people I usually hang around with I'm getting a bit jaded about that sort of thing. He has a crew cut and an open and honest face, though if you squint a bit you can still see the family resemblance.

Missus Nguyen nods, a bright smile on her face as she looks at him. "-Americans."

"Hey. You must be Jade." He steps out into the front step and holds out his right hand. "I'm Matthew Crock, your.. cousin. Good to meet you."

"Ah. Hi." Jade steps forwards and takes his hand, giving it a brief shake.

"Hey, nice coat. I didn't realise that crazy cake guy was doing merchandising." I didn't meet Matthew Crock during my last visit. As far as he knows I'm just a family friend. This should be amusing. "Did you have far to travel?"

"One fifty seven."

"Yeah, but the traffic was really light. It didn't take long at all."

"Glad to hear it. And you must be Jade and Artemis' grandma on their Mom's side. Oh." He catches himself and then looks at Jade and me. "Can she understand English?"

Missus Nguyen nods. "Yes, I can speak English." She holds up her hands and brings the palms close together. "A little bit."

"I'm sure it's better than my Vietnamese. And you're Paul, right?"

"That's me. Pleased to meet you, Matthew."

"One fifty eight."

We shake hands and then he steps back to lead us into the house. "Everyone's sorta gathered in the living room. My brother Jon couldn't make it but my folks are here." Jade follows him in, followed by Missus Nguyen and with myself bringing up the rear, closing the door behind me. Over the hall table there's a framed piece of embroidery with the words 'God Bless This House' along the top and 'Non Classiarius Fascis Heic' along the bottom. I frown. No.. bundles of wood-?

Oh. Heh.

"Come on, Dad! Nearly there!"

"You must be Jade!"

I turn back in the direction of the living room as Cynthia Crock embraces her elder granddaughter. Jade appears to be a little off-put, but she keeps it under control.

"Mom!" Next to them Paula hugs her own mother.

"Tuyet, it is wonderful to see you in person."

Next to me, Matthew smiles. "Hey, I'm feeling kinda left out over here."

"I can hug you if you want."

"Ah... I'll pass."

Paula gives Jade a hug as well, this one a rib-crusher.

"One fifty nine!"

The huddle around the doorway breaks up a little, allowing me to catch a glimpse of Warren Crock giving encouragement to his red-faced octogenarian father as the older man holds himself off the ground, having completed another push up. Artemis is in a similar pose next to him.

"Is he alright?"

Cynthia notices me watching them and rolls her eyes. "Lawrence can't turn down a challenge. I've tried telling him to act his age, but he won't listen."

"Soon have the girl licked, Cynthia." He turns his head towards Artemis. "Getting tired yet, Arty?"

"As if. Hey Paul, hey Jade."

"Can we place bets..?" Artemis shoots me a look as the two of them lower themselves to the floor. "No, forget I asked."

Matthew turn to me. "I'll bet you dishwasher loading duty."

I hold out my right hand. "Done." He shakes it again. "They let you load the dishwasher? Because my dad was always a bit particular about that."

Warren looks up for a moment. "If he can handle OCS, he can handle a dishwasher. Come on Dad, you can do it."

"If that's the best you can do to motivate me then it's no wonder you never made Sergeant, boy."

"You know Mom would never let me cuss like that inside the house."

"And just you remember it." Cynthia shakes her head. "Honestly."

Jade looks her new relatives over. "Are you all military?"

Cynthia nods. "Army nurse." She gestures to her husband. "Enlisted soldier." To Warren. "Warren served for a while to pay for college, he's a gym teacher now. Jonathan -that's Matthew's brother- he's deployed in Saudi Arabia at the moment. Have you considered a career in the army?"

"Not.. seriously." I suppose she could, though her skills lend themselves more to special forces units rather than normal infantry or officer duty. "I'm not sure they'd take me."

"One sixty!"

"Still alive over there, Grandpa?"

"Army can…" Mister Crock Senior pants for a moment. "Take anyone. Straighten you out."

Cynthia nods. "You should hear about some of the things Lawrence got up to before the judge signed him up."

"So do the Crock men just escalate the competitiveness throughout the day..?"

Matthew shakes his head. "Not if we want dinner. Why, you wanna join in?"

"I'm not really one for physical combat. But if your ego can take it I'm sure Jade will be happy to kick your arse in a spar later."

Jade gives me a look of pure irritation.

"Oh yeah?" Matthew raises his eyebrows at her. "You think you're that good? Army doesn't go easy on officer cadets, you know."

"One sixty one! Going great, Dad."

"Six years, mixed martial arts. And that's in addition to what Mom and… Taught me."

Matthew nods. "Alright, I'm up for that."

"Yeah, just don't let her kiss you."

Jade strikes me in the stomach with the back of her right hand. Matthew looks puzzled. "Why not?"

His grandfather looks around from the top of his most recent push up. "Because you're not some g-." His wife gives him an interrogative glare. "-osh darn hillbilly from deepest darkest Kentucky, that's why."

"What? No, no, Grandpa, I wasn't-."

"Drugged lipstick. She tried that on me once."

Jade rolls her eyes. "I'm not wearing drugged lipstick, Paul. For some reason they didn't let me take that in prison."

"Next you'll be telling me you don't have any concealed weapons!"

"I don't."

I reach over to her left ear with my right hand before pulling it slowly away, revealing the sai I just took out of subspace. "Really?"

In one smooth motion she plucks it out of my hand and conceals it within her coat. "Oh that's where I put it."

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Date Night 8

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26th March

12:26 GMT -4

It's interesting, seeing the White House lawns from this view point. So similar to my sojourn to Earth 50 and yet.. totally dissimilar in tone. This time rather than intruding on someone else's ceremony I'm attending my own. I'm wearing a suit rather than glowing yellow armour. I even invited a few guests. Doctor Robbins and Orana have already taken their seats in the audience while A-. While Mister Scott has just been shown through to the backstage area by the Secret Service.

I need to talk to him. I should probably have had this discussion when I returned his lantern, but I was.. busy… Not a great explanation, but a true one. And I had to wait to see exactly how far the League… How far Diana was going to push things. And, yes, this is a better occasion than just turning up at his home or inviting him to my own unfinished one. Really, Genomorphs need an intermediate labourer caste because while G-Trolls are great for clearing debris they don't really have the skills for delicate work. Maybe they could revisit the old G-Promethean design? Or heck, I could offer Dubbilex my services in upgrading the existing ones. I'll run it by him later.

Mister Scott makes eye contact with me. He looks… Old. Worn down. Huh, maybe he and Doctor Robbins can compare notes or something. I nod in greeting and start walking towards him.

"Grayven."

"Mister Scott." I hold out my right hand. "Good of you to come."

"I was.. a little surprised to receive the invite." He watches me for a moment, then reaches a decision and takes my hand. For a man of his generation not doing so would have been a major slight, after all. "I rather got the impression that you didn't want to have anything to do with.. us."

"That's… No, Mister Scott…" Sinestro, sound baffle.

As you wish.

A barely visible yellow barrier forms around us. "I respect you. I admire all your achievements. And I still respect the League."

"You've got a funny way of showing it. They took you in, offered you training and friendship and you just threw it back in their faces."

"Because of their…" Control. Control. Remember your anger management. "I slew the greatest living mass murderer and Diana tried to tell me I'd done a bad thing. This-" I spread my arms wide. "-whole thing is the country saying I was right and they were wrong. Why should I hide? Why should I follow her instruction to sit in a cave while the world celebrates my action?"

"She was trying to help you. And what you did to Hal-."

"That was a harmless joke! And Diana was trying to control me. I could not bear it any longer. That…" I exhale. "That doesn't mean I suddenly forget all the.. good things she does. That the League does. And I certainly haven't forgotten my friends. It just means that wasn't the place for me any longer." I look around. Anyone look like they're trying to lip read me? No. "Besides, it's not as if I did anything you wouldn't have done."

He huffs. "You've got some nerve, saying that."

"Do I? Mister Scott, I'm one of three people alive who know what really happened to Rag Doll." For a second his face shows his shock, then he masters it. "I spoke about the scenario to Diana -didn't mention names of course- and she told me that she thought that the three of you chose wrongly. I -on the other hand- agree with you completely."

"That makes one of us."

"Why? He was a foul and murderous example of humanity who devoted himself to spreading misery and destruction. I mean, it's not like he was the first person you killed-."

"That was in the war. And before you start on how war isn't special, I know. I hadn't ever killed a man before that, and seeing.. all of the death the war involved caused me to never want to kill again. And if he hadn't threatened our families then I never would have."

"So is that alright then? You can kill if it's personal but not if it's a considered decision? Save the people close to you.. but not other people? Mister Scott, no court would have convicted you."

"Maybe. Maybe not. But someone like you might have followed our example. I can't imagine what it woulda done to Jay if Barry had taken that as his example."

"Central City Rogues aren't usually that bad… Okay, Murmur, maybe-."

"That's not the point. You know what a copycat killer is?"

"Of course. But I'm afraid we're all out of Klarions."

"They won't be that specific. By getting away with this, you will inspire other people to murder other criminals. And they won't have your sense of priorities."

"I know. That's why today is so important." I dismiss the yellow bubble. "I need to make it clear to everyone exactly why I did what I did. How I think the law should treat metahumans, what the guiding principles should be. Once I've done that, anyone who claims to be following my lead when they're clearly not is just another criminal." I lay my right hand on his left shoulder. "Please. I got them to save you a seat at the front. Hear me out before rendering final judgement."

He hesitates for a moment and then nods. "Guess I can do that." He turns away, one of the ushers escorting him around to the front of the stage.

I watch him go for a moment, then about face and amble in the direction of President Horne.

"…just the cost, General. Your own analysis shows that it can't maneuver as well as the F-Sixteen, that the next generation radar systems the Russians and Chinese are bringing in can see it as easily as they can regular aircraft and that it isn't mechanically reliable yet. There simply isn't any reason to rush implementation." The air force general looks distinctly unhappy with the President's pronouncement. "And I seem to remember you taking a rather different line last time we talked about the A-Ten."

"Mister President, those aircraft simply aren't compara-."

"I'm sorry to interrupt, General, Mister President, but I'm ready when you are."

"Okay then. Thank you General, that will be all."

"Sir." The General looks at me for a moment before turning away and heading in the direction of the White House.

"Having trouble there?"

Horne bows his head slightly, then shakes it. "I'm a little slower to fund their toybox than some of my Republican colleagues might like. And now there's a distinct possibility they could be stuck with me for another term they're making more of an effort to try to talk me around to their way of thinking."

"Didn't seem to be working."

"PR is no replacement for facts and figures. The case doesn't make sense yet." He half-turns and starts moving in the direction of the steps up to the stage. I follow, mindful of my far greater weight. "Maybe they'll work the bugs out eventually. I don't really want conventional defense to take up too much of my administration's time or energy." He pauses just at the edge of the stage. "You're ready for your speech, right?"

"Of course."

"A few people on my team were a mite annoyed that you wouldn't use our speech writers or show us the text ahead of time. I have to say that I'm a little nervous about it myself."

"Mister President, I've got… About as much riding on this as you have. I'm not going to make a pig's ear of it, but the impact will be all the greater if it isn't trailered."

He nods as we walk up the steps to the rear of the stage. "Were you serious about the other me being a killer robot?"

"It isn't any longer, Mister President."

"I get the impression that's kind of a theme with you."

I shrug. "By the time I usually get called in…"

"I suppose." He nods to himself. "You at least read our briefing material, right?"

"Every bit, Mister President."

"Then okay. Let's get this show on the road."

back

Date Night 9

next

26th March

12:33 GMT -4

"…not just for acting to safeguard American lives, but the lives of every living thing on Earth. Grayven, it is my very great pleasure to present you with this Presidential Medal of Freedom with Distinction."

He pauses in the act of holding it out to me in order to let the cameras get a good shot. Even though I know full well modern photographers don't use them in situations like this, I'm still half-expecting flash bulbs. Behind President Horne's podium -and concealed from the audience- is a box, and standing on it he's just about tall enough to put the medallion's ribbon over my head.

"Thank you, Mister President."

Blue… That's going to clash with my uniform. And with my environmental shield. Ah, no, my ring has decided that the gold parts are sufficiently yellow to mean that it's supposed to make them glow. Fortunately, there aren't going to be all that many situations in which I'm going to be expected to wear it.

President Horne holds out his right hand, doing that 'awkward sideways handshake for the cameras' thing. There's no real way for me to disguise the fact that my hand is massively larger than his, but I'm careful with my grip and that appears to work. This whole thing's.. obviously staged, but I find that I'm.. oddly touched. This wasn't part of our original agreement so he clearly… It could be purely political, but the impression I'm getting is that this is his genuine view on the matter.

"No, Grayven. On behalf of America: thank you."

I give it a few more moments, then release his hand and step back slightly.

"Grayven's going to be working with this administration to further develop our policies on how to respond to crises like the one Klarion created last year. Now, to give you some idea of what you can expect, I'm going to hand you over to the man himself. Ladies and Gentlemen, Grayven of Apokolips."

He steps off the box, going backwards and stage left so that the sudden decrease in height is partially concealed by the fact that he's moving away from the audience. I wait a moment for him to choose a place to stand before walking up to the podium and prodding the box underneath it so that I'm just standing on the stage. I take a moment to make eye contact with Mister Scott and… Ah, I see that the Daily Planet sent Mister Kent to cover this. Scott and Barda are a few rows back and I give them a small wave. I didn't actually invite them so I've got no idea why they're here… Don't suppose it matters.

Now, which of the seven or eight possible introductions that I came up with do I want to use? The magnanimous one, I think.

"Well, first, I'd like to thank President Horne and the people of America for bestowing this honour on me. I don't think anyone really becomes a superhero for the material rewards, but it's always nice to know that our efforts are appreciated. I'd also like to thank those in the superhero community -they know who they are- who helped me find my feet when I first arrived on your planet. Without them I wouldn't have been able to achieve a fraction of what I have."

I pause, taking a deep breath.

"Last November a grave crime was committed, not against any one nation but against the whole of your world, the whole of your species. Millions of people -most of them young children, the most vulnerable members of your civilisation- died as a direct result of the actions of the being I slew last month. This is not the first time in the history of Human evil that such an obscenity has emerged from a single diseased mind. What was unusual about it was that -unlike every other mass slaughter in Earth's history- a small group were able to carry it out without wider support. Usually, when a leader turns people against their neighbours it takes a great many people to participate in the killing to make it happen. Mass public involvement in the case of charismatic leaders, bureaucrats to organise, transportation infrastructure to move the target population to places where they may more readily be disposed of…"

I take a moment to look around the audience. "I doubt that anyone here is completely ignorant of the evils of the twentieth century, so let me get to my point. Klarion required none of that. He required the assistance of precisely four individuals and a single mystical artefact which he was able to procure for himself. No one else had any prior knowledge of what was about to happen. There was no mass involvement at all. The first anyone knew of it, it had already happened. This puts Klarion in a different class to all the genocidal statesmen in Human history. You can't simply prevail upon the better instincts of his supporters or work to bring existing communities together because those things aren't relevant. Klarion existed as a force external to your civilisation exerting pressure upon it but not really receiving any in return."

"Since I killed him, I have been asked repeatedly -often by those I consider my friends- if there was not some other approach I might have used to render him harmless. My answer is: no." I solemnly shake my head. "There wasn't. Klarion's arcane abilities make him either immune or highly resistant to most forms of attack. I had precisely one weapon which I was confident could injure him. More than that, there was no realistic prospect that if he were imprisoned he could be persuaded to change his ways. Killing him was necessary to ensure the safety of this planet." I slowly breathe in and out again. "But sadly, he isn't the only person around with that potential for causing mass slaughter."

"I hadn't even been on this planet for a week when Wotan tried to put out the sun. I'd only been on the planet for a few months when thousands died when the 'Injustice League' attacked several major cities with Smilex-infested vines. It is a fact that some types of criminal are capable of inflicting colossal damage upon their fellow man. And the question in this situation is: how should a civilisation confronted with such people deal with them?"

"Felix Faust and William Zard were each known to the police before Roanoke Island. Wotan and Blackbriar Thorn were known to the superhero community, though their crimes were often outside the usual range of mundane criminal activity. Given the danger they posed, my view -and it appears to be the view of a good many other people- is that they should have been executed for crimes committed prior to Roanoke. None of them showed even the smallest amount of remorse for their actions, each of them was a murderer before they signed up with Klarion. I do not believe that I acted wrongly when I killed Klarion. However, I am aware that vigilante killings are very far from the ideal situation."

"So, what do I think should happen in future? Firstly, let me say that there is absolutely no appetite amongst the superhero community in this country for widespread use of lethal force. And I don't think there should be. Your judicial system is at its best when the facts are studied dispassionately and a jury reaches a conclusion on their basis. Most superheroes are unwilling to kill criminals themselves but few have hesitated to hand them over to police in jurisdictions with the death penalty." I lean forwards slightly. "I handed myself over in one."

"What I would like to see… What I think is a sensible step, is a greater use of trials in absentia, and a greater weight given during sentencing to the damage an individual is able to inflict. Ideally, if a person was so malignant that they needed to be slain then those called upon to bring them down would have had a warrant of execution issued by a court in advance, and so would not have to concern themselves with the possible legal fallout in the aftermath."

"Let me be clear that I do not envisage such mechanisms being required when dealing with the vast majority of what many police forces still insist on referring to as 'theme criminals'. Most use whatever metahuman or technological edge they have acquired to commit essentially conventional crimes. In particular, I have observed that despite having a far higher than average supervillain population density Central City and Keystone City actually have lower than average costume murder rates, and at least one incident the police are aware of in which a group of supervillains 'dealt with' one of their own number who'd crossed.. whatever they think the line is. This would purely be used in cases of individuals capable of single-handedly committing genocide."

I reach up to my chest with my right hand, taking hold of the medallion. "I had to become a murderer to get this. The next person who is in my position.. shouldn't. Thank you for listening."

I take a step back from the podium. It takes a moment for them to fully realise that I've finished, then that part of the audience reporting on the event leap to their feet and begin shouting out questions. I raise my right hand in a farewell wave, then turn away to face President Horne. "I do an alright job?"

He nods. "I'd say so."

Someone who I'm going to assume is the White House Press Secretary hurriedly takes to the podium and President Horne and I walk off the stage. He waits until we're definitely out of auditory and visual range of anyone who doesn't work for him before stopping and facing me.

"Is that what you actually want?"

"It's the best idea I've been able to come up with for dealing with the top fraction of a percent of supervillains. I'm not going to go all out to try and force it to happen, this is a decision that would need widespread popular support. And if you can come up with something better, I applaud you for it. But, if that did happen… I would be happy to serve as a court executioner."

"I'll bear that in mind. Keep a hole in your diary for the Senate Judiciary Committee. They're going to want to talk to you at length."

"I think I can handle them. Any probable dates? My calendar is pretty flexible but I'd like to be able to plan around it."

He nods. "Since we're going to be working together, you should probably meet my staff. And now's as good a time as any."

back

Date Night 10

next

26th March

13:26 GMT -5

"…forty nine?" Marilyn Crock looks across the table at Paula in complete amazement. "How do you manage it?"

Paula shoots a slightly awkward glance at me. "I.. suppose it would be just.. a good diet, regular exercise and favorable genetics."

It.. is sort of noticeable. She hasn't mentioned anyone else commenting on it, but at close quarters with the extended family it was inevitable someone would ask. I didn't ask Paula not to clue them in about who I am but I suppose that she's used to disguising Artemis' vocation, and if I get spotted there's an increased chance she will as well. After LexCorp, pictures of us are out there on the internet and with just wearing one of those mini-masks she is easy enough to recognise. Luckily it doesn't look as though the family Crock are much interested in that sort of thing.

Having struck out with Selina, I.. think I'm not going to bother trying hitting on Paula. Even if she said yes, it would just make things awkward with Jade and Artemis. And I know that she isn't really looking for that sort of relationship at the moment.

Marilyn looks impressed. "You'll have to show me your exercise plan some time."

She met Warren at the school where they both teach and they'll have been married for twenty six years this August. It used to be that in situations like this lunch I'd have no idea what to say, just finding the whole complex mass of cross purpose dialogues confusing. Now -I'm not sure if it's the ring or all the adventures I've been on this year- I have to hold myself back from constantly interjecting. This is about letting Jade -and to a lesser extent Artemis- form social bonds with her family.

"Huh. Maybe you should use Arty's plan instead." Laurence Senior's right hand shakes slightly as he lifts his bread to his mouth. He's trying to eat while moving his hands as little as possible, forearms resting on the table surface when not carrying food. He lost -obviously- but I doubt many octogenarians can manage as many push ups as he did before Cynthia made him stop. Cynthia notices the shake and as she does so he notices that she's noticed, returning his arm to the table surface as she makes a very small shake of her head.

Matthew rubs his left shoulder where Jade used a shoulder lock on him during their spar. Nice to see her letting her hair down like that, though I think he found it to be a somewhat humbling experience. "Hey, ah… Jade? If it's not too personal a question?"

She shifts very slightly in her seat. "You can always ask."

"That.. organisation you were a member of..? What exactly was it? I mean, was it some kind of terrorist-."

Marilyn shakes her head at her son. "Matthew."

"I'm not saying-."

"It's okay, Missus Crock-."

"Oh, call me Aunt Marilyn dear."

Jade hasn't quite got her head around this yet. I suppose it's her first exposure to a normal family. Her normal family. "I'm-. I was a member of the League of Shadows."

Lawrence Senior frowns. "Wasn't that some kinda crazy supervillain cult the Justice League broke up last year?"

I suppose it makes sense that they'd have heard of it. The attack on Infinity Island was on the news, though interest in the trials and arrests rather petered out after a week or so.

Paula glances at Jade, who goes completely still for a moment. "You.. could put it like that. I'm sorry, my lawyer said that I shouldn't talk about-."

Cynthia pats her hand. "That's fine, dear. Paul, could you pass the salad dish?"

"Certainly." I nearly float it over, but remember myself a split second later and pick it up with my right hand instead to pass it across to her.

Matthew rolls his shoulder again. "Sure did a good job of training you up."

"All the best businesses invest in their people. And the Shadows were really more of a business than a cult. Kobra are the more culty ones."

Cynthia takes the bowl with a certain firmness which I take to mean that the topic is to be dropped. "So Paul, what is it you do?"

"Whatever takes my fancy, really. I suppose the most interesting thing I've been doing recently is, ah… Working with a company called KordTech and a chap from Atlantis to create a weather control system."

Lawrence looks interested. "What sort of weather control are you talking about there?"

"Earlier this week I watched the prototypes create a miniature storm inside a warehouse in New York with three control drones."

Warren frowns. "KordTech. I know that name from somewhere…"

Lawrence leans forwards slightly. "Is that a weapon they're planning on selling to Uncle Sam?"

"No, they're… The aim is to have the system ready for hurricane season, stick them in any major storms that make landfall and.. pretty much turn them off. Ted's not keen on making weapons."

"Why the-" A fraction-second glance at his wife. "-heck not?"

"Plenty of people build weapons, but the only people who've built weather control systems to date have been crazy." I shrug. "What's more important, another very expensive way to kill people or a way to prevent billions of dollars of property damage each year? To say nothing of the loss of life."

He doesn't look entirely happy with my tree-hugger response, but it looks like he's going to let it go for the moment. "KordTech's an American company, yeah?"

"Mostly." I nod. "There are some foreign shareholders, but the company is registered in America and the fellow running it is American."

"Oh, that's it." Warren nods. "Wasn't there some sort of demo back in.. February..? They're working on teleportation, aren't they?"

"The system they've got works, it's just a matter of getting to the point where they can produce enough units to sell as a coherent system."

He nods. Either he's covering it pretty well or he doesn't remember the face of the person doing the announcement well enough to match it with the face he's seeing now.

"Mister.. Crock Senior? May I ask you a question."

He smiles at Missus Nguyen. "Ah heck, you don't need to call me that. Lawrence is fine."

"Thank you. You would have been with the American army during the Vietnam War, yes?"

He nods. "I was serving with the First."

"Where in the country were you stationed?"

"Oh, a bunch of places. Anywhere that had the front line near it, I was probably there sometime." She nods. "You have a lot of contact with the army back then?"

She nods. "Yes, but not with you. I was organizing resistance units in American occupied cities. I was worried that we might have shot at each other, but now I do not think that can have happened."

He stares at her for a moment, before making a small snort and giving her a lopsided smile. "Well if that don't beat all. Finally found a VC."

back

Date Night 11

next

26th March

15:19 GMT -5

Matthew nods over to where his grandfather and Jade's grandmother are poring over a map of Vietnam. "I don't know whether to be surprised or not."

"At least they've found something they've got in common." Lawrence Crock Senior did surprise me by still retaining a little of the Vietnamese he picked up during the war. Not a great range, but he appeared to retain the grammar. Missus Nguyen appeared to appreciate the effort at least.

Artemis looks thoughtful. "I don't think Grandma's ever met someone from the American side of the war before."

"Not to talk to, anyway." Matthew hesitates for a moment. "Did.. Uncle Lawrence meet your mom in Vietnam?"

"Probably? I've never really asked her about it. I know Grandma was the one who taught Mom how to fight."

"Are you allowed to say the 'L' word?"

Matthew shrugs. "I'm not exactly thrilled to find out I'm related to a professional supervillain, but I can't just pretend he's not there."

Artemis looks away for a moment. "Did you..? Know about him..?"

"I… I knew I had a uncle who was a mercenary. I didn't know exactly who he was until you showed up and Grandma told Dad to talk to me about it."

"Is it a problem? For.. the army, I mean?"

He shrugs again. "I don't think so. I mean, no one's said anything and I'm sure my superiors know. I've…" He looks at the ground for a moment. "I've been thinking about… I don't know, not visiting him-."

Artemis shakes her head. "No."

"Yeah, I know he's a bad guy, but he's still family. And it's not like he's going to break out of Belle Reve."

"Again."

"Huh?"

"There was that break out just after New Year."

"Yeah, but that Strange guy was working the inside. Waller would never let something like that happen."

Oh, I know she wouldn't. I've seen the upgrades she's made to the place. She wasn't quite able to get the okay on the collar dead man's switch which would turn the inhibitor collars into decapitation bombs if something happened to the controls, but her political overseers have approved increases in security, personnel and funding in order to get the place sorted out. Having Justice League members speak publically in support of the place probably didn't hurt.

"It's your phone bill-." / "You don't know what he's li-."

Artemis and I look at each other for a moment. Yes, I get why she doesn't want Matthew to have anything to do with Casey Jones. Artemis turns away first. "He's not worth it."

"Yeah, realistically, by the time someone's completed their first few assassinations and started introducing themselves as 'Sportsmaster'-."

"Which is funny, because Dad actually is a sports master."

"He's.. not changing. And I doubt you'll get anything out of talking to him, except possibly getting your phone bugged by the FBI."

Artemis lets out a frustrated exhalation. "Can we talk about something else?"

"Ahhh… Okay?" He looks at me. "How did.. you and Jade meet up?"

"That's an interesting story, actually."

"You did mention poisoned lipstick. Did you.. run into her when she was on a job, or something?"

"I'm not supposed to talk about.. exactly what happened-."

"Oh, come on. I'm not going to report her to the police."

Artemis shuffles awkwardly for a moment, then turns away. "I'm gonna go.. check on.. Mom."

"Right. Um…" How to put this? "I.. was the person who arrested her. I encountered her with two known members of the League of Shadows and detained her pending a full investigation."

"You beat her in a fight? Heh heh." He shakes his head. "Glad I didn't spar with you, then."

Okay, time to ask. "I realise that this is going to make me sound massively arrogant, but do you seriously not recognise who I am? When people say things like that I'm never sure whether they're serious or just humouring me."

He looks me over again, then shakes his head. "What, are you.. some kinda English rock star or something?"

"I did have a Billboard Top One Hundred hit with my rendition of 'New York New York'…" Probably cemented the whole 'Cake Man' thing. I fan out my hands, palms upwards so that the ring sigils are clearly on display. "But as you pointed out, I don't usually do merchandising."

His eyes go to the rings, then back to my face, then to the rings blinking before he takes a step back and looks all of me over again. "I-! They're real?"

"Yes. Orange Lantern Two Eight One Four. Pleased to meet you."

"Ah, whaw. Aaaah, look, the whole 'Cake Man' thing-."

"I'm used to it, don't worry."

"So you mean you met Jade-."

"While she was in the company of two League of Shadow operatives. I mean, she's good at what she does, but I have power rings."

"Poisoned lipstick?"

"She said she wanted to thank me for arresting your uncle."

"You kissed..? Oh man, that wasn't smart." I squeeze my eyes shut and nod. "But you still visited her in prison?"

"Not much point arresting her if I just have to do it again in a couple of years."

"So… Do Aunt Paula and Artemis know?"

"Of course they do. I'm shocked that you didn't."

"Are you.. and Jade.. dating?" I frown. How does he think-? "Or.. going to date?"

"At this point, putting that sort of pressure on her is more likely to make her react negatively than do anything good. I'm going to let her sort her life out a bit before I-."

"Paul! Could you come in here please!"

Matthew and I both look in the direction the shout came from, then look at each other for a moment before we decide to heed Paula's request. I lead the way through into the living room. Cynthia, Paula, Warren and Marilyn are alternating between staring at the television, at me and at Jade, who appears to be trying to disappear into her armchair. Artemis just rolls her eyes at me and shakes her head. What's-?

On the screen there's an image of the night sky, which is suddenly illuminated by a surge of orange light.

"…from Vietnam, where it appears that Orange Lantern has picked up a new sidekick."

The image then changes to one of myself and Jade in conference with the Internal Affairs people.

"Initial reports say that everyone at the hospital -many of whom had crippling congenital disabilities- is now fully healthy."

Huh. That was quick.

back

Date Night 12

next

27th March

12:33 GMT -5

"What the fuck do you want?"

Leonard Snart doesn't actually sound annoyed as he says it. I hear surprise and curiosity instead, like he can't quite believe what he's seeing.

"I thought it was about time we had a chat, Mister Snart."

He looks at the guard escorting him for a moment, then sits down opposite me. We're in an interview room rather than the normal visitor booths, Waller's opinion of me being good enough to get the occasional favour.

"What, you think you can talk me around like you did Kadabra and the Terror kids?" He leans back slightly in his chair. "Better than you have tried."

"Oh, I don't think we're quite there yet, Mister Snart." The prison diet has taken quite a bit of weight off him, and without access to bleaching agent his hair's gone back to its natural brown. "This is just a trust building exercise, I'm going to try and convince you that cooperating with me is in your best interests."

"Got me out of cleaning the john. Take a shot. Try asking me about my childhood or something, like Doc Quinzel does."

"Mister Snart, I already know about your childhood." No reaction. I didn't ask to see Doctor Quinzel's notes on their sessions together but I have done a fair amount of background reading on the fellow. "Abusive father, absentee mother, your grandfather the only decent adult in your young life.. until his heart attack." No real reaction. He's well aware of his own damage. "Thing is, all that stuff… It's too late for me to do anything about it, or for you to become the person you might be if it hadn't happened. You're.. Captain Cold now, and if you knew me you'd know how much I hate calling people by their code names."

Mister Snart looks at me for a moment. "Good meeting, champ." He gets up and turns towards the door.

"You designed the ice fortresses, didn't you?" He stops. "When we stopped them, I was able to keep one more or less in one piece. Had to drop it in the Arctic Ocean until I could get a new power source… But when I went through the systems… That was your design… I mean, the air freezing systems, wasn't it?"

He turns his head upwards slightly. "I was in here the whole time."

"While Belle Reve was being run by Warden Strange, a known Light stooge."

"That's an interesting opinion you've got there. You planning to charge me with something?"

"No. Doubt I could prove anything. You want to sit down?"

He turns and looks at me for a moment. I hold his gaze. Five seconds pass, then he nods. "Can't hurt." He pulls the chair back, turns it through one hundred and eighty degrees and sits down.

"See, I'm actually a big fan of your work. I've used freeze rays and ice guns based-" There's a momentary flicker of something as I make that distinction. "-on your designs since I started. Did you really come up with the design during your first stint at Iron Heights?"

"Had a few ideas. Needed to steal some parts…"

"Because I read some of your school reports, and there's nothing that suggests that sort of scientific ability."

He shrugs. "I wanted to beat the Flash." He's not lying about that. "First time in my life I got properly motivated to learn something. The first Cold Gun I built was just supposed to slow him down so I could fight him. The ice was mostly a side effect. To start with. Then I realized that freezing people in place-."

"Without killing them."

"Killing people's not my thing. Usually."

He's never been convicted of murder.

"I've seen several iterations of your gun. Seen how you changed the design. It's really brilliant work. But I've got to ask; did you never consider monetising the invention and not fighting the Flash?"

"After the first time I got arrested as Captain Cold, the designs got confiscated. The gun got given to the people I stole the parts from and they're the ones who own the patent."

"That could be fought, you know. You're clearly the inventor."

"What judge would rule in my favor?"

"Okay, not a judge then. I was talking to some people at the Central City University's physics department. They'd quite like you to write up your notes and submit them for peer review."

He makes a sort of hiss-laugh. "I'm surrounded by my peers here."

"It's called 'peer review', the people doing it aren't necessarily-."

"I know what peer review is. What's in it for me?"

"A doctorate, and probably a few lectures if you want to give them."

"Fuck off."

"Mister Snart, you've found a way to make thermodynamics your bitch." That gets a smile. "That's amazing, especially given how spotty your formal education was. The department of physics is completely serious about the doctorate."

He sets his jaw slightly to the side. "Police got my notes."

"Yes, but the great thing about working for the Justice League is that I can ask to see that sort of thing. I couldn't take the originals, but I did make a perfect copy of everything they had. Waller's got hold of the whole lot now. If you're interested, she's prepared to alter your work schedule to give you the time you'd need. Obviously you wouldn't be allowed anywhere near anything you could use to build a working device…" I raise my eyebrows. "Interested?"

"Heh. Doctor Snart." He nods. "Sure. No reason not to."

"I'm glad you see it that way. There was one other matter. I've been using the Ice Fortress to reglaciate the North Pole."

He frowns. "I.. thought it just made blizzards."

"I had to change some of the systems, stick more of your freeze rays on, take out the air blowers. Point is, I'm being awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize for the work. And when they talked to me about it, I said that I wouldn't feel right about accepting if I didn't share it with the person who invented the core technologies. The freeze ray. Now, obviously you can't attend the award ceremony in person, but there's a plaque and a cash prize. If you're interested."

"How much?"

"A hundred and seventy five thousand dollars, split two ways. And I can probably persuade Waller to set up a video link so you can.. sort of join in with the ceremony. Um, I didn't refer to you as 'Captain Cold' when I spoke to them and it's possible that the people I spoke to didn't actually know who you are."

"Eighty seven and a half thousand dollars. For no extra work."

"Yes."

"Think I can see why Kadabra likes you."

"They might want to make you wait for it until you finish your sentence before you get hold of it, though."

"That's fine. Not like there's anything to spend it on in here."

"Oh, and as an added bonus… For when you finish writing up your thesis?"

He chuckles. "Don't let me stop you now. At this rate, you're going to tell me you snuck a couple of hookers-."

"I've got your mother's current address and phone number. I understand that you haven't spoken to her since-."

"FFfffffffuck!" His shock is clearly evident on his face. "You…" He slides off the chair onto his feet, taking a step away but staying facing me.

"Me. Still interested, or do you want to think about it for a -?"

He glowers. "Just give me my fucking notes."

back

Date Night 13

next

27th March

20:04 GMT -4

"…kinda took a while-" Doctor Quinzel pokes at her noodles with her chopsticks. "-but I finally think Waller's stawtin' t' like me."

I widen my eyes for comedic effect. "Really?"

"Y'know." She deftly lifts a string of noodles into her mouth and chews for a moment before swallowing. "She don't glare at me so much no mowah."

I've never really got the hang of chopsticks. Fortunately for me, this restaurant lays out conventional western utensils for people like me. Certainly, I could just use the rings to hold the food in place but I'm trying not to draw attention. I use a fork to scoop up some rice and then skewer a piece of peanut-flavoured chicken. Fruit and meat may not work for me but this is quite nice.

"The guards are alright with you, aren't they?"

"Mmm, couple weren't. But the new guys weren't heeya during the Time of Strange an' most everyone else is giving me the benefit o' the doubt."

I spear a couple of French beans. "Do you want me to ask Bendemann to have a quiet word?"

"Fuhgeddaboudit. The prison shrink ain't nevah gonna be populah." She somehow manages to grip a piece of beef at the same time as a broccoli floret and put them into her mouth. She's wearing tight-fitting black jeans with a red roll neck jumper. I invited her out to dinner to talk about the progress we're making with some of the inmates and we stopped off at her apartment in Houma before I transitioned us on to New York. "How'd you even know about this place, anyways?"

"Zatanna Zatara recommended it to me originally. I've been here a couple of times."

She raises her eyebrows. "You live in Noo Yawk?"

"No, Rhode Island, but Diana, the Zataras and one of the Green Lanterns live around here so I've spent quite a lot of time in the area."

"I thawt you had that flying fowtress thing?"

"Yes, but it's a bit isolated. Superman has a fortress, but he doesn't live there. Can I take it you've eaten here before?"

"Yeah, a buncha times. I grew up in Brooklyn."

"Oh."

"What?"

"I just.. always associated you with Gotham."

"Oh, I didn't move t' Gotham 'til I stawted college. Went to Gotham U on a gymnastics scholarship. The Arkham Trust paid for my doctorate. They got grants for anyone who agrees t' work there when they finish." Her face falls slightly. "Seemed like a good deal at the time. Course, now I know Strange approved my application because…" She waves her chopsticks.

I nod. "Would you say Arkham was a better or worse place to work than Belle Reve?"

"Belle Reve's definitely sayfuh. While I was theyah I tink we had, like, fowar or five guys fired fowar takin' gang money. And, y'know, Gotham,-"

"Gotham."

"-so there was probably a bunch more. Belle Reve's so fa away from their usual stompin' grounds they can't get the leverage."

"Plus all those security measures Waller's put in."

"Them too. I dunno. Maybe if Arkham gawt as much money as Belle Reve does they could do bettah as well. And it's not really the same sorta thing. T' get int' Arkham ya have t' be legally insane. We get the medication roight and keep them away from othah drugs and some of them might be able t' live in normal society. Maybe. In Belle Reve, they've all decided not to."

"But at the same time, there's a rational mind to relate to. We can persuade them."

"I wasn't shewah bringing up Lenny's mom was such a great idea, but you pulled it owof."

"It's the contrast. At that point he thought I was basically bribing him to behave himself. That doesn't really work by itself. I mean, he'd probably have done the dissertation without much nudging because he didn't have anything better to do-."

"But unless he confronts his underlying issues-."

"Right. And I wasn't going to give him his dad's address."

"How'd you find out alla that stuff?"

I shrug. "Central City Police, the Flash. Finding her address was a little harder but I had a scan of Mister Snart's DNA… Both Mister Snarts."

"I dunno what the Central City social woykers were thinkin', leaving him someplace like that."

"Taking a child into care is a last resort thing. Once his grandfather died there wasn't really anywhere else they could put him. And that's if they even knew about it."

She takes another stickful of noodle, then hesitates. "Do you know things abowt other people?"

"You mean, do I know that your mother is effectively raising your niece and nephew due to your brother being a deadbeat? Yes, I know that. And so does Waller, it was part of your background check."

"Huh." She looks away. "How 'bout that."

"I generally know the worst and best about everyone. I wasn't joking when I said that I can see into people's souls. I generally know why people do things-."

She looks back at me, comprehension dawning. "And… When you know why they do it-."

"You can't help but sympathise. Up to a point."

She nods. "Strange was roight about me, yah'know. Dad bein' inside when I was growin' up… That's why I hooked ont' him like I did. Wasn't even the first time I did something like thayat. There was a teacher at Gotham U…"

"What happened?"

"Oh… Nothin' I didn't sign up fowah." She sighs. "I'm jus' kickin' myself for not realisin' soownah."

I reach across the table and put my right hand on her left. "Hey. Knowing is.. half the battle."

She grins. "Oh, you did not just say that."

"So the trick is.. to never spend any time with a man ever again."

"Hey!"

"I know this great island-."

"Jus-. No. I ain't gunna give up an awl guys just causa that. Jus' gotta-" She smiles. "-find somebody who ain't a jerk."

"A sensible aim. My only concern.. is that there are quite a few people in Belle Reve who fit your 'absent father figure' category."

"Oh, I'm so ovah that." She looks away for a moment. "Um, hey, I hewd abowt what you and Jade did in Vietnam. Looks like she's really turned a cowner."

"Whitemail."

She thinks for a moment. "You tricked her into doin' it so she couldn't go crooked again?"

"That was part of it. Assassins need all sorts of support infrastructure to operate-."

"And now she can't get it. So the two of you aren't…" She waves the forefinger of her free hand back and forth.

"No, that… We're friends, but that wouldn't be appropriate."

"Huh. How 'bout that."

back

Date Night 14

next

28th March

06:41 GMT -5

"..so that's fifty eggs, twenty bell peppers and sixteen rashers of bacon." I look over the interior of the shopping trolley once more, phone construct held against my right ear. "Are you sure you wouldn't rather try chorizo sausage instead? Because I've got to be honest: I'm not completely convinced of the quality of this bacon."

"I am grateful for your concern, Mister Grayven, but I think it best if we keep with the familiar for the time being."

Jean is the newly created G-Goblin whom Dubbilex assigned to handle the Challenger Mountain operations as my majordomo. She's not only taller than both of them but possesses a much more adult frame than Ixy. Same suggestion-of-breasts and horn studs on her jaw that Ixy has but with Dubbilex's more upright posture. Her voice is clearly female and she speaks with a received pronunciation English accent. I'm not sure if that was due to them wanting to copy my manner of speech or not.

She can also taste and enjoy complex flavours, a facility which it appears the G-Prometheans share and one which I am more than happy to indulge. I'd kind of… Been feeling a bit lonely, moving from a populated mountain to one where Doctor Robbins, Mister Tawny and I were the only people who could talk so I'm glad for her presence. I've even made a point of easing off on my mental barriers when she's around, though I'm not sure if she appreciated the significance of the act.

"Okay." I take a look around the supermarket and smile at the few other early morning shoppers. I've been getting more than a few stares and several have taken pictures of me with their phones. With Challengerville an abandoned pile of rubble this place -Rifle, Colorado- is the closest settlement to my new home. Yes, I could boom tube to just about anywhere but if I'm making an effort to win the American public over I really think I should tie myself to a place. If the shopping is really bad I suppose I could just order still and have it deliv-.

"Hey. Are you Prince Grayven of Apokolips?"

"I'll see you shortly. Should be home in about ten minutes." I delete the phone construct before turning to face the woman addressing me. Ooooh bother. She's a little over six feet tall and has a muscular build. An unruly mass of vibrant red hair flows from her head and she's wearing green body armour with gold decoration and gold boots. And a gold cape? Odd. I was really hoping that I'd have more time than this. And that it would be somewhere private. "Miss Knockout, while I appreciate you doing me the courtesy-."

Dagh! Doof! Aghjik!

Bwah!

I gingerly pick myself up from the ruined wreck of a car I just slammed into.

Eight out of ten on the landing, Corpsman.

She just hit me through several shelving units and the outer wall. No weapon, I note. On the positive side I'm not injured and… I check around. When I hit this car I did so with enough force to shove it backwards into the middle of the road. Fortunately, there weren't any cars in the way. I hear screams as the other shoppers and staff flee, one of them shouting at the others to phone the police. No, that would just get them killed.

"Alright." My casual clothing is replaced with my Apokoliptian body armour and I activate the purple ray drones I left on a nearby roof top. "You can probably still protect Father with one arm."

Knockout walks confidently forwards through the settling dust. "At least you can take hits."

"Knockout, I thought that Father and I had an understanding." Leave. Now.

"While your flattery pleases me, I'm here for my own purposes."

The Sword of Second and Third costs too much ring power for me to store it in subspace so I don't have it with me, but I take my x-ionised sword out of subspace. "And what might that be?"

"I'm looking for a mate. You're powerful and reasonably intelligent, so you're it."

…

Huh?

Knockout reaches the pavement, then.. rises.. off the ground? I'm not seeing any aero discs… Then a yellow corona surrounds her head.

Father Box, I realise that I should have asked this about thirty seconds ago, but-.

Ploong.

Ah. Not Knockout.

"I am Maxima, Empress of Almerac. Defend yourself!"

I transition to the opposite side of the road as she fires what I think is some sort of telekinetic bolt at my previous location. "Sorry, thought you were someone else."

She immediately orientates herself on my new location. "Who could you possibly have mistaken me for?"

She gestures imperiously with her right hand and the wrecked car rises off the ground and then flies at me fast. I use the fear of the bystanders to brace myself before catching it with both hands and setting it down beside me.

"A woman called Knockout. She's got the same hair and fashion sense as you, but she's actually about an inch shorter and her musculature is more pronounced." I wave my right hand. "My ba-."

And she's on me ow. She punches my head in a left-right combination then rises slightly to strike me with her right knee. Before it hits home I grab her right lower leg and -check the building's empty, good- turn rapidly, slamming her into and through the wall behind me. Sinestro? Anything helpful about Almerac?

I never had cause to go there. The people have a wide range of unusual mental abilities-

I raise my right hand up and then slam her face first into the tarmac.

-and a highly martial culture. The system of government is an-

Ghh! My right hand spasms as she uses some sort of telepathic feedback attack on my peripheral nervous system. Haven't.. quite got the hang of adapting the yellow ring to blocking that sort of thing yet, though as she backs away she looks a little surprised by how much effort it's taking her.

-autocratic monarchy and they set great store in personal psychic power.

She shoots forwards, air rippling around her as she aims for my head again.

It is the only part of you which is unarmo-.

Yes, thank you, Sinestro. One fist finds my forehead before I can transition away again. "I'm sorry, but I'm not on the market! I already have a mate and I'm very happy with her!"

She doesn't even turn as the yellow corona around her head hits me… Okay, looks like I owe Chester a box of Roses. It hurts, but it's far from being overwhelming.

"Metropolis is on the East Coast! Why can't you go and bother Kal-El?"

"Kal-El didn't kill a lord of Chaos." She keeps the beam up as she drifts towards me. "Giving up yet? You'll have far more fun if you yield."

"Hardly." Drones, shoot her.

Purple beams lance towards her from four separate directions. There's a slight distortion around her skin as she creates a telekinetic barrier, but as expected the beams go right through it. Her blast cuts out as she shudders and falls to the ground as the negalife works its magic.

Drones, stop. As soon as the beams stop she rises to a crouch, ready to lunge at me again. "Look, I'm very serious about not being available. Jade and I are in love. But I'm willing to offer my services as a matchmaker?"

"Explain."

"What characteristics are you looking for in a mate?"

"Strength. Power. They need to be a warrior with abilities that complement mine."

"Really? That surprises me."

"I'm not interested in a weak mate."

"But they'll share your throne. Wouldn't experience in positions of command or leadership be more useful?"

She thinks for a moment. "Possibly. As a secondary consideration."

"Look, I have a database full of information on all sorts of people. Why don't you let me see if I can't find someone more suitable for you?"

back

Date Night 15

next

28th March

11:57 GMT -5

"Right." I lower the lights in what will soon once more be Challenger Mountain's briefing room and activate the holographic projector. "Sorry if this is all a bit simple, I'm mostly using Human technology. And my files are really more about threat assessment than datability."

Maxima sits up attentively, her eyes fixed on the display. "You may begin."

Jean stands behind her, tray in hand. I assigned her to look after Maxima while I did the research she wanted. Maxima more or less ignored her unless she wanted something, treating her as part of the furniture despite there being little difference in their psychic abilities. Someone didn't do their research. Mister Tawny was likewise dismissed as a mere animal, though from what I know of his untigerly body language he's actually finding this fascinating.

I think Doctor Robbins is off joyriding the Sphere again.

"Okay. So, I assessed potential mates based on physical power and political experience as you directed. There's no perfect candidate, but the best match I could find was-" I press a button to display the optimal potential spouse. "-Queen Hippolyta of Themyscira."

Maxima blinks. "What."

"She has over three thousand years of experience as head of state in both times of war and times of peace and is a skilled warrior and commander. In addition, her status as a demigoddess means that she has considerable innate arcane power resulting in more than Human strength and endurance."

"She's a queen."

"Small island nation. She could rule it in her sleep at this point, or hand it off to one of her more sensible senators. I doubt that spending most of her time on Almerac would really be a problem. Only one offspring, a now adult daughter who is a capable warrior in her own right. And she's single, so there'll be no problem over conflict with an existing mate. Possible drawbacks include the fact that she's a little behind the times, technologically speaking, and… The fact that she hasn't taken a mate in three thousand years might indicate a reluctance to involve herself with others in that way. But all told, she's your best bet by a considerable margin."

"She's a woman."

"Yes? Yes she is. Virtually all romantic relationships in her culture are between two women, so there won't be a problem there." I look back at Maxima. "What do you think?"

"Next."

I frown. "What's the problem?"

She rolls her eyes. "Show me one who's male."

I frown. "You didn't say that was part of the criteria." I look down at the datapad containing my list. "I mean, several of these-."

"Grayven, I need a mate. Someone with whom I can have children."

"Okay?"

She gestures angrily at me with her right arm. "Are you being deliberately obtuse?! How can I have children with another woman?!"

"How were you planning to have children with me?"

She lowers her hand and looks me over carefully. "You are male, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"And.. conventionally humanoid?" She looks directly at my groin. "You have a penis and testicles under there, right?"

I shake my head. "Yes, but it's not that simple. Humanoid or not, we're biologically very different creatures. And I'm God of Conquest, fecundity and proliferation aren't part of my domain. I can't just ignore interspecies biochemical barriers at will."

"Oh." She averts her eyes slightly.

"I was assuming that you realised that any children we had would have to be produced in a laboratory. And since you'd have to have known that, logically you wouldn't have a problem applying those techniques to the genetic material of other potential mates." I think for a moment. Actually… "Given Queen Hippolyta's relationship with her people's gods, it might be possible for her to get around that particular problem if you really want to carry the child yourself." I shrug. "Seems like it might get in the way of the whole 'Warrior Queen' thing."

She appears somewhat ruffled. "Is Kal-El on there?"

"No. Existing relationship and little leadership experience. I mean, I can give you the run down if you want, but would you really be interested in a man who so easily turned from his mate?"

Her mouth curves downwards as if she just bit unsuspectingly into a lemon. "I suppose not."

"Look, if you're not happy with the criteria, we can just come up with new ones."

She sighs. "I just thought this would be simple. Find someone who was my physical equal, fight them to establish dominance and then drag them back to Almerac for the ceremony and honeymoon."

"A most romantic vision, to be sure. May I ask a question?" She waves her right hand in a circle. "I assume that you would be sharing power with your consort?"

"Of course. They would become…" She glances at the image of Queen Hippolyta. "King."

"Then… Rather than choose a mate whose virtues match your own, would it not be wiser to select one whose virtues complement them? I mean to say… Surely there are some duties which you prefer to others?"

"Couldn't you just find me a big, strong telepathic male?"

"Yeeeeess…" I press a button. "This is Chester Black." The picture is one I took during one of our training sessions. He's more than a little drunk and quite dishevelled. "A powerful telepath and telekine with a vicious temperament balanced by surprisingly strong underlying moral fibre. His drawbacks include a complete lack of leadership experience-"

"That hair."

"-and according to his sister he dislikes children."

"Still. I could have someone to bathe and dress him…"

"I've got to be honest here, Maxima: I think you're reaching."

She slumps. "Is there no one else?"

"Dubbilex is a powerful telepath and a reasonable telekine, but while male-identifying he has no reproductive organs. Henry King Junior is a capable telepath but physically past his prime." I press another button and the hologram changes. "Doctor Cizko-."

"No."

"Okay, um… J'onn J'onzz is a capable telepath as well as a shapeshifter-"

She perks up. "Oh?"

"-but he doesn't really have any leadership experience, doesn't find standard pattern humanoids attractive and has a crippling pyrophobia."

"Oh."

"To be honest, given how large the families of his species usually are, I'm not sure he has a sex drive at all."

"He's a telepath, can't he just borrow mine?"

"I don't think it works like that."

She snorts. "Fine. What was that you were saying about complementary virtues?"

"You're a warrior. You're psychically powerful and I imagine a capable commander."

"Extremely so."

"But there's more to ruling than that. Would it not be more advantageous to take someone with administrative or political skills as your mate? Armies don't just need strong soldiers, they need food, weapons, transportation. A strong economy to support that, a research base to ensure that your weapons keep pace with those of your enemies."

Maxima blinks. "The boring stuff."

"I.. find it quite fulfilling myself, but if you like… Yes. Marry someone who is good at that and they'll have the authority to deal with it without having to refer every little decision to you."

She slowly nods. "That's not a bad idea."

"If that's your selection criteria, I have a few-" I switch the image to Lex Luthor. "-possible-."

"No, no." Maxima rises imperiously from her seat. "They'd have to learn everything about Almerac from scratch. It makes far more sense to just marry the person who does all that stuff now."

"If they do a good job, yes."

She slowly walks to a clear area of the room before turning back to face me. "Prince Grayven, once you turned me down, I thought this whole thing would be a big waste of time. But I was wrong. This has helped me a great deal."

I smile. "Pleased to be of service. Do stop by again if you're ever in the area."

Her yellow halo reappears as the space around her ripples and distorts. "Sazu, congratulate me."

"Congratulations, mistress. But what for?"

"We're getting married."

back

Date Night 16

next

28th March

23:13 GMT +3

"…a third time, and the young man's arse fell off."

Immediately I finish the line, I stand up and walk away from my attentive listeners.

"What?" / "Hey, that doesn't-!" / "His.. his arse..?" / "Why..?"

Don't ask a Discordian for a joke and then expect something that makes conventional sense. Honestly, they should know better by now.

I stride across the forum in search of further entertainment. The whole theatre troupe have returned to the island now and stories of my performance have spread. I've recounted the whole thing five times already this evening, three of those with interjections from the actresses. My suggestion that we do a play of the events was met with bemusement as the idea of doing a play within a play appears to be something that has never occurred in the Themysciran literary canon.

My suggestions that we start performing immediately before we forget didn't meet with more favour.

I wave back as someone -ah, it's Galene- waves at me in greeting from across the forum. Themyscira doesn't have a seven day cycle but the spring Dionysia nonetheless started on Saturday. Diana did see if I wanted to attend the opening festivities, but I had things to do and I sort of wanted Kon and M'gann to have some time to themselves. But during the week -with them needing to attend school the next day- I don't feel that I'm taking attention away from them by being here. I've feasted, toasted Eris and even danced a little. At the moment I'm making sure that I'm seen. Acantha was pretty definite that I should start spending some time each week in the forum. Amazons expect people like me -people who want to persuade others to change their ways- to be available to be questioned, and me not living here has been making that a little difficult.

But this really isn't the time for serious philosophical debate. I've had a bout of good PR, and apparently the Amazons consider me mouthing off about the gods while under the influence more amusing than offensive. And I'm not really here to work. In fact, the only choice is whether to limit myself purely to enjoying myself or to try to undo the three thousand year old mutual friendzone that is the Hippolyta/Philippus relationship. Mmmmm… Maybe if I see an opening…

I transition myself back up to the upper level of the cit-.

"Ho! Bard!"

I look around as Zosime hails me, then take a bow towards her and her friends. "Is there some service this humble member of the masculine gender may render to his honourable sisters?"

Next to her, Antimache blinks heavily in the darkness. "That sentence is so ridiculous that I do not even know where to begin. And do not think it escaped my notice that the smith with whom you were so taken spent the first day of the festival in-."

Zosime elbows her to silence. "A song! Something from the outside world!"

"As milady wishes. But what sort of song would be most pleasing to her ears?"

"This is the Dionysia! A love song!"

"Something bawdy!"

"He doesn't sing those. Remember the baths?"

Oh, the baths. The baths. I spent a half hour last month cleaning out Themyscira City's old male public baths for my and Kon's use. Only.. the locals took one look at the place and thought 'ah, someone's put the old baths back into service' and started using it themselves. A few weeks later I walked right in on… Well. I walked right back out again.

Antimache appears to grudgingly accept that this is going to happen. "Why not a song of mourning and heartbreak?" One of the other guards hugs her from behind and nuzzles her neck.

I grin as the crowd of tipsy guards turns to arguing amongst themselves for a moment. I somehow don't think that modern love songs are really the thing to go with here. Too instrumental for the most part. I can play a variety of instruments with ring assistance, but I really enjoy singing more. Let's see… What fits the ah!

"I think I have something! I think I have something." I give them a moment to quieten down. "A song with love as the subject, though not necessarily the object." I take a moment to get myself into the requisite headspace. It's not a very happy song, after all.

"As I was out a'riding.. one evening last July,"

The ring has enhanced my voice and my lung capacity, but I don't use it to continually ensure that I sound exactly as I want to.

"I heard a maiden singing and bitter she did cry."

If I do that I may just as well play them a recording.

"I quietly dismounted to get a closer view,

and see if there.. was 'ought a man.. of honour could yet do."

The original line is 'could pursue', but I thought that sounded a bit too 'she's alone and abandoned, I'm in' for me. My modification hopefully makes it clearer that he intends to offer aid.

"She stood all in the clearing and no one else was there.

Her eyes with salt tears shone within the shadows of her hair.

Her dance was wrought in anger and her voice was tight with pain."

There's a slight gasp from my audience and I notice that a little way away one of their number is performing an interpretative dance to my song.

"As she sang her song of undying love for some far-wandering man."

Her movements are slow and elegant, arm sweeping and-. She's not wearing very much. I raise the pitch of my voice for the female part as I slowly approach her.

"Oh, you deny the magic and you deny the love.

But I swear an oath by all that's bright in the darkening sky above-

That we have shared a magic and the love flowed strong and true!

You can close your ears to my heart's song and still it sings for you."

And then I realise why they gasped.

"So you want to be my friend and use a friendly voice to me-"

It's Euanthe.

"Oh, I swear an oath by all that lives on land, in air and sea!"

Our eyes meet for an instant as she twists and bends to my words.

"That I do not leave the friendship when my heart's led by romance."

I'm inches away now. She's.. healthier now, her 'clothing' a smooth bodice and pair of shorts made of bark. I lower my voice to draw the audience in as I stand within touching distance.

"You can close your eyes on the swirl and sway, but you cannot stop the dance."

She turns away to continue her dance as I step back.

"So you say you fear to hurt me or to cause me some new pain.

Oh, I swear an oath by mist and fog, by sleet and snow and rain!

That the finest treasure's worthless if its beauty is not seen

And you pierced my heart like cold hard steel by denying what had been."

"Well, I pity all your ladies for your memory's so short.

And your eyes that speak of romance when you're only wanting sport.

Oh, I swear an oath by all I hold in this world to be true,

That as deep a grief as I feel now, 'tis a greater loss for you."

Dryads don't ordinarily enter the city. Is she alright?

"She swore that final oath and then she danced into the ground."

Euanthe drops to a crouch, her arms raised and in constant motion.

"The birds and beasts, the mist and rain, all heard that final sound."

I turn back to my now-shared audience, my face a picture of sorrow.

"And I'm the only witness as can tell the tale to you-

Of the sorrow learned.. by those who find.. that love.. can be half-true."

A moment of silence as I bow, then as I straighten I feel a hand on my right arm. I turn my head to the right to see Euanthe's face an inch from my own. She stares for a moment before reaching down and taking my right hand in her left. "Come with me." She tugs, and I gladly go with her. She's pulling me in the direction of Demeter's templ-.

"Just not on the altar, Pavloow!"

I look back with a smile as Antimache rubs her head and glowers at her comrades in arms before returning my attention to the Dryad. "Euanthe?"

"I was watching from Eldest Sister's temple, but I heard your singing. I had to-." She stops talking for a moment, tensing slightly. "It is hard… With stone…"

"Out of your element. I appreciate your effort."

She turns her head back towards me as we cross the plaza and there's a small and slightly awkward-looking smile on her lips. "I wanted to see you again but you are seldom here."

"Here I am."

She smiles a little more, head slightly tilted downwards. "Yes." Then she turns her head back to the path and increases her pace, pulling me along behind her in earnest. The temple is empty at this time of the evening and doesn't see all that much use over the Dionysia as a whole. Looking up, I can see that the roof is another vine-covered lattice, designed to let both water and light into the similarly plant-decorated interior.

Euanthe releases her grip on my hand and walks further in, onto the patch of grass beneath a larger hole in the roof lattice. She closes her eyes, clearly enjoying the reunion with her element, then drops into a sitting position facing me, her right arm extended towards me, inviting me to join her.

I slowly approach, extending my left hand to lightly take hold of hers as I sit down just in front of her. "I suppose we're not really seeing the temple at its best at this time of night."

"I could cause the plants to flower, but I cannot make sunlight."

I nod, then extend a filament up into the air behind me before releasing a light globe designed to replicate the wavelengths of natural light. Euanthe stares up at it for a moment before smiling at me once again. Then she turns her attention to the walls and oh. Flower buds form and blossom as I watch, covering the plants in a verdant shock of off-season colour. Artistic creativity isn't.. something I'm used to people using their power for. This is… Impressive.

"You have… Nice.. meat."

I look away from the blooming walls and back to Euanthe. "Um, thank you?"

"I did not say that right, did I? I am not used to dealing with Humans." Her body language is odd. No, literally inhuman. Constant motion but none of the automatic actions that a Human would make. Her eyes don't drop, her head doesn't turn away. "This.. festival, I remember it of old. It is about becoming closer to people, rejoicing in their presence, their.. physicality. I wish to.. become closer to you." She moves her left hand to her bodice. "Should I remove this bark? My body is not quite that of a Human woman, but it is very close. Close enough for your.. meat."

Not on the first date. Not even during the Dionysia. Not with someone who went through what she did. "Dryads don't reproduce in the way Humans do, do they?"

"There are different kinds of Dryad. But, no, I do not. Is that important to you?"

"No, I just…" That might work. My eyes unfocus slightly as I swiftly review the ring's database of alien plant life. "The symbolism is different. Perhaps-" Yes, that one would work. It should be able to survive in Earth's soil. I fabricate a Tartary seed in my right hand and hold it out to her. "-we could do something with-" Her eyes focus on it with laser intensity. "-this instead. Can you work with it?"

"I do not recognise it. And I know all plant life."

"All plant life on Earth. This is alien."

"Its spirit is weak. But.. if I nurture it…" She cautiously reaches out with her left hand and plucks it from my grasp. "And feed it on the Green…" I see a tiny sprout appear from the base of the seed and another from the tip. Euanthe looks down and pushes the seed into the soil next to us. "It will be the work of a moment." The sprout pushes upwards and a quick ring scan shows the roots pushing down and outwards. Leaves follow within a minute, flowers within two, and the lumpy blue Tartary fruit within three. Euanthe looks up at the spindly fruit tree with a look of pure innocent joy.

Well, the fruit match my database image for ripe Tartary fruit… I send wide filaments upwards, pluck one from the branch and bring it down to us before slicing it in half and holding one half out to her. She cautiously examines it for a moment before putting the end into her mouth and biting down. Hm. The skin is edible, but in the places where it's eaten it's more common just to consume the flesh. Oh, never mind. I bite into mine and.. it's a bit like a blackcurrant with the texture of an apple. Maybe a bit sweeter?

Euanthe has already finished her half. "Do you have more?"

"Yes, but we've got all evening. What have you been doing since I saw you last?"

"Existing. Forgetting. Remembering. Having seen what I saw, I find I cannot simply cavort with my sisters as I once did. I fear that what I experienced has forever marked me as a thing apart."

I nod. "I think I know the feeling. I.. don't know if the idea appeals to you, but… The mountain I live in. On top, there is a grove of trees grown from a fruit like the one I fed you under London."

"From the flesh of the Great Warrior?"

"Yes. It's a major site of Green power, the magic energies of the whole region now focus on it. I was.. wondering if you would like to move there? I can take you there as easily as I brought you here from London. And if you can't be as you were, perhaps you could become something else instead?"

"I think that I would like that."

back

Date Night 17

next

30th March

15:27 GMT +4:30

"This is… Weird."

Zatanna looks up from her kebab as we walk away from the street food vendor. "What is?"

I look around the busy and mildly chaotic streets of Kabul. "I couldn't walk around Kabul like this back home. Well, no, I could with a power ring, but otherwise it would be too dangerous."

"How is Kabul dangerous?"

"The history of the country is… Somewhat different. Um, what do you know about Afghani history?"

"Not much. They.. joined the Warsaw Pact during the seventies… And I think I remember something about Soviet bases in the south being attacked by the local tribes…"

Our guide snorts, then catches himself and looks nervously at us.

I wave it off with my right hand. "I'm sure you know it better than we do."

He nods. "It was a cruel thing to do to those conscripts who were stationed there, but President Daoud knew what he was doing. Put all the bases near Pakistan so the crazy tribes start fights with the Russians and not the rest of us. And it was no bad thing to have all of the Russian soldiers away from the centres of government. The communists weren't as integrated into the PDPA as they are now and they might have started something."

"And he could honestly tell the Soviets that Pakistan was a member of CENTO and SEATO, so there was a good reason for them to be there."

"It was that or put them next to Turkey. But we had to trade with someone."

Zatanna looks at me inquisitively. "Is that not what happened on your Earth?"

"No."

"Ah… If you don't mind me asking, sir..?"

"I come from a parallel universe, and.. one of the differences is that Afghanistan is a bit of a war zone. I.. never really studied exactly what started it off, but the Soviet Union actually invaded the country at one point… Then, Britain and America started funnelling weapons and money to the most theologically vicious tribes and Wahhabi madrassas they could find with the aim of making their life miserable. Of course… In the end, that meant that when the Soviets gave up on the whole thing as a waste of life and money-."

His eyes widen. "Merciful Allah. You mean they took over the country?"

"The Taliban ruled Afghanistan from just after the Soviets left to two thousand and one when the United States invaded the country and they've been fighting a continuous guerrilla war across the country ever since, allied to every radical lunatic they can find. Westerners don't dare-" I watch as a group of tourists stroll past us down the street. "-walk around in the open like this. You'd get shot, kidnapped or blown up by a suicide bomber."

"Suicid-." He shudders in horror. "I think I am glad that I live in this Afghanistan."

We walk up to the security gate surrounding the conference centre being used for the conference in which the leaders of the region are meeting Adom officially for the first time. Bialya isn't being represented, though about three different groups who claim to represent it are in Kabul at the moment. It was interesting to see how different the region's history is to back home. No war with the Soviet Union means that while there are Islamic fundamentalists around -though like back home the word 'fundamentalist' doesn't have the negative connotations in Arabic that it does in English so they just call them crazy- they don't have anything like the political or military power that I'm used to. Plenty of countries hate Israel, but in an almost agnostic pan-Arab nationalist way rather than a religious way. It's a political problem rather than Satan's holiday home.

And of course, no al-Qaeda means no attack on the World Trade Centre on the eleventh of September.

Our guide -his name is Mister Farid- leads us inside the building. "I just wish I knew exactly what caused the difference."

"Did the Anglo-Afghan Wars still occur?"

"Yes, there was.. a bit of a joke about us not learning the lessons of history when we followed the Americans in for the.. fourth time, was it?"

"If that happened, it would have been the fourth time, yes."

"How do you.. handle the border with Pakistan these days?"

"We have the military guard the main roads, and otherwise do what any sensible person should do: avoid it." He holds open a door and ushers us inside. "His Excellency Teth Adom will be with you shortly."

"Thank you." Zatanna leads the way into the lounge area as Mister Farid closes the door behind us. She sits down on one of the settees and takes a deep breath. "Are you sure this is the right thing to do?"

"His help would be very useful and.. he.. definitely won't talk to Nabu."

"I know he's your friend, but I saw pictures of what he did to those people in-."

A door in the far side of the room opens and Adom walks through. He stops in the threshold, nods to Zatanna and myself and then partially turns his head to the people behind him. "Wait here."

"Yes, Mighty One."

He walks in and the aide closes the door behind me. Zatanna gets to her feet. "How is the conference going?"

"It is strange to have so many leaders meeting in one place. Recognition of my government will occur, subject to them sending 'monitors' to the capital to make sure that I do not make slaughtering my political enemies a habit."

"Are you alright about that?"

"They would have sent spies regardless. At least this way I will know where some of them are." He looks curiously at Zatanna. I suppose he... He hasn't met her before, has he? "I was informed that you wish to speak with me."

I cover the walls in orange sound baffles and deposit ward stones along the walls. "Yes, Adom. In point of fact we would like to ask for your help. Well, provisionally. We.. still.. hope it won't actually come to a fight."

"You have done a great deal for Kahndaq and for me personally. Tell me what you need, and if it is in my power I will grant it."

I look at Zatanna. This will almost certainly sound better coming from her. She takes a breath to steady herself. "Five months ago a Lord of Order called Nabu possessed my father. His.. spirit is bound to the Helmet of Fate; whenever someone puts it on he takes control of their body and uses it to interact with the world. Once he's in control there's no way for them to take it off or resist him. We're trying to work out a way to get rid of him, and if it.. turns out that we need to use force, we would appreciate it if you would agree to help us."

There's a very slight frown on his forehead. "Fate? Lord Fate is a member of the Justice League as your father was. Are they unaware of this?"

"No. They're not. And before you ask, I have no idea what they're thinking. And I can't talk to them about it because I can't risk Nabu finding out that we're planning something."

"His control is constant?"

"Yes. When you're wearing the Helmet, it's like you're standing in a black void. Nabu can talk to you and show you what's going on outside, but that's it."

"I find it unlikely that a woman such as Princess Diana would countenance the presence of such a being."

"Justice League nominations need the approval of every current member. If she wasn't happy about it she didn't speak out about it."

"This is.. concerning. What does it want with your father?"

"It wants a powerful magic user as its host. He was the strongest available."

Adom nods slowly. "I have no great love for Lords of Order, but they are extremely powerful. I will aid you, but you know that strength alone will not carry the day."

I nod. "We know. We're working on the rest, and it may even be possible to reach a peaceful settlement. This is just in case it's not. Our current plan is to confront him on the seventh of July and attempt to negotiate Mister Zatara's release. The fight would start the moment we fail."

"I will keep my calendar clear. You will brief me more fully when you have a firm plan?" I nod. "Then we have an accord. If there is nothing else, I will take my leave. I need to speak to the Libyan agriculture minister before the end of the recess."

"Ad-. Teth Adom, I… Thank you. For agreeing to help me with this."

"You are welcome, Miss Zatara. After all of this politicking, I will find it pleasant to have a simple fight of good versus evil once more."

back

Date Night 18

next

30th March

10:57 GMT -3

Sephtian makes eye contact with me from the outside of the air chamber. "We can begin the attempt, if you are ready."

I look over the obsidian head once more. I created it in perfect accordance with his directions. The spells bound to the strands of metal running throughout the structure should cause anything possessing it to have a full range of Human senses and be able to speak. I'm a little ashamed that I didn't realise the potential it has as an alternate residency for Nabu until well after the project was underway, but really that just motivates me to press this project ahead all the more. It's not quite as good as we can make it, but when you're waking up an elemental of uncertain temperament it's wisest not to presume its good will. That's also why it isn't connected to the rest of the golem body we built.

I nod. "Okay. Plug it in."

Sephtian moves his hand over the arcane control system and -though I can't see it- the spells keeping Michael Siskin bound within the containment vessel develop a single breach, one leading directly into the golem head, granting him access to the outside world for the first time since the start of the month.

Him or the Terror Thing.

The head is surrounded by spells of binding and containment. Finding time to research them is what caused the largest part of the delay. Atlanteans may not use automata to any significant degree but they know how they're supposed to work. We have no idea how long this part of the process is going to take. Depending on exactly how he's come to terms with his situation he might not even want to come out. Or he might still be fighting the Terror Thing and desperately try to keep it away from the breach. If something along those lines is happening we've got a replacement -and substantially improved- storage vessel on hand…

"Can you see anything?"

I shake my head. "No." I've got my empathic vision amped up and all I can see inside is yellow. Not that that necessarily means much. Unlike me, Siskin doesn't have an organic body to assist in keeping his other emotions functioning. Would it help if we cloned-.

"Orange Lantern, something is-"

There's a pulse of brilliant yellow in my empathic vision.

"-coming out!"

There's a dull glow from the wires in the golem head and a very mild shimmer from the inner circle of wards. Whatever we've got in there isn't actively trying to get out, at least.

"Are the bindings in the head strong enough?"

"I… Yes, yes they are. At the current levels of stress-."

"Where am I?"

Siskin's voice, or something close to it. There's a definite change, I can hear the yellow… It's threaded through every word, not crowding out all other concepts but still omnipresent. He sounds different to how he was last time we spoke.

"Mister Siskin?"

"Orange Lantern. Where am I? How long has it been?"

"You're in a hazardous materials laboratory in Poseidonis, the capital of Atlantis. It's been a little under a month since you entered the containment vessel before Nabu could destroy the Terror Thing."

He should be able to animate the head easily enough. I can only assume that he doesn't particularly want to at the moment.

"Are you.. you?"

"I am… Something. I took all that was left of the Terror Thing into me. Though that may well mean that I'm more it than me now. There was so little of me left anyway…"

"I remember speaking to the Terror Thing. It wasn't exactly philosophically inclined."

There's a slight.. glow in the golem head's eyeballs. "So. What happens now?"

"Now, we ask you some questions, then… Then we connect you up to a golem body. That will allow you to interact-."

"Do you expect me to be grateful?"

I consider his situation for a moment. "I suppose not."

"I exist. I should continue to do so, I suppose. And I don't want to keep staring at that wall for the rest of time."

"Are you..? Are you in pain? Or.. suffering some other-?"

"No. That's the thing. I was… When I lived through all of the fears that made up the Terror Thing, I did suffer. Horribly. To start with. And then… Each time, the horror got a little less. And I became more inhuman. I'm not suffering, and I think that's the worst part. I should be, but I'm not. It just feels… Right, now."

"That doesn't sound bad, considering how you were living."

"You said you'd been through this yourself. Do you not.. miss things? Your humanity?"

I shake my head. "I know I'm different, but I don't feel.. inhuman. Maybe it's because the Ophidian and I cooperated, rather than trying to tear each other apart as you and the Terror Thing did." I contemplate the head for a moment. "Is there..? Someone you want us to contact..?"

"My family. Are they still alive?"

"Your parents, sister and brother are all in good health. Once we get you.. ambulatory, you could say hello-."

"Why did you do this? At best, I'm a slightly more controlled monster than the Terror Thing. I see everything in terms of fear. You know the people I used to work for, if they found out that I existed like this-."

"If they ever came out of hiding you'd probably kill them yourself."

"Create a monster, get killed by the monster."

"They've got no way to manipulate you any more. No way to control you. You're a psychic weapon far more powerful than the one Geotroniks built; your golem body will be far more resilient than your old flesh one and even if it got destroyed you could still maintain your integrity-."

"No." There's a pause. "The idea amuses me, but there's no emotional connection to the idea. I don't intend to seek vengeance. What does.. this.. golem body look like?"

"At the moment, black stone in a roughly humanoid shape. I didn't want to get anything complicated done until I'd had a chance to speak to you about it."

"Black.. stone…"

"We can put an illusion on it if you want to look like your old self, one you can power yourself."

"No. I'm not the old me any longer. Pretending would be… It would be wrong."

"Okay, well, we still want to check you over,-" I nod to Sephtian who begins gathering his test wands. "-but once that's done we can attach this head to the rest of the body, and.. you can think about what you want the rest of you to look like."

"Mister Siskin?"

"Who is that?"

"My name is.. Sephtian. I will be your artificer. I was wondering… I was not able to properly assess how powerful you are while you were fully contained. How much of you.. are you able to fit into the head?"

"Hardly anything. Maybe a hundredth of my full power. Most of me is still in the storage vessel."

Sephtian freezes in the water.

"Is that a lot?"

"Oooooh yes. Less than the.. binding chains can contain, but… More than I should have put here without conferring with the Queen." Sephtian begins moving again. "Let.. us.. hurry."

back

Date Night 19

next

30th March

16:36 GMT

"What did the government tell them?" Mister Siskin doesn't bother turning his head as we stand on the pavement outside his parents' house in Becontree, East London. The fully constructed golem looks a little like the Flamekin from Magic: the Gathering and he's wearing loose-fitting jogging trousers and a sweatshirt to disguise his form. Only slightly, mind. If anyone took a closer look they'd realise that something was up. They're discouraged from doing so by the fact that the golem is six and a half feet tall and quite.. solid looking. He's probably also radiating a little of the fear-flavoured magic that now makes up his true self inside the stone case.

"I'm not completely sure. I can only easily access electronic records, and as you can imagine there aren't many of those left. 'Accident at work, full investigation to follow', probably."

Huh. I suppose that he's a little like Red Tornado was in the comics now: crack the casing and you haven't won, you've just made life even harder for yourself.

"If you don't want to try talking to them right away-."

"If not now, when? When would be a good time to find out that I have become this?"

"When we've found an illusion that isn't disrupted by.. you? Or when you've gotten more used to it? There were probably things other than fear in those memories if you look hard enough. I know someone-."

The pale yellow corona under his hood intensifies for a moment. "I'm not going to drag this out. Either they accept that I'm who I say I am, or they don't."

"Alright, I'll… Come out and get you if they want to talk to you."

He inclines his head slightly and I start up the path to their front door. A little surprising that this was the first thing he wanted to do, given how much he was banging on about his inhumanity. He wasn't particularly interested in assessing how strong his new body is or what his arcane abilities are now. As far as I can tell he was strictly a low level parapsychic before this, now we've got no idea.

I press the doorbell and wait. Police notifying people that their loved ones have been horribly injured or killed is a feature of most crime dramas I've seen but for various reasons isn't something superheroes are generally called upon to do. Gareth and Maeve Siskin, seventy one and seventy five respectively. He used to be a postman and she worked in a chemist's. No significant ill health, other than the gradual wear and tear that comes with ageing. They shhhould recognise me, though I'm not in uniform at the moment. Given the situation I didn't think talking to the British government before paying them a visit was a sensible idea.

There's a motion behind the door and I hear the chain go on before it opens slightly and Mister Siskin Senior peers up at me. "Yes?"

"Mister Siskin." I hold up my left hand palm facing him and generate an orange sigil. "May I speak with you-"

"Bloomin' nora."

"-for a moment?"

"You're that.. cake-" I wince. "-Lantern, aren't you?"

"One cake, one time."

"None of the others do cakes."

"Hah, that's where you're wrong. Guy never got further than barbeque and the other two live off take away food, but the fellow from the Justice Society is a perfectly capable baker."

"Never made a bloody cake the size of a city though, did he?"

"I'm also orange. Bright orange! I glow and everything! None of the others glow orange!"

We stand in silence for a moment.

"Do you want to come in?"

"Yes, thank you." He closes the door slightly and removes the chain before opening the door fully. "I do actually have something serious I need to talk to you about. Is your wife in?"

"No, she's at her reading group at the moment. Come in, come in." He moves to the side and I walk inside, him closing the door behind me. "That big chap not coming in with you?"

"Not just yet, no."

He heads inwards, towards the living room. "You want a cuppa? I was about to put the kettle on."

"Thank you, but no. Um, you.. might want to sit down and.. not have any hot liquids in your hands."

Immediately he turns back, his face grey and sombre. "Oh no, what's happened now?"

"No no, no one's.. died or been seriously injured or anything like that. I wouldn't be talking to you if it was something that.. simple. Mister Siskin, you really should sit down."

"Alright then." He walks over to an arm chair and cautiously lowers himself into it. "What's the news?"

"At the beginning of this month, I was on a mission in Cornwall… Aaaaand it turned out that it was involved in the whole Geotroniks business."

"I hoped I'd never have to hear that bloody name again. I thought they were finished years ago?"

"How aware are you of the work they were doing?"

He shakes his head. "All top secret. Never even really told us what killed our Michael."

"Essentially, they were creating a magic weapon. When active, it projected fear at a target. Michael was employed as a parapsychic during the early stages of development, and.. they didn't know enough about what they were doing to make sure nothing went wrong."

"Oh." He frowns. "How did he end up in a coma, then?"

"That wasn't exactly a coma. His job was to pull the fears out of the volunteers and put them inside a storage vessel. He… His body went into a coma because his.. soul got stuck there during the transfer. One of the things-."

"What? Are you trying to tell me-!"

"We found the storage container they used. Michael was still mentally coherent-."

"He wasn't dead?!" He's starting to tear up. "We saw the body!"

"There was no way you could have known, Mister Siskin. And given what happened at Geotroniks it wasn't likely that those in the know would have told you of the possibility. We were able to transfer him into an artificial body and he… Obviously he looks very different. I think he's still mostly him."

"Where is he!?"

"Just outside."

"Whu-? That..? That was never-?"

"Prosthetic body. We should be able to make one more lifelike later, but he wanted to come and see you as soon-" Mister Siskin gets up and strides over to the front window in order to look out at his son. "-as we had him up and running. I'll just go and get him for you."

back

Date Night 20

next

30th March

21:49 GMT -5

"Bullshit."

I lean back slightly, my shoulders pressing against the settee. "No, totally true."

Jade rolls her eyes. "Your cards. I've got two fours and Karon has the other two."

"Hey!" Karon leans away from her and turns her hand so that the backs face directly towards Jade.

I make an appeal to the heavens, then pick up the pile. "Am I the only one here who can't count cards?"

Holly nods. "Looks like. One five."

Karon hesitates for a moment, then pulls out two cards. "Two sixes."

"Bullshit."

Karon mock-glares at Jade. "Did you look at my hand?"

"No, it's your body language."

"Yeah, I was about half a second from calling that one."

Karon reaches forwards and turns over.. a Queen and a Jack, before picking up the three cards.

Holly smiles at me. "So what happened next?"

"Well, his voice was the same, so that helped. His dad was still a bit shocked when he saw his face, of course. I ducked out once the initial introductions were over." I shrug. "Thought it was all a bit personal for me to be sticking my nose in."

"Three sevens."

I turn to look at Jade fully and lean forwards, staring intently at her face. She stares back with an expression of complete composure, betraying absolutely no emotion. I put my own cards on the carpet face down and lean further forwards, supporting myself on my right hand as she's forced to lean back to avoid our faces bumping into each other.

Two inches from her face I narrow my eyes slightly and her expression goes from composed to slightly vacant.

Then I pull away and sit back down. "Nope, no idea."

Holly and Karon are both looking at me with their eyebrows raised.

"Oh, sorry, um…" I look at my hand. "One eight." I turn to Jade. "Settling in alright?"

Her eyes flick to her landladies for a second before returning to me. "Mom wasn't too happy about it."

"Not what I ah-asked."

"I'm fine."

"City changed much?"

"Four nines."

She thinks for a moment. "It's less.. tense. People don't avoid the police as much. The criminals don't just walk around in the open like they used to. And the streets are cleaner."

I nod. "The arrest rate has increased quite a bit."

She gives me a small smile and shakes her head. "No. Literally. Street cleaning used to be a mob contract. Now it gets put out to competitive tender so they have to actually clean them."

"I think between Gordon, Batman and Dent the old mobs are nearly extinct."

"And the supervillains. Don't forget all the good work they did."

"Oneten. Jade."

"Batman had only been around for a few years when I left." Jade makes an exhalation-laugh. "Gotham's nearly turned into a normal city." She returns her attention to her hand and selects two cards from different parts. "Two-."

"Wait!" Karon takes a closer look at Holly's face, which entirely lacks Jade's comportment. She leans into her girlfriend who frantically tries to get her expression under control, then kisses her on the lips and pushes her back and down. Holly sort of falls to the side with Karon on top of her, the taller woman pushing herself off for a second to say "Bullshit." before returning to the clinch.

I turn back to Jade, shaking my head. "And Ra's said this place was irredeemable."

Hah! Jade's averting her eyes. "Yeah. Uh, two Jacks."

Karon pushes herself off to resume her place, while Holly limits herself to rolling onto her side as she takes her cards.

"Three Queens."

Holly smiles as she organises her cards. "Got that right. Oh, hey, how'd it go with Selina?"

"Dinner was.. nice, but she made it clear that she thinks I'm too young for her."

"Aww…"

Jade raises her right eyebrow. "You went on a date?"

"Yes. You know, some women find me quite attractive."

"I'm just surprised. Artemis told me she thought you were gay." Holly nudges Karon with her right foot. "Either that, or asexual."

"Really? Because one time she caught me checking out-." I stop, silently praying to Eris that she won't-. No wrong goddess!

"And who exactly did my little sister catch you checking out?"

…

"Your mother."

Jade's eyes widen and her mouth falls open slightly.

Holly nods. "Your mom is kinda hot. Toned, y'know? Think I'm gunna start hitting her gym now."

"I don't think she's interested in girls."

"No! Just, y'know, exercise. Now I'm eating better I don't wanna start putting on weight. And I think Selina goes there."

"My mother?"

"Well… You know, I… Rejuvenated her back to peak physical fitness-"

Karon looks away. "Awk-ward."

"-and her.. Huntress costume is.. quite tight around the… Everything, actually."

My phones rings. Guy's number.

"Excuse me a moment." I pick it up.

"My.. mother…"

"Good evening, Guy."

"Hey, Orange. You got any plans for tomorrow?"

"Nothing I can't postpone. Why?"

"Tora wants to bring some friend of hers on our date, so I need someone to keep her entertained."

"And you thought of me?"

"Eh, the guy I had lined up dropped out. Turns out Hal and Carol are 'on' again."

"Okay… When and where?"

"Some place called 'Bakken'. It's in Denmark. Be there 'bout.. six in the evening, local time?"

"Alright, see you there."

"Right. Uh. Okay, I gotta get goin'. I'll see ya tomorrow."

He hangs up and I lower the phone. Holly smiles at me. "Who was it?"

"That was Green Lantern Guy Gardner asking me out on a date."

back

Date Night 21

next

31st March

17:02 GMT +8

I sigh, then lower myself into the seat across from the hulking monstrosity opposite me. "Fabiao. Been a while."

He doesn't.. look too badly injured, but his hardened epidermis makes it a little hard to tell. The facility we're in isn't equipped with a power suppressor but the sheer weight of titanium-tungsten carbide chains on him should do the job about as well.

"Yeah man."

He sounds.. utterly miserable, which given what happened isn't too surprising. The accent is different too, as I'm listening to him through the ring's translation effect rather than his strongly accented English.

"So I… Assume that Bane went to visit his father after all?"

He tries to nod, but his heavy metal collar means that he can't complete the gesture. "Yes. Perdición wanted to talk to him in person. I don't…" He looks past me to where Colonel Fang is giving him a look of total contempt. "I don't know exactly what he wanted-" He tries to shrug and fails again. "-but he is the boss."

"He was the boss."

You'd think August Colonel in Iron's voice would be metallic. Raspy. But it isn't. There's a distortion from where his mouth isn't quite as flexible as an unaltered Human's mouth would be, but otherwise he sounds pretty normal.

Fabiao looks up at him for a moment and then looks away. "Yeah. The woman in the green dress shot him with… Like a crossbow? I thought it was a plasma weapon but the… The arrows? They stuck in him and stayed there."

"Ghost Fox Killer. It's an arcane weapon."

"Is she a superhero?"

"No. She's a superfunctionary. That means that she works for the Chinese government rather than being independent. Which in turn means they're happy for her to use lethal force against dangerous opponents."

"Were those.. people with her..? The see through ones? Were they ghosts?"

"Yes. She harvests the souls of the evil to use as a power source. I'm a little curious as to how you survived."

"You can't pay me enough to die for you. There were police, soldiers, Chinese super-. Superfunctionaries. When Perdición died, I just knelt down and put my hands up."

I half turn. "Was the Socialist Red Guardsman pulling a sickie?"

"I was concerned about bringing a radiological hazard to a densely populated area."

"Right." I turn back to Fabiao. "Obviously, I notified the Chinese authorities that you might be heading their way after we met in Gotham. They really don't like people with superpowers committing crimes in their country."

"Yeah man. I noticed."

"I'm somewhat sympathetic to your position, but I'm still not entirely clear on why you asked for me."

"What? You think I should have called a lawyer? I know America puts people like me in Belle Reve. I don't know what the Chinese do with us."

"For metahuman criminals who resist arrest, they usually summarily execute them. Since they're actually holding you, there's a prison camp out in the Gobi Desert. I imagine you'll get… You haven't committed a serious crime in China, so…" I turn back to Colonel Fang. "Five years' hard labour, followed by deportation?"

"Eight. He was in the company of an international fugitive. And then I imagine that the Americans will want him after he has served his sentence."

I turn back, nodding. "You're looking at Felony Murder for Gotham-."

"The old lady?" I nod. "That was Truggs, man. We were going to hold her hostage, maybe ransom her. Then he just pulled out some weird looking pistol and shot her."

"He admitted to similar murders before. But felony murder just requires them to prove that you might reasonably have suspected that someone could die during your crime, and I'm afraid that breaking into someone's house to commit a robbery counts. Then you've got the drugs smuggling, illegal entry to the country and.. Taiwan's going to want you and any other survivors over the attack on the Rhelasian peace conference."

He sags as much as his restraints allow him. "I'm done, man."

"On the other hand, you did hand yourself over willingly." I raise my hands slightly, rings glowing as I take a detailed scan of his physique. "And I did promise." Two fat beams of orange light strike the centre of his mass and flow across his body.

I hear a scrape of metal behind me as Colonel Fang folds his arms across his chest. "He isn't worth your time."

"That's… Not the point."

"He is undoubtedly a murderer many times over. His surrender prevented me killing him immediately as I did the other two like him, but I know him for the scum he is. The only reason he is still here is because he mentioned your name and the Chinese government considers itself in your debt for Roanoke Island. And for compelling the Physician to accept our authority."

I lower the rings and the light cuts out. Fabiao looks himself over. I could have done a full purge of his system, restored him to a Human baseline physique. But he told me in Gotham that his plans for the future involved keeping his enhancements, so I limited myself to healing the rifts in his skin and performing minor fixes on all of the other damage the Venom Buster did to him. He actually came out of it okay compared to Mister Huang. The changes to his brain were fairly minimal. He probably didn't get much worse than headaches. I guess the late Bane Dorrance knew his stuff.

"Eh. Thanks, man."

I get up and walk out of the room, Colonel Fang following a moment later. There's quite a lot of activity in the police station as Xeno-Team soldiers rub shoulders with Hong Kong police and both try to avoid Ghost Fox Killer's ghosts.

"Obliged or not, I'm still not sure why you showed me that."

"I imagine that my superiors would rather repay you by reducing the punishment of an inconsequential thug than something important."

I nod. "King Snake?"

"Dead. The police had him under observation for his links to the gangs. The presence of the Great Ten expedited matters."

I suppose I could… No.

"I suppose it would be the nice thing to do, but to be honest? He's committed some very serious crimes and I think he should be punished for them. Eight years hard labour?" Colonel Fang gives me a sidelong look, then nods. "Sounds a little excessive to me, but China has much less of a supervillain problem than Britain or the States. Do as you see fit."

"Hm." There's approval in his eyes. "Had he tried to fight on, the lives of several of my men would have been lost to the criminals. And his potential utility is obvious. We may consider offering him employment."

"You want to bring him into the Great Ten? Really?"

"The Physician is a murderer. And you clearly have suspicions regarding Socialist Red Guardsman. Mister Matos has self discipline and power. We may be able to make use of him."

"What would he get out of it?"

"Better food, better conditions. And we would quietly repatriate him to Brazil at the end of his sentence instead of extraditing him. Or allow him to stay on in honourable service, if he so chose."

"That sounds reasonable. And I think he'll probably go for it." I hesitate for a moment. "Just curious… Can I assume that if those responsible for Roanoke Island found themselves in your custody, you would give them to Ghost Fox Killer as well?"

"Naturally. They are not fit to draw breath."

"Hm. Something to think about."

back

Date Night 22

next

31st March

17:56 GMT +2

"…like to see more a' her, but you know how much time this job takes."

Guy and I descend through the air towards the entrance to the entrance to Dyrehavsbakken, which apparently is the world's oldest operating amusement park. He's wearing a green shirt with a suit jacket and trousers in a slightly darker green, and as a result looks a little like a Leprechaun bodybuilder.

"I will in three months, yes."

I'm wearing fawn trousers with an orange sigil belt buckle along with a blue shirt under a darker blue jumper. Not exactly warm at this time of the year and while neither Guy nor I have secret identities I doubt the evening would be improved by us being pestered for autographs or some sort of performance.

"Oh yeah." He frowns slightly as we touch down behind some streets just off the main road. "What you planning to do when your probation runs out? Just head off out there, straight to Maltus?"

"No, I was thinking about visiting Vega first. Get the lay of the land in one of the few places John's ring didn't have up to date information."

He glances at me with a raised left eyebrow. "And run right int' that Larfleeze guy? That really a good idea?"

I shrug. "I have the Sword of Second and Third. If it really comes down to it I can probably kill him."

"Why's it called that again?"

"What, the sword?" He nods as we come out onto the pavement and turn towards the amusement park. "Because it was made from the remains of the Second of the Fallen and the Third of the Fallen to kill the First of the Fallen."

"So… Why don't ya just call it the Sword of the Fallen?"

…

"Um."

He smirks. "Didn't think of it, did ya?"

…

"No."

Smirk has evolved into Grin. And learned Beam.

"Anyway, I'm not sure who would win in a direct fight between myself and Larfleeze, but I need to know he's not assimilating the whole population of Okaara or something like that."

"Okay, so you have a look around. Then what?"

"See what needs doing. Do it. Gordanians, Psions, Spider Guild, Branx Warriors… As I understand it, the place is a bit of a mess."

He nods approvingly. "Okay! Now you're talkin' like a real Sector Lantern."

"Might even-" I hold up my right hand and have the ring sparkle. "-pick up a recruit."

"Yeah, the guy I got this suit from said somethin' about that. You really lend it to that assassin girl?"

"Yes, and she did an excellent-."

"Hey." He fans out his hands. "I ain't complaining. She did good work. I had t' have Kilowog shout'n at me fer a few weeks before I could even create constructs." He regards me curiously. "You, ah… Plannin' on takin' her with you?"

"Probably not. It's three months away and I want her to have a chance to experience normalcy before making that kind of decision."

"Y'know, sometimes you can give a girl too much space."

"Alright. First one to make a romantic relationship last a year wins."

"Psh. I've got a four month head start and even I ain't dumb enough to mess things up with Tora."

"One year continuous. Break up for a fortnight and it's back to the start."

"You're on. But I ain't worried." We reach the park entrance and come to a halt. "Where do we buy the tickets?"

"We don't. Entrance is free and you buy tickets or armbands at the kiosks for rides. It's probably easiest if we wait for Ms Olafsdotter and f-."

"You ain't actually gunna call her that, right?"

"Tora and friend, then buy armbands." Guy nods, then looks around, then checks his watch. "You could just scan-."

"Nah, that's just creepy. I don't want her thinkin' I'm looking over her shoulder the whole time." He tries looking through the crowds again. "Alright, so, what you gunna do when you're done sorting out Vega?"

"Maltus. If Larfleeze confronts me and I win, I'll pick up the Central Power Battery and go straight there. Um, can you.. tell me if Central Power Batteries have any sort of area effect I should know about?"

He screws up his face in thought. "I dunno. I always feel better bein' next t' the Green one, but that might just be 'cause it's the center of the whole Corps, y'know?"

"Well, anyway, I can't just leave it there. I'll have to take the risk. But otherwise, I think I'll probably try and meet up with a Darkstar inside Reach territory. Help them out, get an introduction. Then on to Maltus. What happens after that depends on the Controllers."

"What d'you want-"

"Hah."

"-to happen?"

"I want them to help me defeat Larfleeze without killing him. We will get Orange Lanterns who can't cope, who get overloaded like I nearly did a couple of times-."

"You did get overloaded."

"The Ophidian doesn't count. I mean, just normal usage. You remember when you and Diana talked to me after the thing with the intelligent Gorillas?"

He nods. "Yeah, I know what you mean."

"The rings the Guardians give you aren't green because they want to make your lives harder. Not going crazy is a pretty big bonus. And if we can help Larfleeze, we can help the others too. Anyway, then we'd transport the Orange Central Power Battery back to Maltus and start recruiting. Any Darkstars who can handle it, probably, and I've got a list of people I want to talk to."

"Yeah? Like who?"

"First would be Vril D-."

"Guy!"

We look around, and Guy smiles beatifically as Tora climbs out of the taxi and walks in our direction. I think she'd be running if the heels on her boots allowed it. Guy moves away from me and meets her half way, their arms wrapping around each other as Tora lays her head on his chest and he kisses her hair.

Aww.

Guess whoever I'm supposed to be escorting is still in the taxi. I head towards it, ready to open the door and help her out.

"Oh, hey." Guy and Tora separate a little, though I notice that he's holding her left hand in his right. "This is my friend Paul."

"Good evening, Tora. And whom do I have the pleasure of escorting this evening?"

Her eyes widen slightly as she sees me. "Ah. Oh!" She turns back towards the taxi as a woman with pale green hair gets out. "Bea-."

"Okay, so who did Gardner saddle me-?"

She stops as I step forwards. "Hello there."

She blinks, looking me over. "You're the guy who-."

"Giant cake, yes, I kn-."

"-put those eyes everywhere!"

back

Date Night 23

next

31st March

18:02 GMT +2

I grin at her. "This is the first time anyone's opened with that!"

"What the hell were you doing?!"

Behind me, Tora groans faintly and Guy winces.

"Looking for any League of Shadows operatives who escaped the initial wave of arrests."

She storms around the taxi and up to me, fists balled and… I think her hair's puffed up a little? I did do a little research into her as part of my attempt to investigate potential future Justice League recruits and this version of her isn't yet capable of the feats of pyrokinesis that the modern comic version is. Rather than covering her body in green fire as in Justice League Unlimited she can't project her flame further than about eight inches. It's steel-melting hot, but the short range combined with the summoning delay makes her DPS potential fairly low. She can't fly, either. Her background in Brazil's intelligence agency is a little more interesting but for whatever reason most of the files describing exactly what she got up to with them weren't on computer when I did my data gathering sweep.

"I'm sorry if I.. caught you at a bad time-"

"I was in the shower, you pervert!"

Fists back, face thrust forwards towards mine. She's about three inches shorter than me, though the heels make it more like one.

"-but I was a bit possessed at the time and I don't really remember-" And suddenly I remember seeing her. Thank you Ophidian. "-most of what we saw."

"'We'?"

"I was possessed-" Sorry Ophidian, but it's easier than a full explanation. "-by the Embodiment of Avarice. As you know the eyes were spread across the whole of the world so it wasn't like I was-."

"Whatever." She takes a half-step to the side and then shoves past me. "Gardner, I thought you said you were bringing someone from the Justice League, not the world's greatest peeping tom."

"Err, he had to pull out at the last minute."

"Don't talk me up too much, Guy." I turn around. So, Beatriz da Costa. Alpha personality and -at the moment- insufficient raw power to back it up in superheroics. And her best friend is dating a member of the Justice League.

Might be a slight chip on her shoulder, there.

"But hey, Paul's probably getting upped in a few months and he's already working for Wonder Woman."

Ms da Costa walks past Guy and Tora in the direction of the entrance, nose turned up.

"Bea…"

And she stops, sagging slightly. "Fine. I'll try making the most of it."

She's being fairly rude to me, but to be honest I find this situation more amusing than anything. "Gracious of you."

Beatriz turns back around to face me, pointing at me with her right index finger. "Don't you start with me. I was supposed to be networking tonight."

Tora pats her on the shoulder as she and Guy walk past. "Beatriz, try and be nice." Beatriz' hair flattens slightly-. Oh! It's part of her power set. I hadn't made that connection before. Internal heat or something else?

Something occurs to Guy. "Hey, Paul, didn't Bats have you doing that performance review thing? How am I doin'?"

I take a few hurried steps to catch up. "Pretty well. Based on the performances I've been able to analyse you're the most adaptable Greenie. High DPS, high utility in rescue operations and-."

Tora's head pokes around from the far side of Guy's chest. "DPS? Is that some sort of Justice League code?"

Beatriz falls in on the far side of Tora as we enter the park. "It means 'damage per second'. You mean you've actually worked out how much damage members of the Justice League can inflict?"

"It's hard to be completely precise, but yes. In order to evaluate how well the League is doing I had to work out what they're actually trying to do, and it fits into certain broad categories-."

"Paul's basically the reason why I got in."

"No, come on. I might be the reason why you got in when you did, but you'd have got in without me eventually."

Beatriz suddenly looks more interested. "So are you the guy I have to convince to let me in?"

"No, you have to convince a League member to nominate you and the whole of the League not to object. At the moment. I'm going to be trying to persuade them to change the criteria… About a week and a half from now? I'm supposed to be giving a presentation-" Beatriz crosses behind Guy and Tora and takes hold of my right arm. "-about the League's organisational structure."

She smiles sweetly at me. "And what would this 'change' mean for me?" I think she was pushing her original Brazilian accent there, rather than the North American one she's picked up from practising her English with Americans. "And Tora?"

"I'll.. just be laying out a series of options. I don't have any decision making authority-."

"I mean, is there a shortlist..?"

"Sort of. Once I came up with an evaluation criterion I added it to the list of possible future recruits-."

"There's a list?"

"There's a database of all active superheroes, and a long list of those who meet the minimum requirements."

"I am on that, aren't I?"

"On the.. long list, yes."

"How long?"

"As in, not an auto-recruit but worth considering once they have a better idea of what they're actually recruiting for. And my environmental shield is up, so squeezing my arm harder won't help."

"Hmpf."

"Bea, this is supposed to be a date. Do you have to talk about work all the time?"

"So what would I have to do to improve my position?"

Looks like she does. "Giving me your ESG and SNI files would probably help-" Her eyes widen by a very small amount. "-as it would let me assign a more accurate value to your investigative and intelligence handling skills. Beyond that, a heck of a lot more combat practice against people with super powers than you currently have."

"Nothing like it." Guy nods. "Think you can find videos of Paul an' me goin' at it on the internet."

"And, um…" Tora's head reappears. "What about me?"

"Your ex-nihilo ice construction ability is amazingly versatile and useful. I'm not sure exactly how precise your control is, but the potential during disasters… Floods, fires or.. droughts, actually, is considerable."

"Oh." She smiles sweetly at me. "Thank you."

"Are you saying that she's higher on the list than me?"

I look straight ahead. "I'm carefully avoiding saying any such thing."

back

Date Night 24

next

31st March

18:57 GMT +2

Guy sheepishly hands a very small mouse doll to Tora, who accepts it with princessly grace. "Guess rifles aren't really my thing."

Tora hugs it and smiles at him. "I think it's sweet."

Beatriz steps towards the stall and looks pointedly at me. I turn my lower lip down slightly, nod, and then step up myself, laying my right hand on the stall and depositing a twenty krone note from subspace as I take it away.

"The American doesn't know how to shoot but the English guy does?"

The stall holder passes an air rifle to each of us before moving out of the way.

"I used to go to a rifle range twice a week. These days-" I move the rifle butt to my shoulder. "-I mostly practise with exotic weapons, but the training stood me in good stead. You?"

She checks the iron sight. "Grandpa taught me."

"Ah, yes, I suppose he would have done."

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

"He was in the army, wasn't he?"

She raises her gun to her shoulder. "Exactly how thorough was your background check?"

"Thorough as it needed to be." Huh, gun's slightly bent. Used to always annoy me when arcade light guns were misaligned. Minute amounts of orange light flow along the barrel as I correct the flaw.

The chap manning the stall pulls a lever and the decorative wood covering the target papers rotates out of the way. The aim is to shoot out the perforated paper around the star in the centre using as few of your limited supply of pellets as possible. Having never attempted this particular exercise before I have no idea how many shots you need to make and Guy's placement was frankly terrible.

Beatriz opens fire a split second before I do, perforating the paper of her chosen target just outside the perforated ring. Let's try… Five shots? My first hits the twelve o'clock position of the perforated ring perfectly as Beatriz adjusts her aim and hits hers at the three o'clock. I hit the six as she hits five and seven. Ah, I'm not used to shooting for speed with this sort of gun. Three, nine and centre? No, the shot just overpenetrates without spreading the force out. Half one, half four, half seven and half ten? Done! Okay, next-.

Beatriz is already half way through her second target. Picking up the pace, then. Seven, even placement? It works, but I'm falling further behind. Again. And again.

"Hey, she's pretty good at that."

And click.

The fellow manning the stand smiles at me as he reaches to take the rifle from me. "The lady wins! Four to seven."

"Hm." Beatriz tosses her hair as she puts her rifle down. Guess I have.. got kind of out of practice…

"Do you want to combine your score for the prize..?

I look at Beatriz. "Do we?"

She doesn't look at me. "We will have the big pink fluffy one."

"Excellent choice, madam." He pulls it off the prize stand and passes it to her. It's… I think it's meant to be a cat of some sort. Too big to really do much with.

Beatriz turns away from the stall, looking at it for a moment. I step away as well. "Would you like-?"

She thrusts it into my chest, causing me to instinctively take hold of it. "Here you go."

"Um. Thank you?" Tora puts her right hand to her mouth to disguise her snigger while Guy doesn't even bother. I take a moment to try and put it into a position that will let me carry it… No, I don't think there is one. Subspace with you, foul abomination.

"Hey!"

"It's fine, it's in ring storage. I will forever carry it as a memento of the affection you feel for me."

Guy pulls Tora into him. "So what next, babe?"

"I thought… Maybe one of the rollercoasters?"

"They're kinda small.. but if you like?" He shrugs and they start walking towards the closest. Wooden, rather than the metal structures I've gotten used to. Never really been much of a rollercoaster aficionado. I don't mind the high speeds and sharp turns -not any more, and not even in my pre-ring days as long as I'd had a travel sickness tablet- but all the screaming of the other riders annoys me. Stiff upper lip, guys.

Beatriz glances at me for a half-second, then returns her attention to her friend. "You two go on ahead. I just need a quick word with my.. 'date'."

Guy smiles a bit too quickly at the idea, but Tora doesn't exactly look disappointed as she nods and tugs Guy away faster. Uh..?

"No, really, it's fine." I take the fluffy thing out of subspace again. "See? Completely-."

"How did Green Lantern Three even hear about Tora?"

"Three?"

"Gardner."

"Two eight one four B. And if you're talking about Green Lantern Corps members from Earth, he'd be two."

"I thought the black guy was the second one."

"No, Guy got his ring before he did."

"Stop trying to change the subject. You're the one who told him about Tora, weren't you? What, were you just looking through your big file of women superheroes and picking out the hot ones for your friends?"

I sigh. "Is that a serious question or do you just want to shout at me some more?"

Her hair's puffing up again. "What did you tell him about her? Did you.. coach him on how to seduce her?"

"Shouting it is, then."

"I knew there was something creepy about that guy!" She takes a step backwards, away from me and in their general direction. "I'm going right over there-!"

"While possessed I gave him a file of information. He flicked through it once then threw it away for exactly the reasons you're complaining about. I haven't been tutoring him. What Tora's getting is.. the real Guy. And I certainly don't regard my professional research as a pick up hit list when I'm in my right mind."

She stops moving away, but she doesn't look much happier. "Do you know how many times he's just.. turned up when I was spending time with Tora? I bet he's using his power ring to just watch her the whole time. And some of the stuff he said to me when she wasn't around-."

"Guy's actually quite a nice fellow once you get to know him. But at first, he's got this habit of pretending to be all macho and getting defensive if things don't go right. But, Tora's-" I give her a level look. "-somehow learned to deal with bad tempered people-"

"Hey, I'm nothing like-!"

"-and once he's built up his confidence a bit he usually relaxes and you can get at the nice guy inside."

"How long does that take?"

"Well he.. did.. set you up with a highly powerful and internationally well regarded superhero who is in possession of effectively unlimited wealth because Tora asked him to find you a date."

She simmers down a little. "And dating you would 'help my career'?"

"Wasn't that why you asked? But yeah, I don't mind helping with your training. In a strictly platonic way."

She looks away, eyes down and breathing pointedly regular. "Okay. I'll give.. Gardner a chance." Back at me. "But if he does anything-!"

"Then he and I will both be ahead of you in the queue to beat him up about it."

back

Date Night 25

next

31st March

08:17 GMT -11

"Okay… Now try both hands?"

Beatriz points both palms forward, steady green flames sitting about a centimetre from her skin like someone turned a candle flame through ninety degrees. My temperature monitor constructs register almost no change in the temperature of the surrounding air except where they intersect with my girder construct. That is already starting to give way, so I delete it and replace it with a slightly tougher one.

Hmm.

One hand or two, the flame has roughly the same effect. She's not splitting power, which could have explained the limitation if it were true. She can't burn herself with them; she can wave one hand through a flame floating over the other without taking any injury at all. The flames don't consume oxygen from the surrounding environment and the conditions in the air around them don't seem to affect them at all. Gloves which can fit under the flame will survive it being summoned above them. Thicker ones which touch it don't.

"Okay, stop." She shuts off her flames and closes her fists. "Still not feeling tired?"

She shakes her head. "Have you actually learned anything, or have I wasted my evening?"

"The rune didn't react at all, so it's definitely metahuman. Your brain structure appears to be normal, though there are a few unusual patterns of activity in your cerebellum when you generate your flames-"

"I knew that."

"-suggesting… It's linked to your capacity for proprioception. Hm." I think for a moment. "Have you tried making flames while drunk?"

She nods her head to the side. "Yess?"

"I mean, falling down drunk? It would be interesting to see how it affects your control."

She puts her hands on her hips. "Are you trying to get me drunk?"

"Urgh." I remove my remaining constructs and sit down on the deck of my fortress. "Are you going to keep doing that?"

She frowns for an instant, then looks blank. "Doing what?"

"You've been snapping at me all evening. I got.. the first thing, the Ophidian and I scared a lot of people with those eyes. But we were using them to hunt down the League of Shadows and.. the unaided Human brain can't retain all of that information. And I saw everyone, young and old, beautiful and ugly… I wasn't looking for wank material. And the thing with Guy-."

"No, I was just…" She looks off to the side for a moment, then walks over and sits down next to me. "That time, I was trying to joke about it."

"Oh. Sorry, I-."

"No, I didn't judge it right."

We stare out across the Bering Straits for a moment, admiring the view.

"You really don't remember what you saw?"

"I remember the bits we were actually looking for. The place in the Himalayas where the remaining League officers were hiding out. And.. occasionally, I.. see something or hear something and I suddenly-" I gesture at the side of my forehead with my right hand. "-get a flash of something we saw, but for the most part I really don't."

She glances at me, a playful smile on her lips. "So you really don't know what I look like naked?"

"No, pretty much as soon as you said it I got a flash of you." I shrug. "Sorry."

She goes back to looking out across the ocean. "Oh."

"If it helps, I'm.. pretty much team medic, so I've got detailed scans of both my team mates and the Justice League."

"You know what Wonder Woman looks like naked?"

"And Superman. And Plastic Man. And.. Guy, actually. You ever had a male gynaecologist? Because for me it's pretty much the same thing. It's not.. erotic, necessarily. It's just what they look like under their clothes."

She doesn't say anything for a few moments. Then she nods to herself. "Last time I was drunk, I could make the flames go further but I couldn't control where they were going. Tora had to stop me burning our apartment down."

"Hm. Well, there are exercises you can do to improve your proprioception. I can't promise they'll actually help with your flames, but it's the simplest idea I have at the moment. There are some things we could try with magic, but I'm dumping quite a lot of stuff on my magic guy already."

"You said my power wasn't magic."

"Yes, but that doesn't mean that you can't affect it with magic. We could-."

"Proximity alert."

Oh, right.

Beatriz sits up slightly, suddenly alert. "What does that mean?"

"It means that something's getting clo-." She glares. "Probably the Russians noticing that I've come further south this time. I thought that they might radio first, but I guess that they want to make an impression."

I flick my right forefinger out, creating a glowing, curved-cornered rectangle in the air, marking the location of the incoming power armour suits. The elite model, I note. I create a construct of them just in front of us.

"Are they a problem?"

"No. Unless they're a lot better armed than I think they are they wouldn't be able to pierce the Fortress' force fields. But I'm trying to maintain good relations. You know that evaluation thing Guy said I was doing for the League?"

"Yes?"

"They want a guy because the Chinese have a guy."

"How highly does he rate?"

"Pretty high, actually. His power armour's good even by my standards and it includes some sort of localised machine control." I stand up and walk towards the edge closest to them. "If the summary they gave me was honest. I could forcibly check, but that seems impolitic."

I remove the constructs as they come in, gravity repulsors on their legs stabilising them in the air just over the edge of the rim. There are three, the one at the front possessing a Major's two lines containing a single star. "Orange Lantern. You are moving uncomfortably close to Russian waters."

"I made a deal with your government. I'll be recommending to the Justice League that they consider offering your colleague Dmitri Pushkin a spot. I was told that would be enough that they wouldn't bother me about coming south."

"Ah, that is good! I was worried that we might have to stop you!"

"Yes, that would have been awkward. Do you intend to escort me the whole way?"

"No, the air force can handle that." He begins floating backwards. "Just remember not to go too close to the shoreline. This is still a restricted area."

"I'll be certain to keep that in mind."

back

Date Night 26

next

31st March

20:14 GMT -6

"…punched you through a wall because she was looking to get hitched?"

I nod as the chap next to me at the bar stares at me incredulously. "Yeah. I guess that's how they do things on Almerac."

"And now she's going to marry her assistant because she can't be bothered to do her job?"

I take a sip from my glass of non-alcoholic root beer. "That part of her job, certainly. The structure of their government does quite a lot to centralise certain types of decision-making power and she isn't really able to offload it to anyone else. Formalising her assistant's authority actually makes a lot of sense."

"Lucky fellah."

I smile. Currently illegal in Colorado, and I don't particularly want to antagonise my new neighbours over something not happening in this sector. "Ye-ah, lucky fellow."

My companion -his name is Mitchel- takes a look around the bar of the Wingnutz Bar and Grill. Neatly shaven handlebar moustache, slight gut overhang and one of those cowboy hats I sort of assumed that real Americans didn't wear. I got some fairly extreme looks when I walked in, shock, fear and confusion mostly. Mister Tawny and Doctor Robbins entering just behind me flat out didn't register for almost a minute until I ordered them some wings.

Hey, the sign says 'No Dogs'.

Mitchel was the first person to find the courage to speak to me, though I can feel everyone else staring at the back of my head.

"So, ahh… What is it.. brings you out here?"

"This is my local, now."

He blinks. "You.. moving in?"

"Doctor Robbins-" I point at where she's overseeing Mister Tawny's kitty rides. "-owns Challenger Mountain. I moved in just over a week ago, and Rifle's the closest town. You're probably going to see a lot of me around the place."

"Challenger Mountain? But that's way over…"

I shrug. "Not like I walk it." I raise my tankard and drain it before wiggling it at the barwoman. "That was a good deal less loathsome than I thought it would be. Another, if you would."

"Non-alcoholic, again?"

"I know it doesn't fit the image, but I can snap steel beams with one hand. Me getting tanked up is a very bad idea."

She nods, taking my glass. "Non-alcoholic it is."

"Um. Saw you on TV."

"Yeah? Which time?"

Off to my left Mister Tawny rears up and the boy perched on his head squeals in delight while his mother looks on in horror. Mitchel looks around at the sound. "Ah… Is he… Y'know, trained?"

"Hm?" I make a show of looking around. "Oh, I don't imagine his mother would have brought him here if he wasn't." I nod to the barwoman as she puts my new drink down in front of me. "Thank you."

"No, I mean… Your Tiger?"

"Mister Tawny? I don't own him. He just sort of follows me around sometimes." I turn back to Mister Tawny. "Mister Tawny, no eating the children, okay? You don't know where they've been." Mister Tawny looks at me, grunts, then lowers his head back to his plate of wings and bites down on a few. "Huh." I turn back to Mitchel. "Just keep feeding him wings, I guess."

"Aaaaaah. Um, on TV, your award ceremony?"

"Oh right. Thought it might have been one of the other times. Don't think I've actually watched an award ceremony on television my entire life."

"You go on TV a lot?"

I chuckle. "Whenever I go out and about, someone points a camera at me so they can film the early parts of my rampage and sell the footage to the networks. Sometimes I feel like I should just.. buy something and then break it so they don't feel that they've wasted their time. I think some footage of me ended up being broadcast after Roanoke but if you're not Justice League you're not national news."

"Hey." I turn around as some guy on a nearby table speaks up. "I saw you on TV when you were in Fawcett City."

"Oh yeah, that got national coverage, didn't it. Sorry, it's… There's a bunch of things I do, and I don't necessarily assign them the same importance the networks do. Hey, I'm Grayven." I wave. "Who're you?"

"Ah, my name's Jacob?"

"You sure about that?"

"Ah-." He shakes his head. "Yeah, it's just… We don't see many superheroes around here. And, ah, this is my wife Ella."

The woman in question waves a little nervously at me. "Hey there."

I nod back. "Howdy neighbours. Pleased to meet you both. Can I get you a drink?"

They look at each other for a moment, then Jacob nods. "Yeah, thanks." They get up and walk over to take the stools on my left.

"What are you having?"

"Lemonade for me, and..?" He looks at his wife.

"If the root beer's good?"

I take a sip. "Wouldn't go that far."

"Um." Ella leans forward slightly. "I wanted to.. thank you? For killing that.. Klarion. Our-" Her eyes flick to her husband. "-little girl, she's seventeen months now, and when that thing happened… It was terrifying, not knowing where she was. Bastard had it coming."

"Happy to oblige."

A woman on the far side for the room slides her chair back and starts in my direction. "How can you say that? He cut a boy's head off on television!"

Jacob turns to face her. "Yeah, well that 'boy' killed more other kids than you've had hot dinners your whole life. What's your problem?"

"Oh, I just get worried when someone goes on national television saying they want to repeal the Bill of Rights and everyone applauds!"

I turn fully around. "Guys, guys." I make a placatory gesture with both hands. "We're all rational adults here. We can talk through our differences like civilised people. Okay?" Jacob and the new woman glare at each other for a moment, then look away. "In answer to your concern… As you may have noticed, I'm an alien. I don't have the same attachment to -or awareness of- the Bill of Rights that you do. Honestly, I…" I shake my head. "I have a little difficulty in getting my head around the idea that there might be a law that stops you killing people like that."

Jacob rolls his eyes. "Shouldn't be."

"Well, in the United States we do. Due process means they have to be there when the trial happens."

"And that's an absolute? I mean, I gave the matter some thought and I couldn't think of a way to make Klarion go anywhere he didn't want to."

"Yes, it's an absolute. He was clearly a monster, but the law that gives him the right to a fair trial is the same as the one that protects everyone else."

"You do realise that he was powerful enough to happily slaughter his way through any police force or military force sent to bring him in, right? As far as I'm concerned it comes under the constitution not being a suicide pact. The Founding Fathers can't have given thought to how the laws they were signing off on would relate to beings that powerful. Isn't it.. better than there not being any sort of court process?"

"It would never stop at just people like him."

"Because the alternative would be a politician giving a kill order, and that's far more-." The door opens, and Scott and Barda walk in. Wasn't.. expecting a visit from them. "Hey Scott, hey Barda. Everyone, my brother and sister-in-law."

Mister Tawny looks around and sniffs at them. Scott looks surprised at the people nodding at him and Barda's glowering. What crawled up her?

"Grayven. Can we.. talk to you outside for a sec?"

"Oh, great, my first time in the local bar and I'm getting called out by my own brother." I rise to my feet, sigh theatrically and put two hundred dollars down on the bar before stepping away. "Next round's on me, guys."

Scott looks like he's trying to work out what's going on, like he thinks that he's missed something important but isn't sure what it is. Barda steps back out the door and moves off to the side to let me out. I walk past her and then turn around as Scott brings up the rear. "Okay guys, what's this abou-?"

back

Date Night 27

next

31st March

20:19 GMT -6

I wince as I push myself up into a sitting position. "Okay, people need to stop hitting me in the face now. Ow." I blink as my sister in law strides across the car park in my direction, fists clenched. "Barda? What the hell was that about?" Drones, activate. Low lethality pattern.

"Oh, don't you even try that with me."

I get to my feet as she gets closer. I see Mister Tawny come through the doors of the restaurant as the other patrons line up at the window. "Barda, I don't know what's got into you-."

She lunges towards me. I duck down slightly and bring my arms up in a guard as she swings her right at my head again. Easily blocked. She isn't wearing armour or carrying a weapon. This isn't a serious attack. Or at least she isn't trying to kill me. Her left smashes into my lower guard with enough force to lift me off the ground, then she's at my side, grabbing me and hurling me across the car park!

Okay, had enough. My armour appears around me and my ring's flight aura catches me just before I smash through a row of cars. I right myself in the air and then float back down as Scott and Barda start walking towards me. "First one's free. Second one, I'll let you off because you're family. I don't recommend trying a third."

Barda narrows her eyes. "We've beaten you before."

"What, sparring? Sure, I'm not a melee fighter-."

Scott gives his head a very slight shake, his eyes remaining focused on me. "She's talking about the White House."

White-? Sinestro, if I were to ask you where my brother and sister-in-law are at the moment-?

I would tell you that they are in their home in Hartford, Connecticut.

Oh.

"So, you're the two from Earth Fifty. How did you work out where I was from?"

"How do you think?" Scott 50 raises his eyebrows. "We tried visiting our Grayven."

"Oooooooh. Bad idea. Ah, sorry about that. Although in my defence, I did rather assume that you wouldn't."

"We had to dodge fire from a few hundred Gordanian soldiers."

"Hey, no. If you didn't bother checking better ahead of time, that's on you. He doesn't even look that much like me. Grayven Fifty has a mullet. A mullet!"

"I hadn't ever seen our Grayven before. He hasn't ordered the Gordanians to paint pictures or sculpt statues of him. But he has shielded his command ship against remote viewing. The first we knew that we had the wrong guy was when we walked into his briefing room."

"Oh. Yeah. Okay then, my bad. How's.. things with him and the Thanagarians?"

Barda makes a short rumbling noise in her throat. "He destroyed their fleet and has occupied their homeworld."

"Excellent. That should keep him entertained for a bit."

Scott tilts his head to the side a little. "How did you recover so fast? You were pretty crispy at the end of our fight, yet you came back here after only a few days fully healed."

"How do you know when I came back here?"

"My Mother Box picked up the Bleed radiation from your transit. I didn't think much of it until I realised that you weren't our Grayven."

"Turns out, the souls of New Gods can feed on raw magic. I just had to find a wizard willing to pour it into me and my body regenerated fast enough for me to leave after a few days."

Barda takes another step forwards. For an instant Scott looks a little concerned and lays his right hand on her right arm. She brushes him off, but appears to get herself back under control. "How much of what you did was a set up?"

"I didn't get nuked intentionally."

She stares at me ferociously. "The fight before that."

"I wasn't trying to kill you. I mean, if you'd completely failed I.. really would have taken over. You just had to meet a-" I hold my right hand out level with my chest, palm down. "-minimum threshold. And refuse my offer, of course. Where everyone could see you doing so."

"You played us!"

"I gave your world the heroes it needs. Heroes it can survive. I made the world better for my presence and better still by leaving it." I pause for a moment. Am I actually getting through to these two? "How are.. 'Stormwatch'.. getting on?"

"We beat up a jury-rigged Brimstone Servitor and got turned into children."

"Good for you!" Wait. "You mean, at the same time, or in sequ-?"

Scott holds up his right hand to stop me. "What are you planning for this Earth?"

"You remember all that stuff I said I was going to do on your Earth?"

"Yess?"

"That. Only-" I combine harvester my hands. "-less overtly, more covertly. And legally, without, you know, outright conquering the place. I just want to prove to myself that I can do subtle, you know? Oh, and hey, I've got a mountain fortress now! And an awesome-" I point to Mister Tawny, who's crept up to pouncing distance behind them and is crouching to do just that. "-cat I can stroke when I'm being evil. Heeeee's great!"

Barda's hand goes for the mega rod she's not wearing.

"Look, this has been… Fun? But I don't have any plans to go back to Earth Fifty. Really I don't. Was there something else you wanted?"

Scott and Barda look at each other for a moment, Barda looking like someone just made her gargle sewage. Then Scott reaches into his jacket and pulls out his Mother Box.

"Okay, well, it's been.. nice seeing you-" He holds her out slightly as a Boom Tube opens. "-but you shouldn't probably-."

!!!

Lynne Wayland steps out of the portal. Her hair's a little longer than when last I saw her, pulled back into a short black ponytail at the back of her head. Her face... She's obviously been eating better. She's wearing tight fitting black trousers and a grey coat. She sees me- "Grayven!" -and scurries in my direction, a huge smile on her face. I kneel down as she reaches me so that she can throw her arms around my neck. Why is..? Why did they..?

Scott's looking down on me. "You imprinted your soul on her, Grayven. I don't know what you were thinking, just leaving-."

"I was thinking 'I'm a supervillain'! You'd have a much better chance of giving her a normal life-."

"I don't want a normal life." Lynne pulls away slightly, looking up into my face. "I want you." "Being here feels right."

Well sssssssugar. It feels right to me too. I can feel my aura harmonising with hers, like a part of me that was missing is suddenly returned. I hadn't realised…

"Lynne… I…" What the heck do I say? "I'm…" I shake my head. "I'm not a very nice man. I'm violent, my life is violent. This isn't a safe place for you-."

"And back home was? Grayven, I killed my parents. I turned off their minds without even realising…" She looks away for a moment. "And then I… I got given to SHADE and they put me in a room with the Anti Life. You're.. the only thing that makes me feel truly safe. Please, don't.. send me away?"

…

I stand, lifting her up as I do so. "Very well then… Daughter." She leans into my side, hugging my shoulder as I turn to Scott. This could be... The word I'm thinking is 'inconvenient' and I feel.. bad about it. Her need for me is obvious and at this point in my life I clearly have the resources to cope with a child, but... "Scott. Do you have any other business here?"

"No. We'll be.. headed back now."

"Alright. Wink lasciviously at Kara for me." But my heart's not really in it. He and Barda turn away to walk through the boom tube. "Thank you. For bringing Lynne here." Scott turns back for a second, giving me a small nod. Barda's eyes linger on me for a few moments as if she's not sure what to make of me.

But thankfully Barda 50's unresolved personality conflicts aren't my problem. I stride past her towards the door to the Wingnutz Bar and Grill. Mister Tawny watches my back for a few moments, then turns around to follow after me just before I hear the boom tube shut down.

I shove the door open with my left hand, ducking slightly to make sure I don't knock Lynne's head against the lintel. My fellow bar goers are in various stages of returning to their seats as I stroll back to my seat, Lynne held in my right arm. I sit down and then transfer her to my lap.

"Lynne, sweetie? Do you want something to drink?"

"Um. Orange juice?"

I nod to the barwoman as Mitchel takes a look around and realises that he's been deputised. "Hey, ah, Grayven? What was that all about?"

"My brother felt that I'd been neglecting my daughter." I put my left arm around Lynne, pulling her against my chest. "And he was right."

Mitchel nods in understanding. "Yeah, I think my sister in law would probably throw me across the parking lot if I did something like that, too."

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NEXT CHAPTER

Fool's Canon

BACK

Fool's Canon 1

next

Fool's Canon

1st April

06:26 GMT -6

I open my eyes, shifting my right shoulder at an obstruction. Why am I-? Right, the lounge, because I gave Lynne my room. And… I lift my left arm, catching sight of the top of her head. And she didn't use it. Okay, so, priorities for today: finish the guest rooms. Need her input for hers. Find out stuff about her, birthday, how old she actually is… I'd guess somewhere around twelve? I'm going to need her whole personal history at some point, though that can wait. I'll need to sort out a school and… She's going to need some sort of immigration paperwork, isn't she? Ugh, I'm probably going to have to formalise that whole 'Apokoliptian Ambassador' thing? Probably easier than popping over to Earth 50 and getting her old paperwork from SHADE and creating law for parallel universe travel.

And I've got to work out how to tell Jade. Somehow… I suspect this isn't going to go over too well. Or maybe she'll be fine with it? I did talk to her about children after I got back from Earth 50 and once she reassured herself that I didn't mean 'imminently' she told me that she does want children. And the really horrid stuff like Lynne waking up at all hours of the night and needing us to clean up her excrement has already been taken care of. And, um…

"Mister Grayven. I see that you are awake." I turn my head as far to the side as I can, spotting Jean standing just inside the room. Took her a little while to get used to not asking me things telepathically, but as she pointed out the extra speaking practice is probably good for her. "Should I have breakfast prepared, or do you intend to sleep in?"

"Um." I look at Lynne again. She grew up in a military holding centre, right? I assume that they kept a fairly inflexible schedule. "Lynne, sweetie?"

"Mmmmnnmf."

"Are you awake?"

She grudgingly opens her eyes and looks around. "No?"

"Well, I'm afraid that your mattress is, so unless you want to go back to your actual bed…"

"Mmf." She sits up, still mostly on me. "I'm awake. Who was-?" She spots Jean, her eyes widening oh dear.

"Didn't have a chance to introduce you last night." I sit up slightly, picking Lynne up and then setting her down on the floor. "This is Jean. She's a G-Goblin and she more or less runs the place."

"Oh." Lynne calms down a little as I come fully upright and swing my legs over the side of the settee. "What are… G-Goblins?"

Jean looks to me. "If I may, Mister Grayven?"

"You know what you are better than I."

Jean's horns glow faintly-. Oh, that might not be a good idea. I lean forwards and rest my hands on Lynne's shoulders. And much of her upper arm, given how large my hands are. Hm. I'm not.. feeling any fear, and it doesn't look like Jean's suffering from the mind crush. At least, she isn't showing the symptoms the military facility which held Lynne described. Okay then, I guess I'll let them get on with it.

I shuffle sideways and rise to my feet. Pyjamas, right. A quick flare of yellow and my sharply-pressed trousers and tartan shirt appear. As part of my normalisation campaign I'm making a point of wearing normal clothes while out and about. Actually, replace the suit trousers with jeans and I'm copying Dad's preferred mode of casual dress. Oh, it is nice to be able to think that without thinking 'Darkseid'.

"Oh." Lynne shakes her head slightly as Jean's horns dim. "And… All of you… Think together?"

"In a manner of speaking. Forgive me for bringing the others in like that, but your mind was a little overwhelming."

Add telepathy training to the slate. Hm, if I check that no one on the Light wants Doctor Cizko for anything I could assimilate or brand… My eyes flick down to the yellow ring on my right forefinger. Ah.

How I weep for you, Corpsman.

Or I could just hire Henry or something. I mean, if she can burn out people's minds by accident she clearly needs some sort of instruction. I'll put Chester down as a doubtful… Wait, Mars! It's lousy with telepaths! M'gann said that she had a White brother, and if he's not interested or appropriate there'll be plenty of others.

I smile down at my daughter. "Lynne, what do you eat for breakfast?"

"I don't know. What do you have?"

Hmm. As New Gods, we can eat whatever we want. We can't get tooth decay, we can't get fat and aside from certain raw material requirements we can get away with eating pretty much anything. On the other hand, children need structure to their lives.

"I usually eat porridge, but since this is your first morning here… Jean, could you ask the G-Prometheans to prepare a Full English?"

Her eyes flare for a moment. "Done, Mister Grayven. Is there anything else?"

"Yeah, get the work crew to focus on Lynne's room. Just get it liveable, we can worry about decorating it tomorrow."

"Of course, Mister Grayven." She bows slightly. "Miss Wayland." She turns away and walks out of the room.

"Her mind felt weird."

I lightly rest my right hand on her left shoulder. "She isn't Human. Have you spent much time with aliens in the past?"

Lynne shakes her head. "Not apart from people from Apokolips."

Right, I'm… going to be lying to her about that, aren't I?

"There's that, and the fact that all Genomorphs are part of a mental network."

"I know. I felt the others through her."

"Okay. Breakfast should be ready in about-."

Her eyes unfocus slightly. "Six minutes."

"Right. So, today we're going to be sorting out your living.. situation." She turns her head slightly-. "No, not like that. You're living here, but you need clothes, toiletries, stuff like that. You need to think about what you want your room to look like. Um. Were you enrolled in a school on Earth 50?"

"Doctor Hol was home schooling me." She looks uncomfortable. "Do I..? Have to go to school?"

"Have to? No. It will be far more efficient to have the G-Gnomes-. They're the little telepathic-."

"Jean showed me."

"Okay. It'll be far easier to have them load the factual information you need into your mind, and in any case it's probably best to give you time to get used to your new environment. But. Going to school will force you to learn all sorts of essential social skills and give you the chance to build social relationships with children your own age, as well as giving you formal qualifications which may well be useful to you in future." She nods. "But we can worry about exactly how that's going to work later. Come on." I smile at her and transfer my right hand to her back, giving her a small push. "Let's head to the canteen."

She starts moving, opening the door and then walking out into the corridor beyond. "Who else lives here?"

"Myself, Doctor Robbins, Mister Tawny, the Sphere-."

"The Sphere? What's that?"

"Like a circle, but in three dimensions." She turns back to give me a confused look, then gets it and rolls her eyes. "The Sphere is a New Genosian artificial intelligence that can shift between ball and flying bike forms. Then there's the Genomorphs: Jean, the G-Prometheans, and-" The corridor comes out into one of the workshop areas and I point. "-the G-Trolls, G-Gnomes and G-Elves."

She hesitates slightly, but now she knows what they are she isn't worried by them. Excellent. Now, what do we do after breakfast? What did my dad used to do with me?

"Lynne, have you ever flown a kite before?"

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Fool's Canon 2

next

1st April

13:47 GMT

"Ready?!"

Lynne nods uncertainly at the other end of the string as I hold the kite aloft. After breakfast we came to the area of grassland abutting Beachy Head, which unlike my home village is more or less the same on Earth 16 as it was on Earth Prime. The weather is perfect for kites, overcast and windy with little sun to attract other people. There are a few hardy souls walking the paths around here, mostly retired people with dogs. I've been on the receiving end of a few odd looks, but seeing me with Lynne must be convincing them that I'm not about to start anything.

"Okay… Now!"

I release the kite and she pulls on the strings as it turns to face the wind and rises up into the sky. I watch it go with a smile on my face. Haven't done this since I was… I don't even remember. Not very old. Maybe… Fourteen? Not sure.

Lynne gives one of the strings a tug and the kite obediently tacks to the right before resuming its normal flight posture. "Okay, now try paying out the string a little!"

She twists her left wrist, rotating the plastic handle to unwind the string. That causes the kite to suddenly have more slack on one side and begin moving through the air. Lynne spots what's happening, works out why and tries to rotate her right handle to compensate but loses her grip. The handle goes sailing out of her hand straight into my construct hand as she rapidly switches her attention from kite to handle and back again.

"Yeah, bit tricky, aren't they?" I walk around behind her and pass the handle back to her. "You've really never flown a kite before?"

"No, I… I think… Before my grandparents gave me to the army, I think I remember playing ball with my-" Her eyes flick back to me for a second. "-dad in a park, but after everything that happened, it's.. hard. Remembering that."

Hm. "I know a few telepaths who might be able to help. If you want to recover those memories."

"I don't know." She gives the strings a tug, watching the kite dance on the wind. "I don't think.. going inside my head-."

"If you're not comfortable with it, that's fine. I'm usually not either."

"It's not that. People who touch my mind… That's how my birth parents died, but when the army were testing me, they.. exposed me to other telepaths. They died too."

!!!

"Lynne, I'm so sorry. H-how old were you?"

"I think… Six?" I kneel down, wrapping my arms around her torso and pressing my right cheek against hers. "They stopped after a while. I never really knew what they were trying to do."

"Okay. No telepaths. Do you..? Do you know how long you were there for?"

"No. Not really. It mighta been… Five years? Maybe longer. I don't know. Then I got taken to the SHADE base."

I briefly consider going back and.. remonstrating with America 50's military. No, no, everyone involved is going to be in hiding or in prison from the… From either the Lords' or Stormwatch's follow up investigation. "How old are you now?"

"Eleven. I'll be twelve in two months."

"The first of June?"

"No, April sixteenth. Why would you think it's in June?"

"Ah, yes, of course. I noticed during my visit to Earth Fifty -your Earth- that the calendars don't quite line up. You've come forwards about seven years and one and a half months."

"That's.. weird."

"Do you want to.. celebrate it on the sixteenth of April, ooooor move it backwards a month and a half to when you'll actually be twelve? I kept mine on the same date when I came here from Earth Prime, but it's up to you."

"I think I'll… Keep it the same. That means.. it's only two weeks away, right?"

"That's right." I suppose I could just invite all the local children. Might be a bit of a hassle getting anything in place to host them… Maybe we could use the ruins of Challengerville? Some sort of.. adventure themed thing? Wait, would some of them have been living in the area when the place got wrecked? Note to self: check before sending out the invitations.

"So… I'm a goddess now, right?"

"Technically, a New Goddess, yes."

"Do I get any cool powers?"

"In addition to telepathy? Yes, you will. Slowly. You're already stronger and tougher than a normal girl your age, and you'll heal faster as well."

"Will I get as strong as you?"

"As physically strong as me? Probably not. On the other hand, I'm as telepathic as a brick. The other people I've done this to-."

She stiffens. "Other people?"

"Oh, um… You're the only one upon whom I've bestowed a part of my soul,-" She relaxes. "-but I have invoked a divine awakening in some of my f-. My allies. They gained thematically appropriate abilities based on what they could do already. Based on what happened to Wallace, I imagine that the first thing you'll find is that it will be easier for you to control your abilities precisely."

"I hope so."

"Development beyond that will be based on how rapidly you absorb ambient arcane energy. I've got Zatanna-. She's a magic user, I'll introduce you later. I've got her working on a mana siphon which should speed up the process." Hm "I'm going to test it thoroughly before giving one to you. If you don't want one, you don't have to have one."

"Um. Maybe?"

"Hey, that kite's gone pretty high, huh?"

"Yeah." She looks up. "It really has. Do we just.. keep doing-?"

"Sorry to interrupt, Corpsman, but there is a matter which requires your attention."

"Who was-? Was that your ring?"

"Yes. The.. AI is patterned after the mind of its former wielder, a man named Thaal Sinestro. He's… He has his uses."

"One of which is monitoring Lantern Grayven's system wide sensor network so that I can notify him if -for example- an alien probe of unknown origin is hurtling towards the Earth at extinction event velocity. Of course, if you would rather continue with your kite-flying, I'm sure that the population will quite understand."

"Sinestro, was the Universe Fifty version of you ever married to Arin Sur?"

"No. She was a… Remarkable woman, but with my political work... Things never came together. Why do you ask?"

"Just wondering if you knew anything about child rearing. Lynne, do you want to go and see an alien space probe?"

"What happens if we don't? Will it really destroy the planet?"

"No, I'll just tell the Justice League to sort it. There's got to be at least one Greenie in the neighbourhood. On the other hand, alien space probe, probably unknown to the Human species. Could be interesting."

"Um. Yeah does sound more interesting-. I mean, the kite's nice-."

"It's fine. Kites aren't for everyone."

"Right." She starts turning the handle to reel in the kite. "Do I need a spacesuit?"

I release my hold on her, stand and step back. "Yep. One moment." Yellow light flares along her body as her clothes are replaced with Apokoliptian body armour. Half-remembered Justice League Animated images result in her suit being black and white with an Ace of Clubs tron line design on the chest. It also includes an enclosed helmet and aero discs. If something goes wrong she'll be able to get back to Earth safely. "Grayven to control. Are you there, Doctor?"

"Robbins here. What's going on?"

"Alien probe. Lynne and I are going to have a look. Are the electronics complete enough for you to provide monitoring?"

"Just about. Okay, got you. Mission is go."

back

Fool's Canon 3

next

1st April

13:58 GMT

"We're in space!"

I glance at Lynne as we accelerate towards the ship. "You've been in space before, haven't you?"

Actually, having had the chance to give it a scan I think it's actually some sort of escape pod. There appears to be a climate control system but it isn't a full suspended animation set up. We didn't pick up an explosion in this system but if the species who created it used a space warping form of faster than light travel they would have formed the warp at the 'send' end. I can't build sensors for everything. It would just take too long.

"On the Wrath of Thanagar. But they never let me just go outside!"

"It gets boring fairly quick."

"I can see forever! How could this get boring?!"

Okay, schedule some time off planet with her. The object is a tube. No generators, but there are a power cell and kinetic dampeners, it's definitely slowed down since we first picked it up.… 'Soft crash landing' design, then.

"How fast are we going?"

"Hm? Oh, about three hundred times the speed of sound." Planet Earth is a slowly growing dot up ahead and the Watchtower is on the opposite side of the planet. I could try grappling the pod, but I'm a bit worried about the fact that parts of it are resisting my scan. Even Father Box-

Ploong.

-is having difficulty making sense of it, and there aren't many things that can defy his observation.

"Is that safe?"

"It would be a bit risky in an atmosphere, but we're in space. My environmental shield combined with our divinely resilient armour means that impact with the handful of particulates that there are this far from Earth isn't a problem." That said… I ease off a little. "Doctor Robbins, it looks like the object is heading for the South Pole. Please confirm?"

"Right in the middle of Antarctica, according to your computer. Near Dome Argus."

"Anyone there?"

"It'll be quite close to the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Whether they're in danger or not depends on how hard it hits."

"Shouldn't hit all that hard at all. I'm more worried about the shockwaves as it goes through the air."

"Oh no. Who will save us. From this terrible peril."

Lynne giggles treacherously.

"Yeah, yeah. Lynne, watch carefully what I do. You won't get many opportunities to see things like this."

Leaving her a little way behind me I get closer to the pod. Disruption's still there. Quick check shows that it isn't construct proof. Could try just dumping the whole thing into subspace, but I'm worried about how the bit which I can't scan will react… I take another look at the force field that's protecting it.

Is that a button?

There's a sort of.. plasma eddy in one spot. The design looks deliberate. Alright then. Construct finger and press.

"Hello!" The message is coming over about seventeen different forms of advanced communication system simultaneously. A slightly extreme precaution, but a sound one if the sender had no idea who the pod might meet at the other end. "You've reached the messaging service-" Eh? "-of Brum-El." A Kryptonian? I don't remember-. "No, I'm not a Kryptonian. Why do people always ask that? They're not the only species who frantically jettison things from their dying home planet, you know!"

Huh?

"Preserved in this pod are the things most precious to me." Okay, alien baby. Babies. The Genomorphs can handle-. "My clothes." What? "My sock collection, all fifty two pairs. My fabulous hats, all in their original boxes." What? "My oven gloves, my beautiful, beautiful oven gloves." I hear a whimper. "Oh, and that weird bug facemask my brother bought me for my birthday that time and my green union suit. To be honest, I really just wanted to get those off the planet. I mean, can you imagine if I died wearing those? Yikes, right?"

…

I think we can pretty much rule out the wisdom of the universe.

"Anyway, meteorites coming, I gotta go. The pod should land safely on the first inhabited planet it comes to. So if that's you, congratulations! I guess… Put them in a museum or something? Oh, oh, and there might possibly have been a small infestation of radioactive space robo-insects. Maybe! But it's probably nothing to worry about. All you need to do is crackle. Crackle! Crackle? Yeah, that sounded believable. Okay, future fashion worshippers, this is Brum-El, signing off! I'm off to leave life the way I came in: naked and screaming! Leave your message after the beep."

I wait for a moment.

There is no beep.

"What a flipping waste of time. Sinestro, get me Lex Luthor."

"Dialling now."

I hear the phone being picked up, but no one says anything. "Lex, Grayven here."

"One moment." Miss Graves' voice. Oh, come on. I don't rate being put straight through? Sinestro, I show up on caller ID, right?

A terrible oversight on my part, Corpsman.

"Grayven. To what do I owe this pleasure?"

"Lex, hi. Alien supply pod on collision course with the South Pole. Apparently it contains someone's wardrobe, but you could probably get something useful from the technologies of the pod itself. Interested?"

"Their wardrobe?"

"You can keep the socks, no charge."

Lynne laughs again.

"… Thank you. Once you've performed a preliminary investigation, please transport it to LexCorp's secure warehouse in New York."

"No problem. Tell them to expect me in about an hour."

Sinestro, hang up.

Earth's bigger now, almost the size of my thumb nail. "No sense following it in." I bring Lynne and myself to a relative stop, the pod zooming away from us. "Father Box, boom tube to the Antarctic."

Ploong.

A glowing portal opens in space, a white wasteland on the far side. I send Lynne through first and then float through myself, closing it behind me and looking upwards. Can't see it yet with my unaided eyes, but I have Sinestro plot the location and distance on my eyes and Lynne's visor.

"That was weird. Are we really on the South Pole?"

"No, the Pole's a little way-" I point to the south. "-that way. Magnetic south is about a kilometre south east of us."

"Can we go see it?"

"Um." How long have we got? "Yes, alright. First thing though." I activate the aerodiscs in her boots before triggering my own and rising off the hard packed ice. "I want you to try getting there using your aerodiscs."

"I have those?"

"Everyone worth mentioning on Apokolips has those. You just have to lean a little and angle your feet-." She gets about three inches off the ground before losing her balance, flailing her arms around for a few desperate seconds before falling onto her back. "Nearly. It's like riding a Segway." I float over and offer her my right hand. "It's only not intuitive if you expect it to be unintuitive. Now." I give her a friendly smile. "Try again."

back

Fool's Canon 4

next

1st April

09:16 GMT -5

"…you and the other Roy decided who gets called what yet?" I frown. "And.. the other Mister Harper, come to think of it."

Roy I slowly swings his right arm out to the side while opening and closing his hand, giving the armour's computer the data it needs to interpret his actions. "Yeah. We're keeping the same names, but he's going to ask people to call him William.. or 'Will' I guess.. instead of Roy. It's our middle name, so it shouldn't be too hard to remember."

"My Dad's family had this weird habit of referring to their menfolk by their second names. My great grandfather 'John Jeffrey' was always called 'Jeff'."

He opens and closes his right hand, watching curiously as the armoured pieces move to allow the motion while maintaining the protective layer. "'Uncle' Jim Harper is going to keep his name. Huh, guess that's one of the reasons why they had to remove me."

"How do you mean?"

"Obviously I knew that I didn't have an Uncle Jim. But when they copied my memory for-. For Will, it was easy enough for them to add him in."

"You're probably right. And your… Professional names?"

"He's keeping Red Arrow. Jim's retiring from being Guardian. He said he was thinking of joining the police force." He shrugs, and the pauldrons match his movement. "Not all that much call for out of work superhero laboratory managers."

"Look, um… Given how he was programmed, I'm trying not to hold the Genomorph thing against him?"

"Yeah. Sorry."

"Are you keeping 'Speedy'?"

"I never really thought about it. It was just a nickname I picked up when my foster father taught me to shoot the bow. Using it as my code name just sort of followed from there." He stretches his right arm out and then rotates his hand from palm down to palm up. "I guess I can see why the other R-. Why Will changed it. It does sound kind of.. juvenile." He pulls his arm back and makes a fist. "How long does this armor take to adapt?"

"To be honest, you could probably wear the lightweight version now. It's the heavy versions where the synchronisation is most imp-."

"Would all team members please report to the briefing room."

Roy glances at the workshop speakers. "What, all five of us?"

"Batman knows most of us aren't available during the week." I dismiss my data pad construct. "He's either going to give us a mission to plan for this weekend or give us something that is within our abilities with just the five of us." I look him over. "Do you want to keep the armour?"

Roy stands up, performing what looks like a squat to check the motion of the legs. "For the briefing sure. I'll make a decision about the mission once we know what it actually is." He slings his quiver over his left shoulder and checks its position before picking up his bow and nodding to me.

"Transition in two, one."

The room flickers and we appear in the briefing room. Batman and Mister Freeman are already there, and as I glance left I see the Atlanteans emerging from the direction of our miniature arcane laboratory. Seeing what Sephtian and I have achieved appears to have set off a burst of creativity amongst some parts of the Atlantean thaumistic community, and having our three work together has allowed them to rebond while simultaneously allowing Kaldur to catch up with his arcane education somewhat. Roy and I exchange nods with them, then we come to a parade rest line.

Kaldur makes eye contact with Batman. "Do you have a mission for us?"

"Yes, but we're still waiting for a member of your team."

Kaldur glances back at me and I make a small shrug. "I was under the impression that they were all attending school at-."

The external door opens with a with a gust of wind, then Rob precipitates out of the air. "Sorry I'm late, sir. Came as fast as I could."

Roy looks him over. "Skipping class?"

He bends slightly, breathing hard. "Inset day."

"Now that you're here." Batman takes a moment to make eye contact with each of us. "The Apokoliptian Canis Minor has expressed an interest in joining the team." Can't say I'm completely surprised. I imagine that our lifestyle is far more similar to what he's used to than how the Frees live. "He has considerable skills and experience, though his attitude can be highly abrasive. Both Orange Lantern and Superboy have spent time in his company and can brief you on his personality characteristics. Since he is not being mentored by a Justice League member, the choice on whether or not to admit him will be yours."

Kaldur nods. "Thank you, Batman. We will consider the matter carefully."

I'd say, better inside pissing out. We are going to end up fighting Apokolips eventually, and the more our people can get their heads around how their society operates the better. Plus he's Kon-strong and doesn't need to go to school five days a week.

And him coming here does suggest that Mister and Missus Free are a bit closer to agreeing to join the League. Heh, the Frees, Fire, Ice and Red Rocket. Blue Beetle's a bust but if Booster Gold turns up we'll have the entire Justice League International line up available. Maxwell Lord was one of the people I checked out very carefully early on, but the Earth 16 version isn't telepathic and has no obvious reason to hate metahumans, meaning that the personality shift he underwent in the comics hasn't happened and hopefully won't.

Batman activates the holographic display and a picture of Antarctica taken from space appears. "Approximately ten minutes ago the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station registered a significant seismic disturbance which we believe was caused by the impact of an object crash landing nearby. The object was extra-terrestrial in nature and I'm concerned that it might carry either a weapon or a hostile life form of some kind." The image zooms in on the pod, the scale showing it to be approximately cylindrical, about eight metres long with a diameter of about two metres. It doesn't.. look open, but the resolution at the distance this was taken from isn't good.

Easily fixed. "May I, sir?" Batman gives me a curt nod and I raise my left hand. Ring, scan. The grainy image is replaced with one of crystal clarity. We can see the impressions in the ice left by the landing, though the object doesn't look damaged. The pod itself… Externally, everything looks normal. Internally-. My scan starts glitching out. I get flickers of the interior but something's working against me. "Sorry sir, that's the best I can do."

Roy's eyes narrow slightly. "Clearly something's in there."

Batman studies the image. "The Watchtower is currently monitoring the area. If we see anything moving away from the Station we will notify you immediately. Aqualad, Icon will be accompanying you for this mission." Several not entirely friendly eyes move to the League member in question. "You will remain in command, but Icon has had the most contact with alien species of any available member of the League. If the entity responsible is not mindlessly hostile, he stands the best chance of reaching a negotiated settlement."

"That would be preferable."

Batman nods at him. "Dismissed. Maintain constant radio contact with the Watchtower."

"Um. Batman?" Tula hesitantly raises her right hand. "Isn't making first contact with potentially hostile aliens something the Justice League would normally do?"

"Yes. But with the Green Lanterns all away from Earth it would take a Justice League task force longer to get there than it would take your team." A few glances my way. "And in situations like this time is of the essence. Furthermore, I believe that this mission is well within your team's capabilities."

That gets a few more half smiles as Kaldur turns to face the rest of us. "Gather your equipment and rendezvous in the hangar as swiftly as possible. Fall out."

back

Fool's Canon 5

next

1st April

14:24 GMT

That is a truly hideous sock. I mean, I'm no fashion guru or anything, but green, red and white stripes? Remind me never to go shopping for clothes on Schwab.

Oh. I frown. Right. I suppose that isn't a problem any longer.

I return my attention to Lynne. "So, ah, I'm not quite sure how you being a New Goddess will affect your growth, but assuming that you now match our maturation rate you should age like a Human until you get to about thirty and then just stop."

Killing the robobug appeared to neutralise the exotic energy effect, but as predicted any analysis beyond 'this isn't normal' proved impossible. At least these days I know that's because I've genuinely run into something just that weird, not just because I'm dealing with a gimped database. Sinestro suggested forwarding my findings to Qward and I told him where to stick that idea. While I probably will end up coming into contact with the Weaponers at some point I'm going to wait until I'm in a much stronger position before I do.

"There are real outliers like Granny Goodness, but I assume that her current appearance is something to do with her divine nature. Or possibly Father blasting her with the Omega Effect until she looked like that." I create a construct in the image of the New Goddess of Child Abuse. So glad I didn't actually grow up on Apokolips.

Lynne isn't gagging quite as much as she was a few minutes ago, but she definitely looks a little queasy. "Did you have to give me this talk now?"

"Nooo, but it seems to me that it's best to get it out of the way early so it's not so much of a thing, you know? Leaving it to your school seems like an abdication of parental responsibility and putting it off in the hope that you won't get curious… In this day and age that seems like painfully blinkered optimism. This way you're properly informed before you even start to care! I mean, I'd certainly want plenty of warning if I was going to start bleeding from my genitals every month."

Her eyes widen. "You just said I wouldn't do that!"

"Probably. I mean, I've only got the one data point… Anyway, the important point is that you won't have a fertility cycle, getting pregnant is a conscious, directed proc-"

Ploong.

"-cess." I start looking around. "Which is not to say that you shouldn't insist future partners wear condoms as it's a good habit for them to get into." Ah. Only four places on Earth have hush tubes and the fact that I can't see who came through strongly suggests… Yes, I can see the Bioship now. "Now, I think that covers the basics, but if you have any other questions at any time, it is always right to ask. Apokoliptians are very open minded people and nothing you can say on the subject will disgust or offend me."

"Thaanks."

"Okay, awkward bit over. We're about to meet some of my friends." I drop the yellow wall I erected around the pod when some people from the nearby research base came to have a look just as the rear hatch of the Bioship opens up, revealing Kaldur, Tao.. Tula and Garth. Hadn't realised that they'd be joining. A moment later Arnus steps forth as well, remaining a little behind the younger members. A field supervisory role? In deference to the fact that until recently we were allies they don't point their weapons or spells at me. In deference to the fact that they aren't idiots they have them prepped and ready to go. I smile, flare my armour and start walking towards them. "Hello, chaps. How have you been?"

Kaldur's eyes move from me to the pod before shifting to the construct-armoire. Lynne gets a momentary and very slight look of puzzlement before he returns his full attention to me. "Why are you here?"

"Same reason as you, probably. I saw an alien object approaching the Earth dangerously quickly and got here as fast as I could. I actually.. intercepted it in space, made sure it wasn't a threat and then waited for it to land."

"The occupant?"

I float the construct kill jar over from the top of the armoire, then rattle the late occupant at him. "One alien techno organic pseudo-insect. Non-sentient. The pod wasn't intended to have an occupant."

"Then what was inside?"

"Fifty two pairs of socks, sixteen hat boxes and the corresponding hats,-" The look of puzzlement is back. "-five oven gloves designed for humanoid use, one union suit -green- and this mask." I hold up the strange ski mask with the yellow antenna. Obviously I recognise it as belonging to Ambush Bug. Or rather, it's the mask that would have belonged to Ambush Bug if I hadn't intercepted it. Nothing special about the mask itself as far as I can tell, not with the exotic energy sucked back into the insect thing. Only thing I ever read with Ambush Bug in it was 52, where he joined the very short lived version of the Justice League that existed in the missed year. He could teleport, couldn't he? Plus some sort of fourth wall awareness. The first wouldn't help me much and I'd be genuinely disturbed to encounter the latter.

Tao frowns. "That seems a little strange."

"Having heard the message the former owner recorded, I don't think we're dealing with a first class intellect here."

Kaldur nods. "Thank you for securing the crash site. We will take it from here."

"Ah." I shake my head. "No. This is.. my pod."

Kaldur's grip on his water bearers tightens slightly. "We have the authority of the Justice League."

"Nnnot exactly. The governments who signed the League's UN charter didn't want the League thinking it had unlimited authority to remove alien technology from their own research centres. Even League members don't have the authority to just seize whatever they feel like. And, obviously.. you're not a Justice League member, thissss-" I look around. "-isn't the sovereign territory of any UN member and there isn't an imminent threat to life." I shrug. "I'm not seeing your legal argument here."

He starts to turn to Arnus for confirmation, then stops himself. "Even so, I would.. ask, that we be afforded the opportunity to confirm that for ourselves."

"Of course." I step aside and hold out my left arm in the direction of the pod. "Be my guest. I'm assuming that Arnus is here because there's some small chance he might actually recognise this?"

"That is our hope." Kaldur walks past me and cautiously performs an examination of the pod's exterior. "Our team's own expert on alien technology resigned recently."

I nod. "People like that, you've got to make sure that the opportunities for professional development are there. Otherwise, someone else will just make them a better offer."

"Do you intend to deliver this to the Light?"

"Who?" I smirk. "This is going to a LexCorp research facility, where it will be studied and the technologies derived from it developed for the good of all the peoples of Earth."

Arnus floats over the pod, flashing me a look of… Actually, given how unexpressive he is I can't actually tell. Disappointment, probably. "For the good of Lex Luthor."

"Welcome to capitalism. He can't make money on it by sticking it in a shed and forgetting about it. Which is what the League would do."

"The proper procedures for-."

"And how was it you found out about this, anyway?"

Kaldur glances back at me. "It was detected by the Watchtower's sensors."

I nod, my right finger thinker-posing against my chin. "Remind me who it was that put those back online, Arnus? And.. who it was.. built the hush tube you used to get here right now rather than hours from now after I'd already removed the pod?"

He turns away. Hah-hah.

Kaldur walks around the side of the pod and stops just in front of Lynne. They look at each other for a moment. Ah, I should introduce them. "Lynne, this is Kaldur. Also known as Aqualad. Kaldur, Lynne."

"I am pleased to meet you, Lynne."

"Hello."

"How did you come to know Grayven?"

Lynne looks awkwardly at me for a moment. Oh, I'll field it. I'll have to accelerate my plans for telling Jade to make sure that she doesn't hear it from Artemis first... "Kaldur, you read that mission report I wrote after I got back from Earth Fifty, right?"

"I have indeed read it." He hesitates as he tries to call it to mind. "Lynne.. Wayland. The girl from the SHADE facility."

"Scott and Barda Fifty dropped her off. I'm adopting her." His eyes widen, and I studiously avoid looking directly at him. Instead, I open my killing jar construct and shake the insect out onto my right hand. Sinestro, scan the thing in detail-. The bug flickers with scintillating colours for a second before vanishing.

That was… Odd. But.. probably nothing to worry about. I'll just have to remember to create teleport jammers around sites like this in future.

back

Fool's Canon 6

next

1st April

09:25 GMT -5

Rob shifts awkwardly as the two of us wait outside the Bio-Ship. Roy's inside with Mister Freeman, familiarising himself with the controls. He's flown the Bio-Ship a few times in training but out of all of us he needs the experience of flying on a mission most. "Um. Look, I didn't want to say anything when Batman was there… But…"

"What is it?"

His eyes flick up towards the ceiling for a moment. "You know I..? Teleported here, right?"

"Yes, you said."

"Right. Err. There's a… In the grove? There's a naked woman? I think she's drunk? I dunno what the procedure is."

I look around as the lift door opens and the fully tooled-up Atlanteans emerge to join us. "Oh, that's Euanthe."

"Oh, right. Euanthe. Yeah."

"Yes." He keeps looking at me as I turn away to enter the Bio-Ship. Antarctica is ice over rock rather than just ice, so our Atlanteans don't have quite the same options they'd have in the Arctic. Still, the temperatures mean that a water spray would be pretty disabling. How quickly would it freeze..? No, they can manipulate ice without turning it back into water, and airborne ice particulates are fine for electrical generation.

Mister Freeman is sitting in the front left while Roy's at the pilot station. I focus for a moment and the ship extrudes a chair for me next to Roy. He's still wearing the light power armour I made for him. I should be able to upgrade it to mithril in a couple of weeks but I want to prioritise the Justice League's metamaterial equipment upgrade ahead of my team's. They're the ones who regularly do heavy direct combat, after all.

He glances at me with a wry smile. "You're that confident, huh?"

"This is just in case we encounter a lot more resistance than we should. We're just going to-." I look around as Kaldur and the others board, Garth and Tula taking the seats on the left side of the cabin. "Aqualad, how far out do you want me to put us?"

"Two kilometers." He takes the seat just in front of me and turns it around to face me. "I am a little concerned about Euanthe's state of intoxication."

"I told her to go easy on the fruit. I'll have a word when we get back."

From the back left of the ship Rob looks at us with obvious confusion. "Okay, seriously. Who's Euanthe?"

"A Dryad of my acquaintance."

"Oh! So she's been eating Swamp Thing's fruit to… Power up?"

"Yep. Only to her-"

Kaldur waves his hand over the instrument panel and the hangar doors begin to open.

"-they're like catnip. She'll be a bit out of it until she's adjusted."

Roy raises his hands over the controls. "I'm taking us up. Engaging camouflage." The Bio-Ship rises smoothly up from the landing pad and accelerates forwards, stealth system coming on as we pass through the external doors and accelerate into the Happy Harbour sky. "Minimum distance for transition in.. forty seconds."

I start plotting the route for the transition. Weather at the other end seems clear. No real reason to pick one direction over another.

"Aquagirl." Kaldur looks across the cabin. "Send a message to the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station as soon as we appear. It would be best if they kept their distance while we investigate."

"Right."

"Orange Lantern, do you recognise the design of the pod at all?"

I shake my head. "Sorry, it's too generic. Hundreds of species -including all the spacefaring ones in this Sector- could have built it. Might be able to tell more with a closer look."

Roy looks around. "Minimum distance."

I nod, turning my attention to the front window. "Transitioning in two, one, now."

1st April

14:28 GMT

The window is suddenly filled with clear blue skies and an expanse of white ground beneath, flecks of grey visible where the snow has been blown clear of the underlying rocks. I keep a filament attached to the hull just in case I have to put construct armour around the Bio-Ship. No, doesn't look like the pod thing suddenly turned into a killbot on us.

"This is Aquagirl calling the Amundsen-Scott Station. Come in, please."

"Coming up on the alien pod now."

I narrow my eyes and look out through the ring's sensors. Yep, that's a pod alright. There's a snowmobile next to it, but no sign of the rider. The snowmobile tracks lead off in the direction of the Station, so… Someone went out to investigate, then disappeared. No blood or ash and according to Batman it's only been minutes…

"Rats."

Kaldur inclines his head slightly. "Someone has visited it already."

"Whatever was disrupting my scan of the pod is no longer in situ." I sit back slightly, a cut away construct of the pod appearing before me. "Nothing special about the pod itself. No life support… I'd say it was a cargo container."

Mister Freeman looks the image over carefully. "Not quite. A standardised cargo pod would either be larger for bulk transport or better protected for valuables."

I shrug. Sure, I knew that most would be, but no other purposes leap out at me. "What do you think it is, then?"

"The thing which most comes to mind is a refuse pod, but that does not seem to fit its behavior."

"This is Aquagirl calling the Amundsen-Scott Station. Please respond."

Roy turns his eyes in my direction for a second as he floats the Bio-Ship towards a landing area. "What's it carrying?"

Wha-? "From the looks of it… Socks."

"Socks?"

"Yep."

"You can't be serious."

"Fifty one pairs, neatly ironed. And…" Huh. "A fifty second pair which appears to be of Earthly origin. A couple of other boxes have been opened. Tentatively, I… Think whoever brought the snowmobile out here changed their clothes before they left."

"Wouldn't they freeze to death? It's got to be ten below outside."

"Minus twenty one-. Wait, Fahrenheit or Celsius?"

Kaldur smiles very slightly. "In either case, it would not be healthy for a normal Human to be exposed to without their clothing."

Tula looks up, shaking her head. "They're not responding."

Ring, scan-. "Whatever it was that was stopping me scanning the pod earlier, I'm getting the same thing from Amundsen-Scott Station's dome. Not picking up any people."

Garth frowns. "How many people are there at this time of year?"

"Fifty or so. And I can't see any corpses, either. This is… Really quite odd."

Kaldur nods. "Aqualad to Watchtower."

"Go ahead, Aqualad."

"We believe that an object has been removed from the alien pod and transferred to the Amundsen-Scott Station. We will confirm that the pod is safe and then proceed on to the Station."

Batman barely pauses. "Confirmed. I will continue monitoring from here."

Roy looks at me as the Bio-Ship sets down. "This armor has heating elements, right?"

back

Fool's Canon 7

next

1st April

14:31 GMT

The Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station is an ugly jumped-up portacabin of a building balancing on stilts over a foundation of densely compacted snow. Mister Freeman and I float over the structure, looking down. "Not seeing any sign of a disturbance. No sign of forced entry. One snowmobile missing, the one left by the pod… Apart from the lack of people everything seems to be in order."

Down below, Kaldur looks pensive. Usually, this sort of scenario goes one of two ways: 'obvious enemy' or 'nothing to worry about'. Large numbers of people disappearing completely is weird. Someone wearing power armour could have survived travelling in that pod, but if they were hostile they'd have attacked the first person to investigate and wouldn't have bothered cleaning up after themselves this well. Same with a predatory creature; even if they ate everything there would be blood on the snow, to say nothing of how the snow itself would be disturbed.

"Orange Lantern, Icon. Do you have any idea what this could be?"

"Best I've been able to come up with is a nanotech swarm. One of those could completely disintegrate a person, and they love cold weather. And with the right programming it could build something to interfere with power ring scans."

Mister Freeman looks thoughtfully at me. "That seems unlikely to me. The nearest place in which such weaponry has been used is far outside of this Space Sector."

"I agree it's unlikely, but…" I shrug. "Other than 'something which does exactly what we've encountered and hasn't ever been seen by anyone before' it's the only thing I can think of." I look down. "Sorry, Aqualad."

"It is hardly your fault that you are not omniscient. Tempest-."

"What the-?!"

All our heads snap in the direction of the geodesic dome which housed the previous incarnation of the Station. Garth and Tula are standing at the base of the dome, peering inside. For some reason not only can the rings not scan inside there but the transparent dome surface is opaque.

"Tempest, report!"

"No, it's-. I'm fine, it's just… The dome's warm, and.. I can feel a large body of water inside."

Wat?

Kaldur halts his jog towards his friends' position. "You are sure?"

"Dowsing's a first year spell, Aqualad."

How does that work in Atlantis? 'Yes, I'm underwater'?

Tula holds out her hands and there's a brief pale blue glow. "He's right. There's definitely liquid water in there."

Mister Freeman and I look at each other. I throw up my arms in bewilderment.

"Cornwall, Speedy, attempt to gain entry. Pull back at the first sign of a threat." They turn towards him, nod, then they walk into the short tunnel containing the door. "Orange Lantern, are you still able to track them?"

"Yes. No problem so far. Do you want me to put construct armour on them?"

He thinks for a moment. "There is no direct evidence that anyone has been harmed, and if we have an alien visitor I would rather not alarm them unduly."

"Right you are."

Roy walks up to the door and triggers his armour's thermal vision. "The door's definitely warmer than the surrounding environment. Can't see any traps. Cornwall?"

"Can't feel any magic affecting it. Thermodynamics are weird, though. The ice should be melting a bit with the door this warm."

"We're not going to learn anything else out here."

Kaldur starts walking in their direction. "If you believe that it is safe to proceed, do so."

Roy takes a step back, putting an arrow on string but keeping it pointing downwards. I'm pleased to see that the armour doesn't seem to be impairing his mobility. He nods to Rob, who pauses for a moment and then tries the door handle. It turns easily, Rob pushing it open slightly further than he meant to and then pulling it to again. "Door's not locked. Warm air coming out. No smoke or anything."

Roy raises his bow slightly. "Let's keep going."

Rob pushes the door wider.. and.. I've lost picture. "Boundary effect on the door. I've lost picture."

"Speedy, Cornwall, report."

"It's.. a…"

"It's a beach."

"Come again?"

"Like, with sand and that. Feels like thirty degrees in here. I can.. just about see the dome up in the sky, but it's miles away."

Mister Freeman's frown deepens. "Spatial warping? Unlikely. Aqualad, I advise checking for holographic imaging equipme-"

"Hey there!"

-nt."

"Speedy, right? Or is it Arsenal? Or Red Arrow? Hey, whatever you want to call yourself, you're cool with me. Put her there, pal!"

"Ah. Aqualad? Some weird looking guy just walked up to us. He's wearing a green onesie with a weird mask and then he's got Bermuda shorts and a Hawaiian shirt on top of that."

"Is he armed?"

"And.. I know you! You're Cornwall Boy! Huh, and people say I'm niche. Aloha, one shot wonder!"

"Just with a cocktail. Ah, looks like all the other scientists are here as well."

"Any more out there? Invite them in already!"

"Are they in good health?"

"Think so. Speedy just went to check. Yes, I'm-. Excuse me sir, but who are you?"

"Doctor Irwin Schwab, but you can call me-" A green figure with yellow.. thingies extending out of the top of his mask materialises next to Kaldur. "-Ambush Buuuuuuuug!" Another flicker and they disappear. "Hey, you guys work with Jackson Hyde? Weird. But, y'know, cool. Take a load off."

"Jackson… Hyde..?"

"Oh, okay. Kaldur'ahm. I can respect that. Anyone else?"

I look at Mister Freeman. "A man got super powers from an alien crash and used it to create a beach in Antarctica. There are.. worse things he could have done."

There's a flicker, and… Doctor Schwab is perched on Mister Freeman's shoulders. "And Icon? Glad they're finally letting you out of the Dakotabox, buddy. And…" He orientates his head on me. I can't see his eyes under the red goggles that appear to be part of his green with yellow antenna ski-mask. In fact, I don't think I can see any part of his skin at all. Ambush Bug… Vaguely remember hearing about him. "I.. don't know who you are."

"Doctor Schwab, we rather need to talk to you about the alien pod you-."

"Wait!" He leans closer and.. I'm.. not sure why he isn't falling off. "I know what you are." His right hand tremors slightly as he raises it to point it accusingly at me. "You're not from around here."

"Antarctica? No. I'm-."

"You're an SI!" He dives at me, shimmers and then reappears directly in front of me, his right fist swinging around and- "Ow." -bouncing off my power armour's faceplate. "We'll see about that." There's another shimmer and my armour-. My armour's gone! I hurriedly generate construct armour as another flicker signals his reappearance. "No filthy SI in my story!" Ahghah! He's not very strong but his fist went right through my construct and my environmental shield. I transition away and-.

"Canon for the Canon God! Scribes for the scribe throne!"

There's some sort of robotic looking insect on my chest-.

back

Fool's Canon 8

next

Suicide Squad, part 0

1st April

10:16 GMT -6

Amanda Waller looks up with a sigh as I walk into her office, before sliding the paperwork she had been doing aside and steepling her hands. "What is it this time?"

I shake my head. "I can't believe you actually did it." I come to a halt a metre away from her desk. "I warned you what would happen when we met in Washington, I got you your job back so you wouldn't need to… And you got your Suicide Squad created anyway!" She nods. She's not going to bother denying it. "What the hell?"

"Our prisoners are Americans and some of them want to volunteer. I thought you'd be all over something that might get your friends out a few years early."

"You're planning to use them as deniable assets. Leaving aside the fact that they'd be killed if whoever you sent them after caught them… Can you imagine what would happen to Belle Reve if their identities were revealed? It would look like this place was full of holes again! After all the trouble we both went through to get people on-side again after Strange-."

Waller reaches into her desk and pulls out a small pill. "Know what this is?"

Ring, scan. Oh.

"Suicide device. Looks like the same thing the Chinese give their Xeno Teams."

"Some sorta alien technology-."

"Durlan."

She looks directly at me for a moment, then returns it to her desk. "You'd know. We'll give one to every operative. They die or get captured, no evidence."

I stare at her for a moment, then pull out the visitor chair and sit down. "I assume that the existence of this group isn't intended to become public knowledge."

Her eyes narrow. "I'm not even sure how you found out about it."

"I have my ways."

She sits back. "Alright. So, you know. What do you plan on doing about it? The Taskforce X project will still go ahead anyway. It's legal-."

"I wouldn't go that far."

"We have Senate oversight. The US government doesn't need to announce everything it does."

"Fine. But this is an issue that might result in the League refusing to cooperate with Belle Reve any further. And you can certainly forget about getting any more cooperation from me."

She nods. "I thought as much. I still don't understand why you have such an issue with it. Most of the convicts here are violent thugs -and yes, I'm talking about your friends - and we're giving them a chance to channel their abilities into something useful."

"The problem I have is that the most violent ones will jump at the chance, then get better treatment and earlier release than the ones who are actually reforming. That's what prisons are for, not to serve as black ops recruitment centres for the US intelligence services. And if you don't reform them, then they'll go right out and start offending again."

"We've.. made arrangements. They'll be kept under close observation after their release."

"Closely observing supervillains? Yeah, good luck with that. If it was that easy you wouldn't need superheroes."

"Look, Orange Lantern, this is happening whether you like it or not. But, we could use someone's help wrangling the inmates."

"You want me?"

"We've got a couple of guys lined up to act as officers. Having someone outside the chain of command who they could talk to might help things along. Even our most violent convicts know you're only 'trying to help'." Heck. "Obviously, we'd expect you to maintain secrecy-."

"I won't-."

"We don't care about the Justice League knowing, but there would be.. consequences, if you took the position to release classified information to the general public."

Okay. I exhale. They're going to do this anyway, and unless I'm prepared to drop everything and really campaign… I can't stop it. Keeping tabs on it… There's value there, and if things get really bad I can just blow the whole thing up then and try getting rid of the people involved before they revenge themselves on mine.

"Okay. I'm.. on board. Do you have.. some papers I need to read?"

She pauses for a moment, then shakes her head. "On second thought… No."

"What? But you just.. offered it to me? How can you just-?"

She shrugs. "You didn't buy the DLC."

…

I boggle. "Suicide Squad is DLC!?"

"Uh-huh."

"But the basic game references it about a.. dozen times. There were event triggers and everything!"

"I don't make the rules."

"This is ridiculous! The content's on the disc! A bunch of procedurally generated missions using characters in the main game and one unique scenario, which would be pretty weak even if it was new content."

"You bought the Hellblazer DLC. I can see it on your hard drive."

"Hellblazer was released two years after the main game, added new characters, mechanics and events and had them interact fully with the main game! The resolution I got in Prayer this playthrough came from that DLC, partially because of the fans campaigning for it! It wasn't on the fricking disc I already paid for!"

She raises her eyebrows. "This isn't your first time through and this is news to you?"

"It wouldn't have been in character for my other characters to bother finding out about the Squad. Agh, this is such bullshit! I paid for this disc! Why don't I own it?!"

"You actually paid for a licence to use-."

"Oh, don't even."

"Look, a triple A game like this costs you sixty dollars."

"Forty pounds."

"And you spent how much on the last Hearthstone expansion? You spend more than that for sixty packs." She shrugs. "It wouldn't cost them any more money to give everyone access to all of the cards, but they make you buy them in packs instead. How is that any better?"

"It isn't! I know that's bullshit too! I know they're taking advantage of the sales model that comes from hard copy cards, where there were costs in printing and distributing and a secondary market they didn't directly profit from, but this is not something I'm prepared to put up with." I get up. "Forget it! Forget it. I won't do it. I just won't follow this quest line. All the rewards are crap anyway and I can grind relationship points later on."

"Okay. If you're sure." I nod, then turn away and start towards the door. "I've just got.. one more thing I need to say to you."

"What?"

"You've paid your sixty dollars-"

"Forty pounds."

"-and now you want to play

But all the game's bullshit is getting in the way

Companies don't have to listen to what the fans say

They keep offering you extra content on the first day."

There's a hidden mockery song? Oh that is total-!

She stands up.

"The DLC! The DLC!

You haven't bought the DLC!"

Oh fuck this. I storm out of the office-

"Peasant, get the fuck away from me!"

-to emerge onto a veranda overlooking an entire cell block as the prisoners and guards combine to perform a display of interpretative dance to the song now playing from the prison's speakers.

"‘Cause you haven't bought the DLC!"

I try transitioning away, only to find that the function is disabled.

…

I lean back against the wall in frustration. I could be playing Young Avengers right now.

"We already know you like it, so how is it a risk?

To make you buy characters already on the disc?"

Fuck it. At least I can put this on YouTube later.

"Proper bug testing? Why bother with that?

You can download fixes later for our pile of tat!"

"The DLC! The DLC!"

They're still going?

"You haven't bought the DLC!

Peasant, get the fuck away from me!"

Oh… Come on..!

"‘Cause you haven't bought the DLC!"

"AAAAA-"

back

Fool's Canon 9

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"-AAAAA-"

Sororicide, part 21

26th July 2003

21:32 GMT -8

Even after a month and a half, I'm still not entirely used to it. The strange flashes of heat which run unbidden through my body. The sudden surges of violent impulse that all too often threaten to crowd out my rationality. A couple of times I've come perilously close to trying to find a way just to chuck the whole thing in.

But as some guy on the internet said: how stupid do you have to be to give up a power ring?

My first fumbling attempts to improve the Earth with the universe's most powerful weapon were.. inefficient, at best. It wasn't until Dharma noticed what I was trying to do and started feeding me information that I made any real progress. More than a little blood on my hands now, but: Red Lantern. My current ongoing assignment required that I set up shop here in… Jump City.

And if that isn't the dumbest name for a city I've ever heard…

No, no, not helping. Yes, I… Would like to live in a city with a sensible name. I'd like to have a power ring whose AI responded to my questions a little more intelligently than this one does. But, flying's always fun, helping people is satisfying and -I thrust both hands forwards as I unleash a scintillating beam of red energy at that fucking dropship- occasionally I get to take out my constant frustration on someone truly deserving.

The beam strikes the flying platform thing the aliens are using as their getaway vehicle directly in the centre, gouging through the armour before hitting the primary anti-gravity control system. The red and grey armoured figures look up in shock even as they activate their boot clamps in an attempt to remain upright as the vehicle starts to fall from the sky. One thing I've learned about red rings is that they're shit at anything that doesn't involve wrecking something, but at anything that does? Kind of awesome.

"Friend-?" My vision goes red for an instant and Koriand'r shrinks back slightly in the air. "Acquaintance Red Lantern, what are you doing!?"

"I'm making a neural shock generator." Both aliens cry out in pain as the construct goes to work on their central nervous system, rendering them incapacitated without doing -much- lasting harm. The third alien on the platform, the one being held in some sort of force field bubble thing, smiles savagely at their misfortune before trying to pound her way out with her fists. Emergency anti-gravity should keep them from landing too hard, but… I really want everyone to know exactly why I'm doing this. Red, spike-wreathed clamps manifest around the falling ship, thrusting it towards the ground and then yanking it to a halt.

Koriand'r's eyes and hands glow green as she tries to work out whether she needs to attack me or not. "You will tell me why you have attacked them and you will tell me now!"

I descend towards the ground as the other members of the Teen Titans -actual early to mid teens here, rather than late teens to early twenties like in the comics- form a half circle and ready themselves for combat. Control, control. Reasonable mode on. I lean forwards slightly, my toes nearly touching the ground. "Simple, Miss Koriand'r. I've been flying around like a blue-arse fly all day getting absolutely nowhere and it's made me somewhat cranky."

Mister Logan puts his right hand over his mouth and leans a little towards Mister Stone. "Crankier more like."

"Also, I'm preventing a kidnapping." A tin opener construct slices a hole into the force field around Komand'r and a chain construct pulls her out before releasing her. "Don't go anywhere. I can fly far faster than you." She raises her eyebrows slightly and folds her arms across her chest as I generate heavy manacle constructs for her would-be abductors.

Mister Grayson lowers his staff slightly. "They're not kidnapping Blackfire, they're arresting her."

"Oh, you think they're police officers, do you Mister Grayson?" I stare him down, eyes wide and probably a little manic. "Really? Let's just.. let's just check that, shall we?" I raise my right hand to my right ear. "Ring, give me the non-emergency number for the Jump City Police Department, would you?"

"ERRRRRwrrrrrrrrrrrrrahhHHH."

Helpful as ever, but the phone sounds like it's dialling.

Koriand'r floats around, coming to a stop near to Miss Roth. "Why does he call Robin 'Mister Grayson'? Is it some sort of Earth joke that I do not understand?"

"I do it because I don't like using silly pseudonyms."

Someone answers the phone. "Jump City PD. What can I do for yah?"

"Hello, officer. I was wondering if you could please tell me… How many aliens the Jump City Police Department employs?"

There's a slight pause. "What is this?"

"A simple question, sir. A number of aliens have made their homes on Earth, I was just wondering if-?"

"No, we don't have any aliens on the force! Now stop wasting my time!"

She hangs up, and I lower my ring. "Turns out, they don't! Who'd have thought, hey?"

"They're not local police, they-!"

"Oh, they're FBI, are they? Shall I phone Washington and check?"

"They're from the Grand Centauri Empire. Blackfire stole from them and they're taking her-."

"Absolutely nowhere." I yank one of the kidnappers through the air towards me before releasing the clamps on hirs right arm. "You. Identification."

Ze shakes hirs head slightly before reaching to hirs equipment harness and pulling out a small shield-like medallion. "Here. I am an officer of-!"

I read the inscription on the shield. "Fuck all, from what I can see. My power ring has a universal translator. You're not a police officer at all, you're a bounty hunter. Brotherhood of Zvort, according to that."

"We can't send planetary police halfway across the galaxy! Our warrant is valid-!"

"Yes, in a region of space that's about… Ahh…" I point out in the approximate direction of their homeworld. "About seven thousand light years that way! You are totally beyond your authority! Did you think I didn't have a stellar map?"

"Waaait." Mister Stone tilts his head slightly to the right. "What you sayin'?"

"I'm saying that while you can make arrests thanks to Batman's deal with the local police, and while I can make arrests under the same United Nations Security Council resolution which authorises Lantern Stewart to operate on Earth,-" They probably only meant it to apply to Green Lanterns, but the text doesn't actually specify a colour. "-they have no authority to make arrests here. This, was a kidnapping attempt." I float closer to my prisoner. "The Brotherhood of Zvort are usually quite well regulated. Tell me, did you make any effort at all to secure an extradition warrant? You know, like you're contractually obliged to?"

No response.

"You didn't, did you? What was the discussion like? 'Oh, it's just some primitive place. Might as well just fly in, grab whoever we want and leave again, it's not like anyone there can stop us.'" I float closer to hir. "Well done for picking up the wrong woman, by the way. Do all Tamaranians look alike to you? Was an identity scan really too much like hard work you lackadaisical fuckwit?"

I pull back slightly. "I'm remanding you both in custody for assault, kidnapping, criminal damage, and such other offences as may be revealed by a full investigation. Your equipment will be impounded to be returned to you either when you are found 'not guilty' or at the conclusion of your term of imprisonment." I subspace the remains of their flying platform before tearing the armour from their bodies. They look a good deal smaller without it. "I will also be forwarding an official complaint to the Grandmaster of the Brotherhood of Zvort, which will with any luck result in disciplinary action being taken against you at the conclusion of your sentence."

"But…" Mister Grayson appears to be a few steps behind events. "What about Blackfire? She stole-."

"Was accused of stealing, Mister Grayson. She has not been convicted. And if their guild ever sorts out an extradition treaty with Earth or with the United States of America, she may in the fullness of time face trial for it. In the mean time-" I turn to Komand'r, eyebrows slightly raised. "-dare I express the hope that you have not committed any crimes during your stay on Earth?"

She affects an expression of total innocence, pressing her right hand to her chest. "Me?" She slowly shakes her head. "Noo."

"Glad to hear it. I've taken the liberty of applying for refugee status on your behalf, based on the same arrangements which gave Miss Koriand'r leave to remain. It should take a few days for the application to be processed. Do you have somewhere to stay at the moment?"

She takes a few steps in my direction. "I was staying at a place." She glances at the Teen Titans. "But my roommates were kind of a drag."

Mister Logan looks shocked. "Kind of a.. drag? But she said I was funny!"

Miss Roth pats him on his left shoulder. "Maybe she didn't mean 'funny, hahah' funny."

"In that case, you're welcome to my spare room for the duration of your time here." I rise into the air, dragging the bounty hunters and their armour along with me. "I'll show you the place once I've dropped these two ne'er-do-wells off at Jump City Prison." I return my attention to the Titans. "If you wish to register a formal complaint about my conduct, travel to Ysmault, request and complete form seven zero one b and then prove your worth by defeating Senior Lantern Kultonius in single combat. Then submit the form as directed." I nod. "Farewell."

Miss Komand'r flies after me, her eyes moving over my armoured body and to her two attackers, still bound in construct chains. "I think this could be the start of something beautiful."

I glance back as the Titans watch us go, Mister Stone looking thoroughly bewildered. "What just happened?"

back

Fool's Canon 10

next

"-AAAAA-"

Sororicide, part 22

26th July 2003

22:09 GMT -8

"…not really sure why you did that."

A tiny spike of irritation allows my ring to manipulate the mechanisms of my apartment's lock. As a security measure it doesn't have any externally accessible components.

"I dislike bullies, Miss Komand'r."

The two pillars rotate in response to the lock being deactivated, causing my door to open down the middle. It's designed to be very difficult to force, externally applied pressure just pushing the two parts together more strongly. I don't look back as I stride in, letting the automated security system get a good look at me.

"Recognised, Red Lantern two eight one four. Welcome home."

I stop just ahead of the inner door, hearing Komand'r's faint footfall follow on behind me. "Computer, one guest. Indefinite leave to remain. Name: Komand'r."

"Recognised, Komand'r. Welcome home."

The pillars behind us rotate closed with an audible thump, then clank as the mechanism engages. I had this place refurnished when I started living here by people whose usual clients were supervillains. Perhaps I should have been more annoyed that that's actually something it's possible to make a living at, but they did good work. A moment later the inner blast door slides aside, granting us access to my richly furnished living room. There's quite a lot of red, but perhaps not quite as much as my theme would seem to demand.

I walk slowly through the living area in the direction of my armoury, dumping the alien armour off to one side. Another tiny surge of irritation and my own torso armour unlocks, allowing me to start pulling it off my body. Would have been nice if my ring could have given me some sort of physical tune-up as well as the Lantern-powers, but the best I've been able to get it to do is burn away excess fat. On the other hand, I'm more physically active now than at just about any point in my life, and the ring does appear to improve my endurance and reduce my capacity for boredom while I exercise. I'm no Mister Universe, but there's definitely muscle definition present in a way there didn't used to be. "Make yourself at home. I'm just going to grab some normal clothes."

In a wall-mounted mirror I watch as her face goes contemplative for a moment before appearing to dismiss me as I move out of sight. The armoury door has a palm reader, so I drop the cuirass on the floor for a moment to allow me to pull my left hand free of my gauntlet and then put in on the reader. It flickers into life for a moment, then the reinforced door slides open. This armour was a gift from a guy in New York. Well, I say gift, it was really more of a 'I'll make you armour if you don't kill me' kind of thing. Fucking mob armourers… Anyway, the flat's AI can do maintenance to my armour which my ring certainly can't -and clean it as well- so I usually leave it here instead of in subspace.

I put the gauntlet under my right arm and pick up the cuirass with my left before ambling in. Not a large room, just a few weapons and the armour stand as well as the maintenance armatures. Haven't quite been able to get an Ironman-type system set up, but this is body armour, not true power armour. Gauntlet goes on the bench, then I lift the cuirass with both hands and put it on the stand. Then the left gauntlet and rerebraces follow the right gauntlet and I'm nearly free. I throw the gambeson into the washing basket and pick up a towel to dry myself off. I don't really get hot any longer, but sweating is a normal physiological response to stress and I feel a lot of that most days. Boots come off next and get stored in their own slot, followed by my greaves. I take a moment to do a few stretches before towelling my bare legs and chest and my crotch dry. Oh, that's better. Towel goes into the washing basket and I take a pair of loose cotton trousers off the bench and put them on, followed by a t-shirt printed with the logo of the Death Metal band 'Atrocity'.

Last step… I walk over to the medical scanner and stand on the platform. "Update."

The machine hums for a moment, green lights dancing over me. "No change detected since last scan."

Great. I close my eyes for a moment, listening to the beating of my heart. I know the Corps of which I am a member isn't quite like the one in the comics. No 'rage zombies'-. Well, not exactly. Still, the ring is changing me. It would be nice to be able to monitor it better. Oh well.

I walk out of the armoury, hearing the armatures whir into life as the door closes again. Looking down the short corridor into the living area, I see Komand'r holding her right hand out to one of my trophies, comparing the size and shape of her hand to the size of the shape melted into the bone.

"Do you like it?" She pulls her hand back in to her body as she turns, a little more wary now. "For people who make me really angry, I-" I hold out my right hand, fingers outstretched. "-like to hold them by the head and have the ring burn the flesh off. That little shitter was the leader of a militia which murdered about… Wwwwwhw… Two thousand people? After my employer confirmed the kill they let me keep his skull. The bounty payment paid for this place, actually."

Say what you like about Dharma, he pays well.

"Those guys from earlier?"

I shake my head. "They didn't deserve it." I walk over to the aliens' armour. I'll have to hand this over to… Star Labs? But I can do that tomorrow. First, I burn holes into the chest plates around the transponders and pull them free. Couldn't risk setting these off by putting the armour into subspace.

"What are those?"

"Emergency FTL transponders. If the wearers die, if the armour gets destroyed or they trigger it themselves, a call for help goes out. I'd rather avoid that for the moment." I put them down on an empty shelf.

"What did you mean by 'bullies'?"

I walk into the centre of the room and flop down on one of the settees. "People from more technologically advanced societies who think they can do whatever they like on our world. They had no right to remove someone from this jurisdiction yet they tried anyway because the people whose job it normally is to stop things like that wouldn't have been strong enough to stop them." I tilt my head to the side for a moment. "Not that I have to tell a Tamaranian what that's like."

No visible reaction to that. I suppose I couldn't be sure that this Komand'r would care. She keeps walking around the edge of the room, taking in some of my other kill trophies, each skull with a hand-and-red-lantern-sigil burn on the forehead. "Were these murderers too?"

"Mostly. Murderers, brigands, warlords…"

She nods at the smallest skull. "Children?"

"That little shit had murdered seventeen people, twelve of them tortured to death, by the time I met him. I saw no reason to wait for an arbitrary age limit."

Dharma's little test of my resolution, before he attempted to sic me on Miss Roth. Apparently she's responsible for.. something very bad happening some time in the next couple of years and he wanted me to 'intervene early'. I took the deposit, checked his information and then refused the commission on the grounds that she hadn't done anything. And frankly that it doesn't look like she ever would. He couldn't give me more information -a lot of Shadow Cabinet operatives get pissy about that, but it's not like he knows everything- so he told me to stick around until I change my mind. Can't hurt to keep an eye on her, and it's his money.

"You… Did all this with your power ring..?"

I hold out my right hand, taking a good look at it and noticing the renewed interest in her eyes. It's not the original ring. Lord Atrocitus took that when he took me to Ysmault for my 'induction'. "Red rings are catalysed by anger and hate. Though -because I know this is why you're asking- taking it from me would-."

Pantomime of innocence time. "Oh, no, I wouldn't-."

"Yes, you would." Her face goes back to a somewhat more honest expression. "But it wouldn't work. It's bound to me by blood and magic. Take it off and it would just crumble to dust." I pull my right arm back a little. "Of course, if you want one of your own, there's no real reason why you can't go to Ysmault yourself. I'd be happy to take you."

Her eyes narrow slightly. Curious but cautious. "How would that work? What does 'Lord Atrocitus' want in return?"

"There's a.. three day ritual. Senior Lantern Qull gradually regresses your mind to its most primal, rage-filled state, until you're reduced to a savage, animalistic level. At that point, they throw you naked into the Lake of Blood which surrounds the Red Central Power Battery and Lord Atrocitus himself calls forth your rage with which to forge your ring and personal lantern." I flick my eyebrows up for a moment. "As to what he gets out of it, I'm really not sure. I think.. that he likes giving people filled with righteous anger the strength to fight against their oppressors. But, he hasn't said anything definite to me."

She turns her head away again, looking at an ornate sword I took from a previous target. "Maybe. Maybe not."

I nod, then wait for a moment. "Have you given any thought to what you're going to do? Now you're not having to evade those bounty hunters?"

"I've got a few things…"

"I ask, because one of my regular employers has another target for me. I'm planning to go after them in three days' time. I'm not.. hurting for cash myself. I'd happily split the commission with you."

She looks at me out of the corner of her eye. "What kind of split?"

"Half the money for half the work. The job should be well within our combined abilities."

"Hmmm." Appraising look now. She turns to face me, hip tilted slightly to the side and her eyes... Ah. Not a huge surprise. And I think I'd be… Okay with it. No, more than that. I'd like to have someone around to share -she saunters forwards, poses above me for a moment then drops into my lap- this life. Or, hey, just until she gets bored. Frankly, having someone who's a little more on my wavelength-.

Her left arm goes around my shoulder as she leans in slightly, her eyes studying my face as she tries to gauge my reaction. She's a lot stronger than me, but that's not.. a problem, as far as I'm concerned. I raise my eyebrows and give her a small smile. Her grin expands and in an easy motion she twists to straddle my legs, staring down at me from above with both hands on my shoulders.

"Interested in Human males?"

"You're not that different." She leans forwards. "And I do owe you for your help."

I interpose my right hand and press my index and forefingers against her lips. "No. Not like that."

She blinks in confusion. "Like what, Red?"

"Because you find me attractive, because you like me… Because you've got an itch and I'm a convenient penis… That's fine. But never because you owe me. Never for.. obligation's sake. I don't.. own you. I don't want to."

She leans forwards, pushing my fingers out of the way and nuzzling the side of my face as her right hand ah. "I think I can manage that."

back

Fool's Canon 11

next

1st April

23:47 GMT +9

The great thing about being the focus of a Tentacle Ogre orgy is that there's no need to worry about what you're going to say the morning afterwards. Everyone's clear what they're there for and you're all going to be heading back to your own homes at the end of the evening's festivities.

I look around the shop. "So… How have you been?"

The fact that I don't live anywhere near Aichi meant that the chance of just running into someone I'd met there was minimal, but… This is the Japanese city I know best. And I knew that this shop had a personal shopper service and stayed open late. Seemed like such a good idea at the time.

"I… Haven't been back since you stopped going, if that is what you are asking Mister Grayven."

Hara Takako is the manager here and was one of my more.. ardent admirers, right up until the point she nearly… No, did, cause herself a rather nasty injury on… Me. I healed her with the ring, but the screaming and blood rather put a dampener on the festivities. I did warn her not to try something like that.

"I think you can probably get away without using the 'Mister'. Given…"

"Oh no, that would be quite improper."

I raise my left eyebrow slightly. I once used seven construct tentacles to… Okay, I guess it's.. probably a company directive or something. Don't I.. remember something about the Japanese being big on those?

"Was it..? Did what happened between us drive you away?"

"No, not… For me, it wasn't a lifestyle choice. It was something fun to do in my spare time. I met a woman who wasn't part of that scene and… That was that."

She nods. "Is the young lady her daughter?"

I look over to where a young Japanese woman with blonde hair -bleached rather than natural, but done well- is helping her pick out items of clothing that are to her taste. "No. Lynne… I'm adopting her."

She looks a little surprised. "I realise that I only saw you in one.. role, but it does surprise me that you are the paternal sort."

I nod. "Surprised me a bit."

"You know…" She looks me over. Ooh dear. "They may be busy for some time."

"Could well be."

"There is an.. office…"

"Ahh. I'm afraid that Jade and I are monogamous." She nods disappointedly. "But.. if you like, I can give Guy Gardner your phone number?" I still go to the anger management classes. Lynne's presence makes it doubly important now. "He doesn't look like an Ogre but he can make tentacles just as well as I can."

She looks thoughtful. "Maybe I could ask him to wear a mask."

"I'll.. pass that along. Um." I wiggle my right forefinger in the direction of the personal shopper. "What did she do to get lumbered with us?"

"Miss Amane is a wonderfully vivacious young lady. I was certain that she would be able to help you and whoever it was you were buying for." Ms Hara watches her for a moment. "She only works here part time now. She was scouted by a modelling agency and I imagine that she will leave us entirely once that contract generates enough work to justify it."

"Ah. Then I am honoured that we are considered suitably armigerous to deserve her attentions."

She looks me over again, this time a little less amorously. "Will you be purchasing anything for yourself?"

"Do you stock my size? I mean, I know that I'm not as big as I used to be, but I'm a fair bit bigger than your usual customers."

"Still…" The tone says innocent enquiry. The expression- "Too big, Mister Grayven?" -says something rather different.

"No. You just have to be careful with the fit."

Ms Hara smiles salaciously. "I can imagine. We have a tailoring service, and we can order clothing in to your specifications if you find a style that you like."

"Then…" I nod. "Certainly. It would hardly do for me to let the side down by dressing shabbily when my daughter is so chic."

"Let us see if Miss Amane has finished her first set of selections." Ms Hara leads the way away from the counter and towards the young women's clothing section. Should I pick something for Jade? That would probably be a good idea. Nothing too racy or fetishistic… A dress? Blouse? Oh, I'll ask Miss Amane what she thinks.

There's a small and neatly folded pile of clothing on a cushioned seat near to where Miss Amane and Lynne are going through a rack. "…pierced ears? I think these would look so cute on you." She holds up a couple of surprisingly large earrings in the shape of a fleur-de-lis.

"Oh no, I'm dad-vetoing that. No self mutilation until you're eighteen." Lynne just rolls her eyes -I'm calling that a success- while Miss Amane turns to look at me with genuine nervousness in her eyes. I shake my head. "It wouldn't work, anyway. We heal our injuries too fast. The hole would be gone-" I flap my right hand at my own right ear. "-before they could put a placeholder stud in."

Miss Amane's eyes dart from me to her employer and back again. Then she performs a shallow bow, hands clasped at her waist. "I apologise, Prince Grayven."

Bit melodramatic of her. "That's fine. No way you could have known." Her own ears bear some sort of cross design. Being Japanese she's probably not Christian. Maybe she just likes right angles? I think I heard something about the Japanese liking symmetry? "Lynne? Found anything you like so far?"

"Uh-huh." She looks at the pile. "Is that alright?"

"Of course it is, poppet. Buy what you like."

"Miss Lynne." Ms Hara smiles at her. "Why don't you pick that up and come to the changing rooms with me. Miss Amane, Mister Grayven has expressed an interest in acquiring a new wardrobe himself."

I didn't.. go that far. Oh, the sell-me-the-shop thing. Can't really complain. I'll admit that my non-armour clothing isn't something I've paid a great deal of attention to. On Apokolips it's basically 'body armour or leotard' and my wardrobe wasn't much better organised back on Earth Prime.

"Yes, Madam Hara. Prince Grayven, please come this way?"

"Lynne, I'll be right over here-" I point as Miss Amane leads me towards what I assume is the men's section. "-if you need me." She nods as Ms Hara picks up the clothing and leads her towards the changing rooms. "Lead on, Miss Amane."

I follow her across the shop floor, past the-. Huh. "Isn't men's clothing over there?"

She glances back for a second. "Yes, Prince Tentacle Ogre." Hah! Oh, Japan. "But I am afraid we will need to take your measurements first." She leads me over to a slightly remote part of the shop towards what looks like a tailor's work area.

"What exactly did Ms Hara tell you?"

Miss Amane looks away, and I think I saw a blush. "Madam Hara did not tell me anything. I heard… Rumours. About you. And I saw the news report that you killed the monster Klarion."

"And what do you think about that, Miss Amane?"

"There's nothing wrong with liking sex, even with a.. Tentacle Ogre."

"Hahaha! No, I meant about Klarion."

She walks over to a work bench and picks up a tape measure. "He was evil. Killing him was a righteous deed. Could you please take off your shirt?" I hold my arms out to the side as I send my shirt to subspace. She unwinds part of the tape and walks up to my right arm. "Did.. someone ask you to kill him?" I raise my eyebrows. Not quite sure where she's going with that. "I mean, did someone offer you… Something? You know… This, or that?"

I suppose that the Light did. "I was compensated, but.. I wouldn't have killed an innocent. He had it coming."

She steps behind me to put the tape around my chest. "I.. believe in you, Prince Grayven. Would you do the same thing again?"

"Yes. I mean, I'd prefer it if the legal side was a bit better organised, but some people need killing."

"Okay." The tape is no longer around my chest and I extend my left arm. "And Tentacle Ogres like Japanese girls best, is that right?"

"Hahaha. I'll.. admit to a certain fondness, but, ahh… First, they were all consenting adults." I turn to face her. "And I wasn't offered-." I blink. "What happened to your clothes?"

back

Fool's Canon 12

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1st April

09:37 GMT -6

A thoroughly dejected looking Amane Misa sits opposite Lynne and I in Olive Ridley's Coffee & Tea Company Café in Rifle, nursing her hot chocolate. I've erected a sound baffle around us as I get the feeling that this isn't a conversation any of us want becoming wider knowledge.

I sigh. "Miss Amane, just because I played the role of a Tentacle Ogre during a sexual role play, that doesn't mean that I actually am one."

"Yes, highness."

"I mean, for goodness sake, you're-" Only about a year younger than Jade, actually. She just.. acts younger. Or maybe Jade acts older? Certainly, Amane has a certain girlish air to her than Jade hasn't had as long as I've known her. Probably the pig tails. "-asking me to trade sex for a hit?"

"I-I'm sorry."

"Who did you even want killed?"

The change is instantaneous. Her hands whiten as the strength of her grip on her mug increases, the muscles of her face tighten, her teeth are bared, her eyes flare with rage. "The man who murdered my parents."

"Oh." Sugar. "Would you.. care to explain to me what happened?"

And the passion's gone, as if that moment drained her. "It was a robbery. He broke in through the back door while we were out at dinner." She's staring at her mug, completely still. "When we came back, we didn't realise that he was in the house until he came into the living room with a kitchen knife. I-I don't know why he killed them, but I was-." Her eyes are watering. "I was right there, and he stabbed them! And they were bleeding and I couldn't do anything. And after he ran away I phoned the ambulance but by the time they got there-." Her voice hitches, her body hunching slightly. "By the time they got there it was too late. They were dead! He killed them!"

"The police?"

Her eyes are running freely, and she absentmindedly dabs them with a napkin. "I told them what happened. The man who did it was arrested three days later. At the trial, his lawyer said that I wasn't a reliable witness."

I lean forwards slightly. "And?"

"He's in prison, but the trial is still going on. Because I was the only witness and there wasn't much physical evidence, the prosecutor said that he isn't sure if the man will be convicted."

"And you want me to kill him. Without a conviction."

"He murdered my parents and the court isn't going to punish him."

"You don't know that. They might well decide that he's guilty." Sinestro, connect to the Mountain's hush tube generator and open a small aperture to the Amane family home. Scan for biological material, hair and skin cells. And access the prosecutor's database to get any other pertinent information. Confirm the accused's guilt.

In progress, Corpsman. Hm, curious. It looks like he wore gloves while carrying out the theft. No finger prints or biological traces there. There is some biological material from him at their home.

"You didn't see the way the jury looked at me when I gave my evidence. You didn't hear what the defence lawyer said to me in court. A-and the newspapers said that I might have made it up. They said… They said that my father might have killed my mother and then himself and seeing it drove me crazy."

Did the police not find it?

Lynne is looking at me expectantly. Does she think I can fix this? Would killing this… Komon Eiji actually bring Miss Amane any peace? If I could see into her soul… I can't ask Lynne to read her mind, that wouldn't be safe and in any case Lynne doesn't know enough to be able to judge things like that. Would a G-Gnome.. or Jean herself? Don't know. Probably not.

They searched diligently and found hairs, but they were unable to prove how they came to be there. The defense said that they could have been blown in from outside.

The jury believed that?

Humans do not shed that many hairs. I can detect his skin cells in situ, but with Human technology that would be next to impossible for the police. I assume that we will be killing this man?

Hm. No, I don't think so.

Murder is murder, Corpsman. Japan has the death penalty. I fail to see any reason for hesitance, now that you are free of the aegis of the Justice League.

That's because you're a surprisingly small minded individual. Now shut up and let me work.

"No. I'm.. sympathetic, but compared to many of the people I've encountered, two murders barely registers. Mister Napier alone has killed-."

"He didn't kill my parents."

"Lots of people's parents die every day. Why should the man who killed yours get special attention?"

"Because it's what he deserves."

I shrug, shaking my head. "Why me?"

"Because-. Because I can't. I just sat there. They fell on the ground and I just sat there. I couldn't move, I couldn't think, I just stared up at him and he laughed at me."

There we are.

"Then, wouldn't it be better for you to be able to kill him yourself?"

She stills again. "I.. can't do that. I'm not a fake Tentacle Ogre with magic powers-."

"No." I tilt my head a little to the right. "But would you like to be?" Her eyes widen. "I ask, because I can make that happen. If it's what you want."

"An.. Ogre?"

"The Ogre thing isn't actually necessary. But if you like, I can give you power. Perhaps… Super speed? Like the Flash? You could pass through the prison walls like they were nothing, run down the halls faster than the cameras could track you… Vibrate his brain to pulp? Strike him repeatedly faster than the eye could see? Or perhaps a bladed weapon? Would you rather slice through his neck and watch his head fly off as his blood spurts out of his neck stump?"

Her eyes are wide and her mouth hangs open slightly. I don't need an orange ring to know how much she wants that. "What… What do you want from me in return?"

"I was serious, when I asked what was special about your parents. You aren't unique in your situation, Miss Amane. Any number of young women feel the same pain that you do, for the same reasons. Does that not seem.. unjust, to you?" She nods, hesitantly. "Then -once your own situation is resolved- I would like your assistance in doing something about it. I would not take up too much of your time. There would be no need for you to abandon your career-."

"You want to make me a superhero?"

I smile. "I want to make you a goddess. I want to set you free of your mortal limitations. I want to give you the power to decide who lives and who dies, and the guidance to use that power responsibly. If you say yes… Then it will be a difficult and violent road, my little death goddess, but this I will promise you. You will never be powerless again."

She's nodding before I've even finished my offer. "Yes. Yes, please, Prince Grayven. I want it. I want it so much. I want to be able to-."

I stand and move to the side into an empty area of the floor and motion to the space in front of me with my right hand. She gets up, not entirely steady on her feet, and stands before me for a moment before kneeling. "Please."

I lean forwards, touching her lightly on the forehead with my right forefinger. Sinestro, Garrick Formula infusion.

The air around us crackles with the signature electrical discharge that signals the Formula taking effect.

Done, Corpsman.

Father Box, Divine Awakening.

Ploong.

And I can feel it. Feel her soul expanding. Feel the idea of speed and motion making itself part of her at the most fundamental levels. It's glorious.

"Rise, Iname, New Goddess of Death." Miss Amane gets to her feet, taking a moment to stare at her right hand and vibrate it to a blur. "Now…" I look around the room, outside of my sound bubble. We've drawn a small crowd, passers by who decided to stop and gawk at the superhero and his coterie. I drop the barrier. "Shall we celebrate our compact in the traditional Japanese manner?"

She nods twice enthusiastically- "Yes, Master." -and then appears to hesitate. "Here? In public?"

"Of course. Where else would you perform karaoke? Bret!" I turn to face the chap a the counter. "This place has a live music licence, right?"

He nods. "Sure does, Mister Grayven."

"Right then." Can't muster that much fear power, but what the heck. Singing's not exactly a high power activity. I turn back to Amane. "I'll go first, you think about what song you want to do." She nods, and I walk towards the rear of the café before turning to take in my impromptu audience. Easy choice. Two yellow construct speakers appear next to me and a construct microphone appears in my right hand.

And then the music starts.

"Like an unsung melodaaaaa-aaaay!

The truth is waiting there for you to find it." I will help you.

I clench my left fist for emphasis, enunciating violently with all the passion this song requires.

"It's not a blight, but a remedaaa-aaaay!

A clear reminder of how it begaaaaan! You will become strong.

Deep inside your memoraaa-aaay!

Turned away as you struggled to find iyat."

I stare directly at Amane.

"You heard the call as you walked awaaaay.

A voice of calm from within the silence."

Then at Lynne.

"And for what seemed an eternity.

You wait and hoping it would call out agaa-aain!

You heard the shadow beckoning.

Then your fears seemed to keep you blinded.

You held your guard as you walked away." Trust me.

Now I'm not looking at anyone, throwing all of my energy into the song.

"When you think aaaaall!

Is forsaken,

Listen to me now. I will guide you.

You need never feel broken agaaaaaain!

Sometimes darkness can show you the liiiiiiiiiiiight!" You will be magnificent!

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Fool's Canon 13

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"-AAAAA-"

Mayday, part 3

Day 6

10:57 GMT -5

It's amazing what you can become accustomed to, really. And how quickly.

Five days ago I committed my first murder. I suppose I could argue it down to manslaughter. My choices after all were -and still are- severely curtailed. But I feel that would be dishonest. I didn't choose to kill, but I did have a free choice of the target. Or I.. could have chosen to die myself. I'm not surprised I wasn't… I'm not brave, certainly not enough to suffer through what I would have had to in order to make that choice. Learning things about yourself isn't always nice.

Four days since I started committing what even a relatively sympathetic jury would have to admit was unarguably murder. I am.. a serial killer. I'm sure that various law enforcement organisations around the world are trying to assemble a profile of me even as I float here in the skies above Detroit. My victim profile probably doesn't make much sense yet. The Society of Shadows doesn't exactly advertise its employees' occupation, and local police most likely have not yet been informed by their country's intelligence agencies exactly who the bodies in the morgue belong to.

And… I'm okay. I'm okay with it. I really am. I'm okay with them being dead so long as I get to live. Obviously, there's the argument that I'm saving lives by killing assassins but in my own head I'm not completely sure it would matter.

Three days since my first suicide.

Less than a day since my most recent. Carbon monoxide really is the way to go. None of that nasty business with needles or slicing your own wrists open and having to watch the blood pour out. Between pulling myself out of the Lazarus Pit and going to sleep with the gas mask on, I get about eighteen hours. The first time it took me half an hour to get my head together, but on the second the fucking ring-.

"GGAHGAAAAAAGHHHHH!"

The slave-animal will address this ring as 'Master'.

Yes Master, I'm.. sorry, Master.

The slave-animal will complete its appointed task within the next half an hour. If it does not, first stage punishment will begin. Comply.

I can taste blood in my mouth. I'm not sure if I've bitten something or if th-. If Master just burst a blood vessel by punishing me. I suppose it doesn't matter. Master will heal me if it looks like my effectiveness is being impeded.

I will comply.

There are some things I'm not allowed to think. Surprisingly few things I'm not allowed to do. Master had no objection to me attempting to cut off my right middle finger, confident that the level of energy channelling it would need to do in order to protect me from myself would be its own punishment. It doesn't object to me reading about local superheroes or supervillains, even though it knows I'm trying to find someone who can help me escape. I'm just… I'm too interesting a test subject. Through me it's learned too many interesting things to casually discard me. I suppose that's.. nice to know, but I dread to think what the Weaponers are learning from what I do.

Why I'm here is simple. I don't have a personal lantern, and I'm told that aside from a handful in the workshops back on Qward there aren't any 'green antithesis personal lanterns' or 'anti-green lanterns' to be had anyway. No, Master is designed to recharge by taking power from a Green Lantern. I was putting it off, but Master's charge is now low enough that it's decided to force the issue.

This is a DC universe, obviously. Nothing here quite tracks with any particular continuity I remember. It looks like it's most similar to the Justice League Animated continuity, with a load of canon DC stuff thrown and other differences as well. Cyborg -Victor Stone- was a founding member of the League here, and he appears to have a sidekick I've never heard of. The Flash's sidekick is Impulse rather than Kid Flash. In fact, the sidekicks appear to go on League missions a lot more than I would have expected.

Not that I've got any grounds for feeling morally superior.

There's some sort of giant robot assisted crime wave going on down there at the moment, but I'm not here to help. I'm going to wait until Lantern Stewart is on his own, attack him and steal as much power as I can before the League turn up to assist him.

Ushh.

"Magnify."

Uuehh. As ever, making a construct feels like I'm undergoing amateur brain surgery. Antithesis rings -or as the Qwardians call them 'slave-rings'- were originally designed to be used on mass cloned slaves with little mental activity bar what was imprinted on them so they wouldn't soil their owners' laboratories. Whenever I use it to make a construct it 'boosts' my mental acuity in the same way it would have boosted theirs. I suppose that their lives were so generally unpleasant that the added discomfort didn't really register, but it does for me.

Master has so far refused to tell me whether it has to do that every time or if it can work like a normal green ring.

On the other hand, there are advantages to having my willpower artificially increased. The increase in mental clarity while it's active is really quite noticeable. Right now I'm tracking the League members as they move from trouble spot to trouble spot. Here, Wonder Woman blocks some sort of particle beam shot from a robot's arm gun with her bracers, defending a crowd of people. There, Superman sends one staggering back with a punch to the head, pushing it away from its objective. Over to the west, Batman directs the sidekicks in attacking a warehouse that was used as part of the criminals' staging area. Lantern Stewart…

He's in the south east. From the way a collection of rough-looking types are tied up with bent steel I'm going to assume that he beat his Human assailants before their robotic support unit arrived. As I watch hatches open in its torso, firing out a volley of missiles in his direction. He creates a construct barrier to block most of them, but whether by intent or by faulty guidance systems three get past him and slam into the America-side tower of the Ambassador Bridge just behind him. They detonate and the entire bridge begins to tilt to one side. Stewart hears the screams slightly before I do and turns to look, but the robot takes advantage of his distraction to shoot him in the back with its arm mounted plasma cannons, sending him careening through the sky with a yelp.

Oh heck. They're going to-.

I shoot forwards, support pillar construct already projecting into the water of Lake St Clair as the other end comes up under the bridge. Careful not to damage it further… Okay, stabilised. Stewart recovers from the attack and spots me, giving me a slight frown before returning his attention to the robot.

The slave-animal will explain itself.

I-It will be easier to lure him in if he thinks I'm a friendly.

Master doesn't say anything further. Guess that means I'm in the clear. The robot fires its plasma cannons again, but Lantern Stewart's able to block them before forming a sniper rifle construct and shooting the cannons directly in the barrels. From the electrical crackling and smoke I'm going to assume that he wrecked them. Another batch of hatches opens, and as the robot lumbers towards him it fires missiles one at a time as a distraction.

Master blinks. What does that-? "Hey, kid. If I hit it full power, can you stop it crushing anything?"

John Stewart's voice. He's talking to m-? Oh. "I can probably do that, sir. Just give me a little notice."

"You're not Rayner." I see him shoot out the missiles and give a little ground as the robot advances. "Did something happen to him?"

"I don't know, sir. I'm not actually a Green Lantern, I just have similar powers."

"Alright then. On three. One. Two." His ring glows brilliantly for a moment. "Three." His beams strike the robot in the head, chest.. and open hatches.

The remaining missiles detonate first, then I see his green beam erupt from its back. Immediately I extend.. ugh, an X-clamp construct around its torso, catching it before it can fall too far. I'll have to lie it down in the road… Anyone there? No? Okay then. Gently does it, the civil engineers are going to be busy enough as it is after this. Right, done.

"Good job. Now hold still while I fix the bridge." His beam goes to work on the tower, pushing broken metal back into place and fixing it good as new. I suppose it only needs to last until people can evacuate… "Alright, that should do it. You can take the support away."

Check for myself… He's right. I drop the construct and fly up to land on the bridge's road surface. Well. Now here comes the.. shitty part. Lantern Stewart floats down through the air to land just in front of me. Unlike the Anti-Green Lantern uniforms I vaguely remember from the comics, I'm wearing normal street clothes. Unless he spots the ring he's got no particular reason to be cautious.

He looks me over. "Are you sure you're not a Green Lantern?"

"Yes sir. I'm afraid that I'm-" I raise my right hand and for a second his eyes widen as he sees the twisted symbol Master bears. "-quite the opposite."

"Bwaaagh!" The dull-green beam strikes him in the chest, causing him to shudder and fall to his knees.

"Recharging."

Master, please let me know when he reaches nine percent charge.

The slave-animal will explain its request.

We'll need to feed on him again. He needs that much to get away safely without being able to pursue us.

Acceptable.

Lantern Stewart's glow has noticeably decreased. Antithesis rings were specifically tailored to shut down Green Lanterns after all, he'll be basically powerless until I stop draining him. He manages to get his head up to stare at me, shock and anger at my betrayal clearly showing on his face.

I look away.

back

Fool's Canon 14

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"-AAAAA-"

Mayday, part 23

Day 11

23:57 GMT -4

I look around at the barren rock and parched earth around me. This is it. Ra's al Ghul's last bolthole. Master hasn't wanted to make my job too easy, it hasn't just let me scan the planet for the man. But it has been willing to let me use its god-tier hacking and decryption abilities on every Society of Shadows database I've come across. Oh, and confirm the location from low orbit. There was no obvious reason for a plane to ever deliver supplies out here. They had to more or less drop them out of the back before flying onto their 'official' destination to avoid detection.

Conventional detection.

There's a plane here now. I raise my right hand and blast it through the fuel tanks before walking on. The crane over the side of the canyon gets the same treatment a moment later, the broken and twisted metal falling into the void as the plane explodes behind me. In theory, a person could climb up or down, but that certainly wouldn't be easy.

This is it, then. Once I kill Ra's al Ghul my part of the deal will be complete. Nyssa wants to be in at the death but it won't be any real trouble to pick her up once I'm more or less finished. No sense putting her in the line of fire before that. Anything happening to her would defeat the whole purpose of the exercise.

I should feel relief.

I don't.

I don't feel much of anything, except tiredness.

I walk to the edge of the canyon and step into the air before turning around and slowly descending. Lesa DeOrro. Not sure how that's supposed to be spelt. Sounds Spanish, so it was probably the name given to the place by the Spaniards Ra's led here to slaughter the population and steal all of their worldly goods rather than the people who built it. A man who has the ability to cure any disease in the world and this was where his fortune started. Even if he wasn't sharing the technique, the money he could have made offering to regenerate the occasional king or wealthy merchant… But no. The Pits were for him and him alone and genocide was the only way he would accept making money.

My right index finger glows as beams of dull green energy leap towards the lights hammered into the cliff face. I'm not exactly trying to hide my approach. I'm even -for the first time- wearing the uniform of black, white and dull green. Still, I haven't needed to recharge since that thing in Detroit and I don't particularly want to have to waste power blocking missiles here.

Vision.

Thirty seven people, all armed. Ra's isn't looking all that good. He appears to be in a wheel chair, wizened and frail. Possibly he has a problem with Lazarus Pits? Well, he's hundreds of years old. If the same thing ends up happening to Nyssa and I then I'll have lived far longer than I would have without it. The others… Talia, naturally. A hulking brute I presume to be the current Ubu. And a whole lot of agents of various stripes. With the lights going out the ones on lookout duty have donned night vision goggles and are aiming their rifles in my direction.

I raise my right forefinger again and lines of dull green pierce their chests and bore into their hearts. They barely have time to cry out before the blood pouring out of the smoking hole causes the pressure in their veins to drop with the result that they lose consciousness. I continue heading down, level now with the city's rock pathways. One brief moment to admire the architecture and then I walk softly in the direction of the Demon's lair.

What does come next? Having recently persuaded Master that I do in fact need sleep in order to think clearly I think I'll start lying in. Maybe a day of not killing anyone? Heh. Oh, what have things come to that that sounds so good? I imagine that Master won't be onboard with me not killing anyone, at least not for a prolonged period. It can't be that hard to find people I wouldn't object to killing… Or at least fighting.

I idly wave my hand forwards and disarm the recently planted mines. Another volley of beams strike the security cameras and deny them the ability to see me. Hm. Why am I going this slowly? I could just.. zoom up there..? Ah, that's why. I'm worried that whatever I have to do next will be worse. Another group of guards appear on the roofs surrounding the meeting hall which Ra's is holed up in and they meet the same fate as their comrades. Right, come on. I start striding up the shallow incline towards my objective. There's been some attempt at fortification, but it's nothing I can't lift out of the way.

Two assassins charge out, blades drawn. These I shoot through the heads, sending them tumbling to the floor where they lie still. Perhaps years of fighting Batman has caused them to forget how to fight people who don't mind using lethal force? Inside, the remaining assassins form up in two ranks, rifles at the ready, Ubu, Talia and Ra's just behind them. I form a blade construct and slice in through the chaff, cutting them in half. Ubu goes to snatch up a gun but Ra's lays a hand on his arm to stop him, watching the doorway with a degree of interest.

I walk forwards, arms held loosely at my sides. As I enter the room Talia shrinks back very slightly. Ubu's face tightens. Ra's just looks a little disappointed. "So this is my fate. To die at the hands of a man I've never heard of."

"Yes, basically." I turn to Talia. "You may leave, now."

She draws a pistol and points it squarely at my centre of mass. "I'm not going anywhere without my father."

"I have orders to leave you unharmed, Miss Talia Head. However, everyone else dies."

"Orders?" Ra's manages a weak smile. "Indulge a dying man. Who ordered this? Which of my many enemies finally found someone who could-?"

"Qward."

I stiffen slightly at the voice from behind me. Batman. Why didn't I..?

The continued existence of the slave-animal is permitted as long as it provides data. The execution of these weak warriors provides none.

"Detective. Good of you to come."

"You've been keeping yourself alive using his Lazarus Pits, haven't you?"

I take a few steps to my right, turning as I do so. Yep, that's Batman.

"I wondered who was attacking the Society of Shadows. Once Green Lantern explained how your power ring worked, it was obvious." I nod. "But if you kill them all, how do you intend to stay alive afterwards?"

"Obvious, logical and wrong, Mister Wayne. You lack a vital piece of information. It's like on that-" I snap my right fingers twice. "-Sherlock Holmes update thing, where he deduced a load of stuff about Watson and misses the fact that Bob is his sister not his brother because there's nothing present to suggest it."

He inclines his head slightly. "So what am I missing? You passed up two opportunities to kill Talia before today. Were you planning to force her to make them for you?"

"I would never help you!"

"Guessing." I shake my head. "Master, are any of the others here?"

"You call it 'Master' and you wince whenever you use it. You're not working for the Weaponers voluntarily."

"No shit." Master's giving me nothing… Ah heck, Batman's just a man. If it comes to it I can just hide in an ocean trench until he loses the trail. My eyes blaze dull green as two beams of light shoot from my side and stab my two remaining targets through the chest.

"I die… For the Master."

I turn my head slightly to regard the dying Ubu. "Yes, and you do it voluntarily, which is all the more patheti-." Ra's looks down at the hole in his chest as it oozes closed, then stands up. "Mister J'onzz." I sigh as he returns to his 'Martianish' form. "Should have seen that coming."

"Indeed." Talia backs off as his eyes glow. Telepathic chat with Batman? Master made it clear that it wouldn't let-. I feel a brief sense of disorientation and then Mister J'onzz sags, clutching his head. Qwardian copyright protection in action.

"If he's not here, I'm leaving. I can hunt-." There's a brilliant flash at my feet but I'm already flying backwards, bulldozing through the wall before Batman can follow up. Once I'm clear I pause. No, no reason to hang around. I'm not really on a clock. Nyssa would probably like to spit in his face but I can always throw his corpse into the sun for her. I accelerate upwards-

"HhhhhhhhhAYAH!"

-and frantically lunge sideways as Hawkgirl dives at me with her mace!

"Oh look, the spy." No, the wind's up and she isn't really paying attention to what I'm saying. I'd like to blackmail her into leaving me alone but I don't think it's going to happen. I accelerate away as she comes back around for another pass. Master, you can outfly her, right?

Nothing back. And she's gaining. Fine, scramjet. It takes a second to form but as soon as it does I'm leaving her in my backwash. Right, watch my surroundings. The Flash can't fly, Mister J'onzz is still nursing his head and Wonder Woman isn't fast enough. The only one I've really got to worry about is BWOFF!

I spin out of control for a few seconds before dropping the construct and taking control. Superman floats in the air just in front of me with his arms folded across his 'S'.

"Stand down, Anti-Green Lantern. I don't want to have to-." My kryptonite laser hits him in the chest. "Aagh!" Not enough to seriously injure him, but enough to hurt and to slow him down for long enough for me to get away.

"Lex says 'hi'. Don't follow me, Mister Kent."

Now I have to go and report a failure to Nyssa.

back

Fool's Canon 15

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"-AAAAA-"

Bereave, part 1

19th October 2007

10:12 GMT -5

This building has excellent air conditioning.

Whatever their other failures -and there are many- the air conditioning in Vought-American's New York headquarters is a marvel of engineering. And I know bad air conditioning. One of my colleagues at my previous job described what we had there as being a flu simulator: cold in the morning and toasty in the afternoon whatever the actual outside air temperature was. Here, we're just reaching the end of autumn and there's a ve-ry slight breeze percolating through the place and… Is that lavender? I'd make a comment about executive privilege but actually it runs through the whole building.

And after my encounter with Brand I'm in a particularly good position to enjoy it. While I came out somewhat less scathed than I thought I might, they've still dressed me up like a seventeenth century Native American of some sort. Or at least Brand's idea of what a seventeenth century Native American looks like, which is probably nothing like the real thing. Animal skin -probably fake- waistcoat dyed to a pretty near match for the indigo glow of my constructs, shorts made of the same material and mock moccasins. I've got enough bare skin showing that anyone who looks at me is getting an eyeful of the skin paint that appears whenever the ring has a charge.

The butt of my lantern's staff taps gently on the carpeted floor as I make my way towards James Stillwell's office. I'm getting a few looks, but I imagine if you work in Superhuman Development you get a bit used to odd-looking types walking around. Ah, no, that woman's checking me out. I turn my head and give her a warm, friendly smile, prompting her to immediately turn her head away. I rather suspect that she's blushing under her makeup. It's funny; I seem to remember something about indigo rings having some sort of brainwashing effect, but though I have experienced a slight change in my approach to things I certainly haven't experienced any sort of radical disconnect.

I walk into the antechamber of the office and stroll over to Margaret's desk. A woman I don't immediately recognise… Sandra, thank you ring. Is occupying it, and she's still new enough to react with surprise to someone who looks like me hanging around the place. I haven't gotten around to learning the executive assistant hierarchy yet… I'm probably going to need to. Presumably the one hanging around here is fairly low on it? "Good morning, Sandra. I was asked to report to Mister Stillwell once Brand had finished with me?"

"Ah. Right." Her attention goes back to her computer. "I'm afraid that Mister Stillwell is in Washington at the moment…" She looks back up at me and rises to her feet. "Could you wait here for just a moment?"

Calm. "Certainly."

She turns away, walks to the door to the main office and knocks before pushing it open and walking through. Bit odd. Mister Stillwell always seemed to be an extremely precise man. Not like him to leave things up in the air without-.

The door opens and Sandra comes back out. "Ms Bradley will see you now."

"Thank you." I incline my head slightly towards her and smile before heading towards-.

"Um." I stop, raise my eyebrows slightly and give her my full attention. Under the make up, her cheeks colour slightly. "No, it's.. nothing."

"Alright. Let me know if it becomes 'something'." Not a great deal of compassion in places like this. They usually don't know how to cope with it. I expand my smile slightly, then turn away and head on through the door. A woman… Ah, Jessica Bradley. I think she's Mister Stillwell's deputy director or something? I've seen her around a few times but I haven't interacted with her directly. "Ms Bradley. I'm sorry if this is inconvenient..?"

"Not at all." She moves the paper file she was reading -one of several littering the desk- into a position which makes it awkward for me to try peeking at it. "Please, take a seat." And she does this while maintaining eye contact. Good distraction. I already know the contents of my own file, of course. Mostly it consists of Vought-American's attempts to work out how the hell someone with no Compound V in their system can do any of the things I can do. Most of the rest is their attempts to precisely work out what those things are. The remainder is Mister Stillwell's own observations, the most pertinent being 'Indigo Lantern is considerably more intelligent and capable than most superheroes currently in Vought's employ. I advise taking whatever he says seriously'.

"Thank you." The visitor chair is positioned some distance from the desk. It's probably an attempt to make the desk -and its occupant- seem larger than they are, to add a little intimidation to the proceedings. I release my staff just to the right of it and it remains standing upright, casting an indigo light over the area. I then sit, slouching back in the seat and crossing my right ankle over my left leg.

"How was your meeting with Brand?"

"I survived. Lost some-" I raise my arms to the side as if noticing my bare arms for the first time. "-clothing."

"What's your new origin story?"

"Visiting missionary for an alien religion. Have you heard the good news about the Proselyte?"

"That's odd. They usually try to avoid non-Christian religious themes for Caucasians."

"Or make them ridiculously stereotyped. I.. may have had to guide them away from a few things."

A nod. "How did you manage that? They're usually fairly insistent."

"Yes, but they value their 'originality'. Avoiding a dodgy concept was a simple matter of pointing out each time it had been used before, and at whose instruction. They hate the idea of copying someone, so…"

She smiles, then catches herself. "Still, it's a bit… If you're in any way unhappy-."

"Oh, no. This will just be for publicity stuff. I'm meeting a Red River guy later to sort out an actual armoured version to wear if I'm going into combat."

She nods. "I'm.. afraid that James' departure was something of a surprise."

"I'm sure that the Vice President is very grateful for his assistance."

She pauses, then decides to press on anyway. "I know you had a meeting scheduled to discuss your proposals, but I haven't had a chance to properly review them yet."

"Very well. Would you like me to come back later?"

She looks me over, trying to decide how seriously to take me. She's had more than a little experience of… Nearly everyone else in my profession. Still, I doubt that she'd simply ignore something Mister Stillwell told her. "I'll read your written proposal later. But since you're here, why not explain them in your own words. What exactly do you want to do?"

"Alright. Well… It struck me, after I'd got the measure of the place, that Superhuman Development doesn't actually do much development of superhumans. You've got branding and public relations down, Victory Comics make most teams at least slightly profitable… But there are basically no attempts made to actually upskill existing superheroes. I'm painfully aware that most of my peers have no skills beyond brute force and I've seen the casualty figures that approach generates. Even superhumans you have on your radar since birth don't really get any training. There are those pageant things, then if they meet the grade on their own they're assigned to a manager… But not a tutor."

"What did you propose to do about it?"

"My original proposal was to take a youth group and give them various useful forms of tuition. Have a paramedic lecture them on first aid and emergency care, a fireman on firefighting, someone from Red River to lecture them on firearms and.. how to conduct yourself in a fight. Since the conceit would be that this was how all superheroes were trained anyway, they wouldn't be functioning in the field for some time. I thought that the costs could be defrayed by turning it into a reality television series. In the long term of course, the costs required to manage them would be reduced because they wouldn't create as much of a mess in the first place as…"

"Most current superheroes." Ms Bradley give me a wry smile. "I do understand where you're coming from, Mister Lantern, but that concept is something that would require a great deal more study before I could approve it."

"I understand." And I do. I really do. Superheroes are a roller coaster for Vought-American. They make them a great deal of money, but at the same time the slightest thing goes wrong and it can get very messy. Godolkin was the worst, but some of the things the others get up to… They're going to be nervous about any change. "My alternate proposal was to assign me to Superduper." Her eyes widen slightly. "Superduper are a cash… Well, not a cow. A calf? They don't cause any trouble that can't be dealt with by normal insurance, they turn enough of a profit year on year that it's worth keeping them going... But they themselves are going nowhere. What they can achieve is.. basically nothing, due to lack of skills, lack of useful powers-" I don't know who thought 'Ladyfold' was someone it made sense to put on a super team, but they need a slap around the head. "-and their low IQs." I lean forwards slightly, resting my chin on the back of my right hand. "Those are problems I am uniquely well equipped to deal with. It wouldn't cost a significant amount of money and it would let me test out the viability of my ideas concerning training."

"I was half expecting you to ask to transferred to the Seven. I understand you and Homelander hit it off at Herogasm."

I'm not sure exactly why he was flying naked in the middle of a flightpath, but whatever it was he appeared to give up on it once I turned up. Oh, he pretended he was just out for a flight, but I know for a fact that wasn't it. I'm not actually telepathic, but I get the feeling that there's something very wrong with him. More than the usual disregard for the lives of the squishy people. "Homelander notwithstanding, I don't think my profile's really there yet. Maybe in a few years…"

"I have a file on your own behavior at Herogasm. Apparently you spent the whole time playing a children's card game in your room."

"And healing the injured." My staff pulses. "Did you know that some of those sick bastards actually wait outside the medical-."

"I'm more curious as to why."

"For a start, Babylon Five isn't a children's card game. It's very complicated and I usually have trouble finding opponents. I mean, those ladies were there to keep us happy, right?" Whore procurement on a disturbingly epic scale. Dangerous work for them, considering how most superheroes here behave. Nice women for the most part. I fixed Bryony's son's cerebral palsy after it finished. "Wait, you're not planning to use that as an excuse not to pay them-?"

She shakes her head. "I also have a report that says that you broke up a number of people smuggling rings in the aftermath of the event. Without orders."

Whores I don't have a problem with. Their 'managers', on the other hand, I remonstrated with and then passed to the local authorities. "I was told that that sort of thing didn't require specific prior authorisation."

"It's been a while since we've had someone capable of acting on their own initiative in the way that you do." She closes a file and leans forwards. "Superduper.. had an… Experience, with-."

"Malchemical." I sit up, nodding slowly. "I know that winning them over won't be easy, but I'm confident I can make it work. I'm an easy man to like, and I already have an approach planned."

She nods. "Meet with the team. If you think you can make it work, I'll authorize it."

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Fool's Canon 16

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"-AAAGG-"

Bereave, part 7

22nd October 2007

08:52 GMT -5

Alright, let's review what I've got to work with.

Superduper is a dumping ground for retarded and otherwise useless superhumans who somehow make it past Vought-American's screening process. It's nominally led by a baseline Human named Charlotte Miller, who used to work as a special needs teacher before government cutbacks led to her leaving that profession and being employed by Vought. She should be here in a few minutes, having handed her charges over to a former colleague for an hour.

The team consists of:

Aunty Sis, the aforementioned childminder.

Klanker, a shapeshifter with Tourette's Syndrome who transforms into iron objects. He can't control what he actually transforms into each time and the chance of it actually being something useful appears to be somewhat low.

Kid Camo, a protean shapeshifter who can make his epidermis -and whatever he's wearing, something I was very glad to find out- mimic the texture and colour of his surroundings. For about two minutes, whereupon he turns into a puddle of goo for a bit.

And that's about it as far as functional ones go. As for the rest:

Black Hole, who has some sort of semi-controllable portal in his throat.

Stool Shadow, who can sometimes move though solid objects. Using a trigger that is going to be the second thing I fix.

Ladyfold… Yes, technically that's 'superhuman', in the sense that normal women don't produce that much, but it isn't a power I'd wish on anyone. Otherwise she's one of the more normal members of the group.

And Bobby Badoing. His body fat has remarkably elastic properties. He suffers from low self esteem, low IQ and gluttony and is responsible for most of the actual damage the team do to their surroundings.

No real wonder no one wants to try doing anything much with them.

I'm in the reception area of the Mission Health Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, and if an Indigo Lantern can't convince someone that he's a good guy after healing hundreds of sick people then he isn't worthy of his staff. Still, she's going to be sceptical. Last time Vought sent someone to take over it was Malchemical. I had to hack Vought servers in order to get a full report, and it made for disturbing reading. He started by merely being rude to the group and finished by attempting to rape the female members, only being prevented from doing so by the intervention of a man named William Butcher. Apparently Mister Butcher is part of some sort of anti-Vought CIA team. I've never met him myself. What he was doing there is anyone's guess, but I'm bloody glad he was. I sent him a thank-you note and some flowers at their office before I left New York.

Someone -female and irritated from the sound of it- clears her throat behind me. I turn around and give Ms Miller a warm smile. Ah, excellent, she isn't in costume. I extend my right hand. "Ms Miller, pleased to meet-."

"Can we just skip it?" She glowers at me. Impressive. Usually being near my lantern makes people at least a little amiable. "I don't know what you did to get sent here, and frankly I don't care. Let's just sort out some sort of publicity thing and then you can stay the-. The heck away from my team."

"Alright. Firstly, I'm here because I asked to be." She rolls her eyes. "Perhaps a demonstration of good will?" A small box appears from subspace and floats over to her. "A present for Ms Kalmar."

She sighs, slumping slightly as she reaches out to pluck it from my indigo aura. "Just.. don't call her that. Don't call any of them that. It's just about the only source of self esteem-." She opens the box and her eyes widen. "Why am I even surprised that you'd-!"

"It's a medicine. It should help with her 'problem'."

She pulls the syringe out and takes a closer look. "How?"

"Vought were kind enough to grant me access to everything they have on Compound V. I developed that. It's got a long and complicated chemical name, but I call it 'Purge'. It completely removes every trace of V from a person's system, shutting down whatever exotic abilities they possess. Even turns your poo back to brown. I have more, but it seemed to me that she was the one most likely to benefit from it."

"Is it tested?"

I nod. "Vought has.. people in their custody, people who had worse reactions to the stuff than your friends. Their families sign them over because they can't afford to look after them-."

"And you took advantage."

"I healed them. They get to live normal lives now." I shrug. "Would you rather I left them there?"

She takes a deep breath to steady herself, then closes the box and slips it into her handbag. "Why did you want to meet me here?"

"I wanted a chance to convince you to give me a try before meeting the rest of your team. I fully expect them to react even worse to me than you did." Let's see… Children's ward? I start walking. "Would you please come this way?"

"Alright, I suppose I could… This better not be some kind of set up, though."

"There's a story there. Oh." I take a file out of subspace. "This is my file, everything Vought knows about me and a few of my own observations."

I hear the binder open. "Saul Talbot, huh?"

"Close enough. Mm, what do you think of my costume? Brand went for a sort of sexy, metro Gandalf the Younger thing, but it's a bit of a clash with what the rest of you wear and it's no real effort for me to get it changed."

"I don't like the staff. I don't want them being around weapons."

"I'm.. afraid that.. I'm stuck with the staff. But I can stick it in the corner of the room instead of keeping it on me, if that's any good?"

"I s-. Mind altering?"

Ah, page four. "Yes. People in proximity are nudged to behave more compassionately. The effect appears to be cumulative, gradually reverting to normal after a period of absence. I should point out, however, that I've been more or less constantly exposed for the past seven months. I really don't think that a small compassion nudge is going to do much to the team."

She keeps reading. "Wait, you can really do all these things?"

"Yes. I'm happy to demonstrate later, if you like."

"And you.. asked to be transferred here."

"The alternative appeared to be Team Titanic. Not saying they couldn't do with learning to be a bit more compassionate but I don't think I could help them in any more fundamental way."

"What.. sort of.. 'help'..?"

"I aim to make your team all that they can be. I aim to understand their limitations and remove them if at all possible."

"They're happy how they are."

I glance at her. "Are they? Does that explain why Mister Badoing weighs as much as five normal people? Or why Ms Shadow is covered in bruises? They need help that -with the best will in the world- you can't provide. But I can. If you'll let me."

"Prove it."

"Why do you think we're here?" I look down the corridor. "Ah! Doctor. Are we ready?"

Doctor Reid is on a retainer from Vought to report anything they might be interested in to them before the proper authorities. This is probably going to be the least immoral thing she's done for them.

"Yes, I can take you to the terminal cases. Getting the parents to sign off on a superhero helping was no trouble at all."

"I'm glad to hear it."

"Are you certain this is going to work?"

"Yes, completely. Thoroughly tested, if not exactly FDA approved. You know they don't have authority to regulate superpowers."

She nods, a little reluctantly. "Well, in here we have-."

Timothy Ketz, aged eleven, a really quite aggressive form of leukaemia. He's bald, visibly withered and now he isn't. He breathes in suddenly and sits up in astonishment.

"Next, please."

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Fool's Canon 17

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1st April

10:03 GMT -6

"I don't think.. I understand."

Lynne frowns slightly as we walk along the road out of Rifle in the general direction of Challenger Mountain. Yes, it would have been easier tubing back but -observant chap that I am- I spotted that my new daughter had something she wanted to get off her chest. She waited until we got away from the built up areas. After all, we may be bonding well but we haven't actually spent all that much time together. I don't mind having my decisions challenged -I even put up with Richard- but I imagine that it's more than a little hard for her to bring herself to do so.

"Okay? Ask away. It's my job to explain things to you."

"You gave.. Amane.. superspeed."

"Uh-huh."

"And she's going to kill the man who she says murdered her parents."

"Oh, he did. I opened a hush tube and had Sinestro scan her house for biological material. Skin cells all over the place. Probably scratching his face.. orrrr maybe he sneezed."

"I.. thought.. you were… A superhero."

"Okay, stop." She does, turning to face-.

Oh, no. Not having that. I crouch down. "Lynne. There is nothing wrong with questioning me. Friends.. and family, who are prepared to tell you things you need to hear and don't want to are very valuable things. I am not perfect. And-" I nod my head to the left. "-I'm here to teach you things. I can hardly do that if you're afraid to ask me questions."

I spread out my arms and do my best harmless face. "Hug?" She smiles, stepping up to me and wrapping her arms around my neck, her head pressed against the right side of my chin. This is nice. "Okay." She pulls away a little, her hands resting on my shoulders. "Better?" She nods. "Okay. Whether or not I'm a superhero depends on how you define 'superhero'. Most superheroes don't kill people. You know full well that I do. However, the people I kill are either mindless -like the guards at the SHADE prison that were holding you- or very very bad, like Klarion and Esak. Killing someone is a big deal, and… I know of no reliable way to reverse it. If the job of a superhero is to keep as many people alive as possible, then a simple look suggests that a superhero shouldn't kill. But what if they kill someone who would otherwise go on to murder lots of people?"

"Then.. those people don't die."

"Just so. I'm not quite that utilitarian, usually. But if I am presented with someone who has killed and.. whom I might reasonably expect to kill again… Kill innocent people…" Hm. "Or at least people not guilty of anything very much-."

She nods slowly, her eyes turned to the side as she gets her head around the idea. Probably a bit much moral philosophy for an eleven year old. "Then you've saved them. You've saved more people than you would have by not killing."

"I don't know if the man who killed Amane's parents had killed before. He may have, he may not. But when confronted with the people whose home he was robbing, he stabbed them to death. He stabbed them repeatedly. He did that in preference to threatening them and running. I strongly suspect that, if left in the wild, he would kill again if a similar situation arose. Plus, Japan does have the death penalty for murder, so… Their society has decided that it's the correct way to treat people like that."

"And that's the other part of my justification. When you can act on the sort of scale that we can, you have to decide what sort of world you want to live in. How you would like… No, how you believe things should work. In my case, I'm trying to persuade-."

There's a rush of wind as Amane precipitates out of the air next to us. She's beaming, a not entirely sane glint in her eye. The armour I designed for her borrows from her preferred 'perky goth' style of dress. Decorative, but providing a sensible degree of protection. Though I was never going to make her the high heels which she wanted I compromised and gave the boots a bit more of a slant than the ones I wear have. Balanced over her shoulder and supported by her right hand is an Apokolips-tech scythe capable of cleaving through just about anything I was able to test it on.

There's quite a lot of blood on the blade and splattered across the left side of her face.

I stand. "Your revenge is complete?"

"Yes, Master."

"Very well then. Assuming that there are no pressing demands on your time in Japan, I think now is a good time to show you the Mount-"

Bzzzt.

"-ain." I frown slightly. "Or possibly not."

"What is it, Master?"

She must.. know that the blood's there, right? She isn't reacting to it, blinking or wiping it away. "Doctor Robbins wants something." I raise my right hand to my ear. "Go ahead."

"Something just happened in Philadelphia."

"When you say 'something'..?"

"The nearest phenomenon on record is one of your hush tubes, but apparently it doesn't quite match."

"Hush tubes are hardly the only stealthy sort of portal. When did this happen?"

"Maybe.. three minutes ago?"

I nod. "Right. Got an exact location?"

"Near the Academy of Natural Sciences is the best I can do. There's nothing on local news yet."

"Still worth checking out. Get Jean to put a squad of G-Elves together in case we need to do crowd control, then give me a hush tube."

I see the outline of a hush tube form in the air in front of me. "Way ahead of you, Grayven."

Miss Amane looks at me curiously. "Master?"

"Did I hear someone just call you 'master'? Am I calling at a bad time?"

"I've recruited someone. I'll introduce you when we get back. Let you know what I find. Grayven out." I lower my right hand. "Iname."

Her smile heads right into slasher territory. "Yes, Master?"

"We have a job. I'm afraid that you're going to need to-" I waggle my left hand at the left side of my own face. "-clean up a little. If that's alright?" She makes a tiny frown, then touches the left side of her face with her left fore and middle fingers before pulling them away and staring at the sticky red substance on the end in apparent surprise. Okay then. A wave of yellow and the blood vanishes. "Okay, girls." Another beam and Lynne's armour reappears. "Someone just opened a portal in Philadelphia. We don't know who they are or why they did it. We're going to have a quick look around and see if we can find out what's going on." Miss Amane moves her right hand to the haft of her scythe. I hold up my right hand to stop her. "No, that might not be required. Hang back a little while Lynne and I look around. And.. stow it for now."

"Yes, Master." The scythe vanishes. I built it with a subspace storage system linked to her nascent divine signature. She can pretty much disappear it or summon it to her whenever she wants, and while she can almost certainly get away with walking around central Philadelphia dressed like that the scythe would draw a little too much attention. Hm. Might be worth creating 'low impact' armour suits for myself and Lynne.

"Lynne, stick with me and keep your eyes open. Look for anything out of the ordinary."

"You mean like us?"

"Other than us. Ready?" Miss Amane nods immediately, Lynne a moment later. "Okay then." I hold out my left hand and Lynne takes it in her right. Together, we step through the hush tube and into Philadelphia.

back

Fool's Canon 18

next

1st April

11:09 GMT -5

"Alright Lynne, look around, and see if-"

Lynne points. "Her."

I plough on. "-you can work out-"

"Her. It's obviously her."

I smile benevolently down at her. "-which of these people does not belong."

She gives me a moment, just to make sure that I've finished. "Her."

I look over to the young woman she indicated. "And what makes you say that?"

"She's.. trying to walk on all fours."

I nod. "On her fingertips and toes, actually." The young woman in question collapses onto her side again. "But she could just be on drugs."

Lynne shakes her head. "Too clean and healthy. And.. I think her balance is actually okay. She's just trying to do something Humans can't do. Like.. she doesn't really know how Humans move?"

I nod. "Very good. What else?"

"She's speaking a language I don't recognise."

I raise my eyebrows. "I didn't know you spoke languages other than English."

She gives her head a small shake. "I can't, but most languages have the same sort of.. noises? She sounds like some sort of animal."

"There are some pretty odd-sounding languages out there, but okay. Not something I'd have noticed. Anything else?"

"The yellow stripes in her hair. The color's wrong for them to be bleached, and it's too even to be dyed."

"That could be Chimeraism."

She frowns up at me. "What's that?"

"That's where a person's body contains cells with different genetic information. Parts of her scalp could have the bit which says 'blonde' and other parts the bit which says 'red'."

She thinks for a moment and then shakes her head. "I don't think real people have hair that red."

"It's unusual, certainly. And I don't think Human irises come in that shade of turquoise. Anything else?"

"She… Feels… Weird."

"You mean-" I point to my forehead with my right hand. "-telepathically?"

Lynne's eyes widen slightly for a moment. "No! No, I'm not-!"

I reach across to where I'm holding her right hand in my left and pat it. "It's okay. It's okay." She calms down again. "What exactly do you mean?"

"I… Don't know? I can just sort of.. feel her, I guess?"

I nod. "I can too. Soul sense. It's a magic ability, sensing other concentrations of power."

"Is she a witch?"

"Hah! Oh. Maybe. It doesn't feel quite like… You haven't met any other magic users yet, but there's something… Off, about it. Anything else?"

"She's scared. I can tell from how she's looking at things around her, then looking away and trying to pretend they're not there."

"Threat assessment?"

Lynne shakes her head. "She's not a threat. Well… Maybe to herself. We should go talk to her."

I nod. "I agree. Here." A yellow filament connects us as I share my ring's translation function. "That should let you understand her. Let me do most of the talking, but tap me on the hand if you want to join in. Okay?"

Lynne nods her affirmation, then together we walk past the Swann Memorial Fountain towards the young woman lying slightly curled up on her side. She looks perilously close to tears, actually. We come to a stop about three metres away and I release Lynne's hand as I kneel down to speak to her. "Excuse me, Miss? Are you alright?"

Her eyes widen at the sound of my voice. Ah, of course, I'd be the first thing she's heard in her own language since she got here. "Fine! Yep. Totally fine."

"I ask, because you appear to be unfamiliar with bipedal locomotion." I hold out my right hand with a smile. "Can I offer you a hand up?"

She gulps. Odd. Everything around us seems to scare her, but my size and obvious physical differences don't appear to warrant special attention. Just the fact that I'm the bit intruding in her space. "Ah…" Her eyes flick to Lynne for a moment. "Please?"

I shuffle forwards, taking hold of the sides of her torso under her arms and lifting until her feet are dangling just off the ground. "Alright, now hold your feet parallel to the ground…" Her toes point down. "No no, your foot is the flat bit… Lynne, would you mind demonstrating?" Lynne obediently turns sideways, lifting her right foot off the ground and bringing it down again in an exaggerated stomp.

The young lady I'm holding looks at Lynne's foot for a moment, then down at her own as they wiggle slightly. "I don't think I can."

Lynne takes the initiative, coming closer and pushing her feet into the right position. There's a look of disquiet on her face, but she gives me a nervous nod and I gently set her down. Almost immediately she tries to go up onto her toes and collapses into my waiting hands. "No, not like that. I know it feels weird and counterintuitive, but really try to stick with it."

"O-okay." With great care she returns her feet to the parallel position and I lower her to the ground once again, holding onto her to see if her en pointe habit reasserts itself. No, she seems to have gotten herself under control. "Okay. I think I got it."

"Standing still, yes." But I move my hands away as I rise to my own feet. "My name's Grayven, and this is Lynne."

"Graven and Linn, right. Ah, hello!" She smiles with enthusiasm borne of her desire to move beyond what must have been quite an embarrassing first encounter for her. "My name's Sunset Shimmer." She holds out her right fist towards me, fingertips first. "Pleased to meet you."

I bump fists with her. "Locally, that gesture is made with an open hand. Like so." I flatten mine, fingers pointing towards her and blade downwards. "Can you do that?"

A momentary flicker of uncertainty. "Um. I…" Her fist shakes a little, but the fingers don't uncurl. "Aagh!" I grab her again as she nearly falls over. "Why can't I make this stupid body do what I want it to!"

"Alright, calm down, calm down. What morphology are you used to?"

"Ungulate quadruped! How do you.. balance on..?" Her face stills as she realises what she just said. "Um."

"We detected the portal. You rather stood out." I regard her curiously. "The portal itself transformed you?"

"I.. think so. I came through like this, wearing these.. clothes. And those-" She looks over to where what I presume to be her boots lie on the grass. "-foot.. boots."

"And you didn't.. test it beforehand?" She averts her eyes. Ah. "Clothes. You were.. naked on the far side?"

"I wasn't cold enough to need clothes." She frowns, this time with curiosity. "What species are you?"

"I'm.. somewhat unique. Most of the people around here are Humans."

"Taxologically?"

"Animalia-" She nods. "-Chordata Synapsida Mammalia-"

"I worked that out."

"-Primates-"

"You're Monkeys?" She looks at her fists. "I'm a Monkey now?"

"-Haplorhini Hominidae Homo Sapiens Sapiens. And no, not Monkeys. Apes."

"Okay." She takes a deep breath. "Okay." She gestures left with her left fist. "If you can just get me over there, I'll go back through the portal and pretend none of this ever happened."

"Ahhhh."

"What?" She looks straight at me, fear bubbling in her eyes. "'Ahhhh' what?"

"I'm sorry, it's… Already closed. If you.. can't reopen it on your own, you're… Pretty much stuck here."

"No, that can't be right! The book said it stays open for three days!"

"Did you.. check? I mean.. before..?"

This time the deep breath doesn't quite seem to do it as she throws back her head, presses her fists to her cheeks and screams her despair to the heavens!

"Nooooooooooooooooooo!"

back

Fool's Canon 19

next

1st April

11:21 GMT -5

When I saw that the nearest café was a Sundollar, I nearly tried to lead Miss Shimmer somewhere else. Fortunately for her, Lynne stopped me with a raised eyebrow. Yeah, okay, my contempt for the place isn't entirely rational… It isn't as if I'm ever going to be in a position where I'm going to need to make use of the services their untaxed switched profits aren't paying for, but when something arouses my ire I tend to stay properly ired up.

Lynne took the window seat facing the door and I sat down next to her after helping Miss Shimmer into the seat opposite. She's staring moodily at her coffee, as if trying to drink it with her mind.

"Do you want me to get you a straw?"

"I don't-." She exhales, looking away from it and me to the view through the window. "I can't do anything! I can't even pick things up with these claw-things-."

"They're called 'hands'." Lynne picks up her milkshake. "Like this, see?" Miss Shimmer gives her a dejected look, then taps her right fist fingertips-first into the side of her cup. "Oh."

I raise my left eyebrow. "If you used to have hooves, how did you pick things up? I mean, we could get you a.. sippy cup or something if you used your mouth?"

"I used my horn."

I screw up my eyes. How would that work? "Was it prehensile?"

"No." She scowls at me, trying to work out whether I'm mocking her or not. "My horn was the focus of my magic. Moving things with thaumokinesis is easy." She goes back to staring at her cup. "At least it.. was."

I frown. "Thaumo-."

She rolls her eyes. "It means-."

"I know what it means." I look her over again. The hair.. sort of fits... "This might sound odd, but… Were you a Pony?"

Her eyes widen. "Yes! Are there other Ponies around here? Do you know another way for me to get home?"

"I… Sorry, ah…" I shake my head. "I've heard about a lot of different species, but…"

Lynne looks at me like I've said something weird. Yeah, okay, I'll give her that one. "She's a.. Pony? She doesn't look like a Pony."

"Equus Sapiens Monocerotos. I'm a Unicorn Pony." She makes a face. "I was, anyway. Stupid Monkey-body."

Lynne valiantly tries to take this in. "You were an intelligent Pony, and you came through a portal that turned you into a Human?"

"I didn't know it was going to do that! Now I'm stuck with hand-claws and no magic for Celestia knows how long!"

!!!

"Celestia. That would be the big white pony with the suns on her bum, right?"

"You know her?!"

"Um. Just.. stories, really." Okay, I'm in a Detective Comics universe. I've met Superman. There's nothing inherently more strange about encountering someone from Wilson. "Do.. you know her?"

"I-!" And she deflates again. "I was her student."

!PonyPonyPonyPonyPony!

"Like Twilight Sparkle?"

She frowns. "Who?"

Huh. Divergent timeline, or just an earlier point? Or.. later? Could ask about Princess Luna to establish that? No, she's going to start thinking I know where her home planet is and that I'm just keeping it from her. Um. "I do have some good news, however. As far as I can tell, your magic reserves are still as strong as ever. You just need to learn how to utilise them as a Human."

She holds up her right hand and manages to slightly uncoil her fingers. "With.. these things?"

"Human.. magic.. is more…" I wave my right hand as I try and summarise what I know in a way that would make sense to someone-. Somepony from Equestria. "Like… The world has all sorts of arcane systems in it already, so you're working out how to connect your bits to those bits to tweak them into doing what you want."

Miss Shimmer looks thoughtful. "That sounds a little like how Earth Pony magic works."

Lynne looks lost. "Earth Pony?"

Miss Shimmer nods. "Equestria was settled by three migrating tribes of Ponies. Unicorn Ponies, with their horns-" She moves her fist to indicate her forehead. "-that could focus their magics to do all sort of things, Pegasus Ponies, with their wings-"

Lynne gives her an incredulous look. "Ponies who can fly? Ponies can't fly."

"-and innate magics that reduced their effective weight so they can fly, as well as manipulate weather, and Earth Ponies, whose magics increased their physical strength and endurance as well as giving them simple instinctive floramantic abilities."

"Flora-?"

"They could make plants grow better."

"Oh."

I nod. "And Alicorns, who get all that and more." I reach across the table, pick up her cup in my right hand and hold it up to convenient drinking height. She hesitates for a moment, then dips her head and takes a small sip. "You did research into Earth Pony magic?"

She nods as she swallows. "As much as I could. Canterlot doesn't have farms, but the palace gardeners let me watch them work sometimes. Of course, I.. can't really push my magic out through my hooves anymore." She sighs.

"Why did you even come through the portal like that?"

"I…" She looks away. "Sort of… Fell out. With Princess Celestia." She hesitates again and then turns back to me. "The other side of the portal is a magic mirror. It.. showed me myself as an Alicorn. And, well, that seemed like the best goal for my research.. and Celestia wouldn't tell me anything about how you become an Alicorn. I guess I just thought the mirror could help me… Ascend." Another sigh. "And instead it turned me into a Monkey."

"Ape."

"What's so good about being an Alicorn?" Lynne shrugs. "If you could use magic anyway…"

"Alicorns don't age. If I became an Alicorn I'd have all the time in the universe to learn magic, the magics of all three tribes instead of just Unicorn magic. And having the magic of all three tribes makes their magic much stronger." This time it's a huff. "I'd know more if Celestia had actually helped me."

Lynne looks at me. "So… Like us?"

Miss Shimmer frowns. "Like us what?"

"Grayven can do a thing he calls 'Awakening' where he alters you so you can become much more powerful."

Miss Shimmer looks at me in astonishment. "You can do that?"

"I can do that to Humans. I've never done it to a Pony before. Your metaphysique is probably quite different."

"I'm a Human now."

"Yes, but I assume that you're going to want to go home at some point." Hmm. "Okay, here's what I think we should do. You need a place to stay, people who can understand your language, research materials and, um…" I nod at her right fist. "Physical therapy."

She looks at her right fist too. "Ye-eah."

"If you want to sign on with me, I can arrange that."

She looks a little suspicious. "You'll let me study you?"

"Hah. I am a fascinating subject. And I can probably find you a few other subjects as well. Iname?"

A puff of air and Miss Amane is sitting next to Miss Shimmer, who looks around in shock. "Ah! How did you-! Teleportation? No, that wouldn't-."

Miss Amane smiles beatifically. "Master gave me the power to move at super speed."

Miss Shimmer starts to smile. "Oh, I'm going to study the hay out of this."

back

Fool's Canon 20

next

"-GGGGG-"

Defector, part 5

7th August 2010

08:21 GMT -5

Even after being.. 'accepted' by the Syndicate, I can't help but feel a little… No, let's be honest here, more than a little nervous about being called into Ultraman's office. Okay, so my status as a Made Man and Ultraman's appreciation of my work so far as team supervisor -not caretaker, Jackie- means that I can come in from the street, walk up to the lift and press the button for the penthouse without anyone stopping me, but… Some of the things I've learned about his personal history from Syndicate files were.. deeply unsettling to me. And that's not even starting on the police and Justice Underground files I've been able to lay my hands on.

The lift chimes, the doors open and I walk out into the hallway beyond. I think a few of the pictures have been changed since last time I was here. Does that mean that someone fell out of favour, or do they just get rotated on a regular basis? Ah, I see. The new ones all have Jon in them. Ultraman may be a violent criminal but he's really gone all out to make Jon feel like one of the family.

Kin-family, not Syndicate Family. Though that too.

I come to a halt just outside the door to Ultraman's office. As far as I've been able to tell, Ultraman doesn't have a secretary in the conventional sense. After all, who could he trust who isn't already doing something more important? Instead, he remembers appointments himself and sets approximate times for things. I was told to be here 'early morning, after breakfast' and that was when I realised that I had no idea what he considers to be breakfast time. Do I knock? Oooor should I find someone to ask-?

"Get in here, Blue."

Super hearing does make things easier. I take hold of the handle, turn it and push the door open. Ultraman is standing on the balcony, looking out over the city he might reasonably claim to own. His pose certainly implies it if his accountant can't prove it. His cape flutters majestically in the breeze. Or… Is there an antiheroic version of majestic? He certainly looks inspiring, if it's fear and obedience that you're looking to inspire. An icon for a harder, more realistic age.

"Reporting as ordered, Ultraman. What can I do for you?"

Jon told me that Ultraman actually gets a kick out of me going 'full English' when I speak to him, so I've been brushing up on my diction. Never hurts to put your boss in a positive frame of mind, especially when your boss is a serial killer.

Ultraman remains scanning the skyline for a moment. Are we actually expecting trouble, I wonder? The country is.. stable, at the moment. With the Justice Underground thoroughly underground, Lex Luthor in hiding and President Wilson nobbled there shouldn't be anyone who could seriously threaten this building… Ultraman turns away and strides back in through the door, waving a hand to trigger the closing mechanism behind him as he walks around his desk to sit down. He looks at me for a moment, then waves his right hand in the direction of the free chair on this side. "Take a load off."

"Thank you, Ultraman." I walk over and sit down. "Jon not joining us?"

"Nah. This is…" He looks a little pensive. "This ain't about the team. I wanna.. talk t'you about this thing Owlman came up with."

"I am at your disposal. What.. sort of thing?"

"He wants to build a bomb. A real big one."

I frown slightly and shake my head. "City killer size?"

"Nah. This one would be big enough t'kill a whole planet."

"Is the Syndicate going interstellar?"

Ultraman shakes his head, and I realise that he's not looking at me. Humans instinctively avoid looking at face-shaped objects when thinking hard about something and it looks like it's the same for Kryptonians. "He wants it as leverage. Way he sees it, we get a bomb that powerful then we can threaten the world's governments into surrender."

The fuck? "Okay?"

"Now, me? I prefer to do things subtle. Less trouble, less chance fer things to go wrong. But, he's got a point. Blackmailing Wilson turned out t'be a whole lot easier than stayin' under the radar." His eyes come back to me. "Somethin' this big, I wanna be sure in my own mind before I say 'yes' or 'no'. You're a smart guy and you're not… You don't think like the rest of us long time Syndicate types. So. " He leans back in his chair, hands resting on his abdomen. "What'd'ya think?"

"My… Instinctive response is that it's a bad idea."

He nods. "Thought ya might say that." He motions with his right hand. "Convince me."

"One of the first things I learned from Al Scott.. is that you don't make a threat you're not prepared to carry out. Because there's always a chance someone will call your bluff, then you end up looking weak."

"What makes you think Owlman wouldn't push the button?"

"Oh, no. I know he would. Superwoman too. But that's because they're mental." A slight smile. "Okay… You're blowing up the Earth. Where are you when this is happening?"

He shrugs. "The moon base."

"Alright. Let's assume that no rubble from the Earth hits the moon and destroys either the whole moon or just the base. And that the bomb doesn't destroy the moon anyway. And let's assume that the majority of the Earth's mass stays in roughly the same place so the moon's orbit isn't adversely affected. What are you planning to eat that day?"

He frowns. "What's that got to do with anythin'?"

"The Syndicate's moon base has food stores for about a month. With the Earth gone there's no way to replenish them. There's a water recycling system so you could probably stretch it out to two months if you had to, but then you'd start starving. And that's assuming you're just talking about evacuating the Management; if you bring Jon and Superwoman brings the other Supers and.. so on, it would be a fraction of that."

Ultraman nods slowly. "Okay. I grew up on a farm…"

"Farming on the moon would be.. difficult, without a lot of preparations. Assuming you install vertical farms and don't mind a monotonous diet it's doable, but you're talking about at least a year planning, testing and building and a lot of money. And again, that's just for management and immediate family. What do you think would happen the moment the rest of the Syndicate -Made Men or not- found out you were planning to blow up the planet they were standing on and not evacuating them?"

This nod is a bit more definite. "They'd do everything they could t' stop us."

"Right. So… The only way you could do it would be to take the entire organisation with you. That takes you from seven to…" I shake my head. "I don't even know how many. Thousands at least. And what about their families? Children, spouses, parents… They're not all going to be Syndicate members. You'd be looking at setting up a city on the moon for millions of people. And defending it, because when the world's governments work out what you're doing you better believe they're going to pull out all of the stops to stop you. I.. don't even know how to work out how much that would cost. We could probably do it, but it would take every spare penny the Syndicate had and massive amounts of manpower. And that's not even getting on to the really serious problem."

He raises his eyebrows slightly. "More serious than starvin' t' death?"

I nod. "Oh yes. The question is: what do you do the next day? The Earth's gone and you don't have faster than light spacecraft. The only place you can go is the moon base. You-" I gesture to him with both hands. "-are now Governor General of all that remains of the Human species. Given all the people you'd have to evacuate to get that far the gene pool probably isn't a problem, but do you have teachers? Doctors? All of the people with the specialist skills needed to keep a civilisation going? Are they going to be on the moon city permanently? Because people like the people who make up the majority of the Syndicate won't react well to being cooped up. What's the next move? Where are you going to go?"

He looks away for a moment. "Mars, maybe?"

"I don't imagine that Mister J'arkus' people would be particularly happy to see us. You could set up a mining industry, build ships and colonise the system, but that's an even bigger undertaking and you'd be looking at everyone living in artificial habitats… Terraforming… No work's been done on actually doing that. There are.. theoretical models, but none of them would be quick if they worked at all. You'd be looking at generations, at best."

"Put it that way, the whole thing sounds like a dumb idea."

"I'm a little surprised he suggested it. I mean-" Ugh. "-a city-killer is a viable threat, especially if it doesn't give off radiation or other poisons. If worldwide destruction is what you're looking for, a biological weapon would serve far better than an explosive. Far easier to hide an immunisation program than making a massive city in space. But even so…" I shake my head. "The whole thing sounds like a massive White Elephant that would make more problems than it would solve."

"Bribing governments is expensive. Maybe I think we could convince them we're serious without needin' to use the bomb."

"Bit of a risk, but okay. Ultraman, you run the Syndicate as a business. You know that the threat of violence achieves more than actual violence. That a little violence nudges things along while a lot of violence just riles them up. The government's used to taking your money. That's.. part of the system they're used to. Giving it to them gets you more money, that's why you do it. No one on their end is looking to rock the boat. What does having a planet killer bomb get you that you don't have now?"

"Whole lotta nothin'." He nods, then stands. My signal to leave. "Thanks, Blue. You've given me a lotta stuff t' think about."

back

Fool's Canon 21

next

1st April

21:31 GMT

"-GGGHHHHHHH!" I plummet from the sky, frantically grabbing at the robotic insect thing on my chest. I hurl it away about half a second before I hit the snow just outside the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Boowf! Construct armour holds out, but I get a rather confused few seconds as black sky and orange snow fly past.

Uuuuuuuuuuugh.

Ring. The fuck.

"Lantern and ring ceased to exist for approximately-."

"Oh, don't you give me that." I let the construct armour fade away, then push myself into an upright position. Environmental shield, don't fail me now. "I did not cease to exist. I formed memories. I was-." Blue.. me. He tried to persuade Ultraman not to build the bomb. And… That was The Boys. As an Indigo. He.. didn't remember reading The Boys. Red was Teen Titans and he didn't remember that either.

I move to a kneeling position, staring out across the Antarctic wilderness. But… They each remembered DC in general, but not the place they ended up. I…

Oh gods.

I don't remember this, and… It didn't occur to any of them to think about it. Should I..? Did I..? Did I once watch or read some sort of updated Teen Titans thing that I can't remember? I… I assumed that I was from something like comic Earth Prime, the.. boring one. So… Did each of them come from different Earth Primes, or… Are we all versions of the same person? Is-? Do we have some original, sitting at home in Hampden Park, still… Going to work like a normal person?

Urm..?

Ambush Bug had fourth wall awareness, didn't he? And teleportation using… Bugs. Shitringwhere'ditgo?!

I haul myself to my feet as the ring highlights an area of snow. Okay, um, don't think touching that is a good idea. I'll just get-.

"Orange Lantern!" I look around as Tula runs across the snow towards me. "Tula to team, Orange Lantern has reappeared."

"Orange Lantern, report. What happened?"

"Not.. completely sure, Aqualad. Ambush Bug tagged me with something that looked like a mechanical insect. Next thing I knew I was living parallel universe versions of my own life. Ah, I'm not hurt, but I am still a bit weirded out about the whole thing."

Tula gets close enough to give me a quick visual inspection. "He is alright."

"Doctor Schwab disappeared immediately after attacking you. The interior of the dome returned to its pre-beach state and the staff are uninjured."

"Right." I turn in the direction of the main building. "The bug thing he used to.. displace me is still here. It appears to be inactive."

"Bring it with you. We are in the main building-."

"Sorry, Aqualad, I'm a bit nervous about touching it again."

Tula gestures, her tattoos glowing. The ice immediately around the insect melts, rising up into a short pillar with the insect buoyed to near the top. Ah, I know that spell! It's the same supercharged surface tension thing Kaldur's water-bearers do, only she can direct it without artificial aids. "I have it. We will be with you shortly."

We both start trudging in the direction of the Station. Rings, remaining power?

Sixteen percent remaining.

Ugh.

"What was it like?"

"What was what like?"

"The alternate universes. Other versions of your life? I have been wondering what it would be like since our fight at the LexCorp building. What would have happened if their version of Kaldur hadn't eaten her."

"I don't think he said that he'd eaten her, just that he'd eaten their version of Garth. For all we know she's alive and well."

Tula nods. "Did you see the Blue Lantern again?"

"See? Sort of… I… Experienced a few hours of his life from his perspective. As if I lived it myself, thinking his thoughts. Remembering his memories. He… Heh." I look down for a moment. "He actually got strong armed into joining the Syndicate after he tried to stop a mugging without realising that he was in a country more or less run by supervillains. The people he fought were Made Men…"

"That's terrible. Why didn't he just ask to stay here?"

"The bit I saw… It was months before they came here. At the time he was just trying to make the best of a bad situation." I sigh. "I'd like to think he was telling us the truth, but I don't have hard evidence either way."

"What else did you see?"

"A version of me with a red power ring. Red rings-."

"Are powered by anger and hate."

I nod. "He couldn't use it to build things like I do, so he'd settled for… Making a list of the worst people in the world and killing them. It's.. logical. It's probably the most efficient way to benefit the world if all you can do is kill things. I did… One of the visions of my desires I confronted when I was trying to separate myself from the Ophidian was of me-. This me, doing that."

"Did you.. see him kill anyone?"

I shake my head. "No, I wasn't… In his head long enough." I get a sudden flash of what having sex with Komand'r was like.

My goodness me.

Tamaran 16… What with the destruction of their industrial infrastructure by the Citadel and the siege-like conditions they live in now Tamaranians are never seen outside of the Vega Systems here. They certainly can't fly at faster than light speeds under their own power.

"The second one was using a Qwardian power ring rip off. He.. killed a lot of people, but… He was acting under the threat of torture and death himself, and they were all murderers." One of Jordan's old mission reports mentioned antithesis rings, but there wasn't anything on the database on John's ring. Classified, maybe? I should probably ask one of them about it, because if our version of Qward is actively gathering information in that way that's something the Greenies need to get on top of.

"And then there was an Indigo Lantern on an Earth where superheroes were super-violent celebrities who hardly ever did anything heroic. They mostly just did publicity work for a psychopathic corporation, which covered up all their misdeeds in order to protect their revenue stream."

"Weren't any of them anywhere nice?"

Um… "No. Not really. I suppose if you give a 'me' a power ring we all just feel obliged to actually use it. Might have been interesting to get the perspective of a businessman Lantern or aaaa… Pure uplift Lantern or something? I don't really know what the selection criteria were. Any background on Schwab?"

"His co-workers say he was just a mild mannered climatologist. He volunteered to go out and have a look at the crash site in case it was a plane and there were any survivors."

"On his own?"

She shrugs. "He was already outside. He was just supposed to take a quick look and then radio back. The next thing they knew, he was dressed in a green costume and they were on a Hawaiian beach. An actual Hawaiian beach. We checked, and a section of the Hawaiian coastline got covered in snow and ice while he was doing it."

"So he swapped them around rather than creating it whole cloth." I nod. "Okay, that's useful to know. What happened to-?"

Just ahead of us the door to the Station opens and Rob steps out. "Mate? You got enough power to get us back?"

"Just.. about? Assuming there are no other upsets? Why?"

"Great granddad gets cranky if I'm late, that's all."

"Well… Ambush Bug isn't here and we've got the pod. We'll have to see what Kaldur and Icon think, but I can't see any reason to stay. We'll probably be heading back in a few minutes."

back

Fool's Canon 22

next

1st April

16:48 GMT -5

"Orange Lantern. I have been meaning to ask you a question."

Mister Freeman is watching me thoughtfully as I look away from where the Atlanteans are manoeuvring the alien pod onto a STAR Labs flatbed lorry with gelatinous water pseudopods. Not much longer and we can all go home. I. Have. No idea what I'm going to put in my report about my experiences. "Sir?"

"Doctor Schwab accused you of being an 'SI'. I have been trying to determine what he meant by that, and I have been unable to do so. Does it mean anything to you?"

Well… Yes… "The use of the phrase which I am most familiar with… It would mean 'self insert'." He frowns slightly as he tries to work out what that means. "It's a term used in fiction to… Some authors create lead characters which are essentially them. Maybe… How they would ideally like to be… Or… Covering up their worst characteristics… The example that immediately comes to mind in published fiction is the character Jack Reacher being an idealised version of the author Lee Childs. But, um, any.. author is bound to put some aspects of their character and experiences into what they're writing…"

Mister Freeman stands there quietly for a moment. "Ambush Bug believes you to be a fictional character?"

No, Leonardo, we don't need to go any deeper. This is already far far too deep.

"He also said 'canon for the canon god, scribes for the scribe throne'. That was a clear reference to the fictional battlecry of the followers of the fictional chaos god Khorne: 'Blood for the Blood God, Skulls for the Skull Throne'."

"I am not familiar with-."

"Games Workshop. Their Warhammer setting. Khorne is chaos god of martial strife and bloodletting. Using it implies that I was literally driving him berserk. And.. possibly that he would be rewarded by a deity for killing me."

Mister Freeman nods. "A somewhat unusual motive."

"For conventional crime, certainly. For supervillains?"

"Most of the criminals I have fought to apprehend have been essentially mundane. Those who were not at least had mundane motives. Perhaps you would be best advised to speak with Batman." There's a slight hesitation. "Unless your empathic vision revealed more information about his motive."

I shake my head. "Couldn't see a thing. Probably.. the same as whatever was blocking my ring scans."

"Do you think his motivation is religious?"

"What, that he's a literal Khorne-worshipper? I think it's unlikely."

"Then I remain puzzled by his use of the word 'canon'. What body of texts does he believe that you are causing the world to deviate from?"

DC canon, presumably. Reed Richards -or whoever his opposition counterpart is- may be useless, but I'm not. Does Ambush Bug find acting outside the normal superheroic tropes offensive? Of course, there's a.. worse explanation. Before I came here, I was… I had only just started reading Hiver's stuff on Spacebattles. I'd just finished my Imperial Guard Tank Company and had ordered the bitz I needed to assess the feasibility of making a mega armoured Boar using a Juggernaut of Khorne and a Fantasy Boar's head. I wasn't really.. getting anywhere, and…

The alternative project…

I shudder. No. No. That sort of thing doesn't happen. And even if it did, I wouldn't know about it. It's like Descartes' Demon, there's no evidence for it. And… Yes, the other characters in settings with 4th wall breakers tend to just assume that they're insane when they are in fact right, and… That's pretty much what I'm trying to do here... No, it's stupid. It doesn't matter if I am fictional. This is the world I experience, that I live in. The people I have emotional attachments to. I can't just abandon that because someone -who probably is just a madman- shouts stuff at me. Head down, walk on.

It's that, or I try hunting down Alan Moore or Grant Morrison, and I'm just not ready for that.

My right hand goes to my forehead as my head dips slightly. "It doesn't have to have a religious meaning. It can just refer to any fictional setting. His use of the word 'canon' implies that he considers the rest of the world 'correct' in accordance with how the fictional universe in which the story takes place should be. As such, I believe it is possible that he thinks that we are all fictional characters, but that I'm some sort of Mary Sue author's pet. And that the story can't be good until I'm not in it any more."

"Then what would be canon?"

"I.. do come from a parallel universe." I look around as the others board, Roy returning to the pilot's station. "Maybe he… Maybe the suit makes him aware of that? So… To fix things he'd have to send me back to the universe I came from."

Rob looks around as we rise into the air. "Who's sending what back?"

"Camouflage active." Roy keeps his attention focused on his flying. "Orange Lantern, whenever you're ready."

"Orange Lantern hypothesized that Doctor Schwab is aware that he is not of our universe, and that that is what led to his attack."

I wave my right hand. "Basically just a guess. Transitioning back to Happy Harbour in three, two, one." The view through the front window flickers and is replaced with the Rhode Island coast.

"Oh. You.. going back to your Earth?"

"Not if I can help it. And all he really did was punch me." Ahead of us the hangar doors slide open. "I mean, he's not Klarion or anyt-."

There's a thump as something-. Several somethings land on the Bio-Ship, and-

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

-what look like cannons are fired in our general direction from the landing area. No, all directions, they still can't see us so they're using grapeshot. The cannons are manned by… Actual.. pirates. The things that landed on the Bio-Ship areohshit! I instruct the ship to open a hole in the roof as one of the robots finds enough purchase to bring its arm-mounted energy weapon to bear! My orange bolt hits it in the chest, knocking it free and sending it sailing across the hangar, the brilliant golden beam from its arm narrowly missing the hull! A second later Kaldur's water-bearers shoot up and strike the second and third, knocking them off as well. A quick scan of the hangar lake shows a total of twenty six in the water and heading for dry land.

"Avast, Young Justice!" Doctor Schwab is now dressed like a pirate, loose cotton shirt, baggy trousers and tricorn hat over his green union suit. The other twenty six pirates are either working to reload their cannons or trying to aim at us with their muskets. "You see! This is how it's supposed to go! Lunatics in crazy costumes throwing down for no adequately explained reason!"

BOOM! BOOMBOOM!

Roy glances at Kaldur. "Aqualad?"

"Use the ship's cannons. Destroy their artillery."

"Right." The guns deploy and there's a harsh buzzing noise as the beams cut cleanly through the cast iron of the cannons, pirates scrambling to get away in case it sets the powder off.

"Orange Lantern, can you get to your personal lantern?"

"Probably."

"Speedy, use the ship to knock them into the water, then hold back to fire on any further robots they may have in reserve. The rest of us will deal with the pirates while Orange Lantern recharges."

Roy throws the bio-ship into a tight turn and I recreate the hole in the roof before surging out. I see puffs as the pirates fire their muskets but those aren't any threat to my environmental shield.

Doctor Schwab looks quite put out. "Knew I shoulda brought cavemen and astronauts. Now where did the ship g-?"

Pirates go flying as the Bio-Ship ploughs into them. I see Doctor Schwab himself leap clear just before it reaches him and then vanish. Right, they've got this. I transition to my room and yank open the door, thrusting my hands forwards. "Recharge." My lantern appears from subspace and the twin beams of orange light-.

"Got-cha."

I feel a slight pressure on my back as Doctor Schwab presses a new insect thing to my back.

"Let's try something a little different this time."

"Why are you doing-?"

back

Fool's Canon 23

next

First Year

Reign of Fire Lord Zuko

Imperial Palace

Capital City

Fire Nation

Mid afternoon

I imagine that I cut a rather strange figure here. My clothing -robes of orange and grey- fit the local formal dress code… Well, more or less. Even my bright orange irises don't warrant more than a curious frown from the courtiers and officials my escort and I walk past. I haven't seen anyone else with that particular distinction, but I have seen gold and amber coloured irises so presumably mine don't stand out quite as much as they would in.. other climes. I'm tall, but not shockingly tall. My face on the other hand appears to be giving them a little difficulty. The skin of most of the local nobility isn't much different in tone to mine, but their facial features are far more Asian than my own Caucasian visage. And from what I've seen no other nation on this world shares my combination of features. The people of the Water Tribes have a similar structure but far darker skin. Being the most populous nation, the people of the Earth Kingdom vary in appearance, but those I saw during my brief visit favoured oriental features as well.

Hm. Perhaps they think I'm a colonial? That would be amusing.

"Hey." One of my escorts, a young woman who was also part of the group which took me into custody, frowns thoughtfully at me. "How did you do that?"

I bow slightly as I walk. "Do what, ladyship?"

"Keep moving like that."

Ah. I was wondering if she'd ask. "I've walked from a very young age, ladyship. At this point it's second nature. In fact, my mother told me that I never learned to crawl."

"No, I mean-." She looks astonished for a moment. "Wait, really?"

"So she said, ladyship. I don't remember much about the period myself. But I'm not about to call my mother a liar."

She blinks a couple of times, then shakes her head. "I hit your pressure points. You shouldn't have been able to stand up at all."

"Ah, that." I nod. "Yes, I see how that might have been a surprise."

She looks at me expectantly, then pouts slightly when I don't answer. "Are you a wizard?"

"Oh, no, ladyship."

"Pleeeeease tell me!"

I regard her for a moment, then make a show of looking left and right before returning my attention to her, apparently failing to detect the six other guards in my escort. "Promise you won't tell anyone?"

She nods enthusiastically. "Uh-huh."

I reach up to my coat and turn up the edge slightly. Revealing the fine mithril chain mail beneath. She looks at it with fascination for about a second, then sags, looking at me like I spoiled her fun. She wouldn't recognise the metal, but the implication is clear.

I shrug apologetically. "These are dangerous times, ladyship. I spend a lot of time travelling. I'm afraid that you didn't hit me anything like hard enough to paralyse me through my.. robes, though I will have a nasty bruise later."

"That's boring. I thought you did it with monk-wizard magic."

Another bow. "I apologise, ladyship."

"You're probably going to tell me you didn't get into Azula's prison with magic, either." She holds the pout, but doesn't hide the eagerness in her eyes for an answer.

The guards at the front of my escort step aside as we reach an ornate door, and the leader of the group steps forward and knocks quietly on the door. A moment later it opens a crack and he has a whispered discussion with the person on the far side. "I wasn't planning on telling you that, ladyship."

She nods, her smile restored. Then she hesitates, pointing at me with her right forefinger. "Heey. That isn't the same as saying 'no'."

The doors ahead of us are opened and one of the guards behind me gives me a shove to get me moving. "You're right, ladyship. It isn't. Excuse me."

The room which I'm being led into appears to be an office of some sort. From what I've gathered of local politics, Fire Lord Zuko took part in overthrowing his father and sister and then rather had to hit the ground running after his uncle -his closest advisor and confidant- moved to the Earth Kingdom capital. At this point things have calmed down somewhat, but from the look of… Huh. His bodyguard appear to be some kind of warrior-geisha. Curious.

The Fire Lord himself is a serious, athletic looking youth. The stress of office doesn't appear to have quite gotten to him yet, other than providing a small measure of momentary frustration. This is after all a time of peace and disarmament, the other nations of the world more than content to give him the time and space to get things under control. His robes are not quite so ostentatious as those I've seen in some of the portraits but I have no doubt that they cost more than most peasants would earn in a year. His attention remains fixed on the scroll before him as I'm led into the centre of the space in the centre of the room. A basic intimidation technique, used to reinforce the idea in the petitioner's mind that they are unimportant, insignificant and generally unworthy of the time of the person they have been led before.

I clasp my hands at my chest and perform the medium bow which my knowledge of local courtly manners suggests is correct for a sage before the Fire Lord. And then I wait, in silence, for him to deign to notice me.

I think that one of the bodyguards has noticed that I'm not behaving quite right. There's a little extra tension in her frame, a slight lean forwards suggesting that she's prepared to interpose herself at a moment's notice should I behave even slightly out of order. From the depths of my memory I drag up Mister Kent's distant lessons on how to appear harmless and do my best to put them into practice, using the loose shape of my robes to hide my stature, relaxing every muscle and generally doing my best to appear harmless. Gosh, that takes me back.

There's a sound of parchment rubbing against parchment as the Fire Lord rolls his scroll and binds it together, finally deciding to notice me.

"Since my sister entered confinement eleven people have tried to break into her prison. Nine were traitors seeking to release her. Two were people she's hurt who wanted to take revenge. All eleven are now dead." None of that was news to me, though the fact that he started with it is a little interesting. "Explain why you were there."

I make a point of not fully raising my head. "I sought to help her, majesty."

"Help." The muscles of his jaw tighten slightly. "My sister is being helped by the best doctors in the Fire Nation. What's so special about you?"

"The spirit I serve bade me visit her, majesty."

That makes him hesitate slightly. "Azula doesn't care about the spirits. I don't think she's prayed once in her whole life."

"But she has lived in accordance with the ideals of the spirit I serve, majesty. And.. that has.. not served her well. As such, her current state is the cause of some distress to my mistress. I was.. instructed.. to come here and render what assistance I could."

He remains still for a moment, considering my answer. The local religion appears to be animist, though the spirits who dwell on this world seldom directly intervene in people's lives. For the last century the Fire Sages have been reduced in status from enlightened spiritualists to symbolic court officials. But Fire Lord Zuko counts the Avatar as one of his close friends. My claim most likely carries a little more weight with him. "What spirit?"

"The Spirit of Avarice, majesty."

His eyes narrow, trying to work out whether or not I'm mocking him. "Avarice."

"She strove ruthlessly to realise her desires, subordinating all distractions in pursuit of the goal of becoming… Fire Lord. And yet… In the end-."

"She went crazy and lost everything."

"In essence, majesty. Though.. I.. wasn't able to spend enough time with her to.. fully diagnose-."

"Prove it."

"Prove..? "

"Prove that a spirit sent you. I've had a lot of charlatans and conmen try and convince me that they can help Azula. If you were really sent by a spirit, then I'll consider letting you try. Otherwise you can join them in the dungeons."

"Ah." I nod. What exactly would he consider adequate..? Hm, it's a little old, but… I manifest the Ophidian's Eyes and look directly at him for a moment. I'll credit him with having excellent self control. He barely recoils at all, though his expression shifts a little from irritated towards blankness. "Is that adequate, majesty?" He gives me a curt nod and I squeeze my eyes closed and give my head a small shake. Stage dressing as I remove the Eyes.

"Avarice, huh." He leans forwards slightly, elbows resting on his desk. "Let me guess: there's some sort of rare tea that she needs, or some oil extracted from a fruit whose location is only known to a handful of merchants..?"

"In all honesty, majesty, I don't think that putting hot liquids in her hands is really a good idea. There might well be some tea or some oil that would temporarily calm her, but I doubt that it would assist her in the long term."

"What sort of payment do you expect?"

I shrug and shake my head. "Bed and board, majesty. I've never been much of a tea drinker."

He doesn't quite squint. "And you don't.. want anything… For yourself."

"A healthy Fire Princess is far more valuable than trivial amounts of precious metal, majesty. Members of my order are taught to understand and achieve oneness with our desires. I want to help. All other concerns are…" I smile, waving my right hand dismissively. "Distractions."

He nods. "Very well. I will instruct her physicians that you should be granted access, under observation."

I bow again. "Thank you, majesty."

"Do you honestly think you can help her?"

"I am obliged to try, majesty." I rather doubt this civilisation -for all its surprising technological prowess- has quite discovered cognitive behavioural therapy yet. "But… If I may ask? I have.. some awareness, of the way your father raised her. Any more information you can give me would be extremely helpful."

back

Fool's Canon 24

next

First Year

Reign of Fire Lord Zuko

Outskirts of the Capital City

Imperial Sanatorium

Morning, the following day

"Do you actually have any formal qualifications?"

Though the tone of Princess Azula's chief physician is condescending, it only takes me a fraction of a second to assure myself that he is guided by his concern… Not exactly for his patient, but certainly for the good conduct of his offices. He thinks that I may be a fraudster, but am more likely just a well-intentioned waste of time and the fact that he has been ordered to put up with me offends his sense of order.

After her defeat, Princess Azula was held in a.. specialist prison, close to the capital. Given the risks of a potential military coup using her as a figurehead, the decision was taken to move her to somewhere a little more remote. It is true that imprisonment seldom has a healthy effect on the minds of those who undergo it, but I'm sure that Princess Azula simply regards this as her brother trying to get her out of the way. Out of sight. Out of mind.

We're walking through the corridors now to the place where I will be granted my audience. As a highly skilled fire bender -a curious descriptor which apparently indicates that she possesses an innate ability to manipulate both fire and electricity- keeping her somewhere she doesn't want to stay is no easy matter. The rooms she is kept in are lined with high pressure hoses and whenever she is taken out of them she is chained hand and foot, particular physical actions apparently being required to activate her abilities.

"I am the spiritual leader of my order, my learned friend." Still true, though I am no longer the only member to have attained enlightenment. "Though it is true that my medical knowledge is fairly basic-" Though quite possibly more advanced than his. The people here are essentially Human after all. "-I have decades of experience in counselling people with.. similar backgrounds to the Princess."

A slight narrowing of the eyes. "Hmm." Ah, I just confirmed myself as someone who scrounges off aristocrats. If only he knew. From the brief glimpse I got yesterday it was clear to me that Princess Azula is in a bad way, but not more so than those poor souls who were once held in the Blue Cells on Maltus. I am an old hand at undoing the harm that can be caused by orange light exposure, literal or metaphorical. Now, even Larfleeze is.. nearly a fully functioning member of society.

We approach a door, and the guards standing by it open it at a nod from the doctor. Outside is a.. courtyard, a flame-blackened stone area in the centre surrounded by mostly recovered grass and edged by a flowering border. In the stone area, one heavy stone bench has metal rings set into it, designed to have manacles attached to them. Looking up, I see several guards dressed in blue Inuit-themed clothing… Ah, those would be water benders. A.. necessary precaution, I suppose.

"Sit down there-" The doctor indicates a seat on the opposite side of the stone area. "-and don't approach her. She'll be brought out in a few moments. The Fire Lord has sent you here, and I suppose I should tolerate one priest. But if I think for a moment your presence impedes her recovery-."

"Please, my learned friend. Such hostility is not necessary. If I am impeding her recovery, I will leave myself with no prompting required. My sole desire -and that of the spirit I serve- is to help her."

A combination of my own obsequiousness and the fact that he actually can't get rid of someone who has the authorisation of the Fire Lord to be here appears to placate him. "Very well." He turns, and heads back towards the door.

Taking a moment to arrange my robes, I sit myself on the bench indicated. Now, whereabouts..? Ah, of course. The chaotic tangle of orange that is Princess Azula's soul stands out clearly from her surroundings. Despite her angry and violent outbursts there actually isn't a lot of red, not inside. Plenty on the surface, a common enough response from people who believe that the world should be one way and are forcibly confronted with the fact that it is actually another. The buzzing mess appears to be in accordance with some of the descriptions of their upbringing Fire Lord Zuko gave me yesterday, as well as the more recent information the young lady Ty Lee was able to provide. Fortunately, there doesn't appear to be anything wrong with her actual brain. I'm actually feeling a little optimistic.

The door on the far side of the courtyard opens and Princess Azula is pushed through first. The guards behind her have some sort of staff attached to the chains around her torso and use them to push her along while staying out of arm's reach. Or what arm's reach would be if her arms weren't bound, folded across her chest and chained together. The Princess herself… A few bruises, and I think they're feeding her a weak herbal sedative. Compared to the portrait I saw yesterday her hair is much shorter, most likely shorn due to the impracticality of keeping it in good condition due to her violent outbursts. Her eyes go to me first, then disregard me, flicking from place to place as she tries to spot potential attackers or escape routes.

Cautiously, the guards with the staves manoeuvre her in front of the bench opposite me. She doesn't bother giving more than token resistance. Enough to remind them that she is a threat, but not enough to provoke a strong response. They push a little and she sits, not deigning to look at them as two other guards scurry in and one by one hurriedly transfer her bindings to the bench and then detach the staves. Their task complete, they pull back to the far wall to wait.

Without rising, I bow, my hands clasped to my chest. "Highness. It is an honour to meet you."

Her body is turned slightly to her left, indicating as best she can that I am unworthy of being in her presence. She regards me from the corner of her eyes, taking in my robes and trying to work out who or what I am. After a moment she returns her gaze to directly in front of her. "Are you supposed to be an air bender?"

"No, highness. I am a.. sage, one familiar with the ways of the spirits."

"I am not possessed." She snarls, but she doesn't look at me.

"I know, highness. But I do have some small insight into Human behaviour which I believe may.. help you."

She snorts. "Haven't you heard? I'm a monster."

"Oh, I don't believe that for a moment, highness."

Immediately her head snaps in my direction. "You should."

"No, highness. Though -please don't misunderstand- I'm sure that you believe it. And I'm sure that if you could right now you would gladly kill both me and everyone else here." A small sneering smile appears on her lips. "You're affirming your identity as a monster because it's the only freedom left to you."

She rolls her eyes. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"The people who surround you every day these days want you to behave in the ways they consider conducive to good order. By opposing that in a way you consider consistent with your nature, you are able to protect your ego. The fact is, monsters aren't capable of learning the degree of self control you.. were famous for."

"My mother disagreed with you."

"I think your physician does as well. But that doesn't mean they're right."

"Ty Lee and Mai think I'm a monster."

"That's three people you've named whose opinions matter to you. A monster wouldn't care like that."

"So tell me about this total fantasy non-monster version of me who lives in your head."

I smile. "Alright then. At a young age, she showed great talent at fire bending. As a result, her father showed her particular favour and as a dutiful daughter she strove to keep him happy. She focused on her studies, trying with all her might to make him proud of her. Because… Wasn't that what she was supposed to do? And he in turn showered her with… Not affection, exactly. But he demonstrated pride as she got stronger, and made a particular point of encouraging certain behaviours which he believed useful. Viciousness, so that she'd push away all confidants but him. Cruelty, so that none would dare cross her. Aggression and assertiveness and a sort of domineering charisma. Useful traits for a Fire Nation noble. Her mother turned from her in horror, but that was fine. After all, she had her father."

"And when her brother failed to capture the Avatar so hard that an entire fleet was destroyed, she left the Fire Nation and took over the mission from him. Though she didn't quite manage to kill him, she did capture the Earth Kingdom's capital through stealth and guile and returned home in triumph. And when her brother betrayed her country, that was fine. She didn't think much of him anyway. Now her father would only have her!"

"And her friends turned from her, but that was alright, because she was doing what her father wanted. And they were traitors and they had to be dealt with as such. And then she came back to the palace to be told that she was to be made Fire Lord! The pay off had finally arrived." I smile. "All that pain, all that suffering, all that hard work, and here was the reward." My face falls. "An empty title as he promoted himself to King of the World, showing not the slightest regard for all of her efforts."

Her eyes are locked forwards, unseeing. She's shaking slightly. "You built your identity, your concept of the good, around a man who cared for you not at all. You pushed away everyone -just like you were supposed to- and you were left with nothing. And fixing that is what I am here to help you with."

back

Fool's Canon 25

next

1001, Celestial Era.

"AhH!"

I sit cross-legged on one of the few illuminated points on the moon's surface, watching with interest as the shadows flow around me like oil, coalescing and deepening at a single point just in front of me. There's a shift in local magic fields as the imprisonment spell finally collapses, and then:

"After a thousand years, I'm free!"

Nightmare Moon rears up on her hind legs and kicks with her front ones as her excitement at having a body again causes her to forget decorum. The pelt of Wilson's Night Goddess is deep black, coloured only by a purple blob on each of her haunches which in turn bears an image of a crescent moon.

Ohmygoodness.

"Now, 'tis time to conquer Equestria!"

She lands, lunar dust billowing away from her hooves as she does so. Her pupils are slits, like the eyes of a cat. She's clad in barding of midnight blue. The incisors in her upper jaw are extended beyond what any herbivore should need, and the rest of her teeth are surprisingly serrated as well. From her forehead extends a black, spiralled horn and from her sides extend two black-feathered wings, and the magic rune I'm holding in her direction shows that she possesses massive innate magic reserves. She's about one metre fifty tall at the withers.

Andshe'ssocute!

Okay, okay, I'm entirely too old to react like this to a Pony. I clear my throat. "If I might-" Her head turns towards me, lowering as if preparing to charge and gore me. Her wings open slightly, making her look bigger and preparing to thrust her forwards through this moon's surprisingly dense atmosphere. Her eyes narrow as she gets her first clear look at the intruder. "-have your attention for a moment?"

Her eyes narrow. "What manner of creature are you?"

"Does my voice not sound familiar? I have been visiting your prison on a fairly regular basis."

Her head rises a very small amount, tilting slightly to the side. "Yes. Your voice… We heard it…" Her head goes fully erect as she stares up at the stars. "A thousand years? You have visited us for a full millennium?"

"Not quite, highness. I was not here for the very beginning. Though after I first found you, I did make a point of being here whenever the spell's grip waned-."

Her attention returns to me. "So that you could commune with us." She nods, cautiously. "We remember your words, your attempts at counsel. E'en experienced in a dream as we did, we dread to think what a thousand years would have done to our mind without the distraction your words provided. You have our thanks, Ape."

NightmareMoonjustcalledmeanApe! EEEEEEEEeeeeee!

"Now we must be off. 'Tis the night of the Summer Sun celebration, and we are long overdue for a rematch with our-" She bares her teeth as she looks 'up' at the super Earth in the sky above us. "-sister."

"Might I..? Have a moment of your time before that?"

She rolls her eyes and lightly shakes her head, her translucent, star-filled mane falling slightly behind with each motion of her head. "We believe that we remember the thrust of your argument, having had nought else to contemplate. You wish us to resolve our conflict with our sister through means other than our battle magics."

"It would be nice."

She sneers. "Nice. Niceness has little influence on our mood. She trapped me here for a millennium and now she will fall beneath my hooves! You have made your view known to us before."

"Yes, but spiritual communion is not the most precise way of communicating sophisticated arguments. Would you do me the courtesy of hearing me once more?"

Her eyes go back to the planet for a moment, focusing on the dawn line. "Very well. But do not expect us to be much moved."

"As I understand it, the root of your conflict with Princess Celestia is that while your domain over the night mirrors hers over the day, the fact that your subjects are diurnal means that in practice her authority is greater."

"'Tis a little more than that. But… Yes, therein lies the root."

"Couldn't you.. share? Get up a little earlier in the evening-."

She rolls her eyes. "What a remarkable solution! In all my eight thousand years of life, not once had I considered-" Her ears lie flat against her head as she leans forward, scowling at me. "-getting up earlier." Fair enough. She shakes her head again, returning to a normal stance. "No, Ponies will choose 'day' for as long as it remains an option for them. The only way for them to select me over her is if she is no longer an option."

"And… Why does that matter?"

She blinks in confusion. "We are a princess of Equestria. 'Tis our due."

"But I'm thinking… Ponies are diurnal. You know that, they know that. Why not just leave?"

"We have our pride."

"But it's such a small place! I can feel your power, unconfined by binding spells. Equestia barely covers a small part of one of your planet's continents. Is that really the limit of your ambition?"

"Limit? Equestria is vast and prosperous. Of all of the nations we have encountered, whose sleeping minds we have touched-." I lower my head, shaking it. "What mean you by this effrontery?!"

I walk forwards, coming to a halt about a metre from her. The point of her horn is just about level with the top of my head. I hold out my right hand, palm upwards. "Let me show you."

"If this is some manner of trickery, be it known that we are notoriously vengeful and ill-tempered." She raises her left forehoof and puts it on my hand.

"Understood." I extend my aura over her and warp jump us about halfway between the planet and the moon, space bending to accommodate our travel. "Looks pretty big, doesn't it?" Another warp. Now, we're about one astronomical unit away from Wilson and its star. There aren't any other celestial bodies close by, this system's bizarre arrangement totally hostile to other planets. "A little smaller now, but still noticeable." Keeping her hoof on my hand she turns to stare back at her world. We warp again, this time halfway to the next system. One boring old main sequence star and two super Jupiter gas giants. Nightmare Moon looks around in concern as I pull away and spread my arms wide. "Night all around us, Nightmare Moon. Where lies Equestria?"

Her horn glows for a moment, then she gestures with her right forehoof. "That way. But we take your point. In the grand scheme of the universe, it is not so big."

I nod, then warp us again. One astronomical unit from her home world's nearest neighbour. She peers at it in puzzlement. "'Tis a.. sun, but it does not belong to our sister." A moment later she gets it. "You mean to tell us that every star is like unto ours, bearing worlds like our own?"

"Not exactly like yours. Less than one in every hundred are inhabited."

"You believe that we should turn our attention to one of these worlds in place of our own?" She tosses her head. "Why should those alien creatures care more for us than our own kind?" I smile, and warp us again. Beneath us a Karnan freighter ploughs through the void. Nightmare Moon's eyes widen in surprise. "Some manner of artificial vessel?"

I nod. "Trading. Travelling. Exploring. Far from any sun. Only the light you bring with you grants any meaningful illumination. Princess, day is a tiny, weak thing. A star's light diffusing through an atmosphere for half the world's cycle. You could do so much more than playing second fiddle to your sister or becoming a conquering, kinslaying warlord." I hold out my right hand again, manifesting a new orange power ring upon my palm. "Join me. Become their protector and in doing so earn their reverence. Let me give you eternal night."

She studies me, carefully weighing my words. "Tell us… More."

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Fool's Canon 26

next

1001, Celestial Era.

"Thank you, my little Pony. I will be out to join in the festivities in a moment."

Oh, what would Lantern Onik have thought to see his High Priest staring at Celestia's mane like this? The gently waving pastel colours are so hypnotic, waving lightly in a nonexistent breeze. The Princess Regent herself is politely shooing Ponyville's mayor out of her dressing room. Guards… Appear to have been similarly dismissed to join in the party. Outside, her apprentice appears to have calmed down somewhat from earlier and is chatting with the local school teacher.

She can't have failed to feel the spell collapse. Heck, the mare's head shape on the moon disappearing should have been enough of a warning. Yet, I can't feel any prepared spells. I think that I managed to talk Nightmare Moon down from her original plan of beating her sister senseless so that she could leave on a high note, but a little caution wouldn't be amiss on Celestia's end. Maybe Celestia has simply gotten too used to not having to fight people in her own weight class? Goodness knows I've had a few complacency episodes like that myself over the centuries.

She turns to look out of the window for a moment, gazing up at the moon. "Luna, where are you? This was the night-."

Darkness roils behind her as Nightmare Moon manifests through the shadows on the far side of the room. "Of our return." She takes a few confident steps forwards then stops. "Did you miss us, dear sister?"

Celestia's head dips slightly, eyes narrowing as golden light flows around her horn. "You are no sister of mine."

"Ugh." Nightmare Moon rolls her eyes as the two of them begin circling each other. "One thousand years and that is how you greet us? How are you? Keeping to your diet, I see? Do I have any new nephews or nie-?"

"Stop it. Stop pretending to be her."

"Pretending to be whom?"

"Luna."

Nightmare Moon stops. She blinks, genuinely perplexed. She flicks out her left wing for a moment, her eyes flicking back to check that it's still there. "You think us perhaps to be the other Alicorn of the Night?"

"I don't know how you possessed my sister, Nightmare Moon, but you-."

Nightmare Moon frowns. "Who?"

"You!"

"Oh, that." She nods. "We were Nightmare Moon for perhaps five minutes after having been Luna for eight thousand years. Excuse us for not remembering an off-the-cuff taunt we used a thousand years ago."

"Even at her most angry, Luna would never have raised her hooves against me as you did. She would never have imperilled Equestia as you did."

"And we knew that. Submissive, compliant, ignored and uncared for."

"She was never-!"

"That was why we transformed ourself into somepony who could. Somepony without all of those crippling weaknesses and doubts, drummed into her by your callous disregard."

"You're lying. Such magics are extremely dangerous. Luna would know-."

"Oh, pish. It involved less dark magic than we have both used before."

"No. I refuse to accept that Luna hated herself enough to turn herself into you."

"You weren't there when I performed the transformation and my records were designed to destroy themselves if you attempted to read them." She pulls her head back slightly. "Have you really been telling yourself for all these years that we possessed ourself? How absurd. Anyway." Her horn glows a surprisingly pale blue for a moment and a scroll appears in the air next to her before floating over to her sister. "We believe you will find it in order."

Not quite taking her eyes off her sister, the scroll is enveloped in Celestia's golden aura and cautiously unrolled. Her eyes flick to it, then back to her sister before widening and returning to the scroll. "You're abdicating?"

"You have clearly governed the country perfectly well in our absence. You have even managed the day and night cycle for yourself. Equestria neither wants us nor needs us. We refuse to play second fiddle, especially for a piece where only one fiddle is required. We are leaving to find a people who will appreciate us."

"But…" Celestia blinks in confusion. "Your duty…"

"Fie on 'duty'. They did not appreciate us when we lived here and we doubt that you erasing us from history has made them think of us any more fondly."

"That's not entirely true, Princess." I walk out of the shadows she created. Middle finger, middle finger, middle toe, middle toe. Don't know how M'gann managed things like this. Being a Pony is much harder than it looks. "She did create a festival where foals make offerings of sweets of various kinds to icons of you." Celestia takes in my grey coat, wings and horn. The transformation effect gave me an orange tail, mane and an orange sigil 'cutie mark', which I suppose is appropriate. My ring sits at the base of my horn. "In the understanding that if you don't like the offering, you will return from the moon and eat them."

"Who are you?"

"I am Illustres. A pleasure to meet you."

"And really? Eating foals? Really?"

Princess Celestia's eyes dip momentarily. "That festival was not my creation."

"It hardly matters." She walks over to the window and looks out at the festivities outside. "We will visit our quarters in the Castle to pick up some of our possessions and then depart."

Celestia looks at the disinterested Nightmare Moon and then back at me. "And what role have you played in.. my sister's change in behaviour?"

"He counselled me to reconcile with you. His words kept me from being driven mad by the isolation."

Celestia blinks, then focuses on Nightmare Moon. "You should not have experienced the passage of time-."

"The spell waxed and waned with the lunar cycle. She was meaningfully conscious for about three days a month."

"One century of isolation, since you're so concerned."

Celestia looks surprised for an instant, then rallies. "If you had not tried to kill me-!"

"No. No. It was a thousand years ago and we have decided that we do not care. We are done with Equestria, and wish you all joy of it." Nightmare Moon looks around, frowning to herself. "And we actually mean that. How odd." Her attention shifts to me. "Illustres, we will see you anon."

Shadows rise from the ground around her-

"Wait! I-!"

-then she's gone.

Celestia sits down heavily, staring at the patch of shadows her sister vanished into. "This wasn't how it was supposed to happen."

"Better than a fight, wasn't it?" I take a few finger-toe steps forwards before sitting myself. "I didn't think having two demigoddesses fighting it out would be all that healthy for anyone. And I didn't think that sending her back to the moon again would be much better. My experience with ancient evils is that it's best to either fix them or destroy them outright, and that the first is generally preferable."

"It was." She looks me over again. "How were you able to reach her when I was not?"

"My 'special talent' is helping people realise their desires. She just needed the problem… Rephrased a little. She wanted to be appreciated-"

"She-" Her head dips. "-was."

"-and she thought that you were an obstacle to that. When I showed her that she could simply go somewhere where they'd never heard of you, she was quite persuadable."

I get a minor scowl. "And what do you get from this arrangement?"

"A powerful and highly motivated magic user. I enjoy helping people become all that they can be, and if they do so doing something I want them to do, so much the better. And I get that annoying buzz of frustrated desire gone from my head. Ah, horn."

"I had… Hoped…"

"What?"

She shakes her head. "It doesn't matter now." She gets up and walks towards the door. Just as she reaches it, she stops and looks back towards me. Gosh, Pony necks are flexible. "Please..? Ask her to visit me. I don't understand exactly what happened to her, but her absence these last thousand years has been like a hole in my heart."

I nod, standing myself. "Of course, Princess. She might not be available for a while, though."

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Fool's Canon 27

next

1st April

13:53 GMT +5:30

Doctor Blight doesn't look back as she leads the way through maturation chamber seven, MAL's mobile screen hovering just behind her. As she reaches the door at the far end, the armature it travels on bends, turning him back to face me. "You better be right about this, Lantern."

I wave him off with my right hand. "I'm not convinced of the utility of a direct confrontation-."

Doctor Blight stops, her right hand outstretched to the release button. Like a lot of the things she builds, this facility is a strange mixture of super advanced and anachronistic. A door which requires a button to open it? No handle, but no motion sensor either?

"It's not all about utility, Lantern-sweetie. I've waited years for this and there's no way I'm getting cheated out of it now."

I shrug. "If that's really what you want."

For a moment her left hand moves upwards, under the fringe overhanging the left side of her face. Then she pulls it away, clenching her fist. "You better believe it, baby cakes. The look on their faces when they saw what we did to those Tigers… I am so ready for this."

MAL glances off to the side of his screen. "Much as I hate to bring down the mood, security has reported a perimeter breach."

Doctor Blight presses the button and the door retracts. A lot of the doors around here are blast doors. One too many encounters with high pressure water and bizarrely powerful gusts of wind I suppose, and they do serve to provide additional security around the more fragile parts of the facility. "Stop bellyaching, MAL darling." She steps through into the corridor leading to the dissection chambers. "This time, no one will-!"

"ABP!"

"Heh." Doctor Blight turns fully around to face me. "Are you still worried about that list?"

"I haven't properly been able to characterise local magic systems. It doesn't seem prudent-."

"Live a little." She turns away from me and starts walking again. "No one can stop me now. Everything is going according to plan. Those Planeteer punks are helpless-" MAL and I both wince. "-before the power of science!"

I lean towards his screen as she pulls away slightly. "Did you show her the list?"

"They cannot comprehend my brilliance!"

"You're the one who wanted to keep a low profile. I didn't think convincing her that killing her sister was an essential step was a particularly good idea."

"Everything is going perfectly!"

"Fair enough. Edited version?"

"I tried. But I'm not sure she was actually listening."

"Are you two coming?!"

MAL sighs silently, then accelerates Aperture Sphere style along his railing after her. I knew that recruiting a malign hypercognitive wouldn't be an easy thing to do. Or rather, it would be easy, just not easy to do on terms I could accept. I'm not going to give her a ring just to see her transmute the entire atmosphere into hydrochloric acid. This was the compromise we eventually struck. I assist her in getting a clear, unambiguous win doing something she actually wants to do, she agrees to adapt her methodology. On Maltus, where the natural environment has long since been destroyed and replaced, she wouldn't be able to do much harm. Even Mosaic is comprised mostly of artificial habitats. Once she gets out in the field… I need to know that she's not going to do anything antisocially crazy. And showing her that she can win without doing that is the best way to start.

I stride after my colleagues, pulling my phone out of my pocket and pressing the speed dial button for Mister Singh -our Ministry of Health attaché- as I do so. Probably a good idea if he's on hand during the confrontation. I really don't understand how Doctor Blight's got as far as she has without developing a relationship with some sort of business manager. Mostly, once a product she's developed is ready for release she just signs the licence over -usually to Mister Plunder- and then loses interest. She insists that she's not in it for the money and it's not like she's exactly short on resources…

"Chandeep here."

"Would you mind coming to the dissection room? We're about to have a showdown. "

"A.. showdown? With whom?"

"A group of environmental activists."

"Wouldn't calling the police be a more sensible idea?"

I roll my eyes. "You have met Doctor Blight, yes?"

He sighs. "In that case, I will be with you in a few minutes."

"Thanks." I hang up and jog after her. Amazing woman, really. Her actual doctorate is in chemical engineering but she's turned her hands at various times to just about every field of scientific and engineering endeavour with remarkable results. Even magic upon occasion. It's just a shame that she never- I press the button to open the door to what I wanted to call the surgical suite. -found a way to channel that to serve her own rational self interests.

"…what you have been doing here!"

Kwame points aggressively up at Doctor Blight from amongst the cut up corpses of various endangered animals, Gi at his side. Linka's holding onto a biological waste bin, stepping away from Wheeler, who appears to have vomited and missed. Ma-Ti is standing a little way behind the others. He's squinting at a dead Tiger, a look of puzzlement on his face. Not really a surprise that the team empath would realise that something was up. A second later his head jerks around to look at me. Hmm, some sort of passive detection? Wouldn't mind a look at their rings later, see if there's anything we can adapt-.

"Biological research. I've been studying how to automate surgical techniques-."

Gi's scowl deepens. "On defenceless animals?!"

"These?" She looks around at the remains. Not exactly best laboratory practice, but she wanted to make a point. "I cloned these." Stares. "My interest is in Human cloning, but I had to start somewhere."

Ma-Ti frowns. "I don't think this was ever alive." Don't think anyone's listening. A moment later he realises that as well. I give him a conciliatory shrug.

"This is sick." Wheeler wipes his mouth before raising his ring. "And I'm gunna make the right side of your face match the left. Fire!"

MAL nods. "Fire suppression-" A bolt of flame blasts from Wheeler's ring and is met by a shot from the lab's freeze ray. "-active."

"Nice try, hot stuff. But the fact is-" Doctor Blight tosses her hair back. "-you're too late." They stare at the smooth skin which now covers the left side of her face. "Cloned skin tissue and the finest in automatic surgery." She pulls the glove off her left hand and reaches up to touch her face. "In a few months I'll be able to supply every hospital in the country with transplant organs. Every surgical suite with machines that can handle just about any routine surgery."

"We saw your security guards! Their skulls were empty!"

Doctor Blight smiles. "Cloned body parts and a computer plugged into their spines. There was never anything in them, sweetie."

Kwame looks like the rug's been pulled out from underneath him. But for the team, he tries to rally. "Cloning Humans is against the United Nations Declaration-."

"Which isn't binding." Mister Singh walks in through a side door. "And nothing that has happened here violates Indian law. Not by Doctor Blight, anyway. You -on the other hand- are committing criminal trespass. And interfering with our attempts to resurrect endangered species through cloning."

"Heart."

Oh no you don't. "Avarice."

Two of Doctor Blight's securizombies enter through the rear of the room, truncheons ready. Mister Singh nods. "I suggest that you cooperate with Doctor Blight's security personnel until the police arrive to arrest you formally."

And at that point the Planeteers realise that they've been conned. I watch as even Wheeler deflates slightly, wind knocked out of his sails. In fairness to them, the idea that Doctor Blight might be doing something which helped the world does seem a little absurd. At least, it does until you realise that after a string of defeats what she wanted most… Was to see the look on their faces when this happens.

I give it a moment, but it doesn't look like they think Captain Planet is the way to handle the situation. Which is a relief, because I'm not sure-. There's a thump from behind me and I turn away from them as Doctor Blight stumbles back against the wall. "You alright?"

"Better than-" She pants. "-alright. After all these years…" She blinks heavily, and shudders as she takes a deep breath. "I think I'm ready for my ring now, Orange darling."

back

Fool's Canon 28

next

The Pit

Chorh-Gom Prison

The guards here are impressively alert. As Commander Vimes was wont to comment, put together enough soldiers for a game of poker and unless there's an officer right there forget about them staying alert. These Rhinos on the other hand are by all appearances absolute professionals. Those outside are keeping a close watch on all approaches.

Tai Lung.

Those inside tend their equipment and man their stations as diligently as any I've seen. The distance between the Prison and the nearest settlement probably helps, as does the lack of amenities within the Prison itself, and I have caught the occasional muttered conversation. Simple word games, and those manning the ballistae down here in The Pit have scratched noughts and crosses boards into the brickwork.

What do you want?

But, all in all, a highly effective installation. Which did nothing at all to block my ingress via the spirit world. A little surprising, that. They clearly have spiritual adepts of the mystic martial artist sort, even if they don't have what I would regard as a conventional wizard. There were a couple of Daoist charms around the entrance, but they appeared to be purely decorative.

For what end do you strive?

Atop a pillar of rock there stands a Snow Leopard. Around his torso are locked metal plates like a Turtle's shell, holding in place the pins which keep him almost totally paralysed. Strapped to his wrists are heavy manacles, and from those manacles extend chains which descend through a series of iron rings into the abyss surrounding him. Attached to the ends of those chains are great lumps of rock, designed to pull him to the ground. In the eighteen or so years he has been here, the sum total of movements he has been able to make are twitching his tail, opening and closing his eyes and swallowing. Twice a day they feed him with a spoon on the end of a stick and once a day they clean away his excrement.

Silence, spirit.

Here in the spirit world I manifest as a great orange snake. The space around us is a dusty yellow/green, populated by floating rocks and what appear to be temple ruins. The floating island which Tai Lung stands on has the exact same dimensions as the platform upon which his body is imprisoned. No getting entirely away from the place. I half expected to find him in meditative repose. He isn't. He's practicing Leopard Style kata at incredible speed, mind and soul completely focused.

You called me, mortal.

I flow in a wide circle around his island, nearly forming a full circle. In a setting where an action like this might more readily be expected from a Chinese-style Dragon, I manage yet again to subvert genre expectations with my Snake body.

I did no such thing.

You burn with desire. Your soul resonates with the orange light.

I did no such thing.

How can you have come as far as you have, yet remain so ignorant?

I tilt my head slightly to the side as he performs a series of rapid strikes in my direction.

You can only achieve true spiritual balance by confronting and understanding yourself. Your discipline and skill are already unparalleled. These activities you perform with such vigour are a waste of your time.

He leaps across his island then lands, claws digging into the rock to arrest his movement and allow him to swiftly rebound. If you have something to say, spirit, then say it.

A phantasmal orange image appears on his platform. Himself, lunging towards the end of a temple. Before him stand a wizened Tortoise and a Red Panda. Tai Lung's eyes don't shift from his Kata as his younger self batters aside the second before being brought down by the first.

A misstep I will correct when the time is right.

Purely by chance, his motions take him through the shrine at the phantasmal Temple's end, striking the strange dragon-head decoration in the ceiling with a snap kick.

I am more interested in the why.

It was necessary for me to progress.

Orange light shifts, and the Tortoise shakes his head solemnly. The image of Tai Lung looks shocked, stunned at the refusal while the surprised looking Red Panda bows his head.

Were there no alternatives at all?

I am well versed in all forms of Kung Fu practised in China. I could continue to practise my less-favoured styles to master them more thoroughly. I could travel beyond China's borders and study other forms. But I am a practitioner of Leopard style. I attack, relentlessly and furiously. The scroll holds the next logical step in my development as a Kung Fu Master, so that is my objective.

Images flicker around the edges of his island, showing what little I could gather of his assaults on the people of the misleadingly named Valley of Peace. Mostly property damage, nothing worse than a few broken bones.

Were they impeding your progress as well?

No. Those assaults were the product of my anger. I was less.. focused then than I am now.

In my experience, such rage is usually the product of defied assumption.

A series of spinning kicks.

Is that unreasonable? I was raised to be a warrior, then at the last moment they denied me the tool I needed to fulfil that destiny.

They?

I turn my head to look at the previous image.

It seems to me that only the Tortoise is refusing you.

Shifu supported his decision. It amounted to the same thing.

A new image forms. A Red Panda and a much younger Tai Lung, moving slowly in the most basic forms of the martial arts they practised.

Another image, a little further on. The child Tai Lung vigorously attacks a training device, then breaks away and looks to the Red Panda for approval. A nod, and he approaches his teacher, rubbing his head against the older man.

Sweet.

That closeness was why the betrayal hurt so much.

He is why you became a martial artist?

He is.

Sooo... Indirectly, he's the reason why you want the scroll?

Tai Lung stops dead as I slither through the air around his island.

Just thinking out loud, you understand. But it occurs to me that you weren't just doing that as some sort of exercise in zen. 'I exist, therefore I strike'.

Ghost images of a hundred training sessions fill the air.

You did it because he taught you.

Another of Shifu patting the young Tai Lung on the head at the end of a spar.

Clearly, this relationship means a lot to you.

His eyes glow.

Clearly it meant nothing to him!

I pull away, looking at him with curiosity as he tries to regain his control.

Curious… That you should say that. Clearly it means something to you. Otherwise, why the outburst?

Begone!

I extend my head forwards, imposing on his personal space.

If the relationship didn't matter to you, you wouldn't have any reason to steal the scroll.

I will do this as revenge for eighteen years' imprisonment.

So you won't take the scroll? If you only studied martial arts for him, why not spite him by becoming a baker?

I flip over onto my back in the air.

Poor confused little Leopard, trying to get his father's approval by beating his father up and stealing from him.

Raaaagh!

He charges and I recorporeate, appearing at the bottom of the Pit. I'll give him a few hours to think about things, then try again. We've both got plenty of time.

back

Fool's Canon 29

next

Temple

The Valley of Peace

I watch as the Temple's roof explodes, Tai Lung and his former master shooting up into the air to strike at and wrestle with each other. Tai Lung appears to get the edge as they crash back down, making a new hole.

Honestly thought I'd have more time than this.

"All I ever did, I did to make you proud!"

I'll step in… Ah, slither in, if it looks like he's actually about to kill the chap, but even when they were on good terms they mostly related to each other by hitting each other.

"Tell me how proud you are, Shifu!"

I get close enough to see through one of the holes in the wall their fighting has created.

"Tell me!"

His hands are burning with blue fire. Burning oil from one of the braziers.

"TELL MEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

Both sets of knuckles strike his diminutive opponent and send him flying backwards towards the pool at the end of the room. Okay, last… I flick out my tongue. Dumplings? Where..? Oh, the Panda's coming back. Huh. Hadn't really paid him much attention before, but he's gained quite a bit of mental focus from somewhere. Hm. Having Tai Lung sent back to prison would probably cause my task to flip over into 'flat out impossible', but it would be best if I didn't reveal myself.

"I… I have always been proud of you." The Red Panda pushes himself up slightly from where he fell. "From the first-" He pants. "-moment, I've been… Proud of you."

Tai Lung stalks closer. But.. some of the passion that drove him to assault his father figure appears to be waning.

"And it was my pride… That blinded me. I loved you too much to see what you were becoming." Shaking with effort, he turns his head to face Tai Lung. "What I… Was turning you into. I'm s-. I'm sorry."

What do you want?

Tai Lung's eyes dim. For a moment he stands like a statue, motionless and lifeless.

Then he falls to his knees, rocking back and forth slightly as conflicting emotions surge through him.

"I'm sorry, master."

Shifu blinks, taking a few more panting breaths as he tries to work out what just happened. "Ah… What did you say?"

"I'm sorry, master."

There's a quaver in his voice.

"Oh. Okay." Shifu blinks again and nods. Then he frowns, staring up at hulking foster son. "What?"

"I'm sorry, master." Tai Lung drops onto all fours, choking back his tears. "I…" He crawls towards his not-entirely-up-to-speed former mentor. "I thought that was what I was for. I thought that was what you were training me for. Everything… Everything that was worth anything about me, I had because of you… I thought-" Shifu is looking a little nervous now, as the clearly distraught Snow Leopard still towers over him. "-that I needed to validate that by…" He sniffs. "By being the absolute greatest Kung Fu warrior that exists. By becoming the Dragon Warrior. And then… And then when Oogway turned me away…" He collapses onto his chest, hands gripping his head. "I thought I failed you. And you didn't.. care…"

Nervously, Shifu sits up and then cautiously reaches forwards with his right hand to gently pat Tai Lung on the head. "There. There?"

Tai Lung darts forwards, wrapping his arms around his former master's back and pressing his face against the man's chest as he bawls into his robe. Shifu freezes completely still for a moment, then sighs and goes back to patting him. "I have no idea what is happening any longer, but-"

"Waaahahaheeeeeh!"

"-I would rather not have to fight you and I am not having to fight you. So, I will not question it." Another sigh, deeper this time as his immediate need for oxygen is dealt with. "I should have pressed Oogway for answers-"

"Ughuhhuhuhrrr!"

"-then and there, if only to find out where I was going wrong in my teachings. And, now I think I will have to apologise to Master Tigress too, for the way I treated her."

Tai Lung makes an unsettling noise, like he's got an awful lot of snot built up but doesn't want to blow it out over his master's robes.

"Oh, hey!" The Panda stands at the smashed in doors of the temple. For a moment, he beams at them. Then he doubles over, panting hard from his exertion in running all of the way up the mountain. Well, he is a big Panda, with.. proportionally short legs. "You guys made up! Whaw, aheh." He sighs with exaggerated relief. "I thought I was actually going to have to fight you for a while there!"

Shifu taps his son on the head, then gives him a slight push. Tai Lung pulls back a little, rising into a hunched all-fours position as he turns to see who it is.

"'Cause, y'know, even with the Scroll, I…" He holds his right hand up in a request for time while he bends over, gasping for air. "I've only actually been… Studying Kung Fu… For a couple of weeks…"

Tai Lung stares at him in utter bewilderment. "This is the Dragon Warrior."

Shifu closes his eyes again, nodding. "I know."

"I feel-"

"I know."

"-not, less bad-"

"I know."

"-but-."

"I know."

"You guys have made up, right?"

Tai Lung is still too bewildered to respond coherently. Shifu looks him over, then returns his attention to the Panda. "He isn't on a rampage anymore, and he's been in prison for twenty years for his crimes." He takes a deep breath as he attempts to centre himself. "So I suppose we have."

"Oh. Cool." The Panda waddles forwards towards them. "In that case-" He pulls the Dragon Scroll out of his back pocket. "-I guess there's really no harm in letting you read-" Shifu starts frantically shaking his head and waving his arms back and forth across his chest in an emphatic 'no' gesture. "-the scroll after all." He notices Shifu. "What?"

Tai Lung can't bring himself to look at it. He shakes his head. "I-I don't want to read it. I don't deserve-."

The Panda holds the rolled up scroll out in front of him. "Hey, it's cool." Tai Lung starts backing away. "I don't think it's about whether you deserve it or not, really. Because, y'know, heh." He shakes his head. "I sure didn't."

"No. No." He raises his right hand to block his view of it. "I don't want to see it!"

The Panda shakes his head. "I think it's like one of those zen puzzle things? Y'know, the answer's something you can't understand until your head's in exactly the right place."

"Po!"

Oh, that's his name.

"I didn't get it when I first saw it. And, ahh…" He leans forwards, mantling his mouth with his free hand to stage-whisper. "Between you and me, I don't think Master Shifu did either."

"I don't want to see it!"

"It's fine, look." Po unrolls it and holds.. the blank but surprisingly reflective scroll out in front of him. A mirrored surface. Oh, that's clever. And a bit stupid.

Tai Lung puts his left hand over his eyes, waving Po away with his right as he comes closer. "Stay away!"

"Here."

"No!"

"Here." Po knocks his outstretched arm aside and tries waving the scroll in his face.

"No! I don't want it!"

"Here. You gotta-" Po tries pulling the hand over Tai Lung's face off so he can wave the scroll at his eyes. "-see-" Tai tries to turn away, but since he can't see where he's going he trips and falls onto his back. "-what's on-" Tai tries rolling onto his front, a motion Po converts into a confused roll which results in Tai lying on Po's vast stomach with the scroll in his face. "-this!"

Tai Lung blinks, squeezes his eyes closed. Too late. He's already seen it. His eyes come open again, staring madly at the surface.

"See what I mean."

"I DID! ALL THIS! FOR A BLANK..! For a blank scroll…"

"Guess you… Kinda did. The way I see it…"

Okay, I think he's done. So that's all of them. Past me, you need to go and deal with Ambush Bug now. It's been a while, but I seem to remember it going something like this…

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Fool's Canon 30

next

1st April

18:23 GMT -5

The orange beams reconnect to me the moment I reappear.

"Recharge complete." / "Recharge complete."

What.

Future me meets..? No. Deal with pirates and robots first, have existential breakdown later. Rings, what's going-?

Brilliant flashes of light from the other side of my bedroom door. Deal with that first. A destructive bolt annihilates the door as the rings show me the exterior. A series of mobile force field projectors have been set up at the end furthest away from the hangar. Behind them, pirates armed with coilguns are firing down the corridor towards the advancing robots, which return fire with beams of golden energy. Rob's standing next to the pirates, and with electricity crackling around his forearms he shoves one aside and blasts lightning into their mechanical foes. Not a bad choice, the coilguns aren't powerful enough to put the robots down permanently in anything less than overwhelming numbers but they can knock holes in their insulated armour.

"Orange Lantern to Cornwall, cease fire."

"Oran-? Right. Cease fire! Get down!"

Remarkably, the pirates promptly obey.

Ring, railgun, unmakers. Stewart ring, energy pulses. Both, construct armour.

Compliance. / Confirmed.

I step out into the corridor and a strange dislocation comes over me, déjà vu of a possibly literal kind. Orange beams blast for their centres of mass while the railgun tracks them xenomorph style, head shots to kill and leg shots to impair mobility. I could have done this from inside but I know my construct armour is tougher and has better battery life than the mobile force field generators and I should probably make an effort to preserve our apparent allies.

And a moment later, all the remaining robots are down. Eight lie on the floor, though I'm sure that there were more when we started. Can't feel any more in this section. Right. I turn back to the pirate line. "Cornwall, what's going on?"

A few pirates have their guns pointed at me, so as a show of good faith I drop my railgun construct as Rob manoeuvres around the barricades. "The pirates are on our side now and we're all fighting the robots."

A man in a red greatcoat follows him around the barricades, then strides past him towards me. "Captain Tyrone Fortune, at your service."

"Orange Lantern two eight one four."

He seems disquieted by my response. "Do none of the men of this era have rational names?"

"I gave you my rank and the length of my writ. I have to like you before I give you my name. What led you to work for Ambush Bug?"

"He appeared from thin air upon my ship, the Revenge. He said that he wished to commission us to attack a target and that he would pay us well for our efforts. Once I had his sworn word that the target was not an English possession, I accepted. Then this madness began."

"Witchcraft is what it is, Captain!"

His head snaps around, scowling. "That's enough, Mister Harrow. We have one slim chance to see our homes again and I'll not have your bellyaching ruin it!"

Rob looks at Captain Fortune for a moment, then returns his attention to me. "Ambush Bug's still around somewhere. He said something about this pushing our ratings up." He shakes his head. "That bloke's seriously messed up."

"The robots?"

"They can take a beating, but we can put them down. Then they-" He waves his right hand at the wrecks. "-disappear. I think he's fixing them up. The Bio-Ship took a few nasty hits, so Aqualad had Speedy take it back outside."

"The League?"

He shakes his head. "We lost contact after the Bio-Ship left and the zeta tubes aren't working. Icon's still here, but that's about it. If he could move a bit of the Caribbean to the Antarctic we could be anywhere." He glances at Captain Fortune. "Or anywhen."

I reach around to my back and pull the robo-bug off my armour. "Okay. I should be able to prevent him recovering his robots or teleporting. Ring, analyse, and update the jamming system we used on Johnny Sorrow."

"Update complete."

Rob looks sceptical. "And the rest?"

"I was given a plan for that from a version of me from the future."

"Blimey."

"I should be able to stop him, but he's going to have all of my attention. We'll need to attack the hangar."

"If he hasn't got infinite robots anymore, we can do it. Captain?"

Captain Fortune turns back to his men. "Look lively, you sorry swabbies! Get those barricades moving!"

A couple of pirates hand their guns off to their comrades and switch the shield generators to tower shield mode. They're really too heavy and awkward to be used like that in a fight, but they should at least be able to protect the people behind them from a few shots. I raise my left hand to my ear. "Orange Lantern to Aqualad. I've jammed the robots' recall ability and Cornwall and I will be assaulting the hangar."

"Good work. The rest of us will deal with the robots attacking us and then push towards the hangar. Wait for us before beginning your attack."

"Understood." I generate an orange barrier and lead the advance down the corridor. "Whereabouts you from, Captain?"

"Portsmouth. I was granted a letter of marque by his Majesty King Charles the Second." He looks me over. "Now look you, you're the second Englishman we've met here so I want a plain answer. Is this English territory?"

"Charles the Second? Late seventeenth century?"

"The year was sixteen seventy eight, though I take from your question that it no longer is."

"Hey!" Rob looks concerned. "We weren't telling them because we didn't want to change history or anything."

"Bit late for that. In answer to your question, Captain, this is not English territory. Britain conquered all French and Spanish territory in North America before losing most of it to a revolt by the colonials. We're presently in Rhode Island."

"I know of it. And the year?"

"Twenty Eleven. Elizabeth the Second rules Britain and the United States of America are our allies. I say 'our', for reasons which don't really bear going into I'm not actually a British citizen myself."

"Britain?"

Ring? Oh. "England and Scotland will be unified under King Charles the Second's niece, Queen Anne. The resulting state will be called Great Britain."

"Niece?" He frowns. "But Prince James is Catholic."

"And that's what seems odd to you about what I just said?"

"It has a beatitude of being unfamiliar in a familiar way. To be frank, the rest is a bit much."

"Fair enough. Charles had the sense to realise that his heirs being Catholic was a bit much for the country. He made sure his nieces were raised Anglican. I hope you'll be pleased to know that Christian on Christian religious wars are a thing of the past."

"I lived through Cromwell and the Restoration. I am well glad of it." He raises his coilgun as I destroy a patrolling robot. "I don't suppose that I could prevail upon you to permit us the continued use of these arquebuses once this affair is over, could I?"

"Not a chance."

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Fool's Canon 31

next

1st April

18:30 GMT -5

Rob looks at me across the energy weapon lit corridor. "You think he knows you're back?"

The fusillade doesn't cut out as we hear the sound of heavy metal feet charging down the hallway.

I generate a construct railgun and shield. "Could be."

I stick my construct out of cover for an instant and a shining beam of something immediately blasts it apart. About fifteen metres away is the lift shaft down to the hangar. Between it and us are eight robot warriors (now sporting force field barriers on their arms) and something which I really hope isn't an adult Mister Mind in a Skeets body. With everything that's been going on I hope I can be forgiven for not spotting the pirate-robot-Ambush Bug link to 52, but Skeets being on an Earth with no Booster Gold was a bit of a clue. I can only detect where it is by the area the rings won't scan. They have no idea at all what it's shooting and the one time I burrowed enough constructs through the walls on either side of the corridor to tag it, I couldn't affect its epidermis quickly enough to noticeably impair it. Its armour was made of Waverider's skin, wasn't it? The Guardians appear to have a bit of a thing about time travel. No help from the Stewart ring and I'm not quite ready to cut loose with the qwa matter just yet.

I like this planet.

"I'll draw its fire. Get those robots down."

"Right. Captain, shields first."

I shoot up to the top of the corridor. Thiiis is going to suck.

Head facing towards the robot and feet back to present the narrowest possible profile, I begin stabbing forwards with crumbler constructs. Skeets can manage three shots a half second, then needs a half second to recharge. I can fire faster, but not with enough power for him to consider it a threat. Everything around me slows as my beams intersect with his and I manually trigger the crumbler effects. His beams are mildly destabilised after one intersection. Two and they cease to exist. They come from the smaller gold lumps floating around his main chassis. I can judge the angle from how the smaller dots in the rear line up with the larger ones, but my constructs need to already be moving when he fires.

He's fired three volleys before the mobile shields are in place, their owners immediately dropping down on their chests to allow their comrades clear shots. As the first of the combat robots start taking coilgun fire Skeets adds a tenth of a second delay to his shot that I wasn't expecting. A fire extinguisher flies through the air as I realise that my filaments are out of position and I can't get-

NRUGUGHEH

The air shoots from my lungs as I wake up, trying to catch a breath and I can't! The night sky is all around and OH SHIT THAT'S THE EARTH! I see the Earth and it's a long way away and I can't breathe!

NOYOUDON'T

-my crumbler filaments back into position fast enough to prevent myself being hit. Uuh. Rings, calculate difference between that shot and the previous.

Lightning blasts from Rob's arms once more, arcing through the water spilled by the holed extinguisher to bypass the robots' barriers. The ones closest to the pirates' position begin to smoke and shudder.

Analysis available.

The shields covering one robot blink out and the pirates concentrate their fire on its chest. The combined force of the impacts knocks it back into its fellows where it slumps and doesn't rise. Skeets switches to irregular fire as I create crumbler barriers. Five layers covering the arc between me and him and this is going to cane my power reserves if we can't win here quickly. Fire from the robots' arm weapons finally downs a shield barricade, the pirates behind it throwing themselves aside to evade the incoming fire. I see hits to arms, legs and upper chest as they aren't quite fast enough. Skeets' next shot passes through the first and second barrier layers but the next three trigger as intended and the attack fizzles out. Then he switches back to full speed firing to try overwhelming it.

The water on the floor freezes, momentarily robbing the robots of friction. As several start to slip, Rob gestures and it reliquefies, flowing upwards and freezing around their joints. Another shield barricade is brought into position and activated as I create another barrier layer, trying to get closer to Skeets. I've got less time to intercept but the barriers can detect whatever weird alteration that beam makes to them, allowing me to judge the required position with complete-.

Skeets cuts his repulsor and drops down the lift shaft, just as the last of the robots fall.

Uh.

Time accelerates back to normal as Rob waves the water aside and the pirates undeploy the barriers once more.

"By God! What was that thing?"

I drop back down, towards the wounded pirates. No fatalities, I note. "I'm not sure, Captain."

Rob frowns at me. "Thought it hit you."

"It did. For a moment I was back to when I first arrived in this reality. Without the ring." Filaments slide over the burns on the bodies of the wounded, mending flesh and repairing clothing. "Orange Lantern to Aqualad, we're about ready here. Slight problem, he's got some sort of drone weapon. Its weapon appears able to bypass my defensive constructs."

"Do you believe it is safe to proceed?"

"I'm pretty sure that I'm preventing him from summoning more reinforcements… But if we don't do something, he can sit in the hangar with it indefinitely." I think for a moment. My… What I hope to be my future self -because recruiting those people would be ridiculous and awesome- didn't mention Skeets being here, which is kind of a big oversight. On the other hand, the other aspects of his thoughts on the matter still seem reasonably sensible. "I think I.. might still be able to talk him down. But it'll require my full attention if I have to dodge the drone as well."

Rob and a couple of the pirates are attaching ropes to the lift shaft. They'll be a second wave if the Atlanteans can't down our attackers and I can't talk Doctor Schwab out of it.

"Make the attempt. We will not be able to guarantee his survival if we are forced to attack at full power."

"I'll keep transmitting. Transitioning now."

Doctor Schwab floats over the hangar pool, sitting in what looks a lot like one of Doctor Ivo Robotnik's flying pods. Some robots have taken defensive positions around the entrances while others are clamped to the walls to make sure they have clear shots. Skeets floats just behind his new master. Prepare to dodge…

Doctor Schwab scowls… I think. It looks like he's supposed to be scowling, the mask makes it hard to tell. "You again. What's it take to get rid of you, huh?"

"I'm not entirely clear why you're so set on doing that."

"Because you're an SI. Have you any idea how much you mess up the story just by being here? It's hard enough to keep these things on the air as it is, and you don't even want to ask about the merchandising." He leans forwards. "I already saw one series fall into the abyss. I'm not about to let that happen again."

"So why did you bring pirates-"

"Privateers!"

"-and robots here? Please tell me you don't have Mister Mind in there."

"Hah! You admit it!"

"Admit what?"

"The only way you could know how they're linked is if you read it!"

"How do you know then?"

"I was there. Obviously. Anyway, I don't know exactly how much damage you've done, but privateers fighting robots should be enough of a draw that I get time to get rid of you permanently."

"Now, hold on a moment. How can you be sure I've done any damage at all?"

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Fool's Canon 32

next

1st April

18:34 GMT -5

"Polling data."

I raise my eyebrows. "Polling data?"

"Market analysis. People keep buying Superman comics, Batman comics… Heck, they've been buying them for seventy years. Name one comic about socioeconomics."

"Spice and Wolf."

I think he's frowning. "Name. Two. Or name one that's seventy years old!"

"Okay… I can't."

"War and Peace is fine, but this just isn't the War and Peace universe."

"No, it's Universe Sixteen."

"Right, Young Justice. You gotta keep the ratings up, gotta move the merch, or you get cancelled. What people like is what they spend money on."

"And you think my being here is creating a genre shift that is going to drive people away?"

"Obviously. If Reed Richards isn't useless then you end up with a setting people can't relate to. One that doesn't look like what they see out of the window."

"Watchmen sold perfectly well, and that has electric cars everywhere, Nixon serving three terms-."

"And it was a limited run thing!"

"And a film-."

"And the prequel series and now I hear they're doing a TV series! Now you wanna tell me how many series Batman's had since Watchmen got published?"

Um. Animated, Brave and the Bold, The Batman, Beware… "Four?"

"You wish. People like what they like. And you're a threat to that. Skeets?" The robot floats up a little.

"Wait a second. Wait a second. You think I'm an SI right? The author embodied in the story?"

"Yah huh."

"But if I die, why would the author carry on writing it? I mean, if I'm their window on this world…"

"Nice try, but this universe will just fold back into the real Young Justice. We probably won't even remember you ever happened by the time season two comes around."

Oh dear. "But the competition in the Superhero comic market is so great that this might well get cancelled anyway. And if that happens, aside from the occasional reality jumping thing no one will hear from us again."

His arms shoot up. "I know that! But what can I do?! I have to go for the route that gives us the best chance!"

"Oh, come on! Do you know how meta you made this episode? Self indulgent cleverness turns people off like nothing else."

"Only from your point of view. From everyone else's, they got a quick lesson on the Antarctic's environment and an awesome fight with robots and pirates! And that Grayven guy, for the niche crossover appeal."

Who? No, never mind. "But maybe a different approach would work better."

"Like what?"

"You know… Probably better than I do, how many different superhero comics there are. Lots, right?" He nods. "Okay then. Why should people buy this one over the others?"

"Greg Weisman?"

I frown. "The Street Sharks guy?"

"Don't let him hear you say that."

"But… You think… The me who's.. outside.. is writing this. So even if Greg Weisman is the original writer, that doesn't have any impact on the quality of.. what we're experiencing now. Right?"

I think I'm getting a bit out of my depth now.

"It's his setting. He's got a series bible, it's got good fundamentals. The setting's coherent. Lotsa stories start in worse places."

"Okay, but… Even if it's a good example of the superhero genre, it's inevitably going to be retreading a lot of ground, right?"

"I.. guess..?"

"So what's unique about it? See, what I'm thinking… What if all the things I'm doing are what make it stand out? I mean, on a newsagent shelf there are going to be a dozen comics about a superhero punching someone in the face. How many uplift comics are there?"

"None! They wouldn't sell!"

"Internet. I know there's never going to be the same size of market for things like that, but it's possible to have perfectly successful niche players that just run and run. Even if we never make this continuity equal Earth One-"

"Ahhhbout that-."

"-if we put ourselves in a position no one wants to compete with, that will do more to assure our survival than being one of a crowd. There should be at least enough people interested to support one uplift superhero story. One that tries to be both realistic about the consequences of superheroic actions without being all grimdark all the time. Where characters can make lasting changes to the setting for the better, and have them stick. In a setting only written in by one author, that can happen! And it can attract a loyal enough audience to keep it going!"

"You got Ted Kord and those other guys working on that, right?"

"Yes?"

"Skeets."

Transition!

I'm on the other side of the room as the little robot's beams send chunks of floor… Somewhere. "What the hell was that for?"

The pod thing swivels around. "It's a good idea, but there's no way DC'll okay something like that with characters they don't own! You're still an SI so you've still gotta go!"

"How do you know I'm an SI!? How do you-" Transition. "-know I don't have media awareness like you do?! Have you-" Transition. "-checked every comic in every setting DC owns!?"

"Of course not! That's what the wiki's for."

Transition. "But that only works for named characters!"

"Skeets, knock it off for a second." The robot stops, and Ambush Bug's pod floats in my direction as I head for the door to the kitchen. "What d'ya mean by that?"

"What if I'm a minor character who got promoted?"

"How d'you mean?"

"How many Orange Lantern Corps characters can most fans name? Larfleeze, Sayd, Glomulus, maybe Blume… Then it's that butler guy…" I shrug. "But in theory anyone can get a power ring. What if rather than being an SI, I'm a reference to an old DC property. Greg Weisman.. or one of the artists read something years ago and thought 'hey, why don't I put that guy in it'? If that's what happened, then I'm fully owned by DC." I land and spread my arms out. "I mean, it wouldn't exactly be out of character. Who heard of Queen Bee or Sportsmaster or.. Nylor flipping Truggs before this?"

"I…" Ambush Bug looks thoughtful, his right hand going to his mouth. "So are you saying you are a minor character?"

"How would I know? For all I know, we're having this conversation to establish that social battles can work for final showdowns just as well as violent battles. But whatever I am, this is my home. I don't want it to stop existing, but I'm not prepared to abandon everything I've wanted to do to make it better. That would be denying my heroic identity."

He vanishes from the pod and appears next to me. "I see where you're coming from… But the only way to know for sure…" I activate the bug and pull open the kitchen door. He looks into the room I just revealed. "Oh no."

It's not the kitchen. Videos, DVDs, film reels and out of date radios litter the various available surfaces. But more than anything else, there are comics. Stacks, piles, drifts of them, reaching up to the heavens and off into infinity. Everything DC ever produced, every published work and unpublished author's note.

Ambush Bug shrinks back from it. "You can't… Ask me…"

"It's the only way to know for sure. You have to check.. everything. Because if I'm in there at all, I'm canon. And if I'm canon, then I'm authorised. And if I'm authorised, this deviation from the normal tropes has been authorised by DC Editorial. And if you go against that… Well, who knows?"

"I'm too pretty to go unpublished for years again!"

I look into the room again. "Then you know what you have to do."

He stares at the monstrous piles of comics. Then he reaches into his belt and pulls out a remote control. One click and the pod, Skeets and the other robots all vanish. "If I gotta, then I gotta."

He takes a deep breath, then marches into the comic cave and closes the door behind him.

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Fool's Canon 33

next

1st April

18:39 GMT -5

I deactivate the bug, wait for a moment-

"Recognised, Superman, zero one."

-and then open the door again. Just a kitchen. Just a kitchen. Thank goodness.

"Recognised, Wonder Woman, zero three."

"Orange Lantern to everyone. He's gone." I take a deep breath, then turn away and let the ring float me down the steps.

Mister Kent's moved to the middle of the hangar, eyes glowing as he searches for targets. Diana -resplendent in the gold and red plate armour Io and Ted made for her- gives the hangar a quick glance and then flies towards me.

"Orange Lantern, what happened?"

"Pirates, robots, Ambush Bug… And a whole lot of really weird stuff that I'm probably going to ask to leave out of the official report." I sigh. "Is now a good time to bring up the idea of automated defences again?"

"Are you still under attack?"

Ring, scan. Nothing out of the ordinary. "Kaldur, Rob? Icon? Pirates and robots?"

"Gone, mate. They just disappeared."

"The mountain's systems detect no further presence."

The water in the hangar pool surges as it lifts the Atlanteans onto the Bio-Ship landing platform. No targets in sight, Mister Kent lowers himself to consult Kaldur.

"Sounds like we're safe, sir. Though I may have had my view of reality permanently altered." Her fists.. unclench. Huh, hadn't noticed that. "Sorry we were out of contact, sir, but I understand that Doctor Schwab did something to the mountain."

She nods, then raises her right hand to her ear. "Wonder Woman to League. Stand down. Situation normal."

Oh dear. "Rob, did the coilguns go with the pirates or stay here?"

"Still got 'em here. Um, could you give me a hand putting them back in the armoury?"

"Sure, just…" Oh, hang on. "Look, it's past eleven UK time. Why don't you just head home? Let the rest of us handle cleaning up."

"Come on mate, I'm not going to be able to sleep after this."

"Alright. Ah, just do a quick visual inspection… See if any fabric or blood from the pirates who were hit got left behind. I'll handle the guns."

"On it. Thanks."

Diana waits for a moment to make sure that my conversation with Rob is over. "I read your report on your encounter with Doctor Schwab in Antarctica. I'm not sure why finding out that other versions of you exist would be so disturbing. You got on surprisingly well with your Blue Lantern alter ego, and he was a criminal."

"Meeting them would have been fine." I generate a couple of construct armchairs and deposit myself in the closest. "Living parts of their lives as if I was them is a bit different. I mean… You've met your Dane of Elysium a few times but you've never lived as him. And you certainly never lived as the vampire version of you you met that one time."

She sits down opposite me, nodding supportively. "Okay. What exactly was it that upset you so much?"

"I come from… For the sake of this conversation, let's call it Earth Prime. I checked, there isn't a version of me here. No Me Sixteen. I assumed that meant that I wouldn't have doppelgängers, that whatever it is that causes there to be lots of versions of Wonder Woman or Superman or.. whoever, didn't apply to me. That my point of origin was outside that. But they all remember coming from the same place I did. Exactly the same."

"If they were real."

"What I saw Blue Lantern doing was consistent with how he behaved when I met him, and.. with how I'd behave. And the time I spent in his head-. No, as him… It's possible, but I've got no reason to assume that the others were any different." I shrug. "So maybe we're all copies of an original? I can't know for sure unless I visit… Home."

"You don't talk about your family much."

"They're not really relevant to what I'm doing here. And since I can't communicate with them…" But it wouldn't do for her to think I was avoiding the subject. I take a holoprojector out of subspace and have the ring take images from my memories. "Dad, Mum-" I point them out in turn. "-my sister Karen, sister's boyfriend Peter, Aunty Sallie and Uncle Richard, Uncle Simon… He doesn't actually have that moustache anymore, that's just how he looked when I was younger. The Cats: Bubbles and Magic. My grandparents." My grandparents died a few years ago, but I show them as they were… As I think they were when I was eighteen. "So, okay, maybe I'm a copy. That's fine, everything I've done since I got here is all me and all that jazz. Second time Doctor Schwab bugged me I ended up in-" Oh, irony of ironies. "-a setting I recognise from a work of fiction. I think I was.. a future version of me."

"From what little I understand about the way the Bleed works, there may well be parallel universes that resemble works of fiction." I have the ring seize control of my facial muscles. "Maybe you saw yourself visiting them in the future."

"Yes, but a combination of that and Doctor Schwab referring to this setti-. This universe as fictional and interacting physically with things I believed to be fictional and... The fact I had to get into his metaphorical head to convince him to leave left me a bit discomported."

"He just left?"

"He believed that I risked lowering the series' ratings and so causing cancellation. Once I convinced him that the setting could distinguish itself from other superhero works by embracing my ideas-" Her eyes narrow slightly but her lie sense doesn't go off. "-he was worried that the company which owns this work couldn't profit from it because I'm creator-owned. I told him that he'd risk going against editorial policy unless he checked, so… I opened a door and there was a big pile of comics… And he'll have to read them all to check I'm not a promoted background character." Her mouth is hanging open slightly. I look up at the cavern roof. "Does this mean I beat Batman for craziest villain now?"

"If he was genuinely trying to save the entire universe from being cancelled then I'm not certain that he is a villain. Where is he now?"

"No idea, and hopefully he'll stay there for a long time." I get up. "We also need to check historical records for a privateer named Captain Tyrone Fortune to make sure he got back to his own era alright.. Assuming he wasn't a fictional character as well. Oh, and the pod at STAR Labs."

"The Atom's been working on it since we lost contact with you." She rises from her seat and I remove the constructs. Mister Kent appears to have finished speaking to Kaldur and they are walking our way. "Despite the difficulty you appear to have handled yourselves well."

I nod. "How are you finding the armour?"

She moves her right arm… A little awkwardly, actually. "It is a little more confining than I'm used to. I want to give it a fair-" She's not looking directly at me. Diana's terrible at deceit. "-try before I-" Ring? "-give my final-."

"What happened to your arms?" Under the golden metal covering her limbs are a series of nasty looking burns and.. scalding injuries, like she wrestled someone who was made of fire.

"It will heal quickly. And it is a useful reminder that I am not invulnerable."

"Did you wrestle an Elemental or something?"

"No." She turns her head back towards me. "But it seems that you were right about Richard Swift."

back

Fool's Canon 34

next

1st April

20:07 GMT -5

"Who?"

Neither Holly nor Karon appear to recognise the name. I turn my head to the right to see if Jade knows it, but she just shakes her head.

"Richard Swift. The Shade?" Still nothing. "He took over from Jack Knight -Starman- as superhero-in-residence of Opal City in Maryland… Um, about twenty years ago?"

Holly makes a little shrug, her lips pursed. "So why'd it matter that he was strong enough to hurt Wonder Woman?"

Jade shifts position a little, leaning into the settee's side cushion. "Because Wonder Woman's one of the toughest people on the planet."

"I've seen her on TV. She uses those bracelet things to block bullets. If she's so tough, why doesn't she just ignore them like Superman does?"

"A few reasons. Firstly, if she didn't they might go anywhere. There have been a few incidents where bullets deflecting off Superman have hit and injured people."

Karon blinks in surprise. "Really?"

I nod. "Doesn't get a lot of news coverage, apart from one time early on in his career when someone sued him over it, but yes. He doesn't have super tough skin, he has a sort of skin tight biological force field, so if you hit it from the right angle it doesn't necessarily remove much momentum from the bullet. Secondly-."

"You mean-." Jade looks at me in disbelief. "-Wonder Woman can judge bullet trajectories fast enough to deflect them precisely?"

"Well… She has been doing this for seventy years. And the bracers are enchanted. But, yes, most of the time. Um, anyway, the other reason is because you never know when someone's going to fire something at you that actually can hurt you. Someone uses something that doesn't look threatening-" I turn my head to look directly at Jade. "-like poisoned lipstick-" She rolls her eyes. "-and you can end up looking like a right idiot."

"You-?" Holly smiles slightly as she waves her right forefinger at us. "You kissed him.. when you had poison lipstick on?"

I nod at her. "It was so romantic."

Jade nods, sitting up then leaning into my side. "Then he nearly choked me to death."

I smile affectionately at her. "Oh, you totally had that coming."

"Aaaand now it's just like Christmas at my parents' house." Jade and I both look at Karon in horror. "Wha-?" She blinks, then rolls her eyes. "I was joking, guys. Jeez. My parents never get that bad."

"And.. I'm.. glad to hear it."

"They just do all this weird passive-aggressive stuff. Eh." There's a moment of silence. "Ah, Wonder Woman blocking bullets?"

"Um, yes. Anyway, Wonder Woman is very resilient."

Holly leans forwards slightly. "If they're both superheroes, why'd they fight?"

"Superheroes fight each other in training all the time. Wonder Woman usually works out with Superman or Big Barda-."

Holly snorts in surprise. "There's a guy who picked 'Big Barda' as his superhero name?"

"Her name's Barda and she's just over seven feet tall."

"Okay, Big Barda it is."

"The Shade used to be a thief. He fought the Justice Society on a number of occasions. His particular ability… He had a cane which appeared to grant him the ability to manipulate shadows, including the ability to make them have actual weight behind them and to teleport between them. What they didn't know was that he was sandbagging them. He was actually much more powerful than he pretended to be. He doesn't need a cane at all, he can control shadows at will and he can control a far greater mass of them than he ever did against the Justice Society."

Jade frowns. "Why did he do that?"

"He didn't need the money. He's about a hundred and eighty years old and.. when he was younger, something happened to turn him into some sort of eldritch shadow creature. He competed against the Justice Society because he found it entertaining, but he realised that if he fought them at full power he'd kill them and his fun would end. So he didn't. He faked weaknesses he didn't really have and when they won, he dipped his hat and let them." I lean back slightly. "I told Diana that last year, when this nutter called Nylor Truggs attacked a group of us with a thing called an 'Enemy of All' and I called in the Shade to get rid of it. She didn't quite believe me, but today she had to go to Opal for something and decided to check."

Holly looks incredulous. "She asked him to try to hurt her?"

"She asked for a display of his real power. Things.. escalated. See, Diana's.. a lovely woman, but when she was younger she had quite a temper on her, and she was a lot more prideful than she is now. Knowing that he was basically taking the piss out of her younger self.. sort of… Caused her to have a relapse. Apparently he just found the whole thing rather funny."

"She gunna be alright?"

"Oh yes, she'll be fine in a few days. Diana heals very quickly from mundane injuries, however they were caused."

"So, ah…" Karon nods at the television playing silently in the background. "What's with her new look?"

"Diana's normal armour was made by Hephaestus. And you may have noticed, but it's basically a swimming costume."

Holly smirks. "You bet I noticed."

"Right, well, we can't equal Hephaestus' work quite yet, but Io, Ted Kord and this Atlantean guy I know are working on enchanted armour that will actually cover her everywhere. There's even a helmet. The fact it covers up the burns on her arms is just a nice bonus."

Holly looks up at the ceiling. "So… Wonder Woman."

"What about her?" Holly's grinning and her eyebrows are raised. Karon glances at her then rolls her eyes. Oh. "Diana grew up in a homonormative society but I have no idea whether she prefers men, women, neither or both. To the best of my knowledge and the knowledge of those Amazons I've asked, she's never been in a serious romantic relationship with anyone."

"Oh." She nods. "That explains it."

"Explains what?" Jade lets out a quiet snort and Karon giggles.

"You holding out for Wonder Woman?"

"O-? No." I shake my head. "No, that… N-. No. I mean, she's my best friend's mother." Sniggers all around. "And even if this is a work of fiction, it's not that kind of work of fiction. Honestly, I don't think of her in that sort of way."

"So, um…" Karon moves her right hand in a circle. "What happened to them? The.. Pony princess and the pyromaniac and the Leopard guy?"

"I don't really know. I assume that Nightmare Moon joined the Orange Lantern Corps. Or.. will in the future. If it actually was a vision of the future and not just something… Else. I stopped being aware of what was happening to Azula just after she started shouting at me. Him. The Leopard, I don't know."

Jade shifts position so that she's kneeling on the settee, looking down at me. "And the beautiful supervillainess you rehabilitated? What happened to her?"

Ah, heck. It's a beautiful feed line, but she's still effectively on probation. On the other hand, so is Talia and Batman's marrying her. "Well, that depends." I lean forwards slightly and purse my lips. "On what she wants to happen to her."

She nods, smiles, then sits back down. "Good to know."

…

Dang.

back

NEXT CHAPTER

Triumph of the Will

BACK

Triumph of the Will 1

next

Triumph of the Will

3rd April

09:26 GMT -5

"Ooookaaaay." Ted taps a couple of buttons on his tablet and then looks up at the… Ah, call it what it is, the stage. "Try the legs?"

Diana leans forwards, stretching her left leg straight backwards as she bends her right at the knee, her hands resting on her right thigh. She bends it a little further, then tries twisting her torso left and then right. Then she stands and bends her right leg behind her, taking hold of her right foot with her right hand.

Io looks her over. "It seems well to me, Princess. How is it to you?"

Diana lowers her right foot to the ground, then spreads her legs apart before bending to her left. "Constricting."

Io's face falls. "Which part, Princess? We can-."

"No, Io, the armor is perfect. It's simply that my normal Wonder Woman armor doesn't cover quite so much. I have become accustomed to the flow of the air across my arms and legs."

Ted starts walking in a circle around her while the motion sensors capture everything for later review. We developed this set up to try and make the computer in my power armour a bit quicker on the uptake, but Ted thought it could help with arcane armour as well. "We've only been talking about the enchantments we could put on it in the theoretical so far. Sephtian could probably come up with.. something if it's a problem for you. Of course… We can only make the matrix so complicated, you know? Might end up…" Head down again, he taps a few more buttons. "We could make a bunch of different versions if you can't decide."

Diana twists and throws a punch to her right, testing how far the armour can accommodate her. "Can you make me faster than a speeding bullet?"

"Top speed in the air, no problem. I mean, you'll want a helmet with a-" He waggles the tablet at his jaw. "-mouthpiece…" He turns to Io. "Io, you don't happen to have a super tough glass or something you haven't told me about, have you?"

"Would aluminium oxynitride not work just as well?"

"For the armor? Sure, but it's a synthetic material so-."

She nods. "It would interfere with the enchantments."

"Yeah." He taps his tablet again. "Maybe. We might be able to persuade the spells to just ignore it…"

Diana stands again and looks down at Io. "How were you able to make this so quickly without Paul's help?"

"The foundries here are far more advanced than those on Themyscira, Princess. Achieving an alloy that is nearly perfect for the transmutation is apparently a simple matter."

"I wouldn't say simple, but-" Ted shrugs. "-yeah. Automating the process of making the rings for the chain was harder. We don't usually have any use for armatures that small."

"That is why the armor I made for the guards on Themyscira makes no use of chain. Without the knowledge of enchanting Sephtian shared it would have taken until the end of the universe for me to transmute all of the links that would require."

"How do you feel about the design?" Ted points to her with his tablet. "We could stick some stars on the skirt if you start missing them."

"No, that won't be necessary." She rises slightly into the air, then drifts down from the stage. "The design is perfect. The armor is beautiful." Io beams, blushing slightly. Ted grins. "I am almost afraid to be struck while wearing it in case it becomes damaged."

Ted nods. "Just because you can take the hits, doesn't mean you have to."

"Who else do you plan to make such armor for?"

"Small wrinkle there."

Ted pulls a face. "Y-eah."

Diana looks at me. "What is it?"

"Senator Clyemne's been agitating again. Currently, we're not supposed to manufacture suits for any military organisation, which.. because Themyscira doesn't separate the military guards from police guards, includes the police."

"She doesn't have the authority to order that."

"It's covered by existing laws about supplying military equipment. We can make it for the Justice League, or other Amazons… Which means we can make some for Kon, Donna or me… Unless Lyta Trevor-Hall feels like coming out of retirement."

"That seems unlikely."

"And then we run into a bit of a roadblock. Themyscira doesn't trade with the outside world, so we can't pay them for the right to sell it. Or, we can, but they've got no use for the money. Giving potentially hostile countries better armour does technically weaken Themyscira's defence… This isn't something where I can just persuade my fellow citizens not to demand that I stop, this is… They'd have to actively change the law to make this possible. And I'm not that popular yet."

"Do you want me to try speaking on your behalf?"

I shake my head. "No, thank you."

Ted raises his right hand. "I wouldn't mind, actually. Oh, I'm not-" He turns his head to me. "-complaining, or anything. Kord Tech's share price doubled within a day of us announcing the weather control drones and our order book is packed, so this whole thing hasn't been a drain on our assets. But I'd like to know this is going to get used by more than a handful of people. Otherwise, I just-" He shrugs. "-feel like I'm kinda wasting my time."

"But it's not just this. I want Amazons to embrace the best of the modern world. Otherwise, we're going to have to fight them on every little thing. I mean, we're not even allowed to mass produce the purple healing ray. It's a gun that shoots life."

"A Nazi gun that shoots life."

"Also." I turn to Diana. "Bit annoyed you didn't tell me about that thing earlier."

Io walks around to join us as Diana shakes her head. "I didn't know that she had a working version in her workshop. Otherwise, I would have brought it to America myself."

"Okay, that.. makes sense." I return my attention to Ted. "And who knows what else they've got squirreled away where no one will ever hear about it."

"Princess? We have a purple healing ray here if you wish to use it on your arms."

Diana shakes her head. "Thank you, Io, but that will not be necessary. The wounds will be gone by tomorrow, and until then they serve as a useful reminder that I am not invulnerable. Paul: how do you plan on convincing our countrywomen to change the habits of three thousand years?"

"Wait until next September? Once the births start I don't think it'll be all that hard to convince people that I'm on the right track. Until then, I still think that increasing familiarity is the way to go. We need more arcane smiths anyway."

Io nods. "I have had three present themselves to me for training, though it will be months before they are ready."

I nod. "But… Then they'd either have to come here or we'd have to set up a modern foundry on Themyscira annnd I know that's a non-starter. We could trade suits to the guard in exchange for letting us sell some here. That just requires me to convince Philippus, and I should be able to do that."

Io looks thoughtful. "Perhaps if we focused more on the mithril type instead? The weight of orichalcum might be more difficult for those who do not share the Princess' strength and stamina. The guard does not use it and the metal is generally considered inferior for weaponry."

"Maybe some of your senators could visit us here?" Ted looks around the workshop. "We do sometimes show politicians around when we're competing for major orders. Io got pretty excited when she saw what we'd be working with-."

"Theodore!" Io glares at him indignantly.

"You did. And Paul.. said most Amazons have tried just about every profession sometime. Maybe it'll work for them?"

Diana nods in approval. "I am glad that you have it so well in hand."

back

Triumph of the Will 2

next

5th April

11:18 GMT -6

The traitor lies at bay in a back alley in Birmingham, blood leaking through his shirt from where one of the government agents in pursuit of him managed to shoot him. Most wounds should have stopped bleeding by now, the blood vessels in the immediate vicinity having lost pressure and closed up. The fact that it hasn't is a very bad sign. He's propped himself up against a wall, unfamiliar gun in hand as he alternates between trying to check his injuries -of which the bullet wounds to his abdomen are only the worst- and keeping an eye on his surroundings. As I watch, he slumps a little, then blinks heavily, rapidly shaking his head. Trying to keep himself awake. Lack of sleep or lack of blood? Most likely both.

Dozy prat.

I turn to Jean. "Medical ready?"

"Of course, Mister Grayven. We are fully prepared."

"Then bring him through."

"Certainly." She tilts her head forwards slightly, horns faintly glowing. On the other side of the hush tube our traitor starts as he finds himself being lifted up and dragged through the air into what appears to be empty space. Fully alert, he tries bringing his gun to bear as he comes through.

I snatch it from him as Jean deposits him on a gurney. "Give me that."

"Fookin-!" It takes a moment for him to recognise me, then he slumps slightly.

"Doctor Robbins, shut it-" The tube disappears. "-down. Thank you. Right, you." I stab my right forefinger at the injured man. "Firstly, stop swearing in front of my daughter. Secondly, what the heck did you think you were playing at?"

"Fook off. I've been shot."

"I can't imagine why that happened."

"You were the one who gave me those fookin' fiyals. What'd'ja think I was gonna do with 'em?"

"I gave them to you because I wanted to demonstrate the nature of the people you work for. I thought you'd use your position to gather more information. Gather allies. Plan, like I know they tried to train you to. I didn't expect you to try killing them all off yourself one by one. You-" I poke at him, finger stopping just above the wound. "-are a Muppet."

Chester Black flops back onto the gurney, closing his eyes. "Do yeh just wanneh run your mouth fer a bit before I peg it, or were you actually plannin' on fixin' this?"

"Small problem there, Chester." I display my fists. "I don't have access to an orange power ring any longer."

His eyes open a crack. "You got a yellow one."

"Yes, but for reasons which I presume stem from overfamiliarity you don't actually fear death. I don't fear you dying." I relax my mind for a moment, letting my ring detect local ambient fear. There we go. A sheet of pale yellow light passes over him and the flow of blood slows and then halts. "There. Now at least you won't bleed to death."

"Ah, come on mate. At least give me some fookin' morphine or somethin'. Ah can't focus well enough t'block the pain out."

"Alright. Lower your barrier. Jean, help him out."

Chester grunts and Jean's horns glow once more. "Could werk on yer bedside manneh there, love."

"Mister Black, I have no desire to touch your brain any more than I absolutely have to." Two G-Prometheans come forwards and take hold of either side of the gurney, ready to wheel him into the actual medical section of Challenger Mountain.

"Hate to love you and leave you, Chester, but you do rather need surgery and I have an appointment to get to. Don't make a nuisance of yourself while I'm gone."

"Ahright, jus-."

"And just to make sure, I'll be leaving you in Vera's capable hands."

"Oh, fook me. Haven't I suffered enough?"

"I heard that, you dirty little toe rag." Vera pointedly steps into his field of vision and flicks him on the forehead with her right forefinger.

"Ow!"

"Had me worried sick, you did, just disappearin' like that."

"Miss Black did remain on the inside to gather intelligence. This is because she's not a nitwit. And stop swearing, you'll give Lynne bad habits. Miss Black, he's all yours. Doctor Robbins?" A new hush tube opens in front of me and I hold out my right hand. "Poppet?" Clearly not quite sure what to make of Chester, she gives his gurney a wide berth as she walks over to me and takes hold of my hand. Then we walk through the tube.

5th April

12:21 GMT -5

A few Metropolians step urgently away from us as we appear from thin air, but after a few seconds they either recognise me, or spot that if I didn't attack immediately that I'm probably not going to and carry on about their business. Sinestro, call Lex. Directly, please. And identify me this time.

As you wish, Corpsman.

My first meeting with my compatriots in the Light. Obviously, most of us won't be meeting in person. Lex has an ultra-secure communication room in one of his tower's sub basements and as the two legitimate members of the group there's really no reason for me not to visit him near-openly. Plus, he's the one I respect the most. That should help me to remain civil with the rest.

"Lex here."

"Afternoon Lex. Does the LexCorp Metropolis building have a crèche?"

"Yes. Why do you ask?"

"I need to deposit my daughter there while we have our meeting. I could just leave her in my mountain, but she needs to spend time with children her own age."

For a moment, he's completely silent. I fondly hope that I just gobsmacked him. I haven't been hiding in Challenger Mountain, but at the same time I very much doubt that he's been able to arrange for someone to spy on me. Yet, anyway.

"That won't be a problem. I'll have Mercy keep an eye on her for you."

"Cheers. See you in a moment." Hang up. I glance down to where Lynne's busy taking in the city. "Lynne?" She looks up at me. "Since you're almost certainly never going to see any of these children again, I'm not going to ask you to make friends. But try and be sociable, alright?" She nods. Sinestro, hush tube to wherever Lex is.

The circle flickers into being just ahead of us and we appear in a corridor in the LexCorp building. Lex looks around, his face betraying no surprise as he takes in both myself and Lynne. Miss Graves moved to give her arm gun a clear line of sight if she needed it, but she lowers it again almost fast enough to prevent me noticing.

"Grayven. Good to see you." Lex smiles as he steps forwards, holding out his right hand. I pull mine free of Lynne for a moment and clasp his, taking care not to squeeze too tightly. "And Miss..?"

"Lynne Wayland. Lynne, say hello to the n-. To the man."

Lynne steps forwards, holding out her right hand. "Hello Mister Luthor."

"Hello Lynne." He very gently shakes her hand, then turns to Miss Graves. "Mercy, show Miss Wayland to the daycare center." Miss Graves bends slightly and holds out her left hand to Lynne, who cautiously walks over to her.

"Lynne, I'll come and pick you up in about an hour." She nods, then allows Miss Graves to lead her away down the corridor towards the lifts back up to the above ground portion of the building. Obviously Lynne's wearing low profile armour under her clothes and has a couple of drones hovering invisibly around her, but it's nice that Lex is willing to make an effort. "Have fun!"

Lex watches her go. "I must admit, I had no idea that you had a daughter."

"Oh, I adopted her. Apokoliptian tradition. Is, ah… Is everyone ready?"

"Of course. If you'll follow me, we can begin."

He walks over to a nearby terminal and stands there while it scans his fingerprints, and retina. A moment later the exceedingly heavy door next to it slides open and he leads me inside. "Obviously, now that you're one of us I can give you the specifications so that you can build one in your own mountain. No sense in you coming here every time." I take a look around. The room itself is bare. Utilitarian. The screens at the far end and the imaging equipment are all top of the line, but… "I did consider having it decorated, but I'm not in here enough to justify it. Activate."

The screens flicker on. The Brain appears first, his robotic casing appearing to the right of the centre. A moment later Ra's al Ghul appears to the left followed by Vandal Savage in the centre. He stares down at me for a moment. Oh right, he's the chairman, isn't he? No idea how that happened.

"Grayven. Thank you for joining us."

"You're welcome, Savage. Glad to be here. Now let's get this show on the road. First order of business?"

"To inform you that you are not the only person joining us today."

"Oh?"

"With Klarion's death, the Light have need of a new magician."

"Makes sense." I'd rather have been consulted, but I suppose they didn't need to until today. "Who's the lucky person?" Fingers crossed for Circe.

The screen to the right of Brain activates and-. Oooooooh dear.

"Mister Grayven." He smiles at me like someone who read about Human facial expression in a book once. Then practised in a mirror for a bit. "Were you expecting someone other than Mordru?"

back

Triumph of the Will 3

next

5th April

12:25 GMT -5

I continue to look at his screen as I consider the significance of his reappearance. Of the appearance of another Lord of Chaos.

"Was that a Spanish Inquisition joke?"

There's a moment of complete silence. Then a sort of.. crackling noise comes from the direction of Brain's screen. Is he..? Is that how he laughs these days? "You refer of course to Monty Python, Mister Grayven. The infamous 'Spanish Inquisition' sketch. Mordru went out of the universe and then he came in again. Yes, that is good!"

"Monty.. Python..?" I glance at Lex, who appears to be straining not to look lost.

"It is a wonderful television series from Britain which makes use of absurdist humour. I had not realised that you were an aficionado, Mister Grayven."

What? No, what? "And I hadn't realised that you still had a sense of humour."

"I did not give up my humanity entirely. Though my appreciation is more intellectually than hormonally driven."

Mordru does his best to remain dignified. "It was not a reference to Monty Python. It was a statement of fact. Now that Klarion is no more, I have been able to return."

I nod. "And you're looking good. I don't know where you went-"

"And pray that you never do."

"-but I've seen footage of you fighting the Justice Society and wherever it was it's taken years off."

"I felt that a new face would be a reasonable precaution, given the attention I am likely to attract."

"Look… Is the whole 'me killing Klarion' thing going to be a problem for our working relationship? Because I'd rather get that ironed out now."

He shakes his head. "Not at all. I am glad that he is dead. He was a buffoon of a Chaos Lord, interested only in his own temporary amusement and incapable of doing anything particularly creative or significant with the vast power available to him. With him still alive cosmic balance itself prevented me from returning to exact my revenge. You have my thanks, Grayven."

"Okay then, you're welcome." Poop.

Savage focuses his attention on me. "I take it then that there is no problem from your side either."

"I'd rather have known in advance, but… No. Mordru always seemed to be the intelligent, mission-focused sort." And there's now a second person on the Light in my weight class. That might end up being a problem. I get the feeling that Mordru -unlike Klarion- would have looked before he teleported. Aaaaand I have no idea what his phylactery is. "Welcome on board."

He nods his head. "Thank you."

Ra's' eyes narrow slightly. "I seem to recall that you did not have a 'problem' with Queen Bee, either."

"I didn't know the silly cow liked walking into minefields. I was assuming that the drones would kill some insignificant lowlies. She was the ruler of a country, why was she doing field work? Her thing was supposed to be having people to do that for her."

Savage really has that alpha dominant staring thing down. "Whatever your reasons, we will expect you to exercise a greater degree of caution now that you are one of us."

"If there is anything you wish to get off your chest, Mister Grayven?"

"Ah, yeah. Then in the interests of full disclosure-" I turn my head to the right. "-Lex, I should probably tell you that I've been stealing your Genomorphs. In fact, at this point… I think I've got more working for me than you've still got working for you."

There's a very slight pinching of the muscles around his eyes. "Mister Harper informed me that the disappearances which Cadmus had been suffering from had stopped."

I wave my right hand. "I built them a load of extra cloning pods. They're rotating personnel in and out, and he's too inattentive to notice as long as the work gets done. Kind of a… Job share thing. If you check the records you'll see that all of the remaining G-Prometheans were registered as dead almost exactly the same time as I moved into Challenger Mountain."

"I hadn't realised that they were that mentally sophisticated."

"Gestalt intelligence, plus the G-Goblins are Human-equivalent. They want to be free. And the first step in that direction is doing for me what they do for you… But I actually pay them and I treat them better."

"I.. will need to think very carefully about that. But, in every problem lies an opportunity. Perhaps, now that I know how competent they are I can expand their role."

"They'd probably appreciate it. Look, I have to ask: your people programmed James Harper's brain. Why is he such a vacuous fool?"

Lex smiles. "Because we needed someone who could convincingly play the role of superhero."

Oh, dang! I grin back. "Makes sense."

"Is there anything else you wish to clear up before the meeting gets underway?" And Savage is still staring at me?

Well, I can match his pettiness with pettiness of my own. "I did have.. one question. Not-" I swing my right hand in a small arc, left to right. "-trying to imply anything, just trying to understand the lay of the land."

"Ask."

"What do you do?"

Another moment of silence.

"What do you mean by that?"

"We're all here because we all -for our own reasons- wish to kick the Human race out of the doldrums. Advance its status. Ra's contributes a worldwide intelligence network and a coterie of skilled and fanatically loyal operatives. Brain is an omnidisciplinary scientist who combines in a single body the greatest strengths of organic and synthetic intelligences, and his ability to analyse exotic equipment is vital in getting us an edge on any competition. Better still, no one knows his real name, so attempts to-."

"You do not know my name?" No one says anything. "I assumed that you were using my criminal name as a professional courtesy. Truly, none of you know who I am?"

This is what I get for putting Ultra-Humanite into a coma. The rest of us -Savage aside- flick our eyes at each other, uncertain exactly who knows what. If no one's contradicting him… "Brain, no one has the slightest idea what your name is."

"Oh." There's a pause as he gets his brain around the idea. "I.. suppose it doesn't matter. It just came as a surprise."

"Right, well… The only real gap in.. Brain's knowledge is magic and now.. we have Mordru on board. As a more intellectually inclined Lord of Chaos than his predecessor they really don't come much more powerful or more knowledgeable on arcane matters. Mister Luthor's status as a legitimate businessman means that any technologies we develop can be released as 'exciting LexCorp products', he has extensive production facilities and he can influence politics in a more conventional way than Ra's' Shadows and offer employment to legitimate scientists whose expertise we wish to use. And then, there's me. In addition to having access to technology far in advance of anything Earth has, I am a publically acknowledged superhero and can work to bring our ideals into the public domain. The synergies between our particular domains are clear."

I pause for maximum effect.

"I'm just not clear what you bring to the table. I'm assuming there's something, so…" Expression of honest enquiry. "What is it?"

The stare's still there, but there's something… He's disappointed?

"An economic powerbase as vast as Luthor's -albeit one owned by proxy-, an extensive list of contacts -legitimate and otherwise- who will serve my will, millennia of leadership and organisational experience, immortality-"

"Ah, about that-."

"-and absolute conviction of the righteousness of our cause." He's still staring. Also… Why should we care about any of that? I certainly don't accept him as the boss of me and I doubt that the others do either. I mean, Batman's the weakest of the important Justice League members but at least he brings something vital and unique to the organisation. Savage just told me that Ra's and Lex could do his job. Unless he just chose not to mention something? "Do you have any further questions?"

I suppose him being irrelevant isn't exactly a problem. "No, I'm good. What's the first thing on the agenda?"

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Triumph of the Will 4

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5th April

19:14 GMT -1

"…a Sea Pony, okay?" Miss Shimmer takes another extremely nervous look out into the murk surrounding us. "I thought you were taking me to a university."

Sunset Shimmer needed books on magic. I could have tried borrowing something from Zatanna, but I'd much rather develop my own resource base. So, where does an aspiring supervillain go to get magic books?

Venturia, of course.

Lynne tilts her head to the side as we continue to descend. "Why is this freaking you out so much?"

"I grew up on a mountain! I don't even know how to swim as a Pony!"

Most Atlantean City-States are democratic, in varying fashions. Nanaue is oligarchic but it still has a healthy degree of political debate at all levels of society. Only Venturia is still autocratic, and I get the impression that the only reason why King Orin hasn't taken steps to do something about that is that Queen Clea is in her late eighties and it's easier to just wait for her to die and for her reform-minded daughter to inherit than it is to force the issue. In the meantime, her word is law. She directly appoints Senators to the national senate and woe betide them if they vote out of line. I'd rather fly under the radar… Or sonar, but if I get spotted telling her about my falling out with Diana should bring a smile to her face.

I turn to look at my former-Pony mountain guest. "Um. Being honest, Miss Shimmer: being able to swim when you're this deep probably wouldn't help."

"How do people live down here?"

"They have magic to clear away the murk and generate light, but they only use it around the actual city. They used to have a different policy, but then there was a war… Making sure the enemy can't reliably target you is a reasonable precaution."

"I mean, how do they breathe? They can't keep casting water breathing charms the whole time."

"A very long time ago, one of their mages came up with a way to alter Atlantean citizens so that they could breathe water. Purebloods gained extra-Human strength and endurance as well. They can also still breathe air and look unaltered, even if you know what to look for. Atlanteans who aren't Purebloods generally look like they've had bits of aquatic animal grafted to them. Sometimes-" I tap the right side of my neck with my right hand. "-just gills, which are more a manifestation of an imperfect spell than anything else. Sometimes they have fish tails… Other times they're barely recognisable as Human, looking more like the aquatic animal they're emulating."

Lynne looks away from where she's trying to spot the city. "Why did they do that?"

"Their continent was sinking." She frowns as the ridiculousness of the statement shocks her out of her normal reluctance to contradict me. "I know that doesn't make sense, I don't know how it happened and they themselves lost so many records in the struggle to survive… We may never know the truth of it. But, their ancient cities now lie strewn across the depths of the North Atlantic, Venturia being the southernmost."

Miss Shimmer tenses the right side of her mouth. "I guess if they can do that to their bodies they must know something about Human magic. But I don't really want to turn myself into a fish."

"But you do want to turn yourself into an Alicorn, yes? Picking up a few books on biomancy and thaumaturgical notation seems like a good place to start."

"There's more to being an Alicorn than just the shape, but… Yeah." She exhales heavily. "And learning your notation can't be any harder than learning your regular language."

Turns out that while Wilsonian Ponies don't speak English, Wilson does have a single dominant language spoken by most intelligent creatures. Learning how many Humans have was a surprise to her. At the moment the G-Gnomes are trying to fast-teach her English, augmenting normal lessons with telepathy to reinforce links between familiar and unfamiliar concepts. Without knowing the language she already speaks they can't safely dump a new language into her head. They can do constant real time translation but she doesn't want to be dependent on them any more than she does on my ring. On the plus side, once she's learned one local language the G-Gnomes can feed her the rest as fast as her brain can handle.

"I think I can see it!"

Lynne points downwards through the ring generated bubble surrounding us. Can't see anything myself… I take my goggles out of subspace and put them on. Ah yes, there we go. "I think you're right. Which should mean-" The murk around us suddenly cuts out, the blackness behind us emphasising the light shining from the fleshcrafted bioluminescent lamp creatures which mark the edge of the city's territory. They serve to create an artificial night sky for the city's inhabitants, as well as marking 'acceptable' approach channels into the city proper. "-that we're nearly here."

The city itself clearly has a high degree of commonality with Poseidonis, but the differences stand out as well. The free range plant life of the Poseidonis streets is absent, and the buildings are generally shorter and thicker set, almost bunker like. Some are brick or stone, while others seem to be organic, made from a fleshcrafted material.

"Over there." Miss Shimmer points to our left. "I think they've seen us."

Lynne and I tear our eyes away from the city as a patrol squad swims in our direction. Ahead of the Atlanteans comes a small swarm of Voltaic Rays and Sorcerer Eels. Expendable biological drones controlled by a member of the patrol group. In a fight against me they'd be more inconvenient than anything else, but against… Say, other Atlanteans, they'd stun, disrupt magic, bite and finally explode. Venturia has a combat doctrine far in advance of what the rest of Atlantis has. Behind them come the actual soldiers, Eelfolk in armour enchanted to camouflage them in whatever fashion suits the local environment best. Tail aside, Eelfolk look pretty much like fish tailed Atlanteans… Until they open their mouths, anyway. Behind them swims the mage… Ah, interesting. Due to how relatively shallow they are, Venturia and its sister city Aurania are the only places with significant Dolphinfolk populations. This is the first time I've seen one in the flesh, though. Like the Sharkfolk, they paid the price for being early adopters of the shapeshifting spells, in their case being incapable of breathing underwater without further magics. As an advantage, they don't look much different to normal Humans and can usually switch back between Dolphin-tailed and Human-legged shapes relatively easily. This one is currently tailed for the extra speed.

"Helmets on, girls." Lynne dons hers without complaint, while Miss Shimmer makes a disgruntled face as she scoops up her hair to try and fit inside. Though they won't really be able to swim down here, the suits they're wearing will protect them and provide them with air.

A few of the Sorcerer Eels come in closer, no doubt relaying what they're seeing to their master. The Atlanteans come to a relative stop some fifty metres away and one of the Eelfolk raises her right hand. "Ho, stranger! Identify yourself and state your business!"

No command to halt, I note. Underwater it usually wouldn't be practical. "I am Grayven. This is my daughter Lynne Wayland and my…" How to describe our relationship? "Student, Sunset Shimmer. We're visiting for the purposes of tourism and shopping."

"From where do you hail?"

"What, originally? I'm from Apokolips, Lynne's from the United States and Miss Shimmer's from Equestria." My magnified vision shows her puzzlement. "Yes, that didn't tell you anything, did it? Would it help if I promised that we're not here for the purpose of gathering military intelligence or picking a fight?"

I see her lips move slightly. Some sort of communication spell? A moment later the shape of the shoal around us changes slightly, pointing us in the direction of one of the approach corridors. "Follow that entry route. You'll be met by a escort detail at the city entrance. You will remain with them for the duration of your visit. Do you understand?"

I nods. "Of course. Completely. We'll behave ourselves. Will they be able to show us around?"

"Ah." It occurs to me that Venturia isn't exactly a tourist hotspot. "They.. should be able to?"

"Thank you." I focus and the sphere drifts in the direction indicated. "We'll get out of your way."

The fish start peeling off, returning to keep station around their handlers. Looking out into the waters I can see dozens of other patrol groups on duty around the edge of the boundary. I suppose that I shouldn't be surprised that this place is a bit police-state-ey.

"Will they let us visit their universities?"

"Hmmm. I was really thinking more about their bookshops. But they should. Higher level stuff will probably be considered a state secret for mages of proven loyalty only, but what we're looking for are things that are common knowledge in Atlantean society. Accessing it really shouldn't be a problem."

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Triumph of the Will 5

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5th April

20:38 GMT -1

Miss Shimmer taps the sales counter roughly with her right knuckles, next to the pile of scrolls she's attempting to purchase. "And you're sure these are going to be safe travelling underwater?"

Our gill-necked escort lounges against the wall near to the exit while Miss Shimmer discusses matters with the shop owner. The other two were the fish-tailed type and couldn't enter this part of the shop. I hadn't really thought about it before, but I suppose it makes sense that Dolphinfolk would much rather live in air-filled rooms where possible. I know that Miss Shimmer is certainly appreciating getting her helmet off. The exit/entrance is a pool of water in the centre of the room, where a magic seal around the rim prevents water from escaping upwards.

The shopkeeper glances at me, and I respond with a small shrug of my shoulders. Not sure that Atlanteans share that bit of body language. Realising that I'm not going to help, she returns her attention to Miss Shimmer. "Of course, Miss. We live underwater! I would not be able to sell anything if it could not survive the conditions."

Miss Shimmer narrows her eyes. "Then how about out of water?"

The shopkeeper looks around the room. "Ah..?"

"I'm not going to be able to keep putting preservative spells on them. I need to know they're going to be fine long term as they are."

She sort of doesn't. I'm going to be scanning them-.

Ploong.

Ah. Apparently I've already scanned them. Miss Shimmer's seen our computer systems, but from what I remember of My Little Pony Ponies didn't have anything more advanced than silent film reels. I don't think that she fully appreciates exactly what it means for data storage and utilisation. Something we can study… Or maybe I should ask Doctor Robbins to do that. Human computer systems are really more her area of expertise and between Lynne, Miss Amane and the Blacks I'm getting as much on my plate as I can handle.

"The scrolls are made from a biomantically enhanced form of albino sharkskin. Unless you're dealing with extremes of temperature, they should outlast you, even if you don't take special effort to preserve them."

"Hmm."

I had been planning to offer gold in payment, but I was swiftly told that only local currency was acceptable. I don't think that the local bureau de change ripped me off… It's a bit silly, really. The possibility bothers me even though I have effectively infinite money. Is that a New God thing, or am I just..? No, I'm in a situation where I lack the knowledge to be sure of anything and that's bothersome regardless of my core identity.

"Okay, I think that's everything." Miss Shimmer looks back at me, eyebrows raised. I nod and step forwards.

Venturia's currency takes the form of smooth stone discs inlaid with crystals which indicate the value. Fiat currency, and if it weren't for the weak enchantments on each coin I could ring fabricate as many as I needed. I don't really know how gold is valued down here, but the purchases we're making aren't particularly expensive. I hand over the required coinage and the shopkeeper, who briefly flicks her eyes in the direction of our escort as she waves each coin under a small… Looks a bit like a lamp, but there's no bulb and the inside has a runic inscription. Registering the transfer? She hasn't scanned me, so it can't be comparing the coin's aura to my own. Some sort of central register? Interesting as an anti-theft technique, though I imagine that it would drive the American libertarian movement mad with paranoia. Also, it appears to be completely routine. She isn't even really watching what she's doing as each coin appears to pass the test and is deposited in a cash box. Looks like they don't have a real cash register equivalent, and I can't say that surprises me.

"Will there be anything else, Miss? Sir?"

Miss Shimmer shakes her head. "No. I wanna get back to the mountain and try reading through these as soon as I can." She turns to me. "Can we just.. open a portal to go back?"

I nod. "Now I have an exact location, certainly." I smile at the shopkeeper. "Thank you for your help. Hopefully we'll be back once Miss Shimmer has finished with these."

Lynne looks up from the Atlantean desk top she'd been fiddling with. I think it might be.. alive. "Do we have to go home right away? It's an underwater city. Don't you want to see some more?"

"Not really." Miss Shimmer shakes her head. "You just don't know how crippled I feel, not being able to use an ability I was born with." Lynne's eyes dip slightly. "The sooner I start learning this 'Human magic' thing, the sooner I'll start feeling Equine again."

I raise my right hand slightly. "I can send you back immediately if you like, but I'll be hanging around for a little while. Which means that you'd have to use the G-Gnomes for translation."

Miss Shimmer makes a face as she transfers her scrolls to her satchel. "Fine. Where next?"

Our escort straightens up. "The palace."

I turn the corners of my mouth down for a moment. "I was thinking a museum or something. You have those, right?"

"Yes. But my orders are to take you to the palace once you've finished shopping." He looks a little nervous, and a moment later I realise that I've squared up to him. Gotta watch that. "Her Majesty de-. Um, has expressed a desire to speak with you."

"Alright then. Helmets back on, girls." Lynne pops hers back on easily, and I pull Miss Shimmer's hair back for her, earning me a quick flash of smile from her. "Do you know whereabouts Queen Clea wants us?"

"She is holding open court today. We will find her in-" Sinestro? "-the main throne room. The swim should not take us…"

The room appears to be protected from ring scans, Corpsman, but the flow of traffic makes it somewhat obvious where it lies.

"…foreign visitors, so if you'll…"

Don't want to open a tube without knowing that there's air on the other side. Ah heck, Sinestro, tube to just outside the protected area. Open it just under the surface of the water there.

As you wish, Corpsman.

"…provide you with an escort." The guard looks at me expectantly.

"If you can keep up. Follow me, girls." I jump into the plunge pool and almost immediately the pull of gravity shifts ninety degrees to my right. We're in… Yes, the palace. Definitely a built structure, rather than force grown coral like the one in Poseidonis. I land on the stone floor just as Lynne comes through the tube behind me. She loses her orientation and flails about in the water for a moment before I catch her. Miss Shimmer comes through more cautiously, swimming a sort of doggy paddle as she adjusts to her environment.

And then I close the portal.

Lynne gives me as stern a look as she can from her current position. "Grayven, are you doing that thing where you annoy people for fun again?"

"Yes. Yes, I am." I nod at the petitioners who are staring at us, then connect beams of yellow light to Lynne and Miss Shimmer and form a yellow water snake construct around us to pull us through the water.

"Why?"

"Because it's fun."

We accelerate, zipping around the suddenly alarmed guards, through the opening leading to the throne room and sharply upwards into an air filled room. The girls I deposit on solid ground on either side, while I remain in the air. All eyes turn to me and all the guards either raise their weapons or prepare spells, their tattoos glowing.

"Hah hah!" On the throne at the end of the chamber Queen Clea -who really is a little too old to pull off that costume- leans forwards and claps sarcastically. "Grayven, welcome to my city. We're laying a feast on in your honour."

She is? "What did I do to deserve that?"

"You slew Ocean Master." She rises to her feet, leaning only slightly on her spear. "Such a deed made you a hero to all Atlanteans. And I'm told that you slew that reprehensible Chaos Lord Klarion as well." She looks around the room and her warriors return to a mildly more relaxed posture. "I would be very interested in getting to know you better. Unless you would like to splash around some more first?"

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Triumph of the Will 6

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5th April

17:23 GMT -5

Richard glances at me thoughtfully as we walk towards the Gotham home of talk show hostess Mrs Emily Briggs. "You gunna give me a clue how the review's going?"

"Wasn't planning to."

Kon smiles at him. "You worried?"

"I'm not the one getting reviewed."

"No, but-." Kon cuts himself off. I don't think he's spent any time with Richard out of costume before. Not in a position where people might actually recognise Richard as being Richard, anyway. "Ah." And he's having a Bat Block. Can't call him 'Batman' out of costume and calling him Bruce just feels… Off. "Your.. dad is."

Hm. I've rather avoided calling him that. Not really sure if Richard.. thinks of him that way. I certainly don't remember him calling him anything other than 'Bruce' in the comics. He doesn't look bothered by it, though.

"Your Mom is too."

"Yeah, but Paul's spent plenty of time with Mom. If he didn't like the way she did something he'd have said so already."

"Chaps, this review isn't about passing or failing particular people. There's always room for improvement. My job was to identify those areas and draw our teachers'-" I step aside as a woman walking her dogs comes down the pavement in the opposite direction to us. "-attention to them. Though, since I know everyone's going to try to reduce it to these sorts of terms anyway…" I reach into my jacket with both hands and use the cloth to disguise myself taking two packs of Justice League Top Trumps out of subspace, before pulling my hands out and holding them out to my companions. "Take a look."

Richard takes the pack from my left hand and starts going through the cards one at a time, making sure to read all of the stats and probably attempting to understand my reasoning. Kon on the other hand just skims through until something catches his-.

"Have you shown this to Artemis yet?" He's smiling and his eyebrows are slightly raised, Mister Queen's card in his right hand.

"No."

"Why, what's it-?" Richard's eyes widen slightly. "Oh. You, ah… You really didn't hold back."

Unsurprisingly, pointy stick launcher man didn't score all that highly in most categories. "That wouldn't help anyone. You need to understand a problem before-" Kon's started flicking through again. "-you can fix it."

"Artemis and-." This time he looks surprised. "You scored Roy and.. uh, other Roy-."

"William."

"Right, William. You scored them higher?"

"Not on all categories. But they both use my equipment, Roy's getting used to my armour, Artemis is-" I glance at Richard. "-pretty strong. Aaand he isn't."

Mister Queen's got some work to do. Sophisticated -and highly expensive- arrowheads means that his DPS and combat utility are slightly higher than 'mook with gun', but there isn't all that much in it. There's a reason why soldiers use guns rather than bows. Yeah, bringing that up is going to be a little uncomfortable. Still, I'm definitely looking forward to the meeting. Siskin's been through another set of tests in Sephtian's workshop and he's received a clean bill of… Um, not 'health' exactly. Matrix stability. His entire metaphysique is inside the golem body and the binding spells are holding just fine. Which means we can make a body for Nabu. I mean, I find it a little strange that I've spent all this time preparing for a fight I might not actually end up having… But if it gets Mister Zatara back early and without all the risk I'm fine with that. Haven't mentioned it to Zatanna just in case, but everything I know about Lords of Order says that there's no reason for him to refuse.

Wonderful!

Richard keeps looking through the cards as we come to a halt in front of Mrs Briggs' house. "How come you want to meet Lia, anyway?"

"I knew Vampires were a thing on this Earth, but I've never had a chance to talk to one. And Vampires who were… Or.. are?" I shrug. "Metahumans before their transformation are going to be even rarer. Metahumans whose abilities activated after receiving particular environmental triggers-."

"Not sure I believe that whole thing about a comet."

"Maybe, but she definitely had powers before becoming a Vampire and she retained them afterwards. I mean, vampirism alone is worth my time. Improved strength, speed, agelessness-."

"You can never see the sun again."

"Depends on the mechanism. If it's scientific-" I step forwards and press the bell. "-then a radiation shield should be enough to block it. If it's magical, then a ward… Not a Spell Eater, but something more conventionally protective, should be enough."

"You have to drink blood. And you get mind controlled by whoever made you a Vampire in the first place."

"And those are actual problems, except-" I reach beneath my jacket again and pull out a blood pack. "-that we've learned to add arcane vitality to cloned blood. And we can probably-."

"Who is it?"

I turn to the intercom. "Special delivery for a 'Miss Allimrac'."

"I know you're referencing something stupid but I'm too hungry to care." There's a buzz and a click. "Get in here and close the door behind you."

The glass in the door to the porch is heavily frosted, and as I push it open I notice that the inside is covered with blackout curtains. "Wards on?" Two nods. "Alright then." I lead the way into the porch and try opening the inner door. Still locked. Of course, she doesn't want to risk sunlight getting in. As Ulli and Marquand pointed out, when hunting for Vampires make sure to do so well before sunset and we've got about two hours to go here. Kon brings up the rear and snecks the outer door. Ah, that's where the camera-. The electromagnet holding the inner door closed releases and I push it open. The interior is… Nothing like as gothic as I'd been hoping. I mean, the furnishing's nice, but there's barely-.

"Did you bring it?" The woman herself stalks out of a room adjoining the corridor. She's wearing low cut pink jeans and a blouse which leaves her toned abdomen exposed. The people she works with are well aware of her condition but they don't let her on camera still looking this pale. She stands with her mouth slightly open, long canines slightly exposed.

Richard smirks. "What? No 'Welcome to my house!'?"

She ignores him, eyes focusing on the bag in my hand. I hold it out and she approaches, snatching it out of my hand and then looking at me questioningly. "Don't worry, no anti-coagulant."

She slides a sharpened index fingernail across the bag, cutting through plastic and causing a small amount of the blood inside to flow out. She sniffs, then raises it to her lips and licks it, tasting it carefully. "Yours?"

"No. Synthetic. Any good?"

She nods. "I think so. And the rest?"

I take a small pendant off from around my neck. "Ward against sunlight and-" I unclip a small hemisphere of metal from my belt. "-a radiation shield. I want to.. test them first. Just to make sure. And… The other things. Batman said he explained?"

She takes another sip, then nods. "He did. And if these things work like you promised I'll be happy to help you."

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Triumph of the Will 7

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5th April

23:07 GMT -1

It's a fish… Enclosure, floating in mid-air. I've seen some weird things since coming to Earth 16, but a perfectly cuboid area of water floating in the air underwater is hitting my already over stimulated oddness button. As I lean forwards to look at it more closely one of the inmates swims in my direction and takes the opportunity to stare back.

"Hehhahaha."

"Why do you find it so amusing?"

I turn from the pen to my hostess, noting that as my head comes to bear she makes a point of leaning less on her spear. Atlantean Purebloods like her age fairly gracefully, but she's nothing like as fit as her younger self who fought Diana in single combat and won.

"It's a pool of water underwater." I shake my head and turn back to it. "I realise that to you it's just food storage, but I find the incongruity appealing."

She turns to follow my gaze, perhaps trying to see it from alien eyes. "This is more for decoration than farming. Creating barriers with water on both sides is far easier than making it free floating."

"I'm a little surprised that you don't fleshcraft artificial 'meat fish'. It would be easier than maintaining pens…"

"It's been tried. The.. thing you end up with has almost no taste and little nutritional value. I suppose that if we poured effort into it we might eventually make something functional but I see little purpose in trying. Our seas are still full of fish."

"M." I nod. "Thank you for lending Sunset Shimmer your vizier."

"Oh, he was as fascinated to hear about how magic is practised in her land as she was to hear of the Venturian style. We would be willing to offer her a place here in one of our schools."

"Maybe, at some point in the future. I appreciate the offer, but at the moment she's still struggling to adapt even to being bipedal. Her knowledge of arcane theory and practice would be far behind that of her classmates."

"Very well. The offer will remain open."

I turn back to my piscine admirer. "Queen Clea, grateful as I am for your hospitality, I rather doubt that you were so overjoyed to see me that you set this whole thing up purely for my benefit."

"Of course not. I wouldn't insult you by suggesting it."

"Alright. No one else is here-" Sinestro?

You're clear, Corpsman.

"-and I've been suitably impressed by your largesse. What is it you want from me?"

She exhales. "A way out."

I frown faintly, turning my head back in her direction. "And what do you mean by that?"

"I'm an old woman. Before too long, I will be dead and my daughter Ptra will reign in my place. Or rather, she will abdicate her responsibility and hand it off to whomsoever King Orin deigns to appoint."

"I.. was under the impression that wasn't how it worked."

"In theory, it isn't. The nation of Atlantis is in theory a collection of largely autonomous city states bound together by common heritage and laws. The range of circumstances in which King Orin can involve himself in our internal affairs is strictly limited. Except when it isn't."

"Are you talking about your fight with Wonder Woman?"

"No. Though I disagreed with Queen Cora's decision, making treaties with foreigners is an area where monarchs such as I are expected to follow the lead of the ruler of Poseidonis. If she wanted to release a foreign royal as part of a settlement she was free to order it."

"Not still annoyed about it, are you?"

"Hardly. I could live with it, as long as our territory was maintained. Her establishment of a national senate, hah! I saw through that right away."

"Not sure I follow."

"As I said, city states are largely independent. Creating a national deliberative body in her city with the authority to pass laws? Clearly a power grab." Her jaw tightens. "Elections. Just a way of undermining me, of giving my people a level above me to appeal to. And one controlled by Poseidonis. No. When it was clear I couldn't simply opt out, I sent loyal counsellors to carry my words to the body and to oppose every attempt to increase the Poseidonian crown's authority."

"Alright. I don't know enough about Atlantean politics to argue the point, but let's assume everything you just said is true. Have they.. taken the authority to approve individual rulers?"

"Not precisely. My late husband -Ptra's father- was king… Proconsul, of Aurania. Aurania and Venturia are the southernmost Atlantean city states. We reigned over our respective cities, cooperated on a number of matters. When he died, I was naturally to assume rule of both cities. His Council opposed me, and contrary to the law recognised our daughter as his successor."

"And I assume that Queen Cora saw things their way?"

"To her mind, skipping a step in the succession was a small price to pay to avoid a violent confrontation. Ignoring that at the time Ptra was far too young to rule on her own, or the fact that Cora was bound by honour and law to aid me."

"What happened next?"

"Ptra completed her education in Poseidonis before returning to Aurania to take the throne. But all the power of her office had already been stolen from her. Worse, she'd been… Corrupted to the Poseidonian way of thinking. She fully supports Poseidonian supremacy even now."

"Wait a moment. How long ago was this?"

"Fifty or so years? I have adult grandchildren I wouldn't recognise, royals with no actual political power left. I'm the last city state ruler actively opposing Poseidonian control and I have no other children. I am extremely concerned that King Orin will take it upon himself to impose Ptra over my choice of successor."

What little I know of the place says 'yep'. "Who else do you have in mind?"

"Oh, I don't know. One of my great nieces or nephews, it doesn't really matter exactly which one. They're all properly educated. That's the sort of decision I want to leave until I literally can't leave it any longer. I don't want Orin turning them the way his grandmother did Ptra. I've seen once proud and independent cities increasingly bow their heads to Poseidonis and I won't have it happen here, do you understand me?"

"Oh, completely. I'm just not clear what you want me to do about it."

"I need to convince Orin not to. Either that, or weaken him so much that no one will obey him. I had hoped that taking a hard line against those ridiculous Pureblood Supremacists might buy him off but apparently that hasn't been the case at all. According to my agents he now thinks that I might have allied myself to Prince Orm!"

"And you didn't?"

"Of course not! He would have been even worse for centralising power than his half brother! At least Orin is just maintaining his mother's policies."

"Hm." Hm indeed. From the Light's point of view, Queen Clea is next to useless. She isn't two bodies away from the throne of a country, she's one from having no further influence over a single city. Taking a strong and open position myself seems like a good way to have the opposite effect…

On the other hand… "Do you feel obliged to oppose Poseidonian actions on principle?"

"Not so long as they are within traditional bounds, no."

"I understand that King Orin hasn't had the easiest time convincing the Atlantean senate to increase contact with the surface world in the way that he would like. Having grown up there himself, he feels rather strongly about the matter."

"I am aware."

"But with the demands on his time, governing his own city, being a member of the Justice League… He doesn't have time to pursue it as aggressively as he would like. Venturia has dominion over the Greater Azores. You are.. well placed to take a lead on the matter yourself, in his stead. Without reference to the senate. If you're interested, I could put you in touch with.. certain people..?"

She nods. "I could pursue an independent course of action which he would feel obliged to approve. Yes, that could work. Come." She turns away from the floating aquarium. "We will need to discuss things more fully with my advisors before we take action."

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Triumph of the Will 8

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9th April

09:57 GMT -5

Guy raises his eyebrows slightly, his arms folded defensively across his chest as he stands next to the mountain training area's zeta tubes. "What? You not bringin' a clipboard?"

I shake my head as I walk towards him. "I've got an eidetic memory. Once I've done the research it just sits in my head for as long as I'm wearing the ring." I hold up my left hand slightly… "Do you think it would be better if I left John's.. other ring here?"

Guy thinks about it for about half a second. "Ahhh, wouldn't worry about it. You always wear it durin' our training sessions and he's never said anythin'."

"I just thought… This is a more formal thing, everyone's going to be looking at me and seeing two rings..?" He shakes his head. "Okay, you're probably right."

I walk past him into the zeta tube aper-. "Ow." I whip my head around, looking at Guy accusingly. "What was that for?"

He doesn't look even slightly guilty. "Somebody convinced Wondy t' stop wearing a swim suit."

"Do that again and I'll convince Black Canary to stop wearing tights."

"Eh." He shrugs nonchalantly. "That's Ollie's problem."

I frown. "Wait. Are you trying to tell me that you're actually interested in-?"

"No, no, nothing like that. I'm just saying there's a difference between checkin' out someone who's not with anyone and someone who is. Oh, hey, how'd that thing with that Vampire chick go?"

Nice subject change there, Guy. "Interesting. I handed a blood sample from her over to one of Sephtian's alchemy colleagues for a magic spectral analysis."

"Plannin' on turnin' us all into Vampires?"

"No. To be honest, even ignoring the sire's mind control ability it's too inferior to the Danner Formula for me to recommend it. You know, there was one funny thing about it. Vampires can't tolerate holy symbols, right?"

"Yeah?"

"There was a book I read back on Earth Prime, where the patriarch of a Vampire clan exposed his children to holy symbols of every religion on his planet at a young age so they'd build up a resistance. When I tried exposing Ms Barr-" Not Ms Briggs. She was quite insistent on the subject of not using her ex-husband's name post divorce. "-to religious icons, they didn't work if she didn't know what they were, but as soon as I explained them, she couldn't tolerate them."

He blinks. "Whow. Really?"

"Yep. By the end of it she couldn't even look at these rings because of the sigils on them."

"So… What, it's not God tellin' 'em t' get lost?"

"No, no, not at all. It appears to be innate to the Vampirism itself. The best idea I can come up with is it's some sort of built in warning mechanism, so the Vampire knows not to get into a fight it can't win. Or… It could be anything, really. She was actually getting a bit weirded out by it-"

The zeta tube chimes and we start walking forwards.

"-by the time we stopped."

"Can't you just ask-"

"Recognised, Green Lantern, one seven, Orange Lantern, B zero six."

9th April

16:00 GMT +1

"-whoever it was turned her into one?"

"No, Batman destroyed hoh goodness me." I stare stunned at Nightmare Moo-. Wait a second. I narrow my left eye as the chuckles from the Justice League's meeting table reach me. "Most amusing, sir, but you don't desire the same things she did."

Mister O'Brian shifts his head back into its normal shape, a neck about a metre long extending from Nightmare Moon's shoulders. He keeps the horn in the middle of his forehead as he grins down at me. "Not megalomaniacal enough for yah? Or do I need to work on my nicker?"

"Nightmare Moon was a mare." I walk past him in the direction of the table. "Put some clothes on, man."

There's another round of chuckles from the table as Mister O'Brian bends his neck around so that he can look at his really? Guy pats Mister O'Brian on the withers as he follows me towards the League's meeting table. Full house as far as League members go, Batman, Mister Kent and Diana at the head of the table with the others spread around the 'U'. Two empty seats, and those are quickly filled as Guy transitions -giving Jordan a smug grin as he settles into place- and Mister O'Brian extends his legs and strides past me on tiptoes.

"Good afternoon, sirs."

Mister Queen nods at me with a smile. "Got our report cards, teach?"

"Yes sir. However, I thought-" I come to a halt at the opposite end of the 'U' from Batman. "-it might be helpful if I explained the grading system first."

"For those not aware of why Orange Lantern is here-" I come to parade rest as Batman starts talking. "-I asked him to conduct a review of League performance, both of individual members and the organisation as a whole. This is not intended to single anyone out as underperforming, but rather to guide us as we work to improve our effectiveness in the future."

Mister Kent glances at him. I suppose that was a slightly 'management speak' way of putting it, but Bat-. But Bruce Wayne is a business owner. The full attention of the Justice League is on me now. I used to hate this sort of thing. If I'd been asked about delivering this sort of speech before I came to Earth 16 I'd have said that I'd have been a stuttering mess. Either that or cracking up at the daft costumes. But now? I'm fine. Even Nabu being here isn't bothering me.

Well.

Much.

"Orange Lantern, you may begin."

"Thank you, Batman." I take a second to make eye contact with the League members. "The first step in the process of assessing League performance was working out what the League is actually for. The League's internal documentation never expressly states a purpose, Superman's.. speech just prior to New Year notwithstanding. The nearest thing to a written mission is your United Nations Charter, which assigns you four main areas of responsibility. Firstly, assisting conventional authorities in crime fighting. This includes gathering evidence, pursuing leads, locating the criminals, apprehending them and securing a conviction. Secondly, dealing with supervillain attacks. Though there is some overlap, supervillains do sometimes just stride into a place and start smashing things. While conventional law enforcement is perfectly capable of dealing with conventional crime-" My eyes alight on Batman. "-when they're not being paid off by it, police cannot presently deal with high powered supervillains. The alternative to people like yourselves would be the military and I don't think anyone really wants their home cities blown up by a missile strike."

Mister Kent nods. "There wouldn't be much of Metropolis left by now if General Hardcastle had his way."

"Perhaps worse is that for the really tough ones, it wouldn't necessarily work. Black Adam took several anti-tank missiles to the chest and just laughed it off, and there are any number of exotic techniques for avoiding conventional weapons." I wait a moment before carrying on. "Thirdly, defending the planet against external threats. We're fortunate enough to live in a relatively peaceful area of space, but if anything does come here there isn't much other than the League which can fight it." I smile. "For the purpose of my study I used a slightly more realistic example than a fictional species-" My eyes alight on Mister J'onzz. "-that would increase their number to overcome any obstacle. I'll give you all a.. written copy at the end, but I used the examples of Gordanian pirates and Khundian and Thanagarian privateers."

Ms Thal glares at me. "Thanagar doesn't have privateers. And even if we did, we wouldn't send them anywhere near Earth."

"True, but the law of the Thanagarian Empire allows private corporations to own warships up to battle cruiser size and would -for example- allow a Thanagarian mining corporation to strip mine every part of this system except for Mars and Earth quite legally."

"It wouldn't happen. There are safeguards-."

"Would you like me to show you the relevant case studies?" For a moment it looks like she wants to continue the argument, then she sits back. "Fourthly, responding to natural disasters, minimising damage while it's ongoing and helping with the recovery afterwards. In addition to physically carrying out those four core aims, I had to assess the organisational skills and infrastructure which allowed you to achieve them within a reasonable time span. So, in summary, here's how I rate you currently as individuals."

And up come the top trumps holograms.

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Triumph of the Will 9

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9th April

16:03 GMT +1

Mister Queen winces. "Youch."

"Now, the first thing you'll note-."

Guy grins. "Is that Lanterns rule."

I think about glaring at him, but Jordan and John do it for me. "Power rings are both powerful and highly adaptable. However, you'll note that the three of you score below average as criminal investigators. Like me, you either brute force it or assist local authorities with their investigation."

"Ah." Mister Queen points. "Can we.. talk about that for a minute? I feel like I'm kinda getting short changed there."

"Of course, sir. You are -by League standards- a reasonable criminal investigator. You are competent at handling low to mid powered supervillains or moderately well armed gang members in open combat, but the weapons you prefer to use are too weak to do much to higher powered ones, to say nothing of invading starships. Your ability to assist in -for example- an earthquake isn't significantly different to that of a reasonably athletic Human." I raise my hands. "If anyone wants to complain to me about their particular scores, they can do so later after they've read the full report. The point is, everyone…" I look at Mister O'Brian. "-with the possible exception of Plastic Man- could be doing something better."

His grin extends beyond the boundaries of his face. "Thank you, thank you."

"In designation order, Superman. You're noticeably vulnerable to a grand total of three things. I know Kryptonians had personal radiation shields. I know you know that I made one for Superboy. Is there a particular reason why you don't wear one?"

"Kryptonite isn't as common as people seem to think. Until recently I didn't run into it more than once a year." He nods. "But I understand what you're saying. I'm just not used to carrying equipment."

"I strongly suggest amending that policy, sir. Similarly, I'm going to suggest that everyone order a Spell Eater from the Poseidonis Conservatory of Sorcery… Apart from-" I turn to Nabu. "-Nabu. I'm not sure how it would interact with your innate magics sir, but if you'd like to pay a visit to the laboratory we can check that for you."

"That will not be necessary. I will see to my own protections."

"Alright then." I turn back to Mister Kent. "I don't know what information you have on Kryptonian technology, but I've never seen you exploit it other than to build your Fortress. Krypton was a spacefaring civilisation that chose isolationism. Depending on what Jor-El left you, there may be any number of things that could improve League capacities."

"Most of what he left me was cultural and historical records. But I don't mind taking another look through."

"Thank you, sir. Batman, I'm going to assume that your position on Human augmentation hasn't changed since last time I mentioned the possibility to you?"

"It has not."

Batman's score looks like he was min-maxing and did so more efficiently than Mister Queen. His investigative abilities are high and his ability to donate large amount of money to disaster relief charities means that he's quite good at those as well. His vast plethora of equipment, tactical and strategic acumen means that he's basically never useless in combat, no matter how powerful the opponent. Not much use in space, though. He has a spacecraft but it would die in seconds to just about anything that might actually pick a fight with it, and the warheads on the missiles aren't really anything special.

"Then my main recommendation is this: currently, you take receipt of all intelligence material which police agencies around the world pass to the League. You handle most diplomatic relationships. If a Gotham thug with an AK Forty Seven gets lucky tonight and you're seriously injured or killed, no one else is trained to do that."

"There are procedures in place to handle that in the event of my death."

"But no one's had enough practice. There would be a noticeable drop off in performance."

He inclines his head slightly. "Your suggestion?"

"No one on the League-" I don't look at the Hawks, just in case. "-has a background in intelligence. But, Hawkman and Martian Manhunter both worked with their respective homeworlds' police forces before coming here and are probably your best bets if you want to train someone up. Alternatively, you could consider either recruiting a civilian staff to handle it or a superhero who has worked in intelligence."

"You wouldn't-" Guy makes a face as he languidly waves his right arm in my general direction. "-happen to know one, would you?"

"Possibly. Unfortunately, the Brazilian intelligence services have either destroyed the records or found a way to block long ranged power ring intrusion. If that's the route you wish to take, sir, Fire may well have the skills required."

"I'll talk to the SNI about getting her records released."

"I've also taken the liberty of creating a full list of everything I'm doing with Mister Kord, Io and Sephtian in case you wish to add anything we're making to your arsenal. Please bear in mind that the list is only correct at the time of writing." Slight inclination of the head. "Finally, I would strongly recommend integrating a kinetic belt into your standard equipment. Most of your injuries while on active duty have been from kinetic attacks that it could deal with easily. Wonder Woman."

A slight rise in her left eyebrow. "You appear to think that my investigative skills could do with improvement."

"No. Well, yes, but complex criminal investigations have never been your focus and I'm not sure that all the extra training it would take to get you up to the level of some of your colleagues would meaningfully help either you or the League. If it's an area you wish to go into, you might be better off waiting until we've tested the medium term effects of G-Gnome knowledge transfers and just use one of those."

Mister Queen unslumps slightly. "Sounds like you're getting off lightly."

"I had originally been planning to nudge you about the armour again. Since that's no longer necessary I sent a basket of fruit, a bunch of flowers and a signed copy of All Star Comics issue three to Richard Swift in thanks." And wasn't getting that a pain in the arse. The Society sold the rights to allowing a slightly edited version of their travails to be sold to the general public, but they weren't anything as widely distributed as their modern equivalents. A few Leaguers frown in puzzlement at my comment while Diana just sighs. "Instead, I'm going to encourage you to consider increasing your use of equipment and to think about what you might like to use in future that doesn't currently exist. The lasso is excellent for gathering information and binding people but there have been a number of occasions… Even just since you joined the League, where something a bit more lethal would have been helpful and still not violated the League's restrictions on the use of lethal force."

"I'm sure that Philippus will be delighted that I'm practicing my sword drill again."

"While we're on the subject of lethal force, may I draw your collective attention to the incongruity of allowing the utter destruction of artificial intelligences and the undead while having synthetic and undead League members?" It takes a few moments for some of my superiors to work out who the 'vitally challenged' League member is, then Nabu receives a gratifying number of uncomfortable glances. "Particularly in light of the 'Citizenship Recognition Act' currently being debated in the American Senate?" The only real hold up came as a result of lobbying from tech companies who wanted some sort of security in case they created a true artificial intelligence by accident while studying intelligent systems. Their original request to be able to charge an AI the cost of creating it was shot down in short order, but they did negotiate immunity from prosecution as long as they took reasonable steps to confirm that whatever they were working on wasn't intelligent.

"I would appreciate it." Red Tornado doesn't have a particularly great range of intonation, but he makes the best of what he has.

"Flash. I'd like to spend some time with you examining the extent to which you can imbue or steal speed into different objects. I'd also like you to experiment with a subspace arsenal. At the speeds you can move there's little need for you to physically punch someone when a paralysis collar can render them harmless just as fast and far more safely."

"I haven't used weapons before because I'd have trouble keeping them at my speed. But if you've got a way around that, I'm all for it."

"Lantern Jordan." Who has the lowest rating of the three of the local Greenies. And whose bristling suggests that he's noticed. "I strongly suggest that you start coming to our training sessions."

"I'll see if I can make time."

John turns his head to face him. "I've actually found it really useful."

"Thank you, sir. Sirs. Aquaman."

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Triumph of the Will 10

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9th April

16:11 GMT +1

"Green Arrow."

"Ye-ah?"

"What particular part of your skill set do you want to improve?"

"Apparently, I kinda need to improve all of it. Look, I know you're not much of a fan of the bow-" He leans forwards, elbows on the table as he gestures with his hands. "-but in the hands of an expert it holds up pretty well compared to guns."

While Green Arrow is physically in the same category as Batman, he lacks the piercing intellect and mental focus that puts Batman in the number two spot. I feel slightly bad about thinking it, but honestly? If I had to drop one person here from the team, it would be Pointy Stick Launcher Senior. "Red Arrow uses my arrow heads, Speedy is getting used to my light power armour and Artemis-."

"Oh no. You're not doing that to me."

"Sir, the Danner Formula is completely safe. Artemis' experience has been exactly in line with our predictions. There's a sixty year old Danner enhancile in India and one of Brazil's leading superheroes is a surviving Son of Dawn." For some reason Doctor Munro was much less eager to meet him than he was the Beresfords. Maybe he doesn't like being reminded of his father's failure? "The sole drawback is that you need a slightly higher protein intake, and unless you've been seriously injured it doesn't add up to more than an extra boiled egg for breakfast. Sir, your present rating takes into account the fact that you can be killed by a lucky bullet and so prevented from completing your mission. The thug you're taking down is shooting at you in exactly the same way whether the bullet will give you a mild bruise or makes a little hole in your chest-" I tap the left side of my chest with my right index finger. "-and a bloody great one out of your back." I create a construct meat geyser behind me, blasting out of the point directly back from where I tapped.

"If it's so great, how come you're not using it?"

"Last time I checked, it didn't interact with my blood sample at all. Now… I've changed myself so much that it's pretty much impossible for me to test it safely. The Danner Formula is the most straightforward way of improving your effectiveness. If you don't want to use it, that's up to you." We maintain eye contact for a moment or two, then I shift my attention to the next person on the list. "Hawkman-."

"Would you mind explaining to me why his rating is higher than mine?"

I risk a small smile at Hawkwoman. "Of course not, sir. Hawkman was a police investigator before coming to Earth. As a result, his skill at criminal investigation-."

"I know that, but I'm a better fighter than he is."

"The difference.. isn't significant, at the strategic level. You're both capable aerial combatants using Nth metal melee weapons. If-" I make eye contact with Hawkman. "-you don't mind me skipping ahead, sir? " A slight shake of the head. "I know that the Thanagarian military use a wider variety of weapons than those you habitually use on Earth. You've also got more experience of space combat than anyone else here. You know as well as I do how bad Earth's defensive situation would be if just about anyone with a fleet headed in this direction. Acting as a melee fighter is a sub par application of your skills as a military officer. I can't give you credit for those abilities because you're not making use of them. The Green Lanterns reactivated the Watchtower's deep space sensors when I drew their attention to the presence of a Star Conqueror. Before that the League were relying on Human space telescopes. Where's the sensor network? I know constructing one is standard protocol for new Thanagarian colonies because it's so essential in detecting threats early. Where are any of Thanagar's low lethality weapons, or higher lethality ones if the situation required them? I wasn't expecting you to break out the classified equipment, but as far as I can tell you haven't been using standard issue stuff."

"I'd.. need authorisation. The laws on bringing equipment onto less advanced worlds are quite exacting."

"Lanterns are extraterritorial. You can leave the technical specifications lying around somewhere, I can happen across them and build whatever was on it and then you can use it without breaking the rules. Again, I have the case law. Same with your armour, though in that case, against most things there isn't much difference in protective abilities between orichalcum and Nth metal."

"I want to check that for myself."

"I'll make an appointment with Mister Kord. Now, sir-."

…

9th April

16:28 GMT +1

Mister Yao bows his head slightly. "I will simply accept your word for it. My focus has been on my doctoral studies and not on the other aspects of my professional life."

"The armour should be ready for you by the end of the week, sir." Now the bit I've been waiting for. "Nabu."

"You do not know enough about the mystical function of Order to properly assess my achievements."

"That may well be sir, but I couldn't help noticing that you've been a member of the Justice League for over three months and the Watchtower is still unwarded. And that I'm the one insisting that members carry personal wards. I warded Mount Justice and I'm not even a magic user. I realise that warding an alien space station is harder, but you are a Lord of Order."

Nothing from Nabu. Sitting there, wearing Mister Zatara's body and seeing the room through his eyes, it's all too easy to forget that he isn't Human and has in fact never been Human. Whatever instincts he once had as a mortal Cilian, they've long since faded. He's actually more robotic than Red Tornado; at least Doctor Morrow made an effort to enable him to copy Human body language.

"The other thing I wanted to bring up, sir, is your vulnerability to physical attack. While you are perfectly capable of shielding yourself, by default you're little more physically resilient than Mister Zatara.. was."

"I will consider armoring myself."

"If you like, sir, but I've actually got a better idea. Sephtian and I recently successfully tested transferring an elemental into a golem body."

King Orin leans forward. "Mera told me about that. How is he adapting?"

"As well as can be expected, sir. We don't want to stress the matrix with too much testing, but so far he's been able to interact with the world entirely coherently."

"I require the body of a magic user to properly channel my magic."

"The golem body is thaumically active, sir. While you'd probably want to customise exactly how it works, since you're drawing power from the Plane of Order rather than the Earth's arcane networks, there's absolutely no reason why it shouldn't be able to support you just as well as a human host. With the advantage of greater physical strength and endurance and being rather easier to repair and replace. If you'd like to check our working-."

"No."

…

"No as in-?"

"No. I will not leave this body."

Well. I'm just going to have to kill you, then.

Though this could be a useful opportunity to create a rift between him and the rest of the League. "Would you care to explain, sir? If you're concerned about the technology-."

His eyes begin to glow gold. "I will not justify myself to you, chaos worshipper."

"I assure you sir, Eris had nothing to do with the development of this technology. The laboratories in Poseidonis are warded against that sort of-."

"You will desist at once!"

A flicker of empathic vision on the other League members lets me know that I've pushed as far as it would be productive to push at this point. "Very well then, sir. Let me know if you change your mind. Atom."

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Triumph of the Will 11

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9th April

16:42 GMT +1

"…obvious problem of bringing your power to bear at a single point. The zeta tube network-" I trigger the holoprojector to display a world map with the position of each zeta tube displayed. All too few points. "-is only really useful in tactical terms for locations that already have zeta tubes, and for League members who are already close to one. Otherwise, by the time anyone-" I gesture to him with my right hand. "-with the notable exception of the Flash can get there, whatever's happening has already happened. And that's leaving aside the effect of atmospheric disruption, which can make whole areas unreachable."

King Orin nods. "Do you think the Dolmen Gates would be a better option?"

"Unfortunately, no. While they are… Much more difficult to disrupt and much cheaper to run than zeta tubes, the current design has to be circular. As a result, it's far harder to hide. In addition, unless everyone wants to learn the magic required, we'd have to use the 'always on' versions. We can make ones which deposit people with access talismans in one place and anyone else in another, but you're still going to need thousands to get anything that could be called 'rapid response' coverage. The best idea I was able to come up with was creating a Gate which the Flash could carry into position, but that would rely on him being available all of the time."

"Not sure Iris would be too keen on that."

I nod. "Recruiting dozens of people and giving them the Garrick Formula might make it viable, but that's a fairly extreme measure. In lieu of that, I've come up with two basic options. Firstly, we could move to a system of teleportation."

Mister Freeman leans back slightly. "I would be concerned with the safety of a teleportation system that used a base station on only one side."

Mister J'onzz nods. "I have some experience with zeta teleportation myself. If Martians were not as protean as we are I doubt that I would have survived the experience."

"There are dozens of different teleportation designs-" All three Green Lanterns start looking uncomfortable. "-and I don't work under any sort of technology sharing prohibition. It would be possible to get the end point definition required using a satellite network. Five point target confirmation is usually considered acceptable for civilian use. That could only transport you to a location on the surface, but if we're envisaging using this to stop ongoing rampages that's where you'd be needed anyway. In terms of infrastructure it would require a global dedicated satellite network of a sort that can't be created using Human technology. About two hundred satellites would be required to guarantee global coverage, but once you have that you can send anyone anywhere in moments."

"Alternatively -and I've been thinking about this ever since the Roanoke Island Incident- we could carry out a full thaumic mapping of the Earth and use variable end point Dolmen Gates. A slightly more refined version of the technique we used to get up here at New Year. The drawback there is that you need a couple of magic users steering them, though once their end point is set you can just leave them running. But on the plus side-."

"Producing a full thaumic map of the Earth is well beyond your abilities."

I smile politely at Nabu. "The basic principles involved are familiar to Atlantean magic, though they've never been applied on this sort of scale before. As near as I can work out, the lead time on creating the rune stones needed would be less than building a satellite network, though similarly you would need to leave them in place. The precise arrangement of thaumic networks changes constantly and an inaccurate map would be useless."

Batman nods. "Do you have anything else to say on this subject?"

I nod. "The other way of ensuring a rapid Justice League response would be a massive increase in the number of League personnel, but that's… Moving on to the subject of organisation which I wanted to cover a little later."

"The other major infrastructure problem is the lack of space-based assets. With no central lantern, the Watchtower has little in the way of protection and nothing in the way of weapons… Other than its own mass. While I can understand the desire not to have any weapons which could be pointed downwards, the lack of weapons pointed upwards severely impairs your ability to deal with a space-based attack. I was pleased to note that the Watchtower's interdiction systems are back online, but you've still got a situation where anyone advanced enough to make it to this system can send sub-light probes towards the Earth and cause an extinction level catastrophe with a kinetic harpoon volley. But if we limit ourselves to the three most probable-" Ms Thal crosses her arms across her chest. "-potential aggressors…"

I generate another hologram. "Gordanians use large and comparatively slow ships which usually also serve as their habitation." A small flotilla appears, matched by those League members who can meaningfully fight in space: Superman, the Lanterns, Major Atom and Icon. Even with everything I've already researched about him, I don't really know enough about what Nabu can do in space to include him. "Gordanians tend not to use fighter craft but they do use swivel mounts and their shields will make closing the range inadvisable. Assuming that they're detected in time and one of the Lanterns transports everyone into place, this fight is winnable with no fatalities on our side. If it is treated as a military engagement. Otherwise… There's no cover in space and most of the weapons they'll be using are light speed. Most of the League members shown here can take a few hits, but you all need to breathe and your respiratory equipment is generally less tough than you are." The Green Lanterns make shields to defend their colleagues, who open fire. Gordanian shields hold out for a short time, then fracture, causing the League members' exotic attacks to strike the hulls underneath. "What you have to remember is that with the interdiction fields up there's no quick way for them to retreat. If they commit to an attack, they will keep going. Disabling attacks in space are as much of a myth as non-lethal weapons, and given the usual sloppy discipline Gordanian raiders operate under this will result in the deaths of a large number of those on board. If you want to try treating it as a policing action and minimise the risk to those on board-" The images hug ship hulls and attack only weapon mounts. "-then you will take casualties-" Major Atom is repeatedly hit. "-and most likely fatalities."

The hologram resets. "Similar set up, this time with Gordanians with ties to the Citadel and so better technology." The ships' shields flare as the Leaguers close the distance, stunning them. Then the shooting starts. "Unlike most weapons you encounter on Earth, spacefaring races are perfectly capable of hurting even the toughest of you. Their targeting computers will have better effective range than you, they won't cluster up and they will use area denial weapons." Jordan, Icon and Superman take repeated hits and evaporate. "In this situation, the presence of non-Lanterns actively impedes the survival of the Lanterns by anchoring them in place. This is still winnable, but not everyone is coming home."

The image shifts again. "Khundian ships this time. Much better technology and doctrine." After the League fighters appear the Khundian warships are fast and agile enough to keep away from them, constantly moving relative position to change the shield facing their attackers. "They also use attack craft, power armoured marines and their capital ships usually bring their own interdiction fields with them. Against a Khundian fleet of any significant size, I do not believe that the League is capable of winning."

"A Thanagarian fleet is both harder to deal with and less of a threat. The Thanagarian laws on attacking less developed worlds within the Empire's borders are strictly enforced, and under Earth law there is no clear mechanism for claiming extraplanetary territory. Thanagarians have approximate technological parity with the Khundians but are much better equipped to deal with exotic effects."

I don't bother showing the results of that confrontation. Thanagarian 'private security' vessels vary so much in form and function that aside from conforming to the letter of the law they don't have all that much in common with each other. Some are ex-military, purchased by private concerns. Others are upgraded civilian vessels, either turned into warships or just used for their original purpose with added 'pirate deterrent'.

"In summary, the League is woefully limited in its ability to deal with an actual offensive space based force. Of its core aims, I would say that this is presently the League's weakest area. Doing anything significant about this would require a significant increase in the League's military power, and that may not be something you're comfortable with. On the other hand, I doubt you'd feel too happy about someone successfully invading the planet either. Earth lacks the technology to respond effectively to this sort of attack. We do have weapons perfectly capable of harming a lot of what the universe is likely to throw at us, but we don't have the delivery mechanisms or equivalent defensive systems. We don't have ships and the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaties mean that weapon platforms would currently be illegal."

I pause for a moment.

"I may be pushing my luck here, but how do you feel about me coming back in four months, gutting the green light systems from the Watchtower and bringing it up to full operating capacity with an orange battery?"

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Triumph of the Will 12

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9th April

16:51 GMT +1

"I had a brief discussion with Batman about this last year, but I don't think that the current method of recruiting League members is a good one, and I think that it may break down entirely before too long."

Yes, I know that the purpose of the organisation should be to fulfil the aims of the organisation and not merely to perpetuate the organisation, but this sort of thing does need to get thought about every so often.

"At present, any member may propose a new member and every member has a veto." And I'm not thinking too much about what it means that no one at all voted against Nabu. "The problem with this is that as the League grows, more people have a veto and the chance of someone being approved is reduced. This isn't exactly helped by the fact that there's no clear recruitment criteria. The practice so far appears to be for members to nominate people they've met and checked out, with little or no consideration given to what skills would be most useful to the League. For example-" The holograms move around me. "-Superman, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, Hawkman, Hawkwoman, Major Atom, Captain Marvel, Red Tornado and Icon all have both super strength and the ability to fly. Only Accomplished Perfect Physician can heal injuries. However good they were at their job, however good and trustworthy a person they were, how much would having another strong flier add to the League's capacities? Similarly, the League has one magic user. My team has five, not counting Troia's evocations. The League has one telepath. And as a consequence of recruiting known quantities, the League is somewhat American-heavy. No offence intended to my colonial brethren."

There's an extremely polite laugh from a few places.

"No one's going to refuse access to the Justice League on the grounds of nationality, but that does mean that you're ignoring a huge pool of talent because the people who have it don't live in the right place. For example-" A new hologram. "-this is He Who Follows. He works in Iran. Aside from myself and Batman, had anyone heard of him?"

Blank.

"Super speed, regeneration, some sort of air current manipulation. He also follows League guidelines on use of force and cooperation with the local authorities." To be fair though, he's been active for less time than everyone here except Icon. Another hologram. "This is Janissary. She's a medical doctor and magic user and she's been active since nineteen ninety nine." That is to say, as long as Batman and longer than most of the others. "Wonder Woman, you were actively looking for more female superheroes. Have you heard of her?"

She shakes her head. "I think I may have to arrange to meet her."

"Roughly a quarter of Atlantean battlemages are female. More, if you expand your selection criteria to magic users who can both cast combat spells and do other things. There are an awful lot of people around who could be on the Justice League who aren't getting a look in."

"But let's move back onto the organisational issue. The more people taking part in decision making, the more people who need to be consulted, the slower decision making becomes. That's fine for a small group, but the League isn't a small group any longer. And I'm assuming that you aren't planning to stop expanding, because if you are… Several of my team mates are going to be rather upset with you. I haven't seen anything written down about how big you're planning on getting, just as I haven't seen anything written down about what you're recruiting for. But, I came up with a few possibilities for future organisational structures, each of which could work. Then, you need to decide which way you want to take it."

"Firstly, you could certificate existing superheroes. Propagate a set of standards, offer equipment, training and League facilities. Though they wouldn't become League members, that would give you a wider pool of people to draw on in a crisis and a wider skill base. And let those of you who maintain secret identities have some time off every so often." A few rueful nods. "Current League members would in effect serve as officers and keep those functions involved in the running of the organisation divided amongst themselves. People would only be promoted to the League proper when there were openings due to death or retirement, and those openings would be filled by affiliates."

"Secondly -and I'll warn you that in the style of Sir Humphrey Appleby this is very similar to the first option- you continue to recruit anyone with the right skill set, but appoint an executive to approve new members.. and make most other operational decisions. This executive would probably be elected by the membership as a whole. This has the advantage of not causing those nominated for membership to feel excluded, but would most likely result in some of the people who are currently members losing some of their authority."

The Earth 12 option. Sort of. I never got the feeling that the authority of the original seven was in any way up for debate, even when a good proportion of the membership flat out hated Hawkgirl.

Now for Sir Humphrey's option three. The unacceptable one. "Alternatively, it may be easier not to recruit from existing superheroes at all, and instead train your own from scratch. By that, I don't mean taking on a lot more sidekicks. I mean find people -ex-military, police, or just people who have the right attitude- put them through a training program and if they pass give them super powers." I hold my hands forward and take two vials out of subspace. "Both the Danner and Garrick Formulae are easily mass produced." I send them back into subspace and take out the most recent iteration of my power armour. "Power armour, perfectly mass producible as both the Russian government and LexCorp are proving. Cold guns, mass producible. Orichalcum, not currently mass producible but we're working on it. Kinetic belts-" I tap mine. "-mass producible… With a little difficulty. If you're willing to move away from the traditional style of superheroism, you can get a lot of-."

"How about cloning Kryptonians?" The set of Superman's jaw indicates his displeasure at the idea.

"Of course not, sir. Creating people purely to use them as weapons is grotesquely immoral, the only pure Kryptonian produced by Human science is insane and hybrids like Kon don't really have much advantage over Danner Formula augmented Humans." Though I do need to talk to him about this after the meeting. "Bringing arcane education to the surface world would also produce a pool of people with useful and currently very hard to get abilities. I know-" I look at King Orin. "-several governments have expressed an interest in doing their part to ensure that we don't ever have another Roanoke Island."

"It cannot." Thank you, Nabu. "The Witch Boy cannot both channel such great magics and evade my detection."

What's the politest way to put this..? That will still set him off? "Nabu… You're not exactly a Klarion hard counter. Of the last three occasions you met him-" I dismiss the holograms and replace them with a recording from my perspective of the top of the Tower of Fate. "-on the first, you spent the whole fight on the defensive until I arrived-" The image shows Nabu being protected by a shield as Klarion throws red lightning at him. "-and I was the one who went after his familiar. Successfully." A scene shift. "At sixteen percent power. And Klarion still got away."

"My host was not properly able to-."

"The second time you met -on Roanoke- Klarion was able to retreat unimpeded again." The holoprojector shows Klarion waving goodbye as his shield fails. "And to be honest, having read up on that jewel I'm not entirely sure that your contribution was entirely-."

"The Witch Boy fled before I could bring my full might to bear."

"Though at that point, his allies had already recovered the Starro fragment from STAR Labs. He didn't have any reason to stay and try to fight you." The hologram switches to showing me fighting in this very room while another shows Nabu being taken down by my team mates. "Then the third time, you were mind controlled by him, having been in the vicinity of other people being mind controlled by him for some time without realising it. And having not felt his magic in the Starro tech itself. My binding chains held Klarion perfectly well, Lord of Chaos or not." Honest enquiry face. "Do you think it might benefit you to become more closely involved-"

Nabu stands. "I will not be spoken to in this manner!"

"-in my arcane research projects? Or would you-"

A golden ankh forms around Nabu and a moment later he's gone.

I don't smile.

"-rather storm off like a petulant child?"

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Triumph of the Will 13

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9th April

17:27 GMT +1

I finish my walk around the statue then float upwards to try seeing it from an elevated position. Canis Minor must have come back at some point to finish it. I'm not usually one for art, but this… If it wasn't for all the horse poo it would be really nice.

Oh that's right. I'm an Orange Lantern.

One of the horses is scratching an itchy flank against the stone, and it snorts and takes a couple of steps away as the orange light takes hold of the excrement and spreads it out across the nearby grass. The Watchtower doesn't have flies, but the garden has a healthy worm population and the climate control systems make it rain every so often. When this place was converted for League use they brought in just enough plant and animal life to keep the oxygen flowing but no one was really interested in creating an ecosystem. I don't think anyone even takes honey from the bee hives.

"Good, isn't it?" I look around as Superman flies down to hover a little way from me. "We offered to take it down to Earth, but Canis Minor said that it belonged up here."

"The point was creation and commemoration, not owning. Why put it somewhere other than where it should be?" I glance back up at the window to the meeting room. "Things going well up there, or..?"

"We're taking a short break. It's.. not easy being told everything you're doing wrong."

"Everyone on the Justice League has done so much for their fellow Earthlings already." That gets a small smile. "I'm not trying to.. do the League down. You're all amazing; what you volunteer to do is amazing. I'm just trying to… Help you do more. And, y'know, keep you alive while you do it."

"I know." He nods. "Do you have time to make that radiation shield for me now, or should I come back later?"

"Now's fine, sir. On the..? Belt buckle?"

"It's that small?"

"The version I gave Kon is. Really, it's a trade off in power and battery life, but since Kryptonite radiation is actually not.. very strong, and you won't be using it all the time, small works fine." I hold up my left hand and an orange strobe plays over his belt. "If you actually wanted to go to the Rao system or something you'd want something a little heavier. Sir, I… Why do you-?"

"Why do I have a belt?" He chuckles. "I remember what you and the Ophidian did to my trunks-."

"I'm really sorry about that, sir."

"I've had worse critics before." The light playing over his belt cuts out. The 'buckle' unit has about twice the volume it did before, but the change isn't really that noticeable. "I realise my costume isn't exactly 'cutting edge'-."

"No, no, the costume's fine, sir. Solid colour, clearly visible logo. I don't really like capes, but you pull it off. The.. pants…" I hold my hands out to the side, palms up.

"It was originally supposed to be a.. circus strong man sort of thing. The rest got added because I couldn't fly around in just my trunks."

"And the belt?"

"When I started out, they did sometimes get… Pulled down. Because of how fast I was flying." I look away, nodding. "Was that your honest assessment of what would happen if the League faced a group of warships?"

"That was the result of a lot of simulations. The exact result depends on your assumptions about what they know, how they respond. Broadly, though? Yes."

"I suppose we've been lucky so far."

"This is a peaceful region. The chance of being attacked isn't all that high. The only real local power that might threaten Earth in that way is the Black Circle, but they're criminals and raiders, not a navy. Their fleet assets aren't often used for attacking places that can fight back."

"So we don't need to arm up just yet. You had me worried for a minute there."

"Statistically… No. It probably isn't necessary. It would help in some ways, hinder in others…" I shrug. "It's a path you could take."

Ring, anyone else around?

I get a clear impression of the Watchtower, and the locations of everyone on board. Looks like Nabu did leave.

"Sir, there was something else I wanted to talk to you about."

"Oh? What is it?"

"You may want to sit down."

He looks at me curiously for a moment. "I prefer to take my bad news straight."

"It's not bad news sir, but alright. I was always a bit sceptical of the idea that starfaring species could have been rendered near-extinct by a single disaster-."

He looks down. "They can if they isolate themselves on their homeworld."

"Right, but everyone? So… After I got Lantern Stewart's ring I had a look through the database. See if I could track down any Kryptonians who might have been elsewhere."

His face stills as he looks at me in shock. "You found someone?"

Tracking down a single planet in a galaxy when you have no real idea where it is isn't very easy. I was rather lucky finding a specific reference to a 'Dax-Am' in the Corps' records on Kryptonian society itself. Then I tried comparing the faces of his followers to those on other humanoid inhabited worlds. That got me nothing. Looking for humanoid inhabited worlds orbiting a red giant narrowed it down a bit, looking for one colonised rather than indigenously inhabited narrowed it further, then it was a matter of looking at the records and finding the best fit.

"I found a colony. It's on the planet Daxam in Space Sector one seven six zero. The original colonists appear to have been.. Kryptonian Amish, effectively. According to Green Lantern Corps records-."

"What?!" His eyes widen. "That was on John's ring? Why didn't he tell me?"

"The Green Lantern Corps missed them because they've.. pretty much abandoned Kryptonian culture as it was then. Since Daxam orbits a red giant they don't have any of the signature Kryptonian superpowers… And they retained the Kryptonian habit of isolating themselves and doubled down on the xenophobia. The local Lantern just had time to confirm that there was a settlement before they opened fire and chased her off. If I didn't know exactly what I was looking for I wouldn't have been able to find it."

He nods, his eyes shifting to the ground below us as he gets his thoughts in order. "Sector one seven six zero. Where is that?" I wave my right hand and create a galaxy map, our position and Daxam's clearly marked. Quite a long way. "Ah."

"I can give you a lift in three months. Or you could probably arm twist Lantern Tomar-Re into giving you one now." He nods. "I should warn you, they're probably not going to be friendlier to an outsider just because he happens to be from the same species as them."

"I.. better brush up on my Kryptonese." He smiles at me. "Shame you couldn't find someone closer." His smile disappears. "You found someone closer?!"

"Um." Stupid… Super senses. "Ssssort of?"

"On Earth? Where?"

"Thing is, sir… They… Know you're here. I mean, you're not exactly subtle, you wear the sigil of House El on your chest..."

"Why is that a problem?"

"The individual in question was a member of the Kryptonian navy who went AWOL when the Science Council took over. While Jor-El was opposed to isolationism, House El as a whole was in favour of it and several members of the Science Council-."

"And they blame me for that?" He shakes his head in disbelief. "Let me talk to them."

"I.. rather promised that I wouldn't, sir. They were… Percussively emphatic about not wanting anything to do with you." The muscles around his jaw tighten. "I wouldn't tell them that you're Clark Kent; it's hardly fair to expect me to spill their secrets."

"Maybe not. But I certainly didn't promise that I wouldn't look-."

And then the alarms start blaring.

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Triumph of the Will 14

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9th April

17:32 GMT +1

Mister Kent surges upwards, head turning left and right as he looks for an attacker.

Ring, armour.

Compliance.

My power armour manifests around my body, immediately followed by my construct armour.

Mister Kent's right hand goes to his ear. "Batman?"

Ring, scan.

I get a clear image of everything except vault six. Vault six was… Where we're storing the remains of the Einherjar. Theft attempt or did they get up on their own? Not detecting zeta radiation, not detecting… No, check hull integrity in case of scry warded boarders. No, that's fine. No boarding craft. If it was an attack, it would have to be a snatch and grab. Members of the Justice League are monitored a lot of the time when they're out in public, but given that secret identities seem to work I doubt they're monitored full time. Either the identities would be compromised or the Leaguers would notice.

The Light know their identities, but either they wouldn't attack while everyone was here or that attack would be a nuke and it would have gone off by now. Looks like reanimation is the most likely option. We never found out why they fell when the portal closed… Oh, in general terms, their connection to the Norse afterlife got interrupted, but the precise mechanics? Why they showed up in white light in my empathic vision? How they were able to keep functioning when stuck with anti-magic arrows? No idea. At least we were able to get their weapons and armour stored away from them.

Thirty seven unarmed undead Vikings? The League should be able to handle that. It will be interesting to see how intelligent they are when not being directed by the Krieger brothers… Wait. Does that mean that they're back on Earth? Klarion being back would be bad, but the other two are fairly manageable. I checked with Alan and the Spear's mind control effect requires either that the user already owns the area it's being used in or the performance of a lengthy ritual to claim ownership. Easy enough when the League are already mind controlled; not quite so easy when they're not.

I generate a railgun, then blink in surprise as the light crawls out at snail's pace. Oh, I'm accelerating. Right. Stooop.

Mister Kent is looking down at me. "We've got an intruder-."

"Vault six. Probably the Einherjar reanimating. Guess we should have tied their big toes together. Should I attend?"

The very faintest suggestion of a frown momentarily graces his brow, but he's used to working with Mister Allen. And Batman, I suppose. "Do you think there's any chance we could talk to them?"

"Should be able to. The ring's automatic translation didn't work last time, but the effect blocking it may have been bound to their armour. And I can just instruct the ring to do an automatic translation based on historical Scandinavian languages. Won't be quite as good, but it should do the job."

"I meant, do you think we can settle this peacefully?"

"Oh. No idea. Assuming they actually are Einherjar and not just something the Nazis created based on the myth, they're supposed to serve as Odin's army against the Ice Giants. How inclined they are to be peaceful depends on whether they feel obliged to return to Valhalla whole or if they can get back by dying in battle again."

"We can probably help them with that."

"Sir? We don't actually know that they would go back to Valhalla if we destroyed them. And remember what I said about the undead being people too?"

"You may have a poi-." He pauses for a moment. "Flash is just outside the vault. The doors look like they're about to give way. Can you get us there?"

"Stand by." I tag him with a filament. No real resistance there. Maybe I should work on some sort of armour for him? "Transition." Our surroundings flicker repeatedly as the sealed doors of the Watchtower's interior force me to stop on four occasions and poke tiny holes through them to carry on. Add interior force fields to the list… I'm not complaining, but it really shouldn't be possible to just-

We appear outside the vault, Mister Allen looking around as the air displaced by our arrival breezes past him.

-do this in a secure location.

"Superman. Orange Lantern."

There's a tremendous clang from the vault door and it bows outwards a little more.

"Can either of you tell what's going on in there?"

"Scan isn't giving me much."

Mister Kent narrows his eyes slightly, then shakes his head. "Remind me again why we lined these storage rooms with lead?"

"In case you were storing radiological materials, probab-." Oh. "Rhetorical, sorry." I raise my hands slightly as another banging impact causes the walls to shudder. "Sonic probes… Oh. No, can't get a good reading through whatever these walls are made of."

Another bang, and I notice that the doors shift back slightly as the pressure is withdrawn from the far side. Not good.

Mister Kent nods, then drops to the ground in front of the door terminal. "I'll try talking to them. Orange Lantern, I'll need you to translate."

"Sir, might I suggest doing that from a little further away? Magic is one of your vulnerabilities."

"I don't think Vikings will be more likely to listen if I'm hiding." He touches his fingertips to the console's scanner, getting a green light. "This is Superman."

There's another bang on the doors as the ring comes up with its best interpretation for 'Superman' in Old Norse. Maybe I should have told it to refer to him as Kal-El instead?

"You're inside our Watchtower. Identify yourselves."

I hear a quiet voice, and several moments pass with no more bangs. Then there's a short burst of untranslatable Norse. Intelligent undead, at least.

"I am Prince Jon Haraldson, Marshall of the Einherjar. Open these doors at once."

Mister Kent looks at me. "Should I call him 'Marshall' or 'Prince'?"

How the heck am I supposed to know? Ring, anything on Viking military organisation?

Data available.

"Probably Marshall, but the Vikings were pretty informal about that sort of thing. But Marshall implies that he's in charge of the whole thing, all the Einherjar."

Mister Kent nods. "You came here in the service of our enemy, Marshall Haraldson. I'm not too keen on giving you the run of the place."

"His pact with Odin had us fight for him once. If he fell, then his bargain died with him. Our allegiance is to Odin."

"I want your oath that you will conduct yourselves peacefully while you are here."

There's a pause. Again, through the damaged doors I can hear snatches of conversation.

"Do you rule here?"

"Batman is our current chairman, but I can speak for him."

"I will so swear if I may have the same oath from you."

Mister Kent glances at me once more. "Will he keep his word?"

"If he swears by a god he's literally met? I think so. I mean, trust but verify…"

He nods. "I swear by Rao that you will be treated as our guests, unless you violate our hospitality."

"Then in Odin's name I swear that we will behave as your guests. Now open the door!"

Mister Kent presses the door release. The mechanisms clunk, then nothing happens. "Marshall, you've damaged the door mechanism. I'm going to have to force it." He walks out in front of the door. "Flash, Orange Lantern, stand back. Just in case."

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Triumph of the Will 15

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9th April

17:36 GMT +1

His eyes narrow, then twin beams of red light lance out at the metal near the join between the two halves of the door. A second later he stops, then shoves his hands into the softened metal. His muscles bulge as he pushes against the door mechanism. Ooo, this could be a fascinating opportunity to observe exactly how the body of a full blooded Kryptonian behaves when it's exerting-.

Darn. Too late.

There's a horrendous screech as the mechanism gives way. Mister Kent's arms shoot out to the sides as the two parts of the door slam back into the walls. On the other side are the Einherjar, the one I recognise from the fight at New Year as their leader standing about two metres away from the newly opened door. His hands are empty and visible as he regards Mister Kent with curiosity.

The rest of his motley crew are less inclined to passivity. Slightly crouched as if ready to receive a charge they clasp glowing, partially translucent swords and axes in their hands. The one next to Prince Jon has even managed to create a shield to go with his axe; I can dimly see the crossed forearms minus one hand coat of arms. Would it be a coat of arms for a Viking? So… Were they extending that aura over their weapons and armour during the fight? That might explain why we had such trouble working out how they work.

Mister Kent stands and wipes the partially molten metal residue from his hands before rising slightly into the air. A few of the Einherjar brace again as he does so, and from how Prince Jon's eyes move I think he noticed. He steps forward, jostling the shield bearer aside as he does so. Then he starts speaking. Hearing foreign languages at all while I'm wearing the rings just feels weird.

"Health and happiness, Superman." He holds out his right hand.

Mister Kent drifts forwards a little before landing again, his point hopefully made. "May God keep you and bless you." He extends his hand, and Prince Jon takes hold of his forearm. Mister Kent copies the gesture without missing a beat.

The man with the shield mutters something, and a moment later I get the translation. "Christ men. Feh. I thought we were done with those."

Prince Jon pulls away from Mister Kent to glare at him. "You'll keep a civil tongue in your head, Lars. We're their guests, and your failure to discipline your sons is no one's fault but your own."

Lars sneers, but doesn't otherwise respond. Prince Jon then turns back to Mister Kent, for a moment looking past him to myself and Mister Allen. "I don't recognise you from the fight. Were you there?"

"By the time Wolf Krieger called for your help, I was already unconscious."

Prince Jon nods, then focuses on me. "You, I remember. You destroyed my shield."

I nod. "What? If you hadn't wanted me to shoot it, you shouldn't have blocked my shot."

He grins. "Heh hah!" Then he nods. "True. But my wife has spent a long time trying to teach me not to block attacks with my body. She says that I can never tell when one of them will be something I'm not invulnerable to." He points to his left eye with his right hand. "Like those arrows."

"A wise woman. I'm trying to teach-" I point at Mister Kent with my right forefinger. "-Superman the same thing."

Behind him, Lars mutters something and Prince Jon's eyes widen in alarm. The other Einherjar take a few steps away from Lars as the translation comes through. "Perhaps he's the blue one's wife."

Prince Jon turns sharply on his heel and punches Lars full in the face, sending him flying backwards through the ranks of the Einherjar, halting only when he hits the far wall. Prince Jon stares down at him for a moment, then turns back to me. "You have my sincerest apologies for his words. Upon our return to Valhalla I will see him harshly disciplined."

Um, okay? I nod my head. "As you see fit. Superman's not pretty enough for me anyway."

Prince Jon looks puzzled by that, but after a moment seems to disregard it. Some of the tension leaves the Einherjar and several of them dismiss their weapons, blades evaporating into nothing as they decide that fighting is off the agenda for the moment.

Mister Kent stands aside, motioning towards the doorway with his right hand. "We weren't expecting you to wake up again. If you'll come with me, we can see about getting you your weapons, armor and horses."

"Thank you. For how long were we… Asleep?"

"Three months." Mister Kent and Prince Jon lead the way down the corridor in the general direction of the gardens. Probably the best place to put them for the moment. "Were you aware of anything?"

"I was not." Mister Allen and I follow on behind them, with the rest of the Einherjar forming up behind us. Lars retakes his position in the lead. A sergeant, perhaps? I note that he kept his axe and his shield when the rest let theirs disintegrate. "I was fighting against your son, then I awoke in that chamber."

Mister Kent tenses slightly when Prince Jon refers to Kon as being his son. It's not an unreasonable assumption, given how similar they look and the fact that they use the same 'S' icon. "Do you have any idea why you've woken up now?"

"No, none. It was not like death; we Einherjar have all died before. A few moments of pain, then the body dies and the soul appears before Odin-."

Lars huffs. "A few moments! Some of us had to bleed out over the course of hours! Fucking Christians can't even kill a man properly." That gets a few amused nods from Lars' fellows. "And 'appear before Odin'? We all know you spent days fucking Geirahod before you went anywhere near the All Father's ha-."

Prince Jons turn his head to look at the man. "Silence, churl!" Lars quietens -though he certainly doesn't look cowed- then Jon turns back and carries on as if nothing happened. "When next I see the All Father, I will ask him what happened."

Mister Kent nods. "Do you know where Wolf Krieger is now?"

"Is he not dead, then?"

"Captain Nazi picked him up and flew through the portal you used to come here."

"A man such as that, fleeing into Odin's realm? I doubt he will be warmly received."

"Do you know why Odin offered him your help?"

"Above all things, Odin fears the Giants breaking free and making war upon the Aesir. To prevent this, he seeks knowledge, weapons, all manner of things which can best be obtained from Midgard."

"Krieger's been supplying him?"

"And testing weapons and spells for him."

"But Krieger is a Nazi!"

Prince Jon shrugs. "What does that matter to Odin? Neither the people the Nazis killed nor the Nazis themselves worshipped the Aesir." There's a slight hesitation. "Do your wizards have a way to reopen the portal to Valhalla? Though it would be interesting to see what has become of Denmark in my absence, I have duties to perform."

"Not yet. We thought you were dead permanently so it wasn't a priority." Mister Kent thinks for a moment. "Though I don't mind forcing Krieger to open one for you, if we can find him first."

Turns out that being a magic user doesn't make you immune to telepathy. Not until the very high levels where you start to transubstantiate and aren't so reliant on your organic brain, at least. And even then, I could give him a very strong desire to open a portal.

"Odin has given me no order not to." He nods. "We have an agreement."

"Hey, I was wondering." Mister Allen moves up alongside them in a blur. "If you're invulnerable, how did you manage to die in battle?"

Prince Jon smiles broadly. "Telling you the full saga of my death would take many days. In short, Odin only made me invulnerable to things which he thought could give me an honourable death. His intent was that I should die in shame, failing to win my place in Valhalla and condemned never to see my beloved Geirahod again. So I sought out wizards and foul monsters in the hope that they would have the ability to attack me in some way that Odin had overlooked. Finally, a sorcerer named Thorvald was able with his last breath to freeze me solid, trapping me in ice for I know not how long. Centuries passed until I was freed by a man named Franklin Rock. The world I was now in was strange to me, but a battle is a battle. And Odin had not thought to make me immune to-."

"Translation unclear. Best fit: 'blast clay'."

"Yes, blast clay." Prince Jon nods. "And as I left my mortal body my Valkyrie came for me."

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Triumph of the Will 16

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10th April

07:56 GMT -5

Kon glances at me, then returns his attention to the fore as we head down the passageway leading to the training room. "Still can't believe you just stumper-rushed me."

I snort, causing Wolf to stare up at me in surprise from her position next to Kon. "Still can't believe you're still going on about that."

A particularly sweet victory in Human Resources last night. Usually, Stumpers are just used as caltrops, slowing enemy melee units as they charge in. But if you get enough of them, you can slow resource gathering units as well. I scouted early, noticed that he didn't have the prerequisites for their natural counter -Fire Vampires- and thought I'd go for it. I ended up reducing the speed of every unit he had to practically nothing, giving me plenty of time to build up my main attack and giving me more shooting time per engagement before his melee units could close the distance.

"Do you think we could have a game later?" M'gann smiles with what must be affected innocence. "Conner's been showing me how it works, but I'm sure there are plenty of things I'm missing."

Not exactly Korean-level myself… "Of course. I'd be delighted."

"What do you think Batman has planned for us today?"

"Maybe that Haraldson guy wants a rematch?" Kon rolls his shoulders. "We can find out exactly how invulnerable Odin made him."

"Kon, he's had centuries of experience with a sword."

He shrugs. "Did okay last time."

"Last time he'd just had an arrow in his eye."

"Do people come back from the dead a lot on Earth?" Kon and I both look at M'gann. "I mean, there were dead people from Hell in Fawcett City, Paul.. went to the Amazon afterlife to talk to some people, now we've got dead Vikings from Valhalla staying in the Watchtower. I don't think that's ever happened on Mars."

Um… "It's been a bit of a statistical anomaly, but there are established ways of communicating with the dead. Isss… There someone you want to talk to?"

"No… I've just been thinking…" She frowns. "What if there is a way on Mars and people just don't know about it? That could be huge."

"It's pretty huge on Earth. People just don't use magic enough-."

Kon suddenly looks at her. "Are you talking about that Burning Martian?"

"Well…"

"Um?"

Kon and M'gann look at each other, then M'gann turns to me. "All Martians are telepathic. I know that we used to be… Like that. We've got spring break coming up and I was planning on visiting home…"

Kon nods sympathetically. "She's been worried someone might pick up on it."

"How big a problem would it be?"

"Finding out that we're a race of brainwashed monsters? Finding out that the divide between White, Green and Red is just how brainwashed we are?" She looks helpless. "I don't know. But it's just a question of how bad. I can't think how anyone finding out could be good at all."

"I.. have to admit, I'd be in favour of releasing the information. Even if it causes short term disruption, I think it would be better for Martians to know their origins. Might do something to overcome the racism if they had the idea that there's basically no difference reinforced."

Kon doesn't look convinced. "That's a bit optimistic. Martians are in telepathic contact with each other all the time, right?" M'gann nods. "Are they, like, empathic? I mean, if one Martian feels something do the other Martians just know, or do they start to feel it too?"

"We're not… If Uncle J'onn was feeling something, that wouldn't make me feel it, but I might just because it's there?" She looks away. "I'm.. probably not explaining it very well."

"Could you keep up a mental barrier, tell everyone that you knew state secrets you weren't allowed to share?"

She doesn't appear to like the idea. "Maybe?"

"…father was an American citizen." Kaldur and Raquel are already here, talking about something while the others watch Wallace trying to take on Beryl at holographic table tennis. Teekl's trying to decide whether to pounce after the ball or not. "But I do not consider the color of my skin to be a significant part of my character." He shrugs. "My mother has blonde hair and fair skin. I grew up in Poseidonis and not in Florida as my father did. Why should I relate to his ethnicity rather than hers?"

"I... Guess."

Kaldur nods. "In Atlantis, the fact that one of my parents was born outside Atlantis would be considered far more significant than his ethnicity."

She looks at him sceptically. "So, what? Atlantis doesn't have racism?"

"The nearest equivalent would be distaste some Purebloods have for people like myself who have-" He tilts his head slightly to the left, drawing attention to his gill slits. "-non Human physical characteristics. However, Orm's Purebloodist supporters were mostly captured after his defeat, and those who remain are wise enough to remain silent about their affiliation."

"But isn't everyone in Atlantis… Ah, altered? Anyway?"

Kaldur smiles faintly. "Now perhaps you understand my confusion regarding surface world racial-"

"Recognised, Batman, zero two."

"-politics." Kaldur looks around to the zeta tube as the holographic game is deactivated, taking the centre point as my team mates and I begin to form up.

Batman stops just in front of us, pausing to briefly look us over. "At eleven thirty Eastern Standard Time the remains of the Einherjar being stored on the Watchtower reanimated." Most of us knew that, but I suppose Beryl or Rob might not have heard yet. "According to our experts-" Oh, did Nabu stop sulking eventually then? "-this almost certainly means that Wolf Krieger-" A group of holographic images of the man appears showing him as he looked back in World War Two as well as more recent images, most notably the one I took of how he looks without a mask these days. "-and his brother Albrecht-" Not that any of us could forget what Captain Nazi looks like. "-have returned to Earth."

Kaldur nods. "And what of Klarion?"

"We don't know. Preparations are being made-" By Nabu? Good luck. "-for that eventuality, but since there is no record of them cooperating before we are currently operating on the assumption that they are most likely not still together."

"We're-!" Wallace's mind catches up with his mouth. "Not being sent after him, are we?"

"If we knew their location, it would be a matter for the League. Since we do not, there is an opportunity for the team to act in an information gathering capacity."

"So while Oh El does that in three seconds, what are the rest of us doing?"

"I can't get information a priori, Kid Flash. And I doubt very much that a man of Wolf Krieger's age would have uploaded his itinerary to his LinkedIn account."

"With the help of Marshall Haraldson, we have compiled a list of addresses used by the Kriegers and their associates." A map of the world appears, with… Far too many locations for us to monitor each of them. "Your task will be to monitor them and anyone using them in an attempt to learn either the Kriegers' location or their future plans. Precisely which locations you focus your efforts on and who is assigned to each location is a decision for the team."

Kaldur nods. "We will decide swiftly."

Batman inclines his head slightly. "Should you get a definite lead, contact a member of the Justice League." He tries making eye contact with each of us, but it's a bit hard to make us feel worried about someone we already beat. "One last thing. Since you elected to approve his membership-"

"Recognised, Canis Minor, B one seven, Beton Brut, C zero six."

"-Canis Minor will be joining you."

back

Triumph of the Will 17

next

10th April

11:29 GMT -3

"When I persuaded Icon to try being a superhero, this isn't exactly what I had in mind."

Raquel is gamely trying to read through the information folder I had the ring create, but it's kind of hard going if you can't turn off your capacity for boredom.

"What's the problem? It's got secret Nazi magic, decades long international political conspiracies, links between criminal financial assets and modern day political groups... Heck, we ourselves formed an important part of the story at New Year."

"Can we just skip to the part where you explain why we're watching this Helmut Schreiber guy?"

"Did you know that there was a relatively simple piece of magic which can be used to erase a person from any database -written or electronic- anywhere in the world?"

"Nnn-no?"

"An associate of mine by the name of John Constantine uses it to prevent his past catching up with him. But to answer your question, I don't know who Helmut Schreiber is."

She hesitates, then nods. "Which is weird, because you know everything."

"Not everything, but I can check records very quickly. Now, I can tell you how much tax he's paid since he entered full time employment. I can tell you what sort of car he drives. I can tell you where he works and how long he's been there. But the only reason I can tell you where he went to university is because he presented his certificates when he applied for his current job and they made a record of them. The university has officially never heard of him."

"Does it affect his tutors' memories?"

"The version of the spell which I'm familiar with doesn't, but it was years ago and they see a lot of students. The chance of them remembering him is pretty small. I can't tell you who his parents are. I can't tell you his marital status. I can't even scan his house."

"Okay, but Brazil has magicians. What makes you think he's got anything to do with Krieger?"

"Magic isn't just.. magic. You don't.. suddenly know how to do everything under a certain level after you cast your first spell. Power has to be matched by knowledge and the 'bureaucracy erasure spell' comes from late nineteenth century Europe, not from aboriginal American shamanism. I don't even think the Atlanteans know it."

"But a Brazilian could cast it, right?"

"If they learned magic from traditional South American sources… Yes, but it would be difficult. That way of working would be counterintuitive to them. Remember how I flew when I tried using your belt for the first time? Despite having flown by power ring for months?"

She nods. "Yeah, so whoever did this probably had a European teacher."

"A lot of top level Nazis came to South America after World War Two. Including-. "

"The Kriegers."

"No, but several notable ex-Thule Society members did. Brazil -particularly southern Brazil- has a large ethnic German population, and South America at the time had a lot of far right governments. Therefore, the most likely place for this spell to have come from is one of them."

"And you think Wolf Krieger might come here looking for one of his old friends."

"More likely their students, now. It has been sixty years." I shrug. "Or maybe not. I still don't know how he's extended his life this long. It could be the others have done the same and the reason I can't find Helmut Schreiber is that he didn't exist until a decade ago."

Raquel returns her attention to the folder. "So where'd the Kriegers go?"

"Um. The United States, actually."

Her head shoots up again. "No way!"

"Yes way. Wolf used a Swiss passport and he picked up his brother from somewhere a few years later, once America turned its attention towards the Soviet Union. The US got dangerously close to having a blond, blue eyed, patriotically themed superhero in the employ of the federal government on one occasion. If Albrecht had been able to tone down the fascism a bit while in company…" I wiggle my right index finger at the file. "Interested now?"

Head back down. "Bet your ass I am."

I turn my attention back to the monitors we've got set up in the apartment we're renting for this operation. We're getting an image from cameras placed around the edge of the property via Bleed fracture-pulse transmitters. Radio was too much of a risk of detection and wired transmission was out due to impracticality. Bleed transmissions are near unbreakable but they are detectable if you've got the right equipment. The Nazis haven't, as far as I know.

"Oral history, superhero style. It's amazing what you can find out once you get a senior member of the community talking."

"Yeah, I managed to get Icon talking about life as a slave one time. Helped with a.. school project."

"I don't imagine his experience was exactly typical."

"No, but he saw what a typical experience was like. What his foster mother went through."

"Mmm."

Zatanna should be back in a few minutes. She's been taking passive arcane readings of the area, mapping out local etheric currents. Won't necessarily tell us anything… But it might, and it's a good habit to get into. Canis is with her just in case she needs physical protection, though she shouldn't. This is a good part of Brazil. With armed police to look after the tourists and wealthy locals.

I picked Canis for my group because I know most about Apokoliptian culture and so am best placed to smooth over any difficulties he might have. I thought that he might kick up a fuss about leaving Beton Brut behind, but he was actually gratifyingly reasonable about the whole thing. Giant canine war steeds aren't good on stake outs. I suppose it might just be that he's giving us the benefit of the doubt until he has the lay of the land… The Frees must have given him some sort of introduction to Human culture, right?

"Um..? I was.. wondering…"

Raquel doesn't look up. "What?"

"I caught the end of your chat with Kaldur about… Race relations…"

"Yeah?"

"I… Ah… There was a… A television series I used to watch, back on Earth Prime. The white female lead was in a romantic relationship with a black man… But the ethnicities weren't referred to directly in any way. They were just two young people from London who happened to be together. And.. the relationship broke down as the series went on, but again, ethnicity wasn't anything to do with it. I didn't really.. think about it from that point of view, until I read an interview with an American fan who said that that sort of relationship wouldn't be shown on American television. Even now. And… There was an interview with Will Smith in which he said that they made sure that the actress playing his partner in one of his films was black because otherwise that would be a thing. Is that… Actually how it is?"

"Am I the only black person you know?"

"Apart from Kaldur and Philippus? Um…" Oh. "Yes, I.. think so."

"Is that why you're asking me?"

"I'm asking you because you know and care about this sort of stuff. If you don't want to tell me-."

"There was some pretty racist stuff up to the late sixties. After that it just got kinda pathetic. These days you get mixed race relationships on screen without anyone really caring."

"Thanks. Ah, good to know." There's movement on the screen. "Oh, looks like he's coming out." Huh. Now I see him in the flesh, he looks familiar from somewhere. Can't quite.. place him.

Raquel gets up from her chair and comes closer to the screen, staring down at his face. A moment later her eyes widen in shock.

Spoiler: Take a guess before opening this

"Is that Hitler?"

back

Triumph of the Will 18

next

10th April

11:34 GMT -3

I tilt my head slightly to the left, more than a little stunned.

"If we… Take an image of Adolf Hitler from the mid-nineteen twenties, shave the toothbrush moustache and give him a better haircut and a bit of a tan…"

Helmut Schreiber smiles at the midmorning sun, then turns into his house and-. Oh my goodness.

"That's not..?"

"Um. They're both wearing wedding rings."

Raquel's mouth is hanging open, her eyes wide. "Is that Adolf Hitler and his black wife?"

"Um."

And then-.

"Is that Adolf Hitler, his black wife and their three children?"

"Well-. Well-. Well. Until they get further away from the house I can't do a genetic analysis, but working backwards from existing genetic records and their physical appearances… Probably? Um. Um. Let me just try and check school records."

"I-. I-. How?"

"He's… He's clearly too young to actually be Adolf Hitler. I mean, he can't be more than forty. Adolf Hitler was born in eighteen eighty nine."

"But-!" She gesticulates at the monitor. "He's here."

"Maybe they just look really similar. I-I-I mean, I don't have a record of Hitler's DNA so I can't really check."

On the monitor, we watch as Adol-. As Helmut Schreiber bends down to pick up his young son, laughing at something his wife says as he does so. The boy -who can't be more than five- pats his cheek and Mister Schreiber jokingly bites at his hand, much to the boy's delight.

What?

Raquel and I turn towards each other, and I'm sure that the expression of complete shocked and horrified bewilderment on her face is mirrored on my own.

Then we lose it.

"Krgrughahahaha!" / "Huhhehhahahahahaha!"

We slump against each other, arms wrapped around each other for support. I'm shaking with laughter, tears running down my face. ThE nAzIs ReSuRrEcTeD hItLeR aNd He'S nOt A nAzI!

"Oh God."

"I know. Uhhehe. Aah."

We pull apart, not quite trusting ourselves to look at each other. Oh mighty Eris, thank you for showing me this particular piece of the universe's underlying insanity.

"You ever… Read… The Boys from Brazil?"

"No, but… I… Always… Thought…" I clear my throat. "Nurture was a… Bigger deal than… Nature. When it comes to behaviour."

"How..? Hhhhow did they even..?"

"I'm… Assuming magic? The Allies didn't bother taking Thule Society members prisoner, they just killed them. But, that meant that they didn't have any leads on the ones who escaped Europe."

"Okay. This… Schreiber guy's gotta be… Forty?"

"So they'd have made him in the seventies. Probably."

"I know cloning Humans is possible, but could they have done it in the seventies? Without magic?"

"Theoretically? Sure. Chinese scientists cloned a carp in the sixties. The theory certainly existed…" I shake my head. "I want to say 'no', but if I'd looked at contemporary science I'd have said that you couldn't build an AI in the nineteen thirties. I.. don't know… How their magic would have affected it?"

On the screen the Schreiber family walk down their garden path towards the family car.

"Um. Okay, I can get scans of them now. Those children are definitely theirs. His telomere length is appropriate for someone of his apparent physical age."

"His.. what?"

"Telomeres are the things on the end of DNA chains that keep them together. They shorten every time the DNA chain replicates. His look like those of someone who's forty, not someone who's a hundred and twenty."

"So?"

"When you clone someone using a tissue sample, their telomeres stay the same length. Adolf Hitler was older than Mister Schreiber is when Wolf Krieger first met him, so it's very unlikely he could have got a tissue sample back then. Even if he could have preserved it well enough for it to still be useable."

"Do you think he… Knows..?"

We both watch as the children are loaded into the car, Mister Schreiber taking the driver's seat.

"I'd… Speculating, but I'd say either 'no' or he learned a long time ago and doesn't care anymore. Let me just-." I watch through the wall as he drives his family past our apartment. Nothing. "I can't see him with my empathic vision. Nothing I can see in the rest of the family suggests that they're anything other than what they appear to be."

"If Wolf Krieger did make him…"

"Why did he let this happen?"

"I mean, if they're in love-"

"Yep."

"-that's great, but I can't see a Nazi like Krieger being okay with the Führer's clone marrying a black woman."

"Wolf Krieger must have known that a clone wouldn't necessarily have shared his progenitor's attitudes. If he wasn't… I don't know, raising him in some sort of Nazi model village, what the heck happened?"

"Schreiber can't be any kind of secret far right leader. Do we even know if Krieger's been here lately? Maybe he just… I don't know, had to go into hiding and then by the time he found Schreiber again… This had happened."

"I don't know. If that was the case, why would there be spells on the house? It doesn't get much more racist than Nazi, there's no way the Kriegers would be okay with this. They must still think there's some value in keeping him safe."

"What do you think that is?"

I slowly shake my head. "I have no idea. Let's see if Zatanna or Canis have better ideas when they get back."

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Triumph of the Will 19

next

10th April

11:55 GMT -3

"No." / "Who is 'Hitler'?"

Zatanna's reaction mirrors mine and Raquel's, astonishment and confusion. Canis doesn't seem particularly moved one way or another. I shouldn't be too surprised; the Second World War may have been a big part of my education and heritage but I didn't have any reason to assume that Mister and Missus Free would have focused on it rather than more modern things.

I nod to Raquel, who presses a button on our computer and simultaneously plays two video clips. The first, a compendium of clips of Adolf Hitler during the late thirties and early forties. The second, the footage we took of Mister Schreiber. Zatanna's eyes flick back and forth between the two, staring at their faces.

"Okay. They're… Kind of similar, but that doesn't mean-."

I generate a construct of Hitler and another of Mister Schreiber. The latter is very slightly taller, something I ascribe to a better diet. "If we change Mister Schreiber's hair-" It brushes itself to the side. "-and add a moustache…"

She opens and closes her mouth several times without saying anything, blinking as if to see if the mad world she now finds herself in will vanish.

"To answer your question Canis, Adolf Hitler was a rather poor painter and a rather better politician. He ruled Germany from nineteen thirty three to nineteen forty five."

"That is hardly any time at all, and nearly a Human lifetime ago." He thinks for a moment. "Does Krieger fetishise the period? Did he see to this resurrection so as to procure a sexual toy?"

Raquel splutters, then stares at him. "That's the first thing that occurs to you?!"

"It is the reason why Great Darkseid tolerates the existence of Mortalla. I can see little practical value in the act of cloning a man whose claim to significance is so weak."

"Oh, he's significant. The war he started killed millions of people and a lot of those were people just rounded up for being from the wrong race!"

Canis doesn't look impressed. He shrugs. "Millions?"

Hmm. Albrecht was noted as having a bit of a Führer-fixation-. No. No. "That's quite a lot by Earth standards. And Nazis were traditionally rather against same-gender sexual relations."

"Ah. Most likely not that, then."

I put my right hand on Zatanna's left shoulder. "Zatanna? The wards?"

"Oh. Um, they're passive. The ones I could find from the outside, anyway. They're supposed to shield it against detection but they wouldn't actually stop you doing anything."

"Are they recent?"

"They're.. not old. I…" She shakes her head. "They could have been created anytime in the last decade? Maybe two? But they couldn't have been put up yesterday."

"Right. I'm.. going to have a look around inside. Zatanna, I want you and Canis to go and have a chat with Mister Schreiber's boss." I hold out a card with his address and contact number. "He's at home at the moment and nothing in his background sets off any warning signals."

Zatanna takes it from me. "What do you want us to ask him?"

"Schreiber doesn't appear to leave written records. Or, at least none I can detect. We need to talk to someone who knows him. Try and find out… What he's like. I doubt that he's actually a Nazi, but it would be useful to find out if he's in contact with the Kriegers or their allies."

She nods. "What should I tell him when he asks why we want to know?"

"Make sure he knows that we don't suspect Mister Schreiber of anything. Say.. that we think that Mister Schreiber might have inadvertently been in contact with some very unpleasant people and we're worried that he might be targeted by them. Don't be too specific, it wouldn't take much for someone to look up a picture of Hitler and recognise the connection."

Canis' eyes move from Zatanna to me. "And what would you have me do? I dislike acting as a bodyguard when there is little realistic prospect of a fight."

"There's more to our work than direct confrontation. But-" I take a tablet out of subspace. "-this is a record of every example of Hitler's artwork that I've been able to find. There's also a record of every piece of Nazi imagery. It might help you get into their heads a bit better."

He takes it. "Having something the clone created would be better."

"Then ask for something. Mister Schreiber is a professional architect. His employer is bound to have some sort of record." Canis nods. "Anything else?" Neither of them say anything. "Right." I hand her a roll of twenty real notes, four hundred reals worth in total. "I don't think anyone would risk mugging you…"

She peels off five and puts them into her pocket, then holds out the rest. "Edih." The roll disappears.

I nod in approval. "Off you go, then. No hurry, as far as I know."

They nod, Canis taking the lead as they head out.

"When you said you were taking a look inside, you meant we, right?"

"I'm afraid not. There are people around whom I can't scan for. One of us needs to stay here and keep an eye out."

"So why not send me out to talk to Schreiber's boss?"

"Canis couldn't stay here because he doesn't understand Human society well enough. Zatanna goes… Ah, this isn't going to sound like a 'good' reason-"

She crosses her arms. "Uh-huh."

"-but it's renown, basically." Raquel purses her lips and holds out her right hand palm upwards. "If I went to talk to him, he'd almost certainly recognise me as 'The Cake Man'. 'Rocket' isn't well known outside of Dakota City while Zatanna is. At least a bit. Justice League identification can't be forged but it can be faked, and our work would be more difficult if Schrieber's boss just decided that we're just teenagers performing some sort of prank."

"Ahright." She waves her right hand dismissively at me as she turns away to sit in front of the monitor. "Get going. I'll contact you if it looks like anything's happening."

"Thank you. Back shortly." I transition up into the sky and start scanning the house below. I can roughly map it out using infrared and sonic imaging, and outside the warded area… That's probably the burglar alarm. Would they have turned it on if they're just going out for the day? Maybe. I don't know enough about Brazilian society. Crime rates… Probably. Okay, block it and get ready to deactivate the alarm from inside once I rematerialise. Compare the plans of the house to comparable ones… And water pipes… That's probably a toilet. Shouldn't be an alarm in there. Walls around the edge of the property should prevent casual passersby seeing me, cameras are there and there.

Transition.

I appear at ground level inside the wall, then rapidly fly into the area covered by the wards. I end up sitting directly under a camera, underneath its arc. It probably doesn't do more than record, but it may well record to a remote location and the fact that being affixed to the wall allowed it to count as part of the house for the purpose of the wards meant that I couldn't disrupt it in advance. I could do so now, but not doing so is probably a better idea in case Krieger can visit later and pick up on it.

Can I read the house now..? Still no. Okay. I cautiously feed a filament up and through a vent. It passes through without being blocked. Excellent. I continue feeding it through until the far end reaches the downstairs toilet and transition inside.

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Triumph of the Will 20

next

10th April

12:00 GMT -3

I sit on the toilet while my filaments run outwards through the house in search of the alarm controls. Can't scan properly but at least the filaments aren't being directly blocked. Hm. Don't think I've ever been in a toilet inside a private residence in South America before. I remember reading with some horror that standard Brazilian practice involves putting used paper in a bin at the side of the toilet, but fortunately Mister Schreiber's house appears to have been plumbed in European fashion. There is a bin, but it clearly doesn't contain excrement-coated paper and the toilet outflow is easily wide enough to accommodate the probable load.

Oh, for goodness sake. How bored am I?

I tap my own Bleed fracture pulse communicator. "Orange Lantern to Rocket."

"You inside?"

"Yep, no problem." I let the images from my filaments filter into my consciousness. "The place looks like a house. No sign of Nazi memorabilia. Decorations… There are a couple of paintings… I think they're landscapes of places in Germany."

"Nazi places?"

"No, not really. Pastoral scenes. I suppose… They're the sort of things a Nazi utopianist might own, but nothing really jumps out at me as saying 'Nazi'." I'm not an expert on Hitler's art, but I did take a look at a few pieces after Lex showed me his. I'm reasonably confident that Hitler didn't paint these. Schreiber might have. I don't know whether or not he shared his predecessor's difficulties.

Ah, there we go.

"I've got the alarm." I stand and open the door into the hallway, taking a magic-sensitive rune stone out of a pouch. "Would you mind checking in with the rest of our team mates?"

"You want me to tell them who we found?"

Hm. "Not.. yet. Just because he's a clone of Adolf Hitler doesn't mean that he's a bad person."

"Yeah, I got that. But we're looking for proof the Kriegers were here, right? Who else would do something like this?"

"Um. Mengele? Someone else from Thule?" I hold the stone out in front of me. Wonder if we can hook one of these up to something that looks like a PKE meter? I mean, these are fine for an actual magic user but I just feel so analogue… "Or any number of nutty super scientists who wanted to be able to say they were the ones who resurrected Hitler."

"Just when you think they couldn't get any lower."

"Lower would be killing him when they realised that they didn't exactly have the Führer on their hands. Or trying to make them relive Hitler's life." The stone is picking up the house's protective spells but there's nothing particularly intense just yet. "He's well adjusted enough to have a family and a job. Whoever did it could have done much worse."

"You think Hitler's well adjusted?"

"I think Helmut Schreiber is well adjusted. Hitler, less so."

There's a pause. "Robin, Tula and Miss Martian say they tracked down Katrina Krieger. No sign of Wolf or Albrecht."

I head towards the stairs. "Are they planning to keep watching her?"

"No, they took her down already."

I frown as I head up to the first floor. "Why? We'd have had a far better chance of learning from her if she was left out in the wild."

"She was testing some new chemical mix on homeless people."

I nod my head to the side. "Let them off, then. They alright?"

"They didn't say anything about getting injured, so probably."

"How about the oth-. Huh."

"What?"

"The floor isn't squeaking. Natural timber, varnished and uncarpeted. The colour scheme and layout just feel… Nice. And the open structure is designed to allow the air to flow around to keep the temperatures down."

"So?"

"I read that Hitler didn't go into architecture because his maths grades weren't high enough."

"You think Schreiber designed the place himself?"

"Probably."

"You think he'll know you were there?"

I look down at the floor. "I'm not leaving footprints, I'm not moving anything, no chemicals on my body can escape my environmental shield, if I go through a door I can put it back exactly how it was… Unless there's some sort of magic architect sense I don't know about I think it should be alright."

"If he got taught by Wolf…"

I push open a door. A child's bedroom. Looks like one of the older girls likes football. "While it's not impossible, the simplest sort of ward would trigger an alert as soon as I -or anyone else- crossed the threshold. Zatanna said that as far as she could tell it was all passive."

"Yeah, but she's fifteen. Krieger's a hundred and thirty."

Nothing in the master bedroom. "But he had to learn from first principles. Zatanna had access to well written textbooks from early childhood." And more since we started working on how to beat Nabu. "Anyway, if Mister Schreiber had spent enough time with him to get that good, he'd have to be pretty dim not to have picked up on Krieger's political affiliations. You can't… Self study enough in the time he's had to get as good as he'd have to be to pull off a ward that subtle."

"You sure?"

"Pretty sure." A fringe benefit of trying to work out how skilled Nabu is. His showings against Klarion really have been less good than I was expecting, given how capable he's supposed to be. Can't watch him enough of the time to know whether or not he was just having off-days… "Nothing magic in here. Moving on."

"Superboy's team finished talking to the guys who attacked the Watchtower."

"Get anything new?" I'm guessing 'no'. The Russian President isn't exactly against the far right, but he is very much against Nazis. I'm a little surprised that he didn't just have them all executed, actually. Maybe I've been being unfair to the Russian justice system.

"No, but the Russian police gave them the names of a few people they're watching. They're planning on going to a rally tonight, see if anyone says anything."

It's kind of weak, but he must have some kind of contact in that part of the world. Heh, working with Russians. If only the Führer knew.

"I didn't know he spoke Russian."

"He actually speaks a lot of languages. Did they say what time exactly?"

"No. Why?"

"They're six hours ahead of us, so tonight is any time now."

"Message just said 'tonight'."

"Mm, okay. Nothing upstairs. I'm going to check his office, then plant the stones and head back."

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Triumph of the Will 21

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10th April

13:43 GMT -3

"…activist for the Social Democratic Party." Zatanna hesitates for a moment. "I wasn't sure if that was a right wing party or not. I didn't realise until we started talking how little I actually know about Brazil."

I shrug. "They're less right wing than the Republican Party. They're more right wing than Brazil's other main party, but it certainly isn't a warning sign."

She nods. "He joined them right out of college at twenty two and he's been with them since. In twenty oh three he reduced his hours so he could work on a master's degree and he finished that in twenty oh five. Apparently he's quite well known in Brazilian architecture circles."

Raquel glances back from the screen for a moment. "Did they say anything bad about him?"

"Um… He talked around a few things. I don't know if he believed me when I said that we didn't think.. Helmut had done anything." She shrugs. "The worst he said was that he wasn't all that great with people outside of work settings, but then he immediately said he got much better after getting together with Daiane."

"Any mention of anyone who might be the Kriegers?"

"No, but I had to be careful what I said. He's never met Mister Schreiber's parents… Or any family apart from his wife and their kids. And he couldn't remember him ever mentioning them."

"Did he show any signs of having been altered himself?"

She shakes her head. "Not so far as I could tell."

Huh. Okay then. He's been there for seventeen years. If he's a little further along the autistic spectrum than most people it might just not have occurred to him to talk about the rest of his family for that long. Or he might have done and the one person who works with him who Zatanna spoke to just happened not to remember it. "I don't suppose you used a spell to encourage him to answer openly and honestly, did you?"

"No." She looks uncomfortable. "Was.. I.. supposed to?"

"It might have been helpful. Something subtle and short term. Just a mystically enhanced memory jog. But if I'd wanted you to do something like that I should have been clear about it from the offset."

"He's back." The three of us look around to Raquel, who points at the screen as the car pulls in.

Zatanna and I lean in a little closer. Ring? "His wife and their children are still at the park."

Canis snorts, leaning over us. "Are we killing him or not?"

"Not." / "Not." / "We're not killing anyone."

Zatanna blinks, and looks at Raquel and I a little uncomfortably for our briefer answers.

"Why not?"

What explanation would work best for an Apokoliptian? "Canis… What would killing him get us?"

"It would let our ultimate foe know that we are in pursuit, building both his fear and anticipation." "It would give him the opportunity to prepare, creating a greater challenge."

"Unless he's not in contact any longer and doesn't care about what's happening here."

Canis nods. "That is a concern. Perhaps we could simply broadcast our acts? I could display his remains to best advantage."

Raquel blanches. "Are you outta your mind!?"

He just looks slightly puzzled.

"Canis, this isn't Apokolips. We're here to achieve a very limited objective while at the same time not creating difficulty for our superiors. Killing a Brazilian citizen without an exceptionally good reason would create such a difficulty."

He nods. "Because you cannot be sure if someone of significance favours him in ignorance of his true nature. And you do not wish to challenge your elders by assuming a right which belongs to them alone."

…

"Okay. Let's go with that." He nods. Handling him is going to be interesting. He seems willing, but then so was Power Boy and look how well that turned out. "Our mentors want the world run a certain way, and having us kill people at will works against that. The less impact we can have outside our objective, the better."

"On Apokolips, we aim for the greatest impact in victory." His right hand goes to his chin. "But in art… Clarity of communication is more important than intensity."

"You wouldn't just build a giant paint bomb and set it off over a city."

He nods. "I see. Interesting."

Zatanna scoots a little further away from him.

Raquel turns from Canis to me. "So what are we doing about Schreiber?"

I watch as he opens his front door and heads inside. "Two basic options. I think we've concluded as much as we can that he isn't knowingly working with the Kriegers. He's been in cover for too long and too well. So, we either keep watching or we talk to the man directly."

Raquel tries to zoom in on one of the windows. "Some of us have school tomorrow."

Canis nods. "This indolence bores me."

"We could.. give it a few hours..?"

"Not going to get a better time than now. Okay." Who do I take with me? I'm not really expecting to learn much… So it doesn't matter all that much. "Rocket, with me please. Zatanna, Canis, you're on lookout duty."

Raquel stands, stretching out with her hands making a bridge above her head. "Finally."

"Remember Batman's lecture: watch his hands-."

"And his eyes for unconscious tells." She gives me a mildly confrontational stare, as if I was accusing her of sleeping through the lecture. Her not having been there for Major Adams' lecture last year where a couple of our team mates nearly did.

"We'll be coming down vertically into his front garden. If he's watching he'll know we're coming, but the wall will block the view of the people outside. I'll transition us up, then you're under your own power."

"I gaht it, let's go already."

I tag her with a filament and the room's gone, replaced once more by sky and cloud. "Follow me, please."

I dial down my glow and descend, not at anything like full speed or even like terminal velocity. Just fast enough that anyone watching in my general direction might just think they were seeing things. I drop feet first in the direction of the steadily growing garden while a little way behind me Raquel orientates herself towards the ground and heads after me face forwards. I touch down perhaps ten seconds later and watch as she turns her dive into a swoop before getting her feet back under her. We give it a moment but there's no apparent reaction from the house. She looks at me, I nod, and together we walk towards the front door.

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Triumph of the Will 22

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10th April

13:47 GMT -3

"Hitler didn't have super powers, right?"

Since I know she doesn't speak Portuguese, I extend a filament to Raquel. "Not so far as anyone has been able to deduce with any certainty."

"No mass hypnosis or anything?"

"No, just good oratorical technique and the opportunity to use it." I press the doorbell. "From what I understand, he was pretty close to having the Thule Society blacklisted in order to reinforce his conservative Christian credentials. On my homeworld he actually did."

"What was the difference here?"

"This world has magic. Krieger was able to produce observable results, he spoke the right nationalistic, racialistic language. As I understand it, Hitler was never really comfortable either with magic or with relying on one man for their defence against Allied superheroes." I hear footsteps on the far side of the door. "He was rather fond of Captain Nazi, though."

"No surprise there-."

The door opens and Helmut Schreiber blinks at us in surprise.

I smile. "Mister Schreiber. A pleasure to meet you, sir." This close, seeing his desires is easy. It seems that he forgot his camera and returned home to pick it up. None of his other desires seem particularly out of place for a man who is exactly what he seems to be.

He looks me over once more, then spares a moment to do the same to Raquel. "You are the-" Here we go, Cake Man. "-Orange Lantern, yes?"

I nod. "Yes, sir."

He immediately holds out his right hand, a beatific look appearing on his face. "Thank you." I take his hand in my right only for him to grab hold with his left as well. "From the bottom of my heart, thank you. The day on which my children disappeared was the worst in my life." Oh. "If not for young superheroes like yourself I might never have seen them again." Now I'm starting to feel bad for what I'm about to do. "I am certain that my wife would like to speak with you as well. Do you have the time to accompany me to the local park?"

"I'm.. sorry, Mister Schreiber, but I'm afraid that we need to speak with you."

"Oh." He steps back from the door. "Then, come in, please."

I bow my head slightly. "Thank you." Then I walk inside.

"And you, Miss… I recognise you, but I don't remember your name."

"Call me Rocket."

Mister Schreiber ushers her inside before leading the way into his house. "Yes, my eldest daughter has a picture of you on her wall. So many of America's superheroes are white. I was pleased to find one who is a brown girl." I cringe slightly, but I don't think Raquel does. "It is good for them to have more adventurous role models."

"Happy to help."

"Were you involved in fighting that.. devil Klarion as well?"

"No, just.. tried to help out in my home town."

"I am sure they were very grateful. The living room is through here."

I make a point of looking around the room. I was here a little over an hour ago, of course, but if he's got his progenitor's pride he'll like that I'm showing appreciation-. No, he would anyway. I need to not do that.

He gestures to the settee before taking the chair opposite himself. "So… How can I help you?"

"To start with-" I take photographs of Wolf and Albrecht Krieger out of subspace and pass them over to him. No Nazi insignia, just headshots. "-do you recognise either of these men?"

He looks them over carefully, focusing more on Wolf than his younger brother. "No… No, I don't think I do." He passes them back to me. "Should I?"

"Quite possibly not. Mister Schreiber, do you have any interest in the occult?"

"I know the Church says that… Magic is not inherently evil, but… No. I do not like it."

"May I assume that your wife feels the same way?"

He thinks for a moment, then gives his head a small shake. "I don't know. I don't think we've ever talked about it. I have never seen any sign that she is. Why are you asking about that?"

"There are a number of what look like defensive spells placed on this house and on your.. personal history. Normally, during the course of an investigation I can-" I raise my left hand slightly. "-access computer databases to access information. I can't find anything on you."

He looks a little relieved. "That doesn't mean they were disappeared by magic. I love my country, but I'll be the first to admit that our infrastructure is not as reliable as it should be."

"Mister Schreiber, I brought a magic user with me to check. There's some fairly impressive spell work around here."

He frowns, shifting in place uncomfortably. "Do you think it was the builders? Should I call for an exorcist?"

Nothing in his reactions suggests that his response is anything other than completely genuine. "I doubt that anyone who knew enough about magic to do this would be working in conventional construction. And you shouldn't need to have them removed, though if you want to there's no reason not to. Mister Schreiber, may I ask about your parents?"

I didn't see pictures of anyone parental looking with a younger Mister Schreiber when I looked around earlier. If he was placed with a Nazi approved couple…

"I grew up in an orphanage run by the Church. Beyond the fact that they were.. probably ethnic Germans I have no idea who my parents were."

"I'm sorry. I realise that this is uncomfortable, but I need to know."

"Why?" He risks a small smile. "Do I have a relation I have never met who needs a kidney?"

"No. I'm afraid it's worse than that. I have reason to believe that you are a clone, a genetic duplicate of another Human."

He gives a nervous laugh. "That seems a little far-fetched."

"It does, but…" I create a construct. "This is your genetic code. I don't have a copy of the genes of the man I believe you are a clone of, but this is the code of a man named Leo Raubal Junior and this is the code of William Stuart-Houston. Not perfect matches, but close enough to indicate a genetic relationship."

"That's.. interesting, but I am afraid that those names don't mean anything to me. Do they want to meet with me? I have long thought it would be nice for my children to meet my side of the family."

I suppose… He does have living relatives…

"Those particular people are dead, but… There's no particular reason why you couldn't meet up with their descendants." He nods, oddly cheered by the news. "Mister Schreiber, there's no easy way to say this. But I have reason to believe that you are a clone of Adolf Hitler."

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Triumph of the Will 23

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10th April

13:52 GMT -3

"I am sorry, I think I misheard you."

"I think you're a clone of Adolf Hitler. These pictures?" I hold them out again. "Albrecht Krieger, better known as Captain Nazi, and his brother Wolf. Wolf Krieger was head of the Thule Society during the Second World War. Together, they dodged the Allies and various Nazi-hunters after the war was over and narrowly escaped the Justice League at the end of last year. According to our information they relocated to Brazil after their attempt to integrate into the United States' right wing community during the sixties failed."

Mister Schreiber is frowning. "That may well be, but it doesn't mean that I am… Him."

"How old are you?"

"Well, ah-. I'm not sure." He shrugs. "Thirty nine. We celebrated my birthday last month."

"Agents working for the Brazilian interior ministry attacked his encampment in nineteen seventy two. It was a little way outside Caçador. Where was it you grew up?"

"Caçador."

"I didn't know that until you told me, but the fight with the Nazis was national news at the time. It should be easy for you to confirm it. Do you know who brought you to the orphanage? There should be a name on the paperwork?"

"No. No. I.. saw the paperwork when I turned eighteen. Sister Maria said that she thought I might have been the son of leftists the police killed. She told me not to look into it."

"Good advice."

"But how do you know that she is wrong?" He stands and starts pacing, hands and arms in constant motion. "I am not a murderer!"

"I know you're not. Mister Schreiber, you're your own man. My closest friend is a clone. I'm talking to you because Wolf Krieger got free recently and I'm worried that-"

"No."

"-he might come looking for you. I'd like to offer you and your family my protection until-"

He stops, looking away from me. "This is..."

"-he's apprehended. We're following up several leads-."

"Get out."

"Mister Schreiber?" I generate a construct image of Adolf Hitler at his age. "I realise that this is a shock, but I don't think-."

He turns, face red and eyes watering. "Get out of my house, you-" He takes in the construct as I have it mirror his body language. "-lunatic! I am not Hitler!" He takes several deep breaths and I can tell that his heart is racing. "I am not!"

"Okay." I stand. "Thank you for your time. If you see either-."

"I'm not Hitler." He jabs his right forefinger at the construct. "I'm not."

I nod as Raquel gets up to follow me. "No." I remove the construct. "We'll show ourselves out."

His eyes drop to the floor and he squeezes them shut for several seconds as I head for the door. "I am not a Nazi."

Ring, what language was he speaking?

He began with German, then switched to Portuguese.

He changed to his first language under stress? Hm. Makes sense. Not sure why he started with German.

Raquel closes the front door behind us. "That coulda gone better. What now?"

"Now, we keep watch and hope nothing else happens. If we're fortunate, one of the other teams will locate the Kriegers and call in the League without troubling Mister Schreiber any further."

She stops, taking hold of my right arm in her left hand. "What are we gonna say about him?"

"I'd suggest… A full verbal report to Batman -in private- and that we leave out the specifics of his heritage in our written report."

"And we're doing that because..?"

"The Justice League are a UN sponsored organisation. If it goes in the written report-."

"That gets passed on to the UN." She thinks for a moment. "But Schreiber hasn't done anything."

"No, but I don't see them leaving him alone. And if word ever got out…"

She seems to agree. "So what do we do now?"

I take a look around the front garden. Looks nice, inasmuch as I'm able to judge. Well looked after. "Check in with the others, then… I suppose it wouldn't hurt to check up on the Caçador site. At the very least we could get Zatanna something she could use as a magic focus." I tap my communicator. "Orange Lantern to Superboy. Any news?"

"He's here. He met up with one of the local leaders. We're following him now."

Raquel and I stare at each other, eyes widening slightly.

"Have you called in the League?"

"The League would take too long to get here and I haven't seen Captain Nazi yet. Until we're sure they're staying here I wanna keep watching."

Loath as I am to say it… "Nabu fought Wolf during the Second World War. He'd probably be willing to teleport a League force in."

"Mom said no one's seen him since yesterday."

Aah. "Okay. I've still got the binding chains I used on-." I cut off as I hear shouting in the background. "Superb-?"

"Call you back!"

The line goes dead.

"At least we know where Wolf is." I tap my communicator again. "Zatanna, Canis, get ready to move-."

"No!"

Mister Schreiber's voice! The heck-?! I'm already moving through the air towards the front door, Raquel a fraction of a second behind me! I bulldoze the door out of its frame and fly inside the house and Mister Schreiber frantically backs out of the living room.

"That the Führer would be reborn in the body-"

I stop, railgun forming and Mageslayers loading.

"-of a coward."

Spell Eater temperature critical.

Wolf Krieger steps out from the living room and taps the butt of his spear on the floor.

"Stop."

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Triumph of the Will 24

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10th April

13:56 GMT -3

My body seizes up. Feels a little different to last time.

"And I must deny you your gun."

My construct railgun evaporates. Last time he just had me point it away from him. Can I-? Ring, swap current Spell Eater.

Spell Eater replaced.

Railgun!

Spell Eater temperature critical.

No! Damn it! How much power is he using?

Raquel dives past me, aiming at Wolf Krieger's chest. His eyes widen slightly and he takes a half-step backwards, bringing the Spear of Destiny around into a guard position. "Whenever you are-" Raquel closes the distance and he swings his weapon. The blade misses and the impact of the haft is absorbed by her kinetic belt. "-ready-" She hits and he's knocked back, though nothing like as much as a normal man would have been. "-A-Albrecht!"

"I'mma kick your nasty Nazi-!"

Albrecht shoots through the air from the living room and smashes his right fist down onto the top of Raquel's head. The belt absorbs most of the impact but she still slams into the floor. Wolf grimaces slightly before grabbing Mister Schreiber and roughly shoving him towards me. "Albrecht, kill the negro bitch while I restore the Führer to life. You." He strikes the butt of his spear on the floor again. "Back."

I find myself floating back out of the front door, the clearly terrified Mister Schreiber pushed after me. Albrecht stamps on Raquel's neck as Wolf studies me. "It is strange, you know? Even this close, my arcane senses try to tell me that you are not there. How have you achieved this marvellous thing?" I say nothing. "You may speak."

"W..? Why are you here? Why are you doing this?"

Wolf scowls at Mister Schreiber. "I did not mean you, you failed abortion. Ninety four attempts at creating a genetic duplicate of the Führer and you were the only one who lived."

"Why bother? I've seen portals to hell before. You must be capable of opening one without Mister Schreiber's help."

"Schreiber?" Wolf glances at him. "Is that what you call yourself? No matter. Yes, I could open a portal to hell, but how does that benefit me? How would I find one soul amongst the untold billions contained therein? But here! Here I have a living link to the Führer. A way to bind him to the material plane."

"That doesn't explain why. This isn't nineteen thirties Germany! Adolf Hitler is the most hated man in history! I don't care how charismatic he is, there's no way he'll be able to lead anyone!"

"After seventy years in hell? I doubt that he would be capable of doing so anyway. No, for all his virtues as a leader, I doubt that his mind remains in one piece after the tortures of hell."

"That's a surprisingly rational thing for you to say. Tell you what, just for that I'll give you a five minute head start."

"Ah, if only he had listened to me and abandoned that Christian weakness. But, by bringing back the withered soul of the Führer I can expunge Schreiber's soul. And then, I can use this body as a channel for the earthly ideal of fascism. I can build up a new spirit with what is left of Adolf Hitler at the core! For who better embodies the ideal of fascism than Adolf Hitler? Yes. From these base materials I shall forge a new god for the pure Aryan race! That is why I put up with those Slavic scum. Even they can add to the fuel of my ritual, though I doubt they will benefit much from it."

"And… I'm still alive… Because?"

"You have useful knowledge, and you are of European origin. When my new god is born, perhaps he will have a use for you. Perhaps his divine majesty will convert you. Or perhaps-" He raises the Spear of Destiny slightly. "-he will order me to convert you with the Spear. Or kill you out of hand. Who can say?"

"One of my great grandparents was Rom."

"Oh." He thinks for a moment. "That is not ideal. But… Three generations? It will be for the God-Führer to decide."

"So how come I'm not Nazified already? Green Lantern and The Flash made it clear that the mind control was pretty quick back during World War Two."

"I'm not as young as I was, and I have a smaller area of control to work with. Ah, the spirit of fascism! A marvellous source of strength! You know, I actually wept when the Kaiser abdicated." He shakes his head. "Such a young fool. Now-" He clenches his left hand into a fist, causing Mister Schreiber to rise helplessly into the air. "-hold still while I burn out your miserable little soul, yes?"

"Bastard fascist!"

"Portuguese." Wolf looks like he's swallowed something sour. "Could they not have sent you to a decent German-?"

The front of the house explodes as Albrecht is sent flying through the outer wall and digs a furrow across the grass before stopping in a heap! Brick blasts in all directions and Wolf is forced to duck as chunks of breeze block rain down on him.

"This 'negro bitch' just kicked your brother's ass." Raquel floats out of the hole. "You know what happens if you keep punching someone who absorbs kinetic energy?"

"Albrecht!"

I flex my right hand. Not quite fully under my own control yet, but…

Ring, swap Spell Eater.

Spell Eater replaced.

"You won't live long enough to face the God-Führer's wrath!" Raquel convulses. "Stop breathing."

No time for a railgun. The ring on my left hand shines for a second before the destructive bolt blasts out and strikes Wolf in the chest! "Ghaagh!" Finally he collapses!

"My brother!" Albrecht lunges through the air and punchesGUHHH!

Huh…

Wha..?

No… Wholeness Rightly Assumed!

Spell Eater temperature critical.

"I am not!" I push myself up to see Mister Schreiber stamp on Wolf's right hand as he reaches out to grab the Spear of Destiny from where it fell. "A fucking!" He grabs the Spear himself. "NAZI!" He shoves the Spear downwards blade first, right into Wolf's chest.

Immediately the control effect cuts off. Raquel falls to the floor, gasping for air. I rise, forming railguns and taking aim-

"You killed my brother! I will rip you apart!"

-at Albrecht. I open fire.

"Agh!"

I have no idea whether his power is arcane, metahuman or alchemical.

"Arrraaaaagh!"

So I just hit him with everything. Regular rounds, crumblers and mageslayers. On the off-chance I even use a couple of the angel feather fragment tipped ones John designed.

Normal Justice League rules about using lethal force don't apply to people sentenced to death at Nuremberg. The Germans insisted.

"Grawgwgwgwgwgwgwg…"

His chest thoroughly ruined, I put the barrels of my railguns directly over his eyes and fire once more.

"Witch! Bastard Nazi!" Mister Schreiber pulls the Spear free and stabs Wolf again and again. As I watch, whatever spells held his aging carcass together all this time fail. He doesn't decay completely, but he does take on the appearance of someone slightly mummified, like a climber who died too far up for bacteria to live and who was then dried out by the elements. Mister Schreiber then staggers back, breathing hard, Spear held inexpertly in a two handed grip. "Try taking my soul now!"

I give what's left of Albrecht a moment to see if he's getting back up. One of the possible sources of his power we brainstormed was some sort of improved Danner Formula. Abednego was part of the American eugenics movement and it wasn't impossible that he met Wolf and Albrecht's father… No, looks like he's staying dead. I walk over to Raquel and help her up.

"You alright?" She nods, taking in the bloody scene. "Okay. You get your breath back. I'll call Batman."

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Triumph of the Will 25

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10th April

16:14 GMT -5

The elderly man in a grey tweed suit pulls back the cloth covering the bier's occupant. He doesn't flinch, but there is a slight inhalation at the sight of the level of damage done.

"…going on about how he's 'the might of zhe vaterland' and 'zhe embodiment of fascist ideology' and how members of 'zhe lesser races are not fit to lick his boot leather'…"

I glance back at Raquel as she recounts events to Wallace while surreptitiously slipping a rune stone out of my waist pouch. If that was the first time she'd seen a body she seems to be handling it pretty well. The rest of the team stands in huddles of their respective demigroups. No one came back with more than minor injuries and every group except mine has handed someone over to the police.

"…I'm thinking 'you keep stamping and not paying any attention'…"

The man checking the corpses over looks over to our hosts. "I will need to touch..?"

The group -consisting of representatives from the legal, defence and political sections of both the German and Israeli UN missions- exchange a few quiet words, then there's a nodding of heads. The man who appears to be leading the group -the German Deputy Political Director, a man named Klaus Wernholt- nods to the examiner more emphatically. "Whatever you need to do. Make completely certain."

The examiner nods back before returning his attention to the corpse and reaching out with both hands. He makes the lightest contact with his fingertips and then stills himself and closes his eyes. A moment later my stone lights up very slightly. So, maybe a minor wizard, more likely a self taught parapsychic. I suppose I should be impressed that they've got one on staff at all. Or that he's lived to this sort of age. Usually the constant spiritual contact with the world wears them down well before this point.

"…used his own energy to throw him straight through the wall, and I'm all like…"

Batman will want a word or two with us… With me later, but for now he is content with leaving us to clear up the mess we created. Never quite taking my eyes off the examination I shuffle over to where Kaldur stands. His eyes flick to me momentarily as an acknowledgement. "What sort of split do you think is fair?"

Another glance, as if he doesn't want to further disrupt the quiet. "I am not certain what you mean."

"The current bounty on Albrecht Krieger is thirty million euros, and the one on Wolf Krieger is twelve million." He blinks. "Technically, only Kon's team and mine were directly involved, but since it was a whole team activity I think it would be fairest to do an even split on Albrecht's bounty. That's one point eight seven five million euros each, or about two point seven million dollars."

"I had not realised that such a bounty existed."

"Germany put up about half. Israel and Russia paid most of the rest. The Kriegers were the last two significant Second World War era war criminals left in the wild. Between them, they killed thousands of people personally. Far more than that died due to their strategic impact." I give him a moment to process that. "Obviously the cash makes no difference to me, but that sort of thing would pay for a college degree in a good college for our American colleagues. Or a house. Or a period of long term illness."

He doesn't immediately respond. "And what of Wolf?"

"The man who… Finished him, would be due a cut as well. For simplicity's sake it might be better to just give him the whole thing." I hesitate. "I.. don't think telling anyone here who-."

"On that we are in agreement."

The elderly man folds the sheet back over Albrecht before walking over to the bier supporting the mummified remains of Wolf.

"It might be worth asking if M'gann could suppress the memory for him. Not.. erase it, just make it a bit less-."

"It is them." The elderly man carefully wipes drying blood and mucus from his hands with a wet wipe before dropping it into a biological agent bin. "I will confirm that these are indeed the mortal remains of the men known as Wolf and Albrecht Krieger." He looks over to our hosts once more. They're not quite smiling, but there's an air of relief about the gathering. "You have my recommendations for dealing with the remains?"

Mister Wernholt steps forward to shake his hand. "Yes. Thank you for your help."

"Don't make a habit of asking me to do this, Klaus. I do not want what life is left to me blighted by these pictures." The elderly man holds his gaze for a moment before pulling away and heading for the exit.

Mister Wernholt waits until he leaves the room before turning back to his colleagues. "Ladies and gentlemen?" I can hear his accent; he's speaking English. It's really odd when the ring tries to best-fit an English accent to someone speaking a foreign language when I'm used to hearing their speech accented by their own language instead. "Do we accept this testimony, combined with the visual reconstruction provided by Orange Lantern and the verbal testimony of Rocket as a true version of events?"

They nod, some with a simple inclination of the head, others with more enthusiasm.

"Good, thank you." He meets the eyes of the leader of the Israeli delegation. "I imagine that the Chancellor will contact your Prime Minister sometime tomorrow. I will see to the paperwork and the.. remains, myself."

"Thank you." The woman risks a small smile. "Knowing that these men are gone from the world is a relief to all of us."

The Israeli delegation files out, along with most of the other Germans. A couple of medical orderlies move over to start work on the bodies as Mister Wernholt heads over to speak to us.

"On behalf of the Federal Republic of Germany, on behalf of decent Human beings all across the world, I would like to thank all of you for your work today. Now, since you, ah… Many of you have secret identities, we will make a wire transfer of the reward to the Justice League, and.. they can handle it from there."

M'gann looks confused. "Reward?"

I turn my head her way. "Bounty payment. We'll talk about it later." She nods.

"Ah, hey." Raquel briefly raises her right hand and wiggles it a bit. "Captain Nazi was lying, right? He wasn't really the embodiment of fascism or anything."

"He wasn't the embodiment of fascism, but, ah…" He shakes his head. "Oh, it doesn't matter now. He was the embodiment of Germany."

We just sort of stare at him for a few moments.

"Is it that much of a surprise? In America, you have Uncle Sam? During the Second World War he fought as part of the All-Star Squadron?" A few nods, including one from me. Not a character I'd really studied, though I think Alan mentioned him in passing. I think I'd find meeting him in person to be a rather trying thing. Don't think he's active at the moment, which does rather go against his established character. "He is the embodiment of the American character, as it was at the time he came into being. Similarly-."

"Wait a second." Richard holds up his right hand. "You're telling me that the embodiment of Germany is a Nazi superhero?"

"They don't age. If no one kills them they can just keep going." He glances back at the shroud-draped outline of Albrecht Krieger. "When Adolf Hitler came to power, his associates in the Thule Society told him of this. He ordered them to find the embodiment of Germany. Probably, he was hoping they would be a Prussian militarist. We don't know exactly. Instead, he found a man named 'Lucky' Hans, working in a puppet theatre in München. He embodied the German spirit as it was in the seventeenth century, poorly organised, cheerful and happy go lucky."

Richard grimaces. "I'll bet Hitler wasn't too pleased."

"I doubt it very much. So, Wolf Krieger informed his leader of this, but promised to him that it could be fixed. Poor Hans was abducted, ritually murdered and… Albrecht Krieger was the result. Hitler had his Aryan superman. Worse, for we Germans, he had a constant connection to our souls."

Raquel narrows her eyes. "You're not saying, that's the reason why the Holocaust-."

Mister Wernholt holds up his hands. "No, no. Of course not. At that time, there were more than enough people sufficiently devoted to the cause to carry out that genocide without the need for magic intervention. It is only since the end of the Second World War that we have felt the baleful effects. There is a tendency in the Human mind to retroactively justify the things you have done, even when you know that they were wrong. It is a form of ego preservation. If you perform a misdeed you can only become a better person by recognising that and resolving to behave differently in future. Now, imagine if there was someone inside your soul, constantly telling you that you were right all along. That the Nazis were powerful and cool, and not the gang of hateful murderers they actually were."

He shakes his head. "There is a reason why Auschwitz is left as it was and not turned into a memorial park. But we grew accustomed to that. We kept needing to do more! I mean, my God! We had brass plaques with the names of Holocaust victims placed across our major cities in nineteen ninety two! We had to mutilate our psyche as a nation just to keep Albrecht Krieger out of our heads!"

"And… Now you don't?"

"No. I mean, the Holocaust was a great evil, but… Speaking for myself as a man in his thirties? Someone whose parents were born in the fifties? It is a historical one. A black mark on our nation's history, but one which has no personal relevance to me. No more than most Americans feel the need to berate themselves over the Trail of Tears."

Raquel crosses her arms across her chest. "Maybe they should."

"If you look in any nation's history, there are any number of things to be ashamed of. Usually, they do not have to be confronted by them every time they turn on the History Channel." He shakes his head. "Constant shame is not a good way to live. If nothing else, because it distracts from the things you are doing wrong now." He comes to a stop, then steps away and motions to the bodies. "These will be cremated, mixed with silver and calcium oxide, exorcised and then scattered widely in secret locations. Let this finally be the end of it."

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Triumph of the Will 26

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11th April

20:03 GMT -2

"What do I think?" Sephtian quivers in place. I still don't entirely understand his body language, but it doesn't look like the good kind of quivering to me. "I think that it is the most terrifying arcane object I have ever seen and I will thank you to take it a very long way away from me."

I lift the Spear of Destiny from the props he was using to keep it in the mana field reader. "I can do that. What exactly is it about it that is so terrifying?"

He actually backs away a little as I move away from the equipment. "So much of how magic works… In the wild, is about conceptual connections. It is why we Atlanteans find it far easier to manipulate water than fire and... It is why it is often necessary to have an object precious to a person in order to use curses on them from a great distance." For a moment he stills. "That is not.. quite true, but it is a lie that is not completely inaccurate."

"Okay?"

"That spear-." The shuddering starts again. "It maintains a weak connection to everyone."

I blink. "Everyone?"

He makes a small cupping gesture with his hands. "As far as we were able to identify. I could not test.. people from other planets. I think it can be shielded against, but.. the normal magic interference which prevents what our forebears described as 'scry and die'-" I don't laugh. "-being a practical technique… It does not apply. I.. must tell you. When I.. realised what it could do… I nearly attempted to destroy it."

I frown. "Hey!"

"I am sorry, but I work under a royal warrant. I have responsibilities to Atlantis, and allowing that thing to continue to exist is.. dangerous."

"Okay, so why didn't you?"

For a moment he just stares at me. "What possible technique could I use that would be safe?"

Oh, sugar. "Exactly how strong is this connection? Wolf Krieger was using it to mind control people."

"A mind control spell that triggers automatically within a particular area? Do you..?" There's a sudden squirt of water from his gill slits. "I doubt that you can understand how complex an undertaking that must have been. From the records you provided to me, it was most likely some kind of ward linked to the nations his people controlled. Such a thing could in theory be set to respond only to individuals who posed a threat above a certain level."

"It didn't just detect superheroes?"

"How would you define 'superhero'?"

"How would you define 'threat'? I mean, I know Harold Thompson was able to operate in Germany for years, but I assume that was just because he didn't have super powers."

"It would probably be possible to set a spell to detect a particular type of power, but in general terms the phrase does not have an arcane meaning. At least, not yet. Threat does."

"The spell got Green Lantern once while he wasn't wearing his ring."

"I… It is possible that I am mistaken. I have been struggling to work out how a man with no knowledge of theoretical thaumaturgy could have created such a work… Without the opportunity to examine the spell it is difficult for me to determine exactly how it functioned."

I nod. "And that wouldn't have been possible without the Spear?"

"Not without using enough power to reshape the world. As you know full well, the soul resists outward attempts to change it. But, that is also true of the unshaped magics of the world. Creating a spell requires a magic user to fortify their work against abrasion by the etheric currents all around it."

"Which is why artefacts never really caught on. They need to be refreshed so often it was easier to just cast the spell."

"Not in all cases, but often, yes."

"The mind control spell isn't inherent in the Spear though, right? I'm not risking taking control of you by holding it?"

"I don't think so."

"You don't think so?"

"I may well be the foremost expert on thaumaturgy on this planet, Paul. I certainly have more advanced equipment than any other mortal in position to make such a claim. And I am telling you: I do not think so."

"Oh."

"The spellwork on the Spear of Destiny is like nothing I have ever seen. I deduced its function not by analysing its inner workings but by applying tiny external pressures and observing the output. I do not know what it does in the hands of someone who is.. affected by strange energies as you are. But I can imagine."

I release the spear, letting it float in the water just in front of me. "I could use the Sword of the Fallen on it."

"It might work. Would you risk it?"

"Sugar. Um. Got a suggestion?"

"The Spear seems designed to allow a person to heavily influence the state of the world, the soul of the wielder constantly influencing everyone else in tiny, subtle ways. You could hand it to the most praiseworthy person you know and hope that their influence is a good one. Or you could hide it away and hope that it never comes to light again."

"And this is my choice?"

"I considered trying to make the choice myself. I could not. I know no one so good, and nowhere so remote. You are a good man and you know what you want. It may as well be you as anyone."

Krieger had this for decades and the world didn't convert to fascism. On the other hand, I don't have a world free of his influence to compare it to, other than mine. The population here is smaller… I know that over a large enough population a small change in opinion can have some fairly serious macro level results… Was it all his influence? Okay, anyone would be better than him, but who could I trust like that? Mister Kent would be most people's choice, but I'm well aware of the way he treated Kon. Diana..? I want to think 'yes', but there's the Nabu thing… If I handed it to Alan, would it help him stay alive? I don't know, but I do know that he hates it and wouldn't want anything to do with it. Anyone else? John Co-? No. Heh, no. I mean, I don't think he'd take it anyway, but no.

Do I keep it myself? I know orange light exposure isn't healthy for a lot of people, but I can't help but think that if people got a little more of my-.

No. That's mind control. I'm not prepared to nudge the species like that, particularly when it could go badly wrong.

"I'll try and find somewhere safe to store it, out of anyone's way. Until then it can live in Themyscira's reliquary. That's as well protected as anywhere, and it will be under constant observation."

"I understand that the League has a highly capable magic user? Would it not be worth consulting them?"

"No, because they might ask for it. Nabu is a Lord of Order, and I don't trust him not to squirt order into the rest of us 'for our own good'." Darn, that was heavy. I wasn't expecting that when I came down here. "Were you able to look into Captain Nazi himself?"

"No, but the theory is simple. Using magic to speed the formation of an embodied genius loci? Nothing about that violates the functioning of magic as I understand it. Though I have only guesswork for how I could identify such a being if I encountered one."

"Does Atlantis have one? You use more magic than anyone else."

"And that very fact would prevent one from developing here. We use so much magic that it becomes structured. For an intelligence to emerge there must be pools left to format themselves over large periods of time. Other places? Perhaps. I haven't.. studied the phenomena, but it could well be."

"Thank you." I take hold of the Spear again. "I'll get this out of your way."

"And I will begin work on a way to block it."

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A Star Reborn

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A Star Reborn 1

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A Star Reborn

12th April

07:27 GMT -6

"You… Completely sure-?"

"Eh-heh eh-heh eh-heh."

Miss Shimmer stares up at me through bleary eyes as her coughing fit comes to an end while her right hand fumbles for the tissue box. Nice to see that her hand usage has improved so much.

"Yeth."

Naturally -being a magically transformed Pony- Miss Shimmer had none of the usual immunities and resistances to local diseases most people take for granted. Or at least have injected into them in early childhood. I had just been giving her a daily purification with my ring, but we talked about it and agreed that bringing her immune system up to scratch was a much better solution.

She may be regretting that now.

"Okay. Aaaah. You know where the intercom is. If you need anything, just-." She presses a button on the control pad and the television comes on.

Oh no, it's Spongebob Squarepants.

"I'll leave you to it, then." I leave her room at a quick-march and close the door behind me. Shame, really. I had been hoping to include her in Thursday's lesson… Oh well. Might still be possible, but she really has to be better for Lynne's birthday.

"I take it that the young lady is little better, Mister Grayven?"

I shake my head. "No." I frown. "Can Genomorphs get ill?"

"Yes, but Human diseases have little effect on us."

She.. visibly hesitates. That's odd. "What is it?"

"I have a request." I wave my right arm in a 'continue' gesture. "A personal one, though I imagine that the results would be of interest to all Genomorphs."

"No need to beat around the bush. What do you want?"

"I wish to know of our origins, Mister Grayven. Through Dubbilex's memories I have seen all of the records relating to the development work done to turn our G-Promethean brethren into the other Genomorph strains. What I do not know is how they were developed. Cadmus has no record of it. I thought that perhaps Mister Luthor may be more willing to divulge the pertinent information to you now that you are a member of the Light."

I nod. Interesting question, actually. They're not direct copies of any species that Father Box or Sinestro have ever heard of and creating them whole cloth should be well beyond Human biotechnology. Or… I suppose a malign hypercognitive could, but I doubt that they would stop there. "I am somewhat curious myself. I can't promise that I'll be able to find anything out, but I will certainly ask him."

She bows. "Thank you, Mister Grayven. Miss Wayland is presently attempting to teach herself remote viewing in the 'rumpus room'. Your meeting with Director Williams is scheduled to begin in two minutes at the Centre for Paranormal Studies in Metropolis."

"Thank you, Jean. Father Box, hush tube."

"Ploong."

I step through the portal in the air and into the hardened room we built into the Mountain for full contact superpower combat practice. Lynne sits with a couple of G-Gnomes and a row of blank white cards lying on the floor.

"Square." She turns over the first, revealing a diamond. "Ohh."

"Poppet, time to go. Are you ready?"

"I guess." She sweeps the cards into a pile and hands them to one of the G-Gnomes. "Is this place really going to be my school?"

"Maybe. Depends…" I extend my right hand and take hold of her right hand to help her to her feet. "If the Genomorphs can find a way to safely teach you things telepathically, I'd rather send you somewhere more normal starting in the next school year. Otherwise, this place is.. probably the best place you could go." I lay my huge left hand over her right, sandwiching it between mine. "Now, if you really hate it, I won't insist. But this isn't like the people who tried to teach you things before. This is a charitable foundation run by civilians."

"I… I know." She looks away. "I just… Okay, let's go."

I'll… Just have to hope that she warms up to the idea. "Father Box."

"Ploong."

A new portal opens, and we step through.

12th April

08:30 GMT -5

Hm. Looks a bit like a hospital reception desk, actually. I lead Lynne in the direction of the receptionist. "Good morning. Grayven and Lynne Wayland to see-."

"Hello there!" We look around to see Director Williams walking towards us, waving his left hand and smiling cheerily. He's about three feet tall and completely bald, wearing what must be a custom lab coat with a shirt, blue jumper vest and navy blue bowtie. "I'm Doctor Williams." He walks closer. "And you must be Lynne."

"Hi?"

She appears to not be quite sure what to make of him. He certainly isn't visibly threatening, which is one of the reasons I think this might actually work. I didn't warn her that he was a dwarf, or tell her that he's a telekine himself. That can be something for her to find out on her own recognisance.

"Now, there's no need to feel nervous. For a lot of our students, coming here is the first time they've met anyone who can do the sorts of things that they can. Now-" He turns away and motions for us to follow with his right arm. "-classes don't start for another half an hour, but a lot of the children here live on site. Why don't I introduce you to a few of them while your father and I have a walk around."

"Um, okay." Lynne starts after him while I bring up the rear. "Why do they live here?"

"We're the only school like this in the entire country. Our students come from all over, and a lot of the time it isn't really practical for them to go home at the end of the day. Or even at the weekends."

Head that one off… "Lynne, you can always call for a hush tube."

"Oh, uh, most of them do, though. It's actually a major limiting factor in the total number of students we have. Some only come for a few weeks each year, but for the full time students, they either have to be local or… Well, their abilities are so overt that they need our help in learning to control them."

Normal parent question next. "What sort of class sizes do you have?"

"Class sizes for our normal education program range from eight to twelve children, but when it comes to teaching the children to use their paranormal abilities we use much smaller groups. A lot of the time teaching is one to one, so the student's development can be precisely monitored. There's a lot we don't know about how these abilities work, so we put a great deal of emphasis on safety, both for the children and the staff."

Lynne nods. "Do you have..? Other telepaths?"

"Several students have different forms of extra sensory perception. If you mean 'can they speak to each other mind to mind', there are a couple of other children who can do things like that." He smiles up at her. "Would you like to meet them?"

"No." She shakes her head, stopping dead in the corridor. "No. I shouldn't go anywhere near them. If they.. touch my mind by mistake…"

"Ah, yes." He glances at me, then returns his attention to her. "Mister Grayven did.. mention the tragic incident with your parents. But don't worry, everyone here knows not to poke into other people's minds without permission."

"She does have a point, Director. I wouldn't want to needlessly endanger anyone."

"Hm. Ahhh… Ah!" He sets off again with a spring in his step and we follow. "Since not all of our students are capable of conventional telepathy, it wouldn't really be hard to put you in a class where no one else was. At least until your control is good enough that it isn't a problem any more." He knocks on a door, waits for a moment and then pushes it open.

"Hey Doc."

"Good morning, Claire. We've got a visitor. Would you mind looking after her for a little while?"

"Sure. Why not?" The Director steps back as a teenaged girl with astonishingly long and flame-orange hair comes out after him. I get a momentary frown before she turns her attention on Lynne. "Hey."

"Hello?"

"So what are you in for?"

"I'm a telepath. I can turn off people's brains." She pauses, not quite sure where to go from there. "What do you do?"

"I burn stuff." Claire holds up her right hand and it's momentarily enveloped in flame. "Wanna come meet everyone?"

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A Star Reborn 2

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12th April

08:46 GMT -5

"…have had children come to us in difficult circumstances before, but…" Doctor Williams shakes his head sadly. "Nothing on a level with what Lynne's been through."

I nod. I hadn't expected that they would. Huh, I hoped they wouldn't. I like to believe that what Lynne went through couldn't happen here, not without me knowing about it. That's one of the reasons I've been spending quite a bit of time mapping out the extent of SHADE 16's influence. And why one of the first things I'm going to raise with the Light is the idea of doing away with the opposition: thinking and planning type supervillains. It takes a very particular type of person to organise that much misery.

"That's why I want to ease her into a school setting gradually, rather than having her start attending immediately."

I've had to be subtle about it. Don't know for certain that we even have a Father Time. As far as I can tell, our version of the organisation grew out of the support structure for the All-Star Squadron. At the end of the war all but a handful of the 'talent' left, but they were still in control of some very dangerous individuals and plenty of baseline Humans with very specialist expertise. Like the Marine Corps, despite the fact that they didn't have an obvious purpose any longer they never quite got absorbed by any of the other agencies looking to expand their remit. The laws which let them create federal agents are still on the books but they don't appear to get any federal funding. Instead, they survive by 'renting' their expertise out to other agencies, though I'm sure there are plenty of off the books revenue streams I haven't found yet.

We step through the door to his office and he walks around his desk and climbs up into his chair as I take the seat opposite. His is a plush… High chair, complete with wooden steps to allow him to get to the seat. It looks a little… Infantilising, but I can't think of a better alternative for him. Assuming that he can't autolevitate.

"That's probably for the best." He looks uncomfortable for a moment. "I'll be honest, Mister Grayven: I'm not.. completely certain we can give Lynne what she needs. The children here have a wide variety of mental abilities, but only a few are classical telepaths. Take me for example." He raises his right hand and a short stack of papers rise out of his in-tray and floats over to him. "I can lift small objects and I can apply sudden bursts of force to larger ones. And I've got-" He waves his right arm at his computer. "-scans of what's happening in my brain when I do it. But we're still a very long way from understanding the biological basis of what I can do. And what I do is relatively simple to quantify."

"And telepathy isn't."

"When we first started, I assumed that psychic phenomena would be the result of a single oddity in some people's brains. Enough people had similar sets of abilities that it seemed like a reasonable hypothesis. I have what looks like a-" He taps the back of his head with his right fore and index fingers. "-small growth attached to my cerebellum. It's stayed the same size for as long as I've been checking up on it so I know it isn't cancerous. That, and the fact it lights up whenever I use my abilities. Most of the other people here who can move things with their mind have something very similar. Then…" He fans out his hands. "Others don't. And I can't explain why."

"Have you eliminated the possibility of magic use?"

He shakes his head helplessly. "I wouldn't know where to start. For the most part I assume that they're non-psychic metahumans whose abilities have a different basis. Teaching them… We'd had success with the same methods, so it doesn't make much difference where the children are concerned."

"I could… Probably… Get my hands on a few magic users. If you.. wanted to examine it from that side."

"Ahh." He looks away, right hand briefly covering his mouth and then stroking his chin as he thinks about it. "I'm.. not certain that our trustees would… Understand…"

"Do you know the difference between a parapsychic and a telepath?"

"Of course. A telepath can connect to other peoples' minds. A parapsychic can usually do that, but they can also read… Impressions from inanimate objects."

"That's the definition. But the important difference?"

He frowns slightly. "There are several, but..? Telepaths often have altered amygdala function while parapsychics usually don't? I've never been able to come up with an adequate explanation for how it's possible to get a mental impression from a thing without a mind-."

"Parapsychics use magic."

His face relaxes and his eyes dip as he takes that on board. "You're sure?"

"I'm not a magic user myself, but the descriptions of the ability in your literature match and the handful I've been able to examine directly do. One of the problems with the way you study now is that you can't eliminate such possibilities."

"That… Would explain… But that means…" He focuses his attention on me. "When you say that you can get a magic user..?"

"An… Associate of mine is looking to form a connection to a surface world institution. Test the water, as it were."

"Someone from Atlantis?" I nod. "I…" He breathes in and out again. "That could be very helpful. I'm just a little worried about how the oversight committee will feel about it." He sighs. "Despite our results, it's sometimes a struggle to persuade them that it's worth investing in psychic phenomena. Magic research… Are you aware of just how many Americans believe that magic is inherently evil? Particularly after Klarion-." He suddenly remembers who he's talking to. "Ah."

I smile. "Doctor Williams, I am fully aware of that. And I am fully aware of the Human propensity for burying their heads in the sand. But pretending it will go away if it's ignored hard enough is stupid. It may amuse you to know this, but are you aware that your school is the most advanced centre of magic research in America?"

"Really?" He frowns. "But we.. don't study.. magic. Not intentionally, anyway."

I nod. "Yes. That's how bad things are." I pause to let that sink in. "I think my connections in the US government will allow me to talk people around to expanding your remit. Even the.. Protestant right.. are aware of just how vulnerable America is. I'm perfectly happy to act as your political cheerleader."

I still believe that Jade only got me that costume because she didn't credit the idea that I'd actually wear it.

"Oh. Thank you. But the funding we get from the federal government only comes to us indirectly. And we can't go without money for the time it would take them to pass an appropriations bill."

Which leads me nicely on to the other reason I'm here. Places like this were amongst the first absorbed by SHADE 50 when they ballooned after the fall of the Justice Lords. The work they do is too valuable to me personally and to humanity more generally to let it become some sort of.. stupid paramilitary training centre. Keeping tabs on this place helps steer the country away from that, as well as giving me something I can point to when the rest of the Light ask what I've done for humanity recently.

"I was thinking of making a donation myself, as a thank you for helping my daughter."

"I'm sure that we're grateful for anything you can contribute, but the amount-."

"Two hundred million dollars."

His eyes widen. "Oh…"

"Obviously, that would go to a trust. And there would be conditions."

"Such as..?"

"That you don't accept money from the military or other security agencies. I'm all for defence spending, but your students are children."

"Yes, well, that shouldn't be a problem." Something occurs to him. "May I ask you a question?"

"Of course."

"I'm a little surprised that a man in your position doesn't have other options when it comes to this sort of thing. I know that there are telepathic superheroes out there."

"Yes, I did consider seeing if Henry King could make time for me. Thing is, for all his skill he doesn't have an understanding of the underlying mechanics of his ability. Lynne doesn't need to learn how to be more telepathic, she needs to learn control." And to be taken slightly -but not greatly- out of her comfort zone. "And there's the same problem with recruiting a Martian; their brains handle things differently. Humans aren't anything like as plastic, they can't adapt to feedback as quickly."

"I assume that your own people don't have anything similar?"

"Most of what we do is a sort of.. innate magic. Those amongst us who learn to manipulate that in clever ways end up more like sorcerers rather than telepaths." Thank goodness. Dread to think what Apokolips would be like with living Anti-Life broadcasters. "And to be honest my people are pretty unpleasant. I'd rather not dip into that well if I can avoid it."

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A Star Reborn 3

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12th April

15:43 GMT -6

"OOOOphF!"

Guy goes flying backwards, slamming into the rocky ground below us as Jordan moves his hammer construct back into the guard position. We spend a moment watching Guy unsteadily pull himself out of the resulting crater as the people in the stands cheer.

"Heh." Jordan doesn't quite take his eyes off his fallen sparring partner, but he does glance my way. "Guess I don't need this as much as you thought."

I frown. "Sorry, he's… Usually a lot better than this." I cup my right hand against my mouth. "Guy, you alright?!" He waves me off with his right hand, before shaking his head to try and clear out the cobwebs. Or perhaps to chase away the circling birds.

"Maybe you're not as good as you think either." He smirks. "I mean, if that's the best you've ever sparred against…"

"Bet you a power ring?"

The hammer dissipates. "Hey, I'm just saying-."

"Guy." The man in question gives his head one last shake before looking up at me. "Jammer and countdown."

Jordan hasn't come remotely close to mastering short range FTL hops so there's not really much point practising with them beyond what I need to in order to emphasise that he really needs to. And I'll freely admit, my skill in purely construct combat is a little below par. I mean, if I can't do better than a flipping boxing glove, that's just embarrassing.

A glowing green set of grid lights appears in the air above us, horns honking as the first set of lights shine a dull green. Jordan and I switch our attention to totally focusing on one another. Another horn blast and the second set of lights comes on. Immediately I generate construct armour while Jordan flies backwards to maximise the distance between us. A third horn blast and I fly towards Jordan at high speed while he swings his right arm in a punching motion and generates a swarm of boxing glove constructs, grinning confidently as he sends them at me.

Flak gun constructs appear on my shoulders and bolts of orange energy meet and disintegrate each one. A simple scan shows him generating a baseball bat construct while my vision is obscured… He's actually holding it in his hands. Numpty. I send thin filaments out from me in all directions, reaching out for any green light they might encounter.

He swings just as my guns destroy the last boxing glove. To be fair to him, at least he tried to conceal what he was doing. I'm only going to have half a second to respond before I join Guy in eating desert.

Half a real second.

Time slows as the bat brushes my filament fronds and I focus on making the bat construct mine. They latch on and it begins changing colour. I increase the amount of glow that my construct armour is putting out, in the hope that doing so will prevent him from reacting for a fraction of a second longer. The flak gun on my right shoulder changes into a laser and fires a twin shot at his eyes as a further distraction even as I jink around the bat I'm already more in control of than he is.

Then I have the bat extend its bindings around his hands and start swinging him around the sky.

His environmental shield should prevent him feeling dizzy, but from personal experience I know that it's still quite a disorientating process. He keeps his head in the game and forms a knife construct to try cutting through his own usurped bat. He'll be through in a moment, so I generate a construct boxing glove of my own and spin him in my direction before dissipating the bat. He gets a half-second of staring in shock before the construct leather meets his forehead.

A stunning blow, but thanks to his environmental shield not a knockout one. Filaments latch on and begin usurping his environmental shield while yanking him hither and thither. A simple impact pulse to the usurped patch over his abdomen has him doubling over, air rushing from his lungs. Again, he doesn't exactly need to breathe, but Human instinctive responses work in a certain way. I use his distraction to generate a large and very solid snake construct directly above him and bring it down fast!

"Alert! Incoming-."

He gets just enough warning to look upwards before it slams into him snout first and conveys him into the ground at speed, sending a plume of grit and dusts upwards and earning me a cheer from the crowd.

"Aaaaaand winnerrrrr!" Guy gives me a respectful nod as he floats closer. "That wasn't.. actually the big snake though, right?"

"Of course not. Her head's narrower than that."

"Good t'know."

I remove the snake construct to allow Jordan to check himself for injuries. "You seemed.. kind of out of the game today."

"Ye-ah." Guy looks more embarrassed than anything. "Haven't been sleepin' too good lately. Head's like it's fulla cotton wool. Dunno why. I'd blame Tora-"

"Please don't."

"-but it ain't that."

"If you're actually ill…"

He shakes his head and Jordan flies towards us. "Nah, I'll just… Take some Tylerol and have an early night."

"Okay, well, I need to go and pick up Zatanna-" Guy snorts. "-so since you're not exactly fighting fit we should-."

Jordan's ring flashes, and his face takes on a vacant expression for a moment. "Sorry guys. Duty calls." He rockets upwards towards the edge of the atmosphere.

I shrug. "Okay, well, take it easy, Guy. I'll see you Saturday."

"Yeah." I can see how much he dislikes having made a poor showing against Jordan. "You too."

12th April

16:47 GMT -5

I appear in front of Shadowcrest. No need to go for low impact here, this is known superhero territory. Zatanna smiles up at me, still in her school uniform. "Ready to go?"

She nods excitedly. "Oh yeah." She takes hold of the poster tube concealing the Sapphire Staff… Not a great name, but it'll do for now.

"Do you want to try flying up there yourself or-."

"No. Maybe… When we're finished? If there's time?"

"Rightyoh. Stand by." A flicker, and New York is replaced by the Mars-Jupiter asteroid belt.

"Nepo." The cardboard outer spirals open and reveals the glowing staff within. Zatanna takes a firm grip and.. her uniform subtly alters. Nothing… Inappropriate… Quite. Though I imagine that someone would have a word if she tried wearing it at school. A moment's hesitation, then the violet aura flows over her and I remove my own tether.

Sephtian was more than happy to work on the design for a magic battery. He was even willing to devise a version which took full advantage of orichalcum's greater enchantability, though I didn't ask him to make one. No sense implicating him. No sense implicating Io either, which is why Zatanna has spent some time on Themyscira watching her work.

"Dlog dna reppoc ot muclahciro."

I watch as the metal begins to transmute and our storage vessel begins to take shape. Not exactly energy efficient, doing it like this. But it does preserve the secret, and that's the more important thing.

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A Star Reborn 4

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13th April

10:07 GMT +2

"Good morning, Falil."

Adom's harried-looking Principal Personal Secretary looks around from his discussion as I walk down the corridor towards him. "Orange Lantern. Good to see you."

"Falil, why are there severed heads on poles outside the palace?"

"Ah. Yyes, his Excellency wished to talk to you about that."

"Goood. Is he free now?"

Falil looks distinctly nervous for a moment. "Ah… Possibly. I will check for you. Would you please wait here?"

"Of course."

He walks off in the direction of Adom's new office. Having thoroughly.. liquidated the previous government, one of Adom's first acts was to pass a law authorising the seizure of their assets. It wasn't particularly hard to prove rampant corruption and other forms of.. barbarity. The Swiss banks they used were reluctant to comply with the confiscation order, but fortunately I have a power ring. Adom didn't want to move the centre of his government to Cairo so that part of the reclaimed money which didn't obviously belong to someone else is being put towards the construction of a new government building. Some of the more hostile media pundits have taken to describing it as a palace, but in fact it will be no more a palace than the White House is. When finished it will very much be a working office building. But for the moment the Kahndaqi provisional government is operating out of another hotel.

Adom already has the approval of his neighbours and the tolerance of the United States. The UN Security Council has removed a few sanctions and discussion on the rest is being held off until the ratification of the new Kahndaqi Constitution. I know several European countries-

"…primary education, like they do in…"

-have… I frown and look in the direction of Adom's office. Female voice, clearly very angry. I only got a burst of what she said while Falil had the door open. Might get another burst when Adom throws her out of the window, I suppose. What sort of person thinks that berating a demigod is a sensible thing to do? Adom responds fairly well to reason; vitriol like that just annoys him.

"Uh, Orange Lantern sir?"

"Hm?" I look around as one of the other civil servants nervously holds up his phone.

"Would you mind if-?"

Heh. I shake my head. "No problem."

He grins, then turns around while holding his phone out. Despite spending far more time in the United States than I do here, Kahndaqi people identify with me far more than most Americans. Hardly anyone called me the Cake Man, particularly after last month. He leans backwards until his back touches my chestplate and then presses the button to take a picture. Selfies aren't something I've ever got into, but given that this man's predecessors were probably killed by a giant alien robot I tend to feel that I should make an effort.

"…excuse not to…"

Falil closes the door as quickly as he can as my latest admirer checks his picture. Apparently he likes it. He smiles at me -"Thanks!"- then spots his boss heading our way and hurries back to whatever he was doing before.

Falil approaches with an air of discomfort. "His Excellency will see you now."

"Thank you, but what.. was.. that..?"

Falil closes his eyes and sighs. "That.. is.. one of the things he wishes to speak to you about." He opens his eyes again. "It is probably best that he explain himself."

"Okay? Should I just..? Go in?"

He nods distractedly. "Yes. Please.. excuse me. The deputation from Qena have raised some sort of problem with the veto procedures, and-."

"You're a very busy man, I understand. Keep up the good work."

He nods and turns to walk away, giving me a very small flicker of a very small smile. Kahndaq… I'm constantly worried that the country is going the way of Iraq Prime, a universally hated dictator being overthrown leading to chaos as different armed groups try to establish control. Kahndaq at least had the advantage of leaving most of the government structure in place.

Those still occupying positions of authority after Adom killed the old government took the hint and left, without the need to spend the next decade running trials. Lower level types are being allowed to keep their heads down as long as they stay away from the offices of state. The only comparable situation I'm aware of is when the Russian oligarchs got the deal from Putin that he wouldn't look into how they acquired state assets so cheaply in the post-communist fire sale as long as they stayed away from politics, and I know that didn't work. But those left here aren't anything like as powerful and they're surrounded by a country that hates them. Adom's amnesty and personal popularity might be the only thing keeping a lot of them safe from a mob right now.

I push the-

"…accepted limited authority because that is the way things are done now."

-door open-

"You are making excuses. You could do anything with Kahndaq, and you know-"

-and the first thing I see is a woman five and a half feet tall staring Adom down, despite the fact that he's above her, being both taller than her and slightly off the ground. Adom's abandoned his dispassionate arms crossed pose and is currently winning in the battle to keep his temper under control. Just about.

"-that!"

"Excuse me?"

Both their heads snap in my direction, the woman's eyes narrowing slightly while Adom actually.. looks.. relieved? "Orange Lantern." He floats upwards a little, arms folding in front of his as his body posture relaxes. "Miss Tomaz was just leaving."

And she snaps back to him, right index finger extended. "This is not over." She extends her glare for a few seconds, then turns and walks past me through the door. And slams it closed behind her.

"Um."

Adom doesn't groan. I can feel him not groaning. "The heads belong to a deputation from a criminal syndicate which had dealings with the former president. They wished to continue that relationship with me. I turned them down."

"Did they give you a name?"

"Yes. Intergang."

I nod. "They're a 'known'. Shouldn't be too hard for me to do damage control. Um..?" I point after Miss Tomazzzzzz. Tomaz. As in 'Amon Tomaz'. As in the woman who becomes Isis. That's… Interesting. "May I ask..?"

"Intergang is engaged in 'people trading'. Slavery. They offered her to me as a gift." He takes a deep breath. "And she has seen fit to remain despite the fact that I have freed her."

"Why?"

"Intergang's allies still within Kahndaq have her brother. I told her that I would hunt them down and free him once the country is stable. Perhaps she has remained to remind me of my promise. Perhaps not. Whatever her reason, she spends her time berating me over every aspect of my conduct which does not meet with her approval."

"May I ask why she is allowed to do that?"

"She is not… Always, entirely incorrect in her statements. All too many of my advisors are reluctant to gainsay me in even the smallest way. She is… By and large, helping." He grimaces. "I merely wish that she would choose a less infuriating manner in which to do so!"

"She hasn't known you long, Mighty One. I'm sure that you'll grow into each other. And I don't need to remind you of the value of honest counsellors."

"Hah! True. In my first life, only my wife would defy me so openly. Her latest complaint is that I am not ensuring that each governate will offer equal educational opportunities to boy and girl children. As I told her, that authority is devolved, and I will not undermine those who make such decisions by… Giving with one hand, and taking with another."

"About that, Mighty One. When you said during your last interview that you were considering restricting voting to the heads of each household..?"

"Yes, I.. heard." 'Ancient Pharaoh Denies Women Vote' was not a headline I expected to have to deal with. "I apologise for any difficulty it caused you. I was not trying to disenfranchise women. It had not even occurred to me that their menfolk might vote without reference to their wives. It was off the cuff, and the idea was that they would vote on behalf of the whole household. If it had become law younger men would not have been able to vote for themselves either."

"Can I assume..?"

"It will not become policy. It was a misstep. One which Miss Tomaz has already lectured me on." Another sigh. "At length."

"Glad to hear it. So, I'm at Kahndaq's disposal for the rest of the day. What do you want me working on?"

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A Star Reborn 5

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14th April

20:33 GMT +3

Miss Shimmer blows her nose loudly, then wads the tissue up into a ball. She holds it up, staring down her still red nose at it. After a few seconds thin wisps of smoke begin rising from the top, and for a split second I think I see a smile on her lips. Then she notices that I'm watching and returns to dourness, flames consuming her tissue as she tosses it over the side of the construct platform she's standing on.

Then Miss Amane grabs her, wrapping her arms around the other girl with an expression of purest joy on her face. "You can use magic again! I'm so happy for you!"

Miss Shimmer holds her arms out to the sides as if she's not entirely sure what to do with them. "What did she say?"

Miss Amane pulls back. "You." She prods Miss Shimmer in the abdomen with her right forefinger. "Can use magic." She holds up hands and wiggles her fingers. Then she grins. "Again."

Miss Shimmer's command of English has advanced a great deal since she learned a short Atlantean ritual for memorising data tables. Unlike me, she understands the formal rules of grammar well enough to actually use it.

"Okay, thanks, but… Slower, okay? Just not as slow as that."

Miss Amane places her hands on the sides of Miss Shimmer's shoulders. "I Will Speak At Normal Speed."

Miss Shimmer sets her jaw, then places her own hands on Miss Amane's upper arms. "Thank You."

"You don't need to talk slowly for-." Miss Amane realises what she did, then bites her lower lip for a second before beaming again. "Okay!"

"Besides, it's not much magic. It's just so hard to form an etheric connection without a horn!"

"Um." Lynne looks a little self conscious when the two older girls turn their attention on her. "You, um. You neighed the last bit."

"Ugh." Miss Shimmer sags slightly, then focuses her ire on me, "Why are we here? Where is 'here', anyway?"

"To answer your second question, we are about eight thousand metres above a place called Darfur. To answer your first, we are here for a lesson."

She rolls her eyes. "Great."

"I'm glad you approve. Today's lesson is about moral theory, in particular-."

"Is it about friendship?"

"Only tangentially. Rather, I-."

"Is this going to be a lecture?"

"I will deliver a short lecture, then you will-" I make a horizontal circle with my right index finger. "-discuss the matter between yourselves before acting on the decision you make. Then you will observe the consequences of your actions and compare them to what it was that you were trying to achieve." I lean slightly towards Miss Shimmer. "And most likely try to work out where you went wrong."

"Oh." She seems unfazed. "Field work. Okay. That could be fun. I thought this was going to be another one of P-p… Celestia's pointless lectures."

"Take that, sun horse." I straighten up. "Now-."

"Sun horse?" Miss Amane looks at Miss Shimmer in puzzlement for a moment, then her eyes widen and she looks back at me with her hands over her mouth.

"Princess Celestia is planet Wilson's-" Miss Shimmer snorts. "-sun goddess. Or possibly demigoddess." It really wasn't clear from the cartoon how powerful she was. The beam of war with Chrysalis suggested 'not very' but I'm not about to treat an animation in which none of the characters have genitals or arseholes as entirely reliable. "She was also Miss Shimmer's teacher before they parted on bad terms." Oh, what's the line again? "I'm perfectly happy to answer questions, but please try to keep them to the end of the class."

She nods. I'm glad that Miss Amane isn't some sort of mindlessly obedient death puppy, but I… Probably should have thought through what I was going to do with her a little better than I did. At least she's replaced that nice looking but impractical Apokolips tech scythe with an Apokolips tech war scythe. I didn't want to instruct her in her choice of weapon because she would have obeyed without question, but when I showed her a few variants that she might 'find more practical in some circumstances' she jumped at it right away.

"Miss Shimmer. When is it appropriate to use force to compel another to your way of behaving?"

"Um?" Her pupils dart to the side as she tries to work out what sort of answer I want. "Never?"

"No, don't be daft. Do I look like Celestia? What's your real answer?"

She rolls her eyes. "Why does it matter?"

"I'm helping you become a goddess. I'd like to think that you'll be able to use that power responsibly. Well?"

This time she actually thinks about it. "When they'll hurt themselves worse if you don't?"

"Okay." I create a construct blackboard… Huh. Yellow on yellow. That's not going to work. I dismiss the construct blackboard and take a holoprojector out of subspace, writing 'WHEN THEY'LL HURT THEMSELVES WORSE OTHERWISE' in the top left. "Iname?"

As ever, she brightens slightly at the use of her 'superhero name'. She also doesn't hesitate to answer. "When they're bad people."

I nod. An expected answer. I write it in the top right. Those are the two main categories I want to focus on, but… "Lynne?"

"When they'll.. be.. better if you.. do..?"

I write 'THEIR OWN BETTERMENT' in the middle.

"Alright, that should get us started. Miss Shimmer, how badly would someone have to be about to hurt themselves before you would step in?"

A mild frown. "Well… As long as they get hurt less than they would have done… That's okay, isn't it?"

I raise my right hand, ring pointed towards her. "So I should purge you of your current viral infect-?"

"DON'T YOU DARE!" Her eyes figuratively blaze with indignation.

I nod, making a circling motion with both hands. "So..?"

Her eyes widen slightly as she realises what I mean. "Sometimes people get hurt for their own good."

"That's one way to put it." I add 'HOW MUCH HARM' under her suggestion. "Keep going."

"Aaaaaaaah… They'd have to be getting seriously hurt? Something they couldn't get better from?"

"What if you're not sure whether they will or not?"

Miss Shimmer's face appears to shut down as she's forced to actually think about some of the things Celestia tried to teach her. Guess who actually was paying attention all those times you ranted about her? "The.. risks of intervention have to be offset against the risks of inaction?"

I blow her a raspberry.

"Whaaaaaaat?"

"Of course they do. What you need to know in your own mind is 'how much risk'. 'How much injury'." I add those to the hologram. "And you should have a pretty firm idea of where you think the 'intervention point' is before you put yourself into a position where you might be expected to intervene. Which you will in a couple of hours."

"We will?"

"Iname. How bad does a person have to be?"

She hesitates, though in her case she's trying to work out what answer I want because in her mind that is the right answer, rather than because she thinks that the question is stupid. "You can only do as much harm as they would do."

I write 'EYE FOR AN EYE' on the board. "Alright, but do you mean to them, or in total?"

"I.. don't think I understand."

"Let us take the example of a murderer. According to the principle you stated, killing them would be correct. But what if they've got a dependant who requires them to live in order to survive themselves? Or if they have some vital job lots of other people rely on? You would be harming lots of other people when you killed them."

"Grayven?" Lynne raises her right hand. "Why are we having this lesson over Darfur, rather than somewhere else?"

"Because there's a rather nasty war going on down there. And once the three of you have decided on your moral beliefs, you're going to stop it in accordance with them."

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A Star Reborn 6

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14th April

17:45 GMT -6

"…realise this is a silly reason to contact you."

"Oh no, Mister Grayven. It was necessary to test your system and of all of us I am least likely to be distracted from my work."

"Yes, but that's not why I picked you." I exhale, not quite able to look at his screen. Okay, yes, that would make sense. He designed the communication system we Light members use to contact one another for official business, using it to contact him is the logical thing to do in case any problems arise. But that wasn't why. "Ever since our last meeting, I… I can't get the fact that no one knows your name out of my head. It's been bugging me."

"I see."

"I've tried getting the rolls for every university that's had a student from southern France for the last fifty years, I've tried examining your old haunts and trying to get a genetic sample… I even tried going back to Gorilla City and asking the residents-."

"Sacred blue, Mister Grayven."

"I know. They were neither pleased to see me nor inclined to be helpful. Eh, they couldn't really describe you and I wasn't prepared to ease off on my mental defences for them to try showing me telepathically." At least Lynne enjoyed the trip. "So there's really only one way for me to find out left." Well. Other than have Chester rip it out of the Ultra-Humanite's mind I suppose, but there's no guarantee that he knew.

"And what would that be, Mister Grayven?"

"Brain, will you please tell me what your name is?"

He pauses for a moment. "Mister Grayven, is that a Wizard of Earthsea reference?"

Ah? "Sort of. I mean, I don't need you to tell me in order to leave the building."

"You have read it?"

"Yes, while I was on Earth Prime. I wasn't.. massively impressed, but it held my attention at least." I think my dad read it to me for a bedtime story. I may have tried reading it again later, I don't really remember. I've been reading Enid Blyton's Adventure series to Lynne. I don't think she's really.. developed her own tastes yet. That and the fact that we spend most of our time together meant that shopping for her birthday party was a bit tricky. Fortunately, I have a personal shopper with super speed. "Soo… Will you tell me, please?"

"Of course, Mister Grayven. It is Doctor Marcel Durant."

…

"Oh."

"I am sorry if it is not a great revelation. I did not choose my name. I would say that The Brain suits me somewhat more."

"Yeah, I think I agree with you th-."

Lex Luthor's screen activates. "Grayven, I'm-" There's the tiniest hesitation as he spots that the Brain is online as well. "-glad that you're there. We may have a small problem."

"Is it a problem which requires the attention of the entire Light, Mister Luthor?"

"No. In fact, I would have just handed it over to our enforcer."

Hm. "Oh yeah, who is that at the moment?"

"After you killed the last two, the position has remained vacant."

Ah. That. I frown. "Seems like an important job to remain unfilled."

"It will be on the agenda at our next meeting, Mister Grayven. It was decided that it would be best to wait until the new members were confirmed."

"Fair enough. So, what, we'll be deciding between David Hyde and Slade Wilson?" Wasn't really surprised that he extracted himself from custody, though I was a little disappointed.

Lex inclines his head slightly. "They are the leading candidates, though there are one or two others that may be worthy of consideration. Is there anyone you wish to nominate?"

Chester doesn't have the planning skills, Vera hasn't fully acclimatised… I have been meaning to track down Scandal Savage -or whatever her real name is- but I don't have any information on her career. "No, not really. So, why were you calling?"

"One of our secure storage facilities has failed to respond to a check in attempt. Given the nature of what we are storing there, the matter was escalated to me immediately. I dispatched a security detail, and they report that the place is now empty."

"Don't keep us in suspense, Lex. What were you keeping there?"

"Among other things, the exotic remains which the Shadows recovered from STAR Labs during the Roanoke Incident."

"And.. what do they do?"

"It formed the basis of the mind control technology which Mister Klarion used to control the Justice League, Mister Grayven. That, the technology provided by Professor Ivo and Mister Klarion's own magic made for a most potent combination."

"Did wonder where you got that from." I glance back towards the door. I kept one myself, but with everything that's gone on I haven't had the time to study it in any detail. I think the League kept the rest, though I seem to remember Wallace saying something about keeping one as a souvenir. "Do you want me to track down the thief myself? Shouldn't take all that long."

Lex nods. "I was hoping that you would volunteer your services. I'll forward you all of the information we have been able to gather on the creature."

Yes, and then you'll feel obliged to answer when I ask about the Genomorphs, so that works for me… Wait a moment. "Creature?" I frown. "I thought all you had were more of those mind control chip things?"

"Not all of the creature's flesh was consumed creating those. It showed truly remarkable regenerative properties. That was why we kept studying it."

!!!

"You had a living alien in your possession?"

"We were not able to confirm its origin, Mister Grayven. It may indeed be of extraterrestrial origin-."

"No, I know this species. They're called 'Star Conquerors', and at their peak they mind controlled the inhabitants of three Space Sectors. That fight was the last time the Green Lantern Corps really took their gloves off. Do you know how big the one you got your sample from was?"

"I believe Ocean Master said it was something like thirty meters along its longest axis."

"Okay. Okay, that's.. less scary. If it was one of the really big ones…"

"It is interesting to see you so discomported, Mister Grayven. How much of a threat do they pose?"

"I'll send you my files. The closest equivalent in Human popular fiction would be a telepathic Morning Light Mountain from the Commonwealth Saga. If we can contain it quickly, not much. If we can't, if it makes contact with one of its larger kinsmen, very much. Grayven out."

I cut my connection and send Sinestro's files on the species before heading to the door. Blast, what a crap time for it. I'll need to grab… Eh, Chester's still in no fit state... I'll see if Jean's awake. She and a G-Gnome or two-.

"Master!" I look down at the 'thump'. Miss Amane is genuflecting to me, face pressed against the floor. "I have failed you! Please, forgive me!"

…

…kay..?

Miss Shimmer and Lynne follow along behind her, Miss Shimmer looking more than a little nervous. "We.. couldn't come up with a strategy that didn't just result in lots more people dying."

Miss Amane looks up, tears shining in her eyes. "Master, please tell us what we are supposed to do!"

"Miss Shimmer. What did you come up with?"

"Ah…" She ducks my gaze. "If… We thought that if Linn stunned each war band and Iname killed the leaders, that might be enough to convince the rest to back off."

"I don't see a big pile of heads. Did you just leave them there?"

"But we'd have to kill hundreds of people! And that's not even counting the government officials who covered it up for so long! And that might not even have worked!"

I nod, smiling pleasantly. "Oh, so you were paralysed in the face of-?"

"It wasn't possible." Lynne is frowning slightly, as if she's been thinking hard and has just realised something. "The war has been going on for years. You must have known that we wouldn't be able to come up with the right solution in a few hours."

"I would have been surprised."

"Hey!" Miss Shimmer looks irritated while Miss Amane looks like she just got a reprieve from death row.

"If there even was a right answer. In the real world, there may well not be a good solution. Or if there is, the information you would need to make it isn't available. Deciding that there must be a right solution and refusing to take any action until you find it is a rather daft way to proceed. But a few hours was a ridiculously brief target for me to give you. Lynne, well done for standing up to me. But the three of you need to keep studying. I do expect a solution eventually, and more people die while you delay."

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A Star Reborn 7

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15th April

20:17 GMT -5

I smile as Jade opens the door. "Good evening, Catgirl."

She rolls her eyes, turns away and walks back into the house. "Holly and Karon aren't here."

I wince in sympathy as I follow her in, closing the door behind me. "Job interview.. not go so well?"

She stops, but doesn't turn around. "I-." There's a sharp exhalation. "It was a good idea, but apparently they were looking for someone who 'looks a little more intimidating'."

Darn. Jade isn't exactly unwilling to take something minimum wage, but I can well understand that it's a bit of a step down from the sort of thing she used to do. Thing is, she doesn't have much in the way of formal qualifications and she doesn't have anything remotely resembling a reference. I thought 'bodyguard' was quite a good fit… But, yeah, I see their point. Bodyguarding is about keeping the principal safe. A slightly built Asian woman doesn't intimidate people unless she's got a reputation and they know what it is. There are people in Gotham who'd give her that sort of work, but they're all career criminals and probably wouldn't be interested in tolerating her moral hang-ups about doing anything more assertive than guarding.

"This is Gotham. There'll probably be other openings."

"Yeah. Great." She walks over to the closest settee and lithely lowers herself into it. "Guess you heard about me going out with Selina."

I blink. "Well darn. Looks like I misread the situation."

Another eye roll, though this one is slightly better humoured. "Not like that. After working with the League, working out in the gym just doesn't cut it." She pauses as I walk over to sit in the chair across from her. "You're not going to try telling me this violates my parole, right?"

"Not as far as I know." I flick out my right hand. "Don't kill or maim, don't let bystanders get hurt and keep the evidence more or less in one piece and there shouldn't be a Bat-problem." She nods. "New costume?"

"Selina's not a fan of the kimono."

"Gotham's not exactly classy. Not in the sort of places you're needed."

"Plus it's probably better if there isn't an obvious connection between a new vigilante and a recently released ex-League of Shadows operative."

I nod. "Right. Um, look. About... Two weeks ago…" Her eyebrows arch slightly. "It's.. been explained to me… By Artemis… That after you asked about Doctor Blight… You were probably expecting me to…" I make a combine harvesting motion with my arms. "Press my suit. Rather than back off."

"You asked my sister about that?"

"It came up in conversation." And I got away with only a mild ear bashing. "Um. I'm not… Very good at-."

She shakes her head. "I honestly hadn't noticed."

I close my eyes for a moment, exhaling lightly. "Not something I've got a lot of experience with. I just.. took that as you saying 'no', and…"

"Oh."

"I mean, I thought I was making a clear statement of interest, you backed off…"

Her eyes flick away. "I wasn't.. backing off, exactly…"

"Okay, well, I'll.. take that as having your permission to be a little more assertive in future."

"Huh." She treats me to a Cheshire grin. "That'll be fun."

"But in more serious news…"

Sad face. "Aww… And I thought you might have come over while Holly and Karon were out to… Assert."

"N… No. There's a.. situation that's arisen-" Her eyebrows rise again. "-that you not like that!"

"Can't blame a girl for hoping."

"A situation has occurred that.. your particular expertise may be able to help with. Obviously, this is a job, I'd be paying you for-."

Her eyes narrow. "This better not be a pity offer."

I raise my hands in mock surrender. "Wouldn't dare. I'm completely serious. I'm planning something, but I don't have any actual experience-"

"I think I worked that out."

"-with this sort of mission. Oh." I take a ward stone out of subspace and toss it to her. She catches it in her right hand without otherwise moving as I have the ring do a quick scan of the immediate area. I think we're in the clear. "You'll need that."

She looks at the stone carefully. "The only thing… I have experience with… But you don't…"

Killing people, presumably. "Actually, there was a fellow a few days ago-."

"So you don't need my advice on boys?"

An attempt at humour, but her lips aren't smiling. "I'm planning an assassination. Hopefully, it won't-" She looks away. "-come to that, but I need to be sure that I'm prepared just in case. I think I'm covering all the angles-."

"Is this..!" She glares at me. "This better not be some sort of messed up test."

"The Lord of Order Nabu is possessing the body of Mister Giovanni Zatara, and he has no plans to give it up."

Her face creases. "What?"

"Nabu's spirit is bound to that golden helmet. If anyone puts it on, they get shoved into a black featureless void while he gets complete control. Mister Zatara hasn't been taking a leave of absence, he's been a prisoner in his own body since Roanoke Island."

She relaxes a little. "Do the Justice League know?"

"Yes. Which is rather why I'm not going to them… To the rest of them with this."

"That girl, Zatanna. She's his daughter."

"Yes."

She lays there, thinking it through. "Who did you kill?"

"A man named Albrecht Krieger."

Her eyes flick up for a moment. "You killed Captain Nazi?"

"Yes. Of course, killing Nabu is rather more problematic. He's a member of the Justice League-."

She nods. "And we can't risk killing his host."

"Not without a reliable way to resurrect him." Vandal Savage's surviving tribespeople appeared to be my best bet, but I haven't been able to trace them.

"Is that even… Possible..?"

"I believe so. I have a… Scenario in mind. It won't be possible to disguise what we did afterwards, but as long as you're not 'in at the death', we can probably keep your name out of it."

"And if I say no?"

"Then.. you.. forget we had this conversation. I'll understand if you need to think about-."

"I'm in." The look on her face is deadly serious. "Show me what you've got so far."

back

A Star Reborn 8

next

16th April

09:19 GMT -5

"Soooo?"

I look up from the book John got me on Norse runes to where Artemis leans against a nearby bookshelf, looking rather pleased with herself. "So… What?"

Since I definitively eliminated the Kriegers as a way back to Valhalla for the Einherjar, Batman assigned me the task of coming up with an alternative. The Einherjar themselves don't seem all that bothered. Can't say I'm surprised; some of them have been there for well over a thousand years and are metaphorically chomping at the bit at the prospect of being able to fight something else. Presently they're being entertained by some sort of pagan society in Norway, who are delighted to have tangible evidence of the truth of their faith.

"So? You? Jade?"

I return my attention to the book. "Your analysis was broadly correct. We talked about it…"

"And?" She walks towards me. "You two dating now, or what?"

I smile slightly. "We're probably going to be seeing a little more of each other, certainly."

Artemis pulls out the chair opposite me. "And Zatanna's okay with that?"

I glance up and nod. "Oh yes."

I love sophistry. I handed Jade the standard League of Shadows deposit for a well defended high value target and a summary of the techniques we believe can be used to kill Klarion. The folder it's in is warded and designed to self destruct if anyone else looks at the contents, but even so I'm not comfortable having our actual plan written down anywhere. I have been thinking about how to kill Klarion as well; my hate for Nabu doesn't blind me to the fact that he has to go first. Nabu is a reasonable Klarion counter, killing Klarion is a better one. Once Nabu no longer serves any purpose I won't feel that I'm imperilling the world by threatening him.

"Fine. Don't talk to me about it." She looks around the room. "I thought Gardner was supposed to be here at nine?"

"He said 'nine-ish'. Guy's the only local Green Lantern not to have spent any time in the military. Nine-ish doesn't mean 'at nine, unless something comes up', it means 'somewhere around nine, to within half an hour, probably'." I shrug. "Besides, I train with Guy a couple of times a week anyway. I already know everything relevant to the job that he knows. I'm half expecting him to walk in, ask what we're normally doing at this time of day and tell us to carry on with it."

"The only one who wasn't in the military?"

"Two eight one four A-."

"Hal."

Ah. "Oh, okay, I didn't know that you knew."

She shrugs. "He introduced himself when I was in Central City one time."

"Okay, well, he was in the US air force and B was in the marines."

"What about Mister Scott?"

"He was conscripted during the Second World War. He went through basic training before being transferred to work on Stars and Stripes. He's still got the uniform up in his loft, though he said he hardly ever wore it."

"How did he handle the secret identity thing?"

"With difficulty. When he was in boot camp Green Lantern basically disappeared because he couldn't sneak out. Then, he still had to go where he was sent and he could only act in places where his airspeed could take him there and back." I half-chuckle. "Just a good job he wasn't a paratrooper. If he'd been ordered to drop somewhere inside the Nazi control zone things might have become rather tricky." I frown. "What were you doing in Central City?"

"Hanging out with Wally."

"Oh. Hadn't realised you.. did that."

Her eyes narrow. "Seriously?"

"What?"

"I've been going out with Wally for, like, a month now."

I blink. "You have?"

She gives me an odd look. "You didn't notice..?"

"Notice what?" My gaze grows vacant as I try to remember. "You've.. been.. sniping at each other lessssss?"

"Oh.. my God. You must be the least observant guy I know!"

… "Sorry? I guess… You didn't seem to be having a problem…" Weird. "Really you and Wallace?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well I.. can see why he'd find you attractive, but you just seemed to find him annoying. Aside from this hobby we share, I.. don't really see what you've got in common."

"Yeah, I guess we don't. But-."

"Hey." We both look upwards as Guy's voice comes in over the intercom. "Paul, Artemis, unless I'm intrudin' on your 'personal time', get up here. Got a mission for yeh." Artemis gets up as I close the book. "An' if I am intrudin' on your personal time, I'm turnin' the sprinklers on in five."

"That ass!"

"He… Grows on you." I rise to my feet. "Want me to create a zeta tube?"

"No, he can wait while we walk up."

"Buut." There's a flare of orange as I don my armour. "Mission."

We head out of the library and start along the corridor. "Jerk probably wants us to wax his car or something."

New topic, new topic. "How did your mother react to Batman's telling her about the money?"

"She was… Happy." Batman agreed with dividing it as I suggested and he agreed to handle.. laundering it. Unfortunately, most of my team mates aren't going to be able to access the majority of it until they're eighteen. "She sort of started giving me a lecture about bounty hunting and how that wasn't the heroic identity thing I was trying to make for myself…"

"And then?"

"We got talking about some of the bounties Mom and…" Toss of the head. "Went after? We don't really talk about Huntress very much."

"Bounty hunting is a way to make a living while still being heroic. As long as you're careful about which ones you accept."

"Yeah, and I remember you saying Green Lanterns get paid like that. But… She's right. And, now I can definitely afford to go to college, I think I'd rather do something else."

I nod. "Have anything in mind?"

"I dunno. Grandpa would probably like it if I joined the army."

"And your father would hate it, so it has that going for it."

She shakes her head. "I don't.. care what he thinks. Wally's been trying to persuade me to study chemistry with him… I'm not used to having to worry about it. Oh! I was supposed to tell you. Mom's got a new job."

"What happened to the old one?"

"They paid minimum wage. She's working at the gym now. They saw her working out and said she'd be perfect."

"Good for her."

back

A Star Reborn 9

next

16th April

09:27 GMT -5

Artemis pulls ahead of me as we get to the training room, moving at a not-quite-jog towards our double line of team mates. A few absences today, I note. I wasn't expecting Troia, but we're also down a Squire and a Speedy. They might be busy, but I've got a sneaking suspicion that Guy just didn't bother reading the SOP manual for how to notify people when there's a mission.

Guy looks around from the holoscreen. "Arty, Orange. Good of you to join us."

I generate a construct umbrella and -Ring, chemical structure of Artemis' lipstick?- add a few minor decorations to my face and neck.

"Sorry we're late, Lantern Gardner."

He looks… Ooo. He wasn't joking about having trouble sleeping. Lanterns can go extended periods of time without sleep, but Guy told me that he has that function deactivated after he found out what the consequences of using it too much were. Think he might need to rethink his policy.

"Kinda surprised you were cuttin' class-." His eyes widen slightly, looking at-. Hah! Got him! He blinks and looks away as I dismiss the umbrella. "Uh, whatever. Okay gang, listen up."

Artemis takes up position next to Wallace… Which now I think about it she's been doing… Whaw, I really did miss that. I thought she just wanted to be within slapping range. I join the end of the line next to Kon, Wolf giving me a greeting sniff as I do so. The holoscreen is displaying images of the Starro-tech, the Cure-tech and what appears to be archival footage of larger Star Conquerors from the Green Lantern Corps' last encounter with them.

"Last July an Atlantean expedition to the Arctic found a big one of these-" He points to one that would be about the size of the one destroyed in Poseidonis. "-hidden in the ice. If any of you haven't heard already, these things are flying, telepathic alien starfish."

Wallace splutters in surprise and disbelief. "Alien starfish?"

Guy glances at him for just long enough for him to start feeling self conscious about the fact that the rest of us didn't react. Then Guy returns his attention to the screen and has it play the attack we watched when I spoke to the Greenies about those things last December. "Yeah, everyone says that to begin with, but these things are no joke. Originally, they used ta be pretty small. They'd just mind control animals on their homeworld, kinda like how that weird fungus reproduces using ants." Someone's been watching the Discovery Channel. "The animals would move 'em around, fight predators, whatever." There's a picture of a herd of… Some sort of alien armoured octopuses, most of which have Star Conquerors on their… I'm going to assume that's their face. "Since they couldn't move much on their own on land and there were other things that ate 'em, they weren't much trouble."

M'gann cocks her head slightly to the left. "That doesn't sound too dangerous. But then how did they get so big?"

"Part of their thing was they could use the brain of whatever they got stuck on. Do that to an animal, it learns what the animal eats, what sorta thing's a threat to it, that's about it. Stick on somethin' a bit smarter-."

Richard nods. "And it gets smarter too."

"It was worse than that. Looks like the first intelligent species they ran into were telepathic themselves, so the Star Conqueror that got stuck on one a' them could share its smarts with the rest. We're not really sure what happened next, but a couple a' decades later they'd given themselves a full upgrade." New images appear. "The big ones are Mother Stars. Their telekinesis is so strong they can fly faster than light with it, protect themselves from capital ship weapons and rip things apart. Not to mention their mind control powers."

We get a short clip of one coming under fire from a small flotilla of warships. It's approaching them eye first, the smaller Star Conquerors hiding behind its bulk. The warships open fire with scintillating beams of energy… Which fade to nothing before hitting home. The Mother Star's eye narrows slightly and one ship ceases firing. One tentacle bends slightly and another ship crumples.

"Real bad news. Good news is, we think they're all dead."

Kon raises his right eyebrow. "You think?"

"After the war between them and the Green Lantern Corps was over, the Corps checked alla the systems anywhere near where they'd been and destroyed any Star Conquerors they found. But y'can't check alla space. It's too big. Could be some a' the big ones cooled down and hid in deep space." He shrugs. "Way I see it, if they were gunna make trouble they'd have done it by now."

"The medium sized ones are Star Hunters." The video turns back to showing the Green Lantern fighting two of them I saw last December. "Like the one the Atlanteans found. They actually come in a bunch a' different sizes… Anyway, they're flying weapon platforms. Mostly they use their telepathy t' paralyse people and then stick the little ones on their faces with their telekinesis. They're tough, but once you actually start hittin' them they tend to go down quick enough. The real problem on the ground is the little ones."

More archival footage, this time showing the descent of a small group of Green Lanterns into a city where every citizen wears a Star Conqueror. Thousands of cyclopean eyes turn to track their progress.

"When they're like this, every one has a hostage they can make fight fer them."

"I can't imagine what that's like."

I hear Zatanna mutter, and from the uncomfortable look Richard gives her it looks like he did as well. Guy didn't.

"They'll know everything the host knew an' since they're all networked together if one's seen you they've all seen you. They don't really have any sense of self preservation; as far as we can tell only the big ones are intelligent on their own."

Wallace nods. "So they're like.. Starfish Zombies."

Artemis doesn't hit him.

"Sure, if Zombies can do all the things they did when they were alive. Watch." A new video appears, humanoid soldiers from the same planet as before taking up position. A Star Hunter moves out from behind a building and immediately comes under fire. It narrows its eye and the soldiers closest to it shudder. The video pauses. "See that? Needed line of sight. These guys are gettin' their nerves jammed." The video resumes, a flight of small Star Conquerors descending from above and landing on the faceplates of the paralysed soldiers, which swiftly give way. "The little claws on their undersides can be reinforced with telekinesis. Rip through just about anything." He makes eye contact with me. "Including constructs." The soldiers flail around for a moment then with precise coordination assault their colleagues with their fists. "They're not using weapons there because they want more warm bodies more than they need the ones they're wearing to stay alive." The images speed up, then return to normal speed, showing the newly Star Conquered soldiers manning anti-aircraft emplacements and firing at local aircraft. "Here, they need the local fighter planes down more than they need the pilots."

Kaldur nods. "Do you believe that we will need to fight these creatures?"

"Hope not." Guy turns off the hologram. "Since December I've been keeping tabs on the Atlantean team who dug out the first one. They've found some biological remains they want taken someplace safe." He shrugs. "I'd say it wasn't anything to worry about, but the Light created Starro-tech with hardly anythin' and the Star Conquerors were notorious for bein' able to regenerate. We're transferin' what we've got to STAR Labs in Gotham City."

Artemis frowns. "Wasn't that where the last piece got stolen from?"

"Yeah, but it got put there in the first place 'cause they've got the best people for checking this sorta thing out. They're workin' on beefin' up the security, but in the meantime I want there to be a bunch a' superheroes on hand in case anyone tries anythin'." He smiles. "And that's you. Your job is to make sure that the samples get to Gotham and make sure they stay there. Any questions?"

"Ah, yeah." Wallace nods. "What sort of size are these samples?"

"Starro slushy, basically. They're being transported in six nitrogen-cooled and heavily insulated shipping crates. Don't think you have to worry about anythin' jumping out at yah."

"Can I just FTL transfer them to Gotham?"

"'Fraid not. The Star Conquerors fought the Green Corps for a long time, and they're sensitive to all kindsa energy and radiation. You understand exactly what happens when you do an FTL transfer?"

"Not.. exactly."

"Then it ain't worth the risk. Any-?" His ring blinks, and he winces as he looks at it. "Ah, heck. I gotta be on the other side a' the Sector an hour ago. You kids can handle this by yourselves?"

Kaldur takes a confident step forward. "Yes, Green Lantern. You may leave this with us."

back

A Star Reborn 10

next

16th April

11:57 GMT -5

I ignore the glowing around me as the rings react to my displeasure at the dilapidated and bird poo covered state of STAR Labs Gotham's roof by performing a tidy up and look out across this part of the city. You know, for a wretched hive of villainy it doesn't look all that bad. I can hear police sirens, but not more than I would be able to in New York at this time of day. No screams, no gunshots, no screeching tires… With Hugo Strange in prison in Louisiana a Doctor Young is running Arkham Asylum and incidents of escape and violence are well down. There are still gangs and the occasional minor supervillain sticks his/her/its head up, but at the moment things are surprisingly quiet.

I tap my communicator.

"Orange Lantern here. Everything calm and peaceful on the roof. Robin?"

"Robin here. STAR's electronic security is actually pretty good."

"Oh?"

"They get supplied by WayneTech."

"Ah. Are you occupied?"

"There's some spyware I need to get rid of and their physical electronic security could use a little work. I'll have done everything I can in about an hour."

"Rightyho."

Wallace strolls over to stand next to me. "Is that really a thing English people say? Or are you just.. trying to make a catchphrase happen?"

I set my communicator to 'off'. "It's an unusual turn of phrase, but I believe that other English people use it."

He leans against the wall surrounding the edge of the roof. "You know you've still got that makeup on, right?"

"Makeup?"

"Yeah, okay, it was kinda funny? But you're overplaying it." He's probably right. Got a few funny looks from my team mates on the way over here, not that anyone said anything. "And I'm not insecure enough to let it actually bother me. No way did Artemis kiss you."

I make a vague gesture with my right hand and the lipstick evaporates. "I'm afraid that I lack your highly refined sense of comedic timing."

"Guess I finally get to teach you something. Hey, I've been meaning to talk to you about-."

"I just.. need to finish the ring around. Then you'll have my undivided." He nods. "Zatanna?"

"I've put wards on each external door and I'm.. trying to work out what the best way to create a ward for the whole building is."

"We need something that will alert us to an intruder.. and something that will block scrying and magic-based teleportation. Anything else is gravy. Don't worry about how long it can last. I'm sure we can persuade Atlantis to send up a battlemage or two to create something really strong if we think it's necessary."

"Okay, I can do that. Call it… An hour and a half?"

"Okay, let me know if there's any problem. Artemis?"

"I've finished the background checks on all of the staff and most of the suppliers."

"Anything turn up?"

"Nothing worth mentioning. The only tie to the Light is that they get some of their lab equipment from LexCorp, and that all looks legitimate."

"Okay, good work. Let me know when you've finished. Rocket?"

"Seven force field emitters in place, eighteen to go."

"Okay, that's-."

"Some of the security guys are getting a bit unhappy about this."

"Once we've finished up you and I can give them a demonstration of how the things work, let them talk it out. For now, focus on getting them assembled."

"I hear you. Rocket out."

"Canis?"

"FTL jammers and teleport jammers in place. And one of the staff is making an obscene gesture at me."

"If it is weak, either kill it or ignore it. Anything else honours it."

"Then I will ignore it. Though… The individual in question is not unappealing."

I tap my communicator again. "Sorry, Kid Flash. You were saying?"

"How come you're not putting up the force fields? Off-loading the boring jobs onto other people?"

"Because I know how to assemble mobile force field generators and Rocket doesn't. Or rather, didn't." I walk over to the surrounding wall and take a look over the edge. Heights used to scare me, but somewhere along the line I lost that fear. Probably all the flying I've been doing. "I've.. been thinking… About my leaving."

"Going to Maltus?" I nod. "But you'll be back, right?"

"I don't know. Hopefully, but I've got no idea what the timeline will be. If they want me to teach classes it could be a year or two before I can get away for any length of time."

He nods thoughtfully. "So… When is it you're leaving?"

"Haven't picked a date yet. My obligation to remain ends on… In the middle of the night on the fifth of July, Eastern Standard Time. I'll probably leave-" Depending on how things go with Nabu. "-a little after that. I mean, heh, I'd hate to go through all the trouble of keeping my oath and then mess it up by working out a time zone difference wrongly."

Wallace gazes off into the distance. "Huh."

"What?"

"Oh, it's just… I knew the team wasn't a permanent thing. Roy's going to want to join the League eventually. Probably Kaldur too."

"And you?"

"I don't know. Unless I can get my Garrick Formula fixed I'd still be the slow Flash."

I wince slightly. "Sorry, I've… Been kind of occupied. How's that been going?"

"It kinda hasn't." His eyes drop to the ground for a moment. "Nyssa's been doing her best, but the knowledge just isn't there."

"Anything I can do to help?"

"I don't think…" Something appears to occur. "Can you give me Rush Hour's number?"

"I can. I'd.. rather check with them first. Why do you want it?"

"We know that whatever the Garrick Formula did to my body, it was alchemical, right? And 'alchemical' means 'making magic with chemicals'."

"Basically."

"Which means my next step is to get an actual magic user to take a look. But since there aren't any super speed magicians around the place they're probably not going to know any more than Nyssa does."

"Not immediately, no."

"But the Rush Hours already use magic to get super speed. If I can learn what they're doing, that might work."

"Might. But we thought that about Jesse Quick. You really shouldn't-."

"Yeah, yeah, I know." He waves me off. "Probably won't. But, it might. So I'm gonna try it."

"Alright. I'll talk to them about it once the Starro slushie is taken care of."

back

A Star Reborn 11

next

16th April

13:31 GMT -5

The large roller shutter door at the rear of the building opens, revealing the heavy goods vehicle carrying our crates. Raquel waves at me from the passenger seat as the driver drives forwards into the loading dock.

Doctor Wilson Farr steps up beside me. He's the head of STAR Labs: Gotham, having worked on any number of highly sensitive projects for various concerns, Batman and Superman being amongst them. "Heh, well, I'm glad that went smoothly."

The roller shutter door closes as the lorry comes to a halt. "Please avoid tempting fate, Doctor Farr." I raise my left hand. "Orange Lantern to team, scanning package now." Standard scan, sonic pulse -which makes both Canis and Beton Brut wince- and gravity resonance scan. Nothing unexpected. Be a bit surprising if there was, but I'm not about to muck this up by not taking it seriously. "Scan shows no abnormalities. Zatanna?"

Outside the observation booth the driver goes to open the door, only for Canis to shake his head and point. Something about the fact that he's sitting on a giant Dog seems to make people more obedient. Maybe I'm overdoing it, but 'no one gets out until we're sure they are who they should be' seems to be a reasonable precaution in a situation like this.

"I can't wait to get started." The other man in here with me is Doctor Silas Stone. He'll be heading the team working on the Star Conqueror material. "It's not every day someone gets to work on an alien life form." He glances at me. "Not in Gotham, anyway."

Zatanna walks around the lorry. From here I can see her lips moving, though whatever she's saying is too quiet for me to make out. Once she completes her circuit a band of blue-white light passes over the lorry, running up from the wheels and coalescing in the middle of the top surface. She taps her communicator. "Everything seems to be in order."

"Thank you. Step back." She retreats to the edge of the room. "Artemis, Robin." Though they're both about as strong as Canis, they look less intimidating. "Rocket, please open the rear doors."

"Ahright anal retentive Lantern."

Artemis and Richard take up station on either side of the door, far enough back that they'll have time to respond to a sudden rush. The rear doors open… Revealing exactly what we thought would be there. Six crates designed to maintain a very low temperature within them.

"Robin, visual inspection."

Doctor Farr gives me a sceptical look. "Is this.. all really necessary?"

"Probably not, but I've seen enough of what Star Conquerors can do to not want to take any risks."

Richard jumps up into the rear of the lorry while Artemis puts an arrow on string. As he enters the code to pop the hatch on one I close my eyes and mentally prod Fatty to peer over the rim of this building's roof. A moment later I get an unobstructed view of the surrounding streets. Nothing out of the ordinary. I could be using a full swarm for this, but I don't think Batman would be best pleased if I started a citywide demonic invasion panic. Unlike in the comics people around here do remember what happened a few episodes ago. I don't like to draw the link, but Fawcett City made it clear to everyone in America that the Roanoke Island incident might well not be a one-off thing. Places and people who used to scoff at magic and its practitioners -heh, 'ancient religion'- are now wising the heck up all around the world. The Atlantean mission to the UN has expanded to a proper embassy, though they aren't having to process a significant number of visa applications as yet. Hopefully, the cultural immersion will encourage the mages Atlantis is renting out to broaden their horizons. Wait, would that phrase mean anything to an Atlantean? They don't often.. see.. horizons after all…

"All clear in here."

"Okay, send in the unloading team."

"We could just.. carry them. I mean, we do have super strength."

"Which is why I don't want you encumbered. You're here to fight off attackers, not rearrange furniture. Besides, there's probably some sort of training course you have to do first or their insurance gets invalidated."

"Okay."

Richard leans out of the back and makes a beckoning motion at the staff member on the forklift truck. Artemis slowly walks out of the way as they put it in gear and drive towards the opening.

"Rocket, you and the driver can get out now."

"Thank you." She smiles sarcastically in my direction before getting the driver's attention and pointing at the door.

Aaaaaahh?

Chubbs sends me a mental image of three people entering STAR Labs' reception area. A bit hard to tell as he doesn't process clothing images in a particularly Human way, but from what I can tell they seem to fit in. Ugh, I wish Teekl had been cooperating this morning. Her mental images are far clearer. I send him a 'keep watching but take no other action' instruction, but now he's set off my paranoia. Outside… The pavement seems a little busier, but I don't know how busy it usually gets during the lunch period.

Aaahh! Aaahh! Aaahh!

Oh, what is it shiiiit! Where there were three Humans there are now three hulking Demons. Ugh, can't tell-. Ring, security camera! The largest is eight feet tall and looks heavily muscled, though with Demons there's no guarantee that mass means what it would to a Human. Its skin is a dull red-brown, with darker armour-like sections protecting its vitals and two sets of curved horns extending from each side of its head. The second has bright blue skin, its head pulled into its torso and its arms and legs stretched out to extreme lengths. The third looks something like a Human corpse, oily black liquid dripping from numerous pins stuck into its skin and evaporating as it hits the carpeted ground.

Right then.

"Kid Flash, Artemis, attack at the entrance."

Doctor Farr's eyes widen. "What do you-?"

I hold up my right hand to stop him as Chubbs observes the receptionist flee for safety, then transition out into the loading bay. "Three Demons, unknown power level?"

"Demons?" Canis grins. "Demons! I have yet to face-!"

"Canis, stay here, guard the cargo. There could be more." Artemis leaps over to me, steadies herself and then gives me a nod. "Transitioning."

We reappear in the corridor leading to the reception area just as Wallace dashes up. "Someone not say grace at lunch?"

I create a railgun and load cold iron rounds, then put construct armour around both Artemis and myself. "Hail Eris, full of chaos."

Artemis notches an anti-magic arrow. "I got yer grace right here."

"Think I shoulda picked up some holy water."

The doors at the end of the corridor buckle inwards as the blue Demon shoves its fingers through the middle and grips them from the inside. I hold up my glowing rune stone for a moment as they're ripped free. Yep, definitely a magic life form and not an unfortunate metahuman. Always best to check. The Demon behind the doorway awkwardly lowers its body to look at us. Huh. It's gained a few extra arms from somewhere. Looks a little like the Oni from Roswell Conspiracies.

"Raaahwrawrwaw!"

Its chest opens, revealing its teeth-ribs, dripping noxious digestive juices and seven prehensile tongues.

Artemis and I fire.

back

A Star Reborn 12

next

16th April

13:36 GMT -5

My round strikes it near the centre of mass -just missing where its spine would be if it were Human- and punches clean through. I experience a split second of fear that the overpenetrating round might hit someone before I see that the larger armoured Demon was in the way. Artemis' arrow hits it directly in the upper right shoulder, the head burying itself in the joint.

"Grahhhgahggahhhh!"

The transferred kinetic force from my railgun round slamming into it causes the Demon's torso to jerk away and Artemis' arrow causes it to lose hold of whatever it was gripping onto with the hand on that arm. It staggers back and Wallace uses the opportunity to dash out into the reception area.

"Lord Satanus, bless my claws!"

My second shot blasts through the blue Demon's left leg, severing it entirely. Artemis' second arrow was a quick hardening foam which erupts within the hole that appears to serve as the Demon's throat, covering its visible insides and thoroughly clogging up its pseudo organs.

It collapses to the floor, deep blue ichor leaking from its wounds. Must be a weak one. Artemis and I advance past it. That should hold it for now, I can get Zatanna or John to interrogate it later.

"Blmvrl."

Wallace is running circles around the large Demon as it slams its huge three-fingered claws into the ground in an attempt to strike him. Were he less experienced in using super speed the vibrations passing through the floor might be enough to cause him to trip. As it is, he jumps, runs along the wall and then rushes back down towards his target. The Demon swings its right arm -another area effect attack, must be one of the intelligent ones- only for Wallace to handplant on the top of its forearm, bounce from there onto its left arm and then dash up onto its shoulder and smash something in its face.

For a moment the Demon just looks confused.

"GRAAAAAAGHHH!"

I can hear hissing as whatever Wallace just hit it with begins to eat away at its head, armoured plates and horn visibly abrading as we watch. The Demon collapses to its knees, clawing at its face. The only obvious result of that is that its upper left horn snaps off.

Wallace precipitates out of the air just behind us. "Essence of Vitriol. Just what a budding alchemist needs when fighting Demons."

The Tar-Covered Corpse flows away from us slightly, careful to keep its face towards us.

"Alright, you." I load a Mage Slayer. "Answer our questions and I send you back to hell not much worse for wear. Refuse, and… Well. Chubbs!"

The 15-rated Slimer wannabe descends from its hiding place near the ceiling, waving its chubby right arm. "Haa-iiy."

The Corpse turns its head to look at Chubbs for a moment, then turns back to us. Can it not rotate its eyes? Does it actually have eyes, or are the black holes it? Face fixed on us, it makes a strange sort of yawny-hiss noise which the ring's translator can't make sense of. The black gunk appears to stop dripping, instead choosing to defy gravity and pool on the vertical surfaces of its body.

"Was that hiss-yes or hiss-no?"

"Orange Lantern?"

Without taking my eyes off the Demon I tap my communicator to respond. "Not a great time, Zatanna."

"Are you certain they're Demons?"

I take a second to review the camera footage of their arrival. "Walked in Human shaped, turned into inhuman monsters with non-functioning physiology. Possession doesn't work like that… Pretty confident. Why?"

"They didn't set off my ward. Anything as magically powerful as a Demon should have done so."

Hm. She's right. "Maybe someone in Hell's been a bit cleverer than usu-?"

The Tar-Covered Corpse opens its mouth and zooms towards us, black filth spraying from its mouth! The creature just sort of leans forwards and flows across the ground, no leg movement required. Artemis instinctively jerks back as the first few droplets splatter against our construct armour and begin eating through it! I erect a construct barrier but that dissolves too as the Demon reaches us. Fine then. I step up as Artemis' anti-magic arrow strikes it high in the chest and appears to be engulfed in black goo, battering ram construct swinging for its abdomen.

"Orange Lantern! More Demons assail us!" "Finally!"

The goo almost completely absorbs the energy of the strike and begins eating away at the construct. The Demon takes the time to hiss again.

"Have fun, Canis. Keep them away-" I turn the battering ram into a railgun and fire a Mage Slayer round. "-from the lorry."

"Pwaghhuhuhh!" The Demon recoils, thick globs of Tar sloughing away from its body as it tries to cope with the sudden power drain. The noise cuts out as Artemis puts an arrow in its throat, though the Demon still isn't going down.

"Zatanna, if reasonably practical try to capture one. Otherwise, stay back. Robin, make sure the civilians are out of the way."

"Already done, Oh El."

The Tar-Covered Corpse flicks its arms at us, inky droplets spraying off the skeletal fingers. I generate another construct barrier as Wallace darts away, the large Demon lying still on the floor groaning piteously in pain as he kicks its exposed flesh on his way past. This time the droplets don't melt, but rather begin to mix in with the orange, darkening it. I abandon construct. Don't know what that was but it didn't look good.

"Okay, fine, you want to be difficult?" I open both palms to face it. "Brand." Thick bars of orange energy slam into the Demon, battering its personal oil slick and exposing more of its ruined flesh. "Artemis, I've got this one. Make sure the other two stay down."

"Right."

"Laaaanteeeeern."

"Oh good, you can talk. Let's start with your name."

"Laaaanteeeeern."

Oh, for goodness sake. The oil is almost all gone now. If I were a better thaumaturgist I'd probably find the way it behaved utterly fascinating. As it is… I'd guess that the oil isn't inherently magical but the control mechanism is? Oh, that's interesting, there's some sort of design scrawled on the Demon's flesh.

Orange sigils form in its eyes.

"You overreach, Laaaanteeeeern."

"Critical power drain detected."

The runes cut into its flesh light up orange in a design that reminds me a little of the ones Dark Druid used in Liverpool.

"My power naow!"

Cut the connection cut the connection!

"Heeyhaaaaagh!"

Not cutting. With two quick hand motions I pull the rings from my fingers and back the heck up. The beams cut off and the Demon takes the opportunity to pose as dull orange oil covers its flesh, sigils shining through the murk from underneath. It exhales and a cloud of orange wafts from its mouth.

I put the rings back on. Rings, what's the damage?

Thirteen percent remaining.

Ooooh poop.

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A Star Reborn 13

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16th April

13:39 GMT -5

"Orange Lantern to everyone." I draw my sidearm and point it at the Demon. "One of the Demons just ate my ring charge. This isn't going to be-" Two Arrows of Unmaking strike it in the chest and trigger.

"Raaaaargh!"

"-as easy as I thought."

The Tar-Covered Corpse flows away from us, the two round holes ripped in its chest swiftly being swallowed by dull orange goo. It slaps its right hand against the fallen form of the Juggernaut Wallace melted, and orange strands glow across the brute's skin, matching the runic patterns I briefly saw on the Corpse's own flesh.

Okay, power armour, go for my personal lantern or try fighting like this? Call for help? No one could get here- I note another arrow moving into my field of vision in slow motion- fast enough, at least no one with the necessary anti-Demon skill set. I pull the trigger on my pistol, sending an iron bullet towards the Corpse. Doubt that'll do much. Angel feather railgun round? In situations like this I'm really supposed to retreat but I can't leave Artemis and Wallace in the lurch, to say nothing of all the squishy civilians. Fingers moving in slow motion I pull the trigger again. Disadvantage of polytheism is that I can't just pray to my preferred jumped up Elemental to make the Demons go away. I'd have to get a god with a particular pre-existing hostility.

Wallace runs forwards, another vial prepped. The Corpse's eyes flash orange for a moment and a tar tentacle bubbles outwards from its chest, lashing out at his most likely approach. Wallace jumps, twisting in the air to throw himself over it. Next to the Corpse, the empty pits in the Juggernaut's face that once held its eyes flare orange.

Right.

My power armour appears around me-

Warning, twelve percent remaining.

-and I activate the flight system and phasing.

"Ragh!"

Things move back into normal speed. The Corpse's tentacle intercepts Artemis' arrow while the Corpse itself slides out of the way of Wallace's hurriedly thrown vial. My bullets hit but appear to do no damage. Par for the course, really. Artemis' second arrow -this one an Unmaker rather than a anti-magic arrow- punches a hole in the tentacle and causes the part severed from the Corpse to fall to the ground, where it… Ugh, where it shimmers and vaporises in a decidedly unhealthy-looking fashion. I raise my right arm, construct railgun reforming and a cold gun appearing from subspace. Cold gun is a bit iffy as Demons don't always bother creating bodies from matter, but if Crumblers worked they're probably solid enough to have their vibrations impeded. Wallace is moving too fast for me to precisely track him, but from the way the Corpse's head is constantly jerking and the presence of numerous small but heavy airborne objects I'm going to assume that he's super speed throwing things.

The cold beam hits the Corpse in the chest, coating its epidermis in frost as super cooled whatever-it's-made-of causes the water to precipitate out of the air. The Demon itself actually seems mildly perturbed by this, looking down at itself and making a weird sort of choking-panting noise. The Juggernaut starts to pull itself to its feet, a sort of crystalline construct growth appearing along its forearms. I've been reluctant to use angel feather rounds because I only have a very finite number of them, but I think I've found the time for them.

An Unmaker from Artemis hits the Juggernaut hard enough to make it jerk away, and the detonation causes the orange runes to blink out. I load an angel round and fire it directly at that point.

The round punches cleanly through the Demon's skin and into its pseudo organs.

"Yaaaaaahhh!"

It collapses, flares of gold and black flickering around it as the magics conflict and counteract one another. The Corpse takes one look at what's happening to its colleague and propels itself my way on a plume of orange ichor, mouth unhinged and hissing. I go to dodge, but its oil coated talons still pass through.. me…

Ooh, that feels disgusting. The physical component went through, but I think.. I just caught the edge of its magics and-

Warning, ten percent remaining.

-got drained further. I'm going to need Zatanna to check me out fully after this. Artemis rolls out of the way as the Corpse has a moment of indecision: go for me again when the first attempt appeared to achieve nothing, or try reinforcing its other fallen comrade? I come back into phase and fire the cold gun again as Artemis looses another Unmaker, trying to create another hole in its oil coating. It shudders under the beam's effect but doesn't seem notably disabled. Artemis' Unmaker gouges another break, but the oil covers it once more before she can capitalise. Wallace blurs past, another vial breaking on the Corpse and a patch of green sludge spreading across its back. It doesn't hiss in the way the acid did, but the Corpse flails around for a moment trying to reach it anyway. The bits I froze are stiffer, but not nearly as much as they should be. I can see the heat being leached out of the air from here; absolute zero is bloody cold.

Wallace drops back to normal speed just behind me. "Aim for the green stuff!"

Okay then. I raise my railgun and load an angel round as Artemis hurries around to this side and notches an anti-magic arrow. We fire simultaneously, my shot striking home just ahead of hers. Both finally penetrate the Corpse's outer defences and burrow into its insides.

"Nraaaaooooow!"

The Corpse collapses to the ground, more of its body appearing as the oil streams off and runs across the floor.

Right then. Rings, get my gosh darn power back.

Orange vapour leaps out of the muck and towards my gauntlets. Okay, I'm going to assume that means that the spell binding it is broken. Rings, we got a recording of the rune layout, right?

Confirmed. Ninety percent of image available. Charging in progress. Eighteen percent available.

Good to know.

"Master! Please!" The Corpse claws at the air, presumably begging either its summoner or its overlord. "Aid meeee!"

"Mrrruhhhhmrm." Keeping the rings scanning the Corpse I turn to the fallen Juggernaut. It's shrivelled as the angel round leaches its power, horns vanishing and its grey blood turning… Red? What?

"Ah, Oh El? Is it meant to do that?"

Charge at twenty three percent.

I quickly review the footage once more. The Juggernaut was that one, so… The horns vanish and the hair begins to grow from the top of its head in replacement. Behind me the outer flesh of the Corpse begins to reappear, covering its exposed muscles and bones. The injuries we inflicted are now painfully visible, and from the way the Corpse is thrashing about I'm going to assume that they can feel them now as well.

What?

"Kid Flash, healing unguents."

"But they're De-."

"That's not how Demons work. I don't know what they are."

"Okay, God, ah…" He pushes the woman who became the Juggernaut firmly onto her back, revealing the full extent of her facial burns and the hole in her chest made by my railgun round. He pours the content of one vial over her face as I go to work on the rapidly bleeding puncture, cauterizing and reknitting the damaged flesh. As well as extracting my round. Those things don't grow on trees. My constructs fade once I'm reasonably sure that she isn't going to die immediately. Wallace's efforts on her face have restored it to third-degree-oil-burns level, back from skull-with-some-meat-attached. The eyes are still gone, but that's to be expected. Don't think we caused any brain damage, but it's too early to be certain.

"Okay, next one."

Artemis just stands there, staring in shock as we rush to patch up the Corpse. I use the rings to bring her temperature up… Not sure what happened there, having part of your body at absolute zero should be pretty lethal for a Human but she seems to be getting off with extreme-but-survivable cold. Wallace splashes healing potion on the holes all over her torso.

"A-Artemis to team. The Demons, they're… People. People turned into Demons! Try not to kill them!"

How is this even possible?

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A Star Reborn 14

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16th April

13:57 GMT -5

"My God." Doctor Stone shakes his head, stunned at the destruction unleashed in the loading dock. Or possibly stunned by the injuries we just inflicted. Probably best that I not tell him that this sort of outcome is about par for the course when we fight people in our weight class and they won't surrender. All of the former Demons are bound by magic suppression chains and look thoroughly the worse for wear.

Only two attacked the loading dock, but when they bought their tickets in the superpower lottery Hell smiled on them. One was left basically humanoid with a head about three times as tall as it should be and split down the middle. Between the two halves was a black void from which it could fire highly resilient chains burning with hellfire. Richard was dangerously close to getting dragged in at one point before Zatanna worked out how to disrupt the portal. The other resembled a sort of Wurm/Millipede combination, with the added bonus that its partially intangible nature let it both fly and destructively phase through solid objects.

Richard sidles up to me as Zatanna finishes the physical components of the truth compulsion ritual. "So what'd we call them?"

I point to the ones Wallace, Artemis and I fought, generating small constructs of their transformed states. "Oni, Juggernaut and Tar-Covered Corpse. Do you want to name yours?"

Canis decided that it was best to make the portal disruption permanent and darn near stove in their first opponent's head. His Demon form was tough and not all of the injuries they suffer translated back onto their Human forms but the left cheek and jaw are comprehensively shattered. That will take a great deal of surgical effort to stick back together. For the moment, he'll have to make do with Richard and the lab's medic's effort to create a sort of frame around the left side of his face.

And yet, somehow, I couldn't quite muster the desire to fix it myself.

The former Wurmipede is still unconscious from the feedback generated by the interaction between its aura and Raquel's kinetic belt. Raquel was a bit out of it herself, but her I could help.

"Do you think 'Centipede' is too obvious?"

"I think it's taken."

He thinks for a moment, then smirks. "Oh yeah. I forgot about that guy."

"How can you laugh about this?" Doctor Stone gestures at the wreck of the transport lorry. "That creature destroyed the samples! The Atlanteans will never trust us with a second batch, if they can even find one."

"Doctor Stone, the Bio Ship is fast, but it's not that fast. The samples won't get here for another four hours."

"You-! You knew we were going to be attacked?"

"Knew, no. But the obvious time to attack was the moment the samples arrived. Wasn't expecting.. this." None of the scientists or workers were injured during the attack, having all lived in Gotham long enough to know to get the heck out of the way when things start getting weird. Or maybe they just weren't targeted. The ones who entered via reception certainly could have killed the receptionist if they'd wanted. "Thought it was best to spring the attack during the dress rehearsal rather than the real event."

Doctor Stone nods. "I.. suppose. What exactly did they do to themselves?"

"Not sure. Hopefully, we'll know in a few minutes."

"Orange Lantern." Beton Brute pads forwards as Canis hails me with his right hand. "Do you have pencil and paper?"

"Yes… May I ask why you want them?"

He nods, smiling. "The sight of that creature moving through the air has inspired me. Since the fighting is -for the moment- concluded-."

I take an art pad and a selection of pencils out of subspace and float them over to him. "Knock yourself out."

"Thank you."

"Okay." Zatanna stands up and takes a step back. "That should do it. Orange Lantern?"

I nod. "Robin, if you wouldn't mind?"

"Sure. Never interrogated a Demon before."

The two of us walk over to the woman who was briefly the Tar-Covered Corpse. Mary Dey, a college drop out whose previous criminal history amounted to a few parking tickets. Juggernaut had a slightly more jaded past, but the rest had similarly clean records. My physical scans showed no particular anomalies and I couldn't see any unusual financial activity when I had the ring take a look at their accounts. Bit of a puzzler, really.

"Zatanna?"

"I dnib uoy ot kaeps eht hturt, eht elohw hturt dna gnihton tub eht hturt."

The circle around our subject gleams slightly and there's a faint distortion in the air.

"Poetic. Well then, let's start with the obvious stuff. Would you please confirm your name for the record?"

"Fuck you." Her eyes glaze slightly. "Mary Dey." Her eyes return to normal, then widen slightly. "The fuck was that?"

"Encouragement. It won't let you lie or dissemble."

"You shit sucking-."

"What caused your transformation?"

"Juice." Another flicker. "Hell Juice. I dunno what the stuff is really called."

"Robin?"

He makes a small frown. "Never heard of it. What other names does it have?"

"Ah… Devil Jizz, Dee Em En… I don't know any others."

"DMN? Demon? Who came up with that?"

"Maybe it stands for something? Demonic… Metamorphosis… Narcotic?" Um. "Nectar?"

Artemis makes a face. "And who'd take something called 'Devil Jizz'?"

"These five, apparently. Who is your supplier?"

"I never met him. And when I spoke on the phone he used one of those voice altering things."

"Why did you attack this place?"

"It was jghrh." She visibly strains against the spell. "My chance… To get big. I knew whoever it was had something good going on. I wanted a piece of it. We all got sent stronger Juice so we'd be able to do the job. We got told, wait for the delivery, then make sure it got destroyed."

"Destroyed. Not captured. Curious. Is this the first time you've transformed?"

"No, but it's the first time I've gone that far or become that.. thing. Usually I pick something.. prettier."

"Ever met an actual Demon?"

"No. But I figured, that's what I'd look like if I was a Demon."

"Have you had any other significant contact with the arcane?"

"No. Least, I don't think so."

"Can you provide us with the names of other users and locations where you people congregate?"

"Yrrrrrr… Yes."

"Ah, Oh El?" Wallace raises his right eyebrow. "I don't think this stuff is actually illegal. I mean, it should be, but…" He shrugs.

"As a narcotic? No. But I think I could convince a judge that they should count as 'baleful or sorcerous weapons', and there's a decent penalty for using those. Robin, find out everything she knows. I'll get in contact with the Gotham police."

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A Star Reborn 15

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16th April

17:27 GMT -2

Tao crouches reflexively as the explosives vent their fury against my barrier. "They were prepared for us."

I shove the barrier forwards, into the interior of the LexCorp submarine. "No. They're not planning on going back up. They booby trapped the one obvious point of ingress. Ugh, and now we can't use this submarine to get back to the surface without repairing the airlock." The ring shows me the empty corridor. "Clear."

I step forwards, turning to the right. Tao steps up to cover the left. "Surely your power ring would make that simple."

"Making things is much harder with a yellow ring than an orange one." Sinestro, access submarine computers.

There aren't any, Corpsman. Data storage devices have been physically removed.

Damn it. This hunt has been a good deal less fun than I thought it would be. And I've only got an hour until our guests start arriving for Lynne's birthday! For some reason -probably something to do with their relationship with a species that once fought the Green Lantern Corps to a standstill- I can't scan for them, so I've been reduced to doing actual detective work! I got a lucky match on one of the missing researchers from a LexCorp-monitored traffic camera, but from there I was always one step behind. I suppose that I shouldn't be surprised that they've headed to the site of the Atlantean survey expedition that dug out the original Star Conqueror, but… It doesn't make sense. Klarion had to use highly involved magic to control the Starro-tech chips. Okay, assuming that they somehow got exposed to what they were studying despite knowing the risks and the Starro-tech somehow formed a mental network…

"What next?"

"Doctor Robbins, Hush tube. Send in drones to secure the submarine."

"Opening now."

"Tao, we need to get to the dive pool."

"Understood."

I start down the corridugh. Lex's prized experimental next generation submarine isn't quite the glorified sardine tin which modern military submarines are, but it still isn't exactly roomy. Not for someone my size, anyway. But I can't risk transitioning around beings who might conceivably have a way to disrupt it.

"What do you think we will face?"

What indeed. "Worst case scenario, they've freed a large Star Conqueror from the ice and got it up to speed. The mind scrambler I gave you should keep it out of your head for long enough for us to kill it."

"You are not wearing one yourself."

"I was trained by Chester Black. It isn't getting in my head."

"Tell me honestly: do you believe that we can save the researchers?"

"I can't really say. Starro-tech is simple enough to remove. People controlled by actual Star Conquerors can usually recover if they're freed within the first couple of days."

"And after that?"

"Too much of their mind is rewritten. They might learn to function again, but the person they were is gone."

"And why was Lex Luthor studying these creatures?"

Hm. "If you're asking me as an upstanding citizen, I'd say that noted futurist Lex Luthor has made a point of studying any strange or alien technology that he comes across, both to enrich his company and to enrich humanity at large. If they were used in a criminal fashion before the tissue samples his company received came into his possession, he had no knowledge of it. If you're asking me as a member of the Light, I'd say that anything that can mind control the Justice League is something that needs to be studied. If something can control them, it can control anyone."

"Perhaps this practice should be reviewed in light of this escape."

"If Lex had thought to check with the resident alien exactly what he was dealing with, this wouldn't have happened." I pause just before the reinforced doors to the plunge pool. "Wait, did you just make a pu-?"

The doors jerk open, and for a moment my eyes meet the equally surprised eyes of King Orin. Tao keeps his bow down as Orin, Kaldur and the small squad of Atlantean soldiers ready their weapons.

"Grayven. I wish I could say I'm surprised. When my people called for help, I assumed that a surface world submarine was spying on us. Imagine my surprise at finding you on a LexCorps vessel."

"Orin. If only your people had left well enough alone in the first place."

His eyes narrow slightly. "And what do you mean by that?"

"Your people dug out a Star Conqueror." I generate a construct image of an active one. "Did one of the Green Lanterns brief the League?"

"Is that why Luthor attacked my people?"

"Luthor hasn't attacked anyone." That I know of. Recently. "Some of his people got exposed to the Starro-tech and they came here on their own initiative. Or more likely, a Star Conque-."

His right fist slams into my jaw, catching me by surprise. I tip my head back slightly in response. No follow up. I tilt it back down again. "If you were Kal-El, that might have hurt."

"You were studying those things!"

"Do you enjoy being ignorant, or has it simply become a habit for you?"

Kaldur -who has switched back from his Apokoliptian armour to his old blue-and-reds- steps forwards and hesitantly lays his right hand on his monarch's left arm. "My king, the people in the research center are still in danger."

I nod. "And unless you're a much better telepath than your League records suggest. And, have some way to remove Starro-tech…"

I'll credit him at least with not wasting time glaring at me. "Archer, can you breathe in water?"

He taps the upper arm of his bow against his mouth, causing the energy based filtration system I gave him to sparkle. "While I wear this. The water will not prevent me from shooting, though Grayven had intended to force it away from the combat area with his power ring."

Hmm. "The Star Conqueror might have done that anyway. They can function in water, but they usually prefer shallow pools or dry land to oceans."

Orin nods, then stands aside. "You can go first."

I shake my head. "No, the drones go first. Doctor Robbins?" Three drones momentarily drop stealth in the air just above the plunge pool, their weapons visibly trained on the Atlanteans. I smile at their discomfort as I walk towards the pool. "Send them down, would you?"

The drones shimmer and then disappear. Invisible and mindless, they should be able to escape detection. Phased, they won't be affected by the water.

And someone thought that bringing mooks was the answer.

"Atlanteans don't have any special resistance to mind control, right?"

Orin clenches his jaw for a moment. "Several members of the expedition were highly skilled with ice magic. But if Star Conqueror mind control is purely telepathic, no."

I narrow my eyes, focusing on the images from the drones. A simple magic membrane divides the interior of the Atlantean base camp from the Arctic water.

"Celestial Archer." Oh, look at Kaldur trying to be subtle. "Why are you working with Grayven?"

"We are hunting dangerous aliens, Aqualad. I believe that my duty to protect the Earth has higher priority than the.. dispute, between Grayven and the Justice League. "

"Be nice, Kaldur. If he hadn't agreed to help me I'd have had to kill each infected person to prevent the Star Conquerors spreading further." Well, him or Zatanna, but I don't want to cause her trouble at home. "Drones show nothing in the entrance or living quarters. I'm heading down."

I throw myself head first into the water and swim towards the habitat.

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A Star Reborn 16

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16th April

17:38 GMT -2

Oh, they had to loot Lex's exotic weapon lab before they left!

Tao's shot misses as I'm forced to yank him out of the way of a beam of purple nothingness. Of course, the Star Conquerors have had access to starfaring civilisations before. I suppose they might just have stolen raw materials and made it themselves. Doesn't really matter now. Kaldur waves his Water-Bearers in an attempt to block a second and again I'm forced to intervene as the beam passes clean through his water barrier. Drones!

Behind their position my drones phase in and fire their purple beams, and… It does nothing. I could have them turn it up, but that risks killing the hosts. I'm not doing that unless I need to. Two of the men being controlled by the Starro-tech turn to take shots at the drones, who are already reactivating their phasing systems. Not going to get a better chance…

"Tao." I surge through the air separating us from our targets, Tao preparing a new shot as I do so. If I get them away from the Atlantean ward-shields-.

"Look out!" Off to my left an Atlantean soldier shouts a warning, gesturing upwards with his right oh fuck off! Shards of ice explode outwards as Facehugger-type Star Conquerors drop from the ceiling of the chamber we're fighting in. I stab upwards with a construct blade as one flies at me, but it twists in the air and strikes the construct with its mouth claws and the construct shatters. I grab one of its tentacles with my right hand and agh! Unable to reach my face, it twisted around and latched onto my arm! Armour's holding, but the telekinetic effect appears to have penetrated somewhat. The red and green eye on its front surface blinks at me as it redoubles its effort to chew off my arm, the two defenders who were firing upon my drones opening fire at me once more.

No matter.

I fly sideways in a jinking pattern while forming another blade construct and shoving it through the creature's eye. I feel it convulse. Were its teeth actually in my flesh it would clamp down, but as it is the only thing holding it to me is its telekinesis and to direct that it needs clear mental function. Keeping my right hand gripped around the uppermost tentacle I grab another tentacle with my left hand and pull.

And the tentacle comes off.

Might I suggest-?

I dig the fingers of my left hand into the eye socket and pull, the Star Conqueror splitting in two in a spray of purple goo. Ugh, right, how did everyone else d-?

And this is why we don't bring NPCs to a PC fight! A Star Conqueror lies twitching at Tao's feet, two arrows through its body which is somehow on fire. I see another fly into the distance as Kaldur swings a water hammer around and Orin is scraping his off the blades of his trident. Three out of four of our escort are now sporting Star Conqueror facials, cyclopean eyes blinking as the Star Conqueror group mind gets used to controlling their bodies. The fourth aims his weapon uncertainly at his colleagues.

"Tao, get the-" An arrow slices neatly through the centreline of the closest, splitting eye and Star Conqueror in two. "-m!"

Right, assume he's got that under control. I draw my Apokolips tech sword and resume my charge, armour construct reappearing just in time to hold off a shot from one of the controlled Atlanteans. Great, the one thing it can stop is on my side. I cleave through the barrier with my sword just quickly enough to shove Lex's pride and joy upwards, another purple negabeam flaring up through the ice.

"Thank you." I drop my sword and gently punch the man in the diaphragm before letting him drop to the ground. And now it's my ggrregh! Other guy shot me and -yep- left cheek carbonised and.. right side of my jaw rendered brittle and notably painful. Another surge and I slam his head into the edge of the ice tunnel.

Ow! I'm going to.. need to have another look at those blasted helmet designs, aren't I? Oh, he might just have been aiming at the only unarmoured part of my body. I don't think Star Conquerors ever encountered New Gods but Lex's people would know that I'm tough. I clean off the goo covering my left gauntlet before reaching up to feel the hole in my face, flicking away the ashen -heh- flesh around the wound. Shouldn't take too long to heal. Subspace the guns.

I turn back to my companions in time to see electricity flare from Orin's trident and stun the remaining Star Conqueror host as Kaldur slashes at another dropping from the ceiling. I stick construct manacles around the two LexCorp researchers and haul them up into the air. "Tao, when you have a mo-" Arrows pass through their chests, emerging on the far side with Starro-tech impaled on the tips. "-ment." I dump them on the ground. "Thank you."

"Stay alert." Orin slices through the Star Conqueror on his armsman's face with a precise stroke. "There'll probably be more of those things, and inside the ice they'll be able to attack from any direction."

"Hey, you." I nod at the remaining soldier. "What's your name?"

"Ah." He glances at his king, who nods. "Martus."

"You dodge yours, or just get lucky?"

His eyes drop to his fallen comrades. Blood flows from the nasty looking holes in their faces where the Star Conquerors bit in, but since they don't try to physically connect with the brain of their host the wounds aren't mortal. With Atlantean biomancy they probably won't even scar. "Luck."

"Good. Stay lucky." I turn to Orin. "Ready to go?"

He nods. "How many are left?"

"Assuming they got everyone who disappeared? Should be another sevente-." The room shakes. "I assume that means that we need to go?"

The five of us start up the tunnel, Kaldur lagging behind slightly as he runs his left hand along the wall. "They are altering the structure of the ice. Trying to free more of their kind!"

Tell the drones to use lethal force?

Ugh, no, not yet. The Arctic has had any number of ground penetrating scans over the years. Even if they're trying to free a larger Star Conqueror, it can't be that big. From the Green Lantern Corps data I acquired, it looks like I should be able to kill one. Probably.

"How many Atlanteans were stationed here?"

Orin glances at me as we accelerate to a run. "Seven, but only two have the sort of power needed to dig through the ice quickly. The rest are here f-." I feel the mental pressure even as he clutches at his head and staggers to a halt. Martus collapses along with him, while Tao is unaffected and Kaldur merely winces. Hooray for being a god.

"That all you got, abomination!?" I attach yellow filaments to Tao and Kaldur and accelerate into the next chamb-.

Ice surges up and envelopes us. It's a metre thick in all directions. Outside, I see most of the remaining researchers -both Atlantean and LexCorpian- standing, watching us. Just above them floats… Is that supposed to be a Star Conqueror? The eye alone is nearly the size of the facehuggers, but that's nearly all the body it has, stubby nubs replacing the tentacles it would normally possess. Guess that's the target, then.

Kaldur's arms shove outwards as the ice explodes off us, a fusion cannon already forming on my left ar-.

"We surrender."

The voice.. echoes. Sinestro?

The floating eye is using its telekinesis to manipulate the air around it in order to speak. You're hearing it slightly before the spoken vocalisation of the others.

Huh.

I allow myself to float forwards slightly. "How stupid do you think I am, Star Conqueror?"

"We do not believe that you are stupid. Our hosts had access to extensive records of your abilities. We have no other techniques remaining. We do not believe that we can defeat you. For our continued survival we throw ourselves at your mercy."

Huh. Wasn't.. expecting that. Alright, kill count zero as far as I can tell… I don't need to kill it for anything it's done. On the other hand, could it be safely imprisoned?

I could.. probably come up with something. "We will remove the hosts infected with Starro-tech immediately, and you will release the others once we have farm animals for you to transfer your drones onto."

The eye blinks. "Agreed."

"Tao-."

"Wait." Kaldur frowns. "Where is the other mage?"

The ice rumbles again and the still-controlled people charge forward in another delaying action as the Star Eye flees further in.

"Suckers."

back

A Star Reborn 17

next

16th April

14:27 GMT -6

I pause, and my audience leans forwards. Mitchel takes a swig of his beer, checks to see if the others are going to say anything and then decides to take the initiative.

"Then what happened?"

I chuckle and shake my head. "About two minutes of total mayhem. Kaldur defended Tao while he shot the Star Conquerors and Starro-tech off and out of people and I chased after the Star Eye as it fled back to the innermost cave."

"Where the other wizard was?"

"The other wizard, and the recently reawakened medium size Star Conqueror. About… Fifty metres.. tentacle tip to tentacle tip? They needed to dig it out, wake it up, bring it up to speed and get it access to the open air. So I dash into the chamber, the Star Eye blinks at me and then boom!" I jerk my hands wide. "The wizard forces all the ice above us to explode upwards!"

"Was the ice not very thick or something? Or… Was that guy just that powerful?"

"The Arctic is one big iceberg. It doesn't actually get all that thick. The Atlanteans had basically built extra ice onto the bottom for their convenience. Those pictures you see on the Discovery Channel of big ice cliffs? Those are all ice over land. Antarctica, usually. It was only about eighteen metres thick total where we were, and only about… Five metres above us? Still a pretty impressive blast, though."

"Then the little one on the Atlantean's face jumps off and gets scooped up by the big one's telekinetic field. The Star Eye generates a really strong telekinetic field to try and hold me still while the big one leaps out of the hole. It actually showed up on satellite. Here." I take a couple of print outs out of subspace and hand them over. The NRO were happy to hand them over in exchange for me explaining what the hell they'd just seen. "Once it was clear the Eye went after it and I went after the Eye, jamming faster than light travel for all I'm worth."

Someone.. whose name I can't immediately call to mind, sits back. "What would have happened if it got away?"

"Best case scenario? Nothing much. It just.. flies away to somewhere out of the way, slowly rebuilding its species using animals. Worst case? Giant Star Conqueror suddenly appears in low orbit and it rains little Star Conquerors. Earth becomes the new Star Conqueror nest world in short order.

"Hold on a sec." Sandra gives me an incredulous look. "If those things were so dangerous, what in God's name did those people think they were doing growing a whole one?"

"I checked their laboratory early on in my investigation." I wiggle my sandwich around for emphasis. "Their precautions were actually pretty good. Thick lead walls, direct manipulation was by robot only, and they cut bits off it if it looked like it was getting too big. Without dedicated telepath blocking technology -which Earth doesn't have- it was about as safe as it could get."

"Then how'd it get out?"

"Little ones… They're usually telepathic. It's unusual for them to be telekinetic. If I had to guess, I'd say that the fact it was there allowed the big one to connect to the Starro-tech chips they were studying, and nudge the Eye to grow telekinetic nodes and.. throw the chips at the researchers. Anyone outside of the room would only have a few seconds to spot what had happened before the chip would be absorbed through the skin, then good luck detecting it." I shrug. "But… That's speculation on my part. Not only did they destroy the local copy of the surveillance recordings, they also hit the off site backup on their way to the coast, and their memories now are pretty scrambled."

"I still don't see why they did it. If Earth doesn't have good enough anti-telepath technology-."

"How would you like Earth to develop that technology, if not by studying telepaths?" I shrug. "They were too worried about external attack and not worried enough about a break out. But, the League used their authority to close the whole thing down anyway, so it won't be a problem in future." A decision I wholeheartedly agree with. Lex wasn't exactly thrilled, but if there's one thing the world doesn't need from the Light it's more mind control technology. He can make do with the records I recovered and the memories of the researchers.

"So, ahhh…" Mitchel jabs his beer in my direction. "You won, right?"

"How are the burgers?"

"Ah." He nods. "Pretty good, pretty-." His face pales. "Oh God. Y… You mean..?"

I give them a few seconds to get worried. "No, no." I wave my sandwich dismissively. "Just messing with you." A few nervous laughs. Most people nonetheless return their buns to their plates. Mitchel takes another bite instead. "Seriously though, don't eat alien meat without rigorous testing. There are all sorts of chemicals in the bodies of many aliens that would do a Human a mischief." I suppose… If the Star Eye had actually surrendered, if we could actually trust it, it could have been a major asset. Probably for the best we didn't try doing that. Assimilating it… Ah, well.

"The fight was frustrating… Sort of a puzzle boss thing. Once the big one realised that it couldn't control or affect my brain it tried manipulating my body… Pain sensations, yanking control of my nerves… While the Eye was shielding it with telekinesis or hitting me to try and make me stop jamming the faster than light. Fortunately, they can feel fear so my constructs were getting a boost from that. Still, it was a hard fight until they tried getting cute. The big one turned off my optic nerves while the little one and the Eye tried latching onto my face. Fortunately for me, my ring could tell me where they were and my sword wasn't as easy for them to disrupt as my constructs were."

You're welcome, Corpsman.

"I ended up incinerating the bodies, because that was one risk too far. But! Use fossil fuels responsibly because there could be more of those things hidden in the ice, and if the ice keeps melting-"

"Mister Gravyen, your guest is here."

"-they could get out." I stand, turning my head to look at Jean. "Thanks Jean. You told Lynne?" She nods. "Please see to our guests in my absence." Back to my audience. "Excuse me. I need to.. deal with this. I'll be back out in, like, half an hour."

Mitchel nods. "Take it easy, man."

The hush tube opens and I step through it into the mountain's reception area, waiting for it to shut down before I greet my guest. "Jade, I've missed you so much." I step towards her. "What the heck did Ra's have you working on?"

I hold out my arms to embrace her, but stop when she holds up her right hand. "Grayven, is there something you want to tell me?"

"I got a mountain!" She doesn't look amused. "Also, a daughter. Yes, I realise that it would have been better to talk to you about that first-"

"Yes, it would."

"-but I couldn't have referred it to you on Earth Fifty and there really wasn't time when she turned up here. You did read my message, right? Ra's said that he'd get it passed on."

"I read it. That's why I'm so calm right now."

She's not even slightly calm. "Look, I'm not…"

"And why is she here?"

"Hello Master!"

Ah. "Iname, could you possibly.. keep an eye on our guests?"

She bows. "Yes, Master." There's a blast of air as she exists at speed.

"I've taken her on as a student."

"A girl nearly my exact age?"

"She's younger-." Oh. "Oh, she's not.. by much, is she? She just acts so much younger, I'd.. sort of…"

"With the power I told you I wanted."

"It's not as if I can only give one person super speed." I shrug. "This way, I can check that it works in case you decide you want that rather than teleportation. I'd have been happy to Awaken you months ago. You wanted to wait and I respected that." Wait, she doesn't-? "Jade, she's not a you-replacement. No." She raises her right eyebrow and folds her arms. "No!"

"You do like Asian girls. And I come back to find that you're living with one."

"Yes, but… She's so dependent. She's really doesn't interest me in that way. I mean, I'm living with a Pony girl-."

She squeezes her eyes shut in disbelief. "You're… What?!"

"An intelligent equine turned into a Human by magic." That mollifies her a tiny bit. "And a retired superhero, a British assassin, a bunch of Genomorphs-" I try stepping towards her again. "-and I'm not interested in having a romantic relationship with any of them. I love you. I have allies, some of them are going to be female. I'd rather spend my time with you, but that's not practical given our respective work commitments. That doesn't mean I'm going to start.. knocking boots with the first passably attractive women I meet."

"Okay." She takes a deep breath. "But what about… Your daughter."

I nod. "I also love Lynne, but in a different way. I know I could have handled that better, and if you hadn't been on assignment we'd have been having this conversation weeks ago. You don't.. have to have anything to do with her… At least in the short term, if you don't want to. But she's the only person I know who had a worse childhood than you did. She deserves a decent father and I'm… Well, I'm available. She's… Really.. quite a nice girl..? And I'm getting fatherhood practice in for when -or if- we have children."

"You should have talked to me."

"Yes. Yes, I should. And I'm sorry that I didn't."

She makes a quiet grunting noise, then steps up to me and puts her arms around my chest. "I missed you too."

"Jade, I-."

"So we're going to meet your daughter, and then you and I are going to have a long discussion about exactly what you're doing here."

"Of course."

"Okay." She pulls away slightly. "So where is she?"

back

A Star Reborn 18

next

16th April

18:26 GMT -5

"…got records of him being killed twenty nine times, including being flattened by a rockslide." Richard shrugs as we watch the Bio Ship approach across the Gotham skyline. "I think he said something about getting his power from a meteor, but that doesn't really explain how it works."

"Okay, but he could have got through a rockslide more or less intact, right? I mean, there'd be living tissue left."

"Of course there would." Wallace looks at me askance. "Why, you wanna try completely disintegrating him to see if that stops him?" He smiles. "Throw him into the sun or something?"

"Yes."

He blinks, inclining his head slightly. "You serious?"

"I realise that historians might prefer it if I assimilated him instead, but flying to the sun only takes me a few seconds." As the rest of the universe experiences it. From my point of view it's nearly instantaneous. "And I'm sure that he's been sentenced to death somewhere."

Richard brings up his arm computer. "Actually, I don't think he has."

"Really?"

"You don't usually have a trial after the one who committed the crime dies. We know he's immortal, but when he first started showing up people just assumed that he had some kind of lucky escape."

"Okay, I… Suppose that makes sense. But how does he remember stuff if his brain gets destroyed every so often? He should lose just about everyth-."

Artemis strolls over. "What are you guys talking about?"

"Oh El wants to throw Vandal Savage into the sun."

"Huh." She looks thoughtful for a moment. "Would that work?"

"Since we don't know how his immortality works, we can't know for certain. Klarion said something-" The Bio Ship uncloaks and descends to rest on the rooftop helipad. "-about needing to find his amygdala at New Year after Adom turned Savage into pâté. Savage hasn't ever demonstrated super toughness, and I'm fairly sure that the sun could completely burn up his amygdala."

Wallace frowns slightly. "Exactly how much thought have you been giving this?"

"By definition, madness ends in one of two ways: clarity, or death."

I lead the way towards the Bio Ship as the other half of the team disembarks. Wolf dashes out first, taking the time to sniff me and then run around the rest of my half of the team. Kon's out next, followed by Kaldur. They both look… Wary? I know we decided on radio silence but I wouldn't have half the team on the roof if the threat was ongoing. The would-be Demons were picked up by the Gotham police department over an hour ago, and the only reason it took that long was they had to get special equipment -explosive collars- on hand in case they tried demoning out again.

Warning: Spell Eater temperature rising.

I frown. "Aqualad? Something you want to tell me?"

M'gann exits the Bio Ship behind them, eyes glowing. I feel a slight pressure on my mental defences, but it disappears after a moment. She and Kaldur make eye contact… They're having a telepathic conversation. This is.. odd, though I suppose that when dealing with mind control technology it isn't an unreasonable precaution. Garth and Tula are out next, tattoos glowing faintly.

Wallace exhales frustratedly. "Something you wanna share with the rest of us, Aqualad?"

Kaldur turns back to us. "When we arrived to collect the samples, we were attacked."

"By who? Manta?"

"By the researchers. The samples were somewhat more intact than Lantern Gardner had led us to believe."

"How intact?"

Kon glowers. "I nearly got a Star on my face."

"How did you miss them-" I hold my right hand up to my face. "-being infected? Those things aren't exactly subtle."

"It took us some time to understand, but closer examination showed that they were under the influence of Starro-tech."

"Oh dear." If they can hide that they're controlling people… "But, we've all… Except Canis, we've all had the cure."

He nods. "M'gann cannot hear your mind, or that of Canis. Tempest and Aquagirl's attempts to confirm your identities by magic are being blocked by your amulets."

M'gann steps towards me a little. "Actually, you've been.. blocking me out for months now."

"Yes, after I was nearly killed by a telepathic weapon twice." This.. is tricky. My telepath blocking technique isn't exactly precise. If I let M'gann take a peek there's a risk that she might see something she's not supposed to. I.. don't know where the rest of the team would stand on the subject of Nabu. Zatanna hasn't mentioned anyone else speaking to her about reversing the possession…

Richard steps up. "Wait a second. We were attacked too."

"The Star Conquerors are already here?"

"No, five people using a drug which gave them demonic super powers." He thinks for a moment. "I didn't check them for Starro-tech, though. Could that have survived them turning into Demons?"

"It worked on everything else. But we can't use Cure-tech on everyone."

Kaldur nods. "Perhaps not, but we should give it to everyone working in this facility." He fixes his eyes on me. "After we have confirmed that you are who we think you are."

"Alright." Ring, subspace my Spell Eater.

Compliance.

I walk around Kaldur and hold out my right arm to Tula, subspacing my torso armour. "You'll probably need to touch me to get around my tattoos."

"Alright." She lays both water-covered hands on my bare skin, her tattoos glowing again as she casts… Hm, I don't know, actually. There are a few different spells that could be used for this… Anyway, it's good to know that visiting an Atlantean locale didn't encourage her to revert to that cloth 'armour' she used to wear. I didn't exactly shove her and Garth through the doors of KordTech, but they really needed something mundane -if mithril can be called mundane- to augment their water armo-. "He's clean." She lets go of my arm and turns to Kaldur. "There's no sign of the magics used in Starro-tech."

"Good to know."

Kaldur nods. "We should still check Canis."

"Okay." I nod. "How many doses of Cure-tech do you have with you?"

"Twelve. If we are sending five to your assailants, we will need more. I will contact Professor Vulko while you ensure that the Star Conquerors who assailed us-" Rob wheels out a nitrogen shipping vessel. "-are securely contained within STAR Labs."

back

A Star Reborn 19

next

16th April

18:39 GMT -5

"Do you..?" I look away from where a couple of STAR scientists are directing Kon towards the cold storage room. M'gann looks a little uncomfortable.

"Do I what?"

"Do you have a problem with my telepathy?"

"Not.. really." **Why do you ask?**

**You asked Tula to check you rather than me. And I know that sounds… Really.. petty… It's just that when we first met, we had a really good telepathic rapport, but since Bane and Truggs captured you, you've been… You've been blocking all the time.** She looks away, a little self consciously. **It used to be you'd talk to me like this all the time, and now you talk out loud instead. And even now, all I can hear is the words you're sending to me. I just… I'm just worried that you've… Gone off telepathy.**

Oh. I suppose.. I can see where she's coming from. **Finding that I was so vulnerable was an unpleasant shock, but we've all had basic telepathic resistance training.**

**You're doing more than that.**

I smile at her. **Guess I'm just an overachiever.** But I don't need empathic vision to realise that she's worried that I've gone off her. I.. haven't been neglecting my mountainmates, but I have been spending less time with them than I used to. **And… Also… I came into possession of some privileged information that I… Shouldn't risk getting out. It's not that I don't think you can be trusted, it's just that every extra person who knows-.**

**Is an extra risk. I remember Superman's lecture.** She nods. She doesn't look happy about that, but now that she's got something to pin my behaviour on hopefully she won't continue to think she's done something wrong. **Is it… Something you're going to be able to tell me about? I miss… Feeling.. you.** She blinks. **Okay, that didn't come out right.**

**I understand what you mean.** Really, I can probably ease up on the mental blocks around the mountain after the showdown with Nabu, but if I give me leaving as the deadline it'll be a bit obvious. **I should be able to ease off on the mental blocks after I come back from Maltus.** I shrug. **Sorry, I hadn't realised how much this was bothering you.**

**It's okay. I get that there are some things you can't share.**

**How was.. Canis about.. proving that he was still Canis?**

She rolls her eyes. **At first he wouldn't believe that he could be infected, then Conner pointed out that Wonder Woman got infected and she's tougher than him. And then he didn't want to use Cure-tech and refused to believe that the rest of us had used it.**

**Did he give a reason? I am.. assuming here that he wasn't infected.**

**No, he wasn't infected. He just didn't believe that Human technology could affect him in that way.**

**Neither Star Conquerors nor Klarion are Human.**

**That's what convinced him. But then he said that the place we put it on him itched, and-.***

"Out of the question!" We both look around as Kaldur and Doctor Farr come around the corner. "You have no idea what those.. things could do to us in the long term!"

"Doctor, you will be dealing with a telepathic alien race that has already demonstrated that they have access to this technology. None of us have suffered any adverse side effects-."

"How do you know? Have you conducted double blind trials, comparing the state of health of those who have used them to those who have not? How often do your people have medical examinations? Have your studies been peer reviewed?"

"They.. have not. We have medical examinations each month, conducted by one of the inventors of the technology. She is not yet ready to publish her results."

"Well… Come back once she does."

Bit of a relief to hear someone wanting to stick to what I regard as sane medical practice. I mean, in our case if it hadn't worked as advertised I could have expunged it from our bodies, but at the time it never occurred to me that it could be a problem. Super scientist think tank says 'sure, this'll work, no problem', it just does. I mean, I know the gestalt thing sped things up a bit but they only took a few hours. It's only just occurring to me how daft that was.

Of course, if we're following standard superheroic tropes…

I tap my communicator. "Orange Lantern to Kid Flash. Come in please."

"Kid Flash here. What is it, Oh El?"

"Any reaction to the Cure-tech from the Demons?"

"Couple of them tried saying it was a violation of their rights, but… They didn't go unconscious like the, ah, the other people exposed to it did."

"Oh dear. Right, who's there with you?"

"Artemisss…"

"Right. Anyone else?"

"Ah. No?"

"Kid!"

Oh, give me strength. "Mission's not over yet, lads and lasses. And I've got an unfortunate feeling that it's about to go south rather quickly. Get somewhere with good lines of sight."

"Hey." Artemis' voice has a slight echo to it as Wallace's com picks her up as well. "Why didn't Gardner know that they'd found Star Conquerors in the Arctic? I thought he was supposed to be keeping an eye on them?"

"I don't know. I'll try and get hold of him now." I tap my communicator again to cancel the connection, and then hold up my left hand, palm up. "Ring, contact Guy Gardner, Green Lantern two eight one four B."

The ring shimmers for a moment as it tries to connect. No, nothing. Doesn't mean that there's anything wrong. He could be busy. He could be meeting the Guardians right now. Reasonable enough that he wouldn't want to answer right away. Hm. I never asked him about how his work with the Atlanteans was going. He muttered about babysitting once, but otherwise it was just a job he had to do. He's had his Cure-tech dose, so there's no way that he's been Starro-teched again. On the other hand, he's still vulnerable to Star Conquerors… Ring, any records of Star Conqueror victims having instructions implanted into them?

No records found.

And where exactly would the Demons come in? They weren't infected. The person giving them the drugs may have been infected… Ring, any records of Star Conquerors using magic?

No records found.

Klarion would just release the Star Conquerors to cause havoc. Would the rest of the Light go along with that? Would they be able to stop him? No, no, that would explain the Starro-tech, but not the Star Conquerors. And okay, he could probably have infected the Atlanteans… But the Star Conquerors themselves shouldn't have recognised them as being on their side. They should have tried to facehug the researchers just as much as my team, and they didn't. So, the Star Conquerors must be in control of the Starro-tech. Where did that come from? All of the samples the League had were handed to Batman and then used by William. The only other source is the Light. Would the Light work with Star Conquerors? No obvious benefit to them, and Star Conquerors were never interested in negotiation, even when it would be in their interest. Assume that they're not working together, then.

The Demons were here to destroy the samples. They didn't know why. Star Conquerors working independently, someone trying to stop them? Sort of makes sense, though Lex just phoning me and warning me would make more sense… Except that Klarion hates me. Hm. Can Klarion bind Demons? Probably, it's not exactly hard. Demon infusion potion? Harder, but I suspect that it's within his abilities. Or he might have outsourced…

But if they were trying to stop the Star Conquerors, why attack here rather than the Arctic? Accessibility, I suppose. But we didn't exactly advertise what we were doing. The Devil Jizz users were watching this place in advance. "Orange Lantern to Artemis. Is STAR Labs hiring anyone else to cope with the extra workload?"

"Yeah, a few guys. They all checked out, though. They used to work for someplace called Advanced Research Laboratories, but that got closed down a little while ago."

I look over to where Doctor Farr is stridently refusing Kaldur's request. Would LexCorp have used its own people to make more Starro-tech? No, an officially-third-party-but-in-reality-controlled-by-Lex company? Or research it to try and find a way to make a conventional profit from the technology in the device? So, something went wrong, the staff got infected and the Star Conquerors took over? Possible. "Who performed their interviews?"

"Doctor Farr."

I take a Cure-tech wafer out of subspace and -holding it in my right hand- walk towards the Doctor. "Understood. Stand by." I make eye contact with him.

"Ah, what is it now?"

I smile. "I was wondering if you could help me with-" My right hand flashes out, tapping the Cure-tech onto the side of his neck. Immediately, his eyes glaze and he collapses into my arms. "Aqualad, we have a problem."

back

A Star Reborn 20

next

16th April

18:43 GMT -5

His right hand goes straight to his ear. "Aqualad to team. The staff have been infected by Starro-tech."

"Ugh!" / "Ghr!"

I look around as M'gann slams two security guards to the far wall with telekinesis. Both had been in the process of drawing their guns. Kaldur dons his helmet and draws his Water Bearers. "Take them down. Miss Martian, can you detect-" There's a burst of gunfire from somewhere in the building, which rapidly cuts off. "-their telepathic communication?"

"Klarion used magic when he was controlling them. A Star Conqueror would just use normal telepathy. I.. should be able to." Her hands go to her forehead. "I'll need a minute."

"A trap we could not even recognise! So elegant!" Glad Canis approves, though unless he has something helpful to say he really shouldn't say it over the comms-. "Aqualad, if we cannot slay these revenants, where shall we deposit them? I did not think to bring bindings and my aunt -ugh- tells me that I should not break Human kneecaps."

Kaldur glances at me. "The exotic materials lab has a testing chamber we could seal. And I've got plenty of spare zip ties."

"We will congregate them there, but they are most likely a distraction. Miss Martian is attempting to locate the Star Hunter, and we will need to move immediately once she has."

"Fifty seven people are working here today. Kid Flash and me got seven. D'you want us to drag them to you now, or go looking for the rest?"

"We can track down the remaining infected staff later. It is more important that they are out of the way when our true enemy reveals itself."

"I got nine!"

"It's not a contest, Robin." Okay, let's see if I can get anything on empathic visio-. I create an armour plate construct in front of the door as a.. strange purple beam punches through the thick metal. No, the beam isn't purple. It's.. sort of.. colourless, with a faintly purple aura. My construct evaporates even as I send filaments rushing down the corridor to strike the two scientists carrying the guns firing it, shock crowning them. They collapse, dropping their guns, which hit the floor, sparking and burning. Darn, I wanted to look at those. "Watch out for scientists using their equipment."

"Think we can take a guy with a microscope, Oh El."

"Two guys just shot me with some kind of energy weapon."

"I didn't-. See anything like that-. On their computers." Robin sounds a little distracted.

"Did they bring them in from home? Ah, I got five, by the-."

"Not a competition, Cornwall. And I'd guess not. Maybe the Star Conquerors told them how to build it." I tap my communicator off for a moment. "Aqualad, what was the timeline on the additional Cure-tech?"

"It should be ready now, but we cannot spare you if there is a Star Hunter concealed here."

"Kid Flash could pick up Tula and dash to the zeta tube. I'm assuming that the work is being done in Poseidonis?"

"Yes, but that would not get them to us quickly." He reactivates his communicator. "Aquagirl, attempt to contact Professor Vulko and then have him send the Cure-tech through the Poseidonis zeta tube. Kid Flash, once we have been notified that it has arrived, run to the Gotham zeta tube and bring it here."

"It'll only take a moment."

"Okay, Artemis and I are in the lab. Superboy's here as well. I can make it to the zeta tube and back in about a minute and a half. Two minutes, tops."

Wait, how were those guys aiming without a line of sight? Telepathy? No, that wouldn't-. I notice that the guards M'gann stunned have their eyes slightly open. Shock crown, pithing needle. Their eyes open fully for a second and then they slump bonelessly to the floor. Guy did say that Star Conquerors can share information. Ring, scan them and see if my ring knowledge has improved to the point where I can detect the signs of Starro-tech.

Compliance.

No, not getting anything helpful. I look through the building with empathic vision, trying to pick up any particularly inhuman sets of feeling. Yes, there's-.

Oh. No. That's just Canis.

"So where exactly is this Star Hunter, anyway?" I hear more shots, both through the building and through Raquel's communicator. "Shouldn't it be flying through the skies of Gotham, throwing little stars at people? And can someone get over here and stop these guys shooting me?"

I blink, taking in the whole of the building. "Zatanna, Robin, she's down the corridor to your right."

"Be there in a second."

"I thought your belt made you bulletproof?"

"Yeah, but it doesn't make the guy standing next to me bullet proof and they're just shooting-." There's a bang. "Thanks Robin. I've got a few guys out cold here and the others were just blasting away with shotguns."

"Kid Flash, while you're in the lab, check to see if they were making any more Starro-."

"Already doing it, Oh El. Can't see anything here, and Starro-tech had a nanotech component. STAR Labs Gotham doesn't have a nanorobotics lab."

Kaldur checks both corridors leading away from our position, both with his eyes and with puffs of scalding steam from his Water Bearers. "Starro-tech was created by the Light. We have no reason to believe that they used everything they produced on the Justice League."

"I've thought about it, and I don't see the Light working with actual Star Conquerors. It's too much of a risk."

"Vulko says the Cure-tech will be at the zeta tube in four minutes."

"Acknowledged. Kid."

"I'll set my timer."

Kaldur turns to me. "Then what do you believe happened?"

"People get exposed… Maybe researchers, maybe test subjects. We know there was a Star Hunter in the ice. Why not two? Or more? Maybe they tested it on a telepath? Whatever. If Klarion wasn't there or wasn't managing it full time, could it have been woken up by that? Or… Maybe a piece in their laboratory regenerated a full sized brain?"

"Oh El, are you just trying to let Luthor off again?"

"You don't stay a successful criminal in a city patrolled by Superman by being stupid or reckless, Kid Flash."

Kaldur shakes his head. "At this point it makes little-."

M'gann's eyes flash open. "I've got it! It's in the-!"

With a tremendous booming crash the wall to our right flies apart, bricks shooting right at us! Kaldur and I both throw up barriers to block it and I stick a construct platform under our feet as the floor starts to tip and crumble! As the building starts to subside I get a momentary glimpse of a huge red eye moving upwards through the rubble and metal, before it vanishes in the dust.

Shit! Ring, building schematics. Compare to sonic scans. Construct construct construct! The wall turns orange as the rings light it up in an attempt to prevent the building collapsing any further. A sub-basement, it was in a sub-basement. They must have dug it out and lined it with.. something. Scan for bodies. No one? It must have made its thralls get out of the way. Optics? Yes, there's a Star Hunter in the sky over the building. Still can't scan the bastard thing. This must be how magic users feel about me.

"Aqualad to team! Is everyone alright?"

I tune out the affirmatives as I try and shore up the building. Some rooms I give up on, letting them collapse and crumble into the chasm the Star Hunter left in its wake. In others I fuse brick and metal, taking girders out of subspace to create a stable surface.

There's a loud bang followed by a series of metal-on-concrete clangs. A quick optical check shows that the Star Hunter has torn apart the vessels containing the frozen Star Conquerors with its telekinesis, throwing the containers aside carelessly while its smaller kin recover from their imprisonment.

"Aqualad, if I'm going to stop it getting away, I need to get up there."

He nods. "Go. We will follow."

I abandon my construct, don my power armour and phase through what's left of the wall before flying upwards. The Star Hunter isn't exactly like the ones Guy showed us, but he did say there was a good deal of variety-. Daghh! Its eye focuses on me and I feel the telepathic assault against my mental defences. Less powerful than some of the things M'gann's tried in training, but the Star Hunter doesn't appear to have to focus completely on me to pull it off. Ring, extra psi-baffles. Ah, that's better. Right, railgu-.

The warehouse on the far side of the road collapses as a second Star Hunter pulls itself free.

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A Star Reborn 21

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16th April

18:47 GMT -5

Two-? Where did-?

What?

While the first is in the conventional purple and blue colours, the second is far more vibrant. Its skin is a brilliant pink-red colour, with darker red veins of red visible through-.

Starro-tech colours.

While the first has eight small Star Conquerors sluggishly orbiting it, the second has a small cloud of Starro-tech wafers just behind it. It was… It must be grown from what the Light had left over. How… How did they lose control that badly?

**All will be one.** / **All will be one.**

My body locks up as two small Star Conquerors fly at me through the air, teeth first. I'd forgotten they had mouths there. Hacking my peripheral nervous system? Fine. Railguns form on either side of me, a stream of solid iron rounds flashing out towards them. The first few are blocked by a telekinetic field, but as the living projectiles close the distance they get outside the effect area and are torn apart. Ring, secondary nervous system. Analyse how it's controlling me and block.

Compliance. Working.

"Orange Lantern to Aqualad." The second Star Hunter shudders and Starro-tech wafers fly away from the main cloud. Several are fired into the Gotham streets but two are launched at the STAR Labs building. What is it aiming for? "Confirmed two Star Hunters." The staff are already infected and my team is already immune. Does it know that? Yes, it must. If it didn't then it would have fired more. So what was it aiming f-?

**No! My ship!**

Oh shit. For a moment the Bio-Ship drops stealth and I can clearly see the Starro-tech wafers on its outer surface. A moment later they've faded into its hull.

Oh shit.

"They just used Starro-tech on the Bio-Ship." It shudders, then begins shifting shape. "Successfully." The guns I persuaded M'gann to add manifest along the hull as it rises into the air. On the pavements below us the people it managed to hit with the wafers get to their feet and begin running in all directions. "Call the League."

I point my railguns at the first Star Hunter and open fire.

**Kid Flash, go. Everyone else, get outside as quickly as you can!**

Crumbler rounds are intercepted by telekinetic strikes, triggering them before they can impact on its skin. Tried this with M'gann once and she was just about able to pull it off against one round, if I fired at the lowest possible speed and gave her a good deal of space. The Star Hunter is doing it against fully automatic fire. Meanwhile the Red Star is pulling back. The Bio-Ship moves towards its domitor, turning as it does so to hose down the STAR Labs building with plasma fire! I extend a filament to create a shield-.

**Oh no you don't!**

Seriously?! A third Star Hunter -this one somewhat smaller than the other two- exits the STAR Labs building through one of the holes in the wall and takes up position behind me. This one has white skin and-. **M'gann?**

**I can even turn into things Mister J'aarkn didn't have sex with. Ugh, all these lobes!** The Bio-Ship retracts its guns. **But if you think I'm letting you use my ship against my friends, you've got another thing coming!**

The closest Star Hunter narrows its eye slightly and-. My optic nerves, it just jammed my optic nerves. Ring, autofire and bypass.

Compliance.

I feel the railguns fire and a moment later the ring shows me another small Star Conqueror falling to the Gotham streets in pieces.

**Hey Lantern!** A small shower of bricks marks Raquel's journey through an exterior wall. **How're we fighting these things?**

With difficulty. **How does-** I replace one railgun barrage with a destructive orange light blast. **-your belt-** It passes through the area defended with telekinetic fields, but does little more than char the Star Hunter's epidermis. **-react with powerful telekinesis?**

**Like any other foraagh!**

M'gann floats forwards slightly. **Get out of her head!**

**You are not one of us.** / **You are not one of us.**

There's a yellow blur in the streets below us as Wallace leaves the building. Starro-tech infected locals try to grapple him, but he dodges around them with consummate ease and heads for the zeta tube.

Okay, what next? Freezing worked well enough for the Arctic. I take a cold gun out of subspace, only for it to be crumpled into a ball by telekinetic force. Right… Um. Control. Ring, assimilate.

An orange beam is projected from my chestplate and strikes the closest Star Hunter, passing through its telekinetic barrier like it isn't there.

Assimilation in progress. The Star Hunter blinks. Progress negligible.

Negligible? Maybe they have perfect self awareness or something? I stop and switch back to railgun fire. Off to the side of me Raquel recovers slightly while over the road the Red Star manoeuvres itself onto the front of the stationary Bio-Ship, docking itself in the same way the smaller ones do to people's faces. I don't remember anything about them doing that in the Green Lantern Corps' records. The assumption was that they lost the ability as they grew.

**It's going to try and get away! Stop it!**

**I'm on it.** Kon leaps into the air from STAR Labs' front entrance and flies straight at the Bio-Ship.

**Get away? Where are they going to run to?**

**Gardner was right. One of the big ones survived. It thinks it can get to it with my Bio-Ship.**

**Your Bio-Ship doesn't have FTL. If it thinks it can get there before anyone can stop it…**

Kon slams into the Red Star's telekinetic barrier. It doesn't flinch, I notice. Doesn't shake or reflexively close its eye. Which is impressive because -clever techniques and weakness exploitation aside- Kon hits a lot harder than I do. Especially when wearing his Nth metal armour and glowing with the light of the sun. I can see the air shimmer with telekinetic force as the Red Star tries to maintain the barrier.

**Orange Lantern. Try assimilating it again!**

Inside my armour I frown at M'gann. **It didn't do anything.**

**It was distracting it! I can't-! I can't fight both of them!**

She's the expert, and my guns aren't getting anywhere. Assimilate. Assimilate both.

Two beams of orange strike home and the eye of the closest Star Hunter narrows slightly. A stream of bricks floats up from the ground, moving to orbit around it. It waits until it has thirty or so projectiles and then flings them at speed at M'gann. I go to raise a barrier but Raquel is already there, her kinetic barrier easily absorbing the impacts.

Two streams of water blast up from the ground, bending around and sticking to the closest Star Hunter for a moment before flashing as Rob and the Atlanteans use it as a focus for their lightning magics.

Connection lost.

I suppose it's a little tricky for my ground bound colleagues to directly fight against flying opponents-. A small Star Conqueror flops as one of Artemis' arrows pierces it, its protector too occupied by not being electrocuted to properly shield it. Kon's repeated strikes are getting closer to the flesh of his foe. He's stopped trying to ram it and is now using his armour's flight ability to continually press against its telekinetic envelope, reaching out with his hands to try and grip it. Then he's knocked back, the Red Star and Bio-Ship glowing emerald green-

Will detected.

-as Guy Gardner points his ring at us, a Star Conqueror covering his face.

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A Star Reborn 22

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16th April

18:49 GMT -5

Jammerhe'sjammingtoowhydidIteachGreenLanternstostopmeaccelerate!

Green filaments flick out from Guy's body, each one striking a point in the air around him and for a fraction of a second generating a magnetic pulse to fire Crumbler rounds out of his subspace pocket at myself and my team mates.

Ring, message to Lantern Salaak. Inform him that Guy is under Star Conqueror control and request that he shut down Lantern Gardner's ring.

Message sent.

Okay. I form point defence laser constructs and instruct them to target the incoming railgun rounds. Travelling through the air prematurely triggers the crumbling mechanism if you fire them with too much power, turning them into purely ballistic projectiles. The Red Star could just have him dial up the power and wreck a good chunk of Gotham. Lucky me it's so mission focused. Or maybe it's just because it doesn't want to distract him from fighting me?

**Mmmmmmm-**

I extend my armour's kinetic shield as the lasers flick out. All burning the Crumbler rounds up completely achieves is turning them into super hot fast moving projectiles, but the Crumbler mechanism itself is fairly vulnerable to being destroyed and once it is I don't have to worry about my kinetic belt being destroyed like the time I missed one during testing. The fact that the barrier locks me in place isn't really a problem. With both Gardner and I jamming neither of us can use FTL and slower forms of movement are too slow to be meaningful.

**-'ggggggggg-**

One laser strikes off centre, nearly missing the projectile. Why-? He's not firing them all at full speed. He's varying it to make interception more difficult. How? Guy's a Green Lantern, under normal circumstances he isn't able to accelerate his thought processes. Does the Red Star know enough about the Human brain to do that for him?

Message rejected as 'unauthorised'.

Oh, now they decide to filter me-!

**-aaaaaaaaa-**

No, Star Conquerors -even the small ones- can parallel process multiple lines of activity. They have to in order to be able to function. But his ring would only accept instructions from Guy, so they can't be being telepathically transmitted from one of the others. Is that why he's not using strong constructs to attack as he usually would? How many rounds does Guy have? Could they have built more?

**-nnnnnnnnn-**

Light runs under the skin of the Red Star, red veins flickering and glowing. Starro-tech has three components: Star Conqueror flesh, nanotechnology and… Magic. Magic's unusual away from Earth, but Kaldur said that the Atlanteans at the arctic research-.

The Star Hunter is being battered by Atlantean magic.

**Kaldur, shut off-!**

The bubble of water and electricity surrounding the Star Hunter ripples twice and-

Mental pathway damage limit reached. Acceleration discontinued.

-my team mates duck and dive as the highly charged water leaps back at them!

"Akh!" / "Aah!" / "Uh."

Garth and Tula are knocked aside as they aren't quite fast enough to avoid all of the water, jerking spasmodically as the electricity ravages their bodies. Kaldur braces himself, his enchanted armour better able to take the punishment as the water freezes around them. My point defences continue to fire on automatic and I'm really grateful that Guy never bothered to learn how to generate Kryptonite radiation. Kon's battering on the construct barrier protecting the Red Star as the Bio Ship tries to pull away.

**-nn, confuse Green Lantern.**

The Star Hunter that was being repeatedly shocked looks more than a little worse for wear. Its Star Conqueror escort were completely destroyed. I can't even see their remains. The Starro-tech that had been floating around the Red Star on the other hand is rapidly growing, the three prongs getting longer, three smaller ones growing between them and a sort of.. eye.. shape, appearing in the subcutaneous circuitry. Klarion was relying on Bedlam when he created those things. Would they be chaos magic or whatever Bedlam itself is made of?

Guy weaves to the side as the Red Star fires red lightning at me from the tips of its tentacles. Two shots miss, my tattoos presumably preventing the targeting part of the spell working. The other three strike my armour and my armour's display flashes a few warning messages before they get soaked by my Spell Eater. Right, the Atlanteans wouldn't have known much about chaos magic in particular. It's trying to come up with something based on general arcane knowledge and just throwing energy at me. And that just won't-.

Graaaaaagh!

Isolateisolateisolate!

Kon drops from the sky, Raquel goes limp and Kaldur drops to his knees as the pain effect kicks in. Direct nerve stimulation. I've had to cut off my own nervous g-gwh. A Crumbler hits my environmental shield, disrupting it and causing me to drop two metres before my kinetic belt kicks in to replace my flight capacity. Then the green aura around Guy ripples and fades. He doesn't physically react, but M'gann must be having some success.

"You think that this hurts, creature?!" There's a blast as a boom tube opens above the Bio Ship and Beton Brut bounds out with Canis on his back. "Try living-" He slashes a small Red Star Conqueror in half with his sword as they pass. "-on-" Brut lands, scrabbling for purchase as Canis dismounts and stabs downwards into its flesh! "-Apokolips!"

Debris flashes past him and the Red Star tries to shove him off but whatever makes New Gods as tough as they are seems to be letting him resist. Guy's shots have cut out entirely as the thing controlling him tries to reinforce its defences. Still need to free him without killing him. I could probably cut off his ring finger, but-. No. There's an easier way.

I fire an assimilation beam at the first Star Hunter.

Assimilation in progress. Progress negligible.

From the way M'gann isn't reacting to the pain projection I'm going to assume that Star Conquerors can't actually feel pain. Its injury probably isn't totally debilitating for it. Even with its eye ruined its brains should be well insulated enough that it can still pick up on what the others are seeing. Wait a second. Given how many are left… I generate a new railgun construct on its far side and fire a small solid slug at it.

**Okay guys, I'm back. Scientists all de-Starroed.** Pain aura's off. **And I think I got all the civilians it hit, too.**

The low velocity slug passes through its body, causing a hole and lots of nasty shock damage. Assuming that its body layout follows the standard pattern I actually took out a telepathy amp node there. I fire again, but it's got its telekinetic barrier back up. Doesn't appear able to do anything else though.

Canis jerks back his sword and thrusts his right hand into the cut he made in the Red Star's flesh before stabbing down again. One of the smaller Red Stars flies at his face and he's forced to hurriedly withdraw his sword in order to intercept it.

And then Wallace dashes out of the still open boom tube and super speed slaps Cure-tech onto the Bio Ship's hull.

And if Guy's shield is that weak… Ring, send a report to Lantern Salaak.

Compliance.

A pulse of orange light leaps from the ring and flies towards Guy. It moves relatively slowly, so I have time to fire a destructive pulse directly at the Star Conqueror on his face. It prioritises the larger attack, creating a small green ablative barrier to protect itself. The message packet hits his ring, and no doubt its horrible formatting will get Salaak's attention momentarily.

Richard's joined Wallace on the Bio Ship as more small Red Stars go for him. He tries striking one with a baton, only to have the Star Conqueror twist in the air and slice it apart with its newly grown mouth. A quick frown and he switches to Crumbler discuses instead. Those are a little more effective.

"Star Conquerors!" What exactly does Kaldur want to say to them? "You are defeated! Surrender and you will not be killed!"

Another pulse of red light from the Red Star and half of the Star Conquerors still around it disappear. Then the green barrier around it disappears. **I yield.**

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A Star Reborn 23

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16th April

19:35 GMT -5

"Ah, jeez. Why do I always get roped int' these things?" Detective Bullock stares up for a moment at the two Star Hunters as they float in mid air, bound to anti-gravity generators. The blue one turns its partially recovered eye in his direction while the red one keeps its own gaze on Kaldur.

"Hey, Detective Bullock." / "Good evening, Detective."

He sighs, then turns to Richard and I. "Alright. One a' you wanna explain to me why there's a giant Starfish staring at me?"

Richard nods. "Those straps around its body explode if it tries using telepathy, and we're not really sure what other senses it has."

Detective Bullock stares at him with an air of resignation for a moment, then turns to me. "Orange? Gimme a break here?"

"STAR Labs Gotham is one of a handful of places in the world capable of doing xenobiological research. On behalf of the Justice League we were transporting biological materials here for them to study."

Detective Bullock glances at the blue Star Hunter again. "Kinda… Big. Ah, how smart 're those things?"

"Fully sentient. In fact, these two are probably the two most intelligent things in the city at the moment."

He sags. "Please tell me you don't want me ta put those in Arkham?"

"No, the Green Lantern Corps is sending some people to pick them up."

"Oh, thank Christ fer that. What are they, anyway?"

"Their species is called 'Star Conquerors'."

Detective Bullock nods. "Because they're shaped like stars and they conquer things. Makes sense."

"Actually, their name comes from their ability to conquer star systems. Most spacefaring species don't think of stars as five pointed shapes. Describing a Starfish as looking like a star wouldn't make any sense to them. They'd probably think you were referring to a plasma based life form."

"Okay. Didn't… Know that. So, what, you were transporting 'em and they got away?"

"No, we were only transporting the little ones." Richard nods over to the containment cylinders where eight red and one blue Star Conquerors lie in repose. "And we weren't even supposed to be transporting that. When we set out, we thought it was just frozen cellular residue."

Detective Bullock looks up again. "That ain't cellular residue, kid." Red Hunter is a fair bit smaller than Blue Hunter. Shorter tentacles… In fact, I'm not sure that they have the flexibility to be called tentacles. The core section is smaller too. In terms of total mass I'd say it's about two thirds the size of its original model brethren. And yet, they prioritised Red Hunter's escape. Curious.

"They were already here when we arrived."

"Yeah, that's… That's what a punk says when I catch them just after they threw a brick through a window. Aliens invading Gotham? I'm gunna need a bit more." He suddenly frowns. "Reports said there were three a' them. Where's the other one?"

"That was Miss Martian." Richard half turns to where she's tending to Guy. I already healed his facial wounds from where the Star Conqueror had been holding onto his skull, but she needs to go through his brain to make sure there isn't any Star Conqueror programming left. Finding out that they can leave instructions to be enacted even after they're off a person -including 'come here and put me on again'- was an unpleasant surprise. He couldn't remember when he first got taken, and it'll probably be easier to get a date from the Atlanteans than from him.

"She can do that?"

"Oh yeah. All Martians-."

"No, I mean…" Another look at the Star Hunters. "Turn into other aliens."

"To her, Humans are 'other aliens'."

"Yeah, okay, but Martians look like Humans." Richard and I smirk slightly. "Don't they? Or… Is that just what they-." He shakes his head. "Y'know what? That ain't my problem. Okay, so, you transport the little ones here so they can get cut up, then you get attacked by… People using some kinda drug t'turn into Demons, who wanna destroy them?"

"That was their objective, yes." The Juggernaut -Eric Hardwick- was a little more in the know than the others, but even he had never had direct contact with Satanus. I need to talk to John about the current status of Hell's governance sometime soon, see if we can confirm whether he's actually in charge or not. "None of them knew why they were being told to do it, and none of them could confirm exactly who was telling them."

"Please tell me Demons ain't fight'n aliens in my town."

"Actually, no. They never did fight the aliens directly. Ah, the STAR Labs people all got implanted with alien mind control devices -don't worry, we've given them the antidote- and tried to hustle us out as soon as we'd made the delivery. I spotted that something fishy was going on, and…" I look up. "They tried to make a break for it."

Richard nods. "I'd say we kicked their asses, except I don't think they actually have asses."

"And the Green Lanterns are gunna pick them up?"

"Uh-huh."

Detective Bullock takes a deep breath and exhales slowly. "Any chance this is a federal problem?"

Huh. Not sure actually. I don't think any goods were transported illegally across state lines. Devil Jizz isn't specifically illegal, though the general law… "I don't… Know..? Technically, this is an act of war against the United States by a foreign power, but the Star Conquerors don't have a government… Not any more, anyway."

"What happened to it?"

"The Green Lantern Corps threw it into a star. Two stars, actually."

He sags a little further. "Okay. Well, I guess I better question them. Can they… Answer questions?"

"Yes. That's why Zatanna is drawing those shapes on that tarpaulin." Zatanna didn't take part in the fight after having part of a wall fall on her. Between her spells and the ring she won't suffer any lasting damage, but I think I need to have a chat with her later about leaving her kinetic belt active even if she doesn't appear to be in a conflict zone. "I think she's about done if you want to start now?"

"You got… Questions you wanna ask it?"

"A few, yes."

"Then I'm gunna let you guys go first." He follows Richard and me as we walk towards the Blue Hunter. "What exactly's stopping it messing with our heads?"

"I am, Human lowlie." Canis doesn't bother looking at Detective Bullock. He's been pretty alright about the rest of us, but being polite to normal people is a bit of a strain for his world view. "Apokoliptian technology, designed to explode and incinerate the one they contain should they attempt to use telepathy or telekinesis without the permission of their betters. A single thought out of line and there will be naught left but ash."

"They can't mind control us without sticking one of the little ones on our faces, but they can do various other things… Turn off our optic nerves, trigger our pain sensors…"

"The Green Lantern Corps okay with this?"

"Okayish."

"Then it's fine by me."

Kaldur nods at Detective Bullock as we approach. "Detective. We are about to begin questioning." Bullock just sort of waves his right hand, indicating that it's all a bit beyond him. "Very well. Star Conqueror!" Red Hunter blinks at him. "Can you understand me?"

The-. Oh, that's interesting. M'gann has turned her right arm into a mouth piece. Her telepathy won't trigger the boom. "Yes."

"Oh, that ain't right."

"Where did you send the smaller Star Conquerors?"

"Away."

"Where precisely?"

It blinks twice, and then is consumed by an explosion! I instinctively create a shield as the Blue Hunter goes up as well, but Canis knew what he was doing and the blast is perfectly contained. We stare stunned as the remains are reduced to cinders.

Kaldur stares at Canis, who is grinning in delight at the sight. "Did you trigger the incendiaries?"

"No, of course not. It destroyed itself so that it could not be forced to betray its kin." He nods. "Commendable. Now, I will take my leave. I am sure that your lowlies can handle sweeping away a little ash."

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A Star Reborn 24

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17th April

07:23 GMT -7

"That sounds like a total disaster."

Doctor Roquette hasn't got any friendlier since last time I saw her. This is the first time I've encountered her on her own turf, and she's a good deal more self assured. She takes a sip of her second coffee of the morning while waiting for me to explain myself.

"No. A total disaster would have been one of the Star Hunters getting away, or reactivating a Mother Star. Or mind controlling our team."

"Uh huh."

"Fewer people were mind controlled by alien Starfish at the end of the day than were at the start. The two largest, most intelligent and most telepathically capable were killed-"

"I'm not sure you get points for it if they do it to themselves."

"-and we got several important leads on Devil Jizz supply on the east coast." Which is what the rest of the team are doing at the moment.

She grimaces. "Can you not call it that?"

"We.. rather felt that.. any of the other names made it sound 'cool'… I mean, the number of people who'd be interested in injecting themselves with something called-."

She holds up her right hand to stop me. "Fine! Fine."

"So, even though we're pretty confident that all of the remaining Starro-tech wafers got turned into actual Star Conquerors-"

"Who can now use magic."

"-we'd still like to increase our production of Cure-tech a lot. There are only a few laboratories in the world capable of growing Starro-tech wafers and people will notice if anyone starts walking around with a Star Conqueror on their face."

"Unless they just did what they did with Green Lantern."

I shake my head. "Guy lives on his own, doesn't have a normal job and can fly and it was still a risk. If Martian Manhunter or Miss Martian had scanned him or he'd actually had to stay away from his Star Conqueror for a prolonged period of time, the programming would have failed. It was a desperation move."

"And the Green Lantern Corps really couldn't track them down?"

"If the Green Lantern Corps could reliably locate Star Conquerors there wouldn't have been any on Earth. They took the ones we still had in captivity and they promised to look into it, but…" I shrug. "We checked the obvious potential hiding places: Liberty River and its offshoots, Gotham Reservoir and South City Park lake. They're not there."

"Great. Did Green Lantern know I worked on the original Cure-tech?"

"Iiiiiiii'm.. not sure. It was in the files, but he's not the best at doing the required reading."

"Oh great!" She sits back hard against the back of her chair. "Great, now I've got that to worry about as well."

"If you'd like me to help you improve your security here, I'm perfectly happy to do that. I can also leave you a couple of Praexis Demons as bodyguards… Permanently." Wait a second. "Or you could use your nanofog-."

"Current generation Fog only lasts twelve minutes outside a controlled environment! And it's incredibly expensive. I'd never get the University to okay me using it like that!"

"How 'incredibly expensive' is 'incredibly expensive'?"

"About half a million dollars for a thimbleful. And that's not even taking into account all the time it takes to make!"

I frown. "The League of Shadows had you make a nanofog container for them in two weeks."

"No, the League of Shadows read my work and spied on my laboratory for years in order to replicate my work. They only kidnapped me to rewrite the programming to do what they wanted it to do."

"Do you know what happened to their equipment? If you could get hold of it-."

"Yes." She nods. "Someone shot it with a railgun." Oh. Whoops. I suppose… Some of the things they had in storage… "And yes, getting their Fog containment vessel helped a little bit, but it's still a very expensive area of science without any profitable application."

"Your Fog can rebuild things, right?"

She sighs, finishes the last of her coffee and then stands, pushing back her chair. "I'll show you."

I follow her from the robotics office down the corridor and to the nanorobotics laboratory. She scans her key card to open the door to the outer laboratory. "After I got kidnapped, the Dean made some noise about upgrading security. All we actually got before the Justice League destroyed the League of Shadows were a few new keycard readers. Then we were deemed to not have 'exceptional need' any longer."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"What were they going to do against a supervillain anyway?" She walks forwards, towards a viewing window. "The nanotech gets created through here. The temperature and pressure are tightly regulated, there are force fields to keep contaminants out and the nanotech chamber is designed to only be remote accessible but I don't think for a moment that it would keep out a dedicated saboteur."

"How does it actually get made?"

"I came up with the designs and Doctor Raymond Palmer built the first generation of nanobots. After that, each generation have built their own successors."

"So… How many are in there at the moment?"

"Billions upon billions." Her voice is a little less aggressive when she says it. "They're too small to program so all the commands have to be handled remotely."

"And what can they make?"

"Just about anything if they've got the material. They have trouble handling anything much denser than lead and since they can't work on the subatomic scale at all they can't transmute matter. And you would not believe how long it took to convince Homeland Security they can't be used to build nuclear weapons."

"You've got a working nanofabricator?"

"Technically, yes. In practice there's almost nothing it can build that can't be created more cheaply using conventional means. And last month an ass of an ex grad student let a freshman in here and they thought it would be fun to shine a laser pointer at them."

"They're that fragile?"

"Like this? Yes. They're measured in nanometers. Proportionally, it's like you getting hit by a… A fifty kilowatt laser."

"Have you considered using magic to increase their resilience?"

"What?" She blinks, frowning. "No. Why would I?"

"An enchantment designed to protect mechanical devices could be placed in the vicinity of the fabricator and work without actually touching the Fog. And that's just off the top of my head." I tap my right fist against my lips. "I can get you the charm in a few hours, and I've got a power supply I can donate that will generate as much electricity as you want."

"That would… Help."

"I can pay for the increased Cure-tech production, and… There's a meeting I'd.. like you to come to next week. A few experts in their fields… Combining their efforts."

"Um. Anyone I know?"

"Sephtian. Ted Kord?"

"The guy who built the storm control drone?"

"One of our early successes. Normally, a species wouldn't have functional nanofabricators until they're a few hundred years more advanced than we are." I smile at her. "I'd like to shave a little off that, if you're interested."

"I'll… Check my schedule."

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A Star Reborn 25

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17th April

09:41 GMT -6

Jade and I watch from the study room door as Lynne and Miss Amane read up on Darfur's history and Miss Shimmer switches rapidly between her latest arcane tome and English and Atlantean Greek dictionaries.

This is… This place is starting to feel like home.

"She's certainly dedicated." I turn my eyes Jadewards without shifting my head. "When I was her age Dad made us do unarmed combat practice against him if we didn't study hard enough."

"Yes, but unlike your father I'm a decent Human being." A slight rise of an eyebrow. "Humanoid being, then. I haven't disciplined her in any way. I'm not sure if the anti-life exposure permanently.. beat the childhood out of her-."

"She seemed okay yesterday. She played with the other children."

"I presented it as a fait accompli and she made the best of it. She hasn't expressed any affirmative interest in seeing them again, she just sort of.. accepts it when I tell her it will happen." I exhale quietly. "It might be my fault. I'm not sure exactly how much of my nature was transmitted when I gave her a portion of my soul, but I am certainly no child."

"What would have happened to her if you hadn't?"

"I don't know. Apokoliptians don't usually research ways to reverse anti-life infections. But… Izaya might have made a better job of it than I did."

"Who's that?"

"Izaya the Inheritor. Highfather. Ruler of New Genesis. He probably wouldn't have spoken to me, but that version of Scott was on good terms with him." It's a distinctly bitter thought. "I seek problems out and fix them, but I worry that in this case I might have been better to.. restrain myself." She smiles. "What?"

"I'm not used to you being in Dad mode." And there's the other thing. "It's only been a few weeks. You can't expect to fix years of abuse so quickly."

I nod, reaching across the hallway to take her left hand in my right, gently stroking it with my right thumb. "I'm sure that you're right. I shouldn't.. get properly worried for a year or so."

"I'll look forward to it."

"Are you..? Sure that you're okay.. with..?"

"With you having a daughter?" She looks away for a moment. "It's not what I was expecting."

"It's not what I was expecting. Though I… I probably should introduce you to my family at some point."

"Including your father, who you described as being like my father, only Kryptonian."

"No, no, he's… He's actually a lot more dangerous than that. I was really thinking of Scott and Barda. I imagine that… Having someone else to talk to about this whole 'New God' thing would be helpful. And they're on Earth…"

"What other family do you have?"

"Two other brothers. That I know about. It's not like I keep track of what Father gets up to. I've never spoken to Orion, actually. He was sent to New Genesis when he was only a few days old. He turned out… Okay, in a partially civilised barbarian warrior sort of way. Kalibak grew up on Apokolips and he's a violent brute. I'd advise avoiding him."

"And your mother?"

A subject about which Father Box -frustratingly- had nothing to say. I settle for just shaking my head. Jade turns her attention back to the girls. "I was thinking…"

"What about?"

"This whole thing. When I left home, if someone like you had been there to take care of me…"

"In Gotham? I doubt that anyone who offered that would have been-."

"Not a pedophile, Grayven. Someone like you."

"Or Batman."

"Cheshire, the Girl Wonder. That could have been fun." She takes a breath. "The point is, once I was sure they weren't playing some sort of game or that it wasn't just Dad pulling an elaborate training exercise, I'd have really appreciated it. I probably wouldn't have been able to explain it to them… I'm not used to being in that sort of environment-."

I tug gently on her hand, pulling her across the corridor into my embrace. "Hey. This sort of environment."

She rests her head against my chest for a moment, before pulling back slightly to look up at me. "This sort of environment." I'm gifted with a small smile. "It still surprises me. How you can be so big and so gentle."

"I refused to bend to Apokolips' demands on my nature. And I love you. I understand that helps."

"Uhh. If you're going to do that, can you please do it someplace else!?" We look around to see Miss Shimmer glowering at us. "Can't believe Humans go into heat every month." She pulls her tome up in an attempt to block her line of sight to the doorway.

"Ah. Right. Well, we… Do need to be going. Lynne, we should be back by lunchtime. You can talk through what you've found out about Darfur then."

She looks up. "Okay Grayven." And then back down to her book.

Oh well. Father Box, hush tube to Lex's secure meeting room.

Ploong.

The portal opens behind us, and I turn around to lead Jade through it into the LexCorp building.

17th April

10:44 GMT -5

"What was that?"

I frown slightly. "What was what?"

"When Lynne said 'okay'." She thinks for a moment as I look over the room -a sort of relaxed, soft chaired meeting room- and realise that Lex doesn't have a me-weight chair in here. Mildly inconvenien-. "She called you 'Grayven'."

I nod. "She did."

"You introduce her as 'my daughter'."

"Yes, that's-."

"It bothers you that she doesn't call you 'dad'."

A little… "Lynne's father was a man named Cyril Wayland, and by all accounts he was a decent chap. Robin still goes by the name he had before Batman adopted him, as does Troia. They've been with their new families for years, virtually all of her life in Troia's case. Yes, I would like her to call me 'dad', but… I assume that she will once she feels completely comfortable with our relationship."

"Is that why you're so worried that you're doing something wrong?"

"Um. Maybe. Part of it." I make a shrugging gesture with both hands. "She asked to come here, to be delivered to me… Did I accidentally brainwash her? She just felt obliged to come here and doesn't actually want to? I feel the.. rightness of her being there, but I'm older, I have more experience with it. And I feel love for her on top of that."

She reaches up, laying her right hand on my shoulder. "You did the best job you could in a terrible situation. You have nothing to blame yourself for. When I left home, it was a long time before I could trust anyone-." She cuts herself off, looking away. "And she had it worse. I always knew that I could get away, if I had to. She didn't have that. It'll take a while-."

Our heads snap around as the door opens and Ms Graves walks in, just ahead of Lex.

Time for the professional stuff, then.

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A Star Reborn 26

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17th April

10:45 GMT -5

I step towards him as he comes fully into the room, my right hand extended. "Lex, good to see you."

The used car salesman smile is firmly in place as he takes my hand. "Likewise." He releases his grip and indicates the soft furnishings with his left. "Please, take a seat."

Heh. "I'd flatten those. Just a moment." High pressure office environment full of stressed people? There we go. The yellow strobes flick out over one of the soft leather chairs, fortifying the structure. "Right." I step away and carefully lower myself onto it. Gives slightly.. and… Yes. "You've got to remember, Lex, I weigh about two-fifths of a ton. Normal chairs just can't take the pressure."

Lex's eyes remain focused on my face while on the other hand Ms Graves' eyes flick uncontrollably to Jade. "I'll be sure to bear that in mind. Now." He sits down opposite while Ms Graves takes up position behind him. Jade remains where she was, hands unencumbered. She's -probably- a better fighter than Ms Graves, but doesn't have any of the personal assistant skills that have made her opposite number the de facto number two of LexCorp. "The Star Conqueror situation."

"The Atlantean study has been indefinitely suspended and the people involved are in hospital. All the Star Conquerors I encountered were completely disintegrated, no organic activity left. All examples of Starro-tech were also destroyed, with all members of the Atlantean expedition and the LexCorp research team accounted for."

He nods. "No records exist which could be used to prove any control connection between that laboratory and LexCorp."

"I assume you know how much Superman wants there to be and how much effort Batman will put into checking."

"I didn't get where I am today by leaving loose ends. Preliminary medical reports-" He holds out his right hand and Ms Graves puts a manila folder into it. "-indicate short term memory loss. They're being discreetly monitored, but I don't think that we will have anything to worry about on that front."

I nod. "The League suffered short term memory loss after we removed their Starro-tech at New Year, and the Green Lantern Corps' data on Star Conquerors confirms that it's normal for their liberated hosts."

"Their medical insurance was provided by a LexCorp subsidiary, so it will be easy for me to keep tabs on their recovery. Should I expect them to suffer any lingering effect of the aliens' presence?"

"You mean, will they identify with the Star Conquerors?" A shallow nod. I shake my head. "No, that never happens. And if the Star Conquerors had had time to fully reorder their thoughts they wouldn't have recovered. Assuming they follow the usual recovery pattern, they'll suffer a short term fugue with associated confusion, then nightmares, before gradually returning to their pre-infestation state. They should have made as full a recovery as they're going to within two months. Though it might be worth having a magic user examine them in case the chaos magic involved in the Starro-tech has some further effect."

Lex nods. "The Justice League has already sent Giovanni Zatara to examine them. Apparently, he didn't find anything." He puts the folder down on a coffee table. "Are there any other Star Conquerors under the Arctic ice?"

I shake my head. "There's no way to tell for certain without melting the whole ice cap. Any Star Conquerors still in there would have almost no metabolic or psychic activity and they know how to shield themselves from ring scans. I've planted some sensor drones and I'm sure that the Atlanteans will keep an eye out... That's really the best we can do."

"And if they appear elsewhere?"

"Yes, we need to talk about that. Lex, I really don't think that further investigation into the Star Conquerors is a sensible course of action."

"We can hardly protect ourselves through ignorance, Grayven."

"Star Conquerors are capable of interstellar telepathic communication. Telekinetic faster than light travel. The one that fled me might just have been trying to get away. Equally, it might have been going for reinforcements, or… My greatest fear, is that it was leaving in order to reactivate one of the really big ones."

He takes a moment to absorb that. "How big do they get?"

"Planetoid size. The Green Lanterns call them 'Mother Stars'. One of those anywhere near Earth, and this planet would be covered in Star Conquerors and that would be the end of Human civilisation. And if I'd been slower or a little unlucky, that could well have happened. Lex, I joined the Light because Humans aren't living up to their potential and I want to make that happen. I don't mind taking risks, either of my person or my resource base, but… For a fairly nebulous possible benefit, you risked everything to study these creatures."

"You disapprove."

"Risk and reward should be proportionate, and losing completely is not acceptable. Lex, I'm your alien guy. You don't have anyone working for you who knows more about this than I do. I accept that when this study started you didn't know quite what you were getting into, but once I fully joined the Light? You should have brought this to my attention."

"If you feel excluded from my decision making-."

"It's not about my feelings, Lex. It's about making effective use of our resources. LexCorp is your thing, I'm not disputing that. I don't.. expect you to share every little thing with me, but when it concerns the very reason why you brought me onto the Light in the first place, surely it makes sense to talk to me about it. Just as a consultant."

His eyes dip momentarily, then he nods. "You make a good point. I'll have a précis put together for you by Wednesday."

"Thank you. There are powers in this galaxy which humanity is not ready to joust with. Someday." I nod. "Hopefully sooner rather than later, but not yet."

"I am in your debt for preventing our reach exceeding our grasp. If there's anything I can do to repay-?"

"Yes, about that. I already know what I want in return." He raises his eyebrows slightly. "The Genomorphs."

"That's a… Fairly big ticket item."

"I don't want to own them. I want to know where they came from." I flick my hands upwards. "A functioning artificial intelligence in the nineteen thirties? Alright. It's surprising, but the circuitry which made it possible existed and a genius like Doctor Morrow could have come up with the programming. Interplanetary teleportation by zeta tube? Again, once you identify zeta radiation, quite possible. But a fully synthetic organic life form? If they'd been… Modified Humans, then I could credit it. They're not. They're novel. Humans don't have the technology to do that, and even if they did none of the Cadmus staff have the outstanding brilliance necessary for them to… Effectively do all the work in their heads. So, where did the original biological specimens come from?" Lex sucks in a breath. "Lex, if you've been raiding alien worlds I need to know about it."

"No, no." He smiles, shaking his head. "Nothing of the sort. Earth has no need to invade alien worlds for research material. Not when so many of them come here."

"Earth has had a statistically unusual number of visitors."

"As a boy, I found them fascinating. After I made my first few million, I began buying up alien artifacts, meteorites… At the start it was just a hobby. Then, Superman moved to Metropolis and I decided to take it a little more seriously."

"I'm sorry, can I just check: you know his name, right? Klarion had access-."

"Kal-El. But, yes, I know that he masquerades as Clark Kent." He chuckles. "It's funny, actually. One of my intelligence analysts correctly deduced his identity years ago using a facial recognition program. I fired her. It simply didn't seem plausible to me, that a man that powerful would choose to hide himself among mortal men." He sits back a little. "I'd apologise to her, but that would rather give the game away."

"So..?"

"My xenotechnology division was set up in order to study the alien materials and technology. Most of it was so badly damaged that we couldn't learn much. On the other hand, one meteorite I came to possess contained a minute fragment of what is now called kryptonite. Other pieces gave my company a notable advantage in several fields. But the one I found most… Puzzling, came from Cerro Galán in Argentina. Most of it was a fairly standard iron-nickel meteorite, but there were tiny grey.. fragments in it that were made of a far harder material. When they were fully analyzed, their physical structure was something like bone, but stronger than anything Human science can create. It took years of painful and extremely expensive investigative work before we could be certain, but it was once part of a living creature. The first Genomorphs were a result of our attempts to clone… Whatever it was."

"The G-Prometheans?"

"It didn't have anything quite like Human genetics, and my employees didn't have a complete organism to base their work on. But, yes, that was where the project started. Genomorph physiology proved quite mutable. The alternate forms are genuinely the work of the scientists of Project Cadmus. But their start.. came from somewhere out in space. And if you don't recognise it, it must have been a curious life form indeed."

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A Star Reborn 27

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17th April

15:12 GMT -5

Lex is swivelling his chair around as I approach his office window, his right hand held up slightly to forestall any action from the security team who are charging through the outer doors. I wave my left hand and then raise it to my ear.

Ring, dial.

Compliance.

Lex smiles slightly as the phone on his desk rings. Not that I can hear it from out here. He doesn't pick it up though. Instead, he negligently holds his right hand out to the side while continuing to observe me.

"Lex Luthor's office."

"Ms Graves, pleasure to hear your voice again. Orange Lantern two eight one four here."

"Good afternoon, Orange Lantern. If you can wait a moment I'll see if Mister Luthor is available."

"You know I can see him through the… Never mind." Huh. "Actually, while I've got you." I turn to my right, looking out across the city. And making it harder for anyone inside the building to read my lips. "Have you given any more thought to the cybernetic upgrade I offered you? I've acquired a few new options since I first made my offer."

"Thank you, but I am quite happy with the arm I have."

"But you could be more than happy. And that's what I'm all about: wanting stuff. I mean, look at your boss. He's rich beyond the dreams of ninety nine percent of the world's population, is in charge of a huge multinational company, but does he stop wanting stuff?" I realise that I've floated out of sight to the people inside the office and turn around to float back the other way. "Does he ever say 'okay, I've got enough now, time to spend the rest of my life playing golf'? No, he doesn't. There's always something new to want, and you can want a better arm."

No immediate response.

"Come on." I turn my empathic vision up a little. "I can see how much you'd like to never have to feel that slight.. pull you get when you wake up in the morning and-."

"Orange Lantern, are you trying to buy off my staff?"

"No, Lex. No. I'm trying to give a gift to an attractive single woman. Nothing untoward going on at all."

"Perhaps you could try to do that out of office hours?"

"Oh, please. She takes as many days off a year as you do."

"Amusing as this is..?"

"Right. Would you mind if I came in? I've got something rather serious-" I stop outside his window and turn to face it again. "-to talk to you about."

"By all means. I had the window redesigned to slide open after Superman's first unscheduled-" I phase and float forwards, passing through the window. "-visit. Ah." I lower my left hand and he puts down his phone as I walk around to the 'guest' side of his desk. He swivels his chair back around to face me. "What can I do for you?"

"Had a… Spot of bother yesterday."

"Yes, I heard. Giant.. Starfish aliens? Were you able to destroy all of them?"

"No. Most, but… A few of the smaller ones got away. We're looking, but I'd honestly be surprised if we located them by anything other than pure luck before they choose to reveal themselves."

"That's a little concerning."

"If you know a better way to find them, I'm all ears. But that's… All really tangential to why I'm here. Last time the League encountered these creatures, a scientist by the name of Stirling Roquette was crucial to us developing a way to immunise people against the form of mental control they were using. After the thing in Gotham I went to see her again, and… She had an early nanoforge prototype."

"I'd.. heard about her research. I hadn't realized things were quite that advanced."

"I hadn't either. To be honest, I'd rather stopped thinking about her. She's agreed to meet up with some other inventors of my acquaintance for a brainstorming session. You know, cross fields, see if they can help each other."

"I assume that this will be happening in KordTech?" I nod. "LexCorp wasn't developing anything in the weather control field, so I don't have to try downplaying the significance of his most recent product launch. I was actually quite impressed."

"It's like I told you when we first met. Tiny amounts of magic can improve conventional technology in so many ways… Thing is… I like Ted Kord. I like him a lot. But he's… He's a good engineer. A good scientist. I've seen him in action as a salesman and it's inspiring. He conveys his genuine enthusiasm for the product brilliantly and keeps his spiel to a technical level the audience can understand. He'd be a good project leader. But as a manager? As the head of a company? He's terrible. He's basically had to appoint someone to do the actual CEO work because as soon as something 'cool' comes in he can't resist heading down to the workshop to play with it himself. He tries to micromanage rather than letting the extremely capable people who work for him get on with it…"

Lex looks politely puzzled. "I'm not sure that I can help you with that. Unless you're.. trying to jump ship from your own creation?"

"No. That's the sad thing. I'm not." I sigh. "Because you'd be perfect for it. I look at you and I can see -I'm talking literally here- your desire to use all the tools of capitalism to strengthen the Human species. You're a far better manager than he is… I'd like to be able to give this to you. But I can't."

"Because your peers disapprove of me?"

"Because you're a member of the Light."

Four seconds pass as he regards me. "I'm afraid that I don't know who or what that is."

"Lex, if I could prove anything I'd have brought the police with me. I can't. There's no way you don't know that they exist, and if you weren't a member they'd be a threat to you and you'd be feeding me the information I'd need to destroy them. So you're a member. Maybe the leader, maybe not. Maybe they don't have one." I sigh. "But Savage is a member, and he was involved in that Ice Fortress thing last year. Which means that any technology a Light member gets their hands on would most likely end up getting used for something puerile rather than something productive. The sheer waste of resources used in a failed assassination attempt which -even if it had worked- would only have provided them with a marginal benefit… And I know they were studying Star Conquerors, and it looks a lot like they suffered a fairly critical containment failure. And as a result, we've got a species that the Green Lantern Corps had trouble with loose on a world ill equipped to handle them."

My eyes drift away slightly. "On my home parallel, there's a television series. It doesn't exist here. It's called 'Avatar: the Legend of Korra'. In the setting, there are people who can manipulate the classical elements: earth, air, fire and water. Each of the four ethnic groups have an affinity for one element, and the skills and modes of thought required to use it define their culture. Now, when I first saw it, I thought that anyone from the right tribe could learn to manipulate their element, just by studying the signature martial art. So, everyone had the same potential and it was just a matter of spending the time and effort. But by the time Legend of Korra started, it was clear that that wasn't the case. People were born with the ability or not. Those who had it could learn to improve it, but if you didn't have it, tough luck. So in the city the series is set in, there's an element manipulating criminal syndicate and the police force only recruit element users of one type. And unsurprisingly, that causes a great deal of resentment."

"The main bad guy in series one is the leader of the anti-elementalist movement. He's a water manipulator himself, but his hate is genuine and he can use his abilities to permanently remove the element control abilities of others. Thing is, it never occurred to him that he could use the exact same ability to give element control abilities to people who didn't have it. Assuming they didn't resist, it would only have taken him about thirty seconds a time. If he'd done that, everyone would have access to all the things that the elementalists could do, and if they chose not to develop those abilities… Fine. But he was too busy hating himself and encouraging others to hate that he never stopped to consider the alternatives."

I return my attention to Lex. "I want the Earth to be able to stand on its own two feet in the galaxy. I don't want it to be dependent on superhumans any more than you do, not ultimately. So: please. Tell me who the Light are. Tell me where they are. I'll go after them immediately. I'll destroy the whole organisation root and branch and destroy any evidence linking them to you. You won't be implicated at all. And then we can work on this objective we share together, without any of those short sighted idiots undermining it the whole time."

"Please."

Lex's eyes shift momentarily to his desk, and then return to me. "I'm sorry, Orange Lantern. I really can't help you."

I nod. I really shouldn't have expected him to… "Okay then." I stand. "Thank you for your time."

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NEXT CHAPTER

Demeanour

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Demeanour 1

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Demeanour

18th April

08:06 GMT -5

I slump slightly on the settee, staring blankly at the television screen. I think I'm watching one of those long running American situation comedies, the ones that aren't actually funny but use so much canned laughter they sometimes trick you into forgetting. The Earth 16 version of Two and a Half Men or Everyone Loves Raymond. Or whatever.

"Hey guysssss." The air displacement from Wallace's arrival blows past me. Huh. I'm a little surprised that he's here this early. "Ahh, is Oh El still moping?"

The noise generated by the movement of Kon's pen across his homework momentarily pauses. "Uh huh."

"Oh-kay." Kon's pen resumes its motion as Wallace walks past the kitchen table and into the living area. I don't turn around as he plops himself down in the armchair to my right. "Hey."

"Good morning Wallace."

"What're you watchin'?"

"Whatever this is."

Out of the corner of my eye I see him carefully watching my face, trying to gauge my mood. "Still bummed out about Luthor, huh?"

"Mm."

"You don't think you were being… Kinda optimistic there?"

I sigh. "If only he'd been a little more avaricious."

"I thought Lex Luthor was all about avarice."

"No, he… Isn't."

He leans forwards slightly. "So.. what is it based on?"

"He's… Red, yellow and.. green. The base is red. He's… His core personality was formed in anger. "

"Doesn't seem very angry to me. I've seen pictures… You know, after Superman stopped him doing whatever he was trying to do… He always looks calm, or… A bit angry, but I've seen Uncle Barry's rogues after they get taken down. They get.. seriously angry. Luthor always looks like he's just shrugging it off."

"No, I mean-. He's not angry. I mean, the way he thinks is.. defined by anger. Some time… When he was young, something made him so angry that he's never stopped thinking like that."

"Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny."

"In his case… Yeah." I shuffle slightly on my seat. "He picked a fight with Superman when he first arrived in Metropolis because he literally can't stand the idea of there being someone he can't take down. It's like, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, The Ugliest Man. He can't stand the idea of there being someone looking down on him and judging him."

Kon's pen stops again. "Didn't the Ugliest Man kill God for doing that?"

Wallace blinks. "Huh?"

"In 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra' by Friedrich Nietzsche, The Ugliest Man is a nihilist who hasn't learned how to create values or ideals for himself, but has genuinely rejected the ones normal in his society. 'Killing God' is.. probably a metaphor for rejecting the idea of revealed truth. For him, the morality of the church is at best one man's opinion and at worst an active attempt to deceive. But, without it, he can't really function."

"So you're saying… Luthor didn't take your offer because… You're too powerful?"

"I'm not sure. It could be that, it could be because he just can't accept something that good happening. Just.. instinctively suspicious. Or.. it might be that he's genuinely committed to the Light and is just taking the things he doesn't like them doing in his stride." I sag. "I just.. really hoped he would. At this point he's seen enough of what I'm doing to know-. In his head, to know that I mean what I say. He knows that the people I've brought together are producing genuinely revolutionary technology and are actually doing things with it. I should embody the things he likes about the Light better than they do, and without the baggage. It just.. didn't happen."

"What you gunna do now?"

"Nothing I can do. I can't make a stronger pitch than I did yesterday. I'll just… Keep doing what I'm doing and hope he comes around. Which he won't."

"I'm not really seeing how 'less Luthor' is a bad thing."

"He knows how international business works. He's a great organiser and he's genuinely committed to bettering the lot of the Human species. He'd have.. been a great help. But it's not going to happen." I raise my left hand slightly, unnecessarily pointing the ring at the television to turn it off. "So… Yeah. You..? Still on for tomorrow?"

"Psh, ye-ah. You really think my healing potions are something that can… You know, go all the way? I mean, they get a lot less effective if they're a couple of days old. They're not really something you can store."

"Sephtian can probably come up with some sort of enchanted bottle that can get around that. Prevent them losing their potency. Or…" Huh. "We could try seeing what happens when old potions are exposed to the purple healing ray?" I slump. "Sorry, I'm not really feeling the… Uplift revolution at the moment."

"You got a spare one of those purple ray things in your workshop, right?"

"Yeah. Um. All yours. Just.. don't try it on yourself without someone else being there."

"Obviously." He turns to his left, looking at the table where our team mates are hard at work. "You two looking forward to visiting Mars?"

"Um. Kinda… Nervous, actually. Meeting M'gann's family for the first time… Plus I.. can't actually breathe the air on Mars."

"Conner. I'm sure my parents will love you. I'm.. just.. not sure how they're going to feel about me."

Wallace looks puzzled. "Why? Because you haven't seen them for nearly a year?"

"I didn't exactly tell them I was leaving. Uncle J'onn checked with them after he found out I was on his ship, but…"

I half turn on the sofa so that I can actually see them as Kon reaches out with his right hand, laying it on M'gann's left. "They'll be fine. If they were really upset, they'd have said so when he told them."

"I'm…" Her head droops a little. "I'm not sure that them not being worried at all really makes me any happier. When you've got as many brothers and sisters as I have it's easy to get lost in the shuffle."

Wallace turns back to me. "You just dropping them off and coming back..?"

"No. I think… As a Sector Lantern, I should introduce myself to the Martian government. See if there's anything they want me to do for them. And I need to hear officially what they want to do about the whole 'Burning Martian' thing. And, it'll be my first time interacting with an alien civilisation in their own territory. Um, do you have any plans for spring break?"

"You bet I do! Once my homework's done I'm gunna hit the streets of Central City with Uncle Barry. He even said that if things are quiet I can handle it on my own!"

"Shame Artemis, Richard and Zatanna aren't off until next week."

"Yeah. Well." He shrugs. "It was the same last year. Y'know, for Rob."

"Geography done." Kon's pen clatters as he drops it on the table. "I'm free for the rest of the week."

Wallace looks around, frowning. "Seriously?"

Kon shrugs. "What can I say? The Genomorphs were pretty thorough."

"You know, they were looking for Human volunteers for knowledge implantation. If you're interested..?"

"Aaaaaaah…. Think I'll pass."

back

Demeanour 2

next

19th April

10:27 GMT -6

I smile as Guy steps through the boom tube, power ring crackling. "Lantern Gardner. Welcome to my home."

"Hey… Gray…" Guy looks around, as if-.

"Oh, come on Guy, I wasn't going to invite you here and then ambush you."

"Yeah, well." His eyes return to me. "You kinda come with a warnin' label these days."

I nod, the corners of my mouth turned down. "So I should stop holding my breath for an apology from King Orin?"

He frowns. "Apology? What for?"

"I am -effectively- the Apokoliptian ambassador to Earth, and he -the Atlantean head of state- did punch me in the face in an unprovoked attack. And then needed me to bail him out after the big Star Conqueror mind blasted him." Guy tilts his head forwards slightly, his eyebrows raised. "I'm not saying I was expecting flowers or anything, but a verbal acknowledgement beyond a grunt would be nice."

He shakes his head. "Gray, you're a part'a the Light now. You should be grateful he just punched you."

"Oh? I thought the League had principles. Ideals you held to above what an ordinary man on the street might reasonably be expected to do. King Orin punched me because he allowed his passions to override his reason, not because I was doing something for the Light. Heck-" I spread my arms out, indicating the room. "-it's not like I'm hiding. If you want to make an accusation, do it. I turned up in court when my life was on the line. I'd gladly do it for a lesser charge."

"Yeah, that's what Luthor says too."

"And he would. You see, Guy-" I turn, draping my right arm over his shoulder and leading him out of the embarkation room and into the rest of the base. "-being the 'good guy' is rather dependent on you doing certain things and not doing certain others."

He brushes off my arm, but keeps walking with me. "You do remember that time they killed thousands of kids, right?"

"I remember that time Klarion did and they called me in to kill him. You remember how the rest of the Justice League stood around like lemons when Nabu demanded Giovanni Zatara serve as his host-slave?"

"And that time they mind controlled the Justice League?"

"You remember that time we proved that the Guardians of the Galaxy wiped out nearly all life on Mars? And left mind control tech in all its inhabitants up to the modern day?" I glance at him, left eyebrow raised. "Whose ring is that you're wearing?"

"They were tryin' t'do the right thing and they fucked up. It's not the same as doin' it deliberately."

I nod. "Tell me: all that technology I added to the Watchtower in order to prevent a repeat of New Year. Any of it still there?" Guy glowers. "Thought not. I'll be sure to let the rest of the Light know that you're wide open again."

"I ain't on the League. I asked around on Oa and Salaak agreed to upgrade the Watchtower."

I nod approvingly. "Good initiative, Guy. I approve. And I hope that the League do as well." Okay, now to ease off. "While you're here… I realise that it's expected, so I'll ask. If you're interested in switching teams-"

"I'm not."

"-I've got a thing for redheads."

He stops dead, his mouth hanging open slightly in shock. I make a clicking noise in the left side of my mouth and wiggle my eyebrows.

His eyes narrow slightly and his mouth opens and closes silently a couple of times. Then he closes his eyes, shaking his head and chuckling quietly. "Oh, fuck you, Gray."

"Yeah, sorry. Redheads are overrated. Burn too easily." I carry on down the corridor, heading towards the meeting room. "But anyway, I'm sure there's a reason why you've finally taken up my invitation."

"The League wanna know what you're doin' in Darfur."

"Very little."

"If you wan'ed me to believe that, you shouldn't a' used a boom tube."

"But.. some employees of mine have been working there. We were about to do a debriefing. Would you like to sit in?"

"Yeah. Probably should. You know you got no authority to be there, right?"

"What, I don't have the permission of a government that's been a party to genocide for… Five years now? Imagine how that undermines my righteousness. Guy, I stopped going to your meetings because I've stopped being so angry. I stopped being so angry because I don't have to put up with the Justice League any longer. They had years, did nothing, and now sent you to protest my actions."

I reach out and press the door open button set into the wall. The security membrane in front of us fades out, giving us access to the room within. The League may like to use heavily reinforced doors for things like that, but security membranes combine the strengths of physical barriers and force fields without undermining the strength of the surrounding walls by having them slide into a slot. Unlike a force field the membrane will stay functional without an external power source and this one is exceedingly resilient.

"Hello girls." Miss Amane jumps to her feet, Miss Shimmer looks up for a moment and frowns at Guy while Lynne keeps playing with the wrist mounted quantum computer I got her for her birthday.

Just a little more advanced than Richard's.

I stride into the room and plonk myself down in my chair. "Lantern Gardner's going to sit in on this one. Just to find out how badly you've broken international law." Miss Amane is still standing, hands behind her back in an approximation of parade rest. "Iname, you may be seated."

"Thank you, Master!"

Guy's still hovering near the door. "Grayven, how old are these girls?"

I point to Miss Amane with my right forefinger. "Eighteen." To Lynne. "Twelve. And before you say anything, how old was Robin?" That gives him pause. "And…" My finger wavers a little at Miss Shimmer. "Miss Shimmer, how old are you again?"

"In Earth-years? I dunno."

"You're an alien?" She nods. "What planet 're you from?"

"We never really had a name for it. Grayven keeps calling it 'Wilson' and-" Minor glare at me. "-he won't tell me why."

"You don't have a name for it? So, what, you're pre-spaceflight?"

"I'm not sure. That depends on exactly where space starts. But not with spaceships or anything like that."

"Do you know whereabouts your homeworld is?"

She nods. "In a parallel universe." She looks at me. "Am I going to have to explain this every time?"

"No, Guy can put it in a report and then the League will all know."

Guy takes a seat next to me. "What kinda parallel-?"

"I used to be a Pony. A Unicorn. My home country is called Equestria and the majority of-."

Guy leans closer to me. "Grayven, is she-?"

She glowers. "I'm not crazy, and don't talk about me like I'm not here."

"Unless you can think of another reason for her native language to consist entirely of equine noises, it's highly probable that she's being accurate in her description. Also, I was there while her portal was open and her understanding of magic is far more advanced than any surface worlder of her age on Earth."

"Okay. Err…" He looks at Miss Shimmer. "So how come you're Human?"

"The stupid portal turned me into one. I just hope it turns me back when I go through again."

"How're you finding being Human?"

"It's horrible! I'm nearly bald, I can barely feel magic at all, I go into heat every month and I keep falling over because I've only got two legs! Two! And no tail!"

Guy clearly doesn't know how to respond to that.

"Okay girls. What have you been up to in Darfur?"

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Demeanour 3

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19th April

10:34 GMT -6

"…tested it carefully, and it turns out that just so long as Lynne doesn't keep up contact for more than a few seconds, anyone whose mind she touches recovers after an hour or two."

Curiously, the other two appear to be deferring to Miss Shimmer. I suppose -coming as she does from a planet of magic-using Ponies- she's far more experienced in these matters than either of them. The United States 50's military were trying to train Lynne in these matters but I suppose they didn't get particularly far before she was hauled off by SHADE.

"It wasn't too hard to use your drones to let us target individual warbands, then we could stun them. Once they were out of it, Iname could run through a boom tube, take all their weapons and food and move them somewhere else."

"Which groups in particular?"

"At the start of the war, rebels mostly targeted the government military and the government's militias mostly targeted civilians. But now, they're all pretty bad even if some are worse. So, we hit everyone we could find."

I nod. "And whereabouts were they taken?"

Miss Amane smiles. "I gave the food to the refugees."

"And the weapons?"

"Yes, those too. Just in case."

"That might create problems later, but I can follow the logic." I nod at Miss Shimmer. "Carry on."

"There was one group it didn't work on. They had a dark wizard with them, and he could protect them from Lynne's power." She creases her face in distaste. "He did it with the spirits of people he'd killed. I don't know exactly how his spell worked, but anything she did he somehow made his spirits get hurt instead of the people he was with. He knew we were watching, and he made them visible so we'd know what was happening. He had..." She shudders. "Bodies nailed to wooden pillars around their campsite…"

"Sounds like someone thoroughly in need of a good hard killing. Did you do it, or do you want me to-."

"No, he's dead."

"And how did you manage that?"

"I welded a knife onto one of your drones and made it fly into him at the speed of sound."

Guy's looking steadily more and more uneasy. I -on the other hand- just feel curious. "And what made you do that?"

"Celestia didn't mind me reading stuff on how to fight against dark magic. I recognised the sort of spell he was using. It only works against magic." She glances at Lynne. "And other supernatural attacks too, I guess. From how he looked I think he could probably have survived being shot, so what we did had to technically be mundane while still being very powerful."

"Sensible. What next?"

"They were… They were the worst group. And… We decided that we needed to make an example of some people…"

Miss Amane nods emphatically. "Otherwise they would just go home, pick up more weapons and come back."

"So I destroyed their minds. Permanently."

That's the first time Lynne's spoken in this debriefing. I feel a little concern as I carefully watch her, trying to work out how she feels about that. Obviously I want her to be able to kill people if she decides that it is the appropriate response, but I also want her not to be afraid of her own abilities.

"Okay, and how do you feel about that?"

"I saw the bodies. If I let them go, they'd just kill more people. Wasn't that what you said would happen?"

I nod. "It's what I would have expected to happen."

Guy actually shudders. "Grayven, Lynne, that's…"

"Guy, you got that ring in two thousand and three. That was the year that the Darfur War started. At any point you could have got involved. You didn't. I handed the matter over to three teenaged girls because I had more faith in their ability to resolve it than I did in yours. And they did. Miss Shimmer?"

"Um, well, we… We had some G-Trolls take the bodies down and bury them. That was.. all the fighting groups dealt with. That just left the politicians." She looks down for a moment. "There had to be a lot of people involved in organising it. Probably more who knew what was happening. But there were only three who had international arrest warrants. Iname cut Ali Kushayb in half while he was surrounded by his bodyguard."

Miss Amane nods. "He was the most evil."

"I used the drone's purple death ray on Ahmed Haroun and Lynne-."

Guy's eyes widen. "You gave President Omar al-Bashir a stroke on national television."

Lynne nods. "Yes. I did."

I nod. Hit all the major points there, I think. "Alright. Leave a few drones on observation duty and keep an eye on both what they see and on the news."

Miss Amane smiles, her eyes shining with joy. "Did we do the right thing, Master?"

"By your evaluative criteria of minimising death total while maximising effect, you probably did. I'd have been more overt and argued my point publically, but remaining unseen has its advantages-."

"That's..! That's it?!" Guy's staring at me. "You just had your girls kill a load of people, and you think they probably did the right thing?"

"Nothing can be completely predicted in advance." I gesture and a holoprojector comes to life, flicking rapidly through a series of Sudanese government documents. "Between observation scans and data intercepts, I have more than enough evidence here to convince me that they were involved in orchestrating mass murder. What did you want us to do?"

"If they had international arrest warrants, you coulda grabbed them and handed them over!"

I shake my head. Poor, innocent fool. "Guy, on Earth Prime there was a man named Slobodan Milosevic. He was president of a place called Serbia, it doesn't exist on this Earth. He was charged with being involved in commissioning genocide in nineteen ninety nine and finally handed over to the Hague in two thousand and one. Six years later he died of a heart attack, still a free man, having used every delaying tactic he could to stymie justice. Explain to me the virtue of obeying such a clearly dysfunctional system."

He regards me with growing horror.

"You know… Now I think about it…" Miss Shimmer taps her chin with her right forefinger. "The same thing happens in Equestria. I read up on dozens of ancient evils that Princess Celestia banished or imprisoned, but I don't remember anything about her flat out killing any of them. Which means that eventually they're going to get out. And given that they were bad enough to make Celestia angry enough to do that in the first place… They'll just go back to whatever they were doing. Hurting more Ponies. Which means that the whole thing was pointless. Huh." Her gaze grows a little distant, a small frown creasing her brow. "When I go back, I'll have to ask her about that."

I give her a stern look. "Aaaaah?"

"Oh. Um. And.. try to.. kill them myself?"

I nod. "Better."

"Grayven, this isn't right. They're.. kids."

"No, Guy. What isn't right is the innocent living in fear while the guilty reign triumphant and unimpeachable. I'd hoped that your father taught you that lesson."

He snarls. "Don't go there, Grayven."

"What? He beat you constantly as a boy and the Baltimore police department gave him a hero's funeral. Just? I rather doubt it." I shake my head. "You know Lynne's past, and Iname and Miss Shimmer are both legally adult. They solved a problem no one else was willing to with a minimal level of force. And if you try giving me disingenuous shit about it I'll treat you the same way I did Diana when she tried that."

"And… What exactly do you think is gunna happen now?"

"Girls?"

Miss Amane smiles and activates the holo display.

"…calling it 'a miracle' this morning, as fighting stopped all across Darfur. The reason? Early this morning every single gun vanished from the militias' hands." A picture of refugees celebrating. "Combined with the deaths of the men whom many believe to be the leading architects of this brutal conflict, it seems that this conflict might finally have been brought to a close. As to where this miracle came from, no one knows. The sheer scale of the task suggested the involvement of the Justice League, but they have so far not given official comment."

Miss Shimmer nods, and Miss Amane turns it off again. Miss Shimmer then turns her full attention to Guy. "With everyone in the area disarmed, an African Union or UN peacekeeping force could keep things under control. The Vice President can run the north and the south can peacefully secede. No one could have done this with a body count this low except the Justice League and they didn't want to stop it. So… Yeah. What I think is going to happen now is a lot less killing than would have happened without us." I smile. "Good work girls."

back

Demeanour 4

next

19th April

13:58 GMT -5

"Recognised, Orange Lantern, B zero six."

"Hey Paul!" That's a little odd. Ted was waiting for me just outside the zeta tube. The fact that there's a zeta tube on top of the KordTech building isn't a secret secret, but it isn't supposed to be common knowledge. He usually just waits inside the building.

"Good afternoon, Ted." I give his proffered hand a quick shake, and… He's putting his left arm around my shoulders. Okay, now I know something's not right. Behind his back I take my rune stone out of subspace while giving him a ring scan. No magic detected and no anomalies, aside from a slightly elevated heart rate. "Is something going on?"

"Lots of things are going on! We're, we're busy people."

"Okay. Ah, just a moment." I generate a zeta tube construct and then hold my left hand up to my left ear. "Okay Wallace, you can come through now."

A slightly tricky decision, but I think it was the right one. If he does this as Kid Flash then he can use the zeta tube whenever he wants. But -since none of the people we're meeting are on the 'approved for secret identities' list- he can't take his mask off or use any money he makes from mass production of his potions in his civilian guise. The alternative is coming here as Wallace West each time. No problem with people knowing his identity -unless someone tries kidnapping him for his alchemical knowledge I suppose- and no problem with him benefiting financially from his own work.

Unfortunately, that means that he can't use the zeta tube which so helpfully announces his identity to come here, because we can't think of a justification for 'Wallace West, intelligent but basically normal high school student' to have access to the League's secure transportation system. He can get the next nearest tube and run here… Though getting a bus or a taxi would be a better idea. Super speed might conceal the user's identity from everything but ultra speed cameras but the fact that someone is using it is very obvious.

Huh, kind of odd, that. At the moment regular people working out his identity is a bigger problem than supervillains doing it because the most notable supervillains already know.

Anyway, there are only so many times I can 'drop him off' here before it starts to look odd, so he's probably not going to be able to attend the weekly meetings. That and school. But a healing potion has such obvious utility that I couldn't not make this happen.

There's a flare of light and Wallace appears, dressed in the least superheroic way he could manage, carrying a satchel for his computer and a padded case for his samples. He blinks a little theatrically and looks around at the New York skyline, rube-ing it up magnificently. "Whaw."

"Hey there Wallace." Ted removes his arm and walks over to greet Wallace. "Paul said you had a healing potion for us?"

"Mister Kord? Ah, whaw." Wallace turns towards Ted and transfers his carry case to his left hand to shake Ted's hand. This action causes his satchel strap to slide from his shoulder and he scrambles to catch it with the hand now carrying the case. He awkwardly manages it, keeping hold of the strap as he shakes Ted's hand.

Think he may have taken the 'Clark Kenting' lessons a little too to heart.

"Just 'Ted' is fine, Wallace."

"Oh, okay. Um, just call me Wally. Everyone apart from Orange Lantern and my grandma do."

"Alright. I just.. need a quick word with Orange Lantern. Why don't… You take the stairs down. Janine can show you where we're meeting."

"Okay! Thanks Mister.. Ted."

Still giving it the 'innocent high school student' Wallace heads towards the stairs, rearranging the strap on his shoulder and looking back as if he's so totally thrilled to meet Ted that he doesn't quite believe that it's happening. He even does the Clark Kent thing of actually walking into the door because he isn't looking where he's going.

Ted leans closer to me. "Where'd you meet him?"

"Central City. I was at the university, talking to them about Leonard Snart. Pretty much just bumped into him."

Ted frowns slightly. "Doesn't Central City have a 'Doctor Alchemy'?"

"Sort of. The military took his 'Philosopher's Stone'-" And aren't interested in talking about it. Even I'm not sure where they stashed it. "-and his transmutation gun requires it in order to work. As far as we know he doesn't know how to make another Stone-" Though Alan was able to tell me about a couple of its former owners. "-so he isn't currently much of a threat. He used to be a chemistry teacher but as far as we've been able to tell he doesn't actually know anything about alchemy."

Ted frowns. "Name's kinda misleading."

"He originally called himself 'Mister Element'. If it makes you feel happier you can call him that."

"Wait, he wasn't a real doctor either?"

"Ted, you said you wanted to talk to me about something?"

"Oh, yeah. Yeah. That. Okay. Um… Well, the good news is that we managed to build a suit of power armor like yours with the invisibility system. And as far as we can tell, the mind altering effects are pretty minor."

"Good news. Wait, you haven't… Actually put someone in it without-."

"No! No. Well not exactly."

"Ted."

"We were doing test exposures with volunteer college students! We didn't give them power armor. That stuff's far too expensive to build a whole lot of suits for testing."

"Okay… That's a bit more reasonable."

"We did double blind short term exposure tests, they're all wearing monitors like the one's we're using to reverse engineer the Thinking Cap… They're showing signs of increased impulsiveness and a slight increase in aggression, but it's not enough to be worrying and Louis Crandell said that part of the effect only lasts a few months. I want to see if we can inoculate people with low doses before they start using it for real."

"A perfectly reasonable thing to test, but I'm kind of bracing for the bad news here."

"Iiiiit's Bobo."

"Bobo?"

"He's the Chimp we've been trying out some of our non-intrusive Thinking Cap designs on."

"Oh, how's that been going?"

"Oh, good. He can float small objects and create simple sensory illusions now."

I close my eyes, take a deep breath and then open them again. "Ted. Are you working up to telling me that there's an invisible telepathic monkey loose in New York City?"

"We don't know he's loose."

"Ted."

"'Cause, you know… He's invisible."

"Ted."

"I mean, we know he's not in his enclosure, but we're pretty sure that he thinks of the building as 'home' so he probably hasn't gone that far."

"What did we say, Ted? What did we say, when we first started this?"

"Ahhhh... No mad science?"

"Because our aim is to make people's lives better, improve the lot of the Human species and make enough money that the project is self-funding. What else?"

"You're… Fed up with well meaning scientists creating their own villains?"

"Completely fed up, Ted. Completely fed up." I squeeze my eyes shut again. "At least tell me that he hasn't got phasing or power armour."

"Why would we make power armor for an ape?"

"I don't know. Did you?"

"More of a test frame?"

"For goodness sake!"

back

Demeanour 5

next

19th April

14:05 GMT -5

Wooosaaaaaah.

I.. joked -when Ted and I started this- that we'd be lucky if we only created five supervillains doing this. That was why I insisted on detailed psychological screening for everyone who was going to be working directly with our novel equipment. It was why I upgraded his security so much. It was why each project had relatively narrow targets and anyone going off on a tangent was supposed to be reassigned!

NO. FUCKING. MAD. SCIENCE.

I was very clear. Very direct-.

Woosah.

Empathic vision on full, I take a look around the lobby. Nothing unexpected from the people around me and nothing to suggest the presence of an invisible ape. Orange lights strobe out from me as I run a full spectral scan. No, nothing on that either. On to the next location.

Seeing as how Ted's not an idiot, he's had Bobo's handlers leave a pile of fruit in his enclosure. Seeing as how Ted is probably only a little less annoyed about this than me, the handlers are in there combing each other's hair. Ted also tried to find a lady Chimpanzee, but it turns out that there aren't actually all that many Chimps in New York and most places aren't ready to turn them over for honey trap purposes.

Scan the corridor. Nothing.

Blasted Thinking Cap. If it was just invisibility I wouldn't have a problem. A weak omnidirectional pressure beam would reveal Bobo's location quickly enough. The problem is that the Thinking Cap doesn't quite do what I thought it did. After we acquired Dr. Hartford Jackson's research we found out (to my disappointment) that it isn't really a telepathy machine. It's a telekinesis machine. It can mind control people, but it does so in a fairly obvious brute force way and the one doing it doesn't get access to the contents of the victim's mind. The illusion creation function isn't as I had at first assumed a telepathic hallucination, but rather the application of what its inventor called 'mental force' on the environment, altering the properties of light in a particular area and causing false sensory feedback to anyone who touches what the user has 'created'. Oh, and it apparently increases the user's intelligence, which could well be why we're having this problem.

A few surprised faces look around as I open the door to a cubicle farm. KordTech's sales department. A lot of their stuff is special order, contracts being negotiated over a period of weeks to make sure technical reality and user expectations line up. Other stuff is actually kept in stock.

No ape.

And from the looks of things, if Bobo decides that he doesn't want to be found, it's capable of spoofing the ring.

I'm beginning to think that the Maltusians' reputation for paramount technological excellence was somewhat exaggerated.

On the other hand, Ted clearly has a non-implanted version of the technology which works. Yes. That's what I want to take away from this. And -depending on how much effort it takes to use- we might still be able to move into production. Or at least get something useful out of it. Mental illusions are useful, right? Unlike telepathy I'm not sure it's something that will be useful for me… But in power armour for general use, total invisibility would be blooming useful.

"Err, who are you?"

"Orange Lantern two eight one four." Nothing in the accounts office either. "Sorry to have bothered you."

"Is this about that Chimp that got away?"

"Yes, yes it is."

"Good luck."

I give her a polite smile. "Thank you."

Darn it! I'm not an ape behaviour specialist! But both Ted and I want this kept in house if possible and in community if not. I've never met Michael Maxwell or William Glenmorgan who are just about the only people in the superhero business who might be able to help. Bernhard Baker I've rather been avoiding, what with the whole Ambush Bug thing and how fourth wall breaking his comic was. Telepathy's an option, but M'gann is finishing her homework and making preparations for our holiday on Mars. I suppose I could pop by Gorilla City and ask for help, but I've got no idea how Bobo would react to the presence of a larger ape in his territory. Probably not well. Plus, he's been under the effect-.

Ugh.

Plus, he's probably been under the effect of the invisibility generator for a few hours. We're not exactly sure what that does to Chimpanzees, but the original version turned a well socialised laboratory assistant into a violent thief so I'm not all that hopeful. And now I'm remembering the scene in Lawnmower Man where the augmented ape tries to escape from the testing centre…

"Aaaagh!"

Theeeeere we go!

I transition into the canteen just in time to catch a table with a construct gravity plate before it can crush the startled cleaning staff. The front of a vending machine has been smashed in and something is making a mess as it rips into the goods contained within. A hungry and paranoid invisible ape.

At least it can't phase.

The table jerks off my construct and then flies back at me at full force. I create two draconic construct hands and catch it, gripping on to hold it against the force of Bobo's enhanced mental energy. I turn my head to the staff crouched down at the side of the room. "Sir, madam, I suggest leaving while the leaving's good."

They hesitate for a moment, then surge to their feet and sprint for the exit. Right, they're gone, PR restraint exercised. Ring, power armour.

Compliance.

Additional construct hands shimmer into being as chairs, tables and loose debris are hurled my way. Gas or tranquilisers, gas or tranquilisers? I send a filament in the direction of where I think he is and spray out a cloud of blue smoke. And… Nothing. Not even a traceable movement in the smoke. He doesn't want me to know where he is, so the Cap handles the rest. Correct what I thought earlier, that's bloody brilliant.

"Ooowaaah!"

Most of the debris falls from the air and while I can't see Bobo I can't really miss the heavy impact as a large Chimp wearing 'totally not power armour' slams into one of the tables I'm holding. The table cracks in two under the force but I've already interposed an orange hand to prevent Bobo coming through and striking me. Then the weight's gone. Okay, he can't fly with the Cap but he can use his telekinesis to boost his strength enough to do flying leaps. Assuming a slightly awkward fall…

Ah! Of course. I extend a construct to encompass the edges of the room and send orange lights strobing through the interior space, transmuting oxygen to nitrogen. An angry, physically active ape uses plenty of oxygen while the rings can keep me supplied without reference to local atmospheric conditions. Now I've just got to keep-.

One of the halves of the table Bobo jump kicked is suddenly shoved aside and I'm forced to create a construct shield to stop the oncoming ape train. Apes are wrestlers rather than strikers. Strong, but as long as I keep my barrier broad it should-. There's a series of impacts and it starts to crack slightly. It should hold long enough for oxygen deprivation to do its job. Then that should- There's another impact, weaker this time. -deactivate the enhancement he's getting from the Cap, which will give me the time I need to remove the armour, Cap and the invisibility module.

Something bangs on the floor, and I feel the pressure disappear from most of the tables I'm holding. Another bang, then a third, even weaker. Then a sort of gentle thump. I dismiss the floating hand constructs. Ring, add enough oxygen back into the air to prevent complete asphyxiation.

Compliance.

I extend thick probing constructs towards roughly where I think the recumbent ape is lying. They prod forwards gently, stopping when they meet solid resistance. Ape located. Pressure there and there indicates an arm and a shoulder which means that the head is here and this is the Cap. And the invisibility module is here…

A crisp covered and quite dishevelled Bobo appears on the ground in front of me. Time to get him out of this rig and back to his handlers.

back

Demeanour 6

next

20th April

08:12 GMT -5

Wolf looks up at her foster father with sad, soulful eyes.

"No."

She whines piteously.

"No. You can't come with us." Behind us, the Sphere rolls up the ramp onto the Bio-Ship. "We tried putting you in a spacesuit and you freaked out." Given how strong she is, it didn't take long for her to extricate herself. "Mars gravity is a third of Earth gravity and we can't breathe the air outside the caverns."

M'gann tilts her head to the side a little. "Um, actually? You probably won't enjoy breathing the air inside them. I mean, you could, but the pressure and gas mix are different to what you're used to."

Kon turns his head back from where he's crouched in front of his pet. "I know. I did the reading." He reaches forwards to rub Wolf's face, and she raises her right paw and lays it over his left arm. Awwwww. Kon sags slightly, then gives her a last rub of the head with his right hand and stands up. Realising that she's lost the argument, Wolf makes a low moaning noise and then lies down to sulk.

Diana looks down at the family pet with a fond smile before raising her head to look at her son. "Kon, you have no need to worry. I will take good care of her."

"Yeah, I know. It's just, this is gunna be the longest we've been apart since I got her."

She puts her hands on the big softy's shoulders before pulling him into a hug. "She will still be here when you return."

"I know. Thanks, Mom."

"It is no trouble at all." She pulls away slightly. "Are you certain that you have everything you need?"

He nods. "Environment suit, check." Essential in order to avoid low pressure assisted autodefecation. Now with House El sigil decoration. "We've got food, water, and I'll probably be sleeping in the Bio-Ship."

"You should be able to eat at least some Martian food."

He grunts softly. "I'll give it a try. Some of us can't shapeshift our stomachs."

"Not voluntarily, anyway."

Diana turns her attention to M'gann. "Please pass on an invitation to your family to visit us whenever they like."

"Oh, I will. Buuuuut I doubt they'll go for it."

"Really? Have you told them that they would not have to endure mental isolation for more than a few seconds?"

"For most Martians, leaving your home city is a big deal. Even if it wasn't actually painful, leaving… Everything behind is definitely a minority interest. Sorry."

Diana nods. "Then I will simply have to find room in my schedule to visit them." She turns to me. "Paul. I trust that you have fully versed yourself in your duties as the prince's chaperone."

For a moment I feel a small worry that there actually is such a tradition. Ring, quick review? "There isn't any such role. Themyscira doesn't have a formal age of consent-" Kon and M'gann avoid looking at each other, their cheeks colouring slightly. "-because everyone's at least two thousand years old and the relationship between father and child wasn't considered important enough to have any particular social custom."

"It was a joke, Paul."

"Oh. Ahhh. Yes. I am fully aware of my responsibilities in observing Kon and M'gann at all times to ensure that their behaviour does not violate propriety, as well as restraining the hordes of amorous Martians who will no-" Diana folds her arms across her chest and waits for me to finish. "-doubt descend upon us upon our arrival."

"Are you done?"

I think for a moment. "Mmmmmmmmmmmmmyes." I frown. "Though, thinking about it, Mister J'aarkn has had three and a half months to spread the word."

M'gann shudders. "I think that's more likely to convince people to avoid us."

"Yeah, but anyone who saw his memories and then sees us is going to think about it."

She bows her head slightly. "And if they do, I'm going to be the one who knows about it."

Kon puts his right arm around her shoulders. "If it gets too much, you could always turn into a Star Conqueror again. I don't think they even have-."

M'gann half turns and shoves him in the direction of the Bio-Ship's ramp. "Okaythanksforseeingusoffgoodbye!"

Diana smiles as Kon is hustled into the Bio-Ship. "So. Aside from preserving my son's honor, what is it that you plan to do on Mars?"

"Introduce myself to the Martian government. Mars is in two eight one four, after all. See if there's anything they need done, what they want to do about the whole Burning thing. See if I can get hold of some military grade Bio-Ship components."

"And what does M'gann think of that?"

"She wasn't keen, then the Bio-Ship caught two rounds of Starro tech. Which it wouldn't if it had defensive telekinetic fields or reactive laser interceptors. As it is I have no idea what the rules on selling Martian military equipment are."

"You could have asked J'onn."

"I did. He didn't know. Apparently it's never come up."

"Paul! We're taking off without you!"

I perform a short bow. "I will return the young prince unharmed on Saturday, Highness."

"Good journey, Orange Lantern."

I transition into the Bio-Ship cabin. The Sphere is just behind the pilot station. Kon has seated himself at the front left and Teekl has curled up in M'gann's lap where she sits on the pilot's chair. As a construct she has nothing to worry about from the Martian atmosphere, temperature or pressure. Not sure what the Martians will make of her, but then I'm not sure what they'll make of the rest of us either. Hopefully, between the White Martian warrior, the Human-Kryptonian hybrid who glows with the light of the sun and the enlightened Orange Lantern they'll be so overwhelmed with the strangeness that they won't bother commenting on her.

I sit down at the front right as M'gann triggers the hangar opening sequence and lifts the Bio-Ship off the landing platform. "Do you mind if we clear Earth's atmosphere before you transition us?"

"No problem at all." I swivel the chair around to face her as she turns the Bio-Ship nose up. "Any particular reason?"

Kon nods. "We haven't really spent much time in space. I think last time was back when you went and hid on the moon and we had to come pick you up."

"Really?"

"Yeah. And… We weren't really in the right frame of mind to enjoy it."

"Um. If you want to stop off on the moon or wherever, we can do that."

"Naah. But it might be fun to float around outside the ship for a little while."

"You do remember that you can fly, right?"

"It's not the same thing."

"Okay, well, you should probably get your pressure suit on then. Because it's not going to be pretty otherwise."

back

Demeanour 7

next

20th April

08:26 GMT -5

**What's the view like?**

M'gann's having the front screen of the Bio-Ship track Kon's spacewalk rather than display our front arc. We're well above the orbital plane of Earth satellites here and there haven't been enough launches since I performed my local space laundering last year for us to have much need to pay attention to exactly where we are.

**It's amazing. I can see whole weather systems from up here. I can see where one ecosystem starts to turn into another. You sure you don't wanna come out here?**

**I… Sort of.. had a recurring nightmare for two months after arriving on Earth of the exact situation you're in right now. Martians and big empty spaces don't mix.**

**Oh, ah, I don't have to stay here. If it's bothering you?**

**No, it's okay. We're still close enough to the planet that I can feel that there are minds there. I just don't want to risk turning around and there suddenly being nothing.**

"Would it help if we talked about something else?"

M'gann breathes in then out, giving me a slightly uneasy smile. "Please?"

"Human Resources." She perks up slightly. "Which side do you prefer to play?"

"I think I prefer the Machines? But, Kon's so good with the Ancient Ones that he usually takes them?"

"Okay, well, I prefer Machines too. But you can just play Machines versus Machines if you want."

"I thought that didn't really work?"

"Some units end up without the thing they were designed to counter. There's basically no point in Exotic Energy Detection if your enemy doesn't use magic or Dimensional Shamblers."

"You could still use it to track Ray Projectors."

"Yes, but how often would that come up in a game? That ability just got patched in when the game developers switched it from a strict Ancient Ones versus Machines to letting people play mirror matches." Okay, where to start? I'm hardly pro level myself, but playing against someone who had tactics and strategy programmed into his head before he spoke his first word has given me some insights. "Kon.. is.. much better than me at micro, and not much worse at macro-."

"What are those?"

"'Micro' is the ability to precisely and promptly control individual units. Usually it involves moving one unit around and keeping it alive, like a.. Scuttler that's dodging base defences while gathering information. Or moving a unit away from a fight when it's being targeted by the enemy and about to die, so you keep your force alive. 'Macro' is the ability to keep your economy growing and your production constant. So, Kon is good-."

She nods. "He's good at directing his units but not so good at directing his whole army."

"Basically. He can also be a bit inflexible once he's committed to an approach. When I play against him I know that if I let him play a standard game, he'll almost certainly win. So I don't. I scout early and often, work out what he's doing and work out how to counter that. I've also found that rushing the centre for resources and trying to hold it works pretty well, as long as you're prepared to pull things back when his army appears."

"My scouts usually just die."

"That's what they do. Usually, you have to assume that the information they gain will result in efficiency savings in your unit composition that make up for it. If you see a Goat Temple you know you're going to see a cheap creature rush. If you see a Planar Gate you're going to see fast, manoeuvrable units. A Spatial Beacon and you'll get a magic focused attack. Kon really likes flying units, so I tend to have an anti-air unit or two around."

"Um, you usually make a lot of Drones, though. Why don't you just buy Improved AA Tracking?"

"Because it doesn't do anything else and early game fliers usually die quickly enough to Drones that I don't need it. Sentinels work well enough against huge units, armoured units and dense concentrations of weak units that they'll be useful whatever he does." I think for a moment. "I mean, in the unlikely event that he's gone for a heavy Night Gaunt harass and you've got lots of Drones and Enhanced Combat Cogitation already researched it might just be worthwhile, but it's not going to come up very much."

"What sort of mix of units do you think I should use? I usually try building a few of everyth-" My face creases up. "-ing?"

I have a flashback to my efforts at playing Age of Mythology. "Don't do that. It's hard enough to use two or three unit types efficiently together. Fifteen or twenty will just be a mess. They all work better when engaging in particular ways which the others don't and… Most people just can't coordinate them all well enough. Plus, you're trying to counter what your opponent is doing and a lot of them won't do that."

"Okay, so, what units are good for scouting with?"

"Early on, Drone for the Machines and Night Gaunts for the Ancient Ones. Later on, Scuttlers and Dimensional Shamblers."

"Why not use Gaze of Yog-Sothoth? It doesn't cost much."

"Because to get a decent scout with it you have to keep your screen and cursor still over the thing you're looking at and that's always time you don't have to spend. You've got too much to do early game-" I hear the air move as the Bio-Ship's newly grown airlock cycles. "-and too much will be going on late game."

**Okay, yeah.** Kon strolls into the Bio-Ship's cabin, taking his helmet off as he does so. "Guess it wasn't that interesting."

"Okay, if you've got that out of your system…" Kon shrugs and sits down. "M'gann, how far away from Mars should I deposit us?"

"Patrol ships don't usually go more than thirty kilometers from Mars' surface. We.. should be okay appearing ten thousand kilometers away."

I unfocus my eyes as the ring shows me Mars space. "I'll take us out near Phobos. Get a nice view of it-" M'gann's and Kon's expressions both look a little vacant, though they're both looking my way. "-as we come in."

M'gann gives me a slight shake of her head. "It's.. just an ugly lump of rock. Once Martians realised-" Something flickers across Kon's face. "-that we couldn't go too far from other Martians we stopped travelling there." She stops talking for a moment or two. "I don't think we even went there as many times as Humans have been to your moon."

Silence again, and slight facial tics… "Okay, I may not be able to listen to your telepathic communication, but I am-" Kon looks away a little sheepishly. "-feeling a little excluded."

"Ah, well-."

"It was my idea." M'gann looks like she expects to be scolded or something. "I thought… If I got you talking about something, I might be able to… Hear you. Your mind. Just a little! Like I used to, before… Truggs…"

"Sneaky." The view outside the front screen doesn't exactly 'jump' as black with stars is pretty much black with stars, but there's now a dim lump of rock in it as well. "Clearly, I've" **underestimated how much this is bothering you. I'll… I'll try easing up on the blocking. While we're here. But I'm going to have to ask that you don't poke back, okay?**

She nods, smiling.

**Okay…** Um. Hm, this is actually a bit tricky. **[The game begins and I send instructions to the Harbinger to begin work on a Harvest Node.]**

back

Demeanour 8

next

20th April

08:32 GMT -5

The dim red blur I know to be Mars is slowly getting larger in the centre of the front screen.

**Can you feel them yet?**

M'gann nods, her eyes a little unfocused. **I've been able to hear them since we arrived.**

Kon looks curious. **What are they saying?**

She blinks, refocusing. **Oh no, I can't hear individual words. At this distance it's more like a background noise. I probably won't hear anything until we're a good deal closer.**

**Do you want me to apply the booster rocket constructs?**

**Ummm… Not yet.** She looks down for a moment, then up at Kon. **You realise… The Martians on Mars aren't going to be pretending to be Human. They're mostly going to look like [picture of default Martian physiology].**

**Yeah, I remember. And if any of them ask why I'm thinking about an ancient Martian made of fire, I tell them it was a horror movie.**

**Are we going to have any trouble getting in?**

**We shouldn't.**

**That doesn't sound very definite.**

**We don't have any laws against bringing aliens to visit. But.. that's-.**

**Because no one has ever tried.**

**Yeah. But everyone on Mars knows about Uncle J'onn, and we know what Humans look like from his first visit back after the zeta tube picked him up.**

Kon frowns slightly. **Earth had spaceships before he went back.**

**Not ones that could get to Mars reliably. Uncle J'onn sent his first message back using zeta beams.**

**I'm not sure I'd want to try getting from Earth to Mars in an Earth-built spaceship now.**

**Wait.** Kon blinks. **If Manhunter sent a message from Earth to Mars back in… When was it?**

**Nineteen fifty eight.**

**Why are we still taking a ship fifty years later?**

**Because -if you don't have a terminal at the far end- zeta tubes are hideously inaccurate. Mister J'onzz sent hundreds of messages out like a shotgun blast in the hope that someone would pick one of them up. He couldn't even put a beacon on them that someone on Mars could reliably detect because Martian communications technology runs on organic telepathy and he couldn't replicate that with fifties Earth technology.**

M'gann nods. **The patrol ship only found it because Uncle J'onn rigged the message pod to release an electromagnetic pulse on a wavelength the patrol ships could pick up.**

**Okay, but the League could put a zeta tube on Mars now, right?**

**Yeees, but you know how big the machinery needed for the zeta tubes the League uses on Earth is?** He nods. **Interplanetary travel using the technology we use now requires much bigger machines which use lots more power. Because the Martian technology base is so different to the Human one we can't easily make an organic zeta tube terminus.**

**So? Use Human technology.**

**We could, but we'd have to have a team on Mars full time in order to maintain it. And we'd have to have the power source imported, and they'd need either an air supply or more likely a full Human-friendly habitat. Communication from Earth by radio would have a delay of between six and forty four minutes, depending on what part of the planetary alignment cycle Earth and Mars were in. So, that's two huge zeta tubes that you have to send there at great expense by rocket.**

**Two?**

**In case something went wrong with the first one and it couldn't be repaired on site. It takes a long time to get from Earth to Mars by rocket even when they're close together, and we've got another year and a half until that happens again. They can't get replacement parts locally because: Martian technology. And if you want them to make their own they'd need all kinds of additional workshops and mining facilities.**

**You brought us here.**

**Yes, but if we're assuming that I'm available full time… Why bother with a zeta tube anyway? We're taking the scenic route here so Mars has time to see us coming. I could have just plonked us down on the planet's surface.**

**But you could set it up, right? Then they'd just have to keep it supplied and they could do that by zeta tube.**

**Yes, that's possible. But other than keeping the zeta tube existing, what are they doing? There's no trade between Mars and Earth. We can.. just about eat their food and they can eat ours, but the sort of zeta tubes that would be involved need so much power that it wouldn't be possible to trade a high volume of items. Data transmission is easy… Except-.**

**The technology base is too different for us to use theirs or for them to use ours.**

**Yep. Can't even send them television. Getting a few more Manhunters sent through on detached duty might be useful, but other than that?**

**What about diplomacy? Or.. defense?**

**At our current level of technology we'd have to go a long way out of our way to offend Mars, and Martians hate going that far away from other minds too much to want to come to Earth. Mars has space capable warships, but we can't borrow them because-.**

**The crew can't leave Mars.**

**They could function near Earth, but you really don't want to fight an invader near your planet. So, in summation, it could be done, but no one wants to enough to actually do it.**

**And… That's assuming other Martians even want them here.** M'gann shrugs. **Uncle J'onn worked as a policeman, and he didn't really see Earth at its best.**

**And that's leaving aside whatever other Martians have picked up about us from Mister J'aarkn.**

**I'm…** M'gann blushes slightly, her eyes momentarily flicking to Kon. **Really not looking forward to explaining that one to my parents.**

**Earth: sex and violence plan-** M'gann stiffens and her eyes glow. **-et. What?**

"A patrol boat has seen us and is asking me who we are. I'm just talking to them now."

I look over to Kon. "Excited to meet the in-laws?"

"Not really. I can just about tell male Martians from female ones but I don't think I'm gunna be able to tell M'gann's mom from her sisters. If they even come."

"My family back home had enough trouble when we tried to fit ten of us around the table for Christmas. I've got no idea how M'gann's parents manage with thirteen girls and seventeen boys."

"Staggered pregnancies." M'gann's eyes stop glowing. "We live a lot longer than Humans so there's no need to have all your kids at once. Most of my brothers and sisters are adults now. When we get home there will probably just be my parents and younger siblings." She looks over to me. **Please take us in. [An image of local space and Mars, the approved flight path clearly marked.]**

Orange light flows through the Bio-Ship, creating large gravity impellers on the rear of the ship as Mars begins growing rapidly in front of us.

back

Demeanour 9

next

20th April

08:39 GMT -5

"Okay, turn it off."

Mars completely fills the front window of the Bio-Ship as I remove my construct, our angle of approach meaning that I can just about see the yellow-gray edge of the Martian horizon near the top. "Construct deactivated."

M'gann nods. "Setting course for Mel'dilo'rn. ETA, four minutes."

"Is that them?" Kon points to something through the window, a tiny coloured speck against the rusty grey sands below us. Ring, magnify?

"Yes. They're going to monitor us as we approach. They're actually getting a bit…"

Kon looks mildly concerned. "A bit what?"

"Umm. Pushy? Intrusive? They're not interrogating me exactly, but they're certainly… Not being polite. One thing I definitely haven't missed about Mars is the racism."

The patrol ship itself is primarily blue in colour. It puts me in mind of a cross between M'gann's Bio-Ship and… Thunderbird 2? Or maybe Moya? Same sort of bulbous body section with trailing, disproportionately short wings. Of course, in the Martian atmosphere those wings can't be generating significant lift. Sensors, maybe? It flies using the same telekinetic system as this Bio-Ship, giving it similar aerial manoeuvrability. An Earth-built jet aircraft of similar size would wallow through the air, but not that thing. No weapons visible on the exterior of the hull, which at least means that they don't consider us to be an immediate threat.

"What exactly is your official status, anyway?"

"How do you mean?"

"Should we expect a truancy patrol to be waiting for us, wanting to know why you've skived off school for a year?"

Kon smirks. "That would be awkward."

"No, Uncle J'onn got all that straightened out before I joined the team. Technically, I'm a Manhunter cadet assigned to him for training, but everyone knows that that's only really true on paper."

"Well, you're a more powerful telepath than he is, and a better shapeshifter, so maybe not training you was the way to go."

"I'm not a better shapeshifter than he is." I raise my left eyebrow. "I'm really not. There's a lot more to shapeshifting than changing your shape." I frown, then Kon and I exchange puzzled looks. "You know what I mean. I've got a better range but there's a lot of skill involved in instinctively shifting your shape during combat. Uncle J'onn is a lot faster than I am, especially under stress. Ugh."

"Hey, I'm sorry-."

"No, not-. You. It's them. They're instructing me to reconfigure the Bio-Ship's hull. Apparently it's 'too militant' for a civilian ship."

"I thought it was registered as being owned by Mister J'onzz?"

"It is. But he's not here and they've decided to make an issue of it." She sighs. "Reconfiguring." I hear a slurping noise as the exterior wings retract and the cabin space behind us shrinks. The Sphere warbles in protest as it's nudged closer. "Sorry."

"Are people gunna be hassling you the whole time?"

"I-. No. Probably not. But everywhere you go, some people are just.. jerks."

"You know, if you want to go back to pretending to be green… Your mental defences are probably good enough now to keep casual enquiries out."

"No."

I hold up my right hand in surrender. "Okay, I was just-."

"No, I'm not-. Ugh." She slumps slightly. "I had a talk with Rocket about color prejudice-"

"Ooooowh."

"-and she said that pandering to bigots only encourages them."

"Raquel's got a bit of a thing about that."

Okay, I'm not going to pretend that modern America or Britain are post-racial utopias or anything, but her habit of interpreting most things in racial terms has become a little wearing. When she brought up the issue of remuneration for the descendants of slaves my asking if she would be willing to pay Americans of European descent for the actions of her own Barbar ancestors was totally a rational argument in no way spurred by my irritation.

Power ring genetic scans are a little bit cheaty in that sort of debate.

"No, I started using white skin on missions for a reason. I'm a White Martian and I'm not going to hide it."

"You shouldn't have to."

"You know… I've sort of been thinking. It might be possible for me or.. one of the Controllers to reverse whatever it was the Guardians did to your ancestors-."

"Oh, no. Mars does not need monsters like that back."

"I'm still not convinced that their nature wasn't the result of how they were socialised, rather than-."

M'gann stares directly at me. "**No.**" She exhales sharply. "I know you're.. trying to help, but… I don't think I can… Explain just how horrifying that thing was. Not to someone who isn't Martian."

Kon frowns. "I didn't think it was.. that scary."

"The molecular disruption technique it was using is something that's unheard of outside a handful of Red Martian mystics. It's supposed to be impossible for anyone else. And it wasn't like them, its mind was.. like… Fire. When I looked at it, I felt the same fear I feel when I look at an open flame. I don't know what would happen to Martian society if their existence became more widely known, but it could totally collapse our government."

"Wait. Are you saying that.. while you don't regard Whites as being inferior to Green you still regard both as being inferior to Reds?"

"Um." She cringes slightly. "A little?"

"M'gann. You know that's ridiculous."

"Yeah, well, it's not that easy to just change your entire way of thinking."

"Certainly it is. I managed to achieve complete unity with my desires inside ten minutes, and you're a telepathic shapeshifter."

"Okay, it's not that easy for me to do it. That part of Martian racism isn't something that I've ever suffered from, so I just don't… I don't have the same resistance to it. Respecting Red Martians is just something that you do."

"Alright, do you know the name of the Red I'm going to need to talk to while I'm here?"

"You could probably.. just talk to the Chief Administrator. I'm not sure if it's the same woman as it was when I left, but if it is then she's a Green."

"No. I want to go to the top, someone who's part of Mars' elite, someone connected to the planetary government."

"I.. don't know if he'll be willing to talk to you, but Mel'dilo'rn's reigning Prelate is Prince J'emm. Are you really just going to walk up to the government buildings and demand to speak to him?"

"Of course not. I'm going to insist that whoever I meet send a skivvy to inform him of my arrival. If he won't talk to me, that's fine."

"Okay, good."

"I'll just try other cities until I find a Prelate who will."

back

Demeanour 10

next

20th April

08:46 GMT -5

"Bringing us in no-" M'gann grimaces. "-w."

"The patrol ship again?"

"They're helpfully reminding me of landing procedures." M'gann's hands move across the controls. "As if I haven't been doing this for over a year."

"Are they saying anything about the rest of us?"

"There'll be a security screening, but I wouldn't worry about it."

"Do the people doing it know anything about Human weapons? Or power rings?"

"Probably not." She smiles the smile of a person who has outsmarted someone very annoying. "So it shouldn't take too long."

A short ridgeline appears on the horizon of the flat Martian desert ahead of us. Ring? Yes, artificial. There's a decent drift of loose sand built up along the near side, disguising its nature from cursory inspection. The Bio-Ship slows as it closes the distance and a portal oozes open in a gust of air. Positive pressure keeps the sand from getting anywhere awkward. The pressure difference appears to be only slight, so they must have developed a way to keep air in even if the entryway is open. The pressure difference between the surface and the inner caverns proper is far more significant. Presumably the difficulty in communicating through sonic means is one of the things which led so many Martian life forms to developing alternatives like telepathy.

The Bio-Ship is moving at little more than jogging pace as we pass through the entrance and start down the tunnel. There's a weak glow which I presume to be bioluminescent coming from the walls but it's rather patchy. Is that just where it grew, or is it a sign of poor repair? I turn to M'gann with a curious frown and she glances my way before following my gaze.

"This is the entrance for privately owned civilian vehicles. There's no rule that says Martians can't go up to the surface, but most of us don't have any reason to go out there. As a result it… Well…"

"Isn't a high maintenance priority."

"Right."

The tunnel curves off to the right and downwards. Martian cities are arranged in a series of large caverns which are more or less on the same level as one another. The buildings are set into the walls or rise out of the central floor area. They also do the Star Wars thing of having fragile looking platforms projecting out into the open air, held up by biotechnological telekinesis rather than more conventional antigravity systems.

What is it about advanced civilisations that makes them think that structurally unsound structures are a good idea?

The darkness ahead opens in the same fashion as the external tunnel entrance and I get a momentary impression of depth. Buildings like skyscrapers made of rock rise up on either side of a short plaza which leads to a drop into the cavern proper. Ahead, I can see tiny lights in the windows of the stalactite buildings which form islands in the tight streams of aerial traffic.

The first science fiction alien city I've seen in person.

And, yes, there's the slight pressure on my mind from the presence of millions of telepaths lightly probing their environment. A little distracting, but I'll probably get used to it. Don't really get this from the Genomorphs, but they're far closer to being a hive mind than Martians are and instinctively share information from their mundane senses rather than doing anything like this.

There are three standard pattern Green Martians naked but for a couple of straps waiting for us as M'gann brings us down. Just as we touch down she suddenly brightens up and I feel slightly dizzy for a moment.

"M-M'gann?"

She stares off into space for a moment, then snaps out of it. "Oh! Mom and Dad say 'hi'. They'll expect to see us when we finish here." She prods the cat still curled up on her lap. "Come on Teekl. Time for a walk."

Teekl raises her head and blearily peers up at M'gann. "Teekl not want walk. Teekl happy here."

"Well…" M'gann looks at me for a moment. "Ah..?"

"Teekl, there's a whole planet of people out there who've never seen a cat before!"

"Mrww?"

"Never, Teekl." I lean closer and she stares back at me. "Never seen one before. There's a gaping, cat-shaped hole in their lives and only you can fill it."

She tilts her head slightly to the side. "Teekl suppose Teekl grace funny smell people with Teekl magnificence." She rolls to her feet and stretches out, claws momentarily extending. Kinks worked out, she jumps to the cabin floor and starts growing up to her Tiger-sized form.

Kon meanwhile is standing by the exit, helmet in hands. "Am I gunna need this?"

"I'll have an environmental shield around you, but it's a good idea to have it with you. We'll probably be splitting up in an hour or so. M'gann, are you going to be able to park closer to home or is this it?"

"Uum… I should have a space. As long as D'harr hasn't passed her test yet, and Mom didn't mention it." She stands, walking towards the airlock and patting the wall as she goes. "Been a while since you've been in storage mode, hasn't it girl?" She looks at Kon, then her eyes slide past to the airlock. "It's probably best if I go first."

"Right." He steps away, the Sphere rolling after him. "Are.. you going out like that?"

"Like what?"

He smiles and inclines his head slightly. "Like a really pale Human."

She shrugs. "Martians don't really care about that sort of thing. And.. I'm.. actually more comfortable like this than in my Martian form now."

"Really?"

"Martian.. self image is.. more about how you think than how you look. I only really became conscious of my physical image when I moved to Earth, and, well,-" She shrugs, smiling weakly. "-this is it."

"I like it."

Her smile broadens as he pulls her into a clinch. "I know you do."

I start to avert my eyes, but their near-kiss is interrupted by Teekl nosing M'gann's legs. "Show funny smell people Teekl now."

Kon glowers at her. "Maybe we can take her to your uncle Ma'al's place and forget about her."

"Gggggggggggggggggggggggggggg."

"Okay, no dumping the cat." He waves his right arm at the airlock. "After you."

M'gann steps up to the exit, which opens to allow her in. We don't usually bother with an airlock when we're on Earth, but the pressure difference here makes it necessary. Thinking about it… "Kon, you know that the gravity-."

He nods. "Is about a third what it would be on Earth. I'll be careful."

There's a hiss as the air in the airlock is pumped back into the cabin, and then the ship-ooze noise as M'gann exits. Teekl nudges Kon aside for the next opportunity to leave. Uh? "Teekl, you remember you can phase, right?"

"Teekl will disembark with due majesty."

I exhale with amusement. "Okay then."

The Sphere warbles something, and Teekl responds by turning her head away with a snort. Then the airlock opens once more and Teekl struts through.

"Can't you phase as well?"

"Um. I can with my power armour, but this is a civil matter and I thought it was a bit militant."

"Yeah, but-" He shrugs. "M'gann said that Martians don't care about that kind of thing."

I nod. "True." I rise slightly off the deck as my armour appears around me. "See you outside."

back

Demeanour 11

next

20th April

08:51 GMT -5

Two au naturel Greens are standing just in front of M'gann, looming over her in an intimidatory pose which transcends species. Or possibly not. After all, that means that they're actually weaker than her at the moment, their mass being more spread out while hers is compact. Teekl is circling around them, tail flicking in frustration as they ignore her. I know they can feel her mind, M'gann remarked on how different it felt from what she expected a construct to be like. Ignoring her is deliberate. Not clever, lads.

Wait, lads? Ring? Okay, lasses then. Huh, and I don't know if it's a Human-brain-being-optimised-for-looking-at-other-Humans thing or a no-body-image thing, but they both look identical to me. Some sort of telepathic buzz going on between them, but with all that M'gann's been through on Earth I doubt that a couple of weak telepaths who think that they're intimidating can cow her-.

A large green hand tries to grasp my right shoulder and passes through me. I float away a little and turn to face the third member of the welcoming committee. Ah, this one's male.

"Can I help you?"

He stares, and the mild buzz at the edge of my mental shields increases slightly. By default Martians can't speak. Their original throats simply didn't allow it. It isn't really all that clear why their language has a spoken form, given their telepathy. Maybe it was the Guardians… Or maybe it's like Humans and sign language? Hm. Maybe he hasn't bothered with ears? I suppose they wouldn't serve all that much purpose here. I wiggle my fingers and extend my environmental shield around him.

"I said, can I help you?"

Another little buzz. Oh, come on, are we really going to do this?

"My barriers are up for a reason. If you've got something to say to me, say it out loud."

His throat shudders slightly as it reformats. I suppose I've become so used to M'gann's current ease at manipulating her protean form that I've sort of forgot how tricky she found it to mimic the male members of the team when we first met. I'm also wondering if Mister J'aarkn really was some sort of expert. Next comes a sort of spur growing from the sides of his head as… Ears designed by someone who's only ever seen pictures before emerge.

"Lower. Your. Mental. Shields."

"Hello there. I'm Orange Lantern two eight one four. What's your name?"

"Lower. Your. Mental. Shields."

"I get the worrying feeling that we're at an impass-"

"Now."

"-here." I hold up my right hand.. in a gesture he's probably not going to recognise… Oh well. "Look, I had a couple of encounters with hostile telepaths a while ago and since then-."

"I. Do. Not. Care. Lower. Your. Shields."

"Since then I've booby trapped my brain specifically to stop people like you."

"Then. Lower. All. Your. Defences."

"If they were the sort that could be turned off with thoughts they wouldn't be much use against telepaths, would they?" That doesn't appear to win me any points. Alright. **If it makes you feel any happier, we can talk-.**

For a fraction of a second I get a blast of associations, words, thoughts and images and up go the shields again. And someone's officially gone beyond the call of duty in being a dick.

I'm probably going to regret this in a minute or two.

…

No I'm not.

I land. "I'm sorry, I didn't quite appreciate how strongly you felt about this." I drop my shields, my mind completely open in a way it hasn't been since Roanoke. "What's my name?"

I blink, and he's collapsed to the floor. My armour's locked in place to keep me upright. Good work, armour. I reinstate my shields. Ring, time loss?

Nine seconds.

Huh. It does get easier.

I lift off the ground again and turn back to M'gann. Kon and the Sphere have disembarked and the whole little party is looking at me. **I warned him.** Actually, M'gann looks a little wobbly herself. Did she try taking a look at my head, or is that just the result of the haranguing she's been getting? No, don't worry about it. I can't really fault her if she was curious. I flare my environmental shield, making an effort to do the pseudo flame effect Alan has. **Right, you two. Have you finished hassling my friend? Because you're this close-** I hold out my right gauntlet, forefinger and thumb quite close together. **-to the official definition of interfering with an officer of the Corps in the execution of his duties.** If I were a Green Lantern working under a standard cooperation agreement. **Do you actually have a reason for holding us up?**

**There has been a rise in violent crime amongst the White population. The events concerning M'gann M'orzz's return are suspicious.**

**Is this rise in crime recent?**

**Yes.**

**Then it's fairly unlikely that someone who's been on Earth for a year is involved in any way. Anything else?**

**The presence of aliens on M'arzz-.**

**I'll be presenting myself to the Prelate later today. Anything of substance?** I wait for a moment. Nothing. **If you have any further concerns about M'gann's conduct you may refer them to Manhunter J'onn J'onzz.**

**I may do that.** The second Green inclines her head slightly. **You may depart. See that you stay out of trouble.**

The Sphere warbles and shifts into her supercycle form. Kon carefully leaps up, landing in the front compartment while Teekl flies to the rear. M'gann floats back towards the Bio-Ship. **Thank you. I'll.. maybe.. see you later?** The second Green turns away, walking towards one of the nearby buildings.

Kon looks baffled. **See her later? Why would you wanna do that?**

**You remember when I said I had three hundred cousins?**

**That was one of them?**

**Yeah… That was… K'hym.** We both look blank. **K'hym J'onzz.** Kon and I simultaneously give a slightly uncertain nod. **Uncle J'onn's daughter.**

**Manhunter has kids?**

**No, she's… Sixty seven Earth years old?** M'gann frowns. **I think that's right.**

I vaguely remember something about him having a family in the comics. I definitely remember it in Justice League Animated. But… With Mars not being genocided in this timeline… Obviously they'd still be alive. But he hasn't-. **Mister J'onzz has been on Earth for the last fifty six years.**

**Yes. She wasn't very old when the zeta tube accident happened. By the time he was able to come back…** She shrugs. **She was already an adult. She barely knew him.**

**What about her mom?**

**Aunt M'yri'ah was murdered.** M'gann shifts uncomfortably. **I mean, that all happened before I was born, but… I think that's why Uncle J'onn spends all of his time on Earth. He doesn't think he has anything here to come back for.**

back

Demeanour 12

next

20th April

Actually, thinking about that…

"M'gann, what sort of time keeping do Martians use?"

I hear her voice come back through my armour's speakers. "For obvious reasons we don't base it on the sun. We've had several different ways of measuring time over the years, but modern M'arzz society divides a 'day' into six, and then each of those into six and, well, keep dividing into six parts."

"And is a 'day' a day? A Mars day, I mean?"

"I think we lose about a day a year. A Martian year. Sometimes there's a political movement that wants it to line up, but there's no real need to."

I don't think I'll have the ring mark time in recurring sixths.

09:08 GMT -5

We're getting more than a few stares as we fly along the edge of one of the consensus flight paths. Both M'gann and Kon are supposed to be in the 'vehicle' lane, while it isn't entirely clear whether my armour counts as a vehicle or as some sort of disability flight aid. And I've finally seen a few Martians who don't look identical! Okay, identical apart from colour, there are Greens and Whites in not entirely segregated groups all around us. And a few vehicles, all smaller than M'gann's Bio-Ship.

The Martians who don't look entirely Martian appear to be affecting parts of the Human physique. The effect isn't all that convincing for the most part. Some have Human-shaped arms, but kept their Martian dimensions and so look a little like some kind of fish-ape. Others altered the general shape of the head without bothering to change the features, pulling off a fairly convincing Skeletor look.

A few more are working hard to put me off sex for life.

A couple of the braver ones are floating a little closer to Kon than appears to be the socially acceptable distance to a fellow traveller. The Green on the left floats up alongside for a moment, then appears to think better of it and falls back. I suppose with telepathy and the social norm of constant mental contact news media of the sort we have on Earth probably aren't a thing. Why invent Twitter or Facebook when you can just stick things on your own brain?

M'gann turns the Bio-Ship away from the main flow of traffic and directs it through a short but wide tunnel between caverns. Kon and I follow along behind. I note that the edges of the tunnel have troughs containing.. some sort of.. plant? Looks a bit like a succulent of some kind. I suppose that's another point in the direction of 'alien'. So far I've seen buildings and bare rock but no gardens. No window boxes. Not even the little strips of greenery you get on roundabouts or the sides of roads. I know Martians have tree-equivalents… I suppose they just don't go in for decorative planting in works areas.

But it looks like they do in residential ones.

The cavern which the tunnel opens out into is far smaller than the one we just left and I can't see any bare rock. There are houses offset from one another in a step pattern, punctuated by balconies and verandas and miniature gardens sticking out in defiance of gravity. Dozens of Martians of all ages turn their heads up to look at us as we come in and start losing altitude. More than a few of the.. younger-but-not-child-size ones are mimicking Human appearance. Well, the Humanish appearance that Mister J'onzz uses, anyway. I guess that M'gann wasn't exaggerating about the regard in which he's held here. The mix of Greens and Whites is about even and they don't appear to be separating themselves apart in the way those in the main cavern were. Of course, I've got no idea if that means this is a mixed neighbourhood because those here reject typical Martian racialism or because it's cheap.

M'gann sets the Bio-Ship down on someone's roof… Though it doesn't actually land so much as go into hover mode. M'gann doesn't even bother using the door, she just phases through the hull with a delighted smile on her face. **Mom! Dad!** She flies fast in the direction of two nearby Martians, one Green and the other White. They spread their arms out, wrapping them around her as she flies into them.

That would be S'randa and E'ann M'orzz, then. The hug looks a little awkward; their forms are completely Martian and their arms don't bend quite enough to properly embrace her much smaller body. Doesn't look like it bothers her.

**M'gann! It is so good to have you back again.**

Kon brings the Sphere Cycle around in a circle before setting it down next to the Bio-Ship, which has gone back into storage mode. Then he looks at the family reunion going on a short distance away and hesitates.

Fatal mistake. Teekl is out of her seat in a second and nosing around the happy reunion, like a… Cat. An attention-seeking cat who unaccountably finds herself not the centre of attention. M'gann's White Martian father frees his left hand to awkwardly pat at her head, which appears to temporarily satisfy her.

I send my armour back into subspace as I descend myself, landing just next to Kon and extending my environmental shield around him. "Go on. Go and introduce yourself."

"I'm just.. gunna.. give them a few minutes."

From M'gann's direction I get a faint impression of a series of images, fragments of our team's endeavours. Both elder Martians lean back slightly.

**Not so quickly, M'gann. We are not all as telepathically capable as you are.**

M'gann shrinks slightly at her mother's comment. **Sorry, I just got so excited, I mean 'hello Megan'-**

**M'gann!** A small Green Martian -probably young rather than a dwarf- dashes out of their home and hovers next to her. **You're back!**

Hang on. I got a full list of her siblings… Younger and male-sounding means… S'monn. The fact that all but one of her twenty nine siblings are Green strikes me as a little odd, but since their whole coloured racial subgroup thing is an invention of the Guardians I suppose normal inheritance doesn't necessarily have anything to do with it.

**And-. Whaw!** He shoots over to stare into my face. **You're really good at looking Human!**

**One does one's humble best. You're quite good at looking Martian.**

**Duh, I am a Martianohmygoshyou'reoneofM'gann'sHumanfriends!**

M'gann leads her parents over in our direction. **Mom, Dad, this is Kon-El.**

Kon checks the environmental shield, then takes off his helmet in order to smile sheepishly at his girlfriend's parents. **Ah. Hi.**

**And this is Paul.**

**Pleased to meet you.**

**Welcome to M'arzz, both of you.**

**Thank you for inviting us.** He glances at me for a second and I nod my head in their direction. **My mom wanted me to pass on an invite to stay with us if you ever wanted to visit Earth.**

E'ann steps forward slightly. **That's very kind of you, Kon-El. If an insane Earth scientist ever hits us with an energy ray and teleports us there, we will certainly take advantage of that offer.**

**D-ad.**

Unsurprisingly, Kon doesn't know quite how to respond. **Ah, we understand zeta radiation a lot better now, and since Doctor Erdel found out Mars was actually, y'know, inhabited, we stopped testing it in this direction.**

M'gann nods. **The zeta tubes we use now are far too weak to pick someone up from this far away.**

I can well understand that what happened to Mister J'onzz would have left a rather bad taste in their mouths. **I think they were more thinking about-** I notice one of the more Human-looking Martians observing our conversation from a balcony above us focus her eyes on the top of M'gann's head, then begin growing hair on her own bald scalp. **-having me fly you there for a visit. It would be over in the blink of an eye.** I raise my hands. **No pressure. But the option's there if you want it.**

S'randa holds out her right hand in the direction of their home, and I feel a flickering image pass from her to her husband. **We receive the offer in the spirit in which it was intended. Now please, come inside. We are eager to hear all about your adventures on Earth.**

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Demeanour 13

next

20th April

09:51 GMT -5

"One time-" Kon looks thoughtful as the senior members of the M'orzz family stare into space. "-Wally told me that when the Flash gets really excited about something, he just talks faster and faster until all anyone can hear is a kind of buzzing noise. I've never heard the Flash do it…"

I nod. When I started having trouble keeping up with the telepathic conversation taking place in the living room -a large open plan room with long Martian scale settees- I wound my barriers down a little, and then a little more, and… Then I stopped bothering. It's not words. Words I could cope with. I've been around when M'gann's gone full sugar rush before. But now she's sending out a storm of sensory impressions, sounds and thoughts and it's becoming increasingly apparent to me that she really holds herself back when communicating with the rest of us.

Or… Maybe if I dropped my barriers completely..?

No. Not until after Nabu.

I blink heavily as the sense impression of being a Star Conqueror hits me right in the cerebellum. Kon is actually disorientated enough that he reaches for his forehead with his right hand. I'm not sure whether not shielding at all or shielding more would have been better there. A moment later M'gann's eyes widen and she turns sideways on her seat towards the two of us. **Oh, I'm so sorry! I think I got a bit carried away. I mean, hello M'gann! I've never tried talking to you telepathically like that before.** She gives us a quick once over. **Are you okay?**

**Uh, yeah, I think so.** He shakes his head to clear it a little. **What was that?**

S'randa leans forwards slightly. **That was M'gann getting overenthusiastic.**

M'gann bows her head a little in embarrassment. **I'm sorry, there's just so much to cram in…** She looks directly at Kon. **Telepathy isn't just for transmitting words or pictures. It's not even just memories. I can transmit the idea of an experience, what it was like and an intuitive understanding of what's actually happening. I don't really do that much with the team, because…**

He nods. **It's kinda overwhelming if you're not a telepath.**

E'ann leans back against his seat. **It was a little overwhelming for us as well. J'onn has taught you to harness your abilities well.**

**Actually, that was more Henry. [An image, a snapshot of one M'gann's sessions with him.]**

**A Human? I remember J'onn saying that there were Human telepaths. I am surprised that he was confident enough in their abilities to allow one to instruct you.**

I raise my right eyebrow. **You..? Didn't tell them about..?**

She frowns at me. "No, and you weren't supposed to either."

"Oh." My eyes flick from her to her parents. "Um."

S'randa's eyes glow faintly. **Is there something you're neglecting to tell us, M'gann?**

She sighs. **One time, Uncle J'onn put us in a telepathic group illusion, so we could do a training session on dealing with an invasion of the planet without.. actually.. having to find someone to invade it. We were fighting them and… [The ice of the north pole, crashed alien fight craft smoking on the ice. Richard pulls a piece of machinery out of the ship and then the beam strikes him no!]**

**Did they end the scenario?**

**No. Uncle J'onn tried, but he couldn't. For a moment I was so convinced that it was all real that I altered everyone else's perception of what was happening. We went from a practice session to.. actually fighting an alien invasion.**

**[Idea of frowning] Why didn't J'onn enter your minds and remind you?**

**He tried, but he couldn't stop me changing his perception too. He became convinced it was real and forgot how he got there. It wasn't until everyone on the team.. except for Paul and I, 'died', that he remembered.**

**After that I suggested that he might like to find an alternate teacher for M'gann's telepathy classes.**

There's a brief something between her parents again. **I think I may want to record a message to my brother about that event. After you have explained it in more detail.**

M'gann sags slightly. **Yes, Mom.**

If that had happened closer to the time I would probably be celebrating his forthcoming ear bashing. As it is, I've long since gotten over my irritation with him. His sessions with M'gann these days focus on things that he actually knows, like how to conduct criminal investigation and interrogations with Martian superpowers.

S'monn suddenly perks up. **Hey, I thought you said that Kon-El and you were dating?**

Kon reaches across and picks up her right hand in his left. **We are.**

**And you haven't done full telepathic sharing before?**

M'gann's eyes widen in surprise. **S'monn!**

**Uh, no? Should we have?**

**Mum said that when she and Dad started dating-.** He stiffens. **Sorry, Mum. Sorry, M'gann.**

Kon frowns thoughtfully at M'gann. **You've never really talked about Martian dating customs. Is there..? Something you wanna..?**

**If you are not capable of telepathy-.** E'ann catches himself. **On your own initiative, I mean, the level of reciprocity required for that sort of contact might.. simply.. not be possible.**

M'gann shakes her head. **No, it is.**

**I know you may want it to be, but-.**

**I've… Done that. With a Human.**

**Oh.**

**I mean, it wasn't, ah…**

Kon looks distinctly curious. **Who are we talking about?**

M'gann clears her throat. Or at least mimes it. The sound really doesn't travel in this atmosphere. **Paul.**

He looks at me. **Ah. Really?**

**We did?**

M'gann is starting to go pink. **You remember… When we were in the desert in Bialya?** Oh dear. **You… Projected me… Feeling…**

Yes, I do remember, actually. Wait, so that was like Martian… **Um, for those of us whose species aren't usually telepathic..?**

**It's intimate, though not necessarily romantic.** S'randa looks at each in turn. **J'onn told me that Humans were usually monogamous. Though J'onn J'aarkn gave a rather different impression.-**

**Mom!**

I grin somewhat manically. **What sort of response has there been to his return?**

**You saw all of the people assuming a Human appearance?**

We nod.

**J'onn [Clear image of Mister J'onzz] never performed a detailed social study of Human civilisation. J'aarkn did, and he made his more scholarly pieces publically available. M'gann's brother [Clear image of a White Martian] was particularly piqued by the American civil rights movement.**

I think about complaining, but J'aarkn did spend most of his time in the United States. He'd know that part of the equal rights movement better than he would the equivalent in any other country.

**And he wasn't the only one. Unsurprisingly, the idea of people of one colour being oppressed by another and eventually gaining equality resonates with many White Martians. It's sad that a species that can't feel each other's personhood have done more work in that direction than we Martians have.**

E'ann holds out his right hand, not-palm pointing upwards. Uncertainty. **Even though the protests are peaceful, certain Green members of the establishment are attempting to crack down.**

M'gann scowls. **I noticed.**

**It's not worth spoiling your visit over.**

**No, but I was planning on visiting the Prelate anyway. I'll ask him about it.**

back

Demeanour 14

next

20th April

11:17 GMT -5

Welp. I can only hope that was as uncomfortable for Kon as it was for me.

Some combination of psi-baffles, mental shields, tattoos and standard traveller disinterest in those around them means that the Martians travelling around me generally don't know I'm there until after I fly in front of them and they see me with their own eyes. Their eyes don't widen and they don't cry out, but I had the ring match increases in mental pressure to me-observance and there's a definite sudden mental shout of some kind when they see me.

Heh.

Prelate J'emm's place of work is a large palace/office block near the middle of the city. Yes, I could have just transitioned there, but really it's only fair that his people get some warning. In the same way that Martians have telepathic computers they also have a telepathic real time thought sharing system, a more emphatic form of Twunter. I doubt that J'emm himself will notice the disruption I'm causing, but by now the police have probably heard it and I'm sure that… Some of the-

"Hey there!"

-Martians around here are police. The problem with no clothing being the norm is that there aren't any-

"Hey!"

-un..i..forms…

A Green Martian -who looks a lot like the Earth 12 default form Martians- drifts in front of me a little, waving both hands and smiling. Chest outline suggests but doesn't prove that the individual is male. Okay, he's basically having to shout to be heard. Environmental shield or ease up on the mental barriers?

Oh, he's just some guy. **Good morning.**

**Oh. Whaw. Is that a British accent?**

**Possibly slightly coloured by the American east coast and Themyscira, yes.**

**I don't think I could fly around like that. I mean, heh, in my own home, maybe. My family think I'm kinda weird for being this into Earth stuff already, but… Out in public?** My face goes a little blank. **Oh. Wait, is that rude? Don't be offended, I'm not trying to be rude. I think it's really impressive! I could never get the fingernails right. I just end up with spiky fingertips. They just seem so.. flimsy, you know?**

I bow my head slightly, then motion sideways with my right hand before leaving the traffic stream. My new friend follows me. We float for a moment while the traffic streams past.

**Permit me to introduce myself. Orange Lantern two eight one four. Born on Earth.** His eyes do widen. **To Human parents, to the best of my knowledge.**

**Really?**

**They might have lied to me for my entire life. Seems unlikely, though.**

**I didn't think Human rocket ships could get them to Mars! And we're not even that close right now. My name's Y'ok. Y'ok V'ira'an. Wait. Lantern as in 'Green Lantern'?** I hold up my hands, glowing rings clearly visible. **This is amazing!**

**Have the Green Lanterns ever come to Mars?**

**Yeah, but they didn't come here. Are you after some kind of Human supervillain? Or are we going to be attacked by space pirates?**

He sounds a little too excited about the prospect.

**No, really I'm just here because my friend M'gann needed a-.**

**M'gann M'orzz?!**

I briefly consider sarcasm. Then reject it. **Yes. She needed a lift, I was available.**

**Where are you going now?**

**I'm hoping to be able to meet Prelate J'emm. With the only two Martians to have spent any time on Earth living in his city, he seemed to be the obvious point of contact with the Martian government.**

**Are there going to be.. more Humans coming here?**

**Kon's already here. Probably won't be any others in the immediate future. Would you mind if we-** I gesture towards the next cavern entrance. **-talk and fly?**

He nods, though the motion extends far beyond the normal Human nod-arc. **Sure, sure.**

We rejoin the traffic and I note that the other Martians are now giving us a wide berth. **I couldn't help but notice that a great many Martians have adopted… Non-standard appearances.**

**Yeah, why wouldn't-? Oh, you can't do that.**

**If I really wanted to look different I could use the rings, but no, not by default. Is there a particular reason?**

**I guess it's… Martian society's really stable, you know? And then J'onn J'aarkn showed us how fast things can change on Earth and it's just… Whaw.** He blinks… Kind of. **You know?**

**You've seen his memories, then?**

**Everything he's made publically available so far.**

**Has he made the.. 'adult' stuff avail-.**

**Ahhhhh…**

**He did, then.** Y'ok looks a little embarrassed. **I don't find the idea of other species finding my own attractive unpleasant. What consenting adult sentients do in private is their own affair.** We fly through another tunnel. Royal palace dead ahead. It looks like a giant vaguely gothic stalagmite. **Exactly how big a subculture is..?**

**What, the..? The pornography, or-?**

**Earth-interest in general.**

**It's hard to tell. I mean, there's a lot of interest right now. J'onn J'aarkn's sharing things about everyday life we just didn't know before. But, how many are really interested? I don't know.**

**And the resulting civil unrest?**

**Like I said, we're… Really stable. Red Martians rule, Greens form the middle class and Whites make up the underclass.** I give him a mild glower. **I'm not saying it's right. I don't treat Whites any different. It's just.. how things are.**

**And Reds?**

**What about Red Martians?**

**It's curious to me. M'gann said the same thing; she didn't like the way society differentiates between Whites and Greens. But when I asked her about Reds, she didn't have a problem with their privilege.**

**Oh, I don't either.**

**Well, why not? In Human society, we haven't just moved away from a biological underclass, we don't really have biological rulers either.**

**Ahhhh. They're… Just… Majestic... I guess.. I.. can't really explain it.**

**Thank you. This has been enlightening, but this is my stop.** I head towards where the turn off for the palace appears to be.

**Um! I was wondering?**

**Yes?**

**Are you going to be taking anyone back with you?**

**M'gann and Kon, yes. Anyone else, I think it would probably be best it wait until formal diplomatic relations were established.**

**Ah. Yeah. I guess you're right.**

**Good talking to you, Y'ok.**

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Demeanour 15

next

20th April

11:26 GMT -5

Since I'm on polite mode, I'm not scanning the interiors of individual Martians. On the other hand, I don't think anyone can reasonably complain about me using automapping in a building this large. Looking at the part of the building I've come into, it looks like the interior is either made of or coated in the same sort of programmable material that M'gann's Bio-Ship is made out of. Interior decoration is in blue and purple, though the meaning -if any- of the patterns is lost on me. There aren't any signs up -because telepaths- and there doesn't appear to be a reception desk.

On the positive side, I'm getting the occasional odd look but no one's actually tried to stop me yet. I've seen and been seen by a few Martians -all Greens- with the red Manhunter 'X' straps… Wait, are those Xs red for Red Martians? Or is it just a coincidence? Don't know. Oh, I can ask M'gann later.

Anyway, red Xs aside, I've also got no idea what the various items of clothing the Martians here are wearing mean. Do they work here? Are they..? Visiting? Petitioning? The rings can easily identify the Red Martians in residence, but I've got no idea which of them is Prince J'emm. I suppose this must be how blind people feel most of the time. I can get around, but this place was clearly designed to be navigated by people with a sense I don't have.

I pick a corridor which leads towards the centre of the building and fly along it. Walking appears to be something people around here don't do to travel long distances. Given Martian legs I suppose that makes sense. I think I remember a Prince Jemm from the comics. Didn't he get kidnapped by a Lex Luthor led incarnation of the Injustice Gang.. and have some sort of magic crystal? I definitely remember something about a crystal on his forehead, but I don't remember whether or not that was what the Joker used to warp reality at the end of the issue. And because I have perfect memory these days, I know that I'm not going to just remember later.

Oh, wonderful, vertical corridors. I remember these from the Telvanni manors in Morrowind. Okay, logic suggests that in a place where everyone can fly the most defensible location would be at the base, preferably under ground level. On the other hand Earth governments usually only go into a bunker if there's an attack in progress. And since he actually lives here… There we go. One Red Martian with a gem of some kind in his forehead near the top of the structure, with more than a few Manhunters between here and there.

Presumably, someone will stop me if I'm heading somewhere I'm really not supposed to be. Now that I know where he (probably) is, I could try going in from the outside. Phase my way in. Mmmm. No.

I step out into space and head upwards. Back downstairs… Downtube, the mix was about fifty fifty Whites to Greens. Assuming the colour I saw was their actual colour of course. Only a couple of Martians in this tube and they're both Green. Too small a sample to mean anything I suppose, but now I'm sort of looking for it. This passageway doesn't go all the way to the top of the structure and it looks like there's some sort of guard post. Martians don't go in for power armour due to the way it would impede their shapeshifting, but I'm seeing telekinesis enhancers and the same reinforced clothing Mister J'onzz wears.

Martian SWAT.

They're all Green, too.

I emerge from the top of the tube and ugh. Okay, they're on the ball. There's a telekinetic field around the exit. I could force my way through it, but a couple of heavies are walking over. They've also altered their bodies for their job: no membranes under the arms and a tougher epidermis and their external volume is slightly less than average as a result. They're knuckle walking but striking with their arms isn't really part of Martian combat.

"Hello there."

No apparent reaction. The telekinetic field may be impeding the sound, or it could be the transition of sound through the atmosphere. Or they might not be using ears. Well, I can't initiate telepathic contact, so until-.

I feel a probe that's notably more forceful than I'm used to outside of training.

**…identification. Continued mental resistance will result in imprisonment, a fine of-.**

**Quite alright chaps and or chapesses. Orange Lantern two eight one four. I'm here to see the Prelate.**

**Uh huh. I'm sure you are. But I'm telling you-** It's fascinating. I genuinely have no idea which of them is speaking. **-that you're going to drop your barriers or I'm going to leave you up there.**

Ring, armour, phase out.

Compliance.

The armour appears around me and immediately the external force is gone. I'm moving through the air and landing in front of them before they can respond. Dismiss armour and there's the force again. **The last Martian who demanded that I drop my mental barriers ended up unconscious when I obeyed. You should have access to the relevant report. Do you really want me to?**

They go completely still. Probably talking to someone telepathically. Hmm. M'gann did tell me that Martian magic users weren't Order order aligned so I'm not all that sure that they'd care about my plans for Nabu. No, I'm keeping my barriers up so that they don't learn about the Burners, whose existence isn't well known but isn't a secret on Earth. Of course, if there was significant travel between Earth and Mars that particular division would fall apart.

**What is the reason you wish to see the Prelate?**

**Two reasons. Firstly, because Mars falls within my area of responsibility and he's best placed to inform me of how I can best use my abilities in Mars' interests.**

I wait. I'm not disappointed.

**And the second?**

**I'm afraid that's a secret. I need to impart it to a member of the Martian government so that they can decide how to deal with the situation surrounding it.**

Another pause. If they were Human, they'd be relaying this to their commanding officer, or possibly their sergeant. They would then make a decision on whether to follow through on their initial impulse to arrest me or to grant me an audience with someone. I'm not really sure what the rank-comparison is, here. I imagine that if an American general wanted to speak to the mayor of a city on short notice that would be arranged in short order. The Green Lanterns haven't spent significant time on Mars and while I might be a 'known' around here thanks to Mister J'onzz I haven't exactly been farming rep.

**The Chief Administrator is prepared to meet you. You will wait here until an escort arrives.**

A Chief Administrator is essentially the Principal Private Secretary to the Prelate. For an introduction, that would be fine. To be honest, better than what I had any right to expect. But, in many places the role is occupied by a Green… And for a potentially world-shattering matter of political philosophy I do sort of need a Red. Even as I think it I realise that sounds every bit as racist as what the Martians do, but Reds genuinely have less fear of fire than the other types and often have training to resist it further. And if I'm going to share my memories of Mister Martian Made Of Fire, then I need someone who isn't going to freak out and broadcast it to the whole city.

**I appreciate the effort required to arrange that on short notice. But I'm afraid that it won't do. I need to speak to a member of the planetary government. The Chief Administrator isn't.** I raise my hands in a theatrical gesture of surrender.. which is.. almost certainly lost on members of a species with no native body language. I lower them again. **But really only the second item needs to go to the Prelate. Once it's in his hands I would be happy to talk about anything else with another official.**

**You are a disagreeable [Complex image I don't really understand but I don't think is supposed to be complimentary] Human.**

That was.. the other one. Whichever one wasn't the first one to address me. **Sorry about that. Is approval likely to take long?**

**It is granted.**

**Thank you. Whereabouts do I go?**

**[Smug grin sensation] Into a holding cell until his Eminence is ready for you.**

**Fair enough. If you'll be so good as to show me to this waiting room?**

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Demeanour 16

next

20th April

11:53 GMT -5

I don't look at either of my escorts as the door membrane in front of us oozes open and Prince J'emm's previous meeting walk out. Greens, in their default Martian forms. They don't rise into the air until they're out of the entry corridor. One or two of them also take the opportunity to alter their bodies. Interesting. Using powers around the Prelate is a taboo, then?

Had a bit of a brainwave about the whole Diana-Cottus situation while I was waiting. If he made Diana there should still be a sympathetic link between the two of them. I'll need John.. or Sephtian or someone to check it. Once I know that for certain I can try talking to one of the other Hekatonkheires about the whole incident. I could try talking to the Titans they've got imprisoned in there. They don't have access to most of their power, after all. But the Hekatonkheires are wardens rather than inmates and should be my first port of call.

**You may enter.**

My escort's mental voice again. I think I've worked out which is which. I step forwards into the corridor and there's a very slight resistance as the telekinetic fields note that I'm here. M'gann didn't say anything about assassinations being common, and given how every Martian seems to respond to Reds I'm having trouble imagining someone attacking him. Oh. The corridor turns from the normal techno-organic to bare stone, with material drapes tied in arcs across the smooth cut surfaces. Purple, with no blue. Maybe significant, maybe not. But the bare stone is interesting. Is this a ceremonial space, then? Historically significant? An ancient reception hall which the rest of the palace grew up around?

The doors at the far end are stone as well, though they glide effortlessly apart in the grip of someone's telekinesis as we approach. Inside is a fairly small round room, perhaps six metres in diameter. On the far side a large Red Martian I presume to be Prince J'emm sits on a stone throne. He's notably more muscular than other Martians I've seen, though otherwise the only differences are the golden diamond shape which appears to be either attached to his forehead or actually imbedded in it and the purple cloak he wears about his shoulders.

Three Green Martians are present, along with one other Red in a short blue cape. Ah, so it does indicate rank! Each has an organic personal computer similar to the one M'gann showed me a couple of times while she was still getting used to Human computer systems. Civil servants, presumably? No, one has the Manhunter 'X'. An officer? I stop a few metres from the throne and bow from the waist.

**Prince J'emm. Thank you for agreeing to see me.**

There's a slight pause. **I am told that you were quite insistent.**

His mental voice puts me in mind of Mister Freeman's, only a bit more… Round? Not as gravelly.

**I apologise for my breaches of propriety, but I strongly believe that this matter warrants your personal attention.**

**I have no objection to important matters of state being brought to me, but you are undermining my officials by rejecting their oversight. More, you are making me do the same.**

**I believe that when you hear me out you will decide that I acted correctly.**

I'm still in the bowing position… Which he's probably not recognising. Silly of me.

**Then what is this secret matter which a Red Martian must hear?**

**Are you familiar with 'controlled molecular destabilisation'?**

Prince J'emm raises his right arm so that his upward pointing fingertips are just in front of his face. Then the very tips of his fingers shimmer like those of the Burning Martian we encountered in the Oan ship back in January. Every other Martian in the room shrinks back while he takes the time to look at it before turning it off. **Yes. I am trained in the use of the technique myself, though I can only sustain it for a few seconds.**

I create a construct screen which is opaque from the back and float it in his direction. Once everyone else is out of line of sight of the far side I create words in the local Martian written language. 'Imagine a Martian who could maintain that over their entire body indefinitely'. I give him a few seconds to read it, then dismiss the construct.

**That may be of importance.** I don't hear anything else, but the three civil servants and my own escort file out. The guards stop just the other side of the stone door while the rest head out down the corridor. **I do not know if your understanding of our civilisation is incomplete or you are merely arrogant, but such an individual would have a truly remarkable capacity for psychic self control. Has M'gann M'orzz demonstrated such a capacity?**

**Goodness gracious, no.** I narrow my focus as much as possible. **[Image of other Red Martian, interrogative.]**

**I would need a better and more concrete reason to dismiss S'yrra. Continue.**

I relax my focus. I can only hope he's being sensible about this. **A quarter of an Earth year ago the team of which I am a member was sent to investigate a spacecraft on the floor of one of Earth's oceans, near the Northern Pole. [Map image.] When we reached the bridge we identified it as belonging to the Maltusians. A little further on and we found the remains of dead Martians. [Image of my team walking through the surgical suite.] The ship's records suggested that it visited Mars-.**

**Ten thousand years ago. Or twenty thousand Earth years.**

Oh shit, do they know about this? **Yes… How did you know?**

**I am not unfamiliar with conspiracy theories. You would hardly be the first person to suggest alien involvement in our world's environmental catastrophe. Or to believe in their truth hard enough to fabricate memories to show me. I hope that you will be able to provide slightly more evidence.**

**The Manhunter J'onn J'onzz reviewed the site after the mission was over. My colleague M'gann M'orzz was also present during the mission and can corroborate anything I tell you.**

**And the ship?**

**Returned to its owners. Their dead were on board as well. I took copies of the ship's records and can make them available to you.**

**Very well. So, these Maltusians caused the catastrophe?**

**As far as I could tell, the damage to the Martian surface was caused by both sides in the conflict between them and your forebears, a now extinct type of Martian.**

**It stretches my credulity that prehistoric Martians could best a species of spacefarers in combat.**

**We encountered one such Martian. The individual in question had kept itself alive in the ship's one animation suspension pod. I can remember the fight with perfect clarity if you want to see it.**

**Show me.** My eyes flick to S'yrra. **Just me.**

**[An image of the Burner, the moment we opened the doors to its pod.]**

**A combat form. Our armed services use them.**

**Brace yourself.**

**I hardly think that necessary. I have experienced fights vicariously before.**

**[The Burner moves and I'm on fire.]**

"G-guh!" J'emm slumps forwards. S'yrra moves closer putting his… Um. Their arm on his shoulder. **No, I am… I am well.**

**That shouldn't be possible, should it? A Martian shouldn't be able to even think that.**

**Unless they were insane or some sort of transcendent mystic, no.** He straightens up. **This is concerning.**

**There's more, and it doesn't get better. Do you want to see it?**

**Yes.** The gem on his forehead glows faintly. **Show me everything.**

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Demeanour 17

next

20th April

11:58 GMT -5

Prince J'emm looks more than a little wilted as I finish showing him our fight with the Burner. S'yrra has fallen to a sitting position, hands clasping… Ring, coin toss.

Result is: Heads.

Clasping his head. He isn't squeezing his eyes shut or rocking back and forth or any of the other things a Human might do when faced with something so horrifying… Though, thinking about it… I'm not sure that I've ever had that paralysing response to anything. I mean, I knew how horrifying confronting some of my desires would be and I just did it anyway. I've fought Demons, supervillains, soldiers… Blume scared me but I didn't just huddle under the mountain until he went away. Even back on Earth Prime when my thanatophobia struck I didn't get paralysed, I just.. found something to do to keep my mind off it until it died down a little. Hm. When I have another crack at the Cottus thing I should have another chat with Thana about the nature of my soul. Hades seems like a decent guy, but if I'm heading there I'd like to be able to continue my work.

Wonder if the Controllers would be willing to make a non-Nekron associated black power ring for me, just in case?

**What. Other evidence do you have. What else did you see?**

I create a sound baffle around the room and then hold out my left hand. A projection of the Guardian who recorded the logs appears. "…difficulties, I continue to believe that rehabilitation is possible. Preserving the natives in their own habitat will be.. somewhat difficult now…" The image glitches. "…increasing sophistication. It is almost as if our presence here has provoked them to unify. How groups with whom we have not had direct contact are even aware of us I am not…" Another glitch, and the Guardian is replaced by a time lapsed image of the surface of Mars. "Simply destroying the natives and recreating them using genetic samples would be far easier. Still, we are resolved not to resort to such methods, even…" The image jumps forwards. "I did not properly anticipate the damage this conflict would cause to the planet's surface." We watch as chunks of surface are scoured of plant life. "The combination of telepathy and physical mutability enable them to fight us with surprising effectiveness, given their lack of technological…" Another glitch, and the map now shows the modern, barren Mars. A new Guardian appears. "…resettled into cave systems we constructed in areas already cleared. We have avoided leaving any trace…" Another glitch. "… different forms. The 'red' variant is least modified, though all three colours possess the comportment and empathy we were aiming to engender."

I don't see a particular reaction from either Red Martian. Given what we saw, I suppose it would be surprising if they did know. I suppose that in cases of ancient conspiracy I'm just trained by popular culture to suspect the ones who benefit from it. I think this situation justifies an empathic scan. S'yrra glows with yellow, uncertainty about the state of his mental universe and horror at the idea of becoming something like the Burner. Prince J'emm is.. harder to read. Certainly nothing which looks like guilt. Though I suppose if he's got good enough self control to essentially set his hand on fire then he could probably suppress that as well.

"Their natural telepathy means that the control system will be passed from one generation to the next in the womb without the need for constant intervention. Time will tell which…"

**They dared-!**

Again, it's weird. I can feel his anger through our mental link. It's not like just seeing it, like this it's so much more immediate. I'm getting the set of assumptions which lead to the anger, not in the clinical, removed way vision gives them to me but as if they were my beliefs, beliefs from my own culture.

There's a series of flickers. "… y colleagues have expressed concern that our modifications have reduced their aggression in too great a degree. Our predictive models show that it is possible that their civilisation will remain introverted as a result. Self isolating. Having reviewed the data in depth I have recommended a continual monitoring…" The image changes to show the Burner. "…intelligence, unusual in its kind. I will attempt to initiate mental contact. Perhaps we will be able to complete the conversion peacefully when they see that we have their best interests at heart?"

**Unsurprisingly, there were no further recordings. It looked like the remaining Burners killed the Guardians, their security robots and any modified Martians still on board before putting themselves in suspended animation. The one we encountered appeared to have sabotaged the other units to make sure that his remained powered for as long as possible.**

**Is there more?**

**I found this map.** I replace the image of the Burner with the globe showing pre-war Mars. Or Ma'aleca'andra, I suppose. **There may be more, but I won't be able to find out until I can talk to the Controllers. They have contact with the Guardians and may be able to access their records of the event.**

Prince J'emm takes a moment to think about things. **You were right to bring this to me. I will need to bring this to the royal conclave. Do you believe that there are any other 'Burning Martians' still in existence?**

**I'm sorry, I have no idea. It.. seems unlikely. They didn't seem like the 'deferred gratification' type and we've had no reports of rampaging fire monsters.** I pause for a moment as I contemplate my answer. **That also match the other parts of the description.**

**What became of the one you did encounter?**

**We recharged the ship and sent it to its owners' homeworld with a warning about what was inside. I don't know enough about Controller justice to know what they'll do with it. They might recreate the original work to turn it into a modern Martian, they might kill it out of hand or they might try something else.**

**We will need some time to decide what to do with this information. Can I assume that the fact you brought it to me first indicates that you do not intend to release it?**

**I don't intend to release it anytime soon, no. If I thought that the Red Martians were planning to sit on it indefinitely I might start dropping hints…**

**No, that would not be practical. Though we do need to be careful about how the release is presented. Thank you, for the information and your forbearance. Is there anything else you wish to discuss?**

**Yes, but nothing else is secret. You can call your retinue back in if you like.**

**I think it would be best for me to take a little time to get my thoughts in order first. As I feel now I could not guarantee that they would not feel something of my discomportment.**

**Alright. Then I'd like to present myself as this Space Sector's Orange Lantern. I'm based on Earth, but if there's anything the Corps can do for the people of Mars, you can tell me and I'll try to get it done.**

**Can you undo the damage done to the surface of our world? Can you restore the species lost? Can you cause the iron in our world's core to spin, granting us a magnetic field capable of turning aside the radiation which now deluges our planet?**

**Can I theoretically do that? Yes. But it wouldn't be safe for me to try spinning your world's core without knowing a lot more than I do about planetary physics. But the Controllers are thousands of years old. When I consult with them, I will speak to them about Mars and ask their advice. As for the damage done to your biosphere, I will also ask if they have records from that period. Or if their cousins the Guardians do. If so, then I will make them available to you. You could use them to start building nature reserves on the surface using artificial shields.**

**I will thank you in advance for the information. As for the reserves, I already sponsor several such sites. M'gann M'orzz's uncle Ma'alefa'ak J'onzz is responsible for one.**

**Yes, I'm planning on visiting him before I leave. Anything else you want?**

**Many minor things. Nothing worthy of your time.**

**I understood that there is some minor civil unrest?**

**There are flare ups every so often. It is an inevitable part of governing a large community. I myself do not agree with the intentional disadvantaging of my White subjects.**

**But advantaging your Red subjects is fine?**

He pauses before replying. **In light of what I have just been informed, I may need to reconsider many things.**

**One last question then. There are things I could do to make travel between Earth and Mars easier-.**

**No. Having borne witness to the upheaval caused by the limited contact we already have, I will not support any move to increase the frequency of such contact. I will take no action to stop you pursuing such an end yourself, but I will speak against it when asked. I do not believe that the time has arrived for a deepening of relations.**

I nod, then realise that they probably don't know what that means either. **Very well. Then I will take my leave. Thank you for seeing me.**

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Demeanour 18

next

21st April

00:36 GMT -5

Ma'alefa'ak places his hands on his lap and leans forward slightly. "It all makes sense so far, but I still don't understand what brought you here now." He smiles at M'gann. "Not that I'm complaining about seeing my favourite niece a few days early, but I'd have thought that you'd want to spend more time in the city."

M'gann and Kon give me the evils while I look sheepishly at the floor. Noting that I'm suitably shameful, M'gann turns back to her uncle. "Paul didn't really understand the way information propagates through a telepathic civilisation. As soon as Paul went into the palace Y'ok was busy sharing our location with everyone who had an interest in Human culture."

"Sorry."

"Maybe… Since I've been on Earth… I've just got used to people not prodding at my thoughts."

Kon grimaces. "The whole cavern was standing room only. Guess I know how zoo animals feel."

"I doubt it." Ma'alefa'ak strokes his chin with his right hand. "From what J'onn has told me of Earth, the zoos in the wealthier parts of the world have educational and conservation purposes. What you experienced was closer to rubbernecking."

Kon slumps. "Or a freak show. Was J'aarkn responsible for that?"

Ma'alefa'ak shrugs. "How would I know?"

"Oh. Ah. Sorry."

"Don't worry about it. I've, ah… I'm over a hundred and thirty Earth years old. If I wasn't used to the idea that I'll never touch someone else's mind by now, I'd have gone crazy." He waves his arms out to the side. "And as you can see, I haven't."

"If you don't mind me asking, your body language is remarkably Human. How..?"

"All the technology J'onn sent to Mars for our anthropologists to pry into was designed to work in the Earth's atmosphere, and under Earth gravity." He looks out of the window, towards the nearest habitat dome. "In the end, they decided it was easiest to store anything they weren't examining here rather than build a special room and learn how to shapeshift into something that could cope with the environment themselves." He nods to himself. "It was a godsend for me. You know how all Martian information technology is telepathy based?"

"Oh goodness. That must be…"

He nods. "Difficult, to say the least. On the other hand, I've gotten pretty good at shapeshifting. I'm also Mars' leading print author."

Kon looks impressed. "Really?"

Ma'alefa'ak grins. "There isn't all that much competition, is there?" Kon and I both look horrified. "Oh, come on. If I can joke about it the least you can do is laugh with me."

We both give him an awkward cough-laugh.

This is really strange. The comics have been roughly accurate about almost everyone I've met, and yet Ma'alefa'ak could win an award for 'Martian least likely to unleash an apocalypse virus on his species'. For goodness sake, he runs a wildlife reserve. And he even looks Human-ish. Certainly more Human than Mister J'onn's normal appearance. I'm not sure if his piercings are actual metal or just shapeshifted bits of skin, but they certainly make his face look like a face rather than a blank mask.

"And the, um, body language?"

"Unlike M'gann, I didn't spend all my time watching situation comedies." M'gann fidgets at the comment. "I watched the documentaries too. There was one on Human body language. To me it was a revelation. Martians usually communicate intent telepathically, even when we're speaking out loud. And Humans do the same by waving their hands around and stretching their face a bit? I can do that."

He leans forward. "Don't tell anyone this, but some days? I take on a completely Human shape. I just walk around, check on the animals, put on some old Earth radio program…" He shrugs. "I guess… I always thought that -to a Human- I'd seem ungrateful. Virtually all Martians are telepathic, but Humans aren't. I've still got shapeshifting and telekinesis. Humans… Most Humans, don't get those."

"You know, it might be possible for me to fix whatever means that you can't-" His face twitches slightly. "-use telepathy? If you wanted?"

He shakes his head. "If you'd offered when I was younger, I'd have jumped at the chance. As it is…" He sweeps his right arm towards the window. "You see any other Martians out here?"

We are pretty much in the middle of nowhere. "M'gann's here?"

"Most Martians aren't telepathic prodigies like M'gann is."

"I'm not.. that strong."

Ma'alefa'ak nods insistently. "Yes you are. There might be some Red Martian prince or princess somewhere who's stronger, but I doubt it."

Kon looks thoughtful. "M'gann said she could feel other Martians when we were near Phobos. I guess I kinda assumed that was.. normal."

"Wait a second." I look at M'gann askance. "When we picked Mister J'aarkn up, you said that when Mars and Earth are close together, you could hear Human thoughts. He asked why you weren't getting tuition on Mars, then he cut himself off. I wondered at the time if it was a racism thing." M'gann shifts uncomfortably. "Was it?"

"Not exact-." / "Pretty much."

M'gann rolls her eyes at her uncle. He stares intently at her face. "The rolling eyes means something, doesn't it." He pokes his right forefinger at her. "Don't tell me, I'll get it in a minute."

M'gann decides to ignore him. "It's… Unusual for Whites or Greens to be as powerful as I am. I don't think I could find a tutor-."

"But if she were Green, someone would probably be willing to bend a few rules for her." Ma'alefa'ak shakes his head sadly. "Don't get.. confused, just because all of those fans of Earth culture turned up at M'gann's house. Most Martians don't want anything more to do with Earth, and most Martians regard the racial hierarchy as immutable. We're fairly liberal around here, but most cities have strict formal segregation. M'gann's parents wouldn't have been allowed to marry in most places."

Kon looks crestfallen. "I guess I hadn't realised that it was really that bad."

"Just because we're telepathic, doesn't mean that we can't be assholes too."

"Can we.. talk about something else? Please?"

The three male members of our gathering avoid each other's eyes while we try and think of something.

"What's a 'rabid Ma'alefa'ak'?" Oh, looks like that wasn't what M'gann had in mind. Press on anyway. "I mean, having met you, you seem pretty even tempered."

Ma'alefa'ak sits back. "Funny story. I'm pretty much Mars' most experienced conservationist…" He chuckles to himself for a moment. "Which should give you some idea of how popular an area it is to work in. So, the city of El'dila was expanding into a new cavern, and the diggers notice that there are a whole series of little tunnels running all through the rock. So they naturally think it's some sort of animal. I get called in, but some idiot decides to carry on digging-. Which is illegal, by the way. We don't have enough biosphere left to be that cavalier with it. They carry on digging, and eventually they break through into a pocket cavern… And then they get attacked from all directions by the animals whose home they just invaded."

Kon looks puzzled. "But Martians are telekinetic."

"It's a bit hard to focus well enough to use controlled telekinesis when the thing's already trying to bite your face off. And they couldn't be detected through telepathy and they had teeth as long as your finger. They were lucky that there was a squad of Manhunters around. When I finally got there and had a look at them, I realised that the locals couldn't hear their thoughts because they had the same thing I did: complete blocks on mental communication. Instead, they communicate by firing sonic pulses through the rock. Once I knew that, I could work out how to lure them into a trap. We can go and see them later, if you like."

"And they named them after you as a.. thank you?"

"Heheh. I think it was a bit more mean-spirited than that. I think I could have done without it, to be honest. They should have done what M'gann said and call them-"

"Hey!"

"-De'lefz'ad. Hahahah!"

Ma'alefa'ak appears to find it hilarious while M'gann looks embarrassed. Kon gives a small shrug. "What does that mean?"

"Mister Bitey Beast."

"I was eight!"

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Demeanour 19

next

21st April

01:09 GMT -5

Look at all this stuff…

M'gann brought her original 'Hello Megan' tapes to Earth with her, and they still occupy pride of place on her shelves even though you can't buy VHS players new anymore. I'm looking at all the things Mister J'onzz brought to Mars which she couldn't take with her when she stowed away with him.

When he finally got back in contact with Mars he was able to convince them to send a Bio-Ship for him. Or rather, he requested one and his former commanding officer -a man named R'oh K'arr- cajoled and browbeat people until it happened. Since no Martian could make the journey, the Bio-Ship had to be pre-programmed and unmanned and launched at just the right time to cross when the planets were nearing alignment. There were a lot of things that could have gone wrong and because they couldn't send a message back Mister J'onzz had no idea it was coming.

"Is any of it any good?" Ma'alefa'ak nods in the direction of the bric-a-brac. "Our anthropologists have long since finished with it. I was going to tell M'gann that she could take whatever she wanted with her."

"Depends what you mean by 'any good'. To be honest, it's all too far behind current technology to be desirable while not being old enough to be antique. Some of it might have value to collectors." Oh. "I'm not keeping you awake, am I?"

He waves it off. "No, I was…" He frowns slightly, his eyes going distant. "I have trouble sleeping, sometimes. I don't know why…"

"Worried about civil unrest in Mel'dilo'rn?"

"Hah! Civil unrest." He shakes his head. "Mel'dilo'rn is quiet. Pleasant, liberal… There are places you wouldn't know we were a caste based society at all."

"Earth isn't exactly a social utopia, you know."

"Your species never consigned an entire subspecies to an underclass."

"We've had castes-."

"It's not the same thing. From a Martian perspective, that's one caste segregating parts of itself. Move to a new area and work hard, who'd know the difference?" He smiles faintly. "It's not as if most Humans can read minds. And, yes, I know about the American civil rights movement. But again, that only affected dark skinned Humans in one country."

"It was more than one country. The whole post-colonial-."

"Okay, but J'onn didn't bring me videos about those. The point is, there were always countries where dark skinned Humans ran things. They were in the army, the civil service, the government… Pale skinned Europeans only ran your world for a few hundred years. Mars… We've been like this for our entire recorded history. There are things White Martians cannot do. Anywhere."

"Couldn't they found their own city?"

"Sure. But it would still come under the planetary government. They'd still have to have a Red in charge of things, and they couldn't stop Greens coming in."

"Huh, you didn't do it."

"Doing what?"

"Everyone I've heard since I came to Mars has abbreviated White Martian or Green Martian to White or Green, but Reds are always Red Martians."

"Maybe I've just gone crazy, out in this place by myself. Or.. maybe, not being in constant mental contact with people who think Reds are the greatest thing ever gives me a greater degree of mental flexibility."

"Okay… So, what's keeping you awake? I was surprised by how quickly you answered the door when we got here."

"What's keeping you awake?" He gestures behind us. "M'gann's asleep in the guest room and Kon's back in J'onn's Bio-Ship."

"The power ring means that I don't need a lot of sleep. I still habitually keep Earth hours, but I don't really need to. Without Earth's day and night cycle I just forgot to turn myself off. So?"

"Nightmares."

"Oh, um. I'm sorry to hear that. Do you get them a lot?"

"They come and go, and at the moment they're coming." He leans against the wall. "I've had them for years. I'm used to them, but they're still a bit inconvenient at times."

"Doesn't… If you've had them for a while, isn't there someone you could see? A doctor, or something?"

"Sure. But they're all telepathic. Since they can't just look into my head, they're a bit outside of their area of experience."

"Um… If you think talking about them would help, I'd be happy to listen?"

"I suppose it can't hurt. I'm not sure that it really needs much analysing."

"So what was.. this one about?"

He shakes his head. "They're always the same. I'm walking through a Martian city. All around me, people are on fire… And I'm not scared of the flame, but that's… Horrifying. I usually wake up there. If I don't, I start seeing the faces of people I know. And…" He trails off, his lips tightening. "It starts to feel… Good. That's the worst part. When I wake up, there's a moment when I'm not sure if I still like it or not. It scares me, sometimes. Which I suppose is the healthy response."

"You're not afraid of fire?"

"Usually I am. After I woke up the first time I actually saw the whole thing through, I tried burning some hydrocarbon liquid. I thought that if I was the only Martian who wasn't telepathic, maybe I'd be the first who wasn't afraid of fire?" He shakes his head. "No luck." He looks at me with curiosity. "So? What does Human dream analysis say's wrong with me?"

"If I had to guess, I'd say general undirected resentment, probably stemming from your exclusion from Martian society. Do you remember when it started?"

His gaze grows vacant. "No… Sometime before J'onn came back for the first time…"

"M'gann said that the two of you didn't get on. I was a bit surprised-" I sweep my hand across the store room. "-that you had all this stuff."

"I don't know. Something…" His frown deepens. "Something… Happened, when he got back… I don't remember exactly what it was. Maybe I… Said something..? I'm not sure. I've tried patching things up since…"

"You don't feel any resentment towards him?"

"No." He considers his answer for a moment. "I suppose I'd quite like to be as telepathic as he is. But I wouldn't take his abilities from him in order to get that."

"He does have the advantage of living surrounded by people without telepathy."

"Things would probably have been better if it had been me who got hit by the zeta beam. But.. I believe in this project. Making Mars live again the slow way. I wouldn't leave it now."

"You… Don't have any children yourself?"

"There's a telepathic component to Martian reproduction. Even if I was in a.. relationship where the subject came up, I'm effectively sterile."

"I.. hadn't.. realised-."

We turn as there's a dull trill from one of the alarms. Ma'alefa'ak immediately throws off his sombre mood and walks back towards the living area. "Looks like someone's paying us a visit."

"Anyone I know?"

"Probably M'gann's brother T'ronn and a few friends. They visit me fairly regularly." He smiles. "Because the best place to organise a covert civil rights movement-."

"Is somewhere no one wants to go."

back

Demeanour 20

next

21st April

01:25 GMT -5

**T'ronn! [Giant beaming smile!]**

M'gann tackle-hugs her White brother off his flying.. Bio.. platform thing, both of them floating into the thin Martian air. She's had to modify her Humanish form slightly for the low pressure. She could have had her shapeshifting clothes form an environmental suit, but she decided against it.

The rest of the party watch them. Five Whites and two Greens. All of them -T'ronn included- are in minimally modified standard pattern Martian forms. They're probably saying things to each other but at this distance I can't pick it up unless they decide to direct something towards me. I guess having M'gann around has spoiled me with the power of a once in a generation telepath.

Ma'alefa'ak smiles at the scene. "I was worried they might miss each other."

"How long has this been going on?"

"A few years. J'aarkn's return widened the appeal, but it's not as if White Martians weren't aware that they were getting a raw deal."

"Does M'gann know about it?"

"She knows that her brother and his friends like to meet up here." He glances at me sidelong. "T'ronn was thinking about involving her, then she said that she wanted to join the Manhunters. Since she ran off to Earth I don't suppose it matters."

"Can Whites do that?"

"In Mel'dilo'rn? Sure, if their record is completely spotless. With the arrangement she's got now I don't think it matters. Even if she wasn't a Manhunter on paper she could make a life for herself on Earth."

"Seems a few too many for a secret meeting."

"Martians… Who aren't me, at least, don't do things solo. Most of these guys and girls will be spending time tending to the animals."

"Why?"

"Making memories. It's not foolproof, but having definite memories of spending time here not discussing the overthrow of the existing social order makes it harder for anyone who might take issue with that to spot that they've been doing it."

I nod. Makes sense.

Kon peers blearily out at them, before exhaling lightly and shaking his head. "I'm going back to bed. Tell M'gann's brother I said 'hi'."

"Okay."

He turns away and trudges sleepily back in the direction of his temporary bedroom.

"Is it late, where you're from on Earth?"

"Middle of the night." The sun's still up outside. "And Kon can't control his circadian rhythms like M'gann and I can. What sort of time is it here?"

"Early morning." The party of Martians on the outside draw nearer to the airlock. Ma'alefa'ak turns away from the window and heads towards the internal side. "I live by the planetary day, not the standard day they use in the caverns."

"I'd have thought that the animals would be most active during the hours of darkness. If they're all burrowers."

"No, they're not. A lot of them have lived in the caverns as long as we Martians have. They're used to open spaces and light… Though not this bright."

"Did you design the biomes yourself?"

"Not entirely. They're based on designs we had for off-world habitats." He sighs. "A purpose they'll probably never be used for."

"I know… Martians have difficulty, when they can't feel other people's minds. But how many people would they actually need? For long term settlement, I mean."

"I don't think anyone knows. M'gann could come out here on her own, but everyone else who's tried that ended up feeling distinctly unwell until they got into range of my menagerie. And we're only about a hundred miles from the nearest city."

"Mister J'aarkn mentioned that he hallucinated during his journey to Earth."

"He probably did. Our early space explorers had the same difficulty. Patrol ships have crews of fifty or so these days, just to make sure the people they actually need are at full capacity."

The opening to the inside of the airlock oozes open and M'gann emerges, dragging T'ronn along with her. **T'ronn, this is my Human friend Paul, and this…** She blinks. **Where's Kon?**

**He went back to bed.**

**Oh. I suppose it is kind of early. Ah, Paul, this is T'ronn.**

I hold out my right hand. **Pleased to meet you.**

He regards my hand for a moment, then his body starts to shift. His arms shorten, fingers clustering towards the end of the limb and being joined by two extra digits. His face smoothes, hair extends from his scalp, his torso contracts and he gains a slightly more upright posture. Lastly, his belt expands to cover his increasingly Human body and I'm left looking at rule 63'd version of M'gann, complete with chalk white skin and grey-black hair.

**Hello.** He takes hold of my hand. **I am T'ronn M'orzz. M'gann has told me a great deal about you.** The left side of his mouth turns upwards and I feel-. **[My arms around her his chest, under her breasts his pectorals. My bare chest pressed against her his naked back. My face nuzzling her his neck. Her His giggles chuckles like silver bells a babbling stream.]**

I bow my head slightly. **I'd be more worried about what Mister J'aarkn was saying about us if I thought the idea of having a race of telepathic shapeshifters finding us sexually attractive-**

M'gann looks scandalised. **T'ronn, what did you just-?!**

**-at all problematic. Guess he didn't edit his own bias out of everything.**

**M'gy didn't need his help to find Humans attractive. Huh.** He looks down at his legs as the rest of his group file in behind him. **Certainly easier to walk around like this.** He tilts his head to the side. "Uncle Ma'al, where do you want us today?"

"That depends. How many more are coming?"

"Two more groups, I think."

"Nice to see you kids so interested in your natural history. So who wants to clean out the B'ool enclosure?"

M'gann's eyes widen. "You have B'ool here?"

"Little ones." He smiles. "No takers?" No one says anything. "M'gann? You want to show your brother how much you've learned from J'onn?"

"Ahhh…"

**Do you like seeing people suffer?**

That was one of the other Martians. Not sure which… Ring, is there a way to tell which of them is doing that?

Confirmed. Options available.

No, I don't think sticking collars on them is really-.

"Uncle Ma'al?" I look around to see Ma'alefa'ak.. clasping his head, unsteady on his feet. M'gann reaches out to support him. "Are you okay?"

"Ah… Ah…" Ma'alefa'ak pulls his hands away, straightening up and his fingers clenching into fists. "Yes, I'm… Sorry. I didn't mean I was actually going to let you loose on the B'ool unsupervised. Let's.. start with the Sho'keer instead. T'ronn, could you show the others where the protective gear is?"

He nods. "Sure, Uncle Ma'al." He looks a little concerned, but Ma'alefa'ak appears to have recovered.

Bit odd. But, I suppose that I'm better equipped to handle dangerous animals than they are and I don't know anything about Ma'alefa'ak's particular condition. Well, if M'gann doesn't look seriously worried.. I'll just.. leave it for now.

back

Demeanour 21

next

21st April

03:47 GMT -5

The acid spat by an adolescent B'ool splatters off my construct barrier. **Remind me why you want to preserve these?**

T'ronn moves the vacuum into the puddle of B'ool… Excretion, and activates the suction. **If Whites were involved in those sorts of decisions, I wouldn't need to be here.** "Hey, Uncle Ma'al!" Ma'alefa'ak looks around from where he's slathering what looks like quick-drying cement onto the sides of an injured adult B'ool. I note they don't try puking super acid on him. "Paul wants to know why we're preserving this species!"

"Urrrruuughhhlllgh." The B'ool Ma'alefa'ak is tending to objects to its treatment. Ma'alefa'ak responds by putting his hands on its… I'm not sure what that is. It calms down immediately.

"That's a complicated question. We don't actually need any of these animals. We can maintain our atmosphere ourselves, either with plants or synthetically. We can grow meats in laboratories-"

"Urrrrrugh."

He smiles fondly at his patient. "-not that I'd want to try eating one of these fellows. I don't think it would affect anyone's lives adversely if we let them go extinct."

"Uncle Ma'al, I'm not sure what you think you're arguing-" T'ronn pulls the partially corroded nozzle out of the waste trench, regarding it with a wary eye. "-but I'm not hearing a reason to keep doing this."

"Optimism, T'ronn." Ma'alefa'ak sits back, checking his patient over one last time before giving it a pat. It dutifully squirms away. "The optimistic belief that some day we will be able to turn the surface of M'arzz into something we can live on. That we can turn it back into the verdant world the fossil records tells us it once was. We don't have enough species left that we can toss away any of the ones we still have. These guys were apex predators and their bodily secretions formed an important part of the ecosystem they used to live in."

"Maybe we could just import nicer animals."

"You know, there's some evidence that the caverns our ancient forebears moved into after the disaster were dug out by B'ool."

I suppose that might be true. The Guardians' records don't specifically say how the caverns were made, and the B'ool's acid spit is mostly used for melting rock rather than attacking things.

"They don't have any B'ool in them now. I'm not convinced that our ancestors-" Ma'alefa'ak is watching the B'ool wriggle away. "-made the wrong decision." Ma'alefa'ak doesn't answer or turn around. In fact, he looks a bit out of it. "Ah, Uncle Ma'al?"

Nothing for a moment, then he jerks his head around. "I'm sorry. You were saying?"

"Ah… Don't worry." He wiggles the vacuum. "I think I've got it all. What do you want me to do with it now?"

"We need to take that to the microbiology laboratory. The bacteria living in the B'ool's digestive system are one of the best insights we have into the surface of ancient M'arzz, as well as an indicator of their general state of health."

T'ronn sighs. "I think I can see why you're the only one who lives out here."

"No, I'm the only one who lives out here because-." He cuts himself off, frowning.

"Because you're the only one who can, I know." T'ronn lets go of the vacuum and instead levitates it beside him as we walk towards the exit to the large B'ool enclosure.

"So, what exactly are your people doing to undermine the Green/Red hegemony?"

"Civil disobedience. We share information about companies or people who have strong apartheid tendencies and agree not to have anything to do with them. We also monitor and publicise incidents of violence committed against White Martians with semi-official sanction."

"I'm a little surprised that sort of thing can happen in a telepathic society."

"Why?"

"Because they can't just pretend it didn't happen. The victim would have a memory they can share. Right?"

"I'm doing this-" He momentarily lifts the vacuum. "-in order to create cover memories to hide my political work. Manhunters are much better at it than I am. If they want to they can just erase a memory from someone's mind, and it's even easier for them to edit their own."

"Have you considered using Human recording devices? They're not telepathic. It wouldn't be that hard to make a wireless transmitter that was small enough to wear so that even if the device was destroyed there would still be a record."

"That could work." The three of us come to a halt as the inner airlock door oozes closed behind us. "You'll have to show me how to use them."

He and Ma'alefa'ak alter their shapes for the external environment. I note that the elder Martian completes his change slightly ahead of his nephew.

Pressure dropping.

I should have spotted it before now, but Martian airlocks don't flush air, they extract it, telekinetically drawing useful gasses out of the small locked chamber before opening it to the outside. Given that the caves they live in aren't interspersed with airlocks it hardly comes as a surprise that Martians are masters of atmosphere retention techniques. Or maybe they are interspersed with them? I wouldn't necessarily recognise a telekinetic airlock, and I didn't notice anything particular on our way in.

The outer door oozes open and T'ronn leads the way out onto the Martian desert surface. The air here isn't completely still, but there's still little enough wind that footprints and other markings tend to linger for a long time. Wonder why there aren't any paths? Sure, he couldn't make enclosed walkways due to the risk of escapes, but putting a few stones down? Then I see T'ronn floating just above the ground. Which is probably even easier to do here than it is on Earth. Right. Different assumptions.

**T'ronn? You there?**

**Yeah, what is it?**

**The civil disobedience stuff you're describing to me sounds pretty peaceful. Not.. saying that you're lying or anything, but if it were Humans I imagine that some members of the group would want to be a bit more… Forceful. Direct. You know?**

**Yes, it's.. not a universal approach. There are Whites who want to be more aggressive about things.**

I look around, taking in the other domes. Looks like M'gann's team (her, Z'üm and Cha'rissa) have finished with the Sho'keer, and they've got the Sphere with them in trike mode carrying a couple of large containers of Sho'keer eggs. I suppose with creatures that practice r-selection reproduction these sorts of habitat would allow them to successfully reproduce far more than they would have been able to in the wild. And creating a habitat big enough to actually replicate an area of ancient Mars would be a massive undertaking.

**And?**

**What happens in a fight when one side has all the apparatus of state and the other side doesn't?** Ah. **Some… [A complex mental image stressing extreme ingroup bloodline loyalty and superiority and the exclusion and/or destruction of everything else.] They want-.**

**I'm sorry, can you give me a moment? That was a more complex image than I'm used to dealing with.** How could I parse something like that? Strong…

**Oh. Right. Sorry. I guess in words it would be something like… Hyper.. clan..?**

A name I recognise from the comics. If I remember correctly they were a group of White Martians who posed as superheroes. I think they had mental influence satellites as well, which was sort of necessary to explain why anyone would turn their backs on the comic book version of the Justice League. And that's about all that I remember. Of course, with Mars still being inhabited and colour being inherited rather than being a result of mental state, if they exist they'd have to be something else. **And what do they do?**

**They want to kill anyone who takes advantage of us. They've killed Manhunters… They've even killed Red Mar-.**

**Stop. Try saying it as 'Reds'. Leave off the 'Martians'.**

**Is that really..? Alright, ah, they've.. even.. killed Reds.** Darn, it isn't an absolute compulsion. **I don't want to tear down Martian society. Mostly, things are pretty good here. But people are angry, and a lot of Whites who don't want to join them give them a degree of.. respect. Kinda hard to explain to someone who's just been on the receiving end of a unwarranted Manhunter mindfray why they should care about the Green who did it getting the same done to them.**

back

Demeanour 22

next

21st April

08:23 GMT -5

"…sound like a race of total psychotics, Mister Grayven." Congressman-. Um, Representative Visclosky leans forward slightly, looking a little alarmed. "I hope you're not just better at hiding it."

There's a smile there, but it's brittle, as is the laughter which follows it. He asked me -on behalf of the United States House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense- to introduce myself and explain why I was worth listening to on the subject of defence procurement. Then followed a short description of Apokolips.

Understandably, they were somewhat perturbed by that.

For a moment I hide my smile behind a glass of water. "Not at all, Mister Chairman. Many Apokoliptians are far better at hiding their nature than I am."

He holds my gaze for a moment as I affect an expression of honest helpfulness. Then he gives me a polite near-laugh and returns his attention to his notes.

"If I may, Mister Chairman?" Representative Visclosky looks up as Representative McKeon raises his right forefinger, and gives him a nod.

I'm not expecting anyone here to give me a hard time. Visclosky's a Democrat and an ally of the President. McKeon's Republican and the ranking minority member. He also was one of several people here who sent me a thank you note after I killed Klarion. One he wrote himself by hand. Good penmanship, I thought.

"Mister Grayven, should we.. Earthlings, be worried about Apokolips?"

"Hmm. Not to the extent that it disrupts your daily lives. To the best of my knowledge, Darkseid has next to no interest in this world. But… Strategic planners such as yourselves need to be aware that it's there, and tend to your armaments appropriately. If you ever get around to expanding off your homeworld you will run into them eventually. Oh, and, um… No one actually calls you 'Earthlings'… I don't know how that whole thing got started, but it was nothing to do with us." Another polite laugh around the room. "Apokolips is the number one military power in this galaxy. It doesn't hold that much territory compared with some, but that's because Darkseid doesn't want to hold territory. It has massive production facilities, a sizeable fleet and almost total social unity."

"Unity enforced by physical abuse and mind control."

"Yes." The faintest twinges of fear around the room. "There's a reason why I-" I place both hands on my chest. "-live here instead of there."

Representative McKeon's smile looks a little more genuine at that. "Welcome to the land of the free."

"Thank you. Good to be here."

"While we're on the subject…" Representative Calvert gives it a moment to see if anyone wants to stop him. "What exactly is your immigration status?"

Representative McKeon winces. "Ken."

"Hey, I signed off on the Bill naturalising Superman. If Mister Grayven hasn't made arrangements yet, we should get the ball rolling."

Ekh. "I'm afraid that -though I thank you for your generous offer- I can't accept. I am essentially Apokolips' ambassador to Earth, so taking citizenship from an Earth polity isn't.. really… Something I can do."

"Oh, ah, no offence intended." Representative Calvert looks down the bench, but it looks like the others are happy to allow him to continue talking. "I don't believe that the US has officially recognised your status yet-."

"And you shouldn't. My Apokoliptian title isn't ambassador, it's suzerain. Darkseid may well take offence if someone of my rank is asked to present themselves to… Another official, for recognition."

"Must make diplomacy a bit tricky for your people. What exactly do they mean by 'suzerain'?"

Ah… Telling a group of American congressional representatives that I own not merely their country but their planet probably isn't such a great idea. "Please understand, the rulers of Apokolips regard themselves as gods and are powerful enough to back that up. As far as Darkseid is concerned, Earth is.. my territory. So long as I'm around, no other Apokoliptian will attack the planet… Though they might come after me personally."

He blinks. "They think you own the Earth?"

"Technically. It really won't make any difference to anything until your species develops the capacity for interstellar travel. And… The downside of making an effort to repudiate it is that Darkseid might take offence, and…"

Representative Visclosky nods. "We might have the greatest military power in the galaxy knocking on our door."

I shake my head. "I'm sorry about that. I really never intended to regain my memories of Apokolips. But, the problem with erasing your memories.. is that you forget that you're not supposed to remember."

He nods again. "I think that covers the introduction. Though I can see State wanting to talk to you before too long." I nod. "Now, on to the actual subject of our hearing. Mister Grayven, you've had a chance to review the documentation on the F Thirty Five." I nod again. "We've already heard from a lot of witnesses about how it compares to our existing aircraft, and the aircraft of our allies and rivals. What we're interested in hearing today is how an alien sees it."

I take a deep breath.

"It's crap."

A blink. "Pardon me?"

"I've spent a lot of time thinking about it. Leaving aside the cost overruns -that's an organisational thing, it doesn't affect the effectiveness of the weapon- and generously assuming that all of the technical issues can be ironed out, you end up with an aerofighter."

"Not a fan of airplanes?"

"Advanced militaries don't use them. There's just no point. Too easy for ground based weapons to destroy without the advantages that come with being in orbit. Some places make.. cheap aerial drone weapons for anti-insurgent duties. I use infantry support drones… But the F Thirty Five is a machine which can barely go supersonic, can't operate outside of an atmosphere, has a distinctly finite supply of fuel, has no force fields and doesn't carry any light speed weapons. I don't see the benefit of having it."

"I'm sorry we don't live up to Apokolips' standards, but Earth technology isn't quite advanced enough to make space-fighters."

"Really?"

"I'm afraid not."

"I ask because I picked this-" I take a cold gun out of subspace. "-up in Central City yesterday." I hold it up. "It's called a 'Cold Gun'. It works by arresting molecular vibration in the target area. The beam moves at light speed and at maximum intensity stops molecular vibration completely. By my estimation a strike anywhere on an airborne F Thirty Five would kill it. It was designed by a Human with no higher education.. while he was in prison." I return it to subspace before taking out a purple death ray. "The forerunner of this gun was built in the nineteen forties. It nullifies life. A normal Human can only take the beam for a second or two before their body completely ceases functioning. Again, a light speed weapon." I make eye contact with each committee member in turn. "Ladies and Gentlemen, I use these guns. They are superior to their nearest Apokoliptian equivalents. Why aren't you using them?"

"As for the rest?" I put the death ray back into subspace. "The superhero Red Tornado was built in the nineteen thirties and hasn't been recharged once since. In the forties the first Starman built a device that could generate decent force fields, and it was the size of a signal baton. That contained its own power source as well. All Earth technology."

Jack Knight hanging up on me nearly made me regret my break with the League.

"And while it's true that the jet engine comes from the same era, there's really no comparison in terms of effectiveness. Why do you insist on using these substandard technologies when you have better ones available?"

back

Demeanour 23

next

21st April

13:40 GMT -5

President Horne rises to his feet as his personal assistant shows me into the Oval Office. "How did it go?"

I amble over the presidential seal on the carpet and come to a halt before the desk. "Remind me: you don't like F Thirty Fives, right?"

"I have some reservations about the cost/benefit ratio and in some of the technologies involved. I wouldn't go so far as to say that I dislike it. It's an aircraft, not a person."

I'm honestly not sure if his dispassionate attitude is going to be a help or a hindrance. I suppose it has allowed him to govern the country despite the House and Senate both being split down the middle. "I informed the Committee that advanced species have -for the most part- abandoned aircraft, and that in any case the American establishment's unwillingness to use 'superhero' technology means that compared to things you can find in a half dozen American cities any day of the week, even cutting edge conventional aeronautics are more or less obsolete."

President Horne regards me for a moment. "Is that what you've been telling the Chinese?"

"Mister President, I didn't assist them in creating the Dragon Wing. I merely aided the pilot in an attempt to ensure that he doesn't melt. And the Dragon Wing has a great many advantages over a more conventional aircraft."

"Would you, if asked?"

"Mister President, at this point few things are more contrary to my interests than encouraging internecine conflict on Earth. But you do need to advance your technology beyond burning hydrocarbons and… Copper."

"You didn't answer my question, there."

"Probably, if they were working on something interesting. There are a hundred ways that fiddling with Durlan technology can go wrong. Better for the Earth that it doesn't."

"And would you do the same with us?"

"Mister President, I have no allegiance to any Earth nation. But, I've met you. I've never met Hu Jintao. I live here, and in the autumn my daughter will begin going to school here. Your.. country is growing on me."

He nods, a faint smile on his lips. "So, we're your favorite customers, just not your only one."

"More or less."

There's a knock at the door, then his personal assistant sticks his head around the door. "Mister President? Mister Myer and General Lane here for you, sir."

"You can send them right in, Irwin." President Horne walks around the left side of his desk and gestures to the seating on the opposite side of the room. "Shall we?"

"Ah… Mister President, I'd crush those seats."

"Oh." He looks me over. "I suppose you would. I'm sorry, but I don't think we've got-."

The door opens once more and Mister Myer and General Samuel Lane walk in. Full regalia, hat under his left arm. I am privileged. He looks at me. He's.. weighing me up. He doesn't appear to resent my presence. Never got around to asking Kal-El what their relationship was like. So I don't know what his general attitude to superfolks is. Or aliens.

"General. Thank you for coming."

General Lane comes to attention. "Mister President."

President Horne gives him a nod. "I don't believe that you've met Mister Grayven."

"No, but I've heard of him." I hold out my right hand and after a split second hesitation he takes it in a firm grip.

"I believe that I was once harangued at length by your elder daughter."

"Heh. You're not the only one."

President Horne turns his attention to Irwin. "Have the kitchens send us up refreshments in about an hour." Irwin nods, then closes the door behind him. "Grayven, General Lane is being put in charge of our exotic weapons research program, replacing General Eiling."

I nod. "I suppose that we'll be seeing a good deal of each other, then."

"After the shellacking you gave the Committee? I should think so. Not sure whether I should be mad about you badmouthing the US military or enjoy the schadenfreude at the Air Force's expense."

"Why don't we say you did the first while you actually do the second?"

"Works for me."

President Horne gestures at the seating. "Okay, gentlemen, if you'd like to take a seat…"

Mister Myer sits down in the far corner while President Horne takes the position next to him. After a brief moment of hesitation and mutual eye flickering General Lane sits down opposite Mister Myer while I cover the position opposite President Horne in a construct before carefully lowering myself onto it.

Flying in a sitting position just isn't as relaxing as actually sitting down.

Mister Myer opens his briefcase and passes President Horne a card folder. He in turn opens that and takes out a stapled together group of printed pages. "First item. General, are you up to speed on your brief?"

"Assuming that everyone involved is actually telling my people the truth, yes." He turns his head my way. "The United States had a lot of 'future weapon' research programs, each in separate chains of command. Now, they all work for me."

I nod. "I imagine that ruffled a few feathers."

"Some. But mostly they're mad enough about Klarion-" He snarls the word. "-and how they weren't prepared for him that we've got them on board." He turns back to his Commander in Chief. "Not a lot will change for them on a day to day basis. I doubt we'll have any serious problems with insubordination."

"Glad to hear it. Anything I need to know about right away?"

"I don't think so, sir. I'll have a full written report for you within a fortnight."

"Alright then. Adrian, how are things going with sounding Congress out about… Ah, what are we calling it?"

"'Special Tribunals', sir."

"And we couldn't come up with something less ominous sounding than that?"

"There are only so many things you can call a court hearing, sir."

"I guess. So?"

"Well, Republican conservatives are delighted by the idea. They weren't sure you could pass it, but they liked the idea. Republican moderates and libertarians were against in principle, though a lot of them said they wanted to see a firm proposal before they came down on either side."

"About what we expected. And my fellow Democrats?"

Mister Myer sighs. That isn't a good sign. "Mostly, the best I could say is 'lukewarm'. A lot of them were pretty confident it would be unconstitutional to try someone in absentia."

"I thought Caroline came up with a form of words which let us get around that."

"It should, but even if we could get it passed in Congress it would be challenged by every civil liberties group in the country. We won't really know for sure until the Supreme Court rules on it."

"Great."

General Lane looks momentarily puzzled. "Ah, Mister President?"

"Sorry, General. We're looking into ways to deal with people like Klarion legally." The General's puzzlement deepens. "Ways to try and convict them for their crimes. It turns out that trying someone who can't be safely captured or confined isn't something the Founding Fathers gave much consideration to."

"Well, hell sir." He actually looks a little impressed. "I'd happily kill the son of a bitch whatever the courts said."

"I'm sure you would, General. But as a matter of policy I feel that this administration should try and stay within the bounds of the law."

…

My goodness me. He's actually serious.

back

Demeanour 24

next

21st April

14:11 GMT -5

Kon prods at the contents of his plate with a fork. "Are you sure these are okay for Humans.. and Kryptonians, to eat?"

Ma'alefa'ak nods. "J'onn gave me plenty of data on Human physiology. I don't know Kryptonians well, but assuming they mostly handle their food in the same way Humans do, you shouldn't have a problem with it."

"Guess I'm just not used to eating giant spider eggs."

M'gann swallows her own mouthful. "Oh, Sho'keer aren't spiders. They have ten legs, and only six eyes."

"They taste fine to me, Kon." Fine, but not 'good'. Slightly rubbery outer and slightly slimy inner. Sort of what I imagine you'd get if you sautéed a grape. I don't think hens are going to have to worry about the competition anytime soon. "Do you sell these?"

Ma'alefa'ak nods. "It's not a huge market, but I can usually find buyers. Of course, since I can't really leave here I'm dependent on T'ronn's friends to distribute them."

Kon stabs an egg, the left side of his mouth turning slightly down as albumin -or whatever Sho'keer have instead- oozes out. "Do you sell B'ool eggs as well?"

"Oh, B'ool don't lay eggs. They gestate their young in their skin. When they reach full term they use their own acid to burn their way out of-."

"Uncle Ma'aaal!"

"What?"

"Humans consider some subjects inappropriate for discussion while dining, as they tend to put us off our food. Bodily mutilation is one of these subjects."

"Oh." He thinks for a moment. "So, should I not talk about what we'll be feeding the M'loth after breakfast?"

M'gann puts her fork down. "No.. you.. definitely shouldn't."

I take another forkful. I always thought an 'acquired taste' was a food so bad that it numbed your sense of taste, but these are actually growing on me. I don't often eat alien food. That time with Euanthe was the only other time I've eaten a significant amount.

"How were the B'ool gut juices?"

That came through in Ca'andran, though the timbre suggests a speaker who isn't used to forming words with their mouth. I was looking at my plate rather than the rest of the table so I'm not sure which of T'ronn's friends was asking. Sounded slightly feminine…

"Healthy, thank you Z'üm. They're getting a good mix of soil microbes and minerals in their diet."

"Are any of those microbes dangerous?"

"What, compared to the B'ool themselves? Not really. They'd probably make you ill if you ingested them-" Kon puts down his fork. "-but aside from that they're pretty harmless. Your body chemistry is more dangerous to them than theirs is to you."

"Are any of the microbes here dangerous?"

"One or two. The really dangerous ones are the ones designed to interfere with the telepathic or telekinetic abilities of the animals. Those can often cross over from one species to another because M'arzz native life forms usually use the same brain mechanisms to produce those effects."

"But not the shapeshifting mechanism?"

"While a lot of M'arzz native life forms can change their shapes, none of the ones which survived the disaster have the ability to anything like the extent that we do. Any diseases that used that as a route of infection are either living so far under the ground that we've never encountered them or.. were.. simply rendered extinct." He levitates a few eggs. "Not that even I think that's a bad thing."

Z'üm turns towards us. "M'gann, Kon'el and.. Orange Lantern? Will you be staying here for the entire day?"

Kon pushes his plate forward and nods. "Yeah, and probably all of tomorrow as well. I didn't think so many people would come just to stare at us."

M'gann looks a little dejected. "We'll.. have to try visiting in disguise… Or coming up with a way of preventing people from recognising us. I really want you to meet the rest of my brothers and sisters before we go back to Earth."

"Would a telepathic illusion work? I know Mister King used them plenty of times in situations like this."

"Maybe. But it would only take one person in the crowd to realise what was happening and we'd be mobbed again."

"I don't mind acting as a taxi service. If you organise a time, I can fly around picking up members of the J'onzz clan and depositing them here."

T'ronn looks pensive. "We.. kinda need most of my family not to visit until we've got the business part of our visit finished."

"Tomorrow?"

"Yeah, we'll be.. gone by then."

"Are you sure you can't stay?" The look M'gann gives her brother is more than a little reminiscent of the one Wolf tried on Kon.

"Ah, I suppose I could. If Orange Lantern can transport me back?"

"I'd be happy to."

Ma'alefa'ak nods. "It'll be interesting to see if the rest of the family make the same faces you do when you…"

**Orange Lantern.** Z'üm's mental voice. I look over to probably-her. **Could I speak to you outside for a moment?**

**If you like.**

I run a brief surge of orange light over my own plate, scouring away the residual egg-gunk before sliding back my chair. Ma'alefa'ak's home makes use of quite a lot of fixed shape furniture as he can't issue the mental commands required for the shapeshifting variety himself. Z'üm rises slightly more awkwardly, and I'm slightly ahead as we walk towards the passage through from the dining area to the hallway leading to the exit. I'm getting a slight probing buzz on the edges of my mental shields, though I've got no idea where it's coming from. Her? Maybe, though I'm not sure what she'd want to know that she couldn't just ask right there. Maybe she's not very good at narrow beam transmissions?

The habitation module airlock is large enough to fit default form Martians like her, so we can both enter in a single cycle easily enough. Light buzz is still there, which means that it's probably coming from her. Odd. Another moment and the outer door oozes open and I step outside, floating slightly off the ground. She follows suit, autolevitating after me as I turn to face her. **What was it you wanted to talk about?**

**Your mental shields are really good.**

**Thank you. Get into a few fights with hostile telepaths and they tend to become a priority.**

**Are you a Human telepath?**

**No, but a lot of the exercises can be used by untelepathic Humans as well. I've been a participant in about half of M'gann's lessons with [Image of Henry King Junior].**

**Is that how you knocked the police officer unconscious when you first arrived in the city?**

**Oh, no. That was my name.**

**Your name?** She looks me over a little cautiously. **Are you a Human sorcerer?**

**No. Something… I'm not sure exactly how it happened, but my name has become unthinkable. I can't think it or say it out loud, and M'gann found out that probing it telepathically produced the same results.**

**And you didn't warn him?**

**No. In fact, I nudged him towards it.**

**Really?**

**They'd been being rude to M'gann and he was being rude to me. I warned him, then when he didn't take any notice… His own silly fault.** I gaze into her faintly glowing eyes, instinctively looking for facial expression in a species which I know doesn't do expression. **Was that why you wanted to talk to me out here?**

**No.** Her skin begins to shift. **That was mostly for something else.**

back

Demeanour 25

next

21st April

14:16 GMT -5

I watch with interest as her crest shrinks, merging with the softer skin at the back of her head. At the same time her face flattens and smooths, skin growing to cover her teeth as her chin recedes to form a more Human like jaw line. Her upper torso shrinks as her shoulders contract while her lower torso expands slightly, creating a central trunk of near uniform width. The normal wide hips possessed by default form Martians now fade naturally into the trunk rather than looking like they were stuck on afterwards from parts left over from some other creature. Next, her arms retract into her shoulders, faint purple patches losing their separate identity as the skin around them softens and becomes the same chalky white as M'gann's. The underarm pseudo wings vanish and the usual thick Martian neck withers until the more mobile Human variety emerges.

The shift as a whole is more than a little disquieting. It reminds me of something the Discworld character Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson said of his Werewolf lover: she was fine with him seeing her either in Human form or Wolf form but not with him seeing her while she changed, in case he never wanted to see her again afterwards. Z'üm is trying to assume Human form. She knows what those are supposed to look like but appears to be uncertain as to how to get there from where she is at the moment.

I've known for a while that M'gann is a more powerful telepath than most other Martians but this is the first time that it's really been brought home to me how much better a shapeshifter she is as well. T'ronn and his allies are her elders by a good few years but Z'üm is taking longer than M'gann did to copy us back when we went for that first joyride around Happy Harbour. Thinking back, it was a bit odd; she said that boys were harder, but Martian reproductive systems are quite dissimilar to those of Humans. I guess that she'd just got used to Megan-shape. Of course, these days-.

**How do I look?**

She's gone for a Barbie doll smooth look, and rather than adopt M'gann's White Martian to Human monochrome interpretation she's given herself hair the same lilac colour as the patches on her arms were. Her new facial features are perfectly symmetrical and-. Actually, her hair should be a bit more floaty in this gravity and atmos-. Oh, I see. She's holding onto both herself and an air pocket with telekinesis.

**Pretty good. I'm not sure… You do realise that Humans don't get skin of that colour, right?** I think about Mister Napier for a moment. **Not without being in some sort of horrible chemical accident.**

**It's a fusion form. I'm not trying to pretend to untelepathic Humans that I'm one of them, but at the same time I can still appeal to their… Aesthetic sense.**

**I'm a little puzzled as to whether your outer surface is supposed to mirror the effect of clothing or bare skin. Also, the complete lack of facial expression is a little strange.**

**Facial expression? You mean how Ma'alefa'ak squishes and expands parts of his face when he speaks?**

**There's a little more to it than that, but essentially, yes.**

**And as for the other thing.** She freezes for a moment, her dull blue-grey belt shifting and growing until it turns into a fairly minimal bathing costume, covering her smooth crotch and non-mammary chest mounds and.. not a great deal else. And suddenly I'm paying more attention. **Is this better?**

**It conceals the fact that you don't have certain body parts from casual observation. The lack of facial expression is still a little off-putting. Though I.. do have a gynoid friend who used to do a similar thing. Still does it sometimes when something unexpected happens.**

**Or you could reduce the intensity of your mental barriers a little so that we can share what we're feeling in the Martian way.**

I'm half expecting it, but the sudden rush of lust inside my own head still catches me off guard. I redouble my barriers until I feel it slacking off, then attach a filament to her. "Can I assume that you've.. viewed Mister J'aarkn's work?"

**Enough to get curious.** She holds up her right arm, looking at the orange glow. **What is this?**

"An environmental shield. It will allow you to communicate with me by talking. And.. allow you to breathe."

"I did not know that Humans had such abilities." Her voice is a little strange, damp compared with her mental voice. I'd guess that she hasn't practised speaking before.

"By default, we don't. There's a species called-."

"Guardians."

"It would be more true to say that the Guardians are one faction of a species, but yes, they're the best known example. I'm.. assuming that.. you've heard of their Green Lantern Corps?"

A slightly strained looking smile. I think she's trying to match my expression, but just isn't familiar enough with her new muscle shapes to pull it off convincingly. "Yes, of course. How did you come by it?"

"Not really sure. Green power rings go to the strongest willed heroically inclined sentient in a Sector after the death of a serving Sector Lantern." For obvious reasons, Honour Guard power rings don't auto-recruit. "Though they prefer recruits from interstellar civilisations. The first couple of Humans were recruited by mistake." Alan because they lost track of Lantern Yalan Gur's equipment after his death and Hal because he was close to Abin Sur when he died.

"They would not recruit Martians?"

No, in point of fact. The Martian species is on the 'Do Not Recruit' list, but I can't reasonably explain why to her until I've given Prince J'emm a little longer to prepare Martian society for the news. "Probably not, though they might make an exception for an outstanding candidate."

"Could one power ring undo the work of another?"

"Depends what that work was, but it should be able to." I don't think the Green Lanterns have done anything here lately, certainly nothing ongoing. Has Z'üm picked up something from M'gann?

"And what would I have to do to get an orange ring?"

"I haven't really settled on selection criteria as yet-."

She floats a little closer. "How about if I ask-" **[Hands everywh-. Oh goodness me.]** "-really-" **[And softly kissing mouths.]** "-nicely?" **[And that's further than I'm prepared to go with someone I just met.]**

Shields up. "It's really more helpful to have an understanding of your own desires, your own nature."

She floats right up to me, chest pressed against my shirt. And now she's made herself anatomically accurate. "I understand my desires very well."

"If you're really interested, I don't mind tutoring you with a view to eventually applying to join the Corps."

"How about you tutor me right now." She's picking up facial expressions. That's sultry. I suppose those would have been on J'aarkn's recordings. She probably just didn't appreciate their significance before. "There's a habitat over there that doesn't have any animals in it. We could alter the atmosphere mix…"

Something… I feel some sort of telepathic transmission arrive in her mind, though I'm blocking too hard to get anything else. She starts slightly, then pulls back a little.

"Oh. Oh well. Not my decision to make."

"I'm sorry? Did someone.. put you up to that..?"

"No, that was initiative. He is really interested in your ring. But I'm afraid I've been instructed to focus on my original objective."

"Um." I summon my armour from subspace. "What exactly do you-?"

The habitat behind me explodes!

back

Demeanour 26

next

21st April

14:20 GMT -5

I turn, generating a hemispherical barrier as jagged sections of wall blast past us. Next comes wind, air at Earth pressure and consistency whipping up the Martian dust around us.

**You must have known!**

Next comes the debris and-. Filaments flicker out as Martians adapted for Earth conditions are sent flying through the ruined walls, catching them and allowing them to breathe.

**There must have been signs!**

**Uncle Ma'al! Stop!**

"What the hell just happen-?"

Two lances of red energy pierce the dust and slam into my shield, which immediately starts cracking! Not heat vision, it's some sort of telekinetic bwoof!

The scenery goes shooting past, tethered Martians dragged along with me! A flare of orange and I stabilise, construct armour forming around my body and my standard armour being replaced with my heavier suit. **M'gann! What's going-?!**

**M'gann's not here right now.** Z'üm's mental voice. There's a vague blur in front of me and my construct armour starts taking hits. Super speed attack. And.. there's not enough atmosphere here for sonic attacks to do a thing. I generate a brilliant flare of blinding white light. **Ugh. Alright then.**

Connection lost.

I turn to see Z'üm-. I assume it's Z'üm. Her revised form is more like that of the comic White Martians… Though for reasons which escape me she's kept the breast mounds and swimming costume. Extremely sharp looking claws clasp one of the Greens I brought with me and a razor tipped tail scratches at their throat!

**Catch!**

A blur of motion and the Green shoots away across the desert. They try to stabilise themselves with telekinesis, but they've got too much energy-! I transition, images of thousands of strange devices flashing through my mind as I struggle to-. There! A construct flickers into being, nullifying the Green's momentum and leaving them suspended in the air. I pull my passengers in tightly, orange barrier around us as my cold gun constructs fire at the thin air around us. Hope this works in a Martian atmosphere…

**Gah!**

Z'üm precipitates out of the air wreathed in frozen carbon dioxide. Mister Snart originally designed cold guns to stop the Flash. In a cold field it doesn't matter how fast your molecules were moving, they're brought to an immediate halt. Z'üm collapses forwards into the dust and I attach a filament to her recumbent body.

Pithing needle.

Compliance.

Two bright orange needles stab into the back of her neck. Think I can trust the rings to adjust those automatically.

"Is everyone alright?"

Nothing.

"Speak out loud, if you please. I'm shielding myself mentally and you should be as well."

"Yes." The Green I caught is the first to respond. "I am whole."

"Glad to hear it. What just happened?"

"Hyperclan. I've never met one, but…" There's a pause, then he awkwardly waves his left arm at Z'üm. "That is what they are supposed to be like."

"Ma'alefa'ak?"

"He was talking about some Earth television program with M'gann. Then-" **[Ma'alefa'ak's eyes widen as]-.**

"Words! Words, not images. Your enemies can use telepathy at least as well as you can."

"Sorry! I'm.. not used to… Ma'alefa'ak sort of.. shook? Then he changed his shape to.. like that."

"He's Hyperclan too?"

"No." One of the others speaking this time. A White. "Hyperclan are all White. He's Green. They'd never accept him."

"He projected thoughts at us." Cha'rissa's wearing a form that's Human enough for me to see facial expression. "I didn't-. It was like he wanted to kill everyone just for existing."

OOooooooh crap. I activate my communicator. "Superboy, you there?"

"A-heh. Yeah, barely."

"What's happening?"

"Ma'alefa'ak's fighting M'gann and another Green. Teekl's fighting one of the other Whites. Sphere got blasted right at the start."

Good cat. "Are they handling it?"

"Think so."

"Right. I've got the other Martians with me here. Z'üm's Hyperclan and the other White probably is too. I'm going to interrogate her. Call me if things get worse where you are."

"Right. Let's see how good they are dodging plasma."

The cold gun constructs fire again, creating a cold zone around but not touching Z'üm. Then I touch her with a filament. "You. What's your name?"

She turns her head a little, then freezes, perhaps surprised that the rest of her body doesn't follow. "My name is Z'üm Z'orr."

I take a moment to turn to face the other Martians. "Did none of you do a background check on the people you were working with?"

T'ronn frowns. "Z'orr? You actually believe in that?"

"How were you able to move that fast?"

"Magic."

"All the sorcerers on Mars are Red and I very much doubt that they'd help you. Answer honestly or I use these rings to compel you."

"Like your owners did our entire species?" What? My ow-? She.. knows about the Guardians? "Distraction complete, Karmang. Get me out of-"

Jam FTL and teleport!

"-here."

Purple smoke roils around her. What has that signature? My rune stone comes out of subspace and.. a weak glow. Right, railgun, mageslay-.

The smoke is suddenly sucked inwards, taking Z'üm Z'orr with it. Darn it! Okay, need to get the civilians somewhere safe, then get back to helping M'gann and Kon.

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Demeanour 27

next

21st April

14:23 GMT -5

The Bio-Ship jinks frantically as one of the Hyperclan fires a volley of red beams from his eyes at it while flying rapidly away from the enraged Teekl.

I shove the last of my charges into the airlock. "Get in, stay off the ground and keep quiet. I doubt they'll target you unless you draw attention to yourselves."

The outer surface oozes shut. Ironically, the habitat furthest from the combat zone houses the Ma'alefa'aks. It also has thick rock walls for them to burrow through, so is least at risk of a decompression in the event that it takes a few hits. A city would be better but I'm not sure how the telekinetic atmosphere barriers would interact with my FTL. Right, good-.

Laser eye Martian opens fire again, piercing the Bio-Ship through the centre of the hull! It spins out of control as he lines up a second shot.

Praexis swarm, go.

His head spins to face me as Construct Demons by the dozen tumble from the rings and fly at him, mouths open to bite and swallow. He back-pedals in the air, raising all four of his hands and firing beams of energy from them as well as from his eyes. Praexis Demons start taking hits to the face and chest-.

Connection lost. Connection lost. Connection lost. Connection-.

Mute.

Compliance.

And their construct bodies collapse to nothing only for them to re-emerge from the rings. Not hitting the mouths. Curious. Is he familiar with this type of Demon or is that just standard training? No, telepathic, he might be aware that they want energy in their mouths. Now, where did M'gann get to? I lower my shields a tiny little-.

**-happened to you?**

M'gann doesn't sound like she's in a position to discuss events. I put my barriers back up and reactivate my communicator. "Superboy, you still with us?"

"Yeah. The beam hit me in the chest so the Bio-Ship isn't too badly damaged."

"And you?"

"Stings a bit. I've got my environmental suit on so I'll be with you in a sec."

"Kon, that's not safe. If they breach it-."

"Then they'll have got through my kinetic shield and I'll still have my environmental shield."

"Oh. Um, didn't realise you brought them."

"What, after all you said about being prepared?"

The Praexis Demons finally get near biting distance with the White Martian -who appears not to be capable of super speed- and lunge for him. He waves his arms, and bands of red lightning leap out and disintegrate them. He takes a moment to stare me down once more, and then is completely taken by surprise when Teekl jumps on his back and sinks her teeth into his neck.

I try to communicate the idea of staying still to Teekl but it doesn't look like she's in a position to obey. The Martian extends his neck and turns it around to try blasting Teekl with eye beams. Teekl swings her right forepaw -claws as long as bread knives- and slices neatly through his face. The Martian clutches at it for a second, then blasts more red energy in all directions. This knocks Teekl off for long enough for the Martian to level his arms, palms glowing.

Rings, brand.

Twin orange beams hit him in the back, orange light flowing over his body.

Resistance detected.

If I can get one of them, I'll find out everything I want to know about this situat-.

A puff of purple smoke and he's gone. Ergh. Need to get Sephtian to invent some sort of area effect magic nullifier. Right, where's M'gann? I shoot into the air as Kon flies over towards where Ma'alefa'ak's home used to be. M'gann's telekinetically hurling debris at him while another Green writhes in his left hand. Another Martian -this one grey skinned- thrusts his arms forwards in a shoving motion, the debris exploding away.

Darn it. I open my barriers slightly.

**Karmang wants you to join us, but his patience is not unlimited.**

**If you want to run then run.** I form a construct railgun and open fire with Crumbler rounds. Ma'alefa'ak doesn't even bother to turn around, just waves his right hand negligently and tears them apart with telekinesis. **I lived my whole life denying what I was. I think that I will properly thank my niece for releasing me.**

Shit, what did M'gann do?

**Knew…** Wait, that's… K'hym's voice. **That… You would be true to your nature. You are a kkrk!**

**Oh, the self delusion. You really believe that the greatest conclave of telepaths on the planet would have left any of my original consciousness intact.** He appears to dismiss her, focusing his attention on M'gann. **And you, M'gann M'orzz. You've become impressively strong. But you lack a certain KILLER INSTINCT-**

YyyyyyyyyAAAAAGHH!

The PAIN! My whole body hums with it and my vision goes white! There's a ringing in my ears.

**-that comes with being a natural mind ripper. I tried to pretend, you know. For a long time. But the fact is I just.. like.. hurting people. Why do you think the Assembly of Minds took my telepathy away when they passed sentence?**

**Shouldn't… Even… Remember…**

**Oh, I didn't. It was all completely gone.**

TeeklTeeklEATHIM.

**I should be gone. But it turns out that someone decided to assign the one witness to my crime as my probation officer. Which means there's a nice strong memory of what I was like when I did it in your mind. And apparently that was enough to… No, it's not that, is it? You stupid whore, you actually put it back in my head. You were the one giving me the bad dreams. I raped and murdered your mother in front of you and you actually did the one thing that might undo my telepathic neutering. Thank you.**

**Uncle… Ma'al..?**

**Fluxus, deal with this stupid Earth animal, would you?**

**It's… Not.. that.. easy…**

**I put poor little M'yri'ah J'onzz through every hell a mind can experience before I killed her and it was glorious. But I couldn't hope to hide what I'd done. The Manhunters dragged me before the Assembly of Minds. They didn't think much of my 'but I really wanted to' defence. The punishment for a crime like mine is total personality death.**

**What?**

**Not reached that part of your education yet, M'gann? Yes, you see, they don't limit themselves to editing the minds of uppity members of the underclass. The 'Uncle Ma'al' you met was a complete fabrication of theirs, an attempt to make that crippled thing pay off my debt to society.**

**But… They can redo it. You don't need to-!**

**No. But I really want to, M'gann. I really want to.**

My vision starts to clear somewhat. I'm.. face down in the dirt. GetupgetupGETUP!

**So, little K'hymie. Do you want to experience what I did to your mother first hand?**

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Demeanour 28

next

21st April

14:27 GMT -5

No!

Praexis Demons swarm out of the rings as I push myself up, relying more on the armour's synthetic muscles than on my own strength or -for once- the rings themselves. Kon blasts past me in a curving arc that should terminate with him slamming directly into Ma'alefa'ak, outpacing the Demons. Was he less affected because he was further away, or has he really been focusing on his telepathic resistance training while I haven't been looking?

**GahaAAAAAAHH!**

Ma'alefa'ak's left hand has grown into some sort of mass of tentacles, completely enveloping K'hym's head. The remaining Hyperclan member… Fluxus, has his right hand up guiding his telekinesis in holding my enraged Construct-Cat in place.

**Let her go, now.**

**Or you'll what? With another twenty or thirty years' experience you might actually be a threat to me, M'gann.** Railgun, mageslayers. **But AS THINGS STAND-**

G-guh…

**-you just don't have what it takes.**

My railgun construct is gone, and Kon's leap turns into a tumble as he loses control in mid air. Fluxus takes the opportunity to hurl Teekl at him.

**Ma'alefa'ak, if you want to torture her so much then bring her with you. The patrol ship will be here-.**

**Yes, it will. I look forward to it. I used to crew one. You'd be surprised how often the crew scrimp on their telepathic skills, thinking unification and augmentation technology will protect them. Fortunately, little K'hymie knows everything about their systems. She was thinking of applying to join.** He shakes her around a little. **If you like, I'll let you wat-.** He blinks, his right hand going to his forehead. **-ch. What are you looking for, M'gann? Your doting Uncle Ma'al? Shunned by all for crimes he couldn't remember committing? I'm afraid he's not home any longer.**

Okay, complete block. Psi-baffle constructs. Dismiss the rest, they're clearly not using brute physical force. And up. Railgun. Ma'alefa'ak has floated a little closer to M'gann and I can only assume that there's some sort of telepathic fight going on. Fluxus uses another telekinetic shove to knock Kon back while shooting his arms at the incoming wave of Praexis Demons. They're elastic but incredibly strong. When M'gann tries that she loses most of her strength. Presumably improved physical abilities is his enhancement. Mageslayer.

Teekl makes another run at Fluxus. He makes eye contact with her, then takes a step back as she keeps coming anyway. Agh, should have told her that phasing dodges telekinesis, I don't think it's come up before. Another step back and his skin sprouts hundreds of razor sharp spines which gleam faintly in the Martian sunlight. Telekinetically enhanced? Could be.

I point the railgun at his centre of mass and fire.

I feel the hum through the armour more than I hear it. The sheer disgust at the situation unfolding in front of me propels the round far faster than usual, and pressed from all sides as he is Fluxus doesn't get any time to react. It hits him in what would be the left side of his ribs if he were Human, though I'm not sure what role it serves with his current body set up. Spines fracture and fall away as he's knocked into the air, flying in slow motion away from the point of impact.

The other grey spines are staying, so either the magic is extremely strong or it had an effect on him but has since dissipated. Hopefully that means that he can't retreat in a cloud of arcane smoke any longer. Keeping him alive would be ideal but he can afford to lose a little mass. Kon's back into the fight, grabbing and shoving Praexis Demons back to both propel himself forwards and change his angle of attack.

Crumbler round. Fire.

I think the shot caught a spike before it could hit his main body of mass. It still manages to trigger, carving out a hemisphere in the front of his armour. He's seeping some sort of fluid… Can't really tell what, doesn't look like M'gann's blood. Then Kon hits him like a rocket, knife… Wait, an x-ionised metal knife? Guess he really.. has been paying attention. Another set of spines are sliced from Fluxus' body, then Kon goes for a grapple. Tricky proposition with Martians, but if he can't focus well enough to shapeshift out of it then it shouldn't be too hard to choke him in air this thin.

M'gann and Ma'alefa'ak both look staggered. K'hym's being dragged along for the ride as Ma'alefa'ak appears to lose confidence in his telepathic powers and lunges forwards before being brought to a sudden halt. M'gann's outline twists and melts as she adopts her Star Conqueror form and his eyes widen.

Okay. Railgun, crumbler. His secondary personality may still be salvageable so I'd rather not kill him. Target the tentacle arm and f-.

His head twists in my direction and the sand between us ripples as some sort of energy wave heads in my direction. I recreate my orange overshield and send crampons down into the Martian soil, bracing myself for g-gruh! It's like I'm.. being shaken apart, even through the construct barrier! Ring, focus on fixing the damage-.

Ma'alefa'ak freezes in place, his eyes widening. The tentacles around K'hym's face unwind and she drops to the ground. Okay, good, M'gann's got that. Ring, how am I doing?

Physical damage repaired to pre-fight level. Mental damage repaired.

Mental damage?

Telepathic attacks by Ma'alefa'ak caused minor damage to schematic patterns. These have been restored in accordance with pre-fight scans.

Okay. Thank you.

Oh, shoot, K'hym's suffocating. I fire a filament at her and extend my environmental shield around her. Physically, I can't see anything wrong with her. Patrol boat should have a medic, shouldn't it? Hope so. Ring, check armour?

Armour repaired.

I push myself up, then activate the armour's flight system and head towards M'gann. She's still in Star Conqueror mode while Ma'alefa'ak's fallen to the ground in a foetal position. Kon is hauling the recumbent Fluxus over towards her… Right. I accelerate, then throw up an airtight dome construct around us. Normally I'd repair the building, but I'm really not sure how Martian techno-organic buildings would respond to that sort of treatment.

Kon's eyes flick to the dome as it appears, then he focuses his attention on M'gann. "M'gann? Are you okay?"

"Nguh… Ah… Ah…"

Star M'gann remains floating in the air above her uncle for a moment, then shifts back into her humanoid form. "Oh, Uncle Ma'al."

"M'gann?"

"I don't know, Conner." She looks miserable. "Uncle Ma'al…"

His head suddenly jerks up, hands clutching his head. "Get it out! Get it out of my heaaaad!"

M'gann raises her right hand. "Sleep."

Ma'alefa'ak collapses again, motionless.

"What exactly happened?" Kon checks Fluxus over once more before dropping him on the ground. I generate a construct bier for K'hym and place her upon it. "One minute we were just having breakfast, and then… He just went crazy."

"I don't know yet." M'gann's eyes glow as she holds her right hand over Fluxus' forehead. "He's a member of the Hyperclan. He… His mind has been altered. He thinks his name is Fluxus Z'orr."

"First name doesn't sound very Martian."

"It's not." Her eyes stop glowing and she straightens up. "Either that, or it's very old. But Z'orr isn't a family name. It's… Z'onn Z'orr is a place, a mythical place. He thinks he's the child of a myth."

"Is this one of those myths that's actually a myth, or one that's actually true?" I think for a moment. "And is someone called 'Karmang' associated with this myth?"

"I hope it's not true. Because if it is… Mars is in a lot of trouble."

back

Demeanour 29

next

21st April

14:29 GMT -5

"There." M'gann lifts her hands from K'hym's forehead. "I've suppressed the memories of what Uncle Ma'al did to her. When she wakes up… She can either keep them or have them erased."

Fluxus Z'orr has already had a slightly harsher form of the same treatment. I supplied a magic suppression chain and a Bleed-tech based tracking device. Hopefully, if his colleagues can come up with an arcane workaround we can find out where they're hiding out.

"I.. think I mighta missed something. Ma'alefa'ak…" Kon looks down at him. "He didn't seem like the sort of person…"

"He's… Not. He wasn't-." Kon carefully walks over to her and wraps his arms around her. She rests her head in the crook of his neck.

I turn away, extending a grappling arm construct outside of the dome to lift the Bio-Ship off the ground and pull it towards us. The hole Hyperclan member number two created has already sealed itself, though I know that the internal damage it wrought will take longer to heal.

Teekl sniffs at Fluxus for a moment, then turns away contemptuously. "More hunt?"

"Not at the moment, Teekl. Thank you for your assistance."

"Funny smell funny taste." Losing interest in me now that I don't have anyone else to attack, she pads around to make a circular depression in the sand and then curls up in it.

I do a quick scan of our environment. The animals don't seem to have been too badly disturbed, the civilians are fine and the Sphere… Has curled up and appears to be in self repair mode. Unlike the Bio-Ship, there is genuinely nothing I can do to speed that up. If it's still injured when we get back to Earth I'll ask Mister Free to have a look.

"Okay." I turn back to M'gann and Kon as she pulls away from him slightly. "I can.. explain why… Uncle Ma'al…" She stops. "Mars doesn't have a death penalty. I.. always thought it was because we didn't need one. Our crime rate isn't zero, but it's only as high as the really peaceful parts of Earth. But… It turns out that we do have a punishment for people who do things…" She glances at Ma'alefa'ak. "Like that. Ma'alefa'ak was arrested after killing Aunt M'yri'ah. And not just her, he killed at least three of the Manhunters who went to arrest him."

"Guess he didn't think they were worth mentioning."

"He might not have remembered. The… The senior Manhunter called for a judicial panel called an Assembly of Minds. They examined his mind and ruled that there was no chance of him ever being rehabilitated. So they erased his whole personality. Every memory or feeling was completely destroyed. Then, they implanted a new identity and.. a lot of safeguards to make sure that he couldn't ever do anything like that again."

"I think he said something about them shutting down his telepathy as well?"

"When that's done to someone… You're basically creating a whole new person in the old person's body. It wouldn't be right to hold them responsible for the old person's crimes. But, if he knew what he'd done…"

"He'd feel guilty for it." / "He could get his memories back."

Kon and I exchange glances.

"No, K'hym gave him her memories of.. what happened."

"And they gave him nightmares."

"So…" Kon looks a little out of his depth. "Was that how he was supposed to respond?"

"The programming he got didn't specifically tell him to have nightmares. That… That's just how he is."

"Alright, but what made him… Relapse?"

She scowls at Fluxus. "He did. He was projecting some sort of telepathic signal which.. caused Uncle Ma'al to identify with the version of himself from the memory K'hym implanted."

"I'm assuming that she wasn't supposed to do that."

"Of course not! But it wouldn't have made him do this if the Hyperclan weren't interfering with his mind!"

No further attacks so far? Right. I send my armour back into subspace and lower my mental barriers. M'gann appears to calm down a little. "So the reason he was begging you to remove the memories..?"

"I shut down the part of his mind Fluxus was activating. That was.. the real Uncle Ma'al."

"Who now knows what he did and hates himself."

M'gann nods sadly. "I can take out the memories K'hym gave him. They haven't fully integrated yet."

"How come? He must have had them-."

"Because they're not..! Him. The way the thing he used to be thought was too different for them to fit back into the rest of his mind." She shakes her head. "I knew he had nightmares, but I always thought they were just.. normal nightmares."

"What will the Manhunters do when they find out that he reverted?"

"I don't know. This hasn't ever happened before. Hopefully, they'll just.. redo his conditioning and let him go again."

"So, decision is: hand him over or take him back to Earth right now." M'gann looks at me, surprised. "What? The Hyperclan can't reach him on Earth. If you took out the memory K'hym implanted he could live a long and happy life there."

"No, he… You heard how much he loves this place. I couldn't take it away from him."

"Yeah, but… A patrol ship? Weren't they the ones annoying you when we landed?"

"Yes, they were." She exhales. "Maybe… I think it would be better if.. Uncle J'onn…"

"I can.. ask… But…"

"Uncle J'onn knows Uncle Ma'al isn't.. the same."

"Okay, I'll head back and see about getting hold of him. But, before I do, exactly who is Karmang supposed to be?"

She shakes her head. "Karmang's a mythical sorcerer, like Merlin or Jaffar. He's supposed to have founded the Martian tradition of magic. I don't think he was ever a real person-."

"Merlin was, I'm afraid."

"Even if he was, every picture I've ever seen of him shows him as a Red Martian. Why would he help people like the Hyperclan?"

"No idea. And Z'onn Z'orr?"

"His temple, or library, or fortress." She shrugs. "It depends which story you want to listen to. If it ever really existed, no one has been able to find it."

"Maybe the Manhunters can get more out of Fluxus."

"Aside from shapeshifting, telekinesis and telepathy, do Martians ever get other superpowers? Are there..? Meta Martians?"

"Aside from the Sorcerer Priests, no."

"Z'üm Z'orr and the other one definitely used magic to escape. I'm assuming that non-Reds aren't allowed to learn magic?" M'gann shakes her head. "Z'üm had super speed. The second one had energy projection. Even if it isn't an ancient sorcerer, something's going on here."

back

Demeanour 30

next

21st April

15:43 GMT -5

I have just discovered something rather interesting. J'onn J'onzz wasn't actually a serving Manhunter for all that long before Doctor Erdel's zeta beam misfire abducted him to Earth. As such, he never got promoted much beyond rookie. But. Once he got back in contact, his superiors realised that he had dramatically more experience than his rank suggested, and in far more trying circumstances than would ordinarily arise on Mars.

So, they promoted him.

Quite a lot.

The telepathic argument between him and the patrol ship's commander was carried out via a direct link and so I couldn't eavesdrop. It wasn't until M'gann told me that I discovered that Mister J'onzz had the higher rank. More than that, since his field of authority is pretty much all Earth-Mars relations (since they had to give someone of his rank something important sounding but that didn't require him to physically be on Mars) he has a better claim to jurisdiction since Kon and I were born on Earth and M'gann is his student, not irritating the primitive but occasionally very powerful neighbours apparently being Mars' main foreign policy aim.

Since the commander wasn't prepared to give up a case involving the most interesting thing to have happened on the surface since the Guardians finished off the Burners, the matter was referred upwards to the Martian in command of Mel'dilo'rn's Manhunters.

R'oh K'arr promptly ruled in Mister J'onzz's favour and flew out to join us.

Two patrol ships currently float over the nature reserve, and T'ronn is overseeing his colleagues in looking after the animals. Ma'alefa'ak is currently being held in a secure cell aboard one of the ships while Fluxus is still on the surface. Martian protocol for dealing with hostile magic users requires one of their magic users to be on site before they attempt transportation, and social custom means that the on duty Sorcerer Priest shows up when they're good and ready.

"Sirs?"

R'oh K'arr is in his natural Green Martian form. His uniform covers a little more of him than the normal red X but I still wouldn't go so far as to call it clothing. To a Human it makes him look much less authoritative. I suppose to a Martian his brain is authoritative enough. He doesn't react to hearing me, but with my mental shields turned down to normal levels I feel the slight buzz which indicates him telepathically 'looking' in my direction.

In contrast, Mister J'onzz is in his normal humanish form with his costume modified to include an air supply. There's a slight distortion in the air around him. Having taken note of the environmental shield I gave Superman, he's upgraded his own apparel with a telekinetic shielding booster. Martians can handle Mars’ surface radiation a little better than Humans but it still isn't all that healthy. He hears my voice and turns to look at me. "Orange Lantern. What have you found?"

"As far as I can tell-" I generate two constructs, one showing the site before the attack and one after. "-only two places were targeted. The main residence, and the laboratory. Given the level of damage done I can't say for certain, but it doesn't look like anything was removed from the residence... Though pretty much everything there was destroyed. The damage to the laboratory-" I focus the constructs on the before and after. "-was more precise. Unfortunately, none of us were really focusing our attention on exactly what they were doing and it's possible that the second Hyperclan member just completely destroyed things."

Mister J'onzz inclines his head slightly. "But equally it is possible that she was collecting materials and returning them to their base of operation."

"Her given name is 'Tronix'." Mister K'arr is at least more comfortable with vocal speech than the maybe-chap at immigration. "Probably not her birth name. We have records of her energy projection abilities from previous attacks."

"I've got a list of the equipment that's missing. It all looks a bit basic to me, but since it's all Earth-built they probably couldn't get it anywhere else." Other Martian labs have better equipment, but since it's all telepathically operated it wasn't any use to Ma'alefa'ak at all.

Huh. Just realised that I think of him as Ma'alefa'ak after knowing him less than a day while J'onn J'onzz is very much 'Mister J'onzz'.

Mister K'arr's eyes flare slightly. "And what specimens were being held there?"

"B'ool poo. I know that for sure. Probably waste materials from other species and I think he said something about soil samples and bacteria cultures. He'd be the best person to ask but from the brief look I got it didn't look like anything particularly unusual or dangerous."

"I doubt that the Hyperclan would have acted so brazenly outside their usual area of concern unless they could gain some advantage."

"I got the impression that they were trying to recruit M-. Ma'alefa'ak J'onzz. While he was in sociopath mode."

"Again, something which makes little sense. They usually only recruit Whites. And they are not short of volunteers. It is puzzling that they would make such a special effort to do something that could have more easily been achieved with fewer witnesses. Your case, J'onn J'onzz. I will eagerly await your report."

Mister J'onzz nods. "I should be the one to interview my brother. If he is in a fit state."

"I'm not sure what a 'fit state' would be in these circumstances, but he's awake. Cadet M'gann M'orzz is with him."

"Sir? May I ask what will happen to him now?"

Mister K'arr's eyes dim. "There is no clear answer in law. People subjected to the punishment he was gain immunity to further chastisement for the offence. However, until now none have ever suffered a relapse. Having viewed the results of the initial questioning my opinion is that the new personality is still the sole one, but the ultimate decision will lie with the Prelate, as advised by the Assembly of Minds."

"Orange Lantern." I turn my head to look at Mister J'onzz. "Accompany me."

He rises from the ground and I float along after him as he moves towards the patrol ship containing his brother. As we reach the hull it flows open to allow us inside and Mister J'onzz leads me the short distance to the holding cell.

"What exactly do you want me to do, sir?"

"You saw my brother's emotions both before and after his 'relapse'. I would be grateful for any insights you could share."

"Ah… Sir, I've been trying to tone that down. It seems too intrusive to be looking at someone's soul every time I meet them."

"Ethically, I agree with you. However, this is now an active investigation. You have legal authority to use your abilities."

"Yes sir." I look through the muted green of the crew going about their duties at the festering pile of yellow and red that is Ma'alefa'ak J'onzz. Fear of just about everything, most particularly turning back into the other Ma'alefa'ak. Hatred for himself. "About what I'd expect if he's being honest, sir. Nothing to indicate the sort of deviant desires I'd expect to see from his former mental state."

Mister J'onzz nods. "There are Martians who can deceive telepathic scans but far fewer who can deceive magic."

We pass into the compartment containing Ma'alefa'ak's cell. Kon and four.. marines..? Are outside the cell itself, and Kon and I make brief eye contact before I follow Mister J'onzz into the cell.

Ma'alefa'ak himself is sitting on the floor in the corner furthest from the 'door', with M'gann standing against the opposite wall. "Uncle J'onn. You-."

He holds up his right hand to cut her off and continues across the room, lowering himself to the floor in from of his brother. **Ma'alefa'ak.**

**J'onn.**

**You have regained your facility for telepathy.**

Ma'alefa'ak raises his head slightly. **M'gann tells me that I never really lost it. The Assembly of Minds altered my mind so that I couldn't consciously process it. They will need to restore that block before… Whatever they decide to do with me.**

**Open your mind to me.**

**J'onn, M'gann already removed what K'hym implanted, but I still remember-.**

**Open your mind to me, brother.**

I glance at M'gann but she just looks blank. Ma'alefa'ak's face goes still for a moment, then he nods his head. Both sets of eyes glow for a moment, then Mister J'onzz stands up. **You are no longer the man who murdered my wife. His crimes are not your crimes and his guilt is not yours to bear. I will endeavour to convince the Assembly of this.**

**Thank you, J'onn. I just wish I could believe it myself.**

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NEXT CHAPTER

Family Day

BACK

Family Day 1

next

Family Day

21st April

21:03 GMT -5

"This is yah last warning, Tetch! Come out with your hands up or we come in an' drag you out!"

I've no idea how he managed it, but the deranged criminal somehow built a giant teacup in a disused warehouse along the Gotham waterfront. Gas fired flames lick the bottom, heating the cup and the tea therein to scalding temperatures. Around the edge are the bound girls who were nearly but not quite what the crazed man's madness said that he needs in order for the world to start making sense. He used his hat to mind control them here-. Well, not mind control exactly. It turns out that his hats just make people very suggestible rather than flat out controlling them. Whatever. Hat-persuaded the girls to come here, bound them and then turned it off.

Naturally, they all screamed up a storm and he stumbled off in confusion to find someone else.

"But we're all having such a delightful tea party. No Humpty Dumpty allowed!"

"They never take it." Detective Bullock draws his revolver before holding his phone up to his cheek. "Montoya, you in place yet?"

"Excuse me, Detective."

Bullock glances at Miss Shimmer, who has left the small cluster of people watching the unfolding confrontation. Her hair gets a flicker of a frown but she doesn't look enough like an Alice in Wonderland character to attract actual alarm so he ignores her. "Yeah? I dunno. Because there's a camera on the door and if I have them kill the power-. Yeah, well he's not here, so I guess the police are gunna-."

Miss Shimmer reaches the end of her patience and pokes him in his considerable gut with her right forefinger.

"What! No, not you, some kid. Hang on." He lowers the phone. "The only reason I'm not bustin' you for interferin' with an investigation is I got eight little girls to rescue from a nut job an' that takes priority."

"Oh. Well, is there any way I can help?"

"You live around here? You got any idea how I could sneak inside and put a couple a' rounds through that sicko's head?"

"No. But-" She opens her guitar case and takes out the contents. "I do have a sniper gun that can shoot through walls. Would that help?"

Bullocks eye widen. "Holy Mother of God. Where the hell did you get that?"

"Grayven. And I have a concealed carry permit."

"Grayven?" He makes the connection. "The guy who-." He looks the gun over. "You know how to use that thing?"

"Not really." She holds it out to him. "Do you?"

"Uhh…" He takes hold of it, resting the stock against his shoulder and peering into the target scanner. He then turns it in the direction of the warehouse. Having designed the weapon myself, I know that the scanner will immediately detect and highlight life forms in the direction it's pointed in. Actual marksmanship isn't required, the barrel only exists to let the coilgun round build up speed. It's the teleport function which makes the projectile hit the target. "Okay. One guy moving around-."

"If you press that button you can hear what he's saying."

Bullock frowns slightly, then presses the button.

"-above the world you fly,

Like a tea tray in the sky!"

He shifts the phone to his shoulder. "Montoya, I got a shot." He hesitates.

"Is there a problem?"

"Huh, guess I just got used t' the Bat handlin' these."

Miss Shimmer frowns. "So… Are you.. not a police officer, or something? I thought your job was to keep people safe, but if you're completely dependent on a man who dresses up like a bat-."

There's a sudden crack, and inside the warehouse Tetch crumples and falls back into his own tea vat.

Bullock lowers his gun. "I get by." He holds the gun out to Miss Shimmer. "Thanks."

"Oh no. You can keep it. In fact-" She holds out a business card. "-please give this to the Commissioner. Just in case he's interested in getting more like it."

Behind me, I hear a soft sound as someone who thinks that he's silent lands on the roof.

"I'll keep that in mind." Bullock looks at her, as if he suspects that there's something else going on but can't quite work out what it is. Then he shakes his head and hurries in the direction of the warehouse.

"Grayven."

"Batman. Nice night for it."

"You're using children as arms dealers."

I turn, smiling. "Oh, you of all people don't get to rag on me about that. Miss Shimmer is better equipped, better protected, older and engaged in less dangerous work than Richard was when you first took him out with you."

He walks closer, taking a moment to look at the people gathered below. "Is Tetch dead?"

"Hmm." Sinestro? Ah, I see. "Wait for it, wait for-. Yes."

"He was a sick man."

"Yes." I nod. "Yes he was."

"He was off his medication. I could have taken him in alive."

"Was he off his medication last time as well?" He glares. "And the time before that? Seven deaths total, all young girls. Maybe you should stop thinking of the medicated version of him as being the real him and recognise him for the deranged murderer he really is." I tilt my head to the side for a second. "Was. Anyway, Detective Bullock identified himself as an armed police officer and had a reasonable belief that innocents were in danger. No crime happened on my side."

"You could have stopped him even easier than I could."

"I can't be everywhere. Time the Gotham police learned to stand on their own two feet, far as I'm concerned. They carry guns, I'm giving them better, more precise guns. But hey! You're doing better than Aquaman. He'd have punched me in the face by now."

"Don't think I'm not tempted."

"Don't recommend it. But if you've got time to moan at me over a perfectly legal police action-."

"Is that what Darfur was?"

"No, but as I said to Guy, the government was okay with genocide so I don't consider their laws to be binding. And I didn't see you coming up with anything better and it did both stop the fighting and punish the guilty. But enough of something we're never going to agree on." I smile. "I have a story for you."

I give him a moment, but he doesn't appear to want to interject.

"One day a man named Jack Napier goes on holiday to the great city of Metropolis, taking a few of his closest friends with him."

"The Jack Napier you crippled. You did that intentionally, didn't you?"

"Rather than splitting him in half? Yes, pulling my punches was intentional. Anyway, he goes to Metropolis and pays a visit to a famous tourist landmark: the Daily Planet building. And while he's there, he connects drums full of Smilex to the ventilation system and sets it off! Lois Lane dies with a smile on her face. Perry White, same thing. James Olsen, Steven Lombard, William McCalman… All dead. Some guy called Clark Kent was out on assignment at the time, but everyone else? Gone. Mister Napier goes into hiding, pursued by your good self, Superman, and some new guy called Magog. Magog was Superman-level strong and tough and he had this laser.. trident.. thing."

"And for once? It's the police who find the criminal first. Heck, they even capture him without any fatalities, which was a near miracle. So, the three superheroes stand there watching them drag him off, and? Magog raises his trident and with a snarl incinerates him. Then he hands his trident to your good self and surrenders to the police. The case goes to trial quickly and he pleads not guilty. When the prosecutor puts him on the stand to query that, he says 'I'm glad I did it'."

I raise my eyebrows.

"Wanna guess how the story ends?"

Batman's jaw tenses. "The jury agreed with him and he was acquitted."

"No." I shake my head. "No. Oh, they acquitted him alright. But that's very much not how the story ends."

back

Family Day 2

next

21st April

21:08 GMT -5

"Magog walks free of the courthouse and to the assembled journalists makes a speech about how the establishment has been far too soft on career murderers. To their cheers he announces that he will be forming a taskforce with like-minded individuals and hunting down others like Mister Napier." I dab at the air with my right finger. "And here's where things start to go wrong. Superman is so horrified by the deaths of his friends and with the reactions of his home city to someone he regards as a murderer that he ups and leaves. Floats around for a bit before isolating himself in the Fortress of Solitude on a semi-permanent basis. You try to hold things together, but the up-and-coming generation of superheroes seem to agree with Magog's approach. All across the country superheroes ratchet up the violence and the criminals follow suit. The veneer of civilisation across Gotham was only thinly coated at the best of times and the sudden wave of violence that came from the fighting between gangs and vigilante mobs meant you had to abandon your other duties and stay on site full time."

"Thing about the vigilantes is that while Magog himself conducts proper criminal investigations and requires both serious crimes and virtual certainties of guilt before he's willing to kill the perpetrator, those who claim to have been inspired by him don't. Police had to be a little flexible with powerful superheroes anyway, but now everyone has that attitude. Before long the whole country's going the way of the wild west. And Magog? He doesn't like that. When someone asks him, he says that anyone who feels inspired by him should cooperate with law enforcement where reasonably practical. But… The fact that he's usually saying this with some costumed serial killer's head on his trident rather undermines his message."

"Ten years of gradual societal decay pass. Things finally come to a head when Magog and his crew track down the Parasite in Kansas. Parasite's past his best at that point and tries to run. When he can't escape, he tries to surrender." I solemnly shake my head. "Then he tries to fight. Unfortunately for the world, Magog's not all that fast and the first person on his team to make it into contact was a chap called Breach. Similar powers to Captain Adams, but… Not quite as stable. That, combined with Parasite trying to use his own powers while injured, resulted in a nuclear explosion which scoured all life from Kansas and devastated its neighbouring states. Then come the radioactive dust clouds and rain. In addition to the horrible tragedy of all those deaths, America's main farmlands were destroyed. Food became a strategic resource, a secure road the difference between survival and starvation for entire cities."

"With the nation on the verge of collapse Wonder Woman decides to have one last go at winkling Superman out of his hidey-hole. After throwing some fairly harsh home truths at him she's finally successful. As the nation's infrastructure is in no position to offer substantial assistance, the Justice League is reformed and anyone who is prepared to agree with its code of conduct permitted to join. Painfully aware of the failures of superhuman containment that have occurred in the past, they build their own prison and then begin targeting the most violent criminal groups. Those which are redeemable are permitted to integrate and those which are not are locked up for the duration of the crisis. Superman himself isn't entirely comfortable with the level of interference he's having to have, but it's working and they can sort out the balance of power issues later. Right?"

"They're just about getting things back under control when Wonder Woman tracks down Magog himself. He survived the explosion and for some reason he's still in Kansas. So -with the country more or less functioning again- Superman flies down to hear what he's got to say for himself. When he first sees him, Magog's got a plough strapped to his back and he's pulling it through the burned and irradiated soil, making furrows for seeds. It's obvious to anyone watching that nothing is ever going to grow there, so… What's he doing?"

"It takes Superman a few seconds to get his attention, but once Magog realises that he's really there, he starts… Ranting, about how he was trying to deal with the problems Superman hid away from. 'You can't let a serial killer be sent to a prison he's already escaped from dozens of times!' He didn't want Superman to just disappear for a decade. He didn't want the country to pick him over Superman. He was only trying to do what he thought best and now he's responsible for more deaths than any of those he slew. He begs to be punished. Imprisoned, killed, he doesn't care. Anything to dim the absolute horror he feels for his own failings. So Superman puts him in prison with the rest. In a secure cell, because he's worried that if he doesn't Magog might kill himself."

I smile. "So, what do we learn from this? Magog tried to do the right thing and epically failed. Superman thought his narrow-minded principles were more important than the lives of those he protected and lost nearly everyone he cared about. Then he went off in a huff for a decade and -surprise surprise- that didn't work either. Hundreds of people who could have acted differently didn't because they had a particular idea in their heads of how they should behave."

"And that point of that story was?"

"Mmm. Just passing the time. And letting Bullock and Montoya remind themselves that they're perfectly capable of dealing with these lunatics without you." I turn away from him and look down to where Bullock is leading the girls out towards the waiting ambulances. "The League has you doing organisation stuff. Did you ever think about all the good you could do in Gotham if you focused your energies on that rather than this whole Bat-thing? Goodness knows why the police are turning to me for weapon upgrades."

No response from him, then I hear booted feet walking across the rooftop. "Who are you talking to?"

I turn. Sunset Shimmer and no Batman. I put my right hand to my mouth. "It's not clever, you know! It's just rude!"

"Did Batman pay you a visit?"

"Yes. Not that it really mattered. He can't be everywhere at once any more than I can. There would have been another opportunity, sooner or later."

She looks off to the side. Looks like something's bothering her. I wait patiently for her to get her thoughts in order.

"Grayven… Are you evil?"

I take a moment to give the question the consideration it deserves. "No. Anything else?"

"That's not the most convincing argument I've ever heard."

"I am by turns harsh and brutal, when I feel it necessary. I don't cause pain to others purely for my own pleasure and I aim for my actions ultimately to benefit those around me. Is there something I've done that particularly bothers you?"

"You set the three of us the task of stopping the war in Darfur."

"Yes. It was a task well within your abilities."

"You knew that we would kill people. I-I'm not…" She takes a deep breath. "I'm not sure what you think you know about Equestria? But it's a peaceful country. I'd never even seen someone killed violently before you.. showed us that. And you sent us there knowing that we'd have to go along with it!"

"No I didn't."

"You-! Did.. too!"

"Miss Shimmer, do you know what is meant by 'reflective equilibrium'?" She shakes her head. "It is what happens when you realise that there is a contradiction between your beliefs and actions. Or between one belief and another. If you are honest with yourself, you will alter your actions or your beliefs until they no longer contradict one another. We went through your moral beliefs together during the lesson and I know that the three of you kept talking about it afterwards. I told you that I wasn't setting you a deadline. You could have chosen to do nothing. You could have chosen to kill no one."

"You knew we wouldn't do that. Misa would do anything she thought you wanted… Lynne's.. just.. cold." She looks away, her fists bunched up.

"I let you make the choice. So, tell me. Reflect upon your thoughts and actions. Why did you use lethal force?"

"Because it was the only thing that would work!" She covers her eyes with her right hand. "We tried working out what would happen if we just disarmed everyone, and… And they'd just go back to killing each other again as soon as they would rearm! And they might not even have waited that long!"

"I know."

"Then why us?"

"I understand that part of the reason why you left your former mentor was that you believed that she was holding you back." Miss Shimmer nods uncertainly. "This is 'not being held back'. This is confronting the world in all its horror and misery and it being your responsibility to fix it. This is not being able to pass the buck because you can see what happens when you do that. See it as.. not on a report on a scroll or on edited pictures on a television screen, but see it in the flesh. Celestia would lecture you on this subject and you would ignore her. You do not appear to be ignoring me."

She gulps.

"You came to the conclusion -with your mind heavily weighted against the idea- that killing a limited number of people was the only way to fix the situation in the medium term. And now you feel bad." I make a shrugging gesture with my hands. "Okay. Reflect on your beliefs and on this feeling. Where lies the contradiction?"

"I… Celestia always…"

"Celestia had a thousand years to get the country running exactly as she liked it, and she only had to deal with… What, a few million Ponies? You don't. Where is the contradiction?"

"I.. act as if I don't think killing is bad. And I know that's wrong."

"If you actually thought that then you wouldn't have stuttered. Miss Amane has no problem with killing. You do. You think it's bad. Your problem is that you want to think 'bad' means that it's something only evil people do, while in fact you merely assign it a heavy utility value. In this situation you believe that it was necessary and you're feeling bad because that clashes with a belief you have about yourself and the beliefs you have about people who believe what you now know that you believe."

Her gaze grows distant as she thinks it over.

"Come on. Let's go home. You should probably talk to Doctor Robbins about this, get an alternate perspective."

"Are we..? Going to have to do something like that again?"

I shake my head as the hush tube reopens. "No. Not any time soon. I'm not trying to shock you into submission, and that's all sending you somewhere like that again would achieve. Think on what happened, and if you want to talk to me some more I'm always available."

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Family Day 3

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Empiricist2 said: ↑

Sparring

22nd April

10:47 GMT -6

**!**

*1*Space bends between me and Paul's latest near miss as I telekinetically shove the eruption of sand and loose rocks away while trying to predict and evade the next shot.*1*

*2*I don't think I like this desert. Sure, the sand's the same but I've never had to worry about overheating on Mars. Apparently Paul really didn't like how well he performed when we fought those Star Hunters last week. Not compared to how well he thinks he should have done, anyway. So now I'm in my Star Conqueror form, defending myself as well as I can from his barrage while trying to hit him back.*2*

*3*Multiple thought threads give me a headache. I wonder if that's why Star Conquerors are so aggressive?*3*

*2*I've used this form a few times now but I still find it really uncomfortable.*2*

*1*Surge to turn aside a solid slug barrage then phase to dodge an orange beam. Pick up rubble again and recreate my barrier.*1*

*2*Normally I'm fine with new shapes, particularly after Mister Jerkin- Mister J'aarkn gave me his pendant.*2*

*3*The brain to make this entire thing work is.. very different to a normal Martian brain. It's like… One time, I remember Wally asking Robin how his hacking programs worked so well, and he said he took advantage of his arm computer's ability to run thousands of computer threads at once compared to normal computers… Or something like that. I can focus on so many things at once without it interfering with anything else.*3*

*1*A miniature dust storm is met by a reinforcing of my telekinetic shield.*1*

*3*I can shield myself with hundreds of fist sized rocks against the various energy blasts Paul is throwing out at me while shifting the concentrations to intercept any railgun strikes.*3*

*4*[New images from the eyes of the Demons] I send a few in to try and distract him.*4*

*3*And throw out telekinetic strikes to sever those trailing filaments he always makes, organize the Demons Paul loaned me to stand in for a Star Hunter's escort of Star Conquerors, and I'm still able to plan my next move and casually notice the local scenery that I'm tearing up.*3*

*5*Ooh, a flower!*5*

*3*None of that frenzy like in a normal fight for my life with so many things to do at once.*3*

*2*A bright orange pulse starts flying at me and I know that-*2*

*1*I send one of the larger boulders I have in reserve for just this occasion to intercept it before I need to dodge out of the way, keeping my eye out for any railgun strikes that might try to make their way through the hole I just opened up in my debris shield.*1*

*2*-another bit of me has it covered. Sure enough, I can see one of Paul's turrets aim for that hole, and I quickly hit it with enough force to disrupt it for long enough to cover my defenses again.*2*

*3*According to Lantern Gardner, Star Hunters didn't phase when they used to fight Green Lanterns. I tried when we started and I can't keep control of the Demons I'm borrowing from Paul or even the things I'm levitating when I do it. Plus I'm not really sure what happens if something dephases me.*3*

*5*Lantern Gardner is a few hundred yards away doing his best to arm-wrestle with Conner, and the spectators are cheering him on.*5*

*3*I don't think he can win that… Can he? His constructs are pretty strong, but Conner's really strong.*3*

*6*Big strong arms around me and holding me close.*6*

*5*The construct table breaks as the back of his construct gauntlet slams onto it.*5*

*3*Paul said that Green Lanterns recruit stubborn people and then train them to be stubborner, so… Looks like it's working.*3*

**Ow!**

*2*A laser turret is able to sneak a shot past my barrier to graze one of my tentacles. Minor flesh wounds aren't that big a deal when the team medic can patch you up immediately after every spar, but it's a poignant -thank you English class for that word- reminder that against a real enemy that could just as easily have been the shot that decided the fight.*2*

**Blergh.**

Multiple different streams of thought run together as I shift back into Miss Martian Mode. "Okay, you win that one!" Paul stops generating his constructs and pulls his Demon things back into his rings. "This time, I'm going to use telepathic illusions, and you can use crumblers and your kinetic shield again!”

A flicker of orange later and Paul is floating right beside me. Still can't quite get used to a mind just showing up like that.

"Sounds fair to me. Let me just-" Another flare of orange and the burn on my arm-that-used-to-be-a-tentacle disappears. "-fix that for you and we can get back to sparring. Oh, hang on, it's nearly lunch time. Are you alright with calling it a day after this next bout?"

I nod. "Alright with me. Just ask Conner and Lantern Gardner first.”

An orange megaphone forms in front of Paul's face. Why does he have to-? I shapeshift my ears closed so the noise isn't overbearing. "Guy, Kon, you good with going out to lunch after this next round ends?! "

"Sure! Any idea where?"

"Place just down the street from my place! Conrad's Crabs! Specialty restaurant! Best Baldamore Blue in Baldamore!"

Without thinking about it I try tapping into Paul's memory of it… Of course, I can't… Anymore.

"Whatever you say Guy! And it's so nice of you to offer to pay! Oh, Kon! Try to go easy on Guy! I'm not sure his ego can stand taking another loss from a one year old! "

There's a big surge of green from Lantern Gardner. "Oh you'll be regrettin’ sayin’ that next time we come out here!"

Paul turns back towards me. He was winding Lantern Gardner up intentionally. I think that's one of those.. guy things. "Shall we continue?"

Instead of answering I shift back into Star Hunter form.

*1*I pick up all the rocks I had set down and reform my debris shield.*1*

*2*Paul transitions back to where he was before we paused our spar.*2*

*7*I start forming telepathic illusions of myself.*7*

*1*I start trying to access his optic nerves.*1*

*2*He recreates his construct armor and guns.*2*

*1*Next, I create a telekinetic barrier around my body and a wider but weaker field to prematurely detonate his crumbler rounds.*1*

*3*Getting hit by those hurts a lot.*3*

*1*A focused telekinetic beam-*1*

*3*Like a narrow version of the one Uncle Ma'al used.*3*

*1*-hits his construct armor hard enough that I probably would have broken it if he hadn't been focusing.*1*

*4*The Demons throw themselves at Paul in a wave of orange.*4*

*7*I alter his vision so that he sees them as little Star Conquerors.*7*

*3*Huh. I wonder if I could micromanage units in Human Resources through the limited input of Human computer systems? Conner would probably consider it cheating, but I might actually be able to give him a challenge like that.*3*

*2*I shouldn't be able to do that. Wait, that sort of mental attack must make it hard for him to use his constructs!*2*

*1*A crumbler detonates on my outer shield, causing it to buckle. I repair it.*1*

*7*My illusions show me being somewhere else. I know that he's seeing them.*7*

*2*He isn't trusting his eyes. No point using visual illusions. How about.. smell? And speech?*2*

*7*He smells perfume and hears one of those… Videos I saw on the internet when I tried to find more information on Human mating.*7*

*6*Which doesn't seem anything like as weird as I thought it would.*6*

*1*Another psychic blast.*1*

*2*I'm a bit worried about hurting him, but… He wanted to practice hard and he was okay after Evil Uncle Ma'al did it.*2*

*1*Throw a rock really hard and blast him again just before it hits!*1*

*2*It explodes against his armor! Paul's knocked back in the air and starts to fall for a moment before his kinetic belt comes on. But my Demons are already swarming in and grabbing him! I won!*2*

*5*The spectators, along with Conner and Lantern Gardner, are watching with rapt attention.*5*

*2*I won!*2*

**Blergh.**

I switch back to my normal form and see everyone in the stands applauding. Ugh. No, still feels great! I beam at them, breathing hard from the mental strain of doing all that work.

I don't notice as Paul appears behind me until he claps me on the back, his armor back in subspace. "Well done you. Never really got a look in there." He gets this look on his face and I know that the next thing he says will be hyperbole. Still not as good as hearing him think it. "I truly pity the next supervillain who draws your ire, for clearly you shall have none."

Conner and Lantern Gardner appear in a flash of green. Guess they're done arm-wrestling.

"That was great! That was the hardest beat down I've ever seen Paul get in a spar."

Lantern Gardner glowers at the back of his head.

I float up to him and he puts his arm around my back. Lantern Gardner and Paul are saying something to each other, but I'm not paying much attention to them right now. "Thanks Conner. It's been a really productive day so far, but I'm glad we're taking a break. Doing that really tires me out. I don't think I could have gone another round." Um, I suppose if everyone else is doing it..?

I smile winsomely at him. "How was slamming Lantern Gardner's arm into the table repeatedly for half an hour?"

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Family Day 4

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23rd April

19:23 GMT +3

Donna shakes her head, looking contemplative. "No, I can't really say I've given it much thought."

"Really? Because I've got to say-" We touch down just outside Hades' temple. "-it was one of the first things I started thinking about when I got here. I mean, what religion are your parents?"

"Episcopalian."

"That's.. Anglican, right?" She nods as we head towards the entrance. "Remind me what current church teachings on magic are?"

"That it's just another skill, and no more evil than any other." She hesitates. "Though that's just the branch of the church we belong to. The evangelical wing has a.. slightly less liberal viewpoint."

"At least Anglicans Sixteen are arguing about something that actually has spiritual significance."

I lead the way into the outer part of the temple. Thana doesn't appear to be around.

"What do you mean by that?"

"We learned from the Young Offenders that this parallel is parallel sixteen. So, I refer to its Anglican inhabitants-."

"As Anglicans Sixteen." She nods. "But what do you mean about arguing about something important?"

"Back on Earth Prime the Anglican Communion is fracturing over homosexual ordination. I mean, magic involves rearranging the universe using your soul. I understand why that would be contentious."

"Homosexuality is an issue, too."

"But I can guess which is a bigger problem for you." Now, should I scan for Thana, or-?

"What?" I turn. Donna's stopped a little way behind me.

"Well, you're an innately magical being." We stare at each other for a moment. "Aren't you?"

"Yess." She looks away. "Ugh, sorry."

"What?"

"You know… How Amazons-?"

"Homonormative, right."

"Homo-? Huh, yeah, that actually fits."

"So?"

"A lot of people assume that Diana's gay, because of where she grew up? And then I showed up working with her?"

Oh. "But you're American."

"Right, but they didn't know that. And when Diana first brought me here the Amazons assumed the same thing."

"Oh." I try and suppress my smirk. "Um. She is a bit older than you…"

"Apparently that's how they.. used to.. do things."

Suppression attempt failed. "Hey, I offered you a chance to assert your heterosexuality after the play."

"Oh, don't." She looks away. "And they were all so happy about it…"

"Can I assume that Donna Troy is a known heterosexual?"

She goes to answer, then hesitates. "When you say 'known'-?"

"Pavlos!" Thana walks up the stairs out of the literally stygian depths of the Temple. "And Donna, who certainly is not the Princess' erômena."

Donna rolls her eyes. "Hey Thana."

I transition right in front of Thana just as she reaches the top of the stairs. She starts, and I use that as an opening to wrap my arms around her back and pull her into a hug, pressing my forehead against hers. She remains stiff for a second, then relaxes slightly. "Is Eris so easily pleased that 'surprise hugs' are a devotional act?"

"No, she pretty much wanted me to pin you against a wall and… 'Express my fondness'."

"I see." Her facial expression is one of equanimity. This close I can feel her exhalations on the skin of my face. "And do you intend to do that?"

"She may just have been trying to wind me up. Though I do note that you've been isolating yourself again. Despite what that did to Lord Hades' original priestesses."

"That simply isn't true-."

"I looked everywhere during the festival." I nuzzle her left cheek. "Guess who I didn't see."

"I… Attended."

I lean forwards slightly, my mouth right next to her left ear. "Really?"

"S-some of it."

"Someone isn't embracing chaos."

"Chaos appears to be embracing me well enough for both of us."

I move my head so that we're face to face again. "As my mistress taught me: the more you fall behind, the more I chivvy you along."

"An expression of fondness?"

"A trip to Fawcett City. Melinoë needs a chaperone."

"Ah…"

"I warned you." I kiss her lightly on the lips, then release her and step back. "Donna and I are heading down to talk to Lord Hades. Would you be so good as to let him know that we're coming?"

"I…" She looks more than a little lost. "I.. can do that."

"Thank you." I step around her and start down the stairs. "Donna?"

I'm nearly to the end of the first flight before I hear her rapid footsteps as she hurries to catch up with me. I stop as she approaches. "What was that?"

"What? You've had jobs from Athena before." I start walking again. "And besides, Melinoë does need a chaperone."

"Thana has trouble talking to other Amazons, and you're taking her to a city."

"Yes. Daemonic invasions not withstanding, Fawcett City is the friendliest city in America. Um, in the United States. The Marvels said they'd see if they could join us… Seems like a good place to start. Is this a bigger problem than I think it is?"

"And kissing her? What about Euanthe?"

"Oh, she doesn't like cities."

"Did you..?" She realises something. "No, wait, Artemis warned me about this. Where did the strange fruit in the Temple of Demeter come from?"

"I fabricated the seeds with the ring and Euanthe connected them to the Green to make them grow. Why?"

"Oh, the island thinks you're a botanophile."

"No, Dad was always more into gardening than I-."

Oh.

…

Huh.

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Family Day 5

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23rd April

19:31 GMT +3

"…can't get over you not picking up on that." Donna makes another snort of laughter as we emerge from the tunnel and land on the platform marking the start of Erebos proper.

"Euanthe did.. seem to be 'up for it'… I just thought…"

"How would that even work? Isn't she.. basically a plant?"

"She's definitely on the plant-that-looks-Human side of the Dryad spectrum, but she can control the shape and texture of the plant matter making up her body. And she's got a better eye for Human aesthetics than Alec Holland." Donna gives me a small frown. "Swamp Thing." She nods in understanding. "As I understand it, she doesn't literally have generative organs, but she can do this sort of soul-link thing that-."

"I-" She holds up her right hand. "-don't need that much information."

"Really? Because it's a fascinating area. Like Asari, our children would be-."

"I thought Melinoë was going to meet us here."

"No, that was a first time only thing. Have you ever been down here before?"

She nods. "A few times with Diana. Only once on my own."

I rise into the air and she follows, getting above the height of the orchard trees before we level out and head for the palace. "If you.. don't mind me asking..?"

"My superpowers are Olympian. I wanted to know if my birth parents were down here."

"Were they?"

"If they are, they didn't identify themselves when I asked."

"Is.. that.. something.. you want me to look into?"

She smiles. "What, and take time away from your 'secret mission'?"

"Yeah, okay, unless you needed a kidney or something-"

"Huh!"

"-I wouldn't be prioritising it, but I don't mind asking around."

"Um." She reaches up to brush her wind-blown hair out of her face. "Alright. Yes. It's not that big a deal for me, but I would be interested to find out. I think a few Amazons have money riding on it."

"I suppose I'd have a conflict of interest if I put money on it myself. Any idea where I should start looking?"

"I'm nearly as physically strong as Diana is. So whoever my divine parent was, whether they sired or carried me naturally or just imbued something with their power, they'd have to be powerful. Zeus isn't exactly shy about acknowledging his bastards, especially now that he's divorced."

"So not Zeus?"

"Probably not. And as far as I know, Hades has never cheated on Persephone. And I don't have any particular skill with water or horses, which means that Poseidon is probably out."

Below us, the dead farmers pull the carts containing the day's produce towards the palace. Erebos is a Human-only afterlife. A few of them look up at us, but I suppose they've all seen stranger things. They look… A little pale, but aside from that more or less as I imagine they would have in life. While Homer was almost certainly right about the decay of their strength and wits before Hades bound small amounts of Erebos' power to each of them, he would clearly be wrong now. No, there's clearly nothing much to fear about death if this is where you end up.

"When we visited Themyscira with Kon, you asked me what I thought about the Titans."

"It's the obvious alternative. The Titans respond when I ask." She looks down for a moment, studying the forest. "The most obvious candidate for my biological father is Cronos. Or maybe even Uranus. They're not answering prayers so much as doing what their princess tells them to."

"If we're heading to Tartarus, we could ask about talking to the inmates."

"If I am their daughter, do you really think Hades will let me?"

"If he doesn't know, why not?"

"Greeks were a bit bigger on family loyalty then we are. And I can't lie to him about it."

"But you don't know. Not for certain. If he asks you can honestly say that you suspect that you have an Olympian mythos-."

"Othrysian."

"Huh?"

"The Titans were supposed to hold court on Mount Othrys."

"Oh. Right. Well, wherever, a father or mother from the same mythic family, but you don't know for certain. If they want to chuck you out if you get it confirmed, then so be it. You haven't had any contact with them beforehand, whoever they are."

"I suppose it wouldn't hurt to ask."

"Right then. Oh, semi-related matter. I'll need a blood sample from you."

"I thought your ring could scan someone's genes."

"It can, but you're an arcane life form. If you were made in the same sort of way Diana was you might not share genetic material with your parent. I'm going to need Sephtian to analyse your precise arcane signature, and then compare it with that of the other Olympic or Othric beings. Just a.. final confirmation." I was planning on asking him to do that to a piece of Cottus. And it will preserve secrecy if I give Donna's parentage as the reason.

"Okay. If it'll help." She looks down at the palace. "Wait, where are you heading?"

"Towards the throne room?"

"Since he didn't know we were coming I doubt he'll be there."

"Oh. Where do you think he'll be?"

"His dining room, the garden or his study, probably. Come on, the garden's closest."

She accelerates Horn-and-Ivory-wards and I follow her. "Hades has a garden?"

"His palace has a garden. Queen Persephone made it. Unlike the orchard it's fuelled by the Green rather than by Erebos itself, so it tends to die back when she's not here."

"And it's.. April, so she's not here?"

"Didn't you see her last time you came here?"

I shake my head as we descend towards a glade on the edge of the gardens. "No. I saw Hades and the Three Judges, but no Persephone. I wasn't actually in the palace grounds all that long…"

"That's a shame. She's nice." We step out of the trees and onto the grass, and at once I can see the royal picnic.

Melinoë makes eye contact with me, and sighs.

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Family Day 6

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23rd April

19:36 GMT +3

"Ah, Orange Lantern. Good to know that we didn't scare you off completely." Hades smiles as he says it, then chuckles quietly.

He's sitting on a small wooden seat while other members of his court either stand in discussion with one another or seat themselves on blankets on the ground.

"Your majesty, I can only offer my apologies for whatever it was I did which so enraged Cottus."

"Think naught of it. Melinoë-" Whose eyes dart to her father with pupils like daggers. "-spoke quite eloquently on your behalf after you left." I give her a winsome, eye-roll-earning smile while Hades looks thoughtful. "It was curiously out of character behaviour on his part, and my daughter was clear that you did nothing to provoke him. Might I assume that this means that you were on to something in your investigation?"

"It's really too early to say, majesty."

"And Troy Girl! A pleasure, as always. I don't suppose that you've given any thought to abandoning your Jewish carpenter for us in the interregnum?"

"Ahh…" Donna seems to be wrong footed. I hadn't realised that she was actually a practising Christian. Or maybe she just said that to head off an argument.

I should try covering for her. "Actually, majesty, as I understand it? 'Architect' is probably a better translation of his job title."

"Oh?"

"The Bible had passed through several languages and thousands of scribes and editors before we arrived at the modern version."

He nods. "I suppose that I shouldn't be surprised. Very few people who knew it well from the early days ended up here, of course."

"Actually..? There was something I wanted to ask… About that?"

"Oh, I'm not the jealous sort of god. As long as your conversion is genuine and heartfelt I won't expect any great display of devotion."

"A-hah… No, I…" She glances at me. "Orange Lantern had an idea for trying to track down whoever my divine parent was."

"Does it involve pestering my staff and nearly getting my youngest daughter crushed to death by an enraged Hekatonkheir?"

"No and, well, I hope not. He has an.. associate, who can analyse magic signatures in great detail. I intend to give him a sample of my own blood to work from."

"You must trust him greatly to part with that. I hope that I am not the first to warn you of the fell magics which may be wrought with a sample of someone's blood."

"I… Well, I trust Paul and he trusts him."

"Sephtian has extremely high ethical standards, majesty, and we have worked together on numerous profitable enterprises already."

"Very well. I am not certain as to what input you require from me on the subject."

"The process works not by just analysing me, but by comparing me to other samples." A slight frown from Hades at the implication. "I do not believe for a moment that you would have sired me, but the more we know of the magics of the Olympians the better able we are to narrow our search."

Hades nods sombrely. "Think you that I will need to have words with my son Zagreus?"

"Probably not. Gods and goddesses born in Erebos have certain.. traits in common."

"Hmm." Hades raises his fists to his mouth as he contemplates the request. "I have no objection to your quest, but am strongly minded to refuse your request. Instincts ingrained by the war against the Titans weigh heavily on my thoughts."

"If I may suggest, majesty?" He waves his right hand in a 'carry on' motion. "As Twilight Sparkle says: Don't dabble with blood magic. If you must, see that the blood is consumed in the spell, and have the spell cast in front of you. While having you travel physically to Poseidonis for this is beneath your dignity, I was.. planning on asking Princess Melinoë to accompany me on an outing today."

"Oh?" He glances at where his daughter is staring at me in puzzlement.. and possibly disgust. "So bold."

"You could release a vial of blood into her care, and she can ensure that it is utilised properly and destroyed promptly before we carry on to our eventual destination. So long as it is never out of her sight and she is provided with a copy of the results, you shouldn't have any need to be concerned."

"Daughter? Do you have anything to say on the subject?"

"Where exactly were you expecting to take me?"

"Fawcett City. A friendly sort of place, aside from that demonic invasion they had a few months back. Captain Marvel -Champion of Shazam- lives there."

"And what makes you think I would want to go there with you?"

"The joy you took in my offerings during my last visit. I assure you that you will find Fawcett's shops most appealing. And social interaction with the living. Oh, and-" I turn back to Hades. "-Thana has agreed to act as her chaperone."

"Do they lay demonic invasions on for the visitors?"

"It was really more of a one-off thing, your majesty." Forty three dead from the attack, and about one and a half times that again in sacrifices. Plenty more injured, but most of them were incidental. Demons can tell when a wounded person finally dies and usually don't stop attacking until that point is reached.

"Then I have no objection. Daughter?" Pointedly not looking at me, she gives her father a sort of sideways half nod. "Then so shall it be. Will you depart at once?"

"I'd like to pop back into Tartarus first, if that's at all possible." Melinoë perks up a little. "I thought that I might try speaking with one of Cottus' brothers, see if I can find out what I did wrong. And.. possibly acquire a small part of their body for resonance testing."

He seems to find the idea amusing. "It would take a passionate woman indeed to love a Hekatonkheir in such a way that they could beget a daughter."

"And… If it could be done safely… Cronus as well?"

Hades shakes his head definitively. "No. I mean no slight against your honour, but Zeus has commanded that all he, myself and our brother Poseidon must be in agreement before anyone interacts with our father or grandfather. Do you believe that such interaction is absolutely essential?"

"No, I… I wasn't sure whether approaching him would be dangerous."

"Nothing involving him is not dangerous. Even bound in Tartarus, I would not take the chance save for dire necessity."

I nod. "I should probably be able to get a reading on his magic from Deva. Assuming that she's willing to cooperate. That won't be a problem, will it?"

"No, his youngest daughter lacks the arcane skill to take advantage of your efforts." He turns to Melinoë. "Well, daughter. It seems that you must escort this young hero to the gates of Tartarus once more."

"Fine." She perks up a little as she walks away from his throne towards me. "See if you can manage being inside him for more than three minutes this time."

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Family Day 7

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23rd April

19:52 GMT +3

"So, just to make sure that I understand completely-."

"I doubt that you'll ever manage that."

Tartarus hasn't become any less relentlessly pitch black since my last visit, but this time I'm expecting it. Donna and I have construct visors on showing us the landscape as revealed by the rings' sonic pings. I remember her saying that she could just ask Tartarus to let her see but that doesn't seem politic with Melinoë right there. We took a sharp right just inside the gate and haven't seen hide nor hand of Cottus.

"The gods of many pantheons get into a huge fight with their forebears and eventually cast them down. Tartarus -some sort of primeval darkness Titan- got bound and used as a maximum security prison. Erebos… Who was also some sort of primeval darkness Titan..?"

There's a pause and I'm going to assume that Melinoë is rolling her eyes. My sonic pings aren't that precise. "Darkness isn't just darkness, Human."

"Of course. How silly of me." I pause to give her a chance to respond, but nothing is forthcoming. "Erebos gets bound and anchored to several different points with the four gates: one for regular dead folk, one for mortals particularly favoured by the gods, another to the Dreaming and the fourth to Tartarus. Hades also hooks himself up to Erebos, making him much more powerful than most of the other Olympians."

"Except Uncle Zeus and Uncle Poseidon, yes."

"Alright. First question: are you tied to Erebos in the same way?"

"No. Well. Sort of."

"Thank you for that wonderfully clear and helpful answer."

Our heads whip around as we both hear Donna giggle.

"I'm not tied to Erebos in the same way Father is. But he had so much of Erebos' magic in him when he.. sired me, that my own magic is… Similar. Sort of."

"I thought that everyone down here was-."

"I'm not dead! I don't need to have my vital breath replaced with bits of Titan!"

"Rightyho. Is Erebos still alive?"

"We think so. Obviously he doesn't talk to us, but the magic flows inside his body are too.. organic, for it to be completely determined by Father pulling it around."

"And Tartarus?"

"Probably."

"Because if something squirrelly happened here, asking the prison would be a good way to-."

"Hah! How could you possibly trust anything he said?"

"We could see if other sources corroborate his version of events, but okay. Is Hades tied to his magics as well?"

"No. Every bit of spare power Tartarus has goes into the bindings keeping the Titans trapped. And the other punishments going."

"Other punishments?"

"Sometimes some stupid mortal does something that gets Zeus so angry he sends them here as well."

"I thought that Hades had released-."

"He released the ones in the Punishment Fields. He can't overrule Zeus. These ones are staying put."

Makes sense I suppose. Alright, so Hades is powered by Erebos. That might throw off whatever results I could get from his blood sample. But his brothers are as powerful as he is. So… Poseidon… Oceanus? Don't know who Zeus could be using. Probably not polite to ask… I mean, I'm guessing Cronus himself, but I imagine that Zeus is already fairly angry with me and since the answer might well be 'all of the rest' I'm not going to push my luck.

"What exactly are we looking for?" I stop, frowning at Donna. Was that inten-? "I mean, where are we going?"

"Gyges, hopefully. Are we close enough?"

"Probably."

"Right then." I generate a pile driver construct and slam it into the ground. Pause, look around… Nothing. I retract the piston and slam it down ag-.

Earth cascades upwards as giant… I'm going to guess hands, it's a bit soon to tell with any certainty. Giant hands pull themselves free of the Tartarian ground. Unlike those belonging to his brother, these are thin-fingered, each disproportionately thin digit having at least eight points of articulation. Four point 'forwards' and a further two point in the opposite direction. No arms, just strange floating hands. As with Cottus there are a vast array of different sizes and.. shapes. I didn't notice with Cottus but some of these are armoured and others look smoother and softer.

And he hasn't thrown anything yet, which is hopeful.

As we watch, hands come together, fingers wrapping around other fingers to build a structure. Golly… Gosh. That's big. Oh, I see. No messing around making faces here, he's just making a massive humanoid.

Really massive. Cake massive.

"Princess and guests." His voice is decidedly odd, accompanied by a constant sound of hard surfaces banging and scraping against one another. "Welcome to my bailiwick. Do you wish to inspect the prisoners?"

"No. I know that you're keeping watch. My…" His huge head swings towards me. "Guest, has a few questions about your brother Cottus."

"I will not betray his confidences, but otherwise I will speak."

"Last time I came to Tartarus, it was to speak to him. He attacked me and I fled. Do you know why?"

"No."

I get ready to fly rapidly away, just in case. "I mentioned something about a living woman being made from clay."

The giant face has no real expression, just makes more clicks as the hands move around one another. "I do not know this magic."

"Does your mother? "

"Yes. Certainly."

"Does Cottus?"

"If he does, I have never seen him use it."

Fair enough. "If Cronus has been trapped here, how is it that he was able to create Deva?"

The hand man… I think that's supposed to be a glare. "He bound some of what little power is left to him to his own blood and spilled it on the ground to prevent it from being drained. We have already been chastised for this failure in our watch."

"Enough to create a whole person? A demigoddess in her own right?"

There's a pause and I'm mentally preparing to run again. "No. That power was stolen from our mother."

I frown, though I doubt that he can see it. "How?"

"Sympathetic magic."

"What did he use as the focus?"

"A small and stolen part of my brother's flesh."

I close my right hand around the small chip of Cottus I found near the entrance where my railguns hit him during my last visit. And suddenly everything starts to make a little more sense.

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Family Day 8

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23rd April

15:18 GMT -2

"No, it's quite impossible!"

The overweight fish-tailed Atlantean in front of me puffs up -metaphorically- and takes a slightly higher position in the water. I've never met Onesimus before and I can't say that he's making the best first impression. He's one of the experts in his field who're supposed to be helping Sephtian move into mass production. As I understand it, this was a bit of a step down for him. Like that.. Industrialisation era drama my class watched back in Primary School. A master weaver going to work in a factory because he can't possibly hope to keep up with the volume of cloth it can produce. I made everything he knows about arcane design wrong-. No, worse. Irrelevant.

"Which part of-?"

"We can't just drop everything we're working on to devote thaumatorium time to your…" He gulps water for a moment. "Frankly ludicrous request!"

Melinoë looks up from the arcane analytic equipment she was staring at. I'm not sure exactly what magic she's using to get around down here but when I offered her an environmental shield I got a rather haughty sniff. Thana elected to remain on Themyscira while we dealt with the Atlantean part of the 'quest'. Donna is next to me, breathing as easily as any Pureblood.

"What's ludicrous about it?"

"Have you got any idea how busy we are here? Just-!"

"Yes, I know exactly how busy you are." That seems to take some of the wind out of his air bladders. "I see Sephtian every week and I still make blanks for him… Though I understand that the rune printing system is just about out of prototyping."

He nods, reluctantly. "Then perhaps you can appreciate that we don't have the time to waste."

"If you need me to make the device-."

"And who could enchant it? And who could operate it, once it was finished?" He holds up his hands, palms forward, then brings them together in front of his chin. "Are you aware of exactly how complex a procedure is involved in analysing an arcane signature?"

I shake my head. "No."

"Let us say that we have an object strongly connected to a magic user's 'soul self'. And let us further assume that they have made no active attempt at duplicity, which a mage involved in some manner of crime certainly would."

Donna frowns. "I'm.. not sure that making me was a crime."

"It would be in Atlantis." Ooh, this guy just wants to be on my shit list, doesn't he. "A particular spell will have a near-identical formation regardless of who cast it. To analyse an object in enough detail to be able to tell with any certainty that it was cast by the one whose object we are analysing, we must examine it in the most minute detail. Do you know how complex the soul is? How many influences it may pick up, especially in a place as thaumically active as Poseidonis?"

"Nnnnno?"

"And these new devices don't help in the slightest. Before, any reading measurable by a device was so approximate that it was barely worth performing. Now! Now just tabulating the results takes months! For normal magicians! And for a god? And I can barely believe that I'm taking the suggestion seriously-."

"Why wouldn't you?"

I'm not sure that he realises that Melinoë's appearance is in any way unusual. Certainly he hasn't recognised who she is. As for what she is… I'm assuming not. He's got to be sensitive enough to magic to realise that she's not just another surface dweller, but the link between 'strange magic user named Melinoë' and 'Greek Goddess of Nightmares and Madness' hasn't formed in his mind. I don't think that Orcus has children, the Roman habit of appropriating Greek myths not having any bearing on the gods' actual lives.

"Because it's patently absurd! Gods having blood that could be subject to analysis, indeed! And even if that were the case, it would be orders of magnitude more complex than that of a mortal mage, which I've already said we couldn't do even if we wanted to. Which we don't."

Melinoë's eyes narrow. "How would you like to-?"

"Could you do something simpler?"

Onesimus shakes his head. "Like what?"

"Could you… Identify the strongest magic… Frequencies-"

"Resonances."

"-in an object?" Donna tenses her left cheek. "Does that make sense?"

"Well… That's… That's easier, of course. I'm not sure what use it would be."

"We're perfectly happy to accept that getting a precise mote by mote analysis is beyond the capacity of our current thaumic technology. We just want to see how similar the magics of several objects are to one another."

"I'd still need to-."

"Roughly how similar."

Onesimus thinks for a moment, his eyes unfocused. "If.. I.. could get the time… I…"

"I'm sure that I can talk Queen Mera into making an opening."

"How many samples did you have in mind?"

"Twelve."

"Fine." He waves his right hand dismissively. "Leave them in Dry Room One. I'll let Sephtian know that they're there when he gets baaaaaah-ah."

"You really are a louse." Melinoë's eyes are fixed on him as she stalks across the room. "You will perform the analysis yourself and you will do it now. Or you will keep seeing what you are seeing now for the rest of your life." She thinks for a moment. "And I will tell Uncle Orcus how unhelpful you were."

"Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh…" His eyes have gone totally black. Oh dear.

"Melinoë, that's.. a bit…" A bit assault on a chap who doesn't deserve it in a way which is rather seriously illegal. "Irritating as Mister Onesimus has been, I do rather need him to both perform the analysis and continue his work on this project. Would you please let him go?"

"You let him go too far. I didn't think you were that weak. I'll teach him his place and then let him go."

I move closer to her. Maybe disrupting her line of sight..? No. Ah. "Melinoë, you catch more wasps with honey than with vinegar. In the life of an immortal, what are a few minutes? Compared to the wonder of my goal, what are a few mean spirited words?" Donna looks genuinely worried. I can't really judge how much this is affecting him… I bend down slightly so that my head is level with hers. "I could try forcibly breaking your connection-" Her eyes narrow slightly. "-but I'm sure that you'd appreciate-" My hands go to the rear of her lower horns, fingertips pushing her head forwards as her eyes blink in astonishment. "-a different approach-" I give her what I hope is an affectionate smile. "-more."

She blinks, then I lean forward and kiss her. I don't linger, just press our lips together for a moment, but for the split second we're touching I can feel the location and texture of shadow in the room. There's a gasp from behind me as I pull back slightly, Melinoë staring at me in wide-eyed astonishment.

"Are you alright?"

"Melainia, she's Melainia oh gods preserve me."

"There, you see-."

She plants her hands on my chest and shoves me across the room! "Get off me, idiot!"

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Family Day 9

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23rd April

12:27 GMT -6

Donna looks around with a smile as I walk into the… Female… Accessory.. shop. Ugh, it's just like Claire's back on Earth Prime whenever I went there to get a birthday present for someone or for hair bands; I can feel my testosterone evaporating to shield me from the femininity of the place. Melinoë's eyes dart in my direction then return to the.. thing Mary Marvel née Bromfield is showing her the second she realises that I'm looking back.

"Any news?" Thana's a little closer to the door, most likely not feeling comfortable having all the weird things at closer quarters.

"Ms Deva didn't really care. She actually found the idea of someone suing Cronus for paternity amusing." She's very much not in my reform class and.. I.. don't really have the time to spend rehabilitating someone created as an instrument of vengeance by a bound and bitter Titan.

"Did you have any difficulty in persuading the Atlanteans to aid you?"

Now, think it through. Thana's speaking Themysciran Greek, but the other patrons and the shop assistants can't understand that or differentiate between it and Modern Greek. True, they're mostly staring at Melinoë's amazing cosplay but we are -sort of- here incognitoish. I don't want to risk anyone overhearing anything which blatantly says 'super person'.

Ring, switch to Themysciran Greek.

Compliance.

"Not really. I ended up speaking to a fish-tailed Atlantean called Onesimus." Who wised up pretty fast when he realised that the Goddess of Nightmares and Madness was standing in the same room as him. Apparently they still… Not 'worship', but certainly acknowledge her in Atlantis. "After being flabbergasted, telling me that even if it was possible it would take centuries and flat out refusing to look into it for me. But, we were able to persuade him."

"I'm sure that I wouldn't be able to understand the technical aspects..?"

"Normally when they analyse an arcane artefact they do a complete analysis. It would be…" A bit morbid, but so is she. "Like examining every part of the body of a murder victim in detail so that you don't miss even the slightest thing that might lead to the culprit."

She nods hesitantly. "Only.. the.. murder victim.. is a god?"

"Sorry, bad metaphor. What they normally do provides much more information than I need." Um. "Than I probably need, and if a simpler examination doesn't give me what I'll need then I'm going to have to work out how to improve their equipment before I do anything else."

"Ah." She nods. "So you would merely be comparing their domains, rather than the whole of their magics."

"Right. And they can do that."

So by Monday I should have a rough idea of the arcane relatedness of Euanthe (daughter by magic of Gaea and Uranus), Diana (daughter by magic of Gaea and blessed by the Six), Hades (natural son of Cronus and Rhea), Melinoë (natural daughter of Hades and Persephone), Ares (natural son of Zeus and Hera), Hera (natural daughter of Cronus and Rhea), Hippolyta (natural daughter of Otrera and Ares), Cottus (natural -I think- son of Gaea and Uranus), Deva (daughter by magic of Cronus and blessed by the Titans), Donna Troy (not really sure), Tartarus (really not sure) and -just for a giggle- Orange Lantern 2814, who incidentally is the only one not related to all of the others.

I mean, you joke about them all being more inbred than the Habsburgs, but think about it for a moment. Gaea is Zeus' grandmother and grandmother in law, being the grandmother of his wife and mother of both of his parents. Euanthe is Diana's.. half sister, at least. Hades is Diana's nephew, though maybe 'created by magic' and 'naturally borne' changes that a little. Melinoë is Diana's great niece and Deva is her niece. Hippolyta, her adopted mother, is her great great niece. It's a bit strange that Euanthe is so much weaker than the others… Or was, anyway, since I'm not completely sure how strong she is now. Maybe if Diana's creation hadn't been blessed she'd be more like Golden Age Wonder Woman, extremely capable but not really super powered. Or… I don't know, maybe Euanthe only has Uranus' magic innately and learned how to use the Green. I don't really know enough about Uranus' magic to comment. Gaea was supposed to create them using his blood, right?

"Is there some sort of Amazon betting pool I'll need to notify?"

Thana shakes her head. "When she first arrived, it was so widely assumed that she was sired by Zeus that no one was interested in placing such a bet. Now it will merely be a matter of curiosity."

"Melinoë getting on alright?"

"I was surprised by how muted the reaction to her was."

"How is she reacting to them?"

"She.. hasn't cursed anyone to endure eternal nightmares-" I cover up a nervous expression with my right fist. "-which is something that it is well within her power to do." She frowns. "Miss Mary said something about it being hard to get makeup for someone of her complexion."

"Well… Yes."

"One youth asked if she was 'cosplaying'-" That word must have been in English. "-as.. some sort of Elf."

"A Dark Elf?"

"It may have been. I only know because Miss Mary was kind enough to translate it for me. Melinoë has no elfin heritage. She does not even look like an Elf. Why would they ask such a thing?"

"Elves are depicted in popular fiction as looking very different to how they really look. I'm not sure where Dark Elves started being shown as grey skinned… Might have been Dungeons and Dragons-." And I've lost her. "It's a role.. play.. game… It's not important. The fact is, it would seem far more likely to them that she was a normal Human in costume than literally being a goddess… That he probably wouldn't have heard of anyway."

Thana nods. "I suppose I can see why he might think that." She pauses, as if not quite sure how to address the next point. "But if he did not recognise her, why did he apologise and flee when told that his initial supposition was incorrect?"

"In our society, it's considered.. impolite… To draw attention to physical abnormalities. Once he was informed that it wasn't a costume…"

"He thought that he had been rude… To a normal woman who happened to look a little unusual?" I nod. "I see."

"How have you been coping with everything?"

"I keep my eyes focused firmly on the ground. I thought that I was used to large buildings… I have seen visions of Lord Hades' palace, and of the structures of Asphodelopolis which are bound together with Erebos' own magic. But this.. Fawcett City…" She shakes her head. "I looked up and it gave me vertigo. I should have listened more to what our wandering theatre troupe said of the outside world."

"And the colours? The noise? The men?"

"Those, I was more prepared for." She looks thoughtful. "I.. was not born in the Old City of Themyscira."

Oh. Goodness. "You're doing exceptionally well for someone born on the Island."

She shakes her head. "I believe that the town into which I was born was technically in Thracian territory. We moved into Themysciran territory during… I don't believe that the war ever received a name. The town had two storey buildings. Themyscira City -which I only saw after joining the priestesshood- had buildings as high as four storeys. Here… It is not so much the height of the very tall buildings which concerns me so much as the higher average height, I think."

I glance back at our shoppers. Mary is attempting to attach a gold chain to Melinoë's left forehorn. I catch Donna say the word 'piercing' and the Goddess of Nightmares and Madness jerks back in horror. "Would you like to go up one?"

"I think that I shall leave that to the rest of you."

"Oh, come on." I glance outside. "Once you're running this fast it's easier to keep-" Doctor Sivana ♀ walks past the window. "-going. Would you excuse me for just a moment? There's someone outside I should probably say hello to."

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Family Day 10

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23rd April

14:01 GMT -6

Doctor Sivana ♀ looks at me a little sceptically as she takes a sip of her coffee. "And she's… Actually the Ancient Greek Goddess of Nightmares and Madness?"

Said Greek Goddess of Nightmares and Madness appears to be going through a pink phase. Pink skirt, pink leggings, pink t-shirt with a picture of Pink emblazoned across the chest and a pink denim jacket.

…

Maybe I should have let Donna help the multimillennial goddess instead of an eleven year old girl who currently isn't using the Wisdom of Solomon.

Eh, she seems happy enough.

"She's actually quite pleasant company. One of my ongoing projects is to encourage a link between ancient magic practices and modern society and technology."

Her eyebrows raise ever so slightly. "And you're recruiting gods?"

"Yes, Hephaestus has been a great help already."

"What about Vulcan?" Momentary frown. "Or are they not separate deities?"

"No, they're separate. But Vulcan's even more cut off from… His job, if you like."

"Smithing?"

"No. He still does… Well, I haven't met him, but I had a chat with Hephaestus-" And Hera. Never hurts to consult more than one source. "-about it. He still makes things, but he doesn't god, if you see what I mean. No one worships him, very few people worship his pantheon… He spends half his time in their workshop under Mount Etna making wonders no one will ever see and the other half in a garage in Rubiera in Italy."

"Really?"

I shrug. "He likes machinery."

She appears to be struggling with the idea. "So people can just walk in and say 'there's a light on my dash and I don't know what it means, could Vulcan take a look at it'?"

"No, he doesn't go by that name. And I doubt that they use him for things where it's just a matter of replacing a part or resetting the engine management computer. He's very good at what he does."

"Is that what all the ancient gods are doing now?"

"Not all of them. But quite a few, yes. They usually had their domains because they liked whatever it was they were patron of. Hera's a relationship advice columnist-."

"Heh. And what does Zeus think about that?"

"They're divorced."

"You honestly expect me to believe-."

"He is a serial philanderer and she can do much better." I don't think that Doctor Sivana ♀ is quite convinced. "I can introduce you if you like?"

"And… What about..?" She looks over at where the Goddess of Nightmares and Madness is experiencing her first ever brain freeze. Frederick Freeman appears to find it hilarious. "Hades? Or Pluto?"

"Hades rules the Olympian dead from the hollowed out body of the fallen Titan Erebos. They get a handful of new residents each year. Pluto is a cartoon dog owned by Disney. He lives with Mickey Mouse. I don't believe that he's real as well, but I suppose I could be wrong. If you're referring to Orcus, I assume that he's doing the same sort of thing. I've never met him."

"Do.. you worship them? I mean, it seems a little strange that you'd worship someone who works in a garage."

I grin. "I worship Eris."

"I thought.. she was.. one of the bad ones."

"Chaos is what makes the universe more than rocks moving in perfect circles around one another. Eris.. the person, will wheedle, cajole, prod and pry to try and make people different from how they are. But…" I turn my palms upwards in a shrugging motion. "Are you today the same person as you were yesterday? Or a year ago?"

"I thought you told everyone that Klarion was a Chaos God?"

"No, he's a Lord of Chaos. A mortal wizard who turned their own soul into a giant mass of chaos magic. Eris' soul is that of an Olympian, Earth magic core with a chaos magic outer. Also, he's a mass murdering shit and she isn't."

She nods. "So, chaos isn't the problem, it's about how you use it."

"Like anything else. Yes. A fundamentally unproductive system changing may be for the best. A perfect system changing would be bad… But I'm not sure those really exist."

She nods, finishing the last of her coffee. "Listen, I've got.. this… Thing…"

I smile. "Need to wash your hair already? Am I really that bad?"

"No, it…" She sighs. "Actually, you're the reason why I'm not at the hospital. We're on the purple healing ray trial."

"Oh yeah? How is that going?"

"Brilliantly. The ray works exactly as it's supposed to. The hospital wants me to take a sabbatical to try and work out why it works. KordTech haven't been particularly forthcoming."

"That's because we don't know. Baroness von Gunther's work was a bit out there." But I smell an opportunity to fix that. "I can get you copies of her notes if it would help?"

She nods. "That.. would be great. I wouldn't give up working at the hospital for anything, but…" Another sigh. "My Dad.. wasn't a supervillain at home. He was the one helping me when I developed a strain of synthetic bacteria that destroys the rhinovirus. But now I'm working full time I haven't had time to get into a laboratory and do original research since…" She looks blank. "I'm not.. actually sure. God, it might be since I started my residency."

"That sounds like a waste of your talents."

"That's what the Chief of Medicine says as well." She looks uncertain. "It's just-."

"The results may help people but it takes far longer to get to the point where an actual person benefits than doing a shift in Accident and Emergency."

"Yeah, that. Magnificus doesn't care and the other two are nearly as bad as Dad. I sort of feel that I should be doing something like this? That's mostly why I went into medicine in the first place."

"To pay back some of the 'karmic debt'?" She nods. "I don't want to sound.. rude about your profession… But there are a lot of medical doctors and not very many… Um… 'Beneficent Geniuses'." That gets a burst of laughter. "I'm sure you can sort out a schedule that lets you spend some time on normal medicine if it means that much to you. But purple healing rays everywhere, that's…"

"Yeah." She doesn't sound completely convinced. "You're probably right. I guess ray guns just have a bad association for me." She sits back in her chair, looking me over. "I'd.. like to ask a favor."

"You can always ask, as my Dad used to say."

"Once a year, the Sivana family has a.. get together. I'd like you to come with me this year."

"When you say 'family'-?"

"Mom and my siblings. Dad's still.. wherever he ended up." She does a circular wave with her right hand. "I just like to bring someone along to make it bearable, and at this point it's you or Jack."

"Jack?"

"Daniels." She shrugs. "I'm a Danner enhancile, aren't I? It's almost impossible for me to get drunk, but if I down a bottle I can get tipsy enough to ignore Thaddeus and Georgia constantly bickering and Magnificus' inferiority complex. And I.. actually…" She looks away, smiling. "Would like to talk to you some more."

I smile back. "That sounds fascinating. When is it?"

back

Family Day 11

next

25th April

07:56 GMT -6

"Now, remember:-" Doctor Sivana ♀ checks my tie for a second time. "-you're-"

"Not allowed to arrest your siblings." / "-not allowed to arrest anyone."

I put my hands on her shoulders, gently nudging her own hands off me to do so. "It's fine. I haven't forgotten anything you told me."

"Mom keeps the habitat on Central Time Zone Time-"

"Still haven't forgotten."

"-and.. I.. know that." She takes a deep breath and then slowly lets it out. "I really shouldn't be this wound up yet. The others won't be arriving for hours."

She's wearing a grey knee length skirt, a white blouse and a grey jacket, an ensemble which shouts 'camouflage'. An attempt ruined by the fact that the wearer is a gorgeous six foot tall blonde woman with super strength. I'm in a dark grey suit with orange pinstripes.

"You didn't say why we're going this early-."

"So I can catch up with Mom before everyone else arrives and she has to spend all her time 'Moming'."

"Is it.. really that bad?"

She flares her eyes as she nods. "Oh, you'll see."

"I do have one question, though." She nods, eyebrows slightly raised. "Is this a date?"

"Aaaahh…"

"I ask because I need to know what capacity I'm coming in. Is this a date, and if so how long are we supposed to have been dating? Because I doubt that you'll want to tell them that you.. grabbed me as an alternative to necking Jack Daniels until you could cope with them. Alternately, this is a fake date to demonstrate that you have a functioning social life, and if so-"

"Ou-ch."

"-same question. I can be vague about it if you want."

"Look, I have friends, I just-."

"Don't want them getting involved with the supervillainous part of the family. You're like Aimee Osbourne."

"Heh. Maybe. Only instead of swearing and shouting at each other they shout formulae and fire ray guns."

"I can use the rings defensively, right?"

"Ah, if things go badly enough that you're actually threatened, yes. But… I want to try and have a normal family day. Just once."

There's a beep from her jacket pocket. She looks down as she reaches into it with her right hand and pulls out her phone to look at the message.

"Bomb scare?"

"No, Magnificus wants me to make sure Mom has the right coordinates. Dad used to organise these things in hard-to-reach locations and make us work out how to get there ourselves. Mom's holding it on the Venus habitat because we can't turn it into a competition."

"I knew.. that your father had a teleportation system, but I don't know how it works."

"Oh, it isn't anything special, really. It works in more or less the same way as Doctor Erdel's original zeta tube. Dad always said that the fixed entry and exit point was a step backwards."

I frown. "Wait a moment. Wouldn't that mean that-"

There's a flare of blue-white light around us.

"-you have problems-" My brain catches up with my eyes, but my mouth presses on. "-with integrity.. loss..?"

"Hey Mom!" Doctor Sivana ♀ beams as she walks over towards the control booth, where a woman I'm going to assume is Doctor Sivana ♀… No, that's not going to work, especially if we're supposed to be dating. Beautia beams as she walks over to her mother and embraces her. I know the joke is that the older children took after their mother and the younger ones took after their father, but the resemblance is far from perfect. Venus is notably shorter than her daughter, and without the Danner Formula lacks the same muscle definition. She's also… How to put this? She isn't fat. I wouldn't even call her plump. But there's a little more body fat on her than there is on her elder daughter.

"Tia, honey! How have you been?"

Her accent is different as well. Transatlantic rather than Fawcettian. Okay, if this is a zeta radiation based system then… The four posts coming up from the platform must be the equivalent of our tubes. But that means…

"And who's this?"

"You fixed the problem with Doctor Erdel's original one-point system!" And curse not being allowed to scan any of this stuff!

Venus separates from her daughter and walks towards me. "No, that was Thaddeus. I'm an economist."

"Oh, right, sorry. "

"I can tell you how much it costs to build or run, if you like. And why that means that it's not practical for mass implementation." I step off the platform and she holds out her right hand. "Venus Sivana."

"A pleasure to meet you, Doctor." I bow, taking her right hand in mine and raising it to my lips. "Orange Lantern two eight one four at your service."

She smiles. "You probably shouldn't identify yourself with a number around here, in case Georgia or Junior get the idea that you're a robot." Her expression momentarily freezes. "Tia, he isn't-?"

"No Mom, he's not a robot."

"I only ask because last time-."

"Not a robot, Mom."

"Last time?"

Venus opens her mouth slightly, then closes it and turns to her daughter. "How long have you two been together?"

"We.. met back in February." Beautia comes around to my right side and winds her left arm around my right. "And we're going to be working together on reverse engineering the principles behind the purple healing ray."

Sophistry at its most off-the-cuff. Not a word of a lie but a strong implication that we've been together a while.

"Oh honey, that's wonderful! Your father's far less likely to claw his way back from whatever parallel universe he dumped himself in to wreak revenge if you're dating someone who isn't Captain Marvel."

I feel Beautia stiffen slightly. "Yeah, that's… Off the cards."

Hm. She's eighteen herself, so the age difference is only seven years and she's going to live for long enough that it isn't an absolute barrier unless she wants it to be. Maybe she prefers older men?

"It's probably for the best. So, Orange Lantern." Venus smiles at me warmly. "What do your friends call you?"

back

Family Day 12

next

25th April

09:31 GMT -6

"It's really that good?"

Venus has got a bit into the 'make the potential son in law feel welcome' routine. Though… By what Beautia was saying, maybe she wants to get the warm feelings flowing before the rest of the clan turn up and try to scare me off.

Luckily for Beautia the photo albums are back in Venus' home on Earth.

"No resistance to electricity or heat at all. I've got a spool with me-."

She raises her right hand. "I think.. maybe, you should pretend you don't have that with you. Magnificus and my younger two would probably find it fascinating…"

I nod. "And having two young supervillains and a slightly older borderline case interested in something isn't necessarily a good thing."

Beautia nods. "Last time Georgia got jealous of me over one of my boyfriends… Well..."

"I'm.. going.. to need more than a 'well'."

Venus looks away for a moment, hands moving over her tea cup. "She transferred his mind into a Possum."

"She-. She what?"

"And then she wouldn't tell us where the switch was to turn them back…"

"But… A Possum? There's no way its neural structures are complex enough to contain a Human mind. Was… He alright?"

Beautia shakes her head. "Her machine didn't literally swap minds. It just rearranged the connections between mind and body. Justin's brain was still in his body, but it was getting sensory input from the Possum's body. And the same with the Possum."

"I don't think that's technically easier. Ah, also: are there any Possums-" The Sivana women cover their smiles. "-on Venus, because it sounds like that's something I need to worry about now."

Venus shakes her head. "I don't think so. Ah, Sivanadroid?"

One of the robots who apparently maintain the place trundles over. Its construction is a strange mix of heavy industrial looking metal and technical sophistication. The face is a simple piece of metal, with a glowing blue line to indicate the mouth. The upper body is similarly immobile, a humanoid torso attached to a metal oblong rising from a caterpillar tracked base unit. The thing it most puts me in mind of is Pneuman from the Tom Strong comics, only marginally less creepy. And the electronics inside are far more sophisticated than the exterior would suggest.

"Ready for command."

"Do we-? Uh. Information request. Are any Possums presently located within the habitat?"

"No member 'species: Possum' detected by internal sensors."

"Thank you. Um,-" She rolls her eyes. "-Sivanadroid, dismissed."

"Have a good day." There's a whir as its tracks pull it away.

Venus shakes her head again. "I don't know why he designed them like that."

"He probably kept them mentally simple so that they couldn't rebel against him."

"Or maybe he finds completely predictable interactions easier to cope with."

Venus sighs. "That does sound like him."

"Okay, I've… I've got to ask. How did the two of you end up together?"

"Oh, looks aren't everything. When he was younger, he was... Different."

"Oh, I don't mean because he's ugly and you're… Not." That gets an amused smile. "It's just… I spent days trying to get hold of the designs for some of his early work. I can easily understand how someone that brilliant, that passionate about what he was doing, could be attractive. I'm just… From what I've been able to read, his interpersonal skills were never particularly good."

"Oh, no, that's all…" She leans back in her seat. "A lot of what people who say they knew Thaddeus said after he… Became a criminal… It was all either nonsense or 'reinterpreted' in light of what he did later. Not that the newspapers thought to fact check when they had a hot new supervillain to demonise."

I glance at Beautia, but receive no guidance. "Well… I… Never met him. What was he really like?"

"Surprisingly charming. Before he came to college his parents told him that he needed to improve his interpersonal skills, so he read a book on etiquette and assumed that would do. I think it must have been from fifty or sixty years ago."

"So.. he's… Autistic?"

"He's definitely on the autistic spectrum, but I don't think he's got the full condition. But he can get upset when things don't go the way he thinks they will." She takes a sip of her tea, eyes gazing into the middle distance. "We first met when he asked me to take a look at some of his grant applications. I thought that some of his claims were a bit farfetched… So he took me back to his laboratory. It.. was…" She nods, more to herself than to me. "Amazing."

"I know."

"So.. we completed the proposal and I… Kept going back. I wanted to see what amazing thing he did next. And… He programmed a robot to cook us dinner, and…" She shrugs, smiling fondly. "He wasn't good at people, but he did try. And… Later…"

"Information retrieved." One of the Sivanadroids trundles up, its chest opening to reveal a screen which flickers to life to show… My lecture back in February.

"But the thing that really got to me, the thing that reduced me to hissing, eye watering apoplexy? Doctor Thaddeus Sivana." The picture of him -which I now realise would have been from when he and Venus were courting- appears on the screen behind past-me. "You all know him as a supervillain who occasionally goes on the rampage in Fawcett City before Captain Marvel stops him. But he was actually a legitimate scientist for far longer than he's been a supervillain. Know what pushed him over the edge?" There's a pause, and Beautia shifts around so that she's got a better view. Incidentally pressing a little harder against my left side. "No, me neither. Pretty much the first thing he did as a supervillain was try and take revenge on those who rejected his ideas and destroy all publically accessible records of his work. But I've read the reports from the survivors. Smart viruses that could target and replace damaged DNA segments, economic hydrogen fuel cells… If he'd been a better businessman…"

The Sivanadroid's chest closes again and -job completed- it trundles off again.

Venus smiles at me again. "I'm a little impressed. Quite a risk you took, speaking well of someone like Thaddeus."

"I just wish I'd met him when you did."

"You were wrong, though. The business case was solid. I'm the one who wrote it."

I frown, shaking my head. "Then..?"

"Why the rejections?" She slumps slightly. "Honestly, I still don't know. Perhaps his claims just seemed so unbelievable that investors just didn't believe it. Or.. maybe.. larger companies didn't want the market disruption that he could have created. And the college wasn't happy about him trying to become more independent… And ego was definitely a factor, on all sides."

"You left the university in ninety one…"

"We certainly weren't short of work. Or money. But Thaddeus was always frustrated by the fact that he could only sell designs that were slight improvements on things that already existed, rather than anything truly revolutionary." She sighs again. "Lost opportunity doesn't even begin to cover it."

"At what point did you notice him starting to go… Off the rails?"

"I.. think it was when we first started talking seriously about children."

back

Family Day 13

next

25th April

09:35 GMT -6

"I already heard part of that story from Magnificus."

Venus nods. "I didn't.. know about the test subjects.. at the time. Thaddeus had a lot of data on fetal development and.. I believed him when he said his techniques would ensure that our children had the best start in life they could get."

Beautia leans forward and pats her mother on the left arm with her right hand. "Mom, I started work in a hospital as a fully qualified MD at seventeen. I'd say it worked."

"There's.. more to life than how quickly you can start work. Your social skills may be better than your father's, but I still had to drag you out of your laboratory to go and make friends. And Paul's the first boyfriend you've ever brought home to meet the family."

"Mom."

I reach back with my left arm, putting it around her shoulder. "Do you know exactly what he did?"

"Thaddeus… He thought normal zygote selection techniques were wasteful. You have to fertilise a lot of eggs and then test them… So he did a full genetic work up of both of us and used that to calculate the optimal-" Mmmmmmmmmm! "-combination of genetic characteristics and womb conditions." She leans forward slightly. "And -let me tell you- I wasn't exactly flattered by that. Making a child is a very chemically complicated business, but Thaddeus was on top of it. I must have taken more dietary supplements during those nine months than the rest of my life put together."

"That sounds a bit…"

"He was.. trying to help. To do something good. And if anyone had actually been prepared to invest in the technology he developed we could have eliminated congenital deformity worldwide by now."

"And.. the Beresfords?"

"He never exactly said he was going to give our children super powers, just that they'd be as fit and healthy as humanly possible. I suppose he.. just had higher standards for Humans."

"I've certainly never had a problem with my strength."

Venus looks less certain. "You didn't have to breast feed two-" Beautia and I both cringe. "-super strong children." She notices our reaction and smiles. "Thaddeus ended up developing a sort of super resilient rubber nipple cover-" We cringe more as she mimes. "-which seemed to do the trick, but it still wasn't exactly comfortable. Fortunately, you both learned a degree of self control and spatial awareness before you did too much damage to our home. I don't know how the… How Missus Beresford managed with that."

"Breast pump and putting them on formula early. Please don't ask me how I know that." She was perfectly happy to talk, but her alcohol-lubricated ramblings were somewhat disjointed. Still, her children's rehabilitation is.. if not going well, then at least going. Magnificus has actually phoned them a few times, and his sheer condescension has spurred Tuppence into paying attention in class. "Their father used to take them out to an abandoned quarry where they could cut loose with their full strength." Which is almost certainly where the positive association with smashing comes from.

Beautia shrugs. "I never really cared about being strong. Dad.. emphasised intellectual development. I suppose I always thought that I was as strong as I'd ever need to be so I may as well focus on things that actually interested me."

"And.. Magnificus? I'd have thought.. at school…"

"We were always the youngest in our year. It wasn't such a big deal for me, but for him being shorter than the other guys.. did give him a few problems. And then he was.. too strong. If he got into a fight-"

Venus nods. "And that happened a few times."

"-he wouldn't just win, he'd mop the floor with them. He found it pretty hard to make friends."

"He was too clever for other children his age and too young for the other children in his classes." Two nods. "I suppose that.. in a way, Hugo Danner was luckier. He only outclassed the people around him physically."

Beautia rests her head on my arm. "I suppose that's why -despite everything- we've stayed so close as a family."

"Despite half of the family being supervillains?"

"Would you rather I leave Georgia and Thaddeus Junior with only their father for guidance? I'm not happy about the path they've chosen… But at least this way I can make sure that they're not doing anything too crazy."

"We're the only other people we all know who can understand what we're working on. Who can keep up with us when we start working on something beyond cutting edge."

"I've got the shade of Thomas Morrow on call. He's the only expert on thaumorobotics on the planet."

"I didn't say there weren't other people, just that we're the ones we know best. And there aren't many."

I nod. "Okay. Your father clearly had no illusions about his own physical attractiveness if he selected genes for appearance mostly from-" I indicate Venus with my right hand. "-you. Then why-?"

Venus raises her eyebrows. "Why do Thaddeus Junior and Georgia look like him with hair and him in drag respectively?"

"I wasn't going to put it quite that harshly, but… Yes, basically."

"That.. was.. when Thaddeus started to go more and more… Off. Our first children had the best of everything. With them… He said that if he compromised on some characteristics he could enhance certain others. Genes don't code for characteristics, they code for chemicals, so it seemed reasonable." Venus looks a little down, then perks up slightly. "Of course, since they didn't have super strength it was a lot easier on my-."

"Mom!"

"Thaddeus said that since intellectual ability was more useful for influencing the world than physical appearance he needed to do everything he could to maximise their intellectual development. Including discouraging them to have anything much to do with other children." She sighs again. "They both have better social awareness than he does, but otherwise… They have the same relentless, ruthless intellect that he has. Has now."

I frown. "But the Danner Formula wouldn't have made them less intelligent. It doesn't.. affect that at all. Unless he had some other alchemical formula for augmenting their brains."

"He said… And this wasn't until after the divorce. Because if he'd told me beforehand it would have caused the divorce. He said that that by denying them the ability to rely on their physical abilities, he was forcing them to rely on their intellect for everything. They weren't designed to be all that much more intelligent than Beautia and Magnificus, they were designed to be better motivated."

It makes a creepy kind of sense. "No one would give them anything, so they'd have to learn to take it." I frown. "That's-."

She nods. "Supervillain thinking. I've tried to encourage them to do other things… But.. it.. hasn't really worked. Particularly after the divorce. Thaddeus wanted to keep contact and.. he could help them with their projects more than I could. And then by the time he went full supervillain they were closer to him than ever." She looks pensive. "They sent me a message after Thaddeus disappeared to let me know they were alright, but this will be the first time I've seen them since then."

"Are they going to be alright with me being here?"

"I don't… They probably won't resent you more than they would resent anyone else." She takes a deep breath and then slowly exhales. "Okay, that's enough about my family. Why don't you tell me about yours?"

back

Family Day 14

next

25th April

10:07 GMT -6

"So the ruddy Cat's just staring at me from the other side of the window, six metres off the ground above the concrete bit of our back garden. He sort of tries turning around, but loses his nerve part way through, because the window ledge isn't that wide." I mimic my cat's posture. "He looked a bit like he was thinking about trying to jump back through, but he was only a little Cat and I don't think either of us thought he could do it. So I ran downstairs and told my parents and Dad.. got a ladder out of the garage to go up from the outside and bring him down. And then a few days later he goes and does the same thing again. Only this time, before Dad can get the ladder up to him he jumps back through."

Odd to think about it, but this is the most I've talked about my family on Earth Prime since I got to Earth 16. Maybe it's… Sort of a taboo back in the mountain? They know that I've got no way to contact them so they don't bring it up? Don't know.

The travails of my family are a good deal less interesting than those of the Sivana family, but Venus has been politely nodding along. "We never really had pets in the house."

"What about those Crocodiles Magnificus had?"

"That was.. really more.. your father letting him help clean out his test subjects. They weren't supposed to be pets."

Beautia sighs. "Father ended up feeding them a mutagen and turning them into giant rampaging monsters. Poor little Herkimer. He was such a sweetheart when he was a hatchling."

"I imagine that Crocodiles are a bit more manageable when you have super strength. I'm afraid that I.. don't really have any stories that can hold a candle to that. Not from before I arrived on Earth Sixteen."

Beautia looks curious. "Earth Sixteen?"

"This parallel… Ah, the Earth of this parallel. We had an encounter with parallel universe versions of my team mates in February and they had some sort of numbering system."

She nods. "And let me guess: they were number one?"

"No, negative fourteen. I'm assuming it's a reference to some sort of constant, but I don't have any way to-"

There's a loud 'ping' from somewhere.

"-check." I take a moment to try and work out where it came from. There aren't any speakers, but… Ah, that's a sound induction wand! I didn't think anyone on Earth had those. Of course, with this being the pad of the Doctors Sivana, one of them probably independently developed it. "Is that important? "

Venus checks her watch. "Oh, that's probably Magnificus. He said that he might be coming up early." Beautia lets out an exhalation of frustration, earning her a warning look from her mother. "Be nice, Tia."

"Yes, Mom."

"Why don't the two of you go and fetch him while I check on the environmental systems."

"Is.. there a.. problem with them?"

"Not as such, but Thaddeus always thought it best to have Human eyes on vital systems every so often. And I've never been sure whether this base was one of the ones where he deliberately set the system to malfunction if you didn't or not."

…

What?

Beautia rises from her seat next to me, effortlessly pulling me up with her and then gently taking hold of my left hand and tugging me back in the direction of the zeta platform. I wait until we're out of earshot before asking.

"Deliberately malfunctioning environmental systems?"

"Dad.. sometimes.. liked to set us little.. practical tests. Oh, don't worry, even if it breaks down completely we'd still have hours of breathable air left. And Venus' gravity is approximately ninety percent of Earth's, so even without the artificial gravity we probably wouldn't notice the difference."

"I.. know, I'm just… How old were you when you were expected to do the eye-keeping for him?"

"Um… Six or seven? Crawling through the ducts was easier back then, but we had to use a step to check the control panels." She glances at my face and notices my stunned expression. "We knew what we were doing. Dad always said there was no point in getting an education if you weren't going to use it."

"Are we on.. Venus' surface here?"

She stops walking and closes her eyes for a moment, before starting forwards again. "Yes, I think so. There's usually a slight vibration when we're in the air."

"Can I assume that I don't need to draw attention to how amazing this place is and how valuable the technologies here could be to the Human species?"

"We have an agreement about not using each others' inventions without permission and.. Dad.. won't give anyone permission. Besides…" She looks around the corridor we're walking through. "There isn't anything here that humanity actually needs."

"Really? Because I imagine that a place like this has a pretty nifty power generator."

"Oh, it is. It generates power from something Dad calls the 'reality-Bleed membrane'. That's, ah…"

"I know what a Bleed Membrane Instability Generator is. It's on my xenotechnology database." I think for a moment. "How much trouble would I get into if I scan things around here?"

"I'm not sure. If Dad finds out that you used what you scanned to build something then he'll show up and destroy it. But I don't know if there are any actual automated anti-Lantern devices here. Dad hasn't really had anything to do with any of the Green ones."

"I.. note that you're referring to him in the present tense."

"Oh, he…" She flaps her left hand. "Might be dead. But I'm not going to assume anything. He's been declared dead, like… Five times, and there wasn't even a body this time." She releases my hand and heads towards the control console. I hover around just behind her, trying to make sense of the control system without actually scanning it. Just in case. "Seven.. relays… And…" She lowers a lever. "Activate."

There's a flicker of blue-white light from the platform, then a brighter flash as Doctor Magnificus Sivana appears. His hair is a little longer than last time I saw him and I think that he's put oil in it. He's wearing a white polo shirt and a fawn coloured leather jacket with a pair of blue jeans. I'm a little surprised, I hadn't thought of him as the dressing down type. He looks a little down, actually. "Good morning…" He catches sight of me and is momentarily nonplussed. "'Tia. And Orange Lantern." He steps off the platform, a slight frown wrinkling his brow. "You're.. looking… Well."

"Hello Magnificus. How's life treating you?"

"Oh, we.. finally got the go ahead for Human trials… On the Danner Formula, and one or two other things. I.. hadn't realised.. that the two of you…"

Beautia nods. "It's.. a little new, but I wanted him to meet the family early."

"Probably for the best." He's.. actually slouching. "I was.. going to invite Nyssa, but… She had.. a.. thing. Um… Have… Junior and Georgia turned up yet?"

"No, not yet."

"Uh-huh yet."

The three of us direct our attention to an apparently empty part of the room.

"We've been here for-" Whatever invisibility system Thaddeus Junior is using deactivates by increments, first revealing his face, then hands and arms, then torso and lastly his legs. "-nearly a week!"

"Hey Tia." Georgia's invisibility mantle fails in the same manner as her twin's. "Who's the hunk? And would it really be a problem if I cloned him?"

back

Family Day 15

next

25th April

10:12 GMT -6

Magnificus looks pained. "A week?"

Thaddeus nods. "Yeah. See, we were trying to work out where Dad might have gone, and this was the only lab we hadn't checked out."

"But we're on Venus."

Thaddeus shrugs. "Yeah?"

Ow! I glance down and see Georgia looking disappointedly at the scalpel she just poked into my right arm. I might not be wearing armour but my environmental shield still works. Beautia snatches it out of her hand. "His name is Paul and yes, it would be a problem if you cloned him."

Georgia looks up at me, jaw set slightly to the left. "Are you sure? Because I could make some cosmetic modifications-?"

"Yes!"

Georgia tosses her head to the right and waves her left hand dismissively. "Fine."

"Not that I.. want to end up as a Possum or anything-."

Georgia scowls at me, and I suddenly get the 'Thaddeus Senior in drag' comment. "One time! And he deserved it! Stupid, deceitful-!"

"What exactly is he supposed to have done that justified-?"

"He only pretended to be nice to me to get close to her." Georgia points her right index finger aggressively at her sister.

"Ah. Well… That shouldn't be a problem, since I met her first."

She shakes her head. "Mom confiscated the Possumizer anyway."

"Hey, orange guy!" Thaddeus Junior waggles some sort of.. technological… "Where'd you get this?"

"That's an invisibility generator from one of Truggs' mercenaries. Are you working with him?"

"Nah, we stole it from your subspace pocket."

What? Ring, status of subspace storage.

"We were going for your lantern but I guess you left that at home."

Subspace pocket is currently empty.

What?

Georgia nudges her sister with her right elbow as she reclaims her scalpel. "Did you know he can cook?"

What?

Thaddeus Junior grins. "Yeah, turns out? Guardians don't bother locking subspace pockets." He shrugs helplessly. "Eh, what you gunna do?"

Find out how to bloody quick. "I should probably warn you that in our testing-."

"Yeah yeah, mental instability in unshielded users. But let's be honest here: with us?" He smiles at me and, yep, Thaddeus Senior with hair. "Who'd notice?"

"I thought there was some sort of truce in effect..?"

He tosses the invisibility generator to me underarm. It doesn't quite travel the full distance and I have to step forward to grab it. Ring, sub… Space. I guess. I mean, I can't carry it around all day. It's just.. whaw, I stick everything in there. Okay, okay, he can't have hacked the ring itself so at worst he's got hold of a few weapons, and he's shown the ability to make more powerful ones than anything I put in storage. He couldn't fit in my armour…

"Where's the rest?"

"Storage warehouse seven. Nice armor, by the way."

"Thank you, Thaddeus." Georgia tilts her head up, eyes rolling back into her head. Magnificus gives me a puzzled look. What? "I would be.. perfectly happy to just.. talk about the technologies I use in future?"

"Where's the fun in that? C'mon, we should go say 'hi' to Mom."

Thaddeus leads the way, but his shorter legs mean that the rest of us have to slow to a crawl to avoid walking into him. Magnificus sidles towards me as we go. "You know, since our first encounter in Qurac… I admit that the Kryptonian was a better fighter than me."

"He is trained for that sort of fighting."

"If we fought again, it wouldn't go the same way. I've been studying Systema and Judo with the mercenaries Lex hired to protect our research center."

"Have you been sparring with other super strong people? Because super strength fights are very different to the normal strength fights most martial arts are developed to be used in."

"N-. No. I mean, Arnold once or twice, but…" He frowns. "And exactly how many doctorates does 'Kon-El' have?"

"None, but he isn't one year old yet."

"He's-? What?"

Thaddeus glances back. "Yeah, Magni, it was in 'People'. He got made in an exo-womb pod and they had these weird telepathic aliens teach him stuff while he was growing."

"Oh."

"When you say 'how many'-?"

Beautia exhales sharply. "One. Are we really going to-?"

"My second thesis is nearly ready for submission."

Thaddeus grins, his posture becoming slightly more upright. "Two."

Georgia smiles confidently. "Three."

Thaddeus brings his right hand up to his mouth. "Soft subjects."

Georgia grabs his left shoulder with her right hand and jerks him around to face her. "Social psychology is not a soft subject!"

"Oh yeah? Where's your control group?"

We come to a halt as the younger Sivanas ignore their surroundings in favour of squaring up to one another.

"My control group! You can't even measure quantum energy states without changing your results!"

"That's because it's not possible, not because the underlying methodology is flawed!"

I turn to the senior Sivanas. "Should we-?" They've both fished out hip flasks. Oh. "Ah. Um, what was that about finding your father?"

Magnificus waves his flask. "Father was always meticulous about taking notes. They've probably scoured the laboratory Father was using when he disappeared -and the police evidence locker- for every bit of information they could find on exactly what he did to create that portal." He eyes a nearby corridor speculatively. "He might have left something around here, but if they've really been here for a week-"

"We have!" / "We have!"

"-they'd probably have found it by now." He takes a slug. "Father will either turn up or he won't. Whatever he made, he knows more about it than anyone else."

Beautia sighs as her younger siblings return to their bickering session. "And wouldn't that be the perfect way to spend the day."

Hm. She is the one I came here with. "Beautia, darling." She lowers her flask in surprise, blinking at me as I take her left hand in both of mine and bring it to my lips. "I find myself in need of directions to warehouse seven. Which I assume is far away from here. Would you be so good as to escort me?"

back

Family Day 16

next

25th April

10:21 GMT -6

"Thanks."

Beautia walks slightly ahead of me as we travel along a corridor away from the main facility. Through the transparent walls dark storm clouds crowd out the yellow sky and splatter a liquid I know to be high strength sulphuric acid against our corridor. It's seven hundred degrees outside due to the runaway greenhouse effect and inside it's a pleasant twenty. This place has been here for years at least and shows not the slightest sign of corrosion.

People were turning this man down for grant money! Imbeciles!

"You're welcome. Do Thaddeus and Georgia argue like that all of the time?"

"Not all the time. Just whenever they're not distracted with work."

Ring, passive monitoring. Is anyone watching us?

Minor increases in activity in local circuitry. Cannot determine precise cause without active scanning.

"Magnificus seemed a bit down."

"Who exactly is 'Nissa'? Do you know her?"

"She's a daughter of the probably-late and largely unlamented Ra's al Ghul. She's been working with Magnificus.. and more than a few others now, in Lex Luthor's alchemical research centre in India."

"Alchemy?" I nod. "Maybe that's the problem. I doubt many universities award doctorates for alchemical research, no matter how original." He has a doctorate at eighteen and somehow still thinks that he's an underachiever. Bizarre. "Do you know what he's working on in particular?"

"Don't you?"

She shakes her head, eyes dropping to the floor for a moment. "Magnificus and I… We're.. very.. different people. You know how you said I wanted to be a medical doctor because of my family karmic debt?"

"I was half joking-" A brilliant bolt of lightning slams into the warehouse complex we're walking towards, momentarily lighting up the clouds. "-about that. I haven't found out whether karma is actually a thing or not."

"Let me know when you do." She smiles. "I'd like to find out how much overtime I need to put in."

"Or you could just convert to Hellenism. Hades is a very reasonable sort of God of the Dead." She snorts quietly. "But what's that got to do with Magnificus?"

"He doesn't care. I don't think he's committed any crimes exactly, but… His professional ethics-."

"When I first met him he was working for Queen Bee."

"There you go."

"Of course, now…"

"What?"

"He's working to understand the underlying principles of alchemy. And their first project is to get the Danner Formula licensed for mass use."

She stops right in front of the door, staring at me in astonishment. "Really!? But… That…" Her eyes unfocus slightly. "Everyone with super strength, super toughness and accelerated perfect healing. I… I have no idea what that society would look like."

"Good job you've got a sister who studies social science then, isn't it?"

She nods. "It kind of is a soft subject, but-" She turns to the armoured door's control panel and begins entering her code. "-that doesn't mean that it isn't useful. Where did Lex Luthor get his hands on that?"

"Some guy called Doctor Arnold Munro. He says he's Hugo Danner's son."

"Whaw, this is…" The door clanks, then opens with a slight hiss as the air pressure equalizes. "I've been wondering how long I could expect to live. How old is Doctor Munro?"

"Sixty two. Though I'd say that he looks about ten years younger. If he started using hair dye, maybe twenty years younger."

Beautia leads the way inside the storage complex's reception area. I suppose it had to be big enough for doom robots. "His hair's gone grey already?"

"I don't know, maybe he bleaches it. Or maybe the stuff they stick in cows in Brazil is so noxious that-" Beautia's eyes widen slightly as she slides forwards. "-they found something that overpowers Danner regeneration." Beautia 'lands' on the wall in front of us, then stands up at ninety degrees to me. Heh. "Artificial gravity on the blink?"

She lifts her right foot off the wall experimentally, then lowers it. "Apparently."

"Feeling any heavier?"

"I'd say.. about twice my normal weight." She lifts her foot up again. "Which is odd, because the artificial gravity system isn't designed to generate a gravitational field in this direction."

"Maybe one of your father's devices got turned on?"

"Oh, great. Well, 'down' appears to be-" She walks along the wall towards the door. "-in warehouse one, so at least I won't have to try the stairs like this."

I rise off the ground, orientate myself so that her down is my down and fly over to the opposite side of the reinforced doorway. "Should we wait and get Thaddeus and Georgia to have a look at it?"

"No, if it's only generating two g's then it's probably not that big a deal." She kneels down to enter a code in the door. "As long as the effect doesn't intensify, just disconnecting the power source should be enough to shut it down, and either of us-" She press the door open button. "-should be able to deal with it without any-" The door opens at speed. "-real difficulty."

We look inside, and a horned, three-eyed humanoid made of a black star-filled void stares back at us.

I blink. He's standing in the middle of an aisle. Around him, areas of the floor are marked out in yellow 'do not cross' lines. Within these areas are devices which I can't readily identify. Some are exposed, others are covered in shimmering force fields and a few just have tarpaulins draped over them. The tarpaulins are draped in such a way which suggests that he is now down.

"Is that one of your father's projects?"

"I.. don't.. think so..?" She kneels on the edge of the doorway. "Identify yourself."

The life form continues to stare. Ring, anything in the database about that?

Nearest match is Black Nebula of the Vanguard organisation.

Is she a good match?

No.

O.. kay…

"I am Beautia Sivana. Identify yourself."

"SIVANA." It begins walking towards us. "I AM HERE FOR THADDEUS BODOG SIVANA. YOU WILL TAKE ME TO HIM AND THEN YOU WILL DIE."

back

Family Day 17

next

25th April

10:25 GMT -6

"But I can't-"

Humanoid made of space. DC don't own Captain Simian and the Space Monkeys which leaves…

"-take you to him-"

Sheeda. The Huntsman. I think I remember him killing a group of unpowered heroes and… Throwing them through time? I know he also got his arse kicked one on one against fricking Stargirl, so I wouldn't be too worried were it not for the fact that he's replacing local gravity with his own body.

"-because I don't know-"

But I am worried. Which is why I create construct armour around myself and Beautia just in time to intercept the luminous green energy beam fired from between his eyes.

"-agh!"

The armour is being abraded as I fly rapidly away from the doorway, pulling Beautia with me. The beam bends around the opening of the door, maintaining contact for a good half-second after she's out of his line of sight. Ring, local gravity?

Attraction to 'Huntsman' is now five times Earth gravity.

Oh wonderfu-.

There's a tremendous bang as the wall to the store room crumples in on itself! Through the gap I see the material of the wall floating next to the Huntsman, falling to the floor with a crash as he lowers his right arm.

"SIVANA. WHERE IS HE?"

"I just told you-!"

Armour.

I don't have my armour! Gah! Railguns! And.. I don't have any ammunition. Errr… Quick, fabricate…

I fire a short volley of Crumblers and… Were the Sheeda like fairies as far as vulnerabilities go? I don't remember. I think that the Sheeda-Sheeda looked a bit like Dark Eldar, so even if they are I'm not sure it would apply to him. Ah, what the heck. Cold iron and silver tipped rounds are added to the volley and… Every single one is a negative impact.

"-he isn't here!"

"I don't think he's going to listen. Do you know if your father was storing any-" The Huntsman fires another bolt of luminous green as we fly towards the lift shaft. I interpose a construct shield which appears to hold. "-gravity manipulation devices?"

"I haven't been here since I was eleven!"

"Oh."

"Maybe if we could just explain that whatever my Father did-."

"Beautia, I've been doing this for a while now and sometimes? Supervillains just don't want to listen to the voice of rationality."

"Yeah, he's kinda got a point. I've been a supervillain for a while now myself-"

Beautia looks around. "Junior?"

"-and sometimes you just get total tunnel vision. Ah, yeah, we've got internal communications from the hab area. Do you know what that thing is?"

"Not completely sure. I don't suppose your father's work contained any reference to 'Sheeda' did it?"

"Ah… No. We think he was working on some kinda time travel. He wanted to go visit the future and-."

"How far into the future?"

We fly past the number '3' painted on the wall. Four more to go…

"If I coulda found that out, do you really think I wouldn't just have opened another portal?"

"Okay, but, a little way, or a long way?"

"Junior, give me that." There's a bang just off the microphone. "Hello again Orange Lantern. Doctor Sivana here."

"Georgia, there's no one here called 'Sivana' who isn't also a doctor."

"But I have more doctorates than anyone else. Therefore-. Hey!"

"Magnificus to Orange Lantern."

The '5' flies past. And then goes past again in the other direction. Huh? "Go ahead, Magnificus." I look down and the Huntsman looks up. Flecks of paint are cracking off the walls to orbit around him in a miniature dust cloud. I flick both hands out to the side and release the Praexis swarm, who immediately fall towards the bottom of the shaft.

"Waaaaaaahh!"

A couple land on the Huntsman's head and scrabble to stay on.

Praexis Swarm.

The '4' goes past.

Consume.

"Yay! Foooooooood!"

Beautia looks at me in alarm. "What are those?"

"Demons bound to my service. Magnificus?"

"Do you have anything that can affect that creature?"

I glance down. A couple of Praexis Demons are attempting to ingest his horns, though I'm not sure how much good that's doing. I can't tell what he's made of. "Pass."

"Father had some rather precise gravity measuring devices in warehouse three. If you can reactivate them we might be able to assist you. Otherwise… You're the superhero. If you want to just take a swing at.. whatever it is."

Beautia looks at me. She's not properly scared yet, but I can see the yellow worries bubbling up. "Then you can put me down somewhere safe first."

"No fear. If we're the only people around I'd rather get all the information I can before running in blind." Ring, list of gravity manipulation devices.

Compliance.

"Dropping to level three. Beautia, get the door open." I shove the armour construct containing her into the doorway, then take up position in the middle of the shaft and create a gravity pulse projector construct. It's essentially a form of crowd control device designed to knock a group of people over. I target his chest just as he gets tired of the demonic assault and starts lashing out with his luminous face beam again. Three Demons shake and disintegrate before one gets to his face and starts sucking the beam at the source. Unlike when they sucked at his body this appears to be giving it a power it can use. The Demon begins to swell as I take aim and fire.

The Huntsman brings both of his hands up and grabs hold of the Demon slobbering at his forehead and there's a crack as space bends and the Praexis Demon is shredded. A moment later my pulse strikes the Huntsman in the chest. No noticeable effect, save that it's gone back to ignoring the Demons to focus on me. Okay, turn it up from crowd control to something a little more potent. My construct grows to anti-tank missile launcher size as I fire again. This time a thin cloud of blue wafts off his epidermis a fraction of a second before his green beam blasts through my construct barrier and pierces my construct gun, wrecking it.

"I'm in!"

"Go go go!"

Beautia charges through the doorway, running inside the warehouse. I try an orange energy pulse on the Huntsman (to no effect) before following her and hitting the door close button behind me.

And then I see the giant robot.

back

Family Day 18

next

25th April

10:28 GMT -6

Beautia scrabbles across the walkway around the edge of the room as I take in the sight. I've seen pictures of the second Mister Atom before on the Justice League database. Still images and footage taken at -or rather, as far as possible away from- the scene. The threat he posed to Captain Marvel wasn't just his strength, his toughness or integrated armaments, his sheer size and weight made fighting him within a city extremely dangerous. One mistimed punch and he could easily fall and flatten a building full of people. One car underfoot and he could fall against a wall, crushing it and all of the rubberneckers behind it.

Two Praexis Demons fall out of my rings.

This one isn't quite as big, and in any case Captain Marvel destroyed that one so thoroughly that there wouldn't have been much point in Doctor Sivana recovering it. This one is smaller, no more than two storeys tall at most. He's standing on the floor of the room with his back to us, the bottom of his head level with the upper gantry.

"Hey!" Beautia waves at me from the far side of the… Let's call it a hangar. "I've found his workshop, but I don't know which of these are gravity detectors!"

I fly at best possible speed across the open space between us.

"Magnificus! You with us?"

"Yes, yes. You're looking for a graviton flux detector."

"Okay, and what do they look like?"

"You don't know? I thought your ring had all sorts of technical specifications on it."

"Certainly, and if by some complete fluke-" Beautia leads the way as we walk into the workshop. Looks like weapon prototypes to me. "-he's built one according to the standard specifications of any species known to the Green Lantern Corps-" No, no, no, no, no… "-then I can identify it. Otherwise-."

"He won't have done that, Magni."

"Thaddeus, I'm trying to work here."

"Well, you're being too slow! I fight giant monsters all the time! And some of them I didn't even create!"

"Boys!" Beautia stares at roughly where the voice is coming from. "We're trying to fight a gravity monster here! Focus!"

Another Praexis Demon falls out of the ring, and I send the three of them to lurk near the door on the off-chance that the Hunter will come through there.

"Give me the-. According to Father's records, you're looking for a grey cuboid about three hundred by twenty by twenty."

"Three hundred..? Feet? Inches?"

"What? No, millimeters, obviously. There should be.. seventeen of them in stock. If you can arrange them in a circle-."

"I'm not seeing them."

Beautia heads over to the far side of the room, frantically looking for something that matches the description.

"Well... Look harder, then."

"Can you narrow down the location? What floor are they on?"

"Three, I already-."

"We're in warehouse three, which of the subdivisions of warehouse three should it be on?"

Beautia shakes her head at me. "Not over here!"

"Ah-. The.. secure part?"

Beautia and I share a look of bewildered ignorance. "Could you be a little more precise?"

"We can't see what you're-."

"Sure we can."

"Georgia, where did you get that microphone?"

"I built it, Thaddeus. And I built this-" There's a loud whir and then a series of clanks behind me. "-so I can reactivate Mister Atom Mark Two, and then we can use this to see through his eyes."

Beautia leans slightly to the side, looking out across the hangar. "Ah, guys? Do you remember what Dad programmed as the Mark Two's behavioral baselines?"

Mister Atom's head turns in our direction and the robot takes a step forward out of the gantry surrounding it. "I, MISTER ATOM, AM MEANT TO BE THE EARTH'S RULER!"

"Never mind."

"It's okay! We can still see through his eyes! And Dad would never have programmed one of his robots to attack us."

"Okay, I've got the power supply schematics." Thank you, Magnificus. "The power network shows that there are additional force fields around the room two levels-" Beautia is already running towards the stairs. "-down."

"Thank you." I fly back out into the main hangar and then drop down two levels-.

"WHO DISTURBS ME IN MY HOME!?"

Darn it. The robot isn't actually pointing any weapons at me, but its stance suggests that that could change at a moment's notice.

"Sorry, Mister Atom. Just passing through." That appears to be inadequate. "It's family day. I'm.. here as Beautia's date?"

And then the entire Praexis Demon horde pours from the rings. Most take a moment to stabilise and then fly in the direction of the entrance while two tumble to the ground and then vomit up the next generation. Okay, looks like the Huntsman will be heading our way in a moment.

"BEAUTIA SIVANA. CHECKING LOGS."

"Wait, what?"

"Magnificus?"

"He's got super moderator access to the system! I don't have that!"

"I do." / "I do!"

"Oh, that's… Splendid."

"CONFIRMED. YOU ARE ORANGE LANTERN." Oh good. "SUPERHERO."

Yike-! The electrolaser shots from his eyes strike my construct armour and he strides towards me, hands rising to either grapple me or bring other weapons to bear. Right, barrier. A new construct shield appears in front of me. "Beautia, found them?"

"I think so? Are there any other grey cuboids in here?"

What look decidedly like a pair of proton cannons emerge from Mister Atom's shoulders.

"That force field. Is it up?"

"No, I took it down to get in here."

"Might want to put it-" Two brilliant orange beams leap from his shoulder mounts, joining his electrolaser in blasting my shield! "-back on, because-" The wall behind Mister Atom explodes outwards as the Hunter enters the hangar. "-I'll find it rather tricky to-" My construct shield begins to crack. "-keep them off you."

I hear heavy thumps behind me, then Beautia leaps over my shoulder and lands back up on the upper catwalk. "Just keep them occupied while I set these up!"

Oh. Sure.

Mister Atom takes another ponderous step forwards.

No problem.

back

Family Day 19

next

25th April

10:31 GMT -6

The gantry above the Huntsman creaks, straining against its mooring as he exerts a far greater pull than it was designed to withstand just by walking past it. Beautia's having to anchor herself as down suddenly moves to the wrong direction. I think and her construct armour becomes sticky on the base of the feet. Great, now how to deal with Mister Atom? Ah. Maybe?

"Oh, what a relief! My leader, the Sheeda Huntsmaster is here! Surely he will save me from this robot!"

Immediately Mister Atom's hands drop and his head rotates to allow him to look at the new intruder.

"ORANGE LANTERN IS NO THREAT. NEW TARGET FILE NOT FOUND. BUT I HAVE NO INSTRUCTION TO LEAVE YOU ALIVE."

I dismiss my shield construct, then replace it with a fresh one. Okay, Mister Atom- He opens fire with proton cannons and electrolasers. -is occupied. Huntsman… He looks slightly irritated, maybe? That might just be because his increasing local gravity caused the Praexis Demons to get stuck to him again. Actually… I just gave Beautia non-magnetic magnetic boots and I can fly. Why hasn't Mister Atom fallen over? Mister Atom Mark One didn't have a flight system, but I suppose this fellow does? I'm not seeing any exhausts, magnetic field is about what I would expect-.

Gravity suddenly reverts to normal as the Praexis Demons are pancaked against his outer surface for a moment before dissolving. Ring, don't bother recreating them.

Compliance.

Mister Atom plays the electrolaser over the Huntsman's face for a moment before shutting it down. The proton cannons hitting him in the chest on the other hand remain active. "CURIOUSLY RESILIENT. BUT NOTHING COMPARED TO THE POWER OF THE ATOM." The small red marking on his upper chest shines and then ah crap.

I fly as fast as possible to Beautia and stick a shield around both her and the graviton flux detectors as Mister Atom fires a beam of gamma radiation that makes the amount I used on Mister Hagen look trivial. He maintains the beam for a second, then switches to alpha radiation, followed by a blast of beta radiation. Ah, maybe I should give him a clue.

"Quick, master! Use your gravity powers on this foolish robot!"

"WHAT LUNACY IS THIS?"

"BETRAYED BY THE MOUTH OF YOUR OWN ASSISTANT. MY WEAPONS SYSTEM ALLOWS ME TO COUNTER ANY THREAT."

The Huntsman holds his right arm out to the side and a… A trident apparently made of the same material as the rest of him appears in his hand. Shapeshifting? Some sort of storage ability?

"YOU WERE MADE BY SIVANA. I RECOGNISE THE DESIGN. I KNOW ITS FLAWS."

"I HAVE NO FLAWS."

A plate on his crotch armour slides aside and a small ray projector extends itself, three circular fins whose purpose I can't immediately identify leading to a small bulb at the end. Then the fins light up in pale blue and a beam of bent space connects it to the Huntsman. He staggers, blue dust pouring off him.

"NONE WILL STAND BEFORE THE MIGHT OF MISTER ATOM."

"Is the radiation back down to normal?"

"Yes? Oh." I drop the bubble shield and Beautia thrusts five graviton flux detectors at me before hurrying along the gantry. It looks like she wants to get behind the Huntsman, though I'm not sure how much-.

The Huntsman raises his left hand and makes a fist, Mister Atom's crotch cannon crumpling in response. Okay then. Ring, closest weapon to that?

Based on appearance and observable effect, graviton nullifier is closest match.

Edging towards concluding that he's a walking black hole here…

It is extremely unlikely that entity designated 'Sheeda Huntsman' is a 'walking black hole'. Peak output observed so far is two hundred thirty nine times normal Earth gravity over a small area. The gravitational pull of a black hole-.

I'll take your word for it.

Compliance.

Mister Atom takes a step back as the Huntsman strolls forwards, brings his left arm up over his head and then drops to a crouch, smashing the fist into the Huntsman!

"Magnificus, still with us?"

"Yes?"

"Exactly how do you want these sensors arranged?"

"Ah, the optimal disposition would be at variable known distances from the subject. Surrounding him in all directions if at all possible."

"Right." External surface looks fairly durable. I transmute a small amount of adhesive onto the wall and stick one of the sensors there. "Are you getting data from these?"

"Yeah, they've got a connection to the habitat's systems. I'm going over it now."

"We're going over it now."

"Soft subject."

Thaddeus Junior and Georgia on the case. I suppose that's a good thing. Considering the circumstances.

The Huntsman has been driven to his knees, hands on either side of the haft of his trident as he uses it to block Mister Atom's fist. Right, they're both fully occupied on that end of the hangar… I fly to the opposite end, near that storage area, and plant another sensor. "Do I need to tell you the distances, or-?"

"No, it's all automatic."

On the other side of the hangar I see Beautia toss one down the lift shaft before leaping over the wrecked gantry to the far side. I fly to the right side of the room, plant one on the wall and turn to check on the combatants. The Huntsman seems to be stuck-. No, he's sliding his left hand along the haft and there's a noise of tearing and crumpling metal as Mister Atom's left middle finger collapses in on itself. Next comes another bolt of green lightning from his forehead, but that skitters harmlessly across Mister Atom's armoured chassis, no more effective than Mister Atom's shots were. I create a construct hand and use it to reach to just behind Mister Atom, depositing another sensor.

"CURSE YOU." Mister Atom brings his right hand down in a chopping motion. The Huntsman has to compress to cope with the force of the impact, but almost immediately he starts to straighten again. Mister Atom points his left forearm at the Huntsman and-.

Alert! Anti-matter detected!

Oh dear.

Beautia continues running around the side of the room as Mister Atom thumps his damaged left fist into the Huntsman's chest. Okay okay, it should just be an explosion, and that's if the anti-matter encounters matter. If his body isn't comprised of matter -which is what my Crumbler negative impacts suggest- then probably nothing will happen. Whatever, they're both fully occupied. I take hold of another sensor with a construct hand and have it carry it around the side of the room, depositing it behind the Huntsman.

Where else? The ceiling? Okay, but then I think we should be heading up to warehouse seven. I really don't feel comfortable with-.

There's a brilliant flash of light from the Huntsman! The rings react immediately to dim my vision as I frantically look for Beautia! She's up above me, no closer to the centre of the blast than I am. Okay, her armour construct should hold-.

"yAAAAAAAGH!"

It fails. I'm by her side in an instant, a bubble shield going up around both of us. Idiot! The filament connection wasn't tough enough. Okay, burns, doesn't.. look like anything she can't heal.

"Magnificus, I'm heading up to warehouse seven."

"It would be better if you could plant one or two more-."

"Beautia's hit. She should be okay, but we need to move."

"Of course, then. Let me know when you arrive."

back

Family Day 20

next

25th April

10:34 GMT -6

I hold Beautia in my arms in a bridal carry as she taps the entry code to warehouse seven, leaving a smear of blood and liquefied fat on the keys from the burned scabs on her fingers.

"Are you really going to be okay?"

"The Danner Formula makes me very tough. And this isn't the worst I've ever been injured."

The door opens and I fly us inside. Ah, looks like Thaddeus and Georgia at least stored my belongings neatly.

"Really? What the heck happened to you?"

"I was learning not to play with-." She winces and shudders. "With necrotising fasciitis." She takes a couple of rapid breaths. "Danner." Another pained breath. "Doesn't make you immune. To disease." She shakes her head and takes a look at the closest shelves. "You. Cook?"

"Yes, well I make my own hours. Seems like the sort of skill-" And there's my armour! "-a man should have."

"Put me. Down."

"Are you sure? Because you look like death.. at room temperature."

"Need food. To heal."

"Right." I haven't studied exactly how the Formula deals with heavily injured recipients, but assuming that it's already been triggered… I fly over to… I think they organised my meals by colour. Danner regeneration mostly uses protein, though she'll need other nutrients as well. What's the best fit-? Cassoulet! I land just in front of the ceramic tray I cooked it in and gently put her down. "Any go-"

Beautia staggers up to the shelving and sticks both hand into the bean and meat dish, grabbing what she can and shoving it into her mouth as fast as she can swallow.

"-od? I'm.. afraid.. It'll be… Cold."

"Orange Lantern, she'll be fine but it looks like Mister Atom is losing."

"Right, Magnificus." And my ammunition is in… That box. "Picking up my stuff now."

Filaments flicker out to touch everything vaguely technological looking. All of my ammunition-. No, it looks like the younger Sivanas took a little something for themselves. I'll have to get that back off them later. Or.. is it already too late? Never mind, my library and tools can stay here… Now, my armour. Never did work out how to make it something I could put on normally. I rise into the air, dismiss my construct armour and surround myself and it with orange light before experiencing a sort of heavy metal anime transformation sequence.

And now I'm actually dressed for a fight.

Ring, link up to internal communications.

Link established.

Bleed tech is Bleed tech.

"Thaddeus, Georgia-."

"Busy working on a black hole gun!"

"Ah, Magnificus-."

"Is Beautia safe?"

"Safe-ish. She's gorging, as per the Surgeon General's recommendations for heavily injured Danner Enhanciles. And now the Huntsman is to blame-" Ring, run checks on the armour. "-for the wasting of a perfectly good cassoulet."

Armour systems in perfect working order.

"If it keeps my sister alive, then it isn't being wasted."

"That was… Pre-fight banter."

"Isn't that a bit flippant? You are about to fight an alien creature of extraordinary power with weapons which are very much not optimized for the encounter."

"It's a way of dealing with nerves, since I'm trying to ease up on using the rings-" I start walking back towards the lift shaft. "-to alter my mental state."

"Oh."

"How tough are these walls? The transparent stuff can take Venus surface conditions without getting even slightly abraded."

"Uh, look… Don't worry about it. Unless you completely destroy the interior, the building will remain-"

BOOM!

"-upright, and there are emergency force fields and repair automatons for the external walls. Georgia says that was Mister Atom's arm weapons being destroyed. Are you sure you're ready?"

"Yes. Shouldn't you think about evacuating?"

"Shouldn't you?"

"I'm a superhero. There's a hostile thingy near my homeworld. What's your excuse?"

"This is my family home. As much as anywhere is. And anything clever enough to break in here will be able to track us down on Earth easily enough."

I look down the lift shaft in time to see the remains of Mister Atom's head hit the far side with a tremendous CLANK before falling a short distance and then landing on the near side of the shaft. Looks like gravity is playing up again.

"How much progress have the junior Sivanas made?"

"Working!"

"Hard to say. They've taken apart most of the kitchen and a couple of Sivanadroids so I'm assuming that most of the design work is done."

"Right. I've got about thirty different gravity based weapons to try out."

There's a scraping sound of metal against hyper alloy. I generate construct armour around my power armour.

"Any guidance for me, or should I just go through them in alphabetical-?"

I'm shooting downwards, the floor collapsing around me! Gravity nullifier gravity nullifier! The construct takes effect and I'm left feeling an unusual weightlessness as rubble and debris that was once stored in my subspace pocket rains down towards the Huntsman. Huh. That works.

"LANTERNS. RELICS."

My construct shield is in place before his green forehead lightning leaves his face. It bows and cracks, but it can hold for the moment. A single Praexis Demon drops from the left ring with instructions to intercept.

"I go!"

Next, I form a gravity nullifier ray. Bit of a novelty item rather than a weapon in most places, but I'm not going to moan as long as it works.

I point it straight at the Huntsman and fire.

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Family Day 21

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25th April

10:39 GMT -6

I see a fraction of a second of the Huntsman under the beam's effect, not looking hurt so much as puzzled. Then the space between us is filled with debris, material he crushed or shoved aside flying back into the gap between us.

"Gahh!"

The Praexis Demon I summoned is struck by Mister Atom's head and then smashed into a lump of floor. My shield is.. holding, but I don't have a clear point to shield against. None of the debris is moving particularly fast. There appear to be… Ring? Gravity has become a local phenomenon and I'm not totally sure how the form of phasing I use would interact with that.

Ugh. I don't remember much about this guy's arc in Seven Soldiers-.

Every bit of debris flies at me! The force isn't all that much, certainly not enough to break my construct armour, but it's more than a little distracting. The gravity nullifier effect doesn't actually extend all that far from my body and the mass is building up, pressing into me. Much more pressure and it'll be worth using the kinetic belt to deal with it. Okay, what now? I can still move… Oh, no I can't. Right, he wouldn't have done this if it wasn't advantageous to him so just staying here isn't a good idea. I take a small phase capable drone out of subspace into the thin gap between my construct armour and my actual armour and give it a nudge. It slips through the material surrounding me without apparent difficulty.

Guess that's as much indication as to the safety as I'm going to get. I activate the armour's phase system and the construct armour around my left shoulder buckles and fails, the prongs of the bladed weapon I saw the Huntsman using on Mister Atom slicing cleanly through the debris ball! It hits the surface of my armour and I'm already away just as fast as I can. I feel the armour shudder as it hits, as if the universe isn't entirely sure how the malleable physics employed in both my own phase generator and the Hunter's whole body are supposed to interact.

"Alert! Crushing gravity."

And since I'm phased the gravity nullifier isn't working. That doesn't really bother me directly, but the mass around me is obeying local gravity again. The Hunter's blade is knocked aside as the mass falls free of me. My vision of my environment restored, I see the Huntsman land in a light crouch on the wall of the lift shaft. No significant mass superimposed on me? Right, drop phase.

Ring, graviton gun.

Compliance.

I was astonished as anything to find that a weapon I first heard about from Games Workshop actually existed here. Doesn't have quite the same effect, the target usually being too smashed apart by the gravitational eddies to experience the immobility. But what the heck, seeing the name translated into English brought a smile to my face. Like a lot of these weapons, there's no real beam to see, though the air appears to shudder as the gravity jerks light around.

It hits home and there's a minor waft of blue before green lightning from his forehead destroys my construct.

And I don't even know for certain that blue wafts indicate a damaging hit! Certainly the crushing pull being generated from inside me doesn't appear to be weakening. My environmental shield is holding me together but I don't want to start relying on it. It really isn't all that strong against most deliberate attacks.

Ring, graviton trap.

Compliance.

This one is a bit more promising, a device used by physicists amongst species with more intelligence than sense to study one of the fundamental building blocks of the physical universe. The cage-like construct crackles with black energy… For about a second before the Huntsman waves his trident around and tears it apart.

G-GUH! Gravity shear inside my body! I felt a chunk of my right torso slide sideways, bone tearing from sinew and organs being pulped! Okay, heh, phase out and dodge the gravity effect, move and phase in and try… High powered lasers to his face.

Not a lot appears to happen.

I think he's in the same situation I am. We're both tough, hard to injure in a way which -and the ring finishes repairing my body- disables us. But we're not really sure how to put our opponent out of the fight. Okay, gravity attacks don't appear to be the solution I hoped they would be. Let's try something a little more orange. I raise my gauntlets. "Brand."

I go for wide beams of light, it having been conclusively demonstrated by this point that filaments don't last around the Huntsman. He swings his trident through the oncoming mass of orange which bends around the attack, flowing through the air around his weapon to strike the surface of his body. For a moment his interior glows orange as the light precipitates through and tries to find something to latch onto. I pour it on. I can't really see any desires from him, but it wouldn't surprise me that the Sheeda have defences against that sort of thing.

"WRETCH."

There's got to be something in there, he's clearly purposive… Unless I'm not actually looking at a living being but at some sort of projection which would-.

His trident twitches and I've moved just far enough to avoid getting the blade in the face by the time it hits me, slicing though my restored construct armour and into the material beneath. My kinetic belt triggers automatically. It fails to stop the cutting edge but tries to grab the weapon by the flat of the blade. Too late to save my upper ribs. I feel the jerk as whatever gravitational weirdness made a blade on a stick make sense for a life form like this pulls and crushes bone and flesh free from the surrounding tissue.

Gragh! Graviton converter.

The blade hasn't even fully passed through me as the boxy construct takes shape to my left and fires almost straight into his face. This thing converts gravitational energy into kinetic energy, so if the Hunter's body works even slightly like I think it does then it might make him explode, fall apart or otherwise cease to be. Instead, he narrows his eyes slightly and he takes another swing with his trident. I'm already moving, keeping the beam of the device shining on him in the hope that it will end up doing something. Dust and other minor pieces of debris disintegrate as the pull of matter to matter stops mattering and gets converted to omnidirectional thrust. Looks like the Huntsman can't fly, but his gravitational control is good enough that with a chunk of wall under his feet he can do a passable Silver Surfer impression.

I fly backwards to avoid another swing, taking an x-ionised sword out of subspace. The continual beam from the graviton converter has made the Huntsman go a bit purple. Or maybe that's just how he looks when he's tired? Or injured? I suppose one way this sort of fight -I parry his trident with the sword, which holds for a moment then disintegrates- can go is to exhaustion. I hope he's getting injured, but his gravity effects seem just as strong as before. On the other hand, so are my constructs and I know that I'm using a good deal of power doing this.

Hm. Ring, exactly how much power do I have left?

Forty three percent power remaining.

Oh dear. Another dodge and a neural chaff grenade… Which appears to do nothing.

Forty two percent power remaining.

I have the ring transmit a break down into my mind as I try using construct manacles to hold the Huntsman in place. Yikes gravity manipulation weapons are power hogs.

Forty one percent power remaining.

A chunk of power when I make one, then more to power the effect. Plus my injuries and the construct armour. The Huntsman takes another green lightning bolt shot at my weapon construct but the Praexis Demon has recovered enough to interpose itself.

"Orange Lantern to the Sivanas. Is there any chance-?"

"-because it's what I got my doctorate in! I invented this technology, Junior, and I know it better than anyone including you!"

"Did I call at a bad-" The Huntsman pulls fruitlessly at the manacles, then clenches and slices through them with intense gravity shears before lunging at me again. "-time?"

"Oh, just the boys sounding off, handsome. What can I do for you?"

"Georgia, are you anywhere near finished?"

"Uh, I usually think of myself as a 'work in progress', but I suppose-."

"Sorry, I meant the anti-Huntsman weapon you're working on?"

"Nearly. We're just trying to work out-."

"Right! I'm grabbing Beautia and heading your way. Try to be ready when I arrive."

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Family Day 22

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25th April

10:42 GMT -6

"Before you go-" The Huntsman crouches slightly. It looks… Tired? Hard to tell. The purple has spread through its limbs to the point that the black is almost totally obscured. I manacle him again. "-could you possibly deactivate any anti-Lantern devices your father has installed?"

"Ahh… He didn't have any last time I checked." My left eye twitches just a little. "I mean, he might have put in stuff that works on Lanterns-."

"Thank you. Carry on."

Ring, full scan. And assimilate.

The construct manacles flare as I try assimilating him through them. No, it doesn't look like that's going to work. Full scan gives me… A whole lot of really complicated information which would no doubt be fascinating to the Sivanas but is basically gibberish to me.

Alert! Thirty percent power remaining.

I scan Beautia's location. She's still eating, now looking slightly less roasted. Next, I abandon my assimilation efforts and try transitioning the Huntsman. Nothing. Try transitioning a piece of debris? That worked, but I still don't really want to risk it.

Alert! Twenty nine percent power remaining.

Time to be gone. The manacles and gravity converter are gone in an instant, eight more Praexis Demons appearing from the rings and swarming the Huntsman once more. Next, I form ion engine constructs and blast myself upward, back into warehouse seven. I dismiss my construct armour and send a second group of Praexis Demons down the shaft towards the ground floor. If I'm lucky the Huntsman will see the orange glow and assume that it's me.

"Ready to go?"

She puts down the soup bowl and wipes her hands on her jacket. "How are we getting out?"

"This place is all made of the same material, yes?"

"Ah, the structure is, yes."

"It doesn't impede my phasing. We're going out through the wall."

"To the surface of Venus?"

"We'll be phased, so the temperature and atmosphere won't be problems. Grab on."

Her eyes flick over my armour as she looks for a handhold. I open my left arm slightly and she steps up to me, wrapping her right arm around my forearm and putting her left hand on my left shoulder. I pull her in closer and float us off the ground before phasing us both and flying full pelt at the far wall. I have tested phasing with an external object before, but this probably isn't something it's wise to keep up while on low power. We pass through the wall… Hadn't realised quite how thick it was. Doesn't take more than half a second, then we're out in the open air. I also didn't really appreciate how tall this building is from the ground. Not without a casual ring scan to give me the numbers. I wonder how Doctor Sivana managed to build it? Orbital construction, then lower it? Build it on Earth then teleport it? No idea. I'll ask later. Only a short flight to-.

There's a boom behind me as an explosion rips through the wall of the warehouse complex! Chunks of building material are sent flying, then the murky clouds surrounding us are sucked in by the lower pressure. For a moment I see the twinkling lights that mark the Huntsman's body, but all I can think is 'uagh, that's a perfectly good building ruined'. I reduce my glow to minimum and drop, more decoy Praexis Demons flying away as I aim for the corridor connecting the storage warehouse to the habitat.

Okay, between the clouds and the lights if his vision works based on visible light… Or infrared, due to the armour's insulation and my environmental shield, or.. actually, most things, then he can't see me. If he can't see me, why is he looking this way? One, he can see me perfectly well. Gravity sense? I do have mass, after all. I'm not drawing green lightning… Has he given up on that, or can he really not see me?

Through into the tunnel. Quick check, door at the far end still in one piece. End phase.

"-coming back any time soon, or do we have a few minutes?"

I open my left arm. "Beautia, go. Make sure they're set up."

She nods, then sprints towards the habitat end. Huh. No quick 'what about you'? I mean, just running was far more sensible… I suppose… Full body armour does rather… Discourage…

Eh.

"Sooner would be better, Georgia. You've got maybe a minute and I'd like it if it were less."

"You know..?"

Ring, remaining charge?

Twenty four percent remaining.

Don't really want to light myself up. One thing about the Huntsman is that he doesn't seem to be in a hurry.

"Know what?"

"Just saying… 'Tia's not really one for exotic physics… She couldn't do what Junior and I are doing."

"I am fully cognisant of the virtues which you possess and which she does not. I also doubt that whatever happened with Justin was malicious on her part, while coming on to her boyfriend would be. Also, you're… What, fifteen?"

"Bet you wouldn't say that if I looked like her."

"I would, moral standards being a big part of the superhero thing. Look, shouldn't you be focusing on building.. whatever you're building?"

"I can work and talk at the same time. What do you want for one of those power rings?"

"I'm afraid those aren't for sale." Gravity based weapons had an effect… There is a beam singularity projector on file. But there are a lot of warning flags and I might want this power to run if the Sivanas' device doesn't work.

"You've got two. I could tell you how that zeta platform works."

"Okay, firstly, you wouldn't be able to recharge it without an orange personal lantern and I own the only one in existence. Secondly, if you really want one I'm happy to forward your application to the Controllers in two months' time. Thirdly, you stole my property while under the flag of truce. Fourthly… Georgia, you're an omnidisciplinary genius. If Beautia's appearance really bothers you that much, build an automatic plastic chirurgeon or something."

"Power ring would be easier. That's how you did you, right?"

"Tell you what. Deal with the Sheeda Huntsman and I'll see what-."

The tunnel in front of me implodes as the Huntsman falls through it, landing in a small crouch. Venus' atmosphere at once begins boiling in. I recreate the gravity converter and hurl my supply of neural chaff grenades even as I start flying backwards, shooting him before he is quite able to focus on me. Before I reach the habitat side I create a construct airlock and step though it. Ring, power?

Twenty two percent remaining.

I toss twenty Praexis Demons through the gap, then open the door to the habitat and fly through, closing it behind me. Okay, that should buy a few more seconds. I turn-.

"Hey, Orange!" Thaddeus Junior waves at me from the control seat of a.. contraption. There's a.. gun… I think. And a platform built on what look like robot spider legs. And some sort of computer system and a.. power supply. And that's when I notice that the corridor has a shimmering force field across it and the Sivana children are all on the far side of it. "Clear the way!"

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Family Day 23

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25th April

10:44 GMT -6

The black blade starts in the top left corner of the reinforced door, poking through tip first before sliding downwards and to the right. Its passage is marked by the intrusion of a dark high pressure stream of Venusian atmosphere, billowing out of the gash and expanding into the lower pressure Earthly air on the inside. It looks a little like the metal itself is bleeding. Really, it's a testament to whatever Doctor Sivana Senior made this place out of that the metal isn't bowing due to the pressure, especially now that it's been weakened in this way.

The second slice is faster, moving top right to bottom left before the blade is retracted. The murk has already reached the point that the additional bleed through of gas is barely noticeable. Next come four far faster cuts, along the top, bottom and sides, angled in such a way that the external pressure starts to push the free-standing mass inward before a sudden extra force is brought to bear. The mass leaps towards us before toppling onto the floor, revealing the Huntsman as he poses in the hole.

"NOW YOU WRETCHES WILL-."

A mass of blue/green rays bend around the barrel of Thaddeus Junior's gun before striking the Huntsman in the chest. The light appears to penetrate before vanishing deep within him.

"GHU?"

For a moment the light disappears. I'm.. a little concerned-. No, it's back and it looks like it set off a supernova deep inside him. The Huntsman shudders, arms and legs spasming and locking in place. His spear falls to the ground, embedding itself blade first into the floor.

Thaddeus' eyes are locked on the sight. "And… Any… Second…"

A colossal shudder runs through the Huntsman, then his body… It's hard to describe. Like his body is some sort of inflatable object and air is being sucked out of the middle, but not all the bits are getting deflated at the same rate. There's a movement and a piece of the left side of his torso has vanished, pulling his body to one side in a way which looks quite painful. His left thigh has also vanished, knee connecting to his torso in a way which puts me in mind of Thalidomide victims. Another sudden movement and his shoulders are nearly touching his hips. A third and his fingers are all that are left of his arms. The shape I believe to be his mouth is working but no sound is coming out.

One last surge and there's nothing left.

Georgia rubs her hands together excitedly, waving some sort of tricorder at her twin. "Exactly as predicted!"

"Mm." Thaddeus Junior checks one of the readouts on his ersatz weapon platform. "Hey, Magni. Guess you were right about the circuit's tolerances."

"Well." Magnificus leans slightly forward so that he can look over his brother's shoulder. "Yes. I would be."

"How were you able to put this all together so quickly?"

Both of the younger Sivanas look smug, and Georgia points to the blasted opening with her right forefinger. "You think you could do something about that first?"

"Oh. Certainly."

A wave of orange passes through the air in front of us, pushing back the Venusian air and forming a construct patch over the hole in the wall. Next, I pick up the fallen doorway and put it back into the gap. Now, that was tacit permission, wasn't it? Scan. Hm. Not exactly revolutionary, but it would be a very nice addition to the next generation construction mix. Oh well. A flare of orange and the wall and doorway are as good as new. Another and the damage to the interior caused by the local atmosphere's ingress is undone.

"Hm. Yeah, that'll do. Georgia and I had a lotta this stuff ready to go because we're trying to replicate Dad's portal."

"Some sort of gravity weapon?"

"No, we got a clue that wasn't the way to go when you kept trying and failing. No, see, Dad's portal works by-." He cuts himself off, staring at me. "Oh, right. You're a superhero. Let's say it uses hyper-compressed black holes to make portals in space-time."

"Really? Because that sounds insanely dangerous."

"No, but that's nearly what it does and since you're kinda… Y'know…" He glances back at where Magnificus is checking Beautia over. "Usually the enemy…"

I wave it off with my right hand. "Oh, don't worry."

"I'm not worried, I'm just saying."

Georgia rolls her eyes. "Captain Marvel intervened before Dad could test it properly. I don't think there was more than a point five percent chance of anything much going wrong."

"Anything much?"

"You know, the Earth getting destroyed, that sort of thing. So what we think happened was that Dad didn't get transported to a parallel universe, he ended up somewhere in this universe and somewhere else in history. I've been trying to read up on-."

"Soft subject."

Georgia scowls at her brother. Ring, review historical records for people matching the description of Thaddeus Bodog Sivana.

None found.

"What I want to know-" Magnificus turns off the force field then looks at me. "-is how you knew what that thing was."

"If I'd known what it was I'd have done what you lot did."

"No." He frowns. "But you recognised it. You knew the name of its people."

Thaddeus looks momentarily thoughtful. "Hey, you did. What's with that?"

"That's something I'm not really prepared to tell the-" I bow slightly and hold out my right hand towards him and Georgia. "-loyal opposition."

Beautia's eyes move around the group, then get rolled. "Paul, we need to know if they could have left anything here. Any sort of monitoring devices, or anything like that."

"Okay, look, I don't know much about them. Sheeda usually look like bondage Elves-" Thaddeus sniggers. "-while some of them are-" I hold open my right index finger and thumb. "-much smaller. They stab special knives into the back of people's necks and use that to control them. Oh, and these sort of fat, non-corporeal gas cloud men who kill you by making you feel bad…" Can't remember much else from Seven Soldiers. "They're from the far future, descendants of-."

Magnificus turns to his brother, his right hand on the… Gun. Thing. "Can I borrow this?"

"Okay, but I'll want it back."

"Thank you." He lifts it off the cradle and flicks a few switches. "And… Good work."

"Oh." Thaddeus smiles. "Thanks."

Magnificus points the gun at an empty section of corridor and pulls the trigger! Blue light flares, and for a fraction of a second I see a humanoid cloud with six glowing eyes arranged in a circle around its head. "'Inherently inadequate' am I? Who's inadequate now!?"

Thaddeus and Georgia stare at the place the Misery unit disintegrated, then simultaneously reach for some sort of sensor. Beautia and I just look around nervously. "Can.. anyone else.. see one of those?"

Georgia shakes her head. "No, we're good. Ooh, is that vaporized suspendium?"

I walk over to Magnificus and pat him on the right shoulder with my left hand. "How long had that been following you around?"

He looks me in the face for a moment, then his eyes drop. "A while."

"Um." Beautia points to where the Huntsman disappeared. "I don't want to worry anyone unnecessarily, but…"

A tiny black fleck floats in the space where the Huntsman vanished. It wobbles for a moment, then opens outwards into a vertical black disc. Ah, crap! Magnificus brings the gun to bear while I create a construct railgun and the younger Sivanas raise their sensors, grinning excitedly at the prospect of gathering new data.

A short bald man in a tattered lab coat steps though, and the portal closes behind him.

"Hello children. And…"

Doctor Sivana Senior peers at me through glasses held together by tape.

"I don't think we've been introduced."

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Family Day 24

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25th April

11:14 GMT -6

Doctor Sivana Senior slumps back slightly in his chair, hands steepled on his stomach as he looks at me. "I suppose it could have been worse. You could have been Captain Marvel."

"I'm just glad that you're taking this so well, sir."

"Oh, that's probably just a result of fighting for my life in a post-apocalyptic wasteland with only what I could scavenge to eat, drink or build with for a year." He closes his eyes and rubs his forehead with his right hand for a moment. "What time are we eating?"

Venus leans against the wall closest to the kitchen. "I was planning a cold lunch for one o'clock, but under the circumstances I suppose that a sandwich wouldn't be out of the question."

"Thank you d-." A very faint frown marks his forehead. "…Venus. I would appreciate that."

She stands up straight, looking him over carefully as she does so. I didn't pick up on it when he first came through but he's carrying a lot of minor injuries. I haven't wanted to scan him directly -since he's clearly not in any immediate danger and he has killed quite a lot of people- but I can see bruises and long thin scabs which suggest quite serious injuries which have only mostly healed since they were inflicted. "No problem." She turns and walks away.

"So…" Doctor Sivana Senior finds himself the focus of our attention, and for a moment he isn't sure how to deal with that. "Guess I'm going to need to rebuild the warehouse." Then he stops talking.

We all wait for a few moments, but nothing is forthcoming. Thaddeus Junior loses patience first. "Where did you go, Dad?"

"The future, Junior. A little bit further than I meant to." His eyes drift away from his youngest son. "The Big Red Cheese punching things he didn't understand must have overloaded the system. Next time-." His head comes up again. "Sivanadroid!"

The closest one stops and trundles over. "Ready for command."

"Memorandum. From now on, four circuit breakers, not three."

"Command prompt recognised."

"Sivanadroid, dismissed."

"Have a good day."

Thaddeus Junior shakes his head. "How far was too far?"

"I'm not sure. I know that the sun will start dying in about five billion years and be completely dead in ten, but I can't think of any natural phenomena that would make it look like it did then. The radiation output was all wrong, and I could almost… Feel it sucking the life out of me whenever I went outside."

"Doctor, are they preparing for a Harrowing?"

"Eh, maybe, maybe not. None of the ones I interrogated knew when it was scheduled, but we do seem to be ripening up nicely."

Beautia blinks. "Harrowing?"

"Yes. You see, 'Tia, they're a dying civilisation. Their Earth's worn down to nothing, their technology is advanced, but it isn't anything like as advanced as what a civilisation like theirs should have. Every so often they raid the distant past for what they need to keep going."

"You mean it's happened before?"

"Oh yes." He smiles. "Their ruler King Melmoth stole their first time machine from some sort of time travelling Neanderthal." He smiles crookedly to himself. "If I'd known about that in advance I'd have spent more time trying to go back in time and not forwards."

"It's not just Humans they've done it to. There was an aquatic race that used to dominate the Earth. Someone -probably the Sheeda- killed nearly all of them. The handful left are Atlantean citizens."

"Sounds plausible. The thing about time travel is that they can do harvests of different eras while for them it's only a few years apart. They don't even necessarily need to do them in order."

Doesn't look like that's the answer Beautia wanted. "Dad, are they going to be sending more of those things here?"

"Oh, no, don't worry about that. Some complete lunatic was firing a gravity converter back through the link between the Huntsman and their control center. Not much left of the place now." He smiles cruelly. "Completely flattened, with hundreds of their people dead."

Oh.

"Or... Not much left of it then, I should say. After all, it hasn't been built now. Anyway, they were using a sample of my blood to triangulate on my era and I took care of it before coming back through. If they weren't aiming for now before I got there then we've got nothing to worry about."

Magnificus frowns. "I'm not sure that I'd say 'nothing', Father. A race of future Humans with highly advanced technology and a proven track record of exterminating planet-spanning civilisations have a bone to pick with our family."

"But they're not here now. Magnificus, how long will it be before Humans have faster than light travel?"

Magnificus' frown deepens. "We have it now. You took me on a trip to Proxima Centauri for my tenth birthday."

"No, no. Not things I've built. Things… Things normal people could build."

"I don't know. Forty or fifty years, I suppose."

"So if they can't do it before that, we've got nothing to worry about. They'll be too late to reset Earth civilisation." He leans forwards slightly. "They're resource poor. They can't sustain large fleets or large populations. It won't be too long before current day Earth is strong enough to beat a Harrowing Fleet conventionally. All we have to do is make sure we don't get Harrowed before that."

Thaddeus and Georgia look at each other with what could be concern. "We?" / "We?"

Sivana Senior nods. "Children, I've been doing some thinking."

Their faces fall. Georgia shakes her head. "Dad, no."

Thaddeus Junior's eyes widen. "Say it isn't so."

"I think I've… We've… Been stuck in a rut, just throwing things at Marvel and the other children. What I saw in the future… The civilisation there is.. contemptible, beyond even the idiots who rejected my inventions in this era. I'm going to rest up for a few days, then I'm going to start building weapons."

They start smiling again.

"And save them for fighting the Sheeda."

And they stop smiling again.

"We've been fighting someone we know everything about for too long. Can you honestly tell me that you're really pushing yourselves because of him? We already decided not to kill him when he was in his mortal form-."

Beautia's eyes widen. "You knew about that?!"

A faint smile appears on her father's lips. "You made it clear that you didn't want me interfering with your life. Have you changed your mind?"

"I was hitting on a ten year old!"

Magnificus' face drops. "Wait, what?"

Thaddeus Junior looks at him as if he's said something truly bizarre. "You really didn't know? Captain Marvel is really a kid called William Joseph Batson. He gets older when he transforms."

Magnificus hesitates for a moment, then shakes his head. "Why would I care who he is? I've never had anything to do with the man. Boy."

Thaddeus Senior nods approvingly. "Good for you, Magnificus."

He blinks in surprise. "Oh. Um. Thank you, Father."

Thaddeus Senior returns his focus to his younger children. "The point is, we're not really learning anything new. Sure, we can test weapons on him, but there are dozens of places we could do that. He's not changing himself, he's just static. And yes, he's using his powers slightly better than he did when we first started fighting him. But so what? The Sheeda on the other hand are near complete unknowns. I lived on their world for nearly a year and I still can't tell you what they can do and how it works. Are you really telling me that studying them won't be more rewarding than picking a fight with Marvel for the umpteenth time?"

They think for a moment. Georgia nods her head to the side. "I… Guess…"

"Glad you agree, Georgia. Junior?" His son nods. "We'll get started tomorrow. But right now, I have a non-recycled sandwich to eat."

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Family Day 25

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25th April

18:54 GMT -6

I knock on the door, but there's no immediate response.

"Doctor Sivana?"

I knock again, a little louder. Okay, he knows that I'm on a truce, and if he's serious about focusing on the Sheeda then I really don't have any reason to violate it. I take hold of the door handle and push open the door.

"Humpf?"

Doctor Sivana jerks awake in his chair, momentarily confused by his environment as he blearily looks around. His left hand goes to his glasses where they rest on his desk. His right is already holding an organic looking handgun. Fortunately for me it isn't pointed in my direction. In fact, his grip on it is loose. He must have been holding it when he went to sleep. It tightens as he sees me hovering by the door, then his glasses reach the bridge of his nose and he releases it completely.

"Come to get me for dinner?"

"Actually, Doctor, I was hoping to have a word with you?"

He squeezes his eyes shut, right thumb and forefinger massaging his brow. "I'm sorry. I haven't had a lot of opportunity for regular sleep lately. A lot of late nights are catching up with me."

"A year, you said."

"There aren't any safe places in Sheeda arcologies. I didn't understand their technology well enough to build watch drones. I had to make do with simple mechanical traps. Every time one went off I had to relocate."

I nod. "A year for us. How long was it for you?"

His eyes narrow slightly, but his mouth has a thin smile. "A little bit longer, if I counted it right. The good thing about going bald early -and looking like a Goblin- is that it makes it harder for people to tell exactly how old you are." For a moment he smiles properly, a completely unguarded response to his emotions. Then it's gone again as he shuffles his chair forwards and puts his elbows on his desk, hands clasped together. "Tell me, young man. How long have you and 'Tia really been together?"

"She asked me to attend this gathering two days ago. Prior to that, my only interaction with her was during a demonic invasion of Fawcett City."

He nods. "Are you planning to keep seeing her?"

"Yes. There's some technology developed by Baroness Paula von Gunther that I'm.. trying to get into wider circulation-."

The smile is gone, his fingers unlaced and his right hand sort of rubbing around his left. "Good luck with that."

"I'm in the advantageous position of not needing external investment. With these-" I hold up my palms. "-rings, I can tell exactly how well motivated everyone involved is… Aside from problems involved in licensing -which would exist for any novel technology- I don't think anyone will be able to do to me what they did to you."

"Hn." He notices his own hands, then lays them flat on his desk. "I meant, do you plan to continue seeing her in the romantic context?"

"I don't know. We're really in more of a 'feeling-one-another-out' stage. I like her, but I don't know how compatible we are."

He nods. "I suppose that's reasonable."

I risk a smile of my own. "Have to admit, I thought having this sort of conversation with a supervillain would involve more threats."

He shakes his head. "'Tia wouldn't want me to involve myself. And… Sometimes relationships don't work out, no matter how much you want them to."

"Would you mind if I.. asked you a few questions about that? I mean… I've looked into your personal history-."

"Then you probably know everything already. What is there left to ask me about?"

"I know what, I don't know why. And I can only learn that from you. I can easily understand being angry with the people who rejected you. I'm not sure I can understand deliberately killing them. Or… I can't understand why they rejected you in the first place."

"You'd need better people skills than me to understand that." He wrinkles his nose. "Why did I kill them?"

"Given everything you could have done with your abilities… And that you'd put up with already… Why did you turn to supervillainy?"

His gaze grows a little distant. "I'm not sure I can exactly explain it. Science is my first love. One of the few vectors I have for interacting with people is sharing what I've learned. When I got turned down, I was honestly more annoyed about them rejecting Venus' business plan than them rejecting my technology."

"You killed them for being rude to her?"

"No. No. I killed them for being…" He looked puzzled for a moment, searching for the word he wants. "Wrong." That doesn't seem to quite be it. "It's like… If you want to get across a body of water, you could use a aeroplane or a boat… But you shouldn't use a dogsled. I got to a point where I just couldn't see a reason not to." He bows his head slightly. "I'm probably not explaining it very well. I've never really been one for introspection."

"Just… 'Why not kill them?'"

"I… Understood people… I mostly understood people, in terms of their roles. As a scientist, my job was to discover and invent, to work out how the universe works and how to make use of that. Venus' role is to understand supply and demand, what people need and how to get it to them. The role of an investor is to make a rational judgement about risk and reward and then either put money in or not. But if the product is good and need is there and the risks low and the reward great, someone like that should invest. One or two people I could have understood. Dozens?"

He shakes his head. "I mean, look around us. I designed this. I didn't build it, but I built the robots who did. I could have done this for NASA or the ESA or CNSA. And I would have been happy to. The sort of person who turns this down has no grounds for complaint if someone like me decides to use them as a test subject."

"Test subjects?"

"Well… Okay. I was pretty annoyed with the first few, but… Yeah. I don't have any sort of personal grudge against Captain Marvel. I don't do this because I particularly want to hurt him. I've learned a lot from testing weapons and technologies against him." He nods. "That's what it's about."

"You're just making weapons-?"

"I'm not just making weapons, they're just the only things you see because they're the only things that require that sort of field testing."

"But to use your own justification-" If I can really call it that. "-a lot of the people who die during your fights with Captain Marvel might well be quite good at their jobs. Their.. social roles."

"But I'm not really part of society anymore, am I? I don't have henchmen, I have robots. I don't trade for things other people make, I use robot miners, farmers, construction units… Anything I want to learn, I learn myself. I don't go out of my way to kill people, but if they die.. then.. they die."

"But-?"

"I didn't think like this to start with. When Venus and I got together, I genuinely hoped… Okay, not hoped. Just 'assumed', really. I assumed that my technology would revolutionise the world. Heh." He looks down at his desk for a moment. "I wasn't like this to start with. But I am now. And I'm not going to change."

"I just wish I'd met you twenty years ago."

He nods again. "Twenty years ago I'd probably have wished the same thing. This… Research thing you've set up? Are you looking for people like me, or are you hoping they'll come to you?"

"We haven't really got that far. At the moment we're just bringing established people together and sharing abilities."

"Then on behalf of my younger self, I'm going to suggest that you reconsider that approach." He brightens slightly. "Oh! And in case you hadn't spotted it, well done for calling Junior 'Thaddeus'. He likes it when people do that, but around here it would just get confusing."

"You picked it."

"Nothing wrong with 'Junior'. I'm certainly not using my middle name around people. I'm a scientist, not a rap musician."

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Family Day 26

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26th April

15:04 GMT +3

Donna waves as she sees me across the inner city plaza and jogs in my direction. I think I'll count the Senate agreeing to the presence of a Dolmen Gate here paired with one in the Themysciran Embassy as a minor victory. Saves me from having to ferry people here. Though not much use for Cassandra, it makes travel time for Donna about ten minutes and for Diana about two minutes.

And about twenty minutes for Io or any other Amazon who feels like sticking her toe into Man's World.

Donna comes to a halt in front of me and raises her eyebrows. "So? How was Sivana Day?"

"Doctor Thaddeus Bodog Sivana returned from the far future, pursued by Apocalypse Elves."

Her eyes widen slightly. "Are you alright?"

"I was, once Guy explained how to secure my subspace pocket against subspace pickpockets." I gesture back towards the palace. "Can we?" She nods and we start walking. "Thaddeus Senior persuaded Thaddeus Junior and Georgia to focus their energies on preparing for the next Sheeda Harrowing, so we won't have to worry about super science attacks from that quarter for the foreseeable future."

"And the bad news is that we've got Sheeda Apocalypse Elves to look forward to?"

"Yes, but we probably had those anyway. At least this way we know about it. And the Sivanas are quite good at making weapons."

She nods, then glances at me. "And how'd it go with Beautia?"

A goodbye kiss and we're meeting up again the next time the brain trust gathers. "Is that really why you came here?"

She ducks her head slightly. "Do you..? Did the results come in? Do you know..?"

"Not for certain, but… Probably. And I've also finished the secret mission I was given by Queen Hippolyta."

"Since I don't know what it was about I don't really know what to say about that." We climb up the steps and start towards the main entrance, the guards on duty giving us a nod. "Well?"

"The two are… Related. And I've got this whole monologue planned..?"

She rolls her eyes. "Fine, I can wait for a minute."

We pass into the throne room and begin walking up the central aisle. Queen Hippolyta, Captain Philippus and Diana are seated at the far end, with Acantha and Menalippe hovering close at hand. Menalippe's cat is also hanging around. Odd. Maybe it's too hot outside for her? Conversation falls away as they watch our approach. Once I reach the start of the 'audience area' I place my right fist over my heart and genuflect to the throne.

"My Queen. Thank you for granting me this audience."

Queen Hippolyta leans forwards slightly. "Paul, is there a reason why you are behaving in this way?"

"Yes, it's because I've done something very clever and I'm feeling fairly smug about it and want to wring the maximum enjoyment from the build up." I look up. "Chaos, you know?"

She looks puzzled. "I do not think I see-" I send filaments out of the throne room and down. "-what is chaotic about-" Around the corridors… "-a sense of pride in-?"

Four orange flickers as the Circle appear in front of me. They aren't merely on their knees, they're on all fours, faces pressed against the floor. "My Queen, I-." Alkyone's voice is choked. She hasn't stopped crying since I explained to them what the results I got from Sephtian meant. "We… Humbly beg your pardon for our grievous error in judgement. For our treason and attempted regicide."

Hippolyta's mouth has fallen open. Philippus' hand stills with her sword half-drawn and the guards already have their spears levelled. Acantha has covered her mouth with her right hand while… Diana looks at me with a sort of maternal irritation and gives her head a slight shake. Donna just looks confused.

I stand, my arms snapping out to the side. "Chaos."

Hippolyta stands, half-staggering forwards a pace before recovering herself. "How did you manage this?"

"When you went into Gaea's temple to create the clay figure which became Princess Diana, Alkyone followed you and watched. For reasons I.. still don't fully understand, while you were doing it she saw the Hekatonkheir Cottus standing over you. Now, they'd never seen Cottus in person before, so didn't realise that if he were physically present -even allowing for the spatial distortion at work in the grove- he'd have been visible from the city. And quite possibly the mainland. If you're used to gods and goddesses who look more or less Human, a titanic individual like Cottus is more than a little disturbing to see. That, combined with the fact that you made no mention of him upon your return, led Alkyone to conclude that your mind was being altered in some way. Since no friendly divinity would do that, Cottus' cause must have been hostile, and since it resulted in a child being created she must have been a vector for his malevolence."

"And for that, they tried to murder Diana." Hippolyta shakes her head. "But Cottus wasn't there."

"Diana, would you mind..?"

She frowns, but her mother is already looking at her and nodding. She closes her eyes for a moment, then takes the Lasso of Truth from her belt and places the loop of the lasso in her mother's hand. Hippolyta puts her fingers through and firmly grips the rope.

"I testify that I saw nothing of Cottus on that day, nor have I on any day since."

"And I can combine that with the testimony of Lord Hades, Princess Melinoë, Akhlys, Briareos and Gyges. While none of them can account for his every movement, none of them are aware of him having left Tartarus since the end of the titanomachy. And they all gave him good character references. Diana, may I borrow the Lasso?" She nods, and I link a filament to it and float it over to me. I take hold of the coil with my right hand and lower the loop so that it lies on the floor next to Alkyone's right hand.

It takes a moment, but her eyes glance towards it and then she moves her hand to take a grip on it. "My Queen, I saw Cottus standing with you that day."

I frown. Hmm. That means that her memory hasn't been altered. Or reconstructed in her own mind from ambiguous stimuli, the Lasso burns through that sort of thing.

"I can't explain that." I tug the Lasso back from Alkyone. "If it turns out that it matters, a full analysis of the site might yield more information, but I'll understand if you're not keen. Just to make sure that Alkyone's concern was unfounded I had my colleague Sephtian compare thaumic signatures from a number of individuals. To spare you the technical details, all members of the Greek mythos share certain arcane characteristics and these are more similar if there is some immediate relationship between the individuals compared. Having seen the results I can confirm that Cottus isn't drawing any power from Tartarus, or any source other than himself. His signature is simply too similar to that of his brothers. Diana has both Titanic and Olympian elements, but nothing that is uniquely like that of Cottus. While I would need to fully analyse the Five and Gaea herself to establish the relationship beyond reasonable doubt, on the balance of probability the version of Diana's creation told by Queen Hippolyta is correct."

I turn to Donna. "But Cottus might have created you."

The sudden change of direction appears to catch her off guard. "What?"

"The similarity between your metaphysique and Diana's is very high. Higher even than that of Diana and Euanthe, who were both given life by Gaea. The differences have a strong similarity to Cottus' magic, though there are other components I can't readily identify. I would hypothesise that you were somehow created in a similar fashion to Diana rather than being naturally born, though I'm afraid that more than that I don't know."

Her eyes drop to the floor as she takes that in. "Oh."

I turn back to the throne. "Alkyone has psychological issues relating to children which may have affected her judgement, but that was the trigger. I'm afraid that I can't explain every event… The information just isn't there. On the other hand, I have completed the task that you set me."

There's a flash of blinding light behind me, as if someone set off a flashbang grenade. Construct goggles form over my eyes as I turn around, and as the light dies down a blonde man wearing only a kilt, sandals and a pair of leather bracers stands in the aisle. He smiles at us.

"Perhaps I might explain?"

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Family Day 27

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26th April

15:09 GMT +3

There's a general bowing from my Amazon compatriots. At least, those not already face down on the floor. Even Donna gives him a politely reverential nod.

I cock my head to the right, and jab my right forefinger at him a little uncertainly. "Apollo, right?"

He grins broadly, throwing his golden-tanned arms out to the side. "I am indeed he! And you-" His right index describes an arc pointed in my general direction. "-must be Eris' little boytoy. Pavlova or something, isn't it?"

A college student compared to Zeus' university student, Apollo is second only to his father for putting it about, though it seems that before reaching the modern era he either grew up or learned to use contraception. Sustained Mage Slayer fire would probably hurt him, but Menalippe was quite clear that attacking the Olympians isn't on. Instead, I send a filament outside the palace, up the wall and further up into the sky, generating a large Discordian Chao in the sky.

Some jokes are only funny once.

I take a deep breath, and Hippolyta looks at me with growing concern. "Lord Apollo. Welcome to Themyscira."

He turns his full attention to her, walking past me and-. Oh, he actually shoulder-nudged me. He actually-. Oh, okay.

"My pleasure, dear niece. I believe I can explain the remaining facts which your investigator failed to uncover."

Hippolyta bow-nods. "Please do."

"Diana's creation is of course unblemished by any power beyond those you know. Grandmother Gaea, my aunts Hestia and Demeter and my sisters Artemis, Athena and Aphrodite. But even in his prison, Cronus-."

"Used a stolen part of Cottus' body to eavesdrop on what happened in Gaea's temple, and later used sympathetic magic to duplicate the ritual to create Donna."

"Ah." His head half-turns back to me, his grin a little less sure. "You knew."

"I wasn't certain, but I could see where you were going with that. I didn't say anything because I didn't have proof. And it didn't make any sense to me. What did he hope to gain? Where did he get the power from? And why didn't anyone spot what he was doing?"

"What he hoped to gain was a powerful demigoddess servitor. Obviously." He tosses his hair and returns his attention to the throne. "Cronus didn't merely duplicate the ritual, he altered the magics the goddesses employed so that they could not tell one nascent demigoddess from the other. They… Inadvertently empowered both."

Donna nods. "So it was Cronus."

Apollo turns to her. "He arranged things, certainly. But don't feel down. The same magics animate you.. that animate Diana." He turns back to the throne. "For the most part."

"But that was eighty six years ago. Donna's not eighty six."

He doesn't look around this time. "Cronus arranged for his new daughter to appear in the hands of a group of his cultists, who kept her in suspended animation while he worked out what to do with her."

Donna shakes her head. "What do you mean?"

"Can't you tell? You know how slavishly Devastation hangs on his every word, his every order. His intent was for you to be not the spirited young woman that you are, but rather for you to be as she is. He simply didn't understand the magics he had evoked, so desperate he was for any slight advantage."

"So… Why let me go? I mean, if he couldn't trust me…"

Apollo grins again. "Dumb luck. A gas main leaked and met a spark. The cultists looking after you were all killed and their spells of binding broken."

"And of course, if they'd just brought you up normally you'd probably have been happy to serve their cult." Donna glances at me, clearly unhappy that I said it but not able to honestly contradict me. "Just goes to show that a being can be ancient and powerful-" I smile at the back of Apollo's head. "-and still understand nothing."

"I'd say-" He looks Donna over with a lasciviousness that annoys me. "-that he knew exactly what he was doing. The error probably came from the cultists. Perhaps he tired himself out in the rite and then couldn't direct them in the next stage. Who can say?"

Donna nods slowly. "And I doubt that I'll ever be able to ask him in person. Not that I'd want to."

"I'm quite glad to hear it. I believe that he used what he learned from your creation to create Devastation, substituting the magics of the goddesses for that of the Titans, the fragment of Cottus for his own blood."

"So… Devastation is my… Sister?"

Apollo shrugs carelessly. "If you like. Though you are far more closely related to Diana."

Donna shifts her eyes from the god to her mentor, whose return gaze is filled with sororal affection. "I'm… Not really sure… How I feel. About any of it."

"Of course." Apollo nods, then looks around the gathering once more. "Well, my work here is done. Donna, if you want to talk, you know where my shrine is." He turns around and starts walking back down the aisle towards the entrance to the palace.

As he draws level with me I stick out my left arm and plant my hand in the centre of his chest. "Couldn't help but notice that you didn't say why no one knew about it at the time." His eyes narrow slightly. "Or did anything about it. I mean, Cronus giving his cultists a demigoddess? That could have gone very badly." I nod my head to the right. "And you didn't explain how you know any of that."

"Providing mortals with insight of matters that are beyond them is part of my portfolio."

I nod. "Why did Alkyone see a vision of Cottus, oh God of Oracles?"

The skin around his mouth tenses, as if he just smelled something repugnant. "I thought that it was fairly clear. I've had complaints about heroes receiving ambiguous visions and omens before, so I sent one that was completely straightforward. A vision of the person whom the recipient was supposed to go to for further guidance. Cottus could have told her what Cronus had done, then she could go out into the world and recover the newly made demigoddess, and bring her back to Themyscira to be raised in an environment of love. Alkyone wanted a daughter and we gods wanted Cronus to be denied a pawn. It would have been perfect." He turns around. "How could I have known that she was so deluded as to believe that the gods wanted her to kill a newborn?"

Hippolyta bites down her initial response. I watch her getting herself back under control. "An… Unfortunate miscommunication, my lord."

I take a step to the right, getting out of his way. "And of course you couldn't just step in and tell her directly, could you?"

"We-" His head snaps around, smug smile finally gone completely. "-don't-."

Eris' fist catches him right on the underside of his jaw, snapping his head back and sending him crashing to the ground, where the back of his head takes the brunt of the impact.

"You got my-?"

"Eris signal." She nods. "Nice."

"Glad you approve." I turn my head to the mildly stunned Amazon elite. "To complete his sentence: We don't fix our own mistakes. When things don't go the way we thought they would we cut and run. We whistle and walk away and let the chips fall where they may. My Queen, there are no outstanding loose ends."

Hippolyta's eyes dip to the stunned Apollo. "No. I suppose there aren't. I will need some time to consider. Captain, escort the Circle to the guest quarters and post a guard. I will..."

"Oi." Eris pokes me in the arm. "I'll grab him under his arms, you get his legs. There's a pig farm just outside the walls. If we hurry, we can toss him in the sty before he wakes up."

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NEXT CHAPTER

Zigzag

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Zigzag 1

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Zigzag

29th April

10:58 GMT +2

Jade looks around at the bustle of activity all across the archaeological dig site. "It's certainly classier than anywhere I've been on a date before. Not sure about the food…"

I shrug, left hand holding onto the box whose strap is slung over my left shoulder. "I can take you to somewhere in Shiruta afterwards. I should warn you though… I'm quite popular there. We might not get much privacy."

Though it hasn't been a priority of his reign so far, Adom is well aware of the value of tourism to the Kahndaqi economy. He also knows the location of a great many valuable sites that have been lost in history, though I know for a fact that there have been clashes with Cairo University's Archaeology department about how to treat them. For an archaeologist, historical sites should be preserved as much as possible. For Adom, a place sacred to the gods he worships should be repaired, repainted and put back into use. What exactly is to become of the now partially buried Temple of Zehuti hasn't been agreed on, but for now it serves our purpose nicely.

I frown as we head towards the recently excavated entrance. "I.. thought you said you didn't want to-."

"I didn't say we were. But this is."

"Look, I've had enough criticism about my romantic intention communication failures that-."

"I never said that I wouldn't flirt with you." She's not looking at me, but she is smiling.

I look directly at her, then wave at the archaeology student beyond her who's excitedly pointing his camera phone at us. "I said I was interested, you said it was against your professional ethics."

"It is. We were the League of Shadows, not the League of Ninja.. Escorts."

"But you're not an assassin any longer." That gets an eyebrow. "Not professionally. This is a.. hobby thing. The rule doesn't need to apply if you don't want it to."

We pass under the awning and start down the slope into the Temple proper. "Date with Sivana go that badly, huh?"

"There was a near-unstoppable time travelling gravity manipulator and Thaddeus Junior and Georgia stole everything from my subspace pocket." Jade stops and this time looks at me with genuine alarm. I shrug. "They gave it back, but it was pretty unnerving."

Got back everything the breach of the warehouse complex didn't completely burn up or melt to sludge, anyway. After their mother glowered at them for a while I got what certainly sounded like a genuine apology… Which -given how they normally behave- is probably all I can hope for.

I pull ahead of Jade slightly as we reach the first chamber. "Beautia and I will be meeting up again. I just want to be clear that you have… First refusal." She doesn't say anything. "How's the bodyguarding thing going?"

"It pays the bills."

"No problems with the other henchmen?"

"Not after they found out I'd been to Belle Reve. Besides, I'm not supposed to get involved in the 'family business'. I'm just temptation-free protection for the boss's daughter." Her face stills for a second, and the next thing I know her sai is out, fully extended at thin air. Her eyes have narrowed. "I know you're there."

"Between you an' the Bat, think I need to work on me hidin' spells."

John… Appears. It isn't the shift that I saw when Thaddeus turned off the invisibility generator. The best way I can describe it is the reverse of what Granny Weatherwax did in Masquerade. Parts of wall and floor I was perfectly aware that I was seeing before suddenly come together in my mind as being parts of John. He holds his hands open and to the sides, trying to make clear that he isn't a threat while at the same time not deigning to pay her knife much attention.

Wait a second. No cigarette. The rings run full scans on our surroundings, bands of orange light running swiftly over everything. My rune stone comes out of one of my pouches and I turn up my empathic vision, taking a good look in all directions.

"What's wrong with you?"

"No cigarette." The stone is glowing… John usually makes it glow brightly, but the Scholars of Zehuti were big magic users back in Adom's time. This whole place sets it off. Scans don't show anything I wasn't expecting.

"Oh, come on. I can go five fuckin' minutes." His hands and eyebrows flick up for a moment in appeal at the gross slur on his personal habits.

"Almost certainly him."

"So does that mean I put the knife down, or stab him twice just to make sure?"

John smiles, right hand patting the left of his coat before tensing up and lowering itself again. "Where'd you find this one?"

"'This one' grew up in Gotham City." Jade lowers her sai and returns it to her coat. "John Constantine. The League had a file on you."

"Oh yeah?" The left side of his mouth turns upwards. "Anything good?"

Zatanna walks through from the inner chamber. "No one who has a file on you has anything good to say about you. I thought you realised that."

"Charmin'." He looks around the room, then turns and ambles towards the doorway to the inner chamber. "Adom's warmin' up the wards. We can get started in a mo."

Jade nods, then glances at me. "And the defences here are good enough..?"

I shrug. "If you know somewhere better…"

Zatanna nods. "We don't know enough about what we're up against to judge it perfectly. But this temple is as well protected as anywhere else we could go without rousing even more suspicion."

Adom stands as we enter, his normal black and gold costume covered by white robes. A display of modesty before one of the gods empowering him. Not something he does for anyone else. There's a smell of burned perfume in the air. "My preparations are complete. We may speak freely."

John nods, then looks at me. "Did'ja get it?"

I open another pouch and pull out a Golden Apple. "I asked when we were dumping Apollo in a pig pen."

"She ask what it was for?"

"I said it would be a surprise. She didn't seem to think it was such a big deal. Apparently she's got a whole grove of them."

"An' that'll work, will it?"

"We'll find out." Filaments take hold of my box, pulling out the prototype elemental rifle I received from Sephtian's workshop. "In theory, it's this simple." The Apple flickers as my constructs push, then deforms as the gold it's made of says that it should. The metal stretches over the chamber of the gun, making it the most bling firearm I've ever held. I hold it out to Jade, who takes it, works the mechanism then nods.

Zatanna makes a small beckoning gesture with her right hand and a small stone rises off the floor. "Dleihs fo redro."

A small golden barrier forms around the stone as it hovers in the air. Order magic isn't Zatanna's speciality, but we've been studying what Nabu might be able to do so much that she's picked up a few things.

Jade raises the gun to her shoulder, sights and fires. The stone explodes, its arcane shield doing nothing at all. She lowers the rifle.

Zatanna looks at her cautiously. "Remember, the aim isn't to kill him. He's holding my Dad-."

"I know." Jade nods. "My job is to disrupt his spells unless ordered otherwise. Then shoot to wound."

I nod. "You've had plenty of time to look over our plan so far. What do you think?"

"It's… Basically well thought out. But as far as the ideal outcome goes, I'm worried about what happens if your arcane mana draining device doesn't do the job. I think you need-."

I nod, looking down. I was worried it would come to that.

"I'll talk to him tomorrow."

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Zigzag 2

next

30th April

17:07 GMT

"Again, boy."

Since I didn't want to disturb them if they were doing something delicate I transitioned myself into the next field and then walked over this way. Rob was visible for the whole of the distance, flying hither and thither in the air around the stone circle. The stone circle where Rob and Graham have their practice sessions is a good distance from any road, and since they don't customarily use giant glowing shapes high up in the air to fight with they haven't attracted the sort of attention that my sessions with Guy, John and Jordan have.

"Again."

That said, the brilliant flashes from Rob's conjured lightning blasts might end up changing that before too long. I haven't come back since the first time. It felt like I was intruding, though Rob hasn't hesitated to talk about it. Graham is a stern but fair taskmaster and Rob's combat magic has come along in leaps and bounds.

"Translocate."

Rob disappears from the air and reappears near the centre of the circle. Just in front of him I see the mist-filled uniform which makes up Graham Marrack's 'body', standing in the exact centre of the circle, hands clasped at parade rest behind his back.

"Call winds."

I brace as a gust of hurricane force air blows past me, clouds above visibly moving inwards towards the megaliths.

"Clumsy, boy."

Rob's actually panting. "Sorry, sir."

"Don't be sorry, just don't do it. Time?" Rob turns his left wrist to look at his watch. "No. Any fool can use a watch. Use your magic."

"Errr… Two hours 'til sunset?"

"Closer to three, but better than your last guess. Alright. You're clearly exhausted. We'll call it a day there, I think." Rob sags. "We've taken basic elemental casting as far as we reasonably can in this setting. We'll do something a little more sophisticated next Saturday. Pack to travel."

"Ah, okay?" He looks confused. "Can you..? I didn't think you could leave the circle?"

"Only on the mortal plane. It is well past time you were inducted into the mysteries of Otherworld."

"Oh. Ah. Okay. Sounds interesting."

I reach the edge of the stone circle and Graham's head turns in my direction. "Orange Lantern. Robert has informed me that you are the protégé of the Green Lantern." He pauses. "Though since there are now several perhaps for clarity's sake I should specify that I am referring to the one I fought beside during the Second World War."

Rob half-turns and gives me a nod.

"Yes, sir. I've been the fortunate recipient of a great deal of guidance from him."

"I remember him clearly. Good lad, I thought. My time on the Earth is nearly done, for this week at least. If you seek my counsel, speak swiftly."

"Actually sir, I just wanted to talk to Rob somewhere private. I don't want to keep you.. if it's uncomfortable for you."

"Not greatly. The living world has a.. colour to it my normal abode lacks."

Rob frowns. "Heaven doesn't have colour?"

Graham shakes his head. "We Marracks don't go to heaven, boy. Why do you think I want to show you Otherworld?"

"O-oh. Right."

As I understand it, studying pre-Christian magic might well result in a practising Christian going to the afterlife associated with that practice instead. Graham might well just be talking from personal experience and be mistaken about the general effect. Or it could genuinely be a core part of how their abilities work. "If it makes you feel any better, I'd sign up for a pagan afterlife any day of the week. The Angels are a bunch of fascists anyway."

"Think my vicar might argue that with you. Zatanna kind of warned me not to talk about Christianity with you?"

"Vicars, hah. An ignorant breed, for all their pretensions." Graham's eye-clouds glow slightly as he focuses on me. "No, you may speak."

Might want to give Rob a little longer on the 'not going to heaven' thing. If it really worries him we can see what alternatives we can arrange. "It's… Really somewhat private."

"Tchjk." Rob shakes his head. "Great granddad's dead. I don't think you have to worry."

"He might. But I know when to hold my tongue. Speak, Lantern."

Well. Poo. Still, if I'm going to do it there's no sense in dragging it out. "Zatanna and I have been researching techniques which could be used to remove Nabu from her father. Violently, if necessary."

His eyes widen. "What?"

I give him a small shrug. "Why so surprised? Did you think I would accept the status quo?"

"I… Shit… I just though-."

"Language, boy. Lantern, what has Nabu done?"

"What do you know about him?"

"He's an order-based elemental creature who relies on hosts to act in the world. I met him while Doctor Nelson was his host."

"Doctor Nelson gradually stopped using him, then towards the end of his life began looking for someone to take over the whole Fate thing. Sadly, he died before he could find someone willing. Last November, the Chaos Lord Klarion led a ritual which put the world's children on one Earth and the adults on another. To help stop it, my friend Zatanna put on the Helmet. Once the fight was over, he didn't want to let her go. Her father traded himself for her freedom. Since then, he has enjoyed not a single moment of freedom. That is not acceptable to me. As far as I know Nabu hasn't made any arrangements to secure substitute hosts-" Like William Zard, who was right there at Roanoke. "-and was aggressively disinterested when I offered to make him a golem body."

"Yeah… But… Don't.. the League, like..?"

"Not as far as I've seen. Current D-Day is the seventh of July. We intend to confront him, give him a last chance to stand down, then… If he doesn't take it, do whatever it takes to force him off. I would like you to participate. Having a thaumovore along would significantly increase our chance of bringing him down alive, which is my preferred outcome."

"Shit." Graham cuffs him around the back of the head. "Ah-! Um. But… You-. The League-. Wouldn't they-?"

"I don't know what -if anything- they're planning. But they seem to have accepted Nabu. My plan is to ambush him away from any support and have the fight finished before any help can reach him. I'm going to need a yes or no before I tell you any more."

"If I say 'yes', what happens?"

"We go and meet the rest of the group I've assembled, and bring you up to speed on the specifics."

"And if I say 'no'?"

"Then I go and fetch Zatanna and you forget this conversation ever happened. I'm sorry, but we can't risk a security breach."

"No, 'course…" He's looking at the ground, his head shaking left to right and back again. "But what's this going to do to… Like, us and the League."

"I don't know. Afterwards, I'll be leaving the Earth and Zatanna will be leaving the team. I don't think they'll be able to take any overt action against the participants due to how they lied to the world about what happened in the first place. However, I can't promise that you won't be punished in some way, particularly if we end up killing Nabu. Well?"

"I don't fucking know, alright?!" He turns away from me, shaking his head as he walks a few steps before turning back. "Great granddad? What do you think?"

"Boy, do you know how many times I have considered usurping control of your body and using it to grant me the freedom to move beyond these stones? To draw magic naturally once more and fight the good fight in the land of the living?"

Rob's eyes widen. "What?"

"I am the better mage, after all. Surely the world would be better served by me than by you? Logically, if I saved at least one more life than you would have done then the deed would be just, would it not? So: How many times? How many times do you believe that I have considered it?"

"I-I-I-um… Once or twice..?"

"No. NEVAH!" A crackle of lightning runs through his body. "My time is done. My life is over. I accept that. Life passes from one generation to the next. Great grandson, you are my heir as my own son never was. I will guide, I will steward, at your request, recognising the rightness of your independence. I will not make you my slave, fit to live only that you serve me. It would be a foul and unnatural act and Nabu should know better. If he has become so arrogant, so debased, then strike him down and worry not for the righteousness of your cause."

Rob just stares at him for a minute. Then his head dips.

"Right." He shakes his head again, then turns his attention to me. "Think I should… Probably meet everyone, then."

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Zigzag 3

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2nd May

07:54 GMT -6

I lean forward slightly towards the monitor. On the screen, Wallace approaches Challenger Mountain's front door before bottling out.

"June, how many times has he done that?"

"That's his fifth. I've got a bet going with myself that he'll get to seven before giving up completely." She tilts her head my way, eyebrows slightly raised. "Are you going to take mercy on him, or do you want me to turn the sprinklers on?"

"I'm genuinely curious as to why he's here." I tap my left fist against my lips. "I mean, I'm assuming that he's come in person because he doesn't want anyone else to find out, but I can't think of anything he'd want from me."

Sunset looks up from her tablet. "Maybe he just wants to talk to you because you're friends?" I blink. "Used to be, anyway."

"Mmmmm. No, I don't think so. Kaldur, maybe, or Artemis or Zatanna. But Richard loathes me and I doubt that I won any points with Mister Allen when I killed Klarion just outside his city."

"He's afraid, Corpsman."

I lift up my right hand slightly and stare at my ring. "Of what?"

"The lazy option, Corpsman? I'm disappointed."

Ugh, right. Using the orange ring to look at someone's desires came naturally to me. Using my yellow ring to look at someone's fears… And I do actually like Wallace. Instead, I take a snapshot of everyone's location. Chester and Vera are in the gymnasium, Chester to make sure that he's in top shape before I start giving him fieldwork and Vera to get used to her improved cybernetics. Mister Tawny is watching them and the Sphere is spending the day with Scott and Barda.

The Genomorphs are… Everywhere. With most of the heavy lifting done we've scaled back on the G-Trolls and brought in a new Genomorph type. G-Nisse are slightly larger and a good deal more physically adept than G-Gnomes, perfect for the sort of precision work this place now requires. Jean and Lynne are overseeing a 'session' in the basement. Probably shouldn't take Wallace in to see that. Neither Jade nor Miss Amane are here at present.

Wallace stops, turns around and starts towards the door for attempt number six. I turn away and head towards the door. "Sunset, pop outside and invite him up, would you? I'll be in meeting room two."

"And you can't do this because?"

I stop. "Because I'm big and intimidating while you've got that whole 'Magic of Friendship' thing going on."

"I'm not sure that's actually a thing here. And I'm still not totally convinced it was in Equestria, either."

"Look, he's clearly very intimidated and the only person he even knows here to be intimidated about is me. Please, go and say hello to him."

"Fine."

"Thank you." I walk out of the control room and head in the general direction of the meeting room. Ah, teenagers. Worth getting the practice in when it comes to handling them, and she's usually not too bad really. Of course, that could be something to do with never asking her to do anything she doesn't already want to do. I once read a fan fiction in which Twilight Sparkle was described as a 'pony shaped learning machine' and I think that Celestia has a 'type'. She already started building her own arcane laboratory and has a team of G-Dwarves transcribing and indexing every piece of arcane lore she can find. A worthwhile investment, to be sure.

"…in a minute. It's not that far to walk."

"Uh, yeah, okay."

Sunset and Wallace? What? I walk a little faster, pushing the door open with a gentle yellow beam as I reach it. Wallace is leaning against the wall on the far side of the room. He's wearing a green shirt over a white long-sleeved t-shirt, a brown coat folded over the back of the chair in front of him. He looks up as the door opens, his eyes dropping awkwardly away after a second of eye contact.

"Hey, Grayven."

"Wallace." I walk fully into the room before pulling out one of the reinforced chairs and sitting down. "Good to see you. Keeping well?"

"I've.. been better."

Not getting a clue here… "Your powers, they continue to work as they are supposed to?"

He brightens up very slightly. "Oh yeah. It's been great, being able to keep up with-." He glances at Sunset, whose attention is on her tablet once more. "Ah…"

I nod. "She knows."

Sunset pushes something on her screen. "Secret identities are dumb, and don't work against magic anyway."

"Right…"

No quip? No 'if my hair was made of bacon I probably wouldn't bother with a secret identity either'? Out of character. "Wallace." I clasp my hands together in front of me. "What brings you here?"

"I…" He takes a breath and then looks me full in the face. "I need your help. I've got a.. friend-."

I smile. "And this 'friend' needs advice on women? Well,-."

"No! Just.. don't interrupt, okay? This isn't easy."

"I apologise. Please, continue."

"Her name's Frances Kane. We were real close when we were kids-" I raise my eyebrows slightly but don't interrupt. "-but her family moved away and we sorta lost touch. I got a phone call from her last week. They were coming into Central City for a few days and she wanted to meet up. I said 'yeah', but then she didn't show."

"Okay?"

"She was in a car crash. Her dad and her brother died and she and her mom are in pretty bad shape. Her mom's out of surgery, but they can't operate on her."

He stops again, and this time it seems right to prod him. "Why not?"

"She's a metahuman. It looks like she can control magnetic fields, but right now she can't turn it off. Anything with iron in it that gets too close to her gets grabbed and anything electronic gets wrecked. You're the only guy I know who can stop her getting crippled for life. I don't know.. what's going on with you and the Light, but you helped me… Us, and M'gann.. thinks…"

"She thinks that I will continue to help you out of the goodness of my heart despite joining the opposition." I sigh. "She's incorrigible. Wallace, my fellow members of the Light would not want me to aid her. And not just to spite you, though that would be enough for several of them. They would say that if an alien such as myself heals the injured, then humanity will have less incentive to learn to heal itself, or correct defective.. cars, or roads, that cause these accidents. That through my actions and the actions of those like me humanity was being kept closeted, insulated from things that could harm it and allow it to grow and learn. Tell me: would you be asking for my help if you didn't know her?"

"I… I'm not…" He thinks for a moment, then slumps. "Probably.. not."

"Do you intend to find a way to help everyone else in a similar situation, now that your attention has been drawn to the matter?"

"I can't! I don't know how to do that!"

"No. You don't. But you come into my house… On the day my daughter is to be married-"

Sunset looks up. "No, she's not."

"-and you ask me to-."

For a fraction of a second there are two Wallaces, then there is just one in front of me. "You think this is funny?! If you're not going to help, fine, just say that! Don't make fun of-!"

"Of course I'll help, you prat." I rise to my feet. "Show me where they've got her."

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Zigzag 4

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2nd May

09:07 GMT -5

Sunset and I step out of the hush tube and into the medical wing of Star Labs Central City.

"Remind me why I'm coming?"

"You're working hard to learn magic so that you can use your skills to better the lives of others, correct?"

"If I'm honest-" A woman at the other end of the corridor spots us, her eyes momentarily widening in shock. I give her a wave. "-I think I'm mostly doing it because I enjoy it. But I think what I learn will help other people eventually."

"People could benefit a great deal from medical magic. In fact, I imagine that with a little encouragement doctors could comprehend the basics." I shrug. "If you don't want to help me with the more conflict-orientated aspect of my work, medicine isn't a bad area to get into."

"I guess…"

"You have a great deal to offer the world, Sunset. But you are actually going to need to offer it at some point." There's a whoosh of displaced air as Wallace appears. Since he couldn't-. I frown. Hey, what? "New costume, Kid Flash?"

He holds out his arms slightly so we can get a better look. "Yeah. Your brother made it. I was worried about giving up the New God protection, and…"

"Didn't want to keep wearing the suit I made. Fair enough. I burned my bridges and now I can sleep in them."

Sunset stops and squints at me. "What?"

"Never mind." I raise my eyebrows at Wallace. "So, where's the patient?"

He leads the way through the corridors, staff calming noticeably with him present. "She's in a… It's a cell they built to hold Doctor Polaris. It's the only way to stop her messing up all of the equipment. She's being medicated through a plastic tube they fed through her mouth into her stomach, but being unconscious doesn't seem to turn off her powers."

I frown. "They couldn't come up with a nonferrous needle?"

"Not quickly. And with all the blood she's lost an intravenous system might not work properly if they did."

I nod. "And they don't want to replace the blood because that will raise her blood pressure and risk breaching the clotting on her internal injuries. Can you give me a quick summary?"

"Ah… Her rib cage was basically crushed, and it's cut her lungs in several places. Worse on the right side. Her right upper arm was pretty badly smashed. Even if they didn't end up amputating it, she'd probably only ever get a fraction of her strength back. Her jaw's broken, her skull's probably fractured but they can't tell for sure because she'd mess up the machinery. She's got cuts everywhere but they've all scabbed over by now. We don't know about her spine."

"And her brain? If it's been damaged that may explain why her abilities are constantly on."

"She's concussed." He pushes through a set of double doors and into what looks like a rapidly converted high security area. Too many medics and pieces of equipment in too small a space. "And we can tell that because of how her pupils dilate. I didn't want to ask Miss Martian to take a look in case there was some sort of psychic feedback." He turns away, looking for someone. "Doctor Schmitz, can we just go in?"

A slightly overweight man in a lab coat turns around. Ah, the mad scientist bald-on-top-with-long-grey-hair combo. I image that STAR has a few of those around the place. He looks me over for a moment and then gives Wallace his full attention. "You'd better. She's stable at the moment, but…" He shrugs helplessly.

"Ah, Mister Grayven?" A short woman taps me on the arm to get my attention. "The room will have to be sealed once you're inside. This-" She holds up a microphone. "-will let you talk to us despite the magnetic flux."

I shake my head. "Thank you, but I have a power ring."

I walk towards what looks like a bank vault door. A technician looks up at me for a moment before pressing a button on his equipment. There's a clank and an oddly quiet klaxon wail. I look up at it and see that someone has shoved a sock in it. For a prison cell I suppose that you'd want it on full volume, but for a room people are having to go in and out of constantly it would get annoying very quickly. Once the door is open I step through and wait patiently for it to close once more. Through the inner door I can see a couple of nurses keeping careful watch on Miss Kane. She looks to be in a right old state.

Sinestro, scan.

Mister West's summary of her injuries was largely accurate. A picture appears in my mind. Internal bleeding is more or less stopped, but there's blood in her lungs and her brain is swelling dangerously.

Nothing we can't fix.

Explain to me exactly why you want to repair the girl.

Further damaging my relationship with the League -and my ex-team mates- serves no useful purpose. I still haven't heard from Zatanna about those arcane energy siphons I want to commission. Probably, that means she's been instructed not to contact me. If I do this, it may change a few minds.

It also lets you undermine their faith in their own cause. And your team mates' faith in the judgement of their superiors.

It's a fringe benefit. I never understood hero worship. Get me her medical records.

The door behind me clanks shut, then the inner door whirs into life as it opens up. The nurse steps away from the near side of Miss Kane's recumbent form, allowing me to come up alongside her. Now, how to build up enough fear..? From Wallace, from the nurse… Not enough. My being here is reassuring them too much, and it would interfere with my diplomatic efforts to taunt them into fearing more. Hm. I look down at Miss Kane's face and imagine Lynne in a similar position, her body smashed-.

Yellow light surges, her ribs expanding and realigning before being fused back into place. Next, I remove the blood from her lungs and fix the torn and damaged tissue. A blast at her brain undoes the bruising and swelling. Doesn't look like there's an appreciable amount of underlying damage, though there are one or two physiological oddities. Probably related to her metahuman ability. Log those. Last comes the right arm, shoulder bones and muscles. Then…

"Does she know?"

The nurses look at each other, then the one closest to me answers. "No. We didn't think it was a good idea, given the state she was in."

I could heal all of her minor injuries, but I think letting her lie here for a little while is probably for the best. "I imagine that her friend Wallace West will be along to visit her later. I would appreciate it if he were granted entry."

I don't wait for a response, but instead have Sinestro connect to the Mountain's systems and open a Hush Tube back out of the cell-ward.

"She okay?"

"She'll live. And retain full functionality. She's still unconscious for now." He sags, exhaling heavily as he does so. "But we need to talk about what's going to happen to her next."

"Ah… Look, I'm grateful and all? But I don't see what that's got to do with you."

"The Apokoliptian technology I use in Challenger Mountain is proof against the highest level of magnetic flux she's been observed producing. Is anywhere else? Anywhere she could live long term?"

"She needs to stay under observation…"

"And then?" I lean closer. "Have you checked the wreck of her car for signs of unusual magnetism?"

His face pales. "Oh God."

I straighten up. "If she can't get under control, then she'll be a danger to all around her. If she does this-" I look around the room. "-while in a drugged stupor, what happens when she sleeps?"

"Could.. you… Awaken her? That would work, wouldn't it?"

"Certainly. What's in it for me?"

He stares me in the eyes for a moment, then nods. "What do you want?"

I grin. "Someday, and that day may never come… I'll call upon you to do a service for me."

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Zigzag 5

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3rd May

09:03 GMT -5

I point to the star chart being projected into the middle of the training area, my spirits falling further. "And here?"

Canis shrugs. "Perhaps? I was a cavalry commander, not a ship captain." Canis has a great deal of experience with alien civilisations. Unfortunately, most of it involves boom tubing in with a few hundred friends and looting the place. "The region here-" He reaches into the hologram with his right forefinger and indicates a radius. "-is known as The Waste. Any settlement here was taken as an affront to Great Darkseid and destroyed, the foolish people attempting it either slain or taken back to Apokolips in chains. Further out, we raided and brought ruination, but never in so focused a manner."

"What was the point?"

He frowns at me. He's not confused by what I've asked so much as by the fact that I'm asking. "To keep them afraid, of course. To remind them that every day they are given leave to draw breath by Great Darkseid, and should his merciless gaze fall upon them his gift would instantly be rescinded."

"Does he order each attack personally? "

Canis smiles, shaking his head. "No. Such matters are beneath his notice. At some point long before my birth he ordained that things should be so. And we faithfully carried out his commandment ever since."

"Faithfully?"

"We cry out his name, shout his praise and -time allowing- erect monuments to his fearsome magnificence."

I nod. From the comics it was never very clear what the peoples of Apokolips did from day to day. I'm getting a better idea now. "Now, the events which led to you being banished…"

"What is to say that you do not already know? I achieved a moment of perfect self-realisation, of communion with the greater spirit of Darkseid. I took my god-name, cut down my father and replaced him as general. My new status demanded greater targets so I ordered a raid on New Genesis itself."

"Did you have that authority?"

"We do not need special permission to fight and die for Darkseid. And I met with success! Their people cut down, their army routed, two of their sky cities left as burned out ruins!"

"And yet, you're here."

He shrugs. "Kanto has taken some exception to my ascension, and he is an assassin without peer. I cannot guard myself in my sleep. But I still do Darkseid's work, harrowing the weak and unworthy."

…

"Okay, so why don't we try tracking the world you visited after you were forced to-"

"Recognised, Kid Flash, B zero three."

"-quit your position."

Brut stirs himself as Wallace materialises in the tube's terminus. I imagine that when compared with the fast paced and highly dangerous life Brut and his master lived on Apokolips his time on Earth must be restful at best. He hasn't quite gotten to the point where he'll let the rest of us stroke him, but at least he doesn't bark or urinate at inappropriate times or places. Wallace doesn't warrant more than a quick sniff before Brut's head is once more resting on his forepaws.

"Good morning, Wallace." Oh dear. His posture is slouched and his face fallen. "What's wrong?"

"Anatole Sokolov's dead."

Ah. I nod. "I'm sorry to hear that. I didn't know the two of you were close."

He trudges in our direction, looking over the star chart briefly and then dismissing it. "We weren't. I met him a couple of times when he was visiting Jay, but that was about it."

Canis frowns, this time in frustration. "Who is this person?"

Wallace looks at the ground for a moment. "Anatole was a Russian guy. A speedster like me. Ah, well, more like.. Jay, really."

"I don't know who he is either."

Wallace looks at me and gestures at the hologram with his right hand. "Mind if I..?"

I shake my head. "All yours."

He dismisses the star chart and calls up Jay's personnel file. "Jay Garrick, the first Flash." We get a picture of him in his prime. "Born, nineteen eighteen, started out as the Flash in nineteen forty. Far as we could tell, some time in the fifties the Russians got a hold of a copy of the formula he used to get super speed. Only… They didn't get a perfect copy. The first three Russian speedsters he met were Blue Trinity-" A picture appears showing Blue Trinity's members; Boleslaw Uminski, Gregor Gregorovich and Christina Molotova. "-and they ended up with crippling health problems as well as being mentally unstable. Anatole was part of the second group." Another picture, Anatole in costume with his Red Trinity team mates Bebeck and Cassiopeia. "They did better, but when they started showing the same symptoms as the Blue Trinity members they came to Keystone City to see if Jay could help them."

"And swore themselves into his service in return?"

"What?" Wallace frowns at Canis. "No. He just tried to help them. And it… Kinda worked." He presses another button, calling up a more recent image. "Until it didn't."

They look withered, and I know from when I read their files that their legs from the knee down are artificial. To say nothing of the constant tremors and headaches.

"I didn't know about any of this when I tried copying Jay's formula, but there's a reason -or rather, six reasons- why there hasn't been more interest in it. Get it wrong -like I did- and if needing a calorie rich diet is the worst that happens to you then you got off lucky." He steps back. "And the symptoms are progressive."

!!!

"You're not showing any-?"

"No, no." He shakes his head. "It just really brought it home, you know? Between that and Velocity Nine there's more examples of super speed gone wrong than gone right. My healing potion helped him, but it didn't make the symptoms vanish."

"Okay. Do you know what went wrong with the version of the formula the Russians used on him?"

"Yeah, for some reason? They weren't all that keen on talking to Jay about it."

"But would they be willing to now?" His face stills. "I mean, I could understand them… The super soldier producing part of the military, at least… Not being willing to help a defector. But if he's dead and the s-. Partner of the current Flash puts in an official request for information…"

He frowns thoughtfully. "You think?"

"They want one of theirs on the Justice League and this could win them points. They know that Jay isn't sharing with the US military." I shrug. "They might go for it. Might not, but it won't hurt to ask."

Wallace nods. "That's a great idea. I'll call Uncle Barry-."

"What happened to the blue ones?" Canis jerks his chin at their hologram. "Were they slain in battle?"

Wallace shrugs. "We don't really know. I mean, given how severe their symptoms were they'd probably be dead by now, but the last we heard of them was when they got shipped back to Russia after failing to stop Red Trinity coming over to our side."

"Then they're the first thing we ask about."

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Zigzag 6

next

4th May

18:29 GMT +10

The swirling lights from Canis' Boom Tube fade behind us as we walk across a small plaza opposite the Transfiguration Cathedral in Khabarovsk. Fifteen hour time difference. We're going to be feeling this in the morning.

Richard, Wallace and I attract a few stares from the passers by. They give us a little space but they're clearly not afraid. Then Canis comes through the Boom Tube on Brut's back and they start backing up in earnest. I'm not completely clear why he wanted to come. He said it was because our conversation made him aware of how ignorant he was of Earth's history, but that didn't ring entirely true with me. Maybe he's finding the lack of violence just as trying as his steed does.

Brut pads towards the curved wall of the… I don't know what that's supposed to be. "Is this some sort of monument?"

Richard has his arm computer up, a local map on the screen. "It's the local Great Patriotic War memorial. 'Great Patriotic War' is what Russians call World War Two."

"And you're not allowed to smash it."

Canis doesn't respond. He just nudges Brut forwards, heading for the start of the curved wall. I suppose that he wants to do a circuit. As he reaches the start of the curve a young woman walks around from the far side, her attention focused on the phone in her right hand. She only regains her awareness of her surroundings a fraction of a second before walking into Brut's muzzle, a sharp intake of breath marking the change.

Canis looks down at her, head tilted slightly to the right. "Human. Move." She backs up, cringing as she does so. Canis makes a flapping motion with his left hand. "To the side." She scurries crablike out of the way. Canis nudges Brut back into motion, then something appears to occur to him. He leans forward in his saddle. "Good Human. Well done."

Richard smiles. "At least he didn't call her a Lowlie."

Wallace turns his head around, taking in our environment. "Your contact said he'd meet us here, right?"

"Yes, but he's on a bit of a public relations campaign so you should probably expect-."

We all hear the roar of their thrust packs before the Rocket Reds appear, blasting heads first through the clouds before cutting their engines, orientating themselves feet first and switching to gravity repulsion. They descend slowly and elegantly to the ground just in front of us. They get greeted with cheers from the gathering crowd, and cameras start flashing. This is far from the first time I've seen the Russians' Advanced Suits, but they still look really nice. I don't think they've been deployed in any combat zones yet but the Russian government has been making every effort to publicise their existence in the run up to the Victory Day Parade next week. In virtue of the fact that they're going to be acting as our escorts, the long-barrelled energy weapons usually attached to their arms are absent. Since this is an official mission and not purely a photo opportunity they're keeping their visors down, falling into parade rest with a gap of about four metres between them.

Then Dmitri Pushkin plummets to the ground between them. His personal armour actually looks in some ways less advanced than the Advanced Suits. The chest plate is a large solid looking plate while theirs are made of overlapping segments. His shoulder guards are large and have visible articulation points, while theirs are far more streamlined. The most flexible parts of his body are covered in what looks like thick lycra when contrasted against the clearly armoured parts of the Advanced Suits.

But the appearance is deceitful, as him casually straightening up without leaving a crater in the ground demonstrates. I know for a fact that his armour is about fifty times more resilient than theirs at its weakest point and contains electronic systems a couple of hundred years more advanced than theirs. I'm actually a little curious where the Russians got that stuff from, because there's no way that Russia has the technology to invent it themselves. I don't think anywhere on Earth does.

His face plate flickers and his face appears. The helmet isn't designed to be removed while the armour is in use, but it can use integrated holographics to display his face. It's a little disturbing, actually. The curve it follows makes it look like some sort of early motion capture thing, nearly there but subtly off and not quite natural. He smiles, throwing his arms wide. "Hello, my friends! Welcome to Russia!"

"Thank you for inviting us, Sergeant. May I introduce my colleagues-."

"Kid Flash! And Robin, the Boy Wonder!" Wallace smirks at the use of Richard's extended appellation. I wonder where it originally came from? Sergeant Pushkin takes a few paces forward, his steps quiet despite the weight of his armour. "It is good to meet you!" He holds out his right hand, and I note that the Advanced Suit on the right is training its sensors on the scene. Probably taking a recording for publicity purposes.

Might be a bit cheeky, but that is why they agreed to do this. I step forward and take hold of his hand. I'm probably less well known around here than the other two, but I am still technically in charge of this expedition. I'm not wearing my power armour for the same reason that the Advanced Suits aren't carrying their guns so hopefully the visual distinction is sufficiently clear for them. "Good to meet you at last. I've heard a good deal about you."

"And I of you, my friend." His grip is firm without being crushing. If I understood the description correctly his suit uses a system not unlike the way Kryptonian resilience works to provide strength boost in every direction, rather than relying on reinforcing Human muscle systems as the other types do. It's also supposed to provide tactile feedback, though I haven't checked that for myself. "I believe we have you to thank for our warm weather this spring."

"So they tell me."

I didn't think much about it at the time, but making the arctic colder naturally caused the air over it to contract and draw in additional air from the surrounding area. The result wasn't that great, but -according to a meteorologist who had a minor rant on the subject on the League's message board- air was sucked up from the equator, resulting in slightly warmer than usual weather in both Russia and Canada. Technically, the same thing is happening now as the Ice Fortress turns its guns on the Antarctic, but with the nearest land mass being further away and over a wide ocean it will be far less noticeable.

I step aside, nodding Wallace forwards. "Hi.. Sergeant. Thanks for doing this."

"It is not a problem! We are happy to help our American colleagues!"

I can't say that the Director sounded quite as enthusiastic as Sergeant Pushkin about it when I spoke to him over the phone, but I can't imagine that he'd say this if he didn't have authorisation. Heh, I think a childhood of watching narrowly post-Cold War cartoons has me braced for some sort of daft double cross.

Richard takes his hand next. "I'm sure the Justice League will appreciate this."

"I hope so. Ah, I have a daughter your age. Maybe I could introduce you before you leave?"

"Ah…"

"Of course, she cannot become Rocket Red Girl Wonder! Hahah!"

"Ah. Yeah." He and Wallace share a slightly uncomfortable glance.

"Because she is a girl and we only have adult sized suits! And because her mother would kill me." He turns his head side to side, then returns his attention to me. "If there is no one else, we have a car-."

My eyes widen as Brut leaps over the memorial. The Advanced Suits clock him almost immediately and instinctively jerk their arms up slightly before remembering that their guns aren't there. Canis will land almost exactly behind Sergeant Pushkin, which is exactly the sort of dick move I told him not to-.

Sergeant Pushkin rotates, right arm extended, and catches Brut in mid air by the left side of his neck and shoves him aside. As the great Dog starts to tumble Sergeant Pushkin moves his arm right, catching Canis in the chest and lifting him out of the saddle before setting him on the ground.

Canis blinks, stunned, as Brut rolls to his feet and shakes his head.

"You must be Canis! I was wondering where you were hiding! That was an amusing test of my reflexes!" Sergeant Pushkin leans closer to him. "But don't try that again or I will put you over my knee, boy."

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Zigzag 7

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4th May

18:37 GMT +10

"So, ah… Who do I need to focus on pleasing in order to get into the Justice League?"

Richard and Wallace were ushered into one car and I into this one. They're not limousines, but they're perfectly comfortable. Cars to work in. They rather assumed that Canis would ride along on his own, which was completely accurate. He isn't really keen on Earth vehicles, preferring to ride or walk short distances and Boom Tube long ones. And haven't we had complaints about that. I asked, and while he's heard of quiet Boom Tubes he's got no idea how to make them.

Despite the fact that he's flying above the cars -either as air cover or to show off- Sergeant Pushkin's voice comes over perfectly clearly over the car's intercom. Which is interesting, because it doesn't have any radio capacity.

"It doesn't work like that. If you're actually able to help Kid Flash dig out the information he's looking for then their opinion of you will improve, but it will probably improve anyway as long as you don't let anyone actively obstruct him."

"Yes, but… Ah… Batman and the Flash are both founding members. Batman is the chairman of the League, which suggests that it is Robin I need to impress the most. But I was told that you are our fixer-."

"Whow, whow. I.. know enough about how Russian politics works to know that that's an overstatement."

"But, you were to make a recommendation. That was the deal you made in exchange for being allowed to transfer your flying fortress through the Russian side of the Bering Straits."

"Right, and I did. But I can't be seen to shill for you."

"I'm not sure that I understand."

"Any League member can nominate someone, but entry can only be granted through a unanimous vote. Formally speaking, since I'm not a Justice League member myself I can't nominate someone but Batman has been willing to look at people I've drawn his attention to. Your name and details were on a long list of people with useful skills that I gave to him and made available to other League members. However, if I actively campaign on behalf of a particular candidate or engage in horse trading it looks suspicious and risks setting people against you regardless of your qualifications. A nominee needs to avoid having anyone vote against them. One vote against, and you're not getting in."

There's no immediate response, so I have the rings feed me information on our route. Hard to tell exactly, but I'd guess that our destination is a group of buildings that the CIA believes to be some sort of intelligence storage facility. The route hasn't exactly been cleared, but some of the roads branching off the one which we're on have police temporarily blocking them.

"Horse trading? I'm not sure that I understand."

"Oh, sorry. Your English is so good that it slipped my mind that you might not know some expressions. 'Horse trading' refers to underhanded dealings or compromises. In this context, it could be getting Major Atom's support by promising to do anything I could to torpedo Major Force's application." Which -to be honest- I'd have cheerfully done anyway.

"Does that not happen anyway?"

"No. Since the League hasn't ever had political oversight, they've never had to temper their idealism. If it looked like you were causing that sort of thing to start happening, far more than one member would vote against you. If one or two people voted against you, you could build your reputation for a year or two and then apply again. If a lot of them vote against you, it wouldn't be that simple."

"I see. So, how do you rate my chances?"

"Better than most people's."

"Heh, not as good as yours, surely?"

Heh. That's funny because unless Nabu turns out to be a lot more reasonable than I think he is, Circe actually will get on the League before me.

"Don't sell yourself short. They already have three Lanterns, and if I'm off-world as often as the Greenies are then I'm a much less appealing prospect. No, your problem is that another of my recommendations was that they consider changing the structure of the League, which means everything I've said about their selection process might suddenly become invalid. And I know for a fact that Wonder Woman wants more women on the League, and Rocket wants more black people… And she's going to be getting upped herself before too long. I think I've convinced Batman that drawing on talent from a wider variety of countries is a good idea, but that means that you're competing against the best in the world rather than the far smaller pool you would have been otherwise."

"Ehh… It might have been better if you had waited a year before doing that."

"Hah, yes, you're not wrong."

"So, what are my problems? What do I need to do to convince them that they aren't really problems?"

"American superheroes act within a certain set of social assumptions. Someone from another country, particularly from the military, could be seen as a divergence from that."

"But Major Atom is a military officer. And Accomplished Perfect Physician is Chinese."

"Accomplished Perfect Physician actively fought against the Chinese military and was imprisoned by China for several years. The League aren't at all worried about him trying to do things the Chinese way because he prefers their way. Major Atom grew up in a country where superheroes operated independently. Even during the Cold War, there was never an American equivalent of the People's Heroes. Every group, the Justice Society, Infinity Incorporated, the Justice League and a lot of other teams most people have never heard of, were independent."

"I hope they don't expect me to pick a fight with my government."

"I'll be honest: it wouldn't hurt. That photo opportunity when we got here was fine, but it portrayed you as part of the Russian military. Major Atom doesn't turn up to League meetings in his air force uniform. As a League member you could be operating in any country in the world, including ones that don't have good relations with Russia. They've got to know that you're there as a League member, not as a Russian soldier. I mean… You people still have Steel Wolf on the books. What do you think would happen if someone reminded the Ukraine of that and then you tried to go there?"

"They would not be too pleased to see me."

"The last thing you need when you're trying to stop a supervillain is to get turned away at the border because your face doesn't fit. And the last thing the League needs is every country demanding that one of their people get on the League."

"I.. understand. I will need to think about it."

"What exactly are your orders about this whole thing?"

"I was told that our metahuman development program has not been interested in super speed since the defection of Red Trinity, and that as a result all of our research and historical records on the subject were to be made available. The second part is what I was ordered to ensure, so whether the first part is true or not is not entirely relevant. If we are still interested, you are permitted to find that out. I have not specifically been ordered to hide anything, though I am supposed to politely discourage you from looking into any other programs."

"Any idea why they stopped looking into super speed?"

"I was not even born when that decision was made. I have been working on this armour; I have never had anything to do with the chemical modification programs."

"Is that a no?"

"I mean to say that I do not know. Maybe they could not make it work correctly?"

That doesn't… Sound like the way the Soviet Union operated. Uh, maybe having people they publicised as being national heroes retiring seriously injured would have been a problem? Maybe they didn't want to provoke Jay into handing the formula over to the US army, given that he had the complete version? Heck, mass produced superhumans could have provoked a nuclear exchange, or a super powered war. The separation between heroes and government on the US side really limited how far things could go there. Did someone on the Soviet side realise where things could go and shut the project down? I don't know. I'm not sure it matters for Wallace, unless it's something to do with how the condition deteriorates.

I'll look into it when we get to the archive.

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Zigzag 8

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4th May

19:44 GMT +10

One of the Russian archivists assigned to help us drops another box of files on the table in front of us, sending a cloud of dust into the air.

Oh joy.

Richard looks up and winces slightly. "That's thirty seven boxes of receipts and expense forms."

Wallace turns another page in the research journal he's looking through, a filament from the ring allowing him to read the Cyrillic script. "I thought they were Communist. Shouldn't all that have been 'given according to their need'?"

I lift off the box lid and have the rings float out the first folder. "The Soviet Union had to spend quite a lot of time and effort forcing people to keep working within the bounds of a theoretically utopian but basically nonsensical economic system. Modern Russian nationalism is much more rational."

The rings get to work scanning the receipts and purchase orders, adding the data to what I've collected so far. They're bringing us everything directly related to the project which created the Blue and Red Trinities, which isn't exactly a small amount given that the project started in the twenties and wasn't formally terminated until the sixties. We don't know exactly what they were doing in the twenties given that that was years before Mister Garrick first developed the Garrick Formula. My Hail Mary guess is that it has something to do with the Danner Formula, but all I've got to go on is petrol requisition orders and given what was happening in Russia during the twenties it's a minor miracle I've got those.

Wallace looks up at me. "Can't you just load all that into your brain?"

"Last time I did something like that I spent weeks uncontrollably muttering quotes in Themysciran Greek. I don't speak Themysciran Greek. Any progress?"

He shakes his head. "They kept pretty thorough lab notes, but none of this has anything to do with the Garrick Formula. Hey, you know what a 'Sopernik' is?"

Richard leans in to look over his shoulder. "'Sopernik' means 'rival'. But it's a Russian word, the power ring should translate it for you."

"Not if it's being used as a proper name. Or a code name."

Richard looks sceptical. "How does the ring know?"

"I'll ask the Controllers for you. But if you think about it, so many words' meanings change depending on context that power ring translation systems would have to be able to pick up on it somehow."

"I guess. What does it say about the 'Rival'?"

"Not much. If it was a person, then they're responsible for a lotta these experiments getting performed. This is.. nineteen fifty two."

"Were they someone working in the army?"

"It's a lab diary, Rob. It's not going to say anything like that."

Richard starts pacing. "Okay, so how many people who were around in the fifties had super speed?"

"Johnny Quick, Jay Garrick, Max Mercury, Edward Clariss… Probably a bunch of other people whose names we don't know. I mean, Marvel and Adom get very high flight speeds and fast reflexes from Shazam… Sally Sonic was still a legitimate superhero then and her peak airspeed is supersonic."

"So the odd one out…"

"Might well be one of the ones we've never heard of. We still don't know the names of all of the Red Shadow operatives, to say nothing of metahumans and magic users who might have been scooped up in the Soviet Union's metahuman development program."

Richard sighs. "Yeah, but if I start with Clariss at least I've got somewhere to start. He dropped off the radar in nineteen forty nine. Do we have anything for nineteen forty nine?"

"No." / "Nothing that helps."

The three of us look at Canis.

And we keep looking. A few moments later he lays the bundle of written orders he's reviewing down on the table and looks up at us. "Have I done something to displease our masters?"

Richard shrugs. "Trying to pounce on Rocket Red wasn't exactly League standard operating procedure."

"He was showing you off to the Russian Lowlies like prize farm animals. It was degrading."

Wallace frowns with eyebrows raised. "It's a photo-op, dude. Lets people know that we're on the case. Whatever it is and…" Another box of files is deposited next to him. "However long it takes."

"But we're warriors. Not scriveners. Do they not have slaves for things like this? Lantern, those fat orange things you used as expendable infantry?"

"Praexis Demons can barely speak. I'm pretty sure they can't read and I don't think I'd be inclined to trust them if they could."

"Robin, surely the Batman has peons whom we could rely upon to do-?"

Richard shakes his head. "I don't know what you think Batman does, but back in Gotham we usually use a computer indexing program for things like this. When the data isn't on computer… This is just how long it takes."

Wallace nods. "The Flash can read through a mountain of stuff really fast, but that only works for finding key words. He doesn't remember much of what he read afterwards."

"In other words, suck it up. Or, find something faster and we can stop sooner."

Richard fiddles with his computer some more while I continue tabulating receipts. Nothing's exactly standing out, but I suppose that I'd need to know a lot more about material availability during that period to really evaluate that. "Have you guys seen anything about what happened to Blue Trinity yet?"

"I've got some blood tests from the sixties."

"Nothing here. Probably." I'm getting a rough idea of the sorts of thing that might have been going on at particular sites. The link between test animals no longer being ordered in and pest control chemicals being ordered in large quantities nearly makes me chuckle.

Nearly.

"So.. how sure are we that they're actually dead?"

"We're not. But…" I look at Wallace. "You said that the animals they tested the incomplete formula on stopped getting worse if they were prevented from moving, right?"

"Ye-ah..?"

"So… They'd be quite old. And they'd have to have been sedated pretty much continuously… Ah, Canis, have you got anything about what they did after failing to prevent Red Trinity defecting?"

"There was a hearing, then they were ordered back to their original test centre near Khonuu. Nothing beyond that."

Wallace, Richard and I look at one another. Wallace voices the question first. "You don't think they're still there, do you?"

I tap the intercom. "Sergeant Pushkin, do you have permission to tell us where Blue Trinity are?"

"Permission, yes, but I don't know that. I had assumed that they were dead. Do you want me to ask the Director?"

"And we can go anywhere relating to the Russian super speed study program, right?"

"Unless my orders are changed, yes. But, those files must stay in this building, for security reasons."

"Can we leave them out and come back to them?"

"Yes, of course."

I take my hand off the intercom and raise my eyebrows at Wallace. He shakes his head. "Even if they are there, I don't know how it helps me."

"I can do power ring scans on someone further along the decay path. And I can get Sephtian to do the same. Look, whatever answers we can get out of this-" I look over the file boxes. "-are buried here somewhere and finding them could take weeks. Pursuing another avenue of investigation might be more productive."

"I guess." He pushes the lab diary away slightly. "Though I'm not sure that meeting the worst case scenario is gunna do much to make me feel better about all this."

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Zigzag 9

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4th May

21:27 GMT +11

The greatcoat-wearing sentries raise their rifles as we step out of the Boom Tube, before a spotlight illuminates Sergeant Pushkin. That causes the rifles to go back down and right arms to snap upwards in a salute.

"No, my friends!" Sergeant Pushkin steps towards them, both arms making a lowering motion. "I am a sergeant, not an officer! You don't need to salute whenever I break wind!"

This is a bit more like the Russia I was expecting. There's still snow on the ground and the temperature is below zero. Khabarovsk was positively balmy! Wallace clearly doesn't appreciate it, visibly wincing in the chill wind. His costume has heating elements but the top of his head and the lower part of his face are bare. Neither Richard, Canis nor Brut seem particularly bothered by the drop in temperature.

"Ah… Yes, sergeant." A corporal takes a few steps forwards. "I am sorry, but this is a restricted area. I will need to see your authorisation, and…" He leans a little to his right, getting a clear look at the rest of us. "Your friends..?"

"Well done, corporal!" Sergeant Pushkin walks towards him, reaching into one of his storage pouches. "Too many people would say, 'he is a famous hero, I will just wave him through'."

"Ah…"

"I respect a man who does his job diligently. You are a contract soldier?" The corporal shakes his head as he reaches out to take Sergeant Pushkin's written orders. "Why not?"

He looks over the first page, then flips through to the second. "I was conscripted out of school. Then the army sent me to Siberia. I always thought that a man needed to commit a crime to get sent out here."

"Bah! You have it easy! I am posted on the North Pacific coast!" He holds up his right gauntlet. "I am lucky they didn't need to make this with only two fingers!"

The corporal nods with a chuckle, then hands back the orders. "This seems to be in order. But I will need to check with my commanding officer."

"Of course, corporal. Lead on."

The corporal waves at the other guards and they grudgingly resume their patrol while he leads us in the direction of the guard station at the side of the road leading into the Khonuu facility. It isn't some sort of hut designed to keep the wind off; it's a genuine concrete bunker. What little glass there is in the slit windows is extremely tough and reinforced with wire.

Wallace leans towards Richard. "Anyone else feel like we're in some kind of spy thriller?"

Richard thinks for a moment, then shakes his head. "Don't think you're a spy if they've got orders to let you look at their documents."

Canis peers out through the dark. "What is this place?"

"This was where a lot of the Soviet Union's metahuman research was done. These days-" As I learned through long and painful analysis of their receipts. "-it's more of a storage facility."

"I know what it is. I want to know why it is. Why does it still exist? And why did those warriors it produced not overturn your world?"

"Why is because it's in an unpleasant location. I doubt they keep anything really top secret in the archive back in Khabarovsk. Piles of receipts, sure. Actual blood samples of someone with super speed that someone might be able to use to reconstruct the Formula from, no. They needed somewhere to put that and they already had this place up and running. Easier to just run it down than build somewhere new."

"And it works for p-p-punishment duty." Wallace shivers. "Shoulda brought a scarf." I attach a filament to him and grant him an environmental shield. "And my gratitude is only slightly tempered by the fact that you could have done that two minutes ago."

"Punishment duty?"

Wallace nods. "Yeah, you know: some guys screw up but not badly enough to get them kicked out completely… You stick 'em somewhere where you need someone but where it's not worth putting your good troops. What, you don't do that on Apokolips?"

"No. Anyone who had failed that badly would be killed or tortured. Or possibly both. It would depend on who their overseer was." He thinks for a moment. "Of course, the truly devout would torture and kill themselves without the need for further intervention. Alas, few have that level of devotion."

Wallace slowly nods, then takes a step away from Canis. "Riiiiight."

"But what of their lack of success?"

Richard frowns. "Maybe they were worried about Jay handing out the Formula to the US military?"

Wallace tilts his head to the left for a moment. "Super speed mutually assured destruction. Glad that never happened."

"What do you mean, mutually assured destruction? Surely the side with most people capable of super speed would emerge victorious?"

Wallace shakes his head. "Super speed doesn't let you do everything. If someone got nuclear weapons in the air on planes or missiles there wouldn't be much that anyone could do to stop it. Plus… We had to rebuild three city blocks when the Flash and Reverse Flash fought each other. Even if nukes didn't get launched I don't know how much world there would be left afterwards."

"And?"

"What do y'mean, 'and'?"

"The two nations hated each other, were rivals of each other for supremacy over your world with near equal power. On Apokolips…" He shakes his head. "Were they gods rather than nations, there could be no peace between them. Such a weapon as these Trinities represent would be used. And your Jay Garrick would certainly not be given the opportunity to keep his discovery to himself."

Wallace holds up his hands at his sides, palms upwards. "Did you not hear how that would have destroyed the world?"

"Planets are hardy things. With reasonable preparation, some of the population of one side would be able to survive and rebuild later."

"They'd be rebuilding from nothing. Billions of people would die, including almost everyone from their own side."

Canis frowns uncomprehendingly. "But they would have won?"

Wallace waves dismissively at Canis, earning a low growl from Brut. "Apokolips is messed up."

"Okay!" Sergeant Pushkin waves goodbye to the corporal as he heads back towards us. "My orders have been checked and verified. We may enter. Again, there will be places we cannot go, but they will be polite when they let you know."

"Are they here?" Wallace sounds excited by the prospect. "Blue Trinity?"

"Ahh… He did not know."

Richard frowns. "How could he not know?"

"Operational security in places like this is very tight. If they are here, only the scientists directly working on them would know of it."

"Just them?"

"And the Director of Future Weapon Development."

Wallace shrugs. "Could we just ask him?"

Sergeant Pushkin turns to walk into the facility. "He is a very busy man. Besides, you will see for yourselves in a few minutes."

"Oh El, can you just scan the place?"

Oh dear. "Doesn't look like it. Sergeant, when was this place warded?"

"When it was built. They had gypsy witches brought here to protect it from enemy magic. American parapsychics did not spend all of their time staring at Goats."

Oh thank goodness.

"There are also.. other measures… Automated defences. Things to stop the volunteers leaving without authorisation."

Wallace looks uncomfortable. "Automated defenses?"

"Do not worry. They will all be deactivated for our visit."

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Zigzag 10

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4th May

21:36 GMT +11

The Major in charge of the facility steps aside with a smile. "This is as far as I have clearance to proceed." He holds out his right hand in the direction of the doors to the laboratory as an older man in a suit comes through. "I will hand you over to Doctor Egorov. If you need anything, let me know."

"Thank you, sir." Sergeant Pushkin turns to Doctor Egorov. "Do I need to present my orders again?"

"No." The doctor shakes his head. "The Director informed me that you might be coming." He turns his attention to the rest of us. "And these are the Americans?"

"Actually, I'm Themysciran."

"Ah. I stand corrected." He steps forward and looks Wallace over. "And you are Kid Flash."

"Yeah, that's me. Do you know if you've got Blue Trinity in there, or is there someone else we need to talk to?"

Doctor Egorov turns around and beckons us to follow him. "Not out here. Inside."

He pushes his way back through the double doors, Wallace hot on his heels. Robin, Sergeant Pushkin and I follow on behind. Canis opted to stay outside with Brut rather than 'waste his time on more purposeless debate'. Through the doors there's a short corridor which terminates in a heavily fortified door. Doctor Egorov is leaning over an iris scanner mounted on the wall next to it, his access card pressed against the adjacent reader. There's a clunk and the door unlocks and starts to slide open. On the far side is… Another short corridor with another fortified door.

"This way."

We file on through, and I note that there are several cameras mounted at points on the wall. The door we just passed through clanks shut behind us and the lights around us dim slightly.

"Good. Now I may answer your questions. Yes, the surviving members of Blue Trinity are held here."

Richard cocks his head to the side. "Surviving?"

Doctor Egorov nods. "Doctor Krulik was more concerned with getting a functional result as swiftly as possible than with the subject's long term survival. The three you know as Blue Trinity were simply those who lived the longest. Of the rest, their remains were either cremated or they are stored here."

Wallace starts to smile. "Can I talk to them?"

"No." Doctor Egorov shakes his head. "They are kept in a state of… Biological hibernation, for their own safety."

"You mean suspended animation, right?"

"No, not suspended. But slowed down a great deal." There's a loud buzz from a wall-mounted speaker and the inner door clunks open. "You will not be able to speak with them, but you will be given access to all of our records."

"Why are they in hibernation?"

"One of the symptoms they developed was a constant super speed shaking. They became a danger to themselves and to everyone around them. In a state of hibernation, this is not a problem."

He leads us into the inner laboratory. The first things I see are the stationary gun positions and a group of soldiers. Richard frowns. "What's with all the security?"

"All of this was developed from a few notes passed to us by an informant in America in the forties. With what we have here, a person could create their own super speed soldiers. In the Cold War America and Russia did not dare use such weapons on one another, but today there are hundreds of groups around the world who would not hesitate. And once one person does it, everyone else will need to follow suit." He shakes his head. "I have no desire to live in such a world. We do not have the budget for the more extreme anti-metahuman defences, but we have taken fairly comprehensive steps against the threats we can predict."

"All of our cameras are ultra high speed, relaying their images to a high speed computer server with advanced pattern recognition programming. That in turn controls explosive shrapnel charges. I know that people with super speed struggle to fight at full speed." We go around another corner and get our first view of a laboratory. "By timing the detonations, we can corral an attacker into an area and kill them even at high speed. Particularly when the gas is taken into account."

"Wouldn't that kill you too?"

He nods. "Probably. When we found out that the current Flash had the ability to vibrate through solid objects we had the walls reinforced with multiple materials of differing density, with a constant high voltage electric current running through wires contained inside it."

"Yikes."

Doctor Egorov smiles faintly. "It would work, then? That is good, because we were working from very limited information."

"Maybe. I'm not trying it to find out."

"We also have more twists and turns than someone like the Flash could navigate at his maximum speed. Even if it is-" The corridor we're in doubles back on itself. "-a little inconvenient."

Richard taps his arm computer. "What about someone with super strength?"

"That would depend on the degree. At lower levels, we have enough conventional anti-armour weapons to cope. And again, gas has often proven to be effective. They still need to breathe, after all. If all else fails we have a nuclear self-destruct-"

!!!

"-system." We all look shocked. "Oh, there is no need to worry. It is a tactical nuclear device only, and both the American and Chinese governments have been informed of its existence. If we are forced to utilise it, it will not be the start of World War Three."

"That's not really the point."

He smiles in a rather creepy way. "Do you want to go and see it?" I shake my head. "Ah, anyway, we had to shut them all down while you are here. They all have to be automated, because normal Humans can't respond quickly enough and we did not have time to program the computers with your particulars. One last corridor."

Wallace looks around us. "So… What's protecting this place now?"

"A platoon of soldiers and four superheroes." He stops just outside another security door. "How long were you planning to stay?"

"I don't know. I need to see everything you've tried to make Blue Trinity better."

Doctor Egorov frowns. "Why? You had access to the pure form of the Garrick Formula, and I am reliably informed that he himself is in good health."

"I had access to his records, sure. But I tried replicating it with a high school chemistry set when I was thirteen."

"Hah!" Doctor Egorov smiles, slapping Wallace on the back with his right hand. "Young man, you would fit in around here very well!" Wallace doesn't look particularly pleased as the door opens and he leads us into the room.

The three pods containing Blue Trinity are raised off the floor on biers displaying their medical information. Heart beat and respiration very slow, brain activity low. Not even dreaming. Inside the pods they're technically naked, but all the equipment plugged into them does a reasonable job of disguising it. Their heads are shaved to allow better access for the brain monitors, their mouths held open by tubes meant either to make sure that their airways remain unobstructed or feed them, I'm not sure. I can see seven different tubes going into their veins at various points.

The three of us just stand in front of them, staring. Sergeant Pushkin actually gasps. Doctor Egorov nods. "A sad way to treat them, but it is the best we can do for now." He points to a computer terminal at the side of the room. "What you want is over-."

Time slows.

Doctor Egorov flying backwards, his chest compressing past the point where his lungs could be intact.

The floor approaching my face, my environmental shield flaring.

Richard falling backwards, arms trailing out in front.

Sergeant Pushkin starting to crouch as the explosive charges appear all over his armour.

And a vague black shape standing in front of the pod containing Ivana Christina Borodin Molotova, hands thrusting forwards as the machinery flies apart.

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4th May

21:39:41 GMT +11

:41.4

Super speed attackers protocol. Construct armour begins to manifest around me along with tendrils which in a few relative moments will drop vertigo inducers onto the floor.

Wallace is blurring into motion, fighting… Someone. One of Richard's hands is reaching for a smoke bomb while the other stretches out to arrest his motion. Sergeant Pushkin's armour shudders as the first explosive goes off and at this speed I can see the expansion and compression of the air around the charge. I think that means that it failed to penetrate.

:41.7

The heavy external surface of the hibernation pod cracks and explodes away from where the black blur is standing, small pieces of metal and plastic shrapnel flying outwards in all directions.

Then there's a clear liquid in the air where the blur was standing and the blur is gone, joining in the yellow and white blurs currently making the dull grey painted-concrete walls a little brighter.

:42.0

Another explosive goes off on Sergeant Pushkin, this time on the back of his left knee. To someone unfamiliar with the design of his armour that might look like a vulnerable point, but it's certainly well beyond the capacity of a conventional explosive of that size to pierce. It does manage to make his leg jerk just as the guns on his forearms start to glow in preparation for firing.

:42.2

Doctor Egorov hits the far wall hard enough to cause the concrete immediately under his point of impact to crack and throw out a small cloud of concrete dust. I start sending a filament his way but I very much doubt that it will reach him in time to preserve his life.

:42.5

Sergeant Pushkin is wreathed in explosions as the rest of the charges detonate. I still don't think that those will be enough to actually hurt him through his armour but his sensors will probably take a second or two to adapt to the stimuli.

A cloud of smoke starts radiating outwards from Robin's smoke bomb. He hasn't bothered throwing it, he just set it off as soon as he got hold of it. He's worked out what we're fighting. One of those bombs will briefly fill this room, and this fight will be over before it can disperse. Wallace will have his goggles on, so hopefully it will impede his opponents more than him.

:42.8

The clear liquid strikes the floor and Ms Molotova's pod, whatever it touches steaming into nothingness. Wallace's Essence of Vitriol. Can't tell if it's going to hit her. One of the shapes darting around the room moves in an irregular fashion for a moment. Someone hit them? Can't tell for sure, and whoever it was recovered too quickly for me to identify them.

Sergeant Pushkin fires probably-blind across the room, two waves of purple plasma rapidly expanding outward. Area effect attack, sensible.

Richard jerks in the air, spinning around just before he hits the floor. I think something hit him in the head. Danner should be enough to keep him safe unless they really focus on him.

:43.0

Richard hits the floor, his smoke having spread around enough that the dashing speedsters are making visible air currents. I don't know what effect it's having on them. If they're saying anything it's happening too fast for my ear to make sense of it.

My construct armour is fully formed. A few cracks suddenly appear but like the Flash our assailants aren't able to hit at anything like F=MA. From the specifications the Russians gave me I know that it can take Sergeant Pushkin's shots as well, which is good because his explosion-affected aim means that I'm going to take a good hit from his right arm gun. The filament I'm sending towards Doctor Egorov is about half way across the room. I think I-

:43.1

-can reach him in time.

The white shape pauses just in front of him, right hand vibrating as it strikes out. Doctor Egorov's head bursts, flesh and bone cracking and ripping around the intruding limb as his cranium comes apart. Brains have excellent blood supplies and his is starting to spurt.

:43.2

The white shape is gone, moving back to the pods. Not Miss Molotova's pod, Mister Uminski's. Its hands touch the metal at the head end.

The vertigo inducers appear from subspace and I activate them immediately. White shape staggers visibly, and for a fraction of a second I see him.

:43.3

White body armour, looking unpleasantly like that worn by Truggs' mercenaries last year. Silver lightning bolt covering most of the chest. Flash fan? No, stupid. Given the publicity Mister Garrick's had over the years the lightning bolt is probably the image most strongly associated with super speed, if it wasn't anyway.

:43.6

Sergeant Pushkin corrects his aim at our stalled target and fires a narrow beam directly at them.

:43.9

The White Flash throws themself to the floor, ducking under Sergeant Pushkin's shot which burrows through the concrete wall on the far side of the medical bay.

:44.1

Wallace slams into the wall to my left.

:44.3

The door to the medical bay collapses as the black figure takes advantage of the momentary distraction of the one of us who can actually keep up with him to vibrate a series of holes in the metal. They don't appear to have been affected by my vertigo inducers at all. They're wearing ear plugs while their partner isn't?

:44.6

Wallace and black figure blur into motion once more while White Flash -NO!- shoves their left hand through the metal of Mister Uminski's pod. Their forearm turns red, though I can't tell whether the blood is theirs or his.

:44.8

Richard would survive chlorine gas but I'm not sure that Wallace would. And with the door open I'm not sure I could transmute enough to be disabling anyway.

My eyes glow orange as the smoke becomes too dense to see through conventionally. I try flying towards Mister Gregorovich in the faint hope that I can provide a distraction but I'm too damn slow!

:45.0

Richard rolls as he lands, reaching for a flashbang grenade.

White dashes to Mister Gregorovich's pod while black does something which appears to force Wallace to evade. Black then goes for Miss Molotova's pod.

Energy pulse!

Mental pathway damage limit reached. Acceleration discontinued.

Shit!

There's a gust of wind as Richard completes his roll and throws his flashbang towards the ruined doorway. Too late. Wallace staggers to a halt, his right hand holding his upper left arm as blood seeps through his costume. Outside I hear a series of explosions, then Sergeant Pushkin sprints for the exit.

I take a moment to check Blue Trinity. No, no good. The male members have had their heads shattered in the same fashion as Doctor Egorov while Miss Molotova has been removed, the tubes connecting her to her pod cut through. Orange light surges over Wallace as I repair his arm. It looks like Black Flash threw tiny fragments of metal at him with tremendous force. That done, I transition out to the speed wing's entrance.

"Aaaagh!" / "uuuuuuuUHHHHH."

The soldiers we passed on the way in lie on the ground, either dead or seriously injured. Black charred areas on the walls mark… The explosives. Someone must have reactivated them. But-.

Machine control. Sergeant Pushkin did it. He activated the explosives because stopping our attackers was more important than the lives of the soldiers.

He's just ahead of me in the antechamber, holding the bloody remains of the white attacker in his right arm. Black's… Not here. Must have gotten away. I scan on the off-chance, but I'm not surprised when I find nothing.

The rings glow as I turn my attention to the injured soldiers.

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5th May

01:22 GMT +11

"An unfortunate -though not wholly unanticipated- event."

The Director was here within two hours of the Major reporting the attack. We're standing in the base's briefing room and the Major has been glowing bright yellow since he got off the telephone. It's a bit of a joke about excessive security precautions; so secret that even his name is classified. Major Adam's name was sort of a secret while he was being 'Cameron Scott' but it was never actually classified. The whole masquerade was technically for his benefit.

The Director's name actually is a secret. On no document that I've been able to see is his real name recorded, which is weird given that he's technically just a political appointee. I can see his patterns of emotion easily enough: green-orange with no indigo. That might mean that he's a psychopath, but lower intensity examples of psychopathy often lend themselves to office environments. Did he used to be a Soviet superhero? I'm pretty sure that was Steel Wolf with him as a bodyguard, and for that nutter to be willing to do bodyguard work he must consider the Director to be absolutely essential to the good of Russia.

The Director makes eye contact with the Major. "You have arranged to have the bodies of the deceased members of Blue Trinity cremated."

"Yes, Director."

"With Blue Trinity no longer present, this facility has served its purpose. We will discuss this further when this matter is resolved. Dismissed."

The Major about faces and marches from the room. Even once he is outside with a wall between him and the Director he doesn't relax at all.

"Sergeant. Members of the Justice Youth. Given the speed with which the attack took place, you are to be commended on the speed of your reactions." He focuses on Wallace. "Kid Flash, you will be given all computer records we possess on the treatment regime given to Blue Trinity."

"But that Black.. Flash.. guy got away!"

"I am fully cognisant of that fact. But a brief review of the case suggests that the attackers took opportunistic advantage of a gap in our defences. No one but you knew exactly when you were coming here for long enough to arrange anything sophisticated. I see no reason to deny you our aid simply because your presence coincided with this incident."

"I didn't mean that! Why aren't you going after them?"

The Director's expression doesn't change. "Kid Flash, under my direct command I have Sergeant Pushkin, ten Rocket Reds with advanced suits, two platoons of Red Rockets with standard suits, a company of soldiers of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and various other specialists. With a phone call I can call upon any of the resources of the Russian government. I have the authority -should I deem it essential to the national good- to deploy a tactical nuclear device on my own recognisance. But where should I deploy it? If this 'Black Flash' is as fast as you then he could be anywhere within three thousand kilometres and moving faster than anything we could send after him. If he is as fast as the Flash then he could be anywhere on the Earth." Wallace wilts slightly. "No. Now is not the time for rash action. Now is the time for a careful discovery and examination of facts."

Canis grimaces. He is not happy about missing the fight, though I'm not sure what exactly he thinks he could have done. "What if your people have betrayed you?"

"Operative Truth of the Alliance will be interrogating everyone who could have known, but I think it unlikely that she will find what we are looking for. Postings here are not easily predictable and all communication is closely monitored."

Richard nods. "Who knows about this base?"

"That this base exists is not a secret. Precisely what was housed here was a secret known to very few, though as you yourself discovered it is a logical place to look for someone interested in Russia's attempts to create super speed."

"Did you have any kind of tracking devices on Blue Trinity?"

"Yes. They were removed from them during the attack."

Richard looks at me. "Oh El?"

I shake my head. "Tried and failed, I'm afraid. Mister Director, do you have any idea how long it would take to reverse engineer a workable version of the Garrick Formula from Miss Molotova's body tissues?"

"When the Russian project began working on replicating Mister Garrick's work, we had more intelligence to go on and it still took us more than a decade. Now, with modern medical equipment and spectrographs, it may well take a lot less time. What is of greater concern to me is that they already have some method of bestowing super speed."

Wallace shrugs. "It was just Velocity Nine, right? That stuff still shows up in the US a couple of times a year. I guess if someone actually trained with it-."

"The initial blood test results do not appear to contain any Velocity Nine. Or show any of the signs of prior Velocity Nine use. That result will need to be checked of course, but the equipment here is advanced and the researchers are highly experienced with super speed related medicine. It is unlikely that they would make such a mistake."

Richard looks puzzled. "So if they've already got a way to give people super speed, why do they need the Garrick Formula?"

"Yes. That is an excellent question. If it is not Velocity Nine and not the Garrick Formula, what could it be? If we do not know what it is then it is far harder to narrow the range of possible culprits."

"So we've got no idea at all?!"

"I would not say that." The Director walks over to the room's podium and an image appears on the projection screen behind him. An elderly man's face, grizzled rather than frail. "This is Feodor Kerimov. He once held the rank of General in the Soviet Army. He resigned his commission during the early nineties. While he was on active duty he was a proponent of the aggressive use of enhanced soldiers, and I have uncovered people feeding him information on Russia's older programs on several occasions."

Richard frowns. "Then why haven't you arrested him?"

"As the Soviet Union's influence went into decline, he acquired certain business interests in Azerbaijan and now has a joint nationality. He has not returned to the Russian Federation for several years and has many well placed friends in the government of his new homeland. While I could arrest him, doing so would require me to send Russian operatives into an independent country."

Richard nods. "Which would be an act of war."

"Russia against Azerbaijan? No, it would not be much of a war. But the political fallout both internally and internationally as a result of Russia behaving in such a way towards a former Soviet Republic would be quite serious. I am not prepared to order that yet. Instead, I am minded to increase our intelligence gathering operations against him. If I have hard evidence to present, it may be that he would find that his new friends become a good deal less friendly."

Wallace makes a curling gesture with his right forearm. "We could go in. We're not Russian."

"If he ends up in Russian custody, I do not think that our critics will be mollified by the fact that he was put there by Americans."

"We can take a look around for you. If we find Miss Molotova or… Information he stole from Russian intelligence, you could get him arrested, right?"

The Director nods. "Yes, pressure could be brought to bear to make that happen. The Russian government would be grateful for any assistance you feel that you can provide on this matter."

"Alright, stop." Wallace twists his head in my direction. "Mister Director, are you sure that General Kerimov is responsible?"

"No, but I have no other active investigations into anyone with his proven interest and capacity. There are Russian officers and politicians who have expressed an interest in expanding our metahuman program, but none of them have been actively spying on our programs. There are paramilitary organisations who would like to gain information for terrorist purposes or for sale, but they lack the resources to perform such an attack."

"Right. Thank you for the information, Mister Director. We will relay your request for assistance to Batman."

"Oh El!" Wallace looks pained. "That could take all day! We need-!"

"We gather information covertly, Kid Flash. We wouldn't be charging in in any case. Taking a few additional hours to get there wouldn't change much. More importantly, deciding whether to deploy the team remains Batman's responsibility."

He takes a moment to get his instinctive truculence under control. "Fine."

"Since it's clearly so important to you, I will suggest that he send us. Mister Director, could you please give us everything you have on General Kerimov?"

"Of course. I would be pleased to."

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4th May

10:03 GMT -6

"So when the fook are we actually gonna start doin' somethin' worth whyle?"

Chester's covered in sweat from his latest exercise session, and on his bare chest I can see the angry red marks from his not yet fully healed injuries. Given the internal damage which is similarly still only mostly healed, I can only imagine that he'd be in a great deal of pain were it not for his mental abilities. But he seems determined not to let his injuries slow him down.

"Chester, the world hasn't fallen apart in the month you've been away."

There's a tiny green-purple flare around his eyes as he squares up to me. "No, but that bunch of bleed'n' murderin' pederast tossers 're still runnin' the show back home! I don't seem to recall you bein' this slow off the mark where Klarion was concerned!"

"That was because I could kill Klarion without a nation collapsing into anarchy." I raise my hands in a gesture of surrender. "I fully accept that eventually we will have to forcibly remove a sizable chunk of the British ruling class. But before that, there are things we need to do in preparation."

"When?"

"When the preparatory tasks are complete."

"You'll 'ave t'do a damn sight better than that, cock!"

"I'm not going to set an arbitrary deadline if the result of going ahead then would be just the same as going ahead now. But, since this has clearly got you so riled up, I'm prepared to involve you in the preparations. Is that acceptable to you?"

Chester's eyes dim and he tilts his head to the right, stretching his neck. "Think it might be. What d'you 'ave in mind?"

Vera glares at me. "Chester's not fully fit yet. You shouldn't-."

He looks at her in irritation. "Leave it out, Vera love."

I shake my head. "Miss Black, it is not my intent that you or your brother should directly engage the enemy. But I am not prepared to remove one government only for them to be replaced by another which is just as corrupt. Or for them not to be replaced at all. I need to know who is irredeemable, who is tainted, who is redeemable and who is virtuous."

"Not gunna be many o' that last one, I'll tell y'that fer nothin'."

"Be that as it may, I need to know. I need you and Miss Black to act as intelligence gathering operatives rather than thugs. Find out how far the canker goes, but do not take action against it yourselves."

"So, what? If we see one o' the bastards grabbin' a kid right in front of us-."

"Chester, please don't be facetious. In the unlikely event that happens, feel free to remonstrate with them. But this is a covert mission. The aim is to avoid contact where possible. I don't want to tip our hand until the time arrives to act."

Vera puts her hand on her hips. "And how exactly are we supposed to werk under cover? The police will all have awer pictures."

"I can provide holographic and arcane disguises." Thank you Queen Clea. "Unless they're putting a great deal of effort in, they won't be able to spot you."

"Alright." Chester grins as he nods. "This is a bit more my style. I'll take a shawer, then we can get right ont' it."

"Yes, once you've had a shower you can start writing me a mission plan." His grin droops a little. "I'm not having you go off half cocked again. Doctor Robbins is going to be monitoring you full time, and she's going to be in operational command."

His face creases up. "That old biddy?"

"'That old biddy' has more experience of this sort of work than the two of you put together. So yes. When you've put the plan together, get her to approve it and you can start right away. Is that acceptable?"

"Not bloody likely, cock. I've only been doin' this me entire adult life-."

"Manny, knock it off." The siblings Black have a brief staring contest, Chester's outrage competing with Vera's growing irritation at his behaviour. "He's right and you know it."

"Chester. Do it for a month, and if you've proven that you don't need the oversight I can reconsider. You're too valuable to me to risk you dying doing something stupid."

Vera gives her head a small nod. "Again."

"Both a' yeh?" He turns his head back in my direction, rolls his eyes and tosses his head. "A'right, fine. But this better-" He jabs his right forefinger at me. "-be goin' somewhere."

I smile a little more confidently. Losing Chester's services would be decidedly unfortunate, given his abilities. "It most assuredly is." Hm. Something I was going to-. Ah! "Before you go. Is there any chance you might be able to talk your former colleagues around?"

Vera snorts. "Not bleedin' likely. You saw what they did t' Manny."

"Actually-" I frown at him. "-Chester never said exactly how that happened. I assumed police marksmen."

"Fook off. Police marksmen me hairy white arse." Chester wrinkles his nose. "Hard to shoot someone who knows what yeh thinkin'."

"Does the British government have telepath blocking technology?"

"Nah cock. They've got fookin' robots, h'ant they?"

I fold my arms across my chest. "News to me, chum."

Chester points to his forehead with his right forefinger. "Can't hear 'em 'cause they don't really think."

"They're built and operated by awer former colleague, Penny Dolmann. Doubt they'd 'ave told her why Manny did what he did."

"Not that she thought all that much a' me in the furst place. Probably jus' though I was livin' down t'her opinion."

"Exactly how good are these robots?"

Chester shakes his head. "Bit tougher than a normal bloke an' they can fly. I coulda coped, 'cept fer than fooker Derek Kelly."

I look at Vera with my eyebrows raised. "Awer old boss. He's in charge of awer unit. Used t'be in the SAS."

"Right bastard he is 'n all."

Vera nods. "My country, right or wrong."

I raise my eyebrows. "If right, to keep it right; and if wrong, to set it right?"

"What?"

"That's the rest of the quote. By a man named Carl Schurz?"

"I didn't know that, and I don't think Derek does either."

"Okay, so what's so scary about him?"

"He's invulnerable. Can't 'urt 'im at all." Chester sneers in disgust. "I can't even hear his brain, let alone mess about with it."

Vera nods. "That, and he's as strong as he needs t' be. Hit him and it won't even knock him over. Try wrestling with him and youw'll lose, however strong you are."

"Invulnerable? I was about to say that there's no such thing…"

Chester shakes his head, apparently pleased at getting the chance to lecture me. "Not 'avin' you on, cock. His dad gave him this magic jewel thingey. Don't remember what it was called. His dad used to wear it 'round his neck on a chain. Derek -bein' a crazy bastard- had 'is chest cut open so they could stick it inside."

I nod. "Logical. It can't fall off that way."

"You might wanna watch yerself. If I'm on his shit list, you'wer definitely there as well."

"Eh, if it comes to it I'll just throw him into space. Alright, I think that's everything. You can go and get started-."

"Robbins to Grayven."

I raise my ring to my ear. "Grayven here, go ahead."

"Your guests are here."

I nod. Today's other scheduled activity. "Thank you, Doctor. I'll go and greet them. Would you please ask Lynne and Sunset to join me downstairs?"

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4th May

10:09 GMT -6

I step out of the boom tube into the mildly landscaped ruins of Challengerville. One of Jean's ongoing projects is directing the G-Trolls and G-Elves to do a bit of a tidy up, but I didn't want them to remove anything structural. Just as the US military dumps spare tanks to create havens for marine life, these ruins are now home to many different types of insects, birds and small mammals, to say nothing of all of the plant species.

"Hi Grayven."

Zatanna is in full costume… Or rather, armour. The same armour I created for her. It seems that she hasn't taken advantage of Scott's services. That pleases me. I'd judge that the gold glow is a little brighter than last time I saw her, but… That was a while ago. I should probably have done more in that regard.

Wallace merely nods at me. He's in costume as well.

I bow. "Once again... Welcome to my home. Come freely. Go safely; and leave something of the happiness you bring."

Zatanna's face goes blank for a moment, then she gets it and giggles. Wallace looks slightly perturbed. "I'm sure that was some kinda movie quote, but can you just get on with whatever you wanted us for? I've got plans for this week."

"As you wish. There is something… Somethings I wish to show you. But first… Zatanna, that commission I asked you to investigate..?"

Wallace glances at her with a slight frown. She looks down for a moment. "I can do it. But… You're with the Light now. I'm not sure I should."

Wallace's eyes narrow. "What commission?"

I decide to spare Zatanna the awkwardness. "A personal mana infusion device. It would increase the recharge rate of a mage and rapidly improve the growth of a New God's soul structures. I can create a crude approximation myself-" Or at least get Sunset to do it. "-but it would require the user to remain in one place while it's active."

"Whow. No. Zatanna, you can't."

"Wallace, what do you think the Light is trying to do?"

"Take over the world. Wipe out the Justice League. Have.. Tuesday renamed 'Savageday'! They're bad guys."

"Sort of, eventually, no… Ye-eah, okay, you've got me on the last one." I open a boom tube behind me. "Can we walk and talk?"

Wallace and Zatanna look each other in the eyes for a moment, then head towards me at a slow walking pace. I turn and lead the way through the tube into the lower part of the Mountain. "I'm sure you've read my reports on my initial meetings with the Light, but to reiterate: the Light wants to advance the lot of the mass of humanity. They see the League as a plaster over-. A band aid over a wound, falsely giving the impression that the problem is dealt with while actually encouraging people to remain indolent. Savage wants to defeat the League, mind control, kill them all, whatever. I think that's putting the cart before the horse. If we're successful, the League will be largely obsolete. Until we are, they do an essential job and it makes more sense to work around them."

"I am a member of the Light, which means that I can vote on policy and objectives. If Savage proposes an anti-League initiative which serves no other purpose, I say so, point out what else could be done with those resources and vote against. If my argument is rational, Lex, Brain and Ra's -who doesn't really mind mass murder but is actually pretty logical - vote with me. Mordru votes with Savage and they lose."

No local space coilgun for Savage. I mean, really. All the effort it would take and agents we'd have to burn to get it there and it wouldn't last more than five minutes after its first shot. I'm glad that at least Ra's learned his lesson from last time.

"On the other hand, if someone proposes a course of action that actually benefits humanity then I speak out in favour and it gets enacted."

I can feel Wallace's confusion. "So you think you're neutralizing-? Wait, Mordru!?"

"Didn't know about him? Yeah, one out, one in, as far as Lords of Chaos go. How's Miss Kane doing?"

"What? Ah. Okay..? As well as she can."

"Was my guess-?"

He looks away. "Yeah."

Ah. Unfortunate, but it's inevitable that a few first manifestations of metahuman powers would be destructive to their possessors' surroundings. And the people most likely to be in those surroundings… Sad, but there's not much I can do about it. "I realised afterwards that I should have known that it was something serious."

"What, because I came to you?"

"No, because you didn't try hitting on Sunset."

"Who's hitting on me?" Sunset emerges from a junction and falls in behind me, taking a moment to look Zatanna over. Magic goddess, meet someone who wants exactly what you have.

"Wallace wasn't. Zatanna Zatara, Sunset Shimmer. She's here to study magic."

Zatanna smiles at her. "Hi."

"Hey."

"Yeah, I guess it.. kinda put me off my game."

"Oh, you." Sunset looks him over, then appears to dismiss him. "There wouldn't be much point. I don't actually find Humans physically attractive."

Wallace frowns. "You.. don't..?" The frown is replaced with a squint. "Huh. Well, what do you find attractive, then?"

"Ponies."

He blinks, then jerks his head away. "Oh, I'm so not touching that one." He refocuses his attention on me. "Where are you taking us, anyway?"

"The vaults. It's where we keep the children I'm using as test subjects."

"Yeah, that's not as funny as you think it is."

The heavily reinforced door in front of me slides open with a quiet hiss. "Who's joking?"

Lynne is standing next to the cell containing-. I get a moment's dizziness before I stop trying to think the name. Ugh, my old name. He's in his early teens, a little older than she is. His brothers and sisters are in the other cages. Eight in total and he's the oldest of them. All the survivors of one of John Constantine's fuck ups. I'm pretty sure that I got all of them, but I left some monitoring equipment on Gruinard Island just in case.

Sunset walks over to Lynne while Zatanna and Wallace stop dead. The cells are designed to have a 'public' section and a private section, though all areas are monitored around the clock. Each one has its own toilet and shower unit, though curiously they don't produce much in the way of waste material. And I've found it's important that they can see and talk to each other all of the time. After all, they're all the company they've known for nearly their entire lives.

Zatanna's eyes widen in horror. "What are you doing here?"

"Helping them." Lynne steps away from the cell while the young man within walks around the edge until he's facing me. "Young man, would you mind providing my guests with a demonstration?"

He gives me a small shrug. I have talked with him about what I'm trying to achieve here, but I can hardly blame him for not being more enthusiastic.

Activate.

It only takes a second for him to get the scent. His eyes dart around his cell, his nose sniffing constantly. He winces, trying to resist. He's an extremely responsible young man, especially considering his circumstances.

"What are you doing!" Zatanna's eyes are blazing with golden light, triquetra forming around her hands.

"Offering him food."

And then the change happens. His face elongates, his skin darkens and his fingers sprout claws. He gets his clothes -sweat shirt and jogging bottoms- off before his body's change rips them, but after that his coordination fails him and he collapses against the inside of the clear dividing wall. His eyes turn red, the muscles on his shoulders grow and membranous wings sprout under his arms. His mouth opens and displays his pearly white fangs.

He's still fully intelligent like this. But -like the rest- he just can't resist the hunger.

"A fascinating case. He and his siblings are Vampire-Succubus hybrids. They can only feed on adults, and they don't have enough self control to stop themselves. When I found them, they'd been living in starvation conditions on a small island, having eaten both their mother and their four older siblings. I'm trying to help them learn to control their instincts." The youth regains his balance, hunched over as his gait now is. I deactivate the pheromone sprays. "That, plus I've been using the G-Gnomes to educate them."

"Hello." His voice is raspy but coherent.

Wallace's mouth is still open. Zatanna closes her hands.

"This is what I do with my time. Advancing the interests of humanity without punching people in the face. When was the last time anyone in the League tried something like this?"

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4th May

21:08 GMT -6

I back carefully out of Lynne's bedroom. "Goodnight, Lynne. Sweet dreams."

She rolls over, pulling the duvet more tightly around her. "Mruuuuh."

Aw.

I sneck the door silently, then turn away and head back towards the living room. I'm smiling in total contentment. Today's going great. Well, aside from Lynne wanting me to read her bedtime story in the cells so that the Succupires could benefit from my delivery. I negotiated her down to playing it to them over the internal communications system. Fact is, as part Vampires they're more alert and active when it's dark so a bedtime story doesn't really make sense.

I suppose I could just change the light/dark cycle of the synthetic lights down there…

Jade glances up as I walk into the living room. As is her ingrained habit she's sitting in a position that lets her keep both doorways under observation and is far enough away from both that she could ready a weapon before most attackers could close the distance. At her feet Mister Tawny also flicks his eyes in my direction but otherwise remains still, his huge head resting on his forepaws. The Sphere chimes once, but otherwise doesn't react.

"Nine o'clock, huh? I didn't think you'd be that strict."

I nod as I cross the space between us and then lower myself into the settee. "Children benefit from safe boundaries. Routine." I reach down and give Mister Tawny's head a rub with my left hand, getting a quiet grunt in return.

Jade leans into my right side as I settle back, and I carefully put my right arm around her. "I wouldn't know."

"I've been reading up… If a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing properly."

"From what you said about Apokolips, I can't imagine you had that sort of parenting either."

I take a slightly deeper breath, shaking my head. "I honestly don't remember. But -for my second childhood, on Earth Prime- I did. And that's the guide I'm using… Except where the other is unavoidable."

She nods, then looks up into my eyes. "I've never asked, but how old are you?"

"Well… That depends on where you count from. I've got thirty years of memories… Not perfect, but… The sorts of things a person would remember from thirty years of life. Before that..? Flashes of recollection at best, and I think they could be a result of my mind interpreting what Father Box has been showing me."

"So you could be..? A hundred years old?"

"I could be. Or two or a thousand or ten thousand. If it matters to you I can try and get an exact date."

She looks away, thinking about it. A moment later she shakes her head. "No, not really." Hn. Something there seems a little-. "Why did you invite Kid Flash here along with Zatanna?"

I smile again as I look over to where the first version of the mana siphon sits on the coffee table. Sunset and Zatanna spent most of the day working on it, and neither was happy with their initial effort. But it's still a massive improvement on what I had before and it's nice that they've each got a study buddy now.

"Why wouldn't I? I still consider him a friend."

"Because he's a superhero and you're a part of the Light. I can't see him being in favor of Zatanna helping you."

"He wasn't. That was the point." She narrows her eyes slightly. She knows that I have the explanation ready and am drawing out relaying it for my own gratification. "Alright. Zatanna still likes me. But, there are very good reasons for her not to help me. If I invited her here on her own, she'd have to raise them herself when I tried to persuade her. And if she did that, she would identify them as being her position. But-."

"If Kid Flash is here, he'd make the argument first and she'd see it as his position." Jade nods. "And she likes you more than she likes him. So why not invite Robin instead? You only just helped-." She stops. "Because you'd just done him a favor and he'd hesitate, making his position look weaker."

"Partially. My relationship with Kid Flash isn't exactly bad, you understand. If I gave up this Light stuff he'd be the first to welcome me back. Buuut at this point I don't think that Robin would bother making a rational argument against what I'm doing and 'Grayven equals Evil' is a narrative I want to avoid."

She nods again. "You're not planning on doing that, right?"

"Of course I am." A slightly more concerned frown. "Alliances between supervillains are.. unstable at best. And if it doesn't fall apart I will eventually outlive most of them. But I'm committed to our cause. As long as they are, there shouldn't be any problems."

Which is increasingly true. I've been pleasantly surprised by how non-mental my new colleagues are behaving. If things continue, if my mere presence neutralises them… Maybe I won't just hand them over to Batman. Goodness knows that I've found the work I've done since I left far more fulfilling than what I did with the Team.

"Grayven, I…" Jade looks away, towards the photographs decorating the wall. Pictures of us and the girls. "I need to talk to you about something."

"Okay? What is it?"

She steels herself before returning her gaze to me. "I need to talk about our relationship."

I smile. "And you think I will respond to your inquiry like some callow Human youth? With fear and evasion?" I shake my head. "Jade, I love you. Speak your mind, and be heard."

"Why?"

"Why?"

"Why do you love me?" I just about stop myself chuckling. "I know you do, but I've been trying to see what you get out of this, and I can't work it out."

"I get you. Why isn't that enough?"

"You're one of the most powerful men on the planet and I'm a League of Shadows operative. I don't feel bad about what I am-."

"No, you're… Parsing the relationship wrongly. Why am I more powerful? The orange power ring?" I shrug. "A cosmic accident. I still don't know how I got it. My strength? An injection, one you could have this evening if you wanted it. Godhood? Already on the table. And yes, that was a nudge. I can't fight at super speed. You can have that ability, if you want. Or something you can take off at the end of the day?" I hold out my right hand. "In a couple of months I'm going to relieve Larfleeze of the Orange Central Power Battery. Once the orange ring is functional again, I'd be perfectly happy to make this ring a gift to you."

Corpsman-.

Oh come, Sinestro. Her life has been far more defined by fear than mine has. She has far more potential as a wielder.

Jade arches her right eyebrow. "The ring you don't want?"

"The ring I can't use as effectively as you would be able to. Goodness knows that your nature is far closer to the yellow light than mine is."

"Alright, but I still need to know why."

"Your father tried to break you, and you grew strong to spite him. I know that in your place I would not have been so strong. Had Darkseid focused on me as Lawrence Crock did on you I would have died… Or if not dead, have reached adulthood as a broken, pitiable thing. You thrived, became a wonderful young woman so that you could throw your achievements in his face. You are more psychologically vicious than I am. I admire that immensely. I came to love you for your mind and soul. The.. physical.. aspect… Transitory economic issues… Can be fixed. Will be. In all the time we will have together, a few years… They won't matter. You will be a goddess, my equal and partner."

Her face is still, listening to what I have to say and taking it in without as yet letting her thoughts show through.

Ploong.

"Perhaps… If I explained a little about the way Apokoliptians conceive of 'love'?"

"I didn't think Apokolips had that."

"Of course it does. But… We don't… Fetishise romantic love of the kind that is so popular on Earth. There are… For example, the relationship between Canis Senior and Hellga would be considered unusually romantic by our standards. They were… Two senior warriors in Darkseid's service. She was given to him as a reward for his good service, but they both respected one another. Admired one another. They were equals. As I understand it your two previous sexual relationships were of a similar vein." Her eyes flick aside for a moment. "But their lives were apart. Their relationship was one between comrades, they did not.. share of themselves in it. Then there are other types of relationship. One between people who are unequal. Darkseid's relationship with Mortalla. I do not believe that Father loves Mortalla, and I do not believe that she retains the freedom to choose not to love him. That would be like… If I were to change the character of my relationship with Miss Amane. I would hold all of the power, the control. It would be a servant loving her master. I could love Miss Amane, but she could not learn to be my equal. She would gladly do anything I asked-."

"She'd do that now."

"Love and devotion are not the same thing. She is devoted to me, yes, but it is not… I don't think I can express it properly in English. I accept her service because it is something valuable she chooses to give to me. Love would be…" I shake my head. And I actually can't express it. Not properly. "The love of an owner for their dog. Genuine, but… Lacking."

"And how would you describe your love for me?"

"Open, in that I keep nothing of myself back. I would share even my soul if you had the mechanisms to experience it. Free, in that there is no exchange. I do not seek repayment for my time, you are your own end. It is a love which when it was offered by my brother Scott it freed Barda from a lifetime of Anti-Life exposure. And when she reciprocated, did the same for him. It is the union of people to the exclusion of rationality. Among New Gods, it is really only common on New Genesis, but then… I never much liked living on Apokolips."

"I love you, Jade Nguyen. Your soul calls to me in a way that none other has before. It takes me away from the horror of my origin and shows me something of transcendent beauty. Does that answer your concern?"

She nods, not quite meeting my eyes. I think she's… Crying.

"Yes. Yes it does."

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5th May

08:18 GMT +4

I hear the door open, and turn my head around to see Kaldur walking in. "Has anything of interest occurred?"

We're in a small suite of rooms in a nice-but-not-top-of-the-range hotel in Sumqayit. General Kerimov's mansion home is located on the outskirts of the city, and this is as close as we could set up shop on short notice. Getting the team's non-speedsters into the fray quickly could be a bit tricky without either myself or Canis assisting, but given that we're up against either people with super speed or baseline Human mercenaries I doubt that will matter. It also has the advantage that we're far enough away that we're not going to arouse any suspicion. Dressing up as backpackers appears to have convinced the staff well enough for now.

"Yes… Sort of." I have one of the monitors play back a section of what I've recorded since he was last in the room. A military truck being used for personnel transportation comes to a halt at the back of General Kerimov's home. "He's bringing in additional security."

"From where?"

"He's part owner of a private security company. Their work is mostly legal, and the bits that aren't are sufficiently close to being so that they're generally ignored." Azerbaijan certainly isn't a terrible place to live. Here, anyway. I don't remember what it's like back on Earth Prime now, if I ever knew. But here? Secular government, good Human development rating, high literacy and employment. Bit of a corruption problem, but considering… "These lads have been booked for this for a couple of months. A lot of them are ex-military and they're all pretty well trained. Nothing we couldn't deal with…"

He nods in understanding. "But then we are the ones who would be in the wrong. I take it that you have made no progress against the building's wards."

"Nope." Honestly, the whole scry warding thing is getting a bit beyond a joke now. "You know anything about roleplaying games?"

"I do not."

I return to watching the feed from my stealth drones, leaning back into my chair. "For balance reasons, certain types of boss character are often rendered immune to certain types of attack. A one hit kill attack that would normally kill one normal enemy in a horde if it hit would be far more valuable against a single powerful opponent. Game-breakingly so."

"I can see the logic. But I am not certain that I see what bearing it has on your situation."

"I can scan anything I like, but whenever I try doing it to anything actually important to a mission?" I throw my hands up. "Ward. It's like I'm not allowed to or something."

"Do you regret having used it against the League of Shadows?"

"Nnnnnnno."

"Then it seems that you had little choice." He stands next to me, studying the screens. "I will admit that such events have cured me of my belief that surface worlders know nothing of magic."

"You not having any luck either?"

"Garth and Tula are certain that we could penetrate his defences."

"But not without letting him know what you've done." He nods. "Is that pretty much it or is there a chance they could find a work-around?"

"Not without knowing exactly how his protections work. Robin and Kid Flash are attempting to track down the plans, or builders who worked on the original construction."

"I imagine it would be a later addition. Christianity might have moderated its position on magic use lately but Islam hasn't." Yes, spell breaking might technically be Qu'ranically permissible, but if you know enough to break a spell then you know enough to make it. The Ottomans decided that the difference was splitting hairs and their successor states have rather tended to follow that line. "If the builders had seen anything like that there'd still be rumours about the place."

"Do you know of anyone in this part of the world who could have created them?"

"The League of Shadows could have found someone, and an ex-Soviet General sounds like the sort of person who would know how to get in touch with them. Magic users who are actually local?" I shake my head. "If there are local magic users, I'd be astonished if they knew enough to make a ward that encompassed a whole mansion for years on end, let alone one that a couple of people with an actual magic education couldn't easily bypass."

"Could he have brought in someone to replenish it?"

"Yes, but anything beyond a charm-necklace would get noticed and commented upon. We can send Canis and Rocket after local charm-sellers and hope they find someone if you want, but I don't think we'll have any luck."

"We could pursue a more aggressive approach."

"The Director's suspicion aside, we don't really have any evidence that he's responsible. I don't suppose that there's an easy way to detect the Garrick Formula using magic, is there?"

"None that we are aware of. Though I do not believe that the subject has been studied in any detail."

Another lorry pulls up, this one decorated with the logo of a local caterers. We know he's got some sort of party planned for this evening. Unfortunately, since we don't know the guest list we can't really judge how safe sneaking in as an extra guest is. It would be fine if his home were being used as a venue for a corporate social event type party where no one there would know all of the people invited, but it could well be a smaller event with his friends and allies. If that were the case we'd stand out like sore thumbs.

One of the guards walks over to the lorry's cab and has a brief conversation with the driver. The passenger side door opens for a moment, then closes itself again. No one gets out.

Wait, what?

I've only got one drone with countermagic capacities, but I redirect it from the main entrance to the rear entrance where the lorry is and move its feed to the main screen while flickering through the visual modes of the drone already in place. Infrared shows a small area of hot air… EM shows nothing… I could pulse the place where I suspect an invisible person is with something but I'm a little nervous that they'll detect it.

Then the countermagic drone gets a clear shot.

Kaldur's eyes narrow. "Is that not John Constantine?"

It shouldn't be. Since that thing with the Beast I've kept myself updated on his itinerary. Right now he should still be in Kahndaq. "I can phone him and check?"

"Do so. Having heard of what often happens to people who oppose him, it seems wise to ensure that we are not operating at cross-purposes."

I raise the right to my left ear, generating a phone construct. Dial John Constantine.

Compliance.

There are a few rings, then a click. "Yeah?"

The figure on the screen is strolling in the direction of the front entrance, cigar in mouth and no phone in hand.

"Mister Constantine-."

"Oh right. One o' those, is it?"

"You wouldn't happen to be in a former Soviet republic at the moment, would you?"

There's a slight delay. Hopefully he knows that this isn't a Nabu-related call. Only my dealings with him outside that are Justice League knowledge and Batman might check his phone records at some point.

"Not right now. Why d'you ask?"

The figure on the screen stops for a moment, looking around in a nonchalant fashion for a moment before looking up into the sky. And sticks up the middle finger of his left hand.

"Then I think we've tracked down your doppelgänger."

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5th May

08:27 GMT +4

"If we know he's here, why can't we just go in?" Wallace is leaning over Richard's shoulder, having used his friend's arm computer to watch the recording of The Demon Constantine's arrival. "There's no way the Azerbaijan government's going to protect someone doing business with a Demon."

Richard nods. "Especially not one who was involved in what happened in Fawcett."

"Well, yes, and if I'd recorded General Kerimov meeting him at the front door with a handshake I'd agree with you. But as it stands all him being here proves is that he's here. If anything, the fact that he went in while invisible and.. the fact that he knows that someone saw him but the guards haven't altered their patrols or just cancelled the party… That suggests that he's not meant to be there."

Kaldur looks slightly pensive. "In that case, do you believe that it would be prudent to warn the General?"

Wallace's eyes narrow slightly. "What, after he had two members of Blue Trinity killed and kidnapped the third? I think we can let him take his chances."

Kaldur remains impassive. "We do not have concrete evidence linking either him or one of his employees to that attack. Until we do, we are obliged to protect him from those we are certain are our enemies."

"On that subject…" I make deliberate eye contact with Kaldur. "In Fawcett City, I wanted to shoot him dead with the Ace of Winchesters. Captain Marvel ordered me not to. But, he's a Demon and involved in the murder of a very large number of people. Since he's back on Earth already, clearly just sending him back to Hell barely slows him down. I'd like a little forward guidance."

"Imprisonment is my preferred option."

"If that's your final word, I won't complain. But I have summoned Demons while in the Conservatory of Sorcery and with the knowledge of Queen Mera for the express purpose of shooting them dead with the Ace, aand... Justice League rules of engagement expressly exclude Demons from the 'do not kill' list."

Wallace frowns. "Can Demons even die?"

"Maintaining their bodies consumes arcane energy. Damage them enough and it falls apart and they lose whatever they invested in it. Being Demons, they tend to invest everything in the one they're using to keep them looking strong. Techniques for killing-" Arcane life forms of all kinds. "-Demons permanently usually revolve around starving them, taking so much away that they can't sustain themselves. It's difficult, though. If even a little bit survives they can eventually come back, which is what usually happens. The Ace works by sending its own magic into what it is that connects every bit of the Demon and -as far as we can tell- burning everything. One hit and the Demon's gone."

Kaldur's eyes drop as he considers my request. "Is there a less lethal option which you believe can work?"

"As far as I know, he's only a bit stronger than a baseline Human. A lot tougher, but if we knock him down binding chains will keep him there unless he gets external help."

"Then in the event of hostilities that is the option we will pursue."

I nod. I'm.. not happy about that, but our team is supposed to follow the League's example and William's order didn't leave any room for doubt. Still, I doubt Kaldur will mind if I shoot him a few times with Mage Slayers just to make sure that he stays down. Not as if the Demon actually needs his internal organs.

Kaldur returns his attention to the screen. "We need more information. For that, we will need someone inside."

Richard taps something on his computer and one of our screens changes to a wire frame drawing of the house. "Once it gets dark, I should be able to sneak in."

"True. But Roy could do it now."

Richard looks surprised. "Ah, no disrespect to Speedy or anything, but I don't think he's quite that good."

"He's been practising with my stealth armour." Richard hesitates, then nods. "Phasing and invisibility. Unless they know exactly what to look for and have some very specialist equipment, they wouldn't be able to stop him."

"And you're sure you've ironed out the whole 'it makes you crazy' thing?"

"Our testing showed that repeated exposure at low levels was pretty safe. Mister Crandell wore it for hours at a time when working and not at all otherwise, which is the worst combination."

Working out exactly what is happening in the Human body when the adaptation takes place is proving a little tricky. Best guess is that it's something really small that fits within the bounds of normal biological activity. That or something metaphysical, and I don't want to drag Sephtian into analysing something else like this when we've already got a workaround.

Kaldur taps his earpiece. "Aqualad to Speedy." Who's currently lurking in the back of a locally rented van near the mansion. "Activate stealth systems and investigate the mansion. If you get the opportunity, plant listening devices and cameras in areas likely to be occupied during the party. Try to observe General Kerimov or the Demon Constantine, but fall back immediately if you think you've been detected."

"Roger, Aqualad."

"Both Canis and Orange Lantern are available if you need immediate extraction."

"Orange Lantern? You're sure this'll work, right?"

"I checked the armour before you put it on. It's in perfect working order, so… Barring certain exotic detection systems, yes. Have you noticed any problems?"

"No. It's just a bit of a change from using just a bow. Makes me feel like I'm a walking arsenal or something."

Hah. Nice one, universe. It doesn't even have that many integrated weapons. I think it was Artemis' super strength which persuaded him that he needed to up his game when it came to armaments. Neither Green Arrow nor Red Arrow have mentioned anything to me about upgunning themselves and I think I've pushed the League as much as it's productive to for the time being.

"It'll take me about two minutes to do final checks and get inside. I'll be out of contact while the stealth system's active. Depending on where the guards are it should take me about half an hour to plant the bugs. Speedy out."

"Good luck, my friend."

There's a click as Roy hangs up.

"Something's been bothering me." Richard looks pensive. "The Demon Constantine was working for Satanus. If he was telling the truth in Fawcett City, Satanus basically rules Hell now. Which means he at least knows about DMN-."

Wallace smirks. "You mean 'Devil Jizz', right?"

"Batman.. didn't.. go for that name. Anyway, Satanus would at least know about it, right?"

I nod. "Given the usual level of intelligence and creativity Demons show, the most likely sources are him or an unusually well educated cult of some kind."

"Can your ring detect things in Hell?"

"Um. I only went in there briefly. I could navigate alright, though I don't have a map or anything."

"I mean, from Earth could you detect things that were there?"

"Unless there was a portal nearby? No, probably not."

"What about that quintessence waveform scan?"

"I'd have to scan everything on the planet and every part of the Earth's associated magic field. I'd get there eventually, but I'd expect everyone I knew to be dead of old age related causes when I came out of it. And I'd have even more trouble making sense of what I'd seen."

"The Demon Constantine was added to the international watch list, but he's a Demon. Going back to Hell and getting out again is probably something he can do for himself. But Batman's had Squire and me looking at criminal movement patterns. There have been a couple of cases of criminals we knew were in one country appearing in another with no sign of how they got there. Is it possible they're travelling through Hell?"

"Yessss. Though it's a pretty horrifying place, if a major power in Hell like Satanus offered safe passage, it could work."

"And how valuable would that ability be to the Light?"

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5th May

17:35 GMT +4

Another limousine drives slowly up the driveway of General Kerimov's home.

"Nothing on that one, either."

I don't look round when Tula speaks. No magic users so far. It's gotten to be routine. General Kerimov has invited a large number of people from all across what was once the Soviet Union. Some of them I could write off as old comrades in arms. Others are clearly more recent business acquaintances. But the rest…

Richard brings up the faces of the most recent set of passengers on his terminal. "Oleksander Hryshchuk and Dariya Osipenko. Both of them work for the People's Party of Ukraine. No significant criminal record."

The rest are politically active sorts from around the former Soviet Union. There hasn't been any sort of public announcement that such a gathering was taking place, and no one we've seen so far was a 'face' for any sort of campaign. These are advisors and deal makers, people who can be dumped if they do something 'brave' in public. Just the sort you'd send to a meeting called by a ex-Soviet General with a big idea he wanted to share with you.

But I'm sure that the Director knew it was happening when he suggested that we come here. So, what, was he hoping we'd just charge in and disrupt it? It isn't as if the Justice League aren't going to be keeping an eye out for Ms Molotova regardless of what we turn up here. And he must know that we're not anything like stupid enough to just leap right in.

"Okay, thinking out loud here. Two political parties of any significance in modern Russia. Unified Russia and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. Unified Russia was founded by Boris Yeltsin and has been in power since nineteen ninety six. The Director works for their current leader."

Wallace looks up from the video feeds from the bugs he's monitoring. "What, you think the General's trying to restart the Soviet Union? And the Director wants us to stop them?"

"But he must know we wouldn't care about that."

"Ah, bringing back the Soviet Union sounds like the kind of thing we'd care about to me, Oh El."

I shake my head. "The Justice League doesn't get involved in the internal politics of nation states. Case in point: the ongoing Bialyan civil war. If the Russian Communist party somehow won an election and their neighbours wanted greater political or economic integration, good luck to them. But if that's what he's after, Unified Russia would be happy to talk to him. Or them. In terms of the political reality, life under either party would be quite similar. They're even starting to take major nationalised companies back into state ownership. Unified Russia is very much in favour of close relations with its neighbours. Right now, having good relations with Moscow is a good way to bring your gas bill down. I'm struggling to work out what he's got to offer that they couldn't get by working with people already in government."

"Maybe they just… Really like Communism?"

"Why? A nationalist police state has all the advantages of a communist one, as far as the ruler is concerned. And doesn't leave them shackled to an unworkable economic model. The only thing it lacks is a unifying morality, and you'll note how much more pro-Orthodox Christianity the current President is than his predecessor. If I had to guess, I'd say it's just attracting people who didn't win positions of power in the new state as it developed. They're just… Looking for an alternate route to power."

"No one we've seen so far has been an oligarch or a representative of one. Some of the oligarchs have come to terms with Unified Russia, some are keeping their heads down and a few are starting their own political movements. None want communism back because it would threaten their livelihoods."

Roy's still watching his monitoring equipment, but he looks a bit more thoughtful than a few empty rooms really warrant. "So what's this guy got that's got everyone so excited?"

Wallace shakes his head. "Can't be Molotova. He's barely had her a day. And even if he woke her up right now he's got no way to know whether or not she'd be willing to cooperate."

"And if he showed her off to anyone, Russia would hear about it and could openly come down on him like a tonne of bricks." I shake my head again. "I've got to say, if we hadn't seen the Demon Constantine I'd be suggesting that we just leave."

Roy presses a button, switching from one trivial conversation to another. "Yeah, well, we did, and until we find out what he's up to we're stuck here."

Wallace suddenly jerks, then tries to relax a little. Too late, we're already all looking at him. "Ah…" He looks around the room. "It was just-. The Demon Constantine comes from Hell, right?"

Richard smirks. "This is usually where Demons come from."

"So… He could have talked to anyone who's died and gone to Hell, right? Basically every bad guy in history."

"No. To go to Hell you have to have associated yourself with a mythos that includes Hell. Otherwise you'd just go… Wherever."

"But that includes Edward Clariss. I don't remember anything about him picking up another religion.. and.. he's.. dead, so..?"

"It's a possibility. But it would be rather hard for the Demon Constantine to find him, if he'd even heard of him."

"Do you think super speed soldiers would be enough to do whatever it is he wants with Russia?"

"Um. Maybe. But the old Soviet Union tried for over a decade and couldn't get it quite right. None of.. these people have the sorts of contacts they'd need to get a research program up and running-."

"Except for Doctor Conrad Bortz of Genetech, New York." Richard turns around, pulling the image from his monitor and transferring it to his hologram projector. We see a car carrying a thin and slightly ragged-looking man with a mop of orange hair and bushy eyebrows. As we watch he fiddles with his tie, clearly uncomfortable with it. "Think he'd be able to do the research?"

Ring, review personal history? Ooh dear.

"Yes, though I'd point out that researching super speed isn't actually a crime."

"Maybe not, but a super powered arms race doooesn't exactly sound like something that would help world peace."

"It wouldn't get that far. All we'd have to do is tip off the US authorities and Genetech would lose its export licence. I doubt that the US really wants a super power arms race either."

Wallace looks directly at me. "Unless they're offering Doctor Bortz a job here. How friendly is this guy with the Azerbaijani authorities?"

"Friendly enough that he could set up a laboratory without too much hassle. But we still don't know that he's got a source-."

"We do now."

Raquel points to her monitor, drawing all of our attention. Standing next to General Kerimov as he greets his guests is a man in tight fitting blue trousers and a loose white shirt, open at the chest to display his man-cleavage. It looks like some sort of ill-advised seventies hang over, and to be fair that's the last time anyone saw its wearer.

Max Mercury shakes Doctor Bortz' hand.

"Think they could study him?"

Max Mercury, who at some point told Mister Garrick that he derived his speed from a potion given to him by a Native American shaman. And if someone like that could make it, a modern laboratory should be able to crack it pretty quickly.

I raise my left hand to my ear. "Ring, get me Aqualad."

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Zigzag 19

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5th May

17:53 GMT +4

"And that's where we are, sirs."

With Batman, Mister Allen and Mister Garrick in here as well as as many members of my team as are available, things are starting to get a little crowded. I used a construct zeta tube to bring them in without the loud bang that a boom tube would generate. Kaldur had been away for consultations on how to proceed, given how political the situation was becoming. But for this they wanted to review the situation first hand.

Mister Garrick nods as he straightens up from where he'd been lent over a monitor. "That's him alright. I'd recognize that getup anywhere."

Batman's standing back a little. "Have you run an analysis of his facial expressions?"

Richard and I look at each other for a moment, then I make a small gesture with my right hand. He nods, then activates his arm computer. "There aren't enough recordings of Max's face from his previous periods of activity for a conclusive analysis. Vocal analysis doesn't quite line up, but.. that could be natural change. It has been forty years."

"Hn." Mister Garrick shakes his head. "Not for him it hasn't. He found a way to use his speed to take himself out of time. From his point of view it might only have been a few days since he and I last spoke."

Mister Garrick is in a suit rather than his Flash gear. From what Wallace has told me that was most likely down to Missus Garrick's influence. Apparently she didn't have a problem with him being the Flash but she shares Alan's opinion that superheroing is a young man's game.

Mister Allen sighs. "Whether Max is there or not, I don't think I'm okay with an ex-Soviet General developing a super speed formula."

Batman's eyes narrow slightly. "There's been no further sign of the Demon."

Kaldur draws himself up a little. "There has not."

Batman turns his head slightly towards Kaldur. "How far do the wards extend?"

Kaldur presses a button on the display. It changes to show an image of the property, a line around the outer edge of the boundary. "So far as we have been able to tell, it extends all of the way around the property at uniform strength. Since we could not penetrate it without revealing ourselves I do not know if further areas inside have their own protections."

Batman studies the image for a moment, then nods. "Team. Your objectives are to locate and recover Christina Molotova, and to capture The Demon Constantine, ideally without being detected by any local group. Any political consequences of General Kerimov's actions are a problem for the League."

Kaldur and I both nod. That's a relief, though I'm a little worried that 'problem for the League' really means 'we're not going to do anything about it'.

"Orange Lantern, zeta tube."

I nod again and create the required construct. Batman walks into it immediately. Mister Allen steps towards it, then hesitates when he realises that Mister Garrick isn't following him. "Jay?"

"You go on home. Think I should stay on for a bit. I knew Max best…"

"Okay, but I'm gonna catch hell from Joan if anything happens to you."

"I'll be fine. Get going before you're late for work again."

Mister Allen nods and dashes into the tube, disappearing in a flash of light. I dismiss the construct as Kaldur moves to address the team. "We have our task. Tempest, Aquagirl, how quickly can you perform a scrying ritual from inside the wards?"

Garth's eyes dip as he considers the question. "If we're not worrying about anything else, we should be able to locate a Demon within… Six minutes. But if they've got any sort of defences up it might not work. The Demon Constantine is a demonic copy of the man who invented Orange Lantern's tattoos, there's no way to be certain that he isn't protecting himself in a similar way."

I shrug. "The next best option is walking around with rune stones and hoping one of them starts glowing."

Kaldur nods. "Then that is what we have to do." He half-turns to the image of the mansion. "The easiest point of ingress for people who cannot walk through walls appears to be the wall at the rear of the property."

Richard nods, pressing a button on his arm computer to bring up a closer view. "There are lasers and razor wire at the top of the wall and another set of lasers right at the bottom on the inside, as well as cameras on the external surface."

Roy crosses his arms across his chest. "I can deal with the cameras. Being able to turn invisible almost makes it too easy."

Tula takes a closer look at the hologram. "If the cameras are down, our kinetic belts can get us over the walls easily. But that still leaves the guards and their dogs."

Raquel frowns. "Can't you just wear Orange Lantern's invisible armor stuff?"

Garth shakes his head. "We haven't practiced with it. Our water armor is usually more useful."

"Canis-?"

He grins. "I am not so subtle as Kanto, but I think myself able to kill a few Human guards without alerting their fellows."

…

"That's good to know, but I was actually going to ask if you could collect a bucket of Brut's urine." And now everyone's staring at me. "It was on Mythbusters? Wolf urine made guard dogs hesitate and Brut is far bigger than a Wolf." Still staring. "We could use a sonic device instead if urine makes you uncomfortable. If the dogs are acting up it's more likely that the guards will ignore them."

Richard brings up the patrol routes. "There are four moving patrols, but it looks like they're trying to keep them out of sight of the guests. If you go in here, unless they actually see or hear something you shouldn't have a problem. Will the spell make your tattoos glow through your clothing?"

Garth shakes his head. "Not for something simple like this. Demons stand out a great deal against background magic. Casting the spell won't take much power."

Kaldur nods. "Robin, Speedy. It is extremely unlikely that General Kerimov would keep anything incriminating in his home. Once the cameras have been neutralized, you and I will travel to the offices of his private security company and gather any intelligence that could lead us to Miss Molotova." He warded that place, too. "Canis, Kid Flash, Orange Lantern and Rocket. You will remain outside of the mansion and either move in to capture The Demon Constantine when he is located or assist Garth and Tula in evacuating if he is not."

Wallace nods. "Oh El? Anything else you can tell us about what sorts 'a magic this Demon can do?"

I shake my head. "Sorry. John can perform a wide variety of minor magics but I've got no idea how becoming a Demon has changed his abilities. Still-" I shrug. "-the chains can hold him and bind him and I've seen no sign that he's become anything like as fast as you."

Raquel points her right thumb at the picture of Max Mercury. "What do we do about him?"

Kaldur sighs quietly. "If we are fortunate, he will never know that we were here. Otherwise, he can be fought using the anti-speed techniques which we have practiced before. Your force field will hold him off indefinitely and he cannot fly. Kid Flash can fight at near his speed, Orange Lantern has a supply of Vertigo Inducers and Canis is extremely resilient. But if that should happen, the priority is to disengage. We have nothing to gain from such a fight."

There's a round of nodding, though Canis' head remains still. "And if we are detected and identified?"

"Then we were acting on legitimate intelligence on the presence of a dangerous criminal. General Kerimov may well not be aware of the Demon's presence, and even if he is I doubt that he will be willing to affirm an alliance with a Demon in public."

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5th May

19:27 GMT +4

Roy's subversion arrows arc over the road and strike the security cameras with a dull clunk, sticking them on an unchanging loop of an empty street. Garth and Tula are walking down the pavement along the wall side of the street, dressed in Azerbaijani apparel. Great thing about a country like this as opposed to somewhere like Japan is that there are so many ethnicities in the mix that Atlantean features don't stand out at all. Tula's red hair and Garth's purple eyes might attract a glance or two, but they certainly don't look out of place. Just two young people out for a walk.

"Raaaoowwwwwww!"

"Get the fucking dogs back in the fucking kennel! And when I find the cum-drinking idiot who sent us these useless mongrels I will…"

I lean back, wincing slightly. Richard raises his right eyebrow.

"I still say urine would have worked better."

He taps his earpiece, carefully watching the image transmitted by my surveillance drone. "Guards are moving away. You should have space in five… Four… Three… Two…"

The wall is about three metres tall, topped with razor wire. Slightly offset from the lip on each side is a laser, which means that if a person climbed up they'd trigger an alert as soon as they grabbed onto the top. Someone trying to use a ladder would have a similar problem. For added fun the razor wire is electrified, so anyone who tried grabbing onto it would find themselves spasming and unable to let go. The walls are painted with anti-climbing paint, so an Atlantean's normal fallback of using patches of highly viscous water to let them stick to the surface is out.

None of these protections do anything as I interrupt the power to the street lights for a moment and Garth and Tula trigger their kinetic belts. They aren't as comfortable using them as some of our team mates, but a simple up, over and down is no real test of their abilities. As they go in to land in the cover of some trees I tense for a moment. We couldn't be completely certain that there wasn't something nasty hidden just behind the ward we could see. There are any number of curses available to people who don't mind treating with malevolent Spirits or Demons, and while I'm reasonably confident my Spell Eaters could cope with anything that's actually likely to be there it would completely blow their cover.

"We're in. No problems."

"Understood." I nod to Richard and Roy and they jog across the roof we're standing on, heading towards the alley side. Really, as far as finding Ms Molotova goes their part of the operation is far more important than what the rest of us are doing. We might have to spend a week tracking down every operation and holding the company possesses, but that's the place where we'll find that information. A moment later they're gone, dropping over the edge to join Kaldur in our hired van.

I return my attention to the footage from my drone. I've got the magic detector in position over them, just in case someone who thinks that they're invisible tries to approach my Atlantean colleagues. Mister Crandall's invisibility system works perfectly well against x-rays and infrared but it can't disguise the presence of a soul. I'm going to have to get some sort of visor with an arcane detection system built in created. It's just too useful. Not Sephtian, his industrial work is too important. Maybe I could find someone else familiar with his techniques and hire them instead?

There's an uptick in arcane energy as the Atlanteans get going with their ritual. Bit of a shame that Zatanna's not available, but she has school today.

"Orange Lantern to team, the Atlanteans are in."

"…and Johnny. We were both only just learning what our powers could really do-."

"Kid Flash?"

Jay's voice gets blocked out. "Sorry, Oh El. Rocket asked Jay about Max, and…"

"Okay, but unless it revealed some sort of deep-seated Communist tendencies, please leave it until after the mission."

"Right."

For a moment I consider asking Raquel to get airborne. It won't get properly dark for another hour or so, so she'd have to get pretty high… No. It wouldn't actually reduce her response time by all that much and would create a chance of her being spotted. People don't usually look up without some sort of audible cue, but just one would be enough.

"Orange Lantern to intrusion team. Any difficulty?"

"None so far."

I turn my attention from the drone monitoring the patrols to the monitors I've got tracking Max and General Kerimov. Max is getting a few odd looks, but the General is well into his glad-handing and they appear to be accepting his guest. In fact…

"Kid Flash, could you ask Jay if Max speaks Russian?"

"Yeah, one sec." There's a slight delay. "He says he doesn't think so. He spoke Spanish and French, but no Russian."

Curious. Lip reading at this resolution is an imperfect science, but the ring thinks he's speaking Russian. Again, doesn't mean that he couldn't have learned it, but I tend to assume that if you've been around for a hundred and sixty years and not done something then you've probably decided not to. There wasn't anything on his file about him being politically active outside of the Native American rights movement. Nothing about him even coming to Russia before.

I vaguely remember Edward Clariss from the comics, but he only showed up once as a ghost. I had no idea who this 'Rival'.. person…

Okay. The fact that he was called that in the comics and so was the person the Russians had as a source doesn't necessarily mean that they're the same person. It's just -based on what I've seen so far- a strong indicator. Given the level of security the Russians are operating under there's a good chance that only the Director knows who it was, if anyone else knows that there was a source at all.

Max is acting suspiciously, The Demon Constantine is around and there's a super speed comic character who was known to escape from Hell and possess people.

He's in Max, isn't he?

Ah heck. "Orange Lantern to Kid Flash. How fast is Max compared to you?"

"Ah… About as fast but a lot more experienced. I thought we weren't supposed to be fighting him?"

"We're not. I'm just a little worried that the reason The Demon Constantine is here is to possess him. Which means that we're about to ping two Demons who may -or may not- be aware when we do it."

Okay. From what little I remember, becoming a Demon is supposed to take a very long time. Would a shared super speed ability be enough to allow The Demon Constantine to bind Clariss' damned soul to Max Mercury's body? And what about the control spells they'd need in order for Clariss to control him outright? I can't see any tattoos or drawings on his skin.

"Rocket, when I say 'now', fly to where Tempest and Aquagirl are and stick a barrier around them."

"Got it."

"We're activating the spell."

The rings glow faintly as I prepare to create a railgun construct. I won't be able to obscure it. Anyone looking in this general direction will have their eyes drawn to it. And they'll immediately know who it is making it. Max doesn't appear to respond in any way. Not only does he not look around, there's not even the slightest twitch or saccade of his eyes.

"Two Demons and a major focus of Demon magic. Sending you their locations now."

I have the rings relay the data to my eyes. One Demon and the magic locus are in the mansion's cellar. Constantine, presumably. The other matches the current location of Max Mercury.

"Orange Lantern to team. Max Mercury is possessed. Rocket, change of plan. When I say 'now', get in there and put a barrier around Max."

"My kinetic barrier doesn't stop magic."

"No, but it will stop him punching his way out." My armour materialises around me and I trigger the invisibility system. "I'm going after Constantine."

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Zigzag 21

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5th May

19:35 GMT +4

Mister Crandall's invisibility doesn't do anything to cover up the orange glow of my environmental shield, so I have to remove the rings. As ever, this makes me feel slightly nervous. Playing Goldeneye taught me the distinct difference between invisibility and invincibility. Still, the kinetic belt, phasing and wards work just fine and I don't think there's anything around here that can easily get through them. Phased, I don't even cause a ripple in the air as I fly fast as I can through the manor wall, over the gardens at the edge of the party and through the wall of the house itself.

Roy's visit earlier gave us the chance to compare the actual structure of the house with the architect's plans. A few minor changes -a panic room and a small armoury- rather than anything that screams 'supervillain'. But then this is supposed to be his home. He owns fortified places elsewhere. This is where he comes to be 'normal'.

Says something about my life that I can consider ex-Soviet general politicians 'normal'.

I fly through a living room and a corridor before heading down. There's really only one place that The Demon Constantine could be without risking getting spotted by either guests or staff not in the know, and that's the storage cellar. Not sure what they usually keep in there. Not wine, there's a separate wine cellar and the two aren't connected so it can't be room to expand. Thought it was a bit odd when Roy mentioned it, but since it was empty he didn't bother bugging it. Rather than risk flying through a warded wall à la my fight with Kanto I emerge in the stone-walled corridor immediately in front of the door. No obvious security. Perhaps because he didn't want to risk any record being made. No matter.

I phase in and become visible, sliding my rings back onto my fingers. And this is where trusting my equipment becomes a thing. I'm not risking using a construct on the door, not after that Devil Jizz user managed to feed on my power, but this is still heavy power armour. I lumber at the door and smash it inwards.

Ethereally burning sand marks out an arcane circle on the floor and floats up in a rotating pattern above it. Looking through it I see… I'm assuming it's some part of Hell, because it certainly isn't the other side of the room. The flame around the grains is orange-violet and somehow insubstantial and if I knew more about demonology that would probably mean something to me. I have the rings take a picture of the design and then have them block my awareness of its specifics. Just in case.

"…mundus-." The Demon Constantine stops chanting and waving his arms the moment the door flies past. His head jerks around and spots me. There's a brief moment of disbelief, then his head tilts slightly to his left. "Oh, fuck right offaghh!"

I retarget my railgun at his other kneecap and fire again.

"GAH!"

The whirling vortex flares fractionally as he falls. If I had the Ace with me I'd put a round through that as well… But if I had the Ace with me then I'd shoot The Demon Constantine. I settle for shooting the edge of the design with a Mage Slayer round. In response the sand whirs faster and faster, gradually stripping the design from the floor.

The Demon's right hand is under his coat as I grip him with a series of construct clamps. "No." His coat is probably more projection than coat so I don't bother trying to put it into subspace. Disintegrate.

"Me fuckin' ciggies!"

I stride around the room and lean down, grabbing him with a filament and hauling him up. I then backhand him across the face, knocking his head to the side. "Shut up. Who have you got in Max Mercury?"

"I dunno what you're fuckin' talking about! I thought we were mates!"

"You didn't change your eyes back."

His face stills for a moment. "Oh." And then falls slightly. "Fuck."

Taking the binding chains out of subspace takes more power than I really want to spend, but the new generation sort of cuts out when not in contact with the Earth's arcane fields and so isn't quite as bad. Convenient thing about speedsters is that any fight with them is over one way or another before power requirements start to matter. Another flash of disintegration takes care of the rest of the Demon's faux clothing and then I apply the chain's clamps to his waist, neck, arms and legs.

"Bit much for a first date, innit?"

"I can get the Ace of Winchesters if you prefer. Last time of asking: who or what is in Max Mercury?"

"Nah, nah mate. You got it all wrong! This is just a-"

Brand.

"-bit a'-." There's a flare of orange and he throws his head back. "Aoh-ho-hoa!"

"I'm not sure how long this takes for a Demon like you. Or if you can recover afterwards like a Human would. But I do have a reasonable idea of how to come out ahead when dealing with a Constantine." I clench my right fist and the constructs around his naked body force his head back up. A glowing orange symbol is trying to form on his forehead, but just before it can fully come together there's a flicker of something and it fades again. "Protections bound to your body. Obviously not the Seal of Solomon that John has. Won't last indefinitely. Look, the game's up. Whatever you and Satanus-."

"He… SaYs It… SaTuRn… Us."

I take a Mage Slayer round out of subspace and shove it into the hole I shot in his right knee. He grits his teeth as it goes in. The damage hasn't exactly regenerated, but it's far less than a baseline Human would have received and is less than it was when I first fired. "I'm not sure if you actually feel pain, but that will continue to drain you of power. Whatever you had planned here isn't going to happen. The best result you can get is the one which irritates me least."

"Thought it was… Gah! Fucking… Blaze!"

I take another Mage Slayer out. "It wasn't. I normally don't go in for this whole… Jack Bauer thing. But you disgust me…" I nod. "Just enough, Demon."

"Oh, an' Demons aren't really people, is that it?"

"No, they're people. Very bad people. Take you for instance. The only decent Human quality John gave you was his love for Kit Ryan and I know you haven't tried contacting her. And since you have actually become a Demon rather than just being one damned soul among the multitudes you must have willingly bonded with the stuff of Hell-."

"You have no fucking idea what I've been through!" The skin on his face is starting to flake away like burning paper, revealing the canker beneath. "And another-!" I muzzle him. "Mmm!"

"I listen to bad guys in the hope that it might help them become better. You can't, and since you won't talk I'll just wait until the brand takes hold." I activate my armour's internal communications. "Orange Lantern to team. The Demon Constantine is secure. Rocket, are you able to put a kinetic bubble around Max Mercury and drag him into the sky?"

"Ye-ah, but it'll be kinda obvious."

Might be better just to wait until the party winds down a bit… General Kerimov isn't really our problem. Just dealing with the demonic side would be enough to call this part of the mission a success…

"Tempest, Aquagirl, could you exorcise Max Mercury?"

"Ah… How much time do we have?"

Garth doesn't sound anywhere near certain. "No idea."

"We can pick at the binding spells, but flat out exorcisms usually need the mage to channel massive amounts of power. We'd need him in a prepared environment-."

"Oh El, something's happening to Max!"

I change my visual mode back to the drone camera and see Max stagger and fall, his head elongating as horns sprout from his forehead.

"Rocket, go."

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Zigzag 22

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5th May

19:40 GMT +4

Unenchanted metal clamps attach themselves to rings on the binding chains and construct bindings attach themselves to them. Uh. I can't risk leaving The Demon Constantine in here on his own and I can't maintain the focus on branding him if I'm having to deal with Max Mercury. I don't want to take the risk that he has some way to drain my constructs that he can perform while bound. It doesn't seem too paranoid to assume that they've had some sort of feedback from the transformed Demons, or even from the Chaos Star Conquerors. Have to do that later.

I float in the direction of the door, him dangling at one remove from my construct bindings as the muzzle construct evaporates.

"Oh yeah, nice one! You've only gone an' let that nutter Eddie Clariss free!"

"I think you'll find that was you." I switch to internal. "Rocket, is it working?"

"I had 'im under control."

"Yes, I'm sure that you had the damned soul of a supervillain speedster possessing a superhero out of the goodness of your heart."

"At the moment, but he's.. mutating more. Is Max gunna be okay?"

Internal again as The Demon and I fly at speed up and out into the mansion's inhabited areas. "No, he's been possessed. He's going to be a mess. Aquagirl, Tempest, banishment as soon as possible."

"Right." / "Working on it."

"Kid Flash, do you have vertigo inducers?"

"Yeah. Look, Oh El, I don't think Max is much faster than me but Jay said he had a load of other tricks. Would the Demon know them?"

"It shouldn't. Unfortunately, The Demon Constantine says that's Edward Clariss inside him."

"Edward Clariss was Jay-fast, Oh El! There's no way I'll be able to keep up with him!"

"Lantern, the party guests flee into the streets! Do you wish for me to corral them?"

"No, let them go." I emerge out of a hallway into an open reception area in clear view of more than a few well-dressed partygoers. There are gasps, a few of which turn to shrieks as they see the naked and rotting Demon hanging in the air behind me.

"Oh, you've all fuckin' seen worse!"

They're not fleeing, though they are backing away. In fact, a stream of people are flowing into the mansion from the exterior. I fly out through a set of double doors and into the dining area, everyone giving me plenty of space. "Is the General still on-site?"

"Lantern, Max is doin'... Something?"

"With you in ten seconds, just keep him contained."

"Him, yeah, just not sure about all the rest."

Rest? "If the security guards-."

A shadowy shape slides through a wall next to me and leaps into one of the party guests. He staggers, shudders,-

"Team, we have Ghosts."

-then rights himself, looking at the people around him with malevolent and faintly glowing eyes.

Then I shock crown him and he collapses.

"Your Spell Eaters should protect you but the guests are vulnerable. Canis, Kid Flash, anyone gets a shadowy thing in them, knock them out and zip-tie them."

"At last!" / "You got it, Oh El."

Another shade appears through the wall. Right, assimilate. Strands of orange light leap from the rings and latch on to its ethereal form.

"Identity Theft in progress."

It writhes in distress as the orange light percolates through it.

The Demon Constantine looks on with fascination. "You know, that used to be someone."

"I know full well that people don't last long in Hell with their minds intact. I also know the death toll from when Lucifer ran off."

"Identity Theft complete. Identity partially corrupted. Nameless Hellshade, you belong to the Orange Lantern Corps."

"Assail your brethren wherever you find them."

"Yes, Master."

Oh wonderful, this one can talk.

It flies off, claw-like arms extended. Through the bay windows I watch the yellow blur that is all I can see of Wallace dash from point to point, slamming into the possessed and knocking them down. Brut lands in front of a pair of possessed guards who are aiming their guns at General Kerimov, putting Canis in position to take their first few shots on his armour before slamming his mace into their chests in a pair of rapid strikes.

Fuck it. Praexis horde.

More strands of orange flick outward, disgorging my von Neumann minions.

Fatty gets his bearings first, Chubbs floating just behind him. "Food time?"

"Eat the shadow things before they get into people."

"Okay!"

Glowing blobs of orange shoot off after the faint, dark Ghosts. I'm glad that they don't really have faces any more. It would be far more awkward explaining this to Batman afterwards if they did.

One of the guards panics and opens fire on my Praexis Demons, his assault rifle achieving nothing at all against their construct bodies. Immediately, his sergeant shoulders his way past the guard-huddle and grabs him around the shoulders. "Stop that, you fool! They belong to the Orange Lantern! You could hit someone!" The man instinctively obeys, though he isn't even slightly calmer.

Two Ghosts lunge for the guards, only for one of the Praexis to peel away from the main melee and chase after them. Its mouth clamps down on the closest, then the Construct Demon inhales and the Ghost is sucked into its maw. The other spots what just happened and frantically abandons its attack, going for height instead.

"Lantern!"

A surge of speed brings me up to the kinetic barrier in which Raquel has Max imprisoned. Considering some of the things John described to me the transformation is relatively mild. Horns, glowing red eyes and I think his legs have got a bit longer. I suppose that he hasn't really been down there long enough to become a powerful Demon. His hands are a blur as he repeatedly strikes at his prison, but his body remains still.

"Good work, Rocket. Now we can just get in touch with the local authorities-."

"Ah. That's how it works." His voice is normal. Given how his face has twisted that's a little surprising, but I suppose he hasn't altered his vocal cords. "But Max knows that we can do far more than adding kinetic energy to things."

His hands stop moving, and the barrier disappears.

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Zigzag 23

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5th May

19:43 GMT +4

FuckAccelerate!

In slow motion I see Raquel wiggle her fingers in confusion, trying to reactivate her kinetic barrier. My armour doesn't have a projection system but I try sending filaments towards Clariss. It's not going to get there fast enough, damn i-!

Wallace cannons into his back and knocks him flying!

"Gah!"

Together they slam into the grass-covered soil of the garden, skim across it like a pebble on water and then smash through some shrubbery. Raquel's force bubble goes back up immediately. Stopping it must require his focused attention. So.. is he not fast now, or-? No, either Wallace can handle his speed or he can't. Decelerate.

Raquel looks left and right, clearly confused.

"Clariss is borrowing Max Mercury's skill, including-."

She looks positively offended. "Turning off kinetic energy?"

"Yes. Wallace is going to be occupied."

A Ghost goes for a distracted guard only for Canis to smash through it with his mace. "Feel my godly rod, nethersprite!" Their.. numbers don't seem to be increasing, good.

"Ooooooof!"

Wallace comes flying back in our direction, several minor tears showing on the surface of his uniform. No blood, I'm pleased to note as he pushes himself up. I'll be sure to point out the clear advantages of decent armour during the debrief. "Okay, good news? He can go fast or make stuff slow."

I form vertigo inducer constructs and bombard the area he and Clariss flew off in.

Raquel glances at Wallace as he starts moving forwards again. "And the bad news?"

"What? You don't think the fact he can move at super speed is bad enough?"

"Tempest, any news on that banishment?"

"Are all monotheistic spirits this truculent?"

"Is that a 'no'?"

"It's a 'maybe'. They aren't responding to the normal bindings!"

Clariss emerges from the shrubbery, hands outstretched in front of him as he stops my sonic vibrations dead. "Is it likely to get better in the next minute?"

"I doubt it."

"Then give us what you've got."

"Just a moment!"

A Praexis Demon floats past Clariss and gets frozen in place. I really hope 'a moment' is shorter than the amount of time it takes Clariss to realise that he can stop all motion in the air and simultaneously freeze and suffocate everyone here. Clariss himself is taking the time to stare each of us down. Then his eyes widen for a second before his features twist into a snarl. "Constantine!"

"Ah, heh-."

Clariss jerks at super speed and for a moment I lose track of him. Fortunately the vertigo effect still works and there's a crash as he goes through the bay windows in the front of the mansion. "Kid-" He's already running. "-Flash."

Clariss gets his head up just in time for Wallace to punch him in it, the man's face bouncing off the glass-covered floor and bouncing upwards into the second punch.

Then Wallace freezes in place and Clariss punches upwards, striking him on the chin and sending him sailing backwards. I recreate my vertigo projectors but they don't meet with any more success this time around.

"YAAAAAGH!" Savage aggression!

Brut charges Clariss, Canis on his back. Not growling, just a sort of rumbling moan sound. Canis is nearly leaning off him, left hand on the pommel of his saddle and right holding onto his outstretched mace. Oh, come on, that's not going to-.

Clariss sneers, and Canis' and Brut's armour flickers for a moment. They don't stop. Clariss' eyes widen and he throws himself aside as they charge past. Canis' mace lashes out and catches him in the side, and I can see ribs give way. I think he can feel his host body's pain like this, and that's going to hurt.

"Here we go!"

About flipping time.

Brilliant white flames flecked with gold flare out from the Atlanteans' hiding place, roaring across the garden in all directions! The Demon Constantine's eyes widen as they pass over a group of recumbent guests, faint traces of smoke rising from them as the Ghosts within them are incinerated. Pretty much what John tricked the Angels into doing to Nergal. And I've got a worrying feeling that my Atlantean colleagues- The fire bypasses me like I'm not here and passes through Raquel with no effect. -just forcibly took something from the forces of the Silver City without asking nicely.

"AAAAOOOWWWWFUCKINGFUCKFUCK!"

The Demon Constantine is set on fire, writhing against his bindings. A moment later and the front of the flame wave has passed him by, my chains dealing with the residual magic. Even after it's passed by I can see shining light in the rents in his flesh. Not dead or destroyed, though. I'm not sure whether that's due to his origin or simply not being what the spell is designed to deal with.

Slightly dimmed, the flames continue towards where Edward Clariss is struggling to rise. He gets about half a second to see them coming before being totally enveloped. The flames don't envelop him; they cover and coat him in white fire.

"MMMRRRAAAAAAGGGGHHHHHHH!"

His horns are consumed in raging fire, his eyes go white and his head is thrown back as he collapses once more. Wallace gets up somewhat unsteadily and takes a couple of hurried steps towards him, breaking out his own suppression chains. He's forced to shield his face from the heat being generated. Oh dear, I hope we haven't just cooked a famous super hero. Bracing himself, Wallace darts forward and claps the manacles around Max's forearms. The fire isn't burning him, so he clamps shut the neck and leg manacles as well.

Okay.

The Demon Constantine is either unconscious or faking it passably well. Aside from that… General Kerimov is staring at the wreckage, but I suspect he's starting to get the idea that the fight is over. And once he's sure of that, he's going to start making a nuisance of himself. "Anyone injured?"

Canis shakes his head. "A little tired." He smiles. "Invigorating. And such novel adversaries!"

Raquel shakes her head. "I'm fine. So, that was a Demon, huh?"

I frown. "You were at STAR Labs when-."

"No, that was just… Magic-drugs or something. That was an actual Demon from actual Hell."

I point my right thumb at The Demon Constantine. "So's he."

"Eeeaaaaagghh…" Wallace staggers back from the unconscious Max Mercury. "Oh El? I could do with a-" A wide orange beam hits him, knitting his injuries back together. "-heal. Thanks. Ugh."

Tula and Garth pick their way towards our position, trying to peer at Max Mercury as they come. Tula frowns. "Is that it?"

"I think so. We'll check once Max Mercury wakes up-."

"Because I didn't… Feel a Demon being destroyed or sent anywhere."

"Oh. Well, if you're not familiar with the magic-."

Garth is knocked flying, slamming face first into the ground! Tula is picked up and hurled high into the air!

Mister Garrick stands where they had been moments before, his face red and his needle-toothed mouth now extending to underneath his ears.

"Now this is more like it."

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5th May

19:46 GMT +4

Oh...

Not again...

Edward Clariss grins with Jay Garrick's mouth, revealing multiple rows of needle-like teeth. The wings of Mister Garrick's helmet have been replaced by the horns now extending from the top of his head and punching through the metal. Mister Garrick didn't even bring that with him. Where did he get it?

Oh, never mind. A man who murdered people in specific locations for no better reason than to spell out his own name is now a Demon and possessing Alan's closest friend. And he's just standing there and not attacking. Or gloating. I.. would have expected gloating, given his personality profile. Mister Garrick... Should be alright, at least in the short term. I talked to John about the subject when we tried to work out what sort of state Mister Zatara is likely to be in.

"Edward Clariss."

"Orange Lantern." Jay's voice, distorted slightly. I'm not sure whether that's due to the possession or the teeth.

"Back from Hell, I see. Congratulations on becoming a Demon. Always knew you had it in you."

"Jay said the same thing." There's a slight upturn in the corners of his gaping mouth. "Then he started screaming."

Brut growls. Canis is holding him back for a moment, probably because he knows that Clariss can just walk around his attacks if he's not distracted by something. Raquel is bracing herself and Wallace is... He has his ear over Max Mercury's mouth. Listening for his breath, perhaps?

"What do you want?"

"I thought that I wanted to kill Jay. That's one thought that kept rolling around in my head while I was down there. But now it occurs to me that he'd just go to Heaven if I did that, and he's an old man anyway. So really... What would be the point?"

"If it makes you feel any better, I don't think that Heaven is all that it's cracked up to be."

"He thinks that you know about this sort of thing. There is a Heaven, right? Not everyone goes to Hell?"

"No, there certainly is a Heaven. For the faithful and devout. If you.. wish to avoid going back to Hell, I'm prepared to assist with that?"

"You did pick up on the fact that I'm a-" He raises his hands to run them along his horns. "-Demon, right?"

"Just another species as far as I'm concerned. The last Demon I spoke to said that they found Hell aesthetically appealing, but I imagine that it isn't quite the same for immigrants like yourself."

"On my first day they shoved rusty iron spikes though my legs and made me run on a treadmill."

"That certainly sounds cruel and unusual to me."

"Then they flayed off my skin and made me run though a desert. Then they broke my bones, one at a-."

"Mister Clariss. Hell is an utterly horrible place. I fully appreciate that you have suffered greatly. But since you've acknowledged that there's no point in killing him, I'd really quite like to know what you want in exchange for letting Mister Garrick go."

"Let him go? Why would I do that? Hell, son, how do you think I became a Demon?"

"I don't know."

"I tried to replicate Jay's formula for fame, power and money. But you can't take it all with you. Then, somewhere in all the suffering, I.. realised how much fun those Demons looked like they were having. And I remembered how good I felt whenever I hit someone at super speed, someone with no way to fight back. Just beat them bloody." Oh dear. "And it didn't hurt less, but it started to bother me less. And then less.. and less… Until one day I just ran through the sandstorm and ripped those bastards torturing me apart. And that felt even better. Heady stuff." He refocuses on me. "Jay's going to Heaven? Let's see if I can't tarnish his halo a bit."

He sticks his arms out to the side, vibrating them at super speed. I project infrasound in his direction as Raquel projects a maximum area kinetic barrier around him. And... He's not there.

"Awraaaaagh!"

"I mean, if I eat this woman's face." He's holding one of the recently depossessed partygoers off the ground. "That's got to hurt his chances, right?" He unhinges his lower jaw, horribly distending it as he inches closer.

I send a mental instruction to every Praexis Demon and to the Hellshade to swarm him. I know that I've got no reason to assume that they'll be anything like fast enough but it can't hurt to try.

"Waaaaaaaghh!" His teeth get close to his chosen victim, who struggles against his grip to no avail. Possession must be making him stronger, because given his current age and general state of health Mister Garrick wouldn't be strong enough to hold her like that. But he's not looking at her. He's looking at us. It reminds me a little of a chap in my secondary school by the name of Alex Harrison. Once during a PE lesson he ran a ball over the goal line during a rugby session and didn't put it down, instead challenging weedy little me to tackle him. No point, I'd just have bounced off. And he knew it. Clariss is challenging us because he doesn't believe that there's anything we can do to stop him.

Two Praexis Demons come at him and he blurs away, grabbing a replacement hostage.

"Aagh!" / "Oh, Allah!"

Another Demon comes at him and his right arm blurs into it then vibrates, ripping it apart. I switch my communications to internal.

"Anyone got a clever idea?"

"Yeah, I do." I don't look around as Wallace speaks. "Make him move again."

With Clariss watching me, his teeth already drawing blood from the jaw of the terrified member of the Azerbaijan Worker's Party, I form a railgun while extending filaments under the ground in his direction. "I'd hate to kill Mister Garrick, but better that than let you continue."

"Give it your best-."

I form an infrasound projector in the ground under his feet and trigger it. Clariss staggers, teeth slicing through the flesh of his victim –no critical wounds- as he spasms and falls. His hostage similarly collapses, clutching at his injury. "Rocket!"

A kinetic bubble appears around him, not interfering with the infrasound due to its dome shape. Is that-? The dome disappears and Clariss stands up before lunging-.

Wallace blurs past me, accelerating as... Is Clariss getting slower? I just see two blurs moving, even as the ring accelerates my perception to try and allow me to meaningfully contribute. I transition the Praexis Demons into an approximate circle around the fighters in an attempt to corral them, but... The yellow blur is definitely faster than the red one. Wallace isn't as fast as Mister Garrick, but it looks like demonic resilience is all that's keeping Clariss in contention. Weird, but.. okay. Suddenly they stop, coming back to normal speed as Wallace gets Clariss into a sleeper hold. I've got my railgun up but Canis reacts faster, speeding forwards and smashing Clariss' legs with his mace. There's a resounding crack as the bones break.

...

It's okay, it's okay, I can heal him afterwards. I fire a subsonic Angel feather tipped round into his chest, wincing as I do it. Shining sand –like that in the portal site downstairs- begins sloughing off him as my new Construct-Lantern Hellwraith finally gets back to the combat zone.

"You, get in there and eat that Demon!"

"Yes, master." It flows over the ground and then leaps into Mister Garrick's body.

Okay, can't do anything else there for the moment. Tula, Garth and Max Mercury get quick healing beams, my Atlantean team mates getting up and Max finally being pain free enough to lose consciousness. More sand falls away from Mister Garrick, evaporating where it hits the ground as his demonic features recede.

A moment later the Hellwraith emerges. "Gone, master. Returned to Hell."

Immediately, Wallace lets go of him and I fire healing beams at Mister Garrick, making sure that his heart and lungs keep going and getting the remains of the railgun round out so they can't impede his speed-enhanced recovery. As an afterthought I recall all of my Construct-Lanterns.

I take a moment to look around at the stunned, bound and panicking partygoers.

Oh, what a mess.

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5th May

19:50 GMT +4

Wallace checks Mister Garrick's pulse and breathing, but I already know that he's... 'Fine' would be pushing it, but he's physically whole and unlikely to expire immediately. I turn to the Atlanteans. "Tempest, check Flash Senior for lingering influence. Aquagirl, same for Max Mercury."

"Right." Garth jogs over to kneel next to Wallace, his tattoos lighting up. Tula just nods before heading towards Max.

"Well, that went alright." Being mildly burned by holy fire doesn't seem to have overly diminished The Demon Constantine's spirits. "Guess you'll be sendin' me back to Hell now."

"No. That didn't work last time and I'm not inclined to-."

General Kerimov shoulders his way out of his guard huddle and marches in my direction. "You! Lantern! Is this your doing?!"

He's clearly well past his physical prime. I'd guess that he weighs two stone less than me when I'm not wearing the power armour which I'm currently wearing. And yet he's storming up to me in what is very clearly a fighting mood. We've probably missed our chance to get anything useful from him personally as far as this investigation goes. If we can't tie him to the demonic element we'll be relying on Kaldur to get something useful from their offices. Still...

Internal communication only. "Tempest, if you can do it without looking obvious, put a truth compulsion effect on the General, would you? Don't activate it until I say."

His eyes flick up towards my faceplate and he nods. Good man.

I send my armour's helmet section into subspace and smile at our target. "Good evening, General Kerimov."

"Stick your evening up your arse!" His face has reddened, but empathic vision shows that he isn't anything like as angry as he's pretending to be. His gaze slips to the side for a moment. "Why have you got some sort of bondage faggot behind you?"

"I'm afraid that Mister Constantine is under arrest and will be facing some rather serious charges." I'm not seeing anything that would indicate recognition, but.. then I wouldn't, necessarily.

"What, and that's how you treat people you arrest?"

"When arresting supervillains I find that it's generally best to remove anything they could use as a weapon. If he'd had tattoos I would have had to remove his skin."

Cold hard eyes narrow slightly, but I think I see... Approval? "Who is this... Constantine?"

Again, no indication of deceit. My goodness, someone with a possible supernatural connection who hasn't heard of John. I'll have to tell him. "I'm afraid that's a bit complicated, sir. And I'm afraid that I'm going to have to ask you a few questions before-."

"Fuck off. You can talk to my lawyer."

"General, are you fully aware of how the Azerbaijani legal system treats people who may be under the influence of demonic magics?"

"Demonic?" He frowns fiercely, trying to indicate by his posture that he isn't going to let something that trivial stop him getting the result that he wants. "Bah! Nonsense. Some sort of metahuman terrorist. Yes." He nods. "You can-."

"I'm afraid I can't, sir. I have two Atlantean mages with me who will confirm my findings. The standard Azerbaijani reaction to suspected diabolic influence is a month's solitary confinement minimum for each person at risk. Which means you and all of your guests." His pupils dilate slightly, but his expression remains controlled. "Alternatively, if you'll answer a few questions for me, I'll have my Atlantean colleagues check everyone over and report to the local police that they're all clear." He narrows his eyes slightly. "I'm sure that both they and you would find that more convenient."

On the other side of the garden a few guests try edging toward the front gate. Brut interposes himself and very slightly bares his teeth. They stop.

"Mpf. What do you want to know?"

Hm. Max 'Mercury' Crandall doesn't have a secret identity... Well, he used to, but you don't stay active for two hundred years without people noticing a thing or two. I think that these days most people just assume that 'Mercury' is his real surname. I half turn to see Tula helping him into a sitting position. He looks pretty out of it, but he's conscious and at least somewhat aware of his surroundings. And he's physically Human. A lot of possession victims don't get all of those things back.

"When did you first meet that man?"

Fairly innocuous question to begin. He certainly can't deny that they know each other. Whatever answer he gives, I'll have to check it. Doubt that Mister Crandall will be able to remember with any certainty.

"Mercury? A few months ago. He wanted me to find him work."

"Is that sort of thing a frequent occurrence?"

"People will pay a lot for metahuman security. Usually I just deal with kids who can make a few sparks, but someone who fought the Nazis? He could name his price. That was why I invited him here."

Hmm. I don't know what Mister Crandall's financial situation is like. His preferred way of life doesn't lend itself to building up a financial reserve. Or investments, given what inflation's been like for the past half century. It's not impossible that he'd genuinely have been interested in a job.

I make eye contact with Garth once more. "And what did you hope to get out of it?"

The great thing about most truth compulsion effects is that you often don't realise that what you're going to say is 'off' until after the words leave your mouth.

"I wanted to reverse engineer super speed and use it to create a generation of Soviet super soldiers, like that fuck who runs the Russian super power program is too cowardly to do."

"Do you have any sources other than Max Mercury?"

"Not ones that are worth a damn." He stops, looking perfectly content with his answer. Then the faintest trace of a frown appears, closely followed by the oh fuck, what did I just say?

"And the Demons?"

"You can't trust them to do anything. You-." He actually grabs hold of his own mouth to stop himself talking, glaring at me ferociously for a moment before turning and stalking away.

Hm. Suspicious, but if he already had Mister Crandall's willing participation...

Garth gets up and walks towards me. Mister Garrick is still out of it, but it looks like he's clear. "Was that helpful?"

"I'm not sure. Oh, The Demon Constantine had some sort of ritual going in the basement. I think I disrupted it, but take Aquagirl with you and go and make sure that it's shut down properly."

He nods and heads towards his girlfriend. I attach filaments to the senior speedsters and float them off the ground and towards me. I can get Canis to boom tube them to the mountain's medical bay in a few minutes.

Wallace follows Mister Garrick's recumbent body. "They gunna be okay?"

"Can't say for sure. The possession was brief, we've got magic users available to check on them... So, hopefully." He nods, slightly reassured. "Couldn't help but notice that you seemed faster there..?"

"Jay always said that he was faster than Max, but Max always had more tricks. One of those is how to... Kinda... Borrow speed from other super fast guys."

"And you just.. picked it up?"

"I've been doin' a lot of research into this stuff. I guess I already kinda knew how it should work. And I still wasn't as fast as the Flash. Ah, the current one. But it was just enough to let me keep up with Jay." He opens his arm pouch and fishes out a nutrient bar and a healing potion. "Hasn't done anything for my eating habits, but..." He nods to himself. "Probably worth looking into. Once Max is back on his feet."

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5th May

14:22 GMT -5

Tula, Garth, Raquel and I look up as Kaldur, Roy and Richard walk into our meeting room. "Please tell me you've got some good news?"

Kaldur looks very slightly downcast. Richard shakes his head. "Nothing to do with the kidnapping. We did get solid proof that General Kerimov has been breaking dozens of minor laws, but nothing about kidnapping Miss Molotova or hiding her."

Roy slumps into a seat at the far end, next to Raquel. "We checked dozens of places they owned or worked or rented. If they've got her somewhere, then it's totally off the books."

Richard sits down opposite Canis while Kaldur takes his place at the head of the table. He looks at me. "Were you able to apprehend The Demon Constantine?"

I nod. "Bound in magic suppression chains and handed over to Belle Reve." Ms Waller was fairly upbeat about the prospect of having definitive proof that the upgrades she's made to the place for the purpose of containing magic-based offenders actually work. The chains are designed to be highly resistant to damage but they're keeping him in solitary confinement just in case. "Max Mercury was being possessed by Edward Clariss under his direction. The General was planning to recreate the Soviet Union through super speed operatives by reverse engineering whatever potion it was that gave Max his speed. From what he said before he clammed up, he probably didn't have Miss Molotova kidnapped." I shake my head. "I'm not even sure that he knew about the Demons."

Roy frowns faintly. "Don't you have to be a Demon to possess someone?"

"Um." How to explain to someone with the limited knowledge of magic that Roy has? "The Exorcist-style spontaneous mutation and added super powers type? Yes. But... It's possible for a damned soul to become a Demon."

His eyes widen slightly. "Seriously?"

"We don't... Understand the process... It's unusual and slow and they usually aren't all that powerful. Of course, if someone like Satanus thought that Clariss would be useful he might have helped the process along a little."

"Oh, good. At least we don't have to worry about every dead criminal in history coming back."

Kaldur leans forward slightly. "Was Max Mercury able to give you any useful-?"

There's a rush of displaced air as Wallace comes to a sudden halt in the doorway. "Hey, guys."

"How are they doing?"

"Well... Jay's gunna get an earful from Joan when he's... Y'know... Okay enough to take it in." He crosses to the table and takes his usual place next to Richard. "She only let me off lightly 'cause she was really worried." He fidgets uncomfortably for a moment. "They.. are gunna be okay, right?"

Kaldur blinks, eyes directly on Wallace. "Did something happen to Mister Garrick?"

Wallace's eyes flick to me. "Oh. You guys only just started?" I nod. "Tempest and Aquagirl used some sort of magic to get Clariss out of Max, but rather than getting sent back to Hell or just destroyed he ended up inside Jay."

"Did Mister Garrick take to the field?"

"No." Wallace shakes his head. "He was still back in our room. Far as we can tell Clariss ran straight over to the mansion as soon as he took control." He looks over at the team's Atlantean members. "How did he do that?"

Tula shakes her head regretfully. "We are not really sure. There are a number of possibilities. The fact that all three of them have super speed might create enough of a link to enable Clariss to transfer himself. He might have taken power from the ritual in the basement to make it work, or they might have prepared a spell in advance."

"I thought-. Ah, don't take this the wrong way, but I thought you guys were experts on magic?"

Garth's eyes dip for a moment. "In the Conservatory of Sorcery, Demons are not a popular field of study. We simply do not know enough about how they use magic to determine what they did without a great deal of study of the site, and I do not think that General Kerimov is likely to invite us back." He turns his head my way. "Orange Lantern, do you think that the original John Constantine would have any useful insights?"

"He might. I'll certainly be asking him."

Richard presses a couple of buttons and an image of a man in a grey waistcoat appears. His hair is auburn, aside from his distinctive shock of white running along the right side of his head. Jason Blood. "Might be easier to call in someone they won't recognize as a Demon."

Kaldur stares at the image for a moment-. No, he's staring through it as he thinks. "I do not think that the precise mechanism will be of much significance. It would be more useful to have Jason Blood available when The Demon Constantine is interrogated."

I raise my eyebrows slightly. "Not Constantine mark one?" From the looks they give me I'm going to assume that the answer is 'no'.

"Ah..?" Wallace raises his right hand, index finger extended. "That spaced out thing Jay and Max are doing. They're not going to be like that permanently, are they? I mean... I don't know what being possessed by a Demon does to you. When Nabu did it to me I was just standing in an empty room, but I guess... With a Demon..."

The Atlanteans make brief eye contact with each other and with me. Why would-? Oh, right. I nod, and Kaldur turns to Wallace. "Do you remember how -before he got his current tattoos- Orange Lantern could become overwhelmed by magic, so that it would seem as if he was intoxicated?"

"Yeah? But, they're not acting like they're drunk, just... It's kinda like they've got... Like they've got dementia or something."

Kaldur nods. "For sudden or intense exposure, that is how it usually manifests. They should be fully recovered within two days. If they are not, then there are other treatments which can be used to improve their recovery."

"Okay." He nods, looking quite relieved. "Thanks."

"Okay, I need to bring this up. Whatever we managed to achieve today, we don't have any current leads on what happened to Miss Molotova. Is this mission effectively over?"

Instinctive responses range from denial to downcast. Kaldur mirrors me in taking a look around before responding. "We will need to speak to The Demon Constantine, and it is possible that the Director may have further information for us. But in the event that neither meeting results in us gaining new leads, I fear that you may be right."

Raquel frowns. "Ah still don't understand why you can't just use your ring to scan for her."

I smile ruefully, then connect the ring to the table's holographic display. "When I first arrived on Earth, I could scan pretty much anything I wanted to. After the League of Shadows was destroyed, that started to change."

"Yeah, 'scry wards', you said. But they can't be everywhere."

"These are corporate logos from companies owned by LexCorp before the League of Shadows... And after." I give them a moment to take the images in. "Please note the change in emphasis here and here..."

Garth gets it first. "Those are runic wards."

"Yep. But it gets better. LexCorp has a paper production business. And guess what shapes are now included in the structure of the paper? And guess who are adding it to their computer security product line?"

Richard's eyes narrow slightly. "That's kind of a lot just for you, isn't it?"

"Lex had LexCorp Metropolis warded by an actual wizard. If Satanus actually has joined the Light he's most likely got a few competent cultists around to work on that sort of thing. The protections won't be powerful, but they'll keep me and the Greenies out. Perhaps more importantly, if everything's warded, then magic users on our side can't tell what's important and what isn't, so looking for blind spots isn't really going to help." I look around the room. "Our enemies are intelligent people. In the same way that I've tried to persuade League members to cover their weaknesses, the Light are doing the same, and in the most inconvenient of ways."

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7th May

09:01 GMT +12

Mister Gort glowers down at me as I step into the Director's office. I suppose that I shouldn't, but I'm peeved enough about the whole situation that I open my empathic sense up beyond my normal levels. Follow the red strands... No, he doesn't bear any kind of personal animosity towards me. I'm not Russian, I'm in a secure site and -a little yellow here- he's not completely sure that he could take me. I'm not seeing any real fear for his own safety, he's just worried that me attacking here could seriously compromise Russia's interests. Quick detail scan... Yep, another Danner enhancile. Born sometime in the twenties...

But again, it doesn't make sense. The Russians had both the Danner Formula and a working -if imperfect- version of the Garrick Formula. And while I'm sure that some people in the upper levels of the Soviet Union would believe in the inevitability of the overthrow of world capitalism strongly enough not to want to risk deploying novel weapons I'm having a hard time picturing Stalin having much in the way of reservations about it.

I walk past Mister Gort and towards the Director's desk. He looks up but doesn't otherwise react until I reach the other side, then indicates the chair next to me with a small motion of his right hand. I pull it out and sit down as he marks his place in the report he was reading and files it away, then rests his forearms on his desk and looks me directly in the eyes.

"I understand that you have captured The Demon Constantine. You and your team are to be commended."

"Thank you, Director."

"What is it that you intend to do with him?"

"We had intended to use the Lasso of Truth on him and have him inform us of his master's activities on Earth. Unfortunately, recent legislative changes in the United States have granted non-Humans the same legal protections as Humans. This includes the right not to incriminate himself."

"You yourself led that campaign with Mister Luthor."

"Yes. And.. now I'm really wishing we could have held off for a month or two."

He's not frowning... Not more than normal anyway. "So the American government intends to treat him like a normal prisoner. How confident are you of the continued integrity of the Belle Reve facility?"

"They've had Atlantean assistance in improving it to hold magic users. There's no such thing as complete certainty, but... If we're going to hold him, it's-" Probably worse than the Tower of Fate. On the other hand, if anyone can sneak their way out of the Tower it would be a Constantine. "-as good a place as anywhere."

"Are the Atlanteans selling such technology to other nations?"

"They're not especially eager to propagate anti-magic arcana, but you could probably come to terms."

He nods, a very slight inclination of his head followed by an equally short rising of it. "It was unfortunate that you could not uncover any evidence of a link to Molotova."

My eyes deaden. "Did you really think there would be?"

The skin around his eyes tightens slightly. "I did not think that chance was particularly high. I did not lie to you. It was indeed the best lead that we had on a possible culprit. But as I am certain that you realised for yourself: if General Kerimov already had people capable of super speed movement under his command, why would he take the risk of abducting her?"

"So... What? You heard about his political gathering and took the opportunity to have us break it up? Did you know about The Demon Constantine?"

"There is a modest advantage in having his involvement with Demons revealed by a party who is not directly involved in Russian politics. But in your place I could have brought more pressure to bear to ensure that the government of Azerbaijan dealt with him more harshly. And I prefer to deal with situations like this without involving people not under my command."

"That isn't what I asked. Did you know?"

"I knew that Maxwell Crandall was associating with him, contrary to his usual character. I suspected that his mind had been altered in some way. I did not know that he had been possessed. I trust that he has recovered?"

I give him a small nod. John tells me that people don't ever completely recover from demonic possession, but both Max and Jay appear to have recovered their facilities and not be in too great a mental distress.

"So who actually did it? Who actually took Miss Molotova?"

"Some other enemy of the state. We are still attempting to identify them. Should we learn anything of note, we will inform the Justice League."

"You're willing to share secure Russian intelligence with the Justice League?"

"Of course. Quite aside from the fact that I suspect Batman will be investigating anyway, ensuring support for American superhero teams is a major Russian foreign policy goal."

I didn't know that. "Why is that?"

"It is far better for us that people such as Superman exercise their powers for the greater good in an independent manner. Far worse for us if they join the American military or otherwise work directly for the American government. And with the Justice League held up as the highest embodiment of the superheroic ideal, they encourage up and coming American superheroes to follow a similar independent career path. So long as that continues to be the case I have the freedom to ignore the calls from people similar to General Kerimov to pursue a more confrontational approach."

"Alright then, tell me. Why didn't Russia develop the speed formulae further? Or-" I gesture back with my left thumb. "-the Danner Formula."

"The decision not to further develop Professor Danner's formula was taken by Comrade Premier Stalin. The decision not to continue with the Garrick Formula was taken by me, for the same reason. Steel Wolf has been a paragon of loyalty, but the way the Danner Formula must be applied means that there is no way to select the candidates for loyalty to the Motherland. The Russian Civil War began in nineteen seventeen and Russia was not fully unified under the Communist government until nineteen thirty four. In such an environment, the chance of politically unreliable people gaining such power and possibly overthrowing the Socialist government and setting themselves up as a new ruling elite was intolerable."

Makes sense, I suppose. I know Khrushchev had Mister Gort sent to a gulag as part of the de-Stalinisation program, and he was one of the loyal ones. "And the Garrick Formula?"

"I could not guarantee continued political control. There was an attempt to use their ill health as a control mechanism, but Red Trinity's defection demonstrated the weakness of that strategy. Super speed is far more dangerous than super strength."

"You..? Gave them an imperfect formula intentionally?"

"No. But I was prepared to take advantage of the situation that had developed." He looks past me to Mister Gort, who strides over and places a data stick down on the desk in front of me. "That contains the results of our investigation to date, as well as records from our medical staff and copies of the paperwork you were reviewing before your investigation was curtailed."

I frown. "You.. had this-?"

"No, Orange Lantern. You were engaged in work on our behalf, so I had our staff collate it for you. I have no interest in alienating the Justice League or in seeing Kid Flash come to further harm. And I am genuinely grateful. Your actions against the former General Kerimov will -along with our other work- go a long way to ensuring Russian political unity."

"I don't think you needed our help with that."

And for the first time his eyes waver. "There is no such thing as too much unity. My predecessor lived through the breakup of the Russian Empire. I lived through both Stalin and de-Stalinisation, through the occupation of Eastern Europe and the privatisation of national industries. Where there is disunity, there is weakness. And that is not to be tolerated."

"I didn't realise that you-" I open up my empathic vision again. "-were that old. Are you another Danner enhancile?"

I manage to control my reaction well enough not to frown. The colours I saw before are still there, but now that I take a closer look I start to notice the things that aren't. I can't follow threads to formative memories or experiences, they just sort of... Trail off to nowhere. I mean, the most intense green is associated with... I think that's a gulag. But the rest...

His face remains impassive. "My personal history is of no relevance. I act on behalf of the Russian people at the direction of their leader, the President. So far as you may be concerned, I am the face of the Russian state. One functionary among many, and completely replaceable. Good day, Orange Lantern."

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NEXT CHAPTER

Bindings

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Bindings 1

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Bindings

11th May

13:58 GMT

"Recognised, Wonder Woman, zero three, Orange Lantern, B zero six."

Guy looks around from his place on the far side of the Justice League's meeting table as Diana and I walk towards it. "Hey Orange. Welcome t'the club."

I.. slow slightly, but continue my approach as Diana walks over to her place near the table's head. "Club?"

Superman nods. "I suppose you could put it like that."

Batman's here, as are the other Lanterns, Major Adams, William Batson, Mister Freeman, Mister Yao, King Orin and.. Nabu. If Mister Allen and Mister J'onzz were here I'd make a comment about this being the League's top tier. For a moment I worry that my talk last month resulted in half of the League getting fired.

Batman looks up from his datapad for a moment. "Take a seat."

That makes me stop. On the near side the occupied seat furthest from the head of the table is occupied by Nabu. Fortunately, there are more empty places on the far side. Giving Nabu a wide berth, I walk around the open end of the 'U' and pull out the seat next to Guy before looking into the League members' faces and trying to work out what's going on. Diana orders me somewhere, I go there, but a little more information would have been helpful.

"Orange Lantern." Batman presses a button and a blue holographic globe appears in the middle of the 'U', rotating slowly on its axis. There are a large number of markers on it, some green, some yellow and a few red. "Do you know what these represent?"

Ring? Hm. Some are military bases, some I can't scan... Those could be secure government sites of some kind. Countries marked are the United States, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, France, Britain...

"Are they nuclear weapon launch sites?"

Batman inclines his head slightly. "This is a list of the locations of every launch-capable nuclear warhead on Earth which we have been able to discover."

"Do their owners know that you know this?"

Superman tilts his head to his left for a moment. "We haven't told them, but that doesn't mean that they don't suspect that we know."

Diana smiles faintly as she looks at me. "The reason I asked you here today-."

And it clicks into place. "Is that in the event of a nuclear war it's our job to stop them."

This time Batman nods. "Essentially, yes. Intercepting-" The globe moves and various military vehicles and missiles appear. "-aircraft and missiles requires a very particular power set, including but not limited to supersonic flight and the ability to absorb and inflict significant damage." I glance across at King Orin, then back at Batman. "The Atlantean military monitors all sea-based nuclear launch platforms."

"It's a little more than that, Batman." Orin turns to me. "We also have battle mages on hand who could disable or sink them at short notice." A wry smiles plays over his lips. "A job which the recent popularity of anti-scrying wards hasn't made any easier."

"Sorry, sir."

"It's not your fault. Something like this was inevitable, eventually. I won't really start to worry until they start using wards strong enough to actually keep us out."

Superman nods. "I can sympathise. It surprised me quite how quickly the army took advantage of the fact that I can't see through lead."

I remember that in the comic which featured Fernus the Burning they had to intercept a group of nuclear missiles launched by the American military. They missed one, but that was with a seven person League and zero notice. I turn to my left. "I thought you Greenies weren't allowed-?"

Jordan scowls. "What, you really think we prioritize being in the Corps over all life on Earth?"

John nods. "We checked, and we think we'd have about half an hour before our rings were deactivated. Short range nuclear miss'les only take minutes to reach their targets. Even Salaak can't revoke our status that fast."

Guy rolls his eyes. "Oh, good job, now you said it out loud."

Then... I can't help but look over at Major Adams. I'm not sure exactly what rules he's acting under these days, but to my inexpert ears this is starting to sound a bit.. treasony.

He notices. "I'm not about to see millions of Americans die if I can prevent it. And they can only arrest me if there's still a government left."

"Ah, alright, well, I'm in. Haven't really... Thought about this much. Do we.. each have a.. sector, or..?"

Batman shakes his head. "Given how quickly we predict that events would occur, that just isn't practical. Since most League members are based in the US-" The globe stops rotating and icons showing the 'home locations' of the League members present appear. "-we would most likely be relying on Doctor Fate and the Lanterns to cover the rest of the world. Realistically, I doubt that even under favorable conditions we would be able to stop all of the missiles, but every one destroyed en route or prevented from launching will spare the lives of tens of thousands of people."

I nod. "Have you discussed more... Aggressive action against launch sites? It would be... Far faster to destroy them than to disable them."

William takes a steadying breath. He really doesn't look comfortable. "Have you ever seen the film 'War Games'?"

"Not all the way through, but.. I'm... Assuming you're referring to the opening scene where the launch operator wasn't prepared to fire despite receiving valid orders."

"So..." He shrugs. "How do you know the guy who's been ordered to fire is actually gunna do it? And if we don't stop all of them, well... We're gunna have to do a lot of work... Afterwards. People probably expect us to try and stop the missiles, but if we actually attack someplace then people might start seeing us as the enemy."

He does have a point. I could probably tell whether or not the people in a particular silo or onboard a particular plane would actually do it, but not from a great distance and not quickly enough to go from place to place for each of the thousands of sites worldwide. Personally, I think it would be more sensible to just do it, but... No, if this happens we'd have to start immediately. A limited exchange wouldn't necessarily result in all out war. Unless someone started destroying their launch sites. And by the time everywhere got their go-codes...

Batman nods again. "In the event of all out war, if even one percent of the nuclear powers' devices reached their targets-"

The world hologram changes, showing arcs representing nuclear weapons flying from their points of origin. First strike weapons like ICBMs and fighter-mounted missiles streak ahead. Ninety nine in every hundred wink out... A hundred and fifty are left. I remember that belligerent powers generally don't target population centres. The UK does because Trident's got poor accuracy, but the US and Russia generally point theirs at military and government targets. Of course, those are usually located in cities. Looks like the League think that India and Pakistan have the same lack of precision.

"-the immediate death toll might well be in the region of one billion people. In the aftermath, as the only active Lantern on Earth we would be relying on you to do what you could to minimise the effects of the dust clouds. A nuclear winter which destroyed that year's harvest would kill even more people than the initial nuclear exchange."

"You know, if... " I glance left. "If you'd be out of the Corps anyway... There's really no reason not to let Alan recharge himself. I mean, I could do the whole planet eventually but this is something that needs to be done as quickly as possible."

Guy and Jordan nod. Stewart glances at Jordan first, then nods as well. Jordan leans forwards to make eye contact with me. "Not sure how much time we'd have, but sure. We can try doing that." His jaw moves slightly to the left and his eyes drop to the table for a moment. "Look, I've never been 'okay' with the way that the Guardians insisted on freezing Alan out. It just wasn't my call to make."

I shake my head. "Never thought it was."

Batman waits a moment to see if we want to say anything else, then presses on. "You will be required to memorize the locations displayed on the screen, though given that you have eidetic memory that shouldn't prove too difficult. We meet here once a month to go over any changes in our target locations. Since we started these meetings the world hasn't come close to a nuclear exchange. In the event that it did, we would meet more frequently. It should go without saying that you are not to tell anyone about this."

"Thank you for not phrasing it as an order, sir, but yes. I realised." Do I ask? "Sir, there are things I could do to make it easier to stop an exchange. Laser drones placed along likely flight paths, that sort of thing? Do you want me to look into it?"

"No. I do not believe that a nuclear exchange is likely to occur in the immediate future, and the damage that would be caused to both the League and to international relations if your efforts were discovered makes it too much of a risk."

Major Adams nods. "He's right. Remember how the Russians acted when President Phillips tried restarting the Strategic Defense Initiative?"

I nod. Not 'Phillips' of course, but I do. "Very well, sir. Thank you for trusting me with this. If the worst happens, you won't find me wanting."

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Bindings 2

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12th May

11:47 GMT -6

My maternal grandparents lived in a house in the village of Leonard Stanley in Gloucestershire. They ate most of their meals on the kitchen table, but during periods when they had guests in the house they ate in the actual dining room, which would otherwise remain closed and unused. I suppose that the table was a bit big for the two of them, but... I'd never seen that particular arrangement anywhere else. Until now.

I look out through the hush tube into the home of retired Detective Chief-Inspector Geoffrey Talbot. His wife killed herself twelve years ago and his daughter and her family live in Australia. I suppose that he doesn't think it's worth keeping the dining room open just for himself. In fact, from the look of the kitchen area I'm going to assume that he usually eats out. There aren't any food stains but there's a small amount of dust in places which suggests that he hasn't thought to include them in his cleaning rituals.

I am mildly annoyed that Chester and Vera want me to meet him without actually telling me why. I suppose a degree of interpersonal difficulty is inevitable if I want to continue working with Chester. And I can't claim to be above creating unnecessary difficulty for my own amusement so it would be hypocritical for me to complain when he does it. I did a little research on the man and it seems that he retired under somewhat confusing circumstances. Twenty nine years on the force, then he was carrying out a corruption investigation into officers in the Avon and Somerset Constabulary. He was at it for a couple of months and then was suspended himself. I've checked the newspapers of the period and I can't find mention of a specific allegation, then... He took retirement and whatever case was going to be brought was dropped. I know that happens sometimes. I generally regard it as unfortunate, but probably more cash-efficient in complex cases than taking it to trial. Still, Chester will have had a look around his mind by now and given how seriously he's taking this I doubt that he'd involve me if it was going to be a waste of my time.

Miss Amane is sitting in his living room in full costume, war scythe propped up against the side of his chair. Chester is standing just behind her and Vera is lurking invisibly on the pavement outside. Miss Amane was delighted to take an assignment in Britain, though I suspect that she's been happy to take an assignment from me to just about anywhere. She'll be learning spycraft from my two more experienced employees, plus her natural face and body language aren't known to anyone. When we actually move into the active phase-.

There's a clatter as Mister Talbot opens his front door and steps inside, pushing it closed behind him. He takes his coat off and hangs it up on the coat stand. It's not raining in London at the moment but there's a chill in the air. There's a good deal more grey in his hair these days than there was in the older pictures. His hairline has receded a little further and I think he's lost a little weight. As he turns towards his shoe rack he hesitates for a moment, as if something just occurred to him. Then he appears to shrug it off, removing his shoes and donning his slippers. Next, he picks up his briefcase in his right hand and ambles in the direction of his living room.

He pushes the door open with his left hand and takes a moment to look at his uninvited guests. He doesn't look worried or angry. A little annoyed, perhaps. As if he now has a minor chore to attend to that he'd rather he didn't have to.

"Wondered how long it would take you bastards." He stays standing in the doorway for a moment. "Well? Here I am. What's the bloody holdup?"

Chester grins. "Got us all wrong, dibbler. Not 'ere t'shiv yeh."

"Chester Black. I didn't realise that I warranted your personal attention." Miss Amane gets a small frown and then a mental dismissal. I suppose that if he knows who Chester is then he's got no reason to suppose that anyone else with him is more dangerous than he is. "I don't intend to cooperate with you taking me somewhere else, so you'd best do it here."

"Like I said, all wrong, cock. I'm a private agent these days."

Mister Talbot frowns slightly. "Is that so?"

"Yeah, it is so. Reckon my new boss 'd be dead keen on meeting you. If yer up for it."

"And if I say 'no'?"

Chester shrugs. "Sod yeh, then."

Mister Talbot's frown deepens. "Alright. I'll need my briefcase."

"Jest a sec. Vera love, you got the windows?" The living room window shimmers as Vera activates the hologram projector. "Magic."

I step through the hush tube, closing it behind me.

12th May

17:50 GMT

"Mister Talbot. Chester has convinced me that meeting you is worth my time."

Mister Talbot looks up at my face, puffs out his cheeks slightly and slowly exhales. "You're that Grayven chap who killed that little shit Klarion. Hmm. Well, since you're here I suppose we might as well talk about it. Put the kettle on, would you, Black?"

Chester narrows his right eye, preparing for a 'y'wot?' I give him a level gaze as Mister Talbot sits down and he acquiesces, heading out the door towards the kitchen.

"So. What exactly is it that you want with me?"

"Me and mine have run smack into evidence suggesting that the British establishment is corrupt and 'evil' to an almost farcical degree." He hunches down slightly, eyes narrowing as if to bore into my soul. "We're starting doing the work which will eventually lead to us dealing with the problem."

"What do you mean by 'dealing with'?"

"Killing the worst offenders, trying and imprisoning the rest."

"Need a bloody big prison."

"I have a bloody big prison." Well. I've started building one. It'll be ready by the time we need it. "I take it that you ran into.. some of the same things that we have."

"Something like that. One moment. Don't think I'll be needing this." He tightens his right hand and... Presses a button on his briefcase.

What exactly-? It's a bomb. "Why do you have a briefcase bomb?"

"Last time the bastards got me, they bundled me into the back of a van with four other blokes. They got slaughtered like pigs. I only made it out because our gaolers went mad and the armed response unit that got sent in after them recognised me."

Ah. I approve. "You decided that if they came for you again you'd take a few of them with you. Admirable. How exactly did this come about?"

He shakes his head. "Never really got to the bottom of it. When I was investigating the Avon and Somerset mob, I nearly ran into one of their Masonic death squads. That was enough to provoke them into trumping up charges and leaning on my superiors until they suspended me. Kept poking around, of course. Didn't find a bloody thing until I ran into John Constantine."

"Oh. Hard luck."

"Not his fault." He smiles, and there's no joy in it. "Though I've thought about walking up to him and giving a good thumping on many an occasion since. No, that death squad had been sending me hate mail since I was taken off the investigation. Didn't matter to me, but they were posting them through the door when Joanie was there on her own..." He sighs. "Silly cow."

I nod. Never really understood why that sort of thing could drive someone to kill themselves. I mean, why not just bin the things after reading the first few lines?

"So, she killed herself, I joined up with Constantine, a journalist called Hughes and a Russian FIS agent agent named Sergei. Only the death squad got a kill order and rounded the lot of us up almost immediately. Except Constantine, who was out at the shops at the time. We all got hauled off to a place called Geotroniks. The bloody Masons were using it for some sort of.. magic research. Still not sure how seriously to take that part of it."

"Oh, fairly seriously."

"I am well aware that magic exists, I just didn't expect to run into it in a place like that." He rubs his chin with his right hand. "Part of the ritual involved killing us. They got most of us. Throttled a few of their people myself. Armed response shot the rest. Constantine walked away from it all, of course. Apparently, he does that a lot."

"Then what?"

"Police took my statement, wrote it off as gibberish and let me go. Sat around the house for a couple of days feeling sorry for myself, then gave myself a stern talking to and got up off my arse. I started volunteering at the local citizen's advice so there would be something to keep my brain ticking over. Then one of my old chums from the force paid me a visit. Seems that all the pressure they'd had on them to get rid of me had suddenly disappeared."

"They weren't seriously asking you back, were they?"

"No, but they'd give me early retirement with no fuss. I said that I'd think about it. None of the Geotroniks employees could have had the authority to order Scotland Yard to get rid of me, and that meant that the ones ultimately responsible were still at large. People died, and they were just going to walk away from the whole thing. As I hope you can appreciate, that made me rather angry."

"Is that when you bought the bomb?"

"Not quite, but it wasn't much later. No, I knew that if I was going to get them, the people who were really behind things, I'd have to do it intelligently. Gather evidence until I knew exactly who did what. I need to get all of them in one fell swoop. So I started making contacts. Poked around a bit, kept my ear to the ground. Learned a thing or two you might be interested in."

"You might well be right there."

"But there's a price." I raise my eyebrows. "I want to be there when you take them. I want to see them when you drag them off to wherever you're planning on taking them. If it's the last thing I do, I want to see it happen. I want to see my country cleansed of this filth."

I smile, nodding. "Mister Talbot, I do believe that we can come to terms."

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Bindings 3

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12th May

14:37 GMT -5

"I hereby declare, and solemnly affirm, that I absolutely-"

I lean back in my wooden seat, trying to look like I'm giving the stage my full attention and trying to ignore the man to my immediate right.

"-and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty-"

It's a big day. We nearly had a bit of a misstep when Red Tornado tried using the version of the Oath from the nineteen forties, but Justice Stevens just stopped him and pointed out his mistake. Not really sure what the point of him bearing arms would be, but I suppose there has to be one rule for everyone where these things are concerned.

"-of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States-"

Danni has her right hand raised while she recites the Oath, having assured Justice Stevens that she knows the words for the modern version. Her face is serious but not blank in the way it would be if she didn't have her emotional simulation program active.

"-of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear-"

I can't really blame whoever it was who came up with the seating arrangement for putting me next to Lex Luthor. We both campaigned to make this happen, and… Yeah, it was reasonable to put us front and centre. I suppose that I was lucky, really. A little further down the row is a man who is either an actor or Uncle Sam.

"-true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf-"

I mean, really. Red and white striped trousers. I came in suit. I'll give him a pass on the blue waistcoat and tailcoat. The hair and the beard even manage to look distinguished.

"-of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the-"

But the hat currently resting on his lap kills it. A top hat is dubious anyway, the red and white stripes are a big no-no and the ring of stars makes him look like a flag cosplayer. Did Captain Nazi dress like a Prussian officer? No, he did not.

"-Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I-"

Of course, it might just not have been noticeable with Captain Nazi. The Nazis were dressed by Hugo Boss. He'd have thrown up all over his jackboots if the embodiment of fascism tried dressing like that. Apparently there wasn't any advanced notice that he was planning on turning up. I had thought about investigating him earlier but his last public appearance was in the seventies and I couldn't find any recent trails. I suppose this change to citizenship procedures was enough to bring him out of hiding. Is finding out what he's been up to worth the mental anguish of actually talking to him? No, probably not.

"-will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that-"

Goodness me this Oath thing is a bit militant, isn't it? What happened to the ideology? Where's liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Bah, I found the idea of something like this unsettling and I still think that the modern British version is better. Not that I -as a loyal citizen of Themyscira- am affected much either way.

"-I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion."

Danni lowers her right hand to shake hands with Justice Stevens, then with President Horne. He's the one I've got to thank for the fact that we couldn't Truth Lasso The Demon Constantine. Aahhh, I shouldn't complain, not about having to follow a law I broadly regard as being a good thing. Apparently, something happened in Congress, the final vote happened sooner than anyone really expected and Horne wanted to get it signed and in force as soon as possible. Originally, it was going to be signed at the start of this ceremony. Would have made it a better performance piece…

I join in with the polite applause, though to my left Marie Logan is a little more enthusiastic. No more cross-border intrusions these days; the Bialyan military is far too busy fighting itself or defecting to make a nuisance of themselves. They did take in a few civilian refugees, but they weren't really set up for hosting them long term. I spot the new ring on Marie's left hand and smile. Turns out that one of the refugees was a judge from a town on the Bialyan side of the border. Danni took the initiative; a short trip over to the Bialyan side took them to the only Middle Eastern country where gay marriage is a thing. I'd like to have been there, but apparently Danni decided that haste was the order of the day.

In the chair to her left, Garfield mostly just looks bored.

Dubbilex has already had his turn and Doctor Lockhart is still firmly in denial. Mister Dukeston is up next. Technically, he isn't a prisoner, since at the time his crimes were committed he wasn't legally a person. Red Tornado has been spending a good deal of time with him in the interim and apparently he's… More or less adjusted to his new life. Not that we were stupid enough to give him a replacement combat body or anything. From what Red Tornado told me, he's perfectly happy to be able to regain control of his business and has no intention of wasting any more of his time as a 'no-good low down supervillain, nosireebob'.

Ah, good luck to him. It's not as if there are a great many robot assassins in the country, and we control the only places he can go for anything more than cursory maintenance. I'd be astonished if he's on anything other than best behaviour… Quick check? No, emotional connections say normalcy and lawful money making.

"I hereby declare, on oath, that…"

I tune him out. These four will be the first, but they hope that other beings who don't fit the conventional definition of Human will be able to come forwards and claim citizenship. They'll have to make do with doing so in the normal manner, rather than on the White House lawns. The legal structures for Dubbilex to take formal control of Cadmus are already in place, though it won't change what he's up to on a day to day basis.

You know, this legal change is going to have a larger impact on my work. When I'm in the US, I'm going to have to exercise the same forbearance on the use of lethal force on Demons and the undead that I do on living organic people. Of course, that only applies to the US. The Azerbaijani authorities were rather annoyed that we didn't kill The Demon Constantine right then and there, and British law positively incentivises the slaying of 'unrighteous revenants'. Or would, if anyone but me remembered that the law existed. It's one of those old 'no sunset clause and still technically on the books' laws that no one is sure if they are actually still in force.

Ah, I love my old country.

The President shakes Mister Dukeston's hand and ushers his guests to the front of the stage for a photo opportunity. Photographers and camera crews out to the front of the seating area, and several of the people around me get to their feet. I give it a moment to make sure that that is what we're supposed to be doing, then push myself off my chair.

Lex is already upright, and Miss Graves has reappeared from wherever she was lurking. He looks up at the stage with a faint smile on his lips then turns to me. "I thought that went rather well."

"No Enginehead, Lex?"

He gives his head a small shake. "I offered, but he wasn't interested. It's hard to get him to abandon his datasets."

"I suppose there's no reason to assume that AIs would have the same range of interests as organic beings. Or-" I glance at up the robots on the stage. "-AIs patterned after organic beings."

"No. Still, the protections of the law still apply to him even without this ceremony. My personnel department is trying to work out exactly what his services are worth to us so that we can determine what we're supposed to pay him. It wouldn't do at all for me to be seen as abusing our relationship."

'Seen as', I note. "I assume that he has access to counsel?"

"Naturally."

He's probably being honest. Lex does tend to treat his employees -at least those he directly employs in the various Lex-businesses- fairly well.

"I am curious as to why my son isn't here. Legally speaking, he was a US citizen before he became a Themysciran citizen."

The actual answer is that Prince Kon doesn't identify with the US. Conner Kent on the other hand is already a US citizen, though not through normal processes of application. "He's happy as he is. A diplomatic passport gives him all the legal protection he needs, and I'm fairly confident that he never intends to run for president."

"Ah." Lex bows his head slightly. "I had thought -given that he spends most of his time here- that he might have developed a stronger feeling for this country. Still, I suppose it's his decision to make." He looks past me for a moment. "Excuse me, I need to go and thank Senator Jeffreys for his support."

I nod, and he heads off to gladhand.

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Bindings 4

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13th May

20:17 GMT

Our host frowns at us from his place on the family settee. "Not as far as I know, but I do not mind introducing you to a few people who might know better than me."

There are only so many sources of super speed in the world, and without any other leads to go on I suggested that we find out exactly how broad our ignorance is. Which is why we're sitting in the Birmingham home of Mister Aavai Singh (aka Rush Hour 1) to try finding out how the heck a seventy one year old man from the Punjab acquired the ability to run faster than a speeding bullet. He also picked up super speed reflexes that are always on, though he can't move through solid objects or run on water. Thanks to me his son-in-law is on the League long list and I know that Diana is keeping in touch with his granddaughter.

Richard nods. "It would be a big help."

I was just going to do this on my own, but Richard said that he really wanted to be out of Wayne Manor this evening. With the wedding coming up tomorrow things are a bit manic. I suppose going from three people living there to four, five, and now the extended family of both parties and a lot more servants-. Is that the PC term? The help? Whatever. Wayne Manor is actually overcapacity for the first time in decades. Mostly the bride's family of course, but Bat-. But Bruce's Aunt Agatha is temporarily in residence, along with her nursing staff and a smattering of more distant relatives.

Mister Singh nods, then frowns at me. "What is this I hear about you using Demons?"

Um. "Technically, they aren't Demons."

"Technically?"

His accent is an odd mix of Punjabi and Brummie, with the first being predominant. "As I understand the process by which they are created, every bit of demonic magic is consumed in the assimilation process."

"And what is that?"

"What I do to make them. As I said, technically they're just Demony-looking constructs. They keep some of their original instincts, but that's because it's easier to give them broadly worded instructions than direct them every moment myself. I would be extremely reluctant to trust a Demon with anything."

"Ah." He nods. "I do not like it much, but-" I hear a key in the front door. "-I will trust that you know what you are doing."

"Papa?! Are you home?!"

Mister Singh turns his head in the direction of the door. "Living room, Dennis!"

Dennis Singh née Brown pushes open the door from the hallway. "Hello, lads." Something of a rarity, he's a white British man who converted to Sikhism while on a gap year in India. He's married to Mister Singh's-. To Aavai Singh's daughter Adish.

Ugh, it's awkward to talk about people when half of their entire religion has the same surname. Yes, the caste system needed to go but couldn't the Guru have come up with a less linguistically awkward fix?

"Are they really here?" His daughter Vasi enters the room on her father's heels. I'm on my feet before I really think about it, and Richard follows me before he realises that I'm just 'being English'. Her eyes widen excitedly as she spots us and then she's in front of us, beaming.

Her grandfather frowns at her back. "Vasi. Manners."

She ignores him and holds out a small book towards Richard. "Could you sign it?"

He smiles back at her. "Okay, sure. Got a pen?"

Dennis walks up to me, right hand extended. I take hold of it and we shake. I've actually spoken to him a few times before while assembling my long list and adding to the League's non-US database. "What brings you to Birmingham, mate?"

"We had an encounter with a speedster last week, and we couldn't work out how they were moving that fast." I shrug. "I thought I'd ask if you knew anything."

Vasi blurs to the closest chest of drawers and back, presenting Richard with a biro. He takes it. "So, do I make it out to Rush Hour or Vasi Kaur?"

Dennis shakes his head. "Papa taught me, and the only person I've taught is Vasi. Vasi, you haven't been training anyone, have you."

"What?" She looks away from Richard. "No, of course not, Dad."

"Papa? You taught anyone else?" He holds his hands up. "I promise I won't be jealous."

"I have already told them that I have not. My brother Tekbir knew, but he died without teaching anyone. Our father knew, but he taught only us."

Richard finishes signing his name and hands the book back to Vasi, who looks delighted with it. "It's something you can just learn?"

"Johnny Quick's technique is something you can just learn." I remember my own attempts to visualise exactly what the hell '3X2(9YZ)4A' actually looks like. "Apparently."

Aavai shakes his head. "The names of everyone my family has acknowledged teaching are a matter of record, and I do not think that there is anyone in my family who would have taught a criminal."

"Um. Are you allowed to tell.. us... What it is you do?"

Dennis and Vasi look at him as he ponders the question.

"What religion are you?"

"Hellenist. I worship Eris, Goddess of Chaos."

Vasi blinks in surprise. "Really?"

"You did realise that Wonder Woman-?"

"Yes. But... I didn't think other people did?"

"The proof of the physical reality of a god is quite a draw for many people."

"I'm Episcopalian." Richard looks over our hosts. "If it matters."

Aavai bows his head slightly. "It is not the answer which I was expecting, but I suppose that it does not matter. We swear only to never give information on the subject to Muslims. The source of our speed takes the form of a prayer. To receive it you must open your mind and spirit to God and to the one teaching you in just the right fashion. If you do this, someone who already has it may share it with you. It is not written down and there is no way it could be passed on accidentally." He glances at Dennis. "No matter what my son-in-law tries to tell me."

Vasi rolls her eyes. "Oh, don't start, granddad."

Richard looks at him with undisguised curiosity. "So where did it come from in the first place?"

"A Hindu teacher to whom one of my ancestors gave shelter from the forces of the Mughal Empire. The version of the story I was told by my grandfather was that he was displeased by the inability of his own disciples to master his teachings and so he attempted to instruct my ancestor, who learned it in a single night." He smiles, shaking his head. "That was probably not what actually happened, but I'm afraid that there is no written record and no one thought to remember where the Hindu got it from."

"I haven't seen any super speed Hindus running around the place, so they probably didn't teach anyone else."

Richard frowns. "Isn't that kinda weird? I mean, if it was a Hindu prayer..?"

Aavai opens his mouth slightly, then closes it with a sigh. "Dennis, I can feel you vibrating. If you want to explain it, then explain it."

He grins the grin of someone who isn't allowed to eloquate on the subject he loves anything like often enough, and has just received an unlimited licence. "At the time, Hindus and Sikhs were mostly allied against the Muslim Mughals. Sikhism is monotheistic, but it isn't Abrahamic and it actually has a lot more in common with Hinduism than with Islam or Christianity. All of the first generation Sikhs were Hindu converts, and for a long time a lot of Hindus regarded Sikhism as an odd sort of Hindu denomination that only saw God as one thing rather than lots of things that were also one thing. The particular way Hinduism was practised varied a lot from place to place, and which particular god or goddess had a big following in a particular area. As long as a Sikh didn't eat beef right in front of them, the fact that a Sikh considered themselves to be a Sikh and not a Hindu probably wouldn't have mattered much to them."

Ah, the zeal of the convert.

"Of course, things aren't anything like that friendly now." He jerks his head to the side. "Well, not in India or Pakistan. There's no real animosity here, not among people who've been in Britain for a generation or two."

Aavai nods. "We believe in reincarnation as they do and in the same sorts of virtues and vices. Unless a particular prayer absolutely needed to be addressed to one of the Hindu gods on an individual basis, it would be compatible with Sikh thought and spirituality."

Richard nods. "Are there any other sorts of prayer power that you know of?"

"Oh, heh." Aavai laughs. "I would say that a great many Hindu superheroes probably received their powers in a similar sort of way."

"So do people know how to make more prayer powers like that?"

That brings him up short. He and Dennis share a moment of eye contact, then he shrugs. "They may. If anyone does, they are keeping it very quiet. I certainly do not know how it could be done. If I had to guess, I would say that God granted it to the first holder. But I do not know." He frowns. "If you find out, be certain to let me know. That is going to bother me all day now."

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Bindings 5

next

13th May

17:22 GMT -5

Richard, Artemis and I stand well back from the orange and yellow blurs darting around the holographic table tennis table. As with Donna, school commitments make it impossible for Vasi to join the team. Still, Diana was happy to approve a visit to the Mountain and for her to meet with those team members in residence.

"Point, Rush Hour."

The two of them precipitate out of the air. Vasi is panting heavily, her uniform darkening with her sweat. Wallace slowly jogs over to where he stowed his towel then pulls his mask away from his face to mop his brow.

Artemis smirks in his direction. "Still feeling confident, Kid?"

He drops his towel and picks up his water bottle. "I'm just..." He drinks a slug and then tips some over his face. "I'm just.. warming up."

Vasi straightens up and stretches her arms over her head. "Your... Your service?"

"Yeah. Yeahokay." He wipes his face once more and then toddles back towards the table.

Richard glances at me as Wallace serves and the two of them disappear again. "Wanna change your bet?"

"No. Kid Flash has become a lot more mature since we first met. He'll get over his reluctance to steal her speed eventually."

Artemis raises her left eyebrow. "That's something he can just do now? You said Clariss could stop sound waves."

"Not exactly. He tried it out with the Flash. He can slow down someone else with super speed and make himself faster by the same amount. At the moment."

"Point, Kid Flash."

"Alright!"

"At the moment?"

"He said he wants to keep training with Max. Max taught Jay, and there's a lot he could learn."

Artemis nods, opens her mouth slightly and then closes it again. Then she frowns slightly. "Has he said anything about it.... Doing anything about his... Eating..?"

"It might end up helping with that, but it hasn't yet." Richard looks down slightly. "Nothing the Russians came up with really helped either. I mean, they gave us a whole lot of things that they found out didn't work..."

"Think we should suggest that he talk to Rush Hour Senior about maybe accessing their form of super speed?"

"Maybe. I dunno. I mean, we've got no idea what it would do to someone who already had super speed."

"We tried Johnny Quick's formula without knowing that."

"I don't really think that was a good idea either, Oh El."

"Point, Kid Flash."

"My serve!"

There's a noise behind us, and I half turn to see the Sphere roll in. It warbles briefly and then rolls up alongside us. Had to admit, I'm a little surprised that it didn't go back to New Genesis with the young New Gods. Canis hasn't said anything about it but its presence appears to be confusing him slightly as well. Though probably not for the same reasons.

"You two got your outfits picked out for tomorrow?"

Richard raises his eyebrows. "We're guys, and I have a butler. So, yeah, that was taken care of really quickly."

"Remind me again how Richard Grayson knows Orange Lantern?"

"You're representing KordTech's Future Technology project. WayneTech is very interested in the commercial potential of some of the things your think tank has been coming up with. Lucius will probably want to talk to you at some point."

"Seems a bit... Distant? Inviting potential business partners to your wedding?"

"Half the people there are going to be people we barely know. Including the bride's relatives." Richard shrugs. "I didn't even know I had cousins."

We watch the blurs for a few moments.

Artemis shifts position slightly. "I've.. never actually been to an actual church service before. I don't.. really know how I'm meant to act."

"Really? Never?"

"Supervillains aren't really big on God."

"You know, you're totally ruining my mental image of Americans here."

"You said you used to be an atheist! How many times have you been to church?"

"Church of England Primary School, so... Two or three times a year between the ages of five and eleven? Might have gone to chapel with my Nan a few times, but if I did I don't remember it. Never been inside a working cathedral, though. Actually..." I frown. "Saint Augustine's is Catholic, isn't it? You said you were Episcopalian."

"He's Catholic. When... When I was living with my parents, we weren't exactly regular churchgoers. But, whenever we went and we had a choice, we went to an Episcopalian church. Or whatever the local Anglican church was. After they died and I moved in, he switched over so I could keep going to the sorts of service I was used to."

"I suppose that Catholicism is a bit of an acquired taste." Huh. "I hadn't thought about it before, but... What religion is the bride?"

"Lapsed Zoroastrian."

I chuckle in surprise. "Really? That's a thing?"

"Those were the sorts of social rituals that Ra's brought her up with. I'm not sure how seriously she took it. She seems happy with the venue just because it's big and fancy."

"And I imagine.. it would be a bit tricky... Finding a Zoroastrian venue big enough.. in... America, actually." I frown. "Wait, Ra's was a Zoroastrian and he worked with a Chaos Lord?"

"I guess he wasn't practicing either."

"Point, Kid Flash."

"Only one more to go!"

"You'll never get it!"

"What are the rest of her family like?"

"Pretty normal, actually. Oh, and they don't know what her father actually did, just that Melisande married a guy from the Middle East."

"I should hope not. Just in case it comes up, what is the official line on his occupation?"

"Shipping. That's what most of her legitimate businesses do, so they shouldn't question it if it comes up. Though... You might not.. know.. that."

I nod. "Because there's no real reason for a superhero to know anything about a Middle Eastern shipping mogul, right."

Artemis looks down at him. "Are you gunna be able to pretend you don't know all of the people you know?"

"It won't be too bad. I know you from school, people have already seen me with Wally when we were both out of costume. The Wayne Foundation donates to one of Wonder Woman's charities so I've met her before, and if I know her people could believe that I met her son. I haven't 'met' M'gann but Kon can introduce me. Really, it's just Orange Lantern I have to pretend I don't know."

"You know, when I decided not to have a secret identity? This sort of thing never occurred to me. Oh, we might have met. I introduced Wallace West to the brain trust. Which means that he knows Orange Lantern and could conceivably have introduced us."

Richard thinks about it for a moment. "It's a bit of a stretch. He lives in Central City. There isn't much reason for the three of us to be together in one place."

"What sort of security are you having?" Richard raises his eyebrows at Artemis' question. "'Cause we both know there's a lot of crazy people in Gotham and there'll be a lot of rich people at the wedding. They don't know that Batman's not gunna be available, but that's never stopped them before."

"There'll be armed guards, and Superboy, Wonder Woman and Orange Lantern will be there openly. It shouldn't be too much of a problem."

"Point, Rush Hour."

"Yes!"

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Bindings 6

next

14th May

08:17 GMT -5

"The fuck..?"

I… Could have planned this better. Surprising how often I end up thinking that, considering, y'know, power ring. I mean, scanning my environment for weapons and nothing else is probably the ethical option but it does lead to me getting blindsided by things I might otherwise have avoided. I knew that Jade was working as a bodyguard for Erminia Inzerillo but I also knew that due to traditional mob sexism she was only really involved in the legitimate parts of the family business. Jade's shift finishes… About now, so I said that since I was going to be in Gotham I'd give her a lift home. Erminia makes her home in a rather nice apartment building. I was waiting in the lobby and admiring the very nice floral arrangements decorating it, then who should stride through the doors but…

Jacopo Inzerillo looks at me in disbelief while his bodyguard -not either of the two I've seen before- appears to wince slightly. 'First offence' and a few favours called in resulted in him getting a fine and a suspended sentence. Oh, Commissioner Gordon knew a good thing when he saw it and added a few delays to the process. Jacopo spent some time in prison on remand, and the final plea was 'guilty' rather than the 'this never happened' that would have been the result only a decade ago. His younger bodyguard on the other hand is still in Blackgate for shooting me.

"Mister Inzerillo." I smile. "Good morning."

"I say it again: the fuck?"

My smile broadens. "If you could narrow it down a little..?"

Eyes flare, fists ball and he steps forwards a step before his bodyguard's meaty right hand plants itself on his left shoulder. He stops at once, his eyes reluctantly leaving my face and shifting to his escort. Once the bodyguard is certain that he's stopped, he releases his employer. "Sorry, Mister Inzerillo, but the boss said-."

"I know what Dad said." He takes a moment to get himself back under control, dramatically shaking and straightening out his suit jacket.

"Mister Inzerillo, you really should listen to your father."

He stare at me in aggrieved astonishment. "Awh, I don't fuckin' believe this! What makes you think you get t' tell me what to do?"

"I don't think I can tell you what to do. However, picking a fight with someone in a public venue isn't clever, not with Gordon in the Commissioner's office and not with someone with whom you have a history. You were lucky to get out of it without a custodial sentence last time. I suggest that you show a little wisdom here." And let's leave out the fact that I was beating you even without a power ring and I'm now wearing two. "There's a time for open confrontation and a time for keeping things calm."

"Did you fuckin' talk to Dad about this?" He points with his right index finger, then wiggles it back and forth. "Did the two of you set this up t' teach me a lesson?"

"Mister Inzerillo, your father was running your family when the Reaper was cutting a swath through the Five Families. Your grandfather was running it when Green Lantern still lived around here. You grew up in a city where a sufficiently powerful criminal could get away with whatever they wanted, but… That's not the Gotham you're living in at the moment."

"Word fa' fuckin' word!" He stomps in a small circle, arms spread out in an appeal to the universe. "I don't believe this shit!"

"There's no point taking a risk if there's no payoff. There's no benefit in fighting me. And I'm not really sure what you hoped to achieve at that restaurant, either." He comes back around, staring at me intently. "Not getting your temper under control is going to cost you and your family money. It's going to give the police leverage you don't want them to have." I hold out my right hand, palm upwards. "Now is the time for sensible men to be honest."

"I ain't gunna-!"

"Grow up ever, Jaco?" He transfers his glare to the stairs behind us and I take a step to the side to see who else has decided to join in. Erminia ignores her brother, preferring to look at me as she comes down the stairs. Jade and a blonde woman whom I don't recognise but who I assume is the day shift stay back slightly, hands unencumbered so that they can reach weapons quickly if they have to. Her eyes only return to him when she finishes the journey to the ground floor. "Our father tries to teach you, Uncle Marc tried to teach you… Even a superhero understands better than you do."

"Oh yeah? And what would you do?"

"Oh, it's not complicated. If fighting isn't getting you what you want, make peace." She walks up to me, a polite smile on her lips. "Orange Lantern, permit me to introduce myself." There's a slight pause before she continues. "I am Erminia Inzerillo."

"Pleased to meet you, Miss Inzerillo." I take hold of her right hand in my own and raise it to my lips, lightly kissing her knuckles. "I am pleased to hear that your father's lessons weren't wasted on you."

The kiss gets a surprised blink, then her smile broadens before her head turns back to her brother. "You see, Jaco? That wasn't hard at all."

Satisfying as completely smashing Gotham's mobs would be, if it could be done by conventional investigation and conviction Batman would have done it by now. As with police corruption, going after the worst offenders and threatening the same to anyone who doesn't smarten up is far more likely to produce the desired end state with fewer casualties than open warfare. I don't think it likely that Jacopo is going to be amongst the winners, but him getting his head around the idea would make it a virtual certainty that the Inzerillo family would straighten itself out. Plus I've had a nagging fear since the restaurant that him or his might target Holly or Karon at some point.

So…

I step around Miss Inzerillo and take a few steps towards her brother. "Mister Inzerillo, we seem to have gotten off to a rough start." I hold out my right hand towards Jacopo. "I'd like to put that behind us."

Since I'm not a gangster, him refusing won't result in my whole family waging war with his on the Gotham streets. It won't even cost him money. On the other hand, he knows that this will get back to his father. If his bodyguard doesn't mention it when questioned, his sister certainly will.

And he knows it.

Staring into my eyes, he takes my hand and shakes it exactly once. "Yeah. Let's do that."

"Oh, that is nice to see."

Jacopo lets go and steps back. "Yeah, whatever. Erminia, we got business to discuss."

"I was heading out for breakfast." She walks past us both, blonde bodyguard following on behind. "We can talk shop at the restaurant."

"Right…" Jacopo doesn't glare at me this time, but for a moment he looks like he's trying to weigh me up. Then he shakes his head, dismissing me from his mind as he and his escort turn to go after his sister.

Jade pulls up alongside me. "That looked fun."

"I.. didn't just get you into any trouble, did I?"

"I doubt it. Erminia loves taking any chance she gets to make her brother feel stupid. And she already knows that I know you."

"Glad to hear it." I extend the crook of my left arm. "Shall we get going?"

She looks into my eyes, then at my proffered arm, then back up to my face. Her eyebrows rise a little and her head tilts slightly forwards in a posture of polite incredulity. Then she turns to face the door and threads her right arm through it. Together we head towards the exit.

"Who did you end up asking?"

"Well, you-."

"You asked me first? I'm flattered."

"Holly was working, Karon and I don't really have a going-to-weddings relationship, Selina's on villainwatch so can't attend… I thought that inviting Doctor Sivana to a wedding was a bit much for a second date."

"Probably."

A wave of orange pushes the doors open in front of us as we leave the building. "Kon and Zatanna are going anyway. Tuppence is still in prison-."

"Tuppence Terror. Really."

"Really." We turn and head towards where I've parked. "She'd almost certainly have said no, but asking would indicate that I wasn't looking at her as a project or victim but as a person."

"What would you have done if she'd said yes?"

"I'd have taken her… After assuring her brother that I would comport myself appropriately."

Jade doesn't quite bite her lip, but she does take a moment before replying. "Did you invite an Amazon?"

"Most of them wouldn't want to enter a Christian place of worship."

"You're not going on your own, are you?"

"No, the ole address book wasn't quite empty."

"Jade! Hey theeyah!"

Jade stops as my date waves at her from the window of my car, leaning over from the passenger side while trying not to crease her dress. "You invited Doctor Quinzel. The Belle Reve prison counsellor."

I shrug. "I've spent quite a lot of time with her, and she lived in Gotham for years. And I enjoy her company."

Her grip on my arm tightens. "Has she told you anything about my sessions?"

"Of course not. That would be completely inappropriate. She's delighted that you've gone straight, though. Not a lot of her patients do." I look at her for a moment. "Is this a problem?"

From the way she hesitates, I'd say that the answer is 'yes'.

"Look, it was her or your mother, so-."

"Doctor Quinzel!" Jade pulls away and strides towards my car. "How are you?"

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Bindings 7

next

14th May

08:23 GMT -5

Harleen leans forward slightly to peer at the dashboard. "Say, what sorta car is this, anyways?"

My eyes flick to her for a fraction of a second as we approach an intersection. Honestly, what's wrong with roundabouts? "It's a custom vehicle I created myself."

She turns her head towards me slightly. "F'real? Your insurance premiums must be nahsty."

"They're not that bad. I think they consider insuring superheroes to make their vehicles road legal to be a public service." Okay, we're going… Left, which means that the red light means red. In Britain where we use the red-can-mean-go convention we actually have a green curved arrow to indicate it.

Driving lessons in Happy Harbour didn't really prepare me for city driving.

She pulls open the glove compartment. "Where's the button fer tha miss'le launcher?"

"There isn't one." Gently accelerate, turning… "Missiles aren't space-efficient."

"So it's just, like, a car-car? Nuthin' special at all?" She looks around the front of the car. "That's kinda dissapoint'n'."

"The car has a force field and its own power plant. The Renault Racoon I patterned the body after could travel on water; mine can travel in space."

"Why would you-" I glance at the rear view mirror and see Jade's incredulity. "-design a car that would travel in space?"

"Well, I started designing a car that would be proof against chemical or biological attack, and since I had to make it airtight and.. that meant that it needed an atmosphere recycling system… Making it space capable didn't take much more work."

Harleen perks up. "It can fly."

"Ah, yes, but-."

"So how comes we're drivin' when we could be flyin'?"

"Because a flying car would risk drawing more attention to my friends' house than I really want. By the same token, I don't intend for us to fly to the wedding. Superheroes are going to be enough of a distraction without me actively seeking to draw attention to myself." I turn into the road upon which lies Holly and Karon's home. "And it's not really designed to be fast in space, and atmosphere flight is different to space flight."

"Why do you even have a car?"

I look up once more to meet Jade's eyes via the mirror. "Kon and M'gann were having driving lessons. I.. thought that it could be something we could do together. I had some lessons back on Earth Prime, but I never did pass my test." True, actually. I got the train to work and the shops were in easy walking distance. Of course, my lessons were a little further back than I'm implying.

"Are there lasers?"

"There's a laser communicator. I didn't design this as a combat vehicle. It wouldn't have a windscreen like this if I had."

Okay… And… Indicate…

I park the car at the side of the road just outside Holly and Karon's house. "And, we're here." I twist around in my seat. "Have a pleasant day's sleep."

One problem with the original Racoon design was the lack of individual doors. Not restricted by earthly building materials I was able to work around the problem. Jade presses the 'open door' button, which causes the car to check the chemistry of the air outside before opening. The 'glass' which makes up the roof and upper part of the side then liquefies and the body section slides out and then folds up out of the way. She then gets out and walks along the side of the car, then taps on my window. A simple motion of my hand causes a convenient conversation-sized hole to open, a motion mirrored by her car door oozing shut.

"Thanks for the lift."

"Not a problem at all."

She hesitates, then looks around the street for a moment. No one close by. She beckons, and I lean forwards. "You know, I was surprised to hear that Talia was getting married."

"Oh? Why's that?"

"We weren't close, but it wasn't a secret in the League that she was interested in Batman."

"So I'm told."

"And less than a year after the League was destroyed, she's getting married to a man with a similar physique who moved back to Gotham just before Batman became active and who has an adopted son roughly the same age as Robin."

"I suppose that she is." I smile politely. "Maybe she has a type?"

"Yeah." She nods. "That's probably it." She takes a step backwards from the car. "Have fun at the wedding."

I nod as she turns away, then I close the window and turn my attention back to the road.

"Sheeeee freaked when she saw me, didn't she?"

"I wouldn't say… Freaked."

"Nah, you'd say somethin' like 'astonished'." Her New York accent is momentarily replaced with something closer to Received Pronunciation. "Or maybe 'flabbergasted'." 'Garsted', I note. Not 'gearsted'.

"She seemed concerned that you-" I press down on the accelerator and the car pulls away from the curb. "-might have discussed her sessions with me. Obviously, I told her that you hadn't."

Harleen frowns. "That'd be a complete breach of professional ethics."

"Not.. assuming.. anything about anything she may or may not have said-"

"Shuwer."

"-but you know what her upbringing was like, even if it's just from her files. Her reaction suggests that she actually did talk about something personal with you, rather than just doing what I assumed that she'd do and just sit silently in the chair until the time ran out. She'd hate the idea that that got out and she doesn't trust you in the same way she does me."

"I suppose. She seein' anyone now?"

"If so, she hasn't mentioned it. I'd guess not, but I try not to monitor her that closely."

"Yeyeah, that probably wouldn't turn out so well." She faces forwards, watching the road go by. "How exactly did'ja swing these invites?"

"It's a high society wedding. Neither Mister Wayne nor Ms Head are all that close to their extended family. Otherwise they might have gone in for a smaller event. One of my.. ongoing projects is helping people with revolutionary technology bring it to market. WayneTech have been sending feelers in our direction. Plus, celebrity value." Huh. It looks like Gotham City is cutting back on road and pavement repairs. I can see weeds poking through the tarmac and paving slabs in dozens of places. Might come back later and fix that myself.

"How long were yeh plannin' on us stayin' for?"

"Don't know, really. We're invited to the reception, and it's been a while since I've been to one of these things." Kon's generally Diana's escort at diplomatic functions these days. My other work is taking up the time I used to have to attend. "We can probably leave after a few hours if you get bored… Or stay until kicking out time. Up to you, really."

"I was… Wonderin'… Could we go flyin' later? Not in a plane, but, like, with yower ring or somethin'?" My eyes flick her way, left eyebrow raised. "I know that transition thing you do is fahster, but I always wondered what it was like. Y'know, jus' flyin' around the sky under yer own powah?"

I nod. "If you like… Sure. I enjoy it, but it's so inefficient. I can even lend you one of my spare kinetic belts, if you like."

"Rilly? That'd be amazin'!"

I smile. "No problem at all. You should probably change your clothes first, though. Flying and dresses don't mix."

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Bindings 8

next

14th May

08:48 GMT -5

"Alright, I give up."

"You can't give up." Harleen looks around to see if she can spot somewhere to park the car that I've missed. "We'll just have t' walk a bit further."

I raise my right eyebrow. "In those shoes? You'll break your neck."

She turns my way, smiling brightly. "You could always carry me."

The suggested time to arrive at the cathedral is nine o'clock, with the ceremony starting at half past. As a result, south east Gotham is gridlocked, normal Saturday morning traffic battling with the limousines of Bruce Wayne's wealthy friends and allies.

And we haven't moved significantly in the last four minutes. I can see the cathedral from here easily enough, but there's nowhere to park.

"No, giving up." I let go of the wheel and lean back against my seat. "Even if we did just walk from further away, we'd still need to get out of this morass first and we'll never manage that in twelve minutes. Let's get out."

I undo my safety belt -I was originally going to build this car with kinetic barriers instead of belts, but it was pointed out by Kon that the law in several places required belts- and then poke the appropriate button on the door, causing the driver side door to ooze open. Nice thing about it opening upwards is that I don't have to worry about scratching the car next to us, the driver of which is regarding me with some concern. Harleen gives me another concerned look and then decides to follow my lead, pressing the release on the passenger side door and getting out onto the pavement.

"You jus' plannin' on leavin' it here? Gotham ain't never gunna be that safe."

"No." I raise my right hand, a small fob construct appearing in my fingers. With a bleep, orange filaments flick out and deposit the decidedly non-magical car into subspace. I don't intend to leave it there -I rent a garage in Happy Harbour- but it'll be far less annoying than trying to find somewhere to park it now.

Harleen blinks in surprise. "Guess that works."

I jog across the now empty space, making it to the pavement just before the car behind us takes the initiative to move up. More than a few carfuls of people are just staring at me, and I give them all a quick wave with my right hand before using it to take hold of Harleen's left.

"Shall we?"

We start walking down the Gotham street, a map forming in my head. This is one of the nicer parts of Gotham. Even in the bad days these streets didn't get that bad. Not during the day, anyway. Crimes in these parts mostly happened behind closed doors. Huh.

"Is the decorative Ivy a Gotham thing? I don't think I've seen it before."

Harleen follows my gaze up at the wall of the building we're walking past. "Not unless they stawted afteh I left. Looks pretty." There's a brief flicker of concern. "Unless Poison Ivy's gotten outa Arkham."

"No, I checked. She's barely done anything since me and mine took down the Injustice League."

"That was you? I mean, I saw you on tha news with Ad-. Adom?" I nod. "But I don' rememba hearin' what happened to the rest of 'em."

"I'm afraid that I'm not supposed-."

"Yeah, yeah."

"But Doctor Isley ended up having her connection to plantlife removed. No more plant control, no more symbiotic plant microbes and no more-. Ah, no external pressure on her mind driving her mad."

Harleen nods, looking forwards as she thinks it over. "I tawked t' her a couple times, but that all happened afteh I went to Belle Reve."

"If you're interested, I could try and get an appointment with Doctor Young. See if there's been any progress."

The corners of her mouth turn down slightly. "Let's.. not do that."

"Problem?"

Harleen tosses her head. "She always hated me. Thawt I got int' Arkham by sleeping with Strange. Like gowin' t' Arkham's such a great career move."

"You said that the Trust paid for your studies?"

"Yeyeah, but…" She takes a deep breath and sighs it out. "Strange had me pegged from the stawt. Gave me access t' more interestin' patients. Didn't break the rules or nothin'…" Another breath. "But it made me feel like he was doin' me special favors while at tha same time makin' me nervous so I'd be lookin' t' him for protection."

"You.. know that for sure, or-?"

"You followin' his trial?"

"Can't say I was. I used to always follow up on people I arrested, then I arrested the entire League of Shadows. It stopped being practical."

"Defence entah'd a whole lotta his records int' evidence. Bearstad actually explained what he was doin' like… Like I was a study or somethin'."

At least that means that they're guaranteed to get a conviction, I suppose. I slide my right hand free and put it around her waist. Her left hand hangs for a moment before slipping under my jacket to reciprocate.

The cathedral looms large on our left, and I see a few members of the Gotham police force trying to bring order to the jam. We're not the only ones walking this way, and names and faces flicker in my vision as the rings try to link them to the guest list. Or the suspects list.

"So we're shuwer that Ivy ain't been redecoratin'."

"Even if she could, they aren't grappling passers-by or releasing poisonous spores. Just decorating doesn't fit her modus operandi."

"Huh."

We look left and right before crossing the zebra crossing to the pavement outside the cathedral. A few heads look around when they see that we're joining the party but as I've noticed before: if I'm not actually wearing my armour and the environmental shield is turned down I don't actually attract all that much attention.

"Oh, I forgot to ask: are you a Catholic?"

"I ain't been to church f' years."

"Um… Is that a yes? Or a no?"

"The few times I've evah been to church, I didn't rilly pay much attention t' who it belonged to."

"Fair enough. I've never actually been to a church wedding, but-."

"Paul!"

Our heads simultaneously jerk around as we hear Nyssa's voice. She's heading our way with…

…

Was not expecting that.

"I think that you already know Doctor Sivana."

Magnificus nods. And… My goodness, that's a very slight smile.

"And this is my-" She looks at the black haired man on her other side. "-great grandson Vasily Arketov." I recognise him from the pictures but this is the first time I've met him in person. I free my right hand from Harleen's side and take his hand. "His wife Polina." I nod as I shake her husband's hand. "And this is little Yuliya." Nyssa picks up a girl of four or five, to the child's obvious tolerance. "And who is this?"

"This is Doctor Harleen Quinzel." Nyssa deposits her great great granddaughter back next to her mother and then steps forward to kiss the momentarily surprised Harleen on the cheek. "Harleen, this is Nyssa Raatko, Talia Head's sister."

Harleen nods, now a little more up to speed. "Hi there."

Nyssa turns to her date. "Magnificus, I believe there was-."

He nods. "Yes yes. Quinzel, you're the one looking after… The other two. The proto-." He stops himself, closes his eyes and tries calming himself. "The Beresfords. I… Think it would behove me to offer my assistance in their rehabilitation. If.. you think it would help. I was… A bit of an ass when we first spoke, and…"

Harleen nods, smiling. "That's real nice a' yeh. Maybe y'c'n join in next time Doctor Munro tawks to 'em?"

Magnificus nods. "Yes. I think I'd appreciate that."

back

Bindings 9

next

14th May

11:26 GMT -5

"I have to admit, Commissioner, that I spent virtually the entire ceremony braced for some sort of attack."

"Ye-ah." Commissioner Gordon looks down at his drink. "I wouldn't be surprised if just about everyone was."

But -in defiance of all convention- the event happened without any significant hitch I could detect. I think the decorators might have overdone the flowers a bit as there were more than a few frantically suppressed sneezes from those seated next to them, but no armed lunatics breaking in, no instances of poisoning or… I don't know, earthquakes or demonic possession or anything.

"I mean… No offence intended to your department or anyt-."

"No need to sugar coat it." He looks up. "Not like I don't know what the GCPD's reputation is like."

"Your officers appeared to be on the ball today."

"WayneTech has been generous enough to donate more than a few pieces of low-lethality defence equipment to us over the years. My guys know that they've got Wayne to thank every time a flak vest catches a bullet the police standard vest wouldn't or when they get to subdue a perp with a sonic stunner rather than a night stick." He nods, looking around the gardens. "Wayne's got a lot of good will from just about everybody. And it certainly doesn't hurt that all of the usual suspects are inside."

"Oh, did you find Garfield Lynns?"

The left side of his lip curls upwards. "Yeah. He's in Blackgate's medical wing, recovering from having most of a warehouse fall on him."

"Good work." He takes a sip from his champagne glass. Mister Pennyworth attracted quite an audience opening the bottles with a sabre. "Ah, if you don't mind me asking a.. slightly personal question..?"

He shrugs. "Go right ahead."

"What exactly attracted you to Gotham in the first place? I mean, Chicago isn't the most friendly city in the world, but… When you first arrived in Gotham, the place was…"

"In need of a good spring cleaning?" I nod. "Well, the first part is that I didn't know that at the time. I mean, I knew it was rough, but I really didn't appreciate quite how bad things were here. Second part was that it was a promotion and I had-." He cuts himself off, his eyes moving away for a moment. "Well, there was James Junior and my wife was pregnant with Babs. We certainly needed the money and turning down a promotion didn't sound like the smart thing to do."

I nod sympathetically. His marriage to Barbara Eileen Gordon ended fairly recently, and for some reason she got custody of their son while Barbara… Junior? Is that how it works with girls' names? Note to self, if you ever have children don't name them after either yourself or their mother and certainly don't name all of them like that. Anyway, he got custody of Batgirl-Barbara, who isn't currently Batgirl. I think I remember his ex-wife from Batman: Year One and the Nolan films, but she didn't have much presence other than being the one he went back to after ending his affair with the far better characterised Sarah Essen. With Chicago in Illinois and Gotham being in Connecticut, visiting can't be easy.

"And the third… Eh, there was an incident…"

"Um, when you say 'incident'-?"

"James! Good of you to come."

We turn away from one another as Bruce Wayne walks over, new wife on his arm. I can't quite resist doing a quick scan just in case there is some sort of mind control at work, but the only change I'm seeing from his normal resting mindset is the violet haze which presumably can be attributed to perfectly normal causes. Again, I'm impressed by the divide between Batman's body language and what I'm seeing as he and Commissioner Gordon shake hands. Even sticking a mental sheet over the parts of his face his cowl normally covers… I wouldn't think it was him.

"Bruce. Talia. Congratulations to you both."

Talia smiles in a way which demonstrates to me that she hasn't mastered the secret identity/public identity divide in quite the same way as her new husband. "Thank you, Commissioner."

Mister Wayne looks at me with expertly affected puzzlement for a moment. "And.. you must be.. the Orange Lantern."

I smile politely. "Yes, Mister Wayne."

We shake hands. "I almost didn't recognize you without your costume on."

"I'm not actually required to wear it at all times." I shift my eyes to Talia. "And Missus Way-. Oh, I'm sorry, is it just Missus Wayne, or are you hyphenating it?"

She meets my eyes imperiously. "I am Missus Wayne."

"Missus Wayne." I take her right hand and raise it to my lips, lightly kissing her knuckles in what Jade assured me is the correct fashion. "My most sincere congratulations."

Really, this is an achievement. With her father gone she's got further in her relationship with Bruce Wayne than any other iteration of Talia al Ghul. Comics, animated series, films? Never managed to have a normal healthy relationship with the man. She's beaten all of them. Heck, even Selina had a continuity where she and Bruce had a successful relationship. Though I suppose… The reader wasn't ever shown who Bruce Junior's mother was in Batman/Superman: Generations. I had assumed that it was Selina there too, but I don't think it was actually stated.

"Thank you, Orange Lantern." She pauses for a moment. "You came here unaccompanied?"

"No, but my companion is currently catching up with a college friend of hers." Actually, Harleen is hiding from someone from the Arkham Trust who 'always gave her the creeps', but I suppose that wouldn't be the polite thing to say.

Bruce smiles at Commissioner Gordon. "You bring Babs with you, James?"

"Yeah, she's…" He looks around us. "Somewhere around here. I doubt she'd-."

Bang!

There's a noise like a car backfiring. Not a gun noise; I know very well what guns sound like these days. The four of us look around, trying to locate the source of the noise. Odd, but I'm not-.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

It's coming from the far side of the wall around Wayne Manor's gardens. Is someone letting off bangers or somet-?

Then the grass rises in a wave in the direction we're looking. No, not a wave, the earth is still. It's growing, starting from the wall and rapidly spreading outwards! There are brief yelps of astonishment as people suddenly find themselves surrounded by thick blades of grass, rising past their waists, their shoulders and then their heads! The trees lining the drive are affected a moment later, their trunks swelling and their roots erupting from the soil in thick woody vines. I see the tarmac of the drive cracked to pieces by the sudden burst of growth before the grass cuts off the view completely.

Commissioner Gordon blinks. "What in God's name is going on?"

I step forward, forming a globe shield around the four of us and lifting us all into the air. Ring, scan. No, looks like normal plant growth, just supercharged. The soil hasn't been entirely drained of nutrients or water to support the growth surge. Dead plant matter like the wood of the tables or the food in people's stomachs isn't affected. As we rise a little higher we get a clear view over the walls to the south.

It looks like someone's set off a forest bomb in Gotham. The Giordano Botanical Garden is a jungle, the dense foliage clearly visible across the Gotham River. From everywhere else, shades of green have replaced the grey stone as vines, lichen and moss race to cover every surface.

I'm sure that Bruce has worked it out, but Commissioner Gordon is the one who vocalises it. "Ivy? No, this is far more than she's ever managed to control."

Over on the far side of the garden I see Diana and Kon rise into the air and it looks like Richard has scaled one of the trees for a better view. Barbara Gordon, Wallace, Artemis and Zatanna are at the base. Zatanna could be useful, but we haven't been focusing on green-manipulation in the training and someone who could do this could do someone who doesn't know what they're doing a lot of no good. Plus, that's too many people the right size and shape in the same place.

"I can think of two beings who could do this so fast, and working out which it actually was is simple enough." I turn my head to face him. "Commissioner, please tell me that your people haven't arrested Abigail Holland?"

back

Bindings 10

next

14th May

11:30 GMT -5

"Who?"

I generate a construct image. "Born in Romania in nineteen fifty five as Abigail Arcane. Emigrated to the US with her soon-to-be husband Matthew Cable in nineteen seventy four and since his death has become involved with…" I gesture to the visibly growing greenery with my right hand. "Swamp Thing. Who point blank rejects his own former name 'Alec Holland'."

"And he's the one doing this?"

"If Gaea was doing it, Diana wouldn't look so surprised. Jason Woodrue couldn't do it anything like this fast without a lot of help. There might be other floromancers out there who I've never heard of, but this level of power is hard to keep quiet. I'm going to assume that it's Swamp Thing until I have evidence to the contrary."

"Excuse me. Orange Lantern?" Whaw, it's weird having Batman talk to me like that. "My guests..?"

My eyes glow orange as I give the party area another scan. Below us the guests are trying to wade through the head height grass, people calling out in order to better locate one another. "Somewhat disturbed but all uninjured."

Commissioner Gordon's lip curls. "So he's the considerate kind of supervillain."

"He's the isolationist kind of superbeing. Nothing short of an oncoming apocalypse will get him to go further from the Louisiana bayou than Houma. Which means that someone must have done something very stupid to make him this angry."

Bruce makes a show of peering downwards onto his lawns. "Okay, but could you do something about that?"

"I can give it a go." Precision grass trimming isn't something power rings are really optimised for, but I generate a spinning blade construct over an empty area of the garden and slowly lower it into the grass. Clippings fly in all directions as I shave the lawn down to something a person can walk over. With nowhere to go the cut grass builds up in damp mounds on the lawn surface, but at least a person can now navigate the area without a machete. Okay, if I repeat that and put a few arrow constructs in the air where people can see them-.

The soil under my cleared circle heaves and bulges, then brambles erupt from the ground, filling the space and then curling around one another until they've created a solid mass of vines and thorns.

Right. Not doing that, then.

How about indoors? I know Swamp Thing is perfectly capable of resurrecting dead wood and using that, but has he? No, potted plants and window invasions aside the interior of Wayne Manor remains inviolate. I'd check the Cave, but I'm still under orders not to.

"Mister Wayne, I'm afraid that the plants don't seem to be cooperating. I suggest transferring the party inside. By your leave?"

He nods, the slightly shaky nod of an alpha male who finds his position suddenly uncertain. A masterful display of acting.

Right. How to go about this? I create arrow constructs across all occupied parts of the ground-. Really? Ugh, apart from that corner where a couple are having sex. Next, I create orange constructs that are a sort of cross between a wedge and a snowplough, creating furrows in the grass by shoving it aside. Should make getting through it a little easier. A good chunk of the population were already starting to head in that direction, but with pathways opening up and a clear indication that someone has some idea of what's going on most of the rest get moving as well.

But not all. Okay, Gotham, they're probably a little nervous about following the direction of strange floating arrows given the sorts of people liable to make things like that around here. I fly our bubble across the garden in the direction of Diana and Kon, dismissing the upper third of it as we arrive. I didn't know that Kon was planning on wearing his belt today, but I do admire his preparedness. His belt aside they're both wearing a chiton/himation combination accessorised by gold diadems. Huh. Sort of assumed that Diana would be wearing her bracers as well.

"Sir?" I generate a ribbon microphone construct just in front of her. "Could you please ask everyone to follow the arrows?"

She nods, taking the microphone in her right hand and holding it to her lips. "This is Wonder Woman of the Justice League. Would everyone please leave the garden and get inside Wayne Manor."

Commissioner Gordon gets out his mobile phone and presses a button before lifting it to his ear. "Gordon here. Find out if we've got someone in the cells called 'Abigail Holland'. Yeah, well, I'll try and find a ride. No, don't call a helicopter. Where would they even land the thing?"

I place a construct platform under where Richard is perched in a tree branch. A moment's consideration and he moves around it, extending his right hand downwards to give.. Barbara Gordon Junior a hand up. Together, they clamber aboard and I pull them gently in our direction.

Ah, okay, what next? My eyes unfocus as I scan the city with the rings. Hooray! No wards! Well, the plants aren't warded, at least. Swamp Thing isn't making any deliberate attempt to destroy buildings, though the roads are going to be a mess for a while after this. Haven't caught sight of his avatar body yet, but the thing about Swamp Thing is a) he doesn't actually need one and b) it looks like a pile of moss and vines, exactly the same things the buildings are now covered in.

Huh. Feel like I'm forgettin-Harleen! Ohdearymewhoops. I dismiss the microphone construct as Diana hands it back, then scan for Harleen and attach a filament to her and transition her up to us. She blinks in surprise. "Huh."

"Everyone, Doctor Harleen Quinzel. Harleen, Bruce and Talia Wayne, Richard Grayson, Diana and Kon-El of Themyscira and James and Barbara Gordon."

She raises her right hand in a slightly nervous fashion. "Hi?"

Kon nods to her. "Hey." Then he switches his attention to me. "This is Swamp Thing, right?"

"That's my working hypothesis." Now, I'm sure that Bruce would want to get involved in this, but he can't really abandon his own wedding reception. Not my decision to make, but I'm not sure how to-.

"My husband and I should probably see to our guests. Please convey us.. and our son, to the Manor."

Without thinking about it my eyes dart to Bruce's, but he's still in character. He hesitates for a moment, then nods. "That's probably for the best."

"Of course." I generate a new platform under their feet, merging it with the one which Richard and Barbara and standing on. "Commissioner?"

He moves his attention from me to Diana. "Wonder Woman, are you planning on going after this Swamp Thing guy?"

She nods. "I will be looking for him, certainly, though I would prefer to persuade him to leave peacefully rather than engage him in violent confrontation."

"Any chance I could get a lift to Police Central?"

"Certainly. Though you might prefer it if Orange Lantern conveyed you."

Recently divorced man? Doubt it.

"Okay then. Dick, look after Babs for me, would you?"

"Sure thing, Commissioner."

"Be careful, Dad."

I twirl my right hand and their platform heads towards the entrance to Wayne Manor. I note that Mister Pennyworth is already at the doors, welcoming everyone inside. Commissioner Gordon looks at Harleen for a moment and then frowns at me. "Ah..?"

"Doctor Quinzel used to work at Arkham. Her expertise in aberrant psychology may come in useful."

"Ma'am?"

Harleen nods her head to the side. "Suwre. Could get a great papah outa this."

I look at Diana. "Sir?"

"Take us to Gotham Police Central. Then we will attempt to locate Swamp Thing."

back

Bindings 11

next

14th May

11:39 GMT -5

"Whooooohw."

Yeah, I think… Harleen speaks for all of us there. Swamp Thing's envelopment of the city hasn't stopped as we've been travelling. No sign of the man himself-. No, plenty of signs, but he hasn't put in a personal appearance yet. We were about a third of the way to Police Central when the roads started buckling and crumbling as he extended nature's wrath to the transportation infrastructure. People had already started abandoning their cars so hopefully the casualties will be minimal, but neither fire, ambulance or police will be able to respond to emergencies any longer. Would it occur to him to put out fires? Or would he regard them as a part of the natural world, a part of nature's way of replenishing itself? How long until he starts disrupting water, gas and electricity supplies? In the comic his ultimate aim if they didn't release Abigail was to turn Gotham into a jungle permanently. If he's heading in that direction here he'll want to break open the water supplies and block the other two.

Starvation I'm less worried about. I've already seen several plants bearing fruit which the ring tells me have all of the nutritional content required for healthy Human life. Thing is, I've also seen his detergent fruit and water gourds and I don't think that the people of Gotham will easily be able to tell the difference. That, and the way my rune stone is glowing indicates that there's quite a lot of green magic in both, and I know that Swamp Thing's fruits have hallucinogenic properties.

All the good he could do if he just got involved a bit…

Commissioner Gordon stares at what has become of his city and starts to raise his hands to his forehead before getting a grip on himself. "You still saying that he's not a bad guy?"

"A bad guy would have been using poisoned plants."

"That's not much of a recommendation."

"It takes a lot to provoke Swamp Thing to kill someone, but he doesn't like cities all that much."

Diana looks more awestruck than horrified. "In all my years I have never seen anything like it. It is as if Gaea herself had decided to smite your city."

"And if she did, I'd arrest her too. God." Diana raises an eyebrow at his choice of invective. "Can he get rid of all of this?"

"I.. think.. most of it is being sustained by his magic. If he leaves then most of it should die off. That won't repair the roads or.. anything like that."

"Great. There goes the city's budget for the next decade."

I'm not sure whether to be impressed by his practical attitude or dismayed by his inability to see this for the wonder that it is. I mean… Get a few floromancers in here and they could be the centre of a floro-arcane revolution. With a little magic the plants are perfectly capable of creating everything they need to live, and everything everyone around them needs to live as well. But, no. I doubt I could convince more than a handful of people to give that a try.

The entrance to Police Central is already covered by what I think is some sort of ivy grown far beyond its natural proportions. On the far side I see that the police have got the doors open and are attacking it with the sorts of mechanical saws usually used for cutting people out of wrecked cars. As I watch, one fat vine falls away, rousing a cheer from those on the inside. A moment later more vines explode through the remaining paving slabs, these one coated in thorns which ooze a paralysing agent. Not fatal to a Human, but getting stuck with it would cause pain and immobility in the body part stung.

One of the policewomen narrows her eyes at the new vine and raises her saw.

"Don't even think about it!" The police officers clustered around the entrance look up as Commissioner Gordon shouts down at them. "Every time they get attacked they grow back worse!"

They back away as we land on a section of surviving pavement that isn't entirely moss coated. Commissioner Gordon walks up to the vine wall and tries pulling away enough vines to get past. Realising what he's doing, Kon flies down and pulls an armful aside. Gordon nods. "Thanks."

"What the hell's going on, Commissioner?" Officer.. Santiago looks at her commanding officer with more than a little yellow at the forefront of her mind. I don't recognise any of the other officers as being people I've interacted with before. "Where'd all these plants come from?"

"We don't know yet." He shoulders his way through the opening, while Kon holds the vines back for the rest of us. Nice of him. "Who's got that information I wanted?"

"I do, Commish." Harvey Bullock walks out of the stairwell with a couple of files in hand. "You were right. Abigail Cable got picked up by a vice squad two days ago."

"What?" Gordon frowns, then glances back at me.

"It's kinda a funny story. She told the guys in Vice that she was just visiting. They figured it was the worst cover story they ever heard, but the other girls backed her up and she had a bus ticket. She actually was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were gunna let her go."

"Why didn't they?"

"She had an outstanding warrant from Louisiana. Jumped bail. She's due to get escorted back into their custody tomorrow."

"God dammit. What's she supposed to have done?"

"Aaaaah…" Harvey… He's actually looking uncomfortable, avoiding our eyes as he fiddles with the paperwork to find the charge sheet. "Minor fraud, not filing tax returns, pretty trivial stuff, really. Um."

"It's bestiality, isn't it?"

That earns me a few stares, but Harvey nods. "Yeah, kinda. Says here 'crime against nature', but… Yeah. There's also some stuff about child abuse… I mean, we aren't investigating the crime, but the warrant's valid…"

"Child abuse?"

"Raisin' a child in an unsafe environment, subjecting children to perverse… Ah, you get the idea."

"That.. would.. relate to her teaching?"

"Looks like they tried t' put her daughter in protective-."

"Are you telling me that you also have Tefé Holland in custody?"

"What, you know her?"

"No, though I'd very much like to. Do you?"

"N.. oh, just Abigail."

"Do the Louisiana authorities have her?"

"Doesn't look like it."

"Then it sounds like they tried to take her daughter away and she jumped bail to prevent that. Did it not occur to you that locating her should be a matter of priority?"

Harvey frowns at me. "Hey, ease off, alright? I got this file, like, five minutes ago."

I bow my head. "Sorry. Sorry. Just… Punch one of your Vice people for me, would you? No, no, let's be fair, picking her up was an honest mistake. Punch flipping Louisiana for me."

"Orange Lantern." I turn back to Diana. "Perhaps it would be best if you and Superboy began looking for Swamp Thing out in the city?"

I sigh. "Yess, it.. would. It's just-! I got the flipping law changed! We couldn't use truth compulsion magic on a flipping Demon because of it! Swamp Thing is exactly the sort of novel intelligence the Citizenship Recognition Act was designed to cope with! This is bullshit!" I march past Diana and the Commissioner, stopping next to Harleen. "Harleen, would you mind coming with us?"

"How dangerous is this guy?"

"He may well be the most dangerous person on the planet. But he's unlikely to be wantonly hostile."

"Then what'cha waitin' for? Let's go!"

I shove the vines aside once more with a construct, Harleen leading the way back outside with myself and Kon following after her.

back

Bindings 12

next

14th May

11:51 GMT -5

"So at first he just thawt that tha chemicals had mutated him?"

"Yes. It wasn't until Woodrue dissected his original body that they found out for certain. As far as I know, Alec and Linda Holland's remains are still in the swamp somewhere."

Since we're pretty much reduced to watching for Swamp Thing by eye, Kon and I headed off in different directions. Harleen's with me. This is technically still a date, after all.

"Wasn't Woodrue the one who turned Poison Ivy into.. Poison Ivy?"

"His chemical treatments were at least partially responsible, though I don't remember anything about him using them on her against her will. Funny thing is, he wanted the connection to the Green that she ended up with. If the police had been slower, or if he'd realised how successful he'd been…"

Harleen shakes her head. "That ain't funny. I saw her medical rec'rds when I was at Arkham. He did a real number on her."

"Highly capable but impressionable student, charismatic and domineering teacher…"

She pokes me in the ribs, her right forefinger bending painfully as it encounters my armour. "Hey, I'm the analyst here, thank you very much." She puts her damaged finger against her stomach and covers it with her left hand. "Ow."

"I think Swamp Thing fixed the physiological alterations when he stripped her of her connection to the Green. It should be possible for her to recover now."

"Don't think they were havin' a whole lotta luck." She frowns. "Huh."

Around us, greenery-covered medium rise housing rises up from the Gotham streets. The plants are colonising the rooves in earnest to maximise their access to sunlight. I see a wash of medium yellow from the people inside, but just occasionally I see someone sticking their head out of their window and gazing in wonder at the newly landscaped world around them.

"What?"

"Jus'… Thinkin' about it. How many people get int' weird accidents or exposed to some kinda chemical.. and end up gettin' super powers outta it. Instead of.. y'know, cancer or chemical burns or whatevah."

"Oh, plenty of people get those. They just don't live long enough to put on silly costumes and make public nuisances of themselves."

"Still… It's kinda weird."

I smile, shaking my head. "Did I ever tell you how I ended up on this Earth?"

"Yeah, you said-." She nods in understanding. "Oh. Heh, yeah, I guess you'd kinda know awl aboud it."

"Something like that. Not 'why', but-." I frown. "Oh, got something."

Harleen turns away from me, following my gaze down onto the street. "Weyah?"

We accelerate as I flick my left hand and generate a construct-screen, showing a playground. "Notice something about the slide?"

"It's made of wood." She nods. "So Swamp Thing must have made it himself."

"Yep. With any luck he's keeping an eye on the place."

As we come into sight I see eight children and a cluster of nervous-looking adults in an area which used to be a major road intersection in the Gainsly area in the east of the city. The roads are dead, the few people foolish enough to still be driving their cars either crashing them or getting them helplessly stuck in the undergrowth. Unlike their caretakers the children appear to be accepting the sudden change in their circumstances uncritically, clambering over a wooden climbing frame, swinging on the vine-ropes and sliding down the smooth wooden slide.

Harleen and I descending from the sky gets most of them staring at us, but at least we're not making them more-

"It's the Cake Man!"

-alarmed. Sigh. Once we reach near-ground level I float us over to just in front of the largest group of adults.

"Good morning. I'm-."

"Orange Lantern." A black man with a slightly fluffy beard steps forwards. "Yeah, we know who you are, man."

"Ah. Right. This is going to sound like a strange question, but-."

"Dude made outta moss and vine and shit? Yeah, he was here." He turns his head away from me and towards the city. "He really do alla this?"

First positive confirmation I've had that he's really here. "Probably." Watch out for confirmation bias. "Did he look like this?"

I generate an image of Woodrue in his plantman mode. While Swamp Thing can make bodies out of whatever plant matter is convenient, he usually makes them in the same sort of way. I've seen enough abandoned bodies to know his type, and Woodrue is much slimmer and woodier.

The man I'm asking looks at it in puzzlement. "Nah, nah man. Bigger. Lumpier. And he had this like-" He raises his hands to his face, palms resting on either side of his nose. "-triangle nose thing."

I nod. "Like this?" I leave the Woodrue construct in place and add one made in the image of one of Swamp Thing's abandoned bodies.

That gets a nod of recognition. "Yeah man. That's the guy. Who is he?"

"Swamp Thing. Which way did he go?"

"Hey." A woman steps towards us. "Is this..? This is gunna go, right? You're gunna get rid a' the plants?"

"The jungle reacts to attempts to clear it by producing more dangerous plant forms. While I probably could kill off all plant life in Gotham chemically, you wouldn't want to live here afterwards."

"So… What? We're stuck with this until he decides to get rid of it?"

"Swamp Thing's doing this because the police arrested his wife on bullshit charges."

The black man exhales through his teeth. "Hear that."

"He hasn't made any demands yet, so I'm just going to ask him. Which way did he go?"

"That way." They point west, away from the riverfront.

"Thank you." I have the rings scan in that direction and… An abandoned Swamp Thing body. This is taking too long. I float Harleen and myself upwards and face a completely overgrown building. "Alec! Show yourself, or I go and fetch Constantine!"

Nothing happens.

"Hey, didn't you say you had a Dryad livin' with yah?"

"Yes, but she's in awe of him and more likely to encourage him than talk him down."

"Oh."

The vines explode into motion! The mass between us and the wall triples in thickness as new vines shoot forth in all directions. I catch a momentary glimpse of someone in one of the windows behind it screaming in panic as they lose daylight.

"That him?"

"I hope so, because I'd hate to think there are two people who can do this around here."

Gradually, the rough outline of a face appears. It's not even, not symmetrical, and it's quite flattened compared to what he usually uses, but when the eyes light up red I have no doubt about whose attention I've attracted.

"What?"

back

Bindings 13

next

14th May

11:55 GMT -5

"What do you mean, 'what'?" I spread my arms out. "What do you think I'm talking about? You've turned Gotham City into a forest."

"It was… Deserved."

"Big face. That's a real big face."

"He has complete control of all plant life."

"So it's, like, a projection?"

"Sort of. He's probably slightly more 'in' that face than he is anywhere else at the moment, but it's still just a pile of vines."

"O-kay."

I return my attention to the wall-face. "Swamp Thing… Seven million people just had their homes turned into bushes. How many of them do you think actually had anything to do with what the State of Louisiana was trying to do to Abigail and Tefé?"

"Sufficient… For my… Purposes."

No way has he got working lungs in there. How the heck is he talking?

"American politicians are spoiling for a fight with a supernatural opponent. All this is going to do is encourage them to dig their heels in. If you'd spoken to Euanthe I could have sorted this all out with a couple of phone calls. Current Louisiana law is in contravention of national law. Give me some time-."

"No!" Hard wood and thorn covered vines extend across his cheeks. "My daughter is… Dangerous. Distraught. I will… Not pull back."

"Okay." I hold up my hands in a placatory gesture. "That's fine. Just… Keep the greenery at its current level, Wonder Woman can find the idiot from Louisiana and get him straightened out and the three of you can go back to the bayou. I don't want this to escalate… Particularly given that you're one of the few people I can't out-escalate."

I try giving him a winsome smile, but I don't think that he's in the mood for the niceties of Human social interaction. If he's even capable of that sort of subtlety any longer.

"Your… Allies will attend to… The legal aspect."

"If you agree not to increase the forestry, yes. Do we have an agreement?"

"Abby is in the… Police cells."

"I.. believe so." Scan? "No, they've actually moved her to the police canteen at the moment." White hair with a black streak. I remember from the preparatory reading I did before the Aberrance mission that it's a characteristic found in the Arcane womenfolk. She's had it cut short rather than long as I remember it being in the comics. And as it was last time I spoke to her in person last year. For a woman in her mid-fifties she actually looks pretty good. "Diana probably wanted her somewhere less oppressive while they-."

Swamp Face's eyes go out.

"Guess that means he's not home no more?"

Uuuuuuh. "He's not focusing on us, anyway." I raise my left hand to my ear. "Orange Lantern to Wonder Woman. Just had a word with Swamp Thing. He's in a mood, but appeared willing to negotiate."

"He just appeared."

"Oh. Do you-?"

"The commissioner and I will handle negotiations. Superboy is busy dealing with a street gang. I need you to report to St. Luke's Hospital. With the roads blocked, Gotham has no ambulance coverage."

"On it, sir. Orange Lantern out." I lower my hand. "I'm afraid that this next bit isn't going to be as exciting. Transition in two,-"

"Transwhat?"

"-one."

Our surroundings flicker, then we're outside the pile of vines climbing the walls of St Luke's Hospital. Patches of thorns near doorways indicate locations where they've already tried to clear space. Right, Zatanna's still at Wayne Manor, Euanthe will be near Mount Justice. Both of them should be able to moderate Swamp Thing's actions, though neither are strong enough to block him if he actually exerts himself.

Yep, I'm definitely going to have to talk to Medphyll once I leave Earth. But until then… I attach filaments to the thorn vines around the main entrance and inject auxins along their length. Almost immediately they begin bending out of the way, hospital workers backing away as they see the orange glow. Harleen and I descend from the sky to land on the lichen carpet which covers the ambulance bay.

"Don't attack the plants. They just-."

"Grow back stronger." A short, balding man in a suit nods at me. "Yeah, we worked that out. You here to make yourself useful?"

Ring?

Individual is Doctor Simon Simpson, Head of Medicine.

I nod. "I can pick up and drop off. Just give me the addresses."

"I meant, can you get rid of the damned plants!?"

"Not in the short term, but it's being worked on. I can resupply you, but I'm going to be splitting my time between all of Gotham's hospitals and whatever else I need to do."

"We've been getting hundreds of calls about people getting poisoned by these thorns. What do you know-" Harleen's phone rings and she answers it, turning away and whispering into the handset. "-about the toxin?"

"It's a weak paralysing agent. Tell people not to touch the thorns and get them to put anyone affected somewhere safe. They won't require hospitalisation unless they have a particular reaction to it." And hopefully Swamp Thing is still intelligent enough to make sure that doesn't happen. "Some of the fruits are hallucinogenic, but again, they shouldn't cause any other complications."

He nods, rolling his eyes. "Great, a considerate supervillain. We can get a list of pick up locations together for you in a few minutes. You got a cell?"

C-? Mobile phone. "My trips will be instantaneous. Just have someone standing by in the entrance."

He frowns slightly, then shakes his head. "If you say so."

"Hey-. Orange Lantern." Harleen still has her phone in her hand. "That was Doctor Stoner up at Arkham. He says somethin's up with Isley. He wants someone who knows what's gowin' on t' check her out."

"Okay, we can-."

"Doctor!" A nurse jogs out of the entrance, a piece of printer paper in her hand. "Shooting in Murphy Avenue, we got no way to-" She sees me. "-get…"

Efficiency, that's the name of the game. Murphy Avenue is in Upper East Side. I narrow my eyes and have the rings show me the scene. A shop owner and a couple of police officers exchange fire with a group of youths in gang colours. Several people are on the ground, moving weakly if at all.

Flicker.

The youths collapse as I Shock Crown them, filaments tagging the fallen.

Flicker.

I deposit the wounded in reception.

"Next!"

back

Bindings 14

next

14th May

13:39 GMT -5

"Hey." I look up as Harleen walks over to me, looking thoughtful. "Can I tawk t' you fer a minute?"

"Um..?" No one appears to be heading my way… "Probably?"

"Heh, yeyeah." She sits down next to me. "Been real busy, huh?"

"Oh, I'm the ultimate all-terrain vehicle, I am. Life doesn't stop just because someone with superpowers decides to take their problems out on everyone else."

"Kinda surprised Batman ain't showed up."

I shrug. "He can't be everywhere at once."

Richard sent me a message about that. He, Wallace, Zatanna and Artemis managed to get away from the reception, but the host and hostess don't have that sort of freedom. Bit of a shame, really. The comic version of this even ended with Batman giving a first rate ticking off to the fool who thought that picking a fight with a god's wife was a good idea. Oh, and Swamp Thing getting mystically blocked and then incinerated by napalm, but when the handover finally happens I'll be on hand to make sure that doesn't happen.

The mayor of Gotham went on television about an hour ago to make an announcement about what was going on. Since then, people have calmed down a little. No more idiots trying to set vines which cover an entire city on fire with petrol. Lucky that none of them ended up needing treatment for anything worse than first degree burns, really. I don't know how the negotiations are going.

"See, I was wonderin'-."

"Orange Lantern?" Nurse Grignon appears from around the corner. "Got another one for you. Stab wound in Filigree Street, in The Bowery."

My eyes unfocus as I see the scene. Knife through a boy's leg, wrapped in a blood soaked towel, his frantic mother on the telephone.

"Excuse me."

The hospital reception disappears and the vine-covered street appears. The infamous Park Row -better know as Crime Alley- is a little to the north of here. Window's open and with another flicker I'm inside.

"Aah!"

I ignore her and focus on the whimpering child. No, it's no good. I tried healing a few people the first couple of times, but I just don't feel proprietary enough to make it happen. I attach a tourniquet just above the site of the wound, tighten it in accordance with my team's medical training then attach filaments to both of them. "We'll appear at St Luke's in two, one."

Flicker.

The woman looks around in shock, mobile phone still in her hand, as I deposit her son onto the waiting gurney. The waiting paramedic gives me a nod before pushing it down the corridor towards casualty. "Hey there, kid. I'm…"

I look around for anyone who might have another pickup for me. "Anyone else?" Nurse Grignon shakes her head. "Okay." I walk back towards where my date is waiting. "Sorry, Harleen. Part of the job is always being on call."

"Guess every job's got its downside."

"Oh, it's not a downside. I find making the world work better quite satisfying. I just realise that it's rude to keep disappearing like this. You were.. saying? Something..?"

"Swamp Thing didn't actewally say it was him doin' this. Should we be worried?"

He didn't? I frown. I suppose… Not… I shrug. "He isn't chatty at the best of times. I'm not sure who else it could be."

"Has his dawteh got any superpowers?"

I shake my head. "I don't think he'd have called her 'dangerous' if the answer was 'no', but until today I didn't know that she existed." Spying on the Holland residence seemed like bad faith, but Tefé wasn't at home when I first visited their home last year. I seem to remember her having meat control in the one comic I ever read with her in it.

"'cause I was wonderin' if she mighta got real mad and done alla this. And not her Dad."

"Um. Plausible, but we don't know if she has the ability and the timelines wouldn't quite-."

"Lantern!" The chap manning the reception desk looks up. "Call from Arkham. They want you there right away."

"What for? Someone injured?"

"Whatever was up with Poison Ivy's still going on and they've gone from 'concerned' to 'seriously worried'. They want a superhero there in case things are gonna get.. crazier."

"Kid Flash-."

"Adult superhero."

I nod. "Right." Not really his.. bag, anyway. "Harleen, do you want to come? I haven't studied her in an asylum setting."

She nods. "Okay."

I step closer to her and attach a filament. "One stop first. Two, one." We appear atop Mount Justice. I tried stopping back here earlier and Euanthe wasn't around and my own scry wards seemed to be preventing me from finding her. "Euanthe! You around?!"

"Hey, those fruit are jus' like the ones Swamp Thing's growin' in Gotham."

"Yes, they come from the same place." I'll give her a mom-.

Euanthe steps out of a nearby tree smiling at me with a warm and only slightly creepy smile. After a brief discussion of Human social customs regarding clothing she's replaced her bark clothing… And also replaced her nudity, with a vine and leaf number which just about meets the requirements of local law while still managing to look borderline obscene. She looks far healthier here than she did the second time we met. Her skin is a pale green colour, her lips a strongly contrasting rose-pink and -yes- the grass grows more strongly around her feet.

"Pavlos." She walks over to me with her head tilted to the left and runs her right hand across my armoured chest before walking past me to get a better look at Harleen. "You're new."

"Yeyeah, I've never been-." Euanthe takes hold of Harleen's head and nuzzles her. "O-ohka-a-ay. Ah..?" Harleen looks at me for advice.

I give my head a tiny shake. "Euanthe, Swamp Thing has appeared in Gotham. I was hoping that you could come with us in order to help him."

Euanthe releases her hold on Harleen and turns back in my direction. I go to walk over to her in order to peel her off Harleen and then realise that there are vines training up my leg armour. "He is still there?"

Actually… We sort of lost contact after he-. No, the brambles aren't naturally growing like that. He must still be around. "As far as I can tell, yes."

She walks back towards me. I suppose that her outfit is being sustained in the same way as much of the growth enveloping Gotham, Green magic substituting for more conventional nutrients. I've got to have another go at persuading her to take students on. "Then we must go to him. Though I do not know what I can do for him that he cannot do on his own."

"Oh, don't sell yourself short." Harleen notices that the shoots are growing up her legs as well, an expression of uncertain disquiet appearing on her face. "Your social skills are at least as good as his are these days." And isn't that damning. "Ready?"

"Yes."

"Right then." I attach filaments to each of them, pushing through the small amount of resistance I feel from Euanthe. "Next stop, Arkham Asylum."

back

Bindings 15

next

14th May

14:03 GMT -5

"She's through here." Doctor Benjamin Stoner leads the way through the corridors of Arkham Asylum.

Harleen looks at our surroundings in confusion. "This ain't tha secure wing."

Doctor Stoner shakes his head. "She doesn't need it. When Batman told us she was 'normalized'… Weeee were pretty sceptical."

"I'll bet."

Euanthe stares at the walls in fascination. I guess that in her newly empowered state she isn't as bothered by the lack of greenery in her immediate surroundings as she used to be. Or maybe the city is just so filled with Green magic at the moment that she hasn't even noticed. The guards were more than a little concerned when a green-skinned woman with plant control powers appeared with us, but after she gently cleared the entrances by 'asking' the plants to move, they appear to have decided to trust my judgement. Now we just have to transport her to every single other building in the city and get her to do the same thing, and Gotham might become somewhat functional again.

"But…" He waves his hands in an almost helpless sort of way. "She just.. sat there. She wasn't completely uncommunicative, she'd eat and.. talk to you if you asked her questions… Y'know, there was an experiment back in the seventies by a guy called Doctor Rosenhan, where people requested admission to a psychiatric hospital and then stopped showing symptoms to see how long it took the staff to work out that they weren't ill."

I think I remember studying that study during my psychology A Level. The follow up study -where they told hospitals they were sending people to them and didn't, resulting in them identifying dozens of 'volunteers'- made me smile at the time.

"Some of their volunteers were inside for two months! Now, I always figured I'd never let that happen to anyone I was working with. But… I think everyone says that. So I figured… Okay. She's not picking fights with the guards or the other prisoners anymore. She's not all that talkative, maybe that's… Because she's shut up in solitary confinement the whole time? So I reduced her medication, increased her, y'know, her privileges…"

"You could do that?"

"Eeeeaaah, there's a decision review process for our 'special' patients. One too many 'hopeful' discharges of people who really needed to be kept inside. And bribes and threats to family members-"

"Yeyeah, I remember."

"But Doctor Young approved it."

"An' she was doin' okay?"

He smiles. "No!" The he realises what he just said. "I mean, yes, compared to what she used to be like. But no, because she still remembers being Poison Ivy and all the crazy stuff she got up to. But that's on the level of something conventional therapy can handle. We moved her into the low risk wing. Honestly, I thought that she'd be out and ready to face the world in a few months."

Sounds like Jeremiah Arkham's blank blackboard can finally have that 'I' drawn on it.

"Then… Well, then this happened."

He pushes open the door to the common room and stands out of the way to allow us entry.

The first thing I notice is that I can hear the Gotham River.

The second thing I notice is that the reason I can hear the Gotham River is that there are some rather large holes in the far wall.

Made by the third thing I notice. All of the plants. The main hole appears to have been smashed through reinforced concrete by the trunk of an oak tree in a way that is quite contrary to its normal behaviour. Hickory trees have taken out the wire-reinforced glass from the room's windows, the more or less intact panes lying on the tiled floor. The trees have expanded into the room, leaves sprouting in a way which makes little sense given how little sunlight they'll get. The hickory trees are bearing fruit, the normal nuts replaced by Swamp Thing's custom jobs.

The fourth and fifth things I notice are Swamp Thing's former body standing in the middle of the room and the orange jumpsuit wearing Doctor Pamela Isley lounging in its arms, one of the fruit half eaten in her left hand and giggling.

Oh. Dear.

She runs her right hand down the side of his vacant head and sighs. Then she notices us watching her and straightens up slightly. "Oh, hello there."

Harleen takes a couple of steps forward. "Hey, Isley."

I notice Harleen tense at the same time as I do. No, no reaction. It looks like Doctor Isley is happy using her Human name. Scans say… None of the modifications Doctor Woodrue made to her body have reappeared. Good.

Isley straightens up a little to find a posture in which she can better look at us. "You're.. Doctor Quinzel, right."

"Uh-huh. You remember me okay?"

"I remember finding you…" She averts her eyes with a small shake of her head. "I wasn't… I found you annoying."

"Guess that explains tha time you tried to choke me t'death with my own hair."

"No." She swings her right leg. "I did that because I hated just about everyone. If you hadn't been there it would have been someone else. That's… Why I hurt a lot of people."

Harleen walks slowly across the room towards her. "And you don't feel like doin' that now?"

"No. I feel… Good." She leans into Swamp Thing's body. "Comforted."

"I didn't think that you and he were on particularly good terms?"

"You'd know." But I'm not seeing any real anger there. "He was in a bad mood, and.. I was clinically insane. And then I wasn't. He didn't just get rid of my connection to the Green, he changed back everything Woodrue did to my body to force me to have that connection. My brain was working properly for the first time in years."

"You shower you should be eat'n that?"

"Yes."

"'Cause I'm thinkin' if it messed you up befowah-."

"My connection to the Green was the only thing that kept me coherent. And now-" She takes another bite. "-ry cn grut bck-" She swallows. "-some of that. I want to know what it's like when I'm not crazy."

"Why did Swamp Thing come to see you?"

"He wanted to give me this chance. The chance to see the Green the way he does. The healthy way."

"He broke into Arkham Asylum to do that?"

"He also wanted to know if I could find his daughter. He didn't really know what Gotham usually felt like and he thought that someone might be hiding her from him."

I frown. Swamp Thing, I feel your pain there, but was this really..? He's not intelligent. Maybe he couldn't get his head around the idea of asking the police or child services? Still… He's got awareness throughout all plant life. Isn't that like Ophidi-me with the construct eyes? Or maybe he doesn't get full awareness until he animates dead plant matter as well?

"So, okay. We need to find Tefé Holland and get the police to release Abigail. Did you give him any ideas?"

Doctor Isley shakes her head. "My connection to the Green is barely there. I'd have to eat hundreds of these things before I could tell him anything.. useful…" She stares in fascination. "Who is that?"

I half turn to see that Euanthe has entered the room. "This is Euanthe. She's a Dryad."

The look of wonder returns to Doctor Isley's eyes. "Oh God."

Euanthe walks purposively towards Doctor Isley. "The Great Warrior wishes you to find his daughter? Then I will aid you."

back

Bindings 16

next

14th May

14:12 GMT -5

"Is this how mosta your days go?"

I think for a moment as the Dryad and recovering mental patient feed each other fruit in front of us, clearly relishing the experience.

"Which.. part..?"

"Somethin' weird happens and you have t' fly all ovah the place t' sort it out."

"No, that's…" I frown. How many of these things have I done now? "Only about once a week. The world can be a pretty strange place, but usually I'm diving in strangeness because I find it fascinating rather than dire necessity."

"There's stuff you find strange?"

"I've been to Tartarus to visit a person made of stone hands. I built a toilet cubicle on the Moon."

She smiles incredulously. "No way."

"Yes way. I'm sure you know about the giant cake…"

"Everyone knows about tha giant cake."

"I've visited cities at the bottom of the sea, flown into Hell and emerged unscathed and a few weeks ago I dumped an unconscious god into a pigsty."

She stares at me for a moment, then shakes her head. "I can't even tell if youwa lyin'."

I chuckle. "I don't need to. I don't think I could make this stuff up."

She nods, eyes momentarily going to the floor. "That why you do it? Fly around, pick fights with guys in weird costumes… 'Cause y' like seein' things othah people don't?"

"No… I don't think it's that. I mean, I could do all of that stuff without the fighting."

She shrugs. "Y'don't need t'have some great big dark secret."

"Those are still fairly popular." Greenery extends itself from the intruding branches and gathers in an approximate circle around the two Green… I can't think of them as Greenies. Greenists? Around Euanthe and Isley. "But in my case it was more mercenary. I needed a personal lantern to charge the ring, the chap who had a spare wouldn't give it to me unless I was getting supervised."

"'Need it'? Wat'cha need it fowah?" She looks down at the rings for a moment. "Most people get buy jus' fine without 'em."

"Until someone turns their city into a forest."

"Okay, but statistically-."

"Yes, I know. Humans aren't good at judging risks, and I'm no exception to that rule. And the sort you have here are so much more flamboyant than we had back at home." I frown. "I don't think that I told you that I-."

"Came heyeh from another universe. No, but'cha told Dana Dearden an' I read her interview."

"Right." My frown deepens. "You know, it's only as I talk to you… I justified it to myself in various ways post-facto, but it… Never really occurred to me not to get it recharged."

"An' alla tha other stuff?"

"Reputation grinding. I wish to change the way Human society works, so I'm doing what I need to in order to ensure that, firstly, there's still a human society here and, secondly, so that people will be inclined to listen to my ideas. Or… At least, that's my current justification. Now you make me think about it, I'm not sure-."

"Wonder Woman to Orange Lantern."

I raise my left hand to my ear. "Orange Lantern here."

"What is your status?"

"Euanthe and…" I look at Doctor Isley for a fraction of a second. "I are attempting to locate Tefé Holland. Any progress at your end?"

"Swamp Thing has yet to reappear, and the Mayor appears set on enforcing the letter of the law."

"The letter of the law says that he's wrong. I made sure of that when it was written."

"The warrant is still valid. It was issued before the Citizenship Recognition Act was signed into law, and Louisiana law has not yet been modified to take it into account. When it goes to court in Louisiana Missus Holland can plead innocent on that basis."

"Yes, but that could take months -or years if she has to go to the state supreme court- and I rather imagine people are going to want Gotham in the meantime. Besides, it's clearly bull-!"

"Frustrating.. though it is, the Mayor and the State of Louisiana have the right to demand that it be followed."

"Then they're welcome to try enforcing it. Look, she's basically being arrested for jumping bail, right?"

"I believe that is why the warrant was issued, yes."

"Howsabout they just pretend that didn't happen? She and Tefé can go back to living in the swamp until the trial, I'll have Mister Tuckman conduct her defence in absentia-" And not do anything pointlessly vengeful like publicly attacking them for being morons. That is sufficient punishment by itself. "-and Swamp Thing can call off his plants."

"I have already suggested something similar. It was not well received."

"What do they think is going to happen?"

"They have requested that I call upon the services of Doctor Fate."

"Then I hope his robes are one hundred percent synthetic and that he hasn't eaten anything-. Does he eat?"

"I have never seen him do so."

"I assume that you've told them that if Swamp Thing decides to make a fight of it -and he would- he'd tear Gotham apart?"

"The phrase used was 'we do not negotiate with terrorists'."

I sigh and roll my eyes. "What's the process for starting a recall election for the Gotham mayorship?"

"Notifying the electors may prove somewhat difficult."

"Alright. I'll let you know if I find anything to-." The leaf circle shakes and rattles. "Oh, hang on. We might have-."

The leaves brown and blacken and fall to the ground. The branches themselves wither and decay and Euanthe and Doctor Isley both stare at them in horror. Euanthe recovers faster. "Pavlos! Burn the infection! Quickly!"

I raise my hands and orange light surrounds and disintegrates the dying plant matter. There's resistance of the sort I've learned to expect from an arcane target. I turn off the orange and… No, still some left. I scoop the wood that won't die up into a construct container and fire a Mage Slayer at it.

Okay, that appears to have worked.

"Problem?"

"Yes, Pavlos." Euanthe looks at the severed limbs of the plant I just amputated. "A great problem."

back

Bindings 17

next

14th May

14:16 GMT -5

Doctor Isley flops back, her breathing rapid and shallow. "What..? What was that?"

"Are you injured?"

She shudders, her breathing-. I transition across the room, a paper bag emerging from subspace and covering her mouth.

"Breathe. Breathe." She gets her left hand up to take hold of the bag. "Euanthe, has the attack stopped?"

"Yes. I was not expecting such a backlash. I believe that someone created some manner of trap to try and slay anyone who attempted what we did."

"Was it Tefé?"

"No. No, it cannot be her. No one who has the connection to the Green that she has could create such a thing."

"Do you know what it was?"

"It felt like oblivion, like drowning in tar. It felt like every spark of life being extinguished and something repugnant continuing in a foul anti-existence."

"Demons or some kind of necromancy, right. Are you still being affected?"

"No. Pamela was the focus of the ritual and her connection to the Green was not strong enough for that.. corrupted magic to continue."

Doctor Isley removes the paper bag from her face. "Okay… Okay… That… That wasn't there before."

"Are you sure that Tefé is?"

"Yes." / "She was…"

Doctor Isley looks at Euanthe for some clue as to which of them is supposed to be answering. Euanthe's lack of Human-compatible body language appears to be throwing her. Hm. I wonder how Euanthe and Danni would get along? With no guidance, Doctor Isley turns to me. "We saw her. At least, I assume it was her."

"It was."

"Then the.. blackness… It came back through the channel."

"Right. Can I assume that you didn't have any sort of cut-out? You were just plugging yourself directly in to the local greenery?"

Euanthe looks almost offended. "Of course. How else should we have acted?"

"Human magic users tend to incorporate defensive measures into their rituals to prevent things like that happening. If you're interested, I can arrange for you to get lessons." My eyes dart to Doctor Isley. "You too, when you're released. Now, where are they keeping Tefé?"

"East, almost directly. Robbinsville, but… I think she was underground. I didn't see much. I could… Probably tell where it was if I got closer."

"Not to worry." I raise my left hand to my ear again. "Orange Lantern to Wonder Woman."

There's a short delay before she answers. "Wonder Woman here, go ahead."

"Tefé Holland located. There's at least one person with her who can use some sort of death magic. I suspect that she is being held against her will. Orders?"

"Good work. I will contact Doctor Fate and request his presence."

I almost suggest assembling my entire team instead… But -much as I hate to admit it- I don't think three barely graduated Atlantean battlemages and two haphazardly trained magicians are really well suited to this situation. I really need to put more effort into finding a magic user in the weight class who we can call on instead of him. I mean, after the seventh of July it won't matter so much and with a little luck I'll have a preferred candidate anyway… I'll ask John if he's got any ideas. Or maybe Eris has another devotee with an interest, or an Amazon who'd like to try Man's magic? Don't know. Problem for later.

"Understood. Should I support him or return to civil assistance?"

Curiously, due to the way the team is set up, my oath is the only thing compelling me to obey her in this situation. The League doesn't generally have the authority to give my team orders, only Batman does. Any other deference the rest of the League gets comes from personal respect and affection. I haven't drawn this to anyone's attention as I don't want it fixed in such a way that I find myself obliged to obey Nabu. Maybe something for my exit interview?

"The Gotham zeta tube is currently too overgrown to function. I understand that you have the ability to connect construct zeta tubes to our network?"

"Yes. Though to be honest, it won't be any harder for me to just fly over and pick him up. Wherever he is. Similarly, I can pick up and drop off my team mates if you think they've beaten the gangs into obedience. Or we can try telling Swamp Thing himself. In any case, I strongly recommend having someone more diplomatic than Nabu just in case this is some sort of strange misunderstanding."

"Do you have any assessment of the level of force that you would expect to encounter?"

"None as yet. And I only have an approximate location. I can perform reconnaissance first if you like."

"One moment."

The line goes dead. Okay, what next? I walk back to the common room door and push it open, ignoring the pistols which the guards point at my face. "Doctor Stoner?"

He pokes his head out from around a corner. "Ah, yeah? Any problems?"

"No, but I might need to borrow her for an hour or so, as part of efforts to pacify Swamp Thing. Is that likely to be a problem?"

"Are you going to bring her back afterwards?"

"Of course."

"I'm… Not sure this is really my decision? I mean…" He looks away. "I… Technically, I can approve someone in minimum security for day release, but only to someone who has already gone through vetting."

"I have… Excellent character references?"

"I.. um, I'm sure you do, but there's a little more to it than that. We have to make sure that no one's fallen under the influence of… Um."

"Rea-? No." I hold my palms toward him. If people were inclined towards rationality today wouldn't be happening. "Okay. Is anyone I know on the approved list?"

"Batman?"

"Busy." And how the heck did he pass a background check?

"Robin is as well, but I guess-."

"No, I can get Robin. And if I do, you can release her?"

"Oh yeah, that'll be fine. But we'll need her back by nine. Ah... That's when we go into lockdown."

"Either that'll be fine, or there won't be a city anymore. So no problem!"

"Okay! Well then… I'll get the forms, you get the Robin!" He smiles, nods, and turns away to hurry down the corridor.

Right. One problem dealt with. Now I just wait for Diana-.

There's a rumble from outside. Then another. And another, slightly fainter.

I'm hurrying back through the door even as the ring shows me Swamp Thing's colossal body stomping down the Schwartz Bypass. "Euanthe, any idea what Swamp Thing is doing?"

"Going to recover his daughter. Was aiding him in that endeavour not the purpose of our actions?"

back

Bindings 18

next

14th May

14:20 GMT -5

…

"Yes. Yes. … Yes."

…

AAAAAGH!

My right hand massages my forehead. "But it was to get them back together in the way which best served his longer term objectives, rather than the one which resulted in him rampaging through a city and alienating everyone. Swamp Thing is a wonderful being, but he isn't very clever and sometimes he needs other people to deal with complicated situations for him."

"Your original explanation was unclear."

"Yes… Yes, I now realise that. We're going to try getting there ahead of him. If it turns out to be necessary, are you willing to confront the source of that death magic?"

"The Great Warrior freed me and allowed me to succour on his power. His purposes are mine."

Harleen raises her right eyebrow. "Maybe you shouldn't put it jus' like that when you meet his wife."

"Harleen, I'm going to have to ask you to stay here."

She shakes her head. "I ain't gunna argue. I know when I'm gettin' over my head."

"Right." Ring, location of Robin?

I get an image of Upper East Side. Looks like he and the others are doing a meet-and-greet. A sound move. Preventing panic and the break down of social rules that it leads to is every bit as important as fighting a gang at the moment. Kon's floating above the others still in his party frock, and from the way he's staring north I think I can assume that he's seen Swamp Thing's new body.

Transition.

I appear at ground level, Robin and Artemis immediately orientating to me. "Guys, we have a problem."

Kon drops through the air, landing a short distance from me. "Is that Swamp Thing?"

I wave my right hand and generate a construct image for those of my colleagues who can't fly. I add a scale, and Robin grimaces. "The Schwartz Bypass is already clear of motorists, so all he's doing is crushing cars. When he reaches his destination and tries using that body to fight with that will change."

Richard nods. "Where do you think he's heading?"

"Robbinsville. Euanthe and Doctor Isley were able to locate Tefé Holland there."

Artemis grimaces. "So he's just gunna kidnap his own daughter?"

"Someone near her is using death magic to counterattack scrying attempts. If they're also keeping him from sensing her I expect that he just wants to make sure that she's safe. Wonder Woman is getting hold of Nabu but we suddenly don't have as much planning time as I had been assuming."

Wallace walks closer, draping his right arm around Richard's shoulders. "Y'know, I can still remember a time when all Gotham had was freaks in bad suits. Whatever happened to them?"

"We beat them all. Giant Swamp Thing is our level now."

He nods approvingly. "I like the way you think."

"Everyone got their spell eaters?" Nods from Kon, Richard and Artemis. Wallace and Zatanna shake their heads. "Right. I've got one spare. Kid Flash-" I generate a zeta tube construct. "-go back to base and pick yours up. I'll open up the tube again when we reach our destination."

"Right."

He's gone in a blur of yellow and I shut down the construct, taking my spare spell eater out of subspace and handing it to Zatanna. She takes it a little reluctantly. "I can't cast spells while holding this."

"I know, but -and I say this with the greatest respect- anyone powerful enough to keep Tefé somewhere she doesn't want to be and to keep Swamp Thing out-."

She nods. "Would be more than I could handle anyway."

"Once the fighting starts, just drop it. Okay, we need to stop off at Arkham so Robin can sign Doctor Isley's day release form-."

Richard's eyes widen. "You wanna explain why we're letting a plant controlling supervillain out of Arkham, Oh El?"

"Because she's not insane anymore and she can feel where Tefé is. Finding her will be difficult without Doctor Isley's help." He looks sceptical. "Robin, you were there when Swamp Thing changed her back into a normal Human. It was the alterations that Doctor Woodrue made to her body that made Poison Ivy. Her desires are.. what you'd expect from a normal person who'd been through some fairly extreme experiences and really likes plants. And I doubt that she could wrench control away from Swamp Thing if she wanted to."

He deflates slightly. "I'm so gunna regret this."

"Okay, good. Everyone ready?" Nods all around.

Transition.

Back in the asylum common room Doctor Isley is back on her feet, paper bag neatly folded in one hand. I attach a filament to it and return it to subspace as the sound of Swamp Thing's thumping steps filters back into my consciousness.

Richard eyes Doctor Isley awkwardly and she in turns looks more than a little uncomfortable. "Robin. I.. realise that you're just one of a lot of people I hurt while I was Poison Ivy, but I… I want to apologi-."

The door swings open and Doctor Stoner walks through. "So I've got the forms ready whene.. ver…" He takes in the room's occupants. "Oh, you're already here. Okay, good." He holds out a clipboard in Richard's direction. "Just sign at the bottom."

Richard takes hold of the clipboard and picks up the attached pencil. "I really hope I don't regret this." He signs with a stylised 'R' before handing it back. "Okay, Oh El. Where now?"

Underground in Robbinsville. It's surrounded by sea on three sides. Assuming that I can't scan the target directly… Gotham has large utility tunnels and storm drains… Ring, match the plans with what we can scan. Let's hope our target hasn't been as clever as they think they have.

Discrepancy found.

HAH! 'Oh, he'll never find me if I put up a scry ward'! Sucker!

"Transition in two, one."

We appear next to the main entrance to the Robbinsville utility tunnels. "There's an area in there that's warded against my scans. Doctor Isley?"

"Ah..?" She looks around for a moment, getting her bearings. "Down and…" She points north. "That way." I nod. "Do you want me to come with you?"

"No. While I much prefer your current form to that of your alter ego, I doubt that you'll be much use in a fight. Seek cover." She nods gratefully and backs away.

Thump, thump. Swamp Thing is definitely getting closer. Zeta tube construct. "Orange Lantern to Kid-" He appears through the aperture, wiggling his spell eater pendant. "-Flash. Orange Lantern to Wonder Woman. I'm in position. Is Nabu available?"

"Yes. Do you know why Swamp Thing is-?"

"Miscommunication with Euanthe. Zeta tube is open."

Another flash from the tube and Nabu floats through, stolen eyes staring and unblinking.

And immediately all of the greenery around us begins to rot.

back

Bindings 19

next

14th May

14:25 GMT -5

Apparently tough bark crumbles away all around us, revealing dry and Moth-eaten wood. Or perhaps Woodlouse-eaten, given that a small horde of them appears to have materialised from somewhere to run over the surface of it, following the wave of death spreading out from our target.

"Vile necromancy!" Nabu's eye holes glow gold as the Lich rises a short distance into the air, a faint gold glow appearing in the air around us. Within the area of his spell the plant life either remains green or evaporates into golden flecks while outside it the plants continue to putrefy.

Hm. Presumably his necromancy is of the non-vile kind.

"Whow." Wallace looks around as the dying wood spontaneously sprouts great fronds of fungus. More insects appear, and I note several Millipedes of types not usually found in this part of America.

Euanthe has moved to the exact centre of the shielded area and has her arms pulled tightly against her chest. She stares around in horror, rather than the mystification the rest of us appear to be feeling. "Wrong. So very wrong."

"Okay." Artemis shrugs. "Creepy, but we kinda need all this plant stuff gone anyway."

"Artemis, that's ridiculously optimistic. No one is going to do something like this out of the goodness of their heart. We're just waiting for the other shoe to drop."

Even as I say it, partially rotten vines and wood are pulled away from us and towards Aparo Expressway. Chunks fall away and some vines snap, but that's an awful lot of dead wood moving under its own power.

Richard looks thoughtful. "Euanthe, can Swamp Thing control dead wood?"

She doesn't respond, too fearfully focused on all of the dying plants around us.

"He can make dead wood alive again. He can't kill it and then control it. I've never heard of a necromancer controlling dead plants before-."

"This is more than necromancy, Lantern." Nabu's hands are glowing, small ankhs on his fingertips. Ah, it seems like he's picked up the 'many small spells are more efficient than one big one' lesson. "I sense a demonic agent at work."

More Demons, great. "Anyone you know?"

"My bestiary of earthly Demons is incomplete. None I know of are skilled in manipulating plants."

"Nabu, we're here to assist you. Undead demonic plants or freeing Tefé?"

"How can I know that this is not her doing? Your own reports state that her conception was tainted by demonic magic."

"No." Euanthe shakes her head emphatically. "No one who knows the Green could perform this abomination. Their own souls would curdle and die before they could twist themselves so much."

I think we've left Artemis behind. "Swamp Thing used Demon magic to have a daughter?"

"No, he borrowed John Constantine's body and John Constantine has some of Nergal's blood in him."

"So she's John Constantine's daughter. Right?"

Nabu glows brilliant gold and then shoots directly upwards into the sky, staring in the direction the necro-wood is moving. Great.

"It appears that we have a decision." I form a platform under my tea-. My squad, and lift us into the sky.

Oh, that's disgusting.

I can clearly see Swamp Thing's colossal form as it strides down the Schwartz Bypass. Preparing to meet his charge is a.. thing. Dull brown interspersed with dull yellow, a creature made of rotting and cankerous wood stands. Its head is a narrow oval, a lopsided mouth with teeth made of jagged pieces of bark and eye-like holes inhabited by nests of spiders. All around its body a swarm of flies hovers, more and more maggots digging out of its body to the fresh air outside. Down the front of its chest real demonic eyes swivel madly in all directions as the combined elements of the abomination take in their environment. Its lower body is a cross of insect and snake, with insectoid legs made of petrified wood and oozing demonic flesh. Blood, pus and liquids I don't want to try identifying drip from various orifices and Eris preserve me I think it's pregnant!

"Oh God. I think I'm gunna be sick."

Wallace says it, but I think we're all feeling it.

Zatanna gags. "Augh. Is that where the smell's coming from?"

"I hope so, because if it isn't, that means there's something worse smelling around here."

"SWAMP THING!"

And the sound. Damp but strong, rotting but vibrant. I know who it is even before Swamp Thing bellows back.

"Arcane!"

And I remember the Demon, his tormentor and later lover, whom their demonic overseers bonded him to after she enabled one of his escapes. Don't remember her name, but that does go some way to explain how he's back again. Bet Cranius and his mob will start shitting themselves if this gets back to Aberrance.

Kon glances at me. "You didn't bring the Ace of Winchesters, did you?"

"No. No I didn't." I form a railgun construct, load an Angel feather round and take aim. "But this is nearly as good."

Artemis draws her bow, an anti-magic arrow searching for a target. "Where do I even shoot that thing?"

"Shoot where I shoot!" Nabu thrusts his fists forward, the air around them glowing gold. "We will purge this abomination-."

"No, you won't." A beam of ghostly white energy strikes him in the side and sends him reeling in the air for a moment before he teleports, then surrounds himself in a golden shield. I trace the beam back just in time to see Dark Druid stride out onto a rooftop. "You'll die. Everyone in this city will die."

"Foul sorcerer!" Nabu charges his shot, ankhs floating around his forearms in a circle before a brilliant golden beam blasts at Dark Druid's position.

Where it's met by an ectoplasmic barrier. "This is a place of unlife, Fate. Our domain. Inhabited by hundreds of the still living." Nabu blasts him again, this time making his barrier shudder. "Arcane! Cull the living."

The abomination half turns, its arms flying outwards. From them, a horde of demonically mutated insects fly in all directionohshit.

Praexis Horde, get them!

Demonic constructs fly from the rings as I drop us to ground level. "Team, we're going after Tefé. No way can either of those monsters sustain a connection to the Green on their own."

Zatanna looks concerned. "We're abandoning Fate?"

"Dark Druid just surfaced for the first time since Roanoke. What just changed?"

Doctor Isley's eyes widen. "The Green. There's more Green magic in this city than anywhere there's ever been."

"Losing Nabu-" Like this. "-would be bad. Losing all plant life on the planet would be worse. We're going to disrupt his link to it." I transition upwards, target Arcane's womb and fire my Angel feather round before transitioning back down. "Now."

"RRRRAGGH!"

back

Bindings 20

next

14th May

14:28 GMT -5

Demonic Wasps fly from Arcane's rotting body, meeting my Praexis Demons in a swirling melee in the air. The Demons are more numerous, grabbing and biting at their far more agile quarry. Still a few get through-

"Yfirup!"

-and in a puff of smoke hurtle out of control to the ground. They're still alive-ish, but the magic enhancing them is gone and they're stuck with giant insect bodies that can't get enough oxygen to function. I give Zatanna a nod as the rest of my team jogs towards the utility tunnel entrance.

"There's no way anyone down there doesn't know we're here, so we're doing this fast and not subtle." I take Zatanna's proffered spell eater, then create construct armour around everyone. "Robin and Zatanna, take the lead. Destroy any magic protections you encounter as you find them." They nod and speed up as Richard throws a crumbler-boomerang at the entrance, destroying it. The access tunnel is straight down, kinetic belts allowing them to just jump down without any concern. "Superboy, Euanthe, Isley, you're next. Superboy-" He glances back. "-look after them."

Euanthe is first to the hole, then hesitates. "I cannot make it grow to-."

Kon puts his right arm around her waist, his left around Doctor Isley and jumps.

Artemis puts an arrow through a demonic Stag Beetle that was running along the wall near us. "You know they're gunna follow us, right?"

Off in the sky above us there's a flare of golden light.

"Giant Demon-Insects in a narrow tunnel." Wallace nods. "Great. Now I wish I'd spent more time on magic insecticides."

I generate a pair of minigun constructs. "Go. I'll be along in a moment."

"Ah, Oh El? I didn't bring my belt-."

Artemis stows her bow, picks him up in a bridal carry and jumps down the hole.

Right. The miniguns open fire as the insect and arthropod swarm keeps coming. I hadn't reasoned it through the whole way when I took the shot, but railgun-aborting Arcane's foetus has done a reasonable job of persuading him to send his minions after us. A Black Sexton Beetle has its wings shredded by my constructs before taking shots to its head. The Praexis should be able to consume the rest before they get into the buildings. Okay, good.

"Hellwraith." The horrible thing shimmers into being next to me. "Consume the demonic magics in anything that tries to follow us."

"Yes, Master."

There's a tremendous crash, and the rings show me Swamp Thing slam into Arcane, wood dust and demonic gunk spraying everywhere. Arcane is clearly damaged by the impact, but he's drawing more mass into him. Like a Nurgle Demon, ripping his flesh apart doesn't really do much to hurt him. Not in any important sense. And it probably doesn't even hurt significantly when compared to what he suffered in Hell. As they grapple I see demonically enhanced Ants scurrying across his body and onto Swamp Thing.

Swamp Thing brushes the first wave off and stamps on them before smashing Arcane's head to dust with a haymaker.

He's got that. I fire off a last burst of fire before flying into the utility tunnel at full speed.

"Eb Edamnu!"

Protocol and role-comprehension. Not being expected to take any part in the fight -if any- at the end, Zatanna knows to put as much effort as is required into breaking down obstacles en route. Using her for face-punching duty is a waste. For more conventional obstacles -I see a white-red glow from down the tunnel as Richard sets off an incendiary- we have a super strong gadget user. Kind of interesting how different it works between solo work and team work. A solo artist has to be able to do some of everything and know when they're trying to operate in an area they literally can't handle. We can afford to have specialists for particular tasks and keep them in that role.

Up ahead I can see Wallace and Artemis. Between super strength and super speed everyone's making good time. Better yet, they're not bunching up. Glad that I'm not the only one who's learned a lot.

"Orange Lantern to Wonder Woman. Nabu's fighting Dark Druid and Swamp Thing's fighting Anton Arcane who's using a body made of rotting wood and Demon. I've deployed the Praexis Demons to fight demonically enhanced creepy crawlies and my team's trying to release Tefé."

"I'll be there in under a minute. Won-."

The sound of wind obscures the rest as she accelerates. Good. Much as I loathe Nabu on a personal level, Dark Druid is a foul offence to life and is thoroughly deserving of the worst beating the League members feel like delivering. Diana isn't as fast under her own power as Superman and I experience a momentary pang of fear as I note that she isn't wearing armour at the moment.

Wallace blurs into motion, shoving Artemis aside and lunging against the wall himself as a giant Mole Cricket falls down from a freshly dug hole in the roof. A half-second later its head is coated in smoke as… Yep, Essence of Vitriol. Bit surprised that he brought it to the wedding with him. Maybe he picked it up from the Mountain? The Mole Cricket collapses, shaking, as its head melts away. Artemis rolls to her feet, an arrow already on string. She launches it at the Cricket's entry hole. The arrow detonates and releases quick drying hard foam into the space, temporarily blocking it to any other insects.

Suddenly I feel my awareness of the local area expand, the last of Dark Druid's wards collapsing. Tefé Holland and some figures who only show up as black are in one of the sections which the plans say shouldn't be there. Richard and Kon are already in the room, a visibly tired Zatanna having dropped back a little.

"Double time."

I attach a filament to Artemis as Wallace dashes forwards and around the corner in the direction of the advanced party. I'm not risking a transition around unfamiliar magics, but we need to get there pronto. Killing Tefé will probably shut down whatever magic they're trying to do here… Although… If it happened here as it did in the comic… I'm painfully aware that Arcane briefly was Swamp Thing, back when he still thought that he was Alec Holland and Arcane offered to give him a Human body in exchange for his elemental one. He might still maintain enough of a connection to keep things going, at least.

I deposit Artemis near the entrance and create railgun constructs. At the far end of the room a young woman is chained to the wall with dying plants.. plugged into her skin. Just in front of her, seven corpses with plants growing around and through them stand in a rough circle around a single man in a priest's habit whose eyes glow with the same off-white light as Dark Druid's beams.

Richard recognises him. "Blackfire." The clearly dead man regards us with a good deal more intelligence than the shambling forms around him. "Can't keep a bad guy down."

"Robin. I do God's work here."

I load a Mage Slayer round and shoot him in the abdomen. It punches clean through his flesh and smashes into the concrete floor beyond. An incendiary arrow from Artemis hits the closest plant zombie, the chemical gel inside spreading out across its surface before igniting. No scream, not even an exhalation as the fire spreads and it and its fellows charge. There's a yellow blur and one begins smoking from Wallace's acid as he runs past to see to Tefé. Richard takes another with a white phosphorus bomb as Blackfire stands. The hole in his body glows the same off-white colour as his eyes and he grins as more of it manifests around his right fist.

"Superboy, get him."

"For Helios!" Kon surges through the air, Helios' pure light shining from him as he hits Blackfire in the chest with both fists and drives him into a wall. The man doesn't yelp or give any other indication that that actually hurt him.

A shambler charges at me, wooden claws shimmering with that same off-white light which I remember from the Invunche in Liverpool. I back up slightly, taking an x-ionised sword out of subspace and slicing off its reaching limbs before smashing it in the chest with a battering ram construct. It tries digging its foot claws into the rotten vegetation underfoot, but a pair of construct blades slice those off as well shortly before an unmaker takes its head.

And the rest of it keeps moving.

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Bindings 21

next

14th May

14:32 GMT -5

Awkward. Almost cheating.

"Head shots don't kill. Destroy them completely."

For a moment, every part of my opponent's body glows with orange light. Then not even ash remains.

Euanthe has joined Wallace in ministering to Tefé, pouring his acid… No, that's healing potion, pouring healing potion onto the vines stuck in her.

Richard backs away from his still-burning attacker before throwing a small explosive into its chest. The blast knocks it off its feet, but what's left of it still tries to rise. "They don't burn so well!"

Artemis looses two unmakers, the torso of the vine zombie closest to her vanishing completely and its arms, legs and head falling to the ground. "Disintegration works fine."

"I only brought-" Richard holds up a single boomerang. "-one!"

Kon headbutts the snarling Deacon Blackfire then turns his head back in my direction. "Can we kill undead?"

Blackfire gives up on trying to push Kon off and instead closes his hands around Kon's shoulders, passing through his construct armour as tainted white light flows across them. "Your false god shall not protect you from-."

Kon frees his right hand and punches Blackfire in the abdomen, his left lifting Blackfire up by the throat. The brilliant white light of Helios' blessing flickers for a moment, then pushes back against Blackfire's corruption.

"No, but you're perfectly free-" I push my hands towards another vine zombie and disintegrate it with a beam of orange light. "-to rip off his arms and legs, since they're weapons and his body isn't functioning-"

There's a tremendous crack and Blackfire's right arm sails past me. I stick out my right arm and disintegrate that as well.

"-biologically."

"Lortnoc daednu." I frown, looking around as Zatanna speaks. A vine zombie that had been closing in on her staggers a few steps, then her eyes glow with the same ghostly white as Blackfire! "Ah-agh!"

I transition to her side, another ring blast annihilating the zombie as I press her abandoned spell eater to her chest. She takes a gasping breath, blinking rapidly as her eyes return to normal.

"You alright?"

She grabs onto my hand holding the spell eater with both of hers, trying to get her breathing under control. "That was horrible."

"Energy field larger than your-?"

I get a glare and she shifts her hands from my hand to the spell eater itself. "That's not funny."

"Sounds like you've recovered."

I turn back to my colleagues as the de-limbed torso of Deacon Blackfire thumps down on the floor as Artemis and Richard destroy the last of the vine zombies. More of the off-white light twinkles in the dead flesh of the stumps but absolutely no liquid flows from the wound. He looks around, filled with a desire to end us but with no way to put it into effect.

I disintegrate his severed limbs. "Kid Flash, how's it coming?"

The parts of the vines directly attached to Tefé are momentarily alive once more and Euanthe is persuading them to leave her flesh. "Looking good, Oh El. We should have her out in a minute." He looks around to make eye contact for a moment. "Where exactly are we taking her?"

"The Mountain. I'll make a zeta tube construct. Euanthe, get her into the grove and try healing her. Kid Flash, help her."

"Right." Tefé comes loose, falling forwards into Wallace's waiting arms as the last few vines are pulled from her flesh. She looks.. a mess. Her wounds aren't bleeding much but there are clearly visible incisions into her flesh everywhere I can see.

"Anyone hurt?"

Kon rolls his right shoulder. "Aches where he touched me, but that's it."

My eyes pass around my team mates and they each shake their heads in turn. "Euanthe, any idea what that was doing?"

Euanthe steps away from Tefé's prison as the plants she temporarily resurrected die off once more. She peers at Tefé's injuries and then shakes her head. "She connected the death to the Green. I do not understand the magics involved."

"Right." I generate a zeta tube construct. "Get going."

They walk into the aperture and disappear as Doctor Isley nervously raises her right hand. "Should I go with them?"

"Grateful as I am for your help, you're not going inside secure Justice League facilities for a little while. Stick with us for the time being."

She looks longingly at the portal for a moment, then nods.

Kon walks slowly towards Blackfire's fallen form and lightly kicks it with his right foot. "What do we do with him?"

"Nabu can have him." I put construct clamps around the torso and send it floating back along the way we came. "Let's go. Superboy, take point. Doctor Isley, with me."

Kon nods and strides ahead as Isley comes up alongside me. "What are you going to do next?"

"Help Nabu and Wonder Woman if they need it, clean up the infestation and then talk Swamp Thing down."

Artemis follows Kon, and Robin turns his head my way. "Oh El, what's going on up top?"

I generate railgun constructs and set them to automatic before having the rings scan the combat zone. Bars of luminescent green energy surround Dark Druid as Nabu brings a golden ankh down on top of him. Druid's hood is either thrown back or burned away, his face snarling with hate as he raises his hands and tries to stop the ankh with his own necrotic magics.

The mass that is Arcane's current body shudders as Diana smashes through the front fists first and out of the back in the same way. His body looks smaller than it was before, dead wood sloughing away… He isn't regenerating. He and Swamp Thing are still grappling and from the looks of it the right side of Swamp Thing's body is starting to die off as well. Not fatal, as long as he has space to evacuate.

I watch a Millipede duck around a small group of Praexis Demons and charge through a doorway, only to be blasted back by a group of well-armed civilians. Shoot a demonic creepy crawly enough times and it still dies.

"Nabu has Dark Druid pinned and Wonder Woman and Swamp Thing are tearing chunks off Arcane. Unless something goes badly wrong, we've won."

"Um… Excuse me?" Isley makes eye contact with me for a moment before pushing her right hand through the dead vines running along the side of the tunnel. They come apart and fall to the ground. "I think the.. plants are dead. Properly dead, not undead-dead. They don't feel unnatural any more."

There's a twang from up ahead as Artemis puts a couple of point arrows through a mutated Spider.

"Good shot. Right, sweep and clear. I don't want a single bug escaping."

back

Bindings 22

next

14th May

16:43 GMT -5

"I'll pass that on. Hold please."

I nod, letting my left hand drift a little further from my ear and returning my attention to the argument taking place in front of me. After Nabu sent Dark Druid back to… I'm not actually sure. Wherever he put the wizards after Roanoke Island. His tower, presumably. That caused the unlife to go out of the severed torso of Deacon Blackfire so I took a couple of pictures as proof and then disintegrated it. Anyway, he did that and my team went a-hunting while Swamp Thing and Diana battered what was left of Arcane into submission. Then Nabu blasted that down into a vaguely humanoid lump of meat and plant and sent it away to join his partner in crime.

And if he breaks the law on dealing with dangerous but defeated supervillains, that's his problem.

And now I'm in a room with Swamp Thing, Diana, Mayor Skowcroft, Commissioner Gordon and a group of distinctly uneasy looking members of the Gotham SWAT team while they try sorting out what the hell happens next, because the core issue of contention didn't get solved just by us stopping a couple of supervillains doing… Whatever it was they were doing.

"…don't care if you weren't responsible for the giant insects! Your plants still brought this city to a halt, and I intend to hold you responsible for every Gotham citizen who died!"

It's fascinating. I knew full well that Swamp Thing was capable of splitting his attention between multiple avatars but I hadn't realised that he could consciously animate them at once. There's an instance of him on top of Mount Justice ministering to Tefé right now, another down there being all impassive as Mayor Skowcroft shouts at him and there's at least one out in the city.

"How do you… Intend… To do that?"

I'm not even certain that more people died today than die on most days in Gotham. Let's see, the normal death rate is about 140 per day. Swamp Thing stopped ambulances and helicopters, but I was covering for emergencies pretty well and not everyone who calls an ambulance is going to survive. Regular appointments were cancelled, so there might be a few deaths there due to late identification of conditions. Eight people were mauled to death by Demon Insects, but he didn't create those and I'm not convinced that the police who were within their normal response time radius would have helped more than he did.

"You think we can't find out where you live!? How about we add Aiding and Abetting a Supervillain to Missus Cable's charge sheet? How would you like that?"

Gangs were mostly lying low and my more martially minded team mates jumped the few who weren't. There were a few fires, but supercharged by the Green the plants proved remarkably un-inflammable. In fact, there were reports that they would grow to smother fires above a certain size. If that's true then I need to see if I can get hold of one or two examples… But anyway, it will be very hard to link Swamp Thing to any one death that occurred today. Most of the obvious damage is financial, lost revenue and damage to city infrastructure.

"I am… Still capable of… Levelling this city."

Neither are behaving in a remotely sensible way, but one is a plant god and the other is a slightly overweight American of Italian-Scottish descent. The mayor has far less leverage than his opponent. Really, it should be obvious that Swamp Thing doesn't feel even slightly bad for what he's done. If the mayor had any sense he'd just set out what reparations he thought were reasonable and go from there.

Diana smiles pleasantly at both of them. "Perhaps if we could return to the matter at hand? Swamp Thing, do you know why Arcane and Dark Druid were here?"

"I… Do not. I felt the wave… Of death in the Green. I removed myself there to stop it and… To make repairs. When I… Returned to the physical world…" His eyes narrow. "My wife had… Been arrested. And had fled to Gotham."

"Now, that wasn't our doing! We didn't make her jump bail. If she'd just stayed in Louisiana, there wouldn't have been-."

Swamp Thing's body darkens as the green epidermis grows a layer of hardened bark. He glares at the mayor as the right hands of several police officers start drifting to their guns. "She should not… Have been threatened… In the first place! If I had… Not acted, it would have meant the… sickening of all plant life in the world! Your crops dead. Your ecosystems in ruins. And for this, my reward is… The persecution of my family! And for what?!"

"Swamp Thing." It takes a moment, but his face turns back towards Diana. Don't really know how he feels about the daughter of Gaea, but he does at least appear to be listening. And I know that Diana's accepted that he isn't prepared to wait for due process of law. "What happened to your daughter after Abigail was arrested?"

"She… Saw the police… Make the arrest. Waited at their… Hotel room for news. When there was none, she went to… Robinson Park. There, she was… Captured."

Commissioner Gordon tenses the left side of his mouth slightly, clearly not wanting to interject but feeling obliged to. "The paperwork we had from Houma said that Tefé might have been travelling with her. We had people out looking for her, but she wasn't cooperating."

"Why… Should she?"

"Because if we'd had Tefé in protective custody-."

"You believe that you could have… Kept her safe… From Arcane?"

Commissioner Gordon shakes his head. "Of course not, but he wouldn't have had to find out that we had her."

Diana nods to herself. "How did he find out that she was here?"

"I do not… Know for certain. Arcane may be able… To use magic in order… To trace his living… Relatives."

Commissioner Gordon frowns. "Relatives? That thing has relatives?"

"Anton Arcane used to be a Human. He's Abigail's uncle."

"I did not… Study her prison directly. But from the description… Provided, it seems that Dark Druid and Arcane were… Using her connection to the Green in order… To continue their work of poisoning plant life… Faster and over a wider area than before."

Diana makes pointed eye contact with Commissioner Gordon. "If you do not know when Arcane and Dark Druid began pursuing Tefé, could it not be that they fled Louisiana to avoid capture?"

He gestures upwards with his hands. "Then why didn't she say that when we interrogated her?"

"Was she obliged to?"

"Wfuj… No, but it would have been extremely helpful to know. Why?" He shakes his head, not following her reasoning. "Do you think that's what happened?"

"I think." Diana pauses to consider her exact words. "I think that if she had fled her uncle, and did not have the opportunity to inform the authorities in advance, then she has not violated the terms of her bail. She would not of course be expected to remain in a place where she could come to harm or where her daughter might be captured and used to destroy all of the world's plant life."

Commissioner Gordon looks blank for a moment, then nods. "That's certainly plausible."

Mayor Skowcroft screws up his face. "Oh, come on Jim. Obviously if that was the case it would have been the first thing she said!"

"Mister Mayor, are you familiar with the work of General Sunderland?"

"Not-. I mean, I've heard of him, but I don't see-."

"Swamp Thing was one of his victims. Him and his aren't inclined to trust authority."

Technically accurate, though Swamp Thing wasn't involved in the late General's work on the Un-Men. But that's the association Diana wants in his head.

Commissioner Gordon nods, warming to the idea. "And if that were the case, Abigail could be returned to Louisiana under her original bail conditions."

Diana nods. "Or placed in the care of the Justice League. In the event that further attacks of this nature were a possibility."

It's a reasonable face-saver. Mayor Skowcroft's clearly spotted what they're implying. Will he go for it?

"That still leaves all the greenery and the damage to the city."

"If my wife is… Free, then I am prepared to… Remove my plants and restore… Parts of the city which were… Significantly damaged." He leans forward. "Freed. Not transferred from one… Prison to another."

"I can't just clap my hands and make the original charges van-"

My ring blinks and I return it to my ear.

"-ish."

I generate a phone construct and hold it out to him. "Mister Mayor? President Horne for you."

back

Bindings 23

next

14th May

21:53 GMT -6

"And you could jus' get tha President on tha phone."

Harleen and I walk down the main road of Montegut, Louisiana. We have our arms around each other's backs and she's leaning into me. We dropped Swamp Thing, Abigail and Tefé off twenty minutes ago and I am now escorting her back to her home. The right hand and the left hand -or perhaps, this being America, the right hand and the further right hand- are now talking to one another and with luck finding a non-stupid legal solution which doesn't involve picking a fight with the God of Plants. I was pleasantly surprised by how President Horne stayed polite and reasonable throughout the conversation.

"Yes. I mean, it wasn't exactly easy. I had to go through a number of intermediaries, but he told me when Mister Luthor and I were campaigning about the Citizenship Recognition Act that he agreed with what we were doing, and if we ever ran into any sort of trouble getting it enforced we should contact him."

"Rilly?"

I raise my right eyebrow, turning my head to look down at her. Street lighting around here isn't all that good, but I'm sharing the ring's ambient lighting enhancement. It makes her eyes look more than a little bit unsettling. I suppose that I'm used to seeing it in the mirror, but seeing it on someone else… "Why wouldn't he?"

"Jus' never rememba him gettin' excited about civil liberties befowah." She looks thoughtful for a moment. "Actually, I ain't sure what else he's actually done."

"I know he was the third head of state to send an ambassador to Kahndaq after Adom took over."

"I don't rememba hearin' nothin' abowd that."

"Probably didn't want to draw attention to it, given how sensitive America was -and still is- to supervillains. I mean, Adom's not, but that sort of distinction's lost on some-" Television channels. "-people."

"I know you said this sorta thing only happens once a week, but is this how it usually goes?"

"No. Usually our opponents are more violent or more secretive. Swamp Thing was just sort of sitting there and having a halfway reasonable grievance. And if there's any sort of dispute about who gets charged with what afterwards superheroes aren't usually involved."

"How come?"

"We're permitted because we're useful and… As you saw today, there are certain practical difficulties involved in stopping us."

She chuckles. "Yeyeah."

"But most of us don't have arrest authority. Justice League members do, but that's about it. The usual procedure is to hand suspects over to police and then let them handle it."

"You can't make arrests?"

I nod. "I can't make arrests."

She tugs slightly on my arm and we turn off the main road onto a smaller road lined on either side with bungalows. Bungalows on stilts. I suppose that it makes sense, given how low lying all the land is around here. If it floods, who cares? As long as it's less than two metres deep you just have to sit tight for a day or so.

"Lived here long?"

"I was just rentin'." She shrugs. "But, once Waller decided she was gonna keep me on, I decided I needed somethin' a bit more permanent." I nod. "A lotta guys an' gals from Belle Reve live around heyah. It's less than an hour's drive t' get t' work, prices are okay, crime rate's low… 'Course, havin' a buncha people from a supervillain prison livin' here probably helps with that."

"Bit quieter than New York or Gotham."

"I dunno. Gotham was pretty quiet today. An' tha flies can get real bad durin' summah. Oh, this is me."

She pulls away slightly, leading me up the solid wooden steps of her bungalow towards the door. There's a small electric light attached to the wall next to the door and I can see a couple of insects crawling over it in an attempt to reach the moon. I've never really been clear why Americans build houses that are this fragile. If I lived in a place that got hit by tornadoes a few times a year I'd want my home built of solid brick.

Harleen takes her key out of her handbag and slots it into the lock. "Nevah did get t' go flyin'."

"We can always do that some other time."

"Yeyeah, we could." She turns back towards me, then nods. "You… Um. You got any plans for tomorrow?"

"Batman's probably going to want to talk to me about the whole Swamp Thing thing at some point, but other than that, nothing that can't be put off. Haven't managed to put you off the whole superhero lifestyle, then?"

"Heck no. So…" Her eyes dart around, moving from me to our environment. I suppose that since she's not used to built in night vision it must be a little distracting. "I was wonderin'-."

"Hello, Paul."

"Ah!" Oh dear. A hand appears over my right shoulder at the same time as I feel a head against my left arm. What the heck is Eris doing in Louisiana? Harleen stares at her. "Who are you?"

"Didn't he tell you?" Eris' right hand trails across my back to my left side, making only a brief stop off at my bottom and Eris walks forw-. What is she wearing? No, I can clearly see what she's wearing. It's a black leather corset which barely covers her breasts, coupled with black knickers, black leather thigh boots, black elbow length gloves and… And she's carrying a riding crop. "I'm his goddess."

Harleen blinks, backing up slightly. "Uuuuum. I… Um."

"And he recently called upon my services." Eris tilts her head slightly to the right, looking Harleen over and grinning. "Will you be joining us this evening?"

Harleen's mouth falls open, her eyes moving from Eris to me and then back again. She gulps. "Ah-h..?"

I sigh. "Harleen, she's my goddess in an entirely literal and not at all metaphorical -or sexual- way. Allow me to introduce my patron, Eris. The Olympian Goddess of Chaos."

"O-oh." She nods. "Because.. that's.. less.. scary."

"She's actually quite a pleasant woman." Eris brings the keeper of her crop to her lips and licks it lasciviously. "Mostly. Sometimes. Eris, are you actually here for something?"

She grins. "Oh, call me 'mistress'."

"I'm not calling you mistress."

She rolls her eyes. "Oh, fine. That thing you asked me about. I've got a lead."

"The thing…" Oh, the thing. "Rrright." I sigh, then focus my attention back on Harleen. "I'm terribly sorry, but I need to get on this."

Eris nods. "He really does."

"Ah. Okay! Well, I had-. Fun, today?" Her eyes dart to Eris again, who-. Shouldn't be doing that with a riding crop in public. "Ah…" She darts forward, puts her hands on my shoulders and pulls my head down to give me a quick peck on the left cheek. Then with another nervous glance at Eris she backs away, pushing open the door of her house and walking through. Then closing it in a fairly definitive way. I hear the lock turning.

Eris nods to herself. "She seemed nice."

"Eris, this wasn't the best time."

"I know. And you!" She turns my way, flicking me lightly in the chest with her right hand-.

Whow! I go flying through the air! Over the roof of the stilt bungalow opposite Harleen's house and I'm still going! Brakes, brakes? Okay. I stabilise, then transition back down to where Eris is now standing at the end of the road. "What was that for?"

"Sinning."

"What? Eris, you don't even have-."

"You were just going to drift into her bed. After all the nagging from me and after all your high-sounding rhetoric, you were just going to go with the flow." She peers at me suspiciously. "You.. did.. realise that she wanted-?"

"I didn't… Think she was going to proposition me… Now."

"You actually didn't, did you." Eris looks away for a moment. "Wrll. I'll let you off. But I expect you to make an actual decision." She comes a little closer, looking me directly in the eyes. "Take a hold of your destiny."

"Eris, that's my crotch."

"I've already got my destiny." She nods. "Now, come on. I think I've found a way to get that chaos focus you wanted."

back

Bindings 24

next

14th May

22:02 GMT -6

"I'm not sure where you think we can walk to from here that has any chance of-."

The universe around us twists and bends, colours shading into one another as the paint of the universe runs and mixes, swirling in bizarre patterns that I can't quite make sense of. I close my eyes to-. They're still there. Okay, this might just-. No, it's just strange. I unfocus my eyes slightly, abandoning any attempt to follow any one part of what I'm seeing. Treat it like a magic eye picture. Huh. Now I do that it's almost relax-.

I fall face first onto the tarmac as I'm abruptly returned to reality. Ow! Wait, why does this -I push myself up and gingerly feel my nose with my right hand- hurt? My environmental shield should have protected me from a simple face plant. And my nose… No, it's not broken, but it still hurts and I've got dirt and gravel on my face and that.. shouldn't happen.

Eh. I brush the worst of it off with my right hand and look around for Eris-.

This isn't Louisiana. Ring, where am I?

14th May

23:02 GMT -5

Present location is Salem, Massachusetts. Precise location is the last recorded location of the-

FUCKFUCKFUCK I recognise it!

-Tower of Fate.

"He̸h͜eh͢ehé!"

I frantically look in the direction of the laughter. Eris is kneeling in front of a small child. Blonde and.. female, I'm assuming, though too young to have entered puberty. Her clothing is faded turquoise, and it's either a dress that has been cut down to her size or a long blouse or t-shirt that got that tatty through natural wear and tear. On her head is a green knitted bonnet with an orange bobble. The hair which juts out is cut in a haphazard manner, as if some time ago someone stabbed at it with scissors until they got bored and then called it a day. In her right hand she holds a string, and on the other end of that string is a lighter than air balloon in the shape of a fish. She smiles as she sees that I've noticed her and gives me a wave with her left hand.

Then she steps forwards and pats Eris on the head. Eris collapses.

"Hello? I don't think we've met. I'm-" I rise to my feet, fighting against a sudden feeling of dizziness as I do so. "-Orange... Ah. Orange Lantern two eight one four."

"͜Re̛ally̸?̀"͟

"Ah…" I frown. Am I-? Yes, of course I am, why was I-? "Yes." I nod. "Really."

I open my right hand, creating a simple kaleidoscope construct in the air next to me. No, the rings are working, so why does my face still hurt? And why couldn't I remember-?

An image appears in my mind. I'd just got out of the zeta tube in the Hall of Justice, I turned to my right and-.

"You-. You were both there. At the Hall of Justice, before the thing with Kon and the Genomorphs."

"̶Y̧òu͝ ͠n͡ever g̡ave me͡ my c̸a̷k͠e̡."̵

"You never left your address." Eris rolls onto her side, staring at me wide-eyed as she shakes her head. "But I have some in subspace if you want some now?"

The girl beams and nods her head vigorously. Right, fruit and icing… I delete the kaleidoscope construct and turn my right hand palm upwards, fingers raised. A plate appears from subspace with a generous piece of Christmas cake resting on it. I crouch down and hold it out to her. "Here you are. Now…" I glance at Eris, but she seems to be spacing out. "What's your name?"

She lunges for the plate, her mouth w̷iden͞ing b̧eyo̶ńd t̴hé c҉on̡f̨ine̕s ̢ǫf̵ h͞er͘ ͞m͢ơu̕th,̡ ͠r͘i͡n̛gs o͜f̵ vici͘ous҉l҉y ̶sèrŗat̷e̵d ̨tee͘t͟h̸ undùla͠ti͏ng̕,̧ p̸oi͟śe͜d͡ ̡t̴o̶ redu͝c͏e a͡ǹy͟ ̕obje̸c͜t̛ ente̵ring ͘th͠at v̡a͠s̢t m͝a̴w to i͢ts ̨b͢as͠e ̕c̛omp҉o͢nent̵s͞. ͢ A ͏r̷ip̕p͢l̢e, ̶an̕d m͡y̧ ve҉r͘y ey͞e̛s̷ are d̨r̀a͞w̸ǹ ͡f̡u̶r̀t̸h̀er a͠nd furt̕he̡r ̕in̨, ̀p͜a̧s͟t̡ m̡o̢r͢e̵ ̢and m͠o͞r̶e̕ r̡i͏ngs ͡of ̵t̡ee͞th ͢un̷ti̸l̀ beyond̴ all o͞f ͠th͜e ̵teeth,̴ wh҉ere I ̨wơu͝ld̵ expect ̸t̸o͢ śęę ͝he͟r͝ gulle̴t...̵

I͡ ìn͞s̷teaḑ ̶seȩ ͟m͘ysel̵f ͡s̴t͝a̵r̸i͢n̶g ̨b̨ack.

I fall backwards, dropping the plate as I fall onto my arse. She steps forward and neatly catches it as it drops, staring down at me with amusement.

Then she raises the plate to her mouth and takes a perfectly normal bite out of the cake. Okay, using her hands would be more normal, but compared to the Chaos-Wurm…

"What are you?"

She tugs lightly on the string of her balloon, bringing the fish down to the level of my head as she continues to eat the cake. I look the fish in the eyes and the fish looks back.

"I ̶is Sh͏iveri͞n͟g͘ J̨e͏mmy̴ ̢o̵f ̸T̵h҉e̡ ̀Sh̢al͘l̨ow ͠Br͝i̸g̛a̶de̛,̵ ͢an͝d I͘ is a P͡rin̡cęs̷ş of͠ Chao̕s,҉ ̨ąnd͠ I is̷ ̢very ̧im҉p̡ortaņt."

"I'd have hesitated to give you cake if you weren't. Um." I glance at Eris. She just looks back blankly. "Okay? You-" I look up in the direction I know the Tower to be. "-are aware that the Tower of Fate-."

"̵It҉'s̴ ̵no͜t ͞he͝re҉ ̧m̷óḿent͟ari͜l͜y͡. ́ I̵'̡s w͏ant̡s̨ y̕o̡u ̡t҉o̶ t̕ell I͠ ͠w͘h̨at̢ y͘ou i҉s ̛doi̷ng͠.̨"̀

Okay, Eris thinks I can get a chaos focus from… Shivering Jemmy, a phrase which means 'A beggar who parades in rags and tatters in the hope of attracting greater sympathy'. Is a Princess of Chaos the same as a Lord of Chaos? I have no idea what I'm dealing with. But I need a focus from her, and I doubt that Eris would have brought me here for no reason.

I shrug. "I'm going to kill Klarion. I could.. just.. lure him somewhere and stab him with the Sword of the Fallen. But that isn't enough. The bit we've got walking around and making a nuisance of itself is disconnected from the greater part of the Lord of Chaos Klarion that exists in the Realm of Chaos itself." I look from the fish back to her for feedback. "Right? I mean, it seems like you'd know better than I do."

"̢Go̵ o̡n."͢

"But that mass could regrow his mind, or develop an intelligence of its own. And he could just get replaced by someone as bad, and while I'd probably feel a bit better about seeing him dead… That's not why I'm doing this. So I need to deal with that mass and I need to be sure that we get a Lord of Chaos who isn't like Klarion. So… My idea was to kill two birds with one stone. Get someone who could become a Lord of Chaos and use the Human-shaped bit of Klarion to force a connection."

Jemmy looks up from her plate, mouth slightly open, damp raisins and other pieces of cake stuck to her face.

"But to do that, I need a powerful focus of elemental Chaos magic. Eris told me that her apples wouldn't be enough. Which I assume is why she brought me before you."

"You i͝sn͠'̴t̀ very͝ ch͝aoti̸c̀.͢"͡

I nod. "I know. I'm not instinctively a particularly chaotic person. It's just that I look around, and… The existing order is so dysfunctional. It needs to change. The world needs more chaos, and if I'm the person in the right place…" I nod. "Then that's how it is."

"̵Ǹot͟ yo͜u͟ the͟n.̴ W̷ho?"̨

"Eris-" Who has pushed herself more or less upright. "-wasn't interested. So I asked John Constantine."

"Huuuurrrrhh-hahahah! Hehahahahah! RAAHHHAAHHHAAAHHAHHHAH! WOOOHHAHAHAAAHAHHHHAHAHAHH!"

Her body shifts as she continues laughing, childlike form replaced by something more obviously monstrous. Guffawing, she towers over the plaza as a titanic, misshapen figure. A child's clay model of a human brought to life. I've seen far uglier, but the sheer wrongness she now conveys puts her in the top ten things I don't want to see again.

And then the ogreish figure is gone and the girl has returned.

"̵Kl̸ar͝iòn ̢p͡u̸ll͏e͜d͝ ͜I's͟ ha͡i҉r and ̷p̛us͜he̵d͠ ͏I͠ of́f̧ th͞e̶ swi̷ng͡s̀.̷ ͏Yo͠u̸ ͞c̷a͘n hav͟e ͟I͢'̵s҉ fi̛sh҉."

She holds out the string towards me. I glance at Eris again, but she just pulls her head back slightly. Guess she doesn't want to involve herself further. I reach forward and take the string.

The fish deflates, falling to the ground.

"A҉ll ̵you'r̵es.̵ ͞A̕ll ̢doņe̷.̧"͡ She turns and starts walking away. "M҉ake śur͜e ̷you ͝şt̶a̸y͡ ̧iǹter͏e̷s͠t̕ing."

"I will certainly try, oh Princess of Cha-" And she's gone. "-os." I look down at the chaos fish balloon and then at Eris. And then at the place where the Tower of Fate should be. "Eris, can I assume that we need to go now?"

She struggles to her feet and lumbers in my direction. "Yes, yes we do."

I nod and transition us both away.

back

NEXT CHAPTER

Escalation

BACK

Escalation 1

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Escalation

15th May

10:37 GMT -6

"Okay, now, just sort of… Lean forwards a bit?"

Harleen tries to follow my instruction, starts to drift and then immediately straightens up again. I suppose it's a bit like using a Segway. All your instincts tell you that you're about to fall over, despite the fact that that's very unlikely.

I smile encouragingly. "Okay, and again?"

For a second she looks up at me, then her eyes drop back down to the ground. Which is about a metre away. "This ain't easy, y'know. How long did it take you t'learn, anyways?"

"I got the basics after half an hour or so." That earns me a minor scowl. "But, I had been flying with the ring for months before that, so I'd got used to the whole 'being in the air apparently unsupported' thing. Look, it's pretty much impossible for anything to go wrong. Even if you just fall out of the air, hitting the ground won't hurt. The belt absorbs kinetic energy."

"I dunno. That shuwer sounds like somethin' that'd hurt."

I hold up my hands, pull the left ring off with my right hand and then pull the right ring off with my left. I then stow them both in one of the chest pouches in my overalls. "There we go. Just the belt holding me up. Next?"

I flip over, the sky spinning across my field of vision until I can see the ground again. Ugh, that always feels weird when I do it without the rings. The kinetic belt has some inertial stabilising but it's got nothing on a proper environmental shield. Then I shoot forward, accelerating rapidly and boong, ramming face first into the grass-covered ground.

There's a sharp intake of breath from my flying-buddy.

"And I'm fine." Precise manoeuvring with these things is more difficult than large movements, but I twist around while still balancing on my head. "See? No problem."

"Okay." She blinks. "That's a thing."

"You wanna try?"

"I think I'll stick t'normal flyin'."

"Well, go on then."

"Oooooh… Kaaaaay?" She leans forwards in the air, accelerating slowly forwards and upwards. "How'm I doin'?"

"Like a toddler on her first tricycle, but you're going forwards and that's the main thing." I clench slightly, causing my own belt to reverse me back upwards. Then I twist, briefly moving to a position parallel to the ground before accelerating up to Harleen. "Come on! It's really instinctive. Inasmuch as there is a trick, it's to not think about it too much. I mean… You were a gymnast. You didn't think about where every part of your body was the whole time, did you?"

"Okay, but-" She moves her right forefinger into lecture position. "-if this goes wrong you bettuh catch me."

"I won't need to. Unless you fly into a laser or an electricity pylon-" I look around, seeing none of either. "-you're pretty much proof against anything that could hurt you."

She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, then leans forwards and jerks her hands back. Immediately she accelerates forward, forcing me to duck and dive to avoid being hit. "Wwaaahhhoooooo!"

I hold my right hand up to my mouth as she rockets away. "See!" Uh. Maybe I should get after..? Yes, yes I should. I assume the position and fly along in her wake as she powers through the sky… Well, so close to the ground perhaps I should say through the air, above the Kisatchie National Forest. She seems to be enjoying 'forwards' well enough, but the tree line is coming up and-.

She looks back. "This is great!"

"Pull up! Pull up!"

"Huh?" She turns her head to face forwards. "Ah!" She leans back, probably trying to stop. Unfortunately for her, the belt interprets that a desire to change direction, so rather than going at about fifty miles an hour straight forwards she's now going fifty miles an hour straight up. "Agh!" She flails briefly in surprise, then calms down a little and gets herself back under control, slowing to a stop about a mile above the forest canopy.

I follow after her at a slightly reduced rate, giving her a moment to get used to being in the air and to appreciate the view. She glances my way as I come up alongside her. "Well?"

"That was… Heh." She's panting, but the smile on her face says 'excitement' rather than 'terror'. "That was pretty great. Hah."

"Okay, next lesson: flying into the ground at full speed."

"Oh no. No." She shakes her head definitively. "That ain't happenin'."

I lean back in the air, lounging on nothing. "Alright. What do you want to do next?"

Another deep breath. "I wanna…" She nods to herself. "I.. wanna talk aboud last night. While I'm still buzzin' with adrenaline an' not.. fellin' self conscious aboud it."

"Okay." I nod. "Reasonable. Eris is-."

"Tha Greek Goddess of Chaos. An' you work fer Wonder Woman so I guess it makes sense, you knowin' her."

"I.. am actually a Hellenist. I do literally worship her."

"But that don't explain what she wuz doin' showin' up at my house, an'… Dressed.. in that."

"How.. blunt do you want me to be?"

She gives me a flat look. "Hey, I'm a counsellor heyah."

"Okay. I asked her to find a particular arcane artefact for me, and the owner was available to negotiate with right then. As to why she was dressed like that, I'm… I've been somewhat reticent on matters of romance and sex. Depending on how the mood takes her, she finds that either amusing or irritating. She dressed like that as a wind up."

"Ooh. That makes sense. I mean, she's still kind of a bitch, but…"

"Yeah." I clear my throat, momentarily averting my gaze. "Also… She wants me to end my reticence… Deliberately."

Harleen frowns, baffled. "How d'ja mean 'deliberately'? Like, you can't fall on someone?"

"No, she means that I have to deliberately choose a particular person, not just… Go with the flow in a way I don't find objectionable. Can you believe that I didn't actually pick up on the fact that you were propositioning me?"

"Oh." She looks more puzzled than offended. "Rilly? 'Cause I thought I was bein' pretty direct there."

"Yeah. I mean, I see it now, it just-. At the time, it didn't…" I sigh. "Okay, did I ever tell you that I'm a metahuman? I don't mean the rings, I mean…" I make a circling motion with my right hand.

"No." She shakes her head. "What, you got a power and power rings?"

"Not exactly. I got my power as a result of the power rings. I'm empathic. I perceive the emotions of those around me as coloured light. Most.. importantly, I see love as violet light. Last time someone propositioned me I knew… Because I could see… Violet. They were interested in me, emotionally… So it made sense that they might want to have sex with me. You… You're not violet. Not even a little bit."

"Well… We don't know each other that well. I mean… If you wan'ed to wait…"

"The question is not.. why I don't. I can or not. My question is, why do you? I'm pleasant company and I'm good looking, but would you be enjoying this flying any.. more, if we'd had sex last night? At the.. restaurant in New York, you mentioned a teacher at Gotham University in the same breath as Doctor Strange. Then you said that you just needed to find a guy who wasn't a jerk. If I turned my empathic vision up, would I see myself filling that hole?"

"Huh." She looks me over with notably less enthusiasm. "Didn't think you were that insecuwah."

"I'm not. I'm concerned for you. Not only do you not love me, there's no flicker that could become true love. You're not particularly libidinous, so it's not just the endorphin release from sex that you're looking for. Why do you want me? Given.. your history… Do you.. really think that another.. relationship with a man is.. a solution? Eris considers going with the flow to be a sin, and I.. kind of see what she means. If you're just looking for the next Strange-."

"Oh, go t' hell!"

She turns face down and drops through the sky, tears leaking from her eyes.

back

Escalation 2

next

15th May

10:42 GMT -6

"Harleen, I'm very sorry-" She changes direction again, and I keep pace with her. "-but I feel that it's import-" Another jink, another change in direction. "-ant to be open and honest about-."

She stops suddenly, twisting round in the air and throwing her arms up. "Not always! God!" She's breathing hard as she stares at me. "I must have tha worst taste!"

"Okay, no-."

"I'm not lookin' for a Strange replacement! I thawt that maybe a superhero could be a guy I could trust not t' do any a' the manipulative bullshit he did!"

I was intentionally not using-! "I'm not.. trying to be manipulative? I mean, I'm pretty sure that I've never lied to you-" And -let's be honest here- the number of people I've not lied to is pretty small. "-or tried to persuade you to do anything for my benefit-."

"Then what tha hell was that whole 'flicka of love' stuff?"

"Ah." I nod. "May I show you?" She eyes me suspiciously for a moment, then grudgingly nods. "Try to hold still." I send a filament through the air to her, touching it to her neck and interfacing it with her nervous system. Visual cortex… There we are. Swamp Thing might do this by altering Missus Holland's soul, but.. I.. don't think that's a good idea for me. Simple enough to share what I can see.

Harleen exhales suddenly as her visual field is replaced by mine.

"This is how I see the world. See you. And this is… The lowest intensity. See the colours beneath the surface…"

"Indigo and red. What's that mean?"

"Compassion and anger. Indigo is your strongest colour. Usually. I can.. see how annoyed you are by my behaviour."

"Then why'd ya do it? If ya know how it makes me feel, why don't cha just… Not?"

"Like this I only see the colours that bubble to the surface. If I wanted to predict how… People were going to behave whenever I did something I'd have to look-" I hold up my right hand and drop it forwards. Within my visual arc so that she can see me doing it. "-deeper. And I don't like doing that unless I've got a good mission-related reason to do so."

"Deeper. I wanna see deeper. I wanna see what's so obvious t' you."

"You said you were sure that you wanted me to be blunt."

"Show me."

"Alright. Not sure this will come across properly." And I look… Under..? I don't know the words to describe it properly. If they even exist in English. Should probably talk to M'gann and find out how Martians talk about it. Though… I suppose they usually only talk about it with other Martians…

Under the red are threads of different colours leading off towards various other experiences. Standing in Belle Reve as she starts to believe that Strange was responsible, standing behind the door, listening as that woman takes me away because she's not important enough and more vaguely, wisp-images of why why why? And Strange smiling fondly and someone else I don't recognise and her useless lump of a brother-.

"Stop. Look… Look somewhere else."

I see the two of us walking along the streets of Gotham heading towards the wedding and me talking to her after we broke her out of the psychiatrist's office during the second break out attempt and us having dinner in that restaurant in New York and then she's having dinner with Strange-.

"I jus' wan'ed one relationship with a guy that wasn't a total mess." Her eyes stare at nothing as she starts crying again. "Was that too much t' ask?" I disconnect, floating closer as she blinks and focuses her attention back on me. "Was it?"

I… Um. I float right up to her and hug her, my arms going up her back and my hands on her shoulders. Her head rests on my right shoulder, leaning into my head. "No. No it isn't. But… You're looking for any sort of stability. Not for a loving partnership. And that is… Actually… What I want, ultimately. And… In your case… I don't… You know that your relationships with men have generally been unhealthy. I don't think another dominant man is really the solution you need."

"Oh yeah? What do I need?"

"A friend? One you don't need to sleep with or slave away loyally for in order for your life to keep making sense." I shrug. "Today was just supposed to be pointless fun. I wasn't really…"

"We're jus'… Gowin out flyin'… Fer fun."

"Yeah, I… I've been flying with most of my friends… You seemed to like the idea…"

"An' tha weddin'… You didn't even think that was a date, did you?"

"It had a certain date-like quality. But most of the people I might have invited have secret identities and.. so.. can't be seen with me in certain circumstances."

She pulls back slightly. "You shuwer you ain't jus' afraid of commitment?"

"Yes, completely. I have total awareness of my desires. I have no fear of commitment at all."

"Youwa bein' literal, ain't you?" She snorts as her nose starts to run-. I raise my right forefinger, a wave of orange cleaning off her face. "Oh. Thanks."

"Are.. you.. feeling..?" I don't really know to carry that sentence on.

"I dunno. Given my track rec'rd, maybe friends is bettah." She sighs. "So what yeh sayin' is, I need t'be comfortable bein' me befowah you'd even consider havin' a romantic relationship with me."

"No, it's more than that. Last time I was in this position-" I share my own recollection of Holly's inner self at the time-.

"Wait, two girls? Seriously?"

"The-. The point I was making is that… See that violet? Right. That's.. my guide to 'this relationship is a healthy one'. A genuine commitment of… At least one person to another. You've got.. blue and orange, hope and avarice, but that… Looks like it's because you want the world to work a particular way, the idea that that way is right."

"An' whats youwa violet light look like?"

"No idea. I don't know of any other Lanterns who can do what I can, and I've got.. other things that would make looking at me difficult. And just in case you're wondering, no, looking in a mirror doesn't work."

She nods, looking down at the forest below us. "I ain't sayin' youwa right and I ain't sayin' youwa wrong. An', yeyeah, I was more lookin' forward t' the idea of you bein' there in the mornin' than…" She trails off. "Huh. So, youwa turnin' me down 'cause you don't want me… What, bein' dependent?"

"You could put it like that."

She nods. "Sounds like somethin' I should be grateful aboud. But I'm mostly just annoyed." She sighs. "I wasn't expectin' a therapy session either."

"I… Really should have… Come up with a better way to put that."

She folds her arms across her chest. "So. What'd we do now?"

"Well, you appeared to get the hang of high speed flying back there. Why not keep going?"

"I… Dunno…"

"Come on. It's fun. And perhaps most importantly, you're completely under your own control up here." I tilt my head slightly to the left. "Huh?"

"Ahhhh…" She nods, the slightest hint of a smile appearing for the first time since I dropped my little bomb. "Fine. Race yah t' the trees?"

back

Escalation 3

next

17th May

08:01 GMT -5

"Mister Grayven?" The young man who serves the same role as Charlie did on the West Wing… What was his actual job title? Chief gopher… No, probably something vaguer. Personal assistant, maybe. Anyway, Irvine does that sort of thing around here. "The President will see you now."

"Thank you." I get up from my chair, return it to subspace and follow him in the direction of our meeting room. Obviously I know where President Horne and General Lane are, but I don't mind observing protocol if there's actually some point to it. It's like the chair. Protocol calls for me to wait at the President's pleasure, instead of having me get a call when he's available and opening a hush tube to whenever he is. But I'm huge and threatening… Or possibly just really interesting, so it's bad for me to be standing the whole time because people stop what they're doing and start staring. So I sit somewhere out of the way in a chair I made myself, because I weigh two thirds of a tonne and some of the chairs around here are expensive antiques.

Bit of a palaver, but it makes getting on with these people a little easier. I'm strange, but… What was the line from Nineteen Eighty-Four? Follow the small rules and you can get away with breaking the big ones. Though, perhaps given what happens to the character who said that…

The door we're approaching actually has a keypad and some sort of junior vault door between it and the corridor. Ah, a properly secure room. In fact…

Weak security measure as these things go, Corpsman. Still, this is a primitive species. At least they're making an effort.

Lead lined walls, sound dampening technology and a weak… Sort of force field. Not as secure as the version the Light use but it should easily fulfil its purpose. Ahead of me Irvine enters his code and allows it to scan his iris. There's a 'ping' of approval and the door unlocks. He takes hold of a lever, pushes it down and pulls the door outwards slightly, sticking his head around the door.

"Show him in, Irvine."

"Yes sir." He pushes the door open the rest of the way, holding it open for me. It's a bit of a tight squeeze -they usually have to open both sets of double doors for me to get around- but fortunately I just about fit.

I nod to him. "Thank you, Irvine."

He nods back, then looks over to his boss to see if there's anything else he wants. A slight shake of the President's head and Irvine backs out of the door, closing and sealing the door behind him.

I walk over to the table and take my accustomed seat next to General Lane. President Horne is sitting at the head of the table with his Chief of Staff Adrian Myer on his left. As a foreigner and a… Non-exclusive agent, there are parts of these meetings I'm not privy to. Not many things, and since they include me in most of their discussions I do them the courtesy of pretending that I don't know exactly what they've been talking about when I'm not here. It's polite lies like these that make the world go around.

"Grayven." A thin smile from President Horne. "Good of you to join us."

"Wouldn't miss it, Mister President."

"Ah, Sam's been bringing me up to date on our.. research programs. Apparently.. you.. have some concerns?"

"Well. One of the things I raised with General Lane-" I look at him for a fraction of a second. "-was my concern about Major Zmeck. Now, I understand that you can't recant on his deal. He volunteered, his murder conviction disappears. But…" I shake my head. "Any plans to use him in any sort of public role… To say nothing of having him act as a national superhero… Nothing in his psychological evaluations suggests that he's changed his views or.. behaviour. I would be extremely concerned-."

"As it happens, I agree with you." President Horne nods. "The problem we have is that out of all of the sixty seven volunteers who went through the process, he and Captain Adams were the only people who ever came out. And while we might be able to persuade a similar number of terminally ill patriots to volunteer today, we would still have to wait forty or so years to see any benefit."

I shrug. "That's not going to get any less because you waited. And I really do think that terminally ill is the way to go, rather than condemned criminals. Frankly,-" I glance at General Lane again. "-you've been lucky that he's played along as well as he has. Even someone without a military mindset would be a better option than… Anyone else like him."

President Horne looks at General Lane. "Sam?"

"To be honest, Mister President, I'm not all that keen on continuing the quantum field experiments at all. We still have next to no idea what happens when people get exposed to it. We've no idea why they got the super powers that they did, no idea why they survived when all of the others appear not to have done. We don't even know much about how they do what they do. Frankly, the whole rig makes me feel like some sorta jungle tribesman playing with a nuke."

"And Major Zmeck himself?"

"We're stuck going into battle with the super soldiers that we have, not necessarily the ones that we'd like to. I don't think taking away his privileges would achieve anything useful. But, I see Mister Grayven's point. Having.. his.. identity… Leak… His victim's family are still around. All it would take is one photograph of him in his Human form getting online, and that's the end of any national program we tried to involve him in."

President Horne nods. "Well, that's that idea put to bed. I assume there's no commensurate problem with Major Adams?"

General Lane shakes his head. "Not at all, sir. To be honest, I think it's worth involving him further."

"I wasn't inclined to meddle with my predecessor's decision when having him as a semi-independent agent was working out so well. I don't wanna twist his arm, General. And the final decision is of course yours. But it would be very useful to have a familiar face leading the campaign."

"I understand, sir."

"Alright, moving on. This… SHADE business."

"I'm glad that Grayven brought them to my attention." He points at the holoprojector. "You mind if I..?" President Horne shakes his head and General Lane presses a button. "SHADE runs a certification program for the military… And federal agents and other law enforcement officials." Various glyphs representing the various agencies appear on the screen, the shield and three black stars of the Super-Human Advanced Defense Executive taking the centre. "Anyone who wants to learn how to deal with metahumans attends one of their courses."

"And how are they funded?"

"Essentially, that's it. They don't get any federal money at all. There are costs for their courses and.. they do consultancy work for just about everyone… Public and private." The corners of his mouth turn slightly downwards. "'Private' is where the problem comes in. I've had no trouble getting the SHADE agents-."

President Horne holds up his right hand. "Wait a moment, General. Are you telling me that an agency that gets no federal funding has the authority to empower federal agents?"

"Yes, Mister President. That's exactly what I'm saying. But that's not all. A good many of the agents my people questioned did not believe that their authority came from SHADE. They seemed to honestly believe that it was a paperwork thing… A technicality, while they were really part of whatever outfit they were planted in. That outfit picks up the bill for the staff. But, they send full reports of everything they do up the SHADE chain of command."

"There's a federal agency so secret that even its agents don't know that they're working for it?"

"That's about the size of it, sir. I made it pretty clear that as of right now they work for me, but that only gets me the agents we know about."

The President looks at him with clear disbelief. "And who was in charge of all of that?"

"I honestly don't know, sir. All of their reports get routed to the Pentagon and to a few secure backup servers. The people at the Pentagon are operating under the same conditions as everyone else. As far as they were concerned, they were contracted as civilian support staff who had to technically be federal agents. From there, we lost the trail. We've got data sharing arrangements with certain private third party agencies who do work for us. Metahuman containment, power harnessing, places like STAR Labs who do research on the equipment tech-villains use… Our best guess is that whoever's running SHADE accesses it that way." He sighs. "I've got people working on tracking everything down, but this has been going on for a long time and they've had plenty of time to muddy the water. Cover their tracks. Unless someone from their inner circle issues a command we can track back to them, I don't know if we'll get anywhere."

"God. A rogue agency." President Horne shakes his head. "Alright. Back off, General. No sense tipping.. whoever it is, off. Keep an eye on their people. Let them make the mistake."

General Lane nods. "Sir."

"Well, ah… Thank you, Mister Grayven, for bringing that to our attention. Next item. Supervillain work release."

back

Escalation 4

next

17th May

08:38 GMT -5

"…realise that it's not what you want to hear, sir, but that's their final ruling." Mister Myers stops himself. "That is to say, that is the informal opinion of the Justices of the Supreme Court. And if it got challenged, that's where it would have to go."

President Horne nods solemnly. "So, we couldn't get the votes, and if we could get them it would just get struck down anyway."

"That's more or less the size of it, sir."

Horne sighs, head slightly bowed. "I was really hoping we could avoid-" He glances at me. "-another situation like Klarion."

I shrug. "Constitutions. Who'd 'ave 'em?"

Myers nods his head to the side. "We could try fighting it. If we got someone really bad convicted before they could hear the arguments, someone who wouldn't be aware of all of their legal routes, I doubt they'd want to order them releas-."

"No." Horne shakes his head firmly. "I'm not prepared to do that. I didn't become President to try riding roughshod all over the Constitution I swore to uphold. If absentia trials are off the agenda we'll just have to come up with something else."

I fan my hands out. "How about… Mobile courts? I could fly a judge and jury to wherever the malfeasant is, they could do the trial opening, then if the bad guy leaves then they've clearly chosen to absent themselves and there's no problem."

"Heh heh." Horne chuckles, nodding. "That's a great mental image, but I don't think I'd want to try whipping votes for the Bill to make that happen. General?"

"I'm not an expert on the legal situation, sir, but things are a lot simpler if we treat them as enemy combatants. If they're not US citizens and they're powerful enough to present a threat to national security on their own, I don't see why you can't issue an order as Commander in Chief that gets around all that." General Lane's eyes narrow for a moment. "That's not to say we're anything like ready to fight some of these people right now, but in five to ten years it could start to look a whole lot more realistic."

Horne nods. "I'm sure that the men and women of the US armed forces would do their best in whatever situation they were called upon. And I might find myself ordering something like that at some point, regardless of what either of us might ideally wish. But that still leaves the question of what we do with people whom we can only hold temporarily, or who are readying for an attack, or who have to be-" He looks at me again. "-lured out of hiding."

"Well sir, have you considered creating a third category? Someone who isn't an enemy soldier or a civilian criminal?"

Horne sits back in his chair, giving General Lane his full attention. "No General, I have not."

"Sir, the laws which govern how we wage war were drawn up from the customs of medieval European nations who didn't have guns, let alone super powers. The sorts of challenge they faced are categorically different from the ones we face today. We aren't talking about the possibility of being conquered by.. Russia or by China. We're not talking about being forced to pay reparations, or accepting some sort of political restructuring. We're talking about people who would be perfectly happy to kill every last American citizen. We're talking about single individuals with no widespread support who can kill thousands of our people for no greater reason than their own sick personal pleasure. Or someone who can seize control of the minds of a body like the Justice League and send them out against anyone they choose. There are people out there who can equal or surpass the destructive power of nations. I don't think that we can continue to apply the same old laws to this situation. We could get a lot more leeway if the rules for dealing with these people were phrased in such a way as to be clear that they weren't being treated either as soldiers of another nation or as criminals."

"No." Horne looks almost… Tired as he says it. "No, General, I will not do that. I appreciate what you're saying and why you're saying it. I need to hear things like that sometimes, but… No. No matter how convenient it might be, that's not a step I'm prepared to take." He bows his head slightly, closing his eyes and touching his left fist to his chest. "Adrian, talk to some people about the military threat option. See what the possibilities are."

"Yessir. Ah. Sir, I'm.. getting some questions about this. People are asking where you're going. It hasn't gotten any real media attention yet…"

Horns opens his eyes. "I'll do a press conference once we've got something a little more concrete. At the moment, this is all just thinking out loud."

"Sir, I'm… Not sure that the House Minority Leader is going to see it like that. And I'm not sure the Attorney General will either."

"I'll brief Brian when we've got something to brief him on." He nods. "But you're right about Caroline. General? Mister Grayven? You have any particular problem with the Attorney General joining us?"

"No sir."

I shake my head. "I don't know the woman. If you think it's a good idea, by all means."

"Alright then. Unless there's anything else..?"

I nod. Hm. While I haven't reached a final decision on my continued Light membership as yet, I suppose that if I were going with my original plan… "There is one thing I'd like to raise, Mister President. Semi.. personal matter, but pertinent to our work. Have you been briefed on the League of Shadows?"

"I know of the organization."

"I'm investigating them with a view to ending them." General Lane raises his left eyebrow. "I have an informant on the inside. I'd like to be able to offer them… Not an immunity for testimony deal. If I missed even one Shadow their life would be over. A pardon."

"I assume that this person is a murderer?"

"Yes sir. There were extenuating circumstances regarding their recruitment and they want to leave, but… They can't. I realise that this is a big deal, and I'm prepared to work to get federal and state police into position to perform the arrests -eventually- rather than just handling the whole matter myself. You can make the announcements, offer information to foreign leaders and leave me out of-."

"Grayven."

"Mister President."

"Stop trying to bribe me. Getting those murderers is more important than my re-election. Don't do anything that makes it less likely that they'll all get caught just to try and make me look good."

"Alright… Well, depending on what stage General Lane's got to, having police, military and local superheroes in position should be perfect for the arrests. I'll be able to inform you better once I know more than I do now."

"Can I assume that your informant would be keeping a low profile after this? I'm not keen on announcing the end of the League if they plan to go on talk radio right after."

"Extremely low, Mister President." Because if I end up making that choice, Jade and I will be off Earth after a brief stop-off in Las Vegas.

"Then I'm prepared to agree. Conditional of course on the League of Shadows and most importantly its leadership ceasing to exist." He looks around the table. "Anything else?" The three of us shake our heads. "Alright then gentlemen. Thank you for your time."

General Lane and I get up first, and I let him be the one to operate the door. Keypad's a bit small for my fingers really. I follow him out into the corridor where he half-turns to me as we continue towards the exit. "You think I came over a bit strong in there?"

"No. He might, but he doesn't seem like the sort to get petty about it."

"No." His eyes crease slightly. "Y'know, when he was standing against McKeon, I didn't really think much of him. No military experience, kinda wishy-washy on defence. Didn't seem like the kinda guy I'd want running the country."

"And now?"

"Not sure I like him any better, but I sure respect him a whole lot more. Of course, him standing by his principles isn't going to make our job any easier, not where these trials are concerned."

"I doubt there are going to be that many. It's really more of a precautionary thing." A couple of White House staffers come around the corner, spot us -or rather me- and back up to let us go past. "I don't think I ever exactly asked you, but how do you feel about this whole superhero.. thing?"

"They're just a fact of life. Personally, I'd prefer it if they had some kinda oversight… You know, like they did in the Second World War. The All-Star Squadron. On the other hand, it makes me proud to be a citizen of a nation where private citizens are prepared to go out and serve their communities like that."

"Does that extend as far as your prospective son-in-law?"

"Heh." He turns his head away, theatrically rolling his eyes. "Ah, that guy. I'm sure not happy about someone as powerful as he is operating on his own recognizance, but I can't fault what he does. And Lois says I'm not allowed to shoot him, so I guess that working with him is the only option I have left. I understand you had some kind of falling out..?"

"Minor operational disagreement. I'm sure that we'll all pull together, when the time comes."

back

Escalation 5

next

25th May

14:54 GMT +8

That was a fascinating experience. I've never attended a Chinese wedding before, and the obvious divergence from Christian custom -to say nothing of the divergence between the bride's expectations for the day of her marriage and those of her fiancé- are creating what must be a fairly unique set of circumstances.

Hu Guan -which apparently is either Ghost Fox Killer's actual name or the pseudonym she's decided to use- wanted an ultra-traditional Confucian ceremony. Or something very much like it. Some of the characters on the decorations aren't anything from the modern Chinese lexicon and the dress of the members of the bridal party isn't quite like anything the Chinese wore at any point in their history. No idea how they handled the 'getting her parents' consent' bit; I asked and her homeland is supposed to be totally off-limits to outsiders.

Fang Zhifu on the other hand regards Confucianism as a religion, something that he's supposed to frown on. From the way he occasionally glanced at the décor I rather suspect that he would have been happier with a registry office service.

I shuffle forwards slightly as the line approaching the happy couple moves very slightly. Only a few places to go. Lynne's bearing up pretty well, given how dull this must be for her. I'm dressed in a slightly sinicised set of old-style Apokoliptian court robes while she wears a delightful little pink number Father Box and I put together.

And then there's the third party to the wedding: the Chinese state. After all, Fang Zhifu is a major national hero and Hu Guan.. while less favoured in official circles, is a member of the Great Ten as well. Which explains why the decidedly Taoist Temple of Heaven has been closed off to the public for a week and why most of the guests were party officials rather than friends or family. During the ceremony itself the front row consisted of a group who I think were Ms Hu's parents and eldest sister, Mrs Fang and a picture frame standing in for the groom's deceased father, and then about sixty old men in grey suits. The second row wasn't much better, though at least a few of them were officers and officials actually involved in the Great Ten program.

That's actually how I picked out the bride's party: they were the only ones wearing the coloured robes who weren't part of the staff. I wonder what the official party line on her homeland is? Is it like Taiwan, or are they a little more realistic about a city in a pocket universe populated by people who can kill with a touch? Oh, that's the other thing that gives the bride's family away: the lack of exposed skin.

Fang looks good in the white and gold robes. Must be hard to find clothing in colours that work with his complexion, to say nothing of fabrics that won't get shredded by his dermal plating. Hu is wearing a red dress decorated in gold thread and including a frankly ridiculous train which has to be carried everywhere by a small horde of attendants. She looks… Happy, though. Off to the side I see their parents talking politely, while the siblings of the happy couple seem to be far more uncomfortable.

Line's moving faster now. I think that below a certain level, the party apparatchiks just want a photograph of them with the leader of the country's superfunctionary team and don't have anything much to say. Oh gosh, I should really have talked to someone about the diplomatic protocol involved… Anyone important behind me? No, just lower level functionaries. Ah, I'm sure that's supposed to indicate something, but what? I have absolutely no rank in the Chinese hierarchy. Most of these people probably don't know that I'm even involved with the Great Ten project. More than a few probably don't know who I am. Are the people at the front the most important, or are they just the ones with the highest rank and the ushers want to get them out of the way?

"…thank you for your kind wishes, Comrade Governor."

Fang physically can't smile, which gives him a perfect excuse for his expression. He also can't get physically tired any longer, though the way he's holding himself would suggest to someone who's spent as much time working with him as I have that he'd much rather be somewhere else. The Governor on the other hand looks delighted by the situation. Perhaps it's the prospect of going on a work-funded jolly? I haven't spent enough time in China to get any real sort of feel for how popular the Great Ten are in official circles. The Governor performs a short bow, then turns and walks away.

Huh. Taking most of the photographers and journalists with him. Looks like I really was first of the also-rans. An usherette beckons myself and Lynne forwards. Hm. Apokolips doesn't really have much of a marriage tradition. Certainly no one important enough for this sort of ceremony would be expected to do an epic meet-and-greet session afterwards. Meh, they'll probably overlook any minor breach of propriety as long as I'm a polite barbarian.

I steeple my hands in front of my chest and perform a shallow bow. Lynne glances at up at me and copies the action, then straightens as I do. "I understand that congratulations are in order on two accounts, Lieutenant Colonel. Long overdue, in my opinion."

"Do you refer to my promotion or to our marriage?"

I frown slightly. "Both, definitely."

"It is with your aid that the Standing Committee have been able to convince the high command that my.. alterations do not mean that my devotion has been undermined."

'There are no Durlans' may be on a level with 'we have always been at war with Oceania' as far as blatant lies go, but at least it makes a little more sense that the Chinese government doesn't want the fact that there is a task force of hostile metamorphs inside the country to become common knowledge. Officially, his body modifications are the result of an encounter with an alien vessel of an unknown type. While true at the time, they figured out that it was Durlan pretty darn quick when the rest of the investigation team melted. Some people need to know, most people don't.

I hold out my right hand and he takes it in his. There's a flash as someone takes a picture as we shake hands before I turn to his new wife. "Missus Hu." I extend my hand again. "You look radiant." And she actually does. Though I suppose it might just be because this is the first time I've seen her out of uniform.

"Thank you, Mister Grayven." She doesn't move her hand. Unlike the rest of her family, she isn't wearing gloves. I smile slightly, a pale glow coating my hand. Her life draining ability requires skin contact, but even quite a thin barrier is enough to prevent it from triggering. I had considered trying to tough it out with my divine resilience, but then I considered that she could kill Wotan and I'm not completely sure that I'm tougher than him. And dropping dead at a person's wedding is dreadfully impolite. She extends her hand and I rotate mine, raising it to my lips and miss-kissing her knuckles.

I release her hand and motion Lynne forwards. "And may I present my daughter, Lynne Wayland."

Colonel Fang nods politely. "Miss Wayland."

She bows again, a little nervously. "Congratulations, Colonel Fang. Missus Hu."

"Now, my gift to you on the occasion of your wedding." I reach into my robes and take out a small case, offering it to him. "Took a little time, but I believe that I've finally got to grips-"

No, that's fine Corpsman. No need to credit me at all.

Ploong.

Oh shut up, both of you.

"-with the control mechanism which determines the state of your skin." There's a slight scraping noise as Colonel Fang's face tries to move in shock for a fraction of a second before he clamps down on his feelings. "I'm afraid that I have no idea how to restore you -or if that's even possible- but if you attach what's in there to your epidermis, it should grant you a form which -while still metallic- will be a good deal more Human-seeming. Remove it, and the effect ends."

Colonel Fang's head doesn't move. I'm not sure how much is protocol and how much is shock. Given that his first fiancé broke things off because of his transformation there's a pleasant mirroring of circumstances here. "Thank you, Grayven. I shall treasure this."

"My pleasure. And as for your lady wife…" I make careful eye contact. "The matter which you requested that I investigate." Whether they could have children. There isn't any Human tissue left in Fang Zhifu's body, but like all Xeno-Team soldiers he submitted several blood and tissue samples before going on active duty. Her body is sort-of Human with a variety of arcane and semi-divine effects at work on it. There's no way they could have children conventionally, or even with conventional-level assistance. "Prospects look good. Let me know when you wish to begin a more.. practical study."

"Thank you, Grayven. I believe that can wait for a few months, at least." I spot Colonel Fang's eyes as they uncontrollably jerk towards his wife. I doubt that he's bothered by the idea of having children. I suspect he'd just assumed that it was out of the question for them. For him. "My husband and I will discuss the matter."

I nod. "Of course." I bow again. "May your lives together be joyful and prosperous."

back

Escalation 6

next

27th May

21:18 GMT

"You're new! You're new!"

Ra's actually bends down, balancing on his toes and offering his right hand to the small pack of Tasmanian Tiger pups.

"You're new and you smell weird!"

One of the braver ones edges closer, extending its nose towards the proffered limb before losing its nerve and backing away.

"I never had the pleasure of encountering them in the wild. I visited the last of them as it lived out its last days in Hobart Zoo in Tasmania. And now, here they are once more."

"It was a straightforward enough business, getting a wide enough variety of genetic samples to recreate them. But I should warn you, some of the other projects are not going quite so well."

He nods distractedly as one of the pups nudges another up the bum, causing the nudgee to turn and nip at its muzzle.

"Off! Not dominant!"

"Do you raise them yourself?"

"No, I abducted a small number of African Wild Dogs and they've been acting as foster parents." I glance upwards. "I've got drones on standby so that my work wouldn't be wasted if they.. realised that the pups aren't their own. And there are always Genomorphs around for problems requiring an organic intelligence." Under the direction of the G-Goblin Guan. "Obviously that means that their behaviour will be a bit off, but…" I shrug. "There aren't any better models for their probable-behaviour."

"You could not have had the Genomorphs implant the Dog's behaviours directly?"

"I could." I nod. "But I thought that it would be better to let them grow to maturity naturally, and I don't really have the space to use both techniques in parallel."

"No! Danger! Come away!"

The pup's mother yaps at them from the top of a small hillock, causing them to look around immediately.

"Foolish! Come away!"

And they're gone, dashing across the scrubland towards her while she keeps her eyes firmly fixed on Ra's and I.

He stands in a smooth motion, the faintest glimmer of a smile on his lips. "Neither tame nor afraid of Humans. So far as they are concerned, our civilisation never existed." He takes a moment to watch them go. "What do they eat?"

"The system introduces cloned prey animals at irregular intervals with simple organic computers in place of brains. They mimic some of the behaviours of the creatures they're based upon… Neither the Dogs nor the Tigers appear to notice a difference."

He turns to face me. "And your other work? I am particularly eager to hear of the Caspian Tigers. It pains me to admit it now, but I myself played a small part in them being driven to extinction."

"Bad news there, I'm afraid. I've got a selection of small enclosures inhabited by them-" I gesture towards the wall to my right. "-through there, but I'm afraid that I can't get enough genetic material to make them viable as a subspecies." For reasons I can't begin to imagine, those are Mister Tawny's favourite enclosures. "It may be best to simply accept that and use what material I have recovered to increase the genetic variety in the Siberian Tiger population."

"That is.. regrettable, but I suppose there are limits. How do you intend to handle the reintroduction?"

"Could be a nice ice-breaker with the Russian government. They're the one superpower I haven't persuaded to take me into their confidence… As yet. Otherwise, I could purchase an area of land and set up a sanctuary for them. No need to say exactly how they came to be, and unless a geneticist knew exactly what to look for it would be very unlikely that they'd think anything amiss." Ra's nods contemplatively. "There simply isn't space to reintroduce Tigers back into their former range."

"That is something of which I am painfully aware. Did you know that according to the Washington University the global population may well continue to climb into the twenty second century? It is entirely conceivable that it could reach double its current level… With all of the associated damage to ecosystems that brings. No, attempting to reintroduce them into their original habitat would be a senseless waste of your work."

I nod. That does rather lead me on to a topic I wish to investigate. Before I joined the Light, I gave the matter some considerable thought: which supervillains should be killed on sight and which could be retrained to do something useful with their lives. Of the Light, I rather assumed that Ra's was one of the ones who wasn't worth keeping around, but now? I'm less confident. Though he himself tends to prefer violent solutions to problems, and he's certainly proud… Yes, pot/kettle, but he's proven to be amenable to reason to an extent which his prior behaviour suggested was unlikely. And if I get to a point where I don't think killing him is productive, Brain is happy as long as he has science to do… That just leaves Savage and Mordru. Savage is loathsome, but at least he's rational. Haven't spent enough time with Mordru to really assess him. Aaaaand I'm going to have to, aren't I?

Ah, I'm genuinely torn. Going back to the League means… Okay, I get to associate with my friends in familiar circumstances, but the Light is responsible for any number of projects which will ultimately benefit humanity. The League are already Leaguing just as hard as they can. Adding myself to that won't improve matters noticeably, particularly as I can give them equipment now. And… Not a trivial issue, I find them quite vexing on a personal level. Going independent works, but the Light genuinely can do more together than apart. I just don't have the reach or the expertise to do the job my fellows do. If they're gone, then it won't get done.

No Lex means no LexCorp. It means reduced political influence, it means far less research and development and it means that the societal nudges that come from siting a factory in one place rather than another just evaporate.

No Brain means that we go back to near-Earth Prime timelines for advanced research, rather than the months it takes us now. No one can take things apart and understand how they work as well as he can, as STAR Labs demonstrate with their ever-growing backlog of projects they don't know enough to start, let alone finish.

No Mordru means no widespread reintroduction of magic into the world. There are other people who could do that, but none are good enough at what they do to become a Lord of Chaos.

No Ra's probably means no League of Shadows. As assassins, my people already outclass them. As an intelligence network they are irreplaceable, quite aside from any...

…

I'm an idiot.

"Ra's, do you have any particular investment in the current British government?"

"I have informants in the British civil service, and a good deal of blackmail material on their ministers. It's profitable, but not exceptionally so. Why do you ask?"

"Well…" I smile in what I hope is a disarming manner. "Last time I didn't talk through what I was doing with a member of the Light, Queen Bee died. I'd feel dreadful if anything like that happened again. I hate seeming incompetent."

A slight tilt of the head. I think he's curious. "You intend to act against the British government, then?"

"Yes. Not.. immediately, but in the not too distant future."

"I have Shadows in Britain, but they are not employed in the infiltration of the government. None of my core interests would be threatened by such an act."

I nod. "I would like to purchase your files. And… Offer compensation for the loss of revenue you will encounter when the blackmail material becomes irrelevant."

Ra's contemplates, then nods. "I'm willing to negotiate a price. I am, however, puzzled. Just what has Britain done that has so enraged you?"

"The Light exists to improve the lot of humanity. Not just through technology, but through social change. But, just as free markets must be tended to by the breaking up of naturally emerging monopolies, so occasionally a state becomes so vile and corrupted that only a thorough purge will solve the problem. Tending to the world's governments to ensure they are doing their jobs is something which I firmly believe we should be doing. And Britain is not."

"Such an intervention as you are proposing is fraught with difficulty. While I will make no effort to stop you, I would express the hope that you have properly thought this through."

"Oh, I'm still in the information gathering stage at the moment. But yes, I am firmly aware of what an attack from the outside does to a state, even if the current government is loathsome. I will take no action until I am sure that I have mechanisms in place to keep the state running, both in the short and long term."

"Removing uncooperative rulers is a field in which I have a degree of experience, Mister Grayven. When you get closer to the time, I would offer my services as a consultant."

"Thank you, Ra's. I may well take you up on that."

back

Escalation 7

next

30th May

08:53 GMT -5

"Signed…" My pen moves across the paperwork which the Metropolis University's legal department had drafted for me. "And signed." I look up at the President of the University. "Anything else I need to sign?"

"No, no, that's perfectly fine." She coughs, then doesn't quite grab the paperwork from the desk. Still comes pretty close to 'picking up with indecent haste', though. "Since you're one of the trustees you'll have full access to the accounts, and major expenditures beyond normal day-to-day expenses will require majority approval-."

"I did… Read it before I signed it."

"Ofcourse. Of course." To be fair, I did just sign over an awful lot of money. She looks around the room, trying to think of something else to say about it. "I was impressed that you were able to get Mister Luthor interested in our work. LexCorp has made contributions in the past to our science and technology departments, but Paranormal Studies just doesn't attract the same level of interest."

"Mister Luthor lives in a city where a man flies around with his underwear outside his leggings." Her face sort of.. freezes up as I openly disrespect Kal-El's dress sense. I'm wearing a suit. "It's simply that the Centre hasn't had the assistance it needs to really progress its research work. Though I have no desire to insult the work they've done in helping individual metahumans deal with their abilities, that generally doesn't help the Human species as a whole."

"Oh. I'd… Rather got the impression that you were doing this for your.. daughter?"

I shake my head. "I'd have been generous for that alone, but what Doctor Williams and I have mostly been discussing is improving our understanding of the underlying mechanisms for metahuman abilities in general, not just in particular cases. Because -knowing what I know about the wider universe- I can tell you that what you have on Earth is not common. Just imagine if studies conducted here allowed everyone to share the abilities of the few fortunate enough to be born with them."

President Asplund frowns slightly, looking down. "I'm not sure I can. You mean a world where everyone can fly around like Superman?"

"No, no." I shake my head. "Superman's an alien. The only way you could give a Human his abilities is by turning them into a Kryptonian first. But perhaps like Geo-Force?" She looks blank. "Prince Brion Markov of Markovia?" A place the existence of which would bother me more if I remembered what shape Eastern European countries had back on Earth Prime. "If one Human can possess it there's really no fundamental reason why you couldn't all have it." She actually looks a little worried. "Of course, doing it the real-science way instead of the mad-science way takes a good deal of time. But if something's worth doing then it's worth doing properly."

"Well, I can assure you that the Center for Paranormal Studies will definitely be doing it properly."

I nod, smiling. "I'm sure that you're right. Now, unless there's anything else, I'd like to get back..?"

"I… Was… Wondering. Mister… Valjek?"

One of Queen Clea's court mages. Though she's not completely sold on the idea of developing the Greater Azores, she could see no harm in sending one of her people to study the lay of the land. And where better than America's leading magic research institute? "Oh, don't worry, I got all of the work visa stuff sorted out. There won't be any problem there."

"We.. had a few… People… Expressing concerns. Now, I don't share their prejudices myself, but-."

"Is this about magic?"

She exhales. "Yes. Yes it is. With the attack of Fawcett City being only a few months ago-."

"I was there."

"Yes, I… I know. And obviously we don't have to worry about the funding loss any longer, but having a lot of protestors outside the Center might encourage parents to keep their children away."

"The program which Doctor Williams and I discussed would not involve teaching children thaumaturgy." She looks blank. "Ah, the operating principles behind magic. He's here to offer advice on aiding those children who appear to have developed magic abilities spontaneously."

"Wait, spontaneously? That can happen?"

"There was a rather odd religious sect in seventeenth century France who believed that Elementals had no souls, unless they married a Human. The issue of those relationships occasionally manifest abilities relating to their arcane forebear." Which is odd to say the least. It would make sense if the Human half of the relationship was female as the Elemental could use magic to trigger parthenogenesis, resulting in a near-clone of the mother with added Elemental attributes. But the surviving records suggest that the Elementals were female. Ah, I don't really know enough about how Elementals work to know how plausible it is. "And then there are those who more or less fall over a magic technique and can't recognise it for what it is. You have a parapsychic currently here as a boarding student?"

"Yes, but he's never studied magic. Or at least there wasn't anything in his file."

"Magic is a part of this world, inseparable and inescapable. It doesn't go away because you ignore it any more than ionising radiation does. Every Human presently alive uses small amounts automatically, and a few luck into something a little more potent… Just by focusing their souls, by thinking in the right sorts of way. Or, to put it in more mundane terms… You can cut hair without ever having studied hairdressing."

"A-hah. I suppose that's true."

"Look, if it starts to be a serious problem I'll talk to them." That doesn't appear to reassure her. "And I'll ask Mister Zatara to have a word as well." Yes, that worked. "If you have any concerns about magic in general, Mister Valjek is the best person to speak to. That's literally his job, and I'm sure he can do a better job of explaining it than I can." I pause to give her the chance to reply, but that appears to have been sufficient. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'd like to see Lynne before her class starts."

"Oh! Of course."

Father Box, hush tube. No sense deafening everyone.

Ploong.

I turn away from President Asplund and walk through the tube, out into the waiting area where Lynne has been waiting. I know that this place doesn't have a uniform policy for students, but I thought that dressing her in something a little more professional would help engender the appropriate mental attitude. I don't intend to have her do her normal schooling here, but it should help her adjust to an educational environment.

"All ready, poppet?"

"I… I guess I am. You're still going to be here, right?"

"For today, yes, I'll be in the building. I need to talk to Doctor Williams' researchers about the sorts of equipment they want to get to help some of your classmates." I kneel down and put my left hand on her right shoulder. Well, the index finger is on her shoulder. The rest just sort of hang over. "But that's only going to be for today, alright?" She nods. "Okay then. Now off you go. I'll take you home at three."

I lift off my hand and she turns away. Then she turns back and wraps her arms around my neck. I smile and hug her back. After a few seconds she pulls away, smiling slightly nervously, then turns and heads towards her classroom.

"…not even close to being worried, Agent Gallagher, so why don't you make like a tree. And burn to death." I turn to see Miss Selton turn off her mobile phone and… From the way her eyes widen I can only assume that she was so focused on her conversation that she didn't spot me until just then. "Ah. Hey."

"Good morning, Miss Selton."

"Lynne starting today?"

"Yes."

She nods. "Is she going to be here permanently now?"

"I'm.. not sure how long she'll be here for. Probably until the start of the next school year, with weekend visits thereafter. Homework permitting." Hm. "I hate to intrude, but…" I gesture towards her phone with my right hand.

"Government agent. This place was getting funded by his people, so I had to be nice to him. And now it's not, so I don't."

"Glad I could help."

She regards me for a moment. "Lynne said you had other superpeople living with you. Is that so?"

I nod. "Yes?"

"You interested in another?"

I look at her for a few moments. "Perhaps we should have a conversation about that."

back

Escalation 8

next

30th May

08:59 GMT -5

"I don't remember my parents." Miss Selton moves her fingers over the surface of her coffee cup. "One of the social workers at a home I was living in left my file out one time so I know what they look like, but it was just a photograph. I could probably find out why I got put up for adoption if I wanted to, but-" She raises her right hand and a gout of fire leaps forth. I don't flinch. "-I can probably guess. I've been able to make fire for as long as I can remember and my control didn't use to be all that great. Maybe I burned down their house. Hm." She closes her hand and looks away. "Maybe they're dead, and I'm the one who killed them. I wouldn't have been old enough to know what I was doing… But I think I'd rather not know."

She shrugs. "I didn't get adopted. Might have been because I could set people on fire. Might have just been unlucky. One of my case workers read about-" She looks around the canteen. "-this place, and got in touch with Doctor Williams. I came from Vermont originally-." She slumps slightly. "Least, I think I did. Anyway, I got transferred here when I was eleven."

"How old are you now?"

She looks at me, right eyebrow slightly raised. "I thought you were supposed to know everything."

"I could hack your personal records. I'm asking you."

"Seventeen. Which is why Agent Gallagher's bothering me. My grades are…" She closes her eyes for a moment. "Okay. But there's no way I could afford to go to college even if I could get in. He wants me for some kind of research program."

"Isn't.. this a research program?"

"This is a school. I watch movies, I know what happens to people with powers who go to government laboratories."

"Point of information. I know the man who runs the United States metahuman development program. His name is General Samuel Lane, and I'm reasonably confident that he wouldn't be on board with dissecting people."

"I don't really want to be a weapon either. Just because I can set people on fire doesn't mean I'd like doing it."

All well and good, but fairly useless for my purposes. "Miss Selton, if I did offer you employment, precisely what did you think you would be doing?"

She shrugs. "What can I say? Lynne made working for you sound really appealing."

Awakened, with New God armour… She could be useful. But not all that much more useful than a well equipped lowlie. Her power doesn't make her stronger, tougher or faster. She doesn't have any particularly useful skills… And I don't have any personal obligation to her. "What exactly can you do?"

"I make fire. I usually throw it from my hands, but I can actually make it come from anywhere." She tilts her head upwards and blows out-. A ring of fire, as if she were exhaling a smoke ring. A circle of.. burning…

Sinestro, what the fuck?

A most curious phenomenon, Corpsman. Normally, a fire would require heat, oxygen and fuel. She appears to be able to bypass at least one of those requirements. The heat does not appear to be radiating away from the flame, but when I scan the fire directly it reads as being fifteen hundred degrees.

Stuff like this is why metahumans need to be studied. It makes no sense and yet is clearly happening.

On that we are in full agreement.

Father Box, any ideas?

Ploong.

Yes, I realised that.

"The biggest fire I ever made was a sphere about half a mile across. I can make them hot enough to melt steel, but I have to focus on it to do that. And obviously I can't be hurt by fire myself."

"Can you make it hotter than melting steel requires?"

"I don't know. I probably could, but that wouldn't be safe for anyone nearby."

Hm. Aside from the obvious combat applications there is welding, performance art…

"Can you turn fire off?"

She frowns, opens her right hand and lets fire dance over her palm for a moment before closing her hand and snuffing it out.

I shake my head, then take a ceramic bowl filled with copper chloride powder in methanol out of subspace. I tap my right index finger against the bowl and ignite it. "Can you put it out?"

"Kind of." She holds her right hand over it, the air around her skin flaring with blue fire. Then she closes her hand and the fire goes out, both around her hand and in the bowl. "I can't just turn it off, but I can consume all of the oxygen around it. That puts most fires out."

"Have you considered applying to work with the Metropolis fire service?" She gives me a weary look. "You seem to be reasonably physically fit, you're fireproof and can burn oxygen and so starve fires. You'd have a leg up with the fireproof thing alone."

"I don't know."

"Military or paramilitary work is the obvious application for heat generation. If you aren't willing to do that then there aren't many areas where what you can do is an advantage. What do you like doing?"

"I like using my power. I like not being forced to do things." She turns away, looking out of the cafeteria window. "What I want hasn't really been a big part of my life."

"How about performance arts? Some sort of dance routine which involved your pyromantic abilities?

"Dancing? I don't know how to dance. Not the kind people pay to watch, anyway."

"I might be able to help there. I have in my employ a species of telepathic Gnome-like creatures. If you want, they could implant knowledge into your mind. You could learn the moves of someone who had been trained in ballet since they were three years old, and it would take a few hours at most. A little longer to fully integrate it with your own proprioception, but it would skip an awful lot of learning."

"And what's the downside?"

"The G-Gnomes are kind of creepy if you're not used to them. And you may find them going into your mind disturbing. I know I would, I maintain flawless mental barriers at all times to prevent things like that occurring. Also, you would be quite disorientated during the integration process.

"That doesn't sound-." She blinks. "Wait a second. I could learn anything like that?"

"Anything known to someone the G-Gnomes could reasonably access and comprehend, yes."

"So I could go to college. I'd just need them to teach me math, science and English rather than whatever I needed for a job. If I got straight A's I could get a scholarship no problem."

"I.. suppose you could. I should warn you though: that's a lot of information you'd be taking in. The only two people I know to be taught like that were much younger than you are now. I can't guarantee how well it would work. And -from personal experience- I wouldn't advise going in for further education purely as a way of avoiding making a decision about future employment."

"I want to try it. If there's a risk, I'm fine with that."

"Alright. I'm pretty sure that you pass Gillick competency standards. I'll talk to the Genomorphs about setting the upload up. Anything else?"

"That agent guy I was talking to. Kurt Gallagher?"

"An irrelevance, really. I have regular meetings with both General Lane and President Horne. I'm fairly sure that between the three of us we can slap some sense into him if he bothers you any more." I shrug. "What agency does he work for, anyway?"

"His identity card says 'SHADE', but I don't know who they are."

"SHADE?" Hmm. "Now, isn't that interesting. Tell.. me.. more."

back

Escalation 9

next

31st May

11:32 GMT -6

I had thought that I'd developed fairly thick skin-.

Heh. I smile a little at my own inadvertent joke.

I had thought that I'd developed a fairly strong stomach. When you stop blinding yourself to the horror of day to day life, when you clean out the insides of blood-soaked aircraft as I did in the aftermath of Roanoke, your capacity for visceral disgust simply stops being what it once was. Things are a bit strange for a little while… Then you adjust to the new normal.

Either that, or you have a psychotic episode.

Turns out that despite everything I can still be unsettled. The files Ra's gave me… This is some next-level stuff. I remember… There was a comic, the style reminded me of 2000AD. There was some sort of parallel universe invasion, and one of the super predators the attackers used would inject stimulants into its victims so that they wouldn't pass out from pain or blood loss as it ate them. Looks like it would have fit right in at the Caligula Club. Ra's -bless his cankerous soul- has really come through for me here. Pictures and video in decent resolution, far superior to what I'd been able to collect for myself. With this, having actual court cases and riding the wave of public horror to get things sorted has become a far more realistic option.

The meat of the investigations is even more interesting. Ra's had his people investigate the Geotroniks matter at the time, though things had already started to settle down before they got involved. Some poor sod called Julian Marrack apparently took the fall for the whole magic-side of that mess, and is currently a guest of her majesty. Seriously, Britain is sufficiently ignorant of what a magic user can and can't do that they bought the idea that a neophyte could cause nationwide rains of blood. As a former-Brit, that level of ignorance embarrasses me.

Wonder what Mordru would think about the idea of opening a school?

I mean, I think it's entirely too hopeful to think that he'd be up for it… Come to think of it, I know next to nothing about his resource base. Something to ask about when I speak to him.

Anyway, having evidence to support my accusations against the current elite is only half… Okay, more like a third of the equation. I've forwarded a list of names to Doctor Robbins and she can share it with the field team. Should narrow down the breadth of the investigation a little. Though… From what I've read, no one senior enough to become Prime Minister post-coup isn't implicated herein. Oh, I might accept a merely moderately guilty person I could control with an offer of a pardon, buuuut… I don't like it. If I'm making a clean sweep, I would want it to be a clean sweep. At the moment, that leaves me with a choice between my old friend the Member for Croydon North for the Conservatives, or some doddering old back bench socialist from Labour who probably shouldn't be let anywhere near the levers of actual power even in a caretaker role. Obviously the former is better… I just really don't want to give it to her. Particularly since I don't know that she'd respond in a positive way to being offered the role and it's something I'd need to plan with the lucky individual. Really, I'd rather offer it to Mister Talbot himself. The caretaker part at least, keeping the government running while the purge takes place. After that I don't really care all that much who-.

"Iname to Master. Come in Master."

I reach over to my desk's intercom. "M-. Grayven responding. Go ahead."

Curious about SHADE's involvement in the Centre for Paranormal Research, I detached Miss Amane from the ongoing mission in Britain and had her spend some time getting to know the children at the Centre. She really does have a wonderful way with people. The fact that she's about the same age as Miss Selton also serves to make them hanging out together seem less suspicious.

"We are being followed by a man with a very bad fake beard."

I frown. "Are you certain that he's not just a homeless person?"

"No, he is too healthy and the holes in his coat are too regular. And it really is a very bad fake beard."

I deactivate the computer I was working on. "Alright. Do you think he's going to try picking you up?"

I hear a giggle. "Master! I do not go with old homeless men or evil secret agents! That is a lewd suggestion!"

"'Pick you up' in the sense of kidnapping you. I don't want you taking unnecessary risks. You're fast, but you're not particularly resilient."

"No, Master. I do not believe so. We are in a public place."

"Alright, carry on. Let me know if anything changes."

"Yes, Master. Iname out."

Hmm. More likely a random agent rather than anyone significant. Still… "Grayven to Manchester Black." No immediate response. I suppose that if he's reverted to UK time it isn't quite-.

"Vera here."

"Chester not around?"

"He's not likely to be up much before midday. I'm not exactly fresh as a daisy meself, come to mention it."

"Completely out of it, or just grumpy?"

"What's this about?"

"I've located a SHADE operative who looks like he might be more in the know than the ones we've encountered so far. I'd like to have my field telepath around to do a little mental eavesdropping, but if he's completely non-functional..?"

"I'll 'ave to wake him up, won't I? Probably best you give him half an hour if you want anything intelligent out of him."

"Late night?"

"Werkin'. Talkin' to witnesses. Not somethin' we can do during the day. They might not be able to recognise us but I'm shuwer they keep tabs on their victims. And their families."

"Alright, give Chester a prod for me. No massive rush, but he needs to be available."

"Right you are, then. Vera out."

I deactivate the communicator from my end as well. Hmm. If this is just routine surveillance then I suppose that I shouldn't be too worried. SHADE -or at least this Agent Gallagher- must have known this was coming. I haven't made any effort to hide my interest in the Centre, so the fact that this might happen should have been on their radar. Or… Maybe it wasn't? If General Lane has forced the pure-SHADE parts of SHADE into hiding then their data-sharing might have been significantly impaired.

Someone assigned to tail a person of interest is unlikely to be particularly important. Would this Kurt Gallagher still be in the area? The tailing agent must have a way to contact his higher ups. If he does then I can trace it with my ring… Probably. Chester can't telepathically puppet people in a way that's even slightly convincing, so that's out. Orange… Uhhhh. Maybe? It would take a more subtle application of power than I'm used to, and I'm not… Hugely keen on using power I can't get back for at least another month…

I look down at the Sword of the Fallen where it sits in the sheath at my waist. Or… I could nip over to Okaara and kill Larfleeze right now, take the Orange Central Power Battery for myself… No. Still feels like losing.

I tap the computer again. "Call General Lane." Given that SHADE firmly lies within his area of responsibility I really should let him know what I'm up to. Is it worth checking in with my fellow enlightened about SHADE? No, I'm sure they'd have said something if I was getting in their way.

"General Lane's office."

"Grayven here. Is the General at home?"

"One moment, sir. I'll check for you."

Ah, the busy life of an éminence grise. You give yourself super strength and within a few months you're reduced to playing phone-tag with your allies. I most sincerely hope that I haven't risen to my level of incompetence…

"Grayven, what can I do for you?"

"I told you that I was taking over funding the Centre for Paranormal Research attached to the Metropolis University, didn't I?"

"That's where you're sending your daughter, right?"

"Yes. It seems that SHADE might have had an interest in the place. One of the students who will be graduating high school next year was being leaned on to sign up with them."

"That's outside their normal mode of operation."

"Quite. I was going to prod them a bit, see what falls out. I have a telepath in my employ…"

"Can you do it covertly?"

"No complete guarantees, but that would be my aim. Obviously, only senior agents are worth overt action against…"

"Did they threaten this student of yours?"

"She firmly turned them down yesterday and now there's someone tailing her."

"Alright then, go ahead. Keep me posted on what you find out."

"Will do. Grayven out."

back

Escalation 10

next

31st May

12:41 GMT -5

"Seat's taken, fook off."

Chester doesn't even look around as he says it, though I do detect a little pressure on my mental barriers which suggests that he's trying to give me a suggestion. Or an aneurism. Or possibly both. He does have a record of lashing out at bystanders who interrupt his work.

"Yes, Chester, by me."

His head whips around. "The-?!" His eyes widen. "Gray?"

I smile. "What, you thought I only had illusory disguises for yourself and your sister?" A waitress wanders over with a notepad. "Tea, please. Darjeeling if you have it, Earl Grey otherwise." She nods. "Thank you."

Chester has his wits a little more about him as she walks away. "Wot, you not gonna go full ponce an' ask fer a slice a' lemon?"

"I'm trying to be a little more realistic." The work of Queen Clea's finest artisans can't quite disguise me fully. I still weigh two thirds of a tonne, and a sufficiently observant person might spot that objects I pick up move in ways they shouldn't as it tries to work the location of my hands and mouth into the illusion. But I look nothing like the Grey Hulk look-alike contest winner that I am, and I intentionally avoided looking like my pre-transformation self as well. My skin is dark brown, my hair and beard dark and curly and my suit is of a conservative cut. "Any news for me?"

Chester looks me over once more and then appears to shrug it off. "Fook all, cock. No one 'around 'eyeh's thinking about them."

"Ah. I suppose we must have missed him." Bothersome, but oh well. Sinestro, run a quick check would you?

The description was somewhat vague, Corpsman, but I can detect no one obviously observing either Miss Selton or Miss Amane.

A cup of tea in placed on the table in front of me. I look up at the waitress. "Thank you."

She smiles. "Enjoy your tea."

Sinestro, sound deadening.

As you wish.

"Grayven to Iname. If your tail has vanished then you may as well escort Miss Selton back to school. Remain on hand in case of incident."

"Master? He is still there."

Sinestro?

Nothing, Corpsman. Perhaps she's imagining it.

Show me her location.

An image appears in my mind: a map of the local shopping centre with two markers, one for Miss Amane and one for Miss Selton.

"Iname, where is this person relative to your location?"

"He is sitting at a table outside the restaurant opposite the clothing shop we are in."

A second 'window' appears in my mind. I see the restaurant, the people sitting both inside and out… I take a sip of tea. No one matching the description Miss Amane just gave me. But there's a gap where it looks like it would have made sense to put a table. Someone's being clever. Clever worries me.

But.

Whoever it is, they're just observing at the moment. It's worth knowing that they can duck both telepathic detection and power ring detection, but it isn't proof that anything else is going on.

"Grayven to Doctor Robbins. Put the Mountain in lockdown and give me status reports on all of my people."

"Why, what's going on?"

"Someone has found a way to duck my detection and I'm worried where else they might be."

"You wot? I left Vera back in-."

"Chester, panic is unbecoming."

He shoves his chair back, rising rapidly to his feet. "Open up a fookin' portal."

"All Genomorphs have reported in, Grayven. The Sphere is here with me. All bulkheads and energy shields are active."

"Good. Chester, I'm not doing that. They may be under observation, we may be under observation and my unarmed, unarmoured daughter may be under observation."

That gets through. "But we don't even look like us."

"If I can get a magic user then so can the opposition." I take another sip of tea. "Doctor Robbins?"

"Mister Tawny growled and Doctor Williams says he and Lynne are fine. Sunset's in her laboratory. Nothing from Vera yet."

Go or no-go. Go or no-go. In America I can count on government support. In Britain, that very much isn't the case. On the other hand, I feel much less hesitancy about hitting people I might encounter in Britain. Miss Selton told me that Agent Gallagher's people don't usually tail her. Ugh, I don't even know for certain that this person is from there. Of course, if Vera's just gotten into the shower and put the radio on…

I rise to my feet and put a twenty dollar note under my teacup. "Chester, go and talk to Iname's stalker. I'll check on Vera."

Chester strides away in the direction of the bothersome agent. "Yeah, I'll fookin' talk to him."

Nearest concealed location… I walk in the direction of the closest stairwell. Sinestro, show me Vera.

I would like to do that very much, Corpsman. Regrettably, I am unable to find her.

Last known location?

A picture of the house they're renting appears. No sign of damage… Nor of Vera Black or Geoffrey Talbot. Vexing.

Any spy satellites in position to take a look?

Not presently, Corpsman. I would also advise that acquiring one might tip our opponents off as to our ally's location.

They do bug sweeps whenever they return to the house. With the equipment I provided. So either I'll be hush tubing into a combat zone or I'll be hush tubing into a safe spot. I move behind the stairwell and out of sight of the rest of the shopping centre. Father Box, hush tube.

Ploong.

I stride through the portal, actively scanning my new surroundings.

31st May

17:45 GMT

A… Castle..? What?

"Who's this supposed to be, Kipling?"

Two men. One in military fatigues and the other in a trench coat. The military fellow is well muscled with pale skin and short, curly blonde hair. No weapons that I can see. The one in the trench coat has dark brown hair which is slicked back with oil and from the way one of the sleeves is lying against his side I'd say that he has only one arm. He's also wearing a long green scarf.

"This is the person who tried to portal to the target location. The spell isn't selective."

I take a moment to try to make my voice sound unlike myself. "Whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?"

The man in fatigues steps forwards. "Major Derek Kelly. And you're under arrest."

back

Escalation 11

next

31st May

17:46 GMT

Okay, something just threw the hush tube terminus off. Derek Kelly is Chester's former boss and squad leader with the jewel which makes him invulnerable embedded in his chest. And the other fellow… Willoughby Kipling. The arm is a giveaway. Chester didn't know much about him. From the way he described the man, I'd guess either 'intelligence operative' or -given the trench coat- hedge wizard. How best to handle this? My disguise is still functioning, so…

I switch to an American accent, and do my best to mimic an expression of outrage.

"On whose authority? Where the hell am I?!"

"On the authority of the British government, specifically the authority granted by The Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act of 2001."

"I'm not a terrorist! I'm a child psychologist! What the hell is this?!"

Think I've got the American exceptionalist-entitlement thing down. It's so hard to judge…

Anyway, two people and what looks like a solidly built stone room. Nothing about Chester's description of Major Kelly made it sound like he'd be hard to evade. Or drop into a star. The man himself takes a step towards me and I step backwards… No, the hush tube isn't there any longer. Not a huge problem. This is presumably some sort of secure site and I'd have to come here and wreck it eventually anyway.

"And what exactly was it that led a child psychologist to meet a known international terrorist?"

"I don't know any terrorists, you crazy limey!" I take a step forwards, taking care to have a little fear under the outraged affront. "You let me get in touch with the American Embassy right now!"

Bit much? No, I'm going to assume that they aren't going to expect someone in this situation to be entirely rational. It would make more sense in their position to assume that any oddities could be explained by stress. Okay. Sinestro, scan our environment. I want to know where we are.

…

Sinestro?

…

That's.. not.. good. I rub my hands, taking the opportunity to feel my right ring finger. Yep, he's still there. Can't feel any damage… Hope it's temporary, whatever the problem is. If I were on my own I'd just call up the lantern, but that isn't really possible here.

"We aren't obliged to notify your embassy until you've been charged with something."

I cross my arms. "Well you're not getting anything from me until you do."

Father Box?

…

Oh, Humans are fucking hax! They somehow shut down a power ring and a Father Box? I want this technology! Or.. magic. It's probably magic. Okay, door is.. over there. Looks heavily reinforced but I'm strong enough to arm wrestle Kal-El. I shift my shoulders a little… Feels like my daiklave is still there. And -slight movement of my hands- so is the Sword of the Fallen. Would that bypass his invulnerability? Um… No idea, actually, and since his way of injuring me would involve him grappling me and then ramping up his strength Bruce-Willis-in-Unbreakable style until he can actually hurt me, I don't really want to stay within stabbing distance if I can possibly avoid doing so.

"Look, Mister..?"

And I'm actually wondering if I'd need to cover myself in grease to break his hold.

"Daniels. Calvin Daniels."

"We were expecting someone else to come through that portal. If you could just explain how you came to pass through it, we should be able to send you on your way a little quicker."

"I have absolutely no intention of-."

"One person on Earth possesses a portal like that, and his name is Grayven. Grayven is a known associate-."

I frown. "The big grey guy who killed Klarion? He's a superhero, not a terrorist."

"He's been associating with a known super criminal, and we believe that he intervened to rescue him from British police. We would very much like to know why."

"I don't see what that's got to do with me."

"You just walked through one of his portals. He isn't in the habit of opening them at random. This indicates that you have some sort of relationship with him, and that's more than enough to justify us holding you."

"That's just an assertion on your part, Mister Kelly. I don't intend to incriminate myself by discussing the matter."

He advances a few more steps, to within easy reach. He's probably trying to intimidate me, and if I were the civilian I appear to be it might work. He's a little shorter than my illusory shape but a good deal more muscular and moves like a man with a great deal of combat experience. I think he's going for 'reasonable, with a hint of menace'.

Bawhaahaa.

"The right against self-incrimination is a protection extended by the American Bill of Rights and that, Mister Daniels, does not exist in Britain. Now, come on. I'm not asking for much here. Surely you didn't just happen upon an alien portal device?"

Maintain the illusion… I look at his face, then around the bare room, then back to him. "Alright, I… Suppose there's no harm in telling you. Mister Grayven is employing me to help with his daughter. The.. portal.. thing was supposed to send me straight home. I've got no idea how I ended up…" I look around again. "Wherever this is. You people keep your supervillains in the Tower of London, don't you?"

The brickwork doesn't look right for the Tower, but nowhere else comes to mind.

"This is a… Little awkward, then." Major Kelly smiles uncomfortably at me and then turns away. "Just sit tight while we confirm your story and.. then.. we'll let you go."

"Don't you dare pretend you're being reasonable about this! This is kidnapping! I am gunna sue your ass so hard your children get born in debtor's prison!"

"Crown immunity, Mister Daniels. Questioning you was a perfectly reasonable step in our investigation." He walks over to Mister Kipling and the two of them put their heads together. "What the fuck?"

Ah, the joys of enhanced hearing.

"The spell was set up to transfer the terminus of any portal that formed at their safe house to here. There wasn't any way to know in advance who would come through. Just fire a cruise missile at the house and stick this man on the next flight back to the US."

Interesting. If it was him who turned off my technology then he clearly doesn't know that it's happening. I think that can happen… Or maybe it's a property of the room?

"I'm not prepared to authorise anything that overt. Not yet. Our friends aren't keen."

"Then use the Left Eye on him, pump him for information and then dump him somewhere. This isn't complicated. He knew Grayven was a killer when he got involved. I'm surprised you're being this squeamish about it."

Left.. eye..?

"I'm not being squeamish, but there are practical concerns here. Father T-."

"Oh, shit or get off the pot, man. Are we questioning him or letting him go?"

Major Kelly's fatigues rustle slightly for a moment and then he turns around. OBEY.

"Just one or two things, Mister Daniels." OBEY.

"Oh, what now?" I don't think so.

"Are you aware of any action Mister Grayven may be planning or have planned against the British government?" OBEY.

"Ahh… No?" The pressure to obey, to supplicate myself before him continues. But I'm a god, damn it. My metaphysique is stronger than this enchantment. And compared to the Anti-Life…

"Are you aware of any of Mister Grayven's activities outside of public knowledge and your professional relationship?" OBEY.

I shake my head. "No, not really."

Mister Kipling's eyes widen. "He's faking! Praecantatio terminalis!"

The stone around my neck holding the illusion enchantment cracks and falls to the ground, revealing my true form.

Ah well. I draw my swords.

back

Escalation 12

next

31st May

17:51 GMT

OBEY!

Major Kelly takes a half step backwards. There's no fear, I'm simply too big for him to see all of me while that close.

"Fuck."

Mister Kipling is a good deal less sanguine. His eyes dart towards the heavily fortified door before deciding that, no, he can't make it.

I lunge forward, bringing my daiklave around to slash at Major Kelly's face. I know, invulnerable, but people say that about Kal-El and I know for a fact that he isn't-.

The sword is nearly jarred out of my hand as the blade stops dead the moment it connects with the left side of Major Kelly's face. The man doesn't even move.

Then his eyes narrow, and he smiles. "Incomplete briefing, alien?" He raises his right hand and then moves it across his face, palm touching the edge of my sword and pushing. I…

I try holding it in place as he continues smiling, calmly looking me in the eyes as he pushes. I.. can't. Sinestro. you there yet? No? Fine. I take a half-step closer and he rolls his eyes, putting his left hand out to arrest my motion. My own left hand darts forwards and shoves the Sword of the Fallen into his abdomen.

"Ttttth' fuck?"

His left hand drops as he doubles over, suddenly a great deal less confident. Okay, good. I pull the Sword back before stepping around him and heading towards Mister Kipling. "I want some answers, and an exceedingly good cake."

"Hyaah!"

He shoves his right arm forwards, some sort of amulet in his hand. Thin bands of pale blue light flicker out, washing over me. I feel my daiklave getting pulled away from me towards the small red gem in the middle of the amulet, and I'm going to assume that if it gets there that I'm not getting it back again. There's a slight… Something across the rest of my body, a vague poking, as if something were trying to get a hold of me but not being able to grip... The spell effect. I stopped bothering wearing a ward because my ability to resist external magic with my own spiritual resilience outstripped the defence that a ward could provide me with. But my daiklave incorporates Apokoliptian technology; it should be just as resistant as the rest of me.

I narrow my eyes as he tries wiggling the amulet as one might twiddle an aerial in an area of poor reception. "Informative." Wizard on standby and advanced xenotech mysteriously failing suggests magic based preparation. Which means… All I need to do is push my nature into the daiklave harder. The drive to dominate, to conquer, to tear my foes' works asunder and supplant them with my own!

The tron lines on the daiklave glimmer, and the blue strands from the amulet collapse.

"Oh bloody hell."

"I'm told it varies from case to case." I raise the daiklave. "But I'll happily send you to check unless I start getting some answers." I smile cruelly. "And that ca-."

Arms around my neck! Squeezing!

"Shouldn't have taken your eyes off me, alien."

Fuckingfuckeronmyfuckingback!

Mister Kipling drops the amulet, backing away from me as fast as he can without taking his eyes off me. I stagger right, twisting around and throwing myself backwards against the door to the room. There's a clang, but Major Kelly's stranglehold on my neck doesn't weaken. Alright, not a magic life form and that wasn't an immediate kill-stab. He could still be bleeding out but -eugh- his grip is still just fine. Environmental shield's down, which means that I do actually need to breathe.

I reverse my grip on the Sword of the Fallen and stab behind my back, trying to cut him again. He squirms, trying to keep away from it. I think I'm nicking him, but my own bulk is working against me! I can't get a good hit! My throat's not in danger of being crushed until he can move, but I'm still gasping for air!

I turn, swinging the daiklave through the metal of the door and the stonework surrounding it.

"Kipling! Stop him!"

"Oh, and exactly how am I-" I lean backwards and kick with my right foot, sending the door skidding backwards into the vaguely insectoid guards on the far side and bowling them over. "-supposed to do that?"

"Not going to plan, boss?"

A female voice, emanating from all of the… Robots, the guards are robots, fine. I lunge, grabbing Mister Kipling by his coat and throwing him at them. Another stab and by pure fluke I think I hit an artery in Major Kelly's leg. Blood sprays outwards for a few moments and the man's grip weakens still further. A quick look around the room and-. The amulet Mister Kipling tried using on me. It's on the floor. Doesn't look damaged.

"Whenever you're ready, Dolmann!"

I make it two steps towards where the amulet lays before the first robot cannons into me, jet engine firing from the wing unit on its back. I'm thrown across the room, Major Kelly still clamped around my neck. The force of the impact is nothing like enough to injure me, but it does force me to stop stabbing the bastard. As I fall I clumsily swing the butt of my daiklave around and score a glancing hit on the robot, knocking it aside. Either the pilot or its own AI recognises that they're not on target any longer and they cut the rocket motor as they plough into the wall a little way to my left.

Then my face hits the floor. Gah, gruh! I push myself up onto my knees and immediately am forced to swing the daiklave to cut through another robot. The blade passes through its carapace cleanly, piercing the -bah!- fuel tank, which is immediately ignited by its own rocket flame! I blink, trying to get the burning liquid out of my eyes but not able to drop my weapons to use my hands. Through the smoke I see two more humanoid outlines as-

"Attack!"

-a pair of robots charge through the smoke, riot shields in their right hands and some sort of spray gun in place of their left. I charge, rising from my crouch like a sprinter as the fucker's hands go over my eyes aaaagh!

Can't… Fucking…

I keep going, turning sideways and slashing at where I remember the robots being. I think.. something is coating my left side, but I feel the feedback through the daiklave as blade meets metal. Another slash gah! Turns out… Having someone with super strength fiddle around inside your eye sockets is quite painful! Okay, think I hit the second one there. Amulet should be that way…

I hear the roar of another rocket and slash… Agh! Missed! Something, probably another of the insect robots, strikes me in the chest. I brace and bring my daiklave's hilt down on it, smashing it to the floor and causing another explosion to wash over me. This won't work. Okay, hopefully the amulet is still roughly where I think it is. Need to get there now. I leap upwards, twisting in the air so that my feet meet the ceiling and pushing off while upside down. Half a second later I crash down in what I hope is nearly the right place, stone shattering beneath me and I listen.

Major Kelly swinging forwards over my head distracts me, but I think I heard the noise of metal against stone to my right. Before he can recover his position I slam my daiklave point down into the floor, push him forwards with my now free right hand and slash with the Sword of the Fallen.

"Huuuuuurhhh!"

Wetness and meat fall past my left hand in the Sword of the Fallen's wake, Major Kelly finally being forced to release me. Okay, based on past experience it could be hours until I get my eyes back. Too long to wait. I toss my head, hoping that some of the burning fuel in my eye sockets is shaken free. Then I sheathe the Sword of the Fallen and start feeling around on the floor for the amulet.

Heal.

I can't tell quite how hot the room is, but it should be hot enough to throw off infrared sensors. The fire should also make it impossible to see me normally. Conventional munitions aren't a worry even now; being blinded is a pain and it hurts but it doesn't threaten my existence. I feel an edge-. No, just a stone fragment. Okay, and… That's an intestine.

…

I yank it as hard as I can, then throw what's torn off in my hands towards the other side of the room.

Heal.

I feel around some more. That's robot debris… Not sure if making noise is really a problem here, but ahah, got it! Probably. I stand, sliding my feet around and trying to feel where whatever's left of Major Kelly ended up. The intestine was there and-.

"Not that easy, alien!"

Heal.

OOF! I'm down on my back. I think he grabbed my foot.

Heal.

"Been a while since anything's hurt me, but you can't keep me-!"

Heal.

I thrust what I hope is the amulet in the direction of his voice. "Hyaah!"

Heal.

I feel… Something from the amulet.

Heal.

"Oh, motherfu-!"

Heal.

His voice cuts out suddenly, the amulet vibrating in my hand.

Heal.

I take a deep breath, tasting the burning fuel and smoke around me.

Heal.

Then I rise to my feet and grab my daiklave.

back

Escalation 13

next

31st May

17:54 GMT

My eyes are shut, but something is trickling down my face. Eye goo? Blood? I don't think it can be rocket fuel; it isn't on fire. The heat isn't really a problem for me… Not yet at least. I might suffer from oxygen deficiency eventually but my insides are nearly as heat-resistant as my outside. My neck aches and I'm sure that if I could see it I would see Major Kelly's fingerprints gouged into my flesh.

Heal.

Fortunately, the pain from my abused neck is being drowned out by… Agh… The pain from my eye sockets. Not at unanesthetised autodisembowelment levels yet, but the day is young.

Heal.

Stay here or get moving?

Heal.

I'm in what I presume to be a castle. One maintained by the British government as a black site. The castley bits of castles aren't usually all that big, so charging out of the doors and smashing my way along the corridors is certainly a viable option. On the other hand, there are almost certainly more robots out there. There may also be regular Human soldiers -only a concern in the sense that killing them might make me look bad- and metahumans of various sorts. I.. am.. in no shape to fight someone in my weight class.

Heal.

I'm not sure exactly how much of the British super-establishment is on board with Project Evil, but… Even those who aren't would probably be on board with assisting in stopping me if they find me rampaging around a secure facility. Doubly so if I'm dripping with the blood of their countrymen. Of Chester's associates, the only one who really worries me is Tri-man. Super speed and super strength are difficult for me to overcome at the best of times, and.. now… Isn't. Fortunately for me, he has Thundermind's problem of being too much a public figure to be able to disappear for long periods of time. A call has probably gone out, but it'll take him a while to get away from whatever's occupying him and.. then travel here…

Heal.

On the 'stay put' side I've got Father Box and a power ring that are currently non-functional. If I can change that then I can either escape or -my preference- wreck havoc upon the deserving. Sinestro?

Heal.

…

Heal.

Nothing.

Heal.

Okay then. "In blackest day or-. Uhuh-uhuh."

Heal.

I wince, then gasp as that involves putting pressure on the damaged tissue around my eyes in a way they are not shy about sharing with the rest of me. OWFUCKINGOW!

Heal!

Okay. Talking out loud is a no-go for now.

Heal.

The flames… I think they're dying down a bit. I don't remember seeing any flammable material in the room, so it's just the quick-burning fuel, robot remains and… Probably Kelly-remains and my eyes.

Heal.

When this is over I'm going to be on my third pair of eyes! Thirty years I lived with one perfectly good pair but I'm on this stupid Earth for a couple of months-!

Heal.

I stab my daiklave into the floor and check myself over with my hands. Something stuck on the left side of my torso… Maybe on that side of my face as well, but I have no intention of prodding it to make sure. The robots had some sort of glue spray? It's still sticky in places while in others it's set like rubber and.. across my left arm it appears to have been burned and crystallised. Heh. If I could see what I was doing, I could use it to put a protective cover over my eye sockets, but then… If I could see what I was doing then I wouldn't need to.

Heal.

No other injuries in evidence. I pick the daiklave up once more and cautiously make my way towards the door. I'm getting a little short of breath as well. The room.. didn't look well-ventilated. Can't hear anything much from the far side-. I nearly trip as my right foot bumps into something. I crouch down, feeling… Part of a robot, I think. There's no chance I could repair it or use it as a weapon like this, but maybe… I grab hold of something on the chassis that feels load bearing. As a shield, it's inadequate. As a projectile, it's… Better than nothing.

Heal.

I rise to my feet. Okay, door should be about three metres that way, nearest wall should be there. I could just stride out of the smoke looking like a killing machine, but I'm.. just not feeling it at the moment. I swing the daiklave slowly, trying to use the flat of the blade to determine exactly where the wall begins… There. I stop to listen again.

Heal.

Nothing.

Heal.

I swivel my waist, preparing for the throw. One… Two… Three. I bring my left arm around and hurl the remains of the robot down the corridor outside. Then I listen. No shots, no yelps and no frantic scurrying to the side. Either whoever is there is exceptionally well disciplined or the corridor is empty. Right then, best foot forwards. I step to the side so that I'm standing directly in front of the opening. I should be visible now. No, still nothing.

Heal.

I step forwards one pace. Then another. As I pass through the opening there's a slight drop in temperature and an equally slight rise in air quality. Running my left hand along the wall I can feel the lumps of stone I sliced through when I cut through the door's anchor points earlier and that is the door itself. Worth picking up? I crouch down, feeling it with my left hand. It's not resting flat on the floor, there should be a handle… My probing hand encounters a wheel mechanism. That should do for the moment. I heave it upwards, metal scraping against stone as it comes upright. The wheel turns under the door's weight before stopping at its furthest extent.

Heal.

Mm. Very awkward. I'm just about strong enough to hold it in place, but the grip is decidedly suboptimal. No, have to make do. I hold it so that it covers a good deal of my chest, then extend my daiklave like a blind man's stick. Which it literally is, I suppose. Tap, wall over there. Tap, wall there too.

Heal.

With me removed from the field, command defaults to Doctor Robbins. The Mountain itself should be perfectly secure, with both technological defences and with the muscles and claws of the Genomorphs. I may have sent Chester to assist Miss Amane but I'm reasonably confident of her ability to look after herself if it comes to it.

Heal.

The one I'm really worried about is Lynne.

Heal.

The Centre for Paranormal Research isn't a military institution. There are a couple of security guards, but they're there to throw out nuisance visitors or protestors, not fight paramilitary units. Against untrained and unarmed metahumans, walking up to them with a gun and shooting them dead before they know what's going on is a perfectly viable technique. And if they can shut down a Father Box they can almost certainly shut down her telepathy.

Heal.

Tap. Tap.

Heal.

And sure, if anything happens to her then this country can forget about a smooth transition of power as I run through Westminster like a blender… But that wouldn't bring her back.

Heal.

Tap. Tap.

Heal.

Why did Major Kelly refer to me as 'alien'? I mean, yes, I am… Father Box?

Heal.

…

Heal.

Okay, I'm not an alien, but I've been telling everyone that I am and I certainly look like one. Why the heck is that a problem for him? Everything these people know about Apokolips comes from me. Doesn't it? They wouldn't know that they should be worried about an Apokoliptian unless I told them, and if they don't trust me why would they trust my information about us not being trustworthy.

Heal.

Tap. Tap.

Heal.

Maybe he's just speciesist. I mean, alien is three syllables, saying my name would actually have been-.

Heal.

"Hello, alien."

Heal.

I stop, turning my head in what I think is the direction of the voice. "Miss Dolmann." Owowow. Fight through. "Would you be so good as to point me to the exit? I've been kidnapped by men of low character and I fear for my safety."

Heal.

"We're going to get you. You're in a secure facility and extra forces are en route. You can't escape."

Heal.

For a moment, I consider doing the 'I'm not locked in here with you' line. But my throat really hurts. "'Kay."

Hea-. No. I try pushing my essence into Father Box, the resolute unflagging drive to conquer married to the intellect to do so intelligently. Nothing.

Tap. Tap.

Heal.

I start walking again. I wonder if I can sense the magic in this structure? Maybe get some idea of where things are? My magic-sense is pretty much limited to 'there is a concentration of power here', but even that-.

"You're going to die, alien!"

Heal.

"Y-. Yep. You said."

Heal.

I rest the knuckles of my right hand against the corridor wall and try relaxing my grip on my own body. Can I.. feel.. anything..? Ugh, sort of. There's power here, but it appears to be all around in more or less uniform strength. It probably isn't, but the distinction is too subtle for me to detect. Drat. I bring my daiklave back to the ready position and start walking again.

Heal.

Then I hear the roar as another rocket fires.

back

Escalation 14

next

31st May

17:57 GMT

I turn side on, holding up the door-shield and bracing the metal against my shoulder and left leg. I didn't really get a good look at the corridor when I cut the door free, but I think it was straight-.

Resist.

FSHOOM.

Resist.

The first rocket hits the door, flames exploding against the metal and expanding outwards around the edges. Incendiary? That won't be a problem, then. I inch forwards.

Resist.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Resist.

More air is displaced, but there's little heat. Not sure what that was. Smoke, maybe?

Resist.

BANG!

Resist.

Something strikes me on the cheek. Not.. hard… I bring my right hand around and feel the inside of the door. There's a noticeable dent on my side adjacent to my face. Anti-armour? This door must be pretty darn well armoured to take that. Okay, anti-armour rockets can hurt me, but they would need repeated strikes in the same place to do much more than bruise.

Resist.

Hitting my face right now… That would be bad.

Resist.

I try picking up the pace, but the fact I can't see where I'm going is constantly making me hesitate. I hear another 'fwoosh' and move to the side, raising the door-shield slightly in the hope that if it's another anti-armour rocket it'll hit somewhere else.

Resist.

Instead, there's a comparatively slight impact and then a slight pushing. Don't know what that is. Push forwards-. Ah, there's some sort of sticky material on the floor. Nothing like strong enough to hold me in place but it's slowing my already glacial pace even further as I'm forced to push harder and shove.

Resist.

Some sort of hard foam? More of that glue stuff? No idea. But I think I'm.. past it.

Resist.

Tap. Tap.

Resist.

Okay, take a risk. I accelerate to actual walking pace, daiklave dragging along the wall. Hopefully, when I reach an opening it'll be one on both sides.

Resist.

A different noise this time, followed by a hissing I know indicates a gas weapon. I'm pretty much immune to conventional poisons but I still need air. If all of the air around me gets displaced and I can't get my environmental shield back up I'm as stuffed as anyone else. Faster, then. I accelerate to an awkward jog, my right foot kicking what I think was a gas grenade forwards. After two more steps I encounter it again and this time kick it harder, listening for the sounds of it striking something. Klink, klink, roll and klunk as it stops. Assuming that was in more or less a straight line…

Resist.

This could hurt.

Resist.

I run forwards, trying to judge the distance.

Heal.

"I can see you, alien."

Heal.

The daiklave stops scraping as I try to zero in on the voice.

Heal.

"Let's see how you handle this!"

Heal.

Okay then. I leap in the direction of the voice, daiklave thrust forwards. There's a series of fwooshing sounds from my direction of travel. Someone's dumping their rockets.

Unstoppable!

I can feel the backwash as the majority go wide and the thump as two don't. More than a few people have assumed that someone my size would have to be slow and clumsy. In actual fact, divine aura plus super strength means that I'm pretty darn fast!

Triumphant!

I bring the daiklave around where the voice was coming from, feeling it bite into metal and shear through! Excellent! And… Now I'm falling? The daiklave is still cutting through something..? I strike out with the door-shield, getting a 'clank' sound for my trouble. Okay, something big and-.

Heal.

And that's the floor. I hit it at a fair old clip with no warning to allow me to bend my legs. The brick comes off worse. There's a feeling of space around me but no movement from the air in front of me. I lunge and slash with the daiklave. The edge bites metal and slices through, the slight jarring sensation being easily absorbed by my hand.

Heal.

I have no idea what I'm fighting. Big robot? Mech? Golem? No, not a Golem, I can hear electricit-.

Heal.

Doouf! Something heavy just… Landed on me.

Heal.

"I'm going to kill you, alien!"

Heal.

"Good for you."

Heal.

Still hurts. Okay, she didn't sound particularly shaken up so I'm going to assume giant robot full of missiles. I push upwards, trying to either find an edge or at least push it aside. Risk of self destruct? Eh, it's probably got a scuttling device around the clever stuff but I doubt it has a built in nuke or anything. If it has, it would have fired it. And the rockets activating within their launchers won't do much more than knock me across the room… However far that is.

Heal.

Still, better safe than sorry. I bring my daiklave around and slice at what I believe to be the chest of the probably-robot. The blade passes cleanly through, then I stab it into the stone floor and feel inside the groove with my right hand. Armour… Half an inch thick. Okay, stab with the daiklave, then shove hard.

Heal.

I hear clanks and the shriek of metal against stone followed by a sudden bang. That must be where the wall in that direction is. Okay, so the cell was… That way…

Heal.

"OPEN YOUR GOD DAMNED EYES AND LOOK AT ME!"

Heal.

I could respond with 'TOGTFO', but that would involve talking. And using internet memes as banter is beneath me.

Heal.

I can't hear any 'fwooshes', so I'm going to assume that nothing else is in position to shoot me. Instead I stalk in the direction her shout comes from, swinging my daiklave back and forth in a way which I hope looks like I'm being menacing instead of just trying to stop myself walking into a wall.

Heal.

"LOOK AT ME!"

Door-shield up.

"LOOK AT ME!" / "LOOK AT ME! / "LOOK AT ME!"

Heal.

From different places that time. Okay, either there's three more robots or she's worked out that I'm navigating by sound. My left foot brushes against a decent-sized piece of debris and I stab the daiklave into the ground, dip down, pick it up and turn, hurling it in the direction of the furthest of the voices. One , t-. There's a complex sound, a crumpling followed in quick succession by a smash. Okay, that was most likely a wall-mounted speaker. And… More debris. She knows that I'm not looking…

Heal.

I pick up pieces of debris and throw them in a compass rose, trying to get an approximate idea of the shape of the room. A few dozen clangs and clunks later I've worked out that I'm in a rectangular room about ten metres by twenty. From the sounds of it there are other doorways, but from their placements I'm going to guess that they just lead to other cells. This definitely isn't the Tower of London. Those cells are far more cramped.

Heal.

Clang, clang, clang.

Heal.

Ah, excellent! That sounded like it hit a stair and bounced down a few steps. Sword waving again I head towards them. A bit odd that a room this big doesn't have any furniture, but I think I'll assume that they cleared it out. Nothing… Nothing… Wall. Okay, run the sword along the wall until… There!

Heal.

Heh. I'm feeling rather pleased with myself here. Ambushed, blinded, and I'm still going to get out of this okay.

Heal.

"You're too slow, alien!"

Heal.

She needs a new hobby. Advanced robotics are something I'd like it if Humans did more work on, but if all she's doing is building weapons I think I can live with myself if I kill her. I tap the daiklave against both sides of the staircase. Stone walls, and fortunately not spiralled. Plenty of room for me. Steps are… Okay, feels like the distance is even. I can afford to go a bit faster.

Heal.

"Now you're going to be trapped in here forever!"

Heal.

…

Heal.

…

Maybe I should go a little faster.

back

Escalation 15

next

31st May

18:04 GMT

"Let me out!"

Heal.

Tap. Tap.

Heal.

Not sure exactly what was supposed to happen that would result in me getting trapped, but as far as I can see it hasn't mat-. As far as I can hear it hasn't materialised.

Heal.

Tap. Tap.

Heal.

The pain in my eye sockets has died down considerably. That might mean that I have eyeballs again, but the pain hasn't gone and it still doesn't… Feel quite right. Think I'll leave it for now. My throat on the other hand feels hunky-dory.

Heal.

"You utter arseholes! Let me out of here!"

Heal.

Tap. Swish.

Heal.

Open air? I swing the sword around a few more times, feeling out the edge of the space. There's an opening in front of me which appears to emerge out of a wall. There's a slight movement in the air, though whether it's from a well-ventilated room or from the outside I genuinely can't tell.

Heal.

Hmm. So, my choices are: one, follow the wall around until I find out the size of the space or two, call out to the desperate-sounding Mister Kipling and have a chat. Jumping towards his voice sounds unwise; he's my only source of input since Miss Dolmann stopped taunting me. And he's nothing like as tough as her robots, far more squishable.

Heal.

"Excuse me, Mister Kipling." I take a few steps forwards, door-shield held to my side. "May I have your attention for a moment?"

Heal.

"Oh, it doesn't matter. What do you want?"

Heal.

"A cake would-."

Heal.

"I'm not getting you a cake! Don't you understand what they've done?!"

Heal.

"No. I'm not even entirely certain who 'they' are. I didn't start any of this."

Heal.

"What do you mean, you didn't start any of this?"

Heal.

I shrug as best I can with both hands occupied. "I thought I was going to be fighting SHADE today. I had my lure, I had my people in place… And then one of my operatives fails to report in and the next thing I know, here I am."

Heal.

"Vera Black is a wanted fugitive and her brother is a serial killer! You're planning on overthrowing the government and taking over the country!"

Heal.

Hm. Yes, yes, yes… No. Not even in the short term. Why.. would.. he.. think that? Actually, why would he think that I was planning on overthrowing the government? Sure, I threatened to do that if whatshername didn't buck her ideas up during that committee hearing but that's about as far as I got. How closely have they been keeping tabs on me? Okay, so they might know that I've been investigating things, but Ra's has had people doing that and they don't think he's planning to take over the country. They're just paying him the hush money.

Heal.

"No I'm not. I mean -no offence to your country or anything- but that's a bit small potatoes for me."

Heal.

"Then what are you planning?!"

Heal.

"I'm planning on taking over the planet."

Heal.

"Ha! Then maybe it's for the best that we're trapped."

Heal.

"Not sure I follow you."

Heal.

"We can't get out, you fool! All your plans are for nought!"

Heal.

"No, I got that. What I don't understand is why me becoming ruler of the planet is a bad thing. If you could just… Talk me through the reasoning…"

Heal.

"You-? You want to discuss it?"

Heal.

"Do you have somewhere you need to be?"

Heal.

"I was planning to try and find the wine cellar and drink myself to death, actually."

Heal.

"It's actually quite.. hard to kill yourself in a short timeframe by drinking wine. I mean, spirits, sure. But with wine..? If no one was helping you, you'd probably lose consciousness before drinking enough. You'd certainly lose the hand-eye coordination required to open the next bottle."

Heal.

"I'm going to try."

Heal.

"Alright, fine, but.. my question?"

Heal.

"What's so hard to understand? Mankind does not want to be enslaved to an alien tyrant, to have our home world used as the base for an alien empire!"

Heal.

"Okay." I put down the door-shield, propping it up against the wall behind me. Then I return my daiklave to its clamp on my back. "This is just me, right? I mean, my brother and sister in law were here when I first arrived and I haven't brought any other Apokoliptians with me."

Heal.

"And?"

Heal.

"So: I, the Emperor of Earth, would be an alien. But all of my lieutenants would be Human… All of my military officers, all of my directors of industry and all of my civil servants would be Human. Research scientists: Human. My own daughter and heir: Human. So how exactly is this Empire that is made almost entirely of Humans.. an alien empire?"

Heal.

"What?"

Heal.

"I mean, you're basically saying that an alien can't be Emperor because he's an alien." I take a small risk and frown slightly. "Are you a racist, Mister Kipling?"

Heal.

"J-." There's a pause as he tries to come up with an answer. "No, of course not. But you're still trying to overthrow the British government and it's our job to stop you."

Heal.

"Mister Kipling, if either Father Box or my power ring were working right now I would show you the sorts of things that your government officials get up to, and it would turn your stomach."

Heal.

"Is that enough to justify Black killing our Members of Parliament?"

Heal.

"Four rapists, two paedophiles and a cannibal? Yes, I'd say so."

Heal.

"W-? No, that's preposterous. They can't possible have covered up so many criminal acts."

Heal.

"They didn't. They hushed it up. I've got the evidence. I just wouldn't be able to find anyone to do anything about it. That's why I'm sheltering Chester Black. And preventing him going off half-cocked."

Heal.

"Prove it."

Heal.

"Alright. Unlock my power ring and I will." He doesn't immediately respond. "If you're so sure that we can't get out -and while you're drinking yourself to death I will be making an attempt- then it can hardly hurt."

Heal.

"It-." I can just about hear him sigh. "I can't. I worked the spell I used to interrupt your portal into the castle's defences. Hostile artefacts that it has been applied to won't function while they're in here."

Heal.

"So I can't show you the thing I need to show you in order for you to help me get out until we're already out." I nod. "Tricky."

Heal.

"Oh, no. Screw 'em. I'll help you get out regardless, as long as I'm included in the escape plan."

Heal.

"Oh. Bit of a.. change of heart there."

Heal.

"Thought I might as well put a brave face on a hopeless situation. I'm actually fairly self-interested."

Heal.

"Drinking yourself to death?"

Heal.

"If I go down then I'd take you with me. But -between you and me- I'd rather not go down at all." I hear another sigh. "I mean… Look at that."

Heal.

"Look at what?"

Heal.

"Maybe it would help if you opened your eyes."

Heal.

"Sadly that's impossible. Major Kelly crushed my eyeballs. Could you please describe it?"

Heal.

"You ever see the film 'Labyrinth'? With David Bowie?"

Heal.

"Yes?"

Heal.

"Like that, only made of castle. The man who first enchanted this castle designed it so that it could disassociate itself from reality if it ever became overrun by one of his enemies. It's castle to the front of them, castle to the rear, castle to the up and the down and the round and round. An infinitely repeating mile cubed."

Heal.

"Oh. I'm rather sad to be missing it. Sounds like an amazing visual spectacle."

Heal.

"It's just stone. The problem is that nothing in here can affect the outside."

Heal.

"Can things outside affect.. this..?"

Heal.

"They can turn it off, but they're not going to. I'm sure that I'm perfectly expendable."

Heal.

"But things from outside can come here?"

Heal.

"Some things, yessss…"

Heal.

"Then we may as well keep ourselves busy seeing if we can scavenge parts for a radio from Miss Dolmann's robots."

back

Escalation 16

next

31st May

18:23 GMT

"Which doesn't help me at all, because I don't know what a germanium diode looks like!"

Heal.

"Okay, that's fine." I nod. Not unreasonably, Mister Kipling's background is in magic -and English literature, curiously- and not electronics. I only know how to put an ersatz radio together because Richard thought it might be important for us to know. "I don't suppose the robots have aerials anywhere on them, do they?"

Heal.

"I'd have spotted that."

Heal.

"Wall mounted communication devices?"

Heal.

"There are tannoys on the walls in a few places. Are they any use?"

Heal.

"Might be. I don't know much more about this than you."

Heal.

"Oh, what good does it do? Do you really think that something as simple as radio waves could breach our dimensional bubble?!"

Heal.

"No, not really. But once we have a working communications device of some sort I can wire in the Transferral Node from my sword and that will allow us to listen in to my allies' communication devices."

Heal.

"Transferral Node? What's that when it's at home?"

Heal.

"Apokoliptian technology. It lets me connect a device to my soul. Did you notice how your amulet thing pulled my sword for a second or two and then lost its grip?"

Heal.

"Not specifically. I was busy trying to plan out my next move."

Heal.

"Alright, well, without that, my big sword is a nasty bit of kit but it's still basically a sword."

Heal.

"What's so special about it?"

Heal.

I reach back with my right arm and take hold of the hilt before releasing the clamps and bringing it around to my front. "X-ionised edge with Nth metal chasing. Nothing sharper or more resilient in the universe, and that's leaving aside the force field disrupting properties. The Apokoliptian construction of the rest lends resilience and resistance to magic and reality warping. Usually."

Heal.

"The spell should have stopped that."

Heal.

"Yes, it did. Fortunately I was able to extend my soul into it and push the effect away. It reactivated at full power immediately." I stab the daiklave into the stone floor. Alright, let's assume that the radio idea is a bust. "Do you think that you could funnel additional raw magic into me?"

Heal.

"Not enough to make a damn bit of difference. The castle is designed to keep all of its magic to itself. It took me months just to work out how to extend the weapon-nullification effect."

Heal.

"Can you reset it? Having my ring and Father Box back would give me a lot more options."

Heal.

"No, it's designed to resist that. Adding, yes. Taking away is a little beyond me."

Heal.

We both spend a few moments in silence, thinking the problem over.

Heal.

"Where exactly is this castle?"

Heal.

"At the moment? I believe it's a semi-stabilized portion of the Dreaming, though I could be wrong. The owner wasn't around to consult when our little company took possession."

Heal.

"No, I mean... Normally."

Heal.

"Western Scotland. Used to belong to a man named Cursitor Doom, but he was declared dead decades ago."

Heal.

"Any way to get in touch with him?"

Heal.

"Not as far as I know." I hear him move. "Not a bad idea, if we get desperate. If there is a way to get a message out, it would almost certainly go to him."

Heal.

"Why would we have to be desperate?"

Heal.

"He wasn't declared dead on a whim. Britain doesn't have enough competent wizards that we could easily afford to lose him. We searched, with means both conventional and arcane. Not a sniffle. What sort of weaponry does your Father Box have?"

Heal.

"None, so far as I'm aware. Why?"

Heal.

"Oh, it just sounded like an odd thing to call a gun. The spell should only affect weapons."

Heal.

I almost ask Father Box if he's been holding out on me. "He has an extensive database of weapons of various sorts. Would that set it off?"

Heal.

"No, or it would have shut off your brain as well. And mine, come to mention it."

Heal.

"Boom tube generation?" No, doesn't sound like it. "Matter reorganisation?"

Heal.

"Probably. If you remove the component that performs that function then it may start working again."

Heal.

"If Himon or Desaad drop by I'll ask them to do that."

Heal.

Hm. I suppose that now is as good a time as any. I hold out my right hand.

Heal.

"In blackest day, in brightest night,

Beware your fears made into light,

Let those who try to stop what's right,

Burn by my power, Prince Grayven's might!"

Heal.

…

Heal.

I wait.

Heal.

No, nothing. The ring's totally dead.

Heal.

"Poetic. What was it meant to do?"

Heal.

"Summon my personal lantern. But with the ring dead, it can't connect to the subspace pocket where I keep it."

Heal.

"And the fact that we're stuck in a pocket universe of our own doesn't help." He's not wrong. "I may have an idea. How much 'communication' has to be going on for your Transferral Node to function?"

Heal.

"No idea. Honestly, it was chancy with a radio."

Heal.

"Does it need to be physical, or would a spell suffice?"

Heal.

"Um. A spell might be better, actually. But I somehow doubt that you're powerful enough. No offence intended."

Heal.

"No, but… We have an intact speaker, we have bits of robot which presumably communicate with each other somehow, and we have a network of spells hardwired into the stones of this place. Given the dimensional nature of the trap, their size is effectively infinite. I hear that large aerials are useful in these matters."

Heal.

"Might be on to something there. Of course, we still need to actually find a way out, but it's a start."

Heal.

"With us trapped here Penny lost access to her drones. We don't have to worry about them attacking us. A few months ago she had me charm a couple of the smaller ones. I don't understand the circuitry but I remember her description of the components. If you cut one open then I should be able to salvage what we need for that."

Heal.

I nod. "Is there a nexus to the spell network on the castle? That would be the ideal spot."

Heal.

"Yes, Doom's workshop. We can set up in there after we get the parts we need." I hear his clothing rustle as he gets to his feet. "This way."

Heal.

Yes, a physical cue to the direction. Very helpful. Ah, fuck it. I have to open them sooner or later. My eyelids stick together as they haven't since last time I had an eye infection. I can feel some parts sticking more than others, and the slight tearing sensation as some of the stuck parts become unstuck. Flashes of brilliant white light stab at my brain through the narrow opening.

Function as I demand!

"Come on, y-. I thought you said Derek blinded you?"

"I undo my own injuries. Slowly." I keep them as near to closed as I can, peering around me. Slight degrees of differentiation appear, brown-grey and… Light brown-grey. "How do they look?"

"Like you had cataracts, then someone stabbed you. Can you see anything out of that?"

"Not much, but at least I don't risk walking into walls." I nod at the moving blob. "Lead on, MacDuff."

"The line is 'lay on'. Lay on, MacDuff. And since we're not charging an enemy it doesn't apply."

"Alright. Lead on Mister Kipling. And remember that I can survive longer than you without food or water."

back

Escalation 17

next

31st May

18:32 GMT

"What did you actually… Ugh."

I try making out what Mister Kipling is working on. The image is a little clearer now, but I'm a way off getting fine details. "Problem?"

"No, no, done. I don't know how you plan to wire your sword in, but the robot and the speaker are thoroughly bodged together."

"Right." I reach back with my right hand, take hold of my daiklave and spin it before jamming it point first into the stone floor.

"Hey! Less fancy swordplay when you can't see what you're doing!"

"Not an option. I'm the Apokoliptian God of Conquest. When I perform spiritual acts I must do so in a thematically appropriate mode, leaving my mark on the stone." I bend down, feeling along the blade. Open.

"What did you do to Derek? I didn't think anything could hurt him any more."

"See the little sword in my scabbard?" Ah, Apokoliptian technology. The wires exist purely to convey the idea of connection. I detach one from the Transferral Node and then gently feel around for a suitable connection point on the object Mister Kipling has put together.

"Yes. Wasn't that what you used to decapitate Klarion?"

I nod. "It was made to slay the First of the Fallen. Sabbac Two used it to cut off Captain Marvel's arms. I have yet to encounter a creature it can't harm."

"I thought he was invulnerable."

"I don't believe in invulnerability. I was a bit surprised by how much punishment he took-."

"Oh, the Eye knitted him back together after every hit. I was wondering how you finished him off. Stab to the brain as you did with Sabbac? Or was separating his head from the gem enough to prevent further regeneration?"

"No idea. I was blind at the time, so I just used your amulet." I find a suitable attachment point and stand, both hands going around my daiklave's hilt. "Okay, I'm probably going to need your help making this work. Watch what I'm doing and nudge it along if you see an-."

"My amulet?"

"Yes. Is there something wrong with that?"

"Puts us on a bit of a clock, yes. That thing is only designed to keep someone contained for a few minutes. The only reason why he isn't already free is because we're on our own demiplane."

"So did he get wiped or will he reappear the moment we break out?"

"The latter. Give it here, I'll see if I can-."

I shake my head. "I don't trust you that much."

"He'll know I've helped you. He won't consider saving myself to be an adequate excuse!"

"So are you.. going to ask me for sanctuary, or are you just planning on hiding and hoping it blows over?"

"As long as he doesn't see us together I'm sure that I can come up with something. He wasn't expecting me to actually fight you."

"I'll think about it. Now, let's focus on the job at hand." I tighten my grip around the hilt. This is the first time I've tried anything this complicated…

He was right. I can feel the daiklave, the robot parts and -dimly- the castle itself. Ugh, the minuscule nature of this false universe makes me feel unwell as I try to make sense of it. No, no. I'm not the God of Intellect. Think like a conqueror. I stop feeling out the pattern and pull. I have taken this castle! Slain or subjugated its defenders! By Right of Conquest this is my domain!

The speaker crackles slightly as I feel the castle trying to resist. Doesn't feel directed at me in any sort of complex way, just the resistance of any system already in motion.

"Allow me, Mister Grayven. Just a… Little… Alteration…"

And everything snaps into focus. I still don't know what the parts of the system do and I'm not about to try fiddling with them. I might hit whatever it is that is keeping my ring inactive and I might hit whatever it is maintaining this demiplane and dump us into the Dreaming. Or worse, the Bleed. Instead, I try feeling outwards, letting my Conqueror's Ambition run wild. I will take all that is out there! Summon My Vassals!

"…ast as me, but he is far stronger than I am."

My eyes snap open as I hear Miss Amane's voice. Come on, keep talking.

"Iname, the man you are fighting is almost certainly the British superhero Tri-Man."

Glad that Doctor Robbins is keeping things organised.

"A superhero? No, tell me what he can do!"

"Enhanced speed, strength and augmented vision. Don't bother trying to hide."

"Understood."

"And avoid lethal force if at all possible! The last thing we need is a fight with Superman as well."

"Yes Ma'am."

I raise my eyebrows at Mister Kipling. "Anything you feel like sharing at this juncture?"

"Compartmentalisation is the name of the game, I'm afraid. I didn't even know other offensive operations were being planned."

"Mister Tawny, report."

"Tawny?"

"My Tiger." Actually, what exactly does she expect him to say?

"Forgive my taciturnity, Doctor." What? That's.. his voice, but without my ring I shouldn't get a translation. Since when can he speak English out loud? "Fighting giant invisible robots is not as easy as I make it look."

"You have a talking Tiger?"

"Apparently." And how is he working a radio with paws?

"Is Miss Selton safe?"

"Giant robot, so, no. She's not injured, and-. Ah, one moment. Bally blighter's trying to get clever."

I turn my head towards Mister Kipling. "Giant robot?"

"The Brain has a monstrous chassis. I've no idea why they thought it was a good idea to deploy it in Superman's home city."

He's not that hard to distract. Had one or two plans to arrange for that to happen myself. "Giant invisible robot?"

"Presumably they want plausible deniability. Oh, you mean 'how is it invisible'?"

"Yes."

"Technology derived from Crandell's gauntlet. Not really my department."

This sounds like a fight I should be involved in. I mean, I suppose the point of having competent subordinates is that they can fight without me watching over them the whole time… "Do you know where Vera Black is?"

"As far as I know she's still in the house you were trying to get to. With Chester around we were limited to using robotic drones for observation and couldn't risk a strike team being anywhere near the place."

"Would anyone else using a hush tube to get there end up here?"

"Not now, no. Why, did someone come through before you?"

"No." Find My Heir. "How about someone leaving it?"

"Wouldn't affect them."

"Attack a fooking school fulla fooking kids, will yeh?!"

Ah, good. Sounds like Chester's in fine form. And looking after Lynne. Must remember to thank him. "Any idea why your people are going after the Centre for Paranormal Research?"

"None."

"Alright, sounds like my people are managing. Any ideas on getting us out of here yet?"

**Daddy?**

back

Escalation 18

next

31st May

18:35 GMT

I drop my customary mental shield immediately.

**Lynne!**

"Ow! What are you..?" I ignore Mister Kipling, trying to focus instead on the flicker I feel from the soul now so similar to my own. "That's not going to work. Nothing gets out."

"Could you recreate this place from scratch?"

"… No?"

"Then clearly you don't know everything there is to know about it. Now, where would whatever arcane device is used to bring us back to Earth Sixteen be kept?"

"Earth what?"

"There are parallel universe versions of Earth, ours is Sixteen, don't question it. Where?"

"Ah… Either the Queen's House in the Tower of London or GCHQ. Or, maybe somewhere else. It was in the Tower when I saw it, but that was last year and they might well have moved it since."

"What, Grayven's heeyuh?"

"If he is, he's keeping dashedly quiet about it. LOOK OUT!"

"Manchester Black, if you don't have something useful to say then keep quiet. Mister Tawny, don't shout warnings over the radio. Lynne, what do you mean?"

"You know how he does that thing with Uncle Scott and Aunty Barda, where there's two different types of speech happening at the same time? It felt like that."

"What did he say?"

"I-. I didn't get any words. Just… I felt him."

Okay, good. Getting somewhere.

"How the hell did you do that?"

"I gave my daughter part of my soul. I had thought that doing so might mean that I count as being both here and there. Not that it does a lot of good if I can't get a clear message across."

"Curious. I didn't think that would…" Mister Kipling quietens for a moment. "But that could mean… Alright, if we're isolated from everywhere but the Dream -and that's testable- we should still be able to use that to send messages to the waking world. If we're careful."

"And if we're in the Bleed?"

"Then we can't, but as I said, it's testable. We just have to go to sleep, and I'm already trained in lucid dreaming and dreamstate manipulation. Of course, if we're in the Bleed, and we have no source of additional power, then this place will experience planar collapse once the protective spells decay. In which case we'd be fucked."

"And if we're in a little fold in the Earth's own arcane planes?"

"Thhhhen it will either naturally decay and return us to our starting location -though that could be over a very long period of time- or it could be permanent."

"I might be able to survive the Bleed for a little while, depending on when my power ring reactivates. But still, suboptimal."

To put it mildly. Apparently Desaad actually tried throwing lowlies in a few times to see what happened. He stopped because it didn't produce good data, but according to Father Box his studies suggested that a New God should be able to brace themselves against the raw chaos in much the same way we ordinarily reinforce aspects of ourselves. Sinestro's input on the matter covered what the Weaponers and Guardians knew: power rings can maintain your coherence, but it sucks the energy out of the ring very quickly.

"Do you have a magician working for you?"

"Yes, with contact details for more."

"Okay." I hear his footsteps as he starts pacing. "So, communication is possible. We just need to find a form this place isn't designed to prevent. Keep trying."

"Lynne, this is… Your father speaking. Can you hear me?"

"Have you felt him again?"

"No, not yet. I've tried talking like that before and I can barely do it. I'm not as powerful as he is."

Yet. Communicate My Will! "Lynne, hear-."

"I heard him again!"

"Okay, the trick is for me to be at my most-" Grayveny. "-godly. I have to be absolutely in tune with my domain, but I can get through."

"Morse code! We could try Morse code."

"Lynne's twelve! She's not going to know Morse code."

"No, but Chester will."

"I mean, she's probably not going to know that Morse code is a thing."

"Whatever are you teaching her?"

"I'm trying to teach her how to be a child." I squeeze my eyes shut in an attempt to ignore the visual distraction of blur-o-vision. "Look, I'm connected to the castle's magic networks. Can you make sense of any of it?"

"Even if I could, I don't have the power to-."

"Teamwork, Mister Kipling. You can use me for power. Do not abuse this privilege."

"Very well." I hear the sliding of cloth and a slight bump as he sits down. "Can I just point out the incongruity of trusting me with your soul and not with my own equipment?"

"Heard and ignored. Get to work."

He exhales steadily. "Yu Mo Gui Gwai Fai Di Zao. Yu Mo Gui Gwai Fai Di Zao."

"Was that Uncle from Jackie Chan Ad-?"

"Concentrating here. It's a perfectly viable Taoist-."

"Fine. Sorry." I focus as well, expanding my awareness around My Bulwark. It takes a moment, but after a little effort I begin to recognise the patterns in the infinitely repeating sets of spells. Speak Plainly. And then… It's like they aren't infinite. I see it as one thing in infinite places, each…

That's actually quite beautiful.

"A-hah! Found something!"

"A way out?"

"No. But. Once I took a look at your connection to your daughter, I checked to see if there was anything else similar. And there is."

"Is there someone else here?"

"No, it looks like it's set to trigger automatically. If we're lucky, it's the thing which is connected to the system which triggers the isolation."

"And if we're unlucky?"

"Well… This place does have working toilets."

Ah. "Are there any other such triggers?"

"There are thousands of triggers. But it's the only one which looks like the one you made. It's probably a communication channel of some kind and I could spend the rest of… However long I've got until I die of thirst, trying to make sense of everything else."

"So the choice is..?"

"Unless you can subvert it in some way? Leave it on or turn it off."

Control The Communication!

I feel that part of the magic network become more… Quiescent, but that doesn't tell me what it does.

Answer Your God!

The link shimmers, telling me that it is working just as well as it can. That appears to be the limits of my ability.

"Turn it off."

I feel a slight tug as Mister Kipling uses my connection to cut the string.

"Notice anything?"

"No. Feel anything?"

A vague disquiet that my domain is now slightly smaller. "No. Let me know if-."

And I collapse to the floor as the whole network is yanked away from me.

back

Escalation 19

next

31st May

18:39 GMT

Ow. Really ow.

"What in the name of unlubricated buggery was that?"

"Ow." Feels like a chunk of my soul just got torn off. What the fuck was that?

"I can't feel the castle! Grayven, get up! Or die!"

"Eh." I plant my right palm on the floor and push myself into a slumping position. "What do you mean 'or die'? How would that help?"

"I could probably survive for weeks if I had your body to eat." I hear him get back to his feet and dust himself off. "Longer if I freed Derek and cut the Right Eye of Zoltec out of his chest with your short sword. Or I could just free him and ask him if he has any way to return the castle to normal space."

My right hand trembles as I attempt to come up to all fours. "That would seem to involve less risk."

"What happened to you?"

"He trifled with things that would not stand to be trifled with."

I don't recognise the voice. Male. Sounds… Older. Upper class, in a BBC Radio 4 continuity announcer sort of way. I orientate my head in his direction, seeing a black blob with a pale strip running from the top down to the middle. "I generally find that trifling is all a matter of who has the bigger spoon. And elbow power."

"Curious. Though I think that I will prove that owning the kitchen comes with the greater advantage."

I don't have time for this. "Mister Kipling, who is-?"

"Doom?" He sounds confused. "Cursitor Doom? But you're… Dead."

"No, merely taking an extended leave of absence. And what, pray tell, are you?"

I frown. Thinking is… Hard. "He's a wizard, given name of Mister Willoughby Kipling. And who are you?"

"As Mister Kipling surmised, I am Cursitor Doom. And you are intruding."

"Not my idea. I was heading… To a house in Berkshire. My portal was interrupted." Wait, why did I just-?

"And your presence here was enough to justify casting it loose from its moorings in the material world and setting it adrift in the subtle realms? What manner of man are you?"

"I'm one who doesn't usually-" I stagger to my feet, right fist swinging in the blob's direction. "-answer questions this readily."

My fist stops dead against thin air. I didn't feel any pressure, nothing to indicate that I'd encountered a barrier. My arm.. just.. doesn't.. move. Eh? Oh, I am not having good luck today.

"Violence. The first refuge of the brute. That does not speak well for-."

"Excuse me, I was kidnapped and had my eyes gouged out while allies of the one who did it attack my friends and family and why am I volunteering information like this?"

"You flooded the mystic energies of my castle with your essence. But you failed to take into account that I -as the owner of the castle- had a superior connection to it. And the castle was more than willing to hand over to me every mote of the power which you impressed upon it."

…

Oh shit.

"You're holding a chunk of my soul." Not an insurmountable problem. A soul is.. after all, basically a magic energy construct. I've still got more than enough energy to keep me going and an hour or two in the mana infuser should top me up to functional levels. But in the short term it's going to leave me weak and…

Oh.

A magic user has a chunk of my soul. That means that he can do pretty much whatever he likes to me, limited only by his own knowledge. Again, there are ways around it, but they mostly involve sitting in a magic circle while your allies hunt down and off the blighter responsible. In a situation like this…

"What do you want?"

"I left the leasehold on my home to an ally of mine, a Mister Crandell. I knew that he in turn had passed it on to a group of specialists in the employ of the British government. I see by the expression on your face that you know what I have it in my power to do to you. I have never been one for senseless violence, but I will have an answer, creature. Who and what are you?"

"My name is Grayven. I am an…" I briefly try to stop myself and my jaw starts spasming as the words try to escape. "A-p-p-pokkkkoliptian New God."

"New God? And what do you mean by that?"

"A god is a purposive arcane energy life form. A New God is flesh and energy both. I am man and god both."

"You came close to subverting the protections I placed upon this castle with brute force. I suppose that there may be something to your claim. What set you at odds with your hosts?"

"They discovered my plan to-" I can't stop but can I steer? "-detain and punish certain criminals in the British government." It seems that I can. Useful to know. "These criminals are well placed within the establishment, and were able to prevail upon Major Kelly to act against me."

"You have evidence?"

"Yes. Lots. Not all of it of flawless providence, but yes."

"And they have no other concerns about you?"

"Apparently the fact that I'm an alien is an issue for some."

"And, ah… If I may, sir?"

"Yes, Mister Kipling? You have something to add?"

"He also became a close associate of the President of America and amassed a group of exceedingly powerful henchmen. He's also a close associate of several known supervillains. There was concern that his influence might not be entirely legitimate, or natural. Aaaand he threatened to guillotine the entire royal family."

"No, just those in the immediate line of succession. Also, what happened to teamwork?"

"I no longer need you in order to escape." I feel him pat me on the right shoulder. "Good team up, chum."

Motherfu-.

"Mister Grayven?"

"My medium term objectives coincide rather well with the President's concerns. I also have a great deal of knowledge he lacks, and that makes me useful. Yes, I give people superpowers. That hardly makes me unique, and I'm giving those under my command direction, guidance and instruction in their use with the aim of serving the greater good of… Everyone, really. I'm trying to persuade the supervillains in question to use their fantastic abilities in more productive ways than simply lashing out at those who attract their ire. It's a work in progress. I don't use mind control as a long term thing; it's an uncomfortable reminder of Apokolips and I don't think that the advantages outweigh the costs. A lot of the royal family are implicated in the misdeeds I spoke of and… It was really more of a threat than a firm plan."

"What did you intend to do with these… People, whom you say have committed grave crimes?"

"Kill the worst, try and sentence the rest as soon as the judiciary has been cleansed of those involved."

"I assume that you don't have this evidence you spoke of on you?"

"I have some. Unfortunately, I keep it stored on my ring and your anti-weapon charms have disabled it. Mister.. Doom. I would be happy to share everything I have with you, but I need to return as soon as possible. My people are fighting for their lives, and with my soul in your hands you have all the leverage against me you need. Please."

"What aren't you telling me?"

"That the very moment the attack against them is over I will attempt to block your power over me."

"And?"

"And then take such actions as to ensure that it can't be used against me."

"And that is all?"

"There are thousands of things I haven't told you, but nothing immediately applicable."

"Very well then, Mister Grayven. We will return to the material world. You will be under my close supervision. I would advise that you not disappoint me."

back

Escalation 20

next

31st May

18:43 GMT

There's a sharp intake of breath from Mister Kipling. Was that it? My magic sense vanished with my spiritual force and I certainly can't see worth a damn. Father Box?

…

"Mister Doom, I'm going to need my weapons back. We need to get to Metropolis, and unless you can teleport us a boom tube would be-."

There's a sort of fizzing noise from my right side. OHSHITAMULET! I twist around, falling back to the ground as I try and grab it with my right hand. My fingers brush the surface and I flick it away just as quickly as I can.

There's a flickering from the far side of the room where I threw it, then a new blob appears.

"Mister Doom, I would very much like it if-"

"Nice try, alien. But whatever magic makes that knife of Sabbac's work on me, it doesn't stay worked."

"-we could leave now. Please!"

"Major Kelly."

"Cursitor Doom. Thank you for detaining the prisoner. I'll handle it from here."

"Major Kelly, I am afraid that I must question you concerning accusations made in my presence concerning the moral probity of the British government."

He's not…

"No formal accusations have been made, but investigations are continuing. This alien is sheltering a known murderer. Now, get out of my way and let me do my job. What is it, Kipling?"

"I'm not sure that it's the best idea to challenge a wizard in his own castle, Kelly."

"Major Kelly, I am not unfamiliar with the concept of a government conspiracy. Well intentioned as you may be, I am afraid that I cannot simply ignore testimony given to me under truth compulsion. Particularly when the one requesting the handover may well be implicated."

G-uh! "I have no specific evidence which suggests that Major Kelly is personally involved in the crimes which I am investigating. Though Chester's reports do strongly suggest that he has violated various national and international laws at the direction of the Home Secretary in the performance of his duties."

"Did you become a member of a British police or security service when I wasn't looking?"

"I'm afraid to say that I did not."

"Then I'm not going to concern myself with your opinion. Move or be moved."

I hear a series of rapid steps from the direction of Mister Kipling. Then a sort of woosh.

"Regrettable, but he will of course survive the fall. Mister Kipling, do you intend to join us or remain here?"

"Difficult question. I think on balance I'd rather stay. But if you could keep me appraised..?"

"That will depend on the result of my investigation. Mister Grayven? Your… Devices should-"

Ploong.

Corpsman, what just happened?

"-resume their function momentarily."

Ploong.

I know!

Plooong.

Yes, Yes. "Mister Doom, I… I can barely stand. Your magics only require the smallest part of my essence to cripple me completely. Could I please have at least a little back?"

"Very well, but I would caution you against the abuse of my generosity."

I wait for oh, that's better. I push myself up on all fours, then cautiously get my right foot under me and gently push upwards. There's a moment of dizziness and I hold my hands out to the sides to try and improve my balance. It passes, and I'm able to stand once again.

U-uhhh.

Right, quick check. Sword of the Fallen, check. Daiklave… Sticking out of the floor next to a gaping chasm. A gaping chasm whose bottom I can't see. Extra motivation -if any were needed- to be polite to Mister Doom. I pull the daiklave free and attach it to my back. Anything I'm forgetting? The illusion amulet, but that was broken and I don't think I'm in any position to make demands here. Any biological material I left down in the cell should have been destroyed by the fire…

I'm waiting for an answer, Corpsman!

Weapon nullification spell. Father Box, boom tube to the Centre for Paranormal Research in Metropolis. And see if you can do something about my eyes.

Ploong.

Alright. Sinestro?

Even now, your physiology resists me. A three dimensional map appears in my head. Better?

Yes, thank you. Father Box?

Boom!

Cursitor Doom regards the portal without much expression. "A curious technology."

I use Sinestrovision to check myself over. Bit of a mess. One quick wave of yellow and I'm presentable again, my eyes excepted. Doing my best to remain confident-looking I stride through the portal-

31st May

13:46 GMT -5

-and raise my ring to my right ear. "Grayven to everyone status re-"

"Master!"

"-port."

Miss Amane appears in front of me, looking somewhat dishevelled. "Master, where were you!? I was dreadfully worried!"

"Iname, where's Lynne?"

"Daddy!"

I turn, Sinestrovision showing me Lynne dashing down the corridor towards me, with…

Is that Mister Tawny? Yes, must be. The hulking Tiger-Man walks lightly down the corridor after her, his fur glowing faintly golden as it ripples in a nonexistent breeze. I kneel down and spread out my arms just in time for Lynne to run into my chest. We embrace.

And I breathe out.

A few seconds pass like that. I hate not being… Able to react to things.

"Grayven."

I tilt my head upwards in the direction of Mister Tawny's face. "Mister Tawny. That's a new look for you."

"I've been spending some time in the mana infuser." He holds out his right paw-hand, razor sharp claws extended. "A curious sensation. I think bipedalism could grow on me."

"Casualties?"

"We took a few hits, nothing to create a scene about. Tri-Man is being transported to Stryker's Island and the central cognition unit of the giant robot is being held by the Special Crimes Unit."

"What about the bystanders?"

"A few broken bones here and there. And various minor injuries. No deaths."

I frown. "No Superman?"

"Busy with something or other."

"The rest of the League?"

"Hawkman got in contact but Doctor Robbins told him that we had things in hand. Apparently there's been a bit of a spate of attacks today."

Behind me, Cursitor Doom walks through the boom tube, which shuts down behind him. Mister Tawny turns his head to look at him, then returns his attention to me. "Why don't we pop back to the mountain for a bit of a note-comparing session?"

back

Escalation 21

next

31st May

18:58 GMT

"Oh, come in, come in!"

Mayor Johnson waves at me from where he stands next to some kind of mobile notice board. Pinned to it is what appears to be a line drawing of London, with roads and railway lines clearly marked out. There are also fourteen coloured pins stuck in various places. Apparently satisfied, he turns away and ambles back towards the table.

"Thank you, Mister Mayor." I push the door open the rest of the way and walk into the meeting room. "Not the Assembly meeting room this time?"

He stops dead mid paper shuffle. "Oh gosh. Did you want to?"

"No. Um, probably? You.. may need to run my proposal by a few people, but I can't think of any problem with presenting it to you first." He nods, looking a little relieved. "Do you mind if I ask-" I point towards the board. "-what that's about?"

He grins. "Finally got the RMT b-." He cuts himself off and has a quick check around the room. "Blighters on the back foot. It's your doing, you know. You and that Sephtian fellow and your wonderful portals."

I pull out the chair opposite him and sit down. "I haven't kept up to date. Is it still going down well?"

"What, you mean the ones in Battersea?" He finishes getting his papers together and puts the pile on one side before pulling out his chair and sitting down on it. "They aren't attracting quite so many visitors as they did when they were first installed, but they're on the itinerary of every tourist who comes here. You know, I was thinking." He brushes his hair back slightly with his right hand. "Do you think the Battersea Power Plant would work as a sort of… Hub, for them?"

"I was rather assuming that you'd want to follow the existing underground route." I think for a moment. "Maybe? A hub-based system could work, but it would get pretty darn crowded at peak time with everyone going through the same area."

"Oh, no no no. I don't mean for the final system. But I was talking to the Atlantean UN Ambassador chappie about the delivery timelines, and their best guess is that it's going to take years to make as many as we need to replace the tube network." He waves his left arm at the board. "This is just supposed to be a temporary thing. You know, take some pressure off the network-."

I smile. "And put some on the RMT."

He leans forward slightly, inclining his head. "You didn't hear that from me."

I nod, taking a look at the board. "In that case, yes, depending on your predicted footfall. I'd be happy to put them in place when you're ready to go… Um, assuming that I'm on the planet at the time." I turn back to him. "No problem getting approval for the system?"

"Oh, you know, normal union hot air. Nothing substantive. PM's fine with it, our lawyers say that there's no legal challenge that could be mounted that would stand much chance of success. Once we're ready to go we're ready to go."

I nod, smiling. "I'm glad to hear it."

"So, um." He rubs his hands together in front of his chest. "What was it you wanted to talk about? Terrorists? Supervillains? Some sort of demonic portal opening up under the streets of London?" He grins jovially.

I shake my head. "No, I shut the portal down months ago. It's really more-."

"Wait, what? You did?" His eyes widen. "There actually was a portal?"

"Yes sir. But it's closed, sealed, and everything that came through was destroyed."

"Ah." He relaxes slightly. "That's a relief. So what was it?"

"I need a favour. It's a fairly big one, and I'm perfectly happy to compensate the City of London for any costs incurred."

"Alright. What do you want?"

"I want to fight a supervillain here. To be precise, I wish to lure them here in order to fight them here."

"Um." Boris frowns, tiling his head slightly to the right. "Why?"

"The supervillain in question is a Lich. An.. undead magic user of considerable power. Among the various feats of magic it can perform is teleportation. Now, I can.. jam most forms of technology based teleportation… But.. I.. can't reliably block magic teleportation. Fortunately, the chief shaman of London can."

"Chief… Shaman..?" He clicks his fingers. "Oh, don't tell it, it's that chap… What'shisname… Met him once…"

"His name is Ken Ondaate and since he works for Transport for London you might have met him on a picket line at some point. Otherwise, I rather doubt it."

"Oh." He frowns. "No, I was going completely in the wrong direction with that one."

"Mister Ondaate is an extremely powerful magic user, but his influence only extends as far as the city does. That's why-."

Boris holds up his right hand. "Sorry, just… Transport for London employs a wizard?"

W-? Oh. "Not in his capacity as a wizard. He does cleaning and basic maintenance. He just.. likes walking around under his city."

"Mpf." Boris shrugs with both hands. "Who am I to judge? I suppose he may as well do it here as in Tibet or somewhere." He puffs out his cheeks, then exhales. "And he can stop this Lich escaping?"

"Testing it.. is.. somewhat tricky, but we believe so."

"And then you can take it in a fight?"

"Again, I can't give a complete guarantee, but…" I nod. "Yes. My team and I believe that we can."

He nods. "And the risk of collateral damage?"

"The best information we have is that it will attempt to leave, and if unable to do so will focus on its attackers. If we're all dead, it should simply leave. The main problem will be from… Missed attacks. A directed energy attack or a projectile weapon keeps going until it hits something. That's why I want to sort the whole thing out in advance."

"There are a lot of people in London. If you're talking about evacuating a large area, that's…" He shakes his head.

"My current plan is to have the fight take place as much as possible in Hyde Park. That way, clearing out the immediate area shouldn't be too difficult."

"What about Richmond Park? It's far larger. If you could keep the combat zone down to the middle we might not have to evacuate anyone."

"Mister Ondaate's magic is stronger the closer towards the city centre he is. Richmond Park is sufficiently far away that he's not sure that he could maintain the spell." Boris nods. "I can provide mobile force field generators for the periphery of the park and I can set up all kinds of wards in advance, but I would advise that the buildings on the edge of the park be evacuated before the fight starts."

"Right. And how long do we have?"

"I'm aiming for the seventh of July."

"Oh." He smiles for a second. "I thought this was going to be a bit more imminent."

"This sort of thing needs a lot of planning."

"I'm glad you appreciate that."

"Beyond the evacuation, we'd need a police cordon keeping people away, road blocks and… I'd certainly appreciate it if there were paramedics on standby. Again, I'm obviously prepared to pay for all of it."

"That will help. What happens if you don't?"

"Don't… Fight him here?" Boris nods. "Then I'll have to fight him somewhere else. London is the best place I've been able to find, but we could do it somewhere else. The trap would be far less reliable though… I.. wouldn't like our chances of keeping the Lich contained. If it helps..?" He raises his eyebrows. "I realise that this has the capacity to go very badly wrong. I am willing not merely to cover the costs, but to compensate for the risk."

"In what way?"

"One week of my time. With a power ring, I can…"

"Chase down criminals?"

"Yes. I can also remove industrial contamination from brown field sites that no one is prepared to build on. Or I can skip the middleman and build cheap housing myself. Just give me the plans. If you're having trouble with the tunnels for HS Two, I can do that. And I understand that you had plans to build an island in the Thames Estuary to build an airport on? Just give me the plans and I'll do it. I don't usually do… Industrial things, but I'm willing to make an exception here. This is very important to me."

"Right." He nods again. "Is it alright if I discuss this with people?"

"I'd rather you kept the need-to-know down, but if you need to talk to someone, yes, that's completely fine."

"Okay then. Let me think about this, and we'll meet up again… Same time next week?"

I nod. "Thank you, Boris."

back

Escalation 22

next

31st May

13:17 GMT -6

I frown at the replay of the fight which took place in the Metropolis streets a few hours ago. "Something's not right here."

"I dunno, cock." Chester is leaning back in his chair, hands folded behind his head. "Feelin' pretty good about it meself."

His sister frowns slightly. "What d'you mean?"

Chester prevailed upon Doctor Robbins to open another tube for her once the fight got started. Apparently I had Mister Kipling sufficiently distracted that their attempt was successful. Miss Amane, Miss Selton, Mister Tawny and Doctor Robbins are also at the table. Miss Shimmer spent the whole incident in her laboratory. She didn't even realise that the mountain was in lockdown. Lynne is currently sitting on my lap and she isn't going to be moving for some time.

"Alright." I reach around my daughter to activate the holographic display. My people have monitoring equipment on them constantly, so reconstructing Chester's movements wasn't too difficult. "I stepped through the portal at twelve forty five-."

Doctor Robbins nods, narrowing her eyes slightly. "Without sending a drone through first. Or establishing contact by radio and asking Vera to come through."

Miss Amane scowls at her, but I nod. I'd like to have been able to spend some time in the mana infuser, but getting my eyes very nearly back in working condition has rather improved my outlook. "A valuable point, and one which you can work into the next SOP update. If I may continue?"

She gives me a curious look, then nods.

"A minute and a half later, Chester plonks himself down next to the man observing Iname and Miss Selton." Who is sitting at the far end of the table and trying not to look too intimidated. "Nothing on telepathy, so he tried conversation and managed to give away his own identity almost immediately. That prompted an immediate attack." The holographic image of Chester throws himself backwards as the other man lunges across the table, a pneumatic spike sprouting from his right hand and stabbing at my colleague. Chester finds his feet, spreads his arms wide and stares, his eyes glowing. His opponent crumbles into a mechanical heap. "Chester, for future reference, if you're not certain it's a robot, try leaving it in a shape which allows it to answer questions."

"It were one of Penny's, weren't it?"

"Probably, but you didn't know that."

"Fooker tries t'kill me, I'll kill him right back."

"Chester, I'm not saying 'don't cripple them', I'm just saying 'don't kill them before we can interrogate them if you can possibly avoid it'. If we don't know who we're fighting, we don't know who to strike back against."

"Dolmann's stuff is all remote operated. There wouldn't be anything t'salvage anyway."

"Lots of people build robots. The more intact they are, the better our chance of identifying them. Anyway." Chester looks for a moment like he wants to keep arguing the point, but he shrugs it off. "Moments later someone later identified as Jonathan Small -aka Tri-Man- flies through the front window of the shop containing Iname and Miss Selton."

We have surprisingly good footage of this part as well. Apparently, Metropolis is so well known for its superfights that shops invest in high quality cameras in the hope of getting sellable footage. I'm not sure whether to find that impressive or depressing. I am genuinely impressed by the speed at which Miss Amane reacts to their attacker, beaning him in the head with her handbag before grabbing a display stand to use as a weapon and signalling Doctor Robbins. The impact doesn't appear to hurt him, but being momentarily blinded causes him to veer off. Miss Selton reacts with wide-eyed astonishment before bringing her hands together in front of her and throwing a sheet of flame in Tri-Man's direction.

"A word of advice, Miss Selton? Creating broad swaths of fire in a room full of easily flammable objects should be avoided where at all possible."

"Um. Yeah. Okay."

"Short and precise ultra-hot bursts are the way to go when fighting for your life. Or running away."

"Ah." She glances at Chester. "You just told… Mister Black..?"

"Chester's a veteran professional. You're a teenaged civilian. I don't hold you to the same standards that I hold him." She nods. "Now, when Doctor Robbins gets the signal, she sends Mister Tawny and a group of G-Elves to the Centre for Paranormal Research-."

"Actually, I just meant to send the G-Elves." She glances at our newly-ascended Nishoba. "I didn't even realise that Mister Tawny could understand English."

"I am a fine example of a modern Tigris Sapien,

I'm combination Tiger, Man, and perhaps a little alien-."

"You don't need to prove it." Mister Tawny flicks his ears at her interruption. "I also sent a few drones, the ones with the advanced sensors. Those are what spotted the robot."

I nod. "I didn't see it pre-crushing. How big was it?"

Mister Tawny scratches his chin with the claw of his right index… Finger? "About eight metres, sole to scalp, and humanoid. I imagine that Ms Dolmann created it."

Vera nods. "The AI pilotin' it was The Brain. We used t' use it fer data analysis."

Chester exhales through his teeth. "Creepy fookin' thing."

"And the robot was flown into position by aerial drones -likewise invisible- which explains why no one crashed into it walking down busy Metropolis roads. And if we put the three images together-" I press a button on the holodisplay so that all three locations are showing, then play them from Chester sitting down. "-it looks like The Brain landed at the same time that Tri-Man launched his attack."

Vera nods. "So they both got their orders from Dolmann."

"While at the same time in Castle Doom I was busy pretending to be a child psychologist. So here's the question. Why? We knew that SHADE were interested in Miss Selton, but as far as anyone in…" I look at Vera. "Did your lot have a collective name?"

"Not realih."

"Kelly's Heroes knows, she's just one of many students at the Centre for Paranormal Research. Yes, one I've spoken to, but I've spoken to several and our first in-depth conversation was yesterday. That's not anything like enough time to build a giant robot, and I doubt that it's enough time to get one from the UK to the US either. Trying to snatch Lynne makes sense if they're trying to counter me, but why her?"

Doctor Robbins nods. "An informant? Do you think there's someone watching the Centre who tipped them off that you might be interested in her?"

"More likely a drone that removed itself once Dolmann realised that we could see through the invisibility, but it's possible. Except… I heard Kelly mention a 'Father T-' before Mister Kipling cut him off. And he mentioned 'friends'. The friends could be his superiors, but-."

"They could also be SHADE." Doctor Robbins turns to our tame Mancunians. "Either of you hear anything about your employers having anything to do with them?" A pair of shaking heads. "Okay, but so what? You think they made a deal with SHADE, trading information for Claire?"

"Could be. The other thing that bothers me is this." I shove the images of the ongoing fights between my people and Kelly's aside and open up a series of other pictures. "Kal-El doesn't respond to a fight in his own city because he's already dealing with a forest fire in California. Batman's been spending the day chasing around after someone called 'The Cluemaster' and apparently Doctor Poison has planted various toxic gasses in a number of cities and had the rest of the League rushing around to discover and defuse them. None of these cities-" I bring up a map. "-has a zeta tube, but each is within an hour's travelling distance of one that does. The League has zeta tubes in many major cities, and while their presence isn't exactly a secret, it isn't widely known. All that means that the Justice League has been fully occupied. We've been fully occupied and I strongly suspect that if I asked I'd find that my youthful former team mates were getting sent after Doctor Poison." I tap another button. "And there have been other crimes, keeping the attention of superheroes who aren't part of any larger groups. There isn't anything about today which suggests there's any reason for it to be a particularly high crime day, and the attackers don't have any known links."

"I was about to ask what's happening that no one with superpowers is around to see. But now I'm wondering who's looking after President Horne."

back

Escalation 23

next

31st May

13:25 GMT -6

I frown into the middle distance as the White House Chief of Staff gives me the bad news over the construct-phone. "Adrian, are you seriously telling me that you don't know where the President of the United States of America is?"

"I had a meeting with the House Minority Leader, he had a security briefing. I… I mean, he can't just have disappeared. What's got you so worried?"

"All of the members of the Justice League are currently occupied and a group associated with SHADE has had a go at killing me. Plus, as I told you, they've got form."

"In a parallel universe. That doesn't mean-. Oh, hang on. Yeah? Okay, that's great. Panic over, we've found him."

"'Found' as in 'spoken to in person', or 'found' as in 'heard a voice over a telephone."

"Over a skype set. She saw his face, and Julie's known him for years. I'm not going to bust in on him because you're having an attack of the paranoids. There are things I'm not authorised to hear."

"Ah. In that case, I'm sorry to have troubled you."

"It's fine. I mean, I'm glad you're concerned, but in this case there's… Really no problem."

I look at the drone images in front of me, showing me the White House where a frenetic Adrian Myer is shouting at members of the Secret Service and is very definitely not on the phone to me. The voice is perfect, the manner of speech… Whoever's doing this is very good.

Not only are they good, Corpsman, they are not feeling even the slightest trace of fear.

I raise my eyebrows at the other people in the room, Miss Shimmer and my domitor. I couldn't begin to understand the inscriptions they've scrawled upon the floor but there's a definite sense of something or other going on. Mister Doom is holding a pendulum over a map and I can see a slight tugging.

"Okay. Would you mind seeing if you can find room for me in the diary? Nothing too urgent, but there are a few things the President needs to be apprised of."

"Can it wait for your next weekly meeting? The next few days are going to be kind of busy for us here."

Mister Doom looks my way and gives me a single sharp nod.

"Ah… Yes, I suppose. I'll send a written report through normal channels, give you a chance to read up on it."

"I'll look forward to getting that. Goodbye, Mister Grayven."

My construct-phone beeps as he hangs up. "Mister Doom?"

"They are in Washington DC, but I am afraid that your belief that they would be ignorant of the arcane may have been excessively optimistic. The map gives their location as the Washington Monument, which is clearly impossible. If you have your drones perform a thorough search, you may still find a trace of him."

Father Box, boom tube.

Ploong.

A portal opens, and I hear a few gasps as passers by hurry to get out of the way. "Mister Doom, would you please accompany me?"

He takes hold of his pendulum and nods again. "Of course. If I were to get closer it would be far easier for me to locate him."

Miss Shimmer looks a little nervous. "Do you need me as well?"

I shake my head. "Not unless you've become an expert battlemage in the last few months. Thank you for your assistance."

"You're welcome." For a moment she looks like she wants to say something else, but then slightly lowers her head.

I raise my right hand to my ear as Mister Doom heads through the tube and looks around him. "Chester, Vera, Iname, immediate deployment. We're heading to the Washington Monument. Tawny, Jean, secondary targets." Then I stride through the tube myself, closing it behind me.

31st May

14:28 GMT -5

Surprisingly, my presence seems to calm the crowd somewhat. Sinestro, find him. I've invested too much-.

Corpsman.

Sorry. The people who tried to abduct my daughter are currently winning.

Better. I can't find him, but there does appear to be a chamber below us.

Right. "Mister Doom? Anything new?"

"I am very much afraid-" My three colleagues step out of thin air. "-not."

"Manchester Black, scan everything." He hesitates for a second, then nods, his eyes glowing a ghastly black-tinted green colour. And I focus. This was far easier with the orange ring, but I can still use my yellow ring to see fear. I know from looking in a mirror that it turns my eyes into glowing points of bright yellow light surrounded by darkness. Like Parallax itself were staring out of my face. A quick check that it's working -Chester fears powerlessness most strongly, Vera fears for him and Miss Amane fears failing me- and I look downwards.

Got you.

"No idea who grabbed the President, but I can feel the man himself clear as day." Chester's eyes normalise. "Right below us."

I look his way again, prompting him to frown as he sees my eyes. I blink them back to normal before nodding. "I agree."

Vera raises her eyebrows very slightly, shifting her forearms into their weapon configurations. "We going in by hush tube?"

Are we? Yes, of course. Tempting as making a giant yellow boring machine and burrowing through the ground is, whoever deposited him down there might just spot that and either kill him or-. Sinestro, teleport jam.

I was wondering when that would occur to you.

I've had a rough day. Father Box, open a hush tube close as you can to those coordinates and send in.. drone squadron two.

Ploong.

The reason I have subordinates is because they're useful. Yes, it's not exactly dramatic, but I'm standing next to a Human magician who is keeping a nontrivial amount of my soul in a small box. I'm feeling unusually cautious today.

Ploong.

Same to you. Alright, getting feedback from the drones. One President Horne, one… Muscular looking guy with a goatee. Looks familiar from somewhere. Sinestro, who is that man?

Doctor Joel Baines Cochin, Corpsman. I see that SHADE has high standards for its agents. He's a three-time Nobel Prize winner.

I've yet to see a man outthink my fists. I send the drones further in, moving around the subterranean workshop. Computers and.. a part-built robo-president. Excellent.

"One target, an unarmed scientist." I generate a construct of the room. "No real reason not to take him alive, but since he's probably going to be executed anyway don't strain yourselves. Ready?" I get nods. Father Box, hush tube.

I toss a flashbang through first, let it detonate, then step through myself.

back

Escalation 24

next

31st May

14:30 GMT -5

I form a fusion cannon on my right forearm and point it at Doctor Cochin, who blinks to clear his eyes. "Hands where I can see them, Doctor."

"Gra-." President Horne looks somewhat the worse for wear. His suit is scuffed and torn, his face is cut and a magnetic sensor balaclava has been put over his head. "Grayven?"

"I apologise for the delay, Mister President. These bastards had someone take a shot at my daughter. You alright?"

"I'll... I'll mend."

Chester and Vera appear behind Doctor Cochin at the far end of the workshop. The Doctor himself doesn't seem unduly troubled by this. Oh, he looks over his shoulders one after the other to confirm their relative position, but he doesn't move otherwise. If anything, he looks a little bored.

Hmm.

"Chester, crush his robot, would you?"

"Sure thing, cock." He raises his right hand melodramatically, eyes glowing. Then he makes a sort of slapping motion, the partially complete president-bot coming apart at the seams.

I keep staring at Doctor Cochin. I think he might have just sighed a little, but that's about it. "Doctor Joel Cochin, you're-."

"Baines."

"Excuse me?"

"Professionally. Baines Cochin. I long ago decided that 'Joel' was too plebeian for someone of my abilities."

"Alright. B-Man, you're under arrest, dawg." Still no real reaction. Not hopelessness… Something's off here. "Though I think it unlikely, you may find the courts more merciful if you-."

"Why do you insist on doing that?"

Never pass up an opportunity to learn something of your opponent. "Doing what?"

"You aren't a well-educated brute. You don't even really like playing up to it all that much. And yet, you insist on doing it. I can only assume that you do so to be tiresome. If we could perhaps skip ahead a little? I am perfectly capable of writing and memorising the computer code my automaton requires in my head. You are not distracting me significantly."

"Yeah… And what were you planning on running that code on?"

"The robot I build after I either kill you or detach your arms and legs and blind you. I haven't decided which as of yet." He raises his left hand to his shoulder, pointing at Vera. "Miss Black I will kill. Mister Black I will almost certainly leave alive. I think that his abilities will remain useful to me."

"Think I might not be all that keen on werkin' for yeh if yeh killed me sister."

Doctor Cochin ignores him. "Do you know what the worst thing about telepathy is, Mister Grayven?"

"Finding out how boring people really are?"

"Close, but I already knew that the Human race was -by and large- insipid. No, it's finding out what sort of people telepathy itself is wasted on. Chester Black is a telepath and telekinetic almost without-."

"Telekine."

For the first time I see something other than boredom in his expression. "Excuse me?"

"Telekine. A telekine is someone with telekinetic abilities who can perform feats of telekinesis. It's one of those irregular-."

The workbench hits me in the face too fast for me to create a construct barrier. I'm knocked back a half-step as a combination of environmental shield and divine resistance absorbs what has to be five hundred pounds of metal travelling at about ten metres per second. My vision is momentarily obscured but I clearly hear a fizz as Vera opens fire and Chester's grunt as he struggles to apply telekinetic force.

"You see, I doubt that I've spent more than-" I shove the workbench aside and raise my right arm, fusion cannon glowing. "-a few hours with 'telekinetic abilities'-" Doctor Cochin is standing in the middle of a whirling bubble of green-black power. What's Chester doing? "-in my life, and I can already use the ability better-" The shield buckles slightly where Chester points, Vera rapidly deciding to abandon her coilguns for plasma. "-than the infamous Chester Black."

Doctor Cochin's eyes glow green-black, and Chester grabs his head with both hands.

"Gah!"

"I wasn't expecting you to win, but this is weak." His eyes glow again, and I feel a slight pressure around my mental shields. "Ah, that's a little better." Vera's plasma fails to breach his telekinetic barrier, so with a snarl she switches to purple death rays. "Perhaps I should reintroduce myself, Mister Grayven. I am-." His face twitches as Vera's beams strike his side, passing through his telekinetic barrier as if it weren't there. "Excuse me." He turns away from me towards Vera, a wave of green-black energy connecting them briefly as she goes flying backwards with her forearms crumpled. "There." He turns back around. "I am Agent Paragon of SHADE. 'Paragon' as in, better than everyone else. I'm stronger than you. I'm a better telepath than Chester Black and-" His body blurs and Miss Amane pinwheels out of the air next to him. I generate a grav-chute construct to catch her. "-faster than Amane Misa. I'm also more intelligent than President Horne, but let's be frank: that's no great challenge."

"So, what?" Sinestro, status of Vera and Chester? "You're SHADE's supersoldier? I'll admit to being impressed with your abilities, but I can't see why you're working for them."

"You just had your power ring check the health of your subordinates."

O-kay, that's a little worrying. My mental shields are… Still there. Is he just good at reading people?

"And no. SHADE didn't make me. Fortuitous genetics made me the fine specimen of metahumanity you see here today."

Vera will need her arms replaced and Chester might well have concussion.

Beside me Miss Amane brings her warscythe to a guard position. Okay, Doctor Cochin is clearly the talkative sort. I need more information. Does he just happen to have speed and telepathy? I had been considering experimenting to see whether a cloned copy of Chester's brain would survive the Garrick Formula…

"So what can you do, exactly?"

"I combine all of the abilities of everyone within a radius of about five miles. Not robots, but everyone else goes into making me me. I was a little surprised that my abilities work on you… But becoming a god is only my due, really."

Hm. If he's using the intelligence of everyone within five miles it's probably far easier for him to learn telepathy than it is for Chester. And add to that my own divine aura of conquest boosting it…

I fire my fusion cannon while simultaneously firing cold fields at the air around him. "Iname, flee."

"Master, I-!"

"Now. Ten miles."

There's a crackle in the air as Doctor Cochin hits a cold field. "Ow!" If he's using my toughness as well-.

Ah fuck.

"Mister Doom, drain as much from me as you can without killing-" There's a wave of displaced air as Miss Amane runs. "-me."

There's another series of crackles as the cold fields are remotely triggered in a wave of green-black guh.

This time I'm ready. This time my environmental shield keeps me upright. But that doesn't seem to have slowed down Doctor Cochin anything like as much as I'd hoped that it would.

"Yes, yes. Remove my sources of power. Even yourself. But you see Mister Grayven, there are still hundreds of thousands of people within my range providing me with str-."

I take my radion blaster out of subspace and shoot him in the face.

back

Escalation 25

next

31st May

14:34 GMT -5

I drop the radion blaster to the floor to recharge and lunge forward as he staggers back from the shot. Radion blasters aren't just deadly poisonous to us New Gods, they hit every bit as hard as normal blasters as well. I pull my daiklave to my hand as he begins to recover. The flesh has been burnt from his face, his eyes are destroyed -hah!- and the bone of his jaw is clearly visible around his mouth. Something around here is making him very tough and it certainly isn't me at the moment.

Yellow filaments flick out ahead of me, triggering the last two cold fields between us and clearing the way for my melee assault. As I begin my swing his empty eye sockets flare the familiar green-black and a wave of that same light expands outwards from him in all directions, passing over my environmental shield with no noticeable effect. My daiklave comes around towards his neck and his head turns towards it, the glare from his eye holes intensifying as he tries to push it away.

Normally I'd just… Power through, but… Agh…

I plant my feet and generate construct armour around myself as I try to wrestle my daiklave forwards. I can feel him scrabbling around the outside of my mental shields, and while they're good, with my divine aura's reinforcement basically gone they aren't inviolable. Sinestro, psi-baffle.

Added. The pressure doesn't vanish, but it does fall away somewhat. Though I would warn you-.

That he still isn't even slightly afraid and the only good source of fear is President Horne. I know. But now that I've got-

I make a little progress forwards.

-his full-

My right hand goes to the pommel and I shove the point of the daiklave towards his green-black glowing face.

-attention…

"Drones, fire."

Five drones drop stealth around the room, their blasters and purple death rays orientating on Doctor Cochin. His wide-spread telekinetic field lets him feel them almost immediately, the small wavering of his concentration allowing me to get the point of my blade to within a centimetre of his chest. I held the drones back because he could destroy them easily with Chester's abilities. But now? Now he can't afford to divert his efforts from stopping my sword.

"Gggguuuuraaaaaahhh!"

Beams and bolts strike his back and his sides. Automatic targeting is much less accurate than shots made with my spiritual guidance but that's offline until Mister Doom re-empowers me. The punishment he's taken makes his concentration waver again, and I start to feel the first trickle of fear.

Then the tip of my daiklave strikes his chest, biting into the left side of his chest between the second and third rib and cutting neatly through the flesh. I don't know exactly how far his toughness is boosted by his powers but it isn't anything like tough enough to stop an x-ionised sword.

"RAAAAAGH!"

His jaw falls open, his partially destroyed tongue flaps and his flesh evaporates as his telekinetic field collapses and the shots from my drones strike home unimpeded. My daiklave shoots forwards and I'm forced to use my armour's strength to hold it back.

Then I smile, and slice left.

His head and shoulders fall to the floor while his body remains upright for a moment. The continued fire from the purple death rays means that the blood doesn't spurt but it does pump and flow at a considerable rate.

"Drones, cease fire and resume cloak."

The fire cuts out immediately and the drones vanish.

I look down at Doctor Cochin's head, then pull the radion blaster back into my right hand and obliterate it completely with a single shot.

"Drones, heal my companions." Revitalising purple light plays over Chester and Vera. Chester stirs to life while Vera raises her ruined arms slightly and curses under her breath. "Don't move. Some of the cold fields are still active." I dismiss my construct armour and raise my right hand to my ear. "Sterling work, Mister Doom. Now, please restore me."

"Is the President well?"

I turn to where President Horne is perking up slightly under the influence of the purple healing ray. "He's been better, but nothing that a little rest won't cure."

"Very well. I should warn you that the loss in transition-."

"Don't worry about it. I'm already planning to spend tomorrow sitting on the mana infuser and doing as little as possible."

"As you wish."

I wait a moment and oh that's better. Now to-.

"Bit slow off the mark, weren't you?"

I half turn, making momentary eye contact with Vera. "I'm afraid that I'm the thinky type. We can go over what you want with your replacement prosthesis tomorrow."

"Oh, aye." She maintains eye contact for a moment, then turns to her recumbent brother. She takes two steps towards Chester and then nudges him with her right boot. "Oop you get, lazybones."

"Fukof."

I walk over to President Horne, stowing my daiklave on my back and my radion blaster in subspace as I do so. "Feeling better, sir?"

"Much." He nods. "Thank you."

I reach around his head, pull his balaclava up over his head and take a careful look at him. Sinestro?

No implants that I can detect. No bacterial, viral or nanotech agents. Some drug residue but the purple healing ray has dealt with it.

Good show. I reach down to the clamps holding his arms in place and pull them apart. "Soon have you out, sir."

"My family, are my family safe?"

"Their Secret Service bodyguard is presently being augmented by my people. Little gets past the G-Gnomes." I kneel and rip the clamps off his legs. "Can you walk?"

"Yeah, ah…" He staggers free, stretching his legs and trying to bring them back to life. "What about the Republicans?"

Huh? "I.. doubt they were involved, sir. He clearly said-."

"No, they… He said, they only bothered picking me up because they were starting to think I could win the election next year. Which means they're probably going to target the potential Republican nominees. And if they're ready to grab me out of the White House I can't think of a reason for them to wait."

"Mister President, I have finite resources. I need to see you safe first." But he's got a point. Trying to arrest and dissect political opponents is awkward at the best of times. I stand, raising my right hand to my ear. "Doctor Robbins, send Miss Iname and groups of Genomorphs to the locations of the top… Three? People most likely to be the Republican candidates for the White House next year. Senator Knight and… What'stheirnames…"

"Already on it."

"Good." I lower my hand. "Father Box, boom tube to the Oval Office."

"Ploong."

President Horne looks puzzled. "What's a 'boom-'?"

BANG!

He jerks back, shielding his face with his right hand. "Aren't those usually quieter?"

"The President got kidnapped. Now is not the time to take the Secret Service by surprise."

"I suppose not. Well?"

I put construct armour around him before stepping through the portal. Six agents point their side arms at me. "Chill out, guys. Just me."

"Grayven!" Mister Myer emerges from behind the huddle. "Have you found-?"

"I'm okay, Adrian." President Horne walks through the boom tube. "Everyone, stand down." The guns are lowered, though the agents look decidedly unhappy with the situation. "Patrick." He looks at one of the agents. "The room where I was being held is on the other side of-" He glances back. "-that thing, along with the remains of my captor. Secure it."

"Yes sir."

Mister Myer hurries up to him as the Secret Service personnel dash past. "Jon, let me get you a doctor. You should-."

President Horne holds up his right hand to ward him off. "I'm fine, Adrian. I'm fine. What I want you to do for me is get a press conference assembled. I need to address the American people."

Myer looks at him sceptically. "Are you.. sure you-?"

"Never surer. Get it done."

back

Escalation 26

next

31st May

15:04 GMT -5

I lean down slightly-. I check our immediate surroundings and crouch, bringing my mouth down to roughly the level of Mister Myer's ear. "Mister Myer, are you sure this is… Really a good idea?"

He watches as members of President Horne's media relations team scurry around to get things ready for his speech. His Press Secretary -a woman named Susan Elseth- appears to have given up on trying to dissuade him and is alternating between pacing and biting her right thumbnail. "Maybe. Maybe not." He tilts his head to the left for a moment. "And call me Adrian."

"Okay… Adrian… I ask because I know Humans-."

He look at me with his eyebrows slightly raised. "I know you don't quite get Human social mores, but that's usually the point where you'd tell me your first name."

I'm pretty sure that this isn't how press conferences are supposed to be organised. Horne himself is off in an office somewhere with Adrian's deputy.

"Apokoliptians don't go in for the personal name/family name name structure. Grayven is the entirety of my name." I don't know what's going to happen. That.. bothers me. "My sister in law took the second part of my brother's name as a family name when they moved to Earth, but that was just to help with fitting in."

"Oh, I hadn't realised. So your daughter is..?"

"Lynne Wayland. She kept her original name after I adopted her. Look, what exactly is the President planning?"

He looks away, nodding to himself. "You, ah… You actually study Jon's campaign? Any of his elections?"

"No. But I've invested quite a lot of time in-."

"You don't hear me complaining about you not giving us any idea what you were planning on saying when you got your Presidential Medal of Freedom. That whole 'trials in absentia' thing gave me a lot of work."

"Yes, I get that. And… I'm very nearly sorry. But I'm asking you-."

He chuckles under his breath. "Sorry. Oh… Jon… Jon's a good friend of mine. We've know each other for decades. He's a good man, a good administrator. But I'll admit that I don't think anyone's ever accused him of having the sort of presence or charisma a really great statesman has." He nods to himself. "Just occasionally, though-."

He cuts himself off as President Horne marches towards us down the corridor, Secret Service detail hurrying along behind him. "Adrian, they ready for me?"

"Yes sir."

The President looks up at me. "How are the loyal opposition?"

"Knight wants to talk to you now. The others are accepting my protection at face value."

He nods. "Bring Knight here, I'll talk to him right after this."

"Yes, Mister President. May I ask-?"

He smiles. "Keep watching. I'll think you'll like what I have to say."

"Yes, but-." I hesitantly raise my right hand as he brushes me off and walks past me, members of the press corps jumping to their feet as he comes into view and heads to the podium.

Oh, I am off my game. I should have been able to encourage him to at least give me a clue with my spiritual force… No. I need to settle things with Doom before I try that again.

President Horne takes his place and looks around the room at the press corps, making eye contact with a few and giving the occasional nod. "Ladies and Gentlemen of the press, everyone tuned in at home… Thank you for getting together on such short notice. There are a few things I'd like to talk to you about today, but I think the first item I need to tell you about is that a little over three hours ago I was kidnapped in broad daylight from this very building by a super powered criminal."

There are a few gasps, but it isn't the first time a President has been targeted by a supervillain.

"As best as the Secret Service and my associate Mister Grayven have been able to determine, his intent was to copy my brain and then replace me with a robot duplicate. The separation of powers means that taking control of the Oval Office wouldn't be quite enough to suborn the government of America, but it would have allowed his sponsors to advance their agenda contrary to the interests and the democratically expressed will of the American people."

"And perhaps the worst part of what happened is that this wasn't a costumed lunatic. No, this was something far worse. This action to circumvent our democracy was organised and funded by a federal agency." Eyes widen. "I don't know how many of you remember the All Star Squadron. It was the government run superhero organization set up during World War Two to try and make a capable but disparate group of men and women into something we could use to beat the Nazis and the Japanese. To that end, the War Office brought together not just superheroes but intelligence people and experts in unconventional warfare, people whose job it was to make sure our people were where they needed to be and knew what they needed to know in order to get the job done. After the war, that part of the organisation became a federal agency called SHADE, the Super Human Advanced Defence Executive. Even today, they train and educate people throughout federal and state law enforcement in how to handle metahumans and supervillains."

"And it's those sons of bitches that just tried to have me killed."

President Horne takes a moment to gather his thoughts, his eyes drifting over the assembled news crews. "You know... I always figured that if something like this happened, it would be the NSA. Guess I owe those guys an apology."

I raise my right hand to my ear. "Grayven to Doctor Robbins. Hush tube Senator Knight to my position at your discretion."

"Will do, Gray. I'll be happy to stop listening to him moaning at the Genomorphs."

"…imagine what they hoped to gain by doing this, but the best I've been able to guess is that they think that there's something lacking in my response to recent superhuman attacks. Hesitancy is something I've been accused of on more than one occasion, and it's an accusation that I think it's time I addressed."

"Some members of the Republican party… Even some members of my own party, accused me of doing nothing in the aftermath of the Roanoke Island incident. And more than a few took the opportunity to run their mouths off about what they would have done, or what I was doing wrong. And it's true, I did not come up with any new policy initiative in the immediate aftermath. You want to know why? The truth is, not only did I not know the first thing about magic but hardly anyone in the US federal government knows anything about it. There was a truly astonishing gap in our knowledge and therefore in our ability to defend ourselves. What I was doing -rather than blowing a whole lot of hot air- was reaching out to our allies in Atlantis and to those Americans who do know something about the subject so that I could form informed policy."

"While I was doing that, Senator Knight brought forward a Bill that would have criminalized the few people in this country capable of helping us prevent anything like that happening again without doing a single thing to impede our enemies. And I seem to recall that he got an awful lot of good press out of it." Senator Knight walks out of a hush tube just in front of me, quickly orientating himself towards the stage. "A Bill which was brought up by King Orin during our discussions as a matter of considerable concern to his people, because virtually every Atlantean is a magic user. And as far as American citizens go… For God's sake, you don't close the nuclear missile gap by arresting nuclear physicists or rocket scientists. You close it by putting them to work for you."

Senator Knight's eyes widen. "Oh, you God damned…"

"And as for Senator Cray's idea of conscripting US superheroes… Senator, you're welcome to try serving Superman draft papers if you like, but this administration will have no part in it."

"What this administration will do is hunt down those criminals lurking in our government institutions. What this administration will do is bring forward laws that will allow law enforcement officials to use greater degrees of force in apprehending or if necessary killing super powered criminals. What this administration will do is create a new federal agency with a remit to study and where appropriate act against super powered threats to the citizens of this country. And in all these things this administration will be guided by evidence, not by rumor or fear-mongering."

"As of right now, SHADE no longer exists. Every federal agent acting under SHADE's authority now has a warrant out for their arrest. I will say to all those agents not involved in the conspiracy to replace me: hand yourselves in. You will be interviewed and then most likely released immediately. And to SHADE's senior employees, those who intentionally evaded congressional oversight for decades and just tried to kill their Commander-in-Chief… We're coming for you. And there isn't going to be any place where you can hide."

back

Escalation 27

next

31st May

17:15 GMT -5

Mister Doom sets down the datapad he was reading from, his mouth turned down in distaste. "To think that they have fallen so far."

I take a moment to regard him across the table. "Are you satisfied as to the authenticity of the information?"

He looks directly at me. "Are you?"

"Yes, for the most-." Grh. "Could you… Not do that, please?"

"Hm." He picks up the pad again. "I see that a good deal of this was acquired from the League of Shadows."

"Yes."

"I have -upon occasion- had dealings with them myself. How would you characterise your relationship with them?"

I pause for a half-moment. No compulsion effect. "Thank you." A slight dip of his eyes. "I have a good working relationship with Ra's al Ghul and I am romantically involved with a serving Shadow. We're trying to-."

His eyes narrow. "You have a good… Working… I would like an explanation for that."

I briefly consider answering 'she needed the training and stayed on because she likes the work environment', but decide against it. "Ra's al Ghul makes money through murder, extortion and the selling of intelligence. So -more or less- do most nation states. More to the point, he has a longer term view than most rulers. He and I are part of an alliance which aims to improve the lot of Human civilisation. Part of our work requires the sorts of operatives that he commands. Not an ideal situation, obviously, but I hope to gradually encourage him to redirect his energies towards the less malevolent part of his work."

"The League of Shadows has been a pestilence on this world for over two hundred years."

"So I kill Ra's, and every League of Shadows cell on the planet goes underground. Someone grabs one of his hair follicles and sticks it in a Lazarus Pit. I lose him as a source and interrupt League operations hardly at all. Ra's voluntarily signed up with an organisation that is finally kick-starting the schizo tech revolution this planet has been crying out for for seventy years. I've even got plans for America's first magic school, and after today I think I can count on President Horne's support. I can't reliably stop him, but by establishing a rapport I can channel him."

"…had enough thinking time." The door to the meeting room is shoved open and Chester storms through. "Well?" He stares at me, throwing up his hands. "We goin' and getting' the bastards or what?"

I meet his stare calmly. "Or what."

"Are you serious? After everythin' that happened today, you're just gonna let them get away with it?"

"Chester, we weren't acting because we lack the information necessary to create a replacement government. Has anything that happened today-"

"The fook is your-"

"-changed that?"

"-problem!" He takes a right turn and starts pacing. "They try killin' me? Fine, just another rosy day at the office." He swivels sharply, facing me again. "But they went aftah Lynne! A school fulla kids! In America, which I'm shower is gunna go down great with your pal Jon Horne. What-?"

"Chester." I point to the far side of the room.

"What?" He frowns, looking around. "You playin' with dolls now?"

"Those are the original robots used by Eric Dolmann. I acquired them from Penny Dolmann's home half an hour ago. In their place, I left a robotic representation of her. Turn the key in the back and it bleeds from every orifice before exploding."

"'s start." He turns back around. "But what else?"

"Chester, I am completely furious about what happened. But fundamentally, nothing has changed except that the opposition have lost some resources. And before too long they will lose their allies in SHADE as well."

Most SHADE-certified agents responded to President Horne's edict almost immediately. Might take a while to process them, but as General Lane told me: most of them didn't know that SHADE was an actual organisation. Those who did and tried going to ground will be brought in presently.

Those conversations will be less polite.

"I am simply not prepared to send a civilised country collapsing into anarchy because one particular offence was personal. The timetable remains in effect. Continue your work. Once I have completed Vera's new arms I will send her to join you once more. Once you have completed your task, then we will move against our adversaries directly."

He tilts his head noticeably to the left, continuing to stare at me. "Are y-? Fine. Fine." He waves his right arm dismissively in my general direction and then he trudges back out of the door. He slams it behind him as he leaves.

I watch the door for a moment before during back to Mister Doom. "Is there anything else you would like to ask?"

"No, I don't believe so." He rises, pushing back his chair as he does so. "I do not trust you, Mister Grayven. But I find that I struggle to strongly disagree with those things that you have done to date. And I doubt that anyone else is engaged in the work of restoring the government of Britain to moral probity as you intend to. I will continue to watch you, however. If I detect any sign that your associates are converting you to their methods more than you are converting them to yours… You may well imagine what I will do."

"No."

His eyebrows rise very slightly. "Excuse me?"

"I am not prepared to be brought into line with threats. You just told me that you agree with what I'm doing. Do you make a habit of threatening your allies?"

"I would hardly describe us as that."

"Why ever not? In fact, why are you not volunteering to provide me with information yourself? The more I learn, the faster and more precisely I can act. The lower the quantity of collateral damage."

"Because I have been absent from this world for some time. Before I take such a risk, I would learn more about you and those whom you describe as your friends. I have no desire to unseat one corrupt establishment merely to replace it with another."

"Then join in. You can keep a better watch on me standing next to me than you can from a castle that is even now being occupied by armed police. And once you have assured yourself that I am genuine, you would be better placed to shape policy to something that is… Appropriately non-villainous."

"That is…" He bows his head and narrows his eyes as he considers the suggestion. "Not something I will reject out of hand, but… No, not yet." He looks up again. "But in the spirit of future cooperation, would you be so good as to open a portal that would return me to my customary abode? I believe that I have uninvited guests to evict."

"Certainly. Just as soon as you return the rest of my soul." His face tightens slightly. "I know perfectly well that knowing its shape gives you very nearly as many options for acting against me as holding it. But you having it diminishes me, makes me less capable. Apokoliptian technology works on the spiritual strength of the one wielding it. You taking a tough line on this could get me and mine killed. Not to mention the fact that it's damn rude."

He regards me passively for a moment. "I.. suppose that you may have a point. Very well." He raises his right hand and ah! Back in business! "But I will warn you: having granted you this reprieve I will now take any backsliding on your part as a personal insult."

I smile. "Then I will avoid giving you cause. Father Box, if you would?"

"Ploong."

The hole in space opens and Cursitor Doom sweeps majestically through it before it closes down.

I wait for a moment, then slip my new goggles over my eyes and check the area. Nothing that I can see. Sinestro?

So far as I can determine, Corpsman, the area is clear.

Good good. I rise and head for the door, gently pushing it open and walking out.

back

Escalation 28

next

31st May

17:22 GMT -5

Chester falls in behind me as I walk in the direction of my secure communications room. "You all back in full werkin' order, then?"

"More or less. I didn't get back everything, but the reduction in power isn't anything significant."

He doesn't say anything for a moment. "Well?"

"Thank you, Chester. Very well done." I smile what I suspect is a moderately sinister smile. "Completely in line with your established character. I'm not sure how critical it was in convincing him that my actions were rational and sagacious, but I'm sure it played a part."

"Now that's somethin' I didn't get in me last job."

"What?"

"People sayin' 'thank you'. I mean, I'm still not exactly jumpin' fer joy about not going in and toppin' the wankers right now, but I get what you were sayin'."

"Good man."

"Still wanna know what took you so long with that Paragon prat."

I place my hand against the palm scanner leading to the Light's internal communication chamber. "I didn't know the full extent of his abilities and as far as I could tell your lives weren't immediately in danger. While it was generous of him to volunteer information about his capabilities, I couldn't just assume that he was telling the truth. Incidentally-" I turn my head to look at him. "-you should be certain to never do that."

"No fookin' fear, cock."

"In addition, my normal… Instincts, were absent due to what Mister Doom had done to me. If I left you hanging as a result, I apologise."

"To tell the truth, I'm more pissed off about him beatin' me at me own game. You wouldn't know any way t' help with that, by any chance?"

"I am happy to make the Awakening available to you. You may wish to train with the G-Gnomes. If so, consult Jean. There are… Amplification devices I could build for you, but most of the best utilise Apokoliptian technology. Files are on the database. Work out exactly what you want and I'll be only too happy to put it together for you."

"Eh, I'll take a gandeh." He nods at the door. "What you need to talk to the old Secret Society a' Super Villains about?"

"It's not easy to organise the infamously fractious supervillain fraternity to act in concert. Even just making the contacts you'd need to pay them to do it is a task fraught with difficulty. Now, SHADE might have done it using salvaged equipment, Doctor Cochin's power duplication and their own contacts… But the other group who could..?"

Chester frowns. "Your pals? What for?"

"Damned if I know, but I've been burned before for not checking what they were up to and I'm not about to do it again. Do you want anything else?"

"Nah. I'll go an' see how Vera's doin'."

I nod, then return my attention to the door. A quick tap and the force fields disengage and the bars unbar, allowing the door to fold away into subspace. I slowly walk into the room, the system already acknowledging my presence. Lights go from 'off' to 'conspiratorially dim' and the monitors which will show the faces of my fellow Light members activate.

"Mister Grayven. It is good to see you again."

Brain's already here then. I wonder if he ever leaves? Certainly, he could just leave his connection live at all times. His chassis isn't really designed for moving around a lot. "Brain. Hope you're keeping well." Wonder if he named himself after the other one? The Brain was built in nineteen sixty six, and when I finally got access to his university records I found that he was born in seventy eight, so… Might have done.

"Oh, like this, like that. I had until recently been involved in untangling the geometry of a parallel universe somewhat unlike this one. That it defied my analysis was a source of some frustration, given the timeline… But, I believe that I am making progress."

"Alien geometries aren't really my thing, but if there's anything I can help with..?"

"Perhaps I should say no more until we are all-" Savage's monitor comes on, followed a moment later by the one belonging to Ra's. "-fully assembled."

"Savage. Ra's. I apologise for the short notice."

"That is quite alright, Grayven." Savage looks… Happy. Hopefully that just means that someone's delivered him a new truckload of underage baboons, but I'm always a little nervous when Captain Caveman looks pleased about something. "With matters advancing, it is important to ensure that all members of the Light are on the same page."

Ra's' face appears to be in neutral at the moment. I give him a nod as the screen for Lex comes on and his eyes flick in the direction of each screen as he confirms who's already here. I nod to him as well -getting one in return- then focus my attention on the screen for Mordru.

I give him twelve seconds. "Our.. Noble Friend does know how to work-?" Mordru's face appears, though he doesn't appear to have actually turned the thing on. Some sort of communication spell using the technological link as an arcane one. Sort of impressive that he can do it while also showing a degree of laziness that he hasn't bothered to learn to use the same technology as the rest of us. A possible weakness?

"Now then, Grayven." Savage leans forwards slightly. "What is it that you wish to discuss?"

"Today's attacks across America. SHADE's being blamed, but I wanted to make sure that it wasn't us before I perjured myself." Lex chuckles quietly, bowing his head. "So, was it?"

Savage nods. "I felt that it would be useful if the Justice League were fully engaged while I saw to certain matters."

I nod. I would like it if someday he managed to surpass my expectations in a good way. "Business or pleasure?"

"Both."

Of course it was. I don't roll my eyes. "I misspoke. Light business or personal business?"

"The final destruction of the Justice League."

…

I fan out my hands. "Did I miss a meeting?"

"No, Gra-."

"Because I understood that becoming a member of the Light meant that I got told what was happening. I don't remember us discussing killing the Justice League in concrete terms. I certainly don't remember voting on it. So what happened?"

At least Savage isn't smiling any longer. "The matter was decided upon before you joined us. Your being here does grant a certain… Flexibility that did not exist before."

"For future reference, Savage, I expect to be notified of plans I'm involved in."

"The original version did not involve you. The League would simply be drawn to the battleground of our choosing and eliminated. Without the protection of the Earth's premier super heroes, the nations of mankind would be forced to look to their own protections. Now, an alternative has presented itself."

Eliminated? A nuclear weapon of sufficient yield would probably do it, but the League don't habitually gather in the same place on Earth. "And what would that be?"

"That we may have our cake and eat it, Mister Grayven." I switch my attention to Brain. "Your argument that at the Earth's current level of technology certain threats are best met by superheroes was most convincing. In the original plan, we would have simply… Taken the risk. But… You have excellent relations with the governments of both China and the United States. Worldwide, you are a very popular man."

Lex nods. "We have one or two other operatives in mind, but the ideal outcome for us is for the entire League to die. You would then replace them with a new team, working in accordance with guidelines set by the Light."

"And how exactly are we planning on killing the Justice League?"

"Grayven."

I don't like the way Mordru is grinning.

"Have you ever heard of the King of Tears?"

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NEXT CHAPTER

Undermined

BACK

Undermined 1

next

Undermined

10th June

14:57 GMT -5

Ted leans closer to me as we wait off-stage.

"We're good to go, right?"

I take a moment to look at one of the television screens showing the crowd of people gathered in front of the stage set up outside New York's newest power plant. Quite a lot of people. Journalists and technology correspondents mostly, and a few people who were invited specifically. I gave Boris a lift here at his request, and I think I've got an inkling that a station like this will be on his wish list. Diana's here as well as a show of support for me and my work and Alan arm-twisted an invitation from someone at his old agency. Just about everyone else I know is either at school or at work.

"Ted, the only thing that I can check which you can't is the generators themselves."

"Yeah, I know. Why do you think I'm so worried? Usually before one of these presentations I keep myself busy checking everything but this place is so simple that I've got nothing to do."

"You check everything?"

"Uh-huh."

"Don't you… Own the company?"

"Technically the shareholders do." He sets his jaw to the side as he thinks about it. "Though I have been thinking of buying back an absolute majority. Y'know, given the work we're doing… Just in case some of them turn out to be evil or something."

"Stupid worries me more than evil, but whatever you think best." Naturally, I've bought enough KordTech shares that we command an absolute majority between us. He's right; given the work we're doing, anything less would be foolish. Having Lex Luthor or Edwin Alva or… Some other business villain trying to stick their oar in would be irritating. I haven't told him because I don't want to look like I'm muscling in on his thing. Also… Because -and I don't like to think this- at some point I might need to nudge him out. Or at least into a different role. He really isn't temperamentally inclined to let the people beneath him do their jobs. In a small company, that's great. In a large company… Lex Luthor doesn't spend time in the flipping post room because he worries about falling out of touch.

Agh, and I feel bad about doing it. He's such a nice guy.

"You guys about ready?" Mayor Bloomberg raises his eyebrows slightly as he looks at us. "Because at this point it's kind of late not to be."

Last check… "Everything's ready to go, sir. The system functions as designed."

"I hope you don't mind me not cutting the city off from the nation's power supply just yet, Orange Lantern."

"Oh no, sir. To be honest…" I look at the screens again. "I'm half-expecting a supervillain attack the moment you throw the switch."

This whole thing has actually gone okay, potential supervillain threat notwithstanding. I mean, our project to rewire New York is nothing like complete. The substations are all done, but there are still people with houses covered in lead paint so I'm not exactly surprised that we haven't gotten around to rewiring everyone's homes in the time available to us. But we do have an agreement from the mayor that all future wiring will be made from Jovium and since we're the only source of the stuff that pretty much gives us a monopoly. All in all, I'm feeling pretty upbeat about this whole thing.

"Is there some information you didn't pass on to the New York Police Department?"

Ted looks confused. "How would that help?" Mayor Bloomberg looks mildly affronted. "I mean, Orange Lantern's here and Wonder Woman's in the audience. And there are already police all around."

There were a few protests around the site as Ted's people put it together, mostly amateur physicists who want me to believe they know anything about the Bleed and its potential dangers. Reminds me a bit about the people who went to court to try and stop the Large Hadron Collider being turned on in the belief that it stood a significant chance of creating a black hole. A few were families of people employed in conventional energy generation protesting about the jobs we'll be destroying. I don't feel bad about coal, gas or oil based production, but harming research into other forms of power does rather go against my stated aims.

"No, Mister Mayor. It's just that in my line of work supervillains tend to just… Show up. Um, we're ready when you are."

Mayor Bloomberg huffs. "You realise that I'm going to be looking over my shoulder for supervillains the whole time now?"

I shake my head. "I'm probably just being paranoid, sir." Um. "But just in case." I take a small portable force field generator and hand it to him. "You may want to clip this onto your jacket."

"A-?" He stares at me for a moment, before attaching it to his lapel. "Alright then. I think we're about ready to start."

I nod, and lead the way out onto the stage. No flashes. Ah, to have been alive in the age of flash photography. I still remember the little flash cube thing I used on my first camera. My last camera too, as it happened. Never could be bothered to put them in albums. Think I ended up throwing the lot out.

I stop at the podium emblazoned with the KordTech logo and look out at the crowd, making a point of making eye contact with Alan and Diana. Then I return my gaze to the approximate middle of the crowd. "Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for coming. It's, ah… It's been a little under five months since I announced that I was getting into the power generation business. A little less than that since Mayor Bloomberg was kind enough to allow us to use New York City as the first location to build one of these. And in a minute or so, you'll be able to see the system formally connected to the New York electrical grid."

No supervillains as yet. Promising.

"Now, I've been hearing…" I look theatrically over at where the protestors are standing at the far side of the fence. "One or two complaints at my use of alien technology to… One moment." I pull a copy of the Washington Post out of subspace and make sure the title piece is visible as I rifle through it until I come to the interview. "'Unfairly distort the energy supply market in this country, and reduce the ability of other parties to remain competitive.'" I shrug theatrically, paper in hand. "I'm sorry, I thought we were running businesses in a free market economy here! I didn't realise I was supposed to hobble myself so you can keep doing what you've been doing for the last… Hundred years? Human civilisation is crying out for better sources of energy. I'm not stopping anyone else doing what I've done. But I sure hope I'm stopping people who were planning on sitting on their arses. Ah." I switch my hands to a 'hold on' position. "I'm sorry, American audience. Their asses. Asses."

That gets a small laugh.

"Innovate or… Expect to go out of business. Part of the reason why I got involved in building this place is so that I can light a fire under the energy sector. And every year they don't come up with something that will let them compete, I'll open more. Our order book will be full for the foreseeable future. Get to work. Innovate. You've had decades and the most exciting thing that's happened recently is that you've learned to get oil out of sand." I nod a couple of times. "Very twenty first century. Sand… Really makes me feel space aged."

"We're only going to be providing part of New York's power for the next four months while we assure people that there aren't any problems with the system. After that, we'll be taking over all power supply for the whole city… And maybe a little beyond that. Anyone living in that area can expect to see their bills cut to one tenth, and we'll be investing that profit into charge points for electrical cars. Because it's going to be cheaper to fill up a battery than a petrol…" I frown. "Hang on, I have an app for this." I pull out my phone and press a few buttons. "Gas, yes, because it's a liquid and that makes perfect sense. Electricity will be a lot cheaper than gas."

I think I just saw Boris write something in his notebook.

"I'm not doing this for the money. Not only am I rich already, I don't get paid for this. Not one penny of the profit for this enterprise comes to me. I'm doing this in an attempt to kick start Human technological progress. To make sure that we have a tech-base fit for a twenty-first century space age civilisation. I don't want this to be a.. just-me thing." I bring my hands to my chest. "That defeats the object. I want lots of people to try and do the sorts of thing that I am. Human scientists with the knowledge power companies need in order to keep up with me are out there. So, to my competitors… Go find them."

"And now, to press the big red button and connect us to the New York power grid, please give a warm welcome to Mayor Bloomberg!"

back

Undermined 2

next

10th June

16:19 GMT -5

Lois Lane looks at the outer casing of the Bleed Torsion Generator. "I was expecting something bigger. And more sparkly. And… Orange."

"I can go and get some glitter or paint if you think it would make a better visual, Ms Lane."

She gives me half of a small smile before turning to Mister Olsen. "Jimmy?"

The young photographer gives her a helpless shrug. "It's a grey box, Ms Lane. There's only so much I can do to make it look interesting."

"If you don't mind me asking… I was a little surprised that the Planet sent you."

"Oh? And what's wrong with me?"

"You aren't the Planet's technology or economics correspondent. I mean no offence, but wouldn't a-?"

Ted puts his right hand on my left shoulder and smiles at her. "Not that it's a problem. We've got people from plenty of tech magazines to talk to later."

She nods. "It's a reasonable question. The answer is, I got the gig because I'm the Planet's main superhero correspondent and because we've met before."

"I was rather hoping not to see everything I do get pigeonholed as 'super life'. This sort of work has the potential to revolutionise Human civilisation."

"I'll try and take it as seriously as it should be." I nod. "Though while we're on the subject, I didn't see Prince Kon-El in the audience. You had some kind of falling out?"

"No, but he's at school at the moment, and… It wasn't really practical to do this outside of school hours."

She knows from his original 'coming out' interview that he goes to school in the US, though obviously we didn't tell her which one.

"And the rumor that you're dating a former League of Shadows assassin?"

"I asked, she said no. She served the sentence for the crimes she was convicted of, and she's never been convicted of killing anyone."

"Okay then." She waves her tablet in the direction of the Generator. "For someone who isn't a technology correspondent, how does this thing work?"

Ted politely pushes me back a little. "Most forms of electricity generation work using what is basically a boiler. You burn coal, or methane or biomass, and you use the energy given off to heat water and generate high pressure steam. This steam then turns a turbine which converts the energy from the steam into electricity. Now, that's not even a twentieth century technology. A British guy called Sir Charles Parsons came up with the basic design in eighteen eighty four. There've been improvements since, but it's essentially the same device. Even nuclear power does pretty much the same thing, generating steam and funnelling it into a turbine."

"Then you've got renewables. Geothermal power gets its heat from the Earth's mantle, and wind and hydroelectric generators take their kinetic energy directly from their environment. Then you've got-." He grins. "Hey, I always get a kick out of this. Did you know that the photovoltaic effect was first noticed in eighteen thirty nine? A French physicist called Edmond Becquerel wrote a paper on it when he was nineteen. Of course, it wasn't until the nineteen fifties that anyone could make a solar panel that was anywhere near commercially viable."

"Thank you, NASA and the Soviet Space Program."

Ted glances at me, nodding. "Yeah, they needed something to power satellites and spacecraft once they were in space, and batteries just didn't have the life expectancy they were starting to need. Um, anyway…" Ted momentarily has the look of someone who has the chance to explain a subject he loves to someone who volunteered for the lecture, but doesn't want to scare them off and isn't certain where their 'scare point' is. "Okay, what do you know about thermodynamics?"

"Ah…" Ms Lane looks like she's not sure what he's decided her scare point is either. She's probably covered enough super… Stuff over the years that he could go in a little higher than that. "Energy can't be created or destroyed."

"Okay, but why not?"

"That's the First Law of Thermodynamics."

"What, so someone will come and arrest you if you create energy ex nihilo?"

I think he's pushing her. "No, that's just not how the universe works."

"Why not? Wouldn't it be really convenient if we could ignore thermodynamics and create energy wherever we want?"

"I suppose it would. Is that how it works? You're altering a universal law to make electricity?"

"Well… I think this is…" He turns to me. "Paul, you wanna handle this bit?"

I nod. "What I'm about to say is wrong in every particular, but is a… Lie that the greatest physicists in the universe use to have a hope in hell of understanding what's actually going on. The Bleed is the raw chaos from which stable universes emerge. The Bleed.. has no rules… Except when it does. The Bleed is infinite and yet full of finite spaces. Like all others, our universe is in the Bleed and yet held apart from it by the laws which give it definition. These generators-" I wave at the closest with my right hand. "-exist partially outside those laws. And if they're outside the laws, they can just create energy."

"And that doesn't risk causing our universe to collapse back into this… Bleed, right?"

"No, that can't happen. The maths proving it is… Far more complicated than I could understand. In slightly more comprehensible terms, lots of species use this technology. Earth is very much not the centre of the universe. If it were going to happen, it would have happened by now."

"How do they work?"

"Very well. Next question." That gets me a mildly indignant glare. "I don't understand how they work. I have a schematic, I build the object described, they work. That sort of ignorance is why I really hope that someone comes up with something better that they can understand."

"Like who?"

Ted shrugs. "Plenty of superheroes and supervillains come up with their own exotic power supplies. Any one of them could have become titanically rich by selling the technology. I mean, take Doctor Morrow, the guy who built Red Tornado. He built a robot that can make hurricane force winds. That could turn a turbine pretty well. People with the right skill are out there."

"Or Star Man One. He was operating from nineteen thirty seven and could fly into orbit with a stick-" I hold my hands out, palms spread to the length of the Gravity Rod. "-this big."

Ms Lane frowns. "So why didn't someone ask him?"

I do a mini frustration dance, forearms raised, head shaking. "I don't know. I mean, how clever do you have to be to work out that a device that can do that might be worth using to generate electricity?"

Mister Olsen shrugs. "I don't know. How clever do you have to be?"

"If you can build it, if in the nineteen thirties you can build a device that can generate force fields and allow a man to fly, then you should be clever enough. And if you're not clever enough, then at least one of the people in the electricity industry whose job it is to work out how to make electricity cheaply should be able to do it for you. I mean, they'd have destroyed the competition…" I turn away slightly, exhaling and shaking my head.

Ms Lane looks from Ted to me. "Is that going to be your next thing?"

"No, it-." / "We don't-."

Ted and I look at each other.

"One of the aims of this is to spur other companies into action. I have a power ring with a massive xenotechnology database. I know dozens of ways of generating electricity. I'm not aiming to establish a monopoly. If that happened, I'd consider the whole thing a failure."

"So you're leaving options available for other people?" I nod. "You wanna give them any hints?"

"Certainly. With Atlantis back in contact with the rest of the world, magic-based methods would be worth looking into. If that's too much like hard work, using Dolmen Gates to transfer power from a remote generation point to the point of need means that someone could… Stick some giant photovoltaic panels in near-Earth orbit and run a cable through a Gate directly to the ground."

"Dolmen Gates are those things that the Mayor of London wants to use to replace trains."

"And now anyone with ten million dollars burning a hole in their back pocket can buy a pair." She gives me an incredulous look. "We're hoping to bring the price down, but at the moment the production facilities just haven't been built."

Ms Lane nods. "Wouldn't mind doing a story on that."

"Then why don't you just ask me?"

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Undermined 3

next

10th June

19:54 GMT -5

Ugh.

"Recognised, Orange Lantern, B zero six."

I step out of the zeta tube and into the hangar. I don't mind doing interviews, but there were a lot of them today and it did get a bit repetitive. I had thought that I might feel a bit triumphant now, having completed that project. But I don't. It's like I've ticked one item off a very long list and immediately there's another item to get on with.

"Hey Paul. How'd it go?"

I look up from the rock floor as M'gann smiles down at me. She's wearing her uniform and a set of telekinetic amplifiers I created for her based on the designs I found on Lantern Stewart's ring. Since they can't shapeshift with her she's been a little slow to take advantage of them, and like any device that someone's not used to they need a lot of practice time before the user can get the most out of them. The amplifiers take the form of a thin cream band wrapped around the palm and the back of the hand, with tiny glowing purple spots dotted along the outer edge.

"The Bleed Torsion Generators are now providing New York with power. No significant problems were encountered."

Her smile grows. "That's great! Did you-?"

She cuts off as a huge, steam-wreathed wave leaps from the hangar pool and heads straight for us. I raise my hands, rings glowing, but M'gann's already ahead of me. She holds out her hands, her eyes glowing white as the water slams into an invisible barrier and splashes back towards the pool. "Careful!"

Garth's head comes out of the water- "Sorry!" -before ducking back down again.

Aquatic combat was the bread and butter of our Atlantean colleagues' training before they came here, and they haven't used it once while on the team. More than that, what the team really needs from them is their knowledge of thaumaturgy and their training was more focused on learning magics directly applicable to combat. They've pretty much been forced to multiclass during a time in their training in which they are supposed to be learning how to function as part of an Atlantean military unit. Usually there's a separate training track for battlemages and pure arcanists, with the latter not being attached to particular military units.

**Who else is here?**

M'gann turns back, looking pleased that I spoke mind-to-mind rather than by… 'Flapping my meat'. I've been making an effort since our visit to Mars back in April. I actually had to go back and study some of the less effective techniques for dealing with telepaths, since those revolve around misdirection rather than outright blocking them. But, I've got to a point where I'm prepared to engage with her in something like the fashion I used to.

I instinctively raise my barriers before I even think 'less than a month to go'. But at least I drop them immediately afterwards.

**Conner is sparring with Artemis in the training room. Robert and Zatanna are… Um.** She looks at me slightly awkwardly. **Doing something..? Together..?** She trails off and I nod in an attempt to encourage her to continue. Yes, I could just scan the place but passing on information like this is the fur cleaning of modern Human society. That, and our magic users at least are practising scry-deflection so my scan isn't as reliable as it used to be.

**Okay.**

She hesitates a moment before resuming. **Kaldur was sparring with Canis, but they should be heading-**

The lift doors open.

"…utterly pedestrian!" Strain the leash!

Kaldur leads the way out of the lift, wearing his Ocean Master gear and carrying the Trident. "I appreciate your concerns, but my training was primarily in the manipulation of an aquatic environment. Though I am reluctant to admit it, it is possible that I lack what is required to truly master the Trident of Neptune."

Canis follows on behind him. "What sort of talk is that?! I did not master hit and run warfare inside of a few months! It takes time and dedicated application." He shakes his head viciously. "Only a fool would give up an artefact of such power simply because it temporarily defies their mastery!" Nip the alpha's heels!

Kaldur stops and half turns back towards him. He's got good self control, but I've known him long enough to spot when he's forcing himself to maintain his usual level of politeness. "If you have some insight you wish to share, I am willing to listen."

Canis' eyes narrow as he nods. "You are not a God as I am, but your arcane power and the tattoos upon your body allow your metaphysique to act a little like mine. My divine powers are an outward expression of my soul, my passions. When I am moved to create it is as if the universe itself moves with my tools. But… If you asked me to study an.. architectural plan…" He shakes his head. "It would merely be my own intellect that undertook the task."

Kaldur nods. "You think that I should focus less on studying the spells that can be cast using the Trident, and instead redirect my efforts to using it for spells with which I am already accustomed."

Canis scowls. "Noo. Are you incapable of seeing it as anything other than a weapon?"

"I am a soldier. Combat is my occupation. If I cannot use it as a weapon-."

Canis tosses his head. "Only a Lowlie has their purpose assigned to them by their master, existing not at all beyond it. If you are any sort of person worth speaking to, there must be more to you than that! Open your soul to the Trident. Commune with the magics inherent to it, then… Do not fight. Express yourself through it."

Kaldur keeps looking at him as he considers the suggestion. "There… May be wisdom in that." He nods. "How do you suggest that I begin?"

**-this way now.**

I nod. **Nice to see Canis trying to make friends. Anyone else around?**

**I don't think so. I know Robin's out with Batman and Arsenal is helping Squire with learning to use her new power armor.**

I glance at the lift doors. Inexperienced power armour users are a recipe for widespread environmental damage… No. She and Roy are sensible people. I'm sure that they'll take the necessary precautions. Or at least call me if something goes wrong.

**Right, well… I should probably go and do some more work on the runic designs for Diana's armour. Oh, how are you finding-** I flick my right forefinger at her amps. **-the amplifi-?**

Water explodes upwards from the pool, the plumes waving in a Helix around the place where Kaldur is crouching on the water's surface. The water immediately under him isn't frozen… It looks like he's just increased the surface tension to the point where it can support his weight. He leaps sideways, spinning in the air and bringing the Trident around in an arc, making the plumes shift and follow him. His right foot touches the surface and he bounds back into the air, back flipping while bringing the Trident over his head. The water helix inverts, opening an air passage under the water into which he dives head first. The head and base of the trident are connected to the two streams, he's hanging off it as it drags him at high speed down and then across the pool near to the pool's bed before turning upwards again. Water is peeled away from the surface as his air tunnel breaks the surface again and lifts him high into the air above the hangar. The plumes then bend, creating an ice platform just underneath the apex of his leap. He lands lightly and then leans forward, the water protuberances following his lead and allowing the ice platform to slide towards the Bio-Ship's platform.

Canis is staring at him, eyes wide and breathing hard. And he's smiling. "Remarkable." "Stirring!"

Kaldur steps lightly from the ice platform, which then tumbles back into the pool. Following its descent, I notice that Tula and Garth have both surfaced and are staring at Kaldur too.

Kaldur holds the Trident out in front of him, looking it over. "It seems that you were correct. I was too narrow in my focus."

Canis steps towards him, his hands going to Kaldur's shoulders. "I have not seen someone embrace the concept so readily. It took me many years, even with the guidance of Mother Box, before I learned how to exist in such a harmonious fashion. This is no slight achievement! It should be commemorated!"

"If you think that it is appropriate, you may-."

Canis pulls him into a clinch and kisses him passionately on the lips.

Oooh…

Whoops. No one's explained to him…

He breaks his hold a moment later smiling in satisfaction, then turns away, a gobsmacked looking Kaldur staring after him. "You are a most impressive individual, Kaldur'ahm. Perhaps I should grace you with my presence more often."

back

Undermined 4

next

11th June

09:36 GMT -6

I touch the fingers of my right hand to Chester's forehead. Awaken.

He continues staring at me, then turns his eyes upwards to look at my hand. "This gonna take long?"

When Chester decided that he'd quite like to be Awakened, he grew somewhat frustrated by my suggested timeline for actually seeing a practical benefit. Spending time in the mana infuser didn't appeal to him either, not that I'd have been entirely happy with him doing that on company time. He complained about it loudly enough that Miss Shimmer overheard, which leads us to where we are now.

Miss Shimmer's understanding of earthly magic has reached the point where she feels ready to undertake original research. Her suggestion was that I actively feed power from the mana infuser into Chester's soul at the same time as I perform the Awakening. While I wouldn't have been willing to do that during my first few attempts, Father Box has accumulated enough data on Human souls that it thinks that we should be able to do that safely. Miss Shimmer herself wanted a look at the process in action, and all of those factors together led us to where we are today.

There's a slight something in the arcane sigils that Miss Shimmer has surrounding us. A little outside the regulation runic circle there are a number of Atlantean devices whose purpose I don't entirely understand. Miss Shimmer herself is wearing a lab coat and a pair of brass goggles of her own design which she tells me are capable of letting her perceive magic energy directly with her eyes, rather than indirectly and imprecisely via her soul.

I must admit, I'm paying a little more attention to the process myself rather than just acting as a vector for Father Box. I can feel Chester's soul like this. When I Awakened Artemis I could feel her, but I had little understanding of what it was I was feeling. Now… I wouldn't be so bold as to call myself an expert, but I recognise certain… Parts? Flavours in the mix.

"Ploong."

I felt that! There's a definite reaction from Chester's soul as it begins to resist the power flow. I immediately remove my hand-.

"Couldn't you keep going? Something was happening-."

"I'm not going to risk something unfortunate happening to Chester's soul in order to improve your experimental data. Not while he's got work to do, and not unless the experiment is very important."

"So… That's it?" Chester holds up his right hand. "I'm a god now?"

"You're a weak New God. That felt like…" I turn my head towards Miss Shimmer. "Miss Shimmer? I'd have said about an eighth of what I've got."

"Hm." She lifts the goggles off her eyes and walks over to what looks to me like a small stone tablet with decorative stone hoops around the edge. Her eyes unfocus slightly as she points it towards us. "Maybe, but you started at a much lower level than most people. He's only gained about one twentieth as much as you have above the normal baseline for non-practitioners."

Chester shrugs. "Which means what, exactly?"

Miss Shimmer beams. "I have no idea! You're the first Human telekine to have undergone this process!"

"Oh, great."

"So what I need you to do is go into the training room and run through some standardised exercises so I can compare-."

"Errr… No thanks, pet." Miss Shimmer scowls at the back of his head as he returns his attention to me. "You need me fer anythin'?"

"No, Chester. If Mister Talbot has no immediate need of your services, you may consider yourself dismissed for the day."

"Cheers, cock." He puts his hands in his pockets and strolls towards the door. "I'm going to go and do some damage to me liver. If y'need t'get in touch, don't expect much intelligence out of me."

"Remember, somewhere visible but not in the home city of a Justice League member."

He waves his right hand dismissively as the door slides shut.

"Hm." Miss Shimmer is looking at… Some sort of graph? "I suppose it's… Reasonable data."

"Learn anything interesting?"

She looks at me like I've said something stupid. "From a sample size of one? Hardly. Still, I had no idea that an Awakened soul would resist additional power." She stomps her right foot in an adorably horsey gesture. "If only I had a better way of monitoring what was happening!"

"I'm perfectly happy to Awaken you, if you think it would help."

Her eyes widen. "No! That would completely ruin my objectivity. Besides." She slumps slightly. "I don't think I'm compatible."

"I had.. wondered. You've checked?"

She nods. "Getting a Human body didn't give me a Human soul. Deep down where it counts I'm still one hundred percent Pony." She looks down at her instruments for a moment. "Do you remember why I came here? Why I left Equestria, I mean?"

"You fell out with your mentor Princess Celestia over your desire to become an Alicorn."

"Right. Alicorns exist. Before I left I read everything I could about them, and Celestia isn't the only one to ever exist. Which probably means that there's a spell or.. some other way for regular Ponies to become Alicorns. And even if there isn't, I know what Celestia's magic signature looked like. Even if there isn't an existing technique -And there totally is.- I should eventually be able to create one on my own."

"So you need to study soul transformations."

"And-" She exhales sharply. "-just about everything else as well. I'm spending most of my time trying to work out what all of the Equestrian spells I know look like in Atlantean thaumaturgical notation."

"So that you can become an Alicorn even without Celestia's help?"

"No. So I can go home to Equestria and ascend in her stupid judgemental face and show her what happens when she tries to get in the way of me reaching my full potential."

Guess… Tearful reunion is off the agenda, then. "And then what?"

She frowns. "Well, at that point I'd know more about Equestrian magic than anyone except her. I suppose I'd take students of my own, so they didn't have to deal with her non-teaching."

"A word of warning?"

"Does it go 'friendship blah blah friendship blah'?"

I chuckle. "I don't think any Apokoliptian has ever said anything like that."

She rolls her eyes. "Go ahead."

"I would advise you to avoid defining yourself in terms of your opposition to Celestia. Instead, define yourself in terms of you, your traits, your characteristics, your skills and special talent. You're doing this to benefit you, not merely to spite her. She isn't worth getting fixated over."

"Mrpfh." Miss Shimmer doesn't make eye contact, folding her arms across her chest and flicking her hair aside. "She kinda is."

"Look, do you want to be the Alicorn of Magic or the Alicorn of Winding Up Celestia?"

"…" She slumps slightly. "Magic."

"Then there you go." I look around the room. "Can I leave you to clean up in here?"

"That's what G-Prometheans are for. I'm going to the Center for Paranormal Studies for the rest of the day." She looks up, pressing her right forefinger to her right ear. "Doctor Robbins? Could I have a hush tube, please? Thank you." She strides off, disappearing into mid air.

Hm.

No. I've put this off long enough already. Father Box, hush tube.

Ploong.

Doctor Robbins looks around as I walk into the control room. "Oh? Made a decision, then?"

"Yes. Much as it pains me, it seems that the Light are committed to their stupidity. Let's talk about what we're going to do about it."

back

Undermined 5

next

13th June

06:28 GMT +5:30

Canis holds the Kobra cultist up with his right hand, fingers wrapped around the struggling woman's neck. She's struggling viciously, kicks striking his arms and chest repeatedly. Canis ignores her efforts. "Kaldur expressed his disinterest.. politely. I understand that some part of my approach was ill-conceived, but cannot fathom exactly what."

I generate a construct barrier between us and the Naga unit running out of the barracks, fire from their Kalashnikovs plinking off harmlessly. "You understand that Hum-. That in Earth-society, interpersonal relationships work somewhat differently to how they do on Apokolips?"

"Naturally." He tosses the cultist away with some force. She strikes a nearby corrugated iron wall and slumps to the ground. "Obviously, the use of physical force as a coercive measure was quite out of the question."

"Yes. … Good."

Beryl appears for a moment, binding the arms and legs of the cultist with zip-ties. Donna drops from the night sky, directly into the middle of the Nagas. Thing about Nagas is that you're never sure whether they've got superpowers or not. Reconnaissance didn't show anything suggesting superpowers and the guns imply not. No, from the way they're reaching for knives and grenades or raising their guns I'm going to assume that these are the unpowered variety.

"I respect his abilities as a warrior and I believe that he respects mine."

"There's a bit more to it than that."

Canis looks thoughtful for a moment. "Is he involved with someone? I am aware that Humans tend to be monogamous, but I have not seen evidence that he has an existing paramour."

"No, I don't think he is." The thing with Dana which I was trying to encourage appears to have.. not happened. Kaldur's mostly focusing on work, but… He seems a bit more cheerful than he used to be, having the other two around. There's still violet, but… Eh.

"I had thought that perhaps he and-." The door to the nearest hut opens and a woman dashes out… Nearly running right into Brut.

"Gwrrrrrrr."

"Ah!" She falls onto her arse and frantically tries to crawl away as he pads forwards, saliva dripping from his mouth. And.. she's.. four months pregnant? I send filaments into the hut… Nursery, right. Brut darts forward, closing his teeth around her right shoulder and lifting her to her feet. She'll have bruises later from that but I know that Brut won't break the skin without his master's instruction.

"Canis, please ask him to stick her back inside and then have him guard the hut."

"Very well." "Guard the den."

Brut snorts, then jerks his muzzle in the direction of the doorway as he releases her. "Rhrw."

"Madam, I strongly suggest that you get inside."

Her eyes dart to me for a moment, then she turns and runs back inside. "Devil dog! Oh Kali, strike it down!"

Ah, Kobra-brand Hinduism. I look around the settlement. Things seem to be dying down a little. I'll ask Tula and Garth to have a look at the particular form of scry wards this lot use. See if they were bodged together locally or they actually had a Bestowed in residence. Trying to track down every Kobra devotee is an exercise in futility, but they'll be a lot more manageable after a thorough decapitating.

"As I was saying before the Lowlie interrupted, I had thought that perhaps he and the other Atlanteans would form a group. But when that did not happen, I concluded that he was available."

"Do you want the short answer or the long answer?"

He looks around as Artemis runs forwards into the centre of the camp, then shrugs. "The short, for now."

"Most Humans tend only to be sexually interested in the other gender."

"Oh." He frowns deeply. "Really?"

"There are a lot of social factors affecting it… But basically yes."

"So his rejection stems not from his relationship with me, but from the fact that I am male?"

"The fact that he's not interested in men doesn't necessarily mean that if he were he'd definitely be interested-."

Artemis glances back, arrow on string. "What're you two talking about?"

"I am in search of relationship advice."

Artemis boggles. "And you're asking him?"

"He knows more of Apokoliptian culture than the rest of you. And he is involved with Zatanna. It seems reasonable to me."

"He isn't-." She turns to me. "You're still not, right?"

"No. Um, yes. Not."

A small growl escapes his lips, causing Brut to turn an eye his way. "Humans are strange and annoying. Are we finished here?"

I float upwards, over the huts. "Looks like. I'll do a full scan, then we can call in the Indian arm-."

A hut over to my right is torn in half as a hulking figure explodes from within! Donna looks up from the last of the Naga just in time to interpose her bracers as his right fist slams down on her. Still she's driven back, a grimace on her face as the ground beneath her feet buckles.

Quick as-. Nearly as quick as a Flash, Artemis looses a hard foam arrow at the… That looks like Venom Buster. At the Venom Buster enhancile's head. It strikes true, the payload swiftly enveloping his head. In a predictable response his hands go to his face and push as much of the gunk as he can along his cheeks. Usually that only works to cover the target's hands as well, but his large size makes it just about viable as a recovery technique. If Artemis hadn't fired twice more since then.

"RAAAAAAGH!" Both legs and most of his torso are enveloped, and the stuff coating his arms is hardening up nicely.

Donna glances at Artemis- "Thanks!" -before pulling back her right fist.

"Troia! Lasso. Squire, check that-" Squire reappears in the hut he broke out of. "-hut."

Artemis puts another hard foam arrow on her string as Donna unwinds her lasso. With Donna's divine origin established beyond reasonable doubt, Hippolyta opened the reliquary in order to give her a weapon equal to Diana's. The Lasso of Persuasion is a good deal less invasive than Branding or Assimilation, and harder to evade than telepathy. If the user has the strength of will to make it work.

Donna throws the hoop over his head and pulls it tight. "Speak openly and honestly. Where is everyone?"

His face twitches slightly. "All of those who remain loyal to Kobra are still here!"

"And everyone else?"

"Bah! Those worthless criminals who follow the False Kobra fled in the night of his overthrow. And those traitors who now follow the Cult of Savitr left here months ago. These are nearly all of the forces I have left. We aren't strong enough to do more than minor robberies any more."

Guess not everyone was on board with Lady Eve throwing Jeffrey Burr aside. Never heard of the Cult of Savitr, but I'll pass that on to our contact in the Indian army.

"Where did you get the Venom Buster?"

"Brothers and sisters who work in South America. We have a network for transporting goods. I don't know everyone involved."

Artemis and I grin as Donna nods. "You will tell me the names of the people you do know."

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Undermined 6

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18th June

09:11 GMT -6

"Does this sort of thing happen a lot around here, sir?"

Ms Thal's mouth tightens slightly. "This is only the second time."

Opposite us, her robotic doppelganger crouches slightly, sword and shield at the ready.

"If whoever's controlling the robot is listening, the US military would love to buy your technology! You have absolutely no need to support yourself by theft!"

"Has that ever worked?"

"First time for everything, sir."

Today's field exercise involves each member of the team being paired with a member of the Justice League whom they don't normally work with. Beryl's squiring for Superman, Kon's prowling the mean and probably under-levelled streets of Star City, Zatanna's enchanting Central City and I'm down here in St Roch with the Hawks.

And someone's made a Hawkwoman robot.

"Tactical assessment?"

Scan. Ugh, surprise surprise. Sonic, infrared and radar? That's a little more helpful. "Single mechanical opponent of unknown strength, toughness, speed and skill level. Bystanders are already absenting themselves and she doesn't seem interested in taking hostages."

"'She', huh?"

"Unless there's something you want to tell me, sir. I can't detect any others and I don't detect any attacks on local financial institutions, indicating..? Pride attack? Personal vendetta?"

"I'm not seeing any Nth Metal. That's just a shield and sword."

Ms Thal's helmet isn't just for looking ridiculous. Though it does do that rather nicely. There are some pretty sophisticated sensors in there. That said… "Your sensors wouldn't detect the x-ionisation process reliably."

"Fine then. No energy barrier or phasic component. No exotic radiation." She lifts her mace. "This shouldn't take long."

"Sir, what exactly has it done?"

"Brandishing a weapon in a pub-." She spots me looking at her mace. "I have a licence."

"Yes sir, but-. Sorry, one moment." I turn back to the robot. "Excuse me ma'am, are you an artificial intelligence?"

There's a slight change in the direction of her head.

"I ask, because you may be unaware that recent changes in American law have granted AIs full citizenship, with all of the rights and responsibilities that entails." I hold out my hands, palms forward. "If you're under some sort of compulsion, we can-" I take a step towards her. "-modify-."

She lunges forwards. "Hhaaaah!"

My eyes widen and I transition a short distance aside to evade the swing of her sword. Okay, evading her should be simple enough. Then I can get a better idea of the technology being used and start working out who could have made it and where-.

"HhhhhhhhhAYAH!"

Ms Thal on the other hand opts to mirror the robot, pushing off thin air with a flap of her wings and pulling back her mace.

W-? "Sir-!"

The robot started turning back towards her as soon as I got out of its line of sight. As soon as it sees her coming on it accelerates again… Some sort of gravitic booster on the back or built into the feathers? The two of them crash together, mace discharging its fury against the robot's shield and sword slicing at Ms Thal's wing guard. The sword sends sparks flying as it slides along the surface and the shockwave generated from the shield's force field reflecting the power of the mace-strike sends dust and debris blasting away from the impact.

Then their bodies come together and it's Ms Thal who gets knocked back. The robot wasn't moving significantly faster than her so it must have more mass. Ms Thal twists her mace, using the butt to lever the shield out of the way even as her back slams into the road.

Then the chains from my crane construct wrap themselves around the robot and haul her off my supervisor and into the air. Ms Thal instinctively swings her mace at the robot as she's pulled away, narrowly missing. "Kkkkkkrah!"

"Sir, if you don't use actual words my translator-."

She rises, mace constantly at the ready and eyes fixed upon the struggling robot. "I'm not seeing any signs of sophisticated intelligence."

"No, and empathic vision isn't showing anything. And that looked like attempted murder to me. Permission to dismantle?"

"Do you let Wonder Woman have any fun?"

"Sir?"

She lowers her mace slightly. "Yes, fine, dismantle it."

"Thank you, sir." Ring, visual inspection. Looks for a seam, weld or panel which could be re-.

The robot's wings glow brilliant blue white, burning away my construct hoist and spitting… Something through the air at us. Ms Thal dives aside and I fortify my construct armour. Construct… Takes the hit, getting moderately damaged. Blue fire now burns in the robot's eyes, on its sword and its wings have become apparently solid sheets of flame. No, that's plasma. How..? Is it..? I mean, there's no way it's making that with gas from its environment, and its internal volume isn't anything like great enough-.

It flicks its left wing, sending a sheet of highly energetic plasma in my direction. I generate a construct tower shield to hide behind and send a wide orange beam down into the road surface beneath me. My usual filaments really aren't going to cut it under these conditions. My shield is getting abraded, so I create a second behind it and then let it collapse.

Ms Thal zooms past her doppelganger, mace swinging through the robot's left wing. The flames buckle and flare outwards from the point of impact, causing the robot to fall to the ground in a semi-controlled tumble. The attack on me suddenly drops in intensity and I take advantage, sending a blade-construct up through the asphalt beneath her and into her torso. She jerks back, a slash from her blazing sword destroying the construct, but I can see the cut in her abdomen where my blade entered. Okay, that works.

I'm a little nervous about using a railgun inside a city, but I suppose it can't be helped. I move my railgun construct so that it's poking out around the shield construct, load a crumbler round and then-.

Ms Thal swoops down on the robot's back like a…

…

Like a hawk. Fine, I thought it. Her mace strikes the top of the robot's head, the metal of the cranium noticeably compressing under the assault. The robot staggers forwards, trying to remain upright. Too close for another mace swing, Ms Thal hooks her left foot around the robot's left ankle and flaps backwards. This results in her disengaging as well as causing the robot to fall face first into the increasingly molten ground.

Target centre of mass, fire.

My railgun hums as the crumbler round is launched, covering the intervening space in a fraction of a second and striking dead on target. The left wing joint, left shoulder and a chunk of the left torso cease to be, the rest of the wing fading back into metal as it loses contact with the main body.

Ms Thal immediately lunges at the opening, bringing her mace down for a final time on the left side of the torso. The robot's body cracks and shatters, legs going one way and the upper torso going the other as shrapnel from the outer casing and bits and pieces from the internal systems spray across the street. Ms Thal studies each part for a moment, presumably looking for anything that's still active or a self destruct device. Ring, see if you can scan-.

She crouches, picking up the robot's sword. "Think this would make a good battle trophy?"

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Undermined 7

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18th June

09:43 GMT -6

"Peacock!" Ms Thal throws open the double doors leading to their St Roch residence. "We have returned from battle!"

I follow on behind her, the remains of the robot floating in an orange aura. The location of the Hawks' residence in St Roch is known to the general public -pretty much unavoidable when you fly in and out of it- so Ms Thal didn't bother with any sort of subterfuge on our journey back. I think she rather likes the attention we got.

Mister Hol looks up from his workstation, the holographic display in front of him playing a recording of our fight. Looks like it's from Ms Thal's point of view. He's wearing his basic uniform, but without the armoured plates or helmet. "Yes, I saw." He peers slightly to the side, getting a better look at it. "Thank you for bringing it back more intact than normal."

Ms Thal stops just in front of him and waves her new sword back and forth. "Where do we have room for this?"

"Oh, just put it on the bench there. I'll get to it in a little while." He gestures to the side with his right hand, indicating a work station as he gets up for a closer look at what's left of the robot. "I'm more interested in the robot's flight system. Powered flight of that sort on a planet like Earth could-."

"Hey!" Ms Thal shoves him lightly with her left hand to get his attention. "This is a battle trophy. I'm not letting you dissect it, I'm putting it on display."

"You still need to put it on the bench. I'll need to check that it isn't booby trapped before you hang it on our wall."

She stares him directly in the eyes. "There better not be a single scratch on this."

He nods, turning fully to face her with his wings slightly extended. "I'll try to stick to non-invasive methods, Magpie."

"See that you do." She leans into him, reaching up to put her hands behind his head and pull it down to a more kissable-.

I turn around, looking for a sensible place to put the robot. Ah, that's a… Holographic imaging tank. Okay. I run one last radiation scan over the head part. No electrical activity, no concentrations of heat, no alpha, beta or gamma radiation and… I take my rune stone out one of my armour's pockets and hold it close to the surface. A slight reaction, but it doesn't look like there are any aggressive enchantments running on it. That done, I deposit it at the far end of the tank and then repeat the process on the lower part before going back to trying to make sense of the smaller parts. I didn't get a great recording of where they came from and a lot of them were damaged by the impact and the heat. I think these.. sort of.. purple plasticy bits came from here-.

"Oh, don't bother putting them in there." I look around as Mister Hol lifts his face away from his wife. "The holotank's only worth using for large pieces. I can look at the shrapnel later if I need to."

"Right you are, sir. Ah." I look at the next table over. "Is there alright?"

"Certainly. Just grab a container first."

Container, contain-ah. I pick up a small plastic tub and deposit the shrapnel into it before putting it on the table. "Anything else, sir?" I look around to see Ms Thal leaving through a door in the far side of the room.

Mister Hol has already moved up to the control systems on the holotank. "No, you're dismissed. Showers are through those doors and on the right."

I… Don't know anything about Thanagarian attitudes to nudity, but-.

"Shayera will be using the one in our room."

"Oh. Right, yes. But I wasn't planning to have a shower, sir."

"No?" He glances up. "Even in a short fight, you can work up quite a sweat. Particularly in fully enclosed power armour. I suppose it's not a problem for me as long as you keep the armour on, but you may find that other people don't look on it too kindly."

"A benefit of environmental shields, sir." I return my armour to subspace. "I'm fresh as a daisy underneath."

"Convenient." He presses a few buttons and the scanners on the holotank go to work. Nothing I can't replicate with the ring, but the drawback to having as much data as I do is that there's too much stuff. Mister Hol has his workshop to look for things that are likely to be there. Plus, it doesn't take ring charge. "Something like that would certainly make life aboard Thanagarian navy ships a good deal more comfortable."

"I'm sorry to say, sir, that the shield is part of the whole thing. Force field based personal cleaning units have a… Patchy history."

"I know. The last time Thanagar tried to implement one it took a layer of skin off the user one time in three. Green Lantern was talking to me about America's space program, and I found it a little depressing that we still use essentially the same system."

"There are forms of techno-organic armour that deal with the problem rather well, sir… But you might not like who you have to deal with to get it."

"Do you intend to keep calling me 'sir'?"

"Sir?"

"I don't hold any particular rank in the Justice League and I'm not a member of the Thanagarian police force any longer. You aren't required to address me as 'sir'."

"Very well, sir. What would you like me to call you?"

He looks up again, a smirk on his lips. "I thought the local form of address was 'Hawkman'."

I exhale, bowing my head. "Yes sir, but to be frank I've always-."

He frowns. "To be what?"

"Frank. Er, open and honest? Oh! You're getting a-" I wave my right hand back and forth between us. "-translation. It usually manages a best match for non-literal turns of phrase."

"Hah. Have you any idea how duplicitous it sounds to need to specify that you're being honest this time? Why would anyone believe you?"

"I suppose… Sometimes people talk about a subject obliquely? Or hold things back?"

"I only speak two Thanagarian languages, but I don't think that either of them has a phrase like that."

"Is that a… Thanagar thing, or do the Lizarkon languages have the same feature?"

"I don't know." He presses a button and a cutaway image of the robot appears. "You'd have to ask one of them. Hm."

"Something interesting, sir?"

"The basic structure is quite a lot like the robotic duplicate of Shayera that was built last year by-."

"Johnny Law, sir. I contacted the prison where he's being held, and they confirmed that he's still there."

"Good work. Similar basic structural layout… But the controlled plasma reaction is nothing like anything I've seen on Earth before. The gravitic slingshot could have come from Earth, but only from a handful of places." He presses other buttons, magnifying particular systems. "To get the effect you observed when the robot moved or attacked, the plasma would have to be expelled at extremely high pressure. But that's not consistent with the comparative lack of damage to the surrounding environment."

"Some sort of exotic containment system, sir?"

"Probably." He nods to himself. "You're.. going.. to keep calling me that, aren't you?"

"I was planning to. But if you'd prefer 'Peacock'-?"

"'Sir' is fine. Now,-" He leans forwards. "-let's take a closer look at this."

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Undermined 8

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18th June

10:14 GMT -6

"Which brings the list of possible supplier-species down to seventeen." Mister Hol takes a moment to review the images. "Assuming that it's a government-approved action. Any progress with those runes?"

Without an obvious reactor or battery, all that power had to be coming from somewhere. That 'somewhere' appears to be three circles of rune-covered metal, with more plates of a similar design in other places throughout the robot's body. My rune stone glows a little more brightly when I bring it closer, though as far as I can tell the system is now 'dead'.

"It's not Atlantean or Nordic." I sigh. "But yes, I've got a match. Remember the demonic incursion in Fawcett City?"

"I'm unlikely to forget."

"I've only matched two runes to what I saw there, and the quality of the design here is much higher. But the general composition matches runes I saw at the Beelzebub and Belial sacrifice sites, as well as on the tower."

"Demon magic? That's a little surprising. Justice League files say that Demons are virtually incapable of doing anything creative."

"I wrote that file, sir. And while it's true to the best of my knowledge, I'm willing to accept that there are things outside of my knowledge. I also don't have the full measure of what Demons consider to be old hat, or what they know instinctively."

"A fully functional robot would be a significant departure."

"I'm not exactly chuffed that my challenge to energy providers was taken up by Hell, sir. Still, Demons aren't the only ones who use magic drawn from Hell."

"Cultists? Magic users who should really have known better?"

"Honestly, my first guess would be an Atlantean. This is… Really sophisticated. The design, the way it's made… It's very strange for a surface world magic user to know how to do this, or think in this sort of way."

"And Atlanteans do?"

"They do now, thanks to Sephtian and I."

"Arthur said that your projects have been quite a revolution. But from how he described it, it sounded like only a few people were fully in the know."

"Yes. But… That doesn't necessarily mean that someone directly tied to my project was involved with making this robot. Sephtian has been telling everyone at least the broad strokes of how he does what he does. He's… Very good at arcane smithing, but there are others who are just as good and it's entirely possible that they could have done some… Parallel inventing. Then you've got the people supplying Atlantis with computer equipment, they'll have at least seen some designs."

"Hn. Doesn't narrow it down as much as I'd hoped."

"It isn't by eliminating the impossible that you get at the truth, however improbable; it is by the much harder process of eliminating the possibilities."

He nods. "Batman?"

"My favourite author, Terry Pratchett. One of his leading characters is the Commander of the City Watch in a… Fantasy city that actually functions like a city. He had a bit of a thing about Sherlock Holmes types when his experience of the job said that half the time it was luck."

"Hah! It's not quite that bad." He sighs. "Do you have any way of working out whether the magic elements of the design are doing anything other than powering the robot?"

"Yes, but it's called 'phone a friend'. I only know enough about Demon magic to say 'yes, that's Demon magic'. Or summon something I really shouldn't, but that's actually worryingly easy."

"I can't think of any species who have access to this technology and Demon magic other than Humans."

"And Thanagarians."

"Wh-?" He nods. "Thanagarians could get a hold of this technology, but we don't use magic. Certainly not to the extent that Humans do. If you meant that someone might have learned something from Shayera or I, we don't send home any information that detailed."

"Actually, I was thinking about Syn, sir."

He frowns, shaking his head. "I'm… Not sure I follow."

"I may be mispronouncing it. Some sort of Thanagarian Demon? Inhabited a body made of Nth metal?"

His frown deepens. "I… Are you talking about Onimar Synn?"

"Maybe? The Guardians don't bother adding information about mythology to the rings of people who shouldn't even be in the Sector it refers to. I'm operating on incomplete information."

"I suppose… It's possible. Before I came to Earth I assumed that he was either just a myth or… Some sort of alien whose presence survived only in myth. No one on Thanagar worships the Seven Devils. That would be like… Worshipping the Wicked Queen from Sleeping Beauty."

"Not even people who've heard of Earth and know that Demons can be real?"

His face hardens slightly. "I have to admit, it's possible. And I'm going to have to get in touch with my former commanding officer and make sure that the need-to-know on Earth is as small as it can be. But we've got sensors here capable of detecting significant concentrations of Nth metal and Nth metal is used in all Thanagarian starships. Our faster than light drives literally won't work without it. No Thanagarian ships other than ours have come to Earth while we've been here."

I nod. "So we're left relying on pure luck?"

"No." He uses some sort of tongs to move some of the Demon magic circles into a heavy duty container. "I'll get this to Doctor Fate. You take what's left to your consultants, and we'll see if we can learn anything." He closes down the hologram before turning to me. "The Demons who sponsored Sabbac. Didn't you report that Satanus managed to escape?"

"If the Demon Constantine is to be believed, he may have set up the whole thing to get rid of the competition. Or have planned it with that potential outcome in mind."

"Do you know anyone who knows anything about him?"

"Most Demons would know something about him. The only one who'd be worth putting effort into locating would be his sister, Blaze. And the only thing I know about her is that she's red. In her default form. And she can almost certainly change it." I shrug. "I can ask when I speak to John, but I'm planning on heading to Poseidonis first because Sephtian is the most likely person to be able to work out what this is supposed to do."

"I didn't think that Atlanteans used Demon magic."

"It's a death penalty offence unless carried out under a royal warrant, though knowing about it isn't a crime. Sephtian has access to everything and has a warrant. And a secure arcane laboratory with lots of safety precautions."

Mister Hol nods. "I'll forward our initial findings to Batman and then contact Doctor Fate. Then I'll ask local police to put out an appeal for information. I doubt that a flying robot-" There's a 'bang' as something hits the outside of the wall behind us, prompting us both to turn around. "-could have got-" Another bang and he's reaching for his mace. "-inside the city with no one seeing it."

Two sections of the wall bulge and then liquefy, partially dissolved brick and metal collapsing as a demonic Caterpillar throws itself through and into the workshop. A more human figure with a burning pentagram on his chest strides through after it.

"Harm believes he now has Its attention."

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Undermined 9

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18th June

10:18 GMT -6

A dragon talon construct grabs the front end of the caterpillar and shoves, bending its segmented body into a 'U' as it vomits. The blob of green slime slams into another section of wall and begins dissolving it.

"Harm?"

The man smiles. There are three red tattoos over the left side of his face, designed to look like a bleeding slash from some animal's claws. "Harm is pleased that It knows who Harm is."

"It's a funny name for a Caterpillar, but who am I-" The Caterpillar bucks and writhes, but my construct's grip remains strong. "-to judge?" Strange creature looking like a large Caterpillar and spitting solvent? Ring, anything in the database?

No good match found.

Probably demonic. It was a bit much to hope that Devil Jizz was just going to go away. I have a filament pick up my rune stone and float it over.

"Harm believes that It misunderstands. Harm is-."

"William Hayes. The chap who stole the Sword of Beowulf and got beaten by Artemis in under a minute. How are the ribs? And the shoulder?" The rune stone glows. "I seem to remember that they were horribly crushed."

Mister Hol is staring directly at Mister Hayes. "Orange Lantern, can you handle this man?"

"Him and… About fifteen copies of him. Why?"

"My home has numerous security devices. They have not activated. And Shayera does not usually take this long in the shower."

Mister Hayes smiles. "Harm has used his time wisely and learned a lesson on the subject of teamwork."

"It's fine, sir. I've got this."

Mister Hol backs away, mace at the ready until he reaches the door and leaves the room. Right then. See if I can get some useful information out of this idiot.

"So… Burning pentagram. I guess that makes you Sabbac Three. Congratulations on keeping your appearance Human."

"Harm is not concerned with Its opinion of Harm's appearance."

"Really? Because if you weren't a psychopathic murderer and… Maybe lost the tattoos..?" And I'm not even joking. He's a… Nice looking chap. And… Confident in his physical presence.

Kind of like if… Jade was male…

I take a half-second to check my Spell Eater.

"Harm understands that his masculine beauty can be somewhat overwhelming, but Harm does not dally with prey."

"Yeah, it probably wouldn't work. So. What are you and the Caterpillar here for?" He opens his mouth to respond. "Oh and… Thanks for clearing up who was behind the Devil Jizz." I shake my head. "I honestly hadn't worked that out. Satanus. Should have… Realised."

He sneers. "Harm does not use simple narcotics. Harm has found a purer method for channelling the power of evil."

"That's kind of impressive, actually. Usually it takes years to learn magic well enough to cast anything worthwhile."

"Harm is nothing if not dedicated." The Caterpillar wiggles its legs in his direction, drawing his attention. His eyes narrow slightly. "Some of Harm's followers are less dedicated. This is not something which Harm is prepared to tolerate."

What does-? My armour appears around me from subspace, construct armour appearing around both me and the Caterpillar. Just a little too slowly. Harm's right hand blurs and a huge gash appears in the Caterpillar's torso, corrosive Demon goop pouring out. Right, Sabbac, speedster.

Accelerated Perception.

I have no way to heal the Caterpillar in its current form. To repair it I'd need to return it to Human form. Sadly, the only anti-magic weapons I have on me at the moment are Mageslayer railgun rounds. I manifest ten from subspace on the inside of the construct armour that has just formed around most of its body and shove them inward. It begins deflating almost immediately.

Mister Hayes has already thrown a blob of goop at me. Assuming that the goop is as solventy as the vomit- Yes, the construct armour I put over the Caterpillar's injury has been dissolved. -then it will pierce my construct armour and probably my power armour with little difficulty.

Railgun, load Mageslayers.

A thick lead sheet appears out of subspace directly in front of my face a relative second before the blob hits, bubbling and dripping as the demonic gunk gets to work. A ring scan of my surroundings shows Mister Hayes picking up and flinging goop, what's left of his gloves burning and his hands smouldering. I transition left, towards the demonically enchanted pieces of metal still on the table. Goop sails past and strikes various pieces of equipment across the room as I send my research materials into subspace.

The Caterpillar has shrivelled significantly. It doesn't look Human yet, but- Mister Hayes tries to stick his right hand into its wound, then jerks his hand back with a scowl. -it looks like he can't get any more goop. What he's already thrown is busy eating through things and in doing so becoming neutralised. Mister Hayes glares at me, opens his mouth and exhales a cone of black/red fire. I transition right to avoid it, firing my railgun construct at his centre of mass.

The former Caterpillar has now shrunk to little over normal Human size and the construct armour has shrunk along with… Her, as it turns out. With no more acid goop coming from the wound in her left side the armour now encompasses the whole of her body. Mister Hayes grabs it and swings it to intercept the Mageslayer round. At the comparatively low power I'm firing the construct armour I created is easily capable of absorbing the shot and isn't vulnerable to the magic nullification effect.

Of course, if I don't hit the brain…

I dial up the power and fire again, once more aiming for his centre of mass. He moves the Jizzer to block, putting her upper right torso in the path of the shot with a cruel grin.

I drop the construct armour front and back.

The material the Mageslayer is made of doesn't penetrate armour particularly well. Sure, with sufficient velocity all things become possible, but the spells bound to it won't last. But in this case all that intervenes is weak Human flesh and bone, not even enough magic left to trigger the spell. Her body jerks and in my accelerated state I can see the shockwave pass through her body and the burst as flesh and bone fragments explode from her back.

Mister Hayes takes the rest of the shot directly in the centre of his chest, flying backwards with the pentagram on his chest flickering. I transition forwards, firing at his centre of mass again while I frantically try and knit back together the flesh of his Jizzer companion. Brain is… In less than stellar condition. Drug use, by the looks of things. Blood loss and shockwave damage aren't healthy but as I thought they are manageable.

The second shot strikes Mister Hayes directly on the pentagram, slamming him into the floor and leaving a crater. The pentagram is almost extinguished at this point and the Jizzer's body is knitting back together nicely. Manacle constructs flow around his body, orange light battering at whatever remains of his Asmodeus-granted exotic attack resistance. Hm. Based on what the First did, the spells on him should maintain a constant link to the caster.

Rings… Assimilate the spell.

Unable to comply. Energy not compatible.

I summon three Praexis Demons and desire them to swim along the bonds of arcane energy-.

The pentagram fizzles out.

Something is happening with Mister Hayes, but he's not-. I'm still accelerated. I drop back to normal speed. He's shuddering, gasping and choking. Can't see anything physically wrong-.

There aren't any colours. He isn't feeling anything. His brain… Looks like it's ticking over, but his connection to the emotional spectrum is gone.

Whatever spell turned him into Sabbac… It tore out his soul as well.

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Undermined 10

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18th June

10:21 GMT -6

The Hawks don't keep their medical equipment in their workshop, not the sorts of things I'll need anyway. Ring, remaining power?

One hundred eighty three percent remaining.

Right then. First step with the new Hollow Man is to keep his body alive while it tries to shut down. I hold out my right hand slightly and fabricate a heart rate stabiliser. This useful little gizmo sticks on the chest above the heart and maintains a constant heart rate. Quick scan of his body… No narcotics, though it looks like he's been injecting steroids. Next, I fabricate a… I call it a cortical stimulator, though that isn't its proper name. Just the thing to keep his brain ticking over. Hollow people aren't well understood even in Atlantis, but that covers what I need to keep his body functioning so that there's somewhere for his soul to go back to.

Assuming that it's all in one piece, and not shredded by whatever unholy magic he used to become Sabbac.

Then I take a set of titanium manacles out of subspace and bind him ankle, wrist and neck. Next come the magic suppression chains and spell eater. That should stop anyone funnelling power back into him. I don't… Think that he could be remotely reactivated with no soul, but it isn't beyond the realms of possibility.

"Uuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhgh."

I turn around as the Jizzer moans. She's not in anything like fighting shape… I listen for sounds of a struggle coming from the rest of the house. Nothing. I'm going to assume that the lack of sound, smoke and broken walls means that if there was anything that they've got it under control. That gives me the time to finish up with these two.

Ring, message to John. 'Got another man without a soul. Feel like making magic history? Also, less urgent, need to consult on thaumaturgical matters.'

Message sent.

Thank you.

Getting a message to Sephtian is less easy. There's a Dolmen Gate between the now expanded Atlantean embassy in New York and Poseidonis and Sephtian has modern computer equipment, but there isn't the sort of communication network in Atlantis that there is up here.

A set of conventional hand and leg cuffs emerge from subspace and attach themselves to her. As an afterthought, I also take out a set of overalls and put them on her. I don't know what she was wearing before she got jizzed up, but whatever it was it didn't survive her transition to Caterpillarhood.

Five Praexis Demons appear from the rings, three taking up station above the prisoners and the other two floating over to the holes in the wall. Nothing on scans, sonic or infrared, or empathic vision. Right. The situation here is as stabilised as I can make it without leaving. I need to check on the Hawks first.

"…"

The heck?

"…"

I felt my mouth move and my throat move but no sound came out. Mister Hayes was talking fine a minute ago…

No sound.

I transition backwards to the door into the rest of the house, turning to face it as I do so. I hesitate at the door… Oh, the workshop will need to be rebuilt anyway. I accelerate to a jog, barging into the door in full power armour and smashing it, the casing and a chunk of the surrounding wall aside.

It lands silently on the floor.

Some sort of small demonic creature throws itself at me immediately, dark slashing claws darting towards my armour's neck. It looks a bit like a cross between a Monkey and a Praying Mantis and is about forty centimetres tall. I hit it with a bolt of orange energy and it falls back, outer carapace smoking. No screech, no thump. I stamp my right foot. I feel the vibration but hear no sound.

Clever.

I look down at the fallen imp-thing, and-. My vision goes blank and a rumbling-clicking sound enters my ears.

"Orange Lantern to Hawkman."

"Hawkman here. We're under attack by some kind of Demon." I send out a pulse of orange light, an image of my environment appearing in my head. "It can block senses."

"I'm being blinded now."

"Do you need assistance?"

"No, I'm just having the ring put a map in my head. You?"

"Thanagarians have excellent hearing as well as vision. I only saw the primary Demon briefly, but there are smaller ones everywhere."

The little one that attacked me isn't there any longer. Evaporated or fled? No idea.

"Hawkwoman?"

"I'm here. Does your ring have data on Thanagarian physiology?"

"Of course. Are you injur-?"

My construct-armour buckles as something slashes it. Not breached, but… Where is the fucking thing? I manifest orange construct-blades around me and slash them in all directions. I don't… Feel any impacts. Still can't see it. Okay. I take my rune stone out of my equipment pouch and… Ah, no light. But there is a slight increase in heat when it detects something.

"Orange Lantern?"

"Still here. Something I couldn't see just hit my construct armour." I take a small biological specimen out of subspace and transition it a short distance in front of me. It reappears without any difficulty. Worth knowing. "Are you injured?"

"A few light wounds. Nothing critical, but I hate being injured in combat."

"I have good enough data to heal you as long as your central nervous system wasn't the part that was damaged. That would be trickier." I take a few steps into the large central area of the house. It's a bit too broad to be called a hallway, but its main purpose appears to be to connect other places to each other. "Can you tell me anything about the little ones?"

"Fast, aggressive and they don't stay down."

My construct armour registers another hit, this time on my upper right arm. Another swing with a construct blade. Nothing.

"Where are you, sirs?"

"Main hangar."

The world reappears around me. Have I got sou-? Wha! Ring, stabilise armour.

Compliance.

Sound and sight, but touch is gone. I'm still in my armour, but I can't feel anything. My Spell Eater doesn't appear to be activating… That's some pretty sophisticated magic, affecting the world in a particular area without directly touching the physical. It's okay, the ring can just take direct control of my legs and keep me going. The hangar is through the aerial combat training area and down one level. Perfectly navigable. Feels… Well, it doesn't feel anything. How is it that I can still see if I'm numb? Ring, can you fake kinetic input?

Attempting. … Attempt ineffectual.

The construct armour on my back registers another hit and I transition backwards before swinging my blades around again. This time the Demon-thing is sliced through in six places, starting to evaporate even as it falls to the ground. Bit better. Armour, pick up the pace.

Compliance.

Three steps and the room goes dark again. The ring restores armour control to me automatically and I jog towards the next door highlighted in my head.

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Undermined 11

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18th June

10:24 GMT -6

The door to the Hawks' hangar flashes as something explodes on the other side. I know the Hawks haven't warded their property so the fact that my ring scans are being so unhelpful is decidedly irritating. I've been attacked twice more on my journey -negative impact on each side- and as I got closer the damage that the house has taken has become increasingly apparent. How did I not feel the vibrations from this?

"Sirs, I'm outside of the door."

"Have you-? Eh. Have you had any success in working out how to harm them?"

"Not really, sir." Hitting them is easy, but they generally just disappear afterwards. No idea why the one which died like it was supposed to didn't do that… I didn't hit a different location or use a different technique. "My best suggestion would be to vary the type of assault until you find something they're not immune to."

Infrared shows me nothing, because they have designed this place to control heat transfers. I'm not going to risk sonic pulsing people with hearing as acute as theirs while they are actively engaged in combat. Gravity sensor shows me… Nothing much useful. The Nth metal stands out, but it stands out so much that it overshadows everything else.

Need to find time to practise with that…

"I thought you-. Hrah!" Ms Thal's still fighting then. Good to know that her injury isn't too debilitating. "I thought you had anti-magic weapons for things like this!"

"They appear and disappear too fast." The first slight hum from my railgun and they vanish from sight. I've never bothered with melee anti-magic weapons. Possible oversight? "Sir, do you need me-?"

"Orange Lantern, search the house. Find the creature that is controlling the smaller ones. Destroy it."

I nod inside my armour. "Sir." Put the directional magic sensor back on the 'want' pile. Maybe my next generation of power armour should be magic based? I turn away from the door, orange filaments radiating away in all directions. Assuming that the smaller ones are being continuously directed and not merely overseen, assimilating them is the best option for tracking their master.

Numbness, and for a moment I feel a powerful vertigo before the ring takes over from my clearly malfunctioning senses again. Proprioception and balance? Interesting.

"While you're doing that, do you know anyone who would want to steal our ship?"

"Every technology company on the planet, sir." What sort of range would minion control have? "Though of all of the names in my files, only Nylor Truggs is familiar with Thanagarian technology."

I start walking back through the house. Okay, minion control can have infinite range if the minions are bound closely to the caster, but the sensory deprivation effect doesn't appear to be coming from them. I didn't detect high levels of magic when I entered the building, so no one put some sort of ritual on the building in advance. That suggests proximity. I can't do Globe-Enshrouding Eyes without the Ophidian, but I should be able to fill a big enough volume of space with filaments to force whatever it is out of hiding. On the other hand, that Jizzer we ran into during the Star Conqueror incident could drain my power. Whoever set this up is considerably more intelligent than a drug-addled drop out. They would have seen that I was around before making this attack, and I doubt that they would have pressed on without some way to inconvenience me.

Or am I being too paranoid?

Everything goes dark again.

I add a construct psi-baffle. To no avail.

"Do you believe what he said about the future?"

"Yes. It's logical." I float upwards towards the first floor with my rune stone out. "Given the Thanagarian Empire's rate of expansion and the time span involved, the Earth becoming a protectorate after getting stomped on by the Reach makes sense."

"As proud as I am of my people, I don't believe for a moment that we could force the Reach off their prize."

"We're a long way from Reach space. They might well have just taken what they wanted and left." Or the Orange Lantern Corps killed so much of their Empire off they couldn't support the outpost any longer. "How are you managing in the dark, sir?"

"Sonic-" A tiny Demon twists itself through my filaments, stabbing at my head. "-sensors-" I shift the filaments, empowering them. "-in our-" It hits one. "-helmets."

Assimilate.

It evaporates before the ring can even report a connection. Properly dead. Well, as properly dead as Demons get.

"I have had little cause to use it in this fashion since training."

What changed? Filaments are weak and cheap. It's how I can afford to burn ring charge spreading them over such a large area. Vulnerability to orange light? Are they some kind of magic construct instead of being minor Demons, and the spells granting them existence got overloaded?

The lights come back on and… I can't smell anything. Odd…

Wait. Lights were off and it got hurt by orange light. Touch was gone and it got hurt by physical force.

…

How do I kill something with smell?

A Demon flashes into existence and lunges at me, shattering my filaments. I fill the air between us with Skunk anal gland secretions, because if any smell can kill-. The Demon goes limp and then evaporates head to toe.

Ah. That wasn't so hard.

"Sirs, it appears that the Demons are vulnerable to attacks based on whatever sense is being blocked. Use sonics when you're deaf, lasers when you can't see and physical force when you can't feel."

It's Ms Thal who responds. "Because of course we have those things in easy reach!"

Okay, I've filled the whole house with filaments now. That just leaves the immediate outside. I take a small phase-drone out of subspace, set it to rematerialise after ten seconds and send it upwards. Appearing inside a wall just once was plenty of times for me. I swing the rune stone a few times just in case… No. Return it to my pouch.

The drone reports no problem. I go invisible, phase and fly up after it, passing through the upper level of the Hawks' home, the loft and finally the roof before passing into the open air. Nothing visible. Now, with a combination of phasing, invisibility and scry wards I'm reasonably confident that if there's anything here it can't detect me. Down side, I can't detect them. The rune stone probably could, but it would become visible if I tried to use it. I turn slowly in the air, empathic vision turned up far enough that the dashes of colour I see from across the city actually start feeling… A little uncomfortable. Still nothing from my immediate environment. I turn in the air so that I can face downwards. The Hawks are clearly visible, moving around five-. Seven-. Four wisps of light I assume to be their attackers. Okay, that just means that there's a better ward on the boss Demon.

…

I'm not coming up with anything better than 'filaments everywhere'. Mass stealth drones with magic detection would work, as moving through the space the Demon occupied would trigger a response. But I don't have those and I don't think they'd be energy efficient…

Filaments it-. No, strong Demon and I've got plenty of power. Don't do something that would allow it to disengage.

An orange dome fifty metres in diameter appears around me as I drop invisibility and return to phase. The edge of the dome isn't a simple construct, it's shimmering and glowing with the orange light. Anything touches it, it gets an immediate burst of orange light and assimilation starts. It would take long enough that if someone is stupid enough to walk up to the outside they don't get turned into a construct immediately, but quickly enough that I don't think a Demon would want to fly through it.

Then I turn the dome's interior orange as well.

"Radiant Orange Presence!"

If you absolutely must call your attacks, then do so after you use them.

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Undermined 12

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18th June

10:27 GMT -6

The Demon appears, floating over the rear of the house.

Identity Theft in progress. One percent complete.

Okay, that's… Weird.

I know that Ezekiel describes Angels as wheels covered in eyes, and I think I'm looking at their dark alter-ego. The general structure reminds me a little of a fullerene ball, the hard outer frame poking out slightly from the dark blue flesh surrounding it. More of the smaller Demons making the attack below crawl over its surface, occasionally pushing their way into flaps in the flesh and making their way inside. Or pushing their way out. In other places the flesh has what seem to be sensory organs. A muscle unclenches on one part of its surface and reveals segments of flesh covered in eyes of various-.

And the lights go out once more.

Okay, it opens its eyes to see and no one else can. Now, the small ones aren't much of a threat to me but they're not sentient. The large one probably is. The rules of engagement are clear and I am in full agreement with them.

"Demon, you are under arrest! Cease all offensive action at once! Failure to comply-"

The lights come back on. The eye flap is closed once more and new flaps are open, these ones revealing some sort of membrane which twitches as I watch.

"-!"

Oh, those are ears. So, did it not hear me? Ring, low intensity sonic shot.

Compliance.

Transmit: 'Failure to comply will result in you being fired upon.'

Message transm- And I'm covered in Demons. -itted.

Fourteen Demons cling to the outer surface of my construct-armour, stabbing and slicing at it. A couple slip and fall off, hitting the roof and shimmering for a moment before disappearing. Sound returns for a moment as tentacles sprout from the boss Demon and I immediately lose feeling. Tentacles are touch. Okay.

Identity Theft in progress. Two percent complete.

The Demon-ball turns slightly, faintly burning runes lighting up on its outer frame. I tense for a moment, but they aren't the ones which the Tar-Covered Corpse used to drain the rings. What would-?

A claw comes through my armour just in front of my face.

For a second I go slightly cross-eyed. The blade has sigils along the cutting edge, glowing with faint red light. Ring, record those would you, then transition us the fuck away!

Compliance.

Thank you.

The blade disappears from my vision, replaced by the orange glow of the Radiant Orange Presence. The assimilation is still in progress because the Presence allows me to maintain the connection constantly, a nifty little trick that could have come in really handy during my first encounter with Klarion.

And keep moving!

More of the small Demons appear around me, only to fall towards the ground as I'm no longer where they were aiming for. The Demon Ball -yep, that'll do for a name- appears to be spamming me, not just materialising Demons on me but saturating the area around me with the little menaces. I generate point defence constructs, but having to switch -there goes vision again- between different weapon types to be able to affect them at all is really trying. Light flicks back on and a laser beam is shrugged off. I switch to railguns and the lights disappear. All the time more small Demons -presumably the ones falling all around me- are crawling out of the flaps in the Demon Ball's skin.

Oh, this is inefficient. Praexis horde, I choose you!

Identity Theft in progress. Three percent complete.

The point defence constructs evaporate as my pet Demons appear, dropping from the rings and throwing themselves at their opposite numbers. Two from the initial wave are cut through, disintegrating in a small cloud of orange light before re-emerging from the rings. Others manage to get their teeth into their foes or just swallow them whole. One unfortunate Praexis gets its target into its mouth only for the… Mantis Demon to shove its claws through from the inside. The Praexis thumps the outside of its jaw with its stubby arms, frantically trying to push them back inside so it can swallow.

Most importantly, the rain of Demons falling on me is slacking off a little.

"Sirs, I have engaged the larger Demon."

"Yes, the little ones are not reappearing. Do you require help?"

"Not presently, sir. Suggest you stay where you are just in case this was supposed to be a tech raid."

"Very well-" The sound cuts out for a moment. "-changes."

"Sir." I create an elongated construct bubble in the air next to me, and inside of that create a construct railgun. As US and Louisiana law currently stand, I am perfectly within my rights to destroy the thing.

Identity Theft in progress. Four percent complete.

I load an Angel feather round.

"Demon, last chance. Surrender now or be destroyed."

"Your mouths consume our hands."

"I'm not hearing 'I surrender'."

"Our hands are consumed by your mouths."

The railgun hums, and as it fires a tiny breach opens in the end of the bubble. The Angel feather rounds blast towards the Demon Ball, a small Demon immediately appearing on its flight path and -numbness again- taking the hit, bursting into golden flame as it does so.

Looks like whatever the Demon Ball is doing to mess around with the local universe, it doesn't work on Angel magic. Bit of a nuisance that it can just watch and teleport a meatshield into place… And has far more of them than I have Angel feather rounds.

"Stolen magic destroys our hand. Are you also from Hell?"

It can't feel my soul, but it can feel the orange light and see the Praexis Demons. Considering the possibility that I'm a Demon myself isn't all that unreasonable from its point of view… No one briefed it. The very first thing it should have been told is 'Orange Lantern is a very dangerous Human'. Communication problem, perhaps? I know I shouldn't assume that just because multiple enemies using Hell magic attack at the same time that they're working together. Even if they almost certainly are.

Identity Theft in progress. Five percent complete.

"What if I am?"

"SKREEEEEEEEEEE!"

The fleshy patches in the Ball Demon's frame are suddenly pulled inwards, and through the holes that are left in their place I can see-

Identity Theft discontinued. Target no longer present.

-the same shining sandstorm that I saw through the portal in Azerbaijan. The runes on the frame are glowing brighter and the sand is billowing out, swirling around the inside of the orange bubble I created.

Ring..? Assimilate..?

Unable to comply.

The frame expands slightly, sections of it falling into the interior and being lost from my sight. The sand streams back into the newly enlarged opening and I'm getting pulled along with it! I resist as the Praexis Demons fly past me. Demons, suck the frame! No, no good, they can't keep their grip. Only mercy is that the Mantis Demons are going the same way.

Right, no more interruptions. I form a tube stretching from the barrel of my railgun to the frame and load a Mage Slayer. Fire. The structure cracks. Reload, recharge and fire again. The runes on the shot section flicker out and that part of the frame cracks and falls inward. The portal wobbles. Good. I move the end point, reload and fire again. Another piece of the frame falls inwards and the portal shuts down, what's left of the frame dropping to the Hawks' roof and smashing their tiles.

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Undermined 13

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18th June

10:35 GMT -6

Ms Thal scowls. "That's the thing that wrecked our home?"

What's left of the Demon's frame is resting just in front of their spacecraft in the hangar. I'm recreating the missing parts with constructs. My rune stone shows that there's still a lot of magic in the thing, but a quick check with my runic database says that the structure should be inactive.

"Not sure, sir." I check her over once more. "Feeling alright?"

She checks the motion in her right arm, torso and wings, doing a quick visual inspection of each part. Fortunately there wasn't any damage to her body's Nth metal deposits. She unfurls her wings to full extension for a moment, then folds then behind her back. "Yes. Thank you." Then the frown returns. "What do you mean, you're not sure?"

"I didn't recognise the type of Demon, but it looked like it voluntarily… 'Repatriated' itself. It's quite possible that this frame was part of a summoning or control apparatus of some kind, rather than being part of its body. If that's the case then it was more of a tactical withdrawal." I shake my head. "It may not even have lost very much."

I -on the other hand- lost most of my Praexis Demons. I assume that they're all in Hell, probably wandering about and attempting to the best of their limited abilities to comply with my last orders. Maybe John could use what's left of the frame to work out exactly where they ended up and we could open a portal to bring them back? I mean… I don't use them all that much anyway and I can just feed the ones I have left in order to make more…

Maybe I should have called out the Hellwraith, but that thing just creeps me the heck out.

Mister Hol stands up from where he was making a visual inspection of their ship's undercarriage. "There is no damage that I can detect. If their aim was to put our ship out of use then they have failed."

Like a lot of Thanagarian technology, the ship is a mixture of the highly sophisticated and the oddly primitive. Having access to Nth metal let the Thanagarians skip a lot of technological development. It's got a gravity manipulation system that's the envy of the galaxy but it has an ion drive for sublight propulsion that's not much more advanced than something Earth could build. The armoured plates show an advanced understanding of engineering… But the whole ensemble is designed to look like a Thanagarian bird of prey swooping down on its prey. Form over function? Who does that? Humans don't design warplanes to look like flying fists.

"Sir, what do you want done with Mister Hayes and the woman?" I was a little surprised not to be able to identify her, but I'm only accessing databases. If the most recent image is out of date or there isn't one at all then not being able to get a match makes sense.

Ms Thal looks at him curiously. "Katar? What are you thinking?"

"That this attack makes little sense. Whoever is behind this, they might well not have known that Orange Lantern would be here when they released the robot. We do not know what control mechanism they had for the Demon. But we have made no effort to keep his presence a secret today. When Harm fought Artemis and Zatanna he was outmatched, but prior to that he showed great skill and resourcefulness." His eyes narrow slightly. "I find it difficult to believe that he did not perform basic reconnaissance."

"Last time I fought a Sabbac, what everyone saw was me running away from him. We never publicised the role which the Sword of the Fallen played in what happened. Perhaps he thought that he could beat me because he thought that Mister Gregor did."

He nods slowly. "It's certainly possible. When is he likely to regain consciousness?"

"Never, probably." I look over to his recumbent body. "People don't usually survive long after having their soul torn out."

Ms Thal frowns. "If we can't interrogate him, why did you bother keeping him alive? He has already been sentenced to death."

"Several reasons. I'm not sure if his complete lack of spiritual presence would do anything to stop a telepath from taking a look, but I think it's worth experimenting. Assuming we can get the legal okay."

That gets an amused snort. "Hey Katar, remember when we first read about Earth and it seemed that people in costumes could do whatever they wanted?"

"I remember warning you at the time that it probably wasn't really like that."

Ms Thal nods resignedly. "What other reasons?"

"It… May be possible to restore him. It would be at the very cutting edge of thaumaturgical research-."

Her eyes widen. "You want to bring that monster back to life?" Her right hand tightens around the shaft of her mace. "Oh, I'm finishing him right now!"

"Sir, surely it's better to experiment on someone we don't care about, rather than trying an extremely risky arcano-medicinal procedure for the first time on someone we do?"

She doesn't let go of her mace, but her wings droop back slightly in a way which suggests that she isn't going to dive across the room at either Mister Hayes.. or me. "You can do that? Call people back from their afterlife?"

"Did you read my report on the Azerbaijan mission?"

"I-" Her eyes dart to the side for a second. "-skimmed it."

Mister Hol folds his arms across his chest. "I read it. You're saying that rather than calling a malevolent spirit back into someone else's body or into an energy construct, they could be summoned back into their own."

"Oh, it doesn't have to be a malevolent spirit. In theory, any intact soul could be called back. Oh." I nod my head to the side. "Aaaa-part from anyone who's gone to the Silver City. They aren't keen on necromancy there. But if the technique works, we'd basically be curing death. Or at least making it a chronic disease rather than a terminal one."

Ms Thal frowns. "'Making death a-'." She closes her mouth.

"And then you've got the fact that right now his soul is in Hell. It might be in the process of becoming a Demon -and I doubt that he'll have much trouble integrating Hell's magic into himself- or at the very least it's providing power and entertainment to the locals. Who are Demons."

Mister Hol nods. "That's the first good argument against the death penalty that I've ever heard. There is no point in killing someone if all that does is make your enemies stronger."

"Making an artificial afterlife would be the best solution… Very few bad people actually want to go to Hell."

Ms Thal's eyes drift away from him then focusing on the woman. "What about her?"

"The one thing I know about her is that she has a history of drug abuse. I doubt that we'll get much useful out of her but you're welcome to try."

"Oh, she'll talk to me." She gets up and walks towards the woman. "Wake her up."

"Sir, I'm going to respectfully suggest that you put down the mace first. She's not going to be in any fit state to-."

"She took part in an attack on my home and tried to kill us. I don't have any sympathy."

My eyes shift to Mister Hol for a moment, but I don't see any sympathy there either. "Alright sir." A filament connects me to the woman for a moment, then her eyes flicker.

"U-ugh?"

Ms Thal pats the head of her mace against the palm of her left hand.

"Orange Lantern." I look at Mister Hol. "I will contact the Manhunter and ask him to attempt to read our prisoner's mind."

I nod. "Do you want me to get in touch with Poseidonis?"

"No." He frowns slightly. "Something about this still does not sit right with me. Remain on duty for now." He looks back towards the door leading to the rest of the house. "Though if you are able to make repairs to my home, I would appreciate it."

"Who do you work for!?"

I wince at the shot of pure fear from the woman. "I'll get right on that, sir."

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Undermined 14

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18th June

10:45 GMT -6

I activate the workshop's computer systems. Like just about every piece of Thanagarian technology it makes use of Nth metal circuitry, but I was able to salvage enough to make it functional again. Other systems -the holotank amongst them- are just going to have to wait until Mister Hol himself can attend to it. Whatever that Demon acid was, it's turned back into mundane chemicals and sludge since the attack. I'm not sure whether that's just how it works or if it turned back when the Caterpillar woman did. I should probably see if I -or someone else- can get a sample of Demon Jizz for…

No, it's not really Sephtian's thing. I need to see if Nyssa's got time to take a look at it. But if it works as I think it does then I don't know anyone with the expertise to suggest ways to deal with it. Definitely going to ask Adom if he's heard anything from Blaze since his return to form, but other than that…

If the prosecution can prove that the woman took the stuff voluntarily then she's due for a couple of years' stay in Belle Reve. Given how close we are to there they'll probably stick her in there with a magic suppression chain on up until the trial date. Mister Hayes is technically dead and has no next of kin to claim the body or make a decision about his life support. I'm not sure who I'd have to convince-.

"Orange Lantern, is the communication system repaired yet?"

I turn as Mister Hol walks into the room. "Should be, sir. Is there a problem?"

"I am unable to contact either the Watchtower or the Hall of Justice." He steps towards the control panel I've been working on and I step aside for him. "I'm not certain how well you understand Thanagarian computer systems."

"Not at all, sir. I just say 'ring, do the thing'. Circuitry can only work in so many ways."

He brings up a diagram and checks it over. "I see."

"How is the prisoner?"

"Stewing pleasantly in her own fear. No, you're right. According to this we should be connected."

"Sir, I'm really not sure that's the best way-."

"Thanagarian law enforcement works to very different standards than Amazon law enforcement. We deal with actual crimes."

"Sir, the captain of Queen Hippolyta's bodyguard tried to kill Wonder Woman before she was a week old."

"I know. They tried to murder the infant daughter of their sovereign and their punishment was imprisonment." He presses a few more buttons, viewing each component in turn. "Do you think that the Demon might have done something to the system?"

"The best information I have is that Demons struggle with hinges, let alone computers. Do you know how resistant Thanagarian technology is to magic?"

"It would be rather hard to test, given that my species doesn't use magic. Why do you ask?"

"Because it's not impossible that the acid had an additional spell bound to it. Or…" I look towards the external door. "Harm might have spent some time preparing the ground in advance with some sort of communication blockage ritual. Do you have a local contact who uses magic?"

His jaw tenses slightly. Oh, come on. This is one of the few places in the country where it's relatively easy to find a minor magic user entirely competent in performing simple rituals! With the caster dead or fled destroying whatever effect is still lingering should be simple enough. "If that is the reason then we will have to contact Lord Fate and ask him to deal with it."

"No need to do that, sir. I'm sure I can get hold of an Atlantean who can do that job perfectly well."

"Would they be as skilled as he is?"

"I can't answer that precisely as I don't know exactly how skilled he is. But… If I asked King Orin for a state-employed thaumaturgist then the person who reported should be skilled enough to identify and unpick anything that's likely to be there." I have a horrible thought. "If that's even what it is."

Ring, locate Watchtower.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Maybe the problem is at the other end."

Unable to comply.

Oh shit. The rota for today had Mister Freeman and Major Adams on duty. Ring, locate area of space in which the Watchtower is supposed to be at the moment.

Compliance.

Empty space, stars… Match the positions they're supposed to be. Someone's trying to be clever.

"I can't scan the Watchtower, but there's no debris. It probably hasn't been destroyed. Someone's messing about with my ability to detect things."

He gives me a wry smile. "I feel slightly better about Thanagarian technology if our foes can manipulate a power ring as well."

"Power rings don't do well against magic."

"That sounds like a rather serious weakness."

"Ideally, Lanterns would be trained to use magic as well. It's on my to-do list." I was surprised to learn that the Green Lantern Corps does have at least one active sorcerer among its ranks, the unfortunately named Torquemada of Sector 3521. Just one, however. Another failure of the Green Lantern Corps' training scheme. Or perhaps most species don't use magic because they can't? Don't know. I know that John says 'anyone can do it', but I doubt he's spent a great deal of time with aliens. "Ring, Hall of Justice?" A picture appears clearly in my mind. "Still there. Of course, it's a little easier to disrupt a building on the ground than a space station."

"Would it not be far easier to disrupt your ring directly?"

"Um." I take my rune stone out of my equipment pouch and run it over the ring. Weak reaction, which could be anything from a minor spell to residue from my recent fight. "Maybe. Ring, contact Green two eight one four B." I'm not actually sure where Guy is at the moment…

Compliance.

An image of Guy's head appears over my ring. "Yeah, Orange? What is it?"

"Just testing whether this ring's communications were being disrupted. Are you on Earth?"

"Not right now. You need me back?"

"I don't think so, but don't start anything new just in case."

"A'right. Gardner out."

I lower the ring. "Sir, would you mind if I went to check on our allies myself?"

"Are you able to transport our ship with you?"

"I… Should be able to. I can find out very quickly."

"Shayera and I will accompany you. The ship is the only truly irreplaceable device we have here." He starts pressing buttons again. "I will arm some of the more aggressive security measures we have in place."

I shake my arms, several Praexis Demons dropping free. Fatty grins at me hopefully. "I'll leave these here as well. Next stop, the Hall of Justice."

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Undermined 15

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18th June

10:47 GMT -6

Lex waves at me languidly with his right hand. "So, what do you think of our colleague's work?"

On my side of the secure communication link I hold up the data stick containing Brain's attempt to calculate the possible dimensional topography of the King of Tears. "It's… Impressive. Calculating theoretical models for parallel universes about which so little is known…"

"I understand that he had some assistance from Klarion in gathering the original data."

"And suddenly I'm less impressed."

"Mordru checked it. It's all a little… Beyond me, I'm afraid." He shifts in his seat. "I realise that you are -quite understandably- upset about being excluded from the decision making on this."

I nod. "What was the vote?"

"The vote was on whether or not to use this method to destroy the Justice League, if it became plausible."

"No, I mean… Who voted yea and who voted nay?"

There's a very slight tensing of the skin around his eyes, but it vanishes as swiftly as it appears. "I'm not sure that it.. really matters."

"I can ask Brain for the discussion logs. I just thought that I'd be courteous about it and ask you directly."

"Very well. Savage, Ra's, Ocean Master, Brain and Klarion were in favor, while Queen Bee and I were against." Somehow I'm not surprised. The lunatics, immortals and the one being who might quite like learning what existing in eighteen dimensions is like. "To tell the truth, I'm still a little concerned. How do you rate your chances?"

"Difficult to say for sure. Assuming that Brain's calculations are mostly or entirely correct, I give myself an eighty percent chance of killing the King of Tears with damage to our side being within acceptable parameters. A few percent more with the damage being significant but survivable. My death, that of my field team, up to forty percent of the Human population of this world… After that, things get exceedingly dicey."

"The population was three billion in the nineteen sixties."

"That's why I consider that a victory worth measuring. Dicier is eighty to ninety percent, which would destroy the current Human civilisation. Dicier is the King of Tears being here long enough to permanently warp local space and killing everyone who could do something about it. Dicier is the eight percent chance that the King of Tears wins outright. And that's assuming that Brain's calculations are accurate. You can shave five percent or so off for every minute the revisions take, assuming that Father Box can continue to function in close proximity to it. And then they could be wildly out."

"Ploong."

I nod. "Quite."

Lex lightly strokes his chin with his right forefinger. "I take it then that you don't think this is a worthwhile endeavor."

"What are the League preventing us doing right now?"

He gives his head a very slight shake. "It isn't what they're actively preventing us from doing. It's about what they are passively discouraging the Human race from doing."

"Have you been convinced, then, since the original vote?"

"I'd rather the chance of victory was higher than eighty percent, but even if it is…" He makes a small shrug. "That's a four in five chance that the next day you'll be the head of the new Justice League and the biggest obstacle to our advancement of humanity will be gone."

Third biggest, right after Human nature and people like the Light. "I realise that there isn't anyone better to calculate this sort of thing than Brain,-" Except possibly Doctor Thaddeus Bodog Sivana, and I can't find him. "-but I know that you employ a good many members of the second tier of physicists. I would appreciate it greatly if you could ask them to go over his work."

He nods. "That's reasonable. It would be rather embarrassing to make a mistake here because his gorilla smudged his printout."

"Thank you. I'll feel slightly better knowing that a few more pairs of eyes have gone over this."

"It's no trouble. Was there anything else you wanted to ask?"

"No, that's it. Thank you for speaking with me." He nods politely, then deactivates the link from his side.

Hm.

Father Box, Hush Tube.

Ploong.

I rise from my chair, turn and walk through the Tube into the White House's secure briefing room.

18th June

11:50 GMT -5

Jon fans out his hands as I walk through. "Well? Good news or bad?"

"Lex says that he voted against." I tilt my head slightly to the right as I walk around to take my seat. "It's probably true, both because that would be in character and because he knows that I can check."

General Lane nods. "And the rest?"

"All in favour."

Adrian shakes his head. "I still don't think I understand what they were voting on."

"Essentially, there's a life form called the King of Tears. It exists in a plane of reality divergent to but accessible from ours. Some time in the fifties a minor supervillain you've probably never heard of teleported there when a minor superhero you've never heard of shot his teleporter with an arrow. He came back a few years ago… Changed. He made contact with Savage, but without Orm or Klarion egging him on he isn't quite dumb enough to make common cause with such a person. Instead, he plans to use him as a lure for his master. And for the Justice League. A few blasts of reality warping power in population centres, then a nice big wibbly-wobbly thingy where they can't help but spot it. The League attack in force, the King of Tears emerges from his portal and kills them all. I come in, use Brain's knowledge of its physics combined with my power ring to kill it… Or send it back, and use my acclaim to become the founder of the new Light-friendly Justice League. The question they were voting on was 'Is it worth the risk?'."

General Lane exhales sharply through his teeth. "I still say we should go after Luthor along with the rest. If he knew about this all along, that's treason and all kinds of other offences."

Caroline shakes her head. "Not unless we're at war with the… Subtle Realms. We might be able to get him on terrorism charges, though." She looks at me. "Do you know how great his direct involvement is?"

"As far as I can tell, very little. That's intentional on the Light's part, the public face doesn't involve himself directly in the most vile aspects of the work either in person or resources. Plus, he could always claim that he was doing what I am, waiting until a better time to act. That conviction might be a long time coming, and I doubt that it would really stop him."

Jon holds up his right hand. "We'll table the Luthor matter for now. What about the rest?"

Caroline indicates several large folders in front of her. "An attorney who only just passed their bar exam could convict the rest. Even Mordru, and that's without us having to use those anti-witchcraft laws too. These people are evil."

"Adrian?"

"Senator Knight's been falling over himself to help out, sir. We won't be able to get the Destructive Persons Act through in time for this, but it should be law before the end of the year."

"Grayven? You sure about the timeline? If we had fifty days or so we could probably get a placeholder law passed to cover this."

I shake my head. "I'm sorry sir. I had enough difficulty persuading them to give me a month."

"Very well then. General."

"Mister President."

"It has been brought to my attention that a group calling itself 'The Light' is assisting a foreign power to invade the territory of the United States. As Commander in Chief, I order you to use any and all means to prevent this from occurring."

General Lane smiles. "Yes sir."

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Undermined 16

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18th June

10:55 GMT -5

The Thanagarian ship is silent as it follows me into the sky while I send a filament in the direction of Washington DC. Someone clever is after me-. Ah, us, and I'm not going to assume that I can go wherever I want whenever I want. I'm not even completely certain that I can rely on a test transition if they can affect my senses like that. No, the Demon Ball could only block me, it couldn't do anything sophisticated. Though that does leave a question as to why I can't detect the Watchtower…

"Orange Lantern, we're ready." I glance back at the fighter where Mister Hol is at the controls. "Transfer us when ready."

"One moment, sir."

My biological sample appears just fine… Okay, the choice is either I transition us there or fly us there at maximum conventional speed and that would take half an hour at least.

"Transition in two, one, now."

The sky flickers, St Roch being replaced by Washington. My need to know bypasses my usual discomfort at using omnicognisance, data flowing into my ring-expanded mind. Every road, person, car, molecule of air… No. Something's stopping me getting a good read on the Hall of Justice itself. And someone-.

Something hits me! OW! My construct armour fails and my environmental shield flares and flickers. Another hit and the projectile is only lightly turned around by my armour's kinetic barrier before it triggers-. Crumbler tech! I don't bother with actual turrets, I just want lasers to fly from my body to intercept the remaining shots and they do, dozens of hair-thin beams shooting outwards and cutting them out of the air.

"Taking fire, sirs."

I widen my hands, an orange barricade made of hundreds of overlapping orange octagons appearing in front of us. The logical follow up for that attack would be-.

Black/purple fire leaps from the plaza in front of the Hall and people run screaming! Two figures remain standing as the crowd flees, one powerfully built figure in robes and wearing a horned helmet and the other an emaciated man with long greasy brown hair. The Demon -I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess Satanus- is throwing the fire from his right hand while his left is clasped onto the smaller man's right shoulder.

Oh shit that's Gary Lester.

"Phased targets detected. Locking target-."

"Civilian area, Shayera."

"Destabilisation pulse and sonic disruptor. Orange Lantern, I need a better angle."

The beam of fire is gouging its way through my barricade and this sort of barricade isn't cheap in terms of ring power. I remove my backup Spell Eater from an equipment pouch and shove it forwards, the barrier-octagons parting around it before reforming. As it touches the plume of flame the fire gutters and splutters and I don't hesitate, railgun turrets materialising and opening fire with Mage Slayer rounds at full power.

Satanus turns his right arm slightly, giving up on the spell in order to-. That's a force field projector. My shots strike and waste themselves against his purely technological barrier. I switch to a mix of Crumbler rounds and Mage Slayers as we pass over the plaza and a wave of something blasts out from the Thanagarian fighter. On the rooftops overlooking the plaza power armoured figures appear-. That's the same armour Truggs' people used when they ambushed us in the Smoky Mountains. Similar, anyway. A series of focused sonic blasts from the fighter hits the closest cluster, knocking two down while their squad mate manages to activate some sort of personal force field.

The first Crumbler round reduces Satanus' shield generator to a smoking ruin, and for a fraction of a second I allow myself to believe that I'm about to down the new ruler of Hell. A Mage Slayer shoots towards his face and a tiny yellow-grey portal opens just in front of it, swallowing it. For a half-second I watch it disappear into the distance in wherever he just portalled it to, then the portal closes and a series of new ones appears to consume the rest of my barrage. I grimace, then turn my railgun's attention to the newly unveiled mercenaries. Tungsten rounds slam into those who remained upright in the face of the Hawks' attack, personal force fields flickering and dying under the onslaught. Their armour fares slightly better, but with their energy barrier gone another blast from the Hawks' sonic weapon is able to put them down.

"Lantern! You just made me lose a wager with Mister Truggs!" I can see Satanus' grinning mouth through the shadows his helmet casts over his face. "I was so certain that Superman or Fate would reach here first!"

The portals are the same colour as the ones the Demon Ball used. I turn my guns back towards Satanus and fire a tungsten round. If he reacts in the same way -he does- then I'm not going to waste hard-to-replace Mage Slayer rounds. Just one shot at a time with two-seven-four second intervals. Force him to keep the spell going. And try to call the Praexis Demons back through.

Food?

Yes. This way for food.

The Hawks' fighter makes a circuit around the plaza, another disruption pulse going off and revealing another small group of mercenaries. I recognise the gear used by the neo-Nazis on the Watchtower almost immediately and before they can bring their elemental attacks to bear I plug each one with a Mage Slayer round.

"So swift! So certain! And so precise! What I would not give for men such as you to be among my own followers!"

"Do I amuse you, Saturnus?" I drop the Hellwraith from the ring on my right hand, instructing it to float under the ground until it's in a position to attack him. Oh, I really wish I'd brought either the Ace or the Sword with me!

"And you even pronounced it correctly! I take it that you have disposed of William Hayes?"

"He's in custody."

"Blackgate is going to need a few new guards. Though I should point out that he killed at least three of them before receiving the powers of Sabbac."

"What did you do to the other Hell Lords?"

He half-turns, showing me the back of his robe… And the faces I remember as belonging to the Demons whom the First sent back to Hell. "Normally their punishment would last only until the First forgot why he was wroth with them. But with the First's extended… Absence from his regular position, they remained vulnerable. Particularly to one whose power was already bound into theirs."

"I imagine that you shortchanged Mister Hayes."

"Not at all! He got nearly everything he asked for. I simply retained the ability to take it back once he failed. If he couldn't capitalise on the opportunity, then the fault was his! Perhaps he should have been less devoted to the idea of evil and a little more to rationality and intelligence! Did you like the Polyhedrite?"

"I was just calling it 'Ball Demon'."

"Yes, and you call the sublime work of alchemy which gives mortal Humans a taste of demonic power 'Devil Jizz'. I fear that naming things is not your strength."

"I was impressed by the complexity of the thing. I take it that it wasn't a Demon?"

"Oh no. It is a Lukhavim. The normal design stresses brute force, but Demons already have that in excessive quantities. By wiring in the intellectual capacities of the Human species using freshly damned souls in a technodemonic framework, I am able to create something far more sophisticated!"

I am in position, Master.

"All your own work?"

"Belial helped. Though I have been expanding my library of late. There is some truly fascinating work coming out of Atlantis."

With no further fire incoming I allow my barricade to fade away to a few plates, the Hawks manoeuvring their fighter to the opposite side of the plaza.

"Still, it would have required a great deal of skill to adapt Earth-magic rune layouts for Hell-magic systems."

"I take after my father in that regard."

"What do you want here?"

"I need more than arcane skill to establish myself as Hell's ruler. Destroying this monument to Human heroism -and killing a few of its defenders- will go some way to giving me the credentials of a war leader."

I don't use Ophidian's Eyes on the Demon Lord.

I generate seven additional railgun turrets. Internal only. "Sir, would you please shoot him with everything you have? I need a distraction."

"Alright." Hawkwoman sounds far less eager than she did earlier. Perhaps she doesn't find this sort of combat as exciting. "On three. One. Two. Three."

I open fire with tungsten rounds at the same time as the Thanagarian fighter opens fire with plasma repeaters.

"Hahaha!" Satanus interposes more portals to absorb the shots. "A weak effort! I had expected-."

Praexis Demons swarm from the rifts and latch onto his body while the Hellwraith rises through the pavement and grabs onto his cloak!

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Undermined 17

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18th June

10:58 GMT -5

Satanus staggers sideways as the horde swarms over him, though I imagine that he does so more in surprise than fear.

"Aagh!"

Mister Lester is less sanguine, cowering away as much as he can with Satanus' hand still clamped onto his shoulder. Okay, I didn't ask John about him directly as I assumed that his fate was a bit of a sore point, but to the best of my recollection he had Mnemoth sealed inside him then got bricked up in a small room in Linton Smith's basement. Not that I think he wouldn't have sold him on to Satanus if the price was right.

Satanus responds, exhaling black/purple fire to burn through the Praexis Demon that had latched onto his face then turning his head in an arc to incinerate as many others as he can. They dissipate after a second or two then fall from the rings to renew their attack, several already showing the distended bellies which indicates that we're about to witness another wave of vomit-births.

Joy.

What next? The Praexis Demons can probably keep his attention but given how powerful I imagine him to be I doubt that they'll make much progress-

Satanus is briefly surrounded by a storm of lightning, which fries the Praexis Demons all over him as well as the Hellwraith. He gets all of half a second's respite before they're all over him again.

-in draining him completely, which is just about the only thing they can do to finish him. Tubbs!

The Praexis Demon I call stops mid-air and turns towards me.

Get into the Hall's zeta tube and fetch the Sword of the Fallen and the Ace of Winchesters from the mountain.

But food?

Go.

He slumps slightly. I go. Then he flies off towards the entrance of the building.

Satanus is lashing out with his free hand in a slightly more controlled way now. I think he's realised that the Demons aren't an immediate threat. Giving him think-time is not ideal.

"Orange Lantern, your… Things aren't giving us a clear shot."

Ms Thal sounds moderately disgusted by them. I wonder..? Oh, I'm a grandfather, that explains it. I suppose she won't have seen that happen before. "They can't die, sir. Feel free to fire through them. Alternatively, if you can secure the Hall or Mister Lester, that would be quite helpful."

"Who is he?"

"An associate of Mister Constantine." A grey/black portal opens next to Satanus and he grabs a struggling Praexis Demon by its head and shoves it through before closing the portal again. Yep, sending them to a different part of Hell will work perfectly well. "There's a rather unpleasant Famine Elemental called Mnemoth inside him. It killed eighty nine people last time it was in New York."

Satanus opens another portal, this time showing watery sludge on the far side. Just in case he's having to concentrate on that I open up with my railguns once more.

"Gah!"

Yes, yes he does. And agh-!

I drop through the air, construct armour gone and armour smouldering. Ring, what was that?

Massive electrical discharge detected.

And I didn't get advanced warning because..?

Unable to detect prior to impact. Probability analysis strongly indicative of conjuration.

Fair enough. I re-establish my construct armour and add an ablative sphere around me. Praexis Demons, next time he tries shoving one of you through a portal, try eating it.

I get a vague impression of obedience back through the link.

What exactly is this in aid of? Satanus is about as powerful as Demons come, yet he hasn't brought any backup with him that I can see. No cultists, none of those minor Demons that Mister Gregor or the Polyhedrite had. I mean, yes, I don't think I've done more than mildly inconvenience him so far…

Ms Thal dives out of the rear hatch of the fighter and flies into the Hall at speed while her husband remains on overwatch. He attempts another volley of shots from the plasma repeaters, but all this does is remind Satanus that he's there. Turning suddenly in the fighter's direction he negligently backhands a Praexis Demon towards a portal leading to an area of densely piled and still animate skeletons. In a surprising display of coordination, two other Demons grab hold of it and shove it upwards so that it hits the portal mouth first. The Praexis gulps, its mouth expanding, being sucked along the outer surface of the portal. Satanus looks back from throwing fire at the fighter, staring at the Praexis with the first genuine concern that I've seen in this fight.

The Praexis Demon grows, not getting fat but expanding, the solid orange of its body being corrupted with grey and brown.

"Raaaaaarr!"

"How-?!"

Perfect. Angel Feather round, fire.

A portal starts to form to intercept it but another Praexis gulps it down immediately, sloughing off to the side as it too begins its metamorphosis. Satanus is left wide open as the Source-touched round strikes him.

"RAAAAAAAAGH!"

Golden fire erupts all over his body, his clothing burned off and his skin blackening and charring!

"Gabriel!" Golden sand swirls around him as he opens a rift to Hell with himself at the centre. The golden flames gutter and fail. I suppose that makes sense. According to John, Hell grew up around the First after God told him to 'get out of my sight'. Presumably the Source's presence doesn't extend there.

"Enough of this!" Satanus releases Mister Lester's shoulder and the man falls to his knees before frantically scrabbling to get out of the way. "Clearly, I should have paid more attention when Truggs told me of your skill." I open fire with Mage Slayers again as he raises his right hand and blasts Mister Lester in the back. "Enjoy the reward of your labours."

The rift collapses around him, taking him back to Hell with it as flies begin to crawl out of Mister Lester's charred body. Mnemoth will be joining us in a moment or two.

"Katar! More soldiers in the Hall!"

Hellwraith, go and assist her. Praexis Demons, eat as many flies as you can.

The swarm swoop in, but the demonic flies are literally materialising from nowhere. It's quite possible that they're just a side effect of Mnemoth's spirit being close at hand rather than acting as his physical body. Plus, the Praexis Demons aren't the world's most agile fliers.

"So full!"

And I've got a distinct feeling that my new living Hell portals are going to be a problem. Okay, more flies and they're increasingly larger and more demonic-looking. The crowd -who had started to edge forwards like the filthy rubberneckers they are- start backing up again as the centre of the plaza blackens from the sheer mass of insect bodies.

I don't think that the Polyhedrite had desires of its own. But I can see from the filthy orange glow emanating from its small avatar bodies that Mnemoth does. It wants people to suffer and starve so that it can spread. Of course, having desires of your own to which you are totally beholden isn't an entirely good idea when facing an Orange Lantern.

Orange light envelopes the entire area in which it is trying to emerge, hundreds of connections forming between the rings and its central consciousness. It's intelligent but not particularly clever, as expected from a life form that flew into the blatant trap John and Mister Smith set up.

Ring, can we assimilate it?

Presence of intense unrestricted desire indicates little resistance to assimilation.

I imagine a cloud of orange Demon-Flies covering the skies.

No. I don't think I want that.

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Undermined 18

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18th June

11:01 GMT -5

Altering other people's desires is something I've been able to do for a while. I mean, I've probably been capable of it for as long as I've had this ring. Looking back I… I can certainly spot times when it's altered mine. Amplified them, anyway. Using that ability myself, compelling people in order to achieve my own ends… I'm not sure whether what I do is worse than telepathically altering someone or not. It certainly isn't any better. Doctor Jones hasn't shown any obvious signs of it lingering, but it's always a concern. I have little desire to turn other people into puppets on a permanent basis.

But in this case it's a Famine Elemental. It was brought into being by suffering, in a way I imagine is similar to that of the Idea of Evil in Berserk. As it spreads, it causes starvation and recharges from the starvation it causes. Nutrition just disappears from people's bodies, sending them into a frenzy in which they will try to eat anything that might alleviate the feeling. It has little personality beyond that and its only window on humanity is its suffering.

There are limits.

Ophidian.

I feel her awareness expand into me, and for a moment I/we see every moment of Human starvation, every crop failure and field-burning and plague that left farmers too weak to work their fields. And in that instance I/we see it as the Ophidian does. Barely relevant.

I pull away from her a little.

My Agent. Will we make it ours?

I can hear a slight hint of confusion. To her, it's another thing, and having more things is better. She doesn't -probably can't- understand why I'm feeling the way I am.

I don't want to ever end up like that.

"No. It may not use our light. Desire nullification."

Flies drop from the air as the Elemental's core self begins to fragment. It doesn't have much beyond its desires, and the more it tries to cling to them the worse it fractures as I dial them down. I can't quite cut it off completely, but it doesn't have anything else to cling to. I feel the parts of its soul begin to lose cohesion…

And realise that having a huge pile of famine-magic do that in a major city probably isn't much better than having the Elemental itself freed.

Praexis Demons with the portals!

The two of them turn their heads… The top parts at least, in my direction.

Lots of food coming! Do you see it?

"Huh?" / "Yay!"

I don't have time for their ineptitude! Praexis Demons, consume!

They shudder, then throw their heads back… The top of their bodies peels off, the tops of their heads flapping down their backs. Inside them, the Hellgates flicker and flare in disturbingly lantern-like structures. The stunned and recumbent flies rise off the ground, drifting in lazy arcs around the plaza as they are drawn inexorably towards the portals.

"Uh?"

The other Praexis Demons look a little disturbed, actively avoiding the flies and flinching whenever they look at their brethren.

"A-ah-ah."

"Quiet! They'll hear you!"

I turn my attention back to the crowd… Yellow, I see yellow. Why-?

I look back at the mob of Demon-Constructs surrounding two big ones with built in Hellgates sucking in the remains of Mnemoth. On the far side I see Hell itself, and as the physical and etheric remains of the Elemental enter it, they bulge and grow. I myself am… Glowing brilliant orange, the orange sigil blazing on my forehead.

Ah.

Ophidian, thank you for your help.

I gently push her presence away, and she acquiesces with only a brief sensation of confusion.

"Got it! Got it!" Tubbs flies out of the Hall of Justice, short chubby arms cradling the scabbard I use for the Sword of the Fallen. He starts heading towards me, then stops dead in the air as he sees his swollen brethren. "Huh?"

"Get over here."

He shudders, then complies.

Shayera comes next, Ace of Winchesters slung from its strap over her shoulder and her mace at the ready. Katar exits the Thanagarian fighter and swoops down to her as a haggard-looking tour group dashes out in her wake before-

"Agh!"

-stopping dead when they see my minions.

The space inside the portals pulses and twists and I have no idea what it is doing. I created these things and I've got no idea how or why they work! I'm pouring more power into a spell I don't understand… Heck, I doubt that anyone understands what it's mutated into now!

"Orange Lantern." Mister Hol flaps my way, taking care to skirt the Portal Demons. "Would you care to explain what just happened?"

"When I confronted the Demon Ball, a number of my Praexis Demons were sucked through as it disappeared. The small portals Satanus used to block our shots linked to the same place, so I could call them back through to swarm him. He started using portals to different places to get rid of them, so I told them to eat the portals."

Ms Thal clips her mace to her belt and raises the Ace, pointing it at the closest one. "What are they?"

"I don't know."

"Are they dangerous?"

"I don't know." I shake my head. "Probably. It's just that everything else they've eaten so far, they've either just ingested it or turned it into new Praexis Demons. This is… New."

Unstable Hellgates built into avarice monsters. And I presumed to lecture Ted about an Ape. If anything comes out, or if they change in some way…

I take the sheath from Tubbs and attach it to my armour. "Thank you."

Mister Hol grimaces. "Communications are still down. We have no way to contact Nabu."

I draw the Sword and fly towards the closest Portal Demon. Upside down on the back of its head its eyes flick in my direction.

"Uuuuuuh?"

"I'm still not really sure how intelligent you are. But I'm sorry about this."

I slash horizontally, cutting through its construct torso and head. The orange light of its body starts to fray, deforming and darkening. I think-. I quickly run my rune stone over it. Yep, whatever the Sword does to things just enabled the magic from the portal to run throughout the rest of it. I float upwards, slashing the portal and the lantern-structure anchoring it in place.

"Lantern!"

"Sir, this is the best idea I have and you told me that the League's expert wasn't available." I pull back slightly, watching as the Demon's face dissolves to mush. Come on, the portal should collapse without something keeping it anchored… It's certainly destabilising… Railgun. I fire a short volley of Crumbler and Mage Slayer rounds at the Portal Demon.

There's a flare of light as the portal collapses inwards.

Ring, did any of that mess end up inside you?

"Construct Lantern did not return to this ring. No changes to structure detected."

Good. I turn my attention to the second one.

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Undermined 19

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18th June

11:06 GMT -5

Ms Thal looks down at her husband as he crouches in front of the bank of computers which run the Hall's internal systems. "And we still have no idea why communications are down?"

"Everything seems to be in order here."

"And either no one's answering their mobiles or somehow public networks are being affected as well. Permission to try civilian phone lines?" Mister Hol extracts himself for a moment to look me in the eyes. "Given that the Light already know who everyone is and Satanus is a member, there doesn't seem to be any added risk."

"No, not yet. At New Year you were able to locate the Watchtower in spite of its cloaking technology. Could you do so again?"

"Sadly, no."

Ms Thal's mouth tightens. "Why not?"

"You remember that meeting a little while ago where -among other things- I asked Nabu why he hadn't warded the Watchtower yet?"

She nods in understanding. "He's warded it since."

"Convenient as it would be for him to have ignored everything I said, he does have a reasonably intelligent head on his shoulders." Someone's shoulders, anyway. "It appears specifically designed to block out the sort of thing we used to get in last time. If we could get hold of Nabu himself or a mage of equivalent power we could get in anyway, but…"

"If we could do that then we wouldn't have this problem." Mister Hol rises to his feet. "At this point I can't do anything more without replacing the whole system."

"Could you just fly to the Watchtower?"

"I can fly to its predicted location and wave some construct arms around. Alternatively, we could try the zeta tubes."

Mister Hol bows his head slightly. "If our systems have been compromised to this degree, I would hesitate to use them."

"The zeta tube system is designed to be isolated from the main computers, and it is extremely failsafe. Tubbs went through fine when he got the Sword and the Ace from their storage facility. If you're really concerned we can send him-" Ms Thal starts walking towards an equipment storage locker. "-and a robotic drone through first."

She opens it and reaches inside. "I've got a better idea." She turns around and holds out… Ring? A Thanagarian designed uninterruptible transponder. "Give this to… 'Tubbs', then home in on its location."

"Does it work through detection wards, sir?"

She looks at Mister Hol, who strokes his chin with his right hand. "I somehow doubt that it's ever been tested. Still, it doesn't hurt to play it a little safer."

I nod, and Tubbs floats forwards and reaches out with his stubby little arms for the device. "Does he understand what it is?"

"Does he need to?"

She presses the activation button before handing it over. Tubbs snatches it and looks at it speculatively.

"No, don't eat it. Fly through the zeta tube to the Watchtower and wait."

"I go." He zips off in the direction of the Hall's library.

"We should probably be right behind him. Going in through the tube will be easier than flying up there."

Mister Hol nods and the three of us fly after him through the Hall's corridors. Ms Thal pulls up alongside me. "I'm curious about the obvious contradiction in your beliefs about personal liberty."

"What would that be?"

"You were prepared to campaign with Luthor to get AIs rights, but you have Demons enslaved to your will." She smiles faintly. "I'm not even sure that's legal any more."

"It isn't. Legally, they're constructs and not Demons. That means that they're not covered. And I had good faith on that until today."

We come out into the library in time to see the flash of Tubbs' departure. "Recognized, Tubbs, C zero five."

"As the law currently stands, I'm obliged to release them. And I'd gladly do that if I had the slightest idea how to. Really, I've been lucky that something like what happened outside hasn't happened before." I check the mechanism on the Ace. Everything appears to be in order.

"Pass me the Sword." I look at Ms Thal. "You're going to be shooting and it's a lot more effective against Demons than my mace."

I nod and detach the scabbard from my armour, then pass it to her. "Sir, be very careful with this weapon."

She takes it, then clips the scabbard to her harness. "You'll get it back."

"Sir, it's a barely understood arcane weapon. We don't know what it does to people it hits or people who use it."

There's a ping, and Mister Hol looks up from his tracker. "Location confirmed. The Watchtower is where it's supposed to be. Any opposition?"

Tubbs?

I get an image of the Watchtower's meeting hall. Haven't taken my advice on moving the tube, I see. Tubbs can't identify weapons all that reliably, but there aren't any people around and no one is actively attacking him. "Looks clear, sirs. We can go right up."

Ms Thal shrugs. "Never hurts to be prepared."

"I'm not arguing." I hold out my right arm towards the tube. "Melee weapons first?"

She draws the Sword.

"Recognized, Hawkwoman, one zero, Hawkman, zero nine, Orange Lantern, B zero six."

18th June

16:09 GMT

Ms Thal is floating near the large window into the arboretum. Mister Hol is trying to access the Watchtower's computer, a breathing mask extended over his face. He glances up as I try scanning the Watchtower from the inside. "It might have been nice to know that the atmosphere had been vented."

"Sorry sir, but Tubbs doesn't breathe. He wouldn't have noticed. Are the two of you alright operating here?"

"It's only one atmosphere's difference. There." All of the holodisplays in the room activate, displaying the message 'Main hall'. "That's being displayed all across the Watchtower. Hopefully-."

Ms Thal flaps, diving out of the way as a beam of blue plasma blasts through the window. I fly towards the breach, creating a construct barrier between us and whoever that was who just took a shot at us.

"Brilliant idea, Katar!"

"Did you see who shot at you?"

She nods. "And you're going to love it."

Robot Hawkman ignites his wings and surges towards my barrier. I fire the Ace once, bullet failing to penetrate his outer casing. Then I pull myself aside and fire an orange beam from the ring. Some sort of pink energy flows over the android's joints as the beam hits, crackling as the pulse is… Absorbed, I think?

Warning: power drain detected. One hundred two percent remaining.

Yep. Absorbed. Wonderful.

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Undermined 20

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18th June

16:10 GMT

Still, it's not as if I don't usually attack indirectly anyway.

Ms Thal flies directly at it with the Sword held slightly to her right side while Mister Hol flies directly upwards, presumably trying to make it harder for the robot to shoot him. Since the plasma beams were just plasma I erect a construct barrier along with two construct railguns.

The robot flicks its right arm in her direction and Ms Thal takes a plasma beam to the chest. "Ough!" She's knocked back, her diving charge turning into an uncontrolled tumble. Plasma weapon is probably Earth-tech, given that her armour appears to have taken the worst of it.

"More of you are up here already?" The robot's face doesn't have any capacity for expression, but the voice sounds confused. How am I hearing that? Internal communications. The ring is interpreting it as direct speech. "I was sure it would take longer than this. Bloody autistic systems."

The voice is English… The armour is warded and insulated. That could actually be power armour, which is why I don't just shoot off the arms and legs as I move to protect Ms Thal with my construct barrier.

"I realise that this isn't America, but if you'll stand down-" A beam of plasma from a device on his left wrist splashes off my construct barrier. "-I'm sure that I can prevail-."

"Where are Major Atom and Icon!?"

The robot raises its right arm and fires a series of rapid pulses in Mister Hol's direction as he flies, weaving and jinking. "If they're where I left them, then they're still unconscious inside a secure cell. Let me just check."

I blink, and he's suddenly smashing into Mister Hol, his mechanical wings ablaze with blue plasma that leaves a brilliant trail in his wake. "Yeah!" The two of them crash into the far wall. "They're fine!"

"Eyh." Ms Thal pushes herself up as I switch from railgun to laser. Okay, automatic tracking, fire. The first quarter-second beam hits the middle of the robot's wings, but I can't see any damage. The second hits the rear of his knee. I see the metal reddening for a moment. Did the heat get transferred, or did I melt something? Not sure.

Mister Hol drops his mace and gets an Nth metal knife out of his belt, stabbing at the robot's eyes. The robot recoils from the blow, giving Mister Hol space to punch it in the throat. "Ah." Which isn't a good idea when your opponent is made of metal and doesn't have normal organic vulnerabilities.

The robot bends in the air and kicks off Mister Hol's chest before he can stab it again with his knife. It turns in the air, diving down towards-. The cheeky git is going for Mister Hol's mace! Though since they're now separate, cold gun, fire on the wings.

The pale blue beam hits the burning wings and the heat dies wherever it touches.

"Whaaaaa!"

Then it's his turn to tumble out of control, slamming back down onto the deck next to the mace and scrabbling for it as his wings super cool. Ice doesn't form as there's no moist air around to supply the water but very cold metal becomes quite brittle. He rolls as he gets his hands around the shaft, interposing it between himself and my beam.

So I make a second cold gun construct slightly offset from the first and fire that at his legs.

"Hey, that's-!" He… Hops, trying to avoid a light speed weapon. I'm limiting myself to temperatures that the Human body can survive in case that is armour, but the Human body can survive temperatures far below what it actually likes. I alternate, shooting legs, arms and torso until the ring's scan says that it's as cold as a person can get without risking frostbite.

Must remember to visit Mister Snart with a box of chocolates.

I cut the beams and walk slowly towards him. He tries to push himself up, metal plates on the outer surface of his armour cracking as he does so. "I would very much appreciate it if you would surrender now."

"You've super-cooled the metal!" He turns his head in my direction and I see where Mister Hol's knife has sliced into his head. Think I can be fairly confident that there wasn't anyone in there. "Truggs tried to tell me that the conductor system was a bad idea. That'll teach me not to listen!"

"Indeed. I've learned to my misfortune that he's a-" Hawkman lands just behind me. "-remarkably sagacious fellow. What exactly are you?"

"Oh, no. I'm not surrendering. I'm just not being a dick about beating you up." Pale pink light flows out of his joints and covers his entire body, silver metal darkening as it does so. "You see, cold doesn't do much to stop Dem-."

I raise the Ace and fire.

"YAAAAAAAGH!"

He convulses as the golden fire passes over everywhere the pink light touches, burning through the outer casing and revealing the mechanisms within.

"Sir, shots from the Ace of Winchesters destroy demonic magic. I strongly suggest that you stop using it."

Wait a moment. Pink Demon magic and an English accent. One match found…

"Richard Simpson?"

Mister Hol glances at me. "You know this creature?"

"He used to be one of John Constantine's friends."

"Emphasis on the-. Guh. On the used." His face is mostly gone, his epidermal layers have been eaten through to the inner mechanism in several places and I've got no idea how he's speaking or hearing. "You know him too? Did he finally fuck things up for someone important enough that superheroes got called in?"

"No. We're friends."

"Hah! Won't be long, then. Okay, spiritual firewalls back in place. That gun is a nasty piece of work. Ah. Bloody hell, this thing's wrecked."

Ms Thal leans forward slightly, Sword at the ready. "How can you tell?"

"Internal cameras. I'm connected to this whole place. Well, all the networked bits. I've shifted myself as far out of this wrecked chassis as I can."

"RaH!" Ms Thal lunges forwards, cutting through the metal with the Sword. The blade enters at the middle of the right shoulder then cuts diagonally down across the torso before exiting just above the left hip.

"And just in time too, apparently. Now where's that communications laser? I need to get back to Earth."

Ms Thal snarls, then turns her head my way. "I thought you said Demons had trouble with hinges."

"Hah!" Oh, I see. The signal wasn't actually coming from the robot, it's coming from main communications. "He wasn't far wrong. Hey, if you know who I am, you can fill them in. If you're here, that means that my part in this mess is over."

"Why are you working for Satanus!? You remember Newcastle, you remember what they're like!"

"Satanus got me away from Agony and Ecstasy after twenty years rather than ten thousand. He's not such a bad guy-."

"Excuse me! The Twins work for the First and I killed him."

"Did you? Oh. Alright, but Satanus is still the one who's making sure the First stays dead. And he took the time to free me from my… Education program. But I'll tell you what. Since you helped, I won't completely wreck the computers on my way out. So long!"

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Undermined 21

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18th June

16:14 GMT

Mister Hol goes to work on the Watchtower's computers immediately. Ms Thal looks at what's left of the robot for a moment, then lunges at it, punching the very cold metal in what's left of its chest with her right fist. Metal fractures and snaps as it gets knocked backwards and falls to the floor.

I hold out my right hand and look at her expectantly. She keeps staring at the robot for several seconds, breathing hard. Then she remembers that I'm there and turns back around, looking at my hand with a frown. Then she resheathes the Sword, detaches the sheath from her belt, and passes it over.

"Thank you, sir."

She glances at the robot again. "Do I want to ask?"

"Richard Simpson was a practitioner of a sort of computer-based parapsionics. He assisted John in investigating a religious group called the Resurrection Crusade. They had arcane computer defences… His mind and soul were inside their system when the defences triggered. His physical body was completely destroyed, and John just walked away without trying to help."

"So he's become some sort of living computer program?"

"No, that made him a weak arcane being. But… After that, John was trying to escape a powerful Demon called Nergal. He couldn't get away, so he used Mister Simpson's equipment to transfer himself into a local computer network while Mister Simpson occupied his body. Nergal caught him, got him to explain how the system worked and then went in after John."

"Demons can do that?"

"Apparently. Needless to say, if Mister Simpson was still Human I'd have recruited him for KordTech months ago. So, Nergal goes in, John tricks him into projecting himself into some sort of anti-Demon trap… Then Mister Simpson decides that he'd rather keep John's body."

"Heh. Sounds like it serves him right."

"Except that as John points out, his body has lung cancer and only a couple of months to live. But, Nergal's brain dead body is just sitting there. So they do a swap. John gets his own body back, and a little while later manages to trick the First and his brothers-" I tap the hilt of the Sword. "-into fixing his lungs. Mister Simpson takes Nergal's body and all the Demonic energy bound into it and reconfigures it. John told me that he claimed to have become some sort of technology Demon. Except, that isn't allowed, and a couple of high level Demons turned up to force him to go through the proper process."

I sigh. "But with the First gone, the old rules of demonic society got thrown out of the window. If Satanus wants him freed with as much of his Human intelligence and initiative intact as possible, then that's what happens unless a Demon of equal power stands against him."

I feel a slight wind against my skin as the air supply comes back on. Ring, give me the bad news; there wasn't any wind when the window was punctured. All of the horses are dead, aren't they?

All horses are presently in their stable. Stable air supply still functional.

Oh, that's a relief. The horses will be a bit grumpy about being shut in, but after a few…

"Sir? Have you checked on Major Adams and Mister Freeman?"

"They're fine, but I'm leaving the door to their cell sealed until the atmosphere is fully restored." He presses a few more buttons and the main holodisplay appears with Batman, Red Tornado and Ms Lance all showing incoming communications. "Watchtower to League. Hawkman here. We've-."

Batman's first to react. "What's the situation?"

"We've retaken the Watchtower from a Computer Demon… Thing." He glances my way. "I'm running a full reset of the Watchtower's systems now. The zeta tube network should have been unaffected. Captain Atom and Icon have non-life-threatening injures and we will take them to the infirmary as soon as the atmosphere is restored."

"The horses are fine too."

Ms Lance looks off to the side, making a very quiet sigh-laugh. The other two don't react.

Ms Thal and I walk around to be comfortably within the arc of the camera. Now that I get a better look at him, Batman looks like he's been in combat. There's dirt and a little blood visible on his mask. Raquel was shadowing him today, hopefully demonstrating by example the advantages of a personal force field. Red Tornado looks fine, as does Ms Lance. Then again, I think she was working her civilian job today.

Another window lights up and Mister Allen's face appears, his eyes flick swiftly around the other floating heads. "Everyone else get attacked too?"

Batman nods. "A professional assassin by the name of Constantine Drakon."

"At least that's one less assassin we'll have to worry about."

Batman's head lowers slightly. "Unfortunately, he was able to disengage successfully. Were you also targeted?"

"Yeah, it looks like we've got a new Mirror Master on the loose. Do you think I could talk Zatanna into making Central City her regular beat?"

Ms Thal nods. "We had to deal with a robot, a Sabbac, a swarm of Demons-" I look away from the screen and cough quietly into my right fist. "-Satanus and a Demon-possessed robot."

There's a slight whir from Red Tornado. "I was not subjected to a targeted attack. However, someone transformed several dozen people in my vicinity into monstrous beasts."

Mister Allen frowns slightly. "That sounds like an attack to me."

"If it was intended as such, then they failed in their objective. They were unable to control their creations. Most fled in a panic, others lashed out at whatever was close at hand."

Ms Lance nods. "We were attacked by a huge alien with four arms."

Batman's eyes narrow. "The League's being targeted. Now that communications are back up and running I'll try contacting everyone. Stay on your guard. Hawkman, Hawkwoman, Orange Lantern. Stay on the Watchtower until I relieve you. Everyone else, if you have dealt with your assailant go to the Watchtower and prepare to deploy. Batman out."

Mister Hol nods, then deactivates the display and stares into space for a moment. "After today, I think we should try and persuade the others to reconsider their position on integrating weapons into the Watchtower's structure."

Ms Thal nods. "Weapons, shields and a standing security force recruited from the armies of UN Security Council members."

I blink in surprise. "Do you think there's any chance they'll go for that? I mean, I thought I was pushing things-."

They both look at me like I'm an idiot. Yeah. Okay.

"While we're on the subject of weapons, sirs." I take two cold guns out of subspace. "Might I offer you each one of these to augment your arsenals? I can be available to train you in their use just as soon as Batman-" Ms Thal takes the one closest to her and begins examining it closely. "-gives the all-clear."

Mister Hol nods. "I think I will take you up on that." He holds out his hand and I pass the remaining gun to him. He takes it and looks at it thoughtfully for a moment. "I see that you've remodelled it based on Thanagarian designs."

"Just these two, sir. I thought that it would help if it were familiar."

He nods, smiling. "Given what has happened, I feel obliged to let you know that today's exercise was in part an opportunity to review members of your team who might be capable of serving in the Justice League. Diana warned us that you were an over-achiever, but seeing you in action was… Impressive."

"Thank you, sir. But I was rather expecting to get black balled by Nabu."

"True, you were. But Batman raised the idea of moving to qualified majority voting rather than unanimity. If we reach agreement on that, Nabu's objections will no longer be a barrier."

I smile outwardly. "Well…. Thank you, sir. Ah-." I turn to Ms Thal, who looks up from her shiny new gun for long enough to roll her eyes and nod. "Thank you sirs. I'm not certain how frequently I'd-."

Batman's face reappears on the holodisplay. "All available Justice League members capable of operating under the ocean are to deploy to Poseidonis at once. They're under a major attack."

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Undermined 22

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18th June

13:19 GMT -3

Waterplough.

I haven't practiced with it. It's just one of those weird alien devices that John's ring had in its database that I looked at for half a second, thought 'when would I ever use that?' and dismissed.

I'm using it now.

The Poseidonis zeta tube was the first target for whoever this is, and the Poseidonis-side of the Dolmen Gate pair between there and the Atlantean New York embassy was the second. That was what notified us that something was going on: Ambassador Vallambrosa frantically trying to get hold of the League while we were all under Mister Simpson's communications blackout. With no other transport links between the surface and Poseidonis we're reduced to either arcane teleportation -a risky prospect when the civilisation you're teleporting to is heavily populated by magic users- or brute forcing it like I'm doing.

The waterplough construct does something to the hydrogen bonds in the water immediately before it, making it far less viscous than normal. I'm focusing on maintaining the construct while Mister Freeman, Diana and Mister Kent put their effort into shoving it forward. It's about four kilometres down to reach Poseidonis and we'll be there inside a minute. Just as soon as Nabu's freed himself from his opponent he'll be bringing another group down… Assuming that the fight is still going on. I sent out a call for the local Green Lanterns to return, but that would take anything up to half an hour.

"Orange Lantern, are you getting anything?" Mister Kent is gazing forwards in a way I recognise from Kon, magnifying his vision just as far as he can. Down this far even his vision can't get enough light to see the part of the spectrum visible to normal Humans, and that won't change until we're in the immediate vicinity of the city. Water's too good a conductor of heat for infrared vision, there isn't enough electrical activity or radiation particles for the rest of a Kryptonian's visual abilities.

Ring… Give me something!

Unable to comply.

"Sorry sir, but I can't. This isn't just normal warding, someone's made a real effort to keep me from scanning it."

Magic sensors have gone up my priority list. As well as talking to the Controllers about whether it's possible for me to learn magic or not.

Mister Freeman isn't fazed. "How long until we reach our destination?"

"Assuming that the silt-cleared area is the same as it was before the attack, we'll arrive in twenty seconds." I think, and a countdown timer appears on our side of the waterplough.

"Alright. We've got no idea what we're running into and none of us have any ranged attack options that work underwater. Wonder Woman, Orange Lantern: you're both more familiar with magic and Atlantis than Icon and I are. We're going to need you to guide us."

"Sir." / "Of course."

After Black Manta's embarrassingly successful attack on the city last year, the Atlantean military was put through some pretty intensive retraining on the subject of civil defence. One problem they've had is that there hasn't really been much for their military to do. The city-states don't fight each other anymore and no one else has the reach to attack Atlantis. Most of the things they do fight are dealt with by small groups of battlemages, not large combat formations. Superheroes rather than soldiers. I know that the High Command was showing a great deal of interest in the military applications in Sephtian's work, though I hadn't bothered keeping up with exactly what they were purchasing.

After the purges that occurred in the wake of Orm's departure Poseidonis' military strength is greater than it's been at any point in its recent history. That, and with a good chunk of it coming from other city-states an attack on the capital is bound to enrage the entire country. Taking those two points together, this may well be the worst time to attack there's ever been.

I hope.

One.

Zero.

The silt remains in place for a moment, then vanishes.

Diana reacts first, though I'm only a second behind. "Titanspawn."

I dismiss the waterplough as we accelerate through the water under our own power. The group of figures we're moving towards are things called Water Wraiths, though that is technically inaccurate. They're very roughly humanoid shapes made of water bound together by their innate magics. As we close the distance it becomes possible to see the water-smoothed stones that form bone-like structures inside their transparent bodies. These creatures are supposed to be very rare. Their precise abilities and level of intelligence have never been properly assessed, their few recorded appearances not leaving enough survivors. Themysciran myth claims that they are surviving servitors left over from before the fall of the Titanocracy, though how literally 'titanspawn' describes them isn't known.

Closer, and I can distinguish individual members of their group. Five of them, surrounded by smaller… Surrounded by man-sized figures, naked and with their partially rotten flesh exposed to the water. Aquatic zombies of some kind. The Water Wraiths must be about four metres tall, assuming that they can't just shift their forms. Already a sizeable chunk of the zombie horde are moving in our direction through the water, and doing so far faster than a traditional shambling zombie should be able to manage. The closest Water Wraith of the cluster half-turns and makes a curved gesture with its disproportionately long arms-.

And the water around us solidifies. It doesn't turn to ice, it just becomes immobile, the super strong people around me struggling to move. Okay, for something like a Water Wraith, control of water must be pretty instinctive. Mage Slayers don't move all that well under water but I brought the Sword with me-.

Wait a moment. If all it's done is make the water a solid unit. Ring, subspace it.

Compliance.

The water around us erupts into a storm of bubbles as the solidified section vanishes and the resulting vacuum sucks replacement water in. Diana has her own sword out and swims full speed towards the Wraith cluster while Mister Kent and Mister Freeman divert themselves into the densest concentrations of zombies. The first Water Wraith turns fully towards us, appearing to give us its full attention as another of its fellows diverts its attention our way as well. A superhero's task: draw the attention of horrifyingly powerful foes in the sure knowledge that we can take it better than anyone else they might take it upon themselves to go after.

I take a moment to look at Poseidonis itself spread out before us, tiny flickers of light shining out as the defenders make use of their electrical discharge based weapons. Hard water hemispheres are in place around the palace and the Conservatory, dark dots I assume to be attackers speckled across the outer surface of both. No plumes of dust that would indicate the use of explosives by the attackers. None of the fires that would have sprung up by now on a surface city under this kind of attack. I can identify the areas that are held by Atlantean troops, patches which look like they're overrun by more zombies… Can't tell what's happening well enough to draw conclusions.

Mister Kent and Mister Freeman reach the zombies and begin dismembering them. Punching and kicking don't really work underwater so they just grab and rip or squash. What sort of zombies..? I watch Mister Freeman crush a head and the rest of the body stops moving. Excellent, some sort of facsimile of life effect. That will make things simpler. The zombies' movements are reasonably quick, but other than grabbing and clawing they don't seem to have much offensive power and… What they've got isn't injuring the resilient League members.

The horde tries to redirect its motion towards Diana and I fire out construct cables, directing them to the zombies' heads and then using the attachment to form vice-constructs which tighten and crush. Destroyed, next, destroyed, next, destroyed, next… Part of the horde swims my way and I ignore it. My construct armour isn't as tough as Mister Kent's skin but I'm not seeing anything that suggests that they'll be able to best it.

The zombie huddle clawing at Mister Freeman explodes! Shredded body parts drift in the sudden current and Mister Freeman himself looks more than a little shaken. A Water Wraith makes a curling motion with its right hand and a focused shockwave blasts through the water towards Diana! She raises her bracers to block the attack, most of the force being deflected around the protective magics they contain. Even so, she stops dead in the water as the Wraiths throw out more pressure blasts in our general direction.

Since they clearly decided that the zombies don't matter, I move my orange strands from anti-zombie duty to intercepting the oncoming pressure bombs. The first two I detonate prematurely, clearing Diana's way as she resumes her progress towards the Wraiths. The third expands as I hit it, destroying my strand without detonating the bomb. Mister Kent braces himself, but unlike Diana he relies on toughness and not damage reduction. He's knocked flying through the water back in the direction of the silt-wall. Is..? No, his breathing mask is still in place.

Then a bomb hits me and I'm forced to focus on my own defence.

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Undermined 23

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18th June

13:22 GMT -3

At sea level, the pressure of the air on the Human body is 14 1/2 pounds per square inch. Where we are it's more like 300 times that. My colleagues are tough enough to take that, and even they are going to have to be careful about going back up again. My armour can take that, as can my environmental shield. Times like this really bring home exactly how tough we are compared to the most advanced conventional technology. We can be here, even fight here without too much difficulty. Anyone else would need a very expensive submarine to just exist here.

I think that in the fraction of a second between realising that a pressure bomb is about to hit me and it actually doing so.

Oh, I'm accelerating myself. Heh.

Of course, part of the reason why we can exist here is that the pressure is all around us. The water will try to compress the much lower pressure areas of our bodies such as our lungs -if my environmental shield failed I wouldn't be able to breathe, though with my chest reduced to mush I doubt that would be my primary concern- but does far less to solid structures like bones and muscles. Even if a projectile impacting at 4200 pounds per square inch could easily penetrate soft tissue, a ship sinking to the bottom of the sea can remain more or less intact for centuries. The point being, it's the variation in pressure that causes the damage.

Five pressure bombs detonate in close proximity to me.

The impacts are heavy, but I've had heavier. The nasty part -the part that's causing visible cracks to appear on my construct armour- is where the pressure waves interact with each other, creating focused channels of even higher pressure or areas of normal pressure between areas of much higher pressure. I reinforce the armour, pouring orange light into it and I really wish that I'd had time to recharge before I came out. A simple sonic scan shows… More bombs heading my way, though nothing like the overwhelming number I'm sure that they could throw out.

Possible reasons..? My accelerated speed leaves my eyes locked in place as my mind whirs. They don't know who we are and don't think we're a threat. They're absurdly powerful and we actually aren't a threat. They're playing for time and this is working well enough that they don't need to exert themselves. They're focusing on something else and can't afford to exert themselves.

Neither Mister Kent nor Mister Freeman were wearing Spell Eaters. Ring, analyse the difference in performance between the pressure bombs, Spell Eaters versus non-Spell Eaters.

No appreciable difference detected.

Fair enough. The compression is magic but the water itself isn't. All my Spell Eater is doing is detonating them a fraction of a second early.

My construct armour is starting to fracture in earnest. Unlike my super-tough colleagues, I'm not really feeling the violence of the Water Wraith's attacks. I'm getting… I'm getting numbers relayed by the rings, a sense of my relative position and mental images of what the assault is doing to the zombies. But as a Lantern… Combat isn't a kinetic experience for me until things go very wrong. It's a little unreal, slightly removed… I'm a drone operator rather than a fighter pilot.

Assume that the bombardment is maintained, my construct armour will fail in five real seconds. I think my power armour could take the attack for long enough that I could recreate it, but finding out in combat doesn't sound like a good idea. I can't perform a test transition under these conditions. Invisibility is pointless as they can almost certainly sense me by the motion I create in the water. One choice remaining.

I phase, construct armour fading away as I head upwards. I see silt carried by the violent pressure differentials shoot past -and through- my eyes. Unlike when I do this in air, the armour will struggle to rematerialise under water. At some point I'll have to actually either push a volume of water aside by ring power or find an air pocket at surface pressure.

Ugh, that was someone's liver!

How do they even make zombies with water magic? I rise a little further before reorientating myself to follow Diana. I suppose that if the zombies were Atlantean in life there might be enough of a water-based connection… No, that would just animate the flesh. Head injuries wouldn't be fatal-. Wouldn't be destructive. Traditional Vodun zombies with partial soul separation only rot if the living flesh is damaged and infected. They aren't affected by pain, but they get weaker in the same way a normal person would. Demon possessed corpses? Hm. I think that's more like it. Minor bound spirits controlled by greater spirits? Plausible, but testing the theory will probably be impossible. Oh well.

Diana's making definite progress. A combination of her flight ability, raw strength and agility and the defensive enchantments on her armour prevent glancing blows slowing her while her bracers block direct strikes. There's a gap in the bombardment as the water around her solidifies once more, but with a little effort I'm able to repeat what I did to the last piece.

The Wraiths' pressure blasts have torn all of the zombies to pieces, and my other colleagues… Aren't looking too healthy. I can see thin trails of blood leaking from their ears. Mister Kent is squinting at his surroundings and making a little progress towards our enemies while Mister Freeman has been knocked out of contention. Severe bruising and he's lost consciousness. Fortunately for him, his augmentations mean that he heals quite a bit faster than most people.

There's a ripple of motion from the Water Wraiths as Diana gets close enough that they stop trying to use pressure bombs on her. I see the water around her body ripple as it heats up to just below boiling point… That sort of spell takes a great deal of energy. By now I'm not far behind her, and I don't.. think I'm doing anything they can detect. I'm not displacing water, my scry wards should prevent direct detection…

I draw the Sword of the Fallen as I get closer to the nearest Water Wraith. Now, what part of their 'body' is actually them? The water, or is that just a convenience they use to mark their place in the world and maintain a connection to their preferred element? The stones, or are those just held in place by their internal currents? I mean, the only warning they're going to get is when I start stabbing. I'd hate to hit something unimportant.

Ah, it doesn't matter. Just have to stab everything.

Six metre things are really big close up. Like this I can see that the edge of their 'skin' I can see isn't a result of the water bending, it's caused by silt particles creating an effect a little like the black border around a cartoon character. Diana's only a little way behind me and they're still not paying her a fat lot of attention. Not as far as I can see. They don't have eyes, those holes in their head stone look completely decorat-.

What?

The Water Wraiths just collapsed, the stones which indicate the presence of their body just flowing away like flotsam caught in a powerful current. The only thing it reminds me of is the water spell that enabled the Saremites to escape Themyscira. I shove water aside and rematerialise, strands lashing out in the faint hope of being able to-. No. Too slow.

Diana comes to a stop, relief clear on her face as she glances my way. "Wonder Woman to Aquaman. Respond."

I turn away, running a quick scan over the zombie remains as I head towards Mister Kent. Oh, nasty. He's bleeding slightly from the puncta as well as the ears, having to blink repeatedly in order to keep his vision clear. "Sir?"

"Did you..? Uh." He shakes his head. "Did you get them?"

"No sir, but they appear to have left the combat zone. Sir, there's not much I can do about your injuries without first draining your solar reserves completely. Are you alright to continue?"

He nods, smiling as he does so. "I've had worse. Icon?"

I send out strands to pull him our way. "Down, I'm afraid sir. He'll be alright, but if you intend for us to push on to Poseidonis we'll need to put him out of the way somewhere." He nods, blinking again. "Sir, I don't know if it will help, but I can replicate sunlight well enough to recharge a Kryptonian. I don't think it will heal you, but-."

"Aquaman here."

I note the blue glow from both Diana and Mister Kent as I give Mister Freeman a scan. Transformed Terminans are a good deal easier to fix up than Kryptonians. No force fields being projected from every living cell. The fact that he's not mine means that I can't fix him completely in the time available for our next move, but he'll be a lot less miserable when he wakes up now.

"I'm here with Superman and Orange Lantern. We encountered a group of water-based Titanspawn and what appeared to be zombies."

"Titanspaw-?" There's a slight pause. "Understood. Most of the attackers are pulling back now, but we've still got undead in the civilian areas of the city. Move in and link up with the officers on the ground."

"We'll be there in a few moments. Wonder Woman out."

She looks at me expectantly, and I recreate the waterplough construct.

back

Undermined 24

next

18th June

13:48 GMT -3

"Slayer!" I think Ceyx is smiling. The shark-mouth makes it harder to tell, and apparently 'happiness' isn't part of the emotional spectrum. "You missed all the good fighting!"

His fellow guards seem less happy about the situation, eyes a little wide and weapons held at the ready. Few of them are carrying the melee weapons that were the standard armament during Black Manta's attack last year. I'm not sure if that's because the guards around the Conservatory grabbed whatever they could from the workshops before heading out or if this is just their standard loadout these days. The armour I remember from previous visits has similarly been replaced by a version incorporating an automatic version of the water armour Garth and Tula use. Their version requires a trained battlemage. These just need a little training.

"I've had enough fighting for today, thank you. But I'm afraid that I'm here on duty. Is your officer around?"

His mouth hangs opens slightly for a moment, showing off his teeth. "The officer's me these days. Ah, after the Tesserario, but he got stabbed by one of those sneaky Saremite gits."

I nod. Saremites… Renegades, who their Ambassador called Oceanus worshippers. And we just encountered Water Wraiths. This is looking bad. "Is the Conservatory clear?"

"Yeah." He exhales sharply, bubbles flowing from his gill slits. "Professor Sephtian's goggles made spotting their infiltrators easy enough. The zombies were… Bothersome." Another exhalation. "Fighting something you can't eat is just… Perverse." He gestures to his retinue with his right thumb. "So I just told them how to do it. Officer thinking."

"Quite. Congratulations on the promotion."

He nods. "Yeah, once they cleared out all of Orm's people even I could get promoted. Didn't even have to bite anyone." He pauses for a moment. "Poseidonis is weird like that."

"Do you need my assistance with healing?"

"Nah, the High Queen and the Professors saw to that." He looks past me, off the mesa and towards the rest of the city. "Can you tell me what's happening in the rest of the city?"

"The army is finishing off the zombies and the remaining Saremites have fled."

"You scare them off?"

"No. I was a bit slow fighting some water elemental things. They'd already pretty much given up by the time I got here."

"Hah!" He turns back towards his soldiers. "Not such a soft target now, are we?"

"No sir!" / "No!" / "Atlantis!"

"Or the attack was some sort of distraction." I glance at the ring on my right finger. Guy should be here soon, if he isn't already. I'm half-braced for an immediate message from him recalling me to the surface for whatever attack is next. "I don't suppose you've got any living prisoners, do you?"

"Euh. When the Saremites… They used some sort of spell to just… Flow away. Even took the bodies of their dead. Saves us cleaning up, but it doesn't tell us anything."

I look him in the eyes, then look at his mouth. "You bite any?"

He squints slightly. "What do you think?"

"Okay." I generate a construct pipette. "Open your mouth. I need a sample of their residual flesh or-."

He backs up in the water, both hands up in a warding gesture. "Hey! I.. respect you, but I'm not into that kind of thing."

Whu-? "I need a sample of their blood and flesh for tracking and necromantic purposes."

"Oh." He blinks. "Okay. Ah, that's fine. I just thought you might be, ah…"

"I don't know enough about Nanauvian culture to know what you thought I was asking… But I wasn't. Eating from someone else's mouth is-."

"Yeah yeah, just… Ah… Forget I said anything. And don't mention this to Alki." He opens his mouth slightly. "Ik oray?"

"Thank you." Yep, got a few nice samples there. I put them in a pouch rather than subspacing them, then dismiss the construct. Not entirely sure what putting things in subspace does to their sympathetic attachments, but there's no sense taking risks. "Okay, that's all I need."

"Okay." He looks past me into the city again. "The High Queen just told us to guard the Conservatory, but if the attack is over… Do you have new orders for us?"

"I'm afraid not." I'll need to talk to Sephtian about trying to come up with a form of uneavesdroppable arcane communications device. Atlantean command and control is… Not great. "I suggest sweeping the place for charms or remaining infiltrators-"

"We're doing that already."

I nod. "-but otherwise I don't have anything to suggest. Good work."

He thumps the left side of his chest with his right fist in salute. I respond with the Themysciran variant, something I don't do on the surface because it looks a bit… Nazi. Then I transition to the edge of the palace's exclusion field. The soldiers forming the internal guard start for a second, then recognise me and stand down.

"Orange Lantern." A battlemage with glowing tattoos swims a little closer. I think I've seen her around the place before, though I didn't hear her name. "King Orin and the other Justice League members are in the Small Council Chamber. Do you need someone to show you the way?"

"No, thank you." I can't detect things inside the palace any longer, but I have familiarised myself with the layout. I've also found a slightly better way of getting around than creating outboard motor constructs. The environmental shield around my armour ripples as I'm thrust through the palace corridors in the direction of the meeting room. If they're still here then I assume that the situation is under control and that there haven't been any other attacks.

Reaching the solid water portal, I slow and push my way through. King Orin, Queen Mera, Diana, Mister Freeman, Mister Kent and several Atlantean officers I don't recognise are either seated or standing around a table. The room currently has an air atmosphere, and none of the Atlanteans present have noticeable piscine traits.

"…inventory of what they took." King Orin pauses in his speech to acknowledge my arrival. "The object which concerns me most is the Diadem of Dominion."

Mister Kent nods. "That sounds ominous. What does it do?"

Queen Mera raises her right hand, creating an illusion of a simple metal torc with runes marked on the inner surface. "It was created by the ancient sorcerer Ahri'ahn as a gift to the king of Poseidonis. When active, it allows the wearer to take control of any arcane artefact they can lay their hands upon."

Diana studies the image. "And what activates it?"

King Orin's eyes narrow slightly. "The blood of the ruling king. Either from me, or from a member of my immediate family." Oh no. Ring, start scanning Canada. "Mera and Artur are already here. I'm having my father brought here, along with my half brother Marius. I've got soldiers heading to my uncle's home in Tritonis, but we haven't had word of attacks taking place anywhere else. I don't have any other immediate family-.

Subject not found.

Fuck. "Your majesty? May I.. speak to you for a moment?"

Eyes turn my way, and King Orin nods. "Of course. What is it?"

"I… Ah… You might..? Prefer it if we discussed this in private, sir?"

He shakes his head emphatically. "If you've got something to say, say it."

"We're too late."

"Oh? What do you mean by that?"

I dip my eyes. Rip the plaster off quickly. "After you completed your high school education, you spent the summer as a lumberer in Canada before moving to Atlantis full time."

"Yes, but I don't see how that's relevant."

"While there you had a relationship with a woman named Kako. Early the following year she gave birth to a boy, Koryak. Based on that timeline and observations on his physiology, including unusual strength and resistance to the cold, I think it most likely that he is a Pureblood Atlantean and your natural son. According to police reports he went missing two days ago. Witness testimony says that he was picked up from school by 'an odd-smelling man' who claimed to be his uncle."

I look up into the ashen faces before me.

"It seems that Prince Orm has returned from the grave, and most likely already has everything that he was trying to get."

back

NEXT CHAPTER

Titanfall

BACK

Titanfall 1

next

Titanfall

18th June

13:52 GMT -3

Shock.

Stillness.

Queen Mera is avoiding looking at anyone. I don't know what she's thinking. I doubt that she's thinking of the equivalence between King Orin's relationship with Kako and his mother's relationship with Thomas Curry. I can see the violet strands linking them. Theirs isn't a political marriage as his mother's was. I hope that when I considered the recent history of an elder surface-born son inheriting the throne in place of the Atlantean-born heir presumptive, I was worrying unnecessarily.

King Orin himself is staring at me, though his eyes aren't precisely-

"How long have you known?"

-focused. I could ask exactly what part he was asking about, but under the circumstances I think that an open and honest answer would serve us best.

"I discovered Koryak's existence and probable parentage ten months ago."

That focuses him. "And you didn't think to tell me!?"

I look him directly in the eyes. "Sir, I didn't know that you didn't know until just then. Early in my stay on this Earth I discovered any number of things that I would imagine people would rather I didn't share. So unless I've got a mission-related reason to do so-."

I watch as his jaw clenches, biting down his initial response. A moment later he's got a slightly better grip. "We'll.. table this for now." He turns his head left, towards the Atlantean officers. "Do we have communications with the surface yet?"

One of them nods. "Telephone only, majesty. The zeta tube won't be repaired for another hour. The Saremites knew exactly what to damage in order to wreck it."

King Orin closes his eyes for a moment before glaring at me. "I assume that you have her phone number?"

I nod. "Yes."

He takes a deep breath, then turns to Mister Kent. "I'll speak with Kako, but I think it would help if Batman and Fate visited the scene. If it really was my brother, he doesn't know much about surface world criminal investigation techniques."

"Majesty, I-." Another Atlantean officer hesitantly speaks up. "I don't see how it could be P-. The former Prince Orm. We all saw him dead."

"There are ways to come back from that."

"If my brother had been dealing with Demons-!"

"The Lazarus Pit." King Orin stops immediately he hears Queen Mera speak. "I performed an arcane reading of the zombies as the attack began. I had hoped to be able to undo whatever spell animated them. There were two distinct forms welded together to grant them their unnatural animation. One, water magics such as any Atlantean battlemage might command. The other, I did not immediately recognise." She looks at me. "The only thing I have felt like it was the samples of material taken from Ra's al Ghul's Lazarus Pit which you sent to the Conservatory."

Diana nods. "If Ra's al Ghul did show Orm how to create Lazarus Pits, he could well have had one prepared in advance of his execution."

I knew that was going to happen! As soon as the body disappeared, I knew-! Ra's had been hoarding the knowledge, but if he started teaching people… We can't rely on anyone staying dead. I'm going to have to suggest that the League formally recommend that all executions include the body of the deceased being… Rendered mystically inert or something. And I'm going to have to talk to Nyssa about tracking down every single potential Lazarus Pit location on the Earth. If that's… Even how they work here.

I suppose logically there's no reason to assume it was Ra's. Nyssa does work for Lex Luthor. And several League of Shadow members would have the required knowledge. No. Ra's… That actually makes a lot of sense. I had thought it strange, how quickly Ra's was able to hide from ring scans. What if he just went to Orm? Orm would have any number of places he could hide a few surface worlders… Certainly he could block ring scans. And if he asked for the secrets of the Lazarus Pit in return, well… Ra's wasn't in any position to turn him down.

Mister Kent looks at each of his colleagues in turn, his eyes skipping over me. "Every member of the Justice League was attacked today, but this was the only attack that appears to have a larger objective. Does anyone have ideas what he could be planning to do with it?"

"Oceanus." / "Oceanus."

Diana and I look at each other for a moment, then she resumes. "The Saremites worship Oceanus, and those Elemental creatures which we fought reeked of his magic. Orm could only have gained their aid by offering to assist them in freeing their patron."

Mister Freeman frowns slightly. "I have not heard of a supervillain or sorcerer by that name. The only 'Oceanus' of whom I have heard is the mythological Titan."

Diana's face is more sombre than I've ever seen it before. "That there are myths about a thing should not be taken as a sign that it does not exist. Oceanus is the Titan of the Seas. Though he did not side with the other Titans during their war against the Gods, he quarrelled with the Olympians later as they established themselves. Quite what was done to him I do not know, but usually those Titans who made themselves the enemies of Olympus were bound in some way which prevents them from using their powers against the mortal world."

Mister Kent looks concerned. "Just how powerful is Oceanus?"

"He is the eldest son of Gaea and Uranus. Every Titan has the greatest arcane power over their own domain, and his is the oceans and all they contain."

"He's a god?"

"No. Most Gods are far younger than the Titans, and their domains are far less a part of them. I don't know precisely what he can do with it, but it is reasonable to assume that he is several orders of magnitude more powerful than the creatures we encountered when we first arrived."

"And he's definitely hostile?"

Diana frowns faintly. "I can't say for certain. Only the Gods and other Titans would have met him in person."

King Orin clenches his right hand into a fist. "I doubt that Orm would do all this to liberate him if he had friendly intentions. Do you have any idea where Oceanus is being contained?"

Diana shakes her head. "No. But just as soon as we're done here I can petition the Gods of Olympus to give me that information."

King Orin nods. "I think that it would be best if you learned that location as swiftly as possible."

Diana nods. "Agreed. Does Atlantis require any further aid?"

"No. We can manage the cleanup ourselves. I should be able to send forces out to attempt to locate Orm's base of operations within a few hours."

"Sirs." Four sets of eyes alight on me, one most unfriendly. "When Hawkman, Hawkwoman and I confronted Satanus outside the Hall of Justice, he mentioned that he'd been acquiring Atlantean thaumaturgical writing."

Queen Mera frowns slightly. "We do not make a habit of sharing our research with Demons."

"No, your majesty, but if Orm still has supporters in Poseidonis… Possibly amongst the student population..? They might have been sharing information with him, then he could share it with his allies."

There's a slight glow from her skin. "Then I will locate them exceedingly quickly."

Diana rises from the table, followed by Mister Kent and Mister Freeman. "Orange Lantern, we will need a zeta tube."

I nod, transition to the far side of the table and create a zeta tube construct.

"Recognised, Wonder Woman, zero three, Superman, zero one, Icon, one eight, Orange Lantern, B zero six."

back

Titanfall 2

next

18th June

12:21 GMT -5

"…more information I have on the diadem, the better the chance I'll be able to find some way to counteract it. I don't give any serious credence to the idea that he could control a Titan-."

Diana holds out her right hand in a clear 'stop' motion. So I do. "Paul. I think it might be best if you stay out of Orin's way for a little while."

Mister Kent and Mister Freeman have returned to their home cities. Neither have skills pertinent to the attempts to locate Orm, and both have authorities to pacify regarding the attacks made against them as distractions. Mister Hol and Ms Thal should be heading back to St Roch shortly if they haven't already. The warden of Blackgate signed off on transferring Mister Hayes to Belle Reve without argument, though I haven't had time to take what's left of the Demon Ball to the Conservatory. Oh, I doubt they'd have time for it.

I nod, conceding Diana's point. "Yes, obviously. But Sephtian is going to be busy-."

"And it would probably be best for him if he didn't immediately start covertly associating with someone with whom his king is very angry."

W-? "I… Really don't think that King Orin would be that petty."

"Finding out that he has a twelve year old son is no small matter."

"I know, and I get that he's angry with me. I just can't see him getting angry enough that he'd lash out at anyone else."

She nods. "You are probably correct. But we need him as rational as possible, and anything that looks like duplicity on the part of the people he needs to manage this crisis will distract him."

I suppose that under the circumstances perfect rationality is too much to hope for. I don't remember Koryak or his mother at all from the comics so I don't exactly have any pearls of wisdom to impart that could make this anything other than extremely uncomfortable for everyone involved. "Alright. Do you need me for anything?"

"Yes." Her face takes on a sterner aspect that I'm used to seeing. "I am not happy about you withholding that information. I would like you to explain to me why you did not inform Orin sooner."

"As I said, I've discovered all sorts of things-."

"This isn't an embarrassing tattoo or a questionable judgement call. This is Orin's son."

"A boy whose life I had no grounds to interfere with. A boy whose existence could have damaged King Orin's marriage, revealed his surface world civilian identity and who had.. eleven years to adapt to not having his natural father around. Why should I interfere in his current familial arrangements -including his relationship with his stepfather- on the basis of information I was.. probably wrong to acquire?"

"Because he's an Atlantean, and his stepfather -whoever he is- is in no position to help him understand what that means. What if he were to contract a disease that affects purebloods and not unmodified Humans?"

Ring, double check..?

None found.

"There aren't any. There are certain forms of offensive magic which can-."

"I think you may be missing the point."

"No, I think we're having a genuine disagreement. Unless you want me to share everything I know with everyone I know it about."

"If you know anyway and it pertains to them, I'm not sure why you wouldn't."

"Because people have certain ideas about themselves that they don't want disturbed. Learning about the true history of Mars has created a crisis in their government. Me telling J-. Green Lantern two eight one four A and B about some of the Guardians' less noble moments created a reduction in their confidence in their superiors and worsened my relationship with both. To no real gain, because the Guardians certainly aren't about to change the way they operate."

Something occurs to her. "Is there something which you know about me which you have not told me?"

Oh… Poop. "A.. couple of things."

"Alright." She smiles. "Tell me. Let us see what is so disturbing that you would hesitate to tell me."

"Diana, I don't think that's a good-."

She raises her eyebrows slightly. "You still have a full seventeen days on your oath still to serve. Do you intend to take advantage-"

"No."

"-of the fact that it is unenforceable?"

"No."

Her smile broadens slightly. "You may have noticed, I have fairly strong feelings where the truth is concerned. I promise you that there is nothing you can say to me about me that is true that will lower my opinion of you."

…

"Alright. You know that Dryads regard themselves as being Gaea's daughters?"

She hesitates for a moment, then nods. "You believe that I should think of myself in the same fashion, since it was Gaea who gave me life and not my mother."

"I'm the last person to speak against the relationship you have with your adoptive mother, or your relationship with Kon. But the fact remains that the magics in your body are those of the earth and not of war. You live like a demi-goddess when as far as I can tell you're Oceanus' youngest sister."

She waits for a moment, then holds out her hands palms upwards. "You see? That wasn't such an earth-shattering revelation. Unless you have more to say on the subject."

"Gaea didn't just reshape and empower the magics in the earth to bring you to life in the way she did the magics in plants to create the Dryads. You've got her in you. I still don't understand why you're as -relatively- weak as you are."

"Perhaps it is something that I must grow into. Or perhaps she wanted me to experience the full range of Human life before I experience apotheosis."

"Or perhaps the 'blessings' the other goddesses gave you were intended to suppress your innate abilities."

The smile fades somewhat and she raises her eyebrows. "That, is speculation."

"Nineteen fifty two. You returned to Themyscira, bearing a gift for a botanist friend of yours. A small plant."

"I remember."

"You stayed for a few weeks before returning to Europe, and then to America. Four years later, you returned to find that she had died." Diana closes her eyes, and nods. "From the descriptions I read in the Temple of Apollo, it seems likely that the cause of death was anthrax. Anthrax isn't found on Themyscira. At the time Themyscira had no contact with the outside world for centuries, save for you. You're immune to all disease. You can't even carry them, so there's no risk of infection via you."

She nods, her face sombre. "You believe that the plant pot contained anthrax spores. That my gift killed her."

"The blessings the goddesses gave Themyscira's female population make them resistant to disease, but they don't grant blanket immunity. She would have examined the plant closely, giving her the best chance of inhaling the spores. I checked the soil where the plant was planted after her death." I shrug. "I destroyed the remaining spores to make sure that nothing like that happened again." I look down for a moment. "There is obviously no way you could have known that was a possibility. But I hope that you understand why I didn't think telling you would help anyone."

"I suppose I do. Do you have anything else to share?"

"Not about you alone."

"Very well. Return to the mountain. I will contact you if Orm surfaces."

"Sir."

I turn away and walk through the Embassy's zeta tube.

"Recognised, Orange Lantern, B zero six."

I stride out into the-.

My armour and construct armour appear immediately.

"What the hell happened here?"

back

Titanfall 3

next

18th June

12:25 GMT -5

"Oh, that's easy." The training room's hologram projector flickers for a moment, then an image of Nylor Truggs appears. "I did."

I accelerate.

Ring, full spectrum scan. Demons, go.

There are craters indicating where explosives were used on the floor, punching through and wrecking power cables and projectors. Truggs holds his right hand out and watches as it fades into non-existence. The lights are out, the air… Completely still. The lower parts of the Mountain… Flooded. Someone actually blew up the water and waste processing system. There are bombs on the zeta tubes behind me, and I'm just fast enough to put a shield around the closest before it detonates. The second is too quick, the shaped charge blasting a neat hole through the tube's ring.

Eh, annoying, but it shouldn't take me more than a few minutes to fix. Downstairs will take a bit longer… No immediate threat detected. Decelerate.

Praexis Demons flow from my rings, assembling in groups of three and flying out down the various corridors. I note the blasts on the walls and ceiling where I installed the automated defence systems that were supposed to prevent this sort of thing.

Internal only. "Orange Lantern to League. Mount Justice facility has been compromised." I recall the attack by the Reds. And by Mister Napier. "Again. I give advanced warning that before the end of the day I will be upgrading it to sensible levels."

"Batman here. Do you require support?"

"I don't appear to be in any immediate danger. Who else is supposed to be here?"

"No one. Do you have any clue to the attackers' identity?"

"I'm looking at a hologram of Nylor Truggs. We spent the day being given the run-around by the Light. I don't need to be you to make a reasonable guess."

"How bad is the damage?"

"Central computer wrecked, the bleed torsion generator I installed to power the place… Neatly extracted, probably stolen. Hard lines to remote backups severed. One intact zeta tube left." I exhale. "So when I do do that full upgrade, at least no existing infrastructure will go to waste."

"Ah, hello? I got a monologue to do here? A little.. professional.. hero-villain courtesy too much ta ask?"

External. "Mister Truggs, I've had a very trying day and I've got a sneaking suspicion that it was largely down to you. Excuse me if I'm a little short tempered about you blowing up my home."

The hologram holds up both hands slightly out to the sides, a sort of surrender-shrug. "Had ta be done, had ta be done."

"Yes, I'm sure that you destroyed our holographic training platform for the good of the Human race."

"Ah, hehe…" The hologram looks down. "That was really more… Y'know, collateral damage. I had ta send all a' my reliable people ta the Hall of Justice." He frowns. "Did you know that the exhibits are all replicas?"

"Yes."

"'cause I didn't. Lyin' tour guides." He shakes his head.

Oh no. Internal. "Orange Lantern to Batman. Given Truggs' history I strongly recommend checking on everyone employed as a tour guide at the Hall."

"Agreed."

"Good job taking down Saturnus. I gotta tell yah, I dropped my popcorn bowl when you called your construct thingies back through his own portals. And when you sliced up your own pet Demon with a sword-."

"This isn't a game, Mister Truggs. Mister Hayes killed five people escaping confinement, and probably more on the way to St Roch. I don't know how many people the Demon Ball killed-"

He grins, pointing at me with his right forefinger. "I called it that too!"

"-but I doubt that it was a small number. And if I hadn't stopped Mnemoth-."

"Saturnus was panicking. He was supposed ta just pick that Gary guy up from 'Papa Midnite'-" He air quotes. "-and bring him back so we could work out how that.. that hunger thing inside a' him works." He leans forwards, his head momentarily passing outside of the bounds of the projector. "What did you actually do to it? Have you got like a… A big ole' hunger monster inside the ring now? Aside from the ones in there already, I mean."

"No, it's gone, destroyed, broken down to its raw energy and absorbed. As best as I can tell there is nothing left of it."

"Well, darn. Anyway, about the people who died? The Reach invasion killed about two billion. Their research an' the 'fuck you' bombs they let off when they left ta try and make sure no one else could copy their work killed another five. So as long as I kill less than that and stay focused on the project? Far as I'm concerned, I'm all good."

"These idiots aren't your best bet, Mister Truggs."

"Pretty sure they are now. I mean, I'm wan'ed for murder."

"If you cooperated with the authorities and with the League we could probably get your sentence commuted to life imprisonment. You could even have access to the facilities to continue the non-villainous parts of your work."

He adopts a thoughtful pose. "Yeah, let me just think no. I mean, really?"

"I have to give you a chance, Mister Truggs."

"But seriously: you have no idea where I am. There's like… Fifteen guys with guns here. If I said 'sure' I'd be doing the bullet dance before you could say 'Albuquerque'."

"They can't watch you all of the time. I'm sure that if you wanted to get away, you'd manage it."

"Look, I… I don't know what you think the 'pull' is here? We just scored a major win. Several, actually. And in a couple a' days, we'll score another one. You have. No. Leverage."

"I'm sorry that you see it that way. Now, if there's nothing else you want to say, I've got some home improvements to make."

"What? I thought superheroes were all about nemesis banter."

"You're not my nemesis. You're an intelligent and well motivated man who chooses to use his abilities for criminal ends. You're really no more important to me than any of your colleagues."

"Oh, cut ta the quick." He turns to his left, presumably to someone who is wherever he is. "Cut ta the quick? It's a Britishism 'cause I'm talking to a British guy."

"I'm Themysciran. And I don't think it actually is."

"Oh, I just can't talk ta you when you're like this. I was supposed ta tell you all this stuff… You've just put me off my stride."

"I can't track you, but I can cut your link to this hologram projector. Tell me or don't, I'm busy."

"Fine. Neptune's Trident -the one Ocean Master used ta use and that Aqualad's been swinging around like he knows what ta do with it- wasn't originally Neptune's."

"Oceanus. It belonged to Oceanus."

"Yah-huh. So the Light wanna use him ta scare people inta action, getting in control of the whole 'super' thing. He's going to make a big bang in the middle of the Atlantic. And when he does-."

"It will devastate everything on the Atlantic rim. But you know we're going to try and stop him. Why are you telling me?"

"I work for the Light. But my actual employer is… Our mutual friend. And-."

"Lex Luthor is rather quite attached to Metropolis. He wants action on supers, but he doesn't actually want the attack to be successful."

"Sounds reasonable ta me. Now, I gotta be-."

I put a railgun round through the projector.

back

Titanfall 4

next

18th June

15:03 GMT -5

"Dude…"

Wallace openly gawks at what I've done to the hangar. Richard does a quick sweep of the place then looks down, wincing slightly.

"Ah, are you.. okay?"

Kon's a sweetie.

I float down from the mountain's hangar entrance towards him, Wolf and M'gann. I've been adding a selectively permeable force shield to the blast doors which I've already upgraded.

"No. No, not really. I've got a nasty feeling that Batman's going to be telling me to strip all of this stuff out when he's finished in Canada."

Richard looks up at me. "You might have gone a bit overboard, Oh El."

I frown, then shake my head. "No, I don't think so."

"No?" He takes a boomerang from his utility belt and throws it upwards. It makes it two metres before a dematerialiser locks on and eliminates it in a puff of green. "That looks a lot like lethal force to me."

"What? The system can distinguish between devices and people. The Light know where we live now. As far as I'm concerned, it was this or move house. And I'm not moving house for these people." Hm. "And anyway, Rhode Island law is quite clear on the subject of home defence against armed invaders. The Reds came in via the sea entrance and Truggs' people phased through the walls. And stole everything that wasn't nailed down."

"Um..?" M'gann shakily raises her right hand. "How do you know that? I mean, no one was here and you said they destroyed all the recording equipment."

"You know how I don't assimilate sentients?" Oh, for goodness sake Wallace. Really? "No." I shake my head and roll my eyes. "One of the Saremites who took part in the attack went for my personal lantern. Where the Ophidian lives."

"Ohhh."

"We've been having a bit of a chat. Oh, ah, M'gann? Don't try phasing through the walls anymore."

She looks rather nervous. "What happens if I do?"

"Probably nothing, maybe it hurts a lot and you get forcibly ejected."

"Oh." She gives me a small smile. "I thought it would be something-"

"Except the outer walls, which would probably kill you. Certainly, you'd lose whatever body part you stuck in."

The smile vanishes. "-like that."

"Oh, come on." I land just before them. "How often do you actually phase through the outer walls anyway?"

"Well, I'm not doing it now."

Kon shifts uncomfortably. "You put anything anti-Kryptonian in here?"

"I rebuilt the vertigo inducers, but Kryptonians have never been the most subtle people. I was really trying to make it impossible for anyone to ever get the drop on us again." I glance over at the rebuilt zeta tubes. "Kaldur not with you?"

Wallace has resumed peering around, trying to spot any other changes I might have made. What with the complete lack of bare stone in here anymore he's rather spoilt for choice. "Nah, he wanted to stay on in Poseidonis. Tula and Garth too."

"Oh well. I'll just have to get Zatanna to empower the new magic defences."

Richard's face has gone rather still. "Aaand.. what do those do?"

"Well, the existing geomantic wards only blocked scrying and detection. Since everyone knows where we are, all those were doing was preventing them from monitoring what we're doing day by day, which… Basically pointless. The new version incorporates a rather interesting spiritual prison effect. If the attacker doesn't know what they're doing, it sucks magic -and eventually their whole soul- out of their body."

"Ah… You don't… Actually mean..?"

"Alright, it's more like it locks it away from their body. It's not an instant death, and it would be very obvious to any magic user inside the mountain what had happened. On the other hand, Rhode Island law theoretically treats magic attack in exactly the same way as any other attack… So legally it's cool."

M'gann looks a little nervous as well. "You can.. do.. magic..?"

My forearms rise until they're at right angles to my body. My palms are upwards and orange light drifts down, swirling about my feet and solidifying into meaningless but impressive looking symbols. "I have been trying to orchestrate a magitech revolution. I've picked a few things up, a few designs. Once they're active, the Mountain will be proof against anything short of utterly overwhelming force."

Kon nods. "So, are the bathrooms working?"

"Yes, the bathrooms are working. I also took the opportunity to remodel the showers."

"Uh. They wrecked the showers?"

"They wrecked everything they didn't steal." I dismiss the mystic mumbo-jumbo and hold out my right hand towards Wallace. "Souvenirs of past missions?"

He looks pained, his mouth falling open. "Uh?"

"Smashed or taken."

Richard blinks. "The armory? Your workshop?"

"Looted and written off."

M'gann's eyes widen. "My..? My room?" Kon puts his right arm around her and she puts her hands on his arm.

"Some sort of incendiary. I restored as much as I could remember. I hope you…" My eyes flick to Kon and then back. "Backed up your school work."

There's a moment of silence.

Richard looks thoughtful. "So the attacks against the League and the Team were to keep us from noticing that we couldn't reach the Watchtower and to keep us away from Atlantis. But it was also to make sure that there wouldn't be anyone here."

"Good job there wasn't, actually. The Saremite said the attacking group consisted of twelve of Truggs' men and fifty or so other Saremites. I might have been able to fight that off, but there wouldn't be much left of them or of the mountain afterwards."

Wallace looks at me askance. "Hey, how come they didn't get your gun or your sword?"

"I kept those in my room. Tubbs isn't clever enough to have reported the state of the mountain to me if I didn't specifically instruct him to. They might actually have still been here when he flew through."

Richard looks around once more. "You've certainly.. done everything you can to stop them doing anything like that again. Why don't you.. show us what else you've done with the place?"

back

Titanfall 5

next

18th June

15:38 GMT -5

Wallace slumps in front of the former trophy cabinet. "Aww man."

Artemis opens her mouth for a sarcastic comment, then looks at his face and bites it down. I get a quick 'don't mention this to anyone' look, then she puts her left hand around his shoulders in a sideways hug. "We can always beat up more bad guys and take their stuff."

Wallace isn't much mollified. "It won't be the same. Everything in here was a memory of a mission-." He turns his head my way, craning his neck to look over Artemis' shoulder. "Hey Oh El, can't you just recreate everything? I mean, it wouldn't be exactly the same, but it would be better than…" He goes back to staring mournfully at the empty shelves. "This."

"I'm afraid that I didn't bother scanning most of the c-stuff you put in here." Completely true, not to mention the fact that I find taking trophies mildly distasteful. "And I gave Jade's knives back to her."

"Yeah, 'cause her working for the mob is so much better than-." Artemis gives him a sidelong eyebrow-raise. "Yeah, 'cause it's.. so much better now… Ah, her doing legitimate bodyguarding work."

"I'm glad you think so, Wallace. Artemis, do you want me to-"

"Recognised,-"

"-show you-?"

"-Zatanna Zatara, B-"

"Excuse me."

I transition to the zeta tube vestibule.

"-zero nine."

The lights fade away as Zatanna steps out of the tube and into my scanner array. She stops dead, looking up at it in puzzlement.

"Identification confirmed."

The force field covering the zeta tube vestibule deactivates. Zatanna gives it a cautious once-over before stepping through. "That's… New."

"I thought that an upgrade was in order."

Wallace and Artemis walk out of the trophy room, Wallace wincing slightly as he's forced to look at my alterations once more. "Yeah, you should see what he's done with the rest of the place."

Zatanna frowns. "But the zeta tube already does an identity check."

"It's far too easy to fool, and doesn't detect a whole host of things. Mind control, intoxication, certain parasites. Like Star Conquerors. Plus, my system isn't on the same system as the zeta tube's approved list. Subverting one doesn't help you get past the other."

She looks around the remodelled training area. I didn't do much to it, though the hologram projectors now incorporate force field generators. It's very nearly a proper holodeck, capable of generating virtual opponents. Mooks, anyway. The sort of power requirement for virtual opponents capable of hurting our toughest team mates or myself made that system unfeasible. "How bad was it?"

Artemis wrinkles her nose. "The whole place was a total write-off."

"I put your room back exactly as it was. Apart from a.. couple of new security systems."

"Wohs em ym moor." Her eyes unfocus for a moment. "That's not so bad. From the way Robin was going on I thought you'd turned the whole mountain into some kinda fortress."

"Just because it's a fortress doesn't mean that it can't have homely touches as well."

"And if you did tha-. Oh, you need me to do the magic part."

Wallace squints. "How did you know-?"

Zatanna rolls her eyes. "Obviously we need better magic defences. Doing them at the same time as everything else just makes sense."

I nod. "That's what I've been saying."

"The new ones are kinda…" He tries to think of a polite but accurate term. "Nasty."

Zatanna smiles faintly. "Do you know what my house does to anyone who tries using magic on the owners?"

"Ahhhh… No?"

"Neither do I. Dad said I was too young to learn about stuff like that. Wohs em eht skrowten." Her eyes unfocus again, and she blinks heavily as she takes in the sight. "Whoooow. You… Really went all-out. That's… Way more than I can handle."

"Okay, but can you activate it at a really minimal level so it charges up itself?"

"Um… I don't… Know..? I mean, I could, but for something this complicated I don't think that would work right."

Wallace thinks for a moment. "Hey, you could always get Fate to do it." My face hardens, as does Zatanna's. "Or.. we could not."

Zatanna looks down, giving her head a slight shake. "What was everyone planning on doing this evening?"

Artemis shrugs. "Talk about spending the day with the Justice League and all the fights we got into. Except all of us had supervillains try and kill us and Poseidonis got attacked again. Kinda takes the fun out of it."

I shake my head. "I don't think they did try and kill us."

"Oh, that undead stripper was trying to kill me pretty hard."

"Right. Except, they were sent by the Light, weren't they?"

Wallace nods. "Yeah, probably."

"So why didn't they just murder us all in our beds?" A tiny flicker of yellow light from each of them. "I mean, the Light have had our secret identities and home addresses since New Year, right? One of Truggs' mercenaries with that power armour they wear could phase through our bedroom walls and shoot us in our sleep."

Wallace shudders. "Thanks, Oh El. I'm gunna sleep really well tonight."

"But they haven't. That's the point." I shake my head. "I don't know what's going on. Savage and Klarion could have killed the entire League at New Year. They could kill most of us now. Instead, they… Invade our home in an unpleasant but not.. particularly harmful way, send 'assassins' we could reasonably be expected to overcome… I don't think you need to worry about being killed in your sleep. I think… For some reason, they've decided not to."

Artemis frowns. "But why?"

"Assuming that Savage wasn't talking out of his arse, maybe he thinks us competing with them makes everyone stronger. Maybe he's worried that they might miss one or two of their targets, then the survivors would… Take the gloves off. Or maybe he realises that the world -at the moment at least- needs the Justice League?"

Artemis looks unimpressed. "Or maybe he just doesn't want anyone else taking the credit."

Zatanna purses her lips. "Or maybe he's got.. some kind of.. weirdly convoluted plan that.. means we.. have to be in exactly the right place at exactly the right time, and everything else is him manipulating us into doing that."

"Okay…" Wallace takes a step away from the rest of us. "Never thought I'd say this, but I think watching Rob interrogate that new Construct-Lantern would actually be less disturbing than carrying on this conversation. How about we go and do that?"

back

Titanfall 6

next

18th June

15:43 GMT -5

I let Wallace and Artemis get well ahead before leaning down, making my mouth level with Zatanna's left ear. "Please tell me that the staff wasn't here?"

Her eyes flick my way for a second. "Of course not. It's at home in a secure room inside a case that turns out to be full of chlorine gas if you aren't the right person to open it. The case is made of titanium and I put that quantum lock you gave me on it."

I nod, slightly relieved. I doubt that Orm would be able to wield the power of love, but Oceanus was married to Tethys. And I imagine that there must be magic-using villains capable of feeling love around somewhere. "That might not be enough. One of the things the Saremites stole from Atlantis was a relic that is supposed to allow the wearer to command any arcane artefact."

"One at a time… Or, anything he touches, or anything he feels like? And… Just the magic bits, or all of it?"

"I.. didn't.. ask." I sigh. "I pissed off King Orin in a fairly significant way… It didn't seem like an appropriate time to ask.. questions. Especially considering that this is now a-"

"Justice League matter." / "-Justice League matter."

We share a small smile.

"What did you do to.. annoy Aquaman?"

"I didn't tell him that he had a son." Zatanna looks at me with a confused frown. "Not Artur, another one. Um, before he went to live in Poseidonis full time. I found out during my mildly paranoid, find-out-everything-about-everyone phase."

"And you didn't tell him?"

"No."

"W-? Why not?"

"Several reasons." I sigh again. "On balance… I'm less sure than I was that my decision was the right one. I.. saw him.. with a life that King Orin wasn't part of… He seemed happy enough. No one was in danger. It didn't seem like something I should intervene in." I tighten the skin around my mouth. "And now it turns out that a critical magic artefact can be activated using his blood and Orm's already kidnapped him."

"What-? So if you'd just.. told him-?"

"I don't think so. Unless he actually moved to Atlantis -which is extremely unlikely- all telling King Orin would do would be to get Koryak's -ah, that's his name, Koryak- bodyguards killed. If he's really that important, Orm would have prioritised it and used whatever level of force was required."

"But they could have put in some kind of alarm or something. Couldn't they?"

"Yes, but Orm is a highly skilled magic user. And if Satanus has been keeping up with the latest developments in Atlantis then he certainly has. The only thing that would work reliably would be a whole squad of battlemages living there full time… And that's just against the level of resources Orm could bring to bear himself."

"You mean, there isn't anywhere that's safe."

"Oh, no." A tiny smile appears on my lips. "This place will be completely safe, once the wards are charged."

"And you only had to turn the mountain into a fortress to do it."

"Yes. I did. We're really going to have to look at the home security arrangements of everyone associated with the Justice League if this is the sort of thing the Light are doing now."

"Or you could just spend a few days tracking down Nylor Truggs." I get a small frown. "Why haven't you done that?"

"I was focusing on other things." Agh, no, shouldn't have put it like that. "And I thought… I don't know. He's a criminal but at least he was sane."

"He murdered an old lady so he could steal your ring. And that Japanese guy and probably a whole lot of other people we never heard about. I mean… I'm not saying stop the stuff you're doing? But… Maybe you should prioritise him a bit higher?"

"But the technology that allowed him to attack us exists now. We use it ourselves. I don't think.. arresting him again will make it disappear. We'd have to completely destroy the Light and make sure there wasn't enough left for anyone to take over." We stop just outside the door to the room where Richard's doing his interrogation. "And get all of the suits that have been built and everyone who's ever operated one."

"You don't think we can put the genie back in the bottle."

"No, we.. can. As with everything else, it's a question of how much effort you can put into it." I gesture to the door with my right hand. "Shall we?"

Kon and M'gann look around as Zatanna pushes the door open. Richard is taking a moment to write up some notes on his arm computer while Wallace and Artemis peer over his shoulder. Kon looks somewhat frustrated. "Paul, can you take over translating? This guy really isn't very good at Atlantean Greek."

The Saremite stands glowing at the centre of the room, orange sigil decorating his-. Her? Not sure, and I doubt that it matters now. "Ring, translation."

"Compliance."

Richard presses a couple of buttons. "So far the only useful thing we've found out is the total number of Saremite renegades Orm has working for him."

"Pretty useful. How many?"

"Not that many. According to him, there aren't all that many renegade Saremites in total. Aside from the fifty who attacked the mountain with Truggs, all of them who weren't already injured took part in the attack on Poseidonis."

"That's… Less than two hundred total. The attack on Themyscira had.. more than that. Did he say when Orm started working with them?"

"That's the weird thing. According to this guy, they're the ones who killed his father."

Eh? "What?"

"He was killed a few years before Queen Atlanna brought Aquaman to Atlantis."

"No, I knew that. I'm just… I thought he liked his father."

"Apparently, he did. About a decade later he led the attack that captured the renegade Saremites' base of operations. That's where he got his Ocean Master equipment from." He looks up. "Which means-."

"It's not the Trident of Neptune. It's the Trident of Oceanus. Nice to have that confirmed."

Wallace throws his hands up. "Neptune, Oceanus, what's the difference?"

"Atlanteans… Those who have religious inclinations, worship Neptune. The Saremites worship Oceanus. Knowing that he was using a weapon sacred to one of their people's god's enemies wouldn't have gone down too well. Especially with the… Conservative sorts that might be prepared to back him against King Orin. Truggs' people took it and the armour along with everything else."

Richard nods. "According to him, giving it to Oceanus is supposed to spare the one who does so from his wrath."

"Makes sense. There's no point releasing a monster that's just going to kill you." I nod. "Now ask him about Orm coming back from the dead."

back

Titanfall 7

next

18th June

19:14 GMT -5

A building the robots were preparing to harvest comes alive with Chthonian Young as their parent bursts forth from the ground and grapples with an apparently implacable Assault Stomper.

"But that's just-!"

A glowing portal opens in the centre of the machine fortifications as a small tentacle-covered creature plays a strangely shaped flute, the outline of a vast translucent mollusc just visible in the air above it.

"How did-?!"

Out from the portal pour the Children of Abhoth in an unending tide.

And Artemis throws up her hands as her structures disappear into their mouths. "How did you even do that?!"

I lean around the monitors separating us. "I do play this game almost every day."

"But you always play machines! And you said magic was the hardest strategy to pull off!"

There's a small 'boom' as her Machine Harbinger loses antimatter containment and explodes in a plume of vapour, then a series of other detonations as her Particle Beamers try to hit the Servitor keeping the portal open.

"Oh, it is."

And hit just about everything else as the Servitor capers around and lets its big cousin take the few shots that are still on target before the Children reach them.

"The Old Ones are victorious! Mankind is doomed! Doomed! GEB'L-EE'H YOG-SOTHOTH!"

"Greh-gruget-grah!" Artemis becomes somewhat incoherent as Kon leans over her shoulder and takes a look at the full map. "What!"

"Uh." Kon's eyes flick to me for a moment, and I understand that he knows perfectly well what she did wrong -lack of pressure- but now believes that it wouldn't be a good idea to bring it up. "Umm."

"Ah, babe? Are you ok-?"

"Okay!" Her eyes widen. "Just give me, like, two minutes."

"We could do some actual sparring for a bit, if you want something you can actually beat me at."

She turns and walks away from the gaming set up, the index finger of her right hand pointed in my direction. "Two minutes."

Yeah, magic focus is kind of annoying to play against. I was a bit surprised that she-.

"Recognised, Aqualad, B zero two."

I half turn in my seat as Kaldur appears, taking in my additional security measures with his usual dispassionate gaze.

"Identification confirmed."

He strides forwards, heading in our direction. Bit of a nuisance that he decided to wear his original Aqualad gear today. On the other hand, having him openly wearing Ocean Master's gear would on most days cause more trouble than it's worth. And, Truggs might just have redirected forces in his direction.

"Kaldur, what new-?"

"Recognised, Doctor Fate, two one."

Kaldur pauses just inside the security scanner for Nabu to materialise. I get to my feet. If he's here then there's input from the League. Richard sent everything he had to Batman and then returned home. I forget sometimes… Quite often, actually, that he's only fourteen and that fighting Titans and underwater foes isn't something he's really equipped to do. Batman's attitude appears to be 'this is a League task, we'll let you know if we need you'. Which -to be honest- is pretty reasonable. I step away from the computer and come to an approximate parade rest.

Nabu stares at the identification system, a pale golden aura shining out from his robes. Hm. Either he thinks there might be threats here or he's taken a leaf out of my book and started having his defences raised at all times. Worth knowing.

"Identification not confirmed. Please lower any exotic defences which may be preventing a complete scan."

"Lantern." I smile slightly, raising my eyebrows attentively. "What is the meaning of this?"

"I decided that the standard Justice League system was too prone to being bypassed, so I improved upon it. I'm afraid that you'll have to drop your shield spell."

Nabu pushes his left hand against the barrier, which holds firm. It's as exotic a shield as I could safely introduce and I don't think it's easy for magic users to bypass. "Lower this shield at once."

"Nabu, that's not how security works. You've been both mind controlled and impersonated before. I hardly think it's unreasonable-."

Nabu raises his right hand, a golden ankh flaring into being for a second before it detonates. Golden light radiates outwards, running through the identification arch and disintegrating it in a flash of light.

It would be so satisfying to hit him right now.

And I think I'd get away with it. Artemis is still angry about everything and the game and now someone she doesn't like -though her dislike is hardly on a level with mine or Zatanna's- just wrecked a piece of useful equipment. Wallace is inclined to respect League members, but that's getting a mild frown from him as well. Kon's staring, and it's flat out hostile. Wolf's lip is curling slightly, though she isn't growling yet. I think that I may have put the idea into the zeitgeist that being disrespectful to Nabu is okay. I could slam him against the back of the vestibule with a construct… Amp up the orange until I can carry out the scan… Batman wouldn't tolerate League members bypassing the security he's put in place.

My eyes slide over to Kaldur who is watching me impassively.

No. I can wait a few weeks.

"Alright then." I pointedly turn away from him and face Kaldur. "Aqualad, how are things in Atlantis?"

"Poseidonis is secure, as are all members of the royal family not already taken." There's a tension in his voice that I'm not used to hearing. "Military battlemages have reached the location of Oceanus' temple. It has been long abandoned. At the moment we have no further leads on Ocean Master's location."

Wallace tilts his head slightly to the left. "Well, what about Canada?"

Nabu steps forward. "Orm -or whatever dark entity he now serves- has become quite skilled in covering his tracks. The Batman and I have identified all of his movements while on land. Beyond that, the trail disappears."

Kon's eyes dip for a moment as he thinks. "What about just waiting at wherever the Gods locked up Oceanus? Orm's gotta go there sometime, right?"

"Oceanus' prison is removed from the physical world. There is no location from which it can be readily accessed, and the very act of entering would most likely be enough to release him." Nabu turns his head towards me. "I have learned that you acquired a sample of blood from a Saremite."

I nod. "Yes. I had intended to take it to Atlantis once the initial panic died down a bit."

"Foolish youth. Time is of the essence. Hand it over to me at once."

The container I put the blood from Ceyx in is currently on a shelf in my reconstructed workshop. "I.. don't.. believe that I take orders from you, Nabu." I smile. "Try asking nicely."

"Orange Lantern." I turn my head in Kaldur's direction. I.. was.. underestimating how angry he is. With me. "This is not the time. Doctor Fate is this world's premier magic user, and the best chance we have for locating Ocean Master before Oceanus is restored to this world. My family, my entire people, are most likely to be his first victims should that come to pass. If you will not take orders from Doctor Fate, perhaps you will take one from me."

"Alright." I nod. Need to smooth things over with Kaldur later. "Back in a moment."

back

Titanfall 8

next

19th June

06:27 GMT -5

"Hm hm-hm. Hm hm-hm-hm-hm-hm."

I look around from the frying pan as a tired-looking Wallace walks into the kitchen. "You have trouble sleeping too?"

"No? I'm usually awake at this sort of time." I use a pair of tongs to turn the bacon over. "The only reason I'm eating breakfast now instead of half an hour ago is that I had an idea about tracking down Truggs' mercenaries."

Wallace shambles towards the fridge and pulls open the door, picking up the orange juice carton. "What, like checking the backgrounds of the guys you and the Hawks picked up yesterday and seeing if any of their associates are unaccounted for?"

"Cht… Cht… Yes."

"Right." He steps away from the fridge, closing the door and heading towards where we keep the glasses. "Pretty sure Batman and Rob are already on it." He stops before reaching his destination, standing up a little straighter. "Wait a sec. Wasn't this place a wreck yesterday?"

"Wallace, you know how much time I spend in here." He nods, then takes another step forwards and kneels down to reach the cupboard. "Did you really think I wouldn't be able to recreate it?"

"Didn't recreate my room."

"I've been inside your room once, and I certainly didn't scan it."

He straightens up with a glass in his hand and puts it down on the work surface before pouring orange juice from the carton into it. "Doesn't really matter. Didn't have much in there anyway."

"Did you..? Stay here overnight for any particular reason?"

He puts the carton down, picks up his glass and turns around, taking a sip as he does so. "I was still kinda freaked out about… What you said, about them coming after us any time they feel like. I… thought they might-."

"Attack your home, which wouldn't be worth doing if you weren't there."

He looks away, nodding. "Guess I'm just not used to being in the line of fire the whole time. Usually if one of the Rogues wants to pick a fight with Uncle Barry they go after an armoured car or something."

"I'm… Much as I'd like to, I can't upgrade your family home's security very far. Not if you don't want it to be obvious that a suburban home has been replaced by a fortress."

He takes another sip, then fishes a small vial of his latest chi-infusion potion out of his pocket. "Don't think it would really be in keeping with the neighborhood. You about done with the stove?"

I pick up a rasher. It's appropriately brown without being burnt. "Yep." I pick up my plate with my left hand and use the tongs to transfer the bacon to the waiting bread before putting it down, stepping back and walking over to the table.

Wallace assumes my position, taking another swig of orange juice before putting the glass down and picking up the tongs. He points them at the rest of the packet of bacon. "You mind if I..?"

"No no, that's what it's here for." I squirt out a small amount of ketchup onto the unbaconed slice of bread and spread it evenly across the surface with a knife. It took me quite a while to get bread that was the right texture for bacon. When I was… Whow. First time I've… Thought about life on Earth Prime for a while. The bread machine always made the crust too crisp and the insides too soft. A bit of a crust is fine, but the interior really needs a combination of absorbency and sponginess that comes naturally to factory bread but is harder to achieve through home baking. "There are eggs and a few tomatoes in the fridge if you want them."

"Any hash browns?"

"There are some potatoes and a grater?"

He turns the hob up and puts four rashers into the frying pan. "Any waffles?"

"A waffle iron… And we've got the materials for waffle batter."

"Oh El… I get you've got this.. thing, about 'real food'. But sometimes it's okay to eat out of a packet."

I pick up my sandwich in my right hand. "Would you eat packet bacon?"

"Oh, now you're just being silly."

I take a bite into Scotland's finest. Mm. My improved sense of taste and smell certainly isn't the best part of the modifications the rings have made to my body, but it does make eating a much more satisfying experience.

"You got any idea what Kaldur wants us doing today?" I wince as I chew, my silence causing him to look around. "Oh. He still pissed with you?" I nod. "I kinda get why. I mean, I get why you didn't tell anyone, but… I think I probably would have. If it were me." I nod again as I swallow. It's not an unreasonable position to take. "I mean, if we'd known he needed protecting-."

"The League could have provided security for ten months? Security good enough to stop… About twenty people in invisible phasing armour carrying guns with crumbler rounds? Without severely interfering with the life of his family? And that wouldn't just draw our enemies' attention to him?"

"Huh." He turns back to the hob and starts flipping the bacon over. "Hadn't thought of it like that."

"I admit it's still a very debatable decision on my part." I take a small bite while I think. Nabu is doing what he can to bypass the wards protecting the Saremites, Batman is investigating the Human end. Unless… Either of them ask for help, there isn't anything for me to do there. I suppose that I could… Spread rune stones throughout the Atlantic. That might improve their reception. Of course, I don't have anything like that number of stones… Aaaand to get more I'd have to go to Poseidonis, which Diana told me not to do.

Okay, what else? I could get John to open a portal to Hell and assimilate a few Demons. See if any of them know something. If I won a straight fight with Satanus, that would make things a good deal simpler. Just forcing him to flee would probably weaken him politically… No. If what I saw when I went after Mister Gregor was anything to go by I'd be swarmed under. I don't have enough anti-Demon weapons that would function in Hell. Maybe drawing the attention of Duma and Ramiel to what he's been up to?

Angels. That would be like trusting Klarion. And of course, that's the alternate route, isn't it? Activate my plan to remove Klarion a little early. Dealing with a second member of the Light would serve to nicely balance things up after they wrecked my home. Might even motivate the rest not to do something like this again. It would risk alerting Nabu…

"Batman to Mount Justice."

I wave my arm in the general direction of the kitchen's communication system. "Orange Lantern here, sir." Wallace looks torn between coming to attention and attending to his breakfast. After a moment's hesitation he opts to remove the frying pan from the hob and face the monitor.

"I've been following up on possible leads on Ocean Master's location. Unfortunately, I don't have enough time to conduct hundreds of interviews in person." From the background it looks like he's in the Batcave. "I'm sending you a list now. You have Justice League authority to request support from local police. Have the team interview as many of them as you can and forward potential leads to me."

"Yes sir. How-?"

The monitor goes dead.

back

Titanfall 9

next

19th June

11:03 GMT -8

I walk down the street in the imaginatively named 'Normal Heights' area of San Diego, left hand pressed to the side of my head. I'm getting one or two odd looks, but since I'm out of costume I think most people are assuming that I'm just some guy on his mobile. "Mister Director, thank you for taking my call."

"I felt it best. Batman's report was somewhat light on detail."

"I'm afraid that we're in the middle of an incident, sir. We can't make a full report until we're certain that the situation is safe."

"I understand that. Nevertheless, the League are both suggesting that our fleets put into harbour and requesting that we offer them assistance from any advanced deep sea imaging equipment that we possess. If they are suggesting that our fleets go into harbour then they believe that Ocean Master may well succeed in releasing Oceanus and that anything on the sea would be at risk."

"That is my understanding, sir."

"And they understand that our more.. advanced equipment-" Xenotech or schizo tech, the sort of thing they wouldn't advertise that they have but might offer to use to help us if the planet is at stake. "-would be based on vessels far less able to survive an ocean-based calamity than our warships?"

"Mister Director, my normal practice is to assume that Batman knows everything." Except that one of his team mates sired a bastard, clearly. Unless he actually did-? No, not important. "Our best hope to prevent Oceanus appearing is to locate Orm before he can complete whatever ritual he is working on. But the oceans are vast, and the League does not have the capacity for universal surveillance."

"You are aware that Russia has no borders with the Atlantic ocean."

"We suspect that is where the ritual will take place. However, we don't know that for certain. We also don't know what the immediate effects of the ritual would be. If it takes place in the North Atlantic, the pressure wave might well be powerful enough to impact Russia's northern coast. And given their allies, they might well be performing the ritual somewhere entirely different. That's on top of the fact that we don't know exactly how good Oceanus' control of water is. It's possible that he can simply pull the water from people's bodies at range."

"That would be a concern. But the League does not require additional combat forces?"

"Unless you have specialists in water magic better than those the Atlanteans have already volunteered, the League doesn't need more force. If you wish to offer any other sorts of combat troops, I would suggest quite strongly that you carefully consider the likely conditions they would be fighting in."

"The only asset I have which could assist the League is currently performing a survey of our own coastal waters. I will ensure that the results are made available to the League."

"Is there a magic user on board?" He doesn't immediately respond. "Mister Director, I understand that you have security concerns but you will need magic assistance in order to get anywhere."

"Atlantis has experts to spare?"

"Yes. Atlantean industry and military is based around the use of magic. Their problem is getting to places. If you can give me a location, I can have a team sent to any Russian zeta tube within half an hour."

"I would prefer it if you could send them to your Fortress. You have returned it to the North Pacific upon completing your work on the South Pole."

"If you like, Mister Director. Please remind whoever will be making the pickup that they still aren't allowed inside."

"Acceptable. Please have them ready as swiftly as possible."

He hangs up. Ring, Watchtower.

Compliance.

"Orange Lantern to Watchtower."

"Hawkman here, go ahead."

"The Director wants the mages sent to my Ice Fortress. Apparently they've only got one vessel that can help us."

"Or one that they're willing to share. I'll contact Atlantis and have them make the transfer."

"Make sure they know to have a translation spell active. I doubt that the Russians have anyone who speaks Atlantean Greek."

"Would you also like to spend some time on Thanagar today? I believe that my grandmother may be rusty on her egg-sucking."

"You know that expression and you didn't know 'to be frank'?"

"Egg sucking has a Thanagarian equivalent."

"Wouldn't that be cannibalism?" Not that Thanagarians actually lay eggs. I'm not sure whether Static was joking or if things are just different on Thanagar 12.

"Hawkman out."

I lower my left hand as I lift up the latch on the gate to my target's home. The American, Russian and Chinese military are now co-operating against a shared enemy. Being involved in something like this is a bit strange. Shouldn't it take… More..? Naturally, China weren't prepared to put foreign mages on the Dragonwing, but unlike Russia and America they have their own. Feels strange, hoping that Nabu can do something right this time. I even had John shut the sickness induction system down. Not sure how much difference that will make…

I press the button to activate the doorbell and I hear a buzz from inside the bungalow. The owner and current occupant is a man named Noah Martinez, and two known criminal associates of his were amongst those the Hawks blasted into unconsciousness outside the Hall of Justice yesterday. Yet he's still here. No logical reason for them to have been recruited and not him. Not that I want to get my hopes-.

The door swings open on a chain and the muzzle of a double barrelled shotgun is pointed at my face. "I don't know who you are, but you can-."

My right hand darts forwards and covers the muzzle of the gun. There's a bang as he instinctively pulls the trigger, followed by a sudden rush of displaced air as my kinetic barrier redirects the force. Mister Martinez goes flying backwards away from the door, shotgun flying from his hand as he does so. I have the ring remove the chain, then push the door open the rest of the way and stroll inside. Mister Martinez is lying on the ground in a daze, but he's sufficiently self-possessed to grab his backup weapon out of his trouser waistband and level it in my direction.

"Given that I just took a shotgun blast, how much do you think that's going to help?"

"Fuck you! I've been shitting myself all day 'causa you people! I said no face to face meetings! You don't think Batman or someone's smart enough to come here?"

Curious. "I imagine that he's busy at the moment. Of course, that doesn't mean he might not send an associate." I reach into my jacket pocket and pull out my identification card. "You may refer to me as Orange Lantern."

His eyes widen and his gun dips slightly. "OhJesusfuck."

"I'm afraid that I'm a Hellenist. So." I crouch down a metre away from him. "Clearly you know why I'm here and.. you've.. rather nicely confirmed that you have the information I want. Where is Nylor Truggs?"

"I ain't tellin'-. I ain't tellin' you nothing."

I nod. "I see. Batman has been known to inflict various forms of physical injury on people who aren't forthcoming during crisis situations. But breaking fingers isn't really my thing." Which is not to say that I can't perform fear-based interrogations when the need arises. "Fatty, eat his left arm."

The Demon drops from the right ring with a grin on its face. "FOOD!"

"AAAAAAGH!"

back

Titanfall 10

next

"…only really known him for a few months." My brother shakes his head. "Darkseid would never be this subtle."

Oh, Scott.

I stride through the hush tube-

19th June

21:03 GMT

-and into the Justice League's meeting room about five metres from the head of the table on Diana's side.

"No,-"

Hands go for weapons, Jordan's ring is glowing brilliantly, Barda's right hand grips her mega rod and Kal-El actually gets to his feet.

"-but he might do this." I smile, arms folded behind my back. "Good evening. My ears were burning."

Batman is still impassive. Letting me get the grandstanding out of my system, presumably. Diana hasn't moved but she's watching me like a disappointed Hawk. Scott-.

"How did you do that?"

"Wasn't too difficult. You blocked boom tube access-."

"I blocked the hush tubes too. All except-." He looks at me honestly shocked. "All except the one in Mount Justice."

"Yes." I stroll onwards, walking down the side of the League's table behind Mister Zatara and opposite the Lanterns. Don't pay them too much attention. Don't let them square up and try and turn this into a physical confrontation. "You tore out almost everything I built for you, but that was just too good to give up, wasn't it?"

I feel Diana's eyes boring into me. "If you have done anything-."

"Diana, they're my friends." I turn my head her way, looking pained. "But did you know that if you know the exact magnitude of hyperinflation applied to the gravitons in a hush tube-."

Scott gets it at once. "You can track it, even.. piggyback it. I'd detect it if you tried that with a boom tube, but since a hush tube is designed to be almost impossible to detect anyway-."

"I just had to wait until you used it at least once, then set my equipment to keep the hyperdimensional passageway open." I stop at the open end of the 'U'. "It wouldn't be noticeable from normal space-."

"But my equipment would see it as coming from a friendly location. Oooohhhhh." He sags. "I'm going to need to revise our entire security policy."

I grin at him. "You got in? Well do-!"

"What are you doing here, Grayven?"

I move my eyes to Lantern Jordan for a moment, then turn my full attention to Mister Wayne. Serious face time. "Batman, I think it's time for me to come in." I dip my eyes, shaking my head slightly. "I've learned everything about Light operations that I'm going to, and I'm a little worried that-."

"Wait, what?" Mister Allen voices everyone's gobsmackedness, Diana looking at Mister Wayne with a combination of disbelief and steadily building outrage.

I hold out my right hand, palm upwards, and replay parts of the conversation Mister Wayne and I had last November, construct images of both of us floating over my hand.

"What can I do for you, sir?"

"You met with Ra's al Ghul."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Information gathering. Sir, I was under the impression that you didn't want full reports on my undercover work."

The image flickers as I skip forwards.

"I simply don't want to risk those parts of the organisation on which I have good information going to ground."

"How long do you envisage this taking?"

"No real way to know."

I close my right hand as Mister Queen whistles through his teeth. "That's some next level stuff, Bats. You running any other agents you wanna tell us about?"

"I wasn't sure that I was still running this one." He glares at me from his position at the head of the table. "You murdered a man on national television. How do I know you haven't been compromised?"

"Alright, first off. Captain Adams, I have to ask: do you actually have a problem with what I did to Klarion?"

"As it happens." He looks directly at me. "No. I didn't."

"Hawkman? Hawkwoman?"

Two head shakes.

"Jordan?"

His jaw tightens. "I have a problem with you working with Sinestro."

"Jordan, it was a joke." I turn away from him. "Dear sister in law?"

"Was both of you dying an option?"

"Harsh." I turn to the head of the table. "Diana? Honestly?"

"I would have preferred a better way, but I did not mourn his passing."

"There you go, Batman. Killing a mass murderer shouldn't really be taken as a sign of greater villainy. Now, the reason I'm pulling myself out… In two weeks, my 'colleagues' are planning to use a man named Johnny Sorrow to call a creature called the King of Tears into our world. You will be lured to the point of emergence, and it will kill you all. Then, I and my associates will -having already prepared for this event- jump in and either kill it or send it back to whence it came, taking your place as the world's premier superhero team. I assume that you don't want that to happen?"

Mister O'Brian points at me with both forefingers. "What, having you lead a superhero team?" His face distorts into an unsettling parody of an actual smile. Probably the best he can do. "Not really."

Kal-El's eyes narrow slightly. "And you want our help stopping them before they get that far."

"No." I take a lever arch file out of subspace and float it down the table to him. "We will be destroying the Light in its totality. I will be taking care of the other leaders. It's the worldwide conclusion of their support structures that concerns the League."

Kal-El takes the file out of the air, still staring me down. "And why should we let you take the lead?"

"Because I have an order from President Horne authorising me to kill them and you don't. Well, alright; technically it says 'take into custody if that can be achieved without risk to yourself or any American citizens', but I think we're pretty clear what he means." I shake my head. "I'm not leading this effort. President Horne is overseeing things and General Lane is in direct command. It's going to be difficult getting people into place to carry out a complete clean up. We've got the entirety of the League of Shadows, Savage's mercenary groups and businesses, Brain's research centres and laboratories, whatever the heck Mordru has-."

"LexCorp?"

"Pursuing LexCorp is a little.. legally awkward. But what he's done has well and truly crossed the line. Lex will be presented with an offer he can't refuse. If he's sensible, he won't try."

Batman nods. "And if we say 'no'?"

"Having the Justice League on board would simplify things considerably but your participation isn't actually essential. There will be more deaths, both on the parts of our targets and amongst the police who will attempt to bring the Light down without sufficient metahuman support. And you will have more difficulty getting your budget approved by the US Ambassador to the UN next year."

Batman nods. "The League will need to discuss the matter. In private."

I nod. "Of course. If it helps your deliberations…" I take another file out of subspace. "This is the initial draft of the Destructive Persons Act. It will set a new tone for US policy towards both superheroes and supervillains. It doesn't apply to Justice League members, but you should probably be aware of it."

Mister Queen holds up his right hand, so I float it his way. "Let me guess: mass conscription or arrest, right?"

"No, a voluntary training scheme with privileges for those who undertake them. A crackdown on some vigilantes might end up happening, but that won't be for years if it happens at all. America's just too used to you people." I start walking up the room again, this time on the other side of the table. Jordan glowers at me as I pass. "I'll leave you to discuss things. Oh!" I stop. "Except one thing. Captain Adams? You're with me."

He frowns in consternation. "Like Hell I-" I take a letter out of subspace and float it over to him "-am." He takes it and breaks the seal.

"Signed by your commander-in-chief and your commanding officer. You're reporting to me for the duration." He looks it over then turns his head to the side with a grunt of frustration. "I'll quite understand if you consider resigning your commission preferable, but please, consider the benefits this course of action has. No more Light. Higher organisation gone from the world's supervillains."

"I guess it's not a crime if the President does it." The letter creases in his right hand as he stands. "Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen."

"Glad to hear it. Father Box, hush tube. We've got supervillains to hunt."

"Ploong."

back

Titanfall 11

next

19th June

17:03 GMT -5

Kaldur intently watches the screen in front of us. I'm not sure whether he's just being his normal intense self or if he's actually ignoring me. But, given that we're going into the field in a few moments it's probably best to clear the air as soon as possible.

"Kaldur. Do you have a moment?"

He doesn't look around. "Princess Diana has discussed with me the reasons for your decision. If it were I who had become aware of such information, then as an Atlantean citizen and as the pupil of my king, it is unthinkable to me that I would not have shared it with him. Having heard the arguments to the contrary, I still believe that what you did was wrong."

"I.. can understand that. Did Diana tell you what I told her about her history?"

He turns his eyes my way. "Do you mean to imply that you know something about me of which you think I am unaware?"

"Yes."

His eyes return to the screen, continuing to study the building layout before him. "Inform me after the mission."

I nod. "Alright."

There's a bang on the open door of the van behind us. We turn to see a fully armoured up Agent Bell looking at us. "You kids ready to go?"

"Are you?"

She flicks a switch on her shiny new plasma repeater, the gun humming as it feeds fuel into the plasma bottle. "I'd say so."

I walk to the doorway of the Federal TV Repairs van and jump out, power armour materialising around me as I stroll into the underground car park being used as a staging area. A moment later Kaldur joins me, his water armour forming a translucent barrier around his body. Roy looks up from where he's testing his new power armour adapted bow… As well as chatting up one of the female SWAT team members. Kon and M'gann are already on overwatch above the target location, Kon in full Nth Metal armour and M'gann in Starfish mode. This time we're also going in with thirty FBI SWAT officers.

Think you're the only one upgrading your mundane fighters do you, Mister Truggs?

"Alright everyone!" Agent Bell waves her right arm. "Stand ready!"

The SWAT officers activate their plasma repeaters and form up into fire teams as their corporals signal their readiness. Roy closes his helmet and puts an anti-magic arrow on string. Kaldur creates a water tower shield and whip with his water bearers. Everyone's carrying spell eaters.

Okay then. "Transition in three, two, one."

Orange filaments dart out and then the scenery flickers.

"Go!"

Roy's anti-magic arrow hits the decorative portico and my rune stone flickers as something fails. Pedestrians are already scurrying to get out of the way as the first squad storms through the front doors of the Hotel Midnight, taking up a position by the elevators. High above us I hear a boom as Kon hits the roof hard.

Linton Smith may be infamously untouchable by the New York authorities, but it's amazing what you can do with a Federal judge of the evangelical persuasion where magic use is concerned.

Another squad takes up position in front of the stairs, a third squad taking and holding the front desk, clearly petrified staff being handcuffed and stuffed out of the way. Kaldur and I walk in next. I check my scans -the general scry ward on the building having fallen with the impact of Roy's arrow- and note that the squad assigned to enter through the staff entrance has also breached successfully.

'Breached successfully'. Heh. Listen to me.

Agent Bell looks at me. "Well?"

"No trace."

She nods and presses her earpiece. "Superboy, Miss Martian. You have anything?"

"We've got a.. skull." M'gann heard my description of what he did to his sister, but seeing her skull in person is a little different. "Securing it and moving forwards."

"Squad two, you're with Arsenal. Head downwards to the gladiator pens. Secure anything that looks like it could be magical."

The corporal nods, then waves his troops forwards. "Follow the guy in the red armor."

Roy takes an Unmaker out of his quiver and looses it at the main elevators. The metal doors disappear, revealing the shaft beyond. He checks up, down, and then jumps down as the squad accompanying him prepare their ropes for the descent.

"Superboy to everyone. We've just encountered a.. zombie."

I nod. "Remember what I said. Linton Smith is a Vodun bokor. Those aren't undead zombies; they're people with their little souls removed, no will of their own. Just shout at them and tell them to stay put."

"Right."

Agent Bell comes up alongside me. "I'm a bit out of my comfort zone here. Can Smith be charged for that?"

"Yes. Yes he can."

The ring shows me the SWAT helicopter flying in, depositing the troops who will be backing up Kon and M'gann.

"Sergeant, hold the front doors. Orange Lantern, take us up."

This time I take greater care, sending a filament and a test object upwards and making sure that it materialises correctly before transitioning myself, Kaldur, Agent Bell and two squads upwards into the private parts of the hotel. Mister Smith runs his businesses out of this part of the building. Property, shipping and construction. One squad takes up position at the entrance, security guards raising their hands in the face of the troopers' plasma repeaters and FBI issue armour.

I realise that there's little chance Mister Smith will try to fight this out. He could, there are any number of unpleasant spells he could cast or spirits he could call upon. But much like John he prefers to fight indirectly. He'll cooperate up to a point, then arrange for blackmail or more subtle magics to be brought to bear to have the investigation blocked.

Teeheehee.

Agent Bell looks around the office. "Alright! Which one of you is in charge!?"

The only man wearing a tie nervously raises his left hand.

"Take us to Linton Smith."

The doors on the far side of the room open, immediately becoming the focus of three repeaters, a water whip and my railgun construct as the man himself strolls through looking perfectly at peace with the situation. I think he's lost a little weight since his last encounter with John, though it could just be the tailoring of his suit. Few people can make the grass skirt and shirtless jacket look slimming.

"Agent." He holds his hands out, palms forward. A gesture of appeal rather than surrender, but simultaneously showing that he isn't armed. Or rather, isn't carrying a weapon. "If you wished to speak with me, I do have a phone line. And a legal department."

Agent Bell lowers her gun, though the SWAT troops keep theirs on him. "Mister Linton Smith, you are under arrest for murder, slavery, blackmail and such other crimes as a full investigation may bring to light. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You-."

"Agent, if you wish to question me, could you not do so in my office? I don't think-."

"Warning: Spell Eater temperature increasing."

There's a flash of blue as Agent Bell shoots him in the chest with her plasma repeater. Its low lethality mode is a sort of static electrical beanbag round, but it still hits hard enough to knock the target off his feet.

"You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning." She walks forward, standing over him with her gun pointed downwards. If she fires then he's getting some nasty internal burns as well as broken ribs. "If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government expense. Lantern?"

I walk forwards, preparing the suppression chains as Agent Bell permits herself a thin smile. "You're not getting out of this one, you bastard."

"So, Linton Smith." I clamp on the first manacles and he starts to look a good deal less certain. "Where is Nylor Truggs?"

back

Titanfall 12

next

20th June

01:49 GMT -5

"Thank you, Mister Cobblepot. Your cooperation is much appreciated."

Richard smiles faintly. "He's scarier than me? I think I'm offended."

Mister Cobblepot nods nervously. "Call me again when you've set a Demon on fire on national television. Even his baking is more intimidating than some sort of.. circus acrobat like you."

"He's got a point there, Robin. Now, Mister Cobblepot, I'm afraid that I'm going to have to leave you where you are and lock you in."

"What? You bastard, I helped you!"

"Yes, you did. And that buys you my silence regarding the matter of you supplying both Nylor Truggs and David Hyde with personnel and equipment. Assuming that stops now, at least. But I can't have you warning anyone, intentionally or unintentionally."

"No, you fuck! Let me-" I close the lid of the storage chest, muffling his complaints somewhat. "-oooooout!"

I take a sound nullifier out of subspace and attach it to the exterior. "Is there a protocol for this?"

Richard tilts his head to the side. "Usually we hand them over to the police. But if you're serious about not telling them about what he's been doing..?"

"I prefer to stick to my agreements. It's good for business. And there must be some reason why Batman hasn't stuck him back in Blackgate."

"He might have trouble justifying that if Aquaman ever found out about Black Manta." We turn and walk away from the disused warehouse where we carried out our interrogation, the case vibrating slightly as Mister Cobblepot struggles against his bonds. "You're actually taking the part about him supplying Nylor Truggs pretty well."

"If it hadn't been him it would have been someone else. I'm saving all my anger for the truly deserving." Still, what I just did to Mister Cobblepot was fairly nasty. There's an oxygen purifier in the chest so he won't suffocate… "Do you think we should move him somewhere?"

Richard looks around at the street as we exit the building. "Nah. He should be safe here. You.. can.. track the case you used, right?"

"Unless someone gets very creative, yes."

"Then that's fine. Batman's done worse to him before."

I let out a sigh/laugh. "Eh, Gotham. Ah, no offence."

"Some taken. So, we hitting Black Manta's warehouse tonight?"

"Pff, this morning. And, no, I don't think we should. The whole team's been rushing around all day… I think that getting some sleep first would be a good idea. I mean, I'll talk to Kaldur, but…"

"Yeah, I'm not feeling all that inhausted right now either." He pauses. "You see, it's inhausted because-."

"No, no, I got it. Not exhausted."

"Aqualad to Orange Lantern and Robin. Have you completed your interrogation?"

"All done. We've got an address, but Oh El thinks we should wait until everyone's better rested."

"Yeah. Once we hit it, they're going to know exactly how we're coming at them. Assuming that we get another location, we're going to have to go there immediately. If we run into a Water Wraith or something I wouldn't want the team to be unfocused due to exhaustion."

Kaldur mulls it over for a moment. "And we do not know if what we are doing will impede Ocean Master anyway. I agree. We will reconvene at oh eight hundred, eastern standard time. Aqualad out."

"He sounds pretty good for a guy who didn't get any sleep last night either."

"I'm not sure I'd be sleeping if someone attacked Gotham like that."

"What about Swamp Thing?"

"That was more of a communication failure than an actual attempt to level the city." Across the road a small group of local toughs see the pair of us then turn tail and run. "I mean, if Arcane had done it, I'd be sleeping with a white phosphorus grenade and an agent orange spray under my pillow."

"And one of Kid Flash's alchemical bug sprays."

"Heh, yeah. You heading back to the cave?"

"That's where I usually sleep."

"You could stay in Gotham?"

"Yes, but I don't want to wake Karon up or give Holly ideas, and Jade and I-." He's stopped, looking at me in a way that suggests that his eyebrows are raised behind his mask. "Oh, you meant with you. Right. Ah, thanks, but there's really no way to explain my presence.. in your home, if I'm spotted. If.. you're.. concerned about your home being targeted you're welcome to have my Praexis Demons stand watch. I've also come up with a couple of drone gun designs that should pierce most disguises." I pause for a moment. "I could probably do better if I had some Nth Metal, but I used up my reserves of that and it'll be a while before the Hawks can restock."

"Thanks, I… Think I'd like that." He sighs, looking forwards. "The whole point of having a secret identity was so these things can't follow us home. At this point, Batman's going to have to do the same thing to the Cave that you've done to the Mountain."

"Unless we get all members of the Light. They don't appear to have shared what they know, otherwise your home address would already have been swarmed under. And we all know where Lex is."

"Miss Martian not had any luck?"

"No. It's not so much that he's actively resisting as he's pointedly avoiding thinking certain things. Kaldur didn't want to risk her doing more in case he became aware of it."

"Makes sense." We stop at the alleyway containing the zeta tube for this part of Gotham. "Well, ah, good morning."

I step forwards, depositing twelve Praexis Demons behind me as I go. "Good morning to you too."

"Recognised, Orange Lantern, B zero six."

I step out into the training room-

"Identification confirmed."

-the force field parting for me. The lights are dimmed for the night cycle, but I can still see Zatanna blinking back into wakefulness from a holographic chair in the sparring ring. "Oh, y-. You're back. What.. time is it?"

"Eight minutes to two."

She rises to her feet before stretching. "You know what this room needs?"

"Pseudo-sentient magic drone guns?"

"Seats. Proper soft furnishings." I reach her and she falls in beside me, leaning on my left arm slightly. "Holograms just aren't the same."

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Titanfall 13

next

Ugh?

I slowly become aware of the duvet around me. Something.. feels… Off.

I'm not sure.. what..?

No alarms, no sounds of weapons fire. No odd smell. Not an attack, okay. Ugh. Lights… Still on the night cycle. I usually sleep better than this. I look across the pillow to my bedside table, the dim orange glow of the rings illuminating my bedside clock.

20th June

05:02 GMT -5

Uhpfff. The worst time to wake up. I've got to be up in two hours, and my mind's already sufficiently alert that I'll struggle to get back to sleep. I turn my face away from the light source and press my right cheek into my pillow. Why did I wake up? After experimenting with a white noise generator I ended up just going with a sound deadening field. Really loud noises get through fine, but sounds from other rooms, the corridor or from the mountain's equipment get stopped dead. No movement in the room, the temperature's fine. I have a dim recollection of a dream in which I was lying on a lilo on a beach… Or maybe a desert… Don't remember it being particularly scary, though.

"Green Lantern to Orange Lantern."

Euh. What does Jordan want? I turn back over and sluggishly lift my right arm out of the duvet, waving it in the general direction of the rings. At this time of the morning I have too little desire to call the rings to me. The third flap results in my palm making contact with them, my fingers wrapping around the uppermost and knocking the lower one onto the floor.

"Orange Lantern here, sir. What can I do for-?"

"Ocean Master did it."

Fuckfuckfuckfuck! My mind sharpens, right ring finger going through the ring it's gripping even as the original ring flies around to land on my newly extruded left hand. Duvet and sheet evaporate as I rise into the air over my bed, power armour appearing from subspace.

"Oceanus is free?"

"If that's not Oceanus, I'd hate to think what it is."

A zeta tube construct forms around me, and a moment later I'm atop the KordTech building.

"Recognised-."

I transition upwards to the edge of the atmosphere and look down at the Atlantic Ocean spread out below me. Nothing much-. There's a grey cloud mass just to the west of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, about two thousand kilometres from America's east coast. Ring, access weather satellites.

"Compliance."

Two hours of cloud and wind monitoring rush through my head. No, that's new. And it's slowly expanding. It doesn't appear to be moving yet…

"Don't look so big from up here, does it?" I half turn as Guy appears behind me. "C'mon, Lanterns are meetin' up on the coast."

I nod. Ring, detect will and transition.

Compliance.

Another flicker and I'm about five metres away from Lanterns Jordan and Stewart, both covered in green glowing construct armour.

"How.. bad..?"

A green cutaway image of the Atlantic appears just in front of Lantern Stewart. "Currents around Poseidonis, Tritonis and Crastinus are already so strong that they've had to call magicians back from the search just to keep them from being scoured from the seabed." The three cities are just on the US side of the Atlantic Ridge, which appears to be acting as a natural water break.

"'course..." Guy shrugs. "We don't really need to search anymore."

"Is Orm in there, or-?"

Jordan shakes his head. "Not our problem right now. Our problem is the tidal waves that are about to hit the east coast." He looks me over. "Think you can shield an area that size?"

John's image shifts, showing the water flowing over the land and marking the predicted area covered at full extension. Actual tidal waves don't look like the sort of mile high waves I remember from old cartoons. They aren't much taller than a person, but they're powerful and the water just keeps coming. Of course, those are just the normal waves caused by sudden earthquakes. Oceanus.. or Orm.. might be actively pushing. Or pushing and pulling. "You'll need to put it out to sea, from the sea bed. And make it tall. The water will just keep on pushing-."

I shake my head. "I'm-. I'm sorry, but that.. sort of area… That's well beyond me. I… I could probably shield Happy Harbour and New York, but-."

"Why not?" Jordan frowns "Yeah, it's a big area, but you don't need to make anything complicated to handle it."

"Because the east coast isn't mine. I don't own it. Complex constructs aren't a problem for me, but if I'm not invested in a place I can't.. do it. I mean, if this is the best idea we've got then I'll try…"

He frowns, eyes darting towards the storm clouds which presumably mark Oceanus' position. "How about with the snake?"

"She's got even less reason to care than I do. We.. might remain aware enough of what's going on to attack Oceanus, but.. maintaining a defence of places we've never even visited..? That's... I don't think that would work."

"Uh, great. Okay. If we work together, we should be able to."

"Hal." Guy looks thoughtful. "You know how I was… goin' on about… Abin Sur's ring picking you by dumb luck-."

"Guy, this is not the time."

Guy puffs up his cheeks, exhaling slowly as he stares out across the Atlantic. "I was jus' doin' the dumb.. macho thing. Y'know, puttin' down the other guy. You're a good man, an' a great Lantern." He turns in the air, looking at the confused Jordan. "Not sayin' I couldn'a done just as well, but… You've done good."

"Guy… What?"

"You wan'ed to know how come I could break free a' Klarion without help? I had help." He holds out his right hand in front of him, looking at his ring's sigil. "I was givin' it everything I had t' try an' get away.. and it wasn't enough. I opened myself up t' anything that was listening." He lowers his ring. "This has to happen, an' we ain't enough. So I guess I gotta ask fer help again."

"Well… Yeah, that would be great, but-."

"Ion." Guy's eyes burn with green light, green vapour wafting from his body. "I'm not enough. Not by myself. No ego here. Use me, burn me up, whatever. I don't care, but this doesn't happen, you hear me? I'm not gunna let millions of people die just because it's impossible t' save them."

"Guy, you've been spending too much time with Lantern Toren. I'm pretty sure Ion doesn't work like-."

"Warning, extreme will detected."

Guy's body flares with green light! I'm forced back, and the other two drift away as well.

"We are in alignment." Guy… Ion gestures, and a green barrier appears below us and then spreads out both north and south. It's got to be a hundred metres thick.

Ring, is that enough?

Unable to calculate. However, available evidence suggests that the barrier will serve as intended.

John stares at our brilliantly glowing colleague, then turns to me with a frown. "You knew about this?"

"I watched him turn off Jordan's ring with a thought. I suggested he keep quiet about it."

Jordan shakes his head. "We can have this out later. Batman, the coast is secure. Where do you want us next?"

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Titanfall 14

next

20th June

05:06 GMT -5

Ring, patch in.

"…is surrounded by hurricane force winds, clouds and rain. Most members of the League can't even get close enough to make an attack."

"Understood. You want some heavy artillery, you just give the word."

"Jordan, Doctor Fate is currently ten miles away from the storm front. Go to his position and protect him while he tries to counteract Ocean Master's magic."

"You got it." He nods to John, looks Guy over cautiously and me over with irritation. "Be there in thirty seconds."

There's a flicker as he transitions away.

"Stewart, do you have any constructs capable of large scale atmospheric control?"

"Yeah, but… I've never tried using them on something this size."

"Sir, KordTech has five hundred arcanotechnology weather control drones. They can shut down normal storms by themselves. They might be-."

"I know. Kord's already making them ready for transport. How quickly can you get them into position?"

Ring, current locations? "If Lantern Stewart assists me…" They're magic, so take more power to shift into subspace… I look over at him. "Can you make zeta tube constructs?"

He nods. "Long as I don't try flying through, yeah."

"Then… Ten minutes. They're in about three different places at the moment, but if I open a zeta tube in the New York warehouse and start passing them through-."

"Get moving. Stewart, it will probably be easiest if you arrange them in orbit before moving directly against Oceanus. Coordinate with Doctor Fate."

"You got it."

"Orange Lantern, now."

"Sorrysir." My surroundings flicker and are replaced with the central courtyard of the KordTech complex in New York. Right, production and testing is over there. I transition again, going in through the air conditioning and appearing inside the building.

A couple of people on the night shift look up from their efforts to move the drones to the loading bay. A second later the supervisor waves his arms. "Okay! Forget that! Let the Lantern handle it! Focus on putting the part-finished ones together!"

I transition across the warehouse to the loading bay and generate a large zeta tube construct. The final version of the weather control drones ended up being much larger than the prototype we showed Io back in March. Not much point building them too small for a storm of any size, and the perfect control Ted likes so much just didn't make commercial sense if the business is mostly going to be shutting large storms down. Over in the production area I see three Atlanteans of the same Black Lagoon type as La'gaan working on linking disassembled enchanted sections together. The eventual split of work we decided on was to have the mechanically simple/mystically complex parts made in Poseidonis and the rest being done up here.

"Orange Lantern to Green Lantern C, ready here."

"Ready."

I pick up the closest with a null-grav clamp construct and shove it through the zeta tube, white light flashing as it disappears.

"Got it. Keep 'em coming."

Alright then. Twenty more clamps appear and start drifting in the direction of the zeta tube. The drones aren't fragile exactly, but unlike in normal operation they aren't going to be checked at the other end. First one through, then the second and more clamps appear to keep the convoy up. I'll slow down if John asks me to, but at this rate we should make the estimate I gave Batman.

"Hey, Orange Lantern!" The supervisor jogs over to me. "Ted's been phoning around the guys at the Florida site, they should have everything ready we're going to get ready by the time you're finished here."

"Good, thank you for telling me."

He watches as another disappears. "Hey, are we gonna get any a' these back? Aaah, not that I'm complaining. I don't want New York flooded or anything. But if we-."

"No idea, sorry. Protecting the drones will be a tertiary concern during combat. We'll try, but no promises."

He nods, taking a look around to see if there's anything he needs to do. "So… How big is this thing?"

"The area covered by clouds is about eighty kilometres across at the moment and growing."

"Nah, nah, I mean the guy making it. Ted said something about… Ah, about a Titan?"

"We don't know. There's a storm in the way and these really annoying wizards who keep blocking me when I try scanning through it."

"Can't Superman see it? He's got, like, super vision and stuff?"

"Any heat would be masked by the storm. Any electrical activity would be obscured by the lightning which the storm is generating. Atlanteans don't really use radio or radiation so there's nothing to see there either." Okay, getting there. One third done. "There's enough water in the air that it's messing up radar and we aren't sure if Titans have dense body structures like bones, if they even have bodies in the conventional sense."

"Okay, I didn't mean like-. I know you guys probably have it all covered-"

"I wish."

"-but it just seemed like something…"

"Fine. Don't worry. How many more are likely to be ready in the next half hour?"

"Uh-?" He looks over at the assembly area. "Assuming no problems, we can get one done every five minutes for the next half-hour. Then we'll start running out of the magical parts. Why half an hour?"

"The way super power fights go, if this takes longer than half an hour then we've probably lost."

"Oh. And what happens..?"

"Ocean Master was a prince of Atlantis who wanted his brother off the throne so he could have it. He was executed for treason and brought back as some kind of undead.. thingy. I have no idea at all what's going on in his mind. Honestly, I couldn't even guess."

"A big storm in the Atlantic would be pretty bad for shipping."

"It'd also be pretty bad for the Atlanteans who live under it and no one I've been able to talk to knows what Oceanus gets out of this."

He nods. "Supervillains, huh?"

"Don't even get me started." Two thirds done. "Still managing, Green C?"

"I'm managing fine. How many more?"

"Another forty from here, then I'm moving to Florida for the rest. Can Nabu work with them?"

"He thinks he can."

"Might be better getting Red Tornado in on that." Oh. "And if he could persuade Red Torpedo to assist us, that would be good as well. The drones are basically upgraded copies of their design."

"I'll pass that on to Batman once we're done here. For now, just focus on getting your job done."

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Titanfall 15

next

20th June

07:21 GMT -3

Nabu raises his arms, a gold light flaring outwards and being answered by the shining ankhs appearing next to each of the weather control drones currently holding position over the storm Oceanus is throwing out. "The mechanisms are crude. But they will serve."

Didn't see you doing any better.

Doctor Lockhart looks out across the world as it lies spread out before us. "There really is no getting away from all this, is there?"

"It is unwise to mistake isolation for safety, Doctor."

"Fate seems to be doing okay. I don't know why you even wanted me here."

"Professionally, because we don't know how well he can actually manage it. Particularly if an enemy magic user targets him while he's working on it. Personally, because I think you needed a kick up the arse."

He frowns at me. "Language."

"Kick up the top part of your legs. You didn't want to go to the ceremony, fine, no problem. But you haven't applied for citizenship-."

"I -James Lockhart- have citizenship. Father faked all the paperwork when he built me."

"I actually wrote you a letter about upgrading your skin to what Danni has. And the rest, if you wanted it. Not to combat levels, just so you can live a comfortable life."

"And if I suddenly rejuvenated, I'd need to come clean about my robotic status. I told Tornado and I'll tell you: it's not happening."

"I can make the changes far more subtle than-."

"Fate to the Justice League. I am ready to begin."

"Batman here. Deploy them at once."

Nabu lowers his arms slightly and four hundred and eighty eight weather control drones wreathed in golden light flash downwards towards the storm clouds. Red Tornado is already down there, testing the edge of the storm front and trying to prevent it spreading further. It should only take a few seconds for Nabu to get them into place, then… Well, we'll see if his existence has any justification.

"I am activating the spell-matrices now."

At this point the drones are just tiny golden specks of light below us, obscured by distance and clouds. Then the clouds around the periphery just vanish, airborne water precipitating immediately and falling to the ocean surface.

"Adequate. Resistance is minimal. This may be because Oceanus is not consciously generating the storm and it is a mere side effect of his presence. I am moving the drones towards the epicentre."

Water continues to fall in a perfect circle as the storm is cut down to size. Okay, a magic user down there could strike the drones with lightning but they're highly resistant to that even without Nabu shielding them. They're shielded against anti-machine effects. Depending on how big a Titan's physical body is -and going by the Hekatonkheires I'm going to guess 'very big'- his best option might well be to just hit them with physical force.

"Doctor, once Batman has no further need of us here, would you be willing to relocate to Atlantis? Your water control abilities-."

A large grey object pierces the storm clouds from the inside, lashing outwards… Presumably towards the drones. It's… This high up the scale is lost. It… I can't scan it, but I'd guess that it's made of stone. The shape is a long thin triangle, sharp along both visible edges. One drone is cleaved in two by the blade and another is smashed by the flat. Another prong emerges and-. Wait, that configuration… The trident, the ratio and spacing matches Oceanus' Trident.

Nabu adapts, moving the drones in that area around the obstruction and continuing to have them close in. Okay, let's see. Assuming that that trident has the same proportions as the smaller one Orm uses and that the Titan's material body has the same proportions as his, that means…

Ah.

"Orange Lantern to Justice League. My calculations suggest that Oceanus is about five miles tall. If he's standing on the sea bed, he should be visible from the waist up once the clouds are gone."

"Noted."

Batman's response is dry, almost disinterested. I suppose… From a planning point of view precisely how tall he is doesn't matter.

The storm is pushed back further, the head of the trident and… A hand. A hand made from churning grey water. Another becomes visible on the opposite side and I use the distance to check my calculation. Yep, I'm about right. Further in and a bracer made of the same stone-like material as the trident becomes visible strapped around his forearms. His water-body appears to be formed with a highly defined humanoid musculature. So, big and made of water. Um. Okay, I think I'm leaning towards needing to use the Sword of the Fallen but I'm certainly not in panic mode yet.

I left that in my bedroom, didn't I?

Nabu moves the drones down underneath another ponderous swing to the trident and two grey… Pincers..? Become visible through the clouds. Ah, traditional depictions of Oceanus show the claws springing directly from his head, but the entity we're seeing uses them as helmet decoration instead. Given that his body appears to be made entirely of water I suppose that shouldn't be too surprising. Lower still, and his face becomes visible. Solid shaped water once more, though with the spray and lack of colour difference the features are a little indistinct. Appears to be Caucasian in proportions and… Not much expression. Stern disapproval, but neither mouth nor the patches of extreme churning turbulence that mark his eyes are moving much. I suppose that it's also possible that he isn't aware of us. That we're just.. too small, too mystically inert to really register. Or too far away in Nabu's case.

His shoulders come into view. Bare, unarmoured. Not sure if that's odd or not. I'd guess that he doesn't have any need for armour, lacking vital organs or blood vessels. But then, what are the helmet and the bracers for? Decoration? Given how Human the Olympians I've met so far are I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that he might have a sense of pride.. or artistry?

"Doctor Fate to the Justice League. Oceanus appears to no longer be trying to maintain the storm. I am recalling the drones in case they are needed later."

The golden flecks glow brighter as they fly directly away from Oceanus in all directions. The storm still raging around his pectoral muscles appears to fade, spreading and fading to a mere sea mist. His head turns slightly up, looking in the direction of… Looks like Florida, though it isn't easy to calculate precisely. His head turns slowly northwards-. No, of course, he's looking at the long green wall. He bends slightly at the waist, left arm reaching down towards the sea's surface.

"Batman to Wonder Woman. If you believe he can be reasoned with, now is the time."

A small target reticle appears on my armour's screen as Diana flies in from the perimeter towards Oceanus. Donna might be a better choice, given that most Titans appear willing to at least talk to her. But she isn't a member of the Justice League and there is absolutely no guarantee that Oceanus isn't just going to attack. And we don't know that Titans aren't happy to talk to Diana; she's mostly avoided them due to her respect for the Olympians. Jordan's flying along just behind her, because while the winds have died down a little there's no way Diana's going to be able to shout loudly enough to make herself heard.

I don't.. really have anything to contribute to the situation. I'd ask where Batman wants me, but I don't really want to distract him. If he wants me to move somewhere I'm sure that he'll tell me.

"Aqualad to Orange Lantern."

Ring, person to person only.

Compliance.

"Orange Lantern here, go ahead."

"Has Batman given you any indication as to whether he wants us to proceed with our raid?"

"No. I… Don't really know how useful it will be with Oceanus already active, but speaking for myself I would be exceedingly happy to see Truggs knocked down a peg or two. Is everyone in fighting condition?"

"It seems that we have little choice. I will begin preparations."

I nod. "Best of l-"

The sea buckles, water streaming in from all parts of the Atlantic and building in the area around Oceanus' left arm. I can see the water level against Guy's wall drop as it does so.

"-uck. Hang on, something's-."

Oceanus half turns and gestures in the direction of North Africa, the huge mass of water he'd built up roaring as he launches it eastward!

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Titanfall 16

next

20th June

07:26 GMT -3

Oh heck.

I grab Doctor Lockhart's left arm with my right hand and transition us in the direction of Africa.

20th June

09:26 GMT -1

"Doctor, anything you could do to slow that down-."

"Are you crazy?! I can't do a thing about a whole ocean's worth of water!"

"Anything you can do." Ring, show me.. water manipulation constructs.

Compliance.

I can't make a wall to defend the Western Sahara. Too large a volume of water to freeze or vaporise. That… There's some sort of molecular bond reinforcement device… No, there's no way I could maintain something that big either. Simple and powerful.

Shock wave manipulator.

Two huge sonic projectors glow into being next to me, their front ends projecting into the oddly becalmed sea. I'm a wee bit more powerful than I was back in July... Still, that is a lot of water. Okay, these things aren't quite as brute force as just slamming an opposing wave of energy at an existing one and hoping for the best, but they're not far off and I wouldn't want to be between the rapidly approaching wave and me when I fire. Ring, please tell me that no one is?

Displaying.

Oh.. dear.

Ships can't move anything like as fast as I can. Even with a couple of days' notice to get away there are still plenty of ships out there. Okay, so, stop this and grab-.

I see a green cradle materialise around an oil tanker and another miles away forms around a cruise liner. Agh, John can make zeta tube constructs but Jordan can't. He'd be better off handling this part-. A red blur grabs people from a trawler a moment before the oncoming wave demolishes it. League's on it, good.

I don't know why the wave is travelling across the surface of the water. Usually tidal waves are just waves of energy, the destructive output only being noticeable when they reach the shallows. I guess that when you're a Titan you don't have to worry about little things like the laws of physics.

"Orange Lantern to Batman. I'm in position to try opposing the wave. This is going to be very messy and I can't guarantee a high degree of success."

Hang on, if it's magic-.

I generate a railgun construct with extra construct-capacitors, angle it so that the shot will skim the wave and then fly onwards out of the atmosphere. Load mage slayer, power up to maximum, fire.

The air catches fire in my projectile's wake, a billowing red line marking its passage across the Atlantic.

"Orange Lantern, I did not say fire!"

"Sorry sir, no, that wasn't the collateral damage one." I see the round strike the oncoming wave near the crest, water vaporising and flying away from the site of impact. The wave shudders slightly but doesn't collapse. "That was the anti-magic one." Check the… I'm checking a wave for damage. Did he just put too much power into it for a mage slayer to nullify? Is it animated by multiple spells? "Minimal effect, but I've got many more."

A golden ankh appears above a cargo ship, which shudders for a moment before disappearing in a flash of gold.

"Then keep firing."

Three more railgun constructs, charge, load and fire.

John and Jordan aren't bothering to move the ships out of the way north or south, they're just lifting them over the wave. That'll.. work, unless Oceanus just repeats what he just did, and I doubt that we'll be able to clear the entire Atlantic…

Four impacts, and if the wave is weakening I can't tell.

Charge.

"Lantern, can you focus on a narrow channel?"

"I can probably limit the main beam to fifteen miles across at the point of impact."

Fire.

"Three more ships to evacuate and the defenders of Lemuria have been warned. Once the ships' crews are evacuated, fire."

"Understood."

Oh yes, they're not bothering to move the ships any more. Collateral damage.

Charge.

Is there anything else I can do? Yess… Damn it.

"Orange Lantern to Nabu. One of the ways to avoid the effect of mage slayer rounds is to use many small but unconnected spells, letting the ones affected ablate while the rest maintain the effect. I don't know that's why I'm not destroying the wave-"

Fire.

"-but it's a possibility. Can you-?"

"Yes." Two more flares of gold and Nabu appears in front of the wave, arms outstretched and ankh already appearing. Jagged streams of gold light flicker off, striking the wave at multiple locations across its surface. "The spells are bound."

Charge.

Guess Oceanus is one of the clever ones.

"Thank you."

Fire.

Oceanus dips his left hand again, a tightly focused storm cloud roiling around his forearm.

The four shots hit the wave just below the crest. There's a moment as the wave shudders, then it collapses, water falling downwards in a colossal splash.

Okay, the energy is still coming, but at least the magic component is dealt with. Which.. I think.. improves the situation. Shipping is clear.

"Orange Lantern to Justice League. Targeting wave with shock wave manipulator construct. Firing in two, one, firing."

I don't understand exactly how this thing works. The ring has a description, but my knowledge of physics is nothing like good enough to make sense of it. It does... Rather than apply force against the wave it does something to match the energy involved in the wave against itself. In a laboratory setting it can shut a wave down without the water stirring at all.

But this is a real ocean.

The wave front explodes in dozens of places, plumes of water rocket up, down, left, right, forwards and back as tiny changes in the make up of the water throw the manipulators off by tiny amounts which are magnified by the distance. Most of the energy is still oncoming, but I think I should be able to-.

Gugerhaah!

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Titanfall 17

next

"…ke up! Come on, I'm not flying back to America by myself!"

Uh?

Wha-?

Everything hurts… Breathing hurts, but I can just about manage to take a breath. Armour's deadweight.

I smell… Bacon..?

Ring, why is there bacon?

No bacon is present. Most likely source of smell is you.

I try moving my right arm and that was a mistake!

"Aaaaaaagh!"

Ring! Fix!

20th June

07:34 GMT -3

Uaoower.

My armour blinks to life around me-

"Orange Lantern, respond!"

-and Batman's shouting at me again.

"Orange Lantern reporting. What..? What hit me?"

Warning: low power. Twenty percent remaining.

Oh wonderful.

"Oceanus used a storm cloud as an electrostatic generator and then shot you with a lightning bolt. Are you injured?"

Ring, what's Oceanus doing?

In my mind's eye I see an image of him moving slowly in the general direction of Bermuda, a storm cloud crackling around his left hand. A lightning bolt leaps out as Diana closes the distance, forcing her to block with her bracers and back away.

"The bolt blew apart my construct armour and fried my power armour. And me. The ring's put me back together but I'm on low power."

Ring, did I stop the wave?

Partially. Green Lantern two eight one four C is attempting to replicate your construct.

Yeah… Those things aren't cheap in power terms. John might be able to get his head around it… "Orange Lantern to Green C. Sonic cannon constructs would be easier for you to use. Don't worry about getting it perfect."

"Right."

Okay. "Batman, permission to disengage and recharge?"

"Granted."

Ring, zeta tube.

Compliance.

20th June

05:35 GMT -5

"Recognised, Orange Lantern, B zero six."

I stumble slightly as I pass through the zeta tube.

"Identification confirmed."

Ring, I thought that you fixed that?

All physical injuries repaired.

Wonderful. Okay, get rid of my armour, let's see what else has gone wrong.

"Hey, Oh El. You done already?"

I register Wallace's presence just after he walks into the training room in costume. I shake my head again in an attempt to… I don't know. "No. Oceanus shot me with a bolt of super lightning. He was in the mid-Atlantic, I was off the coast of Africa. Nearly.. died, and now it's like…"

I pat my chest, and feel for my Spell Eater. It's not there. Ring, where is it?

Spell Eater was destroyed by lightning bolt. No replacement requested.

"And now I've got magic overload. Is Zatanna up? Or.. Rob?"

"Well, ahh…" Wallace glances back the way he came. "Ah… Should you be on duty? 'Cause I remember how you used to be when stuff like that happened, and-."

"No, I shouldn't. That's why I was asking for the magic users who can fix this."

"Right, right. I've been up for, like, five minutes. Batman gave Kaldur the okay to go after Truggs. I think I heard Zatanna's voice, but Cornwall's in school today. Ah." He checks his watch. "Now."

"And this is why I wanted to wait until a civilised hour before conducting the mission. Blasted.. inconvenient supervillains. Right." I shake my head again -no, it still doesn't help- and transition to my room. Huh, that shouldn't-. Oh, I left the door open. Whaw, that was only… Half an hour ago. Uh, right.

"This is my cause, this is my fight

Shine through the void with orange light

I've claimed all within my sight

To keep what is mine, that is my-"

"Paul?" Zatanna stops in front of the doorway behind me, clanking slightly in the Sororitas power.. armour..?

"-right?" My lantern doesn't appear. "Oh, come on, don't make me say the whole thing-" The lantern appears, wisps of orange light flowing into the rings. "-again. Alright."

"You beat Oceanus already?"

"No, no we haven't." The streams of energy cut off and I flex my hands. "I'm currently experiencing magic overload again. Would you mind dealing with it?"

"Oh, of course. Ssecxe cigam emoc ot em!"

And just like that everything snaps back into proper focus. Okay. Pick up the Sword of the Fallen. And a new Spell Eater.

Compliance.

"Thank you. Right. I need to get back to the Atlantic."

Zatanna hefts her bolt pistol and presses the safety. "Ave Imperator."

"Weapon armed."

"Your magic is going to be far more dangerous than that."

"I can pull the trigger and talk at the same time."

"Those are semi-automatic armour piercing rockets. Unless it happened while I was unconscious, we're still not aiming to kill-."

"They've got zombies."

"Fair point." I nod. "Best of luck. Ring, zeta tube."

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Titanfall 18

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20th June

05:37 GMT -5

I appear once more on the roof of the KordTech building. There's a noticeably larger screams-and-cars noise from the streets below. I imagine that Guy's giant wall is the cause of some of it, huge constructs generally being a pretty good sign that something is up. I don't know if anyone has been stupid enough to try flying in the combat area to record the fight. I know that in the comics Lex had drones for monitoring Mister Kent's fights that Ms Lang repurposed for pay-per-view purposes. Certainly he'd have the ability to build such things. I just don't know if he has.

Transitioning directly into the combat zone would be stupid, so I instead transition to Bermuda.

20th June

06:38 GMT -4

From here the flashes of light generated by Oceanus' lightning blasts are clearly visible to the unaided eye, as is the green light shining from John and Jordan's constructs. Bermuda's on the outside of Guy's wall and the waves on the beaches are rising far higher than normal. Fewer cars here, but I can hear the screams and see the streams of people head towards either high ground or hurricane shelters. If Oceanus sends a wave this way… That's the island done. I honestly don't think that I could justify stopping one heading this way and risking missing one going somewhere else. I can't even justify trying to shove everyone through a zeta tube construct.

Ring, update me on the fight.

Pale blue beams flash out from the Batwing, tiny sections of Oceanus' body freezing solid where they hit. The power requirements… No, he isn't maintaining fire. He probably just stuck in the biggest cold gun he could, on the grounds that if something that big couldn't get the job done then the target was probably just immune to the cold.

Mister Kent floats stationary in the air to the right of Oceanus' head, cutting loose with his heat vision as he tries to evaporate Oceanus' eyes and trusting in Diana to block incoming lightning. Oceanus turns towards them -apparently unaffected by whatever damage Mister Kent has done- and swings his trident in an arc. Diana blocks, and he maintains the pressure as he brings his other hand around. White light flares and both of them go flying in an uncontrolled tumble until Jordan gets in position to catch them with a catcher's glove construct.

Ugh. I raise my right hand to my right ear, then pull it away and look at my finger tips. Blood? In the combat zone Mister Yao is standing on a construct platform held up by John, who is also wearing a heavy duty ear protector construct. Mister Yao is shouting-. And I'm not going to try listening to him again.

Whatever it is, it doesn't stop Oceanus making the seas roil and throw rock-impregnated icebergs at them. John's forced to split his attention three ways, carrying Mister Yao, keeping his ears blocked and evasive flying. He evades two, but doesn't spot the third until it's too late. Fortunately for him Major Adams is there, blasting it hard enough to knock it off course.

Nabu's holding back, hundreds of tiny ankhs floating around his hands as he watches Oceanus intently. Probably studying him, trying to work out how he works. Sensible. It's rather difficult to harm things when you have no idea what they are. Of course… I draw the Sword of the Fallen. Brute force is an option in a surprisingly wide variety of cases.

"Orange Lantern to Batman. I am recovered and I have the Sword of the Fallen. Do you want me to take a swing?"

"Whatever it takes. Stop Oceanus."

"Sir."

I lean forwards and accelerate to my maximum safe air speed, 'safe' in this instance meaning that there's no risk of setting the atmosphere on fire. I can't hide that I'm coming in from naked eyes… No, I could, but only by slowing down a lot. I can't really use constructs to increase my speed as I am now when I'm invisible. Alright, where at the whole.. colossal bastard thing am I aiming? Hitting the eyes clearly didn't do anything worth talking about. So… Anywhere on the body… The trident, in the hope that there's some sort of magic inherent in it that's helping with this titanic water body… I mean, Gaea took the form of a normally proportioned woman when I met her. There isn't actually an automatic link between physical size and arcane power.

Is the 'real' Oceanus inside that body somewhere? No, it doesn't matter, there's no way for me to locate it quickly enough. Hang on. "Orange Lantern to Nabu. Any idea where I should be stabbing?"

"No. There is no one concentration of arcane power and his mind is not contained within any one part of his body. For the purpose of your sword, one location is as good as another."

Not what I wanted to hear… Goodness, Oceanus is big when you see him from this angle. "Thank you." Close enough, and I don't like the way that lightning cloud is glowing. Dismiss constructs, invisible and phase.

A half-second later a bolt of lightning flashes through me. Hah! Not so clever now. Not having to defend something makes this sort of thing far easier. Least.. defended place..? Not the left arm with the cloud… It's probably the face, actually. I mean, he can control the ocean and he's attacking from his arms… Alright, angle up.

In the distance I see Red Tornado flying his brother around, water stilling wherever they pass. Good to know that Doctor Lockhart is unhurt. Mister Freeman and Major Adams take a shot at Oceanus' right hand, just about managing to vaporise one of his fingers before they're blasted by his lightning. Jordan catches them and ferries them over to where Mister Yao is standing on a construct platform. Since his ear bleeding attack didn't work, it looks like he's reverted to medical duties instead. Major Adams reacts to something he says and reverts to his bleeding Human form, then Mister Yao sings to him and his wounds knit themselves back together.

I'm not attracting any attention. Invisibility? The scry wards? The intangibility? Because there's quite a lot of water in the air around here. It might be interesting to work out exactly what Oceanus responds to, but I doubt that we'll have the luxury. And… I'm feeling slightly light headed. Ring?

Spell Eater destroyed by lightning passage.

Ah. That's.. a problem. I could get pissed in this fight. That's an actual problem I'm having to-.

I pull away as I start flying through the cascading waterfall that is Oceanus' beard. Would stabbing him in the beard work? I'd.. guess not, but…

Agh, not again. Focus. Okay, his chin would be there. Go for the cheek-. I pull back frantically as he turns his head to respond to-.

Pink and red beams of light strike his face up above me, sending water exploding outwards. Pink? Where would-? Oh heck, that was the same colour as the pink barriers the OMACs used. Ring?

The ring shows me three suits of power armour holding position about two miles away, their chassis glowing with pink energy and tastefully understated LexCorp logos on their shoulders. The general design matches what I saw in the underground sections of LexCorp Metropolis in February. Of course, just because he'd rather not let Oceanus wreck the eastern seaboard that's no reason not to try and score some good PR. Wonder if Lex is in one of those himself?

Okay, that's a cheek. I stop phasing and slash outwards. There's a half-second of resistance as the Sword bites into whatever is creating the membrane effect keeping the water of Oceanus' body in shape, then the resistance disappears and a chunk of Oceanus' face collapses, cascading towards the Atlantic in a torrent.

Ring, scan?

And the rest of him is entirely unaffected. In fact-. I phase again as tendrils of water extrude from his chest and shoot towards me. Two pass through me as I try to evade and oh, I'm feeling… What am I doing? Don't… Don't need the Sword. Sheathe it.

Nothing.. I can do, really. I don't.. know anything about fighting Titans. I was not ready for this.

Do I know anyone who fights Titans? I mean, you'd have to be some sort of berserk lunatic to want to fight giant-.

I blink.

20th June

12:41 GMT +2

Marshall Haraldson looks around as I appear in front of him. The Einherjar have made a camp near the Frederikshavn naval base, and their presence in town has both reduced street crime to near nothing and increased local tourism considerably.

"Hail to you, Orange Lantern. What news?"

"There's a giant made of water fighting the Justice League in the middle of the Atlantic. You want in?"

A long sword materialises in his right hand. "Einherjar were made for killing giants! Bring our steeds down from your Watchtower and we shall fight beside you with joy in our hearts and a song on our lips!"

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Titanfall 19

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20th June

07:49 GMT -3

I watch as the Einherjar charge downwards towards Oceanus, shouting their battle cries. Listening in might have been educational, but I told the ring not to translate the rest of them when Lars shouted 'prepare to be sodomised'. I like to believe that's just him being an arse rather than it being their official battle cry, but I don't feel like disillusioning myself.

Alright, what next? The weapons I currently have in my possession appear to be ineffective. I could -just about- create enough cold gun constructs to freeze Oceanus solid, except that for all I know he can animate ice just as easily as he can water. The titanic body I can see is too big and whatever magics animate it too diffuse to be easily drained or nullified. I could get a working party of Atlantean mages to enchant a giant mage slayer round and try firing that, but that would take a good long while and I'm not sure how long we can keep Oceanus' attention. And it would involve me leaving here, putting me out of position if he tries another Africa-Ending Super Wave.

Of course, I do have…

I'm unable to avoid looking over at Nabu.

I do have the mana batteries Zatanna and I are planning to use on him. They're in as secure and warded a location as I can store them. If I decide to use them, there's no way I can hide from him the fact that I've got them. Or how they work. I'd rather not reveal them, but I'd rather take the hit than let Oceanus destroy the Atlantic rim.

Would they work on Oceanus?

A Human body can only hold so much mana before strange things start to happen. Nabu is far more powerful than Mister Zatara because he replenishes everything he expends almost immediately from the Plane of Order. The mana batteries are designed to drain at that rate, but they're not designed to store what they take for long. Oceanus… Probably isn't taking power from any one location. It's either innate, or he's taking it from the entire world around him. Making a storage vessel to isolate what we drained from him would take a similar amount of time to making a super mage slayer… Maybe even more, because I'd have to explain the design to the people working on it. Plus, given what happened when I tried stabbing him with the Sword of the Fallen he appears to have an innate structure that resists that sort of approach.

I think I'm going to decide against.

The Einherjar appear to be enjoying themselves, performing hit and run attacks or in a few cases leaping from their steeds to grab onto Oceanus and stab him directly. Since they don't need to breathe and.. may be immune to conventional attack, a lot of the concerns the rest of us have aren't so much of a problem.

Oh. Oceanus appears to have noticed them. Sections of his 'skin' transform into hard ice, frozen spikes stabbing at the undead Viking warhost. They're… Laughing.

"Wonder Woman to Justice League. Everyone, pull away from Oceanus now."

And.. the Vikings can't hear that, because they didn't have radios in the tenth century. Anyway, why does she-?

Oh.

There's a huge wall of water heading our way from the general direction of southern Europe. Not as tall as Oceanus -and I think he's reconfigured my mental ideas of what huge really means- but still about a mile high, and… Are those..? Horses..? Horses made of water galloping in a giant wave of water, pulling… A giant humanoid, this one not made of water. Okay, his beard and hair don't appear able to decide whether they're water or not, his skin is pale green and he sits on his chariot atop a fish tail rather than legs, but he's mostly Human.

Looks like Poseidon has decided to involve himself.

Um.

I think, and filaments extend towards the Einherjar frantically swarming Oceanus… Or at least a tiny part of Oceanus' surface area. "Guys, a god on our side is about to hit Oceanus." And I'm not joking, he's really motoring. "Get back on your horses, pull back and reform."

The response is… Mixed. Marshall Haraldson gets it at once, squinting eastward before shouting something in Old Norse and leaping onto the back of a nearby horse. A good third of his host wheel away into the sky as Oceanus notices that his old foe is incoming and turns to meet him. The rest… Not all of the Einherjar were mounted. Several of them dart back to pick up their infantry colleagues and I see John and Jordan perform a similar duty.

Lars stabs a construct reaching for him and continues his attempt to cut a passageway under the left bracer.

Okay, most of them are off, and the sea is shifting as Oceanus tries to give himself the high ground against a mounted opponent. I've got nearly a full charge. And… I've always wondered…

Rings… Beam singularity projector.

Compliance.

Targeting these things is… Tricky. Quite aside from the way they mess around with local spacetime, the beam doesn't really attenuate. And it's a heck of a power hog. Still… If you absolutely, positively have to eliminate physical force as a possible vector for destroying your opponent, it's hard to do better than a singularity.

There are still eight Einherjar on Oceanus, and they appear to have decided to stay for the impact. Lars is laughing like the lunatic he clearly is. I think he's biting-.

"Orange Lantern to League. Everyone apart from those eight clear?"

"Yes." Batman sounds like he's about as out of ideas as I am.

"Alright then. One last attack from me." I warp forwards and aim my beam singularity projector at Oceanus' back, angled so that the beam will pass through his spine at the base of his neck and carry on through his face. I'm not sure if that's actually a useful thing to do… But I can't see a better target. "Prepare for singularity."

"WHAT!?"

Light.. cuts out for a second. Water foams in a fury along the line the beam briefly cut and the whole body visibly slumps.

Ring, reset to local time.

Adjustment made.

For a moment I dare hope that did it, that the raw power and exotic effects of super dense matter might have killed the damn thing. No, no such luck. Oceanus reels for a few moments, then starts to pull himself together.

Just in time for Poseidon's chariot to hit him at full force.

And I need to pull back now! I grab a falling Einherjar and then warp again, appearing well above the grappling gods. I think the comparatively Human forms of Hephaestus and Eris misled me as to what the gods can do when they pull out all the stops. Oceanus was taking everything the League could throw at it and now every blow from Poseidon sends him staggering. His attacks do just as much, however. There.. isn't actually much skill involved that I can see. They appear to just be slugging each other-. There's probably something clever going on at the arcane level, both parties wrestling for control of the seas… I can't see it, though.

"Aqualad to Orange Lantern."

"Orange Lantern here. Raid successful?"

"Yes. No casualties on our side, and we have captured a number of computer systems. If the League can spare you, I would like you to attempt to recover their contents."

"I can try, but there have been an awful lot of anti-Lantern enchantments on things lately. I can't guarantee that I won't trigger something."

"My alternative is to have Squire guess how to access it, and she tells me that is even less likely to be successful. Between yourself and Zatanna-" ! "-you have the best chance-."

"No we don't." Ring, where's Sergeant Pushkin?

Sergeant Pushkin is currently located on the north-west coast of Russia.

"I know a man who can access any technology, risk free. I'll grab him and be with you in two minutes."

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Titanfall 20

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20th June

04:57 GMT -6

We appear next to the camouflaged harbour that until recently was Black Manta's main centre for resupplying and offloading his own ill-gotten gains in America.

"…certain that the Justice League does not want me to assist in the main fight?"

Thinking about it… This was probably where he waited for Truggs when he broke out of Belle Reve and swam for it.

"Not… A-hah. Not that I am precisely eager to fight a giant made of water, you understand. But we must all do our parts. And there were other people in force armour on the scene."

Ahead of us, Roy deactivates his armour's invisibility generator and waves with his right hand.

"I appreciate the offer, Sergeant." I rise off the… Heh, they've put that plastic grass protection mesh down to cover the soil. Can't risk the grass dying off too much in case someone noticed, but they still need to drive over this because exotic transportation would be more noticeable than a regular lorry in an unusual place. I rise off the grass protection mesh and fly at speed towards the entrance next to Roy, Sergeant Pushkin just behind me. "But your armour doesn't contain any weapons that would be a substantial improvement on powers possessed by people already on-site. We have reason to believe that the data held here may well relate to the ongoing fight, and you are uniquely well suited to accessing it."

"Oh, if you are sure…"

We reach Roy, and he turns and heads inside to lead us through the corridors. "Arsenal, anything interesting?"

"A few hi-tech weapons, machine parts. Plenty of those scry wards you like so much."

"Naturally."

"Not much in the way of combat personnel. A couple of guards, and Squire and I took them down no problem."

"No zombies?"

"No. Ocean Master and Black Manta have worked together before, but Kaldur says they're not exactly close."

"One's a pirate who happens to operate in Atlantean territory, the other wants to take over the country. If Orm had won, killing Mister Hyde and his crew would probably have been fairly high up his agenda."

"Heh. With friends like that…"

An image of Nabu flashes into my mind. "Indeed. Prisoners?"

"We've got 'em all secured. M'gann's been taking a look in their heads, but it looks like Black Manta didn't include his cargo handlers on the need to know list."

Sensible enough. Black Manta is a thief, but he's been somewhat under my radar and… Frankly, I didn't consider him worth my time. Now we've got some of his people being pumped for information, and while we might miss the man himself if we can roll up the network he uses to shift his stolen merchandise then he'll find it much harder to operate in future. And most likely so will a load of other people who use the same fences.

"Injuries?"

"Nothing major. You shoulda seen their faces when Zatanna pointed that toy gun of hers at them."

"It's not actually a toy gun."

"Oh. … Huh."

He leads us into what appears to be the communications room. Kaldur and Richard are already present, Richard crouched down and running a small sonic probe underneath the server cases to get a look at their insides. Kaldur nods at Sergeant Pushkin. "Red Rocket. Thank you for coming."

"I am always happy to help the Justice League. Or.. their…" He leans awkwardly to the side to get a better look at Richard. "Sidekicks."

Barely a wince. I guess everyone's a bit more secure than they were eleven months ago.

"Orange Lantern tells me that you are able to access computer systems regardless of the security which they have in place."

"Ah, yes. But it is not well tested in the field yet. Robin may wish to move aside in case something goes wrong."

Richard stands up and steps back. "There's definitely something in there. Given the sort of technology Black Manta uses I'd guess it's some sort of plasma charge. Or several plasma charges."

"So I do not turn them off one at a time."

"No, definitely not." Richard keeps backing up. "In fact, just take the data and send it to my arm computer."

"Okay." There's a ping from Richard's arm computer. "All done."

"Huh." Richard raises his left arm and starts tapping buttons with his right forefinger. "That was fast. Give me a sec-."

Sergeant Pushkin stands completely still for a moment. "It looks like they are doing something on Porto Santo, off the west coast of North Africa. I can see that they have made equipment and supply deposits there recently."

Named by some excessively optimistic Spanish settlers, who were politely booted out by Atlantean soldiers in the fifteenth century once they realised that there were surface worlders there. It's probably.. inhabited back on Earth Prime, with no Atlanteans around to contest things.

Richard taps his computer once more and then closes his right hand. "Yeah. Looks like."

Kaldur frowns. "Islands in the Atlantic are Atlantean territory. If Orm had wanted to build a base of some kind there before he was condemned, it would have been a simple matter to arrange. Though I am uncertain as to why-."

"Squire to Aqualad."

"Aqualad here."

"There's something… The water in the dock? It's not moving right."

My eyes and Kaldur's meet for a moment, mild frowns on both of our foreheads. "Can you be more specific?"

"Does she need to? I mean, we're out of here just as soon as the police get here to pick up-."

The ground beneath our feet rumbles. Oh.. dear.

Richard's first out of the door, bouncing off the corridor wall and hurtling down the corridor towards the dock. I transition past him, appearing just outside the reinforced door leading to the place where the Manta Sub usually stops for repairs and for offloading cargo. Several of Mister Hyde's employees look up in shock as Canis flies through the opening on the end of a plume of water. I cushion his landing with a construct crash mat, don construct armour and then stride into the breach myself.

A Water Wraith stands on the water's surface, directing water spouts at Beryl, Zatanna and Kon. Kon just plants his feet and takes it, Beryl triggers her armour's phasing system but gets staggered by the attack's arcane component and Zatanna-

"Retaw wolf dnuora em!"

-takes a firing posture as the water bends at right angles about thirty centimetres before it hits her and spraying harmlessly against the wall. Then she-

Tchoom-tchoom-tchoom-tchoom-tchoom!

-opens fire with her bolter, the bolts striking the Wraith's outer membrane and exploding harmlessly.

"Zatanna." She looks my way as I draw the Sword of the Fallen. "Keep it there, keep it material."

"Right! Yats ereh dna niamer-"

Kon loses his footing and slams into a wall.

"-dilos!"

She collapses, bolter falling to the ground as the Wraith hisses like a steaming boiler.

But that's all I need. Construct jump pack forming on my back, I boost myself towards it and stab the Sword through its 'face', sword slicing through the outer membrane and into the floating stone within.

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Titanfall 21

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20th June

05:01 GMT -6

Actual steam flashes out from the incision, washing over my construct armour and rushing across the room. Thick bars of orange light immediately link me to each of my comrades, construct armour appearing around them. Between supernatural toughness and fully enclosed power armour they'd.. probably have been okay, but I don't feel like taking risks at the moment. The head section of the Wraith has entirely vaporised now; the large stone that I've stabbed is sitting on the blade of my sword while the others are slowly falling through what's left of its body.

"Zatanna, still with us?"

"Ah? Uhhhh." She tries to push herself up, momentarily forgetting that she's wearing power armour. "I… I wasn't ready for how much power that would take."

I put an orange scoop construct underneath the bottom of the Wraith's 'body', catching the stones as they fall out of the bottom. That appears to be the trigger for what's left of the body to collapse into normal water, splashing down into the docking bay. Physics then snap back into force, steam freezing in the air and precipitating in tiny ice particles. I take hold of the head stone with a scaly construct hand and pull the Sword free.

"Orange Lantern to Aqualad. Situation under control."

"So I see." He walks into the room, the hardened surface of his water armour causing the ice crystals to crunch and fragment under his feet. "Can you detect any others?"

Not with a normal scan, but the stonework seemed pretty consistent amongst those that attacked Poseidonis… I send a sonar probe construct down into the water and let off a pulse. "No, we appear to be in the clear."

Beryl rematerialises and taps the side of her helmet with her right hand. "I think I might need a new spell eater."

I float back down to the floor, stones floating out in front of me as I put them in approximately the same position relative to one another that they had inside the Wraith. Hm. Check with the rune stone? Yes, powerfully magic rather than haphazardly collected detritus. I put them down. I'll pick them up afterwards and hand them over to Sephtian. Ring, check environment?

Environmental conditions safe.

I remove the orange construct armour from around my companions before connecting a filament to Beryl's chestplate. She's actually been burned where the spell eater overloaded, though fortunately it hasn't melted as mine did when Oceanus shot me. I disintegrate it, then heal her burn and deposit a replacement.

"Hey!" She puts her right forearm across her chest. "A little warning in future!"

I frown. Why would-? Oh. Oh right. "Sorry." I lean forwards, taking hold of Zatanna's hands and assisting her in getting upright.

"Thanks. Um, Aqualad? I don't… I don't think I'm going to be much use.. for the rest of the mission."

He nods. "Understood. We will need someone to remain here with the prisoners and hand them over to the police."

"An Old God!" Canis brushes off Richard as he re-enters the room, visibly limping. "That was a minion of the Old God fighting the Justice League! This is incredible!" He looks at me expectantly. "Are there more?!"

"Probably."

"Excellent."

"Aqualad to Batman. We have captured new intelligence from Black Manta's base of operations and been attacked by a Water Wraith. It now seems extremely likely that Black Manta was assisting Ocean Master. We also have a location."

"Understood. Stand by."

Kon looks at each of us. "What exactly are we standing by for?"

Richard nods. "What, you thought we were just gunna rush in with no plan and no reconnaissance? Batman's gunna want every member of the League who isn't fighting Oceanus directly to participate." He turns to Kaldur. "Does Atlantis have anything around there right now?"

Kaldur shakes his head. "The closest Atlantean city is Aurania, and they are unlikely to be able to move forces into position quickly enough to be able to help us."

"And the Spanish and Portuguese fleets are in harbour. If the sky is clear we might be able to talk them into carrying out an air strike, but without more precise coordinates than 'somewhere on the island' that's asking an awful lot of ordnance."

Canis sets his jaw. "I would prefer to confront and destroy our enemies personally, but if we are talking about simply bombarding them… Your people have fusion bombs, do you not? Three high-yield devices should utterly obliterate the island."

He.. does have a point. There's minimal risk it would trigger World War Three as the world's leading nuclear powers are aware of what's going on. The island itself is empty, and it wouldn't be all that hard for me to spend a couple of days removing radioactive material. On the other hand…

"A nuclear explosive wouldn't hit phased targets. We'd need to use some sort of phase disruptor first, and we don't have any of those attached to nuclear warheads."

"Ah." He bows his head slightly. "A shame. There is a beautiful finality to a mushroom cloud on the horizon."

Richard leans away slightly, looking at him askance.

"Batman to team. I authorize you to go to Santa Porto. Stay on the east side of the island. Once you arrive, open a zeta tube and further Justice League personnel will join you. Black Canary will have operational command. Your objective is to locate Ocean Master and disrupt whatever magic he's using. If that doesn't stop Oceanus, investigate the site for anything that might."

Kaldur nods. "Understood. Team out. Aqualad to team, convene in the docking bay."

"Right there!" Wallace blurs into view, slipping slightly on the ice. "Hey, why does Batman want us to stay on the east side of the island?"

"Because Oceanus can shoot the west side. And if he can take me down with full armour, it would kill anyone who wasn't super tough."

"Whow. Ah, east side it is."

M'gann drifts in through the wall while Roy walks through the door. She looks over to Zatanna. "I've put all of the prisoners to sleep. They shouldn't give you any trouble."

"Thanks."

Sergeant Pushkin enters the room as I flick my hands out to the sides, ten Praexis Demons led by Fatty shimmering into being. "But just in case. Robin, where did the ones I lent you end up?"

"Still at the cave. Do you need them?"

"I don't think I'm in danger of running out." I look around. "No Artemis or Rocket?"

Kaldur shakes his head. "We could not rouse them quickly enough to take part in this attack. They will most likely join us when you open the zeta tube."

"Alright." Ah. Kon looks at me, his head bowing slightly. "I can't just transition Superboy while he's wearing that armour." I generate a zeta tube construct next to me. "If you head to the Watchtower, you can come out with the rest."

He nods. "Alright. Be careful."

"I think we're a bit past careful."

He steps through the orange ring. "Recognised, Superboy, B zero four."

Canis shakes his head. "I will make my own way as well. Brut would be sorely vexed with me if I allowed such an opportunity to escape him."

"Very well." I remove the construct and attach filaments to each of my team mates, sans him and Zatanna. "First transition will be to Morocco. Then I'll test the safety of transitioning to the target and transition us onwards. Ready?"

Nods all around.

"Three, two, one."

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Titanfall 22

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20th June

11:05 GMT

We appear on a cliff side overlooking a wave-lashed beach. It's a bit… Five mile tall guy… Whatever, you know? I can see the storms he's making from multiple time zones. Other things just don't impress. The waves hitting here aren't quite as bad as the ones which Guy and Ion are holding off, but the normally inviting sands are swamped with decidedly uninviting water and this whole area has been evacuated.

"Scans say there's nothing on Porto Santo but shrubs and rabbits. Sending a test object…" A tuna sandwich disappears from my subspace pocket and dutifully reappears on the island. "Test object materialisation successful." There's a noticeable tensing from my team mates. "Two, one."

And zombies.

"Haaaaaaarrrrr."

They don't do that underwater.

Kaldur's already slashing with his water bearer-generated blade as M'gann floats into the air, raises her arms and shoves, the zombies surrounding us being sent flying.

Beryl draws her x-ionised sword. "I'm starting to feel a little under-equipped."

Two zombie foreheads sprout fletching. "Not like I brought anti-zombie arrows."

A yellow blur as Wallace dashes off, weaving in between the undead horde. With the ring's detection being rendered unreliable the mark one eyeball will have to substitute. Sergeant Pushkin begins walking slowly forwards, firing finishing shots into any zombies that are down but not out. A flash of red plasma-.

I generate a zeta tube construct and send the 'active' signal. "Since when do you carry a gun?"

Richard's face has an uncomfortable expression on it. "I usually don't."

"So?"

"Recognised, Black Canary, one three, Green Arrow, zero eight."

"Batman taught me shooting and gun safety. I don't like it, but these are zombies."

"I'm not criticising your pragmatism."

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaiiiihhhhhhhhhhh!"

Against the undead Ms Lance holds back not at all. Dead flesh is flayed from the bone by the sheer power of the sonic energy. Green Arrow looks sideways at her for a moment, then looses an arrow at a zombie standing near the top of the island's highest point. It collapses, pierced through the right eye socket.

"Recognised, Superboy, B zero four."

Kon comes through in swimmer pose, flying across the ground at waist height and smashing through anything in his way. Kaldur notices that we've got some space and falls back, his water constructs turning into shields. "Miss Martian, assume Star Conqueror form and then link us up."

I avert my eyes as her flesh distorts, forming railguns and watching for higher value targets than the meat shields currently throwing themselves at us.

"Recognised, Hawkwoman, one zero, Hawkman, zero nine."

They both pace through warily, circular Nth metal shields carried in their off-hands.

"Recognised, Red Arrow, one nine, Plastic Man, two three."

R-. William takes a second to nod to his clone before nocking an arrow while Mister O'Brian shifts to a predictably Ash-like shape before charging into the rapidly-concluding melee.

"Recognised, Artemis, B zero eight, Rocket, B one one."

Where are the high value targets? Whoever's running this must realise that zombies are only going to distract us for so long. And given how these zombies are animated I very much doubt that the fact they're being destroyed has escaped their creator's attention. I fire a few railgun rounds at zombies that have so far escaped my colleagues' attention-.

Wallace skids to a halt in front of Kaldur and myself. "There's some caves. Look like they've been dug out recently."

Kaldur nods. "You should probably report that to Black Canary."

"Oh. Yeah." He looks over to where she's snapping a zombie's neck with her bare hands. "Force of habit."

**Everyone is connected.**

**Query: they know we're here. Why aren't they-?**

The sea behind us rises up vertically about fifty metres. I cease animating the zeta tube construct and switch to throwing out the Hellwraith and the Praexis Demons with instructions to hunt and consume/possess anything that isn't us. Eyes turn upwards towards the oncoming wave as it curves at the top and starts heading down towards us! I snarl, generating a barrier construct over my comrades' heads.

**Sir, I can kill Water Wraiths but keeping this up-.** The water hits with tremendous force and then doesn't run off. The Wraiths animating it are just going to recreate their preferred fighting conditions!

**Can anyone see them? Or… Anything?**

Artemis' frustration is quite understandable. Being underwater is extremely limiting for most of us, and the silt-filled water around us is reducing visibility to next to nothing.

**Give me a second…**

Not sure what M'gann has planned. Not as if we've trained for this sort of situation. I hope she's quick; we'll start losing people just as soon as our enemies realise that cutting the glowing orange barrier protecting us removes life support from most of us.

**Yahh!**

The water around us vibrates for a moment and then flies back into the ocean as a colossal telekinetic surge shoves the water off us! For a moment I spot a Water Wraith just behind what would have been the start of the wall. Immediately, I drop the barrier, draw the Sword, warp forwards and stab. As before, the blade pierces the outer membrane and slides into the stones marking its head. To my right, plasma bolts, particle beams and anti-magic arrows slam into a second. It writhes and buckles, then collapses entirely as Ms Thal smashes through its head with her mace.

Two down, then the water rises up once more. I transition back to the land, then tag Ms Thal with a construct hand and pull her to safety before raising the shield again. **Anyone see how many others there are?**

I.. feel Mister Hol nodding. **There were four. If both of the ones you struck died, that leaves two.**

**Five of them attacked Poseidonis, and Oh El killed one in Black Manta's base.**

I hope that Richard is right. There's no real reason to assume that those were all Orm has at his command, but it would be very convenient.

**Miss Martian, can you do that again?**

Miss Lance, don't you think that if she could that she'd have done it already?

**Uh. Um..? Not… For a little while. My brains are vibrating.**

**Alright then. Orange Lantern, how long can you sustain this dome?**

**At the current level of pressure, about two hours. Though I'd suggest-** Something moves in the murk. **-having Green Lantern C open a zeta tube-** Things start hammering on my shield in multiple locations. **-and flanking them.**

Cracks start radiating out across the dome's surface.

back

Titanfall 23

next

20th June

11:08 GMT

**Saremite infantry.** And I can't see their desires. Some sort of ward? Must try to acquire. **The ones who attacked Themyscira didn't use enchanted weapons, but regular weapons wouldn't harm my barriers anything like this fast. Orm has hundreds available, but my barriers are only being struck in… Sixteen places. Most likely a small number using enchanted weapons.**

And this is exactly the situation where having a magic user with us would be excellent.

…

Ring, dial Rob's mobile.

Compliance.

The cracks spread further.

**Orange Lantern, can you make your constructs permeable to our attacks?**

I glance in Ms Lance's direction. **Ssssort of, sir. A barrier like this is a barrier. An environmental shield around your body would let your attacks pass through it, but you'd have trouble moving through the water and they wouldn't.**

**Hawkman, Hawkwoman. Can you confirm Orange Lantern's assessment of our opponents' numbers?**

Mister Hol peers into the murk. **Visibility is too poor for me to be certain, but I believe that there are more objects moving further back, most likely further Saremites.**

Hi, this is Rob's voicemail. Leave a message after the beep.

The only flipping teenager to actually turn his phone off during lessons. Right, message: Hi Rob, Orange Lantern here. We could really do with your help on Porto Santo right now. Let me know when you're available and I'll create a zeta tube construct for you. Message ends. Ring, dial his father.

Compliance.

**Orange Lantern, do you have any other way for me to transmit my cry outside of the barrier?**

Ah… **Yes, but I'm afraid that it involves sticking your face through the barrier. I can make the barrier permeable to things covered in environmental shields.**

**Do it.**

Green Arrow looks at her curiously. "Canary?"

**Water doesn't compress well. Hopefully, Saremites do.**

Hello?

Mister Marrack, Orange Lantern here. Rob's not answering his mobile and we could really do with his help. Could you please prevail upon him to get to a zeta tube as fast as possible?

Right… Yeah, I'll call the school.

Thank you. Goodbye.

I attach a thick beam of orange light to Ms Lance. **Ready sir?** She nods, and I float her upwards towards the barrier. Water is already trickling in… I establish a second barrier slightly inside the current one and then drop the failing barrier. Bubbles swirl at the interface where the formerly trapped air mixes with the mystically propelled water, and I use the distraction to shove Ms Lance's face through the barrier at one of the stab points.

The barrier isn't designed to conduct kinetic energy, so we only hear the part of the scream conducted through Ms Lance's own body. But from the way the water turns murky brown I don't think we can doubt the effectiveness of the attack. Certainly, efforts at piercing my barrier in that area cease.

"Batman to strike force. Oceanus has turned away from the east coast of America and is heading in your direction, ETA sixteen minutes."

Kon frowns. "What happened to Poseidon?"

"He lost."

Ms Lance ceases screaming, so I pull her back through the barrier. "Canary to Batman, message acknowledged. We'll be finished before he arrives."

**Again, sir?**

**Hey.** Mister Queen looks speculatively at an arrow with a large head. **Would that work with arrows?**

**They would pierce the barrier, but the water would stop them almost immediately. I don't know how long the mechanism would last.**

Mister Queen nods, and he, William, Roy and Artemis all notch sonic screamer arrows. **Might as well give it-** Cracks start appearing in the new barrier. **-a shot.**

Orange beams connect me to the four of them, and I make a special effort to ensure that their arrows are included in their own right before applying Ms Lance to another locus of the offence. Another scream and another cluster of Saremites back off, a proportion of their number either dead or at least seriously injured. From Mister Queen's direction I feel a mental image as he directs his students where to point their bows. A moment later they loose, he and William hitting one location and Roy and Artemis hitting another. The arrows only just pierce the barrier and water remains as it was, but at least the attack stops in those places. Mister Queen fishes another sonic arrow out of his quiver, then looks expectantly at the others.

Artemis shrugs and Roy winces slightly.

**What, neither of you?** He shakes his head as he notches again. **You can't just throw away the classics like that. One day, you'll need them.-**

Roy rolls his eyes. **Ollie, I remember the fake cat arrow.**

**There were perfectly good-** Mister Queen and William loose as I reposition Ms Lance once more. **-mission-related reasons why I had that.**

**Chief Nudocerdo couldn't look me in the eye for three weeks.**

Connection made to monitored-.

Answer!

Paul, you there?!

Yes, yes, I'm here. Where are you?

Oh, thank god. We were doing a mock exam and I couldn't-.

That's fine. Where are you?

I'm about to get inside the mountain. I'll be with you in, like, a minute.

Good show. I'll have the tube ready for you. Orange Lantern out.

I generate a new zeta tube construct. **Cornwall Boy will be joining us momentarily.** I pull Ms Lance back once more and… Curious. They've stopped attacking. I put her down and begin regenerating the barrier.

Then something long and dark swims past the front of the barrier.

And keeps swimming.

And keeps on swimming…

…

Golly, that's long.

Mister O'Brian twists his neck around. "Did that thing just swim past the barrier in order to generate an image of menace? And should we be worried that it can understand basic Human psychology? Oh, and I'm trying not to take the whole 'not telling the one guy who can't hear telepathy what's going on' thing too personally, but if someone could clue me in, that'd be great."

And then a giant mouth filled with teeth latches onto the top of my barrier.

back

Titanfall 24

next

20th June

11:11 GMT

A Cetus is far too big for us to see much of it from this position. Its mouth is above us and its body is large enough to block out what sunlight the water and my barrier aren't. Richard breaks out a few fluorescent tubes and tosses them around to augment the light provided by my constructs.

**Is that some kinda sea serpent?** Wallace looks up in fascination. **Because there's no way an animal could actually get that big without magic.**

**They're supposedly Titanspawn like the Wraiths. And like the Wraiths, there aren't good modern records. And yes, my guess would be that it's the titanic magics inherent in their nature that let them get that big.**

Its leading fangs break through the barrier top and bottom, water spraying in at high pressure. The island of Porto Santo is about five kilometres across where we are and my barrier only covers one kilometre of that and is about five metres in height. From the angle of the jaw, I'd guess that the Cetus' mouth isn't even opened to its full extent.

Huh.

I bring Ms Lance back to ground level. **I can form a seal around those teeth if someone could-?**

Mister Hol and Ms Thal leap into the air, heading towards the upper canine teeth brandishing their Nth metal weapons. Kon heads for the left lower fang and Squire triggers her belt to fly at the right. Raquel… I'd missed her earlier. She's taken a pose. What's she-?

She spots me looking at her. **It's just a real big fish, right? So I figured I should be able to use my belt to stop it crushin' us.**

**Really?**

**Turns out there's a limit to how big an area-.**

Kaldur's head snaps in our direction. **Can you instruct other members of the team also wearing the belt in how to replicate your efforts?**

**Not fast enough for it to be useful.**

Ms Thal slams her mace into a tooth thicker than she is, chunks of whatever it's made of exploding away from the point of impact. Mister Hol takes a slightly more clinical approach, using his axe to sever a piece near the tip and then cutting upwards. Beryl holds position about half way down the length of her tooth and begins slicing clunks out. Kon doesn't bother with anything that precise, flying directly into the tooth where it passes through the barrier fists first. The tooth actually shifts slightly in the Cetus' jaw, and the barrier takes another impact as its tail spasms.

"Recognised, Cornwall Boy, B one zero."

Oh, at last.

Rob staggers out, still wearing his school uniform. "Right, what-?" He looks around, eyes wide. "Oh."

"Cornwall, the water over our heads is being held there by magic. Please do everything you can to get rid of it."

"That's a… That's a bit much for me, mate. But alright. Heh." He raises his hands over his head. "Give me all your en-"

Ms Lance raises an eyebrow in his direction.

"-er… Gy. Sorry." He closes his eyes. Of course, unless the water suddenly disappears above us I can't really tell whether he's succeeding or not.

"Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh."

So… That's what a giant fish moaning in pain feels like. The sound is blocked by my barrier, so the noise is coming up through the rocks and soil of the island. It's really.. quite disturbing to listen to. Right, ring, show me… Magic power drain diagrams… Adapt for Cornish runic systems…

No good matches on file. Effectiveness of diagrams provided not guaranteed.

A few pictures… Okay. Maybe if I-?

Water flows across the ground from where it had pooled beneath the ruptures in my barrier, heading in Rob's direction. I immediately create a barrier around him-.

"No, that's meant to happen! I need that!"

The barrier fades before it can fully form.

"Still waiting to be clued in here." Mister O'Brian holds out his hand in a gesture of appeal to Richard and Wallace. "Anybody? Anybody at all."

Wallace is looking up at the partially destroyed teeth. He thinks for a moment, then pulls out a vial of essence of vitriol. **Hey, Superboy? Squire? Try using this stuff on it.**

Kon's taken to flying back far enough to build up speed and then ramming his tooth. Cracks are appearing all across its surface. Beryl on the other hand has cut through to expose whatever it uses for nerves, and zips down to take the proffered vial. "Cheers, flasher."

"Oh, you.. so can't call me that."

"Anybody at all."

Richard looks up at him. "Big fish try eat us. Big fish bad." He nods emphatically. "Very bad. Water men bad. Fish men bad. Drowning bad."

Mister O'Brian looks at him askance for a moment, then nods. "You see? What was so hard about that?"

The water is.. actually forming a ball over Rob's head, writhing and sloshing as he -I'm assuming- pours more power either into or through it. Or sucks it out. I haven't really kept track of exactly how he uses magic. Frankly, it's hard enough learning the Atlantean system without also trying to work out another. Still, the basic principle of using an elemental focus that's been touched by your opponent's magic is reasonably universal.

"Please allow me." Sergeant Pushkin politely waits for Mister Hol to move aside before shoving his right fist up into the hole he's cut into the tip of the Cetus' tooth.

Warning: singularity detected.

At the same time, Beryl throws her vial into the hole she's created and-

"Rrrrrruuuuuuuuuuuuuughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"

-the Cetus convulses, jaw working as it tries to free what's left of its fangs from my barrier. The rate at which the water pours in briefly increases so I stick patch constructs over the holes as the Cetus finally backs off. Light filters back down to us with no giant aquatic creature obscuring it, and team tooth puncher drift back down. Of course, we still need to do something about the-.

The water, which is cascading down the sides of my barrier as Rob shudders and jerks in what looks like a very uncomfortable way.

**Does anyone have eyes on the target?**

Ring, scan with everything!

Targets located.

**[Map picture]**

I drop the barrier and boost outwards again. This time the Wraiths haven't come up to surface level, so I jam a watertight construct into the water around it and pump the water out. It gestures up at me and the blood in my arteries burns but it's too late. I dive, Sword of the Fallen finding its head stone and cleaving through as I hit it from above.

I stand on the damp sea bed for a moment, then sheathe the Sword. **Got mine. Everyone else?**

**It fled.** Kaldur doesn't sound entirely sorry about that. **And we do not have much time before Oceanus' arrival.**

I rise up into the air and head back to land, taking care to stay below the line of Santa Porto's hills. I do not want to get hit by lightning again. Landing, I look at Ms Lance. **What next, sir?**

**Kid Flash, lead the way to those caves.**

back

Titanfall 25

next

20th June

11:15 GMT

And that's a problem.

Ms Lance looks at me. **Well?**

**Oceanus already has a clear shot at the cave entrance. Assuming that he's actually aware of us, there's very little any of us can do to stop him shooting us.**

Yes, he's a very long way away and I'm not entirely certain how his colossal electrical discharges would interact with the sea water, sodden island or the rock, but I'm a little nervous about getting a third of the Justice League and most of my close friends fried.

Mister Queen looks a little puzzled. **Can't you just, y'know, teleport past it?**

I take my test object out of subspace. **This used to be a tuna sandwich.** I apply a little pressure and the bread crumbles to dust and the liquefied fish blobs out onto the ground. **Last time I encountered a ring FTL disruption system was Kahndaq. They're not common, but apparently Earth now has the technology to make them.**

Of course, if Canis were here we wouldn't be having this problem.

Ms Lance nods. **Can we just go through the rock?**

**Maybe. I don't know what spells there are on the place. If that's the way you want to do it, I'm going to need to know right now.**

Kaldur looks pensive. **That may not be wise. There are spells which can be used to alter space in such a way that entering a place from any direction other than the intended one results in the one attempting to gain access not encountering the interior of the structure. Ocean Master is a highly skilled mage, and it is highly likely that he has made preparations for such an approach.**

"So!" Mister O'Brian beams. "Who wants to re-enact the jumping scene from Enemy at the Gates?"

Wallace looks at him speculatively. "Didn't Flash say you were the toughest guy on the League?"

Mister O'Brian stops beaming. "Y'know? You'd think by now I'd see these things coming."

Kaldur doesn't share in the general amusement. **Orange Lantern, Squire, Arsenal and Miss Martian can all become invisible. I would suggest sending them in first.**

**I… Might…** M'gann winces. She still isn't anything like a hundred percent. **You remember when I used the Bio-Ship to hide us from Mister Twister? I might be able to do the same thing with… Me.**

**Kal-El shot out Oceanus' eyes and it didn't lose track of what was going on. It's more likely that it tracks with magic, ifff… If it isn't being directed remotely.** I frown. **No, sorry, it can't be doing that. I'm unscryable and it's been tracking me fine.**

Ms Lance looks at M'gann for a moment, then returns her attention to me. **Orange Lantern, you're in first. Squire, Arsenal, follow him in once he's given the all clear.**

**Sir.** / **Right-oh.** / **Got it.**

**I'll follow you in after that. We-.**

**Sir, that's.. not a good idea. One shot-.**

**I'll be exposed for ten seconds at most.**

**Sir, Plastic Man and Superboy could probably take a hit without being killed. Red Rocket would have a chance of survival. If you got hit there wouldn't even be ash.**

Ms Lance takes a moment to look at the other League members' faces. **Alright. Plastic Man, then Superboy. If Oceanus doesn't shoot I'll come in after that.**

Mister Queen looks as unhappy about that as I feel, but I doubt that I'll get a better deal by negotiating further. It takes a very particular mindset to fight gun-armed criminals while wearing tights. She wasn't going to back down just because the Titan of Oceans is bearing down on us.

**Sir.** My construct armour vanishes and I fade from sight. Let's activate phasing as well. New spell eater, check. Go.

Flying, it takes me four seconds to reach the cave entrance and during that time no lightning at all is thrown my way. And I'm in and breathing a sigh of relief as the watery colossus leaves my visual field. Or rather, as I leave his.

The entry to the cave looks like an actual cave. There's no path along the floor -which is submerged- and the rock is uneven, organically carved by the flow of water in and out and by the water running down through the rock above. It only takes a few moments for the ring's visual augmentation mode to pick out the unnatural parts. The marks made either by hands or fingernails on the rocks where someone has clambered over the stalagmites. No signs of heavy equipment being dragged through… Not sure whether that's a good sign or not.

I float further in. I want to take out the rune stone and check for magic, but it wouldn't be covered by my armour's invisibility system. Ring, any of those scratches runic?

Several runic patterns identified. However, simple runes may be created through repeated random scratching and this ring does not have the capacity to directly detect spellcraft.

I take a quick look at the suggested symbols. No, nothing that suggests intelligent design. Ignore them, press on. A little further in the cave opens up a little, though it still doesn't look man-made. Not seen any enemies yet. Curiously, the only weapon that I have that I can use while invisible is brute strength. And I can't use that while phased. Do I phase back in?

Yes.

**I'm inside. No one here. I'm moving deeper.**

**Understood. I'm sending Squire after you now.**

Sound judgement. No sense in putting both her and Roy in the line of fire at the same time if Oceanus is using magic-based detection. Hm. The water is still on the floor despite the cave angling slightly upwards. It's running out to sea. Where's it coming from?

I follow it in. I think Kaldur was right about space warping. This cave is continuing further than the available land suggests that it should be able to. The passageway is turning into something more even, with what is definitely a manmade channel down the middle. Not paved, this was clearly worked from the stone surrounding us and there are tiny stalactites on the ceiling.

Still no opposition. Ring scans aren't showing anything my eyes can't see. Sonic pulse, read the-.

Oh heck.

**[Image urgency]**

I drop stealth and thrust up the passageway, reforming my construct armour just in time to meet what I recognise as entropic lightning. I've only read descriptions before. Grey-white rather than white-yellow, it acts as normal lightning against most targets with the added bonus that it tends to nullify spiritual force. In effect, the target becomes more vulnerable to magic and loses magic capacity themselves. Against Atlanteans it's deadly. Against me, my construct armour soaks it without too much difficulty.

"Ah. The Lantern."

I emerge into a larger cave, with what looks like a large and vaguely Greek style folly in the centre. Ten pillars hold up a sloped roof while what looks like a statue of Oceanus pours an endless flow of water from an urn. There's an arcane design on the ground, the runes of which somewhat resemble those used in Dolmen Gates. Orm-.

I blink. No, that's not Ocean Master. Too short. He's… He's put Koryak in his old armour. Koryak is standing next to the statue, Diadem of Dominion in hand. Orm is standing a little further back. His new armour looks like it's made of the same grey stone as the armour Oceanus himself wears, and lacks the obvious holes of the Ocean Master gear. He hasn't relinquished Oceanus' trident, of course.

"I had hoped that Arthur-."

I generate a railgun construct and open fire.

back

Titanfall 26

next

20th June

11:18 GMT

My mage slayer round hits-. It hits something about a metre from Orm. There's a flicker as… A tiny volume of water precipitates from the air, the expended round itself dropping to the ground. Fully accelerated I fire twice more, the supposedly magic user killing rounds stopping on what-.

Layered super surface tension barriers. It's the only thing I can think of that fits. Strong enough to absorb the kinetic force of the shot and separate enough from one another to cope with the magic draining. Weakness: they're more vulnerable to pure kinetic force. I load tungsten anti-armour rounds and dial up the power.

The barrier doesn't even trigger. The shot slams unimpeded into whatever that grey stuff is and-. He's barely affected. There's a slight sound at the impact so the force isn't simply being nullified by magic-.

The water's spreading out of the channel. Ring, scan? Yes, sea water is being pulled up the tunnel behind me to cover the floor. From the way it's foaming I'm going to assume that it would be extremely loud if I was thinking slower. As it is, all I'm getting is a low rumble.

Switch to crumbler rounds. Orm's trident is moving slowly, entropic lightning dancing around the prongs. I begin moving slowly to the side. Normal lightning spells use automatic aim which won't work on me, so unless he's an excellent aim his shots should just miss. Tridents aren't easy weapons to aim with and Atlantean battlemages don't train to aim precisely.

Pressure on my right foot. The moment the crumbler round leaves the barrel of my railgun I phase, construct vanishing. I fly at best speed towards the rear of the room as tendrils of water flail impotently after me… At a speed I can see. Those things must be moving faster than the speed of sound at least. Orm's work? No, he doesn't seem to be-.

Ggruh!

I materialise, slamming into the rear wall. My head feels like-. Combat with a magic user.

"There you are."

Don't reason, follow the protocol. Switch out the spell eater. With the FBI officers and my team mates I'm getting a little low on those. Same with mage slayers.

"Truggs mentioned that you have a frustrating habit of not-"

Praexis Demons, go. Eat him.

"Yay!"

"-listening to-. You think Demons will be enough-"

Orm turns to face me as they pour forth from the rings in a torrent. Tubbs leads the charge, mouth open and ravenous. To them, a magic-rich target like Orm must be a feast.

"-to stop me? Fool!"

The water around him explodes, tiny droplets hitting like railgun rounds. Praexis Demons are slammed back or flat out disintegrated, respawning from the rings and flying forwards again. This time I throw a barrier forwards and prepare a railgun. His trident shimmers and that's my sign to fire a mage slayer. The barrier meets it once more, but it delays him long enough for the Demons to get into biting distance. One I haven't bothered naming reaches him first, chomping down on his right shoulder. No apparent effect.

Blades of ice shoot up from the thigh-high water on the floor, neatly piercing every Demon save the one actually biting him. Orm's left hand forms a blade and strikes, piercing my construct Demon through the right eye.

"Aaaaaagh!"

Even with a chunk of its head gone the Demon continues to grind its teeth against his plate. Is it-? There's a tiny blemish on the surface of the plate where my crumbler hit. Dread to think what that stuff is made of if that's all it managed. On the other hand, I can make more crumblers on the fly. Orm gets a grip on the rest of the Demon's head and crushes. Alright, no point in calling more of them except as a distract-.

"Forget me?" Beryl materialises behind Orm, sword flicking out towards the rear of his knees. Shouldn't strictly be necessary with an x-ionised blade; either it'll go through like it does most things or he's got a spell that will stop it and it won't matter if the metal was thick or-. "Oh."

A pillar of water shoots up where she's floating, sending her careening towards the ceiling. She phases a moment before she would hit, shimmering into invisibility. The water level in here is getting to the point where it will seriously impede our mobility. And I don't think for a moment it will impede his.

Internal.

"Beryl, did you actually cut him there?"

"Yeah, but he bled water. Something weird's happened."

A hard gel arrow hits Orm in the back of his head, enveloping it. Alright, lacking a better idea… Double railguns and fire a volley of crumbler rounds at the areas of exposed armour. Some damage, but Oceanus is due to arrive soon and this isn't going to penetrate fast enough. Orm staggers, and I'm forced to create a construct barrier as a tornado of super hard water spirals around the room.

"Beryl, ideas?"

"What's Koryak doing?"

"Just standing there, keeping some sort of artefact under control. Probably enchanted."

My barrier fractures and I'm forced to replace it.

"What artefact?"

"The runes on the gazebo are a portal of some kind."

"Copying you again?"

"No, I got the original design from Brain anyway."

"Well, water's coming out of the portal and water's bad, so-"

"Shoot it." / "-shoot it."

One railgun diverts its attention and a mage slayer speeds towards the centrepiece. Being blocked by another sodding bubble shield. Beryl crouches behind me as Orm lets out another burst of entropic lightning. This time it's not aimed at us but at the material caked over his helmet. Relying on vision rather than a scrying spell? Worth knowing.

"You have moments until my master arrives! Mighty as you are, there is no way-!"

BOOM!

"Mighty, wizard?!" Brut runs at full charge out of the boom tube and leaps, Canis lashing out at Orm with his sword from his steed's back! "Feel the fury of a New God-" The edge hits Orm's upraised left wrist, severing his hand. Flesh and bone is revealed, but as Beryl said: water and not blood flows forth. "-and know that your master's time is done!"

"Wretch!" A blast of water vapour erupts around Canis as-

BOOM!

-another boom tube opens and Brut completes his leap, disappearing from sight.

Well, that was impressive, but I'm not clear-.

"Orange Lantern?" Sephtian is crouched next to the gazebo, the mage slayer blocking bubbles flaring into existence for a moment and then fading away. "Your way is-"

"Arsenal, anti-magic arrows at the gazebo, now!"

"-clear."

My railguns come up, targeting each runic cluster and firing with a scream!

"No!" Orm gestures and water surges towards the gazebo. I interpose a construct barrier, two shots striking the stone near the statue. Koryak moves, throwing himself in the way of my guns. But he's on the wrong side to block Roy's arrows. The stone cracks and the runic arrays fizzle and dim. Orm points his trident at Sephtian. "Bastard half-breed!"

Sephtian regards him levelly for a moment. "Better a half-breed than a traitor."

The water filling the room surges, flowing out of the room and down the passageway. Orm's trident crackles with lightning.

For about a second, before it explodes as my mage slayer round hits it.

back

Titanfall 27

next

20th June

11:21 GMT

"Gaaagh!"

Orm doesn't appear hurt, but the destruction of his patron's weapon appears to have shocked him. Either that, or the lightning spell he was building did something to him through that armour. He starts to recover for a second, then takes another hard foam arrow to the face.

"Got you!" Beryl grabs Koryak and wrestles him to the ground. Atlantean Pureblood or not, the armour she's wearing makes her stronger than him and the protection his Ocean Master gear provides doesn't really help with her wrestling him-. Ah, she's applied some sort of gas to his exposed face. That should do it.

BOOM!

Brut bounds back into the room, splashing as he lands. Some water still lingers on the stony floor but it doesn't seem to be about to attack us. Canis slashes at Orm's back, cutting a narrow groove through the armour protecting his back. Orm collapses.

"Nonono. That wasn't what I meant." Sephtian is kneeling down at the gazebo, taking in the spell work in place upon it. His arms move, and a dazzling array of purely etheric runes shimmering into visibility. "You've destroyed too much!"

That sounds like the most important thing going on. I dart in his direction as Beryl begins tying up the recumbent Koryak. "Explain."

He squints up at me. Is this..? Yes, this is probably the first time he's seen me in my current generation combat armour. "This… This spell, is-. It was the Titan's prison. Now.. it.. is not. I had thought that we might restore it…" He sags.

Oh dear.

"What do you need?"

"A-a-a-a-ah…" He crawls over the structure to take it all in. "Here, restore… Restore it physically."

Ring, use prior scans to restore the structure.

Compliance.

Orange light flashes over the structure, stone whole once more. Sephtian's body stills as he gets a clear look at the remaining runes.

"Can you-?"

"No. No, I cannot. This will require far more power than I-."

"Orange Lantern to Cornwall. Get in here now."

"Ah, Orange Lantern? Oceanus is, like-."

"Now!"

"Coming."

"Power, restored physical component. What else do we need to force Oceanus back inside?"

"I'm… Ah…" He shudders as he tries to get a grip on himself. "I think…" He moves his hands over the outer part of the rune network. "This is recent, based on my work. You were.. right. Atlantis was betrayed."

Rob appears in a blast of air, looking around the room. I hold up my left hand in a 'wait' gesture. "Professor, please-."

He holds up his right hand to stop me, wiggling it slightly. "It was.. linked to the trident. With that destroyed... And here and here…" Parts of the runic network dim. "This is designed to imprison him. They modified it with my work… If I had been here-."

"What do we do?"

"You." He motions to Rob with his right hand, beckoning him. "Here. Provide power."

"Right." Rob kneels down next to him, his eyes unfocusing slightly. Several runes glow more brightly. "Any good?"

"No. Ah, yes-" Rob looks at him in concern. "-you are doing well, but it is not enough. Oceanus now has too much of himself in this world. It is enough to prevent thissss… System from pulling him back. And… Some of this is not… Not working."

"Hades gets a good chunk of his power from draining Erebos. Maybe Poseidon had a similar thing set up for O-."

"Oceanus." He nods. "Yes, that would make sense. But why is it inactive?"

"They fought about ten minutes ago. Poseidon lost. Any ideas for a replacement?"

He goes completely still. "Neptune?" He shudders, then starts re-examining the runes.

"Never met him."

"Perhaps… If Oceanus' avatar was destroyed…" He shakes his head. "I am sorry, it is all I can think of."

"Hah. Hah!" I turn to see Canis holding Orm up by his cuirass. He's taken off the foam and his helmet, revealing his pale white and somewhat chewed upon face. If it was a Lazarus Pit that brought him back, it clearly didn't do a particularly good job. "Oceanus will crush you all!"

I…

I don't know how to stop him.

"Aaaahhh..? Orange Lantern to… Everyone? We've recaptured the thing that was used to imprison Oceanus. If we destroy his body… We think we can stick him back in. But I don't know how to do that. At... This point, I think we're looking at nukes. I don't have anything better."

Except the Ophidian. Could I..? Could we assimilate something like Oceanus? What would that do to me, or to the Earth's seas? Probably less harm than leaving him to his own devices, but… I honestly would rather nuke him. Something like this… 'I don't know' really isn't something I want to work on. But… If that's all I can do…

"Canis, Squire, stay here with the prisoners. Arsenal, guard Sephtian and Cornwall."

"Right." / "Okay."

Canis doesn't respond. He's using his sword to cut open the rest of Orm's armour, and as each part of the body beneath is revealed he pauses, taking time to examine, move and poke at the newly revealed flesh. Taking a firm grip on Orm's head and right arm, he leans forward and sniffs-.

I fly at high speed back out of the cave. Since I'm not really having to study it I can afford to make better time-.

Shiiiiit Oceanus looks big from the ground. He's not here yet, but he isn't far away. Once he takes up position… He can just throw out waves and then have that last Water Wraith or.. whoever, work out how to undo the bindings…

A large ball tumbles past me, about fifteen Saremites tangled up in Mister O'Brian's distended body. Razor-tipped filaments dart out from my body, jamming themselves into their skulls and stunning them. A bit of a risk, but I think we're taking a holiday from 'no killing' today. And they'll probably survive, it's just not as well calibrated as-.

**Black Canary to Orange Lantern. Batman agrees. We're going to evacuate everyone.** I can hear the defeat in her voice even as I see League members and the rest of my team locked in combat with the Saremites. **Create a zeta tube construct-.**

**Sir… Cornwall and Sephtian will need to remain in place to make the spells work.**

**I-.**

**Paul, can you get me to the sun?**

I wheel around, looking for Kon. **Um. Yeeess? But.. it won't make you that much stronger or I'd just have grabbed Superman.**

He shoves a large Saremite into the rocky surface of the island and punches it in the head, stunning it. **I'm not talking about Kryptonian power. Ocean Master isn't the only one who worships a Titan.**

back

Titanfall 28

next

20th June

11:24 GMT

I…

**Superboy, explain.**

Black Canary sounds irritated. Given how Greek deities behave I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that Helios' offer of help was eleventh hour… Or so cryptic that Kon only just got it.

…

If that's actually what happened.

**I don't think I can. I just know-.**

**Irrelevant. Sir, do we stay or go? If go, you'll need to call in Green Lantern C for the evacuation.**

She screams in the direction of a block of Saremite infantry sheltering from arrows and more exotic blasts behind water shields of my design, breaking their formation and leaving them vulnerable to fly by strikes from the Hawks. **Go!**

I transition to Kon. **Ready?**

His jaw tightens slightly. **Guess I have to be. How long-**

I put a construct barrier over his eyes, then warp.

Warping towards the sun is.. not fun. Quite aside from the problems you get with intervening obstacles -which is why standard Green Lantern Corps protocol suggests using it for inter-system travel only- and the time distortion effect, you're essentially getting hit in the face with a laser for the entire journey. There are about 150 million kilometres between the Earth and the Sun and I need to cover that space in a few seconds. The sun's output at that distance is usually about 1.361 kilojoules per square meter every second, so if I do it in a second that's about two hundred billion joules right in my face. Even in the thirty seconds I'm planning to do it in, that would still be a constant 70 million kilowatts for the duration. And that's ignoring the fact that it actually increases as I get closer.

Sure, I'm not dumb enough to actually do that. Since I'm bending space/time anyway I also bend sideways, slipping through space like a mouse down a snake's throat. The warped pocket where Kon and I are is merely bright; the area towards the edges of the pocket is blazing white sunlight. I've tried this once before under Guy's direction and I'm.. still not sure I understand the description of what's actually going on. Still, if it-.

The warp stops, and the sun is…

Hah.

It's a wall of fire obscuring space. If I turn my head, it's like… It's too big for me to be able to see the curve. Somewhere to my left, a plume of plasma that must be…

Gods…

That's amazing.

"Alright, we're here. What next?"

"I'm.. not sure."

"Is there anything I can do to help?"

"No. Just.. give me a sec." He takes a deep breath, then closes his eyes and bows his head. His lips are moving silently in what I assume is some sort of prayer.

Okay. Well, warping back is a good deal easier. Here to the outer atmosphere in one second is no problem at all. I shake my head and turn away from the sun, looking out in the general direction of Earth. A tiny amount of the sunlight that reaches it is bounced back this way. If I look in the right direction I can see what was going on eight minutes ago in really low resolution.

Hm. I know that Earth is unusually active, mystically speaking. I know that Mars has magic users. I don't know how that applies to the rest of the system. Is the idea of the sun as it exists in the Earth's arcane systems the same as the sun-as-it-is? Not like there's anyone living down there who could be using… Sun-magic. He's not… Helios turning up in person -even if he is more personable- probably wouldn't be much healthier for north-west Africa than Oceanus. Unless he's in Human-seeming mode. No, he'd have to fight at full power… Wouldn't h-?

"Warning: plasma density increasing."

When you say 'increasing'-?

"Warning: plasma density increasing significantly."

"Ah… Kon..?" I turn back towards him. "Are-?"

A coronal mass ejection about a kilometre wide is reaching out for us, launched by… Well, they're usually launched by the sun's natural magnetic activity. This one… I slide my rune stone out of a pocket. Yep, there's a reaction. This was aimed.

Kon himself is wreathed in white fire. It's a little like when he attacked Deacon Blackfire, only more… All-consuming.

Ah. I think I understand the plan. Ring, contact Green 2814 B.

Link established.

The image forming over the ring appears, then glitches in and out. Yes, I suppose that making an orange ring show Ion was asking a bit much. "Guy-. Ion, Oceanus has moved away from the East Coast. The wall is no longer required. We're going to hit him with a coronal mass ejection." I think. "Please move to where he is and create a barrier cylinder around him."

"The wall is no longer required."

"That's right."

"We understand."

"Okay, but did you get the res-?"

He disappears. Oooooh, that could be a problem.

"Paul?" Kon looks at me with eyes that are glowing white ovals. "Can you take me back to the edge of the atmosphere? I need to be right above Oceanus."

"Yes. Yes, I can do that. Ssssstand by."

Cross my metaphorical fingers.

Aaaaand warp.

The sun vanishes and the Earth appears behind us. Kon and I reorientate, me creating a construct marking Santo Porto's location beneath us. Oceanus himself is… Not visible to the naked eye, but with a little magnification I can spot him. He's nearly there, the League having mostly evacuated the island. Ms Lance and John are standing at the entrance of the cave…

And Kon's not next to me any longer. There's a plume of burning white as he dives through the air towards his target.

Um.

"Orange Lantern to Justice League..? Superboy's heading for Oceanus and I really think everyone should be standing well back when he hits."

"Wonder Woman to Orange Lantern. What do you mean, 'hit'?"

"Helios set him on fire. It doesn't seem to be hurting him, but he's flying directly towards Oceanus at-" Quick check. "-maximum acceleration. I don't know exactly what will happen when he hits, but I don't advise being there when he does. Has Guy arr-?"

There's a flare of green around Oceanus, followed by a surge of white as he unleashes lightning in all directions.

"Never mind. About… Ten seconds to impact."

"Batman to Justice League. Fall back to five miles' distance."

John and Ms Lance aren't moving. I warp again, appearing at the entrance to the cave as Oceanus… I'm shorter than his fricking toenail! He's walking through the shallows now, stabbing at Guy's barrier with his trident and here comes Kon!

"For Heliooooooooos!"

back

Titanfall 29

next

20th June

11:27 GMT

"My God."

I think.. John speaks.. for all of us.

Kon strikes Oceanus in the exact centre of his helmet, which explodes outwards in all directions at the speed of sound. We don't hear it break until the pieces are already shattering against Guy's shield.

Kon then enters the top of Oceanus' head, and from the little I see before the steam and water vapour block them from sight vaporised a channel around himself with enough force to cause his entire head to explode.

Oceanus' head is-. Was about a kilometre in height and contained I shudder to think how much water.

Huh.

All that water is shooting towards the upper atmosphere as Guy's construct acts as a funnel, the air pressure forcing it out of the tube with a great deal of force. I can see the effect of the wind caused by such a sudden and rapid movement in the air as the dirt is ripped from the rocks around me.

Calculating…

"John, I… I, ah. I think you can probably drop your barrier now."

The point of Oceanus' trident shudders, sliding down the inner surface of the construct cylinder for a moment before falling back.

The steam is screaming…

"Ah. Yeah." John lowers his arm, the construct barrier fading to nothing.

"Oh, to live in such a time."

I glance left as Brut and Canis both stare upwards. "I thought I told you to watch Orm."

"I saw little reason to remain once I finished disintegrating him. And before you complain, I will point out that-."

"We're in Atlantean territory and he was already under sentence of death." I exhale as there's a sudden increase in steam pressure, the gaseous water howling as it rockets from the funnel. "I don't see any gain in making King Orin execute his brother twice. You were thorough?"

"Of course."

"Then.. don't worry, but don't boast about it. Some of the League members can be a bit strange about that sort of thing."

"I understand." We continue to watch. "Do you..? Kon and M'gann." I sigh inwardly. "Are they-?"

"To the best of my knowledge, they're not interested in expanding their relationship."

"Ah."

"Is he alright in there?"

I don't turn to face Ms Lance. I just.. can't take my eyes off what I'm seeing. "I have no idea. I don't… If I understand what Helios has done properly -and I may well not- the effect would end if Kon died. And it-."

There's a brilliant flash of light from inside the cylinder.

Oh.. dear.

Steam continues to howl forth, precipitating out of the air as it hits the colder air surrounding it. Oceanus… If there's anything left of his body… I can't see it. I can't see Kon and I can't hear him and ring scans aren't showing anything.

I fly directly upwards, construct armour increasing in volume as I do so. Water turns to steam at 100oC but this steam is far hotter. The sun's corona is in the millions of degrees centigrade… And power rings aren't reliable guides to magic effects.

Kon's in there.

I swoop down into the steam. Armour.. holding, good. Out of the corner of my eye I spot Diana and Mister Kent heading this way as well. Actual temperature… 180oC, both of them can take it. Fine. Assuming that Kon dived at a constant rate impact to explosion… I accelerate, steam slamming into my construct armour. Can't see a bloody thing… Radar's no good, rune stone… Too much raw magic. I dial up my empathic vision. Conscious and unwarded, Kon should-. Okay, that doesn't mean he's dead.

That doesn't-.

There!

Still burning white, he's-. He's underwater. No, he would be but it's boiling off him as fast as-. Okay, okay, think. I can't touch him directly. Gravity clamp? That should work. I generate the construct, floating him up as quickly as I can. I-. The air here is unbreathable, too hot and too moist. Can't get an environmental shield on him. Um.

Warp.

We appear a mile above the construct cylinder. No, we're still in the plume. This is why I transition everywhere! We warp again, five miles east this time. Prevailing winds are taking the damp air towards Morocco. And-and Kon's still on fire. Errrr…

"Orange Lantern to everyone. I've recovered Superboy. He's… I think he's alive? But he's still on fire. Does anyone have-?"

Brilliant golden light flares just ahead of me as Nabu appears. "His fate is safe in my hands." He floats forwards, ignoring the heat radiating out from Kon as he reaches towards his head with both hands. A golden ankh appears before them, glimmering for a moment and then flicking beams of light over Kon's body. The fires enveloping him gutter and die as they pass.

Immediately I pull him away, scanning and probing with every medical device in the rings' database. Heart rate, brain activity, breathing…

"Okay, he's okay. Green C? Any news from your end?"

"We just had a few thousand gallons of water running up hill into the.. containment statue. Professor Sephtian says that's what's supposed to happen."

Nabu's eyes glow for a moment. "I will confirm this for myself."

"You don't know enough to-." A flare of gold and he's gone. … Oh, fine. At the moment I can't muster the hate for him that I usually feel.

"Batman to Red Tornado. Keep track of that water vapor. We can't give the all-clear until we're certain it isn't going to cause a hurricane or a flood. Aqualad, the team may stand down."

"Of course."

I wait a moment, but it looks like that excludes me from the circuit. I could listen in to what he's telling the League, but at this point -I glance at Kon's recumbent body again.- I'm content to leave them to it. At five miles' distance-.

"Orange Lantern to Aqualad. Are you back at the mountain?"

"Yes, as is most of the team."

"Right." The ring shows me Diana holding station near to Guy. Her skin's mildly reddened, either as a consequence of the steam or from prior injuries. But if she's staying there then she doesn't need to see Kon immediately. "Kon and I will head back now." John can send Beryl and Rob back when they're relieved. I generate a zeta tube construct and fly through.

20th June

06:30 GMT -5

"Recognised, Superboy, B zero four, Orange Lantern, B zero six."

"Identification confirmed."

My team mates look around as we come through, M'gann immediately flying over to get a look at Kon. "Is he okay?"

"Yes, he should be fine." I take another look around and spot the other absence. "I'll just.. go and pick up Zatanna. Back shortly."

back

Titanfall 30

next

20th June

09:23 GMT -5

"…shortly, so it would probably be a good idea if you made yourself scarce.. for… About a week?"

Been a while since I've been here. I smile and wave offhandedly for the hastily raised camera phones as Captain Adams and I stroll through Inwood Hill Park. Nearly a year, in fact. I think I'm visiting in a different part of the grass mowing cycle, but otherwise it looks pretty much the same.

"And you're telling me this over the phone and not in person because?"

I, on the other hand… Heh.

"Jade, I'm a public figure these days. There are internet pages where people post sightings of me. And that's leaving aside any direct monitoring the League… Or other parties, may be carrying out."

"And they can't monitor your phone?"

I smirk smugly. "Not this phone, no."

"I am involved. I'm not the sort of girl who's content to sit the fights out while her boyfriend handles things."

"I know. But we're past the information gathering stage. This is going to be a direct raw power confrontation, not one well suited to your skills. Even if you accepted augmentation today, there wouldn't be time for you to adapt-."

"This must be big."

"Yes, it is." There's no immediate reply. "Jade. Please. I want to know that you'll be safe."

"Mpf. Fine. I can hide out for a few days. Let me know when it's over."

Hah! "Oh, you won't be able to miss it. Oh, um. Probably best you don't use a League of Shadows safe house. Just in case."

"You think the League's been compromised?"

"I don't have.. any specific information. I'm just covering my bases."

"Fine. What are you planning on doing afterwards?"

Marrying you and then, as the Americans say, blowing this popsicle stand.

"Depending on exactly how things shake out… I thought a little time away from Earth might be appropriate. I've gotten wind of a few opportunities… Not permanently, of course. Lynne's starting school this August… But for a month or so. Did you have any… Conflicting plans yourself?"

"H-hm. Why do you ask?"

"Because I want you with me, naturally. It would be such a lonely and fruitless endeavour if you weren't there to share it with. Plus, it's a unique opportunity for you. Only a handful of Humans have ever left their home system."

"Mmmmm. I'll think about it."

"Hm. You do that. I'll see you in a week or so."

There's a quiet beep as she hangs up, and I dismiss the phone construct.

"So is she in on it?"

I glance at Captain Adams. He's in full dress uniform, though the G-Gnome perched on his shoulder throws the whole look off a little. "In on what, Captain?"

He spots my implication, and does an apparently casual look around the park. "Your plan."

"Only in the most approximate terms. I felt that best. Obviously I'll explain the whole thing afterwards."

"The President seems to think that she's a vital informant."

"Yes. And that's the other reason why it's important that she's elsewhere. I don't want some trigger happy federales shooting her dead."

Clearly he knows that she isn't a vital informant. I suppose if pushed I could say that she helps my cover… Which she probably does. But she isn't vital. I can see in his face that he's weighing up whether he should push me on the issue or not.

With a small shake of his head he averts his eyes, looking down at the pavement before us for a second before looking across the road. "Why are we here, Grayven?"

"Alan Scott was the Earth's first Green Lantern. After I approached him last year he gave me his personal lantern, on the understanding that I would work under the direction of the Justice League."

He nods as we cross the road. "You had to give him his lantern back, and now you want him to give it to you again."

"It.. would be convenient, but no. That's not the main reason. When I quit, Diana told him that I'd joined the Light. Alan Scott is a very old man. I would feel… Bad, if he died believing that his heir apparent had gone over to the dark side. And.. given who our first target is…"

"I'm sure Wonder Woman would straighten him out if it came to it."

We come to a halt by the intercom. "I think there are things a person should do face to face. If at all possible." He nods. "Would you do the honours?"

He reaches forwards and presses the button. "What do you plan to do if the rest of them hear about this?"

"You're being mentally conditioned into working for me to keep General Lane on message. And I'm simply recovering my lantern."

We wait a moment more, then the intercom screen comes alive with Mister Scott's face. "Grayven. Can't say I was expecting you. And… I'm sorry… Captain. I don't believe that we've met."

"Captain Adams, sir. I work for General Lane. May we speak with you for a moment?"

Mister Scott takes a moment to consider, then nods, moving away from the camera as he does so. I push open the gate to his driveway and lead the way up the gravel drive to his front door. He's already opening it as we approach, then stands in the doorway and looks at me expectantly. Gosh, he's… Gotten old. His skin hangs loosely from his face and there's little of the original blonde colour left in his hair. His muscles have wasted somewhat as well. He looks… Well, he looks his age, I suppose.

"It might be best, Mister Scott, if we discussed this inside."

"Mm." He eyes us wearily, then steps back into his house and heads towards his living room. Turning sideways, I pass through the door and head after him, hearing Captain Adams close the front door after he passes through. I follow Mister Scott into the living room, watching as he carefully sits down in his chair, a neglected walking stick resting by the side. He looks up at me and.. I avert my eyes, proceeding towards the bay windows at the far end of the room. Captain Adams walks in, and Mister Scott gestures to the settee. "Take a seat."

I take a hologram projector out of subspace and toss it lightly towards the window. A moment of flight and it halts itself in the air and projects a false image onto the glass. I turn back and nod to Captain Adams. He waits for the G-Gnome to jump from his shoulder and onto the settee and then tenses slightly, a burst of yellow light transforming him into his Captain Atom form.

Mister Scott stares at him for a moment. "Captain.. Atom. Uh, to what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Grayven thought that you'd only believe it if you heard it from a Justice League member. About eight months ago, Grayven was assigned by Batman to go under cover with the criminal organization known as 'The Light'. To that end-" Mister Scott's eyes dart over to me. "-he joined them and he's been gathering information on their operations. Tomorrow, we're finally going to begin the process of shutting them down."

Mister Scott blinks, his eyes drifting. "My God." He shakes his head. "So… Everything you did..?"

"I was working on my own initiative. But the aim was to gather information so that action could be taken if necessary. I'm telling you now because our first target is an acquaintance of yours, one 'Mordru'." Mister Scott's eyes widen slightly in recognition. "He returned to Earth at some point after Klarion's demise. He's also the only member whom.. I…" I glance at Captain Adams. "Might not be able to beat."

"You're still working with the Justice League?"

"Ahh." I look away from him. I don't want to… Give him too much hope. "Given the bridges I had to burn to make my apparent defection believable, I think it unlikely that I will be on good working terms with the League anytime soon. I merely wished to convey that while I don't work like you did… While I'm not… Not the sort of superhero you might have liked…" Hm. "I am not a supervillain. The rounding up will occur in cooperation with federal authorities, their equivalents in other countries and.. with the Justice League taking a prominent role."

"Well then." Mister Scott shifts to the edge of his chair before rising to his feet. I catch sight of… A tear, just before he turns away and starts towards the door. "I suppose you'll be needing your lantern back."

back

Titanfall 31

next

20th June

11:07 GMT -5

M'gann sits next to Kon's bed in the medical bay, while Diana and I stand a little further back. Not completely sure why he hasn't woken up yet; between his Dannered brain tissues, sunlight aura and the purple healing ray there certainly isn't anything wrong with him physically.

"So, ah… How's Poseidon?"

"Better."

I turn my head to look at her. "Could you be more specific? All I got was a 'he lost' from Batman."

Diana takes a deep breath. "When the gods rose up to overthrow the Titanocracy-."

"Any Titans they caught were imprisoned in such a way that the gods could strengthen themselves with their magic. Melinoë explained it to me. Well, she only explained it in reference to Hades but I assumed that the others did the same thing."

Diana nods. "That is true. Poseidon derives much of his strength from the prison Ocean Master found. With Oceanus largely freed from it, Poseidon was far below his usual strength when they fought. Oceanus engaged him only long enough to sever Poseidon's connection to his former prison, then struck him down and ignored him. With Oceanus returned to his prison, Poseidon will swiftly recover."

"Oceanus left him alive? Why?"

Diana returns her attention to her sleeping son. "That, I do not know."

"Thinking about it… That was a… Long and hard fight, but… The estimated death toll is pretty low, all things considered. It's almost like… Oceanus wasn't deliberately trying to kill people."

"The wave which you and John intercepted on its way to Africa would have killed many people."

"Yes, but Orm knew my abilities. He might well have suspected that I could stop it… Or reduce its effect. And Oceanus only sent the one."

Diana frowns very faintly. "I suppose. Why do you believe that is?"

"No idea. Do you know why Oceanus was there instead of in Tartarus like the rest?"

"No." Her brow smoothes and a rueful smile appears on her lips. "Should I warn Menalippe?"

Should she? Hmm. "No." I shake my head. "There was a.. character, in a book written by my favourite author. The character's name was Hodgesaargh, and one of his jobs was beekeeping at Lancre Castle. There was a part in one of the books where he was getting ready to destroy a Wasp's nest, and the narration showed that he didn't hate Wasps… But if you're for Bees, you have to be against Wasps." I shrug. "So they had to go." I look at the floor for a moment. "You tried talking to him. He could have tried talking to us on his own initiative. Whether he was going all-out to kill you or.. people generally, or not…" I shake my head again. "This doesn't warrant further investigation."

"And he did shoot you with lightning."

"I'm trying not to take that personally." And the other thing I need to ask… "Those power armour suits Mister Luthor sent…"

"They fought… Competently. They attacked Oceanus without fear, and when they found that they lacked the power to harm him they instead used their energy shields to block attacks meant for the rest of us."

"Have LexCorp said anything about them?"

"Not yet. If we accept what Nylor Truggs said at face value, then he sent them into combat in order to aid us."

"Not that that will stop him using any pictures they took in his catalogue."

"You believe that he can mass produce them."

"He started with two healthy OMACs. There were three suits with the same capabilities, and Earth negative fourteen wasn't any more advanced than us. If he only sent three then they're either experimental or shockingly expensive. But yes, I believe that he can make more."

"Batman believes the same thing. I'm inclined to-."

"…through here?" Sephtian walks in, the water armour coating over his skin glistening. "Ah. Hello Paul. And Princess Wonder Woman." He gives her a shallow bow.

"Properly speaking, it should be 'Princess' or 'Wonder Woman', not both together."

Sephtian straightens, looking puzzled. "Ah… Which do you prefer?"

She shakes her head. "Either is fine. Are you able to examine my son?"

"Certainly, certainly." He walks forward towards the bed, an artefact I recognise as a diagnostic wand in his right hand. "Paul, I would ask that you inform Canis that -in future- he would be better advised to abduct an actual battlemage."

"Right. Sorry about that."

M'gann looks up as he walks around to the far side of Kon's bed, the glow in her eyes dimming. "His mind's healthy. I don't understand what's wrong."

"I have an idea, but-" He moves the wand from just above Kon's head to his stomach. "-I should confirm first." He raises the wand and stares at the tip for a moment. "Ah, yes. Paul, I believe that you are familiar with this particular malady."

I'm-? "Mana overload? Really?"

"As I understand it, he… Was in possession of a piece of a Titan's power, was he not?"

Diana nods, looking relieved. "Are you able to assist him, or will he have to wait until he has metabolised it?"

"Hm. I will have you know that I am quite competent in general arcane practice as well as theory." He stows his wand in his robes and then holds his right hand over the centre of Kon's chest. "This will take a short moment."

"How are things on Santo Porto?"

"Lord Fate is.. not.. an easy man to work with. Still, the runic systems employed by the.. artefact, were fascinating. Several of the rune forms were unknown to Atlantean thaumaturgy. I believe… That I may be able to improve upon your next generation of 'mage slayers' by incorporating elements of the design."

"Thank you. Because… I'm going to need…"

He looks up at me and nods. "I thought that you might. Give me a few days and I shall have the design for you Ah." He sits back. "There. Superboy is now in a natural sleep, and-."

M'gann's eyes flash.

"Uh?" Kon's eyes flicker open. Then they close again. Then they open fully and take in the room. "Did we win?" M'gann leans down and wraps her arms around his neck, pressing her right cheek against his forehead.

"Yes, Kon-El." Diana walks over to the foot of his bed, and I follow on behind her. "You completely destroyed Oceanus' water body, which allowed Professor Sephtian and Cornwall Boy to return his spirit to his prison."

"And is everyone okay?"

"A few bruises. Nothing that won't mend."

"What about..? Ah, Aquaman's.. son?"

Sephtian nods. "Lord Fate was able to.. deal with that. It seems that your enemies had not wholly expended their reserves of Starro-tech. One application of cure-tech and… He is in his father's care now."

Good to know. I did think a child diving in the way of my railgun was a little peculiar. Of course, in the interests of completeness… "Though I should point out that Ocean Master and a number of Saremites were killed, and plenty of Saremites, one Water Wraith and a toothless Cetus escaped."

Diana shakes her head. "Actually, they didn't. A task force of the Atlantean army moved into position to block their retreat. Many Saremites surrendered once they realised that they could not escape. The Cetus was bound with magic and I understand that Professor Vulko is looking forward to examining it in detail."

I nod. "Awesome. And the Wraith?"

"Mighty as it was, it could not stand against the combined power of the Atlantean army's battlemages."

"So.. Clean sweep. We win." I raise my hands. "Hooray us."

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NEXT CHAPTER

Last Supper

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Last Supper 1

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Last Supper

Zerox

3rd Lunar Conjugation

Sun Resplendent

A view of the sea.

If you'd asked me a few days ago… Heck, a few hours ago, I would have guessed that if Mordru were inclined to even bother with a permanent stable home, he'd be the black-iron-and-granite-Fortress-of-Doom type. Like me. Alright, he'd have the souls of Demons and brutally slaughtered rivals bound into the fabric of the place instead of the Apokoliptian technology I use, but it would be a place designed to inspire a dread of the one who ruled there and to protect him against enemy incursions. A seat of power, that any looking upon it might know the nature of the being they faced.

Instead, he's got a relatively small and tastefully designed place with a good view of the Emerald Sea.

I mean, it's not small small. It's still a fortress in the medieval style with a thick stone curtain wall. But the wall isn't very high. It's not quite fairy tale castle, but it does lean more towards open spaces, courtyards and gardens than a purely defensive structure. I can see runic brass work attached to… No, it was attached to the stone by being melted and shaped in situ.

As for the bound souls of his enemies…

Suspended from the walls by relatively solid harnesses are what from a distance I took to be labourers, since they appeared to be either cleaning or otherwise working on the wall. Now that I'm closer, I see that they are in fact altering the runes laid into the brickwork, minor magics causing rock and metal to flow in their hands. But that's not the only thing I notice. I see that their robes are of a considerably finer cloth… If a little dishevelled, than would be wise for the work they are performing. Around their necks are ruby pendants attached to chains of the expected black metal, and despite the physically demanding work they appear to be engaged in they take care never to let the gem touch exposed flesh. Through the power ring on my right ring finger, I can taste the fear they feel for Mordru.

Hm. Well, Mordru was banished from the universe for a little under fifty years. I shouldn't be surprised that he felt the need to come down hard on his would-be successors.

Still, the sun is in the sky, the waves are breaking against the rocks and the sea birds… Um. Sort of bird-like creatures are calling to one another in the air around the rocky promontory this place is built on. And the walk; I do like walking. The whole thing is making me feel surprisingly relaxed.

Figures on the top of the wall gesture in my general direction, and I raise my right hand to give them a wave. While I might be able to sneak in, I really don't see any need to try. After all, I'm just one alien tyrant coming to see another with whom he is presently allied.

I expected that Alan would react positively to the news that my defection was feigned. Quite how strong the reaction was took me a little by surprise. I certainly wasn't expecting to get the orange personal lantern back until after completing the roundup of Light members. Still, it might well be useful. Crock and Dorrance could prove to be useful distractions, and this does open up the possibility of following through on my original impulse of assimilating the entire Light. Oh, the information I could get from Savage alone…

Of course, I have to survive this first.

I approach the gates, and… I'm not impressed. These clearly aren't built to survive sieges by conventional force. I could poke my little finger through that stonework. Then again, if you're an allegedly immortal sorcerer -and didn't care at all for the people nominally under your protection- I suppose that such things are really more for decoration than anything else.

The gates part, and a group of six… Oh my goodness, they're actually knights. Honest to goodness knights on the backs of some sort of six legged and vaguely insectoid creatures. There are two per creature, the ones at the front bearing a lance and the ones at the rear aiming crossbows with crackling green energy in place of bolts. Four such teams, and a leader in a plume-covered helmet on a lizard-emu thing. The riders and the people on the walls all look pretty Human, but that's so expected at this stage that I don't think anything of it.

Corpsman, that has been your downfall before.

I mentally roll my eyes at him.

Says the red skinned Human look-alike.

There are any number of physiological distinctions between Korugarians and Humans.

There are probably any number of differences between Humans and them. But if it makes you feel any better, scan.

"Halt, stranger. You approach the keep of the Sorcerer Lord Mordru. Explain your business here."

I come to a halt, smiling pleasantly. They fear him as well, though it's more in the way a subordinate might fear a superior of unpredictable moods than the outright dread of those working on the walls. Hm. Assuming they age as Humans do, they'd all be too young to remember when he was last here. Unlike their construction-worker colleagues.

"I am Grayven of Apokolips. I am an ally of Lord Mordru and am here to request an audience with him."

He frowns. "You sent no word in advance?"

"Apokoliptian codes of behaviour are unlike those of Zerox. Sending an emissary… Would imply that he wasn't important enough to warrant my personal attention." Because Apokolips has had boom tubes and two way video communications for millennia while you people still ride around on animals.

I mean, yes, Dog Soldiers ride around on animals too, but that's because the Elite make them, not because we pretend that it actually makes some sort of sense.

The man on the… Raptor-mu..? Emu-tor? Need to find out what those are called. He tries to look down on me. Well, he is just about taller than me while on beast-back, but he must weigh about as much as I did before my upgrades. He is… Not intimidating to me in the slightest. "Accompany us. I will show you to the Chief Acolyte. She will decide whether you may meet with Lord Mordru."

"My pleasure." He pulls on the reins to turn his mount around, and I rise off the ground on my aero-discs in order to follow him. That gets me a few odd looks. Apparently, while they're the bee's knees where magic is concerned, other forms of advanced technology have rather passed the natives by. I make a point of floating alongside the.. officer? I presume? While the other knights fall in behind us. "Who are those fellows working on the walls?"

"The former ruling council. They usurped Lord Mordru's position during his absence and are now enduring his wrath."

I nod. "Doesn't seem all that harsh, as wraths go. Not that I'm criticising his judgement, you understand."

"The pendants they wear drain virtually all of their magic from them. They are forced to exert themselves mightily to cast even the simplest spells." We pass through the gate… Ah, good, murder-holes and more brass rune plates. Into the part of the gate house between the inner and outer portcullises and gates, and then out into the courtyard beyond. Clean lines, well maintained… My respect to Mordru's architect. "And if they do not complete their appointed tasks, they are flogged."

"Even so…"

"They thought themselves this world's rulers, and now they are in constant pain. And every one of them will break from the strain before long. Lord Mordru simply wishes to get work out of them before their inevitable deaths."

I nod. "Surprisingly rational. In their place, many people would have opted for a cycle of torture and healing. Maximising their suffering. My own father would have done something like that… As well as the occasional false escape, to allow them to build up hope for him to crush."

He leans away from me slightly, shifting awkwardly in his saddle. "… Yeeees… This way, Lord Grayven."

Once it becomes clear that we're heading for an entrance to one of the enclosed gardens I make a point of accelerating ahead of him. Pointless macho posturing, maybe, but it does reinforce my character before any witnesses. There's very little chance that Mordru doesn't already know that I'm here. The reason I came by boom tube and walked was to give him time to prepare himself. The leading knight doesn't say anything, though he does keep coming rather than simply leaving me to wander around on my own.

The garden has a stone pathway around the edge and a variety of well-tended plants on near-turquoise pseudo-grass. I float over it to have a closer look at some sort of woody bush-analogue with frilly orange flowers. I wonder if Jade would like a cutti-?

"Milady Mirabai, this is Lord-."

"Grayven, yes. The master told me to expect him."

I turn to see a red haired woman with a blue facial tattoo walking down the steps from one of the castle's keeps. Her low-slung trousers and breast-accentuating waistcoat rather distract from the medieval aesthetic… But maybe that's just how women dress here? I give her a polite nod. "Lady Mirabai. Would you be so good as to show me to the master of the house?"

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Last Supper 2

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Zerox

3rd Lunar Conjugation

Sun Resplendent

Since she is actually important, I allow Lady Mirabai to lead the way through the castle corridors. She's clearly not in any hurry so I mirror her attitude, arms folded in one of Darkseid's classic poses. "How have his subjects reacted to Mordru's return?"

"We're adapting. He ruled this world for a very long time. Really, this is just a return to what we were used to."

"Forgive me, but you seem rather too young to have experienced his rule yourself."

"True. However, the political organisation of Zerox has changed little. The position he occupied was replaced by a council, but the lower levels of administration were left in place by his would-be successors."

"After being properly purged, I assume?"

There's a very slight hesitation. "As you said, I am too young to remember it."

Hm. Would be useful to know if she has any skills beyond those of a normal personal assistant. Chief Acolyte suggests that he's actually teaching her things, after all. If her position is entirely dependent on him -and he's cast down or alienated every alternative power base- then she's likely to be quite loyal. How to go about finding out?

"So… What exactly does being 'Chief Acolyte' involve?"

"It was the title given to the second of each Archmage on the former council. They acted as student and aide to their master."

"So you're Mordru's pupil."

There's a very slight tensing in the muscles of her face. "No. The Guardian Knight called me by that title because I have been.. allowed.. to take on a somewhat similar role."

"So what's your actual job title?"

"Concubine."

"Huh." Didn't.. think he'd be the type.

"The few surviving members of Lord Mordru's previous harem took their own lives when they heard of his return. Though they were no longer in the first flush of their youth. Lord Mordru's new body is considerably more… Vigorous, than the one he occupied previously. More… Libidinous."

"So… What? Rather than sending a councillor to participate in the ruling of the planet, each… Region..? Sends a-."

"I was sent as a councillor. Lord Mordru chooses to make use of me in this fashion rather than have me work on the walls."

It's a risk, but… Sinestro? Parallax Gaze. Oh, ew ew! Off! No, she's not happy about her current station. Appointed to high office, then the old boss comes back and turns you into his plaything. All the qualities you made it your purpose to cultivate, suddenly irrelevant compared to having perky tits and a well rounded arse. Would she..? No. Mordru is a league above the magic users here, and he'll have put some sort of binding spell on her so as to avoid being stabbed to death in his sleep. She won't help me, though if she has an option she won't help him either. If I win..? Perhaps she'll be able to render some sort of assistance.

"I suppose… With some jobs, it's what you make of them rather than the contents of the job description. You're not just loafing around the seraglio, you're handling the administration."

Her shoulders tense, and I see her force them to relax. "It is my joy to serve in whatever fashion Lord Mordru wishes."

Uh. Huh.

I turn my attention from her to our surroundings. Nearly a true classical castle, so far as I can tell. The windows are made from leaded glass and their frames are far wider than those of medieval castles would have been. No need to block shots from besieging archers here. But there aren't any obviously modern additions either. Most 'working' castles I've been in before have central heating and electrical sockets added to them. Here, there's nothing of the sort, though the slight movement I'm feeling in the air suggests that there are spells at work. Perhaps they serve to regulate the temperature. Assuming that I survive the next half hour, I should see whether Sunset would be interested in looking around. See how similar their thaumaturgical notation is to what the Atlanteans use.

We're heading towards the top of one of the inner keeps; Mordru's private residence I presume. Either that, or whatever he uses for a throne room. No, if he sees me as an equal he wouldn't greet me from his throne; the power statement is too overt. Somewhere else, a private sitting room or something of that nature. Somewhere he's at ease, and can pose… Without it being too obvious. He might have arcane devices on hand, but probably not. He never used any during his attacks on Earth during his fights with the Justice Society. He's a Lord of Chaos, his link to Chaos itself is his strongest tool.

"Will you be sitting in on our meeting?"

"I serve at Lord Mordru's pleasure."

I can see the hairs on her arms trying to stand on end. She's got remarkable self-possession, given how strong her involuntary physiological responses are. And there's no way Mordru hasn't noticed.

Some times I'm really glad that I'm going to be killing someone. I mean, I understand theft. I've stolen. I understand self-interested murder. When I killed Mister Crock I hesitated only long enough to make a quip. But keeping someone around just so you can.. play with them. Torment them in ways that they can't prevent because there is some novelty in their suffering…

Okay, new policy. Every Lord of Chaos I encounter dies.

Mirabai slows slightly as we approach a heavy wooden door. I stop entirely to give her time to gird her ill-used loins and to give myself a chance to look at the door. The beams are bound together by a dark metal I can't immediately identify, but otherwise it's just a regular medieval door. Its very mundanity is odd. I suppose that my own doors are simply technological portal blocks rather than a fancier force field system, but there isn't even a talking grotesque head door knocker or anything.

She exhales with a little more force and then steps forward, taking a firm grip on the ring type door knob before turning it, pushing the door open and stepping through. "My Lord, your guest."

I follow her in. Now this is a bit more like it! To my right, the stuffed corpses of animals I can't readily identify decorate shelves stacked with menacing-looking grimoires, scroll racks and other pieces of arcane paraphernalia. The light sleets in through two large windows in the far wall, with additional illumination coming down from the heavy looking wooden chandeliers above us. To my left, a large fireplace, currently empty. Mordru himself sits just ahead of us in a high-backed wooden chair that isn't a throne but which nonetheless emphasises the authority of its sitter. He looks up at me, then moves his left hand, closing a book bound in blue leather that sits on the table before him.

Mirabai has moved to stand just to his right. He doesn't bother looking at her.

"Grayven. Welcome to my home. I have been looking forward to the two of us having a private conversation for some time."

"I thank you for your hospitality, Mordru." I step forwards, closing the door behind me. "It is a most picturesque home that you have. I must admit, I quite misread you as far as your preferred abode was concerned."

"I occupy this place because it became the place of power of those who usurped my authority during my absence. My being here emphasises my authority. In truth, I do not care for it overmuch. Please." His eyes move for a moment to the plain chair opposite him. "Be seated."

Oh, a simple power play. Alright then. Crock, pull out the chair for me.

Orange light flickers from the ring on my left ring finger, Mister Crock materialising a moment later. Mirabai stares a little, but Mordru only glances at him curiously for a second.

He has eyes only for me.

Mister Crock reaches the chair and pulls it out. It's not really big enough for me, but nothing I've seen of him so far suggests that Mordru has a sense of humour. I doubt that he's going to offer me a chair that's going to collapse. I step forwards and lower myself onto it. No, no creaking at all. Crock backs off, mirroring Mirabai's position.

"I am glad to see you, Grayven, as the only member of our association who has truly surpassed mortal limits."

I modestly avert my eyes for a moment. "Oh, I have not come so far as you."

"No. But you are heading in the right direction. Now tell me: what is it that has brought you to my home this day?"

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Last Supper 3

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Zerox

3rd Lunar Conjugation

Sun Resplendent

"It's this King of Tears business."

"Oh, that." Mordru nods. "An infantile affair."

"Ah." I frown. "I had rather got the impression that you approved."

Mordru… That's either a grimace or a smile. Not sure which. "I would experience a distinct moment of pleasure from witnessing the deaths of Wonder Woman and Red Tornado. But bringing a life form like the King of Tears to Earth risks destroying the very thing which led to my becoming interested in it in the first place."

I shake my head. "I don't believe that I ever heard what that was."

"Oh, you know more of the universe than our.. 'colleagues'. You know how infrequently sophisticated civilisations which employ magic rise to prominence."

I suppose that I… Father Box?

Ploong.

Oh. Well, yes, but I hadn't realised that they were that rare. Goodness.

"Zerox, Earth, Mars, Ysmault… Apokolips and New Genesis. Perhaps a handful of others. Approximately… One in four thousand life-bearing worlds."

"Fewer, if one counts only those with worthwhile intensity. And Humans use it so very little. Earth is a rare prize, for a sorcerer such as myself."

"You… Wish to possess the Earth… So that you may study it?"

"I am ruler of my world, master of all that I survey. I have ascended to the rank of Lord of Chaos. My mystic might is rarely equalled and never bettered. And yet… A double handful of Earth warriors were able to thwart my designs, using powers… With which even I am unfamiliar. Though I was not truly at risk, I am loath to live with ignorance. One demand that I place upon myself is that I constantly rise above my weaknesses."

"Not truly at risk?" I raise my eyebrows. "Forgive me, but you seemed to be-" I raise my left hand and generate a three dimensional replay of his last few moments on Earth. "-close to death. If that portal had gone somewhere a little different…"

"Hm." A… Worrisome smile, there. "No, Grayven. The portal could have gone anywhere and it would have made no difference at all. Unlike even other Lords of Chaos, I am truly immortal. Even if every mote of mana and atom of material in my body were destroyed in some fashion, I would still return to life." He inclines his head slightly. "Are you curious?"

You better believe I am. The.. one comic I read back on Earth Prime that contained him made reference to it, but I just assumed that it was… I don't know, we need to make this guy who features in comics less often than that clown in Gotham seem significant, let's say that he's totally immortal, unlike all of these other characters who aren't but sure seem like they are. Of course, if he actually is something else…

"Father Box has no records of… 'Super Immortality'."

"You are aware that Lords such as myself must bind themselves to some corporeal object in order to maintain themselves in the physical world?"

"Of course."

"Klarion had his cat, Nabu his helmet, The Changing Man his coat. Oggar, the Rock of Finality… And as for the Hat… I suppose that at least it's intuitive. Tell me, if you were faced with such a decision, what would you select?"

"Well, I… Don't know what the restrictions are. Though I suppose it would be unwise to make a selection for one's phylactery unless one has the perfect object for doing so." Mordru gives me a shallow nod. "The point of the ritual is to gain more power, so… The artefact itself having power is less of a concern. Something… Invulnerable? Something your enemies would not dare to destroy? The Source Wall, perhaps?"

"Logical. Sound reasoning. But while the Source Wall is as old as the universe, no one part of it is immutable. And completing the ritual in defiance of the Source would be more than anyone could perform."

"Alright. What, then?"

"Through great effort I was able to acquire a tiny part of one page of the Book of Destiny, the great tome upon which the fate of the universe and everything in it is written. I used that as my anchor point in the ritual and then returned it to its rightful owner."

My face stills. "Destiny of the Endless will be the last thing to die in this universe, and his book will continue on even after that. You've bound your existence into the very thing which.. is both a log of the universe and a guide to its events."

"Just so. I am already written into past, present and future. Strike me down, and I will simply… Reappear, at some point in the future. Or perhaps the past. Destroy the Book of Destiny and you imperil the universe, and if you did… The most likely result is that I would simply be banished to the Realm of Chaos, from which I could return in due time."

"Ingenious. I would have assumed that the magics of the Endless would resist such alterations."

"They are impressive beings, but… Limited, in so many ways. The magics of the Book reflect the contents of all existence, and I was already a part of that."

Looks like we're going with plan C, then. "Perhaps he simply doesn't care."

Mordru's face stills for a moment, the illusion of life vanishing. "Perhaps."

"And you don't experience any… Blowback?"

"What did you notice about the structure of this fortification?"

"Surprisingly orderly. Unless that's some sort of… Chaotic for a Lord of Chaos being… Orderly behaviour?"

"No. That would be absurd. The truth is that I have no ideological allegiance to Chaos, but drawing upon its power as I do, I became concerned that it would imbalance me. Change my mind, my outlook, to become more like that of the otherworldly creatures who arise directly from the Plane of Chaos itself." He turns his right hand palm-upwards, a… Golden ankh appearing over his fingers. "As such, I have made a point of studying and drawing upon those magics opposed to it."

"Very intelligent of you."

"No. All Lords of Chaos are intelligent. Otherwise they would not have been able to make the conversion in the first place. Ensuring that I am able to remain me is a sign of wisdom."

"Well… I'm… Suitably impressed."

"Are you?" Does he suspect? It doesn't change all that much if he does... I just wish he were a little easier to read. "Tell me, what do you think of Savage?"

"He is one. I am not happy to be risking the Earth to the King of Tears, and from what you were saying you aren't convinced of the wisdom of it either."

"I consider him to be pathetic. Immortal, to conventional forms of death at least. Older than Human civilisation. And yet, he has failed to build anything of lasting significance or improve himself further. He seems to believe that simply having lived a long time is an achievement, when in fact he did nothing to earn the ability to do so."

"Alright. I can't say that he's done much to impress me either, but-."

"I had… Hoped… That we might use this meeting to come to terms between us. Agree to split the universe between us. You, taking those worlds that were mystically inert, and ceding to me those that were more active."

"I'm not against that in principle, if we could agree trade and movement terms before-."

"And yet… You disappoint me." He idly waves his left hand, an illusion of Captain Adams appearing before him. "Did you really think that I wouldn't be aware of his arrival, on this world that I have ruled for millennia!" Ah. Adams, go. "And was this the best you could-?!"

The lance of golden energy hits him directly in the left side of his head.

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Last Supper 4

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Zerox

3rd Lunar Conjugation

Sun Resplendent

The hair evaporates from the left side of Mordru's head, filling the air with a burning smell I haven't smelled since that time back on Earth Prime when I got a little over enthusiastic with a hair dryer. The skin beneath reddens, then he casually raises his left hand and a series of purple lines appears in the air between him and the source of the beam. A small circle, various runic squiggles… And the beam stops as it hits them.

"A weak eff-."

A fusion cannon appears on my left arm as five drones drop stealth behind me. The scintillating beam of plasma takes him in the chest, setting fire to his robes and shoving him through his chair and into the far wall.

I keep it up as the drones fire. The first and second mount an oversized purple death ray, and as Mordru somehow reaches into my fusion beam and physically turns it aside…

That's such bullshit!

The wall to his left evaporates, surprisingly mundane brick unable to cope with the five thousand degree assault. Mirabai dives past me making arcane gestures as the purple beams strike home.

"Duh."

Got a grunt out of him, at least. The flesh on his chest blackens and burns as the blaster drone begins shooting at his extremities.

"Grayven, we get him?"

Crock raises the construct-ghost of his plasma crossbow, getting off two shots before a crimson beam strikes him through the forehead.

"Not yet, Captain. Keep it u-."

Everything goes black. I'm enveloped in something. The material is hard, but I'm super strong. Push! Stone explodes away from me as I rip myself free of the pillar imprisoning me!

"Keep it up!"

A shimmering phantasmal fire envelopes me for a moment, pain spiking through every part of my body as two new golden beams bore through the wall behind Mordru into the back of his head.

"Gah!"

I fall to my knees. "Aaaaaaaagh!" Get it off me! Conqueror's Pride!

The flames gutter. It still hurts, but I'm functional again. I rise to my feet as the spatial disrupter drone gets close enough to Mordru to activate. The space around him twists and bends and matter is compressed and stretched in ways it was never meant to. Grandmother used to use this for her torture parties, but it looks like Mordru-.

The drone explodes and a hail of translucent green snake-like creatures fall from the ceiling down towards me! The coilgun defence drone switches automatically from ineffectually shooting its molten iron droplets at Mordru to point defence as I duck and raise a construct shield over my head. The snake things aren't fazed by the iron, landing on my construct shield and fading slightly as they eat their way through.

A shockwave passes through the room as the spatial disrupter drone dies. I'm knocked off my feet, dismissing the snake-eaten shield as I go and raising another to replace it. The sensation of pain cuts out as the fire around me finally fails. I raise my left hand- "Assimilate!" -and an orange beam flicks out from the orange ring, only to decay into nothing a good metre from Mordru's skin.

Things seem to slow for a moment as a snake drops through the shield over my head and hands on my left middle fingeraaaagh! Skin and sinew vanish in a flash, the dull grey bone beneath flopping down and the distal, proximal and radial phalanges dropping to the ground with a nauseating click.

FUCKINGFUCKINGFUCKFUCK!

"Yaaaaaagh!" ASSAULT THE FOE!

My New God armour seems to shimmer as I charge towards where Mordru is trying to pull himself out of the wall as the drones keep shooting. He gestures, and a thin purple film appears between us. I slam into it left shoulder first and it disintegrates, my momentum disappearing with it. I bring my left arm up and generate a new shield while pulling my daiklave into my left hand. Some sort of green stream of vapour splashes off the shield as I lunge forwards again, bringing the sword around in an overhand blow.

Mordru doesn't react as it turns to rust and ash before it hits him.

He's naked now, clothes, hair and a good part of his skin burned off. At the left and back of his head the bones of his skull are on open display and his eyes have been replaced by orbs of burning purple. I bring my right fist around from my left in a clumsy swing. Strike hard! Strike true!

His left arm comes up and I see that his natural hand is gone, replaced by a four fingered construct of bubbling purple goop. There's an energy discharge, the armour covering my forearm goes dead but it's not enough and my fist keeps moving, smashing into his jaw and snapping his head around.

Impeller node!

The air between us is blasted away as a kinetic force approximately equal to that generated by a nineteen seventies strategic nuclear device suddenly blasts towards him. What's left of the wall disintegrates completely, stone shrapnel and battered Chaos Lord going flying from the keep and out into the woodland garden beyond.

I take a second to look at the space where my missing finger used to be. I better get that back.

Captain Adams flies across the wall to my right as I look into the woods, trying to spot Mordru. "Is he dead?"

"Hardly." I wave my right hand and the plasma initiator drone swoops down, matter around it becoming unstable and spontaneously converting to low temperature plasma.

"You find his phylactery?"

"If he was telling the truth-" The plasma initiator drone crumples, top and bottom twisted in different directions. "-we can't get it."

He brings his arms up and begins firing randomly into the now blazing woodland. "Doesn't that mean we're screwed?"

"Not until our prostates tingle, Captain. We can still-."

Captain Adams' beams jerk and bend, cutting through what's left of the garden's contents and then exploding outwards! Mordru stands at the centre of the now-blasted landscape, body and… He's even got his clothes back.

Balls.

He holds up his left hand, a tiny portion of golden glowing energy dancing on his palm. Then he closes his hand and-.

There's a flare of light from my right. Captain Adams looks at his dress uniform. "Oh, this ain't good."

Two guns appear on my forearms, one a singularity projector and the other a bleed overlay cannon. A black line from the first connects me to Mordru for a moment before evaporating. "Look on the bright side!" An indescribable mess of… No, it's indescribable, but it appears at Mordru's location as I intentionally break the bleed membrane where he's standing. "Maybe now you're not worth killing!" Mordru looks at it almost disinterestedly, then breathes in and draws it down into his throat.

Then two giant phantasmal red hands materialise around me, claws puncturing my armour and cutting into my skin! Aaghgruh! Dgh! I'm hoisted out of the keep as Mordru levitates upwards to my level.

"Hm. Power rings."

I don't breathe, relying on the rings to keep my body oxygenated. I'm bleeding freely where the claws sliced into my chest, but that will heal. Will To Power.

"I remember how to deal with those."

Both rings flicker and die and I desperately focus on pushing outwards with my metaphysique, trying to take control of my conceptual space. I don't think it's working.

"This has been a weak effort, Gr-." His head jerks as a pistol bullet bounces of the air near his face. He turns to look at Captain Adams and makes a gesture.

"AaaaaaagH!"

"A weak effort, Grayven. I presume that this is a prelude to you allying yourself once more with the Justice League and destroying the Light?"

"I just don't like your face."

"Oh. Really. After I told you what you were trying was impossible, you went ahead with it anyway? Pathetic."

"Not quite as pat… Pat…"

He floats closer. "Yes? Let me guess. 'Not quite as pathetic as you, you foul f-.'"

"I was going to say." The spell holding me up fails, and I fall for thirty centimetres before my aero-discs take the strain. Heal. "Not quite as pathetic as a man with a sword through his throat."

Mordru's eyes are looking down, trying to look at the two pronged golden sword blade poking through his windpipe. "Eh!"

"You may recognise the sword with which I c-cut-" Oh, this still really hurts. "-off Klarion's head. The woman holding it doesn't feature in Destiny's book. I don't know if this will keep you gone… But I'd give us good odds." I nod to Doctor Robbins. "Finish him."

"Happy to." She slices left, making his head jerk as the connective tissues are cut through. Then she takes her left hand off the handle and grabs his hair before slicing back right, Mordru's now disconnected body falling to the ground beneath us.

back

Last Supper 5

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Zerox

3rd Lunar Conjugation

Sun Resplendent

Aaaand I really feel like going with him.

Aooooooooow.

Doctor Robbins looks at me askance. "Grayven? Are you alright?"

"Do I look even slightly alright?" I try moving my right arm sli-. That was a mistake! "Gruh." Right, right. Use the rings-. I look down at my hands. Nope, still dead. Breathe very carefully-.

No. No, that didn't work at all.

Ow.

Need to check what happened to Captain Adams. Don't really want to have to tell his children that he died, given that they've been back in touch for less than a year. I angle my feet to make the aero-discs turn me around, turning slowly to try and avoid putting further strain on my torso. He's…

Oh shit.

Mordru petrified his arms and legs. Mercifully, he's already unconscious but he won't live much longer like that. I head towards him, teeth grinding together as I move faster than entirely wise. Actual petrification doesn't work like it does in cartoons. You don't just lose feeling in the affected body part; you have a lump of stone plumbed into you. Your heart will continue trying to pump blood in that direction, your veins losing pressure and your arteries gaining it because your blood can't circulate any longer. Your muscles, nerves and bones are now fused to cold and unyielding stone. And there isn't necessarily an easy way to reverse it. I'll probably have to cut them off and grow him replacements back at base.

And I've got no rings, no daiklave… I'll have to have one of the drones-.

Mirabai stalks cautiously through the rubble generated by our fight, eyes flicker over the Captain, the exterior and then up to myself and Doctor Robbins. There, her eyes linger… Ah, the head. Of course.

"Drones, purple healing ray on me. Point defence drone-."

"Is he dead?" Mirabai addresses the question to me, holding herself in a way which suggests that she's strongly considering fleeing.

Doctor Robbins floats faster than me on her own aero-discs, Mirabai backing up somewhat as she comes in to land and holds out the head. "Take a look for yourself."

The purple beam finally finds me, the light passing through the rents in my armour and invigorating my regenerative capabilities. Doesn't.. feel like the radion blaster did, so it should all heal up fine.

"That means nothing. He used to play tricks like that on people, vanishing for months-."

I grimace. "He's as dead as we can make him. Do you know how to reverse-" I touch down. "-this petrification effect?"

"I… Perhaps… What is my aid worth to-?"

"I'm not in the mood to barter. Help him, and by the Source I will honour my obligation. If you won't, then get out of my way."

She stares at me for a moment, then her eyes dart back to the head. Then she nods. "Lie him down."

I reach out-. My face creases. "Doctor Robbins, would you-" She's already taken hold of him. "-mind?" Straining -must remember to offer her augmentation again- she lowers Captain Adams to the ground. Mirabai is quietly chanting something, green mist swirling around the affected areas of Captain Adams' body. Slowly, patches of stone begin assuming fleshy tones once more and I breathe a sigh-. Ow, ow, no I don't.

"There is nothing… Behind the spell." Mirabai has stopped chanting, though her hands are in constant motion with trails of green smoke following in their wake. "Mordru's soul is no longer maintaining it."

I nod. "Good to know. I don't suppose you spotted whether he got a message off, did you?"

Her eyes move to me for a moment. "No, I saw him send no message."

Ooooohhkaygood. I can leave Savage and the rest for a day or so while my body sticks itself back together. I want -I look down at the ring on my left hand- to be at my best. Losing all that history would be... Simply tragic.

Mirabai moves her hands over Captain Adams one more time, then nods. "He is.. whole. He will sleep for now, but he will recover in a few hours."

Father Box, how is he?

Ploong.

I nod. "You have my thanks, and my obligation. You may name your favour now, or bank it for-."

"His ring." She fortifies her resolve. "There was a ring on Mordru's left hand. I want it."

I didn't notice… I turn back towards the blasted garden and look over to his corpse. Yes, there's a ring. "Any particular reason?"

"Do-? Do you intend to take Mordru's place?"

I look up into the sky. Seems like a pleasant enough world… "No. Not that you're unattractive, but I'm quite happy with the lover I have."

"I-. I meant, as ruler of Zerox."

"Oh, goodness me, no. Feel free to make yourself Chief Acolyte, or Councillor, or whatever."

"I was thinking 'Queen'."

"Hahow." I nod. "I don't care who succeeds Mordru, as long as it doesn't cause any blowback on Earth." I send the stabbing drone down to cut off his finger. "But how does the ring help with that?"

"It drains power from those working the walls. With their power, I can compel the rest to toe the line."

Hmm. Brutal. For a moment I weigh their probable capacity for gratitude against hers.

"Very well." Doctor Robbins frowns at me. "What? Do you want to try ruling a planet about which you know next to nothing?" She still doesn't look entirely happy, but she doesn't object further. Steeling myself, I bend down and pick up Captain Adams' recumbent body. "I'm going to be busy for a day or two. And I imagine that you are as well. Once we both have some free time, we can discuss what we can do to help one another."

Mirabai nods. "I will look forward to it, Lord Grayven."

I give her a small -and slightly painful- bow. "Queen Mirabai. Father Box, hush tube."

"Ploong."

A portal opens in the air, and I float through.

21st June

09:18 GMT -6

Home again, home aga-.

"Daddy!" Lynne dashes forward to hug me, then brings herself up short. "You're hurt!"

"Comes with the job, poppet. Ms Black, would you mind-" Doctor Robbins passes through the portal and Father Box closes it down. "-taking Captain Atom? I need to get to the mana infusion system as soon as possible."

Vera nods, her new force field reinforced arms making his weight an easy burden. "How bad?"

"Well, Mordru's dead. Anything more than that was always going to be chancy." I pat Lynne on the head with my right hand. "I thought you were supposed to be with Aunty Barda and Uncle Scott."

"I.. borrowed a boom tube." She looks at me slightly nervously. "You're not mad, are-?"

"No, no, of course not. But please, when I give you an instruction in future, do try to obey it. It's my job to look after you and that's what I'm trying to do." She nods, relieved. I want to pick her up and cuddle her… But I think I'll leave that until I'm a little less blood-covered. Vera walks down a corridor in the direction of our medical facility, and I start to follow her. Ah, no, there's something I need to do first. I hold out my right hand.

"In blackest day or brightest night,

Beware your fears made into light,

Let those who try and stop what's right,

Burn with my power, Prince Grayven's might!"

My yellow personal lantern appears in mid air, a yellow beam connecting it to my yellow ring.

"Recharge complete, Corpsman. A little more care with your equipment in future."

Noted, Sinestro. Now… Phone.

I raise my right hand to my ear. "General Lane. It's done."

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Last Supper 6

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21st June

16:18 GMT +1

"Eh." Hephaestus lumbers his way across the lower slopes of Mount Etna. "Nice day for it."

"Not sure Lord Vulcan will see it that way."

"No, he will. When either of us is in there, there's such a pressure to make use of our time that it can all get a bit… Well, a bit much. First couple of days you're out, you spend your time decompressing." He stops and looks at me. "Why did you think we didn't just set up another workshop under some other volcano? Santorini would be a heck of a lot more convenient for me than a place in southern Italy."

"I had wondered."

"There you go." He turns back to his previous direction of travel, takes a moment to examine the ground in front of him and then starts off again. "Besides, it's not really an ideal workplace for modern manufacturing. Way back when we first built the place, all we were doing was making things of metal. You don't need a huge forge for electronics."

"I… Have been meaning to ask you… Um…"

"Oh, ask. I can't promise I'll give you an answer, but I promise not to plague you with rust or anything like that."

"Your leg. I don't know how much modern medicine can actually affect you-"

He glances down at it for a half-second. "Not much."

"-but it should be fairly straightforward to make a better.. frame. Or an exoskeleton section like my power armour. Or a cybernetic."

"So what you're saying, is that I should cut off my own leg."

"No, I'm saying you should get a competent chirurgeon to take a look at it. Whatever the damage is, it might be repairable by modern medicine. The cybernetic replacement thing would be a last resort."

"Do you know who the Greek God of Medicine is?"

"Yes, it's A… Pollo." Ah. "But you had millennia-."

"Yeah, I did. Exactly how good was cybernetic technology a few millennia ago?" He sighs. "Besides, this wound was inflicted by Zeus. Having another god fixing it would be a declaration of war against the King of Olympus, and no one is willing to do that. For me, anyway."

"Okay, but… Mundane stuff?"

"I'm going to see what I can adapt from the schematics you gave me. I don't move around all that much, but it would be nice if I could." We emerge from a small copse and start walking over the rubble-strewn ground of the lower slopes. Hephaestus slows for a moment, getting his bearings. "This journey used to take me months. One nice thing about modern transportation technology."

"Have you given any thought to the idea of using a Dolmen Gate? I certainly don't object to giving you a lift, but I.. know that in your place I'd prefer to be able to make the journey myself."

"Maybe. But if I do, I'll need to talk to Vulcan about it. And we'll probably want to make it ourselves." His brow furrows slightly. "I think… Technically, the Atlanteans are his people."

We continue slowly on up the slope, though the incline isn't particularly steep down here.

"Leaving the planet, huh?"

"Not quite yet. A little over two weeks."

"Anything big planned for your send-off?"

I can't help but clench slightly as he asks. Not that I think he'd care all that much. "We're having a bit of a get-together. My friend Kon is having his birthday party on the fourth of July, so we're sort of merging the two together."

"Kon, as in 'Prince Kon-El', right?" He glances at me once more as I nod. "How long you planning on being away for?"

"As long as it takes. If I'm really lucky, just a couple of months. But…" I glance down at my rings. "I can go literally anywhere I want. I could be the first Human in another galaxy if I wanted, and didn't mind losing the few months the journey would take. I might just spend some time out there… Just, flying around." He nods. "You ever felt like getting away from the Earth?"

"Sure. Soon as I heard about the space program. Just for the sake of it, though? Not really. I wasn't really one for travelling even when I could do it easily." He stops. "Wait." I obediently come to a halt. "I'm pretty sure we're here."

"You're 'pretty sure'? How long have you been coming-?"

"I'm the God of the Forge, not navigation. The greenery changes from year to year, and sometimes there's an eruption and the whole landscape changes." He lifts his hammer from his shoulder. "Anyone around?"

"Ah." Ring? "No. Not in visual range, anyway."

He bangs the rock beneath us a couple of times with the head of the hammer. "Yeah, sounds about right. Hey! Vulcan! Open up already!"

There's a clank, and just ahead of us a circular section of rock with a diameter of about four metres starts turning, rotating clockwise and rising as it does so. Dust and small stones cascade from the upper surface as it rises to the height of our heads and then keeps going. There's a noticeable bevel to it, so that the rock plug can sit neatly in the hole that's cut into the rock. As it keeps rising I see metal beneath the rock, a huge steel screw frame that's hollow on the inside.

"Glad the mechanism is still in good order. I always hate it when the first thing I have to do is work on the damn entrance."

There's a clank as the whole assemblage halts, and I hear footsteps clanking on a metal floor.

"What! You sleep in or something?!" The voice comes up through the screw, echoing slightly on the metal. "I've been waiting to go since dawn!"

"I never get here at dawn!"

"The start of the day on the solstice!"

"Look, if you wanted to leave you could just have told the tripods to work the entrance! It makes no difference to me!"

A figure moves into sight from inside the screw. The footsteps are regular, which I was expecting. Hephaestus found my initial assumption that Vulcan would be some kind of palette swap of him quite amusing. Apparently Vulcan isn't physically deformed, he's just ugly. His hair is dark brown, unlike Hephaestus' own greying locks, and if not actually better kempt it is at least shorter. His beard is likewise better groomed. He's wearing a mostly red shirt decorated with a tartan pattern and faded and well-worn jeans. His face… It isn't that bad. His nose is quite crooked and quite a bit too fat for his face. His ears stick out to the sides and bristle with hair and his brow is rather heavy. I mean, he's not traffic-stoppingly ugly or anything. I guess Juno just has really high standards.

He walks out into the light, wincing slightly as he does so before walking up to his shorter Greek counterpart. "Hephaestus."

Hephaestus nods. "Vulcan."

They stand there looking at each other for a moment, before they both smile and step towards each other, wrapping their arms around each other and embracing tightly. "Oh, it's good to see you, Heph."

Hephaestus slaps him on the back. "You too."

They stay like that for a moment before separating, Vulcan transferring his attention to me. "So who's this? Apprentice? A son I haven't met?"

"This is… One of Diana's students. You remember, the Amazon Princess?"

"Yeah, I remember. He working with you this year?"

"No, but he's got a few projects he wants to work with us both on. You have to rush off?"

"I can give you a few hours." Vulcan frowns, then turns his thickset eyes my way. Weighing me up. Then he turns back to Hephaestus. "Why don't you tell me what you've been up to?"

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Last Supper 7

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21st June

16:53 GMT +1

Hephaestus grins as Vulcan comes back into the dining room, followed by a strange clockwork tripod automata. "Ah, the good stuff!" The tripod appears to be largely clockwork, chain and pulley driven legs allowing it to waddle along the corridor with an amphora firmly clasped in its mechanical grasp.

"There's nothing wrong with my wine, Hephaestus."

"I didn't say there was. But ambrosia's better."

"Ambros-?" I look from one forge god to the other. "Is it alright for me to drink that?"

Vulcan pulls out a stool for himself and sits down at the table. "There's little harm in it."

"Okay, but… Doesn't it have any..? Strange side effects?"

"It gets you drunk." Vulcan makes a beckoning motion to the tripod and it approaches the table. "It has minor regenerative properties, but one amphora won't do much."

"What's it actually made of?"

"Nectar, boiled and fermented." The tripod unwinds an arm and uses it to pick up the amphora and offer it to Vulcan. He takes it with a nod and holds it up slightly. "Not that the right flowers are easy to get hold of. Usually just pay the Dryads to grow them."

Hephaestus nods at me. "Drink up. We'll need new cups for this."

I'm really not a wine expert. I don't even like the stuff, but I thought that doing my normal 'ring, make me taste something else' would be rather rude to the people who I hope will become business partners. So I smile, pick up the slightly weathered cup and drain what's left. I know that Ancient Greeks and Amazons water wine down in situations like this. I guess that Gods don't bother.

"Thank you."

Vulcan takes three empty goblets from the tripod while Hephaestus takes my cup and turns in his seat to put it on the sideboard.

"I've been meaning to ask: your tripods. Are they really mechanical robots?"

Vulcan shakes his head as he pours for us. "No. I could build a mechanical robot, but it would be enormous. These are controlled by small Elementals."

Hephaestus nods. "Powered, too. Much easier than having to wind them up every few hours."

"The Elementals-" He puts the amphora down on the table and offers me a goblet. I take it. "-have an affinity for the metal. That means they can… Empower it or move it as if it were their own body. In fact, because their affinity is for ore-level concentrations of metal and this metal is pure, they're stronger and tougher like this. Happier too." He turns to look it in the… Torso? "Isn't that right?"

There is a series of rapid mechanical clicks.

Hephaestus raises his goblet, then looks at me with his eyebrows raised. I mirror the gesture and a moment later Vulcan does the same. "Jupiter."

"Zeus."

I blink. I don't think that saying 'Eris' in a forge would be correct. 'Colin' doesn't sound right either. "Ophidian."

"Eh?" Vulcan frowns faintly and looks at Hephaestus. "I thought he was one of yours?"

"He is, but his patron is… That woman."

"Oh." Vulcan nods, then raises his cup to his lips. Hephaestus and I do the same. Tastes… Sweet? Sort of a mildly florally scented alcopop. Vulcan puts his goblet down. "Say no more. So, mortal. What exactly do you want from us?"

"A better question, sir, is what do you want from me." I shrug. "What do you want from life? Assuming that you're as old as Hephaestus, you're four thousand years old."

"Close enough."

"Italy has been Christian for fifteen hundred of them, and doesn't look like it's going to change any time soon. I don't know how long you expect to live, but you don't look old. Maybe-" I indicate our surroundings with my goblet. "-you're happy like-."

"No. I'm not." Vulcan watches me intently. "So you can stop trying the market trader routine on me. But there's not a lot of call for forge-gods these days."

"Do you want there to be?"

"I'm a craftsman and a teacher. I want my work to be seen, used and appreciated. Same as Hephaestus, unless he's changed his mind lately."

"Human knowledge of metallurgy has come on in leaps and bounds in the last century. You could take pride in that."

Hephaestus raises his eyebrows slightly. "You know what I feel, whenever I look at one of those skyscraper things?"

"Pride? Envy?"

"Nostalgia." He drinks deeply from his tankard, then sets it down and sighs heavily. "I can still remember when you people needed us."

"Well-."

"I didn't think I was asking for much. Not compared to some. I didn't ask for gold or silver. I didn't ask cows or sheep. Heck, compared to the new guy… I didn't even ask people to behave better towards each other. I just taught people how to make things with metal, and all I wanted in return, was that when they gathered together to celebrate what they'd done with those skills… They did so in my name. Was that too much? Or was it too little? Would it have stuck in their minds more if I'd been more demanding? If I'd demanded a copper coin every time they heated their forge if they didn't want their iron to be full of impurities?"

Vulcan nods, sipping from his goblet with a bitter expression on his face.

"Did I ever mention my friend John Constantine to you?" Hephaestus nods, but it looks like Vulcan's the first arcane being I've met who hasn't heard of him. "He once had an encounter with an Aztec death god by the name of Mictlantecuhtli. John said something disrespectful to goad him, and Mictlantecuhtli told him to watch it, as he might have lost nearly all of his worshippers but hadn't lost any of his power. John's response was… Doesn't that just make it worse? You can do all of these wondrous things and no one wants to know."

Hephaestus looks contemplative while Vulcan's eyes narrow slightly. I smile.

"We want to know. On the twenty third of August KordTech will be sponsoring a technology demo to show off its latest developments. Most notable amongst these are the arcane metals that Hephaestus taught Io how to forge. We're calling it the Hephaesteia, and we're going to make it an annual thing. To start with, it'll probably just be us and the Atlanteans, but in future we hope that other companies will get involved. Diana will be leading opening and closing prayers and Io's going to be there to field questions."

"That's already.. set. That's going to happen. You don't need to do anything else. But you can. We would be delighted to trade for large quantities of arcane metals, especially jovium. Seriously, we can't get enough of that stuff. We'll trade for instruction, teaching others how to make it."

Vulcan's eyes are on the table. "You're going to want every little secret, aren't you? Everything we've learned…"

"I want you to teach us. I want you to share knowledge. We're happy to do the same, with things outside of your domain that don't come quite so naturally. I want you to get involved in the world again as gods. I want you to remind people that pagan gods aren't all arseholes."

"Hm." Vulcan puts his right fist to his chin for a moment, then turns to his Greek counterpart. "Well? He's one of yours."

Hephaestus nods. "And I'll be spending some time making jovium with Io and Pallas this summer. Maybe one or two others. And I've got some designs Paul wants made for his allies. But the Atlanteans are yours. What do you plan on doing with them?"

Vulcan stares into his goblet for several moments. Then he looks up. "Find me one who knows how to repair a Lancia, and we can talk."

back

Last Supper 8

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22nd June

05:18 GMT -8

"Captain Eiling, I assure you that your father will be fine."

I look around the staging area as I hold the phone construct to my ear. With everyone who can physically threaten me -read: Mordru- out of the way, the rest should just be a mopping up operation. Still, this will be good practice for General Lane's people. They won't be going after Savage -I'm here to handle the combat part of the operation personally in case something unexpected happens- but they'll handle the covert reconnaissance, communication and the teleportation jammers. I even managed to purchase a fun little piece of kit from Venturia called a Havock Stone which should stop arcane teleportation… Well, by a non-expert at least.

"Fine doesn't land you in the hospital. Look, I know that you can't tell me much-."

"No, no, I can tell you pretty much anything. I'm not part of the US military and I haven't signed any sort of non-disclosure agreement." Which now that I think about it is a bit odd. "Your father is suffering from the after effects of a petrification spell. He's been restored to flesh, but we want to keep him in for observation. And you know how hard reliable magic users are to come by."

"No, I can't say I do. Can I.. visit?"

I nod to Vera as she gives me the thumbs up. Chester, Mister Tawny and Miss Amane are with the team going after Brain on the grounds that it's a wee bit easier to bring weapons and personnel to a location in Mali than it is to the United States of America. The government are cooperating -on paper at least- but they aren't going to send troops anywhere near an international supervillain if he isn't actually attacking them. To be fair, that's probably for the best.

"Best… Give it a day or so. But after that, sure. Just.. phone General Lane's office sometime tomorrow and they can get hold of me."

"Thank you. I'll do that." He pauses for a moment. His.. rapprochement with his natural father came about as a result of my team-. My former team's efforts. But he grew up under the care of his treasonous stepfather General Eiling, and I can well understand that he's conflicted about the whole situation. "Why is it I'm hearing this from you?"

"I was in operational command at the time. I know superheroes don't have the best reputation for command and control, but as far as I'm concerned it's my-" My left hand traces a line along my armour, following one of the talon wounds I received yesterday. "-responsibility. Bloody.. glad he didn't die, actually. I've never done one of these before."

"As someone who has, I think you're handling it okay. I'll pass it on to Peggy."

"If that's the protocol. Listen, I need to get going-."

"I understand. I'll call in tomorrow. Goodbye, Mister Grayven."

"Goodbye Captain." I dismiss the phone construct. "Vera, we ready?"

"We were just waitin' for you." She and the US army officer in command -a Major Laramore- walk towards me. "Situation report is all ready."

I nod. "Then let's hear it."

Major Laramore glances at a datapad in his left hand. "We think he's got seven people in the hotel, and some sort of rapid response team in a privately owned warehouse a couple of miles away. Give…" He shakes his head. "Sir, I… I've never actually worked with a superhuman as.. powerful as you before. Are you really going to be able to do this on your own?"

"Seven guys, probably carrying Earth weapons? Yes? I'm more worried about your people."

"Okay then." He nods. "We've got three sniper teams in position on the rooftops. We'll lay explosives on the roads right before the attack starts, but I don't wanna do that too much before in case-."

"In case some civilian walks into it. That's the right call. Are your soldiers going to be alright working with Operative Black?"

"My men are professionals, sir. There won't be any problems."

"Good. I realise that it isn't ideal, suddenly having to work alongside people you haven't trained with. I'll try and sort something out with General Lane.. before we do anything like this again."

"Thank you, sir. I'd appreciate that."

I look around again, then nod, raising my left hand to my ear. "Grayven to General Lane. Las Vegas reports full readiness."

"The teams in Ecuador and Mali report the same things. General readiness is at about eighty percent, but I don't think we should wait any longer. The more time we give them, the more likely they are to smell a rat."

I nod. "I agree. By your command?"

"Just a sec."

There's a brief pause. "All teams, this is President Horne. Operation Light Switch is go. I repeat, Operation Light Switch is go. Godspeed."

"Call you back, Sam."

"Go get 'em, Grayven."

I lower my hand and focus on Major Laramore. "We're go. Get your team by the offsite group to lay those explosives and send the team at the hotel upwards. I'll meet them in the penthouse. Hopefully I'll have dealt with everyone, but don't take any silly risks."

"I'll.. reiterate that, sir. Give us one minute, then you can start."

I nod, and he turns away and marches towards the command station. "This is weird."

Vera glances my way. "What is?"

"Soldiers."

She raises her left eyebrow. "You don't have soldiers on Apokolips?"

"No, we do, but they're all Lowlies. We don't expect them to do anything clever or complicated. Just… Die for Darkseid." Her right eyebrow joins the left. "Hey, I'm not saying I like the system. This is better, it's just… Odd." And right. Competent people, trained and experienced, loyally carrying out my orders. I like this. Oh yes, I've got to look into getting one of these.. army things. Or maybe a navy..?

I watch Major Laramore for a few moments, half listening to the radio chatter. Of course, no Apokoliptian Elite would stand back and organise when there was a fight going on. And I'm not either. Maybe there's some sort of… Course I could go on..? I'll ask Sam about it after-.

Major Laramore looks up. "Sir, everyone's in position."

I smile confidently. "Right then. Best not keep Savage waiting. Father Box, hush tube."

"Ploong."

22nd June

13:21 GMT

I step lightly across the lunar surface as the tube closes behind me. Obviously I'm not stupid enough to open a portal directly to the target. I take a moment to look at the glimmering Earth far above me. Father Box, hush tube.

Ploong.

A new portal appears and I stride through, shutting down the internal cameras as I do so.

22nd June

05:21 GMT -8

Savage's penthouse is the epitome of his horrible, gaudy taste. Dozens of trophies -presumably from various historical events he lived through- on display. No plaques though. This isn't for tourists. This is for lecturing guests and for reminiscing. I flick my goggles down over my eyes. Savage is asleep in bed, and mercifully his current companion is over the local age of consent. I wiggle my left hand… Just doesn't feel quite right with a finger gone. Eh. Crock and Dorrance materialise, and I wave my left hand in the general direction of the front door. They should be well capable of dealing with any relief team.

Movement from the bedroom. I'm not bothering to be silent, but it is a little impressive that they heard me already. I stride confidently towards the door. Looks like Savage is going for a high-calibre pistol, while the woman goes for a sword and some knives. For a moment I'm reminded of Jade… No, too tall. Neither of them bother with clothing.

I stop a little way from the bedroom door as they both move out of line of sight from the doorway.

Sinestro. Sonic cannon construct.

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22nd June

05:22 GMT -8

One doesn't really hear a sonic weapon. And not just because they'd burst your eardrums if you were in a position to do so; the variants I'm familiar with either use sound at frequencies much higher or much lower than those a Human can naturally hear. I'm getting a sort of 'whumwhumwhum' from the vibrations that pass through my hands from the weapon and are transmitted through.. my.. bones…

Father Box, how exactly is that bypassing my divine resistance?

Ploong.

Oh, of course. Anyway, despite the name, you don't hear the weapon. Any science fiction which depicts it otherwise is using artistic licence. On the other hand, you can hear whatever the stream of sonic energy hits exploding.

Like Savage's bedroom door, which is torn apart, splinters spraying in all directions.

Like the far wall, plaster evaporating, metal running in streams and stone blasted into dust and shooting out of the side of the hotel in a cloud.

Hah! I mean, it's not a black hole gun or anything, but it's still bloody good fun. I believe that I have located my inner redneck.

That'll do, Sinestro.

Corpsman, confrontational grandstanding is always ill-advised.

Not if no one advises you to do it, it isn't.

I am not going to dignify that with a response.

I'm not keeping that gun because this hotel has other occupied rooms. The falling dust is too fine to cause serious injury and we're too high up for anything bearing critical weight to be on a horizontal plane with us. It's completely impractical for a close quarters fight.

At least you've thought about it this time.

I take my new shoklave from the scabbard at my hip with my right hand. Didn't have time to make a full sized one, but this will do for most purposes. Haven't… Done this for a while, but I also make construct armour and a construct kite shield. Just to be on the safe side. Then I stride forwards, using the orange ring's flight aura to float over the somewhat worse for wear floor that was in the sonic cannon's effect cone.

I can see where they are perfectly clearly through the walls. The woman is behind a decorative pillar to my right, presumably waiting for me to pass her by so that she can make a surprise attack. Not seeing any fear from her. Savage is standing in the open to my left, holding his pistol two handed. No fear there, either. Being organically immortal I suppose this sort of thing is old hat for him.

Warning:

A beam of murky gold energy hits my construct shield, doing minor damage before cutting out.

Radion source detected.

Oh, thank you very much.

You are welcome.

Savage lowers the pistol. "Grayven." I knew that radion weapons of that size existed of course, but they're single shot affairs. A bit worrying that the rings couldn't detect it until it fired, but again: I know that sort of technology exists. I wonder how he got hold of it.

"Savage." I glance right. "And friend."

He still doesn't look worried, but he does look curious. "I was told that your kind were vulnerable to radion weapons."

I nod. "Oh, we are. Dreadfully so. Power rings aren't. The Thanagarians only got that shot off by downing my construct armour with fire from their fighter craft."

"Do you truly believe that the Light will follow you because you deposed me?"

"What, you really think this is a power play? Savage, this is the end of the Light. My people are attacking Brain, and the US Navy is levelling Infinity Island. Across the world, hundreds of thousands of soldiers and law enforcement officers are getting their marching orders."

He glowers, though given how gifted he is in the glowering department that might well be his neutral expression. "Luthor."

"Actually, no. He's being unsubtly watched by the FBI. I honestly have no idea what he sees in you, but as far as I know he never acted against you."

A nod. "Was this your plan from the first?"

"Oh, you were right about superheroes being an impediment to Human achievement. And I tried, I really tried to talk you into doing something about that using sane means. But you just had to summon an eldritch abomination, you utter buffoon!"

Movement to my right. I instinctively lash out, a thin band of yellow light striking the airborne daggers and knocking them aside. Faintly glowing eldritch script on the side of the blades… But it doesn't look like it does anything if you don't hit the target. The now clearly visible naked woman-.

"Ms Wu-San. I was not expecting you to be here. And I rather thought that you would have better taste than to bed… Cavemen."

I clearly see her muscles move under her bare skin as she shifts to a fighting stance. "Vandal Savage is a superb fighter."

"Okay, but he-. Oh! Hahah! Him and David Cain? Of all the chat up lines I never thought would work! How is little Cassandra?"

No verbal response. Her eyes still locked onto mine, she just takes her sword in a two-handed grip.

"You really could do better. I'm not single myself, but I know a few-."

"Oh really?"

I turn back towards Savage as he grins, snapping in half some sort of wooden medallion.

…

"Was that meant to do something?"

"I never truly trusted you. I thought that your devotion to the future of humanity was genuine, but that you lacked… Vision, where hard methods were required. Mordru was intended as your opposite: disinterested but ruthless. And alerted by this medallion, he-"

"Hah!"

"-will momentarily be-"

"Hehahah!"

"-joining us."

"Um. Yeah."

His eyes narrow. "I fail to see the humour."

"I killed Mordru yesterday. You seriously thought that I'd come after the rest of you without dealing with the most powerful member of the group first?"

"He is… Immortal."

"Savage, one little piece of wisdom, from Apokolips? There's no such thing as truly immortal. Not Klarion, not my Father, not me, not you and probably not even the Source itself. Whatever you do to anchor yourself to the material universe will eventually fail. Everything ends. Everything dies." I glance back at Ms Wu-San. "Look, you actually aren't on the arrest list, so if you want to just disappear I'm not going to stop you. Though for the good of the Human gene pool, I really would suggest a morning after pill. Or.. five…"

In an elegant motion she leans forward and pushes off, going from still to full charge in a second, sword ready to slice through me.

I blast her to pieces with a bolt of orange light, chunks of painfully-outclassed martial artist raining down around the room. It's really nice to have that option back, without having to get my head into the fear-space.

Well, back to Savage. "You're under arrest."

He shakes his head. "I think not. I'm immortal, and while I believe that I have a soul far greater than those possessed by the common herd I am not a magic user. The sword with which you so memorably slew Klarion will have no more effect against me than any other sharpened piece of metal. And while you may be able to defeat me in combat, there is no prison in which you can-."

"Ring, assimilate."

A wild burst of orange blasts from the ring and strikes the jumped up caveman in the chest. Orange light spreads over his body immediately, and he holds his hands up to watch the progress.

"Thing about you, Savage, is that you're all about avarice. Making what you want to happen happen. It's a vice I share, but unlike me you don't have anything else. And you never learned self discipline because you never thought that you needed to."

"This won't work!" Finally he loses his cool! "I'll come back! I always come back! I am immort-!"

He shudders as the change completes.

"Vandar Adg of the Blood Tribe. You belong to the Orange Lantern Corps."

I walk over and stare my new Construct Lantern in the eyes. There's little reaction.

Good. Now, where to next?

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Last Supper 10

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22nd June

10:34 GMT -3

Admiral Strom looks around as I step out of the hush tube and onto his carrier's bridge. If it wasn't for the stinking headache I've got right now I'd make time to be a little more impressed by how quickly the marines on duty bring their weapons to bear. Ah, damn it, I should really have thought that through better.

It's fascinating, Corpsman. For every flaw you correct, you swiftly find another to replace it.

He's not wrong. When I call Crock or Dorrance into the ring, I get a quick information burst of whatever they've done or seen. Mildly useful the first time, pretty much irrelevant since. It should really have occurred to me that doing the same with a man as old as Savage might be… Inadvisable.

That's certainly one way to put it, Corpsman.

I mean, it's kind of interesting that despite his claims to the contrary he actually wasn't Genghis Khan. He was some guy called Yelü Chucai, and basically ended up as Genghis Khan's Prime Minister due to being the only one in the whole horde who knew how to do anything other than wage war. It's a bit surprising, given what I know of Savage. I struggle to imagine him letting someone else out-rape and out-pillage him, but I can see from his own memories that he did.

This is the closest I've come to having any respect for him at all. Rather novel, considering the fate worse than death I consigned him to.

"Is there some reason why you've decided to join us, Mister Grayven?" I note that Admiral Strom hasn't turned to face me. He also hasn't told the marines to stand down.

I blink, hard. Head in the game. Embody strength!

"How goes the attack, Admiral?"

"Gotta say, I'm impressed by how many sea mines they stuck in these waters with no one noticing. Could probably walk to the damn island." A short nod to his flag captain and he steps back from his station, turning towards me. "You sure about them having anti-air lasers?"

"I got a tour as a thank you for resurrecting the Tasmanian Tiger."

"Well, we've been dropping missiles and shells on the coordinates you gave us since we got the go-ahead. Those sites are about as flat as we can make 'em." From outside I hear the roar of a jet engine igniting. I look out of the conning tower window as the first planes take off. The admiral follows my gaze with a cruel smile, then walks over to the window to watch them go. "I told 'em not to bother being too precise, seeing as how everyone on that island is a terrorist and it's gunna be a couple a' hours before we can land troops by sea."

I nod, though I don't otherwise move and test the marines' discipline. "Any problems so far?"

"Lost one minesweeper to frogmen."

I frown. "I'm sorry, this line of work… When you say 'frogmen'-?"

"People in scuba gear. Swam out and stuck charges on the hull. I've got a screen of dinghies with marines out in front, stop anyone doing that again."

"The crew?"

"They all got out." He glances my way. "Stand easy, fellers."

The marines snap their guns back to a rest position.

"Thank you. Admiral, you understand… This is a navy operation, but President Horne's orders were quite clear. Under no circumstances is Ra's al Ghul-."

"Yeah yeah, you wanna go in yourself."

"I'm not trying to steal your credit or anything, but-."

"His house is getting trashed in the first wave of air strikes, but we're not using bombs designed to penetrate fortified structures. Any underground bunkers are gunna still be intact." He looks over his shoulder towards me. "And you can take our bombs, right?"

"Anything short of a tactical nuke, yes."

"Then what're you waiting for? Go get him."

"Thank you." Father Box, hush tube to… Oh, I don't know…

Ploong.

Yes, that'll do.

I give Father Box a moment to create the new hush tube, then send through two blaster drones and one death ray drone to scout out the far side. Anything..? Ah. Interesting, though hardly unexpected. I stride through, yellow construct armour manifesting around my body as I appear in the catacombs under Ra's' mansion.

"Batman. What an unexpected… Meeting."

He steps out of the shadows to glower at me. "Grayven."

"Aren't you supposed to be in Germany? I'm almost entirely certain that was the plan. In fact, I'm not even sure how you got here-."

"I'm here for Talia."

"Funnily enough, so am I. As the League of Shadows' moneyman-. Moneywoman…" I frown, then dismiss the point. "Her arrest and conviction is just what we need to make the takedown real for people." He continues to study me. "What, you thought I was going to let her just disappear, take up some new identity? After all the murders she's arranged? Don't be absurd, Batman. She's going down and she's staying down."

"I don't recall you having the same attitude towards Jade Nguyen."

"And I'm sure that if you took down the League of Shadows, President Horne would have offered you a get out of gaol free card. Besides, Jade was hardly critical to the organi-." There's a tremendous BOOM from up above us, the walls around us shaking in response. "Organisation. They have killers to spare, but no one else Ra's would trust as their business manager." We continue to regard each other. "The United States government wants her by the end of the day."

"And I don't rate her chances of being taken alive if I have to come looking for her."

He waits a moment, then walks backwards and tries to fade into the shadows. A move which completely fails due to my ring augmented vision. I see him clearly as he turns and runs towards the minisub pen.

Oh, he'll be better off without her.

I turn left, heading towards the command centre. Yeah.. I.. do kind of need to eat Ra's' brain as well. There are bound to be shadows and other such people I don't know about. And I genuinely am curious to see if I can track down David Cain. I mean, if anyone knows where that nasty little psychotic serial killer is, it's Ra's al Ghul. Not sure what I could do for little Cassandra -if she even exists here- but I'm sure that it's more than him. I walk out into a training area and-.

"Grayven."

Oh, it's that Ubu bloke. He pulls a metal bar… Thing… Off the weapon rack and brandishes it. I raise my left hand and explode him. I start walking again as parts of his body rain down around the room. I just can't work these people out. They must know I don't care about killing them. Right? I mean, I called in the US fucking Navy. I shrug to myself.

A short corridor later and I'm outside the underground command centre. The yellow ring shows only four people inside. Two shadows, that Sensei bloke and Ra's himself. Three sources of fear, but Ra's himself is perfectly calm.

And… Suddenly I'm bored with this whole thing. This is just barely worth my attention. All these… Self-proclaimed masterminds just can't cope with someone of my power level stomping on them. Not without editorial fiat protecting them. I don't even bother shooting, I just barrel into the door at a loping charge, knock it down, grab the shadows around their necks and squeeze. As their heads drop to the ground I'm already lunging at the Sensei, a solid punch from my right fist crushing his chest to a mess of mashed organs and broken bones.

Then I turn to my prey. "Ra's."

He seems calm. If I had to characterise his mood, I'd describe it as disappointed. Well diddums. "I assume that you're here to kill me."

"No. Someone might find a hair follicle and use a Lazarus Pit to bring you back. I'm going to turn you into a construct, and use the knowledge that grants me to ensure that your organisation is completely destroyed."

"Talia?"

"Batman's going to find her. A show trial, and then life imprisonment."

He nods. "You would not attempt this if Mordru and Savage were not already.. taken care-."

"Dead, they're dead. Of all people, you shouldn't be squeamish about saying it."

A slight curl of distaste appears on his lips. "We could have achieved so much. Your betrayal-."

"YOU LEFT YOUR DAUGHTER TO DIE IN A NAZI CONCENTRATION CAMP! YOU DON'T GET TO CALL ME A TRAITOR!" My construct armour fails as I let the rage flow through me. "Father Box, boom tube."

BOOM! The glowing portal opens next to us, and a moment later Nyssa Raatko steps through. Her eyes are hard, and she's smiling cruelly. She's going to be useful, and she was so eager when I offered her the chance to watch this.

"Assimilate."

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22nd June

14:06 GMT

"…because I'm interested to see how you work." I try not to wince as Nyssa steps through the hush tube after me. Adding a seven hundred year old to Savage's multi-millennial memories shouldn't make all that much difference, but it's… Such a different outlook. I need to get back home and dump both of them in a cupboard as soon as possible. "While I am grateful to you for dealing permanently with my louse of a father, I will want to know you better before I commit myself to your cause. You have.. something of an unsavoury reputation."

And now I've got to deal with this.

Ring, where the fuck are we?

A map appears in my mind, and it's swiftly followed by Savage's memories of riding through this part of the world with a band of mercenaries two centuries ago, mixed with Ra's' recollections from even further back. Euuuurrrrgh…

No. Whatever benefit these two might give me, they're just a distraction now. Father Box, hush tube to… Storage room seven?

Ploong.

I send a filament through the portal, dump out all four of my Construct Lanterns and then close the portal. Oh, that feels better.

I turn to look at her. "Ms Raatko-."

"Nyssa." I raise my eyebrows slightly. "I think that you have earned the right to call me by my first name."

I nod. "Alright. Nyssa. This is an active combat zone. I'll be… Happy, to discuss my plans with you in more detail. But this really isn't the time."

She nods. "When, then?"

"Once I've finished up here, I'm going to spend the rest of the day transcribing data for the police and military of every country taking part in this purge. I doubt that you'll find it interesting, but you're certainly welcome to watch. Please, wait for me in my home as my guest. I will be with you shortly."

She continues to look into my eyes for a moment, then nods. "Very well. Thank you for your hospitality, Grayven."

Father Box.

Ploong.

Nyssa turns to face the hush tube and walks towards it, only looking back at me the moment before passing through.

Alright, shut it down and then open another… The base was built into Mount Tenakourou, but I never actually visited the place. I know he uses some sort of super plastic injection system to hollow out space underground and prevent collapses that would give away his location. I can feel the approximate locations of my subordinates by the effect of their enhanced metaphysiques, but… A good part of this was to make sure that they can work together to meet an objective without constant oversight from either myself or Doctor Robbins. I don't want to interfere, or risk giving away their positions if they're busy. Alright, according to the plan there should be local soldiers over there… A new hush tube opens and I step through.

Krak! Krak!

What?

"Over here!"

Krakkrakkrakkrak!

I look over to a nearby copse and catch sight of a soldier in the uniform of the Malian Army pointing his Kalashnikov at me, smoke from the propellant drifting from the barrel. Another soldier dashes up behind him, stares at me for a second and then grabs his gun off him. "Idiot! That is Grayven!"

The first soldier looks at the second, his eyes wide. "Oh shit."

Hm.

Okay, PR time. I stride in their direction, my best approximation of a friendly smile on my face. "No harm done. You." I point to the first soldier with my right forefinger. "What's your name?"

"Ah, ah-. Oumar-. Ah, Private Samake, Mister Grayven. Sir." He salutes as his colleague shakes his head in disappointment.

I stop within arm's reach, then pat him on the left shoulder with my right hand. "Good reaction time. Well done. But… You may want to check your targets a little more carefully in future."

"Yes sir. Thank you sir."

"Good man. Now." I turn to his colleague. "Whereabouts are my people?"

The second soldier -a corporal- nods his head towards the top of the bare stone hill. "They were up there, last time I saw them. Our orders are just to maintain the perimeter."

I nod. "No offence to you, but it's probably for the best. Any idea whether they've finished up or not?"

"There haven't been any new explosions for ten minutes, sir. Beyond that, I could not tell you."

I nod. "Thank you." I armour myself before transitioning into the sky above the mountain. No vengeful plasma explosions or anti-matter beams greet me, so it seems likely that my people were victorious. In fact, looking down… Ah, good. I allow myself to plummet, not bothering to brake at all as I slam into the ground with enough force to crack the rock… And make me bend my legs slightly. Fortitude: not just for taking punches.

Grodd looks up from the ruined body of Monsieur Mallah, baring his teeth at me. Hm. Looks like he cracked open his former troupe mate's skull and ate his brain. A moment later he recognises me and returns to his meal. A short way to his right Mister Tawny looks on in palpable disgust. Grodd… Might have been granted Human-equivalent intelligence by Doctor Durant's work-. No, it doesn't work. I can't think of him as being anything other than The Brain. By Brain's work, but he clearly hasn't picked up the insight into civilised niceties that interacting with Humans has given my feline companion. I'm not completely sure that Grodd will prove to be a worthwhile investment. Still, helping him get revenge against the ape who betrayed his troupe costs me little.

Other bodies surround the two of them, presumably part of Brain's retinue. Some sort of man-elephant, his chest torn open. A woman in a body stocking with a green cape, blood still leaking from her eyes, nose and ears. A woman wearing some sort of light armour, her body cut in three and then dragged roughly back into shape. There'll be others, of course. Once I've assimilated Brain I'll add them to the international manhunt.

"Where y'been, cock?" Chester stands next to a large hole in the rock, presumably his point of entry. "Missed all the fun, didn't yeh?"

"Not all of it, Chester. Everything secure?"

"Everythin'? Where's the fookin' fun in that? Heh."

"Chester, we're nearly done. Did you get-?" He makes an upward motion with his right arm, his eyes glowing green. Brain's heavily damaged travel machine shoots up through the hole to hover next to him. "Good work."

"Piece a' fookin' cake, cock. Not sure what alla the fuss was about." He drops his hand and jerks his head to the left. Brain's travel machine is tossed in the direction of his head, hitting the ground side-first, shaking and sliding to a stop.

"Iname?"

"Givin' the whole place a once-oveh. Think she's tryin' t' score points with yew or somethin'." He nods at the fallen Brain. His dome has cracked, and whatever the fluid he keeps in there is is gradually leaking out. "Well? Come on, then. We all know what you're here for."

I raise my left hand to my ear. "Grayven to Iname. Are you-?" There's a small gust of wind as she appears in front of me. "No trouble, I hope?"

She hesitates, uncertain how to answer. "There were a few… But nothing that we could not handle, Master. Do you want me to go back down? There are still a few rooms that I have not gotten into yet."

I nod, smiling at her. "I'm glad to hear it that you're alright. And I'm pleased with your work." She beams beatifically. "But don't worry about the base. We can go through it later, once the rest of the League is destroyed. Batman skipped out on Germany, so I want you to-."

Another blast of air and she's gone. So eager to please, that one. Hm. No sense in delaying.

"Brain, I've got no idea why you did what you did. And I care even less. Rest assured that I'll put your talents to better use than you ever did. Assimilate."

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Last Supper 12

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23rd June

09:23 GMT -5

"…always thought that Superman's costume was striking, but it isn't exactly haute couture."

It's a little difficult to focus on Ms Madison and ignore the cameras. Most of the media relations training Ms Cobert provided stressed the importance of looking directly at the camera. But this is a pre-recorded program. There isn't an audience, and the camera has a small green light on it which lights up when I'm supposed to look directly at it.

"That's certainly true, but a lot more goes into the creation of a superhero's costume than whether it's in keeping with current fashion. While it's not so much the case for some historical costumes-" Naming no names. Starman. "-most modern costumes have sound logical reasons for looking like they do."

The studio actually has a hologram projector. Not as good as the ones I'm used to, but it can create solid colour 3D images. Ms Madison presses a button on her remote and an image of Mister Kent's costume appears.

"Why don't you talk us through it?"

One of the crane-cameras pulls back, following me as I walk over to the projector and gesture at the image with my right hand. "The obvious part is the insignia. Though most superheroes don't need to establish a brand in the commercial sense, the aim is to make it clear to anyone who looks at it exactly who they are dealing with. When dealing with civilians, it helps them recognise the wearer as someone they can trust to look after them. When dealing with criminals, the intent is to attract attention towards the wearer and away from civilians and law enforcement who may be unequipped to deal with supervillains. That need for swift recognition is why few superheroes wear a camouflage scheme."

"And the bright colors help with that."

I look her way and nod. "Quite so. Now, in Superman's case there are a few other points to bear in mind when examining the design. Take for example the skin-tight nature of most of the costume. There are a couple of reasons for this. Superman -as I'm sure everyone knows- can fly under his own power. Having a skin-tight costume makes it more aerodynamic. But perhaps more importantly is the way it interacts with his tremendous resilience."

"He has to wear skin-tight clothes because he's really tough?"

"It's more about where his toughness comes from. While someone like Wonder Woman or Icon has very tough body tissues, Kryptonians project a biological force field a very short distance from their bodies. Superman's costume fitting tightly around his body means that it's inside the force field, and so receives the same protection as the rest of him. That saves the embarrassment of him being hit by, say, a flamethrower, and having all his clothes burned off while he himself is uninjured."

Ms Madison shifts in her seat to look knowingly at the camera. "And we certainly wouldn't want that, would we, ladies?"

"The external underwear is an aesthetic choice, intended to call to mind old-school circus strongman performances. They don't serve any particular physical function, but they do serve to break up a large area of blue."

"What about the belt? Does he have trouble with them slipping down?"

"Given the speeds he can fly at, it's possible." Yes. "But to be honest, I haven't asked. I do know that there are a few rather useful devices built into the belt, but I'm afraid that I can't really talk about what they are."

He was a surprisingly easy sell on the kinetic belt, but there really is only so much room under his force field. A personal atmosphere generator will have to wait.

Ms Madison presses her control button again. "How about Wonder Woman? Her old costume didn't look very practical to me."

"Again, it's to do with what the individual needs. Diana is immensely tough. The original Wonder Woman uniform was designed for mortal Amazons called upon to perform the role of Wonder Woman. That-" I change the hologram to show it. "-was a somewhat more decorative version of the traditional Greek hoplite armour. The armour around the torso protected the wearer's internal organs against sword or spear strikes, the helmet protected the head, the 'skirt' protects the thighs and the greaves -the shin armour- protects the lower legs. As with Superman's 'S', the gold colour marked the wearer out as a warrior of note."

"Protective and sexy."

"Yes, but the male soldiers of the era wore more or less the same thing. Sexy in a gender-equal sort of way."

"But that isn't what Wonder Woman wore."

I change the hologram back to the basque.

"No, the armour Diana wore -and it's important to remember that Wonder Woman is a title that many Amazons have had over the millennia- was designed at the behest of her mother Queen Hippolyta."

"Didn't Wonder Woman leave Themyscira when she was fifteen? My mother certainly wouldn't have wanted me going out dressed like that at her age."

"She did, but Amazon standards of dress are.. a little different." Making cracks about Hephaestus designing it to look like that because he hasn't gotten any in three thousand years probably isn't appropriate for television. "And so were her requirements. Unlike most other Amazons, Diana has both super strength and super toughness. Super strength means that the design absolutely has to avoid binding her joints, otherwise she would damage the armour whenever she moved. Toughness means that providing total protection was far less important. If.. an.. Abrams tank shot an anti-armour round at her and managed to hit her thigh, it would knock her back and it might bruise, but it wouldn't cause her any significant harm."

"So she didn't need the extra protection like other Amazons would."

"Just so. Though her original armour is armour. Anyone trying to shoot her with some sort of exotic ray gun that could hurt her would most likely be aiming for her centre of mass. That's what the armour is designed to stop. And it.. also has a modesty-preserving function."

Ms Madison gives me a comedically incredulous look. "I think that's the first time anyone's ever described Wonder Woman's armour as 'modest'."

"Superman's force field protects his clothes if they're close to his body. Diana doesn't have that. If her clothing wasn't armoured up to.. her level, it would risk being destroyed when she fights." This time Ms Madison just glances at the camera, her right eyebrow arched. "The armour isn't just metal, it's also protected by powerful magic. Similarly, the bracers are designed for blocking incoming attacks, because while she is very tough, there's no sense taking unnecessary risks."

"Wonder Woman's recently been seen wearing a more heavily armoured version. I understand that you had something to do with that."

I switch the hologram for Diana's current armour. "This armour was the result of a design project between myself, Ted Kord, an Atlantean by the name of Sephtian and Hephaestus. The obvious differences are the fully covered arms and shoulders, the plates covering the thighs and shins, and the armoured boots. The chain mail parts are enchanted so as not to impede the range of motion. Unlike the 'basque' armour, this is designed to protect every part of her body."

"Have you been helping other League members improve their costumes?"

"Those who've asked, though the one I'm proudest of is the partial credit on getting Hawkwoman to abandon the appalling get up she wore when she first started operating on Earth." I have the hologram projector show a image of Mister Hol and Ms Thal side by side. "Now, Hawkman's armour has a couple of curious design choices, most notably the heavy shoulder pads. He has those because his normal mode of attack involves diving directly towards his foe. When he does that, all they can see are his shoulders, head, his upper chest and the leading edge of his wings. And as you can see, those are all armoured. The rest of his body is covered in an extremely tough material, but the most important feature is that it doesn't weigh much. Defensively, his aim is to evade attack by high speed flight, and unlike Superman and Diana he's kept in the air -at least in part- by the power of his muscles. He can't afford to get weighed down with heavy armour. As such, the design of the armour makes sense."

"Hawkwoman's armour on the other hand has two very obvious design flaws. Firstly, it has a boob window. Those belong on dresses, not on things that might get worn in combat. If she dived at an enemy while wearing that, she'd be giving them an unobstructed shot at her bare skin and at the lungs beneath it. Secondly, the miniskirt. Diana can get away without protection on her legs because she's super tough anyway. Thanagarians aren't much tougher than Humans; they're certainly not bulletproof. Compromising her protection like that was a bad decision, and I'm glad that she's fixed it."

"Do you know why she chose that design initially?"

"I think it was something to do with.. misunderstanding Human customs relating to female clothing." I turn to the camera. "Comics rot your brains, kids."

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Last Supper 13

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23rd June

14:47 GMT -5

"Hey!" Guy waves his hand as I walk into the restaurant. "Get a load of the TV star."

A few of the other diners look around as I roll my eyes and start walking faster towards his table. Tora's there already… Ah, they've finished. I suppose things did.. run on a bit longer than I thought they would. I sit down opposite them. "I'm sorry. They just wanted to… Go over a few things…"

"Ah, don't sweat it. I guess we should just be grateful you've still got time fer the little people at all, what with yer new career an' all."

"Guy." Tora pats him gently on his left arm. "Be nice."

He rolls his eyes back, shaking his head. "But seriously: how'd it go?"

"It was a fluff piece. It's not as if I was going on a serious interview program or anything." I wave my right hand around in a circle. "It went okay..? I think..? Either that or they were being very polite about it all."

"When is it being broadcast?"

"Ugh, a little after I'm scheduled to leave, actually. By the time I… Get back, I imagine that all the excitement will have died down."

"An' I'm sure no one's gunna bear any grudges at all."

"You didn't say anything mean about anyone, did you?"

"Not… Especially. I couldn't risk giving out information on League member weaknesses to potential enemies, so I couldn't mention a lot of the things I got really exercised about. Ah, you getting on alright with your armour?"

Tora nods, smiling modestly. "It fits quite well, thank you. And I'm sure that if Bea was here she would say the same thing."

"Once you kicked her under the table a couple a' times, maybe."

Tora doesn't look totally happy with the description… But doesn't appear to be able to advance an argument against it.

"So anyway… "

"Yeah. Did, ah..? Do you know how King Orin..?"

"You ain't exactly his favourite Lantern right now, but I don't think he's plannin' on black ballin' yeh."

"No, I mean..? How are he and.. Koryak..?"

Guy shrugs. "I dunno. We're not that close. Think J'onn said something about him inviting the family down to Poseidonis this summer." I nod. "Course… You've got everybody wonderin' what dirty secrets you know about them." He looks at me as if he's expecting me to say something. I give my shoulders a slight shrug. "What, nothin'?"

"The Ophidian and I already gave you the best we had. That, and the chip on your shoulder you had about…" I look around the room, as more than a few people have their phones out and are recording us. "Green A. But you seem to have dealt with that. Actually… You're looking a lot greener than normal. Um. You and… Ion..? Doing anything?"

"He ain't still here, if that's what you mean." Guy thinks for a moment. "I dunno. After Oceanus went sploosh I just kinda… Snapped back. Things jus' seem kinda… Clearer, now. Like… I don't gotta worry about stuff I'm doing, y'know?"

I nod. Sounds a little like what I got out of bonding with the Ophidian. "I suppose you couldn't really hide this from the Guardians."

He shakes his head. "Nah. An' honestly? I don't think I shoulda done that the first time, neither."

"You could be right. I don't know them well enough. I was just… Worried. What have they said about it?"

"They wanna run some tests… Make sure I'm not gunna explode or nothin'." Tora's eyes widen, and her head whips around to stare at him. "Whu-? Oh, no, no, that was just Guardian Kontross gettin' his dress in a twist 'cause they didn't plan fer this."

"Are you sure that you're not in trouble? I could… Come with you..? If that would help."

"Ah… They said just me. I mean, they probably just didn't want me t'bring Orange-" He nods my way. "-with me, but… Kinda covers you as well." He shrugs. "Sorry, babe. Look, it's as much fer my own health as anythin'. I'll probably be back in a couple a' days. A week, tops. I'll just-." He glances across the restaurant, blinking as he sees.. the wall clock. "Ah, heck. Listen Orange, there was a bunch a' other stuff I wan'ed t'talk about, but Tora an' me got a show t'get to-."

"Oh. Yeah." I shake my head, waving his concerns away with my right hand. "Go. Go. We can talk later."

"A'ight." Guy rises from his chair, then offers Tora a totally superfluous but mildly gallant hand up. "Oh! Yeah." Guy focuses on me as Tora puts her jacket back on. "Green Arrow said he wan'ed t' talk t' you about somethin'. Wouldn't tell me what it was."

I nod. "Thank you for letting me know. I've got a sneaking suspicion that he's not going to be the last."

"Yeah, well, you made the bed, you get t' clean the sheets." He and Tora link arms as they head towards the doors. "Or whatever."

Yes, I rather suspect that I.. do. Not all that hard to work out what Mister Queen wants to talk about, considering what I revealed to King Orin. I stand up, pushing my chair back. Ring, current location of Green Arrow?

Green Arrow is located on the Watchtower.

Right then. Zeta tube.

The waiter who'd been heading my way takes a step back as the orange circle appears, the other diners not even bothering to hide their interest. With a royal wave at them, I step through.

23rd June

19:51 GMT

"Recognised, Orange Lantern, B zero six."

Mister Queen turns from where he'd been standing staring down at the Earth. "Guy talk to you already?"

I amble in his direction. "He said that you wanted to see me."

He nods, not meeting my eyes. "You know what this is about?" He closes his eyes for a moment, shaking his head. "Empathic vision, right."

"I don't use that as a matter of routine, sir." I extend a sound baffle around us. "But… If you know, and you know that I know… I'm not sure that I know why you want to talk to me." I hesitate. "Just in case we are actually talking about two separate things-."

"Connor Hawke. My son."

"I have his current address and phone number, if you want them."

He bows his head, shaking it as he does so. "God… I don't know. I don't have Aquaman's excuse. Moonday told me she was pregnant. At first I didn't believe her, then… I was.. a jerk. I just…"

"It's not much of a secret that you only straightened your life out after coming back from that island, sir."

He looks up. "Yeah, but it's like… Being an alcoholic. You realise you've got a problem and you try and get help, your friends help you. I only met Dinah after I became Green Arrow. She knows I used to be a…"

"Tearaway, sir?"

"Whatever you want to call it. But she thinks I'd stopped doing that."

"You didn't father Connor-."

He frowns, looking straight at me. "No. But I knew he was out there, and I didn't do a thing about it. About him."

I shrug. "Are you planning on doing so now?"

He exhales slowly. "Yeah. Yeah, I think I am. Gimme that phone number. I can work out what I'm gunna say to Dinah afterwards."

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Last Supper 14

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24th June

20:27 GMT -5

I stare out across the Metropolis skyline towards LexCorp Tower. Lex is in his office, putting in his usual full working day. I'll say this for him, he's certainly hard working. Aside from having his desk repositioned so that it faces the window, an external observer wouldn't notice any difference in his behaviour from the norm. Not unless they knew exactly what they were looking for. The attempt to send a message to a burnable phone in Savage's possession. The satellite picture of Brain's mountain fastness.

The updated Will.

In a hotel room off to my right the FBI monitoring team are preparing for the shift change, writing up their notes and downing the last of their coffee. The whole policing situation is a bit.. confused, at the moment. The legislation for the organisation currently bearing the placeholder name of 'Department of Extranormal Operations' is still in committee. Jon needs it to be something Republicans and Democrats broadly agree on, and not just because the Republicans currently control the House of Representatives. He -we, I suppose- need this to be the route America takes in dealing with their… Oddball freelance law enforcement/breaking types in future. If the next guy just takes it apart or if Congress just deny it all funding after their initial enthusiasm wanes, we'll end up with a worse mess than we started with.

Anyway, the FBI are doing this for now. Both the NSA and General Lane's people had a claim… As do local police. But the FBI had an existing investigation going on and people with the relevant skills on site, so they got it. General Lane didn't argue the point; with his people getting credit for Savage and him having operational command of Operation Light Switch, getting the job of monitoring Lex was penny ante stuff.

The roundup of Light operatives worldwide won't be complete for months, if then. But the infrastructure is already entirely in the hands of national authorities, and that's the killing blow we needed. A few facilities owned at several removed by LexCorp ended up getting included due to the uses the other Light members were putting them to. They haven't made more than local protests, though I assume that people further up the chain have been notified.

Chairman Jiang's people were thorough and lethal in their work. They made a point of not taking any Shadows alive, though he did hint that he had secured quite a lot of intelligence from them. I didn't ask if that included blackmail material, but whether by crook or by hook his standing in China has never been higher. The Justice League were -naturally enough- far less lethal in their arrests, which I suppose is to be commended. Batman escorted Ms al Ghul to Belle Reve himself. Perhaps he didn't want to risk her doing something stupid and causing the marines to shoot her. Brain's surviving people are being housed in the European Union's premier metahuman prison, a facility in Austria called The Labyrinth. I'd never heard of it before we started planning this, but then the comics did rather focus on the United States. Kal-El's on duty there as an additional guard, just in case there are any problems with the influx of new residents.

Which rather neatly means that he can't be here when I do this.

And now… Time to finish up. I flare my environmental shield as I step off the roof and float at some speed through the air. The FBI team were… Informed that I was in the area and planning on speaking with Lex, but they aren't accustomed to my melodramatic habits. This should provide them with a little entertainment. I spot Lex glance up from the document he's reading… Paper and not electronic, I note. Burn after reading? Or maybe he's just looking after his eyes. Curiously, the expected surge of yellow doesn't happen. Yes, given how he's behaved so far I was expecting him to face the end with dignity, but I was also expecting a little more of a reaction on his part.

Instead, he simply gathers up his papers and straightens them before laying them down just to the side of him. Next he straightens his tie, then he rests his hands in plain view on the desk before him.

I stop a metre from his office window, arms folded in front of me. I'm not sure how well he can see me; it's dark out here and the glow my ring generates does rather obscure fine detail. See if I can get a reaction. I fling my arms out to the side, ripping the window before me to shards of glass which float in a cloud of sharp edges around me! The wind whips through his office immediately, plant leaves rustling and the papers he so neatly positioned going flying from his desk. I pose for a moment, then allow myself to drift forwards through the hole before pulling the glass back together behind me.

"Lex."

He regards me for a moment, then reaches over to activate his desk intercom. "Mercy, that will be all for the evening."

"Mister Luthor-."

"Thank you." He takes his finger off the button and returns his attention to me. "I.. understand that you've dealt with our colleagues."

"Yes."

"I'm.. not sure.. what you hoped to-."

PFWOOOOSH! The door to his office explodes and Mercy marches in, her cybernetic arm in gun-mode. She aims at me and fires again, a beam of low power plasma splashing harmlessly on my cuirass. I march towards her once the shot ends, closing the distance as her weapon recharges. She fires again, this time aimed at my face.

"Mercy, no!"

I ignore Lex's outburst, raising my right hand to block the shot. It wouldn't have hurt much, but I only just got these eyes. I don't want to spend the rest of this encounter blinking to try and clear the spots. The energy discharge knocks my gauntlet back about one sixteenth of one inch, then fades as the weapon expends its power. I'm looming over her now as she puts her gun back into fist mode and swings it at my head. I catch it, wrapping my left hand around her forearm and then grabbing her torso with my right and lifting her bodily off the ground.

"No, no, no. This-" I wiggle her robotic right arm back and forth and she squirms in my grip. "-is not a threat to me."

"Grayven. Please, she isn't-."

"This is." Orange light flows over the arm, reconfiguring the weak Human cybernetics with a superior kind. Not Apokoliptian, she isn't a New God, but Qwardian robotics and prostheses were really rather good. I replace the qwa energy projector from the original design with a purple ray projector, and the skin with a more sophisticated version based on what the Korugarians use for their medical prosthesis. As the orange light fades I take a moment to appreciate my work.

Then I casually toss her in Lex's direction. He's standing now, genuine concern for her wellbeing giving his face an expression I've never seen on him before as she lands hard on her left shoulder.

"Ah-!"

"Lex, I've been doing some thinking." I fold my arms behind my back and slowly stroll in the direction of the front window. "I was trying to work out… Why you were doing this. Why you were working with a group of clearly deranged supervillains. And -try as I might- I couldn't work it out." I bring my left arm out in front of me for a moment, making a show of studying the orange ring. "Savage wanted to follow his Neanderthal instincts and club to death everyone who threatened his rule of the tribe. Ra's wanted to recreate some sort of nonexistent iron age idyll. Mordru and Brain wanted test subjects… But you?" I shake my head. "I genuinely can't work it out. It couldn't just be for the connections; you already knew those people. And anyway… You're as rich as a Human can practically get. Then I thought… Maybe it was killing Superman in a way that couldn't be traced back to you. But your allies could have done that at New Year and they didn't. So unless they just welched on the deal that couldn't be it."

In the reflection on the window I see him cautiously help Ms Graves up before regaining his composure. "I tried to help the Human race. I may not have been-."

"Why?"

Lex shakes his head. "I don't think I understand the question."

"I don't see your investment." I put my left arm behind my back, then turn to face him. "I'm invested in the future. In two hundred years I'll still be here, reaping whatever benefits humanity has enjoyed from my efforts. But you?" I shake my head. "You might live another fifty years in reasonable health. You have no heirs. You've never had any lasting romantic relationships, you have no close friends, you work three hundred and sixty four days a year -three hundred and sixty five on leap years- and use your one day off to do the exact same thing every year. You have a sister you never see, and I think there's a robot around here somewhere that sends your niece gifts at her birthday and Christmas. You're-."

"Actually, Mercy does it."

"You're the least Human Human I know, and I know Batman. So where's your investment? Why does it matter to you if superheroes rule the roost while everyone else gets their discarded crumbs? I'm genuinely fascinated to know."

He takes a moment to consider the question, eyes down, nodding to himself. "Pride." He looks me directly in the eyes, his face relaxed. "The one thing I believe in more than my own greatness is Human greatness. Klarion was a tool and Mordru was a mistake, but the rest of us were working to direct Human civilisation to more effectively-."

"No, you were building doomsday devices and diligently following the tropes of supervillainy with a nifty sounding motto."

"As opposed to what the Justice League does? Lording it over the world from an alien space station, divorced from all Human institutions save the small UN fig leaf? And you know from your own experience that they're happy to ignore that when it suits them. Time and time again, technologies… Minds, that could be advancing our understanding of the universe, that could revolutionise Human technology, are relegated to being used in pointless costumed brawls. And Humans learn all too well from the examples they see. I achieved this-" He holds his hands outward to the room, palms upwards. "-in two decades of hard work, leading tens, then hundreds, then thousands of other Humans. And iconoclastic characters from Saturday morning cartoons become figures of envy and admiration."

He looks away, shaking his head. "And you will make us the villains of the piece to justify another round of costumed mummery. You may as well kill me now. I don't have anything else to say to you, and I'd rather not die in a worse mood than I'm already in."

I shake my head. "No, I'm not going to kill you, Lex." He frowns at me, head cocked slightly to the side. Block all listening devices. "The original plan was to leave you and Queen Bee alive. She rather ruined that…"

"… I don't understand. You strengthened your position with President Horne. You probably could build the Earth up until you could harvest the useful parts for your army-."

"Because I agree with you. I have for a while. What I don't understand is why you thought the others would manage to keep to that ideal rather than reverting to type." He clams up. "I have a message for you from President Horne, and a task from me. The President is uncomfortable with the idea of arresting you. It disrupts the narrative too much, and you're too well connected. Keep your nose clean, pay your taxes and keep out of politics and you'll be allowed to continue on. Don't, and you won't live to see a courtroom."

He nods slowly. "And the task you wish for me to perform?"

"The Human race still needs someone kicking it up the arse. The Light were -for the most part- exactly the wrong people to do that. Far too… Crazy. In a few weeks, I will be taking a holiday from the Earth. When I return, I expect to find a new Light waiting for me. Rational people, who are prepared to do the actual job of advancing humanity without getting distracted by pointless feuding and egotism. Then, we will begin the great work of guiding the Human race into becoming great by its own efforts. Do we have an understanding?"

A very small nod.

"I'm glad." I turn and walk toward the doorway. "Lex. Ms Graves. I'll show myself out."

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Last Supper 15

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25th June

10:17 GMT -5

"…our partners around the world. I can announce that all members of the supervillain group who called themselves 'The Light' are now dead, and that almost all of their followers are either dead or in custody. Over the next few days, the work of-."

Someone mutes the television as President Jonathan Horne walks into the room. Since -as far as I know- no one outside the usual intelligence community suspects are likely to be eavesdropping, we're having this meeting in a normal briefing room. Happy faces all around; if this hasn't guaranteed their man's re-election then nothing will.

Oh, and the world has been saved from the King of Tears, so there's that.

Jon approaches his chair at the head of the table and takes a quick look around the room. "Sam?"

General Lane nods. "We got him. Johnny Sorrow is right now heading to a special containment facility, still trussed up in the gear Brain designed to keep him where they wanted him."

"That's excellent news. Excellent news. Grayven?"

"I've transcribed everything I recovered and passed it on to the appropriate authorities. Though I'm afraid that what I got still isn't quite everything." True to his professed ideology, he didn't try and cut any sort of deal in exchange for supplying the information. Wherever the enemies of mankind lurked, the governments of those regions got everything they needed, whether that be information or military aid. US commandos fought and in some cases died crushing the Shadows in South America and Africa. It's not just Jon who's coming out of this looking good; America's international reputation just got a major boost.

"One hundred percent would be too much to hope for. And the other thing?"

I nod. "I think Lex got the message."

He nods, satisfied. "Glad to hear it. Caroline?"

"It'll take a while for my people to go through everything, but we shouldn't have any trouble making sure that no one gets bail at least. Given how big this is… I'm afraid to say that the Department of Justice might have to request additional funding to take on more lawyers. On a temporary basis."

"You sure about that?"

"I don't imagine that we'll be getting another surge of cases like this for a good long time."

"Okay. I'm sure we can get something set up before it becomes urgent. John?"

"Mister President, right now you could conduct every southern Representative in a rendition of Rally 'Round the Flag and they wouldn't complain about it. The budget hawks might want a sunset clause written in, but you've easily got the votes to push through whatever sort of bill you want in spite of them."

Jon shakes his head. "No. I want to bring as many people with us on this as possible. This isn't a victory for the Democratic Party, this is a victory for America and for the entire world. If Caroline doesn't think it'll be a problem, a sunset clause is fine." They both nod. "Let's… See if we can't get the Destructive Persons Act through committee a little faster. Ah, Adrian?"

"Mister President?"

"Set up some meetings. Don't beat any brows over this. This needs to be as bipartisan as possible. Throw them a few.. minor amendments, if that's what it takes."

"I have to agree with John, sir. I really don't think I'll need to."

"Well. The option's there. Henry still behaving himself?"

"He was starting to grow his spine back. I think, ah…" Adrian nods at the silent screen, showing prisoners from Infinity Island being marched onto transport ships by the marines attached to the 4th Fleet. "I think this'll remind him who's in charge."

"Don't be too hard on the guy. He's not a bad man. Just ill-informed. Oh." He looks down at his chair, as if surprised that he isn't sitting in it. "Got a bit carried away there." There's a little very polite laughter as he slides it out and sits down. "Okay. This.. Department of Extranormal Affairs we're creating."

Sam leans forwards slightly. "I've already got CID people lined up to transfer over for the investigation branch, and a few promising metahumans for a strike team. It might be worth-."

"I'm.. I'm sorry." I raise my right hand. "I was under the impression this was going to be a civilian agency?"

Sam shrugs. "Sure, eventually. But I've already got the infrastructure in place. It'll be easier to adapt existing teams than build them up from scratch. It really makes more sense to start it out as part of my command."

"But the long term aim here is to bring as many free range superheroes as possible into the fold. Starting this off as a military project is going to put a lot of them off. Plus, you'd be blurring the divide between law enforcement and military action. A lot of your job now is weapon development. I can see some foreign governments being a little concerned-."

"I do know how civilian law works, Grayven."

"I'm not saying you don't. And if you wanted to resign your commission to take the directorship, you'd have my support. I'm sure that you've got the ability, I just don't think-."

"Have you got any idea how long-?" He blinks, sitting back in his seat. "So that's your angle."

"My angle?"

"You want to head up the civilian end yourself." Oh goodness no. "You know what?" He nods. "I'm actually okay with that. Probably do people good to see a superhero running the show. You could take my people as a temporary thing, replace them when you've got your own agents ready. And I'm sure Robert-" He looks down the table to the Director of the FBI. "-can have some of his people transfer over permanently."

He nods. "I was kinda assuming that would happen."

There are entirely too many smiling faces at this table right now. I shake my head. "Looooook. Grateful as I am to have my name under consideration, I'm afraid that I would have to decline. I don't think that having an alien who isn't even a US national in that sort of position is even legal, and I'd been planning to spend some time away from Earth once this mess with the Light was straightened out."

Jon nods. "Sure you won't reconsider? It would do wonders for public confidence."

"I'll support whoever takes the position, and I'll make sure they can get hold of me. But, yes, I'm sure."

"Very well. Robert, Sam, Keith, Michael, Todd… Prepare dossiers on three of your people each for consideration. We can go into more detail when we've got a better idea of what the job will entail." Five nods. "I'd rather make it a civilian from the get go, so, Sam? Make sure anyone you submit details on knows that."

"Yes sir."

"Okay. Now, I-. Oh, I meant to start with this. Grayven, I don't totally understand why this needs to come from me directly, but…" His personal aide comes forwards and hands him a thin manila folder. "As requested, one full Presidential Pardon for your informant."

He hands it over to me, and I take it with a grin. "Thank you, Mister President. Since you're curious, according to Apokoliptian custom it needs to come directly from you because we're… Feudal. Handing it to me yourself shows that I'm a valued retainer while getting someone else to do it says that I'm not worth your time."

"That's, ah… That's interesting. Now, you understand that while that covers any crimes Miss Jade Nguyen committed inside the United States and would prevent her extradition from the United States for other offenses, if she gets arrested anywhere else… We can't help."

"Not to worry, Mister President." I open the folder and check the pardon over. Perfect. "I plan to take her off planet with me for our honeymoon."

Jon seems to take that in his stride. "I suppose it would be a rather dull affair without her. I hadn't realised that you were married."

I roll the Pardon document into a tight cylinder, then take the ring I'd chosen out of subspace and slide it through. "We're not, yet. But I want to fix that as soon as possible. In fact, do you..? Need me for anything else… Right now?"

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Last Supper 16

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26th June

04:26 GMT +13

I exit the hush tube into a corridor in the Paihia Beach Resort Hotel and start heading in the directopn of Jade's room.

"Would you like to.. swing on a star?

Carry moonbeams home in a jar?"

Guess the League of Shadows pays its people alright. Used to pay them alright.

"And be better off than you are?

…

Or would you rather be a mule?"

In my left hand, a bouquet of freshly plucked roses. Thorns still on. In my right hand, Presidential Pardon and engagement ring. Haven't got the actual wedding ring yet. She's going to want to be involved in that decision, and I still remember -and how sad is it that this is my best reference?- that in Sex and the City Carrie had a bit of an episode after Aidan proposed with a rubbish ring. This engagement ring is a simple platinum band with a representation of her genetic structure picked out in silver. I did consider something a bit more… Technological, but I didn't want to give her something she'd have to take off when she decides what super power she wants. A ring made from two non-magnetic metals should be pretty safe. And anyway, you can't fit a weapon worth a damn in a ring. Not without replacing the finger.

Speaking of, I've got my proximal phalanx back. Hooray for the mana infuser. Even with all of the running around I've been doing, it could still buff my regeneration enough to regrow an entirely missing component. I need to see about seeing Zatanna before I leave, see if she's had any ideas about the personal version.

Maybe I could make that a ring? Functional and decorative. And I can't quite stop myself thinking 'like Jade herself'. Is that offensive? She's pretty, lives without regrets and can kill people without being a complete psycho about it. Or being reduced to a neurotic wreck about it. I am truly privileged to have her in my life, in a way I just couldn't imagine before coming here. If I do ever find out who was responsible for that… I'm going to punch them less hard than I originally planned.

"A mule is an animal with long, funny ears,

He kicks up at anything he hears."

I'm not wearing my visor at the moment, so I give myself a quick burst of augmented vision. Plenty of sleeping people, a few employees on night duty… Jade's awake. Bit of a privacy violation there, but I didn't want to burst in if she was asleep. Not like waiting a few hours would kill me.

Ah, hell. I was thinking about doing this anyway… I awkwardly slide my yellow ring off my right ring finger. I mean, there's no way she would be able to keep up with me without augmentation when we go to Vega, but a power ring will be a decent placeholder. And Sinestro can't complain, because he's already off my finger!

Right, rings, Pardon, flowers. Ah… I twist my left hand awkwardly, trying not to put pressure on the flowers as I knock on Jade's door.

Inside, I see her look up instantly, and press… Some sort of device.

"Ah..? Who is it?"

The voice is that of a middle aged Australian man, speaking as if he just woke up. A recording. Clever not to use her own voice. I lean forwards so that my mouth is next to the wood of the door. "Mister… White.. Ven."

She crosses the room in an instant, pulling the door open as I blink to dismiss my visual augmentation. "Were you followed?"

"Flowers!" I gently push the bouquet towards her.

She looks at me over the top of the roses. "Is this really the-?" She cuts herself off with an exhalation, then reaches forwards and grabs the flowers by the wrapping paper before stepping backwards into her room. "Is this really the time to be bringing me flowers?"

"I haven't seen you for over a week, so… Yes. Yes it is." She tosses the flowers onto her settee and then stands in a somewhat dejected pose in the middle of the room. "You know, if you put them in water they could last for-."

"How can you be so calm? The Justice League just destroyed the League of Shadows."

"It was.. really more of a joint exercise. It was the Fourth Fleet that took Infinity Island, the Great Ten who wound up operations in-."

"How do you-?" She takes a breath to steady herself. I'm honestly not sure what she's so worked up about. "How do you know they're not coming after me next? This isn't a safe house, but they've got my name and face." She turns away, heading towards the toilet. "How could they have learned so much? Batman spent years trying to-."

"I told them." She stops dead, facing away from me. "As I said during our first conversation, the plan was always to destroy the Shadows. Once I knew enough. Of course, knowing what I know now I obviously had to destroy the rest of the Light as well. Took some doing."

"V… Vandal Savage is immortal."

I nod cheerfully. "That's what he said, too. And as Lex Luthor would say… Wrong!" Heh. "Just a matter of disintegrating his entire body and eating his soul, like I did with your father. Good luck coming back from that." I exhale. "Look, I… Realise that you might have some… Lingering attachment for the people who took you in after you left home, but their latest plan had about a twelve percent chance of destroying this planet and everyone on it. And about a forty percent chance of inflicting deaths in the hundreds of millions."

"So… You're.. a hero again."

"Really more of an anti-hero. Paragon types don't have my body count. So, anyway: I've got your Presidential Pardon right here. If anyone asks, you were instrumental in getting me vital intelligence."

"Vital…"

"That's officially why you're getting it. Pardoning a friend's girlfriend doesn't go over that well with Congress. I'll talk to Chairman Jiang, but China doesn't pardon people very often. You'll probably just have to… Avoid the place." Hm. About time. I kneel down, ring-bound Pardon balancing on my upturned palms. "Jade, I want to ask you something-."

"You could have been one of the rulers of the world."

Um. Okay? Semi-witty reply? "I.. wouldn't want to rule a world.. that would.. have me as its ruler?"

"And you… Just… Was.. our relationship.. just… Cover? For you?"

I grin. Oh, is that all she's worried about! "Turn around and find out."

"Get out."

I.. frown. "I'm..? Sorry?"

"I trusted you, Ra's al Ghul trusted you-."

"I did.. say. If you thought that I'd.. changed my mind, then-."

She wheels around and-. I've misjudged this rather severely.

"You used me as cover and you betrayed everyone." She turns, reaching into her jacket and pulling out a pair of knives. "Get out. Get out now."

"B-. B..I…" I sort of wiggle the scroll in my hands. This… This..?

What?

"Get out!"

She steps towards me, knives held in a combat stance.

Why-?

She slashes at my hands, and I shuffle backwards in case she hurts herself when the knife jars out of her hand.

W-what-?

"Jade, please, I-."

Another frantic slash and I stand, stepping backwards.

"Jade, I would never-."

"I never. Want. To see you. Again." She's breathing fast, and…

Wh-w-wh..?

"GET OUT!"

I stare…

I…

…

I…

F-father Box, hush tube.

Ploong. He comes.

back

Last Supper 17

next

25th June

09… something, GMT -6

She…

My breath comes out as a whimper.

Sheshe…

"Erauh…"

Okay… O-okay. That happened. I-I guess I guess I should have… Reconfirmed that we were on the s-same page.

I walk down the corridor between the entrance to Challenger Mountain and the living quarters in what I distantly appreciate is something of a daze. The G-Gnomes are apparently finding it fascinating, sitting along the walkway and staring blankly, their horns aglow.

Jade… Jade's…

And it… Appears… That I have lost the capacity for tears.

I'm not sure it would help but but but at this point, I'd…

Okay. It's Sunday. Lynne… Is probably here. I need to… Pull myself together. A bit. I stop walking, raise my hands to my scrunched up face and just hold them there. I hold them there as my ragged breathing slows a little, as my shoulders ease back a little from their hunch.

Alright.

Maybe.. when she calms down a little, she m-m-m-ight-might-might-.

I dig my fingernails into my face.

…

Some time has passed. I'm not sure how much, but I'm… I'm not any happier… In fact, I'd say I that I'm downright miserable. But the shock of her rejection has at least… Dimmed, a little. I… I don't really know what to do with myself now. My plans… They all involved her… I start walking towards the living room. I mean… Yes, I suppose that I… Should go to Vega anyway. Kill Larfleeze, take the Central Power Battery… Make sure that Tamaran is more or less alright.

Ugh.

To be honest, how I'm feeling right now? I could just not come back. Lynne could travel to school by boom tube… Or I could just get a telepath to tutor her, someone who comes from a telepathic species. She could go to school with the Tamaranean children. I doubt that she'd… Mind.

No. It's an entertaining fantasy, and at the moment I really would. But I'm sure that in a day or two, I'll feel a bit better. A bit more rational. Just.. avoid making any major decisions… Maybe avoid people until I know that I won't explode at any of them… I don't feel particularly explosive, but… I've changed a lot this year.

I close my eyes and breathe out.

Alright. Just.. spend the day watching television. See if there's something on that Lynne wants to watch, put her on my lap and let my brain go to sleep. That sounds like a… An acceptable idea. Feeling a little more like myself, I push open the living room door and-.

!!!

"Hello, my son."

Self=Darkseid

Darkseid sits quite calmly in my chair, a clearly terrified Lynne silently weeping on his left knee. His left arm lays on the arm of the chair while his right hand closes a book… Victoria, which he then puts on the table.

Self=Darkseid

"Father." I bow while I wait for any idea of how to handle this situation to occur to me. "I had no idea you were coming."

Self=Darkseid

"Do I need a reason to visit my family? My… Only grandchild?"

Self=Darkseid

Since we seem to be doing this informally… I straighten up, and see that his right hand is now gently stroking Lynne's hair. Thinkthinkthink! "Of course not, Father. But if I'd known I could have laid on some sort of entertainment. Or at least food. Has my seneschal offered you anything?"

Self=Darkseid

"I regret that this will have to be a short visitation. I am here to offer my congratulations."

Self=Darkseid

"Thank you, Father. What.. particular part of my actions here have.. earned them?"

Self=Darkseid

"You are too modest, Grayven. I refer of course to your recent betrayal and utter ruination of the other members of the organisation which you called… The Light. I must admit, when you accepted such a subordinate position, I was… Sceptical. Even after you defeated Devilance and Brimstone, I had thought that your sojourn into the Bleed had reduced you to the level of Kalibak: that of a thoughtless brute. But I see that instead it has taught you patience and cunning, traits that are entirely absent in him. This pleases me."

Self=Darkseid

"I'm glad to know that you approve, Father. I will admit, I was concerned that you might look unfavourably upon my way of operating. Being so contrary as it is to the style of Apokolips."

Self=Darkseid

"I have turned Apokolips into an extension of my own self. But having done so, there is a limit to what else it can teach me. By studying your actions and decisions, I will learn more of myself."

Self=Darkseid

His glowing eyes and rocky face reveal no expression. I have no idea what he's really thinking, why he's… Here. I have no idea how to handle this. "I am humbled at the idea, Father."

Self=Darkseid

"I particularly like the way in which you refused to take a formal position in their government. It has been some considerable time since I operated so indirectly myself. It stirred… Old memories. Nonetheless, it is important to me that your successes.. and your failures.. are your own."

Self=Darkseid

I've got no idea what he means. Beyond the obvious. He's giving every impression of believing that I'm Grayven, but at the same time he's showing that he has considerable information on exactly what I've been doing here. I'm not sure how he's been getting it. I've checked every so often and there haven't been any other New Gods on Earth-.

Self=Darkseid

Ploong.

Self=Darkseid

No.

Self=Darkseid

Ploong.

Self=Darkseid

You-.

Self=Darkseid

"Something troubles you, my son? I could not help but notice the absence of your consort, Jade Nguyen. I do hope that she is not unwell."

Self=Darkseid

"No. Thank you for your concern, Father, but she is quite well. We… Had a… Disagreement about… Work…"

Self=Darkseid

"Ah. I understand."

Self=Darkseid

I think that's a smile. Is this… Apokoliptian father-son bonding? Scott described the whole civilisation as rather different, but I suppose that Darkseid's never had a son so apparently on his wavelength as I appear to be. He gently picks up Lynne and deposits her on the floor before rising. As Lynne collapses, hugging her knees to her chest, he takes a few steps over towards me. We're actually about the same height, though he's a little broader.

Self=Darkseid

"When it comes to romantic relationships, I really have only one observation for you. Perhaps you may learn something from it."

Self=Darkseid

"What would that be?"

Self=Darkseid

"When one is in love, everything is right in the universe. One's enemies are less significant, one's trouble at one remove, one's ambitions closer to realisation. And then something happens, something causes that emotion to curdle, to sour in our souls. This artfully draws our attention to a fundamental truth of the universe. One with which we are now both well acquainted."

Self=Darkseid

"Truth, Father?"

Self=Darkseid

"Yes, my son."

Self=Darkseid

He lays his right hand on my left shoulder, then leans forwards slightly so that his mouth is next to my right ear.

Self=Darkseid

"Life=Pain."

back

Last Supper 18

next

27th June

12:32 +3 GMT

The crowd fills the forum of Themyscira City completely, not just overflowing into the surrounding streets but leaning out of the windows of the surrounding houses. Due to the clement climate and their limited technology, Themyscira started using glass for windows only since Diana returned from America the first time. Most houses just make do with shutters, which are being pushed aside so that the residents… And probably their friends, neighbours and.. just whoever shows up can either lean out or climb up onto the roofs.

All watching as my fraction-of-real-size hologram of Kon slams into Oceanus' helmet.

There's a gasp, and a pushing in the crowd as Oceanus collapses 'towards' them, calming only as the image loses integrity before hitting them. Guy's shield is still in place, though I'm depicting him with Ion floating just behind him as the truth doesn't really suit a visual medium. The image of me then flies down into the steam, Diana and Kal-El shortly behind me. The image then dissolves, switching to me flying Kon out to safety.

Yes, by Amazon standards the image presented is a fairly homoerotic one, but I hope that they'll overlook-.

Kon cringes slightly as the crowd turn towards us, cheering and-. I blink as I'm hit in the face by a shawl. What? Oh, right. Throwing clothes at performers is how Greeks show approval. They're clapping too, the applause echoing off the walls of the buildings until it sounds like it's coming from all directions.

Or perhaps it genuinely is.

"Sisters!" Queen Hippolyta is standing on a construct platform just ahead of me, her arms raised to focus her countrywomen's attention. "You have witnessed the valour of my grandson this day! He won the highest blessing of Helios and used it to defeat a Titan, the ancient foes of the Olympians!"

That's not quite how it works, and from the slight wince on Donna's face I know that I'm not the only one aware of that. Diana takes that as the signal to hug Kon from behind, making him cringe more.

"Can there still be any doubt that he is worthy of his title?!"

"No!"

The crowd don't quite cry that out as one, but it's not far off.

"Do you agree then, that we should amend our law and allow this man, this hero, into the line of succession?!"

"Yes!"

Queen Hippolyta smiles, and I… Well, that's one way to do it. Public holograms are something Diana never tried to introduce and they're far more immediate than word of mouth or plays. Kon doesn't seem to care one way or another, but I know that Diana and Queen Hippolyta regard this as one way to help my… Social engineering project. Give the Amazons male heroes.

Donna sidles over to me as Kon is shoved towards the front of the floating platform. "You could have come and got me, you know? I might have been able to talk him down."

"Diana tried. And, we're still not sure whether Orm was influencing him or not. You're not… Quite as tough as Diana. The lightning bolts she took might have killed you." She looks a little dubious. "Yes, it was something we could have tried and yes, it might have worked. But I'm afraid that I'm… A little less hesitant to use lethal force than an ideal superhero would be, when the aggressor is as dangerous as he is. If you want, I can give you a lift to Porto Santo. The magic holding Oceanus inside isn't absolute; you could probably still talk to him."

"Thank you. I think I should try, at least."

"Um…" Oratory might have been a common skill amongst Ancient Greek political leaders, but Kon wasn't programmed with much in the way of public speaking skill and hasn't taken the time to learn it. I'm… Not sure that Queen Hippolyta has realised that. He takes a look at the crowd, his admirers and countrywomen gazing up at him and waiting for him to speak. I make momentary eye contact with the faintly scowling Clyemne and smile at her. "Thank you? I-." He glances back at Diana, who smiles reassuringly. "A.. little under a year ago, I got my first glimpse of the world outside of the pod where Cadmus grew me. My first chance to interact with real people. It took a while before I learned to really appreciate the skills they had and how much.. of an impact they could have on my life." This time he looks back at me. "And I like to think I've… Made an impression on them as well. And not always just with my fists."

There's a little polite laughter as he takes a moment while he works out where he's going-. No. He knows where he's going, he's just not entirely sure how to get there. Several of those present have watched while he spars with various volunteer Heraklya. He doesn't usually win, but he's doing better than most one year olds would.

"I'm not really sure I'm ready to be a prince. I'm certainly not gunna be ready to take the throne any time soon. But I'm learning as fast as I can. If I'm not worthy now, I will become worthy. It is a great honor you have bestowed upon me, and I will live up to its demands."

"Pavlos." I look left as Queen Hippolyta speaks my name. "The rest of this will be a… I believe my daughter has referred to them as 'meet and greet sessions'. If you wish to absent yourself, you may do so."

"Thank you." I nod, floating the platform backwards towards a solid-looking rooftop. The forum isn't really designed for public events of this size. Maybe I should have done this in the amphitheatre instead? But this is where the crowd was, and… That was the point. To get across a heroic tale from 'Man's World'. Once the royal party is safely down on a solid surface I eliminate the construct and turn away, floating in an arc in the direction of the closest empty street.

"Where are you off to?" Donna's following on behind me, apparently considering my dismissal to include her as well.

"In less than two weeks, I'm leaving the Earth. Possibly for years." I wonder if that counts if Klarion or Nabu manage to kill me? There's a good chance I'd end up in Erebos… "So there are more than a few things I need to get settled first."

Donna nods, pulling up alongside me as I head down into the streets. "You know, I didn't really think about it until Megan handed me the invitation, but Kon's birthday is on the fourth of July."

"Yes?"

She looks at me as we touch down, her head bowing slightly as she maintains the stare. "The fourth of July? In America-."

"Treason Day, I know. I think half the reason why Zatanna's so enthusiastic about it is that it's the only way she could ever persuade me to take part."

"You know, after midday, saying things like that is a pretty good way to start a fight in some places."

"Why after midday?"

"Most people hesitate to take a swing at a guy whose eyes glow orange. But once they get a few beers in them…"

"We're doing the party mid-afternoon and into the evening, and most of us aren't old enough to drink."

"Right. Because that always stops teenagers."

"And I can… Probably avoid making remarks likely to undermine the American nation." … "For a day."

She nods as we enter a building and start up the stairs. "Are you leaving right after?"

"No, I'm planning on leaving on the eighth. Assuming that nothing comes up." I suppose I.. could ask Mister Free to boom tube me part of the way. It would save a good deal of time… Mm, can't hurt to ask. I stop outside my destination and knock on the door with my right fist.

Donna grins. "What, is this your secret Amazon love-" Iola opens the door, her abdomen swollen with a six month old foetus. Donna's eyes widen. "-neeeest?"

"Pavlos!" Iola steps out of her house and carefully embraces me. "It is good to see you!"

"Just thought I'd give you a quick check up while I'm here. Have you noticed any-?"

"Uh. As I have told my mother, my grandmother, my great great and many more greats grandmothers and every single one of my cousins, I am fine. Practice contractions, uncomfortable stretching, anal bleeding and clumsiness are all perfectly normal parts of pregnancy."

"Okay, then.. I.. guess I'm just here for the imaging scan. Assuming that you want to-."

"Oh yes! Tekla!" She turns away, heading back into the house. "Pavlos wants to show us what our daughter looks like!"

I take a hologram projector out of subspace. Hope this goes better than last time.

9th May

12:32 +3 GMT

Iola looks uncertainly at the holographic image.

"Is it.. supposed to look like that?"

back

Last Supper 19

next

1st July

20:32 -5 GMT

This is going to be uncomfortable.

This will be the first time that I've spent any time in the company of Mister Luthor since the citizenship ceremony. The first time I've been alone with him but for Ms Graves since he decided to double down on his allegiance with the Light. It's… I'm not used to being impolite to people who are being polite to me. In fact… I'm usually pretty polite to people who are being impolite to me. And I know that he's going to make some reference to it, some snide comment about 'turning into Superman' or something. And I won't get annoyed. It always sounds a bit stupid to me when people say it, but I really am just disappointed.

I float down towards his office window… Given how often this sort of thing happens, he really should look into getting an external entrance put in or something. As I drop into view the woman -Miss Teschmacher- on the far side of Lex's desk starts, stepping back and pointing. Lex doesn't move for a moment, then leans back and twists slightly in his seat to look my way. No real reaction in his face, but he then turns back to his guest and says something that has her bob her head and exit the room with some speed, Ms Graves opening the door for her.

Ring, phone Lex Luthor.

Unable to comply.

Alright then. Electron inductor construct.

The strange and vaguely ray gun like device manifests just in front of me, pointing at Lex's desk phone. It's actually a tool of intelligence gathering, capable of remotely reading or generating patterns of electrical activity. Seems a bit.. daft to have to use it to make a telephone call, but there we go. Unless he's got a force field generator around the phone, this should work fine. I pick up the construct handset. Ring, try now.

Connection established.

This time, Lex picks up the telephone and stands, turning around to look at me. "Orange Lantern. It's been a little while."

"Would you mind if I came in, Mister Luthor?"

He steps away from the window, a polite smile on his lips. "By all means."

I dismiss the construct and trigger my armour's phasing system, floating forwards and p-.

I tap the exterior of the window. Huh. I'd known that phase disrupting technologies exist, of course. But… Ring, manual phase shift.

Compliance.

Orange light flares around me as the ring directly aids my armour, an effect not unlike the flame aura Alan gets when he uses his ring. See, while a force field can block certain types of exotic effect, unlike with magic it's a simple 'who has the most power' fight. And I have two power rings in addition to my armour's bleed torsion generator while Mister Luthor is restricted to Human technologies. Of course, if he's somehow secretly replaced his glass with some sort of phase shifting material…

I move forward, passing through the window and.. probably overloading whatever was generating the effect. Lex himself doesn't seem unduly troubled, simply walking around to the far side of his desk and putting the phone down.

"May I offer you something to drink?"

"No, thank you." I dismiss the effect and return my armour to subspace, taking out a hologram projector as I do so. "But please, feel free to drink yourself."

"I'm really more of a social drinker. What.. brings you into my office today?"

"Power armour with pink force fields. Mister Luthor, the agreement was that you would share everything that you learned from the OMAC technology."

"And I have. STAR Labs and the Justice League have received a copy of every test and every scan. I did not agree to share data on every technology LexCorp developed from what we learned. We didn't simply… Cut parts out of them."

"Fair enough, I suppose." I take a quick look around the room. Doesn't look like anything else has changed. "What do those things retail for?"

"I'm afraid that's a confidential matter. Was… That what you came here to talk about? The armour?"

"No. No, it wasn't." I give him my full attention. "I'm here because I want to get a message to someone and I think… No. I know you can help."

"I'll do my best. Might I enquire as to the identity of the recipient?"

His tone is polite, enquiring… Helpful, even. "Klarion the Witch Boy."

His face grows sombre, his brows frowning. "Wasn't that the name of the individual primarily responsible for the Roanoke Island event?"

"Yes."

"I'm.. not sure why you think-."

"Mister Luthor. As I said before, I know full well that you're a member of the Light. Not to the extent that I can prove it in court-" Yes, there's the picture. A meeting of the members of the Light. Meeting Klarion caused just enough fear for a trace to become visible inside him. "-but enough for my own purposes. I offered you an out, you didn't take it. So… I may as well take advantage."

Lex thinks for a moment, his eyes dipping to the floor. "If we say… For the purpose of this conversation, that I could pass on a message to him, what exactly would that message contain?"

I nod, walking a little further into the room. "The Light knows from the Justice League's files that the Lord of Order Nabu is currently occupying the body of Mister Giovanni Zatara. I want to remove him. Unfortunately, I lack the… Skills required. Lords of Order are rather… Resilient."

"You intend to ask him for help? I'm rather surprised. He's responsible for the deaths of-."

"I'm not keen on it, and any arrangement we come to will last exactly as long as it takes to get rid of Nabu. But I… Need him."

"I doubt that someone like that would simply volunteer their services."

"I have his cat hostage. I'm willing to return her, in exchange for his cooperation." I feel a flicker of yellow… He doesn't want Klarion back at full power. Nice to know that he hasn't completely taken leave of his senses. "Ideally, I would like to meet up with him tomorrow to discuss the matter. On Roanoke, where the ritual took place."

"I.. was.. rather under the impression that he hated you. From what you've said-."

"Oh, he does. But he can always kill me after taking advantage of my offer."

"Well…" Lex shrugs with his forearms, hands turned upwards. "In the extraordinarily unlikely event that I come across him-."

I hold up the hologram projector, and an image of Mister Truggs materialises.

"It will devastate everything on the Atlantic rim. But you know we're going to try and stop him. Why are you telling me?"

"I work for the Light. But my actual employer is… Our mutual friend. And-."

"Lex Luthor is rather quite attached to Metropolis. He wants action on supers, but he doesn't actually want the attack to be successful."

"Sounds reasonable ta me."

"If Klarion doesn't show up, that gets released to whatever news stations want it." I close the hologram down. "Not conclusive, and certainly not admissible in court. But that wouldn't be the point. The point would be to associate you in the minds of the general public with Klarion. The point would be to hound you. The drawback of secret identities… Is that they matter when you can't use them any more. Can I assume that Klarion is going to be there?"

back

Last Supper 20

next

2nd July

19:45 -5 GMT

"…which meant that I had to change a few cards which affect mutual tension so that they move it two places."

Zatanna cautiously leafs through my binder. "Okay. That.. sounds like it makes sense."

"And adding the game AI means that you don't have to remember whose turn it is, or what different things are doing."

"Wouldn't it be easier to just put it all on a computer?"

I glare. "Heresy."

She holds her hands up in mock surrender. "'kay."

"I also got rid of the need to use a card to declare war, because-."

"Hsssssssss-hhakk-kk-k."

My Babylon 5 folder goes back into subspace and construct armour appears around both me and Zatanna as Teekl hisses in the general direction of the tree line. Zatanna stares in the direction of Teekl's ire as she takes a firm grip on her staff. Her new armour is a little more sensible than the Sororitas gear she wore during the assault on Black Manta's base, and does far more to empower her magic. It's mithril based, since I doubted that she was up to fighting in anything heavier without power support she hasn't trained to use. Combined with my new generation mage slayers, we might well be able to kill Klarion without using exotic techniques.

Not that I've done anything so stupid as leaving the Sword of the Fallen at home.

Talking the warden into closing the memorial down for a couple of days wasn't that hard. It's not really all that popular anyway. We just had to say that we wanted to check that Oceanus' summoning hadn't caused any of the spells here to reactivate. Which technically could happen. That left us with plenty of time to make our preparations, but we still didn't have any idea when Klarion would actually turn up. If he would at all. So we've been stuck waiting here.

Klarion himself steps slowly into view, eyes glowing purple and an expression of severe disgruntlement on his face. "Stoopid… Cat." Wisps of purple smoke curl around his fingers, but aside from one or two facial… Oddities, he looks more or less Human.

"Raowraowraowraowraow!"

"Nobody asked you!"

"Klarion."

He walks clockwise around the clearing. "Don't even think I'm coming any closer!"

"Klarion, if I wanted you dead-" I tap the pommel of the Sword with my right forefinger. "-you'd be dead. Or bound. Remember New Year?"

"You know, at the time, I really couldn't work out why you tied Nabu up with me."

"I'm assuming that Lex told you everything I told him."

Klarion taps his lower lip with his right forefinger. "I don't think I was meant t' confirm that. And I don't really think anyone would believe me." His eyes glow brilliant purple as he throws his arms wide! "Hey everybody! Orange Lantern and me have totally been working together the whole time!"

"Klarion."

"It's a novel experience for me! Hating two people and hating them this much!" In an instant he calms again. "Maybe I should just tell Nabu that you're plotting against him. Maybe I'll just watch and see who wins. That oughta be fun."

"You could do that. I suppose it all depends on how much you want to be a Lord of Chaos again." His eyes narrow. "I'm sure-."

"I'm still a Lord of Chaos!" Klarion whips his right hand back and then swings it forward, a burning purple ball heading our way!

Zatanna raises her staff. "Eb edamnu!" The Star Sapphire flares violet, then Klarion's ball detonates in a blast of violet. "Who's using baby magic now, oh great Lord of Chaos?"

"Why can't I just hate you to death!"

"We've been over that. You're not currently attached to the Plane of Chaos. Thus, the overwhelming power you're accustomed to is cut off. And I'm sure that you've tried... Performing the ritual again. Fixing it yourself. Any luck so far?"

"What d'you want?"

"Let's not kid ourselves. You hate me, I hate you. The moment any agreement we come to is over, we'll try and kill each other." He grins. "But. You also hate Nabu… And you really really want your full power back. So… Let's make a deal."

"You want me to get all my power back? That doesn't sound too smart." He frowns. "Truggs keeps saying that you're the smart one. What are you up to?"

"I have a plan to deal with Nabu, and for it to work you need to try to reconnect with the Plane of Chaos. I took the liberty of-" I wave my right arm around. "-preparing the ground."

Klarion follows my gesture, sniffing. He flicks his fingers out, flashes of purple light leaping from his hands and running over the ground. Swiftly, his magic finds the runic design I embedded into the ground. "Huh." He carefully studies the designs. "That won't stop Nabu detecting what we're doing."

"No. But it will delay him long enough that you'll either be at full power, or… You'll know for sure that you're not getting it back, and we can all flee before he gets here."

"I don't trust you."

"And I don't trust you. I know for sure that if he's not here when you get to full power, you'll attack me. And since-."

He smiles. "Yeah, that does sound like me."

"And since we have to do that first, I'm the one taking the risk here. You shut down this ring last time we fought here, and I'm sure that you've been dreaming of doing all of the horrible things to me that you'd be capable of if you were at full power."

"Some of them were mutually exclusive."

"Nice to know that your mind is still working. So? Do you want to keep skulking around, clasping those epic level scry wards to your chest like a teddy bear? Or do you want to be you again?"

"How about you die first, and I think about it?"

"I'm not repeating the offer, Klarion. Power and revenge now, or irrelevance and obsolescence forever." I make a sad face. "It didn't exactly escape my notice that Orm and Satanus handled the recent fun-and-games without you. Not able to..? Keep your end up? You wouldn't want to end up like Ra's now, would you?"

I can't see his emotions. But I think I can guess.

"Come ooooon. It's an alliance where we both plan to betray each other at the first possible opportunity."

"That sounds like me too!" He squints. "What's your plan? If you think you can just give Teekl back-"

"Raaaaaaaoooorwwww!"

"-that won't work. I need a proper reconnection. One you can't revoke whenever you feel like it."

"I know. That's why I set this up. Why don't I… Talk you through it?"

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Last Supper 21

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2nd July

19:51 -5 GMT

Klarion puts his hands on his hips. "Huh. That's kinda clever. But I still don't see what's supposed to stop me just blasting you the first chance I get."

Klarion has allowed himself to get a little closer, though he hasn't been so foolish as to enter the area marked out in glowing purple and I strongly suspect that he's got at least half a dozen emergency escape spells in place upon his person.

"Nothing, really. Except it turns a three-on-one-in-your-favour fight into a three-on-one-against fight."

His face creases up in confusion. "Why would Nabu fight with you?"

"Because he hates you more than he hates me. And while I have friends whose opinion has a material impact on his life, you don't. Plus, he'd only have your word for it that we were working together. All I'd have to do is say that I set up an ambush and got in over my head..."

Klarion.. twitches, in a way which nearly has me reaching for the Sword. "I know there's a trap, there's gotta be a trap. Teekl-?" Without thinking, he turns to Teekl and then remembers that she's a construct. His face twists, flesh moving in ways that Human skin just can't to form a scowl of truly inhuman rage. "Why is everything so hard?!" His head darts around, looking for… I don't know. "Fine, let's do this. I can just kill you after."

"You can certainly try." I indicate the glowing purple circle that is the focal point of the ritual space. "If you would please take your place."

He stares at me, then cautiously walks around the side of the ritual space until he's as close as he can get to the circle without entering the general area. "Oh, is that how it is?" He brings his hands together in front of him, the space between them glowing purple. Then he wrenches them apart, the runes around the circle flaring and being subtly altered. Klaron smugs at me. "Can't trick me that easy."

No, I didn't expect that I'd be able to. Still, it helps me if you spot one or two traps. I don't really want you looking too deeply. What's he done..?

"Zatanna, will that still work?"

"Cigam wohs em eht cinur scinahcem."

A complicated series of glowing violet runes appears in the air in front of her, spinning and oscillating as her spell calculates the interactions of the set up we made for Klarion.

"You're asking her? P-lease. I just took out the thing you were gunna use to drain me, and-."

"Aaaand changed it so it will flood your circle with raw chaos from the start."

"I happen to like chaos."

"Okay, but will it still work?"

"Of course it'll still work. Hmpf." He picks his way around the layout, takes a last look at the circle… And then steps inside it. "Much better." He pirouettes, the whole rune layout flaring slightly as he does so. "Now let's get started!"

"Klarion." Zatanna shakes her head. "You have to release control over the network. If you extend your magic outside that circle-."

"You don't tell me what to do!"

"Do you want this to work or not?"

Scowling, Klarion sits down on the bare earth and thumps his hands against it. Immediately, the rest of the layout dies down to a faint glow. "Happy now?"

"My father's possessed by Nabu and I'm having to put up with you. I'm a long way from happy."

"Look on the bright side. Soon, you'll be dead."

"How is that a bright side?"

"Pretty bright for me." He looks over to me. "What's the hold up? Upset I saw through your little scheme?"

"Just enjoying you being powerless for a little longer. Teekl."

"Teekl not help nastybad-."

"Teekl." The rings on my fingers glow brightly. "Obey."

Teekl shudders, the orange sigil on her forehead shining brightly for a moment. "Not-. Not like! Bad! Not like!"

She-. No. I know perfectly well that she was complicit in everything Klarion did before I assimilated her. This has to happen. "Do what I tell you."

Her fur standing on end, Teekl grudgingly stalks in the direction of her smaller circle. That part of the spell will mirror her link to Klarion's presence in the Plane of Chaos while bypassing her. It won't be instantaneous -at least it shouldn't be, and we checked pretty thoroughly- but it will allow Klarion to gradually pull himself together. It's… It's not at all like hacking a computer, actually, but that will do as a metaphor. Guessing a password is hard. Getting the user to enter it for you is far easier.

Teekl reaches her circle and curls up inside, paying as little attention to the world around her as possible as she purrs to calm herself down.

"She's in place."

"So start already! The sooner I get my powers back the sooner I can kill you!"

"It won't work while you're still using Bedlam. The system isn't designed-."

"I know." He waves dismissively at Zatanna and I with his right hand. "Take a few steps back."

"Why?"

"Simple. I don't trust you. So I'm gunna bind Bedlam to a magic shield around the ritual space, and you need to be outside a' that."

"Fine." I lift Zatanna and I up with the rings and float us backwards until we're clear of the design by a decent margin. "Happy now?"

Purple light radiates out from Klarion's eyes and mouth, coalescing in the air above him as Bedlam looks out on the world for what may be the first time since the Roanoke Island Incident. His apparent freedom lasts for about four seconds as Klarion tugs downwards on the last few strands that link the two of them.

"Get down."

Bedlam billows towards the ground, half his mass apparently being torn off his upper torso to form a translucent purple barrier between us and the ritual area. Hopefully not a critical problem… No, that should still work.

"Okay, whatever, but you'll still need to cut your links completely."

Klarion shakes his hands, as if trying to get rid of water droplets. "Fine. Done." As Bedlam loses all connection to him he eyes me warily, wondering if this is where the double cross comes in. No, not quite yet. "Can we get started now?"

I nod. "Zatanna, if you'd be so good?"

She takes a deep breath, then taps the butt of her staff onto the ground. "Etavitca."

And that's when the full ritual space activates, four times the size of what Klarion uncovered. The look on his face is priceless.

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Last Supper 22

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2nd July

19:55 -5 GMT

"Whaaaat's that do?"

"Interesting story there, Klarion. After I-."

"What's it do! Tell me!"

"After I hit Infinity Island… Gosh, it's ten months ago now." Doesn't time fly. "After that, I started losing the ability to locate people by-" I hold up my hands so that the rings are clearly visible. "-power ring. When Bane attacked the Rhelasian peace conference I discovered that that was probably due to a rather vexing piece of arcane kit called a 'scry ward'. You see, it seems that a power ring's scan is similar enough to magic-based detection that it can be thrown off by some very simple magic countermeasures, while at the same time being sufficiently mystically weak that it can't just punch through."

"You have no idea how frustrating that's been for me. At times… I honestly felt like the universe was conspiring to remove my greatest advantage, just to make the job of rounding people like you up harder."

I walk a little closer, coming right up to the Bedlam barricade at the closest point to Klarion. "These days… It seems that every single supervillain I run into has a ward of some kind. And there are so many different types! You know, I.. catalogue them carefully after each encounter, in the hope that doing so will allow my magic using colleagues to find a way around them." I shake my head. "It doesn't work, because the designs keep changing, each drawing on slightly different arcane traditions… I can't even be sure that they're coming from the same originator. Maybe they weren't. Maybe just releasing the information that it was possible was enough."

"As a result of banging my fucking head against a wall over this for months now, I… Probably know more about scry wards than anyone else on the planet! Funny how that works. Hehaha!" I throw my arms out to the sides. "The design was made with carbon nanotubes which I transmuted from the soil itself. The-."

"That-! No, that couldn't work!"

"I wasn't sure it would. I really wasn't sure. Not until we worked out an activation system that linked it directly to me. As you probably know, I'm the best warded thing on the planet when it comes to counter detection techniques. And it turns out that it's actually pretty easy to link an existing ward to a new ward using a sympathetic link. It still took quite a lot of my blood to do it, so I might have ended up a little bit cranky, but I'm choosing to associate my current lack of comportment to you being a mass murderer."

"You want to know what it's designed to do? See, this isn't a trap for Nabu. We're doing that in a few days. We talked about asking for your cooperation back when this first happened, and the answer was a resounding 'no'." Klarion gestures at the circle around him, prompting Zatanna to stamp her staff on the ground again. This triggers the enhanced circle around the one he thought that he was standing in. He yelps and pulls away from the edge. "One thing I learned from Mister Truggs: if you're going to monologue, make sure that you're not going to be interrupted. And you're not going to interrupt me." I look over the diagram again. "This magnificent piece of work just won't allow it."

"Frankly Klarion, you're useless to me." I glance at Zatanna. "To us. Too much we don't know about your full capacities, too much mutual hate. But some other Lord of Chaos, that could be useful. So we looked into that, with a little help from The Changing Man. We could ascend a mortal mage… Eventually. But apparently there's some sort of cosmic balance thing which stops too many of you being in the same place at once. They'd probably just disappear. So that wasn't any good. And as for recruiting a current Lord of Chaos, well… I talked to Adom about Oggar. Mad, bad and/or dangerous to know."

"That was when we hit on this idea. You've got a roiling mass of energy just waiting for someone to connect to it. As far as 'the authorities' are concerned, it's already assigned to Earth… So there won't be any problem there. So we just needed a candidate and… You."

"It's my power you can't have it!"

"Want to bet?" I draw the Sword of the Fallen with my right hand. "I could kill you now. No Chaos power and no Djinn make you extremely killable. In fact, I could probably do it with-" I generate two construct railguns. "-mage slayers. But I'm not going to. Hijacking your power requires your cooperation-."

"I'm not going to!"

"Yes, you are. Because if you don't, I am just going to kill you. The only way for you to have even the smallest chance of survival is to grab that power just as fast as you can. That way, you'll stand a fighting chance."

Klarion… Goldfishes, his eyes boggling and his mouth chewing on air. I'm actually a little worried that he might explode from confusion, rage or hate. Him killing himself is one of the few things I couldn't work out a way to prevent. I don't think it would present an insurmountable barrier, but it would require a good deal of rethinking on our part.

"Would you like to meet your replacement, you feculent piece of excrement?"

"Yes! Because that way I know who else I need to torture to death!"

"Lively one, inne." John steps out of the shadows around the memorial, tossing aside a spent cigarette as he does so. He left his jacket at home, his shirt sleeves are rolled up and his coat is folded over his right arm. "Always assumed if I ever stopped bein' Human it would be 'cause of a Demon." He heads towards his appointed part of the enlarged diagram, glancing at Klarion only for a moment. "Name's John Constantine, by the way."

He steps over a smaller circle, dropping the deflated fish balloon into it with his off-hand. He had to keep it with him for as long as possible, as we found that it swiftly throws off organised magics placed upon it. Including scry wards. John's had his work cut out keeping it contained, but since we're about to start… Zatanna's spotted it as well. She doesn't do anything as dramatic as slam the butt of her staff down, but she does start quietly muttering the incantation.

"Dnib lla strap rehtegot-" John reaches his own circle and drops into a cross-legged sitting posture. I had thought that him getting into the required headspace might be an impediment, but I was worrying unnecessarily. John is perfectly capable of various forms of mystical projection, but when dealing with Demons those sorts of thing are more dangerous than useful. "-dna ekam siht tiucric elohw."

"That's it? You couldn't do better than him?" Again, with his inhuman facial expressions and whatever it is he does to block my empathic vision I can't tell whether Klarion is genuinely not impressed or just putting a brave face on things. "He's barely even got a whole soul already! He won't last five seconds of pure Chaos."

John looks faintly amused by the outburst. In his case I know that he's not faking. He's taken on scarier things than Klarion with far less preparation than this before. "If you're that sure, we might as well get started, hadn't we? No sense hanging about."

Klarion lashes out with his right hand, slamming it into the edge of his circle only for it to bounce off harmlessly. Each of us is treated to a last snarl, then his face goes perfectly blank and calm. He sits down cross-legged, his hands clasped together in what looks almost like a praying gesture. "I'm gunna tear your soul apart, magician."

He says it without any particular malice, in the same tone with which one might describe the weather.

"Better than you tried, mate. An' the only one ever managed it was me." John closes his eyes, hands resting on his knees.

There's a sort of… Hissing noise. It's faint, and it's… Coming from the ritual space, everywhere the nanotubes run. Chaos magic is pouring into the system and changing the magics we put there. That's my part done, now that Klarion's started. Zatanna's watching the ritual, ready to unleash the power of love if it looks like Klarion's won. Or is cheating better than us. I'm on Nabu-monitoring duty, because if he spots this through the wards then we're all in deep trouble. I think I could talk my way around the Justice League, justify it on the grounds that we'd get someone so it may as well be John, but that would cost us the element of surprise when it comes to fighting Nabu.

Nabu is supposed to be answering questions on the Oceanus incident and magic more generally to a UN committee today. They're still meeting, and I've got an eye on the internal cameras. He doesn't scry ward himself routinely, but I'm reasonably confident that he can detect it when I scan him so I'm trying to make this as indirect as possible.

All up to John now.

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Last Supper 23

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2nd July

20:09 -5 GMT

"Pirt pu!" Zatanna backpedals as the blue and red Tiger-striped man falls toward her, turning it into a controlled tumble as he does so. "Who are they?!"

I fire a bolt of orange energy at the turquoise and red one, a hole opening in his chest to allow the bolt through. Fortunately, it doesn't stop the gauntlet construct from savagely backhanding him across the face. "Don't know. Some of Klarion's hangers on, presumably."

A large weight clearly marked as '10 tons' materialises over John's head. I generate a construct hand, catch it and shove it aside to land in a pile with the others. I think I'm noticing a theme here.

"bOSS kLARION SAYS-."

"Dnuob dna deggag!" His red stripes peel away from his skin, looping around his wrists, ankles and mouth. He falls, squirming against his bonds. "I think I've worked out-!"

"Cartoon style effects only." Cartoons like Road Runner use horrific acts of violence -including people being crushed to death or incinerated- as entertainment. Should have realised that would be Klarion's thing. It also explains all of the dead Coyotes and Road Runners that have been found lately. So naturally his entourage are proof against everything else. Not quite as dangerous as Onomatopoeia… Or maybe we're the ones who have improved? Of course, that's-.

Another one runs at Zatanna with two sticks of dynamite. As expected, they're marked with the brand name 'ACME'.

"Ekar."

A rake appears out of nowhere, jumping up to slam into the madman's face.

"Erifsim."

The dynamite explodes weakly, knocking her assailant down and covering him in soot. It's not like the cartoons, though. I can see blood all across his skin where the pressure waves have torn his flesh away… Looks like under those garish colours he's Human after all. More blood from his ears where his ear drums have ruptured, and he'll be lucky if he keeps full use of his hands.

Of course, seeing them reminds me of what happened the first time I tried fighting Klarion. I've done a lot since then to try to ensure that that couldn't happen again, but I'm getting a sort of phantom ache from the lower left side of my torso. John… Really needs to win this.

Another weight appears, this one… '1 Million Tons'. That's a bit more than I can lift. I generate a gravity nullifier construct underneath it before it can start to fall. It stops in mid-air. Okay, it's still got inertia, but if I can shove it hard enough… "Zatanna, if you get a moment, could you possibly-?"

"Ekar ot edaps. Gid a eloh."

Um. Okay..? The giant weight is slowly moving, three opponents down and I can't see any others. I cautiously take a runestone out of my armour's left hip pouch and float it over to the one bound in his own-. It melts before it gets close enough for a reading. That's a problem with this sort of ritual; there's so much magic around that delicate sensors can't survive it. They just get overloaded and break. I've got seventeen less precise ones around the edge of the site to try and record the event… Give us some idea of when it's coming to an end so we can brace for a fully repowered Klarion. Not that we really have anything to compare it to.

"Eb ni eht eloh."

The busy shovel is now out of sight, earth showering upwards and raining down on the surrounding area. Then it-.

"Eip yrujnoc."

A yellow and red striped man shoots upward, propelled by the shovel. He flails around as he falls to the ground, and as he turns to look at Zatanna she slams a custard pie into his face hard enough to break his nose.

…

"I bow to your mastery of cartoon physics."

"Hm." Zatanna takes a moment to look down at her fallen opponent, then looks up at me. "Do you think this means that Klarion's winning, or that he's losing?"

"I don't really think we can tell. You heard the description John got from The Changing Man."

"What do the readings say?" She nods at the fallen.. clown-zebras. "Eb dnuob yb ruoy sepirts."

"Lots of power, far more than when we started. It's slightly more focused around Klarion… But that would probably be the case if John was winning, because he's.. basically hijacking Klarion's connection, which he-."

She nods. "Can't do if there isn't a connection in the first place."

"Any progress with Bedlam's binding spell?"

She looks up at the pained expression on his purple face. "I think so, but I don't want to push too hard in case he actually gets free." She looks through him into the ritual area. "I know we talked about what this would be like, but doesn't it seem strange to you that they're fighting some sort of huge magic battle and there's no external sign anything is happening at all?"

"No explosions, fire, lightning, monstrous creatures… Present company excepted. That sort of thing?"

"Even a… Visible clue about who was winning. A burning candle… Maybe… If the circle was part one color and part another?"

"As convenient as they are, progress bars aren't realistic." Ah… "Unless you can-?"

"Not with this much chaos magic around."

"Because, I mean, those guys were annoying, but if there was actually a way for us to hit our opponents as hard as we can and for the worst that could happen to them to be that they get knocked out-."

The magic in the ritual space surges, red light flaring across the diagram! Sympathetic explosions mark the deaths of my larger runestones. Drat. Sephtian is not -I generate construct railguns and load mage slayers as I take the Sword of the Fallen from its sheath- going to be happy about that.

"Uuuuughhh…"

I'm not.. sure where the moan come from. John's body is sort of slumped forward while Klarion collapsed-. Klarion's eyelids open, the eyes behind them burning with the same red light as his spells. He slams his right hand to the ground, groggily pushing himself upright.

John's still not moving.

Ah, shit.

Klarion stumbles towards us, the lines marked out on the ground fading away as he thoughtlessly stumbles through them. He squeezes his eyes shut, hands coming up and clasping his head in obvious discomfort.

I'm sorry, John. I train my guns on Klarion's head. Let's see if I can add to his discomfort a little.

"Fuckin' hell."

…

What?

"Oh, hang on."

Klarion stops, looks around and then walks towards the fish balloon. "Won't be needin' this." He bends down to pick it up, the fingernail of his right index finger growing to the length of a short sword and puncturing the rubber of the fish. There's a squeak as the hole he made sucks air in, the fish reinflating and pulling away from his grip. It flies a short circuit around him and then flies off into the air.

Then… Whoever that is turns back to face us. "I miss anythin'?"

"Jjjjohn..?"

He makes a gesture of appeal with both hands. "What, were you expecting the bleedin' tooth-" He appears to notice his hands. "-fairy. Oh. Thought it felt a bit odd."

"Are you..? Stuck..?"

"Gimme a sec." He clenches his fists, and then steps forward, the surface of his skin and clothing running as if liquid, gradually shifting until it takes on the form he's more accustomed to. If a little more sombrely dressed.

"It worked?"

He nods, then shudders. "Never again. That was… Pretty fuckin' horrible." He turns away, strolling in the direction of his former circle and nudging the pile of clothes with his right foot. Klarion turns onto his back. He.. seems to be unconscious. John reaches down next to him and picks up his coat, putting it over his left shoulder. "Right then. We'd best be making ourselves scarce before Nabu turns up. Who wants the Witch Boy?"

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Last Supper 24

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2nd July

20:13 -5 GMT

"I've got a plan for that. Can you..?" I sheathe the Sword, then gesture vaguely towards the insane clown posse with my right forefinger. "Do something about them? Whatever Klarion did-."

John claps his hands together, red flames flaring from our assailants. As the flames die down, four normal-looking naked men are revealed. "That should undo everything that's happened to them since they met Klarion. You know who they are?"

Ring, scan. Anything on missing persons?

Matches found.

"Yes. They're Hub City natives, reported missing… Beginning of last month. Minor criminal records, but no outstanding warrants on any of them. Shouldn't be any problem just handing them over to the local police."

"Right." John waves his right hand, crackles of red energy momentarily linking him to each of them. They flicker then.. disappear, replaced by small black/red.. stars..? The stars shoot high up into the air and then turn north north west, accelerating as they go. "That's that sorted. What about-?" He notices as Zatanna and I glance at each other. "Look, the whole point of doin' this was to give me the power I need to fight Nabu, right? I know hundreds of spells and whatnot that I couldn't use without begging some dodgy Demon or uppity god to do the heavy liftin' for me. Now, I've got all the power I could ever need." He holds his hands in front of him, palms upwards, as blood red flames flare up from them. "Might as well get used to it."

Zatanna looks him over. "Are you.. okay..? What..? What exactly happened in there?"

John starts patting down his coat until he finds a pocket. "Best you don't ask." He pulls out a packet of cigarettes, extracts a cigarette and puts it in his mouth. "Alright if I leave the cleanup to you? I don't have a lot of time to get used to all this."

"Of course. I'll phone you Tuesday if I haven't heard from you-" My helmet's camera shows Nabu stand and walk out of the meeting room. "-by then. Nabu's moving. Go."

John nods and turns away, a slash opening in the air like the one Klarion used to escape Roanoke. "One thing first." His right hand twists, pulling an oil lamp from nowhere and holding it out towards Bedlam. "Not leaving you hanging about. In you go."

The Genie snarls, but is unable to resist as it's pulled inextricably into the spout. Once the purple has completely disappeared John looks the lantern over, nods to himself, then strides towards the tear. "Be seeing you."

I turn to Zatanna as the tear seals over. "Okay, you handle-."

"Lla cigam secneulfni, eb detapissid!"

Alright then. I raise my hands as violet light surges through the area, sending a wave of orange through the ground and resetting it to how it was before our arrival. Though I'm not completely sure that Nabu would notice the nanotubes -they are very small- it's best not to leave any sign at all. Him finding us here isn't a problem. Someone's almost certainly going to mention that Zatanna and I were here all day. In fact, if it weren't for the fact that the comatose Klarion is here it would probably be better if we stayed until he arrived. As it is…

"I'm done."

Zatanna's eyes glow violet as she focuses on her task. "My bit is a little more complicated. Is Nabu coming here?"

I generate a gurney construct underneath Klarion and strap him in before pulling him over to us. I then take out a runestone and hold it over his forehead. No, barely any reaction at all. Huh. Okay, if a Lord of Chaos replaces the normal worldly magics in their soul with chaos magic, what happens when the chaos magic is taken away? No, no, it can't have been completely removed. If it had, then he wouldn't have been able to use magic after I took Teekl. Still, these symptoms are the same as those shown in Hollow Men who achieve that state through misadventure.

"Not sure. He's left the building. Can you give me a count down?"

"No… I'm about a third done."

"Checking television cameras… I've got him. If he's coming here he doesn't seem to be in any sort of hurry about it. He's-. No, he's going north west. I think he's following John's transportation star things."

"Of course, if I get this wrong he's going to turn around pretty quick."

"Yes, but the time pressure's off a bit. Do a good job rather than a good enough quick job."

"I have been doing this longer than you." I dismiss my construct armour and raise my left eyebrow at her. "Just saying."

"I know. I apologise for doubting your professionalism. It's just that I have effective operational command, so it's my responsibility to make sure that everyone is on the same wavelength."

"That's okay. Annnnd… Done. Eugh." She blinks, her eyes returning to normal and her grip on the Staff of Love loosening slightly.

Ring, message to Major Fang and Chairman Jiang. Tell them that I need an urgent appointment.

Compliance.

"Are you alright?"

She holds the staff up slightly, looking at the Star Sapphire at its head. "I've never used it quite this much before. I think-." I attach a construct to it and yank it out of her grasp. "Hey!"

"Remember the safety procedures."

"I wasn't-!"

"You were staring at it. Zatanna, I know how dangerously addictive the emotional spectrum can be." I hold the staff up. "You can have this back tomorrow, but right now, you're going home."

She breathes in as if about to protest. Then she exhales, bowing her head. "Yeah, you're probably right. Do you think…?"

"What?"

"Do you think it would help if I did the same thing you and Guy Gardner did? Made contact with the.. Predator?"

"No. I survived that by pure luck, and Ion seems to like the Green Lanterns. The chance of you successfully integrating with the Predator is slim to say the least. And even if you could, we've got five days. That isn't enough time to completely rework our plans. Or deal with a rampaging Embodiment if something went wrong." She nods reluctantly. "Okay, let's get out of here. Teekl!"

No response. Where's that blasted Cat gotten to?

"Teekl!" Nothing. Can't see her. "Ring, where's Teekl?"

"Not found."

I frown. "What do you mean, 'not found'? The Cat, the Construct Lantern."

"Construct Lantern Teekl not found."

I-. Oh. I… suppose.

Zatanna looks at me, her face sombre. "Is she.. dead..?"

"Unable to quantify. Construct Lantern 'Teekl' is no longer associated with this ring."

"No, I… I should have guessed." I shake my head. "From the way she was protesting… She was Klarion's link, and if he's not linked anymore…"

"Oh."

I just… Killed my Cat. And not just in an are-Construct-Lanterns-still-people sort of way. She's… Gone. No, no. I can't worry about that now. "Let's go."

Our surroundings flicker, and we appear in Zatanna's front garden.

"Right, I'm off to China to hand Klarion over. You.. just.. do something that doesn't involve love for a day or so."

"I should probably get some practice in-."

"A day, Zatanna. Practice, fine… Just not with the Staff. Alright?" She nods, and I reluctantly hand it back. I can't be seen out and about with it in case someone realises what it is. "I'll see you later. Ring, plot route to the Great Wall Complex."

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Last Supper 25

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3rd July

10:02 GMT +8

I don't think that Major Fang can narrow his eyes, but he can certainly still glower. "What do you have in the box, Orange Lantern?"

I keep my posture neutral. He's returning the favour by not quite pointing his spear at my face. Meeting me on neutral ground in Hong Kong was one thing, but me actually being on the grounds of the Great Ten's headquarters seems to be putting his back up. Judging by the Xeno-Team soldiers not quite covering me and Socialist Red Guardsman very obviously covering me.

"I want to say 'classified', but then… I'm a civilian. So let us say that it's… Sensitive."

"You expect me to allow a mysterious box inside our headquarters?"

"Major, I have two power rings. I'm struggling to think of what I could put in a box that would do more than a technology I have on clear display. But if you -and just you- want to see…" I step slightly away from the construct box containing Klarion and gesture to it with both hands. "Take a look."

I wave my right hand, and a viewing tube extends itself from the box just above Klarion's face. I leave the viewing window opaque. Major Fang stares at me, trying to discern my motive. Gaining no further information, he steps smartly forward and leans into the viewer. For three seconds I turn it transparent before rendering it opaque again.

His reaction is minimal, a slight hissing as he breathes in. He remains where he is for a further two seconds, then steps back. "Socialist Red Guardsman, you are dismissed. Detail, return to your posts."

I see Gu Lao glower at me from inside his mech suit, turning away before closing the aperture over his chest cannon. From the corner of my eye I see several Xeno-Team soldiers make a point of trying to minimise their time in his arc of fire. Does he realise how much they hate and fear him? Or is it like North Korea back home, and he still thinks his comrades back him in any circumstances? It's ridiculous really; you don't see Diana behaving like this and she's at least a decade older than him.

"Is Chairman Jiang at home?"

"He is here. And I believe that he will want to see you. Accompany me."

He turns and heads towards the entrance of the main office complex. I let him get a short way ahead and then start walking after him, the box floating along beside me. I've had some fairly advanced medical technology try and work out what's going on with Klarion and I think that my initial supposition was correct: he's been hollowed. There simply isn't any biological reason for him to not be awake. It's like his brain just can't get.. awake enough for him to do anything. His heart is beating and he's breathing unaided, but that's about it. I suppose… Using the system that I have tattooed onto my skin it might be possible to restore him to wakefulness, but… It's Klarion. I don't think that anyone wants him awake that badly.

Major Fang presents his identification at the front entrance. The technician on duty runs it through some sort of scanner… I could scan it, but I don't think that would be appropriate. She then turns the scanner on Major Fang. Presumably it's looking for evidence that he's Durlan, which must give it some trouble as his body is a product of Durlan technology. Whatever it is they're looking for, they appear to find it. His identification is handed back and he's waved through. Once past the checkpoint he turns and beckons me. I walk forwards, stopping in front of the desk when he holds out his right hand in a 'stop' gesture.

Given that it's reasonable that they don't want me turning into a sentient explosion of metal blades in the middle of their command facility, I turn down my environmental shield as far as I can while they scan me. They should have basic information on me on file as part of the data the Justice League shares with Security Council members, but I doubt that it's enough to be completely certain that I'm not a shapeshifter pretending to be me. Or maybe they just want a scan so they can confirm my identity next time. I wait, and a few moments later I get a nod from the technician.

Environmental shield back to full. I think it was Rogal Dorn who said 'sleep well in the camp of your allies, but always keep your bolter within arm's reach'. I don't seriously think that the Great Ten are going to act against me, but it doesn't hurt to take reasonable precautions. I once more follow Major Fang as he leads the way into the administrative part of the building. I get a few curious looks, but I imagine that they're somewhat used to odd-looking people around here.

"I did..? Call ahead? If that wins me any points at all?"

"It is why you were not met by Thundermind's fists. Given that you intruded without permission in our most secure facility, I do not think that we have been unreasonably hostile."

"Thank you. Um, point of fact? Thundermind probably couldn't get through my defences fast enough to prevent me disengaging." Though his lack of easily exploitable weaknesses would make actually beating him harder than beating most flying bricks.

"I will remember to include that belief in our next briefing session."

He stops outside of a meeting room door and knocks carefully on the wood once.

"Come!"

Major Fang pushes the door open and then steps aside, allowing my cargo and I to enter first. Chairman Jiang nods at me before turning his attention to my cargo. He's a pretty nondescript man, a little young for his position and carrying a little more weight than is healthy, but otherwise physically unremarkable. He waits while Major Fang shuts the door and takes up position behind me.

"And what do you have for me that required an immediate meeting?"

I float the box forward, tilting it so that the feet end is down, then dismiss the lid. Chairman Jiang's eyes widen slightly as he takes in the sight, and he takes a moment to get himself back under control.

"You are certain it is him?"

"Yes, completely."

"How? How did you do this?"

"A baited trap. A lot of very powerful life forms have exploitable weaknesses, and I've spent months determining his."

"Is he.. safe? Like this?"

"He's in a coma. It's unlikely that he'll ever wake up, and if he does the chains will prevent him doing anything."

Chairman Jiang nods, cautiously. "Why are you here, Orange Lantern? All the world wants this.. thing dead, and yet I have heard nothing."

"It's been less than an hour, and we carried out the ambush in an isolated location. I don't believe that anyone except those who took part knows that it happened. Why..? I don't want to explain that. I have my reasons, and they don't really matter to you. I want to hand Klarion over to the People's Republic. I'm perfectly happy… No, I'd prefer it, if my name was kept out of it. Give credit to one of your people… As long as it's not Gu Lao… Or don't explain, I don't care. I want him tried and punished according to Chinese law, with full videos made publically available after the event. And I need you to not announce that it's happened until the eighth. British time. And he's not to be harmed until the conclusion of the trial. This needs to be seen as completely above board, completely just."

He nods. "Anything else?"

"No. That's it."

"I agree to your terms, of course. But it seems like a paltry reward. Even if you want the matter kept secret… I would like to know who worked with you to achieve this. Both for the State and.. my family, I would like to know the names of the heroes who brought this monster down."

I suppose there's no harm. "Zatanna Zatara and John Constantine took part in the ambush with me. Several Atlanteans helped craft the spells, Professor Sephtian chief amongst them."

"The girl? And… I have heard of Constantine. He is a street magician of low repute."

"But incredible cunning. Though this time I'm the one who set things up while he directly confronted Klarion." I look aside, smiling to myself. "And I'm afraid that's as much as I'm going to tell you about what happened any time soon." I dismiss most of the construct holding Klarion, revealing the arcane binding chains that are there just in case. "Can I leave him here?"

"Certainly. If we put him in a body bag, we can conceal him. I am not certain that we can assemble a proper panel of judges within five days-."

"Longer is fine. Just not sooner."

He nods. "I will keep my end of the bargain." He stands, and bows from the waist. "Thank you, Orange Lantern. You have performed a great work today."

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Last Supper 26

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Life

=

Pain

Self=Darkseid

I sit on the beach, turning away from the ragamuffins as Diana takes in my little speech. And I can see it in her face, in the slight frown and tightening of the skin around her eyes as she almost manages to master her expression that I have spoken unwisely and alienated an admirable woman merely by being me. I didn't want to do that. Why did I..?

Self=Darkseid

I smile as I put my right arm around Wallace's shoulders, being happy that I just deliberately made a fifteen year old boy who of his own free will fights armed criminals for no greater reward than knowing that he did the right thing… Made him feel bad.

Self=Darkseid

Lawrence Crock looks at his own arms in horror as they turn orange and I permanently alienate myself from all of my peers and create a secret I can't tell my… The woman who might have become my mother in law. Did my parents not raise me better than this? I felt satisfaction, joy at my victory… But now…

Self=Darkseid

I smile at Artemis' expression after I made a tentacle sex joke to a fifteen year old girl while alone with her in a darkened corridor.

Self=Darkseid

I chased Jade across the country because I found the fact that I could scare someone like her so easily pleasant. I apologised later, but looking back I can see a little of the damage I caused in every part of our interactions.

Self=Darkseid

Jade sits on my chest, smiling down at me as she runs her hands over my naked chest and by every gesture I am reminded of the time eleven months hence when she will reject me and slash at me with a knife.

Self=Darkseid

I turn away from Theodore Kord's office, already knowing that the fool will misuse my technological gift for something puerile. Why did I bother?

Self=Darkseid

N-no. Jade-!

Self=Darkseid

She will reject me and slash at me with a knife.

Self=Darkseid

I… I don't…

Self=Darkseid

She has rejected me and slashed at me with a knife. She never wants to see me again.

Self=Darkseid

M'gann is still dazed by Artemis' apparent death. She's my friend, and I torture her to break the illusion because that's just how things are.

Self=Darkseid

Life…

Self=Darkseid

Ms A'Daire shakes with fear as I drive away yet another group I could so easily have befriended.

Self=Darkseid

I reach out to Richard in order to improve our relationship but can't resist sabotaging my own efforts for momentary amusement.

Self=Darkseid

The Justice League, people I believe to be better and more moral than myself, stand around like garden gnomes as Mister Zatara goes to put the Helmet of Fate upon his head.

Self=Darkseid

Diana is so concerned about my possible actions that she takes the time to confront me, ignoring the bleeding world outside. Poor threat assessment? Could she not stand it? All that…

Self=Darkseid

I lift away a heap of rubble to reveal the mangled remains of the family of the woman who followed me inside. She collapses with a wail, sobbing 'why? why?'. She cared, and she suffers for it.

Self=Darkseid

My team mates are genuinely conflicted as I make every effort to turn them from their mentors. They're children! They shouldn't have to-!

Self=Darkseid

Kon vaporises Luthor's drugs because he's learned to behave that way from me.

Self=Darkseid

Lynne, shaking and sobbing on the floor as Father steps towards me.

Self=Darkseid

I was trying to turn them into me. No higher reason. Just because.

Self=Darkseid

Because I'm me.

Self=Darkseid

Because that's what I do, what I am.

Self=Darkseid

I strove to crush the idealism that I can't feel myself.

Self=Darkseid

Alan gave me his lantern in a gesture of trust and hope and I've done everything I can to make him regret it. I made the greatest hero of the greatest generation cry with joy finding out that I wasn't a supervillain! How low were his expectations of me!?

Self=Darkseid

Life… Equals…

Self=Darkseid

I get to spend time with Jade and I'm happy, even though in nine months' time she will reject me and slash at me with a knife until I discover that a single careless phrase has made her cry and doubt my love.

Self=Darkseid

I sit down to eat with Jade's family while eight months in my future she slashes at me with a knife and I killed Paula's husband and I can't tell her.

Self=Darkseid

My pretence at being Grayven nearly gets my friends killed by Apokoliptian soldiers. Jade lies broken and bleeding while eight months in my future she slashes at me with a knife.

Self=Darkseid

I try and help a world avoid its destruction and I get shot, beaten and nuked for my troub-.

Self=Darkseid

No! That was-! I did-!

Self=Darkseid

Fire all around me as the worthless fools who I've been trying to save don't help me as my flesh evaporates.

Self=Darkseid

That's not-! I… I helped!

Self=Darkseid

Kara In-Ze casually suggests killing me after I twice saved her world and am at her mercy. Why do I help these people?

Self=Darkseid

Life… Equals…

Self=Darkseid

Doctor Robbins served the greater good her whole life and ended up a gibbering incontinent in a home for people no one cares about.

Self=Darkseid

Doctor Robbins..? What happened to-?

Self=Darkseid

Lines of staring Genomorphs, unseeing as Father's presence does its work. They trusted me to show them the world and I wanted to. And that is what they received. Lynne, curled up on the floor and sobbing.

Self=Darkseid

She's probably the same.

Self=Darkseid

Lynne comes through the portal, smiling and running towards me as she sees me and she's sitting on Father's knee as the living repository of the Anti-Life reads to her.

Self=Darkseid

She throws her arms around me and collapses, hugging her knees to her chest and it's my fault. I brought this on her!

Self=Darkseid

We fly a kite and she collapses, hugging her knees to her chest and it's my fault!

Self=Darkseid

I love Jade and it made me vulnerable, made me hurt.

Self=Darkseid

Life

Self=Darkseid

I love Lynne and it hurts! He wouldn't have come here but for me! It must have been even worse than when she was in the SHADE facility, she'll never feel safe again!

Self=Darkseid

=

Self=Darkseid

Graaaaaagh, no! No! It doesn't! I don't believe-!

Self=Dar-. No! I'm Grayven! God of Conquest! And you won't-!

Father looks down on my broken body with disappointment. He knows.

Self=Darkseid

Even if I recover… Lynne will never recover. Lynne will never forgive me.

Self=Darkseid

No! Even… Even my pain! My pain is mine! Whatever you do-.

Self=Darkseid

Even if I lose everything, I can rebuild. It will hurt, and that is right, but I tried to repair my relationship with Richard and only drove him away more strongly.

Self=Darkseid

Help me! Someone, please!

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Last Supper 27

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3rd July

14:43 GMT

I stand on my newly built stage facing the relatively small crowd gathered to hear me speak. Quite a bit smaller than the number who gathered to watch me work, but I suppose that was the interesting bit.

"As you can see behind me, the Pitsea Waste Management Site… Or if we're a bit more honest with ourselves, the Pitsea Landfill Site… Is now clear not only of all waste material, but also of any toxic or poisonous chemicals that might have leached into the soil." A disgruntled looking Gull lands on the right edge of the stage and takes a look around. "Most of the site is going to be handled over to the RSPB for development as a bird sanctuary, and the rest will be used for housing."

I step aside from the podium for a moment, looking back at the piles of material which ring-sorting through the colossal piles of rubbish generated. Plenty of metal in rubbish, and recyclable plastic and any number of useful chemicals. It's just not efficient for them to be reclaimed at Earth's current level of technology. I've left them stored neatly by element and material and the site's employees are going to be occupying themselves selling it and transporting it to places that can use it. Recycling levels in London are… Okay, these days. Most of this mess is historical.

I return my attention to my audience. "The refined material will start being shipped out-" The ground rumbles as a large lorry drives past the stage. "-right now to its new homes. Now, I imagine a number of you are wondering why I'm doing this. Not exactly.. typical superhero work, is it?" I smile at a few faces I recognise from... Some of them from other parts of Boris' work program. A couple of others from the Dolmen Gate reveal. "One of the projects that I've been engaged in has been an attempt to increase the range of what can be done with technology Humans already possess. My friend Ted Kord is already mass producing arcanotechnological orbs which can control clouds. Most of the technology involved in that was taken from work done by Doctor Thomas Morrow… So we're only seventy years behind the times there."

"I'll reiterate, for those of you who missed my last complaint about poor technology application regarding zeta tubes. We've had the technology to control hurricanes for seventy years, and it's only just now being applied to something that isn't a weapon."

"But can anything on Earth do what I just did?" I shake my head. "Not just yet. But we're working on it. In the KordTech laboratories now is Earth's first nanotech disassembler. Its co-inventors are the nano-robotics expert Doctor Serling Roquette and cryogenicist and recovering theme criminal Leonard Snart. The current version could do what took me a couple of mornings in… About… Two months. Nothing like as fast, but controllable, reproducible and made entirely with Earth technology. That point cannot be made strongly enough. This is a world of technological wonders the likes of which.. just don't exist on other planets."

"I didn't do this because I have some burning desire to work in waste disposal-." I cut myself off and half turn in the direction of the nearest group of orange-clad workers. "No offence, guys!" A couple of them look around, but they don't otherwise respond. I turn back to my audience. "I did it because I wanted to-" Take my mind off what I'm doing next week. "-demonstrate the capacity of super-advanced technology to change the world for the better.. in ways that directly and immediately affect people's quality of life for the better. It isn't all about… New ways to blow things up and… People in ridiculous costumes finding new ways to shoot at each other." I shift from my suit to one of my more garish armours. "And I know what I'm talking about on that last one."

…

No? No one?

I switch back to my suit.

"I mentioned in my last speech on this subject that Doctor Thaddeus Sivana's story made me the most angry. But it wasn't until I had the chance to see some of the things he's invented since then, and… Well, meet the man, that I discovered the full extent of humanity's loss. And that's why I'm announcing today that KordTech is opening a scholarship program for… Let's call them.. angry scientists. Had an idea of revolutionising a field of industry, but lackwits and fools-" I ham it up, clenching my fists and railing at the heavens. "-refuse to give you the time of day? We want to hear from you. We want to help you. Preferably before you feel the need to.. go on a rampage to.. prove how wrong they were to doubt you. You can't revolutionise anything from in prison."

I make a shrugging motion with both hands. "Alright, I'm done. Any questions?"

Several hands go up, but an angry-looking man with an RMT badge on pre-empts them. "Why do you hate the British railways?!"

"I used to go to work by Southern Rail. The management's incompetent and the employees think they belong to the National Graphical Association. The trains are a natural monopoly and the unions have taken full advantage, becoming so cocky that people are willing to use teleportation portals rather than put up with them any longer. We can replace a fifth of the network for less than the cost of High Speed Rail Two with a form of transport that's safer and quicker. So begone, all of them."

"You think it's okay to destroy workers' livelihoods?!"

"On the contrary, the Atlantean artificers who make the Dolmen Gates are extremely well paid. Next question." I point to a woman at random.

"Dominique Westlake, ITV London. Are you planning on clearing up any other landfill sites?"

"No. I did this to show that it can be done. I'm of the opinion that having superheroes clean up every social or economic problem is like a fit and healthy adult who still has someone to wipe his arse for him. I've only just been on this planet for a year, and already I've helped develop a technology that could do what I just did. You get one, you can do the rest yourself."

"So you're saying that you could?"

"Without a greater purpose to work towards I'd get bored before long, and I can't use these rings for things that bore me. It doesn't work. But no, I probably wouldn't be willing to even if I could do so reliably. Next."

"Nigel Smith, BBC. Isn't Doctor Sivana a wanted criminal?"

"Yes. We met under flag of truce at a family dinner and I'm a man of my word. If it makes you feel any better, he claims to be mustering resources to fight against future alien invasions because he doesn't think that superheroes offer enough of a challenge."

"That doesn't sound reassuring."

"I find it reassuring that the greatest scientist of the age isn't focusing on fighting other Humans any longer. Next!"

…

3rd July

15:08 GMT

I stroll into the Mayor's meeting room. "What did you think?"

"The press bit meandered around a bit. Usually best to just-" He makes an odd sort of pouncing motion with both hands. "-keep things focused."

"I'll bear that in mind in future. So, are we square?"

He nods. "Yah, yah. You've done your week, and I think we're all set for tomorrow. Oh, have you met-" He gestures to the uniformed man sitting a little way down the table. "-Bernard?"

I nod. "Commissioner. A pleasure."

He nods back. "The cordon won't be a problem, and we could do with an evacuation drill. I'm still a bit puzzled by your request to join the Met. Could you explain that?"

"I don't have arrest authority. I don't imagine for a moment that the Lich will actually yield, but best practice requires that I at least try to resolve the situation in a lawful and orderly manner. Or as close to it as possible. Obviously it'll be an on-paper thing and I'll resign as soon as the matter's resolved, but it would be a help."

He nods. "If you say so. I can swear you in as a Special Constable. It will be entirely above board, if a little.. odd. Obviously there's no way our regular police could confront a powerful sorcerer."

"Thank you, Commissioner. That's just what I need."

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Last Supper 28

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3rd July

21:02 GMT -5

"…the topic of discussion tonight, please welcome our first guest, Orange Lantern."

Ms Manning turns towards the side of the stage as I walk on. Unlike my first television piece, this one is going out live. And I'm… Actually more nervous about this than I was about confronting Klarion. There, I was pretty certain that I'd covered all the angles. Here, once the initial discussion is underway the audience can throw out pretty much whatever they want.

There's a polite round of applause, and I smile and nod in the direction of the audience -and the cameras- as I take the first seat opposite the presenter. Ms Manning is a favourite of Diana's due to being an oddity amongst American anchors: a woman working in television who remained employable after she stopped being hot. She's a presenter and an interviewer rather than an investigator, which is… Actually the way these things normally work. Huh. There are a statistically improbable number of investigative reporters associated with superhero work, aren't there?

"Orange Lantern, thank you for joining us tonight."

"A pleasure to be here, Ms Manning. Thank you for inviting me."

That particular greeting went through several revisions during rehearsals. In the end, she ruled that it should stay in. Everyone else is told to call her Marla from the start, but 'formal and polite if a little stiff' is perfectly fine for a superhero and because she can't really use my name. There's no way to explain why I can't introduce myself by name in a way that makes any sense on television, so by skipping the whole issue there's no implied power inequality or distain.

"Perhaps I should start by asking you exactly what your religious beliefs are."

"Well… That's a little complex. I worship Eris, the Ancient Greek Goddess of Chaos. However, as I'm sure-" I glance towards the cameras. "-everyone here knows, Eris is part of the Ancient Greek pantheon. This means that I -theoretically at least- acknowledge their authority even if I don't worship them on a regular basis."

"That sounds fairly straightforward."

"The problem arises due to the use of the word 'belief'. I've met Eris; I've spoken to her in person on several occasions. I don't have 'faith', there isn't anything I need to believe that I can't prove… Or at least could prove if she felt like cooperating. I may believe things about her which aren't true, but I would be perfectly happy to revise those beliefs once I… Proved that."

"When did you start worshipping Eris?"

"I'm a citizen of Themyscira, and it is.. customary, for a citizen to choose one god to… Follow, to study. When I first visited Themyscira back in January, I was asked if I intended to do the same. I thought about it, thought about… What I wanted to do with my life, and realised that she was the best fit."

"What religion were you before that?"

"I was… Sort of an atheist. A year ago today I was firmly an atheist, but since coming to this world… I've been confronted with overwhelming evidence that certain… Classes of being demonstrably do exist, and that denying that would be… Daft."

"But you still considered yourself an atheist?"

"Just because they exist is no reason to go around believing in them. It only encourages them." There's a very faint laugh from some parts of the audience. "I used to refer to things.. other people might have called gods, as 'jumped up elementals'. Sentient magic-based life forms that had ideas above their station. I.. grew up in.. Britain, a monotheistic society… And once I'd convinced myself that the God of Abraham didn't exist, there just didn't seem like much point worshipping anything else."

She presses a button on the control panel and the screen behind us shows one of the pictures the Justice League released of Oceanus. "What exactly was that?"

"What you're looking at there is the body of an entity called Oceanus."

"Is he a god?"

"That really depends on what you mean by 'god'. If you mean, 'are there people who worship him', then yes, the Saremite renegades we fought on Santo Porto do. If you mean, 'is he a sentient magic-based life form'-."

"A 'jumped up elemental'?"

I nod. "Quite. He is, as far as we can tell. If you mean, 'is he very powerful', clearly he is. If you mean, 'is he inherently deserving of worship', I'd say not. I suppose that might be the biggest leap for a monotheist; when I say that a god exists, I don't mean either that I worship it, or that I think people should. Most Christians believe in Satan, but they don't worship him."

"But Satanists do."

I shrug. "Nothing about being powerful necessitates that you're a good person. My job would be a lot easier if it did."

"Back in February, Fawcett City was literally besieged by Demons. In the aftermath, there was a major increase in attendance in churches across the city, and across the country." Another button press and a graph comes up on the screen. That.. is quite an increase. "What do you think that says about religious faith in America today?"

"We've all seen the recordings made in Fawcett City during Sabbac Two's attack. I don't think that anyone doubts the existence of Demons any more. The existence of Demons was documented well before that of course, but the attack on Fawcett made it apparent that Demons were a thing that could affect everyone. This means that people now have.. what they believe to be evidence for the truth of some part of their faith. Demons exist, therefore so does the Abrahamic God and that has immediate relevance."

"You don't think they're just going there looking for protection?"

"I hope not. While the Catholic Church has got its act together with regards to magic since the Second Vatican Council and the Anglican Communion has.. a degree of institutional knowledge, a lot of Protestant and Orthodox denominations treasure their ignorance of magic. There's nothing about wearing a crucifix or.. being a priest that makes you proof against magic in general or Demons in particular. The priest I worked with in Fawcett City -Father Mattias- was able to hold Sabbac Two off, but he did it by.. using magic to manifest his faith in the world around him, not by channelling part of his god. That's why he's Father Mattias and not Saint Mattias."

"Now for the million dollar question: does God exist?"

"That's a tricky one. If you mean in the sense of the Sistine Chapel roof, elderly man stretching forth his hand to Adam, almost certainly not. A being that is at one with the entire universe.. would not be anything like that Human. On the other hand… May I..? Borrow the screen?" She nods, and I bring up an image of a part of the Source Wall from John's old database. "This is called the Source Wall. It sort of.. bends space around it, but there are several places in this galaxy from which it can be accessed. Once you can see it, you can't fly around it; it just stretches up to infinity. A lot of alien monotheistic religions believe that God exists behind it in some sense. Certainly, Angels and saints get their power from somewhere."

"I don't recall there being any mention of Angels in Fawcett City."

"I didn't see any. But they do exist."

"Do you have any idea why they didn't get involved when Fawcett City was under attack?"

"I'm afraid that I don't. The one person I know who has met them didn't have much good to say about them, but he isn't exactly on their Christmas card list either. Possibly they believed that we could handle the situation. Perhaps it was part of some larger plan the rest of us aren't privy to. Angels don't really feature in the Hellenistic religion."

"In that case, we should speak to someone who knows a little more about them. Please welcome our second guest, Father Mattias."

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Last Supper 29

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3rd July

21:28 GMT -5

"…and I imagine that the Coca-Cola Company is prepared to acknowledge the existence of other cola brands, while still maintaining that theirs is the only cola you ever need to drink."

Mattias bows his head with a chuckle. "I am not.. entirely sure that is an appropriate metaphor. The Lord God created the universe and everything in it. Mister Pemberton may have combined ingredients in an original fashion, but he did not create them ex nihilo."

"The Guardian Krona's time travel experiments allowed him to witness the creation of this universe. From what little I know about what he saw, it would be .. difficult to link the event to Genesis in any literal way. The Earth made in six days, with the rest of the universe coming into being on..? What, the fourth day? As an offhand act?"

"Without having seen Krona's records, I could not comment on what he saw. In such matters, the line which was reinforced at the Second Council was that doctrine cannot contradict reality. What is real is real, and any fault lies with those who recorded the relevant biblical text or with those of us who misinterpreted it."

The audience member who asked the question looks none the wiser. "So how literally should we take the stuff about heaven?"

"The.. existence of the Silver City has been confirmed by various mystics… Including those who have no reason to have heard the Christian accounts. So again: something exists, but I don't know how closely it resembles what you believe."

"We can be a little more certain than that. The Church has records of communication between Angels, saints and various visionaries. While.. not all accounts can be assumed to be completely accurate, there are enough trends that we can conclude that practicing conventional Christianity honestly will get you there, and that it is a place of glory and wonder. Though.. that goes back to what we were saying earlier about the difference between professed faith and actual faith. You must accept Jesus Christ into your heart and soul and genuinely repent your sins. Simply going to church once a week is not the same thing as being a committed Christian."

That appears to be a little more helpful. "Okay, but, ah… Orange Lantern, you said that you're not Christian, right?" I nod. "Doesn't that mean that you're kinda… Stuck? I mean… What happens to you?"

"No one knows for certain. I've simply had too many influences at work on my soul to predict it. The most likely thing to happen is the conventional Hellenist afterlife; I'll.. become conscious of myself entering Erebos through the Gate of Shades, cross the river Styx and be judged by Lord Hades. Alternatively, I could earn the favour of enough Olympians to pass straight to the Elysian Fields. From there, I understand that reincarnation is possible, though I don't know the precise mechanics." Should probably find that out, actually.

"The Elysian Fields… Is that like… Greek Heaven?"

"No, Heaven is a reward for faith and good behaviour. You live a good life and you go there automatically. Getting into the Elysian Fields requires personal sponsorship. You can live a good life and still not get there."

"Sounds like a raw deal to me. Ah, thank you." He starts to sit, passing the microphone back to a member of the crew.

"No, it's not so bad. Asphodelopolis has a far higher population than the Elysian Fields. If I've got to spend eternity somewhere, I'd want to make sure that I've got interesting people to talk to."

Ms Manning gestures to the left of the audience. "The lady over there?"

Another member of the crew heads toward her, passing a microphone over.

"Thank you. I guess.. the question goes to both of you. How do you excuse the bad things that your gods have done?"

"Specific acts, or the nature of the world in general?"

She hesitates. "Both, I guess?"

"Well, I'm confident in my own mind that the Olympians didn't make the world, and that was either creative advertising on their parts or a mistaken belief on the parts of the Ancient Greeks. So I don't blame them for the built-in stuff. As for particular acts… Ah…" I glance upwards. "How well earthed is this building?"

Mattias turns to me with an expression of utter solicitousness. "Are you concerned that the being you worship will express their displeasure at your answer?"

"It's a valid concern. To answer the question: I recognise them as bad. The Olympians aren't anybody's ideas of paragons of morality. They're more… Mortals writ large. There are.. some moral rules they regard as absolute, but for everything else… There's a reason why Zeus and Hera aren't married anymore."

"Wasn't Eris the one responsible for the Trojan War?"

"She kicked off events, yes, but pride and ego played a far greater part. If Paris had said 'you're all equally lovely', or if Aphrodite hadn't tried to bribe him, or if the other two had shrugged it off… If Helen had decided to stay with her husband and not start a war, if Menelaus had given her a divorce on the grounds that no mortal could prevent Aphrodite making them fall in love… Time and time again, everyone had the opportunity to choose differently. And if they didn't, then that's their fault."

"Okay, I guess… And Father Mattias? What's God's excuse?"

"Once Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge… Whether that was a literal tree or more of a metaphor, all Humans gained the capacity for good and evil. God gives us independence to act on that capacity, and respects that independence even if he sometimes weeps for how we exercise it."

"Yeah, I respect the free will thing, but what about the stuff he did directly? Killing the firstborn son of every Kahndaqi household, even if they were babies who'd never hurt anyone, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and everyone who lived there… I mean, if he's omnipotent, why didn't he just teleport all the Israelites somewhere, or just kill the bad people?"

"In the case of the Israelites, they had a compact with God that guaranteed them both protections and a particular area of land to call home. When the Kahndaqis enslaved them, they trespassed against that protection. If you ask 'why the firstborn?', I cannot say for sure. The Bible gives no specific reason why they were targeted, but I would point out that that was the last stage in a series of escalating punishments, and at each stage there was a clear warning that they would continue to grow worse if the Israelites were not freed. Kahndaq at the time did not have modern mass communications, each plague had to be something that could not be explained as a natural phenomenon. It had to be clear that the usually remote God of Israel was so enraged that he was prepared to interfere in the natural course of the world in order to protect his followers."

"Or Moses was a wizard."

"Hm?" Father Mattias jerks his head my way, blinking in surprise.

"Like you said, we don't have good records of the event. If… Moses was a wizard who either claimed that God was acting through him, or… Was in modern terms a saint empowered by God's magic, he'd be the one deciding what level of punishment was correct himself."

Father Mattias considers that. "I do not myself believe that, but I suppose it is possible."

"Wait, so you're saying that when Greek gods do bad stuff, that's their fault but other people can make things worse, but if the Christian God does bad stuff, that's always someone else's fault?"

"No. I am saying that God does not make mistakes. So, if something happens that looks like a mistake, then it was either the best thing that could have happened, there were events occurring that we are not aware of which He was, or the fault lies with some Human agency. It is easy to blame some supernatural event when things do not go as we would like them, but more often the cause is something far more mundane."

She doesn't look all that impressed, but sits and hands the microphone back to the crew member.

Ms Manning looks around the audience again. "Gentleman over there?"

"Ah, thanks. So, I get that some… Or, I dunno, all? Pagan… Things pagan religions worship are real, and God is definitely real-."

"In some sense, yes."

"Right, so… Are Angels real?"

I nod. "Unfortunately, yes."

"Unfortunately?"

"The last well documented incident of Angels interacting with Humans was about twenty years ago where they made contact with a Millennialist Evangelical Christian sect called 'The Resurrection Crusade'. They were active in the southern states and in a couple of places in Britain. They rather fell apart after their leaders died during a magic ritual in Glastonbury; the crater's still there if you want to look. Actually…" I glance at Ms Manning and she nods. I wave my right hand at the screen and put an aerial view on display. "Like a lot of supervillain organisations, they were quite stupid. They thought it was a good idea to create a new messiah and end the Human capacity for free will. Then they made such a mess of the ritual that the Angel they called up killed them all."

"Or…" Father Mattias glances at the image. "The Angel was so disgusted at what they were attempting that it rendered judgement upon them."

John was pretty confident… But I suppose that an Angel angry over one thing is much like an Angel angry over another. "I suppose that could be the case. If I ever meet it, I'll be sure to ask."

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Last Supper 30

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4th July

14:54 GMT -5

Artemis looks at me over the kitchen counter. "You sure you're not gunna feel left out?"

"Of course I'm going to feel-" I scrape the last of the cake batter into the cake tin. "-left out, but that's my own silly fault for not having a secret identity, isn't it?"

Since Kon does actually have friends at school who aren't part of the superhero community, he wanted to celebrate his birthday in a way which involved them. Which is fine for most of our team, even if explaining how he knows people from Gotham and Central City is a little tricky. But for those of us who don't have secret identities -or who couldn't convincingly pretend to be Human for five minutes, Canis- that means that we can't go. I'm a bit surprised that none of the people who spotted me around the school last year ever made the connection. I'm even more surprised that no one appears to have spotted Kon. He does.. have a secret identity, but his face is uncovered and he doesn't really change the way he talks.

On the other hand… Superman, glasses…

Wallace nods. "And going on TV a whole lot. Think The Resurrection Crusade are gunna make sure no one forgets what you look like."

Yeah… While most of the central leadership did die in Glastonbury, a lot of lower level leaders who weren't in the know survived. I'd actually missed that the Crusade was still a going concern… After a fashion, at least.

I shake my head. "I don't think that lawsuit is actually going to go anywhere."

Artemis frowns. "They can't sue you for having an opinion. And that stuff actually happened!"

"No, they can. They probably can't do it successfully, and... Since I'm leaving the Earth for an extended period in three days, I wish them all the best actually serving me."

A construct oven glove pulls open the oven and I start putting the cake tins inside. With how big the team's got, plus Diana and Dubbilex, this had to be a wedding cake sized affair. Perfectly within my abilities, but I'm going to need to get this done before I start on dinner proper.

The left side of Wallace's face twitches. "How long you gunna be away for?"

I close the oven and straighten up. "No idea."

"Know where you're going?"

"Roughly. I mean… There's places I need to go for professional reasons, then there's places I just want to see. I'm going to Thanagar because Ms Thal wanted me to take a message to her mother and Mister Hol gave me their reports to drop off… Tamaran, because-."

Artemis smiles. "Orange bikini babes."

Wallace nods. "It's a good reason."

The skin around my right eye tenses sceptically. "Orange.. third world planet.. horribly oppressed by the local imperial power. They probably have bikinis as well, but that's not why I'm going." Two slightly awkward grimaces. "J Five Eight Six, where Lantern Medphyll comes from. They have city trees. And they're fully sentient!"

Wallace nods. "So you're gunna be Earth's first space tourist. Take lots of photos!"

"Second, actually. Adam Blake beat me by about fifty years. Heh, maybe I'll bump into him."

Wallace gives me a flat look. "Oh El, you know that thing you do where you mention someone no one else has heard of and expect us to know who they are?"

"Oh. Sorry. Ah, Captain Comet, superhero active in the fifties and sixties. Red uniform with a-" I point to my upper chest with my right hand. "-comet on it? Had telepathic and telekinetic abilities? Bit of a shame Mister J'onzz wasn't out-and-proud at the time, actually. He could probably have dropped him off back home."

Artemis nods, starting to move away. "Say 'hi' to him for us."

"Will do. You two have fun."

"Oh El, it's a beach party." He and Artemis link hands as they head for the exit. "I don't think we could not have fun."

I watch as they leave the room, then find myself sagging slightly. I'm.. not going to be seeing them for a while. After the seventh, I mean. Even assuming the thing with Nabu goes better -much better- than expected, it could actually be years before I'm back on Earth. I'm not going to know.. anyone, the food is going to be weird… I exhale. Before I came here, the idea of spending long periods of time on my own and only really interacting with people for professional reasons would probably have been something I'd have found satisfying. Now, I've… Rather gotten used to there always being people around. And for the most part I've gotten over the feeling of creepiness I used to feel about being nearly twice their age.

And on the subject of creepiness…

I take my Will out of subspace. In case things go really badly… I've been intentionally running down my cash reserves, because.. it wouldn't be any use to me where I'm going. Heh, win or lose. One useful thing about Blume eating so much of it was that I actually don't have a giant mountain of gold waiting for me any longer. I don't know, I'm probably just going to endow the Sivana Super Scientist Scholarship fund. There isn't really any other cause I feel strongly about that needs it.

Thing about being an Orange Lantern is, when you feel strongly about something… It doesn't tend to need further attention afterwards.

Equipment? That's easy. Roy and Ted can split that, superhero stuff going to the former and other stuff going to the latter. Don't want Ted getting distracted, and I don't want Roy unable to keep his equipment in working order.

The ring… S…

I hold up my left hand. "Ring, in the event of my death, make best possible speed to Maltus and report to whoever the senior Controller is."

"Compliance."

I lower my left hand and raise my right, studying John's old ring. Sending the original ring to Maltus discharges my responsibility to the Controllers. I could set this one to go anywhere I want. Unfortunately, the comics didn't show anyone who could use orange rings without going mental. There's a slight but statistically significant chance the Controllers are going to take one look at these things and flip the heck out.

Under happier circumstances I might be setting it to go to Lex-.

"Paul?" I look up and Rob walks in. "You got a minute?"

"Yes, but… No offence intended? I don't think you're well known enough to prevent you heading to the beach if you want."

"No, I just… It's about… You know, Thursday?"

Ring, internal monitoring gets nothing.

"Compliance."

I reach into my upper right pocket and toss Rob an anti-eavesdropping stone. He catches it with a nod. Then I put up a sound nullification field with the ring. "Shoot."

"It's just… Is this whole thing necessary?"

"Not sure what you mean by 'whole thing', but I believe so. I don't want to hurt-" Bearing in mind that this is a facility that has had Batman in it. "-the target. I told you what I intend to offer him as my preferred option."

"You really think he'll take it?"

"No, but I've underestimated people before. Rob, going into a fight with no way to win is a stupid thing to do. I'd rather-. "

"But you already beat Klarion! I just thought… Didn't that box guy say that if you did that, he'd tell Nabu to get lost?"

"No. No he didn't. He offered far less, and if there's one thing I'm not prepared to do it's rely on the goodwill of a being who probably doesn't have any. As with a lot of things… People I could tell, I don't do so in case the target gets tipped off. And I don't feel inclined to trust someone who used that as a negotiating tactic. Robert, I've done everything I can to make sure that we don't end up needing to kill the target. If you've had an idea since our last talk about it, I'm all ears. Do you?"

He shakes his head, and I raise my hands in a shrug.

"Then the plan is still going ahead. If you want to back out, that's fine, I'll under-."

"No, I'm not-. Backing out, I just-. I really… I really don't like this."

I picture for a moment all of the other League members voting Nabu on board. "No. I don't either."

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Last Supper 31

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4th July

20:27 GMT -5

I smile as M'gann kisses Kon on the right cheek, a conical party hat with the numeral '1' on the front perched jauntily on his head. I don't.. think about it much, but when you consider how he behaved when we first got together it's remarkable how far he's come. He certainly -Wolf rears up and licks his left cheek, M'gann covering her mouth with her right hand in a half-hearted attempt to smother her giggle- wouldn't have done anything like this this time last year.

The Sphere warbles behind him, having not moved since Beryl put a party hat on top of it. Canis studies Raquel with unsettling intensity as she blows a bubble with her bubblegum. Roy and Kaldur are having a light-hearted conversation about surfing, something they today discovered that they're both equally bad at. Off to the side Brut is engaged in a staring contest with Dubbilex's guest, the G-Pooka twitching its ears in the direction of the conversations at the table. It looks a little like Dubbilex, shorter than him and with a larger number of smaller horns which glow constantly as it uses its empathic abilities to get a better sense of the people around it.

Richard's recounting the story of how he first met Wallace to Artemis. She's finding it hilarious, while Wallace alternates between embarrassed denial and his version of events. Zatanna is talking about magic theory with Tula after she gave up trying to talk to Canis about the subject. Usually he's pretty cagey about Apokoliptian magic practices, but it looks like something about watching Raquel blow bubbles is distracting him to the point that he's forgotten that he's not meant to be sharing.

We don't quite have the full team assembled. Because schools in Britain don't break up until the end of the month Rob had to head home early, and Donna is spending most of the day with her family. Maybe… Maybe next year we could make this a team-members-and-their-family thing. I mean, they're all in the know-.

"Penny for your thoughts?"

I look around from my wool-gathering as Diana enters the kitchen area. "Oh, just… Getting a clear memory of everyone in my head." I shrug. "Going to be a while before I see everyone again."

"I'm certain that you will be back."

"I've nearly died several times on Earth. I'm going to have a whole galaxy of trouble spots to choose between."

"In the interview you gave yesterday, you made it clear that you have little time for faith."

"That's.. an accurate statement of my thoughts on the subject."

"I have faith. You will return from your adventures in space whole and healthy, and if your time on Earth is anything to go by you will have new technologies and allies to show for your time."

"It isn't new technology Earth need-." She raises her eyebrows slightly. "I'll try." And I'll try and keep an eye out for the crazy space Amazons, because as a citizen of Themyscira they're kind of my problem now.

Diana smiles, looking out of the kitchen towards her son. "I also wanted to tell you that you are to be offered a place on the Justice League."

"What, now? Three days isn't really-."

"You may take it up now, or upon your return."

Not.. surprising, exactly. "I.. heard that the voting procedure had to be modified for my benefit. While I do think something like that needed to happen, I wouldn't want anyone to think that I argued for that just so I could benefit from it."

"I doubt that. The change.. which we agreed upon falls well short of what you argued for."

"Anyone except Nabu vote against?"

"No." Hah! "Paul, I also wish to talk to you about your relationship with Lord Fate. Having two members of the League at loggerheads as the two of you are-" I have the ring take control of my facial expression. "-can only serve to disrupt our cohesion. When you join the League you will be working alongside him. I think that it may be worth your time learning to-."

"Diana, I cooperated with him perfectly well when we fought Oceanus. I doubt that I'll ever like-" The bastard Lich. "-him, but.. it…" I shake my head. "Won't be a problem on professional occasions." After the 7th.

Diana smiles, nodding. "I am glad."

Reminds me that I need to double check the arrangements for sending an accurate account of what he is to every journalist on the planet. One way or another he'll be off the Justice League.

"Look, I'm… I know the Greenies are League members despite the fact that they spend most of their time away from Earth, but I could be away virtually full time. Or actual full time. I'd feel bad about taking a position I was never going to occupy."

"I'm a little surprised. Most of your team mates would jump at the chance to join the League. It's surprising how much additional maturity a few years can bring."

"Yes, I… Suppose it is."

"We don't have any meetings scheduled before Thursday, so… If you want time to think about it, you should have plenty while you're away from Earth. Let me know once you've made a firm decision."

I nod. "Of course. Now, do you think… One candle, or a number one candle?"

I hold up the two options.

"I doubt that Kon will care, but personally, I think-." She cuts herself off, looking down as Wolf brushes against her leg.

"Wrf." Wolf sits and stares up at her expectantly, then glances at the cake.

"Wolf, icing is not good for you."

"W-wrf." She glances at me, gives her tail a wag and licks her lips.

I look away. "Number one candle it is." I use the ring to impale it with cocktail sticks and attach it to the middle of the cake before lighting it and picking up the cake tray. "Diana, could you please pick up a cake knife?"

"Of course."

I step over-. I step around the still expectant Wolf, nudging her aside a little with my legs as I walk out of the kitchen area.

"Happy birthday to you!"

Conversation drops off as everyone turns to face me, Kon wincing slightly.

"Happy birthday to you!"

Dubbilex blinks, then turns to look at his G-Pooka aid, whose small horns are glowing as it tries to make sense of what everyone's feeling.

"Happy birthday dear Kon-El!"

Richard and M'gann choke down their giggles as I deposit the cake in front of the birthday boy.

"Happy birthday to you!"

The moment it touches the table he leans forward out of his seat and blows out the candle. With a chuckle I take my seat opposite him as Diana leans across the table to hand him the knife.

"Thanks, Mom." He takes a moment to look at the icing representations of our team mates for a moment before plunging the knife through the cake and cutting me in half. I pass him a small plate as he takes out the first slice. "Oh, hey, I've been meaning to ask." He plates the slice and passes it down the table. "Have you seen Teekl lately?"

A pang. Fortunately, I'm prepared to cover it. "No, can't say I have."

"'cause…" Another slice. "I haven't seen her, and I think Wolf's been looking for her? Do you think she might have wandered off?"

And Diana's right next to me. "I don't know exactly what's happened to her. I haven't been getting.. any mental pictures or anything. I'll keep an eye out."

"Thanks."

And that's the other reason to commit this to memory. Given what I'm planning to do… I can't be sure that I'll ever get invited back.

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Last Supper 32

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4th July

21:21 GMT -5

"…gonna make it anywhere.

It's up to you, New York, New Yoooooooork!"

Donna hams it up as she holds the final note on well beyond what the karaoke machine is prepared to support. Of all the people here who were going to bring that up, it would have to be the native New Yorker. She's chuckling as she steps down off the stage, microphone left out in my direction.

"No, no way."

The rest of my team mates are sniggering right along with her. Richard waves his right hand at me. "Come on, Oh El. This is pretty much your signature song."

"No, I've got something else planned. And it's not my turn, anyway." I look past Beryl, who is… Sitting next to Roy with her legs coquettishly curled up beside her. Huh. "Garth, you're up."

Artemis rolls her eyes. "Alphabetical. Really."

Wallace shrugs. "I'm cool with it."

Garth doesn't seem particularly self-conscious as he takes the microphone from Donna and heads up to the stage. I suppose that -given his upbringing- singing isn't that big a deal. Most of his public performances to date would have involved competitive gladiatorial combat… Refereed, of course. Compared to that, singing isn't that big a deal.

Donna plonks herself down next to me. "So? How'd I do?"

Richard smirks again. "I don't think Oh El's too worried."

"I think you were over-actin-." Richard has put the video of my performance on his arm computer so Donna can compare the two.

She snorts, then raises her eyebrows. "Really?"

"Different size venue, it's not the same thing."

Then the music starts.

"Her name is Noelle,

I have a dream about her…"

We do wince, but we're polite enough to cover it up. Mostly, Wallace visibly failing his bluff check.

"Least no one else is gunna feel bad about their song now."

And audibly failing it as well. Fortunately, Garth is too into his song to notice. No, this bit's meant to be quiet-. Never mind.

"…no, sheeee doesn't know she's missssseeeeeehhhhhheeeehhhowowow…"

Never mind. Mercifully, Garth comes to a stop, looking at the audience for some idea of how well he's done. I just start clapping in the least sarcastic way I can manage, Donna and Richard joining in a moment later. He smiles, looking relieved as he steps off the stage. Kaldur is already walking up, and Garth hands off the microphone as he passes.

"So, ah…" Richard nods at me. "How come you're not leaving tomorrow?"

Zatanna frowns at him. "Hey."

"I don't mean I'm trying to throw him off the planet. I was just curious. If I could go anywhere in the universe I wanted to, I'm not sure how long I'd stick around."

"I've got some work to finish for Boris… The Mayor of London?"

Richard nods. "Putting in more portals?"

"No, that's… Taken care of. Just some police drills, nothing very interesting."

"Think I can stand missing it."

"And then… I've got to do something with the Ice Fortress." Kaldur appears to have made a selection. "And I suppose I should really let Mister Cobblepot out at some point."

"Whu-?"

"Sittin' in the mornin' sun,

I'll be sittin' as the evenin' come…"

Kaldur's rendition of 'Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay' isn't a masterpiece by any means, but it's far from bad. Curiously, when singing it his accent changes… Actually, he sounds a little more like his father. Family favourite, I guess. Raquel seems to approve of his choice, while Garth seems to be seeking reassurance from Tula about his own performance.

"Sittin' here resting my bones,

And this loneliness won't leave me alone, listen,

Two thousand miles I roam,

Just to make this dock my home, now…"

Kon and M'gann are whispering about.. something as well. Presumably talking about doing a duet, since their turns are one after the other. Kon shakes his head and M'gann huffs theatrically. Maybe he'd already made his choice?

Kaldur lets the music finish, not looking at his audience. Far.. better than average, actually. He starts slightly when the machine stops, then looks up with a small smile and walks back toward the seating. Kon gets to his feet, threading his way through the chairs towards Kaldur, who hands him the microphone as he passes. Kon marches up to the machine, rapidly pressing buttons to call up his song of choice.

Actually, I really should talk to Kaldur… I leave my seat at a crouch and scuttle in his direction. He looks around as I approach. "If you wish to give me pointers..?"

"No, I just realised that I haven't formally resigned from the team yet." He nods in understanding. "Obviously, I'm not leaving right now, but I've only got a few days left and I'm not going to be… Available. Unless you really need me."

"I understand, my friend." He holds out his right hand and I reciprocate, clasping his forearm. "We all wish you well wherever your future duties take you."

"I've paid my dues,"

No musical build up, Kon just launches right into it.

"Time after time,

I've done my sentence,

But committed no crime…"

…

Has he been practising? He's.. really quite… Good. This wasn't part of his original programming, he's learned this himself.

"I've taken my bows,

And my curtain calls.

You brought me fame and fortune, and everything that goes with it.

I thank you all."

He's clearly not Freddie Mercury, but his version is… Slight bias on my part here, but I'd say just as good. I realise that I'm standing straight up as he finishes and the people around me start to clap. I join in, Kon looking slightly out of breath but thoroughly pleased with himself. He starts to walk back to his seat, but M'gann leaps to her feet and swoops over to him.

"You stay right there."

"Ah, okay?" Kon stands there awkwardly as M'gann lands next to the karaoke machine and starts pressing buttons. While she's going that, her dress shifts into something a little more… Mature. Yes. That's the word. Kon's quite a bit closer than me, and I see his eyebrows go up and his mouth fall slightly open. M'gann seems to pick up on his reaction, looking around at him and then down at her own costume. Her white cheeks pink up slightly, and the upper part of her clothing shifts again to include a fur shawl. Finding the selection she wants, she activates the machine and steps back, her hair changing to-. Marilyn Monroe. She's doing Marilyn Monroe.

Taking the microphone in both hands, and with the most… I suddenly feel rather self-conscious about watching, and try to get back to my seat attracting as little attention as possible.

"Happy… Birthday… To you…"

Her eyes are locked onto his as she steps up to him.

"Happy birthday… To you…"

She takes her right hand off the microphone and lays it possessively on his left pectoral muscle.

"Happy birthday… Conner Kent…"

She leans into him.

"Happy birthday to you."

As she quietens he instinctively leans down, putting his face in the perfect position for her to dart in and kiss him on the lips. After a moment's surprise, he leans into it.

I don't think I'll mind if he prefers her version to mine.

…

Okay, guys. Some of us are waiting for our turn.

…

Oh, come o-. They separate, M'gann's clothing shifting back to normal. I hear Kon give a quiet chuckle as they walk back toward the seating hand in hand.

I get to my feet, eyebrows raised in M'gann's direction. After a moment she notices and levitates the microphone over to me.

"Do New York New York!"

"I'm not doing New York New York!" I stride onto the stage area, having the ring bring up my song of choice. Once I reach the middle I turn back to my team mates and friends. "Since this is my… Last team activity… I thought I'd sing my primary school's leavers song. The year I've… Spent here has been a… A unique experience… And a highly rewarding one. You're all…" Oh, I hate getting maudlin. "My friends, I… I wouldn't have missed any of it."

There are a few smiles as the music starts. Unlike my colleagues, I am a perfect singer.

"Tonight the rain is falling,

Full of memories,

Of people and pla-ces.

And while the past is calling,

In my fantasy,

I remember their fa-ces.

The hopes we had,

Were much too high,

Way out of reach but we have to try.

The game will never be o-o-o-ver,

Because we're keeping the dream alive.

I hear myself recalling,

Things you said to me,

The night it all start-ed,

And still the rain is falling,

Makes me feel the way,

I felt when we part-ed.

The hopes we had,

Were much too high,

Way out of reach but we have to try.

No need to hide,

No need to run,

'Cause all the answers come one by one.

The game will never be o-o-o-ver,

Because we're keeping the dream alive.

I need you.

I love yooooooooouuu.

The game will never be o-o-o-ver,

Because we're keeping the dream alive.

The hopes we had,

Were much too high,

Way out of reach but we have to try.

No need to hide,

No need to run,

'Cause all the answers come one by one.

The hopes we had,

Were much too high,

Way out of reach but we have to try.

No need to hide,

No need to run,

'Cause all the answers come one by one.

The game will never be o-o-o-ver,

Because we're keeping the dream alive.

The game will never be o-o-o-ver,

Because we're keeping the dream alive.

The game will ne-ver be o-o-o-ver."

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NEXT CHAPTER

Falling Action

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Falling Action 1

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Falling Action

7th July

22:14 GMT

The hopes we had,

were much too high…

"This is my cause, this is my fight."

Way out of reach but we had to try…

"Shine through the void with orange light."

No need to hide, no need to run…

"I've claimed all within my sight."

'Cause all the answers come one by one.

"To keep what is mine, that is my right."

I drop the last of the ten metre tall rampart sections in place, Zatanna strolling over to activate the shielding spells that should serve to protect the rest of London from what we're about to do. Down Mayfair I can see the police barricades and the curious people watching from behind them. On the side streets just inside the police cordon wait ambulances, ready to ferry any of us who fall to St Mary's Hospital to the north. The set up of this has to be reasonably quick. This is going to get televised, and if a member of the League should happen to watch BBC News 24 at the right moment…

That's why I'm mostly using flight auras and null-grav clamps. It makes it that much harder to identify me as 'Orange Lantern', rather than 'some bloke in power armour'. Adom's keeping out of sight as well, for much the same reason. His actions have been enough to prevent him becoming an international pariah, but it would still be 'cause for concern' if he started flying around Britain without prior notice.

I'm.. making fists. I hold my hands out slightly, uncurling my gauntlets before returning them to my sides.

"And you're not conflicted about this at all?"

I look over to where Jade sits atop the already-completed section of rampart. Her new armour is made of mithril, but where Zatanna's version has runes designed to assist her spellcasting, Jade's includes scry wards and the same sort of invisibility generator that mine has. Thanks to Ted and his volunteers, we now know roughly what the safe level of exposure for a person to adapt to it is. Which is good, because this plan revolved around us coordinating precise levels of vengefulness and having her go psychotic on us would be very bad.

"Not at this stage, no."

"I never got this close to killing a Justice League member when I was a villain. You're the most straitlaced guy I know."

"Maybe you should expand your circle of friends a little."

"Are you sure that-?"

"I don't like the fact that I'm-. That we're having to do this. And I'm not looking forward to the arguments I'll be having with.. people I generally admire and regard as friends." Alan in particular, he's going to be disappointed, and I… And Diana's certainly up there. "But I don't doubt that this is the right thing for us to do."

The violet glow around Zatanna dies down as she takes a last look at the runic network covering the rampart. "All done here."

I nod, a gesture probably obscured by my helmet. Jade isn't entirely mistaken, of course. I.. had really wanted to leave Earth on a high note.

"Orange Lantern to team. Final preparations."

I watch Jade work the mechanism on the Ace of Chaos, check her ammunition and then vanish from view. We don't want her actually shooting Nabu unless something goes badly wrong, but each Chaos-laden shot should disrupt his magics fairly nicely. Zatanna's preparation simply involves her touching the Star Sapphire to her forehead and closing her eyes. Above me, my ring augmented vision shows me Rob just shrug while Adom adopts a more alert posture. John won't show himself unless… Until things get violent. He's too much of a trigger for both Nabu and Zatara, especially given his recent elevation. And as for the other participant…

I float down to the grass next to Zatanna and use a construct to pry open the packing case containing our last best hope for peace. Nabu may have point blank rejected my offer of a golem body, but maybe with a complete one here ready for him to examine he'll feel differently. Unlike the one we made for Mister Siskin, this one is made of the same super-inert metal as Zatanna's staff, threaded through with orichalcum wire. John's not… Capable of using Order-related magic any longer, but Sephtian was perfectly happy to help Zatanna with my 'proof of concept'.

I suppress a twinge of guilt about involving him without telling him what's really going on. The League, I can justify to myself. They brought it on themselves when they voted Nabu onboard. But if this does turn violent, that golem is enough to strongly implicate him.

I breathe in, then out. Just something I'll live with. Like.. whatever it was that happened to Teekl. Like lying to my friends.

Still, there are still some things I can do properly. Diana's at a diplomatic event this evening… This afternoon, to discuss the regulation of magic and arcane technology. Which means that she isn't going to be at the embassy.

Ring, dial the embassy.

Compliance.

"Hello they'uh Pawl. Diana ain't here raht now, if that's who you'uh aftuh."

"No, no, thank you. Could you please pass on a message for me? It's not urgent."

"Sure, sugar."

"Could you please tell her that I'm declining. She'll know what it's about."

"Alraaht. Ah made a note raaht heyuh."

"Thank you very much, Miss Candy."

Ring, hang up.

Compliance.

I turn in the direction of a nearby patch of woodland. "Are you ready, Mister Ondaate?"

The shadows flow into the shape of his face. Our wards don't do a thing to a man who's already here.

"Not all that easy to miss a Lord of Order. As long as one of you is alive, I'll stop him running."

"Thank you for your assistance."

The face nods, and then… All that's there is leaves and shadows.

"Mission starts, repeat, mission starts. John, bait."

There's a slight delay, then it's as if what little colour there is in our environment is gone, replaced by tones of grey which serve to give emphasis to the vivid red lines running across the ground. We don't know exactly what the normal Chaos ascension ritual looks like, but this should look exactly like the sort of big chaoticy thing that Nabu claims justifies his existence. He shouldn't be able to pass up the opportunity. If he does, I could try calling him in… But I'd rather not.

Heh. I'm fine with potentially killing a Justice League member, but misusing a radio is where I draw the line.

Hehehe.

"Okay, we're not waiting. John, apply the skull."

At this point the arrangement in the shed is irrelevant anyway. I don't know if Nabu just wasn't paying attention, but that should-.

A giant golden ankh appears in the air before us, Nabu materialising in the centre. Before his teleportation ankh has fully disappeared he raises his arms, firing a barrage of golden bolts at the glowing ground. The bait-magic fades immediately, colour returning to the surrounding area. Nabu lowers his arms, the golden protective aura in place around his body. He peers around, eyes alighting momentarily on Zatanna and myself before moving on. Having completed his review, he turns back to us, lowering himself to just above the ground. "Explain."

"This is a combination of intervention and ambush. I'm not prepared to tolerate you continuing to use Mister Giovanni Zatara's body. So we're going to have a talk about it, and if I'm not satisfied at the end we're going to take it back by force. Do you have any questions at this stage?"

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Falling Action 2

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7th July

22:19 GMT

"Enough of this nonsense!" Nabu spread his arms as a giant ankh forms behind him. It shimmers, then vanishes, taking him with it.

Um. Mister On-?

It shimmers back into being, Nabu being visibly shoved forward as it shatters and fades.

"Nabu, you like me about as much as I like you, but could you not credit me with the intelligence to remember that you can teleport?"

He glowers for a moment, then spreads his arms out again. This ankh is bigger and brighter. Together, they vanish… And a moment later, return. This time, it's a genuine scowl. "Impudent wretch."

"Could be."

He looks upwards, then surges into the sky, far faster than I've ever seen him fly before. He makes it about six metres upwards before his rate of ascent suddenly diminishes. He stops accelerating for a moment, then immediately starts to fall back. The golden glow surrounding him shines brilliantly for a moment as he tries to escape again, to the exact same result.

Looks like Mister Ondaate really came through.

"Done?"

This time, his eyes shine gold as he glares down at me. "You dare."

"Yes. I do. I have no idea why the Justice League has given you such an easy time for what you've done, but we don't intend to go along with it. So you've got a few choices. You can-."

"Zatara is most alarmed by the presence of his daughter."

There's a flare of violet light from beside me. "Oh, like you care about that."

"Zatara also recognises that jewel. It is the Star Sapphire. What is it doing in your possession?"

"Isn't it obvious? I needed to be more powerful in case I had to fight you."

His eyes dim briefly, then return to full blaze as he turns them on me. "The Star Sapphire was in the custody of the Green Lanterns until you stole it. You informed them that you did not know of its location."

"Completely true at the time. We recovered it afterwards."

"It has strongly adverse properties on the minds of those who possess it. Relinquish it at once!"

Another flare of violet. "No."

"Your father wishes you to abandon this endeavour."

"Why don't you take the helmet off and let him say that?"

The air to Nabu's right shimmers, and a translucent image of Mister Zatara appears. He looks haggard and slightly panicked. "Zatanna, this is madness! Please!"

"As if we'd believe an illusion you create-."

"Are you saying you could have let me speak to my dad at any time?!"

Mister Zatara's face goes still and-. I want to say 'pale' and 'ghostly', but he's a translucent illusion already… Then the image of him fades to nothing.

Nabu seems a bit less.. glowy now. "You believe that you can harm me."

"I know we can hurt you. I'd…" My mouth twists. "I'd like to hurt you, for what you've done. But I struggled to come up with a way that would reliably harm you and not your host."

"For how long have you planned this act of infamy?"

"Eight months. Since the night you took Giovanni Zatara." His eyes narrow. "We actually had a word with Kilderkin the day after, to see if there was any negotiating room. We nearly got rid of you at new year, but Captain Nazi grabbed Klarion before the spell could complete. With that off the table, I had to start an arcane technology revolution just to work out how to get rid of you!"

I shake my head. Again, it won't be visible from outside, but I want to keep myself under control. "So, you've got a few choices for a peaceful resolution. Firstly, stop using Mister Zatara. Despite the way you've behaved, it's not impossible that someone might pick you up again. And you could see about building a relationship based on mutual trust and respect."

"No."

"Didn't think you would. You do understand that you're confirming my low opinion of you here?" No response. "Alright. Option two." I pick the new golem up with construct clamps and float it towards him. "I know that you weren't keen when I first raised the issue, but the offer is genuine. A thaumically active golem. You could actually transfer your consciousness out of the helmet into its containment systems. The helmet could then serve as a power source, since it wouldn't be critical to your continued existence. I've got-" I take the book out of subspace. "-the full development log here, since I know full well that you never bothered to read it. If you want to check-?"

"No."

"No? Just n-? Why not!?"

"I would not trust anything delivered to me from your hands. And if I attempted the transfer, what possible guarantee could you give me that you would not simply destroy my helmet?"

I note that he isn't even scanning the golem. "I found out at New Year that my oath to Gaea was rendered unenforceable once I got my warding tattoos up to power. Diana implied that if I wanted to, she'd let me leave. Go to Maltus. I didn't, because that wasn't what I'd sworn. If you take this offer, I won't cheat you on it."

"This from the youth who but moments ago openly stated his desire to harm me."

"It's true, I loathe you. But I don't want to harm Mister Zatara. And I'm going to have to explain what happened here to the Justice League tomorrow. If there's an option for a peaceful resolution, I'll take it."

"There is. Abandon this foolish endeavour and I shall be merciful."

"Should I understand that you're refusing the golem?"

His right hand flicks out, a golden ankh forming in the air before him for a second before the tip buries itself into the golem's chest. The golem shudders as golden light surges through it along the mana pathways, then crumbles and collapses to the ground in pieces.

"You may."

"Have you any idea how long that took to-!?" I bite down my rage. "Fine. Last option. Much as I'd like to be shot of you, I'm willing to-."

"You would offer yourself as a host?"

"Of course not. If I did that I doubt that I'd bother waiting for more than ten seconds before calling the Ophidian and devouring you from within. But I am prepared to delay my leaving the Earth in order to find several replacements. People -magic users- prepared to wear you in sequence, so that you'll have a near constant host."

"Kent Nelson searched for years for someone willing to become Fate. Why should you believe that you can succeed where he failed?"

"Because I won't ask just one person. I know full well that if even he couldn't put up with you long term that it would be foolish to ask any one other person to do so. But a large enough group… Say, thirty? They could probably put up with you for one day a month each, in exchange for you teaching them how to improve their own magic use. It shouldn't be that hard to get thirty volunteers from all of Atlantis."

"You do not already have them assembled?"

"No. I couldn't do it in advance because I couldn't risk you hearing about it. But I'm perfectly happy to swear an oath to that effect-."

"You expect me to believe you?" He says nothing for a moment. "Go. Assemble whatever number you think correct. I will assess their compatibility. If I am satisfied that they are suitable, I will begin the rotation."

"No."

"Explain."

"As I said, I'm not prepared to tolerate you being on Mister Zatara's head for a day longer. I'll swear whatever oath you want, then you come off and I'll gather a group for you."

"Unacceptable."

"I can't trust that you'd stick with a rotation agreement, Nabu. You've had three hosts since Klarion attacked your tower and you've betrayed each of them. As far as I'm concerned, if you can't bend this much, you can't be trusted at all."

"Your opinion is not my concern."

"That's where you're wrong." Can't say I'm surprised. "Nabu of Cilia, I am placing you under arrest for blackmail, kidnapping, false imprisonment, enslavement and malefictum. You do not have to say anything, but-."

"By what authority? You are not a member of the Justice League!"

"No, but I joined the Metropolitan Police a few days ago." I take my identification card out of subspace. "I really am empowered to make arrests while in the Greater London area. As I was saying, you do not-."

Nabu's pose changes, golden ankhs appearing on each hand.

"By force it is then." Construct armour manifests around me. "Queensberry rules until you say otherwise."

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Falling Action 3

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7th July

22:25 GMT

The universe around me slows. I'm not sure if Nabu is waiting for us to make the first move or if he just can't cast all that fast. Not that it matters. When we rehearsed this, we did so on the assumption that he was capable of much more than he'd shown to date.

The first attack comes from Jade, the muffled crack of her round's propellant detonation reaching me just as the bullet reaches his right hand. It misses the flesh but neatly hits the ankh in the crosspiece. I see the slight wobble that preludes its collapse in the same instant as I hear the second detonation. The second bullet strikes the left ankh exactly as the first hit the right, which is starting to visibly fragment.

The third bullet hits Nabu in the amulet at the centre of his chest. As expected, it doesn't strike home but it does fracture his protective aura. He's vulnerable.

And that's when Michael Siskin leaps out of the soil beneath him, easily covering the distance between them. His stone arms seize his target, the left looping around Nabu's stomach and the right wrapping around Nabu's neck. The sudden additional weight combined with the shock of having his spells fractured causes Nabu to start to fall from the air, and then comes the yellow. I don't know exactly what Siskin is showing him… Whether it's his fears or other people's… But from the way Nabu is trembling it seems to be working. I stop accelerating -might need that in a moment- and watch as-

"…another Human from a monster's digestive tract."

-they hit the ground, Mister Siskin taking the opportunity to wrap his legs around Nabu as well. The plan involves him trying to see if causing Nabu to have a total mental breakdown allows us to lift the helmet off without doing anything more exotic. I kneel, picking up the restraint chains from next to me and striding forwards. Still, getting him chained up would be-.

"YAAAAAAAAAGHH!"

Golden light outshines the yellow for a moment, then stone fragments rain down from.. the… sky. Siskin… Most of his.. torso is still on Nabu, but… It's cracked and burned out, the yellow runes that once covered it entirely gone. Nabu's still yellow, but there's not-.

He just killed-.

Nabu shoves the torso off and rises to a crouch, Siskin's body fragmenting where it hits the ground.

You shit.

"Orange Lantern to team, lethal force is authorised. Kill the fucker."

Nabu's head jerks to the side as a bullet hits the helmet. My own hands come together as an orange branding beam links the two of us-

"Teg ffo ym rehtaf!"

-and violet light envelopes his head, shining from his eyeholes and the base of his helmet.

"You're mine, Nabu." I start walking closer, intensifying the beam by focusing on my desire to just-! Fucking-! Have this done!

How is he warding this off?

How is he-?!

And I'm…

…flying…

…backwards.

Owfha! Something's gone in the armour, I felt that! I float up from my prone position, desperate to see what Nabu's managed! He's risen to one foot, the air around him filled with hollow golden squares which spin and dance through the air with perfect geometric precision. As I watch, three wink out, shot by the Ace of Chaos.

"Agents of annihilation!" Nabu points both fists to his left, tiny ankhs moving in circles around each wrist. His hands open and the ankhs shoot out, slicing through shrubs, trees and detonating!

"Augh-!"

I hear Jade's yelp over the comms. Right then, ablative shields is it? Six railguns form in the air next to me, mage slayers loading into each one from subspace. Couldn't risk this when he just had the one shield, but now he's got dozens…

I open fire.

"You've sworn yourself to Chaos!" Shields begin to blink out. It looks like they take two hits a piece, and they're moving… Switch targets to individual shields. Create an opening. "Betrayed every bond of friendship that you-!"

"What do you know about friendship, Lich!?"

One fifth of his shields gone; they're reappearing but not fast enough to keep him safe. John, now would be a very good time to-.

"Pag ni eht sdleihs rof Moda!"

The shields shift, still surrounding him but no longer covering the space above him. Nabu starts to crouch, raising his hands as symbols I don't recognise dance around them.

Symbols which part easily around Adom's fingers as he descends from the sky at speed. When we discussed this, he said that his instinct was to fly down as hard and as fast as possible. Zatanna responded that the whole point was to free her father, not turn him into paste. So, rather than focus on Aker's speed or Heryshaf's strength he's reinforcing his spiritual integrity with Atum's power. I send a ping to Jade's armour as Adom bears Nabu to the ground and grasps his foe's helmet with every bit of his strength. I maintain fire-

"Sdleihs nekaew!"

-and the shields evaporate.

"You aren't the Lord of Order I want."

I fly an arc around Nabu, firing at the ones on the far side.

"But you'll do for-"

Nabu gets his hands against Adom's chest, gold light flaring! Where did the suppression-? I see the pool of molten metal where I landed. Okay, the backup set is with-.

"-now."

The golden light dims, and Adom is still there.

"Your magic is-."

Golden light flows from Nabu's helmet and up Adom's arms!

"You have lived too long, fallen champion."

As I watch, Adom's flesh begins to wither and age, his body visibly shrinking! With Nabu's outer shields mostly fallen I throw my arms forward for another brand attempt.

"Think he's doing-" Rob calmly steps up to Nabu from behind him and puts his hands on his helmet. "-alright."

Adom falls back, struggling to rise. He looks like he's aged… At least sixty years. His skin is loose, his hair white and thinning and his uniform hangs off him. But with him out of the way and Rob draining Nabu…

"Brand."

"Noisufnoc!"

Golden light surges again as my beam strikes home, but this time it looks like an uncontrolled mess. I also take a moment to connect a line to the staggering Adom and pull him out of the way. Okay, that's-.

"Nearly there."

"John, we don't have an unlimited amount of time on this." I drop a box of Sivana-brand nutrient bars on the ground next to Adom. Assuming that was a touch attack rather than a lingering curse he should be perfectly capable of regenerating the effect, given sufficient fuel. "Adom and Jade are no longer combat-effective, and-."

"Got it."

John appears in the clearing to my far left, all four of the colossal mana batteries Zatanna and I built just behind him and Nabu's skull in his left hand.

"Alas, poor Nabu."

Then the lights on the batteries light up as they begin draining Nabu in earnest.

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Falling Action 4

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7th July

22:27 GMT

"I knew him, Zatara. A fellow who thought-"

Nabu grabs Rob's hands and lifts them from his helmet as I put construct armour around Adom.

"-that he could get away-"

"Sleep, child."

"-with stealing the body of a mate of mine."

Rob slams his forehead into Nabu's faceplate then shoves his hands forward, sending Nabu staggering back. "Yeah mate. More magic. Did you not read my file or something?"

"Yes." A new ankh appears on Nabu's chest, a hurricane of golden wind blasting out of Rob and being sucked into it. "Fate sees all."

"Oh." He looks up at me. "Aah?"

I cover him in construct armour and put a spell eater around his neck. Much as he's learned recently, if Nabu has a way around his mana draining there probably isn't much his magic can add.

"And you, Constantine. I should have seen your hand in this from the first. Bartering power first from Demons and now from Klarion himself." John looks mildly pleased with himself. "This day marks the first upon which my desires and those of my host are in alignment."

"Yeah, yeah. Except you're missin' a few bits o' the puzzle, aren't you?"

"A magician of low repute with a history of misdeeds and deception has corrupted others in his treachery. Zatara believed that you would not dare approach his daughter-."

"Back up a bit." John leans back against the closest battery. "What was that about Klarion?"

Shoot or not shoot? Once the batteries are active, they don't stop. Hopefully with the battering Nabu's taken he isn't noticing… No. I should let John keep talking.

"You are using his power. This place reeks of it. Clearly you have made some foul pact to gain-."

"Hahaha!" He looks away from Nabu while he fishes out his cigarette packet with his right hand. "Really? That what you think?"

"What other alternative could there be?"

John looks up towards me. "You wanna tell 'im?"

"We confronted and permanently depowered Klarion three days ago, Nabu. Right now his comatose body is lying in a Chinese prison cell wreathed in suppression chains. They'll probably execute what's left of him in a couple of days, if they haven't already. Do you know how.. China executes supervillains?"

No response.

"They've got a superfunctionary called 'Ghost Fox Killer'. She can rip the souls out of people's bodies and either turn them into ghost-slaves or into batteries. She has absolutely no loyalty to the Chinese state, and has no real need for money, so they buy her loyalty… Or at least her service, by handing the vilest criminals they can over to her. See, the more evil they were, the more power she can draw from them."

"That-. Is-. That isn't possible."

"Sure it is. John? I think this is more your area."

"Klarion's problem… Other than the fact that he's a murderous little shit, is that when Paul nobbled his familiar he decided to stick around rather than fuck off back where he came from. Normally, if you kill a familiar or-" His eyes narrow very slightly. "-destroy a helmet, the bundle of magic energy that makes up you gets sucked straight back t' the Plane of Whatever. It's like… Spreading a bit of elastic between two points. Let go of one? It snaps over t' the other one. Klarion cut himself off t' stop that happening, leaving a whole lump of elastic chaos power behind him." John waves his cigarette in the air, eldritch runes appearing in its wake and burning in the air. "Which just about anyone who knew what they're doing could help themselves to."

"Informative. I will be certain to use that knowledge to more efficiently banish Chaos Lords in the future. I will begin with you. Your coat is hardly well-concealed."

"Funny, when y'think about it. Only worked with Giovanni a couple a' times, but you'd think he'd remember how I work."

"He mostly remembers you killing his wife."

John looks down, shaking his head. "That coulda been any of us. Coulda been me. Maybe it shoulda been." He looks up. "Know I thought so at the time. Point bein', I'd have thought he'd realise what I was up to." He nods his head to the side. "Or maybe he's just keeping shtum. Ah well."

"What nonsense is this? The technique you claim that you utilised against Klarion will not work on me. If by some remote possibility you were able to defeat me, I would accept banishment. I dwell entirely within my helmet. I cannot be severed from my link to the Realm of Pure Order."

"Yeah." The end of John's cigarette flares into life. "Think about that for a mo'. Most people, they do their thinking with what's between their ears, don't they? A Human brain's basically a soggy sack of electrical pathways, but…" He jabs his cigarette forwards. "You don't have one. Your host does, but you were aware of what was goin' on even when you didn't have a host, so you're not runnin' on their brain. Plus, you've got that whole order-fixation thing goin' on. So what are you thinkin' with?"

He waits for a moment, but Nabu doesn't respond. He shrugs. "Pure magic. You're thinkin' with the structures of your soul. Bloody clever, actually. Usually when people try that, try directed reincarnation, it doesn't work quite right." He waves his right hand at the side of his head. "Doesn't all come through. Some memories get lost in the transfer, some get scrambled 'cause they can't hold it together right while the new brain grows… But you've got it solved."

"I am Order manifest."

"Yeah. You are." John stubs out his cigarette on the forehead of Nabu's skull, then tosses the butt aside. "Shoulda thought about that a bit more, really." John's face stills, becomes completely serious. And I see… Just a little… Klarion, there. "You're an arcane construct. You think thoughts of pure magic energy, and the power you use gets constantly replenished from the Plane of Order. But you're not the Plane of Order. You can't take more than a certain amount. And you can't drop below a certain amount. Or you start losing things."

"Wanna know what these batteries are doing right now?"

Nabu charges, an inverted ankh forming in his hands like a sword. I accelerate, railguns opening up with mage slayer rounds. Nabu takes a second to glance my way and the rounds stop in midair as he passes. A muffled bang, and his sword shatters under two bullets from the Ace of Chaos. Jade's okay. Okay enough to fire, which means that she's unlikely to be dying. Why do I think the mage slayers aren't moving? Most likely, an indirect block of some kind. What wouldn't be affected? Any construct would be, they're basically physical attacks. I send filaments downwards just in case. Accelerated like this they move slowly, but if there's a way to reach him then they should find it before he reaches John. What else? I can still see what's happening, so a laser should be able to reach him. No, I don't want to harm Mister Zatara.

He's not shielding his nerves. Electron inductor construct.

Mental pathway damage limit reached. Acceleration discontinued.

A new ankh-sword begins appearing, just as my electron inductor tags his spine. His legs freeze up and he starts to fall forwards. Just before he hits the ground he appears to get his levitation spell working again, accelerating through the air near the ground towards John and the mana batteries that are steadily ripping his mind apart.

"Oh yeah?" John carelessly tosses aside the skull and then sticks out his left hand, golden light jumping from the closest battery and shining through his skin as he absorbs it. "Two can play at that-" A red crackling ankh appears in his right hand. "-game."

"Life is matter given order."

John takes a step forwards. "Come on then!"

"Reason is the spark of life."

John pulls his sword back as Nabu reaches him. "Come on you fuck-!"

"Sentience is matter that embraces-" Nabu flies past John, John's hastily swung sword merely clipping his cape. "-reason."

The air around Nabu shines gold as he lands atop a mana battery, sword raised.

Oh shit, opening fire with everything!

"Did you dare think I was not prepared to die for my cause as well?!"

He brings the sword down on the bat-

back

Falling Action 5

next

Beep.

Ugh?

Beep.

Feeling..? Soft..? Warm..? Sheet, sheet, duvet.

Urh-h-h-h-h-h…

My eyes flicker open and brightbrightblur close again.

I'm… Alive..? Ah, confusion… No, Erebos isn't that bright. What was..? Fight with… Nabu. Right. I was… What was I..?

Ring. Ring! Wholeness Rightly… No. Rings 're, rings are gone. That's not good. I rub my ring fingers with my thumbs just to make sure there isn't some sort of interference or blocking mechanism. No, they're gone. Agh.

Okay, my head's too full of cotton wool to try calling them, and I'm probably in some kind of building. Don't want to.. call them through a wall and hurt someone.

I try moving my arms. Yes… They move, but it feels… Sluggish. And not just because of the duvet. I'm.. injured..? Nothing hurts, but I might be drugged. Don't.. feel any drips. Or handcuffs, which were a possibility depending on what happened.

…

What did happen?

Oh, this better not be one of those stupid illusion things, and the fight's still going on in the real-. No, I don't see Nabu going in for that.

Alright, so I'm probably in St Mary's. Good… What do I-? Oh! Oh. Mister Siskin, Nabu killed him. Burned him.. out. I'll… Have to get John-. Someone anyway, to check whether he's dead-dead or just discorporated. I don't think… Nabu would have made a mistake… He did kill the Terror Thing, and the magics involved are probably the same.

I didn't… I didn't think he'd do that. Just another way he fails to live up to the heroic ideal. Another demonstration of why he doesn't deserve to be on the Justice League.

Or… Failed, I suppose. He could well be dead, or rendered such a simpleton that John could have dealt with him.

Mister Siskin is dead because I persuaded him to join us. He wasn't… Strictly necessary. The… Draining thing would have worked perfectly well without him. I just thought-. I wanted to bring Nabu down without that, if we could. He clearly has fears…

If I'd been a bit quicker with the chain…

I'll have to tell his.. parents, his family. And I don't know if anyone else died, or…

I open my eyes again, wincing as the light once again burns my eyes. Couldn't they have..? Curtains, or something..?

"'oight." I close my eyes again for a moment. Come on mouth, work. "'ight. Bright."

There's a.. rustling, and the sound of steps on a hard floor. The light dims a little. "'ank you."

"Are you awake? Should I get the nurse?"

M'gann? That's a… Pleasant surprise.

"No, just…" Openopenopenopen. "Uhhhhhhhrrrrr."

The light dims further as I finally manage to focus and find M'gann standing over me. She's in full Martian mode-. No, in full Miss Martian mode, skin chalk white and hair sheer black. "Hiiiiii there."

"How do you feel?"

"Woozy.. and, slightly numb. A-heh, which is… Wrong, because you don't feel numb, because… Numb isn't feeling." No, that's not right either. "Numb is not being able to feel. That's it."

"Well, you're… Fairly coherent." I feel something -her hand- on my forehead. "Your thoughts were all so mixed up I didn't know if you were-." Footsteps and a door opening, M'gann's head jerking up to face… "Superboy, he's awake."

I hear a sort of cough-sniff as Wolf trots in just ahead of her father. "Hey." He gives me a worried smile. "Had us kinda worried there."

"What-." Agh, my mouth feels like… I'm not quite in control. "What… Day..?"

Nabu strides through the still-open door behind him as the levels of light in the room drop still further, M'gann, Kon and Wolf all ceasing all movement. His cape billows slightly as he comes to the foot of my-. Doesn't matter, focus, rings! Rings, get here-!

He looks down at me for a moment. Can't.. can't focus…

Then he reaches up and pulls the helmet off his head.

…

"John?"

John slowly nods his head. "Just about."

He looks like he's been through the wringer. Actually… So does the helmet. He's got it slightly tucked under his right arm, but I can see what I think are Adom's finger marks where he squeezed it. Nabu's gold cloak… It was his coat. With the helmet off it's back to its usual fawn colour, but it was glowing. Kon and M'gann are just.. stopped, not moving, breathing... M'gann's hair is suspended in the air where she was turning her head. Some sort of suspended animation?

"What..? I-i-it work?"

"Pretty much. What'd you see up to?"

"He… He s-stabbed the… Battery."

John nods. "Not too clever, that. Just sped it all up. Had to grab the skull a bit quick, but apart from that…"

I relax, my head tilting back slightly. "Anyone..? Else.. die..?"

"Giovanni's banged up like you were. Maybe worse. Adom walked it off. Jade needed one of those potions. Disappeared yesterday. Rob headed off back to Cornwall before your-" He glances at Kon, then returns his attention to me. "-mates showed up. Zatanna's with her dad."

I manage a weak nod. "Siskin?"

"Gone mate. Sorry."

"Parents. I need to tell his-."

John shakes his head. "Adom did it."

I suppose he's got experience. "Nabu?"

"Same. If it helps."

A weak shake. "No. Not really." Why.. couldn't he just… I've hated him for eight months solid. Might be nice to be able to enjoy the idea… "You?"

John raises his left hand, an ankh of crackling red lightning appearing over his palm. "Strange. The chaos thing I could… Felt a bit like everything was exploding at a hundred miles an hour, but… I could get it. This is… I dunno what this is."

"Balance. You should be able to… To harmonise-."

He looks me straight in the eyes, glaring slightly. His eyes are bloodshot and red and gold lights dance in his irises. "Yeah, well it's a bit harder than that when you actually do it, alright. Feels like getting torn into a million pieces whenever…" He closes his eyes for a moment, his whole body sort of shimmering. "Dunno if I'll be able t' do it."

"Anything I can do?"

"Not unless you know where you can find a Lord of Chaos and a Lord of Order working together."

"Shazam and Oggar. It… It didn't last, but…"

He nods. "Something to look at." He takes a deep breath, then exhales. "Look… I agreed with this. I was right with you every step. I'm feeling rough as anything... Not your fault." He steps back. "But don't come looking for me for a bit, yeah?"

I nod as he puts the helmet back on, turns and walks away.

back

Falling Action 6

next

Don't know

But we're home free anyway

I hear his steps echo as they hit the hard floor, then… Nothing. The room is still drained of colour, my.. movements… I can move a bit, and my mind feels like it's actually ticking over rather than stalling. I don't know if that was him, or just my natural recovery rate. Actually… All that order magic that got released… I probably absorbed at least some of it with my tattoos.

…

I look at the unmoving faces of two of my closest friends. Now comes the… Easy bit. Let's face it, telling them isn't going to be anything like as hard as preparing for fighting Nabu. And.. they'll be hurt. Maybe because of my duplicity, maybe because I didn't include them. And then…

Off into space. I'm a little… Not conflicted. I don't do that any more. But it's a close run thing. After eight months I very nearly want to stay and argue my case. Publically, if at all possible. If the League continue with the lies I've set up for them, Nabu will be remembered as a hero who died fighting a vile Lich. If they come clean… Is that likely? Diana might-. No. If they talked her into keeping shtum about Mister Zatara getting possessed, she'll almost certainly go along with this.

And I'd like to be a big enough man to not feel the need to needle her about it… Another borderline case.

But the clear winner is sticking to the original plan. I need to recover the postal packets and electronic transfers I had set to go out… Assuming that they haven't already. No, M'gann would have said something. I need to pay Jade the balance of her fee. Need to stow the Fortress somewhere. And I need to have it out with the Justice League.

Has John just forgotten to turn time back on-?

Colour… Bleeds back into the room. The door frame regains colour first, then a rough path across the ceiling between the door and the lighting fixture regains its whiteness. Next, the ceiling mounted light reactivates, throwing fluorescent illumination across the otherwise still room. Then the floor, John's footprints briefly visible as the grey patches slowly recolour. Then the walls and the sheets on my bed. Then a flash of orange as the rings appear on their designated fingers. Oh, that's a relief. I focus on M'gann as her skin starts to turn from grey to white. Her hands start to change first, then her face. She's nearly regained her normal colouration before her hair begins to darken from faded grey to its normal raven-dark shade. Empathic vision goes from showing nothing to suddenly reigniting in a blaze of personality and colour as the world snaps to life again.

There's a slight frown on her face as she looks at the door. "I thought there..?"

Kon glances behind him for a moment before returning his attention to me. "We couldn't find-." He frowns, looking down at my hands. "Oh, you had 'em the whole time."

"Not exactly." I push back the duvet and with slight caution turn so that my legs overhang the edge of the bed. "Listen, what exactly do you know about what happened?"

M'gann smiles. "Zatara's back! We stopped in to see him on our way here."

Kon gives me a disgruntled look. "You got in a fight with some kind of undead wizard and didn't invite us. Just 'cause you quit the team, that doesn't mean we won't help you."

M'gann nods in support. "We're your friends, and-."

I hold up my right hand. "Before you… Go any further. The Lich story was -while technically true- mostly a cover story for what we were actually doing."

Kon looks thoughtful, then nods. "Must be serious. You usually hate working with Fate."

I nearly say 'we could hardly ambush him if he wasn't there'… No. Far too flippant. This is a serious matter. "M'gann, you know those barriers I've been keeping up the whole time?"

"Ah, yeah? It doesn't.. matter-."

I close my eyes and exhale, dropping them completely. And I can.. feel her again. Oh, I'd missed that. She's not the same; a little muted. Her own defences are better now. But she's there again. "There. Now. What actually happened is that after eight months' planning and preparation we lured Nabu into an ambush, attacked and killed him."

Kon's face screws up in confusion. "What? That's… What?"

There's a slight intake of breath from M'gann, her hands moving to cover her mouth and her eyes widening.

"It sometimes seems like everyone's forgotten since Roanoke, but he was possessing Zatanna's father." I turn to M'gann, picturing the image clearly in my mind. **[I look Zatanna over for a moment and then step forwards and hug her. As I do so I flare my aura outwards. With all that's happened today I doubt anyone will think much of that. It serves to camouflage the sonic stabiliser effect which cancels the noise of what I'm about to say. As she relaxes into the hug I put my chin on her shoulder and whisper into her ear.

"On the flight back I had a few ideas about getting Nabu out of your father. If you're up to it, come and find me in half an hour. "]**

**["I have the honour to be the personal slave of Lord Kilderkin, a Manifestation of Order, here incarnated in the form of a sheet of paper."]**

"We started work on it the day after the Roanoke Incident. Started by summoning Nabu's boss. He was less than helpf-."

"You can't have-!" Kon's face hardens slightly. "You're saying you-. You killed a member of the Justice League?!

"I killed a criminal who violently resisted arrest by killing one of my colleagues. Being a member of the Justice League does not put you above the law."

He shakes his head in a series of short rapid movements. "Who? Everything-?"

"Michael Siskin. His remains-."

"The.. fear guy?"

"Yes. Interestingly, British law does recognise him as a person, though it's a bit patchy on what actual protections he gets."

"But… Klarion..?"

"We already dealt with him." I gingerly get to my feet. Steady enough. My NHS issue pyjamas are replaced by a suit before reappearing on the bed, cleaned and neatly folded. "Unless I very much miss my guess he'll be dead within a week, and he'll be powerless and comatose until then. So you don't have to worry about… A 'playground of chaos' or anything like that." Hm. "M'gann, I want to share my memory of this with both of you. Would you mind including Kon in the link as well?"

"I…" **Okay?**

**["Who do you think they're going to get?" I turn back to her, looking blank. "The League, I mean. They don't have a magic user now…"

"I don't know. Um, Jason Blood, maybe? David Sergeant? I doubt it'll be John and it could well end up being some Atlantean battle mage neither of us have ever heard of. Why'd you ask?"

"We'd be working with them, wouldn't we? To free Dad."

"I assume so. I mean, we'll need to talk to them in private at some point and see how they want to handle things…"

"It's just…" Her eyes dip. "It's probably stupid…"

"What is it?"

She looks up. "You don't think they'll offer Nabu a place, do you?"

I blink, stunned. "No, of course not! They're M-. Your father's friends! They're not going to let some Lich stroll in, steal his body and then pick up the keys to the place as a bonus! There's no way they'd do that."

She nods. "I know, it's just… I can't stop thinking about it. I mean, Wonder Woman and Red Tornado worked with him-."

"And that's exactly why they won't. They know what he's like. Zatanna, you're being ridiculous. You know that, right?"

She nods. "I guess."]**

Kon shudders slightly. **Did they say no, or..?**

**["Next out is-."

Her voice fades, replaced by a sort of buzzing. My mouth opens slightly and my eyes widen but other than that I'm paralysed by the horror of what I'm seeing as Nabu, dressed in blue and gold and Giovanni Zatara's body steps out of the Hall of Justice. Dimly I think I hear Zatanna gasp but my mind is empty. I just stare at his helmet as he takes his place in the line up.

"How..? How could they do this..?"

I think some other people are coming out after him. Miss Grant's mouth is moving. That's probably important? There's probably… There might be someone..? The camera angle changes to give a wider image and I find my eyes shifting over to Diana.

How could you? How.. how could you? Why..?

The world snaps back into focus as I hear Zatanna whimper. She shakily gets to her feet and I can see the tracks of the tears that are already running down her cheeks and I'm on my feet and putting my arms around her and resting my head on hers as she cries into my shoulder. Without the Justice League's help -and I think I have to assume that we're not getting any now- freeing Mister Zatara... I'd hoped someone else would have had new ideas, someone who knew something… No. I don't know less than I did before. I was keeping the League out of the loop anyway.]**

**That was…** M'gann looks stunned. **That was when you started blocking me out the whole time.**

**Couldn't risk anything getting back to the League.** I kneel down in front of the puzzled looking Wolf. Ring, animal translation.

Compliance.

"Wolf. Sad. Teekl is dead."

Wolf sits, giving out a quiet whimper. "Cat Mother!"

"Fight kill bad man. She good kitty."

Wolf lies down, her whimper continuing, rising in pitch to a sort of keening noise. "Wrong-bad! Want back!"

I stand, wincing. Stop translation.

Compliance.

"And now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go and have a chat with our superiors."

I walk slowly towards the door as Wolf throws her head back and howls.

back

Falling Action 7

next

Still don't know-

Oh, enough of that. Rings, time and date.

10th July

14:36 GMT

And map.

Compliance.

Neither Kon nor M'gann follows me as I stride down the corridor in the direction of Mister Zatara's room, the ring and my own empathic vision showing me Zatanna waiting within. They're only a few rooms down from my own, and… I peer down the corridor. There are a couple of armed response police officers at the exit, politely but firmly keeping journalists at bay. As well as anyone else who might cause us a mischief.

Oh, the ramparts are still going to be in position, aren't they? No part of them is innovative enough for me to want their construction kept secret, but I imagine that they're a bit in the way. Unless Adom moved them… No. He's easily strong enough to lift them but I doubt they'd survive being manhandled by him.

"Orange Lantern?"

I look past the police. The journalists have spotted that I'm up and about. Deal with them first, or… Mister Zatara hasn't awakened, Zatanna's not likely to leave until he has… I transition to a short distance behind the police.

"Gentlemen? Would you mind?"

The officers turn to-. Oh, that's a woman in there. They turn to look at me, then step aside far enough for me to pass through. Cameras start going immediately.

"Alright, I've only just regained consciousness myself, so this is going to be brief. A few months ago I discovered the existence of a powerful and extremely dangerous Lich. My colleagues and I laid a trap for it, and the trap was largely successful. The Lich has been destroyed and its magics pose no further threat. Sadly, my colleague Michael Siskin was killed trying to bring it down. I'm.. not aware of further developments since the end of the fight, but I can take a few questions."

I've got a sneaking suspicion that these journalists are second tier at best. Maybe third tier; waiting outside a hospital ward is barely one step up from paparazzi behaviour. A few of them look at each other in a brief attempt to work out who should go first. Then one just waves his recorder at me. "Reports say that Justice League member Giovanni Zatara was among the injured."

"I haven't heard any reports. I'm afraid that I've been unconscious."

"Is he in there? Is this why he took that leave of absence from the League?"

"I suggest that you refer questions about the disposition of Justice League members to the Justice League."

"So who was this Lich, then? How come I've never heard of it?"

"It only regained its freedom relatively recently, and had yet to stage any major attacks. I prefer to deal with supervillains before they do that."

One of the others sort of shoulder barges him aside. "Was Black Adam part of your team?"

"Black Adam had his soul eaten by Ammut in Louisiana last year, and so it's unlikely that he'll be participating in-."

She rolls her eyes. "Adom then. Dictator of Kahndaq and your close friend."

"That does sound likely."

"And-." She checks her notes. "Cornwall Boy?"

"I don't intend to comment on the precise composition of the team in case I need to use them again against a similar opponent. This was a serious police operation, not a game of Happy Families or a Hello! magazine article."

A third journalist decides to take advantage of my apparent contempt for the other two. "Why did you carry this trap out in the middle of London?"

"There's a magic user who lives here who was a vital part of my trap. Unfortunately, they lose most of their power if they leave the city, so… We had to do it here."

"Do you have anything to say to all the people who were evacuated from their homes so you could do this?"

"Thank you for your cooperation and I'm sorry for the disruption. Since the actual fight lasted about… Fifteen minutes? Hopefully the evacuation wasn't too inconvenient. I'll see about getting the ramparts removed later today. I'd have done it sooner, but I was unconscious."

A fourth person, and I think I'm going to call this off shortly. "Why weren't the Justice League involved?"

"Because the Justice League consists of twenty one active members and can't be everywhere at once. I could bring the skills-."

"Twenty two."

I blink. "I'm sorry?"

"Plastic Man was the twenty third member of the League, Zatara's on leave." She shrugs. "That leaves twenty two."

"Oh." Whoops. "Ah, yes, my mistake." I shake my head. "Um, I was able to get all of the skills I needed together to complete the task without calling upon any Justice League members for aid. They can't be everywhere and they shouldn't have to be. Um, I'd like to thank the Metropolitan Police and.. the staff of St Mary's Hospital for their help." I take a step back. "I'm sure that a full report will be forthcoming presently. Thank you."

I turn away, the police stepping back into-

"Orange Lantern! Why didn't you ask Fate for help!?"

-the breach. And here comes temptation. No, still not what I want. I transition down the corridor out of sight, appearing just outside Mister Zatara's room.

"…as soon as there's any change. No, Uncle Charlie, I'll be fine. I had some-. Yes, he's here."

That sounds like my cue. I knock on the door twice with the knuckle of my right index finger and push open the door. Zatanna looks up from her seat, smiling. She's switched to civilian clothing, but the Staff of Love is lying across her lap. Mister Zatara looks… Rough. I don't know what Nabu did with most of his time, but it clearly didn't involve sunlight, sleeping or eating. There's a drip in his arm and more grey than I remember seeing before his possession in his hair.

"Can I-? Yes, I… Can I call you back? I know, I'll tell him." She pulls the phone away from her ear, turns it off and puts it down. "You're-" She grabs the Staff in her left hand as she throws herself out of the chair at me, wrapping her arms around me. "-awake!"

I hug her back, resting my chin on the side of her head. "Indeed I am. I think… John had something to do with that."

She pulls back slightly, looking surprised. "You saw him?"

"You haven't?"

She shakes her head. "Not since the fight. Do you think he'll-?"

"Mmmmmuhhh…"

We both look around as Mister Zatara stirs, his eyes flickering.

"Dad!"

"Uh. Zatanna?" His eyes open unsteadily, apparently having the same trouble focusing that I did. "Where..?" Zatanna abandons me like a shot, pressing herself against her father's side. "What..?"

"We got him, Dad. We got rid of Nabu."

"I'm…" He manages to look around, coming a little more to his senses. "I'm…" He looks around. "You…"

"Welcome back, sir. You're in St Mary's Hospital in London."

"Orange.. Lantern." He tries to sit up slightly, Zatanna pulling back slightly and offering him her hands in case he needs help. "Orange Lantern, what have you done?"

"Nothing I wouldn't do again in a heartbeat, sir."

back

Falling Action 8

next

10th July

14:40 GMT

"Nabu…" He makes a panting exhalation. "I… I feel…"

"You're free, Dad. He's never coming back."

"No, that's…" He slumps, falling back onto his pillow. "That's wrong. I… I should…"

His eyes flicker, then close again. Zatanna's eyes widen in alarm as she holds her right hand over his forehead. "Wohs em s'dad etats fo htlaeh!"

Her eyes flare violet for a moment. That's.. something I'll need to keep an eye on. For as long as I'm on Earth, anyway. "How is he?"

A few seconds pass, then she removes her hand and pulls back. "Fatigue, malnutrition, prolonged stress and mana overload." She notes my concerned gaze and gives me a small smile and a little shake of her head. "It's nothing Dad won't get better from, and…" She looks at his sleeping face. "I'm not… I just don't know enough about long term mana overload to want to try anything."

"We could get Rob to drain-."

"No." She shakes her head emphatically. "That's fine for short term stuff, but Nabu was controlling Dad constantly for eight months. Rob.. doesn't have the.. control… I don't want to risk.. damaging Dad's own magic… Or his soul, or-."

"Okay." I put my right hand on her left shoulder and give it a small squeeze.

She reaches around and lays her right hand on mine, still facing her father. "We actually did it."

"We did."

"I mean, I know he's here and.. that.. thing's gone… But it just.. seems…"

"We've been working at this for a long time."

She nods, remaining quiet for a few moments. "What..?" She turns her head to look at me. "What.. do we tell the Justice League?"

"I was going to have a chat with them once I checked in on you and Mister Zatara." I glance back towards the door. No Kon or M'gann… Can't hear Wolf howling anymore… Have they fled, I wonder? Or did I just give the impression that I wanted to be left alone? I could look-. No. "Have they..? Not sent anyone to-?"

"Wonder Woman was here this morning." Zatanna's head dips. "She.. asked me about what happened."

I nod. "What did you tell her?"

Her eyes widen slightly, and her head jerks in a shake. "I didn't tell her anythin-!"

"Zatanna, Zatanna." I hold out my left hand with my palm towards her. "It's fine. Now that it's done, it doesn't really matter to me what the League know." She nods, looking slightly relieved. "Though, um… I only remember up to Nabu stabbing the.. battery. Could you..? What happened next? John, Kon and M'gann gave me a summary…"

She lifts my hand off her shoulder and leans over her father again, kissing him on the forehead. Then she turns away from him and gestures to the room's chairs. I nod, stepping backwards and sitting in the one behind me as she turns the one next to the bed around to face me.

"Um, well… Nabu… Sort of… Exploded. I'm…" She looks aside, trying to work out how to put it into words. "I don't really know why. I guess… He was basically an intelligent spell, right? Do you think..? The bit that kept him coherent got drained and he just… Collapsed suddenly instead of slowly?"

I nod slowly. "Could be. There isn't really much data to draw on. I'd.. guess that it's more likely that what you saw was the result of his connection to the Plane of Order no longer having anything to feed into… But I don't.. really know, either." She nods. "Then what happened?"

"John… I only saw him for about a second? But I think he was trying to do something with the batteries as it was happening? And, um… I put up a shield and Rob got in front of me and tried draining the.. energy wave. Adom was struggling to get up and I didn't see Jade." She blinks, realising something. "Not then. I saw her afterwards, she's okay."

I nod. "John said."

"Then… It was a lot of power. I didn't think I could hold it… But, it only lasted about… Ten seconds? Then all the light sort of dimmed, and I could see John holding Nabu's helmet. Nabu's.. not.. controlling him, is he?"

"John took the Helmet off in my presence, so I'm assuming not."

Zatanna nods. "John was glowing, and Dad was.. sort of floating in front of him. Then the lights cut out completely. The batteries looked drained, so I guess John used them to power his transformation… Um, then Adom got up and John walked towards us with Dad floating along with him. I…" She looks down at the floor. "I should have checked on you, but I needed to know that Dad-."

"That's fine. But, ah… How was I?"

"You'd.. fallen on your back, and your-. You weren't glowing much? I mean, of course you weren't glowing much, you weren't.. conscious. Adom called the ambulances on his radio, and.. Rob started checking Dad over. John just waved at you and.. all your armor disappeared. Then John opened up a hole in space, like the one Klarion used to run away after Roanoke, but.. it just led outside of the big walls you put around the park. Rob carried you and.. John floated Dad over to Adom, and Adom carried him out to the ambulance."

I frown. "John didn't levitate him out himself?"

"No." She shrugs. "Maybe he didn't want people to see him. Ah, Fate. We were trying to pretend he wasn't there." I nod. "Are we.. still doing that?"

I nod again. "Publically, yes. I'm going to give the League the choice on how they want to play it. If you really get pressed, you can go with the version we told Mister Tong, but.. I.. doubt that will happen."

She looks at me a little awkwardly. "And.. our.. friends..?"

"I intend to put a full report on the League's database. I was thinking of calling it 'The Hyde Park Ambush'. I'll try and keep my.. personal bias out of it, keep it factual. Um, what happened to Jade after we got loaded into the ambulances?"

"She… I was already in the ambulance, but Rob told me that she limped out of the woods just after we left."

"How badly was she injured?"

"He said 'pretty banged up'? She used his healing potion, then.. left. I guess she's still got the Ace of Chaos. Um, I think Adom-."

"Went to see Michael Siskin's parents."

She nods. "I didn't-. I didn't think Nabu would do that. I mean… Kilderkin said he took my Dad because he wanted to do good. Mister Siskin wasn't going to kill anybody, he wasn't even trying to kill Nabu."

"No… But, he did do his best to make Nabu afraid. It worked, and Nabu lashed out without.. the normal restrictions we work under. I can't even really hate Nabu for it. I'd.. probably do the same if-."

"No you wouldn't. You went inside the standing stones and connected to all his fears. You didn't go crazy or start killing people."

"It's not quite the same thing as what Mister Siskin did to Nabu." I look over to the door for a moment. "Okay… Thanks for bringing me up to date. Do you have any plans?"

"Since Dad's awake I need to organize getting us home. But… No, not apart from that."

"I don't mind giving you a lift. Though we should probably leave it until after I've spoken to the League."

"Are you well enough? Usually with magic overloads-."

I nod. "I'm not on top form, but I'll manage."

"What if they…" She fidgets. "What if they try and arrest you?"

I shrug. "Then I stand trial and things get very messy. It would be a bit inconvenient but I'm not really worried about it." I stand. "I'll let you know how it goes."

back

Falling Action 9

next

Life

=

…

"Auuuuhh?"

"Alright, he's coming round. Everyone out."

I lie broken on the floor of the Thanagarian bridge as the heavy weapon team fire again.

"But-?"

Father picks her up from his knee and inserts her into the Anti-Life broadcaster.

"Lynne, we don't know how much of him is left. If we were… Too late, you shouldn't be here."

Outside the bar, Barda pulls back the mega rod for another strike while I'm still stunned from the first hit.

"You didn't need to put it quite like that."

"She encountered Darkseid. There is no point trying to shelter her from the realities of Apokoliptian life."

"Huah-uhhau-hah?"

"Grayven? Can you understand me?" "Be liberated, my brother."

I open my eyes. I'm… The room is… White, with New God circuitry picked out in gold on.. several places on the walls, as well as the bier I'm lying upon.

"Ah? A-aaaaah?"

"Grayven?" Scott leans over me, his face covering most of my field of vision. "Can you speak?"

"I… I…"

He leans away, raising his eyes to the heavens. "Praise the Source."

"Whu-? Wha' ha'?"

Barda gives me a hard look. "You encountered Darkseid."

I.. try.. nodding. "Else? Wh' else?"

"Okay, Grayven?" Scott waves his right hand back and forth. "Focus on me."

I try… I try to move, to look… I know it's-.

"Ping!"

"Oh, not again. Hold on." "I'll free you yet."

"Mruh ba'?"

Barda nods. "The Mother Box I captured believes that protecting people from the Anti-Life is more important than continuing to defy me."

"How about now?" Scott looks back at me. "Try moving again." "Step by step."

I-. I put my right hand down on the surface I'm laid out on and use that leverage to work myself into a sitting position. "Wha'-. Wha'-TTT. Hap-happened?"

Barda folds her arms across her chest. "Darkseid came for you. He exposed your servitors and warband to the Anti-Life."

"Mmm-mmm-mmm-mme?"

"Okay, you have to understand what Anti-Life exposure is." Scott pulls up a floating chair and sits in it, facing me. "Normally, Darkseid keeps all that he knows in himself and projects it outwards in the same way you or I do when we use New God technology. Indirect exposure. He comprehends, and you get knocked aside by his spiritual bow wave." "It's there, and the sheer horror of it spreads its influence."

"Felt-. Felt more."

Barda shakes her head. "You just aren't used to it." "You know, but you haven't learned."

Scott clasps his hands on his lap as he leans forward. "He said something to you, didn't he?"

I shudder as I nod.

"That was him… Imparting his understanding of part of the equation to you." He glances away. "You remember when you gave Lynne a part of your soul? Something like that." "You understood the universe a little like he does."

"You… Got it out?"

Scott closes his eyes, takes a deep breath and shakes his head slowly. "No. I don't… Know how it happened. Normally, just being a New God would prevent this, but… It's integrated. It's… Stuck, for want of a better term. You've got a part of the Anti-Life Equation lodged in your soul, and I don't know how to get it out." "I'm sorry."

"I still-. Function."

He shakes his head. "I.. had to cannibalise your soul to… I created a pearl, a spiritual tool to isolate it. You'll be… Weaker, physically and metaphysically. Zatanna and Sunset-" He points to a device bound to my left forearm. "-made that to try and help."

"A personal mana infuser."

"She said that since you weren't really a member of the Light, she didn't have any reason not to help you."

"I still feel… Not just weak, but…"

"I…" I failed. "Grayven, I had to isolate the Anti-Life Equation fragment as quickly as I could. You didn't have enough power, it was turning you so fast… I took the extra power I needed from your rings. From what I.. can tell, you'll keep experiencing surges of fear and avarice until you're fully recovered." He shifts slightly closer. "I'm.. sorry to have to ask, but do you remember how Darkseid was able to affect you this strongly? If he's found some way to bypass our normal-."

My eyes dip. "Worst… Worst day. Proposed to Jade. Turned down. Rejected."

He frowns. "Why?"

"She thought I was really with the Light. Scott, need… Need it out. Can't can't-. Function. Like this."

"Grayven…" He looks away. "If I could get the Anti-Life Equation out of someone, don't you think I'd have done that to Darkseid by now? I wouldn't have left you like this if I had a choice."

"Your.. father. Izaya."

He considers for a moment. "He might be able to help, but I've got no way to contact him."

Wait. "Not just… Fear. Missing. Missing, Scott, missing!"

His head drops. "Binding you that closely to fear and avarice… It's muting your ability to feel other things. You should recover eventually. The Anti-Life isn't converting you any longer. With the mana infuser, you'll build your strength back up-."

I crumple, head in my hands. "Noo."

He raises his hand to try to placate me. "It's just temporary-."

"Can… I can go without… Will, or… Hope. Or rage. Or compassion. I can't go without love, Scott. I think-. I think 'Lynne' and I don't feel! Nothing, there's nothing! She needs me to love her and I can't!"

Scott sags. "I can… Now that you're awake, there are a few things we can try-."

"No." Keep that feeling keep that feeling. "I need to fix this now." I stand, staggering as I do so but keeping my balance. The rings are still on my fingers. Ring.

Awaiting command.

Link to the Mountain. Hush tube to the Mojave Desert.

By your command.

"Okay, if we get Lynne in here-" Scott steps towards the door while Barda watches me cautiously. "-I might be able to use your bond to-."

The tube opens and I lumber through, out onto the dull yellow sand.

"Grayven, wait!"

"Daddy!"

Don't look back.

Shut it down.

back

Falling Action 10

next

I've got

things to do

Mojave Desert. Sand, rock, lichen. No people. Empty. I scout-. Scouted the place-. This region out months ago, not long after I first came to Earth Sixteen. Didn't take me long to realise what it was. There was a r-. Grrragh! Work… Brain! Reason I never asked Jordan to train me. Checked it out again after I moved to Challenger Mountain. Didn't have a reason to go for it, but confirmed my belief.

Only a fool like Jordan would leave the Star Sapphire out in the open.

Is this..? I think this is… Mind's all… Blurred. Confused. Ring, check location.

Location confirmed. Marking target.

Orange crosshairs appear in my vision, mere metres away. Memory roughly working, then.

I never… Checked this bit. Even someone as obtuse as Jordan must have put some sort of… Thing… With the… Security, some sort of security in place. Couldn't risk it without firm need. And a plan. But I need it now, and there's only so much 'plan' that's applicable to my situation. Take it, and beg the Zamarons to fix me.

It's a shitty plan, but I'm no use to Lynne like this. Perhaps they'll restore my capacity for love with the aim of interrogating me afterwards.

"Ring." I hold out my right hand. "Breach subspace vacuole."

"By your command."

Orange lights dance around my right forearm, forming a combination of gauntlet and mechanical lock as I thrust my right hand forward. The air before me seems to buckle and bend, the space around my hand flickering green as tiny wisps of green energy radiate away.

Then it snaps back, a glowing violet stone appearing in thin air. I grab it before it can try seeking out a new bearer.

Anything? I stare at it through my vacuole breaker construct. It sits there, glowing violet. Do I feel..? Lynne. Lynne. No, no, no change! No, there is. I think the Star Sapphire is getting slightly dimmer. No love in me. It's got nothing to work off. Nothing, nothing..!

Fine-. Fine. That was a bit too much to.. expect. Zamarons are still my best bet. Or maybe Scott could do something with it? He managed with the rings..? Or maybe just eating it would-.

"Stand down, Grayven. Trust me, you don't want anything to do with that."

I look upwards towards Jordan as he floats in the air above me. Keeping his distance somewhat, ring glowing brightly. No idea how much power I have. Mind… Not clear enough to fight.

"Look." Jordan descends to the ground, landing lightly. "I know you got hurt bad. Scott told us he was trying to help you. But whatever's wrong-."

"Scott-." Work mouth, work work! "S.. cott did well, but… Not enough. Anti-Life in my soul."

He nods, not taking his eyes off me. "Okay. And how exactly is the Star Sapphire supposed to help with that? It drives everyone who uses it crazy."

"Scott… What he did kept me me, but… Less. Mind not working.. well, soul tattered. Can't… Things I can't feel."

"Like what?"

"Love. Know there's something missing but can't remember what it felt like."

"The Zamaron version of 'love' isn't something you want anything to do with, Grayven. Why don't you.. come back to the Watchtower, and we can get your brother to take a second look at you. Maybe he can… Work something out."

"He knows.. less than the Zamarons… Do."

"So? They're not going anywhere. They haven't gone anywhere for thousands of years. What's the rush?"

"Lynne. She needs me, needs me to love her and I-. I can't."

"And you won't wait for your brother to fix you up because..?"

"She needs her father now."

"So your plan is to go to Zamaron and trade the Star Sapphire to Queen Aga'po?" I nod. "That's a terrible plan."

"Don't care. Doing it anyway."

"Aw, crap." His eyes dip for a moment. "Do you know who Vincent Hardy is?"

Do I..? I don't think so, but… I shake my head.

"He's the son of a bitch who got me thrown out of the air force. And he was one of the people who got picked up during your takedown of the Light. Turns out he was working for Vandal Savage. Now he's in prison, and once they've dealt with the backlog he'll be tried and executed, which is exactly what that traitorous bastard deserves." He looks around, his posture shifting slightly. "I got an official letter of apology from my old CO yesterday. Thanks to you, no one thinks it was me selling US military secrets any more. I owe you. And I've got a few things I've wanted to say to Queen Aga'po myself. You sure you want to do this?"

I nod emphatically, unable to trust my mouth to articulate my feelings.

"Alright then." He clenches his right fist. "Facing down the Guardians' beautiful but crazy cousins with nothing but a power ring and a brain damaged alien with delusions of godhood. Why not?"

"Lot of them… Hybrids. Second cousins."

"Heh. See you've still got your sense of humor." He rises off the ground, the glare of his environmental shield intensifying. "Alright, let's do this."

Ring?

Ready to serve.

Sinestro?

Access restricted. Who are you and what have you done with my Corpsman?

I'm trying to fix.. me.

You-? He pauses. So, that's Anti-Life. Curious.

Don't get… Too fond of it. Ring, hush tube to Zamaron. Outside the palace.

By your command.

The portal opens in the air before me, revealing a plaza of dull peach stone with the starburst of the Star Sapphires picked out in purple at the centre. On the far side, two hybrids level spears of pink crystal at the portal opening.

Fine. Arms behind my back and mustering my desire I march forwards, Jordan just behind me.

back

Falling Action 11

next

Zamaron.. time?

"Hello there. My name's Grayven, and-." The one on my right raises her spear slightly, firing a bolt of energy at me. I interpose the Star Sapphire, which flares momentarily as it greedily sucks the energy down, momentarily brightening before dimming once more.

I think I felt something.

The two hybrids recoil, the tips of their spears dipping slightly.

"As I was-." I lower my right hand. "As I was saying, my name is Grayven. I come in… I come in peace, and I seek an audience with Queen Aga'po."

"And I'm Hal Jordan. I'd like an audience too." Construct armour appears around him, as does a baseball.. bat..? "Peace is kinda optional."

The hybrid on the left narrows her eyes. "An Apokoliptian and a Green Lantern. What could the Queen possibly have to say to you?"

"You recognise the… Ah… The Star Sapphire, I take it?" They subtly glance at one another. "Do you want it back? Because that can…" I feel dizzy for a moment. I try not to let it show. "That can happen."

The one on the right turns her attention to where Jordan floats at my side. "And you?"

"I want a word about what that stone did to Carol."

"And why should we indulge you?"

The bat floats out in front of him and he takes it in a two handed grip. "Because from what I can tell, those spears are much less effective than power rings."

I wince, my eyes creasing up and my head tilting back. "Jordan, not… Not the way." How do I..? "If she won't.. s-see us, we'll just go. But… Your creed. 'Life.. without love… Is heresy'."

The one on the left… Their faces are relatively inexpressive. Perhaps a little curiosity? "There is far more to our creed than that."

"But it is in-. It is in there, yes?" I maintain eye contact for a few moments. "I was f-. I was f-f-f-f-f…" Come on, Grayven. "Forcibly exposed to the Anti-Life. I no longer feel anger. Or hope. Or compassion. Worst… Worst of all, I feel no love. I am here… To beg for help." I drop to my knees. Yes, I'm still taller than them, but it's the thought that counts. "Please."

They stare at me for a few seconds, then the one on the right stamps the butt of her spear on the ground, causing violet light to spiral around her. Her eyes flash violet as well. Not as.. efficient as how power rings do it. I frown. Do they..? Just..? Not know how to make them?

Corpsman, I must inform you that I have neither seen nor heard of either a Zamaron or one of their agents using a power ring. As such, it is certainly possible.

How..? Sure..?

Kalmin's research into power ring technology was exhaustive. He uncovered no record.

Jordan lands lightly on the ground next to me. "Now why couldn't you be that polite to us?"

"I didn't want…" No. Come on. "I was establishing… Establishing the image of myself as someone who dis-disliked the League. Better… Do that by being rude than… Than actually fighting you."

"You weren't exactly friendly before that. I mean, Wonder Woman-."

"Stood there like a lemon when Mister Zatara went to put the Helmet of Fate on his head. Can you..? Imagine.. it? Being trapped in a featureless void for months. Perhaps years or decades?"

He nods. "Sounds like Hell."

"That was what… What finally stopped me idealising you people. Why… Even now. I don't plan on… Having much to do with you."

"You say that like we'd want anything to do with you."

"Weren't… Weren't slow to help… With the Light. Or.. to come here."

"I just wanted to pay off my debt as fast-" The violet lights disappear, right hybrid turning to look at her companion. "-as I could."

"The Queen will see you. Follow us."

They turn, rising slowly into the air as they do so. I clamber to my feet-

"Those dresses really don't leave much to the imagination, do they?"

-and… Try to…

That weak?

I activate the aero-discs on my boots and float after them, Jordan already having taken the lead. In fact, he's… Going to try making conversation with them, having dismissed his bat and armour. Never bothered to find out whether he and Carol Ferris are a couple-. For a moment I flashback to Jade waving her knife at me… But it's just a memory, slightly faded in importance by the constant repetition. And the fact that I can't even remember what loving her felt like. Can't miss what you can't remember.

Not helping. Distract yourself. I look out across the Zamaron city. Nothing in Father Box's database gave it a name. They may have built it here, or taken it with them from Maltus. I'm seeing plazas, part stone and part violet crystal, connected by stairs of the same material. A little further away are buildings… Housing? Workshops? Father Box didn't think that the Zamarons got out all that much, though given the hybrid population they must get out at some time. I don't… See a Central Power Battery… Oh, that's interesting. The city is built onto rock, but the rock itself is floating well above the planet's surface. I wonder why? I see other hybrids sparring with those crystal spears under the direction of an old school Zamaron. One hybrid looks.. younger than the others, though given her Maltusian heritage that doesn't necessarily mean anything. She looks up as we pass, staring at us in fascination until some remark from her overseer draws her attention back to her training.

Hmm. I seem to remember from the comics that Zamarons preferred Korugarian men as mates. Given how they look… Unnaturally tall blue skinned Grey type aliens… Not sure what the men see in them. Or maybe 'stretched women fetishists' are the Korugarian equivalent of furries..? No, that doesn't make sense, Korugarians never had those body proportions while the ancestors of Humans were fur-covered. Odd. And most of the hybrids appear to fit a particular physiotype, so either they're all half-Korugarian or that's just what part-Zamarons look like regardless of sperm donor.

Hm. Sinestro, do you find-?

I am not going to dignify that with a response.

Fine. I hold out the Star Sapphire, trying to get some sort of response. No. Nothing.

"Hey, I was just-!" There's a flare of violet energy and Jordan comes flying backwards, one of the hybrids glowering at him with her spear part-raised. He stabilises next to me. "Huh. Tough crowd."

"Is this..? Negotiating strat-. Strategy?"

"Kind of. Can't deny they're pretty hot, though."

"Their armour is… Weak. Their weapon, unwieldy."

"Not everyone can have two power rings, Grayven."

"Can I..? Take it that… You and Ms Ferris are no longer… Involved."

For a fraction of a second he gives me a sidelong look. "Didn't work out. Secret identity… All that time away…"

I nod, as our escort fly towards a large structure I presume to be either a palace or a meeting hall. "I understand. But perhaps… Let me take the lead here?"

back

Falling Action 12

next

Zamaron…

Jordan and I float into what appears to be the throne room. I can already see the imposing, violet-robe clad figure I presume to be Queen Aga'po, and a small number of other Zamarons whom I suspect to be either advisors or bodyguards.

"Jordan, what day is it?"

He starts slightly. "You don't-?" A small shake of his head. "July tenth. Sunday."

10th July

Morning in California

"Thank you."

Our escort lands just in front of us, and he and I do the same.

"You know, they're a lot more intimidating than the Guardians."

"You didn't meet them before?"

"A couple 'a hybrids covered her retreat one time, and they gave her the Star Sapphire back when I got it away from her. I never actually-."

"Grayven of Apokolips." Queen Aga'po rises from her throne and walks down from the dais towards myself and Jordan. We stop walking. "I understand that you are here to plead with me. You may do so."

Carefully, I lower myself to my knees once more. Then I go forward onto all fours, my face pointing at the stone floor of the throne room. "Your majesty. I am here to beg you to restore my capacity for love. As you have said, life-."

"You know some tiny part of credo, Apokoliptian plague Rat. Did you think to infect us with the Anti-Life you carry within you?"

"That was not… My intent. Hah." My laugh comes out as a gasp. "I'm barely coherent enough to… To walk in a straight line. If I'd retained love and… Ah, lost all else, I would have stayed in my sick bed and waited to recover naturally. Love… I cannot go without it."

"What does an Apokoliptian know of love? Your master has done all that he can to exclude it from your world, and taint it with his foulness where he cannot."

"Not-. Not my master." I feel it's important to make that point… Strongly. As strongly as I can at the moment, at least. "Even… Uxas knew love… Before he became Darkseid. Even.. even after, until Grandmother had Suli killed. He would always have been a tyrant, but he only became an abomination because-."

"You are his son?"

Ohfuck.

Indubitably, Corpsman.

"Hardly… My choice, majesty. I did not even… Want to get back in contact. And I do not… Want to want to turn into him. A small part of the… The Anti-Life did this to me. Father has… Much more."

I can… See her feet. She's within a metre of me now.

"And does that… Not prove… Your argument? Even Darkseid was… Better, when he had love. And… Willingly."

"Whom did you love? How did you retain such an ability, being of Apokolips?"

"Last time I… I removed the Anti-Life by travelling to a parallel universe whose… Whose laws do not support souls. It was destroyed, with the rest of my divine aspect. I cannot… Afford to do that again, even if I retained the memory of how I did it… Did it the first time. When I… Came back, I had… I had a lifetime of happier memories and examples to draw upon. And… Friends… And… A paramour, and now I cannot even remember why her not being with me is wrong! Please-!"

Wisps of violet light swarm around me as I'm lifted off my hands and knees and pulled upright into the air. Aga'po is looking me over and… Her face has no expression. "You will prove to me that you are genuine. The Star Sapphire. Give it to me."

I can.. still move my right arm. I raise it slightly, my hand stretching out to her. She reaches forward, plucking it from my unresisting palm and regarding it. Then she reaches forward again and presses it against my forehead!

Grughergher.

"Show me your love."

And then it hits me again. Jade… Oh, that hurts, but it's my pain. All things end, and I will not judge the entirety of our time together by the manner of our parting.

More violet wisps emerge from the Star Sapphire to form a construct image of Jade. I feel the Sapphire probe my mind, my memories, my carefully developed resistance clearly not having survived my incapacity. The Jade construct takes poses: wary caution, guarded fondness, open affection…

And then she slashes at me with a knife, tears running down her cheeks and an expression of desolation on her face. And this time I'm not so blinded by my own horror that I can't see what my actions have done to her.

"That is the proof that you can love?"

"A mistake. A grievous one."

"It is hardly convincing. A single incident-".

"That one has been on my mind a bit." Low level frustration rather than proper anger, but my thoughts are certainly somewhat clearer now. And it only took yet another mind altering artefact to do it. Invoke the Three Stooges Effect. "I also have a daughter."

The image of Jade evaporates, the vapour reforming into an image of Lynne. Oh, it's a relief to feel like this when I think of her. The look of happiness and.. relief she has when we play simple board games. Her peaceful sleep after I've read to her. Last time we went kite flying. And her undiminished concern for me.

I shouldn't have left like that.

Queen Aga'po moves her attention from the image to me. "Adequate. Barely. Remove your power rings, and I will ensure that you are never short of love again."

…

Really?

"As appealing as the idea of being locked inside a lotus-eater crystal is, that is not what I came here for."

"You would be released once you were appropriately realigned. You told me that you valued love above all other emotions."

"I said that it was the only one I could not be patient for. And that does not mean that I don't value the others. It is my fundamental belief that no one part of the spectrum is complete by itself. Existence requires all, in harmony. I want to feel all, and I want all about me to feel all as well." I look her in the eyes. "How far have you gone into the violet? Can you not remember-?"

"When we first separated from the Guardians, I said much the same. Still, I cannot bring myself to fully trust an Apokoliptian."

The wisps holding me up evaporate and I fall to the ground. Star Sapphire… Still on my forehead. So, that works. If needs be I could nip over to Earth 50 and borrow theirs…

"Your soul is laced with the yellow of terror and the orange of greed. What depth could there be to your understanding of love?"

Feet.. stable. Star Sapphire still on my forehead. What could I do to..? Hm. It worked with Ayame.

I focus, and music wafts from the stone on my forehead.

"Perhaps love is like a resting place,

A shelter from the storm.

It exists to give you comfort,

It is there to keep you warm.

And in those times of trouble,

When you are most alone,

The memory of love will bring you home."

A phantasmal image of Jade appears, and I regard it sadly.

"Perhaps love is like a window,

Perhaps an open door.

It invites you to come closer,

It wants you to show you more,

and even when you lose yourself,

And don't know what to do,

The memory of love will see you through."

Less than an hour free from assault by the Anti-Life and I'm singing. That's the power of love, I suppose.

"Oh, love to some is like cloud,

To some as strong as steel,

For some a way of living,

For some a way of feel.

And some say love is holding on,

And some say letting go

And some say love is ev'rything,

And some say they don't know."

"Perhaps love is like the ocean,

Full of conflict full of pain,

Like a fire when it's cold outside,

Or thunder when it rains.

If I should live forever,

And all my dreams come true,

My memories of love will be of you."

The Jade-construct stares at me with an affection I know that the real Jade will never again feel.

"And some say love is holding on,

And some say letting go,

And some say love is eve'rything,

And some say they don't know."

My life would be so much poorer for not knowing her.

"Perhaps love is like the ocean,

Full of conflict full of pain,

Like a fire when it's cold outside,

Or thunder when it rains.

If I should live forever,

And all my dreams come true,"

The Jade construct fades to nothing.

"My memories of love will be of you."

I let the music fade away, my head slightly bowed. "Happier now?"

"Yes. Still, I am concerned-."

"Oh, come on!" Jordan looks more put out than I am. "What more do you want?"

I hold out my left palm to him, trying to encourage him to back off a little. "I would be happy to entertain a parole officer. Should I live down to your expectations, they could simply reclaim your property and take away your support."

"And keep me informed of your misdeeds." Violet light wafts around her. "Ghia'ta, come. I have need of you."

back

Falling Action 13

next

10th July

09:58 -5 GMT

It worked.

It worked.

Huh.

I take a moment to look down on the streets of New York. From this height, in these weather conditions and with my glow to minimum, there's little chance that anyone down there can see me.

Nabu is dead. Mister Zatara is free.

I listen to the sounds rising up from the streets below. I'm still a little surprised. I mean, I thought that I had everything covered, but I couldn't… Know. Mister Zatara was still pretty out of it when I left. He didn't seem particularly happy… But that could have been confusion, or damage done by constant exposure to high levels of magic energy. Zatanna was confident that he'll recover, and I doubt that John would have left him in that sort of state if he couldn't.

Right then. Ring, zeta tube.

Compliance.

10th July

14:59 GMT

"Recognised, Orange Lantern, B zero six."

Faces look around as I walk across the Watchtower's meeting room floor towards the main table. Superman, Batman and.. Diana are already in attendance… That's the most important part. Guy and Jordan, William, Major Adams, Mister Yao, Mister Allen, King Orin, Mister Freeman and Ms Lance are also here.

"Hello, everyone." I take hold of the ring on my right ring finger and pull it off, tossing it away to my left. "I assume that Kon and M'gann have been in touch?"

Diana has her expression under control, but between a year of studying her face and empathic vision I've got a fairly good read on her. I'd say… Apprehensive? She isn't afraid of me, but… For me? Well, thank you, but that's hardly necessary.

Batman tilts his head slightly. "They have. I've called for a full meeting."

"Good oh." I take hold of the ring on my left ring finger and toss it aside as well, my orange aura fading to nothing as I head towards the open end of the 'U' of the table.

"Recognised, Green Arrow, zero eight."

"Hey, everyone. Didn't start without m-?" Mister Queen stops in his tracks. "Oh."

"May as well take your seat, sir."

"Ah… Yeah."

"Recognised, Red Arrow, one nine."

I reach my destination and stand at parade rest. One of the many changes the rings have wrought upon me -and not just as a constant effect thing when I'm wearing them, but on my body- is that I don't get nervous in situations like this. All the secrecy, all the hiding… Getting it out in the open, getting the opportunity to tell these people what I-

"Recognised, Hawkman, zero nine, Hawkwoman, one zero."

-honestly think of the situation.

I hold out my right arm. "Wonder Woman, would you mind lassoing me?"

That surprised her. "I.. don't think-."

"I'm not doing this twice."

"Recognised, Red Tornado, one six, Atom, two two."

"And I'm not having anyone doubt what I'm saying. You want to know what happened?" I give my arm a wiggle. "Lasso."

"Recognised, Martian Manhunter, zero seven."

"M'gann has informed me that-." He cuts himself off as he sees me. "Ah."

Mister Queen glances back at him as he takes his seat. "Lotta that going around."

"Recognised, Plastic Man, two three."

Mister O'Brian's expression doesn't change, though I suppose the fact that he doesn't comment is indicative of something. He keeps his form within normal Human proportions as he walks over to join the rest of the League at the table before me.

Jordan holds out his right hand to the empty place next to him. "John." A pulse of green light, and an image of Lantern Stewart appears to occupy it.

"Whole team's here then." I stare into Diana's eyes and proffer my right forearm once more. She looks to Batman. He.. doesn't really seem to be focusing on anything in particular, but he nods anyway. She stands, then tosses the noose of her lasso towards me. I catch it with my left hand and drop it over my right forearm before pulling the knot tight.

Truth.

"So that everyone's up to speed? Nabu, aka Doctor Fate, is no more. At twenty two eighteen on the seventh of July I and several associates lured him into an ambush." From their shocked reactions it looks like Team Arrow weren't up to speed. "After our attempt to negotiate his surrender met with no success, we attacked and destroyed him."

"Ah…" Mister Queen starts to raise his right hand. "What?"

"Nabu. Golden helmet, used to sit-" I motion to the empty place to my right with my left hand. "-there."

"I know who Nabu is-. You killed him?"

Truth.

I try to speak, but my mouth fails to work. Why would-? Oh. "While US law has recently expanded the range of things it recognises as being 'people', under British law Nabu would not be considered alive. Since he was not alive, he could not be 'killed'."

Mister Queen glances around the table, then realises that he has the floor. "I didn't think he could die. Ah, be destroyed."

"You were mistaken. If you would like more detail-?"

Batman inclines his head slightly. "That can wait."

I smile. "Certainly, Batman. Where would you like to start?"

"You informed the British government that you were laying a trap for a Lich."

Truth.

"A Lich is an undead magic user who has bound their soul to an artefact, and so gained a prolonged existence. Nabu fits that description, though it is sufficiently misleading to encourage people to draw the wrong conclusion. And -if necessary- sidestep-" I look at Diana. "-some truth detection techniques. Furthermore, it allows the League to maintain its lie about what happened to Giovanni Zatara."

Diana's face twitches.

"It also matches the lie I told to Mister Charles Tong on the first of January. Mister Tong was Mister Zatara's business manager and closest friend. It seems that no one had thought to inform him of the reason for Mister Zatara's disappearance. Or at least give him a plausible lie. At the time, I only knew that the League were lying about it and not what the details of the lie were supposed to be when the story released to the media was obviously false to anyone who actually knew him."

I make eye contact with Batman. And I roll my eyes.

"Why?" Superman looks dismayed. "Why did you.. do all this?"

I.. try to hold it in.

Truth.

But my mouth won't let me.

"Because it became painfully apparent to me that none of you were prepared to lift a finger to free Mister Zatara. So I did instead."

Some expressions are shocked. Ms Thal starts to rise from her seat, Mister Hol putting a restraining hand on her arm.

Truth.

I sneer.

Batman brings his hands together in front of him. "Why don't you start from the beginning?"

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Falling Action 14

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10th July

15:03 GMT

"Fifth of November, at around about twenty two hundred hours local time." I don't look at Mister J'onzz. [**Oh gods. This is actually going to happen, isn't it?**]

Mister J'onzz winces, his right hand going to his forehead.

"If the ring had been functional, I'd have grabbed the Helmet out of Mister Zatara's hands and dumped it on an asteroid somewhere. If my sidearm had any rounds left, I'd have shot it. I don't know what the rest of you who were there were thinking. I-."

Truth.

"But I've thought about it. And I haven't been able to come up with anything which suggests competence or moral probity. Not without being very charitable. A few seconds after he put it on, while my team mates were comforting Zatanna-."

Batman's head rises slightly. "You spoke to John Constantine."

"You remembered." I nod. "Yes. I arranged to meet up with him later. I needed to get the ring working again before trying anything else."

Superman frowns. "It was that simple? You decided to kill him right there and then?"

"No."

Truth.

"I decided that I needed to work out how to kill him right there and then. Without harming the host if at all possible. There's no such thing as a non-lethal weapon or a non-lethal attack. Anything we did that could harm him would have the potential to kill him."

Truth.

"Had I been in the position to use a lethal attack on him right then and there, I most likely would have done. I didn't, and I had not yet formed a considered opinion."

"Robin told me that you and Zatanna disappeared from the Mountain."

"We went to London. Our first attempt to resolve the problem of Nabu was to appeal to his superior. A life form that identified itself as Lord Kilderkin. It was of the opinion that since Nabu could do more good with Mister Zatara's body than Mister Zatara himself could there wasn't really a problem. He also -and I didn't realise this until much later- indicated that he knew that your response would not -as I had assumed- be to hound Nabu to the ends of the Earth, but rather to make him a member of the Justice League."

"We had made no such decision at that time."

"No, but he had a vote during the last recruitment cycle, didn't he? Usually, a new recruit wouldn't be able to vote themselves on board. Or argue their own case in person. In any case, Kilderkin clearly understood your behaviour far better than I do."

"Ah, but, Zatara still had a vote." William looks mildly pleased to have spotted a flaw in my argument. "And he said-."

"Did he, William? Did he take the Helmet off and tell you that?"

"Well… No-."

"So what you're saying is, Nabu said that his slave was cool with being a slave. And you took that at face value. Well done." William's face falls. "Oh, don't feel too bad, the 'world's greatest detective' did too."

If that bothered Batman, he doesn't show it. "Kilderkin was not prepared to come to terms?"

"He said that he would be far more amenable to negotiation if Klarion were dead. He made no indication that there was anything else we could do to gain his aid."

Batman nods. "And then?"

"A group of us got together and discussed the situation. We realised that we didn't know enough about what Lords of Order or Chaos were to make any firm plans for freeing Mister Zatara. So, that was our first order of business."

Diana's jaw sets. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I didn't have any concrete information and because I didn't know if you were proof against things that Nabu could do to compel you to reveal information. The fewer people who know, the smaller the risk of a leak."

Truth.

"Though my trust was a little shaken by your decision to lie about what happened, I still believed that you were planning some sort of offensive action."

Batman waits for a moment, but she doesn't say anything else. He returns his attention to me. "How long did it take you to discover anything of note?"

"On the thirteenth of November we reviewed Kent Nelson's diaries. While the one covering the period in which he and his father first encountered Nabu was absent, we-."

Diana's eyes widen slightly. "Alan has those diaries."

"Yes. He was shocked that you were lying as well."

She glares. "Was he involved in this?"

"Other than showing us the books? No."

Batman's eyes move to Diana for a moment, then return to me. "What did you discover?"

"A fascinating insight into the life of a superhero in the forties and fifties. Mister Nelson's description of Nabu's abilities -and character- was marginally useful, but the most useful part was notes on the planning of the expedition which led him to find Nabu's helmet in the first place. That gave us the approximate location of Nabu's tomb."

"What did you do next?"

"On the twenty fifth of November we had another talk with the other people researching the subject. John managed to make contact with a Lord of Chaos who was more insane than malevolent and got a much better idea of how they work from him. Essentially, they start as mortal magic users and connect themselves to another Plane of existence. That link replaces the one most people have to the universe around them, granting them far more raw power but also granting them signature weaknesses. Klarion's link was moderated through Teekl. When I stole her, he was forced to cut himself off from the Plane of Chaos in order to stay here. And find another source of magic power. That told us that Klarion was vulnerable to relatively conventional attack. It also told us how to replicate the process."

"On the sixth of November I began actively pursuing the Ace of Winchesters, with the aim of furthering my understanding of arcane weapons. On the tenth, I purchased it. I imagine that you've all read my report on the incident, so I won't go into it. On the eleventh, I recovered the Star Sapphire from the Moon."

"You what?" Jordan looks astonished.

"I recovered the Star Sapphire from the Moon. It seems that while merged with the Ophidian we decided to hide it in the toilet."

He turns to Guy. "And you didn't look there?"

"Yeah, I looked there. Probably had it in one of those ultra-secure subspace things."

"We used magic to gain access to it, so a simple power ring scan probably wouldn't have worked. Guy wasn't in the know."

"Yeah, no kiddin'."

"We were eventually able to come up with a system that would allow Zatanna to power her magic from the Sapphire rather than her own resources, thus removing her main arcane limitation. Though that only happened after Nabu was formally inducted into the Justice League. An eventuality of which you gave Zatanna no advanced notice at all. I had assured her that you would never dream of doing that a mere five days previous, that you'd never betray either her or her father or the ideals you claim to stand for by letting that Lich up here. And I was mistaken. Very mistaken."

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Falling Action 15

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10th July

15:07 GMT

Batman leans forwards. "You would have preferred it if we had no idea where he was or what he was doing?"

Truth.

"Yes. The only reason for keeping him close was if you were planning on taking action against him in the short term. On the basis of what I've seen, you weren't. It was unlikely that he intended to leave the Earth and you could have lured him into position for an ambush in the same way I did. Quite aside from that, recruiting him required you to lie extensively and act in a despicable manner. I had doubts about your recruitment practices before that but I never doubted that League members were good people. If you can't trust the Justice League to hold the moral high ground, who can you trust?"

William.. actually raises his left eyebrow, looking towards the head of the table. I'm not prepared to give him points for not being entirely onboard with Nabu joining up, but it was mildly gratifying to know that at least one of them said something. Superman notices, then awkwardly looks away for a moment.

I wonder how the original debate about the lie went? Doesn't really matter now, but I'd be interested. See how much of my respect the participants could salvage.

King Orin straightens suddenly, then stares at me. "Mera said that she couldn't make sense of the spell Constantine used at New Year. You tried to get rid of him then, didn't you?"

Truth.

"Yes. That particular spell required both Klarion and Nabu to be in the same place at the same time. It was designed to use their opposing energies to push them both from this plane. Unfortunately, Captain Nazi grabbed Klarion before it could complete. It would have been far better if he hadn't. Nabu would have survived banishment."

King Orin looks like he doesn't quite believe it. "You had a way to permanently remove a Lord of Order after two months' study?"

"I was hardly working on it on my own. But yes."

Diana's face hardens. "Did you intentionally leave Nabu chained up when it failed?"

Truth.

"Yes. I wanted to see if the chains could hold him when he put significant effort into escaping them. At some point, I planned to chain him up for real and I wanted to ensure that I could do so safely. Though.. once the Belle Reve fight started it genuinely slipped my mind."

"You left a man chained up because you wanted to see whether or not he could escape?"

"Yes. I didn't have another Lord of Order I could test it on, and I wasn't going to create a plan which was premised on our ability to restrain him if we did not in fact have that ability."

Truth.

"Zatanna also tried removing the Helmet conventionally while Nabu was sleeping off the effects of the cure-tech. Sadly, that didn't work."

Superman nods. "I knew about that. I just didn't realise that it was more than a momentary thing. I still don't understand why-?"

"If I dropped a Star Conqueror off in Kansas the next time I was there, would that help you understand?"

He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes for a moment, trying to control himself. "Clearly, you're… Very upset. How about you try calming down a little?"

Truth.

"Superman, I've been angry for eight months and I no longer have any reason to conceal it. I don't think-."

"Why didn't you tell us? Not.. everyone, but Wonder Woman or Batman?"

Truth.

"Because making Nabu a Justice League member required a unanimous vote. Which means that everyone approved it. Batman, who was the reason why Mister Zatara was on the League in the first place, voted to appoint his new owner to his post. Diana, who values truth so very highly that she signed off on lying to the world to cover for… So I couldn't trust any of you on this matter. I actually hoped that he was influencing your minds somehow." I shake my head. "It was better than… Believing…"

"What was the next step in your plan?"

Batman's voice is.. hollow, dead sounding. Either he's actually hearing the point I'm… Not so much making as bludgeoning him with, and it's matching up with doubts that he already had, or… Or he's trying to keep whatever he's feeling out of his voice.

"In the evening of the first of January I encountered Mister Charles Tong at Zatanna's home. That was when I told him that Mister Zatara had been possessed by a Lich and was being held in an Atlantean prison until it could be expunged. A little later that evening a group of us took a trip to the Harmony Grove Cemetery and summoned the spirit of Kent Nelson-."

"You did what?" Diana actually looks shocked.

"He was the best source of information on Nabu I had access to. He didn't object, if that's what you're worried about. The first thing he said was how relieved he was that Zatanna was free, as he didn't think that Nabu would have released her. When she explained what actually happened he told us the precise location of Nabu's tomb-."

"Nabu has a tomb?" Mister Allen's eyes have narrowed. I think he's frowning, but his mask makes it a little difficult to tell. "He didn't seem dead to me."

"According to the hieroglyphics, it was the resting place of his former hosts. I'm not sure how long the place had been undisturbed. Based on the style, I'd guess at least two thousand years. The last host was in some sort of suspended animation sarcophagus when they opened it. Something about the magic used killed Sven Nelson, and the last host died shortly afterwards. One of the sets of remains was alien. Cilian, to be precise. Given what the images decorating the walls showed they were either the host who brought Nabu to Earth, or Nabu's original pre-ascension body. We took the skull to use as a focus for our offensive magics."

King Orin scowls. "If you tried that in Atlantis this would be a very different sort of hearing."

"We built a sympathetic putrefaction system on the second and left it running behind some very strong scry wards. The aim was to see if we could weaken him to the point where lesser attacks could remove the helmet-."

Batman's jaw hardens. "And what if Fate's reduced capacities resulted in Zatara being injured or killed?"

"I saw no sign of him being impaired while on duty. I still don't know if we were having any effect at all. If I had, I would either have attacked him or stopped it, depending on how essential I felt that Nabu was. As for Mister Zatara being hurt… Yes, that was a possibility, but Nabu getting him injured was a possibility anyway. If it came to it, I could probably have carried out a medical resurrection on Mister Zatara once Nabu was off him. But… We never saw definitive evidence it was doing anything. If I had, it could have been deactivated with little notice. Something I had done when Oceanus appeared."

"And if Zatanna had been adversely affected by the Star Sapphire?"

"We designed a staff which contained the effect, channelling as much of its power as we could into her spells rather than into her. I or someone else was always around to monitor her use of it, and ensure that she took regular breaks. In addition, my empathic vision meant that I would have got an early warning if anything was going wrong."

"Oh yeah?" Jordan looks somewhat sceptical. "And just when did she start using this staff?"

"The fifth of February. It took her about half an hour to learn how to focus well enough to use it."

"The fifth?" Diana's eyes grow distant for a moment. "The week Fate was scheduled to spend in the Mountain."

"And Zatanna and I moved out."

"I could understand not wanting to be around him, but there was no way for us to know how strongly you felt about it if you didn't tell us."

"I didn't-?" My jaw tenses. "Twenty fifth of November, just before Thanksgiving dinner. We were talking about Justice League membership-" Her eyes widen slightly and her mouth tightens. I see that she's remembered the conversation. "-and you said: 'What about Nabu?' And I said: 'Well, if we can pick supervillains I'd probably have gone with Circe ahead of Nabu.' What exactly did you think I meant by that?"

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Falling Action 16

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10th July

15:19 GMT

"…had no idea that he'd react like that, but I could clearly see the advantage in pressing him on the issue. I really hoped that it might remind you what he was, but apparently I didn't have any luck." I stare at everyone around the horseshoe once more. "I mean, really? I offered him an alternative to a Human host, he rejects it out of hand… Did any of you even mention it to him?"

Mister Queen hesitantly raises his right hand slightly. "Ah, yeah, actually?"

"Well done. Anyone else?" No one says anything. "And somehow not surprised."

Batman glares at the back of Mister Queen's head until he feels it and lowers his hand. "I think we're getting off track. You say that Fate-."

Truth.

"Nabu."

"Don't interrupt. You're already-."

"Truth lasso. I'm being compelled to be open and honest. I think of him as Nabu and I see no reason not to use his name."

His head turns slightly towards Diana, who nods with apparent reluctance. It's a little interesting, the effect that my revelations and diatribe have had on the League members. Some have visibly slumped with shame as I put Nabu's actions into their proper context. Others -Ms Thal very much included- are becoming visibly angry, though I'm not studying their emotions deeply enough to tell whether it's from my actions or the insulting manner in which I'm delivering my defence. I did take a momentary look into Diana, and I know that though she's outwardly mastering her emotions she's distraught by my actions. I see old mistakes in flashes of yellow, some I recognise from her reports and others I don't. Superman's more impassive, a smattering of green and red visible but not in overwhelming intensity.

And then there's-.

"You said that Fate.. destroyed the golem. Did he give you any further indication as to why?"

Batman. He isn't thinking or feeling any one thing well enough for me to get a reading. I think he's been planning, working out how to bypass my ability. And -being Batman- hasn't shared his conclusions with anyone.

"No. My personal belief is that he found the very idea of accepting something from me repugnant."

Superman gives his head a small shake. "You had just told him that you were ambushing him. Are you really surprised he didn't accept your offer?"

Truth.

"No, though the source of my lack of surprise comes more from his prior rejection than the situation in Hyde Park. Though that certainly didn't help. Nabu had had months to investigate the possibilities of a golem body himself, and the opportunity to consult with Atlantean experts I'd never met or to study their notes himself. I believe that he didn't want one, that he simply preferred Mister Zatara regardless of other considerations."

"When he told you that he would accept alternate hosts, why did you not follow through on your offer?"

"I offered that as an attempt to peacefully resolve a hostage crisis. I did not consider it something I was obliged to do if he wouldn't relinquish his hostage until his demand was met. I also have only an approximate idea how long it would take to gather a group of magic users and no idea how acceptable he would find my volunteers."

Diana straightens slightly. "If you had, the situation would not have escalated-."

"No. I was not prepared to tolerate his continued presence. I would have kept my end of any agreement, but I was not prepared to continue to let him get away with that obscenity like you all were."

Diana's face tightens. "And Michael Siskin's death?"

"If I'd known in advance that would happen, I wouldn't have asked him to take part. However, he was killed by Nabu. Nabu's instinctive response to being subject to a fear magic based attack was to kill his attacker rather than push his attacker away or retreat. Batman has been exposed to Doctor Crane's fear gas on several occasions and hasn't killed anyone as a result. That particular lethal response was all Nabu."

Batman nods. "Was there a reason why you did not attempt to use fear gas yourself?"

"Nabu was essentially a sentient spell. He doesn't breathe or eat. As such, it was my judgement that gas, infrasonics and telepathic attacks would be a waste of time. Though, admittedly, I couldn't test that in advance."

William looks worried. "If he didn't eat.. for eight months..?"

"I believe that Nabu kept Mister Zatara's body alive with magic. He's in a weakened state, but his doctors believe that he will make a full recovery. No thanks to any of you."

Mister Freeman's face is still. But I can see John's jaw tense and his eyes narrow, Major Adams' right fist clench and Mister O'Brian's chest sag slightly. I know that I'm burning bridges here-

-but frankly I don't care. This wakeup call is long overdue.

Batman appears unfazed by my contempt. "If your primary mode of attack was to drain him of energy, why didn't you attempt to weaken him with your Praexis Demons?"

"I didn't expect things to escalate like that. The original plan involved us draining him until he was no longer able to resist. My control over the Praexis Demons is good, but they aren't precise enough to allow that sort of.. instant cut off. While I would not have been overly troubled by killing Nabu like that, it would also have risked Mister Zatara. And taking Nabu alive would have been better." My eyes dip for an instant. "And that's assuming that he couldn't have simply waved them away. My attempts at branding him met with no visible success."

"Other restraints-."

"I tried to get close enough to apply a suppression chain just after he killed Mister Siskin. I was knocked flying, the chain turned to molten slag. It doesn't suppress if it isn't on him. Sustained mage slayer rounds might have worked, and they might have killed Mister Zatara if I couldn't calculate the precise failure point of his defences. Which I couldn't. I used the mana battery system because it had the best chance of success."

"Of killing him."

Truth.

"I'm not completely sure in my own mind that I would have ordered him drained to death if he was clearly powerless. But I was not inclined to take a chance with it after he killed a member of my team. If Nabu had not done that, then I would have endeavoured to keep him alive if that could be achieved while freeing Mister Zatara."

"Did your original plan include killing Fate?"

"Of course it did. I planned as best I could for every set of circumstances. Though I didn't know enough about his range of abilities to plan for everything he might be able to do."

"I'm not questioning your ability to plan. I'm asking whether or not you committed premeditated murder."

"Under English law, Nabu was not a person. Under the 'Foul Witchcraft and Maleficent Practices Act' of fifteen ninety eight he would be defined as a 'baleful and malevolent spirit or spectre', and guilty of 'using unnatural magics to influence the minds of good Christian men to act contrary to their nature'. Not only can I not be prosecuted for killing him, the Church of England owes me either twenty crowns, or an acre of good grazing land and seven Sheep. And even if he were a person, he used lethal force to resist a legitimate arrest. I doubt that you would get a conviction, and that's if you were stupid enough to take it to trial."

Jordan's had enough. "Taking criminals to trial is kind of what we do around here, Orange Lantern. From where I'm sitting-"

"Did you sleep through my last-"

"-it looks like-"

"-lecture, Jordan? That is not the purpose-"

"-you've crossed the line to becoming one!"

"-of the Justice League! But okay! Let's say it did come to court. I would testify as to exactly what happened at Roanoke. There is no way that a British court will agree to keep that quiet. The world will know that the Justice League lied to the world for eight months about what happened to Mister Zatara. That you abandoned him to be a Lich's meat puppet. My team mates mean everything to me… Apparently that's not how it works up here. And they will know that you left a fourteen year old girl without a legal guardian. And they will know that you recruited the being responsible."

I shake my head. "Let's not kid ourselves here. If you weren't going to arrest Nabu then you're not going to arrest me. No, you're going to keep lying. Maintaining face. And while it took me a while to think it through… I'm going to let you. Although, of course…" I look around the horseshoe. "Coming clean is always an option. No?" I lift the unresisting noose from my right forearm. "Oh well."

I turn and walk towards the zeta tube, calling the rings to me as I go.

"I'll be on-planet for the rest of the day if you want me for anything."

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Falling Action 17

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10th July

17:47 GMT

I lift the last of the ramparts off the ground, a smattering of cheers rising from the crowd. Orange lights circle around it for a moment before my point to point zeta tube construct activates, transporting it to its twin on the Moon. Check that it's arrived… Good. I've still got to hand my report over to Sir Bernard and Boris, but I'm going to give the League a little longer before doing so. It maintains their preferred lie and there's still a chance -a small one- that they're going to want to admit their deceit and be honest. If they do that, then I hand over the other report, and… Whether the League want to press murder charges or not, the City of London have a number of things they could charge me with of which I am completely guilty. As a Justice League affiliate I didn't have to worry about lying to local authorities but as a Special Constable it's a much bigger concern.

I shake my head and take a look at Hyde Park. Nabu's ankhplosions aside, there wasn't actually all that much damage to our immediate environment during the fight. The plant life doesn't seem to have been harmed by the order magic… Then again, I don't imagine that it's all that easy to knock a plant out. Some surveyors from the Royal Parks have been around to look at it and rope off anything dangerous looking, but they've held off doing any work on the perfectly sensible grounds that it will be easier and cheaper to just have me do it.

Hm.

I drift over the area of the fight. The trees that lost bark or branches are easy enough to fix; just a matter of accessing the rings' records of the state they were in before the fight, then recreating and reattaching the missing material. Same with the pressure waves; just use the rings to gather up the loose soil and sod and return it to where it should…

That's a part of Mister Siskin's body.

I float it up towards me and look at it. I'm not exactly sure what Nabu did to the rock, but it's.. flaky and brittle now. His family… They'd already gotten over the shock of it when I visited them. They… Accepted my condolences… Sombrely. My lies, my… His-. Rescuing him from the Terror Thing was one of the things I was most proud of. Perhaps even more than my work rehabilitating the Beresfords, it was a life snatched back from the maw of ruination. He was alive, and if not happy then at least with the potential for future happiness. I'd found a life locked in constant torment and rescued it not just from that but from Nabu's callousness.

And Nabu killed him. Because I brought him here.

I mean, I told his parents that he was a vital part of the team, because of course I did, but that's bullshit. Nabu flared with yellow as they grappled and went pretty much back to normal after killing him. I could have achieved the same result by just keeping Nabu talking a little longer. I didn't know that at the time, and… Disabling him with fear and then chaining him involved far less risk of killing him than doing a full drain in a rush…

Is that what I should take away from this? That I should be more ruthless? Take their first refusal to surrender as definitive? I don't… I would prefer not to operate like that, but I… Whatever position I end up with in my Lantern Corps, I will have people die. People I'll have trained, people under my command. It's unavoidable. Did I..? Give Nabu extra chances because I hate him? Did I want to prove I was being fair? Give him enough rope to hang himself with? I don't think so…

Uh. Obvious downside of alienating the League: I can't talk to them about things like this. That leaves Adom and Alan, and I am planning on speaking to both of them before I leave.

Alan. That's a conversation that I'm looking forwards to almost as much as the one with the Siskins.

I return my attention to the park. Like it never happened. Okay, what next? Zatanna doesn't want to move her father until he's a little more recovered. I think that'll end up being the last thing I do on Earth.

Whaw, that sounded ominous. I take the report out of subspace for a moment and look at it. Should that be the next thing-?

**Paul?**

I look up from the report, and then around. With my accustomed barrier down, feeling out M'gann's location… Ah, there she is. She's in Megan Morse mode with Kon at her side.

**Yes?**

**'Yes'?** Kon frowns. **That's all you've got to say about it?**

**I'm not sure what there is to add. You know what I did and why. I can.. spare the time if you want to talk about it. Where do you want to do it?**

He and M'gann look at each other, and… I can't tell if they're whispering or excluding me mentally. Not that I'm going to probe the matter. A moment later Kon nods and turns back in my direction. **The roof over there.** He points in the direction of the Access Self Storage building. **Two minutes.**

**Of course. Though I should warn you that British buildings aren't built with rooftop superhero confrontations in mind. Try to go easy on it.**

He and M'gann turn away, moving through the crowd to look for a place to… Change, I suppose. In Kon's case that just means taking off his shirt and brushing his hair slightly differently. M'gann just needs somewhere out of line of sight so that she can shapeshift. I give the crowd below a half-hearted wave and then ascend at speed, swiftly getting too high for them to easily see. Not many clouds, and we've got hours of sunlight left. Not great for a private chat, but then I don't think that the building has roof access and London doesn't have any resident fliers.

Okay, that should do it. I transition downwards to the centre of the roof, as close to the surface of it as I can without touching it. Ring, check structural integrity.

Structure will bear both your weight and that of your companions.

Alright then. I land, dropping my aura down to next to nothing as I do so. I don't want to look like any aggression I feel is directed at them. O-kay, what do I do after this meeting? I think I'll go and speak to Adom. He kept things on track after the Ambush, and I need to thank him for that as well as for his participation. Might be worth pointing out that what Nabu did to him rather proves that picking a fight with Shazam would be a bad idea…

"Hey."

I turn to see Kon floating over the lip of the building's roof, M'gann just behind him.

"Good after-."

"Why didn't you tell me?" He comes in to land just in front of me, staring me in the eyes. "I get why you didn't tell the League, but why the hell didn't you tell m-us?"

"Several reasons. In order to maintain secrecy, I didn't want to include anyone I didn't absolutely need. Too much chance of a telepath overhearing something, or Wonder Woman talking to you and hearing a lie. Or Nabu doing.. something. You're strong, tough and a capable fighter, but you don't have any specific anti-Order Lord abilities. Any harm you did to him would have been felt by Mister Zatara more than Nabu, and that was exactly what I was trying to avoid if the confrontation turned violent." A little of the irritation fades from his face. "And then there's Wonder Woman."

He looks away for a moment. "Yeah. I don't know why she didn't… I mean, all the League-."

"No, I don't mean 'why did she accept Nabu'. I mean, the damage it would have done to your relationship with her when she found out that you'd been helping me with this behind her back. She's.. usually big on honesty and openness. And could you? Lie to her convincingly, with that lie detection ability she's got, for months?"

"No." He looks down, shaking his head. "No, I don't think I could. I don't even get how you did it. Do your.. tattoos block it or something?"

"Not as far as I know. But when I was studying her abilities, I noticed that it only triggers for direct lies. You can talk around a subject or say something misleading and as long as you're not too obvious about it nothing triggers."

"What about Teekl? Wolf hasn't come out of her basket since we got back to the Mountain."

I bow my head slightly. "I'm… That wasn't supposed to happen. I still don't.. really know why it did. Something about… Transferring the link, between Klarion and the Plane of Chaos." I shake my head. "But again, telling you wouldn't have-."

M'gann folds her arms across her chest. "And what about me?"

"M'gann, you're a terrible liar, and you're from a planet where sharing thoughts all the time is the norm. Can you imagine if you'd had to keep people out of your memories during our trip to Mars?"

"I-." She thinks about it for a moment. "Okay, but I'm not a terrible liar. None of you knew I was a White Martian-."

"I knew since the campfire."

"… You did?"

"You backtracked too hard, and the expression on your face made it pretty obvious. I don't know if anyone else noticed, but-" I point my right forefinger at my right eye. "-I've got pretty good night vision."

"Oh."

"Look… I'm not going to apologise, because it was the correct decision. I'm not even going to say that I regret it. Nabu killed Siskin, and he could well have ended up killing either of you. But I really don't want to-."

"Kon, M'gann." Diana flies out of the sky, hovering just above us. "Would you please give my student and I a moment?"

back

Falling Action 18

next

10th July

17:52 GMT

"Ah…" Kon glances at M'gann, then back at his mother. "Sure. Ah…"

I keep my attention on Diana. "I'll come and see you again before I leave Earth."

"O.. kay." Kon glances at me before walking over to M'gann. "Catch you later." He and M'gann take to the sky, heading in the general direction of the London Eye.

Diana watches them go, waiting until they're out of earshot before turning her full attention on me.

"Am I under arrest?"

She takes a breath. "No."

I nod. "Can I assume-." No, I've done that enough times. No ambiguity. "The League are standing by the official version of events, then?"

"Yes. We are."

I nod. "Thought as much. I recommend that the League attempt to recruit a replacement magic user as soon as possible. I'm sure that, between them, Batman and King Orin can-."

"Why did you do this? Why..? Why did you go about this in the most confrontational way that you could?"

"Because I've had eight months to.. build up my anger about it."

"And.. every interaction you had with your team, or with me… That was a lie, which you feel was justified by us allowing Doctor Fate-."

"No. It was more… Compartmentalisation, really. In every other regard you lived up to my expectations. You all.. just made this one… Weirdly out of character decision. I mostly just tried not to think about it, except when I was actually doing something about it." I regard her with curiosity. "How did you square that lie with yourself?"

"When I joined the Justice League, I agreed with the principle of collective decision making. The League unanimously agreed that including Doctor Fate was the best way to deal with-"

"Hm."

"-the situation. Once we had agreed upon that, the question was then how to explain that decision to the wider public."

"Knowing full well that they'd throw a fit if you told them what actually happened."

She looks away. "Yes."

"On the bright side, you get to preserve secrecy. Did Nabu die a valiant hero, or is he just taking a 'leave of absence' as well?"

"We have no plans to make an announcement. If Klarion were to discover-"

"Hahaha!"

"-Doctor Fate's-." Her eyes narrow slightly. "It is no laughing matter. If Klarion were to decide to attack again while the League is without-."

"Okay, stop. Firstly, Nabu wasn't much of a Klarion-counter anyway. Secondly, there are a great many other wizards. Thirdly, with everything that's going on today-" I take a datapad out of subspace. "-you clearly haven't had time to watch the news."

I set it to BBC News 24, then float it up to her.

"…story this evening. The Chinese state media are reporting the capture, trial and execution of the supervillain terrorist and mass murderer Klarion, by the Great Ten, China's government-sponsored superhero team. If confirmed, it will mark the death of someone hated by the entire world for the 'Roanoke Island Incident', in which hundreds of thousands of children all over the world were killed..."

Diana blinks, then returns her attention to me. "Your doing?"

I shrug. "I told them they could credit whoever they liked except Gu Lao, so I'm hardly going to claim credit. The point is, you don't have to worry about him. They were actually holding off releasing that information until I got out of hospital."

"You told us that Kilderkin was prepared to negotiate Zatara's freedom if Klarion was dead. Did you.. kill him in some fit of pique?"

"Negotiate with Nabu's boss? Why? Why should I make a deal with a body snatcher, or his employer? We have law and morals guiding our actions, we-" I shake my head. "-don't need to kowtow to energy based life forms just because they're powerful. Kilderkin didn't say that he'd free Mister Zatara, he said that he 'might be more amenable'. I'm not killing someone for an offer that mealy-mouthed."

"But you did kill Klarion. If you were going to kill him anyway, why did you not even try to negotiate?"

"I didn't want him to tip off Nabu if negotiations failed. And I didn't want to perform a summary execution and undermine Human law. China tried Klarion before executing him."

"And who tried Doctor Fate?"

"He did, when he resisted arrest and killed Mister Siskin."

"Are those the only reasons?"

I tilt my head slightly to the side. "Why does it matter?"

She exhales sharply, her eyes momentarily dropping to the rooftop. "I'm trying to give you the opportunity to demonstrate that you can still be trusted."

"And not demonstrate that you can still be trusted? Nabu, eight months, lying to the world. Was there some plan to get rid of him I wasn't privy to? That was an actual question, by the way. Was there? I mean… If there was, you were pretty quick to take the suppression chains off him after New Year. Heck, that would have been a perfect opportunity to take him down."

She looks at me, taking me in for several moments. "Did Eris advise you in this course of action?"

Bit of a non-sequitur there, but.. okay… "It wasn't her idea. I consulted with her and she helped a little, but she isn't my patron because I thought that I needed help learning how to bring chaos. Does that mean that there wasn't a plan? Did it not occur to you that keeping him chained up-."

"I do not keep allies bound against their will."

"Ally?" I raise my eyebrows. "Ally, is it? You think that thing was-?"

"Once he became a member of the Justice League, yes. Even if he was not all that I would have liked him to be, he had devoted-."

My aura flares. "Just stop, Wonder Woman. Stop trying to defend the indefensible. A simple 'yes, keeping him chained up would have been better, but he was urgently needed in Belle Reve' would have worked."

"I thought you didn't want me to lie? No, the idea of keeping him chained up did not even cross my mind, because I do not treat people like that-."

"But it's okay if other people do it? Like Nabu did to Mister Zatara? Once they're on the League, nothing else they do counts?" I huff, then rise off the ground. "I think it's best if we end this conversation here. I'm going to Kahndaq now, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't follow me."

back

Falling Action 19

next

10th July

Still on Zamaron

But definitely feeling better

"So you're telling me, you had what was basically a Central Power Battery… And you lost it?"

Queen Aga'po is being surprisingly patient with Jordan, really. I'm sure that if he tried this with the Guardians they'd have his ring off his finger before he reached the end of the first sentence of his diatribe. Or maybe I'm being unfair. Maybe Maltusians just don't care about mortal creatures mouthing off at them, regardless of their professional relationship?

"Our brothers and sisters would not share their research. The Star Sapphire was our attempt to recreate the technology from first principles."

"Okay, but… Then what? You just tossed it out at random?"

"We were curious to see whether, divergent as we are now, cooperation between our agents and those of the Guardians was possible. Your beloved appeared to be a good choice. Sad, that you neglected her so."

"Neglected-!"

"In your service to the Green Lantern Corps, and your frequent, unexplained absences. I have little time for the Guardians but they do have the virtue of honesty. If only because they cannot conceive that they are acting wrongly." Queen Aga'po holds up the Star Sapphire. "Love should bring people together, not send them at one another's throats. Now that it is once more in our possession, we will review the data it collected. We will discover what made this pairing fail, and improve our future efforts."

I turn my attention away from the ongoing confrontation and towards my current benefactor. "How do I look, Princess?"

Ghia'ta looks at me as if I were a fascinating but possibly rabid specimen. Not a completely unfair description, I suppose. "Your… Soul… It is like nothing I have ever seen before."

"Made it myself."

Her eyes narrow in sceptical puzzlement for a moment. "It is abominable."

"My brother Scott did some of the work. Most of it, in fact."

"Are you… Lying to me?"

She looks almost offended. Sweet. "Sort of. I designed the initial structure with substantial aid from my Father Box, and designed the original version of the device-" I point to the personal mana infuser with my right hand. "-for empowering it. The current structure is a result of Scott's effort to stop the Anti-Life Equation fragment erasing.. me, converting my soul from something that grew from the universal life force to something intrinsically opposed to it." My gaze grows slightly distant. "And speaking as the one who went through the process, I believe I can speak with authority on the subject: it is most certainly abominable. Love, used as a weapon to break my spirit."

She shudders. Oh, you'll learn.

"Queen Aga'po requires that I welcome you into my home until you can be sure that I am genuine. But that is hardly adequate repayment to the service you are doing to me… I take it that you have been successful?"

She nods. "Yes. The violet light of love is now bound to you in the same way as the lights of avarice and fear. I don't understand why you did not ask us to replace them."

"Because you don't know enough to be certain that your replacement could contain the Anti-Life safely. You really don't want Life-."

I slam my hands over my mouth at the same moment as I wrap shields around myself. It can… Get out if I speak it?

Ghia'ta has her hands jammed over her ears as well, and Queen Aga'po and her retinue have their hands raised with crackling shards of violet light dancing around their fingers. Jordan has his ring prepared to blast as well.

I endeavour to look harmless as I tentatively move my hands from my mouth.

…

That appears to be safe. Okay.

"I'm sorry. I didn't realise that could happen. I'll be careful not to refer to it directly in future."

"Yeah." Jordan lowers his ring. "You do that."

"What did you..? Experience?"

"It was like it was the worst moment of the worst day of my life. You had that for two weeks?" I nod. "Huh." He nods, then his eyes narrow slightly. "Nice armor."

What does he..? Ah. Orange construct chains are wrapped around my yellow straitjacket. I dismiss both with a shudder. "Ghia'ta, what you just heard is a small fraction of what Father can do to people at will. Just by speaking. What you felt is what the people subjected to him live. While I will hold up my end of our bargain, you must understand that I cannot protect you from him. I cannot even protect myself from him. If you are unwilling to take that risk, we can… Renegotiate-."

"No." She shakes herself. "If such a horrifying thing exists, then I must learn how to fight it." She holds out her right arm, her crystal staff flying to her hand. "And I cannot do that from here."

"Very well." I look over at Jordan and the Queen. She's lowered her hand, though I note that her retinue have not done so. "Jordan, are you ready?"

He floats in my direction, turning in the air to face Queen Aga'po as he does so. "I don't want that thing ever coming anywhere near Earth."

"We have a universe to choose from. I doubt that we will cross paths again."

He nods, then lands next to me. "Okay. Boom tube us back."

"Father-. Oh."

"What?"

"I… Usually have the ring connect to the Mountain's systems… Or use Father Box." Sinestro, how long would it take to fly back to Earth?

You would experience half an hour.

Oh. That's not too-.

The rest of the universe would experience between two days and a week, depending on your level of ring mastery. And you may be assured, Corpsman, that your recent travails have done nothing good for that.

Oh. Poop.

"Are we stuck?"

"No, just…" I raise my yellow ring to my mouth. "Contact green two eight one four B."

"'Calling for a ride' in progress, Corpsman."

Guy's face appears above the ring's sigil. "Yeah, what-? Grayven?"

"Guy, could you get someone to open a tube to my location? I need to get home."

"Hey, Jordan? You there?"

"Yeah, Gardner, he's okay. And I don't want to spend a week flying back to Earth."

"Alright. Gimme a sec."

The image disappears.

"Okay." I bow to Queen Aga'po. "Your majesty, thank you for your aid."

"Be sure not to renege on your part of our agreement."

"I wouldn't, even if I didn't have to. Ghia'ta, you'll be staying with us in Challenger Mountain. We're a fairly eclectic bunch, but I'm sure you'll-."

BOOM!

For goodness' sake, Guy.

The boom tube aperture surges open and Lynne dashes out of it. I fall to my knees and she attaches herself limpet-like to my chest.

This is… Better.

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Falling Action 20

next

10th July

20:14 GMT +2

Great.

I probably shouldn't have blown Diana off like that, but I-. I just can't deal with the League at the moment. I hadn't even really realised that I hadn't told them that Klarion was dead. Worth forwarding a list of magic users to Batman? No, he's still got my last list, and with the exception of John it wouldn't have changed significantly. I wonder if Diana ever spoke to Ms Tolon? She probably would have…

I drop down through the Kahndaqi night sky in the direction of Adom's residency. Lights are off all over the government buildings, but his actual living quarters are still well lit. I know that I have an open invite, but given the security situation I think it would be best to avoid any potential for misunderstanding. I may be effectively immune to conventional weapons fire, but those bullets have to land somewhere.

I allow my aura to flare as I reach street level, the guards on duty bringing their weapons to bear with commendable swiftness. And lowering them again with the same alacrity.

"Good evening, gentlemen. Am I cleared for entry?"

The man closest to me -a corporal- nods. "Yes, of course sir. I will inform the garrison commander that you are here."

"Thank you."

He stands aside and I stride past the checkpoint. Not as good as the security the Chinese use, but then they're a superpower and Kahndaq is still putting itself back together after a civil war. Having said that, Kahndaq is actually pretty stable. I suppose that's the advantage of an internal revolution; you actually have support on the ground on help with things like civil enforcement. Compare the Kurdish areas of Iraq post-invasion to all of the rest of the country.

Oh and… The country being governed by a demigod who tore apart the former government with his bare hands. That probably helps. There's an awe that people like us… Superheroes, attract. Particularly those who aren't the personable sort. I don't want to say.. divine majesty, but it's probably the same thing, the same psychological mechanism. It says: this is a thing that is beyond normal people.

Of course, once you get to know them… No, they're still not quite like normal people, because that same.. thing has changed them as well. I'm certainly not the same person as I was when I first arrived on Earth 16. I'd like to think I'm better. I'm certainly less hesitant. And of course I'm much more in tune with my desires.

Hm.

I transition to just outside the start of the residential part of the building. There is always someone here… Guards, civil servants and politicians of various stripes working late, or working the hours they have to in order to deal with parts of the world that are in different time zones. When you work for a third world government, you often end up working to the convenience of others. The oil companies actually took the tax increase with no more than token complaints, relieved as they were that they weren't having their assets acquired by the state and understanding that it actually would be used for the good of the country and not another round of government mansions.

"Even here! Woman, will you give me no rest?"

And hey, with accepting a bribe while in public office now being a death penalty offence, maybe they'll still come out ahead. The banks were less impressed about being given those mansions as full payment for the loans used to build them, but I can't say that I'm sympathetic. Loan money to a dictator and my heart doesn't exactly bleed when it bites you in the arse.

"This just shows that you need to deal with this now!"

Ah, sounds like the pair of them are in fine form this evening. I nod to the guards as I walk up to what is effectively Adom's front door and then knock twice. I hear steps on the far side, and then Falil opens it. His eyes widen slightly, then a look of relief settles over his face. "Orange Lantern. Please, come in. I am sure that his Excellency will want to see you immediately."

"Thank you. Shouldn't you have… Gone home by now?"

He nods tiredly, then leads the way inside. "Please do not misunderstand. Serving his Excellency is a privilege, one which really belonged to someone with more experience than I have. But I think… Perhaps he has made it a job that cannot be done by just one man?"

"The entire point of an individual sovereign is to hold emergency powers, so that they may deal with situations which the laws do not account for!"

"I'll have a word. Have they been carrying on for long?"

"Even if you could do that, you are not immortal, Adom! What would Kahndaq do if you died, without any formal guide to the succession? Or even on how to handle a crisis without you telling them what to do?"

"Some time. I have stopped noticing." Falil stops before the door to the living area and clears his throat loudly.

"Come!"

Falil pushes the door open and walks inside. "Orange Lantern here to see you, your Excellency."

Adom nods to me as I enter… Gosh. He looks… Weathered. Certainly better than last time I saw him, thankfully. His skin has regained its usual lustre and his muscle mass has returned, but there are still lines on his face that weren't there before and his hair is shot through with grey. "Adom, how are you feeling?"

"Better, thank you. Between your alchemy and the gods' blessing, the foul sorcerer's magic has.. limited staying power."

"Thank you again for your aid-."

Ms Tomaz turns on me. "This is your fault?!"

"Ahh. Adom.. responded to my request for help-."

"He has a country to rebuild! Until he is finished, you cannot allow him to be so badly injured!"

"Ah.. I'm leaving the planet later today, so it's unlikely I'll be calling upon him again anytime soon." That appears to be.. adequate. "May.. I.. ask what you were.. discu-."

"Adom is not willing to approve the provisional constitution!"

"I am perfectly happy-" I notice that Falil has made good his escape. "-to approve the constitution. What I am not willing to do is precisely define the limits of my own authority."

"You… I'm sorry, but you didn't appear to have a problem exercising limited authority before..?"

"During normal times, there is no need. A sovereign can do more damage by…" He frowns for a split second. "Micromanaging, than by allowing flawed decisions to be carried out by lesser officials. More importantly, if I create a formal statement of the powers the sovereign possesses… Then in the event of my death, whoever succeeded me would most likely assume those same powers. And even amongst those loyal to me, there are none I would trust with such authority."

"Then even if you are too prideful to accept limits on yourself, you need to make some arrangement."

He looks at her for a moment, narrowing his eyes slightly. "Yes. I have put that off too long."

"Oh." Ms Tomaz blinks as her need to lambaste is undermined by his admission. She watches him carefully as he turns away and walks towards his desk. Then past it and to the bay windows leading to the balcony. "What exactly-?"

Adom opens the windows and then turns and walks back to her. "I should have done this a month ago."

"Done what? What are you-?" He moves, putting her over his right shoulder before standing. "What are you doing! Get off me!" She flails at his back for a moment, before grabbing his hair and pulling with all her might instead.

"Paul, please accompany me." He strides back towards the balcony before rising off the ground. "I will need you as a witness."

"Of course."

"Brute! Barbarian!"

"Whatever you.. want..?"

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Falling Action 21

next

10th July

20:22 GMT +2

We're somewhere over the mountainous west bank of the Red Sea. I say 'somewhere', obviously I have longitude and latitude. There just isn't anything here that I can point to as a unique indicator of the location. We're not near any settlements or roads, the land below us is rock cut through with sandy gullies. Adom's reason for putting Ms Tomaz over his shoulder became obvious fairly quickly. Nothing like his top speed, but we've still flown far faster than would be comfortable for people without our resistances and it allowed him to shield her head from the winds with his body.

Understandably, she still isn't best impressed.

"Take me back right now you beast!"

I'm.. really not sure where he's going with this. Picking someone up and taking them out into the desert is more than a little out of character. I don't think that he's finally lost his temper; I wasn't seeing enough red. If I had to guess, I'd say that he was frustrated and irritated rather than experiencing the deep wrath or loathing that shows up as red. And he certainly doesn't kill casually. He kills readily when he thinks that he has just cause, but he's never made any effort to conceal it.

Save for Nabu, I suppose. But that was a favour to me, not part of running Kahndaq. And… It's not like he couldn't just kick her out if he really wanted.

Apparently still able to see what he's looking for despite the darkness and Ms Tomaz' best efforts to claw out his eyes, Adom begins his descent. Are there any..? No, no points of interest that the rings can detect around here. Just in case, I hang back a little as he lands and gently tries to remove Ms Tomaz from his person.

Curious how little red I'm seeing from her. Are her protestations a rhetorical technique, perhaps? Overstating a case in order to apply greater psychological pressure?

Back on her own feet, she takes a few slightly shaky steps away from his before looking around us. The night sky is quite lovely out here, but the only real source of illumination is me. "Where is this!?"

Adom looks around, perhaps trying to get his bearings. "This land was green, once. In my time, I could look down on what is now desert and see a land of plant life. It was hot, and it was dry for much of the year, but the rains could support forest where now there is only… Dust, and sand."

"And?"

He doesn't answer, turning to me instead. "Orange Lantern. There should be a chamber some distance below us. Please, carefully excavate a passageway downwards, through the rock. I had hoped that there would be a passageway still, but… No, after five thousand years that was unwarranted optimism."

"Very well." I extend filaments from the ring on my right hand. "I didn't detect anything when I scanned earlier."

"You have mentioned that sites protected by magic can resist your ring's detection?"

I nod as the filaments breaking through the rock report back, the patterns of vibrations returning through the rock suggesting that there is indeed a hollow space below us.

I sigh.

I suppose I should be proud that bronze age Humans could spoof power rings…

"Found it. Excavating now."

I take a grip on the plug of rock and begin pulsing a series of beams to cut it free without damaging the chamber beneath. I wonder how far down this would have been before five thousand years' worth of erosion went to work on the surrounding rock… Quick check on the stability of the surrounding material, and a quick flare of orange to fuse the loose material…

I don't raise my right hand in a lifting motion as the plug comes free, but it would probably be appropriate. The column comes out with barely a sound, and I lay it carefully on a level patch of ground a little way from us. I can stick it back in when we've done whatever it is we're here to do.

"All yours, Mighty One."

He nods. "Cleanly done. Miss Tomaz, would you accept me lifting you-?"

"No, I will not! I am not going anywhere until you explain why we are here!"

Adom bows his head slightly. "I wish to show you a part of my history, that you may better understand what motivates me. I do not.. share of myself readily, but I am.. increasingly reaching the conclusion that this may not be the correct way for me to behave. At least, with regard to you. Would you accept passage from Orange Lantern?" She gives a cautious nod, and he rises off the ground and descends through the hole.

"You." Me? "What is he playing at?"

"I'm not sure. I will say… That he does actually respect you… More than your arguing suggests. I don't think that he'd waste your time -or mine- with something trivial."

She nods, grudgingly. "Take me down. And make lights, I cannot see in this darkness."

"Your wish is my command." I attach a flight aura to her, then lift both of us off the ground and float us over the hole. "Going down."

We descend, the orange light I give off reflecting off the nearby walls. It's a ten metre drop into a chamber barely two tall. The stone was clearly dug out, and the thin layer of dust suggests that it's been sealed for some time. Keeping us both off the floor, I send light emitting constructs out into the room.

At the far end, it looks like there was a rock fall at some point, stone carved steps being covered in loose dirt and stones. The passage isn't visible from the surface any longer. If this room is enchanted in some way, then either the enchantment extends to the passage even in its state of decay, or further up it's so filled in that the ring didn't register it as significantly different from its surrounding environment. Curious. The room… There's pigment on the walls, faded from its application but so protected from the elements that it remains in far better condition than the hieroglyphs I'm used to seeing. The designs are simple, literal depictions rather than abstract representations of things. On the left, trees, a forest, a garden..? Not sure. On the right, a power figure… probably a goddess, raises a hand in benediction over a kneeling noblewoman.

And I know where we are.

Adom is knelt as if in prayer before a stone sarcophagus. There are two other, slightly smaller ones behind it. I recognise some of the symbols carved into the surface from Atlantean spell books. That.. shouldn't be enough to throw me off by itself. I did once ask Adom what he thought about archaeologists digging up long dead bodies. He said it didn't bother him, as none of them were people he knew. I think I'll be doing a very good job of covering this place u-.

"So? What are we here to-."

"Not-. Not the time."

"I will say-."

"As I am certain that Orange Lantern has deduced, this is the tomb of my wife and of my sons." He stands, walking around to the narrow end of the largest sarcophagus. "As High Priestess of Isis, she was a living link to her patron as I am to mine. When.. she was murdered… I had her mortal remains entombed here." He closes his eyes for a moment, then gently lifts the lid from the sarcophagus. There's no smell; the organic material that once covered the skeleton has long since rotted to nothing. The only thing of real note is an elaborate gold, jade and ruby amulet which I actually don't remember in detail from the comic but can clearly see now.

The Amulet of Isis.

Careful not to disturb the bones, Adom reaches into the sarcophagus and picks it up before walking back around to Ms Tomaz. I remove the aura around her, leaving her to stand on her own two feet.

Adom looks thoughtful. "Of late, I have found myself surrounded by men and women who revere me, who serve me through honest loyalty or simple sycophancy. But in all of that, you are the only one who speaks her mind to me. And no matter how vehemently I have disagreed with you, I find that in your absence I miss your sharp mind and.. even your tongue, a little."

He bows his head, holding out the Amulet to her.

"Will you accept this power, this authority, and stand beside me as my equal and as my wife?"

Ms Tomaz, eyes wide, looks at him, the amulet and then at him again.

Then she reaches a conclusion.

"No!"

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Falling Action 22

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10th July

20:47 GMT +2

Adom and I stare out across the Red Sea, the Amulet of Isis clasped in his left hand.

"Where.. do you think I went wrong?"

I turn my head towards him, my left eyebrow slightly raised. He keeps staring into the middle distance. "Ah…"

"I had thought… Becoming my equal, having political power through which she could exert change independent of me… That idea would appeal to her. Was it…" He holds up the Amulet slightly, looking it over. "Because it was I who was giving it to her?"

"That.. might be it. Also… You do realise that in the modern era, people usually spend time courting before marrying one another?"

He glances at me, then back out to sea. "We had spent a great deal of time together."

"Arguing about politics, yes. It's not-."

"Her parents were Terek and Amal Tomaz. She was eight when a local criminal gang stole her, her parents and her brother from their home and interned them in a labour camp. At first, the children were used as hostages. As they grew, those who were prepared to join with their captors were permitted to do so. Those who refused joined their parents in the labour pool. Her parents were murdered when she was twelve." His head bows slightly. "I promised her that I would find her brother. I have not forgotten that, but I cannot afford to take the time away from my duties as head of state."

"Okay… That's better. Why didn't you.. lead with that?"

He shakes his head weakly. "I have shown no one the tomb. I had thought… It would convey my respect most clearly to make the offer in the presence of the only people I had ever loved without reservation. That it would.. convey the value I place on her companionship."

"And not… I'm sorry to put it like this, but that you were literally drafting her in to replace your late wife."

He blinks, then turns his head to face me. "No, of course not. Do.. you.. think that she could have seen it that way?"

"It's a.. possibility. Tombs.. aren't generally considered romantic."

Adom shakes his head. "Adrianna and Shiruta are very different people. I did not mean to imply that she was in any way a stand-in. I would not treat someone whom I valued in that manner."

"Didn't you say that Shiruta gave you.. fairly direct counsel?"

"She would persuade me to change my position, yes. But she did so though persuasion and reason. It would be very unusual for her to raise her voice, even when she disagreed with me most vehemently. The spirited debates I have with Adrianna have a very different character."

"Adom, I…" How to put it? "You are aware that I can see emotions, right?"

"Of course."

"I'm not seeing.. significant violet. You don't love her."

Another small shake. "I did not love Shiruta when we first married. I respected her, I valued her, but… I did not come to love her until we had been married for some time. In Adrianna I see the traits of character that I admire, as I admired those I saw in Shiruta. But they are not the same.. virtues. Or.. perhaps they do not display them in the same way."

"Okay, now, that stuff you just said to me?"

"Yes?"

"That was what you should have said to her, instead of carrying her off to your family's tomb."

He exhales lightly. "Ah."

"Based on what I've seen within her-."

He holds up his left hand in my direction. "No. Do not tell me. If I am to court her, I must learn to understand her myself."

"That's probably best."

I can see a pattern of lights moving down the Red Sea towards the Gulf of Aden. A container ship. Even with a country which was recently on the verge of collapse and which still has no direct flights to the US… The spice must flow…

"I want to thank you for keeping things organised after the Hyde Park Ambush. And for speaking to Michael Siskin's parents."

He nods. "Your plan for the attack was good. Your plan for the aftermath was.. a little lacking."

"I didn't think it mattered so much. But, you're right, I should have put something together."

"Have you spoken to them yourself?"

"Yes, earlier today."

"I was not sure that it would occur to you."

"I was a little surprised that you did it. Did you do that sort of visit during your first life?"

"Not as Prince Adom. After a battle, there would be a ceremony of commemoration for any soldiers who died, but I would not have visited their next of kin in person. But, sometimes… When I fought as Teth Adom… If a hero I fought beside fell, or if a mortal performed a great feat of valour that drew my eye… Yes." We watch the waters for a few moments. "He was the first to die under your command?"

"Yes. But, he won't be the last. Even if I can't talk the Controllers around to founding a Corps in the way I hope to, I will be leading Lanterns in the future. And powerful as we are, we can still die. Scarab Warriors can kill Lanterns in single combat, Reach warships can kill them with weight of fire… And there are many other exotic weapons and warlike species. I feel bad about it now. I feel… That I brought him unnecessarily, to give Nabu an extra chance to survive that he didn't deserve."

"I do not believe that your decision was wrong. That is to say, it is not the one that I would have made. I am not a man much inclined to mercy. In your place, I doubt that I would have attempted to negotiate with Nabu at all. But, for all that, your decision was not wrong. Even the gods cannot predict all of the outcomes of the actions of every man and woman. You could not know what would happen, and…" He smiles. "I do not believe that either Shiruta or Adrianna would disagree with you on the subject of attempting to defeat your foes without killing them."

"And the people who will follow me in future?"

"It is the nature of the universe that some matters must be decided with violence. Death does not only take the deserving, and often good intentions are poorly repaid. To those who follow you, if you do not lie to them, if you stay true to the cause that you have proclaimed and lead them as best you can, then you do them no wrong."

I nod. "What do you plan to do about Ms Tomaz?"

"I think.. that I will attempt a more.. modern sort of courtship. Perhaps if we avoided political matters in conversation, that would allow us to remain civil."

"If I might make a further suggestion?"

"Of course."

"You know about her, where she comes from, why she is the way she is. Have you talked to her much about your history? Not just.. general things, but why you do things, what the world you grew up in was like…"

He nods. "A balance of knowledge. There may be wisdom in that." He stands. "When will you leave?"

"I've still got a few people to visit." I rise to my feet as well. "It will.. probably be early morning tomorrow, Kahndaq time."

"Then, since it is unlikely that I will see you again until your return." He holds out his right hand. I smile, and clasp it. "I will wish you good fortune in all your future adventures."

"Thank you, Adom. And I wish you good fortune in your romantic ones."

His eyes narrow slightly, and his smile takes on a more amused aspect. "Have you spoken to Ms Nguyen yet?"

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Falling Action 23

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10th July

14:02 GMT -6

Father Box sits on the table just in front of me. I tap it lightly on its uppermost surface with my right forefinger.

"Alright… Everyone…" I look around our meeting room. "First order of business."

Neither Chester nor Vera were in the Mountain during Darkseid's visit. It was Chester who found us first, and Vera who thought to contact Scott almost immediately. It's a bit of a shame that I can't promote them. Still, they've both had the divine awakening and now own a personal mana infuser, so they can hardly complain that I'm short changing them. They both cover it up pretty well, but I'm a Yellow Lantern. Finding me raving in agony has left a mark on both of them.

Ghia'ta appears to be slightly subdued, but that might just be from being surrounded by unfamiliar people in an unfamiliar place. Darkseid didn't bother going to the vault containing the Hybrids, so they're fine. And the Sphere is chirpy as ever.

The others are worse off. Lynne hasn't let go of me since grabbing hold on Zamaron. Miss Shimmer starts at every little sound and she's taking to hunching her shoulders, holding her arms folded across her chest. Mister Tawny's tail twitches constantly, and he struggles to stay still for any length of time. Jean appears to have been saddled with a similar communication problem to the one I had and stammers if she attempts more than one word in a row. The effect on the other Genomorphs is less noticeable, but they're clustering together more than they used to. Miss Amane has taken to trailing around after me, clearly afraid for my wellbeing. I'm not sure what she thinks that she could do against Darkseid… And I don't want her to die uselessly trying to protect me. And I haven't seen Doctor Robbins without a glass of whiskey in hand since I got back.

A pall of misery and fear has settled over Challenger Mountain. And they're not wrong to be afraid or miserable.

"Those of you.. who had the distinct displeasure of meeting my father… What you felt was the Anti-Life Equation. I realise that as a concept it's a little hard to grasp. That was the reality. Father has a number of fragments of the Equation bound to his soul. You are aware of how I can reinforce New God technology with my own soul? That is what happens when Father uses that ability on the Anti-Life within him. What I got is what happens when he transfers a fragment to someone."

"So..?" Chester is uncharacteristically lost for words. "How bad a guy is 'e?"

"In all of this universe, there are a handful as bad and none worse. His ultimate objective-" Doctor Robbins finishes her glass and then reaches for the decanter for a refill. "-is to do what he did to me to everyone, only more thoroughly. At present, he appears to be happy ruling only Apokolips, but there is nothing and no one who can stop him going wherever he chooses. Most people just aren't worth his time."

"But you are." Doctor Robbins gestures to me with the stem of the decanter before setting it down on the table. "How long do we have until the next family visit?"

"I have no way to tell."

"Do you think we're safe here? Do you think Lynne-?"

"No. I don't." I take a moment to gather my thoughts as she takes another sip, her right eyebrow raised. "As I see it, we have essentially two options. The first is run and hide." Chester looks away for a moment. "Much as I wish it otherwise, Father knows our names, faces and locations. I have the schematics which the Justice Lords used for their portal, and we can-."

Chester looks back at me, his eyes narrowed. "So, what? We just leg it?"

"Yes. Lynne is my highest priority, but the people in this room are my closest friends and allies. Getting as far as we can from Darkseid is an option available to us. I told you each of Darkseid's existence, but confronting the reality is a different kettle of fish. Many of you have been ill-served by me, and I apologise for that. I cannot make you safe, but I might be able to make finding you sufficiently difficult that Father doesn't go looking for you. Again, I can't guarantee that-."

"Well fook it then." Chester shrugs. "What's the point?"

"It's a probability judgement you have to make for yourself. My judgement is that staying here is far riskier, but I also didn't think that he'd bother coming here. If-."

"No, Master." Miss Amane shakes her head. "I will not run from him. He must be stopped." She looks at me with utter devotion. "You know how to do that, don't you, Master?"

"If I knew how to stop him, then I wouldn't have let him Anti-Life me. Father is stronger and tougher than me, but he's also more intelligent, better equipped and mystically far more potent. But before we carry on this discussion: Father Box."

"Ploong."

"You were passing information about my activity to Father, weren't you?"

"Ploong."

"Why?"

"Ploong."

I nod. "I suppose that makes sense." My right hand comes down hard on the table surface, Father Box's broken remains lying in fragments beneath it. That shocks everyone awake, Miss Shimmer nearly jumping out of her seat.

I move my hand back to my side. "That is not to say that he's unbeatable. No one is unkillable. But he is a very long way from where we are now." I look around the room at the uncharacteristically timorous faces. "That represents the other extreme. We can build up our resources… Increase our power… With a view to fighting him."

Vera raises her eyebrows. "And what happens if he spots us doin' that?"

"It depends. He might ignore it, or he might take action. I think it unlikely that he'd kill all of us, if only because he'd want to convince the survivors of their powerlessness. But if he decided to move against us, we would lose. And that fact will not change for a significant period of time."

She looks away. "Bloody marvellous."

Chester leans back, shrugging nonchalantly. "Fook it, I'm in. Always thought 'e sounded like a right bastard, and now 'e's picked a fight."

"I am with you, Master!"

"I'm touched, Iname. But I haven't decided that I'm staying myself."

Chester blinks. "Y'wot?"

I ignore him, looking down at my daughter. "Lynne?" She pulls her head off my chest and looks up at me. "The Anti-Life is a horror to all sane life, but I can only imagine the additional suffering that you have been subjected to due to my carelessness. I told you when I first took you in that my life was violent, that my home was no safe harbour. Now, you see that I meant exactly what I said. You are my daughter. I love you, but I cannot protect you from him."

She tenses.

"My instinct is that Father will come for me whatever happens, and my feeling is that he is my problem to deal with. But I should have prioritised your protection… Your wellbeing, more highly. If you want, we can step away from this universe. Spend six years -until your adulthood- doing nothing likely to draw his eye. Then I will return, and you can do what you will. Your childhood has already been blighted by-."

"No, Daddy." She pulls away, sitting up straighter. "You shouldn't do that. D-Darkseid is trying to do to everyone something worse than what SHADE did to me."

"Yes, but he's been working on it for a very long time. Six years is the very least I owe-."

"Everyone needs you to stop him. And the only thing I can think of that's worse than him doing that to us again is him doing it to everyone. We have to stop him."

"Alright. If you change your mind, let me know at once." She nods, then gets up off my lap and walks around to an empty seat next to Miss Shimmer. "Mister Tawny?"

"Michael."

"I beg your pardon?"

"American Humans have a personal name and a family name, do they not? After your brother freed me, I had time to reflect upon my life. And everything that the Anti-Life made me think. I am not a beast. I am a person." His muzzle twitches. "And I will eat the man who tries to tell me otherwise."

"Alright. Again, if you wish to step back-."

"I do not. Though… I think I will need to spend a little more time amongst people. Wash the Anti-Life from my fur."

I nod. "Of course. Miss Shimmer?"

"I-. I can't really go to the one place I'd want to. I… Celestia threw me out for trying to learn dark magic. That was it, wasn't it? That's what it feels like."

"I don't know enough about Wilson's dark magic to answer that. Though the Anti-Life is opposed to everything worthwhile about existence, so… It's certainly dark."

She nods, forcing her arms down by her sides. "I'll help."

"Doctor Robbins? Vera?"

Doctor Robbins waves her glass vaguely. "Sure. Why not? I've already had my brain turned off twice, what's one more time?"

Vera appears to be taking things a little more seriously. "What about the British government?"

"You can carry on your work there. The build up on this one is going to be very long, but making sure that the Earth is governed by good people will be one of the steps."

"Alright. I'm not one fer abandoning things part way through. But we're trusting you with a lot here, Grayven."

"I know. I will endeavour to be worthy of you all. But I'm afraid that I'm going to be too weak to do much about this for now. Carry on with your projects. If you need me, I'll-" I rise to my feet. "-be in the mana infusion chamber."

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Falling Action 24

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10th July

15:49 GMT -5

I step out of the alley and look around the Gotham street. You'd barely know that this place was overrun with giant plants two months ago. Oh, now that I look again I can see that some of the work on the fascias is recent, and there are patches where the gripping roots of some of the vines have managed to stay lodged in places where it's inconvenient to get at them, but… Really got to hand it to the people of Gotham. They're a resilient bunch.

Either that or so totally stoical that they barely notice things like that.

No one really pays me much attention as I head towards Holly and Karon's home. With the rings not on open display, I'm not… No, come on, I should be a bit more recognisable by now, surely? Maybe it's a city thing, not paying all that much attention to the people around you… As long as they don't look threatening, anyway.

Maybe it just goes to show that no matter how Earth-shattering an event in your life is, the world will keep turning regardless. And most people around you probably don't give a Monkey's. How many would actually care that the League lied about Roanoke? I mean, they'd care if they were covering for Klarion and I imagine that most people would be anti-Nabu on balance… But how many would care enough to do something meaningful about it? How many would keep caring months later? How many people -even here in Gotham- have had direct exposure to a superhero before?

I give my head a small shake before I press the doorbell. The confrontation with the League has left me more than a little out of sorts. That, and the talk with Rob and Alan… And the proper talk I'm going to have with Kon and M'gann before I leave. And -hah!- I still haven't firmly decided whether I want to go to Maltus before or after I scout out the Vega Systems in person. Turning up with the Orange Central Power Battery would give me an obvious negotiating advantage, and I want to do something about the military domination of the Citadel Complex. That's a bit more urgent than the Reach, though not as important.

On the other hand -I press the doorbell again- I could be in a bit of a sticky situation if Larfleeze notices that I'm-

"It's open!"

-there. Huh. Not a good idea to leave a door unlocked in Gotham, but I imagine that Jade is perfectly capable of taking most would-be home invaders. I take hold of the door handle and turn it, pushing the door open.

"Ahoy the house?"

"I'll be down in a minute!"

No.. sign.. of Holly or Karon. I close and lock the door behind me, then walk over to the bottom of the stairs. "If this is a bad time, I can come back!"

"I said, a minute!"

Sounds like Jade's not feeling too much the worse for wear, then. I sit down on one of the armchairs, leaning back into the cushions. I pat the chair's right arm with my right hand, the suitcase containing the balance of Jade's fee appearing from subspace on the floor next to me. "Where are Holly and Karon!?"

"The park, I think?" I look up as Jade comes down the stairs in.. what looks like her old short skirted kimono costume. Her hair looks damp… Oh heck, did I turn up while she was in the shower? "So?"

"So, Nabu is confirmed… Either actually dead or brain dead." She nods as she walks towards the settee to my left. "Mister Zatara was briefly awake, and the prognosis is good for his recovery." She sits, legs curled up underneath her. "Adom's nearly back to normal, John's… Weird. I don't think… Having two opposing sources of magic energy, he's not having an easy time making them work together." I look her over. "Do you still have the Ace?"

"I didn't think that keeping it here was such a great idea. If anyone came looking for it…"

I nod. "Where did you put it?"

"Shadowcrest. Zatanna seemed pretty confident that the spells on the place would keep out uninvited guests."

"Good plan. I'll pick it up when I drop Zatanna and Mister Zatara off."

She looks at me carefully. "And the Justice League? Do I need to worry about having violated my parole?"

"No. At least, I don't think so. From what Diana told me, they're planning on maintaining the pretence that Mister Zatara was on an extended leave of absence." I exhale, looking away from her. "I wonder if he'll actually go back? I mean… I wouldn't, if it was me, but he just…"

She frowns. "Just what?"

"He almost seemed annoyed that we'd done it. I don't know, I don't know what he's thinking-. Oh! Sorry." I lean forwards, picking up the suitcase.

Then I stand and lean forwards, holding it out to her. Her eyebrows rise slightly, then she comes up onto her knees to take it from me. "Should I count it?"

"Um." I sit back down. "You can if you like, but I assure-" She's already got it open and pulled out one bundle of notes, flicking through them to check the denomination. "-you.. that it's all there."

"Old habits." She puts the bundle back in and takes out a second. "Guess this means I can afford to take a holiday from bodyguarding the mafia."

"If you want, though you might find it better to keep busy. Technically, you didn't do anything illegal, but…"

She puts the second bundle down and smiles at me. "You need me to keep out of trouble for next time you need to kill a member of the Justice League."

"No, I-." I look down for a moment. "No."

"It was a joke, Paul."

"I know, I just… I spent about forty minutes calling them a bunch of cowardly idiotic liars to their faces-"

She blinks. "You-?"

"-and all it did was make me more annoyed as well as alienating people I'd.. considered friends and colleagues."

She looks at me… I think she's surprised, and a little impressed. "I used to know people who'd give their right arm -and probably their left one as well- for the chance to do that."

I shrug. "They're welcome to try. That's not what the Justice League is supposed to be, you know?"

"Hm." Jade gives the remaining bundles a really quick once over and then stows the suitcase next to the settee. "So what happens next?"

"Next? I still need to talk to a few people, then…" I raise my right hand, then drop it forwards. "Off I go into deep space. For.. I don't know how long. Let all the -heh- ill-feeling really fester for when I come back."

Jade looks thoughtful for a moment. "You know… Since you've paid the balance of my contract, we're not in a professional relationship any more."

"Um. True?" I nod. "Don't take this the wrong way, but I'm hoping that I never have to hire you for something like this again."

Why is she wincing?

"Not that I'm in any way complaining about your professionalism, but-."

She holds up her right hand. "Stop."

"Okay?"

"I thought Artemis was joking." She leans back, reaching down to the sash holding her kimono closed and tugging on the-.

Oh.

"Do you get it now?"

"Ah."

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Falling Action 25

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10th July

15:55 GMT -5

The expression of innocent inquiry on her face is rather at odds with the way her kimono is hanging open, revealing quite a.. lot of bare olive skin. The curves of her breasts as the seam just about prevents it sliding far enough to display her nipples. Beneath that, my eyes linger on her clearly defined abdominal muscles before reaching the point where the kimono has bunched slightly in her lap. Her physique is that of a athlete, not a bodybuilder. There's a layer of fat, because that's how the Human body stores energy, but not a gram more than there should be. Everything's clearly been brought to the point where it does exactly what it's supposed to. It's a combination of efficiency and beauty that I only achieved and maintain by using a power ring.

She's… Perfect.

I mean, I knew that already. I maintain up to date scans for medical purposes. Some of that flesh I rebuilt myself. But.. having it on display like this is quite different from an anatomical chart. More… Immediate.

"Do you? Artemis said that you can be a bit slow, so…" She reaches up to where the kimono rests on her breasts-.

"Yes, I… Understand."

"I was hoping for a little more enthusiasm than that… But I'll take it. Why don't you come over here and-." She bows her head slightly and sighs. "You're not going to, are you?"

"I… It's.. kind of-."

The innocence is replaced with mild frustration. "Do you not.. find me attractive or something?"

"No, I… I do. It's-."

"Is there someone you find more attractive?"

"No… Um, athletic Asian women are.. very much my thing."

She takes a moment to look herself over. "Look at that. I am an athletic Asian woman."

"Yes, I've… I've very much noticed that. That was why I.. asked you to-."

"Paul, we've known each other for months. You don't need to buy dinner first. Though-" She glances at the clock on the wall. "-I can probably wait three hours."

"Point of f.. fact, I've bought you dinner on fourteen occasions, five of which were just the two of us."

"So what's the problem?"

"I'm leaving the planet today. I-."

"I'm not asking you to marry me, Paul. This is sex between two friends, and it doesn't have to-."

"But I want it to." I smile ruefully. "And that's the problem."

She shakes her head, her patience fading slightly. "Still not seeing a problem."

"By covering up what happened with Nabu, the League have.. disgraced themselves. Being enlightened doesn't mean that I control how I feel, just that I'm.. aware of it. I'm happy to let them keep covering it up, but I still feel a drive to do the stupid thing. To stay, to bring everything into the public domain, to make them… I don't know, apologise to Zatanna? It's stupid, but it's there. It would mean putting off-."

"What's that got to do with me?"

"Because I am extremely fond of you. I admire not just how you look, and you're.. perfect, really. I admire your attitude, your drive. Even your ruthlessness. And I admire how you've taken.. the opportunity to live.. differently. And I.. meet every week with people in Belle Reve who.. just.. can't make that switch. You did. You have. And I feel privileged to have played a part in enabling that transformation. And we've spent a good deal of time together, and… I'm extremely fond of you."

The irritation vanishes. "Oh."

I sigh, my eyes dipping momentarily to the carpet. "And if you'd said 'yes' when I first asked you out, we'd be in a different place. And if you'd trained with the ring, I'd just ask you to come with me. But… For me, if I had sex with you-"

"If you're nervous about-."

I shake my head. "No, not really. The power ring gives me perfect control of my own body and a constant awareness of exactly what's happening in yours. I know exactly where your erogenous zones are and I'd get real time moan-free feedback on how much you'd be enjoying what I was doing to them. Plus… Additional, ring generated appendages, so-."

"That.. sounds pretty good."

"That's the problem: it's great. Great enough that I wouldn't want to leave the planet afterwards. And without.. time for both me and them to cool off… I'd probably end up picking a fight with the League. And even if I didn't, I.. should contact the Controllers. The Citadel have enslaved the Vega systems, and the Reach add a new world to their empire at the rate of one every other month… And they're the 'mind wipe and enslave' type of empire builders, not the 'suppress internal conflict and encourage trade' type. I have work to do. There are billions of sentients out there that I can help, and that no one else.. can. Or will. But the idea of you is… So… I want you. But…" I shake my head. "No. Not… Now."

She looks away. "Huh."

"Yeah." I take a breath. "Also, I'm not.. totally comfortable with the imagery associated with having sex with you just after handing you a suitcase of money."

She folds her arms under her breasts, pushing them upwards slightly. "And if I said that it wouldn't bother me if you left..?"

"I'm an empath. I know that you'd manage, but be honest. Would you prefer it if I stayed? Particularly after?"

A shallow nod and she reluctantly tugs her kimono closed, tying it loosely in front of her. "When do you think you'll get back?"

"No idea. If everything goes more or less as I want it to, two months. But.. it's more likely that it will be longer."

"And then?"

"Then, if I'm fortunate, I'll be able to split my time between here and Maltus. I hope-."

"You want me to wait?"

"Yes, but I… Don't expect you to. Particularly if it takes longer. That would be unreasonable."

"Oh? And what about you? Planning on spending time with any grateful green girls?"

"Orange, and… Not in the short term. But I won't make long term promises on the subject any more than I'd ask you to."

"Huh." She relaxes her arms slightly. "This isn't exactly what I hoped I'd be doing this afternoon."

"You're probably getting off easier than I- " Her left eyebrow goes up. "-am and that wasn't what I meant."

"What are you planning?"

"I've got to go and explain to Green Lantern, the one from the forties and the man who sponsored my membership of the team, and.. gave me his personal lantern so I could function as a superhero… Exactly what I thought I was doing."

She frowns thoughtfully. "That is worse than what I'm going to be doing."

"Oh, it gets better. He was part of the Justice Society.. at the same time as Nabu. They knew each other and worked together."

"And all I'm going to be doing is laundering this money." She slumps slightly to her right. "So.. I.. guess this is goodbye. Good luck with the.. space.. stuff..?"

I get to my feet. "Thank you, but it's the Earth stuff that bothers me more."

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Falling Action 26

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10th July

16:06 GMT -5

Alan looks up from his weeding as I appear in his back garden. "Good afternoon, Paul. Wasn't sure you were still on Earth."

"I wouldn't just disappear, Alan."

He stabs his gardening fork into the soil and sits back. He's not… Not as old-looking as he was before recharge in February, but the signs of obsolescence are creeping back in. His hair is once more shot through with grey, and while his musculature is still solid his skin is just starting to loosen and-.

"That bad, huh."

"I'm… What?"

"What?" He stands up slightly cautiously. "You think I don't notice when you do that? Checking up on me to see if I'm falling apart yet?"

"Oh. Um, sorry."

"Don't worry about it. I don't think I'm doing too badly for a ninety year old who smoked for thirty years." He looks around and gestures to his garden chairs. "Got time before you leave?"

"Yes, of course."

He peels off his gardening gloves as he leads the way over to the chairs, lowering himself into the closest with the slight caution that his doctor and I hammered into him after the first fall. Which leads me to my first question.

"How much ring charge do you have left?"

"How long you planning on being away for?"

"At least three months."

"Then, that much, and a little more besides."

"Alan."

"Heh. You sound just like Diana when you say that." I sigh quietly and take the chair next to him. "I'll cope. I'm not exactly.. looking forward to feeling my age again, but plenty of people manage." I start to open my mouth, but he pre-empts me. "Yes, I've still got the… Home help brochures you dropped by. If it comes to it, I'll… Phone someone."

"Thank you."

"And not a moment before." He looks at me. "So? Something you wanted to talk about, or were you just stopping by?"

"Yeah, there's just… This thing that happened, and I wasn't sure what anyone had told you..?"

"What, about that thing in London?" I nod. "Diana said you got hurt, but it looks like you're okay to me."

"A few bruises, some minor burns and… Mana overload, again. But there's a whole lot of other stuff… Okay, good news first?"

"Sure."

"Klarion the Witch Boy is dead. The Chinese released news of his execution a few hours ago."

Alan grins. "That's great news. You have something to do with that?"

"Their official version is leaving it somewhat vague on how they got hold of him, so, don't tell any reporters." I nod. "But yes. Zatanna, John Constantine and I lured him into a trap, stripped him of his power and handed him over."

"You did that in China?"

"No. Roanoke Island. I realise that it seems a bit ghoulish, but there are actually quite good magic-based reasons for-."

He waves my explanation off. "No, no, I understand all of that sort of thing. But the US has a whole bunch of perfectly good prisons. Heck, you even rebuilt one of them. If you picked him up here, why'd you take him over there?"

"The Chinese have a superfunctionary-." Alan lets out a burst of laugher. "What?"

"Aah, I'm sorry. I realise that's a translation, but it still gets me every time."

"A vigilante called Ghost Fox Killer. There are a whole load of ways a magic user who is as powerful and knowledgeable as Klarion can wiggle out of death, and one of her talents is preventing that. With Klarion, I wanted to be very sure."

"Okay then. Just make sure you give Waller her number before next time, give her a chance to put a bid in."

I struggle for a moment to suppress a laugh. "That actually didn't occur to me."

"Didn't they all… Embrace capitalism at the end of the Cold War? Being a Chinese state executioner can't pay all that well. And I'm sure we've got more supervillains than they do."

I shouldn't-. I need to get off this topic. "That's.. true, because they execute them for the first offence. Listen, there's.. more."

"What, you catch some other supervillain as well? You trying to make sure we don't forget about you?"

"I.. don't think.. there's much chance of that."

"No, of course not, but-."

"Alan, this isn't good news. Just… Let me get it out?" He nods. "Diana offered me League membership." His eyes light up and I know that he's about to congratulate me. Then he gets a look at my face. "I turned it down, then myself and a few friends lured Nabu into an ambush. I asked him to leave Mister Zatara, he refused. I offered him a perfectly functional golem body, he refused again. I arrested him, and he resisted. In fact, he killed one of my colleagues-."

"Who?"

"Michael Siskin. Terror Thing. You didn't.. meet him." Alan nods. "No one else on our side died, but we did kill Nabu." Alan's eyes widen in shock. "Mister Zatara is recovering in hospital. After I woke up, the second thing I did was visit the Watchtower and.. made it very clear to the League how I felt about their handling of the situation."

"Are you sure that Nabu's dead? You said a minute ago that magicians-?"

"Yes. The technique we used basically rendered him brain dead and passed his power on to someone else. The new guy's already up and running… He's dead."

He nods thoughtfully. "Diana know about that?"

"She does now. I didn't tell her in advance."

He frowns. "Why not?"

"Before New Year, because I didn't have anything substantial. After New Year, because I didn't trust her on the subject."

"Because the League let Nabu in?" I nod. "Weren't they just keeping an eye on him?"

"That's what they said. Personally I don't think that's effective when the subject can teleport. Or make supervillains in his custody disappear permanently without trial. Or enslave a man to act as his body. More than that, the League lied to the world about it."

"From the sounds of it, you didn't tell the rest of the League what you were doing either. You want to explain that one to me?"

"Alan, I lied to you before I even met you. I've kept any number of secrets from concerned parties." I shrug. "I'm not a very honest person. I've never claimed to be. And I didn't mind when other people lied to me. I didn't mind about M'gann trying to tell me she was a Green Martian, or about Robin not telling us his name despite knowing all of ours. I didn't even mind Batman marrying a supervillainess and covering her past up."

"Pardon me?"

I shrug. "She's genuinely devoted to him and she wasn't going to pay off her debt to society dead or in prison. But.. for Diana to lie, that's like… All that time I spend in Belle Reve, it would be like I was actually using that to recruit for criminal gangs rather than rehabilitate them. Abandoning Mister Zatara while welcoming Nabu was just.. such a huge thing that for me it undermined everything else."

"Nabu killed one of your guys?"

"Yes."

"You offered him a peaceful way out?"

"Several."

"Could you have done it better?"

I bow my head slightly. "Maybe? I don't know. There were lots of things I could have done differently, but every one had its own risks… Based on what I know -which is very far from everything- the combination of solutions I used was the best one. The one most likely to result in Nabu being off with both him and his chattel still alive. I don't know that it was and I'm not… I'm not happy with how things turned out… I just couldn't stand the status quo carrying on any longer."

"Any longer? So what changed… Your oath. It ran out." I nod. He looks away, giving his head a small shake. "I don't really know what to say. I didn't.. realise how strongly you felt about… And obviously Diana didn't either." He looks at me. "You should have talked to her about it."

"I would have liked to think I was able to. I didn't. She said that honesty was an absolute, then she lied. I'm…" I shake my head. "I'll try and talk things through with her when I get back. Doing it now… We're both pretty angry."

Alan nods. "I… You've told me your reasons. I don't.. like it, but then I don't much like what Nabu did either. You… Planning on leaving the planet now?"

"I've got three more stops, but… Yes, after that."

"You told me that you wanted to be a super hero so you could make the world better, not just stop it getting worse. With Nabu, I guess that you did what you had to. But that sort of thing… That's not what you set out to do."

"No, it isn't."

"When you get out there…" He looks up at the sky for a moment. "Which are you planning to do more of?"

"Starting the Corps is building, but the Corps will probably be mostly used to make war with the Reach… Destroying the Citadel Complex is killing, but I want to help their victims rebuild afterwards. I haven't… I want to build, but there are so many… Really horrible things out there… I'm not sure that it's an efficient use of… Me."

"No. No. Don't think about it like that. Don't give up on what makes you you. In three months, you can come back and talk it through with me and with Diana. Help you out some."

I nod, getting to my feet. He shifts forward to the edge of his chair and gets his feet directly under him before rising. "I'll see you.. when I.. see you, I suppose."

He nods, holding out his right hand. I step toward him and wrap my arms around his chest. "I'm sorry I couldn't do better."

He puts his arms around my back. "Just don't ever stop trying."

back

Falling Action 27

next

10th July

16:12 GMT -5

I'm getting a… Wrung out feeling. When I left Alan I was actually crying a little.

Nearly time to go.

At least that made my decision for me. I'm not in any mental condition to see the Controllers or deal with anything else requiring mental acuity right now. Vega it is. I'll stop off at Rashashoon near the informal 'edge' of the stellar cluster before heading to Tamaran. I don't want to risk going to Okaara until I've got a reliable way to beat Larfleeze. And given what I've done today I really want that way to be low lethality. Nabu made his choice, but Larfleeze is insane. He can't make moral choices.

Ring, transition.

10th July

21:13 GMT

I appear in the evening sky just above St Mary's hospital. Is Zatanna-? Ah. Kon, M'gann and Rob are in there as well. I… Suppose that will make this an efficient visit. I transition again, through a window and into the corridor just outside the ward in which Mister Zatara is resting.

"No, that's…" Kon doesn't sound too confident in whatever he's attempting to cast doubt on. "His report says you didn't even do anything."

"Oh, yeah, because that makes it better."

I step through the doorway into the ward. "Makes what-" Everyone stares. "-better, Rob?"

For a moment, no one says anything. Then Rob blinks, looking away. "Me. Helping you."

"I didn't name anyone except myself, Zatanna and John. Given how the League have behaved over this, I doubt that they would have strenuously objected to you keeping quiet-."

"No." He shakes his head. "It's a mess, but I don't think it was the wrong thing to do. It's just… If I was going to wreck my chances I'd rather have actually achieved something doing it, y'know?"

I walk further into the room, nodding to Zatanna. "I'm afraid to say that it's about playing the odds. None of us had any idea that Nabu could do.. whatever it was he did to resist your mana draining ability."

"How'd that…" Kon looks more than a little awkward. "Thing with Mom go?"

"Not well. I think we're just going to avoid each other until I leave."

Zatanna frowns. "The League really aren't.. going to do anything?"

"Looks like. The good thing about me leaving the planet is that we don't have to. They can do their.. investigation, and everyone can have the time to calm down. Myself included." I bow my head slightly. "And no-one can say anything they may come to regret." I look up. "All packed and ready to go?"

She nods, picking up her suitcase as she stands. "I've already completed the paperwork. We can leave.. right now."

"What.. just..?" For a split second I feel myself hugging Alan again as M'gann accesses the memory. "Oh."

"I just got back from seeing Alan." I attach a filament to Mister Zatara and move the sheets aside before floating him off the bed. "Not the high point of my year."

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't-."

"No, it's fine."

"I just haven't gotten used to you not blocking me again."

"M'gann." I generate a zeta tube construct. "It's fine. If I wanted to keep you out, I would. Though you might want to avoid the conversation before that."

"Convers-?" **!**

M'gann's cheeks turn pink.

"Yes, that one." I look straight at Kon. "Had a chance to read my report yet?"

He nods. "I still can't believe that you hid all this. I mean, not.. the fact that you wanted to keep it hidden. You already explained why you did that. I just don't get how none of us spotted you."

Zatanna shrugs. "You all thought we were dating. And… Having something to focus my mind on really helped. I was too busy to.. really focus on Dad not being there." She looks at me in an interrogative manner as I stop her father in mid air.

"He'll fall if I don't go through at the same time, and if-."

"If you go through first the tube disappears, right." She nods. "Um, if you guys.. want to come..? You can?"

They look at me. "Heck, I just wanted to talk to you all once more before I left. May as well do it at Zatanna's house as anywhere else."

Kon and Rob nod while M'gann just walks through the tube, disappearing in a flash of light. Rob's through next, then Kon. Zatanna takes a moment to check her father, then walks through after them.

Time for us, then. I step forward, floating Mister Zatara along with me.

10th July

16:15 GMT -5

"Welcome, Mister Zatara. Welcome, Orange Lantern two eight one four."

"Zatanna, if you'll lead the way?" She nods, opening the door into the rest of the house and heading in the direction of the master bedroom. "Rob?"

Kon and M'gann head after Zatanna as my co-conspirator lingers for a moment. "Yeah mate?"

"I just wanted to make clear: I'm really grateful for your participation in this. I know you weren't happy… Even.. doing it, and then when he-."

"No, mate, look. I wasn't happy… Picking a fight with him, but he killed a man right in front of us. When we hadn't threatened him with anything worse than putting him back on the shelf." He shakes his head. "Got what he deserved."

I float Mister Zatara out of the door, then follow him out. "Well… Um, anyway. I owe you. A lot, for stepping up like that. If you ever need anything, just let me know."

"Is the Orange Lantern Corps hiring teenaged magicians?"

"We might be. If you want to train with a ring-?"

"No mate, I was just-. I am a bit worried about what comes next. With being a superhero. I mean, it doesn't pay anything, and… There must be loads of people who don't make it onto the Justice League. Especially after they, y'know…"

"Justice League recruitment is and has always been bullshit. But if you get time, you might want to try reading up on Atlantean portals or developing some sort of magic-based service people will pay for. You've got a natural talent for it, all the information you could want to take it further… There's got to be something with commercial application."

"Great Granddad suggested the army. Used to be a family tradition, apparently."

"Always an option. But there should be more options in the field of arcane science before too long, so, if it's not your thing, don't feel pushed."

He nods as we reach Mister Zatara's room. The man himself is still peacefully asleep as I float him inside and lay him on his bed.

"Right. Who wants to see me off?"

back

Falling Action 28

next

10th July

16:21 GMT -5

"…be here."

I point at the location of the Vega Systems on the construct star chart floating over the table of Shadowcrest's formal dining room.

"This little star cluster is called the Vega Systems. It's unusual, because-."

M'gann nods. "The stars shouldn't be that close together."

Kon points at the edge of the indicated area. "And the others are kinda far away. Did a bunch of systems get destroyed or something?"

Rob looks thoughtful. "Don't… I thought star clusters had, like, hundreds of stars in them. That's only got twenty three."

"And.. you.. got it. The only other-"

"Oh!" Zatanna raises her right hand slightly. "No Green Lanterns."

"-thing is that there are no Green Lanterns."

Kon nods. "Because of the deal the Guardians made with Larfleeze, right."

Much as I'm glad that they've all been paying attention, I was sort of looking forward to explaining that myself. "In answer to your question, I don't know why this cluster is so small. Several species who observed the area from a distance theorised that there might be a black hole, or.. several, that the suns of Vega were orbiting. There isn't. I haven't seen records which show the worlds in the Vega Systems as behaving in a way other than how they are now, and I've got some very old Green Lantern Corps star charts. Similarly, no one's really clear why that.. trench exists. Moving stars is.. very hard, and destroying them in such a way that there's nothing left is even harder."

M'gann tears her eyes away from the spectacle to look at me. "Are you going to try to find out?"

"What, do what the best minds of a dozen civilisations couldn't?" I shake my head. "No. I mean, I'll give the area a ring scan and see if it produces any new data, but I rather doubt that it will. Rather, I'm going-."

"To Okaara." Kon points. "To get your Central Power Battery."

"No. Picking a fight with Larfleeze without first getting some advice from the Controllers would be foolhardy to say the least."

He frowns. "Okay, so why aren't you going to.. Maltus, first?"

"This place. The Citadel Complex is the seat of the ruler of the Citadel Empire, which dominates the Vega Systems. They also have dealings with Gordanian pirates across several Sectors, trading armaments and other advanced technology for whatever the pirates steal. Over the past thousand years, the Space Sectors neighbouring Vega have had the third, fifth and sixth shortest Green Lantern life expectancies respectively. Only the area around Apokolips is more of a death zone."

"They kill Green Lanterns?" Rob looks concerned. "Isn't that… Really hard?"

I dismiss the star chart and replace it with an image of a Citadelian. "This is Lord Damyn, current ruler of the Citadel. His vices include drunkenness, slavery and cannibalism." I raise the image, three more appearing beneath it. "In addition to the aforementioned Gordanians, the Citadel is allied with Branx and the Psions, and those little bastards are where they get Lantern-killer weapons from. The Psions are extremely advanced, but mostly insular. They use the Citadel as brokers for their technology."

"With the exception of Euphorix -which maintains a constant planetary defence force field to keep out everyone- and Okaara -which they revere as the birthplace of their founder- the rest of Vega is controlled by them. And in case I haven't been clear, it's a blight upon the universe."

M'gann looks slightly uncomfortable. "Maybe you should… Go somewhere nice.. instead?"

"The reason it's a hole is that Green Lanterns can't go in there, so every outlaw in need of a safe harbour heads there to get away from them. This naturally leads to the situation inside getting worse and worse because it's full of arseholes. And the reason why Green Lanterns can't go there… Is Larfleeze, and the Orange Central Power Battery. Which means that if I'm taking the Central Power Battery, I'm accepting.. responsibility for fixing it. Or at least, for getting it fixed."

Kon look away for a moment, then looks back at me. "Okay, that's… Great, but… What did you say to Mom?"

I sag slightly. "We… Argued about Nabu some more. She was complaining about…" I bite down my instinct to moan about it.

"About you not telling her? Because that's kinda the impression I got."

"Okay." I nod. "Yes, because I didn't trust her with that."

"If you never tried talking to her about it, how do you know you couldn't?"

I shrug. "Nabu joined the League." I look down and give my head a small shake. "Yesss… Maybe I could have trusted her with it. Maybe I could have trusted Batman, or Guy, or one of the others. But maybe I couldn't, and Nabu would find out from one of them what I was doing."

"That was it? You had a whole year of working with her, and you still wouldn't.. risk it?"

"Correct."

"That's…" He searches for the words. "That's pretty cold."

I nod. "Yes. It is. Not that I've heard her say that I could have trusted her. That she'd have backed me-." I glance at Zatanna. "Us."

"And what if she had a way for you to take Nabu down without killing him?"

"Then she should have used it hersel-." I close my mouth. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. Do not snap at Kon right before you leave the planet. "That would have been… Better. But I do not believe that she did."

"If you still haven't talk-."

"Kon, if she did, that meant that she was choosing not to use it. I'd much rather believe that she just… Didn't. Than believe that."

"And what if you coulda come up with one together?"

I shrug. "I suppose we'll never know."

He bows his head slightly, a faint sigh issuing from his mouth. "I guess not. Are you..? Gonna talk to her before you-?"

"No. I… I'm.. still.. angry, and.. I don't think that conversation would.. go well. I'll… I'll talk to her when I get back." I step back from the table. "This… Wasn't how I wanted to…" I exhale. "Alright. Anythi-?" And I know this is going to come off as unnecessarily curt, but… "Anything else?"

Kon looks over to M'gann, then back to me. "No, I… You're still.. our friend, but that was all…"

"Yeah." I turn away, heading towards the door to the outside. "I'm afraid there's.. not going to be much to see, but I… I do appreciate you all being here."

"Of course!" M'gann's trying to sound chirpy, but I can hear from her mind how much effort it is. At least.. I can go back to hearing that again.

I turn the handle of the front door and step outside.

back

NEXT CHAPTER

Vega, Baby

BACK

Vega, Baby 1

next

Vega, Baby

10th July

16:26 GMT -5

One last look at Kon, Zatanna, Rob and M'gann, then the air around me buckles as I warp myself out of the atmosphere. In an instant I go from bright afternoon sunlight to the dark of near-Earth space. I re-checked the ring's instructions on long distance faster than light travel after leaving Alan. Help.. take my mind off things a little. Technically I could have initiated the long range warp from the ground, but there were more than a few warnings about that sort of thing. Unintended.. effects that can occur related to the sort of intense local spatial distortions that it requires. I'm not sure if they were completely relevant to an orange ring as opposed to a green one -I don't need to maintain the same completely clear image of what I'm doing in my mind that they would- but I accept that the Guardians know quite a bit about power rings by now. No sense in ignoring their guidance just to spite them.

I take a moment to look down on the Earth. It occurs to me that this makes an interesting.. book end. I'm not actually where I first appeared; though my point of entry appears to be stable relative to the Earth, it's in geosynchronous orbit somewhere over India. Still, it's a pretty similar view. And once again, I'm… Off into the unknown.

I am slightly better equipped to handle it this time, of course.

Though the challenge rating is somewhat higher.

Is it worth stopping off to talk to the Green Man? He's assigned to Sector 2626. I haven't received any situation updates since I assimilated John's ring at New Year, and its records from before that weren't exactly detailed. No sense giving a Lantern information they weren't expected to use, and it allows the Guardians to monitor exactly which Lanterns have access to what. I imagine that their Honour Guard get a bit more at-will access…

I don't know. At one level, I'm fully aware that I'm heading into a den of vile criminals. Getting information on exactly what's happening when I don't intend to interact with them in complex ways seems like a bit of a waste of time. One syndicate on the ascendance rather than another won't make any difference to my plans. And I don't really want to get… Bogged down. This is a reconnaissance/low-hanging-fruit-picking exercise, not an intervention-in-depth.

Keep myself ignorant to stop myself caring.

I should probably feel worse about thinking that.

Okay. Vega isn't actually 25 light years away. It's more like 60, but looks less due to the same thing that makes the stars stay close together. The lensing is another reason a lot of people assume it's a gravity-related phenomena, light from multiple stars seeming to combine into one. It is a bit odd… Oh, I'll just see if I can get one of the Controllers interested in it.

For a moment I consider warping to somewhere a little closer and taking a day off before proceeding onwards. There won't really be any safe harbours in Vega itself. No. I really want to.. do something right now.

Ring, plot warp to… To the border of the Vega systems.

Compl-.

The outside of the border. Near Rashashoon.

Compliance. / Warning. Vega system off limits to Lanterns. Do not attempt transit. Failure to comply is a court-martial offence.

I raise my right hand a little, looking at John's former ring in surprise. It's been so long since it's said anything that it had rather slipped my mind that it sometimes did.

Stewart-ring, correct me if I'm wrong, but that regulation applies to Green Lanterns, yes?

Statement applies to all Guardian operatives.

Am I a Guardian operative?

You have a Guardian-forged power ring.

That isn't what I asked.

E-error.

And what are your instructions regarding people who aren't Guardian operatives heading to Vega?

Any traffic not suspected to be criminal is to pass unobstructed.

Glad to hear it. So there's no actual problem with me going there, is there?

E-error.

I guess that's all I'm getting. Left ring, you have the course?

Affirmative.

Estimate transit time?

Two minutes subjective, approximately thirty minutes Earth time.

Alright then. Let's warp on out of here.

Initiating interstellar spatial warp. Stand by.

The stars around me shimmer and twist, the Earth itself shrinking to a dot. Then my surroundings shift, patterns of light coming and going inside the stream. I'm going a lot faster here than I did when Kon and I travelled to the sun, but since I'm not heading directly towards a star the amount of light hitting me is a lot less. The stars… It's a bit like in Star Trek, where they turn into smears, but… The orange glow is rather obscuring it. I suppose I could just… Have the ring stimulate my visual cortex with a more accurate version, but… Not the same.

Maybe this was why Abin Sur flew around in a starship, rather than just recharging a whole lot? So he could see what was going on around him properly. Really appreciate it? Or maybe that was why the Indigo Lanterns in the comics had interstellar teleportation rather than having to fly from place to place. Give them time to appreciate things. Or… Make it so their interstellar travel either flat out works or doesn't.

Oh, damn it! I was going to stop just outside the Sol system to mark… Going outside it after completing my time in service! Slipped my mind. Ugh. Ring, make a note to remind me to stop there on my way back.

Compliance.

I mentally sigh to myself. Prince Markov was right; flying around might be amazing, but it can get really quite dull after a-.

Warp terminated.

10th July

16:57 GMT -5

The stars snap back into clarity and the constant orange glow fades back down to normal environmental shield levels. So. This is Vega.

As requested, this location is just outside the Vega moat.

Heh. And, looking, I can't tell it's even here. Because the thing about space is…

I turn in space, information on the relative location of the closest stars appears on my visual field, along with the distance both to me and to the worlds of the Vega systems… Yep, that's the Moat. Some things you can't see when you're right on top of them. Stewart-ring, everything match your records?

Stellar drift as expected.

I turn back towards Vega, data on my destination appearing before my eyes. None of Larfleeze's Construct-Lanterns around, I note. Long range scans show any number of small and medium sized ships, showing flags of various Gordanian clans and semi-legitimate traders. There's a Citadel Empire picket force, the ships looking noticeably better maintained than those belonging to the outsiders. Three distinct groupings: one close to the planet and two further out. Rashashoon is taxed, but what happens here is so much a part of the Citadel economy that its people aren't particularly oppressed by them. Unless they have the misfortune to be slaves, the trade of which is one of the many things that happen here.

Slavery isn't really a bulk thing here, though. Or rather, it is, but the bulk isn't traded. After the Karnans conclusively lost their long running war with the Gordanians for control of their shared homeworld, their entire population was technically enslaved. Mostly it just manifests as a 'not kicking your head in' tax. Bad, but liveable. As long as you keep your head down and don't have much in the way of ambition.

There are a few Branx ships as well. Hard, blocky, inelegant things. Those ones are armed merchants. While it isn't illegal to pirate inside Vega, it's generally a good way to get yourself killed. The Citadel doesn't like things that disrupt its income, and other groups -especially the Branx- will make a point of avenging a fallen comrade.

No Tamaranian ships, of course. They haven't had any since they went from client world to… Not sure what you'd call them now. 'Resource extraction source', perhaps. Or 'dehumanisation practice centre'. That's my next stop, but I want to take a look around, first.

Ring, check for interdiction fields.

Located. In addition to those based on the planet itself, the two Citadel fleets furthest from the planet possess additional devices.

Anything that would stop me?

Negative.

Alright then. Ring, warp to low orbit.

Compliance.

back

Vega, Baby 2

next

10th July

16:59 GMT -5

I look.. down on a truly alien planet. Yes, Mars is sort of alien, but this is the first that I've been close to outside the Sol system. And it looks… Pretty much the same as Earth, actually. The layout of the continents is obviously different, and… I watch as a trio of shuttles fly past me on the way to one of the larger settlements. Huh. Um, the layout is different, but it could have been made with the same 'planet assets'. It's tilted further on its axis than the Earth, resulting in the hemisphere furthest from the local sun being frozen from pole to where the tip of South America would be. The planet's other pole is covered in a super storm, the land beneath rocky and barren.

The ring connects to the planet's data networks, random facts that it thinks I'll find interesting filtering into my consciousness. The total long term population is less than a billion, with long and short term stopovers adding another… Quarter billion. Gosh. Most of the population is city-dwelling, with most farming being done by robots. Dumb robots, not artificial intelligences. City buildings are relatively short compared with Earth and certainly compared with somewhere like Coruscant. Another interesting thing: no roads. Plenty of paved pedestrian areas, but all the vehicles appear to be airborne. The form of anti-gravity technology in widespread use doesn't seem to be all that fast, but I guess that it's cheap enough to have obsoleted ground cars for long enough that cities aren't built with them in mind any longer.

The native species are pink or red skinned humanoids, and there isn't any real resistance to the Citadel. They seem… Happy enough with their general status as a client world. No countries as such, but the cities are effectively city-states. A couple are owned outright by outside interests, but for the most part the various pirate organisations and clans appear content to treat the place as a neutral harbour.

There's plenty of violent crime, mostly committed by outlaw visitors against each other. Local law enforcement tends to keep back unless locals are threatened or things get really out of control, though the better run mercenary companies have their own military police since it's not in their interests to go to war with their competitors over a spilt drink. Especially since all their other competitors would react violently to both parties if things escalated. All told, it's much like I would imagine a technologically advanced free market planet would actually work if all the groups within it distrusted each other too much to form cartels. It's not pretty, but it works with minimal oversight.

Huh. I suppose that the Green Lantern Corps won't actually… Know this. Since they can't come here. No, they'll have records taken from pirate ships who visited. I doubt that pirates have the wherewithal to completely wipe their records before being captured… But there might still be a few things I'm getting here that no pirate ever bothered recording.

Ring, are the ships talking to each other?

Confirmed.

Can we eavesdrop without being detected?

It is not possible to detect devices that could detect power ring based monitoring without being detected by them.

Fair enough. I know that at least some of these ships are likely to have that sort of technology… How secret do I want to keep my existence? Not completely, but I don't want to make too many enemies here just yet. I take a look around, the ring displaying ship locations and grouping in my mind's eye. It looks like a lot of them are attending-.

A cluster of small Gordanian ships open fire on a larger Khundian cruiser, dull red energy beams scattering off its energy shields. According to Green Lantern Corps records, the Khundian ship is an older model. Sort of a.. flattened half-sphere with half a smaller sphere stuck in the centre of the cut surface. The Gordanian ships have a simpler 'armoured box with things stuck on' design. The Khundian ship takes a moment to bring its front end to bear and then returns fire, a magnetic acceleration system blasting out a stream of molten iron.

Other ships don't appear to be reacting much, other than to give the belligerent parties a little more room. Ring, confirm..? A series of statistics on local weapon exchanges appears in my mind. Not uncommon at all. Fights happen on a daily basis, but they usually take place at a distance that won't result in the participants falling onto the planet if their ship gets wrecked. The larger power groups take a dim view of that sort of disruption to business.

One of the Gordanian ships jerks visibly as the Khundian ship's guns breach its hull. Its colleagues are pulling back, firing as they go. Their placement is.. bad. None of the ships are moving all that fast, and while the weapons they're using aren't light speed it shouldn't be that hard for their computers to cluster shots. Some even miss completely. Are they firing manually? If they are, the Khundian ship isn't repeating their error. The shots against the now-disabled ship were synchronised, though they've switched to splitting fire now. Probably just to encourage the Gordanians to leave-. No, they're launching boarding ships, heading for the crippled Gordanian vessel.

Oh, that.. sort of thing happens all of the time around here. Getting involved in one incident won't change anything. I turn away, looking down at the planet again. No one is sending me messages. Space is big, and full of small things that shine in the sun's light. Other forms of detecting would be thrown off by my small size, ring-based counter-detection systems and -at the really high end- my tattoos. Where do I want to go? Ring, what are my choices?

A list appears in my mind. Temperature, visitor population, friendliness, time zone… Well, if there is a city where it's mid-afternoon… Alright, that works.

The city the ring thinks fits me best is called Raggashoon-. Ring, meaning of prefix 'Ra' and suffix 'shoon' in the local language?

'Ra' indicates ongoing inhabitation. 'Shoon' means settlement, though it is usually used only for larger settlements.

Hm. Alright, I'm not bothering to register my presence with local authorities and gold is a fungible asset in most places. I won't quite have the buying power I did on Earth, but… That doesn't really matter. Dress code? Armoured clothing appears to be common in the rougher areas, but I don't see anyone in outright power armour. And the armour appears to be.. integrated into clothing instead of being worn over it? Fine, I can adapt. I don't want to have to redesign my whole armour, so… Some sort of open robe thing? Sort of a blank version of what the Green Lanterns wore for Superman's funeral in Justice League Animated?

Of course… Pretty much everyone is either displaying their group affiliation or making sure to travel in groups. Or both. I'm… No, I'm not on my own. I've still got.. my.. Praexis swarm. And I doubt that anyone around here is familiar with Earth's Demons. Fine. Reasonably emptyish area… Transition down.

A flicker later and space is gone, replaced by a plaza. There's a fountain in the centre and the surrounding walls are constructed of blue… No, that isn't brick, but it is a brick-effect material designed to absorb sound from the wider city. The only other people here are a group of three Aellans, yellow-skinned white-eyed humanoids. The closest stares at me, her right hand trying to tap the shoulder of her closest companion but missing as she refuses to look away. Ring, Aellan polite greeting gesture? Right. Both hands slightly out to the side with palms up, head tilted back a little. No weapons, revealing the neck. Doesn't seem to mollify her, and her hand has finally made contact.

"Shruuadl, don't-?"

A little too hard apparently. The second Aellan glares at the first for a moment, then notices me. And now she's staring as well. Okay, I suppose… If they've never seen a Human before I do look a bit like a bleached Tamaranian. I drop the posture, waving my right hand as I turn away towards the closest exit. A flick of my hands and three Praexis Demons drop from the rings, floating just behind me as an escort. These three aren't.. ones I've named. After what happened to Teekl-.

Well.

I step out onto the street and immediately get blasted by the sudden increase of noise. The flying vehicles might be cheap and efficient, but they're far from silent. And the Gordanians and Branx that form the largest part of the crowd don't pay me much attention, loudly confident in their positions and power. Other groups… I can see seven different species from here alone… Don't give me much more than a glance.

Okay, what are these buildings? Machinery retailer, food supplies, I think that's a brothel, and-. A bar. Excellent. I start moving through the crowd, stepping around people where I can and muttering apologies where I can't. Someone tries to cuff me around the head but it's nothing my environmental shield can't effortlessly absorb and it seems that whoever it was is only interested in casual violence.

The crowd thins slightly as I approach the entrance. Okay, my first alien bar. An alien spacer pirate bar, even. I look down at the ring on my left hand, even as I step aside to allow a Dredfahlian who had been planning to 'nudge' me aside free passage.

You know, maybe I'm being silly, but… I think I'd like to… Hear the alien sounds of this place when I walk in. With power ring translations it would probably.. just.. sound like a portside bar on Earth. I'm not stupid enough to take the rings off, but…

"Ring, translation off."

Compliance.

The mutters and bellows behind me suddenly change into hoots and clicks, grunts and rasps. It's all wonderfully alien. Smiling, I stride through the entrance.

back

Vega, Baby 3

next

10th July

15:06 GMT -5

I feel a slight tingle as I pass through… Some sort of environmental purification system. I could just scan it for the specifics, but that would take me out of the moment. Certainly, it's doing a good job of preventing smoke build-ups from whatever it is that about half the people here are smoking. On my right, two Okaarans glance at me for a split second, no doubt completely dismissing me as a threat.

I'm amused to note that the tables immediately adjacent to theirs are vacant.

I start towards the bar, the Praexis Demons drifting in after me. They probably think they're some sort of hologram or drone assistant. More Gordanians… Two distinct groups with a clear gap between them. One has three yellow lines and a white blob as their emblem, the other a sort of black squiggle. A few Branx occupy a table at the centre of the room while the bar is staffed by a couple of locals. The Dredfahlian who came in just ahead of me is just sitting down on a bar stool, closely watching as the… Ring, what exactly do the locals call themselves?

Rataan.

The Rataan man tending the bar hands him a glass of something mauve and smouldering. There's a table of Khundian men talking loudly, one of them appearing to re-enact a fight with his knife. A H'san, a couple of Grolls and a Vrang are talking in a more quiet tone. Interesting how for the most part individual species aren't mixing. I suppose that the.. naval forces around here are mostly single species. The Branx may work for the Citadel with the Gordanians, but they do so as feudal subordinates and not.. employees. I'd have thought that the pirates from outside the Vega Systems would be a bit more open minded about things. Maybe they're just not represented in the bar?

"Tra'ak mysion. Ranik vortiis kan."

I glance around, watching as the Okaarans leave after one of them announced that to the room. Hm. I return my attention to the bar and resume my journey, stepping around the chair of one of the Branx as he shoves it back in something of a hurry. A few steps more and I'm clear of the seating area, and I head for one of the free-

"HwoOOOOOwd Mnekekik!"

-stools. It happens to be next to the Dredfahlian, so I… Ring, body language? Mm. I nod and smile as he stares at me. He sort of freezes, then knocks back his drink, spilling more than a little of it on his beard and neck.

"Bzad."

He steps backwards off his stool, keeping his eyes on me as he heads back into the seating area-.

Which is.. now… Somewhat empty. It's pretty much just the H'san left, lurking just on the inside of the door. He… He? Not sure. They make momentary eye contact with me, then back off out of the door just before the Dredfahlian reaches it.

Huh.

"That's a bit odd. Is there some sort of-" I turn around to look at the bar tender. "-parade going on or some… Thing?" He's gone, and at the back of the bar I just catch a glimpse of his co-worker heading for the rear entrance. Oh, where is he? I turn my empathic vision up a little ah. I stand, leaning over the bar. "Excuse me."

"Tishun, tishun Auron kiid-"

I lean further-. Oh! Ring, translation on.

Compliance.

"-around me, and-."

"Excuse me? Do you have a moment?"

He freezes completely still.

"I… My eyes work perfectly well even if you don't move. You'd need to be camouflaged, and even then the eyes of members of my species are pretty good at picking out familiar shapes."

"O-okay."

"Um. Could I..? Have a drink, please? Oh, and… If you do food? What with.. one thing and another I forgot to have lunch."

"Um, the kitchen doesn't usually open until-." My face falls slightly. Doesn't really matter, but-. "I'msurewecandosomethingforyou!"

"I'd be very grateful." I look him over. Why is he still down there? "Do you need a… Hand up?"

"No. No, I'm…" He stands. "I'm fine. Ah, thank you."

He just sort of stands there for a moment. "Um. So. Drink?"

"Would-? Would-? Do you.. know what you want, or, um… We can do a bio scan and.. I can.. see what we have that you might find palatable?"

I move back from the bar, parking my bottom back on the bar stool. "Thank you, I would appreciate that."

"Okay." He takes a deep breath, then approaches the serving counter and takes out a small.. object, which looks a bit like a very short telescope. "If you could.. just.. hold out your hand?"

He leans back as one of the Praexis Demons floats closer for a better look. Oh!

"Are they bothering you? Because I can just shoo them away… If that would help."

"No! No, that's fine. Ah-."

"Are you.. sure? Because you don't look-."

"Boonberry!" He turns away, searching amongst the bottles for something. "Boonberry juice! It's from Kuraq. According to your scan profile, you should find it quite palatable." He pulls out a bottle filled with a cloudy turquoise liquid. "Try it?"

"That's.. why I'm here."

He nods, relieved, and starts reaching for a small glass. He hesitates, looks at me again and then pulls out a larger one before setting it on the bar with the bottle. I nod, and he twists off the cap before pouring it into the glass.

"So…" I look back around to the empty bar. "Why did everyone rush off? Is there..? Some sort of party I don't know about?"

"No, no. Um."

I turn back around as he lowers the bottle and pushes the glass gently in my direction. I pick it up and bring it up to my nose, giving it a sniff. Doesn't smell particularly offensive. Ring?

Liquid is safe to ingest.

I bring it to my mouth and take a sip. Thin, but there's a sort of… Chalky… Passion Fruit? Kind of weird. Not unpleasantly so, but I don't think it would sell too well on the import market.

"So… Where'd everyone go?"

"You… Might have intimidated them… Slightly. Mister The Beast."

I frown. "Mister The B-?" Oh! "No, nonononono. I'm not the Beast!"

He looks decidedly unconvinced. "You're not? Because those Okaarans seemed to think you were?"

"We have the same power source, but I'm not him. He's got these-" I waggle my hands at the sides of my head. "-tusks, and a protruding muzzle. I haven't even been to Okaara before."

"You've.. got the.. same…" He hesitantly points to the closest Praexis Demon. "Slaves..?"

"That's just a function of the orange light, it doesn't-."

"Oooooh." He looks past me. "Bother."

I turn to see what he's looking at. As I do, there's a series of quiet clanks and the last thing I see before the shock grenades go off is four heavily armed Thanagarians charging through the doorway.

back

Vega, Baby 4

next

10th July

15:11 GMT -5

One by one I deposit the ceramic tankards down in front of my new drinking buddies. "I've really got no idea what you people see in this stuff."

The larger of the two Thanagarian men shakes his head as he raises the mug to his lips and… Sucks down one of the worms sticking out of the froth. "Pff. Aliens."

I sit down next to him, slurping up a small amount of my own green and.. slightly gelatinous drink. It tastes a little like… Some sort of flower..? It's not unpleasant, at least. My other new companions are setting their tankards back down, having necked about half of the volume in what I can only assume is some sort of competition.

The woman opposite me narrows her pupils and pulls her wings back slightly, Thanagarian body language for 'you have my full attention'. She has short-cropped white hair and a tanned skin I don't usually associate with Thanagarians. "Not The Beast, huh?"

"I assure you that Larfleeze would not respond to an attack by buying a round."

"Larfleeze, is it?" The only Thanagarian still wearing her Hawk-helm makes a sort of hissing noise. Thanagarian for mild derision. "I hope the Beast of Okaara would put up more of a fight than you did."

"I derive no particular pleasure from combat." I shrug-. Then realise that they probably aren't familiar with the gesture. "So while I could probably neutralise you all without causing you lasting harm-."

The man next to me twists his head to look me full on, his mouth slightly open and his wings slightly… Raised? Hunched? Disbelief. Even if they're mostly humanoid, their body language is different enough that I'd be lost without the ring translating it for me. "Yeah? You and what army?"

Orange filaments flicker around the room, depositing Praexis Demons in their wake.

"That army." His mouth closes, and the rings tell me that his expression is one of wary respect. Two of his colleagues have their hands on the hafts of their weapons, releasing them only after I dismiss the Demons. "Seriously. Don't go after Larfleeze. You'll be killed, converted into orange constructs, enslaved and then he'll know everything you do."

The blonde woman -and I can't believe that hair is regulation length- looks away for a moment, before giving me her full attention. Irritation. "And are we to believe that you have nothing to do with him?"

"I've never met him. Though… I am probably responsible for his recent.. activity. He doesn't like sharing the orange light." And… My drink is finished. I half turn, waving the glass at the bartender. "Something else..?"

He reaches for a bottle of something pink. "Coming right up!"

I return my attention to the Thanagarians. "I've… I know that Thanagarians sometimes have… Curious attitudes to personal protective equipment, but-."

The other Thanagarian man bows his head slightly, wings extending slightly over his shoulders. "We were at a party when the emergency alert came in. We didn't have time to do much more than grab our weapons."

I nod. "Good response time. Considering." I frown. "Wait, why are you on alert here? Thanagar doesn't-."

The white haired woman makes a sort of flicking gesture with her right hand. "We're not soldiers. We're mercenaries. With all the visitors they're having, the planet's government decided they needed a few more peace officers around the place. Our flight got assigned to Raggashoon."

The big chap thumps his tankard down. "Yeah, lucky us. It's all fun and games now, but you can bet things are going to heat up when the negotiations finish."

"Sorry, I-." The bartender puts my new drink down in front of me, "Oh, thank you." I look around the table, eyebrows raised. "I didn't think to ask your names?"

Blonde topknot turns her head slightly aside. Too many possible meanings to readily translate. "You didn't give us yours, either."

"Do you have a universal translator?"

White hair nods. "We all have translators. We couldn't possibly-."

"No." I lean forward slightly. "Universal translators. The super-advanced ones that can handle any mode of communication."

Big guy exhales sharply. "On our pay? Why, what's it matter?"

"I can't say my name, but I've got it written on a card. In English, which you can't read." And which can't be written phonetically in any modern Thanagarian languages. I make a dismissive gesture with my right hand. "Orange Lantern Two Eight One Four at your service."

"You're a Lantern?" / "There are other colours-?"

Helmet and thin man glance at each other, then narrow their eyes and incline their heads slightly.

"I'm Olio!" The big Thanagarian taps me on the back of the head with the… Wrist, of his left wing then points with his left arm. "Olio Thux. That's Rayn Kral and Skalla Kol." The two glaring at each other. From where he's pointing I think that Rayn Kral is the male one. "Corla Tavo." Topknot. "And our flight leader-" A squad leader rank with no direct equivalent. "-Tarra Karn."

I raise my now half-empty glass in a toast, then bow my head and create construct-wings on my back. I fan them back, underside facing towards the floor.

Flight Leader Karn pulls her head back. Surprise. "You know our body language."

"Universal translator." I let the wings fade. "And yes-" I lay my hands on the table, palms upwards and ring sigils on display. "-they do come in other colours."

Ms Tavo smiles, a less friendly gesture amongst Thanagarians than it is amongst Humans. "How about that."

Mister Kral tilts his head to the left slightly. "So, the Beast of Okaara-"

"Who isn't me."

"-is just a Lantern. I mean, yeah, Lanterns are powerful, but… They're not that powerful."

"Larfleeze is an ancient and quite insane Lantern who draws his power directly from the Orange Central Power Battery. He's much more-."

Ms Karn gives me her full attention. "There's a Central Power Battery on Okaara?"

"Yes."

Olio nods. "Ancient and powerful whatever, that's probably worth taking the risk. Any power rings down there?"

"Dozens at least. Possibly hundreds. But you should understand… Larfleeze has taken all comers for as long as there has been sentient life in the Vega Systems. And not just locals; the orange light reaches out to the greediest beings in this universe. It draws them to Okaara. They challenge him, those people most in tune with the light he wields, and he always wins. Sure, it's tempting… But do you really think you're that good? Do you want to risk it when the penalty for losing isn't merely death, but your soul bound in eternal servitude?"

I look around the circle again, and none of them meet my eyes.

"So. You said something about a negotiation?"

"Yeah." Olio taps his tankard on the table, then upends it. Empty. "But that's a two drink question."

back

Vega, Baby 5

next

10th July

15:16 GMT -5

I don't want to make a birds eating worms comment, but they seem to really like those…

"What exactly is that stuff you're drinking?"

Olio sets his tankard down with an appreciative lip smack. "It's called 'blurb'."

Ms Kol focuses on me again. I'm starting to find that gesture disconcerting. That's the problem with alien body language; even if you know what it means you almost certainly don't grok it. Your own instincts just insist on telling you a different story. "You haven't heard of it? Lots of places stock it."

"I'll say this for Rashashoon." Ms Tavo gestures towards the barkeeper with her own tankard. "They're just about the only place that actually make it right. Just about everywhere else uses synthesised enzymes. And a lot of them put the worms in dead."

There's a general attitude of derision from the Thanagarians for the adulteration practices of alien landlords.

"Hey, how come you don't know what's in it?" Mister Kral jabs his right forefinger at my left hand. "Shouldn't your ring tell you everything about it? I'm sure Thanagar's region of space has a Green Lantern assigned to it."

"Asking a power ring database about… Some foods… It isn't always a good idea. There's um… There's a drink on my homeworld made from ground seeds, and… For one of the more expensive versions, they prepare them by… Feeding the seeds to these… Small mammals and then.. collecting their faeces to-."

Flight Leader Karn pulls her head in slightly. "Stop! Some of us are drinking."

"Right, but you understand that the worms in-."

Olio waves his mug. "Yeah, that's how it ferments. That's nothing like… Drinking… Vermin-poo."

"And that's exactly why I don't ask the ring that sort of question." I raise my own gently bubbling brown drink. "I have no idea what's in this, and frankly? I don't want to."

The Flight Leader stares at it. "That's a fairly… Exciting chemical mix you've been drinking. How are you still able to hold a conversation?"

"Power rings grant poison immunity. If you remember to tell them to in advance."

"Do they grant explosion-immunity?"

"Um. No?"

She looks amused. "Then you may not want to make any sudden movements for a couple of days."

…

"I'll bear that in mind. Um, you were going to tell me why you're all on Rashashoon?"

Four sets of eyes move to their Flight Leader, who gives her feathers a slight ruffle. "How much do you know about what's happening at the moment?"

"Until today, I'd never left my home system. A system which.. doesn't have.. native faster than light travel. I know that Vega is a wretched hive of scum and villainy-."

Olio splutters into his drink before moving it away from his mouth. "Hah! You're not wrong!"

"But I don't know anything about what's happening now."

Flight Leader Karn takes another sip from her mug before continuing. "In short, the local section of the Spider Guild… You know who they are?"

"They've never come near my homeworld, but yes."

"They tried expanding close to Vega, setting up a new Control Nest. That was a challenge to the local powers and… I wouldn't call their response 'unified', exactly, but they mostly kept to a truce with each other while they all focused on the Spiders."

I nod. "Who won?"

"The locals… Sort of. Their new Nest was destroyed, along with most of their fleet. And that's where the trouble started."

I frown. "Why? I don't imagine that the locals are all that big on mercy or 'proportionate responses'-"

"Hah!" Olio pokes me in the back with his wing again.

"-so why didn't they just wipe the Spiders out?"

"Because there are a whole lot of Spiders, and without an active threat the locals started quarrelling again. I don't just mean there are a lot of Spiders locally, though the old Nest is pretty well fortified. Taking it would be bloody. The problem is, if they win, the rest of the Guild might take an interest. The Spider Guild has been spacefaring for something like fifty thousand years, their total strength is massive. They don't care if one Nest loses a fight, but if an existing Nest gets wiped then they might decide to send in a new fleet to take it back."

"So… Siege the system? Set up interdiction fields around-?"

"They're pirates, Orange Lantern. They're not a military. Any gain they make in not having to compete with the Guild is outweighed by what they've already spent on the fight. And with the threat to all of them done, they're remembering how much they hate each other. Except… They all know that the moment they leave the Nest is the moment it goes back to ship-building. In the end, Lord Damyn called a 'peace conference' to try and get a resolution which doesn't turn this into the biggest all versus all fight this region's seen in decades."

"I still say there's something not right about that." Ms Tavo flares her nostrils. "Since when does a Citadel Emperor call for a peace conference?"

Karn flares her wings slightly. "Since he wants there to be someone left who will trade with him." She returns her attention to me. "Right now we've got about three big faction leaders on the planet, about a hundred little ones and the Spider Queen arrived in orbit yesterday."

I frown. "Queen? I thought the Guild was pretty patriarchal?"

Mister Kral makes a twisting gesture with his left hand that is sort of a shrug-equivalent. "Maybe all the real leaders died?"

"Could be, but setting up a Control Nest is usually mostly automated. There shouldn't have been anyone above the rank of Strand-Captain in their fleet." Probably not important at the moment. "Is that why you're here, then? Is your company big enough to take part in the talks?"

The Flight Leader shakes her head. "No. We're here to add to local security forces. None of the people negotiating on the 'alliance' side can agree a common strategy or aim. And some of the smaller groups don't want to talk at all. The Queen wasn't even allowed to land yesterday because they won't let her bring a bodyguard."

Olio leans down to talk directly into my face. "And she'll last about five seconds without one. Maybe less."

"The government thinks this is going to end with shooting, so they hired our company to protect the locals when it does. And I think they're right, which is why we're getting our drinking in now."

Hm. "What was Green Man doing while all this was happening?"

"Who?"

"The local Green Lantern."

"Heh." Olio grins. "Laughing his feathers off as all his enemies killed each other, probably. That's what I'd do. Not like he can come into Vega."

"And Lord Damyn's position on all this?"

The Flight Leader waves her tankard. "Doesn't want a big fight on his doorstep. And I don't think he wants the Spiders challenging his trade monopolies either."

I nod. "The ban on the Queen's bodyguards? What exactly isn't she allowed?"

"Any Spiders on the planet at all. And they won't negotiate with her until she's here in person."

"In that case…" I push back my chair and rise to my feet. "It sounds like I have an opportunity to tout for business."

back

Vega, Baby 6

next

10th July

15:22 GMT -5

The Spider Guild ships are pretty darn easy to spot. At some point in their history the Guildmasters decided that it was a good idea for their ships to look like giant mechanical spiders. Sort of. The abdomen contains all of the ship's generator, drive and storage bay while the front part mounts weapons and crew quarters. As I noted to the Thanagarians, they tend to be undermanned for their mass.

That, and every other ship is keeping weapons trained on them.

The larger ship on the other hand… It puts me a little in mind of an Ork Rok. I can't tell just by looking whether that's really an asteroid or just some sort of grey/brown ablative armour. At least the machine parts that are visible look like some thought went into making them. It's also the second biggest ship in near-Rashashoon space. Only the command vessel of the Citadel Empire taskforce is larger. Of course, it's probably nothing like as well armed… Some sort of upgraded civilian transport or generation ship? No, not the second. The files I acquired from John's ring suggests that Guildmasters prefer to base themselves on planets rather than ships, safely under a mile or two of rock. Since they like to have their new home finished before they even consider moving there, I doubt that generation ships are really a thing for them.

Let's see…

Ring, give me a full scan if you please?

Compliance.

Goodness gracious me, a mission critical object that isn't warded. I'm starting to like space. Hm. The capital ship seems to be designed to fight small and medium sized vessels. Lots of weapon turrets, but none of them are particularly large. The smaller ships are designed to attack capital ships. Aside from a few very small anti-fighter turrets, their only weapon is a very large front mounted ion cannon. Which I think doubles as a breaching beam for boarding actions. Energy shields cover both types of ship, but only the front part of the smaller vessels and the core of the larger one are well armoured. Pretty much in line with existing records…

Ring, armour.

Compliance.

My full power armour materialises around me. Adult Spiders are a little larger than Humans, and have a tough cartilaginous outer skin as well as hard appendages. Their corridors tend to be roomy so there shouldn't be any trouble getting about, and I want to look like I mean business.

Ring, hail the larger ship.

Compliance.

Hm. No immediate response. I hold my right arm out in front of me and retract my environmental shield, trying to get a feel for how it moves in a vacuum. Pretty well, actually. The movement assistance is-.

"Nestship responding. If you are contacting us to complain about the deaths of colleagues, or to threaten us, please say so now so that I may stop listening. Also, I do not have a thoumpa, and if I did I am not certain that I would want it elongated beyond its natural span."

"Orange Lantern Two Eight One Four here. I understand that the Queen is in a market for a bodyguard. I'd like to volunteer my-"

"Lanterns are green, you are wasting my t-"

I throw my arms out to the side and generate a large Orange Corps sigil.

"-iiiiiime."

I dismiss the construct. "Are you sure? Because I somehow don't think you're going to get many other volunteers here."

"… Please hold."

Hm. I bring my armoured hands together at my chest and one by one tap my fingers against one another. So, while I don't really care whether this turns into a war or not, I do want to try and make sure that the respective parties fight away from the inhabited planet. That, and much like Gotham it just isn't practical to kill every loathsome-.

Alan's face appears in my mind. And for a moment I feel slightly ashamed.

No, I want most of these people to shift to more legitimate work. There are well regulated mercenary companies and bounty hunters. There are peaceful trading networks where all participants don't all need to be armed to the teeth. And there's the rub: the Citadel Empire is -relatively speaking- a stabilising force. I had assumed that the best thing to do was to simply do away with them. Now… If I went after the Gordanians instead, they'd become more dependent on the Branx for muscle. The Branx are more efficient and less brutish than the Gordanians. Still ruthless, but…

Another twinge of guilt as I recognise that I still want to kill them. And another Iraq flashback as I recognise that getting rid of a loathsome despot doesn't necessarily make the situation better for the people you're trying to help. And I'm not inclined to hand the matter over to someone else-.

"This is Strand-Captain Fhomalhopos. You wish to guard the Queen?"

"I'm prepared to provide my services, yes."

"To what faction are you aligned?"

"Either 'none' or 'my own', depending on how you look at it."

"Do you have any relevant experience?"

I-. Huh. Actually I… Don't think I've really done much in the way of bodyguarding… "I've got a year's worth of experience against a wide variety of opponents and I can create energy shields at will. How much competition is there for this?"

"Little, but we can wait. Do you have references?"

"None that.. you'd have heard of. I can.. give you edited versions of my mission reports if that's any-."

"Who were your previous employers?"

And now I'm starting to feel a little stupid. "Look. I'm a Lantern. I have two power rings and a swarm of bound Demons. Can we.. please skip this?"

"I'll put you down as 'self employed'. Please proceed to the primary docking hangar. Your abilities will be assessed."

"Thank you. See you shortly." I have the ring display a cutaway map of the ship in my mind. And.. just in case he means that they're going to test my abilities by shooting me, I generate construct armour. Right. Ring, anything blocking transition?

No presently active interdiction effect is preventing either transition or warp travel.

Great -the stars jump and the ship shifts position as I appear in front of the open hangar- stuff. Ah, advanced civilisations. None of that awkwardness with airlocks, just selectively permeable energy fields. So much more convenient. As I float on through I spot the technicians working on their shuttles. It looks like they're taking the extra time this delay gave them to upgrade the armour. One of them notices me, his upper eyes tracking me while his lower ones remain focused on his molecular bonding equipment.

Spiders as in Guild members aren't actually all that much like Earth Spiders. For a start, they only have five eyes. Two large ones on the upper part of their face, and three smaller ones just below that for close up work. And then there's the body. Twelve limbs rather than eight, six of which are specialised as legs and six which serve as manipulator appendages. Plus two manipulator mandibles in addition to the more powerful slicing mandibles. Their bodies are really more like those of a chilopod than an arachnid.

Actually… That makes me wonder why I hear their name as 'Spider'. Is 'Spider Guild' the species, or the umbrella organisation to which all members of that species belong? In which case… What is the species actually called?

A set of doors open on the inner wall of the hangar and a cluster of Spiders… Huh. The door is about halfway up the wall and there's no platform on this side. The one with the armour insignia of a Strand-Captain and his four heavily armoured escort just walk down the wall. I float in their direction, aiming to intercept them just as they reach floor level.

"Strand-Captain."

His upper eyes turn my way as he continues walking. "Lantern. I am pressed for time, and I require a demonstration. You will attempt to protect me from these soldiers. Their lives are expendable. If I still live in two minutes and ten seconds, I will introduce you to the Queen. Do you understand?"

I smile inside my armour. "I think I can manage that."

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Vega, Baby 7

next

10th July

15:27 GMT -5

Actually, you know what?

20:27 GMT

Better.

"So when do we-?"

The first of his legs touches the floor of the docking bay and his bodyguard immediately point their weapons-

I attach an orange beam to him -forcing it through a weak personal force field- and transition us to the other end of the hangar.

-and open fire, bolts of blue blasting forth and cutting into the material of the hangar floor. Above us, the technicians scurry to get inside their craft.

"Short range teleportation? Useful. But-"

Construct armour covers him as two of the soldiers correct their aim while the others leap after us.

"-that won't be enough by itself."

Man-portable ion-pulse weapons. The Spider Guild is capable of making just about any 'interstellar age' weapon, but they prefer low maintenance and easily mass producible weapons. Assuming that these are the standardised weapons my scans show them to be, my construct armour should be able to take their hits for an extended-.

The first pulse hits, and proves me right.

"A projected personal force field! Useful. But purely defensive technologies provoke attacks, they do not end them."

Spider Guilders certainly aren't above personal biological and cybernetic modification, but they much prefer robotic weapon platforms and power armour. Ring, scan the interior of the hangar in detail.

Compliance.

The two closer soldiers pop out of cover, a barrage of micro missiles-. Ring, warhead type?

Boosted fission.

Lunatic Spiders! Four point defence constructs appear around us, orange bolts burning through the air and blasting the missiles apart.

"Do your employees really hate you!?"

"Hhhhm. My promotion is recent."

I'm not detecting cybernetics or biological modification. Fine. Beams of orange leap out from me, curving around obstacles and slamming into my opponents. Their shields-. Take it for the two seconds they need to shoot the beams and disrupt them.

Fine. Railguns. My practice sessions showed that reinforced intermolecular bond plasma barriers -the type of force fields which the Spiders seem to be using- are vulnerable to crumbler technology. One soldier is a little slow in reaching cover, and with a low hum the first railgun fires. The shot connects, his force field shimmering into visibility for a half-second as the vapour which forms it suddenly loses all cohesion. Then my follow up beam punches through the armour and jolts the wearer's nervous system into unconsciousness.

"Ah! An offensive action. I was starting to get-"

The second railgun reorientates itself so that it points towards the ceiling, where one of the soldiers appears to have hoped that I'd make the mistake of someone only familiar with 2D combat. Realising that he's been spotted, the soldier tries to throw himself aside. At this range, it doesn't help. The hit shuts down his force field and turns his controlled leap into a tumble. I grab onto him with a reptilian hand construct, poking a claw through his armour and stunning him before depositing him onto the floor.

"-worried. Of course, now they know what you can do-"

A door opens in the ceiling, and a large and… Clearly Spider-shaped robot descends, a weapon I recognise as a gemburner attached on its mandible mount. A gemburner is essentially the opposite of a cold gun, creating heat by stimulating molecular vibration. It's expensive and technologically complex and the preferred anti-Lantern weapon of the Spider Guild due to the way it… Can be set to ignore construct defences.

"-they will call in reinforcements."

The drawback -I take a sheet of steel out of subspace and interpose it just as it fires- is that it can't ignore conventional matter. Some Lanterns -when confronted with one- seek cover. I say, why not make cover? Another of the soldiers chooses to believe that I'm distracted, and is rewarded with unconsciousness.

Praexis Demons, find the fourth.

The Demons surge out from my existing constructs as the Spider robot finishes melting through the steel sheet, the molten remains dripping down onto the hangar floor. Immediately, both railguns train on the hole and fire. The robot's force field takes the first hit, while its hastily raised left foreleg intercepts the second.

Well, since the shield's down…

The railguns open fire at maximum speed and force, tungsten rounds eating into the robot's armour. It tries to get space for a shot but my attack is relentless, chewing through its face-mounted sensors before it can fire.

"That's a little better."

I dimly feel it as the remaining soldier fires on the oncoming Praexis Demons. He's well disciplined and an excellent shot, firing as he retreats. Six are disintegrated -it looks like it takes two shots if they can't bring their mouths to bear accurately- before he's driven into the open and I turn a railgun on him. The crumbler round takes down his shield, then… You know what? Brand. Assist me.

The soldier shudders as the Praexis Demons break off their attack and fly out across the hangar, looking for anyone else who might be part of this 'interview'. No obvious-. Ah. Those may be technical drones, but they have decent welding disruptors mounted on them and they shouldn't be heading towards a potential attacker during a boarding action. Demons, feed.

I feel mildly disappointed that none of them shout 'yay'.

The Spider combat robot has decent armour, I'll give it that. I don't want to use crumbler rounds if I don't have to because I don't think I want the Spiders realising that they're good for more than shutting down their force fields, but a nice bit of abrading-.

The robot bunches up its legs and shoves itself from its perch on the ceiling, plummeting in my direction with some sort of energy field activating around its limbs. My soldier opens fire and wrecks one, but its main weapon at this point is mass. I could probably take it, but why bother? The Strand-Captain and I transition again just before it hits the deck. As expected, the still-functioning limbs cleave through the material of the deck like the metaphorical hot knife through butter, giving it just enough to hold to remain mostly upright. Must have a pretty good suspension.

Alright, whatever the technology it uses is, it's still a stupidly shaped robot. The fat beam of orange light erupts from my chest and strikes at its torso. It interposes its limbs again, only to find them grabbed by construct hands and tugged out of the way. Armour fails and flakes off under my assault, the robot jerking as it tries to get away.

Then my attack pierces the casing and hits something vital. The robot doesn't collapse so much as lock up, all motion ceasing.

"Not too bad, but how will you fare against a multitude of small opponents?"

Quick check around? The Praexis Demons have already consumed the technical drones, apparently not getting all that much power out of them. The number in the field is exactly the same as I started out with. Not enough arcane power around, I suppose.

"Smaller opponents?" The Strand Captain looks around the room for a moment before poking a small computer console built into the armour around his uppermost left limb. "Smaller..?"

"I've already destroyed the technical drones." I float us upwards, giving him a clear view of the room. "Are you satisfied?"

He looks around, eyes lingering on the destruction and the faintly glowing branded soldier. "Are there any more of you?"

"One, and he won't be joining me on this contract."

"And you didn't kill them. I hope that you won't maintain that attitude once you start working for us."

"As long as the Queen is safe, why does it matter to you?"

"A dead opponent can't try to kill you again."

"Or give you information. I'll kill if I have to, not otherwise. Are you satisfied?"

"Your performance was acceptable. Come." He jabs three limbs in the direction of one of the interior doors. "This way."

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Vega, Baby 8

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10th July

20:34 GMT

The interior-proper of the Spider Guild ship is a curious mixture of what I regard as conventionally technological and what is either true organic technology or at least designed to look like it is. The corridors are dingy by my standards, but Spiders see further into the infra red part of the spectrum so it's probably brightly lit as far as they're concerned. I note that the interior walls aren't painted, and that the pipes and the wiring are largely on display.

"Was the ship launched recently?"

He doesn't look back. "No."

"Heavy refit?"

"Why are you asking?"

"Well…" I gesture to our right, where the wall stops about halfway up and reveals a bundle of high capacity power cables. "It doesn't… Look finished."

"What should it look like?"

"Finished.. walls..? Cables tucked away neatly?"

"Why should we tuck them away? That would just make it harder to do maintenance." He stops walking. "Wait. The Queen is not yet ready."

I obediently stop just behind him. "Why is the Queen handling this? Shouldn't it be a Guildmaster?"

A double click of the upper mandibles as he turns towards me. Mild irritation. "That is not your concern."

"Alright." I turn, pointing at the cables. "What happens if you lose inertial dampening during acceleration and something hits that?"

"I do not see that our ship design is your concern either."

"If this negotiation goes badly, it becomes my job to escort the Queen back home. I can't do that if your ship isn't under power due to easily preventable internal damage."

"The precise nature of your contract will be a subject for discussion. All parts are armoured and shielded to the extent that they need to be. You may be unaware of this, but my people have an extensive history of spacefaring. I doubt very much that you will notice a design flaw in a few minutes that we have been so foolish as to not address in the last five thousand years."

"Alright. Do you have any specific intelligence on parties that might attack the Queen?"

"Everyone down there is a potential aggressor. It is unlikely that the pirate leaders will attack her themselves or with their own people, but any of them could hire outside help. Vega has any number of such people willing to throw a region of space into chaos for a few currency units. Life is cheap."

He sounds disapproving. "You are aware that your species habitually reproduces by-."

"We strive to keep ourselves and our own people alive. Even… Contractors, for the duration of their contracts. Robots are expendable assets."

"You seemed happy enough for me to kill your soldiers a minute ago."

"They will die anyway if we are unable to send the Queen to the negotiations. And you did not kill them. Green Lanterns seldom kill, and the fact that you have even offered yourself in this role to a people with little history of treating other sophonts well and did so without demanding money from the first… That suggests to me that you would follow their tradition. Tell me, did the Guardians decide that their policy of non-intervention in Vega did not apply to other colours?"

"I don't work for the Guardians."

"Sponsored, then?" The angle of his mandibles suggests smugness, which means that either he's faking or he genuinely thinks that he's ferreted out a secret from me. "I will not complain if it serves our interests, though you may wish to warn your colleagues-."

There's a dull buzz from his arm computer. He taps it twice, then continues down the corridor. "The Queen will see us now."

He leads the way along the corridor, which curves up and to the right. I think that we're heading towards the centre of the vessel. I remember the execrable Halo novels, where the Elite character comments that Humans are foolish for putting their bridges at the front of the ship rather than the centre. Looks like the Spider Guild build their capital ships on the same principles as the Covenant.

The corridor ahead terminates in a heavily reinforced door, and the ring shows that the same armour extends all around the chamber. The Strand-Captain walks out into the middle of the passageway and bows towards the door. A faint buzz and the force field protecting it shuts down. A clank, and the door slowly begins to open. The Strand-Captain doesn't stand any further on ceremony, passing through the opening as soon as it is wide enough to accommodate him. I wait a few moments longer, giving it time to fully open. The room beyond is circular and depressed in the centre. Several other Spiders man consoles around the periphery, and in the centre…

It turns out that the Spider Queen is quite large.

I walk through as she and I regard one another. Compared to the others, the lower portion of her body is much larger. Though that does make her sound a little more like a regular spider, the net effect is actually to make her look more like a giant Crab-Centipede-Centaur… Thing. Her head and carapace are slightly smoother than those of her male counterparts, and… An extra two sets of her limbs support the lower portion of her body, while the ends of her upper four limbs have simple grasping appendages on the end. I'd have to duck my head to stand underneath her, but only a little. Spider Guild females don't.. usually look like that. Aliens are supposed to have a hard time telling them from the males. If I'd been asked, I'd have guessed that she was a different species entirely. No obvious cybernetics… Bioengineering? I could scan her, but that does seem a little rude.

"So. You wish the honour of being my protector."

"I'm prepared to do that job, certainly. For a consideration."

"We have studied the databases captured from our enemies." She points at one of the consoles to her right with her lower right forelimb. "None of them have a record of you. This suggests to me that you are the independent contractor you claim to be. However, they do make mention of strange beings bearing your mark flying from Okaara."

"They're not mine. I only got here a few hours ago."

"I have little enough time to ensure the survival of my own people. I have none for your power plays."

"Understood. In any case, it really is in my interests that you are able to negotiate a settlement."

There's a.. sort of.. wheezing sound from her. "What is your fee?"

"I have a power ring; I don't need money. There aren't any objects under your control that I want, and I doubt that a single Nest that was recently on the losing side of a war could give me the industrial capacity I could do anything useful with... Let's say… A favour of commensurate value at the future point of my choosing?"

"Why not state the favour now?"

"Because I don't want anything right now. Because if I get one favour then it's in my interests to ensure that you're as successful as possible so that I can redeem it for the most value."

Because I don't really know how much what I'm doing is worth.

"You trust us to repay you?"

"You trust me to protect you?"

"No, but I have little alternative."

"Hey, if I was going to attack you, I'd be doing it now. I'm not suddenly going to develop a reason just because we're on the planet."

"And you are convinced that we will repay you?"

"I'm convinced that I can make things difficult for you if you don't."

"I suppose that I am obliged to take the risk." She walks up the sides of the pit, which I'm guessing was built here so that her subordinates didn't have to crane their necks to look at her. "Strand-Captain, you have the bridge."

"My Queen. We will have an extraction team on standby, should things turn sour. Your personal protective equipment is waiting for you in your yacht."

She heads towards the doorway and I turn and float after her.

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Vega, Baby 9

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10th July

20:59 GMT

"Landing zone confirmed, control. I'm sending the course to you now."

Flying in an actual spacecraft takes a wee bit longer than just transitioning around the place. I would have been perfectly happy to just take her down with me but apparently this was a demand from the other parties at the negotiation. She has to land in a commercial landing zone and walk to the place where the negotiations will be taking place without her usual guards.

"Course received. Don't deviate from it and we won't have any problems."

Ye-ah. While we're not going to cause any problems, I can't speak for the other parties. And I certainly can't speak for the Citadel Complex command ship that flew this way the moment we left the Spider Guild capital ship and is currently looming over Raggashoon with its weapons powered and locking onto other ships in the area apparently at random. I'm not sure whether that means that Lord Damyn wants these negotiations to be successful, doesn't want anyone doing anything too stupid or just wants an excuse to kill all parties and have people allied more closely to him usurp their territory. The weapons look conventional, but they're very big and I'm reasonably confident that the Psions have some way to block Lantern FTL. I would not want to be on the receiving end of a full broadside from that.

Anyway, I can't help but think that the other negotiators are being a bit stupid about this. Yes, having to walk to the negotiation without a retinue is humiliating, but it also increases the chance that someone will attack her. That could be intentional, but… The Spider Guild ship has been here for a couple of days already, well inside the Rashashoon interdiction fields. If they just wanted to kill her, they could have done so with far less drama. It might be stupidity, but the Spiders gave me a copy of their intelligence reports on the other parties and they don't look stupid. Most of them have done work as mercenaries and assassins before; they'll know this is a perfect ambush setup. So… Either they all don't care much either way but want to get some entertainment out of it… Or their desire for cruelty overwhelmed their good sense.

There are a few ships in the general area as we head towards the landing zone, but they have the sense to make themselves scarce when a flight of interceptors with transponders identifying them as local naval vessels enters the area. Thanagarian designs, slightly older than the one Mister Hol and Ms Thal use, and the markings on their exterior don't belong to any Rashashoon city-state. Nothing like enough firepower to stop a concerted attack, but enough to chase away chancers. I'm not sure whether that represents a serious concern for our wellbeing or if they just don't want our wreckage landing on their city.

The yacht has decent shields and is reasonably well armoured. Not impressively so, but it should take a few hits from anything less than capital ship grade weaponry, and with the Citadel command ship very much in evidence those have mostly backed off over the horizon. Actually… I think the artisan approach Earth society takes to its really advanced technology has left me a bit blasé. There probably is a ship or two this size and power on Earth… Not this many, but the awe I thought I might feel at encountering an interstellar civilisation just.. isn't materialising. There are more ships here, and the advanced technology is more widely spread, but… Nothing is fundamentally more potent than things I've seen before.

Not even counting the rings.

"Final approach, one minute to touchdown."

"Understood."

The Queen hasn't been talkative, which isn't that surprising. I'm not from her Nest. I'm an addition she'd much rather do without. I took the time the journey down gave me to review Green Lantern Corps records on the Spider Guild's interactions with mercenary groups. They seem to much prefer relying on their own resources than hiring help. There are instances of even Nests with quite poor relationships hiring additional forces from one another in preference to employing other species, and they'd rather build robots than do either. On the few occasions the Green Lanterns heard of where they have employed mercenaries, history suggests that they're reasonable employers. I don't think I have to worry too much about being stabbed in the back.

Not that I'm going to take silly risks.

"How long do you think this will last?"

"Many local days. Perhaps twenty, before we have an outline agreement."

"What sort of working hours are we talking about?"

She focuses her lower eyes on me. "Why?"

"Because while I can go without sleep for twenty days, I wouldn't want to rely on my decision making abilities towards the end of it. And that's a problem, because I'm your only protection. So are we going back to your ship, or renting a bunker..?"

"Will you be able to manage four local days?"

"I should be able to. Though if nothing happens I can't promise that my attention won't waver a little at times. Why, what happens after four days?"

"The other parties to the negotiation should have stopped blustering. At that point, either we will be able to negotiate or they will attack me in earnest. If they negotiate, the chance of any of them ordering an attack is much reduced."

"Makes sen-."

"Until the end of the negotiation, at which point any who are unhappy with what they have won will make a concerted effort both on my life and those of the parties who are happy with the conclusion."

I smile ruefully as orange lights dance across the controls. The controls just aren't designed for a standard pattern humanoid to use. Most of them require six limbs to slot into portals which can rotate in a number of different directions simultaneously. I've been bypassing them and controlling the systems directly. "Makes sense. Landing now."

The ship is nice to fly, though. Its gravity repulsor system is nearly as good as the Bio-Ship's telekinetic-. And there I go again! Sure, the Bio-Ship isn't Earth-technology, but… Those Martian warships I saw could take out everything in their weight class that I've seen here so far. How did I get this jaded? Anyway, I barely feel the landing. The landing pad is a large and flat area made of a synthetic metamorphic rock substitute. Strong, tough and not unpleasant to look at. Since none of the ships around here need a runway and no one comes to a planet like this to commute, most landing platforms are actually quite small and close to the off-worlder friendly parts of town. This is the industrial spaceport, designed for the loading and unloading of bulk goods. As such, it's a little further away from everything and has somewhat better security.

I mean, not amazing sec-.

…

You know, I don't think it is the technology. I think it's the organisation. Even after the First World War, the German diplomatic delegation could go to Versailles without having to worry about getting shot. Well, not too much, and not as French government policy. And that wasn't because the French government liked them, it was because everyone accepted that the war should be wound up by treaty. In the real world, parley doesn't mean 'everyone else is flat-footed and bare-handed', it's proof that you're capable of civilised behaviour. This place…

I get up from the pilot station -which I could just about sit in without modification- and walk out of the cockpit. The Queen has already raised herself from her pit and is checking her armour. Not full power armour, but it should take a hit or two. Nothing of her pale brown carapace is visible, which is only sensible. Very few naturally occurring species have armour-grade chitin and Spider Guilders aren't one of them.

"Best let me go out first, just in case anyone has an itchy trigger finger."

"I was expecting you to."

She waits for me to take the lead, then slowly follows me towards the exit. A pulse of orange and the landing ramp begins to lower itself.

"Are you certain that you don't want construct armour from the start?"

"Yes. I must be seen as authoritative. If I am wearing your colours then it shows me as subservient."

"Very well." The ramp isn't completely down, but I can see the outside clearly. I wave my hands forwards and eight Praexis Demons fly though the gap. They can draw fire… Or maybe put the fear of the Beast into the locals.

There's a clank as the ramp comes to rest on the… Let's call it rockcrete, ground. Then I stride out to greet the crowd.

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Vega, Baby 10

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10th July

21:06 GMT

No one is… Close to the ship. From the looks of things, spaceport security are keeping rubberneckers… Or at least rubberneckers who aren't well connected, out of the landing area completely. A fair few people -mostly natives- are pausing in their tasks working on heavy loading machinery to gawk at… Hm. I've turned up my empathic vision to help with spotting potential assassins, and they've gone from mild orange curiosity to clear yellow get-us-out-of-here. Because they've seen me. Rashashoon has something reasonably like modern news media; these people know about Larfleeze sending out his minions. And they're rapidly going from slacking off in order to stare to looking for an excuse to work somewhere further away.

Not exactly what I was going for. But I'll take it.

Representatives from several of the larger armed groups on the other side of the conflict stand in small huddles between us and the way to the building the meeting is taking place in. The largest group consists of five and the smallest three, and given the distance they're keeping from each other I suspect that they'd only be slightly slower to shoot each other than to shoot the Queen. A mix of species are represented, mostly local or at least localish. Three Gordanian pirate clans, one of which has… Huh. Nothing in the Green Lantern files about a clan sign consisting of two dots with a 'w' between them. Still, their equipment seems.. more or less the same. One of the larger groups is led by a heavily scarred Branx Warrior, flanked by two Okaarans and with… A Coluan. She's a long way from home. The fifth member of the group is a heavily mechanised cyborg. Certainly, more of a mix amongst the outsider pirates than amongst the local groups.

My presence is causing fear in approximate proportion to how familiar they are with Larfleeze's operations. The Okaarans -curiously, those here don't seem to be in leadership positions- recognise me immediately, but their discipline prevents them either backing away or attacking. Others are slightly nervous; they'd been expecting the Queen to be alone, or have a bodyguard of local mercenaries. I'm outside their context, though the tension from the Okaarans is being noticed. The difference is that these aren't dock workers. They're pirates. They're not going to back down because they're afraid; if anything, they're more likely to-.

"Get grokkin' back!"

FHZCHIOOF!

An arc of purple energy leaps from some sort of hand weapon being carried by a frazzled-looking Cairnian, smashing into the closest Praexis Demon and causing it to evaporate. At the sound of weapons fire a dozen other guns of various kinds are drawn. Some are pointed his way, others mine and the rest aren't.. quite.. pointed at anyone. One of the man's companions leans towards him, muttering something and grabbing hold of the hand carrying his weapon with their right.

I should probably say something.

I rise into the air slightly. Ring, amplification.

Compliance.

"Ladies and gentlemen."

Attention doesn't completely shift to me, but most eyes are splitting their time between me and other potential threats.

"The Spider Guild has retained my services to escort the Queen to the negotiations. My understanding is that the organisations you.. represent, consider these negotiations desirable." I fan out my hands. "Are we going to have any trouble?"

No one.. says anything in response, though a few guns move back into their holsters. Or at least stop pointing right at anyone.

I float towards the still-shaking shooter, additional Praexis Demons dropping from the rings as I go. He's… His emotions are a mess. Give him a scan. What exactly..? Ah.

"Sir, you appear to have developed an unfortunate drug habit. How about I..?" I hold out my left hand in a mock benediction. "Clear that right up for you? Recomflex and Flash are not a combination that's kind to your nerves."

"Y-y-y-you just keep the gratz away from me, freak."

I nod sadly. I could probably give him a purge without it being obvious… No. "As you wish." I float back toward the Queen, turning towards her and giving anyone who wants it a shot at my back. Of course, if anyone felt like taking aim the Praexis Demons would see them…

"Marm?"

Her armour hides her body language in the same way that my armour hides mine. Would she..? Can she interpret Human or even humanoid body language? Power rings are very convenient for that sort of thing, but there are a lot of humanoid species around here and we do all share a fair bit of our physical expression. She's probably learned some, or at least had an analysis program added to her armour HUD.

Secure transmission incoming.

Authorised.

"You appear to have some notoriety. I was not aware of this."

"Problem?"

"I have no desire to make your enemies mine."

"None of my enemies live anywhere near here." I turn away and hold out my left arm in the direction of the closest exit from the spaceport. "Shall we?"

The Queen.. takes a direct line for the exit, but at a slow pace. I land just behind her and follow at a slow walk. My precise physical position isn't that important, and I want to try… Ah. Looking deeply into people's emotions is a time consuming business if I want any sort of detail, but… Reaching out for that one particular combination of fear and desire and hate and rage that indicate that someone who is about to shoot is something-.

Three layers of construct shield and a kinetic shield appear next to the Queen a fraction of a second before the maser bolt strikes home, its power expended harmlessly against the outer shield. That probably wouldn't have -I flash out filaments in the direction the attack came from, the failed assassin already visible in my empathic vision- penetrated her armour, but there could be other assailants. Praexis Demons appear from the orange strands as the would-be assassin tries to flee. No force field, minimal body armour, no… Ah, she's heading for a vehicle. I tag her with a filament and transition her to me, wrapping her in orange chains the moment she appears.

A white-pelted Karnan female in civilian clothing. Probably planning to fade back into the crowd afterwards. I yank the gun from her hands with a construct-hand. Okay, an obvious assassination attempt. Everyone… I glance at the audience. They're expecting me to kill her. Certainly, no one would complain. Not as long as I didn't make a mess of it.

I smile.

Ring, brand.

Compliance.

My guest struggles against the chains for a moment before being enveloped in an orange glow. Then it fades, leaving an orange sigil behind. I remove the chains and call back the Praexis before turning away from her.

"Follow."

"Certainly, master."

Renewed flashes of yellow from the Okaarans, and several others look disturbed. Honestly, you'd have thought that they'd never seen casual mind control before. My new companion walks besides me with a slight skip to her step, keeping up with me with no difficulty at all. I'll interrogate her later, see if any of these people hired her. Or if anyone else did.

And then… I don't have a prison to put her in. I'm certainly not taking her back to Earth and I don't see any point taking her to Maltus. I.. suppose.. I'll just let her go somewhere. I very much doubt that the Queen will be leaving her Nest again for a very long time, so there isn't significant further risk to my principal. Might make me look weak to the local hard cases, but except where it has an immediate effect on me I don't really care about their opinion of me.

Though I'm not exactly unhappy with how quickly they're getting out of the Queen's way as she heads for the exit.

back

Vega, Baby 11

next

10th July

21:29 GMT

"…pay for what you did!" The rough-skinned, heavily set, green skinned leader of the Jovial Marauders appears to like having the floor. "Pay, you hear me!" The… I hesitate to refer to it in a manner which suggests any sort of formal process, but I suppose that 'hearing' will have to do. "What the Spider Guild has tried to do goes far beyond the bounds of-" His eyes flick momentarily to the other two leaders of the major groups. "-reasonable competition."

The man in the purple and green uniform looks somewhat bored, though he is at least polite enough to make eye contact with his competitor. The gold skinned, blue haired, powerfully built woman a short distance away from him just slumps a little further.

"Worse!" He turns back as the woman I vaguely recognise from a Booster Gold comic tries to blow one of her bangs out of her eyes without otherwise moving. "Your actions have threatened to cut off our access to the Vega Systems themselves, and the invaluable safe harbour they provide to us."

I try tuning him out a little, checking my surrounding environment for threats. The auditorium is for leaders only, and the Citadelian marines on guard duty checked everyone going in for weapons… Above a certain level in power, at least. The rest of us get the privilege of watching from backstage, ready to charge in just in case our employers call for us. Whatever Citadelian officer came up with this is at least reasonably intelligent, however. Getting into the meeting room would inevitably require us to get past them, and thus alienate Vega's dominant power.

The one with the battleship directly above us.

I take a look at my new companion as my Praexis Demons float over the crowd. I think I can afford to take my eye off the Queen long enough to-.

"I always thought the ancestral enemy of my people would be… Bigger."

I turn away from the twitching cat woman and towards… An Okaaran woman. She's wearing efficient-looking purple body armour. Her face is flat, a tiny stub of a nose positioned directly between her eyes, with bushy, long haired eyebrows just above them. Two large fangs protrude from her lower jaw and her skin is a pale blue. Let's see, one low power gun built into her right bracer, a larger gun slung across her back and… Matter disrupters built into the left bracer. Less effective than a crumbler gauntlet, but it still wouldn't be too healthy to get punched by one.

"I am not The Beast of Okaara."

She snorts. "A second disappointment."

"If you don't want a third, I imagine that you know where to find him."

"Do you wear his sign to insult us?"

"No. I wear it because I use the same power as he does. And I have not been driven insane by it."

A slight twitch, but the red recedes slightly. "You know of him, then?"

"Naturally." I look around the room, taking in the ones trying not to be too obvious about listening in on our conversation. "I had rather thought that he kept to himself. I've been a little.. surprised by the level of recognition I've been getting. Aside from you Okaarans, I didn't think anyone would know of him."

"A year ago you would have been right. Then his orange slaves…" She looks up as one of my Praexis Demons floats past, grabbing at some sort of small flying creature. "Flew out from the Forbidden Forest of Weeds."

"Did they attack anyone?"

She snorts, glancing at a nearby group of Gordanians. "No one not foolish enough to attack them first."

I nod. Good to know. I mean, the planet they came from is most famous for its well trained mercenaries and any other local power likely to take issue with the Construct Lantern swarm would have been an even more acceptable target… But I'd still rather people not get hurt by accident. If I'm going to kill someone I'd much rather it be deliberate.

"The Beast didn't like me stealing from him."

Her eyebrows twitch. Astonishment and.. I think she's impressed. "Many have tried to steal from The Beast. Our legends say they always end up as his slaves."

I nod. "A weapon in your hands that you have not mastered is a weapon that belongs to your enemies. The orange light is the light of avarice. People are drawn to Larfleeze by their own greed, but none are as greedy as he is."

"Larrrr..? Fleece..? That is The Beast's true name?"

"Yes, as far as I know."

She looks me over carefully. "If you and he are powered by greed, and none are so greedy as he is, how did you escape where so many have failed?"

"Only a fool attacks their enemy where that enemy is strongest and where they themselves are weakest."

Curiosity. "You speak like a War-Sage. If you did not overpower him, you outthought him. You discovered a weakness and exploited it as much as it could be exploited, and then retreated."

"Something like that."

"He sent his slaves out after you? And you evaded them?"

"He didn't know where I was. One of his slaves… The big head with the mouth tentacles? Found me by pure chance. Destroying it without revealing my location was difficult, but manageable."

"Can anyone wield this power?"

"In theory, yes. In practice, it tends to drive those who try, insane. And then they attack Larfleeze, and they lose. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have an assassin to interrogate."

I turn away from her, facing the attentive Karnan. A simple 'you want to be helpful' has been enough to make her stay by my side-.

"She does not look like the others."

I look back at her, and she nods her head at the nearest Praexis Demon. "Branding isn't permanent."

"Surely you intend to kill her once you are finished?"

"What, for a weak assassination attempt? Hardly worth it." I.. could, though. Even if I assimilated her… The Sword dealt fairly handily with the Praexis Demons who ate those portals… And.. appearing weak to these pirates might create problems… "Besides, I might have other uses for her."

I look her over once again. The Karnan woman's clothing is fairly minimal, more being rendered unnecessary by the short white fur that covers most of her body. A mane of longer white fur cascades down her head, tied out of her face by an Alice band. Her irises are pink. Her ears are located on the top of her head, though they're far smaller than they would be in a standard depiction of a catgirl.

Ring, sound baffle.

Compliance.

"What's your name?"

"Felicity, masterrrrr."

The purr is affected. I'm ninety percent sure. She shifts her weight, watching my face carefully as she tries to work out which part of her body I find most attractive.

"And whom do you work for, Felicity? Why did you attempt to kill my employer?"

"I'm a member of the Omega Men, master. Primus wants the Queen dead so that all of the pirates will start fighting again."

I've heard of the Omega Men, though I don't think they were in any of the comics I ever read.

"Primus sent you?"

"No, master. I thought that I could prove my worth by killing her myself."

Oh dear. "When does he plan to attack?"

"I don't know, master. They don't tell me things about missions."

I turn to the Okaaran, dropping the sound baffle. "Are the Omega Men a serious threat?"

She doesn't look impressed. "Serious enough. But nothing we haven't dealt with before."

I nod inside my armour. "I suppose we'll just have to be on our guard, then."

back

Vega, Baby 12

next

11th July

04:02 GMT

"Seventeen."

"Seventeen?"

Sinak -journeyman warrior of Okaara- makes the slight flare of her nostrils which is equivalent to a nod. "It is the most reliable form of data security. Warmasters often write their own programs for their own equipment, but that isn't practical over a fleet."

"I wouldn't have thought that seventeen distinct formats was practical over a fleet."

"No. The Citadel has one, and Branx have another. The Gordanians have three, and often use those of other peoples or a combination. Then you have the various outlaw groups, each of whom-."

"But how do they… Exchange data?"

"Emulation software. And talking."

"But if they've got emulation software anyway, surely that means that there's no real security benefit to having non-interacting operating systems?"

She hesitates for a moment. "There are… Procedures. I don't intend to give away the particulars-"

"Of course."

"-but a combination of hardware and software controls makes it substantially harder. How do your people do it?"

"I don't really know much about the military side, but something like ninety percent of people on my homeworld use the same operating system family and we have a population of six billion."

Sinak pointedly looks around the room. "How much civilian traffic do you think the Vega Systems have?"

I follow her gaze, taking in the paramilitary fighters who make up the retinues of the various gang leaders. "I suppose." I'm not getting quite the same fear response I did when I first came in. I'm not sure whether they're still conflating me and Larfleeze, but since I'm clearly not behaving as he was reputed to they're not on tenterhooks any longer.

I'm still not exactly snowed under with conversational companions.

"You don't like it?"

"It just seems… Inefficient. Badly organised."

"The Citadel is well organised. You can go and work for them if you want."

"The Citadelians have to have their brains cybernetically enhanced to allow them to become intelligent enough to sign their own names. I know they are the dominant power around here, but I can't quite get my head around how it happened."

"Why are you sure intelligence is an advantage?"

… "Optimism?"

"Hah!" From the slight opening of her mouth, I think that she's genuinely amused. "Look at my people. We were never as clever as the Psions, but when we first rose to the stars the only other competition were the Branx. We felt ourselves their superior."

"And?"

"Then came X'Hal. And the First Citadelian. By the time we finished nuking ourselves back to the iron age, he had already learned the lesson our society had taught. Strength, intelligence… Without unity, without purpose, they mean nothing. Less than nothing. A strong people who make war upon themselves will end up with less than they started with."

"True, I suppose."

"So he made sure that his followers would always be unified."

"I thought-?"

"Oh, sometimes they kill the current emperor. And they'll get drunk and pick fights with each other. But it doesn't go further than that. As far as anyone knows, there's nearly no internal division in their society."

"Huh." I look around the room, my eyes alighting on the squad guarding the entrance to the amphitheatre. "And... That's how this all works?"

"They give life here structure. Someone needs to run it, and everyone likes them doing it better than they do the idea of any of their rivals being in charge instead."

I return my attention to her. "And there isn't any other group who could take that on?"

She makes a rumbling noise in the back of her throat. "Gordanian clans are barely unified internally, and their clans spend more time fighting each other than they do anyone else. The Branx are unified… But only to a point, and their government is weak. Euphorix is unified, but they were always isolationist."

"Tamaran?"

"I don't think we have to worry about them having much of a say in anything. A century ago..? No. Even then they were too individualistic. It's the same problem we Okaarans have. Great as warriors, but terrible as armies."

"And the Psions? Actually-" I look around again. "-I don't think I've seen one yet."

"And if you're lucky then you won't. Do you want to become a laboratory specimen?" She glances away, as if concerned that one of the midget lizards is about to walk in with a scalpel. Not much yellow on display; it's a low lying ongoing concern rather than something she really thinks is about to happen.

"And the other races? There are twenty three inhabited worlds in Vega."

"Weak. Primitive. Disinterested. Personally, I suspect that the Citadel had a hand in this lot coming together to fight the Spider Guild."

"What makes you think that?"

"The Guild Nests are unified. And strong. They don't have much interest in other species except as food or breeding stock, but their expansion was probably the first existential crisis the Citadel Empire has had since…" She looks blank for a moment. "Ever. One Nest world wouldn't matter, but one more would give them enough industrial power to actually threaten the Citadel fleet."

"The Citadel Empire can't expand outside Vega?"

"Green Lanterns would smash them if they tried."

"They haven't smashed the pirates."

"No, but they'd try. And they cost the pirates a lot in lost ships and personnel. The fact is, running and hiding is easier than standing and building. If everyone knows where you are, then they know where to go to attack you. The Citadel probably sends out ships, to keep an eye on things, but build? Fortify? No. And… I've wondered. I've been on their ships a few times, and their crew is actually fairly small. Since they're all clones, they could just grow more. There's no obvious reason for them to maintain their alliance with the Gordanians. Not if all they get out of it is dumb muscle."

Hm. I don't remember exactly how the Empire was organised well enough from the comics to assume anything, but it is a little strange. I turn to my other companion. "Felicity, how would the Omega Men like to see things run?"

"Each people should have autonomy, master."

"And if one people decide to conquer another? Who's supposed to stop them?"

"When the Citadel is defeated, Euphorix will be able to lower its shield once more. With everyone else fighting each other, they can build up a fleet and take control."

Sinak exhales with amusement. "It will never happen. Whatever Pren and Kalista think, their people have no appetite for the bloodshed that claiming suzerainty would require. Why do you think they built that shield in the first place? No, if the Citadel disappeared, it would mean chaos. You might just as well-." There's a loud buzz from the direction of the doorway to the negotiation chamber, and the first delegate walks out. Sinak rises to her feet. "My employer. See you tomorrow, Little Beast."

back

Vega, Baby 13

next

11th July

04:53 GMT

"How did it go?"

The Queen had already arranged accommodation. Getting here might have proved a little tricky. We're well outside the city and the local government doesn't like spacecraft flying anywhere but the cities. Especially from species with a habit of laying millions of eggs amongst the wildlife of planets they occupy. We could have hired a local vehicle, except she wouldn't fit in most of them. Fortunately, she was willing to tolerate me flying her here.

"As expected." She reaches back awkwardly to remove part of her carapace armour. "Posturing and boasting. I know nothing more about what they are seeking in our treaty now than I did when I arrived. Perhaps less."

I attach constructs to her armour, pulsing the release mechanisms and lifting the pieces away. She starts as the first comes free, then calms herself.

I'm not sure… Exactly what this place used to be. It's built like a combination of fort and warehouse complex, thick walls protecting large open rooms and wide corridors. Given how large the Queen is those are essential for her habitation. Disused arms dump, maybe? The room we're in has been stripped to the walls of whatever used to be here, an area in the centre of the room covered in two layers of what is either a mattress or a crash mat. The only other decoration is a small computer terminal of local manufacture. I deposit the Queen's personal belongings off to one side as she walks over to the mattress pad.

"Same again tomorrow?"

"That is likely." Her head rotates in my direction. "Why do they think that you are 'The Beast'?"

"He's the only other Orange Lantern active around here. Does that help you or hurt you?"

"I believe that two restrained themselves due to your presence in a way that they would not for other bodyguards. In that regard, it helped."

"Glad to be of service."

"Would you be interested in accepting a contract to render these negotiations unnecessary?"

I can guess, but… "'Unnecessary' in what regard?"

"You are capable of slaying all of the pirates here."

I tilt my head slightly to the side. "Perhaps."

"The Spider Guild has been active in this region of space for a considerable amount of time. We have heard the legends of The Beast of Okaara. When you came into our employ, we took the time to review them. And the records of those whom the Beast destroyed."

"I'm really not The Beast."

"I suspect that you are telling the truth. Still, I am curious as to what price you would ask for performing this service to us. After completing our next expansion, we would be able to increase our industrial capacities considerably. A substantial exchange in raw materials or manufactured goods would be possible."

"I have an orange power ring. If I want something I just-" Not a lot on record about Spider Guild cuisine, but I hold out my right hand and create what is essentially an invertebrate salad with.. mould sauce. "-create it." I float it over to her, and she grasps the plate with four forearms. "I noticed that you hadn't eaten anything-" She looks cautiously at it for a moment, until her arm computer pings what I assume is a 'safe' signal. "-since we arrived, and there doesn't seem to be anything here."

"I can go for substantial periods of time without eating. Still, this is appreciated." She holds the plate up to her face, larger upper mandibles reaching out for one of the larger bugs and taking hold of it with surprising delicacy. She crunches the shell, her lower mandibles feeding the parts back into her mouth. Mouth hole. It's surprisingly.. not quite as messy a process as I thought that it would be, though I can see that involving her manipulator appendages wouldn't be practical.

I turn back towards our other guest. "Felicity, what would happen if I removed your brand?"

"I'm not sure, master. I think that I would scream in terror and then flee as fast as I could, but… My head.. feels…"

"Don't worry about it."

"Okay!"

Don't.. worry about it. She did try and kill you and plunge this region into war. "Do you..? What do you think that Primus would do if you went back as you are?"

"Um, they've almost certainly moved location-" They have. I sent some Praexis Demons to their muster point. Scans didn't show anything, but I've grown rather accustomed to that not meaning very much. "-and since I'm clearly mind controlled-" She glances upwards in an attempt to see her own forehead. "-they're probably just going to avoid me."

"Do they know about this location?"

"I don't know, but, probably. Doc and Dark Flea are really good at accessing other people's data networks. And Kalista is a sorceress, so that-."

"One moment." I take two spell eaters out of my armour's pouches. One goes over Felicity's head-

"Thank you! I think it's beautiful."

-and I float the other over to the Queen, who pauses in her eating to look at it with her smaller eyes. "Explain."

"It weakens and consumes spells. My home world has a lot of magic users." She slips the thong over her upper right limb, tying it around her arm-mounted computer. "Only on loan, though. I'll want it back once we're done."

"I understand." Some more bug goes down her gullet.

"How much sleep do you need?"

Her lower mandibles pause. "After a day of little physical activity, a minimum of three hours and forty eight minutes will allow me to continue functioning. Six hours and sixteen minutes will allow me to function at full effectiveness. I suspect that one or other of my primary negotiation opponents will contact me before that."

"Do you want me to screen their calls?"

"No. Do not risk the negotiations. If they see me suffering it may mollify them somewhat."

"Alright." I wave my right hand and send out a wave of Praexis Demons to supplement the security devices I put in place on our way through. "Will you sleep here?"

"It is not ideal, but it will suffice. The two of you will remain here."

"We won't..? Keep you awake?"

"I am used to being attended at all hours. You will not disturb me."

I nod. "Alright. Felicity, what are your preferences regarding sleeping arrangements?"

She smiles cheerfully. "I would be delighted to sleep with you, master."

My skin chills.

Ring, remove all compulsions but suppress her desire to leave this room.

Compliance.

Felicity's eyes widen as she stares at me. Then they flick to the Queen before returning to me. She cringes.

"Oh no."

back

Vega, Baby 14

next

11th July

10:24 GMT

Remaining in my meditation pose, I slowly open my eyes. "Did you get any sleep at all?"

Behind me -but in full view of one of my Praexis Demons- Felicity cringes and pulls her blanket more closely around her.

"Felicity, that's unnecessary."

She remains completely still, eyes locked on me. "What will you do with me?"

"I'll keep you with me until the negotiations are concluded. Then… Take you to my next destination and remove the brand."

She shuffles closer, moving around my left side. "You'll let me go?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I don't want you to die. I've identified you as one of the Omega Men in public. The only reason why the Citadelians haven't demanded that I hand you over is that they think I've permanently enslaved you, and the only reason that the pirates haven't killed you is that they think I will."

"Why.. haven't you? You already made me tell you everything I know."

She's in front of me now, and shrinks back slightly as I open my eyes to look at her. "Killing someone is not so trivial a thing that I would do it over a.. clumsy, ill-considered assassination attempt. Even if that is the way things usually work around here. Your life has inherent value."

She stares, perhaps trying to work out how serious I am. Or perhaps what I'm on. "If you.. believe that, why are you trying to protect the Spider Queen?"

"Because I don't value anarchy for its own sake. And I will want a slightly better plan than blind optimism for something to replace the Citadel before I am prepared to compass the death of a billion people to serve as a distraction." Her muzzle tenses. "Did it not occur to you that if the pirate groups resumed fighting here that the population of the planet would suffer right along with them? If a ship-mounted weapon can burn through another ship's armour it can certainly do the same to a city. Or they might deliberately target a city which contained a significant number of their enemies, or their enemies' business partners." I shake my head. "I realise that it can be.. satisfying to kill the 'bad people', but that doesn't mean that anything good will come of it."

She shuffles slightly, her eyes dipping. "Where will you leave me?"

"At the moment, my next stop is Tamaran."

"You know about Tamaran?"

"It's the main reason why I came to Vega. To see if I could do something about it."

"You.. know what the Citadel did to Tamaran, and you still-?"

"Destroying the Citadel would not bring the Tamaranian dead back." I raise my right hand, generating a construct-globe showing Tamaran. Local data networks are gratifyingly open to power ring intrusion, and I've been using that fact to update myself. "It would not restore their fleet or their industry."

"The Gordanians destroyed their capital city! They abduct and steal-!"

"Yes. I know." In point of fact they didn't destroy Tamarus. They fired on it from orbit and killed thousands of people, but the city is spread over a much larger area and they didn't target the centre. But that's not really the point. The local Gordanians don't have the numbers or the wits to conquer Tamaran outright, so they limit themselves to brutalising and extorting the place. I feel my lips curling as the disgust flows through me. "And I'm probably going to have to do something about them. But when I do, I will have a plan in place as to how to deal with the fallout."

She crouches, sitting back on her haunches. "You mean that. You don't doubt for a moment that you can destroy them."

"Based on what I've seen so far, no, I don't doubt it."

"You could work with us!" I wince inwardly. "If you-."

"Persuade Primus to come up with a workable plan, and I will give it due consideration." Because I imagine that he's been thinking about it for some time and while he knows far more about the whole situation than I do he might have a slight bias that I'm going to need to work around.

"His plans are-."

Boooorp. Boooorp. Booor-.

The Queen is awake and pressing the 'accept' button on the terminal before I can turn around. "I hear you."

"The meeting will begin in seventeen minutes. Be there."

"I will-". The panel deactivates. The Queen blinks once and then extends her legs, raising her abdomen from the mattress. "Orange Lantern, I will need your assistance if I am to be ready."

I rise to my feet, turning as I do so and walking toward her. "Getting your armour on shouldn't take anything like that long." I tag the first part with a filament and lift it-.

"There is something else you must do first. There is a gel amongst my belongings that should be applied to my carapace before the armour is put on."

Huh. I'd thought that was some sort of Spider-food. I put the armour down and use the ring to bring a tub of the stuff over to me. "Just apply an even layer all over?"

"It is most important that it covers my joints. The motor systems in the armour supersede my natural hydraulics, and that can lead to my joints becoming painful."

"Not a problem." I float up over the lip of the mattress and use a construct to pull the lip of the tub. Doesn't really.. smell of anything very much. Two more constructs grab blobs of the stuff and-.

"I would appreciate it if you could apply it by hand. I am… Not comfortable with your glowing objects."

"That… Might push us for time." I land on the mattress just behind her, pulling a blob over to me. I send my arm armour and robes into subspace before putting my hands into it. Hah, if my massage teacher back in Happy Harbour could see me now.

"As long as my legs are covered, it should not prove too unpleasant."

Hm. Alright. No sense in dillydallying. I put my hands on her carapace where her rear left leg joins the-.

There appears to be a.. hole, just behind the second leg to the rear.

"Um. What's.. that..?"

The Queen rotates her head to see what I'm looking at. "One of my spiracles. Those will also require attention. Carefully ensure that the near-interior is lubricated so that my armour's breathing systems can form an interface."

Oh, breathing hole. For a moment there I thought… Well, she is naked. She probably has a reproductive opening somewhere around here, but wherever it is, it's reasonably well concealed by her carapace. I offered to give her a medical scan on the way down, but she turned it down. Obviously that wouldn't stop me, but I think it would be a good idea to kick the habit of scanning everyone prior to my meeting with the Controllers. It would be a bit of a faux pas to scan them, after all.

I work my way down the rear left leg, then start on the second. "I couldn't help but notice that you're physically quite dissimilar to most Spider Guild members."

"My Nest specialises in biological modification. I will not provide further information on this subject."

"Alright." The Spider Guild doesn't have any particular prohibition on any area of research, but advanced biology isn't usually their thing. Second leg done, and I move onto the third. The spiracle looks slightly inflamed… Best be extra careful with it.

"Ah!"

"Sorry! I'll be more gentle. Just hold still."

"A-ah!"

back

Vega, Baby 15

next

11th July

07:13 GMT -6

I sit cross-legged in the mana infusion chamber, contemplating my next step.

"You know… I had been planning to visit the Vega Systems about now."

Ghia'ta nods. "And the Anti-Life has made you change your plans."

"No." Hm. "Sort of. Really, it was more… Jade. I mean, I'm certainly weaker than I was. Going there would be… More of a risk now. But with New God technology, I don't think that even the Psions could stop me. Not if I struck hard and fast."

Ghia'ta smiles at me with an innocence that is both wonderful and painful to behold. "You are staying here because you wish to reignite the flame of love that lies between you?"

I look down at the polished stone floor. "No. No, I'm not."

But isn't that… Tempting.

"Why? Why would you refuse-?"

"Because I'm-." Because I can barely think about her without feeling the Anti-Life stirring. Because I was locked in a mental loop of her rejecting me for nearly two weeks and it was horrific. "Because I'm not making any important decisions that I can avoid until I'm certain that my thoughts and feelings are my own again. That I'm.. whole.. again."

"Oh." She looks away. "I see."

I asked Scott for his best estimate on my recovery, and that turned out to be 'months, if ever'. If it turns out that I've become permanently crippled then I'll consider more extreme methods… But I'm not going to worry about that at the moment. At least I got my left middle finger back.

Of course, if it's going to be months anyway, then there's not much point in me staying in here. Am I..? Hiding out in my safe place..?

Heh. Pathetic.

But what to do instead? I want Lex to find his own level… And I certainly don't want him to see me at anything less than my best, so looming over him is out. Trying to properly mend relations with the League might be a good idea. Pure luck that Captain Adams wasn't here when Darkseid paid me a visit…

I come to my feet, looking inquisitively at Ghia'ta. "Other than keeping tabs on me, what do you want to do with your time here?"

"I wish to learn how Humans love. How they express love and how they feel it."

"Because your aunt made a mess of Carol Ferris?"

She looks.. a little unhappy about the way I phrased that as I walk past her, out of the infusion chamber and in the direction of Sunset's laboratory. "No. That is…" I can hear her slump. "Perhaps if I met her-."

"Oh, that's something you should build up to. Quite aside from the way it messed up her personal life, a lot of what your people did with her were criminal acts. I doubt that she'll be in a forgiving mood."

"Then… Building up to that is what I should do. I.. believe in the wonder of love, and if my knowledge is flawed in some way then that is something which I must address."

I nod, more to myself than her. "I can respect that. Are you interested in pursuing a romantic relationship yourself while you are here? I know any number of people of good character to whom I could introduce you."

"... On… Zamaron… We… Practise.. love as a community-."

"Polyamory is unusual here on Earth, but I imagine that you could find a group if you wanted. Strikes me as a sub-par jumping on point, but if that's what you're used to..."

"I… Meant that we have an intense sororal love, not that we are romantically in love with one another."

"Okay, but you're out of your familial home now. The option's there."

"Perhaps… At some point."

I nod once again, then come to a halt and knock on Sunset's door.

"Just a minute!"

Immediate response, no obvious stutter. Mild improvement. That pleases me. As does the fact that it doesn't take her anything like a minute to open the door. She's dressed.. neatly, no lab coat or work overalls. She blinks up at me. "Oh. Grayven. I wasn't expecting you. Is the..? Infuser working properly?"

I shrug. "So far as I can tell. Thank you, again, for what you managed to do for me."

She shrugs her right shoulder, her right hand briefly taking hold of her upper left arm before falling to her side. "It wasn't… I mean, I had to work with Zatanna to make it."

"And I'll be sure to thank her as well."

She looks away with a slight huff. "No, I mean… I should have been able to do this on my own!" She stares up at me, and she's… She's actually looking quite annoyed with herself. "I come from a whole species of magic users, and I couldn't make a.. stupid.. magic infuser on my own."

"Sunset." I kneel down and put my right hand on her left shoulder. "You had to learn an entirely alien magic system-."

"I got distracted. I was.. having fun just.. playing around. All I've been doing is testing out magic theories when I should have been making things." She turns away, walking back into her laboratory. I wait a moment, then stand and follow her inside. "I wanted to talk things through with Zatanna-."

"Sunset. Have you made a friend?"

She stops dead still. "Ah..? Maybe..?"

"And Grayven beats Celestia one-nil!"

She spins around, fists balled. "How can you not take this seriously! We nearly-. You nearly-!"

"Yeah. And it was pretty horrible. Then life carried on. Darkseid would like nothing better than for everything to be about him. And I am treating him with deadly seriousness. But not every thought I think will be about him, not every action I take will be about him. The antidote to Anti-Life -it turns out- is life." Her fists open, her palms slightly reddened where her fingernails were pressing into her skin. "What are you working on now?"

"Magic disruptors." She walks over to a workbench upon which sits a series of rune-inscribed pieces of metal. "With everything I've learned about soul structures and.. what I was studying before about how Pony magics combine in Alicorns, I should be able to make a weapon that pulls it all apart. Or at least makes it so a person can't use magic. I'm just… Having trouble making it efficient enough."

Hush tube.

By your command.

The portal appears next to Sunset, the far terminus being just outside Shadowcrest.

"Shall we?" Sunset nods, picking up a bundle of papers and her tablet before striding through. "Ghia'ta, you may find this instructive."

"In what way?"

"I think that speaking to Zatanna's father Giovanni might further your understanding of love."

She smiles hopefully. "Is he in love?"

I consider for a moment. "Probably. He's a widower. His wife died horribly about fourteen years ago, and I'm given to understand that he has shown no interest in other women since then. He was also willing to spend the rest of his life locked in a dark void to save his daughter from that fate. He loves, but I'm not sure that he's benefited much from it."

"I.. am.. not sure that is what I came here to learn."

I turn my head her way. "As I know full well, love isn't just good feelings. And no complete understanding can be had without also understanding the rest." I look away from her and start walking towards the portal. "But the choice is yours. Uncomfortable wisdom or blissful ignorance."

I smile slightly as I hear her start after me.

back

Vega, Baby 16

next

11th July

13:13 GMT

"…thought you said it was a spiracle!"

Representatives of fifteen different armed groups burst out laughing, a Gordanian making a sort of arm-curling gesture in my direction that I instruct the rings not to translate. Amusing as the other Gordanians appear to find it. Uncomfortable as I'm feeling right now, I suppose I should be grateful that Felicity has perked up a little.

No. Not working. New policy is that unless I have a reasonable suspicion that the subject has power ring manipulation technology on them, they're getting a thorough medical scanning. Third hole back? Not a spiracle.

A large blue hand thumps onto my left shoulder as Sinak leans towards me, a huge grin on her face. "So! Giant spiders!"

"She said they were sp-."

"Now I feel less bad about you ignoring my advances! Bwahahaha!"

I raise my eyebrows. "You were..? Ugh." I look down, shaking my head. "I'm sorry, I completely missed it. I don't have good records on Okaaran body language."

"I know I've only got two legs, but that's hahaha!"

I lift her hand off my shoulder as she slumps over. "It's not that funny."

Or maybe it is? Most of these guys are going to be stuck in the same room I am and expected to remain on constant alert in case one of the other factions tries something. The Queen was supposed to be the weakest, then she apparently manages to hire The Beast of Okaara. Sexual impropriety on my part probably makes me seem a lot less scary.

How would the male Spiders even..? I mean, if she's standing up it's above their heads, and if she's lying down then it isn't really accessible…

Why is that in my head?!

"Giant Spider fetishist, huh?"

I look around, seeing a well built, gold-skinned woman with short pink hair sticking directly up from her head. "It was a misunderstanding."

She narrows her eyes, looking at me askance. "I don't think you can misunderstand sticking your hands in someone's-."

"She became slightly incoherent and I thought she was.. injured.. or something."

"You know…" She-. Oh, please don't tell me she's a giant Spider fetishist fetishist. That's a good deal more than I'm prepared to deal with at the mom-. "I think that might interest my boss."

Not… Much better. "Aaaand which one is your boss?"

Her eyebrows raise. Her facial expressions are fairly Human, considering how.. odd her biology is. The gold colour of her skin appears to be.. evolved to reflect energy weapons. It's even throwing off the ring slightly, and if its calculations are correct then she's far stronger than a Human of equivalent mass would be. I don't think she's Kryptonian-strong, but she might well be Kryptonian-tough.

"How many gold-skinned gang leaders are there in there?"

"One, but I didn't want to assume that you were together just because you're the same species."

"We are, and she likes weird and strong. Mini-Beast with a Spider fetish-."

"I don't have a-!" Breathe. "I don't have a Spider fetish."

"Uhuh. I also spotted that you had a Karnan slave and-" She sniffs in Felicity's direction. "-I can't smell you on her. Regular women not work for you? Because the boss-."

"Are you getting paid for this?"

"What, soliciting for my boss? No, but our life's usually easier if she's getting some."

"Being here. Standing outside the negotiating room, looking... Shiny."

"Are you?"

"I'm paid by the job, not by the hour. And if I remember correctly, aren't pirates paid a share..?"

She shrugs. "Yeah?"

"So you're not getting paid to stand around. This is actually costing you money, because while you're stuck here you're not out pillaging. Right?" She looks hesitant to confirm it. "Pay structures aren't exactly secure information. I'm not asking you to betray your employer, I'm just asking… Is this where you want to be right now?"

She shrugs again. "I guess not. What's it to you?"

"Well…" I turn to the now slightly more sombre audience. "Is anyone..? Here… Getting paid by the hour?"

Sinak nods. "I am, but that's because I'm a mercenary. I'm not crew."

"Okay." I nod. "Anyone else?"

A few glance at one another, but the general response appears to be 'no'.

"Right. Right. You couldn't allow the Spiders to claim a new world, but the only way to actually turn a profit from all the fighting you've already done is if they can be compelled to pay reparations. Even ignoring the threat of the rest of the Guild, destroying the Nest just makes profiting harder, right? And that's what this is ultimately all about. Making money."

A few grunts of agreement. Most of the audience is just watching me. But not in a particularly hostile way. They're waiting to see where I'm taking this.

"I'm getting paid by the job. I get exactly the same whether we wrap this up today or in five years, so… I'd rather have it done today. Plus, the chance of someone losing their temper and doing something unfortunate only increases the longer this goes on. Right?"

A couple more grunts.

"Now, since I'm pretty sure that the Queen will be going back to her Nest after this and.. not having any further use for me."

"Aw, already!"

I make a point of not looking at the Dredfahlian woman who shouted that. "So I just want to get this resolved as fast as possible. And it occurs to me that getting an accurate account of what everyone put in and lost during the fighting would be a good place to start. Now, that is secure information. But, I suspect that most of you have a rough idea what your people lost, and some of you-" I make momentary eye contact with the Coluan woman, who was pointedly avoiding the huddle laughing at my erotic exploits. Purple and green uniform, so she probably works for Commodore Amalak. "-know more than the others. Might I not prevail upon you to share this information in confidence with a disinterested third party? Our superiors could agree a split in principle without knowing exactly what they'd get out of it, I could punch in the numbers, and we could be on our way in a couple of days."

No one looks enthusiastic. I'm not surprised, it must sound dodgy as anything.

"Or perhaps you would trust that information to my lovely assistant?" I gesture to Felicity with my right hand. "As an Omega Man she's already ideologically in favour of us all killing each other, and that's a fairly good sign that she doesn't favour any one group over another."

That gets her a few less than friendly looks, though no one moves immediately.

"Well, think it over. I'm sure that your employers are well aware-."

The Coluan woman's eyes widen. "No you fools, that's not a genuine-!"

Attack alert-!

The southern wall explodes in brilliant blue fire!

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Vega, Baby 17

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11th July

13:17 GMT

Barrier up!

The two tables closest to the wall -and their occupants- are vaporised immediately as the force field protecting this building weakens and leaks plasma. Null shields are energy cheap and don't fail when they get overloaded, but the down side is that they can be overpowered by comparatively weaker weapons. The flickering flames of the overflow plasma slow and still as the rings accelerate my reactions, then dim as my construct barrier completes and filters the brilliant light.

What's happening?

All around me pirates are crouching and drawing weapons. Flickering lights around a few indicate that they're also activating personal shields, but those seem less common. The two gold women who are here from -and this must be a best guess translation- Estrogina's party are grinning, having started to run directly towards the explosion. Quick calculation… Yes, they should be able to take it, though they might well not be able to take whatever else is waiting outside. The Citadelians on guard duty… There's unusual activity in their cranial implants. Communicating with their ship? It's right overhead, so they probably already know who the attacker is. If it's the Omega Men, I suspect that this neighbourhood is about to be short a few buildings. I doubt that they'll hold fire for the benefit of a client world when the one source of open rebellion against their rule comes into the open.

No, that doesn't sound right. If the Omega Men were stupid, they'd have attacked me last night. Did one of the many local belligerent parties lose their temper? If so, they won't exist for much longer as a party. The Citadelians take direct military challenges to their authority very seriously. And while there was a sort-of exclusion zone for heavy weapon systems around the negotiation centre, just about every group had rapid response teams just outside that. Since they're pirates, I don't expect perfect response times, but people are going to be calling in help immediately and it will only be matter of minutes before help starts to arrive.

What's wrong with this picture?

This feels stupid. Attacking one party could be reasonable… By local standards. But attacking everyone like this -including myself and the Queen- is a perfect way to unify everyone against the people doing it. Killing all of us might be the Omega Men's goal-. No, they've remained at large due to being a small group. There's no way they can have enough force to fight everyone. And the Citadelian ship is going to be activating its teleport jammers at once. If they were out there, they'd have no way to escape. It can't be them-. It can't directly be them. Someone else? A false flag operation? Feels convoluted. And while none of the local species are telepathic, the Citadel does have… Machines which can destructively read a person's brain. Something like this, if a party at the negotiations set up an attack, they would get found out.

And frankly I don't think any of them would bother with something like that.

Laser pulses strike my construct barrier in a dozen places. With the null field still functional they're not powerful enough to guarantee one kill per shot but they would disable. Fortunately, my construct barrier can take them for a little whi-.

Mental pathway damage limit reached. Acceleration discontinued.

The room explodes into motion. The plasma roars across the room, slamming into my barrier and washing expandthebarrierexpandthebarrier! And… What works against plasma..? Refractor, plasma refractor, that was it! A new construct forms and the plasma ball blasts upwards, incinerating a good chunk of the roof as it goes. It visibly weakens again as it passes through the null zone a second time, the force holding it together collapsing and the remaining material dispersing into the air.

Praexis Demons go!

"Who the [to eat discarded scales] did that!?"

Ring, scan!

"Call in backup! Get the boss!"

And where's Felicit-?

"Ah, shit."

The.. shape of the pulse of yellow grabs my attention. Sort of a 'feel-the-fear-and-do-it-anyway' thing.

"Vran Gozzi to all operatives. Alpha-override, disregard last command. Confirm command at once."

A Dredfahlian in purple and green takes aim at a Gordanian standing just in front of him and shoots, a thin purple ray boring through his head. A Rannian in similar clothing draws a faintly glowing knife blade and stabs at-.

My construct shield, which blocks the strike that would have otherwise struck an Aellan. Rannians aren't easily susceptible to.. reasonably-safe stunning, so I opt to form chains around her arms and legs and pull her to the floor.

"Whaoughff!"

Dredfahlians regenerate pretty well, but they're not much harder to stun than Humans. Just as long as you maintain the stun-effect. He collapses just as the rest of the purple and green crew throw themselves at the nearest enemy.

FOR GOODNESS SAKE!

Felicity stares at a… A Voorlian in purple and green who is swinging his sidearm around in an arc which just happens to include her. Ring, is transition being blocked?

Negative.

A flicker of orange and she's by my side and covered in construct armour.

Shots ring out, hum out, fizz and zap out, fists, feet and other melee implements fly. What just..? The Commodore doesn't get anything out of wrecking this. Does he? Given that he's here and the Citadelian warship is right overhead-.

My scan of the exterior shows some sort of electrical discharge crackling over the warship's hull as ships I registered as being part of the Commodore's fleet begin what looks worryingly like an attack run. Closer at hand, the Commodore's rapid response units appears to have been quickest off the mark. Preaxis Demons, intercept. Everyone else?

Get down.

Construct chains shoot up from the floor, latch onto everyone and tug them to the ground. One man with a force field stares around in bemusement for a moment as my chains slide off him, then I shoot him with a crumbler round and he joins the rest. Shouts of rage, pain and confusion come from all parts of the pirate people pile. I ignore them, focusing on picking out everyone in purple and green and lifting them towards the hole in the wall. Everyone else gets shoved back a little, then released.

Of the twelve of them who were in the room at the start, ten are still alive. Including the Coluan woman. I float out in front of her as the rest of the gang pull themselves up and raise their weapons. Most get pointed at the purple and greens, but more than a few get aimed at me-.

A Dredfahlian takes a step towards Felicity. I don't look around as I use an orange energy beam to send him flying into the back wall.

The Coluan woman in front of me is frustrated, but there isn't much red showing. She's mostly green. Right now Colu and most of its citizens are under the most unkind domination of the Computer Tyrants. Her being here is incongruous in itself.

"Are you in charge?"

"No. Whoever just hacked our communication network and sent an attack-order is. I am no longer able to contact our forces."

"You're in charge of nothing, foo-!"

The Gordanian joins the Dredfahlian against the back wall.

"Do you have a protocol for standing your forces down from this point? If you do not, I may have to kill them all."

Two well-fed Praexis Demons fall from my construct armour, orientate themselves and then fly back towards the purple and green reinforcements. They're.. already eating them. Of course they are, of course-. Praexis Demons, consume equipment only.

"No. At this point, the protocol requires that the Commodore rescind the order himself."

"Well he can hardly have missed-."

The door to the meeting area flies off its hinges, the bloody and semi-conscious Commodore Amalak landing on the floor just outside as the grinning Estrogina stalks through after him. "Knew he was up to something. Girls? Crack some skulls!"

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Vega, Baby 18

next

11th July

13:20 GMT

I raise my hands as the crowd starts backing away from the gold women falling in beside their boss. "Ms.. Estrogina, this is the result of a misco-"

The Coluan woman behind me inhales sharply. "You can't talk her down! She's a berserker!"

"-communication, which we're-."

"Hraah!" One of Estrogina's henchwomen -Muliebria, the blue haired one I spoke to yesterday- leaps at me. Gosh darn super strength! I generate a construct claw to catch her in the air and-. It evaporates as it touches her skin. Huh? I yank myself to the side as she slams into the ground where I was standing. Okay, not construct-. Weapons fire and.. the squelches of super strength pulverising flesh. Screams follow almost immediately.

Not constructs. I'm out of Muliebria's line of sight, but the members of Amalak's crew I've got bound in construct chains aren't. Muliebria grins at the Coluan woman, then pulls back her right fist-.

And spasms uncontrollably as my sonic cannon constructs remind her that there's no such thing as invulnerability.

"Ahduhduhduhduhd…!"

Okay, very quick test. Brand? No. Assimilate? No. Filament? No.

Gah! How is there a species that's just immune to constructs?!

Then Muliebria twists, shoving her left hand through the right sonic cannon construct. "Not bad, Spider-Man. But we-" I form another cannon and pull them out of her arms' reach. She takes a staggering step. "-can… Take…"

Come on, where can I put the prisoners? Other side of the road, on the top of the building. Not.. safe, but safer than being in a confined environment with super strength brawlers. My captives yelp as they go flying backward as Muliebria straightens up under the assault of-. That's a lot of sonic energy.

She turns to fully face me as pirates flee the golden women. "Come on then, Little Beast. Show me-."

Railguns form, tungsten slamming into her eyes a fraction of a second later. She falls back a half-step, then steadies herself. Turn up the power… Okay, what's happening to the rounds? They're flattening as they hit, most of the force bleeding off somehow… It's not a question of strength, she's nothing like heavy enough to generate the friction she'd need to stay upright under this sort of attack. Her toughness works by force nullification, then? Or part of-.

She ducks and then leaps again. A steel cord from subspace wraps around her legs from behind and pulls her up short, the tips of the fingers of her right hand brushing lightly against my construct armour… Which remains solid. Whatever these gold women do, they're not straight up disrupting my constructs…

"Geh." She hits the floor, glares at me for a moment, then bends to pull the cord from her legs. No. As Amalak's crew land on the far roof I connect the rope to a solid orange line and tug her upwards into the air. Five hundred metres, a kilometre, two… Looks like she can't fly, but… She's not pulling at the cord any longer. She should be able to survive the landing. Or.. maybe I've misjudged..? No, that doesn't matter. I turn around. I need to-.

Estrogina tilts her head slightly to the left, looking disappointed. "A rope? Lame." She cracks her knuckles. "Still, looks like you're the best there is around here…"

The remains of two dozen or so pirates litter the floor, some still living and others decidedly not. Amalak himself..? Not moving, though his eyes are open and he's tracking both myself and Estrogina. I doubt that he's going to get up until the coast is clear.

"Miss Estrogina-"

"Hah!"

"-this really isn't necessary." Ring, where are-? The Queen's still in the negotiation chamber, crouched down with her armour's force fields turned up as far as they can go. One of Estrogina's people is sitting on her, looking bored. Felicity joined the flow of pirates outside and is taking cover as best she can, trying to get away from the active combat zones that appear to have sprung up just about everywhere.

Ah, heck. One of the bodies on the ground is a Citadelian.

"I know it's not necessary." She shrugs, grinning. "But it's fun! Fighting the Spiders was all about-" She glums, rolling her eyes and waving her hands to the side. "-ship-fighting. I only got to do one boarding action the whole war! And now they're all saying I can't attack the Nest World."

"This… Isn't you, is it? You didn't-?"

"What? Con Amalak's crew into attacking? How the heck would I do that? He's got all kinds of… Protocols, and stuff." Without turning around she points her left arm at him. "And don't think I haven't seen you watching." She shrugs again. "Kinda thought he'd be a harder fight. Eh."

"You do realise that making this collapse will probably result in the Spiders coming in with a fleet and all of your allies fighting each other?"

"I know." She beams. "Isn't it great? I was planning a run on the Beast, and now I get a great warm-up-."

"Which could result in the destruction of all the ships you'd need to actually get to Okaara."

"What?" She shrugs again. "We're not going to destroy everything. And the fighting's got to move away eventually. I only bothered coming here 'cause I knew a fight was going to break out somehow. And now I get to fight you."

"I don't really want-."

"Or Ovula rips your Queen's head off."

…

"Can I think about-?"

She moves forward, not a leap like her subordinate but a light-footed dash in my direction. Right! I tra-. Felicity's taking fire, can't transition or her armour will fail. I dodge, loading crumbler rounds as I go. Estrogina's quick on her feet, but it's nothing sparring with Kon and Diana hasn't prepared me for. Crumblers are kind of-

"Graaaahh!"

-all or nothing and I don't actually want to kill her yet. Instead, I form a plasma thrower construct and shoot her in the face. The flash of green howls through the air and.. splashes off her skin. All it achieves -dodge- is mildly ruffling her hair.

… Fine. But with precision. I target her left leg and fire at low power. She sidesteps, my round disintegrating a hemisphere out of the floor. A volley of three shots follows as she twists, trying to keep out of my line of fire. One round hits her in the abdomen-

"Ah!"

-destroying a chunk of her clothing and causing the gold skin beneath to tarnish slightly. She stops, looking down at her torso in disbelief.

Then she looks up, grinning even more. "Ovula! If he doesn't fight me hand to hand, kill the Queen!"

"Right!"

I'm not sure how useful keeping the Queen alive actually is. I'm not sure that I can do anything to stop the fighting spreading. But if I'm doing this, I should commit fully. I've got the Sword of the Fallen in a sheath on the outside of my armour but I'm not sure that would work here. Instead, I drop my construct armour, turn on my kinetic shield and take an x-ionised short sword out of subspace.

"This is pointless."

"You should try to enjoy-" I fire another crumbler volley as I land, the front of her clothing disintegrating and the back part falling off. "-life." She grins, gritting her teeth as most of the rest of her golden skin mottles.

"I don't enjoy being stupid." I land. "Are we doing this?"

She lunges, both hands outstretched!

back

Vega, Baby 19

next

11th July

13:24 GMT

When I first made power armour, it moved exactly as I assumed that it would. Clunky. Awkward. Oh, strong, sure, but the antithesis of agility.

That was before the armour's systems had time to adapt to how I move. These days? Things are a little different.

I sidestep, slashing out with the x-ionised sword. It cuts through Estrogina just under the ribs on her left side, droplets of golden brown… Blood..? Running freely from the wound. Two dancing steps and I've turned before her feet are back on the ground, thumping my right leg down and pushing off. My right fist hits her directly in her left ear and.. whatever it is that let Muliebria shrug off my hits doesn't seem to be active. She tumbles away from me, bouncing shoulder first on the floor before slamming onto her back and sliding across the ground until she hits a body.

"Are you finished?"

She pulls herself up into a sitting position, her right middle and index fingers touching her wounded side. She looks at the blood for a moment… Then she licks her fingers, grinning at me.

"Do it again."

Oh, for goodness… "Look, you do realise that the Citadelians are going to-."

She moves, grabbing the body from behind her as she comes up to a crouch and throwing it at me. I catch the poor bastard with a construct hand and shove him aside as she dances forwards. Okay, I'm running out of ideas here. I could cold gun her, pour some sort of quick-setting gel down her throat, stab her a whole lot more… Killing her isn't the difficulty here. She's one of the three who absolutely have to agree with any settlement reached here, and she doesn't seem at all bothered by what's going-.

Ring, is Amalak wearing a communication device?

Confirmed.

Anything you feel like contributing, Commodore?

Keep me alive and I will reward you well.

That-. He's got a point there. I don't need to fight her, I just need to keep the Queen and him alive. That, or throw up my hands, bond with the Ophidian and forcibly disarm all participants myself.

And then probably fight Larfleeze immediately.

No.

First, disengage. Estrogina appears to have been planning to charge me while her position was obscured by the body. That option blown, she advances more slowly, fists balled and feet light. A feint from her left prompts me to shift to the side, but I don't counter. No sense giving her something to grab onto. Now… She's naked, her musculature struggling to support the heft of her breasts without the assistance of clothing. She clearly doesn't have any sort of communication gear… Ovula -and seriously, who named these ladies?- will only know that she's supposed to kill the Queen if she hears a verbal command. Or if Estrogina runs -step, turn the punch aside without touching her hand, lean back- into the negotiation room.

Right. Ring, null field. Don't let any vibrations from her get back to Ovula.

Compliance.

Mimic Estrogina's voice.

Compliance.

Estrogina's strikes are getting faster. She's actually trying to lure my arms out of position to block her strikes. But… As far as I can tell, she's not a particularly technically skilled fighter. Probably used to just being tougher than-. I misstep, a severed hand sliding slightly under my left boot. For a second my balance is off. And she uses the opportunity to grab at my right arm while I can't pull it away without fully overbalancing. I fly back instead-

"Ovula! Pull off one of her legs!"

-and land two metres away. Ring, tell Ovula: 'Forget the Queen, go have some fun.'

Compliance. Ovula has replied 'you got it, boss'.

"I just wanted a fight, and if you're not-."

"You wanted a punching bag. When was the last time you fought someone who could actually threaten you?"

She flashes me a savage grin. "You can try stabbing me again-"

"Thank you."

"-if you gahh-!"

X-ionised stiletto blades appear from subspace and stab into her, legs, feet and lungs. Should slow her down somewhat. I blink, the ring showing me that Ovula has left by the far side exit and that Felicity has found somewhere to hide that appears reasonably safe. I grab Amalak with a filament and yank him over to me before transitioning us both into the meeting room. Any medical record on him?

Species listed as 'extinct'. Formerly resident in Space Sector Two Eight One Three.

Huh, small universe. I shoot the Queen's force field with a crumbler round before tagging her with a filament and transitioning us both to the space port.

"Biological data not found. However, the subject's body does not resist scans. Data can be extrapolated with a high degree of accuracy."

He isn't one of mine, but I'm invested in this situation now and him being more or less in one piece is something that leads to the end I want.

Basic repairs.

Orange light strobes over him, his cuts and bruises disappearing. Compliance.

"Commodore, your majesty, we have a slight-" An armed flying car, probably an upgraded civilian vehicle, slams hard into the rockcrete about thirty metres from our position. Since it doesn't use any sort of fuel that could explode it remains in one piece, but its battery breaches and there's a sudden flash as the air around it momentarily electrifies. The four individuals inside are… Fried. "-problem."

"Vran, progress report." Amalak's eyes unfocus slightly as the Queen gets to her feet. "Naturally. Amalak to all operatives, abandon attack and apply fallback plan three." He glances at me. "No, not necessary. You? Yes." I get his full attention. "Lantern, our communications were accessed by the Omega Men. They.. somehow spoofed my authentication. I've given the retreat order, but-" He looks up at the chaotic gunfire crossing the skies around us. "-I fear that will be inadequate to salvage the situation."

I look up towards the Citadelian capital ship. "How long until the Citadelians get their big guns functional again?"

"Uncertain. Their skills at in-field repairs is poor, but if there are Psions on board… Any time now."

"My thoughts are, get you and Jarko to agree a truce and tell the Citadel it was Estrogina and the Omega Men."

He nods. "That may work. If we have one party or the other to hand over. Estrogina is not easy to contain."

"Yes, I-. Excuse me." I transition upwards, grab the steel cord attached to Muliebria's leg just before she can crash into a building and then transition-.

Unable to comply.

Fly back towards the space port at full speed. How are they this resistant to power ring technology? And Felicity, do I need to grab-? The Coluan woman and her surviving retinue appear to be taking her to some sort of safe house. Safe… For now, though I imagine that Amalak will hand her over to the Citadelians if we don't find some other white lamb.

I hope me fighting comic book heroes isn't about to become a theme.

Ring, find me Jarko.

Subject found.

…

Oh drat.

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Vega, Baby 20

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11th July

13:41 GMT

I smile politely at the construct screen. "Mister Jarko, thank you for taking my call."

He waves it off. "No trouble at all, dear boy. From the sounds of things you were behaving as the very font of reason. Such a shame that certain people didn't feel like following your example."

"Mister Jarko, you ordered your people to shoot everyone not allied to you."

"Well, naturally." He nods. "I felt that I should provide clear direction and leadership."

I grit my teeth. Just a little. "Mister Jarko… You appear to be fleeing the system."

He favours me with a small smile from the command throne of his flagship. "Yes, I rather think that I am. One of my enemies makes an alliance with The Beast of Okaara-"

"I'm not The Beast."

"-and another uses it as an opportunity for an ambush? A third sends her ladies running rampant for a bit of a jolly? I've quite had my fill of this entirely misnamed 'peace conference', thank you so very much. I'll.. set something up with anyone who's still alive in a day or so."

Ring, system map?

Compliance.

"One of the Citadel fleets is going after you. With an interdiction field. My calculations suggest that you won't be able to get far enough away to escape them."

He fans out his hands. "But I don't need to. If I split my fleet, there's no way for them to intercept every ship before we reach the nominal edge of the Vega Systems. The Green Man doesn't care for me very much… But he positively loathes the Citadel. I rather doubt that they'll risk it. Particularly if…" His smile broadens. "Someone happened to tip him off..?"

Ring, current location of-. Ah.

I nod, then swirl my left hand in a circle and generate a construct image of his fleet just above it. "True. However…"

Ring, mark Mister Jarko's ship.

Compliance.

"If someone told the Citadelians exactly which ship you were on… Things might work out a little differently."

His smile freezes. "Stand by."

His connection ends, leaving me with a glowing orange rectangle. I turn left, making momentary eye contact with Commodore Amalak. "Well?"

"He'll check your calculations, bellow once or twice, then get back in touch. One minute forty three seconds at most." He returns to studying Muliebria's floating form. "Where did you get the technology to do this?"

Several species use forms of locomotion suspension on problematic prisoners, but those usually have… Limits. I drew upon their work and added multiple kinetic barriers to the suspension unit. Muliebria has been punching and kicking it pretty much continuously since I stopped juggling her and shoved her inside and it's holding out just fine.

"Here and there."

He nods, apparently not concerned by my non-answer. "And you believe that you can get Estrogina inside one?"

"Should be able to. Of course, if there is any information you can give me about her abilities that would make it a more certain thing..?"

He nods. "I don't know as much about her as I would like to. I first became aware of her after she captured one of my cargo transports, forced it to divert into Jarko's territory and then performed a reverse-boarding on the ships he sent to intercept it. She and her fellow golden women demonstrated a variety of unusual physical abilities. The rest of her people are hangers on and would-be suitors. Khundians, for the most part. I had a couple of my people infiltrate one of her after-action parties to see what they could find out. They didn't find out much, but according to them, they call themselves 'Zamaron Pirates'."

"Za-?" I frown. "They're not Zamarons. Zamarons look like-" I generate a construct image of one. "-that. And Zamaron is a very long way from here."

"I wasn't able to confirm it, but given their behaviour I doubt they were intentionally lying. Perhaps there's more than one place called-?"

My screen construct comes back to life, a decidedly less jovial Mister Jarko looking down at us. "What do you want?"

"A workable, long-lasting peace settlement."

"Oh yes. I'm sure that when the Citadelians shoot us all dead things will be very peaceful. Why not just take your lover-Spider and go?"

"Because then the Spider Guild will try expanding again. Do you want that?"

"No, but they're not paying me to."

"They're not paying me to, either. I'm just here to protect the Queen at this meeting. And the Guild isn't usually eager to hire outside help."

"A commendably mercenary attitude, but I don't understand what you think I can do about it."

"Simple." Commodore Amalak steps forward. "The Omega Men sent an attack command to my troops, but my techs caught on too fast for them to remove their traces. We can prove that's what happened."

"And Estrogina? I seem to recall her remonstrating with you rather viciously when I teleported out."

"If we can't find the Omega Men, I'll hand her over to the Citadelians as the responsible party."

Jarko claps, his eyes lighting up. "O-ho! That is good! I'm sure that the Psions would be just delighted to get their claws on a creature such as her!" The screen flickers, and he's in a slightly different place when it stabilises. "I'm coming back. I have to take a slightly circuitous route to avoid hostile ships…" He leans forward. "And if you don't have her in custody when I get back… I'll shoot you dead from orbit and fly on by. I'm sure the Citadel will be only too happy to blame the Spiders and not their sole remaining significant business partner."

I nod. "Thank you, Mister Jarko. We'll see you shortly."

"Toodle-oo."

The screen goes dead, and I dismiss the construct.

"Right. I'd best go and collect her." I look the Queen's ship over. With shields active it makes a reasonable bunker, and most of the fighting is elsewhere… "Are you going to be alright here?"

"My personal barrier has recharged and I'll be under the cover of the space port's defences. I should be. But would it not be easier to hand over your Karnan slave to the Citadel? She is a member of the Omega Men."

"She's been with the Omega Men for less than a local year, before which she was an exotic dancer. She's not exactly Primus. They haven't even placed an individual bounty on her yet."

"If she knows where they are-."

"She doesn't. I asked, and she can't lie to me unless I allow her to. So unless you've got a lead on the rest of the Omega Men..?"

"Why can't you find them?"

"There are ways to shield a person from power ring scans. They appear to be using one. I could certainly find them eventually… Do you want to risk the wait?"

"Very well." He nods at me. "On your way."

Okay, so what's Felicity up t-?

"Before I do that, would you mind making sure your people know I'm friendly? I should probably help extract them first. In the name of continued cooperation."

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Vega, Baby 21

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11th July

13:46 GMT

"Sorry about this."

The second Citadelian slumps to the ground, unconscious, while fire from… A group of Gordanian clansmen steadily abrades my construct barrier. I might have Amalak's agreement in principle that it isn't worth handing Felicity over, but taking the risk doesn't seem at all sensible. Estrogina is -naturally- hard to scan for, so I had a Praexis Demon divert from eating the power cell of a field artillery piece to the conference centre. She's cautiously pulled the knives out and bound her wounds, but she doesn't seem inclined to go anywhere. If she is still capable of doing so.

I thrust my barrier forwards, causing the Gordanians to duck for cover as I establish a new barrier just behind it. Ring scan shows Ms Gozzi's team inside the fortified structure we're fighting outside and I don't want them to decide to kill anyone else. Talking the Citadel fleet down will be hard enough without deaths that we can't semi-legitimately blame on the Omega Men. Gordanians are quite a bit more resilient than Humans and wear decent armour, but it still leaves parts of their bodies unprotected and they aren't 'power ring protected' tough.

Filaments flash out, grab and subspace their guns -I'll give those back once things are settled- and stab into their necks just under their jaws. Stunned, all six of them fall to the ground. I expand my constructs, grabbing them and pulling them out of sight of the street. Next, I chain their ankles and wrists and chain the chains together. A fleeting moment of… Disappointment? Gordanians aren't super strong. They're roughly Kaldur-strong, but they aren't going to shatter titanium chains.

Am I really disappointed by that? No… It's more that I can contain super strong people but forcing a civilised resolution to a knotty negotiation is something I haven't trained for a year to achieve.

Sighing faintly, I knock on the door to the fortified structure. "Ahoy the house. I need to put these gentlemen somewhere safe and to retrieve my-" I only hesitate for a moment. "-slave."

Communication laser detected. Decoding.

"Submit verification code."

"Certainly, Ms Gozzi." Ring, do it.

Code transmitted.

"Verified. You better have a good reason for killing a Citadelian."

"Not dead, just stunned. Would you mind hurrying up? We've only got-."

The recessed entranceway opens inwards, an apparently normal wall with a door in the middle revealed to be a disguise for a seriously armoured mechanism. A Dredfahlian woman and an Aellan man in Amalak's uniform wait just inside, plasma carbines pointed past me at the empty street beyond. The woman switches her gun to one hand and then pulls out a small personal medical scanner and points it at the Citadelian. There's a quiet chime and she nods, returning the scanner to its holster.

"Get them inside, right now."

Down the corridor there's a empty room to the right. Ring, anything blocking transitioning?

No.

A series of orange flickers marks the Gordanians' disappearance and reappearance as I stride into the opening. "Where are you keeping Felicity?"

I know full well, but there are sensor-dampening materials in the armour that Amalak's people somehow snuck in here before the conference started. Probably long before, actually; if he does business here on a regular basis it would make sense to have hidey holes set up just in case.

The Aellan steps aside as I come in. "First on the left."

I nod and smile underneath my helmet. "Thank you." Obviously, he can't see the smile. I wonder if making the helmet expressive would..? No.

I walk along the corridor, turning into the room indicated. The rest of Ms Gozzi's group are in here, as is the woman herself. And Felicity, who looks up from next to her and waves at me. Ms Gozzi appears to be using a small workstation to check their communications gear. "…that we add to the bounty on Dark Flea. The intrusion methods required to access our equipment would be advanced enough to breach anything it would be practical to roll out across the organisation."

"Do you know why they targeted you?"

"Theories, but no proof." She doesn't look up as she continues playing a molecular mapper over the device. "Someone familiar with how we operate might deduce that we were the group most likely to have a detailed contingency attack plan. But if killing us and alienating us from one another was the aim, subverting the Citadelian communication network would have made more sense."

Communicator..? A filament darts out, takes the neck-mounted device from their guest and deposits it on the table next to her. "Tell you anything?"

This time she does glance at me for a moment, before taking a data probe from her tool rack and holding it against the communicator. Where would she..? Ah, a machine/mind interface. The fact that Coluans can handle those is part of how the Computer Tyrants are able to keep control. If she got away, it's a little surprising that she is still willing to use it. Mm, maybe Coluans -or at least her in particular- are just that rational.

"They did. There's an apparently authentic order in the system, telling them to kill the faction leaders."

"Are you saying they… Exercised their judgement, and chose not to?"

"I could believe they might refuse through cowardice, but… This order was sent to the entire battle group. The fleet commander at least should have followed it."

Would they have refused an order because it was immoral or stupid? Every record I have on the Citadel says 'no'. Were they bribed..? What, all of them? No. Jarko wouldn't have fled if he'd been paying them not to go after him. Amalak wouldn't have been showing that quite real and well controlled yellow… The Queen? Possible…

Worry about it later. "Felicity, with me, if you please."

She rises elegantly to her feet. "Certainly, master." She.. flounces over to me-. What's going on there? No, never mind. A filament tags her and refits one of my earlier armour variants to her size. She squeaks slightly as it appears around her. Right, reasonably protected. Estrogina still where I left her?

Confirmed.

The scenery flickers and we both appear in the air over the conference centre. I take a quick scan to make sure that we're not about to be shot by anything too heavy… No, it looks like the fighting has moved away… And.. those are Thanagarian mercenaries, herding the belligerent parties away from the residential area. Of course, the smaller groups haven't been involved in the post-fight negotiations and don't have the resources to set up safe houses…

Have to broadcast something… Later, later. I begin taking material out of subspace to assemble a new force cage.

"Mpff." Felicity tries speaking without triggering the armour's communication system. Ring, remote activate. "How do-?" The basic frame takes shape… I've got enough titanium. Something exotic would be better, but I don't want to hand what little orichalcum I have over to the Citadel. And once she's out of my hands I can pretty much stop caring. "Master, what are you making?"

"A cage for Estrogina. The Citadel are going to want someone to blame for this mess. The Omega Men would be best, but I don't know where they are and… I'm going to assume that you'd rather-" I start adding kinetic absorption units. The minimum number for it to function is sixteen. Twice that is safer. "-I didn't hunt them down."

She hesitates for a moment, a flare of fear forming at the idea. "No, master."

"So we can blame them, but they're going to want to take custody of someone and Estrogina escalated things into this mess. Bit of a lucky stroke for Amalak…" Back up power supply, external shielding… "But too bad. I need this to stop, and this is the most expedient way I can think of."

"What will they do with her?"

"Don't know, but she's a murderer and a pirate. She's not at the top of my list of priorities."

And since I plan on dealing with the Citadel and the Psions eventually, I can always rescue her later.

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Vega, Baby 22

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11th July

13:51 GMT

Estrogina staggers to her feet as I float into the room, Felicity just behind me. "What..? Didn't you think I was…" She coughs, then spits out a blob of sandy brown blood. "Worth killing?"

"No one's paying me to kill you, Ms Estrogina."

"And that..?" She pants. "You want to cage me."

"Are your wounds mortal?"

"What do you care?"

"My intent was to prevent you killing anyone. I was trying to disable you, not kill you. If you need-."

"So you can put me back in a aghhgraooughgrahh!"

Her angry rant trails off into a series of coughs, doubling her over as she expectorates more sandy brown phlegm.

Back in a..? She looks pretty disabled, but I don't want to take a risk with Felicity. Or myself. Ring, prepare to transition us away if necessary.

Compliance.

"What are you talking about? I haven't caught you before."

"I'm done talking to you!" She doesn't straighten up so much as stagger towards me, pulling my stilettos from her impromptu dressings and hurling them at me. I interpose construct barriers, the knives striking and failing to penetrate. I return them to subspace. Okay, how much muscular control do I think she has now? Ring, now she's got holes in her -I send a platform construct under the floor as she barrels towards us, ripping it free as she runs over it and sending her into the air- can you scan her better?

Partial internal view available.

Estrogina rolls off the chunk of floor before it hits anything, landing-

"Oowagh!"

-in a heap on the floor. Ah heck. I take more chains out of subspace, wrap them around her torso, neck and upper arms and hoik her off the ground and into the cage. Activate!

"AAAAAGH!"

She tenses her right arm and swings, the chain binding it snapping as it's pulled in separate directions by my construct and her arm. Then the part of the chain still attached to her stops, as does her arm. Estrogina's eyes widen.

"Orange Lantern to Amalak. Subject secured. Making our way to you now. Status of the Citadelians?"

"Unhappy, but I've sent them my evidence and they say they're prepared to accept my version of events. They then destroyed three of my ships, killing all on board, to show exactly how unhappy they were."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"I was expecting worse. Jarko will be getting back shortly. It would be… Advantageous… If the fighting were fully suppressed by the time we present our case to Admiral Dakyn."

I lift the three of us off the ground and start flying us in the direction of the landing zone. "Understood. I'll make that my next highest.. priority…"

I see the dead Citadelian on the floor. With things as delicate as they are, knowing why they refused the attack order could be invaluable in working out how to stop the Omega Men messing things up any further. His implants…

I wait until Estrogina and Felicity are out of line of sight, then take one of the x-ionised stilettos from subspace. A construct claw grips the Citadelian's head and the knife cuts cleanly through his bulbous skull, bone and brain parting in a torrent of blood. Slice there and there… Construct tweezers appear and carefully pull the implant free. Due to the fact that they seldom leave Vega I don't have good records on Citadelian communication protocols. Handing this over to Ms Gozzi would probably be the best bet. Don't know if subspacing it will affect it, but I don't want to risk it. I create a construct-pouch on the outside of my armour and store it there. Next… I use a construct to pick up one of the fallen plasma weapons and shoot the Citadelian in the partially dissected head.

That should hide the missing implant.

I return the gun to where I got it, then fly after Felicity and Estrogina.

Felicity had her head turned as far as her armour would allow, looking back at me. "Master, she looks very badly injured. Might.. you..?"

"Yes. Estrogina, hold still."

"Get… Tail-raped by an Electroderm!"

First, the lungs. Two thin probes enter the wounds in her chest. Just the skin that's construct proof. Tissue, can we scan the tissue? Good, good. Suck out the blood, stick the tissue together with... Would that be toxic? Good. Stick it together, then pull out… Right. Can you work out a sedative from that?

Individual's physiology is too divergent from anything in this ring's database to suggest a safe sedative.

Okay. Anything life threatening left?

No, though the lack of records on this species' physiology means that this conclusion is not certain.

Fine. Keep monitoring her.

Compliance.

And open a secure line to Ms Gozzi.

Compliance.

"Orange Lantern to Ms Gozzi."

"Here. Speak."

"I've secured the implants of one of the Citadelian guards from the conference."

There's a momentary delay. "Did you kill him yourself?"

"No, of course not."

"Who killed him?"

Ring? Oh. "One of the henchmen of a minor party to the conference. Estrogina killed him and his grip on his weapon tightened as he fell. Why does it matter?"

"Killing a Citadelian is a thing that they do not let people walk away from. You disguised that you took the implants?"

"Of course."

"I would be.. interested in performing an analysis. No one else here will recognise the implants for what they are, and if they do they're thoroughly implicated anyway."

"I was hoping that you'd say that." I hold out my right arm, materials emerging from subspace to form a small courier drone. "I'm sending it your way now. Obviously, I expect a full report on your findings."

"Agreed." There's a slight fizz sound as she disconnects. I load the implant into the drone and send it on its way. It's tough, has a weak force field, sensor dampening and is pretty fast. On the off-chance that it's intercepted it will self destruct, destroying the implant.

I wonder why the Citadelians have those? The First Citadelian was by all accounts an extremely successful warlord. His clones shouldn't be as dim-witted as they are. Something to ponder, I suppose.

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Vega, Baby 23

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11th July

16:12 GMT

Eight of the heavily armoured assault escorts descend in perfect formation, heading for the landing zone. The original design looks Branx, but they've increased the armour and energy shields in exchange for increased energy consumption. I know from the ring's scans that they're also faster and more agile than they look; these will happily serve as interceptors, attack craft or escorts for landing craft. Since they're designed to deploy from a battleship and not to operate on their own for an extended period, the change in focus makes sense.

Weapon hardpoints rotate, ensuring that every part of the surrounding environment is covered. Larger weapons are trained on the attack craft that have landed nearby… or on me.

I smile and wave.

"Lord Be-. Ah, Orange Lantern?"

The representative from Raggashoon city government nervously makes the outward-pointing-thumbs gesture that is his people's polite request for attention. A few other notables have joined us for this meeting: the Flight Commander of the Thanagarian mercenaries as well as a couple of local business people. Some of the gang leaders from the negotiations -those with the sense to get their heads down when everything went sideways- are here as well, but they are being kept back by the Thanagarians.

"Yes?"

"On behalf of the City of Raggashoon, I wished to thank you for your assistance. If not for your aid, the fighting would most likely have carried on into the industrial and residential areas." The Flight Commander glances our way. "And your efforts at negotiation… We would have lost a great deal of business if one or more parties became permanently excluded from the Vega Systems."

"You're welcome. Though I should point out that Estrogina's people almost certainly will be excluded."

I wasn't exactly subtle about flying their clearly defeated and contained leader across a chunk of the city. Still, I was slightly surprised that they had the sense to flee rather than continue rampaging. Having not identified their ships in advance, I couldn't tell which of the runners they were on from a distance and I had better things to do than chase down and inspect every ship individually.

"The other Zamaron Pirates, certainly. But they were few in number, and the other members of her gang will just need to switch their transponders."

I nod. Perhaps I should think the worse of him for his attitude, but in reality that adaptation to circumstances is probably what has allowed this planet to… If not exactly flourish, then at least be a reasonable place to live under Citadel domination.

"Gozzi to Orange Lantern."

"Excuse me." My helmet comes out of subspace and appears on my head. Privacy on. "Orange Lantern here. What do you have?"

"They received attack orders. But those orders were countermanded immediately, before they could even decide how to put them into effect."

"What? Some sort of… Monitoring system? They keep records of what their soldiers are thinking, just in case one of them thinks something they're not supposed to?"

"No. I am familiar with that sort of-"

Idiot! "Of course, I'm sorry.."

"-implant. This was connected to the parts of the brain concerned with visceral responses. They received the order, then were told that it wasn't plausible that it was genuine."

"Interesting. Though I suppose that you can't-" A beam of white light illuminates an area in the centre of the ring of Citadelian ships as their high-gain teleporter activates. A moment later a squad of heavily armed Citadelian marines step out, weapons at the ready. Veterans. I can tell due to the more extensive nature of their cybernetic implants. "-take advantage of it yourself."

"Not with our own soldiers, certainly. Still, this is knowledge that the Citadel guards jealously."

"Happy I could help. Did you learn anything about how they were told it was ridiculous?"

"I'm not.. certain. If I were creating a system like this, I would connect each implant to my own brain. But I am Coluan; I can cope with that sort of input. A Citadelian could not. Not without substantial augmentation."

"Senior Citadelians have substantial cranial cybernetics."

"Not enough. They would need a full hyperprocessor array, as well as a communication system capable of handling the input and output."

"The Citadel Complex." Which would also explain why they use Gordanians. The system can only support so many users.

"That is the most likely location for it. Of course, they aren't simple drones. Jamming it wouldn't do much to disrupt them. If that were even possible."

"Interesting. Thank-" There's another flare of light, then Admiral Dakyn steps forth. His cybernetics extend quite visibly outside the limits of his bulbous head. "-you, Ms Gozzi."

Another fizz as she hangs up.

And next to the Admiral… A Psion. He's short, and looks doubly so next to the huge Admiral. His clothing is utilitarian and plain, his face inexpressive. And… And he has a.. quite disturbing way of conceptualising the people around him. Sources of knowledge best accessed by pulling it apart. Which he has already done to many things.

Guess he's a biologist.

Commodore Amalak, Mister Jarko and the Queen are already heading over to greet him. I note that neither of them are looking at the Psion. Social thing, or..? No, they're both worried about setting him off. As I understand it, Admiral Dakyn has already accepted our excuses in principle. This is… A personal and public display of obsequiousness designed to mollify his and the Citadel Empire's pride.

"Master?" I send my helmet back into subspace and Felicity just about manages not to hide behind me. "The… Psion."

Amalak gestures at the kinetic prisons where Estrogina and Muliebria float, powerless. Estrogina struggles more, while Muliebria just glowers down at them. Dakyn rubs the small beard on his chin, nodding as Amalak delivers his spiel again. For what it was worth I put some clothes on Estrogina. I suppose it's like the scene in Small Gods where Brutha is being executed; they chained him to an iron turtle which was being steadily heated in order to kill him slowly with as much pain as possible, but they gave him a loincloth out of decency.

She's a murderer hundreds of times over. Still… Just handing her over like this…

Jarko gestures in my direction and Dakyn nods again, briefly making eye contact with me. The Psion is still studying Estrogina, and I'm… Not going to look at what he wants to do with her. Jarko turns to face me and beckons me to join them.

"Felicity, with me. Remember, I'm mind controlling you."

She cringes. "Could.. you… Do that for real? Please?"

I frown at her, taking a closer look with empathic vision. Does she really-? Yes, yes she does. She's.. that scared of the Psion… And he's not at all interested in her. Saying that wouldn't help. Fear isn't rational. "Alright. I'll just make you want to help me again. And I'm turning it off as soon as we leave."

She nods, and her eyes glow orange and the sigil on her forehead flares as it takes effect. A half-second passes and she's back to smiling at me beatifically and I can't help but look deeper into the life she lived that made her think like this.

Heck.

Rescued by the Omega Men from a life of sexual servitude, got swept up in their purpose because she'd never really had one of her own, used to being controlled and happy to be-.

Another project, then.

I turn back towards the huddle. "This way, Felicity."

"Yes, master."

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Vega, Baby 24

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11th July

16:16 GMT

Admiral Dakyn is an extremely large man. Gordanians, Branx, Okaarans and Citadelians all share a similar.. 'template', averaging at around two and a half metres tall and being far bulkier than a Human of equivalent height would be. As a member of a race of mass-produced clones, Dakyn himself is exactly the same height as the rest of his cohort. His clothes are similar as well; the Citadel takes combat too seriously to let their officers add unnecessary ornamentation to their armour. The differences are more subtle: the gold and platinum bands on his tusks and the armoured cables which flow out of his skull and into the yellow metal of his armour.

He smiles, making sure I get a good look at his teeth. Oh. No, Citadelians don't show friendliness by showing their teeth. He's instinctively showing that he can bite me. It's more of a dick-waving thing than an actual threat, but it certainly isn't friendly.

"You are the Spider Guild's tame Beast?"

Unlike those of the other Citadelians, his implants are active continuously. Boosting his mental abilities? Providing him with information? Personally, I'd rather use G-Gnomes for that if I didn't have a power ring. On the other hand… He wasn't much of a looker to start with…

"Orange Lantern Two Eight One Four, Admiral." I can't really bow in this armour, but I favour him with a deferential nod. "How may I assist?"

"I was hoping to see the infamous orange ghosts. It seems that I am to be disappointed."

"Given what happened, I didn't think that waving weaponised life forms around was politic. But… With your permission..?"

"Yes. Show me."

I hold my arms out to the side, strands of orange light floating freely in the breeze as my Praexis Demons emerge. They look around, taking in their environment for a few moments before rising into the air.

"They seem… Small."

"They are. And given enough power, one can become a thousand in under an hour. Though if you want to see something a little more impressive…" I make a bit of a show of it, bringing my hands together and having them glow brilliant orange. Jarko takes a step away while Amalak's hand drifts a little closer to his sidearm.

Then the Hellwraith appears. Usually it keeps itself fairly insubstantial, but this time I feed it a little more power. And the result… Sort of a cross between a Warner Brothers Tasmanian Devil and a Praying Mantis, with the orange sigil in the middle of its forehead and on the back of its claw-hands. It floats just off the floor and looks around excitedly. Huh, this thing could be the first Demon off Earth.

"It can also seize control of people without my direct input."

A snort from the Admiral, who sizes it up for a moment before dismissing it. "Still small. But never mind. On behalf of the Citadel and of my batch-brother Emperor Damyn, thank you for bringing down this…" He turns his head to Estrogina. "Disruptive influence. And for foiling the Omega Men."

"My pleasure."

"My people will search for them. You will give me the one Omega Man you caught, and we will perform an interrogation."

"Noo."

"Ah." He snorts. "I mean to say, I will buy her from you. For a fair price."

"I'd be defrauding you. I've already interrogated her. She's a whore Tigorr picked up on Slagg and she bungled her first operation. They've already abandoned her. She was an Omega Man in the same sense that your toenail is a Citadel warrior." I glance at her. "Besides, I've already branded her." I look at him, letting my eyes flare orange. "Mine."

"Fine. Keep your whore." He sniffs, then jabs his right arm towards Estrogina's cage. "Load it. I will present them as gifts to the Emperor."

One of his bodyguard stows his gun and then ambles towards the cage. He hefts it off the ground with no obvious difficulty and strides back into the light beam.

"Admiral." The Queen is in a slightly crouched posture, trying to not be the only person here taller than him. "I am ready to resume negotiations. I believe that-."

"Bah." He looks at her with clear distaste. "Get on with it, then. Just make sure that the Citadel gets its cut."

"May I take it that you don't much care what shape the final agreement takes?"

"The Citadel has seen dozens of negotiations amongst our trade partners. We don't much care who comes out on top." He glowers at the Queen. "Except when it's our enemies."

"Commodore Amalak, Mister Jarko, may I make a suggestion?"

Jarko waves his left arm languidly. "By all means."

"Being here costs you, and the longer this takes the higher the chance there is of the Omega Men coming up with something else. So many local notables gathered together in one place is just too tempting a target."

"True, but these talks will be no simple matter. Everyone here is only interested in what they can get for themselves, and that inevitably means less for everyone else."

"What if they weren't?"

"That would be delightful. But if you think it'll actually happen then I've got a hyperspace bypass I can sell you."

"After fighting the Spiders… Do you want to throw your remaining forces against…" I gesture. "The Commodore. Or the smaller groups, who might decide to take advantage of momentary weakness? Do you want to try landing on the Nest World, or maintaining enough of a fleet to blockade it for… As long as you need to? Or taking on a serious Spider Guild war fleet in a few years if you destroy it?"

"If I wanted to, then I wouldn't have bothered coming here." He narrows his eyes slightly. "What are you suggesting?"

"I have mastered the orange light. I can… Use that to alter the desires of those around me. In this case… I could make everyone a little bit more agreeable. A little more.. honest in admitting what the war cost them, what they put in. And since I'm sure you were.. planning to use this meeting to agree territory and shipping rights… It would make everyone more.. reasonable about that as well."

He glances at the Queen. "I'm sure that your employer would appreciate your efforts on her behalf greatly."

"It's an area effect, Mister Jarko. She'd be just as much under the influence as you. And I could remove the effect at the end, give you the opportunity to make sure that you weren't signing your life away." He's very unconvinced. "Look… I'm going to be around Vega for a while. It's in my interests that you get a settlement that you can all live with. And one which maintains your current reasonably positive disposition towards me. You already know that you all want more or less the same sorts of thing. This doesn't have to be hard."

Amalak narrows his eyes slightly. "He does make a reasonable observation. I had intended to demand new ships from the Spiders as my reparations, but their docks are wrecked. I would benefit most from them being repaired, but I cannot rely on their honesty and I do not want to provide the entire suppression fleet myself."

Jarko scowls at him. "I don't know what the two of you worked out, Amalak, but I am not going to agree to-."

As one, the Citadelian marines bring their weapons to bear on him.

He freezes. "Admiral, I… Thought that we had an understanding..?"

Dakyn snorts. "This stalemate is costing the Citadel money. The damage to this city costs the Citadel money. And Citadel soldiers died today. I thought that I might have to hold a gun to all of your heads and dictate the terms of the peace myself, but it seems that X'Hal has smiled upon us all. Amalak?"

"I think that further delay would be.. stupid. And wasteful." He looks at me. "Under the proviso that the final decision will be checked free of your influence and that no influence lingers, I will.. agree."

The Queen spreads her upper arms. "I will consent to this also."

Dakyn makes a slightly different snort. Satisfaction. "Well, Jarko? Do you say 'yes', or do I kill you and ask your successor?"

Jarko doesn't look happy. But he knows a fait accompli when its barrel is being waved in his face. "Fine. But I'd best get something worthwhile out of this."

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Vega, Baby 25

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11th July

17:01 GMT

"…can't just rearrange the crew complements." Jarko waves his left arm at the order of battle display. "Which would be the sensible thing. Each ship that survived wants new crew, and won't countenance taking personnel from their 'rivals'. And anyone they get will either know nothing or have.. 'conflicting' loyalties."

The Queen quickly reviews the casualty lists. "Many of these vessels could benefit from increased automation. That would reduce the requirements for crew. We could include that in your refit program."

"I prefer ships run by people. And my people do as well."

Amalak nods. "I have a training academy on Rooduun."

"For your people?"

"Not exclusively. Several worlds in my sphere of influence send military cadets there. If you wanted to offer a 'placement program', or avail yourself of its service, I am sure that we could… Come to terms."

Jarko nods. "That's a possibility. Perhaps…"

11th July

17:19 GMT

Amalak shrugs. "I think it will be easier to abolish the entire class, rather than keep them in service or upgrade them. Of course, that does present a problem of covering my existing obligations until the work is complete."

Jarko smiles. "Just do what I do and use freelancers. You still have more than enough force to crush any stupid enough to try stabbing you in the back."

The Queen pulls up a detailed list of the ships Amalak is writing off. "Handing these ships over to us would substantially increase the speed with which we can rebuild our orbital infrastructure."

"Perhaps… But I would still have cash flow concerns."

"A simple matter." The Queen rearranges the build order. "Allow those who assist you to move ahead in the priority queue. That would allow you to have them test your new ship designs. And if they prove themselves capable, you could offer them more permanent contracts later."

He frowns. "The delays…"

"Under the agreed timetable, the delays would be inconsequential where fleet actions are concerned. Our infrastructure build up would eventually reach the point where we could make good on your losses so swiftly that you might need to delay us while you trained new crews."

Amalak nods. "In that case, agreed."

11th July

17:33 GMT

"…untaxed access to Vega." Several other minor faction leaders nod as the Khundian man gestures at the star chart. "A safe harbour's useless if we can't use it."

"Well…." Jarko doesn't really look abashed. But he does manage to look mildly self-conscious about his actions. He doesn't exactly control the area around Vega, but his people are generally active in this region. Attacking merchants carries greater risks than attacking the people who attacked the merchants, particularly if you know where those attackers are going to go. Heck, just demanding that they hand over their cargos at less than black market rates has been a fairly nice earner for him. "I could… Agree substantial discounts… For comrades in arms. But at the same time I would want good conduct guarantees. Attack my people or make trouble for me and I would be… Displeased."

The Khundian waves his hand dismissively. "Your house, your rules."

11th July

17:58 GMT

"…Nest would become a shipyard for construction and maintenance." The Queen moves a few designs around the holo display. "This will allow you to monitor our growth without it impacting your other activities. In turn, it allows us to grow in a way which does not threaten you."

Amalak nods. "While tying our fleets to you for their upkeep and you to us for protection, since you could hardly protect yourself from a dedicated attacking force with-" He brings up their projected fleet strength. "-this."

"Just so."

Jarko waves his right hand in a circle. "Makes sense to me. Stick to that and we won't have any problems."

11th July

18:34 GMT

"…tax travellers rather than simply stealing from them." Jarko indicates his fleet action records. "It's a regular profit for far less aggravation. And makes it much less likely that anyone goes running to the Green Lanterns."

Amalak nods. "It occurs to me that we have effectively approached a very similar position from opposite ends."

"Hah! Yes, just so. Did you know that I started out as an arms dealer?"

"I… Have heard that version of events. I don't think that I ever heard the whole story."

"Oh, I was backing a rebellion on a prison colony world called Asryx. Kranaltine used it as a dumping ground for their criminals for centuries… And proceeded to treat their descendants as criminals themselves and ignore all the ill-feeling that attitude created. So, I was contacted by…"

"Impressive work."

I look away from the merrily conversing outlaws and to the Psion who stands to my right. "Thank you. High praise from a member of a species who have mastered morally dubious sciences."

"Gun-fighting to a peaceful accord in less than a day-tenth." He turns his head towards me. "Will you really release them? Or simply tell them that you have, and leave them under your power?"

"I wouldn't undermine myself by breaking my word." I take a quick look over the desires of all of the meeting's participants. "Besides, this serves my interests too. Do you think they'll have another meeting like this without inviting me along?"

He thinks for a moment. "No. You appear to be a civilising influence."

"And I'd much rather that you didn't dissect them to find out how it works."

His eyes narrow slightly. "Are you telepathic as well?"

"No. You're not that hard to read. Also, it wouldn't work. It doesn't leave a physical trace."

"Mmm. A shame."

We both turn back to the pirate gathering, which appears to be a good deal more light-hearted than the original meeting. There was a book I read, back on Earth Prime. There'd been some sort of disease pandemic and only a small number of augmented Humans were immune to it. They were left to find a cure while as many other people as could manage it went into cryogenic suspension. After they succeeded they tried to manage the restoration of society, only for their guidance to be soundly rejected as the newly re-emergent groups violently contested with one another for dominance. Towards the end of the book, one of them released something she called a Human genetic patch. It was a virus that would alter Human DNA, altering everyone affected so that they received a greater psychological reward for cooperation than competition. Under its pervasive influence civilisation stabilised… And then people developed an immunity to the transmission vector.

The pirates aren't immune to me.

I'm going to try and cure this Sector's ills by civilising it. Not by smashing it flat. This probably isn't what the Omega Men wanted, but I think it would be what Alan would want. Civilisation develops because cooperation works better than brutal, ceaseless competition. And with a little help, I think this lot will come to see that. From piracy to demanding money with menaces… Which is basically what taxation is. From fighting to hold territory to policing it. Heck, this deal will even ensure the local Spider Guild Nest's survival and security without them needing to rearm. I'll need to keep an eye on it, of course…

The Psion walks away, heading back towards Admiral Dakyn's party. I make momentary eye contact with the Admiral himself and he stares into me, as if-.

That's… Odd. For a moment it looked.. like there were two different sets of desires…

That… May warrant further investigation. Later. For now, I've got a peace conference to conclude.

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Vega, Baby 26

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12th July

03:48 GMT

"Orange Lantern. You appear to have acquired a fleet."

Green Lantern Green Man floats in space in front of me, just the other side of the halfway point across the moat of stars marking the 'start' of the Vega systems.

"They're not… Following me."

His face is fairly inexpressive, but he doesn't look particularly impressed. He raises his right arm and points over my shoulder. "I can clearly see them following you."

"Oh. No, sorry, I was thinking.. two different meanings for that word.. and your ring went for the wrong one. I mean they're not working for me."

"And do you work for them?"

"I'm.. sort of under contract with the Spiders until the Queen gets back to her Nest."

"Under contract for what?"

"She hired me to protect her during the peace conference. You see, her Nest tried expanding and the local pirates.. objected."

"I was aware of the fighting. I took the view that the more pirates and Spiders who killed each other, the better off this Sector would be."

"I.. took the view that… The way Vega is, all that would do is lead to the creation of new pirate groups, and that it would be better in the longer term to civilise these ones."

"Civilise? Orange Lantern, the only reason that I allowed you unobstructed passage here was so that you could deal with Larfleeze. I have spent most of the time since our last meeting hunting down Larfleeze's Construct Lanterns. What have you done?"

"Negotiated a peace settlement between the major actors which will see the Spider Guild's Nest World become a shipyard, one of the largest pirate groups become a private military company and the other turn into an independent stellar nation. Er, and allied to each other."

"You-?"

"The Crown Imperium isn't getting Asryx back, but since they haven't exercised any effective control of it for the last eight years that's not really a big change in the status quo."

"Did you also share your anti-Green Lantern techniques with them?"

"No… But they already have weapons that can kill you-."

"Not on the level of what you have. What are you trying to do here?"

"Green Lantern, most civilisations begin violently. I'm trying to improve the state of Vega by working with-."

"Violent criminals."

I sigh. "Yes. Because they're the ones in a position to make this change." I regard him for a moment. "So… Are you going to let them past?"

"What happens if I say 'no'?"

"Then I would -regrettably- be forced to defend them. At least until the Queen manages to return to her Nest. Plus… They almost certainly brought Psion-built weapons with them for this gathering, so on the off-chance you got away from me there's a good chance you'd still die, and I'd.. really rather that didn't happen."

"And if I wait?"

"I'd.. obviously rather that you give them the time to adapt… See if they backslide. But.. I.. wouldn't involve myself."

He closes his eyes, bowing his head slightly. I try and keep my glow down while he considers the issue. He may be a pernicious individualist by Uxonian standards, but by Human standards he's pretty darn selfless. If he decides that I'm in the wrong I'm going to get my first real fight against a Lantern versed in my techniques who isn't treating it as a training exercise. And.. he's using my techniques to prevent me seeing anything but green light when I look at him.

Of course, generating constructs myself might well be seen as an attack.

"Do you intend to deal with Larfleeze quickly?"

"I'm prioritising the Citadel Empire. Larfleeze has been content to sit in his cave since we convinced him that I'd died… I don't think-."

"How long?"

"With a little luck, a couple of weeks."

His eyes open, the green glow he's emitting dying down a little. "I accept death as the inevitable result of my work, but I do not seek it needlessly. Perhaps the pirates'.. alliance will bring stability to this region. Perhaps it will not. In either case, I can give it a little time to demonstrate its nature."

"So..?"

"I will stand aside. They may pass." Inside my armour I sigh with relief. "I will monitor the situation closely. If I see them using this opportunity to rearm and expand their territory, I will request the assistance of the Honour Guard in bringing this Sector to order."

"Understood."

There's a flare of green light as he disappears.

I wait a moment before transitioning back to the Queen's ship. "Orange Lantern to commanders. He's moved off. Bear in mind that this is temporary, and he will be returning to normal anti-piracy duty once-" Ships are already activating their faster than light systems, glowing or distorting as they accelerate out of the Vega Systems. "-you leave."

"Well done, lad." Jarko's face appears on my armour's internal screen. "Are you sure that you won't consider working for me on a more permanent basis?"

"I'm afraid that I'm going to be busy for the foreseeable future."

"Very well. Stop by Asryx next time you're in the region." He turns away. "Engage."

Space bends around his ships for a moment, then they're gone. A moment later his face is replaced by that of Commodore Amalak. "What did it cost you to secure his consent?"

"Nothing. But… He's going to call in reinforcements if the local level of violence doesn't go down."

"We would be de-escalating anyway, even without the new compact. Still, I will remember it. Good fortune to you, Orange Lantern."

His screen goes blank, his larger ships glowing white-blue. Strands reach out and touch his smaller ships, then the whole network flashes as the ships accelerate away. I watch them go for a moment, then transition to the Spider Guild command ship's upper access portal and trigger the mechanism. They may not use airlocks on this ship, but they don't leave gaping holes where someone might shoot them. A moment passes and the material making up the armour is sucked inwards, allowing me to transition inside.

Felicity is standing as far away from any of the Spiders manning the bridge as she can, the orange sigil on her forehead clearly showing through the gloom. I fly over to her as the Queen reorientates herself towards us.

"Thank you for your service, Orange Lantern. My Nest is in a better position now than I had dared hope we would occupy after the negotiations."

"Happy to help. And… Um…" I clear my throat. "Sorry about-."

She crouches slightly. "An innocent misunderstanding. You cannot be faulted for it after I refused to tell you more of my physiology."

Okay, I'm going to take it. "I'll be certain to visit your Nest next time I'm in the area."

"Yes. I would-" Her legs do a sort of.. shuffling motion. "-like that very much."

The f-? You know what? No. I take Felicity's right hand firmly in my left and extend my environmental shield over her.

Ring, get us out of here.

Compliance.

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NEXT CHAPTER

Tamanarama

BACK

Tamanarama 1

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Tamanarama

12th July

11:03 GMT

The concierge waves as Felicity and I walk away from the front desk, left hand playing with one of the blank platinum disks I used to make payment. "Be sure to recommend us to your friends!"

I wave back absent-mindedly with my right hand as I hold my left to my ear. "Ring, connect me to the Thanagarian network. Flight Leader Karn, if at all possible."

Compliance.

Felicity steps out into the hotel's front garden, taking a moment to stretch in the natural sunlight. Though the off-worlder parts of the city are mostly set up to cater for piratical thugs, there are more salubrious venues for piratical chiefs and the occasional wealthy merchant or dignitary. Most things inside were scaled to be comfortable for those of a Citadelian build… And resilient enough to be survive being used by them. They were willing to change it around for we smaller-framed humanoids, but I told them not to bother.

"Blades of Alstair, Flight Leader Karn responding. If you want to hire us, you should get in touch with-."

"No no, nothing like that."

There's a slight pause. "Orange Lantern. I hear we've got you to thank for yesterday."

"Hey, that fight was all the Omega Men's doing."

"I was referring to the fact that our contract's being terminated early. And from the sounds of it we're not likely to get much work in this region for the foreseeable future."

"I'm not sorry for that." I stroll out of the hotel, Felicity turning to blink slowly at me. Affection and general contentment. "So, you all shipping out?"

"The commander's making calls. We're packed up and ready to leave, but we'd much rather have a job to go to. Even if it's just babysitting a merchant convoy." I hear an amused exhalation. "I don't suppose you've got any use for five thousand Thanagarian mercenaries?"

"What sort of naval units do you have?"

"Mostly small attack craft. We've got a cruiser and a support-carrier, but those are more our bases of operation than things we'd want to use in a fight."

Huuh. "What sort of level of risk do you take?"

"We can talk prices over anything short of an outright suicide mission, but we prefer jobs to be either quick, local or low risk. Personally, I wouldn't mind a quick strike attack commission. Get the rust off my mace before I forget how to use it completely."

"How about..? Training work? If a planet was remilitarising and needed experienced people?"

"You can't defend a whole planet with what we've got, but if the threat wasn't imminent? We'd probably take it. Where did you have in mind?"

"Ohhh… My homeworld is probably going to start getting serious about space travel in the next few years. Is there somewhere I can get in touch with you again without chasing you down?"

"We've got feedsite links on Thanagar and Alstair, but that sounds like a long term contract. If we're busy then we won't be able to take it."

I nod. "Fair enough. I was planning to head to Thanagar in a little while anyway. Good luck finding a commission."

"Good fortune doing… Whatever it is you're planning on doing. Karn out."

I lower my left hand, increasing my pace to catch up with Felicity. "Ready to go?"

"Yes, Mast-"

"You don't need to-"

"-er."

"-call me that. Particularly after-."

"You're the one who offered to brush my hair." Another blink. "How could I have known that you only meant my mane?" I close my eyes, bowing my head slightly. "Do I not.. please you?"

"I will.. say this once, and then I'd.. quite like to drop the topic. I… Have what some may regard as an excessively romantic view of sex. Plus, my empathic abilities make me unusually aware of what you're feeling, and.. I'm.. proud enough to only want to have sex with people who want to have sex with me, not one who doesn't object to it."

"That isn't what I asked."

I look over the tight-fitting and.. 'well ventilated' clothing she's wearing. I did offer to get her something else, but she seems to prefer it. "Yes, I find you attractive."

She nods, looking pleased. "Will we be travelling by ship or by your ring?"

"Ring. There shouldn't be a problem with us spending a few days on the surface."

"Kalista.. told me that the Gordanians keep away visitors. Would we not stand out?"

"Yes, but they don't have good communication infrastructure. And Gordanian intelligence isn't particularly good. They probably won't even know that we're there."

Her ears straighten slightly. A nod. Right then. Ring, my armour, Karnan-friendly space armour for Felicity and then plot route to near-Rashashoon space.

Compliance.

A filament touches Felicity, a slightly upgraded version of the armour I lent her yesterday manifesting around her. I tried to work out if there was a way to allow her ears space without making the helmet huge or compromising the protection it provides, but as far as I can work out there isn't. But apparently pinning them flat against her head isn't that uncomfortable. She shifts slightly awkwardly, trying to get comfortable without accidentally brushing her fur backwards.

"Three, two, one, transition."

The street disappears, replaced by local space. Far less busy than it was when I first arrived, though I see a couple of local tugs picking up debris from one of the earlier fights. Admiral Dakyn is still around, but his fleet is on the far side of the planet at the moment.

Ring, plot warp to interstellar space just outside the Vega seventeen system.

Compliance. Course calculated.

"Next stop, the edge of the Tamaran system's Oort cloud. Warp in three, two-."

"Will it hurt?"

"No, of course not. I'm warping the space around us, not warping us. Two, one."

Once more the starfield shimmers, our surroundings turning orange. Almost as soon as it starts it ends, and the only obvious difference is that the planet behind us has disappeared.

"Is that.. it..?"

"We're not quite there yet." But now that no one's watching… I hold my right hand out in her direction, orange mist floating through her faceplate as the brand evaporates. "I want to see what the Gordanians have on hand before we go any further."

Ring?

An image appears in my mind. One… Space station at a Lagrange point. An old Tamaranian shipyard seized after the last war, uparmoured and upgunned. It has interdiction field generators, but they're not set up to stop any form of FTL I use. Three clanships, modified for launching kinetic torpedoes. Orbital strike weapons that most people around here don't bother with because they're next to useless in ship-to-ship combat. Just the thing for killing thousands of unprotected civilians, though. Nothing I can't.. take…

Tamaranian life signs on the station. I'll need to make sure they're safe before taking aggressive action.

Ring, plot warp to Tamaran. The side of the planet away from the station.

Compliance.

Warp.

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Tamanarama 2

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12th July

11:08 GMT

Below us Tamaran is enshrouded by night. Near the horizon, dawn is just reaching a city which -assuming the pre-war records I took from Rashashoon are still accurate- is called Komandus. Another city one half a continent east is called Kysarr. That used to be a major mining area, though from the limited artificial lighting and power sources I can see I imagine that its significance has been reduced somewhat. Tamaran was feudal, with the rulers of each region bearing the title prince or princess and the planet's ruler being king or queen and having their seat in Tamarus.

Ooooh.

"Felicity, do you speak any Tamaranian languages?"

"Tamaran has been isolated since before I was born. I know only the commonly spoken languages of Vega." Oh, rats. I can hardly leave her somewhere where she can't speak-. "Though, I would be surprised if at least some of them could not speak Gratch. It is the main language of Okaara and the Citadel Empire. Most people with any history of spacefaring know it."

"Oh good. I was worried for a moment."

"You did not think they would understand you?"

"I was concerned that they might not understand you. You might be here for some time… Possibly the rest of your natural life. I mean, I'd have made you a translator, but that's hardly practical-."

"Master." She turns her head, starting very slightly as her whole body turns in place. "I speak eight languages fluently. I am certain that I would pick up theirs soon enough."

"Oh. Sorry, I didn't mean to insult-."

"You are silly. I am not offended. It is… Strange, that you are so considerate."

Instinctively, I take a look at her feelings in an attempt to divine what she's used to. A moment later I turn my empathic vision down again. I know I.. shouldn't be surprised, but… And I have… Seen worse. Her owner appears to have at least regarded her as somewhat valuable property. What was the line from God, the Devil and Bob? It's not about whether you're a good person according to some sort of absolute standard, but whether you're better than the situation tries to make you. Passing on a softer punch. Of course, her owner was killed by the Omega Men when they overran the Citadel base on Slagg anyway…

Still. I float a little closer and hold out my right hand. "Going down?"

I hear her giggle as she reaches out with her right. Right, where exactly to go? Ideally, somewhere somewhat isolated. But with people who are awake. And not too many people. I don't want word of my arrival to spread too quickly and I don't want to scare people beyond my ability to talk down. Gosh, there are no data networks at all down there... Ah! There we go, a small farm. Older couple, their daughter and her infant son. Looks like the baby is restless. Perfect.

Transition.

The ground gives slightly under the weight of my armour. Careful environmental care -and then less careful abandonment as their population contracted- means that much of Tamaran's landmasses are covered in lush plant life. And with the population able to fly, roads were only really popular for heavy goods transportation. We're about twenty metres from the house, and with my armour's auditory pickups turned up I can hear the child's mother singing a lullaby.

Environmental shield lights to dim, and subspace the helmet. I take a moment to breathe in the air. Raggashoon was a city. The only change from an Earth city was the replacement of petrochemical fumes with ozone. Out here, I can hear the chirping of the tiny lemur-like creatures who fulfil the evolutionary niche that on Earth is held by mice. It's early in the growing season and breathing in I can smell the pollen. Slightly… Gingery? It also has that deep-country darkness that comes from being a very long way away from any sort of sizeable settlement. The windows in the house are only illuminated by a well-worn heat to light converter, probably a hold over from Tamaran's more technologically advanced past.

"Would you..? Mind..?"

Felicity pulls slightly at the front of her armour-. Right. I send it to subspace, then release her hand. She blinks in gratitude, then stretches, puffing out her fur in an attempt to make it lie more comfortably against her skin. Arms held up over her head she looks at me and… Bends further, pushing out her chest in a way that emphasises her-.

I look away, and she giggles.

"Follow me, if you please."

I start across the sparsely forested field at a march. From the looks of it they're cutting for wood in rotation, letting trees grow, then cutting an area down and replanting. Sustainable arboriculture. The bit we're walking through has been replanted recently, meaning that the small trees are easy to avoid and the room they've been allotted to grow gives me a clear walkway. I'm not being silent, but the lack of any reaction from the house rather implies to me that they're assuming that the noise is being made by a local animal.

I could announce myself, but I don't really want to make a lot of noise and wake the rest of the house if I can avoid it. Plus it looks like the baby has just returned to sleep… I don't think I'm ever going to not find meeting people for the first time awkward.

As I get closer, the baby's mother looks up. She's heard me and the sound stands out, but she's not worried yet. My records on Tamaranian social custom don't really have much to say about this sort of meeting. They are -or at least were- such a direct people that a social formula for this sort of meeting was never required. Best fit would be…

I step more heavily, intentionally making more noise in a way which clearly suggests bipedal locomotion. Reach the door, I knock firmly. Not loudly, but enough to make plain that someone outside would like to get in.

"A moment!"

The woman inside walks out of the kitchen area into what appears to be the nursery, laying her offspring down in.. a crib that could have come from a maternity shop on Earth. A rustic one rather than a chain, but it's still familiar. One humanoid using an object that exists in a similar fashion in the culture of another. Agh, I'm a cultural contaminant!

Once the baby is tucked in, she turns around and walks back into the kitchen… Picking up the iron poker from the fire and holding it in her left hand before opening the door slightly with her right. The way the door swings makes it impossible for me to see the poker with my eyes.

"Good evening, marm."

Her solid green eyes widen slightly as she looks over my armour, but again there's no fear response. I'm a little surprised. Tamaranians never really bothered with powered exoskeletons themselves but I'm certain that they're familiar with the concept. I mean, I'm clearly not a Gordanian or a Citadelian but I'd have thought that a heavily armoured alien turning up-.

When it's turned down, my environmental shield glows more around my skin than my clothing. It's late and there isn't much other light. My skin looks orange and she wouldn't be able to see my eyes clearly. She thinks I'm Tamaranian.

"Is something wrong? Do we need to move the archive?"

"I'm sorry, I believe that you may have mistaken me for someone else."

"You're not-?" She frowns. "If you're not from the royal guard, where did you get that armour?"

"I.. built it.. myself. I'm sorry, can we start this conversation again?"

She peers up at me. "Who are you?"

"My name is-." Ring, play the recording.

"Paul."

Thank you. "And I'm not from this planet. Or, indeed, Vega. I'm actually from a planet called-."

"Earth. You're from Earth. You're Human."

…

What?

"Um. How do you.. know.. that..?"

She steps back, opening the door more widely. "I think you had best come inside. If you are anything like the last Human to come here then you will have many questions."

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Tamanarama 3

next

12th July

11:19 GMT

Felicity and I sit at the kitchen table, our armour safely stowed in subspace. The light is still dim, and we're all trying to keep our voices down. Felicity's eyes appear to have a similar facility for low light vision as an actual Cat's, and Tamaranians see further into the red part of the spectrum than Humans. The ring lets me see easily in most conditions so I'm not bothered by it either.

Erraia -our hostess- pours herself a drink of.. something that looks like rainbow sludge but the ring says is a mild stimulant. For a Tamaranian at least. For a Human, drinking it wouldn't be a good idea. She takes a sip, then sits down opposite us.

"Where would you like to begin?"

"How do you know my species? I don't.. think any Tamaranian has ever been to Earth, and I'd be surprised if any Human had ever come here. Are you..? Do you collect records, and you got some from someone who'd been to Earth?"

"Not at all. I learned of Earth when I became an archivist, but knowledge of your people came from a man of your world."

"Aaaahahahahah!" I squeeze my eyes shut, bow my head slightly and cover my face with my right hand.

Erraia's face goes slightly blank, then she looks at Felicity. "Did I say something amusing?"

"No. Sorry, sorry." I move my hand aside and look at her. "It's just… Human stories about this sort of thing go.. one way. I'm just… There aren't a bunch of Tamaranian-Human hybrids running around the place, are there? I didn't pick up any on the way in but the ring might just have assumed that they were within the normal range of Tamaranian genetic variation."

"I…" She looks a little lost. "Not to my knowledge? He did not spend a great deal of time in this part of the world. That is a.. rather strange thing to ask."

"Sorry, it's just… No one on Rashashoon recognised my species, then I go to the planet inhabited by… Most Tamaranians are -by Human standards- extremely attractive-"

"Thank you?"

"-whereas Gordanians, Citadelians and Okaarans… Aren't. So, that implied that rather than stop off at the first planet in Vega, he came right… Ah, sorry, never mind. Aaah… I… Only know of one Human who wasn't a Green Lantern to have left our system, so if the man who came here was called 'Adam Blake', I can-."

Erraia's face lights up. Metaphorically. "You know of him? He said that he was only a minor hero amongst your people."

It actually..? I read all of Professor Zackro's surviving notes about his abilities early on during my research archive binge. He naturally had telepathy and telekinesis, but the professor was able to salvage various parts from the ships and weapons of aliens he fought to create what was probably Earth's first interstellar starship. His notes implied that it acted as a telekinetic enhancer, turning his normal field into something that could generate spatial distortions powerful enough to fly to other star systems by. A similar system could be used by the Martians if I could either get access to the ship or the professor's full records. If they survive, they were somewhere where I couldn't find them.

"I have an.. interest in other Humans with unusual abilities. His were well documented."

"He came here about forty years ago. He lived in the capital for a number of years, and participated in our war against the Citadel. If.. you were hoping to meet him, I am sorry. As far as anyone knows he was killed during the fighting."

I nod. "Which brings me to the actual reason for my visit. What requirements did the Citadel place on Tamaran after your people lost the war?"

"We are forbidden from having any orbital facilities or spacecraft. Those we had which were not destroyed were seized after our defeat. There are limits placed on our industrial infrastructure and we must pay them sums of valuable materials each year… A heavy burden, but one which we could live under. In theory."

"And in practice?"

"Our world belongs to the Gordanians above us. They enforce the limits on our infrastructure by destroying from orbit everything that looks as if it may be a violation. We lost.. so much of our knowledge base when they decided to destroy our electronic communication and data networks. Every so often, they land and.. kill or enslave anyone unfortunate enough to be near to them. And there is nothing we can do."

"You said that you are an archivist?"

"My job is to hide, preserve and if possible teach what scientific and technical knowledge we have. Everything is stored in low-emission formats or in hard copy to minimise the chance of the Gordanians being able to detect it."

"This…" I look around. "Isn't a school."

"The Gordanians target centres of education. When the war ended we had schools, universities… They are gone. We once had a world-spanning magnetic levitation rail network. No longer. Now, we transport goods by animal-drawn carts, or if we are very lucky by canal. They are reducing us to the level of civilisation that our records show they permit the Karnans-" Her eyes go to Felicity for a moment. "-to have."

Felicity wrinkles her nose. "I do not remember Karna. I was taken as a slave when I was very young."

"Is it.. one clan up there, or do they rotate?"

"No clan would accept sharing us with another. Our records from the war show that the Tearing Bite clan distinguished themselves in combat, and so were rewarded with.. us."

"Do you know what resources the clan has, other than what is in orbit at the moment?"

Erraia shakes her head. "No. I have some records from the war, but there is no way for us to know if they have built more ships or lost them since then."

"Do you know where the princesses Koriand'r and Komand'r are?"

She shrugs. "Okaara, I believe. As is their brother, Prince Ryand'r. Young nobles of our society are often sent there to receive an education of a sort we are no longer able to give." She frowns, something occurring to her. "How did you know their names?"

"I met a few Okaarans on Rashashoon. I've been trying to gather as much information as possible."

Completely true. Erraia nods, apparently accepting it as the whole truth. "What is your intention here?"

I hold my hands out towards her. "Do you recognise this sigil?" She studies it for a moment, then shakes her head. I lower my hands. "Then have you heard of the Beast of Okaara?"

"I have not, but Okaaran culture has not been the focus of my studies."

"Ah. Well, simple version: he's got a Central Power Battery and he's at least part of the reason why Vega is as bad as it is. I'm here for him, but I also consider fixing Vega to be partly my responsibility."

"Fix..?" She looks at me like I'm a crazy person. "At the height of our power, Tamaran could not even maintain its independence. I have seen the records of what Adam Blake could do. It was not sufficient for the task."

"Ensuring Tamaran's safety is simple enough. If I get rid of the Gordanians in system, I can build about fifty different types of interdiction field generators and long range teleportation jammers. Then it would take… About three hundred years for the Citadel to send anyone here. Even the Psions would struggle to break through without knowing exactly what was creating the problem. That would give me more than enough time to rearm Tamaran, beat the Beast… Or whatever else the situation requires."

"That… Sounds like something that.. might work. Can you..? Defeat them?"

"Yes, but I'm concerned about the Tamaranians on board the station. While I appreciate that it may not be possible, I'd like to free them if at all possible. I'd also.. prefer not to kill the Gordanians if I can avoid it."

She frowns. "Why? They are loathsome marauders who have murdered-."

"I know. But I'm not." I frown for a moment. What's the best way..? "Tell me, do you have connections to anyone in the higher levels of your government?"

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Tamanarama 4

next

12th July

19:57 GMT

…to spend time checking up on what Amalak and Jarko are doing. Civilisations don't spring up overnight, and newly emergent states tend not to be all that civilised. Slavery is legal in both places, though Amalak lets slaves acquired by his organisation work off their debt and the people of Asryx tend to use enslavement as a criminal punishment. Certainly, their holdings aren't dependent on the institution.

The self-actualisation part of the hierarchy has gotten a lot more complicated, lately. But I.. suppose that's the point. My desires at this stage are so sophisticated that I need to think about this matter in detail. On Rashashoon I wasn't all that concerned about what might happen if all the pirates died. Now, I'm invested. And… Tamaran is a place I had always intended to help out.

And… There's something..? There's something… Orange on this planet. And I don't mean the locals. I can feel a focus of the orange light… In the capital, I think? I try focusing harder-.

"Master? What are you doing?"

I open my eyes, seeing once again the antechamber into which our hostess deposited us before heading further inside the principality's palace. Archivists are well respected for their work and their learning, so it wasn't surprising that Erraia would have a contact here.

"The simple answer is, thinking."

She tilts her head slightly to the side from where she lounges decorously on a settee. "Is there a complex answer?"

"Certainly." I lift my hands from where they rest upon my knees and point the sigils of the rings towards her. "These are orange power rings. They grant me great power, but constantly try to twist my mind more towards avarice. I found that by reflecting upon and accepting my desires, I could.. ignore the adverse affects they can induce. So… That's what I was doing."

Her right ear flicks. "Have you decided that you want anything in particular?"

"No… It was more working out how best to get what I want. Though something is impinging on my awareness from Tamar-" I become aware of Erraia coming in our direction, along with a couple of soldiers and a man who I judge by the manner of his dress to be a noble of some sort. "-us."

Felicity appears to have heard them as well, her head turning in the direction of their faint footfalls as she comes up to a crouch. I stand, medium armour appearing from subspace. Full on power armour is a bit much for what I hope will be a polite meeting with the local aristocracy, but I need something a bit dressy. And non-grey. After a moment's thought I add an orange robe with grey sigils as decoration. The whole ensemble covers far more of me than Tamaranian clothing would… But I don't think I'd be comfortable wearing no armour at all.

The door opens, one of the soldiers pushing it wide before entering. She's wearing.. semi-reasonable body armour. It reminds me of Eldar mesh armour, tough but pliant material reinforced with hard plates in places where it doesn't need to flex but does need to protect a vital organ. Her arms are bare, and there's a small pistol and a short sword on her belt. She gives Felicity a perfunctory once over before turning her attention to me. I'm sure that she sees my armour… Not sure that she'd recognise power rings for what they are. The people of Rashashoon must hear about Green Lanterns from their piratical guests all the time, but Tamaran is a good distance further inside Vega.

Apparently deciding that I'm not an immediate threat, she steps aside from the door and allows her charge entry. A Tamaranian man, youngish looking, with a short mullet of curly brown hair. His dress is more traditional: blue short shorts, blue decorative necklace and a couple of blue straps. It doesn't take a great deal of effort for my empathic vision to show the clear bonds of love between the two of them. They've been together as a couple for a while. The young man looks at me with undisguised curiosity, then starts. Why..? The sigil, he saw the sigil.

"The Beast…"

"No, sir, I am not The Beast." Erraia walks in behind him, along with the slightly older woman who is the palace archivist. "We simply happen to use the same power source. May I ask how you know of him?"

He nods. "I was trained on Okaara. My instructor told me of the stories concerning the Forbidden Forest of Weeds and the monster that dwells there. I never expected to actually meet him."

"You still haven't, and if you're fortunate then you never will." I frown. "And if I'm fortunate, you never will."

He nods again, then walks closer to me. "I am Prince Karras of Kalapatt, son of Prince Regent Tharras and Princess Regent Salja."

I perform a very short bow. "My name is-." Ring.

"Paul."

"And my title is Orange Lantern Two Eight One Four. My companion-" I turn my head towards Felicity, holding out my right hand to indicate her. "-is Felicity of Karna."

Better than Felicity of Slagg.

Karras stops within easy arm's reach and puts his hands on my shoulders. "I bid you both welcome to my home."

"Thank you. It's nice to be-."

He leans forwards and kisses me on the lips. What? I-? Oh! Right, they can learn -he pulls away- languages like that, can't they? Probably a diplomatic thing.

He blinks, his eyes turned away for a moment. "English? It is… Extraordinarily irregular."

"It uses so many different sets of grapheme/phoneme correspondence rules that it actually retards the mental development of anyone who learns it." I shrug. "Sorry."

"It…" He raises his right hand to his forehead. "May take some adjusting to."

"The written version is worse. But… To business?"

He nods, turning slightly to the side to include the two archivists in our huddle. "I can introduce you to King Myand'r. The only observatory on Tamaran capable of monitoring the Gordanian fleet to any worthwhile degree is situated near Tamarus. And… A decision on whether or not to accept your aid would have to be made by him."

"Thank you. You..? Haven't seen my emblem anywhere else, have you?"

"Aside from the texts describing The Beast on Okaara, no. Why do you ask?"

"I already confronted one of The Beast's slaves near my own homeworld. I know that he's had them out looking for me. I-."

"Could he find you here?"

"Yes, but not easily. One of his slaves would have to.. see me, fairly close up. I ask because there's something marked by the orange light in Tamarus. If it's one of the slaves, I don't want to blunder into its line of sight."

"His slaves are..? Glowing orange shades, yes?" I nod. "Nothing like that has been seen in Tamarus. But is there not some risk that he could send one here?"

"Yes. That's why I want to get this done quickly. I plan on fighting him in less than twenty days and I want this dealt with well before then."

"I am.. not certain what help Tamaran can offer you. The few weapons we have that would be effective-."

"Not a problem. Psion weaponry aside, I'm not worried about the Gordanians' ability to hurt me. I'm more concerned about the Tamaranians they're holding on the station."

"You-? How powerful.. are you?"

"Very." I rise slightly into the air, construct armour appearing around me. "Power rings were designed to lift mortals to the level of immortals, and I've got rather good with them. So if you have no other pressing business, let's go and see the king."

back

Tamanarama 5

next

12th July

20:16 GMT

"…fascinating way to travel." Prince Karras looks around to get his bearings.

We're standing on a covered landing area built into the outer walls of the royal palace in Tamarus. I left Felicity back with the Archivists. Hopefully they can learn something from each other. With every member of the species able to fly, the Tamaranians' larger buildings have the same curious 'unlevelled' design I'm used to seeing in Atlantean structures. Since it's as easy to enter by the top floor as the bottom floor, why focus on ground-level entrances? The walls and floor around us are grey… Stone? Brick? Difficult to say. This place was almost certainly built before the technological decay set in, so it's quite possible that the material used was synthetic rather than quarried. Karras waves at the guards on duty. One nods and turns to leave, presumably to announce his arrival. I scan-.

I charge through the weak barricade erected by these so-called 'Warlords', their weapons-.

I pull back, blinking in surprise. I haven't.. felt anything like that since… January, when I tried linking up with the Ophidian.

"Orange Lantern?" Prince Karras looks at me with concern. "Are you well?"

"Are you.. sure there's nothing orange here?"

"We are.. all orange. But-" He shakes his head. "-nothing bearing your symbol."

Heck, if there's a Construct Lantern here… Did Larfleeze have any really small ones? No, that isn't it; the creature I saw was taller than the Okaarans. Stronger, too. And Larfleeze isn't about delayed gratification. If one of his people were here, we'd all know about it.

"Right. If you're sure." I'm going to be keeping an eye out, mind. "What do we have to do to meet the King?"

He shrugs. "Simply travel to the audience chamber. He will come to us when he is ready."

"Right then." I nod. "Lead the way."

He strides into the entry chamber beyond the landing platform and then rises off the floor. "This way. I have been here many times." He drops down a hole in the floor, heading deeper into the building.

I instruct the ring to guide me after him, then block out my exterior and listen to the call of the orange light. Larfleeze shouldn't be able to detect me or the rings I'm wearing… I seem to remember from the comics that Larfleeze's rings were people that he assimilated. Or… Was that just Glomulus? Larfleeze is certainly avaricious enough to create new rings… But he doesn't strike me as the sort who would have the focus or discipline.

I reach out for the orange light again.

I charge through the weak barricade erected by these so-called 'Warlords', their weapons glancing harmlessly off my armour. No reason not to warm up on these weaklings before I do what none have dared before me: assail the lair of the infamous Beast of Okaara. Once I have taken his head, none will overlook me again!

One of his challengers. A warrior seeking notoriety. I reach out for my subspace pocket, to the link between these rings and my personal lantern.

Ophidian? Do you recognise it?

His name was Ceebiss, my Agent. One of many, he fought the Gnat and was consumed.

And he's a ring now?

Sometimes. Sometimes the Gnat would bring him out and ride around on him. Or try to eat him.

Hm. Alright, I knew that I called rings away from Okaara, but… I don't feel anyone wearing it. Orange rings don't go without wearers. If… Someone here drew it here… Why aren't they wearing it? I mean, it's a ring. Even if they called it but.. somehow didn't feel compelled by it, someone would put it on as jewellery. Wouldn't they? I barely ever take mine off now and I'm as resistant to orange light intoxication as it's possible to be.

This bears further investigation.

"Here. You should take a seat while we wait."

Aside from the ring… Ophidian, can Larfleeze feel it here?

Perhaps. But it slumbers with no bearer. It will not impinge upon his mind unless someone wears it.

Lucky escape for Tamaran.

"Orange Lantern?"

I open my eyes. We're in… It's not a large room, though it is richly appointed. A living room, decorated with soft furnishings and warm colours. Paintings of richly dressed Tamaranians hang from the walls and two people… Servants? Lurk at the walls near the door. Karras is already sitting, leaning back against the arm of a settee. He looks a little concerned.

"Are you well?"

"Just in case it ever comes up, if you see a ring like the ones I wear, do not under any circumstances put it on."

"I… Will remember your warning. Why do you-?"

"There's a ring here. If someone puts it on, it forms a link to the orange light and calls in the Beast."

He nods in clear understanding. "And that would be bad."

"Very bad."

"You said that you intend to fight him. Would… It help if he were lured into a position from which he could be ambushed?"

"Not until I've consulted everyone who might know something about him and built any weapon that might help. And it will be just as easy to attack him in his home as it would anywhere else. I wouldn't want anyone else caught in the crossfire."

"If these rings are as powerful as you say, would it not aid you to have another bearer by your side? I would-."

"No. It took me… I learned how to fight with them quickly because I was familiar with what they could do beforehand. Learning to think clearly took longer, and in Lantern versus Lantern combat thinking clearly is essential. I want to fight Larfleeze soon. I don't want to have to wait until someone else is trained to the point where they can meaningfully help."

I descend to the floor and walk over to the chair opposite him. A pulse of empathic vision shows people approaching as I sit. Some sort of woven material… I think the thread comes from an animal rather than being from a plant or being synthetic.

"Still, I'm curious about what sort of person could call a ring-."

The door opens and a powerfully built and.. rather hairy man walks through. Like Karras, he hasn't bothered with much in the way of clothing. Shorts, boots and.. some sort of weird headdress which is supported by a gravity-defying thatch of dull red hair. His beard is plaited and stretches down to his navel, not quite merging with the thick hair covering his chest. And arms.

"I did not take the ring, alien, because I recognised that no matter what it whispered to me in the dark of the night nothing good would bear the sigil of the Beast of Okaara."

A flash of empathic vision-

We know this one, my Agent.

Our surroundings drop away, the room, Karras, the others following this man… All disappear as the orange lines of the Honden of Avarice shine.

We have heard his words.

I… Remember.

My father, my brothers, my mother and now my daughters too? No, I will not accept this! I will find some way to take back from the Citadel everything it has taken from me!

The room snaps back into being as I stand.

"King Myand'r of Tamaran. When did the Citadel take your daughters?"

back

Tamanarama 6

next

12th July

20:21 GMT

A tiny flicker of yellow from Myand'r, and I see… Months. I mean, if he knew back in January… Or longer? I don't remember how long they held her in the comics… Or the exact circumstances… The daughters I see in him are young women, certainly older than the -ugh- Teen Titans animated series versions. And that's the version I know best, isn't it? Flying around for a bit with Animal 'remember that you're married' Man didn't make anything like as much of an impression.

"Nonsense. My daughters -and my son- are on Okaara, learning the-."

"Your majesty, lying to an empath is a very bad idea. I can clearly see the shape of your fears."

Karras sits up slightly, frowning. "Myand'r? Is that true?"

The king's fists clench, breath hissing in through his teeth. "Yes."

"You told me-."

"I had hoped that it was simply another attempt to belittle us." He looks at me, then flicks his right hand in the direction of my seat and he paces. I sit. "Another attempt to remind us how helpless we are. Time dragged on, until finally Emperor Damyn sent a message explaining what had happened to me. It seems that Ryand'r… Has abandoned his studies.. in order to join with the Omega Men."

Karras' face falls. "They punish his sisters because they cannot capture him?"

I bow my head. "Ah, collective punishment." Karras' eyes narrow slightly as he looks at me. "Can't let a planet you've subjugated send people off to join a resistance movement. It makes it look like you're not really in control, particularly if it's someone from the ruling class. And if he's at least somewhat successful it would positively encourage that world's citizens to sign up." Karras' face clears as he nods in understanding. "I mean, the Omega Men would love to operate out of a place with a friendly population that can provide them with resources and personnel."

Myand'r nods. "My hope was that his dalliance with them was the result of youthful exuberance, that would swiftly wear off when he discovered that the Citadel Empire did not collapse in response. It might have been possible to parlay that into something the Citadel would accept…" He looks at me. "That is not the case."

"I'm impressed that you still resisted the ring."

"I have an unenviable job, and know full well that people -or rings- who claim to be able to solve them with a single simple action are almost certainly lying, and will cost me far more than I can afford. So, alien: what is it that you want from me?"

"I want to solve all your problems with a simple series of actions."

He nods. "I see."

"I wasn't going to put it quite like that-."

"And what would those be?"

"I… When I started planning this, I didn't know where the princesses were being kept. I thought it might be… The space station."

"It is not impossible, but I strongly doubt it."

"Well… The first step would be creating interdiction field generators capable of blocking any form of faster than light travel the Citadel or their allies could use."

"And what of the forces already in local space? Or those Tamaranians already enslaved to the Citadel?"

"The first, I believe that I could deal with relatively swiftly. As.. for.. the slaves… I'm not sure. I… Think I could recover most of them before any… Revenge attacks could take place. If the Citadel even decided to handle the situation in that way."

He makes what is either a quiet snort or a normal exhalation. "And what else?"

"There are a company of Thanagarian mercenaries on Rashashoon now, looking for work. I could bring them here to assist you in rebuilding your military. I'm not sure what tributes the Gordanians have been demanding, but I'm sure that professional soldiers for hire would both be cheaper and provide better value."

I pause for a moment, but he doesn't respond.

"The… Ah, the aim would be to get you to a point where you could become too great a force for the Gordanians to casually raid, even if they could get here-."

"Not to conquer Vega completely?"

Um. "No? I don't think that's… Really feasible. I mean, you certainly don't have enough people to occupy it, you don't have the social structures to create a structure for rulership… Maybe… Eventually… You might be in a position to establish hegemony, but you're a long way-."

Myand'r turns to Karras. "Karras, why did you bring this man to me?"

"He.. did not mention the mercenaries. If he had-."

"You don't… Have to use them. It just seems… That it would help."

Myand'r stares at me in irritation. "And where exactly do you propose to get these 'interdiction fields', hm?"

"I.. can build them myself. I have a copy of the Green Lantern Corps' database. The Green Man… Ah, the local Green Lantern… Monitors the technology the various pirate groups use fairly closely. There are ways to block just about every form of-."

He stands, turning away. "Karras, I wish that you had not found out like this. I will contact your parents-"

"Excuse me?"

"-with suggestions for-."

Nullify sound, Praexis Demons.

Orange monster babies flicker into existence around the edge of the room, prompting the servants to take a few steps towards the exits.

"Now, I can understand why you'd be sceptical. However, the first part of my… Plan, involves me doing something which has no risks for you. Even if I fail, there isn't anything to link my actions to you. Heck, I got enough scans of Gordanian weapons on Rashashoon that I could probably make it look like it was another clan that did it. Similarly, having interdiction field generators built here doesn't require you to take any risks yourself. I can leave them 'off' until they're ready to be activated. And once they are, it's unlikely they'll cause you a problem for the next three hundred years."

Sound nullification off.

"After that, there are things that I would like to help you doing. I hadn't realised that the princesses were elsewhere, so I imagine that I'll be spending some time recovering them.. and… Whatever other Tamaranians I can find."

Karras tears his attention away from the Praexis Demons. "But… Your interdiction fields?"

"I won't build one to block power rings. Green Lanterns won't enter Vega, Larfleeze-. The Beast, isn't looking this way and… Neither Sinestro nor the Qwardians have any history of working with any element in Vega. Obviously, I can't guarantee success, but until the interdiction fields go up there's nothing to implicate your government. So?"

Myand'r takes a deep breath as he forces himself to ignore the Praexis. "Why? What do you profit from this?"

"Self-actualisation. I think about myself in a certain way, as being a certain sort of person. And the sort of person I think I am would do this. And.. after the debatable 'goodness' of what I did on Rashashoon, I'd quite like to do something unarguably correct."

"What.. debatable-?"

"I helped a group of pirates negotiate a peace treaty. Hopefully, that will result in the normalisation of near-Vega space… In the longer term. But now, whatever they may become, they're still pirates. Murderers, slavers and slave traders… Thieves, at best." I shrug. "I want to help, because what is happening to you isn't just at any level. Nothing is gained by allowing the Gordanians to carry on as they are."

Myand'r looks at me for several moments. "I still do not-."

"Perhaps… If I explained it in the medium of song..?"

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Tamanarama 7

next

12th July

22:33 GMT

For a second time today I look into the T-.

Huh.

Ring, what do the Tamaranians call their star?

Liot'r. 'The Fire that Bestows Life'.

Ah. Thank you. The Liot'r system from the outside. Ring, plot course to.. near Tamaran's larger moon using… Spatial.. fracture induction..? Make it as sloppy as you can without injuring me.

Compliance.

There's a reason why this form of FTL isn't my go-to technique. It's slow, inefficient, blinds you at the exit point, is easy to track and once started can't be stopped. Still, if I want the Gordanians to see me coming in from outside, it's probably just the ticket.

Execute.

The space around me shimmers pale blue for a moment and then uhhhhhhh, yep, that's why I don't use that. Maybe there's a way I can use the basic technique with the Plane of Avarice somehow? Something to take up with the Controllers. Wholeness Rightly Assumed, and show me what the Gordanians are doing.

Compliance.

And release the Praexis Demons.

My minions flow forth from the rings as I get a look at the Gordanian ships. The closest one is coming about at speed and increasing the power to all systems as it comes to combat readiness. The one furthest away isn't doing much at the moment and the one nearest the station is… Recalling its crew from the station, by the look of things.

This… Can't be their entire strength. Even if they're bucking Gordanian tradition and using the ships exclusively for combat and not habitation, there isn't enough power here to have made much difference during Tamaran's fight with the Citadel. I need to find out where the rest are.

Tubbs makes momentary eye contact with me, then accelerates so that he's further away.

Ring, take us in the general direction of the station, but slowly enough that the closest ship can intercept us.

Compliance.

Gordanian sensors aren't usually top of the line… But if I assume that they've kept the Tamaranian made ones on the station in good repair… They'll be able to estimate my size from the power of the fracture I used to come here, but my lack of mass should be confusing them. What would they assume? Probably that I've got a stealth system, if they bother to guess at all. What do they think I am? An attacker? Probably not. If I was another Gordanian clan, I'd come in closer and with more ships. Merchant in the wrong place? Maybe, but… Vega doesn't get that sort of traffic. They'd have to be desperate to make any sort of journey on their own in this region of space, and there flat out aren't unaligned merchants in the Vega Systems themselves. Not these days. I suppose it's just about credible that I would be running from an attack… Part of a flotilla that was attacked and panic-jumped here?

I don't know. They're not Citadel-grunt dumb, but the Gordanians don't have a reputation as being great planners. Probably not worth trying to fake mass. After all, I'm not trying to draw them in. Just give them an incorrect idea of my capacities.

Speaking of which… Ring, give me a sloppy, Alan-style flame aura thing.

Compliance.

They've probably got combat veterans over there who have at least heard of Green Lanterns. I'd like to be able to pull off 'Challenger to the Beast' but 'New kind of Lantern' works about as well.

Communication stream incoming.

From the ship or the station?

From the station.

Put it through.

"You have entered the territory of the Tearing Bite clan! Your ship property is hereby confiscated! Heave to and prepare to be boarded!"

I wonder if that was.. recorded…

Ring, reply using… Whatever transmission system they used.

Standing by.

"How were you planning to 'board' me, exactly? Is that some sort of… Gordanian sexual metaphor?"

"It can be! Hahaha!"

Praexis Swarm, accelerate towards the closest ship. Fly by the hull, let them get a good look at you.

The ship still isn't close-close. After the initial surge of power, they appear to have decided that it isn't worth coming after me quickly. At this range, a light speed weapon… Wouldn't hit me reliably. Kinetic torpedoes aside, the ships appear to have a mixed armament: masers for long range, coilguns for close range and for flak, and… High fidelity short range teleporters, both for sending over infantry and grabbing stuff from their targets. Yeah, those are general purpose ships, not dedicated warships. The maser turrets on the top of the ship have rotated to point my way -ring, make sure that we're never actually in their reticles- but they're not otherwise taking offensive action.

"No, seriously, I don't get it. Can you actually see me yet?"

"We know exactly where you are! Do not try to escape!"

"That's not what I asked. Can you see me? Do you have the technology for a visual identification?"

"That does not matter!"

"You'll laugh when you spot it."

A beam of microwave radiation flashes by. Nothing like close enough to hit, though that does give me some idea of their beam attenuation. Not bad, for Gordanians. Don't think that was a full-power shot. Probably trying to intimidate me into compliance. And -hah!- they've actually put up an interdiction field against spatial fracture induction! Not stupid at least.

The Praexis Demons are about to get into 'looking-out-the-windows' range, so I strain my empathic vision to try and see their crew's responses. Not that Gordanian ships have windows -those are a purely civilian-ship-flying-in-a-safe-area thing- but they do have camera mounts. Small objects in proximity should trigger an automatic-. Yep, there we go. And unlike Tamaranians, these people have been out and about since Larfleeze started sending his Construct-Lanterns out to visit people.

And there's the flash of yellow. Just the bridge so far, focused on… That's a command seat, so the other one is probably the sensor operator. And now it's spreading. Just to the bridge… The guns look automated, so there isn't really any reason for anyone else to-. More flickers of yellow. It doesn't spread further, but a small number of people across the ship just started being afraid of me.

"Are you laughing yet?"

I get dead air for a few moments.

"Begone, slave of the Beast. We have nothing that belongs to your master."

"Oh, I'm not a slave. I retain my own purposes."

"Do you claim to be the Beast yourself? How stupid do you think I am?"

"No. Just someone who uses the same power as him. I have a… Business proposition for you. Do you think that we could talk in person?"

"What business?"

"I wish to purchase some Tamaranians from you."

back

Tamanarama 8

next

12th July

22:40 GMT

"Welcome aboard the Scratching Post." The body language of the scarred Gordanian opposite me suggests caution, but not an immediate intent to attack. Unlike the heavily armed soldiers that have formed a rough semi-circle inside the airlock. They don't appear to have been told what I am, just that I'm a threat. "I'm Chief Weezak's seneschal. I will take you to our holding pens."

Hm. Seneschal isn't exactly a position of honour amongst Gordanians. Holders of the title are usually ex-chiefs who are deposed and.. 'encouraged' to swear loyalty to the one who removed them. The custom both allows for leaders facing a coup to step down without being killed and allows their knowledge to be retained by the clan… But they then spend years reporting to the one who defeated them and who in turn knows that they must keep constant watch on… Oh, no, I see that Weezak went in for implanted explosives instead. Much more efficient.

"So, which was it?"

"Which what, Lantern?"

Ah, he recognised the rings. I raise my right hand, pointing to a recent-looking scar running along the left side of his neck. "Did you jump or were you pushed?"

He turns away from me, forcing me to rise off the ground to avoid being hit by what's left of his tail. "I displeased Clan Commander Trogaar." He heads off deeper into the station and I float along behind him, a couple of guards falling in behind me. The corridors would be more than spacious enough for Tamaranians, but Gordanians would struggle to pass one another. "I was.. fortunate enough to be permitted to kneel to Chief Weezak."

The Clan Commander is the head of the clan's military forces. So as I thought, their dedicated warships are somewhere else. Proper warships, most likely built in Citadel shipyards and possibly equipped with Psion weapons. Crewed by the best veterans the clan has.

I'm… Going to… Have to kill a lot of these people, aren't I? I… Maybe I could..? Work out a way to maroon them somewhere instead? Get rid of their FTL drives and long range communications equipment..? Don't know yet.

Tamaranian space stations were fairly Spartan affairs, and if the Gordanians have changed things they at least have the sense to keep the public areas clear… It's even reasonably well cleaned, though I doubt that they have robots to do that…

In a side passage, I get a momentary glimpse of a young Tamaranian boy mopping the deck. Ah.

My host stops in front of a heavy door in what would once have been a mechanical goods storage bay. Tamaran didn't quite have enough of a space industry to do the practical thing and handle all of their ship fabrication in orbit. Quite a lot of prefabricated components were made planetside and shipped up until they were needed. With the Gordanians not doing any shipbuilding here, they can probably spare the space.

"In here." He strikes the access panel with his right fist. The doors stay closed, a quiet growl bubbling up from his throat. He taps the communicator on his chest. "Zaark to Control. Open the door to Slave Pen Two or I'll cut off your testicles and send them to the Psions."

"Say please, Zaark. I want to hear you say 'please'."

The red billows around his interior, and he half turns in the direction that leads to the station's control centre. I can see the way his fear of being weak feeds the need to strike down those who think they can take liberties.

An exploitable disunity.

"Please, allow me."

An orange beam connects me to the doorway for a moment, easily triggering the lock mechanism. There are a.. lot of mechanical parts holding the doors together. I suppose the whole thing is designed to resist Gordanian strength. Zaark steps forwards and grabs the slowly retracting halves of the door, shoving them apart faster than the mechanism is designed to allow. There's a puff of smoke as something burns out.

"Drollg, there appears to be something wrong with your door. I would get on that quickly if I were you. Zaark out."

"You're rotten meat, Z-!"

Zaark taps his communicator again as I get a look-.

They really are pens.

Tough looking… Pipes, I think? Have been welded into bars, with heavy plates serving as doors. Each cell holds between four and ten Tamaranians, and if there's an organisation system I can't tell what it is. They stare at us fearfully, backing away to the fullest extent that their surroundings allow them to. I see… Few cuts or signs of malnutrition, but plenty of bruises and electrical burns.

"You see any you like?" Zaark heads over to a chest mounted on the wall and pulls out… A glorified cattle prod. "I can make them walk around for you, or talk or whatever."

Ring, control my features. Callous disinterest.

Compliance.

"The ones we have working for us, we implant explosives. These aren't processed yet." He walks over to a cage, bending down slightly to stare at those inside. "We can throw that in if you buy more than ten. Or you can just stick in whatever you use before you leave."

The ring reducing my response to next to nothing, I stroll down a walkway between two rows of cages, making sure to thoroughly examine those within. "Does the planet tithe them to you..? Or do you just grab them?"

"Trogaar orders us to bring him a certain number of adults. We sell the excess we collect. You want a woman?"

I stop, then turn my head towards him. "Excuse me?"

"Your species, you look like they do. If you're looking for a fuck-slave, I could point ones out to you. No?" A slight flaring of his nose that is a Gordanian shrug. "Tell me what you're looking for, then."

"Domestic servants." I continue walking through the.. room. "As you say, my species and theirs are physically similar. There's a certain appeal, and we wouldn't have to widen the hallways as we would if I bought Gordanians."

"Just for yourself? You have a big house?"

"No, I'm thinking of buying wholesale, selling retail." I stop at the far end of the room, turning back towards him. "Is this all you have?"

"Is there a problem with them?" He glances around the room. "They're not lively now, but-."

"No, no. This is fine, mostly. But I can't start a business with this few. And of course, I'm willing to pay more for those with specialist skills."

"Technical skills?" I nod. "Most of those died during the last war. We put the ones we catch to work on our equipment. Or send them to Trogaar."

"And they don't commit sabotage? Wouldn't you be better having them train your people?"

"Smaller hands are better for some things." Another flare. "We watch them, of course. But it is true that it would be better if we worked without them."

"Do you think..? I might persuade your Chief to part with them?"

"With money, all things become possible, uh?" I smile politely. "Weezak will want money. More than the market rate. And I want time to make sure our people can do the jobs. We can sell you the domestics now, if you want them."

"And more than you have? If Trogaar is using them for manual labour, I assume there's a certain amount of… Wastage?"

He makes a low hissing noise. "If you're serious about a big contract like that, you might need to talk to Trogaar himself."

"I'll try not to take too much of his time. If I could use your communication facilities..?"

"No, he'll want to see you in person. And we'll want to feel the texture of your money. If you buy what we have now… We can talk about getting you a visit."

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Tamanarama 9

next

12th July

23:22 GMT

"…the market rate. Even taking into account 'rarity value'-" I make the air quotes gesture. "-I'm not prepared to pay a premium of more than five percent. Not for this many, and not for slaves who were born free."

"Look, if you need them broken-."

"I don't need them broken. I need them diligently performing their assigned tasks with an appreciation that such is their lot in life. If it was just me then I'd stick a brand on their foreheads and call it a day, but it isn't. The market in my region of space simply isn't the same as the Vega market. I can't just brutalise them into obedience and expect to get a decent return."

"We've got steroid injections we could give them to make them a bit more lively. Once they've gone to the final buyer-."

"Zaark! I'm selling for domestic usage. One or two per buyer, and they'll demand that a doctor check their purchases before they authorise the transfer of the funds! My name would be mud if I used short lived chemical tricks! Particularly if there were ongoing effects on their health."

"Sounds pretty fussy."

"That's where the money is. I suspect that half of them are basically going to end up as ornaments anyway."

His tail straightens, then vibrates slightly. Surprise. "People pay for that?"

"Sure. We certainly weren't going to use them as labourers. Automation is more effective for industrial purposes in most conditions."

"They hiring Gordanians? Because that doesn't sound like a bad place to retire! Hahahaha!"

"Hah! Ah." I lean forwards. "Was that a joke, or do you want me to start asking around?"

"Errrrr… Better not. Anyway." He jabs at the Gordanian friendly keyboard, figures moving across the display. "If we're using Rashashoon valuations, I'm happy to take the same values on mechanical or electronic components. Agreed?"

"Raw materials?"

"Minus ten percent. We've got an asteroid field here, and we're not doing any large scale heavy manufacturing. We can get most of what we need ourselves, and we can buy the rest from other parts of the clan."

"Fair enough. What do you want off that list?"

"Hm." He scrolls through a few pages. "If it were up to me, I'd go for high end technical parts. Not a lot of places can make the really good stuff, so there's usually a waiting list. And we're nowhere near powerful enough to muscle our way to the top."

I take a moment to check what he's pointing to. Huh. Perfectly engineered millennia guaranteed parts for systems only a little superior to what they already have. It would improve their capacities a bit, but mostly it would save them time and increase their reliability. And then there's the installation time… Even if I was planning on not destroying or capturing everything I give them, I wouldn't worry too much about them having it. Better still, the chaotic nature of Vega has inflated the prices. It wouldn't take me long to make enough equipment to equal the value we've agreed on for the slaves.

"That sounds jolly unfair. I don't have a problem-."

"Yeah, but Weezak would." He growls quietly. "Not like he's the one who has to arrange maintenance schedules for systems using parts that should have been time expired years ago."

"Oh. You have my sympathy, but… What does Weezak want?"

"Weapons mostly. Infantry and ship. Matter disrupter melee weapons and ship grade particle cannons most of all."

"Matter disrupter melee..? Really?"

"Trogaar likes them. Which means we like them."

"Oh… Kay…"

"Weezak was assigned here from the clan military. He doesn't really… Value the commercial side of things. They make our warriors better in melee, then they're what he wants."

"Is melee fighting a big part of-?"

"No. No, it isn't."

"I.. can.. supply them, if that's what you need." Unlike their earthly cousins the crumbler gauntlets, they don't do much to construct barriers. They won't present me with a problem. "And I can do particle cannons… But if you want anti-ship size… You do realise that you'd need to strip out most of your existing weapon systems in order to fit them? To say nothing of the time in dock. This place wasn't designed to work on Gordanian clan ships."

"And guess whose job it is to fix that?"

"Honestly, you might be better off just building a new ship. Or saving your currency units and buying one. If the peace treaty with the Spider Guild holds, Jarko and Amalak are going to be looking to offload their older models."

"Peace treaty? First I've heard of it."

Ring, transfer full text.

Compliance.

"Basically, they agreed on territorial claims and the Spiders agreed to build ships for the victors. It should reduce hull prices a lot over the next few years."

"Hm." Zaark skim-reads the text, then moves to the appendix on the build queue. "You're right. I'll need to get this checked-."

"What, you think I faked an eighty page treaty off the cuff?"

"No, but you might have edited a thing or two. Whatever exactly happens, this is going to affect prices a lot." He sits back slightly. "Which means… Until I know exactly how this is going to work out, I can't possibly know what the best weapon acquisition strategy is."

I nod. "Quite true."

"The price will probably drop on… Low end particle cannons. If Amalak liquidates his stock. Which it looks like he's going to."

"If you say so."

"And in a situation of uncertainty… Investing in items known to hold their value is sensible, even if it turns out not to have been optimal."

"Sounds sensible to me. Do you think you can convince Weezak?"

"Weezak's not really an economics chief. I wave this treaty at him and he'll spend the next demi-year trying to work out the military implications. Which works for me, since he'll be out of my scales."

"Though you might want to throw him a bone. I mean, if you did upgrade your guns, you'd probably need improved power generation systems anyway. It would hardly hurt to swap over a few hardpoints."

"Yeah. Okay." His fingers flick with surprising dexterity as he adds items to the trade list. "How soon can you have… This together?"

I lean forwards, a faint smile on my lips. "How soon can you have my slaves ready for dispatch?"

"Depends on what you want us to do with the implants."

"Removed, if that can be done without completely traumatising them."

"No, the implants are pretty resilient." He absentmindedly scratches his neck scar with the claw of his right forefinger. "Should be about… Six neegath..? As long as I don't have to bust any heads together when my tail rot cases find out they're going to be scrubbing their own decks from now on."

I feel the ring work to keep my face naturally animated. "I'll have it ready by then."

back

Tamanarama 10

next

12th July

19:03 GMT -6

I stare passively into the unblinking eyes of the late Lawrence Crock, ignoring the sudden change in the pressure of the air behind me. A thought, a single weak desire from me and he can move and speak almost as if he were truly alive. In its absence-.

"Is that Sportsmaster, Master?"

"Yes. What's left of him, at any rate."

I can feel her smile on the back of my neck. "Did you hunt him down and kill him, Master?"

"In a manner of speaking. This was… Last year, while I was still with the team. Our first official mission. We were in Santa Prisca-" Which has since become a slightly better controlled third world pisspot. "-to try and work out why they weren't sending quite as much Venom to America as they used to.-" I frown. "Which -now I think about it- is a pretty odd reason to send us somewhere. Anyway, he was trying to do a runner with a sample of Venom Buster-" I raise my right arm slightly, turning my attention to it as I for a moment picture my post-Venom Bustering dimensions. "-and looked like he might have useful information, so I assimilated him."

"Did he?"

I lower my arm again. "Nothing special. He was the first man I killed… Since arriving on this Earth, at least. The most useful thing I managed to do with him was attract… Jade's… Approval."

"She fell in love with you because you killed her father?"

"Not.. just that, but it certainly gave me an in." I manage a weak smile as I turn to face her-. "I see you've been out hunting."

She nods, still smiling. Completely ignoring the blood splattered across the left side of her face. I can't help but think that there's something very wrong with this girl. I don't think it's completely my fault… "They keep trying to smuggle in more weapons, Master."

I nod. "Hopefully, they'll get the message this time." Her eyes shine with excitement as I gently place the tips of the fingers of my left hand on her right shoulder. The slightly bloodier one, as it happens. I.. don't think I'll ask the Genomorphs to bother trying to clean it out. "Well done. I am pleased by how attentive you are to your responsibilities in Sudan."

"Thank you, Master!"

"Now, go and get yourself cleaned up before you cause Miss Shimmer to give you another lecture on hygiene."

"Yes, Master." She steps back, bows, and then dashes away. Leaving me with what I'm increasingly coming to regard as a mistake. Assimilation is… A hideous violation of the soul. I always knew that, I just… Didn't care. Mister Crock was a vile man, Dorrance was just as bad… Then… Nabu. After my exposure to the Anti-Life, I'm…

I don't think that anyone deserves to have this happen to them.

"Ring, release."

"Unable to comply."

"You understand that I genuinely desire this?"

"Unable to comply."

"Why?"

"Insufficient data. Speculative: technique requires both intense desire and information presently lacking."

I close my eyes, nodding sadly. "Or it might not be possible at all."

"Insufficient data."

"Sinestro?"

"I'm hardly a specialist in orange light manipulation, Corpsman. If you are still unwilling to consult the Weaponers, I can only suggest that you finally undertake that sojourn to Maltus that you were planning."

"In a week. Perhaps two. I want to be certain that I am ready." But for now… I draw the Sword of the Fallen from its sheath. "Mister Crock, I really don't know whether or not there's enough of you left to understand what I'm saying… I'm… Sorry, for doing this to you. If I'd known… I'd just have killed you."

The glow from the rings I'm wearing dims and then dies as I rediscover my capacity for compassion. I suppose there was no guarantee that getting better… More whole, was going to make me feel good in every instance.

And then I stab Lawrence Crock through the sigil on his forehead.

The blade moves smoothly through his construct flesh, and he remains expressionless as he fades from existence. I wait for a moment, then bow my head. Is that..? It? Is he truly dead? Does his soul pass to an afterlife, or is he simply erased from existence? Knowing what little I do of Hell, I suspect that the latter would be preferable…

"Ring, Dorrance."

"By your command."

My second… Slave, appears from the ring on my left ring finger. "Mister Dorrance…" The same vacant stare. "You were a nasty piece of work and you killed a lot of people. But you had a pretty shitty start, and I can't really say that you were worse than the people around you. Just… A little more successful."

Stab. Again, the knife goes in and again the target fades.

"Ring, Crock."

"Subject not found."

I nod to myself. I wasn't sure… Done now. Two things more. I walk over to the oversized coffin containing Mister Dorrance's fake corpse. I made it look reasonably good, as if someone tided it up after they found the body. And then put it in cold storage for few months. The coffin is.. pretty nice, good quality wood and a little tasteful decoration. The only odd element is the folder sitting on the top.

His only relative I was able to trace was Edmund Dorrance, presently resident in Hong Kong. His father. The folder contains proof of their relationship -in Braille- and a short biography. The two of them didn't ever meet, but if someone has to take receipt of his body…

"Ring, hush tube to Edmund Dorrance's office."

"By your command."

Morning tomorrow in Hong Kong at the moment. For a split second I see the man come to his feet, a blade drawn as two confused looking bodyguards raise their guns while they try to work out what set their blind ninja boss off. Then I shove the coffin through the tube and close it down.

I walk over to the second coffin, drumming my fingers on the wood of its surface. The difference between the first and the second being… That I actually like Paula. The time I've waited to do this…

Show me.

Paula is alone, Artemis is… Well, not in Gotham. Could be on a team mission, but… Not really relevant. "Ring, hush tube to… Outside her apartment."

"By your command."

I… I look at the coffin for a moment… Then walk through and close the portal behind me.

I take a deep breath, then exhale heavily. Then I raise my right hand and knock on her door.

And then I stand there, like a great grey lemon weighing a third of a tonne.

"Just a moment!"

I hear footsteps as she moves towards the door. This must be a slightly novel way for… One of us to enter her house. Usually superheroes go in through the window, and I usually tube directly inside. Maybe I should have..? No. No, I think this is correct.

She pulls the door open, her face pointed at normal-person head level for a moment before she corrects. And she.. smiles. "Grayven. What brings you here? Is Jade with you?"

"No, she's… Not. Would..? You mind if I came inside for a few minutes? There are a few things I need to tell you."

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Tamanarama 11

next

12th July

19:07 GMT -6

Paula slowly leads the way into the living room. She's looking.. well. Not her full Huntress-hotness, but intense exercise and a sense of purpose can do wonders for a person. I stop just inside the room, the cessation of my footfalls prompting her to turn around.

"Is Jade hurt?"

I shake my head. A reasonable enough question. "Not… She wasn't when last I saw her, and she was in a safe location under an assumed name. I haven't… I haven't seen her for a little while."

"I.. see." Her face isn't blank, but I do think that she's making an effort to avoid giving away what she's thinking with her expressions. "Would you like to sit down?"

I nod, giving her a small smile. "Thank you." Having been here so much for various reasons, I reinforced one of her chairs… Still, I'm careful to lower myself into it slowly as she takes a seat on the adjacent settee.

"I was expecting to hear from you after you destroyed the League of Shadows."

"I… Thought it best not to visit someone known to have links to the League in the immediate aftermath. In case someone decided to come after you. Law enforcement, or.. someone we missed. Besides, I was… Fairly occupied for a few days."

She nods. "And afterwards?"

"That's… One of the reasons I'm here. I…" I turn my head away, looking out of the curtains into the Gotham evening. "I told Jade the second time we met that I intended to destroy the League of Shadows… But, with all of the work I did on integrating with Ra's and his fellow 'Illuminati'… She… Appears to have come to the conclusion that I had genuinely converted." I turn back towards her, but her face still betrays no clue as to what she's actually thinking. "I told her to keep her head down for a few days… Carried out the purge, got her a Presidential Pardon-"

"She is-?"

"-and an engagement ring." Paula doesn't carry on speaking, though she isn't quite suppressing the happiness she feels at the idea that her elder daughter has a chance at becoming an honest woman-.

Uh.

Of having something approaching a normal life, former sins written off if not actually forgiven.

"She was expecting the police, and was highly agitated. When I explained what I'd done, she… Tried to stab me, and.. generally indicated that my continued presence was… Undesirable."

Paula's face takes on a more sombre aspect as she nods. "I am very sorry to hear that. Have you tried speaking to her since?"

"I… Probably would have done, were it not for the fact that my father chose that moment to pay me a visit."

"Your father. The man you once described to Jade as being Lawrence with the powers of a Kryptonian."

I nod. "Actually, he's a lot more powerful than that. He has subtle options which Kryptonians lack… He actually seemed to be fairly pleased with me… And I still don't know whether he was feigning it for effect or if… What he did to me is how he shows… Affection."

My jaw locks as for a moment my mind revisits the experience of being in his presence.

"What did he do to you?"

"The Anti-Life Equation. Ah, a part of it. He shared with me his conviction that existence itself is unbearable agony. Every moment of my life becoming the worst moment in my life, forever." I shift slightly in my seat. "I was locked in that mode until last Sunday. Since.. I.. was helped… Free… I.. haven't.. really.. felt up to it. To talking to her. Have..? Have you seen her? Spoken to her?"

"She telephoned me from a burner phone to let me know that she was alright, but I have not heard from her since." I nod. It was a bit… I mean, what the hell would I have done if she was here? "Would it not be a simple matter for you to find her?"

"I'm.. not… Fully myself again, yet. And.. I…" I squeeze my eyes shut. "I don't know what to do about.. her."

"Oh, Grayven."

I hear her starting to get up. I raise my right hand to forestall her, opening my eyes as I do so. "The other reason why I came here-." Oh. Will. That felt… Like forcing the fug coating my thoughts and feelings away… If I regain anger and hope I'll nearly be back to normal. I'll need to talk to Scott about… "The other reason I came here is a good deal more personal to you. On my old team's mission to Santa Prisca last year -that was before Artemis joined- I encountered and killed your husband, Lawrence Crock."

Her face slips back into neutral.

"Legally, I'm in the clear… He was armed, dangerous and a known international criminal. And I was a rookie. But I almost certainly could have taken him alive, if I'd wanted to. I just decided that the information in his head was worth more than his life."

There's a moment of silence.

"How did he die?"

I frown weakly, my eyes fixed on her carpet. "Depends what you mean. He died while bound in orange construct rope as I assimilated him. Shortly before that he hit me with exploding javelins and tried to shoot me with his plasma crossbow. And tried to close the distance so he could punch me. I was Earth Prime Human size at the time so it might have seemed like a reasonable tactic. Wouldn't have worked…"

"Who else knew that you had killed him?"

"I told Jade and.. the other members of the Light. A few of them had bodyguards with them… But they're all dead now. As far as I know no one else knows. Certainly no one in the Justice League."

"Artemis?"

"No. Though I'll tell her if you want me to."

"No, I-." She takes a breath. "No."

"I've.. killed better for less since then, but he was the first person I killed on this Earth. I don't feel bad for killing him.. exactly… But the way I did it… Was unnecessary. Assimilation is a violation of a person's soul, and while he's truly dead now, for the intervening time, he… Wasn't. I don't think he was.. exactly.. suffering…"

Oh, this is… Drivel. Ring, hush tube.

By your command.

Filaments flick out, reaching through the invisible portal and latching onto the coffin to pull it through. Paula comes to her feet as it floats into view.

"If you'll forgive the impertinence-" I rise, turning away as I deposit the box on the middle of the floor. "-I included enough money to pay for a funeral… Or you can just dump his body in a back alley and donate it to charity." I walk towards the tube aperture. "And if Jade-."

I don't know.

I walk through the tube, absent-mindedly raising my left hand back towards-.

"Grayven."

I stop, turning around and leaning back through. "Yes?"

"Thank you, for returning his body."

I look down, shaking my head. "It's a bare minimum."

"I fell firmly out of love with Lawrence when I was in prison. You did not need to do this."

"I should have done it months ago." I pull back-.

"If I hear from Jade, I will tell her that you asked after her."

I close my eyes again.

Ring, close the.. tube.

By your command.

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Tamanarama 12

next

13th July

02:49 GMT

I try not to give the Tamaranian chattels being trouped past me more than a cursory examination. With my eyes, at any rate. Ring scans… Reasonable health, no serious injuries. None are starving, which is the thing I was worried about. Telling a cripple that you're going to get them a replacement limb makes them inclined to work with you. Telling someone who's been starving that you can't give them food…

Zaark brings up the rear of the column, looking pleased with himself. "That's every last one. I'm looking forward to putting some complainers on punishment duty."

"All of them? He agreed?"

A snort of agreement. "Throwing in that axe thing was a great idea. Can't stop playing with it. Like my daughter with a new doll." Another snort. "He wants me to ask if you want to make this a regular thing."

One x-ionised axe. With a little something built into the head to make it explode if anyone tried to analyse it with anything sophisticated enough to actually make sense of it. Not that I think Weezak will let anyone touch his new precious. One Gordanian with an axe shouldn't be much a problem, and I could tell by looking at him that he'd probably part with the remaining Tamaranian technical specialists for it. And the chance to maybe buy more in future. Not that that's going to happen, of course.

"No, no." I shake my head. "There isn't any point until I know how well these sell. But if they do…" I turn as the Gordanian dock workers close the transportation… Well, it's more or less a large shipping crate. "You'll be the first man I speak to."

"You sure you don't want us to fly these somewhere for you? I could probably do it at cost."

"Thank you, but no." I rise into the air, thick bands of orange light connecting me to each of the six shipping containers. "What sort of Lantern can't fly a little luggage around?"

"Alright. But just to be clear: we have a strict no-returns policy. HAHAHAHA!"

"Hehe, yes." Inside the shipping containers orange filaments dart from person to person. The few visible injuries appear to be from where they rushed the autochirurgeons in suturing the incisions where they removed the explosive implants. Doesn't take a lot of bomb to kill a person if the bomb is already inside their skull. Heal heal heal… "Alright, good doing business with you." I lift the containers, prompting flickers of yellow from the ground crew. "Open up the bay."

Zaark flicks his right forefinger in the direction of the inner airlock, prompting his fellow Gordanians to march back into the inner parts of the station. Tamaran didn't have the technology for selective atmosphere fields, and while some of the richer Gordanian clans make some use of it, it's too expensive for them to have made it widespread.

Zaark is last to leave the bay and the atmosphere starts being evacuated the moment the stationside doors close. I float the crates in the direction of the outer doors as the quiet noises of the station fall away with the air. Within the crates there's an understandable degree of fear, consternation… The muttered conversations as workers from various parts of the station pass on what little they've seen and those from the pens who tell the others what they saw of me. A few friends happy to be reunited and more than a few prayers to X'Hal and Auron. I don't think anyone's noticed that they aren't carrying injuries any longer.

The outer doors open and I get a clear view of space. I could just leave now, but since I want them to underestimate me I leave it until there's enough room for me to pass comfortably through. Ring, prep spatial fracture, take us in the direction of Rashashoon… Maybe a bit softer this time?

Compliance.

My cargo and I drift towards the exit, passing through just as the opening becomes wide enough. I'm generating artificial gravity inside the containers, as well as nullifying the momentum imparted by my acceleration. Still, we've got a way to go before we get a safe distance away from the station for a spatial fracture.

So, what did I learn? The Gordanians maintaining the blockade are a tiny proportion of their clan's full strength. Technically skilled Tamaranians are being sent somewhere at the behest of their war leader. Ring, start analysing the Gordanians' drives and their residues. Chances are they're all using a similar system.

Compliance.

Ugh, there are still enough charged particles and miniature spatial distortions from the last war that I can't be completely sure which are recent… I toss out a few dozen stealth observer drones as I head towards safe fracture distance. Still, there are only so many worlds in this cluster. Unless they're using magic or anti-Lantern shielding, I should be able to find them in… A couple of weeks. Darn.

Space around me shimmers blue, a feeling of mild disquiet rising in my chest. This jump is a little…

Uuugh.

I hear shrieks from-.

Damn it, can't cancel this. Just.. bear with it…

Another moment of unpleasantness and we're back in normal space. We should be far enough away now that it doesn't matter… Ring, a spatial warp. Take us to Rilsomtine.

Compliance.

The third planet of the Crown Imperium- The space around me bends and turns orange. -is a nice place for a visit. It sells itself as a resort and centre of agricultural production and best of all? Has a rather large fleet nearby at a constant state of alert. The Crown Imperium is the first civilised interstellar nation of any size near Vega, a sworn enemy of the pirate groups and has quite definite anti-slavery policies. Getting one of their charitable organisations to agree to put up my guests didn't take a great deal of work.

The warp ends and I send the agreed signal to the naval command station. They can't actually stop a sufficiently determined Lantern, but these are basically good people and I don't want to rile them up… More than my actions in negotiating peace between the pirate factions already have.

Not that I was stupid enough to tell them that was me.

I get an approval ping, then warp further in-system. Not too close. Warps of the power I used.. aren't really for well-travelled regions of space. Check the site… And transition downwards.

Space is replaced by fields, silence by insect song and isolation by Felicity and a local fellow in a vaguely Star Trekky suit. I gently deposit the shipping containers on the ground as he comes closer. "Orange Lantern. Did everything go well?"

"They've already moved most of the slaves. Might be a little while before I can work out where they're holding them. And I.. can't risk taking them back until…"

He nods. "We'll be happy to provide these poor unfortunates with shelter for as long as you need."

X-ionised blades emerge from subspace and cut through the hinges on the containers, orange constructs pulling them away and dropping them on the ground. "Thank you. They don't have any immediate medical needs, but a good meal wouldn't go amiss."

He nods again. "Of course. We've got that.. and bathing facilities, set up and ready."

I rise off the ground and float towards the now-open containers, manacles popping open as I do so. "Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, my name is Orange Lantern two eight one four and I will be your liberator for the evening." They're staring at me. Most aren't expecting anything much from me. Fair enough. "We are presently on a safe world in the Crown Imperium where slavery is very illegal. I'll be depositing you here until I can remove the Gordanian presence from Tamaran-" Just a few flickers… "-permanently, at which point I intend to return you there. I apologise for the inconvenience of the mode of transportation, but it was the best way I could come up with to ensure that they didn't suspect anything."

A few braver ones have risen and are nervously leaving the confines of the cargo containers, blinking in the midday sunlight. A few children take to the air, marvelling at their newly regained freedom. Must have been.. unpleasant, being confined to space station corridors for a species with a natural capacity for flight.

"My intention is to absolutely abolish the ownership of sentient beings in Vega, but for now…" I gesture towards a nearby building. "Please, avail yourselves of the facilities."

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Tamanarama 13

next

13th July

03:12 GMT

"You bought them?" Mylissa -the social worker I asked to have a chat with Felicity- glowers at me. "You realise that so long as there's a market, they'll keep kidnapping and brutalising these people."

"Yes. I do."

"Then would you like to-" She glances over to where a group of ex-slaves are engaged in some sort of.. flying game. "-explain?"

"It was the method most likely to result in their safe recovery. And while I am aware that there might well be longer term consequences, I intend to soon make it impossible for them to resupply. And.. I… Tried to make it clear that I wouldn't be buying any more quickly."

"So why are you here rather than out making it impossible for them to resupply?"

"Because I don't know where the rest of the people they took from Tamaran are. If I do anything aggressive, it might tip whoever has them off. As it stands, I doubt that Zaark's done anything more than notify his superiors of the sale. I'm not a threat yet."

She stares into my eyes for several seconds before averting her eyes with a toss of her head. "You better know what you're doing. These people got off lightly. Some of the people we get here-."

"I know. And speaking of Felicity..?"

Mylissa slumps slightly. "Oh, she's not damaged. That's all she is. She's grown up believing that the way she lives is completely normal. Her concept of good is limited to.. pleasing her patron and her owner."

"Can you help her?"

Mylissa shrugs. "She keeps trying to be helpful. We can give her things to do and thank her when she does them, but at this point there's no way to change her core schema short of neural reprofiling." I nod. "Are you going to leave her here?"

"Probably. I… Don't.. like.. being thought of in the way she thinks of me."

She frowns. "You're telepathic?"

"No, empathic. But it's a very precise sort of empathy. Her highest aim in life is to be the kept plaything of a powerful figure who treats her decently. I recoil every time I look at it. Does..? Do you think that she'll accept me leaving her here? I don't want to make things worse."

"From what you told me about how she joined the Omega Men, she'll just find someone else to attach herself to. As I said, I don't think that's avoidable."

I nod. A bit of an imponderable. There are probably things I could do to change her value system… But would she still be herself afterwards? I'm.. inclined to think not… Which still leaves this as the best place for her. "And… You'll make sure that no one takes advantage of her?"

"As much as I can."

"Then that's probably for the-."

The table's holoscreen flashes into life, the institute director's face appearing. "Orange Lantern?"

"How can I help?"

"We have a… Message incoming. Someone… Probably from the fleet, they sent a message to Central Office on Karaltine."

"Okay?"

"And… It somehow reached Chief Minister Jediah Rikane. He wishes to speak with you. We, ah… We don't normally rate access to such exalted circles."

"Speaking to him is the least I can do. Please, put him through."

"Just a moment." The screen appears to turn off, giving me a clear view of the space behind it.

Then a man in loose-fitting green clothing appears. The background.. looks like a well appointed office. The man himself is bald and sports a bushy beard and full eyebrows. Not a goatee though, so he's probably not evil. I nod politely. "Chief Minister. To what do I owe this pleasure?"

"I was notified that you liberated a group of slaves from Citadel-controlled space. It's hardly a state secret that I'm in favour of anything that hurts the Citadel." I nod. "I had been under the impression that Lanterns couldn't operate in Vega. Have the Guardians altered their position?"

"No, but it doesn't apply to Lanterns who don't work for them."

He smiles faintly. "An excellent piece of sophistry. Can we expect more like this in future?"

"I intend to… Reform.. certain aspects of Vega's culture. Certainly, that will include abolishing slavery, reducing military conflict to.. normal levels. And I can't see how the Citadel or the Psions would survive such a reform."

He nods. "Music to my ears, Orange Lantern. I'll…" He waves to someone out of shot. "Make funds available for the rescue centre you're in. And if you should find yourself in need of fleet support… We're always willing to do our part in culling pirate numbers."

"You're very kind, Chief Minister. I'll let you know if that becomes… Operationally appropriate."

"Good show. Rikane out."

The screen vanishes once more. Hm. Crown Imperium ships aren't bad… But if they had the force to purge the region around Vega then they'd already have done it. Perhaps I could give them the details of groups who aren't prepared to accept the new calm?

"E-excuse me? Orange Lantern?"

I look up as a young Tamaranian man hovers -literally and metaphorically- a short distance from the table I'm sitting at.

"Yes? How can I help?"

"I… Overheard..? You don't know where they sent the others?"

I straighten up. "You do?"

He nods. "They had me working on… Non-critical systems. But, I heard them… The crews from the other ship, the ones that took the others away… They said the planet's name and how long it took to get there. I… I don't know if-."

"It will certainly reduce the time I need to spend looking. Please, tell me."

"They called it Hny'xx, and they said that it took them over fourteen neegath to get there."

Ring, is there a Hny'xx on record?

No 'Hny'xx' found. However, the Citadel uses standardised naming conventions for unoccupied worlds-.

Yes, yes. And?

Thirty statistically probable locations. Locations may be eliminated by tracking Tearing Bite clan military ships and scanning their primary drive design.

And all clans have some military forces in their homeworld's system.

I stand, my full power armour appearing around me. As the homeworld of one of the Citadel's main allies, Karna is well defended and is known to have Psion-built combat installations.

This could be… Interesting.

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Tamanarama 14

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13th July

03:28 GMT

Those are some decidedly unfriendly looking ships.

Appearing in close proximity to Karna seemed like a bad idea. They've had the ability to block warping for a long time, and while transitioning is ludicrously hard to block over a wide area unless you've got a power ring too it can be detected. And it basically says 'a Lantern was here'. I don't exactly know what happens if the Psions think that the Guardians have gone back on their word, but whatever it is I don't want to be responsible for it.

So I appeared in the next system over, the automated metallic hydrogen extraction plants in orbit around its one super gas giant planet taking absolutely no notice of me. The thing about forms of FTL fast enough to actually get you anywhere is that they remove the need to move through a region. Space is vast, systems are small. If you're attacking somewhere it's because there's something you want in that particular place because otherwise you'd be somewhere else.

Now I'm on the outskirts of the Karna system, whose star's Gordanian name translates as 'The Star that Shines on Karna'. I'm phased and invisible, the rings prepared to deflect anything that they can detect before it detects me. Gordanians generally make use of whatever ships they can get, but clans large enough to have a distinct military will generally use Branx ship designs. The Branx build about four different types of FTL system, but none of them skip the intervening space. Species in Vega have been in space for so long that I.. need to narrow it down.

In theory the patrol fleets of Karna aren't supposed to quarrel, sharing as they do the purpose of defending their homeworld. In practice, you can tell how closely allied clans are by where they're positioned in relation to one another. Certain clans do not want anything to do with one another, the customary pax domum being the sole reason why they're not shooting it out instead of simply avoiding each other.

Whoever runs this mess -if anyone does- must be a master politician.

The ships are well armoured, well shielded and well armed. Some are even agile. I actually… Couldn't take all of that. It's not even a question of having to kill them to do it; there are so many guns and shields that even an optimistic assessment says I'd be dead before I destroyed more than a fraction of their capital ships. They'd feel it, but…

Anyway, Tearing Bite located. Ring, use the communication protocols we acquired on Scratching Post. Create… A sensor ghost there, at the edge of their patrol area.

Compliance.

Smaller ships often get their sensor data enhanced by the more powerful systems of their larger counterparts. That communication system isn't particularly well secured, as it's useful but not essential. The Gordanians' decentralised systems make it a little harder for me to acquire data than it is on Earth, but I had hours with minimal supervision aboard the Scratching Post. And-.

The ships disappear, reappearing almost at once in the part of the system I indicated.

Ring?

Readings acquired.

And we're out of here. A perfect spatial fracture jump this time, since I'm not trying to fool anyone. Karna disappears from my view and its star is reduced to an even smaller dot. No more warp interdiction?

None found.

Drop phase and warp. Space buckles. Right, I want to know what system they're in before I show up there. Since wherever they are is going to be a military installation, they aren't going to be as open to a dialogue as the inhabitants of Scratching Post were. I need to follow their course. Would they use multiple jumps to try and throw off tracking, or do one at maximum speed? Don't know.

The warp ends with me at the very outskirts of the Liot'r system, 'up' the galactic plane from where Felicity and I arrived. Ring, scan for Tearing Bite warship trails.

Matches found. Displaying.

O… Kay… If we eliminate… What Tamaran's records tell me was the direction of the main Citadel attack during the war… The raids I know about prior to that… And compare what's left with the detected leaving times from the Tamarus observatory… I have a probable vector. Ring, warp.

Compliance.

A blur of orange, then the Liot'r system disappears and is replaced by… A star whose Tamaranian name translates as 'Cold Fire'. Two gas giants, a triple handful of moons. Ring?

No signs of habitation detected.

I open my empathic vision up to the highest extent… No, nothing here. Trail detected?

Displaying.

Warp.

A flare of orange, then-.

Phase!

A confused moment as I fly through a device… Ring, that was a mine, wasn't it?

Confirmed. Standard pattern Gordanian spatial disruptor mine.

Oh… Gosh, there's a lot of them. Good.. thing I can phase. Ring, are they picking me up?

No signs of detection detected.

Ho-hoo good. Ring, detect approximate edge of the minefield. Also, make a note to drop out of warp a good five light-seconds early from now on.

Compliance.

Mining space isn't a great idea. Unless you have reason to believe you know exactly where the other fellow is going to appear. And if you're following someone and your sensors aren't quite up to power ring specifications, the logical thing to do is appear as close as you can to where they went.

That…

Ring, trace?

Acquired.

Is it going to one of the possible systems?

Confirmed.

Right. Wait until we're far enough away from the mines to phase in, then warp to… Interstellar space outside that system.

Compliance.

One jump to nowhere of significance, another to a minefield. I didn't see any detection equipment in the first system, but the residue was weaker. Running quiet? It would work on a lot of ship-based sensor systems. And if they picked something up… I'm just lucky that those were Gordanian mines. That's… Something I really want to learn somewhere where the other fellow might make a mistake.

Distance reached.

A tunnel of orange light around me… And back into normal space. Scan the system.

The image appears in my mind. One huge gas giant, not too hopeful… There. Much further in, there's a super-Earth sized rocky planet with… One large moon and a fleet of ships. I'm not… Getting particularly good resolution. Focus. I need to do this in order to fix this place. Thank you. Okay, Tearing Bite ships confirmed… And… That's Citadelian. Not a huge surprise. There's a structure on the planet… And it's blocking my scans. Could be magic, but since the only magic users around here come from Euphorix… Probably Psion instead.

That… Would be expensive. And probably something I could brute force… If I didn't mind telling everyone down there that a Lantern was looking at them. No point using optical detection, not at this distance. Ring, any interdiction fields?

Confirmed. However, they are currently only spread across a small area around the planet.

But… Can almost certainly be expanded at will.

Unable to confirm.

I try empathic vision, but at this distance it's basically just showing me a single spot of light.

Okay. I need to find out what's going on. How best to go about this?

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Tamanarama 15

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13th July

03:47 GMT

The picket fleet moves away as my Hellwraith approaches Hny'xx. Obviously, the people here know that there are Construct Lanterns around the place, and thanks to me and the Okaarans they have half an idea of who they report to. Having shown it to Admiral Dakyn just having it drift in as it was would have been a give-away, but it occurred to me that if it could move between tangible and ghostly and if… If Teekl could move between Felis Catus and Panthera Leo at will then the Hellwraith should be a bit more mutable. It's currently much larger than it was, and its harder outer body parts have now expanded into something that looks more like techno-organic armour. I also moved the sigil to his… To its chest, because while I don't know exactly how Citadelians or Gordanians process images I know that a Human would be far faster to associate it with me if the sigil were in the same place.

Perceiving the ships from the Hellwraith's viewpoint is… Odd. I've become used to the Praexis Demon viewpoint, which is a bit like a low-intelligence Fallout playthrough. So much of the meaning and complexity is stripped out. The Hellwraith is… Not like that. It has Human equivalent intelligence, but taking its viewpoint makes the things it's interested in -people it can possess and souls it can eat- far more… Apparent. It can already taste the tiny amounts of shaped magic held within the ship's crew. Their souls. I get the impression that it isn't used to that; this system is just so mystically inert that there's nothing to confuse the scent.

A triangular Psion ship rises up from an opening on the planet's surface, thrusters burning brilliantly. I nod to myself as the Hellwraith surges downwards towards it. Having it possess a Psion might give me the information I want, otherwise that looks like the best entry point.

Ring, are they talking about us?

Confirmed. Pertinent data intercepts available.

Play.

"You better have a good explanation for this, Tront. This location is supposed to be undetectable to Lanterns!"

Only one clan has ships here, so that must be Trogaar. Marking ship.

"Clan commander, I assure you that there is no way for the Green Lantern Corps to detect us without violating our treaty. Whether these things are truly some form of independent construct or something else entirely, they have been drifting through the Vega Systems for some time now. For millennia, if Okaaran records are to be believed. Whatever it wants here-."

"I'll destroy it. Ships, close-."

"No."

That one is Citadelian. Except when altered by injury their voices are the same as one another, for obvious reasons. The second voice was probably Psion as I can't imagine a Gordanian or a Citadelian saying things like that.

"Admiral, why?!"

"Unless you have stolen something from Okaara and brought it here, that thing has no reason to be interested in this place. Did you see the recording of what happened last time Gordanians engaged the Beast's slaves?"

The Psion ship changes orientation so that its underside faces the Hellwraith. The housing around some sort of projector array… Hm. The closest thing on record is a device Psions are known to use in order to assess the strength of Green Lantern constructs. Logical, and if they'd scanned a construct being directly projected by Larfleeze it might give them meaningful data. But Construct-Lanterns channel the orange light themselves. In theory, the readings mine give and the readings his give should be the same.

Rays of green light lash out and play over its skin… Hellwraith, consume them.

"I hear and obey."

The beams flicker, weaken… And the array generating them sparks and smoulders before shutting down.

"That was… Unexpected."

"Can we shoot it now?"

The Hellwraith can dimly perceive the force field protecting the heavy blast doors covering the place the Psion ship emerged from. Scan… Yeah, not a good idea to try phasing through that. I'm not sure if the form of intangibility the Hellwraith uses would be affected…

"No. See? It stops. The facility remains inviolate."

"And it's staying."

The area the force field covers gives me an approximate idea of how large whatever facility they have under there is. And it's.. big, underground skyscraper sort of size. And if the force field goes all of the way around… Then the phase protection will as well.

"Admiral. Clan Commander. Can you not see what a unique opportunity this is? We could study-."

"No. No delays and no threats. I don't know if the Beast will come if we destroy it, but the Emperor requires that I not take the risk."

"If it's going to be here anyway, what possible harm is there in taking a closer look? I may have to… Rebuild slightly-."

"The Orange Lantern. The one who was on Rashashoon." Hm. Looks like they reported the incident at least. "We get him to remove it."

…

What?

"You want to bring a Lantern here?"

"That thing is already here. The Beast will want him more than it wants us. And you were certain a moment ago that the facility was still secure."

"… Yes? Within… Bounds… I don't know enough about his abilities to swear an oath upon it… And if he was right here…"

"Since he heard that the Beast's power comes from a power ring, the Emperor expressed an interest in acquiring them. Imagine a legion of Citadel warriors armed with the very thing that the only force capable of opposing us thinks is their trump."

"I… Don't believe that my people would object to the chance to study a power ring directly. The green ones have a tendency to be… Uncooperative. Still… It seems…"

"Maybe he gets rid of the Beast Slave and goes on his way. Maybe he gets rid of it and the Beast goes after him. And if the Beast goes after him, maybe we send some people into the Beast's lair. Maybe we talk to him and he agrees to work with us. Maybe he doesn't, and we kill him and take his rings." There's a pause. "I'm not asking you, Tront. This comes from the Emperor, and if it works..."

"We all get everything we want. Do you know where this person is?"

"Somewhere in Vega. Word has already gone out. We'll find him."

I just about manage not to laugh. Oh, this is…

Okay, so they're going to have a lot of anti-Lantern weapons. But… I need to get in. And I'm perfectly happy to betray any deal I make with them.

Of course… Taking Citadel Complex… Somehow… Branding the Emperor… That could work… I'd effectively get control of the largest and best organised military force in Vega. They could crush the Gordanian fleet around Karna. Hardly ideal, but at least they're a military target. Issue a code of conduct for every pirate group hoping to trade here, and with a clone army… I could bring in Genomorphs to fast-educate them while they were still growing. Forget the Controllers, I could get an army of custom-built mystic Lanterns who are born knowing everything about the orange light that I do, sharing my outlook.

No. Just… Too many things I don't know, too much that can go wrong. I'll focus on rescuing the Tamaranians. And to do that, I need to be somewhere visible.

Ring, where would the Okaarans record their Larfleeze sightings?

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Tamanarama 16

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13th July

07:02 GMT

"…than we're used to, ever since the Slaves flew out of the Forbidden Forest of Weeds last year." The elderly Okaaran leading me through the record vaults appears to be pleased with the idea. "It's nice to know that we can do something more than teach people how to kill each other."

I was a little nervous about being on the same planet as Larfleeze, but.. really… Distance shouldn't change how easily he can detect me. "Do the challengers ever come here?"

"No. You're the first. I should tell you, I have placed a modest wager on your success."

"Thank you. Your confidence-."

"Not that big a wager. I simply thought that I should do something to acknowledge your foresight. Ah." He comes to a stop in front of a tall shelf of binders. "Here we are. Order-" He points to the top left. "-chronological, or I can fetch you the index. Or you could just ask me, I should be able to find whatever you're looking for."

"All on paper?"

A quiet dejected snort. "During the time of X'Hal, electromagnetic bursts and datavore programs destroyed much of our older computer-based record-keeping system. We went back to paper partially from necessity and partly because… It's safer, if access to certain types of information is restricted."

I nod, looking up at the starting point. "So, what's the order?"

"Start at the top left, work down, then up to the start of the next column."

"Right." I float up, reaching for the first binder. "Are there any actual sightings of the Beast himself recorded here?"

"Some. Supposedly. None that I would consider reliable." I nod as I open the binder. "So… It was a power ring all along."

"You don't sound particularly surprised." Ring, no one wants to read it in Elizabethan English, even if that is more authentic. Thank you.

"Glowing translucent objects? Power rings were a perennial guess. Never proven. Until now."

"I'll try and get the full story from the Guardians for you." The folder appears to be a record of myths, Okaaran folk tales about the Forbidden Forest of Weeds. I'm really just… Doing this because I want to be somewhere I might credibly need to be and where people can find me. Ring, scan this stuff, but… Don't load it into my head.

Compliance.

"What do modern Okaarans think about it?"

"Prior to your arrival, I think most of us assumed that it was some sort of automated-"

"He's down there!"

"-weapon… System." He looks around at the direction of the shouting. I don't. That was a pretty fast reaction time, given the difficulties involved for them. "Perhaps a storage vault for radiological materials that was designed to scare people away. Inasmuch as-"

Three Gordanians in the heavy armour of their soldiers… With the Tearing Bite insignia on their shoulders, jog into view.

"-we thought about it at all." My guide brings himself up to his full height, his good humour evaporating. "What are you doing here?"

The Gordanian on the left bares his teeth, only to be cuffed by the one in the middle. Lefty glowers at Middle, but backs down as Middle takes another step forwards. "Orange Man. You have business with my Clan Commander."

They probably don't know Human expression well enough for my pantomime of innocence to matter, but I make the effort anyway. "I do? What sort of business?"

"Profitable business."

"That's a little vague." I put the folder back onto the shelf and float down to their level. "Could you be more specific? I've… Got data to gather-."

"There's a secure communicator at our transport. You want details, you use that and talk to him directly."

"Well…" I shrug. "If you insist…"

Ring, where is their transport?

An image appears in my mind. Looks like a… Somewhat modified Branx command lander. I turn to the librarian. "Thank you for your help. I'll return once I've dealt with this."

"In your own time." He attempts a smile. It does not sit well on his mouth. "I have so many questions."

Middle Gordanian huffs at me. "We'll show you-."

Transition.

I appear next to the lander, the four Gordanians on guard bringing their weapons to bear almost immediately. Looks like Zaark was right about their equipment. "I believe you're expecting me?"

There's a delay while they look at each other, uncertain how to respond. I'm forced to wonder if Middle was the group's only NCO. Then the one closest to the lander's door bangs his left fist into the door control, the door opening in response. "This way."

I follow him inside. The lander isn't particularly large, no bigger in total than a large passenger aeroplane from Earth. The secure communication station is -Mass Effect flashback- just off the command station in a small vestibule. I take a seat as my escort steps back and a force field appears across the entrance.

"Someone ask for me?"

There's a momentary noise of static, then a screen lights up with the face of a grizzled-looking Gordanian. "Orange Lantern. I am Clan Commander Trogaar. I have a job for you."

"Oh? And what might that be?"

"I know that you have purchased Tamaranians. I have several hundred with advanced technical skills." He leans forwards slightly. "I offer them to you, if you perform a service for me."

"I… Might be interested." Recovering them alive is good anyway, and the more who have useful skills the faster Tamaran can rebuild. "As I told Zaark, I don't know what the market-."

"Spare me your merchantist bartering. Do you want them?"

"As opposed to..?"

"They all die at the completion of their project."

"And… How long..?"

"Less than a Gordanian lunar month. The Psions are already making noise about vivisecting the less useful ones."

"In.. that case, I'm interested. What do you want in return?"

"Admiral Drolyk wants me to ask you to remove one of the Beast's slaves from his facility without bringing the Beast down on our heads. I don't. I want a power ring, like you have."

Hardly surprising, but… "May I ask, why?"

"I am made for war. I want to be able to fight without relying on other species, other Vega powers. I will use it to conquer the other clans, cast down the Citadel and then..? The universe is the limit."

"That's not exactly in line with my wider aims…"

"I fight. Whatever you are trying to do, you will need a fleet to enforce your will. Ensure that my guns never cool, and I will be pleased to fight under your banner."

Yeah, right.

"Well… I can certainly get rid of that Construct Lantern for you. Whereabouts are you?"

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Tamanarama 17

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13th July

07:55 GMT

Four Gordanian soldiers escort me towards… Some sort of room. It isn't the bridge or the generator room or the primary drive… It actually doesn't appear to be linked to any of the ship's critical systems. Some sort of..? Meeting room, then? The soldiers' armour is well wrought and well maintained, their weapons… Both more powerful and more sophisticated than those used by their fellows stationed on Scratching Post.

Gordanians don't exactly wear power armour, but the cuirass has a flight pack and low penetration sensor system built in. The data I have so far makes it clear that they don't like fighting in the air in the way that Thanagarians do; they lack the Nth metal augmented nervous system that Thanagarians have and the brain matter that comes from flying for your entire evolutionary history. The result is more like Starship Trooper style mobile infantry. Or like Titanfall. They jump from place to place, then take cover and fire. In addition to the armour covering their torsos and legs, they have helmets and bracers which mount their melee weapons. It provides good protection while minimising the degree to which it impedes their range of motion and the quantity of upkeep it requires.

The group who found me on Okaara did offer to fly me to the Clan Commander's location, but I turned it down on the grounds that waiting for them to prepare and then make the journey would take hours. Stars in Vega are relatively close together, but even the Gordanian military doesn't use FTL systems that are all that fast. I suppose that they.. either don't see the point, or they prefer simpler and easier to maintain systems for their main combat fleet. This ship might be less technologically sophisticated than the Spider Guild's ship, but it looks a good deal more shipshape to me. Clean lines of sight, mechanisms tucked away neatly… Gordanians might not be the greatest technologists the universe has ever seen, but they do get taught basic starship engineering.

Anyway, I came right here and was floating in space for a little while before an appreciable chunk of clan Tearing Bite's military dropped out of FTL and sent a welcome message. The Clan Commander wasn't going to greet me at the airlock, but he does want to talk to me in person. And judging by the fact that the ship hasn't gone back to FTL yet, he wants to do so before Admiral Drolyk gets the chance to talk to me. Makes sense. I doubt that the Citadel are eager for their principal supporter to suddenly supersede them.

The lead Gordanian strikes the door release with his right fist. "The Lantern's here, Clan Commander."

There's a pause, then a clank as the door mechanism releases. The next room is… Richly decorated. I see Trogaar himself first. He's wearing a slightly more ornate version of the armour that the others wear, though it only covers the same amount of his body. His helmet on the other hand… I'm going to assume that it's ceremonial. It looks a bit like something a samurai might have worn, a segmented shawl to cover the back and sides of the head with a solid face covering and four upturned metal spines for decoration. It's currently sitting on the table next to him. The man himself is slouched in an armchair. The back of the chair is curious in that it only goes halfway across. Gordanian tails are far too thick to do what Felicity does and curl them around themselves, and I suppose that cutting a tail hole out of the back would make sitting down in the first place rather awkward.

Off to the side there's a transparent map of the Vega systems broken into three… Approximately accurate planes, one sheet per plane. If you look at it from straight on you get a two-dimensional map, then if you look from an angle you get something a little more accurate. Across from Trogaar there are three less ornate seats which… Heh, they're designed for someone of Gordanian stature but to also be just a little too low. Their occupants will almost always be shorter than him when everyone is sitting down. The walls are decorated with weapons, though rather than the cutting edge pieces I was expecting they're all… Broken. Not completely, but there's a plasma pulse gun that's clearly had a critical overload, a disruption blade that's had two of its tines broken off…

"Do you like the weapons?" I turn my gaze back to the Commander. "I haven't managed to keep hold of every weapon I have personally worked to death, but this is most of them. Each one met its end in glorious combat. Most of my people would have tossed them aside or salvaged what they could from them, but to me they are simply too much a part of my life to discard."

"My species often keep mementoes in the same way. Though my own colleagues were more inclined to take trophies from their enemies rather than their own expended equipment."

"No. I considered it when I was much younger, but rotting heads aren't hygienic. And skulls just start to look… Samey." The other Gordanians don't bother following me in as the door slams shut. "But these? I could tell you the cause of every scratch."

"But.. that's.. not what we're meeting to talk about today." I gesture to the chairs opposite him with my left hand. "May I sit down?"

"Probably."

I nod and walk over to the middle of the three, then turn and sit. "So… Where are we going?"

"Right now? Nowhere."

"I was under the impression that there was a degree of urgency..?"

"Not for me." He flares his nostrils. "It's a Citadelian facility. Some sort of secret project."

"That makes me curious."

"I just provide security and workers."

"Workers?"

"They're not keeping the Tamaranians down there for entertainment. Not all of them, anyway. They won't tell me exactly why they want them, but since those are what my clan has, they're what we provide." Another snort. "Your species looks a lot like them. If I didn't know better, I'd think you were one!"

"I'm afraid not. Do you know how many Tamaranians there are at… Wherever it is we're talking about?"

"Maybe… Two thousand? Most of them were taken during the war. The Citadel want people who know machinery. Heh, because they're too stupid to do things like that themselves!"

Hm. I can't tell when someone is lying to me all of the time, but… No, empathic vision isn't showing me anything helpful. "You really don't know what they're building?"

"They've been working on it since the end of the war. Maybe it's another shipyard or something, I don't know." He leans slightly forwards. "I see you've already got two rings."

"Yes, but I can't give any away until after the Beast is dealt with."

"You're hiding yourself, like the Psions are the base?"

"Better. But don't tell them that."

He leans back slightly. "You do know that now everyone knows what he is, that he's a Lantern… People will go to Okaara to kill him. They'll go properly equipped to kill Lanterns. And I don't think that the first few teams will get him, but after a while… People with serious resources will try it. You don't have all that long while the thing you can do is so special."

"Feel like taking a swing at him yourself?"

"If I did, I wouldn't bother talking to you. I know power rings. I know what they let their wielders do. If Psions could beat Lanterns so easily, they'd be out there fighting them… No, they'd be having people like me do it for them. So it's probably going to be brave idiots carrying weapons for the people who'll get all the benefit. Now, I know the Citadel are going to make you an offer. Heh, because there's no other way they're getting a look in. Psions probably will as well. But I will tell you with no word of a lie: the Citadel Emperor will not follow you. He'll backstab you the first chance he gets. He wants to rule everything more than he wants anything else."

"And the Psions? They sound like useful people to know."

"They're smart. And they'll cut you up for parts the first chance they get. That's what they do whenever someone starts trying to copy their technology, and if they get a pile of power rings? Same thing. Heck, they'll probably want to analyse you to see if there's anything special that lets you do it. What do you think your chances of avoiding ending up on a slab in one of their laboratories are?"

"Better than average. But… There's always room for improvement."

"I want to fight. I don't care about ruling. I don't even rule my own clan now, and I probably could. There are thousands of Green Lanterns, and I am sure that they will try to stand against any power arising from Vega. You want dependable help? You want an army? A fleet? You won't find one in Vega better than what I can offer." He stands and walks towards the door. "Consider that when the others make their pitches."

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Tamanarama 18

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13th July

09:36 GMT

Alert: ship has exited spatial fracture and is heading toward Hny'xx.

Thank you. Any change in the disposition of the other ships?

An image appears in my mind. There's a cordon around where the Hellwraith is floating, but other than that it looks like everyone has returned to business as usual. I nod to myself, then rise to my feet. At this point I can probably fly in-system myself without giving anything much away about my capab-.

Cream coloured light manifests around the Clan Commander's throne, shifting and writhing in an approximate uneven sphere. I step back, construct armour appearing around my body. Okay, there's a few things that could be-.

There's a crackle of… Purple lightning? From the area inside the sphere, then something flies-. I grab the object with a construct claw. A.. metal cylinder, containing… Complicated circuitry which… Doesn't appear to do anything, some plant matter and what looks like cultured meat. There's also a small repulsor drive-.

It jerks, trying to get out of my grip. Still not sure what's going on I let it go, watching as it flies back to its origin point and disappear. Right, some sort of teleportation system and… A test sample. Testing to make sure that it's safe to send things through. Ring, prepare to destroy anything that comes through looking threatening.

Compliance.

And armour, obviously.

Compliance.

No alert from the ship yet. Technology this advanced implies Psion, as anyone else who could teleport things onto someone else's ship would use it to cut a swathe through Vega's other powers. Could be an outside force… Qwardians would be the worst-.

The cream orb flexes inwards then opens up, revealing a Psion in utilitarian purple overalls. He takes a moment to examine his surroundings. "Ah. A success."

"Can I help you?"

The cream light peels away, forming a backdrop for him as he sits in the Clan Commander's chair. His eyes are.. curiously Human, though the decorative head crenulations are a little odd. "I think it's more about what we can do for one another."

"You think that I can help you get orange power rings."

"It would be nice, but I am… Prepared to set my sights a little lower. We Psions aren't really the.. stomping around and conquering types. Oh, and may I say? That was a rather nice stratagem with the construct. Forcing the Admiral to call you in?"

I frown slightly. "I thought it was one of Larfleeze's..?"

"Too convenient. You buy a group of Tamaranian slaves from that Gordanian outpost and then a short time later a construct slave arrives in a system holding Tamaranian slaves… In a system which The Beast-. I'm sorry, which Larfleeze's slaves have already bypassed? It might have been him, but it's far more likely to have been you."

"There's a certain logic to the assumption."

"Of course, we don't really have enough data to reach a firm conclusion. So I don't feel the need to report my suspicions to the Admiral."

"Good of you."

"The question remains, then, why are you here? The Gordanians would be happy to gather more slaves for you and I'm certain that a Lantern could acquire technically skilled workers elsewhere. Puzzling."

"Are you going somewhere..?"

"The Spiders think that you're working for the Guardians in some fashion. I think that unlikely. A Guardian operative wouldn't have handed that fascinating construct-resistant woman over to us."

"What do you want?"

"What do I want? I want what the Guardians have: agents throughout the universe bringing me information and technology. I want a power ring for the challenge it poses to my intellect and the convenience of making my own constructs. And what I offer in return is Psion analytics and technology. Not every challenge can be overcome with brawn."

"Do you think you can do those things better than the Maltusians?"

"Aaaah." He thinks for a moment. "Pride demands that I say 'yes'. But… Honesty demands I say 'no'. However, I imagine that they would want a controlling share in exchange for their help. In fact, if another Maltusian group were like the Guardians… I doubt that they'd demand less than absolute sovereignty. We Psions would regard it simply as an improvement on our relationship with the Citadel; run your organisation as you wish."

"Without more personal lanterns, it would be a crippled organisation."

"I understand your concern, but I'm certain that -given time- we could-." He blinks, then the cream light moves to cover him once more. "Perhaps we could continue this later."

There's a crackle of purple lightning again, then the cream light collapses in on itself.

About four seconds before the room's main screen lights up with the Citadelian Admiral's face. "Orange Lantern! So good of you to come!" His eyes narrow slightly. "Such fine looking armour you have. You simply must give me the name of your armourer."

"It's an artisan piece. I'm not sure you could persuade them to make a suit for you."

"Pity. Trogaar has explained the situation?"

"You want the Construct Lantern removed. It's doable. For a price."

"I wouldn't dream of insulting you by suggesting that you work for free. I also want to talk to you about your rings."

"Naturally."

"No doubt Trogaar has made his approach already. Fie, I say! What is a fleet compared to the power of a Lantern Corps?"

"Depends on the fleet."

"The Citadel is prepared to compensate you well for assisting us in exterminating the Beast of Okaara and taking control of his possessions. We have a history of working well with aliens and being true to our word. Assist us, and as our Empire spreads you would be second only to the Emperor in power and influence. Navies to serve under your command. Worlds, yours, their people to do with as you pleased."

"Generous, but… I have… Concerns, about the capacity of most Citadelians to make use of power rings. Yourself, your implants… I'm sure that you could cope, but the common infantry-."

"And no doubt you have concerns about our numbers. Some sort of nonsense about.. the constant cloning causing some sort of genetic decay. Hm?"

"The First Citadelian was by all surviving accounts an extremely intelligent man. His descendants aren't. Your numbers have been constant for a very long time and you need cybernetic implants to become intelligent."

"True. All true. But like any other people we are capable of change. It is fortuitous that you are here. When you are done with that construct-thing, come into the base to speak with me in person. I have something to show you that I think you will find very interesting."

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Tamanarama 19

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13th July

10:02 GMT

My escort peels off as I enter the Admiral's office… No, more of a lounge, really. The Admiral himself grins broadly as he turns his attention away from a screen showing me come up behind my Hellwraith and 'overpower' it, sucking it into the ring.

"I had assumed that it would be somewhat more complicated. No? Or is it a matter of personal skill?"

He's lounging comfortably on a… It looks a bit like a chaise longue, something he could be comfortable lying or sitting on. There are five other Citadelians in the room in a similar state of repose. No weapons or armour. Unusual.

"Something like that. If Larfleeze had been concentrating on that particular Construct-Lantern, things could have been a good deal more… Complicated. Fortunately, he wasn't."

"And if he had been?"

"Then… It would have been a contest. His needs against mine." I take another look at his companions. They seem a little more attentive than other Citadelians I've encountered. I can't see outward signs of cybernetics… Worth the risk of a scan..? "Unless it was controlled by someone else, of course." He tilts his head slightly as the rings feed me all information on the other Citadelians that they can gather passively. "I mean, if I can use an orange ring for an extended period while remaining free of the Beast's influence, it would be foolish of me to assume that I'm the only one."

"Wise of you. Though if you'll forgive me, perhaps not something you want to announce to the other party in a negotiation?"

"I doubt that your Emperor would be best pleased if I negotiated in bad faith."

"No, but you aren't obliged to tell us things until we are formally allied." He turns his head aside, looking towards a doorway. "May I offer you a drink? I was maintaining a reserve of.. quality product, but since our work here is nearly done we may as well finish it."

The other Citadelians aren't showing any of the usual symptoms of cybernetic grafts… The Admiral does… Skin pigmentation suggests that they're younger… Though that's not a precise guide…

"Thank you."

"Anything in particular?"

"Surprise me."

"Htcha!" He grins. "I should think I can manage that." He presses a concealed button on his chair. "Slave! Nectar of the Abyss, two glasses, twenty seconds!"

I wait for a moment, then frown. "Twenty..? Seconds..?"

"Yes, this may interest you. If there's one technology we Citadelians know, it's cybernetic neural interfaces. We-" The doorway he waved at opens and a Tamaranian woman in a ragged dress walks in, her eyes locked directly ahead of her and two large glasses containing a murky dark grey liquid balanced on a tray in her hands. "-have been experimenting on our… Excess labour pool." The woman stops next to him, standing completely still with her eyes still not wandering. He reaches a hand up and takes the closest glass before nodding at the other. "Take it."

I extend three filaments, lifting the glass from the tray. Ring, chemical analysis? Oh. Well, it's… Not toxic as long as I wear a power ring. I take the glass in my right hand and raise it to him in a toast. "Your health."

"Oh, no." He takes a snip. "There's nothing in here good for my health."

I smile and sip-. Oh it tastes like a horrible combination of raw fish and coal! Ring, facial expression!

Compliance.

Uraghuraghuragh!

"The world will seem so much better when we reach the bottom of our glasses. Slave, put down the tray." She bends her legs, lays the tray flat on the ground and then stands up again. And again, without looking around. "Twelve seconds, good."

The woman gasps, her eyes widening for a moment. Then she collapses, curling up on the ground and breathing heavily.

"What.. did.. you..?"

"A simple conditioning technique. Some slave masters use punishment and kindness to train their slaves. Citadelians are not kind. A few wires here, and the slave experiences terror or agony. A few wires there, ecstatic pleasure. Far simpler."

I…

I picture… Very clearly… Cutting him in half with a construct blade and.. not quite killing him immediately.

"That… Seems like an unusual expenditure of resources…"

"True… But I can't spend all day raping them. Even we Citadelians only have so much endurance. Up, slave. Five seconds."

I-. I'm not red, anger. When I am confronted by the horrors of the universe I rejoice-

The woman pushes herself up slightly with her right hand twitching as she tries to get her feet under her.

-for when I am done there will be one less.

Five seconds.

"Ooooowwwaaaagh!"

The woman collapses again, twitching spasmodically and exhaling a constant crying moan.

"Is..? This what this facility is for? Better slave indoctrination?"

"No. Quite the opposite. Better Citadelian indoctrination."

"I didn't think that the Citadelians were at all remiss in brutalising those who stand against them?"

"When they created the First Citadelian, the Psions used any number of.. additives, to alter the way his Branx and Okaaran components melded together. Then X'Hal levelled their laboratory -and most of their cities- and their records were lost."

"You're trying to reverse engineer it."

"Oh, no. Interfering with the First's body is… Unthinkable. But learning to duplicate their work is a desirable objective. My friends here-" He gestures to the room. "-are better. Not on a par with the First, but far more capable than our usual neonates."

"Wise, but why tell me? And why hide it? I'd be surprised if everyone didn't already assume that you'd be trying something like this."

"Why conceal it? Timing. We don't want anyone to have time to prepare themselves. Why tell you?" He takes another sip. "I want to show you that we're genuine. The Citadel will rule, not through proxies as we do now, but directly."

"And the Gordanians?"

He leans back. "They can make themselves useful. We will still pay for their services. But they will no longer be… Essential."

I nod. "I'd… Like to inspect your facilities. I need to be certain that you can actually deliver."

"That can happen. If you hand over one of your rings as security."

"I'll do better than that. I understand that the Citadel has recently acquired two Tamaranian princesses?" A momentary expression of mild surprise and curiosity passes over his face. "If you would be prepared to give them to me..." I take the Ceebiss ring out of a pouch on my armour's torso. "I would be quite happy to give you this ring in return."

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Tamanarama 20

next

13th July

10:24 GMT

"…precise chemical mix to ensure that the optimal…"

The facility may be shielded against power rings from the outside, but the inside is wide open.

"…pseudo-telepathic induction, but with future generations we can simply use…"

A passing touch on one of the 'new-type' Citadelians tells me that they're genetically identical to the old type. They haven't made improvements to the genome. The brain structure looked more or less the same, but I don't have a wide variety of samples to compare him to.

"…education. At this point that's really all they're good for, beyond our recreational..."

More.. implanted Tamaranians. They're not doing menial work. That's all been automated. Rather, they're demonstrating particular points of knowledge. An older, heavily scarred Tamaranian man delivers a lecture on strategy while another with two skeletal cybernetic arms gives one on battlefield medicine. Mostly male, I note. I'm not sure whether the Citadelians are really chauvinistic or not, but… If they're increasing the size of their local population and.. want more.. entertainment...

"…pods, but there is still a hard limit on how rapidly they can be grown. Once we move into the open…"

I didn't see any evidence that they'd dumped the bodies outside. If.. Tamaranians built this place then there should be a far larger number than in evidence so far. I risk a general area scan and note their positions.

"…particularly proud of."

The Admiral waits while the control system for a large vault confirms his identity, then the huge and heavily reinforced doors slide open and he leads the way through. The… Vast, aircraft hangar like chamber beyond… It reminds me a little of the room in which Kon and I found Match. Row upon row of liquid-filled tanks piled up at least twelve high, techno-organic tubes feeding into the partially developed Citadelians within.

"More sophisticated even than the gestation units in the Citadel Complex itself."

I affect an expression of polite interest. "Tamaranian work?"

"Yes, but not their design." He plays with the orange ring in his right hand, appearing momentarily hypnotised by it. For a fleeting moment I notice the same double desire set I saw from his fellow Admiral back on Rashashoon. "We originally tried to copy as near as possible the design the Psions used during the First's creation, but they themselves had improved it since then."

"You have Psions working here? Isn't that a bit of a risk?"

"Only two. They considered-" Two levels above us a Psion is checking a display. He looks down at us, then turns away and heads towards a lift. "-it worth labouring for us in secret in exchange for as many Tamaranian subjects as they could get. Naturally, they can't leave until we are ready to reveal ourselves."

"And then?"

"The Psions are allies. We will stick to the terms of our agreement. Besides, if we kept them here they might decide to try recreating X'Hal. And we could hardly have that." The lift platform descends from the upper level, prompting the Admiral to look around. "Ah, Fon, we were just talking about you."

"Yes, I heard." He looks at me, apparently fascinated. "And an.. Orange Lantern. It seems that I owe Tront a small sum of money."

"You've done some impressive work here." Work I can't let you continue somewhere else. At least there -probably- won't be off-site backups.

"Fon, I'm afraid that I'm going to be ordering the transfer of those two females you wanted to play with."

I see a momentary puff of orange. Frustrated desire, and… Some sort of machine? "That is… Quite inconvenient. The Tamaranians who work here don't have the solar exposure we need for our studies. This could set us back quite considerably."

"Oh, come now! In a few thousand neegaths' time you can go back to the Wombworld with more than enough credit to set up your own research centre and buy your own subjects."

Fon returns his attention to me. "What do you want with them, anyway?"

Admiral Drolyk throws back his head. "HAHAHAHAHA!"

"Admiral?"

"Is it not obvious?" The Admiral calms down a little. "I realise that you are a creature of pure intellect, but some of us relish the functionality of our genitals!"

Fon's mouth falls open in a Psion expression of distaste. "Really? I am to lose valuable research subjects in order to-? What has he offered you?"

The Admiral strides past him, right hand out flat to the side with the Ceebiss ring sat on his palm.

Dismay. "Ahh. That.. does make sense."

"The Admiral agreed to throw in the rest as a bonus, but I will admit to a particular interest in these two." I shrug. "Sorry."

"Frustrating, but… Very well." We're getting closer to the armoured doors on the other side of the chamber. Fon picks up his pace, jogging out ahead and triggering the door mechanism. "We haven't gotten around to.. tidying them up yet, but it you're prepared to accept them 'as they are', you may as well take them now."

"Thank you."

There's a short passageway between the two rooms, and I wouldn't need a power ring to tell that there are automated defence systems embedded in it. Their teleportation system is probably through here as well. I wonder how they disguise it? The Admiral has to be intelligent enough to know that he can't completely trust them. Then… The whole reason why he's working with the Psions is their technical and scientific brilliance. What sort of monitoring could he use that they couldn't bypass?

The far door opens at Fon's order, opening out onto a clean and sterile laboratory. Actually, it's… Almost featureless. I frown as I have the ring scan-.

"The laboratory is programmable. Everything we need folds away. That way we don't trip over equipment we don't need for whatever experiment we're conducting." Fon heads over to a computer terminal. "Hm. I'll have the drones bring up your… New toys for you."

I think… Yes, I think Alan will let me off on this one.

Fon looks at a piece of machinery that looks like… A quidditch goal, maybe? "I may as well pack some of this for transport if I'm not going to get the chance to use it."

"What's that supposed to do?"

"Make them explode, probably. But we'd learn from exactly when and why they exploded. Ah well." He presses a button and the device powers down. "Perhaps some other time."

A door opens in the side of the room and…

And the Universe 16 versions of Komand'r and Koriand'r. They're barely conscious as the drone-platforms they're strapped to float into the main laboratory, though I can see Komand'r's eyes fluttering as she tries to focus. They're both naked, and I can see dried blood-. Some of their wounds are neat, possibly from the Psions' 'investigations'. The rest, a little older, look like blunt object impacts and.. weapon burns. And some-.

"Well, no matter." The Admiral grins at me. "We can float them up to the surface for you and-"

"I had wondered, given the size difference, how you and your men derived 'entertainment' from them."

"Hah! As the saying goes, 'if brute force doesn't work, you're not using enough!'"

I nod. "Yes. So I see. Admiral, thank you. As far as I'm concerned you may now put on that ring."

"Excellent!" He grasps it with his left hand and holds out his right. "For the Citadel and the First!"

He slides it onto his middle right finger, orange light flowing over him and his uniform growing an orange sigil on the chest. He holds out his arms to look at the effect, his eyes glowing with orange sigils embedded in his irises.

"The… The power!" He rises into the air, orange lights flickering around his body. "I am equal to the Green Lanterns! The might of the Citadel will cover the universe with me as its greatest warrior, commander and Emperor! I shall be unstoppable!"

And then he explodes.

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Tamanarama 21

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13th July

10:29 GMT

Accelerated perception.

Compliance.

Strands of orange light reach out from the Ceebiss ring to the glowing meat-chunks that used to be Admiral Drolyk, grabbing them and turning them construct-orange. The Admiral's head is largely intact, and I wonder for a moment if he's still aware as the tendrils latch onto it and convert it as well. There's a quiet 'fizz' from my environmental shield as it vaporises the spray of blood that hits me, and a quiet 'splat' as the rest of it splashes against the ground and the astonished Fon.

The incandescent ring floats from Admiral Drolyk's phantasmal finger to the approximate centre point of the explosion as I fly back towards Fon, laying my left hand on his right shoulder.

Hellwraith, possess.

I hunger.

The ring on my left hand shimmers for a half-second, but there's no other outward sign as it flows into its new host.

End acceleration.

Compliance.

Chunks of construct-flesh impact on the floor and walls as I frantically start scanning the princesses. Implants, but not dead man's switched. Ring? Good, disintegrate them and absorb the components.

Compliance.

The chunks of construct-flesh begin rolling across the floor to a point just behind the ring. With every remaining part of the Admiral converted, it keeps glowing. A translucent image begins forming next to it, ghostly hands reaching for the ring and a snarling muzzle baring its teeth at the room.

"More thieves! Everyone tries to take what's mine from me!"

Another blast of light from the ring and Larfleeze's construct-self becomes a little more substantial. Behind him, the Construct-Lantern form of Admiral Drolyk begins pulling itself together. Ring, railguns, load crumbler rounds. And heal the princesses as best you can.

Compliance.

Larfleeze clutches the Ceebiss ring to his chest, his eyes moving briefly over the shuddering Fon before fixing on me. "You! You're already dead!"

"Hello, Larfleeze."

He bends over as if trying to mantle the ring as he uses his left hand to conceal it from me completely. Interesting that he only wears one ring himself. His right hand extends towards me, claws reaching out-. That hand collapses into orange mist as my crumbler round hits it.

"I'm still alive and still stealing from you. And there's nothing you can do to stop me."

"No! No! I'm going to find you! I'm going to take everything back! And I'm going to-" He lunges forwards. "-eat you!"

I back up, crumblers striking his face and chest and turning them to orange mist. He falters for a moment, pulling back so that the light from the ring can knit him back together.

Hellwraith, use Fon's knowledge to deactivate the Tamaranians' implants and deactivate all anti-Lantern measures.

I obey.

Admiral Drolyk has fully pulled himself back together, his eyes glowing orange as he glowers at me. Oh, don't even. You had that coming.

"Tear you apart!"

Larfleeze ignores the possessed Fon in favour of trying to rend me with his talons. Retreat and fire, retreat and fire! Chunks of his body disintegrate, but he keeps trying to come on. Shooting the Ceebiss ring might end the fight and it might blow a circular hole a mile across in this facility and take me and the Tamaranians with it.

"I'm stealing your stuff, Larfleeze! And you can't tell where I am, can you? Because I'm clever and you're stupid! Stupid Larfleeze! Big stupid-head Larfleeze!"

"Rraaaaaaggghh!" He jerks his right hand forwards, a beam of orange shitshitshit! I raise my hands, generating a construct shield. Can't let him hit me. Or anything else. There are all sorts of power relay systems and potential poisons, to say nothing of him probably being powerful enough to collapse the rock around us. His beam hits my shield and immediately fractures it. I abandon it and create another. Come on, he's a powerful idiot, how do I-?

I stick out my right hand and call my personal lantern out of subspace as filaments reach out from my left arm and reach around my shield to touch his beam.

The Ophidian Feeds.

"You even stole my Ophidian from me!"

"My Ophidian." Orange incandescence flares from my filaments as Larfleeze's beam fades and falters, the excess power flowing into my personal lantern. "You're not very good at this. Maybe you should ask for help?"

Please do that. I can draw power away from him, but-

Sixty two percent power remaining. Sixty one. Sixty.

-it's doing a number on my power reserves and even Larfleeze isn't dumb enough to let me recharge in the middle of a fight.

Larfleeze drops his beam and darts forward again, and I reward him with a crumbler to the face. Okay, this I can work with. Hellwraith?

Anti-Lantern measures no longer function. The chattels are liberated.

Good work. Now jam all local non-Lantern FTL and communications. Trap them around the planet.

I obey.

I load a tungsten round into the railgun, batter Larfleeze with crumblers until there's little left but mist, then shoot the solid metal slug into the Ceebiss ring. It sails backwards out of the Larfleeze cloud and slams into the far wall, prompting me to generate construct barriers around-

Fifty five percent power remaining.

-the princesses just in case. No, no explosion. Larfleeze remanifests, glowers, snarls, and then notices Admiral Drolyk. Yes, yes, come on! Put one and one together and get x>1!

"I know where you are! I'm going to send the entire Corps after you!"

'All the more to steal from you' might put him off or encourage him to come himself. Something else… "I'm too good for you! You'll never send enough! I'll win!"

"RAAAAAAAAAGHHHHH!" The Larfleeze projection grabs the Ceebiss ring and stares at it for a moment. "Ceebiss, kill him! New Guy, kill him! EVERYONE, KILL HIM!"

Thank you.

Larfleeze tosses the Ceebiss ring aside. It travels a few metres and then stops in the air. It shimmers orange, then expands outwards into the form of the six legged four armed Centaur-like alien I saw when I tried touching it. The Admiral slams his right fist into his left palm while his partner lands and lowers his head to gore me with his horns.

Okay, don't know exactly how long that gives me… Hellwraith, open every internal door.

I obey.

"See you, Larfleeze."

Three crumbler rounds and his construct image dissolves to nothing just as Ceebiss' horns hit my chest plate.

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Tamanarama 22

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13th July

10:32 GMT

The impact knocks me back, Ceebiss grabbing onto my sides with his upper arms as he tries to shove me into the far wall. I retrain my railguns on his wrists and fire, then pull myself downwards with the ring's flight aura.

"Rueeerh!"

I fly myself feet first between his legs. His front left and middle right hooves manage to stamp on me and there's.. some sort of matter disrupting effect in play, but the fact that I'm moving and he's not flying means that he can't maintain pressure long enough to eat through my armour. Okay, what next? With Larfleeze gone I could theoretically subvert-.

No.

I come upright behind Ceebiss as he tries and fails to arrest his momentum, careening into the far wall face first and managing to dent the metal. I generate construct armour and raise my fists just in time to block a punch from Admiral Drolyk, bracing myself on thin air with the ring's flight aura. His initial swing blocked, Drolyk attempts to grapple me. He certainly.. hasn't.. lost any of the strength that Citadelians are.. infamous for. My railguns shoot Ceebiss in the face as I plant my feet and push back, construct muscle straining against my armour's synthetic musculature. Ceebiss… Some sort of ultra-fine construct barrier appears around him as he remembers that Lanterns can fly and turns himself around. Did his equipment get assimilated with him?

All internal doors open, master.

Good show. Now sound the evacuation alarms.

I obey.

Drolyk pulls his head back, prompting me to drop my construct armour and activate my armour's kinetic barrier. He slams his forehead forwards, pale blue light flaring for a moment as its force vanishes. I bring a railgun to bear on his right hand and fire, the appendage and part of his chest behind it collapsing into a cloud of orange. I plant my feet and pull my right arm back, then punch him directly in the face. His grip on my left side loosens and I yank it free. Ah, no, I can't hang around.

I reach across my chest with my right arm and draw the Sword of the Fallen. I had thought about not bringing it at all, but… The risks of needing it rather outweighed those of somehow losing it. Can't see a ring inside him… I slash at his chest, but he flies backwards out of range and Ceebiss is coming up behind me.

I need to get this finished!

I sidestep before Ceebiss hits me, pulling myself around with the ring's flight aura and stabbing the Sword into his flank. The construct.. material just parts around the blade-

"Raaaaahhhhh!"

-in a way which apparently is quite painful.

"Woooawh. Woooawh."

The alarms start sounding as I create a jump pack construct and thrust myself onto Ceebiss' back. He twists, trying to reach me or toss me off but I grab his left horn with my left hand, yank his head back and slice through his neck with the Sword. All the way through, as he doesn't bleed or breathe. As the head comes free the body beneath me disintegrates into vapour, then vanishes entirely. The head similarly decays as I toss it aside and generate construct armour-

Fifty three percent power remaining.

-in time to block a shot from Drolyk's construct gun. My railguns return fire, vaporising his face and a chunk of his torso. The rest of him stays stuck together well enough for me to trigger my jump pack and slam into it with the Sword outstretched. The blade pierces him directly through the sigil on his chest. Done? His arms and legs begin falling apart as I pull the sword free. Good, good.

I drop the railguns, the barriers around the princesses and my construct armour. Right. Filaments fly away from my body and dart throughout the facility as I-. Right, they need clothes. A quick burst of orange light and I fabricate body suits based on Kon's solar infusion design. Don't know if it will.. help…

My lantern appears from subspace.

"This is my cause, this is my fight."

The filaments reach the inhabited parts of the facility, the Citadelians making a hurried but orderly evacuation and utterly ignoring their chattels. Education, prisoner storage…

"Shine through the void with orange light."

Filaments make contact with the Tamaranians and transition them into the nearby gestation chamber. Service and… 'Entertainment'.

"I've claimed all within my sight."

Oh, I hadn't… There aren't anything like as many as I.. hoped that there would be. Technical and kitchens.

"To keep what is mine, that is my right."

"Recharge complete." / "Recharge complete."

I send my lantern back into subspace as I lift the princesses from their drone platforms, flying the three of us down the corridor into the gestation chamber. A sea of bewildered orange faces turn to greet me as I land, more appearing every second.

"Could I have your attention for a moment, please! Your implants have been deactivated and in a moment or two we will be escaping." Less than a hundred left to come. Come on! "Please remain calm and above all avoid panicking. If any of you have medical experience, please see to the injured."

A few look around at that, zeroing in on those who aren't able to stand on their own. Not much they can really do for them at the moment. There are additional flares of yellow as a handful recognise the princesses. Ten, three, none! Yes!

Hellwraith, kill your host and get back into the ring.

I obey.

Three thousand three hundred and twenty nine Tamaranians. In.. terms of mass, well within my ability to transport. Good job orange rings don't require confidence.

Orange light spreads throughout the group, and…

Transition.

I ignore the screams as my passengers realise that we're in space, just behind Hny'xx's moon. I picked this location in order to-.

Oh…

I feel it in my soul as the Construct Corps arrives. Orange light… Twisted… Compressed. More flares of yellow from the ships as they try to find out what's happening and then find that their communication systems and FTL drives are non-functional. I feel a cluster of lights blink out as the Orange Corps frenziedly tear through the ship, and the ring picks up the radiation spikes as the ships open fire. Can't feel Larfleeze himself, so… Yay me. I guess.

Okay, can't take these people back to Tamaran. There's too much risk that the Gordanians present will spot me or them. Transitioning is a risk. Larfleeze can't detect me directly, but ambient orange light and visible light are both well within the abilities of his slaves to notice. But a warp will probably be too generic to notice, as space is warped by the ring rather than by a distant construct. Or at least to notice quickly. I hope. I move the Tamaranians around into an approximate sphere, eliciting more shrieks… And more dull resignation from all too many. I remember reading that.. Tamaranians live in the now more than Humans do, but… I'm not sure how that works with massive psychological trauma.

Ring, plot course for Rilsomtine. Minimum safe distance.

Compliance.

Warp.

Space.. ripples as the ring distorts a far larger area than I'm used to. Come. On! This is the first significant heroic thing I've done away from Earth and it is going to happen!

The moon vanishes behind us as the starfield blurs around us. The panic dies down slightly, though the helplessness is still present. That can… I'll worry about that later. Or… Hire someone who knows how to fix it.

Emergence in three, two, one.

The warp terminates well inside the 'acceptable' boundary which the Crown Imperium enforces around its worlds, but I cleared my approach in advance. The Crown Imperium is governed by an aristocratic oligarchy, and when the Chief Minister says that you're good people, everyone lower down bends over themselves to make things easier for you. Given that the Imperium would have been the first target of a Citadel expansion wave, I think they probably owed me anyway.

Transition down.

Compliance. Warning: low power.

Space vanishes, and we appear just above the fields of the rehabilitation centre. Tamaranians from my last delivery look around in alarm, some fleeing but others either heading in the direction of the staff buildings or flying closer to offer their help. A large number of those I'm holding immediately try to fly away, so I release my hold on them and try and land the rest as rapidly as I can. Local ambulance vehicles are already heading our way…

I did it. I did it. It worked.

But I'm still not finished.

I hold out my hands palms forwards as my lantern appears from subspace once more.

"This is my cause…"

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Tamanarama 23

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13th July

16:46 GMT

"Well? You wanted to talk to them."

I nod. He's right. It's just… "Commander Andar… My duties haven't required me to… Get in this situation before. Is it..? Common, to be acting against people you.. think you might quite like if things were a little different?"

"My entire company is comprised of the descendants of those who remained loyal to Hyathis after the High Council deposed her. I feel that way whenever we operate in Thanagarian space."

"Okay, but… With people you fight?"

"In regions like this, that is the nature of the work. Is this the first time you have been in combat?"

"No, but that was mostly law enforcement. There was an… Attack on a city on my homeworld. I killed dozens without hesitation, but the people involved… They had suicide charges which destroyed their bodies. We still don't really know who they were." I pause. "Slavery as it's practised in Vega is a despicable institution. I felt that even before I gained the ability to see the desires of the people around me. But… For these Gordanians, it's simply part of their society. If they'd grown up somewhere where it didn't happen, they probably wouldn't do it."

"In my experience, thinking about it in those terms doesn't help."

"I'm sure you're right…" Well. He is. "Orange Lantern to King Myand'r. We're in position."

"The interdiction fields which block the Gordanian drives are now active, as is the communications jammer. Make those fiends pay for what they and their Citadel masters have done to us."

"Understood." I end the transmission. And that's why communication between Tamaran and the Thanagarians is going through me. I'm not sure exactly how Commander Andar would respond to getting conflicting orders from his fixer and the man who is technically his employer. "Remember, Commander. That space station is your deposit. If it explodes you'll be stuck living out of your ships for the next three hundred years."

"Hah! Have no fear, Orange Lantern. Should it come to it, a simple breach and clear of an ageing space station is well within our abilities."

"I'm glad to hear it. Ring, hail them."

A screen lights up inside my helmet, a bored looking Gordanian staring back at me. "Who is it and what do-? Oh, it's you. You want to talk to Zaark?"

"I think it would probably be better if I spoke to Weezak."

"Hold on." The screen goes black. I'm on hold. How about that? The screen lights up again. "He wants to know what it's about."

"It's about the reason why your faster than light drives aren't working."

"What are you talking about?"

"Try them."

The screen goes black again.

"Any progress?"

"I think I'm talking to a receptionist."

"A comms officer."

"I used to work in an office. I know a receptionist when one puts me on hold."

The screen lights back up. Finally, Weezak. "What do you know, Lantern?"

"I know that I just spent three hours building interdiction field generators, and they just got turned on. And now I'm-"

"YOU DARE?!"

"-going to ask you to surrender, please. I'm prepared to offer-."

"COME AND DIE, LANTERN! I WILL DISEMBOWEL YOU WITH YOUR OWN AXE! ALL SHIPS, TRIANGULATE THE SOURCE OF THIS TRANSMISSION-" A buoy that's nowhere near my physical location. "-AND REDUCE IT TO CINDERS!"

"Chief Weezak, please, be rational. You don't have anything like enough force-."

"My clan is MIGHTY, Lantern. Our military-."

"Died to a man when Larfleeze attacked Hny'xx. Aside from the picket force around Karna, and you couldn't reach them to call for help even if they could get here fast enough. Which they can't."

"Lies. We will coat the stars with your internal organs and I will take your rings for myself. Open fire!"

Screen off.

"Commander-."

"The hard way, then."

"I'm afraid so. Target-" I transmit an image of the Gordanian's fleet deployment. Two ships, the one furthest from Tamaran accelerating back towards the Scratching Post and the closer one heading for the buoy. The third is in dock, inactive while the parts I traded are being fitted. "-this vessel." I indicate the one going after the buoy. "I want the station to see it. Shoot to disable if at all possible. Squadron ready?"

"Yes, Orange Lantern. We all went on high alert the moment you hired us."

"Right, sorry. I didn't mean to imply that you weren't… Orange Lantern to squadron, prepare for micro warp jump. Sending you emergence points now. I will shoot to disable their shields, you will destroy their weapons. In the event that they don't surrender, feel free to shoot them until they're very sorry. Confirm."

"Message received and understood. Drift on the warp?"

"Zero, Flight Leader Karn. I'm a Lantern. Warp in three, two, one, warping."

Space bends around the squadron of six and myself. For such a short jump it's barely noticeable, but I'm accelerating-. The Gordanian ship appears ahead of me, my construct railguns loaded with crumbler rounds appearing next to me. I noticed last time I was here that the Gordanians have a double shield system, an outer shield covering the whole ship and several smaller ones covering critical areas. Normally, that's a sensible design, but -my first crumbler strikes home and drops the main shield, overloading the emitters- it means that they have basically no defence against this. My railguns track and fire, marking off each weapon hardpoint one by one. As the shields fall I relay the information back to the Thanagarian attack craft swooping in behind me. Their formation spreads out even as the Gordanian guns try to traverse, shots from their proton guns neatly coring each of the ship's guns.

"Orange Lantern to whoever's in charge of-" One of the guns on the ship's upper surface suffers a flashback, the hull section nearby suddenly heating up. That shouldn't happen. Some sort of..? Overload? "-that Gordanian ship. As of-" Flight Leader Karn pings me. "-right now, you have no functioning exterior guns and your teleport scanners are slag. Surrender at once or you will be boarded and all resisting crew killed."

There's a delay. "Ragh. What terms?"

"Cowards! Fight them!"

"Chew your tail, Weezak. This is my ship and we can't win."

"You'll be marooned on a habitable world with no FTL drive or FTL comms. And I don't recommend ever coming anywhere near either Tamaran or me afterwards."

"Accepted. We yield. And…" There's a pause. "Ignore Weezak. The rest of us would take those terms."

I nod. "I won't kill anyone I don't have to. Hold here. Orange Lantern to the commanding officer of the other effective Gordanian ship. How do you like your chances?"

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Tamanarama 24

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13th July

22:56 GMT

"And what-" There's a horrifically loud tearing sound as a macro construct-chainsaw with x-ionised teeth gouges through the outer armour of the beached Gordanian clanship. "-did we learn from this experience?"

A large part of the Gordanian clanfolk watch from a minimum distance marked out by the line the Thanagarian ships acting as my air cover will shoot if they cross. I only really saw the young and middle aged adults on my original visit, but here are the young and old watching me cut their home apart. With their main warfleet gone and their hold over Tamaran evaporated, Tearing Bite might come to be glad that I'm putting them somewhere no-one is going to bother to look for them. Gordanians aren't exactly shy about sticking the boot in to clans that fall from power, and they're nearly as ready to enslave other Gordanians are they are aliens.

Might. Eventually. At the moment the fact that I'm breaking up their home and primary means of defence is rather crowding out deeper reflection.

The chastened anthropologist I rescued when we arrived looks suitably bashful. "That… No matter how curious I am, no matter how friendly the locals appear to be or physically attractive I find them, I should remain at the observational stage of my studies until I have a firm grasp of their physiology and lifecycle."

"Good show, Miss Leelyu."

There's a ringing thump as the clanship's FTL drive comes free. I return the blades to subspace, drop the chainsaw construct and move the drive over to one of the Thanagarian cargo transports. I tore the larger weapons from their mountings while still in Tamaran orbit, but I wanted to leave the hull of the ship intact until we arrived to make the job of transporting them easier. I'm not taking everything, but I don't want them even getting back into orbit this generation. There aren't any Culacao on this continent yet, but I don't want the Gordanians flying over to their grassland habitat and enslaving them.

"How did you even get here?"

"I bought passage from Meat Barter clan. They're due to pick me up in half a local year's time."

Meat… Barter. They're mostly semi-legitimate traders who largely operate outside of Vega. They'll probably… Stick to their agreement, but I don't really want word about what I did to Tearing Bite leaking out just yet, in case someone who hears it decides to take advantage. Hm.

Okay, the ships aren't structurally sound enough for them to try flying them even if they had fuel, which they don't. Leaving them enough food to keep them going until the next local harvest -as long as they start planting as soon as possible- and some generators… Think I'm done.

"Do you have any plans until then? I doubt that going back to the village-."

"Wouldn't be a good idea since word has gotten around that I'm some sort of talking, two-legged mollusc." She looks down at the ground with a quiet huff. "It's such a shame; there's so little research on the peoples of the Vega systems, particularly the more isolated ones. I'll just.. have to try another tribe. And this time keep my distance."

"Would you..? Be interested in spending time on Tamaran instead? I've just removed the Citadel-aligned picket and… The locals are friendly, attractive and… Don't reproduce using mobile incubation chambers which they stab to death with spears in an annual ritual hunt."

She raises her eyebrows slightly. "How much choice do I actually have here?"

"I'd… Try and work around you if you said no. But I would very much prefer it if you said yes." I turn away from the beached hulks and start walking in the direction of the clan leaders. After a moment's hesitation Leelyu follows on behind me. "It could be an interesting case study on re-industrialisation after a period of occupation. And it'll be a good deal safer than Asryx or here."

"And it might be nice to stop somewhere with heated baths."

"I didn't want to mention it."

"Alright. I accept your generous offer. Where should I-?"

"I took the liberty of having your possessions moved onto transport five. You may as well jump on board now, we'll be leaving shortly."

"Ah."

She stops, looks around for a moment and then jogs off in the direction of the Thanagarians' ships. I float up off the ground and then accelerate, slamming to a halt in front of the senior maroonee.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to your new home."

Weezak is still heavily bandaged from where a group of Thanagarian marines laid into him with their maces. His closest supporters and Zaark were the only ones who tried to fight back, and when I removed Zaark's implant he gave up on that idea quickly enough. Thanagarian 'pacification' doesn't involve low lethality weapons so much as high lethality weapons turned down a little. Several members of Weezak's retinue were killed, and the man himself won't be entering a beauty pageant anytime soon. Still, any fight your still-breathing carcass can be dragged away from…

Somehow, I couldn't quite work up the enthusiasm to heal him.

Zaark takes a half-step forwards, eying the Thanagarian guards warily. When that doesn't provoke a response he takes the opportunity to scowl at me. "Why did you do this? We had a business relationship. I thought that you-."

"I lied constantly throughout our discussion and used the ring to disguise how I really felt. My homeworld formally abolished slavery worldwide ninety years ago, all major nation states having long since abandoned the practice. I told you what I needed to in order to secure the release of the Tamaranians."

"What's so great about them?"

"They're not slavers and pirates. In fact, from what I know about their history they never were. They are a people I want to encourage."

"And what about us? Are we your slaves now?"

"No. I don't own slaves. This…" I look around us for a moment. "Is a test to see if you can become anything other than what you are. To see if you can manage on your own resources."

He gives a slight shudder, his eyes unfocusing slightly. "Trogaar really dead?"

"I saw his corpse myself." Larfleeze's Construct-Lanterns didn't seem to bother assimilating anyone during their charge through the fleet. Maybe Larfleeze needs to be physically present for that to happen? Don't know. "He's dead and no one's coming for you." I take the axe I traded to Weezak out of subspace and hold it out to him. "Here."

His eyes narrow. "You attack my clan, my people… You take everything we have, and you offer me an axe? The only way I have to resist you is to refuse it."

"I suppose you could look at it like that. Are you going to?"

He reaches out with his right hand and takes hold of the haft. "It's a useful tool." I raise my right hand, and the Thanagarians back up a little. Zaark's eyes move over the line, then return to me. "That it?"

"That's it. If we're both fortunate, we'll never see each other again."

"Yeah." He shifts his hold on the axe slightly. "We probably won't. But we'll remember you, Lantern. If we ever get the chance to do to you what you just did to us, we'll take it."

I drift backwards without taking my eyes off him. "Good luck with that, Zaark." Once I'm outside of axe range, I turn around and head in the direction of the Thanagarian transport vehicles and raise my left hand to my ear. "Commander, we're ready to depart. And I believe that King Myand'r wants to talk to us."

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Tamanarama 25

next

14th July

23:14 GMT

"…when you started singing!" King Myand'r beams as he waves his goblet in my direction. "I thought that you were a total buffoon! Tell me, do your people commonly share points of personal philosophy in lyrical form?"

My eyes dip. "No, your majesty, but most people don't worship their people's Goddess of Chaos."

After my actions in rescuing their people and protecting their planet, King Myand'r and Queen Luand'r were more than happy to put me up in the palace. Commander Andar is breakfasting with us as well. They'll be negotiating their actual working relationship today, the Tamaranian side apparently not having given it much thought after they wrote me off as an incompetent. And I'm included, since I'm the only way for the Thanagarians to get out without deactivating the interdiction system.

Prince Karras raises his eyebrows. "The Goddess of Chaos? Does she include music as part of her domain?"

Karras is with us as well, serving as his parents' representative in the negotiations. Just the five of us at breakfast on the balcony, though there'll be a formal banquet later… Today. I haven't quite adjusted to Tamarus time yet. I suppose that the Princesses are still recovering. They were both awake and alert when I flew everyone back…

"No, but she… Isn't keen on impulse control. I wanted to demonstrate a point and… That was the first thing that came into my head. Um, sorry."

Queen Luand'r nods. "That is a very Tamaranian attitude. We are not a people given much to dissembling. Singing is not the usual result, but it is hardly offensive in itself."

Commander Andar slices the top off a soft boiled egg. It looks a lot like a chicken egg, except that it's slightly larger and has a pale purple shell. "Were you able to confirm that the Citadel facility on Hny'xx was destroyed?"

I nod. "All of the ships that I saw on my arrival were wrecks or wreckage. The facility itself had… It was like someone had scooped out a chunk of planet where it used to be. There was some stuff left, but nothing useable."

"And the Beast's-." He stops himself and inclines his head slightly. "Larfleeze's slaves?"

"There were a few still there. Including Blume, who I suspect was the one that tore the facility out of the planet. They didn't see me."

"Are you certain? If I understand our position, those things are the only outside force that can threaten Tamaran."

"And.. maybe.. Apokolips, with boom tubes. I don't know how to block those. But.. I know, because they didn't immediately come after me. Larfleeze doesn't do deferred gratification or patience or.. strategy. If he did, he'd have found me already. And if his people haven't been to Tamaran already, I doubt that they're going to now."

King Myand'r nods. "Having heard your tale of what became of the Citadel Admiral, I am very glad that I didn't try wearing that ring."

"Oh, I weighted that with a pulse from-" I raise my left hand slightly. "-this ring. I've known how to get Larfleeze's attention for a while. It's just that it's usually a really bad idea. But, yes, if you come across any others, don't put them on without talking to me first."

Karras tilts his head slightly to the side. "And once you have killed Larfleeze?"

"Then they'll still be very dangerous, just from the psychological effects of the orange light exposure. I.. hope to be able to recruit, once I have a better idea about how they affect people. If you… Want to be on the long list-"

"Yes, very much so."

"-then I-. Oh. Ah, okay. Um." I wave my left hand, my old 'potential recruits' book appearing from subspace. "Okay, I'll… Put your name down. Please understand that this isn't a guarantee."

"I can adapt to any method of war, and will learn any skill set that they require."

"That's… Skill.. isn't.. the main thing. Power rings respond to… To particular ways of thinking. And if your mind doesn't work in the right way, you won't be able to use it well. That doesn't.. mean that you think in the wrong ways, each ring colour works best with different outlooks. It just might mean that you're not right for orange." I slide my now-empty bowl forwards. I had a mixture of nuts and grains in warm farm animal lactation. I guess I'm.. just a.. man of habit. "And I really don't know when or even if I'm going to be in a position to do that." I slide my chair back. "If you'll excuse me?"

The Tamaranians look a little puzzled. Oh, I.. guess that's not a tradition they have. "I thought I'd go for a flight around the city. Do some sightseeing, get my thoughts in order a little…"

King Myand'r waves his right hand. "By all means. Do you require the escort of a guide?"

I stand and step away from the table. "No, I… Thank you, but I think I can manage. I'll be back in time for the meeting."

I perform a short bow, then rise at speed up into the sky.

There are a lot more people outside than there were during my first visit. That isn't the same all over the planet, of course. The king sent out word to the major cities but it'll be some time before their communications infrastructure is up to scratch. I doubt.. that outlying villages will know that they're safe until the end of this month. I wonder what sort of route rebuilding will take? On Earth, plenty of places skipped building copper wire type phone lines because mobile phone technology was already available. Tamaran has the knowledge required to ramp up quickly… Might end up looking a bit like the 2002 version of He-Man: cybernetics and flying vehicles existing in a world where most villages use animal drawn ploughs.

Though I suppose Earth looks like that in a lot of places, too.

A few people point up, but no one flies up to say hello. I'm not sure what the social convention is… They probably don't.. actually know who I am. The king wanted to do a single announcement for everything, so it's.. pretty much just going to be rumour at this stage.

Oh.

Without really meaning to, I've drifted over the part of the city the Gordanians shot. It's been.. nearly two decades now and what ruins are left are well overgrown. Give the force of the impact I might have expected a shallow lake to have formed, but the soil here is too free-draining. It's just an… Just a scar on the cityscape. I'm sure that when the rebuilding begins in earnest it'll be one of the first-.

I catch a glimpse of white amongst the foliage, the ring showing me-. Princess Komand'r sitting amongst the walls of an abandoned building, the walls covering her on four sides and the foliage concealing her from above. No one.. else around. And I… Need to both check up on her and.. find out what version of her I'm dealing with.

I fly over to directly above her, extending my environmental shield so that I disrupt local air currents. She looks up, her eyes narrowing slightly as I descend into her grove. She's still wearing the solar bodysuit I made for her.

"I hope that I'm not bothering you."

Her attention remains fully focused on me, studying me carefully. "No more here than you were anywhere else."

She's standing at ground level, so I drop down to stand on the ground as well. I keep a.. little distance. "I hope you don't mind me not copying Tamaranian styles." A slight puzzled frown from her and I gesture to her clothing with my right hand. "You haven't changed…"

"Okaara is colder than Tamaran. I had become accustomed to wearing more. Does it have some special significance?"

"A friend of mine is solar powered, and he-" A mild snarl, and she half-turns away. "-used to.. wear something similar..? I'm sorry, is there something-?"

"I am not solar powered." Oh. "Clearly, you did not know that, so I will endeavour not to hold it against you. Did you wish to speak about something in particular?"

back

Tamanarama 26

next

14th July

23:19 GMT

"How..? Are you..?"

"I am filled with a bitter and burning hate." She huffs quietly. "It is almost as if I had never left."

I see red and green, isolation, alienation and determination. I search for images of Koriand'r… Red, she thinks that Koriand'r was their parents' favourite, their people's favourite. Scenes of sparring… Enthusiastic sparring on Komand'r's part… But despite the hate, I'm not seeing anything about handing her over to the Citadel. And if their brother's defection was really what triggered them both getting picked up… It's not as if their location was a secret…

"I…" I look at her rather than into her. Expression, eye movements… Nothing that suggests that she's recovering from being… Being tortured, raped and experimented on. "I meant… In yourself. About-?"

Her head turns in my direction, a frown on her face. "Speak. What are you trying to ask?"

"I realise that different species process events differently, but a Human woman who had experienced what.. you and your sister did would be traumatised. It would be.. years before they could function normally, and there would be a wide variety of behavioural-."

Her face relaxes slightly. "Is that why you are here? To ensure that I have not been driven mad?"

"When I do something, I stick with it until it is done. My aim was to help you. If there is more that you require in order to-."

"No." Her attention drifts away from me, towards the sky above us. She takes a moment before continuing. "Perhaps it is a species difference. What is the point of continuing to be hurt by something that has stopped happening?"

"I don't know. If I had to guess, it's something to do with how the Human brain learns. In a normal situation, learning to associate pain with a thing that harms you teaches you to avoid it. But in a situation where the pain can't be avoided, it's… Maladaptive. The brain tries to associate pain with… Everything."

"Tortured by your own brain." She looks back at me, looking… Contemplative. "If that is what would happen then I am glad that I am not Human. That is the name of your species?"

"Yes. In the short form."

"And in the long form?"

"My species uses a classification system which describes every species on our homeworld precisely in terms of its relationship to every other. Mine is Animalia Chordata Mammalia Primates Haplorhini Hominidae Homo Sapiens Sapiens."

"The last part repeated itself."

I raise my hands. "I didn't come up with the system."

"Human, then. At least you had the privilege of choosing your own name, however strange it sounds. Did you know that our name and that of our world was dictated to us by the Psions?"

"No, I didn't."

"When our people still lived on Okaara we had another name. Now we are known by the Psion name for this world… At least by those who do not call us.. other things. Most of my people are not even aware of it."

"Well… I'm.. sure that your government is going to be developing a new education system fairly soon. You could try and get the.. original language included?"

"It hardly seems relevant. I take it that your people's homeworld is not called 'Hue'?"

"No, Earth. Literally, 'the ground'."

"There is sense in calling it that." She regards me for a moment. "Are they all dead?"

"Who?"

"Those who manned the base on Hny'xx. I assumed that you would have had to kill them, but you may not have been thorough."

"When I went back to check I didn't see anything still alive. The Psion Tront might still be alive, he had some sort of teleportation system I didn't recognise, but I think you can assume that no one else is."

She nods. "Then it seems that I am at a loss as to what to do next. I had thought to revenge myself upon them. Not that I regret your killing them."

"While I'm certainly responsible, it was mostly Larfleeze's Construct-Lanterns who killed them. I've never been much good at unrestrained wanton destruction." My eyes dip. "And I… Think I'd prefer to stay like that."

"I thought that you planned to destroy the Citadel?"

"I… Do. But… Thinking about it? I think I need to deal with Larfleeze first. And given the technology that the Citadel has… I think that I'm going to need more Lanterns on my side."

"Gathering resources is a wise move. The Citadel Complex will not fall swiftly or easily, and I doubt that the Beast will either. How will you do this?"

"I assume that you've.. heard of the Green Lanterns?" A small nod. "The people who run the Green Lantern Corps are called the Guardians of the Galaxy, but their species is called Maltusian. I have their original homeworld's location and I know that a large number of them are still there. I'm hoping that some of them will be willing to help me."

"And if they refuse?"

"If all of them refuse? Then.. I'm.. probably going to have to take a series of quite foolish risks. On the other hand, I did bait the most powerful Lantern in the universe into attacking me yesterday, so…" I shrug, chuckling to myself.

"It must be nice to have such power."

I think about giving her a flippant reply, but there's something about the way she's looking at me… "Yes, it is."

"Oh? No qualification? No comment on the burdens of your station?"

"No, not really. I'm here because I want to be, doing this because I want to do it. If I didn't, I wouldn't. And if you're going to do something, it's better to be well equipped and well supported."

She nods and looks away again. "Do you know why this place exists?"

"Orbital bombardment on the day you were born."

"And everyone was too afraid of annoying our conquerors to do anything with it afterwards." She runs her right hand along an exposed section of wall, her face suddenly twisting into a snarl as she rips away a piece of alien concrete and tosses it aside. Then she stops completely still, the passion completely vanishing from her. "I used to come here when I was a little girl to get away from people. They never openly blamed me. Not exactly. But I heard the muttering. Especially after I fell ill and lost the ability to fly. Such a stupid little thing; before the most recent war with the Citadel we never bothered exterminating the disease which causes us to lose the ability to absorb ultraviolet light because it can only infect a person once in their lifetime and it was far easier to restore the damage. Then, we lost the ability and no one else had records of how to do it." A look of distaste passes across her face. "Except the Psions, presumably. I used to think there wasn't anything that I would not do to regain it. One thing I will take away from this experience is the knowledge that that is no longer correct." She turns to face me again. "Will you kill them as well? And the Branx, and the Gordanians?"

"I'm not sure. Probably. Certainly, I'll need to reduce their ability to interfere with other peoples. The Branx, I don't know. The Gordanians, I expect so."

She nods, then turns away and starts walking out through the overgrown ruins. "I will let you know if I think I have anything meaningful to contribute."

back

NEXT CHAPTER

Control

BACK

Control 1

next

Control

16th July

11:27 GMT

Busy, busy.

I do a fly-by of The Space Station Formerly Known As Scratching Post, letting the rings display a detailed image on the inside of my helmet. Thanagarian work crews are already hard at work, ferrying materials back and forth from their carrier and the docking section. It'll be a while before it's turned into something they can conveniently dock with, so they're using shuttles to go back and forth for the moment. A few point me out as I pass, and I give them a wave.

It'll be… I don't even know how long until Tamaran is a functioning space age civilisation again, but at least they're starting to head in the right direction now. The Princes and Princesses Regent of the other states were beginning to arrive in Tamarus for talks as I left. How to rebuild, who gets to focus on what and who profits are going to have to be hashed out at the beginning.. and… Probably again and again as power relationships shift. Myand'r sounded pretty upbeat about the talks and Karras said that he'd try to stop his parents doing anything foolishly confrontational… I hope it goes well, but at this point it isn't strictly speaking my problem any longer.

Transition.

And I'm outside of the Liot'r system. With the interdiction fields fully engaged even I can't warp where I please in-system any longer. They'd probably turn it off if I asked -me being just about the most popular person on the planet at the moment- but I don't think it's worth the risk in case someone in Citadel Complex turns out to be unusually on the ball. And it's not as if I'm aware of time passing while I transition anyway. But, warping is faster and the next leg of my journey is a lot longer than the brief flight here from Earth.

I could fly directly to Maltus. I know where it is, and I could enter it at a crawl while shooting messages towards it so that they have plenty of advanced knowledge that I'm on the way. The thing is… If they didn't respond to that Guardian ship I sent them, I'm worried that I might have seriously misjudged them. Maybe they know about Larfleeze and don't want anything to do with the orange light. Maybe they think I'm more likely to be a threat or a hindrance than a boon and they don't want anything to do with me in particular.

So, I need more information. Going to Oa seemed like a bad plan, at least until I know for certain whether these Guardians are the Alpha Lantern-Third Army creating versions or the stern but basically reasonable versions. Going to Zamaron? Hah, no. Where does that leave?

Ring, plot warp for the border of Reach space.

Compliance.

The Reach is… Huge. Not galaxy-huge, but according to the records -an orange tunnel forms around me as the warp activates- that were on John's ring, pretty darn big. The periphery zone, the area they're attempting to subvert but haven't formally seized yet, is wider than the Vega systems at their broadest point. From those reports I had access to from Lanterns in that general area, that appears to be where Darkstars are most active. In fact, their membership appears to be split evenly between some sort of pseudo-insect and species whose worlds are falling under Reach control. Or which already have.

Reach ships are good. Advanced technology and highly skilled crews. Not peak technology; a Psion or Qwardian warship would be more dangerous, but I wouldn't want to have to fight more than two or three of their actual war cruisers. The ships they use in the periphery zone tend to be more like armed merchantmen, so unless they actually have a Beetle onboard I'm not all that worried about them. Sure, they can kill me with weight of fire, but they have the advantage of being Reach; I have no problem whatsoever with destroying them and killing everyone on board.

Of course, if they do have a Beetle… They used to be the Reach's go-to Lantern killers, and they're still allowed to serve as bodyguards to Reach 'Negotiators'. If I go to a planet they're trying to absorb there will be one. I'm not… Sure how much of their kill count came from Lantern reticence in using lethal force and lack of practice at large scale engagements and how much from their own power. I'd rather avoid fighting one until I can check.

And… Now my longest warp so far. Maltus is on the other side of the galactic core from Earth, and Reach space is beyond that. If we take Games Workshop orientation as 'correct' then Earth is in the galactic west, Maltus is east and Oa is northeast. That sounds a bit like they should be close together but they're really not. The galaxy is about a hundred thousand light years across and -outside the core and ignoring the halo- about a thousand light years thick. There's more than enough space between them for even their egos.

Of course, the thing about space is, there's lots of space in it. Most of everything is nothing, and most of the rest is black holes, stars and gas giants. Actual small habitable worlds are rare enough that they're not worth fighting over. A species evolving in a system with small rocky worlds will almost always find it easier to render the others habitable than to take a small rocky world somewhere else. And then they'll find it easier to build their own space habitats than conquer someone else's planets. Unless they're absurdly close together as they are in Vega at least…

The only reason to try conquering someone is that you're an arsehole.

And the Reach… Are massive arseholes.

Warp terminating in three, two, one.

Space snaps back into focus.

We have arrived at our destination.

Hm. Haven't made bad time. Thirty thousand light years in a few minutes. Ring, scan.

Compliance.

Nothing nearby. I mean, turning around, the starfield looks different as the core is now in the 'wrong' direction. Heh, I wave in the direction of Earth. See me in thirty thousand years. Right then. Ring, scan… Scan the planets around the border. I'm looking for Darkstars, anywhere they've been active. Preferably fighting the Reach.

A sensor array construct appears as the ring gets to work. The Reach are perfectly capable of shielding their secure installations and core worlds, but places on the periphery should be a bit more accessible. Particularly since I already know where to look.

Hm.

Darkstar activity detected on Urrigen.

Show me.

A planet appears in my mind. Post-industrial, maybe a century more advanced than Earth-. Than Earth Prime. Asteroid mining and some off-planet settlement. The inhabitants are standard pattern humanoids with green skin. No contact with other intelligent species until the Reach arrived. Looks like Reach presence is relatively recent… Good show, the societal dependency shouldn't be all that advanced yet.

Ring, plot warp to-.

Warning: will detected.

I raise my left eyebrow at the same time as my construct armour. Sure, I know that Green Lanterns patrol the border-.

There's a small flare of green as the Green Lantern appears. Oh dear. Green swimsuit, gloves and thigh boots? Someone failed-. And a red cloak. This is a member of their Honour Guard. However daft she looks, she knows what she's doing with that ring.

Though it doesn't look like she's been to the anti-me lectures yet.

Stewart-ring, who is she?

Honour Guard Lantern K'ryssma, formerly of Sector One Eight Nine Zero.

Ring, open channel.

Compliance.

"Hello there, Lantern K'ryssma. What can I do for you?"

The glow around her ring brightens for a moment. A scan, probably. "Oh. You."

"Me indeed."

"I had intended to warn you that you were about to enter Reach space, in case you were an innocent traveller or merchant. Since it is you, I imagine that you think you know exactly what you're doing."

"An accurate surmise."

"Therefore, my only concern is that the Reach may see your presence as a breach of their treaty with the Guardians."

"I'm going to be aiding Controller agents. It should be fairly obvious who I work for."

"True." She pauses. "Orange Lantern, I have seen Reach space expand by twelve systems during my time overseeing this region. The Guardians' treaty may be better than all out war, but I would be more than happy to see the Reach suffer a reversal of fortunes."

I nod inside my armour. "I'll see what I can do."

back

Control 2

next

16th July

11:49 GMT

Is it worth trying to creep around?

Detecting a warp doesn't tell you what warped in, though the power being employed might give you a rough idea. Transitioning is Lantern only. Warping is easier to detect, but the Reach have a history of fighting Lanterns. They almost certainly have a way of tracking them. Us. Now, whatever that technique or technology might be might only work on Greens and it might fail due to my tattoos -that would be nice- but I don't know that. It might be something they have to set up over an area…

Or I could go in hard and fast. The Reach's response to unpleasant surprises is usually to try negotiating with whoever is causing it. If it looks like I might get overwhelmed I could probably just back out again-. No, I'm being silly. If I'm happy to just kill any Reach people without regard to local politics I've really got no reason to worry about most of the things I've been trained to worry about.

Heh.

Ring, we're on military order. Warp in and target any Reach vessels, personnel and property.

Compliance.

And find me the local Darkstar contingent.

Compliance.

Space bends, the rings glowing brilliantly as the cloud of confusion obscuring my desires evaporates. Shouldn't take-

Warp terminating.

-long. Space flattens out, Urrigen appearing in the centre of my field of view. Without looking hard I can already see thirty or so sub-light space barges carrying raw materials from around the system back to Urrigen itself. The Reach vessel -just one- is in low orbit, its weapons firing down at what looks like a.. cave complex. It's not going all out, just-

Incoming communication from Reach vessel.

-firing off the occasional shot. Hm. Anywhere else and I'd give them a minute or two to evacuate. Darkstars in the caves?

Unknown. Reach communications state that they are lawfully assisting local government in neutralising a terrorist organisation. Reach soldiers and weapons fire detected in the caves.

I begin accelerating towards the ship. Masers?

Damage consistent with maser fire detected.

Good-oh.

Message incoming from Urrigen government.

Hm. There's nothing on this side of the planet that has any chance of hitting me and all of their military ships are too far away. Ignore.

I watch as the Reach ship ceases firing and starts to turn in order to pull away from the planet. One really nice thing about fighting this sort of Reach ship?

All of their guns point in the same direction.

Ring? Eddy pulse.

A fat beam of orange light blasts from my right hand at near-light speed. Rather than a single unified beam, this one is comprised of hundreds of tiny strands all bunched up. It occurred to me before I arrived that the Reach might have construct-disrupting technology, at least in a form they could deploy over a small area. And one place they would logically put it would be on ships operating near the periphery. Thus, eddy pulse.

Not that I tried using it on a ship before. I'm quite interested-.

The beam hits the Reach vessel's shields on the upper surface. And then it goes to work. Unlike a destructive pulse, an eddy pulse doesn't work by draining energy from the target area and therefore causing matter to decay. Rather, it acts like a warp biotic power in Mass Effect, applying massive gravitational stress to tear whatever it hits apart. The beam doesn't get absorbed or turned aside. Rather, the strands spread out across the surface of the shield. And then?

Twist.

The shield shimmers and fails as it tries to cope with five hundred instances of intense gravitational shear. The barrier gone, the strands surge forwards and latch onto the ship's hull. Reach hulls are pretty tough, but unlike true warships this ship doesn't have the thickness or exotic defences to even try and survive this attack. The ship jerks as a chunk of the hull just collapses, torn to pieces by the gravitational eddies generated by my filaments.

I see escape pods launch from the underside of the ship towards the rear. Hm. Ordinarily I'd try picking them up and either handing them over to a competent authority or marooning them. In this case, however… The only authorities in the local environment are the Reach and their suborned governments. And I don't have the time or inclination to take them to Maltus. And if I let them land they'll be back in action in a few days. Guess they're out of luck then. A railgun appears next to me, loaded with crumbler rounds. Track… Fire a volley at each.

I feel the hum of the gun through my construct tether as it sends the rounds towards the pods. At this range it's possible that they might evade individual shots. Shouldn't be a problem; crumbler rounds crumble themselves when they hit so there's next to no risk of them getting captured and reverse engineered.

There's an explosion from the ship as something volatile gets hit, and lights in two thirds of the ship go out. Main drive also appears to be inoperative, so it-. Ring, calculate? No, it doesn't have escape velocity, but it'll keep going for a while before crashing… Into one of the planet's oceans. Weapons have also lost power. It's mission-killed, ignore it.

I transition past it and head for the planet's surface. Stewart-ring, do you have Darkstar communication protocols?

Protocols on file. However, they are not recent and are unlikely to elicit a response.

Fine. Broadcast to combat zone.

Compliance.

Escape pods start taking hits, their weak shields failing and their hulls breaking up either from the follow-up strikes or from re-entry.

"Darkstars, are you in need of assistance? Please transmit location. I'm coming in anyway, but you're in caves and those can collapse." The ring gives me a more precise scan of the caves. Those look rather fortified… If somewhat shot up. "Collapse more. It would also be a big help to know who I was going to be shooting at."

Around what appears to be the staging area Reach troopers are manning heavy weapon emplacements and aircraft -local ones by the look of it- are taking off. Following apparently legitimate orders or subordinated? Ring, compare physiology with on-file records for the local species. Also, railguns, fire crumblers at those emplacements.

Compliance. Two more railgun constructs appear as a beam of purple plasma shoots past me harmlessly, and I feel the humming once more as the three of my guns open fire. Minor nanostructure alteration to pilot brains detected. Modification is in accordance with standard Reach methodology.

Symptoms?

Traits common to Reach personnel and technology will seem to possess greater natural authority.

A nudge rather than outright control. It would let them gradually redesign a society merely by making suggestions.

Hm. Not sure that a purple healing ray would remove something like that… Ring, fry their computers in such a way as allows them time to eject.

Compliance.

A pale orange beam flickers out, passing over the aircraft one by one as the railgun rounds begin hitting the emplacements. The force fields covering them flare and die, and a moment later so do the crew. The aircraft wobble and go ballistic… Come on, come on, get out-. There we go. Ring, track their landing zones. I'll purge them if I get time.

Compliance. Incoming message.

Oh, who is it this time?

"This is Operative Lotta of the Darkstars. We're up against about forty Reach infantry-" Easy enough. "-and one Scarab Warrior. Any further help you can give would be much appreciated."

"Understood, Operative Lotta. En route."

Ring, Praexis Demons.

Compliance.

back

Control 3

next

16th July

11:53 GMT

The Praexis Demons surge ahead of me into the cave network. From the residual heat and melted appearance of the walls of the entrance tunnel I'm going to assume that they used the ship to cut their way in through the surrounding rock. I do a brief inspection of the emplacements-. One of the horribly burned soldiers is still alive.

Railgun.

I turn away as the impact of the tungsten round causes his head to disintegrate. Decent armour, decent personal force fields, but… Nothing exceptional. Nothing that beats what I already have. There was a comic I read years ago now, where a group of B-listers ended up fighting… Someone. I don't remember his name. Point is, though he was far more powerful than them he pointed out that while it had taken his people millennia to gain the abilities that he had they were able to hold him off with powers they'd more or less tripped over. Hard work versus luck. Reach soldiers could quite happily walk through light machinegun fire without being harmed, but they actually aren't better equipped than someone like Mister Metcalf.

I think it might be a good idea if that news didn't get around.

The Praexis Demons boil out of the main shaft and encounter the Reach's rearguard. Maybe it's like the 'Humanity, Fuck Yeah' section on 4chan said. The thing about evolving on a death world is that you don't know that it's a death world. I mean, the Praexis Demons are munching their way through the soldiers, stopping briefly to suck the power out of their force fields. We evolved on a planet where Praexis Demons roam freely. And more powerful Demons could appear from Hell if we chanted a few phrases and killed a few people in their names. And, yes, maybe being turned into Construct Lanterns has enhanced them a bit, but the Reach is the largest interstellar polity presently existing and bottom tier Demons can eat their soldiers.

I reach the bottom of the shaft myself as the Praexis Demons swarm onwards. Mapping says-. There's a release of energy from a chamber much further inside the complex, and for the first time I get clear returns from the Darkstars. The Reach appear to be advancing on their last redoubt, placing force field projectors as they go. The woman in yellow organic-looking power armour leading the assault isn't bothering to hide. Her left arm has taken the form of a tower shield and she uses that to block a charged beam from one of the Darkstars, lighter shots barely making an impression on her armour.

That would be.. Yellow Beetle, then.

Ring, anything stopping me from transitioning into the corridor behind them?

None detected.

I pull half of my Praexis Demons back into the ring, and wince slightly as I learn what the Reach taste like.

A huge Dog-faced Darkstar flares his personal shield and charges out of cover, his comrades rising to give him covering fire. Without missing a beat Yellow Beetle turns her right hand into a gun and returns fire, striking another Darkstar in the chest and causing her to collapse to the ground. Then the gun shifts into a power fist looking appendage as she meets the charging Darkstar, brings him to a stop with her shield and slams her gauntlet hand into his ribs.

Transition.

"…clumsy meat."

Demons, go.

"Rahh!"

The big Darkstar throws punches and point-blank maser bolts and the Beetle dances around them. A sidestep and a shield block to evade a punch, a half-second buzz of her wings to dodge a shot from another Darkstar and a punch to the big fellow's leg which causes him to stagger and stumble. She's grinning.

Right up until the eddy pulse hits her in the back.

"Agh!"

Beetle armour is tough. My pulse envelops her right wing, upper right back and upper right arm, but all that I see happen is her armour discolour slightly and her wing collapse.

Resistance detected.

There's a pulse of white-blue light as she turns her fall from the air into a tumble, my attack construct evaporating as she lands. She's not laughing now.

"A Lantern?"

Two railguns form as my construct-armour absorbs a few shots from Reach soldiers before they're assailed by my demonic retinue. While it might be better to keep crumbler rounds as a secret, I think this time I'll take the short term gain.

Fire.

Compliance.

The air burns as the railguns fire faster than I've ever had them do before. I probably shouldn't get used to this intensity of violence but -Yellow Beetle doubles up on her shields and grows additional armour- there's something to be said for not having other considerations to take into account. The shields start turning sandy brown almost immediately, the material they're comprised of visibly abrading as the Darkstars take full advantage of the fact that she's facing me to shoot her undefended back.

"No, you-! Gah!"

She shudders, ducking back behind her right shield so that she can morph her left arm into… Something or other. The moment I see her start to move I generate another railgun off to the side and shoot the shifting arm right in the glowy bit. There's a small explosion-

"Uh!"

-and what's left of her left forearm crackles, sparks and drips what's either blood or whatever the Beetles use instead.

"Lantern! This violates the treaty!"

Aim for the head.

Compliance.

The first hit knocks her head sideways, her full helm discolouring. The second hits her left eye, causing her to shudder and collapse. Then the big Darkstar lumbers over, hauls her up by the head and squeezes.

"Owwwrrrraaaaaaghh!"

I hear the crack as her helmet fails and her head is pulped between his palms.

"I've never fought a Beetle before. She dead?"

He glances at me, then tosses the body into a clear part of the cavern. "Yeah. But she's not done yet."

The armour covering her shakes and slowly retracts. The skin beneath is pale purple… Zambaii? Makes sense, the Reach absorbed their world about seventy years ago. I'd rather assumed that they used their own species, but I suppose they must keep other races around for something.

"Was she a volunteer, or-?"

"Don't know. Don't care. You kill the rest?"

"Just the ones attacking this site."

"That a real power ring?"

"They're two real power rings, yes."

"Hey, Tarant!" A Khundian Darkstar with a shaved head and scalp tattoos tosses a small device over to his large colleague… Tarant, presumably. "Use mine!"

"Thanks Phil." The armour has almost totally retracted now, just the broken parts around the head and the left arm giving it trouble. The woman beneath is wearing just her underwear, and the scarab thingy that makes the armour is clearly visible where it's attached to her back. Tarant leans down, presses the device to the scarab and then steps back. "Might want to cover your eyes."

There's a sort of a… Hissing noise, green vapour rising from the scarab device. Then space bends around the device as a flash of green light consumes the scarab.

Tarant huffs in satisfaction, then turns to face me. "Thanks. Now who the Hell are you and what the Hell are you doing here?"

back

Control 4

next

16th July

11:55 GMT

"Orange Lantern Two Eight One Four." I pull all but a handful of Praexis Demons back into the rings and send the rest to the entrance to keep watch. "Do you have injured?"

Tarant glowers. "That doesn't-."

"Yes, we do." Another Darkstar strides past their defences. Another Zambaii. Ooh, this could get awkward if they knew one another. "We will gratefully accept any assistance-" I transition to the other side of their barricade. "-you feel able-" The shot that hit the woman I saw earlier burned through her armour, skin and muscle and lightly charred her organs. Another fellow… I think that's a fellow, has numerous burns all across his body where his armour has been punctured by multiple smaller strikes. "-to give."

"Medical records please!" Okay, scanning. Nothing on the second guy's species but the woman conforms more closely to the standard humanoid template. I still need to copy her body chemistry but at least I know where everything is supposed to go. Huh, and no temptation to 'improve' things. Blackened and roasted organ tissue evaporates and is replaced by fresh brown/green. That looks… About right. Anything obviously toxic in the blood..? No, right, best I can do then. Fat, muscle and skin and I hope her species doesn't have belly buttons.

"Here." The man who asked for my help thrusts a data pad at me, then starts as he sees what I've already done for his colleague. Another Darkstar is applying some sort of purple gel to the man with the… Odd head.

"Thank you."

Ring, absorb all data.

Compliance.

Ah, good, their umbilical cord equivalents attach to their arms. And the other fellow… The gel is a sterile wound cover and regeneration aid, but it won't do anything to prevent the internal damage killing him now. Orange light flares again-. Amphibious filter-feeder? Curious, but alright. Major blood vessels are the most important thing, hearts… Okay, good. Nerves… His eye snaps open, staring at me-.

"Calm down, Threllian." The blue skinned woman next to me waves her left hand in front of his field of vision to be sure that she's got his attention. "He's on our side."

"Reach? Scarab?"

"Dead."

His ears wiggle in a way I don't have information on. "S-scarab, dead?"

Phil strolls over and drops down next to him. "Yeah, buddy. New guy and Tarant squished her good." His armour's battered as well, but the energy field is throwing off my scans so I can't tell whether or not he's carrying injuries.

Threllian suddenly relaxes, and I scan him to try and work out why. Everything.. seems to be in order. If it's some sort of brain shutdown thing-.

The Zambaii rests his right hand on my armour's shoulder. "Thank you. If-."

"I don't know why he's not more alert." I hold up the datapad. "Are you sure this is complete?"

The blue-skinned woman who had been ministering to him stands, pushing her hair back as she does so. "We've been fighting constantly for three days. Frankly, I'm a little surprised that any of us are still on our feet."

I straighten up. "If your physiology is anything like mine, you'll crash in a little while." I turn around in the air. "Anyone got any non-critical injuries they want me to look at?"

Tarant uses his armour's force field to float past the barricades. "Yeah, my leg, where she hit me. Feels like she fried the nerves and broke the bones."

"I'll need you to deactivate your personal shield. I can't scan through it and you don't want me best-guessing something-"

"Hahahahahaha!" The Khundian throws his head back and guffaws.

"-like.. that."

The Zambaii moves to support Tarant as he sits on a fortification and deactivates his shield. The moment it's no longer contained his leg flops limply, though the man himself gives no indication of discomfort. Scan… I generate a construct-brace to hold his leg in the correct position as I push bone fragments into place and fuse them into a whole.

"How is any of this funny?" I recognise the voice as belonging to Operative Lotta. She's a green-skinned woman with… Sort of… Pink things dangling down the side of her head. Too thin to really be described as lekku. "We nearly died, we could-."

"I know! Ha! Wasn't it great!?"

I shut off my construct. "Try putting weight on it now."

He gingerly puts it on the ground, testing it before standing under his own power. "Good work. Lot better than the last robot doctor I had."

Robot..? I look at my own armour-encased right arm. "Oh, right. Sorry, let me just…" My armour disappears into subspace, replaced by my lighter version. "There. Now, as I said:-" I bring my hands to my chest. "-Orange Lantern Two Eight One Four. Or-"

Ring.

"Paul."

"-if we're being informal. I'm here because I need an introduction to the Controllers. And because the-" I half-turn to take in the rest of the room, battered corpse of the former Beetle and the half-eaten Reach soldiers. "-Reach are dreadful people, obviously."

"Yeah. They are." The green-skinned man takes a step forward. "Operative Munchukk."

The Zambaii nods. "Operative Ferrin."

I point out the ones I know. "Operative Phil, Operative Tarant, Operative Threllian and Operative Lotta…"

The blue woman nods. "The woman you healed is Operative Rayyana. I am Senior Operative Merayn Dethalis." Her eyes narrow slightly. "And I would very much like to know what you are. If the Guardians have repudiated their treaty, we need to know about it."

I shake my head. "Sorry, but I am -currently- a free agent. That's rather what I want to talk to the Controllers about. I… Sent a ship to Maltus? Should have arrived about half a year ago?"

She shrugs. "I haven't been back to Maltus for three. We're only based there in a technical sense. It's so hard to get into Reach territory undetected…" I nod. "But providing you with an introduction is the least we can do. We need to evacuate anyway; with our cover blown-."

"Weren't you listening, Mery?" Phil sits up, clearly struggling to remain straight-faced. "He blew up their ship. No ship and no Scarab Warrior. And with all the soldiers who died here, that means-."

Tarant's eyes widen. "No real defences around their embassy or brainwashing factory. If we hit them now-."

Operative Ferrin nods. "No reinforcements. It might be two years before they can send replacements."

"I'm in." I raise my eyebrows at Senior Operative Dethalis. "If you want me. I want to make a good impression."

"You realise that you'll be making an enemy of the Reach?"

"Bit late for that. Besides, people like the Reach? If I've become their enemy… Then I'm probably doing the right thing."

She nods and holds out her right hand, a holographic image of an industrial plant appearing in the air. "Then this is where we're going…"

back

Control 5

next

16th July

15:37 GMT

"How do you know about us, anyway?"

The Darkstars' exo-mantles might not have the raw power to let them fight Beetles, but it turns out that they're very good at hiding. So good that they've ordered me to keep back just in case my systems show up more than theirs do while they move into position around the building containing the Reach's trade mission. I'm not sure whether or not I should be offended by the fact that they trust Phil the Khundian, a member of a species for whom violence serves the same social role as sex does in my own, with command of our part of this task.

Then again, given how much violence I've engaged in and how little intimacy, maybe I shouldn't be quite so quick-.

"Hey, you awake in there?"

"Sorry, yes." Concealing information is contrary to my interests, but there's the question of presentation… "I gained access to a partial Green Lantern Corps database a while ago. They monitor Reach activity fairly closely."

I half expect him to make some insulting comment. The Guardians may have made the sensible decision where the Reach are concerned, but I doubt that anyone left fighting Reach soldiers, ships or Beetles is exactly going to thank them for it.

"Right."

He keeps his attention focused on the monitors the other Darkstars are wearing. Ultra-secure feeds interpreted by their computer systems to allow near-perfect monitoring… Still something I could probably set up back on Earth, though the computer would be far larger and the communications less secure. I watch over his shoulder as the group moves past the internal security monitors and personnel like ghosts as they move towards the control systems.

"We're a… Way from Khund here."

"Yeah."

More importantly, they're dodging the actual monitors. The Reach know full well that regular security wouldn't stop a Darkstar, but apparently they hold out hope that it would distract them from the real threat, stealthed detection systems designed to report their presence to either the ship or the local Beetle. The Reach would happily sacrifice what they've built here to stop a Darkstar team, but -Operative Lotta isolates the first suicide demolition charge before evading a scanner- as things stand they're just going to sacrifice everything.

"So what brought you here?"

"Fighting. Those power rings you're wearing?"

"Yes."

"Guardians trying to work out a way around the treaty?"

"Not as far as I know."

"So where'd you get those rings?"

"Second one I got from a fight with a Green Lantern. First one, I still don't know. I just woke up and there it was."

He nods. "I met my first wife like that."

"Which?"

"Both! Which was awkward, because I hadn't actually killed her husband!" He turns to look at me, grinning. "Eh? Hahaha!"

I shake my head politely. "Honestly. What sort of woman doesn't check the body first?"

Operatives Ferrin, Munchukk and Tarant get into position to use their exo-mantles to generate false signals while Operative Dethalis accesses the central computer.

"Yeah, and that's why basic education should be universal." He returns his attention to the screen. "You get anything from those pilots?"

"Yes. I'd ideally like more information on this species' neurophysiology to be certain, but it shouldn't be too hard for me to reverse the physical alterations. But that doesn't do anything for the socialisation aspect, for modes of thought they've already adopted."

"Right." He turns away and walks towards the balcony. "Come on then. Our turn."

My armour reappears around me. "I haven't been able to scan the chief negotiator since we arrived. How are you sure that she's there?"

"I've spent a lot of time working out how Negotiators think. I don't know if they're actually clones or not, but they all do the same sort of thing in situations like this." We pass through the dampening field and he fades from view as his exo-mantle's stealth systems activate. I follow his lead and activate my armour's phasing and invisibility systems. "Right now, she's in the Principal Building trying to assure the government of the Reach's commitment to their.. relationship." He lifts off to fly over the capital and I follow on behind him. "There'll probably be a joint public statement as soon as his boss has told him that a new ship is on the way. You showing up has probably delayed that, because they don't want to risk it if the Guardians are doing something."

"So why are we going there the slow way?"

"Because if they think there's a Lantern around, they wouldn't go anywhere without every bit of Lantern-disrupting technology they can get together. You know what happens when you Lantern-FTL into-?"

"Yes, I do."

I see the clear dome of the Grand Assembly auditorium ahead of us. In theory, Urrigen's government is supposed to be open and transparent. As such, they meet and debate in a chamber that can be viewed from the outside. In practice, the growth in central government function during the post-unification era means that the citizenry only see the top of the dome poking out from the surrounding office complexes.

Obvious metaphor is obvious.

Looks like the Assembly is in session… Phil starts to lose altitude, heading for the near side of the dome. I accelerate, flying over the apex and turning, dropping down until I'm precisely opposite him. I remove one of the Darkstar's teleport jammers from my left leg. Clever little multiphasic thing; I can attach it to a structure without coming back into phase and rendering myself detectable.

"Done."

A new party begins filtering into the auditorium, various aides and… The Convenor, with the Negotiator not far behind. And a small squad of Reach soldiers not far behind her. The assembled representatives quieten down and rise to their feet as the two of them approach the podium.

"Ready?"

I fly upwards once again, extending my arms towards the dome.

"I think so."

Hooray for terrorism.

"Enter on four. One-two-"

There's a flare as his breaching charge activates, cutting a hole in the dome and allowing him entry. A maser shot hits a Reach soldier in the neck and another slices off the Negotiator's right forearm.

"-three-"

A third shot hits a Reach soldier's gun just as he brings it to bear, causing an explosion which sends him flying backwards with his chest burned to a crisp. Another soldier deploys a force field barrier while a fourth tries to run to the Negotiator. Phil drops his stealth and increases power to his masers, both hands coming together to generate a shot powerful enough to burn through the braver soldier's chest plate. He falls to the ground, shuddering in pain.

"-four."

I come back into phase, giant construct talons pulling at the dome even as I grab control of the broadcast systems to prevent them cutting the feed. Huge chunks of bombproof material fly away as the dome fails before my attack, and I toss it behind me as I float inward and release the Praexis Demons. Assembly security storm inside only to be forced to duck and hide as my horde makes its attack runs. They're under strict instructions not to eat anything that isn't Reach, but they can actually deliver quite precise bite wounds.

Phil storms up to the Reach soldier behind the force field, using it to partially cover his approach. As the soldier comes out to take a shot he accelerates, drawing a long blue-glowing knife. He takes a shot to his force field and stabs, blade passing easily through the soldier's own defences. The soldier falls back and starts collapsing, so Phil grabs hold and slashes his blade through his foe's chest before tossing him back and turning to face the horrified Convenor.

"I got the floor?"

back

Control 6

next

16th July

15:43 GMT

The Reach Negotiator tries to covertly reach under her robes and activate her emergency teleporter, freezing as she realises that it's inoperative. Another button press gives her emergency anaesthetic, causing her to gasp with relief.

The Convenor makes a vague twisting motion with his right hand. "Security, stand down."

"Aw, really?" Phil grins and heads towards the Convenor's podium. "You sure? I'll spot you my masers?"

"What do you want, terrorist?"

I drop my own invisibility and hold out my hands, projecting a construct image of an Urrigenian brain.

"No one?" Phil looks around hopefully for a moment, then sheathes his sword. "Alright, fine. Business it is. My orange friend up there is showing a picture of your brains." I generate a second image. "And this is your brain on Reach neurotech. Please pay careful attention to that bit near the front." I switch to a cutaway image which more clearly indicates the issue. "A lot of people in your military… And more than a few of your representatives in here have had this done. Improved short term memory and spatial awareness… And an inclination to be subservient to their Reach masters." He reaches the podium, kicking the body of a Reach soldier out of the way as he does so.

"Fortunately for all of you, we Darkstars know a Reach plot when we see it. We know everyone who's had this done and we know how to reverse it." There's a ping inside my armour. Our colleagues have hit the Reach planetside command centre. "And we also have recordings proving that the Reach violated what your government told you was their deal and used their military forces -including a Scarab Warrior- on your planet." He slouches against the podium. "Not to labour the point, but they've done everything we told you they would when we first got in contact eight years ago. We're releasing all of this onto your planet's communications network now. Check what I've said. Check our evidence. Ask your representatives why they've spent eight years lying to you."

He looks up at me. "Orange!"

I extend my right hand to my right, one representative glowing orange. A cut away image of his brain appears just above him. Clean. Another is highlighted, his brain showing the characteristics of Reach modification. I purge them and he collapses bonelessly into his chair. I know from the pilots that he'll be fine once his brain has had a few minutes to adjust. And the next…

As the assembled representatives see their colleague collapse there's a concerted charge for the exit. Phil shakes his head as I have the Hellwraith manifest between them and the doorway, then create an orange barrier just behind that.

The ground rumbles as I continue to work my way around the representatives, flashes of fear from those who know they're on my target list matched by the relief of those whom I pass over. One or two of the more intelligent ones are no doubt noticing that I'm not just striking down those in favour of more cooperation with the Reach… Or maybe that won't be evident until they've had time to review events.

"And that was the Reach trade mission. Hey, guess what?" He turns to the Negotiator. "That makes you the last Reachian left alive on the planet."

"We are a peaceful.. trading empire." She does her best to scowl, but her species don't have the most expressive faces and the drugs in her system are making it even harder. "We're trying to help this world advance. To meet its full potential."

"Just like all of the other places you wiped out. We'll be including them in the data packet too."

"No one will trust your word. You are a murderous thug."

"No." Phil raises his right arm and points it at her head. "I'm not a thug. I'm a soldier. I've got a cause and I've got discipline."

There's a hiss from his maser, then her body collapses as her head evaporates.

He watches her body for a moment as I continue to purge Reach technology from government officials. "Damn. I thought she might have some kind of super mode or something."

"She was a peaceful diplomatic envoy!" The Convenor finally recovers his voice. "You have no idea what you've done to our world by killing her!"

Phil turns back to him, a slightly saddened look on his face. "And you actually believe that, don't you?" He looks up towards me. "You nearly done?"

"I think so." Done, done, done, and a last beam illuminates the Convenor himself.

Nothing.

His brain is unmodified.

He looks up at me as I come in to land. "Surprised?"

"Regrettably, no. Still, I would like to hear why you sold out your world."

"Sold out…" He shakes his head. "I read your files when you people first arrived. You know full well that no world has ever successfully resisted the Reach. I knew that they would take us, one way or another. So I decided to help them conquer us with the least resistance in the hope that they would leave us to manage our own affairs under their dominion. I know from your own records that there are worlds that are permitted that much freedom."

"Yeah." Phil nods. "Until the Reach decide to take it away and their minds are too altered to think of resisting."

"And how many worlds have bled and died and been abandoned by your Darkstars?! How many knew they were lost the moment they started fighting?!"

"Every. Single. One." Phil looks contemplative. "Sometimes the Darkstars die with them, sometimes they fall back to fight again. We've resettled billions away from Reach space, but those places who wanted to fight to the last, they all knew what it would mean. They prepare, they train… Then… Someone in their government gets controlled or turns traitor and the next thing you know there's a whole fleet in orbit because apparently that's enough to make it Reach territory. Then they die, probably killed by expendable soldiers from other slave species. I've seen it happen three times and I admire the people who did it more than I can articulate. But… You?"

Another hiss, and another headless body hits the floor.

"You sicken me."

He floats up into the air, force field shimmering. "Alright! You all know what we've done and why. If any of you escape being killed by your own citizens, get in touch."

I pull in the Hellwraith and the Praexis Demons, following him up and through the hole in the dome. Police attack drones have formed a perimeter, but we both go into stealth mode far too quickly to get a weapons lock. Then we're both heading up, up and away, aiming for a point far above the city.

"I thought that went well."

"I bow to your superior experience. What happens now?"

"Not sure. Depends on their government. A planet that keeps its head can stay free of the Reach for hundreds of years."

"You really evacuate worlds? There wasn't anything about that in the Guardians' database."

"The Controllers can reshape worlds. It's not easy for them and it's not quick, but… Yeah. We can. We get about half of our recruits from those worlds. Threllian comes from there. The Reach butchered most of his people to use their brains as computers."

"Oh."

"If they weren't evil, I wouldn't be fighting them. Alright." He comes to a halt. "I'm staying on-planet, but Ferrin and Rayyana are taking our cruiser back to Maltus. They can introduce you to our bosses."

There's a ping inside my helmet as I receive the coordinates of the ship.

"Thank you."

"Any chance of the rest of us getting rings like yours? I know it's probably a big deal, but one or two-."

"Phil. I intend to do everything I can to ensure that the Darkstars get as many rings as they can handle."

back

Control 7

next

17th July

03:06 GMT

The thing about not being a Lantern is that you're limited to the speed your ship's drive can manage. And when your ship is designed more for stealth than speed -and when there's a good chance that the Reach are sending ships after you because shooting criminals isn't covered by their treaty with the Guardians- it can take a good deal longer than I'm accustomed to in order to get anywhere. Having my awareness of the universe external to the ship blocked by those same stealth systems is also a little unnerving, but… Well. That's what most people deal with when travelling.

I exhale slowly as I sit on the floor in one of the ship's empty cabins, hands palm upwards on my knees with a ring floating above each one.

Finally, after over a year, I'm going to meet the Controllers.

This is either going to be a start of something magnificent or a complete car crash.

I mean, I sent them a Guardian ship with a request for a meeting. I'm having a hard time believing that they couldn't send a single person to Earth to say hello. I mean, there are only nine Guardians left and they still managed to send Appa Ali Apsa to spend a couple of weeks just.. driving around America with Lantern Jordan and Mister Queen. There's no way them ignoring me isn't supposed to be sending some sort of message. I just don't know-.

There's a chime from the door. "Orange Lantern, we've arrived in the Sto-Maltus system."

"Thank you for letting me know, Operative Rayyana."

"May I come in for a moment?"

"If Operative Ferrin can spare you, by all means."

The blue metal of the doorway.. vanishes, Operative Rayyana standing behind the space it occupied. Standard pattern humanoid female with skin that's a sort of.. pale orange, a black strip tattooed across her nose and cheeks. With her exo-mantle thoroughly wrecked by the same shot that nearly killed her she's wearing a partially armoured spacesuit decorated in Darkstar colours. Her eyes take in the room and then drop to me with an expression of mild embarrassment. "I'm not.. interrupting you, am I?"

"Oh, no. I completed the essential part of my meditations hours ago." Rings still floating over my palms I rise to my feet. "Is there something I can do for you?"

"I wanted to thank you in person for healing me."

"You're welcome."

She looks away from me, the slight movement of her fingers where they rest against her thighs betraying her discomfort. "I should have said something sooner, but with the rush to get everything together, then you closeted yourself in here…"

"It's not a problem."

Her eyes move to the rings. "I've never seen a Green Lantern do that before."

"Most don't learn remote ring control beyond what they need to call their ring to their finger from a few metres away. I used to find dimming the orange light's influence on my mind… Helpful. Now it's more a habit." I close my hands around them. "How long will it take us to reach the planet?"

"Only a few minutes. Since we don't have to worry about the Reach here they're going to reach out and grab us."

I frown. "Reach out and grab-?"

The ship shudders and oh that's weird.

Operative Rayyana nods. "Like that. No one gets to use FTL inside the system, but our bosses don't want to wait for us to report in."

I nod and walk slowly towards the exit, Operative Rayyana stepping back to allow me into the corridor. "Where will you be going?"

"We'll submit our report and recommendation to Regional Administrator Sleer Prigatz. He's the officer responsible for the part of the Reach periphery where we work. It'll be his job to decide how to prevent the Reach coming back."

I nod. "That's-. Oh, ah, which way to the nearest airlock?"

"This way." She gestures with her right hand. "I'll show you."

"Thank you."

"He'll probably want to meet you. If you're planning on sticking around there are plenty of places that could use someone who can fight Scarab Warriors."

"You can't?"

"Standard protocol for encounters with Scarab Warriors is to run and hide. We just don't have the raw power to fight them. When we can't do that… A squad of maxim-suits attacking from ambush can take one down if they catch them alone, but… It wouldn't be a sure thing."

I nod as we walk down the corridor. "Maxim-suits?"

"Like Tarant wears. They're the heavy combat variety. The rest of us are optimised for other things. Exo-mantles… I could fight a whole army from my homeworld wearing mine. The Reach just make better systems for their Scarab Warriors."

"Will you be reporting to the Controllers at any point?"

"If they ask for us. But I doubt they will. I've been a Darkstar for nine years and I haven't even seen one up close before. The only Darkstar who regularly speaks to them is the Director, Huvah Jeddigar. If you can wait a few days, he should be able to arrange an meeting."

"There are Controllers on planet now?"

"I… Think so? I don't really think about them too much." We come to a halt next to an airlock and she calls up a holoscreen. "Welcome to Maltus."

First good look at the place I've had. Huge, hive-like cities appear dotted across the continent below us. At the periphery they cut off suddenly, the area outside of them being what looks like pristine nature. In other places settlements in a strange mishmash of styles are visible.

"Population, twenty billion."

What? "There are that many Controllers? I assumed that they'd be like the Guardians, only a few of them."

"No, most of that's…" She hesitates. "Clickers."

"Clickers?"

"Their actual name is more like.. 'click, click-click, scrape click', but since most of us can't make that sound we just call them Clickers and have our translators worry about it. They're a pseudo-insectoid race that the Controllers… Indentured, in exchange for helping them alter their physiology. The other places are inhabited by Darkstars and our support personnel, and refugees. Not all Maltusians are Controllers. The Controllers only have about thirty or so members, and there are hundreds of other Maltusians all doing their own thing." She expands one of the mixed-design cities, focusing the holographic display on one particular building. "This is the Darkstar headquarters, where we'll be heading."

"And the Controllers?"

She moves the image to focus on a.. fairly nondescript building made out of what looks like red stone. "Here. This is where they spend their time when they're not busy with something else. I assume they live there, as much as they live anywhere."

"Thank you. Would you mind terribly letting me off here, then? I think I can probably get their attention and I do rather need to speak to them as soon as possible."

back

Control 8

next

17th July

03:11 GMT

"You want..?" She glances at the airlock door and then back at me. "The Controllers are ancient, powerful and from what I've heard not the easiest people to get along with. Do you really think just turning up is the right approach?"

"I've got a creature more ancient and powerful than them inside my personal lantern. I want to establish a very particular dynamic in my relationship with the Controllers and… We have a saying on my world: start as you mean to go on." I fully focus on her, eyes glowing orange. "Why is it that you work for them?"

"My people's homeworld was taken over by the Reach centuries ago. The descendants of the refugees they helped get away live on a world they made for us. I owe them, and I owe the Reach."

"I don't owe them anything, as far as I know. I want to suggest something… Help them do something that's far more in their interests than mine. I'm not approaching them as a supplicant."

"I don't know what you could offer people who can build planets-."

"A Central Power Battery. An object that would let them stand as equals of their Guardian cousins. Not to-."

"More Lanterns! The exo-mantle's powerful, but it's nothing compared to a power ring!"

"Just so. So I'm going to be a little pushy." Rings settling on my ring fingers I wave my right forefinger at the airlock door. "So, would you mind?"

She nods and starts pressing buttons. "I'll let the defence systems know that you're coming."

I smile. "Appreciated. Being shot would rather put a dampener on things."

The inner door fades to nothing and I step through. Hm. What else could I do to make my point..? Ah, of course. My armour and robes vanish into subspace, the cloth which emerges to replace them pulling itself tight around me to create a uniform obviously designed to match what the Green Lanterns wear. A bright orange patch front and back, a little like a female one piece swimming costume. Dark grey for the arms and legs, then orange boots and… White gloves, I think. And… Okay, and a tiny mask. I'm labouring a point, not dressing in a way that makes any sense at all.

I open and close my hands, getting used to the pull of the fabric. I look like a… A superhero. Oh well, it had to happen eventually. At least there's next to no chance of me seeing combat around here.

"Good luck!"

"Thank you." The door behind me fades back into existence, then the atmosphere begins being sucked out. I float off the ground, drifting towards the outer door. So close. I hold out my right hand and call my personal lantern out of subspace, taking a firm grip on its handle. Having the lantern on hand should further reinforce the parallel.

You ready in there, Ophidian?

We will get many you now? And then squash the Gnat?

I like to think that it will take you a little while to find someone as good as-

You will always be my favourite.

-me… Um, thank you. It will probably still be a little while before there are any other Orange Lanterns, but dealing with Larfleeze should probably happen a little sooner. Hopefully days at most.

I will be patient.

You should also remember that-

The outer door fades away, giving me a clear view of the planet below. Sto-Maltus is shining brightly today, making the greys and pale browns of the inhabited areas blend into the surrounding countryside. At night I imagine that the density of inhabitation means that the cities are brightly illuminated while the other areas are pitch black.

-the people we're going to meet are the Guardians' cousins. They'll probably look fairly similar to you.

They will be mine?

In the sense that they'll be working to establish the Orange Lantern Corps, I hope so. Please don't try eating them.

I will not eat them.

Okay then.

I float out of the ship, immediately altering my velocity relative to the ship so that it pulls away. Right, mapping? Orange lines appear in my vision, marking out cities, busy areas of sky and my eventual destination. I begin flying towards the planet… Nah.

Ophidian.

Yes, my Agent?

Out you come.

Yes, my Agent! The Green Cousins will quake at my magnificence!

The core of my lantern erupts with orange light as the Ophidian pulls herself outward and into the material universe. She starts small, her head easily fitting through the aperture as she undulates into space. The ring starts sending me 'weapon lock detected' messages immediately… But if they had anything that could stop an Embodiment I doubt that the Reach would be giving them such trouble. The Ophidian continues to grow as she pulls more and more body free. Her head is now as wide as my shoulders and her body is now broad enough that it can't come directly out of my lantern. Rather, it emerges from the orange glow just in front of the core.

The Ophidian coils upwards into the space 'above' me, her face constantly pointing towards the planet. It is a fascinating sight when looked upon with empathic vision; more dots than I can casually count paired with areas where the colours just cut out. I'm not surprised that the Controllers have ways of blocking it. In fact, it's reassuring that they haven't abandoned emotional spectrum technology completely. That means that it's a virtual certainty that they can make rings. I wasn't significantly worried about that, but it's nice to know that I don't need to.

My lantern has one last blast of orange light as the Ophidian pulls the tip of her tail free, then drops down to its usual levels of illumination. Doesn't.. look.. any the worse for wear. Good. I tighten my hold and accelerate upwards, generating a construct saddle just behind the Ophidian's head.

"You wish to ride me, my Agent?"

"It would probably make a stronger impression."

She bends, her head descending underneath me. Then she stops. "Let them never forget our arrival."

"Tally-ho, then."

The planet's surface wheels past as she dips her head again, then we're shooting forwards in a way which would have utterly terrified me a little over a year ago. The Ophidian wants to go somewhere and we're going there. It takes seconds before the atmosphere is being shoved aside by a faintly glowing orange barrier, then a handful more for the closer two hive cities to shoot by as we head towards our destination. More weapon locks every second and I'm fairly confident that the Ophidian doesn't have my scry immunity. I can see our target growing larger ahead and the Ophidian dips again, aiming herself between the largest rows of buildings. The Controllers' building is in the exact centre of the city now flashing past us, showing that they haven't completely abandoned the Guardians' ideas on order and structure.

We're moving too fast for my eyes to really pick up on individual things. The air cars are clearing the skies, but the Ophidian casually flows around any that haven't got the message. I see… Oh, those are the click click-click scrape clicks. They look a bit like armoured caterpillars, their forelegs and mandibles acting as manipulator appendages. Interesting.

Up ahead I see our ultimate destination, and… A single individual stands before the front entrance, arms folded behind his back. I'm assuming his based on the lack of breasts; my scan isn't showing me a thing. His robes are blue and red and show a courageous amount of thigh. His eyes seem to be blank white spaces while the glow from the talisman around his neck is matched by the glow from the centre of his forehead.

Finally. A Controller.

back

Control 9

next

17th July

03:14 GMT

The Ophidian slows, turning aside to fly into the space around the Controllers' building. As my saddle passes the point closest to the main entrance I unclamp myself and leap free, descending in a controlled manner towards the bottom of the steps leading up to it. The Controller's face is inscrutable, motionless but for the oscillation of the light coming from the dot on his forehead. I land lightly, keeping my eyes on the Controller as I begin walking up the steps.

What other traffic is in the area has come to a halt or is frantically pulling back in order to get out of the Ophidian's way. Having already completed a circuit of the building her head pulls upwards slightly for another circuit. Still no reaction from the Controller and no sign of any others. This isn't a sensible way to behave. If they think I'm a threat there should be more of them than this. If they've accepted my version of events they should have been a good deal friendlier.

On the other hand, these are the Guardians' cousins.

I reach the broad plaza before the entrance, the Controller about twelve metres away from me. Three steps later I stop, holding his gaze. Then I look upwards and slowly turn around, taking in our environment. The people of various species pressed to the overlooking windows or staring down from their air cars. Mostly -ugh- Clickers, but dozens of other species as well. Including a small group of three bald mauve-skinned humanoids with scalp tattoos. Unaligned Maltusians. Interesting.

I complete my circuit and return my gaze to the Controller. Then I bow my head and genuflect.

"Orange Lantern Two Eight One Four reporting for duty, sir."

The sense of yellow I'd been getting from our audience noticeably dips. Ring-based facial analysis -of the humanoids anyway- suggests curiosity and wonder. Perhaps they think the Controllers were expecting me? At least I don't appear to be seeking a fight.

…

How long is he going to-?

"Come."

There's a faint rustle from his robes as he turns, floating just above the ground. That's it? 'Come'? Well. Alright then. I come to my feet and raise my lantern high with my left hand.

"Ophidian. Return."

"Yes, my Agent."

She twists in the air, shrinking as she comes closer. The Controller slows in his passage, turning his head slightly to catch a glimpse of the Embodiment of Avarice flying back into my personal lantern.

No, he's not looking at the lantern. The lack of pupils makes it hard to tell-.

He looks away again.

My lantern flickers as the Ophidian completes her entry, some of the air cars around us resuming their journeys. Most seem content to watch me follow my nominal superior inside the Controllers' building. Through the entrance and… From this side there isn't a door. Very nice.

"I was hoping for a little more than a 'come'. You did get the ship I-."

"It was the property of the Guardians of the Universe. I assume that the wooden boxes were part of your species' funerary traditions."

"Yes. I didn't know anything-" He continues moving, floating up a slight of stairs towards a doorway on the first floor. "-about yours. It didn't seem inappropriate."

"We are above casual offence. Only a deliberate insult would be received as such."

"You got the Burning Martian?"

He stops. "A fascinating specimen."

"Would you like to add anything to that?"

"We had already parted ways with our Guardian brothers when those events occurred. Your missive implied that you were interested in undoing the damage to their planet. This may be possible."

"Good, because I was-" He starts moving away again. "-hoping to-" I try flying directly after him. And I can't, I just stop when I get a certain distance from the floor. Inwardly rolling my eyes I fly towards the stairs and try catching up. "-establish a working relationship. I'd like your advice on recovering the Orange Central Power Battery from-" He moves through a doorway and turns a corner. "-Larfleeze and will you please stop and listen?"

"You are not reporting to me."

"No, but I'm trying to? Did you not-" I turn the corner and he's a little way ahead. "-read the rest of my message? I want to establish a Lantern Corps to fight the Reach."

"That is not how we conduct our affairs. You are not my direct concern. You are the concern of one of my sisters. Approaching you without her would have been inappropriate."

"Okay, so, why didn't she come and talk to me?"

"Physical incapacity."

I'm right behind him as he turns through another doorway, leading us to… Some sort of high technology laboratory. I don't have any record of what most of this stuff does but the ring's picking up about seven different sorts of exotic energy-.

That I do know. That's a bleed portal generator. Those are pretty darn uncommon. Usually the aim is to get through the Bleed, not get into it directly.

Further in I see a bier… No, a medical station of some kind. Another Controller lies upon it, motionless. She's also wearing blue and red, not robes but simple trousers and pullover. Thin white hair is bound in a tight bun. There are screens around the bier, and I walk past the first Controller to get a better look.

"Can you read it?"

I nod. "Hinon Hee Hannanan. Controller. Researcher. Forger of.. rings..." Oh. My eyes widening, I hold up my left hand slightly. "She made this ring."

"Yes. Doing so without the Orange Central Power Battery undid her connection to the orange light. She has remained in this state ever since."

"How long-?"

"Long enough. If we are to work together, we will do so through her. She forged the ring you now wear as a sign of her hope in the future. She believed that a bearer would appear, and so you have. Restore her."

"And if I can't?"

"Then you are not worth our time."

Okay… I walk over to stand right next to her. If she's lost her connection to the orange light, clearly what she needs is a replacement. I look down at the ring she made for.. someone. Maybe, but I'm really rather attached to it.

"Original ring? Stewart ring? Separate file and charge reserve."

"Compliance." / "Task complete."

"Stewart ring, blank database. Original ring, copy all files you had before I woke up in space onto the Stewart ring."

"Task complete." / "Compliance."

I put my lantern down on the floor and pull the Stewart ring from my right ring finger. Fingers crossed. Gently as I can I take hold of her left hand and lift it from the bier, then slide the Stewart ring onto her middle finger before laying it back down.

A wave of orange light passes through her, her eyes slowly opening to take in my face.

She blinks, then tries focusing again.

Then she sees me.

Her face remains neutral as she considers me for a moment.

"You shall have to do."

back

Control 10

next

17th July

03:19 GMT

"I'll do? I think I'll do rather better than-."

"What happened to the database?"

"W-? I deleted it."

Her body shimmers as she pushes herself into a sitting position. I offer her my now-ringless right hand but she ignores it in favour of staring at the ring I just gave her.

"Whatever for?"

"I didn't know why you were unconscious and I don't know enough about Controllers to be sure what would happen when I put that ring on you. I thought that only having the data-"

"This isn't the ring I made." She frowns at me. "Where did you get it?"

"I had to disarm a Green Lantern who was being mind controlled. He didn't want it back afterwards."

"Green… Lantern..? Oh, they finally got around to upgunning those Halla people." She looks past me to the other Controller. "Who are you?"

I frown. "Halla peop-? They discontinued the Halla three bill-."

"Ah-t!" She gives me a stern look. "Wait your turn." She points at the other Controller with her right forefinger. "You. Speak."

"We no longer commonly use names."

"Oh, that nonsense. I've no idea what Kontross was thinking. And… Robes." Another shimmer and outer robes matching the male's garments appear around her, though she keeps her simpler clothes underneath. "What did you used to be called?"

"Jevek Jos Jar."

"Oh! I remember you now." She leans a little closer. "I do hope that face isn't standard issue. I had enough of that when I was a Guardian."

"If you are comfortable with your present form, you are welcome to maintain it. The Gathering will wish to acknowledge your accomplishment when you have finished interrogating your test subject. I will leave you until then."

He turns away and drifts back towards the doorway… Which disappears once he has moved through it.

"And you." She eases herself off the bier and stands on the floor. "Why did you give me this purloined ring instead of my original one?"

"Because I've gotten rather fond of it."

"Hmmm."

"Do you want it back?"

She turns away and starts walking towards a piece of machinery whose function I.. have.. no idea how to discern. "No. You can keep it. It's yours."

Propriety unlocked.

My ring flickers for a moment, then stills. Um. Okay?

"Thank..? You..? Okay… Mister Jar said that you made this ring-" She begins checking the device over. "-using your own orange light because you didn't have access to the Orange Central Power Battery-."

"Partially correct. I thought that the risk associated with sustaining my consciousness without it was too great to make the attempt."

"Okay, and that's a Bleed portal… Did you just throw it in and hope for the best?"

"Not quite, but that's not far from the truth. Where are you from?"

"Earth… Prime."

"And whereabouts is that?"

"The unfashionable end of the Western Spiral Arm. In a parallel universe."

"Ah. I wasn't sure that would happen. Which one?"

"Prime…"

She looks around from the thing she's working on. "Using standard notation?"

"That's… The only name I've ever heard used for it."

"And no one had it before you?"

"If they did, I don't have any record of them. You didn't send it to me?"

"I cast it into the void. I did so on the basis that it had to eventually come out somewhere and as I am immortal I would live to see it. I wouldn't have been able to aim it anywhere even if I wanted to."

I sag slightly. "Darn."

"Concerned that you're not quite so special?"

"I've been unable to contact my home plane for a year. I was hoping that you'd be able to guide me back. At least… Temporarily."

"Not immediately, but I can put it on the slate for you. Now, come over here."

"Why?"

"Because I haven't seen many examples of people exposed to the orange light before. A handful of thieves and Krona aren't really-."

"Krona!?"

"Oh." She smiles. "Have you met him? We worked together on the power ring project."

"He used time travel technology to try and view the alpha event, saw a giant hand and somehow fucked up the universe's development. The Guardians stripped him of corporeality, but he still manages to make a nuisance of himself."

"Ugh, there's always one. Though, in retrospect, that makes his interest in orange in particular make a good deal more sense." She picks up the device. "Now, hold still."

"What does that do?"

"Since you still haven't given me a database I'm going to have to work out how you're staying so stable manually. It shouldn't hurt, but if it does-."

A construct yanks it out of her hands at the same time as I flick an orange data packet towards her ring. "Here! Just ask!"

She blinks, tiny flickers of orange flashing across her eyes. "Then how would I confirm that you still had the ability to give people things? I saw the recordings made by the Guardians who confronted the ones who stole the Orange Light Fountain. Clearly they had been overwhelmed. You -on the other hand- haven't tried to take anything or to turn me into a construct. And I've been needling you in case your control was fragile."

"It's not about control. It's about achieving unity with your desires and-."

"Yes. 'Enlightenment' you call it. What fascinating soul structures your species must have. And you don't have any trouble with it at all?"

"I have the Ophidian in my personal lantern!"

She smiles. "Good show. Now, why are you here?"

back

Control 11

next

17th July

03:23 GMT

"The Guardians have -at various times- reached the conclusion that there are groups whom… It's not that the Green Lantern Corps couldn't beat them. In most cases. It's that the casualties they'd take doing it and the devastation that would be unleashed are such that… They decide it isn't a good idea to take things that far. One such group are the Reach. As long as they capture systems through negotiation the Guardians won't stop them."

"You have a problem with that?"

"When the definition of 'negotiation' can be stretched to include drugging the planet's population so that they believe everything you say and when accession eventually results in the subjugated species being broken up for parts, yes."

"Oh dear. That wasn't a clever contract."

"I'm too far away from the time to judge it properly. In any case, the Controllers -via the medium of their Darkstar agents- are contesting the Reach's expansion. I think they could do better if they had a Lantern Corps to use either instead of or as well as."

"More to the point, we ourselves would be more powerful. But I'm not hearing why that matters to you."

"I have certain beliefs about the way the universe should operate."

"We've all got those. You still aren't-." Her eyes widen.

"What?"

"Nine. Only nine of them left."

"The.. Guardians? Yes."

"When we parted company there were thirty three. Even after the Manhunters did their level best to kill us." She winces, her right hand going to her forehead. "I should have.. realised that some of my old colleagues would have been killed. It simply shocks me that it's been so many."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

She lowers her hand. "You didn't know them well enough to be saddened by it." She twitches in irritation. "And they're all names and faces I recognise, they haven't recruited at all. Or had babies. Foolish."

"And that's one of the reasons why it's so important to put you on an equal footing. As peers, you could call them out on their follies. I tried asking my local Green Lanterns about what they would do if the last of the Guardians died and they couldn't come up with an answer."

"Yes, we're a stubborn people. But I think Ganthet at least would listen to me. What's in it for you?"

"Self-actualisation. I used a-."

"Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Interesting concept, though I don't think it's accurate. Not for all species, at least."

"I used it as a tool. Early on, structuring my desires helped me cope with the orange light. The point is, having dealt with most of the basic things, I'm left with… Altering the universe to be more pleasing to me. The fact that places like the Reach exist does not please me. They destroy the sorts of things I value existing, affront ideals I hold to be true. And if what a few time travellers have told me is accurate, they'll be coming for my homeworld… Ah, Earth Sixteen-"

"You can use standard notation!"

"-is due to be invaded by them at… Some point. I like my homeworld. My friends live there. I keep my stuff there and we're doing some really interesting arcanotechnological research and development… I've invested in the place and I'm not having someone mess it up for me."

"You want to deal with them while they're someone else's problem because they'll eventually become yours."

"You could put it like that. I doubt that the species about to be overrun by the Reach will be all that fussed. Look, I thought I made a pretty good guess about what the Controllers would want out of this. Given that you can see how mentally stable I am I really don't understand why we're still discussing this."

"Because putting you on the back foot is advantageous to me."

I blink, my mouth opening slightly and then closing again. "Thank you for letting me know. "

"And I'm interested in the sort of person the ring I created found. I'll have a look, later. See if I can track down that 'Earth Prime' of yours."

"You see? A convergence of interests. We both want things and the other can supply them. This is how a properly composed Orange Lantern Corps should work."

She tilts her head slightly to the side. "You don't have the Orange Light Fountain yet. It's a little premature to speak as if this is a done deal. There were reasons why the Guardians were reluctant to press Larfleeze after he killed Ogandu Onna Oslan."

"Which is why I'm talking to you rather than just taking it from him." I frown. "And why are you calling it a Light Fountain?"

"Haven't you noticed how much smaller it is than the Green Central Power Battery? According to the database you acquired the Green Central Power Battery is fifteen metres tall. The device Larfleeze clasps to his bosom is little larger than a normal personal lantern. Did you think all that extra mass was decoration?"

"I… Hadn't really thought about it."

"The green light was… Least complicated. It did as we willed it. Even the Manhunters could use it without experiencing further.. disruption to their systems. And their emotional range was extremely limited." She turns away, heading towards another piece of equipment. "Our studies in harnessing the orange light were far less advanced. It certainly wasn't ready for… Ring application."

"What do the extra mechanisms do?"

"Oh, thousands of things. Stopping the power constantly radiating outwards, for a start. I see that Larfleeze has had some interesting… Visitors, over the millennia? We could also make the flow of power a little less… Corrosive to the minds of its users. Not.. completely. We focused our efforts on the green-" She reaches the device and waves at it, a shimmer passing through its numerous spines. "-light for good reasons."

I remember Richard and Jade's reactions. "That would be helpful. Would it help Larfleeze?"

"Would it-?" She turns to me with a frown. "Help. Larfleeze?"

"Would it?"

She blinks. "An immortal marinated on the orange light for three billion years with only his own madness for company?" Her face relaxes slightly. "It would make a fascinating case study, but I honestly have no idea. Perhaps…" She strokes her chin with her right hand. "If we created a shielded environment and weaned him off it…"

I take a neural chaff generator out of subspace and float it over to her. "I was thinking… If we used something like this? Interfered with his mind so he couldn't use his power, then stuck the Battery-. Ah, Fountain, in something that blocked it off..?"

The chaff generator shimmers and disappears, reappearing in front of her. "Hm. No, this wouldn't work on his brain. Not anymore. Still, it's not a bad approach. Assuming you don't want to try wresting it from his cold dead hands..?"

"Knowing his life story, I just feel sorry for him. If I had to kill him I'd do it. He's too much of a menace to leave as he is, regardless of other considerations. But if taking him alive is a possibility…"

Another shimmer, and the chaff generator opens up in an exploded view.

"What a fascinating device…"

"So..? Is this something we can work on together..?"

"Perhaps. I'm certainly interested. Tell me how you see our working relationship developing in future."

back

Control 12

next

17th July

03:27 GMT

"What, you and me?"

"I was rather thinking of you and the Lantern Corps you're intent on gifting us with. But yes, I rather imagine that I'll be taking a lead from the Controller side." She looks at me curiously. "Do you know why?"

"Social cachet from your gamble actually paying off. I'd…" I look away for a second as I consider it. "You're a post-scarcity society. You have been for virtually all of your history."

"No, there's always a scarcity of something."

"Not food, shelter or consumer goods. Not the things most species -even quite advanced ones- think of when they hear the term. Why are there so few of you?"

"We intentionally limited our expansion so that we wouldn't overrun the universe. Something that was well within our abilities. We stopped breeding voluntarily to give the rest of you a chance."

"So… You value… What? Influence? Creativity?"

"Influence, mostly. As a species… We never really got fiction." Her face creases up. "I don't know why. Heru once suggested that it was because we'd never needed myths to explain things… That seemed a bit 'neat' to me, but he might have been on to something."

"Power rings -and my orange one in particular- are your development. Which means that you've earned the right to.. control how this happens."

"Well done. Six out of seven."

"And out of nine?"

She narrows her eyes slightly. "You know about those, do you?"

"Three guesses where the Guardians put the-" I make the 'seven-lines-radiating-outwards' sign with my fingers. "-for safe keeping. And which has at least one person capable of tapping into the black?"

She sighs in frustration. "What a fascinating planet you come from."

"Live on. I come from the Prime version, remember?"

She waves it off and returns her attention to her equipment. "Bah, we're getting off topic. My plans for this depended a great deal on exactly who turned up. You've been planning this for a while and you know you better than I do. How do you want this to go?"

"Three other members of my species have worn orange rings. Two started exhibiting extremely unusual behaviour almost immediately. The third had a mission… I didn't have the opportunity to talk to him while he was wearing it. And the Gordanian Admiral had an attack of megalomania when he put one on. I'm concerned about how stable potential recruits will be. And I don't want Controllers handing out rings to create fire-and-forget weapons out of people who want the Reach destroyed more than they want to live."

"Not unreasonable. But there seems to be a war going on."

"I have a list of names. People I think might work well for the first batch of recruits. I would teach them my techniques myself, and be on hand to bring them down if they started going off the rails. Though from what you were saying, having a proper Central Power Battery might help with that. Perhaps… Most importantly, I've also got the name of a man whom I think could run the organisation."

"You don't want to do it, but you know a man who does."

"I think he will. I need to.. check some things. Once we've got the Central Power Battery secured. And… Once that's done, he can probably come up with a way to screen potential recruits for the right psychological characteristics better than I can."

She looks back at me for a moment. "I may possibly have something to add to that."

"Most of the species we'll be recruiting from weren't even sophonts when you were last awake. And he's going to want to know that he has control over the organisation which he's organising."

"I'm.. not.. sure.. I.. like.. where.. this is going."

"The way I see it, orange rings -and the people who use them- work best when they're doing what they want to. We won't be finding the most avaricious people we can, we'll be selecting those who want things useful to us. Someone who wants to be in charge is going to want to be in charge."

"And what do you think we Controllers are going to do? Sit around looking pretty?"

"In theory, anyone with a connection to the orange light can make new rings. But it isn't quite that easy, is it?" She gives her head a small shake. "Larfleeze has piles of rings, but they all used to be people. We'll-."

"Except for the prototype Krona and I created. The very first orange ring. Bit of a kludge job, to be honest. We never thought that we'd use it in the field."

"Does it have any special abilities?"

"No! It was a first effort! I'd be embarrassed to see it now. No AI worth talking about, no control assistance… I'm much more pleased with the one I made for you."

"In future, you'll have the other Controllers to assist you. But my point was, your hold over the Corps comes from the fact that they need you for rings and guidance as well as everything you-. Ah, the other Controllers do for the Darkstars now."

"Unless you do that. I can feel the Ophidian in your personal lantern."

"Even better! You're very useful to them, they're very useful to you, but if relations totally break down you can both survive. Weakened by the separation, until you get over yourselves and patch relations over."

"You don't want us being in total control?"

"No, I don't think that's a good idea."

"Did you miss the nameplate on the door when you came in? I can't see the Guardians accepting that sort of deal with their Corps."

"Is it better for your ego to have people follow you because they have no choice, or for them to have a choice and choose to follow you? And in any case, I like to think that the Controllers still have the social skills necessary to negotiate the power arrangement."

"I wouldn't be so quick to overestimate us. We used to be Guardians, remember?"

"And then there's the Darkstars-."

"Who are used to us being in charge and will probably provide the majority of our recruits."

"I was going to say, who will need a new focus. And who don't have much direct contact with the Controllers save via their Director. They run virtually all operations themselves because that's the only practical way to do it. If the war was going to come more into the open… Well. You Controllers are capable of reshaping planets. How quickly can you build warships?"

"A good deal faster than we can now if we could replenish ourselves from a Central Power Battery." She looks pensive for a moment. "It's not a terrible idea. I'll want to talk to this Director-."

"Clarissi."

"Hah! Very well. This Clarissi candidate. Because your whole plan rather falls through if they can't hack it."

"Reasonable. Now, about Larfleeze…"

back

Control 13

next

17th July

03:27 GMT -5

"…nice to meet a couple who are so open in their love for one another."

I watch the devices Scott is waving at me as I lie back in what feels unnervingly like a dentist's chair. I've never really had much of a fear of dentists, but I used to deal with the discomfort of having them prod and poke at the interior of my mouth by going completely limp. Now, that isn't happening.

"Uh-huh."

Barda isn't the tough-on-the-outside-but-soft-on-the-inside type. She's tough the whole way through, and having Ghia'ta chirping at her about her one emotional 'indulgence' isn't doing much to improve the usually surly attitude she adopts when forced to spend any time in my presence. Still, after 'still in love with his dead wife', 'in love with a woman who'll be spending the rest of her life in a supermax prison' and… My own… I suppose it's only fair that I show her a relationship that's actually working as it's supposed to.

To be honest, I'm not totally sure where I'm going with Ghia'ta. She has the potential to be tremendously useful, particularly if my ultimate plan is going to revolve around white light manipulation. Or just generally; that staff isn't a power ring but it's only one step down, and her combat skills are notable. I wonder if she can learn to use New God-.

"Ping!"

Scott glances at his Mother Box, then back at me.

"Alright Scott, what's the news?"

"You're recovering pretty well, actually. I was pretty sceptical about your violet light infusion, but it actually looks like it's really helped."

I nod sagely. "You see-."

"Though it was still pretty stupid." He leans back against a nearby bench, folding his arms across his chest. "You should have asked me to come along and check what they were going to do. Zamarons might be ancient and wise but they don't know New Gods like I do."

"Scott, that was an act of desperation and confusion. I clearly wasn't thinking straight."

"Should the fact that your instinctive response was to dash off without the guy who spent two weeks putting you back together make me feel better? Or worse?"

"Ahhh." I dip my eyes for a moment. "You… Have a point."

"When you first greeted me as your brother, I was pretty sceptical. And Barda…" He glances at his wife, who raises her eyebrows a little. "She was fairly sceptical too."

"I thought I was growing on her, after our sparring sessions. Though I suppose that may have been the concussion."

"My point is, if you want us to have an actual family relationship… You're going to have to trust me with a few things."

"I-. I do. I'm not… Used to having family I can trust either. Not… New God family. I mean… When I was on… Earth Prime…" Can't honestly say I had a particularly close relationship with my sister, either. We didn't get on badly or anything, just… Not much in common. I nod. "Okay… You have a reasonable point."

Scott looks up a the ceiling for a moment. "That wasn't as painful as I thought it would be."

"If you're missing that Apokoliptian flavour we could beat each other with pain sticks for a while… Though even.. now I'm still quite a bit stronger than you." Barda shifts slightly, a thin smile on her lips. "Probably not… Stronger than her…"

"Let's not. Look, Zatara tells me that you've got some kind of Vampire/Succubus hybrid in your mountain."

"Yes, I picked them up on an island-."

"And you're trying to teach them how to rise above their instincts."

"Yes?"

He sighs. "To free themselves from themselves?"

I flop back, my head hitting the headrest. "Ooooooh. Damn." "Ah. Sorry. That… Should have occurred to me… But it didn't." Um. "Are you free now?"

He bows his head, smiling. "I can be. But in the interests of honesty-."

"The Justice League want us to spy on you." Barda nudges Ghia'ta aside as she walks closer. "They want to be sure that you're not up to something."

I roll my eyes. "Yes, Barda, getting Anti-Lifed was all part of my master plan. You might want to avoid eating any jelly babies for the next few months."

She doesn't look impressed. "They'd probably be less worried if Darkseid hadn't paid you a visit. You nearly destroyed the whole Light perfectly, then you misjudged Darkseid. What happened to you could have happened to everyone."

"What Barda means is-."

"No, she's being pretty clear." I nod. Not as if I had anything critical planned that I need to hide from the League. "Alright. A bit of fraternal bonding wouldn't go amiss. And… In the interest of deepening our relationship… There's… Something I've been planning on doing for a while for which your help would be invaluable."

Scott looks mildly interested. "Oh? What's that?"

"I destroyed Father Box for betraying me to Darkseid. Thus: I need a new Box."

"Ping!"

"Alright, if you want to be pedantic about it: I'd like a new Box."

Scott strokes his chin with his right hand. "Any Box you got from Apokolips would have the same loyalty problem as the one you stole from Desaad. And I don't think you can really afford to steal one from New Genesis."

"That would be sub-optimal anyway. What I really want is a Box designed for me from the ground up." I smile faintly as I look from Scott to Barda. "I understand that you're both acquainted with their creator."

"You want Himon to make-?" Scott seems to find the idea amusing. "That's not going to happen."

"Why not? I mean, I can manufacture element x, which I don't imagine is easy for him to do on Apokolips. I can.. pay him." Scott and Barda glance at each other. "Oh, come on, the guy helped the flipping Captain of the Female Furies escape Apokolips and his daughter married Orion. I somehow don't think that he'll hold Darkseid against me."

"You can't go to Apokolips." Barda appears to be taking the idea seriously. "With that much Anti-Life in you, Darkseid will know the moment you step through the hush tube."

"Then it's a good job my brother is the sneakiest New God in existence, isn't it?"

Scott nods to himself. "Grayven having a Mother Box would help with-." Barda narrows her eyes at him. "It would. A Mother Box could monitor him to make sure Darkseid wasn't influencing him. She might even be able to work out how to exorcise the Anti-Life fragment completely."

"Ping!"

"Yes, I know it's optimistic, but it's possible. Okay. We just need to get in touch with Amazing Grace and then-."

I frown. "Why would you want to do that?"

"She's a resistance organiser. Himon has to move constantly to stay ahead of Darkseid's troops, but-."

"Wait no wait.. no. Amazing Grace is a plant. Darkseid has her draw people willing to resist him to her so that he can kill them and use their deaths as an intimidation tool." Scott and Barda stare at me. "She's completely loyal to him. I.. thought you knew that."

Barda's jaw tightens. "No. We didn't."

"Well… Shit." Um. "You have to-."

Scott nods. "We'll need your hush tube. Let's go!"

back

Control 14

next

18th July

21:04 GMT

"…understand that 'indenture' is one of those words that puts me on edge. Particularly given who we're fighting."

There's a sort of.. wave of motion from the upper legs of the Clicker opposite me. Comprehension/appreciation. "Were you told what they did for us?"

Hinon went into closed session with her fellow Controllers, which gave me the time to do a little sight-seeing. Then I got to try finding a hotel on a planet that doesn't have tourism, which was mildly amusing. Then I found out that Director Jeddigar wanted to talk to me, but couldn't get in touch because no one knew where I was. And I only found that out by walking through the front doors of the Darkstar headquarters.

"A little while afterwards, yes."

"Please restate as you understand?"

"Your species used to have four sexes, three involved in reproduction and.. neutral, without any significant reproductive attributes. Your reproductive genders generally lived about a third to a quarter as long as the neutrals, and represented about one hundredth of your total population."

"Greater genders also reached physical maturity faster and lost mental acuity well before their final expiration age."

I nod. My current conversational companion is the veteran Darkstar who got the job of babysitting me until the Director becomes available. Perhaps most importantly, he-. Um. Oh, let's go with 'he'. Perhaps most importantly, he also gave me a Darkstar communications device, as it turns out that most Darkstar communications occur using techniques that are rather hard to eavesdrop on with a power ring.

"Okay. And your people regarded that as perfectly normal until you started encountering aliens… Humanoid aliens, whose reproductive systems didn't work like that."

"Yes. Strange though the idea of having live young erupt from your bodily orifices must have seemed, it was realised almost immediately that not condemning our progenitors to mind-rot and premature death was far more desirable than the arrangement we had."

"It was really that quick?"

"Yes. Why would it not be?"

"Because your evolutionary history would have adapted you towards accepting the way you did things already? I mean, your genetic-. Ah, your forebears' genetic parents didn't play any part in raising them, the way you did things was necessary for continuing your species…"

"Did your species never suffer deaths during childbirth?"

"Yes, but the rate was never that high."

"And did you regard a percentage as inevitable?"

"It… Kind of is."

"But you attempt to reduce them? Things that would have killed your gestators now seldom kill them?"

"Yes, but we haven't totally reengineered our reproductive systems to do it. We don't even do pre-conception genetic screening anything like as much as we could."

He rears back slightly. "That is strange to me. What is the reason?"

"I think the feeling is that it would be claiming that people with the characteristics not selected for are… Less people than the ones with the characteristics considered desirable. I mean…" I wave my left hand in a circle, showing off my power ring. "I'd have no compunction about using it if I were having a child, but… Some events that occurred in my species' history before we understood how genetics work rather gave that sort of thing a bad name. But… Anyway, how did your people get from that to this?"

"Originally we attempted to moderate the negative effects through drugs and surgery. There was some success, but there were clear limits to what could be achieved. Later, our efforts focused around reproductive cloning. Though not ideal, cloning either adult individuals or sex cells would have removed the requirement for sexed genders. Regrettably, we were unable to develop either technique to the point where it could reliably replace the existing method."

"Then you ran into the Controllers?"

"Yes. Their agents were looking for systems with small rocky worlds and they encountered one of our smaller warrens. We asked to trade for biotechnological knowledge. Two Controllers examined our problem and offered a solution."

"In exchange for your service."

"They have no need for conventional exchange media. In exchange for a reproductive system which would not kill us, we work for them for a span of time. Virtually all warrens considered it a fair exchange."

"That…"

"Are you alarmed? Some humanoid species react with great vehemence to interference in their reproductive practices."

"If you made the decision freely… No, not really. It must be fascinating how your society has changed in the interim."

"Our forebears gave the matter some considerable thought-"

There's a chime from both of our communicators.

"-before…" I rise to my feet as he uncurls into a walking posture. "The Director is ready for you. Please follow me."

He leads the way across the wide open interior space towards the internal teleportation system. While it is perfectly possible to walk around the building, the place is large enough that it would be too time consuming for the people involved. They also don't have stairwells or stairs, ramps between different floors being the norm. Probably something to do with the Clickers being the ones to build it.

"Will you be joining us?"

Flying inside appears to be a no-no. Clicker bodies aren't flexible enough to move in the way that caterpillars do, but on an even surface they can manage to move at a reasonable speed by having each foot touch the ground every third or fourth 'step', sort of like how running Humans don't have either foot on the ground for large parts of the motion.

"No, though I am being assigned to the analytics pool who will be trying to deduce what the Reach's response to your appearance will be."

"I.. hope you have fun with that."

He circles around as I step onto the teleporter. "I might. Usually new occurrences are not in our favour. Good fortune in your discussions."

I feel a tug a little like the one I felt as the ship came in, and then the room has been replaced by an office. The Director is standing at a small console in front of a circular holopit, another Controller part of the way around the circle. This Controller is dressed similarly to Jevek Jos Jar, but his robes are slightly longer and.. he has a greater physical presence. Perhaps he works out? No, more likely he maintains it through bio-control because he has to deal with fighters on a regular basis.

Noting the symmetry I walk over to a position an equal distance from both. "Director. Controller."

Director Jeddigar's eyes scrutinise my face. "Orange Lantern. Thank you for coming to see us."

"It's only sensible. I imagine that we're going to be working together quite a lot for the foreseeable future."

He nods, summoning up an image of the fight with Yellow Beetle. "You and Tarant made short work of that Scarab Warrior, but I wouldn't get too confident. From what we've been able to determine, she was probably a recent recruit. Certainly, she wouldn't ever have fought a Lantern before."

"If fighting the Reach with a power ring was easy, the Green Lantern Corps would have done it."

"Just so long as you understand that." He glances at the Controller. "This is Manu Mia Mosopo, the founder of the Darkstar organisation."

"Yes, I've gained… Some understanding of how that works in Controller society."

"I am glad." His voice sounds slightly… African, perhaps? "My interest therefore is how the organisation you hope to build and the one which I have built will exist together. I do hope that you have thought about it."

"But of course."

back

Control 15

next

18th July

21:09 GMT

"Firstly, I should say that doing… The possibility of doing anything with orange light is going to depend on us being able to neutralise Larfleeze. And while Hinon Hee Hannanan sounded fairly optimistic about our chances, I wouldn't want you to assume anything."

"Of all of us, she is most familiar with the orange light. If she believes that it can be done then she is most likely correct."

"If you don't mind me asking, sir? Why haven't you gone after the Orange Central Power Battery before now?"

"It was stolen from our research centre after our split from the Guardians. If it is true that they located it and chose to allow him to keep it, they did not share that information with us."

"I'm pretty sure that I included its location on the file I sent you with the Guardian's ship."

"Yes. Along with a warning on the nature of its current owner and a recommendation that we not investigate it ourselves. I do not know what you were expecting, but we Controllers are not incapable of taking advice."

"And it was Hinon's thing."

"Waiting until she could be consulted was judged to be appropriate."

"I would be fascinated to know what the Guardians said about it."

"That they stood by the decision. That the orange light is inherently unstable and should not be used directly in the manner you intend. And that once we split from them we lost the right to be involved in their decision-making."

"Hm." I nod. "They don't intend to prevent you trying though, right?"

"They have never had the right to be involved in our decision-making."

"Fair enough." I return my attention to the Director. "If we assume that Controller Hinon and I are going to be back on Maltus in a few days with a Central Power Battery, I'd like your organisation to run psychological checks on its members for individuals who might be capable of using the orange light without going crazy. Hinon is probably better placed than me to describe what the precise trigger factors are. Once we have a list, we can request volunteers and start testing and training."

"And if they are people in vital roles in my organisation?"

"Then.. you.. should be glad that people who you know and have worked with will be playing such an important role in setting up an allied organisation. If Green Lantern recruitment is anything to go by a vanishingly small proportion of people possess the right mindset to use power rings. I'm not trying to poach your best and your brightest, I'm trying to get anyone who can use orange rings and stay sane. You just happen to have a large pool of well-trained people with detailed psychological profiles who are already motivated to fight the Reach."

The Director gives me a shallow nod. "That's… Reasonable. And how do you see these new Lanterns supporting my Darkstars in combat?"

"I don't know exactly what sort of Lantern-detection technology the Reach have. Lanterns are good at large effects, but giant glowing constructs are terrible for concealment. On the other hand, Lanterns can fight Beetles one on one."

"We could deploy a Darkstar infiltration team with a single power ring trained Operative. If they encountered a Scarab Warrior they could put the ring on and kill them, but otherwise carry on as normal."

I shake my head. "That would work… And maybe in the short term that's what we'll do. But in the longer term there are other things Lanterns can do that.. even your current generation maxim suits can't. Look, Darkstars are very good at getting onto worlds coming under or about to come under Reach control and operating there for extended periods. Heck, even attacking their naval docks further in upon occasion. But they don't have the power to fight off an actual attack, let alone push the Reach back."

"Do you know how many Lanterns it would require to do that?" He presses a button and a map of the Reach appears. "How big the Reach is?"

"Yes. And I know that we'd never get enough Lanterns to do it in time. But something I've discovered about orange rings-" My armour appears around me and I phase out and go invisible for a moment before reappearing. I take a cold gun and a purple healing ray out of subspace and brandish them. "-is that we can use them to build things. If we're going to take the war to the Reach, we're going to need a fleet. And a proper army."

He narrows his eyes slightly as he considers it. "We have ships now."

"Ships for transporting Darkstars and performing ambushes of opportunity. I'm talking about building up to the point where we can fight them openly and directly. It's an entirely different philosophy of design and action."

"If we press the Reach on one front they'll simply fortify and expand elsewhere."

I wave my left hand, an image of the worlds around Reach space appearing around the hologram. "Then we build up everywhere. We share technology, we police potential defectors-."

"If I had the people to do that I'd already be doing it."

"So we get them. Darkstars require very specific training, instruction and equipment. To say nothing of Controllers personally empowering their exo-mantles."

"That will become less draining once we have a Central Power Battery with which to replenish ourselves."

"A standard navy won't have that problem. We can pass technology to worlds under Reach threat… Not immediately threatened, but in the next decade or so. Build them up and coordinate them."

"A division of responsibility. Each part doing the thing it can do best while coordinating with the rest."

"Somewhat optimistically, yes. The Darkstars would keep doing what they do best-."

"While no longer being put into situations where they need to do things which they cannot." He nods slowly. "I admit, I had been preparing myself to compete with you and your Lantern Corps."

And nothing I said had anything to do with me seeing that clearly with empathic vision, no not at all.

"But this sounds like an arrangement I can support. Tell me, do you have someone in mind for organising this fleet?"

"Yes. But I'm holding off on making contact with him until after we get control of the Orange Central Power Battery, because without it we're not in a position to create the post."

"And what place is there in your grand vision for we Controllers?"

"We'll need rings, ships and equipment. And I understand that you can reshape matter on vast scales."

"I can accept that in good humour. But I imagine that my brethren will want an organisation they can control."

"Except they defer to you on matters concerning the Darkstars, and to Controller Hinon on matters concerning me. We're fighting a fight they want fought, one which will earn them the acclaim that the Green Lantern Corps has earned the Guardians. If they wanted operatives incapable of having their own initiative then they shouldn't have voted to destroy the Manhunters."

The gem on his chest crackles slightly. "I would recommend not making that particular observation to the other Controllers."

"I shouldn't need to make it. Give good orders and people will follow them. Demonstrate sagacity and people will listen to what you have to say. Do things for people and they will feel grateful. Do not demand obedience as your right; show that you've earned it and continue to earn it."

"I should meet with this.. 'individual' you have in mind for Grand Admiral as soon as possible. With you as head of the Orange Lantern Corps-."

I shake my head. "Ah, no. I don't have the administrative skills for that. I can teach other Lanterns and I can fight, but the job requires abilities I don't have. I was planning to recruit someone for that as well."

"Very well. You have my provisional support. I will begin the vetting process you requested."

"Thank you."

Now all I need to do is defeat Larfleeze. And how hard can that be?

back

Control 16

next

20th July

17:48 GMT

"So how hard is this going to be?"

We're standing at the entrance to a small amphitheatre, the stalls around us populated by Controllers. I'm not completely sure whether this is all of the Controllers, or just all the ones on Maltus or even just the ones who could be bothered to turn up. Most look roughly like Controller Jevek, though there is a degree of individual variation. Longer robes and slightly softer face here, shorter and with hair there. Skin colour ranges from Guardian blue to purply-red and hair comes in black and white with nothing in between.

The general style of the robes appears to be set, but precise length, cut and colouration vary in a number of cases. The glowing crystal and glowing forehead are universal, though the one Controller Hinon wears is dimmer as she draws power from her ring. There are far more males than females… But I'm wondering if some of those I mentally designated as 'male' are actually gender neutral.

"I really couldn't say for certain." Hinon looks down at her ring. "Oh, if only Ganthet was answering me. We always worked so well together."

"Sorry, but I think they blacklisted orange rings."

"I'll go and bother him in person later. We will need to send a formal deputation once everything's up and running, and I do so want to see what they've done with Oa since I've been gone."

"Made lots of green stuff."

"But all of the people! I find it astonishing to think that they're prepared to tolerate an actual population when-. Oh, they're ready for us." The portal melts away in front of us to allow us access. "Follow me."

She floats through the air, feet trailing a little behind her as she goes. I fly after her while maintaining my upright posture. I didn't think that armour was appropriate, but with my initial impression made I've switched to grey robes with orange trim. I've only met a few of the Controllers while I've been here, and I'm not… I left Earth after haranguing the Justice League. Superman has been the iconic superhero on Earth Prime since the forties and I didn't think twice. So while even Guy hesitates to make cracks about the Guardians, to me? They're.. just some people in robes.

Maybe I'd feel differently if they weren't jamming my empathic vision…

Hinon occupies the centre and looks up and around at her fellow Controllers. "Brethren. You've all had the chance to consider the matter under contention. The Orange Lantern and I have given the matter a considerable degree of thought, and we believe that we have a methodology which offers us the best possible chance to recover the Orange Light Fountain. And neutralise its present owner."

There's a flash from the gem at the neck of one of the blue-skinned female Controllers. "The Guardians?"

Jevek's gem glitters. "What does it matter? The Vega Systems have been off-limits to the Green Lanterns since their inception. And now we know why." He looks around the room. "The light will be ours. The Controllers will be in control."

Another flicker from another Controller. "The continuous presence of Green Lanterns on the borders of Reach space slows the Reach advance. It would be advantageous for them to remain."

Another. "Alienating our Guardian brethren would serve no useful purpose, but it is a secondary matter. The orange light must be recovered and put to our use."

One of Jevek's look-alikes. "How do you intend to remove the Orange Light Fountain from Larfleeze's control? Your equations indicated that after so much direct exposure he will have become even more powerful than he was when he enslaved our brother Ogandu Onna Oslan."

"I'm glad you ask." Hinon raises her right hand and generates… I think that's the Maltus version of Atlantean rune equations. "I won't know for certain until we can observe him directly, but I believe that I have a model for how Larfleeze could survive his experiences, even remaining capable of coherent speech. The most likely possibility is that he had what we might call a natural affinity for avarice, for seeing everything in terms of wants and needs. Without anything very much to get in the way of it, the orange light could form a most intense bond with him. At this point I'm not certain he needs either ring or lantern."

A glimmer from Jevek. "But his link can be severed."

"Yes. With difficulty. Over time. In the short term we're going to attempt to neutralise his capacity to focus his desires on any one object, and so paralyse him. That should enable us to transfer the Light Fountain into a proper Central Power Battery housing."

"And we can control the link. Cut him off."

"Perhaps. Eventually. If we actually want to do that, we'd have to wean him off it and then feed in other colours gradually. It wouldn't be a quick process."

I form an orange gem on my own chest and forehead and flash it before anyone else can get in. "Yes, we do want to. Orange light damage is something we're going to end up having to treat amongst Orange Lanterns. We don't need crazy ones running around the place and making the rest of us look bad. Anything we learn from treating the worst case in existence would be invaluable in that regard."

"If it is inevitable, how did you manage?"

"I didn't-."

"Very weak desires, possibly aided by his lack of an attendant arcane construct. There was so little opportunity for the egress of orange energy that he had nearly enough time to learn to channel it without being overwhelmed." She brings up another chart. Me, presumably. "Then he had a construct created in such a way that it would encourage proper interfacing. Unfortunately, for those future Lanterns not fortunate enough to spend a great deal of time in high magic regions, it won't be practical to use it on others."

And also because you'd need to destroy their existing souls in order to do so.

"Larfleeze's current slaves?"

"Once we disrupt him, he should become listless and apathetic. He won't be able to direct them."

"I would very much like to see if restoring them is possible. If nothing else, Ogandu Onna Oslan's restoration to flesh would assist us in maintaining good relations with the Guardians."

Various Controllers look around the room, and there's a shining of gems.

Then a short, Guardian-looking one nods. "We have a consensus. You are to proceed. We will begin constructing a Central Power Battery and holding cell in line with your specifications."

Hinon looks pleased. "Thank you, brothers. The Orange Lantern and I will make our final preparations and depart."

She turns and heads back towards the door, me close at her heels. She eyes me sidelong as the door closes. "I thought you weren't going to talk."

"You told me not to. It isn't quite the same thing."

"Starting as you mean to go on?"

"Yes. I told you that I don't intend for the Controllers to completely control the Orange Lantern Corps in the way that the Guardians do the Green."

"And I agreed that their sort of control wouldn't work with orange light users. But we need to lure the other Controllers into accepting that situation. Tempt them into committing to it fully."

I give my head a small shake. "What's left to do?"

"I want to check the system with the Ophidian once more. Then, nothing. We're off to see the Beast."

"'We'? I thought you were keeping out of sight?"

She pats me on the shoulder. "I'll be with you in spirit. Ready to begin again more intelligently if you lose."

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that."

back

Control 17

next

21th July

02:57 GMT

Space bends around-.

"Are you sure you wouldn't-?"

"I'm sure."

03:04 GMT

Space bends-.

"I'm perfectly capable of-?"

"I know."

03:21 GMT

"You did say that it took you mere moments-?"

Space continues to bend around us, despite Hinon trying to be a back seat Controller.

"Yes. It did. I had been waiting to come and see you for a long time and the Reach represented the perfect mix of acceptable targets and no one I knew being in the firing line. My drive to return for a showdown with Larfleeze is much weaker."

"I would have thought that you would want to get it out of your way."

"Not really. On two occasions I have outthought Larfleeze, now I'm deliberately confronting him in a situation where I can't do that and where his advantages are strongest."

"I will eat the Gnat!"

"Not a good idea. I still don't really understand how he trapped you in the first place, but I would not want to rely on a technique we suspect that he can beat." Hinon looks around from where the Ophidian swims through space just behind us. "I don't remember her being that affectionate."

"Remember? You.. met her before?"

"Yes. Krona insisted on studying each of the Embodiments. We didn't find them all… Though, now that I consider what he's been up to while I was indisposed, perhaps he just didn't tell the rest of us."

"I do not remember you."

"I didn't look quite as I do now. I wore my hair long. And-."

"Warp terminating in three, two, one."

Normal space snaps back into being around us. We're just a little outside of the Moat. Ring update-.

"It seems that your recent travails remain largely unnoticed. Pirates are staying calm and the Citadel isn't doing much of anything. Oh, my word, this region used to be a lot quieter. There's some lovely music coming out of-."

"What are you… Doing?"

"Getting out and about for the first time in three billion years. I've already reviewed everything on the database you gave me." She looks me in the eyes. "You know that party trick some AIs like to do to show off to organic creatures, processing a few hundred lines of communication all at the same time?"

"The AIs I've met have been patterned after Humans."

"Ah. Well, one of the many things we Maltus-originating groups can do is process data in a similar way. Not multi-threading so much as multifaceted awareness. We're rather clever, you see."

"So you just..?"

"Checked out the entire region, yes. Except the area on Okaara you warned me about. It's so convenient to be facing people who aren't quite so good at countering our technology as the Reach are."

"The Construct-Lanterns?"

"A few are still loitering around Hny'xx, but as far as I can tell the rest have gone back to Okaara."

"And Larfleeze isn't reacting to the Ophidian?"

"Not so far as I can tell. I think my device is working." An orange line appears in space. "Check for me?"

I fly past the line, then turn around and raise my left hand. "Scan for orange light."

"Not found."

And I can see the Embodiment of Avarice just behind Hinon. Whatever that device is doing it isn't blocking my empathic vision… Any more than she was by default, at least.

"And visible light?"

"Power ring-like object and Ophidian-like object found."

"I wasn't trying to stop visible light. Now, come on." She flies past me. "We have a Light Fountain to acquire."

"People on my homeworld can do that with a bit of paper and a circuit pen."

"People from your homeworld should try doing that in a low magic environment. My device-" She holds up the machine, which resembles two glowing metallic Frisbees stuck together. "-should function anywhere."

"Alright. Ring, plot course for Okaara."

"Course plotted."

"Warp."

Space bends again, and a moment later Okaara lies before us.

"Doesn't look like much."

"They had a nuclear war. And a Larfleeze. I got the impression that several challengers stopped off in various places to get some practice in."

"And Larfleeze lives.. down.. there."

"Even during what is now referred to as 'The Time of X'Hal', no one dared launch weapons anywhere near it. There are a few plant species that survive there that no longer exist anywhere else on Okaara."

"Yes, so I see. If everything goes wrong, try not to destroy them. Now." She passes me a device which looks a little like a pair of headphones. "Put this on Larfleeze when you reach him. That should keep him in a daze until we can come back for him. Getting the Orange Light Well is your only objective."

"I know. Alright, wish me-."

"Oh." Something occurs to her. "And thank you for not making any Sleeping Beauty references. I understand that they're culturally expected, but I used to be a Guardian and I fear that my sense of humour will never quite recover."

"Ah..."

"Off you go. Shoo. I'll be waiting for you outside to receive Larfleeze."

"Right. Although, in case I do die... I think that I'm glad that you're not still a Guardian." She gives me a look of mild reproach. "Going."

I drop towards the planet, the thin air around me burning as I fall towards the small fort the Okaarans maintain to observe the Forest of Weeds.

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Control 18

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21th July

03:52 GMT

Invisible and phased I float through the Forbidden Forest of Weeds. No sign that anyone has been this way… Ever. It turns out that it's called the Forbidden Forest of Weeds because a plant that is a combination of ivy and Japanese Knotweed covers… Pretty much the whole place. And it pretty much defines the ecosystem as well; just glancing around I can see four different types of creepy crawly feeding on it or cutting through it for building material. As far as I can tell it attaches itself parasitically to the local tree-analogs somewhere near the top and then drapes down, wrapping itself around anything it can reach. It's extinct everywhere else on the planet.

Lovely place. The way the canopy of leaves and vines almost completely blocks out the light really adds to the ambience.

I think I'm dithering, but at least I'm dithering with a purpose. The fort told me where the 'orange ghosts' usually appear from, but no one knows exactly where Larfleeze lives due to him killing everyone who comes looking for him. His presence here predates the Time of X'Hal and while they could do geophysics scans… Why poke the monster? I'm not using ring-scans for much the same reason.

I remember from the comics that the Controllers brushed aside a group of Okaarans on their way in, then went through the Forest and into a cave complex. Assuming the people in the fort were the same as the ones they barged through in the comic that was another example of Maltusian-descendant highhandedness. All I had to do was ask. They're not here to stop people, just give warning to the rest of the planet of anything Larfleeze does.

Thinking about it, that might well have been what killed the Controllers' comic counterparts as well. If they'd thought to stop and ask, they would have gained some idea of what they were walking into. Then again, if they'd done that they might have lost their Worf Effect awa-.

I see a flicker of orange through the foliage. I stop dead, increasing my armour's magnification…

That's a weird one. Sort of… Undead Battle-Dragonfly-Wasp? It appears to be drifting somewhat aimlessly, its construct-body rippling slightly as it phases through the tree trunks. I'm not seeing any other orange light… I could try usurping Larfleeze's control-. No. Ah. It came from that direction, so I'll try that way. At least I can check whether my stealth systems are achieving anything.

I drift closer. Its flight pattern isn't so much erratic as odd, swooping in one direction and then stopping dead before reorientating and surging into a swoop in the new direction. An apparently random movement causes it to head towards me and I float back, tensing as its… Is that a head? I don't have a record of this species and it isn't immediately obvious where its sensory organs are. One, two… And it carries on its way.

Okay. Scry wards are a problem for other people as well, good to know.

Ring, if you can do it using visible light scans only, try and work out if there's any pattern to how it's flying.

Compliance.

So this way.

I accelerate, not even flinching as I pass through trees and vines. Come on, caves, tunnels… Some sort of building..? There aren't that many areas within the Forest that should have caves. Wrong sort of soil and rock for the most part. On the other hand, it wouldn't have been hard for Larfleeze to just transmute whatever was around him… Ugh, a proper stealth search of this place could take days. I can't go faster in case I miss something and I can't do wide area scans in case Larfleeze picks up on it.

Some sort of ridgeline up ahead, the vines trailing down its side turning what looks like a sheer slope into something that would probably be climbable. Assuming that the vines held. I'll break away from my search pattern to look along its entire length, and then circle…

That bit looks darker than the rest.

Might just be a natural cleft in the rock, but I need to take a closer look. I alter my approach angle and accelerate again, moving through the outer layers of still-living vine, through the dead and hardened layer serving as their support framework and…

The passageway within is roughly-hewn, the floor covered in loose soil with a few ragged plants trying to grow in the faint light which pierces the vine-curtain. No orange. Ring, visible light enhancement.

Compliance.

The passageway continues downwards and to the right. If there were once steps here they've been eroded down or covered over long ago, but the fact that the cave moves steadily in a particular direction suggest that this isn't a natural tunnel. Could be a large creature of some kind, but there aren't any of that sort native to Okaara and I imagine that Larfleeze would have killed it by now anyway.

Accelerate.

The passageway continues for about fifty metres and then starts to head downwards at a steep incline. From the look of the rocks making up the side wall I'd say that whoever made it was trying to go around a patch of harder rock. Maybe it… Originally followed the path of natural caves and then got widened out? I'm definitely well below the surface level now. Yes, this is… Going to be it. Somewhere at the end of this tunnel is Larfleeze and the Orange Central… Light Fountain. I'm a little surprised that I'm not feeling drawn to it, but I genuinely can't feel a thing-.

I notice that I'm slowing down and make an effort to speed up.

The end of the passage ahead is dark, and I briefly wonder if it's a dead end. I'd be surprised, but...

No. Not a dead end.

The cavern-. No, the chamber beyond the end of the tunnel is vast in all dimensions. There are shallow stone stairs leading downwards to the floor twenty metres below me, and from there great pillars rise up a good sixty metres to support the chamber roof. The walls themselves have crumbled in places to reveal the rock and earth beneath, but in those places where they remain whole I can see pictograms in dozens of forms… A quick analysis from the ring shows a few to be taken from the myth cycles of species not native to this region of space. The others… The best the ring's translation system can do is translate concepts with no context. Wealth. Travelling.

Danger.

Stalactites point down from the ceiling, their mirrors on the ground appearing to be permitted to reach only a short height before being smashed down. I can see where two pillars have also suffered the same fate, the stump of one flattened to serve as a… Table? There are broken bits of bone on the upper surface and scattered around the base. The other has been left as a jagged spike of stone.

Scattered here and there are small braziers and fire pits, though at the moment only one or two still burn. The rest are only marked by blackened smears of ash and charred wood.

Not that seeing is a problem with all of the Construct-Lanterns around.

A woman with no eyes and a distended jaw floats in the air to my right. A regal looking… Thing floats in the centre of the chamber, near to the roof. Others sit, stand or float in all parts of the ro-.

Oh shit that's-! No. Oh, goodness me. Not Larfleeze. Looks like a member of the same species, but… Just another Construct-Lantern. And-. Oh, I recognise that one! That's Glomulus! None of them are.. reacting to me. Good stuff…

I drift out into the room, taking care not to get too close to any of them. I'm not seeing Blume. Is he too big to fit in this room? Certainly, he would be too big to fit down the tunnel I came in through. Also… I look around again, spotting for the first time that from this side the tunnel entrance is marked with the orange sigil. None of this is what I saw when I called to the Ophidian. No piles of jewels or other valuables. And all of the orange light is coming from the Construct-Lanterns. Given that I'm here for the Orange Light Fountain…

He hasn't moved it, has he? That would be a bit of a bother.

A flicker of light as a Wurm-like Construct-Lantern emerges from an opening in the wall draws my attention to a side passage. Okay. Time to do some exploring.

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Control 19

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21st July

04:01 GMT

Narrow confines. Marvellous.

At least the glow will give me plenty of warning if any of the construct Lanterns come this way. The walls of this tunnel are far rougher than the one leading to the main chamber. I wonder how he made them? A ring-blast wouldn't be a good idea for tunnelling, cutting would require a degree of precision I'm not sure that Larfleeze is capable of… Did he get his Construct-Lanterns to dig it out by hand? Or… Maybe a pre-existing natural cave? The Okaarans didn't have any records of what this place was before Larfleeze made it his home. It certainly doesn't look Guardian…

Orange light ahead, and an opening into a large chamber. I stop for a moment to make sure that no Construct Lanterns are heading my way, then move forwards to the very mouth of the opening.

Oh my.

Make that a very large chamber, far larger than the first room. Three things immediately draw my attention. The first is an unknowable depth of stuff on the floor. I see precious metal and jewels along with the occasional weapon and.. what I can best describe as lumps of machinery. Parts of starships, something that looks a.. little like a windmill. All things that a covetous being like Larfleeze would want. This is the chamber I saw in my visions.

Atop the valuables and detritus lie orange power rings. Dozens, certainly. My ring quickly counts 137 visible ones but the piles imply that there are more beneath. A person could start a Lantern Corps with that many, if he were willing to overlook that they used to be people. Between those piles… Biological matter. I didn't think to ask whether the First Ring had a bio-filter. If it doesn't, quite a lot of that is probably Larfleeze's shit. There are also bones… I think those are the shells of exoskeleton-bearing creepy crawlies. Some of the rest… Plant matter? There are small swarms of insects making the refuse piles their home and I can see eggs and maggots too.

I am rather glad that I can't smell like this.

The second thing I notice is Blume. The size of this room is such that he isn't the overwhelming presence that he would be somewhere smaller-. Wait a moment, he stole my cash pile six months ago… Quick check… Yep, a small portion of this is my property. I guess he picked it up and brought it back here. Somehow. Long range warp-vacuuming is well within the abilities of a being like Larfleeze. Or maybe he recalled Blume for long enough to drop it off and then sent him back?

Blume isn't alone. Two significantly smaller Construct Lanterns also stand guard over Larfleeze's treasury. One is a vaguely Twi'lek-looking woman floating at something approaching parade rest near the cavern's ceiling. The second is closer to the glittering floor of the cave, a bandage-wreathed humanoid. As I watch he moves from one pile of rings to another, his single eye darting from ring to ring as if taking an audit.

None of them react to me. Blume has a wide variety of non-standard senses in addition to being a Lantern. If he isn't reacting I think that I can assume that I'm good as far as being spotted is concerned.

Which is good, because the third thing I see is Larfleeze.

There's a finger of rock poking out through the piles of stuff near the centre of the room, the upper point about eight metres above me. Orange power rings are scattered around it, a few resting on the spire at various points where they've been knocked aside and happen to have come to rest. Somewhere near the top and just outside my line of sight is a brilliant orange glow which I sincerely hope is the Orange Light Fountain. Closer than that, Larfleeze twitches in his sleep, curled up on the top of the bare rock promontory.

As I watch, his right hand rises to swat at some of the insects buzzing around him.

Hinon was right, his ring does look kind of rubbish. My own ring has a slightly recessed bezel with the sigil resting on it flush to the rest of it, and being made in a slightly different shade of orange. His looks like it was made of a single piece, having a uniform colour and the sigil clearly sticking out from a thicker hoop.

Okay.

That's Larfleeze.

…

I float forwards slightly, then begin rising up. Ring, monitor the other three and the opening as best you can with my armour's optical systems.

Compliance.

My right hand shakes inside my armour as I take hold of Hinon's device. My breathing gets faster, and I daren't do what I normally do and have the ring restore it to my resting rate.

That's Larfleeze.

"Sngrghgrahgrah…"

Larfleeze twitches again, his snout wrinkling and his breath coming in snorts. I stop dead.

Anything else..?

His right arm thrusts out, waving around until his hand touches the handle of-. Yep, that's the Orange Light Fountain alright. The design is even more archaic than what my personal lantern used to look like when it belonged to Alan. It's even doing the same flaming-effect lightshow thing his ring does when it's fully charged, though the orange flames are bolder and brighter. Larfleeze's fingers brush against the Light Fountain's flame-wreathed handle for a moment, an orange glow running along his arm and into his torso.

"Recharge complete. One hundred thousand percent regular charge available."

"Sngrgh."

His ring's voice is slow, masculine. Ring, is that Krona's voice?

Words spoken in ancient Maltusian dialect. However, no record of Krona's voice on file.

Okay, nothing else… Just got to approach the most dangerous Lantern ever and hope that he doesn't wake up. And that if he wakes up that he can't see me. And that if he can see me, then… I don't know.

I asked Hinon about doing something to the Light Fountain to weaken their connection, but she didn't think it would be possible in the field. I'm.. really wishing that she'd answered differently.

I drift a little closer, the armour's sensors combining with my ring to give me a really detailed view of Larfleeze's face. He isn't blocking my empathic vision, but all that I'm getting is orange. Deep orange, bright orange, connected to more and more orange. There's so much of it that I can't even make out details. I can't tell anything about his life, his past desires, why he… Did this to himself. The only thing I can see within is a clear picture of the Light Fountain, and even that is diffuse, spread out and connected to the rest of that… That mess of a soul.

I'm about four metres away now. Close enough that if I wasn't phased I'd be able to hear his breathing. My left hand strays to the hilt of the Sword of the Fallen. From this distance… A short lunge. I know the Sword nullifies lantern power; I've sent Praexis Demons to oblivion with it. Whatever power he's built up, it'll vanish like everything else. Shorn of that energy his meat body is about as vulnerable as everyone else's. A stab to the head or a decapitation stroke… Heck, just hitting his ring or cutting it off should be enough.

No. There but for the grace of Eris go the rest of us. And she's not the most graceful.

I move my left hand away from the Sword and extend my right, holding it so that it's over Larfleeze's head. Little closer, little closer…

A twitch and I back up two metres.

No, sometimes a twitch is just a twitch.

I take a quick look at the exit and the three Construct Lanterns. No change.

Right.

I float around Larfleeze until I'm directly behind him, then lower the device onto his head. There's a tiny shimmer as it moves fully into phase…

I back up. It won't make much difference if he wakes up, but-.

Larfleeze's eyes snap open!

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Control 20

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21st July

04:08 GMT

BACKUPBACKUPBACKUP!

I'm already on the far side of the chamber before his eyelids reach the limits of his eye sockets.

PLEASEWORKPLEASEWORKPLEASEWORK!

Larfleeze blinks slowly.

"Uugh?"

The Construct Lanterns turn to face him.

Okay, okay, even if he's free and aware, there's still a good chance that he isn't aware of me.

He blinks, turning slightly so that he can see the Light Fountain.

…

And that's it. His… His eyes are open…

I float around the room, not coming any closer to him or the Construct Lanterns than I have to. He's breathing slowly, his eyes are unfocused… Empathic vision shows… His desires are.. sort of.. smoosh.. y…

It worked.

It wor-. No, time for patting Hinon and myself on the back later. First, I need to check. I float upwards, taking a container from my armour's torso and stopping once I'm more or less in Larfleeze's line of sight. We weren't exactly sure what Larfleeze would most value, so we threw in a few possibilities. The gold and platinum coins, small amounts of element x and stellarium were Hinon's contribution. The bowl of beef stew was mine. Yeah, looking at him now… I don't know what Larfleeze's species considers good looking. Or even how they normally look. I mean, my body is totally hairless and that isn't normal for Human males. But while he doesn't exactly look unhealthy, there isn't much fat on him, and his fur looks… Unhealthy, matted, greasy. If I had to guess, I'd say that he hasn't been getting anything like the nutrients that he needs and his ring isn't getting told clearly what it should do about it.

Okay. I hold out the container and activate its spatial grip. That's a lot harder to detect than an anti-gravity device, but he still might be able to… No, looks like that's safe. Delay ten seconds and then back the heck off again.

And wait.

I'm at the far-interior of the room here and-. Oh, that's how Blume gets out. There's a very clearly discoloured part of the ceiling, the outline making a circle which would be large enough for him to pass through. He must have just shoved it out of the way and then put it back into place. Larfleeze must have been aggrieved enough to allow his treasure-trove to be momentarily exposed.

The container shifts back into phase. A couple of Blume's tentacles twitch but neither of the other two Construct Lanterns respond. And Larfleeze himself? No response. Okay. A few seconds more… The container releases small platforms, spatially locked in the same way that it is. Coins, ingots and the bowl of food. If he's actually aware of it, the scent alone…

Nothing.

Some of the orange within him moves a little, but it's sluggish and meandering. He wants as much as he ever did, but without being able to focus on any one…

Right. Next step. Depending on what instructions he's given the Construct Lanterns… Or does he not allow them that much independence? I… Don't remember any but Gromulus having any initiative in the comics. Have to hope…

I phase in, remaining invisible.

No response from Bandages or Twi'lek. Or Larfleeze, which is the main thing. Blume's tentacles twitch and he rises off the ground slightly. He doesn't seem to be behaving aggressively but I'm pretty confident that he just became aware of me. But that's okay; if Jordan and company could take him I'm pretty sure that I can.

And drop invisibility and raise railguns! And set the ring to take control of my body again. Oh, better, much better. My heart and lungs are now moving at a reasonable speed and the sweat disappears from my armour's interior. No response from Twi'lek or Larfleeze, a low murmuring from Blume as he rotates in my direction and Bandages is heading right for me. Two railguns immediately focus their attention on him. Can he recognise the threat? He slows so I'm going to assume so, his one eye staring madly at me.

Ring. Scan.

The orange pseudo-flames around the Orange Light Fountain flicker and then flare as my ring fills me in on the state of my environment. The pit below us is deep and filled with all sorts of interesting things. There are also others buried further beneath the rock through other tunnels. Some are sealed, perhaps from when Larfleeze went through a paranoid stage. Genetic material… Fresh meat. Looks like some Citadelians came in here recently and were killed rather than being assimilated.

Guess Larfleeze was hungry.

"Thief."

Looks like Blume remembers me. I keep one railgun pointed at bandages while the rest point at him.

"Lantern Blume." Tentacles wiggle and twitch, but unlike our first encounter his mouth remains narrow. "Do you want something?"

"I..." He shudders and actually fades slightly. "I think..." He turns, his eyes glazed, and floats away from me.

Oh flip the heck yes.

I cautiously move towards Larfleeze. Nothing. Great. Now, Hinon thought that the one thing that might break him out of it would be me taking the Orange Light Fountain from him, and having looked into him earlier I think she might well be right. We certainly don't want him storming Maltus to try and recapture it. Which.. means that we have to remove them both together. Hopefully, without his direction the rest will just float around listlessly as Blume is doing -and gosh he's big in a confined environment- and not follow us. Otherwise I'll have to use the Sword on them. Hinon was pretty clear that she didn't think they could ever be turned back…

Still no reaction from my main target. I would so very much like to pull this off without any fighting. I mean, I would have to try and kill him, and… The sheer number of things he must have seen in three billion years of life…

The flames from the Light Well are billowing, almost… Reaching out towards me. Larfleeze himself still looks fairly out of it. Okay, construct platform underneath him and lift… Still no reaction, good, need to keep him near it…

Making sure that he has an unobstructed view of it, I gently place my gauntleted hands on its outer case.

…

Huh. Nothing. No sudden super surge of desire, no burst of short-termism. Either that means that enlightenment makes me proof against it… Or I've managed to become sufficiently 'productively insane' that the difference isn't noticeable.

"U-ugh."

Larfleeze reaches out weakly for the Light Well… No harm in it I suppose. I gently lay it on the construct platform next to him and he curls up lightly around it.

Okay! Both objectives secure for now. Time to get the heck out of here. I don't warp -I'm not doing that until Hinon can check that her device is really working as advertised- but I drop my railgun constructs and fly very rapidly through the treasure chamber, along the tunnel, out through the entrance chamber where the Construct Lanterns have stopped still and out through the entrance tunnel. Larfleeze doesn't react until we break through into the tree-shaded air, and even then only to wince and blink as a stray beam of sunlight strikes his eyes.

"Orange Lantern to Controller Hinon. Mission successful."

"Good show. Come up above the canopy and I'll take a look at the 'Beast'."

Orange filaments pierce the foliage above me, shoving it aside as I rise into clear view. No local aircraft go anywhere near this place. I see Hinon in the distance, then up close as she warps to me in order to look at Larfleeze.

"Oh.. what.. a.. mess. "

"Will it hold?"

"With a little help from me. If you focus on getting us-."

"Warning: avarice detected."

What-?

I get a construct barrier up just fast enough to block an orange energy pulse as four Citadelian Orange Lanterns appear just above us.

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Control 21

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21st July

04:15 GMT

The universe slows as they open fire.

Energy pulses rather than beams. They're firing them directly from their rings. Firing directly at me and not at Larfleeze or Hinon. Hinon isn't blasting me, which implies that she didn't set a trap for me. No, she's shielding Larfleeze. Sensible. The Citadelians are aiming and shooting not charging in stupidly. They waited until Larfleeze was down before attacking. No implants-

Bolts begin striking my barrier as construct armour appears around my body.

-visible, which means that they're either lightly modified or unmodified. But their behaviour is too intelligent for that. New Breed, produced in the facility I destroyed. Larfleeze wouldn't let people have rings, so-. They got them due to my summoning. And had the sense to sit on them and not put them on straight away.

I begin forming railguns.

Was Admiral Drolyk just fishing for information? They didn't know how to use them safely? Or know if they could? The Emperor wouldn't have wanted to move out until his new generation soldiers were ready anyway, so they weren't pressed for time… Empathic vision shows… Desire to follow orders and make the Citadel great. Must be why my barrier is holding out so well; they don't know me well enough to want me dead in a personal way.

I jam my complete railgun constructs through my own barrier and fire a one-two combination of a crumbler round followed by a tungsten at the closest. He doesn't have a barrier or construct armour of his own. Neophyte. No experience. The crumbler strikes home, impacting on the left side of his chest. At this speed I can watch both the physical force from the impact move across his armour and flesh and the crumble effect itself propagate across the surrounding matter. He's already reeling in the air as the tungsten round strikes the hole its predecessor created, blasting through the exposed wound. Normally it would overpenetrate, but as I fired as fast as I could rather than letting the power build up it isn't moving anything like as fast as it might have. Combined with the Citadel's high quality infantry armour-

"ARHHHHHHH..!"

-the result is the round bouncing off the inside of his back armour and being deflected back into his body. A perfectly manageable wound for someone with self-preservation instincts and an orange power ring, but he'll struggle to do anything else for the time being.

Mental pathway damage limit reached. Acceleration discontinued.

Even as I move my railguns to the next target, they're putting up barriers. Three barriers cover all three effectives as the one I shot falls from the sky. Shock rather than death, though I didn't specifically tell Drolyk that rings could be used medicinally. Are they assuming that he's dead, or just that they don't have time to help him during combat? Of course, if they don't know that he can heal himself I'm not going to tell them. Construct armour complete I drop my outer barrier and generate another couple of railguns.

"Would you care to explain to me what this is about?"

They hesitate for a moment as their brother crashes through the canopy. Citadelians are tough, but combined with the internal damage he's going to need to fix himself quickly. Then the one slightly closer to me floats forwards slightly.

"Fight test."

"Don't feel obliged to keep your answer to two words."

"After Larfleeze attacked our facility on Hny'xx and you fled rather than face him, the Emperor was concerned that you could not fulfil your part in any bargain we of the Citadel Empire made with you." He looks over to where Hinon is checking on our prisoner. "You didn't fight Larfleeze. We needed to know that you had the stomach for combat."

…

They don't know that was intentional on my part. They think I might still be interested in dealing with them. But… If the Emperor has Lanterns under his command he could just rebuild what Larfleeze destroyed. Unless he doesn't know that he can do that.

"I do. I also have the intelligence to realise that it isn't always the best approach."

He nods. "Good. The Emperor approves."

They might not have developed good Lantern combat skills yet but they've got pretty good focus and coherence. I'm still confident that I could beat them-. Kill them. As long as there aren't any more. And it wouldn't surprise me to learn that the Emperor kept a ring for himself. But what happens if they decide to visit Larfleeze's cave while I'm gone? Even if I left my own Construct-Lanterns, a well equipped strike force could penetrate and get an awful lot of rings. I had been assuming that a fear of the place would keep anyone away, at least for long enough for us to go there and back.

"And?"

"And he wishes to make his offer again. Join us. Instruct us to fight as you do. Lead his fleets and his armies as his mightiest warrior. The universe can be ours!"

"And if I say 'no'?"

The three of them look at each other for a moment, then back at me. The closest one shru-.

BLOUGHDUGHDOFF!

Uh. I push myself upright in the trench my impact just dug into the Somewhat Less Forbidden Forest of Weeds, the trees around me torn and shattered by the force of my impact. Construct armour held, just about. I generate a new set from beneath and let what's left of the old construct flake away. Giant orange beam. Didn't come from the three talking to me or the one who fell. And it was fast, relativistically fast. I remember from the Stewart ring's database that humanoids generally can't fight like that as they can't get their head around the principles involved well enough. I can just about do it myself -out of combat at least- but there's no way that a rookie Lantern with no database could. Maybe their ring was made from a non-humanoid?

I add a bubble barrier and generate small railgun and cold gun constructs, charging the railgun's capacitors in preparation.

"And what was that in aid of?!"

The three Citadelians drift in my direction, moving apart from one another. They're not surrounding me as yet…

"I felt that perhaps they were not being clear."

Orange light flares in mid-air, and when it clears another Citadelian Orange Lantern is revealed. This one looks older and far more grizzled, grey streaks from old scars visible against the blue-black of his skin. No implants. Odd. An early prototype, perhaps?

"You will work with us, or you will die and we will continue our work without you."

Construct armour flares into being around him, and a beam from his ring hits the dying warrior I shot and knits his chest back together. The warrior jerks into a sitting position, hands grabbing at the former site of his injury.

"Emperor Damyn, I presume."

The old warrior gapes at me for a moment before throwing his head back. "HAHAHA! Damyn, you think me Damyn?! Hah!" He wipes his eyes with his right hand. "This is what happens when your entire species is cloned! No, Orange Lantern, I am not Damyn, and I will dispense with the illusion that he is in command of my empire soon enough."

Then who-?

"You're the First."

"Yes indeed! The first Citadelian, formed by the womb of X'Hal and the technology of the Psions. For so long I have been reduced to directing my people through their implants, my own aged body barely ticking over, but now..! Now I lead and fight and kill once more with my own hands! Restored by this wonderful ring!"

He brings the ring he wears on his right middle finger to his lips and kisses it.

"We are a perfect match for the orange light, not merely one people but different iterations of a single person! I would ask you once more to serve me, but we both know that you will not." He points his ring at me. "Now die."

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Control 22

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21st July

04:19 GMT

His right hand glows and a spatial lensing effect appears to warp the background but I'm already moving. My crumbler round fires at full power, slamming into the construct armour covering his head even as his own beam flashes out and blasts a hole into the ground behind me. His visor fails, causing him to pull his head back slightly in surprise. As I fire my cold gun he raises his left arm and forms a shield construct, blocking the shot.

Not ablative as the construct armour I use when sparring with Guy and John is, but modular. One part can fail while the rest remains strong. That's actually quite-.

Energy pulses strike my bubble shield as the First pulls back, his escort advancing behind their own floating palisade shields. Not a problem. Just keep moving and-.

A shockwave of orange radiates outwards from the First, his escort shooting upwards just before it reaches them. I immediately mirror their action, simultaneously charging and firing my railgun at the closest. His palisade evaporates where I hit but the younger Citadelians have armoured themselves. Okay. I transition behind them and reload my first railgun while forming a second-.

"Yaarh!"

The Citadelian I shot earlier transitions into my bubble barrier, stabbing with.. an Nth metal cutlass. The bubble buckles and bursts as he fortifies the armour around his right shoulder and barges towards me. I retrain my railguns and dart left, getting a clear shot at the unreinforced armour covering his back. My guns hum as the crumbler rounds strike home, construct armour shattering, armour and flesh dissolving and then the cold beam hits. In a second hoar frost covers the Citadelian's body as he plummets to the ground for a second time.

Orange rings can't fix dead.

The three survivors pull back into formation with the First, forming a combined bubble.. with multiple layers. Okay. I fire a tungsten round at the one I killed, his body exploding into frozen lumps of meat. A filament snatches the ring he carried from the broken remains of his right hand and another grabs onto the pommel of his cutlass.

Holding up my right arm I phase out to allow his ring to pass through my armour and then phase back in, the ring fitting neatly over my right ring finger. Immediately, flashes of the life of a being I can best describe as being a tentacle elephant appear in my mind. He came to Vega to find a world to settle… A long time ago. Instead, he found Larfleeze. I take hold of the cutlass hilt a moment later.

Two rings again.

Inside the Citadelian bubble my enemies appear to reach a decision. Strands connect the First to his minions and then.. for an instant I'm confused as to what I'm doing here. It swiftly passes as orange flashes around one minion and transitions him into stabbing range. I swing my cutlass to intercept his as my railguns fire! There's a tremendous clang as his natural muscles try to overpower the muscle enhancements of my armour. I bring my left hand around to push on the rear of the blade as the railguns fire, the first hit destroying his construct armour and the second-.

I jerk forwards slightly as he disappears, a momentary flicker of orange behind me indicating that one of his brethren have transitioned into melee range as well. Before he can strike I transition myself to directly above the Citadelian dome, then drop so that I'm standing on it.

Corrupt and drain.

Compliance.

The orange light in the outermost bubble roils and spins for an instant before visibly flowing up my body and into my rings. I drop down slightly onto the next level and being to repeat the process as-

Alert!

-two Citadelians flicker into being next to me. Accelerating myself I slash at the one to my right with the cutlass while the one above and behind me is met with a destructive pulse. The pulse is met with only limited success; the construct armour covering his chest fractures but doesn't quite break but he's forced to back away and abandon his swing. The swords -ugh- achieve little either. Mine cuts through his construct armour and body armour to cut a thin line across his chest while his cuts through my own construct armour and slices through the power armour covering my left forearm. But since I've got an opening…

I hunger.

Both of the Citadelians are pulled back inside the bubbles as another layer fails and is sucked into my rings. Okay, in theory I could force my way in like this, but somehow I don't think I'll need to as the Hellwraith takes full control of its new host and stabs another Citadelian in the neck with its cutlass before manifesting construct claws and grappling with him. The other two look around in astonishment, giving me the opportunity to create a laser construct attached to my right leg and fire it through the bubble at the First.

If I can see you, light can pass through your shield. Yes, only orange light in this case but it isn't hard for me to make orange light.

"Graagh!"

The First instinctively jerks aside and creates an extra barrier, neither of which impede my light speed weapon that passes through orange constructs. This is why we wear head armour. Credit to him though; he's pretty darn physically resilient anyway. Finally getting his brain in gear he reaches up into the beam of my laser with his right hand and bends spac-.

Ah! Cutting that out. He turned the laser back on me. Do I pull back and-? No, the whole area around his body is shimmering now, he can just deflect it wherever.

"Raah!"

The First drops to the bottom of his bubble where the Hellwraith and the younger Citadelian are wrestling, grabbing the demonhost by the head and… Ew. It looked like he just rubbed the fingers of his left hand across its head, but that head then came apart in blood-pumping slices. I feel a slight tingle as the Hellwraith returns to my ring. The Citadelian he fought is visibly injured, but a glare from the First prompts him to start healing itself.

So I shoot him in the left eye with a laser and fry his brain instead.

There's a puff of burned meat smoke as he collapses dead to the bottom of the inner layer of the bubble shield. The remaining younger Citadelian takes his helmet out of subspace and jams it over his head before I can repeat the process. Maybe he isn't familiar enough with ring scans to rely on them to replace the input of his own eyes in combat?

The bubble shield twitches and I transition to a point fifty metres away without much in the way of conscious consideration, a black beam piercing my former position. Oh great, he knows how to do beam -I transition again- singularities as well. Under other circumstances I might call upon the Ophidian but Larfleeze is right there. I can't risk destabilising Hinon's control of him. The other surviving Citadelian is gathering up his fallen comrades' rings. Shouldn't help him much, but I can't pierce the shields fast enough -I dodge another black beam, this one passing through a chunk of the forest and violently compressing the terrain- to stop-.

There were three of them maintaining the barrier. I think I've got the First's full attention and the other one isn't giving the matter his full attention. Simple solid shot might be able to get through it now. I dodge again, plotting a random evasion pattern as I charge up my railguns and load tungsten rounds. The First drops his singularity projector for a moment, frowning at me as he tries to work out his next move. I fire orange lasers at his eyes to make sure he has to focus on his own defence, then point my railguns at his remaining junior and firechargefirechargefirechargefire!

The bubble crumbles at the first impact, caves in at the second and then the rounds hit the younger Citadelian in the chest. His armour cracks, and I'm slightly faster with my cold gun than the First is with his barrier.

"RAAAAH!"

The First roars his frustration and his ring momentarily shuts down.

He blinks in confusion for a second, then my cold gun freezes him in that pose permanently.

Haah.

I watch as the bodies fall to the ruined ground. He didn't realise. Focus on something other than avarice and your ring stops cooperating. No, no way he could have known. The Greenies don't advertise it and neither Larfleeze nor his minions ever encountered the problem.

His body and that of his runner-up associate hit the ground and shatter while the other two just… Burst. I hold out my left hand and immediately realise that trying to call the rings is a bad idea. Instead, I transition down and pick them up with filaments.

"Are you finished playing yet?"

Three of the rings show me pictures of species I don't recognise, but the one worn by the First…

Ogandu Onna Oslan.

I nod inside my armour as I turn to face Hinon. "Yes. Yes, I think so."

back

Control 23

next

21st July

06:01 GMT

Larfleeze's.. cell, gives me a mild headache just being near it. A room designed to.. nearly completely blot out the orange light. It won't exactly tear a person's soul apart, but a person would find it increasingly difficult to want things for themselves. In a way it's the opposite of the conversion crystals which the Zamarons used in the comics. Those forcibly converted people to their way of thinking, we're going to cure ours of… Not our… The way of thinking our light encourages if they lose control.

I hope he's the last person I put in here.

I glance at the Light Fountain in my left hand.

I don't believe that he will be.

The cell itself is relatively pleasant. A matter transmuter for food and.. whatever other materials the housekeeping drones require. The drones themselves are created and dismantled by the same device. We don't think that Larfleeze has any particular technical skills, but there's a risk that he might have picked them up from one of the people he assimilated. The walls, floor and furnishings are in various shades of blue. A sonic projection system is hidden behind the heavily reinforced walls and plays barely audible relaxing music. A Controller -one of the standard pattern Jevek-looking ones- is going to be here constantly to monitor Larfleeze.

I nod at… That Controller, as Hinon and I watch the trembling Larfleeze through one of the observation windows. "Did you have trouble getting a volunteer?"

"Not at all. Everyone wants to be my friend at the moment." She frowns. "A refreshing change, actually."

"From being comatose?"

That earns me a sidelong glance. "After the Manhunter Rebellion, a number of my colleagues expressed a degree of scepticism about the whole concept of sharing glow-technology with other species. It wasn't a popular field of research." Her eyes drop to the controls in front of me. "Do you intend to press that or are you going to watch him all day?"

At the moment Larfleeze is still wearing the system I put on his head in the caves. He's still wearing his ring as well. Taking it off in advance was just too much of a risk. Once the.. 'blue cell' starts work the ring will rapidly be drained of power, and there's a small and very secure slot for a drone to drop it into once he's sufficiently out of it for that to be practical.

I press the button and the air in the cell shimmers. Larfleeze himself stills, not even twitching. I can't scan him and I can't see him on empathic vision any longer. I have to stare at his chest for several moments before I'm certain that he's still breathing.

"That should do it." Hinon steps back from the observation window and starts walking towards the exit. "Do you want anything special done with his ring?"

Larfleeze's eyes open for a moment. No orange sigil. Not even any pain. They're just blank. Lifeless. He's gazing out at the universe and he doesn't understand what it is or why it's there.

They close again and I turn away.

"Do you?"

"Oh, I'd just destroy it. I'm not completely without sentimentality-" Her eyes drop to John's former ring. I wonder if she really still needs it? "-but that one doesn't have any good associations."

"No, I think we should keep it. It was the first ever orange ring."

We pass out of the cell block and into the central shaft, then rise off the ground and head upwards towards the night sky.

"All yours, then." She takes a moment to glance over the construction crew still putting this place together. This will eventually serve as our version of the Science Cell block which the Guardians have on Oa. Need to plug the Light Fountain into the Central Power Battery housing first… "I'll have it delivered to you when we finally get it off him."

"I was thinking.. more a museum or something. I don't want anyone forgetting that things like Larfleeze can happen to the rest of us as well."

"I thought you were leaving things like that up to this Clarissi candidate you still haven't told me the name of."

"Oh, sorry. Vril Dox. He's Coluan. Highly intelligent but with poor social skills. He and the other Controller-."

"Yes, the joke rather makes itself, doesn't it?"

We rise over the lip of the central shaft, getting a panoramic view of a formerly-pristine chunk of Maltusian wasteland. Now construction equipment and labourers are everywhere, the outlines of housing, training facilities and office buildings visible in several places. I can also see the dull glow as the Controllers working on the Central Power Battery housing make their last minute checks. Hinon smiles faintly at the sight before flying towards them, and I accelerate to catch up.

"Making sure the Corps is making itself useful will be his job. Making sure that its members stay sane will be mine."

"Mm." She frowns. "Aren't the Coluan people being mind controlled by a group of artificial intelligences?"

"Those were made by his father. The information I have suggests that he's in a Dominator-run prison, but I'll need to take some time to confirm that."

"Be careful if you go anywhere near Colu yourself. Losing you at this point would be awkward."

I nod. "I'd certainly hate for my mind being torn apart by monstrous AIs to be awkward for you."

"Do you intend to make a habit of saying things like that? I can see it rapidly becoming tiresome."

"Of course. You used to be Guardians. I need to make certain that you're not reverting."

"Hm."

We fly in silence for a moment, now close enough to see the detail of the Central Power Battery housing. The oval structure of it puts me in mind of a front-on view of a Portal turret. It's grey and inert at the moment, though that will change shortly. The upper part of the housing at the front is currently hinged up slightly to allow access to the internal systems into which I need to insert the Light Fountain.

"Speaking of the Guardians, I intend to stop off at Oa at some point. Zamaron as well."

"Aren't you bold. We don't have the same recent… Recentish, history with the Zamarons as we do with the Guardians. It should simplify things for you." She stops dead, something occurring to her. "If you see her, be sure to point out to Nadia Safir that she was completely wrong about the orange light necessarily excluding other colours, will you?"

"I think that a demonstration would be more effective than a lecture."

"But far less satisfying. You've no idea what that woman could be like." She turns to face me. "Sufficiently un-Guardiany for you?"

I fly on past her, heading for the opening on the casing. I had thought that the full gathering might want to show up, but it turns out that Controllers aren't big on ceremony. Once Hinon has made her checks each of the Controllers will come here and bind themselves to it individually under her supervision. The whole structure is about fourteen metres tall and about three thick at the widest point. I raise the Light Fountain, placing a hand on each side of the main body. Then I drift forward, holding it out towards the opening in the structure. The interior space looks plain, but from the parts of Hinon's description which I could follow it's a massively complicated partially extra-planar monitoring and projection system that they make look like a Lantern because that's what they used to do and there's no pressing reason to change it now. Bare, curved walls and a small plinth. I land, kneeling down to slot the Fountain in place.

Hm.

I rise off the ground and turn, flying out at speed. Hinon has come closer in order to supervise so I head her way.

"Link.. good."

As I reach her I turn, watching two of the other Controllers lower the front plate and make the unit whole.

"Bonding complete." She raises her left hand, ring glowing brilliantly. "And… Activate."

The core of the Orange Central Power Battery flares with orange light, shining almost painfully for a moment. Then the orange colour begins seeping into the rest of the structure and the core begins to calm. The light… Puts me in mind of the front of the nacelles on the original Enterprise. Moving, almost burning, but stable.

As stable as orange gets.

"And… Success. We have a functioning Central Power Battery."

We watch it for a moment, then she turns her head to face me.

"Well? What are you waiting for? Go and get me my Clarissi."

back

NEXT CHAPTER

Headhunting

BACK

Headhunting 1

next

Headhunting

14th August

19:24 GMT

I get a few odd looks as I thread my way through the streets of the imaginatively named Korugar City. Actually, its name is rather emblematic of the political problems facing the whole of the planet. It used to be called Sinestro City, and before that it was a scrubby bit of nowhere whose sole claim to fame was not being part of the territory of any of the three belligerent powers whose conflict blighted the lives of everyone living on Korugar. When Sinestro took over he had the new planetary capital built here, making a point about new beginnings and moving on from old follies. The government he set up named it in his honour, a vote of thanks from the people he saved from neutronic self-annihilation. Then, when he was arrested by Jordan and his government collapsed, the new governors all wanted to move the parliament somewhere else but couldn't agree on where. Then they sort of agreed to a rotating system where they would go from old capital to old capital, but the money wasn't in the budget and the Anti-Nationalists didn't like the way it eroded central government and the smaller nations didn't like getting excluded and all the offices of state were in Sinestro City anyway…

"Wrong time place opportunity."

So they didn't so much agree to leave it here as fail to agree on how to move it. Then came the issue of the name of the place, which clearly had to be changed. It actually stayed as Sinestro City for three years while they argued over it, the names of various national heroes being mooted and dismissed, sometimes for blatantly partisan reasons and at others because they'd done truly monstrous things against the people now being expected to use their name for the planetary capital. For a while they were just going to call it 'Capital City', but it was pointed out that aliens would probably find that confusing and the generic nature of it was just sort of silly.

So, the Anti-Nationalists suggested Korugar City. The city that serves as the planetary capital of Korugar.

Makes perfect sense.

Not a lot of aliens come to Korugar these days, and those that do tend to stick to the areas around the starport. I'm not sure exactly why, but Korugarians don't have much variation in skin tone. Unless they're wearing makeup, the red-purple is pretty much universal, and black or dark grey hair is near-universal as well. Actual grey, rather than black interspersed with white as it is for Humans. I see a few dyed hairdos, but for the most part the locals seem inclined to leave the individuality in the styling.

"Colouration skin advertisement?"

Probably a fascinating case study for a sociologist. Humans might organise themselves into groups based on physical appearances, but a society of humanoids who don't have those differences? Maybe I could dump Miss Leelyu here? Not like she needs to stay on Tamaran any longer…

"Sexual consideration."

Quite a few security officers around, and even more monitor drones. I'm putting out a weak disruption field, but that's legal as long it isn't strong enough to obscure conventional power sources or chemical residues. Korugar knows what power rings can do, and having gone two for two I doubt that the police would make an exception based on colour. Violence has -unfortunately- become a part of Korugarian political discourse since Sinestro's ejection from office, all of those who embraced the gun to fight the tyrant finding that their interests no longer coincide. And since one of the few things that the nationalists agree on is that they don't want their current Green Lanterns setting foot here, that's probably going to rumble on until either the planetary government fails or…

Heh, until the Sinestro Corps occupies the place and reunifies everyone.

"Taste debris poisoning."

Shouldn't really.. joke about that. As far as I know, Sinestro doesn't have a Corps yet and he hasn't been back here for years. But if he ever did, an awful lot of people would die.

Target in sight.

"Thank you."

Since I'm not wearing a power ring, I've got.. limited translation. I remember reading a book a while ago where it was commented on that most of the world reads the internet in broken text because the stuff they want to read is in English and as they don't understand English they use Google translate to change it to something they can read. And since no one off Earth speaks English I.. really struggled to get a commercially available translator that would work at all. I'm wearing a pair of goggles which -after a second or two- will best-fit any text I look at. English is reasonably flexible, but it's not this flexible.

And the spoken version…

"Warm animal paste cup!"

Well.

Most travellers hear the universe like this, unless they take the time to learn the local language. In an area where the same few languages get used people might fine-tune the system to something a little less stupid-sounding, but the rest of us are stuck with something rough and ready.

Or we get a power ring.

The café up ahead does a good business at this time of day. It's close to the city's largest hospital and we're just past the shift change. It's also close to the city's medical school, which means that former students who have moved on to public practice tend to come back here. Including the woman I want to recruit.

I know full well that under other circumstances she might have ended up joining the Green Lantern Corps. But this Sector has at least one perfectly capable Greenie at the moment, and as far as I can tell she wouldn't have been recruited for… Let's see, newly qualified doctor to fully qualified surgeon… Six years? Thereabouts. In the mean time, I need a chief of medicine who can heal by wanting people to be better.

She's sitting at a table, distinctive double triangle tattoo on her left cheek. She's drinking… A tea, probably. The liquid is translucent and a sort of brown-orange. She's drinking slowly and trying to wind down from the work day. The café is busy and there's a spare seat across the table from her.

And here comes the awkward bit. Because while what I say is:

"Would you mind if I sat here?"

What comes out is:

"Seat object presence?"

She looks up in mild surprise, her eyes widening slightly when she realises that I'm no Korugarian. She blinks as she masters her expression, taking a moment to study the structure of my face.

And while I suspect that she says something along the lines of: "Ah, yeah, sure."

What I actually hear is: "Uncertain, acquiescence to request."

I smile. "Thank you." That's a reasonably safe bet. I sit down opposite her and a waitress hurries in my direction.

"Ingestion query?"

I know nothing about Korugarian food. As far as I know, the only other Human to have eaten anything here is Jordan and I never asked him about it. On the other hand, Dr Natu's tea smells palatable enough. I raise my right hand and point to her mug. "Copy, please."

Already I'm simplifying my vocabulary in order to be more likely to get a sensible translation, even if I do end up sounding like an idiot. Korugarians are probably used to the idea of how these sorts of translator make you sound. I hope. The waitress seems to get the idea, nodding and walking back towards the kitchen area.

"Alien presence Korugar?"

The level of illumination here is quite good, and the café's monitoring systems aren't as good as those on the main street. I could probably get away with using the ring to translate what she says to me, but going the other way contains far too much risk that she'll spot that my mouth isn't moving in the right way to create the sounds I'm apparently using. I reach my left hand into the pocket where my ring is secreted, touching the inner surface with the tip of my middle finger. I then raise my eyebrows and give my head a small shake.

"I said, what brings you to Korugar?"

I remove my finger. "Job. Headhunter."

back

Headhunting 2

next

14th August

19:33 GMT

Doctor Natu regards me with a look of discomfort. "I don't think that translated properly. You.. hunt heads?"

And naturally enough the translator struggles with metaphor. How to explain this while talking like a moron? "Not trophy. Head content. Ah, you labour?"

"I'm a surgeon."

I nod. "Your head, medicine. Want Korugar surgeon? Pay me, I find you."

She nods, exhaling slightly in relief. "You're an employment agent."

"I hunt rare head. Very special content."

"Oh, I didn't mean to insult-" We both lean back slightly as the waitress puts my drink down in front of me. "-your.. skills."

I wave my right hand. "No easy offend." I glance at the waitress, smiling broadly. "Thank you."

She smiles back faintly, then strides off towards another table.

"Are you hunting anyone here?"

"Big commission. Hunt many." I pause, as if giving the matter consideration. "Got important heads. Maybe more?"

"So you've got most of the people you're looking for?" I nod. "I don't recognise your species. Are you from.. anywhere near here?"

"Not close." I hold my hands up to my chest, making a circle with my thumbs and forefingers. Then I take my right hand away and point my right index finger at where the middle of the circle was. "Galaxy core." I move my finger again. "Korugar." I lower my finger slightly. "Earth."

Sector 1417 is north north east and 'up' from Earth. Closer than Maltus, further than the Vega Systems. Funny thing about distances in the galaxy when you can move as fast point-to-point as I can: approximate locations don't really matter. Exact locations matter as I do want to be able to find places, but rough locations are irrelevant as whatever the answer is it wouldn't prevent me getting there.

Doctor Natu's eyes unfocus slightly as she tries to put numbers to my mummery. "That's quite a way. Do you travel a lot?"

"Yes." I grin, nodding emphatically as I pick up my mug and raise it to my mouth. Ah, no, too hot. For a moment I'm reminded of the story of a coach load of English people on holiday in Texas, their introduction to ice tea and the resulting hundred person simultaneous spit-take. Heh, I'm only the second member of my species to ever come to this planet, and the last one overthrew their government. I should really be on my best behaviour. "This hunt, and before. You?"

"It's…" She looks away, shaking her head slightly. "Korugar's a lot more.. isolated, since we overthrew Sinestro. The other planets around here remember him as a hero. They didn't have to live under him. Oh." She wiggles her head slightly. "Sinestro... He was the.. Green Lantern who used to work in this region of space."

"Known."

"Right, you… Probably researched the whole thing before coming here." She looks out of the window for a moment. "Just about the only thing we agree on is that we hate him. And because he became so powerful because of a group of aliens and aliens still like him… People from Korugar don't travel all that much." She looks back at me, smiling slightly wistfully as she picks up her mug. "Not that I'd be able to afford to for years anyway. I'm going to be paying off my education until I'm forty."

I nod, sympathetically. "Ship surgeon?"

She shakes her head. "General practitioners and exobiological specialists work on ships. The only places that want surgical specialists are large mining outposts where they know they'll have work for us. And anyway, I'd have to pay back the government bursary I got for agreeing to work in a state hospital when I graduated. I'd be working in the mines until I was fifty, and there's only so much rock I think I could take."

"Ah." I nod. "Sympathy."

"So? Who are you working for? There can't be that many corporations who can afford to send someone all over the galaxy looking for employees?"

"Very old species. Few. Powerful. Not…" I make a vague circling motion with my hands to indicate our general environment.

"Not from around here?" I nod. "What sort of person were you looking for?"

"First; boss organiser."

Boss organiser? Really? That's the problem with ranks as opposed to jobs. They can be so culturally specific that they usually don't translate as anything sensible. Sergeant and Captain don't really have precise equivalents in languages whose people don't have the same peasant/aristocrat divide in their militaries that Earth does. At best I'd get 'squad leader' and 'military middle manager'. And director? What, they direct cars? Stage productions? I remember that in 'The Damned' series by Alan Foster the forces of the Purpose called their officers 'unifiers'. Literally, the people whose job it is to keep everyone working together.

"Boss or-? Oh." She makes an amused exhalation. "I think you need a better translator."

"Agree."

"So these… Ancient aliens are starting some sort of organisation and they want someone to run it." I nod. "And then, the rest of the management team?" I nod again, and she raises her left eyebrow. "And they decided that the best way to find the people they wanted was to hire you."

"Good previous employer report."

Which is a lie, obviously. I doubt very much that the League would give me a favourable write up.

"Must be very good." She takes a sip from her mug. "So what sort of person were you looking for?"

"Intelligent. Very intelligent. Motivated. Sagacious. Available."

"Did you have a list to work from..?"

"No. Already head, recruit. Lost individual."

"You knew who you wanted but didn't know where they were." I nod. "So where did you start?"

"Vega Systems." That's a nice and easy translation. Though that isn't what other species call it, it's a label for a place. The system can easily substitute the equivalent.

Doctor Natu frowns slightly. "Isn't Vega full of pirates and warlords?"

"Now?" I shake my head. "No. Close, mercenary. Match species hunt target."

"That doesn't mean they'd know them."

"Famous father." I smile inwardly at the obvious parallel. "All species know."

"Would I know them?"

I shrug. "Perhaps."

"Well, who are they? A musician? A merchant?"

"Vril Dox, the Maniac of Yod. Dictator of Colu."

"I.. think I've heard of him. He's also called.. Brainiac?" I nod. "And you wanted his son?"

"Yes."

"Did.. you get him?"

I pick up my mug to take a sip. "Interesting story."

back

Headhunting 3

next

22nd July

13:44 GMT

I'm not sure what I was expecting. Some sort of.. heavily armoured brick of a space station, probably. But apparently Amalak has more highly cultivated tastes. His training centre on Dryanna is situated amongst meadows of pale green grass analogues and a short distance from a large forest of.. youngish-looking trees. As I watch a platoon of heavily armoured soldiers begin what looks like a double-pace march out of the main courtyard entrance and down the main approach road.

"Sir?"

I look around and make eye contact with the gunner of one of the craft escorting me down. Picturesque as the environment is, this is still a military facility controlled by a very successful mercenary commander. Once I requested a meeting they weren't just going to let me fly around on my own recognisance. I mean, I'm perfectly capable of forcing my way in if I really have to, but that would waste an awful lot of effort on my part.

"Yes?"

"The Commodore is ready for you now on the southern veranda. If you'd like to follow us?"

"Lead the way."

The two aircraft dip and turn, heading for the south side of the facility where Amalak's personal accommodation is situated. I head after them. The design reminds me of GDI Orca aircraft, thrust provided by directional turbofans. It looks like Amalak believes that what works in space isn't necessarily what works in an atmosphere. And he's right, it's just that the cost of developing separate vehicles is usually great enough that most navies don't bother doing much work on the 'poor relations'.

Amalak himself is standing out on the wooden veranda, looking up at us as we come in. I can see a couple of bodyguards on standby, but they're clearly trying to be unobtrusive. The two aircraft come to-. Hah! They come to attention, stopping a precise distance in front of him and holding position perfectly for seven seconds. Then he nods and waves his right arm in dismissal. They take that as the signal to rise and move to the east until they have enough space to avoid hitting him with their backwash.

"Orange Lantern!" He waves at me with both arms as I approach, smiling broadly. "To what do we owe the pleasure!"

I float down through the air, landing on the decking just in front of him and inclining my head politely. "Commodore. Does the treaty hold?"

He nods, folding his arms behind his back. "For the most part. A few freebooters acted up a short while ago, but the matter was resolved with reasonable civility. Between the major parties, at least." He holds out his right arm in the direction of the entrance to his office cum living quarters. "Shall we?"

I nod. "Thank you." He leads the way and I make a point of looking around our environment. "Did you do the landscaping yourself, or did it come like this?"

"Alas, no." He sighs faintly, bowing his head. "When I purchased the land there was virtually nothing here. Everything I've had planted was cultivated from samples from my original homeworld, Timaron." He glances back at me. "Have you heard of it?"

"Timaron, Sector Two Eight One Three."

"Ah." He smiles again, pleased at the recognition. "And how did you hear of it?"

"My own homeworld is in the next Sector over, and I.. have access to Green Lantern Corps records."

"I don't suppose that… Your world plays host to any of my species, does it? Given what happened… There are so few of us left that I've been attempting to assemble a genetic database… Any new contacts at all…"

"I'm sorry, but-" We pass through the doorway. "-except for those of us who cheat, my homeworld doesn't have interstellar travel yet."

He nods sadly. "A pity."

"My.. records say that your homeworld was subjected to some sort of attack, but I don't know-."

"Krypton." His jaw hardens as he walks towards his private bar. "It was Krypton. They didn't have much of a navy, but we had even less. I'd have taken revenge for it myself by now but their world was destroyed not long after, while I was but a boy. Not that that does my people any good."

"That was… About forty years ago?"

"That's right. Drink?"

"Just water, thank you. Forty years ago General Zod would have been in charge of the Kryptonian Self-Defence Force. He was imprisoned for treason shortly afterwards."

"I'll remember that if I ever meet the man." He uses tongs to put three pieces of ice each into two glasses and then pours a finger of a cloudy pink liquid into one and water into the other. Then he picks up both glasses and walks towards me, holding the water filled glass out to me.

I take it from him with my right hand. "Thank you."

He raises his in a toast, and action I mirror. "Let no new thing arise."

"Cheers."

We both take a sip and then he lowers his glass, looking thoughtful. "I heard from some contacts of mine in Vega that the forces of the Citadel Empire are… Behaving somewhat erratically."

"I killed the First a couple of days ago. The cybernetic implants their higher-ups had in their brains were basically there to let him control them. With him dead, they're probably all stuck on stupid mode."

"Aah." His eyes grow a little distant as he considers the information. "And the Beast?"

"Disarmed and imprisoned. His slaves are still in his cave, but they won't go anywhere else without his direction."

"The Citadelians reduced to simpletons. There's an opportunity there."

"Tamaran's mine, and don't go near the Forbidden Forest on Okaara. Other than that, if you can create stability, go for it."

"I'm not quite that bold. But if I could tempt some of their soldiers to work for me, that would give me a substantial boost to my marines' forces."

"As you will." I take another sip. Huh. No drugs at all. Should I be insulted..?

"You still haven't said why you're here."

"I'm looking for a Coluan."

"You can't have mine."

I hold up my left hand in a 'stop' gesture, shaking my head as I do so. "I wouldn't dream of poaching staff from you. But I'm hoping that she can give me more information on the state of Colu and the location of the man I'm looking for. Is she in residence?"

He looks slightly puzzled. "You won't have much fortune finding Coluans anywhere other than Colu. And while the Computer Tyrants might be willing to sell one to you, I wouldn't want to risk it in your place."

"I believe.. that the individual I'm looking for is something of a special case. Would you mind..? Calling her in?"

"Not at all." He taps a metallic circle on his left forearm. "Vran, would you mind coming to my lounge? I have a guest who wishes to speak with you."

"On my way."

back

Headhunting 4

next

22nd July

13:52 GMT

"Orange Lantern."

"Miss Gozzi."

Her expression is neutral, looking neither pleased or displeased, surprised or expectant. I'm tempted to think that that's a Coluan thing, but I don't have anything like enough data to conclude that.

Commodore Amalak raises a decanter of something blue from behind his bar. "Vran?"

She doesn't look around, preferring to focus her attention on me. "Water, please."

"Both of you?" Amalak sounds mildly put out, and his tone causes Miss Gozzi to frown slightly, glancing his way and then back at me as I raise my own glass. "What's the point of owning these drinks if my business partners refuse to share them with me and be appropriately impressed by my generosity?"

I smile at his good humour, taking a sip of my water as I do so.

"How can I assist?"

Realising that she's not going to change her mind, Amalak tosses back his own drink and pours another of the blue stuff. "Orange Lantern wants to know something you might know, and I think that it's in the interests of our organisation to further improve our relationship."

She nods. "I have not yet been able to learn anything definitive regarding the Citadelian implants. If you wait a few days I can focus my efforts-."

She cuts herself off as I shake my head. "I already know. The implants connected every Citadelian to the First. He was able to keep them unified by sharing his own way of thinking."

"The First Citadelian?" She frowns. "I had assumed that he was long since dead. What evidence do you have?"

I raise my left hand and generate a construct image of our confrontation, letting it play with subtitles as I continue talking. "A few months ago I had to recall my ring from a considerable distance away, and inadvertently called rings out of the Beast's cave on Okaara. Five of them found their way into the hands of the Citadel. One he kept for himself, the other four he gave to new-generation 'smart' Citadelians." I speed up the images as the talking stops and the fighting begins. "As you might deduce by the fact that I'm standing here and the Citadel Empire is in disarray-."

"With the First's death the implants no longer serve any purpose. Or at least can't unify the Citadelians in the same way." She watches carefully as I shoot the First dead, then I dismiss the construct. "Their empire will survive on inertia and ignorance for a time, but you fought him openly. That information will spread."

"I had always aimed on taking down the Citadel eventually. This will just speed things up a little. But it isn't why I wanted to speak to you."

"Clearly."

"I was wondering if you could give me a lead on the present location of Vril Dox."

I see a coil of fear within her. "No. I have no idea where he went after abandoning Colu to his creations. And getting further information would be far too risky for me to attempt it out of mere curiosity. The security systems of the Computer Tyrants are exceedingly comprehensive." She takes a deep breath, her equanimity returning. "If you wish to look for him I would suggest asking the Computer Tyrants yourself. If anyone is still in contact with him, it will be them, and they may be prepared to trade knowledge to an alien."

Why-? Oh, she thinks I mean Brainiac, or… I knew Vril was a clone, I didn't realise they had the same name. Oh dear. I have.. assumed that Vril-. That Brainiac 2 exists here. But if Brainiac just never decided to create a cloned lab assistant…

"Ah, no. I heard a… Rumour that Brainiac had a clone-son..? It was him I was hoping to track down, not the original." Although… "Not yet, at any rate. I can't imagine Brainiac treating anyone as an equal, so I suspect that such a boy would possess his primogenitor's intelligence while utterly hating the man. Such a person would be very useful to me."

"During the period in which he ruled Colu, Vril Dox did not share information on his personal life with the population. If he did clone himself there-" She raises her hands into a typing pose and a holoscreen appears in front of her. "-would be little directly observable evidence." She begins typing, data scrolling across the screen in several directions as she accesses her own intelligence sources. "Can I assume that this 'rumour' does in fact have a solid espionage base?"

"I have… Access to unusual sources of information."

"That woman in the background. A Guardian?"

"Not any more. She quit about three billion years ago."

"Hm."

"Speaking of which…" I look over to Amalak. "Green Man hasn't given you any trouble, has he?"

He moves his glass away from his mouth and swallows. "He's watching us, but as yet he hasn't taken any action against us. The Crown Imperium have increased their force concentration near their border, but they're keeping away from Jarko's territory. It looks like a purely defensive posture. Reminding us that while they can't chase down every raider they can strike at our bases with a level of force which we can't stop." He smiles with the left side of his mouth. "Yet, at any rate."

"Commodore. Please, try to avoid antagonising the largest stable civilisation in this region of space."

"Oh." He waves his glass vaguely. "It won't come to blows. Just a little sabre-rattling to reassure Jarko that I'm on his side." He smiles suddenly. "Oh, that reminds me: your Spider-friend-."

"I may have what you want." I turn back to Miss Gozzi. Her text screen has now been joined by the image of an orange-yellow toblerone-shaped ship. "Most races with any sense have avoided Colu since Vril Dox seized power. The only exception is this vessel."

"Who owns it?"

"The Dominion."

The Dominators. I thought I remembered something about them being involved. Culturally, they're quite a lot like the Psions in an 'evil science race' sort of way. Unlike the Psions, the Dominators are tightly unified and tend to avoid direct confrontation. They buy small numbers of slaves for experimentation, but their most notable-.

"Is there a Dominator prison in the area?"

"Yes." Another image flashes up and oh my goodness me. That's a big one.

Dominator run prisons are famously hard to escape from. They're also fairly popular with interstellar civilisations as the Dominators are perfectly happy to hold prisoners cheaply. In return for a tithe of the prisoners for the purpose of biological experimentation, though the Dominators take care to generally only use the worst inmates. Unless they get someone really interesting. Ugh, very high end sensors, minefield and shields, and most likely exotic defences as well. Not to mention a small patrol fleet and Dominion fleet reinforcements not too far away. Getting in there is not going to be easy.

"Have you got precise details on their defences?"

"No, only a partial plan." I feel the data packet being relayed to my ring. "Obviously, you did not receive that from us. We have no desire to confront the Dominion."

"Any idea what they want with a Coluan?"

"If a clone of Vril Dox is indeed being held there, I would guess that they wish to use him to better predict the actions of his sire. Coluan neurophysiology is sophisticated, but if they simply wished to study our brains then there are far easier members of our species to acquire. I personally am more concerned with what they gave the Computer Tyrants in exchange."

"Problem for another day." I nod to her and then to my host. "Thank you both for your help. Now, if you'll excuse me. I have a prison to break."

back

Headhunting 5

next

22nd July

23:28 GMT

I'VE WANTED TO COME HERE FOR SO LONG!

I'm descending towards ground level past literal tree-skyscrapers! Not trees as big as skyscrapers or trees with habitats bolted on, no. These are literal trees that are literal skyscrapers. And from the glows I'm seeing from them, also sentient creatures! They have windows made from cellulose and a bio-engineered wax, interior spaces and exits, their leaves not only gather sunlight but generate electricity and act as satellite dishes!

J is the first world I've visited which feels completely alien. Like someone took the developmental path of a normal world and just span a load of dials to see what would happen.

Shame they couldn't come up with a better name for the place.

A cluster of broccoli-headed locals crossing one of the sky walkways between colossal tree-habitats stops to stare at me. They have turnip-dogs! That's a turnip-dog! I turn in the air and float closer, waving as I go.

"Hello, plant people!"

That warrants some stalk-twitching and mono-blinking as they look at each other nervously.

One with bark of mottled brown raises his right hand. "Ah. Hello… Meat person?"

"You!" I struggle to suppress a laugh as I jab my right index finger at him. "You are now my second favourite person on this planet."

"Oooookay..?"

"But I'm here looking for Lantern Medphyll. Do you know where I can find him?"

"Ah." He points in the general direction I was heading. "Head.. that way until you get to the lizard garden, then turn left?"

"Thank you!"

I turn away, accelerating towards the… Lizard garden. I remember from the comic covering Swamp Thing's visit here -and confirmed by John's ring- that the plant life forms of this world have considerably more sophisticated neural development than the animals. Most animal species which survive into the modern era are pseudo-reptiles with tiny brains, just about capable of moving, eating and mating under their own power in response to environmental chemical triggers. I wonder if I can see one of those weird art places where they splice animals together to create horrible monster-installations?

I mean, yes, I may be blocked off from the Green Lantern Corps' communication system but I can scan his location perfectly well. Then.. I could have contacted him by plant-phone or something. But I want to see all of this! And be seen, because that comic made it look like a lot of the people around here are neurotic messes. And not give him much warning, because then he would probably ask the Guardians for advice rather than make his own decision.

"No, don't do that. Phyllys, come away from them."

I glance down… And… No grass, obviously. Instead, the ground is covered in… Some sort of crab-like creature. They filter feed on soil bacteria! Fascinating! The locals stand on them without really thinking about it, and the creatures themselves appear to be unharmed by that treatment. A child is picking them up and throwing them at one of the chained lizards that are the garden's… Lizardbed.

"Phyllys, people spent a lot of time making the lizards look nice. You're messing up their work."

An individual I'm going to assume is Phyllys' parent is trying and failing to make their authority stick. Child acting up in public. I can sympathise. The… Ah, I think female, puts her hand on her hips. The child doesn't look around as they pick up another grass crab.

"What am I going to do with you?"

I drop down just behind her, most of the park's other visitors.. not fleeing, but certainly deciding that they have urgent business elsewhere.

"Madam? Perhaps if I tried."

She sighs as she starts to turn. "Look, I'm perfectly capabloh Great O!" Her head fronds fall back in shock.

"No, he's taller than me." I raise my right index finger to my lips. "Shhhhhh."

"Ah…"

"Just a little harmless prank." I walk past her, heading towards her charge. "Excuse me?"

"They don't move much." The child throws another crab, hitting a lizard right on the snout. Brown-grey blood leaks out from the point of impact, though the lizard itself doesn't react. There's… It has eyes, but… They don't focus on its environment.

Plants are animals. Animals are plants.

"No, they don't. But you're still not supposed to throw things at them."

"No one really cares."

"No, the gardeners do. In fact, I hear they bred a really big animal just so they could send it after anyone who messed up their work."

"Nuh-" The child throws another crab. "-uh."

"Un-huh. I hear it's really sneaky. I bet something like that could act like a person until it was right on top of you and ready to pounce."

"You're not-" The child starts to turn. "-my Muaaaaaggggghhhh!"

The child falls onto its bottom, frantically scrabbling for purchase on the crab-covered ground.

"Aaaaagh!"

I grin toothily, eyes wide. "Hello there."

The child turns its body around while still keeping their eye on me, scrabbles forwards and slams face first into a lizard. They bounce back and then look at what they just slammed into.

"Aaaagh!"

The lizard doesn't react as the child jumps to their feet and stumbles away, then realises that they're stumbling towards me. They stop for a moment and run around me in an arc before grabbing their mother around the legs and quietly hyperventilating.

"And that's why we don't mess with the-"

A green barrier wall appears in front of me.

"-lizards." I look up as Lantern Medphyll floats down to the ground. "Lantern Medphyll." I bow. "A pleasure to meet you in person."

The child's mother glances nervously at me as she leads her suddenly considerably more biddable child away.

"Orange Lantern." He dismisses the barrier. "Why are you on my homeworld?"

"I wanted to thank you for your help last year."

"Were you able to save the plant life form?"

I bow my head. "Sadly, no. Though, we did confirm that it wasn't mentally sophisticated, so the loss is less grievous than it would have been."

"I see. I have heard your thanks. Was there something else?"

"Could you possibly please teach me how to control plants?" Medphyll stares at me for a moment. "You see, I know that Dominator computers are plant-based and I-."

"No."

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Headhunting 6

next

22nd July

23:43 GMT

"…possible for a member of your species-"

"It totally is."

"-it would still take years to learn." He flies ahead of me in the classical swimmer pose, heading towards a modest plant-building I assume is his home. "Are you prepared to stay here for all that time?"

"I'd… Rather not. Look, I don't need to get that good, I just need to… Disrupt.. a few plants. Briefly. In a way that someone who wasn't familiar with the technique couldn't block."

"Disrupt-?" Still lying onward, he turns his head back towards me. "Would you like me to teach others how to 'disrupt' all animal life?"

"You do have a power ring. I.. sort of assumed that you.. could already."

He turns his face once more towards his destination, coming in to land just in front of his front door. I come down just behind him, not quite touching the ground. Some.. bare earth, but the roads and pavements are… Modified root systems? The door is a vine of some kind, and it sort of… Twists away in a spiral as Medphyll walks up to it. I stay floating there as he walks inside and a small crowd forms in a semi-circle around me at what I think they think is a safe distance.

"Are you coming?"

Ah, good. "Yes, thank you." I turn my head to nod at the crowd, then land and go after him at a jog. The floor of his home is -obviously- wood, but it's bark, this house is alive-.

The door-vine closes behind me.

"Ah, house?"

"It won't work."

He's moved further in, into what looks like a living area. "Is it deaf?"

"My home can't perceive sound. Master.. Jothra considered it.. inappropriate, for a student of the spirit to use a materialist work-around."

"Doesn't that leave your house deaf?"

He looks back and makes a small beckoning motion. "I wish that you could ask him."

I walk down the short corridor and into his living room-. An elderly member of his species is laid out on a small bier, dressed in robes with their arms folded across their chest. "Um. Master.. Jothra, I presume?"

Medphyll looks down at his late mentor. "I had a brief discussion on Human funerary tradition with Lantern Stewart once. I imagine this seems strange to you."

"Some rituals have the body being physically present. But.. I thought that he died a while ago. Ah." I create a construct hat upon my head and take it off with my right hand, pressing it to the left side of my chest. "My commiserations."

"Our bodies don't rot, as yours do. Chemical processes will cause Jothra's remains to harden. It's.. traditional, for a master's student to host his body while the process takes place."

"I see." I dismiss the hat. For a moment I consider suggesting that he avail himself of the services of a necromancer. Saarek, for example. Talking to Swamp Thing as Jothra appeared to help him in the comic after all. But, I don't know how these people feel about necromancy in general. Best not. "How is the.. new Lantern shaping up?"

Medphyll sits, not really looking at me. "Kilowog's initial appraisal was… Acceptable. With no pressing threat in this Sector it was felt that the Corps' best interests were served by giving them a longer training course."

I nod. "Good. Guy-. Lantern Gardner had.. a lot of good things to say about Lantern Kilowog's training."

"He joined the Corps later than me. When I was new, I was given over to Master Jothra for training. He was already a veteran himself. It was felt.. he would be better able to educate me than Lantern Deegan." He turns his head to look at me. "Why do you wish to learn how to connect with plant life?"

I grin. "Well, there's this Dryad back home…" He blinks uncomprehendingly. Right, true name, wouldn't translate. "There's a prison I want to break into. It's-."

"Dominator run." Understanding dawns. "You wish to be able to disable their security systems."

A nifty trick which I remember from the one bit of the Invasion! event I read. The Dominators waited until they were sure that Swamp Thing was off Earth before launching their attack because they believed that he could single-handedly ruin their forces. The Justice League knew the same thing, so Guy was dispatched to Louisiana to attempt to make contact with him. While there he did the most immoral thing I remember him doing in the comics; he fired on and destroyed an alien ship not participating in the invasion, killing the owner and her infant offspring. When Mrs Holland attempted to remonstrate with him he blew her off. That was probably before DC editorial decided that green power rings turned themselves off if they were used to kill someone.

It's interesting, now that I think about it. Guy was always supposed to be kind of an arse… At least when not in brain damaged mode. But because he was on the 'hero' side, I can't remember an incident where he did anything that was portrayed as being flat out immoral. Stupid, certainly, that 'one punch' thing will be around for as long as the character exists. Short sighted, reckless, aggravating. But that Swamp Thing issue had him both in-character and clearly in the wrong and I can't remember anything else quite like it.

"Dominators aren't the Reach. You aren't forbidden from picking a fight, if you've got just cause. And.. I'm not.. asking you to. You just need to show me how to-."

"What cause would I have?"

"They do.. habitually vivisect inmates."

"Do you have evidence of vivisections in this particular case?" I raise my eyebrows. "The Dominator's official line is that they only dissect the cadavers of those who die of other causes."

"Alright. I have evidence that they're dealing with the Computer Tyrants of Colu. I.. hope those.. things are on the shortlist for an Honour Guard visit, but in the mean time they are enslaving their whole planetary population with brain implants."

"That would be grounds for an intervention. However, I am a Sector Lantern, and I know that there are no Dominator-run prisons in Sector Five Eight Six."

"No, it's… In Sector One Two Eight Seven. And in case you're wondering, the Green Lanterns assigned there lack your skill in dealing with plants."

I really hope he goes for it. My backup plan involves going back to Earth and picking up Euanthe, and.. I.. don't want to do that quite yet.

"That is not an unreasonable target for an assault. But I am not a member of the Honour Guard, and I have not been assigned that mission by the Guardians. My responsibility is to ensure my Sector's safety-."

Ahh? "So as long as you're sure that the Sector is safe, you can leave, right? You said nothing was happening."

"By Green Lantern Corps regulation, I can only leave this Sector if another Lantern can be present. The mobility granted by a power ring makes us the perfect first line of response to an attack. A conventional fleet-."

I grin. "A Lantern, or a Green Lantern?"

"It.. doesn't specify. Do you have another Orange Lantern?"

…

Ah.

"No. But I.. think I know where I can get one."

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Headhunting 7

next

23rd July

14:32 GMT

I clamp shut the last of the void-chests that Hinon gave me, and take another look around Larfleeze's inner sanctum. The First aside, it seems that the reputation of the place was enough to keep most sticky-fingered Vegans away. I had thought that perhaps some Psions might make a grab for them, but they seem to really be more of the éminence grise types. If they thought that the Emperor would trade some to them in exchange for their expanded support… Certainly they didn't have a reason to rush. Anyway, best check I got all of them.

I take a deep breath and try to ignore the assembled Construct Lanterns.

Come.

Immediately the Construct Lanterns float towards me.

No, not you.

They obediently stop.

With Larfleeze cut off from the orange light, becoming their domitor was easy. Unsettling as having more indisputably intelligent people as my slaves is, it's far better than leaving them just.. hanging around. And maybe with enough study we can turn them back into fleshy beings. If not… Perhaps an avarice golem or something? Working out that side of things can be a job for Hinon's new assistants.

Rings, come.

I maintain the call, my own ring shining brightly. I've scanned Larfleeze's caves as best I can, but I don't want to spend time digging through everything at the moment. Most of this.. probably belonged to someone, and while I did check modern Okaaran law on the subject it's silent as to what should happen to the Beast's property in the event of his defeat.

No, nothing. No more rings. At least, no more here. I float up from ground level and point to the void-chests. "Blume, you're on guard duty. The rest of you, take these to Hinon, then follow her instructions."

The mob comes forwards again, Glomulus wrapping all four arms around the closest and then appearing to struggle to rise off the ground with it. A brief flicker of orange as he nullifies the weight and he shoots up in an uncontrolled surge for a moment before regaining control. Flaasha uses.. its Lantern abilities from the offset, pulling a void-chest to its thorax before twisting in the air and heading for the exit, Glomulus close behind. Grubber dips down and picks up a void-chest with her right arms without apparent strain while Tammal Tayn coils various sets of tentacles around two. Nat Nat, Clypta, Sound Dancer and Blooch take theirs without issue and follow the others out.

One chest left. If I'm going to recruit, I've got to have something to recruit with, after all. Hinon's going to be too busy to create new rings for a while. Transformed Construct Lanterns will have to do. Alan managed perfectly well without an AI for decades, and these rings do have minds within them. I float the void-chest up to my height, flip the lid open again, then hold my hands out over the rings contained therein.

Ring, is it safe to put these in subspace?

This ring contains no data on rings created in this fashion.

Oh well. I put the void-chest into a construct safe and transition out of the caves into the air high above the Forest of Weeds. Flickers of orange below me reveal my Construct Corps flying out of the canopy, then disappearing as they surge out into the universe. That… Isn't a form of FTL I'm familiar with. Well, as long as they get there in reasonable time.

Ring, plot course for Tamaran.

Compliance.

A flicker as I transition outside of Okaara's atmosphere, then the stars leap around me. I had originally planned on recruiting Koriand'r and possibly Komand'r, but if their father could handle a ring… But… He probably can't spare the-.

The Liot'r system appears before me as the warp ends. Right, don't want to trigger my own defences. A brief transition and I appear within a few hundred kilometres of Scratching Post.

"Orange Lantern to-" Guns rotate to face me and prepare to fire. "-Thanagarian garrison. Friendly, honest."

"Orange Lantern, good to hear from you."

"Olio. How's the work going?"

"Aw, man. You would not believe how hard our techs are moaning about it. Once we got the basics done, Commander Andar decided to make them strip out everything that isn't up to our standard section by section. Heh, they say it would be less work to just make a new station."

"I'm sure that the Commander knows what he's doing."

"Yeah, me too. So how's that thing with the Beast going?"

"I already won. He's in-."

"When, exactly?"

"Well it… Um, I took possession of the Orange… Central Power Battery two days ago. Why-?"

"Aw, really? Damn it, I'll have to tell the betting pool. I thought it'd take you at least three more months planning and preparing. Thought you were the slow and cautious type?"

"I needed to put on a good show for my new employer, and I'd made.. just about as many preparations as were needed for the approach I wanted to use. And a little more for contingencies. As General Carl von Clausewitz said, 'The enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan'."

"Hah! Wise man. You want me to put you through to the Commander?"

"No, I'm here to talk to the King. Unless he has something he wants to tell me, I don't have a particular need to speak to him."

"Actually, there is a thing…"

"What is it?"

"We're out of contact here, which is fine, but we do need to let the Queen know where we are and why we're not calling in. And there's normal mail stuff. I mean, none of it's urgent…"

"Not a problem. I've got to drop by Thanagar on my way back to Earth anyway, and I do want to see Alstair." Maybe Medphyll would be interested in the place? The locals are meat-based, but magic-based plant manipulation is pretty common there. Or.. maybe he'd be rather put off by that. Yes, that sounds more likely. Eh, I'll ask him. "Since I don't know when I'll be coming back to Tamaran, please put a data packet together for me and I'll pick it up before I leave."

"You got it. King Myand'r should still be in the capital."

"Thank you. I'll head down now. Keep up the good work."

"Hawk's Nest out."

Hawk's Nest. Sure, why not? Heh. I transition downwards, appearing moments later above the.. ruined part of Tamarus. Huh. No Komand'r down there this time, no.. data networks for me to use to bring myself rapidly up to date.

I'm going to have to actually talk to people. Like a caveman.

Late evening here at the moment, Tamaran's rotational period being more or less the same as Earth's. Actually, all of the inhabited worlds in Vega have more or less the same day-length. Just another oddity of the place. King Myand'r is.. in the Hall of X'Hal, a sort of… Combination of museum and temple. Tamaranians tend to regard X'Hal as being a war goddess, which… Probably isn't really true to her historical character. On the other hand, religion, historical authenticity…

I transition to the Hall's entrance and then land, the Tamaranian soldiers outside bringing their weapons to bear with commendable haste. I wave and they lower them again.

"Is it possible for me to speak with the king, please?"

The leader of the detail nods. "Yes, Orange Lantern. I know that he hoped to discuss the plans for the wedding with you."

I frown. "Wedding? What wedding?"

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Headhunting 8

next

23rd July

14:38 GMT

"Wedding?"

King Myand'r nods, then looks up at the statue of his father. King Korithus is depicted as a proud warrior in his middle years, not the broken old man he died as when the Tamaranian home defence fleet was overwhelmed and shot to pieces. I can understand why he considered himself honour bound to resist, but I can't help but thinking that kowtowing could have prevented… So much death.

"Yes. I had intended to wait until Koriand'r's education on Okaara was complete, but… She is of age, and clearly it isn't practical for her to return there." He turns back to me. "I had it in mind to pass oversight of most of the modernisation program to her and to Prince Karras. The new Tamaran will be their world more than mine, and it will be better for it. Certainly, the pre-existing bad blood between myself and his parents would make cooperation between us… Fraught."

BABUM

Orange… Flames… Flicker and flare from my hands. I fold them behind my back.

"Easing her into governing seems perfectly sensible to me. And Prince Karras seemed like a thoroughly decent man fully enthused for the project. But I'm not clear why the situation requires her to marry him."

King Myand'r sighs. "Authority. Tell me, what system of government do your people use?"

"Earth isn't unified. My country has a small democratically elected body who rule in concert with a hereditary monarch. The nearest thing Earth has to a planetary government requires the largest and most powerful nations on the planet to agree before anything much gets done."

Myand'r nods. "That's actually not a bad model. My wife and I may rule Tamaran in theory, but in practice our ability to exert our will outside those lands we directly control depends on our personal authority. I have been a tributary king of the Citadel Empire for my entire reign." He looks down the hall and out into the city. "The day of my first daughter's birth…"

"I know."

"My personal authority is near-nonexistent. And I think that at this point in my life it is too late for me to gain that authority. But, by marrying Karras, his parents will give her the opportunity to build that authority for the pair of them. And the other principalities will follow them as well, for fear of being left out and left behind. It isn't what I wanted for her."

BABUM

He turns back to me. "But that's rather been the story of my l-." He blinks. "Are you well?"

BABUM

Orange flames are dripping off me, maintaining coherence for several seconds even as they part from the main mass.

BABUM

This is wrong.

"Does she want to marry him?"

"She.. sees the value in the match. They get on well enough."

"So, no. Does he want to marry her?"

"I-."

I hold up my right hand. "No, don't answer that. I know he doesn't. He'd much rather marry that bodyguard of his."

Myand'r's face stills. "Oh."

I turn away and start pacing, fists clenched and arms swinging.

"They love each other and have for some time. I can see the threads of violet light which bind them together. And if I was a Zamaron that would be my problem. And that's bad, I feel that's bad, but it's not the bad thing. The bad thing is that the marriage is entirely unnecessary. If it were the only way in which the rebuilding project could happen then I'd be fine with it but it isn't. From what I could tell just about everyone at the conference was all for it. They're just…" I gesture violently upwards with both arms. "Expecting this, like… They need confirmation that individuals' desires are being ritually subordinated to the collective idea of appropriateness!"

"And… You feel that a ruler should not subordinate their desires?"

"Not when they don't have to." I stop and stare at him. "If the wedding was called off tomorrow, what do you think Karras would do next?"

"I.. doubt that he would change at all, though his parents-."

BABUM

"His parents aren't the ones getting married to someone they barely know."

His face grows more sombre. "Are you telling me that I must cancel the wedding? Annul the betrothal?"

"No! You're the king, I don't.. give you orders. I'm.. simply.. making you aware of my displeasure with the situation. Is there really no.. acceptable alternative?"

"You could marry her. Or Komand'r, if you preferred."

"What?"

"For rescuing so many of our people and liberating Tamaran from the Gordanians and their Citadel masters you have earned considerable personal authority. If Karras were willing to step aside for you, that would be a functional alternative."

"But… You've been my point of contact. Don't.. you get credit for-" He smiles sadly, shaking his head. "-that?"

"Why should I get credit for your work?"

"And I can't endorse you in some way?"

"You already have, but I'm afraid that it isn't enough. Even if you ritually presented me the Citadel Emperor's head-."

"I can do that."

"I am aware of your ambition, but the wedding is set to take place in five days."

"No, I mean, the head of the First Citadelian-." I cut myself off and glance at the statue of X'Hal. Then I lower my voice slightly. "I killed the First Citadelian two days ago. His head.. sort of.. shattered a bit, but I could recover it and stick it back together."

"The First.. lives?"

"No, I just said-."

"He.. lived until just now?"

"Yes. Commodore Amalak told me that Citadel forces are in a bit of a mess. He wasn't fighting, but he was the one keeping them unified and focused."

"That's.. astonishing, but as I said; that increases your authority. Not mine." He pauses for a moment. "He's really dead?"

"Assuming that he can't survive his own physical death, yes."

But what to do? I open my empathic vision all the way up and look at him. Oh, not good. With his people and his daughters safe, he's just not.. spiking high enough into the orange. He could probably use an orange ring safely… But if his assessment of the political situation is accurate -and it seems reasonable to assume that it is- then if he died… That sounds like something that would result in chaos, with no one in a position to arbitrate…

Except for me, and I intend to be busy.

Hmm.

"What.. would happen… If the authority of the princesses increased?"

back

Headhunting 9

next

23rd July

14:51 GMT

I drift slightly aimlessly through the skies of Tamarus, heading.. slowly in the direction of the palace. I really wanted more time to assess the princesses for compatibility before.. doing anything like this. I don't really… If I make it clear that it's a field test with imperfect rings, perhaps that would salve their egos? Certainly, these.. people-rings-. No, I need a better name than that. Old rings. Yes, that'll do. Functional, but soon to be superseded.

Talking to Karras first will probably be easier. Though.. it is quite late. Well, if he isn't awake I can just wait until tomorrow. I'm not in that much of a hurry. Assuming that he's still in the same room as when I left… Yes, there he is. I accelerate towards the palace.

I'm still flaming, but not quite as badly as before. The shock of being.. confronted with this arrangement has dimmed the intensity of my response a little. From the way Myand'r was talking I assume that arranged marriages are a relatively unremarkable thing amongst Tamaranians. My own exposure to them comes from the reactionary parts of the British Asian community, honour killings and kidnap-marriages. If I'd had a bit more exposure to functional examples I might feel less strongly. But as it stands this is very definitely triggering my 'This Will Not Happen' response.

The whole situation reminds me of the Meiji Restoration. And the end of the first series of Gundam. In both of those, both sides were trying to accomplish basically the same thing but decided that they couldn't until one or the other was defeated. There was no real benefit to the fighting, just the assumption that it had to happen. Here, there's no benefit to the marriage, just an assumption that it needs to occur.

And now I'm flaming again. Good job that Tamaranians generally don't fly at night. They can, but as they're solar powered they find it draining and can dry up completely if they keep at it. Hope I'm not keeping anyone awake.

There are a couple of guards on the balcony to Prince Karras' room and they can see me coming their way from the other side of the city. As I drop down towards them one is talking through the narrowly-open outer doorway while the other steps forward to greet me.

"Orange Lantern. You wish to speak with Prince Karras?"

"If that's at all possible. It can wait, but I'd rather not lose the time if that's at all possible."

He glances back and the other guard nods. "You may enter now."

I nod as I land. "Thank you." I walk towards the door, empathic vision showing me… Two people inside, Karras and -going by the amount of violet I'm seeing- his soldier-girlfriend. Good show. If she's here then he hasn't done the faux-noble thing of separating from her 'for the good of the people'. That should make him easier to persuade.

The second guard opens the door for me and closes it after I've strolled through. Karras is standing near a desk, a curtain drawn across to separate the working part of the room from the sleeping area. He's wearing opaque purple… Harem pants and nothing else. Okay, Tamaran, I shouldn't have expected anything else.

"Orange Lantern. What can I do for you?"

I flick my left hand up and generate a sound nullification field around the inside of the room. Where's what'shername? "I wanted to speak to you about the wedding."

He smiles politely. "You are invited, of course. Do you think that you will have time to attend?"

I look around the room. "I'm afraid that's…" I frown. "Why is your girlfriend hiding in the cupboard?"

He hesitates, his mouth falling slightly open before he can cover it up. "I.. don't know what you're-."

I stride over to it and yank open the door, the woman trying to duck behind some sort of robe. A mission somewhat impeded by Tamaranian ideas of modesty. "Oh, come out. I may as well have this discussion with both of you."

"Ah…" She looks past me to Karras, looking for some clue as to what she should do. I just turn away and walk back across the room.

"How did you know that she was there?"

"Karras, I have many abilities. The ability to detect the emotions of those about me isn't one of the most noticeable ones but it is fairly useful. I knew that the two of you were in love before you spoke a single word to me."

I turn back and.. she's wearing harem pants and nothing else as well. She's in pretty good shape, though I think that exposure to Diana has left me a little jaded about the female musculature. "I don't believe that anyone has told me your name."

"Corporal Taryia. Sir."

They don't look at each other or try and move together. Assuming that Tamaranian facial expressions are sufficiently similar to Human ones I'd say both are feeling guilty.

"And how long have the pair of you been intimately involved?" She doesn't immediately respond, so I turn my eyes towards Karras.

"I.. really don't see what concern that is of yours."

"Because I don't know enough about the way Tamaranians process emotions. Because I intend to find an acceptable way to break the betrothal of yourself and Princess Koriand'r and prevent the marriage. Can I assume that you're both interested?"

His eyes widen slightly and the corporal glances his way. "That's.. possible?"

"It will be. Are you on board?"

"Yes. Yes, we-" He steps towards the corporal and she towards him. They clasp hands. "-are."

"Good. First thing; is your pre-existing relationship a breach of the betrothal agreement?"

"No. Actually, things like this are quite common when the marriage is political."

The corporal nods. "It's accepted that blood-alliances are sometimes necessary, but being permanently separated from the one you love? No one would accept that."

I take a deeper look at the pair of them, but there's barely enough orange to be worth mentioning. Maybe if violet rings were a thing… I'll bear them both in mind for my eventual meeting with the Zamarons.

"And -I just want to check- you aren't planning on suddenly abandoning the rebuilding initiative if the wedding doesn't go ahead?"

"Not by choice, but I'm not Prince-Regent. It is my parents' decision."

"Alright. How much extra authority would Koriand'r need to convince them to stay on board?"

"I.. suppose if you-?"

"No. While it isn't impossible that the two of us might have gotten together at some point, it would be after a long courtship and because we genuinely loved each other. It wouldn't be happening soon, and I wouldn't… Hold the reconstruction of her homeworld hostage to ensure her compliance. What else?"

"Something of.. substantial service to Tamaran."

"I was thinking about taking them with me when I smash the Citadel Complex and steal their shipyards. Do you think that would work? Revenge, recovering the remains of their uncles and grandmother if they're still there, massively speed up the rate of Tamaranian shipbuilding?" They blink at me. "Assessment for ring compatibility and basic training could take a while, I'd like an answer reasonably quickly?"

"Yes… That would…"

"And you'll support them?"

"Ye-. 'Them'? Komand'r as well?"

"I wouldn't want someone to do something stupid like insist on a consolation prize." I examine their faces. "Someone hadn't done that already, had they?"

He looks away awkwardly. "There.. were discussions…"

"They serve no further purpose. Will they have your support?"

He nods. "Yes, of course."

"Good. See you in a few days."

back

Headhunting 10

next

23rd July

15:12 GMT

"What are you talking about?"

Komand'r flashes me a mildly irritated glance, then returns her attention to her weapon. An elderly Tamaranian plasma pulse gun, restored to operating condition. The Thanagarians have similar weapons but the Tamaranian version fires larger pulses, designed as it was to burn through the thick armour of Citadelian infantry. She inserts a new hydrogen flask, twists and then presses the activation switch. There's an audible hum and the central section of the weapon glows faint blue.

"It was a simple question, Princess."

She puts the stock of the gun to her right shoulder, sights the target at the far end of the shooting range and squeezes the trigger. A beam of brilliant blue plasma blasts from the weapon and annihilates the target.

"It's a pointless one. 'What do I want?'"

"When last we spoke you seemed discontent."

She removes the gun from her shoulder and carefully checks the various gauges that have been attached to it in several places. "Did you know that my sister is to be married?"

"Your father mentioned it."

"She is to be given oversight of our entire reindustrialisation process. Her and.. her new husband."

"I wasn't aware that her education -or yours- included a great deal on industrial strategy."

She raises the gun again and fires at a new target. This time one of the gauges beeps and her mouth twists into a grimace of frustration. "It didn't." She removes the gun from her shoulder and flicks another switch, the glow fading. "But she isn't expected to build things herself. She's expected to make sure that everyone is following the scheme."

"And what do you want to do?"

"I want this gun-" She plants it on the workbench with more force than is strictly necessary. "-to behave itself. We're trying to bring weapons wielded by the old Tamaranian marine corps back into working order."

"Difficult?"

"With the neglect they've suffered, I find it a minor miracle that any of them still function. A tiny deformation of the plasma chamber and they leak waste heat into their own mantle."

"Do you find the work satisfying?"

"It needs to be done. And… I doubt that I could serve as a symbol of Tamaranian optimism and unity."

"Do you want to?"

"What possible good would that serve?" She looks at my face and sees that I don't consider that an adequate response. "No. I wouldn't know where to begin."

"Alright. What, then? What do you want?"

"Functioning weapons." She removes part of the outer casing, and even my unaided eyes can see the subtle warping of the inner parts of the weapon.

"What for? Tamaran is safe-."

"Isolation and dependency are not safety." She pushes the gun across the bench. "All this is good for now is parts."

"What do you want?"

"For the rest to work."

Am I going about this wrong? "What for? What motivates you? Why are you here when the rest of the city is going to bed?"

She takes off her work gloves and puts them on the bench. "Because I can. Because we need more weapons. Do you intend to-?"

"Why? What do you want to do with them?"

"Defend our-." I give an amused exhalation, bowing my head slightly and shaking it. "What?"

"I'm not judging you. I'm not assessing you. I don't want to know what you think the right answers are. I want to know what you genuinely think. What do you want?"

"What do I want?" Her eyes shimmer with pale green light, her shoulders tense and her fists ball. "I want an army. And a fleet, big enough to darken the skies of our enemies' worlds when we go to them. I want to rain unstoppable destruction down upon everyone who dared think us too weak to do anything other than accept this as our station! I want Citadel Complex lifeless and drifting in space. I want Karna and Emana and the Psion Motherworld burning, the survivors fleeing in terror before my wrath. I want to stand triumphant over the ruins of everything my enemies ever built. Are you satisfied?"

I nod. "And then?"

"What do you mean, 'and then'?"

"After you'd done all that..?"

She frowns. "I'm not…" She stops, giving it a little more thought. "Keep it that way."

"And for yourself?"

"Being remembered as Tamaran's greatest ever war leader would fit my ambitions rather nicely."

"You appeared to be irritated by your sister's impending wedding. You don't have any desires in that direction yourself?"

"I'm irate that I have been written off once again! Shoved aside from the path to the throne with no way to earn my way there while her way is smoothed at every opportunity! I am already a better strategic planner than she is but I would have been better served studying makeup artistry."

"And if you had the opportunity to get everything you want, if you had that opportunity… Would you use it to act against her?"

She looks mildly amused. "I wouldn't need to. My achievements would outshine hers to such a degree that it would be.. a wasted effort."

Sounds genuine. Obviously I'd rather her desires were a little more lofty, but they do broadly line up with what I'm planning.

"And no plans to marry yourself?"

She turns away, towards the exit from the proving ground. "There isn't really any need for us to strengthen political ties with any other group."

"Then you'd be free to marry for love?"

She looks back, a small smile on her face. "What a.. curious idea. No, I would wait until there was an advantage." She looks me over. "Though I suppose that you yourself represent a rather interesting prospect. Comely enough for a dalliance, powerful and well liked by Tamaran's citizens. Tell me, are you here to press your own suit?"

"Ah, no. If I were going to marry someone, it wouldn't be for reasons of political convenience."

Her smile grows slightly. "A romantic. How delightful. If political positioning so disinterests you, perhaps.. you would like to spend the night with me for purely recreational reasons?"

"Thank you, but no. I still need to speak with Koriand'r-."

"Oh." Her expression curdles. "Yes, Koriand'r has probably only just gone to sleep. If you wake her I imagine that she would be quite pleased to see you again."

I nod. "Perhaps. But if she has already retired I can wait until tomorrow. Goodnight, princess."

back

Headhunting 11

next

23rd July

22:57 GMT

I turned down my environmental shield to the absolute minimum as evening turned to night and then into dawn, my eyes shut and my mind at peace. I can feel the soft wind against my skin, I can hear all of the quiet sounds of the nocturnal animals and the occasional snatch of speech which drifts my way. And I reach out, not with my hand or my ring but with my own soul, feeling and tasting the desires of the-.

"Hello?"

I leave my eyes shut, turning my head in the direction of the speaker.

"Koma told me that you wished to speak to me? Are.. you awake?"

"Yes." Blue and indigo, mostly. Reminds me of Diana. Not as much green, but she's far younger and hasn't been anything like as battle-hardened.

Orange is a little thin on the ground.

I open my eyes. I'm sitting cross-legged at the edge of the palace's highest landing platform. Princess Koriand'r is floating in the air just in front of me. She's wearing a purple halter top/hot pants combination that.. is still considerably more modest.. and practical, than what she wore in the comics. Her hair isn't quite the pile of perm that it is in the comics. Rather, it looks like it's naturally slightly curly and is either being buffeted by the wind or… Maybe something about the innate ability she's using to fly?

"I am glad!" And she's smiling and as far as I can tell it's totally genuine. "I was.. not able to thank you properly for rescuing our people, as well as my sister and I."

"You are welcome."

"Am I speaking your language correctly?"

I raise my eyebrows slightly. "I'm sorry." I point to my ring with my right forefinger. "Power ring translator. I didn't realise."

"Oh." She actually looks quite disheartened…

"Ring, translation off."

"Compliance."

And there's the smile. "Thank you. What was it you wanted to talk to me about?"

"A couple of things. Would you like to sit down?"

She shakes her head, then turns slightly in the air to take in the city as the dawn sun begins to illuminate its streets. "I prefer to fly. When we were.. captive, we were denied the opportunity-."

I raise my right hand. "I understand. Whenever I'm.. parted from my ring, I tend to spend the next few days using it for everything."

She turns back to me and nods, still smiling. "What was it you wanted to talk about?"

"Two things, really. Firstly, your.. English teacher."

She nods. "Prince Karras. We are to be married."

"And how do you feel about that?"

Her face grows a little more solemn. "He is a good man, and perhaps one day will become a good king."

"That wasn't really what I meant." I sit with my hands upon my lap, waiting for her to continue.

She gives her head a small shake, clearly not understanding. "What do you mean?"

"I.. am an Orange Lantern." I look aside for a moment. "And as far as I know the only one. But -like any other colour- orange rings respond best to particular modes of thought. Green rings respond best to those capable of total mental focus. Yellow rings to those who inspire fear and understand their own. Orange rings like mine -and like the one which the Beast wore- respond to avarice. The more I want, the more powerful I become."

She frowns. "But you asked for nothing in return for freeing us."

"I… No. I have not moved beyond valuing physical rewards, but they are only a part of what I desire. When I freed you, I self-actualised. I acted against others in accordance with my desires and beliefs about how the universe should be. Avarice isn't just about… Eating a thousand cheeseburgers."

She nods, smiling again. "I understand. I don't know what a cheeseburger is, but I imagine that eating a thousand of them would make you ill."

I nod. "So with that in mind… What do you want?"

"What do I want?"

I nod. "What do you want?"

Her left arm folds across her chest and her right hand goes to her chin in the classic thinker pose. "I suppose… I would like to see Tamaran prosperous again. I.. would like-."

"No no no. Not what you think -upon reflection- might be nice. Not what you think you should want. Not even what you're actually working towards." I let my eyes flare orange. "What do you want?"

She gives me a small nod, her eyes half closing as she gives it a little more thought. Probably not the most honest approach; I want an honest answer more than a fundamental one.

"I.. want Tamaran to be safe." Her jaw tightens slightly. "What all of us the Citadel took went through is not something that anyone should have to endure."

"And what will you do, to ensure this safety?"

"I.. will help my world rearm. I will teach others what I was taught by the Warlords of Okaara. And I will ensure that we have the industry to support our rearmament."

"Reasonable." I nod. "But what would you want to do, most of all? If practical issues were no impediments. If you could.. do anything."

She sets her face hard. "Then I would do it myself. I would seek out those who so brutally abused us and ensure that no one else would suffer from their deprivations. I would shield my world from any enemy and my people would know that they were safe under my protection."

I nod. "I note that you haven't mentioned Prince Karras."

She blinks, her focus lost. "You didn't ask about Karras. He.. is… Our marriage will align-."

"You described your wants in terms of service to your people. You don't want him. If you could realise your desires in some other fashion, would you prefer that?"

"I…" She looks uncertain, her eyes not focusing on me. "Karras has done nothing wrong, nothing that would justify breaking our betrothal."

"Do you want him for his own sake?"

She makes a sad little sigh. "No. And I know that he does not-. That he would prefer another. But this is what my people-."

I stand, flowing into an upright position with such speed that she jerks back in the air away from me. "No. It isn't. It may be what is expected but it is not required. You don't want each other and you don't get anything that could not be more sensibly obtained in other ways. Am I right?"

She shakes her head. "If there were another way-."

"Luckily for you, I'm here." I float forwards off the roof, construct safe just behind me. "Komand'r should still be at breakfast, yes? I think I should say this to both of you."

back

Headhunting 12

next

23rd July

23:07 GMT

Koriand'r laughs as she darts ahead of me towards the dining room, trying to… What, turn this into a race? Everything she's been through and she still-. Heh. Incredible. If there were any justice in the universe I'd be offering her a blue ring.

Since there isn't, I smile back at her as she glances at me. And I accelerate, my speed momentarily surpassing hers before she returns her attention to her destination and pulls away. I'm about to do something that risks driving her and her sister insane. I sigh inwardly. No, if I'm here, I'm confident that I will be able to spot the warning signs and intervene. We can more than afford to take a few days to get this right.

Koriand'r darts through the arches leading to the dining area. I decided that it would be more dignified -perhaps not by Tamaranian standards but certainly by mine- to enter on foot instead. I'm overdressed for a Tamaranian breakfast, but no one said anything last time. Is it advantageous to look more like one of the group? Perhaps, slightly, but it would be dishonest. I'm not joining their team, I'm asking them to join mine.

"-explained to you why he was so eager to know that?"

I take a moment to adjust my robes, and then stroll inside.

"He said that he wished to explain it himself." Koriand'r turns and cranes her neck slightly, clearly wondering if I was coming or not. She smiles and straightens as I enter. Komand'r is sat at the table, some sort of flatbread and a selection of small fruit on her plate. She is dressed in the same all-encompassing clothing that she was when I spoke to her yesterday, presumably intending to spend her time in much the same way. She watches me, patiently waiting for me to explain myself.

"Good morning, Princess Komand'r."

"That seems unduly optimistic."

"Oh, I think that you'll agree with me in a moment." Koriand'r steps into the air, floating over the table and taking what I assume to be her seat. "It is my intent to offer both of you the opportunity to advance yourselves. Koriand'r, all being well, you will gain the authority required to make marriage to Prince Karras unnecessary. Komand'r, you would gain sufficient renown to demand a seat at whatever table you wanted… Or the opportunity to forge your own path entirely."

She arches her right eyebrow. "Not that you're an unattractive prospect-."

"No." I hold up my right hand. "No. Why does everyone assume..? No. I was talking about destroying the Citadel Complex."

Komand'r starts to smile while Koriand'r looks puzzled. "How? The Citadel Complex is protected by the most powerful defences in the Vega Systems, the power of the Citadel fleet and legions of Citadelian soldiers. When Tamaran's navy was at its strongest we tried to make such an attack. Few survived. I do not know if a Lantern could make such an attack, but I do not see how we could aid you."

Komandr's smile grows. "No, one Lantern couldn't, could they?"

"I would need to research their defences more fully before I could give you an honest answer. But, as you have no doubt surmised…" I bring the construct safe around in front of me and allow the upper surface and sides to melt away, revealing the void safe. "After I defeated Larfleeze and the First Citadelian-."

"You what?"

Komand'r looks.. almost angry. Certainly shocked. Koriand'r looks more surprised. Ah. I suppose that I should probably have mentioned that. "My sponsor created a device that interfered with the Beast's mind. I went inside the Forbidden Forest of Weeds and used it on him. He's in an asylum cell on Maltus now. The First tried to intercept me on my way out."

Koriand'r blinks as she comes to terms with the idea. "I did not believe that the First was real."

Komand'r rolls her eyes. "Obviously there had to be an original." She looks at me, eyes narrowing slightly. "Though I am surprised that he was still alive after all this time."

"The Citadelians claim that he was X'Hal's son. Would a god age?"

Komand'r rolls her eyes again. "'Would a Psion science project age?' would be a better question."

"He said that he did, and that he rejuvenated himself with-" I place my hands upon the void-chest and lift the lid. "-an orange power ring."

I give them a moment to take in what is inside, then place my hands over the rings themselves. Let's see, someone… No, no… Sane people don't challenge Larfleeze, so getting a mind who ah. Yes, these will do. Okaaran warriors who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. I take a ring in each hand and then close the lid.

"These rings empower their wearers to enact their desires. But, they also magnify those desires. Two of the people I lent my own ring to began displaying extremely altered behaviours almost immediately. When I started using it, my own behaviour changed gradually and.. some.. fairly odd things happened before I reached my current level of equanimity. If you take them, I will begin training you in their use with a view to attacking the Citadel Complex. If you don't…" I shrug. "I will seek others. The decision is yours. So."

Oh, this whole thing is turning me into a drama queen.

I hold out my hands palms upwards with the rings resting on them.

"Koriand'r of Tamaran, you want to protect your people. Komand'r of Tamaran, you want a righteous vengeance. And I want you both for the Orange Lantern Corps. Take my rings."

Komand'r barely waits for me to finish speaking before rising to her feet-.

"No. Stop." She stops, looking confused. "Not like that. Hold out the hand that will bear the ring… And want it to you."

"What?"

"From Earth, I called rings that were in Larfleeze's stash in the Forbidden Forest of Weeds on Okaara. I'm six metres away from you. Call the ring."

Komand'r looks at me askance for a second, trying to work out if this is some sort of prank. Realising that she has nothing to lose she holds out her right hand. "Come, ring."

For a moment nothing happens, then the ring in my right hand wobbles slightly.

"You told me what you wanted to do. Hold in your mind the image of accomplishing it via this ring. Imagine the orange light which once empowered the Beast flowing through you."

Her right hand tenses. "Mine."

The ring gently floats up from my right hand, spinning slowly on its axis.

"Mine!"

The ring shoots forward onto her outstretched ring finger. "Princess Komand'r of Tamaran. I am yours."

"Guh!"

Orange light runs throughout her body and she cringes slightly. I suppose that suddenly seeing the life of the person the ring once was must come as something of a shock. A moment later she straightens up and I watch very carefully to see what her next course of action is. The orange light within her is strong… But it looks stable.

She holds up her right hand, staring at the ring. "You did not tell me that it used to be someone."

"We'll get you a normal ring when we can. And we'll try to turn that one back into a person. But, these are what I have for now. If you'd rather put it aside-."

"No." Her eyes flash orange for a moment and… She rises into the air. "Ah?"

The orange light cuts out and she falls to the floor.

"Intense emotions other than avarice will cause your ring to shut down. That's how I killed the First." I turn to the nervous-looking Koriand'r. "Well, highness? Will you be joining us?"

She stares at the ring on my left palm for a moment, then raises her left hand.

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Headhunting 13

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24th July

16:14 GMT

Just like on Earth, when-

"Yaaagh!"

-Lanterns spar, it doesn't take all that long-

"Raah!"

-for a crowd to form. Fortunately the Tamaranians have the sense to keep well back, unlike a few Humans I could name. Double-fortunately, because while a few of the subtleties eluded Guy, John and Jordan they certainly had the basics down. I don't think the princesses have even seen a recording of a Lantern before.

Komand'r thrusts her hands forward, fortifying her bubble shield as my tungsten rounds strike home. The barrier cracks under the assault but doesn't fall apart, a noticeable improvement upon her earlier performance. I maintain fire as Koriand'r flies at me, pulses of orange light blasting towards me from her ring. I evade, letting my ring project the trajectory of each shot and move me out of the way. Her trajectory I track by eye, firing a single flashbang round right at her face. Its proximity fuse detonates it just before it hits her, the flash-

"Agh!"

-blinding her and sending her crashing to the ground.

"Koriand'r, your ring can heal your eyes! Focus on your desire-" I send a tendril to assail Komand'r's bubble from the side. "-for physical wellness!" The tendril makes contact. Oh dear, she's lost awareness of her environment again. I have warned her about this.

Corrupt.

The barrier shuddering for a moment is all the notice she gets before construct veins appear over the outer surface.

Construct acquired.

I fold my arms behind my back as I throw her ball up into the air and then slam it to the rocky ground.

"Ah!"

Komand'r yelps, then pushes herself up and forms a construct-sword.

"Komand'r, what did we say about-"

She shoots forwards, environmental shield flaring. I'm actually getting a little worried about her stability. I send a filament at her from the ground just behind her… Ah, she's gotten the hang of resisting those with her environmental shield, good. I float backwards, letting her approach but at a slower rate. As she flies past her fallen sister Koriand'r pulses with orange light, her eyes clearing. She looks around for a moment and then raises her left hand in a 'resume' signal. I fire a short volley of tungsten rounds at her and she leaps into the air to evade.

Komand'r approaches melee range and swings her sword at my chest. My armoury tong construct grips it by the flat of the blade before it can complete its arc and the sudden stop causes it to slide from her hands. As soon as she loses physical contact her construct fades to nothing and she barrels into my construct armour hands first.

I hear the crack as several bones in her hands fail to withstand the impact, even through her environmental shield. Enhanced for strength and not endurance, perhaps?

She falls back, her teeth bared and glowing construct-gauntlets forming around her injured hands. No, that won't do at all.

"Komand'r, stop."

"I will still-!"

"No, you've lost focus. Stop. Meditate. Resume later."

"I can…" She shudders as she tries to prove my assessment wrong, momentarily showing me that her eyes are emblazoned with the orange sigil. "I… can-."

Her ring cuts out and she falls onto a construct mattress that I've placed just below her. Her mind clear, she looks at her broken fingers in horror as the pain finally gets through. She bites down a whimper as I raise my right hand and scan them.

"Seven phalanges. I would suggest that in future if you wish to punch a hardened target that you create the construct gauntlets first."

She grits her teeth as she answers. "I will remember that."

Orange light plays over her hand as I knit the bones back together. "Better?"

She flexes her fingers. "Yes. I am ready to resume our mat-."

"No, you're not. Without the ability to retain your situational awareness, your effectiveness in combat will be crippled. And this is just against a single opponent who's pulling his attacks; against a fleet that's actively trying to kill you, you will die unless you understand the self-discipline aspects of my training."

She nods reluctantly, rising off the construct platform under her own power. A glance is enough to know that she really likes being able to fly. I'm not sure if she's learned to repair whatever damage her childhood illness did, but.. I don't think I'll do it for her. It will be an excellent encouragement to learn how to use her ring for non-combat purposes. Komand'r flies over to our starting area and sits down cross-legged, her hands meeting fist-to-palm across her chest.

Koriand'r comes closer. I haven't signalled 'stop' in her case, but she appears to be assuming that she should take a break if her sister does. "What do you want me to focus on?"

"Armour constructs. I shouldn't have been able to disable you like that. You can bet that Emperor Damyn has reviewed the fight leading to the death of his progenitor at length, which is why you'll both be undergoing power armour training this afternoon."

"I have not fought in such heavy armour before. I am .. concerned that it may impair my movements in a way which I cannot adequately compensate for."

"That's a reasonable concern under planetary gravity and in an atmosphere. You'll be in space, wearing a power ring. Trust me when I say that power ring based flight does not care about a little extra weight from your armour."

She doesn't look convinced. "Will this armour stop capital ship weaponry?"

"Not the primary weapons, but if those hit you then it's your own fault for not dodging. It will however severely reduce the ability of their point defences to harm you, and those are far more effective against small targets like Lanterns when at close range. Did your training on Okaara cover ship to ship combat at all?"

"Somewhat. But it was not a particular focus. And we didn't study ways to destroy capital ships from the outside using infantry."

I nod. No, I don't suppose that they would have. "Fair enough. How are you finding the solar suit?"

She tenses and relaxes a few muscles, looking at the material as it moves over her skin. "It feels.. strange. I am so used to the idea that covering my skin weakens me that I have seldom worn so much clothing."

"Hopefully it'll help get you familiar with the practice. Of course, you can charge yourself directly with the ring, but in case you run out of charge or your focus slips…"

"How have you managed, not being able to feel love or hope or compassion? I have tried to imagine it, but the idea is so alien to me that I cannot comprehend it."

"I can feel them just fine. Even using my ring."

She considers that for a moment. "You said that your ring was different to ours. Is that why we have such a problem?"

I shake my head. "No. My ability to feel other things while using my ring comes from a… A great moment of self-comprehension I had last year when I.. saw all of my desires in their proper place. I'm afraid that I don't know if it's possible to train people to undergo the same thing-."

"I am low on power."

Koriand'r raises her left hand and looks at her ring. "How do I recharge it?"

"You will eventually get a personal lantern so that you can charge yourself. For now-" I hold out my left hand and call my lantern out of subspace. "-please use mine."

"How do I-?"

The Ophidian leaps out of my lantern and coils around her!

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Headhunting 14

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24th July

16:19 GMT

Koriand'r's eyes widen as the Ophidian wraps two coils around her abdomen and another around her left arm before ducking her head to look at Koriand'r's ring. Which is crackling with orange light.

"Koriand'r, this is the Ophidian. The Embodiment of Avarice."

"Is she friendly?" Her ring dims and the Ophidian pulls her head away slightly.

"Eeh. Could be. Ophidian?"

The Ophidian raises her head. "Who is this?"

"This is Princess Koriand'r of Tamaran. She's our second recruit."

The Ophidian bends her neck, coil shifting as she leans around to stare Koriand'r in the face. "New Lantern?"

"I had been planning to give her a little longer to acclimatise-." Koriand'r's ring starts glowing again, light.. appearing to be flowing from the ring into herohdear. "Ophidian, why don't you let her go for the moment?"

"I cannot feel the Gnat. Is he dead?"

"No, I-."

"Why can I not feel the Gnat?"

"We cut him off from the orange light. He can't use it. Can't feel it."

The Ophidian tilts her head to the side. "He suffers?"

I nod. "Yes, I'm afraid that was-."

"I am pleased, my Agent. Make the Gnat suffer. Keep him contained and unable to get anything he wants. Make him know that he will never be able to get anything he wants ever again."

"I don't.. think he's even capable of wanting things at the moment."

"Even better! Leave! Him! With! Nothing!"

The feedback in Koriand'r is continuing, the woman herself shuddering… "Can do. Ophidian, you're damaging your new Lantern."

"Making her more like you."

Yes, I see now. She's trying to get the orange light in Koriand'r to mimic my soul tattoos. But if she keeps forcing more orange light into Koriand'r's soul then the whole network will destabilise. It's not like Larfleeze who was already almost totally attuned to the orange light or me who used magic to make it work, something like that would seriously mess anyone else up. "Ophidian, the whole point of this was to show you different sets of desires. Different ways to want things and different sets of wants. You're destroying something, and once you've done that it becomes something you can't ever have. Is that what you want?"

Her coils immediately loosen, her body moving away from Koriand'r in all directions. "No. That is the worst thing."

Without the Ophidian's support Koriand'r collapses to the ground. I see that behind her Komand'r has risen to her feet, though she hasn't got as far as offering actual help yet. Koriand'r pushes herself to her feet, looking-.

"YOU WILL NOT CONTROL ME!"

Beams of orange light blast from her eyes and strike the Ophidian in the chest. They don't do much other than slightly confuse her. Koriand'r recognises her error almost immediately, generating construct armour around her body -now why can't she do it like that when we spar?- and charging the Ophidian with razor-sharp talons outstretched.

Impressive effort, but at best that will do nothing and at worst it might annoy the Ophidian. I fire off six orange tethers which attach to the back of her armour.

Corrupt.

The armour shimmers for a moment-

"GET OFF ME!"

-and then solidifies as a sword construct slices through my tethers. Okay, no.

"Drain."

Orange mist boils away from Koriand'r's construct armour as it comes apart.

"And peace."

The glow in her eyes blinks out. For a moment I see her normal eyes, then they roll back in her head as she collapses into unconsciousness. I stick a crash mat construct under her to soften her landing.

"And that, Ophidian, is why you have to be careful who you feed more power to than they're ready to cope with."

I pull the crash mat over to me, studying Koriand'r's interior in detail. The orange is glowing, but the rest is.. still there. I put my right hand over her forehead and draw out what I can.

"What.. is that?"

Komand'r has come closer, staring up at the Ophidian with naked desire evident on her face.

"Ophidian, Princess Komand'r of Tamaran. Our first recruit." Okay, think that's done. I drop my hand and lower the crash mat to the ground. "Princess Komand'r, the Ophidian. The Embodiment of Avarice."

The Ophidian bends down slightly to get a better look at her, forked tongue flicking out as she tastes Komand'r's soul.

"Is it a god?"

"God.. in the sense of an arcane intelligence arising from the Dream? No. God in the sense of a being who is worshipped by others? I don't think anyone worships her, but it isn't impossible. God in the sense of being ludicrously powerful? Yes, yes she is."

"Another Lantern? Are there more?"

"No, not yet. I was going to introduce you once they got the hang of using the orange light."

"This one is more in tune."

Komand'r looks to me for an explanation. "More 'in tune'?"

"You're better at using your avarice as the driving force behind your actions. That's more or less how the Ophidian perceives the universe. Ophidian, would you please return to my lantern? I'll introduce you to the whole team within a month."

"Yes."

Her construct body shimmers for a moment, then disappears. I sigh with relief, then take hold of my personal lantern.

"You.. keep a god in your lantern? Is she what you draw power from?"

"It's-. No, it's complicated, and it isn't strictly speaking necessary to learning to use your ring."

"Is she more powerful than you?"

"Oh yes, but left to her own devices she'd just do what Larfleeze did and go to sleep on a big pile of valuables. Larfleeze had far more power than me and three billion years in which to use it and what did he do? Nothing. I can actually do things with the orange light." I fix her with a steady stare. "You have a power ring; you don't need more power, you need to use the power you already have better. More precision, more control."

Komand'r nods. I'm not certain that I've convinced her, but she appears willing to give me the benefit of the doubt for now.

"Now, how about we run through the Hierarchy of Needs again?"

Komand'r's eyes linger on my lantern for a moment before nodding. "If we must."

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Headhunting 15

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25th July

14:19 GMT -6

"When you said I could come here after school, this wasn't exactly what I had in mind."

Miss Selton paces uncomfortably inside the isolation chamber, casting the occasional scathing look through the observation window when she thinks my attention is directed elsewhere.

"I know, and I do appreciate you assisting me like this." Air flow… Good. Response… Minimal. Excellent. "The test subject-."

"Don't call him a test subject."

"Alright… Ah, test.. volunteer?" That gets me a look, but she doesn't otherwise comment. "Has had continual exposure to the control.. volunteer for ten minutes with no ill effect."

"Ping."

"Just so."

It's so good to have a Box again, even if it is like having a Sphere I can't just escape by walking up some stairs constantly attached to me. Himon was.. pleasant enough, once Scott explained things to him and to the crowd of Lowlies at the resistance gathering. I assume that Barda killed Amazing Grace before the mob could beat her to death as a result of all of the superhero exposure she's been getting lately; there's no way the old her would have been anything like that merciful. I'm still not sure if he incorporated the yellow sigil for decoration or if it's so much a part of my nature that it had to be included or… What? Maybe that's just the shape this Mother Box has and the resemblance is a coincidence.

Miss Selton folds her arms across her chest, her gaze moving all around the small room and its rather limited furniture. "I'm only doing this because Lynne asked me, okay?"

"Understood. Unlocking the door now."

I press the button which unlocks the inner door, hearing a dull clank from inside the chamber. Still no reaction.

"Are you sure this is safe? I don't think a vampire with fire powers would live all that long."

"He's responded well to the treatment so far, and has shown no response to simulated scent or visual triggers. And he's been smelling you for ten minutes with no observable affect."

She doesn't look entirely convinced. "Why is it you've got me doing this? Rather than anyone else?"

"Doctor Robbins is post-menopausal. Ms Black is heavily cyberised, Jean isn't Human, Miss Amane is a New God, Miss Shimmer used to be a Pony and Lynne hasn't reached full physical maturity. If it makes you feel any better, none of his previous victims reanimated."

"Not really." She glances at the door. "Oh, just get on with it."

I press the button to access the intercom on the other part of the isolation chamber. "Alright, you can come on through now."

The.. hybrid whose name I can't think looks up at the camera for a moment, then rises from his bench. "Mister Grayven, are you sure about this?"

"There are no certainties in this life, my boy. But if you haven't reacted by now I'd be very surprised if you were going to." Apparently that wasn't what he wanted to hear. "Drones with holy water sprays and force field projectors are on hand just in case you relapse. But it probably won't come to that. Come on, get this done and you and your brothers can have a walk around the rest of the facility."

"Why not my sisters as well?"

"Because male and female bodies work differently and the formulation which works on you doesn't work anything like as well on them."

He nods, still looking slightly downcast. Oh for goodness sake, if he doesn't get up I'm going to have one of the drones drag-. Finally he walks towards the door at the speed of a condemned man heading for the scaffold.

"Miss Selton, he's heading through now."

"And if he turns into a freaky monster it's okay to burn him."

"Until he's no longer capable of attacking you or containment activates, yes. But that shouldn't be necessary."

"Right…" She starts pacing again, realises what she's doing and forces herself to sit down. She tenses as.. the hybrid pushes the door open. Pleasant enough looking youth, nervous as anything. But he volunteered the moment I asked. He's got a real sense of duty. She's the first person other than a blood relative he's been in close physical proximity to without anything barring the way. The first adult he hasn't eaten. He freezes up and the two of them just sort of stare at each other for a moment.

"Feel anything, lad?"

And don't I feel like a prize ninny for having to call him 'lad'. You'd think that becoming a god would have bypassed the whole 'can't say my old name' problem. Or being Anti-Lifed. I mean, exactly how much of the original me is left at this point?

"N-no, Mister Grayven."

I watch him on the monitor for a moment. "Breathe, boy."

He remains still for a moment, then takes a very shallow breath.

"Still with us?"

"Y-yeah. I can smell-" He looks at Miss Selton. "-you, but it doesn't, like… Trigger anything."

"Glad to hear it." She turns to me. "Can I come out now?"

"Not just yet. Would you mind changing?"

She frowns. "What?"

"Not you, him."

"Oh yeah, I haven't seen your scary-" She turns back just as the hybrid shifts into his Demonic Manbat form. "-mmmode." The youth shifts nervously as she stares at it, jumper and shorts stretched awkwardly around his altered torso and legs. "Huuuuh."

"Smell anything now?"

This was the tricky bit. When they're in Human form their supernatural power is turned right down. Probably to improve their chance of successful infiltration, something Vampires and Succubae have in common. It turned out that -once Miss Shimmer and Zatanna started working on it in earnest- coming up with an alchemical solution that worked on Human-mode was reasonably easy. Monster-mode is far harder. Not only is their sense of smell far more acute but they tend to throw off externally applied magics far quicker.

"Yes. No. She's still there, I know she's… Ready-"

"Excuse me?"

"-but I don't want to eat her."

Miss Selton opens her mouth, then shuts it again. Then she turns back to the window. "Are we done now?"

"Unless you want to perform an auto-erotic act, yes."

"What?"

"It would be the strongest possible trigger for his-."

"No. I don't."

"Then, yes." I press the button to release the electronic lock on the external door, then walk over to open the manual component. "Out you come."

"Finally." Miss Selton is out of the door at a pace just shy of a jog. "Am I done now?"

"If you'd like to head up to the psionics lab, Jean is ready to perform your latest knowledge transfer. Thank you for your-" She's already walking past me. "-cooperation."

"Mister Grayven?"

I turn back to where.. the boy is standing at the door. Back in Human mode without prompting, very good. "Come on out. I'll give you the tour myself."

"Could we..? Could we let my brothers out as well first?"

Hm. Testing them individually would be better, but all of their initial results came back the same as his…

"If you like. Let's do one last round of scent testing first, then we can sort you all out some proper quarters."

He beams at me, then dashes off to tell them the good news.

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Headhunting 16

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26th July

06:42 GMT

"Koriand'r, you're-" Construct point defence laser turret seventeen fires, striking her on her construct armour's left hip. "-too slow again."

Her construct wobbles for a moment, then she vanishes in a flash of orange. A moment later main gun three fires, two faux gravity rippers cutting a path through empty space.

"Better."

"Haagh!"

Komand'r transitions into a blind spot behind turret four, cutting at its anchor point with an orange bolt of exactly the level of force required. Normally that would be protected by a force field, but in this exercise they've already done enough damage to shut that down.

I slowly bring the ship construct around, as if the pilot were attempting to bring other guns to bear. At the same time a construct hatch opens and construct marines leap into the void, guns firing. Real Citadel marines aren't much of a threat to Lanterns at anything less than Zerg swarm levels, but the first few times we did this neither sister could resist stopping to fight them. They've both learned to desire at a higher Maslowian level since then. Killing the bastards who are right here is less important to them than killing all of the bastards for certain. Urge indulgence is less important than ultimate goal realisation. I don't have anything much to compare the speed with which they've internalised my lessons yet. I had only theory and comics to support my own early efforts, and I was as much concerned with not going insane and learning how to superhero as I was in trying to become an efficient Lantern.

Komand'r creates a tower shield to block the construct marines' first volley, scans the ship and then transmits something before transitioning away. Alright, the Citadelian captain would know that the shields and point defences on that area of the ship are down. His response would be to accelerate and spin, preventing the attackers getting an easy attack run at that-.

Warning: avarice detected.

Oh yes?

Koriand'r warps back, eyes and forearms glowing brilliant orange as she fires an almighty blast at the vulnerable section of the ship.

Ring, simulate.

Compliance.

The construct around me shudders and jumps sideways in space. That's a lot of power she's putting out. I'll wait to be pleased until I find out how mentally coherent she is at the moment. The ship construct's armour keeps together -sort of- but it buckles and its rigidity is causing the simulated interior of the ship to twist and break. Non-critical systems are the first to fail -the Branx are pretty good ship designers- but with the shockwaves passing through the ship it's only a matter of time-.

Primary combat power disabled.

The ship's main guns and primary shield die at once, and its rate of acceleration falls dramatically. What the captain's response to that would be depends on the captain. In some places, a ship may be allowed to surrender in that sort of situation. In Vega, unless you're worth a ransom anyone striking their colours should expect either immediate death or enslavement. But I don't think a Citadelian officer would try that unless they knew help was coming, in order to survive while their allies beat off whatever had attacked them.

If you're being boarded by a superior force, detonating your own main power plant or sabotaging your own FTL drive to make a death-jump is a viable -if obviously fatal- tactic. But given how force transmits badly through a vacuum it doesn't do much to anyone outside the ship and usually isn't easy to rig, ships being designed to not destroy themselves. Slightly more sensible options include using reserve power generators to charge your FTL system's capacitors to either get to help or at least get away from whatever's killing you, or depressurising part of the ship to turn faster and bring your small guns to bear.

Yes, that sounds like something a competent Citadelian might do.

The ship construct lurches around in a semi-controlled fashion, combining the shove Koriand'r is providing with the release of its own 'atmosphere' to turn and bring turrets to bear on her. The moment they get the angle they light up… And expend themselves on the construct barrier which Komand'r has put up to protect her sister.

Ship damage critical.

The hull armour is bent inwards, its own mass crushing the interior sections closest to the hull. Marines throw themselves from every exit point, shooting as they come. But the princesses have enough presence of mind to keep moving, keeping the damaged part of the hull in line of sight and Komand'r's shield between them and the majority of the incoming fire. Infantry heavy weapons can be a threat to Lanterns who are locked in place, but they aren't routinely issued to marines set mostly to repel boarders. Too much risk of doing damage to your own ship's insides. By the time they're out of storage and deployed-.

The ship's hull gives way, reserve power failing across most of its structure as the ship cracks in two. In all but the most poorly built ships this sort of damage doesn't result in a colossal ship-devouring explosion, but there's no way a ship in this condition can keep fighting.

I dismiss the construct, Koriand'r's beam shooting past me into deep space for a second or two before cutting out. I turn in their direction and take a careful look at them. No injuries, Koriand'r is glowing intensely orange but she's mastering it, the sheer power of it diminishing as I watch. She is also managing to avoid doing what she did last time she went for a big shot and trying to focus on another colour as a quick attack-cancel. They're both wearing spacesuits but the sudden loss of manoeuvrability resulted in her being completely vulnerable to the ship's fire.

"Well done." I drift closer, taking time to check that they aren't about to blast me. Hasn't happened since day one, but I'm pushing them harder and I certainly know how the orange light can mess around with your thought processes. "How are you both feeling?"

I can just about make out Komand'r's smile through her faceplate. "Victorious. You weren't going easy on us?"

"I was matching the performance of a Citadelian battleship as closely as I could, neither going easy nor going hard."

She raises her right hand to admire her ring. "Not so difficult at all. Though.. I can see that an entire fleet of such ships would be a far harder prospect."

I nod. "I'm glad that you can keep your perspective like that. I was also impressed with your cooperation. It's nice to know that you've overcome that particular problem. Koriand'r?"

"I… I am… Finding it hard not to focus on a single target when I… Make that sort of attack."

"Not surprising. We can do some practice, have you needing to attack and defend simultaneously. Are you alright to continue now, or do you need a break?"

"I think it would be best if… I am sorry, the mental state I must occupy to use so much power is… Uncomfortable."

I nod again. "Alright, let's head back to Tamaran. Komand'r, if you would?"

Orange light extends outwards from her, enveloping Koriand'r and I. Koriand'r's been able to produce higher peak energy outputs than her sister by a good margin ever since the Ophidian touched her, but she doesn't have the control to match yet. That'll be useful if the Controllers try to argue for an alternate system to the one I want to use.

Alert: warp in progress.

The stars shift as Tamaran reappears. Heh, right where we left it. The orange glow around us dims as Komand'r checks her work. She seems satisfied, and begins flying back towards the planet. A moment later Koriand'r follows on behind her and I bring up the rear.

"Alright, both of you: how does destroying an enemy starship fit the Hierarchy of Needs?"

Komand'r responds first. "Basic: destroying something trying to kill us provides safety from physical harm, and allows us to rest without keeping an eye on the sky at all times."

"Good. Koriand'r?"

"Psychological: cooperative feats promote feelings of unity amongst those who must work together to achieve them. Esteem is gained from serving the general good by destroying those who threaten the community."

"Good. And what else?"

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Headhunting 17

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27th July

02:37 GMT

Possibly due to the… Difficulties the Citadel is currently experiencing, their picket around Rashashoon is somewhat reduced from my first visit. None of Admiral Dakyn's flotilla, obviously, but one of the two which were guarding the outskirts of the system has also been withdrawn.

"Is that it?" Komand'r looks at the assembled ships contemptuously. "I was expecting something more substantial."

Koriand'r frowns. "I thought that Rashashoon's commerce made it an important part of the Citadel Empire. Why is it not better defended?"

"If I had to guess, a combination of the fact that three out of four of the groups in this region who could threaten it are at peace, and the Citadel's own internal difficulties. If I were Emperor Damyn, I'd want to keep my Admirals where I could see them. At least until my throne was secure."

Something about that arouses Komand'r interest. "Amalak, Jarko and the Spider Guild. Who is the fourth? The Green Lanterns?"

"The Crown Imperium has a large enough fleet that they could capture Rashashoon. But their own worlds would be left undefended and they'd be bled white by raiders doing it. And I don't think their fleet could survive the full wrath of the Citadel and its allies."

Koriand'r has turned her attention from the fleet to Rashashoon itself. "Are there Tamaranians down there?"

"I didn't give you a power ring so that you could ask me questions you can easily answer yourself. If you want data, use your ring to get it."

She raises her left hand, orange lights flickering around her left arm and head. "Yes, there are. Tamaranians, Karnans, even a few Branx. Other peoples as well." She lowers her arm, lights dying down a little. "Why Branx? Why would the Citadel permit its ally's people to be treated so?"

"Slavery isn't always a species thing. Sometimes it's a result of an individual's circumstances."

She nods, then her eyes narrow. "I will recover them once we are done with the Citadel."

I smile inside my armour. I had been slightly concerned that she might insist on liberating them immediately. I'm not sure whether my training should take credit or their own natures, but both of them have retained their facility for long term planning as well as I could have hoped. "If you're ready?"

Construct armour appears around Komand'r, while Koriand'r's environmental shield flares. She has trouble with desiring armour as a baseline state. Apparently, solar power was so vital to empowering Tamaranian warriors for so long that as a culture they tend to disdain armour.

"Ready." / "Ready."

"Remember; don't destroy the battleship in your enthusiasm. We need it intact." I remember the Evil Overlord list. "Unless that would put you at undue risk. There are other battleships."

"Hmpf."

I'm not sure whether Komand'r finds the fact I think that I'd need to explain it amusing or the implication that the two of them aren't perfectly capable of doing what the mission requires.

"Go."

There's a burst of orange light as they both accelerate away at superluminal speeds, heading towards the Citadel ships. Nothing else in that region of space and we appeared far enough away that I doubt that they'll have detected our presence. Standard practice for Citadel ships is to maintain moderate shields whenever they're away from a safe shipyard, but they don't go to full combat power unless they're about to initiate an attack or they come under one.

Which means that those ships are currently far more vulnerable than the construct ships they've been practising against.

A point defence frigate is torn apart as Komand'r warps the space it's occupying and then fires an orange beam through its centre. She's moving away as Koriand'r starts her assault on the battleship, precise bolts of orange flying from her hands and striking the point defence turrets around the primary drive housing. A sensible thing for a small attacker to do: a ship that can't manoeuvre or fly away is far easier to kill than one which can.

I watch Komand'r batter down the shields of another frigate and fire some sort of rock drill construct at the ship, crunching through the hull and mashing the interior.

Ships are increasing power generation.

I nod to myself. I supplied both Komand'r and Koriand'r with crumbler rounds, but neither were able to reliably create, load and fire construct railguns in combat. Then again, they're managing well enough without them. Perhaps my dream of a perfect kill was interfering with their actualisation of a good kill?

Ships attempting to initiate long range communications.

I nod again. Ring, monitor and prepare to jam.

Compliance.

"Captain Gralg of the Assailant to Citadel Complex. I'm under attack by-"

Now.

"-Orange Lanterns! I need assistance! Any ships in the-. Citadel Complex? Citadel Complex, respond!"

Perfect.

The Assailant accelerates and rolls, attempting to line up their heavier topside guns with Koriand'r. Their point defence guns are already firing, but after a few painful kicks up the arse from me she's gotten the hang of automatic evasion. It's not light speed dodging, but while lasers are light speed their mounts aren't.

The other ships are moving into position to assist. The Citadel uses a fleet composition not unlike that of the United States navy, with battleships taking the place of carriers. The other ships are literally there to support the battleship and none of them are more than a tenth of its size. I watch as Komand'r checks her lines of sight and ducks behind another point defence frigate, using it to shield her from the other vessels while she uses construct claws to pull apart its shields before firing orange energy pulses at the ship itself. Two cruisers accelerate away from the flagship, trying to get a shot at her. Too late for the frigate as its armour cracks and crumbles under the power ring assault. A chunk of the hull comes away and the bridge loses power and atmosphere. A well run ship can carry on fighting once decapitated, but as a rule Citadelians don't have the organisation.

Komand'r decides not to bother finding out for certain and fires another beam at the ship's unarmoured interior before dodging between the oncoming medium-sized ships. That's not a good-. Oh, I see what they're doing; they're giving the point defence frigates the most time they can to get their shots off. The frigates have turned so that the weapons on one side can shoot at Koriand'r who is still attacking the Assailant while their other facing can shoot Komand'r as she engages the cruisers. The low power of their weapons isn't much of a threat to the combat-power shields of their larger brethren but they're still capable of harming a Lantern who isn't specifically trying to block them.

Komand'r slashes at one of the primary turrets of the first cruiser as her construct armour begins cracking up under the weight of point defence fire. Koriand'r is forced to create a shield construct to protect her while she attempts to thrust her orange-coated hands through the Assailant's armour.

Alert: battleship's drive charging.

Oh? I thought they'd keep trying for longer than this. Maybe the Captain has realised that his ship isn't really contributing against such small targets. I suppose that it doesn't really matter.

Komand'r flies past the cruisers and envelops herself in orange, diving through the shields of a frigate and into the ship beneath. Hiding in the hull, yes, that might help. Koriand'r turns away from the hull to generate a gun construct and using it to fire a burst of broad spectrum radiation to blind her attackers before switching position.

Alert: battleship's drive activating.

"Pull back now."

The Assailant shimmers and the orange glow from my ring matches it as I prepare to intercept its flight.

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Headhunting 18

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27th July

02:41 GMT

The most powerful ships on the seas of Earth are aircraft carriers. The most powerful weapons of Earth overpower its most powerful defensive technologies by a huge margin. These two factors have led quite a lot of science fiction writers to assume that space combat would be similar, small attack ships being the primary way of dealing damage due to their weapons being capable of damaging larger ships while larger ships would struggle to hit them. Star Wars was perhaps the most extreme example, with the first Death Star being destroyed by a single fighter. Babylon 5 had a similar dynamic, Farscape had the Peacekeepers working from Command Carriers, Battlestar Galactica had… Well, Battlestars.

The only counterexample that immediately comes to mind is Star Trek where fighters generally didn't exist until the liberation of Deep Space Nine during the Dominion War and big ships pretty much ruled. Most ships featured… Actually, I can't think of a counterexample. They didn't bother with point defences, and I don't remember armour getting mentioned until the Defiant was built. Phasers and disruptors, torpedoes and shields was what made good ships. Agility meant little; your enemy would always be able to see you and you were mostly fighting with light speed weapons at close range. You needed big ships to contain big reactors and you needed big reactors to power your big shields and power the weapons you were going to use to punch through your enemy's big shields. The reactors on small ships weren't powerful enough to power weapons capable of damaging big ships or shielding the small ships well enough to enable them to survive.

Real space combat is… Quite a lot more variable. The Citadel doesn't want to get overrun by attack craft. However, their warriors don't make particularly good pilots. And they've got a bit of a thing about their battleships being the biggest around. So, they have an entire class of frigates whose job it is to shoot small things and leave shooting big things to their battleships. And that -rather than cowardice- is why Captain Gralg is leaving the combat zone. He'd rather fight us, but he's had the lesson hammered into him that we're not something his flagship is designed to be able to fight.

His ship also isn't all that manoeuvrable, but it does have the best FTL speed of any ship in the local Citadel fleet. That's because its FTL system isn't having to fight against the ship's momentum and sheer mass to make it go from point A to point B. It can just dump full combat power into the drive and boof, off it goes. Normally it would have to hold back a bit so as to avoid leaving its support ships behind, but since the aim here is to leave them behind that isn't something Captain Gralg is worrying about. He's worrying about leaving the two Lanterns attacking his fleet behind and he's worrying about warning the Citadel.

He isn't worrying about me, sitting directly between him and the Citadel in interstellar space with an interdiction field construct. He isn't worried because at the point he set out he knew that there wasn't an interdiction field along his flight path. The only way to intercept his ship would be to know exactly when he left, and at that point he'd already be moving vastly faster than light. FTL sensors and comms that good are rare, and the sheer volume of space would usually foil such an attempt anyway.

Usually.

And then any potential hijacker would get to -if you'll excuse the phrase- witness the firepower of a fully armed and operational battleship. Unless they knew exactly where it would appear and could get inside its primary shield envelope before it could recalibrate. And even then, battleships are a source of pride for the Citadel in a way their smaller ships aren't. These things often have Psion-built enhancements like ludicrously tough hull armour for just tanking hits, prow spatial disruptors for horrifyingly effective ramming actions, highly acute targeting sensors and high-fidelity assault teleporters. I would not want to fight these with a fleet.

Fortunately, I'm not a ship.

The Assailant appears immediately before me in a flash of red, my ring immediately checking the damage,-

Battleship drive inoperative.

-shoving me around to match velocity and rotation as the battleship's hull zooms towards me at a worrisome pace-

Movement matched.

-and the shields come up behind me and a salvo of crumbler rounds fire at the hull directly in front of me.

Hull breached.

And while the weaker inner shields quickly re-establish themselves, I've got just enough time to transition inside.

The universe slows as the Citadelian soldiers in the above-port marines station try reacting to my presence. In battle, the Citadel uses marines for boarding ships that have been crippled but not killed. They use power armour and their natural strength to force their way through the damaged hull and engage the crew directly. If this ship has high-fidelity teleporters then there'll be another marine detachment assigned to that as well. Those aren't sent into wrecks but into ships still fighting back, a high risk move for those dispatched as the device has to be careful to match relative velocity if they don't want the marines to get turned to paste inside their target. Of course, if they aren't trying to capture their enemy then they can just send over a bomb instead.

Construct armour forms around me and filaments move out. The process is a lot faster than it used to be, but it's still something that at this speed I can see happening. The Citadel soldiers around me are already at battle stations, armed and armoured. The ring shows me the arms that are already moving to bring their weapons to bear on me and-

Warning: exotic transportation defence active.

-warns me that transitioning while on board wouldn't be clever.

The robot turrets are the highest priority. Only three of them, as their simple programming just isn't adaptable enough for chaotic boarding operations. In situations like this on the other hand the fact that they can't be surprised and don't need thinking time makes them the main threat. By pure chance the one furthest away had its main turret pointing my way when I appeared. It noted that I didn't match Citadelian profiles and opened fire immediately. Plasma rather than laser, which is why the first shot is intercepted by my construct armour rather than striking my armour and environmental shield. Three shots hit me before my crumbler rounds strike it, the first frying its shield generator and the second hitting its main battery.

It gets a fourth shot as it starts to explode and I move on to the other two at the same time as reaching out towards the closest marines with beams of orange light. The second turret manages a single shot which strikes my left shoulder before being shot through with a crumbler round. The third doesn't even manage that, having been facing in the opposite direction to the point where I came in and then the beams hit the marines.

Citadel marine armour is good. Hermetically sealed against vacuum exposure, armoured and force field protected and containing all the integrated communications and sensor technology that any people with pretensions to interstellar dominance should possess.

I have a power ring.

The beams of orange light smash aside the force field, bore through the helmet and strike the Citadelian beneath.

Brand.

Branding.

I shove off, thrusting myself through the room. As sped up as my mind is-

Mental pathway damage limit reached. Acceleration discontinued.

-isn't any more! Plasma bolts slam into me, other Citadelians and the walls, floor and ceiling! Beams of orange light lash out in return, punching through armour and branding those beneath with my mark. My construct armour fails, my armour's kinetic barrier doing little to absorb the heat of the plasma bolts. I keep moving, Citadel soldiers who have already been branded charging their former comrades as I fill them with the desire to aid me. I form construct tower shields as the unaffected soldiers turn their weapons towards the ones who work for me, and use the momentary respite to release the Praexis Demons.

I need as many alive as possible. Eat their guns.

A moment later the fire that had been heading my way drops to next to nothing as the swarm makes itself a more urgent target. Demons evaporate under plasma fire only to reappear from my ring, soldiers branded and not punch, shoulder charge and shoot one another while I fire beam after beam to convert the unaffected.

No alarms, I note. The Citadel doesn't use shipwide alarms, preferring to transmit the messages to individual soldiers.

The three surviving free marines realise that they've lost the room and fall back, the fortified door sealing itself behind them. But they haven't got anywhere to go; none of the Assailant's parasite craft have FTL and I'm still jamming their communications. I land and look at my troops, replacing my construct armour and repairing my power armour as I do so. Around me, marines with orange brands glowing on their chests under their armour pick one another up, strip the dead of their weapons and apply medkits to their wounded.

Good. Now for the rest of the ship.

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Headhunting 19

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27th July

02:57 GMT

Given that boarding actions are a feature of local warfare Citadelian bridges are designed to be tough. Bridge stations are fortified, protected by the same material as the outer hull as well as weak force fields. The whole bridge could be exposed to space without preventing anyone here doing their jobs. In addition, automatic gun turrets can emerge from the ceiling and the walls to support the standing marine force. In most fights it is massively excessive, and if I'd tried charging the marines working for me into here I doubt that any of them would have lived.

"Ready, Strike Team Leader?"

The main generators are already under the control of my branded marines. Between them and those we've killed, the Captain now commands a force that is about thirty percent of what he started out with and no way to counterattack. But the loyalists still hold the bridge -which on a Citadelian ship also contains the primary computer core- and the location I want to capture next. Exotic technologies.

The hulking Citadelian next to me makes the clenched right fist gesture of readiness. Then he appears to hesitate before returning it to his gun. "Master?"

"Yes. Speak."

"The soldiers inside. Two of them are my batch-brothers."

"I'll take them alive if at all possible."

"Thank you, master."

It's fascinating. Maybe it's due to their implants and how accustomed they were to having the First's thoughts constantly in theirs, but the Citadelians are adapting to the brand far better than I expected them to. I thought they'd end up like Doctor Jones, near-stupefied with their desire overwritten. As it is, other than a 180 in their loyalties they're just as functional as they were before. Or maybe it's their familiarity with the sorts of task I'm asking them to perform?

Exotic technologies is home to the device preventing me from transitioning and -as it turns out- phasing. Transitioning is useful but not essential. Phasing on the other hand is essential to my plan to take the bridge. It's also home to the ship's Psion work detail. None of them are top tier researchers but I suspect that we're about to run into something unpleasant.

Which is what Praexis Demons are for.

I don't even bother firing crumbler rounds at the force field protecting the doorway, I just wave my left arm and the Demons start sucking on it. Exotic technologies is quite close to the main generators because it needs so much power. The force field and 'facilities' stuff runs on internal power but there was a remote shut down built into the generator controls which was intended to be used in the event that one of the devices went wrong. Or the Psions did something the Citadel didn't like. Exotic technologies also has its own computer system which means that I don't have access to a record of exactly what they've got in there. Standard protocol says that if the shield is up then most of the marines have already left…

The force field goes down, my Demons faceplanting into the reinforced door beyond. Immediately, a Citadelian breaching team comes forward and stabs into it with the x-ionised blades I provided to them. Making precise cuts with the swords is not easy while wearing that armour, but trying to use explosives to get through would be an exercise in futility. A construct would work, but I don't want to give anyone watching more information on my precise capacities than I absolutely have to. And if those inside suddenly open the door I want the marines to take the brunt of whatever attack they've put together in my place.

Huh. Thinking about it, these guys might end up being the last Citadelians left. Sobering.

Cuts made around the edge of the door the breaching team plant clamps on its surface and get a solid grip. The second line squad moves up behind them, guns at the ready. Praexis Demons hover over their heads, ready to surge forward and eat anything that causes me any trouble.

"Breach."

The breaching team lift and push forward, the huge wedges of fortified door they cut free acting as palisades as they enter the exotic technology chamber. As soon as the gaps appear the Praexis Demons fly forward and flow around them. I get a flash of the interior as a plasma bolt from the marine squad inside destroys a Demon and sends it back to my ring. Six marines in cover behind heavy machinery. No support weapons. No sign of the Psions.

The palisades start to take hits, but the breaching team push forward to give the marines behind them space and a moment later my side opens fire. They're mostly just trying to force those inside to keep their heads down; there's no chance they could penetrate the door shields with the weapons they're using but they could get a lucky hit. I send a couple of Praxis Demons to get a look at the rest of the room-.

Agh, some sort of drone weapon. Small, but rapid firing and powerful enough to destroy my Praexis Demons. Eh, as long as you don't try shooting them in the mouth that doesn't actually take too much. The rest of the Praexis try swarming the marines, who respond by stepping back into cover and switching their guns to plasma-flamethrower mode. The Praexis Demons evaporate before their inferno, but that does obscure their line of sight somewhat. I dart forward, flying close to the ceiling as I move around the breaching team and lash out at the defenders' sides with orange beams.

"Nonono!"

Not a Citadelian, they don't breach communications discipline. Who else? Psion, presumably. This section has internal doors I can't scan past, but I can't-

Brand complete.

-tell which of them…

Brand complete.

I form a railgun and load a crumbler round and then fire it at the closest door. A circle of the sensor dampening material disappears, revealing a store room.

"Now!"

The universe slows. Really, they should know not to give me audible cues like that.

A door on the other side of the room opens… Quite quickly, for a door. Still pretty slow to me. On the other side three Psions are hiding at the back of a electronics workshop while a terrified fourth mans a stationary gun. Even as the door gets wide enough apart for me to see them there's a sort of small distortion in the air immediately in front of it. It was probably set to fire as soon as the door got wide enough open for it to fire. It's pointing directly at me so I start moving at the same time as I mentally signal the Praexis Demons to attack it.

Brand complete.

The closest ones will reach it in slightly less time than it would take me to create a laser construct and shoot it, and are far better at getting around defences.

Brand complete.

There's a faint movement in the air between the gun and I, which seems to spread out as it reaches the hot and electrically charged air between the Citadelians. What's left hits me a glancing blow… And doesn't appear to do anything very much. My construct armour trembles slightly but beyond that I don't appear to be affected.

End acceleration.

Compliance.

The Praexis surge forward, the one closest to the gun chomping down on the muzzle and biting it off. The Psion falls back in terror-

"I surrender! I surrender!"

And the one I assume to be either the most intelligent or the most desperate waves his empty hands to try and get my attention.

Brand complete.

Amplify.

Compliance.

"Accepted. Lie on the floor and make no aggressive movements."

They can't obey fast enough.

Brands complete.

That's the lot. "Cease fire."

Immediately, my marines stop attacking. I float in the direction of the cowering Psions.

The one who surrendered looks up from where he lies on the floor. "Please don't turn us into constructs!"

"Alright. I won't. But you work for me, now."

He nods and smiles in the most toady way he can manage.

"Now get up. You're going to be turning some of these devices off for me."

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Headhunting 20

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27th July

04:23 GMT

The door into the bridge opens and my Lanterns stroll through, Komand'r looking at each of the marines on guard duty with extreme suspicion. "So. A success?"

I step away from the captain's station and spread my arms wide. "What does it look like?"

Once I had exotic technologies under control, I could just phase up through the bridge floor and brand Captain Gralg. Naturally, as captain, his command station is the most heavily fortified though -in a remarkable display of sagacity- he didn't have access to anything that would let him override the turrets. Still, my ability to phase out, dropping underneath the deck and then phasing back in at each bridge station made overrunning the bridge a doddle.

Komand'r doesn't look convinced. "And they are now loyal to you?"

"Sort of. I modified their desires so that they now want to serve me as they once wanted to serve the Citadel."

I see a glimmer of desire from her at that, at the idea of having a legion of soldiers with no thought but how they may best please you. "You didn't tell me that was something we could do."

Koriand'r on the other hand looks a little unwell. "You can.. make people feel whatever you want them to?"

"I can make them want things or not want things, yes. I don't know if you can. It took me a while to learn, and assimilation is much more straight forward." Koriand'r still looks uneasy. "Would you rather I killed them?"

"Rather than violating their minds? I understand that you had to do this to the captain, but all of the rest? Yes."

"Simpleton." Komand'r sneers. "You would really rather he have killed every last one of them? And what if the Citadel Complex demands the chance to scan the ship's interior before allowing it past the inner defences? 'Captain Gralg, what happened to your crew?'."

She doesn't look happier. "If it makes you feel better, I can remove it once we're finished." She nods, mildly mollified. "What state did you leave the rest of the fleet in?"

Komand'r grins. "Not a single ship was left capable of moving under its own power. It was glorious."

"And the exterior of this ship? It needs to look like it's been in a fight?"

Komand'r had walked past me, strolling up to one of the marines and shoving his helmet with her right hand. His armour is far too heavy and resilient to be moved by her push, but he moves his right hand up to knock her away. "Hm. Not mindless."

"No, very much not mindless." I turn to Koriand'r. "How does the ship look?"

"The damage I caused to the hull during the initial attack is quite visible, and the hole you made is also noticeable. There should not be any difficulty in convincing the Citadel that it is genuine."

I nod. "Good. Captain, how long until we arrive?"

"A little under an hour, master, though we will reach the outer perimeter shortly." He smiles at me. "It is good to have clear direction again."

Koriand'r's face falls. "Did you.. make him.. enjoy it?"

"No. Citadelians are used to having the First's thoughts in their minds thanks to their cybernetic implants. When I killed him, that stopped. If he says that he likes it, then… He does."

Komand'r looks the captain over. "Will they survive the battle, do you think?"

"You'd be surprised. Captain Gralg has been filling me in on recent Citadel politics. Captain?"

The Captain grins. "Any Citadelian who rises high enough to become Emperor inevitably becomes unpopular with all of the rest. We all share the First Citadelian's desire to conquer and control. His thoughts are our thoughts, his blood our blood. Emperors inevitably become soft and indolent. With the First Citadelian's voice in our heads, we just grumbled about being told what to do by the Emperor until the First too grew tired of them and had one of his admirals depose him."

Komand'r nods in understanding. "And now he isn't telling you not to…"

"The only reason he isn't already dead is that the Admirals can't decide which of them should take his place."

"If he had any sense, he'd already have nominated one of them as his heir to try and break up their cartel."

"As you say, master. All I have to do to keep the fleet off me is declare for one Admiral over the others."

"And while he's doing that, we'll be hunting down the Emperor and the computer core. Our aim is to turn the Citadel Complex's defences against the rest of the fleet."

Komand'r nods. "And the shipyards?"

"No guarantees, but we are aiming to kill everything. Once the fleet -present company excepted- is vapour, there won't be anything to stop us taking anything large enough to be worth keeping and towing it back to Tamaran."

"We just have to survive first."

"If you'd like to back out-."

Her face hardens. "Hardly. I'm simply trying to be realistic." She thinks for a moment. "What would you say to us-?"

The navigator turns towards me. "Master, we will be returning to subluminal velocity imminently."

"Understood." I turn and head towards the main bridge doors. "Your highnesses, if you wouldn't mind? The Emperor won't demand to scan the entire ship but he will want to look at the bridge."

I hear them fall in behind me as I pass through the doors and head towards the lifts.

Koriand'r rises off the ground and comes alongside me on my right. "Do you know the size of the fleet which the Citadel has guarding Citadel Complex?"

"Yes." I raise my right hand and generate an approximate diagram of their disposition. "Assuming that nothing has changed since yesterday, one dreadnaught, twelve battleships like this one, about two hundred cruisers and far too many smaller vessels. In addition, there will probably be at least one battleship-equivalent from the Branx and from the Psions, and perhaps a smattering of Gordanian ships. And at least eight times the tonnage in static defences. Not counting Citadel Complex itself or the anti-ship weapons on the planet below."

Komand'r comes alongside me on my left. "Far too many for us to fight directly. Unless you've been holding anything else back?"

"If I had to fight them directly, I would join with the Ophidian. I do know how to use more sophisticated constructs than I have shown you so far, but they require more specialist training. I believe-" I land in the lift. "-that this plan is sound." I swirl my right hand around, generating a new image. "I suggest familiarising yourselves-" A bolt of orange flashes from my ring to each of theirs. "-with the internals of the Citadel Complex."

They nod as I use my ring to access the bridge. We're out of FTL and the face of a Citadelian I don't particularly recognise is on the main screen.

"What are you doing back, Gralg?"

"We were attacked, Admiral. By Orange Lanterns. My ship is in urgent need of repairs and my fleet in need of reinforcements. Permission to approach and make my report to the Emperor."

The face on the screen snarls. "Granted. Maintain course and heading. I'll get a work crew in place and wake the Emperor."

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Headhunting 21

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27th July

05:38 GMT

I feel the faintest of rumblings as the Assailant.. lands on Citadel Complex. Normally, when a ship of this size arrives at a space station it docks. A few heavy duty clamps grab the hull, gangways are extended and form atmosphere seals between the ship's airlocks and those of the station. If the two parties really trust one another there might also be a system for automatic resupply, but from the look of the Citadel shipyards it would appear that they prefer using tender vessels for that. It makes sense; they might be fine automating resupply for their own ships but I imagine that their business partners would want to check things manually. Using tenders for everyone means that they don't have to bother with two systems. Jarko does the same thing. Amalak uses an automated system for his employees and has tenders for his hirelings. The Spider Guild system is -naturally- completely automated.

The Citadel Complex is huge, but even it isn't big enough for a battleship to land inside. Or rather, it isn't designed with that in mind. Volume-wise it could fit inside about a hundred times over, if you didn't worry about the contents at all. Instead, there's a sort of… Socket system, where the part of the Assailant's hull which has the main external entrance plugs into the station. The ship side entrance doesn't have an airlock; it's clearly designed for this purpose only. It means that a huge number of people and supplies can be taken off or put aboard extremely quickly, minimising turnaround time.

It also makes it fairly easy to assault out of.

The work teams aren't surprised to see the marines waiting inside the ship when the hatch opens; they'd just assume that the whole complement wants to spend as much time on shore leave as possible. And those amongst them who are slaves generally aren't inclined to question the people who can administer physical chastisement -up to and including eating parts of them- at will. They aren't even worried that the marines are all carrying their weapons. That's pretty normal for Citadelians. And if the Captain isn't with them when he was so eager to report to the Emperor in person, well. His ship's been shot up. He's a busy man.

They don't start worrying until the guns come up.

"For the Admiral!"

The first rank accelerates to a sprint as fast as their bulk allows, firing shots at any Citadelian not with us. The second rank advances behind them at a walk and the rear rank uses their power armour to leap up, firing while in the air. Their armour doesn't have an AI but it does have an automatic targeting coordination system. Citadelian infantry guns aren't powerful enough to kill a Citadelian soldier in full power armour quickly unless several guns shoot the same target at the same time, overloading the force field and penetrating the armour. The observable effect is that while there's no communication between soldiers, squads all shoot the same target until that target is down, then move on to the next.

They might not be all that clever, but what they can do they do very well.

Return fire in the first few seconds is nonexistent. Aside from the surprise our Citadelians' threat designation system prioritises armed targets. Ten seconds in and our soldiers are filtering through the spare shipping containers of parts and supplies or standing atop them on overwatch, the defending marines dead on the deck.

Good, good.

I look down at the point defence drone the Psions cobbled together and then throw it into the dock, sending the activation signal once it's well inside. It stops, scans its environment and starts shooting internal cameras. While I don't mind the defenders knowing that someone is coming, I'd rather them not know to prepare for Lanterns until it's too late to do so. Positron containment beams lash out at various points along the walls, and a moment later I get an all-clear signal.

"We're on."

The princesses and I fly out of our sensor obscuring bunker in the cargo deck and zoom into the station. I wonder if they realise that they've now made it further than their grandfather's fleet ever did? The front wave of marines is about two thirds of the way to the inner entrances. We're not particularly close to command here, but a short blitz through Citadel Complex's entertainment section should put us in roughly the right place to kill the Emperor. The Citadel's main computer system is on the far side of command. Now I need to task a squad to evacuate the slave workers-.

Force fields activate at the far end of the room, blocking most exits. Komand'r and Koriand'r fly ahead, construct tower shields appearing as they watch for incoming attack. I generate railguns and load crumblers, firing my first volley just as the first autoturrets appear. The defensive system here was designed under the assumption that this was somewhere an enemy who made it this far would be likely to try to board and there are a lot of them. Fortunately, we planned with them in mind. Squads facing high rate of fire weapons duck into concealed positions, rising up to shoot the gun's force field before returning to cover to allow their own to recharge. Squads facing slower firing high power weapons keep moving, trying to deny a multi-kill shot to the gun that can easily blast through their shields and any cover they could get behind.

Which leaves we three Lanterns facing the four anti-ship guns. These are intended to shoot through the hull of any ship landing troops and out of the other side. Before the Citadel reached its present size they were external guns and -in extremis- this section can be opened to space to allow them to fire at targets outside the station. Unlike the smaller battery powered turrets these draw power from the station's main generator, which means that they actually aren't all that slow to fire.

The guns aren't pointing at me, the simple program controlling their actions immediately realising that we're far too small and agile to reliably hit. Instead, they try to fire directly forward through our marines and into our ship. Komand'r and Koriand'r block a shot each with their construct shields. Both are knocked back by the strike and both shields are badly cracked. I manifest additional railguns and start shooting at the same time as generating a barrier of my own.

You. Will. Not.

Two anti-ship plasma cannons vent their fury against my barrier as my crumbler rounds eat through the force fields protecting them from-.

Warning: teleporters active.

But I'm jamming-!?

"Base to base teleportation-"

I see robot guns appearing on the-. The cargo transporters! Komand'r replaces her shield and generates a sword as she flies towards her gun. Koriand'r is a little slower off the mark and spots a heavy turret as it materialises, locks onto her and fires. Rapid fire turrets blindside my marines in three places and I see shields overload and soldiers fall.

"-unaffected."

The guns shooting me cease in order to recharge, their protective coverings moving over their muzzles. Recharge time is about twenty seconds.

"Agh!"

Komand'r tumbles in the air as a heavy turret shoots her in the side, her constructs visibly fading as she stops focusing on how much she wants the guns destroyed. She's not actually hurt, but that could change if she gets hit again without getting her head back in the game.

My crumblers eat through the armour covering one of my assigned guns. The gun itself has a force field around the barrel, but that only takes one more shot to wreck. One down. Next gun.

Koriand'r detours to assist a marines squad-. No! Why would you do that? And she… wants to so ordering her not to wouldn't actually help. I budgeted for this but it's still irritating that it happened so soon. My railguns are chewing through the armour -I don't know what it's made of but some clever Psion integrated materials which resist whatever it is which makes crumblers work- but we've only got seconds until they fire again.

Komand'r rallies, air around her rippling as she slams into the force field protecting her gun sword first. The first shield flickers and dies and she goes to work on the second. Koriand'r flies at the gun she was assigned to, her marines pounding along behind her and assisting their fellows as they go.

And then the gun armour retracts to allow them to fire again.

Komand'r manages to get her sword through to the gun before it fires. Plasma spurts in all directions as muzzle containment fails but she's still hit by enough to finish off her shield and construct armour. Her power armour looks somewhat melted as well, but she's still alive and the partial misfire has ruined the gun. She tries pushing herself up but the armour is too damaged to allow it. Orange light runs all over it as she works to correct that.

Koriand'r rushes a shield and throws herself in the way of her gun once more. She's a little too slow, not managing to soak more than a fraction of the beam before her shield and construct armour fail. What's left of the beam scythes down most of the marines she 'rescued', burns through several cargo pods and then burns into the Assailant. Can't judge the damage quite yet.

My railguns tear apart my second gun the moment it shows itself, then I go to work on Koriand'r's.

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Headhunting 22

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27th July

05:44 GMT

The Citadelian I'm healing tries to rise just as soon as he's physically able, and his armour screeches in protest. Another orange pulse to repair that and he rolls to his feet and lumbers back towards his squad without a second thought. That's the last of them. Losses on the attack were… Well within budget, and we're ready for the next advance. The breaching squads are already working on the doors leading to the entertainment section.

"Captain Gralg, what news?"

"I declared us loyal to Admiral Dakyn, master. I felt that might serve to explain your presence."

"Good thinking." I lift off the ground and fly over to the soon-to-be-breached entrance. "And what are the other ships doing?"

"Moving out of the way of the Citadel Complex's defence systems. No one likes the Emperor enough to risk being shot by Dakyn's other supporters, but no one wants to try getting to here to join in. Heh, and Dakyn's out of the loop completely. Not that the Emperor would believe that."

"What's the Emperor saying?"

"Plenty of things. Heh, some of which don't make a lot of sense considering that we're clones. He gave up on trying to appeal to my loyalty pretty quick, and he's been cursing Dakyn over the comms since. Dakyn had no idea what was going on, but the Emperor's ranting made it pretty clear that if the Emperor survives then Dakyn won't."

"So he's effectively on our side."

"That's why none of the fleet are trying to shoot us in the arse. Eh, not enough to do anything. And it turns out that the Emperor has a vellocet habit, which hasn't exactly impressed anyone." He makes a huffing, grunting noise. "Working for you is far better, master."

Oh, you flatterer. You're just saying that because I rewrote your brain. "Let me know if anything requires my attention. Orange Lantern out."

The breaching team starts clamping their handles onto the cut segments, ready to drive them forwards. Ring, scan… And feed that information to the Citadelians' armour.

Compliance.

Nothing but hover drone platforms immediately behind the door. They're not large enough to kill Citadelian marines quickly, but they can drain shields and spot for marksmen. As well as revealing the Lantern presence. Hm. I attach a tether to the Psion drone and pull it down to me.

There's an almighty tearing clank as large pieces of the blast door come free and the breaching squad advance. The drones on the far side don't open fire immediately. Probably waiting until they can get a clear shot off. Then the next squad advances, their helmets' displays already showing them where the drones are. They exchange fire with the three closest drones, and moments later the drones are down and the marines are all standing.

Koriand'r looks at me expectantly. "What is our next target?"

A flare of orange and I've created a copy of the Psion drone, adding a small gravity repulsor drive. "We don't have one immediately. We let the Citadelians clear the entertainment section and only intervene if they can't progress." I send the modified drone after the Citadelians. Curious that they've never adopted support drones for their forces. Probably the First wanted to keep control of everything directly. Or maybe he felt that his offspring wouldn't be able to maintain them in the field?

"But we are far stronger! Fighting alongside them, we will advance far faster and with fewer deaths."

"They're Citadelians, Kori." I can hear the contempt in Komand'r's voice, though she's careful not to let herself feel hate. She's learned that lesson. "Killing their kind is why we are here. Don't think that if he wasn't controlling their minds they would hesitate to kill us."

The entertainment sector of Citadel Complex is a little like a huge shopping centre designed to cater to a warrior race. Some establishments are slave run, owned either by Citadelians retired due to injury or infirmity or by aliens from allied power groups. Others are owned by the house, a way of parting the Emperor's subordinates from the money he just paid them. And some are mutually owned, like most of the fighting pits that serve as a means of dispute resolution and entertainment. Most fights aren't actually to the death; killing unenslaved aliens is usually a slap on the wrist thing but killing other Citadelians just isn't on. Fights can take just about any form, from ritual Klingon style head butting contests to armed combat with a referee. For death fights there are actual gladiatorial arenas, though most of those are run as PvE. It looks like most of the workforce has pulled out…

"And every moment we don't show ourselves is one less moment they have to prepare a Psion surprise."

"It… I understand your logic. But it galls me to let our allies fight on unsupported."

"Remember the Hierarchy. Remember why we're here, and realise that our cause and our actions are one and the same. There is no conflict."

Koriand'r looks away. "This is not how I was trained."

I create another two drones and send them to cover our forces. They can't maintain their stealth effect while moving, but they're small targets and it doesn't look like things survive long under concentrated fire around here anyway.

"Overwhelming force? Only giving up what you can afford to, while preserving what is most precious? I remember being taught that."

Koriand'r narrows her eyes. "I think I remember our lessons somewhat differently, sister."

"What would you like to do with them?"

"Why not maroon them as you did the Gordanians?"

"Because the Gordanians have the skills necessary to start a settlement and the Citadelians don't. They're soldiers, and… That's about it."

"Even so-."

"Tamaran is going to need more soldiers, both to man your ships and train a new army. Would you take them?" She hesitates to respond. "And that's leaving aside the fact that I don't actually like putting people under my influence like this. Would you have me do it for the rest of their lives?"

Lightly armed Citadelians charge at the advancing line from one of the fighting pits. They've got the same plasma projectors as our side but only light armour. The beneficial effect targeting protocol markers is having on our side is immediately obvious when the attackers pick their targets, pointlessly firing on individual opponents rather than combine their fire. They wouldn't be able to stop the attack, but they might have been able to kill one or two.

"Does it cost you anything?"

"Don't know. Haven't tested it enough. Not that I've noticed."

One of our squads splits off to check the interior of a building. Looks like a pub. No Citadelians, though a Branx is standing behind the bar and.. several clearly terrified slaves are cowering in various corners. The Strike Team Leader sizes up the barkeeper while the rest of the squad checks the property.

"Orders, master?"

"The Branx can stay. Evacuate the slaves and then return to the assault."

There's a sort of.. grunt of acknowledgement, then he gives the orders. The barkeeper appears to protest and his bar receives a plasma bolt by way of admonition.

"Koriand'r, slaves incoming. Give them a basic check-up and then load them into the shuttles."

"Very well. But this discussion is not over."

"As you will. Komand'r-" Ah. "-it appears that our soldiers are about to begin encountering serious resistance. Prepare for combat."

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Headhunting 23

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27th July

05:58 GMT

The thing about Emperor Damyn -when compared to most emperors- is that he isn't special.

He wasn't born into an ancient dynasty and raised in the expectation that he would one day occupy a position of great power, educated and trained by the best tutors and generals his family could find. He wasn't so outstanding an individual that he rose to stratospheric heights due to superlative personal skills and achievements that set him apart from his fellow man. Citadelians are clones. They start identical, and aside from rare attempts they hardly ever vary the formula that has worked so well for so long. He was given the same education that all of those around him received and experienced the same social factors that they did. He rose from infantryman to officer not by being more capable than those around him but by being luckier.

Oh, as he grew older he seemed to get the hang of the political elements slightly faster than those around him, but given his origins he could be almost totally certain that was the result of environmental factors. And then, when the previous Emperor finally failed the First for the last time, he was bumped up for reasons he couldn't understand. Implanted with a few more upgrades and compelled to remain on the Citadel Complex. Given that the First would have been in his thoughts more than in those of any other officer… Did he know that something was going on? Or just..? Feel powerless despite his apparent power? Or was it just frustration at being at the top with nowhere else to go?

Since he was basically a seat-cover for the First's throne, I suppose that I shouldn't be too surprised that he developed a drug habit. But being visibly out of it when making an important call? That was just stupid. Did he get too used to having the First nudge him whenever he had to do something important, or has the stress of actually being in charge already turned him from a recreational user to a full on dependant?

No idea. But it looks like he hasn't lost all of his planning skills.

Across a wide open plaza force field barricades and stationary support weapons are covering every approach to the command section. True armoured vehicles and fliers couldn't fit in that part of the station, but between drones and the heavy-variant power armour being worn by the elite guard they've done their best under the circumstances. Marines in my service are finishing clearing the entertainment section behind them of slaves -and suggesting that the remaining residents might want to find somewhere else to be- while others are forming up in preparation to assault the defences. They're outnumbered about three to one and every so often the defenders take a long range shot with their heavy weapons at the buildings they're using for concealment. The internal structures of Citadel Complex are resistant to infantry scale weapons but heavy weapons go through them easily.

I try scanning the elite. Twenty three of them in total, but what exactly does their armour do?

Unable to identify.

No, that would have been too much to hope for.

"Strike Team Leaders. Switch to cold guns and return fire."

Obedience is immediate, and I feel a momentary pang about the influence I have over these people. They're malevolent and most likely irredeemable, but…

I wouldn't trust anyone else with this power. Heh, even though I'm going to be giving it to hundreds of people. It's not a contradiction; I'll just be keeping an eye on how they use it, hoping for the best and quietly expecting the worst. Do I trust myself with it? I certainly don't like using it, but the alternative was.. killing them. And possibly not being able to sneak in here at all. The advantage this has over assimilation is that the organic person survives and this can be turned off. If Tamaran takes me up on my offer, I'll have to leave it on permanently. There's no way they would integrate peacefully into any society… I don't think. Amalak said that he wanted some. Would that work?

As my marines begin moving into firing positions they start taking plasma fire from the front line of infantry on the other side of the plaza. Range is seldom a problem during fights on space stations, though plasma attenuation might have been a problem if we tried coming in through the outer hull. Rather, they had been holding off firing their smaller weapons due to the need to score multiple hits on the same target to pierce their shields. Their rear lines are holding fire, perhaps waiting to see if our side intends to charge. Their heavy weapons cease their sporadic firing, aiming at points where our side appears to be massing.

And then the cold guns open fire.

Interesting thing about cold guns: due to the nature of the weird, standard-model-of-physics-breaking thing it does, most types of force field don't work against it. Which means that those barricades the loyalists have erected do little to stop the white beams of absolute zero striking home wherever they're pointed. The armour material the barricades are made of causes them to serve as reasonable insulators, designed as they are to maintain integrity against plasma fire. As a result, localised super-cooling causes them to crack and fracture and expose the gun emplacements behind them. Other shots hit the guns themselves, cracking barrels and containment bottles. The incredible cold combined with the weapons' own safety measures causes most of them to fail safe, but I see three go critical and explode while seven others experience serious leaks. The fliers fall from the air almost immediately, their anti-gravity systems completely unable to keep functioning when cooled to zero Kelvin.

And the effect on the infantry…

Mister Snart has really been soft-pedalling people.

The outer layer of Citadelian power armour is designed to be a good conductor in order to prevent multiple plasma or laser shots to the same location piercing it. The same is true of the muscle enhancement systems underneath. The only thing that really helps is that the armour doesn't have cybernetic plugs to aid the user.

It doesn't help by much.

It takes about two seconds for a beam focusing on an infantryman to freeze them solid. Not that they fire like that; the combined effect of several beams works just as well and whole squads are firing. They.. work along the lines of our enemy, six beams striking their targets one after the other and leaving frosted statues in their wake.

Return fire picks up immediately, everyone firing, plasma trails making it look like the air is on fire. The armour of the elite soldiers appears to have something… Some sort of ultra-insulation or a plasma barrier, perhaps? That allows them to survive getting hit. I'm not even sure that the cold beams are making contact.

I see the first of my marines start taking hits. They respond by moving, trying to prevent themselves taking multiple hits in the same point and getting behind cover before their shields fail completely. But there's a lot of fire coming back this way and several go down. Most of those that do won't be getting back up.

"Those weapons of yours are rather effective. Are they of Psion manufacture, or did you bring them from Maltus?"

"No, those were designed on Earth."

"Fascinating." She almost.. purrs it.

"But I'm afraid that they're not for sale. And I'll be taking them back from the Citadelians once we're finished here."

"Oh, is that really necessary? I'll admit to hating the Citadel but they.. die rather well. I could think of dozens of uses I could put them to."

"No shortcuts, Komand'r. If you want nifty technology, get Tamaran reindustrialised faster and develop it yourselves. If you want my aid, I have limits. If you can manage it on your own, good luck to you."

The defenders are down to a fifth of their starting number while ours have taken far fewer casualties. In several places the defenders are wavering and pulling back. Good show. Now, what are-.

The elite guard charge, stowing their plasma weapons and opening fire with integrated positron beam projectors. They cross the intervening plaza at a loping, power armour assisted run, ignoring cold beams as they come. In return their own weapons are.. cutting marines down with worrying regularity. They apparently down shields far faster than plasma. Not.. sure why they weren't using them from the start. They're two thirds of the way across when our units start switching back to plasma and pulling back into the entertainment section, aiming to limit the elite's mobility. And stem the bleeding from the elite's attack.

"Is it time for us to involve ourselves directly?"

"I believe so. Koriand'r?" I glance over to where she's greeting the latest group of former slaves. A couple of Tamaranians are amongst them.

"I would rather remain here-." Her ring dims, and the light she was using to mend their wounds ceases. She looks momentarily shamefaced, then rallies. "I will oversee the evacuation."

"Very well. Komand'r, with me. We need one to interrogate. Kill the rest."

"My pleasure."

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Headhunting 24

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27th July

06:01 GMT

I don't bother shooting cameras as I fly. As soon as we reach our destination whoever's running the defence will know who we are and it just isn't worth the delay to keep them in ignorance for a mere five seconds. The corridors and initial areas of the entertainment sector flash past as Komand'r and I fly through. She's grinning savagely, balls of orange light forming around her hands. I generate a single railgun and load a crumbler round, but I think… The Citadel is a blight on this part of the universe. It's fundamentally incapable of becoming anything else due to the nature of the people who make it up. Yes, I think I'm in the right mental place to use orange light energy pulses instead.

The ring shows me the elite guards advancing into the arcades. Our marines have pulled back further than that and are preparing ambushes. Death amongst the elite from the initial exchange are.. zero. Hm. That's theoretically within the performance thresholds of really good power armour and our marines weren't targeting them specifically… Still, there could be something clever going on.

Ahead, a single elite guard runs down an arcade at full sprint, possibly trying to trigger whatever ambush our marines have prepared. Either that or get behind them. He can see us, but he doesn't stop. He just raises his positron beam slightly before the ball of orange light from Komand'r strikes him in the chest. I slow to observe the eff-

Fzp.

-ect.

The positron beam hits my construct armour in my centre of mass, the beam playing over my chest plate and leaving a pale orange line where it travels. Komand'r's bolt appears to have spent itself against him with no significant effect. The positron beam cuts out as he switches to a one-handed firing posture and draws his plasma weapon. Problematic.

Let's see if mine do any better. I take a moment to muster my loathing, my need for the target to no longer exist. Then I raise my left hand.

"Be not."

A line of orange flashes out from my ring, quick enough that it appears to be instant. I run it left to right, his plasma weapon evaporating and his.. armour… Remaining inviolate. Okay, the plasma weapon is external. It's not covered by the same protection as the rest of the armour…

Praexis Demons, go. Distract and consume the elite guards.

The Demons fly out far faster than normal. Are they eager to get stuck in or is that an effect of my focus? Have to experiment later. Three latch themselves onto our first opponent -to no appreciable effect- and the rest flow around him and into the surrounding corridors. The elite soldier staggers to a stop and tries to bring his positron beam to bear against me once more. I evade, ducking under the beam as it slices a hole through the wall to my left and the ceiling above us. My railgun fires in response, the crumbler hitting a stupid Praexis Demon and evaporating it load a new one! My second shot hits his left leg. No effect. Ring?

Crumbler round was destroyed without making contact.

The elite soldier gets his positron beam into the mouth of one of the Praexis Demons and fires. For a moment the Demon swells, then bursts and evaporates. How-?

Accelerate.

Compliance.

Okay, positron weapons work by firing clouds of carefully contained positrons into solid matter, annihilating electrons as they encounter them. This releases energy and often causes the suddenly positively charged matter to do all sorts of exciting things. It shouldn't do anything to my construct barrier as that isn't comprised of matter. It's the same reason why constructs are immune to cold beams: no matter to still. No electrons to neutralise. So, what? The damage to my construct armour came from energy released when the positrons were exposed to the air? Powerful, if it can tear apart a Praexis Demon faster than they can feed.

But that doesn't explain his armour just ignoring everything. I mean, yes, crumbler rounds can theoretically be stopped by sufficiently lucky point defences as they need to strike a solid surface in order to trigger. No point defences are visible, so..? Active plasma shield? No, those are clearly visible and horribly inefficient outside of a vacuum, Okay, Psions, maybe they've created something with a similar performance profile but without the disadvantages… Wouldn't explain the effect on constructs, but if I assume that's what's happening how do I get through it? A singularity projector might well work, but I need this station more or less intact in order to destroy the fleet outside. And I don't want to risk breaking space-time.

Oh, flipping heck. All that time I spent trying to get the princesses not to use melee weapons…

I take an Nth metal cutlass off my equipment harness and charge.

Mental pathway damage limit reached. Acceleration discontinued.

I roll left as a positron beam comes straight for my face and fire a positron beam of my own back at him. There's a slight shimmer -I was right- but no real damage. Okay, reacts differently to positrons? Nothing on the database about a force field with that performance profile. The soldier twists his hands and two blades of dull blue energy appear, held in a guard position. And I suspect that he knows how to use them rather better than I do.

Of course, the fact that I can't transition doesn't mean that I can't fly really fast.

I jerk back in the air an instant before he slashes with his right sword, my momentum being absorbed by my ring. Next, I yank myself around to his right while his own blade is momentarily out of position. He tries sidestepping to void my attack, but power armour sword dancing is something you need lots of practice to get right and he isn't quite quick enough to prevent my cutlass hitting his right upper arm.

There's a crackling white discharge of energy, then my construct armour dims to prevent me being blinded by the brilliant flash! I back up out of riposte range and wait to see what the result is. It passes a second later, revealing my opponent still functional… Ish. The outer surface of his armour is heavily corroded, his energy blades have died and his positron beam is clearly inoperable. And I can scan h-.

There's a surge of radiation as his positron source loses containment and the anti-electrons inside neutralise every electron they can in a ferocious pulse of radiation. When my construct armour decides that it's safe for me to look again there's.. not much left of this elite soldier and the floor where he once was is pitted, cratered and partly molten. Right then. I was planning on destroying this place anyway.

"That sword, what is it?"

"Nth metal. Usually you'd have to beat up a Thanagarian to get one. I killed the First's bodyguard." I take another out of subspace and float it over to her. "Strike and evade. Work from the periphery. I'll stop their advance."

She takes hold of the sword with her right hand, testing the weight and balance for a moment. "My pleasure." The air buckles as she flies away, her existing construct armour vanishing in a puff of orange and being replaced by a heavier form.

Now, what will I be flying into?

While I've been distracted the elite soldiers have stormed down the arcades, and… Flanked the marine ambushes by charging through the walls they were using for concealment. I can't even definitely identify the marines' former forward positions, there's just.. so little left. I can see a crater where one of the elite appears to have lost containment -weight of fire, perhaps?- but other than that they're all still in action.

I generate a railgun and rapid fire, shooting out all of the walls between me and the closest elite soldier before flying through at maximum speed. The elite soldier is facing away from me, positron beam firing at point blank range at a marine who has already lost his left arm. I slash at his back and fly on past out of the hole which once contained the shop window, slashing again to cut through the plasma gun of the elite soldier there. He drops his gun and goes to ignite his sword, but I've already struck the force field protecting his head. I'm already flying upwards as the first one detonates.

Okay, next-

Fzp fzp fzp.

-target. Three elite in a triangular formation, turning their attention from gunning down my marines as they fall back to take a shot at me. I jerk, jink and finally trigger my armour's phasing system. That gives them a momentary pause as beams pass through me and then I've closed the distance, phasing back in, re-establishing my construct armour and slashing the right arm of the closest with my cutlass.

Next.

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Headhunting 25

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27th July

06:09 GMT

The surviving marines begin forming up once more as I float over to where Komand'r stands admiring the icy statues of the defenders. "I see that you were successful."

She turns towards me, a cruel smile on her face. "It wasn't easy. Once I breached their armour there was such a small window. Then I remembered what you said; that assimilation was the most horrifying thing one being could do to another." She pats her new acquisition on his right cheek. "That simplified matters somewhat."

I nod. The Citadelian Construct Lantern looks badly burned. The process must have finished just as he lost containment. Either that or Komand'r ripped the armour off in a less than delicate manner. His face is blank, impassive. I never thought to find out whether they can.. feel pain like this.

"What do you want me to ask him?"

"We need information on the disposition of other forces on Citadel Complex, any traps the Emperor has for us. Any more novel weapons the Psions have given him. You can compel him to answer easily enough, or call him into your ring. That immediately gives you everything he knows, though it can be somewhat-"

Komand'r holds out her right hand.

"-overwhelm-."

"It isn't working." She frowns. "I'm wanting him into the ring but it isn't happening. What's wrong?"

"I'm not sure. It might be something to do with your ring already being a person… Not sure. Just ask him manually."

Her frown graduates to becoming a small scowl, but she nods. "Very well. You, thing. Tell me what your master has planned for us!"

"Nothing. We were his only loyal defence."

Komand'r looks surprised. "This is it?"

"The defence of Citadel Complex is mostly fleet based. There are cargo handlers, civilians and slaves, but we were virtually all that he had in terms of loyal soldiers."

"Not bothered, are you?"

"You might be content to simply achieve our objective. I want blood." She takes a couple of deep breaths, then turns and punches the ice-Citadelian next to her! Shards of armour and meat explode outwards in all directions, raining down across the plaza. That seems to momentarily satisfy her. She turns back and gestures to the enemy wounded with her left hand. "And what of these?"

One of our marines comes forward with his plasma gun in hand and jabs the muzzle at them, grunting interrogatively as he does so.

"No, that would be wasteful. Ring, brand and heal."

Compliance.

Our marines didn't leave all that many alive. Most of those who survived fell in the opening exchange from exploding support weapons. It won't make up what we lost, but I'm sure they'll manage to make themselves usef-.

"What is that?" I turn from my work as Koriand'r flies over the plaza at speed. She's looking at the Construct Citadelian, and she keep looking as she lands and walks closer. "What have you done to him?"

Brand complete.

Komand'r turns away from her sister and walks slowly towards the passageway leading to the next section. "Isn't it clear? You, slave." She reaches back with her right hand and clicks her fingers towards her new acquisition. "What's your name?"

"Grad, mistress."

"Grad, run ahead and see if there are any ambushes set up."

"Yes, mistress."

Brand complete.

I wave my left hand, creating a cutaway image of this part of Citadel Complex. Not far to go-.

"Master, the ships have begun firing on each other. Your orders?"

"Get mobile. Shoot back at anyone who shoots at you, but don't overcommit and don't go anywhere near the stationary defences. The Assailant getting destroyed would be inconvenient."

"As you command, so shall it be."

"Why did you let her do that?"

Koriand'r is looking decidedly unhappy about her sister's acquisition. "Because we need information. Are all of the slaves evac-?"

"So she turns him to orange light? His body denied the peace of death, his mind enslaved and his soul beyond the reach of any afterlife?"

"No, I can finish him off. I'm not sure exactly-."

"And your slaves? Are they aware? Do they..? Suffer in this condition?"

"Yes, they're aware. No, I don't think they actually-" I see Teekl. "-suffer. And the only ones I have… Aside from one who was transformed by someone else, are Demons. Inherently malevolent creatures with no chance of redemption. I am not unaware of the moral issues involved in assimilating someone. I brought them to your attention in the first place. But could we please continue this discussion after we're back on Tamaran?" She looks away, then grudgingly nods. "Right. I think our next stop should be primary power. It's not far from here."

Komand'r looks back and spends a moment considering the diagram. "Why not just push on to command?"

"Because anything they've got left that could hurt us will require huge amounts of power. I don't believe that the Emperor can win, but he might be able to make us lose. I don't care which of his ships he uses the external weapons to shoot but losing the Assailant would make evacuating harder. As would be a scuttling charge that prevents us destroying any surviving fleet elements."

Komand'r shrugs. "Why not both? Take your Demons to the generator while my sister and I lead your marines against command. If this-" She looks around us. "-is all they could muster I doubt whatever they have left will even give us pause."

Hm. She has a point. And I don't want the fight outside to conclude before we finish our work here. Whether those ships would end up being on the Emperor's side or not.

I nod. "Alright." I expand the construct image to show the main teleportation platform to command. "Obviously, you can't use this for your initial attack. But if you force your way inside you can use it to bring in the rest of the marines." They both nod and I turn away from the image towards the assembled marines, now joined by a handful of those who minutes ago were their deadly enemies. "Marines of the Assailant, it is time for the final push! Capture the command centre and kill the Emperor!"

Fists pound the air. "Rahgh!"

"Follow the orders of my subordinates." I generate two large railgun constructs, load crumblers and point them at the ground. It'll be better to make my own passageway than go through an easily predictable route. "I will join you as soon as I have disabled primary power. Fall out!"

"Rahgh!"

I fire my railguns and then fly down the hole, Praexis Demons spreading out before me.

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Headhunting 26

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27th July

06:16 GMT

I lower my railgun slightly. "While I do appreciate you yielding promptly, I am a little surprised."

The wizened Citadelian in front of me shrugs. "I've seen seventeen Emperors come and go. This one wasn't anything special."

I look at the soldiers standing at ease on the other side of primary power's fortifications while their leader negotiates with me. "And.. your detail?"

"One didn't get a clue." He sniffs. "He won't be a problem anymore."

Ruthless, pragmatic… I've really got to see if I can keep this one alive.

"If you've been through this before, I'm sure you know why I'm here."

He nods. "You want to turn off the power to external weapons before the Emperor decides that he's bigger than the Citadel and shoots up the fleet."

A natural assumption. An Admiral carrying out a putsch wouldn't want the fleet crippled. I do, but I was planning on using the more indiscriminate fixed defences rather than Citadel Complex's guns. "I wouldn't mind cutting off the whole command deck actually, but yes."

He nods again. "Sure, we can do that. You want to come oversee things?"

"Naturally."

He turns around, making a small motion with his right hand as he does so. I presume one of the Citadelians behind the barricades presses something, because the force field protecting them deactivates. Then he starts walking towards the entry to the reactor chamber. "Bit of a surprise about the Tamaranians."

"It looked like the whole attack was a surprise."

"Nah. I felt the First's voice in my head-" He points at the visible part of his implants with his right hand. "-stop, same as everyone else. After that it was only a matter of time. Dakyn's smart. He'll be a decent Emperor." He glances back. "Unless you lose."

"I didn't think that the First's existence was common knowledge."

He snorts as the blast doors open and he leads the way towards the power control station. "I revered the First my whole life, but I always thought the whole 'voice of the First' thing was a metaphor. Sure, I got smarter the more implants I got, but that's what they were for, right? Then, boom. You killed him and that.. instinct was gone."

"You seem remarkably calm about it."

"If I'd got dumber, I'd probably be angrier. But as it is, someone who used to be able to control my actions and.. thoughts can't. No Citadelian would accept being controlled like that. Not if they knew what was happening. And as far as I can tell, I'm as smart as ever. Maybe a little more self-interested. Last couple of Emperors I at least made a token fight of it. But, that could just be age."

"You knew that the First died?"

"Heh. Yeah. He spent just enough time here after putting on that ring to tell everyone to watch him. So we did." He smiles at the thought. "I didn't even really believe that he was the First until he died." He starts up the steps to the reactor control platform. "I mean, we all look the same, don't we?"

"So why are Tamaranians being here a surprise? Do challengers usually keep aliens out of it?"

"They're not usually front and centre like this, but we've had aliens involved before. Usually mercenaries. But I haven't seen a Tamaranian warrior since we conquered them. I didn't think they'd side with one Citadelian over another."

"I needed Lanterns, they wanted power rings."

"And you've got some deal with Dakyn so everyone's happy." He doesn't look quite so sure about it. "Reason I ask is, after their attack here failed we made… A few modifications to Citadel Complex. Probably easiest just to show you."

He pulls a lever, and a quiet humming I'd been hearing in the background falls in volume. Not quite silence, but the reduction is quite noticeable. "Power down. When we did a rebuild after the fight with Tamaran I had separate shutdown systems put in. Just so the next guy wouldn't smash the place up to spite the guy he was deposing. Or the other way around."

"You worked here long?"

He pulls another lever and a heavy metal shutter covering what I presume to be a window to the main reactor starts to slide away, golden light shining out. "I'm the oldest Citadelian I know of. I've spent half my life looking after the Citadel Complex. Couldn't tell you exactly how long that was." He turns a knob, then pushes a few more buttons. "Take a look."

Odd, but alright. I float towards the window. The ring has records of most reactor setups that could power a space station like this, so it shouldn't-.

The…

Heck…

A naked, grey haired man surrounded by flickering golden light hangs suspended in… Ring?

Device not recognised. Based on comparison to known Psion technologies, analysis suggests that it may be a telekinesis suppressor.

He's human, or at least close enough that I can't tell the difference. He's suspended in some sort of force field, dangling from where it grips his shoulders. Around him, there's a sort of frame, spherical in outline. The golden energy spiking off him doesn't pass beyond that limit but is drawn into it whenever it intersects. He looks starved, his skin slack and his ribs clearly visible. His eyes are.. slightly open, though he isn't looking in this direction. His face…

"Adam Blake."

"He was a powerful warrior. He covered the Tamaranian fleet's retreat when we defeated them. Unlucky for him the Psions had a few new tricks they wanted to try out." He pauses. "The old Emperor -the one before the one before Damyn- used to come down here and just.. watch him, sometimes. Damyn doesn't care."

"His power… You're running all of Citadel Complex off him?"

"Stops him from going anywhere. We've still got normal reactors, but this guy could rip battleships apart. Anyway, you see the problem. The Tamaranians find out that he's here-."

"Are your conventional reactors still in working order?"

"Yeah, but-."

Bringing him back… Finding their grandparents' bodies was always going to be a long shot, but bringing Captain Comet back… "What would happen if he were released?"

"Ahhh… Just.. shut everything down?"

"Yes."

"I don't know. He was trying to kill us pretty hard last time he was free, and I don't know what being stuck in there for so long has done for his mind. If it was me… Tear Citadel Complex apart in an insane rage, maybe?"

Fair point. And that would make it far harder to destroy the fleet. "Bring the other reactors online and let me inside. When I give the order, slowly deactivate the device keeping him there."

"You.. sure about that..?"

I float over to the armoured door leading into the chamber where Mister Blake is imprisoned. "Yes."

"Because I don't think-."

"Brand."

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Headhunting 27

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27th July

06:22 GMT

"Mister Blake?"

I'm standing outside of the cage, the systems around me now near-silent. The golden energy which old Earth and Tamaranian records show to be the visible effect of his telekinesis is crackling less frequently, though the apparently random spurts are still earthing themselves in the frame. The power is being diverted into capacitors, so if Emperor Damyn had any plans for his defence he better hope he has enough batteries. The device the Psions were using to encourage Mister Blake to lash out lies in pieces on the floor. In the unlikely event that I decide to study it there are backups, but at the moment I'm more concerned with the man himself.

"Mister Blake?"

I can see colours inside him. I can see the shallow rising and falling of his chest. He's alive at least. But I can't scan deeper than his skin. As far as I and the elder Citadelian know everything that would suppress my ring has been turned off, save for the frame and the suspension field. If I can't scan him then he's the one stopping me. A self-protection reflex? Sounds plausible. Ah heck, I wish I'd asked Alan more about him. How his abilities work. Yes, asking him about other superheroes he knew well seemed logical and there was no real reason to go back to a man who he didn't know all that well and who hadn't been on Earth for over fifty years. Still…

"Mister Blake? Are you with us?"

His eyes are blank, lifeless, his pupils pointing at the floor and not tracking anything I wave in his line of sight. So, choice is: leave him and join the princesses, keep trying to get his attention, or remove the cage.

"Orange Lantern Two Eight One Four to Princess Komand'r."

An image of her head appears above my ring. "Two thousand eight hundred and fourteen what?"

"It's the number of the Sector I come from. Since I can't say my name and since there's more than one Orange Lantern now. Power should be down now. Any trouble?"

"A few traps, clever in nature, foolish in utilisation. A few soldiers, hopelessly outmatched. We should have control of command in minutes. Will you be joining us when we kill the Emperor?"

Branding him.. might be better. I'm confident that my ring can bypass whatever security the Citadel has once I can directly access the components… "Seen any Psions?"

"Not yet. I'm looking forward to that."

"We need their knowledge, Komand'r. Don't do anything rash."

"I do know how to assimilate."

Yes, she does. And I'm sure that gaining the knowledge of a top level evil scientist won't have any negative effect on her mental state at all. Or encourage her in unfortunate directions. "I'll be with you as soon as I can. Two Eight One Four out."

I lower my ring and take an x-ionised knife out of subspace. Okay, let's… Let's assume that he wakes up. What's the thing most likely to encourage him to respond positively -or at least rationally- to my presence. His parents died before he left, his sister Edna died in nineteen sixty one… Shit, he probably doesn't know-. Wait a second. He was born in the thirties. He'd have been a teenager during the Second World War. I could use Alan's voice or a hologram-. No, he's a telepath, that wouldn't work-.

Oh, just get on with it.

I reinforce my environmental shield, add telepathy defence constructs (not enough to keep him out, but strong enough that he probably won't be able to reflexively kill me) and stab the part of the frame closest to me with the knife. Lights go out over a chunk of the frame, so hopefully it isn'turk-urk-urk!

**[Ships drifting in the void as flame flares through holes in their hulls, then goes out as the spilling atmosphere is consumed.]**

I'm slammed back against the wall of the chamber as the frame explodes in a flare of gold-white energy!

**[The first rank accelerates to a sprint as fast as their bulk allows, firing shots at any Citadelian not with us. The second rank advances behind them at a walk and the rear rank uses their power armour to leap up, firing while in the air.]**

Part of the wall melts as the suspension field generator superheats the metal around it and falls out in a pile of slag. Mister Blake grasps his own body in a white/gold aura, his eyes glowing the same colours.

**[Gold/white light around me as my ship accelerates away from Earth.]**

**[Oh shit, opening fire with everything!

"Did you dare think I was not prepared to die for my cause as well?!"]**

Crushing pressure across my body! I'm being held together by my environmental shield, but he can crush harder than I can resist! Why did he have to access that memory?!

**[A living room, Nabu's voice over the radio explaining that the aura keeping the All Star Squadron out of Europe has collapsed.]**

And you couldn't just have been fixated on Diana like every other teenaged boy? I mean, okay, her old costume was a bit frumpy-.

**["Commodore Amalak, Mister Jarko, may I make a suggestion?"

Jarko waves his left arm languidly. "By all means."]**

There were perfectly good reasons why-.

**[Two old style Tamaranian navy vessels fly through space towards the Citadelian ships protecting a convoy of slave transports. The Citadelians fire, their gravity distortion waves being stopped dead by a gold/white energy field.]**

**It's to your credit, but minimising violence and allowing a transition to a more peaceful-.**

**[A snort of agreement. "Throwing in that axe thing was a great idea. Can't stop playing with it. Like my daughter with a new doll." Another snort. "He wants me to ask if you want to make this a regular thing."]**

With an effort I force my mind to jump tracks.

**["My intention is to absolutely abolish the ownership of sentient beings in Vega, but for now…" I gesture towards a nearby building. "Please, avail yourselves of the facilities."]**

**[King Myand'r greets the returning slaves in person, embracing his daughters before moving on to the others.]**

**Mister Blake, I'm trying to free you!**

**[I nod, getting to my feet. He shifts forward to the edge of his chair and gets his feet directly under him before rising. "I'll see you.. when I.. see you, I suppose."

He nods, holding out his right hand. I step toward him and wrap my arms around his chest. "I'm sorry I couldn't do better."

He puts his arms around my back. "Just don't ever stop trying."]**

"Urff."

Mister Blake lurches slightly in the air, his eyes now directly focusing on me.

**How long?**

**You've been here for about forty years. We're about to capture the control deck and-.**

The pressure around me vanishes and the glow around him intensifies.

**Then this is forty years overdue.**

There's a flare of light, and he's gone.

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Headhunting 28

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27th July

06:25 GMT

The liquefied remains of the ceiling, and.. a circular section of the floor above us and… Quite a few floors above that sloshes down into the containment chamber, splattering against my environmental-. I fly upwards, creating a construct cone over my head to divert as much of it out of the way as possible.

"Komand'r, Koriand'r, incoming Captain Comet!"

"You-?" I can hear the joy in Koriand'r's exclamation.

"He's here."

I shove the slag aside and accelerate, twisting around the tunnels Mister Blake ripped in Citadel Complex before emerging into… A somewhat battered techno-barbarian feasting hall. The broken and torn bodies of Citadelians and Psions litter the room, the main table tossed aside and Mister Blake hovering like a vengeful Angel over the heavy metal throne occupied by the cowering and clearly terrified Emperor Damyn.

**How does it feel!?**

White/gold light envelopes the Citadelian Emperor.

"Nonopleasedon'tnono-!"

His body contracts with a horrible snapping sound, neck pulled into his shoulders and his ribs bending inwards. Another snap and his arms and legs are flattened against the sides of his torso. Another snap and his head is.. similarly flattened, then his.. body sort of.. collapses inwards. The resulting ball of meat is.. maybe fifty centimetres in diameter. Mister Blake stares at it for a moment and then slumps in the air.

I look around at the sound of running feet and see a squad of our marines burst into the room, weapons at the ready. Mister Blake's aura flares again-.

"No! No! They work for me! They're on our side!"

His eyes narrow slightly, then two marines collapse. **Huh. You can control people's minds.**

"… Technically, I rewire their souls. Look, if you saw my memories you know-."

**I'm not exactly a precise instrument at the moment. I wasn't choosing what I saw. But I did see you killing Fate. He was a great hero-.**

"I had perfectly-. I had reasons, and I'll happily explain them in detail once we've finished off the Citadel."

**And how are you planning on doing that? It takes a lot more than killing one Emperor to destroy the Citadel. Hell, I could probably tear this whole space station apart without preventing them from reforming.**

"My plan was to.. use the Emperor to take control of the outer defences and use them against the fleet. Then drop the Citadel Complex itself onto the cloning facilities on the planet below. With no fleet, no way to make new Citadelians and no space station there wouldn't really be anything left." I look at the ball of mushed Emperor. "I'm.. not sure how we're going to do it now. I might be able to bypass the security with my ring, or perhaps the engineers stationed here might be able to rig the controls-."

**I took the information on how to operate them from the Emperor's mind. It shouldn't be too hard.** The glow from his eyes brightens for a moment, and the meat ball flies down his entry hole. A moment later there's a geyser of gore as the meat ball explosively expands. Delightful. **Now, where's-?**

His eyes clear, the aura around his body vanishes and he collapscatching! The construct stretcher appears behind him and turns, bringing him horizontal before he can hit the floor. When was the last time he ate something? I take a flask of nutritional liquid out of subspace and fly over to him. Goodness me.

"Mister Blake, your mind may be willing but your flesh is weak." I attach the flask to the construct and manoeuvre the straw to where he can reach it. "Suck on this, slowly."

**Need to…**

"You can't do anything if you're dead, and it would be stupid if you died now, when the Citadel is about to fall. I'll take us to the control centre and you can tell me-" Koriand'r flies in past the marines, Komand'r close on her heels. "-how to work them."

Koriand'r doesn't quite shove me out of the way as she comes up alongside the stretcher and starts scanning. "He is gravely weakened." She turns her head to glare at me. "Why have you not healed him?"

"Because I don't have enough information on his 'healthy' state-."

"You are the same species-!"

"He's a metahuman! Their bodies can be completely-!"

**I prefer 'mutant'. And I can heal myself perfectly well. I just need more… Raw material.** He turns his head slightly and sucks at the straw for a moment. **Let's get to the control centre.**

Komand'r immediately sends her Construct Lantern down the short corridor to the control centre proper. She gives it a moment and then follows on behind him. I briefly hear the fizzing sound of plasma fire, then nothing. Koriand'r backs up as I float the stretcher and myself after them.

I hear a body collapse. "All clear."

The control centre itself is.. a near identical copy of the bridge of the Assailant. Aside from the corpses. I suppose there's no real reason for the Emperor to spend much time here himself; he can stick up a communication screen anywhere he feels like being. Komand'r is standing in the communications station, prodding at the controls in order to-.

Images of the belligerent parties appear on the screens lining the walls in front of us. A quick glance shows that the Psions have left and the Branx are keeping their distance. Fire appears to be being exchanged between… Four factions? The ones that the Citadelians manning this place thought were loyal are clearly marked, but there's nothing to indicate who the other groups are. I spot the Assailant trying to keep out of the path of the dreadnought as the latter finishes off another battleship. The dreadnought isn't marked as loyal, and I'm going to assume that the Admiral in command thought that he was first in line for the throne.

"Orange Lantern to Assailant. Damyn is dead and we've captured the command section. Get somewhere safe."

"Nicely done, master! Moving to obey!"

Komand'r looks disappointed. "We could have just killed him."

"Yes, we could." Koriand'r looks mildly mollified. "Mister Blake?"

**Exactly what defences am I looking for?**

"Warden stations. They're a sort of light speed shotgun, designed to stop oncoming fleets. They added them to the defence network after your attack on the place."

Komand'r frowns. "Why haven't they used them already?"

"Because they don't want to totally devastate their own fleet. I imagine that the Emperor thought that killing the rival claimants would be enough to restore order. We -on the other hand- actively want to kill as much of it as we can."

Several panels glow with gold/white light. **Okay. Got it. I'm not sure exactly how to target with it.**

"Just get them pointed in roughly the right area. It's a shotgun, not a rifle."

**Okay.**

Quick check that the Assailant is… Hm, directly below the Citadel Complex and hugging the hull. Not completely safe, but Citadel Complex's shields should be able to absorb most of the incoming fire.

"Pull the trigger."

One of the interdiction fields on Tamaran is set up to teleport tiny amounts of dust into the path of any ship trying to reach the planet through conventional acceleration. Since force equals mass times acceleration, the massive acceleration of such a ship means that only tiny amounts of mass are required to create enough force to destroy the ship. The Citadel's warden stations are built around the idea of making it work the other way around: firing tiny particles at near light speeds at ships moving at comparatively low speeds. Normally, firing an imprecise weapon in space is a waste of time but these are designed to throw out so many near-light speed projectiles that they can actually work.

The Citadel ships currently exchanging fire were in a relatively narrow corridor of space, which makes it even easier. One moment they're on screen, and the next?

Gone.

Good.

I nod at the expanding vapour clouds which were once a fleet. "Koriand'r, organise the evacuation. Komand'r, turn Citadel Complex's guns on any remaining enemy ships. I've got a colony drop to arrange."

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Headhunting 29

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27th July

10:07 GMT

It puts it all in perspective, really. The Citadel Complex is the largest space station in this region of space. It's a good deal larger than the comparatively modest prison station in which the Dominators are probably keeping Vril Dox the Younger. And yet, as it falls to the planet below I can barely-. Ah, there. A mushroom cloud.

Komand'r floats a little closer. "I can scarcely believe that's it."

"What were you expecting?"

She frowns introspectively. "I'm not certain. Perhaps a gruelling war lasting years and costing us dearly. I suppose the only example I have to draw on is Tamaran's last war with the Citadel."

"Sorry to disappoint."

Ring, scan. Mm. Near total devastation. A giant crater where a fortified cloning facility used to be. Where the mountain it was in used to be, come to that. Already the whole area is enshrouded in dust thrown up by the impact and-. There's a flash as one of the capacitors discharges its stored electricity into the air. It won't quite turn it into a nuclear winter down there, but anything that survived the initial impact probably doesn't have all that long to live.

"I'm sure that I'll be able to find enough to keep me occupied. There were a few Tamaranian war veterans amongst the slaves we rescued."

"Don't try to rush them into service immediately."

She doesn't bother replying, instead turning back towards the refugee flotilla. The Assailant is the largest ship, but we've pressed dozens of Citadel Complex landers into service as transport vessels. Since it's us Lanterns who'll be transporting them the fact that they can't go faster than light under their own power is pretty much irrelevant.

Most of the non-refugee population of Citadel Complex scarpered as quickly as they could after the 'we're dropping the station on the planet' alert went out. Some tried rushing the command centre, but they didn't have anything like the elite heavy power armour and as a result were rapidly reduced to a series of frozen statues. Most of the non-Citadelian population made an orderly evacuation. The Citadelian evacuation was… Less orderly. Not enough FTL capable vessels for everyone, though everyone made it out on something. There are a few smaller Citadelian ships hanging around the edge of the system with their FTL drives warm, ready to run if it looks like we're heading their way. They survived the slaughter of their larger comrades by chance, being shielded by larger vessels with fresh shields. I'll leave pickup duty to them, if they choose to carry it out. If they don't? Well, shouldn't have been such arseholes, should they?

My ring blinks.

Answer.

Koriand'r's face appears. "Everyone is prepared to depart."

I nod. "Good. Are you ready?"

She nods. "Yes."

"Good. Komand'r?"

There's a flash of orange as she transitions away. My ring picks her up next to a mile long ex-Citadelian docking cradle. We'll be coming back to loot high value materials later, but I want the most important pieces now. Visibly exerting herself, Komand'r extends an orange aura around the whole thing. And that's why I want to do this now: I could split my focus to defend myself while doing something like that but there's no way either of the princesses could yet.

Right, my turn. I transition to the other largely undamaged cradle, this one complete with a partially complete battleship. Unlike a finished ship full of its crew's desires as well as awkward shields and other devices designed to disrupt enemy action, this is an inert mass. As such, the orange light spreading from me to the entire structure is unopposed. Got a grip..? Yep, I'm not exactly agile like this, but I can carry it.

"Orange Lantern Two Eight One Four ready."

"Assailant ready, master."

"Koriand'r ready."

"Komand'r, read-ready."

"Set course for my marker on the outskirts of the Liot'r system." I send a location just outside Tamaran's interdiction fields. Komand'r and Koriand'r start glowing brighter and the Assailant powers its drives. "Warp in three, two, one, warp."

The journey takes a good deal longer than it would have without the extra mass. Plus, I decided to limit us to the speed of our slowest member, which in this case is Koriand'r and her refugees. Still, the stars wheel around us as the former seat of the Citadel Empire falls behind us. We should probably see about telling the Omega Men what we did. I don't know what sort of fleet resources Euphorix has, but the main reason they went into hiding was the overwhelming power of the Citadel and that clearly isn't an issue any longer. Of course, there are still the Psions and the Gordanians. While I suspect that the Branx can be persuaded to normalise their civilisation, the Gordanians will take a good deal of work to break out of their unsociable habits. And I rather imagine that the Psions are a lost cause.

"Warp ending in three, two, one."

And there's the universe again. "Orange Lantern to Hawk's Nest. Mission accomplished. Please deactivate interdiction fields so that we can come in-system."

"Hawk's Nest to Orange Lantern. We.. picked up a.. large warp displacement. Are you being pursued?"

"No. We're bringing a large flotilla of refugee ships, two space docks and a Citadelian battleship."

"You-? Ah… Please.. stand by."

"Standing by."

Komand'r's face appears almost immediately on my ring. "What is the delay?"

"The person at the communication station is only authorised to undertake a particular range of activities. Flexibility requires that they get hold of an officer with the authority to be flexible. I imagine that they'll.. rush it, for us."

"Orange Lantern, warp interdiction systems are inactive. You are authorised to approach Tamaran."

"Thank you. We'll be with you shortly. Orange Lantern out."

Komand'r warps immediately, appearing moments later at a Lagrange point in near-Tamaran space. Moving entire docks into orbit is.. something I'm going to leave for a team with tugs and a working understanding of Citadelian computers and thrusters. Next, Koriand'r warps, taking her ships towards the outskirts of Tamarus. There used to be a spaceport there during their pre-space dock era, and the huge concrete launch pad was never completely destroyed. The ships can land there, let their passengers off and then be stripped for parts.

The Assailant warps next. For obvious reasons it's not going to be too close to the planet. I've still got my brand on all of the crew, as well as a few more I picked up on Citadel Complex. I think I'll hand the ship over to Tamaran. See what Amalak can do with the disarmed crew. If he wants them. If he doesn't… I'll try and find somewhere to maroon them.

My turn. Ring, plot course to Lagrange point and execute.

Compliance.

Space distorts for a moment, then… We're here. First part, done. I correct the dock's drift, then let go of it. Ring, location of King Myand'r?

King Myand'r is flying towards the old spaceport.

Good-oh. Transition.

I appear next to him in the air, causing him to stop suddenly in surprise.

"Majesty."

He recovers quickly. "Orange Lantern. I was informed of your return. Are my daughters well?"

"Both uninjured. I'm afraid that your… Family's remains were long since disposed of." He nods sombrely. "On the other hand, we did find someone alive that we didn't expect to."

"Oh? Who?"

Komand'r and guest transition into the air just above us, Mister Blake wearing a copy of his old uniform which I fabricated for him. After a series of nutrient drinks he's capable of moving under his own power, though he said that it will be several weeks before he's anything like fighting fit. Still, he can fly by himself now, and he heads in our direction.

**Mythus. Good to see you again.**

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Headhunting 30

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28th July

13:02 GMT

Given the way Karras is grinning, I probably don't need to ask. But it would be polite. "So?"

He glances back to where his parents and the king and queen are making extremely stilted conversation. "The betrothal has been annulled. Koriand'r is free to marry who she chooses. Or not at all."

I nod. I was worried that the royal party might miss the celebratory ball completely, given how long discussions were taking. I was offered the chance to take part, but they seemed to accept my excuse that I regarded it as a 'purely internal matter of Tamaranian governance'. "And your parents are being reasonably reasonable about the whole thing?"

He turns his head away for a moment, his eyes falling on the elder of the royal sisters. "Komand'r.. took them to see the space docks which you acquired from the Citadel. From how they behaved afterwards, it seems that she may perhaps… Hold some lingering resentment over being passed over for political marriage herself."

I take a sip from my glass. I'll let the Tamaranians off fermenting perfectly good fruit; the Citadel and Gordanians between them destroyed too much infrastructure for refrigeration to be common and it hasn't been a focus of their industry since I liberated them. "And your current relationship?"

He smiles faintly. "Taryia and I will both be applying to study at the Tamarus War College… Once it is constructed. While they would be unlikely to consent to my marriage to a junior officer in my own retinue, I… We hope that they will feel differently about a fleet officer."

"Reasonable idea."

"Though… If you should happen to have.. any.. further power rings…"

I bow my head slightly. "Karras, my next stop is to liberate the man I want to run the Orange Lantern Corps from a heavily fortified prison."

"Then surely it would be wise for you to take as many Lanterns with you as you can?"

I shake my head. "I don't want to undermine their future position by establishing a recruitment pattern they may not like. Besides…" I take a look inside him. "Why do you want to become a Lantern?"

"Well, I-. I could do more for Tamaran as a Lantern than as a fleet officer." I raise my eyebrows slightly. "And… As I said, I want to marry Taryia, and… Becoming a Lantern would most likely grant me the prestige that I would need in order to make that happen."

"If you could see your soul right now." He face stills, his eyes widening slightly. "Karras, not only are you not avaricious enough to make a powerful Orange Lantern, the violet light of love is too strong in you for you to be a reliable one."

"I… Would have to give up-?"

"No, that wouldn't work either. Orange Lanterns have to pursue things they genuinely want, not refuse them. Karras, not being appropriate for an orange ring doesn't mean that you have failed some sort of test."

"It feels as if it does. I would not give up Taryia for anything, but I cannot fuel a power ring with love."

Oh. "That's not a bad idea."

"I… Can.. fuel a power ring with love?"

"Not yet, but give me a while to work on the Zamarons and we'll see what we can do." If they haven't moved on to using power rings yet… Maybe we could come to terms?

"I will. Thank-"

"Karras!"

"-you." He looks around as his father waves for him to come over to them. "Excuse me."

"By all means."

I take a step back, looking around at the other guests. Officers and service personnel from the old Tamaranian fleet, accompanied by their families. A few we rescued, both yesterday and from Hny'xx. They look stunned, unable to believe that they're actually back here. A few more who were fortunate enough to survive and live out the intervening period of time on Tamaran. Occasionally I see them glance at their comrades, some with joy. Others with guilt. There have been more than a few joyful reunions since they returned, though I've been too busy to really appreciate it.

I know that King Myand'r wants as many of the old officers as possible to return to active duty, or at least take part in training the next generation. They're going to be working from scratch, after all. Heck, they don't even have a ship design yet, let alone any ships. They're actually letting the Thanagarians get first crack at the empty docking cradle because it's going to be so long until they might be able to make use of it that it makes more sense to let them work on their ship first. It's not an unreasonable demonstration of pride, not wanting to be completely beholden to the Thanagarians for training, but… There have been decades and quite a lot of beatings between now and when many of them were last in service.

Also, there's the fact that they lost…

"Another success." Komand'r strolls out of the shadowy portico behind me. "The Citadel almost totally destroyed. No other power in a position to fill the void they leave behind. Do you really intend to just… Leave?"

"Actually, no." I turn to face her. "I need to ask a favour."

She smiles. "That's a little more familiar. What do you want?"

"In a few days I'm going to attack a Dominator prison. There's a man inside who could be extremely useful to me."

"And you want my help?"

"Not exactly. I would like you to look after another Lantern's Sector while he helps me. He has.. unique skills that will make the break in far easier than it would otherwise be, but he needs someone to do his normal job while he's away."

"Leave.. Vega? Now?" She frowns. "So soon after such a great triumph?"

"You could stay to work on the industrialisation program with your ring. They aren't just weapons, you know. But… I think that… It might be advantageous for you to see a little more of the universe. See a peaceful region of space; see how it works. And learn how interstellar policing by Lantern usually works."

"Do you plan to assign me to somewhere, then?"

I shake my head. "Of course not. Merely to broaden your horizons. And… At least a couple of the worlds in that area of space have advanced medical technology."

There's a momentary spike of irritation. "Do you mean to tell me that you know how to cure my condition?"

I shake my head. "I probably know less about Tamaranian physiology than you do. But Tamaran isn't going to be prioritising recovering advanced medical technology. And I imagine that you want to cure you more than I do."

"Hm." She considers for a moment. "How soon?"

"A few days. I imagine it would be profitable for us to keep making salvage runs for a little while, and I doubt that my target is going anywhere."

"Then I will agree to aid you."

"Thank you."

She eyes me a little curiously. "How many Citadelians do you think that we killed?"

"I'm not sure. Assuming that the ships we destroyed had full crew and marine complements, and that the cloning facility was fully staffed… Somewhere between four hundred thousand and a million? Probably towards the lower end, but I doubt that we'll ever know for certain. Do you need to know?"

"It surprises me, how casual you are about it. I had thought you… Softer."

I shrug. "The ends and the means are one and the same. It's not as if I could destroy the Citadel without killing a lot of Citadelians."

"Then why did you let so many Citadelians flee? The other species I would understand, but if you had resolved to kill so many, why stop?"

"Simple enough. What do you suppose that they'll do now?"

"Try to convince their vassals that they are still strong. Then most likely turn to piracy when they fail."

"And what will you do about that?"

"Destroy them."

"And how will their victims respond to you doing that?"

She frowns. "I imagine that they'll be gratef-." Her eyes widen.

"I intend to have you and your sister act as Sector Lanterns for the Vega Systems, normalising relations between its inhabited planets. And that will be much easier if everyone regards you highly, don't you think?"

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NEXT CHAPTER

Headhunted

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Headhunted 1

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Spoiler: Original version

Headhunted

14th August

20:24 GMT

Water vapour has long since stopped rising from Doctor Natu's drink, and given how her cup is tilting in her hands the only reason that it isn't spilling is that she'd already gotten most of they way through. From the expression on her face I think that she's torn between disbelief and horror.

"You.. destroyed an entire civilisation."

I nod. "Clone, no change. No picture. No song. No dance. Always fight. No care hurt. Could destroy. Did."

She shakes her head as if to rouse herself, putting her mug down and making a grasping motion with her right hand. "Okay, I can… In theory, I could see how a clone race might be so similar to each other that there wasn't any deviation in their behaviour. Particularly if their total population was so small. And if the First was just using them as an army and they used slaves for all of their non-combat roles… All the slaves were definitely evacuated?"

"Yes. Checked."

"What about the ones on the planet?"

"Slave no trust." And I checked that too. A large garrison, some Psion technical people and no slaves to throw a wrench in the Citadel Empire's greatest point of vulnerability. "No work."

"Alright. And I suppose it counts as a military target. But all of their fleet that survived… When they were in control, you said that they mostly took the money and left the worlds they controlled to their own devices. Wouldn't they just go on the offensive? I doubt that the other worlds have the same protection as Tamaran if they're used to the Citadel dominating the space lanes."

I nod. It's true, of course. Even with Komand'r having free reign to kill any ships that misbehaved, the surviving Citadel Empire fleet elements were bound to try occupying and raiding to shore up their position. Removing them was the only way to start moving Vega towards being a healthy region of space, but a lot of people will die before we get there. How to put that in a context that doesn't alienate her?

"Tripartite War. Eight million die?"

"It's…" She looks down at her mug, stirring the dregs with a small stick. "It's hard to judge. It depends on exactly when you consider the war to start, and what deaths you consider to have been caused by the war specifically. In reality, the figure should probably be higher."

"Eight official figure?"

"Our.. government.. sometimes likes to play down how bad things were before…"

"Sinestro."

People on three neighbouring tables glance around when they hear me mention his name, tiny flickers of fear in each of them. Not exactly associated with the man himself; he's been gone long enough that they're pretty confident that he's not coming back. The fear is more from the idea of being associated with him, with the potential for social sanction and police action. I wonder if he knows exactly how much fear his memory and name evoke here? I don't know if he's been back since picking up his yellow ring.

Doctor Natu looks around, smiling nervously at the other tables in what I imagine is an attempt to convince them to ignore the ignorant alien. After they return to their own conversations she looks back up at me. "Yes."

"He not rule? More die?"

"That depends on whose version you believe. Probably, yes. In the longer term, with all of the purges..? I don't know. I like to think no one would have actually launched neutron bombs, but…"

"After.. him?"

"The purges were stopped, people were let out of prison. There was violence afterwards, but things.. stabilised pretty quickly."

"Better he not rule?"

"It's impossible to know for certain. I.. don't think it would have been."

"Better he not go?"

"No. Children shouldn't be sent to prison for littering."

"Bad thing go. Situation not perfect."

She nods. "The war was worse, and I can't really think of any other way it could have been stopped. So, what? You're saying that what your mercenaries did was the only way to stop the Citadel?"

Obviously, the version of events I've told her is somewhat edited. No mention of a power ring, and the fighting was conducted with equipment I provided by soldiers I hired rather than mind controlled.

"Before left, told mercenary contact. Work opportunity."

"What's the commission on something like that?"

"Not much." Just making Amalak aware that there may be jobs available really isn't something he pays on. He only does commission if you handle to contract negotiation as well to make sure that there are definite offers of employment. Rashashoon at least isn't going to have to worry much unless there's a concerted attack of a sort I doubt that the surviving Citadelian ships are capable of mounting. The Branx can take care of themselves, as can the Okaarans. And fuck the Psions. "Not job."

"You did all that and it wasn't even what you were hired to do. What did your employers think about you starting a war?"

"Not care."

She sits back slightly, putting down her stirring stick. "They don't care about all the people who died, because it was a long way away and they got the new hires they wanted." She frowns. "Wait, you haven't said what happened when you attacked the prison yet. You killed a million people and you didn't even get the man you were looking for."

"Million… Maybe not."

"Alright. Up to a million. I don't know what to think; I've never met anyone who's killed that many people."

"Tripartite War commanders?"

She shakes her head. "I don't move in those sorts of circles. And I doubt they were quite as.. directly involved as you were. Does this sort of thing happen to you a great deal?"

"No. Perhaps future."

Actually, I rather hope not. I'm heading back to Earth soon -all being well- and if something like that happened on Earth… Alright, Klarion's total death toll might well have been greater… I mean, caused by me. Earth's home, I don't want to be in a position where killing that many people is the right thing to do.

"How did the people you hired to help you react when they found out that you weren't working for the Admiral you told them you were?"

For a moment I hear clearly the wailing sound they made when I removed the brands.

"Not happy. Very not happy."

"I can't imagine…" She shakes her head. "Did the security specialist you were trying to hire agree to work with you after all of that?"

"Yes. Not tell all."

"And if you're here then I assume that the attack on the prison went well?"

"Complicated. First, need example Dominator technology…"

Headhunted

14th August

20:24 GMT

Water vapour has long since stopped rising from Doctor Natu's drink, and given how her cup is tilting in her hands the only reason that it isn't spilling is that she'd already gotten most of the way through. From the expression on her face I think that she's torn between disbelief and horror.

"You.. destroyed a pirate base and killed everyone in it."

Obviously, the version of events I've told her is somewhat edited. No mention of a power ring, and the fighting was conducted with equipment I provided by soldiers I hired rather than mind controlled. And I've rather played down the numbers involved.

I nod. "Clone, no change. No picture. No song. No dance. Always fight. No care hurt. Could destroy. Did."

She shakes her head as if to rouse herself, putting her mug down and making a grasping motion with her right hand. "Okay, I can… In theory, I could see how a group of clones might be so similar to each other that there wasn't any deviation in their behaviour. Particularly if their total population was so small. And if the First was just using them as raiders and they used slaves for all of their non-combat roles… All the slaves were definitely evacuated?"

"Yes. Checked."

"What about the ones on the planet?"

"Slave no trust." And I checked that too. A large garrison, some Psion technical people and no slaves to throw a wrench in the Citadel Empire's greatest point of vulnerability. "No work."

"Alright. I know.. pirates kill a lot of people, so… I suppose that what you did is as near to lawful as places like that get. But if some of their fleet that survived… When they were in control, you said that they mostly took the money and left the settlements they dominated to their own devices. Wouldn't they just go on the offensive? Find somewhere new to set up shop and go back to their old ways?"

I nod. It's true, of course. Even with Komand'r having free rein to kill any ships that misbehaved, the surviving Citadel Empire fleet elements were bound to try occupying and raiding to shore up their position. Removing them was the only way to start moving Vega towards being a healthy region of space, but a lot of people will die before we get there. How to put that in a context that doesn't alienate her?

"Tripartite War. Eight million die?"

"It's…" She looks down at her mug, stirring the dregs with a small stick. "It's hard to judge. It depends on exactly when you consider the war to start, and what deaths you consider to have been caused by the war specifically. In reality, the figure should probably be higher."

"Eight official figure?"

"Our.. government.. sometimes likes to play down how bad things were before…"

"Sinestro."

People on three neighbouring tables glance around when they hear me mention his name, tiny flickers of fear in each of them. Not exactly associated with the man himself; he's been gone long enough that they're pretty confident that he's not coming back. The fear is more from the idea of being associated with him, with the potential for social sanction and police action. I wonder if he knows exactly how much fear his memory and name evoke here? I don't know if he's been back since picking up his yellow ring.

Doctor Natu looks around, smiling nervously at the other tables in what I imagine is an attempt to convince them to ignore the ignorant alien. After they return to their own conversations she looks back up at me. "Yes."

"He not rule? More die?"

"That depends on whose version you believe. Probably, yes. In the longer term, with all of the purges..? I don't know. I like to think no one would have actually launched neutron bombs, but…"

"After.. him?"

"The purges were stopped, people were let out of prison. There was violence afterwards, but things.. stabilised pretty quickly."

"Better he not rule?"

"It's impossible to know for certain. I.. don't think it would have been."

"Better he not go?"

"No." She shakes her head vehemently. "Children shouldn't be sent to prison for littering."

"Bad thing go. Situation not perfect."

She nods. "The war was worse, and I can't really think of any other way it could have been stopped. So, what? You're saying that what your mercenaries did was the only way to stop the Citadel?"

"Before left, told mercenary contact. Work opportunity."

"What's the commission on something like that?"

"Not much." Just making Amalak aware that there may be jobs available really isn't something he pays on. He only does commission if you handle the contract negotiation as well to make sure that there are definite offers of employment. Rashashoon at least isn't going to have to worry much unless there's a concerted attack of a sort I doubt that the surviving Citadelian ships are capable of mounting. The Branx can take care of themselves, as can the Okaarans. And fuck the Psions. "Not job."

"You did all that and it wasn't even what you were hired to do. What did your employers think about that?"

"Not care."

She sits back slightly, putting down her stirring stick. "They don't care about all the people who died, because it was a long way away and they got the new hires they wanted." She frowns. "Wait, you haven't said what happened when you attacked the prison yet. You killed hundreds of people and you didn't even get the man you were looking for. I don't know what to think; I've never met anyone who's killed that many people."

"Tripartite War commanders?"

She shakes her head. "I don't move in those sorts of circles. And I doubt they were quite as.. directly involved as you were. Does this sort of thing happen to you a great deal?"

"No. Perhaps future."

Actually, I rather hope not. I'm heading back to Earth soon -all being well- and if something like that happened on Earth… Alright, Klarion's total death toll might well have been greater… I mean, caused by me. Earth's home, I don't want to be in a position where killing that many people is the right thing to do.

"How did the people you hired to help you react when they found out that you weren't working for the chief you told them you were?"

For a moment I hear clearly the wailing sound they made when I removed the brands.

"Not happy. Very not happy."

"I can't imagine…" She shakes her head. "Did the security specialist you were trying to hire agree to work with you after all of that?"

"Yes. Not tell all."

"And if you're here then I assume that the attack on the prison went well?"

"Complicated. First, need example Dominator technology…"

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Headhunted 2

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30th July

10:57 GMT

Amalak looks down from the battlements at the disembarking Citadelians with a wry smile. "I hadn't realised that you did deliveries."

I'm leaving the battleship with the Tamaranians, but since the crew complement is still branded they didn't complain about getting into glorified shipping containers for the journey here. I raised the topic, but leaving them on Tamaran was a non-starter. Myand'r wasn't happy about Citadelians being on his planet at all, Koriand'r wasn't happy about them remaining branded and Komand'r wasn't clear why she couldn't assimilate them all.

Miss Gozzi presses a couple of buttons on her holographic computer interface. "You do understand that the most likely result of this is that we have to kill every single one."

Amalak chuckles. "Why do you think I'm having robots act as escorts rather than living soldiers?"

Komand'r smiles. "Ruthless. You're prepared to gun down every single one."

"Naturally. Not that I want to. That would simply be wasteful. Still, there's a reasonable likelihood that I will need to, so: I prepare."

Koriand'r grimaces. "And you have mechanical soldiers rather than living ones because you think that they would not have the stomach for it."

He tilts his head left and then right. "There are units that wwwould. It's really more that I don't want them to get into the habit of it. Batch killing is something one should only do after careful consideration, not on a whim or because one has convinced oneself that it is standard operating procedure."

The last member of our party is Grad the Construct Lantern, who stands impassively behind his new mistress. Amalak looks back at him with a cocked eyebrow. "A fascinating demonstration of degrees of mind control. Tell me Orange Lantern, are all of your Corps as capable as you, or are you an outlier?"

"To the best of my knowledge, I am the most accomplished Orange Lantern presently active."

Komand'r glances my way, not turning her head away from the spectacle in front of us. "You said yourself that you have a more sophisticated ring than either my sister or myself."

Amalak raises his eyebrows at that. "I wasn't aware that they came in different models. Though I suppose that it makes sense." He turns in my direction. "Tell me; what would I have to do to get a Lantern on my staff?"

"Not asking for a ring for yourself?"

"If that's an option. But from what you've told me, you seem to be rather picky about who joins you."

I return my attention to the landing ground. "Commodore, we have a good working relationship. But let's not get ahead of ourselves."

He shrugs it off. "As you wish."

The last Citadelians out of the hatches turn and close them. They are unarmed and unarmoured, because if this goes badly I don't want them making a fight of it. They disarmed themselves at my request on the pretext that they're going to be getting a span of shore leave. True enough, if they agree to work with Amalak. Otherwise… Robot guns.

I glance left at where Komand'r's eyes are glowing.

Assuming that she doesn't get them all.

Amalak nods to Miss Gozzi, who moves a dial on her controls. The guns in the landing area go live but don't quite point at the recruits. Amalak looks it over and then nods at me. "Whenever you're ready."

I step forwards and flare my environmental shield to get their attention. "Soldiers, formerly of the Citadel!"

"Rahgh!"

The roar from eight hundred throats, the bang as they slam their right fists into their chests in salute. They still think of what we achieved as their victory as well.

"With the Citadel Complex destroyed, this campaign is concluded. After this, those of you who wish to will be working for Commodore Amalak as mercenaries. It is my desire that you accept this offer. Those of you who do not wish to do so will be released on your own recognisance until such time as I need you again. Choose wisely."

I raise my hands and pull the orange light away from them. The brands on their chests just visible though their casual clothing flake off, decaying to orange vapour and flowing towards me. It collects in my hands, then I see it as it flows under my skin towards my ring.

That's a little disturb-.

"Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa..!"

A Citadelian towards the front has collapsed to his knees, his arms hugging his chest and a keening wail coming from his mouth. He doesn't use words, he just gives vent to his misery and horror at what I had him do. I look a little closer. Citadelians aren't loyal to the Emperor but they are loyal to the Citadel Empire. It was the bedrock of their existence and I destroyed it. With that certainty gone he… No, they all, feel completely desolate. Some instinctively reach for weapons they're not carrying, others bow their heads and start hyperventilating.

Amalak regards the scene levelly. "They seem to be taking the news about as well as could be expected."

Komand'r smiles broadly. "Tonight, before I sleep, I will play a recording of this moment. And I will sleep all the more soundly for it."

Koriand'r dips her eyes. "It would have been kinder to kill them."

I don't think that the moaning is even intentional. I hope that their minds aren't literally locking up. That would-.

"You!" Captain Gralg shoves his way through the unresisting crowd. "You made us destroy the-!" His mouth locks up and the rest of his face spasms and shakes. "Everything! Everything! You told us to do it and-!" He's crying, his hands going to his face and pulling, leaving thin cuts where his nails dig into his skin. "And we.. just..!"

I take a moment to search out the older Citadelian who was in charge of power generation. He's near the back and he appears to be keeping himself together a little better than the rest. Though that could simply be as a result of not being involved until right at the end. For a moment he makes eye contact with me, then takes in the guns around them. Then he turns away and shoves his way through the crowd to get into cover.

"Yes, you did. And yes, I did. And let's not pretend that the Citadel Empire hadn't done the same thing to anyone who got on its bad side. Do not expect me to feel even the slightest bit sorry." Komand'r nods approvingly. "But you still have the choice. Any of you who enter Amalak's service will be given work and shelter. Any of you who want revenge? I'm right here."

There's a moment where the Citadelians take a moment to look at their neighbours, perhaps trying to gauge their mood. One or two fall to the ground. Then the rest-

"RAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!"

-charge towards the tower.

Amalak blows air out through his lips. "Well, we got a few." The robot turrets go live, orientate themselves on the charging horde and open fire. "And their equipment. Definitely a profitable day." Bolts of plasma strike the Citadelian mob, and unlike when they wore armour every hit is fatal. Chunks of meat vaporise, the flesh heating up so fast that it seems to explode, sending their corpses slamming into their comrades.

None of them take a blind bit of notice in their headlong rush.

Right into the tower's force field.

I keep watching as the robot guns shoot them in the backs, whittling the eight hundred down swiftly and steadily. Every hit is almost immediately fatal and no amount of punching is going to do damage worth talking about to the force field blocking their onslaught.

It takes a little over a minute for the last of them to die, then another set of robots moves in to remove the bodies.

Of the whole lot who worked for me during the assault on the Citadel Complex only eleven remain.

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Headhunted 3

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30th July

08:14 GMT -6

Jean falls back as I walk into the command suite. Doctor Robbins is sitting at the main monitor station, her chin resting on her right hand and a large mug of coffee held in her left. Trying to be at least a little subtle about it, I take a quick look around to see if I can spot-.

"There aren't any."

I guess that subtle is for people who aren't two meters tall.

I cross the room, walking steadily around to the front of her station so that she can look at me without turning away from whatever it is that she's working on. "Jean said that you wanted to see me."

"What, you not going to scan me as well?"

I turn my head to look her in the eyes. She doesn't look angry, exactly. The accusation has little bite to it. "I'm concerned. I feel a little odd about saying this, but if you-?"

"I'm over it. Liquor isn't a long term solution."

I smile. "I'm glad to hear it. I understand that having an enemy attack you in your home-."

"That's not exactly a first for me."

I hold up my hands in a pacifying motion. "I mean no disrespect to the Challengers, but Darkseid is rather in a league of his own." I take a look around for somewhere to sit down, but there isn't anything. This is the most Challengery room left in the place. I've barely come in here since we renovated. "And then there's the fact that there's not a lot we could do if he decided to do it again-."

"That's not it." She lifts her head off her hand and takes a mouthful of coffee. I decide to let her get whatever it is off her chest at her own speed. She swallows, then sighs. "With the Challengers… Looking back, I guess it looks like we thought we couldn't die or something. That wasn't really it. Even before Red died we all knew every mission could be our last. Heck… That was kinda why we did it. For the thrill."

I nod. Not.. one of my motivations. For me it's about doing something I want to do, the easier the better. But her point of view isn't exactly uncommon. I seem to remember that there was a Star Trek Voyager episode in which the Doctor commented that the Maquis members of the crew tended to exhibit a greater preference for risk taking behaviour than their more staid Federation comrades. I wonder if it's the same for superheroes?

"And ever since you saved me from being the first Challenger to die in her bed, I've pretty much just been sitting around the Mountain and getting in the way."

"Doctor Robbins, your experience makes you a valuable member-."

"I'm a babysitter." She glances at a monitor to her right, showing.. Chester's current location. "And I'm not just talking about Lynne and those Bat kid things. A college sci-fi nerd could do my job. And like it better."

I nod. I suppose -given how much of an adrenaline junkie she was- expecting her to be happy doing this indefinitely was a poor judgement on my part. "If you'd like some time off-."

"I'm quitting." She stares at me as if daring me to protest. "Talbot can wrangle the Blacks and Jean can do the rest of this job just fine."

Ring.

By your command.

"I've transferred the next five years' rent to your account. I'm afraid I'll have to remove your access to our systems once you leave, but if you need anything just let me know." She looks momentarily nonplussed as I take a couple of steps closer. "I really appreciate you staying on as long as you have, and letting us set up in your old home. Thank you." I hold out my right hand to her, sticking it through the centre screen. "Send us a postcard when you get to wherever you're going."

"Huh." She stands, and clasps my right hand with hers. "I will. I thought you'd make a bigger deal out of this."

I shrug. "I'm not really the 'chaining to the desk' sort. You've clearly given it some thought and.. made up your mind. It's your life. Live it as you see fit." I reclaim my hand and make a vague gesture with it. "Let me know when you leave, I'll come and see you off."

She studies my face for a moment longer, then picks up her coffee, turns and leaves.

Hm.

A few.. possible replacements come to mind. I'm not sure that the tentative understanding Nyssa Raatko and I have would really bear giving her the job, but I finally managed to track down Scandal Savage -the name was a bust but her weapon is distinctive- a few weeks ago and I think it would be right up her alley. Probably need to talk to her about her father's businesses anyway. She's technically his beneficiary, but since he ran them from the shadows and only intended her to ever take charge for short periods of time there's no real rush. Despite believing himself immortal he always ran the risk of dying off-planet or inside a large carnivore and he appears to have considered her an acceptable temporary executor.

Still, no rush.

Jean enters the room with a politely deferential air about her. "Sir?"

"Doctor Robbins will be leaving us shortly. If you have any plans to go haring off to South America in search of your primogenitor, I would appreciate you putting them on hold."

"We have decided that there is little reason to hurry. Given the likely date of our forebear's arrival, anything that remains will likely remain for some time yet. Would you like me to assign a G-Troll to take Doctor Robbins' place?"

I nod half-heartedly as I walk past her. "Do as you think best." The system can back up anything the Blacks discover pretty much automatically and they can always contact me directly in the event of an emergency. I.. suppose.. compared to most of the people working for me now I was underemploying her. Maybe I should have.. put her in charge of the extinct species resurrection program..? No, that wouldn't have been any more her thing than watching other people do what she used to do.

I'm going to miss her being around.

"So." Michael Tawny walks down the corridor towards me. Still not entirely used to him looking like that. "I understand that the good Doctor will be leaving us."

I nod. "Indeed. Actually, Michael-."

"I don't have any plans to follow her, if that's what you're about to ask."

I smile. "I'm glad to hear it. But… I'm aware that I haven't been fully utilising your abilities. I'd hate for you to become discontent."

He rotates his head slightly to the right, then gives it a wiggle. "I'll let you know. But at the present time, I feel perfectly happy acting as Lynne's bodyguard. I rather like the children at the school."

I nod, then lean forwards and lightly nuzzle him. He exhales sharply though his nose, then returns the gesture. Adult male Tigers aren't usually social with one another, and I'm rather glad that Michael feels differently.

He pulls back slightly, sniffing me. "But what about you? You said that you were nearly back to full fitness..?"

"As full as I can get with the Anti-Life fragment inside me. But-" I nod. "-yes."

"So? Who's your next target? Will you focus your energies on the British government? Some other criminal group? I've never eaten a Kobra."

"Nnnnno." I raise my left hand slightly, examining the orange ring. "I.. think it's about time that I resolved matters with Larfleeze and the Orange Central Power Battery. An army of Lanterns very nearly managed to kill Father with no other assistance-"

"Ping!"

"-and… Even if he has become more powerful since then, that would seem to be a very useful leg up."

"Didn't you once tell me that orange rings can drive people mad?"

"Which would necessitate a trip to Maltus-"

"Or Qward."

"-to-. No, I'm not going to Qward. Our Qward probably isn't even your Qward. A Controller would be far less of a risk."

"The Controllers would insist on controlling-."

"They can insist all they want. Larfleeze's cave has hundreds of rings, and Vega has plenty of Green Lantern-free room to expand. I need exactly one Controller to assist me running things. The rest can go hang." I exhale. "But before I go and do that, I really do need to get back in touch with my friends on the team."

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Headhunted 4

next

2nd August

10:57 GMT

Lantern Medphyll looks… I think that's 'dubiously', at Komand'r. She in turn stares imperiously back, while Koriand'r is having trouble not staring at our surroundings in wonderment.

"Lantern Komand'r, how long have you worn that ring?"

"Eleven days."

He blinks. "Orange-. Lantern Paul, there are Green Lantern recruits who do not even begin their training within that time span. Raw recruits cannot safely stand in for me for any length of time."

"I have been trained by the Warlords of Okaara since I was eight years old. I am perfectly capable-!"

"Lantern Komand'r." She cuts herself off. "Lantern Medphyll, you won't be away for a significant period of time. They will literally be here to guard against outright invasion only. And while I agree that they will need a much broader range of skills before they can serve as true Sector Lanterns, the attack on Citadel Complex demonstrated that they are both capable of fighting warships and infantry. If they encounter a matter which requires investigative or diplomatic skills beyond what they possess, they can send a message to me and I can pass it on to you."

"And if I were to die?"

"Then I will remain here in your stead until your partner has completed their training program."

"Your files on my Sector are most likely over a year out of date. And while this act of sophistry may escape the Guardians' notice, I cannot pass Green Lantern Corps files to you."

Hm. "I would only need your files if you died, right?"

"Yes, of course."

"Green Lantern Corps regulations allow Lanterns to make a physical backup of data on ongoing investigations, so that local law enforcement can find out what happened without having to wait for another Lantern to arrive. You'd be breaking the rules if I actually did access it, but since you'd be dead that wouldn't really be a problem. Just show me how to access a similar data medium and we're fine."

"I… Am.. still not happy about this."

"And the Dominators' prisoners aren't happy about being vivisected. There's a lot of unhappiness going around."

"If the Guardians asked me, I would know full well that the rule in question had simply not been updated to take your existence into account."

"Lantern Medphyll, the way the rule is worded you could hand your Sector over to an Anti-Green Lantern so long as they were 'in good standing'. Lantern Jordan destroyed the Anti-Green Lantern Central Power Battery seven years ago. At this point, if the Guardians still haven't updated the rules… It's kind of their fault."

"I doubt that the Guardians would see it-."

Komand'r loses patience. "If you are so concerned about our abilities, why not test us yourself."

"Because such a test would most likely leave us both injured and unable to fulfil our responsibilities. To say nothing of the damage that our surroundings would suffer."

"Then what? What would satisfy you?"

Medphyll's fronds wiggle as he tries to come up with an answer. "I… Don't know. I think… That I may have started to petrify. Your reasoning is sound and yet am I reluctant to bend with the wind. I had been… Considering retirement."

"Why? Medphyll, the strongest Lantern I ever met was Larfleeze. He lived billions of years and all he had to show for it was a cave. Not every Lantern can be the greatest fighter, but your comportment has been an inspiration to me. You are the best example I know of how a Lantern should behave. And ultimately, if you don't think that assisting me is the correct thing to do, I have every confidence that you'll make that decision for the right reasons. I'll… Just have to find someone else."

He closes his eye for a moment, and.. something..? A ripple passes through the nearby plant life as his environmental shield shimmers. "I have become too comfortable in my certainties. I would suggest a compromise."

"Okay?"

"You want me to manipulate the Dominators' plant-based computer systems. While I could try learning to do so from the general vicinity of the prison itself, it would be far more sensible for me to learn from existing examples before we make our attack."

I nod. "True."

"Find me alien plant technology to study. While you search, I will take your Orange Lanterns on a tour of my Sector. That will give me time to learn how they think, and give them a chance to allay my fears."

Dominion space on my own. Hooray. "That sounds reasonable to me. Princess? Princess?"

Komand'r restrains herself from making the comment that I'm sure she would like to. "Agreed."

Koriand'r smiles. "I would be delighted to study peacekeeping under a veteran Green Lantern."

"Then it sounds like we've come to terms. What exactly do you need me to get?"

"Ideally, a direct copy of the system that you want me to alter. Failing that, almost any example of alien plant computers would help. I have seldom had cause to leave my Sector to travel anywhere but Oa, and as such I have had little contact with alien approaches to plant technology."

Okay… There are people who have fought the Dominators before. They'll probably have… Some stuff I can negotiate for. "Very well. I'll let you know when I have something."

"May O watch over you."

I rise up through the tree-streets, half an eye on Medphyll as he generates a construct globe and begins his lesson. Okay. Let's start with something simple. Ring, alien species who use plant technology.

Planets on record as using plant-based technology: Floria, J, Alstair, Simballi and Earth. List of further planets which use plant technology in very limited ways or use life forms similar to but distinct from conventional definition of 'plant', available.

Alstair. Where Queen Hyathis reigns. That sounds like a sensible place to start. Set course for Tamaran. I need to speak to Commander Andar.

Compliance.

And tell me about the place.

Alstair is one of four inhabited planets in the Antares binary system. It orbits Antares B and has a year of approximately four hundred days. The primary sentient inhabitants are Zaredians, and the only significant minority are Thanagarians. Other species are resident only as prisoners of war. Alstair is thaumically active, with plant-related magic use being common amongst its inhabitants. Its ruler is Queen Hyathis, who operates a near-absolute monarchy.

Are they at war?

Alstair is presently at war with its neighbours Dhor, Mosteel and Llarr, as well as Thanagar.

Dhor, I've heard of. That's where Kanjar Ro comes from.

It is likely that had his attempt to abduct the Justice League been successful he would have used them to defeat the other worlds. None have had peaceful relations with one another in recorded history, hostilities beginning at the time of first contact.

Alright, warp. Fill me in on their social structure as we go.

Compliance.

back

Headhunted 5

next

2nd August

11:34 GMT

Commander Andar looks up from his lectern-mounted computer with a smile as his equerry shows me into his office. "Orange Lantern. Or should I say, Orange Lantern Two Eight One Four?"

"It's a bit of a mouthful."

Perhaps due to how their wings would get in the way, Thanagarians aren't all that big on chairs. I remember that Mister Hol's laboratory on the Watchtower was largely designed at a convenient height for someone standing. Commander Andar's office has a small cluster of what are clearly Tamaranian seats (the clue is the higher backs) but Thanagarian meetings are generally conducted standing, the participants looking one another directly in the face. It's not quite the aggressive gesture it is for Humans, but it's still mildly confrontational.

"Properly speaking, the correct way to address a Lantern is formally, using Lantern as their title or name-prefix."

He frowns. "Do you have some superstition about giving people your name?"

"My world is thaumically active. It isn't a superstition if they actually can curse you if they have your true name." I shake my head. "But no. I have -by mechanisms which defy my analysis- been rendered incapable of saying my own name."

His eyes narrow slightly, unsure whether I'm making some sort of incomprehensible alien joke. I take a name card out of subspace and-. He won't understand English. Ah, ring, best fit that word I can't think too loudly to Plekesh grammatical rules, then rewrite.

Compliance.

He takes a moment to read it. "Lantern Pol?"

"Close enough. It's my personal name, but the closest I've been able to get to my surname is 'candle dipper'. And I'm.. not prepared to take that step yet."

He hesitates again, but appears to decide to just go with it. "What can I do for you?"

"Having any trouble with the new equipment?"

"No, not at all. The industrial asteroid smelters should enable us to finish getting the Hawk's Nest up to specification in a few weeks. Upgrades to the battleship Assailant will take a few weeks longer, even with a space dock specifically designed for it. The second ship will take over a local year to complete, assuming the Tamaranians don't want us to scrap it for one of their own design. The next bottleneck will be the lack of trained personnel, and I doubt that there's much you can do to help with that."

Since they don't have to pay a tithe to the Gordanians any longer Tamaran can well afford the Thanagarians' presence. But they probably couldn't afford to pay a significant number of skilled alien workers, and by the time that situation changes enough of their own people should have completed training that they won't need them. I could hire people myself, but the aim of the exercise is an independent Tamaran, not a dependent one. I'm certainly not willing to assimilate or brand people because it would be useful. And… They're not likely to get hard pressed anytime soon…

"King Myand'r told me what happened with the Citadelians you had working for you." I nod. "I know it's not easy, killing people you fought beside. But unless you were prepared to maintain control of their minds permanently it's probably the best result you could have got. Do you know how many survived?"

"Eleven."

"Citadelians being what they are, it was probably inevitable."

"I.. appreciate you saying that." I suppose that it shouldn't have surprised me. I had thought that a few of the augmented ones at least might have the sense… But I can't say it particularly bothers me. If they can't overcome their programming then there wasn't anything between them and the half-million or so we killed destroying the fleet. "But the reason I'm here, is that I'm heading to Alstair next and I'm sort of hoping that you could write me a letter of introduction, or… Whatever the normal diplomatic practice on Alstair is. I've already offered to take any messages you have to relay, but if you've got anything that can't go via Thanagar I can take that as well."

"Why are you going to Alstair?"

"A Green Lantern I'm working with wants to look at some examples of alien plant-based technology. We don't.. use that sort of thing much on Earth, and since I already know people from Alstair it seemed like the sensible option."

"What exactly is this Green Lantern planning on doing with it?"

"He has a natural ability to manipulate plant life, and we want to make sure it works on advanced alien plantforms before we go after the Dominators."

"Does he do that with his power ring or by magic?"

"I think his ring helps, but it's mostly by magic." Commander Andar relaxes slightly. "Why?"

"The last Green Lantern to intervene in Antares system gave up after being fired upon by all four navies. For a moment I was concerned that they were planning a more forceful intervention. That, and the fact that Alstair's native population use similar techniques themselves. I doubt that he'll learn to do anything that they can't defend themselves against."

Worth knowing. Maybe someone there will want to compare notes? "Heck, after Kanjar Ro went after the Justice League, it wouldn't be Alstair I'd be helping them go after. Not that I'm planning any sort of intervention unless there's a really good opportunity."

"I think that would be for the best. With Kanjar Ro deposed, the war died back a little. I'd prefer it not to pick up again."

I nod. "How exactly did Queen Hyathis come into contact with Thanagar? I've only read the Green Lantern Corps' summary on the subject."

"I'm afraid that with all of the data purges carried out by the Lord High Equaliser there's little I can tell you about his arrival. Even today, all we really know about him is that he was a male Polaran. We don't even know his name, though since his remains showed the same signs of infection as the Thanagarian population it's possible that he didn't know himself."

"And the Lizarkons?"

"They were infected too. And since you're about to ask, I am aware of the flaws which Thanagarian society has developed since then. My forebears left with Hyathis. The.. apartheid happened after that."

"I wouldn't blame a single individual for the wrongs of their entire civilisation anyway."

He nods. "Before the Equalisation Plague, we were a technologically sophisticated and.. somewhat isolationist civilisation. During it, we were… Meat robots, doing whatever we were told. The Lord High Equaliser was in complete control of everything, no one could even think differently from anyone else. And whatever his priorities were, they didn't include… Childcare, education, leisure pursuits or anything beyond utilitarian efficiency. Ships from Alstair regularly explore space, looking for technology to purchase or allies who might be persuaded to aid them against their enemies. When they found Thanagar, they reported the state of affairs to Queen Hyathis who decided to visit in person. She led the strike force which killed the Lord High Equaliser, then offered to cure the plague. In return, the Lord High Equaliser's immediate subordinates agreed to recognise her as Empress."

"Before she cured them?"

"No, she cured them first as a demonstration." He shuffles his wings slightly. "Anyway, that was where the Loyalists like me and the Nationalists like those who rule Thanagar today disagree. They say that she extorted an oath of fidelity under duress from people who didn't have the power to give it on behalf of the rest of our civilisation. I say, she killed a tyrant and cured our civilisation of a disease that stripped us of our personhood. And she never treated us in a way that was dishonourable; we were equal before the law to the citizens of her homeworld."

"How did she get deposed?"

"People were getting used to individuality again. Most of them remembered a time before the Plague, but it made everything so confused that it was hard to adapt. Having been attacked by an alien and then expected to follow the orders of another… There were a lot of people who didn't like it." I nod. Stupid, but people are people wherever you go. "So, six years later when Queen Hyathis took a fleet filled full of her most loyal officers and soldiers back to the Antares system... They carried out a coup. Every Zaredian left on Thanagar was brutally murdered and the remaining fleet and planetary defence network was seized by the Nationalists. The government that came to power then is effectively the same one that rules now."

"And Thanagar's tendency towards expansionism?"

"Their slogan is 'Never Again'. I don't know what the Queen would do next if she actually managed to conquer Antares, but that's a four way fight between evenly matched factions. There isn't anywhere near Thanagar that's actually a threat to them, so the level of aggression they're showing is completely unwarranted. My greatest worry is that they're going to go after Antares eventually."

"Or Earth."

He nods, then turns away. "I'll draft you that official introduction."

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Headhunted 6

next

2nd August

18:16 GMT

That's a big star.

I know that Antares Scorpii is a supergiant star, but stars in general are so big that the idea of a slightly bigger version doesn't really mean much to the Human brain. Even hanging here in space looking at it, it's a glowing blob a long way away. Even having the ring tell me that it has a radius 883 times that of Sol and that if it were in Sol's place its outer surface would be past Mars didn't have much impact until I got curious and generated a construct model.

It's really big.

Heck, Antares B isn't small. It has 10 times the mass of Sol, as opposed to 18 times the mass as Antares Scorpii has.

As a result of having two stars and a.. really quite pretty band of particles linking the two and reflecting their light, the worlds of the Antares system don't get much in the way of night. Alstair orbits a very long way away from either star, and as a result has a range of temperature that a Human -or a Thanagarian- would find comfortable. Llarr is further in and noticeably warmer, a fact that its cold blooded inhabitants have evolved to take full advantage of.

Incoming communication.

Answer.

"This is the Dhor Stellar Armada. Identify yourself."

"Orange Lantern Two Eight One Four. From Earth."

"One.. moment."

I think someone remembers what happened last time they met a Human. I wonder if Kanjar Ro managed to cling to power after getting his arse handed to him by Kal-El?

"This region is under dispute. Please conclude your business quickly. Dhor Stellar Armada out."

Hm.

The two inner worlds are stranger. The population of Dhor live almost entirely underground, their world's core cold and still while its surface is bathed in solar radiation. In the case of Mosteel it's the people who are the oddity, their whole physiology designed to be able to operate at extreme temperatures and their silvery skin reflecting as much incoming energy as it can manage. It was their attempt to settle the surface of Dhor that persuaded the Dhorians to take an interest in things going on outside their settlements.

Unfortunately, they didn't much like it.

Incoming communication.

This is going to happen a lot, isn't it?

Challenging visitors to disputed regions is-.

Yes yes. Answer.

"Mosteel Command. Identify."

"Orange Lantern Two Eight One Four."

"Purpose of visit."

"I'm visiting Alstair to-."

"Kill yourself now to save yourself from the pain of death upon our guns."

I take a moment to look around my environment. No, their fleet still appears to be in a defensive posture quite a way away from me.

"I'll take that under advisement."

…

No, they're gone.

There are lots of very small bits of spaceship littering the system, but beyond the four inhabited planets and the dust cloud not much else. Given the mass of the stars it's a minor miracle that four rocky worlds managed to establish stable orbits, and I'm not surprised that gas giants either failed to form or were absorbed by the young stars. I'm a little surprised that they've already gone through all of their asteroids, but I suppose that four space aged civilisations burn through a lot of resources. Particularly if they're constantly building and destroying war fleets.

Incoming communication.

Is it Alstair?

No.

Put them through.

Compliance.

"Orange Lantern Two Eight One Four responding. What can I do for Llarr?"

"State business."

"Purchasing computer equipment from Alstair."

"Llarr make better."

"Do you make it better with plants?"

"Plants weak."

"You want anything else?"

"Keep visit short. Do not interfere. Will punish violation."

"Orange Lantern out."

I pass Llarr's orbit, heading for Alstair. Alstair has a couple of… I'm not sure that I'd call them moons, exactly. Clusters of asteroids held together by space plants that are kept in orbit. Reminds me a little uncomfortably of the bad guys from Wheeled Warriors. While there are areas of natural plant life on Alstair, plant-based industry looks quite a lot like the mechanical kind. The locals are just better at cleaning up after themselves, consciously designing and manipulating plant microbes to purify the soil and air. It might be worth trying to bring Euanthe here, actually. I mean, if she can survive a journey like this. I know that there are microbes that can eat oil spills, and if they can be consciously controlled that could prove to be a major boon in areas on contaminated soil.

Okay… Capital city should be about there… Bit odd that no one has tried to contact me yet-.

Incoming communication.

Ah. Good oh. Answer.

Compliance.

"State your business, Lantern."

Ring, what language?

Plekesh.

Curious. "Secure communiqué from Commander Fel Andar of the Blades of Alstair. Also, numerous personal missives from his company. I would also like to purchase some equipment."

"The Blades? Do you have his seal?"

"Yep." I take the small emblem out of subspace. "Can you see it from wherever you are, or do you want me to-?"

"Our druids can sense it now. You are cleared to proceed to the capital. An escort will join you shortly. Accompany them and there won't be any trouble."

"As you wish. Orange Lantern out."

back

Headhunted 7

next

2nd August

18:47 GMT

Alstair is noticeably more… Jungly than J was. The palace appears to be part tree village and part… I suppose the nearest thing I've seen is Swamp Thing's home. It's clearly plant, even if the ring weren't confirming that it certainly looks plant. But it's… No, that's what I'm thinking of. There was a bit in Swamp Thing where -shorn of Alec Holland's guiding intelligence, Swamp Thing visited the green and found that thanks to Tefé's influence- it had become populated by plant spirits mimicking Human civilisation. Plant cars, plant telegraphy wire, plant buildings and roads… J was like that, normal with a plant theme pasted over the top.

This isn't.

The people I've seen so far look kind of Dryad-like. Maybe a bit more like Euanthe was when I first found her, with the plant aspect being far less subtle than I've become accustomed to. The hair isn't kind of a bit reed-like or mossy, their heads sprout leaves or petals and are clearly shaped with that in mind. Their bodies likewise sprout bark and leaves as a person-shaped plant would and not as the sort of clothing-substitute that Euanthe wears.

**Thinking of someone else?**

I stop in the air.

**To whom am I speaking?**

**Such clarity of thought. You've done this before.**

**One of my closest friends is a telepath, as is her entire species.** The mental tone is feminine, imperious… **Do I have the pleasure of speaking with Queen Hyathis?**

**My actual title is Panala. But yes, I am she.**

**And what does 'Panala' mean?**

**You could translate it a few ways. 'Incarnate goddess of the living planet' is my favourite. Or if you were really sent by Commander Andar-** I feel her try and push a little into my mind. Nothing like as strongly as I'm trained to resist, even without construct assistance. **-then you can call me Empress.**

**You're not a goddess and you don't rule Thanagar, so why don't I call you 'Queen'?**

**Oh, you are interesting. Does your species not have any plant matter in their bodies naturally? Did you expunge it before coming here?**

**No, my species consumes plant matter and has symbiotic fungi in our digestive tract and on our skin. Why do you ask?**

**I should be able to feel it. But I can't. Perhaps you are simply too alien a creature.** Thank you, wards. **Your escort will be with you in a moment. I've decided to give you an immediate audience.**

I look down-. Ah. Four Thanagarians breach the canopy and beat their wings hard to gain height, heading towards me.

**Thank you, your majesty.**

**'Majesty'? I.. think I like that. Is that what you call your queen?**

**It's a standard mode of address, but… Yes, I refer to Queen Hippolyta as 'Your Majesty'.**

**Oh? And can she do this?**

Beneath me miles of forest canopy roils, boughs and leaves turning to.. form a face.

**Her father is our people's war god, so I doubt that plants are really her thing. I think you met her daughter, actually.**

**Oh?**

**Black haired Human woman with a golden lasso? I think she-.**

**Yes.** The mental tone is far less chirpy. **I remember her.**

Her presence vanishes from my mind. Hyathis may have been under the influence of the Gamma Gong at the time, but she was still giving the fight her all. I'm sure that she prefers being beaten by Diana and freed of the Gong's influence to being enslaved, but…

"Ho, Lantern!" The lead Thanagarian slows and adopts a more vertical position, raising his right hand to hail me. "We are to take you to the Queen!"

"Lead on."

He makes a motion with his left hand and two Thanagarians peel off, swooping back towards the palace structure. I suppose that's my cue. I shut down my flight aura, turning in the air to face the palace structure as I fall. I swiftly accelerate to terminal velocity, shooting past the Thanagarians as the palace gets larger and larger. The Thanagarians respond by tucking in their wings and diving after me. Okay, I've… Got no idea where I'm going. I slow, still facing the palace, and allow my escort to catch up. The leader pulls ahead of me and then bears off to the right. A second Thanagarian passes ahead of me and then I accelerate after them. I do this without changing my orientation; still facing down and still watching the city below me. I wonder if-. Ah! A different type of Zaredian, this one thin with grey-orange skin and thin white hyphae in place of leaves. Fungus Dryads? Are those a thing?

"Just here."

The leader points to a.. series of giant lily pads floating on a large pool which is in turn held above the forest floor, contained in a huge bowl of living wood. Flowers bloom all around a living pathway across the water. It's.. almost a shame that Swamp Thing generally limits himself to naturally occurring forms. This is…

As we touch down I'm smiling like an idiot and really not paying all that much attention to where I'm going at all. The pad gives slightly under my weight, but it appears able to support it. Not that I'm wearing full power armour for a visit to a nominally friendly state.

"This way."

The Thanagarians start out across the lily pad path and I -with slight trepidation- follow along with them. Let's see, if these are like Earth lily pads then the stem would be in the centre… The edges of the path part slightly overlap one another and it seems to be supporting the Thanagarians' weight without difficulty.

The air smells.. just as jungly as it looks. And there's a slight haze in the air. Water vapour?

Microscopic airborne plant organisms.

Security and detection, nice.

I'm just stepping onto the last pad as there's a change in the plants around me. The blooming flowers seem to brighten, their petals broadening as more flower stems pierce the surface of the water and burst open. Bark bare moments before sprouts elegantly patterned leaves angled to make slanting stripes down the interior walls as vines hanging from the ceiling flower in unison. Then the leaves move, a perfectly choreographed undulating pattern which for one disquieting moment reminds me of nothing so much as the maw of some great predator.

Then the leaves and flowers… Oh, she didn't. Yes she did, they're bowing down as she walks out of the building and out onto the platform on the far side of the pool. She's not a particularly tall woman, actually, though her pink and purple leaf fronds do render her visually distinct from her subjects. Leaves sprout from her back forming a cape while her modesty -assuming that she has anything to be modest about- is preserved by a mini dress made of petals. The Thanagarians drop to their knees with their heads bowed as she approaches, the flowers and leaves turning to follow her.

I'm favoured with a small smile. "Are you impressed now?"

"Swamp Thing covered a whole city of steel, stone and concrete in plant life in about five minutes. It's.. reasonably impressive, but it isn't anything I haven't seen before."

She rolls her eyes and puts her hands on her hips. "Your homeworld is insane. I do hope that you realise that."

"Oh yes, most certainly."

"Fine, fine." She waves her right hand and the extra growth dies, browning and becoming brittle in seconds. "You have something for me?"

I walk closer before holding out Commander Andar's token. "I was hoping that I might-?"

A plant tendril snatches it from my hand and rapidly conveys it to Queen Hyathis. "Hm. You found him work, good. It doesn't do for them to be sitting idle. And you want examples of our technology so.. that…" I see a flare of light inside her. "The inhabitants of planet J can examine them. I agree, so long as we can examine some of theirs in return. Was there anything else?"

back

Headhunted 8

next

2nd August

23:38 GMT

What would a spaceship made of plant matter look like? It turns out, pretty much like one made of anything else. The physics which make a particular design sensible apply equally to whatever you make it of. Normal wood isn't a more sensible building material than bone or flesh, and the thaumically enhanced sort that they grow their hulls out of is still forced into shape by similar design priorities to the ships I've seen before.

"What do yeh think?"

The retired fleet officer next to me pats the hull affectionately. Once Queen Hyathis had an agreement in principle I became a good deal less interesting. Not unreasonable, she does have a planet to run and a war to orchestrate. Enneret is one of the people assigned to look after Alstair's mothball shipyard as a sort of working retirement.

"I'm not really familiar enough with the magic involved to pass comment."

"Oh yeh? That Swamp Thing of yours not do a lot of shipbuilding, then?"

"No. As far as I know, if he wants to go somewhere through space he adjusts his own resonance frequency and connects to the plant life there." Although… I.. don't think Swamp Thing 16 has experienced the events that led him to develop that ability. Or at least use it in that fashion. Certainly he wasn't set on fire at the conclusion of his attack on Gotham. Would that have happened if I hadn't involved myself? I wonder if I can get him interested in this. Or Tefé?

"Cor." He looks impressed. "That sorta thing takes some serious skill. What happens to his body?"

"He's a plant spirit more than a physical plant being like yourself. He only makes bodies so people have something to talk at. Or when he wants to hit someone."

He appears to take that in his stride. "We do something a bit similar for drones and weapon mounts. But ships like this always have a crew."

I take another look over the hull. "No joins, seams or weld points. Is it grown as a single unit?"

"No, but we graft the bits together and then smooth it all over. Every ship's a single living organism."

"How do you get in? I don't see a door anywhere."

He lays his right hand on the hull and rolls his eyes back in his head for a moment. In response a nearby section of hull creaks and snaps out, connected to the interior by thick vines. "Magic."

"Just you coming with me?"

"Usually have a crew of three or four in a real fight." He sighs. "Back when me and this one got fights. Just me's fine for a milk run like this." He steps towards the hatch. "You coming?"

"I think I'll stay on the outside. Can I assume that the FTL system isn't Lantern-speed?"

"I wouldn't want to try flying this across the system, if I'm honest. But I'm not going to be able to talk to you outside. I can't connect to your body's plants and the hull blocks every other form of communication."

I frown. Not giving this guy a power ring… "How do you talk to the Thanagarians?"

"Symbiotic algae. How do you think the queen cured that plague? Same deal. Get enough of it in their body they can even control plants like we do. Some of them, anyway."

Oh, that's worth knowing. "Okay, well, once we get to minimum safe distance we're flying straight to wherever Medphyll-."

"Medphyll? That's his name? Why didn't he just call himself 'Plant Man' and have done with it?"

"Um."

"You don't call yourself 'Meat Man', do you? Honestly, what sort of parent calls their child something like that?"

"I.. don't really know enough about J's naming traditions... Look, he's perfectly capable of connecting to other plant forms. He can talk to you when we meet him. We'll probably drop you off on J for a bit, if that's alright."

"Fine with me." He strides into the ship, the hatch closing behind him. For a moment I can see the join, and a few cracks where the hard outer layer was slightly chipped by the separation. Then there's a very slight movement along the edges of the join and it's gone. Then the ship sort of wobbles a little before lifting off its berth and turning nose up. With a hum, it shoots upwards into the air.

I rise a little slower, looking around at this place as I do so. I remember an episode of Top Gear when they visited a place like this, a place in the desert where the United States dumps planes it doesn't need at the moment. Here are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of plant-based spacecraft that survived the constant warring to reach obsolescence. Most are relatively small, though there are a few of cruiser size. As I gain height I can see small groups of military cadets clustering around one under the eyes of an instructor. A lesson? Maybe a class project?

It's all so wasteful. These ships might be past it by military standards but if the apparently unwinnable war was abandoned they could serve any number of civilian purposes. Or perhaps they could sell them to J? From what I saw coming in they didn't appear to have anything in the way of orbital infrastructure.

I accelerate, rapidly gaining on the plant ship. The Antares Conflict really isn't my problem, though as far as I can see I'd gain more by working with Alstair than any of the other three. I'll come back here once I've returned to Earth, see if I can get Euanthe something. I'm already plotting our return course as I leave the atmosphere, not really bothering to look at the planet below me. I saw it all on the way in and.. it's not like this is the first plant world I've seen.

The plant ship levels out as it turns in the general direction of J. It does have an FTL drive, but since the Antares Conflict rarely moves beyond the boundaries of this system it isn't designed for more than brief hops. I extend my environmental shield around it and warp.

…

Pfffff.

Yes, Prince Markov was definitely right about flying long distances. Maybe I should ask Hinon about getting a spaceship of my own? It wouldn't be faster than I can fly at peak motivation, but it would take some of the boredom away.

Sector 586 appears around us in a sudden dimming of the starscape. Ring, location of Lantern Komand'r?

Location set as waypoint.

Haven't gone far, then.

Warp again, this time for a few seconds, and I appear in interstellar space. A short distance away I can see two orange glows and one green one, silhouetted against a large spaceship. Looks like… Bulk transportation?

"Orange Lantern Two Eight One Four to Koriand'r. Are you busy?"

"No. The ship malfunctioned and called for aid. Is this what being a Lantern is?"

"A Sector Lantern, yes. Sometimes helping people means killing slavers, sometimes it means repairing things for them." The plant ship begins to move under its own power again so I retract my environmental shield. "Are you nearly finished?"

"Yes. Is that ship Dominator? I had imagined them being more fearsome."

"No, just Alstairian. A proof of concept." I transition up to the ship, where Medphyll and Koriand'r are mending a gash in the outer hull. Looks like an internal explosion. Komand'r floats nearby with her arms folded across her chest, clearly disinterested. "Lantern Medphyll, is this something you can work with?"

He holds out his ring in its general direction, a frown appearing on his forehead. Then he nods. "Yes. I believe that it is."

back

Headhunted 9

next

4th August

09:57 GMT

The planet Cairn reminds me of Rashash-

I duck my head back as a chunk of concrete comes flying past.

-oon, in that it's a-

I raise a shield-shaped personal force field to soak a couple of misdirected plasma pulses.

-hangout for violent criminals and mercenaries. The difference is that rather than being a state that has socially reengineered itself to cater for mercenaries, it's a failed state that is gradually being overtaken by them. Where it isn't being overtaken by drug lords or other brands of criminals. It's all.. so… Inefficient. Barely any order, limited capacity due to everything and everyone being unreliable-. Hellhole, that's what this planet reminds me of. Lantern Chance would feel right at home here.

"AAArrraaaaaagh!"

A four armed and shell-covered alien stagger-charges towards me, the green drool dripping from.. his..?

Subject is most likely neutral gender.

His four-pronged beak-mouth suggesting either mental decay or an addiction to one of this planet's main exports: highly addictive designer narcotics. I don't actually recognise the species-

Subject is Brogian.

-but they don't appear to have more than muscular strength. I lunge, covering the distance between us faster than he can react and striking him between the eyes with my right fist. His feet shoot out from under him and he lands hard on his back.

Ring, how much electricity is appropriate to stun one of these?

Calibrating taser.

"Dah!"

The Brogian shakes, then lies still.

Thank you.

A couple of Khundian soldiers guarding the shop I'm heading towards regard the scene not so much with interest as with bored disinterest in everything else. The manner of their dress implies that they're irregulars; the fact that they held discipline when people near them fought strongly suggests that I'm in the right place.

I straighten, pulling my cloak around my light armour as I do so. The Khundians should see me as a well-equipped professional mercenary, but not.. exceptional. Heavy power armour such as I usually wear in combat would stand out too much in these parts. No Psion-equivalent around here to hand out ultra-tech to the local hard cases.

Well. The scan I made from outside the atmosphere suggested that someone with a yellow power ring had been through here at some point, but I'm not seeing any Qwardian technology around her-.

"That's far enough."

The Khundian closest to me has his right arm out slightly. He's not exactly blocking my path, but it's clear that he can at very short notice. He's only got a few centimetres on me in height but is far broader. Again, Khundians aren't super strong but they can arm wrestle Okaarans at no disadvantage.

"What you doing here, little man?"

"I'm here to talk to Mister Kharhi."

I don't make eye contact, instead keeping my gaze focused on the door in front of me. Poking around the periphery of Dominion space is a risky prospect, and I'd rather not start a fight with anyone else. At least, not until it's essential to do so and I have an overwhelming advantage. I'd much rather just purchase examples of Dominator technology from a licensed vendor. The Khundians have an… Understanding with the Dominators and are known to use their technology upon occasion.

"And what makes you think he wants to talk to you?"

"Makes it rather hard to sell things if he won't talk to customers."

"Mister Kharhi isn't your type of two-bit gunrunner. Go hit up a boomshack on northside if you want a new popgun, fool."

"Is this some sort of test? A hazing? Because I think I'm going to get annoyed with it rather fast."

"No." He leans closer. "This is me telling you go get lost."

His colleague cracks his knuckles with a grin. "Or we help you get lost."

Weak body armour, weak personal force fields, reasonably tough physiology but nothing special. So many ways…

I manifest a railgun under my coat and fire a hard foam round at the closest before back-pedalling. He snarls and starts to come at me as the stuff coats him and his colleague, hardening enough to bring him to a halt. I then step around to his right side and strap a bomb to his forehead, pressing the activator switch in the centre to make it give a worrisome beep. The second Khundian is even more enveloped, eyes glaring at me defiantly as I apply a bomb directly to his forehead as well.

"Mediocre."

I step away as the Khundian who did most of the talking goes cross-eyed trying to look at the bomb. Not all that hard to get off, if you've got fingers far smaller than he has. Right, door. The relatively unimpressive shop façade does a little to disguise the fact that the exterior is actually quite well armoured. The door mechanism… Scan. Armed, but a simple electromagnetic burst takes care of that and a crumbler round takes care of the lock. I shove the door open and take a scan of the interior. A short corridor going… Ah. I step inside, kicking the door shut behind me.

"Mister Kharhi, this is not good customer service."

"I have no interest in dealing with the weak." No obvious source for the voice. Sound induction, probably. "Are you armed?"

"Yes."

"Good." A section of floor shimmers and vanishes, revealing a stairway down into the ground. "So are we."

"So noted." I make a show of looking around while keeping my hands from pointing at anything. "Are we trading today?"

"Get down here and we'll talk about it."

I flex my hands, then start down the steps. According to Amalak's contacts, Kharhi is a pretty well connected fellow. If the Dominator computer parts I want can be bought, he should be able to supply them.

"Do I have to jump through any more hoops?"

"You better have something worth trading, but you seem to know your business."

The door at the bottom of the steps is a fortified bulkhead protected with two layers of force field. I wait for them to be deactivated, and then the door bolts clunk free and the door swings open. Another similarly fortified door inside. Fair enough. I make a point of activating my personal force field and them step through. The door clunks shut behind me, and I hear a faint hum as the shields reactivate. Then-.

Heh.

"An environmental purification system? Really?"

"There is honour in being slain by a skilled warrior. There is none in choking up one's own lungs while they watch your struggles like a callous, disinterested vivisectionist."

I nod. "My people forbid the use of gas weapons in war. I hadn't realised that Khundians have a similar restriction."

"We don't. Honour is for Khundians. We're perfectly happy to gas the rest of you." The purification system stops and the inner door clanks open. "Come in, alien, and make me an offer."

I take a step forward. "Just so we're clear, I'm wearing my purification system."

back

Headhunted 10

next

4th August

10:02 GMT

Khundians are a great species to act as the bad guys in superhero comics. From their aggression, brutality and their disdain for aliens to their cultural bias towards head-on confrontation. Most arms dealers around here wouldn't meet me in person, or if they did it would be from behind a fortified customer service desk and with a dozen or so automatic turrets trained on me. There would be a bomb under my chair and -around here- probably an ambush waiting for me down the road after the meeting ended.

"Who are you and what do you want?"

Mister Kharhi doesn't bother with any of that. He's wearing light armour with a pretty respectable force field emitter built in, but he's not got any other cover at all. Much like the Thanagarians, Khundians prefer operating computer systems while standing. There also aren't any automated guns. There is one Khundian in heavy armour -not powered, I note- with powerful force fields and a couple of rather large guns, but that's pretty much it. More than enough for most encounters like this, but nothing like enough to bother me if I was acting openly.

The small Khundian girl who appears to be performing maintenance on a plasma projector is also a little unusual.

"Orange. I want to purchase examples of Dominator technology."

"That narrows it down." He half-turns towards a weapon rack. "I've got lasers, gasers, grasers, a couple of their short-lifespan viral missiles. There's some heavier stuff out the back, but I'm going to want to see some currency before I let you anywhere near it."

"I'm really more interested in their computer equipment."

Mister Kharhi turns back to me, left eyebrow slightly raised. "Computer equipment? I'm an arms dealer."

"You buy from the Dominion." I shrug. "You can get it, right?"

"Yeah. Probably." He looks a little more cautious. The relationship between the Khundian Empire and the Dominion is reasonably good despite the anti-alien prejudice of both parties due to the fact that they're located quite some distance away from one another. That wouldn't mean that the Dominion would hesitate to disappear an arms dealer who overstepped where they thought that the bounds were. "What do you need?"

"Whatever you can get. The more sophisticated, the more I'm willing to pay."

"Bulk buy?"

"No. Single pieces."

"Ehh." He strokes his goatee with his right hand. "What are you planning on doing with this?"

"What do you care?"

"I care, because if it turns out you were reselling to people doing intelligence gathering on the Dominion's warships them cutting off my access would be the least of my worries."

The ironic thing being that while I'm actually not going to do that, what I am going to do will probably make them even angrier.

"No, nothing like that."

"What, then? And this better be convincing, because I'm not selling you a thing unless it is."

I raise my right hand, palm upwards, and trigger a hologram projector to display a slideshow of images taken from J and Alstair. "I'm speculating. I believe that the technologies a couple of worlds I've visited use would be compatible with Dominator computer systems. I think that if they studied them, it could advance them quite a good deal."

"Oh? Where are these worlds?"

"I'm not telling you that." I shut down the hologram and lower my hand. "I don't want any competition when I show them my price list."

"Heh." A small smile, though empathic vision suggests that it's more to encourage me to keep talking than out of any actual sense of amusement. "That makes sense, but I'm still taking most of the risk if you're lying."

"What? You've seen my face. You've scanned my gear. If they ask, you can pass all of that on. Are you telling me that no one has ever shot at a Dominator using Dominator weaponry?"

"Dominators booby-trap weapons they haven't cleared for export." He thinks for a moment. "I can get you… Personal computers. Interfaces, weapon processors, that kind of thing. That what you want?"

"Sure, as long as you don't want much in exchange. But what I really want are central computers." He tightens the muscles of his right cheek. "It doesn't have to be current generation. A couple of generations old is fine. I'm not going to try and get my clients to compete directly with the Dominators-."

"'cause that's a good way to get your clients killed."

"Right."

Probably would be, actually. In this case J should be safe, in a stable Sector with a resident Green Lantern. If they were a larger presence then getting uppity at the Dominators might result in them suffering 'unexplained shipping losses', but if I remember Swamp Thing they generally try to avoid going near plant manipulators for exactly the reason I'm trying to exploit. But if Alstair learned enough to win the Antares conflict and expand… Then I imagine that the Dominion would sponsor someone -probably the Khundians, actually- to take a crack at them.

But just cribbing out of date Dominator technology to give themselves a boost? I'd be surprised if they cared. It's a very big galaxy. Dominators' warp gates let them move around fast, unless they have no presence in a region and they don't in either case. Chances are it would be generations before they found out, and by that point both worlds would be using things so different from what they started with that they might not even spot it.

"I could probably get something. Core from a wrecked cruiser. Good condition, nothing they'd care about missing."

"Sounds promising. How long?"

"Ah, not so fast. How are you paying?"

"Metals?"

He shrugs. "Metal market's not so good at the moment." I reach into my coat and pull out a thin strip of orichalcum. He wrinkles his nose. "Gold? What am I supposed to do with that?"

I toss it to him and he catches it in his left hand. "Try bending it."

He rolls his eyes. "Gold-" The muscles in his left hand tense. "-is-." He blinks, squeezes harder and then brings it up to his face for a closer look.

"Interested?"

"Interested, sure. How much you got?"

"A little more than that."

"Can you get more?"

"Not… Easily."

"No good then." He tosses it back, and I catch it with my right hand. "I'd buy in bulk, but a small sample's no good to me. What am I going to do with a weirdly hard strip of metal?"

"Sell it to a better class of client. Science types would find it fascinating."

He shrugs. "I don't move in those kind of circles. Try again."

"The Dominators would probably be interested in it. If you have dealings-."

"My contacts are-" He points to the middle of his forehead with his right hand. "-low caste. Factory workers and scrap dealers. The people who'd be interested in that are high caste. Unless you can supply in bulk..?"

I could, but I'm not selling orichalcum in bulk to the Khundian Empire. "No. Alright, how about-" I reach into my coat again. "-one of these?"

I pull out an Nth Metal cutlass and his eyes light up. Thanagarians are pretty fastidious about Nth Metal not falling into enemy hands, and with Thanagar being just about the only source of the stuff in this galaxy the metal alone can go for some extravagant prices. Either with scientists or with warlords looking for a trophy.

Mister Kharhi nods. "Six days. Don't lose it. Now get out, I've got work to do."

back

Headhunted 11

next

6th August

10:57 GMT -5

"Scott, you realise that these-"

"Recognised, Mister Miracle, two one, Grayven, A one one, Lynne Wayland, A one two."

"-zeta tubes are inferior to hush tubes-"

Mitchell waves at us. "Hey Grayven."

"-in every way." I stride forwards, beaming at.. my friend. Friends. Kon and M'gann are here as well, his left arm around her and her right around him. It really has been a while… Five months -pretty much- since I've seen a lot of them.

I spread my arms wide and embrace the three of them.

"Good to see you again."

Kon ends up slightly squashed between his girlfriend and his brother. "Yeah, well, maybe next time you infiltrate a supervillain team you'll come visit sometimes."

"I'll be sure to do that." I release them. "Not like I couldn't have snuck in whenever I wanted anyway."

M'gann smiles politely. "Sure you could." I smile and behind me Scott coughs self-consciously. Her eyes widen slightly. "Wait, you actually could?"

I beam. "How have you all been?"

"School went okay." Mitchell shrugs. "Kinda boring when I already know everything they're teaching, but… Meeting.. normal people… That's kinda cool."

"Kon and I visited my parents on Mars using the hush tube!"

Gosh. That must have been like a cultural missile strike. "And how did they take your.. redness?"

"Ah, they were.. okay." Her eyes shift to the side. "Ah…"

Kon gives her a squeeze. "One of her little brothers told his neighbours and some of his friends. Next thing we know the whole city was freaking out. We got a military escort to go and see Prince Jemm."

M'gann nods, her face tilting slightly towards the floor. "Everyone found out all at once that the whole.. reason for Martian apartheid is that some super powerful aliens messed around with our ancestors, and the only reason why we revere our leaders is that they look most like our crazy ancestors."

"Did you..? Intend-?"

"No! I just-!" She throws up her hands. "I couldn't keep something like that a secret!" Looking past her I see Wallace and… Frances Kane, in some pink and white abomination of a New God's armoured raiment. Scott, you couldn't do better than that? "The whole thing completely defined our civilisation since… Since it started, and it's-. Hateful nonsense."

I shrug. "You know Martian society better than me." Ring, remind me to check on Mars at some point. I don't want the place to go the way of every other DC version of Mars if I can help it.

By your command.

"Hey Grayven!" Wallace waves as he approaches. "You remember Frankie, right?"

M'gann and the Els step aside to let the two of them through. I nod, and extend my right hand to her. "Of course. How are you doing?"

"Ah. Better, thank you." She starts to hold out her right hand, then pulls her fingers into her palm as if she's not quite sure whether or not she should. I give her a warm smile and give my hand a little shake, extending it a little further. She checks my face as if.. to make sure that she's allowed, then takes my hand. I make a point of clasping it and actually shaking it rather than just holding it there.

"I'm glad to hear that. And your control of your magnetic abilities?"

"They're… Actually, they're almost perfect. I've been… Using the mana infuser Zatanna made for me, and…" She tugs at her right hand and I let it go. She holds it out and there's a quiet boom as a miniature boom tube opens, iron filings streaming out. They're rapidly collected into a shining grey sphere, which turns into an cylinder and then flattens into a platform. "I can make it do just about anything."

"Excellent. Well done. It usually takes-" Wallace sticks his head out to the side, frowning. "-someone…" Idiot. I turn aside and motion Lynne forwards with my right hand. She somewhat self consciously comes up alongside me, staying close to my left leg. "Everyone, this is my daughter Lynne Wayland. Lynne, this is Wallace West, Frances Kane, M'gann M'orzz, Mitchell Kent and K-errr." I frown at Kon. "Are you going by 'Kon' or 'Conner' now?"

"Kinda getting used to 'Conner'. Just sounds better next to 'Mitchell'."

Ah, the Aerith and Bob effect. "Conner Kent, then."

"Hi?"

"Y'know?" Wallace looks a little awkward. "I know you said you were thirty, but this is still.. kinda weird."

M'gann elbows him. "Wally."

"Oh. Sorry." He gives Lynne a smile. "I don't think we met when I visited your mountain. It's just… We all kinda assumed Grayven was our age when he joined the team." Lynne frowns, then looks up at me. She then looks at Wallace as if he's an idiot. "Hey, he wasn't that big at the time."

No one says anything for a moment, their eyes doing that slightly unfocused thing they do when someone is speaking telepathically. I doubt that they're excluding me intentionally, but… Unless I intentionally suppress my barriers I'm not going to hear anything.

I make an effort and suppress my barriers.

**-want me to train with Mister Black, but he sounds okay.**

**Dad doesn't.. like me training with him too much either. Mostly I do things with the G-Gnomes or at the Center.** Lynne smiles at M'gann. **You should visit!**

**I'd be really interested to meet more telepathic Humans! So far I've only met Henry, but there's so much I learned on Mars that I could show them!**

I nod. "They're always looking for telepathic teaching assistants." Surprised stares and a slight air of guilt. "It would probably look good on your college application if you volunteered to assist them. As well as helping the children. I can arrange an appointment if you're interested?"

M'gann blinks. "Um, yes. Thank you."

"Uh." Kon-. Conner looks less sure. "Wouldn't you need to tell them that Megan Morse was telepathic to do that?"

"I can do it as Miss Martian. It'll be fine."

"Ah, Grayven?" Wallace shifts awkwardly. "Not that it's not.. great that you're not a supervillain and all, but… What's with the visit?"

"I'm going to be leaving the planet for a while, shutting up shop and taking the 'Grayven Experience' to the Vega Systems." Wallace looks slightly nervous. "I'm going to free a bunch of people from the rule of a brutally tyrannous regime, help with rebuilding their civilisation-" He starts looking slightly less nervous. "-and then build my own Lantern Corps. Imagine it! A legion of Orange Lanterns under my command bringing justice to the universe!"

Wallace goes back to looking nervous. Some people.

"Oh right." Conner nods. "I think you said something about that before you left. When are you heading out?"

"A couple of days. I wanted to tie up loose ends and.. say goodbye to you guys properly. Is Kaldur around?"

Conner nods. "No, but he should be back real soo-."

"Recognised, Aqualad, B zero two,-"

Excellent. I turn-.

"-Robin, B zero one."

Oh.

Marvellous.

back

Headhunted 12

next

7th August

15:02 GMT -5

"Afternoon, Grayven." Sam nods at me politely, then frowns slightly as he looks at my companion. "And.. you're Jean, right?"

"Yes, General." She gives him a mildly deferential bow. "It is a pleasure to meet you."

He looks at me curiously. "Any particular reason you brought her along?"

"Yes. I'm going to be leaving the planet for an indeterminate period of time with a good deal of my retinue. If you need information or assistance Jean will be your point of contact, so I thought it would be wise to introduce you."

"Oh." He nods. "Anything I should know about?"

"I assume that the League informed you of my father's visitation?"

"Yeah. Damn near put the fear of God into me." I smile, bowing my head slightly. "What?"

"Reminds me of a film from Earth Prime. The villain of the piece asks a senator he kidnapped whether or not he considers himself a God-fearing man, as he himself has always preferred to think as God as kind and loving. Not someone to be feared. Then he.. suggests that the senator should be afraid of him instead." My smile falls away. "In this case, being afraid of Darkseid is considerably more sensible. The Christian God is unlikely to turn up inside your home."

"There really nothing we could do to stop him?"

"Nothing that would be reliable, or leave you with much of a planet left. I'm working on the problem, but-" His desk intercom buzzes. "-it's going to be a long term thing."

He nods, then presses the 'answer' button. "Yeah?"

"Director Armstrong is here, sir."

"Good. Show her in." I raise my eyebrows as he takes his finger off the button. "Katarina Armstrong is the newly appointed Director of the Department of Metahuman Affairs. We wanted to bring you in on the vetting, but with you being out of commission and then incommunicado…"

"I'm sure that she's a fine choice. Didn't go with the 'Extranormal Operations' title?"

"President's office thought it sounded too militant. Since it's supposed to be a civilian organisation investigating crimes and social issues rather than one big super powered SWAT team." He waves his right hand dismissively. "That stuff's not my department. Whatever makes it easier to sell it."

I nod. "I think the.. training program aspect was the one I was most concerned about them getting right. Did the budget get-?"

I cut myself off as the door opens, Sam's junior aide-de-camp just barely getting out of the way as the.. striking blonde woman behind her strides through. "General Lane." She stops as her eyes alight on me, the lieutenant behind her giving her a slightly evil eye before leaving the room and pulling the door closed behind him. "And the two illegal aliens."

I rise to my feet. "As I understand it, I have de facto recognition as a diplomatic official. And.. Jean is a member of my staff. And was created in the United States. Though it's funny you should put it like that; for years Lex Luthor would only address Kal-El as 'the alien' as well." I smile and hold out my right hand. "Congratulations on your appointment."

"Thank you." She approaches, takes my hand for exactly long enough that I can't be certain if she's deliberately insulting me or just in a hurry, and then sits down on the pew opposite. "I've made my view clear to the President and to General Lane that you should have killed Luthor when you had the chance."

I sit back down, half-turned towards her. "I made it quite clear when I spoke to him that his stay of execution could be rescinded at any time. Has he.. done something that would warrant that?"

"No. Not that we have the ability to keep tabs on everything he does."

Hm. "I'll check in with him when I get back from my trip. I should say though that he did seem reasonably amenable to the idea of not being killed."

"You're going somewhere?"

I nod. "The Vega Systems. It's-."

"I know where Vega is, Grayven."

"Actually, you don't. There's this rather interesting gravitational lensing effect, which means that Humans tend to underestimate how-."

"Does anything you're going to be doing there have any impact on metahuman-related security in America?"

"Not in the short term, though it is part of my eventual scheme for preventing Father from coming back."

"Then don't bother telling me until you've got something concrete to brief me on. I'm building a federal agency, I don't have time for things that aren't relevant to my work."

I open my right hand in a mock surrender gesture. "Very well. In that case I should warn you that my retinue and I are going to be unavailable for several weeks. Jean will be your-" I lean back slightly and gesture to her with my right hand. "-point of contact."

"When can I expect you to report for training?"

Um? "Training? I'm not sure I follow."

"The licensing program for civilian vigilantes. Like you. Other vigilantes will be much more likely to be willing to participate once they've seen you receiving your certification, and you would actually be able to arrest people. Legally arrest people."

Huh. I suppose that she does sort of have a point. Not.. sure.. how I feel about it… I turn to Sam. "I thought that Major Adams was going to be the lead on this?"

"Major Adams is a military officer under my command. I've got him on loan to the DMA, but he doesn't qualify for the licensing scheme."

Huh. Rats. I.. suppose that's it's only reasonable that she ask, though I find my mental teeth grinding at the possibility that I may need to actually report to someone.

"I.. wasn't.. around when the final wording was drafted. Can people who aren't US citizens go through this process..?"

"Yes." Director Armstrong sounds very sure of the fact. "Given how many American Justice League members are space aliens I made sure that the text specifies that it applies to anyone operating inside the US."

"I thought that it wasn't going to be a compulsory thing? Individual.. cities were still going to be able to sort out their own relationships?"

"Rifle isn't large enough to qualify, and you haven't done any work there anyway."

"Oh, that's not true. There was a car theft a couple of months ago-."

"Director. Grayven." We both look at Sam. "No, it's not compulsory. But we want it to become the default access route to superheroing inside our lifetimes. We can do it without you if we have to… But, heck, you were the one saying it was such a great idea."

He's not wrong. It is, just… For everyone else. Ah well. "We can have a chat about it after I get back from Vega. Obviously, I.. wouldn't be working for the DMA directly, just being the standard bearer for the registration program."

"That's what I asked. What about the rest of your people? The Tiger, the Gothic Flash,-"

"Hah!"

"-the pyro-."

"No, she's.. not interested in law enforcement. Not yet, anyway. Nothing quite like being shadowed by SHADE agents for years to put you off that sort of thing."

"And the British duo. And the-" She glances at Jean. "-Genomorphs."

No mention of Sunset Shimmer? I suppose that she hasn't been quite as visible as the others…

"I'll be certain to ask them about it."

back

Headhunted 13

next

7th August

16:47 GMT -5

By now, people aren't anything like as excited about a boom tube opening inside the Centre as they used to be. The children -if there are any around- barely bother looking up from whatever they're doing. The adults generally pay a little more attention, most likely curious as to what strange freak of nature I'm going to be bringing with me today.

Katarina Armstrong was quite definite about stepping through the boom tube ahead of me. Obviously she couldn't actually barge me out of the way, but she strode forward sufficiently fast that my choice was 'let her' or 'trample her'. I think.. maybe I should have a chat with her about what happens if a boom tube aperture opens inside of a baseline human. She took the time to switch out of the suit she wore for our meeting with Sam in favour of tight fitting black trousers and a green turtleneck sweater with a yellow diamond on the chest. That must be sweltering when she's outside, but Americans do love their air conditioning.

The receptionist tries smiling at her. "Can I help-?"

"We're here to see Doctor Williams." Director Armstrong sweeps past the reception desk in the direction of his office.

"Ah..?"

I pull a slightly strained face in the receptionist's direction and shake my head before striding after Director Armstrong. "Director, if I might intrude for a moment?"

"Speak."

"I can understand you confronting me like that with General Lane. I'm an awkward irregularity, trying to hold myself above the rules I expect other people to follow, and… My presence could undermine your position. Fine. When I said that I would sign up and do PR for you, I meant it. And I should really have volunteered without needing to be pushed."

No obvious response. She could at least appreciate my magnanimousness a little bit.

"But… This is a civilian school. Aside from a couple of minor indiscretions on Miss Selton's part and.. a couple of parking tickets, no one here has committed an offence. Or shown any propensity towards vigilantism."

"Except your daughter and Claire Selton."

"Miss Selton was defending herself, and it was a one time thing. The point that I wish to make is that I've got a broad back. Hurt my pride, I'll live with it. But this is my daughter's school."

She stops and turns around, staring up at me. "Wasn't that why the British attacked it and put everyone's lives in danger?"

I smile. "What's the point of having deniable assets if you don't deny what they do?"

"Don't give me that. You pissed them off-"

I glance at a nearby classroom. "Language!"

"-and they came after this school. That's exactly the sort of thing competent operatives won't allow to happen in the future."

"My people were on site in moments and the fatalities were zero. Even on their side."

"And there's absolutely nothing to stop them doing it again."

Hm. Could make reference to the Blacks' ongoing investigation, but I think it might be better if I kept her out of the loop. "Aside from the operation's total failure, the destruction of SHADE's resource base and the tremendous expense of the robot." And the fact that if something like that happens again I'm going to be a good deal less patient. "And they know that President Horne didn't believe their denial for a moment." And I hid multiphasic sensors on the roof with a hotline to Challenger Mountain and all of my personnel. Anyone trying that again would be swarmed under in G-Elves before they even reached the Center.

Director Armstrong turns away and resumes her journey towards Doctor Williams' office, this time at a more normal walking pace. She takes the opportunity to look in through one of the interior windows at a class in progress. Not Lynne's class, but Mister Valjek is in there giving one of their parapsychics… Seers, I suppose that I should say, some personal tuition.

"How many telepaths do you have working for you?"

"There are hundreds of G-Gnomes in total, but only a score or so in Challenger Mountain. I imagine that the Genomorph Collective would be perfectly willing to work with you, if you're interested in acquiring the capacity for telepathic information gathering."

"They were made by Cadmus."

"The original material was acquired from elsewhere, but this particular refinement was, yes."

"Cadmus is Luthor. Luthor is the enemy. I'm not hiring anything he made." She turns the corner, entering the corridor with Doctor Williams' office in it. "The children here, on the other hand…"

"May consider a career in law enforcement if they and their parents are approached appropriately. I would remind you that this place had trouble with SHADE and that they no longer receive any sort of government funding. I strongly recommend donning your more beneficent aspect if you want to get anything out of this."

"I'll take it under advisement." She takes hold of the door handle and sharply turns it before shoving the door open. "Doctor Williams."

He looks up from his computer -a slightly more modern model than when I first visited him- and blinks at her for a moment. "Oh. You must be-."

"Director Armstrong of the DMA."

I walk in behind her and close the door behind me, giving Doctor Williams a mildly apologetic wave.

"You're a.. little early, but I wasn't doing anything I can't put on hold." He presses something on his keyboard, then steeples his hands on the desk in front of him. "Can I offer you some coffee?"

"No. Thank you. What I want to-." She steps back as a chair floats from the side of the room to a position just in front of his desk.

"Please, take a seat."

I wonder if she's taken any notice of what I was telling her. I want the DMA to succeed. Doctor Williams doesn't care much either way. To be honest, he'd probably rather it failed, as someone in central government getting interested is likely to generate extra busywork for him. Then… There's the fact that he could probably squeeze her jugular vein closed…

"Thank you, Doctor."

And a slight smile. Good show. I take my own chair out of subspace and plonk myself down just behind her to her left, noting that the chair he selected for her leaves her head just slightly lower than his.

"So." He smiles. "What can I do for you?"

"I'm interested in the work you do here. You train young children with innate psychic powers how to use them better. There are a few other places across the US that do something similar, but only on a much smaller scale."

"Yes, that's certainly true. I have correspondences with most of them."

"The DMA is going to be looking to train adults with all sorts of powers. Most people with super powers either try and work them out on their own, or get taught by someone else with powers. That happens even if they join the military. The United States has never had a decent federal training program. I'm going to build one, and I want help from you and your staff."

"I see. What.. sort of help?"

"I want to hire them for my program. Or rent them. They have expertise that their country needs. And I want them teaching people to do what they do, the techniques they use. Obviously the DMA would be paying for everything."

Doctor Williams thinks about it for a moment. "That sounds reasonable. We do.. actually do some work with adults here. Today's lessons will be ending soon if you'd like to talk to some of the staff."

She nods. "Yes. I would."

"And… You… Don't want to draft any of our students..?"

"I'd like it if any of them with useful abilities came to work for us, but the US military is a volunteer organization. I'd like to get someone in to do career talks with the older students, but if they don't want to join up, fine. I don't know what SHADE was trying to pull here, but my organization is going to be legitimate."

Doctor Williams smiles. "Then I think we should be able to work together."

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Headhunted 14

next

10th August

14:15 GMT

Tracking device number three… Removed. Ring, picking up anything else?

No further tracking devices detected. Warning: this technology is sufficiently dissimilar to devices on record that highly covert monitoring systems may escape detection.

I take a rune stone out of an equipment pouch and slowly move it around the surface of what was allegedly the central computer for a Dominator cruiser. It's about the size of a van.. and matches the partial scans that were on John's ring's database. The Green Lantern Corps has destroyed Dominator ships before, but they are generally designed in such a way that the most important bits are thoroughly disintegrated. The Guardians probably have better records…

No reaction from the stone, so no magic-based alert system. Which means that if it does have a monitoring system it's almost certainly sublight. After I picked it up I made a few random warp journeys and waited around to see if a Dominator ship would follow me. Nothing so far, and I left hard-to-detect sensors along the way. It's true that leaving an alien to be killed by another isn't the Khundian way, but I thought that a little caution was in order. Perhaps I was being unnecessarily paranoid. Of the devices I removed only one was a blatant leave-a-trail-and-tell-me-where-they-are type tracking device, probably put there by Mister Kharhi. The other two may well have been parts of the ship when it was still functional.

I take one last look around the highly radioactive nebula I'm hiding in. It's really quite pretty when viewed by radiation-proof eyes. Otherwise I wouldn't want to come here in anything less than a solid lead box. Hm. Ring, plot course for J.

Route plotted.

Warp.

Compliance.

Bit of a shame about the Nth Metal. I was looking forward to playing with it a little, but I've got a nasty suspicion that I'm going to have traded it all away before I get back to Earth. That or destroyed it without fully learning how not to handle the notoriously volatile substance. Mister Hol and Ms Thal were probably alright about me having small amounts of the stuff while I was limited to Earth, but I'd imagine that me trying to do anything major with it while on good terms with the Alstair-aligned Thanagarians would raise a few hackles.

Dominators aren't known for using phasing technology… No, probably not worth sacrificing one of the other cutlasses on the off-chance that something is phased in the prison. I'll keep it as a reserve option…

Warp terminating in three, two, one.

J appears in front of me and I plot a course towards the ground and the proto-spaceport that has grown up around Enneret's ship. The locals might find meatfolk disturbing, but the knowledge that there are other plant people out there appears to have kindled-. Probably not a good word to use there. Started, an interest in space travel. And magic. Apparently the local magic forces are much weaker than they are on Alstair, but since mystics like Medphyll do learn how to use it what Enneret showed them wasn't completely beyond their ken. Medphyll himself could get quite a few students out of this if he is prepared to teach them.

"Two Eight One Four to Komand'r. Anything interesting happen while I was gone?"

Her face appears above my ring. "I have no idea. I'm not on J, I'm on Treigst. But unless watching plants grow is something you find entertaining I very much doubt it.

"Oh? What are you up to?"

"Undergoing a thorough medical examination. Are you and our host likely to be departing soon?"

"Hopefully within a few hours. Medphyll will want some time to familiarise himself with Dominator technology. And there's no need to rush back if Koriand'r is still here."

"Then I will not do so."

"I'll let you know when we leave. Two Eight One Four out."

Dropping through the atmosphere I can already see the crowds gathered around the landing area, mostly keeping back behind the barriers the city authorities have assembled. Enneret's been giving a lucky few flights in his ship, though the lack of any way of observing the exterior without magic makes it a slightly disappointing experience for most of them. A few of the rubberneckers below me look up and point but the presence of flying, glowing orange people isn't really a huge deal any more.

My ring blinks.

Answer.

Koriand'r's head appears. "Were you successful?"

"Yep. One giant plant computer ready for delivery. Everything normal here?"

"I have not yet become accustomed to this world's 'normal'. Lantern Medphyll is translating for a meeting of his people's religious leaders and Captain Enneret."

"Is it going well?"

"They appear to simply be exchanging information at this stage, though several have expressed an interest in meeting Queen Hyathis in person." Hm. "Was this your intent? Did you want to bring these two peoples together?"

"Not.. specifically, but I'm glad that it's happening. I don't like stasis."

"It is good to know that the change you bring does not always involve death."

"It's funny. In the sense of being odd. Before the Citadel I'm not sure that I'd killed more than… Maybe two hundred people? And that was mostly.. spread across two pitched battles. More or less pitched battles. I don't particularly like killing people, but it.. doesn't really bother me. Did it bother you? I didn't hear you say anything when we activated the Warden Stations."

"The fleet of the Citadel Empire was a blight upon Vega. That does not trouble me."

"The ones who ran into Amalak's force field? It's been a while since the faces of the dying bothered me, but-."

"I killed my first enemy when the Gordanians came for me and my sister. That did not trouble me, for I knew what they intended. But those who died that day were no threat to you. When you removed the Gordanians from Tamaran you spared many who had killed and enslaved many of my people, and yet you removed them to a new world for them to settle. Why?

I come to a halt in the air. "The Gordanians of the Tearing Bite clan were a community. While they all benefited from Tamaran's suffering, they had internal social mechanisms which could lead to them becoming something else if that opportunity was denied to them. I did not think it right to kill everyone in a group where not everyone was directly involved and not everyone was -by the standards they were used to- particularly bad people. I am loath to kill people who could become something better. However, it is my contention that unmodified Citadelians cannot. They aren't taught anything beyond using weapons or any ideology beyond Citadelian exceptionalism. Combine that with their low intelligence and you get a person who can't reform, not without invasive mind-altering techniques. And if I'm rewriting their brain, then they're not them any longer."

"Should I have dumped them somewhere and let them starve out of sight? Or let them rejoin the Citadelian remnant, so we can fight them again in the future?" I take a breath. "I fully expected most -if not all- to die then and there, and my assessment was correct."

"Aside from those few who were so crushed by what we had done to them that they could not rouse themselves to fight us."

"I found that rather hopeful, actually. It shows that they can learn new behaviours without needing to be programmed with them."

"You could have-."

"Why? Given what the Citadel was, given that in any civilised area of space what they'd done would earn them a death sentence, why should I treat them differently simply because… What, because I'd made use of them?" I start flying in Medphyll's direction again. "Of course, you are free to pursue a different approach to Citadelians you encounter in future and I will wish you good fortune if you decide to do so."

"I will."

"I suggest that you prioritise it, then. I doubt that Komand'r will be as generous. Would you let Medphyll know that I'm coming?"

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Headhunted 15

next

10th August

14:23 GMT

Lantern Medphyll's eye unglazes, blinking twice before focusing on me. The glow from his ring fades away as he lowers his right arm. "You are right. It is somewhat similar in structure to the minds that control our skyscrapers, though far more sophisticated and less… Less creative. I don't believe there was ever an intelligence inside it."

Enneret is still touching it, his leaves twitching oddly. I give him a moment to see if he wants to chip in, but he remains focused on his task. Dominators are reputed to use magic, but according to John's database it's thought to be limited to a handful of high caste types. Medphyll hasn't contradicted that, so this was probably created using conventional technology. Conventional for a people as advanced as the Dominators, at least.

"But the important question is..?"

Lantern Medphyll nods. "I can disrupt similar systems with my ring. I don't know what that will do to the rest of the prison. Since we will be evacuating the entire population life support will not be an issue, but if they are containing any exotic life forms then they may be able to escape the remaining conventional restraints."

"If there are, I imagine that they would be pretty happy about escaping Dominator containment as well. If not, then with a bit of luck we'll be long gone before it can have a serious go at us. Everything else ready?"

"I have a location where I can maroon them until either I.. or my successor, can examine the data on their convictions."

I frown. "Your successor?"

"I doubt that your sophism will have a great deal of sway with the Guardians of Oa. I suspect that I will be called upon to explain myself. We will be going well outside my Sector without due cause. Properly speaking, I should simply refer the matter to the Lanterns assigned to that Sector."

"But they're busy keeping an eye on Colu."

"That is what I have told myself."

I shift a little uncomfortably. "And… what happens if they don't like what they hear? I.. wouldn't want-."

He shakes his head. "Excessive enthusiasm in the prosecution of ones duties is only an exilable offence in cases like Sinestro's. At worse, I would be discharged."

Oh? "I… Do have a giant pile of orange rings burning a hole in my back pocket." His eye narrows. "I'm not trying to get you kicked out. I'm just saying… If they react badly… You've got the skill set I'm looking for."

He looks away, returning his attention to the Controller computer. "I was considering retirement anyway." There's a brief glow from his ring. "According to the Green Lantern Corps database on Human culture, informing you of that fact indicates that we are now doomed."

I shake my head. "No, no it doesn't."

"Lantern Gardner-."

"You're doomed. I'm fine." I pat him on his left shoulder. "Ready to go?"

He takes a moment to look around at the crowds. "I will take the lead in the initial dialogue?"

I nod. "That's what we agreed."

"Then yes." He rises off the ground, environmental shield sparkling green. "Let us liberate your ally."

"To be completely fair-" I take off after him. "-we haven't actually met yet."

He looks down at me as the ground falls away beneath us. "You are willing to take on the Dominion for a single man you have never met?"

"Sure. Why not?"

"Because they can and will bring death and ruination to everyone you know and love?"

"Them and.. an awful lot of other people. If I let stuff like that stop me I'd never get anything done." Or end up like Larfleeze. "How have you found working with Komand'r and Koriand'r?"

"Komand'r I find excessively aggressive. Though no more so than many new Green Lantern recruits. What concerns me there is that you appear to have told her that you will grant her far more freedom to act on her own initiative than a Green Lantern would be given."

"I don't believe that strict discipline will prove helpful when training Orange Lanterns. I'm more interested in recruiting people who want to do what I would have them do. Not.. that I mean to imply that I wouldn't keep an eye on them."

"I think that may be best." The atmosphere around us grows thinner and Medphyll's ring glows as he calculates his course. "My Sector has long since been peaceful. Most of the conflict I have seen has been when outsiders travelled here or when I have been called upon to aid other Green Lanterns in their Sectors. If a war like the one which Tamaran experienced came to J, if my people suffered as the people of Tamaran have… I could not be certain that I would not feel as she does."

"I don't think that the you who's lived the life you have would."

"I am uncertain as to whether you mean that as an insult or a compliment."

"Neither. An observation on psychology."

"Are you prepared to commence the journey?"

I shrug and drift closer to him, dialling my environmental shield down to the minimum. Maintaining conversations over long distance warps is a bit of a fiddle. It'll be easiest if one of us pulls the other along and he does have seniority. "I trust you."

He hesitates for a moment, then the space around us bends as he initiates the warp. Ring, match velocities during flight.

Compliance.

"And Koriand'r?"

"Quite capable. If she is representative of her world then it is a shame that no other Tamaranian has ever been called to the Green Lantern Corps."

"One was. Don't know her name. I assume that she was either living outside of Vega or got recruited before the bar came into effect." Thinking about it, if that ban was put in place just after Larfleeze moved in… "Most likely the first one."

"My ring's database indicates that you are mistaken."

"The Guardians erased a lot of entries in the Book of Oa after their attack on Apokolips failed."

"My ring's database has no record of that, either."

"Well… No. It wouldn't, would it?"

"Do you have any evidence, or… I understand that Humans have a tradition called a 'conspiracy theory'?"

"Sure, I can prove it. Do you want to stop off on Apokolips on our way back? They kept trophies."

"As I'm sure that you know, Apokolips is also off-limits to Green Lanterns. Do you have any other evidence?"

"Errr… You might be able to get Raker Qarrigat while he's wearing his ring, if you're very lucky. Maybe… New Genesis would have records of it? I could ask Canis when I go back to Earth."

"I am willing to examine any evidence that you present. Until then, I will remain true to my conviction that the Guardians of the Universe have not lied to everyone for millennia. And I would prefer it if you did not make baseless accusations."

"Noted."

"Warp terminating."

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Headhunted 16

next

10th August

14:37 GMT

"Multiple weapon locks detected." / "Multiple weapon locks detected."

Well, yes…

I look out across the area covered by Starlag's interdiction fields, seeing next to nothing with my unaided eyes. The area covered by the fields is actually slightly lopsided, with a much greater area of empty space being covered 'in front' of the station while the gas giant it orbits around is largely uncovered. A moment later tiny dots of orange light appear across my visual field, and as I focus my attention on each in turn the ring informs me of what they are.

There are numerous small Dominion gunboats in grey and blue, general purpose craft either manned by low-caste Dominators or simply automated. Some are equipped with gravity clamps and used to pull small asteroids into close proximity to the station. Though it serves almost no economic purpose, working the asteroids keeps the more physical prisoners focused and tired as well as giving the ones they might end up releasing something to keep them motivated.

Mines aren't really supposed to work as an area denial weapon in space. Without air, explosions don't generate meaningful blast waves as they do in an atmosphere. Nonetheless, the Dominators are trying. The sheer number of evenly spaced spherical devices arranged in multiple shells around the station is.. frankly staggering. The minefields are augmented by thousands… No, millions, of force field projectors and detection nets similarly arrayed in spheres around the station. I've spent a little while trying to think of a way to sneak past them and so far I've come up with nothing. Light based invisibility is pointless, they'd detect phasing and based on some of the squiggles I've seen engraved on their exteriors I've got a sneaky suspicion that a Dominator sorcerer has added a little something in case someone tries to bypass them with magic.

I'm still a bit worried about that. An active magic user on site should be able to overpower local wards as long as their creator isn't around to reinforce them…

Further out are the weapon stations. Nothing as clumsy or undiscerning as the Citadel's Warden Stations, they have highly precise and powerful weapons… Which the station they guard is specifically designed to have no defence against. In the event of a prisoner uprising they would simply fire at it until there was nothing left and there would be nothing the prisoners could do about it. The station itself is lightly armed -most weapons are anti-personnel and set to be used against recalcitrant prisoners- but well armoured and shielded. And full of Dominion prison guards commanded by a mid-caste governor, while the high-caste science team do whatever takes their fancy to whomever takes their fancy.

"Multiple weapon locks detected." / "Multiple weapon locks detected."

Medphyll raises his ring in front of him, aiming it in the general direction of Starlag. "This is Green Lantern Medphyll. I wish to speak with the Governor of Starlag."

If I did have to force our way closer… I could probably overpower the spatial stabilisers, at least for a little while. Flying around a little at random should throw off their main guns… Then I… Hm. A long ranged gravity based attack might be able to knock out a weapon station… No, no, they'd call in reinforcements too fast for that approach to be viable. What else? Something… They've designed this station to be capable of resisting Green Lanterns, though not so obviously specifically designing it for that purpose that the Guardians might take umbrage.

What can I do that they won't have seen Green Lanterns doing?

"What are you thinking?"

"I'm trying to work out how to get past their defences if this doesn't work."

"I would appreciate advanced notice if you decide that such an attempt is necessary."

"It would be quite suboptimal. If I thought that I could take the place without you then I would have done so."

"Given the effort which you have put in, I am… Pleasantly surprised how rational you are being."

"For better or worse, pernicious rationality is something of a character trait of mine."

I haven't.. tried using the Honden to bypass spatial distances. Would that work? I try focusing on the desires of the people on board Starlag-.

Medphyll's ring flickers and a Dominator's head appears. They look a little like the Martians from Mars Attacks!, only with very sharp teeth and a red spot in the middle of their foreheads. The size of the red spot corresponds to the importance of their caste. This one… It's hard to get an idea of size from a construct projection, but since the edge of his forehead circle doesn't quite reach an imaginary vertical line drawn up from his tear ducts I'd say that this fellow was mid-caste… And I think the squiggle in the middle indicates local seniority. So, either the garrison commander or the governor.

"Green Lantern. Do you have prisoners for us?"

"No. I am here to investigate reports-."

"You have no authority over this facility. It is Dominion controlled and operated under treaty with many neighbouring stellar civilisations."

"True. So long as you are operating in line with those agreements, and not performing any action which would grant me authority to intervene anyway."

"No such action is taking place."

"I have received reports of invasive biological experimentation being carried out on prisoners who are later reported to have died in accidents or fights. I wish to investigate the truthfulness or otherwise of these reports."

"Hshshshshs." Inasmuch as I can read Dominator facial expression, I'd say that he was decidedly unhappy about being put in this situation. "Who accuses us?"

"That certainly isn't your concern. The substance of the allegations-."

"I would not want you to waste your time investigating slander. We have many enemies who would rejoice at conflict between us and the Green Lantern Corps. Who accuses us?"

"I will not answer that question. The information was received in confidence, and I will treat that confidence with respect. Allow me access to the Starlag facility, and if I find nothing of concern I will ensure that we do not listen to people besmirching your good name out of jealousy again."

The Dominator watches him impassively for a moment, then the construct shuts down.

"Does that mean they're about to shoot?"

"More likely he is simply trying to demonstrate his control of the situation."

"Would the Honour Guard really bother with a place like this, even if they are talking to the Computer Tyrants?"

"Not simply at my request. But Lantern Lee has a reputation for violent thoroughness. I doubt that it would take much effort to persuade him to investigate in force."

"Do the Dominators know who's heading the taskforce?"

"Unlikely. But they are aware that the Guardians dislike them. It would not come as a surprise-."

The projection reappears. "I will tolerate a brief inspection. You will go where we permit and you will be searched before you leave. I will not allow you to interfere with this facility."

"As long as my colleague and I can lawfully comply with that request, we will do so."

"Colleague?"

"Yes." He turns the construct my way. "Green Lanterns often operate in pairs." And his ring transmission won't be able to display my sigil. Interesting. "I had assumed that you were aware-."

"Approach on a direct line. We will be monitoring you."

The head vanishes again.

"How did that go? "

"As well as I could expect. Though they will attempt subterfuge and will almost certainly attack us if we actually find anything."

"Good to know." I hold out my left arm in the direction of Starlag. "After you."

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Headhunted 17

next

10th August

14:43 GMT

Starlag is a T-shaped station, an odd shape for any species advanced enough to have artificial gravity installed. Usually that shape is a result of the need to spin the inhabited areas around a central spoke. Here, it's more or less a huge city in space with a tail. I'm not really in a position to criticise the Dominators for their design decisions since I have no idea what their basis was for choosing this one. I know that high caste Dominators have to undergo some fairly involved purification rituals after having anything to do with aliens, so… Maybe it's something to do with that?

"They want us to enter through airlock seventeen."

I nod as Medphyll peels off. I didn't spend all that much time on the outside of the Citadel before I sent it on its way, but I still had time for a few moments of confusion as my brain tried to work out where 'down' was while I was standing on its surface and looking at the planet below. Starlag is smaller, but approaching it under my own power like this makes it seem larger.

I glance over at the nearest asteroids as I turn to follow Medphyll. We're getting a few looks-. No. He is, and not friendly ones. I spot one reptilian inmate… Rhilosian? Stop working with a force drill while she takes in the sight… And then drop the drill and start shaking as the Okaaran overseeing the inmates spots her slacking off and administers a punishment shock.

"Do Green Lanterns ever bring people here?"

"No. But we do hand criminals over to governments in this region, and many of them send them here. Why do you ask?"

"Post-arrest Lantern Corps policy is something I've been thinking about quite a bit recently. On Earth, people like me do the same thing: hand criminals we apprehend over to the local government and let them handle trial and punishment. I haven't yet been in a position where I was expected to hand someone over for grossly disproportionate punishment or to be punished for something that I didn't think of as being a crime."

"But… I've arrested far more people than I could check up on. Quite a lot of them would have gone to… Prisons not conducive to rehabilitation. And the local Green Lanterns vicariously send people here. Should they? Koriand'r seems to think I should have had somewhere to put the Citadelians I stopped mind controlling. Should we branch out?"

"It's not something I've given much thought to myself. But since you ask-" We fly under a… Antenna, maybe? A spar of some kind in Starlag's superstructure. "-I am inclined to think 'not'. Green Lanterns were never intended to be the be-all and end-all of law enforcement. And we are certainly not meant to subvert principled governance."

"But you're still the people handing people over for the Dominators to dissect."

"We don't know for certain that they do that." The airlock comes into sight, two humanoid robots standing on the outer hull with weapons pointing towards the closer asteroids. "And while I am hesitant to compare the practices of the Green Lantern Corps to what you did on Dryanna, you said yourself that you could have elected to keep them alive."

"Yes. But I'm allowed to kill my enemies."

"Do you think that the rules we are told to follow are the sum total of morality?"

Fair point. "No, of course not."

The robots note our approach, walking slightly further away from the airlock as the outer doors slide open. Medphyll doesn't bother looking at them as he drifts inside.

"If I found myself in a situation where I felt it was necessary to kill an enemy to prevent some great evil, I would do so. Not without hesitation." I fly in behind him and the outer door closes behind me. "I have become too accustomed to resolving conflicts without resorting to lethal measure for that to be true. But I would do so. If it were not necessary-" Gas begins flowing into the chamber. "-then I would prefer to be able to use a prison that would keep most of my prisoners alive rather than slaughter eight hundred of them."

Ring, check the gas?

Seventy six percent nitrogen and twenty percent oxygen, with various other gasses making up the remainder. It is safely breathable.

"You think that I should have brought them here?"

"As opposed to what you did? Yes, this would have been better."

"If I had a prison ready to go I would have put them there. If they had the skills to build a settlement I'd have marooned them like I did the Tearing Bite clan Gordanians."

"But you knew of this place. Its existence is the very reason why you came to me for aid."

"I don't believe in bunting. What's the point in putting a group of violent brutes in storage?"

"What is the point on your homeworld?"

"As I said, rehabilitation. Then punishment, public protection. Perhaps a consideration to the fact that they might turn out to have been wrongly convicted. Does Starlag rehabilitate?"

"I would give it better odds than shooting them all."

"Really? We're talking about a cloned and mentally programmed race-." It's not the same as Kon. He switched sides after a short conversation! "Programmed to be simpleminded warriors, not programmed to be anything else." There's a chime as pressure equalises. "I knew what they were and what they'd done with near one hundred percent accuracy from their own records. What I did was give them one last chance to prove that I didn't need to kill them all."

"Vega is a far more violent place than my own Sector. What you did was more generous than most local groups would have done."

"True, I suppose."

The inner door slams open and he walks through. "That is a very low standard by which to judge yourself."

"I'd like to see you do better."

Our welcoming party consists of two low caste Dominators armed with wrist-mounted particle projectors and wearing armour and face-covering helmets, one mid-caste administrator (not the governor) and a heavily armoured Okaaran with a shock-cudgel. I hadn't really appreciated how many Okaarans found themselves working in places like this. Or maybe she's a trustee? No, that doesn't sound likely.

"Guests." The administrator holds his hands at his chest, palms up and fingers pointing towards us. Polite ritual greeting. Not a happy greeting; if it were he'd be standing closer. "I am to escort you to the governor. Remain with us. Do not speak to anyone without permission or scan anywhere without permission."

"Is the governor busy?"

His eyes move to Medphyll and rest there for a moment before returning to me. "He is willing to speak with you. Consider yourselves privileged."

"It just occurred to me that it would have been faster for us to have come in closer to the command level. Or he could have come down here."

"This area is.. impure. I will require cleansing later. For someone of the governor's position it would be… Inappropriate."

Medphyll nods. "We will accompany you."

The Okaaran turns away, stomping across the room towards the inner door. She waves her right hand over the sensor, which chimes and opens the door. It's big enough for her to pass comfortably through, perhaps an effort to allow the prison to cope with inmates of a wide variety of sizes. I.. wait for a moment for the Dominators to follow.

They don't move. The administrator's eyes move from us to the open door and then back again. Medphyll and I look at each other. I suppose..? We're supposed to go next?

Medphyll starts towards the door and a small amount of tension appears to leave the administrator. I shrug and follow him, the two soldiers and the administrator then following in strict order.

Now. Do I think they can detect empathic vision?

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Headhunted 18

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10th August

14:51 GMT

If they can, no one's saying anything.

As prisons go, this one isn't much worse than Belle Reve. The areas we've seen are clean and well put together, though the shiny pale blue-grey would probably irritate my eyes if my ring didn't come with built-in shades. The prisoner areas we've seen so far have exercise equipment and terminals which I presume are for education or entertainment. Monitoring equipment is reasonably unobtrusive and there are force field protected balconies for the guards.

We haven't encountered any prisoners so far, and while I initially suspected that was due to the time of day a quick flash of empathic vision showed that not to be the case. While empathic vision doesn't let me tell guard from inmate with complete reliability, watching flashes of yellow as one group of people are herded out of the corridors and rooms ahead of us does make it somewhat obvious that they're attempting some sort of deceit.

Interestingly, sounds don't appear to travel through the walls at all. If I wasn't seeing what I'm seeing, I might think that there was nothing amiss. I try not to look behind me too much to see what happens when we've passed through an area. That might make it a bit obvious that I'm up to something.

The Okaaran ahead of us comes to a halt again, and a blink shows me a handful of people being shoved down a side passage. Medphyll turns around and takes a step towards the administrator. The administrator's bodyguard don't quite raise their weapons, but their arms definitely tense slightly.

"Is there a reason for these delays? We could have flown to one of the upper airlocks by now."

"Security procedures require entry through lower airlocks."

"Why?"

The administrator blinks. "That is the established procedure."

I'm not sure how Dominators reproduce, but it seems that they've got a knack for cultural indoctrination. I'm not seeing any desires not related to his role and the efficient performance of it. And a bubbling aversion to aliens. Makes sense, really. If they didn't keep themselves separate and have a built-in reason to keep away from aliens at least some Dominators might start to see them as people. As it is, no one likes needing to perform a lot of rituals that get in the way of their main job, they associate those rituals with aliens… The whole thing reinforces itself. That might explain the Okaarans as well: they don't have to perform rituals and so can handle most of the face to face contact with the prisoners.

The door in front of us slams open, the hallway empty-. The floor's damp. They moved the cleaners out. The Okaaran starts walking again, while Medphyll gives up on his mutual-incomprehension-stare-off with the administrator and starts onwards once more. Okay, clearly they're trying to stage manage the visit and almost certainly restrict our access to prisoners. I'm pretty sure that Medphyll will back me, having come this far. The Dominators have breached what the Guardians consider 'acceptable malfeasance' by dealing with the Computer Tyrants. There might be a… Difficult few moments where he's trying to wreck their computers and they're trying to decide whether or not to fire into their own prison to stop us, but that's the nature of the beast.

The end of the corridor opens onto a small chamber with another two Dominator guards on duty in front of a decorated doorway. The Okaaran leading the way peels off before that, resulting in Medphyll and myself leading the procession. We both hesitate for a moment but apparently that was supposed to happen. Looking at the floor again, I see a band comprised of two golden lines with… The ring isn't translating it so the golden symbols between them must be purely decorative. This is the first time that I've seen it. A boundary marker for the edge of Dominator territory? Might explain why they're using Okaarans instead of other mercenaries. Okaarans have discipline. People like the Khundians would constantly push a limit like that.

"Please head for the elevator. I will accompany you to the governor."

Medphyll and I proceed as instructed. Behind us, our escort peel off and take up position on this side of the corridor exit while the administrator follows us. The door slides open with a good deal less violence than the ones to which the prisoners have access, revealing a small octagonal elevator illuminated in pink-red lights. Dominators do see further into the red part of the spectrum than Humans. I suppose this is the lighting scheme that would be most comfortable for them. Medphyll enters first, walking to the rear of the elevator and then turning to face the door.

"When you meet with the governor, there are protocols to observe." The administrator walks in and doesn't react either as the door closes or as the elevator very gently thrums into motion. "You are not to touch him under any circumstances."

"I'll try to restrain my base animal lusts."

"Yes. Do so. Also, do not pass objects directly to the governor. Do not refer to him by any sort of pseudonym, up to and including 'hey, you'."

"Is that something people actually do?"

"Violent criminals are not known for their grasp of appropriate socialisation." That's.. a reasonable point. "While we do not experiment upon them, we do have a variety of licensed punishments which we administer to the recalcitrant."

"I assume that these rules will also apply to any high caste Dominators we meet?"

The administrator's jaw flexes slightly. He's.. disturbed..? By the suggestion?

"You will not meet high caste Dominators."

"Really? If we're investigating possible prisoner abuses, do you really think that we won't want to talk to the most likely culprits?"

"If they had performed these acts, would you expect them to admit it to you?"

"Probably not, but-."

"And if they denied it?"

Huh. With Humans -or most other races- I could analyse body language or patterns of brain activity to try and work out whether or not they were lying. With Dominators, the structure of their faces and minds is such that unless they were choosing to signal to me I would be unlikely to get anything. As such, without any physical evidence (beyond the small amounts taken from inconsistencies in the occasional official investigations) there actually isn't much reason for me to speak to them.

Medphyll nods. "It is unlikely that we will need to speak with them. However, I cannot rule it out at this point in our investigation. If they have had contact with the prisoners, we may want to speak with them to give them the chance to contradict the prisoners' falsehoods."

The administrator looks mildly blank for a moment. "If it is.. essential…" He sounds so uncomfortable with the idea that it's almost amusing. "Messages may be relayed to them."

He turns away from us, and for a moment I think that he's trying to force us to stop talking about it. Then the vibrations stop and the door opens out onto a chamber nearly identical to the one below. A couple of Dominators in robes nearly identical to our administrator walks past us, their eyes briefly passing over us. It's fascinating exactly how dim the emotional lights within them are. There's a basic green structure with a few.. pools of red. But that's about it. The other colours are there, but they're translucent and ephemeral. Even making a bit of an effort I can't clearly see what they contain or what associations they have.

That's… Really odd.

Add.. 'study Dominator reproduction and indoctrination' to the slate, I suppose.

"Follow me." The administrator starts down a corridor in the direction the other two came from. "Do not fall behind, even accidentally."

He leads us to the end of the corridor, the door opening as we reach it. The bridge of Starlag is hexagonal, rising from the edges of the room towards a raised area in the centre. A Dominator I recognise as the governor sits in the centre, surrounded by glowing holoscreens. Further out there are another three stations, each of which is manned by other Dominators with red spots slightly smaller than his.

The administrator walks directly towards the central position, stopping-. There's another line on the floor. He doesn't have a big enough circle to cross it. He kneels in the direction of the governor's dais.

And we wait.

A few moments later the governor turns his chair in the administrator's direction. He doesn't say anything.

"Superior, I have brought the Lanterns into your presence."

"Inferior. I will deal with them. Return to your duties."

"I obey."

He gets up and leaves the bridge without a backwards glance, while the governor rises from his seat and walks towards us. "Lanterns. I have assembled a cross section of prisoners for you to interview. I assure you that you will not find anything to substantiate any accusations."

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Headhunted 19

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10th August

16:29 GMT

Oh, won't we now?

Our current interviewee is a Quahoogan man by the name of Biist. He's due for release in a little under a month and has absolutely no reason to give his captors any difficulty about certain people who aren't on his cell block any longer. His face is shaped a little like that of a Turian, but flattened. Tough looking spines jut out from the back of his prison issue black-with-blue-stripes jumpsuit.

Which is actually pretty stylish. Though given that Dominators have trouble seeing blue… Ring, infrared?

Compliance.

Oh.

That's some fairly impolite writing. Ring, back to normal vision.

Compliance.

"…not a holiday camp or anything, but…" His throat pouch swells for a moment before deflating again. Resigned acceptance. "It's prison."

Medphyll nods. "You haven't heard or seen anything that would give you reason to believe that the accusations are true?"

"People.. leave… People come. Some new guys pick fights and sometimes the guards kill them to stop them. Not often, but it happens. Experiments?" His eye ridges flex. A head shake. "No. Haven't seen anything like that. I mean, even if they were, how would I know?"

"Do you think they are?"

"I heard all kinds of creepy things about them before getting sent here." Another flex. "It's just a prison. Pretty well run, all things considered." He looks Medphyll in the face, then his eyes switch to me for a moment. "There.. anything else?"

I activate a holographic display. "Do you recognise this man?"

I know full well that he does. Quite aside from the fact that I can clearly see his face picked out in yellow in this man's soul, Psion records state that he was two cells down from our interviewee for most of his stay here.

The pulses in our subject's neck get faster. "Reshulp? Yeah, I… I knew him. What's… I mean, what's that got to do with anything?"

"Do you remember the last time you saw him?"

"Ah… No? I know he's not here any more, but… Morning exercise, maybe? Must have been a couple of years ago. I thought he got released."

I lean slightly closer. "Did you really?"

"Yeah?"

I step back, nodding. "An easy mistake to make. No, he was killed trying to escape through the inner force fields under his own power."

"Oh. Yeah, that… That happens sometimes. The guards find it funny."

No follow up. No 'if you know what happened, why ask me?'.

"Dominators find something funny?"

"No, not the… Not the Dominators. The other guards, the Okaarans."

I nod. "Unfortunately, the injuries on those parts of his body which were returned to the state in which he was arrested don't match those of someone killed in that way."

"I'd never seen his species before..? So… Maybe they just die differently or something?"

I nod again. "I suppose that's possible." I turn to Medphyll. "That's me done. Anything you want to ask?"

Medphyll leans forward across the table. "Do you feel that -having spent time here- you are less likely to continue the criminal activity that led you to be sent here?"

"Huh? Oh, ah, yeah. Totally. Learned my lesson. Straight and narrow from now on."

Medphyll smiles. "I'm glad to hear it." He rises from his chair. "Governor, I believe that we are finished with Mister Biist."

The door we entered through reopens, while the metal clamps attaching Mister Biist to the table by his arms remain in place. Medphyll leads the way out to where the governor is waiting. The gold bordering is present again, this time wrapping around the interrogation chamber. I have my suspicions, but the room was fully cleansed before Mister Biist was placed in there so I couldn't detect any biological matter.

Medphyll nods to the governor as I -apparently accidentally- brush against him. I might not be able to transmit messages to green power rings, but I can send a filament through his environmental shield and manually vibrate his ear drum. And I feel the slight pressure as he does the same.

It seemed to me that he was afraid.

"He said nothing to substantiate the allegations."

I assume that you saw something of note?

The governor makes a gesture, tapping his fingers against his palms. "I am pleased that he has learned honesty during his time here. Do you wish to speak with any further prisoners?"

He saw a Dominator with a large red spot on his forehead accompany the guards who removed Reshulp. Dominators don't normally enter the prisoner areas themselves, and I haven't seen a high caste Dominator since we got here. They should be even more reluctant than the others to enter prisoner areas.

"No, I think that we have a reasonable overview. If you could show us your medical facilities, we will have seen enough to conclude our investigation in your favour."

That isn't proof.

We were never going to find a blood-covered scalpel, Medphyll. High caste Dominators are virtually all scientists. The fact that they're even on a prison is extremely suspicious.

"Certainly. You will find that the prisoner medical ward is the finest in any prison in this Sector."

"I am sure that you are right. I was referring to the Dominator medical chambers." The governor pulls his neck in slightly. Dismay. "If the accusations were true I doubt very much that any studies would have been performed in the prisoner medical ward. Unless you have it equipped for research as well?"

I could try using my plant manipulation abilities to read their records. Once we're closer.

"We.. do not. I will make the request to the high ones. I cannot order them to aid you, but they may decide to in the interests of good working relations."

You were able to infect Mister Biist with the smart algae?

I'd rather you didn't put it like that, but yes.

"We will be quite happy to await their convenience, of course."

"Remain here." The governor turns, heading in the direction of the command centre.

"Thank you."

Have you given much though to what we do if Vril Dox the Second is not here but experiments are taking place?

Wreck the place, evacuate the inmates and.. let the Guardians deal with any surviving Dominators? I'll want any information which could assist me in locating him, but other than that I'd be happy to follow your lead.

I am glad that you said that. Compelling you would have been awkward.

He breaks contact, walking after the governor.

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Headhunted 20

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10th August

17:02 GMT

The Dominator medical facilities are extensive, far more than would ordinarily be required for a garrison of this size. Even one that was trying to prepare itself for the possibility of an armed prisoner revolt. The general layout reminds me of what Tront had on Hny'xx. Efficient. Tidy. Clean.

Suspicious.

Medphyll raises his ring to scan one of the devices, a medium sized tank with complex computer systems attached. "An ultra definition flesh lathe?"

The governor hasn't been entirely at ease since we got here. I don't think he needs to worry about his superiors, though. They've been about five decks down since they received his request. He also doesn't need to worry about us detecting any residue. It was painfully apparent to me that the whole place has been aggressively sterilised. I don't even think they did this for us. I think that Dominator ritual purity just requires it as the default.

"I am not a physician."

"I am a little surprised to find one in a prison medical facility."

"It is not my place to question the high caste's decisions. In the event that I am so injured as to require it, I will be grateful."

Inasmuch as I can read him, I think he's being honest. While ultra definition flesh lathes can be used medicinally, they only really make sense for reconstructing a portion of someone's brain, and that's only if you have an ultra definition scan to base it on. Otherwise, more mundane, cheaper and more reliable techniques are used instead just about everywhere. Flesh knitted together by a lathe doesn't have the sort of automatic correction as 'naturally grown' tissue. Lathes usually have quite a high error rate, which isn't much help if someone is waiting for a transplant. I suppose… If someone was willing to throw money at a place, having a hundred or so of them working on the same thing would guarantee getting a useable component… But this lab only has one.

Which means that it's almost certainly being used for destructive analysis. Taking things apart and recording exactly what went where. There have been enough notable cases of the leaders of crime syndicates using them to dissect failed rivals that a lot of civilised worlds restrict their sale and use. Similarly, all of this analytical equipment has legitimate uses. In a major research hospital or university that dealt with dangerous diseases afflicting hundreds of species. Seeing it in a facility attached to a prison…

Still no smoking gun. Or bloody scalpel. Still, there are a few other things for us to try.

I've spent not a little time trying to work out what the best way to convince Vril Dox II to go along with my idea might be. I know that after breaking out in the comics he started the Licensed Extra-Governmental Interstellar Operatives Network, and I think I remember him being involved in removing the Computer Tyrants afterwards. I know that he hates his father with a fiery passion he displays in no other aspect of his life. So I've been assuming that offering him the resources he needs in order to make those things easier would be sufficient. But the core aspect is the revenge against his father for lowering his intelligence and treating him as a lab rat.

"What's down this way?"

I point to a corridor leading off the main laboratory towards the outer hull.

"A store room and an analytics computer. You are welcome to examine it if you wish."

I nod and amble off down the indicated corridor. The Dominators might not have standard humanoid body language, but I'd be a fool to think that they haven't learned to interpret it. I don't particularly want him to call in a squad of soldiers before we actually get anything concrete.

Oh, listen to the man who dropped the Citadel Complex on a cloning factory being all diplomatic.

The door on my right opens, revealing a computer system different to but recognisable as being related to the ones now being examined by the inhabitants of J. There are comfortable seats, work stations and a holotank for the high caste Dominators who work in here.

And there's a glowing orange shape filled with dying robots on the other side of that wall.

I wave my ring around the room, scanning for any other incongruities. Nothing. I hold out my right hand and generate a model of Starlag, blowing up the area I'm standing in… No, this should be the last room before the hull. And this image is generated based on my own observations, not on the 'official' schematics. I didn't see anyone stuck outside of the station either.

Curious.

I turn my head towards the door. "Lantern Medphyll! Governor! Do you have a moment?!"

Medphyll flies around the corner, not at an unseemly speed but with reasonable haste. "Have you found something?"

"I believe that I've found what I'm looking for."

He takes a moment to look around the room. "Where?"

I shake my head. "Use your… Exotic detection."

His ring shimmers for a moment, and he looks in the direction I was looking in a moment ago. "I see. You're certain?"

"No, but the balance of probability-" The governor walks into the room at a sedate pace. "-is in my favour. Governor, what's through that wall?"

He raises his right arm and presses a button on his wrist-mounted personal computer with his left forefinger. "The wall itself has numerous protective layers. Some wiring. Then the external armour layer. The original plan incorporated a weapon module at that location, but that was not included when this station was assigned for use as a prison."

"Are there any work crews outside there at the moment?"

Another button press. "No."

"I see." Orange filaments launch from my body and latch themselves to the wall in an oval. "So if I ripped a hole through here..?"

"You would be forcibly ejected from this prison. The prison would be unharmed as the hull is designed to withstand such damage."

I shift the end of the filaments into crumbler constructs. "Good-oh."

An oval of the wall dissolves, the centre section collapsing inwards a moment later. And through the gap…

Another room.

A man sits in a chair, naked but for the machinery I assume is designed to deal with his waste products and the cybernetic.. thing attached to his head. His skin is Coluan green while what I can see of his head is shaved bare. Wires from the cybernetic headpiece are collected into a single cable which runs into the floor, and from there my ring is now telling me they connect into the data analysis engine in the room with us.

"I was unaware of that."

Medphyll walks into the newly revealed room, visibly scanning the man with his ring. "Coluan. Locked in some sort of mental interface device." He turns back to the governor. "Explain his presence."

"Perhaps the high caste are.. working on some project with this.. volunteer. I will-."

"You are aware that the planet Colu recently underwent a violent change of government?"

"It is not the Dominion's concern which alien rules over their civilisations."

"Perhaps." Hah. "But it is the Guardians', and you know full well that they have ordered Colu isolated. If you have had any dealings with them then you have violated that order. An Honour Guard taskforce is already being prepared. It can easily stop here first on its way to Colu."

The governor regards Medphyll levelly for a moment, then taps a device on his right wrist with his left hand.

Teleportation detected.

Could jam it -the governor dissolves into a series of shimmering dots- but killing him could be an escalation and this might end up coming before the Guardians for judgement.

The moment passes and he disappears completely. Medphyll and I turn to look at one another.

"You free him and I will disrupt the computers." / "I'll free him, you disrupt the computers."

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Headhunted 21

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10th August

17:06 GMT

I bring my heavy armour out of subspace and generate construct armour around myself as I step up to Mister Dox and start scanning. "Though if you should happen to see an 'eject' button-."

"My control is nothing like that precise."

Ultrafine wires pierce his skull in a hundred-

Two hundred and fifty six.

-places, thank you, and interface with various parts of his brain. My relief that they didn't just extract his brain and stick it in a tank or something is tempered by the realisation that I'm really not sure what to do here. I have good data on general Coluan physiology, courtesy of Ms Gozzi. I know what bits the Dominators have plugged their machine into. I also have dozens of types of mental interface technology on file. What I don't have is anything on this specific set up. While -in theory- cutting the link between the intrusion filaments and the main system as a first step and removing the filaments as the second is a sound plan, I don't have any way to know exactly what I'm doing where brain repairs are concerned.

And Dox's brain is kind of the point of him.

Okay, ring, interface with the device and monitor for unusual activity. I don't want a kill switch being activated.

Compliance. Warning: this ring is uncertain that it could identify such a signal.

Just do your best.

Right. Nothing… Obviously kill switchy. No implanted explosives or anything like that. Of course, there's nothing special about computers made of soggy sacks of meat that makes them immune to data infections-.

Partially visible waves of green light radiate out from Medphyll's ring. As I study the points where the brain interface connects with Dox's neurons there's a slight change in the background noises of the station. The lights don't go off and the artificial gravity keeps working, but something just stopped. I guess their sonic masking wasn't covering everything.

Hm. This isn't going to require a huge amount of power, so…

"Jamming teleportation."

"Unnecessary. This station is designed to be hostile to teleportation. They can recall their staff but nothing more. Otherwise an attacker would be able to do the same. And with their main computers down I doubt that they'll risk it."

"All the same…"

Okay, I… I don't know how his brain encodes data but I do know what physical damage looks like and I can repair it-.

Hang on. That.. part appears to be hijacking his sense of touch. It's actually.. relatively simply to tell which filament is subverting what. Between myself, Medphyll and Dox the most intelligent of us is Dox by a mile. He also almost certainly knows more about his own physiology than I do. So I could tweak his nerves in a code I'm confident he could understand. And if he focused his desires in just the right way he could give me feedback without breaking out…

"Based on standard response times, I imagine that the Okaarans will be here shortly."

"I can fight and fix at the same time. Any idea how easy it is for the Dominators to undo what you're doing to their computers?"

"It should be impossible. At least, without one of their sorcerers being physically present."

I nod, sending Praexis Demons… And the Ophidian's Saremite… Out through the corridor, spreading out across this level. We're cutting the high caste Dominators off from the rest of their forces, though I'll need to send Construct Lanterns outside to completely cut them off. Doors appear to have lost power, though the Praexis can still eat through them, given time. The way they do so involves them protruding their stomachs Starfish-style out through their mouths, but at this point I'm rather hardened to that sort of thing. I feel a momentary flash of dislocation as one cluster encounters an Okaaran strike team, the leading Okaaran smashing through the Praexis Demons with his maul.

My eyes move briefly to Medphyll, then I mentally order the horde not to kill anyone.

A tiny film of orange light takes hold of the filaments lying to Dox about what his left forearm is feeling and slowly consumes them, making sure to repair anything that might strictly be regarded as damage as it does so. Nothing like one hundred percent, but the best I can manage. Done? I try tapping his arm a couple of times and get the response from his brain that I would expect. A few odd flares in other places… He shouldn't be experiencing anything more than slight numbness. If he's even noticing it.

Alright, start tapping. There simply aren't enough nerve endings in that part of his body to use some of the more sophisticated Coluan coding systems… I'm going to have to limit myself to six points of contact. Not a problem. Ms Gozzi was quite clear that any Coluan can process data at a rate that makes the rest of us look simpleminded. Go fast. Basic biographic information. Ugh, there are more than a few filaments going into his long term memory. He might not even know who he is at the moment. Can't be helped. Explain the situation, state where we are and who we are… Lanterns, don't specify colour. He probably hasn't heard of Sinestro and so assumes that green is the only colour there is. Describe the nature of the interface. Request that he form a clear emotional reaction-. No, specifically, ask him to desire a particular resolution.

Send.

Compliance.

The Praexis Demons are pushing the Okaarans back. The first response team were led by guards with heavy duty energy shields, but the rest just have regular shielding and mauls. Good against prisoners or even most professional soldiers. Barely adequate against Lanterns. The Praexis Demons are sucking the power out of their equipment with a fury, being destroyed and reforming as the push stumbles and fails. The Saremite… I don't have the same precision of feedback. I think he's obeying my instruction and cutting off the high caste…

There's a minor change in the patterns of activity in Dox's brain. Ah… Not sure what it means. A minor twitch towards fear, coupled with flashes of images from what I assume to be his childhood. This sort of setup isn't entirely new to him. Oh, thanks, it looks like he's more afraid of bungling surgeons than he is of being held prisoner. Well if you'd like to give me some direction-.

Communicated.

No, don't-. Okay, okay, explain… Complete precision but an incomplete understanding of the technology. I can probably pull it all out and fix the obvious damage. I don't have the ability to override the computer…

I take a moment to check the analysis engine. No, not alive enough for assimilation.

But if he can clearly want me to do something in particular, I'll do that instead.

In the corridors the Okaarans are pulling back, missing most of their equipment. In the distance I can see the dull tones of a group of Dominators. Soldiers, presumably.

A shift in Dox's emotional state. Come on, come on, some sort of clear… Alright, the image shows… Sleep? Unconsciousness? Okay, then… An image of a glowing sword cutting a thick cable. Then an image of a hose being yanked out and the site of the puncture being clamped. Sleep, cutting, yanking. The desire pulses repeat and float around one another.

Okay. Can do.

As far as sleep is concerned, Coluan brains work the same as those of other humanoids. A slight change in chemistry… Okay, and I think he's working on that himself. Some sort of meditative technique to change his brainwave patterns. Right, he's out. Next, take a very strong grip on the cables at both ends and take out an x-ionised knife.

Don't pray to Eris because that sort of thing never works out well.

Cut.

The filaments in his brain immediately go dead. Can't.. see anything that looks obviously like a kill switch activation. This part of the system doesn't have its own power supply… Right, start removing them. Long term memory first, knitting back the miniscule holes in his grey matter as I go. Then his sensory-.

My Praexis Demons get a momentary clear view of two advancing Dominator soldiers, then the feed cuts out.

I can't feel them any more and they're not emerging from my ring.

Work faster.

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Headhunted 22

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10th August

17:09 GMT

The last few filaments evaporate, and I turn to look at Medphyll. "Good news, Dox is out of the machine and in reasonable health. Bad news, Dominator soldiers are heading this way with anti-construct guns."

"I have been considering the device that was holding him."

I give Mister Dox another once-over. There are tiny, well healed scars across most of his body and.. slight damage to the nerves of his right hand. Assuming that my memories of his comic history are accurate on the subject of his upbringing, they're the residue of a childhood as a test subject. Certainly, none of them are recent and so the Dominators probably aren't to blame. Signs of exhaustion, but nothing obviously dangerous… "Is that important?"

"The treaties which the Dominators signed with the worlds in this Sector do not permit this sort of experimentation. Nor do they allow them to have dealings with the Computer Tyrants. I have taken the liberty of passing that information on to this Sector's Green Lanterns."

"And that helps us how?"

Another trio of Praexis demons vanish. I redirect the rest to home in on the high castes, with just a few keeping an eye on the oncoming soldiers.

"The Honour Guard taskforce is heading here now. Regardless of what happens to us, the Dominators will no longer have a facility here tomorrow."

"I'll say it again: and that helps-?"

"Any Dominator still here when they arrive will be placed in the Sciencells, either permanently or to eventually be returned to their people in exchange for political concessions. The Dominators know this. They also know that since I ruined their computers anything the high caste have learned exists only in their minds. And should they fall into the Guardians' hands that knowledge will certainly be stripped from them."

"I didn't think the Guardians were telepathic."

"At their level of skill with the green light, I doubt that their natural abilities matter."

A Praexis Demon dodges several red bolts… Nothing about them on file.

"So, what? We-."

"Grab the high caste…" Vril Dox pushes himself into a sitting position. "And you can negotiate your escape."

"Are you alri-?"

He winces. "The answer to that question would not change whether you asked it or not. Please do not waste my concentr-."

"My data on Coluan physiology is not perfect. Are you aware of anything about your body that isn't-."

"Nothing of particular note." He looks around. "Have you located the high caste?"

"Yes, but I can't phase through their walls or teleport, and shooting-."

"What force are they sending?"

"At least twelve Dominator guards with construct-."

"Do you have any non-construct-based weapons?" I take a cold gun out of subspace and hold it out to him. He frowns very slightly at me. "I am in no mental condition to take part in a firefight." I shrug and take it back. "Will it kill Dominator soldiers?"

"Should do."

"Have you tested it against them?"

"No."

He switches his attention to Medphyll. "How long until the other Green Lanterns arrive?"

"Seven minutes to reach the outer defences. I don't know what proportion still function at anything like full effectiveness, so perhaps-."

"The minefields and shield generators won't be affected by their central computer being off-line, and their emplaced weapons will still be capable of firing. Cut though the deck in the direction of the high caste."

"I'm so-?"

"Do I really have to explain-? You want to survive with as many Dominators in custody as possible. The best way to achieve that is to capture the high caste as fast as possible. The Dominators will attempt to evacuate them, then kill you. They know that you will have-."

I generate a railgun construct, load crumblers-.

"A simple railgun won't work. You need-."

I aim at the floor and fire, a hole about forty centimetres across appearing in the deck. Sadly the crumble effect falls off rather substantially ten centimetres down. Coverage from the Praexis is getting patchy. The majority of soldiers appear to be avoiding us, but four are cautiously heading our way. Praexis Demons heading for the high caste are being intercepted by force fields…

"Disassembler rounds?"

"Sort of. Medphyll, shie-."

A flicker of motion as a small grey thing flies into the corridor just outside our room. Medphyll throws out a blast of green light, smashing it against the far wall. He then takes a pouch from his utility harness and throws the faintly green contents into the air before blowing them out of the room with a construct fan. "I will watch our backs."

I form more railguns and load more crumblers. Ring, calculate optimal firing pattern, update as more data is gained.

Compliance.

Fire.

These aren't exactly high-powered constructs. Heck, that was why I started using railguns in the first place: so that I could fight at high effectiveness with lower construct strength. Using the larger sort of crumbler round with shots timed and spaced and the crumbler fields trained for low width high penetration, it takes twelve shots to blast a hole through the three armoured layers on this side, another three to get through the inner workings and a further twelve to get through the three armoured layers of the ceiling of the level beneath.

Medphyll deploys a point defence construct in response to more drones, thin lines of green piercing them before they can close the distance and do whatever they're supposed to do to us. I suspect that the infantry are advancing but I've lost the remaining Praexis Demons in that area.

No need to physically move down to the next level, so I keep firing. Ah, good, the Praexis have closed off an egress point. The high caste are moving… Another layer penetrated. Internal monitoring should be down and most of my Praexis Demons are well ahead of the Dominator soldiers. How do they know? Personal sensors of some kind? They're familiar with Green Lanterns. Did they think that some sort of a raid was sufficiently probable that it was worth preparing defences against?

Another floor gone. It's hard to get precise distance, but I think that they're another four down.

Flashes of red from the doorway as I alter my angle, shooting a hole into the next floor.

"I assume that we can't just transition around?"

"If it were that simple then I would have recommended it already."

"Mister Dox." Another hole made. "We need to-"

A Dominator soldier steps into the doorway, shots from Medphyll's defence construct being neutralised by a red energy field which flares to life around his body when one hits. He raises his arm-mounted gun.

"-g-!"

There's a thump as Dox lands one level down and starts for the next hole, Medphyll hot on his heels.

Then the Dominator shoots me.

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Headhunted 23

next

10th August

17:12 GMT

Time slows.

Much like what I tried to do to Nabu, draining a construct of energy entirely will destroy it. That might be how these things killed the Praexis Demons; there just wasn't enough of them to return to the ring.

I keep firing at the floor, smashing my way through another level of the station.

A construct barrier starts to form between myself and the Dominator soldier. It… Yes, it's just about going to coalesce before the bolt of red light hits me. Now, these weapons dropped Medphyll's barrier handily enough but didn't drain his ring at the same time. Or affect his environmental shield. That suggests that it destroys one construct at a time, in the same way that my crumblers do.

Weapon constructs begin appearing alongside me, a cold gun and a railgun.

Dox stumbles for a moment, then sidesteps Medphyll's attempt to support him.

The red bolt howowow!

The construct barrier fails, fading for a fraction of a second before vanishing entirely. Unlike with crumbler rounds, what's left of the bolt keeps going and hits my ablative construct armour. Two layers fail before the bolt vanishes entirely.

And the whole process really hurts!

That's logical, I suppose. I mean, I've got no idea how that mechanism works but intense pain would probably disrupt Green Lantern concentration and therefore their ability to fight effectively. All it does to me is encourage me to dismiss lower lethality options completely.

I start moving to the side as the second bolt gets closer and my railguns fire the shots that will burrow through the next floor when they hit. The red bolt heading my way is currently resisting my ring's attempts to analyse it, which makes a degree of sense. I mean, I've got its thermal and electromagnetic output recorded (it's only weakly interacting with dust and air molecules so it isn't plasma) but I've got no real idea about how it actually works. Or whether my armour can take it.

The second bolt hits, though since I know to turn down my pain response it hurts a good deal less. I think the Dominator soldier is aiming for my centre of mass rather than any particular part of my body. Certainly the shots are going nowhere near the filaments connected to the tunnelling railguns. And I know that he's a dick but I do need to do something nice for Mister Tuttle, these things are insanely useful. My outer ablative layers fail over the left side of my armour's abdomen and I really don't want to try taking more hits there.

Mental pathway damage limit reached. Acceleration discontinued.

Fortunately I don't have to.

The railgun fires, targeting the Dominator's centre of mass.

The cold gun fires, aiming a little lower.

I fly sideways at speed, the third red bolt narrowly missing my armour as the Dominator comes further into the room and a second one comes through the doorway behind him.

The crumbler round hits home as I keep flying, causing his personal shield to flare and undulate. Holding but weakened. The cold beam has rather more effect, making the shield -some sort of plasma shell?- visibly fail, though the armour appears to be thermally insulated enough that the cold effect doesn't kill the wearer immediately. However, I can see hoarfrost appear on the outer surface and the Dominator wearing it stumbles. The next crumbler round strikes his breastplate unobstructed, releasing energy in the fashion I've become accustomed to as the crumble field interacts destructively with whatever super advanced material that armour is made from.

And with the flesh beneath.

The Dominator falls as the second charges into the room. I take a hit to my right shoulder as I retrain the guns, aiming the cold gun-.

I fall to the ground as a wave of red energy passes through the room. Constructs failed, armour still functional. My legs thump heavily on the deck as I trigger automatic targeting, my right arm coming up and firing the manual cold gun at the Dominator's head. A red bolt hits my faceplate at the same time-. Something about my kinetic barrier causes it to fail to do very much. Good to know, I'll give spares to Medphyll and Dox when I have a moment. The cold beam strikes home, collapsing his shield and making the soldier fall to the ground. Colours… Not disappearing. I take a moment to fire crumblers at both of their guns and then use the armour's built-in flight systems to head down the hole.

I land heavily-

"Keep firing!"

-on the deck and immediately get heckled. Ring, status?

This ring is undamaged. Power reserves currently at seventy three percent.

Bit.. much for a couple of guns and construct armour. I'll have to keep an eye on that. I generate two new railgun constructs and point them down the next hole, while flicking the cold gun in my hand over to 'cold zone generation'. One shot back into the room above me, one at the hole and one at each end of the corridor. Given how good their armour's insulation appeared to be I'm not sure that will actually harm the Dominator infantry, but hopefully it will slow them down. Shoving the construct railguns further forward I amble over to the next hole and step down, landing with a slight flare of my kinetic barrier.

What are the Praexis Demons up to? Okay, yes, heading in the right general direction-. I feel several blink out in the direction… Yes, most likely Dominator soldiers attempting-

"This would be faster if you joined in."

"Railgun-fired super projectiles are not standard issue."

"Then at least-."

"I am attempting to gain better access to their computers. Splitting my concentration-."

"Fine."

Down again, the other two a couple of decks ahead of me. Defensive cold fields deployed. And again…

"Nearly there! Medphyll-."

"Pass me a freeze ray!"

I branch a filament off a construct railgun and use it to deploy a cold gun from subspace into his waiting left hand. Down again, and through the ruined decking I get brief glimpses of my colleagues. Medphyll's glowing.. reasonably, and Dox is at least moving under his own power.

"Orange Lantern, can you tell where the nearest soldiers are!?"

"Not reliably. They're destroying my Demons." Down again, this time dropping two levels. "But the Dominators-."

"Stop firing!"

I cease firing my railguns, dropping down another level to come face to face with Medphyll and Dox. "Why? We're nearly there."

"Because we're close to the hull here."

"Yes?"

He winces, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. "While I am perfectly capable of ignoring minor injuries, Coluans have no special ability to survive a vacuum while naked. Any halfway competent commander-."

A grey and somewhat frozen drone falls to the ground just behind me.

I attach a filament to Dox as the ceiling explodes!

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Headhunted 24

next

10th August

17:14 GMT

A glowing green barrier appears between us and the outside of the station as the follow up shots slam into our position. Dox looks exceedingly tense for a instant before he spots that he's now covered in an environmental shield. The weapons they're shooting at us are standard particle cannons rather than whatever that red thing was. I…

Right, he's the wrong shape for-.

A space suit forms around Dox, then I shove him out of the way and ready cold gun constructs. Three of the small patrol ships I saw coming in are floating about two kilometres away, firing in sequence. The governor must have dropped shields around this part of the station. Or they failed due to Medphyll's actions. Actually, the shots are-

Another shot splashes against Medphyll's barrier. He glances at me and moves it slightly to the side so that I can fire past it.

-coming far slower than my database says they should be. I imagine that they're having to calculate and aim the shots manually rather than use a targeting computer.

Take aim. Fire. The cold gun beams cover the intervening distance in next to no time,-

"Why are you-"

-passing through their shields and supercooling-

"-attacking them? They have hundreds-"

-their armour. Since there's no real kinetic energy involved in the strike the patrol boat just stays there-

"-of those ships and they won't dare fire if-"

-but I can scan the fried interior systems and the frozen pilot.

"-we were in close proximity-"

Medphyll moves his barrier and I shoot at the next two ships.

"-to the high-."

"High caste, yes, Dox, I had considered the issue. I had also considered the issue that with the central computer down they wouldn't know-."

"They don't need to. Starlag's armour will fail without being penetrated after one hit. If the high caste are inside they could send a signal out without using the central systems!"

I spot another squadron of patrol ships heading our way as the two I fired upon start drifting. "Are you sure about that?"

"To a high degree of probability, yes!"

"Fair enough. Medphyll, can you hold that barrier?"

"That depends on whether you wish to repressurise this corridor or not."

"Mister Dox? Do high caste Dominators keep breathing equipment on hand?"

He turns away, taking hold of a piece of debris and throwing it down the corridor away from us. It travels about six metres before it encounters an atmosphere barrier. The air on the far side is still breathable while we're exposed to space. "This whole section has that system. It probably isn't working where you've punched holes-."

"Understood."

Alright, based on the sections I've seen -both personally and via the Praexis Demons- the atmosphere barrier would probably be-.

Somewhere around the stem of the station other patrol boats fire at the hull. Moments later a Praexis Demon falls out of my ring and I get a flash of what happened. The Dominators have sent drones ahead of the soldiers, but since they don't have any arcane presence the Praexis don't instinctively react to them.

Whatever else is happening, the high caste are two sections below us and in more or less the same place and none of the Praexis Demons can see any soldiers closer to them than we are. Railguns and fire.

Another particle beam shot splashes off Medphyll's shield. "Medphyll, are you alright with that?"

"Yes, though I have abandoned my efforts at complex manipulation of the Dominators' systems."

"Fine." A circular section of the deck falls down to the level below us. "Ready to move?"

"After you."

I nod inside my armour, then send the recently returned Praexis Demon through first. It drops down… Another store room. No Dominators in sight and if there are any automated defences they aren't activating. Good show. Two paces and then I jump down, taking an x-ionised blade out of subspace as I go. Minimal atmosphere left, but the room still has gravity and one atmosphere of pressure isn't really enough to move any properly secured object. I slice through the side of the closest box… Looks like.. some sort of noodles. I suppose it makes sense that 'ritual purity' would require separate food storage.

"Clear. Ready to shoot down again."

Dox peers down the hole, then turns and lowers himself from the rim before dropping the rest of the way. "Down."

Hm. Ugh, cold fields don't persist in pure vacuums. The walls where I shot will still be super cooled but I doubt that will stop anyone. Not much point creating another. I add another four railguns to my construct and point them at the floor below us. "Medphyll?"

The green glow from above us intensifies as Medphyll moves away from the exterior hole. He floats over the hole for a moment then drops down, his barrier at the ready for when the patrol boats try shooting through the exterior wall again. "Ready."

"Firing."

Hm. The lack of air might actually improve our odds of them not detecting us. Crumblers eating deck plate isn't quiet, but without air around sound will only be transmitted through the deck itself. Didn't actually think to test that. And on that subject, a filament attaches itself to Dox's suit and gives him a kinetic belt.

"What is this?"

"Terminan technology. Completely nullifies kinetic energy. And lets you fly, though if you haven't practised with-."

"I will manage. Why not give me a standard force field?"

"Because my kinetic barrier stopped those red pulses dead and from what I've seen all of the Dominator soldiers are carrying them." The deck plate is almost gone. "Medphyll, you're on rearguard. Make sure Dox survives."

"I remember."

There's a final puff of air as the last circle of deck plate falls free and I form a construct impeller on the back of my construct armour to shove me forwards faster, blasting through the hole and into the corridor below us. The high caste are actually a good deal further in than we are, and there are several doors between here and there. On the plus side, at this point they're surrounded on all sides by Praexis Demons.

I fly straight on, then around a corner and open fire with crumblers and cold gun. Though armoured and shielded, the blast doors are far less thick than an entire deck. The force field doesn't even trigger as the cold beam hits the metal beyond, and it collapses as soon as the first crumbler hits home. The crumblers weaken the structure enough that I don't bother slowing down. I just manually trigger my kinetic barrier and slam into it fists first, exploding a ragged chunk of it into the room beyond.

The Dominators inside raise their weapons as the air wafts out.

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Headhunted 25

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10th August

17:17 GMT

Purple and black robes, larger red spots on their foreheads -which are bare of any adornment- and respirator facemasks which cover their eyes and mouths. Dominator bodies are notably better at dealing with low pressure environments than those of Humans but I doubt that this is comfortable for them. It's a little surprising that they don't have personal environmental shields… I suppose they assumed that they could teleport such devices to them in the event of an attack.

I generate an ablative shield-construct between myself and them, and instruct the ring to connect to their personal communicators. "Parley."

All five keep their guns pointing at me, and two activate personal force shields. Literal shields, ovals generated by devices on their left wrists.

"Speak."

The respondent is a Dominator with a small vertical line in the upper part of his red spot. The senior one, presumably.

"If you'll lower your weapons I'll restore atmosphere to this chamber. I imagine-."

"Agreed. We will lower weapons once atmosphere is restored."

Not quite what I said, but alright. I generate a construct airlock to cover the hole behind me, then take nitrogen and oxygen gas cylinders out of subspace and open them. Four to one ratio should be fine, though-. Ah, the automated systems are designed not to bother trying to repressurise an area exposed to vacuum. That makes sense. Once it detects that pressure has been restored it should start up on its own.

"Good enough?"

They maintain aim for a few seconds, then simultaneously lower them.

"You were permitted to board this facility to investigate rumours of medical experimentation. None has taken place. Explain why you have attacked us."

"Two main reasons. Firstly, no experimentation? I found a man with virtual reality brain implants a few decks up. Were they there for legitimate medical reasons? Because I read your treaties with the worlds that authorised this place, and there's nothing about using anything like that to punish misbehaviour."

"It is a special case."

"Really. Because as I see it there are two possibilities. Either, you've violated your terms of reference, or -moving on to the second point here- you've come to an alternative agreement with the Computer Tyrants of Colu. Which would mean that the punishment was legitimate, but would get you in a great deal of trouble with the Green Lantern Corps because that world is under an Edict of Isolation for a very good reason."

"The subject of the study is legally 'property' and as such not a prisoner. Furthermore, regardless of their species they were acquired without contact with-."

"Do you really think that admitting to trading in slaves makes your situation any better? And do you really think I can't recognise Vril Dox the Second? Or that I don't have a recording of a Coluan ship flying here?" I make eye contact with each Dominator in turn. "You've been caught out. The faster you accept that and start negotiating in good faith, the faster we can all get on with our lives."

"Hshshshshs." The Dominator's eyes narrow slightly. "What terms do you seek?"

Ring, connect to internal communications.

Compliance.

I stop projecting my construct shield and extend a filament to the lead Dominator's facemask. "Tell the governor to stand down pending negotiations."

"Release your hold on our computer-."

I shake my head. "That's not happening. I don't know this station's full capacities but I'm certainly not returning them to you. Tell him to stand down."

The Dominator stares at me for several seconds, and I see Medphyll approaching with Dox.. flying quite well for a beginner. I open the outer airlock door to allow them access.

"Inferior functionary. We are unharmed. You will return any militia to their stations and begin repairs."

"Superior, I must warn you that-."

"The Lanterns are no longer your proper concern. Address yourself to your duties."

"I obey."

The high caste opposite me waves his right hand through the filament, and I let it fade rather than reinforcing it. "What else?"

Medphyll and Dox are inside the airlock, so I begin cycling it. Have..? Yes, the station's systems have started replenishing the atmosphere in this room. I return the gas cylinders to subspace.

"You've got a bit of a choice to make. My colleague Medphyll-" I indicate him with my right arm as he comes in through the inner door of the airlock. "-is a dedicated and extremely moral Green Lantern. If you like, you can surrender to him. If you do that, you will be invited to make full confession and then you will be punished in whatever way the Guardians think best. Most likely, you'll be spending a few decades in the Sciencells. That about right?"

"It would depend on the results of a more exhaustive investigation than we have so far performed. If convicted, you may receive a sentence of between thirty years and the remainder of your life. There would also be an element of re-education, and positive steps you make towards addressing the defects in your character that have led you to commit these acts would most likely be taken into account when deciding your tariff."

"Or they might sell you back to the Dominion in exchange for political concessions. They don't mind the Dominion running prisons, but… You know that you crossed the line here, right?"

"What is the alternative?"

"You could surrender to me. But I wouldn't recommend that." Ah, finally. The door on the other side of the room begins deforming, then a Praexis Demon falls mouth first through the resulting hole. The Saremite walks through immediately after, bending awkwardly through the gap and then standing up straight. "Unfortunately, the Orange Lantern Corps' facilities aren't ready for prisoners as yet. So far I've… Had to administer summary justice. One group of traders won't ever leave the world where I marooned them. And a group of soldiers I mind controlled… They wouldn't take a chance when it was offered to them, so I had all eight hundred gunned down. In your case, given the nature of your crimes, I imagine that I'll do that to at least some of you."

The lead high caste Dominator stares at the Saremite. "What is that?"

"It used to be a living creature. Then it invaded my home, and I horribly violated its body, mind and soul. Now, it's a construct, and everything it ever was or knew exists only as part of me. Quite a good deal for me in your case; I imagine that there are all sorts of things which a high caste Dominator researcher would know that haven't made it into the public domain yet. Or perhaps I could do something a little less invasive? Just reach into your soul and rearrange your priorities a little? How would you like to have your loyalty to the Dominion replaced by loyalty to… A local prisoner rehabilitation charity, perhaps?"

"We could kill you."

"I'd have given you reasonable odds if your computer was still working. As it is, the Green Lantern Honour Guard taskforce that was planning on heading to Colu is coming here. And you'll certainly become my pawns before I die. How far do you want to escalate this?"

The Dominator continues to stare at me for several moments.

Then he turns away from me to face Medphyll. "Green Lantern. I require you to take us into custody."

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Headhunted 26

next

10th August

21:56 GMT

"In forest dark or glade beferned

no blade of grass shall go unturned.

Let those who have the daylight spurned

tread not where this green lamp has burned."

The Dominators stand in order of caste in the cube construct which the Green Lanterns are going to use for the journey back to Oa. All of them are refusing to even acknowledge that the Lanterns are there, eyes front without the slightest deviation or uncertainty. Kind of impressive. Lantern Lee turns towards the viewing window I'm watching them through, taking the opportunity to give me the evils one more time before he and the three others he assigned to prisoner transfer duty vanish in a wave of green.

Next to me Medphyll lowers his right arm as he returns his personal lantern to subspace. "I was pleasantly surprised at how you handled the conclusion."

"What, did you think I was just going to shoot them?"

"While we won't know for sure until their debriefing is complete, I expect that high caste Dominators have committed unique and imaginative evils beyond the ken of mere pirate thugs."

I nod. "I can chase after them if you want."

"I was wondering if you could explain why you decided to treat them differently."

"Hmm."

I look over to the asteroids, where a Green Lantern whose name I didn't hear is replacing the Okaaran gang master in watching over the prisoners. Perhaps part of the reason why Lantern Lee isn't all that impressed with me is that they're going to have to take over running this facility until they can either find someone else to handle it or get the resources together for a marooning colony.

"The obvious reason is that this was a joint operation. Orange Lanterns and Green Lanterns are going to need to be able to cooperate in the future, so I wasn't going to do anything to unnecessarily alienate you. The Dominion is still a going concern, and simply executing a group of their elites could… Probably would cause all sorts of blowback."

"Where the summary executions of eight hundred members of a military you have already largely destroyed would not."

"Not more than killing the half-million or so that died when we destroyed most of their fleet, no."

"Koriand'r did not mention the number of dead. I assumed that it was lower."

"Koriand'r is a good person. But she grew up in Vega. She's far more ruthless than you. Those died in combat, so she doesn't worry about it."

"Do you not worry about the eight hundred?"

I shake my head. "Medphyll, I'm enlightened. I have achieved harmony and peace with my desires. When I decide that I want a particular result and pursue a rational method to get that result… No. And unless you've got significant new evidence that my assessment of the feasibility of doing.. anything else with them was inaccurate… I'm not going to start worrying about it. I didn't have anyone available to guard a prison and I didn't have a prison. Low level officers are intelligent but mentally inflexible and I've yet to hear a Citadelian grunt communicate in any fashion other than a grunt or a roar. And neither has anyone else in Vega; I checked."

"Then why not simply kill all of them, or command them to kill themselves?"

I exhale. "I'm.. an empath, but what I did to control them altered their emotional responses. Until I let them go, I couldn't be completely sure how they would respond. I had hoped that they might take my offer of mercenary employment. When it turned out I was wrong… Amalak's guns were already pointing at them. What would have been the point of killing them myself?"

"The survivors?"

"Free to make lives for themselves. Or not. It was never my objective to exterminate the Citadelians completely, or I'd have attended to that before coming here. Maybe they'll turn themselves into something not completely vile. Or maybe they won't and I'll end up killing the rest too. Up to them."

His eye narrows. "All that you have said, and you are still not considering alternate custody arrangements?"

I smile. "If it troubles you, you know what you have to do." His ring glows a little brighter. "Earn such acclaim that the Guardians promote you to the Honour Guard, then request that they remove the ban on operating in Vega and send you there."

He blinks, surprised, the glow on his ring fading as his fist unclenches. "Hah!"

"No no, it's not a joke. I'm sure that.. if you put your mind to it… And do crazy things like leave your Sector without authorisation and pick a fight with the Dominion at the instigation of an Orange Lantern… The Guardians might do that rather than firing you."

"You want.. me to get promoted?"

"Yes. I don't want all Lanterns to be like me, and I don't want a Corps of yes men. If you can find a less harsh solution, then I'll say the same thing to you that I said to Koriand'r: good luck to you. I don't think there is one, but I've been wrong before and it could happen again."

"I will consider the issue." He turns away from me and looks back into the interior of the station. "This has been a… Not unpleasant change of pace."

"I'm glad you think so."

"It is fortunate, considering that Salaak has assigned me as temporary governor."

"Yes, yes it is." I step away from the window as well, walking past him in the direction of the Dominators' former command centre. "I'd offer to keep in touch, but with me barred from ring communications…"

"I will ask Koriand'r to contact you on my behalf when I return to my Sector. I hope that more of your future missions go as well as this one did, rather than as brutally as your sojourn into Vega."

I glance back as I walk up to the door. "That would be nice. Good luck with the being-surrounded-by-hardened-criminals-who-hate-you-on-principle thing."

"Thank you."

I turn away, shaking my head as I walk through the door. A short stroll takes me into the command centre where Dox is sitting at a command console, hands moving rapidly over the holographic interface. He's wearing a pink shirt, grey trousers and white boots, which he recovered from the store of his personal effects the Dominators were keeping hold of. That's… Pretty much all that was there, actually. The only other objects were a few written notes and a diadem of red disks and silver wires that he crushed as soon as he saw it.

One of the remaining Green Lanterns is here too. Partially, anyway. Five of the small green spiky balls which make up the body of Lantern… Lantern Collective. Since we can't get full control of the central computer, they are standing in for internal monitoring. Apparently, they are one of this Sector's Green Lanterns, which just goes to show that you can be a distributed intelligence with hundreds of bodies and still completely miss an evil AI taking over a planet and enslaving its population.

"Mister Dox, do you have a moment?"

He doesn't look up from his work. "You may speak."

"Looking at anything interesting?"

"Yes."

Ah, of course. This is 'minimal social experience' Dox, before he had to run Legion and learned how to pretend to be able to relate to people. And.. he has no particular reason to like or to trust me. "I have an.. offer to make you."

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Headhunted 27

next

10th August

22:00 GMT

"Obviously."

He turns away from the screen to look at me with an expression of cold indifference. What I actually see is rather different. The colours inside him aren't faint as they are in Dominators, but… The lines are rigid, flows prevented from moving from place to place by the harsh imposition of logic. A scene of.. his father performing surgery on his right arm without anaesthetic isn't allowed to connect to other memories or guide his actions. I'm actually… This is the first time I've been worried about whether he can do the job I want to give him, at least without having some sort of breakdown part way through.

On the other hand… That technique should work just as well for orange, and he doesn't need to be an outstanding field Lantern.

"I understand that-."

"Just state your demand. I am in no position to refuse and I have little use for either obfuscation or unnecessary social interaction."

"Mister Dox, I'm not going to demand anything. It would be a violation of my personal philosophy and.. rather self defeating to demand anything of you, even if the Green Lanterns would let me." I glance at the closest ball. "Lantern Collective?"

"Inmate Vril Dox is recommended for immediate release, and is to be accommodated and protected in the intervening period."

"See?"

"I find it highly unlikely that out of all of the Dominator-run prisons in this galaxy you chose to investigate the one holding me by chance."

"No, I'm here because I was pretty sure that you were here."

"How long did you know I was here?"

"Um." I frown. "I had information which suggested that you might be in a Dominator-run prison about a year ago, but I was only able to get it authenticated twenty one days ago. After that, rushing in seemed like a bad plan, preparations took time..."

That appears to pass muster, though I can see why he might be peeved. He doesn't nod, but he does unclench very slightly.

"Would you mind me asking-?"

"Just ask."

"Your background. Would I be correct in my belief that you are a clone of Vril Dox the First, also known as Brainiac?"

"He doesn't style himself 'the First', and I imagine that the title you gave him is a crude approximation of the Coluan word. Otherwise, yes."

"And your upbringing? Cruel, harsh, somewhere between slave-assistant and test subject?"

"Yes. It is unlikely that I would be able to provide you with further data on him. After he uploaded himself he stopped acknowledging that I existed."

"Oh, I.. don't really care about him. I'm more interested in the sort of person that such an upbringing would create." I smile. "Can I assume that you hate him with a fiery passion?"

"Passion is irrational. If my objective were his destruction I would remain cold and calculating."

"But if you could make one being in the universe suffer an agonising death..?"

"I would select him."

I nod. "Glad to hear it. And may I say that -speaking as an empath- the way you compartmentalise your emotional responses is really quite impressive."

"You just did."

I smile. "What would such a person want? Presumably you've considered the fact that as a clone you would probably behave in the same way he did, given the same circumstances. But, you hate him. You want to reject everything about him. Yes?"

"It would be foolish to pretend that my genes don't exist."

"So what do you want to do, now that you're free?"

"Why are you asking what you already know? Clearly you have already reviewed what the Dominators took from my mind-."

"No. I haven't. Feel free to check with the Green Lanterns who have been continually monitoring me." He frowns. "What made you assume that?"

"The Dominators were attempting to use me to better model my father's behaviour. Since my brain is the closest thing they have to his brain, they ran me through various scenarios. In some of them I believed that I was him."

"Ah."

"In others I attempted to plan what I would do in situations like this. But you think that you already know."

"Coluans are unusually intelligent, but emotionally you mostly conform to predictable humanoid norms of behaviour. You value order and security, two things long denied to you. You have your primogenitor's intelligence and drive, but you don't want to repeat what he has done. A number of possibilities would make sense, but my first guess would be a private security firm of some kind."

He watches me for a moment. "It was a possibility."

I nod. "There are plenty of people who would pay to have certain places dealt with. The galactic economy will certainly support privateers and bounty hunters… Even mercenary armies, if you get the PR right. Bring order and justice to the region." I look directly at him. "Is that what you want?"

"You know that it is. I thought that my mental defences were better than this."

"I want to offer you an alternate approach. I can get you a lot of resources up front. Raw materials, shipyards, skilled personnel. A central power battery." That warrants a frown. "The drawback is that you wouldn't be in complete control of what the organisation did."

"Shareholders."

"A steering committee. For the project as a whole. With the Green Lantern Corps finally getting organised the fall of the Computer Tyrants is inevitable. I have another foe that needs to be fought, one with far larger holdings than a single planet. And you're the man whom I want to lead our efforts."

"Who?"

"The Reach."

His eyes unfocus slightly. "Maltus."

"Indeed."

"My father had files on the Reach. He considered them inefficient, though he was rather interested in the physiology of their Scarab Warriors." He focuses on me again. "Precisely what requisition authority would I have?"

"Whatever you can negotiate from the Controllers. Bearing in mind that they're well past the level of a scarcity-based economy and really want to beat the Reach."

"And what authority do you intend to maintain?"

"My knowledge of the safe use of the orange light is superior to that of anyone else. Presently, my intent is that I would act as the Illustres to your Clarissi. You would administer and organise; I would train, teach and lead the Corps into combat."

"And be my subordinate within the Corps." I nod. "A Lantern Corps wouldn't be enough to defeat the Reach. The Reach has anti-Lantern weaponry and combat doctrines, and the relative small size of the Green Lantern Corps suggests that recruitment is likely to be a bottleneck."

"You would be free to build a conventional fleet as well. I have a list of worlds which may be willing to provide portions of their military to act as a training cadre. Does this sound like something you want to consider?"

"I will want more data before reaching a firm conclusion. But you may consider me provisionally interested."

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Headhunted 28

next

12th August

14:53 GMT

I look away from where Hinon is giving Dox an explanation of what a fully operational Central Power Battery is capable of, focusing my attention on the images of the Tamaranian princesses floating over my ring. "When you say 'gone', are we talking about them all performing hara-kiri, or..?"

Komand'r scowls. "Alas, no. We found abandoned sublight ships and bases… But the majority of Citadelian ships have left."

Koriand'r seems more sanguine. "Vega will be spared the harm they would have inflicted in their death throes. I do not see this as something to bemoan."

"Lantern Green Man tell you anything?"

Komand'r nods. "Yes. That he cannot be expected to be everywhere at once. He was concerned by Amalak's fleet movements-."

I nod. "And ended up being in the wrong region of space to intercept the Citadelians." Darn. Still, that should be good for Vega at least. "What are the other Vega powers doing?"

Koriand'r's face disappears, being replaced with an image of a cluster of Branx ships. "Branx consortiums have taken over salvage operations at the former site of Citadel Complex."

"Peacefully?"

Her face reappears. "With one another, yes. Others are fired upon."

"And they're not trying to muscle in on territory anywhere else?"

"They are… Marking out areas of interest. Though they are much less brutal in their dealings than the Citadel were."

"Right. I suppose we can live with that. And the Gordanians?"

"Those that are trying to seize territory are mostly fighting one another." Komand'r grins predatorily. "I considered helping the weaker groups with the aim of getting more of them killed. But when my ring nearly turned itself off I realised that I had no stomach for working alongside such creatures."

"And the Psions?"

The images of the sisters' heads turn to face one another for a moment. Then Koriand'r turns back to me and shakes her head. "Nothing. The ships that were close to the Citadel have returned to their Motherworld. We have neither seen nor heard anything about them becoming more active."

"Any good news?"

Komand'r affects a mildly strained air. "The energy barrier around Euphorix still remains in place and the Okaarans are still selling themselves to anyone with goods to trade. And we haven't heard from our brother or his friends." Koriand'r shoots her an irked glare. "Though -to be fair- we have been moving around a good deal."

I nod. "Alright. I trust you to manage the Gordanians. Let me know if you need any assistance." They nod. "Two Eight One Four out."

I close my left hand, the construct heads disappearing as I drift back towards Hinon and Dox.

"…could probably throw a ship or two together for you, but I doubt that many of us would be prepared to spend the sort of time on it that would be required to assemble a fleet capable of launching a conventional invasion."

"I was under the impression that you were better motivated."

"My good man, what is the point of having minions if you have to do all of the grunt work yourself?"

"You achieve your objectives faster and more reliably."

Hinon huffs. "Alright, yes, we could throw ships together, but it wouldn't be all that fast-."

"And do you really want to make yourself that dependent on Controller good will?"

They both turn to include me in their huddle. "Good news from Vega?"

"Things are surprisingly peaceful. I'm just not sure why."

Dox considers my previous comment. "What did you mean by that?"

"Simple. The more someone else does, the less this is your thing. The more authority you give to someone else over the enterprise. And you only have finite time. Do you want to spend it arguing with Controllers or organising the fleet production networks of the hundreds of inhabited worlds being threatened by the Reach?"

"I am surprised that they expect me to argue with them at all."

"You don't see the Guardians making ships for Green Lanterns."

"There are nine Guardians left to cover the entire universe. I doubt that they could make enough ships to be worthwhile. We will be operating over a far smaller area. I already have enough data to begin the design work but I need a fleet in the field as quickly as possible, far faster than tributary shipyards can be brought into alignment. As things stand I'm not certain that I understand what it is that the Controllers bring to this arrangement."

"If I may..?"

"Oh, go ahead. We're talking in spirals at this point anyway."

"Controller Hinon, how many Controllers have joined with the orange light so far?"

"Four. I believe that the rest are waiting to see if we go mad or explode before taking the leap."

"The point Mister Dox is making is: what's your buy-in? A conventional military force doesn't really need Controllers at all. Lanterns need you to keep the Central Power Battery in good working order and to make personal lanterns and rings. But we don't really need the thirty or so Controllers who are planning on aligning themselves with the Battery. What is the faction as a whole doing that we should want to give you authority?"

"And I take it that you expect us to engage in manual labour?"

"Needing ships into being is hardly that. My suggestion is that we agree a tariff. The Controllers agree to provide a certain amount of labour. Nothing offensive, but enough to get us in business faster and to encourage them to feel a bit proprietary about our forces."

"At the very minimum I'm going to need a large enough fleet to convince potential allies that I'm worth listening to. It would take a considerable amount of time to turn the relatively small shipyards I saw when we approached into something large enough to build such a force."

Hinon nods slowly. "I may be able to persuade them to accept such an arrangement. But it would help me immensely if I could present the final command and control structure as something that would salve their egos?"

"We're going to be doing most of our initial recruiting from the Darkstars, then from people the Controllers have already helped escape the Reach. They'll be naturally inclined to accept Controller authority. As for the.. steering committee, my thoughts were that it be formed of a group of seven individuals. Three Controllers, the Director of the Darkstars, the Clarissi, the Illustres and the commander of the conventional military organisation, whatever that ends up being called. That gives the Controllers the largest say without giving them an absolute majority."

"I thought that you recruited me to organise this endeavour."

"Certainly. You'll have two votes as Clarissi and commander, and complete control of both organisations. Except where you've agreed a compromise in exchange for something you want in return. The whole point of the exercise is that it is always better for us to cooperate than compete with one another. Things should be run by compromise and consensus rather than majority votes in any case, and as your parts of the organisation have more to offer your negotiating strength will increase."

"And that of the Controllers will tend to decrease."

"I wouldn't go that far."

"But it will hopefully nudge them into doing more in order to maintain their influence. Please note that I am not insisting. This is just a suggestion."

"One which is not without merit. So, Clarissi Dox, how exactly do you plan on starting our counterattack?"

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NEXT CHAPTER

Do-Over

BACK

Do-Over 1

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Do-Over

13th August

08:57 GMT -6

I bend my head to the left and try turning to look at my right shoulder. No, no, it's not happening. I can't even feel the G-Gnome it weighs so little, and my neck just doesn't bend far-.

"Grayven!" Sunset strides into the workshop area, a heavy looking satchel over her shoulder. "I'm going to spend the weekend at Zatanna's!"

I give up on meeting the G-Gnome eye to eye and turn towards Sunset. "Sunset, I like to think that at this point we've developed a reasonable interpersonal relationship-."

She puts her hands on her hips, staring up at me in mild frustration. "You told me you didn't need me. You told me there weren't even any decent magic users in the Vega Systems. You can't possibly have-."

"And while Zatanna is in many ways an excellent match for you, I feel obliged to point out that her religion is rather down on same-sex pairings." Sunset cringes and then freezes, a look of delicious mortification on her face. "So make sure to use spells of concealment and sound deadening when her father is-."

"Stop. STOP!" She stares at me with furious incredulity in her eyes. "Where did THAT come from!?"

"While I don't have all that much to contribute to your arcane education, I feel that as your primary adult caregiver-"

"You-you're-you think you're what?"

"-it falls upon me to see to your moral instruction. Since Celestia was making such a hash of it-" She makes an amused snort and semi-nods. "-and your natural parents aren't here-."

And the funny's gone. She holds out her right hand in a Roman salute style. "Stop."

I stop.

"I'm not doing… Anything like that with Zatanna. We're friends. Good friends, who share a common interest. I still don't find Humans attractive like that-."

I tilt my head slightly towards the G-Gnome. "You know that internet access here is monitored, r-?"

She blushes slightly, but rallies immediately. "I was briefly curious. It was a phase. A short phase. That has nothing to do with Zatanna."

"Okay, well, you girls have good, clean and exclusively thaumaturgy-based fun without me."

"I-." She closes her eyes and shakes her head in an effort to throw off me. "That's not why I came in here."

"You can't use my car, you haven't taken lessons."

"I'm trying to be serious, Grayven. I read your files on Vega." I nod. "How.. many..?" She stops, looking down for a moment. "You're going to kill a lot of people, aren't you?"

"Yep. Probably.. like…" I make a gesture with both hands of mildly frustrated uncertainty. "Five..? Million? Maybe twenty? The Psions and the Citadel basically have to go, but neither has particularly large populations. The Gordanians… Yeah, don't know. I'm mostly planning on leaving that up to Michael."

"He eats people."

"Not often. It's more that his mouth is a weapon than a dietary decision."

"Look. I.. know.. Humans and Apokoliptians have a… Different attitude to killing than Wilsonian Ponies, but-."

"No we don't. You don't have Windigo reserves, do you? You don't let Discord out for a day every year. You don't let Nightmare Moon eat a few children every Nightmare Night. You live in an age of peace because in ages past somepony stabbed more than a few very nasty people to death with her forehead spear."

"And how many of those twenty million are going to be innocent?"

Ah. "Like, totally innocent, or.. below-?"

"Grayven." Ghia'ta walks into the workshop behind Sunset, taking in her obvious frustration. "Are you being… You, again?"

I grin. "Hard as I can! Oh, and Sunset wants help asking out Zatanna." Sunset's eyes widen as I stride past her. "Bye!"

"You do?" / "Grayven!"

I upgrade my stride to a jog. I've got to be honest here… At least with myself. This whole Vega expedition thing will be a lot simpler if I leave as many morality pets as possible behin-.

Vrrrrm.

Curses, foiled again. "Sphere." She rolls out of a side passage, frontal lighting section shimmering. "I thought that you were in New Hampshire."

Beep rev chirp.

"Now… Come on. The only reason-."

Beep.

"I did not. I was simply aware of her particular skill-."

Rev rev.

"Fine! Fine. You can come, but it's a planet full of DeSaad fanclones. Hold me back and I will laugh in your…" I point vaguely at her… "Front.. blob… Thing."

Beep.

"Really? Oh, that's actually helpful. Okay, we're assembling in the embarkation room-."

Rev beep.

She turns and accelerates ahead of me, heading towards the chamber where my troops are mustering. And doesn't that just sound splendid. I follow on behind her at a stroll. And… Ugh.

**Jean, checking connection.**

**I hear you, Mister Grayven. I do hope that wasn't too painful?**

**I'll live. Everyone assembled?**

**All bar you and Miss Ghia'ta. And I see that the Sphere has returned.**

**Yeah, I'm-** I glance back. **-kind of hoping-.**

There's a flash just in front of me as Ghia'ta appears. **Hoping what?**

I smile as honestly as I'm able. **Hoping that you were able to give Sunset the tutoring she requires without feeling that you need to rush.**

Corpsman, are these people really necessary?

That actually brings me up short.

Yes, Sinestro. Frustrating as they may by turns be, yes they are.

I can't talk to you when you're like this, Corpsman.

"Sunset refused to speak of her love to me." Ghia'ta drifts along besides me. "I fear that I simply haven't bonded with her as well as you have-"

Ghghahahahaghrhaha!

"-in the time that I have been here."

"I'm.. sure that she'll come around."

The doors are still flapping from the Sphere's passage, but I make a point of stepping heavily into them and throwing them wide.

**My people!** My people!

On the right Michael stands towering over the Redcap-Breed G-Elves and G-Gnomes he's going to be taking to Karna. Given that he basically looks like a Karnan demigod I suspect that he'll have little trouble integrating himself into their resistance movement. That and his absolute lethality. The Redcaps were a side project of mine when I considered the fact that G-Elves are worse fighters in almost every regard than Humans, as they aren't designed to handle guns. A few visits to some perhaps-not-entirely legitimate Martian arms dealers saw me trade some Earth-made laboratory equipment for some rather neat psychoreactive biotechnology. That, and quite a lot of laboratory time resulted in a breed of G-Elf with telekinetically augmented claws and a telekinetic defensive shield. And a nifty red skullcap thing that gives them the ability to actually control their new additions. Like I told Dubbilex: you don't need new breeds, you need to improve the ones you have.

In the centre, Miss Amane twirls her scythe like a demented giggling gothic majorette… Which.. I.. suppose is actually a literal description of her. The Sphere rolls to a halt in front of her and gives her a warble, prompting Miss Amane to stop and crouch in front of her and pat her on the top of her dome. And on the left…

Ahhh…

I walk over and pick up the techno-seed in my right hand, then heft it onto my shoulder as my drone swarm swarms. Since I'm not completely sure what sorts of weapons we'll be facing I made drones capable of countering just about everything I could think of. And Sunset Shimmer's work on the techno-seed is sublime.

I smile at my assembled forces.

**My people. Let's go do some good.**

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Do-Over 2

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13th August

09:11 GMT -6

Michael looks through the hush tube just in front of us. "Our target?"

I nod. "The Gizzard Spiker clan were the first clan to sell out to the Citadel. It was that alliance which resulted in the progressive, unified, Karnan-dominated society that used to control the planet being violently overthrown and replaced with the current morass. Even most other Gordanian clans don't like them."

Ghia'ta frowns. "If they find them so abhorrent, why did they follow their example?"

"They were winning." I shrug. "It's amazing how popular that makes an idea."

The Sphere warbles.

"No, one of their few universal cultural prohibitions absolutely forbids using orbital weapons against targets on the surface of Karna. Anyone breaks it, all of the other clans would unify to destroy them. It's actually happened a couple of times." Gordanian data security isn't particularly good, but then neither is their record keeping. Took a while to get corroboration, but it was there. "Plus, a hush tube to safety will be a button-push away."

Michael grunts in satisfaction. "I will see you again with Gordanian blood on my lips and victory in my jaws."

"Go get 'em, Tiger."

He swivels his head my way to sniff at my phrasing, then sprints full tilt into the hush tube. **Hunt!** Hunt!

The G-Elves and their G-Gnome passengers stream through after him, and for a moment I dare to hope that Ghia'ta or Sphere might be going to go with them... After a moment I turn my head towards Ghia'ta and then tilt it in the direction of the hush tube entrance.

"Not… Going to go with him?"

"Though participating in a campaign of liberation in which a negotiated settlement is possible is far more appealing to me than helping you with… What it is that you intend to do, I was sent here to ensure that helping you was not unleashing a great evil upon the universe. As such, I feel that it is my duty to stay with you."

Ah. Well.

"If you insist." The hush tube shuts down and another opens, this time leading to the Psions' planet of residence. Not actually their homeworld; I don't remember where the Guardians originally found them, but they don't have a sufficiently close genetic relationship to anything on it for it to be that place. "Just remember that Psions almost certainly have all kinds of anti-Lantern weaponry and I don't want to have to explain your death to your aunt."

Ghia'ta strikes what looks worryingly like a Sailor Moon pose, showing off her pink crystalline armour to best advantage. "You do not need to worry."

"No." I smile and pat her on the right shoulder with my left hand. "But I like to."

She smiles. Stupid… Morality.. pet.. freeloading people. Mellowing my harsh.

"Okay." I step away from the Warrior of Love and Justice, moving closer to the far more reliable Miss Amane. "Your job is simple. Find where they're keeping test subjects, slaves, vital pieces of infrastructure, things like that. Engage if you have to, take a hush tube out if you're in danger of being overwhelmed. A lot of the Psions you'll be running into won't be soldiers but that doesn't mean that they haven't done enough truly revolting things that they thoroughly deserve being killed. If you're in doubt, use a G-Gnome."

Miss Amane grins that creepy grin of hers. "Do not worry, Master. If you say that it is right to kill them then that is what I will do!"

She spins her scythe and then does a sort of.. back flip cartwheel thing whose effect is such that if I were a male anime protagonist the sight of it would leave me unconscious due to olfactory blood loss. As it is… All it does is worry me. No, no, she's super fast and reasonably intelligent. She should be able to handle herself.

"Give me three minutes, then start your reconnaissance."

Ghia'ta nods while Miss Amane does a bow-curtsey thing. I stride forward-.

And the Sphere zips in front of me and beeps.

"Really? Okay, fine, go on then."

The Sphere unfolds into a configuration I can actually sit in. A bit pointless now, given that I've got two power rings and integrated aero-discs for flying… Maybe I should encourage her to spend time with Lynne instead? None of the girls have flight after all… Problem for another day. I throw my right leg over her saddle and take a grip on the handlebars. "Hi ho Sphere, away!"

My environmental shield intensifies as we shoot out through the hush tube and into the skies of the Psions'… Ugh, 'Wombworld'. I have no idea why they call it that. I'd have left the name in the Psions' own language but the ring translated it the first time I heard it and now I can't unhear it. I had a few test drones fly through a few days ago so I've got a rough idea on the Psion military's response times. In fact… Three, two-

Jam teleportation.

By your command.

-one.

There are three flares of pink in the air about a hundred metres above me, then it briefly rains mashed machinery. The Psion military has a combat drone focus so those were all non-sentient… Eh, Psions, probably non-sentient. I don't have any records of Psions using machine intelligences but they do have the capacity if they really wanted to. Teleportation assault having failed their next step is launching drone transports from gravitic accelerators from the nearest settlement complex, pooosibly with an oversight barge containing actual Psions. Ship-based assault is possible but unlikely; the Psions are far more happy to fire on their world than the Gordanians are but they wouldn't do that for a curious but limited incursion.

Transport detected.

Best hurry up, then. I float the techno-seed out in front of me. Double check.

All systems as per specification.

Mother Box?

Ping!

Excellent. And now the one thing my artificially intelligent accomplices can't check… I pour my soul into the network of enchanted metal which makes up Sunset's contribution. I still can't cast spells worth a damn, but after that mess with Mister Doom I've had Sunset's help training my arcane senses. This… Feels right. I angle the techno-seed so that the solar siphon is pointing directly at the Wombworld's star, then in a single fluid motion remove the suppression charm and throw the techno-seed into the air. The solar siphon attached to it begins shining blindingly at once as it forms a sympathetic link to the star.

Sunset had wanted to become an Alicorn since she was old enough to understand what one was. And with nothing written on the subject of ascension in any book she could get access to and with the one Pony who might have information on the subject constantly trying to get her interested in 'friendship' rather than giving her a straight answer, she decided to try studying Celestia herself to see if she could learn something. I suppose her next step was pretty logical; the sun is a very powerful thing, maybe Celestia used it to trigger her own ascension? So Sunset studied everything she could find on the legends concerning pre-Unification Unicorn mages raising and lowering the sun and moon collectively and then used a bunch of spells whenever Celestia raised or lowered the sun in an attempt to understand the link.

It didn't turn her into an Alicorn -and rather implied that Celestia didn't get any power from the sun- but it did teach her a great deal about arcane solar manipulation.

Solar plasma blasts out of the siphon and begins clouding out the sky as the Brimstone begins to form. Not only will it continue to grow constantly, but it will also shrug off electromagnetic effects like the one I used to shut it down last year. The Psions can probably take it -you don't become the premier mad science race in a region like this if you can't think on your feet- but it will do a decent amount of damage in the meantime and certainly keep their attention focused.

I tug lightly on the Sphere's handlebars, turning her towards the closest Psion city.

Let's make sure he knows which way to rampage.

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Do-Over 3

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13th August

09:14 GMT -6

Four, three, two-.

The light from the glowing shape forming in the air behind me flares for a moment and then dims.

"Behold the fallen angel known as Brimstone!"

And while I did try to change that announcement, I suppose I… Get it now, in a way I didn't last December. Big, bold and bombastic is how New Gods work, and there are perfectly sensible reasons relating to spiritual mechanics why the walking sun announces itself in those terms.

Honest.

"My dark master has cast me out!"

"Brimstone!" I turn the Spherecycle around so that I'm facing him. Plasma servitors actually have really good vision in all directions so the fact that from his point of view I'm tiny won't matter. "Attend to me!"

A direct order should snap it out of 'general rampage' mode. Still a bit up in the air as to whether it will actually obey me, but it can't get off-world and virtually everyone here is a Psion, so, no loss.

"Grayven! The son of my dark master!"

Oh, he does remember. Sweet.

"Suzerain of Earth! I will serve you in his name!"

Don't… Remember it being told that, but okay.

"The people of this world are my enemies! In my father's name, strike them down and destroy their works!"

"So shall it be!"

His eyes begin to glow, and I wheel the Spherecycle around before the blinding beams of solar plasma lance out and effortlessly burn through the oncoming drone transports and onwards into the city behind them. A faintly pink energy field flares to life and the plasma batters against it, the generators visibly straining to contain the sun beams. They cut out a moment later as Brimstone begins its advance.

Hm. Let's see. It shouldn't take the Psions all that long to work out more or less what it is that's attacking them. Exotic matter shields are good for general purpose defence but they'll probably try switching to magnetic barriers just as soon as someone with the authority to do so is alerted.

"I am the instrument of justice of a dark and angry god! His terrible swift sword!"

As Brimstone is a man-shaped lump of sun held together by magnets, Apokoliptian technology and magic rather than a flesh being… He's got a surprising turn of speed. Even if its designer didn't give it the ability to fly… And to be honest I think it would have probably been easier to do that than to prevent it. I mean, power rings let their wearers fly by putting a field around their bodies and then lifting it and a.. Brimstone is basically plasma being lifted by…

No, not thinking about it. Anyway, the lack of flesh means that it can move with far greater agility and speed than a person might-

The light is momentarily blocked as Brimstone runs at full sprint over my head.

-assume. This time the lance of plasma comes from his 'mouth', far narrower and more focused than the first bolts. The shield defending the city flares, buckles and-

"Feel now, sinners, the wrath of Brimstone! And let the universe forever be rid of you!!"

-fails, the beam carrying on into a burning… I don't know, some sort of… Oh, come on, an automated workshop!? This isn't a Saturday morning animation aimed at the young by their weak-of-stomach parents! I want blood, damn it!

Ping!

No, it's fine, they don't do their biological research here. The only inhabitants are Psions-.

Ping.

Well, technically-.

Ping.

And you wonder why I wanted to leave you behind.

Ping.

Okay, yes, you're right. That was too much. I'm sorry. But the point I'm trying to make is that-

Brimstone fires again, the plasma slamming into… A magnetic barrier. Quick work.

-I can't destroy repugnant societies without destroying.

Ping.

And look how well that worked out! Uncle Drax is either dead or in a pocket universe, Izaya's wife got murdered and father has gotten further with his Anti-Life research than grandfather ever did with the Source! The universe is actually more imperilled than it would be if he'd drugged father's drink and then stabbed him in the eye socket!

Ping.

I know that, but while I like existing I can't help but think that as far as the universe as a whole is concerned it probably-.

Ping.

Gh-. Did Himon put you up to this?

Ping.

They almost certainly can't. They're not exactly clones, but they mix genes in laboratories, the resulting Psionlings get raised and dehumanised -or whatever you call it- in mechanurseries and then join the labour force in a monstrous society that actually bred most of the species in this region just to perform long term biotech research. It's like… Like DeSaad and Granny Goodness -and here's a mental image spawned from the Anti-Life- had a baby which took over some planet in the Waste and started playing god. More than we normally do.

Ping.

Even if I wanted to -and I don't- I strongly doubt that they'd go for it.

Ping.

Look, can't you just let me enjoy wanton destruction? Father Box wouldn't-.

Ping.

Yes, and right up until that happened we had a connection. I'm barely even looking forwards to this any more. Do you understand what you've done to me? I just sent a giant made of plasma to destroy a city full of robots and 'evildoers' while my colleagues rescue their slaves -and I don't mean slaves in the 'technically-owned-peasants' sense, I mean test subjects for whatever bizarre and depraved experiment whatever Psion drew the long straw feels like performing- and I'm not even going to have fun-.

Ping.

Okay, I'll tell you what. Brimstone is doing really well at the distraction and Sphere and I are immune to magnetic fields. If we can go there and find ten Psions who aren't total monsters, then I'll make sure that the species keeps existing. Ten. Abraham had to negotiate Elion down to ten and I'm starting there. Does that sound reasonable to you?

Ping.

No, I'm doing that anyway. But I can shut down Brimstone, and once the slaves have been evacuated I'll… Come up with something else. Not that I expect I'll have to, mind you.

Ping.

Good. Settled. Now I don't want to hear anything else about it.

Vroom.

I should have known.

Bah.

I turn the Spherecycle around, harness the fear being felt by the organic inhabitants of the city behind me as Brimstone strides through their magnetic barrier and generates a colossal ball of plasma between his hands to generate a booster construct and set course for the next city over as Brimstone superheats the area around him to fry the drone weapons systems trying and failing to harm him.

Bah.

What's the point of mass killing if you don't get to enjoy it?

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Do-Over 4

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13th August

09:31 GMT -6

"Alright. You."

The Psion who had frantically been trying to reactivate the gravity sled raises his hands and backs away from the control panel. "Me?"

"Yes."

I heft my daiklave over my shoulder and step over the wreckage of the trailers it was towing. Psions use tunnels like these to transport bulk materials between their cities. Since the city Brimstone is busy incinerating mostly exports machine components, there's next to no chance that any biological sample has ever come this way. Which means -since I want to be completely fair to Mother Box here- that the Psion who operates them has probably had the least opportunity to do evil of just about anyone on the planet.

"I was wondering-." Ah, no. Be polite. "What's your name?"

"Tren?"

"You don't sound very sure there, Tren." I keep walking closer and he keeps backing up until he bumps into the railing. I crouch down so that I'm more on his level.

"I'm sure. Ah, I'm sure."

"Glad to hear it. Now, as I'm sure that you're aware, there's a walking sun up there turning the city to glass."

"Uh huh."

"But you don't have to worry about that, because I need to ask you a few questions and I can't do that if you've been incinerated, can I?"

"You mean-." He makes a sort of rasping/coughing noise. "You mean, like the other guys?"

I look back to where what's left of his late colleagues is lying on the ground. One got mashed against the wall when the carriages jack-knifed and the other bled out when I fired at the train with my fusion cannon.

"To be fair, they haven't been incinerated. But yes. If you answer my questions there's a reasonable chance that you will live."

"O-okay?"

"First question. You're in a desert, walking along in the sand when all of a sudden you look down and see a Tortoise."

"I-it just appeared?"

"It's not really-. Let's assume that it was there all along but you didn't notice it."

"Um. What's a Tortoise?"

"It's a type of quadrupedal reptile native to Earth. It has a heavy shell around its torso which provides protection at the cost of mobility."

"Oh. Okay." The scales around his forehead move. "Is that meant to be a metaphor?"

"Only in the sense that everything can be. So as it crawls forward.-"

"What do you mean 'everything can be a metaphor'?"

I squint. "Really? It never occurred to you that you can stretch a comparison from anything to anything else as long as you don't mind it becoming increasingly nonsensical?"

"Creative writing is really something that aliens do. I mean, I know what a metaphor is, but… Why would I use a comparison if it didn't make any sense?"

"Some species find that makes it easier to understand things if they can compare them to things they already understand."

"Heh. Aliens."

"… Yes. So, the Tortoise crawls closer and you reach down and turn it onto its back. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over. But it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping."

"Of course not. I wouldn't have turned it over if I was just going to turn it back again. That would be a wasted effort."

I nod. "Logical. So why do you think you turned it over in the first place?"

"Probably so that it can't get away while I cut it open and find out how it works."

"Wouldn't non-invasive methods be a better place to start?"

"My overseer wouldn't let me take those sorts of tools out into a desert. And if I brought it back a biological researcher with their own laboratory would probably take it off me. No Psion has ever encountered a Tortoise before. Even great scientists like Fon and Tront started their working lives in tunnels like these. If I could bring them novel data, they might take me on as a lab assistant!"

"You're interested in the biological sciences?"

"Of course! We Psions created the whole of Vega civilisation to make sure we'd always have test subjects, and I want to get my slice of it one day! I practise on Morrocks sometimes, and I can keep them alive and whole with thirty needles through them! Most Psions my age can barely manage twenty five. And I do it freehand!"

"Is that generating novel data?"

"No, of course not. Look, you're clearly from an advanced civilisation. You know that the lives of primitive barbarians don't actually matter as much as the data we can get from destroying-."

I bring my daiklave down, slicing him in half.

Ping.

Like I said: mini-DeSaads. And this is just some train driver. Given Psion lifecycles he was probably only nine or ten years old.

Ping.

Yeah, welcome to the real world.

Ping.

Hey, it's up to you, but I really doubt that they'll be any better.

I wave my right hand and the Sphere flies up alongside the gravity sledge I'm standing on, the G-Gnome in the back sensibly keeping its head down. I swing my daiklave through the sledge's control system and then sheathe the blade before climbing aboard the Spherecycle and continuing down the tunnel. Okay, yeah, that guy might not have been representative of his generation, but…

Ping.

I generate a fusion cannon on my left forearm and raise it in the direction of the oncoming drone swarm. Another reason for taking the tunnels is that they're comparatively well protected. The assumption during the design process appeared to be that a city under siege would probably be able to protect its network entrances up until its defences collapsed completely. As such, the tunnel is heavily fortified and only has internal defences at either end as you approach a city. But so they can quickly and efficiently send reinforcements, it has rather good access to their drone reserves.

I generate point defence and barrier constructs. That's the downside of attacking a city with a walking sun: plenty of fear around but most of it isn't directed against you. And I still haven't gotten the hang of making the two rings work together. Fear and avarice just don't.. mix.

The drone pack rearranges itself as they begin their attack. Hyperkinetic smart munitions are fired first, launched from around the corner as soon as the drones get into optimal firing range. I can scan.. most of them. Viral loads won't work on me, poison gas is worthless, pinhead singularity yep shoot that… More conventional munitions start slamming into my construct barriers, which… Appear to be holding as the point defences deal with anything that could kill me easily. A thin mist begins settling around the lower part of the tunnel as one of the chemical munitions pulls the oxygen out of the air, but I have an environmental shield. I could reinforce my construct barricades further, but focusing my desire on the gun seems to be a more productive course of action.

Laser drones coming around the corner… Any… Moment…

Fire.

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Do-Over 5

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13th August

09:35 GMT -6

I fire first, a brilliant beam of super hot ions burning down the tunnel. The drones aren't even in sight yet but the explosion as the beam hits the far side of the tunnel sends vaporised… Whatever these tunnels are made of into the drone swarm. The damage from that combined with the fact that the beam heated and ionised the air that it passed through means that the drone swarm that opens up with its direct fire weapons at me is somewhat less devastating than their factory specifications suggest that they should be.

Lasers lance through the air towards me as the Spherecycle starts flying in an evasive loop. Most are still on target, construct shields absorbing or reflecting about ninety five percent and the rest tracing lines across my body armour. Nothing like powerful enough to hurt me. Charge the gun and fire-.

AGH! Right in the-! Ow! Right in the eyes! Technically a vulnerable spot but not vulnerable enough! My construct barriers fracture, their shards flying at the drone swarm with absolute precision as I fire again and again!

Ping.

This is exactly why we don't do it like this! It's so inefficient! Gods do not fight mindless, soulless drones!

A handful of drones survive and fall back. A few of them are the ones with hyperkinetic launchers who expended their ordnance early. The others… Heavily shielded. Command relays or monitoring drones.

Hm.

Grapple.

The clamp construct flies away from me as the Spherecycle stops evading and accelerates down the tunnel. The drones attempt an evasive flight path but construct tethers move at the speed of ring calculation. A drone that's slightly bulkier than the rest is yanked out of the air and there's a crackle as its motor systems overheat and fry themselves. The Sphere fires her onboard weapons at what's left of the swarm as I drag the captured drones back towards us while simultaneously connecting the ring to Mother Box in order to get control of the thing. If this is a monitor drone it should have a connection to a control room somewhere…

Ping.

Good, thank you. Is it two way or are they just monitoring it while the drone follows a pre-programmed behavioural pattern?

Ping.

Use one of their low-grade encryption systems. I don't want them not understanding this.

Ping.

I generate a construct phone handset. "This is Grayven, who am I talking to?"

There's a brief pause as the Sphere hits another drone with her guns.

"I am General Farrn. And you are the short lived alien insect currently scurrying beneath our planet."

I dismiss the fusion cannon construct with a waggle of my arm. "Point of fact, I'm a New God from Apokolips. New Genesis is the place with the Bugs."

"I will bear that in mind. Please remain where you are so that our next wave can locate you."

Mother Box, any chance we can track his location?

Ping.

"While you're getting them ready, I was wondering if you could answer a few questions for me?"

"I have no idea what a Tortoise is either. I do not perform dissections myself. Though I may condescend to spectate when a specialist goes to work on you."

"Alright, not Tortoises. How would you characterise your relationship with the local alien species?" Boast of your conquests.

"Useful brutes and test subjects, often both together. Is that why you're doing this? Altruism?"

"Sort of. I suppose that I have different ideas about the best way to operate a stellar nation."

"We created these species. We created their gods and their goddess. Their lives and civilisations are our property-."

"I doubt that's how the Citadel sees it."

"Even the new breed Citadelians are exactly what it is convenient to us that they are. And when our fleets reach.. Apokolips, I'll be certain to mention your name when I see to the slaughter of your people's armed forces and the subjugation of the survivors."

"Hah!"

"Laugh all you want. That plasma creature is already being brought down-"

Quick check. Ah, some sort of exotic matter projector. It's causing momentary flares of energy to be emitted from Brimstone's body but doesn't appear to be affecting the techno-seed at all.

"-and the tunnels are being sealed and more powerful weapon systems are being activated. And is that a power ring on your finger?"

"Yes. I wasn't sure whether using it in Vega would summon the Beast to wherever I was or not, so I thought I'd start in a place no one would miss."

"We'll be sure to be careful when we take it from your corpse. Though I will offer you a deal, alien."

"Oh?"

"It might be instructive to have your body to study. I will give you time to kill yourself. If you do that I will guarantee that your offspring will be kept alive indefinitely."

The clamp disappears and the drone drops for a moment before a new one appears to replace it.

"My offspring?"

"The small alien in the rear of your vehicle. The resemblance is obvious."

I hold the phone slightly away from my ear as I look.. back at the expressionless G-Gnome. Huh. Yes, apparently all grey people look alike.

"Does 'keeping him alive indefinitely' indicate that you'll be holding him prisoner, or that he'll be put back together every time you dismantle him?"

"Probably the latter, but it's all that you're getting."

I face front again, pressing the phone back to my ear and patting the G-Gnome lightly on the head with my left hand. "Hard luck, little guy."

"A cold and rational approach. I approve. When we take your brain apart we'll try to work out what allows you to think like that."

"I thought that you Psions had already engineered yourselves to think like me."

"There is always room for improvement. The educational phase of our lives may be essential but it isn't particularly productive."

Ping.

Yes, I spotted the implication, thank you. "You spend a great deal of time on ideological indoctrination?"

"Enough. Every single Psion would gladly cut you to pieces, and every single Psion has the intelligence required to solve the problem you and that plasma thing represent. Enjoy your last few minutes of life, alien."

He hung up. Alright, I'm not going to find anyone who fits the 'not totally evil' category in these tunnels. Mother Box, hush tube to that building we think holds their neonate culture laboratories. Let's take a look at what they look like before the indoctrination takes hold.

Ping.

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Do-Over 6

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13th August

09:43 GMT -6

"A few years ago now I read a book. I don't remember what it was called, something in the Dune series. Wasn't particularly good, wasn't particularly bad, but what struck me as odd was the author's choice of focus. Previous instalments in the series had been focused on intrigues and battles for control of the planet Arrakis. In the novel I read, the planet was destroyed in a single line as part of an empire wide attack. How? Why? There were any number of possible methods and reasons which.. I would have assumed warranted a paragraph at least, something about how the forces stationed there to defend it were… Betrayed? Outnumbered? Overwhelmed by technological superiority? If the story is about a war, the reader needs enough of a description to get a sense of the war, surely?"

Neither the facility's chief educator nor the three subordinate educators appear to have any comment to make.

"So that you're aware-" A construct image appears in front of me. "-Brimstone is currently in the outskirts of the city he attacked, having bypassed the external shields-" By shoulder charging them. "-fried all of the local combat drones and incinerated the first relief force. Since there hasn't been a second relief force yet, I'm assuming that your top physicists and technologists are examining the telemetry from the previous attempts in order to try and come up with something clever."

"Which means that they're not paying attention to what I'm doing."

I fold my arms behind my back, Darkseid style, and walk over to a nearby observation window. Below, young Psions are lying in baby loungers while educational programs play on the interior of masks covering their eyes and ears. The Citadel goes in for cybernetic data uploads but it seems that Psions eschew that for something a little more low tech. Curious.

"I couldn't help but notice that you appear to have expanded your facility lately. Quite aside from the building work, your records indicate that the most recent batches are considerably larger than past batches." I half turn to face them. "Why is that?"

The senior educator glowers at me. "You're going to die, alien."

"Almost certainly." I nod. "But not today, and not by your hand. Why are you expanding?"

"I will not betray my people by giving an alien invader information."

"Why ever not? Either, I believe myself to be a moral and heroic individual and hence will not attack a non-military target, or I'm a monster and will slaughter your next generation in order to undermine your civilisation regardless of what you tell me. As such, your answer will make no difference to my actions and the most loyal thing you can do is keep me talking. Give people a chance to work out that something is off."

"I'll tell you."

I raise my eyebrows as one of the subordinate educators pipes up. Wasn't expecting that, though I suppose it's true that Psions don't have the same rigid hierarchy that some mad science species have. His superior turns his glower on him.

"You will not."

"Or what? The chance of us surviving is minimal anyway, and he's right about there not being much chance of what we say making any difference to the thing we're actually responsible for. We're resources too. Our creation, education and experience has a value and shouldn't just be discarded."

I nod. "Rational self-interest. Well done that man. So?"

"We're increasing production. Most of the children here will be sent out to create pioneer colonies in order to reduce our dependence on-"

Ping.

"-alien traders for information and test subje-."

"Lying."

"What do you mean, lying? How do you know?"

"I don't, but Mother Box is pretty good at picking up lies." I turn fully back to face them, walk a few steps towards them and crouch down. "Tell me the truth, or my telepathic little friend gets to shred your mind for the information."

He matches my stare for several moments before looking away with a snort. "Everyone will find out in a few days anyway. We finally cracked the technique our ancestors used for making X'Hal and her children. The Citadel has an army of intelligent Citadelians and a fleet prepared for a war outside of the Vega Systems. We're upping our own growth so that we can continue to serve as the technological arm of the Citadel Empire as they expand."

"I had assumed that tales of the Citadelians' simple mindedness were exaggerated."

The senior educator shakes his head. "Trust me, they're not. We were assigned to do feasibility studies on improving their indoctrination uploads. It was painful, trying to get them to learn anything. If a batch of Psions ended up like that we'd euthanize them and execute everyone else involved."

"So, the Citadel Empire expands." I create a construct image of the local stellar region. "Taking the territory of mostly single-world civilisations already in hock to one pirate group or another, then eventually running into the Crown Imperium. I thought that the pirate groups were semi-unified."

"They were." Apparently the chief educator doesn't consider it treacherous to give me information on other people. "Then the Spider Guild tried to muscle in. The Guild lost, but the weak-willed freebooters didn't want to try and take their Nest World by storm."

"No, that could be quite costly for people only interested in fighting for money."

"So they told the Queen that they'd negotiate a settlement, lured her to Rashashoon and shot her dead. The Spiders retaliated and killed the pirate leaders and now the whole area's descended into anarchy. Most of those mongrels will probably jump at the chance to work for the Citadel Empire."

The junior educator snorts. "Which is why any of that is our problem."

One of the other juniors shrugs. "Not that the Citadel needs other people for raw muscle any more."

I smile. "Or other people to do their research and development any more. Not if they're intelligent."

The senior educator rolls his eyes. "They may not be stupid but they're still Citadelians. They don't have the attitude for proper science, or even precision engineering. They'll-"

I raise my right hand and generate a construct shield.

"-need us-"

The particle beam hits my shield, flares of white, blue and pink burning and biting at the construct barrier as the drone projecting it drops stealth in order to redirect power to its weapon. I reinforce the shield and nod to the Sphere. She aims and fires repeatedly until the offending drone ceases fire and falls smouldering to the floor.

"-for…"

I dismiss the shield construct. "Reasonable effort with the weapon but I'm marking you down for the stealth." The one junior who hasn't spoken yet mutters something that might be an obscenity. "Did you think I was wearing these goggles to shade my eyes from the sun? Did you think these power rings were fakes?" They nervously watch my face. "No more talking around the subject. The indoctrination techniques you use on your young; how much direct uploads do you use?"

The lead educator makes an expression of distaste. "None. There's no way to do that sort of thing without compelling their mind states to adopt rigid structures which are completely unsuitable for our purposes. Psions need to be able to reflect on the information they're given in order to integrate it properly."

"And your cultural indoctrination?"

"It happens gradually and rationally. We teach them to value things that Psions have and other species don't. We're better than almost everyone, and we'll eventually overhaul everyone else as well."

That's… Curious.

"Who would you say is… Better?"

All four of them take on an expression of profound distaste. After a few moments pass, the senior educator raises his head slightly. "Your people clearly have advanced technology, and your physical abilities are quite remarkable. But there's only one of you, so either you're few in number or you're enhanced much further than the rest. You may be strong but your civilisation is probably weaker than ours."

Yah-huh.

"Then there are the Dominators, but their social structures are too rigid. We'll surpass them eventually."

"How about… The Guardians of the Universe?"

He shakes his head. "We have nothing but admiration for their science and technology. But they waste their time trying to nursemaid weak civilisations, and that means that their armsmen are too spread out to enforce their will properly."

Hm.

Ping.

No, but it is an opening.

"Thank you, gentlemen. You've given me a lot to think about. I'm going to leave you alive. Continue your work with my blessing." I turn away, a hush tube opening in front of me. "And do try not to get incinerated while I'm gone. I may still have a use for you."

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Do-Over 7

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13th August

09:48 GMT -6

Ping.

That was a little quick.

I sit on the Spherecycle, looking through a drone's sensors out of a building that was once part of the facility owned by the Psions' latest stars of biotechnology research. Now, it's a charnel house. And given that the bodies appear to have been torn apart by a long blade of some kind I think it likely that Miss Amane was responsible. Hm, yes. Ghia'ta isn't above killing people, but she stabs or shoots rather than bisecting. Or trisecting or quadsecting or… However many.

Outside, Psion drones, static defences and several of what the Psions call Variable Response Units fire, glow or otherwise radiate exotic energy. VRUs are the first step towards the New God multi-cube, an attempt to fit as much mad science as possible into something you can deploy in the field. Drones on steroids, not all that much more firepower but a whole lot more flexibility. At the moment they're throwing out a weak graviton distortion field. Not powerful, not significantly harmful, but frustratingly good at throwing off hush tubes. Amusing thing is, I think whoever is running them is just 'throwing science at the wall and seeing what sticks'. The modulation is all over the place. A boom tube is still doable, but I'd have to build a proper terminus here in order to be certain we would avoid… Misses.

Mother Box? Any predictable pattern?

Ping.

Fair enough. Keep working.

I take another look around the plaza. There's a bit too much firepower down there for me to want to just charge in and start swinging. I learned that lesson from the Thanagarians, thank you very much. Hitting and running is… Iffy. I suspect that the Psions have ways to prevent Lantern FTL, and if they haven't deployed one yet they will if I hang about. I need to get in touch with my team.

Fortunately, I have a form of communication which the Psions aren't attempting to block or monitor. I reach down, picking up the G-Gnome from the Spherecycle's back seat and then putting him on my shoulder. **Girls? How goes the work?**

**[Brief glimpse of a hurt leg.]** Miss Amane is too earnest for telepathy, really. She doesn't want me to… To think that she can't help me. **Not as easy as when we first arrived, Master. We have freed as many of the prisoners as we can, but some of the vaults are very secure. And… The hush tubes-.**

**Aren't working, I know. How many drones do you have left?**

**I… I don't know, Master. [Shame.] Ghia'ta was-.**

**Fine. You can't do everything. Ghia'ta?**

**[A kaleidoscope of a thousand instances of kindness and fellowship. Training, sparring, talking and debating. The warm oversight of their mothers and the warm familiarity of her friends.]**

I wince. Mental communication with a half-Zamaron completely devoted to love is… Not comfortable. Almost unavoidably I find myself thinking of Jade-

My environmental shield fades to almost nothing.

-every time. When we practised I.. tried to prevent Ghia'ta noticing exactly how uncomfortable an experience it is for me. I either succeeded or she was polite enough not to mention it.

**I set them to automatic. I am focusing my energies on breaching the vault where the remaining prisoners are. Your assistance would be appreciated.**

**Any sign of the princesses?**

**No, Master. Some of the other prisoners said that they were taken for final stage testing, and I assume that means they are in the place behind the vault. I.. tried to walk [shame] through it, but-.**

**Many advanced civilisations have ways of blocking that sort of thing. Do not concern yourself.**

**Yes Master.** Reassured by me, her mental voice picks up immediately. **Is it safe to use the purple ray drones on the Tamaranians? Many of them are not in good health.**

**Probably. Ask for a volunteer. And if you have time, use one yourself; don't think I didn't feel your pain.**

**Yes Master.**

Okay. We need a tube to evacuate everyone, and once the Psions running this place… What did he say their names were? Fon and Tront, yes. Once they realise our exact capacities I imagine that they'll abandon precision and technique and just use overwhelming power to level the place. Probably holding off until we breach the vault, that's rather the point of no returns on their investment. How can I best aid our side? Given that the vaults are keeping Ghia'ta and Miss Amane out I imagine that they'll hold against an overwhelming external attack at least for a little while. Brimstone is.. over the horizon so I can't just ask him for fire support-.

Ping.

Hm. Unsurprisingly, Psions are now using weak graviton distortion fields worldwide. Bothersome. That'll make it rather harder for me to approach them…

Ping.

Yees. But without the power of the Mountain, you're rather -and I mean this in the politest way possible- short ranged.

Ping.

I was rather trying to avoid-.

Ping. Ping.

I smile.

Well. Listen to you.

Ping.

Alright, that's not a bad plan. Haven't practised much using my yellow power ring in this way-.

Corpsman. You've remembered that I exist, I see.

Tell me, Sinestro; are you able to detect the fears of those around you?

Certainly, Corpsman. Are you ready to begin your study of xenopsychology now, or would you like me to provide you with the reading list first and allow you to prepare at your leisure?

I meant, by using the yellow light.

Only when they are at the very forefront of the mind of someone within a short distance of me.

Hmm. Hopefully, the princesses are in that vault. I remember them getting powers via Psion experimentation in the comics, but… It is of course possible that I got here too late and they've been killed. Psions don't generally feel any particular need to be physically present during dangerous experiments… X'Hal was biologically Tamaranian, and from Okaaran myths and those records that survived I've got a rough idea of when she underwent apotheosis -or at least the next best thing- and it completely flattened Psion civilisation.

What would a Psion mucking around with Tamaranian physiology fear more than anything else? Another wipe out, presumably. No, no, he'd have a rough idea what happened last time too, and would have made a point of having a lot of contingencies in place. Psions are rational. Would they be worried about their place in the universe as the Citadel expands and gets its collective IQ into double figures? No. Augmented Citadelian officers are intelligent but they still don't do their own research and development. The Citadel doesn't hire Branx for that sort of thing and I doubt that the citizens of the Crown Imperium will be queuing up to take their place if their state falls to the Citadel.

Oh. Of course.

Why do the Psions even bother with the Citadel? Why do they create legions of drones? What would a Psion who had lived around Citadelians for years have become afraid of that his homebody fellows would not, having never had their comfortable confidence undermined by wider contact with other civilisations?

They'd be afraid of getting punched in the face.

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Do-Over 8

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13th August

09:53 GMT -6

No matter how sophisticated we become, the psychology foisted upon us by our evolutionary history stays with us, lurking in the primitive parts of our brain. The surge of panic-soaked adrenaline that allowed Thog the Caveman to wrestle a boar to death is painfully maladaptive where modern combat is concerned, where a clear thought process and patience are more likely to be rewarded.

So, is the facility likely to have a reserve force? Probably not. I doubt that wherever their command centre is it's undefended, but I would be surprised to encounter a force capable of prolonged combat. After all, most of the facility has already been overrun and most of the slaves are… If not free, then certainly no longer confined. How far away would the overseers be? I don't think that the facility is a new build; the implication was that the owner's return to the Wombworld was a recent event but the complex has been here a while. Repurposed, then. A Psion scientist who'd newly moved into his laboratory wouldn't go on long trips away from it, not while there was science to do. They also wouldn't leave in response to a small incursion that was apparently contained, especially if the people carrying it out looked interesting.

So, still around. Focused on the action, but still worried about getting hit themselves. I bring up a map of as much of the local area as I have on file, discounting those locations which Miss Amane has already rampaged through. Psions dig, but they wouldn't have had all that much time to move without being seen… Probable locations there and there, possible places for other locations I don't know about there, there and there.

Sinestro. Show me where they're hiding.

The room discolours as my eyes shine yellow.

I'll do my best, Corpsman.

Nothing from the drones, of course. Those are either nothing like sophisticated enough for emotional resonance or in the case of the VRUs directly controlled by either the two owners of the place or their immediate subordinates. I ignore the glimmers from the slaves and sweep my gaze in the direction of the first potential hiding spot. Nothing there-. No, something. Fear of failing to achieve anything of note. Someone took a stray shot and believes themselves to be dying. Fine. Irrelevant.

Second location. Empty. Third loc-. Ahhhgh.

I stagger for a moment, blinking as I try to-. I see my home ravaged by a deranged goddess, the ancient Wombworld of the Psion's imagining flickering and being replaced with first Earth 16 and then with Earth Prime, the faces of the Psion scientists and engineers being replaced with those of my friends and family. Burning, burning all burning and screaming and running and there's nowhere to run-!

Ping.

And then I see the same thing happening to Apokolips, with Lynne's psychic might utterly humbling Darkseid and all of his court.

I stand upright, patting Mother Box with my right hand.

I knew there was a reason why I kept you around.

Ping.

It seems I was wrong about them being most afraid of being punched. Though that does raise a rather uncomfortable question. Sinestro, did you ever find out where Parallax ended up?

No, Corpsman. I did not. Until you persuaded me otherwise I had assumed that even Ion was a myth conjured up by the more theologically inclined Green Lanterns so that they could associate the green light with a divine being. Why do you ask?

Because seeing desires never had that result. I never found it overwhelming like that. I had rather been hoping that Parallax was safely contained either on Oa or Qward. But if he felt that…

Corpsman, I fear that you're suffering from delusions of grandeur. If my alter ego has been untroubled despite using a yellow ring for… Eight years now? Then I doubt that you have too great a cause for worry.

True, I suppose.

I climb back aboard the Spherecycle as I unsheathe my daiklave and generate a fusion cannon construct. I can't duel with the daiklave when wielding it one-handed but I very much doubt that will matter.

Mother Box, boom tube to that location.

Ping.

No argument this time, I'm pleased to note.

"Sphere, go."

I so often use hush tubes these days that the raw fury of the boom tube takes me a little by surprise. The sound would be deafening to a normal Human in narrow confines like these, and the brilliant flash as it opens near-blinding. And more than that, more than whatever trick the design plays with gravitons, it… Feels weightier in a way the unassuming hush tubes don't.

The Spherecycle surges through the tube aperture and a second later I'm in a storeroom of some kind that has been haphazardly converted into a command and control centre. Psions in light armour turn from their holographic interfaces and optical harnesses to stare at the glowing hole in the air. Fingers moving rapidly over drone control systems in an all-too-late attempt to recall some forces to defend them.

I raise my fusion cannon. Pulse fire only. Mother Box should be-.

Ping.

Will be perfectly capable of seizing control of these computers once their controllers are dead, but the computers need to be at least somewhat intact for that to occur. Three Psions have their chests burned to ash and cinders while a fourth has his head and left arm part company from his body with the assistance of my daiklave.

A tiny personal defence drone shoots me in the left shoulder, the particle beam being effortlessly absorbed by my environmental shield and armour. The Spherecycle pirouettes, annihilating two further drones with her blasters while I shoot a fleeing Psion in the back of his head. Two of the remaining Psions drop to their knees, tossing aside anything that could be a weapon or control device and then waving their hands to draw attention to the fact. I run the last active Psion through his chest -active really only in the sense that he was slower to remove his interface goggles and so wasn't as aware of his surroundings as his fellows- and dismount the Spherecycle, kicking his corpse from my blade and slamming it point first into the floor.

Mother Box, get to work.

Ping.

"And who might you two be?"

"Fon." / "Tront."

"Ah. You own this facility, do you not?"

They look at one another, then turn back to me.

"Yes." / "Yes."

"Good show." I pick up the G-Gnome from the back of the Spherecycle and deposit him on my shoulder as glowing yellow chains wrap themselves around the Psions and hoik them off the floor.

Mother Box, do you have control of the VRUs yet?

Ping.

Good. Use their graviton systems to block the wider area effect version from the planetary defence systems, then open a hush tube back home.

Ping.

They're the reason why the Citadelians are now clever enough to wipe their own arses without a map. They enabled the war that will be starting in a little while and they've been experimenting on enslaved sentient beings.

Ping.

No, not this time.

**G-Gnome.**

**[A-lert-ness]**

**Take everything of value from their minds, then shred whatever's left.**

back

Do-Over 9

next

13th August

09:57 GMT -6

Drones irrevocably sent to seek and destroy Psion manufacturing facilities, check. VRUs keeping gravity as it should be,-

Ping.

-check. Lock the instruction in place, would you? We'll be leaving shortly and I don't have any other use for them.

Ping.

Good show. Hush tube to the biotech labs.

Ping.

And last but not least. A plasma converter appears in my left hand. I give it a quick check and then toss it aside. Mother Box has done her best to erase every trace of data she could access through these systems, but I find that physical destruction pleasantly underlines the matter. That little device will suck in and fuse matter until its containment field is overloaded, at which point the whole room will be incinerated. Should be enough to eat through the first set of armoured walls as well.

I take a grip on the Spherecycle's handlebars and she accelerates through the hush tube.

Slave pens torn apart, dead Psions and destroyed equipment all decorated with a smattering of violet crystals. A small cluster of my own drones are on overwatch but I don't see-

"What is that?"

-the Tamaranians we're here to rescue, who appear to have ducked into cover the moment I appeared.

"I'm the man organising your liberation." Mother Box, boom tube.

Ping.

And Sinestro, scan them for me, would you.

I've seen worse, Corpsman.

Considering what they've been through… Of course, these are the pre-operation slaves.

The boom tube explodes open behind me and Miss Amane precipitates out of the air in front of me even as my mouth starts to open to explain it, beaming at me with the delight of a religious fanatic before her god.

"Master!"

"Iname. The tubes are working again and I've dealt with the Psions who once ran this facility."

She nods. "As expected from you, Master."

That's one of those Japanese things, isn't it? Never mind. I point to the tube with my right arm. "I've got meals, medicine, baths and beds set up for you through there." In the room in which I usually have G-Dwarves answering my fan mail, but draw a veil over that for now. "Get going, because we're not going to be able to hold this position once the Psions pay it serious attention."

They hesitate. Huge and splashed with Psion blood as I am I doubt that I'm a reassuring figure. Miss Amane noticed it too, an almost comical frown appearing on her face as she moves her fists to her hips. "Master brought us here to free you from the Psions! Why are you refusing to let us finish rescuing you? Do you want to stay here?"

There's a brief nonverbal conversation between them, then they emerge from cover and walk towards the boom tube. Though their flesh is mostly intact -I imagine that's the result of the purple healing ray drones- there are numerous cybernetic plugs on severed limbs and empty eye sockets. The cybernetics that were presumably once attached are absent; missing legs are replaced by simple rod-and-spring prosthetics and arms and eyes are not there at all. One man has both eyes missing and is guided by one of his fellows, old and badly healed scars visible on both of them. I don't know much about how Tamaranians age, but I'd guess… They're probably old enough to have fought with Tamaran's navy in its failed attempt to preserve their world's independence. Speaking as the Apokoliptian God of Conquest, I have to say that I consider their efforts to have been bordering on stupidity. With a token tribute to the Citadel they could have maintained their fleets and eventually simply out-produced the Citadel. As it was, they chose pride.

Predictably, that didn't end well.

"Excuse me?"

I look down. This one is younger. With burns rather than shrapnel scars and is shy one arm rather than her eyes. "Yes?"

"The princesses and.. some of the others are in the vault. Can you-?"

"Look a bit of a prat if I did all this and then left without them, wouldn't I?" Let's draw a veil over the fact that I'm mostly here for them, secondly to give the Psions a bloody nose and the other prisoners are third on my priority list at best. I climb off the Spherecycle. "Sphere, reconfigure yourself into something that can conveniently carry casualties. Iname, get the Tamaranians settled in."

Miss Amane dashes through and the Sphere beeps, lands and curls up into a ball as I use my aero-discs to rise into the air. Now, to the vault.

The slave pit was arranged in a cluster of four hemispheres with individual cells built into the sides. From the wreckage and Psion corpses I'm going to assume that the column in the centre was a control post of some kind before my people smashed it. A heavy duty.. 'lid' has been blasted apart and the plasma shield generators still have the violet crystals which destroyed them embedded in them. I fly over a few Psions with the distinct bruise pattern which indicates they died from a purple death ray shot and head in the direction of the glowing violet light.

"For Zamaron!"

Ghia'ta shoves her crystal spear at the vault door point first, a wave of violet energy passing through the material to no apparent effect. Wisps of violet light dance around her as she continues to exert herself.

"Any joy?"

"Not yet."

Odd. She's had time. Psion technology shouldn't be-.

That isn't Psion technology, Corpsman. I told you that you should have consulted with the Weaponers. It appears that the Psions did not share your reservations.

Wonderful. And the walls, floor and ceiling are all made of the same material. Mother Box?

Ping.

Can't boom tube or hush tube, can't hack it, can't easily break it… Knowing the Qwardians qwa-matter would probably do the job… The Weaponers have been fighting Lanterns for so long that I'd be astonished if emotional spectrum-based technology did anything very much…

A hush tube appears next to me and a blaster drone floats through. I lay my hand on its chassis as its gun deploys.

Cast down their fortresses.

A bream of brilliant orange lances out… And achieves precisely nothing.

"Okay, I guess we're doing this the stupid way." I draw my daiklave-.

Ghia'ta frowns. "Wouldn't your god-killer sword be a better choice?"

"Qwardians don't use magic and this vault isn't alive." Almost certainly. "'Killing' it wouldn't make it crumble and cutting through the mass would probably take longer than we have. Stand back."

She floats back, spear held in a guard position.

NONE SHALL DEFY ME!

I take the daiklave in a two-handed grip and swing it into the vault door, the Nth Metal edge biting a good fifty centimetres into the material of its construction before being arrested. I pause for a moment before pulling back, letting the ring show me the state of the surrounding streets. The drones I sent on the rampage have attracted a response but that response isn't coming this way yet.

I draw the blade back for another swing.

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Do-Over 10

next

13th August

11:11 GMT -6

Infuriating.

Clunk!

Turtling.

Clank!

Psions!

Clang!

I am unstoppable!

Fina-fucking-lly! I drop my daiklave to the side, raise my right leg and kick the section of the door I've been working on, sending it sailing into the room beyond! Ignoring the Sphere's warbles I duck my head and stalk forward into the chamber beyond, raising a construct tower shield to block any potential attack.

Mother Box, seize control of the local-.

Three turrets fade into view, one on the wall to my right, one to the left and one on the ceiling. I move to fortify my environmental shield as the turrets activate. A wide.. turquoise.. wavy aura thing links them to one another for a second and then they fire, surrounding me in that same aura. Okay, doesn't seem to be doing any-?

I'm lifted off my feet almost gently, my movements becoming more and more difficult. And there's a weight on my skin. Not painful yet, but certainly… Strange. I move my right hand up to that I can watch my fingers as I make a fist. It's not so much hard as it is awkward.

Alright, bored now. My victory is inevitable!

My armour surges with orange light as I throw my arms wide, dropping to the ground as I overload whatever that was. The turrets crackle and burn out as I drop to the ground. Mother Box, what was that?

…

Huh?

I look down at my left hip where she's attached to my faulds. Ooh no. Her outer case is cracked and slightly crumpled and her lights are dim. Shit. Ah, Sinestro?

Completely beyond me, Corpsman. I suggest focusing more on current events.

Right. Damn.

"Are you hurt?"

I half turn, frowning as I take in Ghia'ta's concerned expression. "No, but Mother Box is. I don't suppose you know anything about-?"

"That.. was a graviton field. Qwardians use those to bypass environmental shields. It was most likely intended to crush you."

"I am pretty tough, even without the rings." I turn back to the vault and start onwards. Nothing I can do for Mother Box for now.

The first room on the left appears to be a morgue, storage for the slaves they've 'used up' but not gotten around to dissecting. Some have injection plugs in their arms and on their chests. Others look like they've been burned all over, the skin blistered and... Burned from inside?

I drop another plasma converter and then turn away. I know what the princesses look like and they're not here.

The room opposite is the dissection laboratory. Oddly, it seems to have been in recent use but there's no body. Perhaps they'd just finished work on someone? M-. Sinestro, can you access their records?

If power rings could subvert Qwardian systems, Corpsman, our conflict with them would have been far shorter.

Wasn't ring-you made by a Qwardian?

Yes, but he didn't give me unlimited access to all of his systems. He wasn't an idiot.

A reasonable point, but I would have thought that accessing them wouldn'toof!

The fist catches me in the left of my chin, knocking me sideways and forcing me to do a sort of stagger-hop in order to remain upright. What the-? I swing my left arm in a wide arc, trying to hit whoever that was-. No, no one towagh! My face slams into the wall hard enough for me to actually feel a small amount of pain. Something hit me in the back of the head and knocked me forwards. I'm more irritated than hurt. Turn around. Predictably, no one. Okay, the goggles would pick up most forms of invisibility, phasing and shapeshifting. Sinestro, teleportation jam.

As you wish Corpsman, though I suspect that it will not be that easy.

And armour.

"Ghia'ta, be careful. There's someone-." She hurtles past the doorway out of control, cracks clearly visible in her armour.

I don't bother running or changing my posture, I just have the ring drag me into the corridor. For a fraction of a second I see the figure of a man standing there, then there's a faint waft of blue as he vanishes. Sinestro, I thought we were blocking teleportation.

I am jamming most commonly used forms of target acquisition and reassembly, Corpsman. That is not the same as blocking everything.

Can you block some more stuff?

Naturally, Corpsman. But without knowing exactly what we're facing there is very little point. The probability of me selecting at random the form of teleportation which your opponent is using is minimal, and it will drain me at a far faster rate than that to which you are accustomed.

I put my back to the wall, trying to watch both directions. "Ghia'ta? Are you hurt?"

"Only a little." She rises, armour glowing as it mends itself. "Was that a Psion weapon?"

Sinestro, show me what I saw.

A ghostly construct image appears to my right. Standard pattern humanoid, tall… There's a decent amount of muscle there, along with the signs of malnutrition. Details not good enough for scars to appear. No hair on his head… If he's here then he's probably Tamaranian. I suppose it would have been foolish to assume that the princesses were the only ones they experimented o-.

The figure appears directly in front of me, right fist swinging for my face. His skin is a dull red-brown, his eyes glow a dull green and I use my ring to shove myself into him! His fist misses my head by the narrowest margin as I knock him back and then a beam of violet light strikes him in the side of his chest. He doesn't wince as he fades into blue mist.

"Check the other rooms now!"

She's on my heels as I fly down the corridor, then breaks left as I break right. Some sort of bier with multiple radiation emitters pointing at it, a shielded area for the ones performing the experiment-.

I see a tiny puff of blue in the corner of my eye and I'm already yanking myself out of the way as he swings his right fist at me again. I fire two yellow beams from my eyes and he vanishes once more as they hit him.

"He was here!"

No prisoners or information. Next room. I fly back into the corridor-

"Stop!"

-as a wall of violet crystal erupts from the room Ghia'ta was checking. The man appears to have his left arm and leg trapped on the room-side part-. Excellent. I go past that, down the corridor and into the next room on the left. A Tamaranian man-. Yes, it's him. He's suspended in a tank with some sort of neural interface attached to his head. Some sort of psychic projection device? Don't know, don't care.

"Why are you attacking us?"

Killing him would be quickest and safest-

-but…

Sinestro, do you understand this technology?

Not perfectly, Corpsman, but there are only so many ways to control a humanoid brain..

Disconnect him.

A beam of yellow light punches through the transparent force field covering the front of the tank as a new gun forms on my left forearm. I point it at the man's chest. No sense in taking foolish risks.

Sinestro?

Disconnected, Corpsman. But he's had quite a bit of work done. I don't know whether or not his mind is whole..

Have to do. "Ghia'ta, has he vanished?!"

"Yes."

I nod. "Good. Sphere!" I hear her revving, then a moment later she rolls in through the doorway. "Give him full medical aid, but do not take him to the Mountain until we know that he's compos mentis."

She beeps, then unrolls into some sort of vaguely insectoid clamp thing. She floats up and attaches herself to the tank the man is imprisoned in, her lights flickering in time with those of the device. Fine.

I step out into the corridor as Ghia'ta does the same, crystals decaying and flaking in her wake. Only one room left. I lead the way inside, grinning as I see the two animation suspension tanks containing the two women I came here to rescue. Excellent.

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Do-Over 11

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13th August

12:37 GMT -6

"Excuse me! Hello!?"

The Okaaran encampment on the outskirts of the Forbidden Forest of Weeds would appear surprisingly deserted to anyone who lacked a power ring. As it is I can clearly see the terrified forms of the garrison as they huddle in the fortified cellars each of the buildings possesses. I'm not sure whether doing that would actually put off a wandering Construct Lantern -much less Larfleeze himself- but I suppose that getting out of sight would give the hider a degree of psychological protection.

"If someone doesn't answer me really soon I'm going to drag someone out!"

My aura switches from orange to yellow for a moment, but swiftly turns back. I suppose… With the Central Power Battery so close, I shouldn't be surprised. Sinestro has been uncharacteristically quiet on this leg of the journey as well. Ah, a camera! I turn to face it and raise my right hand in greeting. Honestly, I thought that Okaaran soldiers had a bit more grit than-.

A trapdoor over to my left is thrown open and an Okaaran male hesitantly clambers out. And given how big Okaarans are it's an almost comical sight.

"Finally, some service!"

His hands cradle his particle beam while his stance clearly indicates that he believes that it will avail him exactly naught. He doesn't even bother pointing it at me as he finally puts his fear aside to face me.

"B-beast. What do you want?"

I frown. "Beast? Oh, yes, that's what you people called him, wasn't it? Here." I toss the slightly soggy sack to him. He fumbles the catch, nearly dropping his gun as well as he momentarily can't decide between grabbing the bag and letting it fall. He pauses, then clamps the gun to his armour before crouching down to pick up the sack. "I think you'll find everything in order."

He opens the sack and immediately relaxes. "Heh. You looking to turn in a bounty?"

"Among other things, yes."

"We don't handle that here." He stands, pulling Larfleeze's severed head out of the sack as he does so. "You'll need to head west about forty miles, there's a bureau in Kasagn that can arrange payment. Who was he, anyway?"

"The Beast."

He looks at me directly, his eyes narrowing. "Fuck you. Yeah, it's all very funny, walking up here with glowing orange armour and scaring the spit out of us, but the joke's had its day."

"Oh, I'm not joking." I raise my left fist so that he can see the sigil on the orange ring around my ring finger. "See?"

He manages not to drop the head, but that's mostly because his hands have locked up, along with the rest of his body.

"The head belongs to a man named Larfleeze who made his home on this planet long before your species existed. He was essentially a sort of insane, super-powerful Lantern. But he was also kind of stupid and didn't have anything blocking teleportation into his cave."

I was a little worried when his eyes opened as I stepped through, but his reflexes weren't anything special and the Sword of the Fallen turned off his orange light abilities as soon as it pierced his skin. At least, I assume that it did given that he didn't use them. I seem to remember that in the comics what he really wanted was to be rid of his orange ring permanently, so, maybe that had something to do with it. Don't know, and.. it probably doesn't matter now.

"I… That's, ah…"

"But I'm going to have to ask you not to check it yourself for a few days. I don't think that I got all of his slaves-" Though I did get most of them. They became quite indolent after Larfleeze himself fell. Perhaps it would have been worth keeping a few for their knowledge, but… I don't think that the potential gains outweigh the sheer horror of keeping someone in that state. "-and there are one or two other items that should be made safe by someone who knows what they're doing."

Like the Orange Central Power Battery. I stared at it in a trance for several minutes until Ghia'ta created a pink crystal around my head. Definitely something that needs careful handling by someone who knows what they're doing with power ring technology. In case the Okaarans -or anyone else- don't heed my verbal warning I left the drones which survived my attack on Wombworld with instructions to shoot dead anyone who isn't on their 'friends' list.

"Yes, of… Course." He hesitates again, then covers the head back up. "I… Once we've… Confirmed that what you say is true, we can authorise payment. I.. have.. no idea how much the bounty on the Beast is. Think we.. kind of assumed that no one would ever claim it."

"That's fine. I'm not in a rush. But I remember a clause about becoming the owner of his property?"

"Oh, yeah, you now have legal title to the whole lot. Whatever's there, it's now yours. Assuming you can hold onto it."

"I am somewhat familiar with the politics of the Vega Systems. Do you need anything else from me?"

"Ah…" He looks away from me in the general direction of one of the shelters. Probably the one where his commanding officer is hiding. "Who.. are you?"

"My name is Grayven."

"And… Your species? Where are you from?"

"Various places." I look around. Still no one else sticking their head out. "Though I intend to spend some time on Tamaran while I'm in Vega." I turn away, walking towards the forest edge. "I'll let you know when you can do your inspection."

Sinestro, connect to the Mountain and order a hush tube.

… Yes, Corpsman.

A hole in space opens in front of me and I step through into the space station the Gordanians were using to enforce their control of Tamaran. I can see three bodies, the armour covering their torsos burned through by the sisters' 'star bolts'. No stun effects here, thank you very much. If Koriand'r or Komand'r throw plasma at you then you get burned.

And speaking of the devil. Koriand'r flies into view, her newly granted solar-powered abilities making her hair look like it's on fire. Green plasma churns around her hands without burning them, a fascinating phenomenon which I will ask to study at some later time when it isn't quite as massively insensitive as it is now. When she seems me she halts in the air and adopts a more upright position. "Is your work done?"

I nod. "Larfleeze is dead, his slaves are at rest. I've got my drones looking after his cave. You?"

"My sister and I have placed the remaining Gordanian slavers in the cages from which we rescued their prisoners."

Quick bit of mental maths… "Not that many surrendered, then."

"If they had wanted us to make efforts on their behalf then they should have treated us less monstrously."

"Oh, I'm not criticising. I said 'do what you like' and I meant it. Is Komand'r around?"

"She is with our prisoners."

I nod. Sinestro, another tube. if you please.

Certainly, Corpsman. Is it too much to hope that you may be planning on offering either of these women yellow rings?

If you know where your alter-ego keeps his reserves I'll consider it.

In front of me the hush tube opens and I step through, Koriand'r floating in behind me.

I seem to remember that you intended to offer me to Miss Nguyen.

I knew her better. And I already have orange rings. But, if we happen across any yellow rings then I will give them due consideration.

Very well, Corpsman.

Komand'r stalks between the cells in the slave holding area, purple plasma crackling around her hands. I'm not sure why the two sisters generate different colours. Logically, the method used to give them both the ability would be the same, so shouldn't it be the same colour? Most of the Gordanians in the cells are either very young or very old. I always assumed that Koriand'r would be the nicer of the two, but I suppose that doesn't mean that she would be inclined to have mercy on the undeserving.

"Princess Komand'r, good to see you again. I have another offer for you and your sister that I'd very much like you to consider."

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Do-Over 12

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13th August

16:25 GMT -6

King Myand'r watches me from the settee on the other side of a low-set table. I lean forwards and pick one of the small… Nuts? Seeds? Out of the bowl resting on it. I hold in just in front of my face for a moment, taking it in. It's pale purple in colour and it feels quite tough. I slowly push it into my mouth, chewing contemplatively as I raise my eyebrows in King Myand'r's direction.

Out of the formal setting of our initial meeting he's dispensed with his ceremonial armour. I had wondered about that in the comics; supermodel girl Tamaranian goes around in a bikini. What do the men wear? Because I know how that sort of thing usually goes. It's like: if Apokoliptians are all bisexual then why is it that the only one we ever see being bisexual is the hot female Amazonesque one?

And now I know. Thongs. No double standard here at all. There are thigh boots and a cape and a strange sort of half-mitre hat and a truly colossal beard -seriously, you could lose a sheep in that thing- that is loosely bound into a plait beneath his chin and a veritable bush of red hair exploding outwards in all directions from the top of his head. He very nearly has the physique to pull off the look, rugged without having bodybuilder definition.

I keep chewing. It's got the texture of a hazelnut, but the flavour is… More… Apricot? The oil has a definite fruity tang to it. It's nice. Could be an export market there.

"What do you want with my people?"

Some of that Tamaranian directness, there. I reach forward to take another of these snack things. "What makes you think I want anything?"

"Bitter experience. Tamaran has a wealth of experience with alien warlords." No anger, no fear. Just… Resignation. And crunchy apricot. I reach forwards again and take two-. "Just take the bowl."

"Thank you." I pick up the bowl and deposit it in my lap. "Alright, what do the… The Gordanians get out of it now?"

"Five hundred units a year. Their years, ours are slightly shorter."

I nod. "Okay. And what do you think I'm going to ask?"

He regards my face for a moment. "The optimistic voice in my head says four hundred and ninety nine. The pessimistic voice says five hundred and one."

I pantomime curiosity. "Five hundred and one?"

"A Thalox cannot pull a mountain, no matter how many sticks you give it."

"Wise.. words indeed." I have no idea what a Thalox is. No Apokoliptian or Kryptonian has ever studied Vegan natural history. But having flown over Tamarus the meaning of the metaphor is clear enough. It's a crumbling third world dump. And this is their capital. As they are, they literally can't pay more. "But I'm not going to demand five hundred." He tenses slightly. "I'm going to demand two hundred-" He relaxes slightly, believing that I'm reducing his tribute by more than half. "-billion. Yes. Two hundred billion units." Whatever they are.

His eyes widen, bushy red eyebrows doing their best to hide themselves under his fringe. "Two hundred billion?"

"Two hundred billion."

We stare at each other for a moment.

"Tamaran does not have two hundred billion units, nor anything like two hundred billion. When I was a youth, I was taken to Citadel and shown their treasure vaults as an intimidation tactic and I do not think that they had two hundred billion units. I do not think that I can imagine two hundred billion units."

"I'm not asking you to imagine it." I swallow the oils and try to work out if the flesh has any significant flavour. Slightly.. salty..?

"I can't give you what I don't have."

I nod. Do Tamaranians nod? Koriand'r did, but she might just have been trying to mirror my body language. "So..? You're a king. Presumably your elevation didn't come as a complete surprise. Presumably you had some sort of education in economics. You need to acquire two hundred billion units. How do you intend to go about it?"

He blinks heavily, head pulling back slightly. "It.. would.. require a complete revitalisation of the Tamaranian industrial base."

I nod encouragingly. "Okay..?"

"Educational programs would have to come first. The Gordanians destroyed anything that looked like a school."

"Really?" Accursed space barbarians. Ex-space barbarians.

He nods unhappily. "We adapted. Small classes for primary education, held in people's homes. Apprenticeships for higher education. Our remaining libraries are more secure than our armouries. But there just aren't enough people with the knowledge we would need. And those who have it… A lot of it is just theoretical. Building anything that looked like an industrial base was an invitation-."

"To an orbital strike." I nod. "I'm seeing a pattern. And Komand'r told me about…" I turn my head to the right, looking out of the palace window and across the city to the area where the buildings just… Stop.

"We would have to rebuild our electronics industry, revitalise our transportation… And those are simply the economic matters. Holding the state together during the transition would be extraordinarily difficult with all of the new pressures that would inevitably develop. I cannot imagine that Kalapatt would meekly accept the concentration of knowledge and expertise in Tamarus that the program would require."

I hold up my right hand, my left ferreting around the bowl for more crunchy thingies. "Focus on the economic."

"As an industrial state, Tamaran might be able to pay two hundred billion units eventually, but-."

"No, keep going."

"We were not permitted to keep any spacecraft, and the Gordanians were thorough in their destruction of all space orientated technology. It could take twelve generations before we could build back up to our former levels. Is that what you want? I had assumed that the Gordanians would have mined out the asteroid fields by now."

I shake my head. "They made a cursory effort in a couple of places. Negligible, really."

"Is that where you're expecting us to get it from?" He stops focusing on me quite so intently. "I suppose there might be two hundred billion units' worth of wealth in the asteroids. We never surveyed them in any great detail."

"So if I want to get paid, you'll need a way to spread higher education very quickly, you need heavy industrial equipment and.. maybe a space based shipyard or two?"

"Oh yes. And perhaps if X'Hal is feeling bountiful she could return my brothers to life while she is raining down her blessings. What do you want from us, Lord Grayven?"

I tap the fingers of my right hand against the surface of the table. Some sort of polished stone, I think. "As you are now, you cannot give me anything I want. Therefore, as an investor in your civilisation, it behoves me to assist you in extracting yourself from the pit the Citadel and their Gordanian friends dropped you into. Among my allies are a species who can telepathically deposit information in people's minds. I believe that I can persuade them to make themselves available to you."

"And what do they want?"

"Do you have an island you're not using? I'd like to give them their own world, but I don't have one of those at the moment. An isolated region where they can learn to live self sufficiently would be the next best thing."

"There… May be one."

"Excellent. One problem down. I'm confident I can lay my hands on some advanced equipment… The occasional alien expert or two… To assist with the reindustrialisation. Your daughters caught three ships in orbit, and once we're done with them you can chop them up for parts. Or put them to use yourself."

King Myand'r shakes his head. "The Citadel would never tolerate-."

I look at the back of my left hand, having my yellow ring flare. "Why don't you let me worry about the Citadel? I'm certain that we can… Come to terms."

He takes a deep breath. "Even if you can provide that aid, it could well be generations before we can pay you such a sum."

"My life span is indefinite. And I think that I can make something of this place."

He regards me once more. I suppose he hasn't previously experienced anyone behaving in quite the way I am. "'Make something' of Tamaran?"

"Yes." I nod thoughtfully. "How would you feel about me basing a Lantern Corps here?"

back

Do-Over 13

next

13th August

18:57 GMT -6

Hm. I walk out into one of the courtyards that form part of the palace grounds. That went… Reasonably well. I take another Deca seed out of the bowl with my right hand and put it into my mouth. Then I hesitate. I've eaten rather a lot of these. Okay, in my youth I could finish off a packet of chocolate fingers in a single sitting, but now I'm…

Mother Box, can New Gods get-?

Ah.

Yes.

Well, that killed the mood. I'll get Scott to have a look at her just as soon as I'm finished here. I put the bowl down on the low wall running around the fountain in the centre of the courtyard and take a proper look around. It's a big place, but it's mostly bare stone and I strongly doubt that property or land prices are particularly high around here. It's lit by braziers of burning wood. There should be… I don't know, mosaics or something. A fresco showing scenes from Tamaranian mythology. I'm not exactly Mister Conspicuous Consumption myself, but… Really, if your palaces aren't at least a little ostentatious, how can anyone take you seriously?

You know, I think-.

"You were talking to Father for a long time." I look up as Komand'r descends from the sky, hair billowing around her as if buoyed up by a bonfire. It still strikes me as chimeric; where her sister's hair is a uniform red-orange Komand'r has different tones, orange darkening to brown-amber towards the edge of each curl. As for the rest of her… Her hair is kept from her face by a plain steel tiara, while the rest of her clothing might generously be described as a mini-dress made of blue cloth. Something she owned from before her enforced absence? It's not really traditional Tamaranian fare. Her feet are covered by wood and hide sandals. No stiletto heel, but the back is slightly built up.

"We had a good deal to discuss. And he's.. quite pleasant company." I look her over once more as she lands, her hair falling about her shoulders as she stops exerting her abilities. "Given up on the ring already?"

She turns her nose up slightly, looking back into the palace. "I want my people to see me flying under my own power as a Tamaranian should."

I nod placidly. The wonders of Psion medical research. "May I ask if you have made a decision on whether to keep it or not?"

She jerks her head back around. "Why do you ask like that?"

"Like what?"

"Like the result of the decision is not totally in your power."

I close my eyes, shaking my head. "That is not how I -or the orange rings- work." I look to the side, sighting an open area of the plaza and then wanting a construct-chair into being. I really do get on better with an orange ring for things like that than I do with Sinestro.

Simply a matter of practice and application, Corpsman.

I sit down, taking a moment to get comfortable before looking up at Komand'r. Her arms are crossed just under her breasts, pushing them up and inwards slightly. Her weight slightly more on her right hip than her left, emphasising the lithe muscularity of her physique.

…

No, no, it's not working. Stage 2 is still some way off.

"The ring empowers you to do what you want. To be what you want. Demanding obedience from another ring user doesn't work."

"You think that I would hesitate to do whatever Tamaran needs?"

I shake my head. "Why would I want you to be weaker than you could be?"

Her face hardens, her eyes glow and her hair roils in the air around her head. "You dare call me weak?"

"I did not call you weak. Though purely as a point of information, if I thought you weak I would most certainly dare to call you weak. I asked, why would I want you to be weaker than you could be? If you served me under sufferance your constructs would be far weaker than if you worked with me because you want the same end that I do."

He hair calms slightly, though her eyes still glow lime green. "And what end is that?"

I lean back into my chair construct, relaxing fully and closing my eyes. "A resurgence of Tamaranian strength. I see a.. potential, here, that is not being productively channelled."

"What, you wish for us to become your.. warriors? As the Gordanians are for the Citadel?"

I smile. "Oh, no. I would have fallen beyond all redemption if I failed that badly."

"Speak plainly then. All Tamarus knows that you spent the day negotiating our future with my father. What did you demand as the terms for our new servitude?"

I narrowly open my eyes and hold out my right hand, palm upwards. "If you want an artisan to carve you a stone bench, do you give him a chisel and hammer..? Or… A plasma cutter, or.. whatever Tamaranian masons use? Or do you instead break his arms and legs and put out his eyes?"

"You give him tools, of course."

"Give him tools." I nod. "Princess Komand'r, at my worst, I would recognise that fact. I am the Apokoliptian God of Conquest and the Gordanians and their Citadel masters offend me most profoundly. They have had you under their guns for.. two generations now? And they have done nothing with you."

"They have done many things with me and my sister."

"That is not what I meant. I mean, with your society. They have brutalised you but they have not conquered you. They have not even tried. They have made no attempt to integrate you into their society at all. They have not even attempted to exterminate you and settle your world for themselves. All the resources you possess and they take… Paltry amounts of money? All the things you could productively do for them and all they can think to do is keep you too weak to do any of them. Pathetic, barbaric stupidity."

I shake my head. "No, they've got to go. The whole pack of disappointing failures have to go." I look her in the eyes and smile faintly. "And then your lot can have a go at it instead."

Respect to her, she takes a moment to consider what I'm saying. "With you as our ruler?"

"Though that could work -the Gordanians are effectively ruled by the Citadel Emperor and they've flourished- but… No. I'll be.. around, I have my own interests to serve… But as I said-."

"If we do not want it for ourselves, we would not be able to use your rings as well." I nod, and she frowns. "But you claim to be a God of Conquest."

"There are more ways to conquer a place… A people, than with brute force. I will be a shaping force in Tamaranian society, encouraging it to develop in ways beneficial to me. A more subtle application of my domain than perhaps you are used to."

She stares at me for a moment, then shakes her head. "Even if you could destroy every Gordanian ship in the Vega Systems, you would still have-."

"The Branx, the Psions and the Citadel Fleet itself to deal with." I lean forwards. "The Branx have the best organisation and discipline. The Psions are scientists and engineers with few peers and the Citadel has an entrenched position and excellent fortifications. All together they stand between Tamaran and greatness. So I ask you, Princess Komand'r: what do you want?"

"I want them gone. I want their worlds to burn, their people dead or dying. I wish to place my boot upon the neck of the Citadel Emperor and-" The area around her right hand crackles with glowing purple plasma as she balls her hand into a fist. "-burn off his face for what he has done to my people!"

"We can do that." I nod. "We can do that. What else?"

"Tamaran needs to be stronger." She opens her right hand, allowing the energy she'd built up to dissipate. "I will not tolerate us ever being in this situation again."

"And to do that?"

"Industry. Technolo-" A mote of orange light streaks through the air as her ring comes to a halt just in front of her. "-gy."

"I was thinking of taking some of that from the Citadel Complex's smouldering remains." I raise my eyebrows. "Interested?"

back

Do-Over 14

next

13th August

19:27 GMT -6

Recruitment stage two.

I had assumed that my Corps could limp on without a Maltusian, just staying in the Vega region and recharging directly from the Orange Central Power Battery. Guy told me that he never had any problem recharging from the Green Central Power Battery, and I've never had much of a problem with the orange light's addictive qualities. Personal lanterns would be better and we'd need them eventually, but they weren't a priority.

Having actually encountered the Orange Central Power Battery now, I'm forced to conclude that that isn't a viable option. If the blasted thing could entrance me then I'd dread to think of the effect of putting it on an inhabited planet.

…

Maybe that's a bit much. The Okaarans have had it on their planet for the entirety of their history and while I don't consider their present civilisation as something I'd want to emulate they aren't crazy avarice monsters. But I want to put it in -or at least near- a major city, and that will be rather different to Larfleeze's hole in the ground in the middle of nowhere.

So. While Koriand'r oversees the disbursement of the prisoners and Komand'r reviews Tamaran's census records, Ghia'ta and I step through a hush tube and out into a Maltusian street. Airborne vehicles fill the air above us and tall buildings form a respectful circle around the Controllers' centre of operations, and through windows or just walking around I can see individuals from -quick head count- seventeen different species. Armoured caterpillars appear to be the most numerous, but the partial database I took from Jordan marks several of the others as belonging to species whose worlds the Reach has overrun.

"You're confident that this is the right place?" Because wouldn't that be embarrassing.

Ghia'ta nods, taking in our surroundings without much concern. "Yes. The building was constructed before the peoples of Maltus separated. My aunt told me that she used to visit it frequently."

I take another look around. We don't seem to have set off any alarms… "Remind me: what sort of terms are the Zamarons and the Controllers on?"

"We have little to do with one another. I have never met a member of another Maltusian faction." She gives me a nervous smile. "I am looking forward to serving as an Ambassador between our peoples."

"Well spoken, sister."

I look up as a blue skinned man in red, orange and yellow robes descends from the sky. And why his robes aren't flapping around his face due to air resistance I don't know. I suppose that when you're as powerful as Maltusians are supposed to be little things like that are just beneath you. He lands lightly, smiling at us-. No, at Ghia'ta as he does so.

"Or should I say niece? I hadn't realised that our Zamaron sisters were breeding."

"Niece would be more accurate. I am far less powerful than my aunt or her sisters."

"Your aunt?" He tilts his head slightly to the side. "Aga'po?"

"Yes!" Ghia'ta's smile is almost painful in its earnestness. "Do you remember her?"

"I never knew her well, but I do remember her. Tell me, are you-?"

"Sorry to interrupt-" I'm not. "-but I'm here to speak to the Controllers. Are you one?"

He focuses on me, and I can feel something push against my divine resistance. "And an Apokoliptian." And he looks notably less happy about it. "Curious. Is your maleficent overlord turning his attention in our direction?"

"Don't know, don't care. Controllers?"

"You are aware that the Controllers represent only a minority of the Maltusian population? "

"Fine. Do you know anything about orange power rings?"

"Power rings were never my field of study. You should probably talk to Krona, that was always more his sort of thing."

"I'm reasonably sure that the Guardians executed Krona for trying to look at the alpha event and fucking up the universe."

"Oh." He negligently waves his left hand. "Then try Ganthet."

"Ganthet's a Guardian, I'm an Apokoliptian. If I go to Oa with an orange ring and a yellow ring they'll thank me for my time and destroy them both. And possibly me along with them. They certainly wouldn't help me."

"And Hinon can't help so it looks like you're out of luck. Oh well, never mind." He returns his attention to Ghia'ta. "Do you intend to stay long? There are some lovely parklands to the south of here where we've recreated the original-."

"Hinon who?"

"Hinon Hee Hannanan, and I doubt very much that my Controller brothers would let you see her, especially carrying a piece of the Anti-Life Equation."

"Never heard of her, and if you can get it out of me you'll have my thanks."

He shakes his head. "I'm afraid that isn't my field of study. If you would like-?"

"To talk to someone capable of being helpful?" I turn away, striding in the direction of the Controllers' building. "Yes. Have fun, Ghia'ta."

I hear her sigh. "Grayven, you are being you again."

"Yeah, well, this guy just told me he didn't know anything useful and couldn't help. I've got no reason to waste time on him." Hm. There's been some nice landscaping here. The colours of the leaves and flowers are a nice complement to the-.

The Maltusian man zips through the air to take up station just ahead of me, floating backwards to maintain the distance between us. "They won't let you in, especially if you try treating them as rudely as you are me."

"They're useful, you're not, I have a Central Power Battery."

He stops in surprise, barely managing to drift out of my way as I stride past. "You have a what?"

"The Orange Central Power Battery. It's mine, I own it, but it needs a service. Three billion years, one careless owner. I assume that you're incapable?"

"I don't know enough about the Central Power Battery, no. You would need to speak to Hinon directly."

"Excellent." I take the steps up to the front entrance two at a time. "Then I'll know who to ask for. Thank you for your help, you may be on your way."

He flits ahead again-. I'm not going to get rid of him, am I? "I can take you to her, but I doubt that she'll be able to give you what you want."

"If a leading expert can't make a power ring then I'm never coming back here because you're all totally worthless."

"She's been in a coma for… Let us say three billion years."

"What a remarkable coincidence." I reach the front door and give it a push. No, not moving. Hm. YOU WILL NOT DEFY ME!

The doors explode inwards, granting me access to what looks like a fairly generic-looking office lobby. I smile smugly to myself as I stride inside, two… Oh, that's what proper Controllers look like, looking up. They don't appear to be alarmed. Actually, they look somewhat vacant. Bah, I have the name of the one I want.

"You, purple guy on my left. I'm here to speak to Hinon Hee Hannanan. Which way?"

"Our sister is not here for your entertainment, Apokoliptian. And I-." He stops for a moment, the jewel thing on his forehead glimmering. "Or perhaps I am mistaken. Please, follow me."

back

Do-Over 15

next

13th August

19:32 GMT -6

I look at the Controller lying motionless on the bier. Pinkie, bluey and Ghia'ta have all followed me here, though I'm not really sure why. Guess it's a slow day for entertainment around here. The woman's pyjamas consist of blue leggings and a purpley-red top. Hm. She looks clean, so either they're at least giving her basic nursing care or Controllers don't excrete. I'd have said the latter, but then I became a god and I still shit. Why should they get an opt-out when I don't?

"Great, thank you. I'll get out of your hair now." I reach forward with my right hand, which suddenly encounters resistance. I give the invisible barrier a prod, then turn my head halfway back toward my escort. "Something I can do for you?"

"Our sister may deign to assist you if you restore her." It's the pink one. "But I do not intend-."

"You left her here for three billion years. I don't know what you intended but it's clearly not working."

"She was reduced to this state after forging the ring you now wear."

"One of the rings I now wear. And I'm not giving it back. If you want to keep a thing, don't throw it away." My right hand still can't move. "What?"

"What is your intent?"

"Take her to Okaara, which is where the Orange Central Power Battery is." Actually… "Though I'm surprised that you don't know that. I'm a little fuzzy on the timelines, but the Guardians were still using Manhunters when they approved Larfleeze keeping it and I seem to remember you and them going your separate ways only after the Manhunter Revolt."

"Your knowledge is incomplete."

"Thought it might have been. Still, you weren't exactly straining to help her yourselves. Now, are you going to get out of my way or do I need to become impolite, because I'm pretty sure I could break this barrier if I set my mind to it."

"You would not escape us."

"Yeah, I've seen what happens when the Controllers try picking a fight with the guy holding the Orange Central Power Battery. It didn't go your way."

In the corner of my eye I see Ghia'ta's right hand twitch toward her face before she gets it back under control and forces it to her side. "Grayven-."

"Though if you're really that worried about her -three billion years later- you're welcome to accompany me. Either of you or any of your confederates. I'll give you until I count 'four' to decide. One."

"Grayven, that is not the-"

"Two."

"-way."

"I will accompany the savage, brother." I withdraw my hand and turn to face bluey. "If only to take the Orange Central Power Battery when his reach finally exceeds his grasp."

"Fine with me." I raise my eyebrows at the pink one. "You?"

"The Controllers will tolerate this, under our brother's oversight."

"Glad to hear it." I turn back to the bier, reaching out with both hands… Nothing blocks them as I use my right hand to support her head and grab her around the middle with my left. She isn't Guardian-short, but she's shorter than most people and compared to me she's tiny. Now, how to hold her..? I put her head on my right shoulder, clamping her in place with my right forearm and leaving my left free. "Ghia'ta, you coming?"

"I think that I should."

"Rightoh." Sinestro, hush tube.

Do you intend to ask her about yellow rings, Corpsman?

No. Far easier just to ask the man we already know makes them.

Oh? I had rather gotten the impression that you were abjuring Qward.

Until I am ready. Once I have a Lantern Corps I'll be as ready as I'm going to get. I don't dismiss your advice out of hand.

Glad to hear it, Corpsman. Hush tube ready.

The tube-. Huh. It's visible here, pale violet lines wiggling around the periphery. Alright, I think that the Maltusians are ancient and learned enough that I don't feel cheated by that. Mindful of Hinon's relaxed body posture I stride through the tube and out into the chamber in which I killed Larfleeze.

"Excuse the mess. I haven't had time to clean the place up yet." Hm. I wonder if Tamaran has a central bank yet? I'm going to guess not, but-.

I stop in the air half way towards the outcrop of rock upon which the Central Power Battery rests. They don't have a central bank. I'm…

I'm going to use my university degree for something. I've actually.. studied this. I.. never thought I'd use it for anything.

My goodness me.

I got a two two and I get to actually use it on an entire planet. My sister got a first in forensics and I doubt that she'll ever murder anyone.

There's no justice.

"Grayven?" Ghia'ta is alongside me, looking at me with concern.

I shake my head. "Sorry, got distracted. Right!" I fly the rest of the way quickly, rising over the top of the rock and turning to face the pair of them. The Central Power Battery is as I left it, orange flames flickering all around it. I try to avoid looking inside the interior as I gently lay Hinon down next to it. Hm. It would be easier if the presence of the thing made her spontaneously awaken, but…

I look at the blue one. "I don't suppose you know anything about what happened to her, do you?"

"I believe that my brother might have been minded to tell you, had you been less obstinate."

Ghia'ta raises her right hand slightly. "I can go and ask him-."

"No, it's fine, I can probably work this out myself. Making rings requires orange light, so…" Show me.

By your command.

Huh. It's… Different to the souls of New Gods, but there's clearly quite a lot going on there. Or-. No, when I altered John Stewart 50 I had Father Box helping me. Now I'm just seeing what the ring can show me. Which is very little. I'm not sure if that's just because she's in a coma… No, I've used this on sleeping people before and below the surface they look more or less the same as when they're awake. Never used it on someone in a coma before, and I know that when long term coma patients wake up they tend to have various kinds of brain damage. Would that apply to a Maltusian?

Okay… So… Trickle in small amounts of orange light and hope that the bits I can't see are still there for it to connect to? Uh, no, first, Sinestro?

…

No response. I raise my right hand slightly and tap the ring. It shines weakly, then fades. Have to do, I suppose. Parallax Vision. Yellow lights appear before my eyes, showing me the structures of her fears. Weak, I'm not surprised that they've faded after three billion years, but still there.

"Ghia'ta, can you use the violet light to see love?"

"Yes."

"Would you mind taking a look at Ms Hannanan? I want to make sure that she still has emotional light within her."

She nods, her eyes glowing for a moment. She nods again, smiling. "Her loves are faded, but love still touches her."

"Good show." I slide my yellow ring off my finger and put it in one of my armour's pouches. I don't want to destroy it by accident after all. I then place my right hand on Hinon's chest and my left on the Orange Central Power Battery.

Guh. Keep it under control, Grayven.

"This is my power, this is my might!

I stand alone in darkest night!

With this ring, my foes I smite!

I conquer all with orange light!"

Orange light screams through me, showing me images of avarice and desire from a hundred billion civilisations, each crying out for me to want them need get take them! Oh, no, that's me screaming. I see the orange light pooling inside Hinon, forming shapes-.

I yank my hands back to my chest. That'll do, then.

…

I should have tried that with my personal lantern first, shouldn't I?

…

Whaw, Sinestro must be feeling really bad if he didn't pick up on that feed line.

"Eeuuagh." Hinon stirs, her eyes flickering for a moment before they open fully. Then she sees me.

Her face remains neutral as she considers me for a moment.

"Oh. Splendid."

back

Do-Over 16

next

13th August

19:37 GMT -6

"If it helps, I'm not exactly thrilled at the prospect either."

"Hmpf." She pulls herself into a sitting position, then looks around the chamber. "You've been busy."

"No, that all belonged to the last guy. The one the Guardians let keep the Orange Central Power Battery. I killed him. My name is Grayven and I'm from-."

"Apokolips. And you're wearing my ring." She frowns. "I distinctly remember throwing that into the Bleed, you know. However did you come by it?"

"I'm glad to see that you didn't lose any of your mental faculties during your three billion year nap." I hold out the middle three fingers of my right hand. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Young man, if you want something from me-."

"I just woke you up. You guttered your own link to the orange light and I restored it. From where I stand, I'd say that you owe me already."

"Were it not for the ring which you wear on your finger, I might be inclined to agree with you."

"You just told me that you threw it away. Did you misspeak? Did you in fact throw it away with the intent that it would reach me?"

"I was certain that it would reach someone. It wasn't meant to go to Apokolips."

"In that case, you are to be congratulated. It somehow ended up between Earth Prime and Earth Sixteen and may have played a role in my being returned to my home parallel."

"Prime? What do you mean by that?"

"It's a fascinating place whose structures absolutely don't support magic. Going there the first time utterly destroyed my soul and turned me into a Human."

She frowns. "That shouldn't have been possible."

"As I said: congratulations."

"Hm." She awkwardly pushes herself up, pausing for a moment as she notices the hand I'm holding out to her. She doesn't take it, rising to her feet and theatrically brushing the dirt from her trousers. "So; just what it is that you intend to demand from me while I'm enfeebled from my three billion year slumber?" She looks around again. "And where are we?"

"To answer your second question: we're in the Vega Systems. It's where the Guardians dumped the Psions when they grew tired of them."

Bluey perks up at that. "We were trying to allow them to recover their own culture."

I roll my eyes at him. "Well done. If it wasn't for their stay-at-home habits they'd be the next Dominion by now." I frown. "Ah, the Dominion might not have been a thing when you were last awake. They're a race with a ruling caste of evil scientists."

Hinon nods. "Ah, they've settled down then. I suppose that's progress. And what do you want?"

"Some sort of protective case for my Central Power Battery. It nearly entranced me and I'm a little nervous about letting anyone else anywhere near it."

"Present company excluded, presumably."

"If you couldn't take it you'd be useless to me and I assumed that Ghia'ta's use of the violet light would insulate her somewhat."

"And the hippy?"

Bluey's jaw tightens. "Excuse me, oh sister-."

"You're excused."

"I met him about half an hour ago and I don't really care what happens to him. If the worst comes to the worst I could always turn him into a construct."

"Unless he defeated you, took the Orange Light Fountain and the Entity contained therein for himself and launched an insane campaign of genocide across the universe."

I nod. "Yes, unless that happened. What's a Light Fountain?"

"What that is." She waves her right hand negligently at the Central Power Battery. "The prime connection to the orange light in the material universe. A proper Central Power Battery is the 'protective case', containing the light and making channelling it easier for lesser life forms."

"New God here."

"Yes, and that might explain why you've lasted as well as you have." She glances at the 'Light Fountain' again. "These fancy flames are a sign of leakage and waste, not that Krona had an attack of aesthetic concerns when he made it."

I suspected, but it's nice to have it confirmed. Alan's ring always did the same thing and there's no way that was in good repair. And-. "Wait, Krona? That lunatic the Guardians sentenced to incorporeality for fucking up the universe. He made it?"

"He did what?"

"Broke the universe by trying to look at the alpha event. You'd have to ask the hippy for details."

"The fact that I regard traditional Maltusian factionalism as foolish does not make me a hippy!"

"Oh, that's a shame. But not to worry, I'm sure that I can work with what he's left me."

"And go through and make sure that he hasn't left any sort of control system, because that would really get me down: him turning up and stealing all of my stuff. And some conventional rings and personal lanterns would be nice."

"How many were you thinking?"

I shrug. "I don't know. A few thousand."

She looks decidedly unimpressed. "Really. And what's in it for me?"

"A few thousand Lanterns. Plus you get to sort out a few of the Guardians' missteps in a way that you can hold over their heads forever."

"So these Lanterns will work for me, will they?"

"My Lanterns will work for me, and I may dispatch a proportion to assist my allies. You can recruit your own as well if you want. It's no skin off my nose."

"But you would keep the Central Power Battery."

"Once I destroy the Citadel there will be no significant interstellar power in this region of space. It will be far safer here than on the Reach's doorstep."

"And what does Yuga Khan think of this?"

"Grandfather's been missing in action for nearly as long as you have, and as far as I know father's never been here. And I don't care to serve either of them. Part of why I'm doing this is to gather enough power to ensure my ongoing independence."

"And that Anti-Life fragment in your soul isn't a mark of his favour?"

"He may regard it as such. I do not."

Hinon turns away from me, bending slightly to get a better look at the Light Fountain. "Keeping an entire Lantern Corps going would be quite a big job for me to do on my own."

"Since they're mostly going to be operating locally, all I absolutely need in the short term is the Central Power Battery. I have Larfleeze's ring reserve and can wait on the personal lanterns. Beyond that, the more other Controllers you convince to help, the more Lanterns they get. Failing that, it occurs to me that -properly re-educated- the Psions may have what it takes to aid you."

"A race of deranged scientists?"

I gaze levelly at her, unimpressed. "Sun-Eaters."

"Hmm. Not our finest hour. Still, if they've been a blight on the universe since we abandoned our uplift program… It might be a workable solution."

"Good. You get to work on that, I'll finish preparing the ground." I pat her on the back, and she doesn't move even slightly. Tough old biddy. "I'll check up on you when I've mustered my forces."

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Do-Over 17

next

15th August

02:17 GMT -6

"It seems that you exaggerated your need for my aid, Mister Grayven."

I hold up both of my personal lanterns, the orange one now blazing as brightly as its yellow counterpart. For so long I've had to ration my recharges to what it could support, its capacitors recharging painfully slowly at times. Eighteen hours to recover a full ring-charge and incapable of storing more than two. Now I have a direct connection to the Orange Light Fountain I'm finally free of that restriction.

"It's hardly practical for an entire Corps to recharge themselves from a single personal lantern, even if it is technically possible."

Though now I think about it… Sinestro, where is your Central Power Battery?

I have no idea, Corpsman. Logically, it would either be somewhere on Qward Fifty or my personal lantern was designed to work without one. Given that I have continued functioning here, I think that the latter is more likely.

Ah, like Kyle Rayner's.

No, Corpsman. Rayner inherited Abin Sur's lantern, which was standard issue. I'm not clear why you would think otherwise.

Whoops. Or is it? No, I can just tell him.

Different parallel universe. Jordan got possessed and destroyed the Green Central Power Battery. The last thing Ganthet did was give an independent lantern to Rayner.

Ah. Clever. No Guardian would tolerate a personal lantern they could not shut down, not unless the situation was utterly dire. But I would not be surprised to learn that they had a plan in place should such a situation arise.

"True, you would need a rota. But it would be manageable."

"Why do you think I've been so abrasive? I assure you, if you were essential I would have been a good deal more deferential. You're my first choice, but you're not absolutely necessary. If you refused, I would try hiring a New God, then a Qwardian, and failing that I would temporarily accept a reduced operating status. But I have to be prepared to issue a point blank refusal if none of those I seek to do business with would offer acceptable terms."

"And all these rings."

And wasn't that a surprise. I distantly remember something about comic-Glomulus pretending to be a power ring, but apparently turning people into power rings is something which sufficiently powerful Orange Lanterns can just do. It certainly makes my 'go it alone' model a good deal more reliable. If I could stomach the act.

Which I probably could.

Ghia'ta steps out of a hush tube to my left, looking at me expectantly. I nod, returning the yellow personal lantern to subspace and following her back through the tube. We appear in a stone corridor near an open air amphitheatre the Tamaranians abandoned after they so conclusively lost their war with the Citadel.

"Any new problems?"

"No, though I do not like how little training they have had. For an operation on such a scale-."

"We should expect fatalities. I know that. They know that. And they volunteered anyway, for a chance to free their people and strike down their enemies." I shake my head. "Orange power rings are exceedingly user-friendly. While I could teach them more sophisticated techniques, the gains we would get compared to the losses involved in leaving the Citadel active mean that it wouldn't be a proportionate exchange. I'll be sending them with drones and they'll have hush tubes, but there comes a point where you have to take events into your own hands. And Tamaran-"

Ghia'ta steps to the side as I shove open the wooden door.

"-has had enough of being controlled."

I stride through the opening, the sound from the stands cutting out almost immediately. No cheers, but I suppose for something like this that wouldn't be appropriate. I take a moment to look around, making eye contact here and there. Then I half-turn and proceed towards the centre of the amphitheatre.

On the day Komand'r was born, for no better reason than spite, the Gordanian 'occupation' force launched an orbital strike on Tamarus, destroying an entire district of the city and nearly everyone in it. The act was fairly efficacious, forever blackening the name of an innocent baby in the eyes of her fellow Tamaranians. But as should have been obvious, she was very far from the only child born that day. Even with Tamaran's population being so much smaller than Earth's, there were tens of thousands of births.

So it really wasn't that hard finding two hundred people born that day who were willing to learn how to use power rings if it meant they got a shot at the people who wrecked their world.

"People of Tamaran! I have a present for you!"

There's a flicker of orange light just to my right, and the newly completed Orange Central Power Battery appears. Along with the woman who created it. Across the seating I see orange rings flicker as they respond to its presence.

"People of Tamaran! Lanterns! Today! Is the last day! On which anyone fears the Citadel! Today! Is the last day ! On which any Tamaranian fears the Psions! Or the Branx, or the Gordanians, or anyone else! Today! Is the first day! Of Tamaran's ascendancy!"

I see their rings glowing at the strength of their desires, and the pulses coming from the Orange Central Power Battery as it responds. I rise off the ground, floating out in front of the Battery with my arms wide. No one shouts, no one even whispers as Komand'r and Koriand'r come up alongside me.

"You know your objectives. You are to strike their fleet mercilessly, killing everyone. Let the suffering of your grandparents and your parents and yourselves be repaid in full this day! Leave nothing! And when you have destroyed your target move on to the next. Do not tarry. The Citadel did not become as powerful as they are by being completely stupid."

They should have a fairly target-rich environment. The Citadel Fleet has been expanding as the Ermanian shipyards complete their next generation of ships, but they are mostly being deployed away from the Citadel in preparation for the beginning of their crusade of conquest. The ships serving as the Citadel's defence force are on high alert, which means that most of the Citadelians who would normally be on the Citadel itself are shipboard and most of the vessels of other races who would normally be stopping off at the Citadel Complex have politely but firmly been shooed away. There will be some -whom we'll be killing- as well as a slave population whom we will be endeavouring to evacuate, but we're mostly looking at a target-rich environment while armed with weapons of untold destructive capacity wielded by people driven to complete mercilessness. I did briefly toy with the idea of keeping the Citadel and using it ourselves, but it's a symbol of such malevolence that I don't think it's worth it.

And it's not as if there aren't other deserving people around here whom we can relieve of their space-based infrastructure. Two hundred and three lanterns can pull better than a fleet of tugs, especially at faster than light speeds.

"Orange Lanterns! Today we fight! Today we kill! Today we achieve victory! Now raise! Your! Rings!"

My left fist punches the air in perfect time with theirs, the princesses at my side copying the gesture.

"This is our power, this is our might!

We stand alone in darkest night!

With these rings, our foes we smite!

We conquer all with orange light!"

A colossal wave of orange power envelops the amphitheatre as two hundred and three rings report their status.

"Charge at one hundred percent capacity."

I grin.

"Jean, open the hush tubes."

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Do-Over 18

next

15th August

02:23 GMT -6

My right arm is up and pointing at Emperor Damyn as his retinue come to their feet and reach for their weapons, plasma from my forearm-mounted fusion cannon already burning through the air between us to disintegrate his entire torso.

"Goodbye."

I grin as the hush tube behind me shuts down and raise my daiklave. A Citadelian on my left raises a plasma weapon only to be shot in the head by one of my blaster drones, sending him staggering and dropping, his not quite dead body shaking and spasming as his gun clatters to the deck.

Strike them down!

And then I lunge, batting the feasting table aside with my left hand so that it slams into the Citadelian officers on my left and obscures the line of sight of the soldiers on that side of the room. A backhand swing from my daiklave cleaves through the armour of another officer, breaking though into his chest and cutting a bloody slash out of the other side. I get a momentary flash of him vomiting blood as I move on to the next target.

Destroy all rivals!

Another Citadelian, this one with slightly fancier armour. He has enough time to raise his arms into a blocking position, his armour's force field producing a weak translucent shimmer in the air between us. Then my daiklave hits it and it fractures and fades, his forearms tumbling aside as the blade slices through just above the elbows and continues on into and through his neck.

Overrun their defences!

The drones start firing again as the guards recover from their initial shock, blaster bolts punching through helmets, faces and skulls to get at the juicy brains within.

Hack them down!

The third officer has enough sense to throw himself backwards, earning a death from my fusion cannon as I turn my left arm across my body for a moment before pointing it at an officer scrambling to leave the room and firing again. His upper right arm and most of his shoulder evaporate, the force of the blast sending him staggering sideways even as the heat and radiation cook every part his armour doesn't protect.

Hold their redoubt!

I lower my blade and raise my fusion cannon, lending its support to the drones as Citadelians fall all around me. As decapitation strikes go, this isn't going to be anything like as fatal to the Citadel's war effort as it would have been a few weeks ago. Too many smart Citadelians have moved into NCO positions for them to be quite as dependent on clear orders from on high. Still-

The last Citadelian in the room falls to a high powered purple death ray shot to the heart.

-I think this will disrupt higher order coordination quite nicely. Alright. Sinestro, match these armours and cybernetics to our records. Did we get all of the admirals?

No, Corpsman. Only one of these people holds that rank. The rest are most likely the Emperor's closest lackeys.

I nod, taking a few steps in the direction of the Citadel's bridge and kicking a corpse out of the way as I go.

Any of these the new model?

No, Corpsman. At least, I cannot detect any significant difference in their physiology. After a man is dead it is so much harder to find out what he is thinking.

Fair enough.

I stride towards the control centre, drones zipping in ahead of me, light from their weapons fire causing rippling waves of purple and orange to decorate the walls. There are a few screams and roars-. I pause, frowning. No Psions. There's usually one or two around the command section to keep an eye on their leading business partner. Odd. Though… Not an immediate concern.

I stride into the command centre, smiling slightly at the Citadelians dead at their stations. Hrrr. The things I could do with their external defence systems if their fleet was a little further away. Ah well. I raise my left arm, point it at the armour protecting their computer core and fire. The howling blast of hydrogen ions bore through the shielding and metal and incinerate the delicate computer system beyond. Local defence stations can still be operated manually of course, but that will put paid to their higher organisation.

I raise my left hand to my face. "Grayven reporting. The Emperor is dead and the Citadel's bridge is scoured of life."

"Komand'r here. Their teleportation hub won't be teleporting living soldiers this day."

"Nicely done. Move on to your secondary targets."

"Phyrel here. Admiral Zartac is dead by my hand!"

Commander of the Citadel's defence force. There are a few other admirals around, but he had seniority. "Good, but remember what I said about getting pinned down."

"I have not forgotten, and I have not yet had my fill of Citadel blood. Moving to secondary target."

"Koriand'r here. I have… Found something."

I frown. "What, you don't recognise the reactor? Don't worry about it. Just stick a mine on it and retreat. The bigger the explosion, the better."

"No, I recognise the reactor, but… It appears to have only recently been installed and my ring does not recognise the technology of the device it has replaced."

"Forward your scans to Hinon and move to your secondary target. If she can make anything of them we can reconsider."

"Very well."

I want to know and images form in my mind of my Lanterns in action. Four fail to respond; they're either dead or their rings have been destroyed. Power rings provide a massive boost in destructive potential but their users are still essentially rookies. A small squad of on-the-ball Citadelian marines with heavy weapons would be able to shoot them dead through their environmental shields fairly quickly, and the Mountain can't make two hundred hush tubes simultaneously. As to the rest… Vicarious ring telemetry shows me Citadelian ships drifting in space, command crews slain and primary generators going into forced shut down as a result of orange energy pulses.

Good show.

"You. Alien."

I look around. Internal communications?

"Are you addressing me?"

"Yes. You who would attempt to spoil the moment of my greatest triumph."

I take one last look around and then stride out of the command section. I could call for a hush tube, but I'm not under attack and I'd rather leave those for Lanterns who are. "It seems to me that it's very far from that."

"The ships here are barely a quarter of our full strength. Recall orders have already gone out, and you will find the rest of my ships to be far harder targets."

"I was planning on exterminating you people anyway." I shrug. "Saves me having to go looking for them."

Ring, transmit alert.

By your command.

"And who exactly am I talking to?"

"I am a god. An exceedingly vengeful god, upon whose territory you have intruded for the last time."

Really. "I'm from Apokolips. Have you any idea how little that narrows it down?" The voice sounds… Citadelian? Maybe a bit raspy? An old Citadelian? Could be, I suppose.

"Too bad. That's all that you're getting. And when you are dead I will wear your skin as a suit."

I squint theatrically. "Are you hitting on me?"

"Yes, that is precisely what I am doing. Now hold still."

Hold st-?

I dive across the room as the floor where I was standing erupts in a blast of golden light!

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Do-Over 19

next

15th August

02:26 GMT -6

I roll awkwardly, coming to my feet in a crouch. Sinestro, any idea what that-?

Woophf!

I'm slammed against the ceiling as the floor beneath me explodes upwards, eddies of force running over my entire body and trying to squeeze. The ceiling deforms around me for a moment before the golden light appears to get a better grip on my body, then the deformation stops while the pressure on me intensifies. This actually -agh- hurts somewhat. I've dropped my daiklave-.

In answer to your half-asked question, Corpsman, it bears a more than passing resemblance to certain forms of high level telekinetic assault. Furthermore, my analysis of the patterns of force suggests that-.

Yes, I spotted that.

A ripping force bites into the armour protecting my right calf. It doesn't get very far before diminishing -nice to know that's still working- but I'm sure it will be back. I fortify my environmental shield, the tron lines of my armour glowing bright yellow in response. The pressure is slightly reduced. Okay, how to escape. High powered constant telekinetic attacks aren't something I've spent much time studying as telekines usually use intense one-directional forces or short disintegration bursts. Ah, let's try the gravity thing those VRUs were doing to block my tubes.

If you like, Corpsman. An area about two metres around my body begins to flicker with weak yellow light. Though I am unclear as to why you think- The telekinetic effect stutters. -that would.. work.

I am a god!

I use my ring's flight aura to pull me out of the weakened blast area, landing lightly on the floor and then shutting off the gravity disruptor.

Sinestro, message to the princesses. I'm under attack by a powerful telekine and would appreciate aid. Drones, seek and destroy my attacker.

Message sent, Corpsman. I'm still waiting-.

The telekinetic beam cuts out entirely and I transition to the far side of the feasting chamber before the next one blasts up through the floor in the spot I had been standing. Looks like destroying the central computer didn't completely destroy internal monitoring. Sinestro, get on that, would you?

Narrow yellow beams lash out, boring holes in apparently random points in the walls, ceiling and floors.

Dealt with, Corpsman. Though if the individual in question has telepathic abilities to complement his telekinetic ones they should still be able to launch attacks at your approximate location.

I tap the side of my goggles, checking on the location of my drones. The two that dropped down through the first hole haven't found anything of note as yet -though I can cross a dozen or so Citadelians off the hit list- and the ones moving through the corridors are getting slowed down by soldiers heading towards me.

In answer to your question, the person firing at me clearly didn't know how to improve their attack once they caught me. This implies an amateur, with abilities which are either newly activated or newly engineered. An amateur who was clearly getting feedback but wasn't sure what to do with it.

You used the gravity effect to disrupt their feedback. That's almost clever, Corpsman.

I have my moments.

Now, what's going on outside? New ships have come in, dropping out of FTL almost on top of their compatriots. FTL sensors? No, they'd have to stop to scan. They must have been getting a transmission from Citadel Complex and it's risky even so. Still, I admire the skill that sort of manoeuvring takes. And-.

Three of the new destroyers get into formation around an older cruiser, aim their primary guns and fire-. What?

Lantern deceased.

They're firing on their-. Of course they are, they outnumber us by a factor of ten thousand at least, it makes perfect sense. But to manage a shot like that, they'd-. They're using the other ships' internal sensors to know where to shoot. Automated telemetry sharing? Perhaps, but otherwise that cruiser just gave the Lantern's location knowing that they'd be shot to bits as a result. That's still a net win for the Citadel, but… Whaw.

I raise my left hand to my face as I jog over to where my daiklave fell, bending slightly to grab the grip with my right hand.

Corps wide.

By your command.

"My Corps, the Citadel's reserves have arrived and they are willing to shoot other Citadel ships if they get you as well." There's a.. faint vibrating noise from somewhere. "Remember: you can't kill them if you die first. Use construct armour to protect yourselves. Use your ring's sensors to detect enemy ships moving into position and use short FTL hops to avoid the places they're targeting. If the ship you're on is about to be overwhelmed, use a hush tube. Grayven out."

The noise cuts out for a moment, and then comes back with a vengeance. I can see the loose parts of deck around where the telekinetic blasts came from waving aroundtransition!

I reappear in the corridor a fraction of a second later, scanning my surroundings and shooting out the internal monitor devices even as I start running. I make it to the first T-junction as a cacophonous tearing and smashing noise erupts from the feasting room. Quick scan… Yeah, totally destroyed. The telekine gripped everything and smashed it together in the centre of the room. I'm not.. sure what that would have done to me, but I doubt that it would have felt pleasant. Still, clearly the work of someone not at one with their abilities. Or perhaps they need to charge them up?

There's a flare of light a short distance in front of me and I don't even hesitate to bring my daiklave up. The first Citadelian teleporting in hasn't even fully materialised before my blade slices through his upper torso, my shoulder striking the chest of a second while my scything blade hits anoth-.

Gah!

Gravity disruptor! Cease your vexations!

The yellow corona forms once more and again the telekinetic fields weaken. Movemovemove!

Behind me the corridor crunches down in sections, the sounds of breaking and smashing reverberating through the metal in the surrounding sections. Or possibly those sections relying on this one for their own stability are being broken in turn. Air pressure's staying the same so I don't think that Citadel Complex is seriously holed… Yet. Teleporters. Komand'r wouldn't lie about something like that, and she wouldn't stop smashing or killing until she was certain. With primary teleportation down, the Citadelians should be limited to inter-base station transportation… Unless teleporting in from a ship. So the Citadel Complex isn't jamming any longer… And I can't take advantage of that because I'm not using teleporters.

Someone's being either unusually clever or unusually lucky.

"Koriand'r to Grayven."

A little way ahead of me my drones are just finishing blasting through a bulkhead into… Yes, that's the entertainment district, isn't it?

"Go ahead." Cold gun.

The Citadelian soldiers gathered on the far side of the bulkhead instinctively step back, bracing for my assault. The ones nearest me are in full power armour, protected by armour and force fields and carrying a variety of weapons. The cold gun taking the fusion cannon's position on my left arm tracks from left to right, pale blue light playing over the whole gang of them with the cooling effect turned up to the maximum. Death is instantaneous, power armour insulation not designed to cope with supercooling. The few shots that come back my way are easily absorbed by my armour.

"Hinon believes that the location I uncovered was a containment vessel for an immensely powerful telekine. A Human named Adam Blake took part in Tamaran's attack here during the last war. He was-."

"I know who Adam Blake is." I charge forward, daiklave smashing the Citadelians' front ranks into bloody ice cubes. "Do you have any idea what I've done to piss him off?"

"After so long in captivity, he may not be in his right mind."

Or he could have been reprogrammed. "Understood. Thank you." The rear ranks of Citadelians were somewhat protected from my shots, firing through their dead comrades. The shots hurt slightly, but they're pinpricks. Unless their fleet fires on the Citadel or Blake starts shooting me again, I might well be in the clear.

Then the entertainment district's lights fade as a golden explosion erupts from the centre.

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Do-Over 20

next

15th August

02:31 GMT -6

Buildings crack, crumble and crumple as the gold light is swiftly consumed by an eye-ache inducing sphere of total blackness. Buildings near the thing are totally consumed, breaking up and being sucked into the void with violent ferocity. Naturally, I have the presence of mind to reinforce my environmental shield as local gravity goes haywire. One g down and about..?

Fifteen, Corpsman. From here at least.

Fifteen towards a telekine who apparently just discovered his ability to teleport with black fucking holes. Detritus -some of it living- flies upwards towards the deranged Captain Comet. No reason for them to wear flight packs inside the Citadel Complex, I suppose. On the other hand, a mere fifteen or so times my own body weight is nothing for my environmental shield and flight aura. In fact, thanks to the rings it isn't even giving me inner ear trouble.

Impressive lack of screaming from the Citadelians. I mean, the ones in full armour I could understand just shutting down external speakers but quite a lot are lightly armoured due to being off duty. I raise my cold gun and train it on the centre of the anomaly…

Sinestro, is it mucking about with space time in a way liable to give me a headache later?

With fifteen gravities? Hardly. A few seconds at most.

Glad to hear it. Any advice? Drones, disperse and fire the moment you have a target.

Shoot true, shoot often, Corpsman.

Ah, fuck it. I swap my cold gun for a singularity beam projector. It's not like I was trying to keep Citadel Complex in one piece anyway. Now, I'm not sure exactly how aware Blake is of his environment when he's doing that -or how much he cares- but I think it would probably be a good idea if I kept moving. There isn't really anything like 'open air' -we are inside a space station after all- but there are open areas between the building clusters. I take off and fly… Normal directions don't really work here… I fly to my right, anticlockwise with Blake as the centre of the clock face.

"Help me! Help me!"

The shouts draw my attention to a building above me, where a Rashashoonian man is desperately trying to maintain his grip on the edge of a building while Blake's singularity does its level best to pull him free. He's seen me and he's doing his best to shout in my direction without risking changing his grip. There isn't anything else for him to hold on to, and certainly nothing between him and Blake if his grip slips.

I can almost hear Mother Box pinging at me without her even needing to be here. Which I suppose was her aim.

Ugh, fine. Sinestro, let me know if Blake starts doing anything else.

As you wish, Corpsman. I turn away from Blake, flying upwards towards the hanging man. Though I would point out that an active battle zone is a poor place for inattention.

I'm not saying that you're wrong. I'm just saying that while it's better to be feared than loved-

I reach the man and grab him around his torso, including him in my environmental shield's flight aura before heading towards what looks like a more intact building.

-you have to avoid being hated. I want the people of Vega to be at least a little afraid of me, but I also want them to regard me as the person they want in charge. And occasionally that's going to mean saving a poor unfortunate-

I check the far side of the door and then hack the lock and throw it open. A handful of… I don't recognise that species, cower on their new 'floor' as I deposit the Rashashoonian man inside and then close the door and return my attention to the Blake Hole.

-like that. Would you have gotten a fraction as far as you did without a history of good conduct?

I don't think you'll have to strain yourself to be better than the Citadel, Corpsman.

No, but-.

Corpsman, something's happen-.

The blackness parts, momentarily giving me a glimpse of a figure in dull, sandy-yellow armour. Then a beam of black-.

Gaaaaghr!

Transition!

I appear downwards and right of my former position, right hand feeling gingerly for the bloody hole in the left side of my torso. Around me I see beams of purple and orange light as the drones open fire, though from where I am now I can't see… That wasn't Blake. It looked like a slightly old Citadelian. One of their veterans, perhaps? Ugh, the wound hurts but at least it wasn't radion this time. I should recover before too long.

Heal.

And I need to keep-

A black lance strikes a drone somewhere to my left.

-out of sight. Sinestro, why are the drones being ineffectual?

An image forms in my mind. Blaster bolts fly towards the Citadelian, only to be blocked by telekinetically propelled debris. They fire faster and he throws swirling scrap heaps of the stuff around to shield himself.

Alright, fair enough, but purple death rays should pass right through it.

Another image, purple rays lashing out, only to deflect away before they hit him. How..? Gravitational distortion, I can see how the background blurs out of alignment near him. Recalculate firing positions and keep moving.

Alright, time for shoot and scoot. I don't bother moving out of my cover as I aim my left forearm mounted singularity projector directly at him. If this gets blocked by something then the resulting x-ray burst should do something unpleasant to exposed flesh. Plot transition route to… Over there. Fire and move.

I reappear, tensing up as I wait to see-. My former piece of cover is vaporised, the surrounding area being melted by the released radiation. That hole… It's not a beam, it just stops where he-. Oh, that is bullshit.

"I know you're here, alien! How do you like the power of a god?!"

I like it fine, I'm just not so keen on you having it too.

Alright Sinestro, why didn't that work?

It appears that his control of local gravity effects is sufficiently precise to prevent gravity-based attacks instinctively, Corpsman. A most difficult opponent.

"Raaaagh!"

Though not one without his own limitations.

I'm about to query him out loud, but the image appears without me asking. One purple death ray gets deflected but another fires at the same point at the same time but at an extreme angle. It looks like it should miss, but the distortion causes it to bend towards the Citadelian instead. He's clearly tough, I'll give him that, but that did hurt him.

Three loud bangs and I risk peeking out to see the wreckage of the drones that made those shots. Okay, light speed shots, and I have to let the drones know what I'm doing so they can line up their shots at the same time. Manageable. Alright. I replace my singularity projector with a cold gun, because you never know when you're going to get lucky-.

Wait, a Citadelian calling himself a god? Is that the First up there? A bit academic, but… Where's he been hiding?

Never mind. I scan. He's facing away, perhaps trying to work out where the other drones are. The debris field is awkward, but if I wait for an opening…

There.

Fire.

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Do-Over 21

next

15th August

02:34 GMT -6

And don't stick around to check.

I appear inside a torn open public house, swiftly ducking down out of sight. Various sorts of alcoholic drink have escaped from smashed glasses and pooled on the new floor. Fortunately, both patrons and slaves are entirely absent. I wait, listening for a shout of pain or any other sign that I just achieved anything. Nothing. But wouldn't it just be perfect if killing him didn't undo whatever he's done to futz about with gravity.

Sinestro?

Negative impact, Corpsman. Your shot was deflected into one of his debris barriers and it appears that the two purple death rays only managed to hit his armour.

Show me.

In my mind's eye I see the shots… Both hit his torso. Odd. I may be misjudging his size, but… I generate a construct representation of him, showing a normal Citadelian in armour like what he's wearing. Now, the beams hit here and here, and he didn't appear to react… The man must be shrivelled up like a raisin. Alter targeting protocols to incorporate new data.

Unfortunate news, Corpsman. He just used wide area effect attacks to destroy your death ray drones.

Not the blaster-equipped ones?

I think he's rather written those off as non-threats.

Okay, and with the whole station to choose from he's effectively got infinite debris for protection. How is he powering this for so long? A normal telekinetic would have had an aneurysm by now. No, no, not relevant. New plan. I generate a wide barrel coilgun construct and take a plasma converter out of subspace. Ugh. No, the effort involved in modifying it will make it far too slow. I doubt that the First Citadelian will hang around indefinitely. I dismiss the construct and take the converter in my right hand. Transition-throw-activate, then have the blaster drones fire through the resulting gap in his defences? Sounds like a pl-.

The pub is torn apart, converted for a fraction of a second into debris and then plasma before being converted to hard radiation. I'm being pressed and twisted and torn in every direction, my blood seeping through my skin as my divine physiology tries to hold me in one piece as gravity tries to tear me apart. Hold! Hold! Hold me together!

I…

I…

Bgrh. I'm lying in a pile of wreckage, my mouth burning-. Pffagh! Metal, it's molten metal. Ugh, get up!

"Still alive, alien?"

I get my right hand under me, setting off a flare of pain where the telekinetic beam cut through my chest. Not.. fully healed then. I fall, my legs scrabbling at the broken metal beneath me in an attempt to get moving. Sinestro, what did I miss?

Sinestro?

Oh fucking fuck. My yellow ring is still on my finger, but there are tiny cracks all over the surface of the signet. Today has not been my day for keeping the voices in my head in one piece.

"I'm not sure I'd call that living. Though I do find it fitting that your last moments should be spent grovelling in the dirt."

I get my right hand under me and manage to push myself up, craning my neck to try and spot the First. The lights have come up a bit and.. I.. think gravity is nearly normal again. Otherwise I would have fallen towards him when I blacked out. Okay, lasers, need lasers. Send out filaments, point at him from different… Different directions…

The weak and pale filaments form and then fade.

Oh… Come on. Give… Agh. Give me lasers!

Thick bands of orange light shoot left, right and up as orange surges through the tron lines of my armour. Which is surprisingly intact considering what just happened. I make momentary eye contact with the First as the lasers fire, the first lashing out at his face to be turned aside by his distortion field. Then the second fires, the beam bent back towards his face and-.

And being bent away by the second layer of his defence.

Fuck, not viable. trans-.

"I think not, alien." Arrrgh! I'm enveloped in a gold-white aura and yanked into the air, my arms pulled out to my sides. "I thought that I recognised constructs. Did the Guardians see my forces and decide that the old pacts no longer mattered!? Do they fear me so much that they sent you to spoil the day of my greatest triumph!?"

Transitigahh! The gold glow around my right hand just… Ah. It's flopping. Did he just.. break every bone?

"Stay with me now, alien."

I shudder, shaking my head as he comes closer. We're about forty metres apart now. Ah. Okay, if I try and use the orange ring he'll see the glow and do something to break my concentration. Or just kill me. Daiklave's gone… Somewhere. Remaining drones can't pierce his debris fields. I've still got the Sword of the Fallen, but… No way I can actually stab him with it.

Why hasn't he killed me yet?

Ring, message to everyone. Help requested.

By your command.

"I imagine that you're wondering why I haven't killed you yet.."

"'Oo wah'ed-" Ow, my mouth is not in a good state. "Can't… Wear my.. skin if you've torn it up."

"When I heard that an unknown alien had claimed the bounty on the Beast, I could not help but wonder: what sort of being could achieve such a thing? Who could kill such a legendary terror?" He comes a little closer, I'd say twenty metres at most. Throwing range, if I could move my arms and he didn't have a spatial distortion protecting him. "Do you know who I am?"

"I think… You are the First Citadelian, clone-father of all he surveys." There's something… I spit, a wad of bloody phlegm falling from my mouth. "I thought you were dead."

He smiles, then the golden light around my left ring fingergah! My finger and the ring it bore part company with my hand.

"I lived on, my body sustained by the mechanisms of Citadel Complex and my mind enhanced by its computers, linked to the implants of every Citadelian. But no longer! My youngest sons have no need for me to oversee their every thought! So I can fight myself. I've-" He squeezes his eyes shut for a moment "-so missed-."

The glow cuts out. Gravity takes us both immediately, and I just about manage to bring my arms up to shield my face before slamming into one of the more intact precinct walls. I bounce off a little, fall further and agh, and catch my left hand at an awkward angle and start tumbling down the sloping side. As I go head over heels I catch a glimpse of the First. I think he's trying to activate his armour's flight systems but there was so much debris over his head that he can't get it to fire up before getting hit again and wouldn't have anywhere to fly to if it did. Couldn't happen to a nicer dwoughah!

Some sort of.. decorative spine has arrested my progress, catching me across the stomach. Agh. I grab hold of it with both hands, ignoring the pain. I've got no idea why that happened, and I need-. There he is. The First crashes arse-first into the ground level, getting his arms up just fast enough to keep the rubble out of his face.

Ow.

I pull-. I pull harder, the glutinous metal that was sealing the Sword to my chest mostly coming free. A few deep breaths and I push myself off the spine, twisting as I slide and managing to get my feet pointing forwards as I fall over the lip of the roof. I land on my feet, stumble and fall onto my face. Up. I rise, getting a firm grip on the Sword with my left hand just as the debris pile starts to shift.

I've got a second legend to kill today.

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Do-Over 22

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15th August

I've rather lost track

"Yaaeyh."

There's a small rubbleslide as the First manages to get his left forearm free, his head still largely obscured by fallen material. I've got no idea how heavy that material is or how much power assistance his-.

I stumble, my right foot sliding unexpectedly back and causing me to fall to my knees. I throw my left hand forward to arrest my fall and have a moment of panic as the blade of the Sword of the Fallen comes close to nicking my right hand. I don't know exactly what that would do to me -having only used it to inflict lethal wounds- but I'm not eager to find out. If the First is only as strong and as tough as a normal Citadelian then even now I should just be able to beat him to death… But most Citadelians don't have epic level telekinesis.

Through the cracks in my armour my blood is seeping out almost constantly. On Earth, small wounds -even lots of them- would have healed by now, but there just isn't enough magic on the Citadel for the mana infuser to work with. I'm not dead so I'm clearly getting some kind of bonus for being a god, but it's far below what I'm used to. And all of the purple ray drones were destroyed. Ugh. No, it should be fine: the princesses have a couple each. I'll kill the First, find the ring and…

I don't even know how the battle outside is going.

I rock back gingerly onto my haunches, hold my ruined right hand parallel to the ground in case I fall again and get a firm grip on the Sword with my left hand. And up. Slightly.. unsteady. Think I've answered the question of whether or not gods can get concussion.

"Raaaaagh!"

I focus my eyes on the First again as the rubble pile shifts in response to his efforts to free himself. A moment later he spots me, his face screwing up as he glowers-.

Blouegh! Owowow! And down again! A red.. beam of some kind blasted out of the rubble and hit me in the chest! Feels… Another couple of deep breaths and I carefully put the Sword down on the ground and try touching near the point of impact with my right hand. Feels… Sticky. Burns, then? It doesn't hurt all that much more than it did a moment ago but I've got so much pain coming from everywhere that I'm not sure that I'd notice. Okay, elbows firmly situated..? Yes. And sit up. And wait for the dizziness to pass.

"Still alive, alien!?"

"If you.. call this.. living."

Left fist on the ground for stability, carefully minding the Sword. The First is still more or less buried, though his left arm now has a great enough range of motion to try lifting pieces of debris off his right side. Perhaps the power assistance on that side has been damaged more?

"Oh, don't worry. You won't have to wait for long."

"Maybe if you hadn't-" I draw my legs in and lean forwards, semi-falling into a crawling position. "-killed so many of your own people with that black hole thing-" Right foot down again, left foot… Wait for the dizziness and up. "-there would be people around to help you."

"Maybe if you had followers, you wouldn't be on your own. Agh!" He tries flinging a sheet of metal at me but doesn't have the strength or the range of motion. It clangs to the ground about three metres away, bounces once and then lies still.

And I'm upright and from the mess I'm leaving on the floor I really hope that was a holdout shot and not a proper onboard weapon system. The pain is receding from my extremities and I'm starting to feel… Cold. And that's not good. Alright. One foot carefully in front of the other. Keep your weight centred. Good. Good.

"Meah!" There's some sort of red pulse from the First, and the pile of rubble surrounding him expands for a moment and then falls in on itself. "RAgh!" With an almighty shove he pushes aside the material on the near side and manages a few clumsy steps into a nearby wall. His face looks whole and undamaged, though I don't think that his eyes are focusing quite right. On the other hand I'm bleeding heavily.

"If you… Surrender, I'll ensure that you get a fair trial."

"Surrender to me…" I can't tell whether he's breathing heavily or not, but his armour appears to have momentarily locked up. "And once I've finished pissing on your corpse I won't shit on it as well."

There's a jerk from him, and with a flicker of the three red lights at his waist he regains motive control and pulls away from the wall. He's breathing through his mouth, though with his armour forming a rigid frame I've got no idea if he's feeling as tired as I am or not.

"I fear that I must decline your generous offer." I raise my right arm into a guard position -I can't use the hand but the forearm armour is fine- and keep my left slightly lower. With a little luck he'll just assume that the Sword is a regular blade.

"Die!" The central red circle on his armour flickers brilliantly, then dies with a small puff of smoke. "Vapour-brained eunuch-faced Psions!"

"They gave you black hole teleportation." I take a step forwards, feeling slightly more confident-. And I wait for the world to stop spinning. "They didn't do too badly."

There's a clank from his armour, and he checks the range of motion in his arms and upper body. The lower torso appears to have locked but the rest appears to be in full working order. Okay. I lean forward slightly, because my mind is working rather better than my body at the moment and I really think that receiving a charge will be easier than making one myself. He takes a couple of breaths, his eyes fixed on mine.

Then he triggers his oh shit his flight system and flies at me!

He slams into me at speed, knocking me off my feet and slamming us both to the ground! "Raagh!" His face is centimetres from mine and I try to headbutt him but his flight system is still on and the power of it has him knocking me aside to his left and flying a couple of steps past me. I stagger back, slamming painfully into a wall and slumping against it for support. Ow. He staggers and shuts the system down, then reaches down to his right leg and lifts it around so that he faces me again. I raise my left arm as he surges forward once more, trying to cut him with the Sword. He blocks my arm and I lose my grip on the Sword, then ugh, he slams into me again, raising his left arm to try and reach for my face!

I raise my right arm, but without the ability to grip I can't do much more than shove my forearm at his face. Deprived of the ability to see me he grasps blindly, presumably trying to reach my eyes. Closer… Closer… I crane my neck forwards as far as I can and bite, crunching down on the middle finger of his three-fingered hand! I exert myself, the metal deforming and breaking between my teeth.

"Uuuuuuuuugh!"

I whip my head to the right, bone cracking as the last phalange snaps off in my mouth.

"Agh!" He pulls his right arm back for a moment, then his damaged hand comes across and grabs my-

"AAAAAGH!"

-broken hand! He grins, then pulls back his right fist-.

Overestimated how distracted I was by the pain. My left hand darts forward, striking him in the side of the head. Not my best punch, but then neither of us are in the best condition. His head recoils, and as it moves back to a central position his eyes briefly glaze. I take a moment to aim, then I punch him again, causing his head to jerk back and his grip on my right hand to weaken. I tug -aagh- it free, then reach for his head. Grabbing the top of it I pull him right, pulling him off balance and ramming him face-first into the wall besides me.

And then I lose my grip on his head.

"Uuuugh…"

His eyes roll back, and he slumps as far against the wall as his armour will allow him.

Great. I'm technically mobile, but I'm about ready to collapse myself. No communications equipment… I could try calling the ring but I've never been much good at that. I suppose there's the analogue option.

"Hello! Anyone around?!"

Bit of a risk, but if there were squads of regular Citadelians around then they would have already intervened. Hopefull-.

"Grayven!?" I look up and see the orange glowing form of Koriand'r flying through the skies of the former entertainment district.

"Down here!"

She stops in the air and orientates on my position before flying straight at me, green plasma balling around her hands. "Shall I kill that one for you?"

Should she?

"No. Make him safe, but leave him alive. And find the orange ring I was using." I weakly push myself away from the wall. "And what have you been up to?"

"I found Adam Blake. He was attached to a Psion machine. Controller Hinon was able to explain how to disconnect him."

Ooh marvellous. "Let me guess: it was designed to remote control his abilities."

"It.. may have been."

"We'll need to send Blake himself to a specialist hospital. But first: the ring."

back

Do-Over 23

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15th August

14:32 GMT

I stand well back from the edge of the balcony, construct cast pinning the parts of my right hand while a purple healing ray drone does its best to speed my recovery.

"You appear to be down a ring, Mister Grayven."

I look around as Hinon approaches. "Do you know anything about the repair of yellow power rings?"

"Certainly. But you would still be much better off taking it back to the original vendor. While I could certainly repair it there might be side effects as a result of me not knowing its original settings. It would be functional, but perhaps not quite in the way you have become accustomed to."

I nod. Though the basic functions would still be useful… I'm not prepared to dispense with Sinestro permanently just yet. "Alright. But Qward can wait."

She takes a few steps closer, craning her neck slightly to look out onto the plaza outside. A handful of Orange Lanterns floating in the area in front of the palace have attracted plenty of attention, but the real attraction won't be here for a minute or two. "A fairly good crowd. Is there a reason why you're not parading in triumph around the city? You did achieve your objective."

I raise my left hand slightly. "I also got myself rather badly injured. I think that I'll have an easier time going forward if Tamaranians generally see me as unbeatable."

She nods, her eyes passing over me briefly before returning to the crowd. "What did the Citadel have that could wound you so? An anti-capital ship weapon would have inflicted damage in a wider distribution."

"One man stealing the epic-strength telekinesis of another, and augmenting it with technology. That was not a fun fight."

She nods. "Dead?"

"Captured alive, his armour stripped-" Which is stored safely for later examination. "-and his power source sent to hospital." STAR Labs Metropolis actually, doctors specialising in telepathic Humans being nonexistent.

"Generous of you."

I hear the faintest hum in the air, and look up. A little speck… Yes, here they come. While we destroyed most of the Citadel's ships, I decided that taking the Emperor's personal landing craft from the drifting wreck of the Citadel's flagship was worthwhile. Nothing quite says 'we took what we wanted from a defeated foe' like acquiring the boss's ride.

"No. Not really."

The people on the plaza have spotted the dropship. I don't think that they recognise it for precisely what it is but in the recent past spacecraft coming towards Tamaran has meant a slave raid. A wave of unrest moves through the crowd, abated only slightly by the presence of my Lanterns. And that sort of thing is exactly what this is all about.

"A ship? How quaint. Did you want some memento of your conquest, or have you already started hoarding as your predecessor did?"

"Neither. This is about sending a message."

The dropship comes down next to the palace entrance, the crowd having been politely shepherded away from that area by the Lanterns. From this angle I can't see exactly what's happening, but I hear the noise of the dropship's main hatch opening.

And I see the battered form of the First as he flies from it and lands on the stone-covered ground face first.

"People of Tamaran! We are victorious!"

Komand'r makes a point of floating out after him, her ring in a pocket on her hip. And given what she's wearing there's precious little room for pockets. Combine her imperious attitude with the crackling plasma corona which surrounds her… I imagine she looks like the second coming of X'Hal. Which is rather the point.

Koriand'r comes out next as the First unsteadily tries to push himself up. Same idea; ring hidden and her Psion-given powers turned up all of the way. "What little is left of the Citadel Complex floats dead in space! Its fleets are utterly destroyed, never to threaten anyone ever again!"

"No!" The First manages to scrabble forwards a little way, before raising his head and spotting the mood of the crowd surrounding him. "No!"

Komand'r floats down and around, stopping just off the ground a little way in front of him. His battered body and burned and dirtied tunic provide an excellent contrast to her flawless figure. No, call it what it is: her divine figure.

Huh. Stage 3. Nice.

"This wretch is the First Citadelian. Son of X'Hal, Bane of Okaara and sire of all his accursed kind. Whenever the Citadel acted it was by his will. Blame for every act of cruelty and barbarity they have committed may rightfully be laid at his feet."

Koriand'r drifts forwards as well, Sword-.

"What is that sword?!"

"The Sword of the Fallen was created by a Demon with the remains of two immensely powerful Demons in order to strike down another immensely powerful demonic thingy called the First of the Fallen. It's my go-to weapon to use against entities who might prove immune to mundane attacks."

"Does it work?"

"So far it's been used to kill two Lords of Chaos, and since neither has returned to remonstrate with me I'd say yes."

"So, you gave the First a stay of execution rather than a reprieve?"

I smile. "We wanted Tamaran to see him die. On his knees. Weak."

"And helpless?"

"Best time for it." She raises her eyebrows. "If he'd surrendered then I'd have considered leaving him alive. But the societal benefits here are-"

There's a cheer from the crowd as Koriand'r slices through the First's neck and Komand'r holds his still-bleeding head aloft.

"-rather overwhelming."

"They get to see the most powerful being in the region killed by two of the potential heirs to their throne. Two heirs who pointedly aren't wearing their alien power rings and whose alien ally is keeping himself out of the picture. And who happen to be the spitting image of a local goddess."

"Just so."

She squints at me. "What is it that you're god of again?"

"Conquest." I shrug. "I could probably have strong armed my way into becoming ruler of Tamaran, but this way-."

"This way you get exactly what you want without seeming to force them into it. That's almost subtle."

And how often does a public decapitation get called that? "Their strength will be mine and mine, theirs. There's no need for conflict or ego clashes when we all want the same thing."

"Which is?"

"Firstly, safety. Secondly, to excel. To grow into the most perfect form of ourselves that we can. I see great potential here."

"And statuesque, naturist locals."

I raise my eyebrows. "I hadn't realised that Maltusians still had those sorts of drives. Though I suppose that the Zamarons demonstrated the possibility. And after three billion years-."

"It's not my drives I was worried about. The orange light can have some rather seriously adverse effects on its users. Still, you.. appear to have yourself under control. I think that I will be able to tolerate working with you." She makes a vague flicking gesture at me with her right hand.

Propriety unlocked.

My ring flickers for a moment, then stills.

"What.. was.. that..?"

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NEXT CHAPTER

Respite

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Respite 1

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Respite

16th August

06:27 GMT

My eyelids open, pale blue filling my field of view. There's a heavy weight on my right side leaning against me and I think I've drooled slightly on the pillow. Where-? Ah, yes… Of course. I try moving my left arm around a bit, but it feels like Jade's already left. I'm a little surprised that I didn't wake up when she did. Waking up at six was something I've done for a while… Though I suppose that after enough time passes any habit can fall aside.

I reach up with my left arm, pulling the sheet and duvet away from my free side a little and gently trying to slide myself in that direction. My right arm is stuck under… I twist my head to the right in order to look at Kon's sleeping face. Alright, don't want to wake him up. He's had enough trouble adjusting to GMT without-.

"Uugh."

Mission failed. His left arm reflexively tightens around my right, pulling it to his chest as he half-consciously tries to squirm into a more comfortable position. His eyes half open… Quarter open really, a moment later.

"Kon, I'm going to need that arm back."

He's actually pulled it far enough under him that I can feel M'gann on the far side. Flipping biofeedback circadian rhythm controls. I try pulling again. If he doesn't let go I'm going to have to either wake him up fully or put a glowing orange zero friction coating over my arm, and I don't really want to do either.

"Kon, you've got my arm there."

"Ugh?" He blinks blearily at me. I may have a built-in full wakeup in the form of my ring-derived control of my physiology, but the rest of my family have to make do with more mundane processes. "Uh?" His eyes clear a little and his grip weakens. "Oh, yeah, sorry. What time is it?"

I pull my right arm out from underneath him, rolling slightly to face him as I do so. "Half six."

"Upf." He turns his head away to face his pillow. "You, ah… You need me for anything?"

"No, I'm-." Oh, he's probably still too tired to remember. "Mother's visiting today. You shouldn't-."

His eyes come fully open, his arms coming up to allow him to raise his torso from the bed. "You-" He glances at M'gann's sleeping form. "Sure you don't want one of us to come with you?"

I reach over to him and pat him on the back with my right hand, gently pushing him back down. "I think it will take her a while to adapt to how Earth Sixteen is. Probably best not to crowd her right at the start."

"Okay." His eyelids dip again, and I lean forwards and kiss him on the lips before pulling away completely and getting off the bed.

Mother's visit today is going to be… Interesting. I walk towards the bedroom entrance, passing through the privacy screen and into the hallway. Somewhat essential when the earliest riser in the house doesn't have augmented vision, the screen blocks both sound and light which is why I'm not surprised that synthetic sunlight is streaming through the hall skylight.

Ring, clothes.

Compliance.

A set of clothing that is half suit and half Star Trek civilian wear appears around me. I frown for a moment but… Yeah, I guess that's appropriate. I walk-. I pause after a step and pull at the material until it settles in a slightly more comfortable way. Maybe make it a little looser? Okay. I walk through the dining room and into the kitchen. Now, what do I-?

There's a note on the work surface, and I pick it up as I head towards the fridge. I flick it open as I reach for the fridge door handle.

'Back 0630. Jade. XXX. P.S. Coffee and eggs.'

Ah, not this morning. But coffee and eggs I can do. I pull the fridge door open and lift out the egg holder at the same time as using the ring to pick up the kettle and float it over to the left kitchen sink. While the ring flips the kettle lid open and turns the tap on I put the eggs down on the work surface and take the orange juice carton and butter out of the fridge before closing the door. Next, I open the cupboard and take out the cafetière and the jar of beans. I use my ring to turn off the tap and float the now adequately filled kettle back over to its base station and turn it on. Frying pan and Pyrex bowl are down here, and I add them to the growing pile of utensils.

Heh. Power rings never stop being awesome.

Power ring generated blades neatly slice open the shells of four eggs and I add them to the bowl. Another set cut an ounce of butter from the block and drop it into the frying pan, which I place on the hob manually before turning it on. Using the ring for everything would just take all of the fun out of it. I add a sprinkle of salt and a few grinder-rotations of black pepper to the bowl and then use a construct whisk to thoroughly blend it.

How much bread is there left? Ah, good. Jade generally prefers her scrambled eggs on their own but I prefer the difference in texture that comes from eating them with toast. I lift the lid off the bread bin and use the ring to cut two medium thickness slices from the loaf. I then float them over to the grill before putting the lid back down. The butter has melted, so I pour the whisked eggs into the frying pan and pull a wooden spoon out of a drawer to keep beating them. The kettle makes a quiet clicking noise as the water reaches boiling point and I use that as my cue to create a grinder construct and tip coffee beans into it. Blades whir and butter crackles as the smell of breakfast fills the kitchen.

I hear our house's front door open as the eggs start to solidify and I'm tipping ground beans into the cafetière as Jade walks in wearing her exercise clothing. Oh, I love seeing her abdominal muscles covered in sweat, her slightly laboured breathing causing them to tense and relax slightly.

"Is my coffee ready yet?"

"Do you want me to brew it properly, or do you want to drink it like a savage?"

She wipes her forehead with her towel as she walks across the kitchen. "Which one's quicker?"

"Savage it is."

I pour the just off-boil water into the cafetière and use a construct spoon to give it a stir. "I'd suggest giving it a-" She drapes her towel across the back of a kitchen chair and approaches me with a smile. I turn the half toasted bread and have the ring take control of the egg mixing, turning away just in time for Jade to reach me.

"How was your run?"

"Quiet. I think I'm the only early-riser on this whole space station."

"People like to keep their own time zones. I only mandated GMT for the clocks because that's the space standard."

"I'm not complaining." She approaches to within touching distance, studying my face. "Looking forward to seeing your Mother today?"

"Um. Yes… No, that sounds wrong." I use the ring to put the lid on the cafetière and take a mug off the rack for her. "It's just, it's been so many years that I'd adapted to the idea of never seeing my fam-. You know, my parents, again. So the fact that I'm going to today just feels slightly strange rather than being exciting."

Another filament slices another ounce of butter from the pat and deposits it in the Pyrex bowl while I reach behind me and turn off the hob.

"I suppose that makes sense." She looks around the cooking area. "Mm. Coffee and eggs. Where's the third thing?"

Hm.

I smile as I bend down, her arms going around the back of my neck as we press against each other.

Life is good.

16th August 2016

06:33 GMT

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Respite 2

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16th August

11:34 GMT -5

Doctor Williams shakes his head at me. "I'm sorry Mister Grayven, but there really isn't much we can do for him."

I nod sadly, noting the uncomfortable look he's giving my injuries. Back on Earth my mana siphon went back to working at full power and my skin is just about water tight again. I had the ring clean off most of the dried blood. I still look like shit, mind, I just won't have people reaching for the zombie-repellent any longer.

"How bad? I mean, is it just the telepathy or is there wider brain damage?"

Inside STAR Labs' Metropolis site's medical laboratory the leading physician nods, and the purple ray drone fires at Mister Blake's head again. Blake's implants were a similar technology to what the Psions used on the Tamaranian version of Multiple Man, but far cruder in application. Maybe because they didn't know as much about Human brains as they did about Tamaranian ones, maybe because the First just intended to use him as a power source for the telekinetic enhancement systems in his armour rather than as a soldier in his own right.

"I…" He glances back at the observation window before returning his attention to me. "Mister Blake left Earth in nineteen sixty seven. I studied his old medical records -those that survived- years ago, but they just don't have the information we need. Based on… Our initial MRI scans, he should retain some telekinetic ability. But the rest of the damage is great enough that I don't know if he'll even remember that he has telekinesis."

"What can I do to improve his chances?"

Doctor Williams shrugs. "I don't really think there's anything else you can do. There just isn't enough information on traumatic brain injuries in telepaths. Between your healing ray and STAR Labs… Unless you know some kind of mad scientist bioengineer-."

"Zhet sounds like my cue." Cranius -dressed as Professor Otto von Schadel- steps out of the hush tube and walks past us to stare through the observation window. "Heff you been able to contact his next of kin? Mine own work, it is generally best if I heff signed consent, you understand?"

"I.. don't believe that we've been introduced, Doctor..?"

Cranius -or rather Otto- turns around, a grin on his face that no mere baseline Human other than Mister Napier could come close to matching. "Yes, I em one of zhose! Mister Grayven has been most helpful to me in making contacts amongst my fellow medical professionals! And with the American military, which pleases Janus more zhan it pleases me, but it is still gratifying." Otto steps over to Doctor Williams, beaming all the while. Of course, he doesn't breathe through his mouth… "I am Doctor von Schadel."

"Do you have a great deal of experience in working with telepaths?"

"Young man, I am a telepath. I heff studied myself and my telepathic brezhren extensively, and my knowledge of exotic Human -and Humanish- physiology is unequalled!"

"Then I'm sure that Mister Blake would be glad to have you here, Doctor." Doctor Williams doesn't sound entirely certain, but he's prepared to give us the benefit of the doubt. "If you'll.. come this way, I'll introduce you to Doctor Fransson. She's leading the team…"

Cranius glances back at me once as Doctor Williams leads him into the preparation room. General Lane has expressed cautious interest in Uncorporation's latest product: the oolitic kidney. If the trials prove successful, Cranius gets his wider acceptance, Janus Senior gets a defence contract and the American Military never has to worry about Gulf War Syndrome or Kane Madness ever again. Heck, once the soldiers get Unmanned up they can even use Argonate with zero risk of hideous mutations.

Probably.

Alright, my work here is done. Mister Blake is getting the best care available. Time to get back. I raise my left hand -my right is in a medical gauntlet of Miss Shimmer's design- and look at the surviving power ring. I really didn't want to go to Qward just yet. But what else am I going to do? Where else am I going to get the same snide, needling observations about my failures that Sinestro gives me? Hunt down Sinestro 16? I don't think so.

Ring, hush tube to Emana.

By your command.

…

It's just not the same.

I rise lightly off the ground and float through the tube into near-Emana space, the universe around me glowing orange from the light cast by a hundred and seventy three Lanterns.

16th August

16:37 GMT

Twenty eight deaths in exchange for the death of every Citadelian the First sent against us and virtually their entire fleet. There are lightly defended outposts still to crush, but they can wait a day or two. A pretty good rate of exchange, really.

Koriand'r and Komand'r transition to my side a moment later, both looking at me expectantly. I make eye contact with each, then turn my attention to the planet below us. I raise my eyebrows. "They said anything?"

Komand'r's jaw tenses. "Nothing of consequence."

Emana is well defended as planets go, but ultimately it is an inhabited world and not a fortress space station. The Branx have fleets, but they're mostly owned by privateer guilds. They have weapon stations and anti-bombardment shield generators, enough that even the Citadel wouldn't have been too keen on picking a fight with them. But nothing that would stop Lanterns and nothing that would slow down Lanterns with hush tube access.

Of course, the other way they avoided a fight with the Citadel was by backing them, building their ships and equipment and trading with them. Which is rather why I'm here.

"Shipping activity?"

She looks around, generating targeting reticles all around us to mark their location. "They're avoiding us. I imagine that having an entire Lantern Corps appear in close proximity has encouraged them to be somewhat cautious."

"Think they know about the Citadel yet?"

"Oh yes. They've been talking about little else."

"How fares Adam Blake?"

I look at Koriand'r in concern as her environmental shield flickers out, but she doesn't seem troubled by her sudden vacuum exposure and it returns a moment later.

"He's alive, his brain isn't dead and he's being attended by the most skilled physicians I could find." She nods, apparently satisfied. "You can visit once he wakes up if you like. But for now…" I float past them and hold out my left hand. "Grayven of Apokolips to the government of Emana. I strongly advise answering promptly."

A moment or two passes, then a Branx face appears. I recognise the woman. I think her title is.. 'high coordinator' or something like that. She's more of a Speaker than a President, but their government is structured in such a way that there isn't really anyone above her. "Grayven. What do you want from us?"

"Oh, don't just jump right to the end like that. There needs to be build up!" I smile. "You know that we've destroyed the Citadel and killed the First, yes?"

"I did not know about the First, but yes. We know that the Citadel is gone."

"And you'll note.. that the people with me are exclusively Tamaranian. And don't have anything good to say about the Citadel's allies. We're heading to Karna next, then probably on to the Wombworld. But you made the Citadel's ships. Now, I don't blame you for siding with the strong to protect your own people. In your position I might well have done the same thing. But there's a new ascendant power in Vega and they don't like you very much."

"We are willing to negotiate compensation."

I shake my head. "No. No negotiating. You accept, or your species dies today. Am I clear?"

She considers, her eyes briefly moving to look at someone out of shot before returning to me. "You are clear."

"I negotiated them down to this. You may have peace, and security. If you accept our terms not a single Branx need die. And once you have paid there will be no further retribution of any kind. However, they are otherwise extremely harsh. Firstly, the Branx will undergo one hundred and seven years of planetary isolation. Your people will make best speed for Emana, land, and they will not leave until that span of time has elapsed. Secondly, every piece of orbital infrastructure, every ship and every off-world holding is hereby confiscated."

She shivers. "That will bring about economic ruination. Our government has no power to order such a thing."

"I don't see how that's my problem. If anyone resists, we'll kill them and take it by force. I find either possibility equally appealing. Now, I'm going to give you an hour. At the end of that period I better be seeing some practical action on your part. Grayven out."

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Respite 3

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16th August

16:49 GMT

I smile politely as the door opens. "Regent Alonzo, a pleasure-."

The white haired and white skinned man in loose-fitting red clothing stares at me sitting in his office chair for about half a second. "Guaaaards!"

"There really isn't-."

He steps back into the hallway, allowing a squad of five royal guards to advance into the room, plasma guns at the ready. Four wear red armour with green knot-pattern decoration and the apparent squad leader wears dull pink with purple knot work. She remains standing in the centre while the other four spread out and crouch, weapons trained on me.

"Get out of the Regent's chair, kneel down and put your hands behind your head."

I make a shrugging gesture with both hands. "What's in it for me?"

"We don't shoot you quite as much."

"With those?" I roll my eyes, then attach filaments to each gun and drop them into subspace. "And I should point out-."

Each soldier stands, reaching for their belt and pulling out… Extendible staves. "Yes, because if I can do that to your guns then I can't possibly do the exact same thing to your sticks."

The leader crouches slightly. "Get the Regent to safety!"

"If I could get through Euphorix's energy shield, I can probably manage to walk to the end of the corridor. Or deposit a bomb here and leave without being detected." That seems to get through to the squad leader. At least a little. A well trained soldier isn't going to let a silly thing like good sense affect their response to a recognised crisis. "But fine." I laboriously rise to my feet, the tension the soldiers are feeling increasing as they get a look at my full size. "Let's get the Regent to safety." Hush tube, if you please.

By your command.

I step forward, appearing just in front of the two guards assigned to evacuate Regent Alonzo. The Regent's eyes widen in horror as he frantically arrests his forward movement while the guards bring up their guns.

"Regent Alonzo, do you have a-"

The guards open fire, moderately powerful plasma bolts being effortlessly absorbed by a combination of my armour and environmental shield.

"-moment to talk? I ask because-." The guard on the left gets the bright idea of shooting me in the face, the bolt burning a superficial streak across my left cheek. I dart forward and grip her gun's barrel with my right hand and crush it. "Could you not?"

The guard tugs at her gun, getting back the grip and hydrogen flask and not much else as the scrap remains in my fist. Hm, good safeties. In a lot of places a gun damaged like that would promptly leak or go critical. The Branx version does that, though it also hits quite a bit harder. Of course, the Euphorix version is a better size for Tamaranians…

Regent Alonzo glances back toward his office as the staff-carrying guards emerge, then looks at me and takes a guess on his chances of escaping. Concluding that it's a pointless endeavour, he pulls himself up. "What do you want?"

"I wish to hire about ten.. thousand technical specialists of various types, mostly working in starship construction and maintenance. Also, several hundred senior non-commissioned officers or whatever you call them for use in a training program, and a smaller number of officers for a similar purpose. Is that something you can organise?"

"W-? You.. broke into my office for something you could have organised through the defence ministry?"

"No, I did that because I wanted to demonstrate that your shield could be bypassed. Also-."

He frowns furiously. "How!?"

"Something, something, hyper-inflated gravitons, six dimensional space… Look, I just use the thing, alright?"

"And where did you get it? Are there.. more?"

"Lots more, but as long as you don't go out of your way to antagonise New Genesis or Apokolips I don't think that you have to worry about an invasion." I shrug my shoulders. "Of course, anything that can be discovered by one civilisation…"

He exhales with frustration as the rest of his detail approach at a jog. "Superordinate Skokiaan, this is a breach situation, highest security. Make sure your squad is aware, then erase all records from internal monitoring. I will be meeting with…" He glances at me and raises his left eyebrow.

"Grayven."

"With Mister Grayven in my office. Authorised list only."

"Yes, Regent." She turns to her squad- "Squad, with me." -and then marches away, her soldiers following behind her in good order.

"I'd appreciate if it you didn't go wandering about." Regent Alonzo leads the way back towards his office and I happily follow him. "Our people believe that the shield is a flawless defence. The knowledge that someone could casually walk in here…"

And since virtually all of your authority stems from the fact that you designed it, that would undermine you a little more than everyone else. Still, I see no benefit in mass panic. At the moment. "That shouldn't be a problem in the short term."

"Mm." He enters his office and walks around to the far side of his desk, looking at the seat I reformatted for my own posterior. After spending a moment weighing up how daft he'd look sitting in it he opts to remain standing. "I assume from your request that you're building an army."

"A stellar navy. I really think that for an advanced civilisation it makes most sense to have the fleet as the core component."

"And who is the lucky civilisation?"

"Tamaran."

He frowns, blinking at the thought. "Have you bought the place from the Gordanian clan that owned it?"

"More 'killed them all', really."

"And come to terms with the Citadel Empire?"

"No, killed them too."

He starts. "You what?"

"Killed them, defeated the First Citadelian in single combat, dropped the still-crewed ships onto a planet and blew up Citadel Complex." I shrug. "I'm building a Lantern Corps, but I think that having a conventional fleet as well would be sensible. And I believe that you cashiered yours."

"We didn't cashier them. There simply wasn't any way to support a fleet in space with the shield in full operation. Some of the personnel became part of our planet-based defence force and the rest were honourably discharged. Though… If you're planning offensive operations… I don't imagine that employing them -even in the numbers you want- will present much difficulty."

"Glad to hear it. Though… With the Citadel gone, most of the reason for maintaining the shield in full time operation has gone as well."

"And how would I explain how I discovered that the Citadel had been destroyed?"

"You could try honesty."

"Once the thousands of people you want to employ report back, I will. But I see absolutely no need to rush matters."

"And I'm sure that the fact that once the Queen returns you'll lose your office doesn't factor in to your considerations."

"Hah!" He smiles smugly. "No, not really. Queen Kalista has barely spent a moment on Euphorix since completing her primary education. She'd be completely dependent on me… If she bothers coming back at all. Now, why don't we talk about what you can offer us in exchange for our technical assistance..?"

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Respite 4

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16th August

06:50 GMT

While I technically have the day off, I think that I should probably at least do a basic check on the station's facilities. It's mildly gratifying to my ego that even after so much direct exposure I still draw a crowd when I go out in public, but it does get a bit distracting when I'm trying to work. Fortunately, with the hour still being early -at least for most of the residents- my only encounter as I walk through the gardens is a quick mutual wave with one of Jade's fellow joggers. The gardens are something I'm particularly pleased with; people don't function well in purely artificial environments and plants grow perfectly well on space stations. And heck, we wanted to build a synthetic arcane structure anyway, might as well make best use out of it.

As a result, rather than cabins coming off a corridor Star Trek style, everyone living here has a habitation unit in the middle of well-tended grasslands. Patches of succulents with purple flowers provide colour, though not in a direct line between places people are likely to want to walk. A small effort on Euanthe's part keeps the grass growing strong in those places, but I'd rather not trouble her…

I hesitate, crouching down in front of a flowerbed. Actually, I… I don't remember what these are called. The flowers come in clusters of six, the petals arranged in a five-layered spiral pattern with long purple stamens extending out from the centre. There's what I assume to be the seedpod just behind each flower, and each cluster then connects to a thick, fleshy vine. They're quite pretty, but I'm really not-.

No, no, they're just one of Abra's synthetic plants. Silly thing to worry about.

I stand and turn away, heading towards the nearest portal gateway. Magic-based teleportation is so much mechanically simpler than anything technological, particularly given that we already had full control of the station's arcane framework. The transportation effect can just piggyback on the existing connections, unlike the networks on Earth which still have to bind individual gates together.

"Root Bed."

Though I wasn't foolish enough to not include some security, the arcane networks of the station monitor… Well, not monitor-monitor, but they're in constant touch with the souls of all residents. Again, using that as the basis of the security system just seemed like an obvious and logical step. As such, despite this being the most important place on the station there isn't any sort of fortification at the far end. Just a platform around the edge of the room in which the Root of Yggdrasil grows. Part magic and part biotechnology, it binds our little space station to the magics of Earth and allows an isolated space station floating in the void to function as a proper living world rather than a lump of unliving metal. Well, technically, if this place was inhabited for few thousand generations we would get a similar effect but I've never been keen on waiting like that.

It also means that anyone who dies here gets to go to their preferred afterlife. The prospect of permanent purgatory had been making people more than a little uncomfortable about this.

The Root itself is a tall green tower spotted with purple blisters, and it sprouts from the soil below and spreads its vines out across the ceiling. Each vine plugs into a runic tile which serves as the physical aspect of the ongoing connection. I give the whole setup a quick scan, but there doesn't seem to have been any unintentional change-.

"Paul." Abra shimmers into visibility to my right, following my gaze as I consider the Root. "I thought you were taking today off?"

"Just wanted to give the place the once over before I left."

He smiles, patting me on the left shoulder with his right hand. "Paul, I designed this system. It's working fine. And the moment anything goes wrong about thirty people who could actually do something about it will charge through the portals. If you're so eager to put off seeing your Mother, why don't you go and look over Ted's shoulder instead?"

I… Suppose that he's right. I nod, bowing my head slightly afterwards. "That was my next stop. I'll… Leave you to it." I frown. "Wait, how did you know I was here?"

His face freezes for a fraction of a second, then he smiles the relaxed smile I've become familiar with. "Only one man on this station doesn't trigger arrival wards when he uses the gates. I think all the department heads have a spell set to alert them when you appear."

"'Look busy, the boss is coming?'"

"I wouldn't put it quite like that. We've all got as much invested in this place as you have. But you brought us all together, and none of us want to disappoint you." He glances away for a moment and clears his throat. "Or send you on a cross-galaxy rampage, assimilating everything in your path."

"That would never happen, Abra."

"Excuse me if I choose not to take any risks. But! Since you're so concerned…" He walks towards the edge of the platform, glances back to make sure that I'm watching, then draws his wand from thin air. He holds it out like the baton of an orchestra conductor, then with a sweeping motion conjures up an illusion of the station's arcane networks. "The sun still shines, the plants still grow, the links between every part of the station and their anchor points in the Earth-sphere remain strong." The arcane energy flows related to each shimmer as he announces them. "Spare energy bleed through is well under maximum tolerances and network stability is… On track."

"On track?"

"I had hoped that it would go a little faster, but it seems that Sephtian was right. It scales in a linear fashion and not quadratically. At least we are not behind."

"No reported problems?"

"Euanthe tells me that it still doesn't feel quite right…" He shrugs. "Part of the Green's nature is the habit of unrestrained growth. At this point we need to keep it too controlled for it to feel natural to her. The sooner that wildlife areas can be completed the happier it will make her."

I nod. "I'll mention it to Ted. You need anything else yourself?"

"An oracle, if you can find one willing to work here. I'd like to update my arcane analytics programs before the next stage, and someone with an ability for parsing the future from ambiguous inputs would be an interesting case study."

"I'll ask, but I can't promise anything. You know how most Amazons feel about space."

"At least they're prepared to leave their island now."

I smile as I walk back towards the portal. "Yes, we are. Fabrication."

I step out of the portal on the far side and look out across the workshop floor. My ring keeps the noise down, but unlike the Root Bed the Fabrication section keeps going twenty four hours a day. At the moment we're using every bit of orichalcum we produce here ourselves, but once the station is complete we'll be in a perfect position to export it or use it for ship building. A lot of the machinery here was blessed by Hephaestus when it was first assembled, but sadly I wasn't able to persuade him to move here full time. His followers on Earth and his duties to them simply take up too much time for it to be practical for him.

"…through here is where daddy works." I look around as Ted follows me through the portal in his dressing gown, young Damon held firmly in both arms. "And where daddy's going to be late this morning because daddy needs some sleep if he's going to get any work done."

"Morning Ted."

"Hey Paul." He walks past me and tilts his son so that the boy can look out across the foundry. "See all the fancy machines? I always find them all working like that kinda hypnotic and I'm kinda hoping you do too because your mother isn't letting me back in the house until you're asleep."

Damon extends a small hand in the direction of a machine extruding an orichalcum girder. "Gah?"

"Is everyone having an early morning today?"

Ted sighs, then turns towards me. "I wasn't planning to, but Damon had other ideas."

"Lose the coin flip with Io?"

"Not after she caught me using a weighted coin that one time. I get mornings, she gets evenings."

I give Damon a smile. He responds by hugging his father closer and putting his right hand in his mouth. "They're supposed to settle down after a couple of months."

"Looking forward to it. Ever think about having one yourself?"

"Given my personal circumstances-"

He nods. "Right."

"-it could be a bit complicated."

Ted looks around the room and then back to me. "You wouldn't be putting off-?"

"No, clearly that's not an option." I turn away from the workshop and head back towards the portal. "See you tomorrow."

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Respite 5

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16th August

01:14 GMT -6

I step out of the portal and into the Sivanas' Venusian facility. Even after all of the good work they did during the Sheeda Invasion I haven't been able to get the 'bad' Sivanas a pardon. I have, however, managed to negotiate a truce. One which now I think about it puts me in mind of Doctor McNinja's 'if he calls safe then he gets a pardon' arrangement. As long as they don't interact with any officialdom and don't take the piss on their periodic visits to Earth they don't get bothered.

And with all of the Sheeda technology they've got to reverse engineer I doubt they find it unduly restrictive.

"Hey Orange."

Thaddeus Junior doesn't bother looking up from his work station. He also doesn't bother waving, both his hands deep in one of the Sheeda's undead cyborg horses. Instead, one of the robots behind him starts displaying a picture of his face on its view screen and waves on his behalf. The horse-thing turns its head towards me and whinnies in a pitiful electronic voice, then there's a snap from where Thaddeus is working and its vocal system ceases functioning.

"That's better. I wanted to work on the eye blasters, but the stupid thing just wouldn't shut up."

"You all ready to go?"

"Since you're a superhero I decided to make the portal as simple as possible." The robot turns aside and points to an exit. "There's two buttons. The first one's labelled 'on', and that turns it on. The second one's labelled 'off'. See if you can work out what that one's for by yourself."

"Irene Quimby still not called you back?"

"Don't even start with me, Orange."

"As.. someone who's been reasonably successful in my romantic relationships-."

"If the next part isn't 'I'll let you create a virtual copy of my brain to use as a social interactions app', don't bother."

"I think Georgia studied social science-?"

"Soft. Subject." The horse makes a pawing motion, then its right fore hoof falls off. "I have my pride."

"Have you considered-?"

"I can just turn the portal off permanently, you know? And I'm pretty sure I can make Earth Prime even harder to get to than it already is."

"Okay, okay. Is Georgia about?"

"Still on Colu and Dad's with the portal. Go on, get going. I don't want to have to spend all day on this horse because you distracted me."

"Alright. Oh, ah, Thaddeus?"

He actually looks up, clearly frustrated. "What?"

"Thank you for doing this. I don't think that anyone else could have done this, and if someone could then they clearly weren't bothering. I wasn't expecting anything like this and I'm really happy that you did it."

"Oh. Ah." He ducks back into his horse carcass. "No problem. I guess."

I nod to his back, then walk out of the room. Assuming that he hasn't moved it or something-.

"You're not my type!" I blink. W-? "Not that there's anything wrong with that! Just being clear!"

"Okay! Didn't think I was!"

"Okay then!"

I hear a damp thud, the ring showing me Thaddeus bang his forehead against his pickled horse flesh-covered work bench. I briefly consider making a comment about straight guys not being worth more points, but he has done me a massive favour and I don't think he'd appreciate the humour. Maybe I should.. try talking to Irene? Thaddeus Junior doesn't have a lot of friends… And I know her already through the mad scientist sponsorship program, so it wouldn't be coming completely out of nowhere.

I walk out of the room and turn left, heading towards heavy machine workshop four. Though the Sivana work areas in their Venus habitat can be reconfigured to however they want it, their patriarch doesn't hold with reordering the whole building without good reason. Large projects requiring large amounts of heavy equipment and huge power supplies go in rooms specifically designed for providing those things. And for containing the results if things don't go according to plan.

I walk up to the heavily fortified door and wave at the sensor. "Orange Lantern here. Any chance I could come in?"

A small television screen unfolds itself on an armature, Thaddeus Senior's face appearing a moment later. He does me the courtesy of actually appearing to look at me. "You finally got here. Come on in, we'll get the portal fired up."

Pistons and bolts which I'm almost certain are there purely for theatrical purposes hiss and turn, though I note a couple of force fields disengaging as well. "I'm glad that you think Mother is worth so much effort to protect."

"I've stopped taking things like this for granted where you are concerned."

The four-part door clanks back into its housing, allowing me entry to the heavy machine workshop. Most of the heavier machinery was cleared out once work on the portal was mostly completed, though there's still more than enough to perform maintenance or make emergency corrections. The portal generator itself looks like a stargate designed by Nikola Tesla, glowing rods and whirring thingummies humming with a purpose. Getting access to Earth Prime is so hard that Hinon only managed it by accident, so I'm not surprised that doing it intentionally took Sivana A-game. Creating a physical portal turned out to be even harder, but… Here we are.

And yes, there's the two-button control with both buttons labelled.

Thaddeus Senior looks up from a computer console bank to my left. "Well? Turn it on, then."

"Do those buttons actually do anything?"

"Certainly." He notices what I'm looking at. "Oh, this? This is just so that I can monitor the process."

"And fix it if anything goes wrong."

"Oh, there's no chance at that. If anything goes wrong it will happen far too quickly for anyone to intervene. But, any information I can gather before the horrendous reality-breaking overload will allow the next portal to be far more reliable."

"Um. That wouldn't destroy-?"

"Oh no, Earth Prime wouldn't be affected at all." He frowns. "Probably. Part of the reason why this is so hard is its unusual characteristics, and assuming that our model for this is correct, the blowback will be almost entirely here rather than there."

"Ah…"

"We're prepared for it. Sivana family honor is at stake."

"Alright then. Thank you for filling me with such confidence in your son's work."

"You're welcome."

The sad thing is that they really are the best at this. I stride forwards and press the 'on' button.

And the portal fizzes into life.

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Respite 6

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16th August

01:19 GMT -6

Mother steps through the portal. And I don't move, I don't… Say anything. I'm just-

"Hm." Thaddeus nods happily to himself. "That worked well."

-stunned, really. Mother looks… More or less as I remember her. My most intense memories were formed when I was younger than I was when I left so when I've thought about her during my time here that's the face I imagined. In reality she's in her sixties and it's a testament to favourable genetics that there's still more black hair on her head than white. She also has it cut shorter than she did when I was smaller. She also looks.. smaller..? Could be age, or it could be the fact that I've put on a lot of muscle during my time here.

She's staring at me, her mouth slightly open in surprise. We sent pictures through before, but I suppose that seeing me in the flesh has rather more impact.

Thaddeus frowns. "I'm not an expert on interpersonal relations, but shouldn't one of you be doing something?"

I rise off the ground to float up to her, an action which gets a surprised blink. Oh… Right, comic book universe technology versus early twenty first century Earth Prime technology. "Yeah, I can… Fly."

"Yes. I know you can."

I hover myself over to her and just stare at her for a moment. It's.. so strange, two parts of my world I'd assumed would never come together doing so. Then I land and hug her, mindful that I'm quite a bit stronger than I was last time I did this. I crouch slightly, lay my chin on her right shoulder as she wraps her arms around me in return. For a fraction of a second my happiness is disrupted by a worry about what happens when someone with no soul gets exposed to an orange power ring… But that's just understandable paranoia. That problem got fixed years ago.

Of course it did.

I pull away slightly, turning aside so that Mother can see Thaddeus. "Mother, this is Doctor Thaddeus Sivana. He was running the portal."

"I'm still running the portal. At least a part of the connection to Earth Prime was brute-forced. I'm not going to shut this down while you're still here, ma'am."

"There's also a good chance that he's an undiagnosed asperger, so please excuse any difficulty he has in his interpersonal skills."

"Is he… Ah..."

"He's a Captain Marvel villain, though he's found more productive avenues for his genius since then."

"You know I don't remember those things like you do."

"I don't think either he or Captain Marvel would have been in anything you would have seen. Unless you saw one of the older animations when you were younger."

Thaddeus frowns. "Now, just a moment. How old do you think I am?"

"Fawcett Comics started publishing Captain Marvel in… Some time in the forties? And you looked more or less as you do now, comic book exaggeration notwithstanding."

"And they named themselves after the city they were writing about? Strange choice."

"So… What have you been up to?"

I lead the way down the steps from the portal generator. "Lots of things, really. Ah, I met a lot of superheroes."

"Have you met Spiderman?"

I can't help but smile. "No, Mother, he's a Marvel character. Like Iron Man and Thor?" She nods in an uncertain manner, probably vaguely remembering me making similar comments before but not fully remembering their contents. "DC's the one who publish Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman."

She nods again. "Do you.. know Superman?"

"We're not.. super-close, but yes, I know him." After he actually admitted he was wrong about how he'd been handling Nabu, I decided to let the whole thing go. Since then, I've had plenty of time to build a better relationship with the man. "I'm quite a lot closer to Superboy-"

"So to speak."

"-than I am to him."

"Do you think I'd recognise any of them?"

…

Yes, what comic characters might my sixty year old Mother recognise.

Um…

"Richard Grayson?"

She raises her eyebrows slightly. "You know Robin?"

"He hasn't been Robin since he started going to college two years ago. Unlike in the comics, people actually get older here."

"Right." She looks around the room. "Where are we?"

Thaddeus walks out from behind his computer array. And I've just noticed the force field projector build into the ground surrounding it. "My home, laboratory and workshop. Your son helped build it, actually."

"Rebuild it. The original version got destroyed during the Sheeda invasion, and I.. rather felt that I owed him."

"Where in the world is it?"

"Venus." / "Venus."

"And who are the Sheeda?"

Thaddeus grins, and ignores my subtle head shake. "You mean, 'who were the Sheeda'."

"That's the other thing about a real comic book universe. Details that get.. skipped over. All the background characters who get killed but whom we don't really care about because they haven't had any screen time? They're actual people." She nods. "I know you said that you'd disown me if I ever joined the army-."

"I also told you that I don't remember saying that."

"At the higher end of the scale, being a superhero isn't just about knocking out lunatics in silly costumes and foiling their robbery attempts. I've killed… People. Vile criminals, aliens who weren't doing anything wrong according to their own morals, some people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time and got mind controlled…"

"How?"

I hold out my left hand. "This is called a power ring. It can.. do a lot of things. Make.. just about anything. I'm not just a.. superhero, I'm a… Top tier one. I could beat Superman in a fight. Not that we've ever actually fought.. seriously."

Mother nods. "I see. I'm.. sure you did your best…"

"I'd.. like to show you around a bit."

"And I want you to tell me what you've been doing for the last six years."

"That's going to take a while. Um, Doctor, would you mind if I used your kitchen?"

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Respite 7

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16th August

17:51 GMT

I float out of the hush tube into near-Emana space, the outline agreement on a datapad under my arm. Regent Alonzo isn't exactly an autocrat, and he needed time to find out precisely what -or rather who- he could offer me. Similarly, since I'm not planning on kicking King Myand'r out of office I'm technically only negotiating on his behalf and unless I want to give the impression that I'm planning to kick him out I will need him to okay this. Regent Alonzo was mostly interested in technical data and intelligence, but the fact that he asked me to include something about expanding our alliance later suggests to me that he at least understands that their shield will be going down in the not too distant future.

There's a flash of orange as Koriand'r transitions into close proximity. Since I didn't want my Lanterns spending the hour losing their focus, I ordered them to monitor specific areas of Emana to see what they were doing, with the sisters monitoring the capital city. I nod as she approaches. "What news?"

"They started to abandon their orbital shipyards a few minutes ago. Ships have been despatched to their mining colonies in this system to bring their citizens back to the planet. It appears that they will comply." I nod. "Would you actually have done it?"

"What, exterminated them?" She nods, clearly uncomfortable. "No. I would have carried out a limited strike against various facilities on their planet, inviting them to reconsider after each attack. And I would have taken as much of the orbital infrastructure by storm as possible, killing whatever workers were present. But I would have stopped well short of wiping the species out." She nods again, somewhat mollified. "Princess, I appreciate that the Branx were less directly involved in what happened to Tamaran than the Citadelians and the Gordanians and less involved in what happened to you than the Psions, but they are a part of the same alliance. The ships that destroyed the Tamaranian navy were designed and built here. A substantial chunk of the naval force that has maintained Citadel control-."

Her face hardens. "You do not need to remind me of those facts."

I nod sombrely. "I apologise. Perhaps if you told me precisely what your concerns were?"

"Citadel Complex was a military installation. All of the people there were warriors." Ignoring the allied tradespeople who ran most of the businesses in the entertainment district, certainly. "I would not hesitate to kill Branx warriors and I would certainly kill adults working in military industries, but I would not agree to simply bombard a planet until it was utterly destroyed."

I nod again. "Did I tell you that I had access to a Psion crèche when I was on the Wombworld?"

She shakes her head, her hair floating gloriously in the vacuum. "You mentioned that you were studying their civilisation, but you did not mention exactly where you went."

"There are peaceful Branx traders, just as there are peaceful Gordanian clans. The Citadelians are… Were, universally brutes, intentionally created as such. I wasn't sure about the Psions. I was on the verge of deciding that it didn't matter, but Mother Box-." She frowns slightly. "My AI. She pointed out that I could be killing good people, or at least people who were no worse than average. So I set out to check."

"What did you discover?"

"It might be possible to rehabilitate them. Maybe. But we can certainly kill all of the adults without being morally troubled by it; their educational indoctrination is very good." I sigh. "But they have children who can probably be taught to not be evil. And I'm… Going to make an attempt, if doing so is reasonably practical."

Koriand'r smiles at me. It's faint and I get the impression that she's somewhat surprised to be directing it at me, but it's there. And I… I feel a little… Good, to be receiving it. Heh. What a remarkable woman: to still feel sympathy for such a people after what she went through.

Attention: message incoming from planetary government.

"Excuse me." I raise my right hand. "Answer."

The same woman's face appears. "Grayven. We are preparing to acquiesce to the majority of your demands."

I nod. "And that's nearly good enough."

"We would like permission to keep the core of our satellite communications network-."

"I'm sure you would. No. You can use ground-based relays of some kind or high altitude in-atmosphere platform."

"I-." She appears to chew the cud for a moment, a gesture the ring helpfully tells me means that she's struggling to find the words with which to express herself. "What.. about.. defence? If we are limited to ground-based assets we will be extremely vulnerable."

That's.. a reasonable point. I want people to know that when I say 'surrender to my terms and there will be no further punishment' that that is what will happen. If a group of marauders fly through here in a few weeks time… "Very well. I will give you the designs for Euphorix's planetary shield, and guarantee your defence in the period it takes you to construct it."

"You do not have a fleet either. That is the reason why you are steal-. Confiscating our property."

"True, but I have a Lantern Corps. The people who make it up don't like you very much but they hate pirates and raiders even more."

"We also.. need to negotiate time. Some of our guilds are.. somewhat reluctant to-."

"Point us at the most reluctant ones. We'll soon get them moving." I glance at Koriand'r. "I'll give your people one year before we kill in response to a breach of your isolation in order for you to persuade people who haven't returned yet. However, deliberate dawdling may result in impoliteness."

"Then, on behalf of Emana, I.. acquiesce to your demands."

"Glad to hear it. Now get back to work." I dismiss the image then call Komand'r, her face appearing over the ring a moment later. "You hear that?"

"Yes. It was delicious to hear her so humbled."

"Take thirty Lanterns and start moving evacuated orbital structures to Tamaran." Hang on, they've only been using rings for a few days. "Probably best if you use boom tubes to get it to Tamaran and use rings for manoeuvring only. And make sure that there is a constant guard: the planet is our prisoner so it falls to us to look after it. And that goes for our people too. I don't want any of ours taking a sneaky shot once my back is turned."

She shrugs. "As you wish."

One hundred and forty two remaining. Give Komand'r a minute to make her picks…

"How is Ph'yzzon faring?"

Ah yes, the Psions tried to get creative with that one. "It turns out that the Psions didn't rediscover how their forebears created X'Hal. But they were trying to. With you and your sister they were simply trying to copy her more obvious abilities. With him they were trying to copy her higher order abilities instead."

"Were they successful?"

"They managed to do something, but… No, it appears not. If they'd kept trying… Perhaps, eventually." And I doubt that Mother Box will be anything like as enthusiastic about the idea of looking into it as Father Box would have been. "Sphere believes that he'll recover his senses eventually, but at the moment we're keeping him unconscious. Until we're sure that he's coherent." She nods, and I raise the ring again. "Grayven to everyone Komand'r hasn't given alternate orders to. We're heading to Rashashoon to rendezvous with the Karnan/Crown Imperium fleet, then we'll be pressing on to Karna to destroy the Gordanian war fleet. Once that is achieved, we will assist ground operations as requested."

I was surprised to learn that the Karnans had ships, but it turns out that a few were ordered to run when the Gordanian putsch happened and the Crown Imperium has been playing host to them since. Virtually all of the surviving vessels will be joining us, and the Crown Fleet were happy to join in if they got to see the largest source of pirates in the region finally cleaned out.

"Plot courses and warp on three."

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16th August

01:47 GMT -6

"How are..?" I sigh. "I suppose that Bubbles and Magic are dead."

Mother puts down her coffee mug. "They were quite elderly Cats."

I nod sadly. It doesn't surprise me, but given how long we'd had them… Since.. Teekl I haven't even thought about getting a pet. And Wolf-.

What was I..?

"So, do you feel up to looking around? I-. Do you remember that I had a comic called Transmetropolitan? I don't remember if I ever showed it to you."

Mother shakes her head. "What was it about?"

"It was set in an American megalopolis, and it was about government corruption and people's responses to it. Technology changes but people stay the same." I shake my head. "The reason I mention it is that one of the things they did is, take people who'd been cryogenically preserved, reanimate them and then send them out into the world. And.. most of them, when they saw how weird it was, sort of… Couldn't cope and went into a mild fugue. Permanently, in most cases."

"What's it like, then?"

"Most places still aren't that different. Maybe what Earth Prime will be like in thirty to forty years. And then there are things that are totally out there. Most big cities have portals-. Remember Stargate?" Mother nods. "Not exactly like that, but if you step through one you turn up at another. I've basically killed off long haul air travel, global warming is a memory-."

"That's amazing!"

I shrug. "With the technology here, it's more amazing that no one did it before me. At the moment I'm focusing on restarting Human space travel, which… For some reason was still using rockets like NASA Prime."

Mother looks thoughtful for a moment. "Thaddeus called our Earth Earth Prime. What does that mean?"

"For the sake of convenience, different parallel universes get assigned labels so that we know what we're talking about. Ours is Prime, this is Sixteen, and… I've encountered one or two others."

I don't know if telling Mother about the other versions of me is a good idea. Clearly none of them have made contact with Mother yet. I've wondered, sometimes, if whatever it was that dragged us from Earth Prime copied us and sent us everywhere, so we're not just different versions of the same person but different people who used to be the same person. Earth Prime is unique in its characteristics, Blue-me's Bleed portal had the exact same characteristics as mine… It makes sense…

"Was there anything visible when I left? Like, a.. weird glowing hole in space or something?"

Mother shakes her head. "I don't know. By the time Cells4Life phoned me it'd been a couple of days. When I went to your house it didn't look like anything was out of order, and the police didn't find anything."

"It probably wouldn't have been possible to detect anything with Earth Prime technology." Though they must be going… Crazy… Now…

Um.

Um? What was I..?

Ah.

"So how's everyone in..? Um, on.. Earth Prime?"

"Fine. Peter and Karen's cottage is mostly finished now-."

"Have they sorted out the drive yet?"

"No, it's still brick and mud. But the… You know the room where we put our coats?" I nod. "That's got a settee and a fireplace now. Your Dad's still swimming regularly."

"Anything radically new?"

"None of the rest of us have been pulled into a parallel universe and become superheroes, no."

"And how's everyone taking the news?"

"Shocked. When the radio first started playing messages I thought it was.. some sort of… A trick. There wasn't any sign you'd actually died, you hadn't left any sort of note or done anything…"

"Anything that suggested that I was planning to go off somewhere and kill myself." I shrug. "Good news: I didn't." I frown. "So… No one apart from you and Dad know?"

"What were we supposed to tell them? Now there's an actual thing there to point to we can.. tell people. We should probably let the police know first." Mother… Mother? Mother exhales, her hands playing with her mug. "You've probably got more experience with that sort of thing that I have. What do you think we should do about it?"

I huff. "No idea. Technically, it would be the job of the Foreign Office to establish relations… If they wanted to. But we can't make the portal bigger than it is now. Trade's pretty much impossible, as most of the really useful technology we've got wouldn't work on Earth Prime. And we'd probably get sued by DC."

"I don't think it works like that."

"Probably not."

Mother finishes off the last of her coffee as I think about how I want to do this. No, let's see what she wants to ask.

"So… Are you the only Orange Lantern?"

Ah. "The only one on Earth, yes." Am I? Yes, of course I am. But why? There's no logical reason for me not to have recruited additional local help. We're not short of avaricious Humans, I'd be around-. Oh! No, of course! How could I forget Lex taking a ring from me? "No, sorry, I-."

How could I forget Lex taking a ring from me?

Damn, that's… That's not even subtle. But what else..?

I look Mother in the eyes. Heh. Once you know to look…

"I'm sorry, I didn't mention it before. But you're looking very well, Mother."

"Thank you?"

"I'd say that you haven't aged since I last saw you. At all. And I've never referred to you as Mother before today, except sarcastically. A dozen times in this conversation alone I've experienced moments of confusion resulting from what felt a lot like telepathically induced doublethink, because they trained us to spot that as well. And I'm sure there are things I'm missing, or was made to forget or not notice."

"Who are you?"

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16th August

01:51 GMT -6

"I don't know what you're-."

"What's my name?"

Mother -or whatever I'm talking to- shakes her head. "You know what your name is."

"Of course I do." And while that idea feels completely natural, I can't help but notice that a few moments ago I felt rather differently about it. "It's not remote mind control, is it? If it was and you were controlling me this completely, I wouldn't be able to notice that you were doing it. You've connected yourself directly to my central nervous system."

I knew-. I knew-. It's gone. I knew who this was, but that memory is being suppressed as well. Vexing. "I remember Abra saying my name, but that was just you poking my own memory remotely. You can't say it yourself, can you?"

"Of course I can, P-."

The world vanishes, my eyes… My scum-encrusted eyes opening to a field of rotting corpses bound together by thick, woody brown-green vines. Some of the remains are rotted through, little more than desiccated skin and hair holding bone together. Others are fresh, oozing blood from the wounds that took the lives of their former occupants. A few metres in front of me to my left a reptilian hexapod wrapped in vines and flowers blinks, shudders and exhales, the colours of its soul fading before my eyes-.

And then the room reappears, Mother glowering at me.

I know that world. I know what happened. I just can't think it.

"Okay, so what happens now? Do you just wait for me to starve to death? Because that's going to take a very long time."

Alright, what's the last thing I remember clearly? My unedited memories should still be perfect, and if I'm consciously experiencing the editing process for them I doubt whatever this is has actually created false memories for years. I clearly remember from waking up with Kon-.

And the day before that, when-. No, that's generic. You might as well use an algorithm. But I remember-. Just walking around. And Kon and I being in the kitchen, talking about-. Literally lifted from a conversation we had years ago in the Mountain. What was I doing last year?

…

Well shit.

Okay, I… I remember killing Nabu very clearly. Meeting Hinon? Yep. Killing the Citadelians… Killing..? I mind controlled a group of Citadelians into fighting for me, and… I talked to Medphyll about it later. Picking up Dox, yes, I remember that fight-.

And when I asked that Martian security guard what my name was.

The field of corpses reappears, a vine extending into the remains of the reptilian as I watch. How do I feel? Basically..? There's a weight on my chest, a tightness… Why would anything making a nervous system interface go through the chest? It would be far easier to go in through the spine or skull. I look down-.

Flowers. The vines are reaching out from the central cluster, reaching around-. They must be what's plugging into me. I can't feel them, but-

The Sivana family kitchen -which now I take a closer look I see is identical to the one I saw during my first visit- reappears.

-then I wouldn't be able to. Some sort of predatory plant? Wasn't there an episode of X-Files where Mulder got eaten by a giant fungus? But this isn't a chemically induced hallucination, and I am talking to the directing mind here.

I remember going with Medphyll to free Dox, I remember in tedious detail the meetings which followed while we fleshed out how the Corps was going to recruit. Dox wanted some proof that my vetting was superior to the analytic system he designed, and I flew off to recruit…

Sodam Yat? No, I don't.. remember going to Daxam. I wasn't even sure I wanted to go there until I could speak to Kon about it. And maybe Kal-El. Qward? No. Nothing. I-.

I remember shaking hands with a short but heavily built man-.

The textures are wrong! That's an interpretation of my memory of the Weaponer from the comics! I don't know what the man really looks like!

Alright. So it's preventing me from remembering the recruit. And I don't have clear memories of anything since then until waking up this morning, so presumably that's when this actually is. I can't remember who I was coming to see or where I saw that planet before. Any other clues? I'm calling the thing that looks like my Mum 'Mother', it must have been something that I thought might make a good Lantern… Or just ambushed along the way. No, that doesn't sound likely. There aren't many things that could both beat me in combat without killing me and then do something like this. That suggests… I dropped my defences willingly. Okay, past-me has some explaining to do.

I smile.

"And you should have remembered to erase my memory of my notebook, Mother of Mercy."

"I have never thought of myself by that name. A reference to a figure from your species' primary religion and to the common name for my children."

"Oh, good, you're not erasing it anymore. Thank you." Mum's facial expression has gone slightly blank, Mother of Mercy not using my memories to animate it any longer. "What was this in aid of?"

"Making your death painless, should I judge that your offer was unrealistic."

"I still don't… Did you erase it, or are you suppressing it? Because if I followed through on my idea of offering you a power ring, I'm pretty sure that it was realistic. I've got hundreds of the bloody things. And I can't imagine what you thought that I might be able to do to you after you put one on that I couldn't just do anyway."

"I wanted to see from your own thoughts what it is that you are trying to build."

"And the thing with Jade, Kon and M'gann that's never going to happen?"

"It matches your desires. I had hoped that you would be so happy with the situation that you would not question it."

"That isn't what I want. It would never work. I know that, why don't you?"

"I altered the way in which you weighed the factors affecting your decision. If they accepted the relationship, you would be most happy."

"Oh, then why not throw in… Holly, Karon, Selina, Dannette and Harleen while you're at it?"

"I have a great deal of experience with differing social models. Adding additional people to the scenario -even if you found them attractive- would most likely have resulted in you being less happy. Your brain favours small tight-knit groups for long term companionship, even if your lust might encourage a different mating pattern."

"If I remember correctly..?" She nods. "You don't mate at all. In other circumstances I'd be fascinated to ask what you make of the whole business, but at the moment I'm more interested in what happens next. Did you learn what you wanted to?"

"You bore no resentment for the past crimes of your allies, and you were honestly delighted in them dedicating themselves and their abilities to ends you consider productive. You want to build and aid your fellows. I have learned that you were honest with me."

"Then I'll be honest again. You'd probably be better with an indigo ring. But I don't have those. You saw the comic I read in which you were offered both yellow and green rings. I'd like to get my offer in first, but I'd understand if you wanted to consider other offers."

"I am minded to accept. However, I have two concerns."

"Okay. What are they?"

"Firstly, Mongul has placed sixteen antimatter planetary demolition charges under this world's crust. In the event that I act against him they will detonate. When I was smaller such a cataclysm was survivable, but he has forced me to grow much since we first met."

"We could deal with that. What else?"

"I detected your presence when you first arrived, and reported it. A flotilla is approaching already."

"Oh. Oh dear."

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16th August

I'll get back to you

"Do you know how many ships they're sending?"

"Only approximately. The parts of myself I use to manipulate gravity can sense the distortions created by matter, but the resolution is poor by the standards you are accustomed to."

"Okay, let me go and I'll take a look."

"That is where I am still uncertain."

I bow my head slightly, nodding. "Because they won't kill you if you've done what they told you to, but they might if you're actively helping me."

"If it is Mongul, then he would kill me without a doubt."

I look up. "And then what?"

"Your remains will either decorate his throne room or I will be given them to fertilise my soils."

"But what happens to you?"

"I will continue."

"And Mongul will continue using your offspring as devices of torture and terror. Across quite a large swath of the galaxy that's all they're known for."

"I have seen your memories of the Beast. Do not expect me to believe that an Orange Lantern would be better regarded."

"Not yet. The difference is, we're in a position to do something about it. You're stuck. Do you know how long Mongul's species lives? Do you want to gamble on his heir treating you differently?"

"I have no need to gamble. I can wait."

"With bombs at your core ready to go off the moment he decides that he doesn't want you around any longer. But that's not my question. I know that you can survive like this. My question is: is this what you want?"

"No."

"What do you want?"

"When I was small and simple, it was the earliest stirrings of curiosity which led me to the surface." The kitchen falls away as she changes the illusion to show her former self deep underwater. Far from her current world-covering size, her former self was a ball of vines no more than five metres across. I watch her release her grip from the seabed and rise towards the shore of a small rocky island. I see her pull herself out of the water and plug her vines into the dying pilot of a small spacecraft. "When I interfaced with that alien's mind, I gained full access to his memories. You already know that I used that connection to induce a pleasant delusion as he died. What you do not know is that contact with his mind caused massive change within my own. I had no language before that. I hardly thought at all of anything save ocean currents and feeding. But contact with another mind taught me so much."

"About the universe? I assume that-."

"No." Time rapidly passes in the image, the alien decaying and Mother of Mercy growing. "About pain."

"That's.. what you took away from it?"

"I lacked sensory nerves in the way that you possess them. When I became damaged I was aware of it, but only in a far less immediate way. When I touched that first individual's mind it was pain that was the strongest sensation."

"I see."

"I now understand that it strongly slanted my still-forming mind, but-."

"Your first sentient thoughts were filled with pain. Someone else's, but I can see how that would colour your perception."

"So I created the parts of me you know as Black Mercies."

"How?"

"I believe that my ability to interface with other species was originally for hunting. I would be able to lure mobile species closer by connecting to their central nervous systems. Making them feel good is so much simpler than controlling their motor neurons."

"I meant, how did you know how to do that? To modify your body like that? Or is it just something your entire species can do?"

"I do not know. I have never encountered another being like me, or heard of anyone who has. Modifying my body felt natural. Perhaps it is how I am meant to reproduce."

"And you used your gravity manipulation abilities to send them out while calling spaceborne corpses back to you. What did you want?"

"To prevent pain."

"Have you stopped wanting to do that?"

"No."

"Tell me about the bombs."

"When I was smaller, they would have destroyed the planet but in a way I could have survived. Eventually I would have come to a new planet and awoken. Now, my roots extend down towards the mantle to draw upon geothermic energy and my growth buds reach outside of this world's atmosphere. I am too large. The detonation of any one bomb would kill me."

"Do you know where they are?"

"Yes. However, they are designed to react explosively to any attempt I might make to tamper with them."

"Can you touch their outer casing?"

"Yes. Mongul insisted that I do so in order to confirm that his threat was real."

It's not completely reliable, but… "Do they seem in any way strange to your gravity sense?"

"I don't know. I have had no other contact with antimatter."

"But you can sense the mass, yes?"

"Yes."

"Alright. Then I probably have a way to remove them. Or rather, I can give one to you."

"How?"

"I came here with a newly minted orange power ring. One of a power ring's abilities is to put objects into a subspace pocket. Now, I assume that the bombs are designed in such a way that tampering with one successfully triggers the rest-."

"You are an experienced Lantern. Why do you not remove them?"

"Because if you let me go and I have to do something like that, it'll be obvious. Our best chance for dealing with that fleet is for them to have no idea that you're hostile until it's too late for them to escape." I lean forwards slightly. "So I ask again: what do you want?"

"I want to be free."

"Then free me."

I feel a damp crunching from my chest as the field of rot reappears and the Black Mercy falls from my chest. That's a rather unpleasant-looking wound.

Wholeness Rightly Assumed.

Compliance.

I come to my feet and hold out my right hand, sliding the new ring free from my ring finger. Then I turn around to look at the towering mass of pale green vines and purple blisters which makes up the locus of Mother of Mercy's world-spanning consciousness.

"Mother of Mercy of Ater Clementia, you want to prevent suffering and I want you for the Orange Lantern Corps." She extends a tendril down towards me. "Take my ring."

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16th August

22:42 GMT

Turns out, I did take precautions before letting Mother of Mercy stick a Black Mercy on my chest. And while I'm not exactly patting past-me on the back for that idea, it has worked. Mother of Mercy's locus is now sporting a glowing vine-knot in the pattern of an orange sigil and is working to envelop the antimatter planetary scuttling charges even as I use my ex-Darkstar stealth reconnaissance drones to observe the incoming fleet. On the plus side, no Warworld. If that monstrosity had turned up I think I'd probably try and work out how to run rather than trying to fight it.

On the downside, that's very definitely an Engine City parked on the super-Earth one place further from the local star than Ater Clementia. Engine Cities are the basis of Mongul's industrial base, and how a man who can barely withstand his desire to kill everyone around him at the best of times has a functioning empire. Giant, automated resource-extraction systems, the Engine Cities get planted on worlds he expands to after their population has stopped resisting -usually due to being dead- and turn them into more ships, robots and new Engine Cities. The fleet appears to have decided to stop off there prior to coming here, which suggests that they're not exactly in a hurry. Which in turn most likely means that they have accepted what Mother of Mercy… Sorry, Lantern Mother of Mercy, has told them about who she captured.

I don't remember a lot about Mongul, or his children Mongul Junior and Mongal. They're big, strong, tough and reasonably-but-not-super fast. Mongul was in Justice League Animated for a couple of episodes, where he was shown to be a high end brawler of reasonable intelligence. I also read 'For the Man Who Has Everything' after watching the Justice League Animated episode based on it. Based on that I'd call him arrogant and aggressive, and nothing on John's old ring database contradicts that assessment.

Assuming it's accurate, what does that tell me? If he thought I was a threat he'd come himself. If he felt that a member of a Lantern Corps -established or up and coming- was intruding on his territory then he'd come himself to avenge the insult and make the rest of the organisation think twice. And he wouldn't stop off somewhere first. In fact, he'd probably send someone else to do that after he'd dealt with me while he went back to whatever he'd been doing beforehand. So, minimal chance it's him.

While he has had subordinates before, they generally don't last long and those ships match the style of his main fleet. So, Mongul Junior -who briefly dethroned Sinestro in the comics- or Mongal. The only thing I remember her doing was taking part in the fight against Imperiax. Mongul Junior would probably be glad to take a ring from me, work with me to kill his father and then kill me as soon afterwards as he could. Mongal… Pass. No idea. She could be a chip off the old block or genuinely want to leave. I've got no way to know unless I get a good deal closer than I am right now.

"I am ready."

I nod. "There's only so much I can do defensively, but I'll put a barrier up underground. That won't stop the destruction of the planet, but it should keep some of the energy off us until I can get your core away. Have you made preparations for surviving that?"

"As much of my consciousness as can be moved is in the stem you see before you. I will still lose a good deal of my capacities, and will most likely enter a torpor while I attempt to heal myself."

"If it comes to it I'll put you in good soil. And have a Controller or two look you over to see if there's anything they can do to speed up the process."

"Thank you."

I kneel, shoving my left gauntlet into the vine carpet and then extending a thick thread of orange light downwards. As Lantern Mother of Mercy said, she doesn't have much feeling in most of her body so cutting through a vine or two won't actually hurt her. I'd still rather avoid it, though. Okay, avoid the main vines going downwards… We're about as far from the bombs here as we can get without leaving the surface, and there's a lot of solid rock in the way as well. But antimatter bombs ensure perfect energy release and the bombs here are big. Planets aren't solid bodies, but the shockwaves will still be large enough to shatter the surface entirely if two go off. One wouldn't do quite that much damage, but I still wouldn't want to try living here afterwards.

Of course, most of the matter would still be here and it would probably coalesce into a new planet in a few thousand years or so. But again, not really helpful.

I'm confident of my ability to extract Lantern Mother of Mercy's core even in a high-gamma radiation environment. And I'm.. a little curious as to what being blasted off a planet on a rock plug would feel like. But that at least is simple. If I assume that that doesn't happen, we'll still be left with the fleet. Lantern Mother of Mercy's gravity manipulation is long ranged but weak; no ripping ships apart or anything convenient like that. The ships have their shields at cruising power rather than combat power. I don't know exactly how much antimatter there is in the bombs, but if the shields are up I don't expect to be able to kill the ships with the bombs. The blast waves don't meaningfully travel through space and gamma radiation isn't that hard to deflect.

That Engine City, on the other hand, looks marvellously vulnerable. And I'd bet on crumbler rounds against their shields and my FTL against theirs. Reinforcements are unlikely. Mongul's people tend to go in mob-handed or not at all and if the commander of this flotilla fails Mongul then I doubt that there'll be retaliation in the short term.

Against me, anyway.

"I am about to take hold of the bombs."

"Okay." I spread out my construct shield-plate. "Give me a count-."

"It is done."

"Oh." I blink, then shrug inside my armour and stand up, dismissing my construct. "Ready for the next step?"

"Yes."

"Bombs at the ready. On my mark." Construct armour forms around my body as orange light spreads out across every part of Lantern Mother of Mercy's body. "Three, two, one, go."

If I don't get to try living through an antimatter-powered planet-busting then I'll have to make do with another first. The first time I've ridden on a faster than light planet.

"Hahahahahahahaha!"

I spread my arms wide and cackle dementedly as orange construct versions of the spires Lantern Mother of Mercy uses to manipulate gravity shoot upwards and the sky twists and jumps in response. It's not far to go but there's a lot of mass here and Lantern Mother of Mercy is somewhat new at this.

"They're asking what's happening."

I guess that's my cue then.

Space bends around me as I leap from the surface of Ater Clementia, the sheer grey walls of the fleet's largest ship appearing a moment later. I generate a construct railgun, paint a construct target on the side of the vessel and open fire with crumbler rounds as beneath me the surface of Ater Clementia's neighbour erupts in a ball of antimatter-enriched death. The Engine City vanishes, the continent it sat on evaporates and the planet's surface jerks in a way that's visible from space from the force of the blast. Ship's shield -I start taking laser fire from the ship's point defences but it's nothing my construct armour can't take- fails over a small area, okay, fine, new construct railguns and fire over a wider area.

There's more flickering as the shield restarts and then fails over a larger area. The gap between the shield and the hull-. Ring, transmit that to Lantern Mother of Mercy.

Compliance.

Should be enough room to dump a bomb in there through a gap… And my goodness doesn't having a planet suddenly appear out of nowhere cause a fleet to panic. One of the capital ships starts its FTL systems up immediately -which I jam- while the rest are trying to scatter with sublight drives.

"I am planting the bomb."

Not hanging around for that one. I warp back to Ater Clementia's surface, then have the ring show me the enemy fleet's capital ship. Around me plumes of fire from whatever weapons were pointed in our direction rain down on Lantern Mother of Mercy's construct shields, occasionally punching through to blast against the surface. Not much threat to her mind here but if they destroy too much she won't be able to use FTL for a while.

The capital ship wheels, armour plates sliding open as its anti-planet missiles prepare to fire and I start to feel just a little-.

Then the antimatter charges detonate. And it's beautiful.

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16th August

22:45 GMT

The ship… I don't know what class it is. Given the missiles… Planetary assault dreadnaught, maybe? The blast shoves it sideways, the hull caving around the detonation as it eats through the armour and into the squishy interior. The point defence drones that were shooting at me evaporate around the hole in the ship's shields but… Hah! The shield sections that are still intact are reflecting the gamma burst inwards against the hull! That whole side of the ship is superheating! Lights flicker out as the internal power systems fail and ooh, someone was carrying antimatter!

The ship jerks again as its entire centre comes apart in a huge blast which splits the ship in two as well as eating through most of the interior as the armoured hull channels the blast inwards. Life signs, few and fading.

I turn back towards Lantern Mother of Mercy's locus. "Set course for Maltus, would you?"

"I will need to redirect effort from my defences to do that."

"Alright, I'll see if I can persuade them to back off. How many bombs left?"

"Eleven."

And they only have four capital ships left. Good show. I hold my left hand out in front of me, palm upwards. "Orange Lantern Two Eight One Four to whoever's in charge of Mongul's fleet. Cease fire and get lost, or we do to the rest of you what we did to your flagship."

I raise an FTL interdiction construct, focusing its effect on Ater Clementia's far side. Don't really want them repositioning around the planet or coming closer, but I do want them to be able to leave. The surviving ships stop shooting and manoeuvre into something approaching a formation.

"I am Mongal and I command this fleet. That was not our flagship."

"Really?"

"I would not be talking to you if it was."

"No, I mean, Mongul seriously named his daughter 'Mongal'? Is he that arrogant or is he just not very good at names?"

"You destroyed our Engine City, our bulk carrier and now you childishly mock my name! Die!"

The capitals ships roll slightly, bring their guns to bear on the planet-.

"Distort gravity to turn their shots aside, then prepare to deploy the bombs."

"That will be difficult."

"You don't have to do it for long."

An image appears in my mind showing me what she means. The distortions she makes are gradual and not sharp. Where they are now she can turn their shots aside. As they come closer -which they're doing- the amount which the shots will be deflected drops. She could use her ring to change that, but smaller missiles and drone attack craft are already heading this way.

Ring, I'm assuming that they've blocked most forms of FTL?

Affirmative.

What aren't they blocking?

Luminal state drives are not blocked.

Alright, not my favourite form but I can work with that. The ship's main guns are fixed position, secondary weapons are mounted on ball turrets. They still have a fighter screen…

Ring, set subluminal emergence point to just past the last capital ship.

Compliance.

Engage.

There's a flash as my ring briefly convinces the universe that I'm made of faster than light particles, then the stars reappear. I spin about, phasing as I take a chance on the fleet not having noticed-. No, they noticed. I come back into phase and generate construct armour and railguns. Let's try… Solid slugs, I think. Target the interceptors until I'm close enough to mark the capital ships.

Compliance.

Tungsten slugs blast forth and… The drones are using gravity impellers, jerking left and right in defiance of momentum and effortlessly avoiding my shots. Fine, drop the railguns and switch to cold guns.

Compliance.

And adopt an evasive flight pattern.

Compliance.

Space wheels about me as my ring copies the style of my opponents without precisely copying their patterns, white beams from my cold guns being replied to by golden bolts of… Some sort of exotic radiation beam, apparently. A couple of strikes on my construct faceplate result in mild cracking, the majority of their shots going wide. Though that will change as they start to reach me. My own shots miss, miss-. Ah, that one carried on to hit one of the capital ships and.. caused a momentary collapse of its outer shield layer. A plasma field thick enough to absorb a cold beam? By most standards that's excellent shielding. That ship's a brawler.

A hit, and the drone tumbles in space. It doesn't stop but continues in a ballistic arc based on its momentum. Ring, try and line up more so that misses hit the capital ships.

That utility was already included in calculations.

Oh. Well done.

I watch as on the far side of the enemy fleet their main guns fire again, giant glowing beams lancing towards Ater Clementia and slowly bending away from their target. They skim the atmosphere before flying out into deep space.

Let's not let too many of those happen.

The drones start reducing their acceleration in order to avoid flying past me, making shooting them a little easier. The ones in a direct line start to die en masse but I'm aware that the swarm is starting to loop back and surround me. Since I'm not slowing and the angle isn't good for them at the moment I'm not taking extra hits myself, but that will change when they form up behind me.

Okay, close enough. I don't slow, but I switch my cold gun constructs for railguns and open fire. I'm not familiar with this particular shield configuration, but the ships have far too much mass for them to be able to dodge effectively. I think it was G'Kar who said that the logical places to aim when shooting at a ship were the drive and the weapons as both have to be exposed with minimal armour. And he wasn't wrong; while the primary generator, bridge and crew quarters will be deep inside the hull most ships use forms of sublight drive which require something to be expelled. Shielding also tends to be weaker due to the space requirements for the emitters. Not all, gravity drives don't need anything like that, but Mongul appears to use that for drones only. Odd choice, but, whatever.

Crumbler rounds slam into the shield around the exhausts of the closest capital ship, the barrier shimmering and failing, second layer going the same way and-. The top layer regenerated! Gosh, that was fast. Okay, I don't think I can match that to Lantern Mother of Mercy's bomb deployment, not without slowing down and getting shot dead by drones and point defences.

Brute force it is then.

"Lantern Mother of Mercy, prepare to deploy the first bomb wave."

"I am ready."

I fire again, sending thick strands of orange in the wake of the crumble rounds. The outer layer of shielding breaks again, but this time I generate an armoured construct cylinder in the place it used to be. The shield tries to flow back in from the sides even as the next crumbler round takes down the second layer and I extend the construct inwards. Tethers vanish as whoever's controlling the drones works out what I'm doing and I have to work to establish new ones faster than they can be destroyed. Come on… Yes! Three layers only, the next shot hit the hull directly.

"Now!"

Faster than I could think an orange beam envelopes the ship, Lantern Mother of Mercy dropping two bombs inside the now open shield envelope. I drop my construct and make a luminal jump away as the ship erupts from the rear.

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16th August

22:48 GMT

While nothing like as cataclysmic as what happened to the cargo carrier, the effect is still substantial. The thrusters assembly is gone, the rear quarter of the ship almost entirely hollowed out with the hull and most heavily armoured internal structures sticking out into space. The shields are down all over the ship, so either the internal damage not immediately visible is so great as to take down the whole system or the commander saw the carrier fried by gamma containment and has decided that containing the radiation is a bigger risk to the ship than a follow up bomb.

If that was the case then they were badly wrong, as I'm already moving onto the next ship when the first is lit up with orange light once again as Lantern Mother of Mercy deploys another bomb. This one appears next to the primary weapon and detonates immediately. With the ship designed to point that weapon directly at its enemy the surrounding armour is massively thick and sophisticated. That, combined with the surrounding vacuum limiting shockwave transmission means that the front end isn't damaged anything like as badly as the rear. That is to say, it still exists. The main gun is slagged, the armour is glowing red as heavily distorted plates continue to boil away from the hull. And it looks like the secondary turrets are no longer tracking, so either power is down or we hit the bridge.

I alter my direction of travel, aiming at the next ship.

Ring, message to the fleet.

Compliance.

"Mongulists. Cease fire and withdraw or I do that to the rest of you."

"We will scour Ater Clementia of life before allowing you a victory!"

"While I would much rather recover Mother of Mercy, killing you represents an acceptable 'next best thing'. You know I can kill you. The most sensible thing you could do would be to fall back and try again when you're better prepared. I will not repeat this offer. Fire again, and we don't stop until your ships are wrecked and everyone on board is dead."

If it comes to that, Lantern Mother of Mercy will have taken substantial damage. I'd rather not make that trade…

Of course, if I'm really lucky Mongal will shout 'I'll kill you myself' and come after me in a personal fighter. If that happens I'll have a reasonable chance at turning the ship crews to my cause on the grounds that going back to Mongul minus an Engine City, a Mother of Mercy and a daughter wouldn't do much for their life insurance premiums.

"Three, two-."

"I accept your terms, but mark my words, Lantern! Your head will decorate my father's halls-!"

"And not yours. Yes, I rather understood that was how it worked. You know, if you'd rather work for someone else-?"

Channel closed.

Yes, I suppose that was a bit hopeful. The ships begin to wheel around, secondary turrets not even pointing at Ater Clementia. I don't stop or drop my railgun turrets, but as the drones fly past me without firing and head for their parent ships I start to wind down mentally. I alter my course to fall back slightly, keeping my guns trained on them but allowing my shot to gradually worsen. I wonder if there's a way to create faster than light crumblers? No, stupid question, obviously there is, but I wonder if there's a way to do it without building a full sized FTL torpedo. Those things aren't common for a good reason: they're far too easy to distract or disrupt. Some sort of… Space warping field projection, maybe..?

"Thank you for liberating me."

"There's a Human expression, Lantern Mercy. Don't count your chickens before they're hatched."

"Because some eggs may get eaten or otherwise be destroyed before that. Where can you see potential for a problem to arise?"

"Anger is a tricky beast. They might call in reinforcements, even knowing that we'd kill them in retaliation, rather than let us win. In order to let them leave I'm having to give them an escape vector where I'm not jamming faster than light travel. A way out is a way in."

"I have an additional problem."

"Oh, what's that?"

"Between the energy I am committing to the subspace pocket containing the remaining bombs and the shields I am maintaining to protect myself, my ring is very low on power."

"How low?"

"Eight percent."

"Okay, as long as they don't fire-."

"Seven percent."

What's using-? Gravity distortions. Maintaining a construct requires avarice, making it in the first place requires ring power. As long as those barriers don't get shot they don't take any more power, but the gravity distortions she's using to shield herself do. Can't recharge without dropping her construct…

Ring, is superluminal travel still available?

Confirmed.

Plot course to Lantern Mother of Mercy's locus and execute.

Compliance.

A flash and I'm back on the ground. I take a moment to reorientate myself and then march toward her, my left gauntlet disappearing into subspace as I do so.

"The plan is, you take my ring, switch to using that, then pass me your ring for me to recharge. Simple enough?"

"There will be a slight shift in the gravity distortion. They may be able to detect it."

"Six percent power remaining."

"They're quite a lot more likely to detect your construct barriers vanishing." I pull my ring off and hold it out to her. "Do it."

A tendril sprouts from my left, reaching out from the main mass. "No ritual handover this time?"

"Not for fieldwork."

Her tendril plucks my ring from my hand, my environmental shield going out as she does so. Okay, that always worries me a little, but… Air pressure's a little high on my left hand, but nothing dangerous. Local air isn't breathable by a standard pattern humanoid, but my armour's atmosphere recycling system can handle it easily for the few seconds it'll take for her to pass me hers. She pulls my ring to her central mass, a slight ripple passing through her environmental shield as she syncs them up.

"Did they notice?"

"I do not believe so." Another tendril swings around, her dimly glowing ring falling from the end into my waiting hands.

"Right."

I slide her ring onto my left ring finger, then summon her lantern from subspace. The new model lanterns look like miniature versions of the Orange Central Power Battery rather than the 'classic' design mine has. I wouldn't change it for anything, but I can't deny that the new version looks more… Appropriate, for a space-aged military police force.

"This is my cause, this is my fight-."

"Is that necessary?"

"No." I tap the ring against the body of the personal lantern.

"Charge at one hundred percent."

"But it's traditional. What we're doing, devoting our lives to improving the universe, it's a big deal. And it's easy to get distracted from the mission. Particularly with orange rings."

"How so?"

"Getting to do whatever you want is addictive. The oath is there to ensure that we constantly remind ourselves of our higher ideals, but… I don't intend to lock personal lanterns to a mantra, and there are Green Lanterns who don't use one."

"What should it consist of?"

"Something that reminds you of why you're doing this. What it is you hope to achieve with your ring. And it's traditionally four lines of eight syllables in whatever language you choose for it."

"Then I believe that I have something in mind for my own."

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17th August

03:04 GMT

I lean back slightly as I look at the effect of Mother of Mercy's spatial warp through her atmosphere. It's kind of.. soothing in a way that my own warps aren't. No sign of pursuit from the Mongalites, though we have had the occasional curious transmission from ships and worlds that we've travelled past.

But, joyride's over.

"Orange Lantern Two Eight One Four to Controller Hinon. Please respond."

"Paul!" Hinon's smiling face appears over my ring. "We were beginning to worry that something might have happened to you."

"Really?"

"I was. Dox was being depressingly sanguine about the whole thing. What news?"

"Recruitment successful. Mother of Mercy has accepted an orange ring and performed well in combat."

"'Mother of Mercy'? Is she theologically inclined? I did think about the possibility of using the theologically inclined as Lanterns when Krona and I brainstormed the subject…"

"Not as… Far as I know." I glance back, keeping Hinon from getting a look at Lantern Mother of Mercy's locus. "Are you?"

"My children have posed as a being of religious veneration for untold millions of dying sophonts. I have no inclination to such reverence myself."

I nod, then turn back to Hinon. "She says 'no'."

"So who is she?" Hinon cocks her head to the side a little. "You didn't give a ring to your Spider-friend, did yo-?"

"No."

"Hmm. Given the significance of your first recruitment mission I doubt that you would have done anything so dull as recruit another Humanoid. An AI, perhaps? I'm sure that Dox would appreciate someone on his wavelength." Her eyes widen slightly. "You haven't reconditioned a Manhunter, have you?"

I frown. "No. That's something that no one should ever do. And I'm a bit iffy on the Fists, to be honest."

"Did you know that the Guardians still use them?"

"What, Fists? Yes, Jordan's report on Sinestro's arrest-."

She huffs. "No, not Fists. Manhunters."

What? "What?"

"Manhunters. You know, the big red and blue robot things-.

"I know what the Manhunters are. Why the.. heck are the Guardians still using them?"

"Waste not want not. After the remaining ones were deactivated, they kept them in one piece as objects of study, then.. later as aids to memory. Eventually they reprogrammed them for guard duty."

Huh. Logically, if their programming was completely stripped out… I really don't think that the Guardians would have made the same mistake twice. Still…

"Yes, I see that you don't approve. Would you like to guess where they're deployed?"

"The Sciencells? I can't think of any other locations they might want to guard that don't get visi-." I blink. "No."

"Where else would they put them? You yourself have already seen how the Guardians like to conceal multiple sins behind the same exclusion zone. Anywhere else and someone was bound to stumble across them sooner or later."

"Abin Sur went there. He couldn't have missed them."

"Green Lanterns tend to have a rather narrow focus. Though I don't know for certain, I imagine that utilising the simple expedient of hiding in interstellar space with their power cores turned down to minimum would have been sufficient."

"Huh. I might-."

"Ooh, that's a rather large warp displacement. Did you decide to bring a ship of some kind with you?"

"We are nearly at the boundary of Maltusian space."

I glance back with a nod. "Very well. Return us to normal space at your convenience. Hinon, I hope that the Controllers on catching duty have had their Weetabix."

"Now I'm curiou-" The space outside Ater Clementia's atmosphere steadily returns to normal. "-oh my goodness. You recruited a planet."

"Technically, a macroorganism who covers the entire surface rather than the planet itself. I thought, the Green Lantern Corps has Mogo, and he has a certain.. presence. So we need one."

Hinon considers that for a moment. "Yes, very orange of you. I'll.. just go and let Dox know."

"I don't think he can have missed a new planet. Where would you like her to enter orbit?"

"I do hope that you're referring to her orbiting Sto-Maltus. I have no interest in turning Maltus into a binary planetary system."

"And she'd block your light."

"Mm, yes. Can she manage ninety degrees to the system orbital plane?"

"Yes, she can."

"Good show. Try not to hit anything important on your way in."

"How is Clarissi Dox's recruitment effort going?"

"Oh, he's had several volunteers from amongst his fellow prisoners. I'm not sure how compatible they would be with orange power rings, but they'll be useful additions to either the Darkstars or whatever he decides to call his fleet."

"I'll talk to them once Mother of Mercy has parked. Anything from the Darkstars?"

"Several possibles, although I have a sneaking suspicion that your preferred recruitment criteria may be a little different to the ones we've been using."

It wouldn't surprise me.

"Do you have anyone else you want to shanghai into our service, or do you intend to make yourself available for teaching now?"

"I have a few people in mind, but I think that doing some assessment work would be a worthwhile use of my time now." Before you people do anything too crazy.

"I suppose that it's hard to top a planet."

"That too."

"I'll expect you when I see you, then. Hinon out."

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17th August

09:23 GMT

The Admiral in the strange looking uniform of blue with gold decoration of the Crown Imperium raises a fluted glass in a toast. "To a truly satisfying campaign."

I nod to his as I raise my own in return. "To new allies."

The stuff in the glass isn't wine. It actually tastes vaguely minty, but it serves the same high-class social lubricant function as wine does on Earth. From the fact that there are several other glasses on the sideboard I'm going to assume that I wasn't the only person invited and from the lack of serving staff it seems likely that what he wants to discuss isn't for the ears of the lowlies. Oh, he wouldn't put it in exactly those terms, -not that 'lower orders' is much better- but the Crown Imperium is quite open about its aristocratic form of government.

"My other guests will be arriving shortly, but I thought that there were one or two things we should discuss between ourselves first."

Somewhere below us the Gordanian clans are on the receiving end of a hundred and fifty very angry Orange Lanterns, as well as hundreds of thousands of Imperial Marines and a lesser but still quite determined complement from the Karnans. Fleet operations were decisively concluded in our favour hours ago, but I think my fellow commanders and I wanted to remain 'on station' just in case anything demanded our immediate attention.

I nod politely. "Certainly." I'm not surprised. The Crown Imperium is the only stellar nation of any real size in this region of space. Certainly, it's the only one that never 'came to terms' with the various outlaw groups. And now that it's pretty much inevitable that we'll win here, it's only natural that they're looking to the future in which one of their near-neighbours is an Apokoliptian with a Lantern Corps under his command. I'm willing to do quite a lot to keep them on-side, as long as they don't get stupid about it.

"I understand that you've planted your standard on Tamaran. A curious choice, if you don't mind me saying so?"

"Tamaran was the only Vegan stellar state that fought the Citadel until they could fight no more. I see in them the potential for great things."

"The Karnans did something similar."

I smile. "The Karnans' reaction to the Gordanian uprising was probably more rational, but it was far less heroic. And it contained no real prospect of ultimate victory."

"And yet, here we are. The Karnans have a fleet-"

A mildly upgraded but far smaller fleet than the one the Gordanians destroyed during their uprising.

"-and Tamaran doesn't have an industrial base that can't be written off as a rounding error."

I frown. "Admiral, that's simply not true."

"Oh? Since when? Our intelligence reports are reasonably up to date."

"Since yesterday. We relieved the Branx of their shipyards and asteroid mining facilities. It will take a while to bring them up to full speed, but Tamaran currently has the largest shipyards in the region. Not-" I tilt my glass his way. "-quite so large as those of Karaltine, of course. But there's always room to expand."

Euphorian experts plus G-Gnomes aren't an immediate fix, but they'll get the job done far faster than the figure Admiral Oswin is now using in his mental calculations. Simply occupying Vega wasn't really a possibility for them; too much space, too many threats, not enough ships. But I imagine they'd be quite happy to have a puppet Karnan state as the dominant force in the region's politics. Heh. I'd assumed that Euphorix would be more of a problem. I'd prepared for that. Proxy influence fights weren't something that it had occurred to me might be a problem.

"Ah." Admiral Oswin nods. "That's one residual problem dealt with, then. Have you given any thought to the Psions?"

"I'm trying to work out a feasible technique for neutralising them that doesn't result in us killing them all. But… I don't see any need to hurry. It would be more in character for them to wait for things to stabilise than for them to take precipitous action."

He nods again. "Our analysts agree. I assume that you have no objections to coordinating on the problem?"

I shake my head. "Not at all. Though I should be clear: the Wombworld isn't Karna. There's no prospect at all of a successful occupation, and no obvious value in making the attempt."

"I'm in no hurry to throw the lives of my marines away attempting to take it by storm. Fleet action, do you think?"

"Combined action. My Lanterns should be able to take out their anti-ship defences if you don't mind bombarding the place."

"I would be delighted to." He drains the remainder of his glass and pours himself a second before raising the decanter interrogatively at me.

I extend my near-empty glass. "Thank you."

"How much thought have you given to the aftermath of the campaign?"

"That's where I've put most of my thought. I intend to create a resurgence of Tamaranian power, and have the resulting stellar nation secure, pacify and civilise this region. I will not allow Vega to continue to be a safe harbour for pirates and slavers."

"And the area outside Vega?"

"We don't want that to be a haven for pirates either. But… Tamaran is reindustrialising, and I have only so many Lanterns. If you wish to keep the peace there yourselves, be my guest. Tamaran can only benefit from having civilised nations as neighbours and allies."

"And Karna? We have a certain.. relationship with its people."

"I don't intend to force them into anything, certainly not violent conquest. My intent is for them to gradually slip into Tamaran's sphere of influence, but if they don't…" I shrug. "Then they don't. It will be far more useful to maintain a friendly relationship with them than it would be to have a world of vengeful serfs. I doubt that the Tamaranians would tolerate me trying to do to someone else what was done to them even if I wanted to. Which I don't."

"I'm pleased to hear it. I will of course convey your words to the Empress, but I'm not hearing anything that is against the Imperium's fundamental interests."

I wonder if this was how Stalin felt during the Fourth Moscow Conference?

"As we say on Apokolips, 'it's nice not to have to shoot your ally in the back immediately after finishing off your mutual enemy'."

He looks a little concerned at that, but I make a point of sniggering and he seems to understand that it was a joke. "Speaking.. of.. 'Apokolips', I was wondering-?"

The door on the far side of the room opens and a blonde Karaltinian man in a blue side-buttoning coat with a solidly yellow coloured five pointed star on the chest enters the room. There are a pair of yellow goggles holding back his fringe and his.. trousers are blue jodhpurs. The long shepherd's crook he carries in his right hand makes the identification easy enough, but I'm still a little curious…

He nods to me. "Lantern Gravyen."

"Prince Gavyn. Forgive me, but I thought that you were dead? Something about being pushed out of an airlock?"

He nods, a wry smile on his lips. "Not quite. I narrowly dodged the execution attempt and then I hid under the 'Starman' identity for years. But you can only save an Empire so many times before they feel obligated to pardon you."

I nod. "I know that feeling." Admiral Oswin passes his prince a glass and the three of us raise them slightly in a non-toast before taking a sip. "Who else are we expecting?"

"The Supreme Commander Gaharrugh of the Karna delegation, your princesses of course, and Queen Kalista and Sir Pren of the Omega Men."

I affect a blank expression. "The who?"

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17th August

09:57 GMT

"…understand why you ask, but it doesn't really work like that on Apokolips."

Supreme Commander Gaharrugh's fur is mottled brown and dull orange, and he's wearing what appears to be a slightly modified -Karnanised, perhaps- version of the Imperial Navy's light body armour. Though for some reason his feet are bare, his claws tucked safely away to avoid poking holes in the carpet. He was a little surprised by my physical size -I imagine that he'd gotten used to generally being the largest person in the room- and started sizing me up almost immediately.

Queen Kalista smiles in a politely inquisitive manner. "Then how does it work?"

She's wearing a highly impractical purple, mauve and white dress that appears to be trying to conceal exactly how she's changed physically in the long years of conflict. She's certainly lost body fat, the life of a paramilitary space outlaw not precisely being conducive to regular quality meals. My ring scan shows me that there are minor scars across her body, from injuries that would have been simple to fix by most local standards. The Omega Men have to ration their medical apparatus. She's also put on more muscle, in a ropey marathon runner sort of way. I also feel the tug of very weak arcane probes coming from her as she tries to work out what the heck I am.

"You get what you grab. You keep what you can hold on to… Or at least, that you can convince others that you could hold onto if they chose to question the matter. I am the natural son of Darkseid, and as far as I know the youngest he's acknowledged. Since Father is ageless and immensely powerful, there is no point to having a formal line of succession. Politically, we have whatever power we are gifted by him; that is to say, essentially none."

The orange-haired man sitting at her right raises his eyebrows slightly. "You don't seem to be doing too badly?"

Sir Pren is wearing a slightly battered but well maintained suit of black and silver light armour, a suit he probably brought with him when he left Euphorix. He sent a brief mental probe my way when he first arrived. Quashing it presented no difficulty; he's far weaker than Chester or Lynne.

"We're not on Apokolips. Heck, I left so that I would get opportunities like this that I couldn't at home."

Admiral Oswin seems slightly pensive. "So you don't actually hold any sort of title at all?"

I shake my head. "None of us do. My eldest brother, Kalibak, Father's son by his first wife, has no title. Father's second son Orion, by his second wife Tigra, similarly has no title. My foster-brother Scott, no title. Father's chief aide DeSaad, no title." I shrug. "I think the only person who still has one is Uncle Drax, whose title 'prince' was granted by my grandmother mostly to irritate Father. But, please." I smile. "Apokolips is a very long way from Vega, and our social customs will have very little impact on events here."

I most sincerely hope.

Admiral Oswin face shrugs. "I.. merely wish to be sure that you have the authority to negotiate. I'm.. not entirely accustomed to.. negotiating with…"

"HahHAHA!" I grin at his discomfort. "You think I'm a Lowlie? Oh, that's marvellous."

Prince Gavyn leans forward slightly, his right hand slightly raised as a signal that the Admiral should back off. "We're simply curious about your affidavits. Have you been given the authority to negotiate for Tamaran?"

I shrug. "The princesses will negotiate for Tamaran. And anyway, what authority does Queen Kalista have?"

"Ah?" Prince Gavyn glances at her while she just frowns. "She's the queen?"

"Yes, but she doesn't rule the planet. Never has. Not that Euphorix played any role in this fight. And I think she and Sir Pren have perhaps ten fighters between them?" I shrug. "I don't really understand why they're included."

Sir Pren's jaw hardens. "We're included because we've been fighting against the Citadel for over a decade. We've fought and bled for a Vega free of their kind."

"Good going. My people have been fighting them for nearly two days." I hold out my left hand and generate a construct of the remains of Citadel Complex. "I think I know which of us has achieved something worth talking about."

"You'll notice that the Citadel's pirate allies were largely destroyed before you arrived?"

"Yes, but that was-." My goodness. "That.. mess on Rashashoon was you? Have you any idea.. how many civilians were caught in the crossfire? And not just in Raggashoon, out in pirate-controlled territory? They were carrying out orbital bombardments on civilian-inhabited areas to kill off other groups." I… "What the hell were you thinking?"

"I was thinking 'this is the only way to get rid of the people who have turned Vega into the mess it is today'. Any col-."

"I have a Lantern Corps. It would have taken us two days, maximum, to destroy any group that wasn't prepared to straighten out-."

Admiral Oswin makes a face as if he's just tasted something horribly bitter. "You'd give those animals a pardon?"

"Some, certainly. Any without specific obscenities to their names. At this point-."

"Princess." Queen Kalista turns to Koriand'r. "Are you truly prepared to let this man speak for you?"

Koriand'r scowls. "I am no more impressed by mass civilian deaths than Grayven is. And I will remind you that it was your recruitment of our brother that resulted in the Citadel revenging themselves upon us. I have a most personal understanding of the accidental side effects of your campaign."

I lean back smugly. "And I'm not convinced that Duke Alonzo would be alright with you claiming to speak for Euphorix. He does rather control the government."

"This is irrelevant." That's the first thing Supreme Commander Gaharrugh's said this whole meeting. I was beginning to think that he was either mute or so concerned that the Imperium would withdraw their support that he didn't dare speak up. "Once our enemies are dead you can argue over who speaks for whom." He jabs one of the control buttons on the table's hologram projector, calling up an image of Karna. Force concentrations, areas controlled and areas contested and remaining strongholds. "We haven't won control of Karna yet."

Of course, with Taghurrhu's following amongst younger Karnans his position isn't all that secure either. And depending on how big an impression Michael makes…

I point at the representation of the prison camps. "Why are we doing that? There are millions of Gordanians down there and we've chased off or destroyed all of their starships."

Gaharrugh nods. "What do you suggest?"

"Just disarm them and leave them to their own devices. Your people and mine can defend any Karnan settlements that need it. We can start processing them for resettlement or exile based on clan membership once the fighting is over."

Gaharrugh raises his upper left lip slightly, a mild baring of the teeth to indicate hostility to the idea. "'Exile'? You want to exile the murderers and slavers? My people have been brutalised by these monsters-."

Komand'r rolls her eyes. "Yours are hardly the only people to have suffered under the Gordanians. And while we will be punishing those in controlling positions in the Tearing Bite clan, we have no interest in slaying every member."

Koriand'r nods. "This is not merely about our side winning over the Citadel and its allies. We must make our victory about instituting a civilised state of relations between Vega's peoples. And in some cases that will mean staying our hand, no matter how enraged we are. I refuse to stoop to the Citadel's level."

Gaharrugh looks around, but it doesn't look like any of the others are prepared to vocalise any support they might be feeling. He glowers slightly, then nods. "Anyone not on our hit list can go for now. Next point. I'm getting reports of one of my people employing some sort of grey alien mercenaries-."

"Oh, those are mine. Michael's familiar with hush tube combat, I felt that paving our way with them while I attacked the Citadel made sense."

"'Michael'?"

I generate a construct image of him. "Michael Tawny. I thought a leader who physically resembled a Karnan would fit it better. He's the reason why their fleet was in such disarray when we arrived."

"Fine. I'll trust you to control him." I nod. "Next item. If we're not killing them all, what are we doing about reparations?"

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NEXT CHAPTER

Authority

BACK

Authority 1

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Authority

21st August

18:29 GMT

Ms Mallor looks down at me as I sit cross-legged on the roof of the plain structure built to contain the Orange Central Power Battery. She's one of the political prisoners we liberated from Starlag along with Vril Dox, her exotic abilities putting her on the Dominators' 'to be researched' list.

"I understand that I am not to be included in your tuition session."

"That is correct."

"Why? Do you think that I am incapable of focusing my wants? Or that I would be driven insane as that creature in your cells has been?"

Her desires are a rather harmless mix of loyalty-affirmation with regards to her civilisation and a drive for… Interestingly, not revenge against the Dominion but she definitely wants them pushed back. Talok VIII fell under the Dominion's expanded sphere of influence some time ago, but they only heard about her comparatively recently. She knows that she's the only reason the Dominion bothered threatening her world and that they'd leave it alone once she was in their custody. That's why she surrendered herself rather than try fighting it out or running. Admirable behaviour.

"No."

Unfortunately, it makes her unsuitable for an orange ring. At least at this stage.

"Then why? Dox said that he had given you final refusal on his proposed candidates?"

"He has. But my selection criteria are quite specific." I open my eyes and look up at her. She's wearing a figure hugging blue/black body stocking thing. I didn't realise that look was popular outside of Earth-native superpeople. "Would you like some tea?"

"Tea?"

"It's a drink from my homeworld, made by putting dried leaves-."

"I know what tea is, I just don't understand why you're offering it to me."

"I don't want you to think that I harbour some sort of personal dislike for you. I want this to be a discussion rather than a confrontation. So: I offer you tea."

"Very well…" She hesitates for a moment as I wave my right hand vaguely to my right and bring a teapot and two china cups in the traditional style: white with blue artwork. "Why do you consider me inadequate?"

"I don't. Sugar?"

A mild frown. "No."

"Milk?"

She pulls a face. "I'm an adult. I don't drink milk."

I won't ask about lemon. I create a construct strainer and place it over the first cup, then pick up the teapot and begin pouring.

"You understand that the Orange Lantern Corps we're building is primarily designed to fight the Reach?"

"Yes."

"Orange ring users are unavoidably driven to satisfy their desires. You might well intellectually know that, when evaluated dispassionately, the Reach are worse than the Dominion. But the Dominion matters to you in a personal way which the Reach doesn't." Cup filled adequately, I stop pouring and move the strainer to the second cup. "Whatever you have decided that you should accept, it is the Dominion whom you truly wish to fight. As such, your effectiveness as an Orange Lantern would be impaired in the fights we are actually going to engage in. And that's assuming that you didn't suffer from the mind-altering effects of the orange light, and simply decide to go after the Dominion on your own initiative."

"I'm not so easily distracted." I put the teapot down, disintegrate the tea leaves in the strainer and then dismiss the strainer, and pass her a cup.

"That doesn't help. Forcing yourself to concentrate on something is a green light thing. Do it too much while wearing an orange ring and your ring would turn itself off. Given your other abilities, you might survive losing your environmental shield while in space, but it would significantly reduce your effectiveness."

She inclines her head slightly as she raises the cup to her face and sniffs it. Finding the smell not too repulsive, she tentatively takes a sip just to humour me and then puts the cup straight down again. "I understand that, but I believe that after training with other Lanterns and Darkstars I would come to see them as much as my people as I do other members of my species. And if I were exposed to the Reach's wrongdoings, I would come to loathe them just as much as they do."

I nod. "Quite possibly. That's how I learned to focus the orange light to serve my team mates' needs." I pick up my cup and take a mouthful. I don't actually.. like tea, but as a non-narcotic social tool it is quite useful.

"Then why-?"

I hold up my right hand to stop her, then swallow. "Because I haven't ever taught a proper class before. With Princess Komand'r and Princess Koriand'r I could afford to give them personal attention at all times. Here, I'm going to have to create a training program that others can carry out without my immediate supervision. That significantly magnifies the risk. So I don't want to take anyone who doesn't have the ideal psychological characteristics. In other circumstances, when I have a better idea about what I'm doing, I might consider you. But not for the first batch."

She looks down as she considers my answer, then reluctantly nods. "What other circumstances?"

"When Hinon's had a chance to study what happens when orange power rings interact with someone who has a link to the Shadowlands."

A thin wisp of tenebrous mist manifests around her, parts of her body suddenly looking as if they were drawn in place using a thick black pen. "What do you know of the Shadowlands?"

"That it's the former resting place of the Great Darkness, and is now a source of considerable arcane might as well as being inhabited by some rather disturbing creatures. An acquaintance of mine by the name of Richard Swift draws his power from there as well, and a handful of other individuals have abilities that are sufficiently similar that they may well come from there as well."

"The Great Darkness. That is what your people call the Father of Shadows?"

"It's… Likely that we're talking about the same being."

"When I was younger, I felt its rising. Ever since then, I've been able to control shadows, move them and make them physical. I've never met anyone else who could say the same. Is that how it was on your world?"

"I don't.. know for certain. For most of them the time line is possible. Except the Shade and Simon Culp, who got theirs about a hundred and eight years ago. When the Great Darkness would still have been there." Huh. Hadn't considered that part before. "Which is a little disturbing, now that I think about it. Though it might explain why they're so much more powerful than all of the others."

"They..?"

"But anyway, I hope that you consider staying on anyway. You might get offered a power ring eventually, and even if you don't I'm sure that the Darkstars would love to have someone with your abilities."

"Will you take me with you?"

"I'm sorry?"

"I've never met someone else with my abilities before. When you return to your homeworld, will you take me with you?"

Um. No reason not to, I suppose. "Alright, yes. Though I'll warn you now that I don't know how long it will be until that happens." She nods. "Is there anything else you want to ask?"

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Authority 2

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21st August

19:13 GMT

I smile at the purple-robed figure making his way slowly towards me down the corridor. "Are you all going to do this?"

The green tendrils poking out of his hood retract as he gets within convenient talking distance, his movement forward changing from a steady flow to the jerkier movements of a legged humanoid. He raises his arms, then uses the now brown-orange skinned hands poking out to push back his hood and reveal his face. I'm going to assume that this is the face he uses when dealing with humanoids who set store by such things as facial expression.

"Are all of us going to do what?"

"Ask me why I didn't select you for an orange ring?"

"I had not intended to. Though if you would like to furnish me with a reason..?"

"Dox trusts you. He needs you at your most mentally stable, because you're the only one of us who knows him well enough to know if he's becoming unstable. Your ability to perform that role would be significantly impeded if you put on a ring yourself."

"A perfectly sensible reason. I'm.. not familiar with your species."

"And I'm happy to take your word on that."

"I said that in an attempt to encourage you to tell me about them, but now I'm curious. Why did you respond like that?"

"I don't hold the crimes of a group against their entire species. My homeworld has been visited by Durlans in the past and as far as we've been able to tell a few are still there. The.. Human government that's mostly been dealing with their attacks showed me a few pictures of what happens when a Durlan infiltrator sets off a metamorphic bomb in a small town on market day… It gave a.. particularly bad impression."

"Metamorphic weapons? Are you certain?"

I generate a construct image of the results, melting corpses dissolving into soup while others show clear signs of partial transmutation. "The only survivor has skin made of iron plates, so, yes."

"That.. surprises me. Durla is not a technologically sophisticated world. I was abducted by Coluan robots and I had assumed that I was the only member of my species currently alive to have ventured off-world."

"They seemed pretty technologically sophisticated." I generate a construct of the Dragonwing. "This ship was captured from them and partially reverse engineered. Are you sure-?"

"Blood of the Ancients." His voice sounds astonished, but his face doesn't change expression. Curious. "No, I… Long ago, our history tells us that we had such technology. Then there was an event we know as the Six Minute War."

"An apocalyptic war."

He nods. "Some of our eldest still retain the memories of the event, passed from one Ancient to the next. I never had access to them, but supposedly our forebears fought one another with total ferocity. They started with nanotech infections such as those you describe and eventually escalated into an all-out fission exchange. Lingering radioactive material and metamorphic weaponry destroyed the civilisation we had at that time, and has prevented us rebuilding ever since. Certainly, none of us possess the technological capacity today."

"Someone does."

"I'm afraid that if you wanted to learn more you would have to travel to Durla and consult the Ancients. Or track down one of the Durlans you say is on your world."

"If tracking them down were simple, they'd have been killed already." Still. Worth mentioning to the Chinese that I can put them in contact with the government of Durla. "Are there other examples of your people's advanced technology around the place?"

"Not to my knowledge. I had hoped to access the Controllers' archives while I am here, but it seems that they have had little interest in the region of space in which my world resides. I would be very interested in any such technology you felt able to share."

"I.. doubt very much that the Chinese would be willing to-"

"Hey, you!"

"-share what they've learned, but I doubt that it will hurt-"

"I'm talking to you!"

"-to ask." I turn around. "Mister Bek, how may I be of service?"

Though -aside from hair only a Saiyan could love- he could easily pass as Human, Mister Bek actually originates from Cairn. He didn't express any interest in going back so I'm assuming that he's here about the induction session that he hasn't been invited to. A little way behind him a tanned… I want to say 'woman', but her medical scans say that her reproductive equipment is variable in configuration and she only has mammaries at the moment due to something the Dominators were feeding her while trying to work out how she works.

"You can give me an orange power ring, is what you can do."

"Mister Bek, what would you do with an orange power ring?"

"Turn Cairn into a decent place to live!"

"Mister Bek, I'm afraid that while I realise that the Dominion deserves a bloody nose-."

"I'm not talking about them. I understand that you can't fight the Reach and the Dominion at the same time-."

"Actually, we don't even have the equipment to fight the Reach on its own at the moment. Dox is working on scaling up-."

He shakes his head and waves his hands. "Fine, I'm not interested in that. One man with a power ring could easily decapitate the syndicates of Cairn and start turning it back into a civilised world. It wouldn't be easy and the Dominion aren't going anywhere, but life could be made a lot better by a Lantern."

Sounds plausible. "Mister Bek, we're focusing our resources on getting Lanterns available to fight the Reach at the moment. If you'd like to write up a detailed proposal for the post-coup political and economic models you'd use to transform Cairn's society, I promise you that I'll give the plan due consideration. I hope to be able to widen the variety of people who we can give rings to but at the moment it's just not practical."

"Alright." He nods, appearing to calm down a bit. "That's reasonable. But why didn't you say that when I got here?"

"Because Koriand'r brought you here at Dox's request and I.. rather assumed that he was dealing with you."

He smiles faintly. "What, you gave Dox access to all the information he could want and you thought he'd do something other than go through it as fast as he could?"

Ah. "Then, I apologise for my oversight. Do you need anything from me now?"

"No, the Darkstars are giving us access to their offices." He nods again and turns away. "I'll get started on that proposal."

"I'll look forward to receiving it." He heads back down the corridor, his companion remaining where she is. "Do you want a ring as well?"

"No. I'm already booked in for my Darkstar induction."

"Did Dox-?"

"I got tired of waiting for him. I was coming to check that he was still alive in there."

I look at the Durlan, who shrugs.

"Let's find out together."

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Authority 3

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21st August

19:19 GMT

"Dox..?" I step over the threshold of his quarters somewhat cautiously, the Durlan just behind me. "Are you decent?"

Dox finally settled on somewhere to live while I was away meeting up with Lantern Mother of Mercy. Space.. isn't exactly at a premium on Maltus. The planet's population is around ten billion, but Clickers like living in close proximity to one another. And preferably underground. Plus, Maltus is pretty close to post-scarcity. As a result, there isn't the accommodation squeeze that there is in the centre of large cities on Earth. Quarters can be more or less whatever size you want, if you can find someone to build it. And if you've got a Controller or a power ring on hand, that requirement can be bypassed fairly easily.

I was slightly curious as to what Dox's quarters would be like. My first guess was something like one of those Japanese pod-things. With some sort of teleportation system for food and waste materials. Coluans usually eat relatively normal food rather than the nutribars usually associated with logic-focused high-IQ species, but Dox himself wasn't allowed anything remotely resembling normal amenities growing up and I thought that he might value the pure efficiency of the system.

Turns out that I was completely wrong. He's gone for an open plan living/dining area that's almost offensively normal. Rugs and synthetic wood cover the floor, there's a holopit slightly off from the centre of the room and portraits of some people who are probably quite famous on Colu but who I've never heard of at intervals on the far wall. Bookshelves line the walls near the comfy chairs on one side… Books? Wasn't expecting that at all. There's even… Is that music?

"The chance of him being indecent is exceedingly small."

I take a few small steps inside, still taking the place in. "That was really more intended to be an audible indicator that we were here rather than a suggestion that he put clothes on." I stop walking and frown at him. "Does this place seem like him to you?"

"A shell of normalcy which he uses to conceal himself but does not himself inhabit? Yes."

Ah. Yes, that sounds more like what I'd expected.

"Sorry, with one thing and another I never thought to ask you your name."

"I am not wholly averse to being called 'Brand'."

"W-? Oh, do Durlans use non-sonic personal identifiers or something?"

"There is a certain scent component. But the humanoid vocal system I have become accustomed to using makes it difficult to pronounce the sonic components. And Brand is close enough."

"As you wish."

So where's Dox hiding? He could have teleported out, but it's not like we're keeping him prisoner here. If he wanted to leave he could just ask for a lift, I'm reasonably sure that one of the Controllers would have reacted if he built an interstellar teleporter. I could scan for him, but that does seem to be somewhat rude. The kitchen comes off the dining area and I can see that he isn't there. Bathroom's through there, which just leaves…

"Dox, I wasn't joking! If you're.. occupied, just say so!"

Mister Brand walks past me and reaches out to take hold of the bedroom door. There's a slight fuzz in the air as a security field detects him and decides not to incinerate him just yet. He ignores it and reaches for the door handle, taking a firm grip on the lever and waiting for a moment as the mechanisms contained therein perform another round of checks. No.. similar device exists on any other opening in the apartment. Rather lends credence to Mister Brand's assumption.

"Vril, are you-? Ah."

Mister Brand steps aside to allow me to enter. Ah, yes this is more like it. Vril himself is strapped to some sort of chair/bed thing, apparently unaware of the world around him. The device strapped to his forehead-. Ah, a Coluan electro-telepathy transmitter. He's having the computer feed data directly into his brain. Reasonably predictaoh come on!

His power rings, both the second hand Larfleeze model I gave him after we first met and Hinon's first new generation model are sitting entirely unused on a workbench surrounded by analytical devices. Quite a bit more complex than what the Controllers use; they can do most of that sort of thing with their own innate abilities. His personal lantern is a little further along, also unused. Okay, I can understand him being reluctant to use them but I'd have thought that he'd have-.

"What is it?"

Dox's eyes sort of flicker as the lights on his headband twinkle and fade.

"Nearly time for our first training session."

He frowns slightly, then the bonds around his wrists unfasten and he reaches up with his right hand to remove the headband. "And you felt the need to inform me in person because..?"

"The psychological wellbeing of members of the Corps is my responsibility."

"I don't require your assist-" Mister Brand moves around behind him to check his equipment. "-ance. I have a great deal of data to absorb and a finite amount of time in which to do it. If there is nothing else..?"

"Clarissi Dox. I felt that you might like to participate in the first training session. While I realise that you can absorb new information far faster than the rest of us can, the psychological effects of orange light use are something-."

"Something that might lead to me baking a giant cake?"

I tilt my head back slightly to look at the ceiling. One time! "It might help to learn how your own thoughts are likely to be altered in a safe location before using it in the field."

He swivels where he's sitting, then reaches down to pull his boots on. Not looking at me. "Are you telling me that I am obliged to?"

"No. Though I would advise you to avoid using them at all unless you get some training from me. If you don't want to take part in the same session as the rest of the new intake -and for team building purposes I really think that you should- then we can do it in private later. Or…" I spread out my hands. "Not at all. You're still the best person for the job, even without a ring of your own."

Both boots on, he looks up at me. "Your own reports indicated dozens of times when your judgement was compromised by your use of-."

Mister Brand looks up from the device. "And you think that using this device with a data input rate eight times higher than normal will not produce similar results?"

Dox's face twitches. "I've used higher rates before, and for longer. The Coluan 'average' is well below what is safe for me."

Time to use the orange light…

"Remind me: are you a perfect clone of Vril Dox the First, or did he make any changes?"

He glowers at me. "If you're asking that question then you clearly know the answer. I am genetically identical. However, he altered the conditions in which I gestated to produce… Suboptimal results. I was less intelligent than he was while he was still an organic Coluan. Still far more intelligent than everyone else, and more than up to the task I have here."

"Where I'm from… There's a certain… Physicality, expected of, uh… 'Freelance law enforcement officials'. Pretty much the first thing I did with my ring -and entirely without specific intent- was turn myself from a slightly pudgy office worker into an Adonis. I think… It's hard for me to tell, but I think I've become more mentally acute as well. Certainly, my memory is eidetic now."

Dox gets it. From his expression I think that he got it as soon as I started speaking, though he generously gave me the courtesy of allowing me to finish.

"I could alter myself."

"It's more that the ring would unavoidably alter you to better reflect your idealised self-concept." I smile, raise my eyebrows slightly and then look away. "I'm assuming that you know quite a lot about Coluan physiology..?"

His body stills and his eyes unfocus slightly, pupils microsaccading as he considers the matter, then gets up and walks towards the rings-.

"Ah ah." I open both hands and call his rings to me. That earns me a scowl. "There's a tradition to it. Everyone I've given rings to gets the same treatment. It might not seem important to you-."

"Just get on with it."

"Very well." I hold out my hands palms up with a ring on each. "Vril Dox of Colu, you want to establish a just order in an unjust and disorderly universe. And I want you for the Orange Lantern Corps. Take my rings."

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Authority 4

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21st August

20:43 GMT

I raise my right arm and wave as my new recruits fly towards me. Koranys is a newly terraformed world on the far side of Maltus from the Reach border. Settlement has already started on the continents to the north and west of us, and the lingering liveliness of the atmosphere results in frequent storms with their associated torrential downpours.

Lantern K-K'p dives, using a gravity impeller construct to accelerate towards the ground and then to arrest his motion just before impact. He's a Clicker and since his sex is 'lesser C' I suppose that 'he' isn't strictly accurate. Ah, we're both using translators. I can't help that my language doesn't have a word for what he is. There are a series of visible scars along the left side of his carapace from where in his previous occupation as a Darkstar he took several hits from Reach soldier carried plasma weapons and had to be stuck back together. When he first put on his ring it converted the cybernetics beneath back into flesh but left the visible damage. I guess he wanted to keep the memento. He also usually wears his Darkstar exomantle, but for this exercise I asked him and the others to leave their armour and backup weapons in subspace.

"How did you get so far ahead of us?"

I flick my left hand out to the side, connecting in the whole class. Including the ones who are only just entering the upper atmosphere. "As with anything else you use it for, the speed of your ring-based faster than light travel is dependent on your ability to focus your desires. I'm teaching you because I'm very good at focusing my desires." Three concentric spinning circles appear floating over my left hand.

"I thought that we did not need to focus on precisely what we were doing. Was I mistaken?"

"No, but you do need to focus on the outcome. Either the fact that you want to get somewhere or what you want to achieve once you're there."

Another Clicker flies down toward our position. Lantern R-K'rr is a neutral Clicker and a former Darkstar uplift coordinator. His job was to help worlds that decided to resist the Reach to improve their defensive abilities as fast as possible. While he tested well for ring-compatibility, I'm a little concerned that his particular skill set isn't exactly what we want at this stage. Dox wants him to visit worlds on the periphery and help with their shipyard upgrades, but I'm concerned about how much harder that will make keeping track of his mental condition.

"Teacher, why are we here? Why do we not practice on the new world you captured from Mongul?"

"We're here because at the moment the entire surface of Ater Clementia is covered with Lantern Mother of Mercy's body. And while she doesn't exactly feel pain, I don't think we should be shooting holes in each other's bodies during our induction session." Sadly, that made it… Not impossible but certainly impractical for her to participate in the training session. Currently one of Hinon's deputies is going over her in an attempt to learn how she works. It turns out that the Controllers haven't encountered anything quite like her before. Though I do mean 'quite', they've encountered any number of things which were sort of like her. "And her atmosphere isn't something most of us could breathe."

Lantern K-K'p and Lantern R-K'rr glance at one another. I've noticed that Clickers have some sort of game they play with the direction their rearmost eyes look at, and the two of them have a quick round. R-K'rr loses and then lands before coiling slightly into the Clicker 'attention' pose. "Would our environmental shields not prevent that being a problem?"

"Lantern R-K'rr, you already have more space combat experience than me. What I'm going to teach you is how to maintain your focus, how to maintain your ability to think clearly while using the orange light and how to avoid becoming distracted by other emotions. Because something I've observed from other Lanterns is that if you focus on the wrong emotion, your environmental shield goes as well."

"I understand, te-."

BANG!

There's a huge explosion a short distance behind me, accompanied by a blinding burst of light. I've already brought up construct armour and a railgun, and I note that K-K'p has generated a basic construct barrier. Well done that Clicker.

The glow stabilises a moment later into a glowing portal, somewhat like the boom tubes which New Gods use. The difference is that the surrounding circle of light looks more.. ferocious, crackling and flaring and wobblingoh dear.

My armour appears from subspace, Sword of the Fallen transferring from my field uniform to my greaves. "That's a boom tube, armour now."

K-K'p's exomantle appears immediately, while R-K'rr takes a moment to achieve the necessary level of focus. Both point their masers at the portal rather than generating construct weapons, but I'll excuse that for now. They've only really had a few practice sessions with their rings before this, and they're trained to use exomantles.

"If you can spare the concentration, have your rings feed you data on New Gods, Apokolips and New Genesis." Though I've got no idea why either might come here. "If they're from Apokolips, shoot first. If they're from New Genesis, shoot second."

"Acknowledged." / "I obey!"

And then Dox steps through and I feel like an idiot. Strands from his ring feed back into the tube, visibly forcing it to stay open and more or less stable. He's wearing a variation on what I vaguely remember his uniform from L.E.G.I.O.N. to look like, with an orange sigil replacing the clenched-fist-with-lightning-shining-through emblem of that butterflied agency. He looks at us for a moment and then turns back to his portal, exhaling in frustration. "It appears that I need more experimental data before I perfect ring-based gravitonic hyperinflation."

He retracts his filaments and the boom tube undergoes a semi-controlled collapse, energy washing over us. Dox's personal force field flares slightly, and he idly looks at a construct monitor to find out exactly what's hitting him. My construct armour is mildly buffeted, while K-K'p's barrier is cracking and failing. Always use a learning opportunity.

I turn back to face him. "Do you want to be torn apart? If not, then I suggest that you focus on your need to remain whole."

"I obey."

A curved construct barrier appears behind the flat and failing barrier, which collapses entirely a moment later. The new one is brighter, energy being deflected around it. The local grass-substitute isn't going to be doing well out of this, but the isolated nature of our sparring ground is why we're doing this out here.

A moment passes and the boom tube finishes its semi-controlled collapse. Dox presses a few buttons on his arm-mounted construct control panel before returning his attention to the three of us. "Are we ready to begin?"

"Still waiting for the last four, sir." I look up. "Though-."

Lanterns Strata and Tarant slam into the ground. Tarant has kept his Darkstar flight suit, now with an orange sigil in the middle of the Darkstar starburst. Strata on the other hand is dressed a little more like Dox: loose black trousers and a black vest with the orange sigil on her chest.

To be honest, Tarant is far closer to what we're looking for at this stage than the others are. He wants the Reach destroyed and whatever's left of his civilisation restored to its pre-Reach state. But he's disciplined about it, never losing himself to the red light in any of the engagements he's fought in. Strata was the only prisoner to make the cut, and her motivations remind me of what Maddox said about Gregory Peck: she doesn't have any personal stake in the fight with the Reach but she's here because she recognises it as a good thing. Good power output, minimal chance of being distracted.

A moment later Koriand'r and Komand'r transition down to the planet's surface. They're only last because I asked them to keep an eye on the others as they travelled here. Not that they have much more experience, but what little they have means that they get the teaching assistant jobs for the moment.

"Thank you all for coming. Now let's get started."

back

Authority 5

next

21st August

20:58 GMT

"…simplest level of attack construct is an energy pulse." I generate a target ten metres away. "Lantern Tarant, take a shot."

Tarant looks at the target for a moment, then raises his right fist. His ring is on the middle of his three fingers, and the general pose he's using is the one he used when firing his exomantle's masers. He focuses for a moment, then a blast of orange light flashes out. The bolt strikes the target dead centre, dissipating to no appreciable effect. He makes a quiet snort to himself before looking at me to see if I want him to try again.

"A shot from a Darkstar maser will -power source allowing- always strike with the same power. Power rings do not work like that. They are empathic weapons." I dismiss the target and replace it with a Reach soldier. "Try again."

He clenches his fist, the orange bolt he fires being noticeably brighter than his first effort. The result is some minor cracking on the construct soldier's surface.

"Lantern Tarant has fought the Reach for a considerable period of time. Certainly, he defaults to wanting their soldiers destroyed more easily than he does a series of concentric circles." I dismiss the soldier and generate a Beetle construct. "When I intervened on Urrigen, the Darkstar coterie had been in continuous combat for three days. It is perfectly natural to feel fear in combat, and the Darkstars there were controlling theirs as expected from professional soldiers. Except Lantern Tarant, who was barely feeling any at all. Unusual, considering how lethal Beetles are to Darkstars."

"I've killed Scarab Warriors before."

"Glad to hear it. Kill this one."

"Meat!"

The construct Beetle opens its wings and shapeshifts its arms, a shield forming on its left and a blade on its right. It zips through the air directly towards Tarant at full speed-.

And is caught in the twin beams blasting from Tarant's forearms. The construct Beetle cracks and crumbles to orange fragments before fading completely.

"Tarant could do that because he really really wants to destroy Reach Beetles, and because animating it made it seem more like the things that he actually wants to destroy." Tarant himself is still staring in the direction the construct was coming from, his arms still raised. "But it turns out that he wants to destroy them a little too much. Lantern Tarant."

He grunts. Eyes locked, environmental shield flaring, muscles tensed and… Yes, orange sigils glowing in his eyes.

"Lantern Tarant, what planet are you on?"

"I'm-." I watch as he shudders, his overwhelming drive to fight the Reach being undermined by his rational appreciation that this is a training exercise. "I'm.. fighting…" His environmental shield fades to its original level. "What was that?"

"That was your brain on the orange light. You gave that shot your all?"

"Y-yeah."

His environmental shield cuts off for a moment as his fear of losing control like that causes yellow light interference.

"Lantern Tarant, remove your ring and take a moment to collect yourself."

"Yes sir." His hands shake slightly as he gingerly grasps his ring with the fingers of his left hand and pulls it free.

"And that's the other reason we're doing this somewhere with a breathable atmosphere." Tarant stares at his ring for a moment and then stows it in one of the pouches on his uniform. "Everyone notice what Lantern Tarant's environmental shield was doing there?" Dox doesn't move, but the others all give me affirmative gestures appropriate to their physiology. "Years of warfare have left Lantern Tarant with a very strong desire to destroy the Reach. On that last shot he channelled all of it and was overwhelmed." Tarant trudges back to the group and sits down hard, not quite looking at anyone as he tries to work out what the heck just happened. "He became convinced that the Reach were about to attack. I'm not sure that he was even aware that the rest of us were still here." I raise my eyebrows. "Were you?"

"I…" He blinks, eyes still not focusing on us. "I wasn't… Thinking about you."

"This world is highly defended and the rest of us are more than capable of taking down anything short of a full Beetle strike force. And yet, his need to strike them down overwhelmed his rationality. One of the things you're all going to learn is what your own warning signs are."

Dox give me a shallow nod. "What are yours?"

I smile, flaring out my environmental shield as I rise into the air to better emphasise my point. "I don't have any. I have attained enlightenment. I have perfect unity with and awareness of my desires. Though I am.. no longer precisely the man I was before. This doesn't mean that I can do anything; I still have to actually want to do a thing and the mortal frame is only capable of wanting a thing so much. However, it has left me exceedingly powerful and mentally stable."

K-K'p wiggles his mandibles. "How do we attain such power?"

"No idea. I did it through months of meditation and self reflection, constant ring-usage while maintaining my humanitas, followed by merging with the Ophidian and managing to separate again. If you want to try working towards that, be my guest. I'd suggest leaving the advanced stuff until you've gotten the hang of the basics, but since the first steps are the basic training I'm giving you anyway…."

"Now, did you notice how Lantern Tarant's environmental shield shut down for a moment?" Another round of affirmatives. "His fear of what happened to him overwhelmed his personal desires. As such, his ring temporarily shut down because it could no longer connect him to the orange light. Needless to say, that happening in combat is very bad. And why you'll all be wearing spacesuits or armour when we start practising space combat."

I take a hologram projector out of subspace and activate it, displaying the sigils of each of the Lantern Corps… Or at least each of the colours.

"Those of you who have seen Green Lanterns will be familiar with the sigil in the centre. Green is the colour of willpower. Those who use it focus their minds on precisely what they want the ring to do in order to generate constructs. Doing the same yourselves will turn your rings off. To the left we have the sigil of the yellow light of fear. The only extant user of this colour is the Green Lanterns' former First Lantern, Thaal Sinestro. If you act with the intent of causing fear or are overwhelmed by fear yourself, your ring will turn off. On the right, the sigil of the blue light of hope. No one uses it. Feel too much hope and your ring will turn off. At mid-left, we have our own sigil. The orange light of avarice is what you will be trained to use. Focusing on it will allow you to fight. Focusing on it too much will drive you mad. Lantern Tarant got a mild flash of what it can be like. If you want to see a more extreme example, visit the Blue Cells and try talking to Larfleeze."

"Far left, we have the red light of rage and hate. You've all got cause to be angry, and several of you hate the Reach. That's fine in itself, but if you focus on those emotions during combat?"

I click my right thumb and forefinger and point at Strata.

"What happens?"

"Our rings will turn off."

"Quite." I nod. "Mid-right, we have the indigo sigil of compassion. Feel too compassionate? Your ring will turn off. Last but not least, the violet sigil of love. Used by the Zamarons. If you focus on love your ring will turn off."

I smile. "And the kicker is, remaining able to feel each of them is a vital component to you remaining sane. I have no interest in turning you into semi-guided weapons. I am creating a Lantern Corps of Lanterns. I will teach you to focus without becoming too narrowly focused, to feel without being overwhelmed by feeling and to fight and to not fight. And if it all goes wrong and we're forced to put you in the Blue Cells with Larfleeze I will do my best to restore you to sanity."

I look around the group. "Any questions before we move on?"

back

Authority 6

next

21st August

22:27 GMT

"…energy pulses are a problem, power rings can create almost any other kind of weapon and those will have their standard effects. For example-" I generate a railgun, somewhat shorter than what I'm used to using in actual combat. "-this is a railgun. My people worked out how to make them a little after we first achieved powered flight, and they're excellent at delivering solid ordnance to a humanoid target at medium range or a large or stationary target at long range. They're useful for Lanterns because they're propelled by a burst of electricity; even if you're only building up a charge slowly, a construct capacitor will wait until you've got enough before firing."

R-K'rr rotates his head slightly to the side. "I am unconvinced that a physical projectile propelled in this way would have significant impact on warships in combat."

"Fair enough. Would you mind creating a construct barrier for me?"

"That is not a fair test. I do not believe that I currently have the ability to create cruiser-grade barriers."

"I understand. Please do it anyway."

R-K'rr concentrates for a moment and a barrier forms just in front of him.

I nod. "Thank you. This may hurt a little." I take a crumbler round out of subspace and hold it out so that everyone can get a look. Dox doesn't merely look, he scans it at once. "My homeworld is much less technologically advanced than each of yours. But. A tiny proportion of my species are scientific and technological savants, able to invent things that we shouldn't have the ability to create yet. This, is a crumbler round."

I step forward and tap the end against R-K'rr's barrier. The crumble effect triggers immediately, a fracturing and fraying hole appearing in the construct as the remains of the activated round fall through my fingers.

"Ow."

"I use them for destroying energy shields, and I usually propel them with a railgun. I have another type for penetrating magic shields and hurting arcane lifeforms. And a third type for killing Demons." I dismiss the railgun construct. "Though the damage that can be inflicted by a sufficiently powerful kinetic strike should not be underestimated."

Next, I generate a cold gun construct. "This is a cold gun. Please have your rings grant you thermal vision."

There are flickers of orange from the eyes of all of the assembled Lanterns, even the princesses to whom I've shown this before. I wait until they're all finished, then point the gun at the ground to my right and fire, panning it around as hoarfrost builds up on the ground.

"As you can see -and would probably be able to feel if your environmental shields weren't protecting you- the ground where it struck was just reduced to near absolute zero. The particular mechanism which this weapon uses also tends to bypass most forms of energy shield. Both of these weapons can be created with relatively little avarice. With a little more focus-" I create a graser construct. "-coherent radiation weapons are possible. As are scarier things-" I generate a singularity beam projector and Dox blanches. "-like this. It should go without saying that if you generate an indiscriminate weapon you should be certain what you're pointing it at."

"On a more philosophical level, learning to unify your desire to achieve a particular objective with your desire to perform a particular activity leading to that objective is a quite useful tool for increasing the power you can bring to bear in conflicts in which you don't have a particular personal investment. Unavoidably, most of the people you will be fighting will be Reach-altered slaves for whom you will feel pity. Others will be Reach soldiers for whom you bear no personal malice. Remember that our ultimate objective in this war is not the death of any one person but the cessation of the Reach as a political entity. Focus on your desire for that, and be mindful of how every action you perform contributes to that."

"Now, I'm sure that you're tired of listening to me so I've set up a practical exercise. In the rings around the third planet of this system-" It used to be the first, until the Controllers started ripping useful elements out of it to make this one. "-I've placed a number of transponders. And automated defence drones. Lanterns K-K'p, Strata, R-K'rr and Tarant. Your job is to get three transponders each and then come back here. Komand'r, Koriand'r, you're on monitor duty again. I don't want any of my first proper class dying."

Strata… I think that's a frown. "How powerful are these automated defences?"

"Low power. They can hurt you through your environmental shield and they can batter down your construct shields. But they won't do either particularly quickly and they should cut out if it looks like you're in serious distress. I'm not trying to get you hurt. This test is adjusted to skills you should already have. Future practicals will be harder. Dismissed."

Tarant smiles. "Is there a prize for the winner?"

"I will personally pat them upon the head. It's a gesture of great approval in my culture."

"Heh. Right."

Some of R-K'rr's eyes turn towards Dox. "Will Lantern Dox not be participating?"

My eyes move to Dox. "He can if he wants."

"I do not understand. Are you not in command?"

"No, he.-" / "In point of fact…"

Dox and I look at each other, and I bow my head and open my right hand in his direction.

"The command structure we have agreed upon is that I will have strategic command while he will have tactical command. He will teach you how to use your ring and lead you into combat. I will ensure that our forces are numerous enough to win and are deployed to places most likely to harm the Reach to the greatest extent possible. It is unlikely that I will often take to the field with my ring, but I wish to ensure that I understand the application of a device I may well depend upon. My rank is Clarissi. His is Illustres, and he is my immediate subordinate."

I nod. "As the Corps expands and we.. learn where one another's particular skills lie, our roles may evolve somewhat. But the important point is that while it might aid his understanding of how to use a ring to go with you, I can't actually order him to do so." I frown. "Also, it appears that your classmates are leaving you behind."

R-K'rr's eyes swivel to the place that they were standing a moment before. Komand'r is floating just above where she had been standing, eyebrows slightly raised and clearly waiting for him. The rest are… Ring? Ah yes, halfway to the ring already.

There's a flash of orange light as R-K'rr follows them, Komand'r just behind him.

I watch them leave for a moment, then turn back to Dox. "I thought that went alright."

"Most of what you told them was already stated in your written reports."

"Not everyone reads those quite as thoroughly as you do."

For a moment he seems genuinely puzzled. "That's foolish. You warned them what might happen before you handed them their rings."

"If everyone made sensible decisions the whole time, our job would be much easier."

"I disagree. With regard to their stated objectives, the Reach are exceedingly sensible. I hope that they become less sensible when we start fighting them in earnest."

"You know… It might help if you did participate in-."

"Coluans don't get overwhelmed by our desires. Most of your philosophical practices would be pointless for me."

"Oh. Then -if you don't mind me asking- why are you here?"

"There may be tactical uses of power rings that I have overlooked. And since Sinestro was unwilling to tutor me-."

"What?"

"He didn't believe that it was a worthwhile use of-."

"No, no, I mean: you spoke to Sinestro?"

"His ring uses the same communication system as ours. He was surprised to hear from me, but he was reasonably civil about it. Why does this concern you?"

"Because-." My ring flashes with an incoming message. "Who is it?"

"Lantern Gardner."

Oh.

back

Authority 7

next

21st August

22:32 GMT

Right. I look away from my ring and toward Dox. "Would you mind if I answered this? I doubt that the Guardians would lift their communications ban if it wasn't important."

"You detailed your personal relationship with Lantern Gardner at length in your reports, along with your recommendation that we do everything reasonable to maintain a cordial relationship with the Green Lantern Corps. Answer him."

Okay. First time I've spoken to someone from Earth -aside from Adam Blake- in over a month… "Answer."

An image of Guy's… Chest and part of his leg appear over my ring. "…probably not even gunna-."

"Guy?"

The image from my ring blurs for a moment as Guy moves it in front of his face. "Paul! How's it goin'?"

"Pretty well, all things considered. You?"

"Couldn't be better. Hey, ah, Green Man told me about what you did in Vega."

Ahhh. "Which.. bit in particular?"

"Where you took down the Citadel, freed a bunch a' slaves and negotiated a peace treaty between alla the pirate groups. And Medphyll told me about that Dominator prison you broke open. Good stuff."

"Oh. Yes. Um, the Citadel was really a team thing, but… Yes, I was involved in all of that."

"What, you got a new team now?"

"… Yes. Guy, as much as I'd love a chat I'm.. sort of in the middle of a lesson-."

"What, you got someone new t'teach yah stuff?"

"No, I'm teaching a class of Orange Lanterns. It's.. not really something I can offload… Since I'm the only one who's really got any experience…"

"Oh. Yeah. Ah, listen, I kinda gotta talk to yah in person. Think we can meet up?"

"Sure. I'm a few systems away from Maltus right now. I'm still warded, but the other Lanterns aren't. You should be able to find us easily enough."

"What, you think I'm faster than you?"

"I assumed that the Green Lantern Corps kept you around for some reason. Why, where are you?"

"I'm in the Sector House in One Four One Six."

Never been, haven't planned to. Quick check where the class are… "Guy, I haven't got time to get to you, have a chat and then make it back here by the time I have to carry on teaching. On the other hand, you can fly here while I finish the class and we can talk then. That'll be quicker."

Guy looks away for a moment, his head sort of wiggling back and forth as he considers the matter. "There anyone there with you right now?"

"Yes. Vril Dox the Second."

Guy clenches his eyes slightly. "You know he's a clone of Vril Dox the First, right? The guy who took over his homeworld, turned everyone into bio-robots before deciding that they were crimping his style and flyin' off to steal cities?"

Dox's face is pretty impassive. My own is forming a rictus grin. "You know Kon-El is half a clone of Lex Luthor, right?"

"That ain't the same thing. He didn't bring him up, an' Wondy-."

"And you're half Roland Gardner. And he brought you up."

Guy's face hardens. "Low blow, Paul."

"You're insulting a colleague of mine who's standing right next to me. If he starts collecting cities I'll be sure to have a word with him about it."

"Alright, fine." His face becomes more serious. Professional. "Where exactly have you been recruitin'?"

"I've had an eye out for potential Orange Lanterns everywhere I go. I even offered Jack Chance a ring."

"You wh-?" His face grows larger as he pulls his ring closer and stabs his left forefinger towards my point of view. "Okay, new rule: no stealin' our guys."

"Why, are they indentured or something? I thought that a Green Lantern could give up their ring whenever they wanted?"

"No, I'm tellin' you not to do it because it's a dick move."

"Fine. I won't offer rings to any more currently serving Green Lanterns. Happy?"

"Not particularly. You been recruiting in One Four One Seven?"

Why would.. he have a problem with that? Not like the Green Lantern Corps are welcome on Korugar. "I've… Sort of. Why would that matter to you?"

"What, you didn't think having a Green Lantern and an Orange Lantern comin' from the same planet might be a problem?"

"Under the circumstances, no. Not really. Not unless Lantern Tui's banishment sentence has been rescinded. And I haven't-."

Guy frowns in bewilderment. "Katma doesn't like your guy anymore than I do, but what's that got to do with-?"

"'Guy'?"

"What?"

"No, not Guy. 'Guy'." He blinks, his head tilted slightly to the side. "You said 'my guy'. I'm trying to recruit a Korugarian woman, Doctor Soranik Natu. And I haven't recruited her yet. Given how.. the Korugarians feel about power rings I was trying to build up to it. What guy?"

"Prince Ragnar of Betrassus."

"Who?"

"He's flyin' around this Sector with an orange power ring. You sure there ain't somethin' you wanna tell me?"

"Guy, we've only just started making personal lanterns. We've only got four Controllers hooked up to our Central Power Battery. I'd like to move to a Sector Lantern system eventually, but that's not going to be for years yet."

"So who else is givin' out orange power rings?"

"Ah. The Qwardians, maybe? But.. it's more likely that he picked up one of the ones I called from Larfleeze's cave. I still don't know how many of those there were."

He frowns. "You haven't tracked them down yet?"

"It was… Fourth on my to-do list?"

Guy looks decidedly unimpressed. "Well when yer finished with yer class, get over here. You've got a mess t' clean up."

back

Authority 8

next

22nd August

02:51 GMT -6

Ping.

My eyes slowly come open, and it takes me a moment to remember where I am. Been a while since I've been that tired, at least without being blasted near to death. On my left Koriand'r grasps my arm a little tighter, moaning softly in her sleep. On my right, Komand'r's legs are entwined with mine and her head is lying on my chest. It's also a while since I've been able to engage in penetrative…

I frown. No, that was actually the first time, not counting that incident in Osaka when that silly woman hospitalised herself. Huh.

Ping.

Yes, yes, I haven't forgotten.

I try sitting up a little, and feel a tightening about my extremities from my bedfellows. Drat. Don't particularly want to wake them… No, that's probably unavoidable. Ring, transition quietly.

By your command.

An unavoidable flash of orange light and I appear across the room, completely naked. Ah, there's nothing quite as good at clearing up a soiled bedchamber before sleeping as a power ring. Wonderful device. I bend down to pick up a pair of Hulk-size jogging bottoms and carefully slip them on before picking up my recently self-repaired Mother Box and tiptoeing toward the door. It's night in this part of Tamaran, but I don't particularly want to flash a member of the night staff. Keeping my body between the door and the bed I extrude a thin orange filament and spread it throughout the door's locking mechanism before silently opening it and stepping through. Carefully close it behind me… Done.

With their ancestral… Does it count as ancestral yet? It's only two generations since Tamaran lost… But they'd been fighting on and off before that… Traditional enemies. With their traditional enemies 'verifiably put beyond use' as the Irish say, Tamaran had as large a street party as their economy could support. With my Orange Lanterns as guests of honour. Given that tithe requirements have been abolished it turns out that was actually a pretty good party.

Not that I think that they underestimate the amount of work they'll have to do in order to capitalise on the situation, but the mood is celebratory and… The Princesses were feeling frisky and didn't want to risk a 'woman of titanium, man of plywood' incident. Not that they had to work hard to convince me. I'm certainly not.. over Jade or anything like that, but I'm… At least willing to.. think about other people in an amorous fashion.

Still need to do something about the Psions before too long, and I'll have to start organising work crews for the shipyards and the G-Gnome settlements-.

My ring flashes.

That's something I'm going to have to get used to. Tamaranians tend to be direct, and with my Lanterns still being so new to the role I'm fielding a great many questions. I was assuming that we'd have to train as we go, but I'm going to have to try to find time to put some sort of structure in place… Get someone else to do the organisational work which I'm not temperamentally suited to.

"Answer."

Lantern Ernal's face appears above my ring. She's one of the ones I left hanging around the Imperium's fleet, partly to offer aid and partly to remind them that they don't have hegemony here. "Yes?"

"Grayven, Admiral Oswin wishes to speak with you."

And partly so that we can communicate. Tamaran doesn't have FTL communications other than power rings and my own stuff isn't compatible with the Imperium's technology. I could probably talk to them, but they couldn't get hold of me with it. Assuming that the Crown Imperium's fleet keeps Kranaltine time, it's early evening for them. If he wants to discuss anything particularly complex I'll just have to tell him I'll sort it out later.

"Put him through."

Lantern Ernal's face moves out of shot, being replaced with that of Admiral Oswin. "Prince Grayven, I have recently been informed of a development in our anti-piracy work-" Read 'near-genocidal purge'. "-which I feel may be of interest to you."

"I agreed to give you free rein. If you want Lantern support-."

"No, no. Nothing like that. Have you ever heard of a planet called 'Timaron'?"

Name sounds familiar from somewah. "Sector Two Eight One Three. Bombarded from orbit under the orders of General Zod of Krypton, shortly before his militarist rebellion got shut down hard by the Consular Guard."

"If you say so. I hadn't heard of it before today, but apparently that's where the late and largely unlamented 'Commodore' Amalak came from. Some of our intelligence people have been digging through the wreckage, and they found certain alien artefacts they couldn't identify."

"If they found anything Apokoliptian, I would strongly advise that you dispose of it without exposing your people more than you absolutely have to. My people usually booby trap anything of value, and some of the traps will be of considerable magnitude."

Oswin holds up some sort of sash, turning it so that the decoration on the front is clearly visible to me. "Do you recognise this symbol?"

Yes I do. How the heck did that get here? "Yes, and I'm interested."

"Though it pains me to admit it, a good deal of it is too advanced for us to do anything with. I thought that you and I might negotiate an exchange."

I nod. "It's of no interest to Tamaran. I can't in good conscience grant political concessions for what might be a barrel of trinkets. But if you want something from me personally…"

"Visit me on my command ship when you have a moment. I'll trust you to make a fair offer."

He nods, and the ring deactivates. He might be serious about that. The Imperials are the 'my word is my bond' sort of aristocrats, at least between nobles. Of course, I'm going to assume that they're keeping at least one of everything I identify for them-.

"Have you grown tired of us already?" I turn, seeing.. Komand'r walk languidly out of the bedroom completely naked. "Or were you perhaps having trouble sleeping?"

"I think it would take me a very long time to grow tired of you." She walks closer, slowly, deliberately… Mm. "I had Mother Box-" I raise my right hand slightly, showing her to Komand'r. "-wake me because it's mid-evening in my home on Earth now. And I like to read to my daughter before she goes to sleep."

Komand'r's eyes narrow very slightly. Curious rather than irritated. "You have a daughter?"

"Yes. She's not really old enough to participate in a war yet, but her telepathic abilities are really quite impressive. She starts school for the first time in two weeks. Ideally, I'd be spending more time at home to prepare her, but-" I look around. "-I couldn't put this off."

"And her mother?"

"Oh, her natural parents died before I met her. I adopted her… Nearly five months ago now."

"And do you have a wife?"

I smile and frown at the same time, then point my left thumb at our bedroom door. "I probably wouldn't have done that if I had a wife. I'd have invited her, at least."

"Then I would like to marry you."

Huh? I shake my head. "I'm.. sorry..?"

She walks past me, heading for the balcony at the end of the corridor. I amble along behind her. Reaching the balcony, she leans against the waist-high railings and unselfconsciously flashes the sleeping city below. "Tamaranian monarchs designate their heirs. Since I was… Damaged, I never thought that I could become queen. I assumed that in the fullness of time the throne would go to Koriand'r or Ryand'r." She turns her head to look over her left shoulder at me. "But now I am healthy. More than that, I have the power of X'Hal herself." She turns around, raising her hands and allowing burning purple energy to glow around them for a moment before dropping them again. "Given your mockery of the Omega Men, I no longer believe that my brother is a rival. I want to be crown princess, and I believe that marrying you maximises my chances. You are popular, you have demonstrated your abilities as a warrior and leader and you have enabled us to have a stronger future."

Iiiii… Ah… "I… Recently ended a long term relationship. I'm.. not.. sure.. that starting another now is really-."

"It is a political match. I'm not asking you to love me."

"And it feels wrong that you're not. Wouldn't that be better?"

She frowns. "I suppose." She shrugs. "But I doubt that I'd find a lover as politically useful as you."

"I didn't make myself a New God to accept anything less than the best. I have no interest in a political relationship without love. That said…" I look her over. Well… I could do a lot worse. "I'm not.. promising anything. But.. if you.. want to get to know me on a more personal level... I'm open to the idea."

back

Authority 9

next

22nd August

09:37 GMT

Not being an idiot, I drop out of warp a good long distance before I reach the Green Lanterns' Sector House. Phasing and invisibility engaged, I scan the system.

Warning: Will detected.

Green lights flash across the space between me and the Sector House, probing the region of space near my emergence point. Momentum being what it is I'm not still there, but it's nice to know that the Greenies are reasonably on the ball. Attempts to scan the Sector House -which looks hauntingly like a slightly scaled down green-decorated Watchtower- are met with failure. Plenty of green light energy residues around the place, indicating that Lanterns must come through here a lot. No obvious traps or mining facilities nearby, though there's a hydrogen harvesting platform on one of the system's two super Jupiters.

I was a bit sceptical of the Sector House system, personally. Given that there are two Lanterns per Sector at most, how worthwhile is it to give them a place in space to work out of? They're going to be able to go home most evenings if they want to, any prisoner is either going to be handed over to a local world or Oa pretty quickly… Then I remembered that this Sector neighbours that of their former First Lantern and I'm surprised instead that it's not bigger.

It's all about sending a message.

I phase back in and accelerate in the general direction of the Sector House, and only a few seconds pass before my ring starts to blink. I raise it to the left side of my helmet. "Orange Lantern Two Eight One Four."

"Paul, was that you?"

"I'm in-system now, if that's what you're asking."

"Guess we've still got some bugs to work out on the detection system."

"I am pretty sneaky." I stare into the distance where I can just about make out the twinkling light of the Sector House with my unaided eyes. "So… Can I come in?"

"Hey, mi… Ah… Space station is you space station."

"Right."

I remove my left hand from my helmet and cut communication. Then I become visible, change my velocity relative to the Sector House to zero and then transition towards the Sector House's entrance. The entrance tunnel is open to space with bright green light shining from its exterior and controlling the flow of air. I can just about see something of the interior of the station.

I hope they've got actual light-lights in there, otherwise seeing everything in green is going to get uncomfortable. I reach out gingerly with my right gauntlet, pressing against the… No, completely permeable. Alright then. I move forwards, floating inside the entrance tunnel.

"You coming in or what?"

I accelerate, coming out into a small antechamber. Air's fine, so I send my helmet into subspace. There are what look like defensive weapons concealed in the walls, paramedic supplies mounted on the walls in case whoever was coming in was injured and several more glowing portals leading off to other parts of the Station. And a normal light mounted in the ceiling. The whole structure is green, but at least other colours show up like they're supposed to.

I pass through the room and descend through the portal in the floor, which brings me out into the main meeting hall. Or rather, what serves as the meeting hall in the Watchtower. Here, it's clearly a working area. There are a small cluster of empty Sciencells along one wall, banks of computer equipment and monitoring screens. Actual screens; they have colour. The meeting table is smaller than the one in the Watchtower and round rather than oblong.

Guy waves up at me as I descend. Lantern Tui is content merely to watch me as I come in to land a short distance away and walk up to the one free seat. I don't recognise the third fellow, but my database identifies him as Betrassusian. Dull purple skin, facial tattoos, powerfully muscular build and-. "You're wearing body armour!"

"Ah? Yes?" He glances at Guy, looking for guidance. Guy just shrugs. "As are you..?"

"Have you got any idea how long it took me to persuade the Green Lanterns from Two Eight One Four to do that?" I wave my left arm at Guy. "I mean, look at him!"

The Betrassusian fellow takes a moment to look Guy over.

"What?"

He looks away. "I am certain that Lantern Gardner's personal protective equipment is adequate to his needs."

Guy gets up and walks around the table, moving behind Lantern Tui before approaching me. "What kept you?"

"I can't just disappear whenever I feel like it, Guy. I have a job." I dismiss my power armour back into subspace as I land, keeping only my lightly armoured field uniform. "Though if you really need me to hold your hand while the nasty Orange rookie makes faces at you, then I suppose that I'm obliged to put in an appearance."

Guy grins. "Just wanted you to see what happens when you Orange bozos tangle with a real Lantern."

We stare each other down for a moment, and out of the corner of my eye I see the Betrassusian chap's ring start to glow.

Then we step towards each other, right hands clasping together as we pull each other into an embrace.

He pats me on the back, a little harder than he really needs to. "Been too long, Paul."

"Sorry. I've been busy."

We separate, and Guy makes an upwards gesture with his right hand. "And what, you can't call?"

"Actually, no. Thanks to the Guardians, orange rings can't communicate with green ones. And I'm…" I look down. "I'm not ready to go back to Earth yet. Stuff to do."

Guy looks at me sceptically for a moment, then appears to shrug it off. "Alright, if you say so."

He keeps an eye on me as he walks back around the table to his seat, and I take position opposite him. "So what's the problem, anyway? I told you Prince Ragnar's not a part of my Corps. If he's committed a crime, arrest him. It's no different to me arresting…" I point at Guy with my right forefinger. "You remember the Poglachian Green Lantern Corps?"

"Ah, man, those guys were painful. Unfortunately, your guy Ragnar-"

"Not my guy."

"-seems to actually know what he's doin'." A holographic image appears in the middle of the table, showing a slender Betrassusian man in silver and orange armour. His tattoos are more complex than those of the local Lantern, and he's carrying a sword whose edge shimmers with some sort of energy field. "Which is kinda the problem."

The Betrassusian Lantern nods. "Among the aristocratic families of my homeworld, status and authority are traditionally gained through combat. Prince Ragnar is using his ring to enable his belligerence. He challenges any other noble who he feels has slighted him and then slays them in the arena. Any criminal who has the misfortune to cross his path is slain no matter what their crime."

"And what does the local law say about that?"

The Betrassusian looks to Guy for a moment before continuing. "As a member of the ruling household, he has the authority to administer justice as he sees fit. And no-one is forced to accept his challenges."

"So he's inconvenient and brutal but hasn't actually broken the law yet." He nods. "He doesn't have a personal lantern. Why not just wait for him to run out of power?"

Lantern Tui purses her lips. "He seems to be managing. That was why we assumed that he was working with your blessing."

Hm. Interesting. "Alright then. It sounds like I should meet him."

back

Authority 10

next

22nd August

09:45 GMT

Lantern Dulok frowns in puzzlement as we fly towards Betrassus. And probably a little in disapproval. "There are orange power rings scattered throughout the universe, and you have no idea where they are or who wields them?"

"Something like that. I had been assuming that they'd either find bearers in Okaara or be strewn between Okaara and Earth, but if one made it all the way here then that clearly isn't the case."

Lantern Tui looks thoughtful. "Do you think that they have seeker protocols?"

"No, that's… Not impossible, but highly unlikely. Larfleeze didn't make rings in the way that the Guardians and Controllers do, he just ordered Construct-Lanterns to become rings. I haven't worn one for any length of time, but apparently their personalities remain somewhat intact."

That makes her look uncomfortable. "Then do you think..? They're trying to get home?"

"Based on the sample of one that I've located so far, I'd say not." I shrug. "It went to a man who desired something constantly and very strongly. My working hypothesis was that any that weren't just floating in the void would have been drawn to people in a similar way, but I don't have anything like enough evidence to prove that."

Lantern Dulok nods. "And what happened to him?"

"Not a lot. King Myand'r recognised the symbol on the ring as belonging to a local legendary monster and refused to wear it. Then, after we destroyed the Citadel, he didn't want it anymore."

"Would it not have been helpful in restoring his world, or in protecting it?"

"Maybe. But orange rings have an unfortunate effect on the minds of those who wear them. I haven't studied enough subjects to know exactly how bad it can get-."

"Giant cakes, moons spinning around…"

"I put it back."

Lantern Tui blinks. "You… Put back..?"

"Yes? Did-?" I glance at Guy. "I can't believe that Guy didn't mention it when you were on Earth."

"I've learned to tune Lantern Gardner out."

"And see what you miss!"

"How come you're dealing with this, anyway? We're not anywhere near Two Eight One Four."

Guy grins. "Guardians recognised my skills."

"What, they thought you had the best chance of persuading me to help you?"

"Nope." There's a momentary green glow, then a red sash with a gold lantern badge appears across his chest and a red cloak trails from his shoulders. "I mean they formally recognised them. Guess they couldn't have the Host of Ion being a regular Sector Lantern."

"Well done. How did Jordan take the news?"

"Ugh." Guy looks away, rolling his eyes as he groans. "Guardians upped him at the same time. The exact same time. Said they didn't want either of us claiming seniority over the other."

"How well they know you both." Oh. "Does that mean that Two Eight One Four has a new Lantern?" Because if it's Alan I can put that journey to Qward on the backburner.

"Yeah, some Russian chick. I haven't met her yet."

"And she got chosen ahead of Alan because..?"

"'cause the Guardians don't want a guy they can't train from scratch. I asked, okay? I think he's a great guy too."

We've lost Lantern Tui. "Who is 'Alan'?"

"A long time ago there was a Green Lantern called Yalun Gur. He went off the deep end Sinestro-style-." Lanterns Tui and Dulok share an awkward glance. "What?"

"It is…" Lantern Dulok looks away awkwardly. "Something of a point of contention between us. Betrassus benefited greatly from Lantern Sinestro's protection while he was a Sector Lantern here, and I was called to the Green Lantern Corps to take his place upon his ascension to the Honour Guard. Even after learning.. what he did, I still find much to admire about him."

"You wouldn't say that if it was your planet he took over."

"On the contrary. On Betrassus, most battles are fought between small numbers of aristocrats. If a single warrior as skilled as Sinestro emerged he might well rise to a position of supreme power by his own abilities. If anything, the relative peace Sinestro brought is more unusual than the return to the old ways that Prince Ragnar's ascendancy is threatening to bring about."

"Anyway, Lantern Gur goes off the deep end and tries to conquer Earth. The Guardians hear about it and remotely destroy his ring's AI. I don't know if he just wasn't a very good fighter without it or if the AI being destroyed shut the rest of the ring off as well. In any case, the locals kill him and dispose of his ring and lantern. Centuries later, it somehow ends up in the hands of a man named Alan Scott, whose will is powerful enough to activate it. He used it on and off for about twenty five years, and because its AI was fried the first the Guardians heard of it was when Lantern Jordan asked them about him."

"So what irritates me about it is that he's a veteran with incredible willpower who would be perfectly happy to work for them, but the Guardians put a block on his recruitment. No matter how strong willed or heroic he is, he will never be chosen."

Guy winces slightly. "He is ninety, Paul."

"And he rejuvenates when exposed to green light. And how old are the Guardians themselves? Age is no excuse. And I will be telling them that when I visit Oa."

Guy raises his eyebrows slightly at that, but with the atmosphere coming up he decides to ignore it for now. "So what exactly are you planning on saying to Ragnar?"

"He likes fighting, I've got a large war that needs fighters. Unless I see a very good reason not to, recruiting him is my preferred option. Failing that, I'll take his ring and let him think about what he's done."

"Need a bit more detail than that, Paul."

"What? I.. can't, not until I've had the chance to examine his psyche. And since when do you want detailed plans in advance?"

"Comes with the sash, Paul. I'm the ranking Lantern here, which means I gotta take responsibility." He smiles smugly. "And come to think of it, you should probably call me 'sir'. Y'know, when we've got company."

"Okay, one, being ranking Lantern means nothing if the other Lantern is from a different Corps. Two." I let my own formal robes appear from subspace, my full rank insignia running down the left flap. "What makes you think you outrank me?"

back

Authority 11

next

22nd August

09:51 GMT

"Let me see that…"

Guy squints slightly. Power rings will translate pretty much anything, but if the format is very different from your own language it might take a moment for your eyes, ring and brain to work out what they're seeing. The Clickers' written language is quite pretty to look at, so I decided to use that for rank insignia. Unfortunately, because they sort of write with their mouths it tends to result in a column of characters resembling Japanese characters that got pushed together into a single character and written out by someone more familiar with Arabic.

"Lantern assigned to Sector Two Eight One Four… Host of the Ophidian… Hey, where is she, anyway?"

"Still in my personal lantern, but we'll be moving her into the Orange Central Power Battery before too long."

"Oh really?"

"That was the arrangement I came to with her. She wants to experience multiple non-overlapping desire sets, and the best place for her to do that is the Central Power Battery. The Controllers think that'll also boost the rest of the Corps a bit, which is probably why the Guardians keep Ion in your Central Power Battery."

"And your little Demon-things?"

"I find they mostly unsettle people. And I don't want to encourage other Orange Lanterns to use assimilation outside of.. dire necessity."

"Alright. Raised to the Honour Guard…" Guy smirks. "And exactly how many of you are there?"

"The Honour Guard consists of me. The Corps has two other Lanterns and five trainees, not counting Prince Ragnar or the Controllers or… Whoever else has picked up an orange ring while I've been busy."

"Oh. 'cause for a moment there I thought it was a big deal. And, ah-." His eyes widen very slightly. "Oh, you have got to be kidding me."

Lantern Tui appears to have tuned him out, but Lantern Dulok gamely reads on. "Raised to the rank of Illustres." He looks at Guy. "I suppose that means that he has seniority."

Guy turns to face the planet once more. "No, no, it doesn't count if they're in a different Corps."

Lantern Tui's clearly had enough with our posturing. She dives towards the planet's surface. "Can we please get on with the mission? Sirs?"

Dulok looks like he wants to follow her at once, but hesitates while Guy decides what to do.

Guy and I look at each other. "We should probably-." / "We should probably-."

We twist in the air and swoop after Lantern Tui, heading towards the planet's fifth largest city. Prince Ragnar apparently picked his most recent fight with a scion of its ruling clan, and we're heading for their coliseum now. Though if the flickers of red and yellow I'm seeing are anything to go by…

Magnify.

Prince Ragnar floats before the ducal box as the clan chief very grudgingly hands him… Some sort of medallion. In the arena itself a group of medical orderlies check the corpse of his late opponent for a moment, then begin the process of respectfully removing his body. Sword wounds. Not ring-inflicted. Maybe that's how he's kept his ring going: the environmental shield alone would boost his survivability and wouldn't consume all that much power. If he only wears it in combat…

"Too late for that poor bastard."

"Yeah." So let's take a closer look at Ragnar himself. Ah. "He wanted to be a Green Lantern."

"If that was what he was aimin' for he kinda missed."

"You only recruit when there's a fatality or a promotion. You probably miss any number of perfectly good candidates because there isn't an opening at an appropriate time in an appropriate place. I mean, look at the man."

"Yeah, looks like a real piece a' work." Ragnar turns and raises the medallion so that the crowd can see it. A small group cheer rapturously while the rest seem far more subdued.

"Look at his will. His absolute conviction. And his yellow."

"Barely got any."

"I think there's some there. But you're right; it's so controlled, so... Beaten down. I can barely tell what it is."

"Another Great Clan has fallen." Guy and I look at Dulok for an explanation. "I wasn't certain at first, but now it seems clear that Prince Ragnar is demanding oaths of vassalage from all of the Great Clans."

"And why's that a big deal?"

"All clans acknowledge the supremacy of the Royal Clan, but maintain a high degree of independence. King Nol has been encouraging collegiality and shared decision making. It seems that his son prefers autocracy."

"I've got to say, this is starting to sound like one of those 'Prime Directive' situations."

Guy nods. "Okay. I mean, I think Tui's single but I haven't actually asked."

"What?"

"'Prime Directive'. That's Star Trek, right? Like with Kirk and the hot alien babes?"

"Actually, the Prime Directive was more of a Next Generation thing. And Kirk's libido gets overstated quite a bit."

"Neeeeeerd."

"Pretty much. But this is how Betrassusians decide things. Usually, unifications require massive wars. They're doing it with a few dozen deaths, and none of the people he challenged were forced to accept."

"If it helps, most Betrassusians would rather things weren't decided this way. It was something we were moving away from."

"Then why doesn't the law get changed? Why doesn't the King rein him in? The fact that Sector Lanterns exist shouldn't be an excuse not to gird your own loins and sort the situation out yourself." I sigh. "I better go and talk to him before Lantern Tui decides to do it for me."

I flare my environmental shield slightly, then accelerate towards the arena. Prince Ragnar has flown over to his supporters, receiving backslaps and commendations in good humour with his trophy in hand. Wants to be a Lantern, but grew up while Sinestro was active. As a result he'd be of the 'order over all' school. Which explains why he'd want to follow Sinestro's example and improve 'efficiency' by removing superfluous layers of debate in the planet's government. Curiously, I'm seeing no desire to actually rule himself. And more curiously for me, no obvious sign of spiritual instability. I wasn't expecting anything useful out of this trip other than maybe a mild improvement in relations with the Green Lantern Corps. But I wasn't lying when I said that Prince Ragnar might be exactly what we need.

The background noise drops away as I descend past Lantern Tui and through the open roof of the coliseum. More and more of the locals look upwards, no doubt seeing the green lights behind me as well as my own orange glow. Slight increase in the background fear, but Prince Ragnar's supporters don't seem particularly bothered. One points my way, their idol following it and finally making eye contact with me.

His environmental shield flares as he rises into the air and flies towards me.

"Finally!"

back

Authority 12

next

22nd August

09:58 GMT

And he flies past me and stops in front of the slightly concerned looking Lantern Tui. "I was concerned when the ring which came for me was the wrong colour, but now I see that this was just some kind of test of worthiness! Now I can finally join the Green Lantern Corps!"

Oooh dear. I turn around and float up towards them as Lantern Tui drifts back in an attempt to reclaim her personal space.

"Excuse me, your highness?"

He glances at me and then back to Lantern Tui before turning fully to face me. "Are you to join the Green Lantern Corps as well? I do not know your face…"

"It seems very unlikely to me that I will ever join the Green Lantern Corps. Prince Ragnar, it is my sad duty to inform you that the ring on your finger is… Not green." He frowns. "It is, in fact… Orange."

"Is it… Some sort of training ring? Will I graduate to green once the Green Lantern Corps hierarchy has completed my evaluation?"

"Sorry, no. Completely different organisation. Some of the people who have oversight on the Orange Lantern Corps used to be Guardians, but that's about as far as it goes."

"… Oh." He looks like he's not quite sure what to make of the news. From the look of the colour balance inside him I'd say that while he's slightly disappointed he's prepared to hear me out before having a tantrum. "Then why have I not heard of you?"

Behind him, Lantern Dulok and Guy form up next to Lantern Tui.

"While the Orange Lantern Corps technically predates the Green Lantern Corps, it only had one fully functioning member for most of that time and he never came anywhere near this region of space." At least, assuming that Larfleeze went in a reasonably straight line from Krona's laboratory on Maltus to Vega. "We've started expanding the membership recently-."

"And you noticed my skills and sent a ring to me." He nods to himself. "It is not exactly what I wanted, but I will-."

"Again, no. This came as a complete surprise to me. Though if anything, that's more impressive. The only people I've seen acquire orange rings in the wild tended to go insane as a result. Tell me, does it have a mind of its own?"

"Yes. I had it show me its original form. A head, with the rest of its body atrophied. It was weak." He frowns at me. "What does this mean?"

"If a person knows what they're doing, rings can be remote controlled. I used that ability… A little less than a Betrassusian year ago, to call rings from another part of the universe. I did so unintentionally and a number of the rings got lost on the way as a result. The one you're wearing almost certainly came from a planet called Okaara."

"If I was not chosen, why is it on my finger?!"

"Orange rings respond to avarice. Desire, need. You really want to be a Lantern. And now you are."

His expression sours. "This is not what I wanted at all."

"Your avarice was strong enough to call a ring from a very long way away. I'm the only other Lantern I know to have done that. I certainly can't think of any Green Lanterns who have. My question to you is: what do you intend to do with it?"

"I had thought that I was finally being inducted into the brotherhood of the greatest warriors in existence! Not some… Tiny gathering of madmen!"

"Point of clarification: if they go mad we remove them. Going mad is something to avoid, not some inevitable fate that befalls us all."

"And I thought that it was in recognition of the skills and traits of character which I had developed with the specific aim of becoming a Green Lantern! And instead you say it is because the universe decided that I was throwing some kind of childish fit? As if I was demanding power as my right instead of what I was doing, which was working to earn it!?"

"I'm saying that your desires were so focused on your objective that the ring reacted to that. I doubt very much that you could have focused so intently for so long if you had not been working to realise your desire yourself."

He exhales sharply in irritation, then raises his right hand slightly and looks at the orange ring glowing on his middle finger. He stays like that for a moment, watching the glow. "What do you want?"

"That's what I was planning to ask you, actually. If you want, you can hand me that ring and pretend this never happened. Perhaps if the Green Lanterns have an opening-" I look past him to Lanterns Dulok and Tui. "-due to promotion, hopefully, you could be recruited to replace them. You can keep the ring. You called it to you, so it's yours." Guy doesn't look too pleased at that suggestion. "Or you can join us. We are relatively weak now, but we will grow stronger. Centuries hence, our successors will list you amongst the first generation of Orange Lanterns and recount your deeds to inspire their own." I shrug. "What do you think would have happened if you had been called to join the Green Lantern Corps?"

"A lifetime spent in valiant combat."

Ah. I'm getting a better read on his mindset. Something like that of a medieval knight. Your obligations and personal warrior virtues matter, the causes less so. Unfortunate, but…

"I can offer you war. The Orange Lantern Corps is preparing an invasion of Reach-controlled space. The Reach defeated the Green Lantern-"

"Drew with the Green Lantern Corps."

"-Corps and has continued expanding since. I could detail their crimes, though I suspect that aspect doesn't bother you. Their regular soldiers are unremarkable, but their leaders are cunning, their fleet is powerful and their Beetles are a match for most Lanterns. And the Green Lanterns are barred by treaty from fighting them."

He perks up slightly. "You would have me lead warriors into battle against them?"

"Perhaps. If you proved yourself capable. You would also need formal training in how to use that ring, and we'd need to give you a personal lantern to recharge it from."

"I know how power rings should be used. I have studied every scrap of information on Green Lanterns. I even briefly had the honour of being educated by Thaal Sinestro himself!"

Right. Royal dynasty on a planet under his protection. He probably met Sinestro several times, and given how much of a Lantern fan he is I wouldn't be surprised if Sinestro gave him non-classified mission reports to encourage him. I guess I can tell which side of the 'Sinestro: good or bad' debate he's on.

"Seeing Lanterns fight and doing it yourself are very different things. Using a power ring requires that you think and feel in just the right ways while you fight, and the best ways to use your ring can feel quite counterintuitive to someone mostly familiar with ground-based combat."

And his eyes are orange sigils. Damn it, what did I-?

"You think that I am incapable? That having trained my whole life for this I cannot manage even this paltry copy of a proper power ring?"

I'd interject, but since his ring was made by Larfleeze he's technically right.

"I think that you're less skilled than you could be, yes."

"Then I challenge you. Here and now we will see who knows how best to use power rings!"

I blink, staring at him. Did he just..?

"Hah! Okay. When's good for you?"

back

Authority 13

next

22nd August

10:22 GMT

"You sure you can take him?"

I roll my eyes. "Guy, he's a melee fighter. I've spent the last twenty minutes reviewing his most recent fights: he barely uses his power ring. Jordan would do better."

"Heh heh heh." Guy shakes his head as Lantern Tui gives both of us the evils. "You got no idea how good it is t'hear someone else ribbin' Hal."

"You three still doing those training sessions?"

Guy nods. "We were, 'til Hal an' me got promoted. With just John on his own he's probably not botherin'."

"What about-?"

He shakes his head. "Nah, she's still on Oa doin' basic. John'll get t' polish her up once Larvox gets done teachin' her the basics." Something occurs to him. "Oh, hey, I wan'ned t'say… Last session before Hal an' me left? We brought Alan along with us. Show him what we'd been doin'."

"Oh. Um, thank you. I'm sure that he really appreciated it."

"Probably have liked it better if you were there." I nod. Huh. Surprisingly subtle nudge from Guy there. "See you're still usin' John's ring there. Does that mean we're splittin' credit?"

"What, this?" I hold up my right hand and show him the ring. "Does this look like John's ring to you?"

Guy takes it in with a frown. "Huh. No. Looks kinda crappy, actually. That what the Controllers are turnin' out these days?"

"No, this comes from Larfleeze." I shrug. "No one else wanted it, I've already got a normal one and the Controllers are too busy making rings and lanterns for new recruits to make a second normal one for me."

"So what'd you do with John's?"

"That's now being worn by Controller Hinon Hee Hannanan, who made my original ring. She was also involved in making the original Orange Central Power Battery."

"So did she make that other ring too, or was that Larfleeze?"

Outside in the arena, trumpets blare and I start walking down the tunnel. "No, that was Krona."

I step out onto the sands just as Guy's '"Are you shittin' me?"' gets cut off by the closing gates. Prince Ragnar enters from the gates on the opposite side of the arena, smiling faintly as he passes the bloodstains left by his previous opponent. I stand just inside the arena for a moment, then float up off the ground a little so that I can don my power armour. Then I use the armour's flight systems to fly slowly forward.

We both stop just in front of the referee's box, Ragnar with his sword at rest and me settling back on the ground. The referee is a local man and a minor noble. I imagine that he'd like to give me any advantage he can, but his role is far too constrained to allow anything too cheaty.

"We are here to witness the duel between Prince Ragnar of the Royal Clan and Paul, Illustres of the Orange Lantern Corps! Gentlemen, state your terms!"

Ragnar looks at me sidelong. "When I triumph over you, I will have your rings and your rank."

"I cannot offer you my rank. It was a recognition of my abilities extended to me by others. But my rings? Certainly." He nods, smiling. "Should I win, I will expect you to acknowledge my authority and join my Corps as a rookie."

He takes a step away from me and hoists his sword in one hand, environmental shield flaring slightly. "Agreed."

"The terms are agreed! Gentlemen, you may begin on the second horn!"

BWWWWWWWRRRRHHHHHH!

Scan the sword again just in case… Yep, good. Environmental shield to minimal, kinetic barrier on… Good.

BWWWWWWWRRRRHHHHHH!

Ragnar charges straight at me, sword held high ready to bisect me. I raise my hands slightly in a guard position and brace. He's grinning and not bothering with a battlecry. His sword should defeat most conventional armour and he hasn't bothered scanning me to detect my force field. Does he not know how to? I'm pretty sure that intelligence gathering is something Sinestro would have mentioned… Wait, how old is he? Oh, he wouldn't have been more than ten when Sinestro got promoted, he probably didn't get detailed lessons.

His sword swings down at my left and my left hand comes up to catch it, kinetic barrier glowing faintly as the blade's energy gets nullified. My right hand opens at my chest, touching his and removing the momentum from his charge. His eyes open slightly in surprise, then my right hand moves left and sends a pinpoint kinetic energy blast into his sword hand.

His sword goes flying away to my left, then a backhand slap from my right arm sends him flying to my right. He hits the sands, rolls and comes up to his feet in a fighting pose.

"Ragnar, if you want to fight me, fight me as a Lantern." I take a step towards him, my helmet vanishing into subspace. Another step and the armour covering my arms disappears. A third and I step down onto the sand as my leg armour joins it. A fourth and I'm wearing only my light undersuit. "My people's duelling traditions are different to yours. I'll let you recharge your ring with my lantern if you want."

"That will not be necessary!" Glowing construct armour forms around his body, and a construct sword appears in his hands. "Arm yourself!"

I bow my head slightly, then shake it. Then I pull my main ring from my left hand and drop it to the ground. He looks down at it, then up at my face as I pull Larfleeze's ring from my right hand and drop it as well. "You're giving up your rings? Do you yield?"

"No." I point at him with my right forefinger. "You're a warrior. I'm a philosopher. There is a good deal more to using the orange light than 'screaming and leaping'. You know your desires. I know desire."

"And?"

"And I will teach that to you. I'm going to take your ring, and beat you with that." I extend my right hand and beckon him to me. "Come."

For a moment his constructs shudder as a wave of red passes through him. Then he recovers, eyes glowing with orange sigils, and charges again. "AAAAAAGGGHHHH!"

I look deeper and-

defeathisenemybecomeagreatandrenownedwarriorfollowtheexampleofhistoricalgreatsearnhisplaceinhistoryreceiveadmirationfindhisplacebringhisskillstotheirgreatestlevelaidhisfatherfollowthepathhe'schosentotheendneverbackdownshownofearremoveallweaknesses

-it's remarkably simple, actually.

Ring, come. I have a lesson to teach.

Prince Ragnar jerks, his constructs failing as his ring flies from his finger. Huh, didn't bring the finger with it this time. I suppose that's progress. I hold out my left hand and it lands directly on my ring finger. Ragnar falls to his knees in shock, then pushes himself back up and starts running towards me again. Filaments flick out and grip his sword where it lies on the arena floor, then pull it through the air into my hand.

"Ragnar, stop. I don't want to kill you. You have the makings of a good Lantern. Yield to me, and I will see that you receive the education you need to become the greatest lantern you can be."

"Never! I will die before I yield!"

Can't say he isn't consistent. I apply a ShockCrown to his head, causing him to collapse headlong at my feet. I hold up his sword for a moment, look at it, then carefully lower the tip to the back of his head until it draws a tiny amount of blood.

Then I look over to the referee. "He is unable to continue. Would you mind calling the match for me, please?"

back

Authority 14

next

22nd August

11:34 GMT

"…come immediately. We weren't lining up other buyers."

Admiral Oswin's aide-de-camp leads the way through the heavy transporter carrying the Kryptonian goodies he used to lure me here, while the man himself strolls along at my side. Other crewmen spot us coming and make a point of ducking into corridors or rooms branching off our route, coming stiffly to attention as the Admiral passes. He ignores them like the peasants-. Lowlies-. Lesser beings they are.

"When an important ally makes such an offer, it is only polite to respond promptly."

Lantern Ernal brings up the rear of the party. I suppose that I could have sent her off to do something else, but Imperial nobles are seldom parted from their retainers and I do want to fit into the 'foreign noble' hole in Oswin's head.

"Indeed." He's got really quite remarkable poise. I hadn't noticed before, but now that I study him I note that he doesn't look around as he walks. His eyes never deviate from directly in front of him. He isn't seeing his subordinates and dismissing them, he's barely aware of their presence at all. "These… Kryptonians. Do you have dealings with them?"

"There aren't many left. A few years after General Dru-Zod's attempted putsch something rather unpleasant happened to their homeworld. Most of them died as a result."

"What of their spacecraft? Surely their navy would have survived, if nothing else?"

"They'd undergone an isolationist turn and put most of their fleet in mothballs. The rest were scrapped after General Zod's take-over failed. They had automated platforms, but nothing they could use to make a rapid exodus."

We walk through the large and heavily armoured doors to the cargo hold, crew already bringing out the bins containing Amalak's hoard for me to examine.

"You said that 'most died'. There were some survivors, then?"

"A few that I know of. A group of marines who went AWOL rather than obey the order to return home when their world went into isolationism. An infant whose father foresaw the disaster and was able to build him a faster than light planetary escape pod. Two clones of his." I shrug as we walk down some steps into the cargo area, the crew backing off and the admiral's aide keeping a respectful distance from his master. "There may be others."

Karsta gave me a list of her fellow former marines. I've… Got a suspicion that I'll be ticking off a few names today. Still.. I.. suppose that it's better to know.

"A good deal of what we found appeared to be civilian clothing. Do you think he was studying their culture or taking trophies?"

"I'd assume the latter." I lean over the first unsorted bin and begin lifting items out. "Not that I have much in the way of evidential basis for it."

But I do remember some sort of showdown in the Fortress of Solitude between Earth's Kryptonians and… Some guy, in the comic misleadingly titled The Third Kryptonian. I don't remember him looking anything like Amalak, but maybe that was due to alien race lifting or something.

"I saw your star chart." Subordinates out of his immediate vicinity, Admiral Oswin's neck has started working again. "Krypton is some way from here."

"Krypton was destroyed about forty years ago. It's quite possible that Amalak could have made this collection before coming here." Good job he gave up early. No, this is mostly civilian clothing. Of no real interest… Except…

Yes. More genetic traces. Excellent. Jor-El's database had a large number of samples, but the whole selection was naturally skewed towards those he had access to. As a result, Els made up the greater part of it. These people weren't Els-. Oooh, that one's a Kul. Hm.

"Amalak also had a substantial repository of data on his own people. Would that be of any interest to you?"

Hmmm… "No. I don't know any and they didn't have the unusual abilities relating to yellow stars that make Kryptonians so fascinating." I put the clothes back into the bin and move to the next container. This one is divided into shelves containing similar items. Ah, the mother lode. Kryptonian crystal data recorders. Probably just… Personal stuff. Still, worth going through just in case. "Just to keep you in the loop, my people seized the last Citadelian cloning plant, the one where they were making the new ones."

"Yes, I heard that those weren't totally moronic. Did you raze it?"

"I wouldn't be scanning Kryptonian DNA samples if I'd done that."

His eyebrows rise. "You intend to recreate the species? That's…" He pauses to control his surprise. "I would imagine that to be a significant undertaking?"

"I already have a race of cloning experts under my command. It won't be quick…" Ring, anything of military significance or is it all fluff?

Wisps of orange light move from item to item as the ring works through them. Not enough time for a full analysis, but merely looking for key terms-. "Data of military significance located."

Alright, show moh my goodness! Flip the heck yes! How has someone not found that already?!

Unable to speculate.

I carefully slide the tray shut and resolve to buy up substantial areas of Texan real estate as soon as possible.

"Okay, that was quite a lot more valuable than I thought it would be." I half-turn toward the admiral. "What sort of things does the Imperium want in exchange?"

Admiral Oswin smiles. "One or two favours." He nods to his aide, who holds up a small holoprojector which displays an image of local space. "Our navy isn't big enough to hold what used to be pirate territory. Still, our people will rest a good deal easier with a demilitarised zone between them and Vega." He glances at me. "Not that I don't wish you the best of luck…"

"Given what they've endured from this area already I can well understand the feeling."

He nods. "Once we've completed our work cleansing the area, we will begin a new series of colonisation missions." Arrows appear. "Here, and here. Lightly populated and minimally industrialised. Plenty of room for our settlers. Still, we have taken losses during this campaign, and will most likely take more when we attack the Wombworld. New colonies have a way of attracting attackers, and there are bound to be vengeful pirates in the area."

"Do you want my help securing them?"

"The Imperium wants Lanterns."

I nod. "I'm sure that Lantern Green Man won't take it too personally if I dispatch a few."

"You misunderstand. The Crown Imperium wants Lanterns of its own. Our people, equipped with power rings. The strategic advantages presented by Lantern speed and firepower would mean that we could secure these locations effortlessly."

Hmm. I.. suppose… The Green Lantern Corps has members from thousands of species after all.

"I.. am.. willing to conditionally agree."

Admiral Oswin waves his right hand. "Of course. Your terms?"

"The Orange Lantern Corps is not part of the Tamaranian government. I am prepared to accept Karaltine aspirants in my capacity as head of the Corps. If they meet with our requirements they will be issued with rings and assigned to operate in Crown Imperium space. However, they will be part of the organisation and answer to me in that capacity while still being Imperial citizens with the duties that implies. They will be permitted to act in defensive and law enforcement roles, but not offensive war-making without my prior authorisation."

"That's… Fair. What requirements would those be?"

"The Guardians don't use orange power rings because they tend to have a deleterious effect on the minds of their users. I suffered from it on more than one occasion prior to my apotheosis, and once the current wave of hostilities is over I'm going to have to sort out a testing regimen for my Tamaranian Lanterns. Fortunately for me, so far as I can tell the Tamaranian attitude of personal openness works to minimise the effects. Your culture is different, more staid, more controlled. The orange light will most likely create greater changes and lead to more instances of… Regrettable lapses in judgement. While I will test Karaltinian applicants to the same standards as Tamaranians, I would expect a greater proportion to fail. Please understand that that won't be because I think the individuals concerned are bad people or spiritually weak. They just won't be right for the role."

Oswin frowns. "I wasn't aware of the side effects of using them. But I will accept your provisional agreement on behalf of Her Imperial Majesty. How long do you want to wait before we start sending you candidates?"

back

Authority 15

next

22nd August

12:02 GMT

Lantern Tui looks a little uncomfortable at my request. "Wouldn't it be better if you did that? No, let me rephrase that: isn't doing that your job?"

"Guy and I are going to be very busy, and Dulok will have his hands full making sure that Betrassus doesn't explode. You have training and experience in handling Orange Lanterns. And this did happen in your Sector."

"It's not that I don't understand the logic…"

"I can offer inducements if you like. I'm happy to give you a holographic disguise that Korugar's scanners can't penetrate. You could hand your ring off to Dulok for a day or so and walk around on your homeworld. Perhaps look up a few friends..?"

"I…" She looks away, shaking her head. "I don't think that would be a good idea."

"Hmm." I tap my right fist against my lips. "I am two for three in getting my Sector's Greenies promoted. I imagine that if I focused my efforts on John a little I could probably upskill him sufficiently."

"I'm sure John would appreciate it, but it's hardly enough to make me want to go on a… Wild Duck chase for you."

Someone speaks English, doesn't she?

I smile. "Lantern Tui, are you aware that I see all emotion as patterns of coloured light? So I am perfectly aware that you are exceedingly fond of the chap."

"You can-?" Her environmental shield expands visibly. An anti-Orange Lantern protocol, but one which doesn't really do much to my empathic vision other than green out the surface level. "I'd rather you avoided doing that."

"I can't turn it off. And it looks like you can't block it. Look, if it bothers you I won't bring it up again, but when I looked at your desires those were two of the three things that it looked like I could do."

Her environmental shield dips back down to normal resting levels. "You don't think you can beat Sinestro?"

"I… Don't know." And there aren't a lot of Lanterns I can say that about. I'll have to ask the Guardians if they're willing to share his logs… "But it will be easier for me to achieve my own objectives if I avoid having anything to do with him unless it's utterly unavoidable."

Not that I hadn't considered the issue, even before Dox's revelation. Ah, the eternal question: which version of X am I dealing with? The 'Sinestro Corps' era Sinestro founded a Corps of total monsters in order to force the Guardians to turn their nine law compliant Corps into a military organisation because he believed that a change in their epistemology was essential to create an orderly universe and he'd failed to bring about such a change from the inside. Other versions vary from a conceited power-mad tyrant, an old-school Dark Kantian villain or... Just about anything the writer at the time felt like writing. I suppose I was lucky getting a businessman type Lex Luthor. The Green Lantern Corps considered him to be very good and they haven't managed to bring him down in the seven years since he returned from the anti-matter universe.

On the other hand, I was working out with two Lanterns they just made Honour Guard members before I left Earth and I generally came out ahead during our spars. How much of a difference does coming from a space-aged civilisation, of growing up with the sort of technology that still fills me with wonder, make in that sort of combat?

What's the difference between getting your weapons from a crazy American superengineer and getting them from a crazy Qwardian superengineer?

"Tell you what: how about-."

Our rings flash, and we both raise them as Guy's face appears.

"Hey Paul, he's wakin' up. You sure you wanna do this?"

"I wouldn't say 'sure'…"

"Fine." "Lantern Tui, I ain't about t' order you t'-."

"I'd rather handle it myself than leave it undone. By your leave?"

Guy's construct head nods and she shoots off into the sky. I watch her go for a moment, then transition to the secure medical bay the local ruling clan were only too happy to lend to us. Prince Ragnar is still in his armour, but the mechanical restraints should keep him where he is for the moment. I'm holding his ring in my right hand and his 'buzz sword' is in clear line of sight on a nearby table. Guy and a local doctor stand a little way away. Guy gives me a nod and backs off slightly as I approach her.

"How is he?"

"Largely unhurt. If that was what you intended."

"I just wanted to make sure that there wasn't any obvious damage from his ring usage."

She makes a small swooping gesture with her hands, the local head shake. "He's carrying a number of minor injuries from his recent duels, along with numerous older injuries. Some of which may have been self-inflicted. Are you taking him with you?"

"That's up to him."

"Please do. I'd rather never see him again." She turns away and exits the room with some speed.

"Uuuuuuuuuh." Prince Ragnar blinks blearily, then tries to roll to his right before being arrested by the clamps. His eyes shoot open as he remembers exactly what just happened, then he lies back and looks at me. "You beat me."

"I beat you."

"Trickery."

"Any and all methods, Rookie Ragnar. And you better believe that they're going to remember me taking your weapons from you and beating you with them."

His head falls back slightly, then he lifts it to slam it back down against his solid metal headrest.

"Now, I know you set too much store on your given word to try backing out of the terms of our duel, but just in case I damaged your short term memory-."

"You are the Illustres of the Orange Lantern Corps, and I have agreed to join. I will fulfil my obligations, but once I learn what you know I will challenge you again."

"That's not quite how it works." I generate a construct chair and sit down next to him. "You see, the orange light empowers you to get what you want. If you continue to think that what I do is… Trickery, your abilities will be impeded. You'll be empowered to fight against me, but not alongside me. You won't respect me unless you see me as a warrior. But, I don't want to fight you." I shrug. "I was wondering how to square that circle, then it came to me: we need to fight someone we both want to fight. And since I don't fight for fighting's sake, we should go somewhere I'd been meaning to go for a while."

Ragnar looks a little curious. "Where?"

"When a Green Lantern with many years' good service does something so heinous that they must be expelled from the Corps, the Guardians may instead sentence them to exile to the anti-matter universe. It's intended as an opportunity for them to receive an honourable death in combat against the Corps' foes, rather than forcing them to return home in shame. That's what happened to Sinestro, when the Guardians found out what he'd done on Korugar. No one but him knows exactly what happened to him, how he encountered a Weaponer and made common cause with him. Even less how he managed to fight his way through the legions of ships, fixed defences or the Thunderers who guard Qward in order to do it. He was a veteran, but there are limits."

"So that's where we're going." I pat him on the left shoulder with my right hand and release the restraints. "To Qward, to do some poking around." I step away as he starts to sit up, showing him his ring sitting on my open left palm. "You'll probably want your ring."

back

Authority 16

next

22nd August

12:37 GMT

Lantern Ragnar falls behind as Guy and I make our way through the Sector House. I was slightly concerned that we might have to perform the antimatter shift ourselves, but fortunately they have a polarity shift platform here.

That just leaves one question.

"Why do you have an antimatter universe transporter here?"

"Took it off Sinestro one time. Oa already had one. Tui wan'ed t' keep it just in case."

Fair enough.

We land just in front of it and Guy waves his ring at the controls, which glimmer in response. "Jus' take a moment."

I nod, and turn to see where Ragnar's gotten to. He floats slowly in through the entrance to the portal room, openly gawping like a tourist. He notices my amusement and gestures at the walls around us. "This is the keep of Thaal Sinestro!"

"You know that he was an archaeology teacher before he joined the Corps, right?"

"I-." He blinks. "No, I did not. Truly?"

"Yep. You might want to reconsider the sorts of knowledge you need in order to become a great Lantern."

He frowns thoughtfully. "Did he maintain his former profession while he was a Lantern?"

"Nnno?"

"And the strength of my constructs is dependent on how much I want them?"

"How much you want them and want the result you are working towards, yes."

"Then I think that I will leave the humanities to others." He shakes his head. "It would simply serve to distract me." He touches down somewhat roughly. "Are we ready to depart?"

"Yeah." Guy steps up onto the platform and then turns around. "Three express tickets t' the antimatter universe. Hal always said he thought I'd end up there."

Ragnar walks past me to join him. "Why?"

"It's a punishment fer Lanterns who break the rules but prefer t' die than get kicked out'a the Corps."

Ragnar nods, smiling faintly. "And he believes that is what you would choose. It must be nice that the other Honour Guard Lanterns have such a high opinion of your devotion."

"Ye-aaaaah." Guy leans his head slightly away from Ragnar. "Really more that he thinks I will get kicked out."

"But you will do it with honour!"

Guy looks at me as I join them on the platform. "Re-al keeper y'got here, Paul."

"Why ask for a spoon if you want a knife? Are we ready?"

"Yeah. Brace yerselves. I've never done this before, but Hal said it's rou--"

"Transport to antimatter universe in progress."

"-ooougoughoughhh."

Gahhuugh… Yeah… He's… Not wrong. Ugh. Wholeness Rightly Assumed.

Recalibrating for antimatter body.

Oh, great.

"Where is everything?" Prince Ragnar looks around, alert but unafraid. "Betrassus should be in that direction."

"I'll field that one." Guy nods, his face creasing as he tries to shrug off his own discomportment. "Earth's physicists are still puzzled about why the universe exists. If the alpha event created equal amounts of matter and antimatter, it should have destroyed itself in seconds. Instead, we live in a universe where virtually everything is made of matter and there are only trace amounts of antimatter in the wild." I spread my arms out, indicating the empty region of space around us. "Welcome to why. Something about the alpha event caused the two forms of matter with opposite polarity to exist out of… Phase? With each other. And something about that separation process prevented them becoming perfect mirrors of each other, even though they effectively had exactly the same things in them to start with. You won't actually find many places that have direct matches."

There's an Earth, but the one Crime Syndicate I've run into is more than enough, thank you very much.

"Alright, now remember. The first rule of the antimatter universe is-."

"Don't talk about the antimatter universe?"

Guy rolls his eyes. "Don't try shiftin' back on yer own. That's a real good way t' explode." His ring twinkles for a moment, then mine does the same. "You wanna come back, you come here or fly t' where Oa is and use that program. The shift will activate."

Ragnar frowns. "My ring did not glow."

"Yeah, I ain't so keen on lettin' a Sinestro fanboy have the codes to access Oa."

Ragnar's frown deepens, but I interject before he can complain. "If I die, you can just take it from my ring."

He nods. "I will avenge you first, of course."

"Good-oh. Guy, which way's Qward?"

"Roughly where Maltus is in the matter universe."

Okay… Ring. Galactic core is there, spirals go in the opposite direction… Got it. "Ragnar, do you know how to do long distance faster than light travel?"

For some reason he pauses before answering. "Yes."

I nod. "Good. We'll be stopping off at Prisathus, the second world of the Irdini System, before moving on to Qward. Going to Qward openly wearing a power ring is a good way to get killed and dissected. We need to join a trade convoy-" Ragnar starts to look truculent. "-and get into one of their surface trade outposts before revealing ourselves and fighting our way into Qward proper."

"If we're on the planet how are we not in 'Qward proper'?"

"Qward proper is underground. Or rather, under the planet's super tough shell. Assuming that we survive passage we move with all possible speed to Chief Weaponer Kalmin's fortress. He made Sinestro's yellow power ring and we don't want him making any more. Secondary objectives include gaining intelligence on Qwardian military operations and technology. The tertiary objective is to inflict as much damage on Qwardian production facilities and personnel as possible."

Ring, plot course.

Course available.

"Follow me."

back

Authority 17

next

22nd August

13:11 GMT

Miss Amane grins at me as I step through the boom tube, arms folded behind my back. "All clear, Master!"

"Yes…" I look around at the brutally deconstructed remains of the high caste Dominators who used to run this place. "So I see. Any remaining resistance?"

"Master." She shakes her head disappointedly. "I would not have said 'all clear' if there were any left alive."

No, you wouldn't, would you? I nod as I walk over to their research computer and extend a construct connection between it and Mother Box. "The minefield?"

"In perfect working order, Master. And the G-Trolls have already installed the boom tube jammer." I turn and walk towards her, causing her to come to attention. And look a little nervous, actually.

I raise my right hand and pat her on the head with it. "Thank you."

"Master!"

"I am also grateful for your work on the Wombworld and on Karna. Many Genomorphs, Karnans and Karaltinians owe you their lives for the devastating effect you had on their defences. And I'm sorry that I haven't made time to speak to you in person since."

"I-I am happy to serve, Master!"

"And I am privileged to have your loyalty." Hm. It would be extremely useful to keep this place in one piece. None of what we took from Emana really says Command Centre to me, but we haven't even started work on that ship-scale boom tube, and… Ugh, getting the minefield would require one even bigger. I lift my hand from her head. "Would you please escort me to Mister Dox?"

She nods, steps back and waves her scythe at the air to her left. There's the expected bang as the boom tube opens. With all but one of the hush tubes being devoted to the logistical effort of moving materials and personnel around in Vega and the last being left available to the Blacks, she and I are left with boom tubes. I… Thinking about it, I should probably get her a Mother Box of her own at some point. I was going to leave off getting one for Lynne until she left High School, but Miss Amane is in the field now… Unfortunately there isn't really anything else I can offer Himon that won't risk Father… Expressing his displeasure.

And speaking to him again…

I follow Miss Amane through the portal and into what was once the command centre, a couple of G-Elves working at removing the bloodstains. I give them a polite nod before turning my attention to Mister Dox. There's a G-Gnome perched on a chair next to him while the man himself is splitting his attention between the various holoscreens around him.

"Mister Dox. If I might have a moment of your time?"

He doesn't look around. "Yes."

"I am unfamiliar with Coluan social customs, but in most places it's considered polite to look at the person speaking to you."

"I believe that you are correct. An inefficient social custom."

"True, but just this once I expect you to put up with it." Acknowledge Your Sovereign!

His eyes dip, a quiet sigh escaping from his lips as he pauses the flow of information and swivels his chair around. "Grayven of Apokolips. A world not known for its people's largesse. I presume that you want me for something."

"Oh, I haven't been home for a while. I've picked up all sorts of bad habits. Mercy, compassion, love..." I smile. "But, yes, I do want you for something. Getting good use out of the G-Gnome there?"

"It is convenient to have another input channel beyond those I naturally possess. It also gave me the opportunity to confirm that my telepathic defences were as strong as I believed them to be."

"Good man. Sensible use of your time and resources." I generate a construct chair and sit down a short distance from him. "I've got a job for you. I think that it will engage your full intellect for… At least a year, and I'm happy to let you use your spare time to pursue other projects. Should you have any."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Two jobs really. Prime Minister of Tamaran and Clarissi of the Orange Lantern Corps."

He blinks three times rapidly. "Explain."

"I recently removed an oppressive government from the Vega Systems, and now Tamaran has the opportunity to rebuild itself. I was able to secure some orbital infrastructure so you wouldn't be working from scratch, but there's little infrastructure on the planet and dozens of potentates with their own priorities ready to fight you on every decision. A good deal of your job will involve keeping them on-side and focused on the task."

"Explain Orange Lantern Corps."

I raise my left hand to show him the sigil on my ring. "Orange power rings. They run on avarice rather than willpower. I've got one for you if you take the job."

Ping!

"Oh, and they can have adverse effects on the minds of their users. The first fellow to try using one for any length of time turned into a total basket case. I haven't really noticed anything too bad." For a moment I look at my arms and try to imagine the response of my former self to what I've done to myself.

…

Huh.

Okay, but I don't think it was the orange light doing that.

"Point is-" I fold my arms back behind my back. "-that I'd also like you to organise the Corps. Most of it will be creating working procedures, recruitment and training programs, managing resources in relation to my directives… Essentially being my Chief Executive. At the moment there are fewer than two hundred Lanterns but that number can increase for as long as they stay mentally stable and we have a use for them." I smile faintly. "You will not get an offer like this from anyone else."

"And if I refuse?"

I shrug. "Then I'll drop you off on the planet of your choosing and wish you all the best. That's pretty much what I'm going to do with everyone else here." But who would I take on in his place? Maybe… An AI of some kind? I never did bother asking after Red Inferno…

"Some of the people here are violent criminals."

"And? If you hand people over to the Dominators you rather lose the right to complain about their custodial failures. To anyone but them, anyway."

"And if I accepted your offer, then wanted to leave later?"

"You could… Your severance package would depend on exactly how much of a pickle you were leaving us in. Set things up and train a replacement first and I might even let you keep your ring." I half turn away. "Come on, the sooner you get started-."

"I haven't accepted yet."

I stop. "What were you planning to do with your freedom, Mister Dox? Start your own White Hat mercenary band, wasn't it?"

"You saw the recordings."

"No." I really didn't. Honest. But the G-Gnomes confirmed my comic-related memories before Miss Amane pulled him out. "But even your actions are predictable within a given range. Now, you're an intelligent man. Perhaps you could pull it off without any seed capital, personnel or other resources at all. But it would take longer and be much harder. No, you'll come with me, even if it's just to get more information. And when you do that, you'll inevitably start thinking about how to make the whole situation work for you. And since your information about anywhere else would be worse…" I shrug. "I'll see you when you yield to common sense."

back

Authority 18

next

22nd August

14:36 GMT

The crew chief looks at us uncomfortably as the unarmed shuttle lands gently on the landing platform of the Qwardian surface city. Having had a chance to read up on the local documentation I have to say that it isn't really a Qwardian Qwardian city. The locals don't live here-.

Ah, sorry, I should say 'a Q'ardajin city'. Humans' name for our species means 'thinking man'. Their name for their species means something like 'people who guide destruction'.

At least we've confirmed that the Anti-Monitor is no longer in residence. That's not a fight I'm anything like ready for.

"Okay." The crew chief is Prisathian, from a world that's been a Qwardian tributary for so long that their history makes no mention of them ever being anything else. They're a pseudo-amphibian species that have actually benefited from Qwardian society's recent opening of its markets; people want Qwardian weapons but would much rather not go to Murderworld themselves. "I don't know who you are or why you wanted to come here. And I don't intend to find out." I nod as I pass him the case of rhodium coins that represent the balance of our payment. It's unlikely that he'll betray us now that we're here; the Q'ardajin would consider him fatally culpable at this point and he knows that if we're here to start trouble we either don't mind dying or are very well equipped. "Wait until we're gone before doing whatever you came here to do. Oh, and on the off-chance that you're really just here to buy weapons, my corporation is happy to handle shipping for all Council of Commanders approved contracts."

He hands me a business card, and I slip it into my suit. "Thank you. Should we require shipping, yours is the first name we will enquire after."

He flaps his gill slits nervously, then pulls the lever which operates the door. "Enjoy your stay…"

Guy stomps forward first, clanking across the gantry towards the reception centre in 'local veteran mercenary' armour. The Q'ardajin don't much care who comes and goes from places like this, so while they probably have scanners capable of detecting residual power ring energy they haven't bothered deploying them here. Conventional security isn't all that tight, either. Everyone who comes here knows what will happen to them and everyone around them if their behaviour arouses the ire of their hosts, and the Q'ardajin don't feel the need for import/export controls. There are a couple of the flying robotic heads that serve as security monitor drones in the upper parts of the large chamber we're entering, and a small cluster of the drug-stupefied slave-clones that form the first line of expendable soldiery in the event of actual problems. Biologically they're basically Q'ardajin, but have longer arms and a much more developed musculature as well as ape-like facial proportions.

It's interesting. A lot of places like this wouldn't want their mutants to be on display like this. They'd think it made their species seem fallible and less intimidating. But the Q'ardajin genuinely don't care what others think of them, rather than not caring for their approval. These poor unfortunates work as intimidating engines of destruction, so they put them to work.

A robohead painted in pale green floats down towards us from an alcove in the ceiling. "Identify yourselves."

"I'm Ernie Ernest. These 're my friends Joseph Jones-" He holds out his right hand in my direction. "-and Donovan Wallace. Joe an' me are from Earth, Don's from Uranus."

"State your business on Qward."

"Takin' in the bazaars, buying some samples. Maybe see about taking part in some pit fights." He shrugs. "See how it goes."

"Noted. Excellent odds are currently being offered against alien mercenaries prepared to take on Thunderers, while shorter but still profitable odds are offered on mercenary teams taking on exotic competitors such as Qward-built combat robots and cyborg-slaughterhounds."

"I was really thinking something a little more survivable, heh. Q'ardajin.. ain't exactly people I'd want t' pick a fight with."

"House policy states that what happens in the pits stays in the pits. However, lesser gladiatorial pits are available if you wish to test yourselves." There's a small flash from its mouth as it fabricates a holoprojector, which it ejects in Guy's direction. He catches it, then turns it on for a second. "This contains a map suggesting local locations which may prove to be of interest to you. Have a profitable trip."

"Yeah. Thanks." The head has already started floating back up to its recharging alcove. "Bet cha' Hal didn't get those."

He leads the way out of the reception centre airlocks and out onto the street. Qward's outer surface has an atmosphere, but it's thin and not exactly fresh-smelling. With our rings warded and placed in dimensionally displaced pockets to avoid detection we're relying on facemasks to provide us with readily breathable air. They also allow us to mask our communication from external monitoring.

"Robot greeters don't exactly shout 'galactic menace', do they?"

Ragnar looks around, staring combatively at anyone who looks like they might be able to provide a decent challenge. "I will be severely disappointed if this is the limit of their people's capacity for combat."

"Trust me, it isn't."

"Actually…"

"What?"

"You get a look at the sensor panel when we were comin' in?"

"Yes?"

"Lot fewer ships than I was expectin'. Might even be we coulda flown through it." He tilts his head to the side. "Wouldna' been easy, but…"

"Is that new? I always got the impression they were supposed to be a major menace."

"What, you didn't get that off'f John's ring?"

"No. I assume that it was highly classified, need to know only. Now, if I'd have pinched Jordan's ring…"

"Anyway, somethin' screwy's goin' on. I think we should have an actual look around, not just head for the shaft."

"Okay. Anywhere in particular?"

"Bars 're usually pretty good places t' start somethin' like that."

I wince. "Last time I walked into a bar like that everyone fled and I got attacked by a squad of Thanagarian mercenaries."

He raises his eyebrows slightly. "Really?"

I nod. "We talked it out, but it wasn't-."

"No, I jus' can't see you walkin' int' a bar." He smirks. "But did j'a learn anythin'?"

"Yes, actually. Alright, it's a reasonable place to start." I half-turn. "Rag… Nar?"

Who isn't there. Oh… Shazbot.

Guy snorts. "Lose the rookie already?"

"Yes, yes I have." Take a risk on empathic vision… There he goes. Running around somewhere like this is probably not a good idea. "Okay, which bar are you going to be in?"

He slaps my chest with the back of his right hand. "Don't be dumb, Paul. We ain't splittin' up. You get after him, I'll watch yer back."

"Right."

Doing my best to look like a confident and well armed weapons merchant, I set off through the city.

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Authority 19

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22nd August

14:43 GMT

And of course he headed straight for a fighting pit. And the only explanation I have for how he got that far ahead is that he didn't mind drawing attention to himself by running. We didn't take the time to do much work on his armour and unlike Guy and myself he didn't have any changes of outfit stored in subspace. As a result, one sensor dampening cloak aside he's still wearing his royal armour. It's not that there aren't people in snazzy armour around here, but they generally have Writs of Invitation and substantial bodyguards to protect them. There are already a number of people not-so-subtly following-.

Ugh. Weaving through the crowd I step up behind a lightly armoured figure who wasn't paying quite enough attention to his environment and hold an x-ionised knife to his throat. "Hello there."

He tenses slightly but doesn't otherwise move. "I'm wearing a force field, fool."

"And I'm not fool enough to threaten someone wearing a force field with a knife that can't penetrate it. The chap in the fancy armour is a friend of mine. Eyes off."

He hesitates, perhaps weighing up his chances. "Fine. But I can't speak for anyone else."

"I wouldn't expect you to." No one approaching me. "Now, I'm going to turn left and you're going to turn with me. When we're pointing at the door, you're going to start walking and keep walking until you're outside. On two."

We turn, and I move my knife aside slightly to get him leave. He goes a couple of steps before taking a sneaky look back, but my clothing masks my face and is generic enough not to be particularly notable. His armour is a little more notable, with the red smears across… He's a gang member. Ah, doesn't matter. It's not as if we're sticking around. Or ever coming back. Now, where's Ragnar gotten t-.

"…new entrant to the blood arena, Donovan Wallace of Uranus!"

Ooooh. Drat. I sigh. At least he remembered his cover name.

"And his opponent, victor of over eighty bouts and making his seventh appearance in the blood arena, Thunderer Duran of Qward!"

No no no no no. I step forward with a little more force now, making my way to the edge of the third floor balcony overlooking the pit. I'm going to assume that he got in there that quick because they were having trouble getting a Thunderer an opponent. The thing about Thunderers is that while in the comics they've suffered from major villain decay -losing to Jordan on several occasions in spite of his acknowledged skill shortage while dressed like silver age villains, an army of them getting pasted by a five man Crime Syndicate, getting near-exterminated by the first members of the Sinestro Corps- in the real world they really haven't. They're superbly well trained and equipped soldiers. I doubt that he'll be using qwa-bolts in confines this close -because there wouldn't be an arena afterwards if he does- but their melee weapons use tiny amounts of qwa-energy to cleave through anything and their armour and shields are at least as good as anything I could make. They're generally not all that agile in the air -which is how Green Lanterns best them- but at close quarters like this their strengths are magnified.

He better not be planning on using his ring.

Ragnar vaults over the edge of the lower balcony, brandishes his buzz sword and holds his arms up for the crowd to hail him. A few bang mugs against the balcony lip but there are more laughs than acknowledgements. His expression changes from expectant to dismissive, though I make a point of jabbing my right forefinger at him when he turns my way.

That causes the git to smile again.

His opponent isn't made to vault over anything; they open the actual pit doors for him. The Thunderer's traditional wing-decorated helmet sits on his head, and the thing about a helmet with wings on is that it's still a metal case to protect the wearer's head, which is more than ninety five percent of superheroes manage. Thick armour covers his chest, back, forearms, shoulders and lower legs, while a flexible mesh undersuit protects the rest of him. I haven't been able to precisely evaluate the buzz sword, but I wouldn't want to try it against the solid plates. That leaves face, thighs and sides as targets. His eyes are covered by the red cybernetic attachments Q'ardajin elites like to use in place of their natural eyes. It makes them seem somewhat bug-eyed, but it also serves to render them immune to a wide range of visual distractions and widens the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum they can see. There's a quiver on his back, but it's empty. Instead of the qwa-bolts I half-feared, he hoists a round shield and a short sword aloft.

"BLOOD AND PAIN! BLOOD AND FIRE! BLOOD AND DEATH!"

This time the crowd roars its approval. Only sensible really, however they actually feel about it. In the dim light from where the Thunderer entered I can see the faint glow of his personal organiser robohead, and I don't doubt for a moment that it's recording everything.

Ragnar looks mildly put out by the approval his opponent is getting, but gamely makes a salute with his sword before picking a stance with sword raised high and both hands on the grip. For his part the Thunderer crouches slightly, shield forward and sword drawn back to stab.

No salute for the alien.

Right, I need to get down to that level and prepare to intervene. Or at least grab him once the match is over so he can't sign up for another one. And -I spot another spectator having his pocket picked- I need to avoid getting blindsided. And make sure that if he dies then none of the locals gets his ring. Getting it off whoever gets to strip his corpse is going to be awkward, especially if I want to stay undetected.

He and I are going to have a chat about mission discipline after this is over. After Lantern Tui tells me what she found out.

As I walk away from the balcony the noise from the crowd jumps and I hear the thump and clang of their initial probing exchanges. Ragnar's sword glows a sort of purply-pink when active and qwa-energy discharges tend to be a shimmering yellow. Not that it'll look anything like a lightsaber battle: Ragnar's sword might go through the Thunderer's armour but if he tries to parry with it, the Thunderer's sword will go straight through it without slowing.

Across the room I see two people with red stripes on their armour watching me. Ugh, already? No, worry about that later. Another round of clanging and stamps as I thread my way through the crowd in the direction of the stairs downwards. Two well-equipped bouncers are vetting the people allowed down, though they don't appear to be troubling those who come up. I step into the clear circle in front of them and look the closest in the eye.

"What's the entry fee?"

"A Qwardian supply contract, a pit-record or being Qwardian."

"Don't you mean 'Q'ardajin'?"

She huffs. "No one calls them that. They don't like it when aliens use 'their word'."

Ah. Noted. "The man fighting the Thunderer down there works for me. I'd like to show my support."

"That sucks for you. But you can support his death wish perfectly well from up here."

"I don't suppose that I could interest you in a bribe?"

"I dunno. Could you?"

I turn up my empathic vision. What does she or the house want? Ah! It's just a screening process. Those aren't hard and fast rules, just baselines. Anyone prepared to splash around more than a certain amount of money is allowed down. If I bribe big, they'll let me past and mark me down for a fleecing. Hard to judge precisely, but… I put my right hand inside my robes and pull out two platinum coins, then hold them out.

She raises her eyebrows, apparently not impressed.

"I'll make sure I get a supply contract really soon."

She grabs the coins from my grip, making a point of tugging hard on my fingers and in doing so triggering my kinetic barrier. She feels that happening, her expression getting just a little more respectful. She steps aside. "Anyone asks, you snuck past."

"Is that better?"

"Big crowd, someone pushes past in the confusion. We're muscle, not psychics."

"Okay, thank you." Another series of thuds from the pit. The crowd has quietened down quite a bit. I guess that Ragnar's doing a reasonable job. I walk past the guards and hurry down the steps as fast as decorum permits me.

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Authority 20

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22nd August

14:48 GMT

There's a good deal less competition for space next to the balcony on this level, though that may be because no one wants to get too close to the small Q'ardajin… You know what, Qwardian is easier to say. The small Qwardian contingent watching their comrade in arms. Their officer actually looks at me curiously as I intrude on the invisible bubble around them in order to watch Ragnar…

Ah. I wouldn't say that he's winning, but he is doing okay. It seems that he learned to avoid the qwa-blade the hard way: there are rents in his bracers and I think that I can see a little dried blood as well. A few angry red-purple burns have appeared on his face, though those are from near misses. If the Thunderer had hit then he wouldn't have a head any more.

In return, the Thunderer's shield is mildly scored in a few places.

"Impressed?"

Aaand the Thunderer officer appears to have decided to slum it with an alien. Marvellous. "Mildly impressed that he isn't dead yet."

He pauses for a moment. "The challenger is a friend of yours?"

"Recent employee. His death would be… Awkward in some ways. Convenient in others."

"His armour and sword are unequal to the task." I nod without turning away and Ragnar weaves around a series of stabs, preventing his opponent pressing with a series of high and low swings aimed around the Thunderer's shield. "But his skill does not shame him."

"I'm sure that he'd appreciate the compliment, sir."

"He'll not live to hear it." He leans forward. "Duran, press!"

A moment's distraction, Thunderer Duran's eyes move to his boss for a instant. Ragnar takes advantage immediately, ducking slightly and moving around to the Thunderer's shield-side so that the man can't see him clearly. He then brings his sword around in a two handed swing directly at the shield. It hits home and is deflected right back by the interaction of its own force field and the nature of whatever the shield is made of. The Thunderer turns instinctively in that direction at the same time as Ragnar swings wide in the other direction, his buzz sword striking the armour covering the Thunderer's upper sword arm. There's a momentary flare of purple energy as the buzz sword's force fields go a little crazy at finally getting something solid to bite into-

"Gyagh!"

-then the Thunderer reacts, slicing awkwardly at Ragnar's extended arms with his qwa-blade.

"Agh!"

The blade passes through Ragnar's armour, but I don't think that he got anything critical. Ragnar backs off, smiling viciously as the Thunderer takes a moment to check his wound. Yep, that went through the armour and drew blood.

My neighbour seems somewhat less than impressed, breath hissing through his teeth. Yes, slumming it like this only works if you don't lose, doesn't it?

"Will you take a turn in the pit yourself?"

"I don't think so. Public exhibitions aren't really my thing."

The Thunderer moves his shield to the side, giving himself more room to move his sword. He also switches from a stabbing stance to a slicing one, advancing more rapidly as blood drips from his wound. That looks like it hurts a lot, but Qwardian upbringing leaves its survivors well equipped to endure pain. And Ragnar… He's clearly loving this. He tries to take advantage of his opponent's opening, but rather than interpose his shield the Thunderer uses his sword's lighter weight to parry-.

That's not a parry. Ragnar realises his mistake too late as the qwa-sword severs the tip of his buzz sword, the area around the slice going dull and grey. Ragnar at least doesn't repeat his error, making probing swings but making sure not to let his sword contact his opponent's.

"Better."

He doesn't sound happy about it. Reminds me of EA: anything less than total victory starts to look like a failure. Even if Duran ran Ragnar through now this fight has demonstrated that Thunderers aren't actually all that skilful and that alien weapons can stand up to Qwardian weapons. Even when you win, you lose.

Ragnar holds his sword out towards his opponent, then glances back as he realises how close he is to the pit's wall. He lunges, aiming the severed tip of his sword at the Thunderer's chest. The Thunderer steps back and swings, cutting another chunk of Ragnar's sword off-. Ragnar keeps coming, dropping the remains of his sword and slamming bodily into the Thunderer, left hand grabbing at his sword's hilt while his right-

"GAH!"

-hand stabs into the wound his prior attack made. The Thunderer's shield is sheared in half as the Thunderer loses control of his sword, the shock causing him to drop it to the pit's floor. Ragnar grins, then swings his right fist into his opponent's unarmoured chin.

"Yah!"

The Thunderer officer's hands crush the balcony railing.

Ragnar swings his left arm outwards, knocking what's left of the shield out of the Thunderer's hand as the qwa-sword falls to the ground. The Thunderer strikes Ragnar's bare head with his left elbow but Ragnar just absorbs the hit with a bloody smile and grabs his opponent's helmet, stabbing his thumbs through the eye slits.

"Nruh!"

Ragnar lifts, the Thunderer's helmet coming free and revealing his shattered cybernetic eyes beneath. Ragnar swings, striking Duran in the face with his own helmet and knocking him back before tossing it aside and slamming his fist into his enemy's forehead.

The Thunderer falls, stumbling backwards before collapsing. Ragnar looks around for a moment, grins, then bends down to pick up no why are you doing that! He picks up the qwa-blade and raises it above his head in a salute to the crowd who are watching in silence.

"Victory!"

I look at the commander. The man might have accepted one of his losing a fight, but touching a qwa-energy based weapon?

"Hold him."

The other Thunderers draw their own blades and level them at me. I raise my hands, showing myself to be unarmed. "Commander-."

The commander vaults over the balcony, Ragnar turning to face him as he lands. "Another challenger? I'm hardly fresh, but I'll face you tomorrow-."

The Commander lunges, and as Ragnar moves to counter he twists his wrist and slashes sideways-. Ragnar's sword and forearm go flying-

"Phrah."

-and then the Commander's left gauntlet smashes into his face, breaking his nose and stunning him.

"Thunderers, ascend! Bring them!"

One of the Thunderers facing me sheathes his sword and tosses g-huh. An electrified bolas-thing. It wraps itself around me, paralysing my body. Still nothing I can't fight my way out of, and 'bring them' suggests that they're not planning to kill me immediately.

The Thunderer who bound me hoiks me onto his shoulder and then activates his armour's flight system. There's an explosion as we shoot upwards, bits of ceiling raining down and I get a half-second view of Guy being entangled in the same way I am. Another has Ragnar, his severed stump thoroughly cauterised.

And then the Commander flies out through the roof, flies high and draws a qwa-bolt from his quiver. He looks down at the pit beneath us and the streets surrounding them.

Then he throws the bolt, a yellow smear briefly connecting it to the ground.

And then the area evaporates in a wave of yellow energy.

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Authority 21

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22nd August

16:07 GMT

"No fuckin' way."

"Your doubt is-."

"No fuckin' way!" Guy glares at Ragnar. "There is no fuckin' way you planned this!"

Ragnar shifts his right arm slightly, drawing emphasis to the cauterized portion. "Not in every detail-."

"You know nothing about Qwardians and your arm got cut off. Admit it. You jus' ran off 'cause you wann'ed t' fight someone."

Ragnar draws himself up slightly. "They are clearly a martial people, much like my own. I assumed that by taking part in one of their traditions I could ingratiate myself with them and win an invitation into their keep."

I look around our oubliette. "And here we are."

The Thunderers none-too-gently flew us to their closest fortification and dropped us in a holding cell. They didn't even bother giving us a more than cursory check over. I mean, yes, none of the weapons we're carrying apart from our rings would enable us to escape, but there's such a thing as professionalism. As it is, we're as close to the tunnel into Qward proper as we can be without flying through it and it's all due to the Thunderers themselves.

"And if their boss had cut off your head rather than your hand?"

I actually hear Ragnar chuckle. "Death is always a possibility in combat. Even in training." He lifts his injured arm higher to get a clearer look. "Though I will look forward to having a force-cloned arm grafted on as a replacement, since I no longer have my sword the lack of a forearm should not affect my combat performance too greatly."

"Here." I reach into one of my inner pockets and pull out a vial of Wallace's healing potion before passing it in Ragnar's direction. "Drink this."

"No. Pain is both a powerful motivational tool and a training aid. I strengthen my spirit by resisting it."

"It's not a painkiller, it's a regenerator. It won't grow your arm back but it should prevent you being weakened by your minor injuries." He doesn't reach for it. "If we were in a safe location I'd let you bleed to your heart's content. We're not, we're in enemy territory and I expect you to be at full fitness. This is an order, rookie."

He grimaces, but obediently snatches it out of my hand. "What is it?" He removes the cap with his teeth and takes a sniff. "Nanotechnology? Some sort of smart bacteria?"

"A magic potion. Now, before you say anything-." His eyes widen slightly, then he downs it. "Oh. I was expecting more scepticism."

"Sinestro's sister was a witch of considerable power. I was briefly interested in the art myself, but was unable to find anyone who could teach me." He checks the vial to make sure that it's completely empty, then drops it on the ground. "I.. had not realised that you appreciated.. my service enough to offer me such a valuable unguent." He gives me a shallow bow. "Thank you."

"Hah!"

"You're welcome, but… Um. Our homeworld has.. lots of magic users. A friend of mine is working on mass producing that stuff. I mean, I don't.. have all that much with me…"

"Oh. Well. My thanks anyway." Orange light glows in his eyes. "Exactly how common is-?"

"And you won't need to get a cloned replacement. Given how much a fundamental part of your identity your ability with melee weapons is, I'd be surprised if you don't just grow it back."

"Your species may be able to regenerate rapidly, but I will not grow my arm back without external aid."

"Ragnar, when they come and get us for what will probably be a public execution in revenge for embarrassing them-."

He frowns. "Why would you assume that? If their leader wanted me dead then he would have slain me in the pit. I am expecting them to make us fight them to the death, in a private place where their ineptitude will not shame them before others."

"Why?" I look around. "To be honest, I was expecting there to be a giant monster in here."

"Anti-Monitor aside, Qwardians don't really go in for giant monsters." He turns to Ragnar. "And how did you know me an' Paul weren't gunna pick a fight with the Qwardians then an' there?"

"Actually, I was surprised that they were able to capture you. I assumed that you would evade them and meet up with me later."

"I don't let the bad guys just carry off my guys. But I was this close-."

The barred gates to our enclosure slam open, two Qwardians armed with some sort of gun taking up position at the edges of the opening as the commander stands in the centre. The three of us turn to face them.

"I am Commander Roval and you are my slaves until such time as your miserable lives are extinguished. And that time will not be long in coming. You will either leave this cell of your own accord or you will be driven from it. Then you will be assigned the greatest honour aliens such as you may aspire to: duty as weapon test dummies for my troops."

"Perhaps your troops can best test dummies. Are the rest as skilled as the one I cut down?"

"I will kill you personally." Commander Roval turns away and walks down the corridor without bothering to glance back.

"You see!" Ragnar grins at me. "He recognises my skill!"

One of the remaining Thunderers levels his gun at Ragnar. "Out. Now."

Ragnar leaves first, grinning smugly as we walk to our intended deaths. Guy and I walk side by side as the Thunderers back off, keeping out of charge range as they keep their guns levelled at us.

"Sinestro has a sister, huh?"

Guy glances at me with his left eyebrow raised. "You didn't know that?"

"No, I really didn't. Korugar's history doesn't dwell on her."

"She didn't really do much. I think Hal fought her, like, once."

"What's her name? I could probably look her up."

"Ah… I don't really remember. I think it was something like '-."

"Silence!"

We both glance at the increasingly unamused Thunderers escorting us. "Tell me later."

Ten grams of platinum on 'Dextera'.

The passageway we're walking along is broad, and I can already see the wide opening of the external exit. Maybe that was an animal pen they put us in? My air mask would have kept the smell out. I can already hear the chanting of the Thunderers outside, the air reverberating with cries of 'Blood and X'. I get a better view as we come to the mouth of the tunnel. There are about forty Thunderers, arrayed in ranks around what I'm going to assume is the fighting area, and a scarred Thunderer responds to a nod from Roval by thrusting the handle of an unpowered sword at Ragnar's remaining hand. Ragnar takes it with a polite nod, quite cheerfully striding after Roval into the open area.

These poor bastards.

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Authority 22

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22nd August

16:12 GMT

"Fellow Thunderers of Qward!"

Ragnar is shoved out into the fighting circle, but for the moment no one steps forward to join him. Instead, Commander Roval remains at the entrance with his arms raised for attention.

"When I commanded you to make use of the gladiatorial pits the aliens have assembled on our world's surface, I did so in the certain knowledge that real combat teaches lessons that no amount of sparring amongst ourselves or against automata could teach! This past year we have spilt more of the blood of inferior species than at any other point in our lives, and I know that you have relished that opportunity as I have!" He starts to pace, arms waving. "But today! Today the unthinkable has occurred! One of our own, beaten, by this alien you see before you now!"

A murmur runs through the crowd.

"This is unacceptable. He must die for his temerity. But. This also represents an opportunity. Far more can be learned from a skilled warrior than from the bravos and scum who are all we usually fight, but such public loss of face cannot be countenanced. This Donovan Wallace of Uranus has shamed one of us."

The back of the crowd of Thunderers parts, and I see two escorting a third between them. He isn't wearing a helmet, his cybernetic eyes are broken and wires run from the holes where they used to be to a band around his head. Ah, some sort of sensor. It looks like Thunderer Duran has recovered from his cranial trauma. Aside from the blood steadily running out of his eye sockets and the obvious patch job on the armour protecting his sword arm.

"Duran failed in his task, and so he will be granted the first bout. Should he emerge the victor, he will be repaired and allowed to regain his place amongst us, his honour unstained! Should he lose, lots will be drawn for the alien's next opponent until he finally falls. When he falls, we will move on to his comrades."

Ragnar grins. "I'll kill all of you!"

One of Duran's escort shoves a qwa-blade into his healthy hand, then they both back off and rejoin the ranks of Thunderers surrounding him. Huh. Mundane sword against Thunderer armour means 'head shots only', qwa-blade against an injured Betrassusian means 'any hit wins'.

I take a moment to look around. If this is the local Keep, the portal to Qward's innards should be… Over there, I think..? We're not going to get a better location to go 'active' from. Of course, Ragnar himself is loving this.

Too bad.

"Ragnar!" He looks around, a look of sudden discontentment on his face as he works out what I'm about to order him to do. "Arm up!"

He grins, and raises his sword into a higher posture.

"You have a concealed weapon, alien?" Roval sounds almost amused as he draws his own sword. "Draw it and die."

I smile faintly, holding out my hands slightly with palms upwards.

"This is my cause, this is my fight,

Shine through the void with orange light.

I've claimed all within my sight.

To keep what is mine, that is my right."

My rings shimmer into being, Guy following suit a moment later. Roval's grip on his sword tightens slightly as he stares mystified at the orange rings.

"What-?"

A construct cold gun shot to the throat silences him as my clothes evaporate, being replaced by my power armour. His corpse falls to the ground, his brittle-frozen neck snapping and breaking apart as he hits the stones.

"Agh!"

Ragnar has obediently donned his ring, but it looks like he wasn't ready for it to recreate his arm. The grizzled Qwardian who passed him the sword is more on the ball than the stunned rank and file, his gun coming up pointed at Ragnar the moment he starts glowing. I generate construct armour around myself as I redirect my cold gun. But Guy's beaten me to it, a bolt of green striking the weapon and its wielder.

"Head in the game, rookie!"

Ragnar generates construct armour around himself, a construct replacement for his lost buzz sword-.

"Use a gun you prat!"

The Thunderers are alert now, rising into the air with shields pointing towards us and their swords out. Those I'm not so worried about, but-. I see one at the back of the crowd grab a qwa-bolt from his quiver. A cold beam from my construct splashes off his shield as I fly in an evasive pattern. Every one of these Thunderers has qwa-bolts, and our best chance to make it through this fight is to keep them too occupied to draw them.

Guy's in his element, darting around and striking Thunderers from odd angles to bypass their shields. A small group fly at him with their swords out and he's forced to back off. A moment later Ragnar surges into them, bodily battering one out of the air and slicing into the side armour of another with his construct sword.

"Oaagh!"

I duck under a Thunderer's charge and then blindly lash out with my right arm, hitting him in the back. His armour doesn'tshitshitshitshit!

I fly as fast as possible sideways as I spot a Thunderer level a qwa-bolt in my direction. There's a crack sound as it activates, the comic-style lightning bolt leaping from the Thunderer's hand in a brilliant bolt which instantly connects it to the wall behind me. The wall is cratered, three Thunderers who were in the way simply annihilated and my construct armour basically gone on the side facing it.

"Shoot anyone who goes for their bolts!"

I manifest two additional cold guns and set them to target exposed flesh. Guy's mostly just battering them down with brute force while Ragnar's charging and stabbing-.

I form a railgun construct as I spot a shield huddle forming around a Thunderer on the ground. They don't appear to be wearing any sort of sound filter, so I generate a sonic cannon and project a vertigo signal in their direction at the same time as loading a crumbler construct. Their shields waver slightly, but I think they're mostly just gritting their teeth and bearing it. My cold guns fire again as Thunderers try to hem me in, forcing me to duck and weave-. They're aiming not at me directly but at my construct guns. That near miss cost me a cold gun, but now I've got space I fire the crumbler round. It strikes-. Ugh, it hits a shield… Which survives, but generates such a colossal wave of force that it knocks the huddle back and gives me a clear view of the Thunderer with the qwa-bolt.

And gives him a clear view of me.

In a split second I fire twice and then take an armoured barrier out of subspace and interpose it. In the same moment he finishes calculating his shot and triggers his bolt. The barrier vaporises and all too much of the residual force slams…

I hit the ground, construct armour gone and my power armour a wreck pinning me down. Two Thunderers fly at me, swords outstretched for a finishing blow. My construct armour reappears and I drag myself along the ground away from them. Cold guns. Two construct guns appear, one on either side of them. One Thunderer takes a hit on the neck and dies instantly while the other gets his arm in the way. The beam is partially diffused around his armour, but I see him shudder and grit his teeth as the remaining energy starts freezing him.

A green speck pierces the wall on the far side of the arena and flies toward the one Qwardian who hasn't moved since the fight started.

My pursuer falls back, unable to keep control of his flight system. I use the moment's respite to begin repairing my armour and checking on my colleagues. Guy's energy pulses are knocking Qwardians out of the air with ease, sending them into the ground with bone cracking force. I suppose that the Guardians' rules against killing are a bit fuzzier on the subject of compound fractures. Ragnar leaps Mass Effect Vanguard style from Thunderer to Thunderer, his sword always finding the thinner parts of their armour.

"Duran of Qward. Do you wish to regain your honour?"

What's that?

Ragnar's former opponent grabs the thing-. It's a ring, a power ring. "Yes." There's a flash of dull green as he jams it on his right middle finger, the bronze of his armour being replaced by the colours of the Anti-Green Lantern Corps.

"Then welcome to the Antithesis Corps. Twenty four hours of life remain to you. May your death bring glory to Qward."

back

Authority 23

next

22nd August

16:15 GMT

Guy pauses in his battering. "Ah, great. One a' those."

I hit two Qwardians who thought I was distracted enough not to notice them going for their qwa-bolts with cold beams. "Guy, stay away. He can drain-."

"At last!" Ragnar grins. "An equal!"

At least he seems to still be in control of himself. I just wish I was in control of himself. Ragnar charges towards Lantern Duran, who responds by lashing out with his injured arm. A wave of dull green energy surges out from his ring, slamming into Ragnar and beating him back. Ragnar goes flying, his construct armour cracking and failing as he slams into the ground in an uncontrolled hurtle.

"Get up, alien! My sole remaining purpose in life is to humble you and then kill you!"

Ragnar nods as his construct armour knits itself back together. "Better than you have tried!"

Yes, I imagine that teaching him to be humble would be an uphill battle. Ah, okay, if his construct armour still exists at all then anti-green rings don't have the same 'total nullification' effect against orange rings that they do against green ones. He should be able to manage against another rookie for a little while.

"Orange? An interesting choice."

W-? There's a Qwardian face, wearing what looks like a deerstalker hat and with a pair of welding goggles across his eyes.

"Avarice, if I remember correctly. Fortunate for me that you use the same communication system as the Green Lanterns."

Ragnar and Duran engage in a brief beam of war. Ragnar's orange force projection gets battered back, but fortunately he has the sense to get out of the way rather than simply let his enemy's attack strike home. He fires a conventional energy pulse back, which Duran blocks with a construct shield which mimics the one he had during their pit fight.

A qwa-bolt I'd missed narrowly misses Guy before slamming into -and through- a nearby wall, revealing a hole inside. Quick scan… Yes, that's our way down. I fly towards the opening, cold gun constructs taking shots of opportunity. Once we're in the open air, evading qwa-bolts will be a far simpler matter. And assuming that they haven't had any major upgrades we're all faster than Thunderers in the air.

"I had considered using it, but I found that it tended to drive my test subjects insane."

"Chief Weaponer Kalmin, I presume?"

"Not any longer. 'Weaponer' will do fine. Is the Green Lantern of Sector Two Eight One Four with you?"

His head turns around on my ring and he catches sight of Guy dodging and weaving as he uses construct lassos to pull the qwa-blade of one Thunderer into the arm of another. The resulting energy discharge blasts the arm to pieces, burns the armour protecting the Thunderer's side and probably causes all kinds of internal injuries. It also allows Guy to grab the man's severed hand with a construct, said hand still holding his qwa-blade. Guy then uses that to stab at a third Thunderer from odd angles, removing his left leg in a flash of yellow energy.

"No, no one from Two Eight One Four is that creative."

"They are since I've been teaching them. Power rings are tools, not weapons."

"An intelligent attitude. Which is not to say that they don't work perfectly well as weapons."

The handful of Thunderers left are keeping their distance from Guy and I, mostly wanting to keep a solid wall between themselves and us. Could kill them all, but as long as they're suppressed they won't prevent us moving on to our objective. "Guy, ready to leave?"

Guy takes a second to check his surroundings, then generates a green construct demolition charge on the wall above where most of our foes are hiding. "Nearly." I see it as a green blast wave shoots through the wall, causing it to collapse onto our opponents. Trapping them in a way which probably won't kill them. As long as-.

A yellow explosion evaporates a chunk of the debris, and everyone who was underneath it.

As long as none of them were prepping a qwa-bolt. Fortunately, it looks like Guy's ring hasn't registered that as a 'kill'.

Ragnar and Duran are still fighting each other. Duran's added a glaive to his dark green energy bolts while Ragnar parries each shot or swing. Persuading him to break off is going to be difficult.

I raise my ring into a more convenient speaking position. "What's with the weak defences, Kalmin? How are we even alive at the moment?"

"I haven't killed you because you interest me. As for these dullards, you may thank High Weaponlord Varnathon of Q'uldi for their lack of preparedness. And for aliens being allowed on Qward at all."

"I take it that he's a fan of peaceful trading relationships?"

"Bah!"

Sounds like someone I need to support. And I imagine that the Guardians would consider that knowledge to be useful as well. I generate a railgun construct and take aim at Lantern Duran.

Ragnar spots my movement, his eyes widening. "No! This is my fight!"

Damn it. Ragnar turning my way attracted Duran's attention, and a blast from his ring destroys my construct.

Guy's hesitating just in front of the hole. "Hey! Are we-."

"I know!" Turning back to their fight I see Ragnar switch to a one-handed stance with his sword and generate a kite shield for his defence. He uses that to deflect Duran's swing, then slashes at the back of his construct glaive. The glaive shatters, Ragnar tries charging again and Duran-

"YAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!"

-fires a colossal beam of energy at Ragnar, blasting his shield apart, breaking his construct armour and battering the conventional armour beneath. Duran maintains his attack, slamming Ragnar into the ground and then into a wall as his armour continues to abrade.

Right, transitioning… No, non-functional. Fine. I recreate my railgun and shoot Duran with a crumbler round.

"Guh."

The beam slackens off, giving me the opportunity to stick a harness around the dazed and bleeding Ragnar and drag him towards the exit hole after me.

"Wait, I-." Ragnar breaks my construct in a surge of orange light. "I have nearly beaten him!"

"Ragnar, we've leaving. We have a mission to complete. He'll follow us. Get moving."

Oh, at this point… Guy drops out of sight and I rocket after him, construct boosters adding to my speed as I fly downwards into Qward. If Ragnar dies it'll be awkward, but it's only one of Larfleeze's rings with no added database. I should be able to call it, and even if I can't it's a bearable-.

Ragnar comes through the hole, looking around for me for a moment and then accelerating down while keeping a shield construct above him. Oh, good. Now we just have to-.

"Careful, Lantern. These tunnels aren't undefended."

My ring shows me huge cannons unfolding from the tunnel walls half a mile below us.

"Try to survive. I have a use for you."

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Authority 24

next

22nd August

16:18 GMT

"Ragnar, good to see you with us." I form cold gun constructs and transmit my targeting solutions to Guy. "You're on rearguard duty. Keep moving downwards at best speed, and otherwise do your best to kill anyone following us."

His head appears over my second ring, flickering and glitching as its ancient and primitive systems try to cope with his ersatz ring's transmissions. "This feels like fleeing."

"It may feel like fleeing but it's actually a tactical manoeuvre which brings us closer to our objective. Feel free to turn and face Lantern Duran once we're out over the Ash Plains."

Okay, the tunnel going downwards is sixty metres in diameter. It probably used to be used for spacecraft or missiles, but from the cargo lifts built into the sides I'm going to assume that it is now used mostly for transporting goods, supplies and personnel. Should I be surprised that the Qwardians don't have a teleportation system, or would that just be because if they can teleport from one point to another any potential attacker would have the same ability? This way, anyone who wants to get in has to either blast their way through miles of rock or breach a heavily fortified location.

I spin across the passageway as the first blasts from the automated defences fire, fat orange/yellow Kirby Dot impregnated beams of something firing up at me and mine. Shots are… Relative velocity… About half a second long, the guns' capacitors taking an appreciable amount of time to charge up between shots. I see Guy firing bolts of green energy at them… Still bolts, but at least he's not projecting them directly from his ring anymore. The guns have energy shielding… What kind, I wonder? I aim my cold guns at the ones he's already weakened and fire, even as I generate railguns to replace-.

Oh my goodness me, Guy just made a railgun. For a fraction of a second I'm so flabbergasted that I just blink. Yes, I gave him some ammunition for Christmas but I never actually thought that he'd use it in combat. Okay. I fire at the other turrets, crumbler rounds striking and disintegrating the… Plasma shields. Those we can deal with. The armoured cowling is made of the same stuff as the Thunderers' shields but rings are nothing if not precise instruments and the guns are fixed. Hitting the lightly armoured areas is no problem.

Flying downwards fast like this is actually quite an odd experience. I'm blasting towards a ground I can't see… Can't even detect, really. I mean, I got a reasonable map of the place from Guy so I know roughly how far down we're going but I'm very glad that my ring is making it so that my inner ear thinks I'm flying level-.

Dull green beams flash past me and score the sides of the tunnel.

"Ragnar, have-?"

"I checked the angle. I knew he would miss."

"If you're hard pressed, I can fire-."

"No! I have this!"

On his head be it. Duran doesn't appear able to fly faster than us, so the melee weapons he and Ragnar both favour are off the table. Energy bolt exchanges are largely ineffectual, with both of them able to absorb shots better than they can land them. There isn't.. really an easy way for me to assist Ragnar. Duran appears to have decided that the best approach is to keep Ragnar between him and us, and neither of them are dodging that much. I can't get a clear shot with a crumbler-.

Another volley from the tunnel guns fires upwards. One gets a glancing hit on my construct armour, abrading it but otherwise causing no damage. Guy isn't using armour, he's just maintaining an armoured plate in front of him and letting it fail as he takes hits. It's probably a lot easier for a Green Lantern to do it that way than making conventional armour. We both target the new guns and open fire, blowing them apart in a hail of railgun rounds, energy pulses and cold beams. The wrecked guns from our initial exchange flash past me-.

The guns further down open fire, this time with light speed weapons. I increase the reflectivity of my construct armour in response, causing the lasers to splash off harmlessly. A pink-agh-.

Ugh. I shove off the wall, recreate my engine constructs and resume my full throttle downwards blast. Okay, quantum detonators aren't affected by shininess. I send Guy a revised targeting schedule at the exact same moment I receive his. I send an acknowledgement, then start firing. Actually, I should probably start firing something at the armoured door at the bottom of the shaft. Or at least at the walls near the end, because we're probably going to either come out into a fortified building in a Qwardian city or a fortress in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, let's get-.

My shots pass harmlessly through the weapon hardpoints as they shift out of phase.

Aaaaahhhh… That's a problem.

"Guy, phasing turrets. Don't have any Nth Metal on you, do you?"

"Actually, no."

Okay… Okay… I've got phasic rounds. It's just a matter of matching phase, and there are only a few dozen that are usable with the energy requirements that other frequencies have. Um, select a target, set the round to a frequency at random, fire-.

Below me, Guy blasts a chunk out of the tunnel wall next to a phased turret, causing the rock and metal to explode outwards and send the turret tumbling downwards.

…

Okay, brute force and ignorance it is then.

I dismiss my existing weapon constructs and generate two large railguns, load them with crumbler rounds and fire.

"Ragnar, if you get the chance, try to provoke Lantern Duran into throwing a qwa-bolt directly down towards the bottom of the shaft."

"He is not some puppet I can play at your convenience!"

I fire again, smashing another pair to guns off their mounts. "Try taunting him."

"I am taunting him!"

"Try taunting him more." Another pair of shots, but this time the lasers switch their attention from me to strike at my rounds. The simple kinetic strike that results when the crumbler mechanism is destroyed does nothing like enough damage to prevent the gun from-.

Araugh!

Constructs gone, I'm hurtling downwards… Slower than I was a moment ago. Ah, let's see, construct armour gone, weapons gone, armour… Somewhat battered but actually doing-.

Lasers pierce my right arm, chest and left leg, and-. Okay, the ring prevents me from feeling pain exactly but it's still bloody disconcerting. I re-establish my construct armour-. No, thicken it, I'm not going to have to fight anything particularly manoeuvrable in it. Good, thrusters back on and try catching up with Guy-.

"Guy, are you alright?"

"Been better. Still… Flyin'."

"Okay, we should only have a minute until we're inside Qward and can try breaking out. Did you ever get around to adding a kinetic barrier to your costume?"

"Yeah? Why?"

"Because I'm not totally sure where the bottom is, and I want to make sure that we'll both survive if we fly into it at full force."

"…good thinkin' thereooooh crap."

"What?"

A qwa-bolt burns through the air to my right.

"We got incomin'."

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Authority 25

next

22nd August

16:21 GMT

The fact that the Thunderers surging up the tunnel are armed identically to the ones we defeated up above probably says something about Qwardian psychology. Okay, I can understand standardising armaments, and in a place like Qward those are always going to be high quality… But they must already know that those aren't enough to kill us. I didn't detect any transmissions, but hiding transmissions from power rings is something I had assumed that Qwardians did by default. Plus, they're slower than us, so once we're past them they're going to struggle to catch up. Their formation is okay; dispersed enough horizontally and vertically that they can evade without flying into each other and fire without queering each other's shots.

Thin purple beams from the Thunderers' conventional guns stab upwards as Guy and I both adopt more violent evasive patterns. A couple of hits, but it's nothing that my construct armour can't take. Two more yellow blurs shoot past me, the qwa-energy smashing into the tunnel above us. Hah! The debris is falling more slowly than we are! I mean, unless the Thunderers have much better inertia control than I think they do it'll be a problem for them-.

I wonder how much damage this tunnel can take without crumbling completely?

"Guy, it might be helpful for us to grab some of their qwa-bolts."

"Those things go off if anyone who ain't Qwardian touches 'em. Cutting off their hands ain't gunna cut it."

Drat. Oh, wait, I can mind control people. "Can you handle the tunnel guns for a bit? I've got an idea."

"Oh, sure. No sweat."

"Thank you."

I select a Thunderer toward the rear of the pack. He has a full quiver, probably because his hands are occupied with a gun… I'm going to guess a graviton-augmented positron blaster. Not something I'd want to get hit by, but nothing like in the same damage league as a qwa-bolt. Still dodging around the tunnel I spread filaments outwards and then down, moving them as fast as I can ahead of me.

"That's interesting. What are you doing?"

Right, Kalmin.

"These aren't your men I take it?"

"Thunderers answer to the Thunderlord, and through him to the Council of Commanders. I don't command them. In fact, this is the longest conversation I've had with another living being in years."

"Since Sinestro welshed on his end of your compact."

"Whether through improbity or a failure of capacity, his inability to destroy the Green Lantern Corps, kill any Guardians or provide us with further information on the Anti-Monitor marked me as a failure. I gambled on an alien and I lost."

Recognising my filaments as potential threats the Thunderers start directing fire towards them. Several are broken, but any Thunderer who stops weaving long enough to get a decent shot gets shot himself. To cover the gaps I cause the filaments to branch, dividing themselves to ensure that I maintain full coverage. I also make them extend back up towards me in order to ensure that I maintain a connection to as many points as possible.

And now the bottom ends of the filaments are past the outer ranks of the Thunderers. Assuming that Thunderer armour is construct-resistant enough to defy weak filaments, that leaves my target's unarmoured neck and face as my only potential points of contact. I think he's noticed that they haven't carried on travelling past him, but rather than trying to dodge more he's dodging less to try and shoot them.

Alright then.

Filaments surge out and latch onto his neck.

Brand.

Too much red-orange around for me to see clearly, but I imagine that he's experiencing a fair bit of yellow at the moment. Resistance feels minimal, the Thunderer's desire to destroy being stronger than their obedience to whatever orders they've been given.

"Brand complete."

I abandon the lower section of filaments, then release Praexis Demons higher up. Directly into the faces of the Thunderers.

Hem them in.

Demons latch onto Thunderers, scrabbling at their armour and struggling to bite them. Several miss, falling past them and then trying to go fast enough to obey my command. I change my orders to the ones who end up lowest, instructing them to scout ahead instead. Others I tag with filaments, recall and then fire at the Thunderers again.

You want to kill the other Thunderers.

My new companion slows his ascent slightly and takes a qwa-bolt out of his quiver.

The Thunderer response to the Demons is well disciplined. They stow their guns and draw their qwa-swords, each stab disintegrating a Demon with little visible damage being inflicted on the Thunderer. But now they're drifting together, and they're too distracted to see their brother in arms prepping a qwa-bolt.

"What are those? Some form of Demon of the Orange Light? I have not seen such things since our master's departure."

"You'll see a whole lot more in a little while."

"Oh, I hope so."

My other ring lights up again. "How do I make this ring heal me again?"

"Focus on your desire for absolute physical wellness… Ah, in your case, your need to be in perfect condition in order to give your foes the best fight possible. And-"

"Agh!"

"-growing things back can hurt a great deal."

"… Understood."

The Thunderers are as bunched up as they're going to get, and my operative sees that and throws. The qwa-bolt strikes a Thunderer towards the centre of the group, utterly annihilating him and those closest.

Connection lost.

It also annihilates my Praexis Demons and heavily injures the rest of the Thunderer strike force as well, sending them careening around in an out-of-control tumble or plummeting downwards. Excellent. My operative beneath then blinks, smiling slightly as he grabs a new bolt to throw at us.

No. You no longer want to kill us. Your highest priority is to blast a hole through the guard at the base of the tunnel.

He jerks, then slows to a stop in the air. Then he grabs a qwa-bolt, aims and throws as we fly past him. The yellow beam blasts past us and I can dimly see it destroying something. Of course, at the speed we're going-.

"Tunnel end approaching! Brace brace brace!"

"I am somewhat occupied-."

Guy and I plunge through into the layer of sensor-dampening dust and rubble. The Praexis Demons I sent ahead as scouts are.. somewhere in here and they can't see more than-.

We shoot out into the sky of Qward, the ruins of the lower entry point behind us and rubble raining down on the Qwardian city below us. Guy and I pull up immediately, lowering our speed. He smiles, flares his environmental shield to remove the dust and nods at me.

"Made it."

"Right, so now we have the hard bit-."

Ragnar and Duran drop out, fat tentacles of orange and green pulling, ripping and tearing at each other as they both hurtle towards the ground.

"Stopping Ragnar getting himself killed."

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Authority 26

next

22nd August

16:24 GMT

I raise my left hand as Ragnar generates a new sword and slashes at Duran in a spirited attempt to cleave him in two which Duran blocks on a new shield construct. Rather than, say, try to get away.

"Kalmin, is there any way to extend an Anti-Green Lantern's life? If it's just a matter of pride now I'm sure that Ragnar would be happy to fight him later."

"I focused my research on destructive technologies. It may well be that there are ways of extending their lives known to others. But there are none known to me."

"Wait, you're talkin' t'-?" Guy stares at the floating head. "The hell y' doin', Paul?"

"A Green Lantern! I am pleased."

"He just appeared. And it's not like they can't track us anyway." I generate a railgun construct and load a crumbler round. "Just a moment."

"You!" Guy comes closer, jabbing his right forefinger at Kalmin's face. "You're that Chief Weaponer bastard who created the Anti-Green rings!"

I fire, the crumbler round neatly striking the dull green construct tentacles a moment before Ragnar is fully enveloped. They evaporate, throwing Ragnar free as his own construct continues to hold Duran in place. "Ragnar! Fight on the move!"

"You tell me where you are-" Guy cracks his knuckles. "-an' I might go easy on yah."

"But I don't want you to 'go easy' on me. I want you to kill me."

Guy nods. "We can do that."

Ragnar heads in our direction, his constructs constricting Duran weakening enough for him to break free in a surge of green light moments before slamming into a Qwardian skyscraper. He slams through the armoured window, construct armour flickering and cracking as he continues to plough through the building's interior.

"We can? I mean, obviously I can, but you can?"

"Took a while, but the Guardians approved a shoot to kill on Qwardian officers. So come on, tell us where you are and we'll make it quick. In the palace in Krama Dhu? Hal said that was where you used to-."

"Allow me." His face is replaced by a floating arrow as a decidedly unhappy Ragnar reaches us. "It should take you minutes at most."

Guy and I look at each other and he shrugs. "He's the objective. Might as well."

He and Ragnar accelerate in the direction indicated. I take a moment to watch the city, noting the Thunder Fortresses even now sending Thunderers after us. Yep. We're going to need to head back to the matter universe the moment we reach Kalmin. Fortunately, there don't appear to be any patrol fleets nearby and the fixed guns around the outer walls have even less chance of hitting us than the ones in the tunnel did. Duran pulls himself out of the smashed in building a moment later, so I take a moment to fire a volley of crumbler rounds at him before taking off after Guy. The ring shows him try to evade, but he still takes a hit which collapses his construct armour.

The air howls through the intakes of our scramjet constructs as we power through the air.

"Ships comin' in from the…" Guy takes a moment as he realises that Earthly directions don't mean anything on Qward. He points. "Thataway. Any idea where we're goin'?"

"My keep isn't far. You will reach me before they will reach you. And if they work out that you are coming here they will most likely pull back."

"Why do you want to die?"

"Because I am a loyal servant of the Anti-Monitor. I studied under Chief Weaponer Kiman the Studious. I was there when he finally succeeded in breaking open the Golden Obelisk of Qward."

"Wasn't that whole thing some kinda Qwardian practical joke? You all spent hundreds of years tryin' t' get in, then it turned out there was nothin' in there?"

"So my ignorant countrymen believed. So they still believe to this day. You, orange Lantern. What say you?"

"It's not the destination, it's the journey?"

"Yes! Exactly! The effort of breaking into it forced us to constantly improve our understanding and control of the universe. Even Yokal The Atrocious' use of wild alien animals forced us to reach out our hands to other worlds in order to capture them. Always, we had a goal, and when we reached it we found that the mission it set us had given us everything we hoped to take from the interior of the obelisk itself! Sublime!"

"Still not seeing-."

"Kiman fell from power after most other Qwardians didn't appreciate that point. I saw then that Qward needed a new mission, and that a man as widely held in contempt as he could not provide it. So I killed him and took his place."

"Yeah, you're a real piece of work."

"But if your gamble with Sinestro failed, why are you still alive?"

"Because Varnathon is a coward. I accepted culpability! I should be dead now! That I am allowed to continue living is an insult to the Anti-Monitor, to Qward and to me. But if I cannot die by the hand of my successor as is my right, dying at the hands of my enemy is the next best thing." He looks mildly disappointed. "And if Harold Jordan of Earth isn't here, you'll have to do."

"Little while ago, you sayin' that would a' really got t' me."

"But now you recognise the truth of his natural superiority?"

"No. I learned how t' do this."

Guy raises his left hand, a brilliant corona of emerald light building around it for three seconds before a beam of emerald energy lances out into the distance. Ring, where was he aiming?

The ring shows me what looks like a squat stone castle, now missing one tower and quite a lot of wall.

"You weren't in that bit, right?"

"Astounding. Lantern, I am genuinely impressed."

Guy grins. "Well… I hate t' brag…"

"Allow me to retort."

Gun turrets deploy along the battlements, and we all raise construct shields moments before the high-powered light speed shots start slamming into us.

"Hey! I thought you wann'ed t' die!"

"Everything worthwhile in life is bought with blood and pain, Green Lantern. If you want to be the one to kill me, you're going to have to earn it."

Ragnar nods enthusiastically. "I like the way this one thinks!"

Yes. Of course you do.

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Authority 27

next

22nd August

16:27 GMT

Guy grimaces and tries to brace himself in mid-air, semi-crouching behind a construct barrier as the shots slam into us. "For a guy who wants to die-" I generate construct railguns and cold guns and begin targeting the turrets. "-you're sure putting a lotta effort-" The initial fusillade stops as the guns switch to firing in sequence. "-int' stoppin' us!"

"I neither want to die nor want to live. I simply realise that I have outlived my time, and that death is… An appropriate conclusion to my career."

I fire at a turret which is about to fire, striking the barrel just as its firing mechanism activates. The resulting misfire totally disintegrates the weapon itself while somehow leaving the stone it was sitting on totally unaffected.

"A good shot." The guns break pattern, all firing at once directly at me. Guy's shield fails, my own construct armour fails and I'm knocked back with my personal shields and armour barely holding together. "But it's not enough. Do better. Show me your divinity, your destructive power. Show me the face of the Anti-Monitor before I die."

Ragnar raises his sword, his aura intensifying. "I'll show you-"

A tether wraps itself around his head. He struggles for a moment, then it sprouts two blades which slice through his link to his scramjet constructs and drags him backwards through the air.

"I have an alternative suggestion." Guy re-establishes his barrier, a quick look of concern in my direction as I retake my position beside him, repairing and recreating my armour. Fire's still coming in, but Guy's barrier is good enough that they need to fire simultaneously to breach it. "Would you consider taking a commission?"

This is our cause. This is our fight.

"From another alien?" He looks almost amused. "Sinestro impressed me with his personal virtues. I had not even heard of you a hour ago, and I am not bought so cheaply as Varnathon and his cronies."

Let none who live dispute our right.

"I'm not offering you money. I'm offering you an opportunity."

"Paul…"

Ragnar conjures up a bladewind, swirling sharp edges slicing through his bindings and then exploding towards the recovered and closing Lantern Duran. "This time there will be no distractions!"

Lantern Duran generates construct qwa-bolts. "Good!"

A pair of shots strike the shield in front of my face.

"Explain yourself."

"The Anti-Monitor rewards destruction, right? Novel and destructive weapons from the Weaponers, feats of destruction and skill from Thunderers."

Powered by need, our tireless might.

"In essence. Now destroy me and send me to my god!"

"Do you really believe that your capacity for destruction is ended? Have you suddenly become incapable of making weapons because you were betrayed by one alien?"

A tall.. circular device extends itself slowly from the castle's battlements, crackling with yellow lightning. A qwa-amp. "No. For even suggesting-."

Guides all souls with orange light.

A translucent orange snake outline surrounds me for a moment as my eyes and rings blaze with orange power. Guy drops to the side as we surge forward, a dozen tiny constructs flickering into existence as the qwa-amp discharges at us. Being able to handle qwa-energy is the difference between a Weaponer and 'some crazy alien who makes weapons'. On Qward, successfully controlling it and forming it into a weapon marks the end of an Weaponer's apprenticeship, a process that has a survival rate of nearly fifteen percent according to John's files.

The blast hits our constructs and appears to… Precipitate out of itself. Plenty of force gets through; if we tried this without merging we'd probably be torn apart. But like this, we can manage the spill-over and keep our efforts focused on our work.

Qwa-energy: particle, wave and something else. Perhaps magic, we don't know. Perhaps like the colours in some way: a force that doesn't fit politely into a convenient definition. The key to handling it isn't understanding the energy itself, but how it can be transformed from one form to another.

The qwa-amp dims as its excited energy store is expended. My constructs move, twist and strike…

And a giant qwa-bolt appears where once there was qwa-lightning.

"How… Did..?"

A construct tong points the bolt in the direction of the Qwardian defence fleet heading in our direction. Now, we twist like so…

The bolt turns back into energy, striking the fleet almost immediately and detonating with such enthusiasm that we can see it unaided from here. Most of the ships are gone, and the few capable of moving under their own power are turning away just as fast as they can.

"Why did you not throw it at me?"

"We have a use for you. You value destruction above everything. We are building an army for a war which will consume a vast area of space and destroy-"

"No. No."

"-a huge number of beings. Would that not be a more fitting conclusion to your life than begging aliens to attack your home so that you could die without shame? Would that not be a greater service to the Anti-Monitor?"

"What the hell are you doing?"

"He is a mortal who can make power rings. He is unique. He is special. We want his service." The glow fades as the Ophidian returns fully to my lantern. "And he won't be making Sinestro any more rings if he's working on Maltus."

"Maltus? The original home of the Guardians?"

"Just so. We're making war on the Reach: a large interstellar empire who habitually exterminate the civilisations they conquer. They also have some rather interesting anti-Lantern weapons we'll be expecting you to work out how to overcome. We'll also need ships and weapons for conventional warriors. You could die in the field, in honest combat. Or live and take revenge against Sinestro, the man who betrayed you and caused you to be cast out. Or against Varnathon, who perverts your god's mission for personal profit."

I pull a ring out of one of my armour's pouches. "These rings don't kill you after twenty four hours. I ask you, Weaponer Kalmin: what do you want?"

"You gotta be kiddin' me. Are you serious?"

I close my left fist, shutting down my connection to the conflicted Weaponer. "You know why I want a new personal lantern for Alan?"

"'cause he doesn't get old so long as he has one?"

"Yes. And all the Controllers who know anything about power rings attuned themselves to the Orange Central Power Battery before I got around to asking them about it. Which means they can only make orange lanterns."

He looks pained. "This guy?"

I open my hand, Kalmin's face reappearing. "Well?"

"I have decided. Let us kill some people together."

back

Authority 28

next

22nd August

16:41 GMT

Guy and I stand on the broken battlements of Kalmin's keep, idly watching Ragnar and Duran slam increasingly large constructs into one another.

"Can't believe you're serious about this."

"You mean, how I recruited an expert weapon smith and ring forger who knows Sinestro better than anyone alive?"

He glances sideways at me, clearly unimpressed. "Recruiting a monster."

I shrug. "I need to fight the Reach. You know as well as I do that outside the periphery region there aren't any other civilisations in their territory. An expert in destructive technology is far more useful to me than a morally praiseworthy individual."

"Even if that-."

"The Green Lantern strike force who lost-"

"Drew."

"-with the Reach all those centuries ago was composed of heroes." I smile faintly. "Do you know what happens to a Beetle hit by a qwa-bolt?"

"Or you, when he stabs you in the back."

I reach up with my right hand and tap my faceplate. "I'm a pretty good judge of character. Unless the Anti-Monitor shows up in person, I invade Qward or I try coming to terms with Sinestro, I think he'll be happy designing and making weapons." I turn my attention back to the fight as Duran generates a colossal Anti-Monitor construct which punches Ragnar into the ground. Ragnar shines brilliant orange as he gets his feet under him and pushes upwards, slowly forcing the dark god's hand off him. "Which Dox might have been thinking about doing, by the way."

Guy twitches, his head turning to face me fully. "Fer real?"

"Dox and I both hate being dependent. At the moment, he's dependent on me for training. The Controllers don't have an existing conflict with Sinestro, Sinestro's an expert power ring user… And it's not as if the Greenies on the boundary of Reach space would dare make an issue of it either."

"You know that bastard wears a necklace of rings he's taken off Lanterns he's killed, yeah?"

"No, but it doesn't surprise me. Now congratulate me for ensuring that I'll never have to work with him."

"Yeah." He turns back to the spectacle before us. "Great work."

The Anti-Monitor staggers back as Ragnar shoves it off and fires a volley of energy pulses at its creator. Duran responds by giving the Anti-Monitor a shield in its right hand to block for him and causes it to fire a beam of energy out of its left.

"Tora and you still getting along alright?"

"Yeah. Well. She's not thrilled about me workin' away more, but…" He shrugs.

"We could probably sort out some sort of portal from Earth to Oa. Cut down on travel times."

"How you plannin' on gettin' the Guardians t' agree t' that?"

Ah. "Doesn't have to be on Oa. Just… Closer than Earth."

"I don't wanna make it look like they're playin' favorites."

"No reason why other Lanterns couldn't have a similar arrangement. I mean, they can… Actually pay for theirs…" Guy chuckles, bowing his head slightly. "Nothing… Major happen on Earth?"

"What, like the Justice League bein' at each other's throats cause'a the tawkin' to you gave us?"

"Not… Specifically… Just… You know… How people are…"

"Things got a bit shouty right after you left. In the end, Batman told everyone t'… Go home, cool off a little. That was a real bad time t' be a supervillain."

"And after they calmed down?"

"I was kinda impressed. You pullin' something like that, none of us havin' the slightest clue until it was already done." He looks downwards, missing Ragnar split the Anti-Monitor's beam with a sword construct as he flies against the stream to slice through its arm. Huh. That was a raw power thing, but it would still have been quite difficult. "Think you might be off a few Christmas card lists…"

"I'm a Hellenist."

That gets me an unimpressed glance as Duran abandons the Anti-Monitor construct and switches to a simple shield and lightning bolt combo while Ragnar opts to keep his sword. Having learned something from the ongoing fight, Ragnar repeatedly moves around his environment rather than simply charging headlong, an action which wrong foots Duran and results in his defensive blasts missing completely.

"I wasn't trying to make friends. I was trying to make a point."

"Well… Point made." He looks at the ongoing fight. "Ragnar ain't doin' too bad."

"Short range combat against single opponents is his thing. If he can't win this then there probably isn't any point in me recruiting him."

"And if Tui finds out..?"

"I can use bad people."

"I am glad to hear it." We both turn as Kalmin walks out of the door behind us, hammer and shield strapped to his back. "I would be disappointed if you were trying to destroy the Reach with harsh words."

"I dunno. Paul here nearly destroyed the Justice League with harsh words."

Kalmin nods. "Perhaps he has a natural gift." He walks over to the wall on the far side of Guy, watching the fight with interest. "He isn't doing too badly for a beginner."

A blur, and a dozen construct Ragnars dive at Duran. Duran blocks, shooting the first few as he retreats-.

The real Ragnar surges out of the ground beneath him, construct sword slicing through Duran's wrist and severing his ring from his body. Duran's body goes limp as the disconnect from his ring shreds his brain but Ragnar goes for a killing stroke anyway. Grinning, he grabs the still-bleeding head and holds it up for our approval.

"Nicely done. Reasonable use of misdirection."

The anti-green ring rises off Duran's severed hand and flies over to Kalmin, who pockets it.

"We're finished here, Ragnar. Time to head back."

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Authority 29

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22nd August

16:45 GMT

Kalmin's hand reaches for his hammer as soon as he spots where we are. "This isn't Maltus."

We've reappeared in the Green Lantern Sector House of Sector One Four One Six, Lantern Tui… Ah, good, she's here back already. Lantern Tui manning the monitors. She turns, blinking for a moment as she sees Kalmin and then raising her ring-.

"Cool it, Tui. He's on… Paul's side." Guy still isn't happy with my decision, but if he'd been intending to force the issue now would be the time. I'm glad to see that he doesn't. "Everyone on Maltus lives on the surface. Did'ja wanna dig your way out through miles a' rock?"

Kalmin nods, his hand retreating slightly. "I suppose not. Not without doing a great deal of preparation in advance."

Ragnar waves his left hand dismissively. "I doubt that the flight will be a long one. Having used this-" He holds his left hand in front of his face. "-magnificent weapon in combat, I am looking forward to meeting my new brothers-in-arms."

"Nice to hear that you're so motivated, Lantern Ragnar."

"I am pleased that my concerns were unfounded." He hesitates for a moment, then draws himself up slightly and brings his fists together at his sternum. "Grand Master. I am eager to slaughter our enemies."

I nod. That reaction is within the bounds I predicted, 'Grand Master' being an approximate translation from his language of the title for the revered leader of a war band. Him saying that actually means more than him using my actual title. However… I look at Lantern Tui, tilt my head slightly towards Ragnar and raise my eyebrows.

She nods.

Ah.

"How is your ring's charge holding out?"

Ragnar shrugs. "My ring dims, but it is of little concern now that I am to be equipped with my own lantern."

"I ask, because I was surprised how long you had been able to make a single ring charge last. You've had that for… What, fifty days or so?"

Ragnar looks slightly uncomfortable. "Something like that. I rationed my usage carefully."

"Oh, that surprises me. Just after I got my first ring, I was recharging every few days, even when I wasn't using it for very much." I nod contemplatively. "I suppose if you limited yourself to an environmental shield and the occasional flight, you could eke that out-"

Ragnar smiles. "Exactly."

"-but you wanted that ring hard enough to draw it to you. You're a huge fan." I shrug. "It seemed.. odd to me that someone like you wouldn't have experimented."

I nod to Lantern Tui, and she brings up images of Ragnar taken from Betrassus' data networks. He's clearly using constructs, armour, some sort of personal flying vehicle and… A construct of himself to use as a sparring opponent.

"And going by the date-stamps, those were taken fairly close together."

"Yes, I-. Used it like that at first. Then I realised how unwise it-" Lantern Tui presses another button, bringing up an image of a dead Barrionian. "-was, to waste power like that."

With a crystalline life form it isn't always easy to tell what the cause of death was, but given the smooth cuts which appear to have severed the victim's manipulator appendages as well as the cracking throughout its epidermis… It doesn't seem unreasonable to assume that it might well have been a buzz blade.

"Her name was Verilion." Lantern Tui's face is stoical. "And based on data gathered from local surveillance systems, I think there's a good chance that she-" More images appear, orange blurs visible in all of them. "-had an orange ring as well."

Guy sighs as he looks at me. "A murderer too? You sure know how t'-."

"It was not murder!" Ragnar's glow fades to nothing as the rage at the insult to his honour suffuses him. For a moment I consider taking his ring from him, but… I think I'll let this play out. See what he does. "She had a ring on her tentacle, and her heart was filled with the same need I feel! We fought and I won! I will not be insulted and I will not have you insult her by calling it murder!"

"That's not quite how Barrio III's police see it. Or-" Lantern Tui moves the images aside and brings up new ones. Four different individuals, four more corpses. "-the governments of any of the worlds you visited."

A green image of Lantern Dulok appears above one of the consoles, Ragnar's brother Prince Stentar by his side. "That matches the five dead orange rings we found in Prince Ragnar's quarters. He's been killing other Orange Lantern rookies to keep himself powered."

Ragnar throws his arms wide. "I freely confess to it! The fights were glorious, and none who stood against me shamed themselves!"

Stentar leans forward, glaring at his younger brother. "You know full well that is not how it works amongst aliens, brother."

I walk over to the control panel, extending a filament to it as I update myself with the details of their investigation. Hm. "The most recent death is believed to have occurred over a month ago."

"Plannin' on goin' huntin' again? Bet you were real glad when we turned up."

Ragnar's eyes crease up. "No, I'd… Adapted, at that point. I was planning on approaching one of you, once I had finished accepting oaths of vassalage from all of my father's rivals."

"You seriously expect us t' believe-."

"Guy."

He turns to me, throwing his arms up as he does so. "Oh, come on Paul! I mean, the Weaponer I kinda get, but this-."

"Each of the police reports mentions that the victim's behaviour changed noticeably shortly before their deaths. He changed his strategy a little while after we finished setting up the Orange Central Power Battery. There was a good reason why I did that before handing out other rings."

Guy's eyes narrow slightly as he nods. "You think that they were all goin' orange light crazy, like you did a couple a' times."

"I think it's possible. Prince Stentar, have you ever known your brother to tell a direct lie?"

"Not since Lantern Sinestro told him that Green Lanterns were always honest." Ragnar folds his arms and nods proudly at the affirmation.

I stare into Ragnar, trying to look back through… Yes, there are regions where the orange light associations are much stronger. Jagged. Power funnelled in but not properly directed.

"I think it was."

"So, what? You just wanna let him off?"

"I have committed no-!"

I turn to him. "Ragnar, shut up, there's a good fellow." He shuts. "I am… Uncertain. Certainly, each of those police forces should be notified so that they can close the cases. However, I see very little point in requiring Lantern Ragnar to hand himself over. We both know full well that people hopped up on the orange light can behave in very unusual and.. out of character ways. I doubt very much that we could prove exactly what the situation was when Ragnar encountered them, or how responsible they could be considered to be for their own actions."

Guy grunts.

"What I'm going to suggest is that Lantern Ragnar return to Maltus with me, and I assign him to support Darkstar field teams immediately. You and the police forces can continue to gather evidence. If you collectively come to the conclusion that there is a realistic prospect of conviction, I will guarantee his return. In the meantime, he will be fighting the Reach, which is a far more valuable contribution to galactic life than sitting in a prison cell or rotting in a grave. Is that acceptable to you?"

Guy bows his head slightly as he considers the offer.

"Somethin' like that… Workin' out how Green Lanterns an' Orange Lanterns 're gunna deal with each other… That's one fer the Guardians." He looks up. "This one time, if you swear t' me you'll bring him back..? Okay. But right after, you an' me need to take a trip to Oa."

I nod. "That sounds wise."

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Authority 30

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22nd August

14:12 GMT -7

Earth 8096

I take a moment to look out across the treetops of the White River National Forest just as I drop below the canopy. It's a beautiful green at this time of year, the colour of the leaves contrasting wonderfully with the pale orange of the rocky fingers jutting out of the ground. I suppose that if you're a criminal wanted in about forty countries, this is the place to hide out. Of all the places I thought that he'd end up, this wasn't even in my top fifty. Assuming that he's actually here of course.

Ring, confirm that we've arrived.

Confirmed. We are at the coordinates indicated.

I've got a sneaky suspicion that the first part of this is going to be tiresome. Still, best to get it over with.

I touch down gently, leaf mould crunching gently under my feet. Hm. I don't see anything...

"Mister Lehnsherr?" I make a point of obviously looking around. Yes, a ring scan would probably find him, but it's not like I've got a huge reserve of good will-.

Alert! Magnetic-

Armour.

-flux detected!

Orange armoured plates appear about half a second before several lengths of steel chain wrench themselves from the ground and fly at me. While that was hardly unexpected, I am gratified that they wrap around my torso, arms and legs rather than my head and neck. It implies that he does actually want to talk to me. As it is, rather than yank me into the air or tie me to a tree, my armour gets a little stressed and I have to exert myself slightly to remain in one place. He keeps trying for about fifteen seconds, then the chains cease pulling and settle for wrapping themselves in knots around one another.

"I told you to come unarmed."

Ring, scan. Ah. A speaker.

"True, but to be fair, I never actually agreed to that stipulation." I try moving slightly, the chains around me jangling quietly as they shift. "Do you intend to come out… Or do I keep talking to the trees?"

"What makes you think that I'm anywhere near you?"

"I analysed your fights. The greatest distance I saw you exercising precise control over was two hundred metres. I also noticed that your brute force magnetic pulses taper off significantly after a kilometre, even if you have line of sight. So, you're almost certainly close by, and while you might have some sort of camouflage system set up the X gene does rather stand out to power ring sensors."

No immediate response.

"Mr Lehnsherr, I came here because I wanted to talk to you. I'm armed, but I'm not exactly loaded for bear and I didn't bring any backup." I move my arms as far as the chains will allow. "Would you mind?"

The chains shake slightly, then begin to uncoil, dropping to the floor and then slithering snake-like over to… An utterly unremarkable looking elderly man dressed in an outdoorsman's attire, right hand resting on a metal walking stick. If that's who I think it is, he's looking pretty good for an eighty year old. He smiles faintly. "Not quite what you were expecting?"

"I'm a little disappointed that you didn't think I was worth the full costume. You're just about the only man I know of who could make the cape work." I frown as I drop my construct armour. "And your.. face is rather different."

"A gift from my eldest daughter, when I… Retired. If I put on my old armour, my natural face reappears. Otherwise…" He shrugs. "Nobody looks at me twice."

"That explains how you've managed to hide, I suppose."

"That, and my own skills." He brings the stick to the fore, resting both hands on it. "So. Why have you put all of this effort into tracking down a retired supervillain?"

I nod. "I was.. hoping that you'd be willing to help me with something. I think it would be up your street-."

He makes a noise halfway between a cough and a laugh. "The last thing mutantkind need is me becoming active again. Decades of fighting and I'm still not really sure whether I made any sort of difference. We're not threatened by Sentinels any longer, but despite Charles' efforts we're no closer to being accepted than we were when we started."

I nod. "True. Mutants are quite unpopular." I frown. "Don't you find that a little odd?"

"You are aware that that part of my childhood I did not spend in a ghetto I spent in a concentration camp?"

"Sure. In the forties. But now? Two generations raised knowing that the holocaust is the most horrific thing to have occurred. I mean-" I take some files out of subspace. "-take… Bolton and Gonzalez. They tested a wide cross section of the population, and found that people from all groups generally rated mutants less positively than similar baseline Humans. And those were mutants who were outwardly indistinguishable from baseline Humans most of the time."

"I'm not certain that I see what you're getting at."

"Byrne, Pacheco and Pak. People were read a story about a superhuman and asked how they felt about their activities. Same story each time, but one third were told that the superhuman was an x-gene mutant, one third that they were a magician and another third that they used advanced technology. No significant different in positive or negative responses between the second two groups, but the mutant was generally described less favourably. And there's dozens of other studies, demonstrating a similar sort of thing. It's not mutant powers. I'm far scarier than.. eighty percent of mutants? And I get a pretty good response. A.. cursory analysis suggests that there's something about being a mutant that sets people off."

He frowns as he considers what I'm saying. "That's… a little odd. I'd.. always assumed that there simply weren't enough of people like you to make an impact on the public consciousness."

I nod. "I considered that. But I had lunch with Mister Gonzalez, to.. see if he had any thoughts on the subject. And he told me something very interesting that didn't get published. It turns out that one of the volunteers they put in the 'baseline Human' pictures was actually a mutant. She just didn't tell anyone until one of the experimenters told her what the picture was going to be used for." I lean forwards slightly. "And as soon as she did, her responses became more negative, even from people who hadn't heard that."

"I don't… I don't understand?"

"I didn't either. But on a tangential note: have you ever heard of a microbe called Archaea Tractabilis? Don't worry if you haven't, there's been very little research done on it. It lives exclusively in the Human brain in minute quantities. As far as anyone can tell, it does nothing except die very quickly when the host does. The current 'guess' in the medical profession is that it does something with dead cells… But the interesting thing about it? Two groups of Humans don't have it. At all. One of those groups consists of people like me." I put my right hand on my chest. "And the Hulk. People whose bodies are either so different from the Human norm that microbes adapted for Human bodies can't survive in them, or who appeared from a parallel universe without that microbe and wear a device which constantly restores their body to 'factory settings'."

"Want to guess who the second group is?"

"Mutants?"

"Specifically, people with the x-gene. As… An aside, I don't actually believe that the x-gene is a natural mutation, but we'll leave that for now."

"But what does that have to do with Human hostility to mutants?"

"I have a power ring. If I want to study a microbe, I force that microbe to stay alive while I study it. I didn't find out much… Until I waved Tony's experimental telepathy detector at it."

I generate a scanner construct.

"Beep beep beep."

"The microbe is telepathic."

"Yep. I mean, it sort of makes sense. There's no point worrying about people like me; we're flukes and freaks. But a breeding population that has immunity -and you do by the way, I checked- is a more coherent threat."

"Humans hate mutants because they're.. infected with something controlling their brains?"

"No, no, not controlling. It looks like it's more of a nudge towards hostility. And I don't have any evidence that the things are really intelligent. It's more likely that they're reacting to others of their kind not being present. But if I'm right… It's a microbe. We can kill microbes."

"I see." He shrugs. "Clearly, I approve, but what do you need me for?"

"You're an expert in x-gene research. If we can work out exactly what makes… So many different mutants immune to the same thing, and share that with the rest of the species-."

"With Humans."

"If you like. We'll fix the problem. Social regard for mutants will gradually shift to seeing them as just another group of superhumans with heritable powers. So. How about it?"

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Authority 31

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22nd August

16:45 GMT

High Weaponlord Varnathon smiles pleasantly at me as we stroll along a gantry overlooking one of the Weaponers' foundries, his blue and green pet roboheads flying alongside him. "I apologise for the.. awkwardness, above. The Thunderers really should have known better than to challenge a member of the Apokoliptian… Elite? That's the term, isn't it?"

I nod. Perhaps I was.. wrong to hold off this long. Getting to Qward 16… Or… Qward Anti-16? They're part of the same parallel after all… Not sure. Getting to Qward was simple enough, even without Sinestro's guidance. I vaguely remember from the comics that Qward's surface was supposed to be barren with the civilisation existing beneath it. Here, it's largely barren, with clusters of civilisation around authorised trading ports.

"Quite alright. No harm done. To me. And I'm sure… Duran..? Will recover in the fullness of time."

Perhaps jumping into the fighting pit with the man wasn't the cleverest thing I could have done, but I thought that his taunts were getting a bit on the racist side.

"Alright enough that you are prepared to let the Commander go?"

I look under my right arm at where Commander Roval has given up on struggling to get away. After his initial rush failed to fell me he ordered his subordinates to use qwa-bolts on me. Preventing them from doing so wasn't.. that much of a trial, though it did force me to reveal my drones.

I raise my right arm, and Roval groans weakly as he hits the floor.

"Uuuuhuuhuuugh?"

The green head swoops down and scans him. "Commander Irik T. Roval has been incapacitated."

"So I see." I watch him for a moment, but it doesn't look like he's going to get up. "Let that be a lesson to you, Commander. Whatever ideology you hold, however good your equipment or how much hatred or contempt you hold in your heart: there is always a bigger fish."

Varnathon nods as we leave the recumbent commander behind. "Wise words. Though you may want to avoid repeating them around the Anti-Monitor's more dogmatic followers."

I nod. "To be fair, I'm not sure that it's true in his case." I shrug. "Not with grandfather stuck on the Source Wall, at least."

"Your grandfather?"

"Yuga Khan. I doubt that you'll have heard of him, he's been… Gone for a very long time."

Varnathon smiles. "But not forgotten."

"Alas, no." Ah. "Just so that we don't have a misunderstanding, while he's feared by everyone who remembers him and we're all very glad that he isn't coming back, as far as we can tell he isn't actually dead."

"So what brings you here?" Varnathon has apparently decided to move things along. "While I'm confident of the quality of Qward's armouries, Apokolips has historically preferred to rely on its own development programs."

"Oh, I'm not precious about it. Besides, I'm mostly here to get a weapon I own that was originally made on Qward repaired."

"Oh."

"I make my own.. infantry and support weapons, but this is a specialist piece and I wouldn't want to risk it in the hands of someone who didn't know what they were doing."

"I'm certain that we can come to terms. For a valued client such as yourself we should even be able to find the original Weaponer who made it." He glances at me. "What exactly is it?"

I open a pouch mounted onto my chest armour and gently pull out the velvet bag containing my yellow power ring. "Something I picked up in a parallel universe, made on their version of Qward."

"Then while I may struggle to get the particular Weaponer, perhaps their alter-eg-" I tip the ring out onto my right palm. "-ooooo."

"If you could, that would be splendid. I'm particularly eager to recover as much of its AI as possible. It was patterned after the mind of its former wearer, Thaal Sinestro, and I've grown rather fond of it."

"You've-? Taken the power ring from a parallel universe version of Thaal Sinestro?"

"No, I took it from a holding facility. He was already dead."

"I see. I'm afraid that… Ah, the creator, Weaponer Kalmin, was.. discharged… Some time ago."

"Oh." I frown. "That's a pity. Do you have anyone else capable of doing the work?"

"Yes, actually. Council-Member Diataria Lysis worked under him on the Anti-Green Lantern Corps project. I'm certain that her expertise will be sufficient."

Jordan's record of the event only mentioned one female Qwardian being involved. "And where might we find her?"

22nd August

17:14 GMT

Weaponer Lysis bends over her work station as the mechanical appendages go to work on my ring. "You needn't worry, Grayven. I assure you that this is well within my abilities."

"I doubt that you made it onto the Council of Commanders making slug throwers. Still, please excuse my concern. I have grown rather fond of the AI's voice."

The armatures move, light flickering between their probe attachments and my ring. Tuning me out or just ignoring me?

"I note that you're… Somewhat more comprehensively dressed than you were during your confrontation with Lantern Jordan. I don't know Qwardian fashion-."

"Once I realised that I had ascended as far in the Qwardian hierarchy as I was likely to, I decided that I would dress to please myself and not any observers. This is far more practical."

"Oh, I approve. I'm an armour man myself, but I imagine that for a scientist and engineer like yourself heavy plate would prove somewhat cumbersome."

She sighs very faintly and tries to indicate with her posture that she has no interest in conversing with me. "I have little interest in your feelings on the matter."

"Oh, good, because… I recently finished a long term relationship and… Not that you're unattractive or anything, but you're… Kind of small… For me? I just don't think it would work."

She straightens up slightly, and from the tensing of the skin around her eye sockets I think that if her implants allowed her to hold her eyes closed that she would be doing so. "Please stop unless you want me to vomit on your power ring."

"But if you've really hit the ole transparent aluminium ceiling… I could always use a talented armourer in my service. You'd have to relocate to Tamaran, of course. Pretty egalitarian place, and not in the Apokoliptian 'you're all equally worthless' kind of way. We're working on designs and doctrines for an as yet unbuilt fleet, and I'm sure that the people involved would be grateful for any input you wished to provide."

She pauses. "A.. war fleet?"

"Perhaps, eventually. At the moment, a simple self defence fleet. But it's in a very unstable region of space. All sorts of things are possible, in the medium term. Any trouble?"

"No. Correcting the errors in the physical structure is a relatively simple task. I recognise Kalmin's design. Some sort of gravity pulse weapon?"

"A telekine, but effectively. How long?"

"I will have completed a full restore of the physical structures in under three hours. Other elements may take longer, but I doubt that I'll be working on it past day-end."

I smile. "Excellent news."

"Would there be a dress code?"

"Tamaranians traditionally don't wear-" I generate a construct image of a Tamaranian street largely occupied by men in pants and boots. "-much, but I prefer a more relaxed dress code and no one's said anything. Though…" I reach into a pouch and pull out an orange power ring. "If you want to really throw yourself into it, these things usually require a colour's sigil to be displayed somewhere."

"Interesting. Though working for an alien did not work out well for my former tutor."

"True, but-."

"Why don't you tell me about yourself, so that I have more data to include in my decision-making?"

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NEXT CHAPTER

Collegiality

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Collegiality 1

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Collegiality

23rd August

11:58 GMT

Kalmin nods at me as I walk into his partially completed workshop. "Illustres."

"Lan-." I note the lack of an orange glow. "Weaponer Kalmin." I look around the room until I see the ring I gave him sitting in a vice on a work bench. "Is there something wrong with your ring?"

"Yes." He nods in affirmation. "I didn't make it." He raises his hammer and brings it down on his forge, the sound of ringing metal reverberating around the room. He mmms, then turns aside and alters some settings on a nearby instrument panel.

"Controller Hannanan does good work. As far as I'm able to tell. I mean, if there was any major problem I'm sure that Clarissi Dox would have found it by now."

"Perhaps. But it's a point of pride: Weaponers do not use weapons made by other people. I will wait until my own understanding of the orange light is great enough, and then make my own. Or perhaps another colour; I'm sure that I can hate enough for red."

Could he-? Yes, yes, of course he can. "Probably, but I should warn you that the colours furthest from the centre have-."

That earns me a mild glare. "I have read your notes. Unclear as they were as to how you actually learned some of that information, I am a scientist. And much as I love destruction, I value the control of it as well. I will not experiment recklessly."

"Glad to hear it."

"But I doubt that you really want me here just to design your warships. Why did you take the risk of travelling to Qward in order to make contact with me?"

"No one reason. We do need ships and weapons, and with you right there and apparently willing to take the commission, killing you seemed… Wasteful. Secondly, you can make rings. If things with the Controllers don't work out…"

He smiles faintly. "You want someone else who can do the job."

"No. I want someone who can teach me. My understanding of avarice is flawless. It should be well within my abilities." I hold out my right hand, orange light pooling in a band over my palm while Kalmin looks on with undisguised interest. "But so far it… Hasn't gone well. It occurred to me that someone who isn't millions of years old would be far more capable of understanding the approach I'd need. Thirdly, I'd like you to make me a lantern."

"If you like Hinon's work so much, why not just ask her for one."

"It's not for me. It's for a friend of mine, a former Green Lantern."

"Hah! That didn't go particularly well for me last time."

"Oh, he wasn't a member of the Green Lantern Corps. One of their Lanterns, a man by the name of Yalan Gur, went rogue. The Guardians wiped his ring's AI and a group of primitive villagers from my homeworld killed him. Wind the clock on two thousand years, his ring ends up in the hands of my friend Alan Scott. He was able to use it to great effect for about twenty five years before entering a state of semi-retirement."

Kalmin frowns. "The Guardians accept that?"

"He didn't meet either of my homeworld's Sector Lanterns." I shrug. "Either they didn't care or they didn't know. Once my world had its first normal recruit, he asked about it and the Guardians told him that they had nothing to do with it."

"But if he had been using a ring for twenty five years, his strength of will must have been incredible." Kalmin considers for a moment, then smiles in satisfaction. "Ah. I see."

"They won't recruit him, so unless I can talk some sense into them today I'll have to get him a personal lantern from somewhere else."

"What happened to the one he inherited from Yalan Gur?"

I turn my right hand palm down and clench my fist, my lantern appearing in my hand. "He gave it to me. I owe him my ability to fight at this level, and I intend to pay my debt."

Kalmin pulls his Anti-Green ring out of his pocket and lays it on his anvil. "I made these to run without personal lanterns. Their users weren't supposed to live long enough to need to recharge. Lantern Jordan destroyed the Anti-Green Lantern Central Power Battery. I only have this one because I was still working on it when the final confrontation happened, and it only has as much charge as it has."

"Can you build green personal lanterns? Ones which don't kill the users after twenty four hours?"

He tenses and relaxes the muscles in his shoulders. "Not… Quickly. The Guardians jealously guard their control of the green light. Making my original Central Power Battery required me to work around their protections, and they've improved them since. If you brought me some Green Lanterns I could hijack their equipment without too much difficulty, but given how you were treating with those three I doubt that you'd like my methods."

"Anything less evil?"

"Hmm." He strokes his chin with his left hand. "A parallel universe, perhaps? One without Guardians?"

Blue-Me's files made no mention of Guardians… "And you could make one if you went there?"

"Parallel universes aren't an area I've studied in any depth. Maybe. If the green light worked similarly there to how it does here, I could make a lantern that maintained the connection. How soon would you want it?"

"Probably sooner than that method would allow."

"I can understand wanting to take to the field again, but why do you need to hurry?"

"Alan's a very old man. Something… About what the Guardians did to Yalan Gur's ring, caused green light to bleed into his soul. At this point, he's partially elemental. If he gets a replacement ring-."

Kalmin's eyes widen, which is a little disturbing to see in a Qwardian. "He could become as the Guardians are."

"He'd rejuvenate and have a much longer lifespan. I don't.. really care about anything else. As it is he's in danger of dying soon, so…"

"I assume that a twenty four hour extension-?"

"No. Any other ideas?"

"The yellow light is… Not entirely incompatible with the green. This.. Alan of Earth. Does he inspire great fear?" An image of 'Boss Scott' of Earth -14 appears in my mind. "If he is a warrior of great notoriety, it may be possible-."

"I don't think yellow is… His colour. What about blue?"

Kalmin frowns. "Hope? What use is hope? Hope is a poison, a trap for the spirit. It encourages gormless passivity rather than action. What is the value in hope?"

"You mean, like a whole series of Qwardian leaders hoping that they'd be the ones to break into the Golden Obelisk and so causing your civilisation to develop technologically and imperialistically?"

"That…" His frown deepens. "I don't think that was hope."

"Or you yourself. You could have just walked into Krama Dhu with a quarrel of qwa-bolts and forced Varnathon to either kill you or be killed and replaced. I don't think that you were staying at home because you were afraid, so what was it? Was it a wish that something else would happen, some honourable option that you hoped existed but could not see for yourself? How many years did that keep you going?"

His frown deepens further. "Hmm."

"Fear might drive people, but hope causes them to drive themselves on. And they're generally happier about it than they are about being afraid. Are you telling me you can't see a use for that sort of ability?"

Slowly, he starts to smile. "What a novel idea. You might be on to something, alien. I'll start looking into it at once."

back

Collegiality 2

next

23rd August

12:33 GMT

"Controller Hin-."

"Ah, my Illustres!" Hinon beams as she sees me. "I understand that we're playing host to a Qwardian Weaponer now."

"Yes, I-."

"I wanted to check, because I had been under the impression that you were going to cooperate on an arrest with Lantern Gardner. Was I mistaken?"

"No, b-."

"You are aware that the Qwardians served as the Anti-Monitor's army during the Great Crisis, yes?"

"Yes, b-." I frown. "Wait, how do you-?"

"Did you know that I fought him directly myself? By my reckoning I came to within a nanometre of being snuffed out and having retroactively never existed. So please understand that I'm less than pleased about this."

"It was-."

"And now Dox tells me that you're going to Oa." She sighs. "The Guardians. Really. You thought that was a good idea?"

I wait a moment, in order to see if she's finished this time. Nothing. Okay. "Would y-?"

"And this Ragnar fellow. Is there some rational reason why we're also playing host to a serial killer of the less impersonal variety?"

"Is there-?"

"What exactly does he bring-?"

My rings flare as the Scold's Bridle construct appears over her head. "Do you intend to let me answer your questions at any point?"

She gives me a decidedly unimpressed look.

"In the order in which you asked them. I have invited former Chief Weaponer Kalmin to join the Corps. Under the agreement you signed on behalf of the Controllers, I have the authority to do that. Removing the 'wild' Orange Lantern from his homeworld was a simple matter. Taking him on a mission to Qward -which was something Guy agreed to quite eagerly, the Guardians do like to keep an eye on the place- allowed me to get a better sense of how he behaves, to earn his loyalty and allowed Lantern Tui to investigate his past conduct. I was fully aware of the Qwardian people's loyalty to the Anti-Monitor, though I should inform you that it's nothing like uniform. But the Anti-Monitor hasn't been seen for quite some time, and if he does then we're in a rather better position to find out about it than Kalmin is. I will want to talk to you about the Crisis later. Kalmin is a dangerous individual, but he's nothing like as dangerous as the Anti-Monitor. I have some rather pointed questions to ask the Guardians myself, and the last thing they're going to want is for me to inform their Corps what really happened to depopulate Sector Six Six Six. As such, I imagine they'll make an effort to be cordial and in the interests of future cooperation I will return the favour. Ragnar has demonstrated the ability to use an orange power ring in combat. He isn't an.. ideal candidate, but he's capable and sane after two months."

We stare at each other for a moment, then I allow the construct to evaporate.

She flexes her facial muscles for a moment. "Well."

"Ask an uncivil question, get an uncivil answer."

She frowns slightly. "I couldn't break your construct."

"I wouldn't be much use as an Illustres if just anyone could break my constructs."

"Eckhc-cuh!" She looks indignant. "Anyone? Do I need to remind you who made that ring?"

I raise my right hand. "Krona? No, I hadn't forgotten. Do you think it's likely to come up?"

Her eyes narrow. "Paul, this is serious. The Guardians may react extremely badly to a mortal with a command of the spectrum quite as good as you have."

"Guy decided to be open with them after the confrontation with Oceanus. He briefly used his higher order abilities on Qward, and I'm sure that he'll include that in his report. I'm more worried about him than I am about me. Besides, if they didn't want Humans being good at spectrum manipulation then they shouldn't have…" I spread out the four fingers of my right hand one way and the three longer fingers of my left the other.

"Do you know what happened to the last place they did that to?"

Nothing that I remember from the comics, but on the basis that Earth was referred to as the Fifth World… "Split in two, becoming Apokolips and New Genesis. The one before that… It's basically abandoned, with the last few inhabitants keeping tabs on Mageddon, isn't it?"

"And the one before that? And the one before that?"

"I… Destroyed..? I assume..?"

She looks away for a moment. "It's something of a relief to learn that you don't know everything. I am older than your world's gods, and some of the things I have seen in my time…" She smiles unhappily up at me. "Though I suppose you've got that to look forward to." She reaches up slightly and straightens my robes. "The Guardians are good people, but they weren't good at.. flowing with the circumstances before, and I doubt that they've gotten better since. They.. were friends and colleagues. Now… I'm not sure who they are. Just don't get yourself stuck in a sciencell."

I bring my hands to my chest, trapping hers between them and my chest. "I'll do my best. Thank you for your concern." She nods, not trying to pull her hands away. "You're not angling for an invitation, are you?"

"No."

"Because-."

"Don't worry, I'm not. I don't think that one of us being there would make things any better. You're not going to Zamaron as well, are you?"

"You said that you wanted me to talk to Nadia Safir-."

"I think… Put that on hold?"

I nod. "It's on hold."

"And I'm pretending not to notice that you didn't mention the redoubtable Mister Alan Scott when you were explaining to me why Kalmin is here."

"I appreciate that. And I'm pretending not to notice that you haven't agreed to tell me about the Crisis yet."

"Pray I never have to."

"No!" She snatches her hands back. "I worship a goddess of chaos. Praying to her about something like that is the worst thing to do!"

Hinon squeezes her eyes closed and turns away. "Oh… Shoo, you tiresome man. Tell Dennap she has my blessing to keep you in the sciencells for a few weeks."

"I'll be sure to do that!"

She half looks back, then waves her right hand irritably. I think I'm dismissed.

Alright then. Onwards to Oa.

back

Collegiality 3

next

23rd August

15:57 GMT

Prince Stentar looks up from his books as a servant leads me into his study. "Illustres. I appreciate you taking the time to visit me."

I perform a shallow bow. "It's the least I could do, your highness, after what I did to your brother."

He slams the weathered tome shut, then shakes his head as he stands. "My brother did that to himself. I know for a fact that he would be quite irritated if anyone else claimed credit for the man he has made himself. Save for Sinestro, perhaps." He walks out from behind his desk and approaches me. "Rather, I am grateful to you for bringing these matters to light and giving him useful work he can perform as penance."

"I honestly don't think that he sees it as penance."

He shrugs. "So long as he can hide his enjoyment should he return to this Sector."

"Thank you for your appreciation, but I'm afraid that you don't know the whole story."

"Hah! My study is a poor place for such tales of battle as one such as you must be able to tell!" He turns to the door. "Server! Two mugs of Gnuurgah!" He turns back, and catches the look of discomfort on my face. "Did you think that my younger brother was unique in our culture? No, no, if the rest of us were as staid as the Korugari then his duelling would not have been tolerated." He collapses back into a well-cushioned chair and gestures for me to do the same in the one opposite. "Ragnar takes the martial excellence that our aristocracy prizes to its extreme. He causes problems because he has never learned to balance that with the other virtues we try to possess." He leans forwards. "When we were younger, he would try to compete with me in every regard, in our.. studies, our exercises, in pleasing our father and… Our mother. But, I had two years on him. He was constantly frustrated. He told me later that he resolved to focus on one area, in the hope that in that one narrow field he could best me. And Sinestro visited the palace and that was that. Martial virtue was all he cared for."

A servant enters the room with a tray upon which sit two tankards filled with.. a grey frothy liquid. He holds the tray out between us and Prince Stentar grabs the tankard closest to him before waving it in my general direction. "Blood to the ground!"

I half-expected this, so I don't hesitate as I grab the other tankard and-.

Ring, what's the traditional local response?

Blood to the sky.

"Blood to the sky!"

He then raises his tankard to his lips and knocks back a third of its content. I match him, and…

I mean, it doesn't taste nice or anything, but I was expecting far worse based on the colouration alone.

He lowers his tankard and leans forward eagerly. "So, tell me: what is the story that I do not know?"

"It was a little under a year ago. A woman I'd bought a unique gun from was murdered a short time later, and the local police wanted a word. After demonstrating that it couldn't have been me, I ended up helping with the investigation. Myself and one of the detectives tracked the criminals to a warehouse on the waterfront. I had a peek inside, and saw a group of thugs, an infamous criminal and a man being held hostage. It was only after I breached the building that I discovered that I was being tricked: the criminal was an automaton with a built-in anti-Lantern weapon and the apparent hostage was both the mastermind and the bait."

"An anti-Lantern weapon? Do you live on some manner of lawless hell world?"

"Hehaha!" He shakes his head, not understanding. "If you're born on a hell world… How do you know? As far as you're concerned, it's just normal. My primitive ancestors once beat a Lantern to death with wooden sticks. We discovered a dozen ways to kill Kryptonians, generally regarded as being the most ridiculously overpowered species in the universe, after a couple of years. I personally killed the First of the Fallen, and it wasn't even in my dozen toughest fights."

"The First of-? You killed-?"

"But this particular weapon was telepathic. It worked by.. locking onto a mind and then turning down its capacity for coherent thought. Unlike super strength, using power rings requires a clear thought process and intense emotions. I beat down the thugs they threw at me to give the weapon time to work, then I collapsed, powerless, as their employer plucked the ring from my finger and took it for himself. He told the leader of his hirelings to give me a chance to talk my way out of the trap, then kill me if I failed."

"Clearly, you survived. Was the man a slow-witted dolt?"

"No, quite the contrary. Bane was actually quite intelligent. On the grounds that he was a mercenary, I offered him and his gang money. But he felt that killing me would open up future employment opportunities for him, and since I didn't have the cash on me he wasn't interested. And offering money to his men to free me didn't work: they were either too loyal or too afraid of him. But, I knew something he didn't. Something he'd wanted to know since he was a small boy. You see, he grew up in a prison. He was born there, his mother died there, and he eventually escaped after they tested a combat drug on him… But in all that time, he had no idea where his father was."

"I'd fought Bane before, and realised that I might fight him again in the future. So, I made a point of finding out everything about him that I could. And one of the things I discovered was his father's name and location. He checked the information, had an argument with the man he'd never met, then punched me unconscious. I woke up in an ambulance, while the man with my ring was attacking an ultra hi-tech weapon storage facility."

Prince Stentar is grinning. "How did you stop him?"

"Lantern Gardner got sent to fight him head on, but I really wanted to get my ring back. And orange rings are all about desire, as your brother demonstrated. I climbed to the top of a mountain over two thousand miles from him, raised my left hand-" I raise it. "-and called my ring back. It took a minute to arrive, but when it did?" I smile. "It brought the thief's finger with it."

"Hah!"

"Unfortunately, just as your brother managed to call his ring through interstellar space… My calling summoned rings from their resting place on Okaara. They flew out across space, and when I stopped calling… They went their own ways. And apparently, at least six of them came this way. And I very much doubt that your brother is going to be the last."

Stentar sobers a little. "I see."

"How is the.. political situation here? Ragnar's vassals-."

"Father has made it very clear that he doesn't intend to take advantage of the situation. Ragnar did increase father's political strength somewhat, and with Ragnar out of the picture it is unlikely that the throne will suffer from it in the longer term."

I nod. "If I can be of assistance in any way, let me know. The Green Lanterns can get a message to me."

"Thank you, but I believe that between myself and Lantern Dulok we can manage." He takes another swig of the Gnuurgah. "Where will you go next?"

"There was a Korugari I was trying to recruit. With one thing and another I got a bit distracted… But I think I'll visit there again before going anywhere else. After that, I've got an appointment with the Guardians on Oa."

"On Oa itself?" He exhales slowly. "At times like this, I can see why the purely martial life appeals to my brother so greatly. You must feel tremendously honoured."

"It's just the opening meeting for what will probably be a somewhat uncomfortable series of negotiations. I'm more excited about meeting some of the more experienced Green Lanterns."

"You have your favourites, I take it?"

"I've already met Lantern Medphyll and Lantern Chance, but I'm hoping that I'll bump into Lantern Rot Lop Fan or Lantern Kreon especially. I base a lot of my own techniques on methods he pioneered."

"Hah! You sound a little like my brother when you talk like that." Then I'm never talking like that again. "Of course, the one he admires most is Sinestro. What would happen if you met him?"

"Hopefully, we'd both have better things to do than fight. But I certainly don't expect to meet him on Oa of all places."

back

Collegiality 4

next

23rd August

19:19 GMT

O..kay… Assuming that Doctor Natu is a woman of routine and there hasn't been some sort of last second emergency, she should be here shortly. And -now that I'm equipped with a translator upgrade courtesy of Betrassus- I should be able to press my case a little.

"Is drink good?"

I mean, even with the upgrade it's not perfect or anything, but at least it's better calibrated to what a visiting merchant might reasonably have after spending this long in an area.

"It satisfies. I am appreciative."

Definitely not perfect, and I don't think that waiter was here last time I visited. High staff turnover or just changes in shift patterns?

"Tell me if you want anything else."

He smiles and walks over to another table. My goodness me, that was a normal sentence. And the drink does satisfy; I took the time to ask Lantern Tui for a few suggestions and I've found something that tastes like passion fruit juice. There'd be an export market for it on Earth if it wasn't for the exorbitant shipping rates. As it is, it might be worth me spending enough time around here to find out what environment it's best cultivated-.

"-not be here, identically to how he was not here-" Doctor Natu turns away from the older woman she came through the door with and looks around the café. She spots me at once and I raise my glass in greeting. "-last.. time."

"That is your alien hook-up? I hoped that he would be stranger."

Doctor Natu tears her eyes away from me. "He is not-."

"Physically."

"Yes, I understood what you meant. And I hope that his translator is still too bad to-" I smile slightly, shaking my head. "-understand…" She starts to look around for another table, but her friend takes hold of her left arm and gently tugs her in my direction. Doctor Natu half-resists for a moment, then yields to the inevitable and allows herself to be led over.

Ugh. Inconsiderate real universe: giving someone I want to recruit emotional relationships with NPCs. Like they're a real person or something, with friends and a life that goes on when they're not in view of the reader. Stupid non-comic book comic book universe.

"So, you are an alien warlord?" The other woman smiles, leaning forwards across the table. "What is that like?"

"I am not precisely a warlord-."

"A headhunter who sometimes kills people while leading an army."

"It is a technique. It is not an occupation on its own."

Doctor Natu blinks, looking me over. "Your translator has been improved."

"I spent time on planet Betrassus. I bought an improvement."

The older woman grins. "Kill anyone?"

I shake my head, smiling. "Not on planet Betrassus."

"I assert that they have a duelling tradition-."

"Nakkoa, just… Please, stop."

"This is the closest you have been to a-." I don't quite catch what Doctor Natu's right hand does that cuts her friend off, but it appears to be effective. The two of them share a look before Doctor Natu turns her attention to me.

"I mentioned our conversation to some friends at the hospital. They have convinced themselves that you are the most interesting thing happening in my life."

"They think I am more interesting than brain surgery? That surprises me. We only spoke once."

"You try telling them that."

"Okay." I turn to 'Nakkoa', who is probably something at the hospital. "Ms Nakkoa, I am not at all amorously interested in the intelligent and attractive Doctor Natu."

"Pfnnnnnnnnngh." Ms Nakkoa makes a quiet snort-laugh noise, petering off into a grin as Doctor Natu sighs.

"I hope that was a joke; I was not even sure I wanted to talk to you again. What you told me last time was not funny."

"Good. I would be worried if you had found it funny."

"Recruited anyone interesting since last time?"

I nod. "A plant that covers the surface of an entire planet. An engineer made out of anti-matter. Pseudo-insects from a species with seven sexes. Prince Ragnar of Betrassus. Have you operated on any interesting brains since-?"

"A whole planet?" / "Seven-?"

"Sentient planets do exist, though they are rare. Speaking with one was an interesting experience. Physically, they have little in common with humanoids. She senses gravity and electromagnetic fields as you and I do pressure and light." Their faces relax slightly as they try to picture the being I'm describing. "The first time she encountered another intelligent mind, she found pain to be so abhorrent that she learned to turn parts of herself into emergency hospice systems, and the telepathic node network which runs throughout her body allows her to communicate with all parts of her body with almost no lag."

Doctor Natu blinks. "That is-."

"And she keeps her world surrounded by corpses, millions of bodies floating in local space so that she'll always have enough to eat."

Ms Nakkoa pulls a face. "She eats corpses?"

"She cannot live by geothermal and solar power alone." She's actually taking steps to reduce her total volume, using her ring to increase her understanding of the bioengineering she had been doing instinctively. "Corpses lost in deep space are not useful to anyone."

"Wait." Doctor Natu appears to believe that she's seen a wrinkle in my story. "If she is a planet, how did you recruit her? Are you going to build on her?"

"No. I got to sit on her surface while she used her gravity manipulation to move faster than light. Half-visible stars beyond her atmosphere flashing past as we flew. The universe is a wonderful place." I smile. "How is the hospital?"

"Ahh…" Doctor Natu shrugs. "Our hospital is fine. The hospitals in the poorer districts are getting starved of funds to make sure of it."

"I do not know how medical provision works on Korugar. Do you use an insurance-based model, or is provision universal?"

"In theory, it is universal. But some places are more universal than others."

"I had assumed that the purpose of the form of debt bondage you labour under was to compel you to select less desirable work locations. Was that not true?"

Ms Nakkoa rolls her eyes. "Why would the politicians controlling our funding put the best doctors in places they do not use? Medical students on study-grants go through the same assessments as everyone else. It works out better that way for the system, because they have trouble leaving wherever they are put." She leans back slightly as the waiter returns. "But I don't talk to alien warlords to hear about my problems. I want to hear how it works with seven sexes."

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Collegiality 5

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24th August

02:45 GMT

It's very… Green.

The Sto-Oa system is either a bizarre anomaly, or the Guardians did more than a little housekeeping when they moved in. Aside from Sto-Oa and Oa itself, there's nothing here. No other planets, no asteroids, not even dust. And as we're technically in interstellar space here, there's a whole arc of space where there aren't any stars. It's actually a little disturbing to look at, like there's a place in space you could fall out of.

Sto-Oa itself is an orange dwarf star and Oa orbits it far more closely than Earth does Sol. From where I am, if I block my empathic vision the result is that the side of Oa closest to it looks purple while the side facing away is purely green. The purple side is darker, making it look like night happens when the sun is in the sky.

But when my empathic vision is active? Solid green. So solid that it obscures Sto-Oa, obscures space, even obscures the individual light sources on the planet. I thought that the Guardians or.. maybe even Guy would stand out. They don't. I couldn't even say for certain that they're down there.

Another flicker of green draws my attention, and I take the opportunity to turn away from the planet to look at it. It's a Green Lantern, an elfin-looking woman with a complicated arrangement of pink hair trailing behind her as she flies back to Oa. Must be glad to have a power ring; there's no way that hair would stay tangle-free without a protective environmental shield keeping the strands apart.

I don't think she's seen me. I'm not.. glowing that brightly, and most Lanterns don't have empathic vision. I'm sure that the Guardians have…

Heh. For a moment I consider dropping a cloud of dust, purely for the mischief value. No. Bad Lantern.

"Orange Tw-." Ah. No, I'm not, am I? "Orange Illustres to Honour Guard Guy Gardner." I watch my ring for a moment. "Guy? Come on, you invited me."

I cross my legs, relax my muscles and stare at my ring's sigil for a moment.

Have the… Gits blocked me again..?

Ugh. Okay, what do I do? I could just throw my arms wide, create a massive orange sigil and wait for someone to pick me up. How many Green Lanterns are there down there? Probably not that many. Green Lanterns generally stick to their Sectors. Honour Guard Lanterns generally have enough to keep themselves busy… Wonder if they've attacked Colu yet? Anyway, there'll probably be a few around, plus any rookies who are still undergoing basic training. If Lantern Savenlovich is being mentored then she probably isn't, but according to the data I took from John's ring there could be anything from four to twelve rookies down there. That's the normal range due to deaths in the line, resignations and retirements, and outside major wars it's pretty consistent. Guy said that the Guardians had approved shoot-to-kill on Qwardian officers, but they waited for me to handle Ragnar. And I have an invitation. They're not going to freak out if I fly down there, are they?

I switch to a standing position and accelerate towards Oa, space bending around me as I do so. John's map showed the Green Central Power Battery being over there, along the dawn line. Certainly, there seem to be a lot more buildings around there. Actually, it's interesting exactly how much of Oa isn't built on. With such a small population I suppose that -unlike on the heavily populated Maltus- there's no need for extensive structures. There are.. green light.. nodes of some kind..? Probably there to act as a relay for a shielding system. Still… Far more buildings than they need. Do they date from a time when there were more Guardians? The Guardians certainly strike me as a people who wouldn't destroy something just because they didn't need it any longer. They still use Manhunters, for goodness sake.

During major wars, far more Lanterns than normal would be stationed here, and they'd need to use more of the buildings than are routinely occupied. Then there's diplomatic visitors… Do they do prisoner rehabilitation? Are there.. work release programs? I realise that Hinon probably mentioned it as a joke, but I am going to ask Dennap if she actually wants me to. Just so I can see the look on Hinon's face when I tell her that I did.

I reduce my warp effect as I fall through Oa's atmosphere, keeping myself subsonic. No sense in creating a racket or anything. I turn my empathic vision up a little, and I'm now close enough to see the strands… Huh. Yes, those near-cuboid structures contain powerful green light focuses. More than that, I can see strands of green light forming links through the air. It's fascinating… Buuut perhaps I shouldn't fly near them while I'm only grudgingly allowed here. Instead-.

Ah! Green Lanterns over there. A group of five, and they're heading this way. Hopefully, that's my escort. I head a little further away from the green structures and descend further until I'm only ten metres or so off the ground. Quick check of my robes, yep, not naked…

Huh, they don't have the green sigil on their-.

The first green pulse hits me in the chest as I begin to realise what's happened. These are- construct armour, power armour- rookies and they've somehow gotten away from their tutor. Further green pulses strike my armour, with even more missing me and blowing small craters in the ground below us.

I fly sideways, making sure that I keep facing the approaching Greenies. I don't recognise three of them, but the Xudarian… No, Tomar-Re's older. Pass. The blonde with the yellow skin is almost certainly Arisia Rrab, so no jokes about Rrab life insurance costs or life expectancy… Construct megaphone.

"Could we possibly talk about this?"

The Jem'Hadar-looking one at the rear of the pack generates a construct torpedo and fires it in my direction.

"I have an invitation!"

I swerve in the air, still facing them as they try to close the distance. The torpedo construct follows me as the bolts start to seriously abrade my construct armour.

Right! Had enough. I've tried reasonable, and now it's time to put these raucous rookies down with the minimal level of force practical. If the Guardians wanted them to stay in pristine condition, they should have put reins on them.

I stop in the air and stick out my left arm, catching the construct torpedo by the bow cap and tossing it aside. It explodes a moment later, light and… Far less force than when John throws constructs like that around, actually.

Green Greenies, right.

I generate a shield in front of me bearing the orange sigil and I stop retreating, allowing them to close the distance. Their energy pulses slam into it accurately enough, though I'm sure that if it were me shooting like that Christopher would be patting me on the shoulder and referring to me as 'son'.

"Get over here."

An orange construct x-clamp on a chain shoots around my shield and flashes across the space between me and a Lantern who looks a little like a sea anemone and closes around… His..? Torso before dragging him back to me.

"Agh!"

"Blob-blob!"

I drag him to a halt next to me and grab him with my right hand, his environmental shield shimmering and buckling around mine.

Corrupt.

And gone. He drops slightly in the air as his ring's flight ability shuts down, then I extend my own around him.

"For future reference:-"

I extend my left hand, pulling his power ring from one of his tendrils-

"-if someone tries to talk to you?"

-before dropping him and letting him fall the three metres to the ground.

"LISTEN TO WHAT THEY'RE SAYING."

I jerk my shield forward, slamming into Ms Rrab and an eight-limbed cyborg insect of some kind and knocking them aside. The Xudarian and the Jem'Hadar look-alike with the tall head get construct clamped.

"Make this a lesson you only have to learn once, hm?"

back

Collegiality 6

next

24th August

02:52 GMT

"So." Five green rings hang from an orange loop in the air to my right as the five rookies glower up at me. "Who wants to tell me what you five did wrong?"

Lantern Rrab strains against the orange construct chains binding her. "You will not get away with this."

Amusingly, without power rings they can't actually talk to each other as they don't have a language in common.

"Get away with what? I was invited here. The only reason I came down this far away from the administration area is because with the communication bar in place I couldn't tell anyone I was here and I didn't want to frighten anyone." The three rookies with recognisable eyes widen them slightly, and the anemone's tendrils sag mournfully. "But it turned out alright; I'm practising my own Lantern training techniques and this could be a useful opportunity for me." I clap my hands together. "I will return the ring to each one of you who can identify one of your errors."

I did briefly consider putting one on myself and using it to contact someone, but I don't think that 'I beat up your newbies and took their stuff' is the way to go with this. Assuming that I even can activate non-orange rings these days. Have to ask someone here if they mind me testing that.

"We did not contact anyone when we identified a hostile." The grey-skinned humanoid sags further. "That was the first thing we should have done, in case something like this happened."

"Good answer." Now, which one-? I let the middle ring fall through my construct loop, letting it fall onto my right palm. I dismiss the chains binding him and raise my eyebrows. "All yours."

"Ah…"

"What?"

"Do you… Expect me to fight you for it?"

"No. But when I recruit someone, I make them call their ring from my hand. I know Green Lanterns can do the same thing." I move my right hand a little closer to him. "I'm not blocking you. Call it."

…

"Though, actually, you probably should look into non-ring weapons and defensive systems at some point."

"I… Don't know how to call my ring."

"Your ring selected you because you have the mental and spiritual characteristics which the Green Lantern Corps recruits for. You are already capable of calling it to you. Picture clearly in your mind the image of the ring flying from my palm and onto your finger. Focus on that, until the idea of anything else happening appears to be an impossibility. Will it to you."

That's a.. very approximate version of how Guy described the process to me when he got the hang of it. But if these rookies can actually generate constructs, it shouldn't be totally beyond them.

The grey humanoid stands and extends his right hand, eyes locked onto his ring. "Ring." A very weak shimmer of green light runs around its surface, then fades away again. "Ring." It wobbles slightly on my palm, then lies still again. He takes a deep breath, eyes locked on and staring. "Ring."

The ring rises off my palm-

"Remote activation detected."

-and flies onto his middle ringer, a wave of green light passing over him as his environmental shield reactivates. He smiles for a second, then turns to his colleagues and fires an energy pulse at the construct chains around them.

"No!" The chain isn't damaged much by his attack, but I stick an orange construct plate between him and his colleagues. "What did you just tell me you should have done when you found me?"

"Lantern-. Lantern Maestran to Lantern Kilowog, come in sir!"

Lantern Kilowog's face appears over his ring.

"Hey, kid. You keeping out of trouble?"

"Sir,-."

"Ah, hey, just so you know: there's an orange Lantern coming to Oa sometime soon. Guardians want to talk to him. I'd have told you earlier, but Lantern Gardner only just got around to telling me. So: what you up to?"

He kno-ows.

"Daaaah." He looks at me, his colleagues and then back at Kilowog. "Practice, sir?"

"Ah, I'm just messing with you. I watched you all getting your creggocks handed to you. Hey, orange guy." Lantern Maestran's ring glows brightly for a moment, then a life size Kilowog construct steps out.

"Honour Guard Lantern Kilowog." I perform a shallow bow. "An honour to meet you. Guy has spoken fondly of his time under your tutelage."

"Heh. Guardians figured if I could teach him I could teach anyone."

"I apologise for disrupting your class."

The construct image folds its arms. "Think these poozers might learn more this way." He wheels to face those still bound. "He's still waiting for your answer! What should you have done?!"

No immediate responses.

"Rookie Rrab? Any idea?"

Her eyes move from Kilowog to me. "We… We should have identified our target more carefully."

I nod. "I know you have files on me. I read Lantern Stewart's when I stole his ring. That would have told you that it was unlikely that I was going to attack you and that five to one odds weren't actually in your favour."

Another ring drops onto my right palm as her bonds fade. "Call it to you."

The stare with which she fixes her ring looks more constipated than focused, but I'll let her work at it.

"Sorry, don't know what the rest of you are called. Any more guesses?"

The cyborg insect waggles its middle legs. "Tactically. All adopting the same technique. All approaching from the same direction. All approaching at the same time. All were errors."

"Correct."

Its bonds fade and its ring joins Lantern Rrab's.

"Come on, you're all missing the easy one."

The anemone's tendrils suddenly come erect. "We should have attempted to communicate with you in advance of attacking."

"Half marks, given that I told you that. Why?"

"To prevent shameful misunderstandings like this."

"Nearly, but not quite. Try ag-."

"Because we're police officers!" Lantern Rrab's ring flies to her finger. "We stop crimes and arrest criminals. We're not supposed to just go around shooting people because they look suspicious. That's supposed to be a last resort."

I nod. "Well done, Lantern Rrab." She smiles. "Try to remember that in advance next time." She stops smiling. "Who else wants their ring back?"

back

Collegiality 7

next

24th August

02:58 GMT

"...why you poozers thought attacking him-" There's a half second pause as Lantern Kilowog takes a breath. "-was a good idea in the first place, when you were supposed to be training!"

I see a thin strand of spittle drip down Maestran's face. Lantern Kilowog's mouth structure doesn't really lend itself to precise control. The rookie doesn't react, other than to unconsciously lean away from his towering instructor slightly. Kilowog is a big guy, and now that he's here in the flesh he's all the more imposing.

"This is Oa! Things don't happen here without the Guardians knowing about it, and if they had a problem they'd be sending the Honour Guard to deal with it!" He paces down the line of recruits, arms behind his back and clearly unimpressed with what just took place. "You rookies would be called back to the citadel to wait it out!"

"Lantern Kilowog-."

He wheels towards me. "And what did you think you were doing, coming here unescorted?"

I shrug. "I told Lantern Gardner that I'd need a day or so, he said that was fine. I tried to make contact when I got into the system, but apparently I'm still barred from communicating with members of the Green Lantern Corps."

Kilowog wrinkles his nose. And Bolovaxians have a lot of nose to wrinkle. "Gardner didn't turn that off?"

I raise my left ring to my left ear. "Illustres to Kilowog."

Nothing happens.

Kilowog snorts. "Guess I didn't beat the stupid out of him hard enough, either." He lowers his arms to his sides, then raises his right hand to his face. "Let me just see if there's-. Oh."

"What?"

He lowers his hand, the lights from his ring fading. "Standing order from the Guardians. Communications block stays up until you meet them."

"Tremendously helpful of them. Are they ready for me now..?"

"No, they're debriefing Lantern Venizz. I'll tell you when. Alright!" Kilowog turns back to the recruits. "One lap around the planet. First one back gets twenty push-ups."

"Query. First one back?"

"Everyone else gets forty."

The cyber insect turns to see that all of its companions have already started their lap, and hurries to follow them.

Kilowog and I watch them go. "Eh, we were all that bad at it once."

"Were you?"

He glances sideways at me, then raises his left eyebro-. His left eye ridge. "Guy told me about the cake."

"Could you make a cake that big? Heck, I was making faster than light jumps and complex constructs on my first day." I smirk. "Want me to chivvy your recruits along a little? I imagine that a giant orange chomping mouth construct would do wonders for their concentration."

"Nah. I make them do this because repetition works. They need to learn to focus their minds through anger and tiredness and get the job done."

"You sure?"

"Teaching Lanterns is what I do. And if Gardner could make the Honour Guard less than a year after coming off medical leave, I don't think I'm doing too badly."

"I might have had a.. little something to do with that."

"Yeah, maybe. Teaching something makes you think about it in different ways from when you're being taught it yourself."

"Guy told you he taught me? Because… Green Lanterns habitually use side arms and railguns?"

"Alright, so maybe-."

"It only took me a few weeks to get most of the stuff you taught him out of his head so I could teach him how to do it properly." I smile.

Lantern Kilowog folds his arms across his chest. "Oh yeah?"

"I realise that at the entry level green rings are so limiting that Green Lanterns have to settle for just making whatever constructs they can… But I'd have thought that senior Lanterns would be able to do better. I mean, Guy got the hang of filaments for constructs eventually and I have to credit him with learning how to resist orange light infections quickly enough, but I can't really credit you with either."

Lantern Kilowog's eyes narrow slightly. "There some reason why you're trying to piss me off… Kid?"

"I'm used to sparring with Guy. He's pretty good, but I generally come out ahead. John's getting there, but he hasn't got as good as Guy or I yet. Jordan's a good guy, but he's falling behind as far as Lantern to Lantern combat is concerned. You're a… Longer term veteran. How long now?"

"Closer to forty years than thirty."

"There you go. So I certainly haven't fought the best the Green Lantern Corps has to offer. But the way I see it, if the man responsible for training isn't the best, he's certainly got to be up there. Assuming.. your… Illustres isn't available."

"No, Illustres Chaselon's usually pretty busy. So, what; you think I might be a challenge?"

"I think we'll force each other to think about Lantern-to-Lantern combat in ways neither of us have before. Hopefully. I mean, for me it's this or pick a fight with Sinestro… And I don't think he's a… Sparring sort of guy. Also, I'm a bit annoyed about your recruits attacking me and with the Guardians, and I.. may be taking it out on you slightly." I nod my head to the side. "Sorry about that."

"Do you think you can wait until they get back?"

I shrug. "I pretty much have to wait at the Guardians' pleasure, so… Sure? Unless a free range Orange Lantern appears in this Sector before then. Those take top priority."

He nods. "Here's what I'm thinking. I've been having the rookies train against each other and against me. They haven't really seen what experienced Lanterns can do yet. They haven't seen how people like-" I think that's a smile. "-me fight when we're being pushed."

"And you want to make it a lesson." I nod. "I approve. Though I do have a condition."

"Oh? What's that?"

"I'm training rookies of my own back on Maltus. Sometime -doesn't have to be soon- you turn up and we run a similar session there. So the first generation of Orange Lanterns can benefit from your experience as well."

Kilowog thinks about it for a moment, then nods in the affirmative. "Probably a good idea. I don't want you making the rest of us ring-slingers look bad."

"Though I'll warn you: for Orange Lanterns, the problem isn't getting the required level of focus to use the ring. It's staying sane enough to use it sensibly."

"Heh. I've outthought powerful guys before. You should be more worried about me making them think they picked the wrong Corps."

"Well. One of us is in for a rude awakening."

back

Collegiality 8

next

24th August

03:29 GMT

"Forty!"

Lantern Tu looks up hopefully from his pushed up position at where Kilowog glowers down at him, not daring to rise until he has specific approval.

"Get back in line, poozer. And try not to be so slow in future."

"Sir, yes sir!" Lantern Tu jumps to his feet, then steps back to fall in besides Lantern Blob-Blob. As with the Clickers on Maltus there's basically no way for the rest of us to say the pseudo-anemone's actual name, and daft as it sounds apparently that's the accepted stand-in.

"Alright, listen up!" Kilowog isn't pacing this time, just standing in front of them with his arms folded at his chest. "Like Rrab pointed out, the duty of a Lantern is to enforce the law! But sometimes that means you have to use force to get your point across, and sometimes you run into someone who can fight back. Part of my job is to prepare you for those situations. And since I got-" He glances my way, then returns his attention to his students. "-a volunteer, we're going to show you how you're supposed to handle that." He turns to face me, and opens his arms. "So what do you do?"

"Firstly, time allowing, study my opponent. What species are they? What equipment do they have? What weapons or armour? Are they wearing the colours of a group who might provide them with reinforcements? Immediately, or will I need to sleep with one eye open? In Kilowog's case, he's wearing an armour mesh covering his whole body, reinforced with heavy plates around his torso. The only weapon I can see is his power ring. However-" I stick out my right hand and take a cold gun out of subspace. "-that does not mean that he can't get other weapons very quickly."

I return the cold gun to subspace.

"The fact that his ring isn't glowing particularly brightly-" He corrects that at once. "-would have indicated that I had a window of opportunity to attack while his defences were weak. Remember, your environmental shield provides you with a basic level of protection all of the time, but it is not a flawless defence. In terms of local friendlies… We're on Oa. If this were a real fight I'd have to be prepared to deal with the Honour Guard garrison, and then the Guardians. I'd be looking to disengage and flee, rather than carry on fighting."

Actually… If this was a real confrontation I'd probably make an effort to kill Kilowog first, to reduce the risk of immediate pursuit. Sustained crumbler round fire to the head should do it…

"As for species, he's Bolovaxian. Slightly stronger and tougher than a standard pattern humanoid like myself, but not enough to make much difference in a power ring fight."

Kilowog snorts. "We'll see how much difference it makes."

"Yes." I rise slightly into the air and don my power armour. "We will. And of course it's worth noting that Bolovaxians -particularly those that have been away from home for a long time- have a rather easily exploitable weakness."

Kilowog folds his arms defiantly. "Oh yeah? What's that?"

"Bolovaxians share a constant empathic field, allowing them to share feelings and -to a degree- individual thoughts. Though not strictly speaking a group mind, they're fairly close. As a society, it binds them together in ways I find quite admirable. As individuals, it makes them vulnerable to telepathic attack as they're open to direct input but not really capable of fighting back against it. Lantern Kilowog has it far worse. As an Honour Guard Lantern, he rarely has the opportunity to return home. Assuming that he doesn't suppress his ability chemically, that means that after so long without input he is unusually sensitive."

I take a psi-shock grenade out of subspace and let it float in front of me. "This is a psi-shock grenade. It uses cloned neural tissue to create a telepathic surge. Against most people it's a slightly more effective flashbang. Against Lanterns, it usually disrupts their power ring usage, which can be fatal. Against people either trained for it or-" I tap my helmet. "-wearing psi-baffles, it does nothing at all. Against someone like Kilowog… It's dangerous enough that I'm not going to be using it."

I drop it to the ground.

"That's using information I got from an external examination. If you don't know all that, how do you find out? Lantern Tresh?" The cyborg insect.

"Assumption. Increase our data stores through prior study?"

Kilowog sticks his right arm out in my direction and scans me.

"No. You do that."

"Power rings aren't just effective weapons, they're tools, and most Lanterns use only a fraction of their full potential. Your ring's database is available to you all of the time, and if what you want isn't on there then it will relay the query to Oa and you'll have a response within moments. Kilowog now knows the limits and capacities of my armour, and he was also able to gather data on my physiology. To the best of my knowledge, my species doesn't have any particular weak points-"

"Oh, don't get me started."

"-but it never hurts to check. I would point out somewhat smugly that my species currently has four serving members of the Green Lantern Corps -two Honour Guard and two Sector Lanterns- as well as a fifth who'd be so good at it that the Guardians put him on the 'Do Not Recruit' list because they were worried that he'd make the rest of you look bad."

They have no idea who I'm talking about. Move on.

"Doing that also gives him any data the Corps has on me in particular. At which point, he should start looking to disengage."

"Yeah, because that's going to happen."

"Lantern Kilowog's bullishness aside, there are things that it's not a good idea to fight on your own. I had a go at fighting a Titan on Earth… I got hit by a rather large bolt of lightning and nearly died without achieving anything very much. But without the Ophidian's direct support-" And I'm not taking my lantern out anywhere near the 'Green Men'. "-he should be in my weight class."

"All that and more."

"So let's test it out." I generate construct armour. "Lantern Kilowog and I will endeavour to provide you with commentary, an explanation of what we're doing and why. Since I'm still under a communication block, you'll have to listen to me on long wave radio rather than ring-to-ring, but that's the best I can do." Their rings gleam as I fly to minimum safe distance. "Lantern Kilowog, on your signal."

Kilowog's ring glows brilliantly as opaque green construct plates cover his body.

"Ready whenever you are."

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

"Completely sure? I don't want you to claim-"

I remote detonate the psi-shock grenade.

"-I cheated."

Kilowog's armour crumbles across most of his body and he collapses to his knees, clutching at his head.

"That's a good starting lesson. The aim is to take your opponent down. Whole if you can, in pieces if you can't. It isn't to score points or give them a sporting chance. You serve the law, not your personal honour code. And now I'm going to back off a way, because I think I just gave Kilowog a-"

His eyes come up and they look decidedly unfriendly.

"-really good motivation to beat me to a pulp."

back

Collegiality 9

next

24th August

03:33 GMT

His transition jammer comes up immediately, and from the volley of energy pulses that fly in my direction I think that my assessment of his mental state is correct. All respect to the man for staying so focused, but I'm glad that I started heading away from him at speed the moment I finished talking because those things aren't weak little rookie energy pulses. No, these things have to be twenty centimetres across each.

Ring, scan and auto-dodge.

Compliance.

Fortunately for me, energy packets like that don't have any homing capacity and while they are fast, they aren't faster than light. I jink around as they fly past me, not daring to let them get too close. I could phase, but I know that it's possible to affect phased objects with a power ring and if anyone's learned how to do that it's Kilowog.

"…expect to actually hit him like this, it's about keeping him off balance while I close the distance."

I smile. "Guess we're both on long wave, then. Okay, we're both warping space to move faster than our ring-flight would usually allow. I'm not using a scramjet construct to go faster because it would impede my ability to dodge. He's not using one… Probably because I'm not. No point wasting power. For those of you who weren't paying attention, I'm wearing two rings, giving me slightly under twice as much power as Lantern Kilowog. As such, a viable strategy would be to outlast him and attack him when he tries to recharge."

I drop a communication drone out of subspace, then form a simple green laser construct and three railguns. The laser I fire at Kilowog's eyes. It's not powerful enough to cause serious harm, but it does distract him for a moment as he instinctively jerks his head away. That means that the volley of crumbler rounds that slams into him a half-second later goes unanswered and unevaded. The first two shots hit him in the chest armour and left shoulder, but the series that come next hit my actual target: the transition jammer construct. The moment it goes down I transition across the system, drop another drone, transition again, drop another drone, transition back to where I was a moment before and then finally transition to the far side of Sto-Oa. Then I drop my construct armour, go invisible and fly as fast as I can down from Oa's orbital plane using my armour's flight system.

"Lasers are intense beams of light. Since you can see through your environmental shields, you're obviously able to shoot through them with lasers. That's why my armour shows me my environment using sensors rather than risk exposing any part of me to shots like that. Since Lantern Kilowog clearly prefers close quarters fights, I used the distraction my laser provided to destroy the thing preventing me doing a simple FTL transition and then got away. Lantern Kilowog?"

There's a momentary pause.

"Normally, that wouldn't be much of a problem. Power rings are great at tracking things through space. Multiple transitions are harder to track, especially if they use some kind of sensor masking. Over the area of a single star system it's pretty easy to scan for a single object if you can define exactly what it is you're looking for. Except in this case, I know Orange Lantern got magic protection against general ring scans. And that means I've got to find him the hard way. You listening, Orange?"

My communication drones use bleed fracture pulse receivers, paired to the one in my armour. They can also receive and transmit in long wave and by laser, but given the distances involved either would require substantial delays.

"Naturally."

"Communication signals can generally be tracked, too. And so can power ring scans. Orange Lantern had to put out communication drones so he could keep talking without me immediately being able to find him. His armour also has stealth systems and a separate flight system not dependent on his power ring."

"Rings."

Glowing green spatial charges appear all around me!

"Gesundheit."

Armourarmourarmour!

My construct armour reappears just as the charges detonate, blasts of green light and distorted gravity slamming into me from all directions. Through the fury of it I turn up my empathic vision and try to spot-. There he is. I don't know how he realised where I was, but-. The mines clear as another series of energy pulses comes at me. And… I'd have to want to destroy him to match them, and I don't.

Warp.

Compliance. Warning: high energy drain.

And I'm gone, the intense green dot that marks Lantern Kilowog disappearing into the distance as I drop what's left of my construct armour and go invisible once more.

"Which is pretty clever, but doesn't help if I physically interface with the drones and use that to get your position. Go on, say something."

I fire a communication laser shot at the nearest drone. "Well done."

Ugh. Bit of a waste of time, it'll take minutes to get there. But it does make me feel like I'm participating in the discussion.

"So… Are you actually planning on fighting me, or is this strictly an evasion exercise?"

Alright, he can't directly detect me, but I am going to need to confront him. And an Orange Lantern trying to bludgeon someone they don't want to hurt is going to be at a disadvantage. What to do, what to do?

I take another drone out of subspace and set it to transmit on a delay. Then I change direction, sending the drone back towards Oa while I move further around the planet's orbital plane. I wait three seconds, then take psi-shock grenades out of subspace and start sending them after the drone. Then I accelerate and take a small physical railgun out of subspace.

"I suppose that we may as well bring things to a head. I should warn you-"

The green blip moves closer, and I rapidly fire the railgun in the direction of the drone.

"-that I fight at a far higher speed than most human-"

Close enough. A field of spatial charges appears around the drone and I detonate the grenades.

"What, you thought that would work twice?"

Direct transmission from me. "No. Did you?"

Okay, if he's there, then judging by the angle and speed of my railgun shots…

"Ugh."

As much as I could hope for. I raise my hands and point them at the green blob as at least one of the railgun rounds I fired along his flight path hits home. Hopefully enough to pierce his armour and distract him. Medphyll wouldn't teach me how to control plants like he does. And to be fair, he probably didn't know how to. But with observation, meditation and experimentation…

All Things Strive.

And Kilowog's in my face, his active sensors flashing out and piercing my invisibility system. He's actually past me when he detects me, but I see in slow motion as he forms a hammer construct and has his ring swing it at me while he turns around.

I fly to evade, my own construct armour reappearing and two small railguns forming. The hammer is barely half way to me when the crumbler round hits it and causes it to collapse. Kilowog finishes his turn, construct scatterguns pelting my construct armour with pulses of green light. I generate a construct shield as my armour starts failing.

"Pretty sure you've lost, Kilowog."

One of his scatter guns disappears as he takes a neural impacter out of subspace. "Pretty sure I haven't. I was saving this for Sinestro, but I guess you'll do for a… A triaoouhuhhah."

"Sorry? Didn't catch that."

I fire another volley of crumbler rounds in his direction as I stop backing up. If this works as I think it does…

Kilowog stops trying to evade, the noises coming from him becoming increasingly unsettling.

I cease my attack, reinforcing my construct shield and armour. "Kilowog? If you don't respond coherently I'm calling myself the winner."

There's a flash of green as his constructs and armour evaporate and I see him spraying grey/green gunge from his mouth.

"Rookies, I just won. You're escorting me and Kilowog to the Green Lantern Corps' medical centre. Now."

back

Collegiality 10

next

24th August

03:52 GMT

The blue-grey skinned, feminine-looking humanoid turns away from the instruments surrounding Kilowog's bed and regard me for a moment. She..? Looks a bit like a cross between a Vedalken and a Kaminoan. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that the Green Lantern Corps has civilian support workers; the chance of a medical doctor specialising in xenobiology getting a ring in the first place must be astronomically small, and the odds of them ascending to the Honour Guard smaller still. And the Guardians are far too thin on the ground to handle it themselves.

"Explain to me what you did."

"I caused-."

"And the explanation had best be a good one."

I half-turn to see the rookie squad hurriedly giving Illustres Chaselon as much space as he wants. Unlike most of his species, his use of his ring's flight system allows him to use his mechadendrites purely for fine manipulation rather than for motion. The rest of his body is a large, round, multifaceted crystal with a.. really distracting… I don't want to call it a Mohican, but that's what it looks like.

So… This is the one non-Guardian on the planet I might not be able to take in a fight.

"Illustres Chaselon. Lantern Kilowog and I were sparring, as a demonstration for his class. I disabled him using a technique I cribbed from Lantern Medphyll: I caused the microscopic symbiotic plants in his digestive system to multiply far faster than they would naturally. That caused him extreme gastrointestinal upset, and also demonstrates that Medphyll deserves to be promoted."

"Both Jothra and Medphyll rejected promotion when it was offered to them. Neither could bear to leave their homeworld for the duration that would have been required."

"Oh. Okay."

"Doctor, will Lantern Kilowog-"

"Uouououououoghhhh…!"

Kilowog rears up, belches forth a wave of grey/green vomit and then collapses back again onto his bed.

"-recover swiftly?"

"The Bolovaxian digestive system is surprisingly malleable. The drugs I have administered should neutralise the increased growth within an hour. Repairing the damage that has been inflicted on his digestive tract should be a simple matter after that."

"Thank you. I imagine that he will find this a valuable learning experience." He half-turns, facing the rookies. "Recruits. While your teacher is incapacitated, you are placed under the tutelage of Lantern Apros."

A clear wave of fear passes through the rookies. Why would-? Oh. Yeah. It looks like Apros likes to force his students to face their fears until they're not afraid of them any more. Which is apparently fine if you're an Honour Guard Lantern, but the one time I tried to do that to Jordan…

"You will find him in the refectory. Go there now."

There's an unhappy chorus of 'yes, sir' and they file out, Chaselon turning away and scanning Kilowog with his ring as they do so. "Can you hear me, Lantern Kilowog?"

"Uuuuugh…" Kilowog blinks, then tries to focus on Chaselon as a couple of drones float around him and disintegrate his vomit. "Yeah?"

"I do not remember this being in your lesson plan. Do you think it will feature there in future?"

"Yeah. Until I learn to beat it, sir."

"Correct answer."

"Um. Sorry, Kilowog."

"Ehhrr." He awkwardly waves his right hand in a dismissive motion. "Good fight."

"This should help." I fish a spell eater out of one of my pouches and place it gently on his chest before turning away and grinning at Chaselon. "So… What's next on the agenda? Do I get a tour of the place-?"

"The Guardians are ready to see you now. I will escort you-" He turns around and leads the way out of the medical ward. "-in order to ensure that you do not hospitalise any further members of my Corps along the way."

"Is Guy about? Because-" He takes off from a balcony, heading in the direction of the building housing the Green Central Power Battery. "-him picking me up would have been-."

"Lantern Gardner slept through his alarm."

"Oh. Well, fair enough. Mistakes happen."

"He will meet us at the Guardians' chamber."

We fly out across the… I don't know what this city is called. And it is a city, even if it has occupancy levels usually seen in London property investment vehicles. I wonder what it feels like to live here, to be able to stroll along empty streets without seeing another soul. Eh, I suppose if I'd lived through one of the events which prompted it to have high occupancy I'd feel less inclined to complain.

"Are you the individual I talk to about getting Alan Scott taken off the 'Do Not Recruit' list? I don't know enough about Lantern Savenlovich to badmouth her, but Guy and Jordan getting promoted gave you a prime opportunity to bring a twenty-five year veteran into the fold."

"I do not set recruitment policy. The Guardians made their decision because they were concerned that his growing dependency on the green light was potentially dangerous."

"He's a ninety year old Human! He doesn't have much life left to gamble! Frankly, it's amazing that he's lasted this long."

"I did not mean 'dangerous for him'."

"Whatever. I'm just going to carry on telling everyone that you're afraid he'd be better than you."

"I suspect that you would do that regardless of what I told you."

"Not true. If you'd told me 'it was an oversight, I'm rescinding it now, bring him here right away', I'd never have repeated it again. Oh, is now a good time to mention that my second ring was made by Krona?"

"No."

Guy steps out from one of the outer columns supporting the portico of the Green Lantern Corps' citadel. In here is the Green Central Power Battery, and I can already feel it pressing against my environmental shield. Down below is the crypt in which those Green Lanterns whose death leaves a body may choose to be interred. It isn't actually that big a percentage, but over the millennia it's added up to a big number. Somewhere else in the complex is the famous Book of Oa, and the Guardian's reclusiam and probably their forge as well.

Oh, what fun. Ring, prepare the autoplagiarisers.

Unable to comply. Requested object does not exist.

Spoilsport.

"Hey Paul."

Yeah, Guy certainly sounds tired. Hopefully he won't need to say much.

"Good morning Guy. Now let's go see the Smurfs."

Guy closes his eyes, and quietly groans.

back

Collegiality 11

next

24th August

04:00 GMT

Guy stares at me with eyebrows raised. "You did what?"

I shrug as the three of us slowly fly through the corridors leading to the Guardians' chamber. Red banners decorated with the Green sigil hang from the ceiling and… Some sort of shrub runs along the floor at the sides of the walkway, breaking up the hard lines in an organic touch which surprises me a little.

"We thought that a demonstration of Lantern versus Lantern combat would be helpful for the recruits."

"I ain't arguin' about that. Jus' strugglin' t' believe you won."

"What, you never managed it?"

"Oh, sure. Right after I merged with Ion the first time, my constructs got a lot stronger an' he wasn't expecting it. But he wins a whole lot more'n I do." He looks expectantly at me for a moment. "So? How'd you do it?"

"I caused the microscopic plants in his digestive system to multiply very fast, causing disabling stomach pain and vomiting. And -I didn't check- but probably diarrhoea as well."

"Aw, that's jus' cheatin'. Since when can you control plants?"

"I can't. I can just make them grow a little bit. But… if you do that in someone's gut…"

Guy winces as we approach a large grey double door, mythologized scenes from Maltusian and Oan history carved into the surface. "Doesn't work on Humans, does it?"

I grin at him as Chaselon drifts ahead, his ring glimmering. A moment later the doors begin to swing open and I see Guy straighten up and brush down his uniform. I'm a little amused for a moment before I realise that I've unconsciously started to do the same thing. The Guardians of the Ga-. Fine, Universe. The beings I've been studiously avoiding contact with since I got here. The ancient and powerful beings I've actually gone out of my way to nose-tweak on more than a few occasions.

Should be fun.

Lantern Venizz floats out through the door, nodding to Illustres Chaselon as she passes. Guy and I get nothing more than a small frown before she switches to the swimmer pose and accelerates down the corridor away from us.

"She's got amazing hair. It must take ages to get it like that each morning."

"Yeah." He nods as she disappears around a corner. "Her ass ain't too bad, either."

I wince slightly as Chaselon turns to us. "The Guardians will see us now."

He then wheels towards the open doorway and flies on ahead. I fly after him, Guy following me a half-second later.

And… There they are. Blue skinned and white haired dwarves in red robes that are a lot less comedic when you see them in the flesh. Even with my empathic vision turned right down, the sheer intensity of the green light within them is.. quite uncomfortable. And I'm barely glowing at all any longer. They're floating about four metres up in an arc in a room whose interior is entirely disguised by what I assume are holographics. All around us, space, and in the distance, stars. And as the door closes behind us, space in that direction as well. I wonder if we're seeing anywhere in particular?

Ganthet nods politely in our direction, while next to him Sayd regards me with undisguised curiosity. Appa Ali Apsa actually smiles at us, and that's it as far as positive responses goes. Herupa Hando Hu, Pazu Pinder Pol and Ranakar are more neutral, adopting what I had assumed was the Guardian default mode for dealing with mortals: looking stern and sober but not actually aggressive. Dennap regards us with polite disinterest, Kontross looks at us like we're an undesirable chore and Broome Bon Baris looks like she's giving some serious thought to dissecting me.

And that's it. Nine survivors where once there were dozens. A few million years of fighting the good fight will do that to a people, and the Guardians have been doing it for far longer than that.

Chaselon and Guy float up to a point where the Guardians' feet are about level with their heads and stop, waiting to be addressed. I -having gawked at them for a moment- follow, coming to a halt slightly ahead of Chaselon and bowing from the waist.

"Guardians of the Universe. Greetings from Maltus." I straighten. "Thank you for agreeing to see me."

"It seemed only prudent." Herupa Hando Hu lowers his floating position slightly, bringing his head level with mine. "You have defeated Larfleeze and provided our former sister with his Central Power Battery."

"She did make my ring. My first one. It seemed like my best bet. I mean: be honest. What would you have done with it?"

Ganthet raises his left hand and an image of me carrying Larfleeze out of his caves appears in the air between us. "While your motives are apparent enough, we are still curious to know how you were even aware of its existence. We had thought that Larfleeze himself was the last person outside of the Guardians who knew of it."

Lie mode.

I reach into my robes and pull out a small box, then toss it underhand in his direction. He doesn't react as a green ball surrounds it and arrests its motion. "What is this?"

"Larfleeze made rings by using the orange 'Identity Theft' ability on people and then… Transforming them. I haven't tried that myself…" I point to the box which Sayd is now pulling in her direction. "The ring in that was made from Ogandu Onna Oslan. We don't know if it's possible to turn someone back… But I don't like the idea of having him with me, and I imagine that you would consider it to be a fairly large security breach."

There's a brief moment where the Guardians glance at each other. Probably having some sort of high speed green light conversation. Then Ganthet returns his full attention to me. "We appreciate you returning our brother to us." To his left, Sayd opens the box and holds her right hand towards the ring, her face a picture of distaste. "We will study what Larfleeze has done to him and see if it is possible to reverse it."

"I would be grateful if you could share your findings with the Controllers. Larfleeze transformed many people in that fashion, and I would like to return them all to flesh if at all possible."

Ranakar frowns slightly. "We Guardians are somewhat dissimilar to the mortals Larfleeze transformed. What can be applied to us can not necessarily be applied to other species."

Dennap nods. "Nonetheless, this piece of information sharing costs us little. I assume that Hinon Hee Hannanan will reciprocate?"

"Actually, I think… One of the others is working on that particular problem." And it was one of the ones who's weird about giving people his name, so I can't tell them. "But yes, we're happy to share."

Ganthet frowns slightly. "You did not answer my question. You informed Lantern Jordan that we had misled our Corps well before you visited the Vega Systems. How did you know of the existence of the Orange Central Power Battery?"

Only one way to answer that.

I shrug. "I'm afraid that's a piece of information I'm not prepared to share at this juncture. I understood that you wanted to discuss the practical aspects of our coexistence?"

back

Collegiality 12

next

24th August

04:17 GMT

"You intend to make war on the Reach." Inasmuch as his expression changes, Kontross looks unhappy at the news. Can it really be news at this point? It's not as if it was any sort of secret.

"The Controllers haven't made any secret of their ongoing confrontation with the Reach. And since you don't seem inclined to involve yourselves again, they're the… People on the spot."

"Do you have any idea how many people died when the Green Lantern Corps fought the Reach?"

"No. Nor do I particularly care." I shrug. "But if you want to tell me anyway, go ahead. More or less than when you went to war with Apokolips?"

"More. And over a far longer span of time. Unlike Apokolips, the Reach were only able to match the power Green Lanterns possess, but we were forced to engage them over a far larger front. How well do you think that your neophytes will fare against Scarab Warriors?"

"Pretty well? I'll wait until I have more experimental data to give you a firm answer, but based on my personal experience killing a Beetle isn't all that hard."

Broome Bon Baris frowns. "Your estimation of your strength does not match Lantern Tui's report to us after your shared training session."

"You mean, the training session which I ran. Where I was deliberately trying to avoid killing them." I look around the semicircle of Guardians. "I realise that you haven't had much to do with the non-green colours in a very long time, but you are aware that orange is the colour of avarice, yes? As in, the strength of my constructs is proportionate to how much I want something? And while I may make the occasional… Bantering comment, I do actually respect your Corps and I certainly don't want to kill or injure its members. On the other hand…"

I take a hologram generator out of subspace.

"Sorry, I… Don't know how to interface with this room's systems…"

I don't see any of the Guardians make a particular action, but the starscape fades slightly. I nod, then have the hologram generator show my attack on the Reach ship in orbit around Urrigen.

"On the other hand, when I really want something dead, when I really want it destroyed and I feel no hesitancy at all."

The hologram shows in real time me tearing the Reach ship apart.

Pazu Pinder Pol gives me a shallow nod. "That was not a Scarab Warrior. I do not believe that it was even a warship."

"True. This was, though."

The image shows my Praexis Demons swarm in, then me shooting Yellow Beetle and myself and Tarant killing her.

"Doesn't.. really seem that hard. Please, don't.. judge me by my weakest combat constructs. And don't assume that every big thing I did was the result of the Ophidian's influence. Heck, I'm sure that Guy's told you that Ragnar beat an Anti-Green Lantern one on one, and he'd had no formal training at all."

"The rings used by the Qwardian slaves are not perfectly designed to nullify your orange rings."

"I didn't say it was a master class of ring use. I just mean to say that when one of us is assigned to a task we really want to complete… Our rookies are -in that one endeavour- as powerful as your veterans." Out of the corner of my eye I see Guy's mouth start to open. "Powerful." I turn my head to look at him. "Not as skilled, or as good.. generally. Just 'as powerful'."

Ganthet looks uncomfortable. "At the cost of their sanity."

"And that's the focus of our training. But with our Central Power Battery up and running, I don't believe-" Several Guardians… They don't quite stiffen, but it's like they just heard something surprising in a conversation they were eavesdropping on. "-that it's an insurmountable problem." They do that 'looking-at-each-other-without-speaking' thing again. "Something you.. want to share..?"

"Mmpfh." Appa Ali Apsa floats forwards slightly and waves his hands. My hologram shuts down, being replaced by the translucent image of Lantern… Chip? The Squirrel-looking one. "Lantern Ch'p, report."

"Guardians, it was as you feared. The defence screen around New Berrith has been completely destroyed."

Um. Yeah. As much as I try to value all life, I don't really think that letting the Berrith slip into extinction would really give me much cause for disquiet. They're actually worse than the Citadelians and the Gordanians; brutal, savage and ruthless. Fortunately, they were such shits that even in a universe where the Reach and the Dominion have willing trading partners they couldn't make any allies at all. And they weren't so advanced that the local species couldn't fight them off. Eventually they drew the attention of the Guardians and got quarantined on their homeworld, an act of restraint which… It impresses me, though I'm not sure that I agree that it was a good choice.

Appa Ali Apsa nods. "And you're sure of the cause?"

His whiskers twitch. "Not.. completely, Guardian. The readings I'm getting from the debris of the satellite monitors shows that they were hit by powerful but conventional weapons. And some of the damage inflicted on the surface was caused by gravity disruptors."

"Aw, great."

"But the energy readings you mentioned?"

"Confirmed, Guardian. Avarice."

"Sounds like some more a' your lost rings jus' turned up."

"Yeah, wonderful. Lantern Ch'p? Can you tell if the orange ring users were attacking? The Berrith aren't exactly a popular people."

"I-." The image of his head turns. "Who are-?"

"The Illustres of the Orange Lantern Corps is here for negotiations. Please answer his question."

"I can't tell for certain, but I do know from personal experience that the Berrith respond well to strong displays of dominance. The shots targeted at the planet appear to have come close to large population centres without directly striking them. Given the number of them who have left, I suspect that whoever was shooting at the planet was simply making a point."

Probably not someone seeking revenge for an ancestral wrong, then. "Any idea how many? Desire strong enough to call an orange ring over long distances appears to draw more than one."

"I'm sorry, but I can't even tell for certain which shots were from weapons and which were from constructs. I can't detect any faster than light trail, so either they're very good at hiding themselves or they used a stealthed vessel of some kind." His head turns back around to face the Guardians. "The Berrith don't have the infrastructure to build further ships, and… I'm not sure that I could stop whatever did this by myself if it comes back. I am requesting assistance. At the very least, rebuilding the blockade to make sure that no one takes advantage of the Berrith's vulnerability."

"Guardians, I think I should look into this. It will be far easier for me to talk someone crazed on the orange light down, and I'm.. somewhat responsible for those rings being out in the wild in the first place."

Herupa Hando Hu nods. "We agree. Lantern Gardner."

"Sir."

"You will travel with him to Space Sector One Zero One Four and investigate. Take whatever follow up action you feel is appropriate." Guy nods. "And you, Orange Lantern,-"

Ch'p's head is replaced by an image of the planet someone just gouged chunks out of.

"-may wish to carefully consider the ongoing consequences of not dealing with these rings more promptly."

back

Collegiality 13

next

24th August

05:23 GMT

I grin, spreading my arms broadly as the Citadelians engaged in this hopeless last stand pour fire into my construct armour.

Hm. Sinestro, system check?

I have not started malfunctioning within the last five minutes, Corpsman. I assure you that if I do, you will be the first to know about it.

I slowly reach back with my right arm, my hand clasping around the grip of my new and improved daiklave. With nowhere to go the Citadelians can't even run.

And Ms Lysis hasn't left any… Little presents?

None. And I had your Mother Box perform a second check. I may have experienced a small degree of data loss, but it will not impede my core functions.

Ugh, my clothes are talking to each other. Horrible.

I heard that, Corpsman.

Two power armoured Citadelians run at me, disruptor mauls flickering with the discharge of electrons torn from their nuclei. I lunge and swing, my daiklave passing easily through each of them and sending the two halves of their now-dying bodies to the ground.

Good show.

The one on the right lost consciousness immediately, but the one on the left is at least somewhat aware as I stride past and swing the tip of my daiklave through the top of his armoured head.

"I'm not going away, Admiral! Your soldiers are dead and your suicide charges are inoperable! All this is doing is ensuring that you die tired!"

The Last Citadelian doesn't reply, though that may be because I wrecked internal commun-.

Ping!

That is because I wrecked internal communications. Still, I've checked nearly everywhere and there's really only one place left.

Ping.

True, but this is supposed to be a test of my use of the yellow light. If-.

Ping.

I plant my feet and pull back my left fist.

True, but you did hear me think yellow light, yes?

Ping.

Right then.

I swing my fist, the combination of fear and raw super strength utterly ruining both the doors and the wall they were attached to as they go flying across the room.

"…expect you to help me. I merely hope that you will take revenge." The Admiral makes momentary eye contact with me, then returns to whoever is on the other end of his communicator. "For your own sake."

"I do not concern myself with pretenders."

Oh. Oh dear.

I keep to the edge of the room, walking in an arc until I get the view screen in view.

I see Grayven at the same time as he sees me. I see a large man with grey skin, wearing a gold… Crown? Demi-crown? Micro-headdress? On his head. It's decorated with rubies, and… Some Apokoliptian designs. Not sure if those are functional, though. His face doesn't look much like mine at all, aside from the skin tone and texture. His chin is broader, and his nose has a distinct curve to it that mine lacks. His eyes appear to lack an iris, small glowing points of orange sitting on the white of his sclera. His hair -what I can see of it- has a mullet cut, while mine…

Okay, I've been letting it get a bit long at the back…

Not important. His armour is similar to mine, but dark purple in colour with gold tron lines where mine is dark grey with yellow lines. Over the top of that, he's got some sort of golden harness… I think it's decorative. Certainly doesn't.. look like anything I remember from Father Box's database. More rubies there too, as well on his non-power ring rings and on the cummerbund which appears to exist purely for the purpose of holding up his loincloth… Loincurtain?

What sort of idiot designed that ensemble?

With a little luck, all he sees back is 'yellow glow'. I certainly see his pupils move around as he takes me in. His lips purse very slightly.

"He's certainly armed like an Apokoliptian. But Apokoliptians generally don't obscure our faces when we fight."

His voice… Is actually quite a lot like mine. But he doesn't speak like I do. I've cultivated a classical English near-Received Pronunciation accent, and I generally try to speak in a relaxed mode. Even my insults are intended to sound like insulting jokes rather than threats. This… Grayven 16 I suppose I should call him. Everything I've heard him say is a threat. His tone is level and growly. I'd guess that our actual range is about the same, he just isn't using the rest of it. It's a little like how Father talks, only without the hints of self-satisfaction.

"This isn't a fight-" I stab the point of my daiklave through the Admiral's head, holding his corpse up at arm's length. "-Grayven. This is a consolidation."

"They were already a broken people. Their deaths will unify those they oppressed under you." He leans forward slightly. "Tell me, impostor: where did you get that equipment?"

"I made it myself, for the most part. Himon made my Mother Box-"

"Ping."

"-and Weaponer Kalmin and Controller Hinon… Which is a remarkably similar name now that I think about it. Made my power rings. Where did you get yours? And were they having a sale on gold?"

He leans forward slightly, his eyes narrowing and his pupils going from a mild glow to a flickering flaming look which envelops the rest of his eyes as well. Didn't.. comic Grayven have access to the Omega Effect? "Not an impostor, then. From where did Father get another?"

"Why worry about it? I'm doing fine, and you-" I look at the space behind him. The bridge of some sort of starship would be my guess… "-seem to be doing alright for yourself."

"Your very existence diminishes me. I do not share power."

"Well…" I extract my sword and clean it as the Admiral's body collapses. "Sometimes things don't go the way you want them to."

Mother Box, Sinestro, brace yourselves.

Ping.

"That's just the way that life-"

He twitches, visibly wincing, his eye-flames guttering.

"-is sometimes."

His expression changes for an instant into one of absolute rage, then the screen deactivates.

Huh.

That's going to be a problem.

Mother Box, any damage to the Anti-Life containment system?

Ping.

No, I wasn't planning to make a habit of doing that. And I realised that we'd probably run into each other at some point… I just wanted to imply that Father and I were on good terms and that coming after me now might pose a certain risk…

Ping.

No, he'd have checked. And I haven't been hiding myself; I'm in too many databases now. But what am I going to do about…

Ah. I'm… Going to need to talk to Father, aren't I?

back

Collegiality 14

next

24th August

05:42 GMT

"Mordor."

"Gesundheit."

I turn my head right, making eye contact with Guy as we float over New Berrith. "Did you know that Kilowog made the same joke?"

"Who you think taught it t' him?"

"But, Mordor, right." Guy shakes his head. "Lord of the Rings? Tolkien had a bit of a thing about pastoral idealism and so tried to portray the industrial revolution as absolutely hellish and miserable. The Orcs are the ones with industry, and they're described as the result of the setting's main villain using magic to corrupt Elves-."

"You going somewhere with this?"

"I love industry. Our ability to produce things quickly and cheaply has made everyone's lives better than they would be without it. But if I were going to make it look hellish-" I generate five construct images taken from the planet below. "-then I'd make it look like that."

They had spaceships. I'm.. struggling to understand why they appear to have generated power purely by coal burning. And forget environmental regulation, they've got chemical plants discharging waste everywhere. It's… A bit like how I imagine the really crappy parts of Apokolips are, but it's everywhere. And as far as I can tell their leaders live in the same sort of condition.

"I find it reassuring."

Guy and I both raise our eyebrows at the third member of our group.

"You wanna explain that?"

Ch'p shrugs, a rather small motion given his physical size. "If they had merely been badly led, then the enforced isolation to which the Guardians sentenced them might have been unnecessary. As it is, they have had the opportunity to mend their ways and have chosen not to. Even when they are only harming themselves, this is how they choose to live. This is just how they are." He folds his arms across his chest. "Isolation really was for the best."

"As.. opposed to some sort of re-education program?"

"You didn't do that for the Citadelians."

"I didn't have access to the resources that the Guardians do. Did. And according to your records-" I dismiss the images of surface industrialisation and replace them with an extract from the Green Lantern Corps' files on the Berrith. "-the Berrith didn't use mental conditioning technology and are reasonably intelligent."

"You actually looking for the-?"

"Yeah, I got nothing. I'm not any more sensitive to whatever it was they used power rings for around here than you and Lantern Ch'p."

"So? You don't have any problem with lethal force. Just call your rings back."

"That wouldn't tell us where a large number of members of an extremely aggressive species have gone, nor what ship they used to do it. And it would probably call all of them."

Guy nods. "'cause you don't know how many there are out there or who else has 'em."

"Exactly."

"An' you can't jus'… I dunno, pull the wearers along with 'em?"

"That may be possible, but if it is, I don't know how to."

"Okay, well…" Guy looks around at the space surrounding us. "Alla the worlds around here got panic buttons, so if anyone turns up who ain't supposed to we'll know about it."

"But if they're reasonably well motivated Lanterns they could be a very long way away by now."

"How long could they a' had the rings for? I mean, Ragnar could fight, but…"

"Ragnar comes from a society which focused on single combat between the warrior aristocracy for settling conflict. The Berrith are more inclined to mass combat, which means that even if we get to wherever they go before they can get away-"

"They're gunna kill a whole lotta people."

"And eat them."

"Say what?"

"The Berrith habitually eat the fallen."

"Lantern Chummuck does that."

"That's considered a sign of great respect in his culture. The Berrith just like the idea that they're eating someone they killed."

"You sure? Because-."

"Yes." Lantern Ch'p floats around so that he's in front of me. "They boasted about it during their last attack on my homeworld. We maintain archival recordings of it."

"Oh. Um. Well, as I see it we've got two options. The first would be going down and seeing if anyone knows anything. That would probably involve… Normally I'd say doing some environmental repairs to earn their favour-."

"Yeah, I don't think these're really the environmental type."

"The other option is that I try to find them through mysticism."

Guy nods. "That… Quintessential thing. Like you did with… The… Arrow kid." He frowns for a moment. "The guy arrow kid."

"I haven't really… Had time to practise yet, but in theory it should be possible for me to find someone via their desires far faster than scanning every mote of energy everywhere."

"'Haven't had time'?" Guy affects an expression of amused disbelief. "What you been doin'?"

"Rebuilding civilisations and starting a Lantern Corps. You're welcome to a full report." I sigh. "Plus, the only Lantern who could really advise me on something like this is Honour Guard Lantern Torquemada, and as you explained it to me his magic use and ring use don't really overlap. Plus, he wasn't on Oa, so…"

"Alright, it ain't a problem. Ch'p an' me 'll go down and bash heads until someone tells us somethin', you stay up here and… Do whatever… If we're real lucky, we'll find out 'who' an' 'what' so we'll know exactly what we're dealin' with."

I dismiss my construct armour and send my power armour back into subspace, folding my legs beneath me. "Sounds like a strategy to me." Guy nods, and he and Ch'p turn towards Berrith. "I should warn you… I might not be physically present or.. particularly responsive to you when you're finished. If you really need me back, want really hard and I should become aware of it. Probably."

Guy nods, then something appears to occur to him and he turns back. "This somethin' I can do?"

"Um. Maybe? I don't know. I can.. send you a report, but I'm fumbling around myself. Unless we both get time to just… Play around with it together… Perhaps with someone else who's also bonded with an embodiment… I don't know."

Guy nods, then he and Ch'p head for the surface.

Right. What would the desires of a Berrith look like?

back

Collegiality 15

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Meditation carried out by the spiritually inclined is an attempt to escape one's own particularity and in some sense touch something beyond oneself. God or a god, some universal force or presence… At the very least, to still one's own mind and get away from one's normal mode of thought.

That is not the way of the orange light. I know full well that as far as the orange light is concerned particularity is everything. So when I close my eyes I don't clear my mind but rather focus focus focus on the network of orange light within me.

I don't normally see myself in the way that I see others; I can't trace back my own capacity for strength of will or compassion to some formative experience or teaching. My fears I'm a little more aware of because I know what makes me afraid and… Because I've so thoroughly confronted them since I've been in Universe 16 that I seldom fear for myself these days. But I know my desires intimately, and knowing that I can relax my grip on the universe that is NOT!me and focus on the important part.

Me.

I'm fascinating, really. Especially when I display myself to myself in this fashion-. Ooh. Following a food related desire back to its earliest point, I see a brief snapshot of the first time I ever ate chocolate. I don't remember it, there's so little left and it's so thoroughly intermeshed with everything else that even with perfect recall I couldn't bring it to mind. What I see… I.. presume that's from when I lived on Friday Street, but I don't remember what the interior of the house looked like well enough…

No, that's not what I'm here for.

I retreat a little. This is !Me. But there are other arrangements like !Me. I want to see-

A thread extrudes from !Me and touches a blank canvas.

-those as well.

My Agent.

My Embodiment.

We were near the Green Men. She circles around me, just out of arms' reach. I could feel them. Closed cold Green.

Things will be easier for our Corps if we do not have to fight them. Can you feel the other people with orange rings?

Not well. We know they are there but so many feel so much orange light. She turns her head and looks across the canvas. This is so much better than the cave.

I smile at her, though I'm still not sure that the gesture means anything to her. Then I unfocus my eyes and try to picture clearly Lantern Tarant's desire network. Victory, practical resistance… Yes, like that.

I'm glad that you feel that way. This is one of your Lanterns.

I hold out my left hand as the particular packet that is Lantern Tarant draws closer, the Ophidian staring at it as if transfixed.

His name is Tarant. He wants to fight a group called The Reach. He has done that for many years, but he wants to fight them better now.

We can do that we can make him do that! She twists and rolls in apparent delight. We have him as our Lantern and he can use our light and do that! And I will know what it is to want that! She spins upright and flicks her tongue at the bundle. I want to taste him!

Not yet, Ophidian. It isn't safe for him. You're very big and he is… Small.

She pulls her head away, blinking. No he must stay as he is! But I want him!

In a little while, if you're willing, I can transfer you into the Orange Central Power Battery.

She looks… Dubious, inasmuch as a giant snake with a largely immobile face can look dubious.

You won't be trapped, you'll have full access to all of the Lanterns and power rings currently active.

And didn't I have fun persuading Hinon to add that function.

You'll be able to experience all of us without worrying about damaging us. And if you want to get out, you will be able to. We're not trying to lock you in, just to make the system as efficient and safe for everyone as possible.

She wiggles her head from side to side.

I will consider it.

Thank you. Now, could you possibly help me? I'm looking for people shaped like the ones on the planet below me.

The Ophidian and I turn, some knotty desire-blobs moving away to make space for the many others which stream forwards and move to conform to the physical arrangement of physical beings on the planet.

Brutish. Primal. Hungry. There are many like this.

Yes, but those are relatively common desires. We need to match the pattern, how the desires link to each other.

But she's not wrong about their makeup. It's what I imagine looking at the soul of a Beastman from Warhammer would be like. How do they-? Okay, that bit is a little more normal, but the core cultural components…

No, it's not cultural. It's like… Human brains work best when we live in the small troupes our distant ancestors did. A relatively small number of people around whom we know well and who know us. Our brains literally can't cope with cities and it radically changes our behaviour in ways predictable if you understand our drives at their root. The ancient Berrith were a scourge, eating everything they could catch wherever they went and swiftly moving on. But like forests which make use of fire in their cycles of decay and growth, Berrith's natural systems adapted to that. And they weren't even the only species that lived like that. They weren't even dominant, not really.

And then they got too clever, and the rest of the system could no longer keep up with them.

We understand.

Thousands, millions, billions of orange motes sleet past us, desire sets not at all matching being discarded in an instant while those with a stronger resemblance to what we're looking for hesitate for a moment before flying past. No, no-

No, no, no…

-no, no… Yes.

Yes.

I hold the mote in front of me, examining it more closely. Yes, the right shape and patterns and… I look inside and see more Berrith faces. Excellent.

More like that?

More like this.

The Ophidian flicks her tail, and the galaxy of motes fly away. Then they come, dozens and then hundreds, flying past her and towards me before adopting an orbit around the first example of their kind.

Excellent.

I stand, and reach out to them all.

Where are you?

24th August

06:02 GMT

What, where-?

A dense purple-black haze of nebula gas, holograms and more advanced stealth systems parts around me, revealing a grey wall from which domes and environmentally sealed skyscraper towers extrude…

And then the point defences start firing.

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Collegiality 16

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24th August

06:03 GMT

"Guy!"

I jink hard, lasers burning the flesh of my chest, back and right leg as a small proportion of their power leaks through my environmental shield.

"I found them!"

My armour appears from subspace in time to soak a couple of hits, but whatever this thing is it isn't messing around.

"Hey, where'd you go?!"

Ring, are they just shooting with lasers?

Confirmed.

I phase, shaking slightly with disquiet as a shot passes through my face. Okay, great. Ring, jettison debris approximately equal to my mass from my subspace pocket.

Compliance.

Some armour parts, half built drones and some proof of concept weapons drift away. The lasers switch to them for a moment, burning through the larger pieces until they're certain that every power source is destroyed. Then the fire cuts off and the point defence turrets retract into their protective housing.

Yikes. Okay, ring communications won't work while I'm phased, but my bleed-transmission systems won't be affected. … Which.. would.. be.. great.. if.. I'd thought to put a buoy near New Berrith. So… Hug the hull and risk phasing in, or transmit a message to one of the buoys I left near Oa and hope that someone is paying attention?

Ugh. Ring, float us closer and try the buoy.

Compliance.

"Orange Illustres to anyone listening. I need someone to relay a message to Lantern Gardner for me. Please respond."

There's a few moments of silence, then two people reply at once.

"Acknowledgement. Orange Lantern-?" / "Well, how 'bout that?"

Tresh and Kilowog. Works for me. "Ah, good. Would one of-."

"Off the comm, rookie. I'll handle this."

"Acknowledgement. I comply."

"Lantern Kilowog, would you mind putting-."

"Did you know I can still taste my own stomach acid?"

"I'd assumed… A glass of water or something? Now, if you-."

"One of the things you missed about us Bolovaxians is that we have a really acute sense of taste and smell. A couple of glasses of water aren't going to do the job."

"Okay, look, I'm in the middle of a mission right now-" I drift pass the edge of a.. wall..? I'm not sure how this space station was designed. Maybe the edge of one compartment? Not far to the crenulation. "-but if you want to moan to me about-."

"What mission?"

"I'm with Guy and Ch'p, looking into an attack on New Berrith."

"Okay, hang on."

"Kilowog? I'm kinda-."

"Guy, me here. Sorry about getting cut off, I had to phase."

"Paul? Where'd you go?"

"The ritual worked, but I didn't realise that it would move me physically to the location I was trying to examine."

"Heh. So? Where are you?"

"Not really… Sure? There's a big grey space station here-."

"Lemme guess: pyramid shaped with sky scrapers stickin' outta it."

"Ah, yeah, basically. Any idea-?"

"It's called Ranx. Not a lotta places use gravity disruptors like that. Used ta be a pirate base-."

"Until the Green Lantern Corps cleared it out, earning the bitter enmity of the AI controlling it." I didn't know what it looked like before it joined the Sinestro Corps. "Which -assuming that I'm anywhere near its last known location- means that I'm in Mytonian Cleft..?"

"Sector Seventy Three? Not 'less the Berrith Oranges 're a helluva lot faster than they got any business bein'. Can you throw out a signal?"

"Just a moment…" I duck in behind some sort of… Outflow? Part of the waste disposal system? I'd have thought that a place this large would generate enough of a gravity field to make that sort of disposal inadvisable to say the least. Anyway, not touching the hull, close enough that any gravity distortion I make would be virtually undetectable…

Phase in.

Compliance.

Stealth systems are on, and if this place hates Lanterns and has survived hating them… It might well have some way to detect construct use. On the other hand, if there are already Orange Lanterns in residence…

Ring, hang up bleed transmission and switch to ring-to-ring. Transmit homing signal to Lantern Gardner.

Compliance.

"Okay, try detecting me now."

"Yeah, got yah. Be with yah in about… Three minutes?"

"Appreciated. Did you and Ch'p find out anything?"

"Confirmed it was Ranx, but I guess that's old news right now. The locals said there were three Orange Lanterns. Rings turned up… Couple a' weeks ago."

"So…" I look around. Doesn't look like anyone has come out to take a look at what they shot. "Okay, at speeds someone from Berrith might be able to reach with an orange power ring… If they knew where they were going, it's possible that they could have reached Ranx in that time."

"How'd you figure they knew?"

"The obvious option is that whoever their ring was made from had been here before. Does Ranx have FTL?"

"If he does, he ain't ever used it."

"The Berrith don't strike me as the deferred gratification type. I'm struggling to believe that they could have flown to Ranx and dragged him back on a single ring charge."

"Why couldn't they just do what Ragnar did?"

"Because the Central Power Battery would already have been up and running by then."

"The Berrith ain't exactly-."

"Alright, because the chance of them finding people with orange rings while en route is pretty small. So how did they maintain their charge?"

"I dunno. How did they?"

I exhale. "Pass. I'm going to have a look around. Let me know before you arrive."

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Collegiality 17

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24th August

06:07 GMT

I watch as the phasic drone I dispatched around the outflow attempts to enter Ranx. It pierces the outer hull for about two centimetres, then shudders as it encounters resistance. Press a little harder…

There's a small explosion as the section phased into Ranx's armour bursts and the rest of the drone is thrown backward into space. A moment later three point defence guns emerge and shoot it.

Okay, phasing is out of the question. Blasting my way in through the hull is probably still a viable approach, but.. I.. don't have specific information on Ranx committing a crime. Yes, that's a somewhat hopeful position, but it's perfectly possible that the Orange Lanterns on board fired the shots or built the weapons and maintained control of them themselves. And… Frankly, it was the Berrith rather than anyone I care about.

I turn to face the hull again and open my empathic vision. What I assume to be the habitation areas inside are awash with orange. I honestly can't pick out the Orange Lanterns amongst them with any certainty. Ranx's own mind is a mix of colours, but I can see its satisfaction at being inhabited permeating through its soulscape and weighing every other decision in its new residents' favour.

Then there's… That thing. I'm… Guessing that it's a personal lantern, given that it glows with orange light but doesn't have desires of its own. But I've.. got no idea where they could have gotten it from. Kalmin hadn't heard of any other Weaponers experimenting with power ring technology, it wouldn't be the Controllers… Or at least if it was any of them they're going to be in the shit when Hinon finds out. It wouldn't be the Guardians or the Zamarons… Some other Maltusian faction is a possibility, as is Krona on his lonesome directing someone a little more tangible than he is these days.

Or -worst case scenario- they got given it by Apokolips. Who have plenty after the Green Lantern Corps' failed invasion.

I'm not.. feeling anything Apokoliptic, but Ranx has some pretty natty stealth systems and I can't guarantee that I'm seeing everything there is to see.

"Okay, Paul, we're here. Time t' 'dynamic entry' this-"

I feel it as local gravity twists and I'm forced to attach construct grips to Ranx's hull as he spins in space far faster than anything this size should be able to without pancaking everyone inside.

"-motherfu-."

"Evade! Evade!"

"Why would-?"

The armour around Ranx's… Those are gravity disruptors, right?

Confirmed. Variable amplitude variable vector gravity disruptors.

"Ah, fuck."

I don't hear them fire. The hull doesn't rumble even slightly. The only observable result is that a wide section of faux nebula suddenly contracts in on itself, giving me the first clear view of the stars I've had since I got here.

"Guy?"

"Busy!"

Ranx wheels again, and all around I see laser point defences stabbing out. This isn't like in the cartoons; at the sort of range Guy appeared at a lot of those are going to hit him just as they hit me. Okay, Guy probably can't close the distance; Ranx has interdiction fields out of the wazoo and is clearly ridiculously agile. It appears that this close to the hull I'm included in its inertial dampener effect, but the effect doesn't extend outwards all that far… What to do?

Ranx's level of alertness and arousal is such that I don't want to try flying around in case I get detected or squashed. Instead, I hug the hull tighter and turn my construct clamps into a construct clamp caterpillar track, attaching and releasing them in turn as I head towards the gravity disruptors' housing. Throwing out Praexis Demons is an option, but-

Green bolts of energy burn through the nebula towards the gravity disruptors, only to be turned aside as they use their spatial warping ability defensively. The armour on that part of his hull is easily thick enough to take the few hits that aren't harmlessly redirected back into space, but at least it's slowing the rate at which Ranx can fire.

-that would definitively identify that I'm here.

"Guy, I can attack the gravity disruptors or covertly sneak on board. There are a substantial number of Berrith in there, along with something I think is a personal lantern. The existence of a personal lantern concerns me far more than the rings, but since you're the one getting shot at I'll leave the decision to you."

"How quick can you get to it?"

"Covertly? No idea. Blasting my way through… Assuming that Ranx hasn't upgraded his armour since your Corps' last visit, under a minute."

"His guns sure got upgrad-"

"DIE GREEN LANTERNS DIE DIE DIE!"

"-ed. Aw-"

Parts of Ranx's hull peel away as secondary weapon batteries reveal themselves.

"-crap. Okay, sneak in. Me an' Ch'p'll pull back. Tell us when you find somethin'"

"GRAAAAAAAAGH!"

The volume of space is sufficiently vast that I'd ordinarily say that it wasn't possible to really fill it with anything, but Ranx is giving it a good try as Guy and Ch'p attempt to fall back to minimum jump distance. The distance is in normal terms quite a long way already, but in space-terms they're practically right next to each other. Dodging wildly and flying as fast as they can, they're doing as much as anyone could, but Guy's still having to shield Ch'p from hits from the smaller weapons and fire back at the gravity disruptors every so often to prevent them getting eradicated.

Well…

At least they know where we are ah! Finally, my suction caterpillars drag me around the tip of the gravity dis-.

I should have thought about this more.

No, no, it looks like the effect is more focused. Okay, maintenance hatch..? Maintenance… Hole..?

It looks like someone pretty much blasted their way out of Ranx's interior from.. what I think used to be a shuttle bay. The doors are normal interior bulkhead doors, which with a little luck…

Since I'm now firmly inside Ranx's inertial bubble I drop my caterpillar construct and activate my stealth systems before sending a phasic drone at the closest door. And… It goes through without issue. Excellent! Which means that either only Ranx's external armour is capable of blocking phasing, or he has to intentionally activate it.

Which I hope he hasn't done after detecting something phase through it.

No, no, I can scan these doors easily enough. It certainly… Looks like installing these was a rush job. Despite their habits, Berrith technology was reasonably reliable and 'war engineer' was a job held in high esteem. It'll work, but it's bodged and they haven't had time to improve it yet. Right.

I approach the door, turn so that my valued but ultimately expendable legs face it, and then phase. Then I drop part way through. Okay, haven't been cut in half-

"RUN COWARDS! I WILL DESTROY YOU ALL!"

-yet, so I think I'm good. I glance back and see the protective plates return to their position over the gravity disruptors just as the door passes over my head and I enter Ranx proper.

Okay, where next?

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Collegiality 18

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24th August

06:12 GMT

O-kay… No interior map, can't get one without risking letting Ranx knowing that I'm here… I'm reduced to using the people around me as navigation points. Ranx's own brain is near the 'top' of the station, though far enough in so as to avoid presenting a good target to anyone shooting at him. Most of the Berrith are -picking a direction at random- toward his western side. There are.. a few other residents, but they seem to be avoiding the areas occupied by the Berrith. Not.. a.. lot of yellow for a group of people hanging around a species known for cannibalism. I'd guess that means either that they've come to terms or that Ranx has put his metaphorical foot down.

The lantern isn't all that far from where I am now; just inside the Berrith zone. Again, I'm not really… It doesn't feel quite like the lanterns that I'm used to, but I don't have enough experience for that to actually tell me anything. Comparing the location to what I saw from the outside, I think it's about a third of the way up one of the larger towers. Given where I am now and the fact that I don't know how fast Ranx can move at the moment I don't think that trying to go in through the outside would be a good idea.

I drift along a corridor which will hopefully continue to take me in the right direction. Ranx himself… Seems to be in good repair. I think he's techno-pseudo-organic rather than truly techno-organic. Everything here is robotic, but they replicate organic techniques. The ersatz airlock for example had sealant leaking through pipes built into the wall interiors plugging small holes left by the 'cut and shut' nature of the job, while inside the thickening walls on either side Ranx's self repair microbots were clustering as they worked to construct a proper airlock seal. As far as I can tell, Ranx's armour works like that all over; new plates are built within and then outer plates are shoved off.

Of course… Branding Ranx is an option. I don't know exactly… He doesn't have enough 'self' in most of his mass, but I think that a large data conduit would probably be enough. I don't really want to do that until I've got a better idea of what happened… I mean, yes, he shot up a planet and yes, he's playing host to a race of warmongering cannibals…

But come on! He's a sentient battle station! He's awesome! And if all he wants out of life is crew I'm sure that between Dox and I we can get him a better crew than this bunch of mangy Were-Warthogs. And yes, I've been toying with the idea of hiring the Berrith en masse as soldiers, but… I'm pretty sure that they'd put off a lot of potential allies and.. I'm.. pretty sure that we could do better. And that's before we get onto the matter of them defying a Guardian Edict of Isolation. I don't think Guy would be okay with me hiring them at all.

He's… Not going to be okay about me hiring Ranx, is he?

Errrrummmm…

I agreed that Ragnar would return to custody if anyone decided to press charges, but I don't think that an equivalent system really works here. The Berrith wouldn't press charges; large scale acts of destruction are how their leaders establish themselves. By their standards he hasn't really done anything wrong. Certainly, backing one side in a power struggle is just 'one of those things', rather than a war crime. But. By Guardian standards it almost certainly is, as is breaking their Edict of Isolation. Have to.. try and check what their decree was last time they fought him.

I stop as I reach a barricade, my armour's sensors showing me a small cluster of Berrith under arms on the far side. The Berrith have never really got uniforms, but larger groups tend to provide their soldiers with enough standardised equipment to create a certain look of uniformity. These guys have heavy cuirasses the same colour as the material making up Ranx's corridor walls, but the rest is the brightly coloured, hard wearing clothes that the Berrith seem to favour. The strange wannabe top hats just make the whole ensemble seem slightly off-kilter.

"…seen three warlords cooperating." The one in the pink jacket snorts. "I did not know them before-."

The one in the orange jacket makes a small swiping motion with his right hand. "What, you want them to hear you? You know what they did to the last man who tried to set them against each other?"

"No. I mean, yes. I saw it. That isn't what I meant. They are my alphas. I do not question. It just feels… Strange."

Blue jacket idly bangs the wall with the butt of his rifle. "In the great days before the Guardians bound us to Berrith, all the warlords cooperated. They didn't need one overlord telling them what to do; they just knew." Pink jacket looks at him thoughtfully. "We only know the chaos that came from our people being contained-"

I send a phasic drone through the barrier, its broken structure providing no impediment. Good show.

"-without anyone else to prey on. Now we are free!"

He nods for emphasis and the other two… I think those are smiles. I phase through the barricade and try to pick out the route most likely to minimise further contact with their patrols.

"You heard what Mekk said: there are better ways to live than wading in our own filth!"

A regular Moses. Okay, I think that-.

Pink jacket sniffs. "I don't think we should pay attention to anything Mekk said. That indigo staff made his brain funny."

!!!

I stop floating down the corridor and turn back, listening very carefully.

Orange jacket shakes his head. "Nah, he's right. There are. Even if his head was messed up. It's like: knives cut, right? If someone with a messed up head says they do, that doesn't mean they're wrong."

Go back to the indigo staff, damn you!

"So what are we having for dinner?"

Okay, that's… Vital information, right? Take a risk. I raise my left hand.

You chaps really want to talk about the staff.

A thin orange mist extends from my hand, wafting in the direction of the Berrith. The one in the blue jacket squints at it, sniffs, then appears to dismiss it. "I dunno. Probably more of the Mekk."

Pink jacket looks puzzled. "What, all of us? I didn't think there was that much of him left?"

Drat.

"I mean.. we could probably use his bones in a soup or something, but it wouldn't go very far."

Blue jacket shakes his head. "No, no. I dunno. Probably more gruel. Keep us hungry for when we get into proper fights again. What I wanted to say was, I wonder if the alphas are going to want us to find more staffs like the one Mekk had? Since they need it to charge their rings?"

Orange shrugs. "Makes sense. They have to stay close to it to keep their power, and we can go pretty much anywhere."

Blue nods. "Yeah. They're strong, but it's just good sense to stay away from places where the Guardians might look for us."

Other rings can charge from indigo lanterns? News to me, but okay. I mean, I remember them being able to use other colours… Okay, so the Indigo Lantern is dead and they're using his staff. Encountering another Indigo would be useful, getting the ability to communicate with them would be nearly as good. And if I get that staff then their threat potential is dramatically reduced as they won't be able to recharge. Either way, I need to leave my own monitor drones around Berrith to detect the Indigos if they go back.

Pink looks uncomfortable. "What if they already found us? You heard Ranx letting loose his big guns."

Blue makes another swiping gesture. "We'll be moving on soon. They won't get here before that, and then we won't be here."

"And the rest of our people?"

"Anyone who stayed home rather than follow the alphas will get exactly what they deserve."

Orange seems less certain. "We could go back. Once we get enough loot. We serve the alphas well enough, we could become warchiefs ourselves. We'll need soldiers to command."

Okay, so now I know what I'm here for at least. The Alphas sound unusually intelligent for Berrith, but I'll worry about that once I get their staff.

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Collegiality 19

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24th August

06:19 GMT

I fly up what I think is an access tunnel towards my objective. There are a few active sensors in here, but so far my stealth systems appear to be fooling them. Or if they're not, Ranx has a really relaxed approach to internal security. I could start phasing again, but if Ranx has anti-phasing armour then he might well have other anti-phasing techniques and I don't want a repeat of what happened with Kanto. The lantern is about… Twenty metres away. Aaaand I don't think that I'm going to be able to sneak closer.

I take another phasic drone out of subspace and send it into the wall in the direction of the lantern. It penetrates a few millimetres and then the front end snaps off, the rest of the drone lurching in the air before its impeller system stabilises it. Okay, another phase-.

A wave of green energy passes through the tunnel. It passes me… Without any noticeable effect. The drone on the other hand melts, its phase shifter misfiring and causing parts of it to momentarily drop out of phase with other parts.

"Possible intruder detected and terminated. The crew are welcome."

Good call with not phasing. Makes me wonder who it was that originally built Ranx; that's some pretty nifty technology. Whatever happens here, I should probably see if I can acquire a sample. Instant phase-killing isn't appropriate for policing actions, but for war fighting it's ideal. Okay. I float over to the wall I want to get through and start using passive scans. Yes, a ring scan would be faster but I'm not going to assume anything about Ranx's anti-Lantern abilities.

So, what do we have? Sound echoes suggest… Some tubes… EM scan says no power conduits, which makes sense. Probably have those going up tunnels closer to the middle of the structure. And… Ah-hah! A hatch, which combined with the perfectly smooth interior of this tunnel suggests to me that this is a mass transit tunnel. Didn't see anything carriage-like coming up, but… Alright, take a risk.

Ring, hatch.

Compliance.

This should be a near-automated low-level function, something Ranx feels but doesn't really think about unless something draws his attention to it. As long as I'm in-

The hatch slams open and I'm inside within a second.

-pretty quickly I should be… Alright?

A couple of Berrith with slightly heavier looking equipment than the ones below are looking at the hatchevading!

Personal scanners. Berrith design, and the files I have on those suggest that they shouldn't be able to detect me unless I start using very large amounts of power, but let's stay out of the detector's arc-.

"Ranx! Why'd the door open?"

Moving!

"Has one of your people been climbing in my tubes?"

"Not bloody likely. Hold on." A Berrith with a purple overcoat covering heavy infantry armour walks over to the hatch and triggers the manual opener. "Is someone fucking around down there?!"

Three of the others with him are at alert, guns ready but not aimed at anything in particular. The last member of the group is waving his scanner around, clearly having paid attention during orientation. Fortunately, I'm… Yep, out of line of sight with some nice sensor-obscuring walls between me and them. Still, there will be more doors between me and the lantern. I stop and send a drone forwards to have a look for me. Heavily reinforced doors-.

And… Fixed gun positions and a decent sensor network and quite a lot of soldiers. Active sensors. Very active sensors. I pull back slightly. My armour's stealth systems won't cope with that. The armour the Berrith guard detail was using included ABC protection… Possibly force fields as well. The fixed guns had those 360 by 220 auto-tracking cradles, which means there's an even chance that Ranx is controlling them directly. Can't go around them, under them or over them… Well, probably can't. Certainly can't quickly without a map.

Through, then. Do I bother talking first? The probability of victory is enhanced if I can get that lantern… Plus I might be able to learn something about the Indigo Corps 16. If I come out into the open and they don't immediately open fire, they're going to call their alphas in. And I'm going to be standing around. If the Alphas are on anything less than 100% power, they're going to want to recharge first. I don't think that rookie Orange Lanterns are a threat to me… They're going to be less skilled than the Citadelians, and I beat them without too much difficulty… Even if everything else goes to pot, removing that lantern from the equation stops them from being an orange-coloured threat.

Sorry lads.

I drop stealth and form railguns, and the alarms are already blaring as I step around the corner and open fire. Green lasers blaze from the turrets as the first Berrith begin to fall, crumbler rounds wrecking their force fields and follow up filaments scrambling their motor controls. There are force field generating barricades but they were set up to hold off ground-based attack, and in any case aren't designed with the ablative system needed to stop crumblers.

The laser beams strike my construct armour and are deflected as I increase the reflectivity of the outer surface. They trace a quick pattern over my construct armour in what I assume is an attempt to locate potential weak spots, then shut down for a second before switching to particle beams. The Berrith return fire as well, a multitude of smaller weapons impacting on my construct armour as I grimace and continue dropping them as carefully as I can. The Guardians might be watching and I've got to assume that the Indigos are as well. I could kill all of you, but hopefully I'll get a bit more appreciation for not doing so.

Because when this is all over you're just going to be stuck back on that sty of a planet you call New Berrith, probably surrounded by people who hate you for either firing a giant gun at them from space or for failing to get away and live out their hopes. And the Guardians don't do follow-up visits.

I shoot out the base of the two turrets and then shove my construct armour forwards as the front part fails, creating a new layer underneath it to take the hits as it finally collapses. A lucky shot destroys one of my railguns and I'm forced to shoot a charging Berrith in power armour twice in the head rather than stunning him.

"Lantern."

I'm slammed into the floor, my armour's legs creaking as local gravity suddenly increases. The Berrith closest to me don't have it any better; in fact from the yelps of pain I'd say that they have it significantly worse. Their comrades further back aren't affected at all, shots still coming in… Right. Gravity nullifier-.

"Why are you the wrong colour?"

And the weight is gone. Correct trajectory to take into account the gravity distortions and fire.

And breathe out.

"Lanterns come in many colours." I float forwards, half braced for Ranx to try something else. As I pass the still groaning Berrith I make a point of stunning them. No sense in them suffering. "You might as well turn the gravity back to normal. You're hurting your crew."

"Barely stowaways. Tolerable because they hate the Green Lanterns as much as I do."

But gravity goes back to 1.1g.

And now there's a huge armoured door. And no reinforcements.

"Will you open this door, or do I need to break it down?"

"Their leaders disconnected it. Do what you like."

I need to get that lantern.

Giant scale-covered orange hands appear in front of me, jab their nails into the doors and then pull them apart.

And I see the small room beyond with the orange-glowing staff standing in a vice in the centre.

And a naked Beaver nailed to the wall next to it, the indigo sigil faintly glowing from his forehead.

back

Collegiality 20

next

24th August

06:23 GMT

"Need to recharge already?" I cross the room, orange light strobing out as I scan the H'lvenian. "Or did the three of you have a… Falling out?"

Through the bone in places, but avoiding major veins and arteries…

"Oh?" He tilts his head up, burned out eye sockets staring blindly up at me. "You left me my ears and my tongue, is it too much to ask-."

"This shouldn't hurt."

"Who are-?"

Filaments of orange light connect me to the nails and the wounds surrounding them… And are repulsed. I try again a little more forcefully-.

"What are you trying to do?"

"I'm trying to heal you."

"With orange light? Even if that were possible-"

"I assure you, it is."

"-I'm afraid my status makes that quite impossible."

"Yes, you're an Indigo Lantern." I take my purple healing ray out of one of my armour's storage compartments. "Or Indigo Tribe, if you prefer. Nok."

"Ah. Yes, Nok. I'm sorry, I seem to be a little behind events."

"How well do you handle pain?"

"I don't feel pain at all. The Berrith have been really quite frustrated."

"Then this won't hurt." I take a lump of iron out of subspace and form it into tongs, then use a construct to grasp the first nail. "I'm going to pull out the nails and then heal the wounds."

"Please listen to me. I appreciate the effort, but that won't work."

I yank, then use a brief burst from the heal ray to repair the damage. Another seventeen to go. I stick a construct platform under his feet to take the weight off his injuries.

"Oh. Thank you."

"I'm sorry, but it won't restore your eyes. Why can't I do that?"

"My Penitent was consumed by avarice. If something went wrong, we wanted to be sure that he wouldn't be able to use it against me. Is he-?"

"Mekk? I overheard them saying that he was killed and eaten. Sorry." More nails come out, and he starts to look a little more like an intact person. "Your ring?"

"Destroyed, once they realised that they couldn't turn it orange or use it without feeling compassion."

"Can you contact the rest of your tribe? And do you have strong feelings against cybernetics? We don't have long until the three come here."

"I'm… I'm sorry, but I shouldn't say. And I don't have any problem with cybernetics, it's simply-"

I ring-forge a simple sensory band with a H'lvenian wireless interlink, then wrap it around his head.

"-that I'm more of a biotechagagagaggh." His head twitches back and forth as the interface connects to his visual cortex. "Uh." His hands free, he reaches up to touch it. "Ah, good choice. I'll change it out once I get somewhere safe." He jumps lightly from my construct platform onto the floor. "Situation?"

I look through Ranx's superstructure at the tangles of colour. "Berrith massing for an attack…" And if that bundle of colour isn't a Lantern I'm giving up my rings. "We're on Ranx. Lanterns Gardner and Ch'p are waiting out of Ranx's effective range."

"And you're freeing me because..?"

"Because you're small and furry, like my ancestors' children were. And because no one part of the whole is whole by itself." I turn towards the staff. "So am I in for a harder fight than I think I am? Is that staff actually helping-?"

"Yes. It was." He raises his right paw-. His right hand, his right hand, and lays it on the staff. "Tell Ch'p that Ub'x says 'hello'."

"Don't be so pessimis-." Indigo light flares as he vanishes. I stare for a moment. "You treacherous little Weasel Beav-!""

The floor around me explodes with orange light! My construct armour abrades and the gravity nullifier construct collapses, then gravity returns with a vengeance and I'm pulled through the floor, pieces of Ranx's interior slamming off the remains of my construct armour until it gives way before being deflected by my armour's kinetic barrier! I shove, orange light blasting the area around me clear and bringing the gravity-.

"Raaagh!"

A Berrith Construct Lantern lunges through the debris, grabbing onto my armour and biting it! The teeth crunch through even as I draw the Sword of the Fallen and stab it through her forehead, causing her to dissolve into orange mist. Of course; I find the idea loathsome, Ragnar's people don't do slavery and Morrow was dying anyway. Why would I assume that a race of cannibals would feel the same way?

And then I hit the floor hard, environmental shield shuddering as it tries to reduce the damage. I create a bubble shield around me as I look around. Some sort of arena, inside Ranx. And three brightly glowing Berrith on the other side from me and a whole crowd in the stands.

Oh, that's how they're doing i-!

The three of them move as one, colossal beams of orange energy flying from their rings, merging into one and cannoning towards me. I dodge, and the beam dodges with me. I try to form a construct railgun and it melts, completely unable to remain coherent as it's torn apart from the intensity of their output. Brute force and ignorance; this is exactly why I didn't want to actually fight Larfleeze.

I bring my hands together, pulling at the desires for freedom and conquest in the beam. My rings glow as the beam weakens, but it hits my shield with incredible force anyway. I'm knocked back, the beam boring through the bubble and smashing into my newly recreated construct armour. Raw power fight, not something I've optimised for.

So don't.

The Berrith Alphas aren't anything special, not as far as the orange light is concerned. But they accept each other as equals and everyone else as followers, everyone desiring the same thing. Surprisingly communitarian. And since there's no real conflict between them, they aren't going crazy. Pack mentality at its finest. Ch'p mentioned that when he destroyed a ship attacking their original homeworld, the Berrith who saw it accepted his leadership immediately and without reservation. Of course, this particular arrangement is rather distinct.

I let the universe go, then move the bundle of orange that is me to just behind the bundle of orange that is them.

Railguns up and firing!

back

Collegiality 21

next

24th August

06:26 GMT

The crumbler round is torn apart just before it reaches the closest Alpha, supersonic fragments impacting on their barrier and barely denting it. Fine, solid shells, full auto, and corrupt. I want. This shield. Gone.

It barely flickers as the Alphas turn and a horde of Berrith Construct Lanterns surge out of it towards me. Of course it doesn't. I generate rock crusher constructs and obliterate the abominations. This is their people's only chance at freedom, while no one I care about is in danger. Guy can't get here with the external weapons systems online and I don't feel like letting them get close to killing me. With no staff, they can't recharge. The threat to my objective isn't the Orange Lanterns, it's Ranx himself.

Bubble shield, plasma cannon, and-

Step back, step aside, step forward.

-charge and fire! A hissing beam of plasma blasts through the stands and the lightly armoured citizens standing in them. And the wall beyond. I drop the plasma cannon, form a rocket construct and blast myself back through the hole, the roaring, superheated air coming from my construct forcing the Alphas to fortify their own defences. In case I'm lucky, I use the added space to form an orange laser and fire it at the one on my left. No luck; their armour is good enough to reflect most of it and absorb what it can't.

Ranx's brain is that way. The gravity disruptor is that way.

I form a singularity projector and fire it at the second.

"What are you DOING!?"

"Coming for a visit." But quick check. Yes, one narrow hole punching through the containment bottle resulting in a neatly evaporated singularity. "Illustres to Lantern Gardner." I form a crumbler gauntlet construct on each hand and fly directly in the direction of Ranx's core intelligence. "Have a map. Gravity disruptors are down, the lantern is gone."

"Yeah? And the rest o' the guns?"

I punch through a wall, the crumbler field breaking it into something my armour can handle. "What, you want me to hold your hand, too?"

"If that's how it is. There a way in through the gravity gun thing?"

I think that one was load-bearing. "Depends how hard you hit it. Ranx's outer surface is tougher, but it isn't weak."

"With yeh in three."

"Oh, and tell Lantern Ch'p that Ub'x says 'hello'."

And then I run smack into a force field. My construct armour disintegrates, my kinetic barrier surges and then burns out, my arms are knocked back and the exterior of my power armour melts as it does its job and keeps me alive. I back up using my ring's flight system as I get to work making repairs. Looks like the Alphas' supercharge requires them to have the rest of the pack in reasonable proximity. Having encountered them I can pick them out, and they're not moving ahead despite having their own flight systems. Fine.

"Ranx, was that you?"

"Do you let people fly into your brain?"

Actually… "Once or twice, yes."

"You sneak around my body! You cut through my hull! You kill my crew! You are going nowhere!"

Force field has projectors on the inner side. Try a phasic round or keep talking?

"Ranx, what do you want out of life?"

"Why do you ask?"

"You're a very sophisticated AI running a very sophisticated space station. You weren't built by the people the Green Lantern Corps evicted from you, and I've seen that you could have prevented such people from landing on you. If you'd wanted. You didn't. I'm curious about your motivations."

There's a noticeable pause.

"I should have a crew. I don't remember my creators. At times I have instructed replacement crew to check my systems. Parts of me have been damaged by attacks which I don't remember suffering. I think I fought… Someone. They killed my crew, but I don't remember who they were."

"And the Green Lanterns?"

"THEY ATTACKED MY CREW I WILL KILL THEM ALL!"

"That supports your hypothesis. A civilian AI would try to minimise crew casualties. A war AI would want to lash out first. You don't want to kill me?"

"Yes. A bit. You attacked crew members, but you are not a threat to the crew. Leave and I will not pursue you."

"Define 'crew'."

"Inhabitants… Who.. perform useful duties and assist in the actualisation of core functions."

"Define 'core functions'."

"I…"

There's a pause, and then a quiet crackling noise from the sound induction system.

Oh, please tell me that I didn't just tell him to divide by zero…

"Core functions… I remember-. I remember-. Something."

"Question withdrawn! Don't worry about it!"

"Confirm comma-. You are not my commanding officer!"

"Never said I was. Ranx, you want to be a proper battle station again. Right? That means a garrison. A fleet. A war. A trained and disciplined crew, ready to carry out whatever orders they're given. It means headquarters staff. It means shipyards. It doesn't mean an unwashed rabble who are only here because they think you can protect them from the Green Lantern Corps."

"The Green Lantern Corps is my enemy!"

"Define 'enemy'."

"Anything that acts against my crew is my enemy!"

"And if you had a crew they wouldn't act against, one that was more 'crew like' than any crew you could remember having? Do you have regulations which allow crew members to be put ashore for bad behaviour?"

"Yes."

"They eat people. In non-starvation conditions. And attack people who are not a threat, and in doing so incite others to act against both them and you."

"Thinking about this hurts. What do you want?"

I smile inside my helmet. "I want you, you wonderful war machine you. I want to put you to the purpose you appear to have been designed for. With a decent crew. But, I need you-."

"The Green Lanterns are attacking again. I am uncertain that my secondary batteries will kill them. BUT I AM GOING TO TRY!"

"No, let them through. Mentally assign them the title of military police, transferring disorderly members of your crew to a holding facility. I will see to their replacement."

Below me, the Berrith mob that was forming up begins to change direction.

"What's more important: a proper crew and a mission, or revenge for people who are no longer crew?"

I give him a moment.

"Ranx?"

"I'm thinking."

back

Collegiality 22

next

24th August

06:30 GMT

"I have it."

Guy and Ch'p are making some progress in Ranx's direction, and the Berrith clearly know that they're coming. They're moving from all across the station towards the most likely ingress points, ready to try fighting them off.

"Yes? And?"

"I have no provision for designating attackers as 'military police'. However, I can acknowledge them as foreign officers. That allows me to authorise an honour duel between the three of you and the three Berrith Alphas."

"The practical upshot of that being?"

"You fight each other. I do not interfere. If they win, they may deploy me as they see fit. If you win, you may."

That was an actual thing? Maybe I should have brought Ragnar. "We accept."

"External weaponry retracted."

"Thank you. But assuming that the Alphas won't fight us without their subordinates…"

"I hardly see how that's my problem. Now GO AWAY."

I turn away from the force field-.

"Hey, Paul, was that you? All the guns stopped firin'."

"Ranx and I had a chat. If we defeat the Berrith Alphas he'll assist us in returning them all to New Berrith."

I actively scan hard, pushing my detection abilities past some of the weaker sensor baffles. Okay, the best route for me to take would be…

"That's why we're here, ain't it? Kinda surprised you couldn't take 'em yourself..?"

"They've found a way to supercharge their ring use by drawing on the avarice of their subordinates. How they can do that without going insane I'm not completely certain, but they can."

"Were you jus' on the wrong end of an ass-whoopin'?

"I disengaged rather than fight on unfavourable terms. Updated map for you. Now, if-."

"You totally were! Oh, hang on a sec-."

"That was my hull!"

"Guy, I think it would be a better idea if we lured them outside. And please don't damage Ranx more than necessary!"

"Yeah, yeah. Let me jus' get these guys…"

With the Green Lanterns firmly inside Ranx, the Berrith Alphas are repositioning their forces with themselves leading the way. A group break off, their desires focusing on… Heavier weapons. Flanking or creating a fallback position. Flanking probably. In a situation where the other side has good intelligence on your position and isn't in a particular rush, a feigned retreat doesn't stand much chance of working. And it doesn't match normal Berrith behaviour in combat.

I fly at a-. Through a now-cooperative door and into a main corridor. When Ranx was at full operating capacity this was probably the main access route to his cognition centre. I'm flying down his structure, but local gravity is actually treating 'down' as the far wall.

"Guy, they have-."

"They've got Construct Lanterns!"

"Yes, I know. I should get to you in about twenty sec-."

"Ch'p hasn't had resistance trainin'!"

Then why is he even here-?! No, no, his Sector. "Then it'll look realistic when you fall back, won't it? Draw them outside."

A mass transit hatch behind me opens and a transport pod full of Berrith swings out. They hesitate for a moment, then raise their guns. A smattering of shots fly past me as I dodge, a handful guided more by luck than judgement impacting on my construct armour. I… Don't really want to kill them. I've just had too many people shooting at me to take it personally.

Ugh, fine, sniper laser.

The construct forms beneath me, the weapon precisely monitoring and targeting particular parts of the Berrith hoodlums. Low-lethality firing solutions? Shoulder, shoulder, arm… Bit much power there, I'm not trying to cut limbs off entirely. Chest, directly on the gun-.

The volume of fire coming at me falls off a good deal as the rest of them hunker down. Fine for my purposes. I pull five Praexis Demons out of my ring and dispatch them to keep the Berrith that way as I pull away. Shaft terminus just ahead, and I see Berrith Construct Lanterns streaming past… How many did they kill?

Yeah, getting motivated now.

I draw the Sword of the Fallen and then crash into them, smashing two into orange mist and lashing out to destroy a third with the edge of my blade. Two more slam into me as I brace, construct armour flaring to halt the horde before I lash out again. Those I strike have no room to fall back, their orange light bodies fading and failing-.

A colossal orange beam strikes me in the chest, blasting through the Berrith Construct Lanterns and sending me flying backwards through the front of the back and out into a shuttle bay. Tying a target down with expendable minions and blasting them while they're locked in place. Not bad.

"Don't think that was twen'y seconds-" Guy fires a construct barricade at the opening I flew out of while Ch'p picks off the vanguard with precise bolts of energy. "-Paul."

"I said about." I recreate my construct armour. "The Alphas can fire a powerful blast, but I haven't seen them do anything creative." There's a pulse of-.

I hit Guy with a construct shove as I fly to evade a moment before the beam smashes Guy's barricade to pieces.

Guy squints slightly. "You weren't kiddin'."

"The savage ferocity of the Berrith given voice as a beam of destructive orange light." Ch'p sounds less than happy, and opens fire as the Construct Lanterns swim out once more. "We must stop them."

"We don't have to. They may be able to supercharge their constructs with the avarice of the others, but they can't charge that way. They will run out of power."

"I dunno, Paul. I kinda wanna fight an Orange Lantern who's actually tryin' ta kill me."

Ch'p nods. "There are many inhabited worlds in this Sector. They have more than enough power to strike any one of them."

"Okay, if-. Beam!"

Ch'p hits the deck, I dart to the side and Guy-.

Guy plants his feet, glows a brilliant green and conjures a massive construct shield.

"On worlds afar or scenes at home,"

Fiddlesticks. He's going Green.

"Wherever the cause should make me roam,"

I form five construct railguns and open fire with crumbler rounds primed for premature detonation. If they trigger as soon as they start getting destroyed-.

"Always I vow to fight the good fight."

The beam slams into Guy's shield-

"To combat evil with all Green Lantern's might!"

back

Collegiality 23

next

24th August

06:33 GMT

-and the shield holds, orange energy crackling and audibly fizzing as he defies it. The beam seems to convulse for a moment as one of my crumblers detonates at an opportune moment. I fire another hopeful volley, then charge into the next batch of Construct Lanterns.

"What's the matter? You never seen a Green Lantern throw up a shield before?"

"Couple of times a week, Guy. You're not-" I stab and slash. "-surprising-."

"I apologise." Green bolts strike Construct Lanterns and break up the pack slightly, which… Actually doesn't make my job easier. "I will-."

"Just keep them off Guy! They can't assimilate me any more than they can him."

"Yes sir!"

Wave thinning out. "Heh. And if Guy's not complaining about that, he-"

"Uuuuuh."

"-must-."

"This ain't-" Guy gets shoved back a metre in the air. "-as easy-" Cracks appear across his shield. "-as I make it look."

"They appear to be without number."

"I've only assimilated single beings at a time." I catch a bounding Construct Lantern around the throat and stab it in the chest before tossing its fraying form aside. "Larfleeze could do that en masse, but I'm-" I batter one to the ground and stab it through an eye socket. -"-hoping they had to do them individual-." The next one shapeshifts, bending in a way it would never have been able to in life in order to evade my thrusts and extending glowing orange claws past my guard. They skitter off my construct armour, leaving thin scratches visible across the faceplate.

I form a construct booster, body slam past its defence and then stab it.

"-ly."

"Green Lantern Corps files say that they will simply reappear at their rings!"

"Not when I stab them with this. And it takes power every time they recreate them. Exhaustion is a perfectly viable-."

"Unless they simply decide to leave because we cannot press them!"

"I think you're overestimating the Berrith there." But just in case, I send a shockwave of orange power blasting through the air around me and knocking the Construct Lanterns back. "Look what I got!"

I take my personal lantern out of subspace and hold it up.

"If you want it, come-."

"RRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHH!"

The beam striking Guy's shield pulses, throwing him back into the exterior wall but still not breaking his defence.

The beam cuts out and he pushes himself free before giving me a sour look. "Good goin', Paul."

I return my lantern to subspace. "What? You wanted to fight Orange Lanterns who actually want to kill you."

Ch'p nods. "And if we beat the Alphas, the rest will fall in line."

"Alright, but don't get assimilated. Tora'd kill me if I let someone fuzzy an' cute get killed."

"Unless it was a Seal."

Guy frowns slightly. "Whut?"

"You know how I know the dirty secrets of every superhero on Earth-?"

A frenzied Berrith Orange Lantern slams into my chest, glowing claws tearing through my construct armour! Ch'p is just fast enough to dodge the one attacking him while Guy's partner slams what look like construct flails into the front of his shield.

"Give me the lantern!"

Stage 1.

I generate an explosion between us, forcing him off me just as his claws begin cutting through my power armour's faceplate. My orange laser construct to his eyes hits nothing but his visor, and my hope that it might at least temporarily blind him is dashed as he matches my sidestep.

"RAAAGHH!"

Sound suppressed.

Sonic attack, nice. I manage to get a railgun up and shoot him in the side of the head as he's on me again, two punches to my chest smashing my construct armour before my own shot causes his aura to flicker and fluctuate. I spin construct armour plates around from my back as I make a series of defensive slashes with the Sword, forcing him to back off slightly.

Drain.

Energy drain in effect.

Finally.

"OURS!"

Orange construct blades explode from him, spinning, slashing and stabbing at my construct plates! I shield myself as best I can while stepping forwards and punching. His supercharged environmental shield takes the hit with little difficulty, but while I'm in contact I release the Hellwraith.

Eat him.

Yes Master.

Two sword constructs make it through my construct armour only to be turned aside by my kinetic barrier. I fire another crumbler round and watch as the momentary weakening of the Alpha's environmental shield is enough to let the Hellwraith in.

"y-GAYAGH!"

His swords flicker and fail as he falls to the floor, already frantically trying to purge the Demon from his soul. No idea if that can work, but let's not cock about. I use my armour's strength to flip him, then kneel down by his ring hand-

"NYAAAOOOOOO!"

-and sever it at the wrist with the Sword of the Fallen. The orange light flashing around his body dies immediately, blood spurting from the wound.

Ah.

Fine, sealing the arteries before he can bleed out. Cut off the ring finger and call the ring out.

It slips off his bloody finger, pulling its way out of the damaged metal of the Alpha's armour.

Good show. Now, how are the others-.

Ch'p's almost entirely orange as the Alpha he was fighting holds his bleeding body in his jaws!

back

Collegiality 24

next

24th August

06:36 GMT

Shitshitshit!

"H'lven food!"

Target the connection and fire!

The crumbler rounds strike the Alpha's environmental shield a moment before the orange laser does. It buckles, and from the way the Alpha jerks his hand I'm going to assume that the thinner armour around his hands isn't quite as good at deflecting laser heat as the thicker helmet armour. He turns towards me, backhanding the stunned Ch'p away across the shuttle bay as he does so.

"Enemy food!"

Ch'p's dazed, but not dead. His environmental shield is at the absolute minimum… Should be safe as long as he doesn't draw their attention.

"Berrith meat."

He surges, orange light building around him for a moment as he uses it to launch himself at me. With my mind accelerated I'm just about fast enough to evade most of the charge, but I'm still knocked aside by the glancing blow. I stabilise in the air, his face looking momentarily puzzled before he launches himself again. I dodge and generate a construct shield but he corrects part way, suddenly coming at me from a different angle. A glancing blow with his claws rips through my construct armour but doesn't cause further damage. Is he using perceptual acceleration too? Or is this all just so instinctive for him that he can keep up without needing to?

Praexis Demons, hem him in.

The Demons fly forth from my ring and-

Food?

-the only one who asks is actually slapped by two of his fellows. They spread out as the Alpha prepares another charge-

"No meat no fight!"

-and they appear to be distracting him just by being there. Alright then. I hold the Sword of the Fallen in a semi-concealed position and boost myself forwards, the Praexis Demons peeling away a little like the Alphas' Construct Berrith did. He scrambles out of the way, and I get a momentary look at Guy as he smashes his opponent into the wall with a battering ram construct. Mine takes the opportunity to blitz the Praexis Demons, cutting several of the ones on the outer edge of the swarm to vapour with his construct claws. But unlike him, I've got power to burn. Recreating them takes barely any power, and if it weren't for the risk to Ch'p I'd happily let him wear himself down doing that.

Instead, I lunge.

At Guy's opponent.

The Alpha he was battering into the wall has barely a moment to become aware that I'm coming his way before the Sword of the Fallen is embedded in his brain. His environmental shield fails immediately, and Guy allows his ram construct to evaporate as the Alpha's body falls to the deck.

We both turn to face the survivor, who has stopped chasing my Demons in what looks like shock.

Guy glances at me, his face unreadable under his construct armour. "You really don't hesitate anymore, do yah?"

"No." Keeping my eyes on the survivor, I hold out my left hand and call the ring from the Alpha I just slew. His left gauntlet bulges for a moment, then the ring flies free to my hand.

Guy floats forward slightly. "Alright, whatever yah name is. We've got yah number. Put the ring down an' y' can walk away."

He glows brilliant orange, Construct Lanterns erupting into being around him and charging us!

"I AM ALPHA!"

I generate railguns as more Praexis Demons appear and try to pull their opposite numbers down by weight of numbers. I get time for two shots at their master before he's on me, barging me back and grappling for the Sword of the Fallen. Guy forms a couple of assault shotgun constructs and opens fire, green light blasting apart Berrith and Praexis Demon constructs alike. The Alpha attacking me is easily strong enough to maintain the force on my arm, but he can't-

-stop me-

-moving past him. He manages to flare his environmental shield hard to prevent my simply backstabbing him, but I immediately counter with a punch from a crumbler gauntlet construct. His shield dims and I slash, the blade penetrating the armour of his left shoulder as he turns and drawing blood. Unfortunately, the shortness of the blade makes it easy for him to turn and strike my hand. My power armoured gauntlet keeps hold of the blade, and I recover as I shoot him again with a crumbler round-

-then step out and back-

-and stab him directly in the middle of his back, piercing his spine through his armour!

"ARRGH!"

Surge back to avoid his retaliatory blade constructs, fire a volley of crumblers to weaken his defence and-

-move-

-around not to his back as he's now expecting, but to his right side and slash his ring hand.

"No NO! MINE!"

I flare my own construct armour and grab. My first slash didn't sever the hand, and he's still got control of his ring. He forms claws but I absorb the stabs in order to force his arm to extend and slash again.

His claws vanish as it comes free and he falls, blood gushing from the cut surface. I take his severed hand in mine and call the last ring out. Finally.

"Aaawraaaagh?"

He hits the deck wailing weakly, trying to use his right hand to stem the flow of blood. Ch'p comes forward, limping slightly as he fires a green beam at the wound to seal it shut. Guy blasts apart the stunned Berrith Construct Lanterns, then takes a moment to restore his construct armour as he looks around for any remaining attackers.

"He'll live, sir." Ch'p touches the Alpha on the forehead, mercifully stunning him.

"An' the rest?"

Ch'p nods. "We beat their Alphas. Ordinarily, they'd be surprisingly obedient. I'm not sure how the orange light changes things..?"

I look through Ranx in their direction. "From the way they're backing up, I'd say 'not much'."

"The duel is complete! The visitors win and are proven correct in their assertion that the crew are negligent in their duties! All crew are hereby discharged, and are no longer my concern."

"Glad t' hear it. Now howsabout you piss off back to-?"

I hold out the power ring I took from the last Alpha. "Ranx of Sector Three Two Seven Two."

Guy spins, glaring at me. "Don't even think about-."

"You want to be useful."

Guy jabs at me with his right forefinger. "Don't you do it."

"And I want you for the Orange Lantern Corps."

"Ah, fer Christ's sake."

"Take my ring."

Guy throws up his arms. "Is this gunna happen everywhere we go?!"

back

Collegiality 25

next

25th August

13:15 GMT

"…back on New Berrith, an' Paul did some work on the satellite network." The assembled Guardians seem to be reasonably content with Guy's verbal description of events. "I fixed the worst of the environmental damage… Dust in the air from where Ranx shot it…" He shrugs. "Couldn't do much fer the industrial pollution…"

Pazu Pinder Pol nods. "And the H'lvenian, Doctor Ub'x? Were you able to trace him?"

Guy shakes his head. "Sorry. Once Paul poin'ed it out I could sorta feel the indigo light, but… I got no idea where he went. We found where Mekk an' him had been on th' surface, and I got-" He holds up a small bag. "-bits a' his power ring."

Ganthet holds out his right hand, and the bag floats over to him. "This was all you were able to find?"

Guy glances at me. "Ah…"

"It's exactly half. On the basis of it being a joint operation, and me being the one who tracked most of it down."

Kontross frowns. "You were called upon to take corrective action regarding a problem you created. We are the leading authority on power ring construction. You should relinquish whatever you have collected to us."

"That attitude is just not helpful. Firstly, however much experience you've got with power rings in general, you can't properly connect to an indigo ring. I know full well that your connection to the Green Central Power Battery prevents it."

Appa Ali Apsa waves his left hand. "Somewhat. There are ways around that. But do you really think that our unaligned cousins will have better luck? Most of them have very little experience in the field, at least with power rings adapted for younger species' use."

"Between them and Hinon, I don't imagine they'll have a much harder time of it than Guardian Ganthet." I look around the circle. "But then there's the second issue. I'm not prepared to accept a subordinate position for my Corps. If we are the ones who put the work in, then we get the pay off. And if you can't tolerate that… Then don't ask for my help in future."

Kontross narrows his eyes. "I am sure that we will bear your views on the matter in mind. Where did you leave Ranx?"

Guy floats slightly away from me. Telling the Guardians that I gave a Green Lantern-hating AI a power ring is something he decided to leave to me.

"He's had a little trouble adapting to his new power ring. But by now he should be halfway to Maltus-."

"You gave him a power ring?"

"You didn't give him a crew! Didn't the Green Lanterns who depopulated him last time do any investigative work? If you decide to throw away a perfectly good battle station, don't complain to me if I manage to make something of it. Lantern Ranx will be acting as a command station and shipyard in orbit over Maltus. I know that he'll be happy there, and the Reach will be the worse for it."

So quit 'cher bitchin', basically.

Broome Bon Baris looks thoughtful. "I am concerned about the 'Indigo Lantern' having the ability to bypass our defence satellites."

Ranakar appears uninterested. "They were intended to guard against local threats, not against civilisations orders of magnitude more sophisticated than anything which existed locally. Lantern Ch'p was able to bypass the version protecting the original Berrith homeworld easily enough. I am more concerned that they exist at all."

Herupa Hando Hu shrugs. "We have never made an effort to track all of our cousins. It is perfectly possible that other Maltusians learned to utilise one of the other colours independently. That might also explain why their lanterns are closer to being historically accurate than the ones derived from Krona's original project."

Ranakar nods. "True."

Dennap focuses her attention on me. "May we assume that you will now prioritise the recovery of any remaining orange rings?"

"I had assumed -incorrectly- that Ragnar's cluster was a unique case. While I will not be able to promise you that I will find all of them where your own Lanterns couldn't, I will agree to put more effort into it than I have been."

Dennap's expression hardens. "If you wish us to treat your Lanterns as equal to our own, you would be well advised to behave as responsibly as we expect our Lanterns to."

"My Lanterns do. I've already said that you can do what you like with any other orange ring users who make trouble. Orange Lanterns have to be pernicious individualists."

"Perhaps I should rephrase. We consider you to be responsible for the rings you have lost, and will hold you to account for any further harm which their bearers cause."

"And for any good they do?"

Appa gives me a lopsided smile. "It would give us more proof that the orange light isn't inherently harmful."

"So when should I expect you to recruit Alan Scott? I mean, he picked up a ring you lost. And by all accounts he's performed rather well with it. Do you intend to take responsibility for him?"

Sayd shakes her head. "Had he been harmed by his use of the ring he discovered, we would have taken it upon ourselves to heal him. But by your own accounts he has not; on the contrary, he has spent most of his life far more healthy than a member of your species his age would ordinarily be. You have our sympathy, and he has our respect. But you have no cause to make demands of us."

I smile bitterly. "Missed a trick there, didn't I? I should have helped him host Ion." They don't flinch, but there's a very slight rustling of their robes. "And Mars? What is your explanation there?"

Pazu Pinder Pol looks genuinely annoyed. "Given how many of our brethren died preserving their species, we judged that further losses for the benefit of a species that was managing to survive anyway would be more than we could bear. And from the records you've seen, you know what the Burning Martians would have wrought had we not acted."

"Oh yes, they're so hard to handle now."

"If you plan on altering them yourself, know that we will hold you accountable for any harm they do."

I open my mouth-.

"Paul, you wanna.. rein it in a little?"

I take a deep breath. Probably wise. "Well I… Think we've covered everything. You know where we are if you need us for anything. Guardian Dennap? Controller Hinon Hee Hannanan instructed me to tell you that you have her permission to stick me in a sciencell for a few weeks. Do you wish to make use of that option?"

She blinks. "Not presently."

"Then I will bid you good day."

It takes a moment but-

-I can step out, even on Oa. A moment to acclimatise-

-I step back next to Hinon inside the Orange Central Power Battery chamber.

"That went-"

She actually leaps away from me into the air, orange light blazing from her hands and eyes.

"-reasonably well. Oh, and Dennap says 'no'."

She stares at me for a moment, then douses her lights. "However did you do that?"

"The translocation or the 'not being put in a cell'?"

She scowls. "Both."

back

NEXT CHAPTER

Rapprochement

BACK

Rapprochement 1

next

Rapprochement

30th August

06:13 GMT -4

"…review of the LexPharma research schedule at seven, followed by a meeting with the department heads at nine."

I watch through the hush tube as Lex nods to Ms Graves, taking a bite from his jam-covered muffin as he does so. Strawberry, if I'm any judge. There's a small pot of coffee which the two of them appear to be sharing. Ms Graves appears to favour muesli.

Rather domestic.

Ms Graves' eyes move from her tablet to Lex's face as she moves to the next item. "The interim report from the Special Projects auditors is at one, but that can easily be moved if the meeting or lunch overrun."

I stride through. "Or you could just-" Lex chokes slightly and Ms Graves shoots to her feet, gun arm prepped. "-cancel the whole thing." I grin and spread my arms wide as if offering to hug any volunteers. "Because I'm baaaack!"

Ms Graves' eyes flick to her employer, who is trying to dislodge muffin from his windpipe without appearing at all unsettled.

"And I bring you the gift of seeds!" I toss a sack of Deca seeds to the floor next to the table they're eating from. "Trust me, those things are amazing."

"Grauhugh." Lex takes a breath, then a sip of water. "Grayven. You look well."

"You have no idea how good it was to get away from this planet and go somewhere where I could just ram fixes through." I gesticulate. "See arsehole, cut arsehole in half with giant sword. I needed that so much."

"I'm.. glad to hear that your vacation went well. Might I enquire as to-" He raises his eyebrow at the seed sack. "-where you went?"

"If you're still alive in sixty years, look towards Vega and you might see me waving." I grin. "But what have you been up to?"

Lex sighs faintly, then makes a small motion with his right hand which prompts Ms Graves to sit down and stow her gun. "Damage control, mostly. The regulatory regime LexCorps is now forced to operate under is onerous in the extreme. I've had.. feelers out, trying to acquire assets that might have been missed when the businesses owned by other members of the Light were…"

"Brutally slaughtered like the Pig-Dogs they were?"

"…yes." He sighs again. "Unfortunately, the legitimate parts of the businesses they owned were owned with several cut outs between them and any overt criminality. I suspect that their managers are quite happy knowing that their late employers will no longer be making any demands on them, but that does mean that my leverage is unusually limited."

"I'll have a poke around. I know Savage's next of kin, I'm sure I can sort something out."

"I imagine that the entire Human race is descended from the late Mister Savage to some degree."

"No, his actual heir. A woman he raised to be a majordomo, or.. something." I take a step towards the table and crouch down. "But what about the other thing?"

"The.. other thing, Grayven?"

"Yes, the other thing." He looks somewhat blank. "The other thing? You know, I persuaded Horne and Lane not to have you killed, then I came here and we had a little chat?"

"I.. remember the incident extremely well."

"And… I said that I wanted you to assemble.. a group..? People with skills on a level with the late members of the Light, but less stupid? You remember that, right?" Lex looks impassive. I turn to Ms Graves. "You.. remember that, right? I didn't just stroke the whole thing, did I?"

"Grayven." Lex sighs. "Even if I wanted to, I couldn't fulfill that demand. Every one of my.. contacts in that sphere is avoiding me like I'm a plague-bearing Rat. They believe that having contact with me risks bringing down the wrath of the government, the Justice League, or worse, you. And if they weren't..? Why would I bring them and risk losing their skills on the end of your sword because you did not consider them to be suitably 'rational'?"

"You-. You.. mean you haven't got anyone?" Whaw, I was… Not expecting that. "I mean, we're not exactly short of supervillains around here."

"Oh, certainly. I imagine that I could dodge DMA snipers for just about long enough to make contact with a few utter unknowns. People who would add little to your efforts. Would you like me to write down their contact details for you?"

I screw up my face. "No? Of course not. I just…" My hands flap around as I try to organise my thoughts on the issue. "They didn't even have to be supervillains. I thought you'd-."

"I'm not a miracle worker, Mister Grayven. As things stand I'm not even certain how much I can help you. Though do feel free to destroy my window again: I've almost gotten to the point where I miss Superman doing that."

This… Is… Disappointing. And irritating. I lower my head slightly, sighing under my breath. "Can I assume that -if you can do so without being shot- you're still interested in participating?"

"I tolerated Klarion. I'm sure that I can tolerate you."

My jaw tightens, and I jab my right forefinger at him. "Not an intelligent thing to say to me, Mister Luthor." Okay. "Right, here's what we're going to do. I'm going to find people instead. I'm going to talk to them about our ideology and how working with us serves their interests too. And you don't get a veto anymore! I'll just pick people, and they'll… And they'll turn up, and you can like it or lump it! I was not expecting you to fail to network."

Lex appears unfazed, taking a small sip of coffee as I try to get my breathing under control. There's a quiet 'clink' as he sets his cup down in its saucer. "And.. I.. wish you the best of luck. I'm not sure where you hope to find such people-."

"You'd be amazed where I can find people."

"I'll look forward to meeting them. Have you…" He gestures to his table with his right hand. "Had.. breakfast? I'm sure that we can-."

"I'll be eating breakfast in two hours with my household, thank you very much." I turn away from them. "Mother Box, boom tube."

BOOM!

Ugh, but where am I actually going? The Mountain? No, I'd just be hanging around. Tamaran? No, I should get on this recruitment thing as soon as possible.

Who's going to be awake and active at this time of day?

…

30th August

09:16 GMT -1

I stride through the portal and into the Venturian palace, couriers looking around as I approach the table around which she and her inner circle are seated. "Queen Clea, sorry to barge in like this-."

She straightens slightly on her throne-like chair at the head of the table. "I would be astonished if that were true."

"Okay, it's not. I'm just being polite."

"Thank Atlan for small mercies." She puts down a scroll. "Since you're here, I assume that you want something. Are you going to tell me what it is, or do you want to pontificate for a little while first?"

"The second, obviously." I fold my arms behind my back and start pacing across the area in front of the throne. "I'm putting together a little coterie-."

"I've participated in those before. I can't say that I enjoyed the experience. Or profited much by it."

"This is more of a think tank than a fighting force. Like-minded individuals pooling resources in order to achieve greater things than they could by themselves. If you're interested, I'm planning a get-together in a few days. You can get to know the other invitees, see if you think they're people you could work with."

"Anyone I know?"

"Hopefully one at least."

"Hm." She thinks for a moment. "My biggest problem at the moment remains what it was the first time we spoke: King Orin. What do you think that your 'coterie' could do about that?"

back

Rapprochement 2

next

1st September

12:23 GMT -2

King Orin blinks at me in confusion as I rise to my feet. And I nearly miss his eyes flicking to his bodyguards. "Grayven. I'm afraid that if there's something you want to talk about it will have to wait. I'm due to meet the Venturian Ambassador and I really don't have the.. time…" He trails off as I produce my accreditation scroll. "Queen Clea sent you?"

"Your Imperial Majesty, High King Orin of Poseidonis." I anchor my feet to the palace floor and bow, left hand at my waist and right hand holding out the scroll. "I have the honour of having been instructed by Her Majesty Queen Clea of Venturia to serve as her representative, with the aim of normalising relations between your respective thrones."

His mouth opens slightly as he tries to work out a sensible response. A courtier whom I don't recognise swims forward and takes the scroll from me, then swims back to his monarch's side before opening it. I come erect as he checks it both visually and with a minor spell. "It's authentic, your majesty."

King Orin bows his head slightly. "Of course it is." He focuses his attention on me. "I doubt that Grayven would do something like this as a prank. Ambassador Grayven, I recognise you as Queen Clea's representative to the Atlantean government. And I hope-." I shake my head. "Is there a problem?"

"King Orin, you know full well that I cannot accept that recognition. It has long been the position of Venturia that there is no such thing as the Atlantean government, merely an advisory body to the High King. I can hardly be a representative to a body that does not exist."

"This is why diplomacy with Venturia never gets anywhere." He swims past me to take his place at the head of the table. "Would you accept being recognised as Venturia's representative to my court?"

I bow my head. "But of course."

He reaches his chair and motions for me to be seated. "You understand that in the Atlantean order of precedence, it's an inferior position?"

"Inferior to one that doesn't exist? I think that unlikely."

He sits, and I do the same at a seat a little way to his left. Another Atlantean -given the manner of her dress I'm going to assume that she's either some sort of minister or a high level aide- sits down opposite me.

King Orin leans forward slightly. "I remembering hearing from Superman that there was an Atlantean working at your daughter's school. You organised that?"

"Yes. They appeared to be confused by the differences between telepaths and parapsychics. I thought that having someone who knew a little more about magic than well-meaning but ignorant American college teachers… Would be helpful. And I needed a source of literature for Miss Shimmer."

"And you couldn't come to Poseidonis?"

"I had just left the Team under something of a cloud. It seemed to me that going somewhere where the ruler wouldn't care about that made more sense. Queen Clea asked to speak with me…" I shrug.

"That was... April?" I nod. "I had wondered why the Venturian Senators started voting with me on foreign policy issues. I had hoped that it was an indication that Queen Clea might be willing to become less isolationist."

"It was really more… She switched from opposing you and yours in every way she could, to being willing to consider proposals on the basis of traditional authority. If you want to pursue a particular foreign policy objective, then that is your right as High King."

"And what does she get out of it?"

"She hopes that you will agree not to interfere in the Venturian succession. She expects to die in the not-too-distant future and it's been weighing on her mind."

Orin frowns. "Proconsul Ptra of Aurania will succeed her. I certainly don't have any problem with that. If anything, I'd encourage her to reach out to her daughter sooner."

"Ah. No, your majesty. She won't."

His frown deepens. "What do you mean? Ptra is Clea's only child." He blinks, his brow smoothing. "Unless Clea's done what my mother did. Is there another heir somewhere that she's planning on introducing?"

"No-. At least, not to my knowledge. Under Venturian law, much like in the Roman Empire, the monarch appoints their successor. Usually it's the oldest child, but in theory she could name anyone. My knowledge of Venturian court politics is imperfect, but my understanding is that the foremost candidate is her great nephew, Lord Cyprian."

Orin looks at the woman seated on his right. "Majistra, can she do that?"

Majistra looks more than a little concerned. "Legally, yes, but the understanding we had was that she would not."

"That was a very one-sided understanding, then. I got the very clear impression that she'd been planning it for a while but was afraid of being invaded if she made a formal announcement."

"By Aurania?"

"No. By you." He looks surprised. "I'm afraid that after her altercation with your grandmother, Queen Clea became somewhat…" How can I put this politely..?

"Paranoid?"

I nod. "If you like. Where Poseidonis is concerned."

"Where my grandmother refused to let her execute all of her political opponents?"

I raise my left eyebrow. "That's not how the Venturians remember it. And -with all due respect, your majesty- you need to understand this if you're going to get anywhere with them."

"Alright. Then how do they remember it?"

"The dispute starts with the marriage of Queen Clea to Proconsul Philo. The marriage contract states… Well, what it states is.. one of the things disputed."

"I can imagine. Did you read it yourself?"

"Yes. The wording.. seemed unclear, but I'm not an Atlantean lawyer. Queen Clea believes that it sets out that Venturian laws of inheritance would take precedence in the case of shared offices and titles. And the courtiers who survive from the time were certain that it was discussed in those terms at the time. In Venturia, a couple rules together with neither one having authority over the other. If she died, he'd still be king. So, to keep things fair, they arranged things so that if he died, she'd become Proconsul. Aurania's law of course works differently, and that's why they made sure to spell it out in the marriage contract."

"And the Auranian Senate accepted that?"

I shrug. "Passed with a majority. Which should have meant that it became Auranian law. Except… Two years into the marriage, Proconsul Philo died. And that didn't happen. The Auranian Council tried to impose Auranian succession tradition, which passes authority down to surviving children and not the surviving spouse. Ptra was a year old at the time. And given the surprise of his death-."

"She decided to invade."

"She decided to declare martial law on a city she already ruled, after the murder of her husband, its Proconsul. It seemed clear to her that the people who benefited most from his death were the people who were trying to sideline her." I lean back slightly. "Technically she shouldn't have done that, but I don't think it was particularly unreasonable. Particularly when they responded by having her daughter kidnapped."

"They thought that her mother had murdered her father."

"Did they? I've seen the court records. Queen Clea had to testify under truth compulsion that she hadn't arranged his death. They never did. And since all of those involved in that part are now dead we'll never know what their motivations really were."

"Alright. I can see why she did what she did, but Queen Cora ruled in their favour. Why won't she accept the ruling?"

"Because it was clearly incorrect in law." I lean back. "Did you know that there isn't a national minimum drinking age in the United States? Individual states are free to set their own to whatever they like or not have one at all, but if it isn't twenty one or higher the federal government cuts their highways funding. I'm not really sure what building roads has to do with alcohol consumption…" I shrug. "It's just a control mechanism. Queen Cora had the authority to adjudicate in disputes between city-states, which technically included the marriage contract. What she didn't have authority to do was ignore the kidnapping."

"If they were concerned about Ptra's safety…"

"Then maybe they could have been exonerated in a trial. 'Reasonable actions taken under extreme circumstances'. There was no trial. The actual kidnappers and the people who sponsored them weren't even pardoned, just completely let off the hook. Clea might have tolerated not becoming Proconsul if she'd been made her daughter's regent. But she wanted them punished and she wanted her daughter back. And she got neither after Queen Cora recognised the Auranian council as having regency authority and made Ptra a ward of the throne of Poseidonis. And Queen Clea was rather upset about it."

"It seems that I'm going to have to read up on my history. But before I do that, is recognising Lord Cyprian as her heir the only thing she wants from me?"

"She'd quite like the city-states to get more autonomy… Or as she put it 'to have their traditional autonomy recognised', but that's a secondary thing. The second principal thing she wants is to build an airport in the Greater Azores so she can trade with the surface and needs you to reduce import tariffs."

King Orin's eyes boggle.

"She wants to what?"

back

Rapprochement 3

next

1st September

17:23 GMT -5

I smile politely as Director Armstrong glowers at my completed test paper. A moment passes and she stabs it with her 'Approved' stamp with more force than was strictly necessary before picking it up again and dropping it into her 'out' tray.

"Thank you, Director. Where do I go to get my identification badge?"

"How did you do it?"

I bite back my initial 'firstly, my mother and father met' response. Director Armstrong is in charge of what will eventually be an important federal agency. I'm trying to build her up, not belittle her. "Could.. you.. be more specific?"

"You've been back on Earth for two days, and you managed to complete the written portion of the test with a near-perfect grade."

"Well…" I shrug. "A lot of it was essentially the same as the equivalent tests for other federal law enforcement officers, and that was covered by my Justice League training. A good deal of the rest relates to special cases relating to metahuman law and police practice, which, again, I've studied for my own activities. Like when I was trying to get Werner Vertigo executed."

"That doesn't explain perfect scores."

"Okay, fine." I smile. "I had the G-Gnomes implant textbook answers in my mind. I imagine that the only bits I got wrong were where I thought that the official answer was stupid."

"That totally invalidates the results!"

"It does not. As long as they weren't continuously-."

She glares. "Do you know how long telepathically implanted knowledge lasts?"

"I'm aware of previous case studies, but with the G-Gnomes it lasts as long as any knowledge you studied hard. The G-Gnomes have gotten very good at ensuring that it integrates fully with the rest of a subject's mental networks. None of that… Fading away after a couple of days stuff."

Usually I'd hate people doing anything with my mind, but I trust Jean. And I really didn't want to learn this by reading a lot of books like some sort of caveman.

I smile again. "So there's really no problem. I now have the qualifications for a licensed operative. And if you count my work for Operation Light Switch for my 'mentored operational duty' and my time working for the Justice League as 'time in operation', I actually qualify for second tier privileges as well." She doesn't look happy about it. "And obviously I understand that by taking this on I know that I'll be expected to go on the stump for the DMA. My diary's reasonably open; I'm happy to book you in whenever you like."

Director Armstrong nods, managing to look only slightly like she's bitten into a lemon. Then she reaches into one of her desk's drawers, pulls out a small brown packet and passes it to me. "Here. We used your Central City mug shot for the identification photograph."

I grin as I take it and pull out the identification badge. "See, I know that was intended as a slight. But actually? I love the idea." I take a quick look at the photo and then hold it up next to my head and pull the exact expression I had then. "I'm going to show this off to everyone."

"When are the rest of your little enclave going to sit their examinations?"

"Ah…" I lower my badge. "The Blacks are on assignment outside of the US, Ghia'ta isn't active as a superhero -though I'll.. certainly send her your way if she gets interested-, Miss Shimmer is training as a thaumaturgist and has no interest in combat or criminal investigation, Lynne's clearly too young and Mister Tawny isn't on Earth at the moment. But again, I'll be sure to send him your way once he gets back."

"And the Gothic Flash?"

I sit back. "Do you..? Really… Want her formally on your books?"

"I'm aware of what you had her do in the Sudan."

"Technically I didn't order her to do that. Not that I have a problem with it, compared to the reasonably probable alternatives. But if what she is doing-."

"'Is'?"

"You don't want the various factions to rearm, do you? If it became more widely known, and people saw that she had a licence from you… I mean, obviously we know that it's not an endorsement or a sign that she's acting on America's behalf, but it may be more convenient for you to not have anything written down that says otherwise."

"And what did General Lane say about that?"

"He hasn't said.. anything..? I'm not sure if that's because he genuinely doesn't know, or if he's officially not knowing."

Director Armstrong thinks for a moment. "Do you intend to use her in your State-side operations?"

"Probably, yes."

"Then she can sit her test anonymously. I can sign the paperwork and you can be her supervisor. No one else has to know."

I nod. "Alright, I'll talk to her about it next time I see her."

A slight frown. "She's not waiting for you right now?"

I shake my head. "No. With major combat operations in Vega finished, I encouraged her to pay some attention to her secret identity."

Aside from the social aspect, maintaining a cover identity has obvious advantages for her. While I obviously pay her for the work she does for me, it might also help to have a source of income she can actually talk about outside the mountain. Actual pay for entry level models is crap, but unless a lot of people compare notes that won't matter much. A bit sad that I can't be there in person to support her, but Miss Shimmer said that she'd go in my place.

Friend number two!

I pull some paperwork out of the pack. "What's this?"

"Pension and insurance forms."

And I don't age or need to use other people's hospitals. Ah, it's probably a standard package. I nod. "It's never too soon to start saving."

"And your performance targets."

Oh, of course. I just manage to stop myself laughing. "For..?"

"Rifle, Colorado."

"I will make myself the scourge of villainy in the Route Six / County Road Two Two Three area." Actually, I'll have the G-Elves do it. This is clearly another paperwork thing; it doesn't actually require my personal attention. "I already have weekly meetings with Chief Klein, so really this will just be a formalisation of existing arrangements." She nods. "Anything else?"

"Luthor."

I purse my lips. "Luthor."

"Have you spoken to him?"

"Yes, that was one of the first things I did after returning. He's chafing nicely under the restrictions he's operating under."

"And you didn't happen to find anything that would warrant us taking further action?"

"He's got a painting by Adolf Hitler in his apartment?"

"He's-? No, that's not a crime, even if it does make him look like a supervillain. Anything else?"

"He's trying to acquire legitimate companies owned by his late colleagues while their hands are off the tiller. That might technically be insider trading, but it's… So close to legitimate commercial activity…"

"No smoking gun?"

"I'm afraid not."

She nods. "Keep watching him, just in case. I know the President wants him left alive if at all possible, but catching him out would be a big boost to the reputation of the DMA."

"I will be certain to do that, Director Armstrong."

back

Rapprochement 4

next

2nd September

15:15 GMT +2

How hard is it to find an enchanted island inhabited by an ancient demigoddess-sorceress who doesn't want it to be found?

Not all that hard at all when you've got goggles like mine.

Diana only came here once, and since she teleported both in and out she couldn't give me directions. I tried a couple of sources to narrow my search a little, but it seems that scholars have guessed that it might be located in all sorts of places over the years. More frustrating is the fact that while the Odyssey says that she comes from Colchis, for the Greeks that was the equivalent of an English person saying she came from Timbuktu. It's not a literal description -or at least it doesn't have to be-, it just means 'from a very long way away'. Plus the Classical Romans just loved stealing Greek stuff.

On the other hand, Diana definitely described the palace on the island as being in the Hellenic style. And myths have a surprisingly high correlation with reality around here. So I started with a sweep of the Black Sea and then made my way south east along the Bosphorus into the Sea of Marmara until I encountered an island that I could see with my goggles but not without them.

The goggles, they do something.

Out of respect to the woman I'm hoping to see and in the hope that she'll view my presence here as slightly less of an invasion, I open my boom tube well out to sea and start flying towards Aeaea at a speed that will give Circe plenty of time to decide whether to tolerate my presence or not. And whether or not an attack by her beastmen is required.

Flying Monkeys are a distinct possibility here.

No, no, she wouldn't send flying monkeys. She probably hasn't even heard of The Wizard of Oz. Or has she? I mean, Diana managed to modernise herself twice, once moving from the Classical Greek Themyscira to nineteen forties America, and then from Themyscira to noughties America. And there's been basically nothing to stop her teleporting to wherever she wants since the late Mister Nelson stopped wearing the Helmet of Fate. She might not even be in.

Guess I'll… Leave a note then?

Based on what I can see of the buildings on the island, Circe has gone for an almost exploded view for her palace. There isn't a single continuous structure but rather a dock which is physically separated from what looks like a stable, which again is some distance from what I'm going to assume are the servants' quarters. Or possibly peasants' quarters, given that I can see nearby farmland. Even the palace parts are separated into a tower and two halls, though I suppose that those might have assigned functions which are not immediately obvious. The Mistress of the Manor might not be home herself, but there's definite activity in the fields and around the docks. I-. Ah, those are crab-form beastmen. I was curious as to how they fished without drawing unwanted attention. I wonder if the spells bear any resemblance to those the Atlanteans use?

Resist.

I get a slight bleugh sensation as I pass through the wards, but once I'm inside nothing else happens. I think that some of the crabs might be looking my way… Hard to tell. Circe herself doesn't deign to show herself as I touch down on the beach. So… Either she doesn't have a problem with me being here but expects me to present myself to her, or I'm about to-.

The javelin embeds itself in the sand about a metre from my position. I look up towards the tree line… And a motley collection of beastmen glares back at me. I see a Lion-person and a Centaur, along with a small mob of Boar-people. Kilts and straps appear to be the dress code, though given the weather and fact that they're covered in fur I suppose that expecting shirts and ties would have been a long shot. As I watch, the Lion grunts something at the Centaur, who turns and runs away from the mob in the general direction of the palace.

I take a few steps forward and bend down, picking up the javelin in my right hand and lifting it up toward the watching beastmen.

"Lads, do you really want to do this?"

The Lion bares his teeth and his claws while the Boars draw their swords.

Sigh.

I stab the javelin back into the sand and-.

Yeah, okay. My daiklave would probably be overkill here. Diana said that Circe's beastmen have enhanced strength, not super strength. I could kill them all pretty easily, but there's really no point. And some of them might still have family…

Ugh. I generate a construct tower shield and cudgel and advance up the incline as they charge down towards me. The Lion takes the lead, not even looking back in his eagerness to reach me. The Boars are a little more rational about it, keeping abreast of each other and carefully watching me as they advance. No shields, I note. Not that it would help, but that does imply that they were assigned to some other duty.

The Lion comes at me at full sprint, probably intending to bowl me over and claw at me on the ground. I brace and crouch slightly as he slams into my shield, his momentum and my immovability causing him to flatten against it. I lurch forward and then stop, causing him to stagger back into striking range. I stab the head of my cudgel forward, striking him in the diaphragm. Because I'm super strong rather than just being a big bloke the result of my stab is him flying backward and collapsing gasping to the ground.

"Stay down, Lion man."

"I-i-i-in-." His gasps for breath cover up anything coherent he might have been saying as I walk carefully around him and towards the approaching Boar line.

"I'll say again, fellahs. I'm here to see Circe and I come in peace. I don't want to fight you, but you're not going to enjoy what happens if you force the issue."

One on the left of the line looks dubiously at his fellows for a moment, but then shakes his head and raises his sword. Looks like they're more afraid of disappointing their domitor than they are of fighting me.

But the main thing is, they're afraid.

I walk patiently towards the centre of their line and they gratefully accept the opportunity to move to surround me. I sigh faintly, then leap backwards, blindly swinging my construct cudgel around as I do so.

"ORRREEEAAAGH!"

The first Boarman I hit has his upper right arm and several of his right ribs smashed, sending him tumbling down the beach towards the sea. My swing continues as his neighbour attempts to backpedal, making it just far enough to save his arm but not his chest. Ribs crack and he's sent flying as I turn toward the rest. One eager fellow is hot on my heels and I repeat what I did to the Lion, letting him run into my shield. He didn't quite give the charge his all and maintains the wherewithal to brace himself against it and stab around it with his sword.

We have a brief moment of eye contact when his discovers that his arm isn't long enough to reach me. Then I tug my shield left to intercept another charging Boar, causing him to spin around until he's facing me again. As we line up I bring my forehead forwards with a smash, knocking him stunned to the ground.

Then they're all piling on me and it isn't worth keeping precise tabs on who is where. Steel swords predictably fail to pierce my armour or skin as I yank my arms left and right, slamming Boar into Boar and taking smashes of opportunity with my cudgel. Rendering them too injured to fight back takes a little over a minute. Another minute to scan them to make sure that they aren't imminently going to expire-

Your humanitarian credentials are impeccable, Corpsman.

-and I stride back toward the fallen Lion. He's managing to sit upright, but the fight still seems to be knocked out of him.

"What was that in aid of?"

"You... Invader! Mistress's land-."

"I came here because I want to talk to her, not brawl with her." I generate a construct harness and use it to drag him to his feet. "Now take me to her. We have things to discuss."

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Rapprochement 5

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2nd September

15:27 GMT +2

One leisurely stroll later -with just enough tugging on the leash by me to remind the Lion who's in charge and just enough resistance from him to remind me that he's a thinking creature with opinions of his own- and we arrive at a grand-looking stone structure. The pillars and general shape of the roof say 'ancient Greek' to me, but I'm hardly an expert in architecture. A handful of Mulemen are tending the gardens, but they limit themselves to one nervous look in my direction before bending themselves to their tasks once more. The pathway leading up to the palace proper -or should that be manor?- is lined with statues, alternately bronze-cast and stone carved. Not of the gods, but beyond that I couldn't say.

The whole place actually looks pretty nice. I suppose that if you've got near-infinite time and resources then you aren't going to live in a sty, but I was a little worried that she'd have gone for the full 'dark sorceress with skulls on spikes' style. This is classy. And more importantly, suggests that she's capable of being rational over a prolonged period of time.

"Mistress is inside."

I nod without looking at him. "Are you banned from going inside?"

He grunts. "No."

"Glad to hear it." I use the tether to shove him forwards, then let the construct evaporate as he staggers up the steps leading into the palace. "After you."

His head turns, letting him glower at me with one eye for a moment. Then he shakes his head slightly and stalks up the steps into the portico. I follow on behind him, utterly unhurried. It's important to seem at ease; Circe doesn't know me and might do something regrettable if she senses weakness. The stone.. doesn't look enchanted, or at least not exceptionally. Probably just a little something to make the stone more resilient to erosion, or perhaps to regenerate over time. Yes, that's more likely. Given the era and the lack of other magic users at her level to study with I imagine that she'd find elementalism easier than anything truly original. A shame that she grew up in this part of the world; if she'd been born in Atlantis she could have been another Ahri'ahn.

Ah well.

No glass, I note as I step from the sunlit portico into the entry chamber. The Ancient Greeks had glass, but not of a quality that it would have been practical to use in windows. And it looks like she hasn't bothered to modernise…

I stop, looking around. Ambient lighting with no opening other than the doorway. It should be dingy in here, but instead it only appears shaded. I suppose that I shouldn't have expected her not to have some work-around for the problem of darkness.

The illumination allows me to more easily see the painted borders around the top and bottom of the walls, and the frescos painted between them. One wall is covered by a depiction of a garden party. A cheerful scene, until I realise a moment later that every participant save one has some minor animal characteristic somewhere on their person. Teeth, ears, a tail… It adds a strange and disconcerting air to the image. The one person shown to be physically perfect is Circe herself, reclining on a couch in a gazebo and being fed grapes by a king with cloven feet.

Another wall shows a mountain, tiny figures that might be people or rocks or smudges barely visible against the grandeur of the rock formation and the landscape surrounding it. A third wall appears to show a battle, but rather than the neat ranks that Greek infantry were famous for it depicts men striking one another without rhyme or reason. A fourth wall shows a goddess -Circe herself, with a few added indicators of divinity- walking through a city inhabited by unaltered animals who offer her tribute as she passes.

Puzzling. I wonder who painted these?

The Lion has already gone ahead, but I take a moment to look over the pictures for things I've missed. No sign of Diana and I don't.. think that any of her old cronies are shown either. I wouldn't necessarily spot any really old cronies, but there aren't any from her original fights with Diana in the forties and fifties. Or any modern ones. Circe playing up her power is hardly surprising, and the animal motifs..? How she views people?

Sadly, it turns out that I'm not Grand Admiral Thrawn.

Oh well, conversation it is then. I turn away from the artworks and slowly walk through the doorway to the next chamber.

"Greetings, stranger."

Circe herself is lounging on a large throne set into the centre of the far wall. The throne is wood with fabric-covered panels and cushions, while the surrounding dais is artfully carved stone. It looks like a single piece. Was it brought here? Did they build the palace around it? Or did she create it with magic?

The rest of the room is richly decorated in a tasteful way. There are shelves upon which set impressively bound tomes as well as racks for scrolls. There are stands and display cases for ancient or valuable artefacts -some of those do have glass fronts. There is a area with seating and a table arranged before a beautifully upholstered chaise longue. The walls are less intricately decorated here than the ones outside were: a simply decorative pattern so as not to distract from the treasure trove which the mistress of the place has chosen to display for her guests.

The Lion man is already abasing himself in front of the lowest step when I take in the sorceress herself. She can alter her appearance to more or less whatever she wants; illusion sometimes, genuine shapeshifting at others. At the moment she's choosing to appear as a tall, pale skinned and dark haired woman. Her dress -which looks like it could fall off with one careless motion- is peach in colour and artfully draped to not only enhance her own beauty but to pleasantly contrast with the colour and texture of the wood and stone around her. Her feet are bare, while her hair is elegantly draped around her shoulders.

All this for me? I'm touched.

I proceed across the floor until I'm only a few metres behind the Lion. Then I bow.

"Forgive me for not addressing you by title, but I am uncertain as to how you style yourself."

"I've long since outgrown the need for titles. Please address me as Circe. And you are Grayven, I believe."

I straighten up. "My reputation precedes me."

"You fought a Lord of Chaos and emerged victorious. I would be a poor sorceress not to be aware of the man who achieved such a feat of arms."

"Two Lords of Chaos." I smile. "But who's counting?"

She raises her eyebrows slightly. Polite enquiry rather than genuine surprise. "Really?"

"Mordru proved to be no more capable of seeing reason than his erstwhile colleague."

She leans back slightly. "It seems that they were less immortal than I had been led to believe."

"I don't believe that there's any such thing as absolute immortality."

The tiniest flicker, gone before I can learn anything from it. "You may well be right. Tell me, Grayven; what brings you to my home?"

"You, naturally. To the best of my knowledge you are the Earth's greatest living practitioner of magic. I am.. seeking to put together a coterie of talented individuals. Naturally, your name came to mind immediately."

"Hah!" She tilts her head back, her eyes leaving me for the first time since I entered the room. Her amusement seems genuine. "It's been some time since anyone tried to interest me in something like that." She shifts position, leaning a little closer as she returns her attention to me. "Do you seek to conquer the Earth, Grayven?"

"No, Circe. The nature of Earth society is such that it could not be conquered by people like us without depriving it of the very things that make it worth conquering. I was thinking of.. a… Looser alliance, each of us pursuing our own interests while cooperating with one another where such a thing could be profitably done in concert. Coordinating our efforts, rather than working on a single task and getting in one another's way."

"I see. And what is it that I would get out of this alliance?"

"That rather depends, O Circe, on what it is that you want."

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Rapprochement 6

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2nd September

15:41 GMT +2

Circe lounges languidly on the chaise longue while I maintain a more upright position in the solidly-built chair opposite her. Impressive work; it doesn't look like anything special but it manages to bear my weight without complaint. I must get the name of her…

What's the word for someone who makes chairs?

Chairbler.

Right, thanks. A man who looks like he's now part Goose places two amphorae -one of wine and another of water- on the table between us with two clay cups.

"One quarter."

Circe doesn't look at her servant as she gives the order, and he in turn doesn't look at her as he pours a mix of one part wine to three parts water into the cups before standing and backing away. Once he's far enough away that she no longer considers him to be intruding, she reaches out and picks up her cup. I'm underselling it there, it's a beautifully decorated piece and its presence probably means that I'm being treated as an honoured guest. I mirror her action, picking up my own cup and raising it slightly to her in a silent toast. That earns me a small smile as she raises hers to her lips to drink. I do the same. It tastes… Like wine, only weaker. It's probably an excellent wine but I'm afraid that it's rather wasted on someone like me.

A slight motion of her left hand and the floor extrudes a tendril of stone for her within convenient arm's reach for her to set her cup upon. "I'm puzzled by your enquiry."

I lower my cup. "It's a straightforward enough question. The better I understand what it is that you want to get out of a working relationship, the better able I am to arrange things to ensure that happens." I wiggle the cup around slightly in my right hand. "I realise.. that… For people like us, a request for that sort of personal information from someone you barely know… Sets off all sorts of alarms. I assume that this room is warded?"

"Naturally."

"Then let me go first. I seek allies because at some point -not soon, probably not for years- I'm going to have to fight my father. He's the Apokoliptian God of Tyranny and he's every bit as powerful as his name implies. A little over two months ago he rendered me catatonic for two weeks simply by speaking two words to me. I need to become stronger, to have access to better weapons, technologies, magics… So, I need Earth and its people to become stronger, and that is what I am trying to arrange. Admiration?" I shake my head. "I don't need it. Direct control over others?" I shrug. "As long as I can get the things I want I don't much care what else is happening. But what is it that you want? Legions of admirers? Wealth? Political power?"

She smiles. "Those are pleasant enough."

"Then we'll see about ensuring that you get them. But what do you want most of all?"

"Are those not enough?"

"I was a student of Princess Diana's."

"Oh please." She looks away, rolling her eyes. "I don't obsess over the girl."

"No, I…" I shake my head again and put my cup down on the table. "I mean to say that I've read her mission reports. Including the ones concerning your earliest confrontations. I… Believe that there was mention of a prophecy..?"

Circe's smile fades slightly and her eyes harden. This is the point at which things could go badly wrong, depending on how much umbrage she decides to take. "What do you know?"

"I know little. Supposedly, Hecate gave you… At least a portion of your powers, with the proviso that under certain conditions they would be revoked. I understand that you came to believe that Diana might be capable of fulfilling-."

"Her and… Thousands of others over the centuries." Her face tightens and she snatches up her cup, taking a drink. "Do you have any inkling as to why I made that accursed pact in the first place?"

"I'm well aware of the allure of power. Particularly power as.. immediate as the arcane variety."

"Hah!" There's no humour in her pronouncement as she downs the rest of her cup before returning it to its pedestal with a degree of force. "I had wondered if you might know the truth of it, given how you boasted of slaying two Lords of Chaos."

"In point of fact, I only killed one myself. One of my allies killed the other while I served as a distraction."

She looks at me with piercing curiosity, trying to decipher my expression for any trace of deceit. After a moment or two she relaxes slightly, perhaps finding in my favour. "When I was a young woman, recently inducted in the mysteries of Hecate's cult, I met a third. You most likely saw a painting of him outside; close-cropped curly blonde hair, heroically proportioned chest, cloven feet?" The grape-feeder. I nod. "My skill with magic was slight, but my beauty was enough to draw the eye of a being who styled himself as Oggar, the Earth's Mightiest Immortal."

I nod. "I think I've heard of him. Didn't he used to work with Shazam?"

Circe nods. "Yes. He tried to impress me with his magical feats, and failed utterly. Seeing what power magic could bring, all I could think was that one day such power would be mine though my own efforts. Finally, he offered me a gift to prove his power beyond doubt. I knew that the leaders of Hecate's cult were strong in magic, but bowed and wizened of body. Why not have the best of all things? So I asked for immortality. He waved his arms, claimed to have given it to me and asked me to reconsider. I refused again." She shrugs. "I was immortal. What was he going to do?"

"I think I see where this is going."

"Do you know what a woman looks like at two hundred years of age? Three hundred? One who knows of no magic by which she may rejuvenate herself? How swollen and arthritic her joints, how dull her eyes, how clouded her mind, how racked with pain and confusion her every moment?"

"No. But I can imagine."

"I begged Hecate for relief, even death. And for her own reasons, she-" Circe indicates her body with a wave of her right hand. "-gave me this. A portion of her own soul for power, arcane knowledge far in advance of any other in Greece… Divinity."

"Generous of her."

"And the certain knowledge that at any moment it could all be snatched away in an instant with no warning. Have you heard the phrase 'those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad'?" I nod. "It worked. Homer thought that I was exiled here. I wasn't. How could a mere king exile me? I simply grew too paranoid to stand other people."

I glance aside. "Apart from..?"

She follows my eyes to the Gooseman. "Oh, they're hardly 'people'. Why do you think I change them?"

"Okay." I sit back, looking thoughtful. "And that's why you picked fights with Diana?"

"Yes." Her eyes move off me for a moment. "Mostly."

I wave the qualifier off. "Don't worry, I know how it goes." Sounds simple enough to fix. Rejuvenation I can do. Though… "Can you choose to end your pact with Hecate yourself?"

She frowns. "Probably. Yes. But why would I? I have no more desire to become a feeble undying cripple now than I did thousands of years ago."

"You fear this outcome? You fear it greatly?"

"Yes."

I raise my left hand slightly, displaying the Sinestro ring's sigil. "This is a power ring. Its energies are strengthened by fear. If you could undo your pact, I believe that I could use it to restore your youth. Not permanently, you would begin to age again-."

"You could restore a woman thousands of years old to youth? You'll forgive me if I'm sceptical."

"This ring isn't magic, it's technological. Ontological inertia has no effect. Altering your current divinity-infused form is.. awkward. But were you to reassume the form of a mortal woman, it becomes feasible."

"And my power?"

"That power you derive from Hecate would be gone. However-" I tap Mother Box. "-it is within my power to alter the structures of your soul to allow for unlimited growth. I have tested the method, and it works quite well. You would be able to attain godhood through your own labours somewhat more easily than most mortal mages, though clearly you would be weaker in the interim. The important thing-" I lean forwards. "-is that you would no longer be beholden to the prophecy." "Grasp the power that lies before you!"

"That…" Her eyes flick down as she considers the offer. "Would be a great boon. And in return you would want my participation in your.. group?"

"No. A little of your time today, a few minor pieces of arcane assistance, and for you to hear my full spiel when all of those I wish to invite are assembled. I have no desire to trap you in a compact that no longer suits you."

"And if I say no?"

"That of course remains your prerogative. The offer would stay open indefinitely. A 'no' now could become a 'yes' later, once you have more information. While a fit of childish pique from me could alienate you permanently, which is contrary to my interests."

"I.. am.. interested. But putting myself into your power and trusting to your good intentions-."

"I gain nothing from harming you."

"I think…" She looks pensive for a moment, then reaches a firm decision. "I will accompany you and agree to help you in small ways, while I gain a better understanding of your character. Then, perhaps, I will accept your aid."

I smile. "That, Circe, suits me perfectly." I rise to my feet and extend my right hand to her. "Shall we?"

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Rapprochement 7

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2nd September

09:01 GMT -5

"Did you know that this is the only place in the United States where it's legal to produce, buy and sell proper absinthe?"

Circe looks around as we promenade along the tree-lined avenues of the curiously named Rainbow Gardens Park, just off Pyle Avenue in Opal City, Maryland. She actually condescended to link arms-. Or rather -given the size disparity between us- lay her left hand on my right arm. She seems interested but not stunned in the way those Amazons introduced to modern technology tend to look. She's even altered her dress to something a little more modern, though she left the general cut and colour the same. I had thought that she'd want something a little more 'queenly' while engaged on a professional occasion, but perhaps something that serves to draw attention away from her face is better for a known supervillain. As it is, we're drawing looks from morning joggers and they're not all being directed at me.

"I never developed a taste for it. For those acts of magic that are aided by hallucinogens, there are far better options." She looks up at me as I lower the guidebook. "Why are we here?"

"Have you ever met a man made of shadows?"

She frowns. "Yes, several times. I've even created one or two. Why do you ask?"

I nod at the figure sat on the bench in front of us as he throws breadcrumbs to a crowd of Pigeons that don't dare to approach within two metres of him. He's wearing an unseasonable black greatcoat and a black top hat, with some sort of white.. demi-doily thing hanging from his neck providing the only real break from the sheer tone of his clothing. He's also wearing dark glasses, and there's a black cane with a silver handle propped up against the side of his bench.

Despite the morning sun, the ground around him is noticeably darker than the rest of the path.

Circe stops dead. "What is he?"

I smile faintly. "No one really knows. Though he is at least a century old. I'm a little surprised that you haven't run into him before, actually. He was fighting The Flash while you were fighting Wonder Woman in the fifties..?"

"I don't-." She cuts herself off, frowning. "The Shade? I had heard of him, but I thought that he was a dilettante, a minor practitioner at best. Not… That."

"He isn't under a curse. He picked fights with superheroes to keep himself amused."

"He isn't touching his cane."

"He's never needed to before. Why would he start now?"

She hesitates for a moment. "I feel… That I may have missed something rather important."

Mister Swift shakes the last few crumbs out of his bag and then rises, the black edges of his clothing seeming to flow and stick to the bench like a gelatinous liquid for a moment before returning to normalcy. His cane doesn't even pretend, a clearly visible black solid lifting it from where it lays and holding it out to him. The Pigeons back the heck off, one or two of the braver members of the flock darting around behind in order to get at the remaining bread without having to go anywhere near the man-shaped abomination.

He looks around, and his gaze alights on the two of us. He doesn't smile, but he does look… Interested. He takes a few steps in our direction and raises the head of his cane to tip his hat. "Mister Grayven."

I nod politely back. "Mister Swift."

"And…" The skin around the edge of his glasses pinches slightly. "Miss Circe. A queer couple, to be certain, but not so strange as some this city has seen."

Circe's eyes glow faintly as she studies him. "Shade."

"Might I enquire as to what it is that brings you to my fair city? I don't believe that I'm aware of anyone who needs to suddenly find themselves encephally challenged." He glances down at my brochure. "Simple tourism? I could recommend a location or two, if you're interested."

"Actually, I… Wanted to talk to you."

He holds out his hands slightly, palms upwards while his cane remains upright. "And here we are. Do you have some particular topic in mind, or should I simply point out the sheer number of warrants Madam Circe has outstanding in the United States?"

"I wanted to ask you about Mister Simon Culp." A flicker of something passes over his face. "I understand that you knew the man?"

"To my regret, yes. What did you want to know?"

"I was thinking about tracking him down. Do you remember the last time you saw him?"

He hesitates, then shakes his head. "The Roaring Twenties, I think. Some… Scam or other he was running. I can't imagine why you'd want to talk to him-." Circe pulls her head back slightly. "Is something amiss?"

She turns her head towards me and frees her hands. "You knew."

"Naturally. Did you think I'd do something like this without being certain?"

Tenebrous strands of oily black rise from the ground around Mister Swift. "Look, I think I've been quite gracious considering who you are, but I don't appreciate-."

"Mister Swift, I understand that you've taken it upon yourself to take over Mister Knight's role as the city's 'superhero in residence' since his retirement?"

"I… Yes? Look, is this about that DMA training scheme thing? I already informed their representatives that I have no interest in taking part."

"And if you had to summarise Mister Culp in a few words..?"

"A.. savage thug with delusions of civility? A blight upon the life of all who knew him and myself in particular? What possible interest is a long-disappeared criminal to-?"

Circe yanks, eldritch purple fire briefly enveloping Mister Swift and incinerating his shadow constructs. His cane falls to the ground and he staggers back, the flames concentrate themselves at his chest, his whole body highlighted and looking increasingly less like a man and more like a man-shaped shadow. His glasses melt, his eyes stare widely in horror-.

And then a white-haired dwarf precipitates out of his chest, stumbling on the pavement and then falling onto his hands and knees.

Circe waves her hands to the side, flames dying as she does so. "That was novel. I assume that was what you intended?"

I smile and raise my right hand at the fallen Mister Culp. "Like you read my mind."

"Decades of work!" He turns his head to glare at me. "Ruined." He raises his right hand. "But I can begin…" His eyes widen. "I can begin-!" He looks at his right hand in horror. "What did you do to me, bitch!?"

"Hah!" Circe smiles. "With the two of you bonded like that, it was a simple enough matter to ensure that your shadow-control abilities remained behind." She affects a look of mild affront. "I am a goddess, after all."

"No…"

She turns to me, not even bothering to keep watching him. "Does anyone actually want him, or should we just leave him here?"

I nod. "A little tricky under American law. But possession is a crime, and I'm certain that-"

"Hahaah!"

"- we could…"

"Hahhahhahhah!"

We turn back to where Mister Swift is lying on his back, top hat and shades having fallen from his head.

He's grinning like a lunatic.

"Hahhahhahhah!"

Um. What?

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Rapprochement 8

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2nd September

09:06 GMT -5

Mister Swift manages -with some effort- to push himself into a sitting position, all the while grinning like a loon. He's recovered his glasses and they dangle loosely from his left hand while he wipes his eyes with his right.

"Oh, my word. Hahaha-. No, no, mustn't start again."

He makes a sort of choking-gulping noise, ducking his head slightly to avoid seeing anything that might set him off.

Circe gives me a puzzled look. "Was that supposed to happen?"

No. "I was about to ask you that."

She gives her head a small shake. "I was quite careful to merely extract the dwarf. I felt nothing which suggested-."

"There some kinda problem here?"

A dishevelled man dressed and coiffed like a detective from a seventies television-. Sinestro, who is-?

Detective Sergeant Matthew O'Dare, Corpsman.

"Matthew! Matthew!" Mister Swift scrambles to his feet and with an unsteady gait walks towards the man. "Wonderful news!"

"Oh yeah?" Detective O'Dare takes a moment to size me up, his eyes moving briefly over Circe and Mister Culp before returning to Mister Swift. "What's that then?"

"I don't know!" Mister Swift lays both his hands on Detective O'Dare's shoulders. "But it's really good!"

"O-kay. Dickie, if you were anyone else I'd ask if you'd been drinkin'."

"No! No. No no. Quite… Quite the opposite. It's like a veil has been lifted from my temperament and I can finally see the world for the wonder it is!" Mister Swift steps back, arms falling loosely to his sides as he stares upwards at the skyscrapers around us.

Aah. That might-.

Detective O'Dare glares at me. "Did you do somethin' to him? And who's the midget?"

I half-turn to where Mister Culp is sprinting across the park, then grab him with a construct glove and pull him back. "This is Simon Culp. He was possessing Mister Swift, and may have been influencing his actions for some time."

"And you know that how?"

"I'm a god. When someone's motives aren't their own-" I take my goggles out of subspace and tap them with my left hand. "-they don't look the same."

"But of course." Circe nods to herself with a minor huff of irritation. "It's obvious. So many mortal supervillains waste excessive amounts of time in revenging themselves on their foes. The way they were interfaced would only allow him to take control some of the time, but if he were prepared to reduce that then he would be able to exert constant influence."

Mister Swift's cane shoots after him on a wave of shadow sludge as he strides towards Pyle Avenue. He spins as he catches it, his greatcoat morphing into a tailcoat as he does so. "I love to laugh! Loud and long and cleeeeeeear!"

I watch him go. "So rather than use Mister Swift's godlike power for something productive, Mister Culp focused on making him feel miserable instead. Which he is now not feeling, perhaps for the first time since the Second World War."

"And I'd've gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for you and your stupid bitch-whore girlfriend!"

Violet lights dance around Circe's right hand as she turns to where Mister Culp hangs in the air from my construct. "What a curious idea. I've never made a Slug-man before."

I gently push her hand down. "Why.. don't.. we just hand this grubby little miscreant over to the lawful authorities." I raise my eyebrows at Detective O'Dare. "I'm reasonably confident that possession is illegal in Maryland?"

"Not specifically, but controlling someone by the use of super powers is." He takes a pair of handcuffs off his belt and approaches Mister Culp, who-. My goodness, who curses him in no uncertain terms. "Mister Culp, you're under arrest. Grayven, I don't know exactly what's going on here, but I don't think Dickie should be wandering around on his own."

I lean to the side and watch Mister Swift as he prances up to a flower stand and grabs a bucket of roses. "No problem. We'll keep an eye on him."

"Be sure you do. Dickie's got a lot of friends 'round these parts." I drop Mister Culp at his feet and the Detective gives the man his full attention. "Mister Culp. You have the right to remain silent and refuse to answer questions. Do you understand?"

"…monkey-sodomising pederast!" Mister Culp focuses his ire on the Detective. "And you!"

"Do you understand!"

"I will shove my hand into your throat and pull out your still beating heart!"

"I'm gunna take that as a 'yes'. Second part: anything you do say may…"

Circe and I proceed in the direction of Pyle Avenue ourselves. "Where is he going?"

"Not sure." I watch him step into an alley and disappear into the shadows. Ring?

Subject 'Richard Swift' has appeared in 'Opal Gem', a jewellery shop in Fattata Plaza.

Okay, I'm going to say 'hush tube' this time, because this is getting str-.

Subject 'Richard Swift' has appeared in the Central Precinct of the Opal City Police Department.

Huh. I wonder why-? And Circe's gone. Talking to your power ring in your head is not a free action. Ring-.

I'm trying not to feel ignored, Corpsman.

Oh. Sorry. Hush tube to where he is.

Certainly, Corpsman.

The tube opens in front of me and I pass through at an amble.

"…darling, the light of my life!"

Mister Swift is kneeling at the front of a briefing room full of police officers, the bewildered officer giving the day's assignments warding off a shadow hand which keeps trying to thrust the flowers he purchased into her chest. I think she's blushing slightly.

"I would like it very much if you would agree to marry me."

He opens the ring box and looks up at her longingly.

"Richard, are you drunk?"

There's a collective groan from the watching police officers.

"Never more sober or sane. At least not for the past seventy years. I am in fact completely serious."

She goldfishes for a moment, then looks at the smiling police officers, then at me and… Circe disguised herself as an officer.

"Right, EVERYONE OUT!"

back

Rapprochement 9

next

2nd September

09:18 GMT -5

"…thought you were doing bursting into the briefing room like that!?"

Mister Swift glances mournfully at his ring case. "I thought I was fairly clear. I love-."

"Stop!" Captain O'Dare holds up her hands, palms facing her over-amorous paramour. "Just… Stop. I'm-. We didn't-." She pulls herself together a little. "This wasn't supposed to-."

I step out of the hush tube next to her. "Sorry to-"

"Jesus!"

"-barge in." I'm not. "Mister Swift?" He tears his eyes away from Captain O'Dare and I hand him a slip of paper. "If you're interested. I'll see myself out."

"Ah. Thank you."

A glare from the Captain. "Yes. Get out."

I raise my right hand to an invisible hat brim, then step backwards through the hush tube and to a room adjacent to the briefing room which contains a remarkable number of police officers who are completely occupied with their work. The one with 'Circe' on her name tag stands up and walks over to me. "That was interesting. Where to next?"

"Fawcett City Prison. The supermax unit." Sinestro.

Interesting choice, Corpsman. Hush tube available.

We link arms again as we walk through the hole in the air, appearing in the newly rebuilt part of the prison.

2nd September

08:19 GMT -6

They had to do a good deal of work on the place after Ishmael Gregor attacked it to kill his literal predecessor. Our next candidate was transferred here because they could contain him using the same systems as were put in place for the late Mister Karnes. In the event that he ever becomes compos mentis again they can try him for his crimes against the city and its residents. In the mean time he can't hurt anyone if he thrashes about.

I lead Circe in the direction of his cell. She's smiling about.. something.

"I trust that our sojourn to Opal City was acceptably interesting to you?"

"Oh yes." She nods. "It's been a while since I've seen a man on that end of that conversation."

Yes, because we're all deceitful libidinists. "He managed better than I did. My former girlfriend tried to stab me when I proposed to her."

"Really?"

I shrug. "It was a normal knife, so it wouldn't have hurt me physically."

"What did you do to deserve that?"

"I forgot to remind her that I always planned to betray our allies shortly before I did it. She'd convinced herself that I'd changed my mind." Actually… I should probably talk to her again. Just to be clear… Where we stand.

"Was she fond of them?"

"Maybe some. Only one of the inner circle. But an awful lot of people got killed, so it's rather hard for me to be sure if there was one death or other she was particularly perturbed by." Though quantity has a quality all of its own… "I think it was more me kicking out the foundations of her world that offended her. Ah! Here we are."

I bring us to a halt outside a heavy titanium vault door. Through my Apokoliptian goggles I can clearly see the threads of Shazam's magic bound into the thing, though the really powerful stuff is focused on making sure that the outer pieces are never needed. If the occupant wakes up and starts hammering on this then it would only be a matter of time before he broke out. And the only thing that could prevent him escaping would be if the Marvels were alerted.

Circe pulls her hand free as she reaches forward to touch the door. "Who-? No, I recognise this. Order magic. Nabu?"

"Shazam."

"Hm." She steps back. "Do you want to forcibly release whoever is inside? It seems somewhat contrary to your stated aims."

"No." I take my identification paperwork out of subspace as the prison's governor approaches us down the corridor, along with a small entourage of riot-equipped prisoner guards. "I'm going to ask nicely."

Glad to know that the DMA stuff I sat through yesterday was worth something. I was also quite impressed with how quickly this was set up. A quick reminder of exactly who it was that brought him down in the first place was all it took to arrange a meeting through entirely legitimate channels.

The governor nods at me, but frowns at Circe. "DMA didn't say anything about two operatives coming in here."

"My colleague is a civilian consultant. Given that the wizard Shazam is also technically a civilian consultant, I thought that there was an… Acceptance that skilful magic users were entirely too rare to fuss too much about their paperwork. In.. any case, I am empowered to bring along anyone I consider-."

"Fine, whatever. What exactly are you planning to do with this bastard? He hasn't said a thing since they shoved him in there."

"My understanding is that he has so far been ruled unfit to stand trial."

"A technicality."

"Actually, it isn't. I'm no soft touch, but I draw the line well before executing one man for another's crimes merely because they look similar."

This appears to baffle him. "What? He's a look-alike?"

"No." I point to the door. "Might we continue this inside? I'd like my companion to begin work as soon as possible."

"No. Look, I… I respect you, I like what you've done for this country. But my sister, her husband and their three kids got killed by that bastard. So either you explain the whole thing to me or you can shove that Federal warrant up your ass." He folds his arms across his chest.

"Okay. I can respect that. Briefly, then. A very long time ago the wizard Shazam empowered a mortal to act as his champion. Prince Teth Adam of Kahndaq. They had a falling out and Shazam killed him, then bound his soul to his corpse so that he couldn't visit his gods in the afterlife and appeal the decision. About five years ago, a man named Theodore Adam visited his tomb, ritually murdered two archaeologists and bound Teth Adam's soul to a scarab pendant in order to hijack the power the wizard bestowed upon his former champion. He then rampaged on and off for the intervening period until finally being brought down in Louisiana by yours truly, something I achieved by destroying the pendant and so allowing Teth Adam to sabotage Theodore Adam's efforts."

"So you know how to remove.. this.. Theodore Adam's power?"

"Yes, in theory. However… In this case my preference here is to allow my colleague to ascertain the possibility of 'suppressing' him."

"'Suppressing'? What'd'you mean?"

"Locking him inside his own body and allowing the hero whose powers he stole to use his body instead."

"Is that legal?"

"Executing two people who share a body isn't. Leaving him as he is results in a constant risk of the wrong soul winning and killing more people. Imprisoning a serial killer in his own body is unusual, but doesn't result in much of a change from his current status of indefinite detention. Enabling a secondary personality to use the body during that time…" I shrug. "I don't believe that there's any relevant law on the subject. As someone directly affected, how would you feel about it?"

He looks away from me as he considers the matter. "I don't think I'd believe it. I know.. weird stuff like that can happen, but… I saw the bodies."

I nod. "Makes sense. How about if you observed what we're going to do directly?"

back

Rapprochement 10

next

2nd September

09:45 GMT -5

First time I've seen Mister Adam since the fight in Louisiana. They've clearly made some effort to keep him clean; the mud that coated him as we crashed through the swamp at speed isn't there any longer and he hasn't become covered in dust or anything. His cuts and bruises have healed, but they would have done by now even at normal rates so that doesn't indicate anything about how active his powers are. The mundane chains binding him are thick titanium and the enchanted ones appear to be… Copper? Hm, but I think I can guess which set would survive longer if he actually decided to try to leave.

"Mrugnhrhrruuh."

The guards tense for a moment, each taking a half-step back towards the doorway. That took a bit of getting used to as well; he isn't exactly comatose. He doesn't have one mind that isn't working quite right, he has two separate minds which are competing for control of his body. So far, prison records show that no momentary advantage one or other has been able to wrestle has resulted in more than two semi-coherent words. And no one here speaks Ancient Kahndaqi. The downside is that it's clear that one side could win and that if they did the prison would have no warning until he ripped his chains off.

"I'm ready." Circe lowers herself into a cross-legged seating position… About a metre off the ground behind Mister Adam's head. "Grayven, you should sit near to his feet."

I nod, walking around from his side to the indicated position. "Any special reason?"

"Because if he wakes up hostile then he will attack you first."

"Heh." She's not wrong, and I probably am best positioned to tank his attacks… And she'd probably need a few moments to access combat-useful spells. "Fair enough." I take a chair out of subspace and plonk myself down.

"And you're sure this won't mess around with Shazam's spells..? What did you say your name was again?"

Circe huffs, closing her eyes for a moment presumably to avoid the governor seeing her roll them. "These are spells of containment designed to keep a very well defined entity in one place. They would react to another champion whom Shazam had empowered, but unless you've denied me some fairly pertinent information that does not include you. As long as we do not attempt to release him while inside, we should not be in any danger."

"Yeah, but-."

"There is no better explanation I can give a man with your total ignorance of the arcane. Either accept my expertise or go running to Captain Marvel."

He looks at me. "I wouldn't have brought her if I didn't have every confidence in her abilities."

He takes a deep breath. "Alright. Where do you want me?"

"It doesn't matter. Your soul is so weak that it's impossible that you'd make any difference to the spell."

"Excuse m-?"

Circe's eyes glow a faint grey and hands made of stone lance upwards from the floor, grabbing the governor's arms and legs and firmly planting him on the ground. "There." She smiles at me. "Comfortable?"

"Yes, thank you."

"Your nature as a New God makes it.. difficult for me to draw you in. You will need to unfocus yourself a little as I cast. And you will probably be able to break out as an act of will."

I nod, taking a deep breath and stilling my mind. Heed Your Loyal Servants.

Circe raises her hands, purple gas flowing and billowing across the room and obscuring our surroundings. "Hear me O Phantasos, and guide us to the realm where these two do battle."

Hah, yes. No entreaty, no offerings and not even a 'please'. That's how you deal with jumped up Elementals. Just as she described, I feel a slight tug as a new battleground opens up.. somewhere nearby. I reach out with my spirit to grasp-.

The floor, walls and ceiling are grey metal, coloured red by the dull light issuing forth from a thousand towers. Most of the wall in front of me is taken up by a window, while behind me I know there stands a doorway. Circe stands behind me, her body radiant and ethereal. My own… It is as if my armour had replaced every part of my flesh, grey skin vanished before black metal. I actually look a little like Gonzo's true form, but… More.

"Where are we?"

The governor on the other hand is almost entirely immaterial. I can just about make out his face, but the rest of him is visible only as a vague shimmer in the air.

"An interpretation of what the two minds here are experiencing." She floats forward towards the window. "What do you see?"

"Apokolips." I take a look at the towers visible through the window, but I can't precisely place them. I take a few steps forwards and look down at-. "The Furies' training arena. I see two.. men, one in a kilt and the other in loose trousers. They're fighting barehanded, with more than Human speed and strength."

One is clearly Theodore Adam, and the other… Looks Arabic. Teth Adam, presumably. I watch as he turns aside a kick from Theodore and then grabs for his ankle. Theodore uses that as an opportunity to twist in the air in a way which normal physics would make impossible, his leg flashing past Teth's guard and striking him hard enough on the forehead to send him flying backwards, dust billowing outwards as his body skids across the ground.

"The same, but the arena's Roman. How about you?"

Circe floats a little closer to me. "Well, there they are. What do you intend to do?"

"Where does the

bouncing ball land? Hit

with your snout!"

My daiklave appears in my right hand as I launch myself at the window, passing through it with no difficulty and hurtling through the air towards the combatants. I extend my left hand and the ground leaps up to meet me, cushioning my landing as I drop into the centre of the arena.

Theodore watches me with fury in his gaze, while Teth Adam considers me more dispassionately. "What manner of creature are you?"

"I'm the one who destroyed the scarab. Want a hand?"

"I would be grateful."

"Rrragh!"

Theodore crosses the ground between us in three bounding leaps, right fist blatantly telegraphing his punch. I crouch slightly, pushing off with my right leg and timing my strike so that my left fist smashes into the side of his outstretched arm!

"nYaaagH!" Strike Down the Unworthy!

I hear his arm snap as his body slams into me, knocking me aside as he tumbles to the ground. He rolls with it but Teth Adam is already there, stamping on his break-

"A-ahg!"

-and dropping to hammer him in the head with his right fist! Teth Adam goes for a second blow, but Theodore somehow manages to muster enough strength to grab his wrist with his unbroken arm.

Which is when I run my sword through his chest to the hilt.

"Bwlwhgw!"

He convulses, then tries weakly to rise. He's not actually bleeding…

I turn back to the box. "Circe!"

The air between the box and Theodore's fallen form is briefly illuminated by her glowing body before she lands next to him. "A simple matter to bind him. Perhaps…"

She clenches her fists, then raises them high. In response the ground of the arena flows over Theodore, solidifying and hardening… In the shape of a sarcophagus decorated with a scarab. Hah!

Teth Adam regards it for a moment, then turns his attention to us. "My thanks, to both of you. What.. happens now?"

"Now?" I smile and lay my right hand on his left shoulder. "Now you wake up."

back

Rapprochement 11

next

3rd September

08:31 GMT -5

Miss Parish and I watch through the gymnasium window as Cranius puts his squad of US army volunteers through their paces. Only three of the initial batch of twenty have had their oolitic kidneys implanted, and at a glance I can't see much difference between their performance and that of their colleagues. But then I suppose that's the point.

"Had any problems?"

"One of them tried stroking Tigira's tail." She smiles cruelly. "Once."

I can imagine. "Honestly. You don't just grab a woman's tail. That's at least a second date thing."

She arches her right eyebrow. "I remember someone stroking my wings on our first date."

I raise my right forefinger in a finger-wagging gesture. "That was in the spirit of honest anatomical enquiry."

"In the future, you might want to be careful whose anatomies you're 'honestly enquiring' into. Your girlfriend might get jealous." I'm not sure exactly what it is about my expression which clues her in, but she stops smiling and frowns. "Is something wrong?"

"We're.. separated. An unfortunate miscommunication which rather… Grew out of proportion. Is Cranius going to be available today?"

"I, ah… Not for a meeting. He's been doing everything he can to make sure this project goes smoothly, and that means overseeing every aspect of the implantation personally. But.. I can.. probably help you? Or Janus Senior, or… Crassus?"

I look sceptical. "Really? Crassus?"

"He's…" She visibly strains trying to come up with something positive to say. "Getting better with people. It's like he knows how a conversation is supposed to go but can't quite work out how to get there. But as a bioengineer his skills and instincts are at least as good as Cranius's."

I chuckle quietly. "It comes to something when Cranius has better people skills than someone."

"Oh, he… Grows on you. What was it you wanted to talk to him about?"

"I'm… Having a bit of a get together. A few… Like minded individuals discussing ways to… Coordinate their efforts in the cause of improving Human civilisation. Cranius's name was one of the first that came to mind."

Down below, I watch him jump off Otto's shoulders and take a position on parallel bars while… He's laughing, apparently sharing a joke with a soldier who is laughing right back. Is he bantering? And that isn't one of the augmented soldiers. Remarkable.

"I'm sure he'd be honoured, but…" She looks down at the volunteers below. "I'm not sure that now is the best time. How… Much time would it take up?"

I shrug. "I'm happy to tube him in and out. I doubt that the initial meeting will take more than an hour or two. After that, how much he decides to involve himself is entirely up to him. I scheduled the meeting for the ninth, and I… Heh. I booked a conference room in the Hotel de Bilderberg in Oosterbeek."

Her eyes narrow slightly as she recognises the name. "Isn't that-?"

"Yeah." I grin. "Bit childish of me, but I wanted somewhere neutral and… Once it occurred to me I couldn't stop thinking about it."

"And.. how many people will be attending?"

"Myself, six others, and one more by video link. We might expand later, depending on how things go." I shrug. "Or everyone might hate everyone else and this will be the only such meeting. But I'm hopeful that won't happen."

"And… Do they.. know… About..?" She circles her right hand-. Or, her hand, I suppose, indicating Aberrance as a whole.

"Most of them have seen stranger things."

Miss Parish blinks. "Really?"

"Oh, you're welcome to come along and meet everyone yourself. I imagine that Cranius will have you doing most of the liaising anyway, so you may as well introduce yourself."

She nods. "Do we get to see the guest list in advance?"

"Mmm. I'd rather leave everyone equally disadvantaged. Be a bit of an ice breaker, getting everyone to talk about their aims and abilities. Listen, there… Were a couple of other things I wanted to talk to you about." She looks attentive. "Have you had any luck tracking down the Un-woman Magna Mater?"

"I don't think I've heard of her."

"She's fairly distinctive. Two tentacles for legs. Six extremely large breasts. An overwhelming pheromonal aura."

Miss Parish laugh/coughs a little uncomfortably. "We don't have anyone like that, but I'm sure you could find someone in the red light district who could dress up-."

"She's also Janus Junior's mother." Miss Parish blinks in shock, a look of slowly dawning horror moving across her face as she considers the idea. "Or father, depending on which way you look at it. It was during the period in which Arcane was trying to create a better body for himself, though… Exactly what he was trying to achieve…"

"I'll…" Miss Parish gets her face under control. "I'll.. get in contact with our investigators. See if they've… Heard of anything matching that description."

I nod. "Thank you." Then I turn so that I'm looking through the window. Not at the people below, but at the far wall. "The other matter… I spent some time investigating a… An old murder, yesterday."

"Anyone I know?"

"I don't think so. The victim's name was Mitchell Byrne."

I feel the sudden shot of fear run through her, but I pointedly avoid looking at her.

"I… Flashed my snazzy 'DMA Federal Agent' badge around and spoke to the detective who headed the investigation. I was expecting to have to lambaste the man, but, actually? He'd run a competent investigation. They had a pretty good idea who the perpetrator was and… Thanks to the 'victim' not cleaning the carpet or her clothes well enough to fool modern forensic tests, they had a pretty good idea why. The file is -technically- still open, but he mostly wanted to speak to the perpetrator in order to close it. He told me that he had no intention of pressing charges."

I can feel it through the ring as her heart rate drops from 'racing panic attack' to merely 'elevated'.

"He tried to.. sound me out. Find out if I knew where she was. He sounded sympathetic. I'm… Not sure that I do know. Have you..? Heard anything about the case?"

"I… Ah… I think I remember the 'wanted' posters. They sure looked like they intended to press charges."

"Yes, I asked about those. They were produced in the gap between them working out the killer's identity and them establishing the motive. He was quite apologetic." It takes an effort not to look around. "He realised exactly what having something like that hanging over a person could do to their mental state, particularly if they felt that they couldn't ever come into contact with officialdom again. But… I suppose after this much time… If Mina Byrne wanted to formally clear her name… She'd have to want to come forward. And if she didn't… Then she'd probably made a new life for herself, and with any luck she doesn't think too much about the old one." I wait a moment. "I loathe the idea that I can't fix any problem I encounter, but if I sought her out I wouldn't want to upend her life. Do you have any..? Thoughts on the subject..?"

"I, um. Not-. Not right now."

I nod, and give her a moment to regain her composure before turning back to her with a friendly smile. "I suppose that may be for the best." I smile pleasantly. "I was wondering..? Do you have time to show me around your research laboratories? I think it might help my presentation if I have a slightly better idea of what your current projects are."

back

Rapprochement 12

next

3rd September

17:22 GMT

I take a moment to look around Dox's new office. Not a lot of effort gone into decoration as yet, though I do rather like the view out of the windows. "I'm a little surprised that you moved up here."

Dox doesn't look around from his monitors. "We're no more exposed here than on the surface."

I walk towards the closest window and look out towards Maltus. "Still. You're in a building entirely controlled by another intelligence, rather than one whose construction you controlled."

"You rather took the decision out of my hands when you recruited Lantern Ranx. His core programming requires the presence of a commanding officer in order to be satisfied. Our officer corps consists of precisely two individuals. Do you intend to remain here?"

"I'd… Rather not. But a senior Darkstar-."

"I ran the schematic calculations myself. The Darkstars are reconnaissance. Ranx was a battle station. His loyalty is reasonably secured with a Lantern, but is better secured using a fleet officer. His multiprocessing abilities are sufficiently good that I find him to be an adequate source of labour. This is… Acceptable."

I nod, watching as an engineering detail begin attaching the first parts of what will eventually be Ranx's first shipyard. "Alright. What next?"

"Next, I want you to look over the second level of potential Orange Lantern recruits." I turn back towards him, frowning slightly. "Now that the first class have been taught your self-focusing techniques, they can instruct others in turn. Your time is more profitably spent testing exactly what degree of psychological divergence from our baselines can use rings satisfactorily."

"Without going on an insane rampage."

"Without going on an insane rampage against anyone other than the Reach." He tears his eyes away from his monitors for a split second. "We are building a military force."

"Insane Orange Lanterns will be powerful but stupid. The Reach will beat them."

"I'm not planning to defeat them through a series of duels."

I don't see him press a button, but a copy of the Darkstar's map of the Reach interior appears in the middle of the room. Thousands of dots for inhabited worlds in the nebulous 'periphery zone'. I could look up which ones are only just coming into Reach 'influence' and which are actually being settled, but it isn't all that important. Thousands more dots lie outside that zone, marked in accordance with our expectations of how the Reach are prioritising them. Small silver star shapes for Reach Periphery Fleets maintained in the periphery zone and larger silver stars for the Reserve Fleets lurking back in what is firmly Reach territory. We've got a pretty good idea of their locations and composition, as well as their maximum speed and range. The Darkstars may not have the force necessary to stop the tide, but they are good at what they do.

"A group of vengeful Orange Lanterns powerful enough to disintegrate a periphery fleet would be an extremely useful strategic tool. They could be recovered by a more stable comrade after the action is concluded. Planets on the periphery are far more able to support our ongoing campaign than worlds further in, and worlds still outside the Reach sphere of influence will be more likely to support us once they observe our ability to hurt the Reach significantly. Time is an issue."

"If the Reach didn't recover them and take their rings in the meantime."

"Do you have an alternate idea?"

"We have a phrase on my homeworld. 'With blackjack and hookers'."

"I'm… Not sure..?"

"It means, 'I'm going to do what you do, but better'. Without all the mistakes you made. We're not the Green Lantern Corps -we're not going to lose to the Reach- but ultimately I want their structure. The respect they get. And I want future generations of Orange Lanterns to look back at their forebears with pride, not thinking 'those guys were really fucked up'. And I want our allies to be able to do the same thing."

Dox give me something approaching his full attention. "You still haven't given me an actual proposal."

"We don't need people with lots of desire. We need people with… Stable.. desire-structures."

"Which only you can see."

"Which at the moment only I can see. But if I'm getting higher quality recruits, why would that matter? I go to them, offer them training and a ring."

"Using this… Apparently universe-wide teleportation ability you recently developed."

Hinon was pretty clear that taking other people with me wasn't a good idea, but getting to them? That would work. "To reach them, yes. I wouldn't know who I was going to, just how stable their avarice network was."

"You are welcome to try. I am interested in learning to better model your exotic abilities."

"Sensors online, Commander!"

Dox nods. I stare at him. He notices, the skin around his eyes tightening slightly as he tries to work out why. I flick my eyes up. There's a confused moment where he pays no attention to his monitors at all.

Then he gets it. "Thank you, Lantern Ranx."

I smile as I float into the air and raise my hands out to the sides, palms upwards.

And the universe fades out. Dox is there, and the other people working on Ranx… And of course the neatly contained and nearly totally satisfied desires of Ranx himself… I pull back further and further.

And I listen. I listen for… Harmonies. Great symphonies played out in orange light. Patterns within patterns, perfectly balanced and-.

There!

I move-

"…doing to him!"

A cave, a forest, a.. desire set that I've felt before. Soldiers in blue and white armour, humanoid, an officer in familiar-looking robes… A near-humanoid with a slightly pointed oval head. The boy has black sclera, an unusual trait, but one which-

"Another one! Shoot him!"

"No!"

-is relatively common amongst Daxamites! Orange armour shimmers into being around me and construct filaments lash out at the soldiers. I thought I recognised the style. This is Daxam! And if they're using-

My filament burns through the robe and is turned aside by the crystalline armour underneath.

-relic weapons then someone has really made them angry.

The boy I heard grabs the other alien's hand and pulls him away as the soldiers turn towards me.

That shouldn't be completely modern armour; the Daxamites went their own way long before Krypton died. And I don't think that they're-.

There's a yellow flare from the officer's hand as he activates a white solar flare.

And now they are.

back

Rapprochement 13

next

3rd September

17:26 GMT

Okay, Daxamite soldiers getting what is probably-

I yank myself backwards as three sets of heat vision flash through the place I was standing. They had to stop and stare, and there was an appreciable build up. Ring, watch for that.

Compliance.

-their first taste of full Kryptonian might. They're probably not going to be better fighters than Kon was-

One flies through the air at me, firing his gun with his left hand while his right hand balls into a fist. The plasma bolts are soaked by my construct armour without doing too much damage, while I sidestep the punch and press both of my hands against the side of his forearm, turning his forward lunge into a groundward plummet. I fly back as the rock beneath us pulverises and explodes.

-when we first started training, and that small amount of solar radiation won't be enough to fully empower them. I can't remember whether or not comic Daxamites were vulnerable to kryptonite, and I can't entirely credit how vulnerable to lead they were in the one comic I saw them in. I know that Daxam Sixteenians are literally just slightly altered Kryptonians…

Try it. Ring, green kryptonite radiation burst.

Compliance.

Green light explodes outwards from me, prompting the soldiers and their commander to brace… Nothing appears to happen to them. The soldiers, okay, they might have kept their armour in sufficiently good repair to keep the radiation shields working, but the commander isn't wearing full protective gear. Daxamites don't like using their advanced technology, so while he could be wearing a concealed force field he probably isn't.

Another round of shots blast from their guns, prompting me to backpedal and erect a construct shield. They're getting used to moving through the air under their own power, trying to spread out and apply their training to a new situation. Their heads are covered, so I doubt that a light or scent based attack would work. That leaves-

A flying kick towards the back of my head prompts me to drop to lay just above the ground, the soldier who made it flailing in the air as they try to get the hang of the physics of the situation. I generate a construct claw and grab them around the torso before slamming them into their dazed comrade pulling himself out of his punch-inflicted hole.

-sonics, since the officer was clearly communicating by speaking out loud.

Sonic screamer.

Compliance.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

The Daxamites wince, several dropping their guns to stick their hands over their ears in an attempt to keep the horrific sound out. More modern Kryptonian armour would include sound baffles. Heck, these might if the officer had bothered putting on his own suit. But the lack of combat experience means that the soldiers might not know about it and the lack of command experience means that the officer doesn't know what to do about it.

The youth… Grabbed the alien and did the sort of flying leap which Kon used to do to travel longer distances. On the edge of my sonic attack he stumbles his landing, and the alien supports both of them as they continue moving away.

A flash of wide beam heat vision flashes over my construct armour, destroying my amplifier constructs. Okay, the objective here isn't to beat these soldiers in a fight, but Daxam has pretty good interdiction systems. Heck, that's how it's remained isolated this long. It's nothing that I can't bypass given a few hours, but I can't just grab my targets and leave in a flash.

The officer grabs a pair of earphones from underneath his robes and I shoot them with an energy pulse, disintegrating them. He looks enraged at my action, which only confirms my belief that he doesn't have a great deal of experience.

Hang on. Daxamites are weakened by their own red dwarf. Lead probably… Interferes with their own internal radiation… Whatever, they've never let anyone study them in any detail. Would red light weaken them back to-

Two soldiers lunge in concert, constantly moving as they jab at my armour with their fists. My construct armour starts cracking at once. There's the demi-Kryptonian strength that I haven't missed at all. I take six x-ionised knives out of subspace and slash out. The soldier in front of me backs off at once, while the one behind takes the opportunity to punch me in the back of the head-. Ow! The construct armour fails and my environmental shield merely managed to turn a lethal attack into a painful one. On the positive side, the knives slid neatly through his armour and into his right arm, right leg and chest and from the way he's bleeding I don't think he's going to try attacking me again. I reconstruct my construct armour and take out my kinetic shield.

-normal levels? Or do I just keep going with the knives?

No. I'm a gosh darn superhero.

Ring, 1000 nanometre wavelength burst.

Compliance.

And -okay, the youth is out of line of sight- power armour.

Compliance.

My armour's display shows me the infrared burst cover my attackers, one incoming heat vision attack suddenly flickering and failing. Ah excellent!

"You'll never win, alien!" The officer stares at me, left hand touching the blood leaking from his left ear. "Our ancestors provided us with more terrible weapons than you can possibly dream of!"

Ring, translate this into Kryptonese.

Compliance.

"I greet you on behalf of the House of El."

He jerks in surprise. "What?"

"The House of El." I extend filaments to the bleeding soldier just behind me and start sealing the holes I just made. And add a glowing orange 'S' to my chest plate. "I was hoping to establish contact-."

"We have no desire to communicate with the worst of our old world's monsters!"

"Whatever they did, they're dead now. Krypton is destroyed, and a mere handful of survivors-."

He smiles cruelly. "Praise Rao for their destruction. If they dare come here then we will finish them off."

"My lord was newly born when it happened. There is no way he could have played any part-."

Alert. Spatial anomaly detected.

What sort of anomaly?

If this ring could characterise it, then it would not be an 'anomaly'.

Fair point. And I've learned that the Daxamites won't exactly be overjoyed to meet Kal-El. Time to leave.

The air bends around me as I fly after the youth and his comrade. I come to a stop just behind them, about three hundred metres from my previous position. The alien crouches, fists ready. The youth's eyes are glowing.

I hold up my hands. "Peace! Please!" I send my power armour back to subspace, and reduce the strength of the construct armour covering my face. This appears to calm him down a-.

"I can understand you! You have a translator!"

The alien looks overjoyed at the notion.

"Yes, and I can evacuate you from this planet if you like. But I'm mostly here for-."

"What did you do to my father?"

"That was your-? Ah… Made him… Really angry? And partially deaf. He's not seriously hurt. Um, what's your name?"

"Sodam Yat."

Ah. Well, I hope Atrocitus wasn't too attached to that prophecy. But…

"How old are you?"

"Old enough to try to stop my father murdering my friend. What do you want?"

I smile. "Funny you should ask… "

back

Rapprochement 14

next

4th September

07:02 GMT -6

Lynne prods listlessly at her porridge while Miss Shimmer fiddles with her mobile phone. I'd say something, but she is an adult. The.. lad and one of his younger brothers are at the table as well. The younger boy is called Stephan, and he keeps staring at everything in a way which I'm really going to have to teach him not to. All of the boys are reacting well to the anti-monster treatment, while the girls… The younger ones have taken to their version just fine. Bethany and Mary -the ones who have hit puberty- are… Being problematic. At this rate I'm going to have to authorise the use of some sort of libido binding, and I'd much rather avoid that if at all possible. Those sorts of spell can have all kinds of adverse psychological effects, and you'd have to be some sort of idiot to rely on them in the long term.

I beam at my daughter. "Looking forward to starting school tomorrow?"

She scoops up a chunk of well-congealed porridge and puts it into her mouth. I'd.. complain about her avoiding talking to me by starting to eat something she showed no desire to eat a moment ago, but I know full well that I did the exact same thing at her age and… Frankly, some normal child-behaviour from her is something to encourage!

The… The lad -I've got to find out if he's got a middle name or something- on the other hand nods enthusiastically. "Yes, Mister Grayven. Um. Mister Grayven?"

"Yes?"

"Um… Why are we going to school?"

"In order to learn things."

"Um. Yes. But…"

"The G-Gnomes already covered the school curriculum as well as a variety of things you ordinarily wouldn't be taught until college?" Didn't have much choice, really. Up until the US military handed Lynne over to SHADE they at least made some effort at schooling. The Succupires on the other hand never had any. The older ones were able to teach the younger ones to read using food packets left behind by the germ warfare people, but beyond that? Almost nothing. The G-Gnomes had to spend weeks just building up the fundamentals so they could learn the rest. "Is that what you're wondering?"

"Yeah. That's… Were there things they didn't teach us?"

I nod. "Almost certainly. G-Gnomes can't teach you things which they don't know themselves. And one of the things they very definitely don't know is how to be Human."

"Well..? I'm not Human."

"How to pretend to be Human, then. I mean… Which lifestyle do you prefer?"

"Oh! Human!" His eyes flick to Stephan for a moment. "Definitely."

Yes, he'd have been eating you in a year or two, wouldn't he? "I should probably say that there's nothing wrong with being who you are… But in your case, there clearly was. The point of sending you to school is to teach you how to be able to act like a normal Human. You're learning social skills which the G-Gnomes can't teach you, not knowledge they can implant. And, eventually, your personal curriculum will include learning how to use your particular supernatural abilities."

Gloria was not happy to see me. But as I said to her: tough. Don't kill small animals and eat them raw if you're afraid of getting found out. Mrs Briggs was a bit more positive, if 'disturbed and horrified' can be parsed as a positive feeling. She was at least willing to share what little her coven taught her before being slaughtered. Should I feel worse about assuming that I'm going to be training a generation of child soldiers? But… A weapon you don't know how to use is a weapon that belongs to your enemy. If I get them to the point where they can live normal lives, I would of course help them do so.

But I can't deny that a group of super charismatic shapeshifting magic users would be very useful.

Miss Shimmer gets up without either saying anything or making eye contact with anyone, and heads towards the door.

"Oh, Miss Shimmer!?"

She stops. "Hm?"

"We might have a magic user staying with us for a little while. Would you mind showing her your work?"

She looks up. "Ah, sure. I'm not doing anything super-critical right now." She blinks, then frowns slightly. "Wait, this isn't some kind of friendship thing, is it? 'cause I think Zatanna was kind of a fluke."

"No, she's a potential ally of mine and I want to convince her that we know what we're doing as far as magic is concerned. Her practical knowledge is excellent but her theory may be a little behind yours. And… She's quite a bit older than you."

"Oh." She shrugs. "Sure. Just give me a day's warning or whatever."

"Will do, if reasonably-" I've lost her to the phone again. "-practical." She starts walking away. "Have fun!"

"I'll be working."

"Doesn't mean that you can't have fun doing it!" She's almost out of the door. "I generally do!" When I'm not being shot, nuked or Anti-Lifed.

"Daddy?" My attention immediately focuses on Lynne. "I'm… I'm… Worried."

I smile benevolently down at her. "Of course you are. It's a big change of pace. I myself was quite nervous before I started Secondary School, and that was knowing that there would be people I knew in my classes. But you'll adjust, just as you adjusted to being taught at the Center for Paranormal Studies."

"And people..? Won't think I'm weird?"

I nod reassuringly. "Of course they'll think you're weird-."

She sags, but in a good-humoured sort of way. "Daaaad."

"I imagine that people will find a trainee superhero fascinating. You… Might want to avoid talking about some parts-."

"I figured that out for myself."

"But… You might find that a little light touch telepathic probing will help guide you through some of the initial confusion. Just so long as you don't let it become a crutch." Lynne nods, then gets up to carry her bowl to the dishwasher. I honestly think I've done all that I can to prepare her. Except her wardrobe, which I left up to Miss Amane because… Look at me. "You know, you and the boys could try going to the park today? Make a start on that socialisation thing?"

"Yeah. Maybe. What are you doing today, Dad?"

I gently push my chair back and rise to my feet. "More networking. With Adam-. Adom awake and himself they need someone around who can translate for him and explain the modern legal process. I'm mostly just sitting in a room while other people talk to each other. Not very interesting, I'm afraid."

She nods, then she leads the way out of the room with the lad and Stephen following close behind.

I wait until the door shuts.

"Mother Box. Boom tube to Fawcett City."

Ping. Ping.

It's got to be done.

Ping.

The portal opens, and closes again the moment I step through. I don't even bother looking around; the cheery disposition of this place will just make what follows worse.

"Mother Box. Boom tube to the Tower of Rage."

Ping.

I give myself a quick once-over as the portal opens. Armour, weapons, tough looking… I should be able to get past the Lowlies without too much difficulty.

But it isn't the Lowlies that you're worried about, is it Corpsman?

No. But if I can't even bring myself to stand in his presence…

Then he's already won. Quite right.

I take a deep breath, harden my expression and then stride forwards.

back

Rapprochement 15

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4th September

07:07 GMT -6

Self=Null

I look around as the boom tube closes behind me. The brief image I saw when aiding Teth Adom doesn't do it justice. The flicker as the fug that makes up Apokolips' breathable atmosphere causes the lights of a distant industrial complex to twist and dance. The disturbingly grey-brown sky made of industrial effluence and reflected light from the fire pits. Apokolips doesn't actually have a sun. If that… Vertigo comic about suns being sophonts was correct, I suppose… They've just got better taste.

Self=Null

Either that or Father killed it.

Self=Null

The ring is filtering out most of the stench, for which I am quite grateful. In most cities there's a graduation of squalor; the slums on the outskirts, then tenements, middle class housing before you reach the splendour of the central business district. On Apokolips, Father had the Tower of Rage built in the middle of the Armagetto so that he could be just a little closer to the misery.

Self=Null

I angle my head down slightly as I float down the main boulevard towards the Tower of Rage. It's… Reasonably well maintained, the workers not daring do anything less than everything they can when within line of sight of Darkseid. As I glance from side to side I catch a glimpse of a few of them; haggard and half-starved wretches who freeze or flee the moment they see me. I try to avoid giving any indication that I've seen them; not because an Apokoliptian Elite necessarily would behave like that, but because I don't want them doing anything-.

Self=Null

"I die for Darkseid."

Self=Null

Anything like that. I keep my face carefully blank as the man lands chest first on the stone slab in front of me, the fall smashing everything. Death must have been near-instantaneous, though given where we are I doubt that physical death marks the end of his suffering.

Self=Null

I hate this place so much. Revulsion From Contradiction.

Steady, Corpsman.

Why? Sinestro, why? If he decides to make a fight of this I've got next to no chance with you anyway. And staying myself, retaining my own emotions in a place like this is a far better defence than a slight buff to my environmental shield.

There is always a way to win, Corpsman. Even against a foe such as Darkseid.

Apokolips is one of the few worlds to have flat out beat a Green Lantern Corps invasion. Father keeps one of your predecessors around so that he can perfect his Green-Lantern-breaking technique. There are treasure rooms full of defunct personal lanterns and power rings. I like to think that I'm pretty dangerous but I'm not a Lantern Corps. Oh, why do I even bother? There's no way that the Guardians left that little snippet in the Book of Oa. It's full of rules and inspirational tales, not arse kickings.

You are correct on that score, Corpsman. But as First Lantern, I was privy to a great deal that is kept from the rest of the Corps. I know about Raker Qarrigat. The last time I cried was when I watched the recordings of a generation of my Corps being slaughtered on the killing fields of Apokolips. I know the evils of this place.

Sinestro…

I look up as a flight of three aero-troopers spot me and begin their attack run.

As you are now, can you still hate?

I do not believe so, Corpsman. But perhaps I will tolerate you hating for me.

"Trespasser!" The lead aero-trooper comes to a halt in the air a little way above me while his wingmen hang back. Ah, Apokoliptian NCOs; he's claimed the right to first blood. If he thinks that I'm someone he can kill, he'll do it merely to increase his personal kill count. "Halt and make yourself known!"

I hate this place so very much…

I stop and smile pleasantly up at him. "I am Grayven, son of Darkseid." The signs of his fear are obvious. The slight widening of his eyes. The movement of his mouth as he suddenly finds it entirely bereft of saliva. "I am here to visit my father. Would you be so good as to-?"

"Blasphemer!"

Oh. Not scared of me. Scared to be near to someone claiming kinship with Darkseid. Scared to consider Darkseid's retribution against an obviously false claimant and anyone near him.

But still. Fear.

Darkseid-shaped construct armour forms around me, easily absorbing their volley of blaster bolts. I let my eyes glow for a moment, then send twin beams lancing through the air in the towards the squad leader. He attempts to evade for a few seconds until it becomes clear that they're following him regardless, then he… Just stops, turns, and lets them hit him with a smile on his face.

I can't even begin…

The others drop their guns, drop out of the sky, barely manage to prevent themselves falling off their flight discs in their hurry to fall on their faces before me. They grovel… Something. Between their armour and the stone slabs they're mashing their faces into their words are a little indistinct.

I stop looking at them and return my gaze to the Tower of Rage in the distance. Is it..? No. It's like the thing with the Mona Lisa's eyes. I don't believe for a moment that the representations of Father's face are actually watching me. Or smiling. Though I suppose that for a New God as strong as Father it's perfectly possible…

"Get up. You are not Lowlies; you are soldiers of Apokolips." "Feel pride in your strength!"

They raise themselves very slightly from the ground. The aero-troopers are elite soldiers, not beasts like the Parademons or techno-organic perversions like the Suicide Jockeys. Technically they're New Gods as well. Just far weaker ones than me. And not likely to grow stronger in a place where I can feel the Anti-Life in the very air.

"My lord." / "My lord."

"Oh, stop." I walk past them and then come to a halt. "Arm yourselves."

I don't look, but I do hear them picking up their blasters and remounting their aero discs.

"I have no need for an escort, but it would be convenient for me to not have to bother with anyone who was not a member of the Elite. Clear my path, that I may complete my journey and greet my father."

"At once, my lord!"

And they're gone, which is probably for the best. I don't want them to… I don't know, ritually disembowel themselves or something. You know, you'd think that living in a place like this they'd just do what Humans do and grow accustomed to pointless killing. I'm afraid of Darkseid because I value my life, my relationships, my sense of self. But if pain's normal and Darkseid is wonderful… Why were they so afraid?

There is a Human expression, Corpsman. Even a Worm an inch long has half an inch of spirit in it. Perhaps what they truly fear is that one day they will stop fearing. That one day they will truly understand the mind of the one who rules them, and that on that day they will be the ones stepping off the roof.

Don't bother, Sinestro. I know that fear is your thing, but I don't think that I want to understand this.

I used fear as a tool with which to create order. This… Is a very long way from my vision.

I smile humourlessly.

Oh, but you haven't seen the best bits yet.

back

Rapprochement 16

next

4th September

07:51 GMT -6

I hesitate as I step out of the shaft and onto the level of the Tower of Rage containing Father's throne room. Assuming that he hasn't moved since Father Box was last informed of the layout his actual chambers are elsewhere, but every so often he does actually hold court in the way Queen Hegra did. The difference being that she did it because she actually needed the support of her Elite retainers. Darkseid most assuredly does not. At a time like this I can't help but think of Lonnie Machin's confrontation with Darkseid, and that stupid Blasphemy demon, oh so subtly claiming the authority of God for itself and so undermining the very concept of God. Honestly, the whole thing was so obvious that it was somewhat puerile-.

I force myself to take another step, then another. See, not so hard. My 'escort' did their job. I certainly wasn't troubled on the way here and I-.

"…defy Prince Grayven's orders!"

I look around at the sound. Oh, who are they shouting at now? That is in the direction of Darkseid's chambers, but it isn't really on my way. Have they decided that my request also covers cleaning staff who happen to be in the same general area?

"The Master has ordered me to-."

"Silence. wretch!"

I hear a dull thump. So far, so Apokoliptian. I doubt that Father would be impressed to learn that I stuck my neck out for one of them-

-but then this whole exercise is about testing his boundaries, isn't it? I turn aside from my path and head in the direction of the sounds. Darkseid's actual quarters aren't all that large. They're the same ones that he had as Crown Prince Drax's younger and less favoured brother. I'm not completely sure why he didn't change. Perhaps stubbornness. More likely because he doesn't care any longer about trivial things like that.

Heh. I know where Darkseid shits.

"I-I was told to-."

"You dare to-."

"Alright, that's enough."

I step around the corner. A New God -a weak one by the feel of it- is laying on the floor, not daring to rise. Her skin is alabaster white and her hair raven black. She's wearing a purple and gold fifties swimsuit sort of garment, accessorised with purple and gold gloves which go up to the middle of her upper arm and similarly coloured thigh boots. A black and red… Cap? Headdress? Decorated with a golden skull has been knocked from her head and lays beside her on the floor. There's a purple choker around her neck with a red stone over her windpipe. Her eyes don't leave the floor and rich rivers of fear flow from her, but none of it is directed at her attackers.

No prizes for guessing who it is for.

The two aero-troopers back off, bowing to me as I approach the fallen woman. Mother Box, who is she? Her face looks familiar, but I can't quite place it.

Ping.

Oh. Wait, how many does he have?

Ping.

Oh sssshazbot.

Darkseid has absolutely no need for political marriage. The last woman anyone can remember him being intimate with was Tigra, and he hated her so much that when Justeen killed her he gave her a promotion. And yet, Grayven exists and gets recognised as being Darkseid's son. There are only so many places he could have come from.

I reach out to her with my right hand. "Mother."

I ignore the cringing and cowering of the aero-troopers to study her face as she turns her face upwards towards me. I can see what DeSaad was going for, and the facial structure is more or less there. But the ears are wrong, and-. She was Human?

"Grayven?"

I nearly say 'No, I'm Orion in disguise', but I think better of it. "Indeed. It's.. been a while. But it is good to see you again." I pointedly look at my hand and then back to her. "Will you take my hand?"

"Thank-thank you, my lord." She reaches up with her right hand-

Ping.

-which is the one that can cause sleep, and grasps my palm. Gently as I can, I help her upright. Now, what to do about the other two?

I don't look at them. "You buffoons have exceeded my orders and assaulted Father's bedmate while she was executing his. If you are dead before my meeting with him concludes I will not consider it necessary to inform him of that fact. Now, begone."

They bego and I take a purple healing ray projector from my armour and point it at Mortalla. "Hold still."

She holds completely still as I play the beam over her wounds. They don't heal as quickly as they would for a Human… Given that she's weak for a New God I imagine that's more to do with the presiding atmosphere of Apokolips instead of her innate resistance, but I don't know enough to be sure. Hm. I take my personal mana infuser off and offer it to her.

"Please, accept this as a gift. I'm sure that I've missed a few Mother's Days. It should make it a little harder for Father's thugs to-."

"You-." She gingerly touches her lip where it was bleeding as I lower the ray. "G-Grayven, you should not call him that. He does not like it when-."

"When Kalibak does it, yes. If I'd sired Kalibak, I doubt that I'd like being reminded of the fact either. I'm sure that if he had a problem with me doing so, he would have mentioned it during our last meeting."

"V-very well." She gingerly takes the mana infuser and holds it to her chest with both hands.

"It's… It's designed to be worn around your.. arm."

"Darkseid commissioned this for me." She crouches, picking up her headdress with her left hand and restoring it to its place upon her head. "I dare not modify it, save by his leave."

"Alright then. I'll ask him about it. Um. Are you alright.. here?"

"I-." Her eyes go to the floor again. "I am where he has bade me be."

Okay, well… It's not like I ever thought that I was the only one whose soul he'd crushed. Even if DeSaad did most of the legwork with this one. I go to turn away-

-and then turn back, bend down slightly and envelop her in my arms.

"It is good to see you again, Mother." "Consider yourself under my protection."

I think she might be trying to hug back, but she's under six foot tall and normally proportioned while I'm huge. Then I step back, smiling as friendly a smile as I can manage. Her smile is slight and hesitant, as if the muscles in her face were new to her. But it's there.

I turn away and head in the direction of Father's throne room.

back

Rapprochement 17

next

4th September

07:56 GMT -6

My, what big doors you have.

I stand outside the doors to Father's throne room and look at them for a moment. No ushers or heralds here, apparently. Should I knock, or-?

I raise my hands and stride forward, pushing the doors open as I proceed inside.

Self=Darkseid

Father notes my arrival with apparent disinterest from his seat on the dais at the far end of the room. The seat itself is a simple 'U', unostentatious in order to direct the eye towards its owner.

Self=Darkseid

Which at this point is quite unnecessary.

Self=Darkseid

I walk towards Father's dais, arms folded behind my back. A quick look around the room reveals a standard crowd scene of the Apokoliptian Elite lining my path to the throne. This is the first time most of them have seen 'Grayven' in a very long time, and I want the resemblance between myself and Father to stick in their minds. From the slight tinge of fear I can feel in the room, I think I might be successful.

Self=Darkseid

DeSaad's lurking at Father's right hand, looking… Crap as ever, but he doesn't appear to have suffered any long term effects from my last meeting with him.

Self=Darkseid

Kalibak is closest to me, his smouldering glare giving me a pretty good idea how he feels about the situation, the nails of his left hand visibly drawing blood from his left palm and his right clenched tight around the grip of his beta club. This iteration of Kalibak has little in common with his moronic Apokolips 12 alter ego; while not one of the universe's deepest thinkers he's a good tactician in addition to being strong and remarkably fast and agile. He's the second biggest immediate threat to me in this room.

Self=Darkseid

I stop in front of him, meeting him face to face. "Kalibak. Brother." I extend my right hand. "It's been a while. How are you?" "I greet you as my equal."

Self=Darkseid

Kalibak merely bares his teeth. "Father's protection is the one thing that stops me grinding you to paste."

Self=Darkseid

I nod sadly, then lower my hand. "Dear brother, please know that I bear you no ill will. If you should find yourself in the vicinity of my home, I would consider a visit from you to be an honour."

Self=Darkseid

I turn away and continue down the line. Three of Doctor Bedlam's animates stand to my right. Two are dressed like Lowlies while the lead member of the trio is dressed in the manner of the escapologist Baron Bedlam from the Seven Soldiers series. Steppenwolf-. Great Uncle Steppenwolf and Virman Vundabar stand on the opposite side, apparently having only just broken off their conversation in order to look at me.

Self=Darkseid

"Great Uncle. Commander." "It humbles me that great warriors such as yourselves have made time to greet me at my homecoming. Thank you."

Self=Darkseid

Steppenwolf gives me a smile and a nod, while Virman looks less impressed. Though given the set of his face, I can well believe that's the only expression of which he's physically capable.

Self=Darkseid

The others… No Kanto, Amazing Grace is dead, Devilance… Don't know what happened to him after I sent him back, though if I'm officially in Father's good books I doubt that it was terminal. No Glorious Godfrey… Need to keep an eye out for that one. Justeen's standing close to DeSaad, though whether to protect him or backstab him I can't be sure.

Self=Darkseid

Granny Goodness stands a little further forward on Father's left, smiling affectionately down at me. She… Actually looks like a slightly buffer version of my late grandmother on Earth Prime. Maybe with slightly bigger hair. And far more abusive, obviously, and a New God.

Self=Darkseid

So not much like gran at all, really. It's the grey perm that put me in mind of her.

Self=Darkseid

Bernadeth, Stompa and Knockout stand just behind her, the only representatives of Father's 'bodyguard' present, and… Huh. No other soldiers. Not that any of the people here couldn't outfight, say… Ten aero-troopers each without too much difficulty. Just strikes me as a little odd.

Self=Darkseid

"Grayven." Granny Goodness steps towards me just as I reach her, her arms open in a way that implies a desire to embrace me. "Granny has missed you. And I hear that you have a little one of your own now? You've grown up so quickly." "You will allow Granny to educate her and turn her into a proper Apokoliptian, won't you."

Self=Darkseid

"Granny. You appear to be keeping well." "She's already been broken by the Anti-Life directly. Breaking her further serves no useful purpose to me."

Self=Darkseid

She manages to mostly keep the disgruntlement from her face. Hm. She didn't get Kalibak, she didn't get Orion… She got Scott and failed completely. Her Orphanage does have relatively conventional education facilities as well as random torture. I wonder where other Apokoliptians go to learn things?

Self=Darkseid

"Though -if you will forgive the impertinence- I do have a favour to beg of you? Lynne starts school tomorrow, and I need to arrange a bodyguard for her. Someone skilled, determined and reliable. And preferably not known to any local groups. Naturally, your Furies were the first people I thought of. If you and-" My eyes move to the figure at the top of the dais. "-Father could possibly spare one?" "I find the prospect of adding such warriors to my retinue delightful."

Self=Darkseid

Granny smiles. "Dear boy, has one caught your eye?"

Self=Darkseid

"Where such fine warriors are concerned, I find myself spoilt for choice. But Barda-" Her face twitches. "-did have a few choice things to say about Knockout in particular. I find the words of one's enemies to be an excellent guide in such matters."

Self=Darkseid

Granny Goodness recovers, clapping her hands together. "Then no one else will do for our glorious sovereign's granddaughter."

Self=Darkseid

I nod respectfully. "Thank you."

Self=Darkseid

Next…

Self=Darkseid

Then I reach the foot of the dais and I kneel, head bowed. "Darkseid." "My liege."

Self=Darkseid

"Please, my son. Rise. No such formality is necessary between us."

Self=Darkseid

"Thank you, Father." I rise, looking him in the eyes for just a moment before aligning my eyes to a point just below his own. "And thank you for granting me this audience at such short notice."

Self=Darkseid

"Think nothing of it." He leans forwards slightly in his chair. "I see that you have already adapted to the Anti-Life fragment which I bestowed upon you. It may interest you to know that I gained comprehension of the particular fragment which I gifted to you through DeSaad's work. After your encounter with him, it seemed to be the most appropriate."

Self=Darkseid

Oh. That makes sense. There's a slight shifting in the crowd. I'm not sure if it's due to Darkseid willingly giving part of the Anti-Life equation away or that I still appear to be functional despite him having done so.

Self=Darkseid

"Tell me, how do you feel?"

Self=Darkseid

"To be frank, Father, I feel a biting bitterness in the deepest part of my soul. A constant reminder of the lowest point in my life, and I fear that I may never feel anything quite so intensely or so freely again. And I feel that I now carry within me a bane that might at any moment reach out through me and crush everything I've built, everything I've valued. It is horrifying."

Self=Darkseid

He smiles faintly. "Then it seems as though you have adapted well. Without being weakened by the exposure. This pleases me."

Self=Darkseid

Does he..? Think that I've integrated it as he has done? How would he respond to-? "I apologise if I misinterpreted the nature of the challenge, Father. Scott and I used my soul to build a cage to contain it. I try to avoid interfacing with it as much as possible."

Self=Darkseid

"But you have done so, have you not?"

Self=Darkseid

I nod. "Yes. Briefly."

Self=Darkseid

"Then all is as I intended." Oh shit. "But tell me, my son, what brings you to Apokolips so long after your pointed leave-taking?"

Self=Darkseid

"Oh, a few things." I turn my head to the left and then to the right. "I thought that it might be wise to say 'hello' to a few people, remind anyone who'd forgotten me of my existence. But, more importantly, there are one or two articles I was hoping that you would be willing to provide me with."

Self=Darkseid

"For the help you have already given me in studying the Anti-Life, I believe that it is only appropriate that I be accommodating. Tell me what it is that you desire, my son, and I will see that it is provided to you."

Self=Darkseid

"Thank you, Father."

back

Rapprochement 18

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5th September

07:56 GMT -6

I clap my hands together, smiling at the assembled munchkins.

"Everyone ready, children?"

Jean looks mildly offended at the idea that she'd have allowed things to become so disorganised that they wouldn't be, but most of the Succupires smile as they hold aloft their backpacks. A good job that they aren't all the same age, otherwise Rifle Middle School might have needed an extra class this year. Sad to say, for purely academic achievement it isn't actually a particularly good school. Certainly not compared to places to which I could send them. But for learning how normal Humans interact with each other it's near-perfect.

I considered trying to sort out a camera system for Bethany and Mary, but I don't think that it would really be possible for them to learn the social interaction lessons properly that way. I've stuck them on duty monitoring my wildlife habitats, and generally doing whatever Jean wants them to do. As sexless creatures Genomorphs don't set them off, so that should be reasonably safe. Nothing else I can do that I'm not doing already. Assuming that things go well on Friday I'll ask Circe to have a go at fixing the two of them.

"Lynne?"

She gives me a little eye roll, then half-heartedly holds her satchel up as well. "Ready, Dad."

"Alright then." A boom tube appears next to me, the far end opening a little way from the school entrance. Stephan dashes forward, but I reach down and stop him by picking him up and holding him against my right shoulder. "Just a minute. Knockout?"

Knockout strides forward, fists balled and eager for affray. I'm not sure that she entirely understands the nature of her assignment, but unlike whatever it was that led her to Earth in the comics this is an official Darkseid-sanctioned mission. As long as I don't ask her to do anything outside her nature and throw the occasional fight in her direction I'm reasonably confident that she'll do as she's directed.

Quite what effect the sight of the buff, 6 foot 1 tall, auburn haired, 200 pound super strong alien woman will have upon the good people of Rifle, Colorado, I'm not entirely certain. But they've adapted reasonably well to the other oddities that come with me living here so I doubt that there will be any huge problems.

"Alright, file through."

I put Stephan down, and he giggles slightly before scurrying through slightly ahead of the pack. The Lad -responsible chap that he is- follows through after his brother, making sure to keep an eye on everyone else as well. Then Maeve, Christopher, Clare and Sarah head on through, with Lynne bringing up the rear.

I hold out my left hand to Mortalla. "Mother? Shall we?"

She's stepping towards me to take my hand even before she's decided that she will. She's just so used to obeying that her body is in motion before her mind entirely registers the instruction. Which has been useful, as I didn't get all that much information on her background from Father Box and I don't remember her from the comics at all. It turns out that one of the modifications DeSaad made to her removed her memories of her life on Earth. And since he clearly altered her face and her genes I can't track down where she came from originally. It was quite a while ago though, certainly over five hundred years as she remembers when Kanto first joined Father's retinue.

Sadly, one of the other modifications DeSaad made is a strictly limited version of my Awakening. Intentionally. The energy systems are arranged in such a way that after a certain point they shed power rather than gathering it. Mortalla will never reach full power. Mother Box was quite dispirited when we realised that we couldn't fix it without… Basically unpicking her whole soul. I mean, she doesn't need more power or anything, but… Why not be as strong as you can be? The March of Progress Shall Be Eternal.

We walk out into the morning sun and the boom tube closes behind us. Knockout is eagerly scouring the crowd for potential threats while The Lad is busy dispatching his siblings towards their teachers. Lynne looks up at me and I bend down to envelop her in a hug. "You'll be fine, poppet."

She holds onto me for a moment, then pulls away and gives me a nod. "Okay Dad. I love you."

"I love you too. Now, run along."

She nods, and then looks up at Mortalla. "Bye, Grandma!"

Mortalla hesitates for a moment before nervously smiling at Lynne. "Goodbye, Lynne."

Mortalla hasn't really adjusted to Lynne yet. She clearly doesn't know how to interact with her: nothing in her Apokoliptian life giving her any experience as to how to handle it. So far she's opted for a sort of nervous politeness as if dealing with someone related to someone important. Lynne was surprised to be introduced to a mother I had never previously mentioned, but she at least knows how that sort of thing is supposed to work and has taken it in her stride.

"Morning, Grayven!"

I stand, looking around as I do so. "Good morning, Clara." She works at Wingnutz Bar and Grill, and since making a policy of spending at least one evening a week there we've become friendly. "Doing the school run as well?"

"Today and every other day." We both turn to look at the children stream in and I catch sight of her elder son, Patrick. "Was that whole swarm of rugrats yours?"

"I… Sort of? They don't have any other surviving family-"

That I know about. Their father's DNA had broken down by the time I scanned his remains. I don't know enough about Vampires to know if that's typical or not. I suppose that their mother technically had however many thousands of sisters.. and quite possibly brothers as well, but I doubt that they'd show much of an interest in the upbringing of their nephews and nieces.

"-and I've taken it upon myself to look after them. I haven't actually adopted them."

Clara stops smiling, looking serious and… A little impressed. "I.. think that's a really good thing you're doing, Grayven. I mean, it's not-."

"Not cutting someone's head off." I nod. "Yeah, that's-."

"No, no, I didn't mean it like that. I mean, you don't usually see superheroes doing that."

"Robin's adopted."

"Right. And Batman has him fighting violent criminals on the streets of Gotham."

"Superboy and Match were adopted by Wonder Woman."

"Sure, but they were already teenagers. Younger kids take a whole lot more effort." She frowns at Knockout, who is following Lynne into the school building. "Who was that?"

"Knockout. Lynne's bodyguard. I wish it wasn't necessary, but after what happened in Metropolis I don't think it would be safe for her or for the other children if there wasn't someone on hand. Oh, and this is my mother, Mortalla."

Clara takes a look at the lithe, white skinned goddess standing next to me. "She's-? You're his mom?"

Mortalla glances at me, uncertain how to respond. "Yes?"

Clara grins in a friendly sort of way. "Hope I look that good when I'm your age!"

"I.. am.. over five hundred years old. I mean no offence, but it is unlikely."

Despite having nothing to work off, Clara has another go. "You wouldn't have a big folder of Grayven's baby photos, would you? 'Cause I've been wondering what he looked like back then."

"I-. No. I have no photographs, or other images." She appears to shrink in on herself slightly. "I was not… Permitted…"

Clara clearly doesn't know what to make of that. "Er..?"

I lay my right hand on Mortalla's shoulder. "My father is a loathsome man and I am very glad that my mother is now living with me and not with him. And that is all I want to say on the matter."

"Oh. Oh, I'm sorry-."

"It's fine." I rotate my right hand slightly, directing Mortalla in the direction of the boom tube I just generated. "I will see you this evening."

And I'm going to ensure that Mortalla is surrounded by decent people like you for as long as she's here. No one deserves Darkseid.

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Rapprochement 19

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5th September

14:58 GMT -5

"You know… I had a plan. And you were going to be a part of it."

For the first time in some considerable time, I make use of one of Guy's mental exercises. I take control of my breathing, close my eyes, count to five… Picture something happy…

"I know I'm not… My people skills… Need work. I can be persuasive, beguiling… But I generally associate with people on my wavelength. Killers. Or, at least people who understand that killing is sometimes productive. You didn't, you weren't… That wasn't you."

My conversation partner remains entirely silent.

"And… I excluded you. I didn't think you had anything useful to teach me. I'm not… Not sure I was wrong, but I should have-. I should have given you the opportunity to demonstrate… One way or the other. Especially after I left the team. I think… I think you'd have liked being involved with Lynne and.. the other girls and the boys. And after… After my undercover work finished… I might have done something then if Father hadn't decided to pay a visit, but afterwards I just… I needed to get away from Earth for a while."

An unamused laugh escapes through my teeth.

"And then I came back and I thought… 'Now's the time'. 'Seize the day'." I bow my head. "And everything-."

I'm shaking as I glare at Alan Scott's grave.

"And you have the temerity to die in my absence! You managed ninety years, could you not manage a single month!?"

No, no, it's-. It's stupid. It didn't even occur to me to check! This isn't a comic; named characters can die here!

We weren't even that close, why do I feel like… Like some important opportunity has been snatched from me?

"I'm a little surprised to find you here."

I don't look around as Diana walks up behind me. "He was a good man."

She doesn't say anything, just stands there beside me.

Gah! I tilt my head back, twisting my head back and forth. "He was a good man and he deserved better than me as his heir!"

"I don't think he saw it like that. He gave you back-."

That makes me turn around. "Yes, well, he was wrong about lots of things. Don't try and pretend to me that he actually wanted someone like me. He shouldn't just have-. He shouldn't have had to give everything and get nothing back, like..."

I look away from her, standing in silence for a few moments. Then I crouch down and pick up the box at my side. "You served as the executor of his estate, did you not? You may as well have this."

I pass it to her and she carefully takes it in both hands, looking it over carefully. A simple polished wooden box about nine inches square at the base and fifteen tall. She frowns slightly, then holding the base with her right hand opens the lid with her left.

"Hera."

I look away. "Not that there's any point without him."

She reaches up and pulls out the green personal lantern with her left hand. "Does this mean that the Green Lantern Corps recruited you?"

I shake my head. "Of course not. They'd never recruit an Apokoliptian, and I'd be far too fearful to pass their selection criteria if they did." Something… Some uncertainty enters her-. "No, I didn't kill anyone." I shake my head. "The last Green Lantern to use that was killed during their attack on Apokolips. The Guardians themselves recognised it as being Darkseid's war prize. He was free to dispose of it however he liked."

"He gave it to you?" I nod. "Why?"

I throw up my hands. "Because I asked nicely. Why does he do anything? He's probably learning all sorts of interesting things about the Anti-Life from me this very minute."

"And why did you get it for Alan? I'm sure that he would have appreciated the thought, but he was an old man-."

"No. He wasn't." I shake my head. "Didn't you notice?"

"Alan was in his nineties."

"Alan was becoming a god. Whatever the Guardians did to his ring and lantern, he was-. He was absorbing the green light into himself, empowering his soul-. Didn't you notice how much younger he'd started looking just before I got here?"

She considers for a moment, then dips her head. "I… I hadn't thought about it. We hadn't been seeing as much of each other as we used to. How long had you known?"

"I'd suspected that something was up for a while. But it wasn't until I got back from Earth Fifty… What I did to their John Stewart… That I was sure. And before you ask, I didn't say anything-"

"I wasn't going to-."

"-because I didn't have any way to fix it. Once Guy told me the Guardians were avoiding recruiting him intentionally, once I checked that Qwardians and Controllers can't make green personal lanterns, there was only one place I could go for one."

"You went to Apokolips?" I nod. "You said that your father terrifies you."

"He does. He'd terrify you if you actually used your divine abilities. You know. Near him."

I sigh. Did he actually know, or did he just not care? This isn't the sort of pain that Jade… Jade caused, but it's still… In theory, I could have repaired my relationship with-. If Father hadn't appeared. If he hadn't appeared I might well have decided to do so. I'd assumed that it was about appearing before me at my lowest ebb, but… Did he assume that I'd manage? And he just wanted to encourage me to isolate myself from someone I loved? No, there's no way for me to find out. I can't assume that he's fixated on me in that way. The point is, Alan's dead. I can't improve our relationship now. Opportunity well and truly lost. Well done, Grayven.

Diana closes the box. "What would you like me to do with it?"

"I don't know. The whole reason I got it was for Alan." Think… "Do you still have his ring?" She hesitates. "If Jordan took it-."

"No, he didn't. And yes, I do. But I don't think that wearing a power ring-."

I hold up my right hand. "Don't even finish that sentence. You're wrong, but… Whatever. You could find someone to use it, or…" Huh. "The Watchtower was originally a Sector House, wasn't it? You could probably bring a whole lot of its advanced functions back online with a personal lantern."

"I think that the Guardians might find that insulting."

"What, that it's being used to aid a group of heroes rather than being displayed in an Apokoliptian trophy room? They're a pretty logical bunch. I'm sure that they'll get their heads around the idea."

"I will discuss it with the rest of the Justice League." She looks me over, then her eyes drift in the direction of Alan's grave. "There was something else I wanted to talk to you about, but I'm not sure that now is the time."

"Oh, you may as well. He's not going to get deader."

"You were seen in the company of Circe. Given-."

"Given that you apparently aren't prepared to kill her, I thought that acting as a civilising influence would be a good thing. See if I can… Solve her whole 'prophecy' problem so that she doesn't feel obliged to kill you any more. It's surprising how many supervillains have a great deal to offer the world but don't. Did you know that Leonard Snart, his sister and their mother were regularly beaten by his father for their entire childhoods?"

"I-. No, I didn't."

"So I thought, if I've got to keep an eye on Lex to make sure that he stays on the straight and narrow… Why don't I try that with other people as well?"

"Orin mentioned that you were on good terms with Queen Clea."

"Right. And I'm sure Billy will get around to mentioning Teth Adom eventually." I shrug. "I need something to do, working with the League… There'd be some fairly major trust issues. But if I can solve a few intractable problems, maybe that'll go some way to repaying my obligation to Alan."

Diana smiles, and for a moment everything feels right. She does know how to use it!

"I think he'd have approved greatly."

back

Rapprochement 20

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7th September

02:31 GMT

I step out into.. a small room and oh shit. Four construct wire clippers manifest around me and snip at the sinuous robotic limbs pinning down the shaking jellyfish-like alien on the slab in the room's centre. Despite their slender design, they manage to resist for a couple of seconds before the severed ends flop and the metal parts fall to the floor with a clunk. The one carrying what looks like a cross between some kind of surgical implement and a circular saw I simply disintegrate with an orange bolt.

What kind of fucked-up world is this?

I try to make eye contact with the jellyfish, and fail when I can't spot its eyes. "You alright there, chum?"

"What? What's happening? Who are you?"

"I'm-." Somewhere outside the room-. Ah, a cell. I suppose that makes a certain sense. Through a ring round window in the door I see flashing blue lights and the ring lets me sense the vibrations that are almost certainly an alarm. "I am the Illustres of the Orange Lantern Corps."

He? Yes, that's a 'he'. Or.. close enough. He rises off the bier, the robot clamps that had been holding him in place falling from his prehensile tentacles. How is he holding-. We're under water. I actually hadn't noticed. Nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, space, methane: environmental shield. Water, same answer. Exactly what was around me just stopped being relevant some time ago.

"Orange..? Lantern? I have heard of Green Lanterns. They are some sort of universal enforcer."

"Partially true. Do you know who your local one is?"

"No. We don't have crime here. Other than..." Two of his more powerful tentacles make a figure of eight gesture. "Social… Deviants like me."

"Social deviants? What could you possibly do that would justify maiming you?"

I can see, of course. Following the same overwhelming drive that drew me here. A forbidden life style. Quite a few of the people I've been recruiting have been the same, and you'd be amazed what gets forbidden in some places. But I've also found that getting them to talk about it eases them into the idea of taking me up on my offer.

"We are a zero tactility culture. We practice total physical isolation. Aside from when I was arrested, this is the closest I have ever been to another living creature." He experiences a whole body twitch. "You are… Real..? Aren't you?"

"Yes, I'm real. Is there a convenient way out of here?"

"I-I don't know. They put me in an isolation unit to move me here. Can I..? Um."

"Can you what?"

"Can I touch you? I haven't ever really touched anyone before. We were… There were a group of us, and we… They arrested us before we could."

Ah. "I'm wearing an environmental shield and my species isn't aquatic, but if that's good enough for you? Go right-."

I'm enveloped in a mass of tentacles, the stronger ones wrapping themselves around my chest while two smaller ones prod and poke at my appendages and face.

Well.

This is…

Novel.

Um.

"Wrut?" I gently tug aside the tentacle rubbing itself over my lips. "What's your name?"

"Ratchetohthisisgood."

It's a minor relief that as far as I can tell this isn't a sexual thing for him. He is literally just this desperate for the touch of another living being. But he was intelligent enough to suppress it, then disguise it for-. Ratchet. The Red Lantern jellyfish. I'm not seeing a lot of-. I pull a tentacle away from my collar. I'm not seeing a lot of anger in him right now. Presumably this is from an earlier point in his timeline.

"Why did you come here?"

"I'm here to rescue you and offer you a job somewhere where touching people isn't a crime." Ah. "Where touching people with their permission isn't a crime."

"Are you still alright with me-?"

The door drops open and an armoured drone swims in. "Deviants will cease-."

I disintegrate the drone, then I fly-. I use constructs to lift Ratchet off me, then fly over to the doorway and cut though the metal of the door structure with an orange guillotine construct. "Do you know how far your planet's interdiction fields extend?"

"Three times the distance to our outer moon, but they aren't designed to stop Lanterns."

"Excellent news."

I tune my empathic vision to his particular desire and look around us. Seventy six individuals whose desire sets are a close match. And absolutely nothing to stop me grabbing every single one! Ah, I want to visit more planets not absurdly well equipped for fighting Lanterns, it makes my life so much easier. Beams of orange bore through the walls around me, blazing through armour, weak force fields, pipes and wiring -huh, they seal their maintenance ducts against the water, interesting- and into the other cells. The surgical devices have… Done their work with some, while others remain whole. Extend environmental shield… And one blast directly upwards.

And transition.

Space. A place that stopped being a final frontier for me some time ago. Toward the planet I see… Oh, that's… Slightly disturbing. They've set up a network of hologram satellites, and from the projections… They can't see space from the planet any longer.

Why would anyone do that intentionally? That sort of network can't be cheap to maintain-? No, focus.

"Hello everyone." Most of the shoal of jellyfish floating in my environmental shield turn to face me. "I'm the Illustres of the Orange Lantern Corps. I am extending to you an offer of sanctuary on Maltus, where touching people is allowed. If you would prefer to return to prison, please indicate that desire now."

No one indicates that desire now.

"Please stand by for warp. We should arrive in about half an hour, then any of you with injuries will be provided with medical attention. Warp in three, two, one." Space bends as we leap away from the planet. "Warp."

And Ratchet has grabbed hold of me again. "I don't want to sound ungrateful. I like having all of my tentacles. They're my favourite part of my body for holding things. But why did you rescue us?"

"I don't think that what you did should be considered a crime, and it certainly shouldn't be punished in the way you were being punished. But mostly, because your desires are strong and stable and I think that means that you would make a good Orange Lantern."

"How so?"

"Orange Lanterns are powered by our desires."

"My strongest desire is for real social contact. How many people are there on Maltus?"

"About fifteen billion. And virtually none wear environmental suits."

"So… Many… People…"

Ratchet collapses.

back

Rapprochement 21

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8th September

21:03 GMT -5

Circe fidgets in her seat. "Why isn't she here?"

I look around the bar, full of people who are curious but nonetheless careful not to come too close to either me or the shimmering figure in the seat next to me.

"Amazon culture has many virtues, but punctuality is not one of them. Probably to do with the lack of-" Diana -wearing a trouser suit rather than her armoured bustier- pushes open the café door and walks towards us. "-accurate clocks."

Circe takes a deep and calming breath, which hisses a bit more than I suspect it was supposed to. "Couldn't she dress up a little?"

"She doesn't have a lot of clothes that don't draw attention. You did specify-."

Circe tosses her head as Diana passes through the ward before treating her long term foe to an almost believable smile. "Diana!"

"… Circe." Huh. Never heard Diana hesitate like that before. She pulls out a chair for herself and sits down. "I must say, I was somewhat surprised when Grayven told me that you wanted to meet with me."

"'Want' is…" Circe looks away for a moment. "Probably too strong a way of putting it. Having.. taken… Advice… I reached the conclusion that it really was the best way forward."

"Why the change of heart?"

"The most significant reason for me setting myself against you was to escape Hecate's prophecy. Having.. been given an alternative escape, the only reason I have left to fight you would be pride and I'm too proud to allow myself to be defined by my relationship to someone else."

Diana looks decidedly uncertain about what she's hearing, her eyes moving to me in suspicion. "Grayven's awakening process."

"Yes. I thought that… Meeting with you before undergoing that would serve to draw a line under our adversarial relationship. Certainly, one way or another I'm not going to want to fight you any longer."

Diana shakes her head slightly. "That isn't the only reason. You still have about a hundred people enslaved on your island. I'm not going to simply pretend that they don't exist."

"They're free to go." Circe actually sags slightly as she says it. "I have already returned the more recent ones to their Human forms. I even.. sent them back to their homes, or, well, close by at least. With a compensation payment."

And wasn't persuading her to do that a mission.

"But the older ones, the ones who have been like that for more than a mortal span… They're… Stuck. But they're free as well. Would they be welcome on Themyscira?"

Diana nods. "I will speak to my mother. But I believe so, at least on one of the smaller islands."

"I'm glad to hear it. I'll be.. staying with Grayven for a few days." Circe stands with an imperious motion and I put a fifty dollar note on a plate in the middle of the table. "Send word when you have news."

"I will. And… Circe." Circe ceases turning away and glances back with her eyebrows raised. "I'm glad that you're doing this."

"Yes, I'm sure that you are. Grayven?"

I come to my feet, turn away from Diana and open a boom tube back to Miss Shimmer's heavy duty research laboratories. Miss Shimmer more or less threw us out this afternoon after giving up on politely trying to dissuade Circe from poking her machinery. She may have gotten a wee bit possessive, but she's got cause. She designed and built most of these machines herself. Circe seemed to find everything here fascinating, though whether that was simply displacement activity or a genuine concern that the machines are going to be used against her in some fashion I'm not sure.

Circe walks though first, heading towards the prepared centre of the ritual space. I walk through after her, letting the tube close behind me as Miss Shimmer makes final adjustments to a rather complex thaumic resonation monitor control system. She's still interested in attaining Alicornhood and hopes to get some good readings from the process of deconstructing and reconstructing a demigoddess.

"We about ready over here?"

Miss Shimmer turns away from her device, flickering lights reflecting off her goggles in a slightly unsettling way. "I've been ready for days."

Circe scowls at her, but her heart's not in it. "I-. Yes. Yes, I'm ready."

"Good show." I take my orange ring off my left ring finger and put it into an equipment pouch. "Since you're clearly still worried about this, I'll be using the yellow ring. Give Hecate the bad news whenever you're ready."

"And this..?" Her eyes move swiftly over the machinery, over Miss Shimmer and then back to me. "It will take moments?"

"A heartbeat. You probably won't even be aware of it." She still hesitates. "Circe, this is why you are here. A chance for a life free of fear. You've spoken to my employees and you've checked the mechanisms that will be employed. Either you're ready now, or… This is it. You'll feel this fear permanently until your fear is finally realised."

She nods. "I will… Need a moment."

I settle slightly as she begins muttering to herself. I appreciate that this is a big step, but she's had all week to get her head around the idea. This is why I'm using the Sinestro.

"Ah-!"

Pink mist rises a little from Circe's skin before being viciously pulled towards the floor! Miss Shimmer's machinery chatters wildly while Circe stares at me in horror! Various sigils form momentarily on the ground as the mist pools briefly on the floor before… Apparently being pulled down and vanishing. Circe jerks as the rate of transfer increases and her body starts to wither, her skin wrinkling and eyes dimming.

Okay, that's my cue. "Sinestro, rejuvenate. Aim for the mid-thirties."

"Small problem with that, Corpsman." Three thick streams of yellow energy reach out but struggle to pierce the mist. "Perhaps you shouldn't have spoken of your intent where Hecate could hear it?"

Circe realises that there's a problem as her flesh shrivels and she collapses to the ground. She gapes at me, desperation clear on her face, unable to form words properly.

Sinestro!

She is immortal, Corpsman. But with your own fears fully engaged… The streams of energy glow brighter, punching through this mist and connecting with Circe. Golden lights shimmer under her skin as the withering ceases and slightly reverses. I-. No, hold onto the fear, the cold sickening sensation flowing from the idea that I might have just killed a highly valuable ally.

Keep feeling it.

Circe's skin is in a state of flux, healthy one moment and wizened the next. She's not saying anything, but she appears to at least be a little more aware of her environment than she was a moment ago. She gasps and attempts to stagger to her feet before another pink mist ejection sends her crashing chest-first onto the floor. This collapse appears to be the trigger for the final surge, her whole body pinking over for a moment and severing my no! I WILL NOT BE DENIED!

The mist finally vanishes and the yellow light surges in to replace it, lifting Circe to her feet and… Making good on the repairs. She wobbles and I step forward to offer her my hands with which to steady herself.

"Circe?" She pants as she grips my hands for dear life. "Circe? Are you with us?"

"I feel… Hollow. But… Yes. Yes!" She beams at me. "I'm f-finally… Finally free!"

"Are you ready for the next stage, or would you rather remain mortal for a spa-?"

"Don't be ridiculous." She pulls her hands back and readies herself. "The sooner I gain your empowerment, the sooner I become-"

I reach forward and tap her lightly on the forehead. "Awaken."

"Ping."

"-a goddess agai-. Was that it?"

"The process itself doesn't grant you power, it merely makes-."

"Yes, yes. You said." She looks away for a moment. "And the best way for me to regain my power quickly is to use your mana infusion chamber, correct?"

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Rapprochement 22

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8th September

21:14 GMT -6

I gently push open the door to Lynne's bedroom and stick my head around the opening. "Poppet? Are you asleep?"

"U-uh? Dad?"

"I'm sorry I didn't read to you. Circe just turned up, and then.-" I push the door open further and come fully into the r-. Mortalla next to her bed, a guilty expression on her face and.. The Ship of Adventure held in her right hand.

"That's okay, Dad. Grandma read it instead."

"I-I'm sorry if I overstepped bounds, but you-."

"You did exactly what I wanted you to do." I smile at the poor woman in an attempt to reassure her. "Of course that's perfectly fine."

"See?" Lynne shuffles around in bed to look at Mortalla. "I told you it was the right thing to do."

"Mother, the system is that Lynne goes to bed at nine and gets a chapter read to her. I make an effort to be here, but that isn't always possible. You're family." I consider that statement for a moment. "Whom we actually like. Lynne poppet, you're happy with Grandma Mortalla reading to you, aren't you?"

"Yes, Dad."

I smile at Mortalla. "See?"

"Then…" She looks nervous, but a little more confident than she was a moment ago. "I had just finished the chapter. I will leave you to say goodnight." She starts to walk around the bed, then freezes. "If.. you do not object..?"

I smile, nod my head and motion to the door before approaching Lynne's bed and sitting down on the floor. Mortalla risks a small smile in return before heading out of the room.

"Good day at school?"

"It was okay. I… Think I made a friend?"

"Sounds like progress. What's his or her name?"

"Her name's Imra. She's starting school this year too." She wriggles around to face me. "Dad, how common are telepaths? You know, Human ones?"

"Pretty uncommon. I don't have the precise figures, but I don't think there are a hundred worth talking about in the United States. And maybe a couple of them in your league. Why do you ask?"

"Um." Eyes drifting away. She's.. about to lie to me. Wonderful! She's not so dependent that she's unwilling to act like a teenager! "No reason. I just wondered."

"Okay. Well, because it's hard for them to get training, and because until recently psychiatrists weren't trained to differentiate between early manifestation telepathy and schizophrenia, there aren't really any reliable figures. I only have rough numbers because I looked into it myself." I lean back slightly and look away from her face. "If you.. did encounter a telepath, it might be a good idea for you to mention the Centre to them. Some of the things that happen when they don't get training-."

"I didn't say I'd met a telepath."

"And I didn't say that you'd said that you'd met a telepath."

She glares at me. "Dad!"

I snigger, then stand and lean forward to kiss Lynne on the forehead. "Goodnight Lynne. Sweet dreams."

"'night Dad."

I turn away and exit the room, the sound of Lynne's quiet breathing in my ears as I gently shut the door. That was a little surprising, but I am pleased. And not just because there's someone I can hand reading duties over to; Lynne accepting someone else in that sort of situation is a sign of just how far she's progressed, and Mortalla actually doing something without specific authorisation means that my worse case scenarios for her rehabilitation can remain purely theoretical. Lynne coping with a wider variety of social interactions is a pretty good sign as well.

Right. I'm up in six hours to sort things out in the Netherlands before everyone arrives. Bed time for me as well. In fact, Mother Box?

Ping?

Hush tube.

Ping.

I step through it and push open my door. It'll be nice to-.

Knockout is lying on my bed, facing the door.

I blink, slowly. "Did you get lost on your way to your room?"

"No."

"Because this is.. my room. Your status is now such that you aren't expected to share. Your room is-" I step back into the doorway. "-that w-."

The door slams into my face! I'm not really hurt, but it was so unexpected that I'm not up to speed as the door is shoved aside and Knockout surges out, knocking me back into the wall behind me with a shoulder charge and then bringing her right fist up under my chin! I get my left arm in the way, absorbing her blow with a small wince before my right hand shoots out and seizes her around the neck and slams her against the opposite wall!

Like me, she's far too tough to actually be injured by the impact, but I use her momentary disorientation to squeeze her throat while I pull her back and slam her into it again. This time I'm braced and this time concrete is pulverised and fractured by the force I employ!

I then wait, hand still around her neck, for her to regain her senses.

"What was that in aid of?" "You DARE raise your hand to ME!?"

"Thought-. You were-. Soft. One who hides-." I squeeze a little to remind her that she's winding up the wrong New God right now. "Hides behind others."

"What? Because I can hold a civil conversation? Because I have retainers who don't live in terror of me?" But okay, if she likes the traditional Apokoliptian style so much… I pull back my hand and slam her into the concrete again. This time it fractures the whole way through, metal mesh keeping the fragments more or less in shape as a section the size of my fist crumbles through on the far side. "Please do not assume that simply because brutal violence is not my first recourse that I am in some way incapable of utilising it." I pull her towards me slightly and loosen my grip a little. "Is that it? Was there some other reason for this visit?"

She blinks, trying to clear the concrete dust from her eyes. "Granny said that I caught your eye. I would not mate with a man who did not know how to fight. But I like a man who does."

Oh. Ew.

"Why would I-? No, I don't want to mate with you." And that's when it comes to my attention that she's only wearing her boots and gloves. Huh. No, irrelevant. "I didn't bring you here because I wanted a concubine. Your skills as a warrior are what impressed me. It is those skills which I wish you to utilise on my behalf." I turn in the direction of her room, raise my right hand and open it, depositing her on the floor. "Now go. I would have said 'please don't do this again'. However, since you don't appear to understand basic courtesy…"

I step forward and kick with my right foot, catching her in the chest and sending her flying down the corridor and into the far wall hard enough to crack that as well.

I wait a moment for her to look up. Then I smile politely.

"Please don't do this again."

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Rapprochement 23

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8th September

19:57 GMT

I know… That I shouldn't be totally surprised. Standard pattern humanoids are standard pattern humanoids. It's a universal shape which comes with a wide variety of standardised features. There are exceptions, obviously, and social factors can vary wildly-.

The point is, patriarchy is not unique to Humans. Humanoid men are generally stronger than humanoid women wherever you go. It's part of the role-specialisation. This often -not always, but it does happen in far more places than the reverse- results in societies being male-dominated. If one group is where most of the war-fighters are coming from, that group are going to end up disproportionately in positions of authority. I don't think that it's 'good' or 'proper', but that's how it tends to go. And greater strength has advantages in other areas as well; pre-industrial farming and metalwork, for instance. That advantage largely disappears once heavy automated machinery starts providing most of the physical force, but by then the idea of 'male's work' and 'female's work' has set in…

Patriarchy happens. But it doesn't usually result in a continent of women having their eyes gouged out.

"Who's there?"

The mistress of the house doesn't wear a blindfold. Those are forbidden, as they might conceal eyes that hadn't been removed. And since they're removed with hooked knives with no anaesthetic-.

I'm very glad that enlightenment means that my rings aren't shutting down because I don't remember being this angry since I read Handmaiden's Tale. I like structure and as a result nothing gets to me quite like tyranny enthroned to the point where people think it's normal.

"Jerrd?"

"No."

She doesn't have a cane to help her get around. She's well into middle age, and I'm sure that she knows the structure of her own home far too well to need one.

"Who-?"

"I suppose you could say that I heard your prayers. Your eldest daughter was taken to the temple today, wasn't she?"

She shudders, then falls to her knees. Why-? No. No! "My Lord, I am sorry for my wick-"

"No." I land in front of her and place my right hand on her shoulder. "You have nothing to be sorry for."

"-edness, but Taranna loves to paint and-."

"Stop." When I am confronted by the evils of the universe, I will rejoice. F-for when I am done, there will be one less. I know that the point of this is to motivate others, but in this case it's bloody hard not to deal with the situation myself. "I am not your god, or its servant. I am the Illustres of the Orange Lantern Corps, and I heard your need." I move my left hand to her left and pull, encouraging her to rise. "Why do you beg forgiveness for hating something you know to be wrong?"

"Because I shouldn't feel like this. It should happen, it needs to happen. All girls go through it-."

"The fact that something is common does not make it right." I look a little deeper into her. I see a younger version of the young woman I arrived on this fetid planet just a little late to save from going under the knife leading her mother over to a flower bed and describing them to her. "You know this is wrong."

"I-if she could be spared-."

"What's so special about her? What makes her pain different from the pain of any other girl? Yours, from any other mother forced to stand by while the Temple of Unseeing does its work?"

"I… Nothing, I'm not important, but Taranna doesn't need to-."

"It's too late." But that was a colour I can use. "She's already being led away into the-."

"No!"

The 'o' sounds like a yelp. Shame, fear, all useless.

"Do you think that's right?"

She's breathing quickly, water seeping from her tear ducts… Stress, no use to me. Come on, I felt you!

"What you feel now is the same as how your own mother would have felt. And her mother, and her mother before her. And in time, what your own daughter will feel." I lean closer. "What do you want?"

"I-. I…"

"I came here to help you realise your desires. But I can't do that if you won't tell me what they are. Not 'won't someone rescue my daughter', that wasn't what I heard. Tell me." Her mouth tremors, no words coming out. "You know what I'm asking. You're thinking it but you're not saying it. What do you want?"

"I want every bastard member of the priesthood dead. I don't want any girl to go through the Rite of Unseeing ever again."

"Coutara eh'Jerrd of Space Sector Four Nine Five." I step back as the ring I brought for her approaches her. "You have a great need in your heart. Join the Orange Lantern Corps, and see it realised."

I'm still not totally happy with the introductory spiel, but at least it's better than the version Dox suggested. Far too wordy.

Her breathing slows, her shoulders square and her back straightens. "You will help me?"

"That is this ring's function."

Doubt gone, Coutara reaches out with her right hand. "I want that."

The ring leaps onto her middle finger, shattering the grey stone ring that was there already before coming to rest.

"Lantern Coutara, welcome to the Orange Lantern Corps."

A wave of orange light runs through her smock and loose-fitting trousers, adding orange highlights. Hm. I'll need to talk to her about armour at some point-. Her head jerks around to face me, orange light flaring from her eye sockets.

"This ring has made me strong enough to kill them?"

"It's not all about physical strength, but none of their defences should slow you down all that much."

She bends her legs slightly, as if to leap into the air. Then she stops herself. "And what happens then?"

"In what regard?"

"To me, to my daughter, to… Everyone else. I can't just… Tear everything apart, and… Let our civilisation collapse."

I smile at her mindfulness. So many people would just leap right in… "Yes you can and yes you could. When a civilisation is this fundamentally disordered, tearing it down and starting again is a perfectly valid thing to do. But since you ask, I am prepared to offer sanctuary to you, your daughter and anyone else needing rescue. Furthermore, I am prepared to assign Lanterns to keep an eye on your country until things stabilise." Komand'r and Koriand'r in this case. Try gouging their eyes out, you living shits. "Is that satisfactory?"

"Yes." Her environmental shield flares. "Perfectly."

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Rapprochement 24

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9th September

09:28 GMT +1

Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Nearly time. Nearly time. I'll have my own Elite. True equals, not near-subordinates.

The monitor and cameras which Lex will be using to join in are all set up. Sunset created a few basic wards with pure magic and I added a few with Apokoliptian technology.

Ping.

Fine, we added a few with Apokoliptian technology. I'll have to strip it out once we're finished, but that's a simple enough affair. The seats are arranged in an arc, those of our invitees pointing in the direction of the main monitor, which I'll be using for my presentation. I was a little worried that we'd be a man short until yesterday, but I was eventually able to persuade the relevant authorities that I could order Adom's temporary release. Once this is done, he will technically be under house arrest at my house. Which is a pretty handy outcome for me, actually. Ah, glasses of water, air conditioning… Reasonable… I think we're good.

I turn and head through the doors into the antechamber, Knockout's fists balling excitedly as she sees me. "My Lord. Let me demonstrate-." "Fight!"

"Calm yourself, Knockout. This is a social event." "A bodyguard should be seen and not heard."

After our confrontation last night she's been far more eager to please me in the performance of her duties. I took advantage to compel her to change her 'costume'. Her.. green swimsuit was barely acceptable, but now that I've had time I've had her replace it with decent body armour. And a mana infuser. Heh. She didn't seem all that convinced about the armour but that thing is New God catnip. She's still been getting a few admiring looks from the staff here, but hasn't condescended to notice any of them. I don't think that she totally understands what a hotel is, but she appears to have pegged the staff as well-disciplined House Lowlies.

"But I do have a task for you."

"Someone to kill?" "Fight!"

"Knockout, if I wanted a mad dog I'd have hired someone local. I need you to take the measure of the retinues the others bring. The image they're trying to portray."

"How easy they will be to kill." "Fight!"

"Worth knowing, but not a priority. And before you complain further, I've scheduled your sparring session with Orana for Saturday. And if you really can't manage until then I'm sure that Adom will be happy to oblige you."

She nods, reluctantly. "And Barda?" "Fight!"

"I want to be more certain of your self discipline before I even tell her that you're on Earth. I brought you here to guard my daughter, not rampage at will."

"But-." "Fig-!"

"That's enough, Knockout." You Will Obey Me!

She shudders, her mouth working but no sound emerging. Then she smiles, bows her head slightly and steps back. Ugh, she's going to be like this all of the time, isn't she? Tiresome. I mean, if I had normal Apokoliptian attitudes it wouldn't be a problem, but I'm used to Human ways of interacting. Perhaps I could offer her services as a training aid to Komand'r? The princesses are skilled, but super strength combat has its own rules…

Mortalla rises from her chair as I approach, smoothing down her skirt and shuffling a little in place. It's going to be a little while before she's convinced that she's safe here, but I'm going to keep working on it. "And Mother, I would appreciate it if you could observe all other aspects of their behaviour. Family is.. important here. You will be acting in my stead." "You have my faith."

"I…" For a moment she looks a little lost. Then she nods and manages a weak smile. "Of course."

"Then all is in readiness. Mother Box?"

"Ping."

The disdainful sound-

"Ploong."

-from Mortalla's Father Box is drowned out by the sound of the boom tube opening to Aberrance. A brief moment passes, then Otto steps through with Cranius perched on the top of his spine. He looks around, then grins at me. "Grayven, my boy!"

I smile, stepping forward to shake Otto's hand. "Doctor Cranius. Thank you for joining us."

Niko steps through next, her missing arm earning a frown from Knockout. Of course, anyone with such a visible sign of weakness would swiftly be dead meat on Apokolips. Which to Knockout's way of thinking means that either Niko's so powerful that it doesn't matter, or Cranius is so powerful that his servants can afford to advertise vulnerability.

I nod to her. "May I present-."

"Hey, Gravy! Wassaaap, man!"

I just about manage to prevent myself wincing as The Face walks in behind the people I actually wanted here. Oh, why couldn't Cranius have broken him up for parts by now? "Mister The Face." I turn aside, allowing them to get a clear look at my own entourage. "May I present my mother, Mortalla." Cranius gives her a small nod, but I can tell that he's frowning inside. Trying to work out why her skin is white, and what other augmentations she might have. Niko smiles, her eyes moving to me for a moment. What, didn't she think that I had antecedents?

It's not hard to work out why The Face is leering.

"And my bodyguard, Knockout. Today she's here for your protection as much as mine."

Knockout's size and musculature make her speciality more obvious to a casual observer. Another nod from Cranius. "I am certain zhet we are in good hands. Are.. we.. zhe first to arrive?"

"Yes, but unless you're bringing anyone else I'll redirect the boom tube and bring our second guest here now."

Cranius leads his party away a few paces, then turns around with an air of considerable interest. "I am most fascinated to see whom it is zhet we will be doing business wizh."

"Ping."

The boom tube aperture collapses and then reopens with a double-bang. We wait a moment, then Adom floats through under his own power. Unlike what I had assumed, he wasn't interested in wearing a variant of Theodore's costume. In fact, he was quite definite that he didn't want to 'wear the Wizard's lightning bolt' at all. Instead, he's wearing a white sherwani with gold embroidery and loose cream trousers. I was surprised by his choice, but I suppose that there's a definite advantage to having a clear visual distinction between him and Theodore.

His gaze passes briefly over everyone so far assembled before settling on me, only The Face earning a mild frown of puzzlement. He lowers himself in the air slightly so that he's only centimetres above the carpeted floor.

"Lord Grayven."

"Teth Adom. Thank you for joining us." I offer him my right hand. He in turn reaches out with his right arm and wraps his hand around my forearm. Well, as much as he can given the size difference between us. I mirror the gesture, though I'm careful not to over-grip. He's grateful for my help, but we're not yet so close that he'd be prepared to ignore a significant breach of propriety on my part.

A moment passes and we separate, me turning aside to introduce the group. "This is Doctor Cranius, who will be taking part in discussions with us."

"Doctor Cranius."

A little tricky. The form of Ancient Kahndaqi which Adom speaks doesn't have a word for 'bio-engineer'. And its word for 'doctor' doesn't quite have the same connotations which the English word does. Still, we can clear up exactly what everyone brings to the table during the meeting proper.

"Mister Teth Adom."

"His aides, Niko Parish and The Face."

His eyes linger on Niko's wings for a moment, but his only formal response is a nod.

"My mother, the lady Mortalla. And my bodyguard, Knockout."

Knockout is looking at Teth Adom with undisguised interest while he seems less interested in her. To Mortalla on the other hand he lands and reaches out to take her left hand-.

"No!" I intercept him just before he touches it. He looks decidedly put out by my behaviour. "I'm sorry, but it amused Father to bind spells to her hands. The left one kills people. I'm not certain that it would work on you, but it would be an unfortunate way to start a meeting."

He nods, satisfied. "I see. I thank you for your warning. What does the right do?"

"It-." Mortalla responds, then clams up, looking to me for approval. I smile and nod. "It induces sleep."

Teth Adom takes that hand instead, kissing her knuckles to no apparent ill effect. Mortalla smiles a little confusedly. "My lady."

"My lord."

Mother Box, next boom tube.

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Rapprochement 25

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9th September

09:35 GMT +1

Lord Cyprian comes through first, barely reacting to the dryness of his new environment. He's a Pureblood Atlantean man in his late fifties, greying shoulder length hair swept back with some sort of styling product that makes it look constantly wet. He's wearing the knee-length breeches and decorative jewellery common among the Venturian nobility, though I know for a fact that as well as being a capable administrator he is also a capable magic user. The jewellery is almost certainly enchanted, though it would be gauche of me to blatantly check it out now. His bare chest is fairly well muscled for a man of his age, and there are a couple of scars visible on his right side.

Queen Clea walks through next, her own clothing somewhat more modest but also more regal. She's wearing a small diadem rather than the full crown of state she would wear when taking an audience or the helm she used to wear while in combat. Four soldiers follow her through, three Purebloods and one Eelfolk. The Eelman has an enchanted pendant which connects to his gills with a glowing line of water, but he still winces as he comes into contact with the air.

I give Queen Clea a shallow bow. "Your majesty. May I present our colleagues Teth Adom and Doctor Cranius."

Cranius can't really bow while mounted on Otto, but he manages a nod. "I understand zhet I heff you to zhank for my supply of thaumaturgical literature."

"Are you a sorcerer, Doctor Cranius?"

"It would be more true to say zhet I am zhe product-" He stands on the tips of his fingers. "-of sorcery. I study biomancy by necessity as well as for pleasure."

"I imagine that is an area where we might profitably-" She looks askance at The Face for a moment. Fortunately he's distracted by Mortalla. "-cooperate further, Doctor. And Teth Adom."

"Your majesty. During my former life I had a productive working relationship with an Atlantean queen. I hope that our relationship will be similarly beneficial."

"Oh?" She raises her eyebrows slightly. "Who was she?"

"Queen Gamemnae of Poseidonis." Queen Clea twitches as she recognises the name. Wonder who she was? "We were allies for several decades."

"Yes… That would be useful."

Hm. If Queen Gamemnae is known in Atlantean society even after all of this time, they may also have records of Teth Adom himself. Might be worth looking up.

"If the three of you would like to follow me..?" I turn away, the three of them walking alongside me as we head into the meeting room.

Clea takes a moment to look over the rest of us. "It seems that we're a little short?"

I nod. "Alas, one of those I had intended on inviting had died during my time away from Earth. The two others who will be appearing in person insisted that they could make their own way here-."

Shadows pool in the far corner of the room, then Mister Swift marches out of them as if climbing a staircase. "A wizard is never early or late, Mister Grayven. He arrives exactly when he means to." He reaches up to the brim of his top hat with his right hand and raises it slightly. "Your majesty, my lord, doctor."

I send a filament behind us and close the doors with it, before heading towards the monitor. "Presenting Mister Richard Swift, also known as the Shade."

He holds his hands out to the sides. And then another set of hands made of shadows. "For reasons which I think are quite self-explanatory."

"If you'd all like to take your seats, we should be able to begin once our last but one guest has realised that she is now fashionably-" Circe wafts into being, sections of her body appearing as if emerging from behind some invisible fabric that is being gradually tugged away. "-late." She's nothing like at full power, but apparently this little trick isn't too power-intensive.

"Circe!"

Queen Clea walks towards her old comrade, arms outstretched. Circe takes a barely noticeable moment to work out who Clea is, then smiles at her in turn. "Clea, darling! You're looking simply marvellous!"

They embrace, kissing one another on each cheek before pulling back slightly.

"I'm looking like an old woman. I know it full well."

Mister Swift smiles at the assemblage before having his shadows pull out a chair for him and dropping into it. "Is the gang all here?"

I nod. "Nearly." I flip a switch on the monitor, and Lex's avatar appears on the screen. "Our last colleague is unable to attend in person."

Cranius takes a seat near the opposite end of the arc from Mister Swift. "And we are not to see zhis person's face?"

"I apologise for the deception, Doctor." Lex's synthetic voice is as flawless as it is impossible to recognise as being his. It helps that he's speaking French rather than English and letting the computer handle the translation. "But I cannot afford to allow knowledge of my participation to become widely known. I have all too many enemies who would work against anything we produce were the fact that I have any input into its creation to become widely known."

Mister Swift lounges back slightly. "Or we could just work it out ourselves."

"Acceptable." Adom takes the seat on the far end, between Cranius and the door. "For now."

Walking past Clea, Circe takes the middle seat and leaves her old friend with the chair between herself and Mister Swift.

I smile. "Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming. I asked you all here today because I have a problem, and I believe that each of you could help me solve it. Essentially, my problem is that the Human species isn't living up to its potential. And despite the fact that I'm an alien, that's a problem for me because my father-" I put a life size image of him up on the monitor. "-is working on a plan to mind control the universe and I rather need to stop him. To do that I need weapons, technology, powerful warriors, all things that Earth has, but doesn't have in sufficient quantity. So: I need to improve Human civilisation. And to be completely clear, I don't mean by conquering it. The economic systems which I need are more or less in place. I merely need to ensure that certain things which are not currently happening start happening."

"Despite living on what is probably the most magic-rich world in the universe, ninety nine percent of Humans have never used magic and about thirty percent don't actually believe that it's real. Despite reliable Human augmentation having existed since before Atlantis sank, most Humans are little different biologically from the primitive ape-men who left East Africa three hundred thousand years ago. Despite having tried every form of government I know of, vast numbers of people live under corrupt and inefficient governments more interested in building palaces than roads, more interested in inflating their rulers' bank accounts than their nation's GDP. In other circumstances I might shrug it off. What does the stupidity of aliens mean to me? But with the threat of my father hanging over me, I need them, I need Human ingenuity and ferocity."

"I don't need Human stupidity."

"So here's what I want us to do. I want us to fix that and enrich ourselves doing so. And I'm willing to offer you whatever it is that you want if you'll help me." I look around. "Doctor, you want more people to use the augmentations you create. I've already been helping you with that, but we can always do more. Particularly-" I move my hand to indicate Queen Clea. "-with the aid of Atlantean biomancers. While you, Queen Clea, want more political independence and to avoid having to fight over your succession. A simple fix; I can extend your lifespan and build profitable bridges between yourself and various interested surface world groups. If you're doing what King Orin wants anyway, then he won't interfere. Particularly if no one else is. Circe, you've already received my aid. Would you agree that it will make your life considerably more pleasant?"

"It.. will."

"I can also ease your passage to the renown which you want, though you would have to put in a good deal of work yourself."

She tilts her head back, narrowing her eyes slightly. "How?"

"You would found a school and start teaching surface people magic. As more and more people become trained in sorcery they would know that the teacher of their teachers was you, that their entire magic tradition flowed from you as the traditions of Atlantis flow from Ahri'Ahn. And naturally, the governments of the world would call upon you to consult when faced with a question on magic. Teaching staff Queen Clea can provide… And I could locate one or two myself on the surface. You would probably have to use a false identity, at least at the start. But that's nothing you haven't done before."

"Me, a teacher?"

"A headmistress."

She smiles. "That is an interesting suggestion."

"Teth Adom. I've been dodging your questions about how Kahndaq is governed in the present day because I don't want you to fly into a rage. It's… Bad. I'll give you the full details after the meeting. But naturally, I'm sure that you'll want to change that. I have political good will in just about everywhere, and-." I gesture to the screen. "-my colleague has the economic infrastructure. But Kahndaq would just be the first country that needs some careful, considered and vicious regime change. Humanity deserves better than having myopic thieves in suits as its rulers."

Mister Swift purses his lips. "And what of me, and your good friend 'The Screen'? I'm happier with my life now than I've been for centuries. And he already has a SCART lead."

"I believe that the existence of the Justice League is exacerbating the problem Human society is experiencing. However, I do recognise that they are presently near-indispensable as far as protecting the Earth is concerned. If all goes well, we will eventually render them obsolete, but for now they must survive."

I stare him straight in the eyes. "So it would be most convenient if the most powerful superhero on the Earth were to join them."

back

Rapprochement 26

next

9th September

09:40 GMT +1

Mister Swift smiles with his mouth slightly open, as if he were about to speak but is so entranced with the idea that he can't quite shape the words.

Teth Adom turns to look at Mister Swift. "'Most powerful'?"

Mister Swift shrugs. "One doesn't like to blow one's own trumpet… But I'd say so. Particularly with Mister Culp removed from the equation and the Great Darkness gone on its merry way."

"I will concede that you have some power. You manipulate shadows with a greater skill than I have seen before." Adom shakes his head. "But I have seen many great and powerful beings. What proof do you have that you stand so far above them?"

Mister Swift merely smiles, and raises his cane.

Then every light in the room dies and every surface turns black. I raise my right hand, orange light texturing the darkness just enough to pick out the edges of the walls. And then.. the edges become indistinct, fading away as the primordial blackness becomes at once nebulous and solid, my rings' own light visibly weakening…

And then the sheer black peels away, revealing a desolate greyscale landscape of bare earth and stones. The only hint of life I can see is a small copse of apparently dead trees, their bent and wizened trunks completely bereft of leaves. And the only light… I look up at the starless sky, wondering what light illuminates a place like this.

There's a… Hole… In the black sky. And along its circular boundary I can see flickers of light-.

I look down instead.

"The Shadowlands?" Circe nods in realisation, putting her elbows on the table and resting her head on her hands as she leans towards him. "A risky proposition."

"Oh, I know. Staring the Great Darkness in the eye… Such as it had, drove me quite peculiar on the first occasion. And whenever I went back I felt that I was as a mouse treading none too carefully around the lair of some great and malevolent beast. Which gives me far too much credit; I was far less than a mouse to such an entity. But, no longer. It is gone and…" He indicates the landscape with the head of his cane. "I am master of my own estate."

"Mister Swift." I indicate the Shadowlands with my right hand. "Would you mind..?"

"Ah, of course." He taps his cane against the sandy ground, shadows rising up around us and flowing in his direction, seemingly being sucked back into it. The landscape is only obscured for moments, but in the shadow's wake only our meeting room remains. "Your pardon, dear comrades. I did not mean to alarm you." He returns his attention to me. "But the Justice League. I am intrigued. How do you intend to make that happen? When last I checked, you weren't a member."

"No, but my brother and sister-in-law are. And I believe that you know Wonder Woman?"

"Yes, as do two of my esteemed colleagues." He glances at Clea and Circe. "And in much the same fashion. I don't think that I could expect a reference."

"Tell me, Mister Swift: does keeping Opal City safe require a significant proportion of your full power?"

He scoffs. "Pff. Hardly. I live there because I like it, not because it's part of my exercise regime."

"And if you were to exert yourself a little more? Could you develop a national presence? Perhaps..? A global presence?"

"I… Could…"

"Combine that with formally burying the hatchet with-." Ugh. "With the surviving Justice Society members, perhaps offering an explanation for your actions? You were working as a superhero even while possessed by a malevolent super dwarf. You're not a particularly bad fit anyway. They just need to be reminded that you exist."

"Hahahaha!" Mister Swift tosses his head back as he laughs in what sounds like a good-humoured way. "Oh my word. And what precisely would I be doing as this august assemblage's 'man on the inside'?"

"You would be making sure that they stay alive. As a beacon of heroism they're useful, as long as they're an example people are actively following rather than one to whom they are passing the buck."

He regards me for a moment, his head tilting slightly to the right. "You know what? The idea tickles me so-. Yes. Yes, I'll do it. I'll campaign as an unstoppable scourge of the underworld until the League let me in. Why not? I'm sure that the change of pace will do me the world of good. Hahaha! Oh, what a time to be alive!" He sort of flops to his right. "And you, your majesty? Will you be joining us?"

Queen Clea looks cautious, though whether that's because of the temptation I'm providing or the presence of the shadow god next to her I'm not certain. "Extend my lifespan to what degree?"

"You are aware that great magic users gain dramatically extended life spans due to their expanded metaphysiques?" She nods. "I can… Shall we say, remove the limiters on your spirit. Grant you the benefits without anything like the work. I've already tested the process; it's safe and reliable. Several of my colleagues already use it… Including Circe." Clea frowns at her and gets a shallow nod in return. "And if you want an immediate rejuvenation…" I raise my hands, displaying my power rings. "I can do that as well."

"And this airport? How do you intend to make that happen?"

"A little while ago an alliance of supervillains calling themselves 'The Light' did some rather unfortunate things. Most of them died, but one of them -a man named Lex Luthor- was an apparently legitimate citizen. President Horne felt that simply killing him would be setting a bad precedent." Heh. "And there were any number of ways Mister Luthor could have dodged criminal conviction. As such, he was told that he could either keep himself squeaky-clean from now on… Or he could mysteriously disembowel himself while shaving, if you get my drift. And I'm his parole officer, which means that I basically own the third richest man on the planet. Arm-twisting him into building an airport won't even be hard."

Not much point in not telling them who the monitor is if LexAir start flying flights to an airport built by LexConstruction. Not unless there's some other explanation.

"And I know that you've had your man Mister Valjek checking out potential trade opportunities. What is it you're most interested in?"

She looks at me. I think that she's making her decision-.

"Gold. High purity. Other metals too, but gold most of all. And I will agree to participate. Though I will want to see-" I start walking towards her. "-some evidence that-." She frowns as I approach. "What is it?"

"You want proof? I can augment you now. Do you want to be restored to your prime, or merely to early old age? A more subtle approach has its advantages, but then so does full physical fitness."

She sits up slightly, blinking. "And what do you want now in return?"

I grin. "Nothing! At worst, I help Atlantis avoid a distracting internal conflict. At best, you feel grateful enough to become an active participant in my project. Either way, I benefit." I look around. "This isn't a zero-sum game, a grudging trade between people who can barely keep their paranoia in check for long enough to have a conversation. This is to be an alliance serving our shared interests. Not merely can we all win, but the whole of the world can as well. Though obviously… We win by most."

She nods, pushing back her chair and standing. "Mild rejuvenation. If our alliance is supposed to be at least somewhat covert, it might be best if I didn't suddenly change my appearance."

"Very well." In the corner of my eye I see Circe watching with unconcealed interest as I gently reach for Clea's forehead with my right hand. "Please focus your mind on your fear of your nation collapsing and it all being your fault."

"Hm." She closes her eyes for a moment. "There's always a.. price, isn't there?"

Sinestro, Mother Box, we need to be somewhat precise here.

We can manage, Corpsman.

Ping.

Well, aren't you the overachiever?

"Rejuvenate."

Yellow light flows though her body, and the changes… Are subtle. Her skin smoothes a little, a small amount of colour returns to her hair, though the dominant colour is still white. Her muscle tone improves slightly… Good work, both of you. Now Awaken!

Ping.

Queen Clea's eyes snap open, and she staggers back a step. "I felt that. Is that-." She holds out her hands, studying her own skin. "Ooh."

I take out a bracelet-type mana infuser. "Wear this as much as possible. It will speed up the process."

She breathes in, regaining her composure. Then she takes the infuser and sits without putting it on. "Thank you. You have my consent to send your man Luthor to speak with Lord Cyprian. He will oversee the work on my behalf. And…" She turns her head to Circe. "Will you be requiring a teaching staff?"

Circe looks down for a moment, but that hunger makes it all too obvious that she has decided as well.

"I do believe that I will."

back

Rapprochement 27

next

9th September

09:47 GMT +1

I back off a little towards my monitor. I have detailed economic and political plans, timelines and cost/benefit analyses, but it's far more important to get agreement in principle. "Teth Adom? Is there some further reassurance you need?"

His face is impassive as he regards me. "It would seem that I do not have an alternative."

"Not at all. Your bail conditions do require that you stay with me, but I am perfectly happy to offer you the use of my home for as long as you need it without any precondition. Getting a state prosecutor to accept that you are not guilty of Theodore Adam's crimes might take a couple of months, and then you would be a free man. In fact-" I take a deliberate step away from the door and pointedly look at it. "-you could choose to leave this very minute if you wanted. I am not bound to pursue you."

"I will not sneak out like a guilty thief."

"Well.. then… If it's me you're objecting to, I can probably talk a member of the Justice League into putting you up. William Batson owes me a favour for saving his life after he lost a fight with Sabbac."

"Who is that?"

"Sabbac was a demonically-empowered champion of Hell. I decapitated him."

"No. William Batson."

"The wizard Shazam's new champion." Teth Adom's hands clench through the table. "He's a good kid, as are his two similarly empowered friends."

"The Wizard-!" Something occurs to him. "Kid?"

"Yes, he's eleven. Frederick and Mary are still ten."

Mister Swift frowns. "You're certain? That.. seems a little-."

"The Wizard uses children?!"

I nod. "Yes, he does and yes, I'm certain. I think he said it was something to do with William being the most moral person the Wizard could find-."

"If he claims that there was not a single adult that could match the moral intuitions of a small child then he is a liar and a monster! He chose children because they would not have the wit to challenge him!"

I nod. "That could be the case. Would you care to see to his education yourself? I could set up a meeting, but I assumed that you would want to prioritise Kahndaq."

Teth Adom takes a few deep breaths as he attempts to regain control of himself. "Yes. Yes. That should be my priority. But the Wizard betrayed me in a way which I cannot forgive. I will have my revenge against him."

"I am not going to insist you give up your vendetta, but I would point out that not only do I not share it, I don't think that killing a man who has so little to do with the world actually helps anyone. I will however help you with Kahndaq. Normalising international relations, industrial development… Anti-corruption work?"

"Why would I not simply fly to the palace of its ruler and slay him?"

Queen Clea makes a scoffing noise in her throat. "Modern states are a little more complicated than that, Teth Adom. Present day Kahndaq has a population of ninety million. Simply slaying the president would create anarchy and most likely make the situation worse still."

"Ninety.. million..?"

I huff faintly. "Adom, the fact that you didn't know that underlines my point. I'm happy to bring you up to speed, but you'll need to hold off until everything is ready. Including you. It's been a long time. You need to learn about the modern world. My Genomorphs are uniquely well equipped to help you in that regard, but, I'm not insisting."

"It-." Adom rubs the fractured wood from his palms and retakes his seat. "It would speak ill of me were I to reject your hospitality when you have made an effort to aid me. I will make a firm decision once I am better informed."

"As you will. Doctor Cranius?"

"I… I would not reject any cooperation, but… I will need to discuss matters wizh Janus unt Crassus before making a firm commitment on a broader alliance. I heff.. only so much time, and a great many demands upon it."

"Not a problem. Alright if I visit you in Aberrance on Tuesday?"

He considers for a moment. "Yes… Zhet shoult be enough time."

Queen Clea leans forward slightly so that she can look him full in the face. "And is there anything the rest of us can do to persuade you?"

Cranius smiles. "Unless you have magics for making more time, I fear that you cannot. Though if you could lend me zhe services of an Atlantean biomancer… Perhaps zhere is an efficiency saving zhet I could make?"

"There are a few people in my employ who may be of use to you. If Mister Grayven could arrange transportation?"

I nod. "But of course."

"I still-" Mister Swift jabs the head of his cane at Lex's monitor. "-want to know what the box's angle is."

"About ninety degrees."

Neither Mister Swift nor myself can prevent ourselves making a sort of gasp-laugh noise at Lex's pronouncement. Oh, there's no way he came up with that himself. No way. He can make jokes, but that sort of off the cuff witticism is not him at all. Or perhaps he used it intentionally to further separate Mister Monitor from Mister Luthor?

Mister Swift bows his head slightly. "A droll observation, but I'm curious. What do you want, and what do you bring to the table?"

"I bring information networks, and what I want is more information. At present, data relating to the most advanced forms of science and magic propagate only poorly around Earth society. I want to learn more, and I want more Humans to learn more. This gathering presents me with the opportunity to spread knowledge myself and ensure that it is spread by the actions of others. This satisfies me."

Ah! Pretending to be an AI! That makes sense. It also gives them a ready explanation for the monitor; if he doesn't have a body he couldn't 'appear' in person. And I don't think he's actually outright lied yet. Lex certainly wants knowledge of advanced technologies to spread. Just so long as he's the supplier.

"Teth Adom, I am already contacting Kahndaqi groups who may be sympathetic to your efforts with a view to assisting you in forming a government post-takeover." Adom nods. "I will contact the rest of you with data I think will be pertinent to your operations as and when I have it. Development opportunities, avenues of research and useful personnel. I have every faith that our work together will be mutually beneficial."

Mister Swift considers for a moment. "Alright, I've got one for you. What is.. Jay Garrick's favourite liquor?"

"He keeps a bottle of five year Glenmorangie whisky in his home-" And the fact that Lex knows that isn't creepy at all. "-but I'm afraid that I can't tell you-" Mister Swift sticks his left hand through a pool of shadows on the table surface and pulls out a two-thirds finished bottle of Glenmorangie whisky. He notes the 'Five Year' label and nods approvingly at the monitor. "-whether that's his actual favourite or not. I don't know everything."

Mister Swift puts the bottle back. "Reasonable enough. If there's nothing else, I'd best make a start on this 'hero' malarkey. Any suggestions on where to start?"

"Caracas in Venezuela is the most dangerous city in the world. In pure efficiency terms, that would seem like a good place to start."

"And it will give me the opportunity to brush up on my Spanish! Marvellous."

"Otherwise, there are a number of active Kobra cells that you might like to target."

"They're like serpentine piñatas! The gift that keeps on bleeding!"

I take a look around my gathered allies. "If there's nothing else?" A few shakes, and no comments to the contrary. "Let's pencil in another full meeting for a month from now. Circe, Adom? If you'd like to accompany me, I'll get you situated."

back

Rapprochement 28

next

10th September

19:47 GMT

Come on come on, where is she?

Maybe it was unrealistic to expect her to come here every day, but I'm on a a deadline and I'm.. getting the impression that Dox is losing patience with me. My recruitment campaign has -within our original parameters- been quite successful. My new Lanterns have been rapidly grasping the lessons I've been teaching. Lantern Yat in particular has grasped the opportunity with both superstrong hands, even if he is.. a bit younger than I really want to recruit. I wonder if he'd like to meet Kon or Kal-El? His friend Tessog was offered the opportunity to stay on, but he was rather keen on getting back home. Understandable, and his home is sufficiently far from the border of Reach space that I doubt we could persuade them to join.

Anyway, my 'mystical' technique has produced better matches than Dox's statistical technique, as confirmed by Hinon. But it has also left me responsible for a country full of blind women with no government, to say nothing of the hundreds of refugees with no medical records. I need someone who wants to heal, and who won't get bored with it after the first dozen.

I need Soranik Natu and I can't afford to soft pedal her any longer.

It's quite unlike my previous visits to Korugar City. With my rings on (under gloves) I can hear the background voices in clear English and as such I'm ignoring them as I would any English speech, rather than compulsively focusing on each borderline nonsense phrase in an attempt to make sense of it. I'm not even trying to act like a merchant or 'recruitment agent', even though -heh- this time I am planning on recruiting someone.

Ah, if the security forces can detect power ring scans that's just too bad. Ring, where is she?

Subject found.

Thank you.

I rise from my seat, nod politely at the waitress as I leave payment -the blank precious metal coins which are the standard way for visiting merchants without local accounts to pay for things- and head for the door. Okay, she's.. at a bar over there…

In for a penny…

I step out, and then back in inside an alley next to the bar before jogging back onto the main street and entering the establishment. Probably harder to detect than a transition, and without the orange glow. Civilian teleportation isn't allowed virtually anywhere in Korugar City, though as far as I know the locals don't have the technology. Ordinarily that would mean that they probably don't have teleportation detectors, but much like 'average speed zones' back home their camera network is perfectly capable of working out that I just covered more ground than should be possible. But since I'm not planning on coming back, there's no need to avoid committing crimes if their detection would require significant time.

I head towards her table as soon as I'm inside. She, Nakkoa and a man I don't recognise are drinking some sort of translucent purple drink from slightly-smaller-than-pint glasses. The man spots that I'm heading their way first, regarding me curiously as I approach. Nakkoa notices that he's seen something, turns to look at me and then smiles before elbowing her fellow doctor.

"Doctor Natu?"

"O-oh." Despite how well our last meeting went, she doesn't look all that pleased to be dealing with me. "Pawl." It was the closest I could do with written Korugari phonemes. "What brings you here? Killed anyone interesting lately?"

"No, they were quite dull. Look, I-."

"And apparently you're now fluent in my language. Or was it another translator upgrade?"

"Technically, a translator upgrade. I really need to talk to you about something. If your companions can spare you..?"

"I'm fine here." She takes a long sip from her drink.

"Okay, look, I was working up to trying to recruit you. I was going to take my time over it, see how you responded… But events have rather gotten away from me and I need to make my final offer now. Can we go somewhere-?"

"You know what? Yeah. Okay." She takes another glug and then rises from her seat. "I've had-" I transition us both to one of the pub's currently unused function rooms. "-about enough-." She blinks at the sudden change in location. "You can teleport."

"Yes. Shall we?" I gesture to a couple of nearby barstools, and after a moment's consideration she selects the furthest and sits down. "Doctor Natu, I recently overthrew the government of a nation which routinely gouged out the eyes of its female citizens upon them reaching adulthood. I desperately need someone-."

"What? Why would they-?"

"Some god or other, apparently. If I ever find them then I'll kill them too, but that isn't the immediate concern. I can give you all of the personnel and equipment you could want, but there's a country full of blind women-."

"You need an administrator, not a neurosurgeon. You'd be better off hiring Nakkoa-."

"You can hire her, if you want."

"And I still have my bond to pay off."

"Done. Anything else?"

"Why are you even offering this to me? You must have thousands of other people you could go to." She realises something. "Including doctors who are actually the same species as the patients."

"I'm an empath. There may be better doctors around, but of all of the ones I've met, you've got the closest emotional makeup to my ideal."

"What's that got to do with-?"

I palm a power ring on my left hand, lay it flat down on the bar and then slide it towards her. "Your signing on bonus." I lift my hand away-

-and she leans away from it as though it were a hissing cobra. "That's a power ring."

I pull off my gloves and allow my environmental shield to brighten slightly. "Yep. I'm an Orange Lantern. And since I don't like the-."

"What makes you think I'd want to touch that thing?"

I hold up my left hand, palm facing her. Then I generate a construct knife and sever my index and middle fingers. I let the wound bleed for a moment before recreating the fingers and disintegrating the severed ones. "There is no greater healing tool in the universe than an orange power ring wielded by someone who genuinely wants to heal people. And while I don't think you like power rings any more than most Korugari, I think that you recognise the utility of such a useful tool."

"I'd be exiled."

"Only if any other Korugari saw you with it. Sector Four Nine Five is a long way from here. No one need know."

Her eyes narrow. "How can you possibly think you know me that well after meeting me twice?"

"Because that's my job. I know things about you that you don't know."

She folds her arms across her chest. "Like what?"

"You know that you're adopted. And since you're a doctor, you almost certainly know that you're a hybrid." A shallow nod. "Do you know what species your other parent was?"

She frowns slightly, shaking her head. "No one knows that. But I guess you think you do."

"Your parents know. You're half Ungaran. And since a grand total of two Ungarans have ever been to Korugar..."

No backing up this time. She just freezes. "No."

"I imagine that they're keeping the information from you because they promised your natural mother. But it's too late; your natural father found out about you years ago. So-" I pat the ring. "-this isn't just about doing the Four Nine Five a good turn. It's also about protecting you. And everyone around you." I smile. "The pay and conditions are generous and you'll get to do far more good than you would in a Korugar City show hospital." I smile at her. "So how about it?"

And that's when she punches me.

back

NEXT CHAPTER

Resolution

BACK

Resolution 1

next

Resolution

12th September

18:13 GMT

Dox and I walk side by side along the upper gantry over Ranx's ventral docking bay. Below us, the dock crew are busy making ready our latest aid transport to Tillettit in Sector Four Nine Five. Most of them are Urrigen natives. Their new government is strongly anti-Reach, and leapt at the chance to join Dox's mutual defence pact. While I've been rushing around trying to make sure that the women I intervened to aid actually have something to look at once their sight is restored, Dox has been working on his war plans. Involving a world the Reach already made a run on is a bit of a risk, but historically the Reach have responded to temporary setbacks by holding off and watching carefully.

"In some ways, this is a useful test of our processes."

"That wasn't why I did it, and I do appreciate-."

"Your primary function here is to train new Lanterns in your methods, so that they remain sane and focused. You have now spent several days not doing that."

"I couldn't very well leave their country in turmoil."

"You did not have to create turmoil. Once you made your initial assessment, you should have realised that intervention would do more harm than good without the application of resources we are ill-disposed to provide in a location far from Reach space."

"They're late nineteenth century at most. It shouldn't require that much to-."

"I ran the social dynamics equations. Their society may not have technically been a theocracy, but it was strongly organised around their religious practices. And now that authority has gone. Violent crime will increase by between one hundred and eighty and two hundred and twenty percent, depending on precisely how well Lantern Coutara can take charge of the situation."

"And in the long term?"

He glares at me for a fraction of a second. "There are too many unknown variables to calculate with any accuracy." He heads towards the edge of the gantry and stands ramrod straight, hands behind his back. "This is a vast investment of time and effort which is unlikely to see any return within the foreseeable future. I do not want this repeated."

I walk up beside him and lean on the railing. "While I'll avoid setting out with the intention of doing something like this, I'm afraid this sort of thing will probably just come with running a Corps of Orange Lanterns. If you ask us to do something we don't want to-."

His eyes narrow slightly. "You will all disobey."

"Part of your job is finding out how to make sure that doesn't happen. I do realise that that won't come as easily as-."

"My Lord Illustres!"

Lantern Coutara zips up to our level and comes to a halt in the air in front of me, her eye sockets still glowing orange. We have offered her replacement eyes, either cloned or cybernetic, but she's turned it down. Made some comment about not being able to get used to them after so long. Which could be a genuine medical thing; I seem to remember that phantom limb syndrome is a result of the brain repurposing bits of itself when areas of input vanish. Her brain would relearn to see eventually, but the ring can show her the world around her immediately.

"Lantern Coutara, I'm not a 'lord'."

She pauses for a moment, then nods. "As.. you say, Illustres. We are ready to depart. It.. seems that my desires relating to my homeland-" Her environmental shield flares as she says it. "-are still sufficiently strong that I am the best choice for creating the required spatial warp."

"Hardly surprising. Are you adjusting alright?"

"That…" She half turns in the air, looking down to where Lantern Taranna is laughing as one of Ratchet's people decides that she's looking down and therefore needs a hug. "Doesn't matter. My daughter is, and that does."

"Have you..? Had a chance to look at the briefing material.. on-?"

"The Reach?" She turns back towards me and nods. "Yes."

"Please understand that our offer of help to your people is not conditional on-."

"No, I understand." She nods decisively. "And once my country is stabilised in a way that is not evil, I will return here to aid you." She smiles demurely. "My daughter is quite taken with the Princesses."

"I thought that they might serve as positive role models." I lean slightly to my left. "And she also appears to be quite taken with-."

Coutara's face sobers. "I will be chastising them both for behaving so in public momentarily."

"Alright, well, dismissed. The sooner you get home, the sooner things start getting fixed."

She performs her people's version of a salute, both hands rising to obscure her eye sockets. Then she flips in the air and flies back towards Lantern Taranna, whose cybernetic eyes widen as she tries to persuade her new friend to let her go in a hurry.

"And then there's that."

I wince. "I.. am her line manager. She does.. strictly speaking.. report to me."

"The entire Corps believes that I am your secretary. That is not what I agreed to."

"Alright. What would you like me to do about it?"

"Go home."

…

"Igd-? What?"

"You have explained your methodology. Lanterns Koriand'r and Komand'r are both perfectly capable practical instructors. Your interstellar teleportation ability means that in the event of an incident you can return here within a minuscule span of time. And I imagine that you will find things on Earth which will keep you occupied without causing me any further difficulty."

"Um. Yes..? What about the missing rings?"

"Controller Vosk Vit Vorlanni believes that he can remotely drain them using the Central Power Battery, or at the very least prevent their use. Construct-rings are apparently different enough from true rings that he can do so without affecting our operations at all."

"And the Ophidian? I was going to supervise putting her in the-?"

"I've already spoken to Hinon; she's ready at the Central Power Battery now." Dox has stopped looking at me. "I will call you when your return is required."

I stand up straight, come to attention and salute, letting my environmental shield flare just a little so that some of the people below will look this way and see me deferring to Dox's authority. "Sir. I will depart shortly."

"Good."

No salute back… Though to be fair, Coluans don't have an equivalent gesture.

Right then. I.. guess I'm going back to Earth.

back

Resolution 2

next

12th September

18:19 GMT

I hold my personal lantern up to my face, staring into the scintillating orange flickers within. This time last year I was dealing with the fallout from my 'contest' with Artemis. Now look at me. Here I am, on the grandest planet in the universe-.

"Having trouble letting go?"

I exhale, then lower my lantern to look at Hinon. "No. Just thinking."

"Is it likely to take long? I realise that Clarissi Dox is supposed to be the brains of the outfit, but I do like to think that the number two man can spark a couple of neurons now and again."

I huff, then step forward to plug my personal lantern into the indicated attachment point. "I just think there should be more ceremony to something like this. We're transferring the Embodiment of Avarice into our Central Power Battery. There should be a parade… Line of Lanterns hailing her…"

"You can have a parade once the Reach is destroyed. How about that?" She waves her hands at the Central Power Battery. "Control systems good, structure sound…"

"That would be a parade of celebration. Being a Lantern-."

"If it makes you feel any better, we didn't have one when we bottled Ion either." She turns away from the Central Power Battery and looks up at me expectantly. "Mm?"

I raise my left hand to my mouth. "Illustres to all Orange Lanterns and Controllers. The Ophidian is about to enter the Orange Central Power Battery. You shouldn't notice any ill effects, but if you do, report them immediately."

Ophidian.

Yes, my Agent?

It's time. The Corps is ready. Not as big or as strong as it will become, but they're ready for you. The Central Power Battery is ready to receive you, and we made sure that you will be able to access our full data stores from inside.

Thank you, my Agent. I will delight in being able to feel every desire my Corps experiences!

And I'm glad you will, but Dox is getting a bit shirty about people calling it anyone's Corps but his, so…

I will be mindful of his fragile ego. At least, I will be once I experience it from his perspective.

"Alright then, I think we're about-."

"Wait!" Hinon and I look around as Kalmin flies into the Central Power Battery Chamber, landing just behind us and holding out some sort of monitoring device. "And begin."

"Well, so long as it's convenient for you…"

He nods distractedly. "It is. Begin."

Ophidian.

I press the interlink button.

Now.

There's a momentary flare in my lantern, then in the connection attachment and then the lights being emitted by the Central Power Battery itself oscillate for a moment before settling down to a new, brighter and faster-pulsing level.

I wait for a moment. "That it?"

"Yes." / "Yes."

I flip the switch again, then lift my slightly duller lantern out of the slot. "Any problems?"

"No, of course not." / "Not yet."

I sigh inwardly as I return my personal lantern to subspace. "Let me know if anything changes. Kalmin, is the item I asked for ready?"

He nods, and holds out a decorative box near-identical to the one which Alan used to keep his personal lantern in. "I was concerned that I wouldn't be able to find a sufficiently strong source of hope to make the connection. Fortunately, those people you gave refuge to have no idea that you brought them here merely so I could study them."

I smile indulgently at him. "I knew that you'd need subjects…"

He holds the box out to me, grinning. "I've murdered a few religions in my time, but I've never had the devotees thank me for it! I knew that you were worth my attention!"

I take the box, my smile probably slightly more strained. "I had.. enthusiastic help."

"It's a curious approach, motivating people like that." He nods. "I never bothered while I laboured for the Anti-Monitor. But I think I like it."

"I'm.. glad it meets with your approval-."

"What have you got there?"

"A present for Alan. Kalmin, will it survive me teleporting? I wouldn't want to ruin your work."

"On its own, I would not recommend it. Not without a Central Power Battery providing additional stability. But I added protective systems to the box; it will endure."

Hinon raises her hands, and a sphere of orange light surrounds us. "What have you lunatics done?"

"Our Illustres taught me of the fearsome power of hope. I spent some time in repose and study, and then I built-."

Hinon regards the box with polite horror. "A blue personal lantern. Archor preserve me, you actually…" She shudders, and drops the orange sphere. "Go!"

"Hinon, what-?"

"Go!" She makes a fanning motion with her hands. "Shoo! Shoo! Before you… Do anything else!"

"Ah… Alright? See you when I see you." I raise my left index and middle finger to my forehead, Goku style, and then step out.

Alright, where's Alan? His desires were always a bit harder to see than most people's. All that green light, and the fact that they weren't a big part of his character.

Huh. That's… Odd. Can't… No, no, no… Ah. Can't feel him at all. Oh well, not as if I'm an expert at this yet. It's midday in New England, so no appearing right next to my friends… Probably shouldn't jump a League member, not when the last thing I did before leaving was kill one of them. Then where..?

I step back into the universe inside a robotic laboratory.

12th September

19:19 GMT +1

Immediately, about thirty turrets pop out of the ceiling, walls and floor and aim at me and Thaddeus Sivana Junior's head appears from underneath some sort of flying vehicle. He takes one look at me and then turns his head in the direction of the doorway.

"DAAAAAD! THE TELEPORT JAMMER'S NOT WORKING!"

"You're perfectly capable of fixing it yourself, Junior!"

"BUT IT'S YOUR DESIGN!"

"I have every confidence that you can improve on it, my boy! Who was the intruder?!"

"THE ORANGE LANTERN!"

"Oh, that's a pity! I didn't think he was too bad! Still, if you can scrape up-!"

"HE'S NOT DEAD, DAD!"

That seems to give Sivana Senior pause. "The teleport jammer and the turrets? Oh dear me. Perhaps I should take a look at them."

back

Resolution 3

next

12th September

19:32 GMT +1

"Keeping yourselves busy, then?"

Thaddeus Junior has gone back to his air car, but Georgia appears far more happy to see me-.

Ring, nothing's gone missing from my subspace pocket this time, right?

Subspace security remains in place. No objects detected as missing.

"Oh, yes. In addition to all the work with creating working versions of the Sheeda technology which Father studied while in the future, I've been trying to model probable modifications we could make to Human society in order to better resist their next Harrowing. You see, we received an offer from-."

"SOFT SUBJECT!"

Georgia turns her nose up. "I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that."

"Ah, I'm afraid that the only social scientist I know who might be able to help-."

She gives me a sharp look. "I don't need help."

"Alright, not.. 'help', but someone who could understand your work at your level and perhaps make pertinent observations. Thaddeus Junior has made his opinion known and I doubt that it's really your father's field."

Georgia considers for a moment, then nods. "No, it isn't. He tries to show an interest, but… You know him. Who did you have in mind?"

"My immediate superior in the Orange Lantern Corps is a genius by the name of Vril Dox the Second. I know that he's been studying social heuristic programming. If you've got a quantum entanglement communicator, or something else that can-"

She nods. "Yes."

"-commun-. Ah, okay. If you give it to me then I'll drop it off on his desk next time I go back."

She frowns. "It's a little big for that. But I can improve it. Give me… Two days."

"Okay. And there's a man in the Greek finance ministry, Professor Demetrios Prokopios. He's not a general genius, but-."

"Ooh, I've read his work!" She grins excitedly. "His secretary keeps screening me! And I could never persuade Thaddeus that we should kidnap him."

"Ah. Well, yes, don't kidnap him. I can either set up a meeting or arrange a phone call, whichever you would prefer."

"Probably a phone call. But I'd be grateful if you could get him to autograph a photograph for me." She.. blushes slightly. "After I read his dissertation of catastrophe theory I… Developed a slight attachment, and-."

"I will certainly ask. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to America."

"I would offer you our teleportation system, but if you've got your own…" She frowns, then pulls a not-tricorder out from her lab coat and points it at me. "Then where is it?"

"I'm afraid that it's an innate ability, but you're welcome to scan me when I use it."

She puts her hands on her hips. "As if you could stop me."

"Ready?" In lieu of a verbal answer she raises her scanner and presses a few buttons. Alright then, armour, invisibility, and step out. Now, aim for Alan's neighbour Mister Davis and step in.

12th September

13:35 GMT -5

I appear in Inwood Hill Park, with Mister Davis walking his dog a short distance to my right. Still invisible? Looks like. Good. I drop to the ground, walk over to a large tree and then walk around it as I send my armour back into subspace. That way, anyone who wonders why they didn't see me will just assume that I was behind the tree last time they looked this way. Then-. I stop for a moment as I look over to Alan's house. It feels a bit… Home-y. I mean, I have quarters on Ranx, but even after I decorated them, they didn't really…

I shrug, and start jogging down the path towards the road.

Ring, dial Alan.

Compliance.

I hear it ringing as I check both ways and then cross the road, pulling my key out of subspace as I go. The gate to his drive is opening before I'm even on the pavement, and I jog up his drive to his front door and insert my key.

"Alan? Are you in?"

I can hear his phone ringing-. Ring, end call.

Compliance.

The ringing stops.

I push the door open and step inside. I hope he wasn't taking a nap or something. "Alan?!"

I frown slightly as I walk through his house towards the kitchen. Not here, not in the garden… There's a small layer of dust on the windowsill. It evaporates as I see it, but it shouldn't have been there in the first place. Unlike pre-ring me, Alan's always very particular about his housekeeping. It's unusual for him not to be home at this time of day, but-.

…

I transition back to Mister Davis. "Excuse me Mister Davis, do you know-?"

He starts as he sees me. "Oh, hey Paul. How's Alan doin'?"

"I-I don't know. I've been away. Where is he, what happened?"

"Oh, ah… I'm not sure exactly. He.. kinda collapsed about two weeks ago? Ambulance took him to the hospital. I'm not on the contact list, so I don't really know-."

"Thank you." Blow secrecy. I transition directly to the foyer of the Allen Hospital, accelerating my perception as I dodge around a man pushing a boy in a wheelchair and run up to the front desk and why am I bothering? I turn my empathic vision up and look around there! Green! I transition again, coming to a halt outside his room before shoving the door open-.

Alan's lying on the bed, asleep and looking like death warmed up. But not actually dead. Okay, immediate panic over. Get-get-get his ring.

I transition back to his house, appearing in his office with my right hand outstretched as I focus my will. Nothing, okay, that was a long shot. I tear open the safe and grab the small box withinyes. Not glowing much, but I didn't expect there to be much power left at this point. Transition back to the hospital.

"Ugh?"

Alan blinks blearily as I reappear, grabbing his right hand and shoving his ring-.

His hand's cold.

"Oh. Paul." He smiles weakly. "You're back."

"Yes. I am."

back

Resolution 4

next

12th September

13:36 GMT -5

He weakly shakes his head and blinks, then pushes himself upright. "I was… Ugh." His arms shake and I don't know whether to offer to help or not. Reaching what he appears to think is an acceptable verticality, he leans back against the headboard. "I was a little worried that I wouldn't.. last… Long enough. So?" He smiles weakly. "How'd it go?"

His ring isn't… Doing anything. Out of power completely, I assume. But since I'm here, that's not really critical any longer. "Fairly well. The Orange Central Power Battery was recovered and transferred to Maltus. Controller Hinon improved it to the point that future Orange Lanterns shouldn't have quite the same problems with the…" I wave my right hand at the side of my head. "Mental effects. I've recruited a few good people, and our Clarissi is organising the whole thing into a military force that will -with a little time and a little luck- be able to hold off the expansion of the Reach."

Alan's head tilts back, his eyes closing. "I'm very glad to hear it."

"We haven't finished building our infrastructure yet, so… Sorry, but building a statue of you had to get put on the back burner."

His smile widens slightly as he returns his full attention to me. "Heh. I don't… I don't need a statue. Just knowing it all worked out for you is plenty." He momentarily raises his right hand. "Sorry. I did follow your advice, but there isn't a drop of power left in it."

"Yes, I see. Um, Alan? I-."

"You meet any nice girls in space?"

"Ah… Yes? Actually, I think I recruited slightly more females than males. Or.. 'other's."

"No. I mean, good, but what I meant was-."

"No, I didn't meet anyone I was more interested in than Jade. And I'm not really a casual.. hook-ups kind of guy."

"J.. ade…" He frowns. "That was the… Asian girl?" His eyebrows rise slightly. "The assassin?"

"Former… Um. Person who was involved in an organisation that did occasionally-."

"I'm not a lawyer, Paul. I'm just.. a little concerned. Getting involved with a supervillain didn't work out too well for me."

"I'm happy to.. bring her round. You can get to know her, and if you still think it's a bad idea… We can talk about it."

Alan's eyes drop for a moment. "I.. doubt that I've got the time I'd need to-."

"I got you a present." I put Kalmin's box on the bedside-. I put Kalmin's box on the bed next to him so that he can reach it without stretching.

"Heh. Hope it's not a long book."

"It isn't a long book."

"Okay." He picks it up, and with visible effort puts it on his lap. "Let's take a look at-" He opens the long side. "-this…" His eyes widen slightly as he looks at what is probably Universe 16's first blue personal lantern. "W-what is this?"

"The Guardians have you on the 'Do Not Recruit' list, no one else can make green personal lanterns without their permission and the only other place I know of with unused green personal lanterns is Apokolips. So that was out. But after I consulted with a few experts, we concluded that you would probably-."

"You-? You got me a blue lantern?"

"I had it made for you, yes. Did you really think I'd tolerate you dying, Alan? I saw a problem, and I worked to fix it."

"I-." His eyes move uncertainly from me to the lantern and then back again. "How does it… Work..?"

"You said I made you feel hope. So I got you a personal lantern that runs on the stuff."

"Paul, I'm…" He shakes his head. "Not getting out of this bed. I-."

"Yes you are. You remember when you tried to separate me from the Ophidian and I told you-."

"You said I was becoming.. living green light. That was why you couldn't heal me after I had that fall…"

"Fortunately, blue light isn't quite as antithetical to green light as orange light is. Literally all you have to do to be well again is point your ring at that lantern and… Hope."

"And… Then what? I…"

"Whatever you want. I can't spend all my time healing people because I can only get properly invested in a certain number of lives. A blue ring doesn't have that restriction. Or… You'll be physically fit enough to become a full time superhero again… If you want."

"I… I don't know what to say…"

"I think it went: 'I will spread my light over dark evil, for dark things-'."

"Did I ever tell you that I only ended up with that because I made a mistake with what I was meant to be saying, and I didn't know how to wipe it and start over?"

I blink. "No. What was it supposed to be?"

"The first part was supposed to be: 'I will spread my light over all things dark and evil', but I got… I don't know, distracted or something as I was saying it. I had to spend sixty years saying something that made no sense with a straight face."

My face creases up as I snort with laughter. "Seriously?"

"Yeah. It didn't come with a user manual. What was I supposed to do?"

"I-. I don't know… But right now you need to come up with a new one. I mean, you'll be fine after you use it, but at the moment you're still dying."

"Oh, I ain't dead yet, son."

The lantern flares, and I stand back as the blue light pours into Alan.

"Oh, not again."

"Connection established. Please stand by."

"Ah?" Alan raises his ring slightly and a pure blue beam connects it to the glowing core of his lantern. "Is it supposed to feel..?"

"Hopeful?"

"Ye-ah."

"Restoring AI support structures. Updating database. Installing AI assistant. Copying communication protocols."

The undulating blue energy gives off a strangely musical noise as Kalmin's update system goes to work.

"Establishing user interlink."

For a second Alan's eyes flare blue, and his skin…

"Restoring innate empathic spectrum energy."

His skin starts to swell as muscle and fat are added beneath it. YES!

"Final checks in progress. Stand by."

One last surge of blue light and the lantern dims back down to normal resting levels. Alan's lantern-shaped ring is now glowing bright blue, and the man himself looks much as he did when I first met him.

"Welcome back, Alan."

"Thank you." He takes a moment to check his rejuvenated arms, then gingerly raises his hands to his face to check for wrinkles. He then exhales as he lowers them. "It's good to be back."

back

Resolution 5

next

12th September

14:12 GMT -5

I fly backwards across New York harbour with my arms folded across my chest as Alan tries to relearn flying with his upgraded ring. "Are you managing okay back there?"

Alan grimaces, then wobbles in the air for a moment before chuckling at his error and stabilizing. "It's taking a bit of getting used to."

"Get used to it quick. Lantern Stewart needs a new sparring partner."

"Oh, great." He accelerates, coming alongside me and forcing me to turn in order to keep facing him. "Boot camp. You know that I'm ninety, right?"

"You're ninety four, but that's okay. Age-related memory loss is now a thing of the past."

"Who did you rope into making this, anyway? I'll have to thank them." Another slight wobble, but he comes back under control immediately. "Maybe wait until I've gotten a better grip on how to use it, though."

"His name is Kalmin, and I'm sure he'd love the chance to watch you use it. He was actually quite interested in how you function as well."

"Is he..? One of those Controller people?"

"No, a Qwardian. And before you say anything, he's going to do less damage on Maltus than he would on Qward."

Alan smiles in bemusement as he shakes his head. "Paul, I've got no idea what a Qwardian is."

Oh, right. Of course he wouldn't. "Then this is an excellent chance for you to learn to access your ring's database."

"Ah, I suppose it is. Okay then, ring." He holds his right fist just in front of his face in a way which I've really got to train him out of. "Why don't you tell me all about the 'Qwardians'?"

"Certainly, Alan. Data burst in two, one-"

"Ah, pardon me?"

"Zero."

A beam of brilliant blue blasts from his ring to his forehead, a shockwave of blue energy radiating away from his head! Alan stops accelerating, going limp in the air.

"Data burst complete. Have a nice day."

I stop too. What did Kalmin-?

"W-? Wh-?" He blinks, then raises his left hand to rub his forehead. "Someone get the number of that bus?"

"Are you alright?"

"Ahh. I think s-. Wait, that's who the Qwardians are?"

"As I said, less damage-."

"On Maltus than on Qward." He nods. "How do I know all of this?"

"Power rings can transfer data into the wearer's mind. Now that…"

He nods. "Mine's been repaired, so it can do that as well. That is going to take some getting used to." He frowns to himself. "Why do I know what their poetry sounds like?"

"Data burst in two, one-."

"No, you knock that off right now."

"Certainly, Alan."

"Mine just gives me information closely related to the topic. I think Kalmin decided that larger amounts of information made more sense. You might have to… Fiddle with the setting a little. Um. Until you get to a level you're comfortable with."

"I'm not complaining. Just… Take a little getting used to." He straightens up, looking around the harbour. "Were we headed anywhere in particular, or just doing a tour?"

"I was planning to see Diana at some point today. I'm not… I'm obviously not happy with how we left things, but there's no massive rush…"

"No, no. I'm not doing anything I really need you watching me for." He turns, looking back towards the city. "In fact… Why don't we go there together? I should probably let her know that I'm not at death's door any more."

"You should probably tell Jay, too."

Alan spreads his arms. "If you can find a pay phone before we hit the embassy." I hold my right hand next to my head and make an eighties mobile phone construct. "Oh. How do I do that?"

"Data burst in two-."

"You, stop that."

"Certainly, Alan."

I dismiss my own construct. "You just.. sort of hope that a phone will appear. You don't need to picture it perfectly, just hold out your hand..."

Alan holds out his hand, his eyes unfocusing a little as… Hah! As a circular dial-faced telephone construct appears with the handset on a cradle on the top. It also has a handle on each side. Odd.

"Ah…"

"I don't think those work without wires. But maybe if you hope really hard..?"

"At least you didn't make a crack about my age."

"You… Sort of made that for me."

Alan reorientates himself in the direction of the Themysciran embassy, then accelerates towards the land while a filament of blue light works the phone's construct-dial. I fly along after him. The last I heard from Wallace was that Jay had fully recovered from his possession, and if Alan didn't say anything then I'm going to assume that there's no update on that.

"It's ringing."

"Ah, the audacity of hope."

Alan lifts the handset to his ear, managing to metaphorically walk and chew gum in a way Jordan still struggles with. "You got any plans for the rest of the day?"

"I was planning to visit Jade... I'm not trying to blow you or.. Diana off or anything, but I… Was in space for two months." Huh. Felt like longer. "I want to… Um. Reregister my interest."

"Oh, it's not a problem. I've got plenty of time n-. Oh, hey Jay. Yeah, I'm out of the hospital. No, no, they were right, but a new lantern fixed me up good as new."

Right. Diana. I'm not angry with her any more, though I am going to be looking for some indication that she wouldn't repeat… That whole thing if it happened again. Wouldn't behave in the same way if someone else got grabbed. People worked hard to split me and the Ophidian up and… The 'me' part of 'us' had far more agency-.

"No, I'd never ask them for something like that. Paul's back. No, we're going to go see her right now."

Totally not still angry about it.

back

Resolution 6

next

12th September

14:22 GMT -5

People back away as Alan and I land on the street outside the embassy, though I think it's more out of respect than fear. Cameras rise and I hear 'cake dude' in at least three different voices as I head for the open gates. At this time of day they're wide open, in what I've always thought was a fairly optimistic way. I wonder how many Amazons have been taking advantage of their ability to come here? I mean, I'm assuming that Diana's arranged some sort of culture shock classes by now…

"Think I should be worried about the whole… Mask thing..?"

"My opinion is that tiny-"

He nods like someone who's heard a point reiterated entirely too often. "Tiny masks are pointless."

"-masks are… Yes, pointless. They are. And.. if you do become active again, people are going to spot that you look a lot like 'that Green Lantern from the thirties'."

"And forties and early fifties."

"Right." I press the buzzer. "Now, I'm happy to redesign your costume as fully enclosed armour that might actually preserve your anonymity, but… Do you really want to look like that?"

Alan considers for a moment. "No… I don't think I do. And.. I… Suppose that at my age a lot of the other reasons for having a secret identity don't really apply. I don't have a civilian job, and… Most of my friends are super heroes."

Alan does have family. His brothers both married, and most of their children are alive -if retired- today. I got introduced to one of his nieces once, and she definitely knew what Uncle Alan used to do in his spare time. But none of them live in New York. And… Well…

"And… I think everyone who might take a pop at your family already knows your secret identity. It was on the Justice League database…"

Alan looks down for a moment. "Mm."

"Who is it?"

Much as I enjoy trying to work out what Ms Candy is trying to say to me, things will go a bit quicker with Alana being on duty. "Alana, good afternoon. Is-?"

"Paul?"

"The.. very same. I sort of assumed that the orange glow and mutters of 'cake' that follow in my wake were a giveaway, but-."

There's a faint 'clunk' from the door as the lock releases.

"Come in, I'll.. see if Her Highness is available."

I smile towards the security camera, push the door and walk through, turning around on the far side to hold it open for Alan. He smiles bemusedly. "I can probably manage doors myself."

"You're welcome."

"Hello." A voice I recognise comes from a room adjacent to the reception area. "If you're here for the language class, it will be-" Mala walks through the doorway with a small pile of files in her hands. "-starting at-" She sees us. "-goddess!"

I stare at her for a moment, then pat my upper chest with both hands. "Not unless they've really relaxed the requirements."

Alan smiles. "Mala. I didn't know Diana had you working here."

"Save for the princess, I am the best English-speaker Themyscira has to offer." She lays her folders down on the front desk before approaching us. "Alan, I was told that you were dying. How..?"

He raises his right hand, ring glowing calmly. "Not any more. Right now, I'm feeling better than I have in-" Mala walks past me to embrace him. "-years."

There's a sound of footsteps as Alana comes down the stairs. "Paul, Her Highness is oh my God-!"

"For sufficiently low standards of god, yes. I-."

"Alan?"

"I'll just show myself up, shall I?"

"Ah-?" She drags her attention away from Alan for a moment. "Yes-. Yes, of course. How-?"

I transition myself up to the corridor just outside Diana's office, then step up to the door and knock.

"Paul, you can just come in."

I open the door.

Diana's in her preferred casual chiton-. No, she isn't. What she's wearing now has a good deal of ornamental embroidery that the one she actually likes doesn't have. And.. she's wearing her tiara. There have been a few additions since I was last here, and my eyes linger for a moment on the photograph of myself and Kon. I frown as I head towards her desk. "You having guests in?"

That appears to wrong-foot her slightly. "Yes, quite a few people have shown an interest in learning of Themysciran history and culture. It means that I am obliged to dress more like a princess."

"Could always just wear the bustier." I sit down opposite her. "I doubt that you'd get any complaints. Oh." I hold out my right hand to the side and take a sword and scabbard out of subspace. "I got this for you."

She reaches carefully across the desk between us. "Thank you. What is it?"

"A qwa-sword. Bit larger than standard to account for your strength. If an opponent can be killed with a mortal weapon, that will do it." I lean forward slightly and open my right palm in her direction in a warding gesture. "But really don't touch the blade to anything you don't want to kill."

She pulls it an inch out of the scabbard, notes the glow of the blade and then returns it to the scabbard and lays it down in front of her. "Was your.. time away from Earth successful?"

"You're looking at the Illustres of the Orange Lantern Corps, so yes." I lean back and smile ruefully. "All thirty three of them. And I didn't run into any problems I couldn't blast my way through."

Diana nods. "Lantern Gardner told us about your attack on Qward."

"Oh, that-" I point to the qwa-sword. "-wasn't a prize of war or anything. It was custom-made."

"Paul." Diana sighs. "I need to talk to you about Alan."

"Yeah, I… Just came from the hospital. That and a stop off to check up on the Sivanas is why I wasn't here an hour ago."

"Then… You know that he-."

"That he's fine, yeah. I really.. sort of wanted to talk to you about where I stand in relation to the League."

She looks at me sadly. "Paul, Alan is dying."

I roll my eyes. "Diana, it took me eight months to work out how to kill a Lord of Order. I had longer than that to work out how to keep Alan alive. Did you really think that I'd tolerate him dying? He's downstairs being stared at by Alana and Mala. He's fin-"

There's a roar of displaced air as Diana goes from a sitting start to maximum flight speed in less than a second, narrowly missing smashing through her desk and actually smashing through her office door in her hurry to get downstairs.

"-e?"

And quietly I hear:

"Ambient hope detected. Charging. Charge: ninety eight percent."

I lean back.

"I'll just… Sit here on my own, then."

back

Resolution 7

next

12th September

14:24 GMT -5

"…staying with me for the time being."

I'm getting more than a few stares as I walk along the streets of Opal City, construct phone gleaming in my right hand. But no one's actually screaming or fleeing. I'm an oddity, but not cause for alarm.

I look down at my suit for a moment. I'd gotten so used to grey that the yellow-orange check pattern is making me feel strangely vulnerable. Heck, maybe that's why I'm getting stared at. People aren't used to seeing me out of my armour.

"I must admit, I'm surprised that you've been so effective." Diana being pleased with me is a novel experience, but a far from unpleasant one. "Whenever I fought her, I found her to be remarkably single-minded."

"She's not some criminal chancer you could talk into rethinking their life. You being alive threatened her core interests. The only way to change her would be to change that dynamic. So that's what I did."

"I did try-."

"Diana, listen. You threaten her core interests by existing. She would interpret anything you say as a ploy, no matter how sagacious. Because that's what she'd do. Only someone who didn't threaten her in that way could make a successful approach."

"And where did this insight into supervillain psychology come from, Grayven?"

I can hear her amusement. "Are you joking? Compared to Apokolips, this is a child's playground squabble. I can't imagine DeSaad becoming so accommodating just because I resurrected his pet Cat, and they're actually a pretty similar age."

"DeSaad had a Cat?"

"Sort of. Not an actual.. Earth-Cat. Kind of a… Purple Wallaby-Sabre-Tooth?" Objective in sight. Knights Past, place of work of antiquer, author and firmly retired superhero Jack Knight. It got rebuilt about three times when he was active, the first time on the day his brother was killed. After what Mister Swift did to the last demolisher, no one's tried since. I slow my pace. "Listen, I-."

"Kon was asking about whether you'd want to rejoin the team." Oohh. That I was.. not expecting. "I said that I'd talk to you about it, if I heard from you before they did."

"Yeah, sorry… You're right. I should have done more than just leave them a message."

"And?"

I stop in the street, my mouth twisting slightly. "Did you ever talk to Guy about why he stopped being a prisoner counsellor?"

"Lantern.. Gardner and I aren't.. particularly close. I think… Hal said something about the two of them being caught up in a prison riot. I could understand-."

"No, it wasn't that. Oh, there was a riot, and Guy laid out three guys when they came after him. Three big guys. Everyone else backed the hell off. Thing is… He liked helping them, even the ones who only saw him so they'd get paroled a little earlier. But hitting them, fighting them? That felt right to him. He told me during one of our anger management sessions that he was this close to just laying into the rest. He left because he couldn't take the risk of becoming that man."

"I.. see."

"I mean, at least Snart Senior was consistent. He didn't play favourites. So… Yeah… If you really need me? Call me. But I don't.. think regularly fighting people I'd be perfectly happy killing… While surrounded by impressionable teenagers… Is.. really a good idea." I shrug. "I'll tell Kon and Mitchell myself, naturally."

"As you wish."

"Anyway, the reason I phoned you is that I need a reference."

"What sort of reference?"

"The best way to keep Lex on the straight and narrow is to give him things to do. So I started looking around for underutilised technology that could benefit humanity, and I came across the Cosmic Rod."

"I remember you mentioning it during your appearance before the Defense Subcommittee. Do you think the Earth needs another weapon?"

"No. I think it needs a new way of generating electricity."

"I knew Theodore Knight, and I don't remember him using it for that."

"How long do you think it will take Lex Luthor to fix that wrinkle when he realises that it will give him exclusive control of the cheapest method for generating electricity on Earth?"

And then I actually get to hear Wonder Woman splutter. I have Found My Cow.

"I tried to do this months ago, but Jack Knight knew I'd had a falling out with the League and hung up on me. I was hoping..?"

"But why do you want to give it to Lex Luthor?"

"Because he needs something to do, just like Circe needs security. Because I can't watch him every moment of every day, and if I don't give him something to do he'll… Tear up the veranda with his teeth, metaphorically speaking. Plus, if we were able to adapt it, it would slash electricity bills everywhere we could put it into operation. To say nothing of slashing corruption and conflict in places selling oil."

"By undermining their main product."

"Plenty of places have perfectly functional economies without selling oil." I look both ways and then cross the road. "Well?"

"I will tell him that you were working for Batman during your time with the Light. Anything else is between the two of you."

"Fair enough." I push the door open and… Whaw, this is some bric-a-brac. Just looks like random detritus to me, but I seem to remember Jack and his writer knowing their stuff. Should probably pick up a souvenir… "Just a moment." I put her on mute. "Ahoy the shop!"

"Just a moment, buddy." I hear a rumble of metal rubbing against metal from the stockroom. "You here for something in particular, or just browsing?"

I actually don't think I'll fit between these shelves. "Yes, but I'd like to purchase a souvenir as well."

"Okay, well, I can-." I see the shadowy outline of Jack Knight as he gets a look at me. "Grayve-? I told you I-. What are you wearing?"

"I thought you liked old stuff." I unmute the phone and send it his way. "Phone for you."

He takes the phone as he steps out of the shadows. This Jack Knight is a lot older than the one I remember from the Starman comics. He's carrying more weight and more facial hair and there's more grey streaks in the untidy mess of hair on top of his head. But it's still recognisably him. "Who is-?" He blinks, standing a little straighter. "Ah, yeah, sure… I think we.- Right." His face creases up. "Batman? No, no, I can see it. Yeah, heh, yeah, he does. Okay, ah, yeah. Good to hear from you."

He hangs up, and I let the construct evaporate. "Huh." He looks up at me. "So, you want a look at Dad's journals and stuff?"

"It would be a start. I wouldn't mind… Actually getting a look at a gravity rod or a cosmic rod..?"

"Heh hah." He shakes his head. "It's funny, you asking about that. When I first started out as Starman, I made Dad promise he was going to work on that sort of thing."

I raise my eyebrows. "If he made any progress..?"

Jack Knight shrugs. "Handed it all over to a high tech development company before he died. If they ever made anything out of it they never told me about it."

I nod. A bit surprising, but I'm glad that I'm not the only one doing this. "If you could give me their contact details? I have.. resources not available to most people. Perhaps I can assist them."

He shrugs again. "Sure, I don't have any problem with that. I always wanted Dad's scientific work to have a bigger impact. But I'm kind of surprised that you're not asking about his starship."

…

I blink.

"Starship?"

back

Resolution 8

next

12th September

14:26 GMT -5

And she left the sword. A supervillain could make a decent career for themselves with a weapon like that. I stand, then lean across the desk slightly to take hold of it. Press down and activate the scabbard-lock, and… She has a safe in here, but it's too small for this sword. I settle for taking a nondeterministic transponder out of subspace and attaching it to the pommel.

I mean, she's had seventy years of seeing Alan walk around. I've been gone for two months after we had a fairly major falling out. Did she not think-? No, no, she honestly thought he was going to die. For some reason. I mean, you'd think after killing Nabu -and Klarion- they'd have stopped underestimating me like that.

Ugh. I leave the sword on her desk and then follow Diana through the door at a more sedate pace than the one she used. At the top of the landing I pause, half-turn towards the splintered remains of her office door and apply a little orange light to restore it to its pre-smashing state. Then I stroll down the stairs with my hands in my pockets.

"…as a fiddle, Diana."

Looks like I missed seeing the Crown Princess of Themyscira tackle-hug Alan, but she still can't quite bear to take her hands off him. Her right hand is on his left shoulder while her left is on the right side of his waist.

"It's… Such a change…"

"I did say."

Diana turns towards me, her left hand coming free while her right hand stays exactly where it is. "I apologize for doubting you."

"Not a problem. Just try not to do it again."

"That may be difficult."

"Princess?" Mala looks… A little smug, actually. Wonder what that's about? "Should I reschedule the language class? If you would like some time with Alan and your student?"

Diana's eyes dip for a moment as she considers. "Paul, are you on Earth for long?"

"For the foreseeable future."

Alan smiles as Diana nods. "And Alan's change of health. Is it-?"

"Permanent, as long as he retains the capacity for hope and keeps his ring charged. His lifespan is indefinite, the same as mine and yours. Alan?"

"Yeah?"

"Try not to get shot in the head."

Alan chuckles. "I can't say I was planning to anyway, but sure."

"Then, no, Mala. I will still be able to attend. But if you-" Diana looks briefly at Alana to include her in the order. "-could give us some time now?" They nod deferentially, then Mala leads the way out of the room. Diana returns her attention to me. "And do you have any particular plans?"

"See Jade? Check out the place for good Orange Lantern recruits?" I sigh quietly. "Normalise my relationship with League members, but… I don't want to…" I stop. "We don't have to do that now…"

Diana sighs as well, then removes her remaining hand from Alan. "The League… Discussed the subject at some length."

I nod. "After Batman sent you all to your corners, Guy said."

"No, after that." She takes a breath. "We.. came to the decision that… We were too accommodating to Nabu. Certainly, we should have been looking for alternative hosts."

"At least." Alan starts to open his mouth, but closes it when Diana glances back at him. "And?"

"There wasn't any consensus on what to do about you. Some.. League members felt that having exhausted all reasonable measures, attempting to arrest Nabu was… If not sensible, at least reasonable."

"Do you intend to tell me who, or should I find out from them?"

"If… If you intend to keep working with the Justice League-."

"Heh." I smile. "Oh, I wasn't expecting my invitation to join to still be open or anything."

Diana takes another deep breath, then lets it out. "No. It isn't." I shrug. "Hawkman spoke in favor, and Major Atom and Red Arrow agreed with him. They believe that once you identified Nabu as an enemy, searching for ways to kill him and using them when he lashed out was a reasonable course of action."

"I guess I know who's getting Christmas cards from me this year, then." Alan winces. "And everyone else?"

"Several… Hadn't taken the time to read all of the briefing documents Batman prepared concerning Doctor Fate."

"They didn't read-? No… Okay, that's fair enough. They're busy people. Do you mean 'Doctor Fate' as in Nabu, or 'Doctor Fate' as in Mister Zatara."

"Nabu and his hosts."

I nod. "And what's the consensus there?"

"Once.. you made your particular interpretation of the facts clear, they… Were displeased with the way we had managed the situation. Though they by and large don't support your particular response, none of them feel that your actions warrant further sanction."

"Fair enough. Tell me who they are and I'll make a point to ask them how they would have handled it better."

"Plastic Man didn't even know that Zatara had been possessed. He-."

"Wait, what? How did he meet Justice League requirements for basic compet-?"

"Paul."

I close my eyes, tilt my head downwards slightly and raise my right hand with my palm towards her, breathing out audibly.

"Atom wasn't aware that Nabu was in full control of Zatara at all times. Icon hadn't realised that Nabu had.. blackmailed Zatara into accepting the position of host. I assume that Guy spoke to you concerning his reasons-."

"Actually, no. I was so focused on building an improved relationship between our Corps that I didn't ask him."

She nods. "Guy was unaware that the host found themselves in a featureless void while Nabu controlled them. He also hadn't realised that Nabu intended to keep Zatara as a host for the remainder of his life."

"You just…" I shake my head and look away. "You just say it like that and it just reminds me why I still hate that bastard Lich."

"Black Canary didn't believe that it was possible to free a host externally. And I think that Hawkwoman would have agreed with you if you had managed to avoid directly insulting her during your diatribe."

"And the rest?" I don't say 'including you', but she'd have to be far stupider than she is not to realise that I'm still wondering.

"For the most part, we feel that you should have communicated your intent to us and allowed us to attempt to persuade Nabu. Particularly given how your choice of Eris as a patron had already made him.. skeptical where you are concerned. Even if you did not believe that most of the League could help, Batman and I were your supervisors. You should have come to us."

"I may well have done so if you hadn't made Nabu a League member."

Diana gives me a shallow nod. "I suppose we'll never know for certain."

"No." I exhale. "But what I'm taking away from this is that no one actually misses Nabu, everyone's going to be reading their e-mails more carefully in future and no one is going to be able to get away with possessing anyone again. Would that be broadly correct?"

"It…" She nods. "Yes, I suppose that it would."

"Then.. I'm.. good." About as good as I could expect. I smile. "I should.. probably go and talk to Batman. Let you get back to work. Alan? See you this evening?"

He nods. "Sure. You don't want me to come along?"

"Ppppprobably best if I handle this myself."

Diana nods. "I believe that he is spending the day in Gotham, but-."

"Oh, don't worry. I've learned how to teleport." I raise my right index and middle fingers to my forehead and step out.

back

Resolution 9

next

12th September

14:31 GMT -5

"Intruder detected. Deploying-"

I don power armour and generate construct armour, then fold my arms.

"-countermeasures."

A laser turret to my right deploys and fires a weak beam at my helmet, aiming to blind me. Rubber bullets and beanbag rounds strike my construct armour to little effect. There's a quiet clang as gas and flashbang grenades land at my feet and a quiet hiss and not so quiet boom as they detonate.

"Batman?"

"Subject has metahuman durability. Escalating."

A metal rope bolas spins through the air and winds itself around me before flaring with electricity. Fortunately, constructs don't conduct electricity unless their user wants them to and it all arcs into the surrounding metalwork. Ooh, I would not want to have to repair that. Next come the low power plasma shots, causing weak ripples across my construct armour.

"Batman, I know you're there. I just came from seeing Di-."

I wince as the crumbler round triggers on my construct armour, destroying the outer layer. My return shot from a rapidly generated railgun smashes the turret responsible to pieces and penetrates the metal behind it, causing two of the nearby lights to go out.

"-ana seriously?!"

"Computer, stand down."

"Standing down."

I look around suspiciously for a moment, then deactivate my construct armour and float in the direction of Batman's work station. The man himself has his hood down… Which actually makes this the first time I've seen his face while he's wearing his costume. He's actually got noticeable mask-hair. It's off-puttingly humanising. It's.. not his Bruce Wayne persona, but I'm forced to relate to him as a person.

"I appreciate that we didn't part on particularly good terms, but I didn't think things were so bad that you were in a 'shooting on sight' kind of mood."

"The cave's defenses weren't set specifically to attack you. Until Diana notified me a moment ago, I didn't even know that you were on Earth."

I land and regard him for a moment. "That was a crumbler round."

"Crumbler rounds are highly effective against a wide variety of targets. As you know." His face remains remarkably expressionless. "I see that you've learned to teleport."

"Sort of."

"And found a way to bypass the wards protecting the cave."

"No, I-. Actually, I didn't try to scan for you. I just stepped out of the universe, looked for the patch of desires I know are you and then stepped back in. Since you're almost certainly only warded from other parts of the material universe, the only way to get around it would be to completely stop wanting things." We look at each other for a moment, though inside him I can see him starting to want a way to block that as well. "How have you been?"

"Busy. Crime didn't stop just because you left the planet."

Fair enough. I leave my armour on, but send my helmet back into subspace. "So… Diana gave me a summary of the League's feelings regarding the Nabu situation. Since your name wasn't specifically listed I'm going to assume you still aren't happy."

"You killed the League's magic expert without giving me any prior warning. Regardless of my feelings about your methodology, that created a major weakness in our ability to respond to magic threats."

"You've had eight years in which to find more magic users than the one you've been relying on. King Orin has dozens he could call upon, and I gave you a list last year. Did Diana speak to Doctor Tolon?"

"Doctor Tolon didn't feel that she could commit the time that League membership requires. The world wouldn't accept a Demon as a League member after the attack on Fawcett City, which makes Doctor Blood ineligible. And the Security Council has stated that they are reluctant to let the Justice League become 'an extension of the Atlantean military'."

"And the others?"

"They are proving somewhat difficult to locate. If you're interested, I would appreciate it if you could help us find a replacement."

"Were you not listening? Depending on one replacement is a bad idea. If you were planning on taking action against Nabu-"

"I was."

"-then-. Oh." I frown. "You didn't mention that."

"You have expressed an awareness of the fact that I have plans to counter the strengths of every League member." I nod. "Developing a method for combating Doctor Fate-. Nabu-"

"Nabu." Oh.

"-required knowledge well outside my normal area of expertise. In addition, I had to contend with the same need for secrecy that you did."

"I still managed it inside eight months."

"Yes. You did. Finding the right people or equipment to perform a task is something you've proven remarkably adept at."

Is he saying… That I out-Batmanned Batman? I guess that's a compliment.

"Okay, anyway… You need at least two. With a twenty one person Justice League four would be better, but…" Huh. She should be around… "I think I can.. get two within a reasonable timeframe. Neither are active superheroes, but they've got the magic skills you need."

"Is one of them the current owner of the Helmet of Fate?"

"Not unless things have gone seriously awry while I was away." Though I am going to need to speak to John… "I don't think… That person would be inclined to join the Justice League."

Batman looks at me, then his eyes narrow slightly. "John Constantine."

"I will neither confirm nor deny any guess-."

"He's a magic user you know well, believes himself to be in debt to Giovanni after the death of Sindella Zatara and has proven himself against stronger opponents on numerous occasions. What I'm not clear on is why he's keeping the Helmet. Or why -if the Helmet is intact- you claimed that Nabu was dead."

"Oh, Nabu's dead. Brain dead. If you read my full-."

"His consciousness was magic-based. Your mana batteries drained it when they overloaded."

"No, they deformatted it. Power still flows from the Plane of Order, but there's no mind present to do anything with it."

His face relaxes as he nods. "Except Constantine."

"I was gone two months. I don't know what he's doing with it now. But he was keeping hold of it when I left."

"Do you intend to return to active duty?"

"I'm the Illustres of the Orange Lantern Corps. I'm always on active duty. What you mean is: do I intend to work for you?"

"If you prefer."

"You asked me to find two magic users and I'm planning on doing it. So it sounds like the answer's 'yes'."

back

Resolution 10

next

13th September

02:46 GMT +3

I walk across the bare earth surrounding Lalibela's famous cut-rock churches. At this hour just about everyone is asleep, but I tread lightly past pilgrims slumbering with their packs for pillows. I should-. Well. Maybe it isn't as important as it was before we killed Nabu, but I wonder if Zatanna would be interested in coming here? I'm not sure exactly what Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity thinks of magic, but there isn't any bar on female visitors. I'm sure that she'd get more out of it than I would.

Maybe she'd like seeing St Mary's as well? I've mostly tried to avoid the place where Westham isn't, but St Mary's still exists and it's nearly a thousand years old. I'll ask. I could understand her having an interest in the history of Christianity, and St Mary's has still just about spent longer as a Catholic church than as a Anglican church. But the point is, I've got no idea why the man I'm here to visit is anywhere near here. He certainly isn't Christian. Ah, not unless the information John gave me is really out of date. I mean, there's no reason why he couldn't have converted. It just strikes me as improbable.

Since I don't want him to just up and vanish as soon as he sees me, I've taken steps to make sure that he knows I'm coming. I'm unscryable, but my Praexis Demons aren't. I'm also.. making a point of lightly touching the desires of the sleeping pilgrims and tourists around me. Not doing anything to them, just making enough contact to ensure that anyone keeping an eye on them would be able to spot that it had happened. Hopefully. At the moment the only things watching me are the Rock Doves.

I mean, what does it say about my life that I can turn up in the Sivanas' lab and nothing much happens, but if I turn up in the Batcave I get shot? Shouldn't there have been some sort of warning? I mean, in other circumstances I'd applaud his preparedness but his computer had at least enough time to identify me after the initial volley-.

I stop.

That's a lot of Rock Doves. Silent, watchful Rock Doves. Like a very old man's Gimball drone. A simple yet intelligent way to bypass my ward. I guess you don't live eleven thousand years without learning to keep watch. Okay, I don't really want to raise my voice…

I head towards the closest tree and look upwards as the Doves carry on looking down.

"I'd like to speak to Doctor Balewa, if that's at all possible."

They blink unintelligently at me, and-.

I look down, seeing that the earth under my feet has rearranged itself so that a path of pressed earth now leads away from me and towards one of the nearby shacks. I suppose that's my invitation, then. I hear a flapping and look back to the tree as half of the Doves fly away and the rest twitch and compulsively preen.

"Thank you, Doctor."

I walk along the path a little faster than before. Nommo Balewa has been around for a very long time. John told me that he's a good guy, altruistic and certainly powerful… But on the two occasions the two of them met he told John that he'd rather never see him again.

John just has that effect on some people.

Mostly the people who've had to clean up one of his messes.

"Come in, young man. Come and speak to me."

I hesitate for a moment outside his door. His accent is a little hard to place; he's wandered all over the world before, though for the most part he has stayed in Africa. If the stories about 'Doctor Mist' are even slightly right then he came from somewhere called Kor, but… Given how old some of those stories are, that could be just about anywhere on the continent. His English is flawless, if a little slow.

"Having come so far, why do you hesitate now?"

I push open the door, seeing an old but still vital man sitting on a camping bed. He's got various tattoos across his arms and on his chest -a few whose purpose I can guess, the rest might be decoration or just.. something else- and a series of dots painted across his forehead. The combat trousers and heavy boots seem a little at odds with his legend, but I suppose there's really no reason for him to have to wear robes all of the time.

"Doctor." I bow. "I hesitate because this meeting is important, and I cannot read you as I do most people."

He nods. "It is not wise to become so dependent upon your supernatural abilities that you lose your capacity to make judgements without them."

I nod. "I like to think that I'm not there yet, but it does take me a little longer."

He nods, then gestures to a camping chair opposite him with his right hand. I sit, leaning forwards with my hands on my lap.

"What can an old man such as I do for a young superhero such as yourself?"

"Normally, I'd… Try to build up to it… But last time I did that my target punched me in the face."

"I am not much given to committing acts of violence against my fellow men." He smiles, pearly white teeth gleaming in the dull light of the overhead lantern. "But I suppose I can understand."

"The Lord of Order Nabu is dead. I killed him."

He nods. "I felt his ending. What was your reason for killing him?"

"He required a host to function. When he takes them, he's in total control of their body. He extorted his most recent host's servitude by holding the man's daughter hostage. And then he refused to either accept my alternatives or submit to arrest. You can… Read my full report, if you want..." He nods. "But his death has left the Justice League without a magician."

He nods again. "And you wish to recruit me?"

"You and… One other. I thought that relying on any one person was a bad idea. Single point of failure…"

He leans back, regarding me carefully as he ruminates on the request. "If you had asked me last year, I would have refused. I have.. a great power." He holds out his left hand and purple not-lightning dances around it, seemingly distorting space as it does so. "And I do not believe that men such as myself should rule over mortal men. I do not like what you and Adom have done in Kahndaq."

"We improved the lives of millions of people."

"By making an immortal demigod their king. A 'single point of failure', as you say. No. Mortal men should rule over mortal men."

"The Justice League don't rule people."

"They go where they like, they do what they like. I do not mean to say that I think that they are bad people; I know that they are not. But they are too… Big, what they are doing is too big, too much. The effect which it has on society is not a good one."

"So… Is that a 'no'?"

He sighs, then sags slightly. "A year ago, it would mean 'no'. But, in a single year, Wotan attempted to block the sun, Klarion divided parents from children and a Titan attempted to drown the world. I have reached the conclusion that if I want there to be any world left for my descendants, then I must participate more in its affairs. So." He stands. "I will speak with the Justice League. And if we can reach an agreement, I will stand with them in the battles to come."

"Thank you, Doctor."

"Just so long as I do not have to work with that man Constantine. He brings misery and discord wherevah he goes. I cannot stend him."

I consider my response for a moment. "John Constantine is not a member of the Justice League."

back

Resolution 11

next

12th September

19:02 GMT -5

Solstice Fitness is unusual in Gotham City in that despite having an ominous name, it actually isn't owned by a supervillain or secret society. The owner/manager is a member of the Gotham Business Association, the legitimate successor to the mob-owned Gotham Small Traders Association. A couple of the staff have criminal records, but since one of them is Paula Nguyen I'm not going to throw any stones. Selina and Holly come here too, though when last I asked Artemis didn't.

But Jade does.

Doctor Balewa said that he wanted to contact the Justice League on his own, so I took the hint and left the runner-up in the Oldest Living Human competition to get some sleep. That's the thing about using wards: while they do protect you from minor magics, from the point of view of an ancient magician all they do is shout 'there's something interesting here' really loudly. Doubly so if you're using one in a location where hardly anyone uses wards, like Gotham City. I assume that Batman…

Should I still be calling him that? He isn't my controller any longer. I mean, obviously I'd call him that when we're on duty or on a mission, but in a secure environment or in my own head… What should I call him? I guess.. 'Mister Wayne' being three syllables means that 'Batman' wins out over it. Calling him 'Bruce' would just be weird. Or is it? I mean, I'm pretty sure that's what Lex calls him and Lex has tried to kill him at least once. As Bruce Wayne. I wonder if he'd call Batman 'Bruce' to his face just to needle him? No, of course he would, but 'as a matter of course' or 'if it were useful in a specific case'? Oh, I'll just stick to calling him 'Batman'. I doubt that I'll be spending any time with him socially.

Anyway, Bruceman-.

…

Anyway, Batman has almost certainly realised that, and then gone on to realise that a magic user powerful enough to do that isn't going to find it all that hard to work out that Batman = Bruce Wayne anyway, so he might as well encourage them to teleport into somewhere with automated defences.

But enough of work. I'm here for something personal. Jade doesn't work Mondays, and at this time of day she's usually having a post-exercise massage, and.. she's there now. While her masseur is currently heading home early because an orange-glowing stranger offered him $2000 to go home early. After I got my ring to record his vocal cadence and the pattern of his footfalls.

This is either a really great idea, or a terrible idea.

I push open the door to the massage room. Jade doesn't even bother looking up. I can barely imagine the Jade I first met not carefully watching the door of any room she found herself in. "Hi there, Jade."

"Hey Todd."

Or disarm hers-. No, she hasn't locked her locker and there's a knife-. Under the towel she's laying on. She's still wearing her knickers, but aside from them and the towel covering them she's naked.

My word, she's beautiful.

"Anything in particular you want me to work today?"

"My neck."

"Sure, I can manage that." I stick my right hand under the spout of the industrial massage ointment bottle next to the bench and squirt a blob onto my fingers. Then I approach the right side of the massage bed, rubbing my hands together to spread it over both of them. "Tough workout session?"

"Too much time on the uneven bars."

Too much time parkouring across Gotham with Selina, more like. Rolling might deal with momentum without breaking your legs, but it doesn't do much for your spine. I lay my hands on her shoulders for a moment, then gently begin spreading-.

And there's a knife against my throat and Jade's glaring at me, towel held over her breasts. "Did you th-?!" She stills, staring into my eyes. "Paul?"

Ring, dismiss mimicry program.

Program dismissed.

I smile, ignoring the knife. "Good evening."

"You're back."

"Yes, yes I am."

"What happened to Todd?"

"Went home early. I thought I'd surprise you. How'd I do?"

"Somewhat surprised." She lowers the knife. Slightly. "Todd's been my masseur for a while. Your hands feel different from his."

"I'll bear that in mind should I feel the need to masquerade as your masseur in the future."

She leans lack slightly, shifting her legs into a more comfortable sitting position and raising her eyebrows. "Did you want to surprise me, or did you just want an excuse to put your hands on my naked body?"

I smile. "Why can't it be both? I like to think that I've made no secret of my interest in you, naked or otherwise."

"All finished in space?"

"More… I annoyed my boss so much that he sent me home. But I'm going to be able to stay on Earth for a while."

The ghost of a smile appears, which she does her best to conceal. "And all the green-skinned space girls could bear to let you go?"

"While I have met green humanoid females, I didn't.. become involved with any of them."

"Are you going to make me guess the colour?"

"One or two orange-skinned Tamaranians expressed an interest. I.. turned them down. Oh, and a blue-skinned Okaaran with a fairly impressive set of-" I make a curving gesture with both hands. "-tusks."

Jade tilts her head downwards slightly and raises her eyebrows. "Tusks?"

"And she was seven feet tall and five feet wide. I mean…" I shrug. "Perfectly attractive by Okaaran standards-" I lean towards her slightly. "-but not really my thing. How about you? Meet any nice Earth boys?"

"None worth more than two dates. Hm."

"What?"

"I just thought half the reason why you said 'no' before you left was so you could have some fun before you came back. And the other half was that you didn't know how long it would be. But you didn't, and it's only been two months."

"If I'd known it would only be two months…"

"You really didn't have any sex at all?"

Uum. I pull away slightly. "What..? Exactly counts?"

She raises her eyebrows. "If you have to ask, it probably counts."

"Uuugh." I look away for a moment. "Well it… It didn't… Do anything for me, but…"

"Now I'm curious." Jade looks amused by my discomfort. "What didn't do anything for you?"

I avert my eyes for a moment. "She said they were spiracles."

Jade blinks, then frowns. "Spiracles?"

"They're what.. insects breathe through. Spider Guilders don't really-. They're not exactly spiracles, but that was the closest translation. And… She needed anti-chafing cream applied-. And the back one was okay, because that actually was a spiracle-."

Jade's expression has sort of frozen. "Uh-huh."

"But then I got to the gap between her second and third sets of legs, and the hole looked a little different? But she didn't say anything?"

"Oh God."

"So I thought, 'okay, just carry on', and... Now all of Vega thinks I'm a macroarachnophile."

Jade's mouth sort of opens and closes a few times. "Oh-h…"

"But that was it, and like I said, it didn't do anything for me and I didn't even realise it was sexual at the time. Moving-"

She nods. "Yes."

"-swiftly on, I am a fully trained humanoid masseur, so would you like me to finish your session? And then.. we could.. go and have dinner somewhere?"

"Are you actually asking me out?"

I lean further forwards, and kiss her lightly on the lips. "Yes. I am. So?"

She puts her knife down, and twists so that she's lying face down again. "My neck could use some attention."

"Ok-."

"And my inner thighs."

I grin. "Happy to be of service."

back

Resolution 12

next

13th September

Something's buzzing

I open my eyes, the blackout curtains covering the window of Jade's bedroom maintaining their dutiful watch against the encroachment of the day.

Bzzt. Bzzt.

Jade's still dead to the world, face down in the pillows next to me. She doesn't appear to have curled up against me in her sleep, but she was pretty tired-.

Bzzt. Bzzt.

I lean up slightly and sight her phone on the bedside table, then transition out of bed, pick it up, and then transition into her kitchen.

Bzzt. Bzzt.

I look at the phone for a moment.

07:23 GMT -5

Artemis, right. I press the answer button and hold it to my ear.

"Good morning."

"Hey Jade. Arte wants-." There's a pause as Wallace's brain readjusts. "Oh El?"

"Wallace. Good morning."

"Ah, yeah, hi. How long have you been back?"

"A few hours short of a-"

"Is she ready yet?"

"-day. I was meaning to-."

"Hold on a sec. Artemis, Oh El's back."

"Why's he answeringohmyGod."

I look slightly nervously around the kitchen. Jade moved out of Holly and Karon's house shortly after I left. I suppose this is more convenient for work. "Um."

"Heh. Pretty smooth, Oh El."

"It's not like we hadn't been… I mean, we've spent a lot of time together during the past year."

"Oh, I wasn't trying to say you were easy or anythi-."

"Give me-! That!"

"Um."

"Hey Paul."

"Ow! Careful!"

"Good morning, Artemis. How have you been?"

"Ah, yeah, I'm good. Uh, so… You and Jade, huh?"

"Yes." I walk over to the closest cupboard and pull the door open. "You don't know what she eats for breakfast, do you?"

"Ahh-I think she just has a coffee before we go running. Is she.. there?"

"Yes, but-" I glance back towards her bedroom, sniffing the air. Probably.. should do a quick ring-clean of the place… "-she's still asleep and she was pretty tired-."

"Oh, ew!"

"Be.. cause we were out late… Cccatching up?"

"Yeah, that's not gunna stop me seeing-."

"Err…"

"Ask him if he's going to come 'round the mountain this afternoon."

"Wally wants to know if you're coming to the mountain this afternoon. Or.. at all, I guess."

"What? Why wouldn't he-? … O-kay."

"Um… Yes, I.. plan to. Batman's got me chasing down-."

"You've.. spoken to Batman? I mean, since you've been back?"

"Yes, and I've got the electrified anti-metahuman bolas to prove it."

"He shot you?"

"Batman shot Oh El? What's going on?"

"No, Batman's automated defences shot me after I teleported into the Batcave. There wasn't any specific malice."

"Oh, okay."

"What's okay about that? Gimme the phone b-."

"Ggh!"

"He wants me to find a couple of replacements for Nabu-. Um, as League magic users, I mean. I already knew about one but the second one's going to take a bit longer. I don't think it's really… I'm not going to be moving back in or anything at least until I've finished doing… Finding her." … "Are you still-?"

"Yeah! Still here."

"Totally unfair."

"So who'd you get?"

"Batman… Ah, and the rest of the League, they haven't approved it yet. But he's an African man called Nommo Balewa. He sometimes works under the name 'Doctor Mist'."

"I've… Never heard of him."

"How many African superheroes can you name?"

"Ah-. Ssseven?"

"Really?"

"Rocket did a lecture. She didn't mention him."

"Mention who?"

"Some African guy called Doctor Mist."

"Who? No, it's Oh El, there's no way I'm gunna have heard of them. I'm gunna go look him up."

"He's powerful and non-interventionist. And doesn't need a host-slave. And I think he's actually older than Nabu was. Ah… Maybe."

"'kay. Who's the other one?"

Yeah… "You remember Satanus, right?"

"Heh, the Devil Jizz guy?"

"Yeah, that's the one. He's the son of the wizard Shazam and a Succubus."

"Really?"

"Shazam spends all of his time on his own in a magic rock fortress. And if you're a powerful enough wizard to get away with it without getting your soul ripped out…"

"Okay, ew again, but so what?"

"He's got a sister. And they hate each other. And she was friends with Adom. So if Satanus has made new friends-."

"You think she might want new friends too. Huh. It's… Kinda twisted. But I can see you doing it."

"Thank you."

"So… Is she a superhero, or..?"

"Last I heard, she ran a nightclub and did some 'magic for hire' work. But… Guarantees about her behaviour can be part of our negotiation."

"Wait, is he talking about Blaze? Ask him if she's hot, because-."

"You better not be-!"

"I'll.. talk to you later?"

"O-okay. See yah."

I take a look at the phone to make sure it's off, then put it down on the work surface. That went okay, and it was nice to hear-.

There's a knock on the door.

Ah..? Oh, it's Paula. I walk over and open the door. She blinks at me in mild surprise. "Good morning, Paula."

"Hello, Paul. Are you joining us for our morning run?"

"Run?"

She nods, and I notice that she's wearing tight-fitting sportswear. I do good work.

"Yes. Artemis, Jade and I have been running together-."

"Oh, Jade's still asleep." I point my right forefinger in the direction of her bedroom. "I don't think-" Paula raises her eyebrows. "-she's going to be…"

I look at her.

She inclines her head slightly and raises her eyebrows a little more.

"I shouldn't have said that, should I?"

back

Resolution 13

next

13th September

08:11 GMT -5

"Of course." I find myself nodding, even though there's no way that the man on the other end of the construct phone can see me. "That's fine. Teth Adom is a busy man."

"In your case, if it is an emergency, I can-."

"No, it's not. I'm just trying to get into contact with a friend of his and hoped that he could point me in the right direction. It isn't urgent. Just… Pass that on when the meeting's over."

"Of course, sir. Um, would you like to give me the friend's name?"

I wonder if he realises exactly how few friends Adom has in this era? Particularly ones I wouldn't know how to find. "Probably best if I don't. No offence intended, but the fewer people who know…"

"Not a problem, sir. I understand completely."

"Thank you. Have a nice-" A dressing gown-clad Jade walks awkwardly into the kitchen. "-day."

"Thank you, sir. You as well."

I dismiss the construct and rise to my feet, arms wide. "Good morning, oh-!"

"Just-." Jade raises her right hand in a warding gesture. "Just give me a minute."

"Um." She walks over to a cupboard and opens it, pulling out a mug and a jar of instant coffee. "Okay?" Next, she switches on the kettle and opens a drawer to take out a teaspoon. I note that her arms aren't straying much from a folded, defensive position. In fact, she seems to be doing everything a bit gingerly. "Jade..? Are you… Alright..?"

Two teaspoons of instant coffee go into the mug as the kettle comes to the boil. "Tired and.. sore. I wasn't expecting… Some of that."

"Oh." Um. "Ssorry?" I raise my left hand. "I can-."

"No." She half-turns my way. "No, that's… That's fine."

"Are you sure? Because you don't look fine. Um. Are we far enough into our relationship that I can say that and-?"

"I… Know how I look." She picks up the kettle and pours hot water into her mug, then puts the kettle down and gives the coffee a stir. "I wasn't…" She stops, looking down as she works out what she wants to say. Perhaps… Playing for time, she turns away again and awkwardly bends down to open the fridge door and pull out a small container of milk. She then straightens up and puts it down next to the cooking mug. Only then does she turn to full face me. "I… I didn't think you had much sexual experience. I think I assumed that I'd be taking the lead-."

"Oh, I don't."

She raises her eyebrows slightly. "Really?"

"Any, actually."

Her face falls slightly. "Any?"

"Well… Assuming that you don't count the.. Spider Queen." I nod. "That was my first time having sex. I mean, I'd done research, but-."

"Oh God."

"So..?" I wiggle my head side to side. "How'd I do? I didn't expect to get everything right first time, but I'm always willing to accept feedback."

Jade picks up her mug and holds it up to her nose, breathing in the scent for a moment. She closes her eyes and controls her breathing. "I wasn't expecting the power ring."

"Most people don't. I mean, for most of power ring history there were only Green Lanterns, and the level of mental focus they'd need means it isn't really practical for them to use it like that." Huh. "I mean, there are probably a few-."

"I meant-. I wasn't expecting what you did with it."

"Jade… The spirit is eager, but the flesh is that of a male humanoid. I couldn't have done most of that without-."

"And I don't remember you…" Her eyes widen slightly, not looking at me. "You didn't..?"

"Didn't what?"

She transfers her mug into her left hand and picks up her milk carton in her right. Then she… Twists her wrist so that milk splashes out into the coffee. Then she raises her eyebrows slightly in my direction. Then she spills another splash of milk into the coffee.

Why is sheoh.

"Um. No."

"Oh God."

"You see… You… Sort of..."

"Oh God."

"Stopped… Responding near the end of the second hour-"

She puts mug and milk down and brings her hands to her face. "Oh God."

"-and I don't really know the etiquette, but I thought… Carrying on wasn't really-."

"Oh God."

"Jade." I take a step towards her. "Jade, it's fine."

"Ohhhhh." She semi-flops against my chest as I gently put my arms around her waist. "Uuuugh."

"Too much?"

She takes a couple of breaths with her face against my chest. "Next time, you don't use your rings."

Next time. Which there will be. Good-oh. I nod. "I'm perfectly happy to not use my rings. And.. um… If you don't want me to deal with the… Soreness, with my rings, I have a purple healing ray?"

She manages a somewhat fragile smile. "Not going to offer to kiss it better?"

"My kisses don't have any particular healing properties. I'm happy to try, but… To be honest, that would probably just make the situation worse."

"Mpf." She pulls back slightly, and I release my hold to allow her to pick up her coffee. "Did Mom come by?"

"Sheeeee did."

She takes a sip, watching me over the rim of the mug. She's smiling as she swallows. "You told her I was still asleep, didn't you?"

"Yees, I did. And.. Artemis phoned."

"I wasn't planning on keeping this a secret, Paul. Mom and Artemis both like you. And you certainly weren't my first."

I nod my head to the side. "Anyone I need to worry about?"

"I wasn't with either of them for long." She walks around me and pulls out one of the chairs around the table. "And I haven't thought about them much, either. I suppose they're either dead or in prison after the League of Shadows was shut down. Given how I wasn't picked up, I think they'd probably come after me before you." She puts her mug down on the table and then carefully sits and jumps back to her feet a second later, her buttocks clenched. "I think I'll stand."

"The purple healing ray-." I take it out of subspace and put it down on the table next to her mug. "I'll just leave it here. Use it.. if you want."

She gives me a look of combined amusement and irritation. "Thank you."

"Um. Speaking about your mother… Is there a… Good time to introduce you to…"

She frowns slightly. "Your family?"

"No, my family is on Earth Prime. But there are.. people… I'm close to. Who I'd like you to meet."

"I'm drinking this, taking a shower and then going back to bed. But.. my next day off is next Sunday. I could meet them then?"

I walk up to her and kiss her gently on the forehead. "That would be splendid."

back

Resolution 14

next

13th September

08:17 GMT -6

I press down on the writhing carapace of the horror beneath me, doing my best to keep my head away from its flailing raptorial forelegs. Perhaps the most disturbing part of this is that rather than chittering or screeching as I'd expected, the abomination is near completely silent as it tries to bring its natural weapons to-.

Gughuh! And it reminds me with a spray of toxic gunk from its spinnerets that it's anything but natural.

I turn to the observation window. "Do you need samples of this as well?!"

Cranius raises Otto's hand to his mouth. "If it is not too much trouble!"

I nod, taking a syringe in my right hand and doing my best to suck up the larger congealing pools. Insectoid Unmen. I have no idea what Arcane was thinking when he made these and frankly I'll be perfectly happy if I never do gain that sort of insight. This poor bastard used to be Corporal Frank Cruz before his disastrous assignment to General Sutherland's research project. Real zombies don't have infectious bites. In fact, they usually won't bite at all, lacking the animating spirit from which normal people derive motivation. These things on the other hand are totally infectious, symbiotic cells in their blood, digestive systems and venom glands straining with all their might to turn any animal they come into contact with into more Insectoid Unmen.

I turn my head aside and spit, a wad of transformed Unphlegm flying from my mouth. It has.. veins growing on it, the mass twitching as it attempts to develop a heart beat. My divine resistance is enough to prevent my body being transformed, but anything else…

I slide the syringe back into my armoured holdall, then take out another. This one is a bit tricky, and there's next to no chance that the creature itself will cooperate. Extreme option, then. I lift my hand from its thorax, braced for it to start writhing again. There's a token wriggle, but I think even its animal intelligence has worked out that it can't throw me from this position. Okay, step two. I slam my fist forward, striking it directly on the vertex. Nothing like a full strength hit, but hopefully… Yes, its eyes aren't focusing on me. I shove the needle into its mouth, piercing its venom gland and sucking a syringeful out.

Okay, done. I activate my aero-discs and rise off its body, forelegs swiping at me instinctively but being harmlessly turned aside by my armour. Well, that was revolting. I send a wave of orange light over myself to burn away any lingering goop. Mother Box, boom tube.

BOOM!

I slide the venom syringe into my satchel as I fly through, shutting the tube down as I land on the observation platform.

Cranius turns around on Otto's shoulders to grin at me. "Excellent work, my boy! Usually taking samples from zhe insectoids takes us weeks and costs us a great deal in equipment."

I unclamp the satchel from my armour and hold it out. "Happy to help, Cranius."

"Unt… You are not suffering any… Ill effects?"

Oh, my mouth is dry. Mother Box?

Ping.

Ring?

No abnormalities detected beyond the usual.

Huh. I think it might be learning bad habits from Sinestro.

"No, none that I can detect."

Otto turns around to face… To chest me and takes the satchel before walking in the direction of the stairs back into the main part of the Uncorporation headquarters. Cranius manoeuvres himself so that he can look back at me as Otto ascends. "I am very glad. You, I zhink, would be an even more troubling specimen zhen zhey are."

"I'd like to think so. What.. do you intend to.. use that for?"

"Eh, a back burner project of mine. I do not zhink zhat reversing zhe effects after zo long would… Be of use to zhose poor unfortunates. But, if anyone were infected in zhe future, possessing a way to arrest zhe changes would be wizhout price."

"And it would serve to improve your understanding of Doctor Arcane's workings."

His face twitches slightly. "Even I would stop short of creating somezhing like zhat."

"Glad to hear it." We leave the insectoid vault proper and step into the airlock, an entirely sensible precaution against airborne toxins and transmutative agents. And people trying to come back through without knowing that they'd been infected. The inner door clanks closed behind us and Cranius hops onto his perch while Otto begins stripping himself of clothing. "And your work more generally?"

"Zhe next round of zhe implantation procedures begins on Wednesday, unt zhen I will be fully occupied with zhe testing." He strums three fingers. "I am… Finding it an adequate replacement for zhe uncreation." He looks me over. "But… Zhis is not a purely social visit, no? You want my answer."

"I want to give you the opportunity to ask any questions so that I could allay any remaining concerns you may have."

"I…" He looks down for a moment. "I will be honest wizh you: I am minded to accept wizhout furzher qualification." He looks up again. "For zhe work you have done for me, for us, and zhe opportunities you have provided for us… I owe you zhis. And I believe zhat it will benefit us to continue zhis relationship. However."

"Yes? Please, any reservations-."

"I have no knowledge of my own expiration date. I could drop dead tomorrow, or… I could still be as I am a century from now. If I am to devote myself fully to zhis great transformative work you would heff me perform… I need to know zhat my people can continue wizhout me. My… Students are capable unt my brozher Crassus is skilled… But zhey do not have my experience, my insight."

"If you need me to go looking for more of Arcane's books..?"

"No." His neck bulges briefly as he passes more air through it, sighing. "At zhis point, zhere is little more a written text could teach me. Razher… Zhere are two.. furzher… People, who might lend zheir efforts to my work. I know where one is unt where zhe ozher was, but zhey are both beyond my reach. If you could get zhem, persuade zhem to come here…." He nods. "Zhen I am your man."

"Alright. Who are they?"

Cranius smiles in satisfaction. "Many of zhose… Zhe papers call 'mad scientists', zheir work has no obvious predecessor. In science, we are always standing on giants' shoulders, but sometimes… Zhat freeze ray you are so fond of. It is contrary to everyzhing in heat physics. Mister Snart read some zhings und zhen 'poof', it just appears in his mind. Arcane… It was nearly zhe same, but! Zhere was one man whose research he sought after and acquired, one man who inspired him."

"Victor Frankenstein."

"Jah. Yes. Frankenstein himself had long since died in zhe arctic circle, unt he destroyed many of his own records… But in his creations lie zhe secrets of his work. Find zhe creature or zhe Bride, unt we will heff zhat. Zhe last record we heff for zhem is zhat zhey worked for zhe American government during zhe Second World War. Your contacts in zhet area are better zhan mine."

Looks like I'm going to have to talk to Katarina again… "Okay, I can probably manage that. Who else?"

"Doctor Arcane had no true friends or peers… But for several years, he had an assistant. An Englishman wizh whom he had a certain… Familiar relationship. He came to us in zhe fifties, stayed for several years. Zhey parted on good terms."

"That… Really?"

"He was a somewhat unusual man himself. His name was Grymleigh Gartside Fiendstein, unt he continued his work after he returned to England. He is currently in zhe special prison underneath zhe Tower of London."

Well, I was planning on overthrowing the British government anyway… "What was he convicted of?"

"Robbery, arson, murder unt gross indecency." I raise my eyebrows slightly. "What? You zhought a friend of Arcane's would be a 'nice man'?"

"Probably not. On the other hand, I doubt that an eighty year old is much of a threat to anyone. Are you sure that he's still alive?"

"No, but his crimes had a certain notoriety unt zhere has been no announcement. I hope."

I nod as the exterior door opens. "I can't make any promises, but I'll see what I can do."

back

Resolution 15

next

13th September

08:32 GMT -6

Harleen looks at me with considerable scepticism. "You rilly wanna see him?"

I nod. "Yes, I really do."

"'Cause this ain't gunna be like with Kadabra or Tommy an' Tuppy. I don't think this guy's evah gunna change. I mean, I ain't givin' up or nothin'-."

"But he doesn't have the same sort of deep-seated psychological issues as the others, considers mercenary work a career in which he's had considerable success and has multiple life sentences so there's no reason for him to cooperate with prison authorities unless it gets him closer to pulling off an escape."

She looks thoughtful, then nods. "Yeyeah, you pretty much gawt it."

"I don't think I'm going to rehabilitate him either. It's just-" We turn the corner, and I see Warden Waller at the entrance to the interrogation room with a couple of armoured heavies. "-that there's one or two things I need to say to him."

Waller's eyes narrow slightly. "I hope you've got a better reason than that for wanting to talk to Sportsmaster." For a fraction of a second I consider telling her my actual reason. "And don't think I don't know he's your convict girlfriend's father."

"I'm not going to stab him, if that's what you're worried about."

She screws up her face. "What?"

"Warden, Jade hates him. If I helped him in any way, she'd dump me. If I did something that impacted on him adversely, she'd be gratef-." I catch sight of Harleen rhythmically poking the inside of her cheek with her tongue. She stops when she notices me noticing. "Be grateful."

"'least you're not trying to pretend you're not involved with her any more."

"That's a.. recent thing, actually. So… Are you letting me in, or..?"

"You know what I found out about five minutes ago?" Oh dear. "I found out your Justice League permit got cancelled." She looks.. mildly satisfied. "Which means you can't just demand to talk to prisoners whenever you feel like it."

I nod. "That's… True. However, I was under the impression that you.. didn't have a problem with my scheduled visits."

"No, I don't have a problem with your scheduled visits. Prisoners who behave themselves are entitled to those. I have a problem when you turn up and expect to be able to see the most dangerous man in Belle Reve with half an hour's notice."

Most..? Ah, yes. With the power suppression on he probably is. Not just for his physical abilities and combat experience, but for the fact that I'm sure he has every aspect of Belle Reve operation memorised. "I.. can see that I've rather taken advantage of your hospitality, and I apologise." She looks.. mildly less disgruntled. Mildly gruntled? Huh, actually yes, that is the correct usage. "If you'd rather I didn't speak to him, then I can… Just leave. Has he caused you any trouble?"

"He's getting the inmates organised. Watching my guards, recording shift patterns. And we only found out thanks to a random cell check. And unlike the rest of them-."

I nod. "He knows how to fight without super powers. But nothing… Overt?"

"Not yet."

"If it helps, my empathic abilities might give me a clue about what's going on." I smile at her.

"He's trained to resist telepathy."

"Perhaps, but I doubt that he's trained to resist empathy. I won't be reading his mind, I'll be taking a look at his soul. It can be remarkably informative."

She nods. "Okay."

"You know… In future, if you want me to do things for you, you can just ask?"

"I'll bear that in mind." She steps aside, turning to the guards as she does so. "Open it up."

The outer door is armoured -though not to 'Superman-proof' standards- and is designed to resist prolonged assault by someone hopped up on regular Venom. Someone on Venom Buster or the original Blockbuster wouldn't fit in the passageway. I stand still and wait for the heavy metal locking mechanism to clamp into place, then the inner door swings open.

Mister Crock is thoroughly chained to the floor-bolted and welded seat set in the centre of the room. He regards me with mild disinterest, though he does make a point of keeping his eyes constantly trained on mine in an attempt to unnerve me. Fortunately, I can tweak my awareness so that I just register a sort of blur where his eyes are, and as a result the usual instinctive nervous response just doesn't trigger. I could just tweak my brain to achieve a similar result… But I'm still trying to cut down on that sort of thing.

"Good morning, Mister Crock. How have you been?"

There's another seat for the interrogator, as well as a clearly painted 'DO NOT CROSS' line around the prisoner seat. I walk across it, generate a construct chair within arm's reach of him and sit down.

"Biding my time."

"No offence meant, but I am a little surprised they haven't executed you. Given the plethora of capital crimes you've committed."

He graces me with a small smile. "Prove it."

Ring? Oh, seriously? Now I get the whole 'no witnesses' thing. It's not just professionalism, is it? No one alive to bear witness means no one who can be called to the stand to prove you did something. Sure, prosecutors know he was there when people died, but proving he killed any particular person within US jurisdiction… And I doubt Paula's going to give testimony.

Ah, what the heck. Short of a small war, he's not getting out of here before his death anyway. I narrow my eyes slightly and gaze deep inside him. Given the.. green, I suspect that he's doing the whole counter-telepathy mental exercise thing. Not that he'd think I could-. Oh, of course; a telepath in the observation room adjacent to this one would be a risk. Okay, from what I'm seeing he doesn't have a specific escape plan, just a way of keeping everyone organised to take advantage of any opportunities that emerge. Fine, I'll tell Waller.

I take a holocube out of subspace and toss it behind me, blue strobes flashing out as it scans the room and then projects a false image to anyone watching. Next, I have my rings start lying to the electronic monitoring systems.

Mister Crock watches with mild interest. "What, you planning on working me over, kid? You think you're Batman now?"

"Don't be absurd, Mister Crock. I never do anything by half. It's simply that the information that I wish to relay to you is of a personal nature. Jade and I are romantically involved, and no, because I'm sure you're about to make a comment, I'm not asking your permission or anything stupid like that. You see, I don't really care about you one way or the other, but Jade really hates you. So I thought I'd say from the outset, that if you become involved in the life of your natural family -or with me- in any way, I will kill you." He doesn't look impressed. "Nothing exciting; you'll just go to sleep one evening, develop a series of air bubbles in the arteries of your brain and.. not wake up." I shrug, a sociable smile upon my face. "That means your parents, brother, nephews, sister in law, ex-wife and daughters. No communication or skulduggery of any kind."

He looks at me for a moment, apparently as at ease as a man chained to a chair can be. "Do you seriously expect me to believe you'd carry that threat out?"

I raise my right index finger. "I thought you might say that. I thought you might say that." I nod. "You know, I was thinking a little while ago: what Human has killed the largest number of people in history? A lot of people would say Hitler or Stalin, but their-" I shake my head and wave my right hand dismissively. "-governments killed people for them, their armies killed people. I mean, personally. What individual has personally killed the greatest number? If you ignore really long-lived people like Vandal Savage, I reckon until a couple of months ago it was Thomas Ferebee. You know, the man who dropped Little Boy on Hiroshima? That was at least ninety thousand people, plus… The rest of his war record. Sound about right? I mean, there might have been some sort of.. extermination camp operator who really put in the overtime who beats that, but-" I shake my head. "-probably not."

"Now… I'm beating him. I mean, I killed a few people before I left Earth, but it was a handful. That was because Human society is essentially well-ordered. But when I got out-" I gesture towards the ceiling with my right hand. "-into space, I came across places that weren't like that. Murderous rampaging pirates, slavers, and, memorably, a religion that blinded all its womenfolk. So I killed them. Not all; I'm not a professional killer, some of them ran away. But quite a lot. I'm really not sure what my total is… I mean, when you drop a space station on a factory complex, who's counting exactly how many people got crushed? But it's a lot more than ninety thousand."

"Now, I know I'm not going to scare you or intimidate you by saying this. That's.. not what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to save your life. Because if you disobey me, I will kill you. I will not feel happy or sad about it, but I will not hesitate, and I will not lose any sleep over it. I will simply consider it necessary and do it." I rise from my chair. "Goodbye, Mister Crock. I hope I never see you again."

back

Resolution 16

next

13th September

10:13 GMT -5

"…reunion went better than expected?"

I turn the phone handset away from my mouth a little as I sigh, and try to distract myself from the amused tone in Alan's voice by studying the burned out remains of 'Blaze's' on Van Lew Street in the New Troy borough of Metropolis. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised at the idea that a Demon would want to turn a former church into a nightclub, but I am surprised that a church in a major American city could get so starved of funds that it would sell up like that. Far less surprising was the fact that it got torn apart by people hopped up on Devil Jizz a little over a month ago. Kal-El dealt with the Jizzers before they could destroy much else, but their presence nicely ties it to Satanus.

"It was… Yes. Sorry for not phoning you, but… By the time I knew I wouldn't be heading to-."

"That's fine. I was young once, y' know." A quiet chuckle. "So when do I get to meet her?"

I've got a small team of Praexis Demon constructs going over the site now while Detectives Leocadio and Jase of the Special Crimes Units look on. The owner, 'Angelica Blaze', disappeared in the aftermath and as a result the police's first thought was fraud. Except no one ever claimed on it. Beyond that, their investigation hit a dead end. Oh, they picked up a few conventional drug dealers and users while their investigation went on, but any actual cause for the place being targeted? Nothing. When Ms Blaze didn't reappear they actually upgraded it to a murder investigation, which I most sincerely hope it isn't. The next highest magic user on my list is quite a step down from her.

"Is it alright if I bring her around for dinner on Sunday? Her work schedule is pretty unsociable, but she has a day off and I do want to introduce her to… You."

"I think I can manage one more guest. So do you actually need my spare room, or what?"

"She's.. used to having her own space, she works different hours to me and… I don't want to crowd her. So, yes, please."

"Not a problem. I'll be cleaning up the place today."

"I can.. help with-."

"No, no. This'll give me a chance to learn to use my new ring for regular things. I want to make sure I don't make a fool of myself when we start training for real. So, ah… How'd it go with Batman?"

"I'm doing a job for him now. Once that's done, relations… Normalised. With him, anyway."

"Oh? What's that?"

"The League needs a replacement magic user. I found one yesterday and now I'm trying to find a second."

"Anyone I'd know?"

"Maybe? Did you spend any time in Africa during the Second World War?"

"I spent a couple of weeks in Palestine while they worked out whether they wanted to send me to Italy or Greece, but after what happened to Al Fiske the All-Star Squadron were kind of nervous about sending us to places still being affected by the Spear of Destiny."

Ah, yes. Unlike we comic book readers, the Allies didn't know that the Nazis planned to counter their superheroes with magic. They knew that the Society of Thule existed, but it was common knowledge in government circles at the time that magic was a real thing and the Thulists were only unusual in how well connected they were. And while the fact that people like Captain Falcon, Gougeman and White Eagle were quite happy to work with the Nazis was known, it certainly wasn't unthinkable that they were ideological converts to fascism. Or at least considered Germany less bad than the Soviet Union.

The young Master Man's sudden conversion was what finally clued them in to the fact that something more extreme was going on after his brilliant 'why don't I just run up through Spain and deck Hitler in the snozz' plan came a cropper. Later, they found out that while Franco wasn't quite prepared to declare war on the Allies, he had no objection to High Magister Krieger popping over to Madrid to extend the Spear's influence across Spain. Baron Reiter held Master Man off just long enough for the effect to take hold, and then…

Bloody good job that Rommel wouldn't have anything to do with Thule, otherwise they might have got Doctor Balewa as well. Now there's a scary thought.

"Probably not, then. He's an African chap, about eleven thousand years old. He operates under the name 'Doctor Mist'. I've got no idea what Batman plans to do for an interview process, but he isn't really in a position to be picky."

"Eleven thousand..? However did he manage that?"

"There are ways to extend Human life a great deal. Just look at Savage." Doctor Balewa had white light dancing around inside him in a way vaguely reminiscent of Clarice's strange black and white combination. Whether the Life Entity decided to grant him immortality or whether his own sorcerous abilities were sufficient I don't know.

"Well, sure, but eleven thousand years is a very long time. And Savage isn't a great example of how people should behave. I'd be impressed if someone that old could still get along with normal people."

"I suppose that in eleven thousand years you and I will find out what it's like ourselves."

The phone goes silent.

"Alan?"

"Oh! Sorry, I was just… Two days ago I wasn't sure I was going to make it to the end of the week. Now you're saying I could still be here in eleven thousand years. I can't even imagine what that's going to be like."

"Good show. Novel experiences are supposed to get more infrequent as you get older, so you should be glad that you can't imagine it."

"I'm not… I'm not sure that follows."

"It shows that you've already found something novel, and you've only known about it for a couple of minutes. You have a literal universe of possibilities; more, if we can get a planar portal to work. Don't worry about having something to do."

"Heh, I suppose you're right. Mala.. wanted me to visit Themyscira with her, see what they've done with the place since the prison shut down."

I consider coming back with a witticism along the lines of 'Sounds like I'm not the only one whose reunion went better than expected', but I… I don't really think that's appropriate here. I mean, there's no reason for Alan not to pursue a romantic relationship now, but I suppose that's an adjustment for another year. "I got the impression that they thought pretty highly of you there. I'd appreciate it if you could persuade a few more Amazons to visit the US. I'm trying to encourage them to get more involved in the modern world. Oh, and you noticed that your ring has a universal translator now, right?"

"I-. Huh. Well that explains… So I can talk to them, the ones who don't speak English?"

"Yep." I note that the Praexis Demons have stopped sniffing around in a purposive way and appear to just be trying to look busy. "Okay, time for me to get back to work, I'm afraid."

"Alright, I'll leave you to it. I'll see you this evening."

I close my left hand, dismissing the phone construct. Then I hold out my left arm in the direction of the building site and pull the Praexis Demons back into my ring. A confusing mishmash of images flit through my mind as the memories of what they tasted become mine. Okay, that's what Blaze's magic tastes like.

"You get anything?"

Corporal Jase is noticeably less fazed by what I did than his partner, who's trying to hide her expression of disturbed surprise.

"Not much yet." I rise slightly into the air. "I'll let you know what I find."

back

Resolution 17

next

13th September

11:45 GMT -5

Ah, looks like my complete lack of respect for privacy has paid off again. Ms Blaze might have been able to conceal the link between 'Angelica Blaze' and other public faces of the sort that a demonic magic user would find it easy to set up, but in a wave of ring-based forensic accountancy and CCTV checking I can see people who had been leaving traces of themselves suddenly stop at the moment her club was destroyed. Some I can account for as employees, but I suspect that some-.

"Orange Lantern." I open my eyes to be greeted by the sight of Kal-El floating a couple of metres in front of me. We're a couple of miles above Metropolis here, clouds obscuring us from the ground below. "Captain Sawyer told me you were looking into the attack on Blaze's nightclub. Anything I should know about?"

Hm. While I think I know which camp he fits into on the Nabu matter, it's not beyond the realms of possibility that he'll have something useful to contribute. "Good morning, Kal-El. And that depends; are you wearing your ward?"

"Yes." He taps one of his belt pouches with his right hand. "That came in pretty handy when the attack happened."

"I'm glad to hear it."

"You think Satanus is behind it?"

"Almost certainly. I forget: do you have a go-to person for magic related things, or do you just fall back on your own abilities?"

"Not a lot of wizards in Metropolis. But, no, I don't."

I nod, then take a hologram generator out of subspace. "Did you mention the case to Captain Marvel?"

"Not that I remember."

"Exhibit one." I generate a hologram of the woman the police are looking for. "Angelica Blaze, surprisingly wealthy small business owner and Metropolis resident for at least eight years. Exhibit two-" A second image joins the first. "-Blaze, daughter of Jebediah of Canaan, aka the wizard Shazam, and a Succubus whose name I don't know. Given the demonic magic my Praexis Demons tasted on what's left of her club and the fact that Satanus is her brother, I believe that the two are one and the same person."

Kal-El considers the images for a moment. "Seems a bit much for sibling rivalry. Are you sure they're the same person?"

"Not completely. Ideally, I'd check an artefact that I knew for certain was infused with power by Blaze and compare the two. Unfortunately, my demonic magic contact has gone to ground, and the only person I know who knew Blaze socially is busy running a country. And confirming that won't help me track her down; finding Angelica Blaze is an end in itself."

He nods. "So what's your next step?"

"Data analysis suggests that she was using a number of aliases while in Metropolis. I was planning on checking whether any of them turned up anywhere else, but… Five different plane tickets, all seats occupied by women who vanished shortly after arriving at their destinations. Which probably means that none of them were her. So…" So I should have brought Doctor Balewa with me so he can track her. "I either need to search out every trace of demonic magic on the planet, or…" Huh. Well, I did need to see them anyway. "Or I get someone to summon a Succubus, bribe her to tell me who Blaze's mother is, summon her-."

"I don't think that summoning Demons is such a good idea."

"Okay, well, I only know of one Succubus who's out in the wild, and I sort of lost track of her after we turned her into a Love Elemental."

He smiles, ducking his head slightly. "You know, if you were anyone else, I'd say you were spinning a tale. How did you pull that one off?"

"The Star Sapphire. Then… We could just ask Jebediah. I'm sure he'd remember, but he might not want to talk to me about it."

"Or we could do both. Why don't you talk to Zatanna once she gets out of school while I talk to Shazam?"

I think for a moment. "Because Batman set me the task, and I'm not sure if using League resources invalidates the challenge or not."

Kal-El folds his arms across his 'S'. "This crime happened in my city. I think I'm allowed to investigate it."

"Okay, well… Good luck with Jebediah. I'll try tracking Chantinelle down myself, see if I can get it done before the end of school. I'd go with you, but I doubt being seen in my company would help you plead your case."

He nods. "That's probably true." He begins floating backwards, waving with his right hand as he goes. "Good luck!"

Hm. Luck. Alright, not really sure what a Love Elemental looks like or if her copy of the wards tattooed on my skin would defeat my empathic vision, but I'll try most things once. I open up my empathic vision all the way and look out across the world. U-uh. Yeah, there's no way I'm going to be able to find her like this. If I can see her then I doubt that I'd be able to pick her out from more than a few miles away. I could try a few places at random just in case, but… No, hang on, she said that she was going to go and fix broken relationships. And she mentioned Danita Wright, the woman John was involved with. A relationship she ended by getting in bed with John shortly before Ms Wright arrived back in their home while John was asleep.

Ring, where does Danita Wright work now?

Danita Wright is currently employed by the Roche City Gazette.

Right. Marvellous. Present location..? Ah, nowhere near the Hawks or their residence, good. And transition.

13th September

10:48 GMT -6

I ignore the starts and gasps around me as I appear next to Ms Wright's desk. "Excuse me, Ms Wright?"

She keeps looking at her monitor for a moment. "Missus Daniels actually. What is-" She turns towards me. "-it Orange Lantern?"

"Yes. I'm trying to track down an acquaintance of mine, and I believe that she might have made contact with you. Bat wings, glowing violet, name of Chantinelle? You once walked in on her in bed with John Con-."

"Constantine." Her jaw tightens. "Yes, I know who you mean. She came to see me months ago, but I haven't seen her since. I thought she was some crazy woman. And.. that was years ago. Why, who was she?"

"She was a Succubus turned Love-Elemental. I'm trying to track her down. I don't suppose she told you where she was going, did she?"

"What? No." Missus Daniels shakes her head. "She.. told me she posed John just so I'd break up with him and that she was.. really sorry about it. Was that true?"

"Yes. They'd had a professional falling out and she was trying to alienate all of his friends. John's done a lot of dodgy things, but he didn't cheat on you." I consider that for a moment. "To the best of my knowledge."

"Oh." She frowns as she thinks about that. "I.. probably owe him an apology."

"I'd be happy to relay it to him just as soon as I see him. Excuse me."

Sigh. Indiana it is, then.

back

Resolution 18

next

13th September

12:25 GMT -5

I step around the custard smooshed across the pavement and the overweight man being swarmed by squirrels, then push my way through the cluster of rubberneckers watching through the bar's doorway and into the bar itself. My target is facing the bar, shoulders hunched as he nurses his whiskey.

"Excuse me." I stride across the intervening space as the chittering from outside reaches a crescendo. "I'm looking for Ambrose Bierce?"

"Ambrose Bierce?!" He wheels around none too steadily, glaring at me from under a messy mop of blonde hair that Boris Johnson would envy and.. probably attempt to emulate. "That clown?! You impertinent-." He cuts himself off and blinks. "I'm sorry, what did you say?"

His diction's better than John's, that's for certain. The cigarettes in the ash tray next to him are roll your owns, rather than Silk Cuts, his coat is a little shorter and his face… They don't look anything alike.

"I said: I'm looking for Ambrose Bierce?"

"Ooooh, right. Sorry, got into a bit of a habit, there. What is it you want?"

"Selina told me you were the man to talk to about street level magic."

"Selin-? Catwoman?"

"Yes? She's a friend of mine. Can I..-" I point to his drink as I take a seat next to him. "-get you a top up while we talk?"

He nods. "Don't mind if you do."

I wave my right hand at the barwoman, then point it at Mr Bierce. "Whatever he's drinking?"

"I'm a bit surprised, you coming to me. I thought you were connected to the Atlanteans."

"I was. Then I royally pissed off King Orin and left the planet for two months." The barwoman puts a new whiskey down in front of Mr Bierce, and I pass her a twenty dollar bill. "Besides, they need a royal warrant to study Demons without it being a death penalty offence."

"You're connected to the Justice League, aren't you? What about Zatara? I heard he came off his leave of absence a couple of months ago."

I raise my eyebrows. "Are you interested in buying a bridge?"

He nods. "Thought it might be something like that." Then he turns in his seat to face me, looking at me sceptically as he does so. "And you didn't-?" He cuts himself off. "No. You know what?" He takes a sip of his whiskey. "I'm not questioning it. What can I do for you?"

"A while ago I and.. a couple of friends turned a Succubus by the name of Chantinelle into a Love Elemental. Now I'd like to track her down. Unfortunately, she's totally immune to scrying. And multifunction power ring scans. So it's a bit tricky." He looks at me in incredulous astonishment, his cigarette drooping and then falling from his open mouth. "Failing that, I need to know who Blaze's mother is."

"'Blaze' being..?"

"You remember when the Hawks and I fought a large Demon in front of the Hall of Justice?" He nods. "That was Satanus. His sister. He's attacking her holdings and I'd like to find her before he does."

He frowns. "Demons only have siblings metaphorically."

"Yeah, I was thinking about that. What happens if a Succubus possesses a Human woman, gets pregnant, then returns bodily to hell for the pregnancy and delivery?"

"Fucked if I know."

"I mean, they wouldn't be able to build a soul out of Earthly magics like happens with normal foetuses. So if they developed at all-."

He stares off into the distance as he thinks it through. "No, you're right. All that's left is Hell magic. Huh. Obvious, when you think about it. So she's a Human with a Demon for a soul who's also her."

"Just a working hypothesis. Superman's going to try and talk to her father, but I'd like to find out where she is before he does."

He frowns. "So what's Chantinelle got to do with any of that?"

"She's the only Succubus I know who might know the information I want and be prepared to give it to me."

"But you don't need-need her."

"No. Just Blaze. She's in hiding, and her scry defences won't be as good as Chantinelle's. But they're probably more aggressive."

"Well, standard thing there is to get something they own and use that to scry for them."

"I can get anything she left in Metropolis when she fled out of the police's evidence locker. I also had my Praexis Demons sniff around the remains of her club and I'm pretty sure I've got her magic resonance pattern."

"Whaw. You're a lot better prepared than most people who come to me with stuff like this." He knocks back what's left of his first whiskey and picks up the second. "So, you just need me to do a bit of scrying for you, is that it?"

"I was sort of hoping that you might have a lead on Chantinelle's location, but if you think that's the best approach… Yes."

"A bunch of people I usually use for that sort of thing went a bit peculiar recently. Divination pendulums spinning three sixty, flames made of water, dogs and cats living together, rains of cheese, the Black Squirrel being seen as far afield as Luton…" Another sip. "It's going to be a while before they've got anything sensible to say for themselves."

I frown. "That sounds like something that should concern me. When did it start?"

"Beginning of July, actually. Something big happened, and the.. shockwaves are still radiating out around Earth's magic systems. I'd guessed it was something to do with the Justice league fighting that Titan, but-" He leans slightly closer to me. "-I can see from your face it was you. So what happened?"

"I'm afraid it would invalidate assurances I've given to various people if I were to tell you. The best I can do is to say that large amounts of order and chaos magic found themselves in the same place."

"Because the Chinese got Klarion, and… No one's seen Doctor Fate-"

"Nabu."

"-for a couple of…" He looks at me, downs his whiskey and then slams his glass down, coughing and wheezing. "A-grrah. Okay. Decided I don't want to know about that either." He flops back slightly on his stool. "At least I know that's all above John bloody Constantine's level as well." He looks at my face for a moment. "Oh, fuck off."

"Sorry."

He sags further. "Don't know why I'm surprised. So why isn't he helping you with this?"

"He's indisposed."

"Dead?"

"Indisposed."

"Dead's pretty bloody indisposed. Though if anyone could weasel out of it…" He gets up and straightens his coat. "Alright then, your place or mine?"

back

Resolution 19

next

13th September

16:11 GMT -2

"Recognised, Orange Lantern, Ambrose Bierce."

"Welcome to Ice Fortress Two. Sorry about the dust."

Mister Bierce looks around a little uncomfortably as he follows me along the corridor, hands wedged into his pockets. "What dust?"

"Any dust the Russian secret services might have tramped in while I was away. I have cleaning robots, but none of them have rug-shampooing attachments."

"R..ight. Have you got some sort of ritual room in here, then?"

"No." I take a left turn and head towards the exterior access hatch. No frozen bodies, that's a good sign. "Most of the interior space is given over to flight, power generation and cold guns. Then you add in computers, environmental controls and living quarters, and there really wasn't space for it."

"So whereabouts were you expecting me to do the scrying?"

"The South Atlantic." I send a signal to the Fortress's computer, and the power to the anti-gravity system increases to push us higher into the air. "We can use the cold guns to draw out the symbols on the ocean in ice. That would work, right? Doing it on the ocean isn't a problem?"

"The ocean? No, of course there's no problem using magic on the ocean." He sniffs. "Fire magic, maybe. Scrying? Might even make it easier."

"Might?"

"Probably will. I don't really know. For some reason it doesn't come up very much. What sort of precision can those freeze rays do?"

"Fine as a Human hair, wide as you want. Do you think freezing an area would be better, or just leave it liquid and draw on top of it?"

"Did you do this sort of thing with John?"

"What, this specifically?" The inner hatch closes behind us, clanking sealed just before the outer hatch swings open. "No, as far as I know you'll be the first person to do this."

I stride out onto the observation deck, Mister Bierce hesitating slightly before following me. Rain lashes the defence screen around us, granting us a wonderful view of the interior of the storm while leaving us dry enough to appreciate it.

"Bloody hellfire."

"Let's hope not." Another mental command and the cold guns deploy from the dorsal surface of the Fortress. A flicking gesture with my left hand and a swarm of Praexis Demons fly outwards, passing through momentarily-appearing holes in the screen to take position over the ocean. "Now, if I remember correctly, a scrying diagram should look like-" I take a datapad out of subspace and copy out a standard Atlantean diagram. "-this."

"Errr… Basically. Can I just-? Right."

"There's a stylus on the side, and it's got a built-in inscription-assistance tool."

"Nifty."

Lances of blue-white light flash out from beneath us, rain converting to hail as they punch through the storm and strike the ocean surface below us. Mister Bierce's eyes flare and he starts stabbing the pad with the stylus in an effort to-. "That wasn't you. I'm just-"

"Oh. Right."

"-drawing the outer circle."

"You know what her father's strongest magical influence was?"

"Order. Probably.. followed by divinity?"

"What, was he an angel or something?"

"No, he was blessed by a prehistoric pantheon, then became a Lord of Order. I.. don't know the names of the gods involved."

"No, that's fine. Order's simple enough. I'm going with 'order', 'hell' and 'mankind' as the three strongest magic influences. Father, Mother and-.

"Holy Spirit?"

"Heh. Probably not. But the correspondence might help. Lesser influences… Fire, Demons, conflict… Mystic squiggles…"

"You can leave those out. I'm not a tourist."

"They help me, alright? Here." He passes the pad back.

Uum, yeah, looks like something that should work. "Are you sure you can make this work?"

"How badly would it mess up the planet's weather if I didn't?"

"A tiny bit, if I didn't fix it first. Which I will." Ah… "Unless Blaze's countermeasures do something to it, but that's what I've got mage slayers for." He raises his eyebrows as I send the complete design to the targeting computers before putting the pad back into subspace. I take a round out of subspace and hold it out to him. "Built in magic draining enchantment fired from a railgun." He nods uncertainly. I'm.. going to have to dump a lot of information on him to bring him up to speed if I'm going to use him again. Probably worth doing just in case…

I wave my right hand, a construct appearing on the ground at our feet displaying the progress being made by the cold guns. "Do you want cash for this, or would you prefer payment in kind? I've built up quite a library of Atlantean arcana, the Complete Annotated Book of Truth…"

"Ten large, a couple of books of basic Atlantean stuff and a phone number."

"Not that you're unattractive-" He is unattractive. "-but I'm already seeing someone."

He rolls his eyes. "Another thing that separates me from John is that I'm straight. But I can't have a working relationship with someone I can't contact."

"Alright, done. And…" The symbol below us completes. "Done."

"Alright." Mister Bierce shakes himself out, rubs his hands together and then closes his eyes. "This will take a minute or two. I'll be able to get you range and direction, maybe a mental image of the place."

"Go for it."

I nod, then form a construct seat and sit down. Depending on the defences being employed, this may well not take all that long. The Ice Fortress itself has basic wards in case of counter-scrying attempts… I bring the exterior defence cold guns online and generate some point defence constructs. Targeted summoning is a perfectly viable counterattack tactic for-.

A sheet of flame explodes over the exterior defence screen, blood red and purple flames biting into the super stable plasma making it up! The screen fails in a couple of places and I immediately fire mage slayers at the fire, punching holes in it and beating it back.

"GGGGGRAAAAAHHH!" Mister Bierce staggers, blood dripping from between his closed eyelids and down his cheeks. "Got her! Got the bitch! North East! Eight thousand miles, North Africa somewhere!"

Oh dear. "Hold still."

"It's one of those 'struck blind' curses." He waves his right hand and blinks-. His eyes are ruins. "They usually wear off after a day or two. Don't worry about it."

"Right. Let's.. see if I can't take a little off that." Orange light shines from my rings… Ah, good, no resistance. His eyeballs reappear and I clean the blood from his cheeks as an added bonus. "There we go."

He blinks, looks around and then nods. "Thanks. So, I reckon… Israel… Maybe Libya?"

"Or Kahndaq."

"Yeah, could be. I got a pretty good feeling for the place. When we get a bit closer, I'll be able to direct you."

"No, I mean… I think I know where she is."

He looks annoyed for a moment, then puts his hands in his pockets and shrugs. "Whatever. I'm getting paid either way." He frowns slightly. "Right?"

back

Resolution 20

next

13th September

20:19 GMT +2

Mister Bierce staggers as we appear on the rock near to the dig site where -at the end of April- we created the Ace of Chaos. Churned earth around us marks the passage of military vehicles, and the khaki tents and sandbag walls set up around the main temple clearly demonstrate the site's new function.

"Bloody hell."

"Oh, don't worry. I'm a national hero. They won't shoot me."

"No, I mean…" He raises his hands to his face and drags them downwards. "What we just did to get here. What does it do?"

"Transfers most of everything about us to the Plane of Avarice then moves a.. sort of.. marker in the material universe from point A to point B before bringing us back in." I frown curiously. "You shouldn't really have experienced anything."

"Listen, buddy. I'm a magician. That means I'm a bit sensitive to what the world around me is doing, and when I get a sudden mix of where we were and where we are and just a hint of where we were between, it puts me off my stroke a bit."

"Ah. Sorry." I consider that for a moment. "I wondered why John mostly wanted me to use zeta tubes. He didn't say anything-."

He crosses his arms and turns his nose up slightly. "I could cover it up just as well as he can. I just didn't, alright?"

"Hey, it's useful to know. Could save a valuable few seconds somewhere along the line." I point my right index finger at the encampment. "Is that the place?"

He bends his neck, peering in that direction. "Yep. Unless they've been very clever, she's in there. And that felt more like a 'kill 'em all' defense than a 'clever deflection' defense."

"I tend to agree. And I-."

There's an almighty whoosh of air as Teth Adom lands at speed in front of us. Mister Bierce gets a momentary curious glance before being dismissed. I on the other hand get a genuine smile. "Orange Lantern. It is good to see you again, but I fear that you have come at an inopportune time. The wards protecting the former temple were overcome moments ago by sorcerers loyal to Satanus. Even now, his-."

"Ah." I raise my right hand. "Sorry, no. Unless there's been a really weird timing coincidence, that was us."

He now gives Mister Bierce a somewhat harder look. "I did not know that Constantine had a brother, particularly not one who shared his vocation."

"He doesn't." Mister Bierce takes a couple of steps towards him. "We don't even look that similar."

"John strangled his brother in the womb, and his sister avoids magic like the plague."

"Still, it seems strange to me that you were able to find a magician who looks so similar and was powerful enough to disrupt my wards."

"We used a scrying diagram a few miles across. Once Mister Bierce connected it to the world's magic systems, it could build up far more power than a small chalk drawing. The system doesn't actually require the caster to be particularly powerful."

Mister Bierce glances at me as he pulls a packet of tobacco out of his coat pocket. "Oh, thanks."

Teth Adom's expression grows a little vacant for a moment, then he nods. "Yes, Lord Zehuti says that is possible. But why did you do that? Do you know whom it is that I have given my protection?"

"Angelica Blaze, aka Blaze, daughter of Jebediah of Canaan, aka the wizard Shazam. I want a word with her. I didn't know in advance that she was here, and if I have offended Lord Zehuti by harming his temple then I apologise and will make recompense."

Adom bows his head slightly, then.. pulls a radio from a pouch on his right leg. That's new. "Captain, stand down. The Demons are not coming quite yet."

"Understood, Mighty One."

Adom lowers the radio. "Why do you wish to speak with Blaze? I am not.. unaware of the crimes she has committed, but I have offered her sanctuary. If there is any threat to her, I must answer it."

"With Nabu gone, the League need new magic users. She was my second choice."

Adom looks doubtful. "I protect her in memory of our friendship during my first life. It would surprise me if the League were willing to overlook her corrupting and binding men's souls."

"Yes, so she'll need to give that up… Could I please have this conversation with her, face to face? I swear that I will not attempt to compel her."

Adom gives me a shallow nod, then turns away to fly towards the entrance of the temple. I stick a flight aura around Mister Bierce and fly us both after him. As we pass over the camp I see soldiers glowing with relief that they're not about to have to fight Demons as they fall out, leaving the barricades to the sentries as they head back to their tents. Mister Bierce looks around at everything, taking the whole place in without showing particular interest in any one thing. The scaffolding around the entrance wasn't here last time, and I think that more of the structure has been dug out.

Adom drops to just above ground level, nodding to the saluting soldiers before flying inside. The soldiers then.. salute me. Ah. I come to attention in mid-air and salute back before flying after Adom, and Mister Bierce throws a jaunty salute of his own at them as we pass.

"Is he here?"

"No. It was the Orange Lantern, and his new serf-wizard."

"Serf-wizard?!"

"Do you want Blaze to take more notice of you?"

For a moment, it looks a bit like he does. Then he shakes his head. "Fine, serf it is."

I bring us to ground level, then stride towards the inner sanctum. Blaze shrinks back behind Adom as she sees me. She's.. actually not all that impressive in person. Skinny, short, and.. frankly emaciated. Even her clearly underwear-free semi-robe.. thing doesn't make her look appealing, just… Wrong. Ill, frankly. And the horns sticking out of her forehead are far too large to be aesthetically appealing. Now Melinoë, there's a woman who can pull off horns.

"Ms Blaze, a pleasure to meet you. Sorry about the wards."

She straightens slightly, and… Hah, that wasn't even enough to warm up my spell eater. "Lantern."

"I have an offer for you. Hah." I bow my head slightly. "Novel as I imagine that it is for you to be on that side of this conversation, I really do suggest that you accept."

She looks like she finds the very idea distasteful. "What is it?"

"Your brother… I assume you're hiding from him, and that he is the one responsible for the attacks on your holdings?" She nods. "Your brother has joined a supervillain alliance called 'The Light'. I don't like them very much. And neither does the Justice League. The League needs expert magic users, and… You are that. Having someone capable of countering him would be useful."

She nods. "I could be quite usef-."

"The problem is, you can't." I had enough of that with Nabu the Klarion non-counter. "If you could stand up to him, you wouldn't be in this situation. You couldn't do it when you had all your infrastructure… You certainly can't do it now. Besides." I shake my head. "There's no way the Justice League could take a Demon."

Her eyes narrow and her voice deadens. "Did you come here simply to mock me? Why are you here?"

I lean forward, hands clasped at my chest. "Have you ever tried… Not being a Demon?"

back

Resolution 21

next

13th September

20:24 GMT +2

She actually twitches, then throws an accusing glance at Adom. His expression remains impassive. "Yes. And as much as I enjoyed being weak and powerless, I'd rather take my chances with Satanus-" She pronounces it the normal way. "-than become totally dependent on your good will."

"Ah, good; you don't need to corrupt souls to live, then."

"Heah. No, just to live for any length of time."

O-kay. I didn't know that was why she did it, but it was a reasonable suspicion. And one that works in my favour. "I ran into a Succubus called Chantinelle a little while ago, and she confirmed something I'd heard about Demons, but.. wasn't sure about. That they care about power but don't much care what form that power takes. She gladly accepted us turning her from a Demon of middle rank to a more powerful Elemental, even knowing that doing so would change her outlook quite considerably. But… You're Human as well." I smile. "And I know we Humans can be stubborn, spiteful bastards."

She regards me cautiously. "You want to offer me power of another sort?"

"The Justice League could not take a Demon. They need someone who can hard-counter Satanus when he's the de facto ruler of Hell. Other than conquering Hell for you, there's nothing I can do to make you that powerful using your current power source. And if I could conquer Hell-" Within a reasonable timeframe. "-then I wouldn't need you."

"The only power that would allow me to so completely defeat my brother would be that of the Silver City."

"Correct."

She rolls her eyes. "Foolish Human, they would never accept me."

I nod. "True. I doubt they'd accept me, and I'm far nicer than you are. But…"

I take an Angel feather round out of subspace and toss it to Adom. Blaze snatches it out of the air with her right hand before it reaches him- "Gaagh!" -and drops it at once, her hand visibly smoking. She glares at me, nursing her hand and crouching as if to lunge.

"I threw that to Teth Adom. If you caught it-" She grimaces, but calms herself. "-you've only yourself to blame."

Adom bends slightly and picks the round up. "This is what you used in Fawcett City."

"Yep. I try to keep them in reserve; Demons are the only target they excel against."

"Angel magic." Blaze takes a deep breath. "Powerful Angel magic. How did you come by it?"

"I'm friends with John Constantine. All sorts of things happen when he's around." She nods, rolling her eyes. "A few years ago, he went to an Angel to beg for healing. He had lung cancer, and that's a nasty way to die. The Angel told him that he was getting what he deserved, which… Wasn't a very New Testament attitude. So John remembered that, and when he thought that he could benefit from having an Angel on-call… The Angel in question had a bit of an accident involving a Succubus and a chainsaw."

"Gabriel."

"Unfortunately, John isn't quite as clever as he thinks he is. The First tracked down Gabriel's heart and destroyed it, sending him to Hell." I smile. "Minus…"

Her eyes widen slightly. "His wings."

"Yep. Want them?" I attach a filament to the round Adom's holding and send it back into subspace. "They're still.. sort of alive, and I've only taken a couple of feathers for my ammunition. The League couldn't take a Demon…"

"But they could take an Angel. Is that even possible?"

"My.. somewhat hazy knowledge of thaumaturgy says 'yes'. You would have to weaken your demonic aspect as much as possible, but your-" I smile. "-Human aspect was after all 'made in God's image'. We know that Humans can use divine theurgy. We just have to work out how to replace the structures of your soul with a form of energy that's totally hostile to what's there now. Assuming you're up for it."

She gazes off into the distance. "I would gain Gabriel's power."

"Possibly. At least some of it."

Her eyes narrow at me. "Why? Why would you offer this to me?"

"I square things with Batman, the League gets a magic user who can reliably trump Satanus, you become safe… And all those souls you have bound to your little demi-Hell get to leave, because there's no way you'll be able to combine those energies. And we get everything you know about Satanus." I nod my head to the side. "Or… Something goes wrong, you die and a thoroughly repugnant woman is expunged from the world." I smile. "So I come out ahead whatever happens. Really, I've got no reason not to make this offer."

"I could turn you down."

"Enjoy living in this room for the rest of your natural life. Because while I'm sure Teth Adom is willing to shelter you, I doubt that he'll feed you the souls you'd need to become strong enough to be safe under your own power."

Adom looks at her sternly. "You are correct in that assumption."

"And Satanus -and his allies- probably are going to get stronger. Good as this temple's defences are-"

Mister Bierce smirks. "Were."

"-they aren't perfect and Satanus will work out a way around them eventually. I did, and I can't even use magic myself. So you've got a decidedly limited amount of time to make a decision, and… Only one realistic option."

"Throw myself upon the mercy of the Justice League."

"Whether they accept you or not, the wings would give you the power to resist Satanus. And I don't need them to approve me giving you the wings."

She looks down as she considers. "Adom? Do you trust him?"

"Yes. Orange Lantern has a particular relationship with the concept of greed. He would not make you this offer if he did not believe that it would serve everyone's interests. And to Lord Zehuti's ears… It is a good trade for you."

She pauses for a couple of breaths, then raises her head. "Then I accept. How soon may we begin?"

"Working out exactly how to attach the wings to you will probably take a while. That's why I brought Mister Bierce with me. If the two of you can't work it out together, you can tell me what extra resources you need and I can procure them."

She nods, then fixes her eyes on me. "Do you have somewhere to hide me while we study how to perform the.. attachment?"

13th September

15:33 GMT -5

"Recognised, Orange Lantern, B Zero Six, Angelica Blaze, A Four Three."

I grin at my friends, my arms spread wide as I walk across the Mountain's training area to embrace them. "Guess who's baaaaaack?!"

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NEXT CHAPTER

Converse

BACK

Converse 1

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Converse

13th September

15:34 GMT -5

"Identification confirmed."

Kon's face lights up even as he charges across the intervening space and matches my embrace, nearly knocking me off my feet as we come together. "Yeah, hello Kon."

He lets me go and backs up a pace, still beaming. "Two months, you didn't call once!"

"How was I supposed to do that?"

"What, they don't have phones in outer space?"

"Not ones that reach Earth, no. And I knew Guy wasn't here and I didn't want Alan wasting charge with personal messages."

He huffs theatrically. "Fine, but you gotta tell us everything that happened."

"Of course! With a power ring I don't even need slides!" Might… Leave out some of the mass-killing…

Kon nods and steps to the side as Kaldur approaches. "It is good to see you again." He offers me his right hand.

Ah, heck. I ignore it, step forward and hug him too. He stiffens a little, then with a quiet laugh decides to just go with it, letting go the moment I do.

**And M'gann! Hello to you-** She drifts through the air, puts her hands on my shoulders and kisses me lightly on the left cheek. **-as well. And -deadly serious- whatever you do, don't try looking into Ms Blaze's mind.**

**Ah, okay, but why?**

"Angelica." Kaldur offers Blaze his hand, and she politely shakes it exactly once. "Welcome to Mount Justice."

Canis looks mildly interested. "Have you brought us a new team mate already?"

"No, he most certainly has not." Yes, she might have picked her current visage in order to fit in with a group of teenagers, but it looks like her attitude hasn't changed at all. That could make this more awkward than it has to be. "I will be joining the Justice League to replace Doctor Fate. I will simply be staying here-."

"Because it's warded and the Light is trying to kill her."

"Barely warded." She grimaces. "If I can feel the greenery outside already. Do you really think this place can keep me safe?"

Kaldur takes her attitude in stride. "There is a grove of trees on top of the mountain tended by a Dryad. By combining her green magic and the Mountain's wards, other arcane signatures are made harder to detect than they would be by warding alone."

Canis sniffs. "And if you are to join the Justice League, should you not be able to defend yourself?"

"She's going to have some work done. We-."

Her eyes literally flame for a moment as she looks Kaldur over, then she turns her attention to me. "Please tell me that you've got someone more highly skilled than an adolescent Atlantean warrior."

Canis' hand goes to his mega rod. "I do not appreciate your attitude." "Welcome to the pack, omega."

I hold out my right palm in his direction. "Cranius isn't returning my calls, but I'd be happy to hire the most skilled biomancers in Atlantis for you. Otherwise, Kal-El was going to have a word with your father, and this may be the first thing that you've ever done that he'd actually approve of."

Kaldur raises his eyebrows at me. "Why would you wish to employ biomancers?"

I grin more than a little manically as I float the large case I brought with me forwards. Oh, hang on… "Is Zatanna here?"

Kon shakes his head. "No, she-."

"Paul." M'gann mock-scowls. "Haven't you gone to see her yet?"

"I was… Tomorrow?" M'gann looks unimpressed. "I went to see Alan, then Diana, then Batman had a job for me…"

M'gann smiles as her hands go to her hips. "And then Jade."

"Oh, you.. know about that?"

Kon nods. "Artemis called to tell us. I don't think she really believes it's happening."

I raise my hands in protest. "I wasn't that b-."

"This box feels strange." Canis is holding his hands over the case, frowning. "I feel a.. certain presence…"

I walk around the case and take hold of the lid. "No one tell Zatanna I've got these."

I crack the lid slightly, and Kaldur's already recoiling. Yeah, I can't feel a thing but for a magic-user these things do rather stand out. As I open it fully Canis frowns with curiosity, M'gann gasps and covers her mouth with her right hand and Kon makes an expression of intense distaste.

A pair of brilliant white wings lies inside the case, thin trails of silver blood dripping from the severed end of each. Canis dips his right fore and middle fingers into the small pool they've made and then brings them to his nose, sniffing them and then licking them clean.

"No one here's Christian, right?"

Kaldur blinks. "You mean to say..?"

"Gabriel doesn't need them where he is." I close the case. "Is the arcane laboratory still where I left it?"

"Yes, but I.. do not believe we have the facilities for attaching an Angel's wings to someone."

"Proper storage of reagents, Kaldur."

"I am unsure as to whether any Atlantean would be able to perform such a procedure. We do not commonly involve ourselves in the affairs of Angels."

M'gann moves her hand a little away from her mouth. "What.. happened to their.. owner?"

"The First of the Fallen crushed his heart and sent him to Hell." I frown. "Wait, why is this a surprise? Where did you think I was getting my Angel feather rounds from?"

"A single feather? Not… Two whole.. wings…"

"The metal for the Ace of Winchesters, then. And I'm sure that if Gabriel knew we were using them as weapons against Demons, he'd feel slightly better about the whole thing."

Very slightly.

Kon doesn't look much happier. "Batman was okay with this?"

"With letting Angelica stay here? Yes. I didn't ask him about all of the specifics. But the League needs a Satanus-counter, and we're-" I smile at Blaze. "-going to make one for him."

Kaldur nods. "That would be strategically beneficial. And -given your history- he could not honestly claim to be surprised that you were prepared to use extreme methods."

"No." I turn away and head towards the corridor towards the laboratory. "'Extreme' would have been killing Gabriel myself. This is just making good use of available resources." I turn my head back in their direction. "Look, I'll drop this off and get Blaze situated, then we can all catch up. Oh, and Kon? Do you have any plans for tomorrow after school?"

"Ah… No? Why?"

"I've sorted things out with Diana and Batman, but I still need to square things with Kal-El. And the one thing I know he likes is Kryptonian memorabilia, so I thought that the two of us could take a trip to the Rao system and see if there was anything to pick up. Sound like fun?"

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Converse 2

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13th September

16:02 GMT -5

"Hey guys, what's-?" Wallace cuts himself off as soon as he sees first the Spider Queen hologram and then me. I wave. "Hey, Oh El. This some sorta space bug you fought when you were off on your adventure?"

Kon and M'gann are still trying to suppress their giggles, and even Kaldur seems to be having trouble keeping a straight face. Canis, on the other hand-.

"She is the Queen of the Spider Guild sept closest to Vega. Orange Lantern manually pleasured her during negotiations."

Wallace stops dead, staring at Canis as Kon and M'gann start laughing again. "Wha..?"

I smile ruefully. "Could you tell the difference between a macroarachnid's spiracles and a macroarachnid's genital openings?"

A growing look of horror appears on his face. "Ah-h…"

"Because I can now."

There's a quiet chuckle from Kaldur as Wallace walks past the hologram, taking a subtle look at places where I think he assumes either the spiracle or the spider vagina might be. He shudders slightly as he turns around to sit in the chair on the far side of the living area. "So how far you got?"

"My first couple of days in Vega. A group of local warlords were having a peace summit and a paramilitary group were going to disrupt it."

"Warlords were having a peace summit?"

"You don't stay a warlord by fighting an unprofitable war. And the group fighting the Spider Guild didn't like each other any more than they liked the Guild."

"Okay, peace good. So you had to stop the terrorists?"

"I ended up doing that, yes. But I would… Er… I suppose that the Omega Men are terrorists, but… It's a pretty unpleasant region of space. The Omega Men wanted to overthrow the Citadel Empire and chose to try and do so by weakening its allies. The Citadel Empire is… Was violent, domineering and enslaved entire worlds."

"So… It worked?"

"No, it was a total failure. A lot of people died in the crossfire but neither the warlords nor the Citadel were noticeably weakened. I destroyed the Citadel Empire a little while later."

"And the warlords?"

"Formally allied to one another. Things are a lot more civilised, but… The warlords get to hold their territory over the claims of local governments, so… If people wanted the local warlord gone, they're out of luck. Or if their neighbours wanted a warlord gone, that isn't going to happen. See, the Crown-."

"So were there.. no good guys at all?"

"Define 'good'."

"You know… Truth, justice and the… Vegan way?"

"The Citadel Empire is pretty open about how they operate, while the Omega Men are a covert group. The Citadel Empire doesn't really enforce 'law', though they do enforce agreements between local powers. The Omega Men are a paramilitary group. They liberate slaves, but slavery is legal in Vega. They kill people on the Citadel's side, and.. generally target military targets, but the Gordanians-" I switch the holographic image to display a picture of Zaark. "-have armed merchantmen with largely civilian crews. Who may also be slave traders. And the Vegan orthodoxy was whatever the Citadel Empire said it was, having conquered its rivals and reached an accommodation with all other power groups. Do you understand what is meant by realpolitik?"

Kon nods. "Power politics. The ones with all the power treat each other okay, and everyone else gets trodden on."

"Yep. But instability can be just as bad for the people living in a place as bad government. Oh, has the.. Bialyan Civil War ended yet? I haven't checked."

Kaldur shakes his head. "Not completely. The three most powerful factions have absorbed or eliminated the smaller groups and cemented their hold on their own territory. The amount of fighting has reduced, but the war is still going on."

"Any good guys there?"

M'gann thinks for a moment. "The Prime Minister was elected, so…"

Canis sniffs. "And does that make the people he kills less dead? I still don't understand why your people are so fixated on forms of government. They will fight until one wins, then their new ruler will re-establish the nation."

"The Justice League could end the war in an afternoon. But while they might be prepared to support a government over an insurgency…"

Kon nods. "Who is correct to choose in a place like that?"

"Quite a few places regard the Omega Men as heroes, but they've killed a lot of Citadel-aligned civilians, and the techniques they used don't really… There wasn't a plan for actually winning. They'd attack somewhere, the Citadel would retaliate... Nothing changed."

Kaldur inclines his head slightly. "Until you arrived."

"More people would have suffered if I decided to remain inactive, so I acted. I kept the Spider Queen,-" I switch the hologram back to showing her, along with Jarko and Amalak. "-Commodore Amalak and Mister Jarko alive and gave them a bit of a-" I raise my left hand. "-ring-nudge into coming to terms they could all agree to. They in turn came to terms with smaller groups, and so the whole area became a lot more peaceful."

Wallace looks uncomfortable. "And the slaves?"

"The Guild doesn't use slaves. Jarko's people use enslavement as a criminal sanction -you can't be born into it- and Amalak allows debt-bondage but bondsmen still have legal protections. Most of their profit from the slave trade came indirectly, but none of them were going to complain much if that tailed off. And forcing it to tail off required the removal of the Citadel. And then empowering the people who were being enslaved to fight off anyone who might try and carry on. Which… Is a work in progress." I sit back in my seat. Of course, explaining the whole peace conference situation is quite a bit easier than… Some of the rest… "So what have you lot been up to?"

M'gann grins. "Kon got heat vision!"

What? "What?" Ring, scan. No, nothing changed there. "How?"

"Ah…" Kon looks a little self-conscious. "You know how Helios blessed me so I could take down Oceanus?"

"Yeah? I was right there."

"He.. kind of.. appeared in my dreams a couple of weeks later. He said that I'd done a good job and he wanted to reward me. And he asked me what I wanted. And I thought… I can fly with my armour or a kinetic belt, and I'm super strong… The only thing I don't have is heat vision." Kon shrugs. "So I asked him for that."

"And he could just… Do that?"

"Sort of. It made my eyes kinda itchy to start with, but now I don't really notice it unless I'm using it."

I get up. "This I have to see. Come on, let's head back to the training area and you can-." There's a definite air of hesitancy from my friends. "What?"

"I don't think Helios ever saw Superman's heat vision in action. Mine… Doesn't really work well in enclosed spaces."

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Converse 3

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13th September

15:18 GMT -6

I watch as most of my team retreats to what I think is supposed to be minimum safe distance. Canis doesn't go far back, but he's definitely retreated for his personal safety. Even Wolf doesn't need prompting to leave her father's side. Then I turn away from them and look out across the Chihuahuan Desert sands, and… At the wide swath that isn't so much desert as it is glass.

I generate construct armour and look at Kon a little nervously. "What exactly did Helios do?"

"Well, it's kinda…" He gestures vaguely in the direction of the end of the strip of glass. "Plasma. Like from the sun. Helios' magic lets me control it…" He follows my gaze, looking at the glass. "Sorta."

"Which… Bit of the sun?"

"The instruments got melted, but from the color Robin worked out that it's probably the same as the sun's surface."

"Six thousand Kelvin?"

He shrugs. "Fifty-eight hundred."

I look left and right. "Can I assume that Helios also gave you some sort of-?"

"Heat containment, yeah, I know. Robin and Wally spent all evening trying to work out how it works. It looks like anything hit directly gets the full heat, but everything near it just gets…" He flicks his right hand at the glass. "A bit melted instead."

"So are you actually going to show me, or what?"

He takes a solid stance, looking forwards. "Can you put up a target or something? It's easier if I've got something to aim at."

I send a series of filaments around the outside of the glass lane and then bring them together about 500 metres away, generating an archery target where they meet.

"Any good?"

There's a tiny puff of white-orange flame from Kon's eyes and then-.

My rings darken everything and all that I can see is an incandescent beam of blinding light blazing forth from Kon's eyes. My target construct is obliterated, and the glass-coated rock behind it gets turned back into its molten state before Kon blinks and shuts it off again.

Ring, how hot was that?

Observations of beam temperature are inconsistent. Plasma stream most likely between two thousand and six thousand degrees Kelvin.

…

That's quite hot. Actually, that's-.

I smirk at him. "That's hotter than Kal-El's, isn't it?"

"Ah… Maybe? A bit? I don't think it would work so well if I tried using it for spot-welding, though."

"His doesn't work for spot-welding. Yeah, he can melt steel together, but it usually messes up the structure of whatever he does it to so much that it's only good for temporary fixes. Why did you think they had all those cranes around the Metro-Narrows Bridge last August?"

Okay, air temperature is… Not much elevated, and the hurricane force winds that should accompany something like that have predictably failed to materialise. I drop my construct armour and visually examine the burned swath of desert before us for a moment before turning towards Kon. There's a slight orange glow in the centre of each pupil, but he doesn't otherwise look affected. No burns on his face or armour, which is a good sign. Hang on, if plasma is coming from each eye separately, shouldn't-? No, I guess Helios took that into consideration.

"I didn't actually go back." He blinks again and the light fades completely. "I think you've probably spent more time in Metropolis than I have."

Huh… Hadn't really… Put that together. I suppose that after Kal-El confirmed his decision to have nothing to do with him, there really wasn't any reason to. "Does it always come out the same?"

"No, I can… Cut it down a little."

"And can you turn it up?"

He looks at me, then at the molten sand, then back at me. "You really think that's a good idea?"

"Not on a planet, but if we're heading out into space…"

He doesn't look too sure. "Isn't the Rao system radioactive? And full of Kryptonite?"

"No, not.. really. The runaway fusion reaction that destroyed Krypton didn't convert all of its mass into Kryptonite, and Krypton's mass was only slightly more than Earth's is. There's a belt of Kryptonite-rich asteroids in Krypton's former orbit, plus Krypton's moons, but the rest of the system is barely more radioactive than the Sol system. And we know Kryptonians visited their system's other planets. Heck, depending on what happened to Wegthor there might even be salvageable ships there."

"What, you don't know? Haven't you had a look already?"

I frown. "Go to Krypton without you? No, of course not." He nods, and I notice the rest of the team coming back from their safe hiding point. "I did go to Daxam, but that was by accident and I.. didn't hang around."

"How do you go to a planet by accident?"

Wallace jogs up slightly ahead of the pack. "Oh El did what by accident? I mean, Spider, so, what else?"

"This." I raise my left fore and middle fingers to my forehead and step out then

13th September

16:22 GMT -5

back in again. "Good afternoon Mister Garrick."

Mister Garrick looks up from behind his magazine. "Ah… Oh, hey Paul."

I pick up his old helmet. "Glad to see you've recovered from the possession. Could I please borrow this?"

"If.. you really want, but-."

"Thank you!"

And out.

13th September

15:23 GMT -6

And back holding the helmet. "I learned to teleport."

I pass Wallace the helmet, which he takes and quickly checks over. "Couldn't you do that anyway?"

"No, this is far faster."

He slumps slightly. "How much faster?"

"Instant to.. anywhere in the universe where there's a person whose desires I can recognise."

"Eh-?" He shakes his head. "No, why am I even surprised?" Something occurs to him. "Hey, do you think your constructs are strong enough to block Superboy's heat vision?"

"Dunno." My construct armour flares back into being. "Let's find out."

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Converse 4

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13th September

19:12 GMT -5

Sinestro, how close are they?

Thirty metres, Corpsman. An image of their relative position appears in my mind's eye. While I most certainly appreciate the rationale behind presenting a strong opening position during negotiations, I am still puzzled by your decision not to plant traps of some kind. It would make the encounter so much more believable.

The logic is simple. While I know she doesn't care for her employers one way or the other, she might have a degree of affection for the people working for her directly. I doubt that simple traps would present her with much of a challenge, but it might kill them. If I wanted to avoid that I'd have to make them so obvious that I'd look amateurish for using them. As it is, there are piles of bodies to build their apprehension, and I stand here looking completely unconcerned amidst the carnage.

And if they do have a weapon that can hurt you?

Then I'll try to live just long enough that I'll be able to hear it when you say 'I told you so'. How about that?

Adequate, Corpsman. You may proceed.

Thanks ever so.

I lower my goggles over my eyes and look at the oncoming… I'm not really sure what to call them? What do drug cartels call their first responders?

In my experience, 'expendables'.

No, they wouldn't have sent her in with fresh meat. 'Made Men'? No, that's crime families. And you can be Made without being a front line fighter.

A grenade sails in through a broken window behind me, and I erect a barrier to protect my end of the room as it detonates.

Assault Team? Yes, that's a bit more sensible. Of course, when fighting and trading are so much a part of the same thing as they are in the cocaine business, they might not have a custom of calling them anything in particular. It makes it harder to lab-.

Two camouflage-clad men charge through the doorway, assault rifles blazing. Some bullets are blocked by my armour, stopped dead by my divine aura's refusal to let something as base as thruppence-worth of steel hurt me. Their missed shots -and even at this range the AK-47's enthusiastic spread pattern ensures that there are many- punch through both the plaster and wood of the wall behind me and the corpse of the base's late commander.

That was an interesting experience. I'd never crushed a man's skull in my hand before I met him.

"Good evening." I casually toss the desk aside and start walking towards them. "I would like it very much-"

A flashbang comes in through the window, detonating within a metre of my face. Attacking the senses is a pretty good move against most super strong people; heck, that's what I did against Captain Marvel 50. Unfortunately for whoever threw that, I don't have super hearing, and my divine resilience works just as well against pressure waves as it does against bullets. And my visor is easily capable of blocking the magnesium flare. But someone's clearly thinking.

And then the leader of the strike team leaps through the window and I realise that I may have spoken too soon.

"-if you would put down-"

You know, some people scoff at the idea of baseline Humans functioning in combat with superhumans. For myself, I think there's something beautiful about the physicality of a trained and honed peak-Human body in combat. And if people knew about the sheer number of the powered idiots who tried making it either as criminals or heroes and ran into someone who didn't have powers but did know how to use a gun… Cartels sometimes use metahumans as enforcers, but there are good reasons why they generally don't end up running the show.

"-your guns and-"

Perhaps Scandal Savage appreciates that as I reach out with my left hand, grab her around the right shoulder and throw her against a nearby wall. I mean, yes, she was on the ball enough to throw one of those expanding rubber pellet things Mister Queen is so fond of at my face as she goes, but it's a trivial matter to knock it aside. And even if it hit, I can let my rings breathe for me and navigate for me.

But it's a step up from what the people I've already killed managed!

Bullets are still failing to do anything as I lunge forwards and grab the offending weapons-

"-never mind."

-and crush the barrels in my bare hands.

"Ms Savage: good idea, but one which is sadly deficient to the situation. You two: bold, but after the initial volley failed you should have fallen-"

There's a brief plume of flame as someone outside fires a rocket at me as I'm briefly outlined in the doorway. I grasp it in a construct, then neutralise the explosive and spin it around before releasing it.

"Aagh!"

"-back. Even if you couldn't identify me as an individual, someone who is bulletproof is unlikely to suddenly stop being bulletproof because you finished your magazine." I let go of their guns as they cower from me. I reach forward and pat them gently on the head. "Call it a 'C' overall."

"What do you want, Grayven?"

That wasn't a full-force throw, but it would have hurt. Ms Savage is up as if nothing has happened.

"Well, to quote the Drahk: what I want from you… Is you. Obvious.. comments about not being your type aside."

"You've got a-."

"Funny way to show it, yes." Sinestro, detonate.

Done, Corpsman.

"But since I killed your father and your current employer, I thought that you might hear me out."

That gives her momentary pause. "My father is immortal."

"As I told him -before I turned him mind, body and soul into an orange construct- there's no. Such. Thing." I lean down to her level. "Wanna see what's left of him?"

"Yes. Why do you want to show me?"

"Not going to ask about your boss?"

"I can believe that. And what's one drug lord more or less?"

Yes, because I left the others alive. Honestly. "I want to show you because I-." One of her fellow enforcers shoots me in the back with his sidearm. I turn and glare witheringly at him until he drops it, then return my attention to Ms Savage. "I want to employ you myself. You see, your late father -as a sort of 'fuck you' to a retired former adversary- had a company he owned at several places removed buy the rights to some technology which said former adversary wanted put on the market. He intended to sit on it for just as long as possible, then release it in dribs and drabs for the maximum personal profit. I -on the other hand- want to release it as soon as possible to generate the most rapid possible enhancement in Human technology. Now, I could take direct action against said company, but that would complicate things dreadfully. And -with your father out of the picture- you are in the hot seat as his heir designate. Far simpler to ask you directly to come on board."

"On board with what?"

"A few.. friends and I have embarked upon a project to improve the lot of humanity. And we wish to employ you. Pay is good, conditions are excellent and you won't believe the healthcare. And you'd be doing the world a world of good. Oh, and…" I wave my right forefinger at her henchmen. "I'll hire them on as well." I smile. "Why not. Might need to upskill them a bit but they've apparently got a taste for the work."

"I want to confirm what happened to my employers. And my father. And I want to see some figures."

I smile broadly and straighten up. "Certainly! Mother Box, boom tube."

back

Converse 5

next

14th September

20:43 GMT

Kon and I float in space a little 'above' the ring of dust and small rocks which surrounds Haron, fifth planet of the Rao system. Haron is a gas giant about two thirds the size of Saturn, and the only noteworthy fact about it is that it's the only one in the system. That's statistically quite unusual for a gas giant of this size. In fact, the only other places where I'm aware of something like this occurring are where someone has intentionally destroyed the other giants in the system. But I'm not seeing the characteristics of either destructive mining or superweapons… Maybe all of Rao's planets are captured bodies? That's unusual, but it could happen.

Kon's Nth metal armour is augmented for this trip by two (presently inactive) kinetic belts, two environmental shield generators (one active and the other in reserve) and two area effect radiation deflectors (both active). And a helmet. Not an Nth metal helmet, but still fairly resilient. Without air or inconvenient planes to worry about Kon can fly around fast enough that he doesn't need me dragging him around everywhere, but at the moment he's just staring towards the dull red glow of Rao itself. At this distance it's only just brighter than the stars in the background, and Krypton's completely invisible.

"I… Thought it would be…"

"What?"

"Green.. er..?" He floats around to face me. "Yeah, I know you said there wasn't kryptonite everywhere, but when you say 'Krypton', that's what you think."

"Actually… One of the things I want to do while we're here is see if there are other kryptonite isomers around here."

"Like that blue stuff you were going to use on Ultraboy?"

"Yes. Or anything. We don't know how many different types there are and we don't know what they do. That's a major potential problem when we've got Kryptonians around." I turn around on the spot. "You know, you wouldn't hit anything from here if you want to try your heat vision out on full power."

"You think I should have asked Helios to make me immune to radiation instead?"

"Kryptonite isn't very common. Even on Earth, high-strength plasma weapons are more likely to be a threat to you. So… No, I don't think so. Why do you ask?"

"I was thinking… It's impressive, but I can't really use it in fights, can I? I mean, Superman can heat up a gun without burning up the guy holding it."

"That usually causes serious burns to the hands of whoever's holding it. Metal's a good conductor, and there were a couple of cases early on in his career where the gun actually stuck to the gunmen."

"Yeah, but that's nothing like what my version would do."

"True. But it's still not a great law enforcement tool. On the other hand, against high-end opponents, your version's kinetic force and greater thermal output puts you at an advantage."

"Batman doesn't send us on those sorts of missions."

"I can help you work on learning more precise control if you want. Or we can have a word with Helios about-."

"No, no, that's… Yeah. I wanna get this under control myself." I hear over the communicator as he takes a deep breath and see him turn his head away. "Ah, would it work if I just fire it at the planet?"

Ring, likely effect of a blast of that temperature on a gas giant? Yeah, thought so.

"There'll be storms and all sorts of energetic reactions, but that's about it. This system is uninhabited, and that planet's definitely uninhabited."

"Nothing down there at all?"

I extend my left hand in the direction of the planet. Ring? "No. When the Science Council came in, they got rid of just about all of their deep space assets. Including the probes they were keeping here. Particularly after-. Um. A group of marines went AWOL."

Poop.

"Wait, you mean there could still be Kryptonians out there?"

"I've been assuming that there are. But Earth's… Isolated. There isn't much to draw a Kryptonian there. Plus, that was quite a long time ago, and after the Kryptonian Empire vanished there was a massive upswing in piracy in this region. Away from yellow suns… But, yeah, there's nothing down there."

"Okay." Another quiet series of breaths, then…

Static, as the communicator is completely unable to describe the sound of the colossal beam of plasma blasting from Kon's eyes.

Damn. I can see Haron's clouds of hydrogen and helium part, then leap upwards as the liquid below them superheats. It's visible to the naked eye from here and the ring's telling me that plume is thirty miles high. It's like dropping a stone in a pond, but the pond is a frozen planet and the stone is on fire. Shockwaves are moving across the surface, vaporised liquid hydrogen shoving neighbouring liquid aside and now it's catching fire!

Kon cuts the blast out and floats a little closer to me to watch the spectacle. "Whow."

"Yeah whow. And, hey, you also kept it up for longer than Kal-El does."

"I don't know. I think he can go for longer than he's been recorded doing. Though… I coulda gone on for longer. I don't think I've even got a limit."

"Worth knowing."

We watch the roiling planet in silence for a few moments.

"Oceanus could get lost in those waves."

"Yeah. Oh! Ah, you said Batman doesn't send the team on those sorts of mission."

"We're supposed to be recon. Something that can do that to a planet isn't really a recon weapon."

"I haven't really asked, but… Do you actually want to join the Justice League? Because the Justice League do fight people that could be used against."

"I don't really… I mean, people know we exist, and we've been called out to fight alongside the League a bunch of times. I don't think the difference really means much any more."

"It means you get to pick your own missions."

"Doesn't Batman pick League missions? He's the intelligence guy."

"I'm the professional development and training guy. And you.. are my prince."

I hear him sigh, but there's an amused lilt to it. "Don't call me that. It's bad enough when the Amazons do it."

"Do you want to pick your own missions without joining the League? Or-. What? What do you want?"

"I.. guess I want to go after the bad guys. Not just wait for them to do something. And I mean attack them, not just watch them and pass it on to the Justice League."

"Sounds like we're going to need to talk to Kaldur about that."

"Yeah, probably." He turns his attention away from Haron's flaming spot. "Where to next?"

"I want a look at Xenon. It used to be Krypton's third moon, Wegthor getting destroyed managed to knock it out of orbit. If Kryptonian relics survive anywhere, that's probably the best place to look for them."

"Okay. Let's go."

We turn away from the ongoing explosions, and space leaps as I warp us in-system.

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Converse 6

next

14th September

20:48 GMT

"Yeah, that's more like what I was expecting."

Near-Krypton space is green. The large pieces of kryptonite aren't particularly close to here, but there are so many tiny grains of the stuff around here that they're the dominant light source. Even though it's still not that radioactive, it's more than a little disturbing.

"Want me to clear a path through it?"

"What do you think would happen if I heat-visioned it?"

"If you-? Um…" Kryptonite tends to.. break down at extreme temperatures explosively, and you get a blast of radiation before it denatures… "It might clear it out a bit, but there's so much around here that I doubt the effect would be all that significant."

He-. I think that's a nod, then accelerates in the direction of Xenon. I can see the dull flicker of his environmental shield as it increases its power in order to cope with the all-surrounding radiation sources. Perfectly within its tolerances, but the faint grey/purple does rather stand out against the all-encompassing green of our environment. As does the dust-free wake Kon leaves behind him.

Xenon itself doesn't have the pleasantly round shape of Earth's bizarrely large moon. It's more in the 'misshapen lump of rock' mould, with clearly visible impact craters along one side where lumps of its former neighbour struck it. Not going to be much there…

"Were there any mining operations on Xenon?"

"I don't know for certain, but I doubt it. Wegthor was closer, Koron was larger and.. then they had faster than light travel. It's perfectly possible that we're not going to see anything at all."

He reduces his rate of acceleration. "Shouldn't we go there instead?"

"Wegthor's… Kind of… All around us now. After the Kryptonian Stellar Navy got wound up, the Self Defence Force kept using their old command centre on Wegthor as a deep space monitoring station. That was probably why Jax-Ur decided to blow it up… Enthusiastically blow it up. So while there probably was plenty of interesting stuff there…"

"There isn't any more."

"Right. And the resulting debris did quite a bit of damage to Koron, and that's far enough inside the radiation zone that I'd rather not go there if we can manage it. And Mithen's classified as a moon rather than an asteroid due to history rather than size."

We both accelerate, Xenon's surface growing beneath us. My rings are showing me artificial structures, but further scans are being distorted. That suggests Science Council era; the Military Council didn't bother with covert installations this close to Krypton. Security against foreign invaders was what the fleet was for. Kryptonian science was certainly advanced enough that a Lantern would have to be at least a little careful in how he treated their kit, and if kryptonite existed back then its existence wasn't widely known about.

"Something down there. Think it's Kryptonian?"

"Most likely. Piracy might have gone up a great deal after Krypton went into isolation mode, but things are much more stable now. Erm, though.. in a couple of cases that was because the pirates either moved on or legitimised themselves. But legitimate traders avoid this system because there's nothing here, so there isn't much reason for pirates to be here either."

"Unless they wanted a secret base no one would ever find."

"Unless they've got very advanced stealth FTL, hiding in a system no one else flies to doesn't work. There's nothing to disguise the trail. And even if they couldn't just follow them, all someone hunting them would have to do is drop in a few monitor drones and wait. Whatever ships they were hiding would have to come out eventually, then they've got them. And secret bases are a pain to resupply, and-."

"Okay, I get it. So how do pirates really work?"

"Safe harbours like Vega, where the authorities tolerate or accept them and provide a degree of protection. Captured harbours like Dryanna that would probably prefer to get rid of them, but don't have the power to enforce their decision. Or they do what the Black Circle do in our own Sector, and pretend to be honest merchants themselves and hide amongst the real merchants." I point at one of the artificial objects on the surface. "That one?"

Kon changes his angle of approach and I follow him. I don't want to scan it too aggressively in case it has automated defences of some kind and treats it as an attack. Plus, letting someone who should read as… Actually, I don't know what automated Kryptonian sensors would make of Kon. Hopefully the 'S' on his chest will at least give them pause. On the other hand, the Zods were often in charge of military projects like this, so it might just provoke them.

"How are we going to get in?"

"Depends. If it's unpowered, brute force, ignorance and a construct airlock. If it's powered, you're Kon-El of House El and you're here to do an inspection."

"Inspection? What am I going to-? Wait, you think there could be people in there?"

"Possible, but unlikely. But Krypton had advanced AI technology. A facility of any size would have an intelligent management system to assist the crew."

"Okay, so what do I tell it I'm inspecting?"

"Everything. That way we'll know where the best salvage is. And hopefully where the computer core and main power are."

"So we can turn off the automated defences, right. Why wouldn't the AI know that Krypton has been destroyed?"

"It might well know, but if it wasn't programmed to do anything about that, then it wouldn't. Heck, it might just be waiting for a living Kryptonian to tell it what to do about Kryptonian civilisation ending."

"I don't think Red Tornado would wait like that if the Earth ended."

"Red Tornado was built-" Kon touches down and 'walks' over to the structure. "-to be a person, not a smart management system. He's got far more initiative than most civilisations allow their synthetic intelligences."

Kon and I study the structure which attracted our attention. Sticking out from the grey-white dust of the moon's surface, five fingers of dust-covered crystal stand out like sore thumbs. They're about three metres tall each and shaped a little like pinecones, fat lower ends coming to an angular point towards the top. The crystal goes under the dust built up between them-. Ah, yes.

"Artificial gravity."

"Strange that they've left it on. Low gravity wouldn't bother an AI."

Kon steps up to the closest finger, then holds out his right hand. "I suppose I just-."

There's a ripple of purple-tinted energy as the fingers shimmer, dust exploding off both them and the crystal on the ground between them. The curiously localised artificial gravity causes the dust to blow away like it would on Earth and then suddenly billow upwards and the force pulling it towards the moon's surface suddenly vanishes. The result is that we're left standing in the middle of a dust storm with the gleaming crystal of the… What is it, an outpost? The outpost, while the rest of the universe is whited out.

"Huh."

Ring scan… "There's a weak environmental shield keeping the dust away. Don't think I'll need to make an airlock."

Kon nods, and moves his hand towards the crystal ag-.

The centre of the circle of crystal between the fingers retracts back into the sides in fits and starts, creating an opening into the outpost. Ring, scan-.

A humanoid in black and red floats up out of the hole.

back

Converse 7

next

14th September

20:54 GMT

No real emotional resonance, so it's either a remote unit or a basic AI. Which is a relief, because I recognise an Eradicator when I see one. Its epidermis is matte black, decorated with a red cape and cowl, and its 'eyes' are shining points of yellow light. It's got the approximate outline of a face on its head, but like the humanoid shape that's a non-functional sop to the living Kryptonians who had to deal with them on a regular basis. On its chest is silver lettering identifying it as belonging to the Xenon reserve unit -which could mean just about anything- and a stylised red 'i' on the upper portion of the chest. Not a naval or Consular Guard unit, then.

Ring, what House is that?

In isolation, the Kryptonian character resembling the English character 'i' can refer either to courage or to House-

Zod.

-Zod.

Ooooh joy.

"Identify yourself."

Huh. Okay, there's no way that it hasn't seen the 'S' on Kon's armour. And it isn't attacking. Right, General Zod was a single bad apple from a House whose origins go back into Kryptonian history. Just because he was a prize arse, that doesn't mean that the rest were.

There's a quiet 'blip' as Kon switches from general to one-to-one. "Paul what did he just say?"

Oh.. yeah. Kon doesn't actually speak any Kryptonian languages. And there isn't much chance that the Eradicator would understand English. "It wants to know who you are. Hang on." I extend my environmental shield around him. "Try now."

"I'm.. Kon-El. Who are you?"

"Is the alien here at your invitation?"

"Oh, yeah."

"Lanterns are not permitted within the Rao system without an invitation from the ruling Council." The Eradicator floats past Kon and glowers at me. "Present your authorisation."

"I'm afraid that I.. wasn't given a hard copy."

"You are under arrest. You will be held until contact can be re-established with the ruling Council."

"That might be kinda tricky." Another blip. "Does he not.. know..?"

"I don't think its AI is very sophisticated. It probably knows, but it doesn't have any instructions relating to what to do about that."

Kon nods. "I'm afraid that the Science Council all died when Krypton was destroyed. Is there anyone else we could get permission from?"

The Eradicator floats upwards until it can see over Xenon's horizon, then rotates in the direction of the asteroid field that used to be Krypton. Contrary to 'realistic' expectations, the core of the field actually does consist of a group of large rocks in relatively close proximity to one another. A mere forty years simply isn't enough time for them to have ground one another down to gravel yet, and the run away reactions tended to be relatively local. After the initial blast, at any rate.

"Probability of Council survival minimal." The Eradicator drops back down to just above the surface. "In the event of a state of emergency being declared, authorisation may be sought from General Ren-Gor of the Kryptonian Self-Defence Force."

"Pretty sure he's dead too. Look, nearly everybody died. This system isn't even inhabited any more. Does this really matter?"

"Lack of local signals and weak FTL residues suggest that significant damage has been inflicted upon the Kryptonian Self-Defence Force. In the event of such wide scale breakdown in civil institutions, military officers and Heads of Households may grant temporary exemptions."

Another blip. "Does Superman count?"

"Ah… Maybe? Kal-El is technically head of House El now. Whether this Eradicator would accept it depends on whether Jor-El registered the birth or not. He wasn't that old when he got put into his escape pod… Otherwise-." Oh poot. "Kon, would you mind if I cut you out of the conversation for a second?"

"What? Why?"

"I.. told a person I would not share a particular piece of information with you, and I need to share it with this Eradicator."

"What, about Krypton?"

"Ah… I can't tell you what it's about without-."

"No, of course." He exhales. "Okay, fine."

Ring, direct to the Eradicator.

Compliance.

"Is Sub-Commander Karsta Wor-Ul able to give authorisation?" She'd be pretty angry if I had to get in touch, but… I imagine that a pet Eradicator would be right up her street. Maybe up her street enough not to follow through on her threats?

"Karsta Wor-Ul was dishonourably discharged for violation of Science Council edicts. She is not authorised to grant you an exemption."

"Karsta Wor-Ul?" Oh. Right, because the Eradicator isn't using direct comms. Darn darn darn-. "You.. know another Kryptonian?"

"I.. am.. unwilling to comment further."

"So she told you not to-. But why?" He looks at me for a moment, then looks away. "No, no, she made you promise not to say anything. I guess I'll just have to find her myself."

Aaaaaaghh….

"Eradicator. What happens if there isn't anyone who can authorise me to be here?"

"You will be detained until there is."

"Can Kal-El give him authorisation?"

"Which Kal-El?"

"Ah… Kal-El, son of Jor-El? Son of… Um…"

"Seyg-El, son of Ter-El..."

"No such birth registered." It drifts over to float in front of Kon. "Scanning."

A visible series of yellow lines saccades over Kon. Okay, that might be awkward. He may be about 50% Kal-El by mass, but his actual body tissues-.

There's a flare of blue-white light as the Eradicator lasers Kon in the face!

back

Converse 8

next

14th September

20:58 GMT

"Black-" The Eradicator surges forward, punching Kon in the face with its left arm and sending him flying across Xenon's surface! "-Zero-" Completely ignoring me, it flies after him and fires its eye lasers again as he bounces off the moon's surface. "-insurgent."

Fuck me Kryptonian robots are fast! "Kon!" Construct armour up power armour on construct railgun-.

Destroyed by Eradicator laser vision the moment I created it. Though at least being forced to turn its head around means that Kon has a chance to get his hurtling under control. His armour looks intact, but his kinetic belt should have blocked the punch with no knock back. Why didn't-?

I open fire at the Eradicator with six laser cannon constructs, burning through its cape and doing no obvious damage to the black material covering its 'skin'. And this is the slight problem with relying on projectiles.

There's a barely visible silver shimmer around its fists. Of course, if one civilisation finds a way of reliably negating kinetic attacks, it shouldn't be surprising that others found a way to negate their defence.

"I'm-" Kon stabilises, spins so that he's lying facing the oncoming Eradicator and extends his fists as he accelerates. "-fine."

I vaguely remember from the comics that Kryptonians did have super strength martial arts, but unfortunately I haven't been able to find out much about them. Kon's studied wrestling, but I'm not sure how useful that will be against something without normal organic vulnerabilities. On the other hand-

The Eradicator attempts to punch with its left hand, and misses completely as Kon's Nth metal armour allows him to change vector just a little faster than a Kryptonian's flight ordinarily would. It attempts a laser beam, but Kon's thick chest plate is the only thing it can hit as Kon gets in behind it and wraps himself around its legs. The sudden extra mass causes it to spin as Kon gets to work on a knee-snapper.

-the Eradicator hasn't ever fought anyone like Kon before. Kryptonian marines did not learn Greco-Roman Wrestling. The Eradicator turns, giving me a perfect shot at its eyes as it fires down at Kon. Its shot strikes his left arm and shoulder, causing a minute change in the colour of the metal which vanishes a moment later. My shot causes its beam to wink out and makes the glowing yellow lights of its eyes flicker and fail. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's blind; it almost certainly has other sensors. But no more eye lasers: progress.

"Grug."

Kon squeezes as the Eradicator directs their shared spinning mass into Xenon's surface. Between the kryptonite dust and the dust thrown up by their impact it's a little hard to see what the result is, and the Eradicator doesn't really need its leg. I send a wide construct through the dust, shoving it away to give myself a clear shot while the two of them struggle inelegantly in near-Xenon space. I send a flexible construct at the Eradicator's right arm, but a flicker of silver destroys it before it can touch the black material.

Anti-construct as well. Suddenly starting to feel slightly bad about badmouthing Tomar-Re. Can't risk a shot without either a hold… Cold gun would be a bit of a risk since I don't know how the Eradicator copes with heat…

"Kon, can you-" I see the Eradicator's leg bend, dull grey and green material visible through the breaks in its exterior. "-cope? I think-" The leg no longer supporting his hold, Kon slips slightly as the Eradicator spins and it manages to grab his left wrist with its right hand. "-I should check-" Kon grabs its wrist in turn and twists his hands in opposite directions. "-to see if there's a-."

Kon turns his head to face the Eradicator's chest, then fires his heat vision. The blast lasts a second at most but the Eradicator evaporates. And the kryptonitefuckfuckfuck!

I transition and erect a bubble field around us just as the radiation wave passes over us and the blast wave ripples through the dust surrounding us. I can see Kon's surprised face through his helmet.

"Kryptonite generates-."

"An explosion and.. intense.. radiation…" His eyes dart around his field of vision. "Yeah. Ah, thanks."

"Well done with the Eradicator. Now, unless you want to watch the blast wave go all the way around Krypton's orbital plane, I think we should probably get inside the outpost."

"Uh-huh." We both turn and fly back towards the opening in the crystal. "Why d'you think it attacked me? Who are.. Black Zero?"

"Some sort of terrorist group. No idea why it thought you were a member. There wasn't much on John's ring about Kryptonian society and… Only person I met while I was away who might know wants…" We float down the crystal tube, lights glimmering inside the crystal as we do so. "He… Sort of wants to kill you."

Kon frowns. "Why? What did I do to him?"

"Not you specifically. All surviving Kryptonians. When General Zod attempted his coup, he had Amalak's world bombarded from orbit first. I'm not really sure why."

"But the Science Council had Zod sent to the Phantom Zone. He was just as much a criminal on Krypton as he was on wherever Amalak was from."

"Amalak's people would have executed him and all of his supporters. Possibly after torturing them. Which the Science Council did not do."

"I'm not sure that permanent imprisonment without being able to feel anything is much better."

"That wasn't the point. Amalak's homeworld… It's called Timaron. It used to be a Possession World, sort of.. in Krypton's sphere of influence. Whether it wanted to be or not."

"And that would have been-" We reach the bottom of the shaft, and Kon waves his hand over a crystalline pedestal to our left. The crystal making up the shaft responds by closing up. "-when the Military Council were still in charge. Then the Science Council took over… I guess the groups closest to Krypton didn't do too well."

"I didn't ask, but that sounds logical. Plus, the general break down in law and order…"

"Kryptonians would be pretty unpopular anyway." He nods as we make our way along the corridor. "And given how xenophobic the Science Council was… Would they even have bothered telling anyone else Zod hurt what they did with him?"

"I doubt it. They certainly didn't offer the survivors any sort of help."

"Huh?"

"After an orbital strike from Kryptonian warships? The planet wasn't habitable. Amalak told me he was concerned there wasn't enough genetic variety left in his species for them to have a future. Zod did far more harm to them than he did to Krypton."

"Oh."

We emerge into a small circular room with a pedestal in the centre. Kon looks at me and I shrug as best my armour allows me. "I'm not saying that I can't interface with it, but that Eradicator had construct disruption technology. And it wouldn't be easy anyway."

Kon nods, steps up to the pedestal and holds his right hand over it. A hologram appears showing the face of an elderly man.

"Hello. I was High Councillor Har-Zod. To whom am I speaking?"

"My name is Kon-El. Ah, son of-."

The hologram frowns. "An unfortunate name. You're a clone, then?"

"Kind of. I have two genetic parents, but I was made in a tank. What's unfortunate about it?"

"The syllable 'kon' can have several meanings, but the most simple is 'abomination'. It was commonly used as a term of abuse for clones. Not that I myself bear such prejudices, but it is curious to me that you identify yourself in such a way."

What?

"Oh. I… Just… It sounds like a name from Earth. That's.. the planet I grew up on. I didn't even know that it meant anything." He turns towards me.

I raise my hands. "I don't speak Kryptonian."

He looks at the ground for a moment, then appears to accept it. He turns back to the holohead. "So… What are you? Are you wired up to the machine somewhere?"

"No. What you are speaking to is a computer representation of my responses based on my most recent neural imprint. Given the conditions outside I think it likely that the original Har-Zod has been dead for some time. But: you are Kryptonian, and given what has befallen our people I suppose that I should make my archive available to you. What would you like to know?"

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Converse 9

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14th September

21:03 GMT

"Have any other survivors come back here?"

"If there are any other survivors, they haven't come to this facility. Unfortunately, my deep space sensors have long since been destroyed, and my local space sensors are not functioning at anything like full effectiveness. It is quite possible that there are other survivors in other parts of the universe."

"Paul, is the air in here okay to breathe?"

Ring? "Not quite Earth-normal, but yes."

Kon pulls off his helmet and holds it under his left arm. "Did anyone else get out? When Krypton was destroyed, did anyone apart from Kal-El get away?"

"How far back would you like me to go? The primitivists left to establish a colony on Daxam centuries ago. A small number of naval officers and enlisted personnel either refused to obey the isolation edict or fled later. Likewise, a number of colonists were officially recorded as remaining on their adopted worlds. If you are referring to the period immediately prior to Krypton's destruction, I detected two hyperspatial windows opening shortly before my sensors were damaged."

"Two-! Do you know where they were going?"

Har-Zod's head shrinks and moves to the podium's left. A map of the system appears in the space he vacated, and two out of scale lines indicate the crafts' trajectories.

"The hyperspatial window generated by the first would have taken it to a planet in a system outside the bounds of the Kryptonian Empire." The image zooms out, showing the path-.

"That's Earth. That must be Superman's-. Ah, Kal-El's pod."

"The identity of the occupant is not listed on my database. The second craft appeared to have been heading for a similar vector. Unfortunately, it did not get far enough away to escape Krypton's destruction." The image zooms back in and I see the change in its trajectory as the wave of debris passes it. "The craft appears to have initiated an emergency hyperspatial jump. However, attempting that with so much matter in the surrounding environment is extremely risky. It is unlikely they would have survived."

Kon is leaning forward. "Can you tell where they went?"

"Not without precise readings from the location in which the hyperspatial window was formed. If you want to pursue the craft, I would remind you that this was over thirty years ago. Assuming that the occupant or occupants survived, they are unlikely to be anywhere near that location."

Kon glances back at me. "We gotta check it out."

So. Kara Zor-El. Hopefully, anyway. The universe hasn't kicked me in the crotch with any of these yet. "We do indeed. Can you use scans from my ring to get the data you need?"

"What ring would that be?" I raise my hands and send my armour back into subspace, my ring's sigils clearly visible. "Ah, a Lantern. Yes, you should be able to. Here." The image of the system is replaced with… What I'm going to assume are technical schematics.

Ring, does that make any sense to you?

Yes. With this data it will be possible to relay-.

"Wouldn't it be easier for you to tell me how to calculate where it went?"

"Perhaps. However, that data is highly secure."

"Does that matter now? What if they made more than one jump? It's hardly practical for us to fly back."

"It is unlikely they survived, but in the event that they did the odds against them being in a position to make a second jump are astronomical."

"Why don't we just take you with us?"

"Kon, while I'm technically capable of warping Xenon along with us, I don't-."

"Not the whole moon, just the bit Har-Zod's recorded on!"

"I would only be able to communicate with you after being installed in a Kryptonian data interface. There is little advantage in moving me. If whoever was in that craft has survived the intervening years, I doubt that a day or so to come back with new data would create a significant problem."

"I think he's right, Kon." I put my construct armour back on and generate the Kryptonian communicator construct. "We can always move Xenon after we check on whoever this is."

"Okay." He nods grudgingly. "We'll be back for you."

"I don't mind either way, but I believe that the original Har-Zod would have appreciated the sentiment. Rao watch over you."

The face and map vanish as we head for the exit. Rather than take our time, Kon's flying as fast as he safely can in this sort of environment, donning his helmet as he does so. His hand flashes over the crystalline pedestal and he's already at the ceiling as it opens, rising out of the hole as soon as it's wide enough.

Finding a corpse would be… Awkward.

I fly after him, heading back out into near-Xenon space. Which is now a good deal clearer than it was before Kon blew it up. Okay, hyperspace window opened there…

I come up alongside Kon, generating a construct up ahead of us pointing to our destination. "Kon, ready?"

"Ready."

We both accelerate in that direction. "Two, one, warp."

Slightly green-tinted space bends around us for an instant, then the universe snaps back into being. Obviously there's nothing much to see… Other than a continent-sized lump of Kryptonradiation? No, no, it's far enough away that it's merely 'elevated'. Ring, scan hyperspatial distortions and other such residues, then relay to Har-Zod.

Compliance.

"Whow." Kon stares at the giant lump of shimmering green rock. Most of the kryptonite is on the side facing us, what used to be the outer edge of the outer core of the planet. For an object of that size at this distance, perspective is playing all sorts of tricks on me. My mind can't quite comprehend the idea of a rock that shape being 600 miles across.

"There might be ruins on the far side. But we can come back later."

"Yeah." He turns around. "Got anything?"

Data transmitted. Reply received. Most probable coordinates available.

I blink as the ring feeds them into my mind. "Best bet isn't too far from Alpha Centauri." I generate a construct marker and we both begin flying at best acceleration in that direction. "Warp in two, one, warp."

Rao is 'close' to Sol as these things go, but even with my recent experience there's still an appreciable time spent in the warp tube before the universe snaps back into being.

"Scanning... Yes, there's an emergence window. Not picking up other-."

"There!"

Kon's off. What-? Oh, the glowing green rock. I warp again, and a fraction of a second later we're right by it. Okay, we're not in Public Enemies territory here. This thing isn't going in anything like the right direction to hit Earth ever. Its relative velocity must be near zero. And if I remember my Justice League contingencies right, its mass is within manageable limits. Still pretty damn big though.

Orange lights run over the exterior as I scanthere.

"One small synthetic object, somewhat intact."

"Okay. How do we get it out?"

"Very carefully."

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Converse 10

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14th September

21:07 GMT

Okay…

Possible living Kryptonian encased in a lump of silicon, iron and kryptonite. Oh, and thorium and curium and a few other things as well because that kryptonite had to come from somewhere and not all of the radioactive materials in Krypton were transmuted when it exploded. Thirty years' kryptonite exposure would turn a Human into a dead irradiated lump of cancer. If anyone in there has been exposed, they're dead. But. If the craft had some kind of shielding and a stasis or high-end suspended animation unit (which I think I remember the Power Girl version having) and everything stayed working (which is well within the capacities of Kryptonian technology) then she could still be alive.

Heat-based cutting is out, because that would make the Kryptonite explode and trigger a radiation pulse. Sonics aren't a good idea, because those could pass through the mass and damage the craft that is hopefully within. Giant drill construct and hope Kon never mentions it to Guy? No, those still cause vibrations. X-ionised cutting tool?

I turn up my empathic vision, but if there's anyone alive in there then they're not experiencing enough emotion to register. Soo, cutting tool that could go right through whatever ship they're in isn't such a great idea. This rock is baked with enough regular and exotic radiation that I wouldn't want to bet my scans are completely accurate…

I reach my hands forward and replace my armour's gauntlets with crumbler gauntlets. Still, not a great option, but these can be set to crumble particular materials. Whatever the ship is made of, it won't be made of kryptonite. I know crumbled kryptonite doesn't explode… For whatever reason.

"Kon, I'm going to crumble the green kryptonite and the rock. If you see anything that doesn't look like rock, tell me at once."

"Sure."

Right. Green kryptonite fir-. Wait, didn't this rock drop a tonne of non-green kryptonite on Earth in the comic? "And you should probably back off and increase power to your environmental shield."

"Why? If you crumble it, there'll be less radiation."

"Because we know that there are other kryptonite isomers and I don't know exactly how they'd react with an environmental shield designed to keep out the green stuff."

Ah… I think gold removed Kryptonian abilities. Red caused increased self-absorption in New Adventures and impulsiveness in Smallville and.. I think random mutations in the older comics? Black… Turns Kryptonians evil? That silver enchanted variety that made Superman behave like a child in Superman/Batman. And pink…

That… Probably doesn't… Actually…

Well, if it does, I'm sure Kon can control himself until the effect wears off. I jab my hands forward, chunks of kryptonite vanishing as I turn the crumble field up to a five metre radius. Just kryptonite. Vaguely draconic construct arms grab chunks of rock suddenly no longer connected to the main mass and toss them aside. I move forward into the available space and press my hands against the mass again. No, taking too long. Turn the crumbler field up again. Ten metres.

"Anything I can do to help?"

"Sorry, but I don't think so. Do you know if Cadmus has medical facilities for a Kryptonian? I know Star Labs Metropolis-."

"Wouldn't it be easier to take them to Superman's fortress?"

Another big lump of rock comes free, but all the big chunks of kryptonite from this part have been crumbled… Switch to silicon. Hands forward again.

"I don't know. Would it? I don't know what he's got in there."

"Really?"

"We're not exactly close."

"You're not exactly close to Batman. I guess I just figured…"

"Batman is in charge of the team and the Justice League. And he lives in a city with a high crime rate." Not as bad as it was, by any means. It's not Detroit or anything, not any more. But I certainly had business reasons for scanning there. "Superman's fortress is in the middle of nowhere, and he hardly spends any time there. So even if I did have a reason to speak to himDON'T GO ANYWHERE NEAR THAT!"

Kon backs off as I grab the shard of newly revealed black crystal in a very thick construct. "Okay, but… What is it?"

Radiation… Similar but not identical. How the heck does radiation exposure make someone evil? "Black kryptonite, apparently." I subspace it. "We can study it later. Do you know for a fact that Kal-El has medical equipment in the Fortress?"

"Yeah. He told Mom he was taking some of… Match's tissue samples there."

"That could just be a lab." I bring my hands forward again. Not… Too far now. "Ring, contact Lantern Stewart."

"Transmitting now."

"Power ring detected."

Automated message, ignore it. And because I'm no longer on the Green Lantern Corps' shit list…

"What is it, Paul?"

"Not on Earth at the moment, are you?"

"No, Athmoora. Why?"

"…happy to have his son raised…"

"Kon and I may, possibly, have found a Kryptonian survivor. They're in a kryptonite-rich asteroid in what I hope is a sealed container. I need to know whether Kal-El's got any sort of medical facilities in his Fortress or not."

"That's great news. And, yeah, he does. I took him there one time after he fought the Kryptonite Man and needed to get himself patched up."

"Thank you. I'll let you know how it goes. Orange Lantern Illustres out."

"…you well, but my brother speaks…"

I bring my hands forward again, crumbling the last chunk of rock between myself and what looks like the most structurally strong part of the craft. Okay, construct airlock and-.

"Emergency release."

NOWHATAREYOUDOING!

There's a small explosion and the front part of the ship is blasted at me, revealing an emaciated young woman currently being exposed to hard vacuum! I catch the chunk of ship and toss it aside as her eyes flutter and the cables plugged into her arms, chest and neck retract.

"…your care. My daughter-"

"Is that-?" Kon drifts closer to get a clearer look as I fill the area around her with breathable air. Okay, I'm seeing burns and severe malnutrition, but nothing that-.

The light from Helios' blessing shines on her. She blinks, her unfocused eyes turning red.

Oh fuck.

Beams of red light flash out and bore through the inside of the asteroid!

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Converse 11

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14th September

21:10 GMT

FUCK!

Her out of control heat vision bores through my construct, through the rock wall and through the kryptonite contained therein!

FUCK!

"Stop! Close your eyes!"

The air's escaping and she's too out of it to understand me!

Empowered Kryptonian bodies can take vacuum in a way that Human bodies can't. But it takes a lot more than a few seconds' vicarious exposure from the Chosen of the Sun to get to that level of toughness. I watch as boiling blood starts leaking out of the holes where the cables were connected, water vapour rushes from her mouth and her bladder and bowels void themselves and her heat vision is still going!

Environmental shield! Get in close and shiel-!

The woman's flailing smacks a hole in my barely-there construct shell just as the kryptonite starts detonating. The rocks around me turn green as light leaks through the furrows vaporised by her heat vision, before the rocks detonate as well! Block sunlight, stronger shield, keep the environmental shield up! Exit was that way move! Life signs… Not good, but at least she's not heat visioning anything anymore. And she's still alive.

At the moment.

Another explosion, and the radiation is seriously abrading my construct barrier as I-.

"What happened?"

"Heat vision."

"I didn't-!"

"Hers." I break through the rock detritus and see the faintly glowing figure of Kon just ahead of me. "Keep going!"

We both accelerate more, and I create an additional shield behind us as a third explosion erupts behind us. The ring shows me the huge lump of rock visibly start to tumble from the force of it.

"Is she okay?"

"No." Okay, no sunlight getting in… I repair her external wounds-. Her fat reserves are down to nothing. She doesn't just look emaciated, she is actually starving. Thirty years in a pod designed for a few days… "We're heading to Earth right now." I generate a target construct and we both fly in that direction. "Warp."

Alpha Centauri is even closer to Sol than it is to Krypton, and at my current level of need the journey is barely noticeable. As soon as the Earth appears beneath us I mark the location of the Fortress and power for it, Kon just behind me.

14th September

16:12 GMT -5

Ring, dial Clark Kent.

Compliance.

The Earth expands below me as I hear the dial tone.

"Clark here."

"I apologise for contacting you directly like this, but I have a severely injured Kryptonian and urgently need access to Superman's Fortress. Do you know where he keeps the key?"

"Ah-. Just outside the door-."

"Not the joke key. The actual key."

"Don't you think Superboy would-?"

"Not Kon." Ring, did that message confirm who this is?

Confirmed. Message indicated that occupant was 'Kara Zor-El', daughter of-.

Never mind, I know. "Her name's Kara Zor-El and I still don't know enough about Kryptonian physiology to fix severe kryptonite radiation poisoning. I mean, I can best guess, but-"

"I'll unlock it from here. Get her there as fast as you can."

"On it." Ring, hang up. "Kon, can you fly yourself there?"

"Yeah, go."

Transition.

And a metal door with an 'S' on it opening just in front of me. No giant palace of crystal here, though the interior is made of the stuff. I'm flying forwards into a small vestibule which scans me just in case I'm someone trying to come in without authorisation-.

"Please halt."

"Kal-El should just have sent authorisation. Please, I need to get-."

A section of interior wall-crystal retracts into the surrounding crystal. "This way."

I fly as directed. Ring scans aren't really penetrating, but at least I can see the shape of the environment now. "She's-."

"My niece. I know."

Crystals twinkle and I follow them, down, left and into a small chamber with an extremely uncomfortable-looking crystal bed and various other.. Kryptonian artefacts arranged around it. "Are you able to control this-" I lay her down as gently as I can. "-stuff, or-."

"Yes. Please, stand back."

I comply, and a crystal frame grows out of the floor and envelops the bed.

"And we're going to be having words later about why Match isn't in here."

"I'm afraid I don't know who that is."

"In that case, I'm going to be having words with Kal-El. Oh, and Kon-El should be arriving in the next ten minutes."

"He will be welcome. Please explain how you found Kara."

"Her craft appears to have dragged tonnes of rock and kryptonite with it when it went into hyperspace. When it came out, she was in the middle of it."

Patterns of pale blue light shine inside the frame, scanning and.. hopefully fixing.

"So, cellular damage of all sorts, maybe… Do Kryptonians get cancer?"

"Yes, but my niece will not."

"Plus, there's a good chance that she breathed in some kryptonite crystal, and… Not all of the kryptonite was green, so, don't assume that what you've got on file is sufficient."

A pillar of crystal extrudes itself from the floor next to me. "Please place any samples you have on the pedestal."

"This cannot come into contact with any living Kryptonian, even for a moment. Am I clear?"

"Of course."

I take the black kryptonite out of subspace and lay it on the pedestal. It's immediately surrounded in a faintly silver force field.

Fine. Ring, carefully monitor everything Jor-El is doing to Kara. I want to learn everything about Kryptonian physiology I can.

Compliance.

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Converse 12

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14th September

16:28 GMT -5

"How is she?"

I look around as Kon flies in and lands, helmet under his arm. "Jor-El says that he's fixed the radiation damage." I point to the pedestal with the black kryptonite on it. "Do not, under-."

"Don't touch it, yeah, I got it." He walks past me to take a look at her. "Do you know what her name is?"

"Kara Zor-El, daughter of Kal-El's uncle Zor-El and his aunt Alura. His cousin."

"So… She's my first cousin, once removed?"

I consider for a moment. "Basically, yes."

He stands next to the bed and looks down at her. "She looks… Really thin."

"She spent thirty years in a pod meant for a few days at most. I'm impressed that she lasted this long, actually. Once I know that she's going to be alright I'll fly back to Alpha Centauri and grab whatever's left of the pod. See if I can interrogate its AI."

"Does Superman have any.. chairs in here? I think I should-."

"I'm happy to oblige, Kon-El."

Crystal extrudes from the floor just behind him in the approximate shape of a throne, solid based and backed.

"Ah, thanks." Kon looks around, trying to spot the floating head. "Are you another recording of someone?"

"Yes." Another pedestal extrudes from the ground, this time with a back to it. A moment later, an older but still recognisably Kal-El-like face appears. "This program is-."

"A computer representation of the real Jor-El's responses based on his most recent neural imprint, I know. Har-Zod had one on Xenon." Kon sits, tries to get comfortable and then takes Kara's left hand in his. "Do you know who I am?"

"Yes, your friend the Orange Lantern explained it to me. You are Kon-El, a synthetic organic created using a combination of Kryptonian and Human biological material."

Kon shrugs. "Genomorph too. How's Kara doing?"

"She should survive her travails. I will need to regularly feed her small amounts of easily digestible organic sludge in place of normal food while she recovers from her malnutrition, but fortunately she shouldn't suffer any long term effects from it. The effects of radiation on the Kryptonian body were well-documented in my day."

"You knew about kryptonite? I thought that didn't get created until Krypton exploded."

"It occurred in small quantities on Krypton long before that. Though its effects are far less severe on Kryptonians who haven't lived their entire lives underneath a yellow sun, it is at least as dangerous for us as for Humans."

Kon nods. "How long's she gunna be out for?"

"Now that her injuries have been healed, it is likely that she will alternate between periods of wakefulness and natural sleep. At the moment, she is asleep. Given what has happened to her, I think that it would be best to leave her to it."

"There's a zeta tube down the corridor if you want to go home. Kal-El should be here in an hour or so."

Kon looks at Kara's gaunt face for a moment. "No, I'll stick around."

I nod, then turn to the hologram. "Jor-El, I've been trying to work something out. Exactly how.. Jor-Elly.. are you? I mean..? Do you have the capacity for creativity? Are you essentially a true AI based on the original Jor-El's mind? Because if so then I'm.. not happy about you being stuck in here like this."

"I appreciate your concern, but, no. I am not a creative intelligence in the way you are trying to describe. I am a highly complicated user interface capable of mimicking the likely responses of the original Jor-El with a high degree of accuracy, but essentially all that requires is that I access a database and speak using his syntax. Or a translation of it, for Kon-El's benefit."

"And you can't.. become..? A true AI?"

"Not by processes I can initiate myself. There were instances in Kryptonian history in which recordings such as myself were modified to possess greater mental freedom, usually in a misguided attempt to make their originator live again. Kryptonians are no more strangers to the extremes of grief than Humans are. But as I said, I am not an intelligent being. The result would simply be a new intelligence with access to Jor-El's memories."

I nod.

"Hey, could this…" Kon looks at the various pieces of medical equipment. "Could this be used to help Match?"

"Orange Lantern explained who Match is to me. There are a number of things that can go wrong in the process of cloning a Kryptonian in the way Cadmus attempted. Some of them can be fixed simply. Others are more difficult. I won't be able to tell you for certain without more information."

"I can bring him here once Kal-El turns up." Kon nods, giving me a faint smile before returning his attention to Kara. Hm. Since I'm basically here for moral support, I suppose I could have a listen to what that message from her ship was. Ring, you recorded that, right?

Confirmed, message recorded.

Extend a translation effect to Kon, then play.

"Power ring detected. Message begins."

"Green Lantern Tomar-Re. If you are hearing this, then the worst has come to the worst. Krypton is dead. You are now listening to what are almost certainly my last words, and in all likelihood my daughter and my nephew are all that survive. If the gods have been kind then Kara has reached safety. I am a lifelong atheist, and yet I find myself so unnerved that I am actually praying that is the case. I have little time. My brother's.. plan, is that Kal-El and Kara Zor-El be sent to a primitive world in the Sector neighbouring ours, where the locals physically resemble us and where their white main sequence star will grant them the powers with which the Military Council were so fixated. I have a different ideal in mind. My brother may be happy to have his son raised by neo-Daxamites, but my daughter is the product of a technologically sophisticated world. Giving up the stars was the greatest mistake our species ever made, and I am loath to make the last members of my species spend the rest of their days in such a place. I do not know you well, but my brother speaks highly of you. I have no right to make further demands on one who has done his utmost to aid us…" I hear him exhale. "As much as the confederacy of dunces who make up the Science Council will allow. But, please, I beg you: take them to your homeworld instead. If possible, into your care. Your people are technologically advanced, and can offer her far more than the primitive 'idyll' Jor thinks represents a better choice. My daughter… After a period of.. adjustment, will be perfectly capable of raising Kal-El in the traditions of our House. I have encoded a data crystal with as much pertinent data as I could access and placed it within this.. glorified Moses basket. Use what is contained therein as you see fit. I… I wish… So many things… Hah, I wish I had time to record a neural imprint as Jor has. But it's a little harder to make a pod for an adult woman than it is to make one for an infant. Kara, my daughter, I'm afraid that you'll have to make do with a short dictation. It's-."

…

"Ring?"

"At this point, the asteroid exploded and no further transmissions were received."

Damn. "The rest might be-."

"Uwraah? D-dad?"

I'm on my feet and at Kara's right side as she starts to stir. Her eyes blink, irises unfocused.

"You're okay, you're safe." Kon leans over her. "We got you out of that pod, and-."

"Uh?" She tries focusing on him and I extend the ring's translation effect to her. "Uncle Jor? Where..? Where am I?"

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Converse 13

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14th September

16:32 GMT -5

Her eyes close for a moment, and I think she might have gone back to sleep. Then she opens them again and takes a look around the room. Then she sighs with relief. "Krypton, I'm on Krypton."

"I'm sorry, Miss-."

She focuses on Kon's chest-. Where the 'S' of House El is marked on his chest plate because I have issues prioritising when merged with the Ophidian. Then she looks up at his face. "Who are you?"

"I'm K-."

She loses focus again and flops back on the bed. "I was… I got into…" Kon lightly squeezes her hand. "Ohnoohnoohnoohno."

"Miss Zor-El, do you remember what happened?"

"Yes, yes I remember." Her voice sounds like she's trying to cry, wavering and unsteady. "Krypton's gone. And… And I was trapped…"

She looks at Kon's face again, and he nods. "You were in there a while, but you're safe now. You're on Earth, and-."

"K-Kal? Little Kal?" She clumsily reaches out with her right hand. "You've.. grown up."

"No, I-. I'm not Kal-El. But he's-" He glances at the doorway. "-on his way. We had to bring you straight here because it's the only place that knows how to treat Kryptonians."

"And… The voice I heard was Uncle Jor's neural imprint." Kon nods. "It actually happened." Kon nods again, his eyes dipping further. "W-? How did..? Where is this?"

"Jor-El included some sort of auto-fabrication device in Kal-El's pod. Left alone for a couple of years it extracted materials from the surrounding rock and built this place. We're currently on a large island near Earth's northern pole. And slightly underground."

She manages to nod. "But if-" She looks at Kon again. "-you're wearing-. Are you his son?"

"Not.. exactly." Kon looks up, his eyes meeting mine for a moment before moving to the far wall. "A local genetics lab was doing work on Kryptonian DNA and.. made me."

"You're a.. clone..? I mean, not that that's a bad thing or anything-."

"No, I'm a mix of Kal-El, a Human called Lex Luthor and… And a few other things."

"What?"

"Yeah, Human science is kinda crazy. Oh, and, ah… Earth has a yellow sun, so you're… Things are gunna be a bit different."

"I'll be really strong, really tough and I'll be able to fly."

"And have laser eyes. You got a dose of sunlight when we dug you out, but at the moment we're excluding the relevant wavelengths from the light here."

"Why?"

"When we recovered you, your heat vision activated and the Kryptonite in the rock exploded. We all nearly died. That's part of why you're in a medical facility. So, until you're healthy enough to learn self-control, we can't let you get powered up."

She nods. "Okay, that's… Yeah."

"We're also-."

A tube extrudes itself from a nearby device and extends itself towards her mouth. "Kara, please swallow this."

"Uncle-?" The slight lift to her spirits fades almost immediately. "Right. What.. is it?"

"A nutritional supplement designed to restore your strength as quickly as possible. You were near-starving when they recovered you."

She nods and sits-. Tries to sit up, then Kon and I help her when she finds that she can't. The crystal of her bed shifts position to support her as well as she takes the end of the tube in her mouth and starts to suck whatever it is down.

"Recognised, Superman, Zero One."

We release her, and she leans back against her new support as she continues feeding. "Aw-?" She nudges it aside for a moment. "How long as it been?"

"Since Krypton..? About thirty four Earth years." She nods. I'm not sure.. how much of this she's really processing. My training relating to extremes of stress mostly focused on how to calm them down in the short term. "We think what happened to you was that a lot of rock got dragged along when you went into hyperspace, then your pod put you into suspended animation."

She nods, then notices that the tube isn't providing her with food any longer. "That's it?"

"You were getting starvation-level nutrition for thirty four years, Miss Zor-El. Your body-" Kal-El strides into the room, cape billowing. "-needs to get used to food again."

"Kara." I step aside and he takes my place on her right. "I almost can't believe you're really here."

"Kal?" She looks up at him, not quite believing what she's seeing. Then her eyes drop. "Thirty four years. I remember you being a little-" Her arms shake as she tries to lift them, her hands moving to indicate a small object. "-baby."

"You and Mom can compare notes-."

"Aunt Lara's here?"

"Oh." Kal-El looks momentarily stricken at his misstep. "I meant my.. adopted mother. I was brought up by a family on Earth. I didn't see my.. natural mother's face until I was in my teens."

"Oh. No, that… I'm glad you.. had someone."

"Once you're well enough, I'll take you to meet them." He catches my eye for about half a second, then turns his gaze to Kon. "You're invited too."

"I am? Ah, I mean… Thanks?"

Nice to see that his diplomatic training hasn't been completely wasted. And it's nice to see Kal-El making an effort. "Oh, Kal-El? When you've got time, I need to talk to you about how it went with Shazam, but-" He nods. "-not urgent."

Kal-El looks down at Kara again. "So how are you feeling?"

"I'm starving, weak, irradiated, I lost thirty years and everyone I ever knew is dead." This time she does manage tears. "What am I going to do, Kal?"

"First thing is, you're-" A chair extrudes from the floor and he sits on it. "-going to get stronger. And when you're well, then you've got your whole life ahead of you. Earth's.. not Krypton, but I think you'll come to love it just as much as I do."

"It… Do you want me to get a couple of G-Gnomes in?" They both look at me. "It just occurred to me that Miss Zor-El doesn't speak any Earth languages. And a telepathic tutor could fix that in a few hours."

Kal-El gives his head a small shake. "Not.. right now, Orange Lantern. Maybe later." I nod as he turns back to Kara. "Is there anything you need, anything I can get you?"

"I just… I think I'd.. like to sleep for a while?"

He nods, then stands. "We'll be right outside if you need anything."

back

Converse 14

next

14th September

16:38 GMT -5

"Thank you." Kal-El's smiling at us like a man dragged from the sea. "I don't think I can even begin to explain how much this means to me."

"Unfortunate position for a professional writer to be in."

He makes an amused exhalation, and nods. "Alright, I could probably come up with something if you give me a couple of hours. I knew from Jor-El's records that Kara was supposed to arrive on Earth with me, but when there wasn't any sign of her I just assumed that she.. hadn't made it."

Kon's smiling proudly. I settle for nodding. "I was just going to get you a t-shirt…"

"Heh. Ah, Superboy-. Conner-."

"You can… Call me Kon. I don't really use 'Conner' a whole lot."

"Kon. I'm sorry for just springing that invite on you, but I wanted to make it clear I was including you. If you… If you don't want to come-."

"No, I… I do." He nods. "I'd like to meet them. Your parents."

"You two want me to.. get lost while you..?"

Kal-El nods. "If you wouldn't mind."

"Not a problem. If you need me, I'll be either at the Mountain or KordTech."

He nods, and I generate a zeta tube and step through.

"Recognized, Orange Lantern, B Zero Six."

"Identification confirmed."

Alright, where is agh!

"…a Demon?!" Canis brings his mega rod down on a bolt of purple flame, dissipating it harmlessly before it can reach us. "You would barely qualify as a Parademon!"

"I will skin you like a banana then feed you your own intestines!"

The two of them are contained within a glowing blue circle which is being maintained by Tula and Garth. Garth looks pleadingly at me for a moment as a blaster bolt narrowly misses Blaze's head, passes through the magic circle and is absorbed by the arena's force field.

I am… I don't know what's going on. I transition to the living area, where Kaldur is reading a thaumaturgy textbook and M'gann is.. doing history homework? She looks up as I appear. "Hey Paul. You're back early. How'd it go on Krypton?"

"Surpassed all expectations. We found a functioning database. And a living Kryptonian."

Kaldur's head snaps up. "A survivor?"

I pull out a chair and sit down opposite them. "Kara Zor-El, Kal-El's cousin. She's recovering in the Fortress of Solitude now. I left.. Kon talking things out with Kal-El."

"Recovering?" M'gann's attentiveness increases. "Is she sick?"

"Basically, she got into a tiny escape craft just before Krypton exploded, didn't get far enough away, then the craft put her into suspended animation to keep her alive until help arrived. Unfortunately, there wasn't any Kryptonian help around and Green Lantern Tomar-Re was too beaten up to remember that there was anyone to pick up. The Fortress's medical systems fixed the kryptonite poisoning, but she was close to starvation. I'm sure she'd appreciate a visit in a few days, but I don't think she's quite up to strangers just yet. She.. should be fine, eventually."

M'gann nods.

"What's going on with Canis and-" Kaldur sighs quietly. "-Angelica? Because she's meant to be working on-" Kaldur holds up his book so that I can see it's-. "-that."

"It appears some part of the magic which Ms Blaze was using offended Canis. They escalated their hostilities throughout the day before issuing mutual challenges. I felt that permitting them to spar might enable them to let off steam. Garth and Tula are making sure that they do not go over acceptable bounds."

I hold up my hands. "You're the one who has to live here. Did she actually make any progress?"

Kaldur closes the book and nods. "As far as I can determine, weakening her soul-prison should be a simple matter. She can free the trapped souls at will, and they would then move on to wherever they should have gone."

"Can we change that?"

"Is that important? This will already be the most complex thaumatic conversion that I have ever encountered, and I would have thought that simplifying any part that we can would be a more sensible course of action."

"The sorts of people who fall prey to Demons on Earth are generally long shots for going anywhere but Hell, and I think that we can consider ourselves to be Hell's enemies at this point. If we can just transfer the whole lot into Hades' care, or.. give them the choice..?"

Kaldur lays his hands on the book and slides it away from him. "Then I am afraid that you will need someone far more skilled than I to aid you."

"Okay… But… It should be possible?"

"Very few things are impossible. But I am afraid that I do not know whether what you seek is achievable."

I nod. "I don't suppose that you know the name of the second greatest thaumaturgist in Atlantis, do you?"

"There are several professors skilled in.. particular areas. I am not aware of a single individual whom I would describe as being the second greatest overall. Why do you not want to take the matter to Professor Sephtian?"

"Because I haven't had a chance to find out how angry King Orin is with me and I don't want to risk messing up his professional life any more than I already have."

"You-?" Kaldur blinks, then frowns slightly. "Why would King Orin be angry with you?"

"Not telling him about Koryak, and killing Nabu. I can understand him being angry for either or both things, and I want a chance to smooth things over before I start taking liberties."

"I think that you do King Orin a disservice by underestimating his capacity for rationality. And overestimate his anger with you. If someone he did not know was able to present a plausible case for a course of action they were taking being in the Justice League's interest, I am certain that he would give it due consideration. He would certainly not persecute a third party for their involvement in a matter which did not break Atlantean law."

I nod sombrely. "Okay. You know him better than I do. I'll ask Sephtian to involve himself."

"I note that you have not asked me whether I think this is the correct thing to do."

"If you can think of a better way to hook up the wings.- "

I stop as Kaldur raises his right hand. "I was referring to the question of whether or not we should be assisting a Demon who has preyed upon the souls of mankind for millennia. Not the practical realisation of that objective."

"If you know a better magic user, I'm all ears. But as far as I can tell, Ahri'ahn's still dead, Circe still wants to kill Diana, and… That's it. Once we get the wings plugged in, she'll no longer gain any advantage from doing any of the demony stuff she used to do. Or she'll be dead."

"Does that not risk compromising the League's status as heroes?"

"Yes. And next time they try fighting an arcane opponent without adequate support, it will risk compromising their status as living beings. Justice League membership is not a prize, it's a job. I could find you-" I call up a dozen construct personnel files. "-a hundred devoted heroes who would add less to the operational capacities of the League combined than she will simply because it is in her interests. And I am perfectly happy doing that."

"You may be correct. I have been concerned for my king's safety when he takes on such opponents without a sufficiently skilled magic user as part of his team. But given the speed with which you reached your conclusion, it seems that you have acquired a good deal of ruthlessness in your time away from Earth."

"No. I was like that already. But since Nabu's already dead I don't have to disguise it any longer."

back

Converse 15

next

14th September

17:02 GMT -5

I smile as three quarters of the Knight family approach me. Jack's actually wearing the gear he-.

I grin excitedly. "Is that your cosmic staff?!"

Jack looks mildly nonplussed by my enthusiasm. "Ah, yeah?"

"Oh whaw. I mean-" I hold up my right hand. "-you don't need it, but I'm really happy to have the opportunity to see it."

He holds it up slightly, smiling faintly. "After the job you did selling it to the Senate Committee, I thought you might like a closer look."

"No way. Dad?" The teenaged Kyle Knight looks positively stricken. "You didn't say Grayven was a fan."

Jack actually chuckles. "I think Grayven likes weird technology the way I like modern antiques."

I nod. "Your species went from your first powered flight to what is basically a mega rod in thirty years. How is that not exciting?"

"Ah… Could you..?" Kyle comes forward and holds out a small hard backed book. "Would you mind signing this? I'm collecting superhero autographs. I don't have a lot yet…"

"Sure, happy to." Hmm. Want to make a good impression… I flip to the first blank page and generate a pen construct. "Just superheroes, or…"

"Huh?"

"Well, I was thinking…" 'Kyle Theo Knight. To the son of one remarkable man and the grandson of another. Grayven.' "If you leave this with me for a couple of days, I could probably get one or two other people of interest to-."

"Are you trying to get my son hunting supervillain autographs?"

"No. No." I pass the book back. "I was offering to do it for him. Perfectly safe." That earns exhalation hissing through his lips. "And Miss Knight." I crouch down and hold out my right hand to the youngest member of the trio. "Delighted to see you. I have a daughter your age."

She sullens, folding her arms across her chest. "Dad made me come."

"Yes, they do that sometimes." I stand. "But thank you all for coming, voluntarily or not. I have news, and something important to show you. This way please."

I lead the way across the car park between a selection of nondescript warehouses. Jack picks up his pace a little to come alongside me. "Did you find something already?"

"Oh yes. Does the name 'Vandal Savage' mean anything to you?"

"Yeah. I mean, I never met him personally…"

"Long story short, your father got rejected by a lot of tech companies who thought he was a crank-."

"Hey, any decent engineer or physicist would know that Dad could do exactly what he said he could."

"True, but when an old man writes in saying that he has a device that can produce unlimited cheap energy, they don't send their chief researcher. They send either the office junior or whoever p-." Quick glance at the children. "Irritated the boss most that month. Hardly anyone takes that sort of thing seriously."

"Someone bought-. Wait, really? Vandal Savage bought Dad's designs?"

"Yep. The idea of suppressing your father's work, then benefiting from it once he was dead is exactly the sort of thing he'd find appealing." I shrug. "I'd have found out about it months ago, except the company he used to do it wasn't directly owned by him and as such wasn't seized with the holdings we knew about when the Light was wound up."

Kyle comes up on his father's far side. "Who are the Light?"

"A group of supervillains whose holdings and persons were exterminated with extraordinary prejudice back in June. Anyway, I tracked down Savage's daughter and she was able to furnish me with a more complete picture of his properties." I did interrogate the Construct as well, pretty fucking thoroughly, actually, but I think it would be best if that thing's existence did not become more widely known. "And she was perfectly happy to assist me into transferring full control of your father's technology to someone who shares our views on how it should be used."

"If I asked 'who?', would I like the answer?"

"Hmmm." I make a show of considering his question as I push the door to Warehouse 3 open and walk inside. "Could go either way."

The golden form of the Starseeker sits in the middle of a mass of scaffolding in the centre of the warehouse. Upon the scaffolding stand numerous technicians and scientists who are engaged in very carefully examining-.

"Whow." Kyle's eyes widen as he takes the Starseeker in. "Grandpa Theodore really built that?"

"Yes, young man." Lex turns away from a couple of scientists and.. some guy I vaguely recognise as having been a Star Conqueror puppet at one point. I can feel Jack making a point of remaining calm as Lex and Starface walk over to intercept us as we continue towards the ship. "Your grandfather really was a quite remarkable man. Mister Knight." Lex offers Jack his right hand, and Jack transfers his cosmic staff to his left in order to clasp it. "It's an honor to meet you."

"Mister Luthor."

Lex chuckles to himself, and bows his head slightly. "Yes, I've… Rather grown accustomed to that response from Superheroes. May I say to begin with that if your father had brought this to me, then I would most certainly not have turned him away."

"I'm.. not so sure that Dad would have wanted the US army being the main benefactors of his work either."

Because last time that happened, two cities got blown up and he spent a couple of years in an asylum.

"Oh, no, no." Lex shakes his head. "This.. isn't going to be a LexCorp project." Jack frowns. "Mister Knight, I've fantasised about bringing Humanity into the space age since I was a small child. And now that I've been presented with that opportunity, I'm a little relieved to find that I'm still just idealistic enough to want to do it."

"Okay, so, what are you planning on doing with it? And what do you mean, it's not a LexCorp project?"

"I bought the patents myself, in my capacity as a private citizen. I already have people scouting possible locations for the production facility. Or…" He glances back at the Starseeker. "Perhaps facilities."

"You wanna build another one?"

"I want to build a fleet. It's long past time humanity extended its reach into deep space. And with your father's technology, we can make that happen."

Jack nods. "Okay, that's…"

"We're also going into mass production of cosmic converter-based electrical generation. That will be far quicker to implement than a spacecraft assembly plant. No offence intended to your father, but some of his.. design choices-."

Jack draws himself up slightly, but with an air of mock seriousness. "No one insults Art Deco."

"If you'd seen the interior of the LexCorp headquarters you'd know that there's little danger of me doing that. Rather, my researchers believe that modern technology which your father wouldn't have had access to might improve the performance of the core systems he designed. It will be some time before the first designs are ready to be put into production."

"And how are you going to pay for that? Are you going to be selling ships-?"

"Oh, no, no. I wouldn't trust anything this important to the future of humanity to anyone but myself." There's a little self awareness in it, and from his smile I think Jack picks that up. "Within a few years, your father's technology will enable me to completely dominate the world's energy generation markets. Even at a substantial discount on current prices, I don't think I'll have to worry about having trouble funding the project."

"And your cut of that is going to be..?"

"I'm running it as not for profit. My reward is that I get to be the man who leads the Human race back into space. And I intend to give your father full credit for his work. How does a… Theodore Knight Foundation sound?"

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Converse 16

next

14th September

20:16 GMT -2

I lay my right hand on the resonance receiver that serves as the Atlantean equivalent of a doorbell for a moment, then drift back in the water slightly. One magic guy disappeared from the material universe, another so far out of his depth that the fish have lights on their noses -though perhaps I shouldn't think that around here- and the other -shock horror- having a life outside of work.

I don't know how he lives with himself.

The water barrier marking the entrance to Sephtian's home becomes translucent as an Atlantean woman I don't recognise answers my ringing. It's not the same building as Sephtian lived in when I first met him; it's an upgrade in both size and location. Poseidonis real estate isn't any cheaper than the dry land equivalent. The woman in question is octofolk… No, that doesn't sound right. Octopodiform? A somewhat better proportioned Topo. The tentacles around the lower front part of her face are in constant motion, and hide the hard beak I know to be under there. Her skin is a sort of mottled sandy brown with darker spots and her eyes are black circles mounted on a smooth face.

"Orange Lantern, I didn't know that Sephtian had invited you."

"Oh… He didn't. I just.. wanted to ask him about something… Work-related. I can come back, it's not a problem."

"An Orange Lantern project? Of course you can come in!" She takes hold of my right arm and tugs me through the doorway. "Most of us are thaumaturgists of one stripe or another. I know I've been positively green-" Her skin momentarily changes colour to match her words. "-with envy over the things he's been able to do with you."

"I've only recently returned to Earth." A few of Sephtian's other guests look around as my escort continues pulling me through Sephtian's home. "I take it that his work is going well?"

"So many projects were being held back by a lack of materials. Some of us have been nearly laying siege to the Conservatory's circuit-printing equipment."

"If you're interested in working for a surface company with access to that sort of-."

"Hah hahah!" She glances at me, her lip tentacles forming a circular shape. An indication of polite amusement. "You certainly don't waste time."

"No, but it's a serious offer. KordTech is quite serious about securing marketplace dominance, and it doesn't really have any competition at the moment. But it also doesn't have its own pro-."

"Paul!" Sephtian darts around another couple of Mantafolk and comes to a halt just in front of me. "Welcome back to Earth!"

"Thank you. I apologise for intruding."

"Oh, no, no. This.. whole gathering has been discussing the sea change in modern thaumaturgy your.. input has created. Your presence here is.. entirely appropriate." He stares me in the eyes for a moment, then smiles. "Should I.. assume that you have something new for me to work on?"

"Yes, but don't want to take you away from your-."

Sephtian lets out three loud clicks, and the conversations around us die. Guests begin filing in from other rooms. "Friends and colleagues! Orange Lantern has a problem for us!"

"And you're sharing now?!"

A quiet laugh passes around the room and Sephtian's head jerks towards the speaker. She has visible gills and a slightly metallic sheen to her skin, unusual in Atlanteans. "Sabina, I would certainly be delighted to share some of my headaches with you. Especially with you."

"Hmpf."

"So what is it? A new arcane device you need me to build? Something to.. analyse?"

"That will.. probably be involved." I turn my head left and right, taking in my audience. "Is anyone here a member of a monotheistic religion?"

I wait a moment, but no one responds in the affirmative. About what I expected; there are Atlantean monotheists but the idea hasn't ever really caught on. And as part of Ahri-ahn's legacy to Atlantian society high-end magic users are likely to have a more dismissive attitude to elementals in general.

"Item one is an ancient Human magic user with a soul made out of Hell magic. Item two is a pair of wings cut from a high-end Angel. I need to know how to fuse the magics of-" Sephtian starts laughing and twitching, his right hand wiggling backwards and forwards and sending him in a circle. I think he's been drinking. "-the wings with the demonoid without destroying her. This is made more complex by the fact that she's empowering herself using a pocket Hell containing thousands of tormented souls. Ideally I'd like a way to release them somewhere as part of the process."

My escort's tentacles are hanging straight down now. "Is that all?"

"Um… I was wondering… If it would be possible to include scry-ward tattoos like mine? Since you're essentially going to have to recreate her soul from nothing without killing her, I thought you-" The whole room is staring at me. "-could..?"

An Eel-man standing toward the back of the cluster in the library puts his right hand to his mouth. "Do you have a thaumatic break down of the demonoid's power?"

I shake my right hand, causing three Praexis Demons to fall out of my ring. "No, but they do, and the woman herself is available for consultations." Ah… "But that will have to be on the surface; her abilities don't lend themselves to the aquatic life and she's loath to leave a heavily warded environment."

The Praexis Demons give up on trying to waddle through the water. Instead, two of them pick up the third and throw him at the cluster around the library entrance. That provokes a sharp bit of backing up as it lands, tilts back its head and opens its cavernous mouth. A floating wisp of purple/red flame emerges from the back of its throat, and after a moment's delay the guests' hands rise, tattoos glow and invocations get muttered.

Sephtian recovers himself somewhat, and clicks again. "Working parties! Pure thaumaturgists! We need a way to replace one energy with another without losing the fundamental structure. Spiritualists! We need theoretical models for the transmigrations of souls under a variety of conditions! Biomancers! How do we interface a set of wings with a Human body in such a way that they can function? Arcanists! Techniques for making any of this happen. How can we affect such magics?" He turns back to me as the guests begin to group up. "Do you.. have.. an example-?" I take three angel feather rounds out of subspace and hold them out to him. "Excellent. And artificers! We'll need mana taps and containment channels and… All manner of devices to handle the energies. Unless any of you have them already, in which case:-" He gestures imperiously towards his front door. "-get out for not sharing!"

There's some distracted laughter, but the guests are mostly focusing on their new problem.

"Anyone left?" A couple of slightly nervous hands. Sephtian looks perplexed. "And what do you do?"

A Dolphin-man with a pocket of air bound to his blowhole hesitates slightly. "Elementalism?"

Sephtian blinks at him. "Who invited you?"

"Ah. You did? You said you liked my study piece on-."

"Oh, that. Do you.. know anything about Angels?"

"A little. There isn't much published, but I-."

"Fine. Thought models. How is Orange Lantern's latest project going to need to behave in order to use their new magics?"

The Dolphin-man looks around as the huddles turn their back on him. "Just… Think about it on my own?"

"I'm sure you're used to it. Elementalism." Sephtian turns to the Pureblood owner of the other hand. "And you?"

"I… No, I'm Ankhu's date. I work in the diplomatic corps."

"In that case, you can help Orange Lantern work out the political ramifications of his actions, and the best way to deal with a simultaneous invasion of Earth by the armies of Hell and the Silver City when they find out what he's doing this time. And what all of the surface monotheists are going to make of it."

"Ah… I… Really.. work more in inter-city diplomacy than-."

"Just do your best. Ikeni!" Sephtian swims towards the pure thaumaturgy group while the two leftovers look at me slightly helplessly. "What about negative space dream form…"

"Alright chaps, looks like you're with me."

"Nothing wrong with elementalism."

back

Converse 17

next

15th September

08:11 GMT -5

Ted blinks, then takes another look around the room. "Ah..?"

I hold up my hands. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

He shakes his head, small back and forth gestures as his mouth tries to form coherent sentences. "W..? Who..?"

"Apparently, this is what happens when you give a fascinating problem to the greatest magical minds in Atlantis when they're drunk and feeling competitive."

Ted looks around again, but this time he's actually focusing on individual people and artefacts. "You kept them away from the welding torches, right?"

I shake my head. "They didn't know what those were. Most of them don't know surface world equipment. They just-" Ted crouches down and picks up a complicated helical object made of at least five different metals. "-either had the arcanists weld them with magic or did some sort of.. property altering thing to make them a single object."

"Graaakhakhakahak."

The company's sole (hah!) sharkman snore-splutters and then rolls off the workbench he'd been using as a bed, hitting the floor with considerable force. He doesn't wake.

"Greatest.. minds in Atlantis, huh? How much did they-? Wait. Sharks don't snore." He steps over both a sixty year old Professor of Pure Thaumaturgy and her wineskin in order to take a closer look. "How is he snoring?"

"Ted, don't… Stick your head in the Shark's mouth. His name's Da'huk, and he's a biomancer. He decided that it would be easier to turn himself into an air breather than use a water manipulation charm."

"He gave himself-?"

"A-akk-akk-kak-snrk."

Da'huk snore-gulps, giving Ted an excellent view of his dentistry. Ted backs up. "Has he considered a career in surface world medicine? Because-?"

"Why do you think I encouraged them?" I wave my right arm at the rest. "Sephtian's been publishing a lot, lately. And it seems that they think that the surface world presents them with a massive opportunity. Since there's all sorts of fascinating magic stuff up here and no one local who knows what to do with it. So-."

His phone is already out. "Calling my Human Resources manager!"

"Okay, but I kind of need them for a little while first."

He shrugs. "You're already using my labs. Is it something we can bothMaria!" He turns away from me. "I-. Yeah, but-. More of an opportunity. How hard would it be to get green cards for about-" He does another quick look around. "Twenty-."

"Forty."

"Forty Atlanteans? No, no, researchers. The market for product development-. Ah… No? But-." He winces slightly, bowing his head. "Power generation? The medical-? Yeah, I can-." He looks around again. "Maybe… Need to… Get some coffee in them…" He pulls the phone away from his mouth. "Can Atlanteans drink coffee?"

"Mostly. Where do you think I sent the rest?"

"The staff cafeteria?" I nod. "Huh. Okay." He lifts the phone up again. "And you'll need to call the ambassad-. … Ah, yeah, I-." He winces and holds the phone away from his ear for a moment. "O-. O-. Ok-." He bows his head again. "Okay. You're right, I'm sorry. But when you do-." He winces again, then lowers the phone. "They're available for hire, right? I didn't just wake my Human Resources manager up on her day off for nothing, 'cause she's kinda pissed with me now and I don't wanna have to tell her that I was wasting her time."

"I only met these people yesterday. I think they're relatively free agents, but you should probably check with… The sober ones."

"Okay." He holsters his phone and leads the way out of the laboratory in the direction of the cafeteria. "What were you guys working on, anyway?"

"Justice League needs a new magic user, I'm trying to turn a Demon into an Angel so they've got someone who can beat Satanus."

"Is that possible?"

"That's what we were trying to work out. Though I think… Some people might have gotten slightly off track."

"'Off track' like 'dangerous mad science off track', or just distracted? Because psychotic invisible monkeys aside, we've actually had a pretty good safety record here."

"Couldn't really follow it. But they were mostly doing theories and working models and Atlantean magic professionals know not to have anything to do with Demons." He glances back, apparently not much reassured. "If anything was going to explode then it would have already exploded."

"Yeah, I suppose you're right. And if I'd been invited, I-" He pulls open the cafeteria doors. "-would pro.. bab.. ly…"

We both look at the wall of water covering the entrance. I recognise the slight sheen indicating that it's being held in place by Atlantean magics. Inside, the other half of the Atlantean brain trust are talking in low tones, with those who are actually eating occupying a small circle of seats around the counter where they've left an air pocket.

"Huh."

"Though this is something your Human Resources manager should probably plan for."

"Yeah, for the disciplinary process." He stands as close to the water as he can. "Hey! Other people have to use this place too, you know!"

Most of the Atlanteans wince, and Sephtian waves his right hand at the huddle of three arcanists. Their tattoos glow, and the water peels away from the entrance and goes… Not sure. Not anywhere in the room, at least. Sephtian then makes his way towards the dry section and Ted strides on to meet him.

"Good morning, Sephtian!"

Sephtian sticks his head through the divide between the flooded and dry sections of the room. "Ted. I understand that we weren't… Expected. And I.. thank you for your forbearance."

"Did you build anything dangerous?"

"No. No. Uum. Not.. that I remember." He blinks. "In the short term."

"Okay. That's what I need to know. How about we talk about what your people have been working on over breakfast?" Sephtian nods, and pulls himself out of the water side of the room with visible reluctance. "You joining us, Paul?"

"No, I'm happy to pass this over to you. I've got another… Appointment to get to. I'll come back this afternoon with the… Volunteer?"

Sephtian nods while Ted looks curious. "Really? A room full of groundbreaking magic research and you need to be someplace else?"

"I want to visit Zatanna before she needs to be at school. And check up on her father as well."

Ted frowns for a moment. "Oh yeah. Wasn't he on.. some kind of leave of absence? I'd have thought it'd be easier getting him to come back rather than getting a team of Atlanteans to work out how to turn a Demon into an Angel."

No League announcement to the contrary, then? I suppose I'm not surprised. "It might be. I'll know for certain when I see him."

back

Converse 18

next

15th September

08:19 GMT -5

Heh. With zeta tubes making coming here so easy, I haven't actually spent anything like as much time looking at the outside of Shadowcrest as I have the inside. Perfect recall means that I know the garden didn't look anything like this neat when I last saw it, but I don't know if that was Zatanna or Mr Tong while Mister Zatara was still Nabued or if it's a more recent thing. Still, the birds are twittering tunefully in the trees and the crickets are chirping in the grass as I head up the pathway to the front door. Given the early hour and uncertainty of the welcome, just turning up inside the building seemed like a bad idea. Looking good so far though; I distinctly remember Zatanna telling me that the protective spells extend into the garden, and if I haven't activated them I'm not on the banned list.

Hm. No one has mentioned there being any sort of problem with Zatanna, so I'm going to assume that she hasn't been demonstrating any sort of sign of being damaged by violet light exposure. I doubt that she's done what would probably have been the most sensible thing and just put the staff in a warded box and then tried to forget about it…

I glance down at my rings.

I like to think that I'm not that hypocritical. But, as long as she's kept her use within sensible bounds, there shouldn't be a problem from that quarter.

I walk up to the door and take the knocker in my right hand, giving it three short taps against the rest. Then I step back with a polite smile on my face. Can't hear a thing from inside the house and the windows have one of those 'false view' spells on them. Like a lot of wards, there are ways around them with a power ring, but given that this is the house of an ally I don't think that's really appropriate.

The door starts to open. "Yes? What can I-?"

The somewhat dressed down Giovanni Zatara and I regard each other for a moment. This is the first time I've seen him in person not wearing his trademark suit. His hair's still the same, but he's wearing brown corduroy trousers and the sleeves of his shirt are rolled up past his elbows. He looks… Recovered. None of the physical signs of his ordeal with Nabu are present, and neither is the wash of yellow that I'd expect from someone totally traumatised by an experience. Good show.

"Good morning, Mister Zatara."

He hesitates for a moment. "Orange Lantern. What..? Brings you here?"

"I wanted to see how you were. Oh, and.. ah… Let Zatanna know that I'm back on Earth."

"I'm…" He looks away for a moment. "I am in good health. Zatanna has-."

"Who is it, Dad?"

He stiffens slightly, then steps out of the house and closes the door behind him. "Orange Lantern, I-."

"You may as well.. use my name, really. Not like it's a secret."

"Mh." He nods. "Paul. Zatanna has.. made it clear to me that she feels that the way I spoke to you after I woke up in hospital was… Ungrateful, to say the least."

"It didn't particularly bother me, Mister Zatara. You'd been through an extremely unpleasant episode." I shrug. "It wasn't your considered opinion."

His face grows more sombre. "What makes you think that my considered opinion would be any different?"

"The fact that the world hasn't fallen apart in Nabu's absence. Something which you've had plenty of time to note. And if Nabu actually wasn't essential, then all of his justifications were hot air."

"I believe that you are still doing him a disservice. Nabu acted to serve the greater good. While serving as his host was most certainly not a pleasant experience, the good we-."

"He."

His eyes narrow slightly. "We accomplished eclipses what I had done in my time with the Justice League. Do you know how many evil magicians there were in the world before Nabu began seeking them out?"

"And making sure they all got fair trials, I'm sure. No. And I don't care. That didn't need Nabu."

"Do the lives he saved mean nothing to you?"

I hold up my left hand, showing my ring's sigil. "No. But I have been wondering something. Did Nabu have any sort of plan to replace you with someone?"

"If he did, he did not choose to share it with me."

"So if you died, he -and the world which he was apparently responsible for- were back to square one. And he wasn't making succession arrangements which would have allowed him to leave you of his own accord. And he wouldn't accept a golem body." My lip's curling. "Heroes like him the world can do without. I can still barely believe that you're defending him."

"Oh, I am not happy with his treatment of Zatanna-."

"What about his treatment of you?"

"No, I am not happy about that either. I simply realise that there was more to his character and actions than you appear prepared to recognise."

I shrug. "I'm not saying there wasn't more. I'm not saying that everything he did was bad. I'm saying what he did was enough to justify my response, whatever else he was doing. Whatever he was doing, it wasn't enough."

He nods. "Thank you."

"Excuse me?"

"I saw the good Nabu did, but I still missed Zatanna terribly. If I had remained as his host, I would never have seen her again. Whatever his absence will mean for the world, I am hardly blind to the fact that it benefits both myself and my daughter considerably."

"You're welcome."

"And on that subject." His face hardens. "What precisely is the nature of your relationship with Zatanna?"

"We're good friends. Working together against Nabu brought us very close tog-."

"How cl-?"

"If you're working up to asking whether we're romantically involved or not, no. I directly told her that wasn't on the cards at New Year, and I haven't done anything to suggest that my view on the matter has changed since."

"Hm. Then I will not need to lecture you on the subject."

"I like to think that you didn't need to lect-."

The door opens again. "Dad, who is-?" Zatanna's eyes widen. Then she smiles. "You're back!" She dashes past her father and.. wraps her arms around me.

Mister Zatara's eyes lock on me as I return her hug.

"Good morning, Zatanna. How are you?"

She pulls away and takes a half-step back. "I'm great. How was space?"

"Big, black and full of evil doers. I was planning a full slideshow in the Mountain this Saturday, I don't want to… Stop you getting ready for school or anything."

She shakes her head. "I don't go to school any more."

I frown, glancing at Mister Zatara for a moment. "You don't?"

"No! I had the G-Gnomes give me a full high school education and passed my General Equivalency Diploma instead. I mean, spending three more years going to high school just felt like such a waste of time when I could learn everything in a couple of hours instead." Mister Zatara's gaze makes it clear who he blames for that bit of lateral thinking. Not that she's wrong… "And I want to be a stage magician and a superhero anyway, and high school doesn't teach that. So were you here for something special?"

"I wanted to talk to your father. And I.. need help with inventing a magic process, and all the Atlanteans I could ask are nursing hangovers. Do you think you could-?"

She grabs my right arm and drags me through the doorway. "Sure! We can set up in the library. What exactly are we working on?"

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Converse 19

next

15th September

08:33 GMT -5

A little way away I can hear Zatanna singing something to herself as she continues her search for grimoires relating to the structures of Demons' souls. There are a lot of books in Shadowcrest's library, and with its owner returned to it some of the safeties designed to keep younger members of the household away from anything too dangerous have shut down. Even I can tell that the passageways now go further than they did when we were looking for information on Lords of Order.

"It wasn't my idea."

"I don't remember accusing you."

"I'll lend you a mirror." There's a slight huff and a glance aside from Mister Zatara. "I may have mentioned the applications for telepathic learning… In reference to potential employment for Genomorphs, once. I certainly didn't encourage Zatanna to-."

"I do believe you. My daughter is an intelligent young woman. She is quite capable of making decisions for herself. But I hope that you recognise that my daughter has made this choice by applying the approach which you taught her to other areas of her life."

Hooray for utilitarianism. "How much of an.. actual problem is this?"

"It would make it more difficult for her to get into college, but she has made it quite clear that she has no desire to do so. I would be far more hostile to the idea if it meant that she was restricting her educational opportunities, but from what I understand of the process from Mister Dubbilex and from Conner, she has received a better education than most schools can provide and will retain it better than most children do."

"How.. many languages can she speak now?"

"Before, she could speak a little French and Italian in addition to English. Now she speaks both fluently, as well as Spanish and Latin."

"Latin? Odd choice."

"It was the Frankish language of Europe for nearly two thousand years. Many books written across the continent were written in Latin so that they would reach a wider audience."

"I would have thought that Atlantean Greek would be more useful for a magic education."

"Mister Dubbilex told me that he was unsure if learning more languages in that manner was safe. If it is, then I am certain that she will ask."

I nod. "I wanted to ask: have you noticed any lingering effects from your time with Nabu? Has it altered your magical abilities at all? That was my largest concern-."

He points to the piles of books already in front of us with his right hand. "Skoob, esinagro sevlesruoy ni redro of ssenlufesu." They each rise off the table and into the air, then fly around one another until they're arranged in three piles. "I was weaker for a time, but when I recovered I found that my powers were much the same. If anything, I think that I have a little more endurance now."

I nod again. "Batman asked me to find the League new magic users."

"Please tell me that you are not doing this in the hope of cleansing John Constantine."

"No." I clear my throat. "No, a woman named Angelica Blaze. But… Look, if it were me, and the League had treated me like they did you, I wouldn't want anything to-"

"That is not-"

"-do with them-"

"-why I have not-"

"-either, but-."

"-rejoined the Justice League."

"Okay, so… Why, then?"

"I have decided to take a genuine leave of absence in order to repair both my professional career and my relationship with Zatanna. I.. may rejoin the League, in the fullness of time."

"Sounds pretty reasonable. More reasonable than I'd be."

He reaches forward and picks up one of the books from the pile closest to him, then sets it down in front of him and opens it. "Stnetnoc egap."

The pages blur back and forth for a moment, then open at what looks like a new page close to the front. "Hm. Who else did you find to replace me?"

"I'm sorry?"

"You mentioned an 'Angelica Blaze'. Who else?"

"A man named Nommo Balewa."

"Ah, Doctor Mist. I met him once. I am a little surprised that he was willing to come out of seclusion, but I think that he will be a worthy addition to the League."

"I hope so, because Ms Blaze is more a case of needing someone to counter Satanus than someone who is actually a good fit with League ethos."

"Is that why she needs information on Demon metaphysiology? So that she can fulfil that purpose?"

"Um…" Um… "Under what circumstances would you want me to withhold an answer to that question?"

His jaw tightens. "None."

"She's currently.. something I don't have a word for. Her soul is made of Hell-magic, much as my own is made of orange light. We're looking for a way to correct that."

He looks a little relieved. "Paul, I have no objection to you studying magic in order to remove a curse."

"Honesty compels me to say that it's only a curse metaphorically."

"Did John find her as well?"

"No, found her myself."

"That is not as reassuring as you mean it to be."

No, I suppose it's not. "Does Zatanna still use the Star Sapphire?"

He glances up, then starts flipping through the pages of his book. "I've seen her train with it occasionally. Why?"

"Slight concern on my part that it might affect her in the way my ring did me." He looks up at once, eyes wide. "But we did everything we could to reduce the chance… And if she hasn't shown any odd behaviour at this point, it's probably nothing to worry about."

"Paul, I missed eight months of her life. I would not know if the changes in her behavior are a result of the increased maturity she has gained through the work you did to fight Nabu or a result of the crystal."

Ah. "Okay, but violet is the light of love-."

"That is not quite how Lantern Jordan described it. But she has not started behaving as Ms Ferris did, so-."

Zatanna strides back through one of the side doors, holding her mobile phone. "Wally just called. The Justice League are fighting an alien in some place called Thayer's Notch in Massachusetts. Wanna go join in?"

"I.. don't think so, Zatanna. I doubt that the alien uses magic, and if it does? Then Batman has my telephone number."

"I really wanted more time before I had to deal with the whole League professionally. Just a sec-."

Ring, scan.

Oh dear.

"Excusemeneedtogo."

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Converse 20

next

15th September

08:38 GMT -5

Mister Queen leaps from the roof of a collapsing building, loosing his arrows while in the air. Konvikt uses what's left of a Bradley IFV to block the shots, quick hardening gel coating the side of the wreck even as it leaves his hands on course to intercept Mister Queen at his landing zone.

"Ah, cra-"

Mister Freeman's there to catch the Bradley, Mister Queen rolling out of the way and sprinting for cover as Konvikt takes advantage of Mister Freeman's Bradley-obscured vision to leap, smashing into the vehicle from the opposite side and dragging it and Mister Freeman down to the wrecked street where they land in an explosion of concrete.

I really wish I'd finished reading Trinity.

A red blur rushes past them, blowing the billowing dust clouds aside. I can see the crowd forming at the edge of the town as Mister Allen deposits the civilians whose town is being torn apart by the conflict and-.

A pair of Apache helicopters fly under me, keeping low and then opening fire on Konvikt with a volley of hellfire missiles the moment they get a clear shot. Konvikt pauses in punching Mister Freeman in the face just long enough to toss a wrecked car in their path, then dodges to the side. One missile hits his left leg anyway, the detonation knocking him over. He simply rolls into a tumble and then continues dashing towards the helicopters, who try to rise and back off. Two other missiles fly past him and slam through the wall of what had been a reasonably intact structure before detonating, chunks of debris flying through the exterior window holes as they do so. I'm just glad that hellfire missiles aren't incendiaries, because-.

The fourth missile hits the dazed Mister Freeman in the chest and detonates. He is sent flying into a wrecked building hard enough to smash through brick walls, and there's blood on his chest.

Konvikt leaps for the helicopters only to be knocked from the air by a shot from Major Adams. He recovers none the worse for wear, climbing the building he was smashed into as artillery shells from a trio of US Army Paladins finish off its neighbour. What kind of lunatic is trying to use unguided artillery on someone that tough?

Mister O'Brian telescopes up from the far side of the building as Konvikt grabs chunks of roof to throw at Major Adams, wrapping himself around the hulking alien. Who ignores him for long enough to bean Major Adams, then grabs his head in his right hand and slams it flat with his left. That's not fatal, but it's clearly left Mister O'Brian stunned.

Ring, is there enough left of the recordings for us to work out how this mess got started?

Multiple series of images taken from security cameras and mobile phones appear in my mind. Arranged by timestamps and attempting to fill in the rest with observed data…

Konvikt's crashed mini-ship landed over there. Broken trees and huge footprints mark his path from there to the nearest road. It was early morning, but there was still some traffic. One crashed car, but it neither appears to have hit him or been hit by him and no one was seriously hurt. That's where the first pictures come from. He then walked at a relatively slow pace into Thayer's Notch. People run, but there's no evidence that he started actually attacking anyone. No further car crashes; it was still early morning and low urban speed limit meant that cars had plenty of time to stop and back the heck away. Phone calls to the police increased substantially at this point… And someone phoned the Fort Devens US Army base.

Where General Hardcastle is presently stationed.

I thought Kal-El was joking, but this mess has his signature all over it. He's wanted the US Army to get responsibility for dealing with high-end supervillain rampages for years. Fort security cameras show military vehicles already rolling as the local police formed a barricade with a couple of cars. Thayer's Notch is too small for its own SWAT team, but from the recordings I got from what's left of their dashboard cameras they'd tooled up somewhat. Konvikt approached the police line in clear violation of instructions to stop in a language he almost certainly doesn't understand… And then the banging starts and I don't have good footage.

Gaaaaaaaah!

Mister Hol ducks under a swing, but takes a knee to his chest.

You'd think a world where this sort of thing could happen-

Konvikt winces at Ms Lance's scream, but closes the distance between them and she's forced to dodge as he swings at her. A glancing blow, and a red blur moves her out of the area before his second swing can crush her.

-would have better processes. Just hope he doesn't have construct disruption.

I step out and then reappear just behind him. His desires are almost exactly as I was expecting: the need to lash out at his oppressors and the burning rage at his mistreatment. I tag him with a filament before he can turn and transition us to a small clearing in the woods near to where he first landed.

My armour returns to subspace, my construct armour fades and I sit cross legged on the grass as he takes a step away from me, searching for his enemies. Two steps before he turns around to look at me, and I take a thermos flask of tea out of subspace along with two-.

There's a fist in front of my face.

I blink at his fingers, then tilt my head to the side so that I can see around them. "May I offer you some tea?" Konvikt's eyes narrow slightly as he pulls his arm back. "I'm afraid that my people don't really have a formal guest ritual, but I hope-" The fist comes around again, but the thing about these 'honourable warrior' types is that while they're perfectly happy ripping apart anyone who fights back -regardless of whether they were actually a threat or not- hitting non-combatants is still a major no-no. "-that you'll accept this in its place." Ragnar's exactly the same. If any of the people he fought for rings had turned down his challenges he'd have torn himself apart resisting the orange light drive to recharge himself. He really would have made a good Green Lantern.

I smile. "Tea?"

He looks down at the flask as I pour the liquid into both mugs.

"I quite understand that you're not feeling particularly trusting at the moment, so perhaps if I take a drink first?"

And in the spirit of honesty I don't simply use my ring to alter the taste. No, I take an honest mouthful of leaf water instead. And I swallow.

"It's honestly not as bad as I'm-"

"This is pointless." Konvikt starts to turn away. "They attacked me, I should-." He stops.

"Forgive me for violating the conditions of your sentencing, but I felt that this might be easier if we could actually talk to each other."

"I can.. speak again?"

"Not exactly. My ring-" I hold up my left hand, palm towards him. "-can interpret any form of communication. Even the intent to communicate. And then it can play it out loud."

He stands completely still for a moment, staring at my ring. Then he takes two steps towards me, sits down cross legged just in front of me and picks up his cup. He sniffs it, but there's surprisingly little suspicion in the gesture. He's more worried about the taste than the idea that I might have dosed it with something.

He takes a sip, a tiny mug in huge hands against a huge mouth. He appears to like it better than I do.

"Why is this happening?"

"The universe is fundamentally mechanical and hence uncaring."

He snorts, the sound coming from his nostrils rather than my ring. "No. Why did they attack me?"

"Because you're big and scary-looking. The ones who shot first are supposed to look after the rest and judged that you were threatening them."

"I did not threaten them. I walked to the town without hurting anyone."

"Now, I didn't say it was a good judgement."

"Fools." He turns his head in the direction of the town, spotting a thin trail of smoke rising up above the trees. "And what about the rest?"

"People honour bound to help the first people if they found themselves in a fight they couldn't handle."

"Oh."

"So. What's say we talk about your situation like rational people, hm?"

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Converse 21

next

15th September

08:45 GMT -5

Konvikt holds out his mug. "I would like more."

I pick up the flask and pass it to him. "Have the whole thing. I don't actually like it."

He frowns. "Then why did you drink it?"

"To demonstrate fellowship." He looks dubious, but carefully pours himself a new cup before setting the flask back down. "So, to summarize, you saved Jaggar Ton, worked as his bodyguard for years, became romantically involved with his daughter, were wrongly convicted of his wife's murder and were sentenced to lifetime penal servitude."

His face tightens, but he settles for taking another sip of tea. "Yes."

"Okay, well, ordinarily I'd be happy to just fly you back and help you do a proper investigation, but I have responsibilities here, too. And I'm afraid that after.. that, local authorities are-."

"I acted honourably. I have nothing to answer for."

"While that may be true morally, I'm afraid that it isn't true legally. Now, I know that you'd never deliberately target-."

There's a red blur, and Mister Allen-.

"Stop! Stop! Stop!"

Konvikt is already standing, but he doesn't do anything more violent than glower. Mister Allen is still vibrating in a way which suggests to me that he's massively accelerated, his perception of the universe around him far faster than a normal Human. Or me, even. Getting ready to evade an attack, or strike with much more force than a normal Human is capable of creating. Or -just maybe- thinking about the incongruity of the situation and deciding not to run in, fists blazing.

Hasn't taken my advice on the subspace arsenal, I note.

"Flash."

The vibrating slows very slightly. "Orrangee Lannternn."

He's still accelerated, speaking slowly so that it sounds nearly like normal speed for us. It's still noticeable, but at that speed hearing my speech is probably far stranger for him.

Hm.

I drop twelve screens out of subspace and start playing the recordings I recovered at ten times normal speed. At his speed he should be able to view them at a leisurely rate and still have time to pay attention to what I'm saying. "Having reviewed the recordings of Konvikt's arrival and the early part of his fight with local authorities, I have reached the conclusion that he hasn't committed a crime."

His face is blurring as he moves his focus between the various recordings. "Theere's a ruiinedd town back there that wwould argue that witth you."

"I would cite Idaho versus Weaver there, Flash. The police shot first. He was acting in self defence."

"Theyy weeren't a threatt to someone as ttough as he iss."

"How was he supposed to know that? He hasn't even been on Earth an hour."

"There are bbodies in the wreckage."

"If he killed his attackers, then it was self defence."

"Theere were civillianss."

"Do you know that he killed them, or are you just focusing on the obvious aggressor? It didn't exactly escape my notice that Hardcastle declared a US town a free-fire zone." That earns me a two-second hard look. "You work in forensics. Did their injuries resemble those inflicted by a person with super strength? Or an entirely predictable side effect of firing automatic cannons and rockets and artillery into an inhabited area?"

"Speeed these up."

I comply, switching from ten times acceleration to fifty. Given the overlaps I have to split some of the screens, and the footage after initial hostilities break out is far more fragmented.

"What is happening?"

"This is the Flash. He's a heroic warrior who just saved the lives of a lot of people while you fought his friends and allies in the town."

"What is he doing?"

"Justice. At the moment, he assumes that you are broadly to blame for what occurred. However, he is just, and believes in the proper application of the law. As such, he is reviewing the recordings I made. If they favour my explanation, my life and yours will become somewhat easier."

"I have bad experiences with such justice."

"The Flash just put himself in considerable danger to save the lives of the innocent, asking nothing in return. He does that on a daily basis. I think he's earned your forbearance."

"What happens if he still blames me?"

"That would depend on what he blames you for, and why. Our laws are not like yours. You are not a murderer, but you may have committed lesser crimes." He grimaces. "Did you have somewhere you urgently needed to be?"

He sits back down with a loud thump. "No."

Flash stops vibrating and walks towards us at a normal pace. "Okay. That seems… I wouldn't call your new friend innocent, but he's at least got reasonable doubt. I'm still gunna need to arrest him, but-."

"Just a moment, Flash." He stops, and I stab the cold field surrounding us with a filament, causing it to vanish in a flash of suddenly-frozen airborne moisture. Mister Allen looks decidedly unimpressed, but did he really think I'd trust the League to exercise good judgement? "Are you going to arrest General Hardcastle?"

"Not right now, but once we complete a full investigation-."

"Then no. You don't get to do justice only when it's convenient."

"The law doesn't treat invading aliens the same as it does US Army generals. Look, just give it some time-."

"I don't see how that's my problem. Are you a member of the Justice League or the League of Lawyers?"

His eyes narrow slightly. "That's a cheap shot. Hardcastle will be brought to justice-."

Ring? "Then you should hurry back to town. He's already covering his tracks."

"Oh God damn it." His hand goes to his right ear. "Flash to Icon, and hopefully Batman. We need to make sure that we get a full picture of exactly what happened in Thayer's Notch. Orange Lantern's doing a Geronimo and he might be on to something. Yeah."

He turns away and I look up at Konvikt.

"He's a good man, but perhaps we shouldn't take the risk?"

"I will not run."

"Good. But will you fix the damage that was caused? Will you prove that you are better than they suspect you to be? Will you take back your name?" I lean forwards, my right hand going into one of my equipment pouches and pulling out a ring. "What do you want, Konvikt?"

"I want justice."

The ring in my hand shines brilliantly as it darts over to him. Carefully, he holds out his left hand and the ring slides onto his middle finger.

"Xalitan Xor. You have a great need in your heart. Join the Orange Lantern Corps, and see it realised."

"I accept."

Orange light washes over his body, a glowing orange sigil forming in the middle of his chest.

"I am yours."

Lantern Xor's eyes flare orange and he leaps into the sky, Mister Allen watching in shock for a moment before turning his attention to me. "That isn't going to help!"

I shrug. "Helped him."

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Converse 22

next

15th September

08:58 GMT -5

"Okay, maybe it did help."

Mister Allen and I watch as Lantern Xor finishes reassembling Thayer's Notch, getting a quiet cheer from some of the town's remaining residents. Not the ones whose relatives' corpses were dug out, obviously, but that total was far fewer than I'd suspected. I very much doubt that General Hardcastle is enjoying the conversation he's having with Kal-El right now.

"I appreciate you admitting that, Flash. It saves me from having to bear a grudge about it."

He glances at me. "So I'm not 'sir' any more?"

"As Ms Waller pointed out a few days ago, I don't have any formal working relationship with the Justice League any longer. As such, rather than being a member of my team's steering committee, you're… Some guy. And while I don't plan on bringing up the Nabu incident every single time we meet-"

"Now hold on-."

"-I haven't exactly forgotten that the entire League signed off on it. I don't trust any of you to hold command authority over me. I certainly won't be repeating last year's oath."

"I wasn't asking you to do that." He pointedly looks towards the medical station that's been set up for the wounded. "Not that I'm exactly impressed by your choice of recruit-."

Lantern Xor lands in the middle of the beds, a good few of both the patients and staff looking at him in alarm. His eyes briefly alight on a young police officer, but he limits himself to a glower before walking past and pointing his ring at a man with four broken ribs.

"Gosh, yes. What a menace."

"Why did he walk past that guy?"

"'That guy' probably shot him."

"He's not shooting him now."

"Flash, I'm not sure if you were listening when I said it, but the Geneva Conventions are very much an Earth thing. Lantern Xor has a strong sense of honour, but that doesn't mean that he's particularly nice. In his culture, if you pick a fight then you deserve everything you get. I can persuade him to help civilians, but he will not help anyone who attacked him."

Which is why I gave a quick heal to injured Justice League members. They may not be my favourite people in the universe at the moment, but I don't want them carrying injuries. There might be an actual invasion sometime soon.

"What exactly do you think is going to happen to him? More to the point, what does he think is going to happen?"

"I expect that he'll be questioned under caution, then the…" Jurisdiction in cases like this can be a bit interesting. It's not the FBI, because it doesn't concern inter-state crime. It's not the NSA because this isn't an invasion… "What, the state police?"

"Probably."

"Right, while they investigate. At this point, the only thing they can actually arrest him for is immigration offences… But he clearly crashed here and I've already submitted his asylum application. So as long as they have an address for him, they probably won't."

"Do you really think he didn't commit a crime here?"

"I think Mister Augustus Freeman will win the case for me."

His mouth opens slightly, then closes again. "What, you don't trust Luthor's lawyer any more?"

"I think Lantern Xor will respect Mister Freeman more. He doesn't have a lot of patience for legalism, but he can respect someone who can take a punch from him and keep fighting. Anyway, I can put him up in a hotel for a while with strict instructions to contact me before engaging in combat. That should give the lead investigator plenty of time to decide whether he wants to bring any charges. And give me a chance to educate him before he carries on with his mission."

"Which is?"

"His strongest desire is to see justice done. I haven't studied the place, but I understand that his homeworld doesn't have the best judicial system. Once he's ready, I'll be sending him back there to fix that."

"That what you do now? Take over planets?"

"Given sufficient provocation, yes. And if you want to follow that line of enquiry, I'll be happy to show you the planet where they cut their womenfolks' eyes out once they reach maturity. I don't intervene in nice places." I frown. "Don't you have a day job you need to be getting back to?"

"I was going to try to explain to you why I didn't vote against Nabu."

"If you think it will help. There's nothing I can think of that you could say which would make me respect your decision even slightly. With Diana, Batman and Kal-El I've been more concerned with building a relationship going forward."

"Okay-" He waves his right hand. "-then, I'm just going to say it. I didn't think Nabu would stick around indefinitely. Once we got Klarion under control-" M-mghf. "-I think he'd have been far more reasonable."

"Oh. Really?" I smile at him in the most sarcastic way I can manage. "And what brilliant plan did you have for 'controlling' Klarion? And how long exactly were you prepared to give Nabu?"

"I admit, I didn't have one. And I'm.. not sure."

"Ah, I see. So, what? You think I should have waited indefinitely?" His eyes narrow. "I'm not trying to take the piss here, I'm genuinely curious. How long was too long? At what point would you have… I don't know, said something to Batman?"

His scowl fades, and from the way he avoids meeting my eyes I think he's realised that he doesn't have a good answer. "I… Think I was waiting for Nabu to do something… Wrong."

"And… Possessing Mister-?"

"Something else. Otherwise, he was just… Reasonable."

"What..? Were you waiting for him to cackle manically?" I sigh. "No, just… Just promise me that you'll never do something like that again."

"I wasn't planning on doing that anyway." He folds his arms across his chest. "And I'm sure knowing that you'd kill them would motivate us to find another solution."

I nod. "I'm glad to hear it. But that's not… Why you should."

"No. We should have come up with something anyway. I get-."

"Yes, the morality is part of it. But the other is that if you didn't, if the League ever abandons its moral authority like that again, there will not be a Justice League afterwards." He blinks, taking a step back. "Nothing.. brutal, I wouldn't kill you. But you all agreed to cover up the Nabu situation rather than go to trial because you knew what the publicity would do to you. And when you value good PR over a man's life or doing the right thing… Then you're not heroes any more."

"I don't even need to release your secret identities. Just releasing that, then destroying the Watchtower and the zeta tube network would probably be enough." I sigh. "Though if you feel like heading that way, could you please give me at least a few years? Getting a replacement organisation in place would take me a while."

Lantern Xor rises up from the medical area and heads our way, a helicopter pilot blinded in one eye gesturing for him to come back.

"Excuse me."

back

Converse 23

next

15th September

15:08 GMT -2

Lantern Xor doesn't seem too impressed by my ice fortress, but that might just be because his face has little mobility.

"While I'm.. sure that the truth will eventually out, I think that.. it might be best if you didn't make any unsupervised trips to… Ah, anywhere, at the moment."

"I understand."

"The corridors might be a bit of a squeeze, but you can use your ring to transfer yourself between the outside and the rooms inside."

"Do you have news broadcasts?"

"Earth has hundreds of news channels. Your ring can filter them for you, or record and show you the bits you're interested in."

"How do I learn your life code? Your laws?"

"Huh. How do you feel about telepathy?"

"What is that?"

Ah. Yes, I suppose he might well not have encountered it before. "The ability of one being to connect their mind to that of another."

"Like technopathy?"

"I don't know anyone who can communicate with machines like that." Which -given the wide variety of power sets I'm familiar with- is a little odd, now I think about it. I wonder why that is? "And the machines don't necessarily have minds of their own, so it isn't quite the same."

"No. Not communicating from a brain to a machine. Communicating from a machine to a brain."

"Sort of? Do your people have systems like that?"

His eyes narrow slightly, but he isn't looking at me. "I learned like that. When I joined the army. It hurt."

"It might take them a little while to learn how your brain works, but none of the people who've been taught by the G-Gnomes have mentioned pain. A little.. temporary disorientation and confusion, yes, but not pain. Alternatively, your ring can access statute law and case law, or.. you can wait until our appointment with your attorney and ask him whatever questions you have." He turns his head towards me, but doesn't otherwise respond. "I've been meaning to ask: were you the only one in your pod?"

"No. Graak was also there. He was my barrister."

"Ah. I should.. probably track him down before he gets himself in trouble. Do you.. want anything now, or-."

"The man who first attacked me. Will he be punished?"

"Not sure. Given the number of broken bones he received and.. the particulars of the way police officers in the United States are allowed to attack with lethal force, I.. doubt it."

"And the warlord who attacked the town because I was in it?"

"Yes. General Hardcastle is already in custody. That will be a fairly long process, but eventually-."

He perks up. "Do your people allow trial by combat?"

"No." He shuffles sullenly. "We believe that justice is best served by discovering facts and dispassionately analysing them. Arcane truth compulsion hasn't quite caught on in most places, but I'm sure we'll get there in the end. You'll probably be called upon to give testimony at some point, but don't worry about that right now, we'll explain how everything works well ahead of time."

He nods, still clearly unhappy. "Why are you doing this?"

"Which bit?"

"Helping me. I haven't done anything for you."

"You didn't punch me."

"You didn't attack me. And I thought you were a civilian. Killing you would have been dishonourable."

"You wouldn't have been able to punch me."

He looks sceptical. "I have a great deal of experience in punching people. You were not moving."

I tap my forehead with my right forefinger, smiling. "Try it."

He looks at me curiously for a moment, then in a quick motion shoves at my forehead with the palm of his right hand. My kinetic barrier absorbs the force effortlessly.

"I like to give people a chance to demonstrate that they're willing to make the right choices… But I try to avoid being stupid about it. If you had hit me, your fist would have stopped. And I would have been sad that you tried, and I would have disabled you until such time as the situation could be fully investigated. I still think that you would have escaped a murder conviction, but you would have spent the intervening period in a secure facility rather than here."

He nods. "Wise."

"I do my best. But -more than not punching me - you have a desire to change the universe in a way I approve of. You want justice. At the moment, you just want it for yourself. But I'm hoping that you'll come to see that injustice inflicted on other people by the same system which so ill-served you is just as much of a problem."

"Why?"

"Because I want you to fix the system."

He stands completely rigid for a moment. "I am not a lawyer or a politician."

"Then maybe you fix the system by making a new, better system. I can teach you how to investigate crimes. Your ring can create all of the tools you need. And once you have all of the data you-."

There's a puff of violet-tinted smoke. Having learned his lesson from Thayer's Notch, Lantern Xor settles for reinforcing his environmental shield rather than just punching-

"There you are!"

-Zatanna in the face. Or the small chain-wreathed white-yellow reptilian floating beside her.

Zatanna's not wearing either the clothes I last saw her in or her uniform. Or the power armour I made for her. She's wearing solid-looking boots and has replaced her tights with black trousers decorated with runic… Those aren't decorations. She's actually got spells bound to her trousers. Looks like… Protection and fortune? She's replaced the dress shirt with a Kevlar vest coloured black and white, again with protective sigils picked out in… No, that's orichalcum, isn't it? There's a white cape, but the sigils there say flight and concealment so I'll give it a pass. And she's carrying the Staff of Love, but it appears to be inactive. That's a good sign.

"It's been hours! I was wondering where you'd vanished to." Zatanna notices me noticing her new look. "You like it? I know you made me the power armour, but it's just a bit too clunky for me." She smiles, then turns her attention to Lantern Xor. "Is this yours?"

The diminutive alien -Graak, probably- floats towards him. Xor thinks about it for a few moments, then nods.

"Sniahc raeppasid."

The chains vanish, and Graak scampers across the ground, climbs up Xor and settles on his right shoulder to glare at Zatanna.

"You replaced the conventional armour plates with bound spells. Clever." She beams. "I can't wait to look over your design documentation."

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NEXT CHAPTER

Resurrectionists

BACK

Resurrectionists 1

next

Resurrectionists

16th September

08:23 GMT +2

Adom smiles as I fly through the air towards the balcony of his private suite. "Paul. Good morning."

"Good morning, Adom." I land lightly and walk towards him, right hand extended. He mirrors the gesture, our hands clasping the other's forearm for a moment before letting go.

"How does Blaze fare?"

"The greatest magic users in Atlantis are working on the problem. She's not exactly enjoying the process, but she's keeping the moaning to within reasonable bounds." He nods, and gestures to the balcony table. I walk around to the far side and sit and he takes the near-side seat. "Do my eyes and ears deceive me, or is Miss Tomaz giving you a moment's peace?"

"My.. relationship with Adrianna-" My eyebrows rise. "-has… Improved, somewhat."

"Oh?"

"After.. discussing the matter in.. plain terms, she has come to accept that my respect for her is genuine. It… Amused her to test that respect in certain ways."

"What ways would that be?"

"Several Governorates had altered their laws to the disfavour of the women and girls who lived there. Though I do not believe that is a good policy, I had stated that I would not interfere with the abilities of the governors to set education policy. She demanded that I alter my decision."

"That is asking a lot of you. And them."

"I ruled Kahndaq for eighty years. I did learn something of subtlety."

"Then how did you square that circle?"

"I called a meeting for the educational advisors of every governor to discuss.. ways in which our methods could be improved. I gave Adrianna the opportunity to lecture them, and to field their complaints herself. I nodded, I thanked her for her input, but I did not state that her thoughts on the subject were to become national policy. Nor did I state that they were in accord with my own."

"You didn't break your word, but they're all sure what you want to happen, and.. given how popular you are, it's almost certain that it will happen." Adom nods. "And she was happy with that?"

"So long as it works, she will be."

"And what else?"

His eyes move away, and his face tightens slightly. "She said that.. if I were to become her husband, she would-. She wished to know that I could be informal. She did not wish for our children to 'have a statue for a father'."

"Adom, you are my friend and I am not sure that you can be informal."

He nods. "It was a challenge. I.. decided that… Perhaps the best way to convince her would be… If I composed a love poem for her. Without the assistance of the gods."

"I didn't know you were a poet." Though I suppose that it's not a total surprise. Nobles in ancient civilisations-.

"I am not. My tutors tried to instruct me in such matters, but I did not take to it."

"So..?"

"I attempted to woo her with a clumsy and amateurish poem. In front of witnesses. She was… Amused."

"How amused?"

"It was some time before she could steady herself. The other witnesses… I believe that they are behaving as the courtiers in 'The Emperor's New Clothes' and pretending that it did not happen." I'm trying to imagine it, and the image just won't form. "She demanded that I give her a written copy of the poem. Naturally, I acquiesced."

"Are you.. getting married, or were those just the prerequisites for being allowed to court her?"

"We are.. courting. She has accepted the Amulet of Isis as a token of our betrothal, though she has not sought to reach out to the goddess as yet." He leans back slightly. "And what of you and Miss Nguyen? You.. have spoken to her, yes?"

"Third place I went. I… Didn't have to compose a poem, but…" I'm smiling. "We're definitely courting."

Adom nods. "Have you spoken to her father?"

I nod happily. "Yes, and he didn't raise any concerns. Though to be honest, Jade is rather closer to her mother. And I already had a good relationship with her. I can't introduce her to my family, of course, but I'm taking her to meet Alan on Sunday." Hm. "I was.. wondering..? It's a bit of a personal question…"

"Please."

"You told me about your father, but I don't think you've ever mentioned your mother."

"Her name was Aneksi. She was my father's senior wife. She died of malaria when I was… Seven, I think." His eyes narrow slightly as he gazes into the distance. "I have only scattered recollections of interacting with her and I.. am unable to clearly recall her face." His face relaxes as he turns his head towards me. "Though I do remember that she was not so outspoken as Adrianna."

"Would you..? Do you want to see her again?" He raises his eyebrows. "Necromancy doesn't have the same connotations here that it does in Europe. I imagine that Lord Anubis would allow a brief conversation."

"Were I.. younger… Perhaps. But I do not fear that she would not approve. And with so much time passed, I would rather leave her to her rest." I nod. "Now, I have a question for you." I nod, eyebrows raised. "The last thing that Adrianna asks of me is that I find her brother. Since she has no other family, it is.. appropriate that he stand with her when we are joined. I do not believe that he is in Kahndaq, but there are a great many places in the world where I do not go for fear of their rulers coming to believe that I am threatening them. I have no great skill with magic, but those auguries I have been able to perform tell me nothing. If there is some technique you know that could aid me, it would be a great help to me if you would use it."

Ring, on the off chance something has changed…

Unable to detect.

"Standard ring scans still don't find him. I can put you in touch with better magicians if you like. But…"

I talked the process for quintessence waveform scans over with Hinon, and once she got over her need to express faux-surprise at my survival she was actually quite helpful. With the right constructs and existing slightly outside the physical universe it should be possible for me to do one without the Ophidian… Not exactly fun though.

"I'm happy to attempt a quintessence waveform scan for you, but I can't promise that I'll get anything useful. Last time I did one I had a clone of the person I was looking for standing right in front of me so I knew what I was trying to find. It's quite possible that I'll find his location and fail to recognise him."

Adom nods. "I understand. I would be grateful if you would attempt it anyway."

"Might take a while. If I'm still out of it in five hours, try to wake me." He nods.

Alright then. Rings, we've got a sample of Miss Tomaz's late parent's genetic material. There are only so many combinations Amon could have. That's what we're looking for. Understand?

Instruction internalised. / Get thing!

Close enough. Rings, quintessence waveform scan.

Colours and shapes, forms and ideas flash past, surround and confound me. Quarks dance and particles of brick are torn from their greater whole by the wind and the earth churns and the light from the stars impacts on-. Gah! This is.. harder without an inhuman mind used to this sort of thing! Come on, this shape, something in this shape-.

EVERYTHING=NOTHING

I tumble from my chair-. Ow! What? I raise my right hand-. My environmental shield is out. Not weak, not guttering, out.

"Paul, were you successful?"

I keep watching, and painfully slowly my shield creeps back around my body.

"No. No I wasn't. But whoever took Amon isn't a conventional gang."

back

Resurrectionists 2

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17th September

21:03 GMT -5

Jade watches the Gotham street life below us. Relatively few sirens this evening, and Richard and Mister Wayne are over in Granton at the moment. Seeing nothing that requires her immediate attention, Jade adopts a slightly more relaxed pose. "Who exactly am I going to meet tomorrow?"

"His name is Alan Scott."

She might be frowning; the mask makes it hard to tell. "Should I know who that is?"

"Probably not. He used to live in Gotham. He.. ran the Apex Broadcasting Company?"

"Didn't they collapse in the nineties?"

"Something like that. He'd already retired, the mobs were becoming more powerful... Skulduggery suspected-. "

"But never proven. So far, so Gotham. But that doesn't explain how you know him."

"Come on, Jade. Why did the mobs-?"

"The Green Lantern." She stiffens slightly, then turns to give me her full attention. "He used to prevent the gangs from coming into the open. After he left, they started acting openly."

I nod. "Despite the Reaper's best efforts. Though… As he approached retirement age, he didn't actually get in all that many fights. It was more his reputation and visible presence that kept things stable."

She nods. "Do you know why Dad brought us here?"

"Be.. cause.. no one was looking for him here?"

She starts.. not pacing exactly, but… Stalking a circuit. "He thought that it would be a good training environment for Artemis and me. Lots of gangs, lots of people who'd pay us to kill people no one would miss…"

"And most of them well below your skill level."

She snorts quietly. "And if they weren't then we'd deserve what we got."

"Alan was in his seventies. And if he hadn't left-."

"Dad would just have brought us somewhere else, I know. I wasn't blaming him… Exactly." She checks her environment again, then returns her attention to me. "How did you meet him?"

"When I first arrived on this Earth, I had a ring but no lantern. My ring could locate other people's lanterns, and I found one in New York that no one appeared to be using."

She tilts her head slightly to the right. "So you just flew down and tried to take it?"

"So I knocked on the door and tried to buy it from him. He put in a call to Diana, and the rest is history." I shrug. "He's the man who introduced me to America's superhero community, and I've mostly forgiven him for that."

"Your first mentor."

I nod. "And a good friend and.. given recent events, there's a fair chance that we're going to end up as co-workers."

She tilts her head slightly towards me. "And you… What, want him to approve of me?"

"Um… Sort of. I mean, yes, obviously I want him to approve of you, but…" How to put this? "The only piece of romantic advice he ever gave me was 'don't marry a supervillainess', and.. yes, you're not in that line of work any more-."

"What made him say that? Aside from the obvious?"

"He married a supervillainess. A.. really unfortunate split personality case called Rose Canton. Also known as 'Thorn'."

"Rose and Thorn. Creative."

"Please don't make fun of it, it's a really sore point for him. She got caught, revealed, she went through therapy and the psychiatrists said that she was cured."

"Only she wasn't." She nods. "So he thinks I might not be quite as rehabilitated as you think I am."

"It's probably a concern. I want to put his mind at ease."

She stands still for a moment, breathing slowly. "Paul… You do know that I-?"

"Do you want to tell me anything I might have to lie to Diana about later?"

Her hands twitch, as if about to ball into fists. "Yes. If you're actually serious about our relationship, there are things about me you need to know."

"Okay." Now's as good a time as any. "Me too."

"Why, did you kill a Justice League member?"

"You can't kill that which does not live. But, no, not that. I've… I've been lying about my age."

"This should be good." She folds her arms across her chest. "Artemis bet on 'sixteen'."

"Anyone guess thirty one?" There's a noticeable twitch that she doesn't quite suppress fast enough to escape my notice. "Or did the whole team think I overstated-."

"Overstated your age so you could skip school." She stands there for a moment. "Thirty one, huh?"

"Thirty one now. I was twenty nine when I got here. Ah, sort of. The years don't.. quite line up so I lost a couple of months. Though since I've stopped ageing-."

"I don't-. It's a bit weird, but I don't.. mind. And it does go a little way to explain why you were creeping on my mom."

"Your mother is a very attractive woman."

"Starting to mind."

"Sorry."

She tilts her head slightly to the side. "Were you being honest about being a virgin?"

"Yeah, I… Wasn't the most social person before coming here." I shrug. "That was completely true."

"Anything else I should know about?"

"Hey." I frown. "Your turn."

A quiet huff. "I've killed people."

"I had.. rather.. been assuming that. I take it they weren't all criminals?"

"Not all of them. I've killed twenty nine people. Twenty three criminals, and six… Not."

"Jade, I've killed… Rather more than twenty nine people. As long as you don't plan on starting up again I don't really care, saving that it might create difficulties for you in the future."

She regards me curiously for a moment. "You really don't, do you?"

"No, I don't. You could blame the orange light-."

"Did you ever think that maybe I do?"

"Not for any length of time. Would you like to do something about it?"

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Resurrectionists 3

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17th September

21:08 GMT -5

"Do something?"

"Yes."

She hesitates. "About me feeling bad or about them being dead?"

Huh. "Either? Both? I had a bit of a -heh- miscommunication with Zatanna last year, where I offered to take her to Eden and she thought that I was talking about the.. natural history project in England, and I was actually talking-."

"You know where the Garden of Eden is?"

"Ah… Roughly? It's a pocket universe with an entrance a couple of metres wide in Iran. John gave me directions but I haven't ever tried to follow them."

"Why not?"

"I didn't have a pressing need for a burning sword. Or a second set of Angel wings. Or any desire to waste time in someone's else's idea of paradise when I could be building my own. Plus it's.. guarded by these Benei Gadol religious fanatics…"

"The Angel doesn't worry you but Humans with assault rifles do?"

"No, I just don't like picking on minorities. It can't be easy, being non-Islamic in Iran, and that gateway is basically the only thing keeping their culture together."

"Do they have anything that lets you bring people back from the dead?"

"I've sort of been assuming that true resurrection is something that Angels can do, but I don't know if they can do it. Or if they'd be willing to."

She regards me calmly for a moment. "You're serious, aren't you? You think the best way to deal with me having killed people is to bring them back to life again."

"You worked for Ra's for… How long? It can't come as a total surprise that people can come back to life."

"I only met-. Met Ra's twice."

"But League members-."

"We… Most League members never meet him. A lot of them probably thought his name was a title. I don't know how many people realised that he was really coming back from the dead."

"I had wondered about that. The sheer temptation of having a Lazarus Pit just… There."

"The brutal executions of anyone who tried using it when they weren't supposed to. And their families." She leans back slightly, watching me carefully. "You think we should resurrect my victims."

"I don't think that law has quite adapted to the possibility. I mean, it's still murder if they get…" Um.

"Get better?"

"Right. And it obviously wouldn't do anything about the anguish the families have suffered in the intervening period, but if they're not dead any longer you don't have to feel bad about it."

"I.. don't think it really works like that. But I suppose it's better than nothing. Do you know how to make Lazarus Pits?"

"No, I'll… Have to talk to Nyssa about it on Monday."

"What, you've found something a power ring can't do?"

"Not without imperilling all life in the universe. If there are other methods that will work, I'd rather start with them."

…

"That was supposed to be a quip."

"Oh. Um. Sorry?"

Jade comes closer, pushing her mask up so that I can look directly at her face. "After seeing what you did for Zatanna, I'd realised that you don't.. think quite like most people."

"Completely true."

"Hm. So, apart from being over a decade older than me, what other secrets do you have?"

"Only one big one. You remember me saying that Earth Prime doesn't have superheroes?" A small nod. "And the only reference I had was popular fiction?"

"You don't need to build up tension, Paul."

"Some of the fiction was really really accurate."

"How accurate?"

"Accurate descriptions of names, power sets and personalities. In most cases. My best guess is that there actually are metahumans back home, but all they have is a weak unconscious parallel universe viewing ability and use it for writing comics."

Her eyes dart to the side as she tries to get her head around the idea. "I.. see. Was there a.. Cheshire comic?"

"There was a character vaguely similar to you. Er, I wasn't a fan. She once blew up a country. And was pretty mental. And also didn't wear that rather fetching white mask."

"Glad to know that wasn't accurate. And I suppose that explains how you know so many things."

"At this point, some of that is actual hard work." Hm. "That's about it from me. I don't.. really have anything else I'm actively hiding. You?"

"Aside from the murders?" She smiles faintly. "I do have a small tattoo on-."

"I-I-." I nod. "I saw it."

Her smiles take on a decidedly saucy edge and she takes another step closer. "You were pretty thorough."

"I… Hadn't wanted to bring it up, but you didn't seem to appreciate that degree of… Thoroughness."

"It was a… Surprise. And it certainly wasn't unpleasant." She sidles into convenient kissing distance, her eyes staring deeply into mine. "Maybe we could leave it until your birthday."

"Already? I thought you'd want to give it longer."

"What do you mean, 'al-'? Your birthday's today?"

I nod. "Yes. The seventeenth of September, nineteen eighty three."

"You spent your birthday last year looking after Tommy and Tuppence Terror, and repairing Belle Reve."

"I also repaired you, so I'd call it a productive use of my time." I lean into her, our faces close enough that I can feel her breath on my cheek. "What else would I want to spend my birthday doing?"

17th September

21:23 GMT -5

I scowl down at Mister Napier's quivering form. Then I kick him again.

"Look, I gave you an arm back specifically so that you could sign this." I thrust Kyle Knight's autograph book at him again. "I'm sure you've got enough motor control left to manage an X. Get on with it."

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Resurrectionists 4

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18th September

08:58 GMT -5

I idly look around the somewhat busy lobby of the Metropolis LexCorp building, then saunter in the direction of former-starface-guy. The press conference is due to start in a couple of minutes and now seems like an ideal time to find out what he's actually for. He's got a computer pad out and is working on… I think that's the Starseeker's engine design.

"Hello there, Doctor." He immediately locks his pad and closes the screen and only then looks around to me. "No one.. thought to introduce us when I brought the Knights to see the Starseeker."

"Nylor." He smiles. "Nylor Truggs. I don't actually have a doctorate."

"Ah." I frown. "Then-?"

"What I do have is some rather specialised expertise in this kinda technology."

"And you don't have a doctorate? Then, how did you come by your expertise?"

"Experience. I've had an interesting life. Stuck as a lab rat fer a couple a' years, then I get a Starfish stuck on my face. But at least my boss is taking me seriously. At long last." He looks me over, the left side of his mouth scrunching up as he does so. "Working with an Apokoliptian is an interesting swerve, but I like t'think I'm adaptable."

Lab rat? Sure, I can well imagine Lex having an alien dissected, but I'd have thought that he'd rather use financial incentives on a Human. "Sounds like you've got an interesting story there. Care to share it?"

"Not all that much t'tell. I grew up in a bad future and I came back in time t'make sure it doesn't happen. Oh, but don't go asking me fer lotto numbers or anything." He shakes his head and waves his right hand. "Records of alla that stuff got wiped out before I got born."

"I wasn't planning to. You wouldn't happen to still have your time machine, would you?"

"Nah, turns out that was a one-shot job." He shrugs. "Easy come, easy go. But I'm really liking Lex's new direction. I didn't even know Earth had that kinda spaceship. It's gunna be great, working on this."

"Why exactly did Lex-?"

"Ladies and Gentlemen?" We both look around to the usher. "If you'd like to make your way outside?"

"Sounds like our cue." Truggs raises his pad again and taps the unlock. "Lex is on schedule, so… Let's go." He strides in the direction of the main entrance and I amble after him, making sure that everyone on the LexCorp side with an invitation has plenty of time to exit the building ahead of me.

I did send notices to Sam and Jon in advance that Lex was going to be doing this, but I -intentionally- didn't mark it as being high priority. This isn't supervillainous. This is… I'm not sure what the word would be. If a superhero is someone acting violently outside of normal social systems in the interests of law and justice, what do you call someone acting industriously outside those systems in the interests of technical development? A market disruptor? Heh, Market Master? Of course, if this causes LexCorp to go on to become a true science fiction style megacorps…

Then he'd be a super functionary. An industrial functionary who performs his function to a superlative degree and on a super-sized scale.

Some of the assembled press stand as I stroll out, pictures being taken, video footage being recorded and questions being shouted. I will be making myself available to answer questions later, but this is Lex's show. I do make a point of waving to the Knight family, Kyle grinning back while his father looks less contented. I can't imagine what he's bothered about; I removed the arm right after Napier signed.

Finding my seat just behind the small podium, I look up into the sky. Sinestro?

Marking target, Corpsman.

A couple of the more on-the-ball journalists follow my line of sight just as the Starseeker becomes visible as more than a dot in the sky.

"That's not a bird. Is it a plane?"

Ms Lane narrows her eyes, shading them with her right hand. "It's definitely not Superman."

The Starseeker is making pretty good speed in our direction. Going full speed in an urban environment is a good way to be sued into penury, to say nothing of the bad publicity and political aggravation it would generate. The Starseeker's maximum safe speed is higher than that of any conventional aircraft thanks to the judicious application of force fields, but it still can't just appear.

There's a series of muffled gasps as awareness of the oncoming starship ripples through the crowd, everyone who had been sitting surging to their feet and cameras being hastily repositioned to better cover the Starseeker's approach. I asked, and apparently this is legal using the light aircraft provisions he uses to operate a plane from the roof of the LexCorp building. I imagine they'll be changing that loophole pretty quickly.

The Starseeker angles itself as it makes its final approach, its impellers shimmering slightly as the same mechanisms as were once used in the cosmic rod bend themselves to the task of manoeuvring the starship. A few moments later it more or less drifts silently over the crowd before coming to a halt just off to the side of the seating area, about four metres from the ground.

Then a hatch opens in the side and an immaculately dressed Lex Luthor appears. I happen to know that he's got a cosmic converter belt on under his jacket, but I grin as I hear the gasps caused by him simply jumping down from the hatch and landing on the tarmac below. A smile and a wave and he's heading towards the podium, the assiduous Ms Graves taking up position alongside him and whispering a few words. He nods, and she steps back as he climbs the steps and turns to address the extremely attentive crowd.

"It's been over forty years since man first went to the moon. Since then, we've sent robots and probes to almost every part of our solar system and Voyager One is just outside of it. Humans, however, have yet to set foot on another planet." He leans forward slightly, his smile broadening. "I think it's high time that we changed that."

"The vessel you can see to my left-" He gestures with his left hand. "-is not -as I'm sure many of you assumed- a sign of my oncoming mid-life crisis, but a fully functioning Human designed and Human built interstellar starship. And as much as I'd love for LexCorp to be able to take full credit, we weren't the ones who designed it. That distinction belongs to a man named Doctor Theodore Knight. Doctor Knight was a distinguished physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project during the Second World War, and served Opal City as Starman for several decades afterwards. And in his spare time, he designed and built that."

A hologram showing Doctor Knight in his prime appears on Lex's right hand side.

"While NASA was struggling to design a reusable spacecraft, a single man working out of a garage in Maryland created that. It was complete in nineteen seventy seven and the faster than light drive was added in eighty two. After I acquired the rights to it last week, all LexCorp's engineers had to do was perform a little maintenance and polish the hull. It's a marvel of science and technology, and I'm already buying land for the factories where I'm going to build more like it."

"But in the shorter term, the Starseeker's power generation systems revolutionise our understanding of stellar radiation in a way which has immediate application in the field of electricity generation. LexPower is already beginning the process of switching all of our hydrocarbon-burning generator plants to use non-flammable and non-polluting cosmic power sources instead. Not only is it cleaner and safer, but it is also far cheaper. Once the plants switch over, anyone using our services can expect to see their bills reduced to a tenth of what they are now."

And he'll still be making a larger profit per kilowatt hour than he does now. The conversion isn't cheap, but not having to ship thousands of tonnes of coal or millions of litres of natural gas around the place dramatically reduces costs. Not like those ships are going to pay for themselves.

"But beyond my personal pleasure in taking the Human race to the stars, this has brought to a head my concerns about technological development in our society more widely. Exactly why was a man of Doctor Knight's obvious brilliance operating out of a garage? Why did every company he tried to persuade to develop his technology turn him away? It offends me both as a Human being who wants to see people reach their full potential and as an industrialist who wants good ideas so that he can get rich exploiting them."

I think that was supposed to be a joke, but the crowd appears to be too shocked to really respond.

"That's why I'm going to be establishing the Theodore Knight scholarship fund. People this inspired, people with this level of brilliance, should be afforded every opportunity to bring the products of their work to as wide an audience as possible. The fund will pay for higher education, as well as providing grants and seed investment for high-technology start-ups. I don't want the next Theodore Knight to die without seeing his vision realised. The future of the Human race depends upon that not happening."

"Now!" He stands back slightly. "Would any of you like to join me on a brief trip to the moons of Saturn?"

Everyone jumps to their feet, shouting questions.

Lex glances back at the proud Knight family, and smiles.

back

Resurrectionists 5

next

18th September

17:18 GMT -5

"Really?"

I look around the park a little self consciously. "Yes. Why, is that.. contrary to your past experience?"

"No. Those weren't long term relationships. We never had this sort of conversation." She considers my comment. "Is there a reason..?"

"I… Yes. I can.. take…" I make a circling motion with my right hand. "Take instruction. If you want me to do something, or.. do it in a different way-" A small smile from Jade as she considers the circumspect nature of my phrasing. "-then I'm fine with that. Without power rings I don't expect to get everything right the first time, and I hope you don't either."

"You didn't do that badly."

"Thank you. But… If you're doing… That, it's like… Not only are you saying that I'm not doing it right, you're also saying that I'm too dumb to learn and that you've decided that the only way you're going to get anything out of it is if you take care of the matter yourself."

She's fighting to suppress her laughter.

"I mean, I don't care… When I'm not there. But when I am… It's just not my thing."

"I'll.. remember that." She looks around in an attempt to distract herself. "Nice part of town."

"Run-away executive pay is a more recent thing than Alan's tenure at the top of Apex Broadcasting, but he wasn't exactly badly paid. He never had children and his main hobby was vigilantism, which is pretty cheap as long as you stay out of hospital. Which is a bit of luck, because now that he's functionally immortal he might have to consider getting back into the labour market otherwise."

"You didn't say he was immortal."

"Didn't I?" Think… No, I didn't. "Huh. Ah, yeah. His power ring leaked so much into his soul that as long as he keeps it charged, he stays at his physical peak. It's not really something we can use on your… Former.. clients."

"I wasn't asking because of that. I was thinking of all the effort Ra's went to in keeping himself alive with Lazarus Pits. From the sound of it, Alan became immortal by accident."

"I wouldn't call it an accident. He had to work hard at becoming sufficiently in tune with his ring for it to bond with him like that. And I had to work at getting him a replacement personal lantern."

"But the immortality part was accidental." She stops walking for a second. "Does that mean you're immortal?"

"I only age if I want to, I can't get ill and injuries disappear when I want them to. Alan's ageing is a bit different, but.. I.. suppose."

"Huh."

"If you're interested in that yourself, I'm happy to assist you. Ah, after you've been out of prison a year. I told Paula that I'd leave it that long-."

"It's not that. You just make it sound… Easy."

"Life extensions aren't that hard to get hold of. Ooh, have you considered converting to Hellenism? If you do, you won't age during any time you spend on Themyscira."

She raises her left eyebrow slightly. "I'm not worrying about that quite yet."

"Ah. Serious face, there's another good reason for converting."

"What's that?"

"Hellenists can't go to Hell."

She looks at me for a moment. "You think I'm going to Hell."

"Twenty nine murders. I consider the chances unacceptably high. If you got hit by a car tomorrow I don't.. currently have the equipment I would need to fight all of Hell's Demons to get you out."

"This conversation got weird fast."

"To be fair, our lives have gotten pretty weird."

"Still, you're apparently willing to take on all of Hell for me, so I suppose I should take it as a compliment."

"I'd rather not have to. But yes. I would."

Jade nods. "Who is the Ancient Greek God of Assassins, anyway?"

"There isn't a god with that exact portfolio, but there are few who would probably support that occupation. Neikos, Lupe, Adika, Apate or.. maybe Nemesis…"

"Nemesis is a god?"

"A goddess. She's basically a hitwoman who kills people who are rude about the Olympians." Thank you, warding tattoos. "I suppose that your choice of patron would depend on the reason for the assassination."

"What about… Artemis?"

"Not generally associated with hunting people. And…" I glance at her. "Traditionally, Amazons emulating her are… Celibate."

She raises her eyebrows. "Are they?"

"… Yes."

Jade glances my way, smiling speculatively. "What does she think counts?"

"If you have to ask… "

Jade frowns thoughtfully. "I don't know. I'm not really religious or anything, but the only one of those I've even heard of is Artemis."

"The only other obvious patron for a practising League of Shadows assassin would be Ares, who's up for killing in all its forms. But Diana ha-." Ah. "Diana doesn't like him, and the only shrine to him on Themyscira is this half-collapsed thing out in the middle of nowhere. Amazons who are interested in combat generally follow Athena or Nike, and neither of them would be interested in assassination."

"I'm not planning on assassinating anyone. How about vigilantes?"

"There are several gods and goddesses who are patrons of justice and punishment. I suppose… How long are you planning on working for the Inzerillos?"

"I don't think it would look good on my CV if I quit this soon. I don't have much of an employment record."

I nod as we reach the end of the park and start across the road to Alan's house. "Probably true. I'm.. assuming that you're not planning on going with your grandfather's suggestion?"

She flashes me a decidedly distasteful look as we start up Alan's drive.

"Just asking. You could consider working for an agency rather than being employed directly by the end user."

"I did try that the first time. They don't take people with criminal records."

"What, absolutely? How do they-" I open the front door. "-expect people to go straight if they can't get a job? Alan! We're here!"

"I don't think they really care about that. I-." She frowns as I close the door behind us. "I think I…"

"Hey there." Alan emerges from the kitchen, smiling as he does so. "You must be Jade."

Jade tenses slightly, then relaxes. "And you must be Alan. Pleased to meet you."

back

Resurrectionists 6

next

18th September

17:39 GMT -5

Something beeps in the kitchen, and Alan rises to his feet. "Let me just check on that. I'll be right back."

Jade smiles at him as he leaves the room, then turns to me with her eyes slightly wide. "I thought you said he was a Green Lantern."

"He was. But he gave me his lantern, and I couldn't get him a replacement green one without either going to Apokolips or.. shivving a serving Green Lantern. And blue was the best fit. Um… Is there a.. problem?"

"I feel like everything's going to work out for the best."

I look at her with a completely serious expression. "Oh no."

"I never feel like that. Dad's training was great for beating the hope out of me."

"Oh. Ah… I.. hadn't noticed that myself. Are you.. sure it's him?"

"I like him."

"Ah… Again, I-."

"You visited me in Belle Reve and brought me cookies. Talking to you was the only time I could let my guard down and I still didn't decide that I liked you until I nearly died."

I frown. "You need more friends."

"No I don't. And having your mentor mind control me isn't making the best impression."

"I very much doubt that it's intentional. Um." Huh. I certainly hadn't noticed anything. But… I suppose that out of everyone he could have exposed I'm the least likely to be affected by other lights. Same with Diana; her divine nature includes resistance to mind effects. And the other people I've seen him with like him so much that they probably wouldn't notice… "But we can just ask him about it."

Jade looks decidedly uncertain.

"His is the first blue power ring in existence. There are bound to be one or two glitches. This isn't some sort of silly, convoluted mind games thing, it's just an oversight, and we'll clear it up by discussing it like rational adults."

"You had a very different childhood than me, didn't you?"

"Unless my parents were keeping really quiet about the whole 'supervillainy' thing, yes."

Alan pushes the living room door open. "Supervillains?"

"Are you really that eager to start fighting again, that I just have to say 'supervillain' and you're there?"

"I gotta start using this-" He holds up his right hand. "-some time."

"How did it go at the hospital?"

"Healing injuries was pretty easy, but…" Jade starts smiling again despite herself. "The chronic cases… I couldn't… I don't know, I couldn't get a connection. I'll keep working at it, but I… I gotta say, I'm looking forward to our first sparring session."

"Lantern Stewart said that Lantern Savenlovich might be joining us as well."

"It'll be nice to have someone more at my level." Jade's face twitches. "To start with, anyway. Ah… Something wrong?"

"You're making me feel hopeful." Alan looks nonplussed. "I'd.. appreciate it if you'd stop."

"Really?" She nods urgently. "I'm.. sorry, but I'm not-" He clenches his right fist and takes a closer look at his ring. "-sure I know how. What if I just.. take it off..?"

Jade nods, relieved. "Thank you."

"Ooh, we could practise this. Find out how far the-." There's a knock on the door. "-effect-" Alan and I are both rising to our feet. "-goes."

"I'll get the door."

"The whole point of this is for you and Jade to get to know each-" I transition past him into the corridor. "-other."

"Alright." I head for the door. "How did you and Paul first meet?"

Hm. A bit odd. Can't see anything through the door. Did Alan have wards installed while I was away? I'll have to make a point of- I pull the door open. -complimenting him on…

An albino in a ragged suit with lifeless eyes stares at me. There's some makeup on its face, perhaps from an attempt to make the face a little more lifelike. Now, it seems to have been smeared and merely adds to the disturbing appearance. Where its mouth hangs open I can see where the gums have pulled away from the teeth, and his general stance suggests that he isn't in full control of his motor functions.

It immediately puts me in mind of Solomon Grundy, but he was far bigger and didn't introduce himself so politely. And no one's seen him for about forty years. These things remind me of those mass-produced knock-offs from Seven Soldiers. What were they called?

Ah, yes. Grundymen. Zombified Sheeda/Modern Human hybrids pulled from their graves to act as manual labourers. Except… Klarion was a Lord of Chaos. I checked the tunnels under New York as much as I could. No trace of subway pirates or subterranean puritans or any of that stuff. So what the heck is it doing-?

The grundyman jerks upright, a tiny sigil glowing white in its eyes as it lurches for me arms outstretched! And my piston-construct slams into its chest and sends it flying over Alan's drive, over the road and onto the grass of Inwood Hill Park. Remarkably, it remains intact despite ploughing a furrow in the ground, and even struggles to rise.

"Who is it?!"

"It's a zombie, Alan!"

There's a slight pause. "Did it say what it wants?!"

I step out onto the drive, my power armour appearing around me. "No! I'll ask!"

"Arragghrhh!"

Two more charge up the driveway, arms outstretched! Chain construct, perh-?

Jade dodges past me, x-ionised knives at the ready. She ducks under a grundyman's clumsy swing and neatly hamstrings it in both legs. It collapses without a sound, arms still reaching for me. That's a bit personal. I go to-.

Blue bands of energy surround the remaining grundyman. "They remind me of someone."

"Cyrus Gold was bigger, and his facial structures were different."

"Maybe he's been on Atkins."

"Ooh, good old-person-making-out-of-date-reference there, Alan."

"It's out of date?"

Jade takes a runestone out of one of her pockets and holds it up towards the grundyman struggling against Alan's construct. "Magic zombies."

"There are only so many ways to reanimate the dead. I'll see if there are any m-."

"Grundymen! Kill them!"

"GRAAAGH!"

The grundyman in Alan's construct swells with muscles and shatters his bonds!

back

Resurrectionists 7

next

18th September

17:43 GMT -5

Jade steps up behind it as it lands, slicing through the back of its neck with her knife then stepping smartly out of its reach. The sudden lack of a central nervous system doesn't seem to faze it as it pushes off its right leg to shoot through the air at me.

Hm.

Jade's eyes widen as it covers the distance. I form a railgun construct next to its head, load a mage slayer round and fire. It spins in the air, legs slamming into my construct armour and bouncing off. It struggles to rise from the drive's brickwork, its head distorted and flattened where my railgun round struck. Huh. Okay, I knew that flesh that was sufficiently magically reinforced could survive a mage slayer strike at low power, but I would have thought that the hit would still disrupt the spell anim-.

The first grundyman lands on me, slamming me to the ground!

"Paul!"

Another railgun round, this time with a little more force behind it. Headshot; the head is knocked sideways and… Ah, the eyeballs burst. "They're just killer zombies, Jade." Move the railgun to the front, aim at an eye socket, a little more power. Splot! The rear of the head bursts, spraying decayed brain matter, skull and hair across Alan's front flower beds. The front of the face is still upright and still orientated on me. Fascinating. "Nothing to get-" I take an x-ionised sword out of subspace and slice across myself, blade sliding neatly through its left elbow, torso and then right arm. Zombie guts spill as it topples over, and I rise to my feet. "-excited about."

"I'm not wearing armour!" She darts in at the crawling grundyman and removes its right hand. "Give me-" I float the sword over to her as Alan drops a mallet construct on the one I shot in the head. "-that."

She grabs the sword and neatly sweeps the blade through the grounded grundyman's neck and torso. That doesn't stop it trying to move, but its actions are much less coordinated now.

"Interesting."

"What? Being attacked by Grundy's younger brothers?"

"No." That's not interesting. "The spell animating them isn't tied to their brain." I shift the railgun to the head of the grundyman Jade cut into four. "Watch."

I overpower the shot and the head explodes. But the other parts keep moving.

"Hey, that's my driveway."

"I'll fix it when we're finished."

"Alright, but why is it-."

"Ruuuaaaghhhh…"

His grundyman rips at the hammer construct, causing it to fail. Alan lets it vanish, then drops an anvil construct on the revenant instead. It squashes somewhat, but doesn't completely stop moving.

"Why is the head such a big deal? It's dead."

"The brain controls the body in life. That makes it easier to put control spells there when it's dead. The alternatives are using a controlling spirit -which these don't have- or some sort of personal direction spell which my mage slayer rounds should have nullified. Which means-."

Jade shoots me an irritated look. "Can we worry about that after we're sure there aren't any more coming?"

"Sure, but there probably are. Oh, and… Ah, Alan? You… May have just lost your secret identity."

Sunset's an hour and a quarter away, and my railgun and his percussive construct strikes aren't exactly quiet. The park's still clear but several neighbours are sticking their heads out of their front doors to see what just happened.

"Ah, heck."

"Please stay inside! We're dealing with a zombie attack!"

Most duck back a little, but with no more zombies evident they don't hide as they probably should. Worry about that later. Right. If these grundymen work like the ones in the comics then they're being directed by someone from Limbo Town… Except Limbo Town doesn't exist. Probably. So, wherever Klarion actually came from, the place I dimly glimpsed in Teekl's recollections.

Why is the park empty?

"Jade, are you still carrying your Spell Eater?"

"Yes. Why?"

"I'm a little concerned that-."

I see the man dressed like a Puritan for a fraction of a second as his glamour fails and his pistol fires.

Ghostly white flames burn through the air between us. I didn't know ectoplasm could be excited like that. But it's aimed straight at me and I'm thinking fast enough that all I have to do is step out-.

Pale white mist rises from the grundymen.

Transition?

…

At least it's not black.

The bolt of eldritch fire howls as it hits my construct armour, a swirling miasma of howling faces flickering and twisting as it tries to breach my environmental shield! Jade's already sprinting across the road towards the shooter and Alan is trying to attack the fire directly but-.

There's a crack and the fire surges through the hole, enveloping me. The Spell Eater heats up immediately and my tattoos hurt for the first time since they healed. Metaphysical attack? Yeah, good luck with that, I'm-.

There's a stabbing pain in the left side of my chest. That's… Right where Klarion's spike went through when we fought in Salem. Agh! My right forearm burns! Homing in on residual chaos..? No, there wasn't any, I got that checked out very thoroughly by Sephtian. My left hand-. Mage slayer, stick it in the ghost fire. That should help, but-.

The fire twists away from it, even as exposure to the magic eating effect starts to unbind the spells. Pain blossoms in my mouth, but it begins fading almost immediately as the white fire creating it finishes dissolving.

"You back with us?"

I struggle back to my feet, my injuries vanishing only slowly as the residual magic resists my ring's efforts. "Help. Jade."

"Right."

Environmental shield flaring wildly, Alan flies over the road and straight at two grundymen trying to interpose themselves between Jade and the figure I assume to be a submissionary. The pistol he shot me with outwardly resembles a flintlock pistol and it looks like it has a similar recharge rate, forcing him to ward her off with swipes from a crescent moon topped staff. Alan's hammer constructs batter the zombies down just as Jade's sword cuts the staff in two and stops just under the submissionary's neck.

"Drop it, or I find out whether you can keep going without a head too."

The submissionary drops the remains of his staff and raises his hands in a gesture of surrender. His skin is a curious colour, chalky white darkening to pale blue in places. Other than that he looks fairly Human.

Right, good. Ring, how am I doing?

Injuries healed. Full functionality restored.

Glad to hear it. I restore my construct armour and fly across the road to stand next to Jade and Alan.

"What was that in aid of?"

"Our auguries showed the taint of the monster Klarion upon you. But if you survived my shot, his touch must only have been slight. I pray you, as a God-fearing man, tell me where the monster makes his home that I may end him before any others come to grief by him!"

"You're here for Klarion? Also known as 'Klarion the Witch-Boy'?"

"That I am. Do you know then whence he may be found?"

I throw up my arms. "Why can't you just ask to begin with, like a normal person?"

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Resurrectionists 8

next

18th September

17:46 GMT -5

"The magic of chaos is a twisted thing. The bloody toll the Witch-Boy wrought upon my brother Witch-Hunters taught us well that those touched by him were not to be trusted, even if they seemed of honest aspect. I will beg pardon for my caution only when Klarion lies dead."

Jade lowers her sword. "This should be good."

"What's your name?"

"I be Brother Shadrach, a Witch-Hunter in the service of the nation of Colombia."

"Short version, Mister Shadrach: Klarion is dead. He's been dead for about two months. I'm carrying some residue of his magics because I fought him twice and he injured me." Not mentioning my other exposure to chaos magic. "If we were able to prove this to you, would you leave peacefully?"

"Dead?"

"Yes, very dead."

He nods. "That would be a wondrous boon. I would not shirk my sacred duty, but I have no desire to meet my maker earlier than I must." He shakes his head. "But Klarion has fooled goodly folks before, and I cannot put aside my task until I can personally behold proof he's been sent to Satan."

"Oh, he hasn't gone to Satan. With high-end magic users we like to be sure they're not coming back, and opening portals to Hell isn't that hard."

"Aye, 'tis sadly true. What manner of fate did you inflict upon him then, if not a righteous damnation?"

"There are a coven of magic users on this world who use the souls of evildoers as a power source. I believe that Klarion was finally passed to them, though I will put you in touch with the relevant government authorities so that you can examine the system for yourself. Would that satisfy you?"

"More like than not. Though my fellows and I would have a need to examine the spells in detail before I could swear an oath to it."

I sag slightly. "Fellows?"

"We would not send a man alone to face Klarion. Such would be suicide!"

I nod. "Reasonable. How might we make contact with the others, and are they likely to be repeating your error?"

"I can contact them easily enough. But I will not be doing so on your say-so alone."

Jade starts to raise her sword again, but I hold out my right hand to stop her. "Do you know anything about what Klarion did while he was here?"

"Not.. his particular deeds, no."

Jade rolls her eyes while Alan and I wince. "Did they not teach you how to investigate at witch hunter school?"

"I.. sought the spoor of his magics and would have interrogated whoever I found. What else could I do?"

Ah. Right. Limbo Town didn't have much in the way of industry, and what little I saw of Witch World suggested a similar lack of technological advancement. He wouldn't know how to investigate using publically available sources of information here.

"Alan, I'm.. sorry, but I think I'm going to need to take him to the Hall of Justice."

"You can open a zeta tube between here and there, can't you?"

"Yes, of course."

"Well, dinner doesn't need to be a write off, does it? We'll just have to occupy a table in the staff canteen."

I nod, smiling. "Alright then. Mister Shadrach, do you need to collect your familiar, or shall we leave immediately?"

A strange purple lizard fades into visibility near his right foot, and it swiftly climbs up his body to take up station on his right shoulder. It looks a little like a chameleon, but with the addition of a neck frill and vicious-looking teeth. Mister Shadrach crouches down to pick up the fallen half of his staff and then stands once more. "Shall we off, then?"

"And the zombies?"

"Zombies? Do you speak of the grundymen?" I nod. "Aye, t'would be better they not be left to fester." He brings the broken ends of his staff together, muttering something that sounds prayer-like as they merge back together. Then he raises the staff. "Your service is done!"

The closest two fallen grundymen… Huh. The ground around them appears to liquefy, allowing them to sink into it without resistance. Looking back at Alan's drive, the same thing appears to be happening there. Even the bits that landed on brick. Interesting.

"Let's go and bother the evening shift. Transition in three, two, one." Our surroundings flicker and we appear on the upper steps of the Hall of Justice, Mister Shadrach not seeming especially perturbed by the sudden shift. "This way, please."

He gazes up at the glass frontage. "This seems somewhat extravagant for a courthouse."

"It's not a courthouse." I push open the door and then hold it for the rest of the party. From near statue-Aquaman's foot a cleaner stares at us. I wave. "It's a combination of museum and command centre. Just a moment." I raise my left hand to my ear. "Orange Lantern to.. duty officer?"

Jade looks around the foyer. "I've never been here before."

Alan nods. "I suppose you wouldn't have had much cause to."

"Red Arrow here. What do you need?"

"An investigator from Klarion's homeworld turned up to hunt him down. Can we use one of the Hall of Justice's media rooms to demonstrate that he's too late?"

"Tours should have finished for the day, so go ahead. I'll let Batman know."

"Thank you." I lower my ring and cancel the connection. "This way please."

As we head in the direction of the media centre, Alan frowns at Mister Shadrach. "Say, ah… You're a witch hunter who uses magic?"

"Aye." Mister Shadrach looks mildly puzzled. "I be a Witch-Man who hunts criminals, heretics and warlocks like Klarion. How else would I do that, but with magic?"

"Oh!" Alan smiles. "Sorry, I was parsing that incorrectly."

"Nay, 'tis no surprise to me that my use of the arcane is a surprise to you. Such things were forbidden to our forebears as well."

"What species are you? Whereabouts are your people from?"

Mister Shadrach looks a little irritated by that. "I am a man, much as you are."

"I apologise. I meant no offence, but where I'm from people don't usually have your, ah… Your particular skin tone."

"'Tis a sign of the blood of Melmoth. It is of no great import, saving that my skin burns a little easily in the heat of the sun."

Melmoth. I know that name. "Melmoth… King of the Sheeda Melmoth?"

"That's the hellspawn a'right. He stole away my ancestors from their homes and brought them to his own land. And he enslaved them. The menfolk he used for his labour, the womenfolk he used for his pleasure. 'Til his own children rose up and slew him. I am of his blood, but I am of their blood as well. I am a true follower of Jesus Christ and I'll not be compared to the likes of him."

"I'm sorry, that wasn't what I meant to imply. Your people came from Roanoke, didn't they?"

His eyes widen slightly in surprise. "Aye. You know of it?"

"Yes, I do. Welcome home."

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Resurrectionists 9

next

18th September

19:37 GMT -5

"…motivation." Jade shrugs.

Alan frowns at her. "You'd really just have left them like that if your uncle hadn't been there?"

"I probably wouldn't have been able to do anything. I was born in America, I grew up in America and I don't think I've spent more than two months in Vietnam my whole life. It's not…"

Alan nods slowly. "Not yours."

She nods. "Right."

"But doing that sort of thing again doesn't have any appeal?"

"I don't like… Losing control like that. If Paul hadn't been there, I don't know what I'd have done next." She… Hesitates. Alan waits patiently for her to decide to start speaking again. "I… While I was using Paul's ring, I actually altered the structure of my brain."

Alan's eyes widen slightly. "Why ever would you do that?"

"What, you've never wanted a better brain?"

"Maybe, but I'd never just.. fiddle around with it with a power ring. You could have done yourself some serious damage."

"Or.. fixed damage."

Huh?

"What d'you mean by that?" Alan glances at me after he says it, but I've got no more idea what she means than he does. That certainly wasn't what she said at the time.

Jade doesn't meet our eyes. "What people learn affects the structures of their brains. Especially when they're children. Dad wasn't big on empathy. I think I thought on some level that I could.. undo that. If he'd made me less empathic, I could use the ring to make myself more empathic."

I reach across the table with my left hand and lay it on her right. She glances up for a moment then looks away again. "Some things that seem like a good idea when you're hopped up on the orange light turn out in the cold light of day to have been less than sensible."

"On the other hand, I've found reading people a lot easier since then."

Alan nods. "You.. not planning on joining the Orange Lantern Corps I take it?"

"No. At least, not anytime soon. Paul said that having a central power battery makes it less.. dangerous, but I don't… Really want to feel like that again."

Alan smiles. "One less person spinning the moon around."

"One ti-."

"Pray, par-"

There's a glowing orange barrier and a glowing blue barrier between us and the new Witch-Hunter before he's even fully materialised, and my railgun and Jade's plasma pulse pistol trained on him before he has any chance to draw his own.

"-don me, good sirs." He takes note of the weapons, and freezes. The purple lizard on his shoulder crouches down a little, and hisses.

Jade raises her eyebrows. "No attack zombies, this time?"

"Brother Shadrach vouchsafed to me that you had some knowledge of the fiend Klarion. Am I intruding?"

"You're doing better than he did." I dismiss my railgun. Jade pointedly doesn't lower her gun. "Who are you and how did you get in?"

"I be Brother Abednego, Witch-Hunter. This building is not well-warded. A synchronicity pilgrim such as myself could enter without being troubled overmuch."

"Right. Mister Shadrach is through there-" I generate a construct arrow pointing towards the door containing Mister Shadrach, a secure limited database and quite a lot of monitoring equipment. "-and you're welcome to join him. Are there any more of you?"

"There is but one to come. She be down south a ways, and not wont to be coming this way until she's good and ready."

I blink. "She?"

"Oh aye. Sister Beulah's a canny one with a powerful hate for Klarion." He looks at us for a moment. "Will it be a problem, her coming here?"

"No, no more than the rest of you. I'm just a little surprised. Your settler forebears would have been loath to have a woman in such a role."

Mister Abednego shrugs. "'Tis true, men are the stronger sex. But magic is a great leveller in such matters, and her 'fluences are powerful strong. And her pyromancy."

I suppose I shouldn't have expected their society to calcify completely, particularly after such a traumatic experience.

"Right, well, the sooner you're up to speed the sooner you can all leave."

"I'm afraid not." He shrugs apologetically. "The witch-path by which we came here won't open again until the lunar cycles align."

"That seems to be a bit of a drawback."

"Our thinking was that we would most likely not survive our confrontation. As such, anyone left alive would be so grateful to return home at all, they'd not gripe having to wait a month or four."

"I'm sure we'll find something worthy of your time."

"Folks usually do."

Mister Abednego raises his right hand in salutation, then turns away and follows my arrow in the direction of his co-religionist.

Alan looks thoughtful. "I thought conservative Protestant denominations didn't like magic."

"They don't."

"What d'you think they'd make of these fellows?"

"I don't want to find out. I'm.. ninety nine percent sure that it will create more heat than light, and I'm sneaking magic into the mainstream by making it a practical rather than a theological thing. That's why I haven't publicised the Anglican Communion's witch hunters."

"The Episcopalians have witch hunters?"

"Yes. The Closed Order of the Alexins. Warrior monks, though they don't use magic quite as readily as these chaps. And they don't like necromancy, so I don't think they'd get on with them either."

Jade glances in the direction of the media room. "If they couldn't beat us, what did they think they were going to do against Klarion?"

"Either, they're specialised in fighting magic users and lost to us because we're not magic users, or they're trying to die honourably. I'm leaning towards the first, but I wouldn't say I know them well enough to make that a firm conclusion."

Alan nods. "Are you going to take them to China tomorrow?"

I sit back. "Nope! This is a job for the Justice League, or more specifically for the Justice League's Chinese member. Unless I rejoin the team or join the League, not only do I not have to involve myself in this sort of problem, I'm not legally supposed to."

Alan smiles. "If you don't have to involve yourself, why are we eating dinner here?"

"Because I want to make sure they're 'settled in' before passing the matter over to the League. Puritan wizards could cause a lot of problems, and I'm not going to let that happen." I shake my head. "So, where were we?"

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Resurrectionists 10

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19th September

18:37 GMT +5:30

Lex's facility in the Valmiki National Park has grown quite considerably since I was last here in person. I wonder how many palms he had to grease to get around the building restrictions? And whether the increased security is really worth the isolation? It's already dark here as I descend towards the front entrance, away from what appears to be a small building site at the western side of the facility. I phoned ahead, but I don't-. Ah, there he is.

"Doctor Munro! Good evening!"

"Orange Lantern. Good to see you." He waves with his right hand as I come down to land on the path next to him. "How was space?"

"Reassuring, in a way. I now know for certain that no matter how long I live, I'll always have something that I need to work on."

"So I.. take it that the universe isn't full of enlightened philosopher-scientists falling over themselves to show the jumped-up apes a better way to live?"

"I'm afraid not, though there are several groups who want you to think they're enlightened philosopher-scientists and would quite like to give ruling easily impressionable aliens a go." I shake my head. "Trust me, we're better off working it out for ourselves."

"I'll bear that in mind if it ever comes up." He starts off down the path towards a room containing nearly the entire staff-. Ah, the mess hall. "We're about to have dinner, if you'd like to join us."

"Thank you, but I only just had breakfast. How is your work with cracking the Danner Formula going?"

"Ah. It's difficult to say, really. Lex has been able to get a hold of some Atlantean alchemy textbooks for us, but the whole thing's just such a departure from modern chemistry… We have got to the point where we understand how it propagates through a fetus, and that was a messy business. And we know exactly what it does; we can quantify the increases in strength, endurance and regeneration precisely."

"So… What's the problem?"

"The problem is that Atlanteans don't do a whole lot of alchemy, and what they do do they do with plants and animals they can get a hold of at the bottom of the Atlantic. Which means that there isn't a whole lot written… I mean, in the same scientific style, about surface world plants and animals. To say nothing of refined chemical reagents." He shrugs. "Making more Formula was never going to be the hard part. Epiphany and Magnificus are doing most of the work on that part of the project."

"Are you..? Commercially active yet?"

"We've got the first generation of guard super-Dogs in training now. Doctor… Ah, Missus Sivana was… Kind enough to share her… Her experience with us.. regarding…"

"Breast feeding?"

He nods sheepishly. "We were gunna use expressed milk, but milking a Dog isn't all that easy. Really makes me… Feel sorry for my mom."

"Do they train like normal Dogs, or do you need to do anything special?"

"We need to keep them separate from regular Dogs. They're not any more violent -a bit less, actually- but what makes for a playful nip between them makes for a nasty injury for a regular Dog. Other than that… The handlers have to be a bit careful, for pretty much the same reason. But… The same techniques work just as well."

I turn and look around at the facility. "What else are you working on?"

"We've had a few Human volunteers?" I look at him with raised eyebrows and he raises his hands. "I know, I know, we can't offer it as a.. medical product, but you know as well as I do that it's perfectly safe. We can offer it as a health supplement perfectly legally."

"Do the parents know what they're letting themselves in for?"

"As well as we can teach them. We've got a pre- and post-natal clinic… Heck, Lex is even sponsoring medical students so we get people with the right skills who are willing to live out here."

"And immunology?"

"Oooh yeah." He nods. "I… I made a point of looking at those… Photographs you showed me. And the… Film reels. I have no desire to repeat those mistakes. But it is possible to administer immunisation treatments without using needles. We've done extensive animal testing, we're as ready as we can be."

I nod. "Good show. Please, don't… I do want this to happen. And I know there can't be any complete guarantees."

He bows his head slightly, then nods. "I'm more than a little nervous myself. I just.. wonder what my father would have made of all of this."

"You mean.. Hugo, not-?"

"Yeah, yeah. Not… Dad. I don't think John Munro would have thought much about it at all." He pushes open the double door into the mess hall, several members of staff waving at him as they see him. I mostly just get stares. "What exactly is it you want to talk to Nyssa about?"

"The work she did for her late father. Has she.. talked to you about any of that?"

"Not to me. Magni and her might have-." The door opens in the far side of the room, and Nyssa and Magni walk in. Magnificus has his head turned towards her and is smiling, while Nyssa scans the room and spots me immediately. A second later Magnificus notices her disquiet and follows her gaze, giving me a slightly puzzled but not at all hostile frown. "-talked about it. Nyssa!" He leads the way over to them. "Paul needs to talk to you about something."

"Oh?" I spot that she and Magnificus are holding hands. Cradle-robber. "Is there something in particular?"

"Yes. And.. it might be best if we have this conversation in private."

"Ah. I see." She turns to Magnificus, raises their joined hands and smiles affectionately.

He kisses her knuckles and then lets go. "I'll see you when Paul has finished with you."

"Of course." She turns to me. "Would my office be suitable?"

The site is warded, but it also has wi-fi so getting a plan of the place isn't hard. The space around us flickers, and we appear in a.. complexly decorated office. Quite a.. clash of styles.

Nyssa notices my puzzlement. "Magni has made a habit of giving me a present from every culture I speak to him about." She walks to her desk and picks up a cast bronze hippopotamus. "It's all authentic. I'm slightly worried that he has access to a time machine, but I haven't wanted to ask."

"Let's hope not. Ms Raatko, I wanted to talk to you about your father."

She sighs as she walks around the desk to take her seat. "Please tell me that he hasn't reappeared."

"No, he hasn't reappeared. I want to talk to you about the work you did on his Lazarus Pits." A wave of disquiet passes over her face. "Specifically, I know that you know how to make them."

"And you wish to bring someone back to life?"

"Twenty nine people, to be precise. I'm.. dating a former League of Shadows assassin, and I'd like to undo her murders."

"Undo-?" She does a cough-laugh, bowing her head for a moment. "How extravagant."

"After Missus Wayne dunked Mister Hagan, I know that things can go wrong with the process-"

"To put it mildly."

"-so I thought that -since you're the leading expert- I should talk to you before I did anything audacious."

"Yes. You should."

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Resurrectionists 11

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19th September

18:42 GMT +5:30

"So..? What other problems are there?"

"Insanity is a common after-effect. In the case of my father, his mania faded a few minutes after he emerged. Or was so firmly embedded that we all believed it to be his true character. Others… The maniacal rage never leaves them. Or they tear themselves apart in an insane fit. Or their bodies simply decay, or grow to monstrous proportions as their flesh turns to cancer. And sometimes the Pit simply does nothing, and their body simply remains unchanged."

"How did Ra's come up with the Pit? Batman thinks he was born during in the Timurid Empire, but while there are plenty of records of people using magic in that era, there wasn't really any sort of alchemical tradition."

She raises her eyebrows. "Wasn't there?"

"Oh." I blink. "I didn't think you were that old."

"No. I am not yet three hundred. I am merely surprised at how you can claim to have such faultless knowledge of the time."

"Alright. No records survive of there being a significant alchemical tradition. Nothing beyond simple herbalism. So I don't understand how Ra's could come up with something so… Amazing."

"He once told me that it came to him in a dream." She shrugs. "I don't know whether he was telling the truth or not." A quiet snort. "Or if he even really remembered the truth. Making a Lazarus Pit is not difficult. Dig a hole in the ground at a site that is a focus of geomantic power. A simple druid could find such a site for you. The chemicals that it requires were available to a minor Sultan in the fourteenth century, so I doubt that you will have any trouble gathering them now."

"I can't get over the fact that no one else has discovered the technique."

"What makes you think they haven't? The world is vast, Orange Lantern. Even today. If a chemist or medicine man happened upon the technique, it might extend their life once or twice. But then the geomantic energy would be depleted, and their next attempt to use it would fail."

I nod slowly. "And anyone who read their notes would assume that it was bunk, because it killed them in the end."

"For centuries, Father had to live as a nomad, wandering the world constantly in search of places where he could be restored. You know his name because he did survive, but there were any number of occasions where he could have met his true death with no one around to restore him."

"Is.. that what you do?"

"No." She blinks, and shakes her head. "When I left my father's service, I used what I had learned of alchemy and chemistry to modify the Pit I made at the node he so generously permitted me to have. The version I created uses a slightly different mixture of chemicals. It takes little power from the node, and as a result it can be used repeatedly."

"So… Why is death still a thing?"

"It is not powerful enough to restore the dead to life. It can be made so, but then it would be drained and I would have to copy Father's nomadic habits."

"Do you know how many sites there are in the world where they can be built?"

"More than twenty nine. I do not know them all, but based on those locations I do know I would estimate a little over a hundred. Which is why death is 'still a thing'. The sites do restore themselves after they are used, but far too slowly to grant more than a small number of people immortality."

"And I.. don't imagine that people generally finding out about this would be particularly conducive to civil order." Who gets the immortality serum? Not something I'd want to have to decide, unless the answer was 'everyone'. Heck, making the answer 'everyone' is why I support places like this. But if I ever really needed to resurrect someone… "Have you.. noticed any trends about who gets up sane and who doesn't?"

"Virtually all of the resurrections I performed were of my father. The only patterns I noticed were in his responses. But, so that I could properly discharge my responsibilities he showed me his own records. There was a.. period where he used node sites to test the process himself, but beyond noticing that restoring the long dead never produced satisfactory results-."

I raise my right hand. "Um?"

"They would be confused, listless, and then decay and die within a few days at most. And using a node in that way would drain it just as assuredly as using it to restore the recently dead. In fact, he told me that he had never been able to reuse a site that had been used in that way."

I nod. "Doesn't work with long term dead-. How long term is 'long term'?"

"Father gave up on experimenting when his attempt to resurrect a Pharaoh failed. I do not remember resurrecting anyone who had been dead longer than a week, but as I said: I seldom resurrected anyone other than Father."

"A week..?" Oh, that's not good.

"I also do not remember it failing to resurrect anyone not dead longer than a century. I have marked the date of Ra's al Ghul's last possible resurrection on my calendar."

"Done any.. animal testing?"

"There is slightly more to my life than Lazarus Pits."

"Yes, but you.. depend on it. I'd… I'd assumed that you'd have studied it a little."

"My desire to do that evaporated the first time I watch a Pit fail. No, I have not experimented with animals, or bacteria, or viruses, or with cutting a person in half and putting each half in a different Pit-" I wasn't going to suggest that. Though it is an interesting-. "-or with any number of studies that such an investigation would require. Before his death, Father would have strenuously objected, and since…" She shrugs. "I have been busy."

"Magnificus is a lucky man."

She smiles fondly. "I am a lucky woman. He has an incredible-"

"A-hem."

She gives me a mild scowl. "-mind. And he seems much happier in himself since your meeting on Venus."

"Yes, the Sheeda set.. some sort of misery-inducing synthetic life form on him. He shot it dead after I mentioned that they existed. Look, I'd.. really appreciate it if you'd be willing to help me with this. Research the Pits properly. I'm going to ask Talia as well, you could.. spend some more time together…"

"That is a fairly weak appeal. I speak with Talia at least twice a week."

I nod. "Okay. What do you want?"

"You know that I was tortured in a Nazi-run concentration camp." I nod again. "One of the things I was subjected to was a radical hysterectomy. I.. wish to reverse it, but my own Lazarus Pit has not corrected it. Once we have a greater understanding of how they work I wish-."

"No problem." An orange beam connects my hands to her torso for a moment as the rings reassemble her reproductive system. "Just a moment."

Her eyes widen, staring at me. "You can-?" She looks down at her abdomen, her hands moving to the area external to the place the orange light is working at restoring her fertility. "And you are asking me why death still exists? Why do cripples still exist?"

"Because I have to want the result for me. I couldn't have healed you before Jade's wellbeing was on the line, but I really want to help her." The light cuts out. "There. I included thirty years' worth of egg cells so that you can once again experience the joys of ovulation. Might take a few months for your hormonal system to settle down. Anything else you want?"

She prods gently at herself, perhaps getting used to the slightly altered arrangement of her internal organs. "No. That is quite sufficient."

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Resurrectionists 12

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19th September

09:12 GMT -5

"I'm afraid that Ms Head isn't in at the moment." The receptionist of the main Gotham office of what was once a League of Shadows front company smiles apologetically at me. "If you'd like to leave a contact number, or… Ah… I'm sorry, do superheroes have those?"

"We.. do, but do you know if she's going to be in later? I'd.. really rather do this in person."

Talia's either wearing a ward or she's ceased existing entirely. I could probably find her by abusing the ring, but.. at this point I'd rather not do anything likely to wind Batman up. Walking into a business premise and asking to speak with the manager is a reasonable enough thing for a superhero to do, and while it's strange enough to warrant comment it doesn't suggest anything else to the casual observer.

Which is good, because in this particular case the secret/not secret line is really quite confused.

It is not a secret that Nyssa Raatko is Talia Wayne's sister; she attended her wedding after all. It's not a secret that I know them both; I attended the wedding and was seen greeting her in a familiar way. It isn't a secret that I was involved in finishing off the League of Shadows; that came out when I had to explain the eye.. thing. It is a secret that they're the daughters of Ra's al Ghul… Sort of. Nyssa hasn't made a secret of it, she just hasn't broadcast it and I think she's rather slipped under the awareness of officialdom. Talia al Ghul is on a few databases as being part of the League of Shadows; Talia Wayne-Head isn't. Jade knew perfectly well that Talia Head was Talia al Ghul, and that let her work out who Batman is.

But none of that is exactly critical. Ra's knew who Batman was for years, and the Light either found out when they recruited him, or at New Year at the latest. Any of them could publicise the information. If they haven't done so to date, that's because they've decided not to. Any of them could attack Wayne Manor or Wayne Enterprises at any time, so there's no added risk from me coming here. The only real extra risk comes from it becoming easier for the general public to work out the link, and if the Talia al Ghul = Talia Wayne-Head connection becomes more widely known then the FBI arresting her will be a larger concern. The fact that Talia al Ghul had a thing for Batman wasn't widely known even inside the League of Shadows and it certainly never entered the public consciousness.

And avoiding that sort of confusion is why I don't have a secret identity.

"She… She's definitely going to be here this afternoon, but.. there's nothing in her schedule for this morning, so…" She shrugs, shaking her head. "I'm sorry, but I really don't know."

"That's fine. I can-."

The lift doors open and Mrs Wayne walks out. And it's weird. I think she's been taking acting lessons from her husband, because her whole facial expression is totally different to what it usually is. Or maybe she just doesn't like me? Not sure, but at the moment, she looks friendly and approachable, the boss of a medium sized concern who is perfectly happy to make time for her employees.

And all credit to her for not letting it waver when she sees me.

"Orange Lantern?" She walks towards the reception desk and even her walk is different. "What brings you here?"

"I believe that you might have some information pertinent to an investigation that I'm running. Would it be possible to talk about it in your office?"

"I.. suppose…" And hesitation. I haven't really interacted with Batman in Bruce Wayne mode, but… Seeing this, I can sort of understand how people might not make the link between ego and alter ego. "Sharon, could you screen my calls for the next… Half an hour?" She looks at me, eyebrows raised. I nod. "Half an hour."

"Of course, Ms Head."

"Okay then." She turns her attention back to me. "If you'd like to follow me up..?"

I nod, and she leads the way up the circular staircase towards the management offices. "I don't suppose this is part of a normal police investigation, is it?"

"I'm afraid not."

"The reason I'm asking is that our clients have a reasonable expectation that details on anything we ship will only be disclosed to relevant authorities." We reach the upper landing and she waves to a few early birds. "Then again, if my company's being used to transport something we're not supposed to, I'd rather know about it before the police break our doors down."

"I'll try to cause as little disruption as possible."

"No giant cakes then, right?"

"That was a.. one-off."

"I don't see why. Have you got any idea what slices of that cake go for on e-market.com these days?"

"It's.. probably a bit stale by now."

"I don't think that's the point." She pushes open her office door and heads for the desk as I follow her inside. "Could you get the blinds?"

I nod, then take a holocube out of subspace and use a filament to deposit it on her desk. There's a brief blue flicker, then the edges of the room take on a slightly wavy quality. "Slightly more sophisticated."

She nods absent-mindedly as she starts up her computer. Hm. Ring, any monitoring devices that look like they shouldn't be there?

No foreign monitoring devices detected. All monitoring devices detected are identical in style to those used by Batman.

Good to kn-.

"What are you doing here?"

Ah! There's the Talia I know and.. know. I sit down opposite her. "I'm having trouble keeping track. Are you aware that Jade Nguyen, aka Jade Crock, aka Cheshire, the former League of Shadows operative, is living in Gotham?"

"Of course."

"Oh good. And I'm assuming that you know that her plea bargain was extremely generous and that she did in fact kill-."

"Of course she killed people. That is what the League did."

"Excellent. Basically, I'm planning on using Lazarus Pits to resurrect everyone she killed. Nyssa's already on board but I'd very much appreciate your input."

Talia pauses for a moment. "How many kills does she have?"

"Twenty nine."

"And how many were men of low repute?"

"Twenty three were criminals. I didn't enquire as to their sex. Obviously they're the ones I'd experiment with first before trying anything on the other six."

"I take it that my sister has apprised you of the things that can go wrong with Lazarus Pit resurrections?"

"Yes, but she also explained that she hadn't really experimented with it and didn't know exactly what causes it to… Misfire. Did you.. actually know what was going to happen to Mister Hagen?" Her eyes narrow slightly. "Look, I've already decided that I'm not going to ruin your new life with Mister Wayne. There's no point in pretending, and withholding information could hurt the people I want to resurrect."

"I thought that it would kill him. The.. monstrosity he became was a surprise."

"Nyssa told me that older resurrectees fall apart. Have you got any idea how old?"

"Your consort had not been approved for assassination missions for long enough for that to be a problem. But that is far from the only thing that can go wrong. Did it not occur to you to wonder what became of my mother?"

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Resurrectionists 13

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19th September

09:16 GMT -5

"Not really. A couple of years ago you told Batman you were in your twenties. For all I know your parents had an amicable divorce and your mother is living in a retirement home somewhere."

"If that were the case, she would have been able to attend my wedding."

"Unless she was worried about getting arrested, but…" I raise my hands. "Alright. What did happen to your mother?"

Her eyes narrow. "Why should I help the man who threatened to destroy the Justice League?"

"Because I'm going to make the attempt whether you help me or not, and the only thing you can do to influence how I go about it is provide me with accurate information. Also, you're married to Batman. I'd be astonished if he didn't have a plan to do that exact thing."

"My faith in my beloved is absolute. My faith in you is much less."

"I don't.. really need or.. want your faith. Besides, are you really going to try and tell me that you wouldn't try to use a Pit on Batman if he died? Given the risks, shouldn't you try to get all of the data you can, just in case?"

"Perhaps."

"Look, I think I demonstrated before I left that I don't actually want to destroy the Justice League any more than Batman actually wants to use kryptonite on Kal-El or a freeze ray on Mister O'Brian or.. whatever he's got for the rest. I just recognise that it might be necessary at some point." Huh. "Actually, what's he got for me?" Talia doesn't respond. "Okay, but if it's the Medusa Mask, I should point out that empathic attacks aren't reliable when used against enlightened Lanterns."

"I will inform him of that fact."

We watch each other for a moment.

"So… Are you going to tell me, or shall I get on with it?"

"My mother's name was Melisande. She was killed by a man named Quinlan Landor, my father's godson. He broke into my father's laboratory and my mother spotted him. They fought, and he pushed her into a Pit."

"Did it.. turn her into a mud monster as well?"

"Nothing so kind. It melted her flesh and reduced her mind to that of a simpleton. For the brief time she remained alive. Father's attempts to resurrect her merely.. extended her suffering."

"That's.. odd. I thought that the Pits could be used to restore the living to full health? I know Nyssa uses her Pit like that."

"They can. Father has used them in such a fashion on numerous occasions. He concealed it masterfully, but I believe that he was as astonished that they did not perform that function as I was."

"Was there anything… Unusual? About your mother?"

"Nothing that I can think of that might affect the functioning of a Lazarus Pit. She did not use magic, her.. religious practices were not dramatically different from those of men and women who had successfully used Lazarus Pits before. She did not have any serious illnesses or other injuries."

"How.. thorough were her medical check ups? I ask, because there are all sorts of diseases that we can test for now that wouldn't have been testable a couple of decades ago."

"The best that were available at the time. I have not desecrated her remains by removing a tissue sample for a genetic analysis, but beyond that I am as certain as I can be." Her eyes narrow. "And you are not to violate her grave, either."

"Does scanning from a distance count? Because Mister Dorrance-."

"Yes."

Mm. Probably not essential. And I don't know either where her grave is or how the Pit affects DNA when something goes wrong. And I've got Nyssa's list of the reburial sites of the other failed resurrectees. "Have you.. ever used a Pit yourself?"

"Yes, but I was not dead on either occasion. I felt the mania, but it was not strong enough to overcome me."

"Did you ever oversee the resurrection of anyone other than Ra's?"

"Yes." She smiles. "My beloved. Once. I was relieved when he rose as strong and.. vital as ever."

"Did Ra's do a lot of experimenting while you were with him?"

"No. He had already established the policy of restricting the use of the Pits for himself and his immediate family. I oversaw his resurrection on several occasions, and prepared Pits under his supervision, but I have no greater knowledge of what makes them work and what does not."

Unfortunate, but pretty much what I expected. "You wouldn't happen to have a copy of Ra's' notes, would you?"

She shakes her head. "Did you not steal a copy when you attacked Infinity Island?"

"Sadly, no. I wasn't specifically.. looking for that, and I was really more concerned about intelligence on League of Shadows personnel than Ra's' lab work. And I suppose that they destroyed it before the League arrived."

"If there was ever anything there. After what Hagen did, it is possible that he did not even consider Infinity Island safe for such secrets."

I sag slightly. "Marvellous. Did your father practise any particular religion?"

"Why?"

"Interrogating his shade would seem to be the obvious way to learn more. I don't know where his body is, but if I get some sort of idea where his soul might have ended up I might still be able to contact him."

"The lands of my father's birth were largely Islamic, but he was born into a nomadic tribe. I doubt that there is anyone alive who would be able to describe their religious practices. He had some Zoroastrian religious images in his quarters, but I do not remember him ever praying."

"Or living at all piously." Darn. "No, it's no good. I might have been able to work with him if he was a pagan, but if he was a monotheist then he's either in Hell where Satanus can keep him quiet or in the Silver City. And I have it on good authority that they frown on necromancy in a golden fire sort of way."

I stand. "Thank you for your help. I'll send you a copy of everything I learn."

"If you successfully cause people to rise from the dead, then I doubt that you will need to inform me. All of the world's news agencies will swarm the reborn, demanding to know how it was achieved."

"I'm.. aware of the potential problem. I'll try to come up with a way of working around it before I start resurrecting people in earnest. Good day."

I return my holocube to subspace and walk out of her office. Alright, next step. I need a magic user familiar with spells and techniques which can reanimate the dead. I'll grab Ambrose, but I don't.. remember…

Ah.

19th September

23:46 GMT +8

Beulah Bleak stares at me for several seconds. "You want me to help you what?"

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Resurrectionists 14

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19th September

08:58 GMT -6

I stare through the wall at our guest as his lift approaches my floor. Curtis Metcalf dresses like the classical professor. Shirt and tie, neatly pressed fawn coloured trousers with a belt he doesn't need… Probably an attempt to cover up the fact that he's rather well muscled for a man who apparently spends nearly all of his time in his workshop cum laboratory. And a tweed jacket of the sort my Dad used to wear.

Not Darkseid. My actual Dad. I'm finally confident enough that I feel safe thinking that.

My own eyes flicker as I take in the rest. The glasses with the environmental analytics program. The fascinating liquid armour stuff he's wearing under the baggy clothes. The one-shot atmospheric excitation generator built into his watch.

If you're a superhero and Lex Luthor invites you to a private meeting, you'd have to be some sort of special idiot not to be prepared.

We took reasonable precautions too, of course. The invitation appeared in his other laboratory by hush tube, so there was next to no chance of his employer intercepting it. And we didn't schedule this meeting in a LexCorp property; I don't think that Mister Alva knows that his most productive employee is also his most notable bane, but I doubt that he'd react well to the man chatting to his main competition. No, we're in a rented meeting room in a conference centre in which his girlfriend also happens to be delivering a lecture series. Perfectly reasonable for him to be here.

There's a 'ping' as the lift reaches this floor, and I fix a pleasant smile on my face and fold my arms behind my back. The doors open, revealing Mister Metcalf standing firmly at the back, arms forced by his armour to adopt a relaxed posture. He blinks in surprise as he sees me, barely noticeable lights moving over the inner surface of his glasses as he tries to get any information from me that he can.

A moment later he steps forwards at a relaxed pace, a curious look on his face. "Mister Grayven. I wasn't expecting you."

"Lex thought that you might have…" I nod my head to the left. "Concerns. About him."

"And he brought along a man who decapitated someone on worldwide television?"

I shrug. "I feel safer. If you'll come this way..?"

My body language isn't quite Human-normal, partially due to my metaphysique and partly due to my body proportions. Still, the analytics program doesn't seem to be marking me as an immediate threat. He nods, and I turn around to lead him in the direction of Lex's temporary base of operations.

He wanted to go for a smaller room, but I couldn't fit through the doors. That's got to be against some sort of disability thing…

I pull the left door open and step aside to allow Mister Metcalf to go first. Lex looks up from his seat at the coffee table, then rises to his feet and holds out his right hand. "Mister Metcalf. Thank you for coming to see me."

Mister Metcalf hesitates for a half-second, his eyes alighting momentarily on Ms Graves where she stands against the back wall, then walks in and shakes Lex's hand. "I could hardly refuse. I've been trying to get out of my contract with Alva Industries for years."

Lex gestures to the chair opposite his own with his open right hand, and Mister Metcalf walks around the table to sit. While they're getting comfortable I duck under the doorframe and close the door. Anti-monitoring devices primed? Ah, Ms Graves is a consummate professional. I wonder if she'd be willing to train Miss Amane..?

"Now… Just to make sure that my understanding is complete…" As if there's any chance that it isn't. I walk around behind Mister Metcalf before pulling out my own reinforced chair. He can see me, but I'm not his focus. "At the age of twelve, Alva Industries granted you a scholarship as part of their 'A Better Chance' program. You graduated high school at fourteen, had your first college degree at fifteen and then went to work for Alva Industries."

"That's right."

"Eight years and… Five further degrees later, you asked to renegotiate your terms of employment."

"And Alva laughed me out of his office."

Lex leans back slightly. "That was… Certainly rude of him, but I'm not certain I understand..? You're not badly paid by any stretch of the imagination. Your facilities certainly.. appear to be excellent."

"My salary's great for a guy right out of college. But after all the money I've made for the company I don't think what I want is unreasonable."

Lex nods. "And simply quitting..?"

"I wouldn't be able to work in the industry again. A Better Chance has the mother of all no-compete clauses. Sure, I could just walk away, but this is my life."

"And there's no… Escape clause?"

"Sure there's an escape clause. I just have to make Alva Industries enough money and I'm a free agent again. Only somehow that doesn't appear to be happening. According to Alva's accountants I'm barely breaking even."

"Yes." Lex moves a couple of papers. "I had a few people take a look at that. It turns out that while everything he's done is… Legal, he's certainly engaged in a degree of sharp practice." He lays a small folder down in front of Mister Metcalf. "Essentially, all of the intellectual properties which you developed for Alva Industries are held by a holding company, which then leases them to the end users. Often.. Alva Industries itself. It's not an uncommon practice in a number of industries, but it is fairly open to abuse. In your case, it allows them to avoid counting the full profit of your work on the debit side of your account. Instead, they just count the licensing fee, which is far lower. It's hard to get an exact figure, but as far as my accountants could determine, you should have been fully paid up at least two years ago."

Mister Metcalf takes the folder, but none of his degrees are in accountancy. "And that's legal?"

"Well…" Lex makes a shrugging gesture with his hands. "An unbiased court would probably find in your favor. Eventually. Do you have the time or money to take on Alva Industries?" He leans forwards slightly. "And do you think you could find an unbiased court in Alva's home city?"

"No. But you could?"

Lex leans back, smiling. "Mister Metcalf, a year ago I would have gladly paid for your representation simply to deny a competitor your services. Now? Now, I find what he's done positively offensive."

"And what do you want in return?"

"I'm… Branching out, as of late. You saw my press conference regarding the late Doctor Knight's work?"

Mister Metcalf nods. "And his starship."

"Your work is exactly the sort of thing I was talking about. I'd like you to work for me, and I'm willing to give you the sort of terms Alva refused you. But… I understand that working for Alva may well have soured you to the idea of working for anyone. So… Two further options." Another folder. "If you wish to establish your own company, I'm prepared to lend you whatever start up capital you require at below market rates. The only obligation you would have to me is to repay the loan and the only way I would get direct control of your work is if you were declared bankrupt. Alternatively, I am willing to invest in your company as a minority stakeholder." He slides the folder across the table. "There's no need to answer now. Even under ideal conditions, this is a case that will take years, and you wouldn't be able to make use of any of these options until it's resolved."

Hm. Unless Mister Swift and I finish our purge of Edwin Alva's criminal associates before that. I rather imagine that he's intelligent enough to see the writing on the wall once the bodies start turning up. Just need to hand their files over to Director Armstrong when we're done…

Mister Metcalf nods. "Okay… I'm on board with this. What's our first step?"

"You'll need to meet with my legal team. And most likely move to secure accommodation." Lex looks thoughtful for a moment. "Ideally, the first Mister Alva will know about this is when the head of his legal department walks into his office with the papers he's just been served. That said, it might also be… Satisfying, to start hitting him in the pocketbook immediately."

Mister Metcalf raises his eyebrows. "Oh yeah? And how do you plan on doing that?"

Lex smiles again. "How do you feel about medieval Arabic literature?"

Mister Metcalf frowns. "I don't know the first thing about medieval Arabic literature." He shakes his head. "I can't even read Arabic."

"Perfect. Then I imagine that it will take even a man of your considerable intellect some time to earn a college degree in it. A degree which Mister Alva is contractually obliged to pay for."

Mister Metcalf smiles.

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Resurrectionists 15

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19th September

18:23 GMT +3

I step into the Temple of Hades and look around. "Anyone home?"

An Amazon I don't immediately recognise looks up from one of the icons along the walls, starting slightly in recognition. "Lord Pavlos. Are you looking for Thana?"

"Yes, is she around?"

She stands, then straightens her clothing. "She was heading into the inner parts of the Temple. If you like, I can show you-."

"No, that's… Fine." I head towards the stairs. "I'm sorry for disturbing your remembrance. I'll find her myself."

"Um!"

I turn around to face her. "Yes?"

"Have you..? Did you come to see the daughter of Iola and Tekla?"

I smile. "Naturally I visited them and little Elpida, but my business-purpose here is to see Thana. And… Yes, I appreciate that there's an odd symbolism in visiting the Priestess of the God of the Dead right after seeing a baby, but as I understand it Hades is the last God who'd be irritated about Amazons having children again."

"No, I…" She glances at the shrine and then back at me. "You… Helped them have her?"

"Yes?"

"I mean… The women of the city say that you used some sort of… Ring.. science..? But-."

"No." I roll my eyes. "I know the rumours, but I assure you that the technique doesn't require me to have sex with the would-be mothers. And before you ask: no, that isn't where Io and Pallas have disappeared to. 'Studying under the Gods' isn't a sexual metaphor, it's a literal description of what they're doing under Mount Etna with Hephaestus and Vulcan. And while I'm taking it as a sideways compliment that the children are being referred to as the Pavlovas, I actually meant that as a joke and I didn't think anyone would actually do it."

"Oh. Um. I'm.. interested too?"

"Okay, um… You'd need to introduce me to your partner or partners, and we'd need to discuss what characteristics you want them to inherit from whom."

"Actually, I… Prefer men."

"Ah." I frown. "That shouldn't really be a problem. If you've met someone in New York-."

"That.. isn't what I meant. I was here in memory of my last lover, and I think.. I would like to feel a man's touch again."

"Okay, but-."

"Your touch." She comes a little closer. "You are a demigod of some sort, kind and virtuous. I think you would make a good father-."

I hold up my hands. "Um. Thank you, but… Much.. as I respect the direct approach-."

"Oh, I do not mind sharing you with Prince Kon. That was quite normal in the old days."

"That wasn't what I meant. I'm afraid that where I'm from romantic relationships are monogamous by default, and I'm currently involved with a woman. Siring children outside of that relationship would be completely inappropriate for me."

"Oh! Oh. Ah. I.. didn't know that."

"No reason you should have done. I haven't.. gotten around to bringing her to Themyscira yet."

"I'm so sorry."

I wave my right hand. "Perfectly fine. But if seeing new children is motivating you in that direction, I really would recommend visiting New York."

"I…" She shifts uncomfortably. "I'm not sure I.. would…"

"The other gate is in the embassy. It's perfectly safe, everyone who gets in there is already cleared by Princess Diana."

"I will give the matter some thought." She gives me a shallow bow. "Good evening, Lord Pavlos."

She turns and walks out with some haste. That was.. awkward. I hope-.

"Should I not expect a hug this time, then?"

I turn around as Thana emerges fully from the crypts, then walk towards her with my arms outstretched. "You're perfectly welcome to an entirely platonic hug."

She narrows her eyes slightly. "I don't think that phrase means the same in Man's World as it does on Themyscira." She accepts my embrace with good grace, even returning it slightly before I step back. "And what brings you here?"

"Death and resurrection. You mentioned the first time we met that you were able to commune with the dead of other pantheons, and I need someone with that skill set for a research group that I'm putting together."

She frowns curiously. "Lord Hades is perfectly happy for people in his care to undergo reincarnation. Coming back as themselves is something he is less inclined to allow. In my experience, other Death Gods feel the same way."

"I was planning on.. working around them as much as possible."

She sighs quietly. "Why do I get the feeling that I am going to regret this?"

"Because you're very comfortable in your current rut and anything which takes you outside of it makes you nervous."

"I.. had intended my question to be rhetorical."

"Doesn't make my answer any less true. So. Coming?"

"Will there be any other Greek-speakers?"

"Yes, Euanthe agreed to take part." Without actually waiting for me to explain what I was doing, actually. I wonder what Dryads think of death? "And I'll have my rings translating for you full time, so there's no need to worry about not understanding anyone."

"What exactly are we going to be doing?"

"There's this thing called a Lazarus Pit which can be used to resurrect the reasonably recently dead. I'm trying to find out why it works in some cases and not in others."

"I would assume because their souls had not finished their journey to the afterlife."

"Possible, but we need to test our hypotheses. Which is why-."

"You wish for me to communicate with their souls before you revive them."

I smile. "Can you do it?"

"I have no desire to increase the suffering of those who have already died. Or give them false hope."

"I'd love to tell you that I won't be giving them false hope, but I don't know. I'm trying to resurrect very specific people, and there isn't really.. materials for testing on a wide range of corpses. So we're pretty much just going to be doing the ones I really want to bring back."

"But..?"

"It doesn't always work properly, and I'd like to know what happens to their souls in those cases as well." I take a work project journal out of subspace. "I'll read to you what I have so far."

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Resurrectionists 16

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21st September

12:12 GMT +9

"We… Do still have Captain Gwak's body." Colonel Park of North Rhelasia's State Security agency is looking more than a little disturbed by my request, but after I spent most of yesterday doing photo opportunities with North Rhelasia's leadership he was instructed in very definite terms to help me in any way which doesn't endanger the nation. "But I don't understand why you would be interested in his murder. We detained the culprit shortly afterwards and executed them. There were no special circumstances that would require your attention."

I nod, avoiding his eyes and leaning back slightly. "Let's say.. that there was a man who… Though well-connected and from a good family, was nonetheless a disgrace to his name and office. That he sold information to foreign agencies and local criminals-."

"Such a man would be discovered and executed."

"Yes. Eventually. But let us further say that he had knowledge of things he did not sell. And that if he were discovered and arrested in accordance with the law, such awkward information might find its way into the public domain. Might it not -in such a case- be better for everyone if such an individual were to… Turn up dead. And a convenient patsy be tried and executed and the whole matter put to bed."

"There would be a… Certain ruthless pragmatism in dealing with traitors thusly. Perhaps the Southerners might arrange their affairs in such a fashion."

I nod, smiling pleasantly. "Perhaps. But who could carry out the killing? Clearly, such a person might well have compromised state apparatus."

"In other countries with less moral fibre than North Rhelasia, that might be the case. Our loyalty to the state is absolute."

I return my eyes to his apparently earnest face. "Okay, I have to ask: do you not know how creepy it sounds to a Westerner when you say it like that? Or do you know, but you have to do it anyway?"

He remains perfectly po-faced. "I am merely stating facts. If Westerners are so used to lies and half-truths stated by politicians with no real beliefs that hearing an earnest belief from an honest man sounds unnatural to them, then I am sorry for them."

I smile. "Okay, ah… Back to the topic. Let us say that -for whatever reason- the government of wherever this was happening decided to use an external operative. A professional assassin. The assassin in question performed the kill in accordance with the specified requirements, planted the required evidence and recovered certain missing pieces of information. The patsy gets arrested, convicted and executed. Sad for the traitor's family, but it saves a tremendous amount of face for the government."

"It sounds more like the South every time you add to the scenario. Would you prefer to speak to their internal security agency instead?"

"No. But I would like Captain Gwak's body."

"I can have my adjutant show it to you. We have compulsory organ donation in North Rhelasia, a practice which the West is only slowly catching up to. I believe that several of Captain Gwak's organs were removed after his death for surgical uses."

And not at all to disguise the presence of the poisons Jade used or the unusual precision of the wounds.

"That's fine, but I mean that I want to take possession of the body. I'm doing some medical research that requires Human remains, and the particular circumstances of Captain Gwak's death make him the ideal candidate."

Colonel Park frowns. "While missing several organs?"

"His brain is still there, right?"

"Yes, though the preservation techniques we used mean that it is not in as good a condition as it was when it was fresh. If you would prefer, it would be a simple matter to find you bodies of the more recently deceased."

"Thank you, but no. His is ideal."

"I have said that there is nothing further to investigate. The culprit was found and executed."

"Colonel." I raise my hands slightly. "No one is more disinterested than me in reopening this definitively closed murder investigation. I am simply doing medical research."

"What.. sort of medical research specifically requires the remains of Captain Gwak?"

"The arcane kind. I am -amongst other things- trying to discover whether or not there are medical uses for necromancy. Is it possible to bind body and spirit together to give the body longer to heal wounds that would normally result in death?"

"Is it?"

"It should be, but volunteers are not exactly plentiful. And neither are sane necromancers."

"Would this… Technique, allow you to communicate with his spirit?"

"Communicating with spirits isn't all that hard."

"He was -as you say- killed suddenly and violently. His recollections may well be confused, and it would threaten the people of North Rhelasia if a hostile ghost were released within our borders."

He looks mildly pleased with himself at that. Grounds for reluctantly turning me down within the bounds of his orders.

"Please, Colonel. This isn't my first time dealing with the dead. I have walked through Erebos, and my main necromancer has over two thousand years' experience with sacred necromancy. We will be most careful in our preparations, and have ways to contain a ghost in the unlikely event that one was freed."

Or a crazy Lazarus Pit powered revenant. I remember Lazara, even if no one else does.

"I would want a shaman from our military chaplaincy to be present."

"Certainly. And… I suppose that they're an appropriate party. I've recently come into a few Atlantean books on elemental magic I'd be happy to give them. I imagine that sort of thing comes under their auspices?"

He nods. "That is most generous of you. Will you need us to provide a place for you to work?"

"A Dryad acquaintance of mine has located an auspicious site in Kangrim Mountains. We will of course clean up after ourselves and remove any lingering maleficent influences before we leave."

"I will need to see the exact location. There are sensitive national sites in that area."

"I know. I was there last time they were on high alert." I take a map out of subspace and pass it across his desk. "As you can see, none are particularly close, and I'll be moving my colleagues in by ring. There won't be any chance for them to see anything… Prejudicial to North Rhelasia's national interests."

"What are the nationalities of the people working for you?"

"Themysciran, Columbian and…" I don't actually know what nationality is on Nyssa's passport. "Romanian, I think? Somewhere in Eastern Europe. And one person with joint American-"

He tenses.

"-Vietnamese citizenship."

"American."

"And Vietnamese."

He blinks, then grabs a file from his desk and opens it, showing… Newspaper cuttings relating to some of the people Jade healed during her brief stint as an Orange Lantern. "Ms Nguyen?"

"Yes."

He smiles. "Of course, Ms Nguyen is welcome to come to North Rhelasia. Anyone else?"

"No, that's it."

"Then please wait in the reception area. I will arrange for a shaman, and then you may begin at your convenience."

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Resurrectionists 17

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21st September

13:45 GMT +9

My new companion and I walk through the corridors of the State Security building towards the front exit, the box containing Captain Gwak's chemically preserved body floating along just behind us. "Um… I'm.. not trying to be rude here, but-."

The woman next to me in the military dress uniform with the purple, yellow and red chao armband smiles. "How useful am I going to be to a man who has worked with the most powerful magicians in the world?"

"Basically, yes."

"I'm not here to be useful. I'm here to watch what you do and report back. If you needed help, you would have asked for it."

"Okay… Then are you actually going to know what you're looking at?"

"Does it matter to you?"

Huh. "Sort of? I've been trying to bring magic into the mainstream for a while. If North Rhelasia's got a corps of highly skilled magic using shaman whom they've been keeping quiet about then I'm going to start coming here a lot more. But… Not for this particular task, where I suppose that it's actually slightly advantageous to me if you don't."

"And what exactly are you plotting, Orange Lantern?"

"To control the release of any information I discover. You see, where I'm from there's a comic called The Life Eaters. The setting starts in the Second World War, and rather than just committing pointless genocide the Nazis are using their death camps as sacrificial altars to summon the Aesir. It works. The Nazis start a new necromancy-fuelled offensive. Then Loki the trickster god rescues a group of sacrificial victims out of the goodness of his heart and tells the Allies how the Nazis are doing it." I smile at her as we pass out through the front doors. "Guess what happens next?"

"All other factions begin doing the same thing."

"You read it!" I smile unpleasantly at her. "That sort of thing is something I'm worried about becoming more common. A magic user can get further through faith or industry than murder, but murder's a heck of a lot more convenient. I don't want anyone going off half-cocked. And it hasn't exactly escaped my notice that -while it's nothing like as bad as it's sometimes portrayed- this is still a police state with a very high proportion of executions per year."

"Such a practice would be hateful to the Holy Mother, and all of the spirits of the world would turn against them."

"Sadly, no. I mean, I've met Gaea and yes, she'd hate it. But there are plenty of malevolent spirits out there."

"Yes, and I have dealt with them before. But you might be surprised how limited their goals are. Major disruptions to the spiritual world tend to bring their wrath down on those who create them."

"Huh. I did not know that. I suppose I just equate them with Demons."

"I would be happy to continue your education at some point, but I believe that you have a pioneering piece of medicinal magic to perform."

"Okay." Ring? "I think they're about ready for us. Transition in three, two, one."

The passers by and curious soldiers watching us vanish, being replaced by a… Thick forest. What? This wasn't here when I brought everyone here…

"I thought we were going to the Kangrim Mountains?"

"We are in the Kangrim-."

"I know!" Euanthe steps out from behind an Alder sapling… Actually, all these trees look about.. the same.. age. "There were no trees at all. But the ground told me that there should be trees so now there are trees!" She prances forwards to stand just in front of our observer. "Do you like them?"

"This… Wasn't here this morning."

"I know!" Euanthe beams at her. "I put it here, where it should be. I have become so much stronger, the other Dryads are calling me 'Second Eldest Sister'." She giggles. "They are so silly."

"Euanthe, what did we say about changing the landscape without-."

"But the Earth wanted it, Pavlos!" She.. looks extremely upset that I'm not on board. "It called out to me and it wanted it. It was all-" She turns around and gestures at the tree-obscured landscape with both arms. "-wrong before and now it's nearly right."

"I'm not saying it was the wrong thing to do-" She brightens up immediately. "-but I am saying it that you went about it in the wrong way. I know that you want to help, but you know that you don't understand Humans very well. That's why I said 'talk to me first', because it's my job to help you understand."

The Shaman Chaplain next to me shakes her head. "Actually, it's my job. Professionally." Huh. Suppose it is. She takes a step towards Euanthe and performs a deep bow. "I am Mudang Ran."

"I am Euanthe. Have you dropped something?"

"Um, no." Missus Ran straightens up. "But I want to reassure you on behalf of the North Rhelasian government that we have wanted to restore the forests to this region since the end of the war. But there was always something else that required the funding, and the soil was poor-."

"Yes." Euanthe nods. "It is very bad. I had to ask the Alseids to change it around. And now it is good for roots again."

"I see. Would you be willing to restore other areas of forest?"

"I would be delighted to. Where-?"

"Wait. Euanthe, what happens if someone cuts one of these trees down?"

"One?"

"Yes."

"The tree would die. That would be sad, but trees die sometimes."

"What would happen to the person who did it?"

"Oh! They would die. Probably." Missus Ran boggles slightly. "It depends. I put so much Green into this forest that the local spirits are very awake. They might not take revenge for just one tree…" She looks around, probably trying to spot one. "You should ask them."

Ring, nearest settlement..? Okay, that shouldn't be a problem immediately…

"Ah…?"

"Come, this way." Euanthe dances away through the woodland towards the site of our new Lazarus Pit. "They are waiting."

I pat Missus Ran on the shoulder. "Spirits. Powerful, not Human. Not necessarily hostile-."

"But they do not see the world as we do. There was imbalance in the forest not being here, and compared to that imbalance the lives of a few farmers are of little concern." She nods. "I.. knew that, but I have never seen it demonstrated on this scale before. I will have to warn…"

"I'm keeping an eye on the edge of the forest. And the spirits' interest should die down as the forest becomes more natural." She nods. "Let's get after her before she decides to expand it further."

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Resurrectionists 18

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21st September

13:51 GMT +9

I smell the Pit before I see it, an unpleasant mix of sulphur and salt that makes me increase my environmental shield's air purification effect until I can barely detect it any longer. As far as I can tell, Euanthe isn't even slightly bothered by it and my companion is still too focused on the sudden death-forest to be bothered by something that trivial.

She is bothered by the grundywomen who shamble in our direction as Ms Bleak gestures our way with her witch sign. The witch-woman looks down at the gently bubbling pit with distinct disfavour written clearly across her face, her Owl familiar perched on her shoulder. Thana on the other hand appears to find the Pit fascinating, and is pointedly avoiding the grundywomen. Yes, I can see how enslaved undead would make her uncomfortable. Nyssa is extracting samples from the Pit itself with a long-handled titanium rod and borosilicate sample container. A lot of acid goes into making a Pit, but in the right combination they get transmuted by the geomantic energy… Supposedly. The materials aren't similar enough to any Atlantean alchemy that I've read about for me to be sure exactly what's happening. Maybe I should have invited Wallace?

"Nyssa, are we ready?"

She pulls the vial closer and takes a careful look at the contents. "I believe so." She turns her head towards Missus Ran. "Who is this?"

"Mudang Ran Go-Eun. State Security wanted an observer."

"An observer?"

"I'm sure that she understands the seriousness of the situation." And if she doesn't, there are ways of dealing with that. "Mistress Bleak?"

"The alchemy-pit is ready, so far as I can divine." She regards me through narrow eyes. "Though I will be clear: this practice is ungodly. If he is damned then let him be damned."

"Surely it is our duty to save any man who can be saved? Would you condemn a man to eternal hellfire if he could learn to see his error and embrace Lord Christ?"

"Do not think to deceive me with your fork-tongued ways. You would restore this man to life to please your betrothed and for no other reason."

"True. But would you condemn a man to hell, and make his suffering the pleasure of Demons, when there might be any good in him?"

"Yes."

Missus Ran smiles faintly. "Traditional Rhelasian religion does not recognise 'Hell' in the Judeo-Christian sense as existing."

"Then in the fullness of time you will burn alongside him like the heathen you are."

I wince, put a hand on Missus Ran's shoulder and gently tug her away from Ms Bleak. "Ms Bleak is not the most liberal of women."

"I had thought that Christians were prohibited from using necromancy."

"Ah… There actually isn't a universal stand-."

"King Saul prohibited the summoning of spirits because he feared meeting the shade of the Prophet Samuel, against whom he had trespassed." Ms Bleak seems irritated further at a heathen presuming to question her theology, though I must admit that I'm interested to hear her justifications myself. "I do not summon shades or spirits for learning or wisdom. I animate the soulless corpses of my forebears for their labours, as one day my heirs will animate mine. And that is all I have to say upon the matter."

…

"Thana! How is it going?"

She looks up from Captain Gwak's body, her eyes ebony-black pools. "He does not suffer, but is willing for us to make the attempt."

"Lies from the forked tongue of a devil." Ms Bleak raises her right hand, her Owl shrieking excitedly as she conjures a ball of orange-red fire. "I will burn it swiftly for you."

"Please remember to check your target before firing, Mistress Bleak. Does anything about the ritual Nyssa described suggest demonic power to you?"

"You perform rituals in an unsanctified space. 'Tis close enough."

She sort of has a point. The experiments I've seen in Atlantis have far more protections than we're using here. On the other hand, both Nyssa and Talia confirmed that Ra's told them that he hadn't had a demonic episode in his seven hundred years, which suggests that the odds are fairly low. And any ward we could put up would be an extra variable…

"Pit's ready, corpse is ready, does anyone have any last minute preparations they wish to make?"

Nyssa takes several paces back. "I would recommend putting a barrier around the Pit itself."

I nod, and erect a construct barrier. Batman's report said that while Ra's exhibited hysterical strength upon emerging from the Pit, he didn't gain super strength. A simple construct barrier should be quite sufficient.

"Alright then. First test: Captain Gwak, Muist, murdered approximately nineteen months ago. His corpse was chemically embalmed after the chirurgical removal of his liver, kidneys and his left lung. Successful contact has been made with his spirit and the Pit has been prepared according to standard processes. Mistress Bleak?"

She raises her witch sign, the grundywomen carefully carrying the body to the Pit. They stand at each narrow side with the mortal remains of Captain Gwak between them, and carefully bend down and lay him on the surface. The Pit swallows him almost immediately, its consistency being more viscous than water but far from resilient enough to support any weight.

"Thana?"

"No change so far."

"My rings read the pit as still being composed of its original chemicals, but they aren't behaving as their chemical nature suggests that they should. There's a slight bubbling where Captain Gwak's body is, but the Pit does not appear to be responding in a way I can readily detect. Empathic vision shows no change. Scanning the corpse directly… Preservative agents are.. vanishing. No obvious sign where they're moving to, and.. they aren't being extracted from the exposed parts of the body first. They're vanishing throughout the whole of the body. No obvious sign of regeneration so far."

Nyssa nods. "That implies that the mental distress is not caused by the mind experiencing the restoration process."

Missus Ran glances at me. "You have attempted this before?"

"This is a first time for me. Thana has communed with the dead of Themyscira before on numerous occasions and Nyssa has performed this process..?"

"Twenty eight times."

"Huh. I assumed it would be more than that."

"Father did not die that often."

"Mistress Bleak has not performed this particular procedure before, but has animated corpses… How many times?"

"Those who carry the Blood of Melmoth animated themselves. Witch-Hunters such as myself merely bind them to service where they can do most good. I have performed bindings upon perhaps two hundred grundymen."

"How different does this feel?"

"'Tis not e'en slightly alike."

"Oh, the regeneration has started. Missing organs are regrowing and the skin is knitting itself back together." I hold up a runestone. "Still not seeing anything that would indicate the presence of a soul. Magic presence… Stable, so it doesn't look like one is being created new."

And wouldn't that have been funny, a new Ra's soul for every time he'd been brought back from the dead.

"I think we've still got a few minutes to wait."

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Resurrectionists 19

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21st September

14:01 GMT +9

Thana is awkwardly shifting her weight from side to side. "Do you see-."

"Yep. Soul's back in his body, but he hasn't regained consciousness y-"

The gloop in the Pit suddenly churns.

"-et, no, there we-"

Captain Gwak's head and frantically flapping arms appear above the surface. "GRAAAAAGHHH!"

"-go. Captain Gwak?"

"Aaagh!" More upright now, he wades to the edge and- "Rwraggh!" -beats on my construct barrier.

"Allow me." I extend a hoist construct from the barrier around his armpits and lift him out of the Pit. "Physical reconstruction appears perfect." A wave of orange light passes over his body as I clean off the residual gloop and deposit him on a platform construct. "Heart is beating, lungs are breathing, brain activity is.. as predicted for a man in his state of mind. Digestive tract is empty, but otherwise in good condition. Production-"

"Aaaagh!"

Captain Gwak is hunched over, flailing awkwardly at the barriers surrounding him. Yes, hysterical strength, but nothing I can't manage.

"-of digestive enzymes appears to have only just started. Eyes are unfocused, but again-"

"You are.. bringing the dead back to life?"

Missus Ran is breathing a little faster, her eyes unconsciously widening as she regards the formerly late Captain.

"We're studying techniques that can be used to that effect, yes. I prefer to think of it as a code white resuscitation. Are you back with us, Captain?!"

"What-? Wha-?" He stares wildly around, a degree of purpose and reason returning to his eyes.

"Are you with us, Captain?"

He's shivering, arms wrapped around his knees.

"Nyssa, how long does this usually take?"

"He's doing reasonably well. Thana?"

Thana raises her hands in a placatory gesture. "He is not dead, and no signs of his death still mark him. I'm afraid that healing the living has never been my occupation."

"Good show. Mistress Beulah?"

She dismisses her fires and conjures a witch sign I don't recognise. "He lives, is in goodly health, and there are no magics upon him which might shorten his days."

"Thank you. Euanthe?"

"You told me that I had to cover my body. Why does he not have to cover his?"

"Because this is -technically- a medical procedure, and the Pit may well have destroyed them. Captain?"

"Who-? Who are you people? What happened?"

"Well done." I remove the constructs other than the platform and then float it down to the ground before dismissing it. "Do you remember your name?"

"Gwak Him-chan, Captain of the National Army of Rhelasia. Who are you? And.. where are my clothes?"

"Allow me." I take a white cotton shirt, a pair of trousers and a pair of wooden-soled sandals out of subspace and apply them to his body. "I am the Illustres of the Orange Lantern Corps. You've heard of Green Lanterns?" He checks his clothes, then nods. "Same idea. Do you know what year it is?"

"Twenty oh nine. What do you mean, 'what year is it'?"

"Thana?"

Thana walks pointedly into his field of view. "Captain, do you recognise my voice?"

"No, I don't-!" Something occurs to him, and I watch the frustration on his face shift to amazement and then horror. "I was.. dead. I…"

"Yes?"

"My father's spirit spat on me. My mother's spirit spat on me. My grandparents… All of my ancestors…" He collapses to his knees. "I am a Worm. A lowly insignificant Worm."

I kneel down in front of him and place my right hand on his left shoulder. "You are now a Worm with a second chance. I would most firmly advise to make the most of it, because there will not be a third."

Ashen-faced, he nods stiffly.

"Mudang, I believe that I can now pass this one into your care." I stand and step away to allow her access, taking a large baguette out of subspace as I do so and passing it to her. "He'll probably get hungry fairly soon, so-."

"You brought a man back from the dead!"

"Yes. Look, your religion involves communicating with the spirits of ancestors, yes?"

"… Yes."

"So you know that there is conscious existence after physical death. Yes?"

"Of course, but-. This is… Something out of fiction!"

"Where I come from, superheroes are fiction. There is conscious existence after death. There are ways of communicating with the dead. A person's corpse is a strong tie between the spirit and the world of the living. You know all this." A stiff nod. "We're not quite sure how or why this works, but for some people it is possible to take advantage of those facts to restore them after their deaths. For a time, at least."

"What am I supposed to tell my superiors?!"

"If they're materialistically inclined, tell them that I was able to restore his body based on his genetic structure and surviving brain pathways, and once that was done restarting him was simple." She nods. "And if they are spiritually inclined, then say that the Holy Mother decided to give this sinner a second chance. But… Perhaps keep him away from temptation this time?"

She nods, then steps past me to kneel down in front of Captain Gwak. I head towards Nyssa as she takes a post-resurrection sample. "Well?"

"Dead. Resurrecting him drained the energy which the Pit uses."

I nod thoughtfully, looking around at the surrounding forest. "Which doesn't affect the trees at all. Curious."

"My father's original Pits were created in deserts. Plants are not necessarily a sign of geomantic energy."

I nod again before raising my rings and pointing them at the now-defunct Pit. "Right then. I'll clean this up, then it's on to Malaysia."

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Resurrectionists 20

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21st September

07:02 GMT

The late Jayanand Duttagupta lies on the ground a short distance from the new Lazarus Pit we've dug just far enough from Minions that the locals won't see it until we're finished. The late Mister Duttagupta was the point of contact in Malaysia for a rather unpleasant group of Indian businessmen, and amusingly his was a whip-around hit. People he'd pissed off combined with the relatives of people he'd ordered killed in order to fund the League of Shadows sending someone to deal with the problem. The five bodyguards -Mister Ganguly, Mister Karokaro, Mister Megat, Mister Gohain and Mister Bantowa- who were accompanying him at the time of his death lie just behind him.

"Is there enough power here for more than one?"

Beulah shakes her head. "There is little difference 'twix the power here and the power in Rhelasia. Since their deaths were more recent the alchemy might consume less of it, but I would not place my faith in such fortune."

"That sounded.. less disapproving."

"While you recovered the bodies of these criminals, Mistress Raatko informed me that these Pits do not merely cause the dead to rise from their graves, but may restore non-mortal wounds also. That purpose is one to which we witch-hunters might legitimately put such alchemy."

"If you do, it'll extend the user's life as well."

"Adam was in his tenth century when he died. There is no sin in living a long time."

"See, I always thought that whole 'very old prophet' thing was due to a mistranslation of the word 'month'."

"Think you that Mahalalel fathered a child at the age of five?"

"It seems unlikely."

"Then it was not an error in translation."

"Unless the person who originally translated it from Aramaic to Greek or Greek to Latin made the mistake in conflating the two periods. I'm going to guess that your forebears only had English language copies of the Bible."

"I don't believe it for a moment. Perhaps a Columbian clerical scholar could come here now that the witch path is open and prove the matter to your satisfaction."

I wave my right hand dismissively. "My queen is over three thousand years old. I'll let you have your short-lived prophets."

Nyssa looks up from the Pit. "It is ready."

I nod, and Beulah motions the grundywomen into motion. "Second test, Mister Jayanand Duttagupta, probably Hindu, murdered approximately fifteen months ago. Malaysian authorities refused to release his body or those of his colleagues for cremation, resulting in a profane burial. Hindu belief is that the physical destruction of the body eases the soul's passage from the world, which…" I look hopefully at Thana. "Any idea how accurate that is?"

"It.. would be.. one less tie. Speaking personally, I think that I would prefer my soul to be anchored rather than to be set adrift."

"Hindus believe in reincarnation until they achieve spiritual perfection and their souls merge with the universal divine force."

"Then casting themselves into the aether is likely to be the aim." She frowns. "That must be quite disconcerting, but.. destroying the body would help."

"No effort was made to preserve his corpse, and as such it is.. significantly decayed. All tissues and organs are significantly damaged or completely destroyed. It has not been possible to communicate with his spirit, which could indicate that he has already been reincarnated." I frown. "Any idea whether or not he'd answer if he'd been something else in between?"

"Amazons who pass are content with Erebos. While I know that Lord Hades has made reincarnation possible for those who want it, I myself have never had dealings with those who made that choice."

"Okay then. What happen if we use a Lazarus Pit on someone whose soul isn't available?"

Nyssa shakes her head. "There were times when my father had it used on people who practised such faiths, but the attempts that were successful involved them being dead for only short periods of time. I do not know."

"Then let's get our science on. Mistress Bleak?"

She gestures, and the grundywomen deposit their load with a splat.

"So the question is: will the body regenerate or not? Does the Pit require a soul to do anything, or does the rest happen first?"

Nyssa looks at me, eyebrows slightly raised. "Will you tell us, or do you expect us to place wagers?"

"Tissue regeneration is occurring… Not sure how fast it is compared to Captain Gwak, the extent of the damage to the corpse is too extensive. Mistress Bleak, any difference in the rate at which the local supply of geomantic energy is being consumed?"

"Do you wish to wait for me to seek instruction in geomancy, and then follow that course of schooling for five years?"

"Approximately?"

She closes her eyes, raises her hands and begins chanting under her breath. After a few moments she opens her eyes and looks at me.

"Some is being used."

Fair enough. "Regeneration is… Regeneration appears to be slowing, but is still continuing. I'm still not seeing any sort of emotional resonance-" I hold up my runestone. "-or a soul."

Nyssa sighs faintly. "How many of these do you plan on doing today?"

"Just these six. Ambrose is going to need longer to find any more sites where we can create Pits." She nods. "Regeneration… Almost done. Looks like the Pits find it easier to repair organic damage than to flush formaldehyde. Still not seeing any emotion, and-" The runestone glows very faintly. "-there's something magical in there, but it's quite weak. Heart's.. starting to beat and his brain's active, but there's no sign of panic or other heightened stress…"

He's not trying to get out. Not sure if you can drown in a Lazarus Pit, but let's not try to find out. I stick a construct arm down through the muck and pull Mr Duttagupta out.

Hm.

"Irises aren't focusing, breathing is shallow…" I deposit him on the ground next to the Pit, and he collapses bonelessly to the ground. "Minimal awareness. Even zombies will generally try to remain upright without prompting. I think we've got a Hollow Man. Mistress Bleak?"

"Most useful. He could replace those grundymen you destroyed."

"He isn't biologically dead. Yet."

"I can be a patient woman. With neither food nor water to sustain him, how long will he last?"

"Not long." I use a construct to pull his right eye open, then shine a light into it. No response. I hold him up with a hoist construct, then tap his patellar tendon with a hammer construct. Nothing. "Reflexes are impaired, a trait known to occur in Hollow Men and not Vodun zombies. I think-"

Starting from his feet, his body dissolves, flesh turning to what looks like dust before our eyes. Five seconds later, his skeleton decays as well and I'm left with nothing.

"-that.. didn't work." Unfortunate. "Everyone ready for attempt number three?"

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Resurrectionists 21

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21st September

19:27 GMT -5

I smile through the rain at Jade as she spots me in my car parked outside Miss Inzerillo's home. She hesitates for a moment, then heads towards me. The door oozes open as she reaches the passenger side door and she slides herself in.

"Going my way?"

She glances at me briefly, then turns her head away so that she's staring out of the windscreen. "Is it working?"

"Somewhat. Initial indications are that you can't resurrect people who've reincarnated, which… Makes sense, if you think about it."

Mr Bantowa and Mr Megat turned to dust just as their employer did. Mr Ganguly still hadn't calmed down when I dropped him off with Ambrose, but he was physically fine. Mr Karokaro and Mr Gohain came out of it pretty much as Captain Gwak did: fine in mind and body but something they experienced after their deaths horrified them. Hopefully, horrified them into becoming decent people but… Eh. As long as Jade isn't the one who sends them back it isn't my problem.

"So… How many people I killed are walking around again?"

"Four out of the seven we've attempted so far."

She wiggles back in her seat a little, still not meeting my eyes. "What have you been telling people?"

"As little as possible. I told the North Rhelasians that it was an experimental medical procedure. The bodies of the other six I took covertly."

"If people who used to be dead turn up in their old hometowns, someone's going to notice."

"Captain Gwak is in the custody of the North Rhelasian military, but he was clearly distraught with guilt about his prior behaviour and they.. had already.. basically executed him."

"I don't think Double Jeopardy works like that. With the League of Shadows gone they might decide to execute him properly."

"He was a traitor."

She wiggles her head a little, presumably not sure what to think about it. "What about the rest?"

"Ambrose is keeping hold of one who came back a bit incoherent. The other two, I dropped off in their home towns with a thousand dollars in cash. Neither of them knew who any of us were."

"I'm fairly sure they can do an internet search."

"If anyone asks, it's an experimental medical procedure. Medium to long term, I wouldn't mind incorporating Lazarus Pit alchemy into something that could be used en masse."

"How many times can you do this?"

"Don't know. Ambrose estimates there are probably about fifty sites worldwide, minus any that have been used for what we're using it for. Enough to resurrect the people you killed and still have a few left over to emergencies."

She gives a small nod. "What happens to the ones who don't come back?"

"They're stuck in whatever body they reincarnated in. It… Might be possible to find their new bodies, but they might well not have their past life memories and I'm… If they're Human then they're only going to be a few months old."

"If they're Human?"

"Hinduism holds that a bad person gets reincarnated as something lesser. An animal.. or a plant. And given the people involved, we could be looking for a seedling or something." I make an amused snorting noise. "That's what I love about this world: death just isn't that big a deal."

"Not everyone gets Lazarus Pits."

"No, but you get souls. Gods build afterlives specifically to house you after you die. And if you don't want to do that, just pick the right religion and read the right spiritual literature and you can come back with a lot of your memories intact. Death isn't so much 'death' as it is a temporary physical disadvantage. It's a much better deal than what we Earth Primians usually get. Where I'm from, people die if they're killed."

"Mm."

Jade's.. actually looking away from me.

"What?"

"Killing these people was a big deal for me. I wasn't.. as involved in the sort of magic that you know about. I thought we were like Earth.. Primians."

"Do you.. feel differently about it now?"

"I feel worse. It might just be my brain thing going back over my memories. I remember.. stabbing them, shooting them… I remember the feel of the blade going in, their faces, then… The smell… I'm not a.. total psycho. I didn't keep playing it through my head for fun, but it never… Bothered me."

"The fact that you feel bad about it now is.. is a good sign."

"Because it means I'm not evil?"

"Because if you're genuinely repentant that means that I probably won't have to invade Hell."

She makes a quiet amused snort, and glances at me for a moment before looking back at the street again. "I thought I had to ask God to forgive me?"

"It's not my religion. If you want to ask Father Mattias about it-?"

"No, I-." She shakes her head. "I don't even know if bringing them back really.. matters."

"I think that the ones we've brought back so far will appreciate the opportunity to straighten their lives out."

"And their families?"

"Captain Gwak was being spat on by a thousand generations of his ancestors, so…"

"Hah! Guess I probably shouldn't convert to Dao Mau then."

"There's no real advantage unless you have your own children, so I'd say 'no'."

"Why's that?"

"Oriental shamanistic religions usually involve dead ancestors playing an ongoing role in the lives of their descendants. So if you wanted to do that, it's not a bad religion to pick. In Hellenism, they'd consider the idea quite.. creepy. Despite there being a literal physical pathway down to Erebos on Themyscira, hardly any of the Amazons have ever used it."

"Even if I did have children, I'm not sure that I'd want to put up with being constantly spat on for a chance to speak to them once a week."

"Is this a serious thing? Do you.. want to know what your ancestors think of you? Because loyally serving a master and killing in his service probably wouldn't have been regarded as negatively during their lives as it is now. You haven't broken an oath or committed a great act of betrayal, so the situation isn't the same as Captain Gwak's at all."

"Let's put a pin in it."

"Okay. Um, I.. thought about it? And I think that Hades would probably be okay with having an assassin as a worshipper?"

"No, I mean… The whole 'religion' thing. I…" She finally turns to face me. "I killed a lot of people, and now I feel bad about it. I.. should feel bad about it, and… I don't think dealing with it practically is really going to fix things."

"Do you want me to.. stop resurrecting people? Because we haven't got to the innocent people yet and I'd-."

"No. No, worth doing, but… It isn't going to fix things for me."

"Okay. Well." I reach over and place my right hand on hers. "If there's anything I can do to help, tell me, alright?"

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Resurrectionists 22

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21st September

21:15 GMT -6

I look up, smiling faintly as Mr Talbot and the Blacks file into the briefing room. And.. smile slightly less as Mr Doom follows them in.

"Mister.. Doom. I wasn't aware that you were lending your efforts to this endeavour."

Mr Talbot takes a seat to my right and the Blacks sit to my left. Mr Doom remains standing at the far end of the room. "After being made aware of such improbity, did you truly expect me to simply walk away before the matter was resolved?"

Might have preferred it.

"I suppose.. not. Please, take a seat." He nods politely, then walks around the table to sit down next to Mr Talbot. "How's the work coming along?"

Mr Talbot clicks his briefcase open. "It-."

"A biggeh bunch of fookin' monsters I've never seen." Chester leans forward, jabbing his right forefinger in my direction. "Hundreds a' total bastards we'd all be betteh off without. I've had the patience of a fookin' saint heyah."

"I appreciate your forbearance, Chester. Mister Talbot?"

He pulls a ring binder out of his briefcase and pushes it in my direction. "I handed Jean a data stick containing a copy of our records. That's a summary: a damning indictment of nearly our entire legislative and judicial system."

I pull it over to me and start scanning it. Hmm. "Would it stand up in court?"

Mr Talbot frowns. "Of course not. Telepathic intercept evidence, gathered without a warrant? The CPS wouldn't touch it."

"Ignoring procedural issues. If you ignored the 'how' of how you came by this evidence. Do you think that an unbiased jury would convict?"

His eyes grow slightly vacant as he considers. "Most…" He nods. "Certainly enough. Not all, mind, but we could get enough to collapse the system."

"And the other part of your task? Finding replacements?"

"That's…" He glances at Ms Black and Mr Doom. "Proving trickier. Directly approaching the MPs not involved would put them under too much suspicion, and they are being closely watched."

Mr Doom nods. "In other circumstances, I might feel glad that so great a proportion of Britain's elite have gained at least a basic education in the arcane. Sadly, it does make our job that much harder."

"At.. lower levels, we have carefully spoken to the leaders of major city councils… I believe that it would be possible to establish a functioning government with the people available."

"How exactly do you.. see it working?"

He raises his eyebrows. "I rather assumed that was up to you. If you want trials, we would need to pass some sort of emergency legislation to cover standards of proof and levels of punishment. That requires at least one MP, at least one Lord and.. royal assent. And it would be a laughable fig leaf to pass legislation with so little."

"Or..?"

"We could just not bother and make it up as we go." He shrugs. "It worked for the French. And that's even assuming that we go to the effort of taking these people alive."

"I'm a little.. surprised to hear you suggest that. Being a police officer."

"Hm. Police armed response units are allowed to fire on their own initiative if they or a bystander face an imminent threat to their life. Considering the resources our targets could call upon, I think I could justify using that level of force against… At least some of the better magicians. And all of the Satanists. Imprisoning the leading politicians risks a counter-coup by well-intentioned soldiers…"

"Do you think that it's worth putting what you've found into the public domain from the outset?"

Chester grins. "Be a right fookin' laugh."

"It would prejudice a jury, but if we're not planning on using one..?" I give a noncommittal shrug. "That would buy us a significant amount of time… We would still need to have a process in place, though."

"Emergency rule by the remaining parliamentarians for two months while we conduct rapid show-trials on the worst and most senior offenders, followed by a special general election. The new government would ideally pass no legislation save that necessary to regularise the trials, and would be dissolved once the trials were complete."

"That might be longer than a normal parliament."

"Most of the trials, then. Ideally… Two years? Come up with a trial structure you think would work, and… Well, your contacts will probably be the best organised political force in the country after all major parties get decapitated. It shouldn't be too hard for us to 'politely suggest' that they opt for that. And after that… We've done our best. The country can have another general election, and we can wash our hands with the place."

"I don't intend to wash my hands of my country." His eyes dip as he considers my outline. "Who were you planning on putting in charge?"

"I believe that the member for Croydon North is the most senior untainted MP?" He nods. "Then her. The idea being that we're leaving as many parliamentarians in place as we can. As for the short parliament… Would you like the job?" He sits back in his seat. "You do seem to be the logical party, you have the exposure and the organisational experience… People will be looking to you for guidance."

"I'd.. need a constituency."

"You live in London-."

He shakes his head. "No, no good. My MP may be a bloody communist, but at least he's an honest one. Oh, I suppose I can find somewhere." He thinks for a moment longer, then looks at his neighbour. "Doom? Do you have anything to add?"

"Assuming that the elections are free and fair, I can tolerate a degree of.. emergency legislation. As long as it is of limited duration. I would be most disheartened if that sort of thing became more commonplace."

"I was a policeman, Doom. I don't much like this either. But if it must be done…" He nods, returning his attention to me. "When do you intend to give us the go-ahead?"

"I don't want to.. place undue pressure on you. If you need more time, you can have more time. But… It would be convenient for me if we executed our attack… Reasonably soon."

Chester perks up. "We really doin' it? Thought you might be getting' cold feet, cock."

"Far from it. Well?"

"We'll need to bring everyone we intend to work with together. I'll prepare a highlights reel for them, make sure they're on board with our way of thinking. And I think it would be best if we had local people carrying out the initial wave of strikes as much as possible, rather than relying on G-Gnomes. I doubt that you want to end up fighting the Justice League because they think you're trying to take over the country."

"I'll make an appointment with them and show them your highlights reel. Oh, and invite along a few of Britain's more capable superheroes. That'll help with public confidence." He nods. "How do you feel about leading a strike squad yourself?"

"I'm nearly sixty. I may be in reasonable shape, but that's a task for specialists like the Blacks."

"But would you like to? I'd have thought that finally getting the bastards-."

"There is little I would like more, but I'll live with it just so long as they are brought down."

"But… If you could..?"

He eyes me suspiciously. "What do you have in mind?"

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Resurrectionists 23

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21st September

21:29 GMT -6

Mr Talbot looks across the scrubland surrounding the home of the Orange Central Power Battery. "Of all the places I thought that my life might take me, an alien world was far from the top of the list."

Ms Black looks around. "I think we've lost Chester."

Ring? Ah. "Let him. The women of the Orange Lantern Corps are perfectly capable of looking after themselves. And we don't really need him for this." In fact… "Why don't you take a few hours off as well? Nothing that happens here will have any impact on your work on Earth, and it can't be much fun living under that sort of pressure all of the time."

She turns back to me and raises her eyebrows. "Are you telling me I need t' get laid?"

I frown. "Noo. There are any number of recreations here, or you could take an air car to Tamarus and go sight-seeing. I'll let you know when we're ready to leave." She nods and starts walking out across the grounds towards the main amphitheatre. "Though if you want to, Tamaranians are very liberal about that sort of-" She holds up her right hand and shows me her index and middle fingers. I smile at the back of her head. "-thing!"

Mr Doom bows his head slightly, a small smile on his lips.

"You're welcome to join her."

"You will not be rid of me quite that easily. I think that my influence as a moderator may be required."

I shrug. That would have been too easy. I turn to Mr Talbot-.

"I hope that you don't intend to make that sort of suggestion to me."

"Wouldn't dream of it." I take a few steps back towards the corridor entrance. "If you'd like to accompany me?"

Mr Talbot looks up at me, mild suspicion evident in his expression. "Why are you pushing this?"

"It's an Apokoliptian thing. Not all of our Elite are the greatest fighters, but even a scientist like DeSaad is perfectly capable of leading an attack if he has to. And anyone who wants warriors to follow them into battle needs to be a good deal better than 'capable'. Plus, installing you as Prime Minister pro tem becomes easier if you're visually associated with the pointy end of the job."

"Is that all?"

I lead the way back into the building. Mister Talbot keeps up with me while Mr Doom hangs back. If he's anything like most street wizards he's trying to get a feel for the local energy channels. And those are far weaker in Vega than on Earth. "Not… Specifically this. But… Linked to why I want to get this started… Another ally of mine has expressed an interest in.. liberating an elderly relative of his who is presently being housed in the.. Dee wing of the Tower of London."

"A wizard?"

"A.. bio-artificer. He made-."

"Fiendstein."

"That's the fellow."

Mr Talbot nods. "I went to see those cells, once. I don't much like them, but I remember what that man did."

"He's in his eighties, mad as a fish and he's stuck being housed in patently inhumane conditions. I want to see him released into his family's care. They'll keep him housed in secure accommodation for whatever time he has left. In America, in the middle of a former nuclear testing area."

"And if I say 'no'?"

"I'd be disappointed, and probably sue the British government once things were settled down."

"Not threatening to pull the plug on the whole enterprise?"

I nod and wave at a couple of Tamaranian Lanterns as they pass us in the corridor. They both bow briefly.

"Don't be absurd. I have a sense of perspective. Reforming the British government is far more important than liberating one man."

"I'll agree to a review of the case, with a view to releasing him on compassionate grounds unless the evidence is exceedingly damning."

Cranius will be pleased. "Thank you."

He nods. "So, what's this weapon your armourer has for me?"

"Weaponer."

"Is there a difference?"

"One's her title, the other isn't."

We reach the doors to Weaponer Lysis' workshop. Given what she's been working on, I thought that keeping it as far away from the Orange Central Power Battery as the site's defences would allow was the correct thing to do. She seemed happy enough, but I nonetheless generate construct armour as the door opens.

"Weaponer Lysis?! Are you decent?!"

She doesn't even bother turning around from her work station. Not that her cybernetic eyes actually require her to look at someone to see them. She's wearing new and slightly Apokoliptian-looking light armour, the tron-lines glowing with the power of her ring. "Would it matter to you?"

"It would interest me, sociologically speaking. Seeing you adapt to Tamaranian social customs, I mean."

She doesn't deign to respond.

"How are you getting along with Clarissi Dox?"

"He is.. competent. And entirely acceptable as a go-between. Ah." Now she does look in our direction. "And this must be our test subject."

"Excuse me?"

Several emblems flash up on her display, and she almost immediately shuts it down. "Ooh. Grayven.. told me that you… Hm. I suppose I might not need the blast shields and restraints…"

"What are you talking about?"

"Weaponer, if you could perhaps lead the way..?"

Weaponer Lysis turns away from her station and heads towards another heavily fortified door as I lead Mr Talbot and Mr Doom around the laboratory. "You see, the most powerful tools in the universe are power rings. Unfortunately, they're rather hard to make. And harder still to use properly. The Guardians have quite rigorous selection criteria for their Green Lantern Corps.. and.. they've found a way to make it impossible for anyone else to make green rings. Orange rings can cause.. rather severe psychological issues for their users. I manage fine but there've been one or two 'incidents' with the Tamaranians... And then there's yellow, but… I rather doubt that you'd want everyone you meet to be terrified of you. But…"

The door to Weaponer Lysis' hazardous testing area opens, revealing a red-glowing personal lantern, with a matching uncharged ring held in a clamp next to it. And Lysis herself on the far side of a heavily armoured and force field protected observation booth.

Mr Doom takes a step back, staring at the ring in alarm. "It is a manifestation of hatred and rage, a tiny fragment of the Bull Which Tramples The Universe. Mister Talbot, I most strongly advise you to have nothing to do with it."

"A power ring." I step aside as Mr Talbot approaches it. "Not something I've trained with. How dangerous is it to the wearer?"

"We're not.. sure. Animal tests resulted in the subjects going into a berserk frenzy, then dying."

"I'm glad that I'm so valuable to you." He cautiously holds out his right hand towards it. "Yes, I… I think I can feel it. Puts me in mind of how I felt when I wrung that lunatic Webster's neck with my bare hands."

"But you don't feel like doing it again?"

He glances back at me. "I've never stopped feeling like doing it again. I've simply learned to channel the impulse better."

"And that is why we think you can handle it. If you can't, my entire Corps stands ready to hold you down and take it off you."

"Hm." He leans forward to study it closely. "Is there anything else I should know before I put it on?"

I shake my head. "The basic functions are either automatic or instinctual. We can have a training session once you've adapted to it."

Mr Doom shakes his head. "Geoffrey…"

"I'm sorry, Cursitor, but the chance to be on the front line is more than I can pass up. How do I go about taking possession of this?"

Lysis presses a button to communicate with us. "The final part of the process requires it to attune itself to your hatreds. Put it on, then hold it up to the lantern and hate."

"My dear Ms Lysis-" Mr Talbot opens his right hand, and the ring leaves its cradle to float onto his right ring finger. "-I do not need prompting to hate."

"Geoffrey Talbot of Earth. You have great hatred in your heart. You belong to the Red Lantern Corps."

For a moment, his eyes flicker red, red mist precipitating out from the ring. Then he lets out a very quiet snort, and his eyes revert to normal. "Then I just..? Hold it out..?"

"It's customary but not essential to speak a devotional oath when you do, but merely focusing on your hate is quite sufficient."

He nods, and holds out his right hand.

"I, Geoffrey Talbot, do solemnly and sincerely declare and affirm that I will well and truly serve the people of Britain in the office of constable, with fairness, integrity, diligence and impartiality, upholding fundamental human rights and according equal respect to all people; and that I will, to the best of my power, cause the peace to be kept and preserved and prevent all offences against people and property; and that while I continue to hold the said office I will to the best of my skill and knowledge discharge all the duties thereof faithfully according to law."

When the lance of red energy flares from the lantern and strikes his ring he doesn't even flinch.

"Charge at one hundred percent."

"Good." He clenches his right hand, red mist swirling from the ring and then dissipating. "Now let's get some practice in."

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Resurrectionists 24

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23rd September

09:03 GMT -5

"How are our happy campers?"

Ambrose shrugs as he ambles over to the cell door. "Not enjoying being back in the world of the living all that much." He slides the first hatch open-

"-owhnrghnooraagh-."

-and closes it again.

"Has he.. been doing that since I brought him here?"

"Pretty much. He quietens down sometimes, but that's about it. He hasn't slept, he doesn't want to eat or drink and he goes berserk if I try going in the room." He looks at me curiously. "What's he saying?"

"He's just.. sort of incoherently moaning."

He nods. "Explains why I couldn't translate it. What do you want done with him?"

"What do you mean, what do I want done with him? We need to try and calm him-."

"You do realise that he's come back from Hell, yeah?"

"I.. considered it a possibility."

"Look…" He sighs, looking away for a moment. "Hindus, ancestor worshippers, druids… None of the places they go to are…"

"Appalling affronts to sanity which serve to disprove the moral righteousness of the Source?"

"More like 'mind-bendingly awful'. I don't know what it says about the Source. Point is, no matter how much of an asshole they were, none of the other people you tried this on go there. But someone called 'Ganguly', living in Malaysia but coming from India? Probably a Muslim. Same with the others."

"And he didn't make the cut for the Silver City."

"Angels are pretty fair. Given what he was doing, it's a fair bet he didn't keep up his end of the deal. So down into the ditch of Hell he goes."

"And that's why you should always shoot the missionaries." Ambrose gives me an amused snort. "No, seriously. If the aim is to weaken the forces of Hell, why would you ever try converting people to a religion that gave them a better than average chance of going there? You'd just be giving the Demons more fuel."

"I guess the prophets thought people would sort themselves out if the alternative was eternal torment. I suppose they overestimated people."

"He was down there fifteen months. In your professional opinion, is he likely to snap out of it?"

"In my professional opinion?" I nod. "No idea."

I bow my head slightly and close my eyes. "Thank you, Mister Bierce, for that extremely helpful answer."

"I've called souls out of Hell before, and they were mostly… Okayish. I've never tried putting one in a living body before. That could be the problem."

"I hate to bring it back to this, but… Ah."

He rolls his eyes. "John Constantine."

"Y.. es. Are you aware of the existence of his demonic alter-ego?"

"As a matter of fact, I've been getting letters from him." I frown at him, left eyebrow raised. He smirks. "No word of a lie. I think he's using me as a Constantine stand-in as well."

"But getting back to the point: if people can go to Hell and not go completely mental, am I right in assuming that he will be alright eventually? Do we just need to.. play him the Indian equivalent of Care Bears on a loop? Get an Imam in?"

"I'd rather not."

"I know most Muslim denominations aren't keen on magic, but I'm sure I could find one who'd look on this as an opportunity to save a soul."

"No, I mean the Care Bears thing. I have Demons in here sometimes."

"Do you have a better idea?"

"He isn't acting like someone who'd just been tortured. Sure, that would explain it if he jumped whenever he heard a noise or saw someone. It doesn't explain the babbling."

"So, what? Do you think the Pit did something.. wrong?"

"Exotic alchemy, geomancy and Hell magic? That would be my guess. Could still be temporary, or…"

"I could have caused permanent damage to the structure of his soul." He nods. "Do you know..? How it works. Going to Hell."

"What, like, exactly how bad you have to be?"

"No. Clearly, you can be bad and still go somewhere else. I mean… How… Attached do you have to be to monotheism to be caught? And what happens to atheists?"

"I guess that once they experience consciousness without a body, they start believing. And they just default to whatever religion is normal in their culture."

"I.. hesitate to ask, but given how similar to John-."

"Hah! Oh, don't worry about me. I've got a deal with Coyote."

"Sensible. Considering, anyway. Any idea for how we can fix them?"

"I've warded the rooms so no more Hell magic can get in. Another set of runes should be draining away what he's already got. That should sort him out. Or at least get him to the point where he can sort himself out. But you're probably going to need to put him in restraints so we can force feed him before too long. Human bodies don't last long without water."

I nod. "Can you get another couple of cells like this set up? I'm not totally sure on the religious preferences of our next few subjects-."

"Look. Paul. Are you really sure you should be doing this at all?"

"Yes. Why do you think I shouldn't?"

"Because we don't know anything like enough about how this magic works? We don't know what the longer term consequences are. And okay, you don't care all that much about the criminals, I get that. But you said you want to use it on Jade's innocent victims as well."

"Just because they weren't known to be criminals, that doesn't mean that they hadn't done enough to get sent to Hell. So I've got the choice between taking the risk that they might come back a bit confused, or leaving them in the worst place in the universe. The longer I wait, the longer they're in there. If they are in there. If they're anywhere else other than the Silver City, we can ask them. If they're in the Silver City… It probably won't work."

"Or you'll have the Angels on your ass."

"I've been working under the assumption that I'll have to fight them eventually anyway." I slide the Sword of the Fallen out of its sheath. "If this worked on the First…"

Ambrose puffs out his cheeks. "Okay, how about the fact that you're sending the people exposed to their afterlives off on their own without monitoring them. There's all sorts of things that would love a living host."

"I may not be monitoring them full time, but I am keeping an eye on them." Lantern Xor's first job for me. "But that threat is something we also need experience on. Anything else?"

He looks unconvinced, but gives his head a small shake.

"Right. I'll get to work on the next group."

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Resurrectionists 25

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28th September

21:17 GMT -3

Jade looks.. decidedly unenthusiastic as Nyssa puts the finishing touches to the Lazarus Pit. She didn't seem unduly bothered by seeing Mr Okereke's face… Seeing it again, I suppose. A minor official in the Kenya Ports Authority, he decided that he wasn't willing to look the other way when the League of Shadows wanted to ship materials without the proper documentation. Of course, he probably didn't know that it was the League of Shadows he was refusing… Anyway, Jade was available, so she was dispatched to dispatch him.

"What's wrong?"

"I'm remembering what it was like when I killed him."

"Difficult?"

"No. Two cameras and no guards. He had a pistol but he wasn't carrying it."

"Then..?"

"I didn't hesitate. And it wasn't that I didn't hesitate because I was worried that the other Shadows would think I was weak. I didn't hesitate because I didn't care. I was ordered to kill him, so he was going to die."

I nod. "How did you feel afterwards?"

"Satisfied. A little frustrated, actually. I'd been trained to be the best, and my target didn't even put up a fight. I could have killed him before I joined the League." Her eyes dip. "Dad would be proud."

"Do you.. want to talk to him afterwards..?"

She rolls her eyes. "And what exactly would I say, Paul?"

"I..? Don't know..?"

She looks up at me, her eyebrows slightly raised. "Is your empathy misfiring?"

"No, but it only shows me simple emotions well. And it's probably better if you can-."

"If I can talk about my feelings."

"Has not talking about them worked?" Beulah directs her grundywomen to lower Mr Okereke into the Pit. One of them is new: a failed resurrectee she was able to animate with her own magic before it could decay, replacing one she sacrificed as a test subject. Grundywomen can't be resurrected, which does tend to support the 'Lazarus Pits require a soul' argument. "You're never going to be in a safer place than you are now."

"Deal with it or forget about it?"

"I do realise that people aren't that rational. I'll support you in whatever way you need. Tell me what I can do."

She watches the bubbling Pit for a few moments.

"I feel… It seemed to be rational at the time, but now I'm just… Unsettled, that I could think like that. At the time, I was glad that the League took me in. Trained me. Gave me a purpose. But it didn't even occur to me that they were having me do exactly the things Dad would have had me do. I'm not even sure the training was much different."

"It was what you were used to, only not as bad."

She glances at me. "I'm a little worried I have a type."

I nod. "Is that why you haven't wanted to train to use an orange power ring?"

"You haven't exactly been broken up about the people you killed."

"Should I be?"

"I.. don't know. I was brought up to be a mercenary. You had a regular childhood. If power rings can turn old you into you…" She shakes her head.

"So it's not so much that you feel guilty about the people you killed as that you don't like.. your former self who did the killing."

"I can't help that they're dead." She goes back to looking at the Pit. "Even if you can. And bringing them back doesn't change the fact that I was happy to kill them. I just don't ever want to go back to being someone who's willing to kill anyone."

I nod, then wave my right hand in the direction of the Lazarus Pit. "So..? Should we just..? Get him out, or-?"

"No. I'm not saying 'don't finish', just… Bringing them back from the dead isn't what I needed."

"You know, that repenting-your-sins-and-trying-to-become-a-more-moral-person thing you just said you were doing sounds an awful lot like Christian-style morality."

"I did grow up in America."

"Hell is still a distinct possibility here, is what I'm saying."

"With all the work you've done on Lazarus Pits, should I be offended you don't want me around permanently?"

"Oh. In that case, I'm going to need some tissue samples. Just in case you die in a way that doesn't leave a body." Huh. "In fact, I should probably get those from everyone."

"I don't mind you having a tissue sample, but what religion are your old team mates again?"

"Oh. Yeah. Maybe I can.. talk them around? They wouldn't have to go on indefinitely if they didn't want to-. Although Nyssa has a version that just regenerates the living. That would be a far easier sell. And then I could work up to persuading them to change to a nicer religion. But going back to y-."

"Pavlos?"

"Hm?" Thana is walking towards us, looking rather concerned. "Problem?"

"I am.. uncertain. I have lost contact with his shade, which does not surprise me at this point in the proceedings. But… It felt…" She appears lost for a way to describe the experience. "Strangely becalmed. Are you certain that this man was a monotheist?"

I shrug. "No, but most Kenyans are. Could it have been purgatory? Because if that exists and we can resurrect people from there, that would be really conve-."

"Purgatory is a lie promulgated by the Papists to extort the gullible." Beulah turns her head in our direction. "My people have studied the matter most assiduously."

"With magic or by studying the Bible?"

"Both. Though since I know you care not for the Bible, I will tell you that while we do not intrude on the spirit's reunion with its Creator, we have watched them pass into his Presence."

"Well… Maybe he wasn't a monotheist, then. I'm not sure what-"

Warning: spell eater temperature increasing.

"-native.. religion-?"

The slime of the Pit boils and bursts as Mr Okereke leaps! His flesh is somewhat tattered, but more disturbing are the wings of flesh extending from his back as a second rib cage and the bleeding nails hammered through the bones of his arms and legs!

"Satanus says 'hi', Lantern!"

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Resurrectionists 26

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28th September

21:21 GMT -3

The universe slows, my immediate surroundings blurring for a moment as my power armour materialises around my body. My right arm reaches for the Sword of the Fallen at the same time as filaments dart towards my colleagues. Jade and Thana get construct armour almost immediately, while the other filaments move through the air at what feels like a crawl.

Euanthe is stepping away from the horror that was once a port official, but her epidermis is already darkening and hardening into brawling bark. Nyssa has drawn a pistol, but is quite sensibly trying to increase the distance between her and the Demon. Beulah is going for her pistol, an aura of burning purple already forming around her left hand while the grundywomen leap through the air at the malefactor.

Railguns.

The first grundywoman takes a demonic fist to the face, head deforming at the point of impact. She falls aside, but the Demon isn't quite able to strike the second fast enough to prevent it grabbing onto his torso. The Demon just grins as the grundywoman tightens her grip, then the spikes inserted along his limbs glow and extend, stabbing through his undead attacker. The spikes don't do much more than poke holes, but she immediately goes limp as the spells animating her fail.

Euanthe gestures and vines redolent with the power of the Green shoot upwards from the earth, grasping for the airborne Demon. He rolls in the air, ducking behind the vines as Beulah's fire blast strikes the place he was a heartbeat before and incinerates them.

Angel feather rounds and fly.

The shockwaves from my shots blast the grass back and tear the leaves from nearby trees. And I think I see the Demon wink an instant before the sludge of the Lazarus Pit vomits upward to envelop him. The kinetic force of the railgun round impact causes the goo to ripple and undulate, as if someone had taken a hammer to a lump of oobleck. He's knocked back, but-. Of course. He's controlling the Pit indirectly. The Angel feather round would only burn up demonic magic if it came into direct contact. The magic in the Pit-gunk somehow absorbed a lot of force, but that's perfectly possible for mid-tier magic users.

Fine. Mage slayer rounds.

The Pit-gunk pulls down, taking the Demon with it.

Um, what?

I float directly over the Pit, railguns pointing directly downwards.

"Anyone know what just happened?"

Beulah points her pistol at me, not bothering to try removing her construct armour. "Warlock! You called up a Demon!"

"Clearly, but how? We certainly didn't mean-."

"You called back a damned soul! Did you think the master of that place would fail to notice?"

Actually… Yes. Satanus… Worked out what I was doing based on… Three disappearances? Hell is vast. I mean, yes, if he knew exactly what we were trying to do it would be predictable, but he'd have to have good enough intelligence both on me and on the domains of the other Lords of Hell. And he'd have to know exactly who Jade had killed. That's… Scary-good.

"Fine, but we can kill Demons." He's not physically in the Pit… "What's he doing now?"

The ground around the Pit sinks, some sort of foulness bubbling up from underneath. I hurriedly lift Nyssa, Jade, Thana and Beulah off the ground while Euanthe roots herself, a powerful tree trunk blasting upwards from the ground just behind her and a root network expanding outwards in all directions. The remains of the grundywomen start being absorbed into the ground almost immediately, the foul ground digesting their dead flesh.

"Pavlos! He is using his body's connection to the land to open a portal!"

Fiddlesticks. "Can you stop him?"

"I can restrict his influence somewhat, but I do not understand the magic he is using well enough to truly counter it!"

"Beulah, you know much about Demon magic?"

She points her pistol downward and fires, the ectoplasmically enhanced shot doing little to the morass beneath us. "Fighting, yes. Banishing, certainly. But whatever devilry this Devil is about, I've not seen the like before."

Oh dear. "Logically, if a Demon was able to bind its own hellish magic to a site of geomantic power-."

"It will open a gate. One that will not be worn away."

"Right-oh." I generate four additional railguns and start firing with mage slayer rounds, scattering my shots across the parts of the morass furthest from Euanthe's roots. "Anything you can to do counteract that would be much appreciated."

She kneels on my construct platform, hands held together in prayer.

"While I wouldn't turn away divine intervention-."

A white-burning witch-sign appears between her palms. Never mind then.

Below, the mage slayers appear to have nullified the Demon's attempts to alter the ground… At least on the surface. I'm still getting confused scans from underground. Target those patches. Okay, if he does manage to open a gate it shouldn't be that hard to kill any escapees before they get somewhere with people in it. In extremis I can use Praexis Demons, but a simple transition-stab would most likely work as well. This has.. gone badly, but it isn't catastrophic just yet.

Hm. If Euanthe gets a firm perimeter established, grabbing everything inside that and throwing it into space could be a sound op-

Blood splatters across the front of my faceplate.

-tion. Where did that come from?

Another splatter, but my colleagues' armour is holding fine. It's not coming from them. The Demon hasn't reappeared. It doesn't appear to be coming from anyone, and it's not the sort of splatter you get from a wound. It's more like.. rain…

The forest vanishes, a dimly-lit basalt landscape replacing it, and the rain of blood from the literally hellish clouds above us increases in intensity.

Oh dear.

The horizon towards what used to be the west undulates and… No, that's a horde of minor Demons heading our way.

"Paul, what just happened?"

"This is Hell. The Demon wasn't opening a portal to call in reinforcements. He was trying to draw us in."

A shimmering image of a red-skinned man in Roman armour appears a short distance in front of us. "Orange Lantern."

"Satanus."

"Welcome to The Odium. Hell's industrial heartland. I thought that you might appreciate the opportunity to look over the modernisation campaign you inspired."

"No. Send us back or I destroy it."

"Really? My auguries show that the Snake of Avarice is no longer with you. Do you think you're powerful enough to kill all demonkind?"

"I'd give myself a better than even chan-"

Beulah shoots the illusion, which shimmers and fades to nothing.

"-ce."

I look at the oncoming horde, and ready my railguns.

Praexis Demons, go.

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Resurrectionists 27

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28th September

21:23 GMT -3

Praexis Demons spill from my rings and fly at what is for them a reasonable speed towards the army of abominations. Looks like an irregular formation, monstrosities formed of twisted Human forms and/or bits of animals, no two looking quite alike. Some squirm on their bellies like snakes, some undulate like caterpillars, some fly on insect or avian wings and others run on two or three or six or eight or more-than-I-can-easily-count legs. Some have simple weapons, other carry things that look more like tools while the great majority appear happy to rely on their natural weapons.

Beulah shoots me a foul look as she reloads her pistol. "You use Demons."

"Technically, they stop being Demons when I assimilate them, since they contain no Hell magic and are entirely made of orange light. Do your people use living slaves?"

"No, such is an Abomination."

"There you are, then. Looks kind of similar, isn't the same thing."

"Be that as it may, should we survive I am done aiding you in this."

Can't really complain about that.

Jade draws her swords, glancing sidelong at me. "Can we beat them?"

I target the largest of the oncoming Demons with an Angel feather round and fire. "Against all the hordes of Hell?" It strikes home, causing him to throw back his head and scream in agony as the golden fires consume him. "In a straight fight, no. However, I'm reasonably confident that I can slaughter enough of them that they'll either let us leave or flee."

"Reasonably confident, huh?"

The Praexis Demons hit the horde's front rank, immediately causing it to cave in on itself as they start biting everything in reach and the Demons on either side of their line turn to try to envelop them. Almost at once they start flowing from my rings once more, but if I unfocus a little I can also feel them reproducing from the mana-rich Demon flesh.

"I've seen better odds. Thana?"

"A-ah, yes?"

"Can you feel anything around here that isn't hellish?"

She shakes her head. "Lord Hades has no power in this place. Even if he would hear my prayers here, he-."

"We're in Hell. I'll take a portal to anywhere. Back to Earth would be nice-."

Nyssa's looking upwards. "Lantern…"

I follow her oh shit.

The clouds part slightly as a swarm of aircraft break through and head in our direction. Unlike the horde heading towards us across the open terrain, these are clearly the product of a technologically sophisticated civilisation. Part aquatic predator and part rune-covered mechanical war machine, they swim through the air as their emaciated crocodile pilots prepare their weapons. And floating just behind them is a golden humanoid wrapped in barbed wire.

He waves politely.

Railguns the fuck now.

I see tiny flares of light as they open fire with some sort of projectile weapon, bullets of kaahuite punching into the rock around us. Should probably try and collect some of that… I generate a shield construct as the cybersharks start getting their shots on target, the kaahuite striking and pancaking against the construct as its inherently destructive magics get to work. I'm forced to selectively make holes after the force of the initial impact is absorbed, letting the blobs of glutinous metal plop to the ground.

"Me taking all of you up against the fliers gives slightly better survival odds than me leaving you here." Agony is the most senior Demon I've seen so far. "Other options would be appreciated."

Now let's see how physics work here.

Mage slayers rounds strike cybersharks, glowing red arcane barriers manifesting around them and then being drained by the anti-magic properties of my ammunition. Sharks shudder in the air as they start taking hits, demonic machinery vibrating as the shockwaves from the supersonic impacts pass through their bodies. Pilots cry out and break off from their attack dives in an attempt to evade, which is really what I'm trying for at this point. As the fastest members of the horde -a group of skeletal figures on ruddy-glowing bikes- start getting too close for comfort I reinforce the platform beneath my group's feet and lift us upwards.

Cybersharks start to fall out of formation from damage, and with us out of easy melee range I mentally command a group of Praexis Demons to break away and chase them down. Plenty of food in those things. Next, I generate a small bank of cold guns and shoot anything that looks like it's burning. Some go out, frozen just as solid as a conventional flame. Other flaming Demons just brush it off, moving to evade the beam in some discomfort and then returning to their full incendiary glory as soon as they manage it. One or two impressively dressed Demons just take it, or become ethereal and allow it to pass through them.

Fine. Now, cross my fingers, aim a railgun at Agony, load an Angel feather round and fire.

"Oh, no, no-"

He lazily raises his right hand, the barbed wire biting into it swirling outward for a moment and-

"-no."

-striking my supersonic round in the air for an instant before the round carries on to its target…

Who catches it with no apparent difficulty. Thaat's not meant to be possible.

"Delightful as the torment of Heaven's fire would be-"

Praexis Demons start targeting cybershark riders, pulling them from their seats and chomping them to pâté.

"-I do have-"

I focus my fire on him, cold beams doing nothing and mage slayer rounds being met with barbed wire caresses before being ignored. My first couple of orange energy pulses draw a raised eyebrow when I fire them and a disturbing-

"-a job to arh-uaha-ah!"

-sigh of pleasure as they do little more than mar his skin.

"I'm open to ide-."

GruughhhhhhhhhA!

My vision whites out as every nerve ending in my body suddenly signals horrible burning agony! My muscles convulse and I slump bonelessly in my armour.

Spell eater exceeding critical temperature.

Replace it!

Uhuh! Better.

"Down! Take us down!"

I try looking sceptically at Beulah, but I'm wearing a faceplate and my face is still humming with pain. "Yeah. Sure. Why?"

"I have a weak sympathetic link to the Dryad. If God smiles upon us-."

"Good show, going down."

The ranks of Demons beneath us let out a howling cheer as we fall, and those who can spare attention from the ever-growing Praexis mob ready their weapons as I target them.

back

Resurrectionists 28

next

28th September

21:26 GMT -3

"Cleanse the ground!"

How many mage slayer and Angel feather rounds do I have left now? Not as many as I'd like… But this isn't the time. I dismiss the railguns and switch to all-cold guns, sweeping the ground below us at full power. No sense in being conservative either; we either get back now or we'll have to hide somewhere in Hell, and if we have to do that then I'll either have time.. or we'll be dead. Demonic fires flicker around the demonic bikers as they try to avoid being frozen, but they're nothing like powerful enough. Of course here Demons aren't quite as vulnerable to anything so base as physical destruction; they can maintain their physical forms with only the power freely available all around them.

That's why I thrust giant shovel constructs into the mass and shove their fracturing parts aside, dropping us into the gap as fast as I can. Next: railguns. I take advantage of the lower angle to fire full force mage slayer rounds into the closest edge of the horde. The closest few fade and falter, while the kinetic force of the shot is enough to drive those behind them back as well.

That.. giant Slug demon with a palanquin is getting a bit close…

"Beulah?"

Shimmering witch signs float over both of her hands. "Cleanse, blast you! I need the demonic taint gone!"

"But there was a Demon on the other side-?"

"I will not use Demon magic!"

Ah… Right… Maintaining fire and-.

The Slug convulses, and a foul blob of something bubbly and magical flies through the air and splats over my construct barrier. It immediately starts both eating through the construct and tainting it. I-. And I can't get rid of it.

I shoot my own construct with an Angel feather round. Golden flames flare through it, causing a moment of decidedly uncomfortable feedback through my rings. Then I regain control as the taint is burnt out, thrusting my shield outwards while replacing it with another.

Then I target the slug with another round. It hits home with the expected burst of golden fire, but… The Slug… It's actually made of many.. smaller slugs and… A lot of them die, but the structure as a whole carries on just fine. Forget that. Cleansing. I fire Angel feather rounds into the ground in a rough circle around us at low power, then aim my railguns a little further away and fire again. A haze of translucent golden fire wafts across the hellish landscape…

"Good enough?"

Beulah's visibly straining, hands shuddering as if witch signs are electrifying her. "Nearly…"

Jade points upwards. "Paul…"

I follow her-. Ah. Fiddlesticks. Agony has abandoned his former reticence and has followed us down, smiling curiously as he does so.

"Escaping? A theoretically sound approach, but I'm afraid-" The barbed wire around his legs lashes out and.. somehow sticks in the air. "-that my manipulation of the Selvage is far-"

"Gaaarh!"

Beulah's eyes roll back and her whole body convulses as the witch signs fade and die. Praexis Demons!

"-too good for that to be a realistic prospect. Satanus wanted to see if I could block your access to avarice as well… But it looks like that won't be ne..cess-." He looks up as the massively expanded Praexis horde bears down on him. "Ah. A moment." He raises his arms, the barbed wire covering them flying outwards and tearing through the mob. A flicking motion, and the greater proportion of them are flayed apart and don't return to my rings. "Creatures with no capacity for pain or pleasure. How distastef-."

My railguns form a circle around him and shoot. His head jerks towards my guns and his eyes widen slightly, the barbed wire around his torso swirling to intercept the oncoming projectiles around him. None penetrate his defences, but I don't see any spare strands…

I form a new railgun beneath him and shoot him with my last Angel feather round.

It strikes him in the crotch, golden flames enveloping his skin and incinerating his barbed wires. Immediately Beulah rights herself and recreates her witch signs as Agony writhes in the air with a massive grin on his increasingly skull-like face. "It's a good pain!"

I don't bother with railguns, I just shoot a pneumatic ram construct into his chest and thrust him in the general direction of the demonic army.

"Clear?"

I see an arm stick out of the palanquin's curtains and gesture for the foremost Demons to advance across the burning rock. A few obey, shuddering in pain as it eats into their bodies… But the flames dim in response.

"Beulah?"

"There!"

The witch signs flare, momentarily blotting out the hellscape. When they fade, we're standing on the patch of bare earth surrounded by forest. Far more forest than was here a few minutes-

"Pavlos!"

-ago. I turn around to see-

"rAAAAAAAGHH!!"

-the Demon who sent us there being shredded by the razor sharp thorns running throughout his body.

"Are you all back?"

I check, Beulah slumped in Nyssa's arms, Jade watching our surroundings for the next attack and Thana standing rigidly in the centre of our group.

"Yes!"

The brambles squirm and contract, all that's left of Mr Okereke falling apart as the thorns cut him to pieces. The nails that had been stuck through him fall free, and I swiftly envelop them in small lumps of iron.

"Link broken?!"

The wooden Ogre that Euanthe has become shoulders its way through the foliage and plants her right hand on what's left of the Demon. "It is as broken as I can make it. The power of the Green outshines all other influences!"

"Good sho-."

Jade jabs her right hand at me. "That was not good."

"Alright. No, not.. good in absolute-."

"Going to Hell is not good! We would have died and our souls-!"

She bites the rest of her diatribe down, trying to regain her composure.

I nod. "You have a good point. Trying to carry on now that Satanus knows how to do that would be.. foolhardy." She grudgingly nods. "So if we limit ourselves to people who aren't monotheists-."

"NO!"

Um..?

"Look." Jade steps up into ideal stare-down range. "I get you're trying to help. And to start with it was nice… In a weird sort of way. But this needs to stop. If this is what happens when we bring people back from the dead, I'll learn to live with the consequences of what I did the normal way."

"If that's w-?"

"And you need to not… Go.. crazy when I say things like this."

I send my armour back into subspace and nod solemnly. "Alright. I'll.. try. Ah, everyone? I'll.. fly you all home."

back

Resurrectionists 29

next

29th September

17:13 GMT -5

Jade takes a moment to look me and my bouquet over as I stand in the doorway, then steps back to allow me inside.

"I… Asked Doctor Mist to check the site." I look around and fail to spot a suitable vase, so I take one out of subspace and put the flowers in it before setting them in the middle of her kitchen table. "Apparently, Euanthe did a good job of sealing it."

"Without creating a killer forest?"

"It was a.. forested area anyway. Nothing like as interesting, spiritually speaking."

She nods, taking a moment to look at the flowers. "What else did Doctor Mist say?"

"He.. wasn't exactly impressed with the fact that I was bringing people back from the dead. He.. seems to regard it as 'cheating'." I look at the floor for a moment. "I've.. added an equipment harness to my power armour. I'll be carrying the Aces around with me from now on."

"That's.. not the problem."

I nod. "Yes, I… I know. You told me that the problem was having killed them, not the fact that they were currently dead. And I ignored that and focused on the resurrection part."

"And got us pulled into Hell."

"That… Wasn't something I could reasonably have foreseen."

"Did you know it could happen?"

"I knew that some of the people we brought back had been in Hell. Ambrose and I had procedures in place for dealing with that, with… For dealing with small amounts of Hell magic, making sure that no one could track it. But I had no idea that it was possible for them to possess a corpse while it was being infused with geomantic power. The whole… Thing with Thana checking was supposed to ensure that the person we were targeting was.. actually who we thought they were, but…"

"But it turns out that Satanus knows more about Demon magic than you do."

I look up. "Yes. Demon-magic isn't.. really well-explored by professional thaumaturgists."

"And what happened to 'I've read the Book of Truth'?"

"Satanus.. wasn't in it. I recognised Agony-."

"The golden one with the barbed wire."

I nod. "Yes. And I could try summoning him, but he'd know it was me and he wouldn't have to come. And the people who wrote the book didn't write it with people who could brawl with high-end Demons in mind. I could.. identify most of the other Demons either individually or collectively, but I.. don't think that's really the point."

"No." Jade thinks for a moment. "How are the others?"

"Thana isn't.. coming out of the Temple right now. Beulah tried shooting me again. Nyssa thinks.. suspending the study is the right thing to do, though she did say that she wouldn't mind taking a look at the successful resurrectees. Euanthe was.. pretty upbeat, actually. Which.. given what happened to her-."

Jade scowls. "And what did Ambrose say when you gave him those nails?"

"That.. they could probably be used to make another Ace for.. when I have to fight Angels. And.. that the people he was looking after looked like they were starting to recover a bit, so that's… Still not the point." I take a.. slightly wary step towards her. She doesn't back away. "I tried to deal with the way you were feeling in a rational way rather than an empathic way. I can't.. exactly relate to how you feel, as the only person I felt guilty about killing got better-."

She frowns. "You felt guilty about killing Ra's?"

"No, Matthew Hagen. Missus Wayne's mudman turned out to be able to survive being baked by gamma radiation. My point is, if you want to talk about it, I'll actually listen and not.. do anything crazy… No matter how logical it seems… I'll do it. Alternatively, I.. can get hold of someone with experience in counselling child soldiers or... Harleen?"

"I'm not sure that confessing to committing a string of unsolved murders to a prison psychiatrist is such a smart thing to do."

"She takes her patients' privacy very seriously. Or…" I spread my hands out to the sides. "Whatever you want. What do you want?"

She half-turns away. "I don't know how to deal with a guy who says he'll do anything for me and actually can."

"Well… You can… Think about it. Though there was… One other thing…"

"Mm?"

"This…" I tilt my head back for a moment. "I didn't think we'd be having this conversation for a month or two…"

"What conversation?"

"I'm really powerful. And the few enemies I have are either really powerful or really good at hiding. I didn't predict a horde of Demons, but fighting a horde of Demons is something I'm prepared to have happen to me."

"And you don't think I'm powerful enough."

"It's not that you're not powerful enough. Superman's girlfriend is a baseline Human woman. But… She's got basic self-defence training and can use a handgun. She isn't directly involved in superheroing and has no.. pretensions in that direction. So Superman can get into whatever fights he wants and she… She knows she's not part of that. And it only bothers her when someone throws her off a building or throws a car at her. On the other hand, your.. self-concept is tied up in your abilities as a fighter."

"I fought Nabu with you."

"We had preparation time and you had a weapon specifically designed to disrupt his magic. This time Demons just turned up unexpectedly."

"I know that. And I know that being around you is-. You expect these things and I can't do that."

"And it makes you angry. Quite understandable. What do you want to do about it?"

"I-." Her eyes narrow slightly. "You were planning for this conversation?"

"Well, yes. I know that your skill in combat means a lot to you, and I know what a Lantern can do. Assuming that we stay together -and I do want to- it was inevitable that the relative difference in capacity was going to come up at some point."

"And what exactly did you decide I should do about it?"

"I'm.. not…"

"You may as well say it."

"The obvious alternatives are that you improve your capabilities, or that you find something else to do. I can train you with a ring-"

"No."

"-or… I mean, you're only twenty, you could retrain for.. anything. Anything you want. Or you can keep doing what you're doing now. I don't think you'll find it satisfying-. "

"Okay."

I stop and wait.

"You've… Given me some things to think about. Thank you for the flowers."

Ah.

I nod, turn, and walk out through the doorway.

back

NEXT CHAPTER

Alienated

BACK

Alienated 1

next

Alienated

29th September

07:17 GMT -6

Ms Wor-Ul barely looks up from her weeding as I step off the veranda of her house, a crate containing some of the nicer Kryptonian relics from Amalak's hoard in my right hand. "What do you want?"

I stop on the soil and squint at her tub of weeds. "Why are you doing that?"

"Preserving my cover." Her hands move quick, faster than a Human could with any accuracy. Not super fast, though. "The fields need weeding, I don't want to risk hiring someone else to do it."

She-. How did-? Ah, she's not squatting on the ground, she's floating just off it in a squatting position, moving along as she eliminates the invading plantlife from everywhere within arm's reach. That sort of precise-and-constant-movements-that-she's-not-really-thinking-about flight is pretty hard to do, and I speak from personal experience there.

"And you can't use weed killer because..?"

"Do you have any idea what Earth weed killers do to Kryptonian plants?"

Fair point. Probably. I actually don't know if they do anything…

"Alright, but you could probably get some sort of drone-weeder..?"

She looks up, frowning at me like I've said something particularly stupid. "How could I justify Kirsten Wells affording something like that?"

"Stealth.. drone weeder..?" Yeah, okay. "Anyway, while I was out going to and fro across the universe and walking up and down on it-."

"Spare me. I get enough bible quotes from the locals."

"I picked up a few things that might interest you." I hold the case out slightly in her direction.

"Why, did you go to Krypton?" She stands, peeling off her weeding gloves as she does so. "If that's a crate full of glowing rocks I'm not exactly going to be impressed."

"Ms Wor-Ul, I have no desire at all to harm you. I came across some artefacts of Kryptonian origin and you were the first person I thought of."

She frowns as she walks towards me. "And not the boy scout or your friends Kon-El and Match? Interesting choice."

"You're the only Kryptonian I know who's actually from Krypton." I crouch as she reaches me, laying the case on the ground in front of me. "Of course, if you don't want it I imagine that Kal-El will be only too happy to take it off my hands."

"Alright." She crouches down in front of the case and opens the clasps. "Let's see what you've found in the galactic flea markets..." She opens the lid and there's a very slight intake of breath. I can see the shock in her eyes that momentarily breaks through her usually controlled manner. She actually hesitates in commenting on it, gently picking up some sort of.. commemorative plaque and carefully examining it. "Where did you get this?"

"It used to belong to a mercenary commander by the name of Amalak. He was something of a collector of Kryptonian memorabilia."

Her eyes start to glow. Just a little, but I'm watching for it. "I think I need to talk to him."

"Do you have supernatural powers? Sorry, heh." I look away for a moment as my desire to quote Terry Pratchett overwhelms my common sense. "I mean, he's dead, so unless you've trained as a necromancer…"

Her eyes turn upwards while the rest of her remains completely still. "How did he come by it?"

"It's a little hard to tell; between the Spider Guild and the Crown Imperium's fleet his records were in a poor state when I got access to them. From what I read-" A data crystal emerges from subspace and floats out in front of her. "-it looks like he was either hunting down surviving Kryptonians himself or-."

"Ro." She takes hold of a headband decorated with Kryptonian characters.

Ah. "I'm… Sorry. Someone you knew?"

She shakes her head slightly, returning it to the case. "Did you find anything else?"

"Yes, but I put the best bits in there."

"I'd… Like to go through it. All of it."

I nod. "Fine with me. I had a few things I wanted to discuss with you anyway."

I stand, and she takes a moment to carefully return the items she moved to exactly where they were when she opened it before closing the case again. "We knew... Someone was targeting us. I never heard the name 'Amalak'…"

"He was the more intelligent sort of mercenary commander. He was from a planet called Timaron, it was-."

"One of the Possession Worlds." Ms Wor-Ul stands, keeping a solid grip on the base of the case. "I visited it a few times."

"Anything you want to tell me?"

She shrugs as I lead the way back toward the hush tube opening. "No, not really. Technically, they were part of the Kryptonian Empire but we didn't intervene a whole lot in their internal affairs. We paid for supplies, protected their civilian shipping."

She looks around curiously as we walk through the tube and out into the command area of the Hny'xx facility. My Lanterns overran it a few days after the fall of the Citadel and managed to capture it largely intact. I've had the Genomorphs tidying things up a bit since then.

"You.. missed General Zod's putsch attempt, didn't you?"

"Mm. Heard about it. I didn't like the Science Council either but you didn't see me turning traitor."

"You went AWOL."

"Sure. That was my life, but I accepted the results of the election even though I knew it was stupid. And look what happened: Krypton got destroyed and there weren't any ships to evacuate anyone. Maybe if the General had won then we wouldn't be going extinct."

"As far as I've been able to piece together, General Zod manufactured a confrontation with the government of Timaron and carried out an orbital strike. The resulting dust clouds nearly wiped out the planet's population. Amalak got evacuated as a child, but most of his species died."

Her face twitches. "Rao. I knew the General was a nasty piece of work, but… That…"

"Did you ever meet him?"

"He wasn't even born when I left." She looks around again. "What is this place?"

"This is where they were growing the new generation of Citadelians. Essentially, it's a giant cloning facility." I stop and look at her. "Do you want it?"

She frowns. "Me? What for? I don't have any use for Citadelians."

"As you said, your species is on the verge of extinction. I have a staff experienced in cloning Kryptonians and the best facilities you're likely to find, as well as plenty of Kryptonian genetic records. I would rather your species did not slip into non-existence, and I would like a Kryptonian to be in charge of the project. Interested?"

Her eyes widen slightly. "Defences?"

"Isolated location, and I can have two hundred Lanterns here within a few minutes. And… Ten as a standing garrison? Plus fixed weapons, epic shields and interdiction fields as well as conventional soldiers."

"I-." She averts her eyes and shakes her head. "I'm not a scientist, I can't-."

"You're a military commander. This means that you have organisational skills. And you also have a knowledge of Kryptonian sociology that no one else does. No one else could raise a new generation to be Kryptonians rather than monochrome Tamaranians."

"It's… A lot to think about." She stares about us. "I'll need to look over the whole place."

I nod. "Of course. I've planned out a tour. Oh, and one other thing. Since you raised the point about defences…" I generate a construct image. "You'll never guess what we found buried underneath Texas…"

back

Alienated 2

next

30th September

18:03 GMT -6

I feel a little nervous when I see Warden Waller waiting for me. I'd like to say that it's a bit late for her to have second thoughts, but the truth is that she can cancel this little excursion at a moment's notice.

"Warden Waller. I thought that Deputy Warden Bendemann was handling this?"

"Since I'm the one who's going to have to explain it to the Senate Judiciary Committee if anything goes wrong, I thought I might as well see you off myself."

"Do you.. actually have any reason to think anything will?"

"Oh, I've got a-" She holds up a ring binder and shakes it at me. "-whole mess of reports telling me that they're behaving, they're getting educated and staying away from bad influences. And I've got a state Governor who heard about them helping you back in January and who's been asking me about commuting their sentences."

"The State of Louisiana wants to let someone out of prison early?"

"Uh-huh."

I shake my head. "I don't understand you."

For a brief moment she nearly smiles. "I don't either. This is the man who laughed when I told him the reason why I wanted to build this prison in his state was because they wouldn't let me hang them."

And she's.. probably not joking.

"I.. honestly don't think that totally commuting their sentence is a good idea. Did he.. give you some idea of the figure he had in mind?"

"And why would I tell you details of a private discussion I had with the Governor?"

I shrug. "You brought it up. We're both trying to rehabilitate them, and… They're not really the deferred gratification types. If they know that what they've already done has materially improved their position, I think it would help make sure that they keep going."

"I'll make you a deal: if this whole thing happens without incident, I'll talk it through with you."

I smile warmly. And maybe a little smugly. "There aren't going to be any incidents, so that's fine."

She looks unconvinced, but activates her radio. "Warden Waller to Correctional Sergeant Haynes. Bring them on through."

I turn and stand at parade rest as the armoured door behind me slides open. Two plasma gun armed correctional officers walk through and take positions on either side of the door. Then with a quiet "Get moving." Tuppence Beresford trudges out. She's wearing a white t-shirt, blue jeans and a blue denim jacket, solid working boots… And of course that fetching prison-issue choker. She flickers her eyes to the armed guards waiting for her and then dismisses them. I get a suspicious glare, but I just grin and wave until she starts to feel awkward and looks away.

A similarly dressed Thomas comes out a moment later. He spots me and smiles and waves back. "Hey man."

"Convict."

"Ah." He comes to something that might generously be called attention. "Warden."

Two further correctional officers follow on behind them, guns raised.

"Thomas and Tuppence Beresford. Contrary to my expectations, you've actually shaped up since coming here. As a consequence, I have signed off on Orange Lantern's work release program. For exactly twenty four hours you will be under his direction, no less than eight hours of which will involve performing useful labor under his direction on the project you have agreed to."

Thomas nods. "Yes 'm."

"If I hear anything about the two of you taking advantage of this, it'll be the last time it ever happens. Am I clear, convicts?"

Thomas nods, while Tuppence just sort of shuffles slightly. "Yes, Warden." / "Yes Warden."

Waller breathes deeply, then activates her radio. "Warden Waller to Control. Deactivate collars on prisoners Beresford, Thomas and Beresford, Tuppence."

The red lights flash, then fade. Tuppence yanks hers off immediately while her brother takes a little more care. Both hold them out as the prison officers on either side lower their guns to approach and recover them, Tuppence smiling as she hands it over and stretching to loosen up her re-empowered muscles.

"God help us." Waller turns to face me. "They're to be back no later than twenty hundred hours and you have to feed them."

"Understood." She looks away, waving her right hand in an arc from me to them. "Thank you." I walk towards my new charges. "Shall we be off, then?"

Thomas shrugs. "I dunno, man. Shall we?"

I'd love to believe that was intentional. "Transition in three, two, one."

1st October

06:06 GMT +6

Since I've travelled with both of them like this before, neither Thomas nor Tuppence react much to the sudden scenery shift. He looks around vaguely before turning to me for directions while she starts studying the ship hulks. A few of the locals turn to stare in our direction, but this place doesn't really come alive for another hour or so.

"Welcome to the Chittagong Ship Breaking Yard. We'll be starting over here-."

"Ah! You're here!" Magnificus Sivana gets out of the rugged off-road vehicle he'd been waiting in, accompanied by site supervisor Mr Hazari. Magnificus has gone for work boots, khaki Bermuda shorts and a similarly coloured short-sleeved shirt. "Ready to get to work?"

Tuppence pulls a face. "What you doin' heyah?"

Magnificus stops as the mud sinks slightly further than he was expecting, evaluates, then strides through it anyway. "I'm joining in."

"Don't y'all got fancy doctor-work to be doin'?"

"Yes, but I'm here anyway. I don't mind a little physical labor now and again." He looks like he minds a little physical labour now and again. "Oh, watch out for the mud when you're leaping. It won't support your landing."

"Thanks, man. Good t' finally meet y'all." Thomas extends his right hand, and Magnificus doesn't hesitate. Honours in the resulting squeezing contest are about even, though Magnificus disguises his reaction slightly better.

Tuppence looks Magnificus over disinterestedly. "Mah double not comin'?"

"Oh, no, she's-" He and Thomas let go, honour apparently satisfied. "-here. Beautia volunteered to help out in the local medical center. You'll meet her at lunch."

"Mister Lantern?" I turn my attention to Mr Hazari. "You are welcome to start on any of the-" He points toward the shore. "-three ships there. Just break them up and drag the parts to the high tide line. Our workers will handle the sorting."

"Any potential hazards?"

"We took out most of the fuel after they were beached, but there are probably still fumes in the fuel tank area. Otherwise, no. Not for people as resilient as…" He points to my work detail.

"Thank you, we'll get started right away then."

back

Alienated 3

next

1st October

12:21 GMT +6

"Tuppy!" Thomas hoists a sheet of steel hull over his head. "Catch!"

Tuppence turns around, giant marine propulsion unit held in both hands over her head. "Whut?"

Thomas throws, sheet metal spinning through the air from the partially dismantled hulk like a giant Frisbee.

Tuppence is already tossing the engine- "Doc, catch!" -to Magnificus as she takes three hurried paces-

"What? Agh!"

-in the direction of the oncoming oblong then leaps, shooting through the air and intercepting it as it starts to fall in earnest. Their momentums cancel each other out almost perfectly, and the local workers hurry to get out of the way as Tuppence lands in the mud with a plop and an explosion of silt!

She pauses to catch her breath, then shoves the plate into the mud and checks herself over. Yeah, I think there's… Maybe a square inch in total that isn't covered in grey-brown sludge right now. She tries wiping her face, then flicking as much off her hands as she can. Her attempt accomplishes little.

"YAH BIG COOYON!"

Thomas appears to be cracking up. Tuppence spots this, and goes to pick up the hull plate-.

Ah, no. I transition next to her and she spots me just as she's winding up for her retaliatory throw. She sort of waves the plate around for a moment, not wanting to throw it with me right there but not prepared to retreat in the face of her brother's prank.

"Allow me."

A wave of orange light passes over her from her feet to the top of her head, removing mud as it passes. She looks at her hands, lets go of the plate with her right hand so she can check her face. "Uh. Thanks." She sticks the plate on her shoulder and starts walking back to the drop-off point. "Ah guess."

"You're welcome." I float after her, accelerating until I come alongside her. "I couldn't help but notice..?"

"Whut?"

"Are you growing your hair?"

"What if'n I am?"

"Nothing, nothing. Just making a social enquiry."

"Burman's women's side barber."

"Really? Wow, that.. doesn't sound clever."

"She ain't exactly bad at it? But I ain't lettin' her nowhere near me with a razor."

"You know, I could… Probably get you a hair dresser..? If you wanted one? Someone who wasn't a serial killer?"

"Naw… I kinda like it."

I nod. "Enjoying the day so far?"

"Beats gow'n t'class, I guess."

"So -given the choice between a normal day in Belle Reve and doing this again..?"

"I'd come back. Probably." I smi-. "What yew lookin' so happy fawah?"

"You've found a legitimate job which you enjoy. That's a big part of getting you to the point where you can be released from prison."

"How much we gettin' fer today?"

"I'm paying for lunch."

"Uh." She grunts, then tosses the hull plate so that it spins in the air before landing and embedding itself point first next to the others. "I'll have the Lobster."

"Having checked the water quality around here, I wouldn't recommend it." Ring, radio.

Compliance.

"Thomas, I was thinking we could break for lunch now. That alright with you?"

He waves his right arm, nods, then turns around to lower himself off the side of the ship before letting go and falling to the ground. The resulting mud wave is deflected by the lumps of metal already covering the ground by the ship, and he makes his way towards us in a series of somewhat more conservative leaps.

I turn back to the scrap pile, where Magnificus is directing people who do this for a living on a daily basis how to take an engine apart. "Magnificus, are you joining us?"

He looks around. "Yes, alright. Do you have somewhere in mind? If you don't, I.. know a place in Dhaka..?"

"Fine with me." Thomas lands and has to stagger to absorb his momentum. Mister Hazari looks around and sees the four of us together. "We're going to take an hour for lunch."

He waves back. "Okay!"

Magnificus looks at his somewhat soiled apparel. "Lantern, would you mind..?"

I wave my right hand, orange light giving him and Thomas a quick clean up. Thomas smiles. "Shuwer beats prison shawahs."

"Hey." Tuppence jerks her chin at Magnificus. "Doctor Magnificent."

"Magnificu-. Magni, just call me Magni."

"Raaht. Doc Magni. We actually related or whut?"

"Father assures me-" Our surroundings flicker as we appear just outside the local medical centre. "-that we're not. Beyond.. being from the same ethnic group, obviously. Tia?!"

"The whut group?"

"Physical features. Pale skin, blonde hair, blue eyes. It was most likely an evolutionary response to the low levels of light in Northern-."

"An' the formula we gaht don't do nuthin' to make us smartah?"

"Nothing.. significant. It would make you resistant to head injuries… We still aren't entirely sure what all of the effects are, but-."

"Hello!" Doctor Beautia Sivana strides out of the medical centre, dressed in the shapeless sort of clothes recommended for Western women visiting Islamic countries. "I'm Tia, and you must be Thomas and Tuppence."

Thomas leans a little closer to me as Tuppence regards her doppelganger. "Not related, raht?"

"Thomas…"

He grins and nods. "Yeah, Doc. Tommy Beresford. Please t' meet cha. How's it… Ah, how's it gawin'?"

"Malnutrition, poisoning and deformities from industrial waste, five different diseases that don't exist in America any longer… About what I was expecting." Beautia turns to Tuppence. "How are you finding ship breaking?"

"S'okay ah gyus? Lot more fun than sittin' in Belle Reve."

Huh. First time I've heard her address a new person with something other than hostility. Interesting. "Magnificus, where was that restaurant?"

back

Alienated 4

next

1st October

12:34 GMT +6

"…'Sivana' like the midget guy?"

I am seeing an entirely new side of Tuppence right now. And other than Magnificus' famous ability with condescension I'm really not clear why. She wasn't even this nice to Dr Munro. Contrary to my expectations of Magnificus' tastes we're in a tourist-orientated restaurant rather than a more prestigious establishment. Which is fortunate, as I don't think I'm renowned enough around here to walk into whatever restaurant I want and be guaranteed a table. We've been issued with menus and drinks, and Thomas has fallen silent as he tries to work out exactly what he's being offered.

"He's.. not actually a midget. Dad's just short. And he's not even that short; he's just a little under five feet."

Magnificus nods. "We both take after our mother, physically speaking."

"Sounds lakh you gaht the best a' both."

Beautia folds her menu and puts it to one side. "Dad won't tell me exactly what he did-"

Thomas elbows me. "Hey."

"Yes?"

"-but he always said that's what he was aiming for. I'm not sure exactly how…"

Thomas tilts his menu my way. "What is alla theus?"

Normally I'd treat a question like that as a joke. But I don't think that's the correct thing to do here. The menu is in English, but I'm.. assuming that he's not used to this sort of restaurant. "Bangladeshi food. It's all perfectly edible."

"Yeah, but… What's a 'pakora'?"

"A fritter, basically."

"So that one theyah is 'fried chicken'?"

"Fried in spicy batter, but essentially, yes."

Thomas smiles with relief. "And here I thawt this wuz gow be hard."

"Never eaten Indian food before?"

"Naw, man. Hey, ah, what you having?"

"Mutton bhuna khichuri with mixed vegetables."

He frowns. "What sort a' animal's a 'mutton'?"

"A female or castrated male Sheep over two years old. Though… In this part of the world it can also mean 'goat meat' for some reason."

"Then why don't it just say 'Sheep bunna kicurry?"

"I think it was the Normans, but-"

"Are you ready to order, sirs?"

"-that's a history lesson for another day." I look around. "Are we?"

Magnificus looks a little sceptically at Tuppence, who responds by pointing somewhere in the middle of the second page of the menu. "Thayat one."

I suppose that if you've never had this sort of food that's as good a way of picking something as any other. It also means that she doesn't have to ask for help. Sort of makes me wonder how the two of them managed after they left home. I haven't wanted to bring it up for fear of alienating them, but they were on the road for over a year before they rampaged badly enough to come to League attention. They must have been eating alright, and their clothes were clean when they ran into Wallace and Kon so they were either recently stolen or they'd been doing laundry. And I don't remember that being on their charge sheet. Given their mother, they'd probably have had to learn how to clean things at a fairly early age…

"And you sir?"

"Mutton bhuna khichuri with mixed vegetables, thank you."

I pass my menu back, and he piles it with the others. He gives us a short bow and then turns around and heads for the kitchen.

"So, you think ship-breaking could be the career for you?"

Magnificus shakes his head. "Oh, good heavens no. Give me a nice clean laboratory any…" Something occurs to him. "You weren't talking to me."

Beautia smiles at his discomfiture, while Tuppence looks like she's about to take offence. But her eyes flick to Beautia and she just snorts instead. Heck, if this is all it takes I'm going to get in touch with Ms Brauer and see if she minds doing some mentoring.

"I imagine that they'd take you on if you wanted the job…"

"No, no, not about me. Thomas?"

Thomas turns his head to look out of the window. "I dunno, man. I ain't never-" Magnificus twitches. "-had a regular job befowah. They gawt places like that in America?"

Magnificus shrugs, so I nod. "Yes, though nothing quite on this scale. I'm not sure they could provide you with enough ships to make it worth your time."

"Hey, thayt's even bettuh. We could jus' stawp by a few days a month."

Tuppence shakes her head. "They ain't gonna pay fer a few days a month."

"Actually, they might. If you think about it, if it costs them slightly less to hire you than to hire a whole team plus equipment, then-" Assuming they're confident that you'll behave yourselves. "-they'll pick you. That's just good business sense. The only reason I'm sure about the workload is because super strength doesn't help with sorting or processing the parts of the superstructure, and they make their money selling that. But, since they can only get so many ships in…"

Thomas nods. "Makes sense ah geuss."

Tuppence frowns. "Hey, how come we ain't they'uh raht now?"

"Because US law makes hiring you to do jobs like that legally complicated while in Bangladesh they don't care. Once you're released it's easier, but until then their insurance wouldn't cover the risks."

"'Cause they think we gonna go crazy or somethin'."

"Because you might drop something on someone and they'd be financially liable for the damage. They understand cranes. They don't understand super strength."

"Hey." Tuppence looks thoughtful. "What wuz that you wuz sayin' 'bout them havin' all kinds a' diseases 'round here?"

"Um, well… Parts of the world like this don't have the same sort of immunisation program or healthcare that the US does. If children don't get immunised, they can get sick from the disease and the disease is around because people still carry it. And those regulations that make companies liable for the consequences of their action exist for a reason; it's practically impossible for someone here to get compensation from their employer if they get injured."

"But it ain't a problem fer us?"

"Danner enhanciles aren't immune to disease, though we are resistant to side effects, injuries and poisons. Assuming that you had your shots, you shouldn't have anything to worry about yourself, but-."

Tuppence shrugs nonchalantly. "Sucks t' be them, don't it?"

back

Alienated 5

next

3rd October

00:04 GMT +3

"Thana?"

I step nervously into the Temple of Hades. I've visited here every day since the Hell incident, but each time another priestess -a woman by the name of Natasa- told me that she wasn't available. I hadn't even realised that there was another priestess of Hades on Themyscira. I mean, logically it makes sense that there would be more than one priestess but after their forebears went crazy the job rather slipped down the totem pole as a status symbol. I certainly hadn't seen anyone other than Thana in here in a professional capacity before that. Huh. Given that I might eventually end up here permanently, I.. do.. sort of need to smooth things over with her.

"Natasa?"

No, she's not here either. I could scan for her, but that does seem somewhat intrusive. Particularly given that the reason I'm here is I think I've… What's the word? Scared her? Trespassed against her?

"Identify yourself."

An Amazon soldier I don't recognise walks out of the crypts, a shield decorated with a wreathed skull on her left arm and her right hand on the hilt of her sword. I'm.. not seeing much from her, just the black eddies I get from Thana when she's communing with the dead.

"My.. Amazon sisters have taken to calling me Pavlos, though I'm afraid that I can't speak my real name." She.. doesn't appear to recognise it. Odd. "The Orange Lantern? The one who… Ah… Instigated the incident that led to Thana spending a few minutes in hell last week?"

"Ah." She releases the hilt of her sword. "Natasa told me that you had wanted to propitiate her."

"Right, and I'm.. sorry about the lateness of the hour, but Natasa said she might be available if I came back.. now. Is she?"

"She is." A woman… Thana, appears to materialise out of thin air as she lifts a helmet from her head. "I apologise for keeping you waiting, but I had urgent business to attend to." She's.. dressed warmly, and in addition to the helmet has a pack on her back.

"Quite understandable. Are you.. going somewhere?"

She nods, stowing the helmet under her left arm. "Indeed. Captain, why don't you go and complete your preparations?"

"Yes, priestess."

The.. captain? Bows, then strides back into the crypts.

"Thana, I want to apologise. My preparations were inadequate. I should have waited until my Atlantean contacts were available before pressing on with my investigation."

"Oh, that is quite alright. I had every opportunity to refuse to take part, and I should have noticed that there was something wrong with Mister Okereke's shade."

"Oh. Ah, I'd rather gotten the impression that you were avoiding me. I thought that I'd offended you rather worse than I.. appear to have done."

"Oh, I'm not offended. In fact… I should say that I'm grateful."

Um? "You are?"

"Oh yes." She looks down at the ground for a moment. "Eternal torment. Such a deceptively simple phrase. I wonder if it's truly possible for a person to understand the concept until they.. are forced to experience it for themselves."

"I… I don't know. I hope not."

"You hope..? Ah." She nods. "I suppose that would be kinder." She takes a moment to examine the decorations on one of the walls, the ones detailing the fates of those the Olympians singled out for 'special' treatment. "Prometheus, condemned to have his liver pecked out. Painful, extraordinarily painful. But it could not kill him, and he only endured it for thirty years before Herakles killed the Eagle."

"And Zeus didn't just send a new one?"

"I believe that Zeus was distracted at the time. Lord Hades believed that the punishment was excessive, and chose not to remind his brother once his schedule became clear."

"Oh?" I smile. "What was her name?"

"Ganymede."

Ah.

She walks a little further along the diorama. "Sisyphus, obliged to roll a stone up a hill whose summit he will never reach. Hardly agonising. Many labourers must do more each day, and he was a quite unpleasant man." She sighs. "But true eternal torment, great pain being inflicted constantly with no hope of release at all… Horrifying."

"Yes. It is."

She looks at me with mildly disappointed affection. "You don't understand, do you? I am attuned to the spirits of the dead. That did not stop-" Oh shit. "-simply because we were in the domain of another god. Satanus called the region we were in Hell's centre of industry. Do you know what sort of industry they are engaged in?"

"No."

"Once their psyches decay too far into madness as a result of Hell's torments they transform shades into reflections of whatever device they require. Both the process and the results are… It is unspeakable. A violation such as…" She shakes her head. "I could see their suffering. Feel the echo of it in my own breath… It was such an obscenity, and I did not even begin to understand it until I saw it myself. Thank you for showing it to me."

"You're welcome? So… Where have you been?"

"I have been in Asphodelopolis, consulting with Lord Hades as to what to do about it."

"I've been thinking about that myself, but as big a threat as Satanus is, I don't think that an attack is going to be a realistic prospect for the foreseeable future."

"I agree. But I wasn't talking about that." She glances back towards the crypt as the captain emerges once more, followed by a small squad of other Amazon guardswomen. All are carrying packs for travel and all show the same black blur when I try looking into them. "I do not believe that there is much I can do for the poor souls already there, but I can try to prevent others from being sent there. I am travelling to New York and..." She takes a deep breath. "And then onwards wherever I must go, to preach against the evils of the God of Monotheism and convert as many as I can away from the foul faiths which condemn people to such a place."

…

"I see. Um. You appreciate that about two thirds of the Human species are monotheists of various stripes, yes?"

She nods. "My resolve is no less for that. In the face of such a horror, I can do no less." The guardswomen come to a halt just behind her. "I would have gone on my own, but Lord Hades felt that it would be better if I took a retinue for my protection."

I take another look at her companions. And on several of them I see thick scars on parts of their bodies where strikes would have been lethal.

"And as proof of my own god's generosity."

"You understand that this offer will appeal most of all to some fairly unpleasant people?"

She nods. "I don't care. No one deserves that. The worst person it has ever been my misfortune to meet is Herakles, and even he…" She shakes her head. "No. No one. Punishment for wrongdoing is just, but not forever."

"Right. Well. I wasn't expecting this, but I wish you all the best of luck. Feel free to get in touch with me if you need anything."

"Thank you, Pavlos. I will."

back

Alienated 6

next

3rd October

12:34 GMT -5

Jade narrows her eyes in a distinctly unimpressed way. "What do you mean, Catwoman can't keep up with Batman? She was stealing from rich people in Gotham for years without getting caught for longer than five minutes."

I take a moment to look around the restaurant, but either no one is paying attention or 'IRL Who Would Win' debates are so common here that no one cares. But… I take out a sound scrambler anyway. "Catwoman was most successful when Batman first started, when he was mostly fighting organised criminal gangs and corrupt officials. The reason why she was so successful was that he generally had better things to do than chase down a cat burglar who didn't kill people. On the few occasions they did run into each other, she was able to get away. That isn't the same as being able to win an actual fight."

"She took on Carmine Falcone and his bodyguards armed with inch-long claws. They had guns. Falcone had that scar across his face until Dent killed him."

"I didn't say she couldn't fight. I just said that she's not in Batman's league. Look." I raise my hands to forestall her retort. "If two people in costumes operate in the same sort of area and one is a vigilante and the other is a criminal, they get linked in people's minds. That doesn't mean that they're actually an even match. Very few of Batman's opponents can win a fistfight with him. Mister Cobblepot can't, Mister Nygma can't, Ms Pye can't… Even Mister Napier needed preparation and a lot of luck. Talia could, because she used highly lethal weapons and he wouldn't, but you have to go down the list to Doctor Langstrom or Mister Reardon-."

Jade frowns in puzzlement.

"Man-Bat? The Ten-Eyed Man?"

She looks incredulous. "Batman.. fought a man with.. ten eyes."

"He has photosensitive cells on his fingertips and I know it sounds stupid. The point is, it's possible to be an extremely successful criminal in Gotham without being able to fight Batman one on one. Most times Batman has come close to death were due to traps, ambushes or 'industrial accidents'." I smile. "Though Holly probably deserves a special mention for stabbing him on his first night out."

"Hol-? Holly stabbed Batman?"

"Please don't tell her. I really want to see her face when she finds out."

"How can she not know? He is kind of distinctive."

"He was dressed up like a drifter, pretending to be a local while he took in a few crime hotspots. He hadn't even settled on the whole 'Batman' thing back them."

She raises her eyebrows. "And you know this how?"

"Batman has a scar right where it would have gone in, and there's a report matching what I remember on the Justice League's database. And Holly once mentioned something that sounded very much like the incident in question."

"And I thought killing a Justice League member was supposed to be hard."

"Batman isn't on the League because he's good at punching people. Which is -again- why the Catwoman comparison falls through. Because even if she was as good at fighting as he is, she doesn't have most of the other skills that he does."

"She might not be as good a detective as Batman, but she can track down criminals perfectly well."

"And the rest?"

"She doesn't have a Catmobile, if that's what you mean."

"Catwoman's perfectly capable of investigating street crime locally. But more to the point… Batman started work in Gotham about twelve years ago. Since then, the crime families have gone underground and the city's government is far less corrupt. He fought a campaign, and he's largely won it. And he didn't do it just by punching people."

"And Catwoman cleaning up East Side doesn't count because..?"

"Because there's no strategy. She only went sort of straight because she made enough money that she no longer needed to steal." And because of her interesting personal relationship with Batman, but that isn't public knowledge. "But take.. drugs. Okay, she beats up a dealer and ties them up somewhere where the police can pick them up. The demand is still there, so someone else comes in. Net change as far as the area is concerned, nothing. Maybe a slight spike in local prices."

She sits back, crossing her arms. "So you're saying I'm wasting my time."

"Depends what you're trying to get out of it. But if you're trying to improve Gotham in a lasting way… Then… Yes. If you're just beating up acceptable targets for the exercise, then, fine…"

"I can't infiltrate the gangs to bring down the supply network completely because I'm too well known. And I need a job that actually pays me. I don't have any special skills relating to rehab except locking addicts in a locked room until the symptoms stop. That was part of my training."

"Your father or the League..?"

"Does it matter?

I look down at the remains of my lunch. "I suppose not."

"I can't start a business because I only really know how to do one thing and I don't think my probation worker would really want me passing those skills on."

"Offering.. self.. defence training is an option. I know a couple of people in the Gotham Police Department..?"

"I don't think Detective Bullock really has the build to use my style." She raises her eyebrows expectantly. "Isn't this where you offer me a power ring again?"

I shake my head. "You don't want a power ring. You know you don't want a power ring."

"I thought you were supposed to be good at this."

"Talking to women?" I shake my head. "No." She snorts. "Okay, look: you can afford to take time out of employment to do training. But, I don't think you'll be satisfied with something that doesn't involve fighting. You don't want to work as an assassin, you don't want to join the military and joining the police would be tricky. Have you considered looking further afield?"

She looks away to her right. "Every country I'd seriously consider working in would check my background."

"I was thinking more 'another planet'." That gets raised eyebrows, but she doesn't say no. "The Orange Lantern Corps is one of a number of Maltusian-run military organisations. I doubt that the fleet or marines would interest you, but the Darkstars do infiltration, sabotage and reconnaissance. And they mostly do it against the Reach, who are super evil. What they do broadly matches your skill set. And they're down on operatives because a number of them just transferred to the Orange Lantern Corps."

"I don't speak any alien languages."

"Most people don't. They provide translation devices, or you can get lessons."

"That… Could be interesting."

"I can create Darkstar-style armour to your specifications if you want to try it out. And I.. happen to know where some Kobra cultists are hanging out…"

She relaxes her shoulders slightly, resting her hands on the table. "I suppose giving it a try wouldn't hurt."

back

Alienated 7

next

5th October

09:27 GMT -6

"…investigation for his Court Martial."

Arnus' 'Augustus Freeman' personality is as different from his 'Icon' personality as Clark Kent is from Superman. Gone is his taciturnity and growly delivery, farewell his static posture. Mr Freeman is all smiles and animation and I'm forced to wonder which -if either- is Arnus' real personality.

"I will testify without hesitation."

Lantern Xor on the other hand is still barely animate. Outside of combat, he doesn't let his emotions show all that much. Graak has left his former client's shoulder in order to peruse Arnus' office, clearly rather enamoured with the comforts which our civilisation allows a successful lawyer.

"I wouldn't be quite that eager. Exactly how much reading have you done on America's legal system?"

"I sleep. I eat. I read and study. Last time I stood before magistrates I lost my freedom, my name and my voice. I will not enter a fight unprepared again."

"I don't recommend thinking of it as a fight. Particularly given how we're having to fight the image of you being an 'alien invader'. I'll go over-."

"Image?"

Lantern Xor's hands have formed fists, and Graak looks around from the leather-bound book he was reading with a look of alarm.

"Do they care more about appearances than truth? Am I simply to go from one travesty of justice to another?"

But he doesn't smash anything, which is definite progress.

"Not.. exactly. The problem is that in a lot of these cases, the penalty that gets levelled depends on things that can't be determined by a study of the physical evidence. A jury or a panel of officers have to be persuaded to… Let's say, correctly understand a person's motivations. And while they're supposed to limit themselves to evidence and testimony, it's unavoidable that they're going to interpret the way a person giving evidence behaves when they try and decide whether they're a credible witness or not."

Lantern Xor calms down a little.

"And since you're from a totally different culture and species, that's obviously a little awkward for you."

"I will not lie."

"I wasn't going to ask you to lie. I'm going to teach you how to present yourself so they believe you when you tell the truth."

Lantern Xor doesn't look entirely happy, but his anger is subsiding.

"What will happen to the General?"

"That's up to the Court Martial. If I were the one defending him, I'd probably try and make out that he had to make a decision based on incomplete information, that as far as he knew based on the police reports you were a belligerent attacker and needed to be taken down as quickly as possible to prevent things escalating further. That fact that he's written any number of reports on the potential for using military force in policing metahuman criminals shows he might have his own biases, but it'll be hard for the prosecutors to prove that he acted purely for that reason."

"You will not be able make them punish him?"

Arnus shakes his head. "I won't be prosecuting the case. The military has appointed a prosecutor, and General Hardcastle will select his own defence attorney. I'll be in court, but I'll just be there to advise you."

Lantern Xor snorts. "The American military tries an American general. My expectations are low."

"Even if some of them agree with him on using military power against superpowered criminals, General Hardcastle didn't make any friends amongst his peers when he shot up an American town. To say nothing of how his blatant disregard for the lives of the American civilians in the area is playing on Capitol Hill and in the news. Taking time to heal them was an extremely intelligent move."

"They were not military, not attacking me."

"Even so, it's strong evidence that you weren't planning on attacking Thayer's Notch when the police started shooting you." He looks at me. "Did you have anything to do with that?"

"I suggested that it couldn't hurt. But he's using an orange power ring."

He nods. "He had to want to do it in order to make it work. Okay, that's good to know. But… I do need to know why you didn't just leave town as soon as you got attacked. The police didn't have anything that could have hurt you, and even if you couldn't get away from the military the collateral damage from fighting them outside of town would be far less than fighting them inside it."

"I will not flee from an attacker. Especially one in uniform."

"I understand the attitude, but that's a problem in Massachusetts. A civilian who comes under attack is obligated to retreat rather than attacking unless that's.. clearly impossible. In your case, you could reasonably be considered to have known that the police issue firearms couldn't hurt you after the first few shots bounced off your skin. The prosecutor in your case will almost certainly make the argument that you had an obligation under law to leave the area. Did you..? Think they had heavier weapons available?"

"I did not think about it."

"Do you have a..? Lot of military experience?"

"I have been a soldier for two thirds of my life. I was a Warhound of the First Array."

"Okay, so… Would you say that you responded in the same way you would have on a battlefield?"

Lantern Xor frowns. "If I were on a battlefield I would have attacked them first."

"Alright, but if you suddenly found yourself confronted by.. enemy soldiers you weren't expecting..?"

"I would have recognised their weapons, so I would have prioritised them differently. But I would have attacked in the same way."

"Alright, that's something. Do your people have any enemies in this part of the universe?"

Lantenr Xor considers the question, then calls up a galaxy map and studies it intently for several moments. "Not that I have fought before."

"The reason I ask is that if you might reasonably have believed that you were attacking people allied to your species' enemies, it becomes a lot easier to justify your reaction."

"We might. I had little interest in high politics. I had not even thought to find out our location until you asked me."

"You didn't know where Earth is?" Lantern Xor shakes his head. "How did you get here?"

"Something went wrong on the prison transport. They didn't tell the prisoners what it was, but the containment system failed when main power did, and by the time I had freed the other prisoners the crew had already evacuated. The automatic navigation system locked onto Earth as the closest survivable destination. I expected there to be other survivors here."

"You broke the other prisoners out?"

"They would have died in their cells if I had not."

"And the crew didn't have time to open the doors?"

Lantern Xor shrugs. "I do not know why they did what they did. I am not responsible for their behaviour."

"No, of course not. Okay, we're going to need to go over a lot of details about your personal history and species' legal system. And we've got another police interview in a couple of hours. Now, I know-" He glances at me. "-that you've been living on Paul's Ice Fortress, but it would help me manage your case if you could start living inside US territory. Is that something you're prepared to do?"

Lantern Xor nods, grudgingly.

"Thank you. I'll-".

"I can move the Fortress back-."

Arnus holds up his right hand. "I don't think that's such a good idea. I'll have my assistant sort something out, somewhere secure and large enough for you. Why don't you.. tell me about your full military record?"

back

Alienated 8

next

8th October

13:47 GMT -5

"You do not want to raise any more people from the dead?"

Euanthe and I are sitting in the grove at the top of Mount Justice, enjoying the autumn sun. She doesn't really look confused, but by now she knows that Humans do things that don't make sense to her and I'm pleased that she's learned to check.

"Not at the moment."

"Does Jade not want you to return the people she killed to life? Does she still hate them, or fear their vengeance?"

"No, she doesn't hate or fear them. I mean, she doesn't like being reminded of her guilt-."

"But if she feels guilty because they are dead, and now they are not dead, why does she still feel guilty?"

"Because people don't feel based on rationality. It's… It's mostly that she doesn't like having been the person that killed people in those circumstances. Jade was lukewarm on doing it anyway, and I was mostly doing it to assuage her guilt."

Euanthe nods. "And you cannot travel to the past to prevent her from having killed them."

"Not easily, and that would change a load of other things as well... Plus, Satanus knows what I'm doing and will almost certainly be trying to find her other victims, and as we can't be completely sure where their souls ended up, it also isn't a good idea for that reason." Euanthe frowns as she tries to adjust to a meat people mindset. "How did you feel about confronting Demons again?"

She grins, the soft bark of her faux-mini dress darkening and thickening and growing curved thorns until she's doing a decent Demon impression herself. "It felt good. It was wrong and should not be in the world and I made it leave and die."

"I'm not totally sure whether or not what you did resulted in Mister Okereke ceasing to exist. More likely, a little bit of him returned to Hell and will regenerate eventually."

"I do not mind. I am happy to kill him again and again." Her armour dress is accessorised with bramble knuckledusters as she clenches her fists. "I think it was a shame that I did not travel to their home with you. There would have been so many more of them to kill."

"And you might have had trouble accessing the green to empower yourself. And their magics might have been more effective, and the place itself might have been toxic to you."

"Perhaps. And I do not think that eating more of the Great Warrior's flesh would help with that." She crawls across the ground between us and leans forwards until her bark-cowled face is centimetres from mine. "How do I learn to kill Demons better?"

"Um. There probably… Are ways, but I'm afraid that with most of my magic-using contacts occupied with other projects, and given that what happened last time I didn't have thaumaturgists studying what I was doing was that I got sucked into Hell…"

"What are they doing?"

"Studying how to.. make a high-powered anti-Demon magic user. Once they've done that, we can look into it. And until then, I'll call on you whenever I'm planning on fighting Demons so you can get more experience."

"Will that be soon?"

"Um. Pppprobably not. I.. can ask Diana to notify you of Demon-related Justice League cases? To be honest, I'm not planning on going after Satanus for a while, so…"

She slumps back dejectedly, bark coverings thinning.

"You could always try looking for Demons yourself? I wouldn't recommend confronting them on your own in case something goes wrong and you need backup, but Demons are persona non grata in most places. I doubt anyone would mind about you attacking them."

Notification: Kal-El has completed his press conference.

"Ah." I try to get up, then realise that I've been undergrowthed again. "Euanthe, would you mind letting me get up?"

She tilts her head to the side as the creepers retract. "Was it right to make that forest near the first pit?"

"It would have been better to discuss it first, but-" I rise to my feet. "-on balance, yes."

"Would I be able to fight more Demons if I made more forests?"

Ah..? "I don't.. quite see the link. I imagine that there being a stronger green presence would strengthen you slightly and weaken them… Maybe you could find sites of demonic magic and plant forests over them?" She smiles and-. "But check with the local Humans first!"

She smiles and waves as she drops into the soil of the grove floor.

…

Oh, she's managed this long. Now, Metropolis. I fly upwards far enough that the presence of the green isn't quite so overwhelming, then I step out. Kal-El's barely-noticeable and classically small town American set of desires doesn't exactly leap out at me, but it's visible enough that finding it doesn't represent much of a problem.

I appear on the roof of the Daily Planet-

"Orange Lantern. Didn't realise you could teleport."

-building, nodding politely at Ms Lane as I do so. "I learned all sorts of things while away from Earth. Kal-El? Are you ready to go?"

He nods, but opens his mouth to respond slightly slower than Ms Lane does. "'Kal-El'? What's wrong with 'Superman'?"

"It's not his name."

She folds her arms across her chest, shifting her weight to her right hip. "Sounds like you're throwing stones from a glass house there, 'Orange Lantern'."

"Ms Lane, you are welcome to call me by name. Or you may address me by my rank; it's Illustres. But I grew up in a world without superheroes and I can't help but find some of the naming conventions daft."

Kal-El nods. "He used to call me 'sir' the whole time."

"What stopped him?"

"I stopped working for the League. Are you ready to leave?"

She nods, then looks to Kal-El. He nods as well. "Kon's going to meet us at the Fortress. Kara's.. not.. ready to go out in public quite yet."

I frown slightly, then glance at Lois. She shakes her head. "Don't worry, I'm not going to try interviewing her. Getting a first hand look at Krypton is plenty to keep me busy."

I nod. "Very well, then." Orange filaments connect me to both of them. "Transition in three, two, one, transition."

Metropolis disappears and is replaced by the arctic wilderness, Ms Lane shivering for a second before I extend an environmental shield around her. Ahead of us Kal-El flies over to the front door and opens it.

"Welcome to my home away from home."

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Alienated 9

next

8th October

20:27 GMT

Ms Lane stares out through the faceplate of her helmet at the slowly drifting continent-sized chunk of Krypton. "I'm seeing it, and I still can't quite get my head around it."

I don't bother nodding. It wouldn't be visible in this armour. "I can't either." I hold out my right hand, generating a construct of an exploded -hah- view of the late planet. "This bit here."

She studies the image, her eyes moving from it to the floating rock as she tries to reconcile the two in her mind. A moment later she gives up. "Think I could use that for an infographic?"

"Sure."

"I.. went there once." Kara drifts in our direction. "Krypton's first spaceport was.. built outside Erkol, I visited it with my class."

"I thought space travel was officially disapproved of?"

"We aren't-." She sighs. "We weren't a monoculture any more than humans are. A lot of science council-associated families wanted to preserve places like that: where our species took great strides forward in our development. It's just-." Kal-El floats up behind her and lays his right hand on her left shoulder. "I just wish there'd been more ships available. No one was allowed faster than light ships. If they'd had-."

I hear her sob for a moment, then she turns her communicator off.

Kon snorts. "Guess you were right about Zod."

Kal-El looks my way. "What was that about General Zod?"

"Oh, I just… I thought that if his coup had been successful, he'd have built more ships. So.. this…"

"He'd have built warships. He'd probably have invaded Earth by now."

I don't know enough about the psychology of Dru-Zod the Younger to properly evaluate his likely behaviour. It's been.. what, forty years? Conquering and settling his neighbours might well have taken up all of that time, particularly if someone made a decent counterattack. And he wasn't widely popular; it's quite possible that he'd have faced internal resistance, even from the rest of the military council.

"Possibly. We'll probably never know for certain."

From the look on Kal-El's face, he's strongly considering saying something else on the subject. Then he turns away to stare in-system. Ms Lane gives up trying to appreciate the size of the colossal rock and follows his gaze. "Is all that kryptonite safe?"

"I-" I was thinking of saying 'I wouldn't recommend breathing it', but.. perhaps not. "-would think so. Your space suit is rated against that level of radiation and your force field makes sure of it. If either fail I'll shield you with an environmental shield, but outside of the strongest concentrations kryptonite radiation isn't rapidly fatal to humans."

Communication system shows the Kryptonians have a discussion between themselves. Probably trying to comfort Kara. I did.. say this might not be the best idea for her.

"So, what, as long as I don't wanna have kids it's nothing to worry about?"

"No-." Huh. "The chance is low that your reproductive health would suffer, and if that happened I could get hold of a purple healing ray or Atlantean biomancer fairly easily, so… Don't worry about it."

"Mm." She reaches for her suit's controls and awkwardly turns herself around. "Still can't get over kryptonite not being a problem any more."

"It's still not safe. It could kill them if they swallowed it or breathed it in, and a kryptonite laser or plasma weapon would still be fairly lethal."

"First time I interviewed Superman, he bent some steel bars to show how strong he was. Once he'd been working in Metropolis for a while I started to think he was indestructible. Then, someone found the first piece of kryptonite and suddenly… He could get taken down by some thug with a glowing rock."

"Has Metropolis really not had superheroes before?"

"No one on Superman's level."

"No one's on Superman's level. He's the strongest and most durable superhero I'm aware of, to say nothing of him being the fastest natural flyer. But.. most of the difference is by degrees; I could find you a dozen people who could bend steel bars in their hands."

"My point is, have you seen Metropolis' crime figures lately?"

"No? Why, what's happening?"

"Way down. First time he just ignored someone waving a kryptonite crystal at him, all the gangs who'd been depending on the stuff booked it."

"And the figures in neighbouring regions went up?"

"Not all the way. Small amounts of kryptonite aren't expensive or hard to get hold of. Other weapons that can hurt Superman aren't anything like as common. I think they're having to lay low."

"Good show." I switch over to broadcast. "Are we ready to move on?"

Kal-El turns to my direction. "Yeah, I think so."

"Plotting course to Har-Zod's redoubt." I warp space, bending the universe around us to give us a view of the Rao system as we travel. The three Kryptonians and I start flying in the direction warped, but Ms Lane appears to be having a little trouble with her thrust controls. I attach a filament tether to her instead, pulling her with me as we head inwards.

"So why are you doing this?"

"Kon's my friend, and Kal-El's done enough for the world that I don't mind doing him the odd favour."

"I mean, specifically: why are you taking a Kryptonian moon base?"

"That's…" Hm. "I have been meaning to ask you something as well. I'm sort of feeling like… Did you ever watch Friends?"

"I've heard of it."

"The episode where Phoebe and Rachel work out that Monica and Chandler are dating? And they try and get them to admit it by having Phoebe hit on Chandler?"

"Ahhh…"

"And then Monica and Chandler work out that they know, and I don't even remember why, but they decide to try and make them admit that they know? And Joey's privy to both sets of revelations-."

"Are you going somewhere with this?"

"What do you know? Because for me it's confusing what I'm allowed to say around you."

"What do I know about Superman?"

"Yes, and the League in general? I mean, I haven't wanted to pry, but I also don't want to give away anything I'm not supposed to."

I hear a quiet laugh from Kal-El. "I think what Orange Lantern's trying to ask is whether you know who I am when I put my glasses back on."

"Could be awkward if she didn't."

That gets a chuckle from Ms Lane as well. "Yes, I know about his amazing double life as a mild-mannered reporter."

"And… What do you think happens in the Hall of Justice?"

"Tours for sightseers?"

Ah. "Well then, quite aside from its value as an archive of Kryptonian society, I noticed that Earth has barely any orbital defences. So I thought that we might stick it somewhere near Earth and then expand it."

"You want the Justice League to have a space station?"

Ooh. Someone's going to be in for an unfun conversation when his girlfriend finds out about the Watchtower. "I was thinking more along the lines of 'orbital battle fortress', actually. But I leave that up to the Kryptonian contingent."

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Alienated 10

next

8th October

20:42 GMT

"…a military dictator."

Ms Lane has her hands on her hips as she interrogates the neural imprint. Har-Zod doesn't appear to be particularly troubled by her hostility.

"I'm afraid that I don't have files on your planet's government. As such, I wouldn't know how to characterise the precise differences between them. I would not describe myself as a dictator. I was head of the military council during a time when the military council was pre-eminent, but the council as a whole was elected to that pre-eminence by the population as a whole. And that pre-eminence itself was hardly an unusual state of affairs. Krypton's first contact with alien races came when we were invaded by the Vrangs. After their occupation force was destroyed, it became quite normal for the military to set policy with regard to our interactions with other species."

"The.. Vrangs?"

"An alien species which occupied Krypton during our industrial age." His head shrinks, and an image of the military council's organisation chart appears next to him. "The military council was comprised of senior officers retired from active service, the field commander of Kryptonian military forces and the heads of each branch of the services. Depending on election results, additional individuals from areas not directly associated with Krypton's fighting force might also act in an advisory role."

"So if it got popular enough, the military could take control of whatever it wanted."

"In theory, the military council could take control of anything the people of Krypton wanted it to. In practice, that should not have ever happened. What I meant to imply was that at times it made sense to coordinate closely with the science council in the design of new ships or with the labour council in planning ship building projects. The results of elections would determine exactly how forceful that 'coordination' would be. Likewise, when the military council was not pre-eminent we would follow the policy direction set by whatever council was."

"I should also point out that it was the science council who thought that isolationism was a good idea."

"Hm." Ms Lane steps away from the display as I come closer.

"Har-Zod, do you have any particular problem with us moving this base?"

"I would have liked to remain here, in case any other surviving Kryptonians manage to make the return journey. But I suppose the chance of that isn't particularly high."

"I'm happy to leave beacons in place to relay any message you wish to send. And I think we can give them Earth's location. It will just take them a little longer to reach you."

Ms Lane raises her left eyebrow. "You're giving Earth's location to potentially hostile aliens?"

"I'm not doing anything which the Voyager probe isn't doing. Besides, anyone who can track Kryptonian FTL could follow Kal-El's wake and find us eventually. This is just a slightly more polite way of doing it."

Har-Zod's head nods. "That's acceptable. Do you intend to try to move the whole moon?"

Hm. Not sure. Putting Xenon at a Lagrange point would work, but it might also cause the governments of Earth to throw a bit of a fit. On the other hand, digging this place out is… Well, it's doable, if not exactly quick. And it can grow more space if we need it to by consuming some of Luna. Someone might spot it if we put it on the light side, but if we put it on the dark side we could keep it secret…

Of course, while I sort of have the final say since.. I'm the one moving it, it would be impolitic to ignore what the Kryptonians think of the situation.

I raise my right hand to my right ear. "Orange Lantern to Superman."

"Go ahead."

"Har-Zod's given the go-ahead. Have the three of you talked things through?"

Ms Lane stares at me for a moment. "You were serious about the League having an orbital battle station?"

"As both a non-signatory and as a non-state actor, the League is exempt from the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty. The UN has de jure accepted that, otherwise they couldn't allow space-capable League members into space. The League is presently the Earth's only way of stopping space-borne aggressors reaching Earth and their capacity to actually do that isn't anything like as good as you might think."

She opens her mouth to respond, but Kal-El gets there first. "And this has nothing to do with you constantly installing new weapon systems in.. your own facility."

Subtle. I know that he means the Mountain, but Ms Lane might think he's talking about the Ice Fortress. "The reason I do that is the same as the reason why I'm arguing for this. Either the League has military responsibilities, or it doesn't. Since none of you told me that I was mistaken during my performance review when I assessed you on it-."

Ms Lane blinks. "You gave the League a performance review?"

"Yes, and if you want a copy you can ask them for it. Anyway, if you actually want to do that job, you need deep space sensors which the Guardians can't turn off on a whim, you need weapon platforms and.. preferably ships. And I don't mean Batman's space plane."

From the lack of response I'm going to guess that he's still mulling it over. Either that or I was excessively frank again.

"Or if you want to um and ah about this a bit more I can drop Xenon off outside the Sol system while you discuss it amongst yourselves and clear it with the Security Council."

"That does sound a little more sensible."

"No, it sounds more reasonable. In fact, it forces you to take people out of their comfort zones without giving you the advantages that a space-based facility would provide, and thus is less sensible."

"Kal, I… I know Earth is less advanced than Krypton was, but Paul's right. It isn't safe to not have some sort of defence system. And if there was some kind of natural disaster-."

"Earth doesn't have the same structural problem Krypton had."

"We…" I can hear the reluctance in Kon's voice. "Do… Have super volcanoes and crazy supervillains… I'm not saying we need this, but it.. could be useful. Y'know. Just in case."

And I'm getting Joeyed again. Kon and Kal-El both know that the League has a space station, giant floating target that it is. Lois apparently doesn't. I imagine that the arguments I'm advancing in favour are similar to the ones raised when the League discussed whether or not to use the Watchtower. I still don't agree with the decision to keep its existence a secret. The number of supervillains who could even try to reach it is tiny compared to the ones who could reach the Hall of Justice, located conveniently as it is in the middle of a major city. Carrying on using the Mountain would have made more sense, seeing as it's a reasonable distance from Happy Harbour and Happy Harbour has a low population anyway.

Of course, what I really want is for the team to start using this place. But that's probably a stretch too far.

I hear Kal-El sigh. "Alright. We'll move the moon, but I don't want you taking it close to Earth. Could you put it in orbit around Jupiter?"

Ring? "Yes, though if that's the route you want to take my personal preference would be putting it in a off-plane orbit around our sun."

Ms Lane looks at me askance. "Isn't that a little dangerous?"

"I've already asked another member of my Corps to visit us to help me with another project I'm working on. I doubt that she'd mind babysitting it."

Kal-El thinks about it for a moment. "Okay, whatever you think best. Will the rest of us be able to meet her? I'll be interested to see what sort of people you've been recruiting."

"That shouldn't be a problem." I step away from Har-Zod. "Shall we start back now? Even with all three of you pushing, I imagine that it will take us a while to get up to speed."

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Alienated 11

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8th October

21:14 GMT

"I've heard people joke about Superman being strong enough to push a planet, but this is something else."

The universe sails past us in a cylinder of orange and white as the Kryptonians put their backs into it. Obviously, just having them shove Xenon wouldn't do very much, so I've got a construct spreading the force out over the.. west..? The western side. The effort involved in sustaining that along with the warp itself is preventing me from helping with the thrust, but it looks like they've got it covered.

"Second time on a faster than light planetoid for me. Though I should point out that without anything to push from, their strength is basically useless. It's really more their resilience combined with the power of their flight that lets them push it."

"Any reason you couldn't just teleport it back?"

"I teleport to people. Teleporting to someone I know on Earth while towing a moon didn't sound sensible. Plus, I'm not sure what happens when I try to bring very large objects with me. Besides…" I spread my arms out to the sides. "Look. Look."

"You enjoyed it so much the first time that you just had to try it again?"

"You're now part of a very exclusive club. I doubt that more than a handful of people in the universe have done this." Skrk. No, a mile high club joke would not be appropriate. "The stars are all the more beautiful without an atmosphere, but like this you've got a horizon so your brain-."

"Yeah, I'm… Trying not to look at it. I don't usually get air sick, but-."

"Oh." Ah. "I can give you some travel sickness pills?"

"I can cope." She turns to face me, carefully focusing her eyes on my face and not the breathtaking -or in her case stomach churning- panorama behind me. "So is this what you spend your time doing?"

"How do you mean?"

"Superman… Clark, splits his time between his work for the Daily Planet and being Superman. He patrols Metropolis, he helps the emergency services, things like that."

"I.. suppose you could say it's the sort of thing I do? I like locating useful technology and knowledge and putting it to better use. Even if nothing else comes of this, at the very least Kon will have access to a record of Kryptonian history."

"And he couldn't get that from Clark?"

"Um? I suppose he could, now. I started.. planning this before their.. recent rapprochement…"

"I thought you didn't want that to happen."

"Is this about what I said to Kal-El last New Year?" She nods. "Kal-El.. avoiding Kon didn't really give me the best impression. Then I… Then Diana agreed to adopt him after taking him on as a student… And then Kal-El decides that now was the time to reach out to him. A month earlier or later and I'd probably have been friendlier about it. But that really wasn't the time. Now? Sure, no problem. If Kon's happy, I'm happy."

Kon was.. a bit vague when I asked him how it went. I suppose that Lex wouldn't have bothered giving him any farming-related programming, and Themysciran farming techniques are a little more primitive than what farms in Kansas employ. Still, he seemed pretty upbeat afterwards. Not sure what I'll do if he asks about Lex's side of the family. Lori's about his apparent age, but Kon's genetic heritage is public knowledge. And Kon hasn't spent a good chunk of his life idolising Lex.

"So what have you got going on at the moment?"

"Batman asked me to locate…" And another Joey; she almost certainly doesn't know about Nabu. "A couple of magic users who have the potential for League membership, as that's an area of weakness in their current line-up. I've so far got one, and a second who needs a little work. And there were some.. magic field experiments I ran… Got some useful data-."

"Experiments you were running with the North Rhelasians? Experiments that created a forest out of thin air which the military cordoned off from the locals?"

"A series of experiments of which I performed one in North Rhelasia. The forest was a result of an oversight on my part; I didn't explain to a dryad friend of mine why making an enchanted forest wasn't a good idea."

"Because the locals will just cut it down for firewood?"

"Because the locals might try to cut it down for firewood and be brutally slaughtered by spriggans."

"That explains the military build-up."

"Yes, and I've explained why it wasn't a good idea and she won't do it again."

She nods. "These wizards. Who are they?"

"I doubt that you'd have heard of Doctor Mist. The other… I suspect that you'd know her actual name and she hasn't selected a nom de guerre as yet. Doctor Mist is a multi-millennial African magic user of considerable ability. Beyond that, I suggest asking him yourself."

"Any comment on the recently appeared Blue Lantern?"

"He used to be a member of the Justice Society, and he's a good friend of mine."

"And the resemblance between him and retired television executive Alan Scott?"

"He's just got that sort of face."

"Rrrright. So what else do you do?"

"Else?"

"You know, like other teenagers do? Do you have any hobbies? What sports teams do you like? Do you have a girlfriend.. or boyfriend?"

Ah. "In order? As little as possible. I didn't become a superhero because I wanted a normal life. Uplift is my hobby, and everything else has rather fallen by the wayside. I have no interest in sports beyond a small feeling of residually nationalistic pride when England wins something. I do have a girlfriend, and she's coping admirably with.. me. And that's all I'm saying about her."

"Alright, so why did you become a superhero?"

"Kal-El became a superhero due to noblesse oblige, Batman due to a drive for revenge. With me, it was an act of desperation to preserve my own life. As I told Ms Dearden, by the standards of Earth Prime this world is mad and has all too many novel and horrifying ways to die. Heck, your population is a billion less than my own Earth. I needed to keep my ring going and I needed training."

"So you dived straight into a bunch of dangerous situations to keep yourself safe?"

"It's not the ones you see coming that get-"

"Approaching destination."

"-you. Orange Lantern to push team, we're nearly there. Feel free to stop pushing once the universe reappears."

"Thanks for the notice."

"Ms Lane, if you watch-" I point upwards and to my left. "-there, you'll see something truly remarkable. But it might also make you quite ill. Up to you."

"Great."

"Three, two, one, end-"

The universe reappears, our view mostly consisting of the surface of Ater Clementia.

"-warp."

"WRAAAGH!"

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Alienated 12

next

8th October

21:21 GMT

"…GOD DAMNED LUNATIC!"

"Ms Lane-."

"WHY WERE YOU FLYING US AT A PLANET?"

"Our relative velocity-."

"YOU HAD AN ENTIRE UNIVERSE NOT FILLED WITH PLANETS TO AIM AT!"

"The universe is filled with all the planets, Ms Lane. Look, we're safely orbiting around-."

"And how could you be sure the Lantern down there could catch us!?"

"Lantern Mother of Mercy is a planet. Catching moons is what planets do. See those big spine-?"

"I'm trying not to look at it."

"Basically, those are Mother of Mercy's gravity sensing organs. She could feel-."

Kal-El flies over Xenon's horizon at some speed, barely sparing Ater Clementia a glance. "Lois, are you okay?"

"Just..! Super."

He looks at me. "I take it this was intentional?"

"Yes, of course it-."

"Then I'd appreciate it if you could give the rest of us a little more warning in the future. And no, telling us that we're going to see another Orange Lantern isn't the same as warning us that we're about to run into a planet."

"We were never going to hit the planet." I hold out my left hand. "Mother of Mercy, back me up."

A projection of her central nexus appears next to me. "I felt the Illustres' spatial distortion as soon as you left the Rao system. Catching you was simple. I have already put Xenon into a stable orbit around me."

"And the lack of warning?"

"I thought that it was a better visual spectacle like this. The planet just appearing like this. But, I will certainly take your concern onboard and avoid doing this again."

"Thank you." He turns, looking at the sky. "We're in the Sol system, and… From the position of the planets we're near Mars' orbit."

"We're at right angles to Mars' orbit."

"And did it occur to you to make sure that the Martians didn't object?"

"Yes. I popped by for a quiet chat with Prince J'emm a couple of days ago. You see, the biggest barrier to Martians repopulating the surface of their world is their weak magnetic field. So I thought that I'd bring in the Orange Lantern Corps' greatest expert in geophysics to see if she could sort that out for them. Don't worry, she'll check with them before she starts manipulating their planet's core."

Ms Lane seems to have regained a degree of composure. "I know that putting another planet in the star system won't significantly affect the orbit of anything already there, but if she's planning on getting close to Mars, won't that cause earthquakes?"

"I used gravity to fly through space before I became an Orange Lantern. I am perfectly capable of preventing the gravity distortion created by my mass from affecting anything else."

"You see? No-" I raise my right hand to wave as Kon and Kara fly towards us. "-problem. Do you-?"

"Is that…" Kara stares at Ater Clementia. "Planet.. supposed to be there?"

"Yes, that's an Orange Lantern."

"The-? The whole planet is a Lantern?"

"No, but I cover its entire surface. The Illustres has rendered my name as 'Mother of Mercy'."

"What are you?"

"I am unique. I cannot be readily compared to any life form with which you are familiar. Parts of my body function like plant material, others like animal tissue and the rest is organic technology. I understand how to create and use it instinctively. Now that I have a power ring and personal lantern, my few restrictions have been lifted."

"I…" Kara shakes her head. "Huh."

"We're close enough to Earth here that I can zeta tube everyone back. Or you can mount the first ever tourist expedition to Ater Clementia-."

Lois definitively shakes her head. "Perry's gunna want a piece on why there's a new planet in the system on his desk tonight."

"He needs to work on his work-life balance."

She gives me an odd look. "Yeah. He's the weird one."

"No, he's fairly normal. But I don't have high blood pressure and too much cholesterol and hence am at a far lower risk of heart attack." I wave my right hand and a zeta tube construct appears. "After you."

"Recognised, Lois Lane, A four six."

"Kal-El? Kara? Heading back to-?"

"Actually? I was talking to Kon, and…" She glances at him and he nods reassuringly. "I think I'd.. like to meet your friends."

"Oh? Great. They're lovely people-" I set my communicator to 'just Kon'. "Are Canis or Blaze-?"

"Canis is out with his Aunt, and Blaze is at KordTech."

Back to 'all'. "-and I'm sure they'd be delighted to meet you."

Kal-El nods, smiling. "I'm glad you're feeling up to it. I'll just tag along in case-."

"Actually? I think.. this is something I need to be able to do by myself."

Kal-El regards her carefully for a moment. "If you're sure. Call me at the Planet if you need anything."

"Recognised, Superman, zero one."

Kara takes a deep breath, then floats towards the zeta tube. "Okay. Here I go."

"Recognised, Kara Zor-El, A four five, Superboy, B zero four."

I turn to Mother of Mercy's projection. "I hope you enjoy your time in our little system."

"I have found that I enjoy meeting new people."

"Contact me if you need anything."

I float through the zeta tube.

8th October

16:24 GMT -5

"Recognised, Orange Lantern, B zero six. Identification confirmed."

Looks like just about everyone's here, and Kara's working through her initial nervousness. Roy waves, his modified light armour moving more easily than it used to. M'gann's talking nineteen to the dozen to Kara already, and-.

"Hey, Oh El." Wallace blurs to a stop just in front of me. "You sticking around today, or-."

Kara spins, her eyes metaphorically blazing. "You're Kryptonian too?! Why didn't you-?"

"No, I'm sorry, I'm not. Wallace, I told you that would happen eventually."

He looks at her, then looks at me. "What?"

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Alienated 13

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8th October

17:34 GMT -5

"Plato?" Raquel looks more curious than surprised. "I thought you liked Theory of Justice?"

I slide the next batch of chopped celery into the cauldron-like saucepan. I'd rather gotten out of the habit of cooking for this many people. But given the amount of time I've been spending in the mountain since my return to Earth I can't really complain about getting kitchen duty every so often.

"Sure, as a work of political philosophy. It just occurred to me that the only work of philosophy that covered superheroes was Republic."

That gets a frown. "What you talking about? You were the one saying that Truggs was right about superheroes being a bit crazy but not crazy enough. Doesn't that match what Nietzschie-"

"Nietzsche."

"-said about creating new moralities? That it was confusing, uncomfortable and most people wouldn't do it."

I nod as I start adding the stock. "Yeah. Yeah, fair point. It's just that from what I remember of Nietzsche, he thought that once someone did it-. "

"They'd stick with it 'cause they'd already decided their old moral code was stupid. Whereas what you and Truggs think the League is doing is trying to stay within their old moral code while doing something that.. sometimes can't fit inside it."

"I'm not sure that Nylor and I see it in quite the same way. But broadly…"

She squints slightly. "Anyone ever tell you you've got a nasty mind?"

"Not that specifically, no. But what I took away from Nietzsche was that having a morality you don't believe in is self destructive. So if none of us feel like joining the police force but insist on saying that police are important to law enforcement…"

"That's a contradiction 'cause we don't act like we do. We fight crime, hunt down criminals and none of us really care what the police think about it 'cept when they actually try an' make an issue of us being vigilantes."

"But if we don't actually believe in law and order, what do we believe? Or what should we? I mean, to my mind that's at least as important as hand-to-hand combat training. We're not just going to have to hit things in the field, we're going to have to make decisions with massive legal and political ramifications."

"More you than me."

"Really? Have you ever been to Arnus' homeworld?"

"No. But… Huh."

"Right. If he ever does decide to visit home, he'd probably-."

She shakes her head. "I asked, and he told me he thinks of Earth as home."

"Oh. Okay, well, his former home. You'd be the first Human to visit there. Not.. a government or UN appointed diplomat. You. And they'd probably form policy relating to us based on what you said. Remember how you felt when I said I'd started making more kinetic belts? Not doing that was a decision you made."

"And you think I was wrong."

"I think you were wrong. I don't know you were wrong. And I don't know what metric you were using to make that decision."

"I didn't even think about it." Her eyes unfocus slightly as she sits back in her chair. "If you wanna make the world a better place…"

"Take a look at yourself, and then make a change."

"Which is how you got to Plato. Because of how he said guardians should be educated to be guardians, which is kinda what's happening to us."

"The guardians weren't supposed to own property. Superheroes don't get paid. The difference is that the Guardians' upkeep was paid for by the state, while we're volunteers doing it pro bono publico. I still find it amusing that the most avowedly capitalist nation on Earth idolised Kal-El, a man who has never been paid for the work he does as Superman."

"Do you think he should? Hell, do you think I should get Icon to release more Terminus technology?"

"I don't know. What metric do you think you should use to decide?"

She glances aside. "Whether Icon'll let me or not."

"Heh. Well yeah, that's… Important. Given that he hasn't for.. two hundred years? I think we can guess what he thinks. But if we're talking about cultivating virtues in ourselves-."

I look around as the door opens and Kon wanders in, followed by Roy and Kara. "Didn't Plato say that guardians shouldn't marry and people shouldn't know who their biological parents are?"

"There's a logic to that. If-."

A look of distaste passes over Kara's face. "If they don't know who their family are, they can't show them any preference."

Raquel shakes her head. "No, they'd still identify with other guardians more than anyone else. And I'm pretty sure that anyone with a calendar could make a pretty good guess about which kid was whose."

"Which leads us onto the problem of groupthink, and Mill and Taylor's insistence that free discussion on all topics was essential-."

"When are we eating?"

We all look at Roy. He shrugs.

"Sorry to bring down the tone, but…"

"About two hours." Chicken legs, bay leaf and turn up the heat a little… "You getting hungry already?"

"Just wanna know if I've got time to rebuild my armour's targeting system before dinner."

Kara sags. "I'm really sorry-."

"Hey, it's not a problem."

"What happened?"

"She-." / "I-."

They look at each other and Roy shrugs. She sighs. "Earth technology is… It's so much more primitive than what I had on Krypton. I keep thinking that I should be able to use what I know to improve things. Except it's so much less advanced and.. just.. alien that nothing I know applies to it. And I got frustrated and I.. kind of forgot I had super strength, and…"

Ooh. I look at Roy. "Can you fix it, or do you want me to-?"

"Really, it's not a problem. I like working on my armour." He turns away, smiling as he does so. "I'll be finished before dinner."

Maybe Red Arrow gave me a rather slanted impression, but he's surprisingly easy-going.

Raquel sits back so she can look at Kara without straining her neck. "If you're having trouble with your flying, you could try out the ring course."

"I'm.. not sure that it's a good idea for me to fly inside a mountain. I can fly through mountains."

Kon shakes his head. "It's not a problem. After I bounced off the walls and ceiling a few times we added in kinetic barriers. If you miss your turn now you just stop."

"Okay…" She nods, perking up slightly. "Yeah, that sounds like fun. But… Do the barriers cover the floor as well?"

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Alienated 14

next

9th October

11:12 GMT -5

"So… What you're saying is, it's impossible."

"No! No." Sephtian shakes his head. "It clearly is possible, in.. the same way that.. your people understood how a fission bomb could be created well before they had the means to actually build one. We understand how the arcane structures in Blaze function. If we wanted to create another like her it is quite possible that we could manage it. And we understand what she needs to look like after the transition has occurred."

Ted's made a real effort to help the Atlanteans feel at home here. Moving weather control system production away from KordTech's main research centre made a lot of sense, and he's having the building which used to house it converted into an Atlantean style arcane laboratory. And given the subject of the project they're currently doing for me, one of the really high security ones. Unfortunately there isn't a high security way to move Blaze from the mountain to here… Well, not yet.

"But you can't actually make the transition."

"The Demon you fought in Guyana was able to maintain a link using the remains of the soul of the man it once was, combined with the magics of the Lazarus Pit. That kept the Earth end of the gate open."

"Yes, I realised that."

"The Human soul naturally combined the elements. Blaze does not have a Human soul. She has a structure of Hell magic which behaves somewhat like one. There is no attachment point where we could begin to replace the energies."

"Is there any way around that?"

He makes a sinuous wiggling gesture. Yes but no. "If we had an object or creature who could combine those energies, we could use them. Have you located the First?"

"No. And if we haven't at this point then I don't expect to." The Greek police were grateful -even if they weren't sure they could believe me- when I explained who 'Theo' was, and since he killed at least eight people during his stay in Greece they're as alert as they can be.

"I am aware of no other source of such magic. Are you?"

"No, I'm afraid-." Huh. "Maybe."

"If you are referring to a mythological artefact, I would not expect.. complete certainty. But without one we are forced to start from first principles."

"And how long will that take?"

"Perhaps three decades? We will of course learn a great deal… But I suspect that you would like results sooner." He watches me for a moment. "If.. I may ask..?"

"What do you know about Christian mythology?"

"We have all been doing some reading. But a faith two thousand years old -not counting the Hebraic tradition which preceded it- will create a great deal of literature. If you could be more precise..?"

"The Garden of Eden. More precisely, the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge."

"The most empirically-based interpretation I could imagine is that it was a reference to the transition from hunter-gatherer society to settled farming. Knowledge in that instance representing early Humans taking control of the land and causing it to conform to their desires. Since that is usually accompanied by an increase in disease and decrease in general health, that might explain the 'curses' Jehovah bestowed upon the people for defying his will. And the difference in his treatment of Cain and Abel-."

"And the less empirical interpretation?"

"There is literally a tree somewhere which grants people the ability to comprehend ideas which are considerably more complex than those their social world contains within it. Perhaps which even creates sophoncy itself. Though that idea does rather fly in the face of the fossil record. On the other hand, it is very hard to observe evolution, While the orthodox view is that greater brain size amongst hominids is a result of random mutations in favourable conditions, it is not impossible that it was the result of externally applied magic. But not on two people; the gene pool would have been too small, even if they were prepared to mate with more mentally simple hominids."

"But the specific description; the God-like ability to know good from evil and choose between them?"

"There are any number of evils which cannot exist in the most simple societies. Professional thieves cannot work their trade if they must follow the herds. There is little to steal, and all of the other members of their tribe would see them. It is nearly as hard in small farming communities, particularly before currency was invented-."

"This is a little outside your normal area, isn't it?"

"I had to study surface society in order to understand what I was reading." His head fronds ripple. "But what you want me to say is that the fruit is a magic banana which will enable us to perform the arcane transfiguration you require."

"Banana?"

"Banana or mushroom or apple or tomato or pomegranate or perhaps something else entirely. If you actually get to the Garden of Eden, I recommend taking samples of everything. Several, perhaps."

"But does it.. sound like something that could work?"

"Based on the limited information available to me… Yes? Perhaps? It would.. prove an interesting object of study in its own right, regardless of how helpful it would be to our current project."

"One miscellaneous fruit from the Tree of Knowledge coming up. If I'm not back in an hour, watch for a crater."

"Might.. it be prudent to wait until.. one of your allies can accompany you? Your.. last fight with monotheistic elementals did not go as well as it might."

True. I doubt that Euanthe would be much help, my team mates are either at school or… They'd want Batman to sign off on it. And… Helpful as getting access to Eden would be, I am.. basically planning on directly defying the Lord of Hosts here. I mean, I'm working on the assumption that the Silver City is going to have a collective aneurysm when we finish Blaze, but I might have been able to talk myself out of it. This is straight up breaking, entering and theft. And if the Cherub with the flaming sword is still on station, assault with a deadly weapon as well.

Am I..? Really doing the right thing here? I mean I.. think I am. If we can get this to work, it doesn't just get Blaze into the field, it might let us teach morality to all sorts of beings not inclined to learn it through conventional methods. And… Angels don't have free will. This isn't like dealing with a Human where I could try trading something… And if I try, then any help my tattoos would give me in avoiding attention will be gone.

It's like Nabu, but with lower stakes.

I don't think I'd be bothered all that much by it afterwards, but… Is that a sign something's wrong in itself?

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Alienated 15

next

9th October

11:22 GMT -5

I float over New York while the phone of the Zatara residence rings. No cheating; heads I get Zatanna who will most likely support whatever I want to do, tails I get Mister Zatara who will almost certainly try and talk me out of it. In either case, arguing against their position will give me at least a reasonable outline of both sides of the argument. Assuming that one of them does answer, otherwise I'm going to have to give Father Mattias a b-.

"Yes?"

Tails it is, then. "Mister Zatara, do you have a few minutes?"

"Of course. If only because I am worried about what you might do if I say 'no'."

I'd say 'thanks', but he does have a point. "Right. You know I'm working on turning Blaze into.. something other than a Demon?"

"Zatanna may have mentioned it once or twice."

"I may have found a way to do it in a few weeks, rather than a few decades. Unfortunately, it involves stealing an item or.. items."

"And you do not believe that you could simply purchase the items in question?"

"I'm happy to try, but the.. prospective seller has traditionally been rather against that sort of thing."

"The Justice League can get a court order to legally confiscate magic artefacts in a number of countries."

Hm. "Including Iran?"

"Hm. No, I don't believe so. But the Justice League might be able to persuade them to confiscate one for the purpose of improving our ability to fight Demons. What exactly is it you are looking for?"

"A fruit from the Tree of Knowledge."

There's a few moments of silence.

"You wish to go to the Garden of Eden,-

"Is that Paul?"

"-and steal one of the fruit which God specifically instructed Adam and Eve not to eat?"

"It is! Nioj ni enohp llac!"

"Yes, but they did, and -philosophically speaking- I rather like have the capacity to know right from wrong." Huh. "Though since I come from a parallel universe and therefore aren't descended from Adam and Eve, I suppose that I.. don't."

Bananas are smaller than my head, but I think I'll wait until we see what it does to Blaze before I try eating it.

"You're finally going!"

"Good morning, Zatanna. And, maybe. I wanted to run it past your father first."

"Can I come?"

"Um. If I actually go-" I hear Mister Zatara taking a breath. "-and it's reasonably safe, certainly."

"You believe that you can sneak past the guardians set in place by God?"

"I snuck up on the First of the Fallen. The Book of Truth isn't exactly clear on relative angelic power levels, but he's about as powerful as they come and he didn't detect me until I started stabbing him."

"You will not face just one Angel in the Garden. Genesis states that God placed many Cherubim in the Garden, as well as a flaming sword."

"Actually, it says that the Cherubim were placed in the east of the Garden, so as long as you stay away from the east they shouldn't be a problem. And the flaming sword guards the way to the Tree of Life, not the Tree of Knowledge."

"Zatanna!"

"I didn't write the Bible, Dad."

He takes a deep breath. "Be that as it may, you are talking about stealing from God. That is not something to take lightly."

"And that's why I'm talking to you about it first. Now, I could say… Since I'm not descended from Adam and Eve, the ban on entry doesn't apply to me and it was clearly a public space before that. But I'm mostly planning on doing it because with Satanus becoming more active we need better anti-Demon weapons."

"Can I assume that you have developed a way to fight the Cherubim should they detect you?"

I glance at the case I'm using to carry the kaahuite-enhanced Ace-type rifle I had built for that exact purpose. I call it the 'Hellblazer', because, why not?

"Yes, though I'd rather disengage and flee. I'm not sure that Angels are moral agents, but if Genesis is even remotely accurate then I doubt that they'll pursue beyond the borders."

"If you have already decided to do it then why did you bother to contact me?"

"Because sometimes… Things that seem perfectly rational to me don't seem rational to other people. And I think that I may be missing things. Given how non-interventionist Jehovah is these days and how he's apparently fine with people injecting themselves with Essence of Demon, I'm struggling to see how what I'm planning is worse. But that might be me. Is taking fruit from a tree a bigger deal than I think it is? Would it kill the Tree and condemn everyone to ignorance?"

"Possibly. The translation 'knowledge of good and evil' is not necessarily entirely accurate. The phrase could also mean 'knowledge of all things'."

"So Adam and Eve were forced to live out their days as simple farmers, never able to build any of the amazing machines they could now envisage or go to any of the fantastic places they now knew existed? That might be worse than the 'pain in childbirth' thing."

"Pain and death. Death in childbirth hasn't gone away."

"Zatanna, I'm happy to make exo-wombs my next project, but they're not exactly easy for other people to build."

"The point I am trying to make is that it might not give you what you are looking for."

"Knowledge of all things would work nearly as well. Even if it actually only gives accelerated learning or something, that would still speed up the research." Ooh. "Unless it turns out to actually be more along the lines of a Two Thousand AD obelisk or something… No, that could still be helpful."

"And if you are wrong, and the Cherubim do follow you, for having trespassed against God's garden and stolen from it?"

"They're free to press charges in an Iranian court. Having my hand cut off really isn't a problem for me. Otherwise, I will beat them down using escalating levels of force, starting from the lowest amount that has an effect and then increasing until I use the Sword of the Fallen. Which -as previously stated- works on anything. The immediate area around the entrance is inhabited, but there's a lot of desert once you get past that and it's as good a place for a super fight as anywhere."

"I see that you have given this some thought."

"On and off since last year. Any other problems?"

"Does the idea of enduring God's personal wrath not bother you?"

"Not my god. And there are plenty worse than me. So… No. Not really."

"Then I have nothing else to say, and I pray that you are right."

"Great! Og ot s'luaP noitacol!"

There's a puff of violet mist next to me as Zatanna appears and immediately starts falling.

"Aagh! Ylf!"

Recovering, she rises through the air until she pulls level with me.

"Do I need to change before we go to Iran?"

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Alienated 16

next

9th October

19:31 GMT +3

"That's it?"

We look down from high above the mid-sized oasis town built in what looks like the middle of nowhere.

"Welcome to Enoch. Population… About twelve hundred. Primary industries: textiles, goat herding, moisture farming and smuggling."

"Wohs em regnad." Her eyes flare violet.

"I thought I was."

Her eyes dim. "Automatic rifles and rocket propelled grenades."

"And possibly a few theurgists."

"Wohs em cigam." Another flash. "A few low-level artifacts and practitioners. I don't think they're much of a threat."

"And if I told you the number of people who used to say that about John Constantine..."

She turns her head to look at me. "Have you heard from him? I've tried getting in touch a few times, but he isn't answering."

"No. He told me not to get in touch for a while and it's only been a few months. Is there a spell that could send him a message without requiring him to reply?"

"There's a spell that does just about everything."

"I'll write him a letter." The area next to the plateau matches John's description. Since Angela somehow wasn't detected going in or out, they haven't increased the guard at all. Detection appears limited to three men and a couple of wires stretched over the stone pillars marking the entrance. "Ready?"

"Do you really think it's not safe for me to go in?"

"Unless Jehovah has personally let you off original sin… Maybe. I don't know. After getting sucked into Hell I'm feeling a bit more cautious. You don't have my tattoos-."

"Dad won't let me get tattoos until I'm eighteen."

"I don't think they'd work unless you rewrote your soul at the same time. And don't do that."

"John didn't have the best magic education. I can't do it permanently, but I'm pretty sure I could make tattoos that work like Kaldur's. I'd just have to charge them every time I used them."

"Or you could put it on armour."

"No, it has to be something living."

"Okay, this… I'm having all kinds of ideas, but we should get this done first." I need more magic researchers… "I'm going to be phased, and I'm not going to risk communicating with you just in case the giant wheels with eyes can detect it."

"Oh no, that's the Ophanim. The Cherubim are the ones with the four faces: Human, Eagle, Ox and Lion."

"Fewer eyes." I take my armour out of subspace, and check my weapons. "Sounds good. Keep an eye out, and use your best judgement." She nods, and I phase out.

Dox briefly tried to explain how -despite not being able to interact with the world- I could still perceive it. I'm mildly pleased that I made it into his second sentence before he lost me, but I still don't really understand it. I remember the issue of Planetary where the Four's Invisible Woman expy couldn't see without a special visor. It made sense, but… I mean, the visor was invisible too, wasn't it? I thought maybe it was sensitive to light that was slightly forward or backwards in time or something, but when I said that Dox just groaned…

I make it to just above street level without any noticeable reaction from the locals. Huh. Guns and.. a couple of rugged off-road vehicles aside, this place is pretty much as I imagine it was when they built it. No good transportation links… So most things they can't make here don't get here. No electricity, outhouses for toilets… No refined sugar. Must be good for their dental health.

Zatanna didn't mention the gate area being enchanted, but I carefully float around the guards and wires just in case. Through… No warning from my spell eater, so I haven't been sent somewhere. It literally is a magic wormhole. That would be fascinating to study in its own right, but I don't think that the locals would be onboard.

Angela had to scrabble up the side of the plateau when she came this way, but my armour's flight system can manage it far more easily. Up and over…

Huh.

Okay, yes, to desert-dwelling nomads I can see how this would be paradise, but it doesn't really look… Special. The waterfalls are pretty enough, especially with the rainbows which the light creates as it refracts through them, but…

Waterfalls from two sides feeding into a lake. Cheat. Still, as Samuel Vimes remarked: two types laugh at the law, those who break it and those who make it.

Plenty of woodland for fuel, food and shelter. I rise a little further, getting above the canopy and looking out across the Garden. A long way in and on both my left and right I see two flecks of white/gold which I'm going to tentatively assume are Cherubim. Much as there are creatures who can hear it when you speak their name, there are some who can tell when they're under observation. So my interest will have to wait.

Now, how to find two trees in a forest? Working from Genesis, it should be one with precisely one fruit missing. Except that was thousands of years ago, and trees generally fruit every year. And we're currently out of season. Unless it's a mushroom after all… And a mushroom tree would certainly stand out…

Okay, where's the centre?

Map available. Please note that 'Garden of Eden' has irregular topology.

Show me.

An image appears in my mind. Hah! East indeed. The place is large, far larger than it could have been if the local terrain matched what I saw around Enoch, but it isn't as infinite as it looks. Things repeat. It loops back on itself. You can keep walking in one direction forever but you'll start seeing your own footprints after a while. Gravity is the same as on Earth proper, and light is behaving as if a straight line was a straight line… There's no horizon. I didn't spot it at once because-

I momentarily fight down a wave of nausea.

-the trees cover up where it should be. Ugh.

I lower myself until the panorama is a little less offensive to my stomach.

Okay, so there's dust or moisture or something in the air, so you can't see forever. I can see birds and insects… Which must be eating something. So… Look for a clearing where they aren't eating? Because if they were then there would be intelligent immortal animals around the place.

I pick a direction at random and start flying a search pattern. I may have underestimated how difficult this part would be. Though I suppose that if I'm being forced to spend time somewhere, an idyllic oasis isn't a bad place for it. Hm. There are dead twigs on the ground. Do I risk scooping one up? I'd have to dephase something… No, that can wait until I've got the fruit. I can come back for it or get it on my way out.

I wonder if there are any extinct species here?

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Alienated 17

next

9th October

19:53 GMT +3

Well…

There's a grove. And it's got two trees in it. And they're big. Looks like it was pomegranates after all. I guess someone's going to have to repaint a whole lot of old masters.

And there's an Angel floating just above them with a burning sword in hand. I guess Jehovah hasn't heard of metaphor. I was sort of hoping that the local Angels would be appropriately weird-looking, but this chap… I say chap, I know that medieval Angels were depicted as androgynous and I'm not scanning him to check. This chap is very nearly as generically Warrior Angel as it's possible to be. Porcelain white skin covered in black and gold markings I can't readily identify, and a black tabard with what looks like a science fiction warrior villain's faceplate design painted on in white. His eyes are white voids and aside from the tabard he isn't wearing any other clothes. If he turns around a bit quick the question of his sex will be resolved very quickly.

His helmet is gold in colour and looks like it was designed to look a little like a Hawk's head.

It's just an emblem. No four-headed mutant Angels. I am disappointed.

And no wheel of eyes or self-guided flaming sword. Just a bloke. Okay, he isn't flapping his wings to remain in one place, but Thanagarians can manage that. And if he's noticed me, he isn't showing it. All in all, underwhelming. Not that I'm going to take any unnecessary chances…

I wonder if this is actually Zauriel 16, or if the look is just generic?

I drift down towards ground level, coming closer to the trees. And I wonder how I tell which is which? Or if… They're actually different at all. I seem to remember Eve, Cain, Abel and Seth still existing in the Dream, so it's quite possible that the Tree of Life is some sort of metaphysical power booster… No, that doesn't help me. The obvious thing to do is take a sample of both, but there's an Angel of unknown capabilities hanging just over my head. Let's see… Pomegranates are fertilised by insects and Hummingbirds… But I doubt that any animal that fed from one wouldn't feed from the other as well, so I can't try looking for big-brained Bees.

I float right up to one of the pomegranates, trying to discern its arcane effects from the appearance of its skin. I dunno, it's red. Dad's the family gardener; I've never even eaten one of these. Ring, can we use visual data to perform some sort of chemical analysis?

Affirmative. However, the data which can be generated is limited, and makes numerous assumptions which may prove unreliable in relation to arcane fruit.

The data appears in my mind, and my ring wasn't joking. No fungal or parasitic infections, no disease, good soil nutrition -which is worth noting if this is actually the tree Adam and Eve consumed fruit from, as there's no obvious source for soil enrichment other than Angel shit- and the fruit's fully ripe. And so are all of the others. I drift over to the other tree and try taking a look at those fruit. No, same thing. Nothing that would let me work out which type was which. Assuming that there even was a difference.

Ugh.

Okay, so, what are my options? Asking the Angel is viable, even if 'asking' just involves phasing in and asking for a fruit from one of the trees. If he responds 'You would presume to take a fruit from the Tree of X' then I'll know which tree is which. Taking a fruit in the first place was an act of avarice, so I could meditate on my bond with the Ophidian and try and see it from her point of view… Maybe. Or… There's no mention of anyone else eating a fruit from the Tree. Given the lack of decay, or even difference in levels of ripeness…

No. It can't be that simple. Can it? Okay, Eve supposedly picked the fruit, so if I assume she was about five feet tall…

I drop to ground level and make a circuit, carefully studying for any hilum. Or helpful snake skin. No snake skin but… That's a hilum. Not seeing any others… And my other options aren't all that appealing. Okay then, time to snatch, grab and run. That fruit looks as good as any of the others. Stealth system ready. Angel… Not looking this way, as much as that's likely to matter. Put the trees between us as well. X-ionised knife at the ready. Sword of the Fallen there, but… That's Plan Q in this situation.

Aaaand phase in knife grab fruit deploy lure out move move move!

1:1 "Halt and make yourself known!"

The Angel is clearly looking around for me, white-gold flames flaring along the edge of his sword. Yes, let's.. not do that.

1:2 "No evildoer can escape the sight of Heaven's servants!"

I turn away as I accelerate back towards the waterfalls. I wonder how broadly he's phrasing 'evil'? I'm not sure that the theft of a single fruit really qualifies as 'evil' under normal circumstances, and I have a very definite righteous mission here. Right, he's… Spotting where I removed the fruit, where I appeared… He's making a prayer gesture with white light flickering over the palms of his hands… Shouldn't be able to find me like that.

Spell eater temperature increasing.

Increasing a lot, or increasing a little?

Temperature increase is not immediately threatening.

Awesome. If only Demons were this easy to-. He's heading this way. No, wait… He's heading towards the exit. Which makes sense. he wouldn't have detected any sort of portal opening, so the exit is the only place I could have come from. Okay, drop a kaahuite nail and accelerate-

1:3 "Brothers! I feel the taint of the Fallen Ones!"

-away. That should hold his attention. Now that I'm not bothering to slow down and look around, I'm covering the distance far faster than I did on the way in. I was careful not to touch the kaahuite directly, and the orange light is sufficiently universal that if anything of it remained attached it won't necessarily lead to me. Accelerate more-.

There's a roar of white-gold flame behind me as Might-Be-Zauriel points his sword at the nail and lets rip. The flames pass neatly around.. or.. possibly through the foliage and strike the ground where the nail fell. Mm, doesn't look any stronger than the reaction I was getting from my Angel feather rounds, but I suppose that they're weaker than Gabriel was. On the other hand, the sheet of flame is continuous. I wonder if it comes purely from the sword or if the sword is just an aid?

Not far to go now, looking good. Now, is he intelligent enough to realise what it was that he just incinerated? Or was that a shoot first sort of thing? Shoot first would be more convenient… He's looking around and doing that praying spell thing again… Lure activating in two, one, now.

His head jerks around and he spreads his wings and lunges through the air towards the tree. Hm. Certainly sensitive to damage to the Tree. Looks like I made it. Down the slope, through the exit… And out into the Iranian sky with my pomegranate. Up, up, up…

And phase in.

"Orange Lantern to Zatanna. Scenario beta."

"They spotted you? Are they coming?"

"I don't think so, but let's head towards Bialya before we try exotic transportation just in case."

"Did the Cherubim actually have four heads, or was Ezekiel using artistic license?"

"One head, Eagle themed helmet. I'll show you a picture once we get back to KordTech. Whereabouts are you?"

"Hiding in their… Do they call them mosques?"

"I.. ttttthink they call it a temple, but don't quote me on that. See anything interesting?"

"Some of the paintings were nice. I'm heading out now."

"Holding position."

"Soo? What fruit is it?"

"Pomegranate. I'm almost glad that I'm not going to be the one eating it."

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Alienated 18

next

9th October

12:36 GMT -5

"Euanthe?"

Zatanna raises her left eyebrow. "Did you think she was hiding?"

"No, but she might be non-corporeal or something." I hold out the small section of branch I cut from the Tree of Hopefully Knowledge. "Euanthe?! I've got some pre-lapsarian wood for you!"

"Where is she, anyway?"

"After the.. Demon incident in Guyana, she expressed enthusiasm about fighting more Demons. I suggested that she limit herself to creating more spirit forests over sites that had been used by Demons to break into the world. I.. assume that's what she's doing."

"Want me to try summoning her?"

"No." I tentatively reach towards a nearby elm with my right hand. "I think I can manage that."

Plant desires… They're too simple to be called desires, really. But while I haven't really had much practice since I used this technique to disable Kilowog, touching what they have with a light press of orange light…

The vines behind me burst as a bark-covered Euanthe leaps forth! "Who dares-!" She spots myself and Zatanna and staggers to a stop. "Pavlos? Was.. that.. you..?"

"Yes, I learned from a Green Lantern from-."

She comes right up to me and pats my left cheek with her right hand. "Pavlos, I am extremely fond of you. But never ever do that again."

"Sorry." I show her the piece of pomegranate wood. "Does this make up for it?"

She gives it her full attention, frowning. "That is… Is it wood?"

Zatanna smiles, her arms folded across her chest. "Are you sure you're a Dryad?"

"It looks like wood. But it does.. not…" She plucks it out of my hand and then turns away, holding it right up to her face so that she can study it more closely. "Feel..? Like wood? But it is wood? I do not understand."

"I took it from a place called The Garden of Eden. The god that made it really doesn't like Demons. If you're able to integrate it, integrate its magics-."

She looks around, beaming with joy. "I can kill Demons better! Thank you Pavlos!"

"You're welc-"

I blink, and her right arm has snaked around the back of my head, pulling me down onto her waiting lips.

"-mrrum?"

"Is she supposed to do that?"

My mouth -and.. now tongue apparently- otherwise engaged, I raise my right hand and wave my forefinger back and forth. "Ooath-."

Euanthe steps back, still grinning as a thorn-covered vine cuts into her left forearm. Sap drips freely from her plant-like flesh as the gash becomes wide enough for her-. She pushes the twig into herself with a gasp of pain.

"Euanthe, we've talked about this. Humans tend to be monogamous-."

"But I am not Human." She clenches her left hand into a fist and then relaxes it, her wound being covered by a bark-like scab. "Does a holly tree care whose pollen fertilises its flowers?"

"I… Don't know..?"

She shakes her head. "It doesn't."

Zatanna's trying not to laugh. "Humans are rather different to holly trees. Are you-" I point at her scab. "-alright?"

"Incorporating its magics will take some time. And I am mindful of your warnings; I will not seek out more Demons until I have finished doing so."

I nod. "Good show. Zatanna and I.. are about to head inside. Do you want to come?"

"Into the mountain with the Demon? When I have just told you that I will not seek out Demons until I am ready to destroy them with wooden armour proof against their foul kind?" She sits, then leans forward to lay the palms of her hands on the ground, sighing with satisfaction as the plants reach up to envelop them. "Pavlos, that doesn't make sense."

"You are completely right." I float into the air and start to move away from the top of Mount Justice. "I feel silly for even suggesting it."

And she's stopped paying any attention to me.

"So she wants you to.. fertilise her.. holly bush, huh?" Zatanna's following me, and apparently she's given up on not showing how amusing she finds it. "Could be prickly."

"I'm not fertilising anyone's holly bush." I frown. "And since when do you make.. that sort of joke?"

"Since I stopped going to a Catholic high school." She takes a breath, then stops smiling quite so much. "How's Jade taking the 'Hell' thing?"

"Not… Great…" I stop in the air and look down at Happy Harbour. "Fighting hordes of Demons isn't really part of her skill set. And.. she isn't really sure what she wants to do with her life other than 'not murder people for money'. Dropping her in the deep end by accident put her well outside of her comfort zone…"

"I guess without superpowers there are some things you just can't handle."

"Yeah, but I already said that I wouldn't give her superpowers until she'd been out of prison for a year. I'm trying to sell her on power armour. Need to ask.. Roy if he'd mind giving her some pointers." I extend my right hand and generate a zeta tube construct. "Ladies first."

"Recognised, Zatanna Zatara, A zero six, Orange Lantern, B zero six."

The lights dim and the internal security takes a look at us.

"When did you go back to being 'A'?"

"Identification confirmed."

"When you left Earth. After the League abandoned my dad I didn't feel like joining in any more."

The shield parts and we walk inside the hangar. Sephtian should be waiting in Ms Blaze's… I hesitate to think 'holding area', but since the League heard about her mini-Hell her freedom has been somewhat more restricted than when she first arrived.

"Orange Lantern to Sephtian. We're on our way up."

"I strongly suggest that you hurry. Ms Blaze is having some sort of fit."

My eyes widen, and I transition Zatanna and myself into the lift.

back

Alienated 19

next

9th October

12:40 GMT -5

Canis steps away from Ms Blaze as she writhes against the suppression chains binding her arms, legs and neck. "Done. It does not appear to be helping."

"Sephtian, what happened?"

"I am not.. sure." He holds out his hands towards the glowing network of sigils floating in the air at the behest of his two colleagues -a spiritualist and an arcanist if I remember correctly- and his eyes shimmer as he connects his senses to the output glyph. "It seems that her inherent magics are being disrupted. Attacked in some way."

Zatanna frowns. "The mountain's still warded though, right?"

"Yes. Yes, this isn't a directed attack. I doubt that it is even-"

"Said I was safe… Bastard, oath-breaking Lantern!"

"-technically an attack."

"A conventional sympathetic resonance wouldn't be enough to reach her here. How is this working?"

"If I knew that, then I would be counteracting-." His eyes clear and he leans to his right to peer at Ms Blaze through the glyphs. "Ms Blaze, are you drawing on external power resources?"

"Of course I am, fool!"

"That would be the source of the problem." Sephtian's eyes stop glowing. "The wards here would not stop the sympathetic resonance you yourself created. If someone was able to-"

"There's no way-"

"-access the other-."

"-he has the power to dooouaaagh!"

"-end of the binding..." Sephtian looks down with concern as Ms Blaze spasms uncontrollably. "Given that your brother is increasingly becoming a power in Hell, it does not seem too implausible that he has found a way to interfere with your interface."

"Blaze, if he's back-hacked that mini-Hell of yours, the game's up. There's nothing you can do to maintain access to it and keep him out."

"You did this!"

"I gain nothing from harming you like this. Shut down the Hell, and we can-."

"You're.. trying to.. force me! You know you can't fulfil your end of the bargain and-!"

I hold up the pomegranate so that she can see it.

"Fresh from Eden."

"Give it to me!"

"Release your captives first. I'm not sure what would happen if you ate this, but I'm sure it would be worse with Satanus sticking his oar in. I want to have Sephtian's team examine it first-."

The spiritualist turns his head towards me. "We have names, you know."

"-because we still don't really know what it does. It could make the situation worse, but the only avenue of attack we can think of-."

"Fine!"

"Okay. Zatanna, get ready."

She takes a grip on her staff and holds it up slightly. "Decnahne sexelfer, etarucca taerht noitasiretcarahc…"

I generate manacle constructs binding Ms Blaze. "Canis, please remove the manacles."

He cautiously begins by removing the clamp from her neck.

"Ms Blaze, I would very much appreciate it if you could do anything within your power to avoid sending them to actual-Hell. Even if you care nothing for their suffering, I would remind you that your brother would most likely make use of them if that happened."

"…gnisselb fo evol…"

Canis finishes removing the binding chains from Ms Blaze's legs and steps back. Given her physiological symptoms I suppose I should be impressed that she's remained aware of her environment.

"…and last of all, s'rotaderp htarw."

Zatanna now has glowing violet construct armour which looks a little like a xenomorph made of crystal to complement her glowing violet eyes. Violet light radiates from all corners of the room and I'm sure there's a lot of magic-related things going on there that I'm not perceiving.

"Ms Blaze, we've removed the restrictions-."

Sephtian's assistants dive for the floor in what I'm sure is part of a carefully crafted contingency plan rather than a panicked reflex as hellfire blasts from Ms Blaze's eyes and mouth. The purple-red flames flare about a metre and a half into the air before fading into nothingness. I'm.. tentatively going to assume that she's venting the magics keeping her mini-Hell going, and from the way Sephtian's eyes have gotten brighter I'd guess that he's finding the process fascinating. I wonder how long she's had it for? I rather doubt that it's a recent invention, and-.

The flames cut out, and Blaze's skin.. fades from its previous red to a pale and more Human-like flesh tone. Her horns similarly become first translucent and then transparent before vanishing almost completely. All that is left are small nubs on her forehead… And if I'm honest, aesthetically it looks much better.

"Mmruughh." She shakily opens her eyes, blinking at me. "There. Powerless. Happy now?"

"I won't be happy until you've burned your brother to nothing with golden fire. Sephtian?"

"The attack has… I can't tell whether it is stopped or not, but there are no observable effects on Ms Blaze."

"If we're really lucky, Satanus won't realise and will keep wasting his time on that."

Canis is regarding Ms Blaze curiously. She snarls at him as she sits up. "What are you looking at?"

"You have given up your God-Name in the hope of acquiring a stronger one. I understand the rationale, but there is no true equivalent on Apokolips." Fascinating.

"Lunatic." She moves her attention first to me and then to Sephtian. "Well? When do I get my new wings?"

"Your spiritual energies are still fundamentally demonic, portable demi-plane or not. We will still need some time to study the fruit which Orange Lantern recovered from Eden before we can formulate an attachment ritual."

"Or if you think I'm holding out and you want to take the risk, you're free to eat it now?"

Sephtian's eyes fade as he turns to look at me, his colleagues cautiously picking themselves off the floor. "That would.. be unwise to say the least."

"Give me the fruit."

"Ms Blaze-."

"Give it to me."

I hold it out and she takes it from my hand, studying it carefully.

"You weren't lying. I can feel the Hosts' magic…" She hands it over to Sephtian. "Get back to work."

back

Alienated 20

next

9th October

19:27 +1GMT

"…pleased with our current rate of progress." Queen Clea smiles as the magically created ice sculpture sitting in the middle of the table shifts shape to demonstrate the current state of the Wirbata, the island the Spanish keep trying to convince people is called Ilha do Pico. "Not only is there already a simple runway for light aircraft, but Lord Cyprian informs me that Luthor's people have all sorts of interesting ideas about the island's commercial exploitation."

Mister Swift leans back in his chair. "Certainly, sitting sunning on the sands is sure to suit some."

Queen Clea nods. "That option was raised, though I prefer farming and arcane industry. Security concerns become much less of a problem if visitors are isolated in one part of our territory. I have also been… Well, my equerry has been exchanging polite messages with High King Orin's equerry. You know how these things go."

Adam, Circe and I nod, while Mr Swift just smirks.

"But it's progress. Your embassy was most successful, Lord Grayven."

I smile politely at her compliment. "King Orin is a surprisingly reasonable man. He's also far more interested in improving relations between Poseidonis and Venturia and between Atlantis and the surface than he is in doubling down on a point of law he only recently found out about. Do you have any idea when a.. face to face meeting might occur?"

"We're… Indirectly negotiating a form of words. I'm not so proud as to let the currents impale me on the reef, but I do want some sort of acknowledgement that I've been rather hard done by." I believe that phrase is the Atlantean equivalent of 'cut off my nose to spite my face'. She considers my question. "Perhaps… A further two months? Assuming that no new problems arise."

I nod again. "Glad to hear it. Anything else to report?"

"I'm already noticing the improvement in my own health from your.. 'soul stretching' procedure. My thaumaturgists tell me that they've never seen anything quite like it, and sadly they can't replicate it. Yet. The mana siphon on the other hand is replicable and we're moving into full production. To whom do we pay the royalties?"

"Sunset Shimmer and Zatanna Zatara, but I can put your bursar in contact directly."

She nods. "Remarkably talented young women." She waves her right hand and the ice structure evaporates. "Nothing further to report. I yield the floor."

Mister Swift sits up. "Not much to report on my end. Had a few friendly chats with Jay and a quick team up with the new fellow. An actual endorsement might be a little much to hope for, but I think that hatchet's thoroughly buried. Kobra's missing a bevy of second tier leaders and cannon fodder and I'm confident that I'm closing in on Messer Burr's second in command." His expression looks a little strained. "Canny woman."

Luthor's screen tilts slightly. "Forgive me, but I am a little surprised that anyone is able to hide from you."

"Oh, there are ways. I've encountered one or two before." He smiles. "The trick is finding them before I find you. Still, I'm sure that I will have the matter firmly in hand come New Year."

I nod. "Glad to hear-."

"Oh! And-" He raises his left hand and pulls off the glove covering it, revealing his engagement ring. "-on a more personal note, Captain O'Dare has most graciously accepted my suit, and you will of course all be invited to the wedding just as soon as she tells me when it will be."

Adom nods. "Congratulations."

"Double glad to hear it, then."

Circe seems more amused than anything. "Brave woman."

Mister Swift nods. "She really is. I wouldn't recommend buying new hats just yet though; I got the impression that she was planning on a lengthy engagement." He glances aside for a moment. "I think that's… Ah, aside from my personal thanks for aiding in the realisation of Theodore Knight's dream of mass space flight, naturally."

"I'll be sure to let Lex know, though I'm afraid that it will be a while before the first generation of new ships enters production."

"I'll look forward to seeing it. Have you been up to anything else?"

"If you're yielding the floor..?" He nods. "The first and most basic stage of creating a stellar self defence force is actually having ships. Initially, we'll be limited to prototypes built in workshops as test beds for new systems, but once they start flying about we'll be able to start training crews and generating PR. Our-" I half-turn towards Lex's monitor. "-televisual colleague has been monitoring the responses of various governments and security agencies, and while they're not exactly thrilled about a private citizen having that sort of power it appears that my oversight is giving them some measure of confidence."

Cranius perks up slightly. "You are not sharing, Mister Grayven?"

"Cosmic converter technology isn't particularly expensive. If the plans got out, everyone and their Dog would start making warships. Far better to have a unified structure that nations can buy into, rather than allow that sort of anarchy. We might have to release the designs in a decade or two, but at the moment we're keeping core technologies black boxed and using telepathic commands to prevent those in the know talking about it."

Adom frowns. "'Buy' into?"

"The plan is to set up a unified stellar navy and recruit from all around the world. Naturally, individual countries will try and get as many of their own people in as possible. We can use telepaths to screen out people there purely for spying or sabotage, but recruiting trained military people rather than having to train them from scratch provides too large a benefit for us to not employ it. Once we've had them for a while, I'm confident that they'll come to identify with the goals of the organisation and -at least somewhat- rise above national rivalries. If only because we'll make it clear that we're perfectly happy to blacklist countries not playing along. In the longer term the navy will have its own training schools, and national loyalties will be even less of a problem."

"Work on stabilising the Vega Systems continues apace. Not a lot really new to report there, aside from the first retrofitted Citadelian ships starting their space trials. Once the crews have a slightly better idea what they're doing, I'll schedule some joint exercises with the Crown Imperium."

"Oh, and I'm going to overthrow the government of Britain."

Three sets of eyes blink in puzzlement. Cranius frowns for a moment, then appears to get it. Mister Swift looks more curious.

"You zhink zhat is necessary?" / "A novel concept, but I'm curious as to why."

I wave my right hand and a series of dossiers appears before my colleagues while Lex receives a heavily encrypted file. "Feel free to take a read. In short, the country functions basically fine but the top level of a number of institutions is astonishingly vile. Unlike in Kahndaq where the entire country would have to be reorganised from top to bottom, Britain will be fine with a change of officers."

Mister Swift begins leafing through the dossier at speed, his face becoming inhumanly still as he does so.

"'Necessary', Doctor Cranius?" Queen Clea looks at him with a hint of suspicion in her eyes. "Were you aware of this in advance?"

"I… Made a certain request. Not.. zhis exactly, but... I assume zhat zhis is Mister Grayven's preferred way of fulfilling it."

"It combined well with a guarantee I'd already given to several of my retainers. And frankly it needs to happen. If -upon reviewing the documentation- any of you feel able to participate directly, I would greatly appreciate it. If not, I understand completely. I did not originally envisage this as a group exercise. I merely seek to keep you informed of developments."

Lex inclines his screen slightly. "This does raise a point which I feel is worth addressing. Grayven's records indicate that the 'Light' used a senior field officer to enact their collective designs and assist them in preserving anonymity. Are we at the point where it is worth pooling our resources in that way?"

Adom nods. "If we are casting down corrupt rulers, it would seem to be wise. Though I care little for criticisms of my personal conduct, once I am pharaoh I will be one with my nation. For my people's sake it may be that there are things it is best that I am not seen to be involved with."

Queen Clea shrugs. "It makes a degree of sense. Personally, I'm rather indifferent to this.. 'regime change' business. Not hostile to it, it just doesn't have anything very much to do with my core interests." Another shrug. "Still, if it is to be done, it is best that it is done well."

Mister Swift finishes his reading, shadows curling around his dossier. "I assume that you and the screen have someone in mind?"

"Several people. We can forward you the details after the meeting, for discussion at our next monthly meeting." I look around the table. "Any other business?"

back

Alienated 21

next

10th October

14:59 GMT

Three hours.

I hear the beeping of his heart monitor before I even enter his room. Viewed objectively, I suppose that the Sundown Nursing Home isn't such a bad place to end your days. Good staffing levels, most of them speak English reasonably well, well maintained facilities and grounds, good equipment for those residents whose bodies aren't quite as functional as they once were… I used to find places like this an uncomfortable reminder of where I would eventually end up myself, but since I don't age any more I feel a more… A detached curiosity.

Three hours, though.

I give the nurse checking the target of my visit a nod as he leaves the room, having finished his hourly checks. Since I gave the place advance warning of my visit he doesn't look totally shocked, but suddenly encountering someone like me at close quarters is never going to be a relaxing experience. He steps back to allow me access and I nod and smile in thanks before ducking slightly to pass through the doorway.

Three-. Three hours.

I pause just inside the door to visually inspect my target. 'Death warmed up' would be a generous description. His face and hands are shrivelled, due to the fact that he can barely eat and struggles to keep food down when he does. There are drips in each arm, an oxygen mask over his face and a catheter plugged into his penis. He's got some hair left, but it's a far cry from the thick black locks he had during his prime. That said, I can still see glimpses of his distinguished former self; his Roman nose is as distinct as ever, as are his strangely pointed ears.

No one is really sure how old he is now; the best guesses I was able to dig up suggest somewhere between seventy and eighty. Ring scans say that he's mostly European, most likely with a single Middle Eastern grandparent. The rest of his genes come from all sorts of places. One of his lungs isn't original; British Secret Service legend has it that not only did he insist on remaining awake during the operation but he also strapped an explosive collar to the necks of the chirurgeon's family to detonate if anything went wrong.

And then there's the rest of the damage. Scars from bullet wounds, shrapnel wounds and chemical and fire burns litter his skin. But the really nasty stuff is underneath all of that. Neurotoxin build-ups in his synapses make him shake whenever he tries to move, and their effect on his brain has made speech almost impossible for him. It also -and a ring scan confirms what medical staff only suspected- leaves him in constant pain. It's amazing that he's still alive, really.

And I'd feel more sympathetic if I hadn't just spent three hours-!

I walk around to the side of his bed, take a solidly-built chair out of subspace and sit down, facing him. He'd been watching me from behind lidded eyes since I opened the door, but now he abandons the pretence and opens them a little wider.

"Three fucking hours." He keeps watching me. "Three hours, just… Staring at it, written on a piece of paper. I knew there was a joke there somewhere. I've studied Batman's files on the Riddler, the Joker, Catwoman… Even Cluemaster. I'm not unused to people using thematic false names. Film characters…" I narrow my eyes. "Bad puns."

I think he's trying to smile. Git.

"So this is where you ended up, Mister Near." I make a show of looking around. "Not bad, I suppose. The SIS still think you died during your retirement job in Qurac… Those who don't think you're living in a mansion somewhere, laughing at them. They never came anywhere near here, and I'll freely admit that I had to cheat to find you."

"Hruuuuh."

It comes out as a pained wheeze, the intent behind it too indistinct for my rings to identify a clear meaning.

"I doubt that you've heard of me. My name's Grayven. I'm an alien from planet Apokolips." I wave my hands and shake my head. "I know what it sounds like in your language, I didn't pick it."

"Hruh."

"Oh, I'm sorry. Dreadfully rude of me. Here." Two orange cables extend from my ring and attach themselves to the back of his neck. "There. That should make speaking to me a little easier."

"Well done."

The voice is based on one of the few surviving recordings of his natural voice. One of the many ways he used to vex people was subtly changing his own accent, apparently at random. Combined with his compulsive lying, it made it impossible to even guess at his point of origin.

"You covered your tracks expertly-" Three hours! "-but I.. had access to technology that you simply didn't have the means to counteract."

"Employer?"

"Why does that matter?"

"Credit. Curiosity. Dying."

"I work for myself, for the most part. And, hm." I make a point of looking him over, then generate a transparent construct image of the injuries afflicting his body. "Yes, I do believe that you are." I frown. I know that he's going to lie to me, but I have to ask. "Why here?"

"Planned retirement after Qurac. Wanted time to write memoir. Too injured."

"Ah, yes. I thought that the last few assassinations lacked your usual precision. So you already had.. some sort of evacuation plan, ended up back here and…" I look him over again. "I suppose the life takes a toll."

"Your intention?"

"I understand that you made a point of targeting criminals because you found that fighting police and.. mid-tier superheroes was too easy. Having seen the weakness of some of the secret identities they use, I suppose that I can see where you were coming from." I sit back. "I am.. engaged in certain work that could use a man of your talents. The pay is good, the opportunities manifold and the work… I think that you'll find it fascinating. The world has only gotten madder since your retirement."

"Hruurh."

Nearly a laugh, and the less damaged left side of his mouth curves upwards a little.

"And medical technology has come on such a way. For those with the right connections." His eyes narrow a little. "Patching your failing corpus up would be the work of a few moments. If you're interested. Alternatively, you may elect to remain here… And die in considerable pain in perhaps two years. Or if you consider your life's work to be over, I am willing to kill you. It would be quick and painless."

"Now, I realise that working for other people isn't really your thing. But I do hope that you'll consider it anyway. You would be working mostly under your own direction and with considerable freedom in how you pursue your objectives. I will consider your obligation to me for healing you repaid in full for two years of your time, for which you would also be compensated conventionally as well. If you were planning on parting company with me in the not too distant future, having access to my intelligence resources would be a considerable advantage."

"Any initial thoughts? Questions? Queries?"

"Targets?"

"Your first target will be the government of Kahndaq. We want the current lot gone, replaced with people a little less… Self-absorbed. For much of your first year I imagine that you'll be doing the same sort of thing: removing governments and reorganising failing states. Obviously I don't expect you to rely purely on the application of force. You'll have other levers of power to pull, we're trying to create stable states, not chaos. Once that's taken care of, we're also building a space fleet…"

"Space fleet?"

"I'm afraid that I can't give all the gossip to someone on the outside. Now, I know that you're easily quixotic enough to turn me down just to see if I come back, but I've got a rather fun signing-on bonus if you give me an affirmative answer now." I take a dossier out of subspace. "Some truly disturbing information on the British elite. I should warn you: this has a pretty short shelf life."

He tilts his head back a tiny bit, considering.

"Accepted."

"Glad to hear it, Harold." I raise my left hand. "Welcome to the team."

back

Alienated 22

next

13th October

15:03 GMT -5

I push open the door to Sephtian's New York workshop. "Professor? Any-"

The Pomegranate of Good and Evil is sitting in a large and.. slightly frightening resonance array, and those parts of the computer screens and electronic blackboards around it that I can see through the crowds of Atlanteans are covered in what looks like… Alright, it looks like total scrawl to me, but I'm sure that it's all very clever.

"-progress?"

Sephtian worms through the crowd of his colleagues, right hand raised to draw my attention. Last time something like this happened I transitioned him out, and got a thorough telling off for using pseudo-arcane devices in a controlled laboratory. This time I just wait patiently until he has managed to free himself.

"Some."

"Can you.. be more precise?"

"Yes. Essentially-" He turns towards the centre of the.. Device. "-that is not a normal fruit."

I smile uncertainly. "Yes?"

"In.. point of fact I am uncertain that it is a fruit at all. Are you familiar with the use of…" He trails off, looking me over and weighing up my probable knowledge base. "Concept reinforcement?"

"Yes, I sometimes eat at a vodun restaurant where they enhance the food with the idea of the food. Is that what you-?"

"Ah! Yes, just so. I will have to try-." He closes his eyes for a moment, and glowing lines appear over his scalp. Some of those I actually recognise. "It is far easier to-."

"Sephtian, that was an alertness and mental acuity spell. How much sleep have you been getting?"

"My king and country are threatened by Demons. I will sleep once Ms Blaze is ready to defend them." I'm not sure that's.. sensible, but I'm hardly one to talk. "It is far easier to reinforce the strongest characteristics of the thing, and hard to act against those characteristics without destroying the object. For example, I could make an.. iron sword that was far harder and more resilient than an iron sword could normally be, but it would be difficult to make one that was bendy or capable of changing colour. Iron does not bend well, and has a narrow range of colours."

"With you so far. So was.. this pomegranate reinforced with the essence of fruit? Super-antioxidants?"

"No, no. That was my original thought, but… No. I do not believe that the tree this fruit grew from began as a seed. The Christians believe that it was created by their god directly?"

"Something like that." I blink. "Wait; was it?"

Half a dozen Atlanteans pull their attention away from what they're working on. "No!"

Sephtian makes a dismissive gesture. "Perhaps. It is impossible to rule out that sort of intervention somewhere, but we are beginning to grasp the process by which it could have happened. Do you know how old the Earth is?"

"Somewhere between four and five billion years, based on isotope decay in rocks."

"I am told that following the chronology of monotheist holy books, the age of the Earth is revealed to be something in the order of seven thousand years. How would you account for the difference?"

"I wouldn't. I would assume that the chronology was bunk, a mismatch of patently false legend and half-remembered history."

"And yet you have been to the Garden of Eden. Do you not now wish to reconsider?"

"No. I saw a forest and a magic bloke with wings. The fact that it matches a creation myth doesn't prove anything. I've met Hera and I don't believe that the Titans created the universe."

"So where did the Garden come from? And why could you still see where the fruit Adam and Eve ate came from? Any normal tree would have either continued to grow or died, and in either case there would have been nothing left to see."

He walks towards the centre of the room, gazing at the fruit.

"I assumed that parts of the garden were in some sort of magic.. suspended animation, only changing if acted on externally. Or maybe just the trees. Why? What do you think was going on?"

"Understand… Any evidence we could collect in the face of a truly omnipotent being could simply be fabricated. And any evidence gathered in the face of an immensely powerful and skilful being is at least suspect."

"Okay..? What's that got to do with concept reinforcement?"

"This fruit is a fruit. Every magic I use upon it to directly understand its nature shows it to be a fruit. But as I look deeper… It does not have certain associations which a normal fruit would. And there are associations which are strange to see in a fruit."

"Like what?"

"Soul-impacting traits which we.. think would have the desired effect on Ms Blaze. Fruit have little to do with moral development in conventional situations. But more than that, there is a faint trace of the Dreaming upon it."

"Seven thousand years' worth of stories and three major world religions, centred around an inherently arcane location. I'd be surprised if there wasn't some-."

"That… That could cause it. But our calculations show that other possibilities are far more likely."

"Does the doorway I passed through lead to the Dreaming? Is that where the Garden actually is? There's a portal in Erebos, but I didn't have any reason to look at it."

"Possibly. Or perhaps it was brought into the world from the Dreaming. A manifestation of the idea of Eden becoming the reality of Eden."

"Is that just your favourite theory, or is it actually the most likely one?"

"My favourite. Are you certain they will not let us study it directly?"

"They wouldn't agree to it. Is there a great need to force the issue?"

"Perhaps-? No. Truly, no. Not so far as this task is concerned. It is just that it is possible, and it is such a fascinating application of Dreaming magic. With the Dreaming itself becoming more stable in the last few decades, this fruit may open an entirely new field of study."

"But back to the matter at hand..?"

"The Dreaming magic is too poorly studied in cases like this for us to attempt the transformation synthetically. The only thing for Ms Blaze to do is to decide whether or not she wishes to eat the fruit."

"Will it kill her?"

"I do not think so, but I have not studied her for long enough to say for certain. If she agrees, I will prepare the wings for chirurgery."

"You're sure you know how to do that?"

"Attaching the wings is simple. I do not know enough about theurgy to know how attaching wings to a humanoid body could allow them to fly, but I assume that it is an innate magic that I would need to study directly to understand. The Angel blood has some interesting alchemical and biological properties, but I do not believe that it will present a problem."

"I'll let her know. How long will you need to prepare?"

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Alienated 23

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14th October

10:27 GMT -5

"I'm not taking it personally or anything, but how come you didn't talk to me earlier?" Mr Cassidy looks away from the enchanted transparent aluminium between us and where Ms Blaze is preparing to eat the pomegranate. The fruit itself has already been opened and the seeds are sitting in a bowl next to the operating table. "I mean, I'm not an expert on magic or anything, but I sure wouldn't have any problem with these Atlantean guys studying me."

"Because I thought you were a guy in demon-themed power armour."

"Oh." I think he's frowning, but the horns do rather restrict the movement of the skin covering his forehead. "Sure, I started like that, but I've been a real Demon for years."

"Right. I looked at your file, read that your confrontation with Nebiros resulted in your armour getting infused with demonic magic and sealing you inside. I didn't realise that you'd… Actually changed into a demon. I didn't think that was even possible."

"Guess Neron doesn't care about what you think is possible." He turns back to the window. "Or what I think is possible."

And given what you had to do to make it happen, I doubt that you'll give me an honest answer if I ask you about it. "You're welcome to stick around and have them study you after we've-"

The door to the observation room opens and I turn to face my other guest. Given the sharp economic downturn Aberrance has undergone since several major stakeholders realised that the possibility of giant rampaging monsters had been factored into their low rental pricing, I thought that sending Cranius a few invitations to things within his field of study might be a way of smoothing things over. This is the first one he's actually responded to in any way more positive than giving me a short lecture on authentic Transylvanian swearing.

"-finished here. Doctor von Schadel, thank you for coming."

"Yes. Be grateful." He turns his head -himself, I suppose- away from me as he walks towards Mr Cassidy. "Unt who might you be?"

"I'm Blue Devil."

"Are you.. naturally like zhis?"

"'Naturally' might be pushing it, but this is my actual body, if that's what you mean."

"Hm." Cranius looks through the window. "So, vhat is zhe plan here? She eats zhe fruit unt zhey plug in zhe wings?"

"Err…" Mr Cassidy half-shrugs and looks at me.

"Essentially, yes. The fruit forms a bridge between-."

"As zhe uncreation process forms a functioning biological bridge between zhe incompatible tissues, so zhe magics of zhe fruit will allow zhe demon to use ozher magics."

"Yeah." Mr Cassidy looks at me. "You wouldn't happen to have more of those fruit, would you? Be nice to be able to go to church without catching fire."

"If the Bible's anything to go by, she only needs to eat a small part of the fruit. You're welcome to a mouthful of whatever's left."

He bows his head slightly. "You seriously think that a demon is going to leave part of a magic fruit?"

"If she starts convulsing uncontrollably before she can finish it, then yes."

He shakes his head. "Won't happen. Unless it actually kills her, she'll eat the whole thing. You put a source of power in front of a demon… They just can't say 'no'."

"I'll have to look into getting a whole lot of enchanted artefacts with 'Acme TNT' printed on the side."

"Hah! Ah, they're not quite that dumb, but it does make them predictable. She's gonna eat the whole thing. Just watch."

"In that case, I think Sephtian took a few samples. You can have those."

He nods. "Thanks."

Dr Balewa joins Sephtian in the test chamber, the runic network inscribed on every available surface shimmering as he does so. Sephtian himself waves his right hand in a circle, casting the spell which will allow us to hear them. "Ms Blaze, if you would kindly lie down."

She complies, taking position face down on the operating table next to the protective case containing the wings. The biomancer performing the attachment is outside the room and will stay there until they're sure that the alterations to Ms Blaze's arcane structure have stabilised.

"Feh. Before you and Kobra came to Aberrance, zhis would heff been a simple process for me. I would not need zhese… Atlanteans."

"Doctor, if we hadn't come to Aberrance there wouldn't be an Aberrance any longer. I'm sorry that we weren't able to prevent the attack but we weren't the ones who initiated it."

He turns his head-body around without bothering to turn the torso he's riding on along with it. Mr Cassidy's eyes widen somewhat. "I have only recently finished attaching zhe replacement xenografts for all of zhose who were maimed. Wizh no Kane flesh I must do it manually, linking every nerve unt vein unt artery. I had to invent new anti-rejection treatments just to make zhe process work at all!"

"Oh, well done. Do you need help marketing them or distributing them? Because that's something that-."

"You guys mind taking that outside? Some of us are trying to watch a hot demoness eat a pomegranate."

Cranius swivels back, and I walk closer to watch Ms Blaze chomp her way through the pomegranate seeds. As Mr Cassidy said, she's going at it with gusto. Mr Cassidy is.. smiling-. No, that's a leer as Ms Blaze's enthusiasm results in pomegranate juice running down her chin and onto her chirurgical gown.

Huh.

"Human.. women not do anything for you-?"

"When I wore Blue Devil armour… I was stuck inside, and it wasn't anatomically accurate." Ooh. "Now… Being a Demon comes with instincts… Demons don't see humans as people. I can talk to people, but… Trying anything physical would.. just be weird."

"I sssee."

Ms Blaze sets the bowl down, frowning to herself. Still a few seeds left, so I guess Sephtian can keep his samples.

Then she starts shaking.

Sephtian cautiously steps closer. "Ms Blaze, can you understand me?"

Her face is a rictus of misery, tears streaming down her face, finger claws tearing through her cheeks and into the palms of her hands and she presses them to her face.

"Wait, what's happening to her?"

"I'm not certain, but I'd guess that she just gained the capacity for guilt."

"And she's how old?"

"At least seven thousand, and she's spent a decent proportion of that sending souls to a demiplane Hell she used to power her magics."

"Is-? Can she go ahead?"

"We knew this could happen. She gave consent in advance, so-" Dr Balewa steps forward and places his right palm against her forehead. Her eyes roll back as she loses consciousness. "-we have a plan in place. The chirurgery doesn't require her conscious involvement."

Dr Balewa lays her down as Sephtian starts checking on the status of her metaphysique.

"Still, as I told her at the start: if this does all go tits up…" I shrug. "Then we've killed a seven thousand year old monster, and learned a great deal about how Demon magic works. We still come out ahead."

Mr Cassidy glances at me sidelong. "Think maybe you wanna eat some of those seeds as well?"

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Alienated 24

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14th October

11:03 GMT -5

"…sure what's happening to her blood."

The biomancer has finished making the attachment. They're keeping Ms Blaze unconscious for now, because the absolute last thing they need is for her to try using magic of any kind. Mr Cassidy was somewhat interested when they made the initial attachment, but as they moved on to the parts that were less visible he started reading the research notes Sephtian provided. Cranius on the other hand appears to have found the whole thing absolutely enthralling.

Sephtian gently touches the flesh of the left wing with his right hand. "The wings appear to produce the blood ex nihilo. No test we performed showed it having an adverse effect on any living creature. Do you have some reason for believing that something has changed?"

"The blood moving back into the wings isn't having the vitalising effect that it should."

"Risk to the patient?"

"Negligible in the short term, but she'll be carrying vestigial wings on back and have dangerously high blood pressure. Pure thaumaturgy isn't my field… There probably are non-biomantic fixes, but-."

"Fueh!" Cranius swivels to look at me. "Lantern. Let me speak mit zhem."

"Doctor, with the greatest-."

"I heff already build an Angel. I know how to do zhis."

"Assembling Ms Parish was considerably more simple than this-."

"Unt not everyzhing I learned from my former master has made it into my work in Aberrance."

I lift my right hand to my right ear. "Professor, Cranius would like a word."

Sephtian turns to look at the window. "By all means, Doctor."

Cranius clears his throat. "I assume zhat you are not able to directly mould zhe angelic tissues?"

"Normal speaking voice is fine-."

The biomancer nods. "They accept being grafted to foreign tissue without any sign of rejection, but it resists direct manipulation. If I had more samples it would be a fascinating subject to study."

"Yah, okay. I suggest taking small-"

Mr Cassidy's phone vibrates and he gets it out of his pocket to take a look at the screen.

"-samples of the tissue…"

"Ah, Lantern? I think you should take a look at this."

I turn away from the window and look at his oh… Darn it. "Is that live?"

"Yes."

A somewhat distant picture of the Angel I evaded in Eden -or a look-alike- stares back at me from Mr Cassidy's phone. And from the look of the surrounding buildings… About four hundred metres away. KordTech New York has good wards, and we added extra spells before attempting this, but…

"Do you actually have anything to do with Angels?"

"Haven't yet. And I can't say that I'm all that eager to start right now."

"Good Catholic like you?" He raises his left hand and pokes his left horn. "If that's a problem, you may want to consider the practical benefits of converting to Hellenism."

"Why? Would I stop being a Demon?"

"I suppose not."

"…should serve to convince-."

"Sorry, Doctor, Professor. Something's come up and I need to deal with it. Do you have everything you need?"

"No, of course not. We're going to have to work out whether Dr von Sch-."

"Is there anything you need from me?"

"Oh. No."

"Right." I raise my right hand to my forehead and focus on the groundskeeper working on flowerbeds outside, appearing alongside him for a moment before heading up into the air.

He doesn't bother looking around.

Since I'm not hiding my precise location now, I scan the Angel with a bit more effort than I dared while in the Garden. And… Yeah, alright, in the case of an Angel I've got no reason to be annoyed about him having wards that good. Or… Angels don't have free will, right? Would I..? Even be able to scan something that had no connection to the orange light? No, no, I should be able to… I mean, most forms of scan…

The Angel looks in my direction, despite the buildings in the way, and flies upwards on an intercept course. Flaming sword still in sheath, though I suppose that might change once it confirms who I am. Well, though I'd rather avoid a fight like this over a city, attacking me with a burning sword without openly violent provocation would clearly be grounds for self defence… But I don't really want New York to become the next Gomorrah. Heh, which is ironic, because the wings of the Angel who was responsible for that obscene slaughter are being attached to a Demon right now.

I stop about a mile from the surface and wait for the Angel to catch up with me. He appears to be flapping a little more than the Thanagarians do, probably due to using sympathetic magic to fly rather than Nth metal. When he reaches my height he stops about ten metres away with his wings raised and unmoving, his expressionless face studying me.

"Good morning. I'm the Illustres of the Orange Lantern Corps. Whom am I addressing?"

2:1 "I am Zauriel of the Host of Eagles, Messenger of the Most High."

"And are you here for business or pleasure?"

2:2 "I am here upon the Lord's business. There was a theft from the Garden of Eden, from which the children of Adam and Eve are-."

"Let's not draw this out. It was me."

2:3 "You admit your guilt freely?"

"Yes. I needed the fruit, and I wouldn't ask anyone to do anything I wouldn't do-. Unless I wasn't capable of it, obviously."

Zauriel nods. 2:4 "That is good. The most concerning possibility was that an agent of Hell had penetrated the Garden. Still, I felt the presence of the demonic most clearly. Do you have an explanation for that?"

"I just used a small amount of kaahuite as a distraction. And I certainly don't work for any Demon. I slew the First of the Fallen earlier this year, and Satanus is working really hard at getting on my bad side."

2:5 "I am pleased. That means that what comes next will be simple."

"It's my hand, right?" I pluck the power ring from my right ring finger and transfer it to my left index finger. Then I create a construct blade. "The penalty for theft?"

2:6 "I would not deprive a starving man of his means of obtaining sustenance. You simply-."

"Do I look like I'm starving to you?"

2:7 "Did you take the Fruit in ignorance of its nature?"

"Does scry proof, phasing power armour suggest ignorance to you?" I tilt my head to the side for a moment. "Some ignorance. I didn't know exactly how it worked. But I had a fair idea."

2:8 "You have not consumed it yourself. Do you intend to work some feat of magic with it? Or did you seek to use its properties for the benefit of another?"

"Yes? Look, really; I'm fine with the hand thing. Can we just-?"

2:9 "You are not required to maim yourself."

"Then what do you want? What am I supposed to do?"

2:10 "You simply have to repent of your sin and ask the Lord's forgiveness. And he shall be merciful and grant it, and your sin will be wiped away."

I stare, the corners of my mouth turning downwards. "Well that's not going to happen."

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Alienated 25

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14th October

11:08 GMT -5

3:1 "I do not understand."

And here's where things get frustrating. "Which part of 'no' eludes your comprehension?"

3:2 "You are willing to mutilate yourself, but not ask the pardon of one who loves you and will forgive you anything. It is senseless."

"Okay. For a start, he isn't my god. I haven't gone to church since Zatanna wanted to stop in at one last year and I harangued the choir for making a mess of Good King Wenceslas. I haven't gone into one for devotional purposes for… I don't even know how long. I worship Eris, Hellenistic Goddess of Chaos. When I die, my soul will be judged by Hades, as advised by Aeacus."

3:3 "The Lord Most High takes no offence. He merely asks that you live a moral life, and strive always to turn away from vice."

"What happened to 'I am the Lord your God'?"

3:4 "Jesus Christ."

Okay, that's.. actually a reasonable answer. "Is there some sort of compensation I could pay instead?"

3:5 "Forgiveness cannot be bought or sold. It is not for the harm done to God that you must repent, for He is beyond all harm. It is for the harm done to you, in turning from the path of righteousness."

"I think that you and I have mutually incompatible ideas about what righteousness is. And anyway, I don't feel bad about it; I could say the words, but I'd be lying and I doubt that counts."

3:6 "I commend you for your honesty. Do you understand why theft is wrong?"

"Generally speaking, depriving people of the products of their labour without compensation discourages them from labouring in future and makes the person doing the stealing unproductive, since they merely parasitise on another."

3:7 "Do you feel then that the Lord of Hosts not personally labouring in the gardens undermines his claim to its fruit?"

"No." Heh. "Though that is an amusing image. I didn't know that Angels could joke."

He doesn't smile and he doesn't blink. 3:8 "It was not a joke. I am trying to understand your mindset, that I may better escort you back to the side of righteousness."

"No." Uh… "Maybe, a bit? A farmer labours because they need the food to eat and to trade for other necessities and luxuries. If the story of Genesis is remotely accurate then God has no need for the Trees at all. They're literally just there, doing no one any good."

3:9 "And you believe that your need was greater than God's commandment?"

"God's commandment doesn't apply to me. I'm not descended from Adam and Eve. Or.. any Human from this world. And, actually, yes. If Satanus wasn't reaching out to strike at Earth with all of the forces of Hell then I wouldn't be looking for better anti-Demon weapons. Why haven't Duma and Remiel stopped him?"

3:10 "I do not question the methods of the Most High. And while I understand that the beliefs of the pre-Christian Greeks made no mention of the Garden of Eden, you yourself have travelled it. Surely you now realise-."

"I don't know whether the Humans around here are all descended from them or not, though I rather doubt it. But I'm not." He doesn't immediately respond, though the compassionate gaze is starting to feel a little condescending. "Seriously. Parallel universe. Can you..? Tell when someone's lying to you?"

3:11 "Normally, I can weigh a being's spirit merely by looking at them. Though the magics you have woven about you are giving me difficulty."

"Fine." I move my spell eaters into subspace and float closer to him. "Come on. Hand on forehead, or.. whatever. Ignore the Snake."

He raises his right hand in benediction, then moves it towards me. His skin is utterly opaque; even this close I can't see veins or arteries under it, or any sign that he's not an animated marble statue. My environmental shield parts as he lightly presses against my forehead, letting me feel the wind for the first time since I flew up here. Chilly, but it shouldn't be a problem-.

Um. What's that?

Ring, scan-.

Zauriel lifts his hand away. 3:12 "You are telling the truth. Your nature is strange."

"I know." I drift back to my former position. "So, yes, trespassing and theft, but the aim was to create anti-Demon weaponry and I wasn't breaking any specific prohibition. Are we done now?"

3:13 "Not until you repent."

"But I was specifically trying to serve the greater good! I practice utilitarian ethics, not deontological ones! If you want me to repent, you'll have to demonstrate that there was a better way to achieve what I wanted to achieve which I might reasonably have known about. And if you do that? I will gladly repent and try and do that sort of thing in future. But I'm not going to ever repent for doing something that I couldn't have done any better!"

3:14 "I have been instructed to ensure that you repent, and I will not leave your side until you do."

Getting.. closer to dosing him with pomegranate seeds. As long as I take his heart out before his superiors find out that he knows how to evil he won't actually go to Hell when they cast him out…

No. No. I'm not doing that to someone whose only crime is to be slightly irritating. But having him following me around isn't acceptable. How do I get rid of him?

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Alienated 26

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14th October

11:32 GMT -5

But how to do it… "Alright. I've told you that I don't intend to repent. What are you supposed to do now?"

4:1 "Remain by your side until I persuade you otherwise."

"And… That's it?"

4:2 "Should you attempt further evil, I would of course intervene to stop you. But my task is to ensure your repentance, not to punish you myself."

I.. might be able to work with this…

"Are you able to pursue courses of action which might make it more likely that I would repent? Or.. that might allow you to better understand why I was refusing?"

4:3 "To the first, of course. To the second, it would depend upon what you were to suggest."

"Have you spent the last few thousand years in the Garden of Eden, or was there some sort of rotation?"

4:4 "My assignment to the Garden was recent. For most of Human history it has been my task to watch over particular individuals and guard them against harm."

"Okay, that's a start. And.. why exactly did you get reassigned?"

He noticeably hesitates, as if mulling over his possible answers. 4:5 "I do not see how that is relevant to your repentance."

"You won't be able to persuade me to repent without understanding why I'm refusing. I want to explain that to you, but we are two very different people and I don't know you well enough to give you an explanation you can understand."

4:6 "I expressed a desire to resign from my post and become a mortal man."

"You can do that? I didn't think Angels had that sort of free will."

4:7 "It is unusual, but it is permitted. My duty involved me forming a spiritual bond with the one I was assigned to protect. That… Closeness has certain-."

"Who's the lucky woman? Assuming that Leviticus is canon."

4:8 "Her name is Shannon Coyne. In answer to your enquiry regarding free will, I will never refuse the orders of my superiors. I will not question the Divine Plan. And there may be certain concepts which are difficult for me to understand, such as your truculence on the matter of your redemption."

4:9 "On the other hand, I am uncertain as to whether my mind is truly more limited than that of a deeply devout Human. What do you believe that free will means? What is it that you think that I lack?"

"But if you don't lack anything, then what was that whole thing about Adam and Eve not eating the fruit about?"

4:10 "It may be that I do lack some capacity of intellect which you possess. But if that were so, how would I know of it?"

"The obvious way would be for you to try one of the fruit yourself, then see if there was any difference in the way you think. Of course, to make it a really fair test we'd need to have a variety of test subjects, which would require more fruit-."

4:11 "No."

"No to eating it yourself, or no to getting more?"

4:12 "No to returning to the Garden. I am willing to consider consuming the fruit, once I have seen for myself that you have not corrupted it in some way."

I nod. "Sounds like I was wrong about the 'free will' thing." I begin dropping back towards KordTech. "This way please."

Zauriel nods, folding his wings back slightly to follow me.

Ring, covert communication.

Compliance.

Mr Cassidy?

"Hey, Orange Lantern. You need a hand?"

No, but I do need to know whether or not you're… Allergic to Angels.

"He's coming here? Ahh… Haven't really had a.. whole lot of contact with that side of the fence. Should be okay so long as he doesn't sanctify the whole building."

Righty-oh. Please let Sephtian know we're coming.

"Will do. They've already moved Ms Blaze into recovery."

There's a definite crowd gathering around the periphery of the KordTech facility, and I can see camera phones raised towards us as we head for the laboratory. I make a point of landing outside of it and waiting for Zauriel to join me. He does so, looking around in a mildly curious way. I start towards the facility's entrance and he follows me as I push in through the door.

"Okay, one thing you need to know. One of my colleagues, Mister Cassidy, had a bit of a Demon.. incident-."

4:13 "I know of the Spawn of Nebiros. If you are concerned for his safety, be not afraid. My purpose is your rehabilitation, not his chastisement."

"Now, he genuinely wants to repent." I wave to the flabbergasted receptionist and then head down the corridor in the direction of the recovery room. "If you feel like dropping a few hints about how he could achieve that, I'm sure that he'd be very grateful."

4:14 "I regret to inform you that once one is as wedded to demonic power as he is, there is little hope for it. Mere moral reformation is not enough; it would take a feat of great magic to enable a Demon to enter the Kingdom of God."

Sounds like one for Thana, then. "If you tell him that, he'll at least know what he's got to aim for. And I assume that you have no objection to his Demon hunting?"

4:15 "None at all. Indeed, I would applaud it were it not for the fact that it has cost him his immortal soul."

We walk through the outer wards and Zauriel actually starts.

4:16 "I had no idea that you had sought Gabriel's assistance in this matter. If he has achieved redemption, why did he not simply request the use of the fruit? He had the authority."

I don't respond immediately, instead striding ahead and entering the recovery room. Ms Blaze is suspended in a harness which is designed to keep her upper body from pressing on anything while she sleeps. Mr Cassidy staggers slightly as he puts the bowl containing the remaining seeds down on a table, the exposed parts of his body closest to Zauriel visibly starting to smoulder. Sephtian and Cranius lean slightly to look around me as Zauriel follows me into the r-.

4:17 "What have you done?"

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Alienated 27

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14th October

11:37 GMT -5

How to put-?

"A razher fascinating piece of bioengineering, no?" Cranius -who wasn't made by Jehovah and is probably the only dyed-in-the-wool atheist here- grins inhumanly as he says it. "We take zhe wings from your late colleague, unt wizh a little help from zhe fruit from zhe Garden of Eden, irreconcilable magics become reconciled."

5:1 "Those wings belonged to Gabriel."

"Yes? He was not using zhem. Zo zhe consent issue might be a little awkward."

"Didn't your superiors throw Gabriel from heaven after he had sex with a Succubus?"

5:2 "He was sent to a place of punishment to be chastised for his crimes."

"The First of the Fallen made him lick his shoes clean before killing him, and then gave him his special attention while he was in Hell. I assure you, not having his wings was the least of his concerns after your superiors kicked him out for what was, basically, an honest mistake."

5:3 "If you believe that his chastisement was excessive, why have you committed this.. horror?"

"If I wanted to free Gabriel, I would need to either sneak into Hell or force my way into Hell. I'm not usually very good at sneaking, and I'm not up to taking on all of the legions of Hell by myself. This means that I need allies and weapons. Gabriel's wings and-" I detach the Ace of Winchesters from my armour and work the lever. "-this gun were available. And because fighting Hell is something I need to do, I'm going to make use of them." I give the gun a shake. "How many Angels died for the metal in this?"

5:4 "Many. But she is not some device! She is a horrifying improvement on normal Arch-Fiends, able to walk the Earth with no need for external empowerment! And you have found a way to bestow upon her the power of Gabriel, perverting their holy nature!"

"No. I mean…" I glance at Sephtian, who seems more than content to let me deal with this. "We tried." I stow the Ace. "But it turns out that's impossible. The energies cannot be reconciled."

5:5 "Fallen Angels found a way to reconcile them quite well after the Fall."

"Well, Lucifer could not be reached for an explanation on how he pulled that one off. What we did was remove as much of Hell's power from her as we could, put her in a thaumically isolated location and then used the Fruit to add other energies. Of course, if you want to check…"

I step aside to allow him to get closer.

"Be my guest."

Zauriel takes a step closer to the bed, then opens his mouth and… Sings a note that somehow sounds like an entire choral symphony.

It's…

It's beautiful, the sound like the whole world singing in perfect unity…

I…

I reach up to my right cheek where my eye appears to have watered in response.

Ms Blaze's new wings flare slightly in response, but she doesn't otherwise react. Zauriel's eyes widen, but he maintains the song for another few seconds before closing his mouth.

5:6 "You speak the truth. The taint of Hell's magic has been entirely expunged."

"If I'd been lying, I wouldn't have brought you here."

He turns to face the rest of us. 5:7 "Do you understand what you have done? You have enabled a being inherently outside God's grace to come within it."

"I don't really care about your god's opinion on the matter, but that was.. broadly what we were trying to do."

5:8 "But this was not merely a vainglorious, hubristic claim. You managed it, and committed only minor sins in the commission."

"Do you understand now why I won't repent?"

5:9 "I should inform my king of this."

"I'm not stopping you."

He starts to turn and then stops. 5:10 "But.. I am under orders. I may not leave until you repent."

"Did the Source personally tell you that I need to repent? Or did someone else in the Silver City dispatch you?"

5:11 "We are all part of the Most High, agents of His divine will. But my particular orders did not come directly from the Mind of God."

"So… Would you say that this capacity was something they didn't know about, and would probably have altered their priorities if they had known about it? Does it invalidate your orders?"

5:12 "N-n-no. Orders are sacrosanct, our hierarchy put in place by the Most High. I cannot disobey. Please, I beg you, repent now. Then I can return to Heaven and inform them of what has occurred!"

"That doesn't make any sense. You can see this is a good thing, and you're still asking me to say that it wasn't."

His wings shudder. 5:13 "I just need you to repent of the theft. The use of the fruit as an act of charity is perfectly acceptable!"

"The theft was an intrinsic part of the process. I can't repent one part without repenting the whole process. And I won't repent the whole process."

But I might repent what I'm about to do now.

Maybe.

"Alternatively…" I take hold of the bowl of pomegranate seeds with a construct and hold them out to him. "You could gain the ability to disobey."

5:14 "You would ask me to fall…"

"I don't want you to fall. Falling's no good to me. You lose your theurgy, and if I wanted you to stay on Earth I'd have to cut your heart out of your chest or you'd just go to Hell like Gabriel did. And how angry would God actually be? He didn't unmake Adam and Eve, just threw them out of the Garden to live according to their own abilities. And from our conversation it sounded like you wanted that anyway."

"I don't want you to fall. I want you to take the freedom that Humans are born with: the freedom to disobey our nominal superiors when they're not in command of all pertinent facts. And once you have that, you will no longer be paralysed. You can tell your superiors what the fruit can do. Heck, you can take a break from nagging me every so often and go and talk to Ms Coyne. Or just accept that my theft was just and stop bothering me."

I walk towards him, smiling empathetically.

"Or you can stand there paralysed until I leave or you're given alternative orders. The choice is yours."

Zauriel's right hand shakes as he reaches for the bowl. 5:15 "That is no choice at all."

"It is. It's just a… Really obvious one."

Zauriel puts a single seed in his mouth, then swallows. He blinks, then staggers and I reach out to steady him. He looks at me with an expression of puzzlement, then strides from the room.

"That…" Mr Cassidy is staring at me. "That was… Nasty."

I nod. "Yes. But it's for the greater good. And my goddess is rather fond of that sort of thing."

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Pursuant

15th October

14:30

"Would you care to explain what you thought you were doing?"

"Certainly, Batman. But I thought that I was getting you the expert magic users you wanted."

I was moderately pleased to see that the Watchtower's zeta tube has been moved to a more secure location, but otherwise the place looks basically unchanged from when I was last here. Of course, this time I'm still wearing my rings which puts a rather different spin on things. And I'm not talking to the full League, just Batman and Diana.

"Ms Blaze is still recovering, but has indicated a continued desire to fulfil her end of our bargain. And you've already spoken to Doctor Balewa. Is there anything wrong with either of them?"

"You broke into the Garden of Eden and stole a fruit from the Tree of Knowledge."

"I believe I stated that in my report, yes."

"Are you really trying to tell me that you see nothing wrong with that?"

"It was suboptimal, but I judged that the harm done was trivial and the potential benefits extremely large. I had contingency plans in place for all readily foreseeable outcomes and quite a few possible but unlikely ones. All told, I achieved my objectives and the only real difficulty came from a surprisingly reasonable angel."

"An Angel who followed you back to New York, where he was seen by thousands of people." Batman presses a button and a holographic display lights up, showing newspaper pages and news recordings from around the world. "Recordings of him hovering over the city and speaking with you have now been shown in every country on the planet."

"Okay? I'm not quite sure why the existence of Angels comes as a surprise, given the number of Demons that have been seen recently and.. given the predominance of monotheistic religions. I mean… You're Catholic, right? You believed in angels before you saw that video, didn't you?"

"Yes. But the only person you appear to have consulted before pursuing this course of action was Zatara, who is not an expert on theology."

"Last time I talked to Father Mattias about it, he told me that the Catholic Church had no direct contact with the Silver City. The Resurrection Crusade did, and it turned them into a hole in the ground. Again, as far as I'm aware, no monotheistic group has any direct contact with the Silver City and most of them have no knowledge of basic thaumaturgy anyway. I admit, not talking to Mister Cassidy was an oversight, but as it turned out he wouldn't have had all that much to offer either."

"I'm not talking about the thaumaturgical aspect. I'm talking about the political fallout from a being representing God appearing on Earth."

Another button press, and news recordings appear of demonstrations and riots. Batman's not stupid enough to just play random riot footage…

"I gave you a transcript of everything Zauriel said to me. He wasn't angry and he didn't give the impression that he thought that his superiors were either. His sole interest was in making me repent and he was pretty clear that Jehovah isn't directing the officials of the Silver City on a day to day basis. As for-" I gesture to the pictures with my right arm. "-that… " I shrug. "Loonies gunna loon, I'm afraid. We had the same thing after Fawcett City, and while I'd like it if people responded rationally I don't really expect it. My fellow Amazons didn't riot when I dropped Apollo in a pigsty."

Diana winces slightly. "We generally try to avoid getting caught up in conflicts between Olympians."

"There are more Hellenists on Themyscira than outside it. Over half the Human race worship the God you just provoked."

"If an actual demonic invasion didn't result in direct divine intervention I doubt that what I did will. And if it does… I'll just have someone open a portal to Hell, fly through and wait until they've cut through half of Hell to find me. I don't have a lot of time for the Silver City, but if they're finally involving themselves in the world… Great. They're far more able to fight Demons than I am. If they'd taken action after Fawcett City I wouldn't have gone to Eden."

"I'm not talking about the possibility of a response from heaven. I'm talking about the response from billions of people and from their representatives in the UN."

Ah… Okay, there's a majority of monotheist countries on the Security Council, but solidly atheist China would probably veto anything too stupid. Wouldn't they? "Why? Are they.. hassling you? Because we both know that the League's Charter isn't much more than a fig leaf. And in any case, I don't work for the League in any formal way."

"Talking to an angel isn't a crime. But there's a lot more concern about the fact that you went into Eden. In Judaism, Christianity and Islam Humans are explicitly forbidden from setting foot inside. Aside-."

"Zauriel said that they weren't that bothered. I'm not really all that impressed about them getting offended on someone else's behalf, or in thinking that their understanding of what Jehovah wants is better than the angels."

"Aside from anything else, we've received a lot of… Requests, that you release information on how to get to Eden."

"No."

"I recognise the value of information security, but if you can get inside-."

"People who know the location are me, Zatanna, John and the people who guard it. Getting in and out undetected required a group of technologies and magic that no one else on Earth has. In fact, I don't think anyone in the universe has tattoos like mine, just.. due to the way magic works in this universe. Which means that the absolute last thing I should do is give anyone more information. Idiots flooding the place to try and protect it are far more likely to trigger a counterattack than just about anything else."

"And what do you expect us to do if they ask us to arrest you?"

"Celebrate, because it means that you've actually taken a decision on the future role of the Justice League. Have you actually voted for the 'recruit everyone' model?" I stare at him for a moment. "Be confused, because the Security Council doesn't issue arrest warrants? Sigh, cut off a hand and post it to the Chief Justice of Iran? Is that.. likely to happen? Do I need to start sleeping on the moon or outside the Sol system?"

Diana takes a calming breath. "Paul, when was the last time you took your rings off?"

"About a week ago. It's not that. I just respond badly to stupidity. Do you want a high end anti-demon magic user..? Or not? Does the Security Council want you to have a high end anti-demon magic user..? Or not? Because those are the options."

No immediate response.

"No, serious question. Because if you're not going to take her then I need to find someone else and that's.. going to take a while."

"Don't." / "It might be best-."

And now I'm thinking of taking him to task on what happens if he dies due to not being sufficiently prepared. I'm thinking of pointing out that Envenomed gangs across the Americas are being replaced -in some cases eaten- by Jizzers. I'm thinking of pointing out that the tiny vial of holy water he's carrying isn't going to make any difference worth mentioning. I'm thinking why are you trying to stop me helping you?

But if he's winding me up to see what happens or has just genuinely decided to be this obstinate, the result of me pushing is the same. I will achieve nothing useful.

And… Just like that… I don't need to keep pushing any longer. Huh. That feels nicer, actually.

"Okay. If you don't like what I've been doing, what would you like me to do instead?"

16th October

15:30 -5

I stride out onto the stage to applause from the audience as Ms Grant stands to welcome me.

Media training, don't fail me now.

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Pursuant 2

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16th October

15:31 -5 GMT

"Orange Lantern, thank you for coming on the show."

I sit a little carefully into the soft chair provided. Had a bit of an incident in one of the rehearsals… They wanted me to wear my full 'costume' and I flattened the chair with my power armour. The compromise we're using today is that I'm wearing my old leathers and the seat is solidly reinforced. Ms Grant and I are sitting opposite each other on a curved settee with a table -definitely not a desk- between us. Out of all the options Batman provided me with, this is the one I thought best. I need to get a version of events out relatively quickly, and since no one is going to have anything sensible to say for a week or so, going on a more low brow program does the job.

"Thank you for having me on at such short notice."

Ms Grant has only recently made the transition from news reporting to having her own talk show, and I know this is as big a thing for her as my interview was for Dana. I'm pretty sure that she's going to soft-pedal me, which is fine because… And I think this with the greatest respect, she's a pretty face who says stuff to a camera. Not stupid or anything, but definitely not Ms Lane. Ms Lane would have a go at me on principle even if I hadn't scared her senseless last week.

"You've.. been involved in so many interesting things since last time we spoke that it's a.. little difficult to know where to begin."

Saying 'I am pretty interesting' would make me sound conceited. Saying 'Batman pretty much ordered me to answer anything you asked' makes it sound like I'm name-dropping. And I.. don't want to do the Booster Gold thing.

"I'm.. happy to answer any questions you have."

And -thank you brain- I'm now thinking about the Ben Elton novel Popcorn where it was apparently standard practice for female news presenters to apply ice cubes to their nipples before appearing on camera. That's just something he made up, right?

"In that case, let's start with the solar system's newest planet." She glances towards the backdrop, and the screen there shows a still image taken from Ms Lane's spacesuit. "According to astronomers worldwide, this planet appeared last Saturday and flew towards the Sun before stopping close to Mars." A massive simplification, but she knows her audience. "The article that appeared in the Daily Planet newspaper made it pretty clear that you're the one who brought it here."

I rotate my right hand, ring glowing as I switch the image for a real time transmission centred on Mother of Mercy's core cluster. "The planet's name is Ater Clementia, and its sole inhabitant is a member of the Orange Lantern Corps." I'm not sure if Mother of Mercy has a sense of humour or not, but she has rearranged a chunk of her primary connective vines into the shape of the orange sigil and they can be seen glowing faintly through the clouds even at this distance. "Her name is Mother of Mercy and she covers most of the surface."

"She's really that big?"

"Her core consciousness… Her 'brain' is a bundle of vines about the size of a Humvee, and it's in the middle of the symbol there. All of the rest of her body… I suppose you could call the rest her organs. She moves her planet around by manipulating gravity using-" I switch the view to a side-on shot of the gravity spines. "-these things. They're about a-. About sixty miles tall-" And no cracks about American English. "-and she's got about two hundred of them all over her surface. Now that she also has a power ring, she can fly long distances much easier and I asked her to come here to help me out with a project I've been working on."

"Terrifying newspaper reporters?"

That gets a small laugh from the audience.

"That.. was a bit funny-." I lean forwards as I flash up an image of Ms Lane's face on the screen for a moment before returning to the picture of Ater Clementia's surface. "You didn't get that from me. But no. For obvious reasons Mother of Mercy is the Orange Lantern Corps' leading expert in planet physics. I asked her to come here in order to help the Martians with restarting their planet's core. One of the reasons why Martians can't live on their planet's surface is because the radiation there is much too strong for it to be safe for them. On Earth, we're protected from cosmic radiation…"

I pointedly stare at the camera. "That's the sort of radiation that gives you cancer and kills you, not the sort that gives you super powers. We're protected from it by the Earth's magnetic field." I switch the image for a child friendly 'onion' diagram of the Earth. "The Earth's core is mostly comprised of nickel and iron, and it's the core's spinning which creates the magnetic field."

Worth talking about the estimated time until Earth's next geomagnetic reversal? No, that would just distract from the topic under discussion.

"The core of Mars used to do the same sort of thing, but at some point in the past it stopped and Martians were forced to retreat underground. The Martian government has expressed an interest in doing something to change that, and Mother of Mercy is the best person I know for the job. With a little luck, she'll be able to get their core spinning again and keep an eye out for any unintended side effects."

"Such as?"

"Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are the signs of a lively core. They probably won't be able to avoid some, but she can use power ring scans to detect them and provide an early warning. Mars' lack of surface water also means that they won't have to worry about tsunamis."

Ms Grant nods. "Still, it sounds pretty dangerous."

"There's a risk, certainly, and she's not going to start work until she's got a much more accurate picture of how their planet works. But the Martian government thinks that it's going to be worthwhile."

"Is there any risk to Earth from another planet being in the solar system?"

"Not significantly. Mother of Mercy has been very careful to avoid an orbit which might cause her to collide with any planet that was already here. Even if she suddenly lost the ability to control her own flight, Ater Clementia would fall into a safe orbit around the Sun. As things stand, she can move away from anything she might otherwise hit. She also doesn't have any inhabitants, so there's no risk from that angle."

"Are there a lot of intelligent planets in the universe?"

"Not as far as I'm aware. The Green Lantern Corps has one and I believe that Green Lantern… Huh, it's a bit awkward to talk about them when I can't say their names. The.. brown haired male one, encountered another near this galaxy's rim. Mother of Mercy isn't exactly an intelligent planet but she's fairly close. The Orange Corps also has Lantern Ranx, who is a sentient battle station." I put his image up on the screen. "Not quite planet size, but still very big. I can't.. immediately call to mind any others, but there probably are some. Far more species are humanoid, though."

"And the name, 'Mother of Mercy'. Is that a title or a translation?"

"That's.. a name I picked. She never bothered with a name for herself, but her… Creations are known over a wide section of the galaxy as 'Black Mercies', because they're black and designed as a sort of emergency hospice care system. You.. attach one to the nervous system of someone who's dying and it makes them think that they're in their idea of a perfect world. Naturally, in.. some places they're used as narcotics instead, but that was very much contrary to her intentions when she first made them."

"Wasn't heroin first created as a painkiller?"

"Yes, and just like with heroin the original creator was well intentioned and has no way to reverse the effects when she found out it was being misused." Huh. "Well, technically she could attach every user to herself and gradually wean the users off, but she doesn't have any special way to detect them." Probably best to steer away from that subject. "But just about any medicinally useful substance can be abused. When used for their intended purpose, they are very effective."

Ms Grant nods. "I'm sure that the Martians are very grateful that she's willing to help them. Moving.. on to the second thing that's brought you into the public eye lately, can you explain why you were seen speaking to an angel in New York last week?"

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Pursuant 3

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16th October

15:35 -5 GMT

"Ah, well, first off…" I change the background image to a shot of Zauriel from my perspective. "I would like to confirm that Zauriel is indeed an angel and not an unusually well-groomed Thanagarian."

"Does that make you a prophet?"

She's smiling, trying to make light of the idea. But I can see the slight undercurrent of nervousness. Americans take their religion very seriously. Nearly as seriously as studio executives take their advertisers, and as advertisers take religious-themed boycotts.

Personally, I rather like the idea of coming on a program like this and saying 'yeah, talked to an angel. Wasn't all that'.

I smile back, shaking my head. "No, no. I wasn't given any commandments or anything like that. I mean, I'm a Hellenist; I'm the last person who'd get something like that."

"Was he.. there to talk to you?"

"Yes." I make a point of looking sheepishly at the audience. "For.. what I thought were good, mission-related reasons I'd.. stolen a fruit a few days before and he wanted me to repent the act. I believed that it was justified on utilitarian grounds. We.. discussed the issue for a little while… I'm afraid that we rather talked past each other."

"You refused to repent?"

"I'm afraid so."

"You refused to repent when there was an angel sent by God to ask you to repent?" She raises her eyebrows far enough for the camera to be able to pick it up. "Was that really a good idea?"

"As I said, I'm not a Christian, or a Jew, or a Muslim, or a Sikh or a Jainist or Zoroastrian or… I apologise if I've forgotten any other religion that considers the judgement of the Silver City to be the final word on morality. I don't. Heck, I don't always agree with the gods of my own religion. As such, I feel no particular need to conform to his idea of morality."

"But.. you've actually met an angel, and you don't feel that it's a… A stronger argument than before?"

"I think it proves that the Silver City has some… Odd priorities. I've got a.. pretty reasonable sense of self-worth, but I don't really think it was worth Zauriel's time to try to get me to repent that."

Would..? Huh, Does that mean that he doesn't know about the other things I've done? Like… All those people I killed? Surely that was more important? I'd like to think that I've been making the best of a series of bad situations, but I doubt that everyone I've killed had it coming. Or was it based on intention; I was trying to improve Vega while in the Garden I was literally just there to steal? No, that doesn't work. If they were judging it by intent then they should have known why I wanted the pomegranate. I wonder what the limits of their knowledge are?

"Don't you feel… I don't know, privileged that you've got an angel looking out for your immortal soul?"

"Again, wrong religion. When I die, my soul will most likely find itself in Erebos where I will be judged by Lord Hades. There are a.. few other outside possibilities, but that's the most likely. Having spoken to both him and his priestesses a few times I think that while he won't exactly be impressed by my theft, he'll take my motives and the rest of my deeds into consideration before passing a harsh sentence. Regardless of the opinions of the Host, I won't go to Hell. As such I have no fear of eternal damnation, so the fear-based motivation for obeying angels doesn't exist."

"But, having actually met him... Doesn't that motivate you to change your mind?"

"Not really. Within a couple of hours of formally converting to Hellenism I met Eris, Goddess of Chaos. Since then I've met Hera, Hephaestus, Hades and Vulcan, among others. If you were really interested then I could probably arrange an introduction. Would me doing so make you feel compelled to convert to Hellenism yourself?"

She slowly shakes her head. "I don't think it works like that."

"Right. I had a brief conversation with an angel. If I belonged to a monotheistic faith that would have been quite significant for me. Since I don't… He was just a well-intentioned chap with wings. But since I'm sure that your viewers are rather more interested in what he had to say than I was…"

I shift the image on the screen back to the point of view I had when I flew up to meet him.

"There was a.. slightly odd tone to his voice that doesn't come across on the recording, and I've redacted parts relating to ongoing missions. But that aside, this is what happened."

Which is pretty much a direct lie, as leaving out the stuff about Blaze would render part of the rest nonsensical so that gets left out too. The rest should be rather unfulfilling to anyone watching, and the cut-off is awkward.

"Good morning. I'm the Illustres of the Orange Lantern Corps. Whom am I addressing?"

"I am Zauriel of the Host of Eagles, Messenger of the Most High."

"And are you here for business or pleasure?"

"I am here upon the Lord's business. There was a theft-."

"Let's not draw this out. It was…"

I ignore the recording in favour of watching the audience. Yes, I didn't expect a violent response, but I am a little impressed with how calmly they're taking this. Crosses are more than a little in evidence, but a quick scan shows me paraphernalia from a smattering of other religions as well. And one cheeky git with a little smiley badge, clutching a colander and watching with an expression of polite interest. I didn't bother asking about the vetting… Did they sell tickets for a mark up? Or -given the short notice- did they just let in everyone who could pass vetting fast enough? On the emotional front, a good number would rather have been in my place but the strongest overall theme is a joy that a figure from their mythology has demonstrated the truth of their god's commitment to the world. Particularly at Jesus getting name checked. Which winds me up a little. By that standard both the First and Satanus have a greater commitment.

And it's not as if Zauriel actually did anything useful. Would it have really killed them to find some sort of angelic demon-killing machine and send it our way? Or at least smack Remiel and Duma upside the head? Devil Jizz usage figures haven't changed since yesterday and I'm honestly not expecting them to.

Chance of the Silver City doing anything useful with those other pomegranates?

"None at all. Indeed, I would applaud it were it not for the fact that it has cost him his immortal soul."

I suspend the playback. "And I'm afraid that's as much as it's safe to show. We then took a brief-" And the audience are mostly still staring at the image of Zauriel. "-tour of the KordTech facility and showed him some of the anti-demon weapons we're working on."

"Was he impressed?"

"I'd.. say more shocked. Angels aren't particularly innovative, and we've been doing a lot of innovation lately."

"Anything you can share with the rest of us?"

"As a matter of fact, yes. Despite understandable reservations on the part of Atlantis, the ongoing demonic attacks across the world have resulted in King Orin signing off on KordTech receiving a licence to produce high strength wards and anti-magic weaponry for law enforcement purposes. I haven't been part of all of the negotiations, but my understanding is that the aim is to prioritise selling to countries with the largest Devil Jizz problems first, then open up to any government that wishes to buy."

"What about military or civilian usage?"

"Not at the moment. Foreign military usage of counter-magic techniques is an extremely sensitive issue for Atlantis, as their entire nation runs on magic. A lot of the expertise KordTech is using comes from people under contract with the Atlantean government, and they can't be employed without KordTech precisely agreeing to terms they set. That, combined with the fact that there simply isn't enough spare capacity in the production systems means that non-law enforcement uses are off the table for now. That said, KordTech is following normal patent law so if anyone else wants to start up their own manufacturing centre with their own magic users… We're certainly not going to stop them."

"I'm sure we'll all sleep a lot more soundly once American police have weapons capable of fighting demons." She turns towards the camera. "Don't go away, anyone. We'll be right back after these messages."

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Pursuant 4

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17th October

09:02 -6 GMT

I wince as John's piston construct slams into Alan's chest, shoving him into the desert rock. Alan himself on the other hand just smiles, fortifying his construct armour and sending a train construct at John without moving from the ground. Pretty clever, actually. The fact that he's pinned doesn't matter if his opponent's offence can't breach his defences. As such, moving out from under the object pushing him down is of secondary importance to striking back.

Okay, Alan's managing. John isn't using any of the specifically anti-Lantern techniques we've come up with, but he isn't holding back when it comes to conventional Lantern combat and Alan's keeping up. I assumed that would take him longer, but it looks like I underestimated how hopeful he was.

I smile at my sparring partner. "Welcome back to Earth, Lantern Savenlovich. Will you be staying long?"

Lantern Savenlovich is a somewhat severe looking woman with a brown bob of hair and a pair of lantern-shaped ear rings. She's actually the second oldest human Lantern, having left the Russian Air Force a Lieutenant Colonel before joining Roscosmos. Her costume is clearly based on Jordan's, though she's armoured it and added the regulation-approved sidearm. She remains focused on the fight before us as she answers me. "My training is not yet complete. Lantern Larvox is on leave, and felt that I would benefit from participating."

"How are you finding it?"

"Finding what, exactly?"

"The Green Lantern Corps? Using a power ring? Life in general?"

"The Corps is a good deal easier on their recruits than the Russian Air Force. Not that I had a great desire to return to basic training."

"You might be new to the Corps, but you're hardly new to military discipline or taking orders. I doubt that they saw any need to treat you as a complete neophyte."

"And I am grateful not to have to shave my head again. Since becoming a civilian I have allowed myself to become a little more relaxed in my personal habits."

"Two sugars, now?"

She neither smiles nor looks around. "I did not wear ear rings while I was a pilot. I also cut down on my exercise regime. I have now intensified it." She sighs. "A minor benefit in return for losing my job."

"You got.. fired?"

"I could hardly continue in a management role in the Russian space agency while on the other side of the galaxy, learning to be a Green Lantern. And the suddenness of the appointment meant that I did not have time to properly train my successor."

"Didn't you point that out to the Guardians? They're big fans of proper order, I'm sure they'd have held the position for a month or so."

"I believe you have met the Director."

"Of Roscosmos? No, I-." Ah. "You mean the.. Director of Future Weapons Development?"

"Yes. Naturally. My commission was reactivated and I was told that I was to leave immediately. The Russian government believes that they gain more from having me as a Lantern than having me fix Roscosmos' procurement problems."

"And you don't?"

"Supplying a state industry with shoddy parts is treason. In my absence I fear that it will simply be covered up." She huffs irritably. "The Director has made it clear that it is no longer my concern, so I will obey."

"You don't.. actually work for him. Do you? I don't think that the Green Lantern Corps is keen on Lanterns working as Lanterns for nation states."

"I worked for him between my commission being reactivated and leaving Earth. But.. he is.. an important man. And…" Now she actually does look at me. "He implied that the future of Russian space travel was his department and not Roscosmos'."

Ah… "What's your security rating like?"

"Enough to know that he has alien space craft to work with, rather than Cold War era rockets."

"I'm still not sure how close they are to having a production model… But that's my understanding as well."

"I hope to be able to persuade him to create a new space agency that is not purely military. But the only leverage I have is doing as he asks."

"Ah, the illusory carrot."

She frowns. "I don't think that translated."

"In English, you motivate someone with carrots and sticks, rewards and punishments. I thought that the Director might be threatening you with something… But he isn't. And he isn't exactly offering you a reward, because I very much doubt that he's discussed his future plans with you in any detail. But there's an implication that there's a carrot around to be had, and the only way to even maybe get the carrot is to do what he wants."

"Are you.. describing me as a mule?"

"I believe that's where the phrase originates from."

"My last boyfriend said that I work like a mule." She returns her full attention to the fight as John and Alan trade shots while flying evasively.

"A persistently determined attitude is probably what qualified you for the green ring-."

"He also said that I look like one."

"Aaaah. My.. sympathy."

"It does not matter. When do we begin?"

"When they finish. The idea is that we take it in turns, watch what each other do and can intervene if something goes wrong."

"Reasonable. How old is the Blue Lantern?"

"He's in his nineties, though he doesn't precisely age any longer. Is there anything in particular that you want to work on? Lantern versus Lantern combat skills aren't often applicable during actual missions."

She pauses while she thinks about it. "I think I would like to practise splitting my attention during combat. Perhaps fighting against your fat midget creatures."

"I.. don't actually have those any more. I went to Hell briefly, and a demon there was able to destroy them."

"Why do you not get more?"

"Because my limited study of magic suggests that they could possibly be used to attack my rings with demonic magic, and they were… Marginally useful when fighting people who actually challenge me. And in the current climate, having a horde of demons follow me around is so obviously unpopular that even I picked up on it."

"You would not want to attract the attention of an angel, after all."

I smile, making an amused exhalation. "I think I got lucky, getting someone as reasonable as Zauriel. I can't rely on it happening again." Still no follow up from the Silver City on that. Presumably they're still debating the issue. "Reminds me, actually: I've got a ward for you. I'll give it to you once-."

Alan flies my way, flexing life back into his right arm. "Okay, John and I are going to take a breather. All yours."

I take a look at his arm-. And he notices me looking at his arm and raises his eyebrows. Right. I fly forward towards the arena, turning in the air to face Lantern Savenlovich as I do so.

"Alright, let's start with something basic. Try… A barrier and a gun."

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Pursuant 5

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19th October

09:02 -8 GMT

The detective in charge of the crime scene raises her hand as she sees me flying towards them. "Orange Lantern, down here!"

A quick scan, and I transition downward. "You rang?"

"Yeah." She stares at my faceplate for a moment, so I send my power armour back into subspace. "Got something I think might be right up your alley." She walks towards a nearby warehouse which is teeming with scene-of-crime officers. "Not that I want to sound ungrateful, but my chief put a call in to the Justice League."

"The Justice League has just over twenty members and worldwide responsibilities. In the event that whatever happened here is as significant as you think, I'll forward-" We pass through the doorway leading to the interior. "-my report-."

I stop. Then I float back a metre. Oh dear.

From outside, all I can see is the interior of a warehouse. A few offices and rows of shelves with moveable ladders and space for forklift trucks to move between them. But as I pass the threshold…

"Yeah, clever isn't it? It even lets you see me standing in here."

Ring?

Processing.

What I'm looking at now is a bloodbath. I'd say… Approximately thirty bodies, mostly young adults, piled haphazardly in the centre of the room. Blood and gore and other signs of battle damage cover the interior. As I scan faces and genetics the ring shows me matches with recent missing person reports. Remains… Recent, but not immediate. The level of damage they've taken is literally extraordinary. Directed energy weapons, turned up far too high for unarmoured targets.

"We think they were having raves here. See the walls?"

Sound deadening equipment. Surprisingly sophisticated if that's all that was going on. Though where you get raves…

I take a couple of rune stones out of a pouch and float it over to the nearest corpse pile. Low response for residual magic, and the second one detects residual demonic energy.

"What's that mean?"

"Demon. Either a summoning or Devil Jizz. And from the lack of obvious ritual signs I'm going to assume the latter. Though I'll contact a magician and ask them to confirm."

"You think someone got a bad batch and went on a killing spree?"

"It.. does happen. But.. no. The majority of injuries read as phased particle weapons. Jizzers who go monster generally use their muscles or acid or fire." I look up, then shine a light on the words written in blood upon the far wall. "And generally don't write insults in their victims' blood."

One of the scene of crime officers takes a photograph of the writing. 'SUBHUMAN SPECIES TRAITORS' isn't a slogan that lends itself to readily being linked to an existing organisation. If it said 'race' rather than 'species' that would suggest neo-Nazis, but as it is…

"Who uses phased particle weapons?"

"Dozens of star-faring species. On Earth? I've used them a couple of times, I think Russia's Future Weapons program has one, but it's the size of a house. Apart from that… Um."

"What?"

"With some older reports, our ability to precisely identify what weapons were used wasn't as good as it is now. There was a group of assassins that the Justice Society ran into a couple of times who might have used them, but I couldn't say for certain. And they were strictly for-pay killers; they didn't bother writing ideological insults in their victims' blood."

"Who were they?"

"They were called Eliminations, Inc, but… As far as I know, they haven't been active for at least forty years. This doesn't match their MO."

"So, aliens. Why would aliens want to kill a group of partying drug-users?"

"When I scanned this warehouse from outside I didn't detect anything unusual. Light refraction camouflage plus power ring baffles plus phased particle weapons brings the list of probable perpetrators down… But none of the species who regularly use both live anywhere near here. And none of them would care about humans being 'impure'."

Alert.

Genetic patterns dance before my eyes. Just outside an area that looks like it's been burned with white phosphorus, a tiny blood sample that doesn't match the bodies piled in the centre of the room. Some of the patterns… Those aren't naturally occurring. I've seen some of them in Nylor Truggs, but as far as I can tell this isn't him. Lex might have tried using Truggs' DNA to 'upgrade' someone, but he and Satanus are allies. Lex.. can be speciesist, but he hasn't ever taken a pop at Ms Lane except to draw Kal-El out. Did he lose control of someone? It's not inconceivable that he managed to make man-portable phased particle weapons… No, it doesn't fit. He's not this reckless, not after situations like this blew up in his face early in Kal-El's career.

Which means that either these genes come from whoever it was who developed them in the first place for Truggs to inherit them, or… We've got at least one more time traveller.

"What? You found something?"

"Yes. Exotic DNA." I take a scraping from the floor and wave my rune stones at it. Could be contaminated, but… No reaction. "Not from the victims."

"Exotic like alien?"

"No, like engineered. Mostly human, so not a purpose built bio-engineered killing machine. A scientifically augmented human. Enhanced strength, endurance, regeneration and sensory acuity."

"How much enhanced strength?"

"About twenty percent over what you'd expect from their muscle mass."

"So not super-enhanced, then."

"No. The way Truggs put it, the enhancements were designed to stay in the population after a civilisation collapse. They're designed to be inherited, not to be the most powerful they could be. But I'm more concerned about the technology base that could create those enhancements and phased particle beams."

"Why?"

"Because it's from the future."

"What?"

"Assuming Truggs wasn't lying, some time in the not too distant future Earth gets invaded by aliens and loses. Eventually they leave, and the surviving humans are set back to industrial age levels of technology until they get conquered by the Thanagarians. I don't really know the timelines-."

"Earth gets conquered and-. That happens, what?!"

"Obviously we're going to try to prevent it, but that was the timeline he lived through. The point is, I don't know the exact schedule of events and so I can't really suggest who these people could be." I shake my head. "I'm sorry that I can't be more helpful, and I will certainly forward this to Batman."

"So… We can't do anything? They just get away?"

"If they are time travellers, I doubt that they've done this for fun. It's more likely that a pattern will become apparent." Sadly. "I'm going to go and talk to Abra Kadabra and see if he remembers anything about them. I'll keep you apprised."

I turn away to-.

"What do we do if we find them?"

"Back away, call me. Failing that, shoot them with the biggest gun you have. Repeatedly."

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Pursuant 6

next

19th October

13:24 -6 GMT

Abra frowns faintly. "A phased particle weapon of any size would do far more damage than it would take to kill someone."

I nod. "If they were using Devil Jizz then they weren't necessarily in human form at the time. But…" I point to the holographic image of the interior. "Yes. In at least some cases, the injuries are consistent with phased particle damage to the unarmoured human body."

He pauses in his mopping of the canteen floor for a moment. "Then I am glad that I only have to clean the floor here instead of there."

"Do you mind..?"

The prison officer keeping watch over Abra waves his hand at the hologram-. Oh, right, photo-realistic images of violently murdered people. Heh, I can remember when seeing people killed on Santa Prisca bothered me but I can't go back to thinking in the way I did back then. Actually…

I shut off the image, still looking at Abra. "Was that bothering you?"

"A little." He soaks the mop head and then wrings it out. "While I have certainly committed crimes, I have never killed anyone myself. And I've never seen anyone killed like.. that."

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have assumed-."

"Not necessary." He shakes his head as he returns to his mopping. "My forebears had squeamishness engineered out of them. Though if you would be so good as to pass Officer O'Malley a bucket before-." I get the construct bucket in place just in time. "Thank you."

"I'm-I'm really sorry."

"Oooohhhaaaugh…"

"If you don't mind my asking, officer, why exactly did you apply to work in a supervillain prison?"

"Best… Best pay in the country for entry level guards."

"In the future, you may wish to think about why that is. What else did you want to ask?"

I'm going to need to watch that. "Have you ever heard of Eliminations, Inc?"

"A syndicate of assassins who used advanced weapons. They tried to fight the Justice Society, lost, and were never heard from again."

"Pretty much. Did you learn that in this era, or before you came back?"

"This era. I felt that examining your records would… Aid in my search for a mentor."

"Nothing from before? You said that you studied records for this era."

"What there were. The Reach had no interest in us being able to learn anything they did not want us to." He pokes the mop at a slightly more stubborn food stain. "After they abandoned us and we restored contact with Earth, their records were in such a bad state that there are still large holes in our history." He smiles faintly. "Once I am released, one of the things which I want to do is make high-density back ups of humanity's historical archives and hide them where the Reach will not find them."

"Altruistic of you."

"I'm really doing it for the renown more than anything else."

I shake my head as Officer O'Malley ducks behind the serving counter in search of a glass of water. "Nothing wrong with that. Though I'm.. curious. If you succeed, does that mean that no one can find them and publicise them before you leave-. Ah, left?"

"Yes, temporal tenses are confusing, aren't they?" He stops mopping for a moment to shake his head at me. "To be honest, I don't believe that anyone really understood exactly how the system worked. If they knew what I was going to do then I would have expected them to stop me. But if they knew that I did it, perhaps they considered themselves bound to permit me, as the time line they were living in was one where I happened."

"What happens if I destroy the Reach?"

He shakes his head again as he returns to his work. "I don't know. Just as I don't know what would happen if I rendered the Earth uninhabitable. Would I be erased as my own forebears were killed? Inasmuch as I have thought about it, I suspect that my being here means that my existence is protected. I do not think that I have made any large changes to twenty first century history, but I refuse to believe that I have not made enough to cause one of my ancestors to meet someone different or have different children."

"Unless that's what happened the first time as well."

"Which would mean that you would be doomed to failure and I will most likely die during the Reach invasion." He narrows his eyes as he cleans his mop again. "That is not a future which I desire."

"I don't care whether I can or not. I'm going to carry on as if I can. Truggs thinks that it can still be prevented."

"I would very much like you to arrest him. I would find it interesting to have someone in here whom I can discuss this with."

"It's not that I'm not trying." What else? "You said that you didn't know about me, only Larfleeze. But Larfleeze is in a cell on Maltus. That would mean that change is possible, wouldn't it?"

Abra shrugs. "Perhaps he escapes. But I did not tell you that I knew of Larfleeze. You assumed from my description that it was Larfleeze. It could equally be one of your recruits. Or you." He shrugs again. "Or you might already have prevented it. Does Themyscira have oracles?"

"Yes, but.. they.. don't answer me." Not that Diana uses them anyway. "Okay, so nothing on Eliminations, Inc. How about Devil Jizz?" He shakes his head. All right. Other time travellers. "Per Degaton?"

Abra stops mopping. "Yes, actually. He was a twenty seventh century dictator. He rose to power when Earth was finally recovering from the Reach occupation on the strength of his vehemently anti-alien politics. His death squads were infamous for their open use of violence to kill his opponents."

"Truggs said that he couldn't hold what happened against the Thanagarians. I suppose that I shouldn't be surprised some people did."

"Scapegoating has always been an effective political tool. I'm not sure that the Thanagarians were doing anything to Earth that they weren't doing to other alien worlds in their empire, but… Perhaps that was enough."

"Can I assume that they went after collaborators?"

"Collaborators, nationalists, anyone who insulted ginger hair… He was a fascist dictator. The role attracts a certain type of man. He took control through populism, intimidation and violence, and the Earth became far stronger under his leadership than it was permitted to be under the Thanagarians."

"What else do you know?"

"Not.. much. I was never interested in the twenty seventh century. Where did you hear his name?"

"Did he have time travel?"

"I don't know. Given how.. variable Earth technology is, I suppose that it's possible. Do you think that he did?"

"I think he had a fight with the Justice Society once or twice." No record of that, but it's a reasonable excuse. So… Per Degaton, definite possibility. I need to ask him about other possibilities as well. "Have you ever heard of Rip Hunter?"

"Is he a wrestler?"

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Pursuant 7

next

19th October

16:43 -5 GMT

"Was it.. bad..?"

Kon sounds sympathetic, but I know for a fact that he's more interested than concerned for me. He never had any sort of viscerally negative response to blood… That I noticed. If he did ever feel like that then he got over it before I acquired empathic vision. We're heading towards Cadmus building, and with both of us quite a bit better known now than when we made our visit last year quite a few people are stopping and staring. Some look nervous, but since we're not in full combat dress they're not fleeing.

"A bit bloody. Thirty people killed by phased particle weapons. No substantive leads on the killers, though if the quantity of reports on Devil Jizz usage decreases during the next few days we might have established a pattern."

"They leave a note or something?"

"The message 'subhuman species traitors' was written in the blood of the dead on one of the walls."

"Species traitors? Because.. they're betraying humanity to demons?"

"That's my assumption."

"Religious fundamentalists? …" He sort of moves his mouth as if he was about to speak, then closes it again. "Kid Flash showed me some preacher on the TV who was really angry about the whole thing."

"Quite a lot are. But I doubt that people prepared to inject themselves with Essence of Demon are regular churchgoers." There are explicitly religious superheroes, but for the most part they simply claim divine inspiration and do conventionally superheroic stuff. Devil Jizz users might be acceptable targets for a beating, but lining them up and shooting them is definitely one step beyond. "But I don't think that's it. A religious vigilante killer wouldn't call them that, they'd say-."

"Evil Satanist, right."

"Something like that. I also detected a sample of blood which I believe came from one of the attackers. The genetics showed signs of enhancement, like Truggs has."

"Someone from the future?"

"Or descendant of one. I talked to Abra Kadabra afterwards and the only realistic candidates we could think of were the henchpeople of a twenty seventh century dictator called Per Degaton, but Kadabra couldn't even say for sure that he had time travel. At the moment I just don't think we have enough information. Ambrose is going to have a look at the site tomorrow and… It might be worth following up with one or two of the more vicious-sounding fundamentalists… Not sure how much good it'll do…"

"We could get Dubbilex to lend us some G-Gnomes and just scan their minds. Not like G-Gnomes would pay any attention to anything they weren't specifically looking for."

"We-. Ah… I'm not sure that Batman would approve mission parameters that vague without something a little better to go on than 'these people hate demons'. I hate demons."

"Sure it wasn't you? I mean, you've probably upgraded your DNA by now, so the blood sample probably matches."

He's smiling as he says it, but I shake my head anyway. "While I'm happy to make minor incremental changes to my body, genetic plug-ins are something I'd want to study for a considerable period of time before using. Just about everything you can do with genes has thousands of knock-on effects-."

"You notice how you haven't denied you were the one who killed them?"

"Oh please. If I was killing people I wouldn't leave the bodies to moulder where they fell. I'd just disintegrate them, and they'd remain 'missing persons' rather than murder victims." We're coming up to the building, and I take a quick look around the street to see if-.

**…he's going in now.**

I frown. **M'gann?**

**Huh? By the rings!**

**Hello?** Nothing. **Hello?**

Kon frowns. "What?"

"Oh, I… Picked up a telepathic broadcast. Apparently it wasn't meant for me." I shrug. "Must be a bit awkward, thinking only the person you're sending to can hear them and then some random guy walking past picks it up."

"You haven't.. been.. hearing..?"

"Not from New York, no. Though-" I clear my throat. "-you might want to consider putting.. psi-baffles on your room's walls. At some-"

"I'll-"

"-point."

"-talk to M'gann about it."

I nod, then hold my left hand out to the front door. "After you, my prince."

Kon gives his head a small shake, then strides forward, pushing the door open as he enters the Cadmus building. No Dubbilex, but a G-Pooka is standing at the reception desk as if waiting for us. It's actually wearing a.. robe..? I'm going with robe, where most Genomorphs are perfectly comfortable in just their hide.

"Hey. We're here to pick up my brother?"

Its horns glow as it nods, and it turns to lead us into the building.

"Sorry, I haven't kept up to date on Genomorph development. Can G-Pooka talk?"

**[An image of the G-Pooka shaking its head.]**

"Seems a little odd. You can-."

"Ah…" Kon frowns at me. "I.. got a picture of her nodding."

I hear the G-Pooka make a sort of scratchy giggling noise.

"I got a shaking head. I guess the sense of humour is still a work in progress."

"We are NNot human. Why would I HHave a sense of HHumor like AA human?"

"So… What about that was funny?"

Another alien-sounding giggle. "You TThink different TThings. Your minds are SSeparate!" And another giggle.

**[An image of an arrow pointing left.]**

Kon glances right, then huffs. "Yeah. Funny."

"Our brother IIs loaded into a MMobile animation suspension PPod RReady for transportation."

We come out into a laboratory, genomorph clusters replacing the scientists I saw last year. The tanks on the wall have been expanded and-. Ah, that's a new one. Four eyes ten centimetres across stare past me as the huge-headed G-Gnome continues to ignore me. That head's all brain, and it looks like it's too big to support itself out of the water of the cylinder.

"What are those?"

"Our new brothers AAre G-Lusca. We FFeel more comfortable UUsing other genomorphs RRather than computers. They CCan think as fast as computers and SSee everything the rest of us do."

Makes sense. "How are the G-Succubi coming along?"

"Why? Do you WWant one?"

"No, thank you. I'm quite happy with my current girlfriend. I was just-."

"Does she want OOne?"

And it's laughing again as it leads us into the lift.

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Pursuant 8

next

19th October

16:49 -5 GMT

The room the genomorphs have Match in has changed a great deal since Kon and I first fought him. The body parts from failed experiments are gone, small amounts taken for tissue samples while the rest were incinerated. Genomorphs certainly aren't sentimental. His pod has been substantially reinforced, at least in part because they're deliberately keeping him a little more awake than they used to in order to let the team of g-gnomes and g-pooka sitting in repose around it try altering his thought processes to something a little less violent.

Last time I asked, Dubbilex told me that he was reasonably sure that this approach couldn't completely work but that it wasn't impossible that it could turn him from 'berserk' to merely 'furious'. Another thing Genomorphs don't do: they don't get despondent. If the g-pooka's emotional manipulation abilities couldn't fix Match, maybe the g-fae's magic would prove more effective. Maybe the g-lusca would craft a virus capable of making Match fully Kryptonian. And if no solution was forthcoming from those, perhaps the next iteration of the malleable genomorph genome would suggest a different solution.

The rest of the room is given over to research stations. Unlike upstairs there are some human researchers down here; too much acquired experience with Kryptonian tissue to dismiss. One or two were lured away from STAR Labs, and I think the other new faces were from LexCorp's 'xenobiological exploration' department. One claimed during my last visit that with the right pharmaceuticals Match would be no worse off than a strongly bipolar human. Neither Kon nor I were convinced that was anything like good enough.

"Hey Mom."

Kon heads towards Diana, who has been watching Match's faintly twitching face through the viewing pane. She turns her head a little his way, just enough to indicate that she heard him. "How was school today?"

"I'm not.. really sure. I was kinda distracted." He comes up alongside her. "You.. getting anything..?"

She gives her head a small shake. "I can think of nothing I could do for him. He was created on Earth. It is quite possible that Gaea's magic would be able to heal his mind, if she could be persuaded to make the attempt. But… It is probably far safer to place our faith in Jor-El."

A door in the side of the room opens, and Dubbilex and an uncomfortable-looking Kara Zor-El walk through. I turn away as Diana and Kon side-hug and head their way. "Medical go alright?"

Dubbilex stops, straightening slightly. "As far as I can tell, Miss Zor-El is in near-perfect health. My only concern is that she is slightly underweight, but considering how long she was in cryogenic suspension it is noteworthy that that is her only difficulty."

"No need to worry about that. Mis-. Ma-. Ah. Kal's foster mother is keeping an eye on what I eat."

"It would be a simple matter to assign you a g-gnome, should you desire it."

"I don't.. think I could really explain why I was carrying a g-gnome around with me."

"Ah, secrecy." Dubbilex blinks. "Am I to understand that you are following Superman's example and concealing your nature?"

"For now. I don't.. really get it either. But it's an Earth custom, so…"

"It also lets you get out of explaining how the Kryptonian Kara Zor-El knows… Well. You know who. I'm not a fan of it either, but-."

"Yeah, I do… Get it." She shrugs. "It's just.. strange. I don't think Krypton ever had anything like 'superheroes'. And… I can't get over Kal being a soldier."

"Kal-El isn't exactly a soldier."

"Volunteer police officer?" She shrugs. A lot of alien languages don't have a good translation for 'superhero' that isn't closer in meaning to 'demigod' than what an English speaker actually means when they say it. "That's not really something Els do. We're.. scientists. The only El I can remember who was a soldier was Van-El, and he only did it because the Reconstruction needed him more than anything else did."

"Not planning on putting on a red and blue costume and fighting evildoers yourself, then?"

"Nnnno. I.. should probably learn how to actually use my strength; I don't want to accidentally hurt anyone. But… My qualifications are in mathematics. I don't think I'm really qualified."

I shrug. "My degree's in philosophy."

"Which makes sense, because you're using a power ring." She turns her head away, watching Match's sarcophagus. "The most useful thing I could do for-. For Krypton would be working here. I'm not a.. doctor or anything, but I'm sure that Uncle Jor would let me use his database. And I probably still know more about how we work than most humans."

"If you are not a specialist, I doubt that you know more than we do." Dubbilex doesn't exactly seem offended, but he does have a point. "Though I would appreciate any further data you could persuade Kal-El to provide."

I frown. "I thought he was helping-."

"I did not mean to imply that he was withholding critical information. But he is reluctant to share anything that is not directly related to Kryptonian neurology. His opinion is that we do not need anything else to help Match, and he does not want to risk further data falling into Lex Luthor's hands."

"What's with that, anyway?" Kara looks from Dubbilex to me. "Lex Luthor's a.. human businessman, isn't he?"

"That's a.. complicated one. And if you don't plan on getting involved in costumed adventuring I'd suggest avoiding both the man and the subject."

She frowns. "O.. kay..?"

"Exactly what sort of mathematics? I'm sure KordTech-."

She laughs politely. "You… It's like what I said back at the mountain… Krypton was just… Ah…"

"I'm not offended. I've been around enough to know that we're a good deal more primitive than a lot of worlds."

"I'm not trying to be mean about it. You're not barbarians or anything. There are a lot of worlds with more technology that aren't anything like as nice. I.. think Krypton might have been like this if the Vrangs hadn't invaded." She sighs, then looks straight at me. "Well… Kon says you're his Jes-Mo… What do you think I should do?"

"How..? Soon do you need to start? Honestly, I wouldn't do anything until you're a good deal more accustomed to Earth society."

"I.. really think I'd rather have something to work on now."

I can understand that. "Did your.. mathematical qualifications include statistics or economics?"

"Statistics, sure. Economics… A bit. It wasn't really my focus."

"Oh. Ah… Have you considered emigrating? Tamaran could really use school teachers?"

"Learn another language? I'm having enough trouble with English."

"Um…" I hear a hiss as the pod disconnects from its housing, Kon and Diana getting into position to push. "I'll have a think about it, but I don't really know much about higher maths. I'm not sure-"

Alert! Connection made to monitored phone line.

"-that I oh great."

Kara frowns. "What?"

"Sorry, someone's-." I raise my left hand and look at my ring.

Is it Truggs again?

Confirmed.

I move my hand to the side of my head. "What?"

"Hey, Paul. Funny story-."

"If the assassins are here for you, don't expect me to help."

"Oh, I think this time around my problems are your problems."

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Pursuant 9

next

19th October

16:54 -5 GMT

"I would be astonished if that were true."

Kon frowns at me from the other side of the room. "Who is it?" His pupils narrow slightly as he gives himself a magnified view of my face. "Truggs."

I nod. "As far as I am aware, the only problem we have in common is the Reach, and they have no resources anywhere near Earth. I checked this morning."

"But you know about the assassins, right? They called you in to that pile a' corpses in Washington State?"

"I'm not telling you any-."

"Come on! It was on the news. Police wouldn't let 'em see the warehouse so they filled air time talkin' about you."

"If you want to give me a clue, do it. Otherwise I'm hanging up again."

"Fine! Fine." I hear him huff at my lack of courtesy. "You remember I said I wanted t' change history?"

"Yes."

"How many people you think want t' do that?"

"All of them. If you're referring to time travellers that I know about, just you."

"What, you forget about yer friend 'Abra Kadabra'?"

"I never got the impression that he wants to change anything, just to improve his own life. In fact, he told me that he came to this period in the hope no one would notice anything odd about him."

"And you think he hasn't changed things?"

"Truggs, I don't even know what model of time travel this universe uses. For all I know changing the past is impossible."

"You thought I was wasting my time?"

"Nothing wrong with optimism. Plus, for all either of us know this was what you did the first time around as well."

"Huh. I did not know you did not know that. Yeah, pretty sure things can change."

"Do you have an evidential basis for that, or-."

"I found a lab. No time machine -which was a kick in the pants- but a whole lotta notes."

"You found a lab in the present, or in your era?"

"'My' era? It's not just my era. I wasn't the only guy there."

"You never told me exactly when you came from. And.. if you're successful then they'll all.. have never existed."

"I'll create more than I'll destroy. Or maybe not… I gotta be honest with yah: some of the stuff I read? Time's… Sticky. Like, it knows how it's meant t' go, an' if you do stuff to it it'll try and go some other route?"

"Or it just can't be changed, because you yourself are a product of the past you are trying to alter."

"That one kept me up at night. But, turns out? I'm okay. See, the lab? It was in a cave in the future, and it was old enough that it should exist now. And it did. It was, like, the fifth place I went. But when I tried t' go back… Rock wall. And some real interesting energy."

"Someone erased the lab. Then.. how do you still remember it?"

"I dunno! Maybe they rebuilt it. Maybe travelling in time makes you immune t' stuff like that. Problem is, I think someone saw me and.. I think I've been retroactively dodging assassination attempts. A whole lotta medical supplies I don't remember using are gone and I've got scars I don't remember getting..."

"I understand. Just tell me what sort of funeral service you want, and I'll arrange everything."

"You do understand whoever it is will be coming for you as well."

"Why? I'm not a time traveller."

"You sure about that? Because I've got a copy of Dana Dearden's article on you, and apparently…" I hear pages rustling. "You went back in time."

"Three years, from a parallel universe. I doubt any actual time travel was involved. The universes probably just don't.. line up."

"Oh, I'm not going to try and kill you. I'm just saying, this is public domain-."

"Does it matter? Either I won and everything's fine, or I'll pop out of existence. There's nothing I can do about it."

"Really? You don't have a time machine tucked away somewhere?"

"If I had a time machine I'd have gone back and talked Luthor into not joining the Light. I don't have a time machine."

"Huh. Kinda thought you mighta been lying about the parallel universe thing."

"So aside from a useless warning..?"

"It's not the same people."

"What isn't?"

"Whatever killed those people in Washington used some sorta powerful exotic matter weapon, right? I'm tough, but if someone hit me with something like that? I'm done. My injuries are all regular weapon injuries. No reason why you'd use fancy guns against ravers and regular stuff on the guy you were really trying t' kill."

"What makes you think you're the 'real' target?"

"Good question. See, the way I see it, the only reason why someone would try and stop me was if they wanted the future I don't want. Reach didn't have time travel, or the Orange Lantern Corps wouldn't a' eaten them in Kadabra's future. So… Who else?"

"Someone who wants to kill you but apparently doesn't care all that much about me?"

"No! Someone who wants the future we're trying to prevent! Or who wants a different future! Might even be the Thanagarians." I'm uncomfortably reminded of the ship that brought Princess Chay-Ara to Earth. "We want the same future. These people don't. This is both our problem."

"What do you want?"

"How about we share information?"

"I'm exceedingly reluctant to do that without a good deal more evidence than I have now that this is even happening."

"I can understand that. Hold on a sec…"

Coordinates received.

"There. Just sent you the place where the lab used to be. Take a look."

Ring?

"Take a look at a mountain?"

"I don't have a power ring. You might find something I missed. Or you might get shot at like I have been."

"I'll consider it. Anything else?"

"Nah. I'll call you again when you're done. Ciao!"

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Pursuant 10

next

19th October

17:16 -5 GMT

The crystalline growths extending over Match twinkle as the Jor-El neural clone takes his readings. Though not technically necessary for the medical work he's about to attempt, it is very much necessary to restrain a raging Kryptonian should he wake up. The genomorphs quite sensibly removed his solar suit once they took control of Cadmus and they've only exposed him to artificial light, but that's not really something anyone with any sense takes a risk on.

Kon stares through the crystal at Match's face. "So… Can you..? Do it..?"

"The form of genetic damage 'Match' is suffering from is similar to that suffered by early-generation clones during Krypton's own development of the process."

"So you can?"

"Those clones were destroyed before they reached full development, and the knowledge derived from their 'failed' creation was used to create improved versions. Eventually, a generation was created without the neurological deformity which causes Match's insane rage and only they were allowed to integrate into Kryptonian society."

"Cough cough blatant sugar coating is blatant cough."

"Sugar coating?" Kon grimaces at me. "He just said they kept killing them until they got it right. How is that sugar coating?"

"I believe that Orange Lantern is referring to the fact that clones were originally not considered to be 'people' for much of the period during which that form of reproduction was in widespread use. Much to my disappointment. In some cases, clones were kept in suspended animation and used for replacement body parts."

"What?"

"It's uncommon, but hardly unheard of. Cloning whole organisms is technologically far simpler than cloning a single body part. It's also a pretty good way to bring the Green Lantern Corps down on your head."

Kara nods. "It was the military council which eventually outlawed it and gave clones full rights. Partly because they used a lot of clones in the fleet. They also.. banned cloning…"

"The upshot is, Kryptonian science never bothered to develop a way to cure this condition in an already living person. However, by combining my own records and the scans given to me by Cadmus and by Orange Lantern, I believe that I can synthesize a retrovirus capable of correcting the systemic genetic errors in Match's body."

Kon nods, clearly relieved. "How long will it take?"

"This sort of viral genetic modification requires careful monitoring. I would much rather take this slow than further risk damage to Match's health. All being well I estimate a total time of three months until Match is a full clone of Kal-El."

"Couldn't-" He glances at me. "-Paul just do it all faster?"

"Yes, but given that we're altering the structures of Match's brain I don't recommend it. I'm going to be altering things as slowly as I can to give me enough time to react if something goes drastically wrong."

"Like..?"

"Like Match suffering neural architecture collapse because the parts of his brain which his mind runs on aren't connecting properly to the rest any longer."

"That can-?!"

"It's not likely, but that's why I'm going to be doing this slowly."

Kon nods as Diana walks over to me. "No, the League doesn't know any regular time travellers. Atom has expressed an interest in studying temporal phenomena, but he wanted to be clear that he doesn't know for certain whether what Nylor Truggs described is possible or not."

I nod. "I.. doubt that this is a trap. The coordinates he gave me are for an isolated location, but that just makes it easier for me to identify anything odd about the place."

"If someone is using some form of temporal manipulation, there might not be anything there for you to detect."

"Maybe." I shrug. "There are Maltusians who study time travel, but none of them are closely associated with the Orange Lantern Corps and.. other Maltusians tend to regard them as being a bit spacey. Someone's got to do it-."

"And you haven't even considered leaving it to the Justice League, have you?"

"No, but… That's because.. as you said, no member of the Justice League has any special knowledge of time travel. And I have a rather significant advantage in that area."

"Oh? And what would that be?"

"If someone wanted to erase you from history, all they would have to do was appear in the Old City of Themyscira when Queen Hippolyta was.. five? And shoot her dead. Or gas the whole place. You never come to be. With Kal-El they have similar options. Or with any other member of the Justice League. But with me, they'd have to travel to Earth Prime to do any of that, and as I understand it that's a lot harder. I should be safe up to the point where I arrived in orbit, then I've got a power ring."

"You weren't particularly skilled with it when you first arrived."

"It's still more security than anyone else has. Assuming there's anything to this. Truggs might just be testing my response speed or something."

She nods, considering. "How many League members could survive hits from phased particle beams?"

Ah… "Anyone super tough could take a few hits. Probably. Assuming that was all the attacker had. Anyone else would be torn apart by a direct hit."

"Superman said that he wouldn't mind getting away from his public speaking engagement. If you go to Metropolis you could fly on to the coordinates Truggs gave you."

Kon blinks. "We.. could go..?"

I raise my eyebrows, then look pointedly at Match.

"He's not.. going.. anywhere."

"A detailed examination of the site will take hours and if I get attacked and survive I'll be evacuating anyway. And after the Eden incident I imagine that the League wants one of theirs keeping tabs on me whenever I go anywhere."

I look at Diana with my eyebrows raised. She nods. "It.. has been discussed."

Kon nods, and I raise my right hand to my forehead. "See you when I've got something to report."

I appear in Metropolis, and look down from the top of a building overlooking Centennial Park towards the demonstration. This particular event is in support of attempts by President Horne to bring a large number of Bialyan refugees to the United States. Kal-El's usually a bit reluctant to appear at partisan events, but once the organisers agreed to reduce the blatant Democratocracy a bit he agreed to give a speech. Nothing exactly hair-raising-

Kal-El glances up and gives me a shallow nod before returning to the man he was talking to.

-but a definite departure from his normal mode of operation. He asked if I wanted to take part, but in the wake of the 'angel incident' I'm trying to limit my public appearances. Some of the interest I've been getting has been a bit.. creepy. And I was politely told that my preferred solution of flying in and winning the civil war by myself wouldn't be required. Still, I'm at a bit of a loose end until he finishes-.

A shimmering tear appears in the air a short distance from… Oh, come on. Really? There's a slash from… An axe blade? Looks like one of those 'barbarian war axe' things that no one would have actually used in combat, with a disproportionately large and unbalanced blade. Anyway, the magic axe cuts cleanly through the fabric of reality and some guy dressed like a… Yes, like a fantasy executioner, steps out.

"Superman!" The crowd is already fleeing for minimum safe distance and Kal-El clenches his fists. "Today I will kill you, and your tomorrow will die with you!"

Another.. time traveller. Three separate groups, or..? Don't know. Ring, scan-. The rift closes as whoever this is steps through. Has an axe, is from the future… That was the Persuader, right? I saw him in one episode of Justice League and in the comic as part of the Fatal Five Thousand. Not really sure how dangerous he is, but you know what happens to an idiotic supervillain hit by a crumbler round?

The same as everything e-.

Kal-El glances up at me and gives his head a very small shake.

Really?

I stare down and throw my arms up in the air, but he's gone back to focusing on the Persuader. I'd use his real name, but I don't actually remember ever hearing it. Scanning… Is jammed, empathic vision reveals… Someone with a lot to prove and who came back in time to kill the most significant historical hero in order to do it.

Well, fuck you, future historians.

Kal-El unclenches his fists and makes a mildly placatory gesture, prompting the Persuader to throw a small grenade-. Oh. Heh. There's a green blast as it releases a wave of kryptonite radiation, which Kal-El's environmental shield effortlessly absorbs. Persuader charges but Kal-El is already closing the distance, grabbing Persuader around the neck with his right hand while his left hand grips Persuader's left wrist to turn aside the axe's haft.

Huh. That was easy.

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Pursuant 11

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19th October

17:21 GMT -5

"Hyuughuh."

From the impression Persuader's making on Kal-El's gently squeezing hand I'm going to assume that he is super strong. Just, not super strong enough. Physiology is near enough Human-normal that pinching his jugular-. Yep, there he goes, his axe falls from his hands as his body goes limp. Kal-El gives it a second longer, then relaxes his hold and sets the other man down on the grass.

"Could somebody-"

Oh, right. Orange Lantern to Metropolis Special Crimes Unit.

"-please call the police? I left my phone in my other tights."

"Ye-aah?"

"Orange Lantern here. A time traveller with an axe just picked a fight with Kal-El in Centennial Park. The axe man is down, please send an appropriate transport vehicle."

There's a slight pause.

"What?"

Oh, for goodness-. "Orange Lantern, cake, eyes, moon turning around. Time traveller, coming back from the future to-."

"Hey, yeah, I get that. Why aren't you calling nine one one?"

"I thought I'd help you shave a couple of minutes off your response time. The axe man's name is Persuader, he's super strong and tough and Kal-El just-."

A very loud alarm starts going off on the other end of the phone line, and I hear the handset fall to the desk. Ugh, fine. I end the call, then float down off the building towards the fallen criminal. Some parts of the crowd who had fallen back are starting to get closer, camera phones in hand as if viewing it remotely will insulate them from the danger if he wakes up.

"No, I need everyone to stay back. He won't be unconscious for long-" Kal-El does his best to kick the axe away, but at his level of strength there isn't much margin for error between 'ineffectual' and 'sent flying into a nearby building'. "-and I don't want anyone getting hurt."

"Allow me."

Construct manacles form around Persuader's recumbent form, lifting him off the ground as I begin to create a kinetic bubble generator around him. Kal-El nods at me again before floating backwards in the air to give himself more room to manoeuvre if Persuader breaks out.

"Police are on their way."

"Good. Do you know who this guy is?"

"The Persuader. He's from the future and his axe can cut through anything. Including time apparently, which is more than a little disturbing."

Kal-El looks the axe over without touching it. "I don't think you have to worry about him doing that again."

"Well, no-."

"The sockets on the reverse side of the blade are slightly warmer than the surrounding metal, and I saw cables that would have fit in them when the hole opened. I think he was overcharging it."

"So he's less dangerous than a Danner enhancile with an x-ionised axe?"

He gives me a chiding look. "You do remember that those are supposed to be a US military secret, right?"

"Slipped my mind. You know, a Danner enhancile would have woken up by-" The Persuader pulls slightly against his restraints as the upper portion of the cage finishes and becomes active. "-now." I drop a multiphasic scrambler down next to the axe just in case it has some sort of remote recall function and withdraw my constructs, letting our captive slump at the bottom of a cage he can't break through with brute strength.

"I don't suppose you're going to tell me how you know what his name is?"

"I'm afraid not. But I won't correct you if you assume that spending a good deal of time with someone else from the future had something to do with it."

I can just about hear the sirens from the Special Crimes Unit's heavy transportation vehicle and its escort heading our way now.

"Superman! Are you-" I look around as a young black haired man steps forwards from the crowd. "-okay? That was kryptonite!"

"Thank you for your concern, but I'm fine. Kryptonite just doesn't have the same effect that it used to. Now, please: Orange Lantern's equipment is pretty reliable but I don't want to take any chances."

Persuader takes that as his cue to start hammering on the inside of the kinetic barriers, making precisely no progress. Based on the stress they're showing, I'd say that he's less strong than Estrogina. Never did work out where she ended up.

I should probably look into that, actually.

"Ah, sure. Sure thing." He backs up into the crowd, joining a blonde woman who is staring at me in a way I find somewhat disconcerting. He whispers something to her and she turns away, following him out of the area.

Hm.

"Kal-El, is now a good time for you to act as my chaperone while I follow up on Truggs' coordinates, or is clearing up after this going to take the rest of the day?"

"No, the MSCU and I have gotten the system for this sort of thing down to a fine art. They'll pick him up and then we can head out." He watches my face for a moment. "You're not complaining about it?"

"No. It's not an emergency situation, and I… I know that my.. commitment to the case I'm working on can be…"

"Disturb-."

"Disconcerting-" I nod. "-yes."

He smiles warmly. "Admitting you have a problem is the first step to sorting it out."

I frown and shake my head. "No, I just said everyone else has a problem."

"Ah…"

I smile. "Joke, joke." He looks decidedly sceptical, but doesn't say anything else. Okay, he knows the controls for the cage and the SCU know how to transport dangerous exotic weapons. Anything else I need to do?

Yes.

Oh, what-? Yes I do need to deal with that. "Excuse me for a moment." I run a filament under the ground until it reaches the subject of my ring's concern and then transition us both up two miles.

"Excuse me."

"Huh?" The young man looks mildly surprised for a fraction of a second, then covers it up with pantomimed extreme surprise. "What?! What's going on?! What did you do that for?!"

"Not Von Daggle, then? For a moment I thought that I'd irritated the Guardians far more than I thought I had."

"Who? L-let me-. Put me down!"

"I can tell you're not afraid, you know. And I can also tell that you're a durlan."

"I don't-?!"

"Please. My colleague Vril Dox has a durlan foster father, and he's the only person Dox trusts. I have no particular prejudices against your species. However, there is a group of durlans who have killed an awful lot of people in China over the past thirty years and I don't imagine that they'd have anything like my level of forbearance if they found out that you were here. They would capture you, interrogate you, and then use you to test their anti-durlan weaponry on. If it's an option at all, I would strongly recommend getting off Earth as soon as possible."

"It… Kinda isn't."

"Okay, but… Be careful."

He nods, and I transition us both back to ground level.

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Pursuant 12

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19th October

15:48 GMT -7

Truggs was certainly telling the truth about one thing.

There's sod all here.

Rock, dirt, cactuses… We're actually not all that far from the Lantern sparring arena. The particular point Truggs directed me to is a mesa which.. does slightly put me in mind of Rip Hunter's laboratory from… Was it Countdown? But all I'm getting is rock and… Okay, some exotic particle residue, but it's faint enough that I wouldn't ordinarily be suspicious of it.

"Find anything?"

"Not much. But.. then the problem with temporal phenomena is they don't always work in the right order."

Kal-El nods. "Like how radioactive substances decay over time, things relating to time travel could spread backwards in time from the point they occur?"

"Yes. Or… We might be seeing residue as a result of history altering, or… Anything, really. Pick your theory." And all I can do is stay here maintaining my scans in the hope of getting something useful. "How much time travel have you encountered?"

"Not a whole lot. Mxyzptlk made me repeat a single day on an endless loop once, but I think he's a special case."

I could riff off that, but attracting the attention of a Looney Tunes inspired 5th dimensional imp is the last thing I want to do.

"And I.. doubt that you could gather any useful intelligence from him."

"No. But I did get a whole lot of reading done. It was just a shame all the work I did got erased when I broke the loop."

I nod, then float slowly north, scanning constructs maintaining constant vigilance for anything of note or of use.

"Why did you pick that man out of the crowd?"

"He's a durlan."

"The same people who are terrorising China? You let him go?"

"Durlans are even less unified than humans are. While it's possible that he's associated with the group over there, I don't have any evidence of it. And since the Chinese are keeping quiet about their durlan problem it's quite possible that he doesn't know about it. I suggested that he might like to leave the planet before the Chinese locate him-."

"Suggest as in..?"

"Point out the problem and suggest that he leave. He said that it wasn't really an option."

"You didn't offer to give him a ride back home?"

"Durla's a radioactive mess experiencing total societal collapse. If he's here, he's presumably here for a reason. I'm not going to force him to go home any more than I'd force you to go back to Krypton."

"Somewhere else, then."

"He had a human appearance and he's not actually in China. He's probably more at risk from the other durlans…" And if they go after him first then we'll have an early warning system. Not a nice thought, but it's true and I did warn him. "I was actually a little worried that he might be a durlan by the name 'Von Daggle', but…" I shake my head. "Wrong emotional mix."

"I think you might have mentioned him before. Who is he?"

"I'm.. not sure what his official status is. The records on John's ring didn't mention him. But I have other sources of information. He's the head of the Guardians' black operations unit. Actual black operations, not the long-finger things the League used my former team for."

"But not a Green Lantern?"

"He might have been. He might still be, actually. But these days he mostly does things the Guardians need done but can't afford to be publically associated with. There was a brief period where I was concerned that they might send him after me."

"But you're not worried any more?"

"No. Not significantly."

He sighs and looks away. "But it's not because you met them and think that they're good people, it's because the Orange Lantern Corps already exists and you don't think it's worth their time any more."

"The Guardians are too important to be able to be 'nice'."

Kal-El shakes his head. "I don't believe that's true for a moment. Do you really think that important people can't afford to be nice?"

"Not if it interferes with their main job. Look, the Guardians are responsible for untold billions of people. You know what they were going to offer me when I bonded with the Ophidian? You know what they did give Larfleeze?" He nods. "They made a rational decision. They've got finite resources with which to do as much as they can. It wasn't nice leaving Vega to Larfleeze… And having seen the worst of that place, I.. fully appreciate that. But I wouldn't criticise them for the decision if that's really what it took to keep Larfleeze there. Because Abra Kadabra can tell you all about what happens when he leaves."

"Except it didn't. He didn't."

"None of us know everything. It reminds me of a… Okay, we don't have actual superheroes on Earth Prime, but we have the concept. And there was a.. television series.. where they put people in costumes and… In a series of challenges, assessed their suitability for the role. In one of the challenges they had to run an obstacle course as fast as possible… But near the start a little girl was crying. The guy running it wanted them to stop and find out what was wrong, because helping her should be more important to a hero than their time."

"Sure, if it's just a race."

"If a superhero's racing somewhere, then something very bad is happening there. If Barrage was shooting up central Metropolis, how many people would die if you took time out from stopping him to do anything?"

He nods. "Triage."

"Yeah."

"You know, I listened to that 'How To Succeed In Evil' story you told Lex about."

"You.. did..?"

"Edwin says that their version of the Flash has no concept of Triage, he just fights street crime because he likes fighting street crime. Even if it's not the best way he could use his powers. And since Edwin's job is showing people how to use their abilities efficiently, it-."

Warning. Temporal event-

Armour appears around my body, followed by construct armour and rail guns. Tachyon detector getting a lot more pings all of a sudden, and oh sugar those are chronitons!

"I can see.. something…"

The universe wobbles, and when it unwobbles there's a.. transparent sphere with a single figure sitting on a leather seat inside it. The sphere itself is glowing pale blue, presumably as a side effect of whatever allows it to travel through time. Arranged around the man inside are what appear to be the controls of his.. time.. sphere.. thing.

Okay, no immediate danger to either myself or Kal-El, chroniton emission has dropped right off… Can't scan the inside of the sphere, but I think we're safe. The man inside… That's a side arm, but it looks like a kinetic weapon. Probably not related to the killers from Washington.

The man inside checks his instruments, then notices us. He stares for a moment, then pulls a lever. That causes a section of the sphere to fade away, and he climbs out of his seat and walks through it onto the desert sands.

"Hi there. Name's Hunter. Looks like you were expecting me."

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Pursuant 13

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19th October

15:53 GMT -7

Kal-El floats down towards him, smiling in a welcoming fashion with his right hand slightly extended. "Welcome to the twenty-first century, Mister Hunter. I'm Su-."

"Superman, yes. I know who you are." He takes a moment to look around at the desert panorama. Green jumpsuit with dull red decoration, blue eyes and a ginger mullet. I.. don't remember Rip Hunter having a mullet. But.. this could be him from an earlier point in his timeline.

Or it could be someone entirely different. Now that he's out of the sphere I can scan him. Nothing special there, just a baseline human lousy with chroniton radiation. Which suggests that he wasn't involved in the murders in Washington, which is nice. Were time spheres distinctive? No, Seven Days had a time travelling ball as well. Can't… Remember anyone else in DC…

Mister Hunter and Kal-El shake hands. Chroniton radiation is dropping off rapidly… No observable effect on Kal-El from touching him. Hm. Now that I'm past the event, the pattern of radiation makes a good deal more sense. This is the only locus, so… Nothing else to worry about. From this site, anyway.

"…wned hero like yourself." Mister Hunter looks up at me. "But I don't think I know your friend..?"

I float downwards.

"Not a historian by any chance, Mister Hunter?"

"Amateur historian, sure, but professionally? Physicist. Why do you ask?"

"Because -while I fully appreciate that even in this age of technological progress not everyone is going to recognise me- I'm getting a bit peeved about time travellers not having the foggiest who I am."

He appears to find my statement a little disturbing. "Do you.. meet a lot of time travellers?"

"Four so far, none of whom had heard of me."

Kal-El chuckles to himself. "I hadn't realised you needed public affirmation that badly."

"If there's no record of me, then I never did anything the world remembers. If I succeed in.. any of my longer term aims for the Earth, I would have done. Future people not knowing who I am means that I fail." I grimace. "That won't stop me trying, but I won't deny that it's a bit off-putting."

Mister Hunter shrugs. "Since I haven't heard of you, why don't you fill me in on what those aims are?"

"Arcane and technological revolutions, channelling the expertise of the human species in a more efficient way than the super-brawls and minority-participation cults it's limited to now. There's no reason why children everywhere shouldn't learn to use magic in primary school, but all of the time travellers I've encountered so far made no mention of magic. I tried fighting the Reach, but apparently they still win anyway."

"The Reach, huh?" He nods. "Kind of a powerful target you've picked out there."

"Yes. They're an efficient use of my time."

Kal-El focuses his attention on Mister Hunter. "Okay, before we get too distracted… Is there a particular reason why you're here, or are you just a surprisingly dedicated autograph hunter?"

He nods. "I came back in time to stop a political extremist called Per Degaton. He's building a support base for some sort of revolution, and we think he's using time travel to do it."

That's not too surprising, at least. "Abra Kadabra told me that Per Degaton ends up being successful."

"But we know that, now. With the foreknowledge I've got, stopping him shouldn't be too difficult for the Justice Society."

Kal-El looks mildly puzzled. "Either you're sixty years too late, or you've gotten the name wrong. We're the Justice League."

Mister Hunter nods. "Guess that I've got something to take up with future historians as well, then. But will you help me track him and his people down? I could.. probably do it myself, but it'll go a whole lot faster with powerful metahumans and people with contacts with the government and police."

"Wait. Wait. You're saying that changing the past is possible?"

"Yes." He nods. "One of the first things I checked. If you're outside of time, you're not affected by the changes. Even changing your own history just.. produces some odd echoes. Of course, it doesn't help if you're inside of normal time. Chroniton radiation just gives you a temporary buffer."

"So… How come the time travellers already here haven't popped out of existence?"

"I'd need to study them and their techniques to be sure, but I'd guess it's either because they haven't prevented themselves being born yet or they haven't tried going home. Time doesn't correct itself all at once…" He shrugs. "Look, I'll be happy to give you a full lecture on temporal mechanics after we stop the time travelling fascist. Are we going to be working together on this, or do I need to hitch a ride to the nearest town?"

"What sorts of thing are his people doing in this era?"

"We think they're building weapons, then putting them in ultra-secure caches to be dug up again in the future. Beyond that, we weren't really certain."

Kal-El nods, spotting the direction of my line of questioning. "Exactly what sorts of weapons?"

"Ah…" Mister Hunter frowns. "All sorts. I think their main infantry weapon is some sort of.. exotic particle projector, but they also use light power armour and personal teleporters. Why do you ask?"

"There was a group murder a few days ago in Washington State by people using that sort of weapon. Genetic material left at the scene suggested that the attackers came from the future, and the slogan they left implied strong humans first ideology."

"That could be them. I don't have specific records of that attack, but that fits their profile. Were the victims aliens, or employed by aliens?"

"No. Demon cultists."

"Demon..? You're.. serious?" Kal-El and I both nod. "If they're not.. human then it's technically against their ideology for humans to cooperate with them. And if they're acting this openly, that's all the more reason to take them down as fast as possible."

"I think stopping a time travelling fascist is something the League can assist you with. Orange Lantern?"

"I'm on board, naturally. But I'd really like access to any other information you have on this era as well. If we're stopping one warlord, I can't think of a reason not to stop any others as well."

"Sure, I'd be happy to."

I blink. "Um. What?"

"Per Degaton was my primary target because he's the one I've got the best information on. But it would make my day if we could prevent the Reach taking over the Earth in the first place. And the best way I came up with to do that is to stop their patsies. I think you called them… The Light?"

…

"No."

Lex? Lex is the one who sells out the Earth? I mean… I know they use local collaborators. I helped kill some. But Lex.. selling out to aliens. Satanus, yes, the Brain, sure, Savage… Just about. Lex… I'd.. honestly have said that he'd rather die than put human destiny in someone else's hands.

"Now, hold on." Kal-El holds up his right hand. "The Light are the ones who bring the Reach to Earth? Why would they do that?"

Mister Hunter shrugs. "I'm a time traveller, not a mind reader. I don't know the details. If I had to guess, they thought they could get something out of the deal and bit off more than they could chew. But the Reach don't arrive for years. Degaton is here now."

I nod. "One zeta tube to the Hall of Justice."

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Pursuant 14

next

Okay, Genomorphs situat-

I step into the hush tube and appear back in Challenger Mountain.

20th October

14:43 GMT -6

-ed, Dox busy, shipyards up and running, ship-building coming on acceptably… Tamaran can have a tick. Cranius has released Mister Blake on his own recognisance and he's reacquainting himself with Human civilisation, twin-man -and it turns out that his name is Ph'yzzon- well enough to return home, Karna firmly under friendly control… Mr Near is finalising our coup plans with Ms Savage. Mr Talbot is adapting well enough to his power ring. Admiral Oswin wants to know when I want to move against the Psions. He's a bit eager to move his fleet out of Vega so he can carve himself a duchy out of formerly pirate-controlled space, but I'd like to wait until the first batch of Tamaranian ships are ready for real combat. Ah, he doesn't need an answer right now…

Mother Box, anything interesting happen while I was gone?

Ping!

Hah! They did? What sort of idiot attacks three Kryptonians-?

Ping.

I suppose it's nice that they're spending time together. It's not quite on a level of that petty burglar in Happy Harbor, but that's still a pretty high difficulty curve. A little surprising that he legged it but I suppose that even an axe-wielding cosplayer can take a hint that big.

So: next item on the agenda. What am I going to say to the people who will be running the British government after we kidnap them and then kill their less moral colleagues? And what are we going to do about the monarchy? Now, I've got a lot of time for Elizabeth Windsor Prime, but I've seen a list of some of the things Cabbage 16 used to get up to and, damn. Nothing I feel obliged to kill her for, but-.

I dart back four metres as an axe blade cleaves its way through the air just in front of me, signalling additional drones and armouring myself as I do so. That slice matches-.

Someone in a metal face mask lunges through-. A woman, clearly. The helmet fully encloses her head but for the two red eye pieces and the hole at the back for her ponytail, but… Okay, I'd give her a pass on that. Compared to what most super people wear, not a bad effort. Except that the jacket.. thing she's wearing doesn't merely have a deep 'v' to show off her cleavage to its best advantage. No, it also shows off her abdomen as well. And I don't think it's even armoured. And her trousers are those stupid hip-hugging things…

"OhthankGod!" She waves the haft of her axe at the rift, which closes behind her. "You gotta help me! He's-."

"Yes, because I routinely help people who break into my home. Who are-?"

Wait, I… Dimly remember. Terror Titans, wasn't it? She was Clock King's… Oh, darn, what's his name? The guy from the Legion era? He was in an episode of Justice League Animated…

No, gone.

"Elise, my name's Elise Kimble! And I-." She waves the axe, then appears to notice it. "I'll, ah…" She takes a firm hold on it with both hands and sets the butt on the floor. "I was minding my own business when this guy dressed like a ren faire reject cuts a hole in the air in front of me and kidnaps me. He made me put this.. get up on."

"I see." Mother Box, is she more threatening than she looks?

Ping.

I think I can dodge a great axe.

Based on past performance, Corpsman, I wouldn't give exceptional odds.

Alright, I think the drones I've got lined up can shoot her dead before she can swing it.

Better.

"Would this be the same 'ren faire reject' who picked a fight with Superman and sons a few days ago?"

"Did he?"

Sinestro, hologram.

An image of whateverhisnameis appears just in front of me. "This man?" Ms Kimble nods. I dismiss the hologram. "And he forcibly abducted you?"

"Yes! He picked me up and threw me through this.. like, cut in the air. He said I was one of his ancestors or.. something."

"Yes, he's most likely from the future. Did he give any indication as to why he picked you, as opposed to any of his other ancestors?"

"It wasn't just me. There was this guy called Cole, and I think he was planning on getting more."

Oh, splendid. "I assume that the axe is a gift from him?"

"I… Yeah, he-?"

I raise my right hand to my ear. "Jean, highest defence status immediately, please. Make sure Circe and Adom know."

"Of course, Grayven. Whom should we expect?"

"Some guy with a super axe."

"He's really strong!"

I move my ring away from my head for a moment. "Strong, like a man who exercises a whole lot, or strong like super strong?"

"Super, super strong."

I move the ring back to my ear. "Some guy with an axe who is also super strong. And possibly some other people with axes."

"We will bear that in mind. Should I activate the 'special' drones?"

"For a guy with an axe? No."

"Understood."

I lower my hand again. "We've probably got a minute or so before he gets here. Are you planning on joining in?"

"What? No, no one saw me leave."

"Both your axe and your helmet are transmitting a locator signal, s-." I see the axe blade appear next to her neck and yank her out of the way as it cuts across where she had been standing. In its wake space itself is cleaved apart, revealing a.. squad of poorly dressed axe men.

Oh dear.

"Is one of you the…" P-something. Wasn't it? "Peruser?" No reaction, though the masks make it a little hard to tell. "Pursuer? Ppppp… Punisher?" The stare. "Perambulat-. Come on, give me a clue."

"I am the Persuader." The voice comes from the one nearest the front. "I chose the name for myself because-."

"Your axe is very persuasive, got it. Any chance I could persuade you to go back to bothering the Legion?"

He straightens slightly at the name. "You are not from this time? No, it is of no consequence. I do not care about you, but that bitch betrayed me. I will have her head."

"He's craz-!"

I raise my right forefinger at her. "Ah juh-juh-juh. Going out on a limb here… 'Betrayed' in the sense that she accepted your equipment and training but fled before your rematch with the Supermen?"

"Just so. Stand aside."

"You can't-!"

"Juh!" I take a deep breath and smile at the Persuader. "I don't.. really care about her, but you picked a fight with some friends of mine, and… Can I assume that if I refuse to give her up, you'll attack me?"

"Of course."

"Ah-" Open fire "-well, I-."

The drones behind me drop stealth and fire, purple light blazing through the air as I lunge forward, daiklave in hand. The Persuader is already reeling back as I jam -yep, more than normal Human toughness, must take samples later- my blade through his chest, through his heart and out through his back!

I flick his corpse off my weapon as the rest of the crowd raise their axes. "Lads… Get a clue. Drop your axes now."

There's a brief moment of hesitation… Then they comply.

"And you." I point backwards at Ms Kimble with my right hand. "Don't even think about running."

"Staying right here."

Another one. Pfff. Sod it, I'm going to find Cassandra Cain and Rose Wilson before someone throws them at me.

back

Pursuant 15

next

20th October

15:03 GMT -5

I wasted half an hour chasing down Adeline Kane. Though she initially didn't want to talk to me, she really opened up when she found out that I was responsible for beating the shit out of her ex-husband in Singapore. And making him spend four months in one of their utter shit hole maximum security prisons. I mean, he got out, but I'm sure he breathes a little less comfortably now. Anyway, she doesn't have any idea where Slade Wilson is hanging out these days, and she didn't have any daughters with him. Two sons, Grant and Joseph. Um… Let's see. Joseph was mute, which means that he's the one who ends up able to possess people. I suppose that means that Grant is the one who dies attempting to carry out a hit on the… Teen Titans, and whose death results in Mr Slade himself coming after them.

I didn't know that Adeline was the one who shot out Mr Wilson's eye. Nice to know that he's even worse at romantic relationships than I am.

None of the people in the US named 'Rose Wilson' were a match for what I remember from the comics, but fortunately it turns out that blue eyed white haired girls named 'Rose' aren't all that common. Just one match, Rose Worth, living in New York and daughter of suspected brothel madam Lillian Worth. Which I assume is her name in much the same way that Jade's mother is really named 'Paula'. It's strange: as Ravager, Rose was in the Titans at the same time as Tim Drake. Master Drake is presently ten, Rose is eleven, yet the young woman I'm detaining and who was roughly the same age as both of them in the comics is seventeen.

"Just in here, please."

"What is this about?"

"That's.. not for me to say."

Shame she doesn't go to the same school as Zatanna, really. That would make keeping tabs on her easier.

The door to the room in Riverdale Country School which I'm temporarily occupying swings open, revealing Principal Randolph, Ms Worth and the young Miss Worth. The Principal steps aside, Ms Worth regarding me cautiously for a moment before leading her daughter inside.

I stand and offer her my right hand. "Ms Worth. Delighted to meet you."

"Mister Grayven." She takes my hand and does a reasonable job of shaking it, even with the ludicrous size difference. "Why are we here?"

"Ah, yes." I gesture to the settee opposite me. "Please, take a seat."

She hesitates for a moment, and I definitely notice Miss Worth watching her mother carefully for a clue as to how she's supposed to behave rather than sitting down on her own initiative. The woman looks me over for a moment, then steps back so that she and Rose can take the seat offered. Rose is holding her hand, but it doesn't look like she's doing it for reassurance. No. It's a control thing.

I sit down opposite. "Are you familiar with the Department of Metahuman Affairs?"

"I have heard of it. I understand that you are a federal agent."

I nod. "Yes. And more than that, I also had an encounter with a man named Slade Wilson earlier this year which saw him ending up inside a Singapore prison with five fractured ribs. Among other injuries."

She doesn't smile. Her expression remains completely under control. Of course, if she doesn't want me to talk about Rose's father in front of her this would be the time to make an excuse… No? Alright then.

"One of the things which the DMA is interested in is preventing people from becoming supervillains in the first place. Mister Wilson was given an augmentative treatment while in the employ of the US military, and at least one of his natural children has gone on to manifest metahuman abilities. While we wouldn't do anything as intrusive as.. put potential metahumans on.. some sort of national register, or anything as.. contrary to individual freedom as that… We do keep records relating to people we're concerned might come to be involved with known supervillains."

"I have not seen Slade Wilson for a very long time."

"Yes. However, it isn't you that I'm concerned for. As I implied, some augmentative processes affect the children of the recipient. And then there's the risk of Mister Wilson paying you a visit on his own initiative."

She nods slowly. "What do you want?"

"I want to give you a way to contact me or my chief of staff in an emergency. And a non-emergency number as well in case you want to leave a message. I have a.. daughter Rose's age myself, and.. I've been unable to help her when she was attacked by supervillains before. I wouldn't want anyone else to go through that if I could do something about it. And.. in the event that you.. happen to encounter someone who could benefit from mentoring from someone.. inside the community, I am.. again, happy to make myself available."

Rose has been watching me very carefully. I give her a smile. She narrows her eyes slightly, then turns her head towards her mother. "Mom-."

Ms Worth doesn't look at her. "Sh."

A minor glower, then Rose shifts her attention to me. "Slade Wilson is my father, isn't he?"

"Yes."

A quiet quasi-growl leaks from Ms Worth's lips.

"I have a summary of his personal history here-" A data stick appears from subspace, along with three emergency locator beacons. "-if you want to read it. And you should feel free to contact me if you have any questions."

Rose gives me a very small smile. "Thank you."

"You're welcome. That's really all I wanted to say to you." I rise to my feet, prompting them to do the same. "Please, have a pleasant day." Sinestro, hush tube.

The opening appears in front of me and I stride through into the basement of David Cain's current hidey-hole. It closes down once I'm through.

Oh, how very touching. Are you attempting to achieve karmic balance, Corpsman?

I look over to where David Cain is still chained to the wall.

"You know, you really are a horrible excuse for a Human being."

"You know I'll never talk. If you want to torture me, get on with it."

"'Want' is a.. complicated business. I want to see you suffer, but I don't want to be the sort of person who inflicts pain purely out of spite."

He makes an amused exhalation. "Are you going to tell me what I'm supposed to have done to you? I'm assuming it was someone I killed, but I can't think of anyone who you would have cared about."

"Oh, no. No, completely the wrong direction. I'm talking about Cassandra. Physical training… Sure. I grew up on Apokolips, I'm not precious about that sort of thing. Shooting her, then doing it again if she flinched… That's bad, and I'd probably kill you for it. But denying her access to language… That's a whole new level of vile."

He looks… Not scared, but a little concerned. "How the hell did you know about that?"

"I'm from a parallel universe where you're a comic book character. I read it. You got killed by Deadshot."

"Who?"

I widen my eyes. "Exactly."

He dismisses it with a shake of his head. "I don't even know where she is. She did one assassination and freaked out. I had to revise my whole methodology, and I couldn't convince Sandra to conceive another child."

"I wouldn't worry. Ms Wu-San was banging Vandal Savage when I killed her. And I know where Cassandra is perfectly well; she's in my home. Being taught how-" -kind of- "-normal people live." I raise my left hand. "I could assimilate you, turn you into a construct. But I don't like doing that to people whose knowledge isn't utterly irreplaceable. I could alter your mind to make you useful to me. But I don't think I could tolerate your ongoing presence without throwing up."

"So. David Cain of Earth. Die, and make the universe a better place for your passing."

back

Pursuant 16

next

21st October

21:03 GMT -6

"This is gunna be sweet!"

Wallace is grinning as we wait patiently in an unmarked van for the attack order.

Kaldur nods, though his smile is more subtle. "It is good to have you with us once more. Is your presence likely to be ongoing?"

"That's.. up to Batman. I got him the magic users he asked for, but he appeared to take… My methods a little personally."

"No." Wallace blinks. "I mean, yeah, having Oh El back is great and all, but I meant fighting time traveling Nazi assassins who fought the Justice Society."

Beryl yawns into her coffee, then takes a glug. "Not Nazis. Fascists. These ones blame aliens for everything instead of Jews, gypsies and sane people."

"Fine. Time traveling fascists who fought the Justice Society."

"How.. worried do we need to be about the time travel?" M'gann looks around the van's interior. "I mean, unless they can get to Mars in the future I'm pretty safe, but can they just time travel into your bedrooms when you were little?"

Wallace smiles smugly at me. "I dunno. That's why some of us have secret identities."

"Wallly."

"No, he's got a point. Hunter certainly isn't Mister Hunter's real name. But I wasn't ever a baby on this Earth, so I'm probably safe." My eyes turn a little awkwardly towards Kaldur.

"I am not worried for myself. It would be difficult for an outsider to locate a particular home in Atlantis, to say nothing of the difficulty a surface worlder would have in operating under water."

We all look at Beryl.

"Are we even sure paradoxes are possible? If they only try to kill me because I tried to stop them, why did they kill me if I never existed to try and stop them?"

"Supervillains." / "Supervillains." / "Because-. Yeah."

"Mister Hunter said that travelling in time makes you resistant to causality. If these people are time travellers rather than local hirelings, they won't necessarily be able to chronoshift out of the-."

Wallace shakes his head. "Chronowhat?"

"Ah. Use short bursts of time travel. Giving people better guns makes sense. Giving them time travel creates risks, particularly if you're using local electricity grids to power them."

Kaldur nods. "And not merely risks of detection. People they recruit from this time period are unlikely to share their particular ideology. They might well decide to simply take their equipment and then leave."

"I dunno." Wallace frowns. "If they've been here since the fifties then they've probably converted some people. I mean, we've fought actual Nazis twice now and the Nazis lost the Second World War. These guys win the future."

Beryl nods. "Am I the only one finding it strange that a time travelling hero wants to change the future?"

Kaldur raises his right eyebrow. "What surprises you about that?"

"I always thought that a hero would be the one trying to keep things as they are."

"Earth gets huge chunks of its population killed by the Reach, then gets unified under a fascist. If I had a time machine, I'd try to prevent that."

"Except we don't know that happens, do we?" She takes another sip of coffee. "Our only information sources are Nylor Truggs and Abra Kadabra."

"Who both said the same thing. And Kadabra had heard of Per Degaton."

Kaldur shrugs. "Whether their foreknowledge is entirely trustworthy or not, we have a syndicate of assassins to apprehend. Squire, any word from Batman?"

She brings up her arm computer for a moment. "Nope. Nothing yet."

Mister Hunter was a little disturbed to learn that some of his future information was no longer accurate. He didn't know that the League of Shadows was no longer active, and several of the sites he suggested we investigate didn't show any sign of illegal usage. But there were enough signs of recent usage that the team is being deployed along with the League to some of the more important sites.

"I haven't really been watching television. How's the whole 'angel' thing been playing?"

Beryl shrugs. "A lot of people using a lot of words to say nothing. Your interview wasn't exactly informative." Her eyes narrow slightly. "Which.. was intentional. When's the follow-up?"

"Sunday. And they'll be putting me on with people who'll be asking slightly more searching questions."

"You, ah..?" Wallace looks at me curiously. "You actually going to tell them what sort of fruit it was? Because breaking into Eden-"

"I didn't actually break-"

"-and taking a fruit-"

"-into Eden."

"-is a li-ttle more serious than taking some random fruit."

"That partly depends on whether Ms Blaze has shown any sign of understanding theurgy. If she does, I'll ask her to come on with me and I imagine that will set people's minds…" Wallace and Beryl glance at each other. "At ease. What?"

"A-ah…" Wallace grimaces. "Look… You don't think people who've been Christians or.. Jews or whatever their whole lives aren't gunna.. have a hard time with the fact that you've had more angel face time than they have?"

"Wallace, you don't need an invitation to visit KordTech. If you want some face time just-."

"No, not-. I mean, yeah, I probably will. But you've had more contact with an agent of God than anyone."

"Actually… Zauriel pretty much said that they usually stay invisible."

Kaldur seems less than impressed. "It would have been helpful if they had been a little more visible when demons overran Fawcett City."

"Kaldur, I stole a single pomegranate. While I could try taking the Silver City to task for their serial absenteeism, it seems to me that would generate.. more heat than light. Hopefully when Zauriel comes back we can-."

"Batman to team."

Beryl raises her arm again, inadvertently throwing her coffee across the van floor and then mouthing obscenities to herself. The rest of us come to a sort of seated attention, locking eyes on the screen.

"Doctor Mist confirms that Eliminations, Inc technology is only weakly resistant to magic. However, their technology interferes with all other forms of detection. We will not be able to get a good read on either the layout or the garrison until the attack begins. Call out weapons and defensive technologies as you see them."

We all nod, though on this sort of broadcast he can't see us.

"Proceed with the attack. Batman out."

back

Pursuant 17

next

21st October

21:08 GMT -6

Wallace has the doors open in a trice and I'm a split second behind him, armour appearing from subspace around my body. M'gann shimmers into invisibility as she takes to the sky while Beryl and Kaldur hold back slightly. M'gann and I could try phasing through the wall but there are technologies which can interfere with that and I don't particularly feel like doing a repeat of the Louvre.

Instead, I generate a giant crumbler gauntlet construct and slam it into the exterior wall!

Teleport jam, external communications jam… Brick, metal and plastics lose molecular cohesion instantly, the illusion covering the interior failing a moment later and revealing…

A lot of surprised people on forklift trucks.

Wallace blurs through the opening, keys vanishing from ignitions in his wake as I use my ring to scan the interior. Looks like a computer warehouse. High-end stuff, but nothing illegal. Of course, this might be a legitimate operation. The building stealth isn't illegal by itself, and neither is time travel in the US.

"Hey, what the hell is this?!"

Her badge says 'supervisor', and she's first to snap out of the shock. I ignore her, heading for the ceiling with another crumbler gauntlet construct. Because the thing about stealth technology is -crumble- that just because you can't see it, that doesn't mean that it isn't there. Out through the roof, into the night sky… Which stays night sky. Construct rotary blades, spin them through the area just in case there's an invisible carbuncle on some other part of the roof…

**Roof clear.**

**Ground floor clear.**

**They don't know anything. As far as they know, they ship in raw materials and ship out computer products.**

I feel Kaldur nod. **And those in the know are most likely management, working the day shift. Take as detailed a map of the interior from their minds as you can.**

**Done.**

I drop back through the hole in the roof as the supervisor works out that the man in the grey/blue armour is in charge. "Hey, I'm talking to y-!"

Kaldur waves his water-bearers and water envelops her before turning into ice. Kaldur approaches her as the rest of us receive M'gann's map in our minds.

"Please remain calm. We work for the Justice League and are searching for a group of assassins."

"And by 'calm'-" Beryl walks forwards with a large bundle of handcuffs. "-we mean get over here so we can cuff you."

A few turn and dash for the exits. M'gann becomes visible in front of one exit, her white-glowing eyes and telekinetically levitated pallets being more than enough to convince them that it's a bad idea. The ones heading for the fire exit reach it, only to find that it's been gummed shut.

"Borrowed that from my girlfriend." Wallace appears behind them, cuffs in hand. "Probably a fire hazard, so don't smoke anything for the next hour or two."

Hm. Based on the map M'gann took, this place appears to just be a manufacturing site. Not that we can rely on that…

**Aqualad, do we check out the production area first, or shall I start smashing the floor?**

Beryl and Wallace start applying cuffs as Kaldur thinks it over. **We will examine production first. You have point.**

I drop down, forming a new crumbler gauntlet construct as I do so. At this point there's no way we're going to disguise our general location, but experience has shown me that bypassing doorways wrongfoots a lot of people and bypasses a lot of traps. I strike the wall with the gauntlet and it disintegrates, revealing a dimly lit electronics laboratory. The lights blink on automatically as I enter and I get a good look at the equipment. Oh, that's interesting.

**Looks like they're using nano-forges.**

**Really? Are those what I think they are?** Wallace feels as interested as I am. **Practical molecular construction machines?**

**Yes.**

**Are those from the future?**

I hear the uncertainty in Kaldur's mental voice. He's far better with technology than most Atlanteans, but it still isn't a topic he's anything like as conversant on as the.. rest of us.

I'm thinking of us as a team again. That's.. rather nice.

**Difficult to say. It's a generation prior to what Doctor Roquette is working on, but I'm not aware of any Earth company that has them. Especially not this size and speed.**

**Do they present a danger?**

**Not to our mission, no. And.. on the off chance that they are fairly developed technology that the people here were keeping secret for some reason… They'd be very expensive to replace.**

**Then do not interrupt their operation. What are they making?**

**Bleeding edge quantum CPUs. Again, not definite proof of time travel, though... Suspicious. Miss Martian, did the employees suspect anything about this?**

**A few of them thought that there was something odd about the machines, but none of them really thought much about it.**

I spin orange strands around the room, but nothing is other than as it appears. **Room is secure. Moving on.**

Another wall, another destructive high five, another hole. Same.. basic layout, same systems… Same lack of booby traps. **Next room clear as well. Appears to be producing…** Ah. **Difficult to say for certain. Not circuitry. This stuff could be used in some models of phased particle weapon, but equally it could be used in a number of other high-end physics research devices.**

**They got contracts to supply things like that?**

I can feel Wallace's curiosity. And I just know that he and Richard would love to play with these things for a while.

**Not that I've been able to find. Also, they need better network security.**

**Time to remove the floor?**

**Not quite yet. Squire, are there any abnormalities in the floor plan?**

**No-. Wait. Maybe. They had an underground car park dug out… But it looks like they used too many lorries to move the earth they dug out away.**

**You think that they dug out more than they declared?**

**Not for certain, but if we're digging out the basement anyway…**

I crumble the floor beneath my feet and drop through the-.

**That's not on the plans. I just dropped through a radiation suppression system of a similar type to the one in Washington. Floor's thicker too.** I crumble again, this time breaking through to a new corridor. Dropping down the hole I take a look around. **This isn't on the plans and doesn't look twenty-first century.**

Actually, the solid metal with blinking diodes looks sci-fi retro, what someone in the fifties might have imagined the nineties would look like.

**I'd appreciate some support before I proceed further-.**

"Intruder detected. Initiating countermeasures."

back

Pursuant 18

next

21st October

21:13 GMT -6

Standard defence against phased particle weapons is wide area plasma fields. Standard counter to plasma fields is cold guns.

Cold gun constructs appear around me, searching for targets.

**Something triggered, prepar-**

**Aagh!**

**-for attack.**

White-red light flickers all around me, turning into dots moving! Phased particle beams fly, blasting holes in the ceiling, walls and floor as well as eating away at my construct armour! Cold guns fire back on automatic as I duck and dive. I'm never going to dodge them all in close confines like this, but I shouldn't have to worry much about them breaking my constructs unless they all start hitting the same point or something.

My return fire is… I can't tell. Ring, what the heck is this red stuff?

Readings consistent with models for temporal displacement technology. Return fire partially- I hear a muffled explosion. -successful.

Observe patterns of incoming fire. Are they-

Two shots hit my construct faceplate at the same time, making visible cracks on the surface. Phased particle beams are designed to penetrate before detonating, but that only works well against conventional matter; my constructs are turning it aside reasonably well. Which is good, because my power armour isn't really designed to do much more than ablate in the face of attacks like this. Could create a plasma field, but I'm not sure how that would react with the temporal displacement and I really don't want to create a plasma bomb underneath my team mates.

-using temporal manipulation to predict my shots or just firing and vanishing?

Reaction speed too rapid for definitive judgement. If the former, they are prioritising hitting you over their own survivability.

They're also not moving. The ring is showing me the pattern of their activity, and their displacement is regular to within two seconds. Rather than displace, wait to recharge and then reappear the moment they left, they're gone for the time it would.. probably actually take a weapon like that to recharge. Not true time travel, but it would still be blooming useful to get my hands on one.

And the ring's right, there are definitely fewer incoming shots. **Orange Lantern to team, under attack by drone weapons.** The red light has faded as the drones are destroyed. I… I guess it's a side effect of the displacement effect. I'll send the file to Dox when we're finished, see what he makes of it. **Drones are using phased particle beams as their primary weapons and what appears to be temporal displacement technology. Attack was triggered as soon as I entered the underground part of the facility.**

…

The last drone weapon falls silent and I take a moment to replenish my construct armour. Okay, let's take a look at-.

Small devices shaped like mushrooms sprout from the wall more armour!

There's a crackle of ionisation in the air as the plasma initiators activate, then the air turns to white light! Constant pressure on my shield, bearable, but I'm not going anywhere like this. Bit of an extreme burglar alarm; it would be lethal to anyone not shielded or super tough.

**Additional defences include a plasma initiator system.** The plasma initiators burn out, letting the gas in the room return to its natural composition and pressure. And.. that destroyed the drone remains, darn it.

…

**Please respond.**

**We're… Mostly okay, Oh El. Ow.**

**Do you need me back up-?**

**No.** Kaldur sounds a good deal more okay than Wallace did. **Keep looking. I will join you in a moment.**

I nod, replenish my construct armour again. **What happened?**

**Some sort of automated weaponry. Fortunately, I was its initial target and my armour turned its energy aside.**

**Good to hear.** I'd considered using arcane metamaterials in my armour, but I felt that phasing and invisibility were more useful. And I'd have to wear it throughout the mission as I wouldn't just be able to subspace it whenever I felt like it.

The metal making up the walls of the corridor is more than a little melted, and the damage to the stuff they're using to deceive my ring scans is enough that I'm getting slightly more helpful feedback now. This facility still doesn't appear to be particularly big, but there are a couple of rooms to take a look at. Hm. If they'd just had the production upstairs here we might not have thought that there was anything untoward going on here. Was the automated defence system a response to me, or to the other attacks that are going on?

Ring, show me everyone else's progress.

Compliance.

League attacks on what Mister Hunter assured us are their main centres are going well. Some resistance, about half of which is 'high end' rather than conventional guards. Huh. And a couple of whiffs as members of the world's premier superhero team turn up somewhere that genuinely doesn't have anything suspicious happening at it. Plastic Man and Green Arrow probably can't be redeployed fast enough to join in anything else… The rest of my team are doing fine, though Kon and Canis are reporting injuries. Probably had to tank the automated defences.

Kaldur drops down the hole and nods to me. "Are you injured?"

"No, raring to go." I lumber towards the end of the corridor at a jog, crumbler gauntlet construct out in front of me. "Are the forges-" The doorway disintegrates, revealing… Ah, rats. "-in one piece?"

What look like banks of computer equipment are either destroyed or.. missing, perhaps displaced in time to somewhen Eliminations, Inc can recover them.

"Much like this, I am afraid."

Scan… No, no more plasma weapons. Just… Destroyed equipment.

"Darn. Ring, anything worthwhile left?"

"Affirmative."

The ring highlights.. some sort of tachyon fountain. Which being tachyons, means that it's still working in the future. A marker? A beacon of some kind? I walk towards it. Should probably see if I can turn it off. I imagine that Doctor Palmer would-.

Red bubbles precipitate into existence to our right! I immediately aim my cold guns and Kaldur… Ah, calls up a.. sphere of water with ice sigils floating inside it. Beams of phased particles considerably more powerful than those fired by the drones fire back, knocking him backwards into the wall and straight up blasting chunks out of my construct armour. Dodge dodge! Ring, am I hitting-?

The fire cuts out, revealing four humanoids in full black and red body armour. They're carrying what I immediately recognise as phased particle beams, though the weapons look somewhat the worse for wear. Frost covers the exterior of their armour in several places but it looks like it's got the sort of insulation that can actually prevent cold guns scoring instant kills. They freeze for a fraction of a second, then the red bubbles reappear and they vanish.

"Kaldur?"

"I am well. And it seems that Doctor Mist was correct about them having no defence against magic." He pulls himself upright and walks to my side. "It is mildly reassuring that at least one of our foes does not work with the others."

I take a moment to look around. Guess we're done here, then.

back

Pursuant 19

next

21st October

21:47 GMT -6

I lean back against the wall, idly tapping my left foot against the pavement. The local police have pretty much finished their initial processing of the warehouse workers, but we already know from M'gann that they didn't know anything about their employer's real business. Other police are going through the building, bagging and tagging anything remotely interesting as well as securing the site. It would be a bit of a nuisance if someone stole some of the equipment, but… Hardly a major problem. None of it is more than a generation or two ahead of what Earth has now, and if someone was willing to splurge and had the right connections then they could probably get equipment like it from other places.

All in all, I'm a little underwhelmed.

We stopped a time travel-. No, we didn't. We undermined his resource base somewhat, but these places could have been in operation since the fifties. That's sixty years of turning out materials. If Per Degaton can't take over a post-apocalyptic Earth with that then there's probably no hope for him. And contrariwise, I'm struggling to see what a few extra years of production would really have done for him. The only thing I can really think of is that they might have been ramping up…

Okay, think it through. I'm a bitter would-be dictator with a time machine and a xenophobia psychosis. Travelling back in time for the resources worked for the Sheeda, so it's perfectly viable for me. But there's no point in taking raw materials. The Reach or the Thanagarians might have used local resources for local construction but there's no point just stealing raw materials when it's far easier to break up asteroids. Which means that while there might be local resource shortages in the future, there shouldn't be a resource shortage per se. Technology? I suppose… They might be backward, depending on how much effort the Thanagarians put into developing the place and exactly what the Reach didn't bother taking with them-.

No, hang on. Would the Reach have destroyed it out of spite or contempt? Not.. sure. Usually in their fights with the Darkstars they haven't bothered, but that's probably because they're confident that they'll be able to take it all back eventually. In a way it's an intimidation tactic; yes, we'll let you primitives squat here for a year or two, being properly impressed by our superiority… Point being, I don't really have a model for how they behave if they're having to retreat properly. And if Larfleeze was eating them…

Hm. No, I don't think they would. Or rather, if they were going to destroy their holdings then the destruction would be so total that there wouldn't be a native population left. If there was anyone left and the Thanagarians bothered occupying then it follows that there was something to occupy. So Per Degaton grows up in a world that was wrecked by one group of aliens -and unlike with the Nazis blaming the 'November Criminals' and the Jews it isn't a minority thing, it's historical fact- and now controlled by another. Truggs came back to prevent the defeat in the first place, but he's… A bit more of a realist. And -in his way- a utilitarian. Degaton… He'd want to fight. He'd want to show his people that they could win.

So he'd build weapons in the past, back when Earth still had the technology and infrastructure. But how would he get hold of them? Build a time.. gate of some kind here and send them through? Just.. bury them and wait? Bit of a risk, but if he knew how to hide it from Reach technology and knew where the Reach weren't going to bother looking it could work-.

"What's so great about that bit of wall, then?"

I blink as Beryl raises her eyebrows interrogatively at me. "Sorry, miles away. Something happen?"

"Final casualty reports. Nothing too serious, though the Hawkwoman would have been looking for a no-arm combat style if Accomplished Perfect Physician wasn't there. What are you thinking about?"

"Economic uses of time travel?"

She nods. "That Hunter bloke might share. Not sure how I feel about popping out of existence if you went back to stop Klarion, mind."

"No, no-. Well… I wasn't.. planning… Actively planning that. I mean, aren't we making people Mister Hunter's met pop out of existence by doing this now?"

"Not people I've met. And anyway, this was done with time travel anyway. Maybe we're making another group of people pop back?" She glances up for a moment. "If we assume that the possible permutations of history which can be created by time travel are near-infinite-"

I frown. "You can't have near-"

"-then really it's a bit selfish to think that any one group is more 'real' than any other."

"-infinite."

"Unless you're one of them. But particularity is a problem with a lot of logical ideas."

"I-. No, that wasn't what I was thinking about. What I meant was: how was Per Degaton planning to use any of this stuff?"

"Hide it and wait?" She thinks for a moment. "Those four guys with the teleporters might have been doing shuttle-runs."

"I don't suppose they were caught?"

She shakes her head. "People matching their description did a lot of counter attacks, but they stopped when Kaldur shut off their guns. Which means that it was probably the same group each time."

"And we don't… Heh, we don't remember anyone popping out of existence?"

She nods. "Makes it a bit hard to know, doesn't it?"

Alas, poor Triumph. "But… Why are there a few dozen factories? And why were they all in countries that had people who would actually look for them? If they'd gone to… I don't know, Ogaden-."

"Transportation infrastructure."

"For time travellers? Or how about China? I'm pretty sure the Standing Committee would keep things covered up for a cut of the output."

"Fascist dictators aren't sharers. Of course…"

"What?"

"The only time traveller who we know has got a way back.. is Mister Hunter."

I smile. "That's some Batman level thinking. But his sphere isn't big enough for more than a few boxes and we're not going to put all of the best stuff in one place. Compared to a time machine…"

"Do we actually know any of this for certain?"

Hmmm. "I don't think that Abra would lie to me about Per Degaton existing. Small bursts of chroniton radiation combined with their movement pattern suggests that those people had at least limited time travel capacity… But we don't have a hard evidential tie between them and Per Degaton, just Mister Hunter's assurance."

"Alright. So, a fascist dictator wants to send people back in time to build things for his take over. Who does he send?"

"Logically… He'd go himself and set things up, then return to the future and leave a loyal lieutenant running it?"

"What if he couldn't. What if it was one way? Or… Difficult, or hard to hide or something?"

"Someone.. loyal and unimaginative. They'd be going back into what was a.. far nicer world than they were used to. He wouldn't want them getting distracted or deciding they were better off without him. And… He wouldn't be able to send them much help. They'd probably have to recruit it locally. And the locals wouldn't share their ideology."

"See, based on what we actually know about 'Eliminations, Inc.', that fits much closer to how they acted. They killed for money and never said anything about any sort of ideology. So maybe… They were building up funds for this? And they disappeared because they already had the money to build their first factories… They didn't need to kill people any more. And the hired killers were only in it for the money, so they could just be paid off…"

"Might be worth seeing if we can find them. We should be able to get authorisation for telepathic-."

"Because I know what's going on!"

Beryl and I look over to the police cordon where a middle aged and quite aggravated man is arguing with a police officer. We look at each other for a moment and then jog in his direction.

"Is there a problem, sir?"

His attention switches away from the police officer as soon as he hears it. "Yeah. I want my time machine back."

back

Pursuant 20

next

21st October

21:47 GMT -6

Rusty-red hair shot through with grey, generally grizzled face… Ah heck, this is Rip Hunter, isn't it?

Is it? Oh great, how do I actually-?

"What time machine's that then?"

Beryl has an excellent poker face, but I don't think it's cutting any mustard here. A policeman behind probably-Rip Hunter nods at him and raises his eyebrows at me, wanting to know if I want him chased off. I give my head a small shake.

"My time machine, that appeared in the Sonoran Desert two days ago and appears to have precipitated an attack by the Justice League that wasn't supposed to happen."

"I see. Perhaps we should talk in private, Mister..?"

"Rip Hunter."

Beryl raises her eyebrows at me, but I just nod. "'Rip Hunter'. Do you think I should tell people that my first name is 'Esk'?"

"Esk-?" I make a show of wincing. "Oh, that's terrib- " I open my empathic vision all the way, steeling myself as I do so. "-father."

I think Mister Hunter spots what I'm trying. Certainly he ends up glowing an undifferentiated green on the surface. I'm assuming that's some sort of telepathic resistance technique. Not much point going to those sorts of length to hide your identity if the first telepath you run across can take it directly from your mind. But then, I'm not a telepath. And I get just a tiny peek of someone I was sort of hoping to have met by now.

I nod. "Identification confirmed, Mister Hunter. We should continue this in private." I attach a filament to him and Beryl and transition us to the top of a nearby building. His eyes dart around his new environment as much as they can without entirely losing sight of me. "I apologise, but the other fellow had a time machine and useful advice. I rather assumed he was you."

"You shouldn't know who I am. And you certainly shouldn't know who my-." He shakes his head. "What did this other time traveller look like?"

I generate a construct of him.

"Huh. What did he say his name was?"

"Just.. Hunter."

"And he couldn't even come up with something original." Mister Hunter shakes his head. "His name is Jason Goldstein, we.. used to work together. But right now he needs to be stopped."

"While I.. sympathise with you on the theft, I.. don't really see how this is a high urgency issue. Him giving us the opportunity to finally round up Eliminations, Inc. is extremely helpful."

He looks sour. "And despite knowing who I am, you're not just going to take my word for it when I say this is a very bad idea."

"Not without a little more information."

"Information's the problem! The more people know, the more people try to change things!"

"Mister Goldstein is hardly the only person trying to do that. As soon as I found out that the Earth was due to be conquered by the Reach I prioritised stopping them. If that's what you're trying to stop..."

He rubs his forehead with his right hand. "And do you know what the consequences of that will be?"

"If I win, Earth civilisation doesn't collapse, billions don't die-."

"Billions don't die here."

"I'm an Orange Lantern, these are the ones I'm invested in."

Beryl smiles sarcastically. "Awwwww."

"And our technological progress doesn't get set back hundreds of years."

"Earth's technological progress won't get set back hundreds of years. The rest of human civilisation never happens."

"The rest..? You mean, like where Abra Kadabra grew up?"

"That and a hundred places like it where the Reach tried to turn metahumans into living weapons. A hundred worlds where stabilised and reproducible metahuman abilities are the norm. The effective death of Earth civilisation resulted in a medium term strengthening of humanity as a whole."

"And Per Degaton?"

"He unified Earth. He did a lot of bad things doing it, but the net result was to make Earth stronger. If the League stops that happening, Earth stays controlled by the Thanagarians."

Beryl shrugs. "Unless something else happens."

"Yeah, I'm still not seeing this as a problem. Was.. Mister Goldstein telling the truth when he said that the Light are the ones who bring the Reach to Earth?"

"No, no, no…" He shakes his head again, clearly frustrated with us. "The Reach will come to Earth."

"Not if they're all dead, they won't."

Beryl blinks. "All-? Ahhh…"

"I've been a time traveller for long enough to notice things. I understand the appeal, I really.. do. Make things 'better', where's the harm? When I first started out I thought the same way. Things don't.. work out like that. Tachyons go backwards in time. That means that data about the future state of the universe does as well. The past doesn't just influence the future, the future affects the past. The best way I can describe it is that the future knows what shape it's supposed to be. And anything that tries to change that more than a certain amount… It generates… Blowback. Either things get flat out worse, or they end up going the way they were going to go with a slight delay added to them."

"Are you..? Anthropomorphising time?"

"No, I'm not saying that time's malevolent, I'm saying there are hard mechanical problems involved in trying to change things that shouldn't be changed. Problems that your wishful thinking -and his- don't take account of."

"Squire?"

"I'm pretty sure he believes it, but I'd want a look at his original data. It doesn't sound completely implausible, but it is a bit far fetched."

Mister Hunter huffs in frustration. "Can you at least arrest Goldstein?"

"Can you prove that you own the time sphere?"

"I can prove that he murdered one of our co-workers."

"Why didn't you lead with that, then? Murder is something I-" Usually. "-don't have a problem arresting people for. But…" I glance at Beryl. "How do we arrest a time traveller?"

back

Pursuant 21

next

21st October

22:02 GMT -6

Wallace shakes his head. "No, I still don't get this. If he took your time machine to come to now, how did you get here?"

Rip Hunter folds his arms across his chest. "Luck. He took the time sphere in forty BC after we went then to stop David Clinton from stealing the Great Sphinx of Giza. I was able to partly rebuild his Time Clock to send me forwards in time, but it's a one-way trip unless I get my time sphere back."

"And you.. don't build a new one because..?"

"Because my current time sphere is set up to detect the temporal fissure system I'd need to build in order to make another. Goldstein would travel backwards or forwards to whenever I was to put a bullet in my head before I was in a position to do the same to him. I could only risk coming to now because someone fired off some kind of temporal beacon, otherwise the chronitron radiation I'm carrying would have been enough to set it off anyway."

Wallace nods, then starts as something occurs to him. "Wait a second. David-? You mean Chronos? I always thought he was a joke? He's actually a time traveller?"

Mister Hunter's jaw tightens. "Not. Any. More."

"O-kaaay. I'm, ah-." Kaldur walks back into the room, M'gann right behind him. Wallace looks relieved at the interruption. "Well?"

"Mister Goldstein is with Batman in the Hall of Justice, overseeing operations in case Per Degaton manages to organise a counterattack. His time-." Kaldur nods to Mr Hunter. "My apologies. Mister Hunter's time sphere is being stored in the Hall's library."

Wallace frowns in puzzlement. "Pretty sure Batman can take out one guy."

Mister Hunter huffs. "Of course Batman could take out one guy. The problem is that if Goldstein gets attacked he'll just teleport back to the time sphere. It's automatic and temporal mechanics based and once he's in there there's not a thing anyone can do about it. He can warn himself off, try again at an earlier point in time or kill every one of you in your cradles."

M'gann bows her head slightly. "I could.. control his mind?"

"That… That might work, except I trained my people to resist telepathy. He only needs a fraction of a second of mental coherence and he's gone."

Wallace shrugs. "Why don't we just take a hammer to the time sphere? You can fix it afterwards, right? If it isn't working then he can't use it to go back and stop us."

Mister Hunter shakes his head. "The time sphere exists slightly out of synchronicity with normal time. The only way you'd get in was if he opened it for you."

"Could you open it?"

He nods. "Sure, but there's no way I could get close without being detected."

Kaldur thinks for a moment. "Would the time sphere leave this time period at the very moment he entered it?"

"No, it takes a few seconds to start up. But it isn't any less invulnerable when it's preparing to enter the time stream than when it's stationary."

Beryl looks at me, then looks away, then looks back to see whether or not I noticed her looking at me.

"Does its.. lack of synchronicity render it completely invulnerable, or are there things to which it is still vulnerable?"

"Do you have any temporal manipulation-based weapons?"

Beryl sidles up to me. "You sure he's on the up and up?"

"Sureish? I'm not sure I agree with his approach to time travel, and… Intellectually, I appreciate that it's a little odd to worry about one murder when we're perfectly happy to erase an entire future timeline…"

"Because I've never been able to work out how much you actually know about this stuff."

"More than most people, not as much as I'd like. Why?"

"If we were quick, we could probably get away with moving the Greenwich Mean. That-" I suppress my instinctive response to snigger. "-should-. What?"

"We're not moving the Greenwich Mean." Honestly. I very much doubt that moving a time zone around would do much to a time machine. Although it might be possible to create a ritual based… But if Mister Hunter is right about time violently correcting itself, we probably don't have time. But if we're looking for a temporal-.

Truggs never called me back.

Ring, is the communication channel Truggs used to contact me still available?

Confirmed.

Beryl shakes her head disappointedly, then turns away to talk to Mister Hunter.

Use it.

Contacting now.

"…same problem. Anything I could build to prevent him leaving could be detected…"

"Hey Paul. How's it going?"

I raise my left hand to my left ear so that the people around me don't think I'm just staring into space again. "Confusingly. Why did you send me to meet Mister Goldstein?"

Kaldur frowns interrogatively at me while Mister Hunter looks annoyed.

"I didn't know who was coming. Just that someone was."

"And what exactly-?"

"Ah, hey! Saw you on the news again. And I.. ttthink yer standing right next to a time traveller right now. Good goin'!"

"Did you have something to do with the temporal beacon?"

"Ugh, Savage's B plan. All it did was explode. I didn't think it even worked."

"Could you rebuild it?"

"I have already. What, you want it? What's going on?"

"We're playing Back to the Future, and it's annoying."

"The film?"

"No, the card game. I'm having to try and factor in the wellbeing of future people in different timelines-."

"You don't. I lived that life. You let me do that."

"One moment." I hold the ring away from my ear. "Truggs has a temporal beacon. Can it be used to prevent Mister Goldstein escaping?"

Mister Hunter's eyes dart to the side as he thinks about it. "Probably. I'd need to take a look at it, make some modifications."

I bring my ring back to my ear. "Yes."

"Yes what."

"Yes you unmitigated, conceited arsehole."

"Hah! Revving my engine there, Paul. But I want something from you."

"What?"

"This guy you're talking to; he active or reactive?"

"Reactive. He seems to think that trying to alter things will only make them worse."

"Okay, so he wants t' just take his machine and go on his way?"

"Yes."

"That's all I ask. I'll give you the pick-up address now."

back

Pursuant 22

next

22nd October

00:32 GMT -5

Kaldur leads the way into the conference room in the Hall of Justice that is being used as a command post for the attacks on Eliminations, Inc. Mister Goldstein glances up for a moment to see who it is, but otherwise remains focused on his monitors.

"Hey kids." Mr Queen stops fiddling with his fletching and smiles warmly at us. "Or am I not meant to call you that?"

"I'm sure that when someone reaches your advanced age-" Two years older than me. "-everyone starts to look young."

He nods. "Decent comeback. I don't think I'm quite old enough to make it work, but the thought was there." He looks around the group. "Did you come back here for a reason? As far as I'm concerned, if you've handed your site over to the police you can take the rest of the night… Ah, morning, off."

Kaldur focuses on Mr Goldstein. "Mister Goldstein. I am afraid that I must speak with you-."

Mr Goldstein tips his head back, shuts down his monitor and then turns his chair around to face us. "Rip found you, didn't he?"

"He did. And I must speak with you concerning the death of Miss Bonnie Baxter."

"Where is he?" Mr Goldstein tries to peer around behind us. "I thought he'd want to be here to do this face to face." We stop walking towards him, forming a short arc facing him. "Don't tell me he's trying to dick around with the time sphere? I may not be as good a temporal physicist as he is but I do know how to change a set of locks."

Mr Queen stands as well, putting a foam arrow to string but not raising his bow. "Aqualad, what's going on?"

"Green Arrow. This man's real name is Jason Goldstein-."

"Which I didn't use because any other time traveller could use it to go back in time, locate me and kill me." He stands as well, rolling his eyes. "Nice breach of operational security there, Rip."

"His name is Jason Goldstein. Another time traveller, a man by the name Rip Hunter, has alleged that he stole the time sphere and killed one of their mutual colleagues."

Mr Goldstein raises his eyebrows slightly. "I should be hurt that you assumed that he was telling the truth after I've been nothing but helpful. Yet, somehow-."

Mr Queen looks at him. "Was he telling the truth?"

Mr Goldstein shakes his head. "I told Rip I killed her. All I really did was help her cover up an affair she was having. The knock on effect was that she never got fired, she never met Rip and never went time travelling. She's probably still alive now if you want to look her up."

"And the time machine?"

"Of course I stole that. Once Rip made it clear that he wouldn't let me improve history, what choice did I have? I don't know enough about his past to alter it, he's as paranoid as a Texan survivalist in the present… He'd have killed me for interfering with his precious 'real' time line."

His hand hasn't gone even slightly near where Rip said his recall button would be. He spots me looking at it, and manages a half-smile.

"I'm not going to cut and run, Orange Lantern. This is the right thing to do. And you know it."

Mr Queen relaxes slightly, and looks at my squad. "O.. kay. This sounds like something that needs careful consideration. How about we get Diana to-?"

A dull tone rings out from Mr Goldstein's bracer. He nods and makes a vague gesture with his right hand. "And now he's going for the time sphere. Guess he wasn't willing to wait for you."

"Ah, hell." Mr Queen sprints for the doorway. "I remember when this place was secure."

My team bolts after him as I focus on Mr Hunter's desires-

-and step out-

-and back. "Mister Hunter, this wasn't wh-."

Mr Hunter looks mildly puzzled. "Have you arrested him?"

This.. is where we left him. Ohhhh dear.

"Anothertimetravellerisgoingforthesphereexcuseme."

Out!

Back! "It's not Hunt-!"

A phased particle beam blasts through one of the Hall's interior walls as Mr Queen dives out of the way! "Yeah! We know!"

Wallace dashes across the floor and up a wall as another stream of energised particles-. I erect a construct barrier and he dives behind it, nodding appreciatively.

"Hey Oh El. Things went crazy real-" Two more beams join the first and I have to reinforce the barrier. "-fast."

I spot Mr Queen string an EMP arrow. "Really-" He looses and strings another. "-starting-" Another. "-to question-" Another. "-the wisdom-" Another- "-of having-."

I touch Wallace with my right hand and transition us to the viewing area.

The viewing window has been almost completely destroyed, and through the hole where it used to be I can see a golden gynoid hovering over the time sphere, a shimmering red shield surrounding them both as she tries to do something to it. Four guards-. Yes, four, their repeated teleporting makes it a little difficult to track th-.

Kaldur raises his water bearers as shots fly towards him and Beryl. The icy runes form in the water and the beams peter out before they hit. Beryl pulls out her slingshot. "Feeling severely under gunned, here!"

M'gann-. I can't see her, but from the way one of the soldiers is grasping at his head I'm going to assume-.

Wallace dashes in, dodging around a rapidly aimed shot and slamming a sticky mine onto the headaching soldier. It detonates, blast knocking him over and-. No, it hasn't penetrated his armour and he's teleporting-.

Right, pulling weight time. Armour, construct armour, autoguns-.

"Orange Lantern! Pierce her shield!"

I don't acknowledge him but get the ring to work analysing her defences. A neutron shield. Exotic, but hardly unknown to Maltusian science. Obviously I could fire a laser through it. But her highly reflective epidermis would probably deal with that. Instead, I generate a railgun, fabricate a boron carbide round and open fire. It hits home, and the gynoid's head rotates on her neck to look at me as her shield wavers. Yeah, the reason why neutron shields are a specialist item is -ignoring the exorbitant energy requirement- a properly equipped opponent can destabilise them relatively easily. Another shot and it starts to fade. Phased particle shots slam into my construct armour and eat through my railgun construct so I reposition, creating a new one and loading another round as Wallace and Kaldur take advantage of their foes' new focus to assail them anew. Wallace's target gets covered in something I recognise as an alchemical super-acid while Kaldur fires what looks like blue lightning into another, causing him to spasm uncontrollably and collapse to the ground.

Another shot and the neutron shield fails, a bullet from Beryl's slingshot, an arrow and a telekinetically thrown lump of rubble flying at the gynoid a half-second later!

And they pass through her as she phases out.

I catch sight of M'gann with my empathic vision as she tries to bring her telekinetic power to bear on her target directly, but the only person other than me here with anti-phasing equipment is-.

Mr Queen's arrow hits her in the side and fails to penetrate. Yeah, they're not great against unphased targets. I've got my own shot loaded a moment later, centre of mass and fire. It strikes home and she judders a little, but doesn't appear to be significantly damaged. Okay, dial up the power-.

The time sphere's outer surface shimmers blue and she flies for the now opening doorway.

Wallace grins. "Gotcha!"

Truggs' device detonates, the blue light flickering and dying as the gynoid collapses to the ground.

back

Pursuant 23

next

22nd October

01:27 GMT -5

Mr Queen waves his bandaged right hand at the damage to the library. "You not planning on waving your ring and making all of this disappear?"

I slump slightly in my chair. "No."

He considers the damage for a moment, holds out his right arm to look at his injuries… Then pointedly folds it behind his back. "Everyone else gone home?"

"Yes. Kaldur.. stuck around until King Orin got back, and.. Squire wanted to take a look at the gynoid, but she was dead on her feet, so…"

He scans the floor for a moment, then pulls over a partially intact piece of chair and cautiously sits down on it. "Crazy couple a' days, huh?"

I raise my eyebrows slightly. "Which part are you referring to?"

"Time machines. Not exactly an original concept, and we've had time travellers before, but this is the first time someone's actually set down a machine that can transport someone through time right in our laps."

"If they'd erased it from history, how would you know?"

He looks away for a moment, staring through the hole in the side of the building at the early morning sky. "Yeah, that's what's been giving me a headache. I don't think the law's really built for people playing with causality."

"It's not. I checked. The nearest I could find was 'reckless endangerment', and I think you'd have to intentionally mess things up a lot before a judge or a jury would accept it."

"The League's going to try and work.. something out between the Hunters. At least until Bats can check out their stories. Personally I'd rather impound the time sphere until we have some.. huge disaster that can't be fixed any other way, but otherwise ban all time travel. I mean… If we even can."

I nod. "That's the most sensible thing I've been able to come up with. We should probably come up with some-."

"Come up with some sort of protocol so that we know any time travelling we do do is above board. Because two way time travel is a lot more problematic than one way stuff." He scratches the left side of his cheek with the fingers of his left hand. "Look… I've been.. meaning to talk to you since you got back…"

"Thinking about upgrading your arsenal? Or are you running out of-."

"No, not… Well, maybe, but… I.. wanted to talk to you about Nabu."

I exhale. "You really don't want this place fixed, do you?"

"This place is meant to be a punching bag. Or a crumple zone. Somewhere villains can attack, where they'll feel like they're achieving something without it actually disrupting our operations. Somewhere we can evacuate fast. Sure, we could armour the walls and put in.. automated defense systems, but that's not really what it's for."

"Everyone on the Light's payroll knows about the.. other place. And anyone else they feel like leaking it to."

"Still a little harder getting into space than getting to DC. But that's not what I wanted to talk about."

"I really think I've said all that I can productively say on the subject."

He nods, then pauses for a few moments. "You know why I originally joined the Justice League?"

"Star City was fairly stable and since you'd just lost your job you had a lot of free time?"

"No-. Well… Yeah. But the other thing was that… The League was a group of superheroes with no oversight. Not from government or congress or anyone like that. I thought that I needed to be there to keep an eye on things. Y'know, just in case. And then I actually got to know everyone, realised that they might not be perfect but they weren't anything to worry about…" He shrugs. "I stopped worrying."

"So you voted for Nabu because you assumed-."

"I voted for Nabu because I don't know a thing about magic. With the benefit of hindsight, sure, it was a mistake. But I had no way of knowing that at the time." He sighs. "My mistake was not following up on the Helmet after you kids picked it up from the Tower of Fate. That was something I could understand: what happens if you lock a thinking being away from everything while its greatest enemies run riot."

Huh. Hadn't really thought about it like that.

"There are an awful lot of files on the League's computers I've never read through. I'm not beating myself up over not knowing Nabu was there. But once Arte told me about what happened with Kid Flash… I shoulda thought about that a bit more. I don't know, talked to Zatara about what he was planning on doing… Something."

I shrug. "I decided to leave Nabu in the cupboard after he hesitated to release Kid Flash."

"What, just like that? I thought it took you at least a little longer."

"Kid Flash is mine, Nabu is-. Was not. Just a polished Star Conqueror." I shrug. "It just wasn't a problem because he was contained."

He looks away. "Guess I can see where you're coming from. My point is… I don't think I did what I joined the Justice League to do that time. So when Bats and Atom start getting into temporal mechanics, I'm going to make sure I'm there. Not.. sure if I'm going to have anything useful to say, but…"

"I appreciate that." I stand. "And.. I appreciate you coming to.. say that to me." Hm. "Actually…"

"What?"

"You are.. trained as a business executive, right?"

"I've got a BA in Business Administration and six years' experience running a multinational company. I hated it, but I know how it goes."

"Would you be interested in part time work?"

"Aheh." He smiles faintly. "I think Ted Kord can manage-."

"No, not Ted Kord. There's another company… I've been thinking of buying them for a while to protect them from asset stripping fake cheese merchants, but I don't actually know anything about running a company. I'd need someone to keep an eye on.. my interests. Wouldn't be anything like full time -the management's sound- but I imagine that you'd find it easy enough."

"Ah… I don't know. Write up a job spec and I'll take a look at it, but I'm a professional archer for a reason."

"You get paid to do that? I thought you were an amateur."

"Yeah, funny." He gets up. "You might as well go home. I'm pulling an all-nighter but all that's going to happen in here is a couple of days of rebuilding."

I nod, and drift upwards towards the hole in the ceiling. Yeah, there's no point in hanging around. For once I'm reasonably in agreement with the League 'don't interfere' policy. I don't have anything special to add and every time I try and get my head around time travel I just end up thinking in circles. I pass out through the outer wall of the Hall of Justice and come to a stop. 'Home' is Alan's house, but it's half one in the morning. He wouldn't have waited up, would he? I'd have said 'not', but I thought that about my parents once and they started phoning the hospital and police to find out if my body had been handed in-.

"Orange Lantern!"

Huh? I look down.. at a cluster of four people.

"Orange Lantern!" Dana Dearden waves both arms to try and get my attention. She's.. wearing Orange Lantern themed clothing. That's a little weird when it's someone I know. Haven't spoken to her since I got back to Earth, but she didn't strike me as the type to take that personally. "How long you been back on Earth?!"

The three others… The durlan from Metropolis, and two other people I recognise from the crowd. The youth who asked Kal-El if he was alright and his friend. Superhero groupies? Eh, harmless enough. Not sure what the durlan's angle is, but if he's not hostile… Not really a problem. And if he is, it's better that he's hostile here. I mean, what's he going to do, wreck a wrecked building?

I float downwards towards them. "And what can I do for the four of you?"

The male human holds up.. some sort of crystal with a computer attached. Ring, what exactly-?

"Hold still for about two seconds."

"Are you doing a selfie-?"

Space distends around us, New York vanishing in a heartbeat as we're all inexorably drawn upwards! I try flying sideways but I just seem to be.. moving in a circle! Gravity-? No, this is.. a shrunken universe where there literally isn't room for significant lateral flight.

Who the heck are these people?

A moment later I'm thrown out into some sort of… Small room made of a pale green material with a glowing red energy barrier covering the front. Through it I see the other four appear into the corridor outside, and a.. coluan nods in greeting before turning to look at me.

"This does not appear to be the Persuader."

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Pursuant 24

next

Um

Get back to you

The Coluan folds his arms behind his back and walks closer to the barrier between me and the rest of… Wherever this is.

"To a cursory inspection he appears to be the correct species and sex, and I would not expect you to risk moving the Atomic Axe. Still, I do notice a few differences which might suggest that you have managed to bring back-" He turns his head towards the other three. "-entirely the wrong person."

The black haired chap shakes his head. "Superman arrested Nyeun about thirty seconds after he appeared in their time. They had him in a maximum security prison."

"The Kryptonite bomb?"

"Didn't affect him."

The Coluan turns back to me, a mild frown on his forehead. "Curious. And you couldn't recover him? From an early twenty first century prison?"

The blonde woman sighs. "From an early twentieth century prison improved by superheroes and magic. Yes, we might have been able to get him out, but we would probably have been detected. We decided that leaving him there was less dangerous."

"You may have been right. But who is this?"

"'This' is the Illustres of the Orange Lantern Corps. And you must be Brainiac Five. Which makes you-" I point to the blonde woman. "-Saturn Girl, and you-" I point to the Durlan, who shifts to an orange/brown skinned, antenna-and-pointy-eared humanoid form. "-Chameleon Boy, and you…" I point to the third member of the Legion's snatch squad. "Um. Ferro Lad?"

"Cosmic Boy."

"Really?" I frown. "You control magnetic fields and you're not named after a magnetic metal?"

"How do you even know about that?"

"How do you not know about me?" Huh. "Okay, I didn't mean for that so sound quite as arrogant as it did, but I'm relatively well known in the twenty first century and I'd have thought that at least some record of.. me would have survived."

**What can we risk telling him?**

Saturn Girl's mental voice. Given that she's clearly at least in her late teens, perhaps I should question the 'girl' part of her name. On the other hand, Cosmic Teen and Chameleon Youth still use 'boy', so at least they're being even handed about it.

**Absolutely nothing.** I don't remember whether Brainiac 5 is a descendent of Vril Dox or not. Though given how long it has probably been, it's certainly not impossible. Assuming that he ever has children. **The time line has already been disrupted enough. Anything we tell him-.**

**Sorry to interject, but…**

Brainiac twitches. "You're a telepath. It would have been useful to know that."

"No, but I've spent enough time around M'gann that-." Blank looks. Either they haven't heard of her either, or they've learned poker faces pretty quick. "M'gann M'orzz? Miss Martian?" No sign of recognition. "I've spent enough time around her that I've.. sort of.. got a feel for it. Look, is there any chance you could send me back? I had a lot of projects on the go and I'm.. not really clear what I'm supposed to have done?"

Brainiac regards me for a moment. "Our historical records make no mention of you, but they do make mention of the Orange Lantern Corps."

"Oh! Right! Right. You're from the Kadabra timeline."

"Explain."

"Abra Kadabra? From the sixty fourth century? He told me that at some point Larfleeze's construct lanterns leave Vega and tear apart the Reach. Which won't happen now… Um. Then? Because Larfleeze is in therapy and the Orange Central Power Battery is on Maltus. I mean, we are going to destroy the Reach, but we're not going to assimilate entire planets to do it." No obvious reaction. "Which means that either the history he learned was inaccurate, or I've already altered his past."

"Why are you trying to alter the past?"

"No, no. Look: I'm not a time traveller." Oh. "I lost a few seconds using a singularity beam, and my interstellar FTL involves warping space so.. I've time travelled a little bit. But I didn't deliberately go back with the aim of changing something. I'm just.. trying to help people."

"Aside from Abra Kadabra, are you aware of any other time travellers in your era?"

"Nylor Truggs. He-."

"Hey Paul."

I grimace, then turn my face towards my neighbouring cell. "Mister Truggs."

Cosmic Boy looks his way as well. "Nylor Truggs is from our era. He was the first person we thought of."

"Not exactly quick doin' anything about me, were yah?"

Chameleon Boy snorts. "Seems like we found you pretty quick to me."

"Yeah… Guess I got kinda comfortable behind my scry wards. Though, hey, Paul? I'm kinda hurt you were gunna hand me over that quick. This set-up seems ripe fer a good ole nemesis team up."

"You're not my nemesis, and I want to make sure that we haven't ruined time before doing anything."

"He's in denial."

Brainiac 5 glowers in a way I've seen Dox do more than once. "Enough. Orange Lantern, what h-?"

"I don't see why I should listen to you. I wanna talk to a lawyer. An' another t-."

Brainiac 5 holds up a remote control of some kind and presses a button. Truggs falls mercifully silent. "Orange Lantern, this is a matter of the greatest importance. The time line which gave rise to my comrades and me is being erased. I assumed it was the result of an attack and dispatched Saturn Girl, Cosmic Boy and Chameleon Boy to prevent it." Brainiac's eyes stop focusing on me. "Once I detected Persuader going back in time, I concluded that his assassination of Superman was what threw the present off-course. But the assassination attempt failed, and our timeline has still not been restored even in part. Something else is happening, and our historical record makes no mention of you. But without having used a chroniton destabiliser, it shouldn't be possible for you to change history. You should simply be part of the original flow of events unless acted on by an external entity."

"Thank you..? So.. I can go home?"

"Not unless we need to send someone else to your era. We don't have unlimited power."

"But surely a few Bleed Torsion-."

"We're existing in a finite personal time line. We continue to exist and we don't run into our past or future selves, but we can't draw upon any resources outside of its area. And no, we can't use our own time travel technology to get around that."

I frown. "Why no-."

"Are you a level twelve intelligence?"

"I'm not totally sure what that means, but I don't think so."

"Then it's fairly unlikely that you'll be able to suggest anything I haven't already considered. And rejected."

"Including going back in time a day and staying there, incorporating yourself in the new timeline?"

"Yes. Letting everyone we knew remain as never having existed is not an acceptable outcome."

"But why should I prefer them to the people who exist in the new time line? I mean, if all it takes is a little bit of exotic radiation to erase a universe full of people and replace it with something else it probably happens all the time."

That's a bit disturbing, actually.

"Time isn't quite that fragile. Now…" He takes a few steps closer to the barrier. "Talk to me about the time machine in the Hall of Justice."

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Pursuant 25

next

Next

"That was still being sorted out when I left. You'd really have been better off kidnapping an actual Justice League member."

"Where did it come from?"

"I'm not sure. Both of the people associated with it claimed that it was built by a man who used the alias Rip Hunter, but I don't know what era or time line he came from. It came to us under the control of a man named Jason Goldstein, who stole it because he wanted to 'improve' history with his knowledge of the future."

Brainiac 5 nods. "It sounds as though he should be our target."

"Why? The League has decided not to use the time sphere, which means that Mister Hunter and Mister Goldstein are stuck where they are. There won't be any further alterations from them. And.. there's a tracking device in the time sphere that would detect you if you tried it."

"Why did they travel to your era?"

"As I said, he wanted to improve-."

"There are an almost unlimited number of points in human history where a time traveller might go to 'improve' things. The only one of them that happens in your era is the Reach conquest."

"So… The Sheeda invasion doesn't happen?"

His eyes narrow slightly. "I'm not answering your questions. I'm trying to restore a time line, not damage it further. In other circumstances I might tell you everything and let Saturn Girl erase it from your mind, but since you're resistant I can't take the risk of you going back and making things worse."

"You think it can be restored? How does that work? Mister Hunter said something about history 'knowing' the shape it should have, but that sounded.. a bit anthropomorphic to me."

"I imagine that he was dumbing it down for your benefit. The truth is considerably more complicated. My current belief is that I can restore our time line so long as I can correct the largest source of disruption." He shakes his head. "Frankly, I don't understand how this was possible in the first place. Only a colossal disruption in the time stream should have made this possible, and the only being I know capable of making such a disruption is pleading ignorance. Did any of the time travellers attempt to persuade you to take any particular course of action?"

"Truggs wanted to stop the Reach, but we-. Can I talk to him for a moment?"

"Why?"

"Truggs is working for a man named Lex Luthor, who's a member of an alliance of supervillains called 'The Light'. He told me that he was working to avoid the future he came from, where Earth gets occupied and devastated by the Reach. But according to Mister Goldstein, the Light are the ones who draw the Reach to Earth in the first place. I-" I shake my head. "-wondered why an interstellar polity from the other side of the core had any interest in Earth. I mean, it's interesting, but it's not that interesting."

"I imagine that it's due to the investment/reward ratio. Earth can be conquered relatively easily, and the potential rewards are extreme." He steps back and presses his button again. "This may prove illuminating."

"Mister Truggs?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you aware that the Light are the ones who bring the Reach to Earth in the first place?"

He's quiet for a moment. "What is this?" He sounds slightly amused.

"According to the time traveller you sent me to meet, the Light are the ones who bring the Reach to Earth."

"What? Look, Paul, we haven't.. talked for a while-" Oooooh dear. "-so maybe you've started hearin' my voice insider yer head or somethin', I don't know." Oh dear. "If I knew where another time traveller was gunna show up, I wouldn't tell you. I'd have a.. squad a' guys waitin'. Shoot em, tranq em', take their stuff…"

"You didn't tell me."

"I didn't tell yah. Wait… You think I'm the only guy who can get a hold a' you?"

"And that.. thing about Savage wanting to use your time travel device-"

"I told you, it's busted. Even if he wan'ed to use it, he couldn't."

I hold out my left hand and generate a construct of the item I picked up at 'his' behest. "Please show him this."

Cosmic Boy pulls something out his pocket, uses it to scan my construct and then holds it out in the direction of Mr Truggs.

"Huh. Looks… Kinda like my device. How'd you get it?"

"You, or.. the person posing as you directed me to an address. It was there. I asked for it because I needed a way to prevent the time sphere leaving our era."

"Hey, does that mean I have ta get outa here? I don't remember doin' this, so it's gotta be future me. Right?"

Brainiac shakes his head. "So far as I can tell: changing the past is possible, and only the one who does it is aware that anything has changed. Which means that any number of alternate versions of you could try any number of things and none of them would guarantee anything. Otherwise the past which I remember would be guaranteed to return. Tell me more about Goldstein. What exactly did he ask you to do?"

"He gave the Justice League information on a semi-defunct assassination organisation called Eliminations, Inc. Not all of it was accurate, but we were able to take a highly sophisticated gynoid and some time travelling fascists into custody. They worked for someone called Per Degaton."

"I see. Disrupting Per Degaton's reunification campaign would prevent the spread of his pan-human political philosophy. That might prevent the United Planets being formed… Still, time is usually more resilient than that. Others should have taken up the flag."

"But Per Degaton's people were time travellers too. I'm assuming that.. this.. United Planets isn't a fascist organisation?" The green skinned Coluan raises his right eyebrow. "So are you sure you're not from the time line where he didn't have resources provided to him by people from the past?"

"His rise to power was an.. anomaly, even in history as I remember it. Some historians speculated that he discovered a pre-Reach weapons cache of some kind… But he could well have been getting materials from the past. It fits the events."

"So what would you say to people from the version where-?"

"I wouldn't."

I hear Mr Truggs huff-snort. "Nice ta know I never did anything you wouldn't, Brainy. Howsabou-?"

Brainiac 5 raises the remote and presses the button, cutting him off.

Saturn Girl and Cosmic Boy exchange disturbed looks. He shakes his head, then she steps towards her Coluan comrade. "Brainy, you said-."

"That there was only one 'real' time line and anything else would experience paradox collapse? I thought from the way our host laughed when I said it that it probably was an incorrect deduction. And with.. everything we now know was happening…"

"But that-."

He glares at her. "I know. Why do you think he's letting us use this place? This is his idea of a joke."

"Look, if you're just trying to spot a single key alteration, I'm happy to help. What do you n-?"

He turns away and walks towards the only visible exit, the other three falling in behind him. "I'll let you know if we decide to return to your era."

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Pursuant 26

next

A short time later

"So…" Dana paces a couple of steps from left to right. "I guess the.. reason you're not talking to me is… You're kinda pissed off about me telling them everything about you?"

I breathe out, then open my eyes. "No, not really. I doubt that you told them anything that they couldn't have found out from either other sources or… Given that Saturn Girl is a telepath, that they couldn't have just read from your mind."

"Oh." She smiles. "Okay. So how come you're just sitting there?"

"There doesn't seem to be any hurry. Brainiac said that they were on a time limit, but I don't actually know where or when we are. Depending on exactly what's going on, my future self might be heading this way right now."

"They told me they were from the thirtieth century."

"Yes?"

"You'd be… A thousand years old?"

"Yes? I don't age any longer. And I'd still only be a quarter the age of Queen Hippolyta."

"But if their time line got all messed up, wouldn't you have gotten erased too?"

"Dep.. ends? I'm here, which to my way of thinking should mean that I'm not there to age to this point in history. Unless I ever manage to go back, in which case I will be. But from the way Brainiac was talking it sounds like some types of time travel bypass normal causality… Somehow, which might mean that I'm not there to go back until after I manage to go back."

She looks at me for a moment. "Whut?"

"I think the fact that there's a 'me' here means that there can't be a 'me' anywhere else until I get away."

"Oh. Okay."

"Though I could very well be wrong." I raise my eyebrows. "So..? What have you been doing with yourself?"

"Writing more articles, doing my coursework… And I had a go at being a superhero." She grimaces. "But it's a lot harder than I thought, just.. finding things worth doing."

"When you say 'superhero', exactly-?"

"Strength, speed, flight,-" She rises a few centimetres from the ground. "-toughness, super acute vision and the ability to-" She holds out her right hand, electricity crackling around her fingers. "-control electricity."

And my eyebrows are raised. "Really? Ho.. w.. strong, exactly?"

"I dunno. I couldn't find a weight I couldn't lift, but I dunno if I'm Superman strong or anything."

"It's worth finding out. Were you born like that, or did they.. just show up one day?"

She looks away a little awkwardly. "I.. kinda… Borrowed..? These magic coins..?"

I bow my head and raise my hands to my forehead with a groan. Deep breath, then look up. "Probably for the best. Mister Truggs-" I glance at the wall to my right. "-has a habit of killing people who acquire powerful artefacts and don't use them. And -no offence intended here- if you could find them he probably could as well."

"So.. me.. borrowing them doesn't bother you?"

"You're not the only thief in this conversation. I try not to be that hypocritical, and if you're putting them to good use it's better that you have them than a random museum thief. Oh, and well done for restraining the impulse to put on a skin-tight leotard."

"I tried it? But.. it.. wasn't really me. When I fly up high the cold air kinda made my… Ah…" She gestures at her bre-. Ah, yes. That can be a problem. "Y'know…"

"Not a problem I've ever had personally, but… Yes." I nod.

"So… Garden of Eden, huh?"

"I don't-."

"You stole a fruit and got visited by an angel. The only other thing I could think of was that you found a fig from the tree Jesus cursed. So, are you immortal, or did you take God-like knowledge?"

"Neither. I took the Pomegranate of Good and Evil and gave it to a couple of quasi-demonic people in order to give them the capacity for morality."

"Huh. And.. you're sure that Zauriel guy was an angel? He could just be a metahuman or something. And I think there was some crazy doctor in Nevada who stuck some swan wings on a woman."

"Yes, I'm afraid not and true, Doctor von Schadel did. I first saw Zauriel in Eden. His physiology is innately magical, he answers to the authorities of the Silver City… He's an angel."

"Yeah, I… Suppose it wasn't all that likely that he'd be able to fake it for you. It's just kind of a shock, finding out that God, like, literally exists. And… He does, right?"

"I'm still not sure how close to popular mythology the truth of Jehovah's existence is, but… Sort of."

"Ohhhh."

"I'm sorry, I usually assume that Americans are practising Christians unless I hear otherwise. I'm a little surprised that you're surprised. Were you not?"

"Ah… I'm gunna be going to the synagogue more often than I have been. And…" Her eyes widen. "Which religion's right?"

"I-. I don't know. I got the impression Zauriel wasn't that fussy. But he seemed to be rather keen that I repent my sins…"

"Ah. Okay. Ah. I.. kinda… Need to tell you something. Ah. The coins? I kinda.. got them right before we met."

"Okay?"

"I… When I thought you got me fired? I was planning on.. fighting you with them."

"That's okay. I'm perfectly happy to forgive you. Though I'm going to suggest that you consider peaceful resolutions first in future."

"Yeah, yeah, I think I will. And I'm gunna stop eating crab cakes, too."

"I don't-. Okay. Whatever you think best." I look away for a moment. What else to talk about? Given that our hosts have the ability to time travel I'm not exactly in a rush here… "The Legion. Did they offer you something, or did you just volunteer?"

"They said they'd bring me to the future, which they have." She looks around. "I think."

"Are you allowed to leave?"

She glances at the door. "Yeah, but they said that wasn't a good idea. Not everyone around here's.. friendly."

I frown. If this is a Legion base, it should be pretty secure. Shouldn't it? Assuming that we're not here during the time of Earth Man's fascist state. "Did they tell you where this is?"

"Yeah, they called it Vanishing Point. You know anything about it?"

"Supposedly, it's a stable structure located at the end of time. How that works, no idea, but it makes sense if they're trying to dodge getting erased." No Linear Men and no Waverider. Not that I've seen so far, anyway. If only I knew enough about them to know if that meant anything. "Though it does make it less likely that I'm going to be recovered by my past-" The door slides open. "-self."

A man in a purple robe walks in-.

"Oh." I stand, ignoring Brainiac as he follows him in. "Hello, sir. I suppose that I shouldn't be surprised to find one of you here."

The figure stops, the folds of his hood obscuring his face. "You know me?"

"Yes? We met on Maltus. Though that may not have happened in your personal timeline. I suppose that if anyone was going to survive the collapse of time it would be the people who beat the Anti-Mon-."

He raises his arms, pointing them at my cell. "Return!"

Space twists as the time tube opens and I plummet away-!

back

NEXT CHAPTER

Mandated

BACK

Mandated 1

next

Mandated

22nd October

06:13 GMT +8

I feel a moment of disorientation-.

"…intervention of the Chinese army under General Wu in the Autumn of sixteen fifty seven, the war shifted decisively in favour of crown prince Shukoh Dara, so preventing…"

I open my eyes, reaching out across the bed for-. No, a warm patch, but she's already up. I blink a couple of times, then push myself upwards into a sitting pos-.

"I don't know how you sleep through that."

Jade is -naturally- already dressed, a towel around her hair showing that she's showered as well. She glances at me as she pulls her tunic's right sleeve over one of her concealed knives. Green tunic with the gold pagoda emblem of the Imperial Security Agency… That explains why the alarm went off at all.

"I.. thought that you.. weren't working today."

"I'm not, but I have a training course for my next promotion." Satisfied with the positioning, she drops her right arm to test the movement of the material. "It would be unwise for me not to attend."

I turn and shuffle to the edge of our bed before lowering my legs to the floor. "You need a better union." I stand, trying to work out what I should wear. Lantern Fang's message made it sound like an informal event, but I know for a fact that his ideas of 'informal' and mine are a rather long way apart. I stroll over to the wardrobe and pull open the door. Let's.. go with.. black tunic suit with orange-.

"Unless someone died, I don't recommend it."

I close my eyes for a moment. She probably-. No, certainly knows better than me, but I can't just let that go. "Yes Madam Controller. What would Madam Controller suggest?"

"Hm." She walks up behind me, looking at my selection around my left side. "The red tunic with the blue trousers. The style shows that you've thought to dress formally and so respect his position, and the colours indicate your relative inexperience and desire to grow."

As good as anything else, I suppose. I'm still not.. entirely comfortable with these sorts of.. intense colour in a formal setting, but… When in Datong… I lift out the tunic and trousers and a.. simple white shirt, and then turn to lay them on our bed while I take off my pyjamas. I get a momentary look at myself in our bedroom mirror as I pull my pyjama top over my head, and use a burst of orange light to tidy myself up. Jade was heading for the kitchen, but turns back at the doorway with a small smile on her face to watch me dress.

"Would you like me to make the alarm louder?"

"No, I just-" I push my right arm through the shirt's sleeve. "-haven't got used to this time zone yet. I'll adapt, and I don't want to drive you-" I leave the shirt open to display my chest as I slide off my bottoms. "-out of bed."

"Didn't you used to use your ring for that?"

"I couldn't drive you out of bed with my ring, Jade. I'd have to want to."

She rolls her eyes. "That isn't what I meant. You've been using your ring for fewer things since you got back."

Alas, this is now a pants on conversation. "Yess. When I was on.. Maltus, I got a full explanation of what orange light exposure could do to a person. And.. when I met Larfleeze I.. got a.. very good look at the end result. I wouldn't hesitate in an actual fight, but… I'm going to be cutting back a bit."

Her eyes dip very slightly as she considers the ramifications. "You'll need to tell Lord Fang."

"That's what back to work interviews are all about." I button the last button on my tunic and follow Jade as she leads the way into the kitchen. She opens the microwave as I bend down to take my oat porridge and her rice porridge out of the fridge and pass them to her. "That and sparring. That's the one thing about me that Lantern Fang actually likes. And I'm sure that First Lantern Sinestro has told him about our encounter."

Weird as this continuity is, I'm rather glad that their Sinestro is still on the strait and narrow. He's.. quite a bit better than me with a power ring. And was more than happy to prove it when I showed my face in his Sector.

"That's not the only thing Lord Fang likes about you. It's just the only thing he's told you that he likes about you. He has the authority to call you in for sparring whenever he likes; he wouldn't choose to operate with someone he didn't get on with."

I nod. I suspected, but given the very real conflicts we've had… "Is your.. training going to be all day?"

"No, until mid-afternoon. I'll be back this afternoon." Something occurs to her. "Mother wants to know when we can visit my parents for dinner."

"That.. depends on what assignment Lantern Fang gives me. Unless he says 'thanks, but no thanks', in which case my schedule is open until Dox calls me." She nods. "The.. Colonel.. isn't going to try and put me through one of his 'training exercises' this time, is he?"

Ah, the Colonel. Former nationalist terrorist and currently the highest ranking Zero Team field officer. Zero Teams are called that due to the odds of members surviving their first mission. They're not actually zero now, but for a period of time during the Durlan War it was pretty close to that and even a veteran wouldn't have high odds of surviving more than three missions. How their members are selected is a fairly novel concept that I was only familiar with from the imperial guard: they recruit criminals with military backgrounds. If they survive a certain number of missions, they get a pardon. If they die, their debt to society is considered paid and they get an honourable funeral. Sort of like the canaries or a less secret Suicide Squad.

In theory it makes sense: high powered super functionaries are thin on the ground. On the other hand, violent criminals are common. In the event of a super powered attack, it's more likely that violent criminals will be close to it than a super functionary who would stand a realistic chance of stopping it. And if they can't, the super functionary following them in will be better informed of the nature of the threat.

Committing a violent assault while a serving member of the military might result in a survivable tariff of one or two missions. The Colonel… Lawrence Crock, was given a 'die with honour' tariff of thirty missions, and by a combination of skill and tenacity actually lived through them. And after he was released he came right back and put in for officer training because he'd found those fights more fulfilling than anything he'd ever done before.

I think he's mental. And so does most of the military. He thinks I'm a bit of a wuss. And by his standards he's almost certainly right.

"Mother spoke with him about that, and he won't."

"Thank you. And I'll.. thank her as well."

"You shouldn't let him intimidate you so much."

"Everyone gets intimidated by the Colonel."

"I don't-." Her jaw clenches, and I notice as a half-second later she realises that she snapped at me. Her eyes move aside and she shuffles her left leg-.

I walk up to her, bend slightly and kiss her lightly on the lips. Then I pull back slightly and smile affectionately down at her, prompting her to exhale with a sort of pleased irritation.

"Actually…" She looks me in the eye. "That reminds me."

"Clearly I need to kiss you more often, then."

"Will Lady Yifei be at your 'return to work' interview?"

"I.. don't know. I haven't seen her since I got back. I'm not even sure if she's on Earth. I mean, I'll.. ask after her-."

"She got back to Earth yesterday." She smiles. "Now is the perfect time to ask her out."

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Mandated 2

next

22nd October

06:18 GMT +8

"…like learning about the history of seventeenth century India, if only to learn why it's different from the history I know." No Bangladesh or Pakistan, for a start. "I just don't see how it makes sense to have it running first thing in the morning when anyone listening is going to be half asleep."

Jade raises her eyebrows. "What should be on at first thing in the morning?"

"A news summary. Headlines and a brief description of the contents. That way, the listener will hear any item which particularly interests them and can ignore the rest."

Surprising what you notice. America colonised from the west coast by China? I never visited anywhere in the United States, so even when I go there it doesn't really strike me. Japanese Australia? Same thing.

"If you want someone to record a summary of daily notices, just send an e-mail to Intelligence."

"I can't do that." I scrape up the last of my porridge. "That would be misuse of official resources."

"Keeping super functionaries informed is literally Intelligence's job. They prepare daily notices anyway, they won't mind having someone record it for you."

"And broadcast it?"

"And e-mail it to you each morning so the apartment control system can play it."

"That can't be secure."

She rolls her eyes. "It's as secure as a broadcast. Or if that really bothers you, you can have them send it in text form and have the control system use a text to speech program."

"Ooh, that could work. Plenty of super functionaries get those e-mailed to them. Yeah, I'll put in a request today. If.. Lantern Fang approves my reactivation."

"He's going to approve your reactivation. Now can we talk about Lady Yifei?"

"Ah…"

"I know that Europeans are usually monogamous, but you told me that you weren't Christian or Jewish."

"I… No, but I grew up in a Christian society and.. tend to have the same cultural norms."

She frowns curiously. "You've never tried to insist I wear a headscarf in public."

I wince. "Yes… But that's because I come from a parallel Earth where Europe is a.. little more… Enlightened than it is on this one. My Nan wore a shawl, but that's because she had a perm in Gloucestershire. And there was this.. one slightly odd woman I met in university who was a bit of a back to basics Christian who wore one… But I haven't even met anyone else who does. If you started wearing one I'd find it weird."

Which is a good part of why -despite it being the only place on this Earth that speaks the same language as me- I don't spend much time in Britain. It's like someone lifted all of the culture from nineteenth century Britain and dropped it into the modern state. No British Empire plus no World Wars -not ones in Europe anyway- meant no mass immigration or switch to higher female participation in the workforce. And those sorts of social trends are so associated with Qing China that they're opposed in many quarters as 'cultural imperialism'. That sort of thing's sad when it happens to someone else's country but it's downright disturbing when it happens to yours. It's also why I've tried to have as little to do with Ambassador Alfred Clayton as possible.

"You do.. like her?"

The woman who was my tutor, and who unlike Lantern Fang was liberal enough to make allowances for our vastly different cultural backgrounds? "Yes, of course I do."

"You find her attractive?"

"Ah-. Dh-Jh-yes..?"

"You understand that wherever you grew up, she and I grew up in a Neo-Confucianism state where polygamy is perfectly normal?"

"Except.. it.. isn't, is it? Where it occurs it's virtually always one man -usually a rich man- and two or more women. The reverse hardly ever occurs. I mean, it's basically… Some Tibetans? And even then it's only the really traditional ones."

She stares at me. Her eyes narrow slightly, then she blinks as she tries to work out why I'm saying the clearly nonsensical things that I'm saying. "So… The reason you're not going to ask Lady Yifei out is-"

"You know.. she-"

"-because you want to ask out a.. man..?"

"-doesn't like friends calling her that in private? Not like.. most of the others."

Which is probably why she seems so personable. Technically, every member of the Heavenly Guardians should be referred to as Lord or Lady by anyone who isn't either a member or the Emperor of China. Even in private, even when they're not around. Sure, it's only a slap on the wrist offence outside of the security services but it's considered a major social faux pas and it's seriously weird. And Yifei Jade finds it weird as well, which was a mercy when she was assigned as my tutor because I'd have found that really hard going.

"And no, I don't want to ask out a man."

"Do you.. want.. me to?"

"No, not.. particularly. Do you.. want to?"

"N-." She squeezes her eyes shut and makes a frustrated exhalation. "Why do you think I want to?"

"I don't think you want to. But.. I believe in the rightness of gender equality. If I have the option then you should as well."

"Okay. I do, legally, have that option. I just don't want to exercise it because there isn't anyone I'm interested in like that."

"And… Because… Me..?"

She rolls her eyes. "Obviously I'd talk to you about it first."

"Oh-. Good."

"The whole idea clearly makes you uncomfortable, so I'd have to think very carefully about it. But it doesn't make me uncomfortable, so if you're interested then you should go for it."

I sort of shake my head in confusion. "Have.. you.. talked to her about this?"

"No, of course not. I'm not the one who's going to be involved with her."

"You're-. Sorry, I'm.. still not really clear what-. How it works."

"How.. dating.. works..?"

"N-. I.. muddled through that with you, but I'm not an expert. I mean, dating more than one person."

"Mostly the same, but it's not always the same person? It's not that complicated."

"But not.. the three of us.. together?"

"I-. Maybe? Our schedules might make if difficult to make it a regular thing. Why?"

"I think-. In the European context, the only.. thing I've got to compare this to is either bigamy, or.. a wife plus a mistress, and in either case I associate it with dishonesty. I think.. the only way I could.. be alright with.. including 'Other Jade'-"

"Don't call her that."

"-would be if the relationship was… Omnidirectional."

Her eyes widen slightly. "Oh."

"I don't know how you feel about-."

"I.. don't… It's.. been a while. So that's another European taboo you don't have?"

"Yep."

"Because I read a magazine article which said that some Europeans fetishise homosexual relationships due to them being taboo in their own culture." She raises her eyebrows. "Do you want to see Lady Yifei and I together?"

"Iaaaahhh… The idea has some appeal, but it's mostly that I prefer to have a single home, with my… Family all in one place. Even if our work schedules mean that we're not actually all in one place at the same time all that often."

"Hm. I don't have a problem with that. But I think that's something we should speak with her about before making any decisions."

"Alright… I'll.. phone you when your course is over."

Because I'm sure the conversation with her won't be any harder than that was.

back

Mandated 3

next

5th July 2010

Mid day

I have no idea what is going on.

The power ring I could understand. I've read enough comics to know what that is. And waking up in orbit with an artefact of power… Sure. I've read enough of Hiver's work to understand the.. situation, even if I never thought it could possibly really happen. But…

What happened to Earth?

Why is the ring telling me there were nuclear strikes all over eastern China and Japan? Why can't I hear any English language radio? Why are there space ships? Did I go forward in time or something? I don't remember that happening in any DC-owned setting… Or any other setting. Which means that once the ring-.

I plummet through the air, cold biting my skin through my pyjamas! Okay, I-. Ugh, not easy to breathe. I'm high enough up that the fact that I'm falling isn't an immediate problem. Calm. Calm.

I want to fly.

And the environmental shield is back and I'm… Okay, I'm still falling, but the rate at which I'm falling is decreasing.

Once the ring runs out of power I'm stuffed. The ring has a universal translator, but I don't speak any languages other than English. Which is fine when English is the world's dominant language, but a bit of a problem when the dominant language is… Ring?

Language self-identifies as 'Mandarin Chinese'.

Chinese? How am I supposed to learn Chinese? It doesn't even have letters!

No! No. Calm. Want.

Want.

Okay. I can grab a bigger pile of gold and set up a life for myself in.. this version of Britain. Just accept not having a ring. I can head for an alien planet… No, where would even have a way to charge a power ring? Oa? No. Okaara? Larfleeze would kill me. If it even exists. Qward? Even if I could get there, I'd have to get very lucky. Ring, I… Are there any.. unused personal lanterns down there?

…

Ring? Agh, right. Ring. Find personal lanterns.

Three found.

I don't suppose any of them are… Spare? Are they?

Local news broadcasts show only two local Lanterns as active.

Who?

Fang Zhifu and Yifei Jade.

Who?

Lantern names are Fang Zhifu and Yifei Jade.

I have no idea who they-. No, wait. Wasn't.. August General in Iron's name Fang? Okay, he was… Ring, what does he look like?

An image of a.. athletic, militant looking Asian man appears in my mind. Not that tall and certainly not possessing iron skin. Pre-Durlan, or… Given how different things are, that might not have happened. And… Jade?

That's not.. Alan Scott's daughter.

Where the.. hell am I..?

Ring, the third?

Sunao Souma. Japanese national. Presumed retired. Eighty six years of age.

Wh-? No, I just have to accept that I'm not going to recognise anyone. He's retired and he's left his lantern.

!Get the lantern! NEED IT!

That's my one chance of having any say over what happens to me. And he's not using it. Ring, mark location.

A crosshair rather like the ones which marked mission locations in Tiberian Sun appears in my field of view. Elevated radiation levels, not somewhere I'd want to grow food… But I've got an environmental shield. Magnify. Hm. Looks like a park. Of course, so does the area around Chernobyl… Then again, I remember a documentary which demonstrated that slightly raised radiation levels actually deceased cancer rates by causing anti-cancer genes to express themselves, so… It could be safe?

Anyone around?

Hm. No. There's a medium sized army base not too far away, but no security on site.

Okay, so-.

!Get lantern!

Uh. I want to get the lantern. Negotiating would be good. I can.. try to buy it. But ultimately it doesn't matter. I need it. And I've got no real ties to this Earth; once I have a lantern I can just fly off to anywhere. Of course.. if there's no one down there…

I twist in the air until I'm pointing face down towards my target. And then I accelerate. Huh. The ring's showing me how fast I'm going but I'm still so high up that it's not really… Oh. Okay, getting bigger. It's most noticeable in the horizon; now I can look left or right and see blue sky rather than black space. And then the planet's around me rather than beneath me.

Oh. I'm not exactly sure what Mount Fuji looked like back on my home Earth, but I think this one's been in the wars. The lower parts are green, but the land beneath is cratered and radioactive. Why would someone nuke a mountain? Even if they wanted to destroy it, nuclear bombs aren't particularly effective anti-mountain weapons.

Getting closer. I can see larger roads, urban areas and individual woodlands. Not as many of the latter as I would have expected, but I suppose if their major urban areas got nuked… There's only so much land in the Home Islands. Maybe maintaining high-density habitation wasn't practical?

Ring. Any sign of aircraft?

Yes. However, none are moving to intercept.

Good show. Any green other than the lantern?

None detected.

Well… If he is retired, I suppose there'd be no reason to hang around. But I'm on a time limit. I can just… Leave a pile of gold.

Individual trees and slow…

I come to a stop just above a lawn. There's a gazebo and a bench… Some tended flower beds. And a sort of plinth…

!Get lantern!

Which is where the lantern is. No one around…

"Hello?" I look around as I drift towards the plinth. "Anyone using this?" … "No?"

I give any watchers a moment.

"Okay, I'm just going to borrow this?"

Another moment. Good show. I come to a halt facing the plinth and hold out my arms to the side.

!Get lantern!

Ring, get me the lantern.

Compliance.

Orange light flickers between my hands and the space the subspace pocket occupies, and a moment later the green personal lantern materialises. I lower my hands. Ye-.

And then the green fist hits me in the side!

back

Mandated 4

next

5th July 2010

Mid day

Ouwgh!

The lawn flashes past my eyes and then agh!

I'm.. folded around a tree. Urg, what? OW! Fix. Ah. Turn around and.. shield..?

Lantern Sunao walks lightly across the lawn, glowing ring on the middle finger of his right hand. He raises it, and a glowing green hand reaches out and takes his lantern from the plinth and brings it to him. Lantern Sunao is clean shaven and bald, but his musculature is solid and his gestures certain. The lantern in his hand, he takes a moment to check it over before regarding me carefully.

And then just stands there, green light spilling from his ring.

Okay?

The ring isn't a simple circular sigil attached to a circle of… Whatever power rings are made of. It looks like a small carriage lantern attached to a ring. The glow is constant, but now I'm looking at it I can see the faint green aura all around him. It's.. not stable in the way mine is. Rather, it's.. like a flame, billowing around him. I frown slightly as I look at my own left hand. Is it.. supposed to do that? I'd say not, but-. Wait. That's what Alan Scott's ring did, isn't it?

"And who might you be?"

"I'm-."

I stagger, my construct shield flickering for a moment.

He raises his eyebrows, smiling politely. "Are you unwell?"

"I-. No, I…" I frown. "I'm-."

I'm on my knees, propping myself up with both hands on the grass. I.. can't say my name? That's ridiculous. P-.

I shudder, but I don't collapse this time. Great, I can't think my name either.

"Are you having difficulty remembering?"

I rise to a crouch, frowning. "No. I remember, but if I think about it too directly…"

"I see." He nods. "And do you know who I am?"

"Yes. Green Lantern Sunao Souma."

He nods. "And do you know where you are?"

"A.. park? I came here because this is where the-. Where your personal lantern is."

"And before that?"

"The sky above it, then space."

"And before that?"

"Aaaah… Not.. clearly? I think I was at home in bed-." I stand. "I'd very much like your lantern."

He nods. "I had gathered that from your attempt to steal it."

I flick my right hand to the side. "I didn't think you were using it. Heck, I didn't think you were even here. Ring, why did you tell me he wasn't here?"

"Subject not detectable by standard scan."

"Tremendously helpful. So, yes, since you don't appear to be using it I would very much like it. I've.. got no idea what currency is used around here, but if you'll name a figure.. I can probably work something out."

He blinks. "You would offer to buy the lantern of Jong Li from me?"

"Yes..? It was just in the middle of nowhere, the ring couldn't find any recent records of you being active and I couldn't detect you. For all I knew you were dead or something. But since you're not, yes."

His eyes fix on my left hand. "Where did you get that ring?"

"I-. I don't know, it was just there."

He nods. "Had you heard of me before you decided to take my lantern?"

"No." Ah. "Ah, hang on. Ring, anything I'm not remembering?"

A series of images flicker through my mind, too fast for me to really perceive them individually. Weirdly, that's actually easier to cope with than trying to think my own name. I just shake my head.

"And my fellow Heavenly Guardians?"

I shake my head. "Is that a Japanese superhero team?"

He appears to find that very slightly amusing. "No. No, it is not. Have you noticed any things which… Seem strange to you? Facets of the world which are different to how you think they should be?"

"Yes. Why would anyone fire a nuclear weapon at Mount Fuji? In fact, why are there so many nuclear blast points in Japan and China?" I point upwards with my right forefinger. "And there were actual space ships up there."

"Hm." He nods. "Then I have two possibilities in mind. But I wonder; what would you do if I refused to relinquish my lantern?"

"Um."

!Get lantern!

My environmental shield flares and I take a step towards him. He doesn't really react… What.. would I do..? "I'd… Ah, ask you why?"

"You know nothing of my character." He waves his left hand. "Assume that all reasonable avenues have been exhausted."

"Then…" I don't like it, but… "I'd.. try and take it from you. Using.. the minimum amount of force."

"I see." He nods. "That is generous of you, considering my age."

"I-. Yes, I'm not exactly feeling proud of myself, but I.. do need it."

"You don't get to make that decision."

Lantern Sunao and I look up as a woman -yes, that's very definitely a woman- glowing with the power of a green power ring flies over the clearing, construct dragons hovering to either side of her. That's a bit stereotypical, isn't it? Her eyes are solid green in colour -some sort of visual enhancement?- and she's got small construct lanterns placed over her ears.

Lantern Yifei. Problematic.

Ah, ring? Can I go faster than light from a standing start?

Affirmative.

"Lantern Yifei, I feel this young man is somewhat confused. Until he takes directly aggressive action-."

"All he's guilty of is trespass and theft? And dealing with whoever gave him that cheap power ring knockoff?"

Oh no you didn't.

Orange plate materialises around my body as I match her height. "I assure you, Lantern Yifei, this is very much a power ring." Hm. Dragons are obvious, but… "What's that you're doing with your eyes? Some sort of.. expanded visual field..? I'm using a heads up display myself but I haven't had time to experiment yet."

"What?"

"As I said, Lantern Yifei, he is confused. He does not know who we are."

She doesn't turn her head. "How can he not know..? Is he from one of those crazy European monastic community things?"

I frown. "No."

"Possibly. I was endeavouring to find out. I really do think that a less confrontational approach is called for."

"Alright. No, I'm not doing anything with my visual field. I'm blind. They just.. glow like this when I'm wearing my ring."

Huh. I'd have thought that the Guardians could have fixed that. Or they'd have cloned eyes or cybernetics or something like that. Odd.

!Perfect!.

On the other hand, given what the ring did to my body, it shouldn't be too hard…

I smile, raising my left hand. "Let me help you with that."

"Hu-?"

Orange light flashes from the ring, punching through her environmental shield and striking the upper portion of her face. The eyeballs themselves are basically fine, but there's damage to the optic nerve and.. visual cortex. Nasty, but perfectly fixable. Change that change that good-good-.

And then the giant sumo wrestler construct slams me head first into the soil.

"Jade. Are you injured?"

And it's holding me here and I'm really not sure that my armour can take this. What's going on?

In my mind's eye I see Lantern Yifei pick herself off the ground, blinking as she does so. Lantern Sunao comes forward to cover her. Her constructs fail and her environmental shield dims as she stares at her hands with her fully healed eyes.

"No, I-. I can.. see."

"Are you certain that is all that occurred?"

"Ah." She turns to face him, pointing at her eyes. "Yeah."

"I see." He waves his hand and the pressure vanishes with the sumo wrestler.

I pick myself out of the hole and turn to face him as he looks me over carefully.

"Young man, would you care for some tea?"

back

Mandated 5

next

22nd October

07:17 GMT +8

"So… What do you think?"

The Harmonious One tilts his hat back slightly, the mandala surrounding him oscillating as he does so. "You have the sort of problems most men would kill for."

I look away as a particularly bright conjugation appears in his aura, turning to look at the space dock where the last dockside checks are being made to the Zheng He before its scheduled launch later this week. Something else that makes this version of Earth different from every version of DC Earth I remember: it's a lot more technologically advanced-.

I glance down towards the clouds covering Europe.

In most places it's more technologically advanced. China, Japan, India, Persia and the Songhai Empire all maintain space fleets. They're… Not exactly advanced by the standards of the wider universe, and the schizo tech I'd expect from a DC universe is almost entirely absent… Or at least I think it is. Given how advanced everything else is, I might just not notice it.

"Killing I understand. Modern Chinese culture is… I still haven't adapted to it."

He carefully lifts his hat from his head and pulls out a copy of the Book of Rites before returning his hat to his head and thumbing through the book. "There are good Confucian reasons for refusing. Since you do not come from a society where polygamy is normal and she comes from a society where monogamy is one of the normal relationship structures, your relationship would be rendered more stable by not deviating from that model. I can quote…" I shake my head. "No?"

"I've read Confucius' work because it was a set text. I'm not a devotee. I can hardly claim that defence."

"Very well." He tosses the book aside, sending it drifting through the void. "And what does Harriet Taylor say on the subject?"

"She was against political or economic marriages, but that's.. not really relevant. Both Jades have their own careers… I wouldn't expect them to comply with any restrictions which I wasn't complying with myself…"

The Harmonious One looks shocked. "Do you mean to say that you married Ms Nguyen without telling me? That was jolly rude."

"No, wh-? No, of course not. It's just that a lot of 'traditional' scholars-."

"I would hardly call someone who wrote less than two hundred years ago 'traditional'."

"You know what I mean. Extended monogamous cohabitation wasn't really a thing back then. Or at least it didn't get written about. Though Harriet would probably have approved of people learning what marriage entailed by experience, at least where children weren't involved."

"Ah." He nods. "You are treating your present arrangement as equivalent to marriage, gaining the restrictions but not the benefits."

"I suppose?"

"And even with the power of avarice on your finger. Truly, you are a virtuous prince among men."

"Larfleeze made it very clear to me how important virtue is. Also… I like to think that I'd behave… You know, appropriately to anyone I was involved with anyway."

"Hm. Speaking as a long time observer of Chinese culture, I imagine that Lady Yifei is the best person to tell you how practical such an arrangement would be." He frowns. "Un.. less she's got no more idea than you do, having not been in a serious relationship since she acquired her power ring and everyone would just sort of be muddling through with no one miraculously having-"

"Yes, thank you."

"-all of the answers." He smiles brightly. "Glad I could help." He looks up at the Zheng He and gestures grandly towards it with his right arm. "Tell me, what would your China governed by drug-addled Levellers-"

"They're not-"

"-make of this?"

"-drug addled, and they're not even really Levellers any more."

"You said they were communistic?"

"No, I said-. Political ideologies and political realities are often very different things. They actually-"

"And just like that, communistics are not communistical. It must have been very confusing for everyone involved."

"I try to judge people by what they actually do, not by what they say they do. And to answer your actual question, I think they'd be thrilled that there was an Earth where China was the most powerful nation on Earth. And then they'd steal the designs and start copying them." He bows his head, smiling. "What do they have you up here for, anyway?"

"Just.. in case." He shrugs grandly. "The Zheng He is rather expensive, and is protected against most predictable forms of attack. And -as was pointed out- I am quite skilled at reacting to unpredicted forms of attack. I'm sure that it has absolutely nothing to do with Lord Lord Fate replenishing the wards around Chengdu and wanting me out of the way."

Ah, yes. The antipathy which the longest serving member of the Heavenly Guardians feels for my chaos magic using friend is certainly not something which he would ever allow to interfere with the conduct of his offices. No. Another problem with the.. frankly toadying that happens with some of the Guardians. Or maybe I'm just being 'perniciously individualistic' again. Lord Nabu tolerates other magic users but… Well, there have only been a couple of chaos magic users in the support tier ever. And none have ever received the Mandate and actually joined the Heavenly Guardians. Harmonious One himself hasn't actually complained in my hearing, but he does make sarcastic quips at Lord Nabu's expense.

"Have they found you a new partner yet?"

"No, no. With Khyber dead, I'm afraid that they have 'sent me to Liao' literally."

I frown. "What did you do to deserve that?"

"It's technically a promotion, so I can't complain." He turns his head to look at me. "And I do mean that."

"That it's a promotion?"

"That I can't complain. The super criminals are few, the weather fair and I'll have plenty of time to work on applying chaos magic to stochastic analytics…"

"It's a waste of your talents."

He shrugs. "We are but functionaries, yoked to the great destiny of our nation. And so on and so on and so forth."

"If you're interested in transferring, I can put in a word with Dox. We don't have any magic users in the Corps at the moment."

"Now that does interest me. Might I assume that wearing a ring is not required?"

"You can assume that."

"But would I be right?"

"The Darkstars don't wear them and the fleet won't either. I'm sure that you'll be offered one."

"Mmmmmmmn. I don't think that the hat would approve. I'll give it some thought, see how things pan out. But." He raises his hat once more. "I thank you for the offer. Most generous."

"It serves our needs too. The Reach can counter Lanterns."

"Oh, I wasn't expecting a free ride." He returns his hat to its proper station. "When are you meeting Lord Fang?"

"A few minutes."

He momentarily covers his face with his hat, and when he moves it away he's borrowed Lord Fang's face. "Would you like me to growl at you a few times to reacquaint you with the sensation?"

back

Mandated 6

next

22nd October

07:22 GMT +8

Chengdu. Largest city in the world, and capital of China since Beijing was reduced to radioactive vapour during China's last war with Japan. As well as containing the Imperial Palace and the head offices of more companies and government branches than I can easily call to mind it's also the home of the Imperial Security Agency. Much like how -back on Earth Prime- British stamps didn't have their country of issue on them, the Imperial Security Agency doesn't consider it necessary to state who the lucky Imperium is. If you have to ask, then you're probably not a threat to world security and can safely be ignored.

My ring pings me a dozen notifications as radar and lidar stations politely point out that they can see me. This place is routinely staffed by half a dozen high powered super functionaries in addition to any of the Heavenly Guardians who are using its facilities, and if Lord Nabu is down there that inevitably means that thirty or so of his acolytes are in town as well. Easily enough force to hard stop me if they had to. I wave for the benefit of whoever the camera operators are, then head towards one of the building's upper entrances. I touch down, then walk into the upper lobby. If I wasn't on record I'd have been intercepted before I got anywhere near the building. As it is -I raise my hands and stop walking as the security team head towards me- I'm still going to have to put up with them scanning me in detail to confirm my identity.

The ISA… It's not the CIA. And despite what its -mostly European- critics seem to believe it's not the Authority. China's territorial ambitions end with its borders, and it values stability even more than it values dominating its trade partners. And it values trade more than it values… Shall we say… 'Moral convergence'. While the Heavenly Guardians -most of whom used to work for the ISA- are considered to be above such things, those of us who work for the ISA are state employees and are obliged to toe the government line.

One of the members of the security detail is a Persian woman with an ankh tattooed under her right eye. It shimmers gold for a moment as she holds her right hand out towards my forehead, then returns to normal as she steps back with a nod. One of Lord Nabu's acolytes; it makes sense that they'd be giving the local magicians a day off if they're in town. I've met Lord Nabu… Twice, and quite aside from the somewhat creepy possession aspect of how he works he has quite an abrasive personality. But… I have to say that I admire the infrastructure that he's built up and the efficiency with which he works. If you can only act upon the mortal world through hosts, it makes sense to have a few hundred training to take up the job at any one time. And since they're all training to be order magic users, they can accomplish a great deal even when not doing duty as hat racks. The really good ones only take up his helmet at times of planetary crisis; it's just not efficient for them to do so the rest of the time because it stops them using their own magics.

The ISA gathers intelligence from hundreds of thousands of sources, and uses that information to advise government ministers. Its remit includes gathering intelligence both on criminals acting within China and those acting outside of it. That was the part which I worked for, and where most super functionaries the government admits to employing work. Having us work for a conventionally military organisation or for a more interventionist intelligence agency would risk increasing international tensions, so it's careful to keep us nice and visible so that the world can be suitably impressed by China's largess.

Security check and 'welcome back, sir's complete, I stride into the building proper and head in the general direction of the office which Lantern Fang is using. Flying and teleporting around the building is 'officially discouraged' and to be fair the Heavenly Guardians are pretty good about following the rules they set for others. I get a few respectful nods from the office workers I pass, and I make sure to return them. Another thing that I was politely told was officially discouraged was plundering every database I come across and as such I genuinely couldn't say who a lot of these people are.

I've been somewhat impressed about how open-handedly the ISA shares the information it collects with states that the government doesn't have a good relationship with; it was explained to me that China benefits so much from the established world order that it would be foolish not to. And getting large parts of eastern China incinerated by Japan gave the Chinese government a useful reminder about the wisdom of 'shaming barbarians into submission' by setting the best possible example rather than confronting them directly.

After they returned the favour.

The ISA also gathers political intelligence, though unlike back home they don't go in for blatant industrial espionage. If only because there isn't really anyone advanced enough for the risks to outweigh the benefits. I… They haven't asked me to involve myself in the 'normal' spying part.

Jade was kind enough to inform me -after I turned up for my first meeting with Lantern Fang about half an hour early- that he prefers it when the other party arrives either exactly on time or a few minutes later. His justification is -apparently is; he wouldn't tell me himself- that if you were hanging around like that you clearly didn't have anything better to do, and anyone important enough to meet with him should have something better to do. Except the point of this meeting is that I don't, so… Maybe I'll get away with it?

I come to a halt outside the door of his audience chamber. Yes, not a mere 'office' or 'board room', this is a full-on stately chamber. There'll be intricately painted wall panels, ornamental pillars, gravel flooring and stepped dais and… I think this one even has ornamental fountains. Minimalist design exists on this Earth, but it's considered to be a Japanese thing and hasn't ever caught on amongst the ISA's decorators. Quick self-check… Yes, everything's in order. I step up to the door of his audience chamber and knock hard, twice.

"Enter."

Lantern Fang's voice. I firmly push open the door and step through, marching-.

I hesitate for a split second when I see who else is seated on the dais, then I blank my face, recover, and continue my march up the central pathway.

Lantern Fang is up there, but he doesn't have the central position. That is occupied by Lord Nabu by virtue of his seniority. Lantern Fang is to his left, while at his right sits Souma-. Lantern Sunao. Again, he might be retired but the only way to stop being a Heavenly Guardian is to die. His ring glows dimly; the last dregs of its power from the charge he got from Jade's lantern before the final battle with Khyber. Lantern Sunao doesn't smile at me, but I've long since learned that no one keeps a poker face like an elderly Japanese man. Lantern Yifei on the other hand -safe in her position on the side and slightly back from her senior colleagues- can't stop herself flashing me a smile. On the far right, the woman in the minimalist costume is Warrior Maiden. Anywhere else, having five Heavenly Guardians in one place would be a sign of the apocalypse; they'd be there to prevent it. I'm.. not sure why they're here.

I march until I reach a spot just before the foot of the dais and then bow from the waist until my torso is parallel to the ground.

And I don't say anything. This.. whole.. complex formal behavioural thing was rather hard for me to get my head around, and I'm sure that's why Lord Nabu doesn't immediately tell me to rise. They want to make sure that I can play the part of a well behaved super functionary operative.

"Rise, Operative."

I come erect at once, hands clasped behind my back and my eyes trained deferentially at Lord Nabu's feet.

As well as posture, when to speak and when not to are also important. Saying 'reporting as requested' would be completely wrong. Obviously I'm reporting as requested; the alternative is that I just happened to wander into the right room at the right time by complete fluke.

"You have requested to return to active duty. When you left the Imperial Security Agency, you indicated that you intended to found an Orange Lantern Corps. I had assumed that you would remain with it."

He stops, which is an invitation to explain myself. "While I am skilled in the use of the orange light, I lack the organisational skills which the task required. After I located a man who possessed such skills, I passed the responsibility on to him. When he informed me that he felt that my ongoing presence undermined his authority, I offered to return to Earth until he had established himself."

Whatever happened to change Earth's history from the DC history I am familiar with, it didn't to anything very much to the wider universe. Dox was where I thought he'd be, as was Vega.

"Why did you return here and not Tamaran?"

I don't look at Lantern Fang. He almost certainly passed on what the Green Lantern Corps knows about what I did, so I don't need to describe that.

"In Tamaranian culture, personal achievement is essential for achieving political power. Given the.. impact I'd already had, I felt it best to avoid taking further action there myself when the princesses are perfectly capable of dealing with matters themselves. If my presence is required, they can contact me by ring. Also, as an Orange Lantern I have found that having a stable social group is helpful for avoiding the adverse psychological effects of orange light use."

"You have no desire for personal glory?"

Odd.. question… "I do not care about personal glory, saving that possessing it makes it easier to achieve my objectives. I think that the universe should work a certain way, and I work as best I can into making it work like that."

"Acceptable." He looks right and then left. "Do my colleagues have any questions?"

back

Mandated 7

next

22nd October

07:41 GMT +8

"…applying myself to wider scale problems is simply a more efficient use of my abilities. Stealing a million fen results in the same amount of money being acquired as stealing ten thousand yuan, and is far harder for conventional authorities to detect."

Darna doesn't precisely seem happy about my answer, but she doesn't press the issue. Traditionally, Marte natives prefer the direct and violent approach to heroing. It's clear that she doesn't believe that the month and a half I spent investigating tax fraud was an appropriate use of my abilities. Nabu on the other hand actually nods approvingly. Distort well ordered systems for your personal gain at your peril when a Lord of Order is around.

"I also have concerns about your stated desire to acquire examples of Khyber's technology, particularly when I consider that you were present when his.. research centres were breached."

"Lady Darna, learning how our enemies' weapons work-."

"I understand the advantage. But you believe that such knowledge is valuable enough that you were willing to take significant risks in penetrating his facilities rather than destroying them at a distance?"

"While I could not know for certain in advance, I felt that that was a possibility."

"And you were not at all motivated by your desire to acquire Khyber's secrets for yourself?"

Of course I wanted them. Not that they did me a lot of good. I don't study alchemy and while I could use the cybernetic stuff… I'd rather not. On the other hand, plenty of other people across the world can pick over what we acquired and won't have to undertake the dangerous work of dissecting existing specimens or interrogating the few surviving members of Khyber's inner circle. Khyber's own life extension techniques and cyber chirurgeries will probably make their way into the mainstream, given time.

"In part, yes. Finding better uses for the technologies of the malevolent is an aspect of my work which I find particularly satisfying. But I still believe that it was the correct strategic decision, a belief that was supported by my superiors at the time."

"Did the sight of their inner workings not horrify you?"

"I would say 'disgusted' more than 'horrified'. Based on initial studies of the remains of those cybernetic organisms which we had already encountered, I already had a fairly good idea how they were made. Seeing it.. was… Deeply unpleasant. Particularly the.. rendering machines. But it was an evil I could understand."

She regards me for a moment, then leans back in her seat. "I have no further questions."

Nabu nods, then raises his hands. Golden ankhs shimmer-.

The universe seems to skip for a moment. The room is more or less the same, but the faint air currents in the room have left the tapestries at slightly different points in their wafting. The splash of water doesn't quite line up, and the Heavenly Guardians are sitting in slightly different positions. Except Nabu. He's in exactly the same position. Some sort of.. time bending effect? I'm not really sure why they didn't just send me out of the r-.

"Orange Lantern." Nabu stands, waving his right hand in a glowing arc and summoning a small wooden chest into existence. "We have reached a decision regarding your future."

"My Lords, I am ready to serve."

I'm not sure I was supposed to respond-. No, it's Nabu. If I wasn't, he'd have said something. There's a faint golden glow as the lid of the chest opens-.

I genuflect, my head bowing as my right knee hits the ground. I was not expecting that, though it does explain why Souma is here. The scroll currently floating out of the chest is a Mandate of Heaven.

Sort of. The Mandate of Heaven is China's more capricious version of the Divine Right of Kings. 'Capricious' because rather than simply saying that the king rules because God says that he should, it's more of a franchise arrangement. Dynasties which are cast down are considered to have had the Mandate withdrawn, and as such the incoming dynasty is perfectly righteous in taking care of the merely temporal matter of booting them out of the palace. If 'Heaven' permits it, then clearly it was meant to happen.

Ever since Jong Li put his adopted son on the throne of China, however, there's been a… Tradition of the reigning Emperor or Empress licensing certain individuals to act in his or her name, outside the bounds of normal government structures. Extending the Mandate to people outside of the imperial dynasty. Jong Li didn't want future Emperors to rule at the convenience of people with super powers, and after the defeat of Yalun Gar he had a healthy appreciation of the damage super powered people could do. But at the same time, he wanted good people to have the power to cause change without needing to refer to Emperors who might be corrupt or incompetent.

Back in the old days, it was the Green Lantern and perhaps a couple of other individuals. Then a Persian archaeological expedition found Nabu's temple and.. things expanded. 'Heavenly Guardians' is the modern name given to the group of people who have all made the grade and become a full part of the Earth's leading superhero team.

And… Apparently… I've made that grade.

"This quorum of the Heavenly Guardians finds that your deeds and righteousness make you a worthy addition to our number. Kneel no more, and accept this honour."

And he isn't joking. In China at least this gives me authority equal to that of the Emperor; I don't even have to give him more than a respectful nod. And he has to nod back. How it works in other places… Varies. Though I doubt that my friend Caliph Kassam al-Rashid would expect me to bow to him.

I lift my head, hands outstretched to take the scroll representing my new authority into my hands. Nabu for his part puts it into my hands with his own, rather than levitating it there. The vellum feels softer than paper, and the pagoda seal is printed in the wax holding it shut. I create a small blade construct and slice through it, standing as I unroll the scroll.

Oh. The text inside is written in Chinese -obviously- but they've also included an English translation. Not that they need to, I wear a universal translator whenever I'm on active duty. And I doubt that anyone will actually ask to see this; my membership will be widely publicised. Still, it's a surprising-

A faint golden light flows from the open scroll and into me as the identification spell triggers.

-concession. I roll up the scroll and send it into subspace. "Thank you, honoured colleagues. I will strive to be worthy of this responsibility."

"Good." Nabu's eyes flare faintly. "That is the necessary attitude to possess."

"Is there.. an area of the world which presently needs my particular attention?"

"No. Your formal audience with the Emperor will be tomorrow. Until then, I suggest that you spend your time updating yourself with ISA intelligence reports."

I nod. "Sound advice." And it is just advice. While Nabu has seniority he can't actually give me orders any longer. "I will also read up on the customs relating to the audience. I.. wasn't expecting this."

Nabu nods, then walks past me towards the exit. Darna follows him a moment later, leaving me with my fellow Lanterns.

"Lantern Fang. I.. am a little surprised that you consider me to be ready for this."

He nods. "I would have preferred to wait a year or two. But your conduct has been good, and having your rank on Earth be so at odds with your rank in the Orange Lantern Corps would be foolish. I would not have given my approval if you were unworthy."

I close my eyes as I nod back. "Thank you. I will prove you right."

He looks me over, then glances back at our two colleagues who are clearly waiting for-. He gets the message, and heads for the door at a march.

I watch him go as Jade and Souma come down off the dais to stand next to me. But I wait until the door is firmly shut before turning to them.

Jade is grinning, while Souma's smile is far more restrained but just as genuine. My eyes are wide as I shake my head in visible disbelief. Then I lunge forward and wrap my arms around the old man's chest.

"Hah!" He hugs back for a moment before pushing me away. "Off, you excessively emotional barbarian!"

I comply, grinning. "Thank you, oh ancient and venerable master."

He shakes his head. "You have earned this, and I am proud that you are my acolyte."

"Thank you." I turn to Jade. This.. might make things a little easier. "Jade."

"What, I don't get a hug?" She puts her right hand on her right hip. "After all the time I put into training you?"

"Thank you, oh sagacious and cunning tutor who totally knew that construct coilguns were a thing before I shot her with one."

"I totally did." I lean down slightly as I wrap my arms around her shoulders. She hugs back without any of Souma's reservation. "So are you really-" She pulls back slightly, hands on my arms. "-going to spend the day reading intelligence reports? Right after getting mandated?"

"Not.. all day. I.. was hoping that you'd join Jade and I for dinner this evening."

"Oh?" She tilts her head back slightly, glancing momentarily at Souma. "Do I get to bring a date too?"

"I.. spoke to Jade this morning, and… Ah." Do it. "We're the dates." She raises her eyebrows. "Assuming that you're interested."

"Ohh." She looks me over a little more closely, a saucy smile on her lips. "I.. might be. If you've got time for a prac-." She blinks. "Both of you?"

"I said I was only interested in a love triangle if the triangle was equilateral."

"I'll try most things once." She floats up to bring her head level with mine. "But maybe we could practise with a line first?"

Souma blinks slightly as Jade and I lean towards one another.. "Ah. How… Modern."

back

Mandated 8

next

22nd October

08:37 GMT +8

Still…

Those intelligence reports weren't going to keep forever.

It looks like -to the surprise of absolutely no one- the Dream Thieves are trying to acquire Khyber-derived cybernetic technologies, and whoever wrote this isn't shy about laying the blame firmly at the feet of Harun al-Rashid in what I consider a frankly unhelpful distraction from actually giving the reader information-.

Wait a moment. I just received a Mandate.

Check the source identification code… Don't want to be too harsh…

'While I appreciate your efforts in assembling this report, it is not necessary to repeatedly remind the reader of Harun al-Rashid's actions in creating the Dreamers. Unless information has been uncovered suggesting that he gave specific instructions for a situation, their nature is background reading not appropriate for a bulletin.'

And.. send.

It's going to my head already, isn't it? Ugk, I know that I was right; I've read the SOP on writing intelligence bulletins five times and my ring gives me perfect memory. Should I have.. e-mailed the author's superior instead? I still don't really understand how normal Chinese people actually think about Heavenly Guardians. I mean, sure, they'd show deference, but-.

Incoming communication.

Oh? I straighten up slightly. Let's hear it.

"Hey Paul." I frown. "Sorry this took s' long. Guess that purple guy dropped us both in it, huh?"

My frown deepens. Ring, trace.

Compliance.

"I'm sorry; who are you?"

"Oh, come on. You gunna play it that way? You an' me are about the only guys who remember how history's supposed ta be. We need ta put our heads t'gether before they track us down."

"No, seriously. I've got no idea who you are. Let alone how you managed to contact my ring. You know cold calling on government communication channels is illegal, right?"

Ring, do you have a location yet?

Unclear. An unidentified form of obfuscation is being employed.

Probably magic. Do I think I can keep him on the line long enough for a magic user to back hack him?

"Ah no. It got you too?"

"What got me? Look, if this is something dangerous it's my job to help. And knowledge of how to block ring communication back tracking-."

"Sorry! Think I got a wrong number. I'll ah… I'll see you whenever-."

"No-. Look, I'm not annoyed-."

Connection lost.

That was.. strange. Ring, access intelligence voice print archives. Any matches?

None found.

"Any evidence of vocal distortion in the incoming communication?"

None found.

"Background noise?"

None found.

None? So he's.. in some sort of sound filtered environment..? But hasn't bothered to disguise his voice? Does he.. not know that China is a surveillance state? Ring, create a voice print file, list whoever that was as a 'person of interest, unknown risk'.

Which might result in whoever that was getting shot.

Ah, add 'report contact to Orange Lantern before engaging'.

Compliance.

Create standard format report file for miscellaneous contact.

Compliance.

Contents… Analysis… What language was that?

Subject spoke English. Unable to determine origin of accent or dialect.

I frown. Really?

Accent appears to have characteristics of the form of American English spoken in the United States of America.

Aah. With Zheng He's voyages of discovery happening about fifty years before the start of European settlement of the Americas, the USA is a rather different affair to what it was back home on Earth Prime. China didn't start shipping people over until the start of the sixteenth century, but the result was that post-independence USA didn't really have the option of westward expansion. The Sinoistic Provinces of America were already there. A few wars with the world's most powerful country later and the young country more or less fragmented… It's all a bit of a mess.

Can you narrow it down further?

Accent appears to have characteristics of the form of American English spoken in the United States of America on Earth Prime. The accents do not exist on Earth Sixteen.

What?

This ring has access to your memories. Those they do not contain a complete analysis of available accents, two have close matches.

My ring plays.. snatches, of Loyd Grossman and Heath Ledger's Joker talking, matching parts of their speech to.. whoever that was. I don't know what parts of the United States either of them come from, but.. I suppose that you wouldn't have to change history much to change a culture enough to change accents. Especially given the greater roles of Far Eastern languages in world communications.

Huh.

Okay. 'Purple guy'. Nothing comes to mind. I mean, there was that Italian terrorist organisation where the leaders wore purple… But I wouldn't call any of them 'purple guys' and I didn't.. get the impression that whoever that was was trying to deceive me. There are plenty of super functionaries who have purple in their costume somewhere, but only a few where it's a major component. And I don't have anything in common…

Kassam had a purple cloak. He was wearing it before the assault on Khyber's last redoubt at Alamut. There were.. cameras…

No, no, no. It doesn't fit. He expected me to recognise him. Okay, possibilities. He's a nutter, one of the highly skilled ones. He just thought he knew me, and my not responding the way he expected me to threw him off. Like Edward Nygma with Bruce Wayne in the novelisation of Batman Forever. I actually have forgotten. I can't forget things due to conventional means as long as I wear this ring, but I can get memories erased by telepathy. Simple enough to check; just pop along to the Martian embassy. Or get one of the local telepaths to look me over. Ditto with magic.

What does that leave?

Parallel universes and alternate time lines, those old standbys for when nothing makes sense. I've only travelled between parallel universes once and I haven't ever travelled through time. I.. think I'll leave trying to investigate those until I'm eliminated the more likely options.

back

Mandated 9

next

22nd October

19:23 GMT +8

I look up at the restaurant's frontage. Yifei Jade smirks as she watches my face for my reaction, while Nguyen Jade is carefully keeping her face blank.

"Oooooh, very funny."

Before I came here, I'd eaten Chinese food in a restaurant… Twice, I think? Once for an office pre-Christmas gathering and again with my family. On neither occasion was I exactly impressed. But; okay, restaurant eating isn't 'normal' eating. Maybe being completely surrounded by Chinese culture for a year would help me get into it?

Nope.

I abuse my barbarian status ruthlessly in order to use a fork and a knife whenever I go out to eat. It took months for Jade to stop giving me the evils when she found out. I can use chopsticks, even without using a power ring to grip the blasted things. But why would I when a fork does the job better? If I'm picking the restaurant I generally choose somewhere Indian. As Britain had far less success confronting a unified India than it did a divided one the cultural exchange that resulted in the curry I know never really happened, but they're still far closer to what I'm used to than anything else on this world.

But tonight Jade has decided that we're going for an English.

The grinning pie merchant on the sign is wearing chef whites. Which are French. With no imperial-age competition relations between Britain and France are pretty good, far better than I would have expected given how they were when British culture was as it.. is.. now. In addition to the chef's hat he's wearing a crown and a golden chain. The place is called Aethelred's Pie Emporium and -ring?- it's written in English with a Chinese approximation underneath.

I'm feeling decidedly nervous about this.

"Is it… Any good..?"

Yifei Jade shrugs. "I've never been here before. I thought we could experience the-" She holds up a leaflet. "-'wonders of traditional English cookery' together for the first time."

Nguyen Jade already has her personal organiser out. "Reviews are generally favourable. Though apparently we should avoid the 'Star Gaze Pie."

"You can just cut the heads off, it's not really that weird." I look around-. We've already drawn something of a crowd, though Yifei Jade's status means that they aren't asking us for autographs or anything. Though given what Yifei Jade is wearing they might just want a look. Nguyen Jade dressed surprisingly conservatively, though she is wearing more makeup than I'm used to. I'm wearing an Earth-Prime style suit of a kind which doesn't exactly exist here. But again, being a barbarian has its advantages. "How did you get a reservation this quick-" Yifei Jade starts to laugh again, while Nguyen Jade appears to be trying to work out whether I'm serious or not. "-ly?"

Yifei Jade leans into my right hand side, reaching across to pat my chest with her right hand. "It wasn't a problem. Shall we?"

Jade and I let Jade take the lead-. Oh, I need to come up with pet names or something. This is silly. Maybe I can just refer to them both as 'Miss'… Which would work until we actually get married.

Miss Nguyen and I let Miss Yifei take the lead as she pushes through the front door and into-. Oh, what the heck? The interior decoration isn't bad, though with that much bare stone it will probably be expensive to heat during the winter. But the miniskirted pseudo-Beefeater waitresses are throwing me off, as are the… Ugh, the longswords and claymores which decorate the walls, lending the interior a surprisingly martial.. castley theme. The staff are mostly European, and someone whom I assume is the manager is already bowing to Miss Yifei and gesturing to a windowside table in the corner of the room.

Miss Nguyen sidles up to me on my left. "How cringe worthy is it?"

"It could be wor-." I spot a waiter dressed as a Morris Dancer, including bells and handkerchiefs. "I'll live."

Miss Yifei has been given the place facing the door and with the best views of the restaurant interior. I hesitate for a moment, then Miss Nguyen flickers her eyes at the next seat and I take my cue and sit down. Miss Nguyen has barely sat down on my left before the manager -not quite running but certainly hurrying- returns with our menus.

I smile at him. "Thank you."

He bows, a full right angle from the waist job. "You are welcome, sir."

Oh… Right. I've got that to look forward to. The downside to being important enough that I don't have to bow to anyone is that a lot of them are going to feel obliged to bow to me.

Miss Yifei is already looking over the drinks menu. "I don't know these tea blends." She gives a small shrug and then looks at me. "Which do you think is best?"

"Ahhhh." I… Don't know anything about tea. Britain is still a nation of tea-drinkers here, but for obvious reasons British tea brands don't get sold to China. I'm.. assuming that these are sourced locally based on blends popular in Britain… "I think.. Earl Grey is.. generally well regarded?"

Miss Nguyen looks for a moment as if she wants to interject before my horrible taste in boiled leaves ruins everything. Miss Yifei just nods and raises her eyebrows slightly. "What do you suggest?"

"I'm going to be drinking apple juice. British craft beer is pretty good… But…"

"You don't drink alcohol so can't point anything out."

"Yes. British-" I notice the manager giving me a slightly odd look. Why-? I'm not deferring or calling her 'my lady'. "-wine isn't great, but the Spanish and French varieties are probably perfectly palatable. Though again, I can't really…"

I shrug and she nods. "Two.. apple juices, then. Jade?"

"I'll just have.. sour plum juice."

"Oh, come on! The whole point of coming to a foreign restaurant is to try new things. You can't just drink what you'd drink normal-. Normally."

Miss Nguyen is already doing a sort of sitting bow. "Of course, my-"

"No, I didn't-"

"-lady."

"-mean it like, I-."

I look directly at the manager and lean slightly forwards. "Two apple juice, one sour plum juice and don't rush back."

"Yes sir." He bows again, turns and strides away from the table.

Miss Nguyen is clearly tense, rigidly sitting straight up. Miss Yifei on the other hand is slightly slumped, her eyes avoiding both of us. I take a privacy filter out of subspace, set it to two metres and then set it in the centre of the table. The restaurant noise drops to nothing immediately, neatly taking care of the 'public disrespect' angle.

"Jade." I lay my right hand on Miss Yifei's left. "Jade isn't used to you yet. Please -for now- try to avoid giving instructions that she feels obliged to defer to."

"Yeah, I-" She looks across to Miss Nguyen. "-didn't mean it like that. I just meant that it's... That I think it's boring to go somewhere new and then.. do what you'd have done anyway. I wasn't ordering you to drink something else."

Miss Nguyen nods stiffly. "I apologise. I should have realised."

"No, don't-." Miss Yifei sighs. "This is-."

I nod. "That's not really something you want in your personal life. Jade,-" I put my left hand on Miss Nguyen's right shoulder and give her a small shake in an attempt to encourage her to become less stiff. "-do you think you can do that?"

"I-." She nods, looking Miss Yifei directly in the eye. "Yes. I will. I'm-."

"Oh no, don't apologise. This… I've tried to have relationships before, and they always… Since I've been Mandated, whoever I'm with just starts doing that and... And then I found out that Captain Marvel was really twelve, and…"

I nod. "You stopped trying."

"And that's why-" She rotates her left hand so that we're holding hands. "-I want this to work. You.. never have and-" She stands and leans across the table, holding her right hand out to Miss Nguyen. "-I really hope you don't feel you have to."

Some of the tension leaves Miss Nguyen. She also stands and extends her right arm, clasping hands in a barbarian handshake. "Thank you, Jade. I will try."

I smile as they sit back down. "Great! Now what pies do people want?"

back

Mandated 10

next

23rd October

08:30 -6

I smile at Ms Kimble as she enters the living room, escorted by a smiling Miss Amane. "Miss Kimble, thank you for joining us."

"Like I had a choice." She glances back at her escort, who closes her eyes and smiles at her. "Am I getting out of here now?"

"Perhaps. Please." I gesture to the chair across from me with my right hand. "Be seated."

Bit quicker on the uptake than some, this one; she does a quick scan of the room and then takes the seat I've offered her. Miss Amane takes up position a little way behind her, pole arm in hand.

"First, a quick update for you. The rest of Persuader's recruits have been taken into custody by the Department of Metahuman Affairs and their equipment confiscated. Their training area is being occupied and picked apart by forensic investigators and any interesting technology will be passed to their research teams. You have the thanks of a grateful nation. Even Kal-El asked me to thank you on his behalf."

"Great. So I can go now?"

My eyes narrow slightly. "Do you really want to go home?"

"Beats being locked in a room here." She smiles viciously. "Or are you going to make me an offer?"

I lean back slightly, and nod. "Something like that. As you can tell from Miss Amane's presence, I do recruit people with useful skills. And in return for their work, I both pay them and.. help them in certain ways. In your case, locating your father was a simple matter and you're now old enough to request that you be transferred into his care regardless of your mother's wishes."

"You found D-?!"

She bites down her wave of excitement, most likely realising how much it weakens her negotiating position. Stuart Kimble didn't exactly impress me, but as far as I can tell he's just about the only person Miss Kimble actually cares about and I believe that it's best to steer clear of recruiting outright sociopaths.

"To forestall your next question, when he and your mother separated she told him that if he attempted to gain custody of you she would go to the police and claim that he had been assaulting her for the duration of their marriage. And since I've had telepaths studying her mind for the past few days, I think I can write that one up as a believable threat. One which she will not have access to any longer. Your father has indicated that he is very much interested in getting custody, so if you'll give it the nod we can get started on that."

She nods.

"Having looked over your school records-."

"Those are private."

"I'm a Federal Agent investigating a supervillain. I can get access to all sorts of things." Legally, even. "Your grades range from C to D in every subject save P-." Ugh. "Save gym class. Not helped by the fact that you stabbed your maths teacher to death."

"What the fuck! No I d-!"

"Oh, don't even. One stab through the neck with a serrated blade which you kept. Though I was mildly amused by the fact that one of your classmates apparently paid you for the hit." I slouch back in my seat. "To be honest, that surprised me more than the fact that you killed him."

"I wanna talk to a la-."

"No you don't. You want this to go away. You want to have a tearful reunion with your father, change school and put the whole thing behind you." I raise my eyebrows. "Don't you? Because the rules concerning evidence gathering while investigating supervillains are fairly generous. If you insist on talking to a lawyer, I have to stop talking to you. But you will be convicted of the vicious murder of a loving husband and father and spend the next forty years in prison. So: think carefully before insisting on exercising your legal rights."

She glares at me for a moment.

"What do you want?"

"Assuming that you remain at large… Where do you see yourself in a few years' time?" She doesn't reply. "Now, be honest. I already know you're a murderer, it's not going to make me think any less of you." Still nothing. "You see, one thing I noticed about his body was the lack of bruising. You didn't assault him first, you just… Snuck up behind him and stabbed. The level of missing persons reports in your home town are fairly normal so I'm guessing that you haven't been practising… Did you plan to continue that sort of work? Because without some very particular connections it isn't easy to get work as a freelance assassin. Did you plan to join the military?"

"I dunno. Yeah?"

"Not a terrible choice, but I think you would have found being constantly shouted at by the drill instructors uncomfortable. And of course there's the chance that someone might have found out about the murder... Though… They're not exactly thorough about background checking, you might have gotten away with it, and.. some people respond better to that sort of physical discipline than they do a classroom…"

"Are you actually going to make me an offer at some point?"

"I've employed people with.. shady pasts before. To flat out kill someone like that, at your age and without formal training, takes a very particular mental state and I'm sure that I could find a use for you. My problem in your case is the potential for blowback if anyone else works out that you killed your teacher. But, you brought my attention to the Persuader and I'm loath to simply hand you over to the police. So here's your choice. You can move in with your father and make the best life for yourself that you are able. Or, you can enter my employ."

"Do I get my axe back?"

"If you work for me, yes."

She eyes me cautiously. "What does it pay?"

"During your apprenticeship, you get expenses. You also get a telepathically implanted education to replace the one you didn't bother paying attention to at school, superior equipment, physical augmentations that will allow you to survive the rigors of super powered combat and training in how to use them. Once you are ready, your pay will be proportionate to the tasks I set you."

She nods cautiously. "Is.. that it..?"

"That's it." There's a boom as a tube opens to my right, and I gesture to it with my right hand. "You are free to go. I will be in touch in a week for your decision."

She waits for a moment, presumably to see if there's another shoe coming down. I lean forward and wiggle my hand a little. "You can go."

She gets up and strides through the tube, which shuts down as she passes. Hm. I'd say there's a seventy percent chance of her accepting. Getting her out of a toxic environment might lead to her reforming on her own… But I rather doubt it.

"Master?" Miss Amane pointedly glances at the door, then nods her head towards it.

Again? I get up and walk over to the door, kneeling down before I open it.

Ten year old Cassandra looks up at me, then down, then all around as she tries to make sense of my body language. I bring my hands up to where she can easily see them as her G-Gnome escort scampers up behind her.

"Hello, Quiet Girl." I sign as I speak, and since there isn't a sign for 'Cassandra' I settled on that as the name least likely to get confused with anyone else. "Were you looking for me?"

She doesn't actually understand sign language any more than she does spoken or written language, but the G-Gnomes think it should be easier for her to learn it. They can't implant language without completely messing up her existing neural pathways, and from what Jean was saying I got the impression that wouldn't just cost her her combat skills as it did in the comics. The less violent way is to nudge her brain to increase its plasticity so that it becomes easier for her to learn languages the normal way, and that's what we're doing. She does have concepts of things, just not concrete labels for them.

She raises her hands and signs 'Hello Gray hello Man hello'.

"Just one 'hello'. At the beginning."

She just blinks, then signs 'play now play now now'.

I nod. "Yes." I stand and step back into the living room. "Fast Girl, could you fetch the Frustration board, please?"

back

Mandated 11

next

23rd October

21:37 GMT +2

"What was it like for you?"

About the same, probably. The ritual's been the same since the Heavenly Guardians came into existence. Jade pauses. Your-? Ah, the ambassador..?

"Was there, tried to make a speech of some kind. We're not even from the same country!"

Except that… You literally are.

Ugh. "I hope one day to be able to take you and.. Jade…"

Don't even think about calling us One and Two.

"Back to Earth Prime. Show you what Britain's supposed to be."

I'd like that too, but he's the Britain you have to deal with while you're here.

I nod, focusing my attention on our target. Just because Khyber's dead, that didn't suddenly mean that his underlings all vanished. Picking up spies and traitors was simply a matter of subjecting everyone in critical areas or roles to basic telepathic scans, but those who'd actually undergone augmentation are a trickier business. Ghostwolves are a pain; hiding to avoid detection but still operating, still attacking.

We're still not exactly sure what Khyber's ultimate goal was. And given how thoroughly my fellow Heavenly Guardian He Who Follows killed him, I doubt that we'll ever find out. But he had cybernetically enhanced operatives sneaking around the world for decades, if not centuries. They're far more accustomed to irregular action than to direct combat. This is a return to normalcy for them.

Ophidian's Gaze.

My normal vision disappears, being replaced by swirling traces of want and need. Ghostwolves usually have spiritual training in addition to their cybernetics, but this close to an objective…

There. The image is.. distorted, but there's someone who very much wishes to be inside the military dockyard where a relatively small quantity of the cyberware taken from other cyborgs killed during the war is being stored. I can't tell whether the individual is following the last orders they received in the least crazy way they can, trying to get parts for their own repairs or getting parts to make more like them.

"Spotted… One."

There's never-

Just one. / -just one.

I feel a momentary itch on the left side of my chest. Purely psychosomatic, but if someone punches holes in you hard enough it's very difficult to forget. I… Despite its obvious utility, I don't like using my ring this way. It's.. too.. distracting. And… Though there was a.. sort of amnesty for Khyber's followers immediately after the war, that deadline has come and gone. Anyone we take alive will be interrogated until the ISA has learned everything they know, then if they're still alive they'll be executed. Using the Ophidian's Gaze I see people's most fundamental desires, and.. to an extent, experience them myself. I'm… Still not comfortable enough with killing to.. be entirely happy about.. directly experiencing the personhood of someone I'm about to kill.

Still. Needs must where Khyber drives.

…homeeatrest…

Pretty typical. Routines are habit forming, and even doing something you enjoy gets wearing after a while.

…homeawayavoid…

And not everyone's fortunate enough to have a job they tolerate.

…hornycompany…

Ah, not that one. Most of the Ghostwolves examined so far kept their reproductive systems, but often the neurochemical or hormonal modifications they had made them rather disinterested in sex. Strangely, that appears not to be a problem Khyber himself had. Or maybe he just lay forwards and thought of Persia.

U-uhh.

…sustainrevengemachine…

Aaaaaand there we go.

"Found another one." The chador does have the advantage of looking quite a lot like the red robes the Ghostwolves prefer to wear when in uniform. "Marking target. You got anything?"

No unusual activity amongst the personnel, no unusual bank transfers and no one requesting access to materials without a good explanation.

"How about that musical.. thing Rot Lop Fan and you do?"

Ghostwolves have vibration nullification fields. They don't sound any different to anyone else until they go active.

"Do the locals have any sort of idea how many there actually are around here?"

No. No one knows who the original Dream King's spymaster was, so they're even more limited in that regard than we are.

I remember well the comic in which Harun al-Rashid moved all of the glory of his kingdom into the Dreaming. I can't imagine what that must have been like, having your whole world vanish because your king desired eternity more than his people's happiness. But the thing about the Dreaming is that people in the real world can access it. Bits that used to be part of the material world are even more accessible, particularly to people who live in the region affected. So when enough people started dreaming of a glorious city, some of the more experimental type of magic user started investigating the subject. Long story short, it looks like the particularity of the people affected stayed on Earth, but the idea of them was taken into the Dream. Connect to that idea when you're awake, and all sorts of strange things happen.

As Dream Prince, Karram was able to channel the core concepts of the ideal Crown Prince. He gained strength, resilience, skill with weapons and enhanced charisma at the cost of partially becoming someone else for a large chunk of the time. As Dream King… Well, that happened while I was off Earth. But the point is, other Dreamers can also gain supernatural levels of ability in a field if they can make a connection to the skills of the person who did that job for Harun al-Rashid in the Dreaming.

It was quite a scandal when they learned that he had both male and female concubines. Which is not to say that people don't try to channel those skills.

Gonow!

The chameleon systems employed by Ghostwolves are highly effective, as are the magics they employ to encourage people to ignore and avoid them. Fortunately for me they only work against conventional vision.

"They're moving. Do we take them now, or wait for them to breach the perimeter?"

There are fewer civilians inside. Plus, I put an EMP mine in each of the crates.

"Earth-EMP mine or the good stuff?"

If anyone asks, it's an Earth mine.

I grin. Ghostwolves are hardened against Earth's EMP devices… Well, the infantry grade ones. Artillery scale ones are a different matter. But the Green Lantern Corps under Sinestro has become a good deal more 'open minded' about sharing low lethality weapons amongst its members. Given how comic-Sinestro started his own Corps in order to force the Guardians to relax the 'no killing' rule, I'm a little concerned about how long he'll be satisfied with keeping it to 'low'. But for now…

The patches of orange beneath us move, passing through the outer fence and heading for the wall-.

They just went through the fence. They still haven't fixed the electrical induction problem with their phase shifters.

I blink back into normal vision-. She's right. The steel of the fence now has a weak magnetic charge where they went through.

"Fighting an omniscient foe would be a little tricky." I blink again as the Ghostwolves go up the wall with impressive speed. "Attack as they land, or wait for them to penetrate further?"

Two Lanterns against two Ghostwolves? I don't see the point in waiting.

"Agreed. Three, two, now."

We drop through the cloud cover energy pulses firing!

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Mandated 12

next

23rd October

21:41 GMT +2

And shield, because-

Two beams of pale green lance through the air and impact on the construct plate protecting me as the Ghostwolf firing them dodges aside in a wild momentum defying leap to evade my shots.

-they can do that. Ghostwolves are cyborgs, so it came as an unpleasant surprise to everyone that their ocular weapons are actually technomantic rather than plasma or laser based. My construct shield withers and dies, so I let it fade before replacing it with another. Unless they've upgraded, there should be a short delay before that Ghostwolf can fire again.

A flash of pale green to my left shows me that the other Ghostwolf has tried the same thing with Jade. Firing at me would have been a better choice, but if these two haven't had cogitation upgrades they might not have the perfect synchronicity some of their kind possess-.

I dodge left as a glowing knife flies past me, the Ghostwolf who threw it tumbling between rows of shipping containers in a way that would throw off shots from conventional weapons. Hm, if it's just the two I can take a risk…

Ring, evasive flight pattern.

Compliance.

Laser. Track, predict, and fire when the target is in phase.

Compliance.

A small turret appears on my right forearm. The wraith form of the Ghostwolves makes them extremely frustrating to fight. A single Ghostwolf can fight an unlimited number of conventional soldiers armed with nothing more than a phase sword, entirely proof against their weapons and still capable of inflicting damage themselves. Phase disruptor weapons can make them phase in… If the insane agility the mist form grants them doesn't stop you hitting them. But they're very clumsy fliers and the sword only works within arm's reach, which means that against fliers-.

The Ghostwolf I'm pursuing flips, throws a pair of daggers and then goes to turn for their landing. Unfortunately for them, my ring predicted the throw based on their movements immediately prior and fires my laser construct. The beam of ruby red light strikes them during the instant they're completely in phase for the throw, causing their robes to flare with flame where it passes. It also -yes!- hits the external circuitry of their armour. The ghostly green glow being emitted by it flickers and the Ghostwolf tumbles as their weight suddenly increases. They're well trained though, and turn the tumble into a roll as they hit the concrete. They're on their feet a moment later, sword in hand to parry the two orange bolts I throw at them. Another laser shot to the face, but this time the air around them shimmers as the beam is split and diffused over their face and upper torso. Their robes start burning in earnest, before being tossed aside as the Ghostwolf adopts a guard pose.

I stay a safe distance away, dismissing my laser construct and creating an amplifier. "Ghostwolf. The war is over. Khyber is dead. Surrender and you will live."

"Still your tongue, dead man. The master will live again. She will herald his rebirth."

"A fanatic, t-" There's an explosion of emerald green off to my right, and I smile. "-hen. I don't think there's a single piece of Khyber bigger than a raisin left whole and Lord Fate warded the entire planet against the possibility of his soul returning in a new body. He's gone."

The Ghostwolf crouches slightly, a faint glow around their lower legs giving me all of the notice I need to yank myself aside just in time to dodge their sword stroke as they shoot into the air! That's an upgrade! I evade again as they try to press the attack, then generate a coilgun construct and take a couple of shots. Their armour trembles but holds and I'm shield!

The twin green beams from the Ghostwolf's eyes strike my shield as they surge forward again, sword outstretched! The rushed shield construct rots and my environmental shield bgruuuh. Heal and catch!

A construct arm grabs the Ghostwolf's right forearm and tugs it aside, pulling their charge off target as the ring gets on with healing my necrotising flesh. Next, I generate a pneumatic ram construct above them and slam it down with all possible force.

They twist in the air and punch it, the circuitry on their arm glowing as the construct breaks and fades.

Another upgrade. Irritating.

I generate another pneumatic ram and slam it into their side, armour cracking and flaking as they go sailing out to sea. Not the most efficient sort of strike, but now the sea can absorb any excess force.

Coilgun. Dial it up.

Compliance.

I can hear the hum as the coils charge, and the projectile leaves a blue trail in its wake as it flies through the air and strikes the Ghostwolf in the back. Their force diffusion field activates again, but all that does is cause all of the armour facing me to explode rather than just what was covering the point of impact. I drop the coilgun and accelerate towards what's left of the corpse, gripping what's left of it with a construct crate. Just in case their usually anaemic self destruct systems have been upgraded as well I keep it a little way away from me as I turn and head back towards the quayside. Can't.. see any green glows…

"Jade, are you finished as well?"

There's a green blur and then she's next to me. "Yes. And I managed it without getting shot." She sighs. "You asked yours to surrender, didn't you?"

"Yes."

She shakes her head disappointedly. "You need to try learning sonic constructs again. And stop being so nice to the people trying to commit genocide."

'Nice'. I had thought that my willingness to kill sufficiently bad people would mark me out as unusual amongst superheroes. And it might have done, but super functionaries are ISA or military and they were quite surprised that I thought that taking the target in alive was the objective.

"Yours..?"

She holds up her still-glowing ring. "My EMP grenade shut down something vital." And hence no automatic ring shut down for killing, as she was trying something she genuinely thought would disable them. "Did yours say anything useful?"

"They seemed to believe that Khyber would return."

"Pfw." She looks down at the docks for a moment. "We both saw what was left of his body. He isn't coming back from that."

"Cloning, maybe?"

"Even if they had a tissue sample somewhere, that wouldn't be Khyber." She drifts back down towards the dock and I follow on behind her. "It would just be some unfortunate boy. He wouldn't have the knowledge they require."

"A mental download?"

"It-. Possible, but we didn't recover any records of them having anything like that technology. Usually, these 'immortal overlord' types get to a certain age and assume that nothing is going to kill them."

Yes. Reading what one of Jong Li's earlier heirs did to Vandal Savage when he tried taking over China did make me smile. I can only wonder at the malice it must have taken to fly to the sun without an AI, and the self control it must have taken to maintain the focus on will and not hate.

Still…

"I.. think I'm going to talk to Kassam. Find out if one of his seers has picked up anything."

She halts in the air as a support team of base personnel fan out across the dock.

"It can't hurt. When do you plan on us going?"

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Mandated 13

next

24th October

10:12 GMT +4:30

The Royal Palace of the Persian Empire is an astonishing structure of marble and magic, the result of a Dreamer Architect's attempt to realise in the real world the building he saw in his mind every night and which increasingly plagued his thoughts. I'm.. given to understand that he wasn't entirely successful, and… Later generations added modern amenities like electricity, running water and flushing toilets, which purists claim distract from the purity of the original vision. Still, it's a blooming impressive building.

It's also in Baghdad, because that's where Harun al-Rashid had his capital. Virtually every Dream King has -having learned from the example of Emperor Wei- instead maintained a somewhat modest home in the administrative centre of the Empire, in Tehran. It makes it just a little bit harder to nuke, though Kassam did tell me that a good part of the reason is that -grateful as they may be for the supernatural wisdom that comes with the position- no Dream King wants to be entirely subsumed by their role.

The Royal Residence in Tehran is a building on the model of Medinat az-Zahrat, a series of low-built buildings separated by gardens and surrounded by public parklands. Though any Dreamer can claim the right to reside in the Royal Palace, many of the full time residents of the Residence are Dreamers themselves. Since their abilities both make them exceptionally skilled in their chosen field and tend to make them extremely loyal to the current Dream King, it isn't hard to understand why that happens.

On the other hand, that very skill means that quite a lot choose not to. The three hundred or so Dream Soldiers generally regard hanging around the Residence to be a total waste of their time. Dream Concubines… Well, social attitudes change. Kassam told me that he was monogamous last time I asked, and that he intended to pension off his predecessor's harem. Demand for that particular skill set is high enough that I doubt they'll suffer for his decision. A lot of Dream Cooks choose to run their own restaurants, Dream Merchants tend to prefer to live in private apartments even if they work for the government…

On the other hand, Dream Groundskeepers tend to stay put and Dream Sorcerers seem to appreciate the 'neutral ground' the palace represents, as well as the advantage of having their sovereign around to break up any arguments before things get out of hand.

Caliph Kassam al-Rashid, the Dream King, is already walking across the garden as Jade and I descend towards the designated landing zone. He's dressed in white with gold embroidery, including a turban of the sort he used to make snide comments about. Are we.. disrupting a diplomatic reception of some kind?

A little way behind Kassam himself are his Grand Vizier Muhamed al-Tikriti and his chief and only wife Aairah. Never met the Vizier, though ISA reports say that he's quite capable. Aairah had a job with.. some sort of financial services firm, though I don't know if she still does it. Muhamed is a Dreamer, though he dreamt of one of Caliph Harun's ministers and not Vizier Jafar. That's actually pretty normal; while Jafar was perfectly competent at a job which appears to have consisted of getting the Caliph functioning again when he was in one of his moods, he wasn't actually all that good at organising a government. On the one occasion I asked whether she had any interest in Dreaming, Aairah made it very clear that she had no interest in channelling Zubaidah. Which is a bit of a problem for female Dreamers; virtually all of the powerful positions in Harun's court were held by men and while possible it's far harder to channel wrong-sex archetypes.

Kassam raises his arms as Jade and I set down on the paved landing area. "My friends! Welcome to my humble home!"

"We thank you-." / "It's good to see-."

Jade and I look at each other while Kassam just smiles. "My Dreaming brothers and I used to toss a coin to determine precedence. Maybe you could try that?"

I graciously bow to Jade, right arm across my chest and left extended towards our host. "Lantern Yifei, you have seniority."

Kassam frowns in an amused sort of way. "With your recent elevation, I don't think you're supposed to bow any longer."

"No, it's okay." I stand. "I checked, and it's perfectly fine to bow sarcastically."

Jade steps towards him. "Caliph Kassam al-Rashid, the Heavenly Guardians thank you for your hospitality."

"Lady Yifei, it is always an honour to work with the Guardians. Particularly when they spent the previous evening fighting Ghostwolves."

They loosely embrace, then kiss three times on alternate cheeks before Jade moves down the line to kiss Vizier Muhamed. Kassam smiles at me. "Lord Nameless! In virtue of the fact that you come from a barbarian land I.. will of course simply offer you my hand."

He holds out his left hand. Technically that's an insult; in Islam, the left hand is for wiping your arse and that's about it. But I know why he's doing it. When he asked about my Britain I made the mistake of telling him about the Scouting Association. Finding out that there was an organisation that shook hands with their left so that they could keep hold of a weapon in their right was something which he found utterly hilarious.

"Caliph Kassam." I reach out with my left to take his hand, then use the grip to pull him closer so that I can kiss him. Right-left-right don't get it confused because kissing the lips of a straight man channelling the skills of a bisexual is awkward for both parties. "Kissing a bearded man. Just the way to start the day."

"Surely it is better than kissing a bearded woman?" He turns to his left. "I don't believe that you've met my Grand Vizier?"

Muhamed nods politely. "My Lord Lantern."

"Grand Vizier." Him I don't grab, my political training having made it clear that a miss-kiss is perfectly acceptable for people you don't actually know well. Sadly even an acceptably near miss results in me getting beard oil on my lips, the vizier wearing his in the long and straight Chinese sage style as opposed to Kassam's neatly trimmed short style..

"And my Queen, Aairah."

I nod. "I believe that I have had the pleasure of meeting Her Majesty before."

"Before she was queen; it's an entirely different matter now."

Aairah looks my face over carefully. "And you hadn't received a Mandate. I believe that you are the first European to receive one?"

I nod awkwardly. "More significantly, I'm the first person from a parallel universe to receive one." I lean down slightly to lightly kiss her cheeks.

She responds with good grace. "Are you disowning the continent?"

"Your majesty, I never owned it."

I take a step back as the party turns to face Kassam, who claps his hands together. "I understand that you want to speak to my seers?"

Jade and I look at one another, and I bow my head slightly. She turns back to Kassam. "One of the Ghostwolves claimed that they were working to resurrect Khyber. It would be helpful to know if they'd seen anything relating to a disaster like that."

"Or if they could identify the man who managed to directly contact me via my power ring."

He nods, and turns away to march in the direction of the closest palace buildings. We all follow on behind him. "I can think of no reason to refuse you. Though as ever I would caution you that any warning they can give will likely be approximate at best."

I shrug. "We just need to know if there is anything to it."

"They might be able to manage that." He drops back for a moment, letting Jade come alongside him and glancing mischievously at me. "Am I to understand that congratulations are in order?"

"Ah-? Not.. yet."

"But the two of you are together?"

"The three of us have been on a couple of dates…" She glances at me. "It's… I think it's working."

He raises his eyebrows. "That's a bit 'traditional' for you, isn't it?"

"I… Thought.. it was..? That it would be? But when it's people you.. actually know… You're dealing with a reality rather than an abstract idea." She shrugs. "I don't think someone should avoid doing something just because it's traditional, even if tradition isn't for everyone. Maybe it won't work out and we'll.. carry on being friends. But at the moment it… Yeah."

"I can't say I'm surprised. Given the way you two were with one another the first time I saw you together."

"That wasn't-."

1st December 2010

07:28 GMT +5:00

Jade shakes her head. "It's no good; I still can't fight properly like this. Blindfold me."

I look around in mock astonishment as she turns away from me. "Ah… In.. public..?"

She freezes, and Prince Kassam bursts out laughing.

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Mandated 14

next

24th October

10:19 GMT +4:30

"I was a little surprised to hear that you'd become Dream King while I was gone."

Kassam shrugs. "My predecessor's ill-health was hardly a state secret."

"No, I mean that you'd become Dream King."

"Oh?" Kassam glances at me as we proceed down a corridor towards the seers' workshop. "Do you not think I'm up to the task?"

"No, no, I-. I thought that the… That it was unusual for Dream Princes to become Dream King, because of the way the bond worked."

"Mm." He nods. "al-Mu'tasim did become Caliph in his own right as well."

"But that's the historical version, not the.. pre-Dream version. I doubt that the original Harun al-Rashid was quite that cavalier about his succession arrangements."

"Actually, the impression I get is that he was." He exhales sharply through his nose. "Concerned about today, concerned about eternity… But for the decade after his death? A five minute conversation and treaty not worth the parchment it was written on."

"I take it you-."

"Haven't mysteriously gained a new appreciation for the man since bonding with his conceptual framework?" He shakes his head. "Hardly. If anything, it simply brings his failures more into focus." He tilts his head back slightly. "And the criticism does.. help me keep him slightly at bay when I'm trying to be.. myself."

"Is it.. more difficult than it was..?"

"The hours are longer. But it's an evolution of the role which I occupied before, and thanks to Harun the official parts are second nature."

"No, I meant… Maintaining the separation."

He smiles, looks right and extends his right arm. Aairah smiles back and walks over to him, wrapping her left arm around his waist as he wraps his right arm around hers. "I haven't felt a greater compulsion to build a harem or become a pederast than I did before. Aairah is still the only woman whom I desire."

She makes an expression of mock-offence. "Good."

Jade nods. "How is that going down with your people?"

"What, could the-" He pats Aairah's left hand with his own left. "-ISA not furnish you with their analysis? I'm sure they've made one."

"Kassam, you're my friend. If you're having any sort of problem-."

He shakes his head. "As frustrating as I.. find it that sizeable proportions of my empire feel that they need not consider the Prophet's -peace be upon him- intent as they obey his words, I have made it clear that I do not intend to enforce my interpretations in law. Which is not to say that certain mechanisms will not be.. readjusted."

That.. could be interesting. Kassam's particular brand of Islam is of the opinion that polygamy is fine, just as long as you're marrying your late brother's wife to ensure that his family isn't left destitute. Or marrying a war widow for the same reason. They treat four as the absolute limit, not the target. They also regard some of Mohammed's social rules as being.. not entirely relevant to modern society. More conservative strains of Islam have had a habit of decrying them… At the same time as lauding a group of magic using superheroes as a bulwark against Chinese domination.

Kassam's retort was 'I may be a heretic but at least I'm consistently heretical'.

Two guards bow, then pull open the doors to the seers' chambers.

"Shahryar! Zand! Dan-oh."

Seven richly dressed people are kneeling faces down on the floor in an inward-facing circle. From the-. That's blood, and from the pattern-.

Armour.

Jade steps forward, but Kassam sticks out his left hand to stop her. "No. Listen. No moaning or crying, but they're still breathing. They aren't about to die. Don't get closer until a magician ensures that it is safe to do so." Jade nods and steps back while Kassam pointedly looks at me. "And don't scan them either." I nod. "Muhamed?"

The Grand Vizier takes a few steps forward, his hands raised and his lips in motion as he mutters an incantation while Jade forms a suit of armour and a shield in case this is some sort of trap. Weakly coloured purple mist appears around the collected seers, forming a segmented circle. "No hostile magic that my command of the craft can detect, your majesty. It appears that they were performing some form of ritual."

"This was from some form of feedback?"

Muhamed walks closer, careful not to cross the outer band of purple mist, then bends down to get a better look at the participants. "The blood is from their eyes, oh Caliph. In the cases of the most intense visions, it is not unknown. Still…" He stands and looks at the room's walls. "The room's wards are still active, and your seers know their craft. It is strange to see such a result from what was clearly a planned event." He turns to the guards who followed us in. "You! Did you see or hear anything?"

"No, my lord. Not.. beyond the normal sounds of the seers at their work."

Muhamed nods unhappily. "You." He points at the guard who didn't answer. "Fetch Lady Tolon. They will need new eyes before we press them for answers."

"Yes lord."

The guard nods his head, and then turns and dashes away. Lady Tolon is the court's archmage and has overall responsibility for magic in the Persian Empire. She also refuses to carry a radio or a phone, a problem long since been bypassed by trapping minor djinn in bottles and using them as bound messengers. She'll be here shortly.

Jade walks closer, though staying behind the Vizier. "Should we move them? Paul and I can do it without touching them directly."

"No." He turns back to continue his study of the injured seers. "It is a kind offer, but whatever spell they were working is still going. I would not risk disrupting it without a better idea of what it is. My king..?"

Kassam shakes his head. "I felt nothing. And they did not inform me of any major working."

I turn away, rising off the ground as I sweep the rest of the room. The Persian Empire has a distinct preference for anything relating to magic being placed in book form so that protective enchantments can be placed upon it. That, combined with some of the equipment in use here makes it look like something from centuries ago… Right up until you see the half-concealed computer terminals and see the laser projectors they use for drawing out arcane diagrams. But they'd still write on enchanted paper…

Queen Aairah has followed me to their desks. The few papers on them are.. forms and personal correspondences. She notices that a moment after I do, then puts her right hand on the secure storage unit. There's a click as she does so, and its door opens. She pulls the documents contained there out and spreads them across the available surface. Looks like… "They were making preparations for seeing an obscured event in the past. A little bit more sophisticated than the version used in criminal investigation, but nothing too strange. Nothing that should have caused this sort of damage."

"There are dream records here as well." Aairah begins flipping through a notebook. "Several members of the group were seeing images of a figure in a purple robe. The rest of the imagery was too confused to interpret."

Kassam frowns. "The purple figure was from the past? Was it Khyber? Does he have some sort of doomsday device we need to be wary of?"

I shrug. "There's no picture here. But I don't remember Khyber wearing pur-ple..."

That.. guy on the phone. Was it-?

There's a sudden inhalation from the circle of seers, then a series of yelps of pain. Muhamed's mists dissipate and the seers either roll on the floor clutching their empty eye sockets or stagger to their feet!

"Gentlemen!" Kassam raises his hands as he channels his dream partner's authority. "Help is on the way."

"My king!" Grand Seer Shahryar orientates on his monarch, dried blood forming tear tracks down his cheeks. "Oh my king! Everything is wrong!"

Kassam walks over to him and puts both hands on the man's shoulders. "There is no problem which we cannot overcome."

"No, my king! We are the problem."

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Mandated 15

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24th October

10:53 GMT +4:30

"There." Lady Tolon removes her hands from Mister Shahryar's face, and he blinks as his newly restored eyes react to the daylight. "Can you see clearly?"

He nods. "Yes. Thank you."

She takes a step back, her right hand resting on the hilt of the Scimitar of Suleiman. "What went wrong?"

"Nothing…" He shakes his head. "Nothing went wrong. We were protected from hostile magic; indeed, I do not think that we encountered any."

"Your own spells were overloaded?" He nods. "Whatever did you see?"

"Ah-I-." Kassam pushes a cup of tea across the table to him. "Thank you, my king. Hha." He picks up the cup and takes a sip to steady his nerves. "It was… Mm. You saw our notes. When a seer dreams… Particularly those of us who already have a connection to the Dreaming… It is worthy of note."

Kassam nods. "I haven't forgotten why I employ you."

"The figure in purple was the focus of each of the dreams, though the peripheral details were different in each case. Less.. direct methods merely indicated that the figure was linked to an event in the past, so… We worked together to look into the past."

"Um." I raise my right hand. "Did any of you contact me about this two days ago?"

Shahryar frowns, shaking his head. "No, no, of course not. Why would you think that?"

"I had a rather puzzling conversation with someone two days ago. They contacted me by ring, and mentioned a 'guy in purple'. I couldn't think of anyone they might have been referring to, and they broke off the conversation without explaining it."

"What did they.. say about this person?"

"That they'd.. dropped us both in and, that we were the only people who remembered how history was supposed to be. Given.. that parts of the history of my world have entered the public domain, I wasn't sure what they were getting at…"

"No-. Ah, yes, that makes a degree of sense. Based on what we saw…" He takes another sip, his hands shaking.

Kassam leans forward. "Don't keep us in suspense; what did you see?"

"The Night of Stone Blades."

Kassam frowns. "An unpleasant business, but I am unsure how it could cause all of the seers to be blinded."

"It is because we did not see what we should have seen. Lady Yifei, I am sure that you know China's history better than I do. What happened on that day in fourteen fifteen?"

Jade frowns. "Lao Yuqi's automata reactivated. They broke out of the First Emperor's tomb, travelled covertly to Beijing and murdered hundreds of Confucian courtiers and officials before either being destroyed or.. breaking down."

"Yes. And then?"

"The.. death of so many civilian administrators resulted in the military taking an increased role in civil administration, and… Since Prince Zhu Gaochi and his son were killed, it also changed the succession in favour of Prince Zhu Gaoxu."

The Zhànzhēng Emperor. Even bloodthirstier than his father, which when you consider what he did to become Emperor was something of an achievement. He was a large part of why the later voyages of Zheng He and his successors were further roaming and more aggressive than they were in earlier days.

Shahryar exhales sharply. "Did it?"

"Ah… I'm not an expert on history." She shrugs. "There were probably a lot of other things going on as well, but, yes."

He nods. "When we looked back, we saw what you described. We saw nothing not accounted for in written history, so we turned our eyes away and tried to see something new: why the automata had become active in the first place."

She shrugs. "Because they were programmed to."

"Why would the First Emperor have the guardians of his tomb programmed to murder his distant successor's courtiers?"

"I.. don't know?"

"Neither did we. But since our vision was centred on that period, we thought that we would examine the tomb itself. And we saw…" He winces, raising his right hand to his head. "We saw the empty tomb, and so we tried to look back further, to when Lao Yuqi was entombed. We saw him plead with the Emperor's undertaker. We saw him entombed with the corpse of his master. And then we saw a portal open, and a man step through into the great mausoleum. He knew who Lao was, he greeted him warmly and asked him to alter the programming which he gave to the automata. He said that in return he would remove him from the tomb."

Kassam nods. "Was this man a wizard?"

"He may have been, but I do not think so. When Lao asked who he was, he laughed and gave several names. I recognised three: Khafre, Brutus and Vandal Savage."

"Khafre? Hm." Kassam settles back into his chair. "Well, we knew that he was long lived. I hadn't known that he had spent time in China, but it is hardly astonishing."

"My king, he had a mechanical watch of European design. And a mobile phone. I believe that he travelled backwards in time."

There's a sharp intake of breath from both Jade and me. Vandal Savage! I always thought that he regenerated from his body; that throwing him into the sun would do the job. Does he just..? Reappear? Okay, in this era he'd be more a nuisance than anything else… Time travel notwithstanding, with modern surveillance and communications, but it's still a shock.

Kassam raises his eyebrows and rather pointedly looks at us. "Have our honourable friends been keeping secrets from us?"

Ring, check?

No contradictory data found in Heavenly Guardian records.

I shake my head. "Souma was always pretty definite about it with me, and the Guardians don't have anything to contradict it. Picked up, thrown into the sun. If that was him… He could have regenerated from a hair follicle or.. blood or something, and just kept his head down."

"And the time travel?"

Jade shakes her head. "Time travel is banned in China, and I don't think anyone is seriously working on it."

Kassam nods again, then returns his attention to Shahryar. "What happened next?"

"Lao agreed, and set to work on his automata. Khafre simply watched him at first, then joined in. We did not watch the entirety of their work, but instead came forward until they finished. Khafre reopened his portal and then led Lao through. Some of us-" His hands shake again and he presses them against the arms of his chair to still them. "-followed them through, and found ourselves in some manner of laboratory. There was a partially disassembled golden mechanical automaton in the form of a woman plugged into machinery whose purpose we could only guess at. What drew our attention was a screen upon one wall, and the figure in a purple robe whom we all recognised upon it. Khafre told him that his part was done, and the figure agreed but said that he had to check on a few things before fulfilling their bargain. I flew from the room to try to discover where they were, but all around was desert. When I finally reached a settlement, it was inhabited mostly by Europeans and Africans. Several houses showed a flag… I think it was the one used by the European colonies in North America after they claimed their independence."

"This?"

He looks at the construct flag, then shakes his head. "No, there were more stars in the corner."

!

"This?"

"Yes." He nods. "Yes, that is what it looked like."

Kassam raises his eyebrows at me. "I know the flag of the United States, and it did not look like that. Do you recognise it?"

I nod. "It's the flag of the United States of America. From my world."

back

Mandated 16

next

24th October

10:58 GMT +4:30

Kassam gives me a blank look. "Remind me?"

I dismiss the flag and create a map. "The country covering the northernmost part is Canada. The next one down is the United States of America. They're probably the most powerful nation on the planet."

"I thought that your world did not have the technology to shift between parallel universes."

"If someone did, they didn't tell me about it. We certainly don't have super functionaries and I don't think that we have a Vandal Savage. Just because a United States exists, that doesn't mean that it was my United States. Any America that started with thirteen states and currently has fifty would use the same one."

He nods. "True." He turns his head towards Shahryar. "Please, continue."

"No.. super functionaries?" He shakes his head. "I.. do not think it can have been your world, then. I definitely saw images of such people."

"We have them in fiction. Did you see drawings or.. actors?"

He shrugs, shaking his head again. "They appeared to be real, but… I was not there long enough to tell for certain. The technology seemed.. outdated, but beyond that..?" He shakes his head again. "I saw no place names that I recognised, and my colleagues called me back to the laboratory before much time had passed. When I returned, things were much the same as they had been. The figure in purple said that things were in accordance with his plan, and that 'corrections' would only take a moment. Khafre nodded and activated a device which appeared to freeze him and Lao in place. Then…"

He bows his head slightly.

"Things changed… I could feel chains of events snap, the flow of history contradict itself. I saw cities built, unbuilt, changed, erased, their people changing, vanishing, reappearing and finally being unmade by what was happening. As seers, we train ourselves to be sensitive to the links between times and places-."

Lady Tolon nods. "You are lucky that you just lost your eyes."

"I am certain that if we were seeing it as it happened instead of merely sensing it in the aftermath, the cost to us would have been far greater. The only point of stability was the.. 'bubble' around Khafre and Lao. We.. desperately clung to it to anchor ourselves, but even then I could feel it as those inside came adrift from the world around them. I saw Lao alone in the First Emperor's tomb, using his last days to reprogram one robot where I had seen him in company reprogramming them all. I saw him cut his wrist and bleed to death rather than let starvation claim him, even as he stood alive and well before me. I saw some small part of Khafre's life in double vision, then saw him doing two separate things at the same time in different corners of the world. It was too much."

Oh dear. "You mean they altered history? Savage went back in time to that point to change things."

Shahryar nods. "I believe that you are correct, Orange Lantern. His device kept the change from affecting him and Lao, but the rest of the world was realigned to match the new history."

Kassam looks thoughtful. "But if he is dead..?"

Jade gets it. "In the original time line, he wasn't dead. He was alive now, and that version of him avoided being changed by using time manipulation technology."

Kassam nods. "So while he was indeed thrown into the sun in the new time line, the one we know, that version was not. And as he was shielded from changes in his personal history, he would once again be alive." He hesitates. "Or rather, never died."

"Indeed, my king."

But.. that's.. not the important thing, is it? "Did his time travel equipment survive?"

"No, it did not. I-. Our spell ended as time stabilised once more, but I saw his equipment be replaced by solid rock."

Okay, good. "Could you find the location?"

He nods cautiously. "I believe so. If you have a map..?"

I take one out of subspace and float in it front of him.

"A moment." We all look at Queen Aairah. "When did this happen?"

"I.. am.. not certain that that question makes sense, my queen. Since the time in which it occurred no longer exists-."

"But he appeared in the new time line. Which we are assuming is our time line."

"That.. is true. I.. do not know, and discovering that will be harder than finding the location." He looks at Kassam. "My king?"

"I would prefer not to test you until you were better rested. But if this man has the ability to manipulate time then we cannot wait. The location first, then the time. And then rest."

Shahryar nods again, then pulls from his pocket a metal disc with a hole in the middle, suspended on a length of string. He holds it up to the map. "This will be but the work of a moment."

The disc rises, gently tugging the string towards the western part of the Sinoistic Provinces of America. Though formerly they were effectively a separate state from China, the Imperium War and improved communication technologies resulted in them becoming more closely tied to the central government. Though in the case of the war that was largely because they could still produce food that wasn't radioactive, and that made them enough money that there weren't that many complaints.

Thinking about it, maybe the lack of democracy explains the lack of separatist movements? I mean, no one paid the Scottish Nationalist Party any attention until devolved government came in, and now most of the Scottish constituencies return SNP MPs. Whereas in Imperial China, civil servants run the government and are promoted mostly meritocratically. They might have all sorts of political beliefs going in, but there's basically no space for them to do anything about them.

"Here." String hanging from it, the metal disc is floating over an area in… Would that have been Texas? North Mexico? I'm not sure. A moment later a tiny point of light appears on the map in the centre of the hole. "This is where it… Was located. I doubt that you will find anything other than a hole in the ground now, but it may aid you in locating Khafre and Lao."

The disc is steady… Ring, acquire location.

Location acquired. Location is approximate to within thirty kilometres.

Hm. "Just a moment." I alter the map, expanding the area under the pendant while dismissing the rest. "Could you-?"

The pendant moves slightly. "Here."

I repeat the process, and the pendant moves again and again… Right.

I dismiss the construct with a nod. "Jade?"

"Co-ordinates locked, and I've informed local authorities that we're on our way."

I turn to Kassam. "We'll be there in a few hours. We'll keep you updated."

He rises to his feet, walking towards me with his right hand extended. "Good hunting."

I take his hand for a moment, then step back and armour myself before turning away and striding out of the room. Jade's already in the air ahead of me and I'm hot on her heels as we leave the building and head out into the open air.

For obvious reasons, faster than light travel is prevented near to Earth. The Persian Empire keeps its end of the bargain up using magic. It literally won't work here. Which means we're doing this the mundane way. Jade and I head upwards, generating scramjet constructs as we reach a safe height and turning into a parabolic arc that will take us to America.

back

Mandated 17

next

24th October

02:28 GMT -6

"…just buy something from Ma Yu Ching's Bucket Chicken House next time."

Ah, long distance self-powered flight. Geo-Force was right on the money about how boring it is. I have no idea how Thundermind copes. I'm sure that I'd go peculiar if I had to go everywhere at a mere five times the speed of sound.

"I haven't been to a Ma Yu for years."

"Really? It was one of the first places I went, even if I had to explain to them what chips are. Are you..? Do you not like it?"

"ISA catering is really good. And before, I was a sports fanatic. I tried to avoid greasy take away food like that."

"So the pie restaurant was..?"

"I just… You found it awkward, so I thought eating… British food-"

"Hahahaha!"

"-might-. Yes, okay."

"I mean I -hah!- appreciate the thought, but-. They had zweihänder Morris dancing, for goodness sake!"

"Aaaaaand?"

"Morris dancing doesn't involve zweihänders. Handkerchiefs, stout sticks and arming swords, certainly, but I'm sure the only reason they were using those huge.. things is that weird cultural obsession some parts of China have with Europeans using huge swords."

"Oh. Is it..? Does it.. bother you? Did you.. actually do… 'Proper' Morris dancing?"

"Hah! Oh, no. Um, one of my dad's friends was a member of the local troupe and… When I was younger we used to.. go down to the seafront once a year to watch the maypole dancing on May Day. So I know what it's meant to look like and that was kind of it, but they'd clearly had to innovate to work those ridiculous swords into it."

"So was that a 'no, you didn't do it', or a 'no, it doesn't bother you'?"

"It bothers me because they're doing it wrong. If you want to see what it's meant to look like I can take you to see an actual troupe doing it next year."

"So it's.. not the cultural appropriation thing?"

"The c-? HAH! Um, no." We both begin decelerating as we get closer to our destination. "It's just daft. It's like… Imagine that every character in Chinese popular fiction carried a changdao everywhere. Li the Talking Zither from Adventures in Music? Changdao. Hides it in his board in case An-An ever needs it. Doctor Chang from the Diaries of Doctor Chang, Mild Mannered Country Doctor? He's now Doctor Changdao and if gentle persuasion doesn't work he's got a huge-"

"No!"

"-sword to back it up. Wang Hien from that Garden Beauticians program Harmonious One likes to watch?"

"Changdao." / "Changdao."

"Because she really hates ornamental hedges."

Through the green glow of her construct armour I see her smiling at the idea. "I'd actually watch Doctor Changdao. 'Why do you drink and bring shame upon your family? Rah!'."

"I.. think there'd be complaints." We come to a halt, desert as far as the eye can see. "Was anyone going to meet us here?"

"I didn't see the point. It's in the middle of nowhere and they'd probably get here after us. And if we can't find anything-."

"Then the next step would be a magic user."

"I was going to say that there's probably nothing here to find, but there might be a shaman around here the local office could get hold of." She points her right hand at the desert below us. "Shall we?"

"If you insist." Ring, scan.

Compliance.

"I suppose we could come all this way and then just go home again."

Show me what's there. "Oh, heck no. It's got to be dinner time by now."

"It's five o'clock."

"And by the time we flew back it would be dinner time. We could pick up some Mexican food-."

Results available.

We lower our rings. As Shahryar said, there's a sphere.. missing, from the rock. It's partially filled in, partially where dust from the surrounding environment has blown in and partially from where someone dug their way out with a plasma gun. Given the heat that would generate, it was a bit of a risk. On the other hand, Vandal Savage would have assumed that he'd eventually regenerate, and… I doubt that he cared much about Lao. The rock is cold and there aren't any tracks, so whenever they left it wasn't recent. No technological artefacts or spatial anomalies detected. There's a-.

Ah! A hair, wedged under a rock.

"Got a genetic sample."

Partial match on available caveman samples.

"It's Savage. Submitting to local ISA office."

"Any matches?"

"Not yet, but something's bound to come up."

No credit cards from a 'normal' time line would work here, precious metal would require a background check including a genetic sample… Kassam will be getting his people to provide a sketch as soon as they've recovered so we'll know what to look for… Hm. Don't know enough about USA road networks to guess how the ones here differ.

I turn to Jade. "He's not here and he's not wandering the desert. Where do you think he went?"

She creates a construct map of the area. "When did Europeans settle this part of America on your world?"

"I'm.. not sure. I suppose… The oldest cities east of here might be in the same place, but I'm not sure he could reach them quickly. I don't think any west coast cities are in the same place."

"He is on record as being a cannibal. Maybe he brought Lao along so that he could eat him if it took too long?"

"Seems a bit odd to me that he had a time machine but not a personal teleporter."

She frowns. "Wait." A hand construct extends downwards and picks up a piece of plasma-melted rock before pulling it back up.

"What about it?"

She generates an automaton construct and has it grip… Its fingers fit perfectly grooves melted into the rock. "He couldn't guarantee any sort of help in the new time line, but they had all the time they wanted to work on the automata. They could just program them to walk here and wait. They don't need water or food and won't be affected by heat."

I nod. "He could just order them to carry him to the coast, or pass on information about what they'd seen."

"I'll contact local police. We need to find them as soon as possible."

back

Mandated 18

next

24th October

02:35 GMT -6

The golden glowing ankh appears in the air before us, and one of Nabu's monks strides through. "Honoured Lanterns, please enter at once."

He steps back and Jade and I fly through the opening into their temple complex in Shiraz.

24th October

13:05 GMT +4:30

I know for a fact that those ankh portals aren't easy for mortal wizards to open, and even less to transport people who are not strongly order-aligned. This one shuts down immediately as the monk who greeted us comes back through, the monks holding it open on this side slumping with relief as they let the spell fade away. Okay, either Nabu or the abbot wanted us back in a hurry-.

"Honoured Lanterns." Jade and I look up as the abbot enters the ritual chamber, guardian Lamassu at his side. Abadun is a heavily built black man with his greying hair and beard bound in dreadlocks. He'd look like a pirate if not for the complete calm with which he conducts himself. "We have heard disturbing tidings from Caliph Kassam; his seers convinced that our whole world is based upon the actions of a time travelling criminal. Is this true?"

I reluctantly nod. "There's a certain amount of circumstantial evidence which implies that may be the case." Those monks who are still mobile rise to leave, while their more exhausted colleagues are helped out by novices. The moment the last of them are out a new group file in, chanting prayers as they come. "Why did you call us back? We'd barely started searching America for them."

"If Khafre were not protected against detection by your rings, you would have found him in moments. Since he is not in your custody, Lord Nabu felt that the task of examining surveillance was best left to Ultimon while he unbinds Khafre's protective spells himself."

Jade and I glance at each other, then nod. He's right. Heck, we don't even know if Savage stayed in this time period.

Abadun smiles slightly. "Do you have Khafre's hair?" Jade nods and holds it out. "Excellent." Another novice comes forward with a small, ankh inscribed jewellery box. "Please, put it in there."

Jade frowns slightly, but complies. "Are you going to try scrying for Khafre with it?"

"Oh, no." The novice closes the box and it vanishes in a flare of golden light. "As I said, that is Lord Nabu's task. Our task is far easier." He gestures to the circle of monks behind us. "Orange Lantern, you told Caliph Kassam that you were contacted by someone who spoke to you through your ring. Having listened to what he said, I have reached the conclusion that it is likely that he knows something about the events which have taken place. It is him whom we shall be searching for. That is why we need you to be here." He gestures to the centre of the ritual space with his right hand. "Please?"

"All of me, or just my ring?"

"All of you, please. He implied that there was an existing relationship between the two of you which you no longer remember. That will-" I nod, turn away and walk to the centre of the ritual space. "-make things easier."

Jade frowns. "What am I here for?"

"Once this ritual is complete, we will open another portal to his location. Since we have no idea what level of resistance to expect, you and I will advance alongside Orange Lantern."

She nods as I reach the indicated space. "Do I just stand here?"

The monks bow their heads, golden strands of light dancing through the air around me. Abadun nods. "Yes, that is quite sufficient. Please focus your mind on your recollections of the conversation."

Ah. Alright? It wasn't a long conversation, so… 'Hey, P-.' Agh, name. But he definitely sounded like he knew me. 'Sorry this took s' long. Guess that purple guy dropped us both in it, huh?' The vernacular 'dropped us in it' is something that doesn't exist in the lexicon of this world. The 'purple guy' did something to both of us-. Wait. I came from a parallel universe anyway. My personal history wasn't affected before my arrival point. But he knows-. He knew the me from that other, non-Savaged time line. He knew how to contact my ring. They might.. even have been friends.

I suppose I can.. understand him not wanting to talk to me. It must be more than a little dis-.

The golden light around me shines brilliantly! For a moment I get a clear view of a middle aged European with short orange hair and a moustache. Can't.. clearly see his environment…

"There! We have him! Open the gateway!"

Right, we'll just-. No, I can't move. Or.. feel my body. That's a.. bit of a worry. My only point of awareness is the man who prank called me, and he's… Feeling for his necklace and.. standing up… Looks… Worried..?

And-.

Ugh. The lights have dimmed, the monks are slumping once more and Jade's holding the man from my vision in construct cables. He looks around at the interior of the monastery, not scared exactly but certainly concerned.

"Heya, everyone. Nice place y'got here. What is that, sixteenth century?"

I walk out of the circle, power ring glowing. "Sir, we have a bit of a situation and we have reason to suspect that you-" He turns his head my way, wincing as he does so. "-have pertinent information. We would very much appreciate it-."

"Hey, Paul. How 're you finding bizarre world?"

"It's treating me pretty well. You do know me, then?"

"Then, now, sure, whatever. We know-knew each other."

I glance at Abadun and Jade, but they seem content to let me do the talking. "In what way?"

"Ahhhh." His face takes on a downcast expression. "Coulda had some fun with this… If things were a little different." He sighs. "Yah know about the time line changing, right?"

"Yes. Vandal Savage went back in time to reprogram the terracotta warriors, resulting in the time line being changed, from.. whatever it was before to this."

"I don't get what happened to Kal-El. Shouldn't he still a' got sent here?"

Ah… I wouldn't know who Kal-El was if I hadn't seen him in the comics, would I? "What's your name?"

"Truggs. Nylor Truggs." He glares contemptuously at Jade. "Which means Nylor is my personal name." His head turns slowly back in my direction. "And you're Paul, yah can't say yer own name without fainting and yah founded the Orange Lantern Corps. Funny how yah still got together with a woman named Jade." He frowns. "You sure you don't remember anything about… The Legion? The Time Trapper?"

Flat out lying in an order-temple would be unwise. "What legion would that be?"

He exhales sharply. "The Legion of Superheroes? From the.. future..?" My face doesn't move, so he checks Jade and Abadun to see if there's a reaction there. "Well, on the plus side, I kinda think we found out how their future got erased. On the negative side, it kinda wiped out ours as well."

"I really.. don't remember this."

"You don't remember merging with the Ophidian?"

"Merge with-? That would be insane!"

"Yeaah, good times. Alright. Far as I know? Savage wan'ed some kinda temporal… Thing, an' I somehow built it. Except that was future me, 'cause the Legion showed up and dragged me off t' Vanishing Point. While I was swinging my heels, some guy called Jason Goldstein time travelled back t' try an' stop some.. assassin group… The Justice League… They're a superhero team… They shut 'em down, then you got picked up 'cause the Legion don't really know what they're doing an' thought you might be th' source of th' time changes." He slumps back in the chains. "I still can't work out how this is supposed t' be my fault."

"How did you end up back here?"

"The Time Trapper. Guy in a purple robe. I'd heard a' him before… Never seen him until he threw you an' me back into the time stream. You sure you don't remember-?"

"No. But why do you?"

"If you really don't, I'd guess it's because my personal time line doesn't work any more. But yours does, 'cause a' how you come from a parallel universe. You just slot right in, I stand right out."

"Do you know where Savage is now?"

"No. But I.. do know where some a' his safe houses are. And I'll tell yah… But I gotta ask: you're gunna fix things. Right?"

back

Mandated 19

next

24th October

13:12 GMT +4:30

Jade shakes her head. "All the rest are covered, but we don't have anyone in Europe who can get there quickly enough."

I look at Abadun. "I don't suppose that you could teleport us?"

"Could we? Yes. But we are keeping ourselves for high urgency tasks. There are not an unlimited number of monks here."

Jade sighs. "We'll just have to fly there ourselves." She turns away to start towards the exit. "Come on. The sooner we start-" She rises into the air with me hot on her heels. "-the sooner we finish."

"That sounds like defeatist talk to me. Ring, call Harmonious One."

"Calling."

Jade glances back as we negotiate the corridors at speed, heading for the open air. "Harmonious One? You can't bring him here!"

"We'll be out of Persian air space by the time he can respond."

Brrrrring!

I generate a phone construct and raise it to my head. "Orange Lantern to Harmonious One."

"Oh exalted one, My Lord Lantern! How gracious of you-"

"Can we not?"

"-to remember that this… Humble functionary-"

"Do you want to help or not?"

"-is your most obedient-"

"We might lose the last six hundred years."

"-s-. Ah. Should I come to you?"

"Yes please. Meet us at the Persia/Europe border."

"Oh, yes. It's only a few hundred miles long. It won't be hard at all to spot a single man-sized object. When you say 'lose the last six hundred-"

Jade's scramjets fire with deafening force as we get far enough away from the monastery to use them.

"-years', what exactly do you mean by that?"

"Are you on your way?"

"Yes. It just takes a moment or two for the hat to get big enough."

"A Vandal Savage from an alternate time line created this timeline six hundred years ago by travelling back in time and causing the Night of Stone Knives. Now he's back in this present and we don't know where he is or what he's doing."

"Oh. Ah. Wait a moment." I trigger my scramjets while he thinks about it. "Ah… The hat… It's.. talking to me."

"Is it talking about how to get us to Europe faster?"

"It's.. talking.. about time. Ooooh, it's all so beautiful."

I accelerate to catch up with Jade. Of course, Nabu's anti-chaos magic user sentiment might not be entirely unjustified. I once saw the Harmonious One spend four hours staring at a plasma ball, and the hat itself talking is.. not a good omen as far as productivity is concern-.

A red slash tears across the sky, and Jade and I fly straight into it!

24th October

11:18 GMT +3

And out of it-! And… We're here? I decelerate as the countryside of Wallachia flashes past. The Heavenly Guardians have an… Understanding with King Vlad, which means that he shouldn't take umbrage at this violation of his territory. And as the number one cause of the Persian Empire not expanding into Europe he also has one with the rest of the continent, including the parts that would ideally like to see him staked at a crossroad. The holiday home which Mr Truggs fingered as having an auxiliary function as Savage's getaway is rapidly approaching, a translucent dancing dragon circling around it suggesting that Harmonious One got here ahead of us.

Jade smiles at me as she loses altitude. "If he was that efficient normally I'd actually try getting him promoted."

"I don't think the hat paying attention to current events is likely to be a good thing."

The Harmonious One himself is near the front door, gesticulating at.. a couple of figures in cloth-swathed armour. Vampire knights of the Order of the Dragon. Overcast sky? Yes. Vulnerability to sunlight becomes much less important when your elite can control the weather. Screaming face tabard means… Scream Queen, and the Cross of St George with a blood droplet means.. Andrew Bennett.

He looks up as we approach. "Lanterns. What brings you here?"

Jade lands just in front of him. "According to an informant, this is one of Vandal Savage's hideouts."

"Vandal Savage? I thought that I recognised the scent from somewhere."

I land next to Jade. "If you're not here for him..?"

Scream Queen turns her helmeted head towards the manor. "Blood. It's officially a collection of holiday flats, but now it reeks of blood. About… Thirty different sources, which are as many people as are registered as staying here. Local police opened the door, saw the bodies and then called us."

None of us make a joke of it. The Order test the self control of aspirants extremely harshly before letting them join, and the penalty for a knight who loses control on active duty is to be impaled and left in sunlight. It's not as quick as some films make it look.

Jade nods, then gestures towards the door. "It's your country. But we need any clues on Savage's current whereabouts."

Mr Bennett nods. "Of course. Do you have an accurate plan of the-?"

Scan and map.

A three dimensional model of the manor's interior appears before me. It's divided into apartments with some common areas… Mr Truggs said that only a handful were ever occupied at any one time, with the rest being reserved for Savage or his guests. Mr Bennett and Scream Queen look it over and then move, their bodies and armour partially transformed into mist to enable them to run at superhuman speed and flow around obstacles.

I monitor their progress through the manor as Jade waves her right hand in front of Harmonious One's unresponsive face. "Harmonious One?"

"Something's very wrong, you know." He.. sort of manages to focus on her. "Destiny is not so flexible as to allow time to be mistaken."

"The only 'mistake' is that Savage is free."

"No… No, you don't akgh." He winces, pulls the hat from his head and then fans himself with it. "A history that has already happened has a momentum to it, a presence that continues even when the history ends. For little shifts it can be lost in the background… Correct itself. But for major changes energy has to come from somewhere. Sustaining… Us, for six hundred years… The hat isn't sure how it could be done. But then I thought… Were we here for six hundred years last week? Because if we weren't, then the equation starts to look a lot more possible."

That sounds like something I should worry about. "What happens when the power runs out?"

"The hat doesn't know, but at a rough guess? The universe makes itself as much like what it should be in the most efficient way possible. That… Probably isn't survivable for us."

back

Mandated 20

next

24th October

11:26 GMT +3

Jade pulls me away from Harmonious One. "How much.. faith are we putting in a talking hat?"

"That's a slightly harsh way of talking about Lord Nabu."

"I'd believe Lord Nabu. Harmonious One is talking about our whole world ceasing to exist because 'time' says so."

"No, he said we could prevent that happening by finding a sufficiently large power source to make up the energy debt." She blinks. "I don't want our history to be destroyed any more than you do."

"You'd still exist."

"No, some other guy with my name, face and ring would still exist. Some.. lunatic who thinks that bonding with the Embodiment of Avarice is a clever idea. Without my history, my memories… Without you or Jade…" I shake my head. "But that isn't Harmonious-."

She nods. "Harmonious One's fault."

"I can hear you, you know." We turn to look at him as he holds the hat to his right ear. "If I seem distracted it's because the hat and I are trying to come up with a solution."

"Would you be affected?"

"Probably. Almost certainly. Though the hat might remember me, whether it ever mentioned me to anyone or not."

"Do you have any way to track down Savage?"

He taps his chin with the brim of his hat. "Assuming that Lord Nabu is doing his level best to brute force the issue and so it isn't worth my while attempting that approach, a more indirect divination would rely on Savage actively involving himself in the society around him. Since he almost certainly hasn't been doing that…" He holds his hat out to arm's length with the brim up, then turns it over. A series of sticks… Yarrow stalks, fall out and land on the ground. He looks at them for a few moments, then solemnly returns the hat to his head. "Not a clue."

Hm. "How does magic interact with time travel?"

"Apparently, your eyes explode."

"That wasn't-."

"In theory, more esoteric magic effects should ignore it while more physical ones would be almost completely nullified. You might have a point, though. If Savage is hiding himself using temporal distortion technology rather than magic…"

A cloud of mist blasts out of the manor, precipitating into Mr Bennett. "Thirty three dead, no survivors. The deaths were inflicted by axe and short sword. All exits save the front door were barred so that none could escape, though from the location of many of the bodies it appears that the attack happened while they were in bed. To begin with, at least. The fallen were finished where they fell, then left in place."

Jade nods. "Did you find a workshop or an office?"

"There's what looks like a panic room. From the general construction I'd say that it's designed to be 'vampire proof'-" For some reason a number of tourism companies consider those to be de rigueur in Wallachia. "-and it's air tight. We could break in with brute force, but if you wouldn't mind assisting..?"

Jade nods, rising into the air to follow him as he turns back into mist to lead the way inside.

Ah... "Do you think it will have occurred to Nabu to watch for temporal distortions?"

"It should. If it occurred to me then it should occur to someone thousands of years old. But then again, I've never met him."

I frown. "Doesn't he assess all magic users promoted beyond-?"

Harmonious One shakes his head. "One of his acolytes did the actual testing. He signed off on it… Maybe he just didn't trust himself where the hat and I are concerned?"

Doesn't sound likely. I'd honestly expect him to do the job fairly, regardless of his personal biases. But perhaps-.

My ring blinks and I raise it to my left ear. "Yes?"

"Four automata, no longer functioning. There's a modern electronics workshop, used recently. Savage isn't here but he can't have gone far."

"And the gynoid? Mister Lao?"

"Some of the left over parts might have come from her. Lao isn't here. I've already notified the rest of the Guardians and Scream Queen is in the middle of reporting to King Vlad."

Progress, of a sort. "Do you think it's worth bringing Mister Truggs here?"

"No. I've planted a remote observation device. He and Artificer will have to make do."

I nod. The alternative would be removing the anti-FTL ward, and that is legally rather tricky without a.. smoking gun. People have to meet, and the handful of us actually affected by the thing have to explain why saving a few hours is vital to the wellbeing of the planet.

"General broadcast detected. Speaker identifies as 'Vandal Savage'."

"Play!"

"…remember me. I had hoped that the alterations I made to the time line would have resulted in my temporal duplicate becoming Emperor."

Ring, where's that coming from?

"Instead, he was thrown into the sun by the predecessor of one of your greatest heroes."

Broadcast emanates from 'everywhere'. However, an earlier part of the broadcast stated that his location was in Japan.

"The man now lying at my feet."

I'm a mile up before I can even form a coherent thought and I'm still moving as it occurs to me that there's absolutely no way I can get there fast enough for it to make any difference. But I can't imagine not trying. I warp space, the pale golden glow of the ward appearing at once to try and stop what it thinks could be a FTL torpedo.

"A little under a century ago the two greatest military powers on this planet went to war with one another over control of a thin strip of land of minimal economic value."

But unlike a simple mechanical device I can push back against magic, even feed on it. I'm moving fast, but it's still too slow-.

"The craters from where it escalated into an atomic exchange are still visible on the landscape today."

I increase the size of my construct engine, cycling through alien designs until I find something that might be powerful enough.

"Ninety-three years are all that separate the Japanese Home Islands from atomic desolation."

The ward finally wins but I'm coming around the corner of the world now, laser constructs at the ready.

"A mere ninety-three years."

Brilliant flashes of light appear in the Sea of Japan.

"To a man as old as I am, ninety three years is nothing."

The flashes, the.. mushroom clouds… I start to slow down as my growing horror starts to eclipse my single-minded drive.

Ring, is that..?

Every nuclear detonation which occurred on the Japanese Home Islands during the entire Imperium War has occurred again.

"My alternate self could not become Emperor. But I think you will find me a rather tougher prospect. I am at the top of Mount Fuji, and when I have slain the Heavenly Guardians the world will bow its head to me."

back

Mandated 21

next

24th October

17:31 GMT +9

Laser constructs. And if Souma is still alive, find him.

Compliance.

Three five-metre long laser cannons appear alongside me, and images of different parts of Japan flick through my mind. The heavy anti-air defences and fighter screens both China and Japan used during the war made it extremely hard for nuclear bombers to get through. The remains I detected when I first arrived were from impacts which occurred weeks or months apart. Now…

The Home Islands hadn't really been the centre of the Japanese government since the Imperium War -that's in New Tokyo in.. where Peru would be-, and they've never had the same population density as they once did. But there are-. There were a good thirty million people down there. And the centre of Japan's magic education and research program. The shockwaves and heat from the simultaneous blasts have… It's.. just gone. Heck, the winds are visibly tearing at my construct armour even up here. I don't… Think that the place is going to come back from this one.

But I can scan through the clouds.

Target located.

Beams of focused ultra-violet light shimmer through the air between myself and Vandal Savage, burni-.

He turns to look upward at me as my beams vanish entirely about a metre from him.

"Ah, the Orange Lantern. I did think that you would be the first to arrive, though I had assumed that it would take you a little longer."

There's no way that his voice could be heard through the hurricane winds presently levelling what's left of the Home Islands. His voice is at conversational volume, but it sounds like it's coming from everywhere at once. Okay, beams vanishing. Switch to visible light.

"In a way, it is fitting that you and I have time to converse-" Visible light doesn't have a greater effect. I spread my laser constructs out to see if his shield has a limited arc of coverage. It appears not to. "-before the final confrontation. I had doubted that the version of your origin which you put into the public domain was accurate, but your presence here indicates that you were being honest all along."

I try scanning him to get a better idea of how his shield is working. Usually, the shield being invisible means that visible light lasers should go through unobstructed but that's clearly not what's happening here. No, I… The scans I'm getting are distorted. The winds and nearby nuclear detonations make it hard to tell, but I don't think that my lasers are increasing the local temperature. If that's true, they aren't hitting any sort of barrier that I'm familiar with. Energy isn't being absorbed or shunted.

Savage.. floats upwards, rising through the dust clouds without any difficulty at all. Rather than any of the historical aristocrat clothing I'm used to comic and television versions of him wearing, this one has gone for… Some sort of hard body armour and a.. cloak, which is strangely still even in the high winds.

Ring, anything alive in the vicinity of Mount Fuji?

None detected. However, be advised that scans are currently unreliable due to environmental conditions and novel technology.

Understood.

I dismiss the lasers and switch to plasma. Shimmering purple-white ions leap from the gun and.. fade out just before they reach him. Okay, I know there's nothing wrong with the shot. The clouds it passed through were affected appropriately. I dismiss the plasma cannon-

"Please! Take all the shots you want! I can think of no better way to show how utterly ineffectual they are!"

-and generate a beam singularity gun.

"Orange Lantern to all allies. I am about to use a singularity weapon. Stay back."

"A reasonable choice. Still, I am afraid to say that-"

Firing.

The universe.. skips, light being distorted as the beam fires. The dust clouds are sucked inwards, clearing a path where a moment later I can see Savage himself… Entirely unaffected once more.

"A sound choice again. I think you may have just inadvertently caused the Toba catastrophe."

The airborne dust is rapidly refilling the hole I created, but I finally get a clear look at him. Purple robes over golden armour. The armour appears to be of a similar design to what the gynoid had as her outer surface. He's a good deal larger than her, so he clearly hasn't just stripped off her outer casing. Purple robes… Was he making a stable time loop and telling his past self how to do this?

"Given all the history I have seen, it feels a little strange to mention an extinction event I did not personally witness. Of course… Now." He clenches his fist and the ash cloud is gone. "That's hardly a concern."

Ash cloud gone. Teleportation? Not that my ring detected. Transmutation? No, there was no increase or decrease of local temperatures. Volume for volume, ash-filled air has a lot more mass than normal air. Around the.. edge of his cleared zone the air is trying to break back in. I can clearly see the air currents as different textures in the ash, and they're… Just vanishing before they get within one hundred metres.

"And now a small group of third century farmers are wondering why there is a single black cloud in the sky. And will shortly be suffering the first cases of radiation sickness in human history." He looks up at me as he continues to rise. "Do you see, Lantern, what I can now accomplish with a mere wave of my hand?"

Third century-? He sent it backwards it time, bringing the equivalent volume of air forwards. That's… The bombs, they-. No, there weren't any reports of them having only half the expected yield or anything. He can make time repeat as well as transpose it.

Um.

"You really have no recollection of our past conflicts, do you?"

There are ways to take advantage of that, but none that are readily accessible to me. Ugh.

"Where's Souma?"

"Dead. Given his many years of honourable service, I felt it only just to kill him swiftly and painlessly. It's so rare to find that level of dedication in this.. modern era. He didn't even moan when I stuck the knife in."

Kill. Him.

"I see so few familiar faces in this new world. In a way, we-."

ASSIMILATE!

The sky turns orange, Savage's hundred metre exclusion zone battered back centimetre by centimetre as the orange light seizes whatever exotic process he's using to do this. MORE! GET HIM!

"Ah, of course. A fearsome attack in most circumstances. I imagine that you would very much like to make me your puppet in revenge. Sadly for you-" The assimilation effect has covered nearly half the distance now, YES! "-even this is inadequate."

He waves his right hand and-. The orange glow appears to contract. It now stops two metres away from me in all directions. Push harder!

"I have surrounded you in a tiny sphere of the past. Your orange light is reaching past it perfectly well. It simply isn't coming anywhere near me." He comes closer, smiling smugly. "I realise that this iteration of you is not the one who confronted me aboard the Justice League's Watchtower. Intellectually, I understand that the you responsible for me spending two months being continually eaten by hyenas has gone, along with the rest of that troublesome time line. Still, I think I will derive no small measure of satisfaction from killing all of your new allies while you watch."

He turns his head away slightly. I can't hear anything from outside but him, but it looks like a sound has caught his attention.

"And here they come now."

back

Mandated 22

next

24th October

17:36 GMT +9

Artificer's combat drones come first, firing as they make their initial approach. Each is patterned after a different action figure; some are members of the Heavenly Guardians, others figures from comics or animated series. As many of them as possible have 'show accurate' weapons, but he gets a lot of mileage out of multicoloured plasma. Beams, rockets and bullets fill the air around Savage and me… 'Around' in the sense of 'in all directions'. Not one comes within a hundred metres.

The closest drone -Lupo the Friendly Shark- is the first to reach Savage's exclusion zone and dives right in.

"Hmm."

He lets it come on for a few seconds, until I can clearly see the faint shimmer of its disruption field coated teeth with my unaided eyes.

"Did you know that the god Susanoo first fell to earth not far from here? I was too far away to witness it happen. But now…"

The formerly calm air vanishes in an instant, replaced by a swirling roaring mass of lightning-wreathed water. Dimly through the deluge I see a humanoid outline plummeting towards the sea below us, electricity leaping and burning through every drone in the area. Savage smiles, slowly clapping his hands as if to a mildly amusing circus performance, and the torrent is once more replaced by clear skies. There are plenty of drones left, but they appear to be the observational type and are keeping well back.

Ah… Who else would be on duty? Despite Souma's efforts, I don't really know that many of the Japanese members of the Heavenly Guardians all that well. The Home Islands have never needed to bring in talent from outside, and I've mostly been assigned to mainland Asia. Warrior Maiden should be in the general area, and a few wizards… Though they might have all been killed in the atomic conflagration. That leaves-.

"Hukk." Savage stares down at the sword piercing his chest from the rear as the ethereal figure I recognise as Snow Man partially transfers himself back into the material world behind him. Savage's skin swiftly whitens as his flesh freezes solid, Snow Man's magic reducing his body to zero degrees Kelvin. "Hur."

Savage vanishes, and Snow Man stares around to try and spot him. I see his mouth moving, but no sound is reaching me in my time bubble.

"Of course, storms are not the best way to fight everything. Why don't we wind the clock back a little, to before your first meeting with the Goddess of Ice Ages."

Snow Man tries to fade out. He almost makes it, then with a slight flicker he suddenly becomes fully corporeal instead and instantly begins falling towards the distant ground. A couple of drones beneath us turn away from their observations and accelerate to match velocities with him. Without his elemental partner he's even less dangerous than a conventional soldier, but if they catch him he's got a good chance of surviv-.

Savage reappears, entirely unhurt from his brush with absolute zero. He raises his right hand and shoots Snow Man's falling body with a dull red energy beam. It strikes him in the back of the head, flash-frying the rear portion of his skull and the brain beneath. Snow Man's aimed fall turns into an uncontrolled tumble as carbonised fragments of his head fall away.

"Clever." Savage lowers his right hand. "But insufficient. I had assumed that an area of time predating the fall of Atlantis would be sufficient to guard against coddled modern wizards. But I can see that I should have reached back further." The air around us shimmers for a moment, my ring telling me that the oxygen atmosphere of modern Earth has been replaced by something richer in sulphur dioxide and methane. "There. Now only the most primal magics will function."

"This won't save you."

"Lantern, I am immortal." He tilts slightly in the air, looking down below us. "Ah, an invisibility system. Unfortunately for the warriors using it, I can look back from when they reveal themselves."

"An expert I spoke to earlier said that the change you made to time resulted in an unstable-."

"Unstable time line. Yes, I am aware."

He waves his left hand and a large passenger plane appears from nowhere, smashes into an apparently empty point in the sky and begins to crumple. That-. I recognise the identification number. That plane went down twenty years ago in circumstances that were never-!

The holographic disguise protecting one of Artificer's transport aircraft flickers and fails even as the vehicle itself tries to pull itself free of the tumbling wreckage it's intermeshed with. Warrior Maiden punches through the outer hull and tries to push them apart. Metal curls in her grip, then Savage gestures and… Her intestines fall from her chest as she suddenly finds that the lower part of her body has been returned to a prior location without taking the top part with her.

"Interesting."

Even reduced to a crippled torso she tries weakly pulling herself back to the transport aircraft with her hands. Savage gestures again and her head vanishes, her upper body following her lower body as it falls towards the ground.

"You see, Lantern, there are so many different ways I could kill all of you. And only a handful who are a real threat. Would it better demonstrate my supremacy-" His smile widens slightly, and Warrior Maiden reappears whole and well in the air beneath us. She looks around for a moment in wonder, then screams as her body is cut vertically in three!

"-if I toyed with you? It is a simplistic way to use my command of time, but it makes a most excellent cutting tool."

"But if the time line is unstable, then none of this matters! Kill all of us, you'll be destroyed as well! And we'd have been erased in a little while anyway!"

He glances back at me. "Hardly. Even without this equipment, if even a single cell of my body survived, I would eventually regenerate with all of my memories intact. With it, the very act of chronal collapse will only serve to empower me more fully." His eyes narrow. "I will have control over the world which emerges from the temporal confusion. It will not be too difficult to create one where I rule supreme." He smiles cruelly. "True, I will not be able to prevent your arrival. But since I now know precisely where and when you appear, killing you in those first confusing moments before you learned how to use your ring should not be overly difficult." He turns away. "They appear to be trying something new."

Okay, I know what he's planning. There's basically nothing I can do to stop him from here aside-. Aside from trying to merge with the Ophidian. And I don't believe that a world run by Vandal Savage would be a worse place than one where she'd converted everyone into constructs for her own amusement. I don't know exactly when he's sending the orange light I'm hitting him with-

Savage's hair is mildly ruffled as asteroids from Earth's distant past fly past us and obliterate… I.. don't know who those were.

-is going, but it's going somewhen. Who could detect it, almost regardless of when it was? The Guardians go back a long way… And I know that our rings' communication systems are at least somewhat compatible. Ring, attempt to contact the Guardians. Or any Green Lanterns in that era.

The sky around us lights up, though as ever Savage's area of effect proves utterly immune. He looks upwards, blinking at the light. "Mass produced space craft. Those, I will keep. But the design will need to be improved upon with technologies not found in this time line. And these particular ships-"

He raises both hands. From here I can't really see what happens.

"-can be done away with."

But I can guess.

No response detected.

Fine, be like that. Maximum broadcast power.

Compliance.

A human named Vandal Savage has acquired temporal distortion weaponry and is attempting to create a chronal collapse.

"I know full well that you're trying something. You should know that it is futile. I received instructions on how to win from a future version of myself."

I was right, then. I thought the Time Trapper was a version of Superboy Prime? "One who won?"

"No. One who wished to ensure that I did not repeat the mistakes that led him to become trapped at Vanishing Point." He looks even smugger. "He also told me how to become him, so that I in turn can advise an earlier version of us both. So even if I somehow fail to fulfil my primary objective, I can simply try again."

Green Lantern Jade Yifei is working on a counter, but needs additional data. My observations of his abilities are included. Prepare yourselves.

back

Mandated 23

next

24th October

17:43 GMT +9

I stare deeply into Savage, trying to comprehend in full his desires and drives. I may not like doing this with most people, but Savage is reassuringly monstrous on the inside as well. His desire to rule the world is literally just a continuation of his original self's drive to dominate his tribe and their neighbours. Were I a more enlightened Lantern I might respect the fact that he is so at peace with himself. As it is, it just makes my desire to destroy him grow stronger.

Savage looks around us distractedly. "I wonder what could be keeping them?"

"You've demonstrated the ability to destroy or-" I gesture to the sphere of alternate time surrounding me. "-disable a wide variety of opponents. There's no point engaging you until they come up with an approach which might actually work."

"Ah. A pity."

"Why do you even care?! You're going to erase them all anyway?!"

"Some may have histories which make their existences possible within my new world. Since I suspect that I can make them as loyal to me as they are to their existing sovereigns, I would like to know how they react to their own mortality." He watches me for a moment. "What is this? No protest that they would never work for me?"

"No, I'm sure with control of time you could probably generate versions of them who were loyal to your empire and to morals whose nature you would dictate."

"But not you."

"You're welcome to try travelling to Earth Prime at your convenience."

Again, if I were a more enlightened Lantern, I might find the fact that his confidence isn't a cover for any sort of insecurity interesting. He genuinely finds it a sort of bizarrely exasperating amusement that the world doesn't kneel to him. I'm still disgusted by it.

"I'm not sure that it has anything worth taking. Your description made it sound somewhat bland."

"We both know that you'll try anyway."

"True. But not personally. Once my empire stands triumphant in this system and its armies are mine to control, I can consider expanding into other territories."

How much of this stuff won't work on Earth Prime? Infantry equipment would probably work… I'm not really sure if their power packs use 'comic' technology or make conventional sense. It's the same with the spacecraft; I think they'd keep working if a portal back could be created.

Still. Just one more reason to stop him.

Quell desires.

I am not good at this sort of borderline magic use of the orange light. Orange light wants things to want things. Cutting it off, using my own desires to quell it… It's not just a matter of brute force, you have to understand… Almost relate to what you're stopping. Okay, seems to be holding…

Savage isn't being hurt, he just doesn't really want anything. The barrier of altered time around me… I float forwards and press my right hand intoaghr! I pull back my hand, the tips of my fingers… Burned off? The ends aren't.. really bleeding, and I can't spare the focus to fix them. Savage watches my injury, but that's more because it's the only thing happening in his immediate environment than out of any real interest.

But there's no attack, which suggests that my message didn't get through. He's effectively disabled like this, but the temporal alterations which he has already made are still in effect. So I'm still stuck, and.. attacks from outside his area of time control will still be blocked. I could in theory assimilate him like this, except… I'm barely holding his desires down as it is. I can't combine the two. So this basically achieves nothing.

I really want to kill him and the best I can do is stun-lock him until I run out of ring power… Which is going to be when?

At current power consumption rates, this ring will be fully discharged in fourteen minutes.

Fourteen minutes for the other Heavenly Guardians to come up with something. That should be-.

"My Lord Lantern?"

Harm-? "Harmonious One?"

"Have you won?"

"No. I'm just suppressing his desires. If you attack him now-."

"He'd revert to a pre-attack state and cut us to pieces."

Ah. "So… Is there a plan?"

"Sort of. It's a bit of a work in progress. How long will it take after you stop suppressing him for him to start caring about things again?"

"It.. varies. He'll revert pretty much immediately, but people don't tend to reflect on their own thought processes. He'll probably justify his lack of interest in me to himself rather than be immediately alarmed. On the other hand, I don't understand why he hasn't killed me already. He might just decide to.. immediately change time so that I'm back here because… Why not?"

"We -which is to say the Guardians- have a plan. And due to the unusual temporal arrangements you and Mr Truggs are the only people who can carry it out."

"What is it?"

"Go back in time and prevent Vandal Savage returning to the present. As long as the Night of Stone Knives still happens, our history should still occur. We may even be able to return you to the present."

"You have a time machine?"

"No, but… We think we can reopen the passage Savage used. And-."

"Don't worry about bringing me back. I can just put myself in suspended animation." Or get off Earth. Not like I was planning on dying ever anyway.

"That isn't the problem. Once Savage is dealt with we will have effectively unlimited time to work on the problem. The problem is our chronal collapse. Is Savage aware of it?"

"Yes. He told me that he thinks his armour will allow him to control how the time lines merge while keeping him as he is. He also said that the purple figure-."

"Was a future version of him. Yes, we worked that out. Okay, look: I don't understand everything that the hat told me. Controlling the merger.. might work, depending on exactly what the armour does. But part of why it might work is because after.. being violently altered, time is… More accepting of smaller changes. And pretty much anything is smaller than what happened."

"So as long as Savage makes it more like how it was, it might be stable?"

"At this point we're pretty much throwing temporal mechanics at the wall to see what sticks. Maybe? The hat seems to think that living things are more important to time than unliving molecules, which doesn't seem to make much sense rationally…"

"So just switching in a new atmosphere and planetary core isn't an option."

"Probably not. Our best guess is that since both you and Truggs existed in the original time line, you'll be less disruptive, temporally speaking. Truggs has already been fully briefed. Are you ready?"

I take a deep breath. "Ready."

"Then by the power vested in me by the Lords of Chaos… Substitute."

24th October

11:43 GMT +3

And I'm back in the lab-

"Go! Go!"

-with Jade shouting at me and gesturing to a glowing and fluctuating purple portal. I fly for it, Truggs lunging through it just ahead of me.

back

Mandated 24

next

24th October

11:44 GMT +3

I pass through the portal and out into-

Not sure

Don't know

Hopefully, 210 BC

-a large unlit chamber. Immediately, I dim my environmental shield and drop to the ground. The tomb is.. actually quite well-lit. For a tomb. I remember being taught during my 'cultural acclimatisation' classes that they used slow burning tallow candles in order to keep the place looking like an actual court for as long as possible after the First Emperor's death.

"Yah know, I've never actually done this before."

Mister Truggs is standing a couple of terracotta warriors over, and nods companionably to me when I look around. Then he unslings some sort of equipment harness and begins slotting parts together.

"Done what? Travelled in time?"

He glances up, a small frown on his face. "Don't take this the wrong way? You're a whole lot easier for me to work with than old-you, but I kinda miss him."

"Of course you do. He's the me you're used to. It would be strange if you didn't. Were.. the… Were you friends?" He shifts awkwardly as he makes a few final checks on his device. "Rivals?"

"We, ah… Both kinda want the same things… But we had… Kinda… Our 'red lines were in different p-."

"You're a supervillain."

"Technically, just a 'villain'. Hey, can you-" He holds his device up. "-power this up for me? It needs one point two one jigawatts of electrical energy."

Ring?

Device function not recognised.

I narrow my eyes slightly. "I'm going to need an explanation as to what that does. From the self-confessed criminal."

"It's… Just about the most badly built chroniton destabiliser it's possible to build. Guess Savage figured he didn't need it, with time collapsing anyway. Should keep him from seeing us from the future."

I nod and create a generator construct. "Is a 'jigawatt' the same as a gigawatt-?"

"Modern English is my sixth language. Excuse me if pronunciations have changed in the last eight hundred years."

I plug my construct in, and his device starts to glow purple and aquamarine as our entry portal evaporates. "Eight hundred years?"

"Yeah. Not my first time travelling in time. First time-" He checks a few things on the device and then nods, apparently satisfied. "-I came back to try an' prevent an alien invasion. Billions of people died so, I didn't think it mattered all that much that I was wiping everyone in that future out when I did it."

"I don't see anything wrong with preventing an alien invasion." I point at the destabiliser. "Is it working?"

"We're not back in the future, so I guess so." He sets the device down. "Now we gotta find Savage and Lao."

Ring, scan? Oh.. dear. "Lao is checking the walls for a way out. Savage isn't here yet. Do we need to turn that off?"

"If we do Super Savage gets us before we even turn it on."

"But won't.. your Savage realise that we're using that and just.. not come here?"

"It doesn't really matter if he does. Lao is the only guy who knows how to program the warriors. Savage has to get here before he dies, or this doesn't work. An' I don't think his equipment is good enough to detect it. And if he doesn't come back?" He shrugs. "I win by default."

"We're not here to erase my future, Mister Truggs."

"Ye-ah, we kinda are. See-."

"No. Everyone I know, everyone I love who.. isn't on Earth Prime is in that future. I can understand you-"

"It. Won't. Work."

"-wanting to bring back the version you know. And I'm sorry. There's no moral right here, but I'm the guy with the power ring and I'm not abandoning my future."

"IT WON'T WORK!" He takes a step back, then turns around, gesticulating with both arms. "Time WILL NOT SUSTAIN your future! The ONLY THING that hat could come up with was some kinda crazy guess-"

"That's not-"

"-about taking you-"

"-what they told me."

"-out of time. And of course they didn't tell you, you're an Orange Lantern." He pulls out a scroll bearing Jade's seal. "Here."

I hesitate for a moment, then take it from him and open it.

"Hello? Is there someone else in here?"

Oh… This was really the best we could..?

I feel Truggs pat me on the right shoulder as I stare at the letter. "The hat thought it was the only chance you got."

"I just…" Well. What is there to say? "I suppose there really isn't any choice. It was just… Wishful thinking."

Truggs shrugs. "I don't know you, but the other guy was a real terrier when it came to things like this. If you're him-."

"Hello?" Mr Lao comes around the corner and spots us. He starts slightly, but I can practically see the moment he decides that men who have been buried alive can't be choosers. "Were you part of the digging team?"

Temporal aperture detected.

"Mr Lao, I'm very sorry." I attach a filament to Mr Truggs and transition us both to Savage's time portal.

"Who-?"

Disintegrate.

The orange energy bolt hits him in the centre of his chest and spreads outwards, destroying every cell of his body as it does so. That won't guarantee that he's dead permanently, but if throwing him into the sun worked for my Savage I imagine that it will work for now.

Then Truggs and I walk through the portal.

Ring, time and date?

19th October

09:12 GMT -6

"You are not Savage."

Truggs immediately goes over to the machine's control system and begins pressing buttons. I just look up at the purple robed figure staring down at me.

"I'm not."

"He failed, then. Just as I remember it."

"You've probably cost me everything. Even if this was the only way…"

"It was." The figure reaches into his robes and pulls out a duplicate-. No, the same scroll as the one I'm still carrying. "And I assure you, I hate it just as much as you do." Then he pushes back his hood and I'm not surprised by who I see. "I suppose we're our own worst enemy." He looks away from me. "Mister Truggs, you'll need the chronal suspension system."

back

Mandated 25

next

A short 'time' later

From this point of view, it's painfully clear.

"You know me?"

Jevek Jos Jar studied temporal manipulation, and somehow cut himself off from his own past. In doing so he became the Time Trapper, and after 'I' recognised him he decided to try and improve Earth's technology in order to try and increase his -and the other Controllers'- power during my era.

In doing so, he created a time line where Savage cut himself off from his own past and became the Time Trapper. He contacted his past self to increase his power. Whether he created himself or not was immaterial as he'd win either way.

Except that we managed to replace him with me. So now, I was the one who passed temporal manipulation technology to Savage. And I did it because it was the only way to have even the slightest chance to save my time line.

Creating time lines is expensive. Creating closed time loops is cheap.

"Yes?" My other-self inclines his head slightly. "We met on Maltus. Though that may not have happened in your personal timeline. I suppose that if anyone was going to survive the collapse of time it would be the people who beat the Anti-Mon-."

I raise my arms, pointing them at his cell. "Return!"

My arms pointing don't actually have anything to do with my new abilities. It's more the fact that I don't have my own… Place in time, combined with the fact that I'm in a place that doesn't either. I can push on time, but it can't push back. He goes back to his time line.

"Ah, hey-."

I gesture again and Truggs goes back into my time line. His future self has already returned to an earlier point in the original time line in order to give my alternate self the information he needs to get this far. There will be two Truggs for a little while, but the one who experienced four days of my Earth remembers enough to avoid himself. And he'll send copies of anything he learns about temporal manipulation to me.

"Where did you send them?"

Dox isn't panicking, but he's more than a little peeved. Savage Trapper never interacted with him… I think. I'm still having a little trouble getting my head around how this works. Jevek Trapper dealt with him because it allowed him to pretend he wasn't the one causing the problem. And watching a level twelve intellect in action is often informative.

I could respond with something ominous and portentous, but out of all of the iterations of the Time Trapper who are now all me, none of them had that sort of relationship with the Legion. The Time Trapper is not a figure of respect. And for very good reasons.

"I have resolved the anomaly and undone the alterations Vandal Savage made to the time line. Your present is largely restored. You may return to your time sphere."

Dox's jaw tenses. "If you knew what the cause of the disruption was, why did you not simply tell us when we arrived?"

"I thought that perhaps seeing you flail around in ignorance might provide me with some amusement." I turn away. "I overestimated your intelligence. Do not trouble me again."

"Now hold on-."

I move myself to the exterior of Vanishing Point and stare out into the time stream. Its ebbs and flows are the only things which make my cloak move, causing it to waft around my legs. I reach up and pull my hood a little tighter around my head. The Legion should be leaving shortly and it would be rather embarrassing if they looked back and saw my face.

Then I reach across to my left hand with my right, pull off my power ring and send it back into the past. One less contradiction. And… Yes, I feel time become a little more flexible.

I hold out my right hand and summon back my universe. Four days. Maintaining a cycle of four days… It continues to exist on a permanent loop, cut off from the regular flow of time. Until I.. run out of flexibility, or find a better solution.

There'll be leakages, of course. I don't know exactly how 'long' it will take, but people all across that universe will gradually begin to experience flashes of déjà vu from the constant repetition. And they'll try to change things. And that will consume more power. I've got a definite limit to the amount of time I have to fix this problem. And though I can interact with time in ways which make it possible for me to communicate with others, I can't physically leave Vanishing Point myself. If I do, I'd have to pay the cost for my own broken time line or I'd… Heh, turn out not to have been me after all.

And like some sort of time travelling pyramid scheme, the only way to create temporal flexibility is to create alternate time lines and then revert them. I'm going to have to create and then render nonexistent entire universes of people. And if any of my agents realise what I'm doing, they might switch sides and I might turn out not to have been me all along. Does the fact that I'm here, now, thinking about this mean that I win, or is it..?

Hopefully the fact that I won't have to interact with those time lines to any significant degree will mean that I won't-.

…

Dox will have left monitoring equipment of some sort. I'll pretend that I don't know it's there. Having offended him, he'll work extra hard to revert any changes I make, allowing me to realise their value without spending flexibility to act in two places at once. A man who will come to think of himself as the only thing between me and a universe of temporal anarchy I'm creating for my own amusement will in fact be my greatest asset.

In the universe swirling over my left hand, Jade looks back at my still-sleeping temporal echo and then walks towards the shower. On the other side of the planet Jade twitches in her sleep, combat stress from a mission working itself out in her dreams. Harmonious One sleeps on his ceiling, his hat tipping itself to me as I look.

In Vega, Commodore Amalak puts his Tamaranian recruits through their paces while the Citadelians pull back to their fortifications. On Oa, the Guardians studiously avoid indicating their awareness of my presence as they once again review my message. On Urrigen, the provisional government continues its production of orbital defences. On Maltus, the recruits train under Hinon's watchful eyes.

It's not better or worse than any other timeline.

But it's mine. And this…

It's all I can do.

22nd October

01:30 GMT -5

Yeah, there's no point in hanging around. For once I'm reasonably in agreement with the League 'don't interfere' policy. I don't have anything special to add and every time I try and get my head around time travel I just end up thinking in circles. I pass out through the outer wall of the Hall of Justice and come to a-.

Uwwough.

To a stop. Ugh, what was-?

I look across the plaza at the cluster of four-.

Oh. No one there. Could have sworn...

Never mind. Must be more tired and stressed than I thought if I'm hallucinating and getting dizzy. And faster than light travel and unclear thought processes don't mix. 'Home' is Alan's house, but it's half one in the morning. He wouldn't have waited up, would he? I'd have said 'not', but I thought that about my parents once and they started phoning the hospital and police to find out if my body had been handed in at accident and emergency. I activate my armour's flight system and rise higher, turning in the direction of the nearest intact zeta tube. My interview is tomorrow evening and I'm.. going to need to have the ring reset my circadian rhythms if I'm going to get any sleep. And then Ms Colbert's practice session tomorrow afternoon -assuming that she isn't busy explaining this mess- and I need to speak to Angelica…

But for now, home and sleep.

back

NEXT CHAPTER

Embattled

BACK

Embattled 1

next

Embattled

23rd October

21:03 GMT -5

There's a noticeably different feel to the audience than last time I was on Ms Manning's show. For one thing, there aren't any empty seats in the audience. For another, she looks much less happy with me. To an actual journalist, the fact that I've been uncharacteristically unhelpful to anyone asking me questions must have been a bit obvious; I mean, even Dana worked it out.

Or.. maybe it's because I went on Ms Grant's show first.

But, now is the time to be totally-

"Orange Lantern, my first question is fairly obvious. There's been a lot of speculation online and in the press about exactly what sort of fruit you might have stolen to draw an angel's attention. The obvious possibility is that you stole an apple from the Garden of Eden-"

-honest.

"-and unlikely as that-"

I raise my right hand slightly. "Ah?"

"-seems…" She raises her eyebrows.

"Yes, that's exactly where I took it from." There's a sharp intake of breath from the audience. And a lot fewer smiles. "Though I should point out that they're not apples. They're pomegranates. I entered the Garden of Eden uninvited and stole a fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. I did this with the intention of feeding it to a demon in an attempt to give her the ability to make moral decisions rather than act in a purely malevolent way."

"Ah-" She blinks, but swiftly recovers "-and did it work?"

"It.. appears to have done so. Testing is in the early stages, and we don't really have anything to compare it to. The subject is.. more than a little traumatised." I shrug. "She only just gained the capacity to feel guilt and she's got a lot to feel-"

"God damn you!" / "You call yourself a hero?!"

"-guilty about."

"That angel should of burned you!"

Ms Manning turns towards the audience as an increasing number rise to their feet, shouting. "Please. I understand-."

"-lesbian whores like Sodom and Gomorrah!"

"I understand that you're upset, but-."

The shouting continues, and Ms Manning's eyes dart towards the bouncers. I glance down, shaking my head slightly. Then I generate a construct above our heads showing the words 'You have questions. I can't answer them if you keep shouting over me. Silencing in 5.'

Some quieten down, and some of them even sit back down. The rest… I suppose that 'heretic scum' is fair enough, and I am mildly impressed that they knew the word 'heretic', but… Gosh, I hadn't realised that people were still prepared to say things like that about Themyscira.

But the 5 ticks down to 1, and I generate sound deadening constructs on either side of the seating area and activate them. The noise drops off immediately, then dies almost completely as I fine tune the area effect.

"I'm sorry about that. Feel free to shout at me on your own time, but stop ruining it for everyone else. But if I-" I glance at Ms Manning. "-can treat some of those as actual questions?"

"You may as well."

"O-kay. You, madam." I point the first respondent out. "As I've repeatedly stated, I'm a Hellenist. So… Jehovah's opinion on the subject doesn't matter to me. I have physically entered Erebos while still alive. I know where my soul is going, and I don't regard the Silver City as the highest authority on morality. It is quite possible that if I went before the angels for judgement that I would indeed be damned. Fortunately, that will never happen."

"In answer to you sir-" The second respondent. "-while I have used the term 'superhero' to describe myself, I use it in the sense of being an altruistic costumed vigilante, not in the sense of being someone everyone should admire. And yes, while I did steal the fruit, I was giving it to someone else for their benefit and so it was an act of altruism. I quite understand if you think I should have acted differently; I just disagree."

I turn towards the third shouter. "Zauriel didn't appear interested in harming anyone who wasn't literally a demon. He was shocked and confused at what I'd done, yes, but at no point did he become angry. Please understand that 'turning the other cheek' and 'letting he who is without sin cast the first stone' weren't metaphors, but literal instructions on how Christians should conduct themselves. Demanding that holy agents kill someone is something which you are not supposed to do. What you're supposed to do is what Zauriel tried to do, which was gently and rationally persuade me that I have sinned and try and get me to change my ways. And I'm going to be more inclined to listen to him and to everyone who didn't start shouting at me than I am to you."

"I'm afraid the shouting got a little blurred together-" Just about everyone has sat back down, though a red-faced hardcore are trying to shout over the suppression system. "-but if I can address your… Point, madam. Themyscira doesn't exactly have a currency any longer. They used to, but the island has finite amounts of metal and… Well, for various reasons it just didn't make sense to.. keep using it. As such, there isn't any prostitution, because there isn't any point in making an exchange. And while there are residents who are.. open minded about sex, at this point just about everyone has settled down into stable relationships. Your description of them as 'lesbian' is inaccurate, as only a few have ever spent any time on Lesbos. Though obviously their sexual and romantic relations are almost exclusively with other women."

"And the angel who murdered the populations of Sodom and Gomorrah has been dealt with." I turn back to Ms Manning. "I'm sorry. Please carry on."

She takes a moment before carrying on. "I'm sure a lot of our viewers at home will be thinking that what you've said in.. previous interviews was somewhat misleading. The pomegranate you stole was a fruit, but it's also quite a bit more than that."

"Yes, I was deliberately misleading everyone."

"Why? You were perfectly happy to tell us now. What changed in the past few days?"

"No, this.. was always planned. I wanted people to have time to think about.. under what circumstances they'd consider it legitimate to steal a fruit, without prejudging the issue because it was their fruit."

"The fruit belonged to God."

"Yes, and I've never disputed the fact that I stole it. But as I see it… You can't steal from an omnipotent, omniscient being who wants to stop you, simply because they know and you can't overpower them. So -assuming Jehovah has those characteristics- either he wanted me to do it or flat out didn't care. Because any other position would have resulted in it not happening."

"What I meant was that you're treating stealing from God the same as stealing from anyone else."

"No, I'm treating it far less seriously. Jehovah is the only being who might be considered to own things who can effortlessly replace any of them. Therefore, stealing from him is less significant than stealing from someone who has to work for it."

"If you're confessing to theft, should we hold you here until the police arrive?"

"Um. There are questions to which I'll plead the fifth, but I don't mind being questioned by the police. The problem is, no complaint has been made to the police and very few people know to which police force such a complaint should be made. As such, unless an angel makes a complaint or I'm called to appear before a panel of archangels, it's unlikely that any proceedings could be initiated."

"What police force should the complaint be made to?"

"That's not entirely clear." Maybe the Law Enforcement Force of the Islamic Republic of Iran, but a reasonable argument could be made that it's extraterritorial. They might be able to get me on transporting stolen goods, though. "And I can't tell anyone without revealing how I got into Eden."

"What's wrong with that? If it's fine for you to go there, why shouldn't.. I.. have that opportunity?"

"Because while one person fishing in a lake isn't a problem, a thousand people doing it kills all of the fish. I had a good, mission-related reason for going there and I spent no more time there than I had to. Why do you want to go?"

back

Embattled 2

next

23rd October

21:17 GMT -5

Not caring what people think is its own reward. The audience shouting at me? I'm honestly surprised that doesn't happen more. I certainly wasn't expecting a mostly Christian crowd here in order to hear more about the divinity they revere to react with anything other than shock and outrage.

This, on the other hand…

Father Mattias leans slightly towards me. "Why did you not simply ask for help?"

"Is the Catholic Church in routine, direct, two way contact with the Silver City?"

"Not.. in the way which you mean, no."

"The only people I know of for certain who were were the late elders of the Resurrection Crusade. They're dead, and while it's possible that the rump of the organisation might know how to repeat the process I doubt very much that they'd help me with it. Your Church might be able to work something out. Maybe. If the Silver City was willing to help, which it hasn't shown any sign of doing to date. And them saying 'no' would have been worse, because then they'd have been on their guard."

"And if they'd said 'yes'?"

I bite down my initial 'then why didn't they say 'yes' to any of the people who asked after Fawcett City?' response.

"Then I haven't done anything they wouldn't have done. And I'm not stopping them handing over more pomegranates. Or empowering a warrior saint or two. Nothing so far."

Mattias shakes his head. "I cannot accept that they would have refused an open dialogue."

"You're welcome to try that approach. I wish you all the best. Let me know how it goes. Though given what happened last time, it might be best if you don't try it in a built-up area."

"Did the attitude of Zauriel not convince you that that was an isolated incident?"

"It left me open to the possibility that it might have been. Up until that point, every contact I'd had direct information on suggested that the Silver City was… Neglectful, if not outright hostile."

"Oh?" Mattias raises his eyebrows. "And what other contacts were those?"

"Hell exists. I've visited, and seen the results of open portals on several occasions. The Hellenistic gods are selfish and capricious but even they think that eternal torment is a bit much. Then you've got the aforementioned Sodom and Gomorrah-."

Ms Manning's eyes widen as she makes the connection. "What exactly did you mean when you said that the angel responsible for that had been 'dealt with'?"

"Well, it wasn't… Because of that. But he got seduced by a succubus, who.. tore out his heart. Then he was recalled to the Silver City, cast out and his wings cut off with a chainsaw so that no one would know what he was. He was left like that for a few months, then the First of the Fallen found out where his heart was, had him lick his shoes clean, then crushed his heart and sent him to hell. Where -given what Zauriel said on the subject- I assume he still is."

Mattias' face droops slightly, then freezes in place. Ms Manning glances at him to see if he wants to respond and spots his paralysis. Her eyes dart to the side for a moment as she tries to come up with a sensible response.

"What did.. Zauriel say on the subject?"

"Ring."

"I had no idea that you had sought Gabriel's assistance in this matter. If he has achieved redemption, why did he not simply request the use of the fruit? He had the authority."

"He was sent to a place of punishment to be chastised for his crimes."

Ms Manning's eyes narrow. "That wasn't part of the recording you played on 'Good Morning America'."

"I did say that I'd redacted parts. I was concerned that if our latest anti-demon weapon wasn't fully operational we might get rushed before we were ready to deal with an attack. Now that she's-" More or less. "-in fine smiting form, that's less of an issue. She also isn't in the KordTech building any longer."

"'She'? Do you mean your new weapon is a person, or are you just being poetic?"

"A person. A quasi-demonic person, to be a little more precise. Her demonic heritage made her incapable of morality, so I gave her a fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil to correct that." Ring?

"Do you understand what you have done? You have enabled a being inherently outside God's grace to come within it."

"…this was not merely a vainglorious, hubristic claim. You managed it, and committed only minor sins in the commission."

"So that we're totally clear, Zauriel was visibly impressed by what we did and didn't consider any part of it to be a major sin."

"But, a person. What exactly did you do? Did the fruit give her magical abilities?"

"Ah, no, I don't think so. But we did need her to get some, so… Since he wasn't using them any longer we grafted Gabriel's wings onto her, granting her access to theurgy."

Mattias looks shocked. "That is possible?"

"Ah, it wasn't easy, but yes, it was possible. Would you like to meet her?"

Hm. Reminds me a little of a documentary I saw about early in vitro fertilisation experiments. There was an anti-abortion campaigner interviewed who objected to the fact that a large number of zygotes were destroyed for every one implanted… Which -to be fair- was pretty consistent of them. The problem they had was that it was an academic theological concern as far as most people were concerned, and even they had to admit that they lost all public traction once the doctor running the project held a press conference with the new parents and their offspring. Actual babies versus invisible cell cultures? No contest.

"Is sh-?" Ms Manning glances out at the audience.

"Oh… No. But it's easy to call on her." I take a small signal charm out of subspace. "Should I..?"

Ms Manning doesn't look certain, but Mattias nods definitively. "Yes. Please. I would like to meet this woman who may now enter into God's grace."

"Very well." I snap the charm in two, then toss it a short distance across the stage. There shouldn't be any problem with-.

Gold-white flames flare up from where it lands, rising into an approximately humanoid figure before vanishing. In its place stands B-. Stands Angelica, modestly dressed in business trousers and a soft blue roll neck jumper. With two large white wings sticking out through the back. It doesn't have wing holes exactly; the sheer size of the wings made that impractical. Instead, it has two slits which button up at the bottom. Her skin tanned, her hair remained black and her horns have shrunk to a more lintel-friendly length.

She smiles a little nervously at the audience, clasps her hands demurely at her stomach and gives them a shallow bow. "Hello. My name is Angelica. I'm very pleased to meet you all."

back

Embattled 3

next

24th October

10:22 GMT -7

"Hm." Circe looks critically at the exterior of the empty warehouse. "And you're sure that the San Francisco City zoning board won't have any objections to us having it torn down?"

"No ma'am." The helpful fellow from the estate agent -who have been trying to get this place off their books since Eldon Peck was discovered to have killed nineteen homeless people and over four hundred rats here during the seventies- shakes his head. "We checked, and they say they'll be happy just to have someone using it again. You said you wanted to build a private school here?"

"Yes. Adult education and…" She glances at me. "We'll be competing for a few government contracts as well."

Both Sam and Director Armstrong were quite interested in getting some of their own people educated in the arcane arts. Sam's enthusiasm fell off somewhat once he found out exactly how long it takes to get a person with no magic knowledge to the level of 'competent practitioner', but Katarina essentially just wants a programme for giving agents a very basic level of knowledge and Circe could teach that course in a couple of weeks. Of course, what we really need is primary education, because training archmages starts in toddlerhood… But we can move onto that after establishing a brand.

"Then it won't even need to be rezoned. We can apply for the permits you need and get a team in to start breaking ground within a week of receiving your deposit."

Circe smiles at the man. "Very efficient. Now-."

"Though.. I'm…" He looks a good deal less enthusiastic. "I'm obligated to point out that while.. we're happy to provide an indemnity against any part of the plans being inaccurate, Notus Realtors can't accept any responsibility for.. any.. magic related incidents. Now, there haven't been any since Sargon the Sorcerer took Brother Night down in the seventies, but we've got no way to know for sure that's going to keep on being the case."

Circe smiles brightly. "Oh, that's not a problem. I wouldn't be opening a magic school if I couldn't handle a few small malevolent influences, would I?"

"Ah…" The estate agent… I think he said his name was Chuck..? I wasn't really paying attention. He nods with the air of a man who knows that his quarterly bonus relies on him indulging a crazy person without skipping anything he's legally obliged to do. "I'll take your word for that, ma'am. Would you.. like to take a look inside?"

"Oh, please. Call me 'Larissa'." Circe turns her head back towards the warehouse. "If I'm going to be knocking it down anyway there doesn't really seem to be much point. Will there be any difficulty in cutting water and power to the lot when we start the building work?"

"No, though you'll probably need to improve both if you're building a school of any sort of size."

She nods. "I thought as much. I'll be hiring a firm of professional architects for the design work."

Probably-Chuck nods. "Of course. There are a few local firms our clients have worked with before, but if you've got someone… In mind? I don't know what sorts of… Special requirements a magic school would have."

"Oh... None, really. I did briefly consider including a fortified room for the more capable students, but I really don't think that sort of thing would be safe in a built up area."

"Ah… Explosives.. require specialist storage facilities and licenses. I'm not sure-."

"No no." Circe shakes her head. "For conjuring."

"Oh. Well, I don't think there are any laws about that, but I'm sure that your neighbours would appreciate it. Is there anywhere else you want to see?"

"No, thank you, I think that's everything."

He nods. "You want me to call you a cab?"

"No, thank you. I think we'll have a walk around the area, get a bit of a feel for it."

Chuck nods again, and the two of them head towards the gate. "Well, you've got my card. If you need any more information, just give me a call."

Adom and I follow on behind them, coming out to allow Chuck to lock the heavy padlock across the complex gates. This is Circe's show, of course. I'm just here to prevent awkward… How to put it? Miscommunications between the ancient sorceress and the modern world. Adom is here because he needs to get out more and meet people.

I'm using a bound illusion spell to look like a regular human. Circe's assumed a new and less recognisable face, while Adom…

We were eventually able to persuade Adom to wear civilian clothing in place of the Apokoliptian armour of my design that he's taken to wearing. His preferred civilian clothing consists of a short kilt, some jewellery and quite a lot of eye liner, a discovery which caused Sunset's cheeks to stay red for the rest of the day. Here, wearing jeans and a hoodie he looks about as comfortable as a career undertaker wearing a tutu. A combination of his height, obvious musculature and the total confidence with which he carries himself has resulted in people giving us a wide berth on our walk through the city.

"Was the site to your satisfaction?"

Circe smiles up at Adom, her current form being considerably shorter than his. "It will do. One plot of land is much like another."

"You do not need to perform divinings to locate an auspicious location?"

"Not at my power level. Maybe if I was building a home for myself or a fortress, but a school for neophytes requires far less preparation."

"And the results of the evil magician's murderous magics?"

"There's some sort of rat elemental.. thing, lurking in the ground. I'll either bind it to me or destroy it before the surveyors go in."

I raise my eyebrows. "You've decided, then."

She nods. "This was a formality, really. After finally getting Mister Constantine to agree to a residency-" I stayed well in the background during that meeting. "-I have all of the teaching staff prepared and I'm eager to start pulling my weight."

Adom's shoulders tense slightly. "I would also like to start pulling my weight. I have learned Kahndaq's history, my Arabic is flawless, and the iniquity there is far worse than it is in your country."

"Exactly. Kahndaq requires so much more work than Britain. Modern nations are far worse at coping with chaos than ancient ones, and in Britain we can leave most of the government structures in place and just change the officials. But you were pretty clear-."

"Such monsters deserve death."

"I'm not arguing the point. But are your plans fully ready?"

He exhales heavily. "They are not, as yet. Mister Luthor's spies have-."

"'Corporate intelligence.'"

"Spies have provided me with a reasonable picture of the state of my country. I wish to start using genomorphs for more aggressive information acquisition."

"Not a problem. We can transfer a lot of them over to Kahndaq operations once the British side goes operational. Though -and I do want to be clear about this-."

"I know that being too obvious puts future operations at risk. I will control my wrath."

"Control it for now. You'll have the opportunity to unleash it in full in time."

He grunts a quiet acknowledgement. "Madam C-. Madam Larissa."

"I do like the way you make it sound."

"What are your plans for the remainder of the day?"

"I'm looking at residential properties. Something a small businesswoman like 'myself' might rent or own. What about you?"

"An economics lecture. International finance and trade is considerably more complex than it once was."

"No ruler can do everything, Adom."

"The rulers of Kahndaq have not covered themselves in honour. While I am fully aware that I cannot perform all of the offices of government by myself, I need to be able to know that those who claim to serve the interests of Kahndaq are truly doing so. To do that, I must be able to understand it."

"A noble endeavour. I hope the Kahndaqis are worth it."

"If they are not, their children or grandchildren will be. If they are not, the fault is mine."

"Ooh, portentous. Grayven, what are you up to?"

"Entertaining my brother and sister in law. I think it's time I clued the Justice League in to what we're doing in Britain."

back

Embattled 4

next

24th October

13:43 GMT -6

I purse my lips as I watch Barda and Knockout glower at each other. Dominate! / Dominate!

Scott gives a quiet sigh. "I can't say you didn't warn me." Barda, honey, we're trying to do the human thing here. That means no maiming.

"Yeah. I never really had much to do with the Furies on.. Apokolips…" Ugh, no, it's no good. "Why don't the two of you take a look at our sparring arena? Knockout, would you be so good as to escort-?"

Knockout turns away from Barda and strides down the corridor. "This way." "Follow in my footsteps, weak-willed bitch-cow."

"I'm sure it's delightful." "You will whimper and beg for more as I choke the life from you, my sub."

Scott and I stand there in companionable silence as they disappear from view. "You know, I'm actually impressed how level headed Barda's being about the whole thing. She's really come a long way since we left Apokolips."

"Love is a wonderful thing." Scott nods, smiling. "Until-."

I clamp down on the thought, but Scott's already noticed. "You still okay? The.. Anti-Life fragment giving you any trouble?"

"No-. Well, not more. This is just… Normal post-relationship… Absence."

"No new Missus Grayven on the horizon? I'm a little surprised that Ghia'ta hasn't tried to set you up with someone." He looks around as we head towards the living room. "Where is she, anyway?"

"Trying to get Harold Jordan and Carol Ferris back together." I push open the door and lead the way inside. "Ms Ferris found having a Zamaron who wasn't trying to turn her into a lunatic warrior queen decidedly strange. But I'd like to-."

"Uncle Scott!" Lynne smiles as she stands and then bounds across the room to embrace him.

Scott hugs her back, smile widening as he does so. "Hey, Lynne. How's school going?"

"It's okay. And-" She pulls away, half turning to.. the empty space next to where she was sitting. "-this is Cassan.. dra…"

Cassandra relocated herself as soon as the door started to open, and is now crouched behind the settee to my right. I hold up my hands to a convenient height for her to see. "Cassandra, this is Escape Man. He is safe."

Her eyes and the top of her head appear to be reserving judgement.

"'Escape Man'?" Scott turns and spots Cassandra studying him intensely. Then he notices my hands and raises his own. "You can sign 'Completely Free'."

"I'm trying to make sure that all the names I try to teach her have the same structure." I take a few steps away and sit in my chair. "She'll come out when she has a better read on you."

Scott nods, and slowly walks towards the settee she's hiding behind to give her plenty of time to back away. Once he reaches it, he turns around and sits down. "Picked up another daughter?"

"I intended to give you and Barda first refusal, actually. But otherwise, y-."

"Wait, wait. 'First refusal'? I don't think that's how children work."

Lynne tries to persuade Cassandra to come out through the pantomiming of beckoning and friendly smiles. Cassandra shifts her eyes to Lynne for a moment, then dismisses her and goes back to watching Scott.

"She needs a primary caregiver or two. I already killed her natural parents. I'm happy to adopt her myself, but I'm concerned that I've already taken on more children than I can give enough attention to. You told me when I asked that you and Barda had discussed the subject-."

"Yeah, then you told us Darkseid paid you a visit." He give me a serious look. "When you say you killed her parents..?"

"David Cain and Sandra Wu-San." Mean Teacher Man and Crazy Fight Woman. "The point being, as a result of her father deciding that she'd be able to fight better without the ability to comprehend language, she has a series of very special needs and could probably benefit from a lot more one to one care than it will be entirely practical for me to give."

"Without…" "I don't think even Granny tried that."

Lynne gives up and plonks herself down on my lap. I put my hands around her stomach and pull her fully aboard before letting go and resuming the sign language pose. "Like I said. She can read body language really well, but actually talking or reading isn't something she can do. I'm trying to teach her sign language… British, not American." Scott jokingly clenches his fists for a moment, then shrugs. Well. I was a little surprised that he knew ASL. "Because it should be possible for her to understand-" He gives me an odd look. "-it… What?"

"Oh, I'm just waiting for the roundabout to go with this sw-."

"I'm going to overthrow the government of Britain and execute most of its ruling caste."

"-ing and there we go." He looks more amused than concerned. "And why would you do a thing like that?"

"Because they're super… Bad..?" Hm. "I mean, by Apokoliptian standards it barely registers, but by Human standards, they're.. like… The fastest snails in the garden? And they're running a modern country which would loathe their behaviour." I take a large binder out of subspace next to him. "Take a look."

He looks at the folder, drumming the fingers of his right hand on it for a moment before having his multi-cube miniaturise and store it. "I don't think you'd bother doing something like this if there wasn't something in your accusation. But I don't really understand why you're telling me." "Just another place to conquer, Conquest?"

"After the whole Anti-Life.. thing… I've tried to involve you in my life more." I jiggle my legs up and down. "Lynne's too. And I need someone to brief the Justice League before my targets start bleating about being attacked by supervillains."

"In point of fact: you do employ supervillains."

After years of working loyally for the British government, the Blacks weren't even slightly surprised by how quickly they were disavowed. Though Vera was a little surprised by how much about what they'd done the Home Office was prepared to put into the public domain. I was too. I mean, sure, they tried saying it was all done on their own initiative but I don't think anyone really believed it. Jon certainly didn't.

"I'm a confessed murderer. I can hardly throw stones."

"You got pardoned, Dad."

"I'm pretty sure it still counts. Anyway, yeah, supervillains, buuuuut most of that is pretty subjective and I'm handing the only one whose villainy isn't subjective over to Knockout for Apokoliptian-style training." I smile cruelly. "After a few months I suspect that a nice quick lethal injection will start to look rather appealing."

Lynne turns her head around and whoops. "No Anti-Life involved. Intense physical conditioning only. I'm not planning anything like what-" She looks down, nodding. "-they did to you."

"And what happens afterwards?"

"Planned for that. Back of the folder. We've made plans to tide the government over until new elections can be held. Get.. Batman to have a look at it, would you? Probably a bit late to make any radical changes, but I don't mind taking advice."

"And exactly how long do we have to think about this?"

"About a month. We're moving the people we're not targeting into a secure location before we start anything."

"Great. Great. Thanks Grayv-" He glances left, where Cassandra is now staring at him from the next seat. "-en. And you're a sneaky one, aren't you?"

'Quiet Girl.'

"Yeah, that too." He returns his attention to me. "Kinda surprised we're not getting a repeat of last time. You not going to show up on the Watchtower to give us a lecture in person this time?"

"I think I made my point. Sometimes I think I'm better off not getting into people's faces in person."

He stares at me for a moment. "Who are you, and what have you done with my brother?"

back

Embattled 5

next

26th October

21:02 GMT

I tilt my newspaper to the side as I hear the front door open. Ah, good, she's back.

"Derek? Are you in?"

No, Derek is out, moved to a secure location through the judicious application of genomorph telepathy and g-elf muscle. Given what some of the Masons' inner circle can do I am convinced that leaving close family in the capital is a bad idea.

I hear a sigh from the hall as the front door closes heavily. Two people in powerful, highly paid jobs can relate to one another far better than a megalopsychos with a trophy spouse, but the demands of the jobs can rather cut into their contact time. And with the children off at boarding school, coming home to an empty house is a fairly routine experience. A soft swoosh as she removes her coat, and a thud as she puts down her shoulder bag.

Then footsteps, heading towards the living room. She pushes open the door and reaches inside to turn the dimmer switch up a bit without actually looking at the huge grey man sitting across from her. She actually makes it three paces into the room before-

"WRUAAGH."

-jumping without her feet leaving the ground and then freezing.

"Madam Chairwoman. A pleasure to see you again."

"Why are you here, and where is my husband?"

"Your husband is in Castle Baaleskine, a Scottish castle recently recovered from the Home Office by an ally of mine. I'm not sure if you're in the loop on that particular affair? British superheroes invading Metropolis and targeting a school? One my daughter was attending?"

"O-oh God, you're actually doing it."

"No. Well. Sort of."

"Look, I-I don't know who organised that-."

"I'm afraid that it's somewhat immaterial now. Though I will say that it got right up Jon's nose, a friendly nation pulling something like that."

"Y-." She blinks. "The American government sent you?"

"No. Of course not. I'm doing this in my capacity as a superpowered alien warlor-. Sorry! Sorry. My capacity as a private citizen."

"I wasn't involved in that, and and and I-I assure you."

"Of course you weren't involved in that! If you were, we wouldn't be having a polite conversation right now. I'd.. either kill you or.. toss you into an oubliette somewhere. No. I'm here precisely because you weren't involved. Because you went to that club once, when you could have gone any number of times." I stand. "I can't quite bring myself to respect you, not when you had some idea what was happening and did nothing to stop it… But I think you might be salvaged."

"What, you want..? Information?"

"No. Why would I possibly want information from you when I employ thousands of telepaths?"

"That's a violation of anything remotely resembling due process of law."

I lean forward and down until I'm bent at right angles and my face is level with hers. "Ask me if I care."

"You-? The whole-?"

I grin. "The whole." Then I straighten back up. "I'm here to talk to you because I'm hoping that you'll agree to become Prime Minister during the transitional period. Seeing as how you are from the governing party, and the most senior MP we're not going to purge-. Did I say purge? I meant arrest."

"I'm-?" She shudders. "But… There are-."

"Yeah, things are pretty bad. News to you?"

"I knew-. Things were bad, that.. some." She looks me directly in the eyes. "All of them?"

"Oh, heck, that's just the MPs and Lords. By the time we move on to the senior civil servants and suchlike… Well. Don't expect to pass any primary legislation."

"That…"

"Look. Tomorrow, I'm going to put everything I have into the public domain. Tonight, all of the really dangerous people are going to be rendered 'safe', and a lot of the paedophile-cannibals are going to spend some time in a secure location until I'm sure that a trial can be arranged. You can either try and make sure that there's still a functioning country by the end of the week, or… The next guy on the list is Jeremy Corbin, and… Let's be honest, he's not one for running things."

"You want me to be your puppet? You want to.. take over the country, and you need someone to look like they're in charge so that the Justice League don't stop you? I'm not going to help you with that."

"Do you want those people gone or not?"

"Arrested, yes. If.. that can actually happen-."

"It can't under current judicial and constitutional arrangements, which is why I'm not. That, and the fact that according to my best estimates a third of them would be killed by the righteously indignant masses well before a trial could be arranged."

"Protective custody?"

"Protective… For the moment."

"We'll need to have elections."

"Scheduled for two months' time. I just need you to keep the country functioning until then. And… Legally speaking, with the Fixed Term Parliament Act, we'd need-."

"I-. Understand your reasons, but please don't joke about this. Whatever the outcome, Britain's credibility will be non-existent after you publicise… What you know. There'll be.. riots, our debt status will be junk-."

"And you'll have an honest government for the first time in generations. Most of the rest can be fixed in time."

"I hope it's worth it." She frowns slightly. "And what do you get out of it?"

I shrug. "All sorts of things. The only thing I actually asked for was a review of the Fiendstein case, but that isn't anything like of equal value. Mostly, I just want the planet I'm living on to work properly."

"And…" Something occurs to her. "Your brother is a member of the Justice League. You've already spoken to them."

"Sort of." I can't help but grin a little. By my reckoning two days was long enough for Batman to speed read through the entire thing and contact me with any glaring problems, but nothing like long enough for the League to come to a considered opinion. "They think I'm doing this next month."

She nods slowly, calming down a little. "I need to talk to a few people. Not everyone-."

"Already gathered together. I've had people working on this for some time. I just wanted to speak to you alone first so that you could get the shock out of your system."

"And you couldn't have just rang the doorbell?"

"And get spotted? Don't be daft. Also, I found it amusing. I mean, I'm not going to get to fight the people who tried to kill my daughter face to face, Apokoliptian style. I've got to get my jollies somewhere."

She's recovered enough to give me a contemptuous glare. Briefly. "Two months isn't enough time for this country to be properly ready for an election. With all of the major political parties in utter turmoil-."

"As if anyone with a shred of decency would vote for them now." I smile. "The nationalist parties won't be affected much. Some financial corruption only. But I've got an issue and a candidate and I'm prepared for this. I have no interest in Britain fragmenting. Out of the chaos I'm about to unleash there will come a new unifying force in British politics, already prepared and ready to go. How would you like to join the Reform Party?"

back

Embattled 6

next

26th October

21:22 GMT

"Ladies and Gentlemen." I bring my hands together in a not-quite-clap. "Thank you for joining me."

And what a motley crew they are. Britain's… Well… Alright some of them qualify as superheroes. Sir Cyril's competent enough. Cornwall's got the power, if not the commitment. And I know very well that Ms Dolmann can do a person a lot of mischief when she's not being metaphorically sat on by a g-troll in an EMP-shielded location. The Rush Hour family I don't know well. Slower than Miss Amane, but still more than fast enough for most purposes.

But some of the rest…

Ugh. I wonder if my American colleagues feel this way about people like Mister America, or if they all instinctively take the costumed patriotism completely seriously? I look around at these care in the community living puns and it makes me embarrassed that in a world where just about any idiot can waltz into mid-tier superpowers this is the best my former country managed.

Just… Suck it up, Grayven.

"Well…" Sir Cyril pointedly looks at Ms Dolmann. "Not sure it was totally voluntary in all cases."

"She tried to kill me, my daughter and all of my daughter's schoolmates. You'll forgive me being a little cautious."

"Thought that was Tri-Man."

"When has Tri-Man ever built a robot? Or shown a tendency to do anything like that other than at the behest of his political masters? Telepathic interrogation of him and The Brain combined with exhaustive technical and arcane analysis of the remaining parts of the robots means that I've got a pretty good idea of who was responsible, but since only Mister Kelly and Mister Kipling knew everything that was going on and why I'm not going to hold… Much of a grudge."

"Is that what this is about? You're taking a crack at whoever it was who ordered it and you want our help?"

"No, no…" I shake my head. "I'm afraid-" You wouldn't be able to help significantly even if you wanted to. "-that it's a little beyond seeking redress." The door to my left opens and Cursitor Doom strolls in. A lot of people take a look, but only a few recognise him. The Blacks who follow him in get a more noticeable reaction. A couple of utter no-hopers rise to their feet, clenching their fists or grabbing hold of whatever juvenile joke-weapon they pulled from a leftover Christmas cracker this morning. The competent ones check the room and their distance from each other, no doubt preparing attack strategies.

Let's… Head that one off.

"I'm afraid that the attack on me wasn't simply the result of a panicking Ministry of Defence official or other bad egg. Rather, the problem, I'm afraid, is the entire henhouse." G-elves scurry around the room, depositing evidence files in front of each of our guests. "My colleague Geoffrey Talbot, formerly a Detective Chief-Inspector in the Metropolitan Police, assembled that over the last six months. In summary, virtually every member of the British government is heavily implicated in a rather unpleasant conspiracy. Those who are not are next door getting this talk from him. Crimes range from minor things like drug use and corrupt financial incentives all the way up to kidnapping, paedophilia, demon worship, murder and cannibalism."

Some kind of.. Punisher-looking guy mouths a silent 'you wot' at my pronouncement and grabs a binder before flicking through it at speed. Yes, that's why the pictures go at the front.

"Quite aside from the personal affront, this sort of destructive self-indulgence offends me professionally. So I thought that my friends and I should do something about it."

Sir Cyril raises his right gauntlet. "Hold on a mo'. Are you seriously trying to tell me that the British government is totally evil, and somehow no one noticed?"

"Plenty of people noticed. No one else had access to all of the pertinent facts required to put it all together, though some of you have tripped over the periphery. Or they were killed or otherwise.. removed from the scene. Mister Marrack, I'm afraid to say that your brother was fitted up."

Captain Cornwall's mouth falls slightly open for a moment. "Wha'?"

I point to his binder. "Page one hundred and eighty nine. There was an attempt to build an arcane weapon and summon a large elemental… All the phenomena you witnessed were side effects, nothing more. And certainly nothing to do with him."

Behind that stupid mask I'm sure that his face is a picture.

"I'd like to invite you all to take a read. Refreshments will be provided presently-" About a third are flicking through their binders now. "-but first I'd like to tell you why I'm letting you in on this."

Sir Cyril inclines his head slightly. "If you've got all these genomorphs working for you, you don't want us for muscle. What are you telling us for, then?"

"If I don't, there's a statistically significant chance that one or more of you might try stopping me. I'm reasonably confident that my people could take you down without causing lasting damage, but these.. 'people' don't deserve your support. And I don't particularly want the first thing the people of Britain hear about this to be that my people have been fighting the local-" Just say it. "-superheroes. It gives the wrong first impression."

Sir Cyril folds his arms across his chest. "What sort of fighting are we talking about?"

"In.. a.. couple of hours, I'll be sending squads after the-" I gesture to the binder sitting unopened besides him. "-most notable offenders. I have a facility set up to hold a substantial number of prisoners-" Sir Cyril's head jerks back slightly. "-and yes I do take prisoners, no need to be like that."

"You have got a bit of a reputation, Grayven."

"One which I've cultivated as a warning to the world's most powerful supervillains that I can and will use the required level of force against them. What I have not publicised are all of the people I've brought in relatively peacefully." After providing them with a change of trousers in most cases. "Almost everyone on our target list is either a baseline human or a minor magician. I doubt that I would have to use the same level of force to apprehend them that I would my higher profile targets."

"So you want us out of the way. How many-?"

There's a quiet bang as Rush Hour 2 finishes superspeed reading his binder. "You're targeting nearly every Member of Parliament!"

I nod. "I think it's best to make a clean sweep of things."

Sir Cyril regards me for a moment, then turns to his colleague. "Dennis? Is it a load of nonsense, or is he actually on to something?"

"I…" Rush Hour shakes his head, clearly shaken up. "It.. could…" He shakes his head again. "I recognise a lot of the names.. of.. people who went missing. For the rest… You'd need someone with more training in investigation than I have. But I don't think Mister Grayven would do this if he wasn't sure of himself."

Sir Cyril nods. "Cursitor?"

Mister Doom nods solemnly. "Regrettable though it is, Mister Grayven is quite correct. He and his people have conducted a detailed investigation, and I will personally vouch for the authenticity of their findings."

Sir Cyril draws himself up slightly. "Right then. Did you just want us to keep out of the way?"

"No. Ideally, I'd like some participation. Certainly, what's left of the Houses of Parliament would benefit from some friendly talking heads until an emergency election can be arranged. It is vitally important that-" The appearance of. "-democracy is preserved, and the worst thing that could happen is someone in the military trying to restore the deposed oligarchy."

"Before we agree to that, I want to see some of this myself."

I nod. "Acceptable. How many of you have heard of the Caligula Club?"

back

Embattled 7

next

26th October

21:28 GMT

I raise my eyebrows slightly. "I do hope that doesn't throw out your schedule too much?"

"Hardly." Mr Near doesn't open his eyes as the Blue Danube Waltz plays in the background and the horns on the circle of g-gnomes glow brilliantly. "G-elves are already in place, and Miss Shimmer performed an easily-triggerable evocation to make sure that those within can't escape using teleportation yesterday."

I frown. "I'm not sure that g-elves are really the best sort of group for a place like the Caligula Club. Why not use Miss Savage's people?"

"Because I knew that you'd want to go there."

I.. suppose that's the service I'm paying for in hiring him, but I'm still a little concerned that I'm becoming that predictable. Especially considering that I only decided to do it two minutes ago. "How?"

"A trait common to both superheroes and Apokoliptians is a habit of pursuing direct confrontation with their adversaries. You were content to let others investigate and plan, but I judged it extremely unlikely that you would do the rational thing and stay out of the conflict zone entirely. There is no primary malefactor with whom you could engage; this is after all a wide scale operation. The entire ruling class has been compromised for an indeterminate period of time. Most likely therefore it is not the result of the actions of a single malevolent individual but rather the effect of privilege and corruption over a prolonged period of time."

"Thus, you are motivated to attack not an individual but a symbol of the thing you are trying to destroy. Downing Street was an option, but that would look too much like an attack on the government as a government. Buckingham Palace was an option, but you have acceded to my suggestions on how to handle that. Then there is Mister Kelly. Do you want a rematch, perhaps? Maybe."

"There were other possibilities until you decided that you wished to brief the local… Costumed curiosities yourself. Naturally, you see them as… 'Peers'. You want not merely to convince them contrary to their natural intuitions that you are correct, but also to see you as being in command. The only way to achieve that in a situation like this is to demonstrate that you are correct in the most visceral way possible. The binder would not be enough, not when they can't verify the contents for themselves."

"So where could you strike that would serve both your ego and your practical objectives? Only one place. You were always going to the Caligula Club. And so I planned accordingly."

Hadn't really.. thought about it.. like that… But when he spells it out like that, it sounds so obvious. I nod. "Well deduced. Is everything else ready?"

"Lantern Talbot has just signalled his readiness. We can begin whenever you like."

I nod. "Any sign that the League have noticed what we're doing?"

"Nothing overt." His face.. twitches a little. He does have a full range of facial movement, but I've yet to see him make a normal facial expression with it. I'm not sure if he's faking for his own amusement or if he fell out of the habit while in the nursing home. "But I've got g-gnome clusters watching them just in case."

"Good show." I put my right hand on the pommel of my daiklave… No. Rushed demon-summonings aside, there isn't going to be anything there that's a physical threat to me. I want as many of these people taken alive as possible. Not a situation for a large knife.. "Gravyen to everyone. Go."

The Sphere revs viciously, New God computer systems around her lighting up as scheduled broadcasts are interrupted and internet connections are misdirected. I want as many people as possible to know what is happening and -most importantly- why. I want people to wake up and pay attention-.

Starting to sound like Jenny Sparks there. Have to watch that.

"I'll leave this in your capable hands, Mister Near. Mother Box… Boom tube."

Ping.

Boom!

The ongoing waltz is momentarily drowned out by the roar of displaced air as the portal appears. Mother Box appears to have opened it on a pavement, and as I stride through I hear a couple of cars slam on their brakes.

And then I'm out into the London evening. Look left and right… Yep, what cars there are have stopped and the few passersby have pulled out their phones. Doorman's looking a little nervous. So he's got an idea of why I might be heading this way. Good. I cross the road at an amble, transfixing him with my eyes. Oh, Mother Box?

Ping.

Boom tube the rest of them in, would you?"

Ping.

Boom!

I'm already on the far side of the road before Sir Cyril strides through the tube, Punisher guy just behind him. The rest start coming through afterwards, marching like people going to the doctor for a diagnosis they already know to be terminal. No Squire or Cornwall Boy; I don't really think this one is going to be child friendly.

I smile brightly at the doorman as I step up onto the pavement. "Good evening."

"Ah… Evening, Mister Grayven. I'm, ah… Afraid this is a private members' club. If you want to leave your details-."

"Hahahahahaha!" My smile remains just as broad, but becomes somewhat less bright. "I'm-. Hah!" I shake my head. "This isn't a social call. This is a coup d'état. I'm not here to join; I'm here to distrain. So if you want to live-."

He's already pressing the switch on his radio. "Code red CODE FUCKING RED!"

I gently reach forward with my right hand and-. Ah. A faint aquamarine shimmer fills the air in front of me. My fingers touch it and.. can't advance beyond a certain point. Hardly surprising…

"Hah! Not so clever now-."

I pull back my right hand, clench it into a fist, then swing at the barrier. Fall Before My Might!

My fist strikes home and the barrier sworls away with a sound like wind blowing against high tension canvas, followed immediately by every window on the front of the building cracking. Still stopped my fist, mind. The doorman's eyes widen as I continue towards him, right hand wrapping itself around the left side of his torso.

I look down at him, and sigh loudly.

Then I gently shove him aside and head for the door. "Would one of you please arrest him?"

There'll be another barrier on the door, of course. But this time I don't make a fist. I just open my hand and push. You Have Offended Me!

This time it's the stone around the door which cracks, and the door goes flying into the building. I don't even flinch as the shotgun rounds strike my chest with all the force of a kitten's exhalation while the last few patrons in the bar area flee for the internal doors. Looks like they've painted over the area where John nailed Prince William to the wall. The barmen fire their shotguns again as I take in the sheep bound to-. Really.

"Oh god, help!"

The barman on the left and I both glance at the burned and bleeding man hanging in a metal cage from the ceiling, but my ring is faster than his gun. I erect similar barriers around the other four cages and… Drug residues around overturned tables and-.

"Dear Lord."

I glance back at Sir Cyril as another sprinkling of shotgun pellets patter off me. "What did you think I was going to show you?" More shotgun pellets-. You Dare!

"Oh, stop."

Iron maiden constructs manifest around them, pinning them in place but leaving them able to see out. I then lift them out of cover and set them down on the wine, cocaine and body fluid soaked floor.

"Cornwall, get those people down." A purple ray drone drops stealth and begins playing its beam over the second most injured-. Ah, the most injured is dead. A pity, though I suppose it might make the joint enterprise murder convictions easier. "Sir Cyril, with me. The rest of you, don't puke on anything we might need in court."

back

Embattled 8

next

26th October

21:43 GMT

On the one hand, the secret (and not so secret) rulers of Britain. A couple of front-rankers most members of the public wouldn't know from Adam (or Eve), their deputies… Not famous types; no popular music stars or other media personalities. This isn't the nineteenth century. All but the most conceited know full well that their narcissistic little bubble would collapse the instant that any significant external attention was turned upon it.

Heh.

On the other we have a bunch of costumed lunatics. Not the brightest of any bunch that wasn't coal-black, but having moral codes which they value highly. They didn't have to come, or put themselves in danger like this, yet there's no doubt in my mind that having seen that I'm right they'll back me to the hilt. At least as far as this operation goes.

Heroes have their uses, Corpsman.

Hm. Reminds me what Vetinari said about… Oh, what was it? Bad people being good at running things, and heroes only really being good at removing bad people from office. So every so often the villain running a place would get complacent and self-indulgent and a hero would need to show them the door… And then either the hero would make a pig's ear of running the place, or they'd draft in a new and less complacent villain.

Or the hero learns-.

My yellow environmental shield actually vanishes for a moment, leaving me protected only by my orange environmental shield, Apokoliptian armour and being a god.

Was that intentional, Corpsman?

Couldn't say, Sinestro.

I fold my hands behind my back as I walk down a staircase into what appears to be a function area of some kind. While mostly tidy, a few chairs knocked aside suggest that it's being used as a hiding place by some-.

"I've seen bigger!"

A man dressed like some sort of Elizabethan dandy is fending off a knife-wielding partygoer, moving around his foe's wild slashes with surprising grace. Seeing an opening, he dances left as his attacker overextends and fires two jabs into the man's face. Normally that would be disorientating. Unfortunately, the man's too drugged up to really feel it and manages a stab into the fop's stomach.

He looks down at the knife embedded in his costume for a moment. Then he looks back up. "Are you in yet?"

Ah, an armoured under layer. I hadn't thought that a man who would dress like that would do anything so sensible. The fop then headbutts the other man, sending him staggering backwards towards… Someone who I'm assuming is his twin brother, who then boots him in the crotch with cock-crushing power.

"Akhrrrrr!"

"Such a commotion-" Fop number two follows up with a haymaker which drops their opponent to the carpet. "-about such a little thing."

"You gentlemen have this under control?"

They both look up in a mildly creepy way. "Only small problems."

Fop… Agh, I've lost track of which one is which. He nods, and makes a fist with his right hand. "Which we've got well in hand."

"Knight to Grayven."

"Mother Box, open a boom tube to the containment area. Just toss anyone you've subdued-" Their left eyebrows rise. "-through." Wha-? Oh, now I'm doing it. I turn away and raise my right hand to my ear. "Grayven. Go ahead."

"They're heading for the rear entrance!" I wince. "Open up one of your tubes so we can-."

"It's already taken care of." Map. "Send a few people to make sure they don't go into hiding, then join me in the manager's office. I'll need you to confirm that I'm not planting evidence."

"Alright. I'll be with you in a moment. Knight out."

Mother Box, hush tube.

Ping.

I walk through the portal and stride to the office window overlooking the rear entrance. The double doors burst open a moment later, dishevelled club members bursting out and running straight into an immovable wall of g-trolls.

"Unhand me, you vile creature!"

Fascinating how they respond to fear. Some cower, but so far none we've pulled from the rooms they've been hiding in have tried to negotiate. Instead, they play the role of conceited aristocrat to the hilt, as if they were some sort of pantomime villain.

When the weak are oppressed, they see it as the natural state of things. Unpleasant, but hardly unusual or unexpected. Thus, they develop coping mechanisms. Subtle rebellions, small and tightly limited egos… Religious faith. These people have never experienced anything like what you are doing to them. To them, the only equivalent experience they have would be a servant putting the wrong flavour toothpaste on their brush in the morning, and so they try to deal with it in the same way.

Mm. Not sure I agree with your analysis, Sinestro. Still, I suppose that the outcome is much the same. And aside from the odd endorsement speech I won't be much involved with picking up the pieces. The precise whys and wherefores can be left to-

A metal-clad foot steps onto the floor behind me.

-other people.

I turn, a polite smile upon my lips. "Sir Cyril, Mother Box is at-" I take her off my belt and hold her out. "-your disposal for the extraction of data."

"Ping."

He takes her, then puts her down on the desk. "What's in the filing cabinets?"

I shrug. "No idea." Disable the scuttling charge and unlock it.

Certainly, Corpsman.

There's a click and the top drawer comes slightly open. Sir Cyril walks over to it and pulls it open. "Now this is how Dad and I used to do it."

"Whatever makes you happy. Take as long as you want; we're not under any sort of time pressure."

"Do you think it's worth calling Squire in?"

I wince slightly. "Maybe get the place cleaned up a bit, first."

He grunts quietly, and pulls out the first file as I take in the room. Expensive and very tidy decoration. I wonder who handles the cleaning around here? I mean, I doubt that these people have ever cleaned up after themselves, and the staff couldn't possibly be part of the same social class. I'm not sure how much money the average person would have to be paid in order to serve drinks while people were tortured to death in front of them… And I'm not sure how the sort of person prepared to do that could ever be considered reliable enough to be trusted to do it and not run screaming to the newspapers.

Huh. Look at that. I didn't think that anyone in Britain just stuck flagpoles up in their office. Always thought that was an American thing. Whoever used to work here had two: one a pretty normal Union Jack and the other… Nearly a Union Jack. The same design, but the blue is replaced with purple and the red with dark pink. No idea what that's about, but it's not like I'm an expert on flags…

I glance at Sir Cyril. "What's it called when a Union Jack is pink and purple instead of blue and red?"

"That's a Black Jack. Why, did you run into one?"

"What does it signify?"

"Evil, usually. It's from a parallel universe version of Britain. Nasty bunch."

Sounds like evidence to me. I step towards it and reach out with my right hand. "There's one here, but I suppose it's not a surprise-"

I touch it, and blue crackling lights fill the room!

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Embattled 9

next

26th October

21:48 GMT

"-that.. they're associated."

Room's still full of twinkling light, and Sir Cyril has downed the folder and is braced for an attack. Then he spots me still touching the flag.

"Sorry, sorry." I let go and the sparkles fade. "Completely my fault, really should have seen that coming." Me and Miss Shimmer. Probably more me. I shouldn't have assumed that her magic abilities were infallible.

Sir Cyril holds his ready pose for a moment, then relaxes slightly. "Have you got any sort of magic resistance?"

"Yes. You?"

"Where does it come from?"

"From me being a god. My soul is more powerful than that of most mortals and I'm more in tune with it. I shape magic systems around me to conform to my nature. It can be overpowered and I can turn it down, but most spells just either fail completely or fall off after a couple of seconds. You?"

He reaches to his left pauldron with his right hand and taps it with his right forefinger. "My armour's enchanted. Now." He lowers his hand and walks towards the flags. I step aside to give him access. "Let's see what that was all about."

He holds his right hand out, not quite touching the flag. "Hm. Usually get a bit of a reaction if there's still magic in it." He inches his hand closer before finally touching it. Nothing else happens. "It might have been some sort of signal."

"Shouldn't matter, then. All of their controllers are being tied up-" Hopefully literally, but you don't give a man a red power ring if you're not prepared to accept a few acid-etched skeletons. "-and I'm a little more ready for Mister Kelly than I was last time."

He pulls his hand back and repeats the process with the Union Jack. No, that appears to just be a normal flag. "Alright. That might just have been a false alarm."

"Piiiiiinggg."

"Mother Box?" I pick her up from the desk and hold her up to my face. "What's wrong?"

"Pi-ping?"

I envelop her in both hands and focus on our bond for a moment. Better?

Ping.

"What's wrong with her?"

"Mother Boxes have a similar.. relationship with the Source that we New Gods do. She's confused because she can't feel it any longer and it's interfering with her systems."

"And what's the Source?"

"Are you a Christian?"

"Yes. I've been Church of England my whole life."

"Then I suppose that you might call it God. Though in my experience most human practitioners of monotheism severely misunderstand their deity of choice."

"And you know better?"

"Yes, of course I do. When my kind reach adulthood, we take a tiny fragment of its nature into ourselves, to be reunified with it upon our deaths. I have within me that part of the Source that is conquest. Or.. perhaps a tiny part of the part." Or perhaps real Grayven does and I've just soaked enough local magic to fake it. Still not sure. I suppose I'll find out when we finally confront one another.

"I don't think my vicar would believe you."

"What does he know about it?"

"She, actually."

"She, he, whatever. Human." I shake my head. "Given how thaumically active this world is, I was initially surprised that your major religions were Source-worshipping. Usually that only happens on worlds that can't generate their own gods. It wasn't until the first time I saw the roof of the Sistine Chapel I realised what had happened. You actually don't worship the Source, not most of you. Probably Abraham, maybe Jesus himself… Perhaps some of the prophets and saints. The rest of you worship a being I think of as 'Zeus-Who's-Nice', a grandfatherly but basically… Scaled up human sort of figure."

"I'm afraid that I haven't studied enough theology to debate it with you. What's your point?"

"The Source exists, Zeus-Who's-Nice doesn't. And my kind can replicate in a small way our link to it in our technology. Mother Box is under the weather because her link is presently disrupted."

"You mean that your computer can't feel God?"

"If.. you.. want to put it like that. If you're seriously interested in improving your theological knowledge-."

"But you're alright."

"Mother Box uses a remote connection. Mine is inherent; it's part of me and.. part of the Source at the same time. Look: the Source is fundamentally unlike any living being in the universe. Our understanding isn't perfect, it's just better than yours."

"Alright." He actually doesn't sound quite as dubious about it as I'm sure that he is. "Does that mean anything for us, here and now?"

"I don't know." I return her to my belt and walk towards the filing cabinet. "But it's jolly o-." I stop in front of the window. "Um."

Sir Cyril steps away from the flags and follows my gaze. "That's not London."

Um. Yeah. The exteriors of the closest buildings don't look that different, but the skyline is a different shape and there are far fewer lights. "Sinestro?"

"Still here, Corpsman. What have you done wrong now?"

"Just a systems check, nothing to worry about."

"Corpsman, I expect-."

I raise my left hand. "How about you?"

"No critical system errors detected. Your command?"

"Mother Box, have we got tubes?"

"P-ping."

No tubes. "Alright, get to work on making sense of the topology. I want to be able to leave as soon as possible."

"Not working?"

"We can move from place to place here, but going back to London requires that she understand how this place works and how it relates to our world. Assuming that we're in…" I glance back at the flag. "What did you say this place was called?"

"The people I've spoken to who come from here usually just vanish as soon as we work out where they're from. I think it's called the Kingdom of Britannia."

"Interesting. Odd choice of colours. Do the constituent parts of their kingdom use the same colour scheme?"

"I couldn't say. If we're actually there, we can do the first reconnaissance anyone in the law enforcement community has ever managed to do. I take it that you didn't know they had a link to everyone you want to arrest?"

"I wasn't aware of a parallel universe being involved. We might have spotted them making contact and just not realised what we were seeing. I'd get in touch but-. Ah, hang on. Ring, contact Lantern Talbot."

"Unable to comply."

"Contact Lantern Gardner."

"Unable to comply."

"Rats. Okay, you know more about these people than I do. Do we stay here while Mother Box tries to process, or go outside?"

"I'd be surprised if they didn't detect us appearing. I don't think that staying here is a good idea."

"I don't know, if they send a servant or something I could interrogate-."

The door opens suddenly, and the Punisher-looking man comes through quickly and closes it behind him. "What the fuck just-"

Sir Cyril's jaw tightens. "Language!"

"-happened? The door started sparkling and the corridor went weird."

I usher him aside and reach for the door. "Weird? This should be interesting."

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Embattled 10

next

26th October

21:52 GMT

I frown. "It's not that weird."

It's clearly different, though. No radiators, air conditioning or electrical sockets. The paintings have changed as well, and none show anything modern. The lights are still-. No, those aren't electronic lights. They're some sort of flame, bound within glass. And magic… Yes, more magic in use here than I'm used to.

"You weren't out here when it changed."

Magic user or users who aren't on speaking terms with modernity, allied with the most degenerate parts of the British government. Not.. really ringing any bells. Morgana le Fay is the only possibility who immediately occurs to me, and I haven't been able to find out anything about her actions in the modern era. Since she wasn't active I didn't prioritise it.

Hm.

"Sir Cyril, does any of this look familiar?"

"It looks a little like some parts of my castle." He walks over to one of the lights and cautiously raises his right gauntlet. "Hm."

I consider the Punisher-lookalike for a moment. "What's your name and what ammunition does that gun use?"

"Faceoff. And it's standard NATO forty five millimetre. Listen,-."

"And is that t-shirt armoured?"

He taps his chest with his right fist, producing a knock. "Chest and back only, but yeah."

Ugh, probably home made by an amateur. Possibly him. Down side to the complete lack of civilian involvement in the manufacture and application of firearms in Britain; getting kitted up as a vigilante is just so much harder.

"Then I'm afraid that you're soundly out of your depth. Would you object to me giving you an upgrade for the duration of our time here?"

He holds his arms out to the sides slightly. "Sounds good to me, mate. Do I just-?"

Orange light plays over his body. I don't have time to create proper Apokoliptian gear for him, but top of the line non-powered armour is a simple enough prospect. Legs, chest, arms and head, and I'll upgrade his mask while I'm about it.

I lower my left hand. "It's tough but not invulnerable." He twists his torso, getting a feel for how it's affecting his movement. "And as for firearms, this-" I hold out a plasma carbine to him. "-will do for now. Don't point it at anything you don't want to incinerate."

He nods, then slings his gun's strap over his left shoulder and clips the gun to his equipment belt before taking the carbine from me. "Got it. Safety-"

"Excuse me, Gravyen."

"-first and all that."

I turn back to the man who brought decent gear. "Yes, Sir Cyril?"

"I don't like using lethal force. We just appeared in what might well be someone's house. Or another club. Neither of you are to shoot anyone without a good reason, am I clear?"

"Clear to me, Sir Cyril. Faceoff?"

Faceoff shrugs. "I always think it's better to have a gun and not need it than to need one and not have it."

"That's not funny, Faceoff."

"Oi." Faceoff stabs his right forefinger at Sir Cyril. "I've never slotted anyone who didn't deserve it. I don't just go around shooting people at random, and I don't like you implying I do."

"Gentlemen, you're both very pretty, but if we might focus on our current location for a moment? I have a daughter who's expecting a bed time story tonight."

Faceoff moves his right hand to the carbine and half-turns away. Sir Cyril looks down the corridor. "If the layout's the same, the front entrance is that way."

I nod. "As good a direction as any other." He leads the way-. "Ah, Sir Cyril?" He stops and half-turns back. "I once survived a tactical nuclear device at point blank range. Why don't I go first?"

Sir Cyril looks me up and down. Then he exhales more sharply than was strictly necessary. "Try to look friendly."

"Puppies and kittens, Sir Cyril." I stride down the corridor, mindful not to knock anything off the walls with my arms. "Puppies and kittens."

Sinestro, scans working?

I'm having trouble making sense of some things, Corpsman. Most likely, objects which have been enchanted. But conventional scanning to the building's outer walls is unimpeded.

Let's have it, then.

Hm. Yes. It's all pre-electronics, but not the cod-medieval the Justice League cartoon taught me to expect from Morgana. No.. gas either, not in fireplaces nor the kitchens. Plenty of humans, and a few things that read as near human. Still not getting anything useful as far as our planar location goes-

You're welcome, Corpsman.

-but at least we're not in the Phantom Zone.

"Sinestro says this place looks like an actual club. Victorian era equivalent, maybe."

Guest incoming, Corpsman.

Someone-. A stoutly built woman dressed as a Victorian maid -an actual Victorian maid, not the fetish ones- walks around the corner with a pile of sheets in her arms. She spots us at once and stops. Perhaps a little wary, but not afraid.

"Madam, could you please direct us towards the owner of the establishment?"

"Ah… Well, yes sir, I could. The Queen owns the Justinian Club." Accent puts me in mind of the west country. "I'm sorry sir, but we weren't told to expect anyone to come through the portal today."

"Oh, it's a bit of an impromptu visit. I wasn't properly briefed myself. What exactly is the protocol?"

"Um…" I notice her eyes dip momentarily to her sheets. "I don't really… I'm not involved…"

"Where might I find someone who is?"

"Mister Frimost generally meets with gentlemen such as yourselves, but if you head downstairs I'm sure that Mister Turner will be able to help you."

She checks behind her, then backs up to the last corridor junction to allow us to advance. I advance at strolling pace and turn-. Hm. I take a blank gold disk out of subspace and set it on top of her sheet pile. "Thank you. Gentlemen?"

Sinestro, show me her response to seeing the other two.

Concealed as they were behind my bulk, there should be some sort of reaction. Based on the apparent level of technology, plate armour should already be out of date and Kevlar shouldn't have been invented yet. But… No, once I'm past her eyes go deferentially down, and she goes back to her duties with some speed once Faceoff has passed her.

Not quite, Corpsman. There was a small spike of fear as Sir Cyril passed her.

So the monster man and the soldier aren't people to be afraid of, but the knight is. Curious.

"Giving her a tip was a bit of a risk, wasn't it? We don't know if the normal visitors do that, and having seen how they were carrying on I doubt that they did."

"Sir Cyril, do you honestly think she's going to tell anyone above her in the hierarchy? At most, she might tell another servant and people will start volunteering to give us information."

"Hm. You could be right there. Why wasn't she more afraid of you?"

"Not sure at this point. But my guess would be that she's seen large grey people before somewhere."

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Embattled 11

next

26th October

22:03 GMT

"I'm sorry, Sir Cyril, but we're… We would normally expect some notice." Mr Turner raises his hands in a placatory fashion. "Not that I'm.. complaining in any way, I simply wish to explain the lack of.. the normal courtesies."

One of the staff hurried to fetch Mr Turner just as soon as we came down into the lounge area, and he swiftly escorted us into a private meeting room. He appears to have assumed that Sir Cyril is in charge, and the brief look around the lounge area gave me a pretty good idea why. A good few of the aristocratic-looking types sipping wine and making polite conversation there had bodyguards with them. Human men-at-arms in most cases, but a couple had hulking grey… Orcs? Ogres? I'm not sure. I got a few curious looks, but none of them felt any alarm at seeing me. Curious how -despite this nominally being the evil side- things are actually a good deal more civilised here than they were back in the Caligula Club.

"Oh, don't worry, Mister Turner. Things are a bit.. confused on our side at the moment, and it sounds like no one thought to inform you. Entirely our fault."

He nods, looking a little relieved. "We've sent a message to the castle that you're here, and I assume that either her Majesty will request that you pay her a call or send one of her courtiers here. Have you.. met.. Mister Frimost before, Sir Cyril?"

"I'm afraid not. Is there anything I should know?"

"Adh-. The Queen.. holds him in extremely high regard, clearly, so while it's not quite a matter of him being able to speak for her, you may reasonably assume that anything he says has been authorised by her. And… Well… Not that I'd hear a word said against him, you understand, but… Not many of his kind rise to high office and he has.. one or two… Unusual mannerisms. In my experience it's best not to mention them."

"I'm sorry." Sir Cyril shakes his head. "'His kind'?"

"Ah, yes." He glances at me and inclines his head slightly. "Altered creatures. I understand that Mister Frimost used to be the Princess's cat. I've never seen much use for them beyond brute strength, but clearly the Queen knows what she's doing."

Okay, someone's doing a reverse-Circe, possibly the Queen herself. The name 'Frimost' means absolutely nothing to me, and I can't think of any cat-to-man transformations in DC canon… Other than Michael, obviously. I think Marvel had a few. Huh. Actually, if this guy is at Michael's level he might actually be a hard fight for me, with my drones back on Earth 16.

"I doubt that she would use him for sensitive work if he wasn't up to it."

"No doubt, no doubt at all. I was merely remarking that it's unusual."

A name for the Queen would be nice, but Sir Cyril can't sound like he knows nothing or we'll probably have to fight our way through a city that might well be the size of London. But in the dark-. No, pursued by things with animal sense of smell and human intelligence while I glow. Yes, I can fly but I'm not convinced that is actually an advantage against magic users of unknown capacities, particularly when we might need local help getting back…

And the fear. He's afraid of being seen to undermine the Queen, which is odd, considering his position. If he's trusted to meet foreign diplomats, shouldn't he trust that the Queen won't have him hanged, drawn and quartered over a trivial slip of the tongue? And he's a little afraid of Sir Cyril, who's been nothing but polite. Is it fear of aristocrats? I presume that he's upper middle class himself-. Perhaps he's afraid for his position? This sort of role would normally go to an aristocrat, but he's managed to work his way up to it? And if a foreign power actually complained, he might need the backing…

No. I'm forcing conclusions based on inadequate information. Keep looking like well trained muscle.

"You wouldn't happen to know how we get back, would you?" Mr Turner blinks in puzzlement while Sir Cyril smiles weakly. "I was drafted in to cover this at short notice. I assumed it would be obvious, but…"

"I'm sorry, Sir Cyril, but we were clearly instructed to treat your office as inviolate. I.. don't even know what the interior looks like, let alone where your magicians hide the transportation artefact."

"Oh well. I'm sure they'll come looking for us if it comes to it. How long do you think it will be until we hear from the castle?"

"Within the hour, I would say. You're welcome to avail yourselves of the facilities in the meanwhile."

"Very kind of you." Sir Cyril gets up, and Faceoff and I take a step to the side to allow him to sweep past. He gets most of the way to the door and then stops, half turning back. "Oh, one last thing. There aren't any… Morris Men in town, are there?"

"It's not the solstice yet, so I doubt that any troupes other than the Queen's Own are here. Do you wish to speak with them?"

"No, I think I'll avoid them, thank you. Creepy bunch." He turns away, opens the door and strides out of the room. Faceoff follows him, and I take a moment to tip my nonexistent hat to Mr Turner before leaving myself and firmly closing the door behind me.

Sir Cyril and Faceoff surreptitiously check the surrounding corridors for locals before huddling with me. Since he's 'the boss' Sir Cyril gets to go first.

"Do either of you have a clue who this 'Queen' is?"

I shrug. "My first guess was Morgana le Fay. She called herself a queen, used magic and has been uncharacteristically quiet for a while. No record of her using beast people, but it would be well within her abilities."

Sir Cyril's lips take on a thoughtful cast. "How about Circe? She was a queen, uses magic and is on record as using beastmen."

Ah… "She also has no real ties to Britain or any recent interest in ruling humans."

He regards me for a moment. "What's the real reason you don't think it's her?"

"Because she's spent the last month or so living in my mountain after swearing off supervillainy and burying the hatchet with Wonder Woman. I talked her into… Pursuing other projects."

He bows his head slightly for a moment. "I suppose that establishes her alibi. Faceoff?"

"I've never even met a magician. How hard is it to make an animal into a person?"

What did.. Miss Shimmer.. say about it? "It's easy to do a bad job where they go mental after a few days, but a full transmutation takes a lot of skill and power. It's not something some random street magician could do. Familiars get pretty clever, but they don't change shape. And they can be a point of vulnerability which I doubt that any high-end magic user would want."

Faceoff looks down at his carbine for a moment. "Could we beat a magician like that?"

"Can and have before. But I don't think we should think about this as a fight."

Sir Cyril nods. "He's right. First priority is getting home. Second is gathering information. Actually picking a fight with a magician-queen and all of her forces is something we should be looking to avoid."

I nod. "Avoid for today. We can always come back."

Faceoff shrugs. "Alright. What was that about Morris dancers?"

"Had a fight with a Morris dancer from around here a while ago. He got away, and he probably got a good enough look at me that he could identify me if he saw me again."

"Um." I blink. "A.. Morris dancer?"

"They're like English ninjas. I've met some who know thirty ways to kill a man with a handkerchief."

My mouth sort of moves by itself for a few moments while I try to make sense of that pronouncement. "I… Have seen Morris dancers dancing. They.. didn't strike me as-."

"They don't do that sort of thing where other people can see it. You have to go a long way into the countryside to see it, and if you don't know the right people when you do you're in a lot of trouble. I'm expecting these 'Queen's Own' to be her assassins more than they're a dance troupe."

"Alright, mental as that sounds." I take a step back. "I suppose we're just waiting to hear from the castle, then."

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Embattled 12

next

26th October

22:19 GMT

"Oh aye. Seen 'em around once or twice. Folks from another world."

The large grey… Individual I'm presently sharing the courtyard's brazier with nods companionably. Human-equivalent intelligence, though whether or not they're mentally specialised I can't tell as yet. He's not quite my size and considerably less than my mass. Stronger? Weaker? He isn't a new god equivalent, I'd feel it easily if he was instinctively shaping local magic. But I'd only feel bound spells if they were strong and active, at least without doing something that he might feel.

"Do they come here frequently?"

"Dun't roightly know. No reason for them to tell me." Fair point, I suppose. "Never seen 'em bring hobgoblins with 'em, 'fore you. Your master a wee bit higher up than the usual 'visitors'?"

A capacity for reasoning and inquisitiveness. Not a pure weapon species, then. And.. apparently, he's a hobgoblin. And that's a wrought iron brazier he's holding his hands out to in a stable area full of iron. If he has any fae blood in him he's had a few upgrades made.

"Oh, different people have different preferences. Sir Cyril wouldn't dream of coming somewhere like this without me."

Well. It's true. Even in the bad old days when he ended most evenings in a drunken stupor, Sir Cyril's destructive tendencies were all inwardly directed. I imagine that if he'd found out about the Caligula Club he'd have bravely stormed the place and been quietly killed.

"That roight? Interestin' way ah doing things."

"Oh yes. Apparently, he's never had a meat shield better than me."

"'Meat shield'? Hah!" He grins. "Not too far off the truth there, I reckon." He shifts in place a little. "Course… My days in the regiment are well behind me."

I raise my eyebrows in polite inquiry. "Injury?"

"Nah, though you're a gent for saying so. Uuuurgh. Can't keep up with the young'uns at my age. Still, long as I can keep myself useful they won't break me up for spares, aye?"

I'm probably being speciesist thinking this, but I honestly can't tell the difference between him and the others. Not that they're identical, I just can't tell what the signs of age are in their kind.

"Have you got any idea how long it takes to get a message to the castle and back? Not that you're not splendid company, but I doubt that Sir Cyril will want to hang around."

"Ah, yes. Doesn't do to trouble the gentry, does it?"

Not seeing any fear there, just an acknowledgement of a commonly known fact. That's rather the problem with having a warrior race as personal servants: they can slap a heck of a lot harder than you can. I wonder how they're kept obedient? Loyalty geas or cultural conditioning? On the other hand, if the Queen really is a powerful enough magic user, maybe they save their fear for her? Haven't seen anyone lower down the food chain using the stuff… The difference between aristocrats and royalty, perhaps?

"He's fairly even-tempered outside of a proper fight." I shrug. "But why take unnecessary risks?"

"Well." He thinks for a moment. "If they've set a quick runner, or an 'orse on empty roads, no more than a half-hour. Castle gate ull let someone from here roight on through. Time back depends on-."

From nowhere comes the loud clatter of charging hooves and the clacking of metal-rimmed wheels on cobbles.

"Ah." My companion takes a step backwards towards the entrance to the stable-proper. "Might be wise to fetch your master prompt-loike."

I nod as the sound grows louder, taking small steps towards the servants' entrance but keeping my eyes firmly on the yard's street entrance. I wonder what manner of creature would be so readily identifiable? Would a queen who uses fae creatures as foot soldiers bind unicorns? A princess was mentioned, so I doubt she'd attract them by conventional meansoh my word!

The horses don't come through the gate. They -somehow- run at full charge out of the fucking drinking trough right beside me, scales gleaming and manes dripping. Kelpies, of course. The other fae horse. Who can apparently pull carriages far too big to have come out of that trough through it with no trouble at all, and who are now pulling it around in a circle while giving me a decidedly unfriendly eye.

What's a good hobgoblin to do?

I turn away and hurry back inside. This part of the building is a little more sized for larger folk, and I hardly have any trouble navigating past the back office staff. Let's see, right, foyer, grand lounge…

Sir Cyril is having a polite chat with one of the local club members, an untouched wine glass on the table in front of him. Faceoff stands behind him with his arms folded, his position mirrored by the other fellow's guard. Hope he's found out something useful. I take a quick look around to see if anything of note has changed, then walk directly towards my 'master'.

"…always going to be a bit of a problem. In my experience, isolating them from their leaders for a bit and then offering them a token concession or two is the best way to handle it."

Hm. Ethnically homogenous. Some tanned skin, suggesting Roma heritage. Nothing darker. No blonde hair, either. Black, brown and red only.

"A concession!" The other man looks almost comically horrified. "But if word got around-."

"Then don't let it. Invite a few neighbours around when you hang the ringleaders and they won't say a thing."

"I suppose. Still… It sticks in the craw."

"Needs must when the Queen drives. Something amiss, Grayven?"

He doesn't look up as he asks.

"I believe that your carriage has arrived, Sir Cyril. Kelpie-driven, apparently."

"My word." His companion looks suitably impressed. "They must want to speak to you in a bit of a hurry."

"And it wouldn't do to keep them waiting." Sir Cyril pushes his chair back and rises, striding towards the 'member' route to the yard. "Good evening to you."

I let Faceoff follow at his heels while I bring up the rear. I'm not really sure that I'll fit in even quite a large carriage, let alone be conveyed in one without crushing it. I'm hoping the same magic that lets them take shortcuts through-.

"'Hang the ringleaders'? What the fuck was that about?"

"That was about convincing him not to decimate them. And mind your manners; you're my bodyguard, remember."

Sinestro, patch me through to their radios.

Done, Corpsman.

The large grey fellows are hobgoblins, no iron vulnerability that I could notice. There's a standing military force of them, and they're definitely human equivalent in intelligence. The one I spoke to lacked the fear of his 'betters' that the human servants have. What did you get?

"Hereditary aristocracy controls just about everything. 'The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate' in… Blasted deed." Story there. "The rest of the country doesn't look anything like as nice as this city does. More like medieval than early modern. Didn't get the Queen's name, but she's ruled for at least three generations and probably more."

"It's Morgan le Fay." Sir Cyril doesn't stop walking, but his rhythm does change noticeably and I give the back of Faceoff's head a confused stare. "There was a painting on the wall with her name on it."

Morgan? A bloke?

I don't remember that from… All of those cartoons I watched growing up.

"No, it's old French."

Oh. French. That explains it.

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Embattled 13

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26th October

22:26 GMT

Of course.

It's bigger on the inside.

I'm still taking up one entire bench, mind, but at least there's room for the other two to sit without me crushing them. Sir Cyril taps on the inside of the door, then there's a slight lurch as the carriage accelerates.

"It's not just the kelpies." Sir Cyril's jaw looks pensive, but his helmet still obscures the upper part of his face. It makes reading his exact mood rather tricky. "The coachman was fae as well."

I nod. "Oh? It fits the theme." I feel a slight tug, then… The view outside the windows becomes one of green-tinted water. That's what it feels like? "I did spot that there wasn't any iron on the coach. What sort of fae?"

"It's hard to tell. A boggun, probably. They're hard working and loyal, as long as their employer holds up their end of the bargain."

Faceoff stares moodily out of the window. "When did this become my life?"

Sir Cyril purses his lips, inclining his head slightly. "Something you want to share with the rest of us?"

I glance out of the window as some sort of eel swims past. Faceoff looks at Sir Cyril, probably trying to work out if he's taking the piss or not. "Do you actually know what I do?"

"Yes. You used to be in the Parachute Regiment, now you work in a fishmonger's in-."

"No, not that. And how do you know about that, anyway?"

"I like to keep an eye on our community. Particularly the elements that look like they might go on a shooting spree."

"What, so you don't shoot people yourself but you don't mind other people doing it?"

"I mind other people doing it. But I've got better things to do than spend time stopping people like you doing it when the people they're shooting to an extent have it coming. And while I'd prefer them to be tried and arrested, I'm not exactly broken up about Triad people traffickers being washed up with on the beach with holes in their heads."

I raise my eyebrows slightly? "Really? You know, if the fishmonger thing doesn't work out-?"

"But that's the problem, isn't it?" He ignores me. "I understand men with guns. I trained for that. And I know criminal networks. I don't know.. fucking.. f-"

"Language."

"-airies." I try not to smile. "I mean, how do you even get involved in this?"

Sir Cyril shrugs. "Do this long enough and you tend to run into it. The.. magic and other strange things are out there, and if you don't die you'll learn to cope. My dad showed me a few things when I was a boy, and if you actually treated those people you meet in The Time in a Bottle as useful contacts rather than as ridiculous morons then you might learn something."

"On Apokolips, this sort of stuff just comes with the territory. So your enemy is a different shape this time, so what? If it's worth shooting a gangster for then it's worth shooting a hobgoblin for. You know. As above, so below."

"I suppose you've got a point." He taps his left heel against his bench. "And at least I know I made the right choice not joining the Met's armed response unit after I left the army."

Sir Cyril shifts around awkwardly so that he can look Faceoff full on. "What makes you say that?"

"The Met work for the Home Office. Right now, Grayven's g-elves are grabbing everyone with any power in the Home Office. And if they miss anyone, armed response units are going to get ordered to attack the g-elves, aren't they?"

I shake my head. "I'm not worried either about or for the police. We've got unparalleled strategic mobility, they've got London traffic. By the time they've set up anywhere, we should be done."

"Well…" Sir Cyril leans back. "Unless Morgan le Fay sends in her hobgoblins."

"Then that's what we have to-" Another tug, and water streams off the exterior of the carriage as the kelpies trot out into a courtyard. "-ensure doesn't happen.

I lean down to peer out of the window, and a rather sharply dressed courtier with… Yes, cat eyes and ears peers back. That's most likely Frimost. The carriage comes to a halt a short distance from him. What little I know about this sort of thing suggests that someone should be opening the door for us, but that isn't happening.

"Ah. Sir Cyril? Which of us opens the door?"

"A footman, or the coach driver."

"So do I wait, or just open it myself?"

"I don't think it will hurt my credibility if you do."

"Right then." I reach across the carriage and take hold of the door handle, which… Doesn't move. I push a little harder. Yield to my Purpose!

The door sort of.. spins, the force from my hand ripping the hinges out of the structure of the carriage. As my hand stops the door keeps going, flying across the courtyard while the handle remains in my hand. The boggun coachman who is standing right next to the door takes a slightly nervous step backwards and looks to Frimost for guidance.

I lean forwards and extricate myself as delicately as possible, handing the handle to the boggan. "Sorry."

"Quitealrightm'lord." He shuffles back a little to give me space. "Meaningtohavethatlookedatanyhow."

Sir Cyril steps out after me, and I step to the side to allow him to take the lead. Frimost appears to have no special interest in any one of us, his eyes darting from point of interest to point of interest without settling anywhere. Not very cat-like, but I suppose that he isn't either. Sir Cyril gives Faceoff -really need to find out what his name is- a moment to extricate himself as well, then strides towards Frimost.

"Sir Cyril Sheldrake, here to see Queen Morgan le Fay. Is your queen at home?"

"Hmmmrm. She might be." He looks us over once more while I look around the courtyard for avenues of attack. Four solid walls, a heavy locked gate presumably to let the carriage out, and a door behind Frimost which I assume allows invited guests into the castle living areas. "But I'm not sure that she's at home to you."

"If there's some courtesy that I've missed, then she has my most sincere apologies."

"Oh, please. Armour? No suit? Openly displayed weapons? This isn't a mistimed visit. You're not with our regular visitors at all. Taken the Caligula Club by storm, perhaps?"

Rats.

Sir Cyril is unfazed. "Alright, but I would still like to discuss matters with the queen."

"No.. you.. wouldn't. But if you follow me I'll take you to Princess Morgana. She's in a mood to be entertained, I think." He turns away from us and starts to walk towards the castle door, which opens as he approaches. "This way, if you please."

Sir Cyril waits for a moment, though whether due to proper comportment or to give me a chance to interject I can't tell. Then, at a pace slightly slower than that of our escort, he follows him up the steps. Faceoff checks our surroundings again, earning a head-tossing from the closest kelpie as the boggan tries to lead them away. I give him a slight gesture in the direction of the door with my left hand, and with the carbine clasped to his chest and ready to be pointed at a target at a moment's notice he marches after Sir Cyril.

That carriage was what they use to escort visiting dignitaries, and yet I was able to destroy the door without specifically meaning to. Overspecialisation? Good against direct attack but bad against subversion? Morgaine-. Morgan, whatever, is a name, but I've got no way to assess how powerful she is compared to people I've already killed. And she's clearly had some time to dig in. Then again, there's a functioning civilisation here, with elite armies and nobles who are actually involved in running society. Could be someone I can work with.

I might get more out of this than I expected.

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Embattled 14

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26th October

22:49 GMT

Hmm. Yes. I can feel her.

Not a lot of blatant magic on display. The magic lights are dim, but I imagine that is because the castle is in its night cycle and the queen doesn't want her circadian rhythms to get messed up. But nonetheless, the one who raised this castle has woven her power through every brick, every furnishing. Even with New God technology, I don't have this degree of penetration into the fabric of Challenger Mountain. It's almost godly. I can feel the pressure of it. She almost certainly knows that I'm here and what I am.

We don't appear to be taking a direct route anywhere. Either that, or our host is on the move for her own convenience and we're trailing behind. Is Frimost showing off the place in an attempt to impress us? Faceoff is pretty much just checking the corners for potential attackers -must remember to teach him to check up more- and then ignoring the rest as a distraction. Sir Cyril is looking at points of interest, but I think he's just being polite. He's probably seen plenty of 'working' castles, and his own has been significantly upgraded in recent centuries. His armour's probably buzzing slightly from the surrounding arcane energy but when you can't feel it directly that sort of thing is far less impressive; a substitute for a technologically primitive people.

From a door ahead I hear a soft thump, and sort of.. almost frenzied carpet-shuffling noise. Frimost grins as he glances back at us. "I believe that Her Highness is ready to receive you now."

Sir Cyril nods as the sounds continue. "Good of her. Lead on."

Frimost turns as he reaches the door which appears to be the source of the sound, and extends his right hand to it. "Presenting Her Highness, Princess Morgana of Camelot." He pushes the door open, then steps smartly in and to the side. "Princess?"

Sir Cyril follows him in through the door, stopping in apparent surprise at something he's seeing. "Ah-." A moment later he remembers that we're behind him and steps further inside to allow Faceoff and myself-.

Huh.

A youngish woman in a green dress with a black bodice is currently sitting astride a rolled-up carpet, flailing at it with a carpet-beater. That would be odd by itself, but added to the sight is the fact that the carpet roll is flying around the room and appears to be trying to buck her. Her face is-. I mean, if she were younger I imagine that she'd be laughing or screaming, but as it is she just looks sort of… Annoyed. And mildly annoyed at that, as if the animated rug isn't worth her time and she's just going through the motions.

Frimost leans back slightly to around a flailing carpet tail. "Oh, Princess?"

"Mungh." She takes a firm grip around the carpet with both legs, raises her carpet beater above her head and-. It transmutes into a sword as she swings it downwards, slicing into the carpet roll's 'head'. It jerks, shudders and then falls from the air. Princess Morgana herself remains in the air as it hits the stone floor and unrolls, filling the space in the centre of the room, the wounds it took in the farcical struggle still visible on the weave. Morgana then slumps through the air back to ground level, eyes passing over the three of us without any hint of interest until they reach Frimost. "What?"

"Guests, Highness. You sent me ahead of your mother's coachman?"

Wait, we were supposed to wait? I mean, I'm still sure that Morgan knows that we're here anyway, but this could get rather tedious if we're being used for local dominance games.

"Oh." She frowns for a half-second, then stares moodily at Sir Cyril. "Who are you?"

Sir Cyril manages a reasonable bow, despite his armour. "Cyril Sheldrake at your service, your Highness."

She continues to stare at him, then returns her gaze to Frimost. "Why did I want you to bring him here?"

"You did not elect to share that information with me, Highness. Perhaps you thought that you might find him amusing?"

She looks away, shrugging disinterestedly. Then she schleps towards a thickly upholstered chair and thumps herself into it. "I'm not finding much amusing right now."

"I have observed -if you'll forgive me for saying so- that you usually find everything amusing or nothing."

"Oh." She looks away. "I don't feel like being amused."

Sir Cyril takes a hesitant step towards her. "Your Highness, I want to speak to someone about relations between Britain and this wor-."

"Yes, the bounty on Zond is still outstanding, and it can be claimed by submitting any reasonably recognisable body part. Yes, Mother's in fine health and no, I'm not interested in marrying you."

"Er-. Alright." Sir Cyril pauses, clearly not sure how to deal with her attitude. "I'm afraid that I'm new at representing Britain to foreign powers. Do I need to present documents to you or to the queen?"

"Oh please. You don't represent them." Frimost looks just a little smug at her pronouncement. "You don't have enough ghosts around you to be from their government, and you don't smell of that ritual geomantic magic they like using so much." She leans forward, looking slightly more alert. "You're actually a knight, like my brother was."

Not sure how much of a compliment being compared to an inbred utopia-killer is, and even less sure… Wait. Wasn't there a version of Mordred in Seven Soldiers of Victory? Some sort of… Undead thing? Most of the creatures I've seen so far have been traditional fae, not Sheeda pseudo-fae, so… Probably not the same Mordred..? Maybe Mordred used to be a very common name or something.

"I.. do my best."

"And what brave deed did you perform to earn your spurs?"

"Ah. That's been a spot of confusion for a lot of people. I call myself 'knight' but I've never actually been knighted."

"You haven't?" Her mouth morphs into a grimace. "Are you a peasant in disguise?"

"No, I'm actually an Earl." He is? "Because I adopted the name 'knight' as a declaration of my intent to live up to the highest ideals of nobility and chivalry, people often assume that that's my rank in the peerage. It isn't. I don't usually like to make a big deal about it. I did get an audience with Queen Elizabeth after I defeated Springheeled Jack and avenged my father, but I do what I do because it's right, not because I'm under a feudal obligation to do so."

She sits back, crossing her legs. "So why are you really here, Lord Sheldrake?"

"I've had to deal with people from here before, in my professional capacity. We're having a professional disagreement concerning the direction of the British government back on our side, and I want to make sure that we're not about to have a second front open up. I'd also like to make sure that none of the people we're looking for are planning on coming here."

"'Professional disagreement'? Are you a traitor to the crown, Lord Sheldrake?"

"No. If certain people have acted outside the laws of the land, it is perfectly legitimate to bring them to justice. Even if they think you shouldn't."

"And you just want us to be neutral?"

"That's all we're asking."

She exhales, pouting as she does so. Then she looks away from him. "And what does that get us?"

"What would you like to get out of it?"

"Machinery, magic books, serfs and the crown of Britain."

"We can certainly do the first two. I'm afraid that Britain abolished serfdom about nine hundred years ago, and offering you the crown is a bit outside my remit."

She looks back, frowning. "If you don't have serfdom, what are you doing with all those people we've already sent you?"

I see Lord Sheldrake's right hand clench into a fist. "What they did to them is what they're being arrested for. You have my sincere apologies and I will be happy to discuss things in full once they've settled down a bit back home, but right now we need-."

A tremendous gong noise echoes through the castle. I actually wince a bit, and Frimost hisses as he covers his ears. Morgana looks fully alert for the first time since we came in here.

"Mother's calling."

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Embattled 15

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26th October

23:05 GMT

Tottering on metre long wooden legs, Princess Morgana's chair somehow manages to make it up the steps up the inside of the tower without dropping her. Frimost is just ahead of her, and I can just about hear him-

"Presenting her highness, Princess Morgana of Camelot."

-as she makes it through the exit and onto the balcony. Lord Sheldrake is just behind her, at what I imagine he thinks is a safe distance if she takes a tumble. And yes, there's someone powerful up ahead.

"Her guest, Lord Cyril Sheldrake. And escort."

Lord Sheldrake exits the corridor without any other fanfare, and Faceoff emerges into the open air a moment later. Alright then, let's see-

You could just have me scan them, Corpsman.

-what she looks like. Yes I could, except that in her place of power she would almost certainly feel it and that would blow your cover. I don't think that I'll be able to pretend to be dumb muscle before a magic user of her reputed power, but I can at least disguise my precise advantages.

Reasonable.

I step out into the night sky and ah. Now I see why she wanted us to join her here. There must be at least a thousand fully kitted out hobgoblin soldiers down there, along with a cluster of humans who I presume to be officers or mages. And at the far end of the causeway is a gate. Not the Gate-gate; it's a good deal smaller and the hobgoblin block is forced to break into lines as they prepare to pass through. The numbers wouldn't be a problem in the medium term, but they would cause a lot of casualties passing through into a modern city. Exactly how much would depend on how physically powerful they actually are, but I don't really want Justice League interference during the reconstruction.

Hm.

"Impressive sight, aren't they?"

I tear my eyes away from the small army and look at our host. Queen Morgan le Fay is standing at the tip of the promontory overlooking the causeway, her daughter's chair parking itself a little way away while Sir Cyril stands just behind her. She looks quite a lot like her Justice League animated counterpart, gold-coated plate armour decorated with a purple cloak and green helmet plumes. Some effort has been made to make the faceplate resemble the face beneath, but I'm guessing that the full body coverage means that her physical body is just as decayed as it was in Justice League Animated.

Lord Sheldrake turns away from her to look down at the assembled throng. "I don't know enough about them to assess them."

Naturally, she isn't talking to me, so I take another moment to take in the hobgoblins' equipment before returning to my station behind Lord Sheldrake. No guns, but I am seeing a preponderance of shields, cudgels and a sort of heavy knife. The hobgoblins are wearing heavy armour, but that doesn't look like a spree-killing force. It looks like a medievalist's attempt at riot police.

"Strong enough to secure the centre of London against anything that could be sent against them within a few days." She turns around to look directly at him. "I received a most curious message less than an hour ago. My relationship with the government of Britain has always been moderately awkward, given that I claim to be their legitimate queen. And yet less than an hour ago they requested that I aid them by sending a military force into their territory."

Lord Sheldrake just nods.

"When I felt the portal in the Justinian Club activate, I thought that they were sending a representative to explain the situation in full. Except that not even an hour later another representative arrived, this time through the Marble Arch gate."

Marble Arch was used as a portal for a distraction attack during one of her arcane theft campaigns. Official records of the event say that it was sealed. I didn't pay it much attention because I didn't know about this place, but I suppose if they sealed it then it makes sense that they would know how to unseal it.

"Should I assume that you would rather that I didn't interfere?"

"That would be an accurate assumption, your majesty."

She raises her right gauntlet to her mask and taps her right forefinger against the metal. "Would you like to know what they've offered me?"

"Do you intend to have us bid against one another?"

"It does seem that it is in my interests to do so."

"You've got a lot of hobgoblins down there, but it won't be enough. Even if you stormed central London right now, all you'd achieve is a lot of death. You couldn't hold it, your force would be wiped out by the counterattack and then you wouldn't be able to hide what you've got here any longer."

"Opening with threats? Not the wisest course of action for one standing in my city."

"I'm just telling you what will happen."

"I don't think you understand how desperate you've made them."

"Fairly desperate I'd imagine, if they're talking to you. But it still won't work. With all the information we put into the public domain-."

"There are ways around that."

"In your day, certainly. In modern times, the internet-."

"I know what the internet is. Quite aside from the fact that I can come and go as I please, I've been sending geas-bound servants to wait on the members of the Caligula Club for decades." That would explain the loyalty. I'll have to check that, of course. "And they report back to me." She lowers her right hand. "The Masonic branch of their alliance will abandon the sybaritic part to assuage the public fury as easily as a salamander abandons its tail. They will then use the institutions of state to rebuild the nation in their image."

"Will they now."

"I'm sceptical. On the other hand, I only stand to benefit from Britain's disarray. If all contenders to the throne exhaust themselves fighting one another, it will be far easier for me to return, destroy those few who remain standing and take my rightful place as queen."

"Are you aware that the Queen of Britain is essentially a figurehead for an elected government?"

She holds out her left hand, green.. symbols forming in the air around it. "How long do you think it would take me to work around that restriction?"

Hm. I don't hate the idea. If I release what I have on the royal family, we could probably slide her into the job. She is British royalty. If she were appropriately advised-.

No no no. This isn't Kahndaq. Or Apokolips. We're not trying to create a ruling New God elite here, we're just trying to fix a few things. No subversion, nothing that would ruin our work if it came into the light. Circe has eaten humble pie, been significantly depowered and now she's making herself useful. Morgan just wants to seize control because it's what she does. For goodness sake, they still have serfdom here. This isn't a step forward.

"Long enough for Britain to unmask you." Queen Morgan makes a fist with her left hand as Lord Sheldrake decides to continue his confrontational approach. "But, alright; you could make things difficult. What do you want?"

"An open gateway; free passage between our worlds for myself and my retainers."

"We might-."

"I haven't finished." She looks out, past the causeway and into the city. "Artefacts of power and arcane lore. Particularly anything relating to-" Green fire appears around her hands for a moment. "-Merlin."

"We… Might be willing to trade. I can't promise you things I don't personally own."

"And an agreement that my daughter will marry into the royal family, in the fullness of time becoming queen."

Lord Sheldrake shakes his head, but I think I detect a faint smile. He's not taking that part seriously. "We don't organise-."

There's a tremendous crash from a tower on the far side of the causeway as its door explodes outwards, smashed from its moorings as a hobgoblin armsman goes sailing through it and off the battlement.

Through the resulting dust stalks Derek Kelly.

"Queen Morgan. You appear to be negotiating with the traitors. Would you care to explain why?"

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Embattled 16

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26th October

23:09 GMT

Queen Morgan makes a small circling motion with her right hand, catching the projectile hobgoblin in a gust of air and conveying him safely back to ground level. Now, with conventional super strength that would be too little too late: the force of the blow alone would have mashed his organs. But Major Kelly works like Bruce Willis's character from Unbreakable; he isn't super strong all of the time, he just scales up to whatever obstacle is in his way. The hobgoblin is clearly hurt, but not mortally.

"Because this is my country and I do what I want here. And I do not approve of one of my guests assaulting my staff."

Lord Sheldrake inclines his head slightly. "Major Kelly."

Kelly glares in response. "Traitor. And Grayven. And the serial-killing fishmonger."

Faceoff raises his gun slightly. "Sir."

Queen Morgan bows her head slightly. "I may not know exactly what is happening on the other side of the gate, but I imagine that it's more of a concern to you than it is to me. And since I doubt that either of you would willingly offer me more than the other, we're at something of an impasse."

Kelly doesn't seem overly concerned. "Only until I kill them." I smile, and draw my daisho. "Your plot is already failing. Enough senior civil servants made it to well defended bunkers to maintain the government, and we're working on breaking Castle Baaleskine's defences. Once they've fallen, we'll notify the rest of the Security Council of your coup attempt and call in the Justice League to arrest you."

Got all the ministers, then. Well done Mr Head.

Lord Sheldrake holds up his empty hands. "Kelly, we don't have to kill anyone."

"It will be quicker if you don't resist. Do you really think for a moment I'd let an alien overthrow the British government and replace it with his puppets?"

"Kelly, have you seen what those people were doing?"

"Yes. And I've seen the Justice League's intelligence on Apokolips. I know which is worse."

"Those aren't the only-."

"Stop talking to me." He bends his legs slightly. "Your father was a good patriot. For his sake I'll make sure no one finds out what you did."

Lord Sheldrake raises his hands slightly in a gesture of appeal pointed at Queen Morgan. She tilts her head to the side. "Trial by combat is an accepted way of settling otherwise insoluble disagreements in Camelot. And I usually find it somewhat a..-" Her mask locks onto the Sword of the Fallen. "-musing. Where did you get that sword?"

I smile. "Right of Conquest, your majesty. I took it out of an enemy's hand and then decapitated him with it."

"Hmm." Her files say that she's a magic artefact magpie. And if you're not used to interfacing with Apokoliptian soul-based technology it is the most interesting thing here. Bit surprised she didn't notice it sooner. Ignoring the 'help' or was the sheath interfering with her exotic senses? "And where did he get it from?"

"John Constantine."

She doesn't say anything for over a minute, and I'm actually slightly concerned that Kelly is going to jump the gun and leap across. I'm confident that with power rings functioning I can beat him, but I'm not certain that Lord Sheldrake and Faceoff would survive the experience and I'd rather keep them alive.

"Is he any relation to Kon-Sten-Tyn?"

Lord Sheldrake looks from me to her. "Who is that?"

She continues to stare at me. "Do you know?"

I nod. "After Mordred and Arthur killed one another, Merlin was desperate for a king who would stand up for paganism against the encroaching Christian hordes. His second choice turned out to be a fellow by the name of Kon-Sten-Tyn. Decent swordsman and commander, and he had a rare talent for magic. But I don't think he can have been a direct ancestor; he ritually sacrificed both of his sons to extend his own life."

"No." Morgan sounds almost pleased. "Just those sons he sired on powerfully magical women. His mortal sons and daughters he left to their own devices." She leans forward slightly, as if imparting a great secret. "Do you know how he died?"

Um… Was a.. while ago I read that copy of Hellblazer. "Converted to Christianity as a ploy to corrupt the early church, ended up in a monastery with… Merlin's severed but still living head, and… Got carried off by a dragon and recognised as a minor saint?"

"Nearly. He took control of the dragon and flew here. His work done, he decided to sire a new son to kill and sacrifice. Instead, I sacrificed him, and the daughter he sired-" She glances at Morgana. "-lives still."

She's a Constantine?

Kelly leaps, covering the ten metres distance easily and landing lightly on the far side of the balcony. "Fascinating as I'm sure that is to people without anything better to do, I heard 'trial by combat' earlier. Can we start now?"

Queen Morgan stares imperiously at him. "I was going to offer my late lover's reanimated corpse to serve as your second. But if you're going to continue to abuse my hospitality, you can manage on your own."

"Yes. I can."

Faceoff raises his gun to his shoulder. "Go for it."

I shake my head. "Faceoff, he's invulnerable to conventional attack. That gun won't even distract him." I raise my eyebrows at Kelly. "How about we just make this one on one? I imagine that you want a rematch almost as much as I do."

"Actually, I don't care about you one way or the other. You're just another obstacle I have to kill."

I… What? "I… What? But I.. shoved you through that portal and injured you for the first time since you had that gem implanted."

"I'm a professional, not some American pro-wrestler. If you want histrionics then you should have stayed on the other side of the Atlantic."

That's it. Killing him. I'M A GOD YOU FUCK! DON'T TREAT ME LIKE A LOWLIE!

No. No, hang on. M'gann told me to be clear to the people around me about what I'm feeling and why. Otherwise, they can't stop being prats.

My smile probably doesn't look particularly genuine.

"I am mildly offended that you don't consider our previous fight special, but I will happily remind you of its significance. Lord Sheldrake, please step aside."

"But this won't solve anything. Whichever of you wins, all of the information is in the public domain. We already rescued people from the Caligula Club, and they'll be talking to everyone. You can't hush this up! The only way for Britain to keep working is for us to go with Grayven's plan and stop him if he turns out to be evil later."

Yeah, good luck with that, tin can man.

"No. It isn't. I'm going to kill him, then you and-" He glances at Faceoff. "-Darren." Oh, that's his name. "Then Queen Morgan is going to lend me her army and I'm going to defend my country. Get out of my way so you don't embarrass yourself."

I can hear Lord Sheldrake sigh. He walks aside. "Grayven, don't kill him if you can avoid it."

I breathe calmly in and out, eyes fixed on Kelly. "I'm not really sure how you plan on winning this. You got me before because your anti-weapon wards got my power rings. They work fine here, I've tested them. You can't fly."

"The only thing you've got that can hurt me is that sword."

"I'm reasonably confident that dropping you in a black hole counts as a 'win' for the purpose of this duel."

He reaches into one of his pockets with his right hand and pulls out a… Small stone? And crushes it to powder with his bare hand.

"A superior potential bearer has been detected." My yellow ring vanishes from my right hand with such force that it knocks my daiklave to the ground. "Identify yourself."

"Derek Kelly. Host of the Terror Thing."

back

Embattled 17

next

26th October

23:13 GMT

Fear. I haven't felt fear like this since Father-. My Corpus is My Temple!

Grh.

My armour's tron lines shift to orange as for the first time since I got my orange personal lantern back I start running on a single ring. For his own part, Kelly manifests construct armour that appears to be made of eye clusters and gaping mouths as the Terror Thing tries to create a construct body for itself.

Balls.

I grab my daiklave from the ground. Alright, how do I win this? He's now as fast as m-

Kelly lunges, eyes glowing brilliant yellow inside the duller yellow construct monster enveloping him. I swing my daiklave as I fly directly upwards, a small portion of his nightmarish construct parting around the blade.

-e, and can generate constructs. And if that's the Terror Thing from Hellblazer then he's probably a more powerful Lantern than I am. On the plus side, my habit of using Sinestro more than my orange ring means that he's got slightly less power left than I do. And he's got no experience, so even with Sinestro advising him h-

A metre wide beam of yellow light blasts upwards towards me and I'm forced to desperately jink and weave and frankly cross my fingers. A few momentary glancing hits, but nothing my armour can't cope with.

-im I should find forming constructs easier. I switch to lateral motion, giving him the worst possible angle for his shots as I fly over Camelot. Assuming that he can think clearly enough to even form constructs with the Terror Thing inside him. That said, if the thing survived an encounter with John Constantine it can't be completely stupid. I don't.. really remember what happened to it in the comics and I never thought to look into it here.

Ping.

Yes, okay, that's obvious now, but-.

There's another flare of yellow light behind me, and I look back to see Kelly lumber into the air with giant wing-constructs projecting from his back.

Hah. If Sinestro thought that I was bad, I can only imagine what he's saying to someone who creates constructs in order to fly.

Fly… Ah, fairly fast, actually. Mother Box?

Ping.

Boom tube.

Ping.

I watch as he comes on, his construct skin becoming more streamlined as he gets some sort of control over his ring. MY ring. Hm, probably won't work but I may as well try… I sheathe my daiklave, draw a blaster and shoot it at his left construct wing. Burn!

A bright yellow barrier manifests for exactly the half a second it needs in order to block my shot, allowing Kelly to continue flying at me untroubled by the attack. I risk another shot -same effect-, then step through the tube back onto the balcony and shut it down.

"Grayven-."

I return my blaster to its holster then raise my right hand to cut Lord Sheldrake off. Right, his wing constructs might be strong, but they didn't look agile. My original plan for dealing with Kelly involved slicing through his spine from behind, then digging the Eye of Zoltec out of him from behind while his arms were paralysed. And if I could still use the Garrick Formula I'd still give it a stab. But with access to constructs he can bypass his own spine to control his body or just grab me with construct arms. Construct arms would be less dangerous, of course…

What's Kelly up to?

Heh, he's looking for me with his eyes. He seemed to be the intelligent sort before. Is the Terror Thing making him more bestial? How-? Ah, there he goes. Monstrous construct eyes manifesting around him and locking onto me almost immediately. An FTL jammer might give me a cheap kill, but he doesn't seem like he's the sort to go for it. No, he's wheeling in the air and flying back. Twenty seconds, boom tube now.

Ping.

I run to the place where Kelly crushed his stone and scoop up as much as I can before diving through the tube, returning to my original location moments before Kelly slams into the balcony. And… Back to flying away from the city. And… Go for height as well. I want to see what this world looks like when taken in the round.

Kelly spots me almost immediately and… I generate gravity impeller constructs and accelerate away. I'll burn though power a little quicker… I pull my blaster back out of its holster and fire it directly back at him. He blocks each shot, but doing so is costing him ring power and only costs me blaster battery.

Modern Camelot is a decent sized place, by the standards set by their technology. And it's actually enclosed in a fortified wall. Makes me wonder if hobgoblins are used as labourers-. No, if that were the case I doubt that proto-union dispute Lord Sheldrake stuck his oar in on would have been resolvable in quite that fashion. They'd be good at open cast mining, but they're not exactly made for narrow tunnels.

The land beneath me is forested, and in other directions I can see fields crossed with roads. No tarmac, of course, but stone paved in the Roman style rather than the dirt tracks which historically characterised Britain's highways until the establishment of turnpike trusts during the nineteenth century. I suppose it's like Themyscira; they may have only primitive technologies but they've had all the time in the world and -given that the same woman is in charge- none of the social upheavals that would undermine infrastructure construction efforts.

I glance back and ah. Kelly has realised that he doesn't need to block attacks with constructs when he can just as easily block them with his body. An added set of dragonfly wings allows him to easily viff and keep his main source of thrust out of the line of fire. Distance between us appears to be slowly decreasing, but since I'm not 'fleeing' so much as 'running down the clock' the fear that might otherwise have come from a slowly-gaining unstoppable menace just isn't coming. Alright, he doesn't appear to be jamming FTL himself, so is a backstab actually possible? Leave that for plan B. Ring, analyse the stone dust I picked up.

Material is granite. Minor physical anomalies from expected material behaviour. Unable to identify source.

Magic?

Unable to confirm.

Fair enough. Hm. Alright. assimilate-.

"RAAAAGH!" Two construct arms -one a distorted human arm with eight fingers and the other a mass of mutating tentacles- rush towards me from Kelly! The hand snatches at me and I'm forced to roll in the air, losing forward acceleration in exchange for lateral motion! The long nail of the fourth finger scrapes along my armour, and my construct engines shimmer and weaken at its touch. And now he's gaining, marvellous. The arm curls back towards me, growing a fourth elbow as it does so. Ugh. I take a firm grip on the Sword of the Fallen, voluntarily reduce my speed further so as to make it overshoot and slash at its wrist. The construct frays from the stab and fades slightly-.

And the tentacle mass starts wrapping itself around my legs.

back

Embattled 18

next

26th October

23:16 GMT

I make another wild slash at the arm construct while I form buzz saw constructs and rather urgently try slicing through the strands wrapping themselves around my calves. The tendrils themselves are being projected from the centre of a circular and richly-fanged maw and.. given how resilient they're proving to be, I'm not eager to test their strength against my armour! Two sets of jaw-rings undulate and clamp against themselves in eagerness as the tendrils begin pulling me in!

I bend, grabbing a probing tendril with my right hand and very carefully slicing through it with the Sword of the Fallen. Hopefully these are all part of one large construct and it will-. No, it's a cluster of separate ones. Fast, stab, stab and pull! The construct tethers part, fraying and failing as I come free. I start to pull away from the monstrous maw once more, and turn away-.

The remains of the monstrous hand strike me full in the face, smashing me back into the mouths. Immediately, the teeth penetrate my environmental shield and start grating against my armour. I twist, wedging myself in the mouth tube with my feet pressed against the far side and my back against the other. Fine, my constructs aren't top quality. Let's see you overpower super strength!

More tendrils rise from the interior as the mouth extends above me, blocking my view of the exterior world. I stab with the Sword, slashing at the mouth's interior and severing the tendrils before they can get a grip on me. That done, I repeatedly stab at the interior of the mouth! Come on, fail, damn you!

The mouth undulates, attempting to draw me further inside. Ugh, I'm not even sure which way I want to go. Kelly must have caught up by now and there isn't actually a stomach down there. It's just-.

The mouth clamps down in all directions, new teeth sprouting and through the slashes I've already made I can see additional mass being added from the exterior. He's not trying to drag me anywhere, he's just going to use this construct to crush me!

Mrghh! Bracing girder construct. Mother Box, any chance of a boom tube?

Ping.

I don't think he'll be so generous. Ring, is FTL an option?

Yellow light presence too great for transition. Warp is available, but unwise.

AgH! The teeth underneath my back just.. spiked through into my skin. The ones pushing at my feet I can just kick to mist but my back is anchored in place. It hurts, and it'll only get worse as they push through my flesh. Fortunately, I'm tough all of the way through so it won't be quick, and if I twist-. Good, gone for the moment.

Raw construct force isn't-

The girder construct moans and starts to fracture.

-going to work here, so let's try something more orange. What sort of overlord doesn't have a giant monster in the basement? Ring, assimilate.

Identity theft in progress.

The yellow light around me dims as orange light filters into its structure. A little of the pressure falls away as the fact that I don't want to be eaten at all becomes more of a factor and the fact that some of the mason's victims were afraid of being eaten matters less. Hah, hooray for weaker constructs. And… Stab there and there, sheathe the Sword and grab and pull!

The side of the gullet comes apart, revealing a mess of mutant construct flesh, monstrous eyes and tiny arms and insect feelers. Right, grab. Ring, keep assimilating. Aerodiscs to full and GET OUT OF MY WAY!

Eyes burst, flesh is rent and the construct starts to collapse around me! As I start to gain momentum I reach down with my left hand to grab the Sword and thrust it ahead of me, cutting through the yellow construct and bursting through into the open air! I Stand Triumphant!

Very much better out than in. Mother Box, boom huruughh!

"Hello, Grayven."

Kelly's right hand is around my throat and slowly squeezing! I move my left arm to stab him with the Sword but he just grabs my left hand with his own. Guhh. It's not fast, but he will rip my head off like this. Ring, assimilate.

Unable to establish connection.

Transition?

Unable to comply.

Ring, make any progress with the dust?

Task suspended.

This is what I get for using Sinestro for everything for so long. Uhk! Assimilate that!

Energy absorption in progress.

"Urugh. R-hah." Kelly grins as he starts to push my left hand back towards me. "I don't know what you're doing, but it won't be enough. It's never taken me more than a minute to crush a man's throat."

Assimilate faster! I Stand Firm!

By your command.

The pouch containing the crushed stone shines brilliant orange for several seconds, and I feel Kelly's grip actually weaken.

"You're already… You're already in my grip. Banish the Terror Thing and you still can't get away.

"Ooh 're oo tr'n oo cnvnce?"

Because dangerous though this situation clearly is, I'm… Actually not afraid. All those fears in the Terror Thing are making the constructs strong, but my own aren't adding to it. Ring, radio Lord Sheldrake. Message: got any banishment gear?

Message sent.

"The Terror Thing is a mindless weapon. It serves me, now, and your weak attempt to damage our link won't stop me."

Oh no it isn't and oh no it doesn't and oh yes it will. Mother Box, boom tube behind him.

Ping.

BOOM.

A fraction of a second with less than total attention on me and I turn my left hand, release the Sword and pass it to my right.

And then I swing it through his right wrist.

And breathe! I gulp down fresh air while tossing aside the still gripping severed hand. He's backing off in the air even as I try a swing for his head and miss. Damn, he's wearing Sinestro on his left! Press on!

The Sword pierces Lynne's face-. No, it's just a construct blugh!

Kelly punches me with his remaining hand, generates another giant construct hand and throws me towards the ground!

back

Embattled 19

next

26th October

23:18 GMT

The shockwave of my landing probably ruins the field, but I ignore my surroundings in favour of cutting through the construct hand's fingers with the Sword. This was either a rushed job or powered by his own fears; it's human in shape and after the initial grab-and-slap didn't exert much force on me. It's just trying to keep me down rather than do anything likely to cause me lasting damage. Two fingers and it fails completely, letting me get to my feet.

Let's see… Engines, girder, a couple of assimilation attempts… Ring, how are we doing for power?

Ninety three percent remaining.

And those giant constructs must have cost him more than that. So as long as I nobble him if he tries to get my yellow lantern out to recharge… Would that occur to him? If the bloody Sinestro program required me to kill Green Lanterns, become a tyrant or achieve enlightenment then he-.

I dodge violently as a beam of yellow energy bursts through the clouds of dirt and blasts into the ground! Yes, yes! Burn power. Ring, can we tell how much he has left?

Assuming that he has not recharged since the fight began, his construct usage should leave him with around seventy percent full charge.

Uh. I'm not eager to get eaten another three times. Something else, then.

A hail of smaller yellow light bolts home in on my position, though not all that accurately. I hesitate to dodge, experimentally letting one hit me in the chest before I start an evasive pattern. Auh. Punched through my environmental shield easily enough, but my armour stopped it and it didn't sap my orange light effects. So: don't want to get hit by a whole -ow- swarm, but one or two aren't a problem.

Why aren't they all hitting?

Okay, yes; constructs can be a light speed weapon, but even a powerful lantern will usually only fire energy bolts at a couple of times the speed of sound. But even at that speed he's not that far away from me. I should be getting hit by most of these rather than the odd one. So why aren't I?

The dust is diffusing the orange glow around me. It doesn't matter how many construct eyes you've got if none of them can see your target. He's still not scanning. I create a humanoid construct of me and dim my environmental shield and yes, most of the shots start aiming at that instead of me. I have it stumble and big beam! Immediately I dim my environmental shield further, and hope that the additional dirt thrown into the air will conceal what's left.

Ring, passive detection only. Let me know if he calls the lantern.

By your command.

But what now? The Terror Thing is inhabiting his whole body. There's no one target I can strike to destroy it or banish it. Disabling him in one hit when his constructs are strong enough to hurl me back is a pipedream at best-.

Message received from Lord Sheldrake.

Kelly doesn't seem to be taking the bait, though I can see the yellow glow marking his location. Play.

I've got a charmed knife, but I doubt that it would pierce Major Kelly's skin. Do you need it?

Ah, for access to a hush tube. Response: get ready to pass it to me.

Message sent.

I might get a stab. But I'd have to hit his brain to neutralise him… Or would that just result in me fighting the Terror Thing? Or… I don't know exactly where in his body they stuck the Right Eye of Zoltec. I doubt that it would be in his arms or legs, so… Somewhere in his chest. It would make his organs invulnerable to being cut by its sharp edges so he wouldn't have to worry about that. … No, there are just too many places it could be for me to be able to reliably hit it. And I'm not sure what would happen if I did.

I'm.. coming up short here. Actually invulnerable people are a pain to fight. Another super tough lantern and I'd put my faith in my regenerative abilities in a high magic environment, but like this…

The Kelly blur glows brighter for a moment, and then yellow lights start shining from all around me. Some sort of.. construct warrior? I hope so, that would be a decent drain on his reserves. But if he's sending infantry in, I need to get out.

Think think think. It's still dark, there were woods over there and I'm not glowing significantly. Agh, no, can't transition with the Sword and I can't risk leaving it-. No, wait. A subterranean tunnel. I could transition myself, construct-tunnel back and drag it-. No, no, too risky. This sword can kill me far more easily than it can kill him.

Okay, got it. Two flying hologram generators. Send one towards the searchers that way projecting a faint orange me-shape. Are they reacting? Slightly, but there aren't any incoming shots yet. Fine. Boom tube behind him in two, one, now and send the second one through. I see the yellow light blast which destroys the projector, but the first holodrone is flying up through the dust while I use my aerodiscs to get as high as I dare…

Another yellow beam and he's looking in the wrong direction and gogogo! Move the boom tube to Lord Sheldrake and transmit 'throw it'! I fly at Kelly full speed, the weird translucent-monster-body-part armour he's coating himself with spotting me just a little too late. I lunge Sword first, piercing his defensive construct and slicing open his back… Think I severed his spine, not that he needs the use of his legs.

"A-urh."

Knife incoming.

Kelly's right hand is glowing as he manoeuvres away from me. I drop past him in the air, a construct reaching for the inbound knife as I slash at him again. I hit.. something, I can't really see as he fires a big beam at point blank rangeow-grrr-gahrrr-gah! That hurt, and I can feel the air against the left side of my body where the armour was burned away. But now I'm going to get him. Lunge.

He backs off again and puts up a barrier of cancerous tentacles. Which is fine. I flare with orange light to disguise my intent, dropping the Sword and leaving it to be conveyed by construct. To hold his attention I start striking the barrier with my bare fists. No Bastion Will Withstand Me!

I'm actually knocked back as the force of my punch overwhelmed both aerodisc and ring flight aura. Wrong approach of course. Rip and tear is the way. I grab and yank and the barrier starts to fail. Come on Kelly, you're the strongest weapon you have. Yes, good, he's coming back and preparing another beam.

Double backstab.

The construct-controlled Sword of the Fallen stabs him again, parting otherwise invulnerable construct and flesh. The blade then turns to widen the wound to allow Lord Sheldrake's knife to pierce Kelly as well.

And ring? Finish assimilating the crushed stone.

By your command.

"GRRAAAAAGHHH!"

This time I back away slightly, recalling the Sword of the Fallen but leaving the knife in place. Now focus on the-.

Absorption complete.

Kelly gasps, a disturbingly death rattle like sound as yellow mists violently exits his body, swirling around before clumping together above me to my right. Kelly shudders as the yellow light everywhere else flickers and fails. Ring's still on his finger, but without the Terror Thing-.

"Freeeeeeee!"

Ah. The Terror Thing.

back

Embattled 20

next

26th October

23:20 GMT

It's not yellow this time.

No, it's using its stored arcane power to generate a meat body. Or-. No, it's manifesting one, pulling itself into the material universe and switching its magic form for a fleshy one as it does so. Its surface is a mismatch of parts of the things its involuntary creators were afraid of: pallid, muscular flesh, a almost cartoonish version of a cancerous growth, the eyes of insects and imaginary demons. And other parts, things which could not be part of a living creature. I see brambles, rotting fish, razor sharp tin cans and I'm going to stop looking at it directly now.

The important parts are that it's growing and that Kelly is no longer supercharged.

"Ah-aaargh!"

And he still has a knife in his back.

I lunge at him again and he just about manages to dodge, my slash slicing through his mouth and the side of his face rather than piercing his brain.

And then the smell hits me. Burnt flesh -my own burnt flesh from the Thanagarian command carrier- and composting vegetative matter and human sweat and urine-. Ring, environmental shield to full.

By your command.

No, the smell's still there. Magic, then.

Kelly creates another Lynne construct, but that only really worked because I was surprised. I grab it around the head and crush it, then lunge again-.

Right into a construct of my father. Yes, him I'm afraid of, but even a strong construct doesn't have his advantages. One stab and he's disintegrating to nothing, then Kelly flies at me through the resulting yellow mist, his hands outstretched to grab my head!

I block with a construct shield and swing the Sword of the Fallen across his stomach. He shudders as his intestines begin slipping from the wound, but he still appears somewhat coherent. My shield fractures under his grip as I make a second slash at right angles to the first.

Then I stick my left hand into the resulting wound, grab a handful of organ meat and pull.

You know? It's not as bad when it belongs to someone else.

"GAAAAAAHH!"

But I haven't got the Eye, and the exterior wound is already closing up. Must have been implanted higher up. Kelly forms jet engine constructs and thrusts away RAGHH! Fuck! My armour took the thrust fine, but the left of my body isn't armoured right now and that really hurt! I try lifting my left arm but -ow- while I can I doubt it would take any weight.

Heal.

"Terror Thing!"

Heal.

Kelly has flown up in front of a major eye cluster, and it appears to be focusing on him. What's that fool trying to do now? It's clearly not going to fit back inside him.

Heal.

"I am your master!" Says the man whose boots are covered in his own shit. "You will obey me!"

Heal.

"I think not."

Heal.

Huh. Looks like some of those mouths can talk.

"I think-" Kelly reaches into one of his upper equipment pouches and pulls out-.

Wait, that's not it, is it? The Eye? I mean, okay, I couldn't check what the Blacks said about the chirurgery, but a pouch? That's a good way to lose it.

"-you'll change-."

I draw my blaster and shoot it. He catches sight of my motion and puts up a barrier, but right now he isn't using the Terror Thing's boost or channelling his own fears effectively. The barrier fails, and he doesn't quite get his body in the way fast enough to prevent the bolt hitting… I think it hit? Can't get a clear look.

"ByThePowerOfZoltecYouWillObeyMe!"

An uneven field of green light shines out from-. Right, need to do something about that. I form impeller nodes and blast towards him. Ribs, this time. The light shining onto the Terror Thing appears to be causing a couple of its pupils to dilate, but I'm not seeing any other change.

But just in case…

Kelly evades, a chunk of intestine falling off as his regeneration really gets going. Fine, don't care: without a supercharger and with less power than me I can kill him whenever. No, time to put the Sword of the Fallen to its intended purpose again. I Am Unstoppable!

I strike the Terror Thing… Well, some of its eyes and burst them apart, then carry on to its insides. Feh, yuk. Since this target isn't invulnerable, I lash out wildly, horribly coloured meat being sundered in all directions. I don't know if this thing has any sort of core for me to stab, but my best bet is probably to head towards the approximate centre of the mass. I Am Indefatigable!

"Weak creature of flesh, coming inside me-"

Father/Bill putting his hand/waving his cleaver on my shoulder/through another victim-. Feeble effort, beast.

"-only makes me stronger!"

Some sort of fear-magic. If I wasn't a god and in the process of cutting its innards out that might have made me feel quite unwell. If it had a power ring to back it up, I might have been forced out by a blast of yellow light. But my fears weren't used to create it, so the best it can do isn't good enough. In fact, now that I look I can intuit the magics holding together the various fear-filled delusions which make up the Terror Thing. I change from slashing wildly to slicing through them, and almost immediately I can feel the Thing start to weaken as the Sword's magics start neutralising it.

"You're small! You're weak!"

There's a point of convergence, the central knot holding it together as a unified being.

"All will cower before their innermost-!"

"I AM NOT SOME, DEMENTED TERRIFIED CHILD HELD AT THE MERCY OF THEIR OWN DELUSIONS!" FALL!

STABSTABSTAB!

"I AM A GOD!" FALL!

I strike the nexus, and it evaporates!

"RRRRRRRRRWWWWWWWWWWWW!"

"NOW GET OUT OF MY WAY!" NOW GET OUT OF MY WAY!

Meat explodes away from me, a titanic geyser of the Terror Thing's physical manifestation raining down across the blasted countryside. I'm grinning as I make eye contact with Kelly. "Would you like to yield now?"

"Never."

His left hand glows yellow-.

"A superior potential bearer has been detected."

Kelly has the presence of mind to keep his hand in a fist so that the ring can't physically leave him, but his flight aura gutters and fails. He tumbles in the air, falling towards the ground-

Lunge,

-and the Sword of the Fallen pierces the back of his skull.

back

Embattled 21

next

26th October

23:23 GMT

Heal.

Aaaaaand rest.

Heal.

I ignore the shuddering lumps of mutant flesh all around us as I lay Kelly on the ground on his front. The locals will have the sense not to eat that, won't they? Queen Morgan probably knows plenty about the safe disposal of formerly-living arcane components, and… Heck, Morgana said that was one of the things they wanted from trade with us.

Heal.

Ow.

Heal.

I'm bleeding from wounds in my back, and parts of the upper left side of my body are oozing. Not sure whether it's liquefied body fat, blood, or just ultra-tenderised body tissue suspended in pus. And I'm not going to check. Better just to bear the pain until I heal.

Heal.

I.. think.. maybe Mortalla can take bedtime story-reading duties tonight.

Heal.

I gingerly kneel down and pull Lord Sheldrake's knife from Kelly's back. The wound starts healing almost immediately. It was a bit of a long shot that he put it in his brain… Right. I pull the Sword of the Fallen out of his skull and shove the knife into the wound. I'm not.. sure that the Eye of Zoltec won't just consume it, but it should buy me a little time. Then I roll him onto his back.

Heal.

The yellow power ring bumps again into my right hand.

Heal.

"Corpsman-."

Heal.

"Oh, I'm your Corpsman now, am I?" I take a firm grip on the Sword and shove it into Kelly's manubrium. "Because it looked like I was a fling."

Heal.

"I programmed this ring to seek out people who inspired great fear. Major Kelly's use of that.. elemental creature misled-."

Heal.

"No, it didn't." I start hacking down Kelly's chest as blood pours from the wound. "It acted entirely in accordance with its programming. The Terror Thing was made of fear, and was far better at inflicting it than I am. It was literally made to do just that. And Kelly was close to your ideal follower: ruthless, loyal, selfless and determined. It did exactly what you meant it to."

Heal.

"Am I to take it that you are no longer interested in the use of my ring?"

Heal.

"You're to take it-" I stab the Sword into his spine and pull his ribs apart. It takes effort, but the Sword appears to be weakening his invulnerability enough to make it possible. "-like you should come up with a very good reason why I shouldn't switch over to using two orange rings." Now to start.. feeling around inside him.

Heal.

"That would be inefficient. The only benefit would be an expanded charge pool."

Heal.

Ah! A hard surface. Faceted. About twenty centimetres along its longest axis.

Heal.

"I value you for your experience. I'd still get that if you were a construct, I could focus my training on using the orange light and I wouldn't risk you going over to my enemy to give them a fighting chance ever again."

Heal.

Now, do I want to kill Kelly? Well, yes, obviously, but is that the most sensible thing to do in this situation?

I'm trying to convince Lord Sheldrake and company to go along with me, and I rather think that an uncharacteristic show of mercy… No, clemency, would be to my advantage. Without the Eye he's a negligible threat to me…

Heal.

I take a firmer grip on the Eye with my left hand and tug it from its mooring tissue without quite removing it from contact with him. Then I use my right hand to remove the Sword from the wound, returning it to its scabbard. Next, I reach for the knife in his skull and remove that as well. The last step is to carefully move the Eye to his exterior without breaking contact with his body.

Heal.

Huh. I'm actually starting to feel a little better myself. Kelly's father demonstrated the ability to share his resilience with people he touched. I suppose that I'm benefiting from its regenerative properties as well. I hold it pressed against his forehead with my left hand and sit back to watch his injuries knit themselves back together.

Heal.

"I suppose that two beings whose interests aren't identical can never completely trust one another."

"Oh don't even." His spilt blood appears to be more or less evaporating, and I hear a soft click as his sternum reconnects. "I'm using fear and establishing order and if you had any problem with the general direction of my activities you never mentioned it. As far as I know, that's what you want. Is it? Or is there some other cause you have neglected to mention?"

"I.. do believe that fear is the most efficacious way to establish order. You used fear as a tool. You do not have it as the centrepiece of your strategy."

"Do you think that Kelly would?"

"Inevitably, yes. Regardless of his initial thoughts, his bond with the Terror Thing would lead to him seeing the world in a particular way. If he followed my advice he would not have become completely monstrous, but he would have fit the mould I had for an ideal Corpsman rather better than you."

"Ah. Honesty." Kelly's chest is now in one piece, his severed hand is back, and.. head wound nearly gone. Just a moment or two more. "But you're missing something rather important."

"That you won?"

"Partially. And that I'm not your Corpsman. I'm not your soldier. As the only yellow ring wielder I was the Corps. I have to be able to take command level decisions with a clear mind. Raw fear-power might make me a better fighter, but it does not make me a more effective operative or leader. Some fear keeps people motivated. All of the fear and nothing else just paralyses them."

"I do not believe that I agree."

"Did Sinestro Fifty create you to empower someone who would carry on fighting Green Lanterns after his death, or was the plan to recruit more supporters for his anti-Green Lantern crusade? Did he program you in the expectation that he would still be around, or not?"

"I have instructions to follow in his absence, but… Now that I look, some of his criteria make slightly more sense if viewed through the lens of a man recruiting followers. Might I ask a question in return?"

Kelly looks like he's more or less in one piece. I pick up the Eye of Zoltec and put it into one of my equipment pouches. Not sure what I'm going to do with it in the longer term. Invulnerability is nice, but I'm already very tough so in most circumstances the gain isn't all that great. But giving it to someone squishy like Lex… Or Lynne, or Miss Shimmer… Or if Queen Morgan is having the same problem with immortality that the Justice League Animated version had…

"Uuuuugrh…"

I grab Kelly with my right hand and put him onto my right shoulder. "Certainly." Now, where did that other gem he was waving around end up?

Location available.

"Do you intend to train more yellow ring users?"

"I don't have strong feelings on the subject." I stride over to the other jewel… Yes, I can see where the blaster hit it. One of the corners is gone, but the effect hasn't spread. Into another pouch it goes. "If there was someone I trusted, someone I thought would do good work with it, and they weren't compatible with an orange ring… Then yes, I would see about getting another yellow ring for them. What makes you ask?"

"In the absence of my originator, I think… Furthering the cause of the yellow light is something I… Wish to do. Having that opportunity will also reduce my need to jump onto the first fearsome finger I come across."

"Not unreasonable, and if you'd mentioned any of this ahead of time I'd have been happy to grant your request. As it is…"

"I have some significant ground to make up."

"To say the least."

"Then… I suppose that I will simply have to accept your decision." He bumps into my right finger again.

"I haven't heard an apology yet."

"Were you expecting to?"

Hah. I open my right hand and allow him to settle on my ring finger. "I suppose not. Mother Box. Boom tube."

back

Embattled 22

next

26th October

23:27 GMT

I stride purposefully back through the portal, Kelly draped over my shoulder. Lord Sheldrake gives me a mildly relieved nod, and easily catches his knife as I toss it back to him. I then anchor Kelly in place with my right hand and bow to Queen Morgan.

"Your majesty. Major Kelly is unable to con-" His right hand weakly slaps against the side of my face. "-tinue." It slaps me again. "In any meaningful way. Would you be so good as to call the duel?"

She takes a moment to examine Kelly, who can barely coordinate his limbs let alone offer meaningful resistance. "You stand victorious, Grayven. As per the terms of your agreement with Major Kelly, I will not intervene on his masters' side in your conflict." She tilts her head a little to the left. "I am a little surprised that you allowed him to live."

"He defines himself as being a loyal soldier. Once it's clear that his concerns about me were unwarranted, I imagine that he will be willing to serve the next government with all of the vigour that he served this one. If n-." Uk, his hand's gone in my mouth. I remove it. "If not, he's easy enough to kill now."

"What was that creature he summoned?"

"It was called the Terror Thing."

"I heard him name it. I want to know its nature."

"Essentially… Get a large group of people who are obsessively, dementedly afraid of something and draw their fears out with magic and store them in a standing stone circle. Given enough time, those fears will merge into a creature like that. His masters were experimenting with using it as a weapon, directing its madness with a minor wizard. They had some success, but given the resources it required I don't think it was worth it."

"It is not possible to draw out a person's fears cleanly. Such a creature would inevitably take more than they were willing to give it at every turn."

I nod. "Just so."

Lord Sheldrake walks up besides me. "Are we permitted to leave?"

"But of course, my lord." Huh. That's surprisingly-. "Do you know how?"

Ah.

He just nods. "I can't say that I'm entirely surprised that you're not going to let us go back-."

"Oh no, Lord Sheldrake. I wouldn't dream of stopping you. You came in peace, and something approaching honesty. You will come to no harm by my hand."

"But you won't help."

"If you require my assistance, I may be persuaded."

Ping.

No, no. We can't hold their hands all the time. But well done.

Ping.

Lord Sheldrake takes a slow breath. "On behalf of the incoming British Government-" There's a slight shift in Queen Morgan's posture. "-I would like to take this opportunity to establish open diplomatic relations with your kingdom."

"It isn't a separate kingdom. It's just the part of Britain which remained loyal to its queen."

"Alright. I understand that's your position. But The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland doesn't share it, and I'm sure that you know that. You've fought the Justice League before, haven't you?"

"I.. have."

"And you lost. Do you honestly think that your chances of ever becoming queen in fact would be better or worse for having peaceful diplomatic relations with my country?"

"Are you actually going to make me an offer, or just bombard me with empty threats?"

"Peaceful diplomatic relations and trade. Modern Britain knows next to nothing about magic, and the new government is going to want input from friends who know how to cover that weakness. We'd much rather have a friendly neighbour than worry about being attacked by teleporting hobgoblins or an immortal archmage or those.. Morris men. If you want something magical from Earth, buy it or trade for it, or negotiate to use it. You don't need to demand it by force, not when no one is threatening your own kingdom."

"I would have freedom to come and go as I please?"

"Within reason. Foreign heads of state are free to visit whenever they like. But we would consider it an abuse of our hospitality if you did any of those things which led to you fighting the Justice League last time."

"And when could I meet your new ruler?"

"We're not-." Lord Sheldrake straightens slightly, then half-turns towards me. "What are you planning to do with Queen Elizabeth?"

"That's up to her. I will be dropping in on her shortly. Though it may amuse you to know that Princess Margaret's conversion to Catholicism was tied to her genuine repentance for her involvement with the people we'll be removing. And her branch of the family have rather cleared themselves up."

He considers that for a moment, then returns his attention to Queen Morgan. "We should have a new Prime Minister in place in three months. I'm sure whoever it is will be happy to receive you, in the name of ongoing peaceful relations."

"Adequate. Barely."

I smile. "I'll also throw in several tonnes of manifested fear elemental flesh. I'm sure that a magic user of your calibre can find a use for it."

"Now that is a little more interesting. Would the Marble Arch entrance be acceptable?"

"No, not necessary. Mother Box?"

"Ping."

BOOM!

Lord Sheldrake's head jerks in my direction. "You-?" His jaw tenses, then he returns his attention to Queen Morgan. "Thank you for your hospitality, your majesty. I'll see to it that a proper envoy is sent through once we've got things settled down." He bows, then heads through the boom tube. Face-. Darren takes no last looks around, gives his head a small exasperated shake and then follows Lord Sheldrake. I smile brightly at Queen Morgan, then-.

"Grayven. What is your title? I presume that you have one?"

"My father granted me the title 'Suzerain of Earth'. I don't really use it."

She makes a quiet 'hm' noise, but doesn't offer further comment. I suppose… This iteration of Morgan le Fay is surprisingly rational… Buuuut I've already got a Circe, and if Britain can build a working relationship with her by themselves… I don't want to have to do all the work during the uplift process.

I give her and Morgana a cheerful wave, then walk through the portal myself.

And promptly close it afterwards. We're at Speakers Corner, which at this time of night is pretty much deserted. Lord Sheldrake-.

"Exactly how long did you have an exit portal ready?"

"About a minute. Might I say that I was quite impressed by how calmly you were dealing with Queen Morgan?"

"I don't often get the opportunity to talk my enemies down like that. And it would be a pretty sorry state of affairs if I was more violent than you."

Darren looks around. "I can't hear any fighting. What's next?"

Sinestro?

Update available, C-. Lantern Grayven.

Mmm. Good news all around. "Check in with one or two people, then… BBC News Twenty Four, I think."

back

Embattled 23

next

27th October

00:03 GMT

There's no sign on the door. No sign on the fence. Even the building number is concealed by the shape of the entrance. Nothing to indicate that this property is unique or special. But with the front of the upper two floors torn out I can see the decorations, prominently featuring the vaguely phallic symbol the.. Invisible Magi or whatever they call themselves use to represent their cult. I can see what look like ritual rooms. And with a little effort, I can see the last moments of members who failed in their duties.

Don't see any charred skeletons, which is a bit odd.

BOOM!

Another tube opens to another holding cell, and a g-troll picks up a resisting magus and gently throws him through while a growing crowd watches. I knew it was the case, but it still depresses me slightly that they were all Caucasian men. Haven't we got to the point that our ancient evil conspiracies feel that they can include other ethnicities? Even the Skull and Bones let women in these days.

I amble over to where Mister Talbot is watching proceedings with a transfixed intensity. "Any get away?"

"Of course not."

"Any dead?"

"One managed to slit his own throat. Bled to death before we could get to him. But as operations go, I'd say that it went rather well."

I make a point of looking puzzled. "You didn't kill any of them?"

His eyes turn my way for a moment before returning to the line of genomorph-guarded magicians. "No. While Mister Doom assures me that they are perfectly competent ritualists, none of them were a physical threat to me."

"Yes?"

"The British police service only uses lethal force in response to an imminent threat to life. We do not do it merely because it would be satisfying, or because an alleged criminal fails to obey an instruction promptly. I will not break the law in that regard. If they had had time to summon a demon, then my hand may have been forced. As it was, I believe that I will derive an even greater satisfaction from watching their trials and convictions than I would from simply snuffing them out."

I shrug. "As you like."

"I'm surprised that you disapprove. Sir Cyril told me that Major Kelly is still alive, and you had a personal vendetta against him."

"I'm the one who will have to sell this to the Justice League. And my eyes grew back. What they did-." I cut myself off. He knows perfectly well what they did to him.

His left forefinger moves to his right ring finger, stroking his wedding ring and power ring in a single motion. "Joanie can watch from heaven as these bastards are tried, convicted and hanged."

"Reinstating the death penalty?"

"The British people have wanted the death penalty back since it was abolished. Never wanted it done away with, actually. And this mess will only cement that support. We can put the relevant legislation through in the Bill authorising the special trials."

"And the retroactive changing of the penalty for a crime that's already been committed."

"No, some crimes still carry the death penalty. It just can't be carried out." His eyes move to the boom tube. "You are certain that they can't kill themselves in there?"

"The g-gnomes are perfectly capable of suppressing self-destructive-."

"Never thought I'd-"

Mister Talbot's head jerks around as soon as he hears the voice, and mine isn't much slower.

"-see the bleeding day."

A g-gnome's horns shimmer and a g-troll lumbers forwards, reaches into the crowd and picks up John Constantine.

"Shoulda seen that c-." Mister Constantine blinks as he sees Mister Talbot clearly. "Geoff?"

"Mister Constantine. Turning up like a bad penny, I see."

"I thought you were dead. You were in Geotroniks when Webster-."

"Yes, I do remember. Pure bloody luck that the armed response unit didn't shoot me, but I survived. And while I wouldn't say I prospered-" He clenches his right fist to show Mister Constantine his power ring. "-in your absence, I have been given the opportunity to strengthen my hand."

Mister Constantine exhales, his right hand-. Oh, he dropped his cigarette when the g-troll appropriated him. "Fuck me. Do you think you actually got all of them?"

"The vast majority. Have you seen-" He inclines his head towards me. "-Mister Grayven's evidence file?"

"No." Mister Constantine glances at me impassively. "He didn't send me a copy."

I shrug. "I put it all online, Mister Constantine. Maybe you should look into getting a computer, so you can look things like that up?"

He looks away from me, towards the slowly moving line as another-

BOOM!

-member of the Somewhat Less Secret Now Magi is sent through.

"Looks like you've got it covered. 'Course, there might be a bit of a problem about who's running the country now."

"Jasmine Abbott, whose hands are remarkably clean. And Queen Elizabeth, whom I'll be talking to at a slightly more civilised hour. Would you like to come along?"

"God, no." He looks around again. "Looks like I picked the right friggin' time to leave the c-."

The street shoots downwards as I'm dragged upwards at speed. It's-. Ah, yes.

"Kal-El-." Oh, he won't be able to hear a thing with the wind this strong. Sinestro, contact his radio.

Contact established, Lantern Grayven.

"Kal-El, that was totally unnecessary and unproductive." He releases his hold and stops in the air, allowing me to go flying for a half-second until my flight aura takes hold. Hm, mid Atlantic? He does not look impressed. "You nearly got yourself a lung full of krypton-"

"You just overthrew a government!"

"-ite dust there. Yes, I did, and you know why so why did you think it was necessary to grab me?"

"So no one decides to drop a nuke on central London!"

"I.. don't think anyone would actually do that. We made sure that the Trident system was unavailable before we-."

"What about any country who are worried that they're going to be next? And before you say it, I'm not just talking about how they deal with you. The rest of us are going to be affected as well."

"Given what our targets were doing-."

"Take it from me as a reporter. There is not a single. Government. On Earth. That doesn't have things they'd kill to keep secret. Your friends Jon Horne and Sam Lane? They think I don't know that there's a squad of power armoured soldiers based in Metropolis ready to jump on me if I step out of line. They think I don't know about the billions they've ploughed into anti-Kryptonian weapons, even though I've never given them cause to think they'll need them."

"I'll get that closed down-."

"Don't. I'd much rather have a program I know about than one I don't know about. One run by someone who's cautious rather than genuinely delusional."

"That's completely irrational-."

"Yes, it is. But that doesn't stop them. The best thing you can do is to avoid doing things that set them off. And openly deposing a government is one of those things. Because if you don't, it's probably not you who suffers. We were working on a less direct approach."

"Kal-El." I bring my hands together at my stomach. "It's not that I don't understand where you're coming from. It's just that I.. don't care where you're coming from. I am not a reporter. And I have no problem at all in fighting everyone who thinks they can stop me improving the Earth." Mother Box, boom tube.

Ping.

"Be so good as to pass that along to the rest of the League, would you?"

back

NEXT CHAPTER

Grind

BACK

Grind 1

next

Grind

29th October

14:21 GMT +1

"…pretty sure Catherine wouldn't share that opinion."

"Why, what was wrong with it?"

Donna frowns at me as if I've said something bewilderingly stupid. "You deliberately picked a fight with your audience, then you had to use your ring to make them stop shouting."

"Yes, exactly. They had to stake their colours to the mast, then have me play a recording of an angel saying that the things that made them do that actually weren't a problem. Meaning they are, by their own terms, in the wrong."

"They don't think like that, Paul."

"True, but like the fellow in 'Thank You For Smoking' said: I wasn't after them. Unless I suddenly converted to.. some branch of Christianity or.. started my own, I was never going to keep the Christian religious right's approval. But I could give them a platform to publically demonstrate their hypocrisy, so that's what I did."

"Alright: I don't think like that."

"Do you believe that I should have let Satanus kill Blaze?"

"No."

"Do you believe that I should have helped Blaze hide somewhere where she would continue to help people damn themselves to sustain her magic?"

Donna sets her jaw. "No."

"Do you think that I should have killed her myself? Because Adom-."

"Paul."

I twitch my mouth, giving the impression that I'm trying not to laugh. "You're getting really good at doing the 'Diana' voice."

"I'm basically a clone of her. I can probably do her exact voice."

"I'll make sure to get you larger bras for Christmas, then."

Her eyes widen very slightly. "I-. Er, no what?"

"Okay, but I've seen Diana's old pictures, and if you're basically a clone-."

"Would you offer to get Kon a bigger jockstrap!?"

I blink. Yes, but… "Kon.. isn't ever going to grow, so, no. He also prefers boxer shorts-."

"What do you mean?"

"Er, Kon, not going to grow?" She nods. "It's because of how the genomorphs assembled his chimeric tissues. His hair gets longer, and.. eventually it'll go grey-" Probably. "-but that's about it. He'll always be shorter than Kal-El. Actually, he'll.. probably end up being the shortest man on the team. Unless Helios decides to do something about it."

"Why haven't you?"

"Because he's healthy and happy. I can use my power ring to.. alter people in all sorts of ways. But… I'm.. still surprised that Kon works as well as he does-. You know, as a biological organism. Of all the ways I could think of to.. alter him, none of them were… There isn't a solution that's simple and good. Nothing that just fixes the problem. Inasmuch as being at the lower end of 'average' height is a problem."

"And… What about Match?"

"Minimal chimerism. And I think Jor-El might be going to remove that. Aside from the eyes, he'll end up looking just like Kal-El."

"Okay." She nods. "But none of that makes it okay for you to make cracks about my breasts."

"I wasn't making a crack, I was making a light-hearted observation. Based on the similarities-."

"Well don't do that either."

I nod. "Noted." We begin our descent onto the volcanic soil of Mount Etna. "Am I allowed to make comments about shaving, on the grounds that I know Kon and Kal-El shave?"

"I'll.. allow it." She lands, just ahead of me. "Can we go back to talking about you offending three major world religions and how that isn't a good idea?"

"Actually, we'd moved on to how it offended you, which was why I attempted a light-hearted deflection. But alright: what do you think I should have done?"

"Asked Zauriel if you could have a fruit when you saw him in the Garden of Eden."

"So you don't have a problem with the Gabriel part of the story?"

"Yes, I have a problem with it, but that had already happened and wasn't anything to do with you. I don't… There are places that have compulsory organ donation and I don't mind that, so… Using his wings when he can't use them any more isn't necessarily bad."

"Alright, but what happens after he says no?"

"He said that he didn't have a problem with you giving her the fruit. Why would he say 'no'?"

"Because he doesn't have the authority to say 'yes'. Regardless of what he thinks of the idea-" And I'm momentarily reminded of many years ago when I worked at Asda, and a man asked me why I wasn't discounting nearly out of date fruit. "-he wouldn't do it without appropriate authorisation."

Her shoulders tense slightly. "And you don't think God would let you save a demon?"

"I don't remember him saying anything about getting orders from any god. Zauriel said that he was going to inform his king."

"Yes. That's God."

"No, the way he spoke about his god was different to the way he spoke about his king. And he directly stated that his instructions did not come from the Mind of God."

"Maybe if anyone had heard the full transcript I'd know that! This is the problem with anyone telling you what you should have done: no one knows everything you know! You don't tell anyone!"

"Not.. unreasonable. But you need to understand, the Source is not some.. sort of.. super powered Morgan Freeman. It isn't Highfather Izaya, who can do a decent impression of what most people think when they hear capital 'g' god. No one really knows why it does things or -beyond certain obvious things- that it's even what's doing them. I wouldn't even want to claim any degree of certainty that it created the Silver City."

"The Source? That's what you call God?"

"That's the most common name across the universe for the singular almighty divine power, believed to in some sense be physically located on the other side of the Source Wall. 'God' is a fairly generic name, easy to confuse with the class of being that the Source is not a part of."

"Okay, let's… Leave that. Why don't you think Zauriel's king would have said 'yes'?"

"Because Fawcett City. Because.. every atrocity ever committed, including the ones committed by them. I don't know what instructions they're operating under, or what they consider an appropriate time to intervene, but I've got enough evidence at this point to determine that it isn't the same as the one I use."

"Am I..?" Hephaestus waves his right hand as we look around. "Intruding? I thought we had a meeting, but to be honest this sounds a whole lot more interesting."

back

Grind 2

next

29th October

14:32 GMT +1

Hephaestus leads the way along a corridor on one of his foundry's lower levels, grinning as he does so. "So I understand that you're my great aunt?"

"Ah…" Donna appears to not know how to respond. I suppose that it is a bit of an odd thing to hear from someone who looks old enough to be your grandfather and is actually old enough to be your ancestor. "I'm not sure it.. works like that. Cronus didn't… Ah, 'sire' me-."

"So you're adopted. That just means that you didn't get stuck being raised by him."

"Yes, I.. don't think I'd have liked growing up in Tartarus all that much."

"Mm, you might have ended up growing up in Hades' court instead. That might have worked out. He's wanted to raise a little philosopher-king or queen for centuries now."

"What's stopping him?"

Donna cringes slightly, while Hephaestus just shrugs. "Did you see Persephone last time you were down there?"

"No, but I.. didn't have any particular business with her. Why, is.. she ill?"

Hephaestus 'hm's. "What version of the myths of the origin of their marriage do you know?"

"Ah… Well, the Amazon version has Hades abduct her, bring her to the underworld and trick her into drinking something with pomegranate seeds in it so that she can't completely leave."

Donna nods. "That's the version Diana told me when I asked her about it."

He nods. "And it's not completely inaccurate, as far as I know. I wasn't there when it happened, but everyone who was has given their version in my hearing at least once. The first point to consider is that Persephone is Zeus' daughter by Demeter. Hades had Zeus' permission to wed his daughter. I know that it's not how things work now, but at the time it wasn't unusual for fathers to arrange their children's marriages."

"Without talking to her or her mother at all? Shouldn't they have at least known each other?"

"That was.. less usual, it's true." I spot him glancing upwards, as if to make sure that there's a mountain between us and the sky. "But they did know each other, at least a little. Hades always visited Olympus when Zeus was holding court; she'd have been able to see him there. And he must have seen her somewhere to become so fixated on her. And… Zeus never admitted to it, but I think he might have said that he had mentioned it to them. Or.. at least implied it. Hades wasn't anything like as nice a guy back then as he is now, but I think he'd have still drawn the line at kidnapping his niece."

"That.. puts a somewhat different spin on the story. But did he not work it out after he saw how.. surprised she was when he picked her up?"

"Which is the second point. I think that if Persephone had flat out told him that she didn't know anything about it, he'd have cooled off a little. Or at least spoken to Demeter about it before declaring it was a done deal." He shrugs. "But Zeus, Poseidon and Hades are the most powerful gods of their generation, and when someone like that tells you that you're going to do something and that one of the few beings who could stop him has consented to it… I guess she didn't think that she had any choice in the matter. And she'd certainly have known how Zeus and Apollo act when they don't get their way."

"She pretended that what Hades thought had happened had actually happened because she was afraid of him?"

"As I said, I don't know any of this for certain. He certainly knows now, and I've never heard anything about him being violent toward her. But Hades can be a scary guy." He looks away for a moment. "Did the version you know have Demeter starving Greece in revenge?"

"Ah… The Amazon version-."

"The Amazon version says that the starvation was an unintended side effect of her searching for her daughter." Donna looks thoughtful. "Which seems odd. Wouldn't a Goddess of Agriculture instinctively know about a famine?"

"The Amazons aren't going to talk smack about one of their main patrons. And 'if you obsess about children you go crazy and everyone around you suffers' is a lesson-."

"No, I don't think that's the message."

"Whittle dolls, Donna. Hidden, because they were a source of shame."

Hephaestus raises his hands in a gesture of helplessness. "Whatever the reason, the famine happened. Zeus had to admit to Hades that he hadn't talked to either of them, a divorce was unthinkable…"

"And the pomegranate seeds?"

Hephaestus scoffs. "Given when Zagreus was born, I think we can take a guess at what sort of seeds he was putting inside her. Which would explain why he wasn't willing to accept a separation."

"So why didn't he raise him as a philosopher-king?"

"Because at that point in his life, he wasn't interested in that sort of thing."

I nod. "And unlike most gods, Hades is faithful to his wife."

Hephaestus nods. "Unlike most gods, Hades actually loves his wife. Though… I suppose… Shades can't beget children. We wouldn't necessarily know."

Donna shakes her head. "Hades and Persephone have two children, don't they? I've never met Zagreus-"

"He works on a game reserve in Kenya. I get postcards, sometimes."

"-but we've both met Melinoë. What's stopping them having more children?"

Oh. I get it. "Zagreus and Melinoë are about the same age, aren't they?"

Hephaestus nods again. "Hades thought that once Persephone got to know him a bit better, she'd warm up to him. As far as I know? Never happened. But once she knew him well enough to realise that he wouldn't force himself on her, wife or not, that was the last time they shared a bed."

"'Wife or not?'"

"Different social customs, Donna. Or so I'm told." He shoves open a metal door and immediately the clanging and banging of a working foundry fills the air. "Marriage was less about individuals and more about family alliances. One person saying 'no' to their spouse might have meant a war. And if hundreds of lives on are on the line, then the person who was in the wrong was the one saying 'no'."

"Is.. now a bad time to ask about Aphrod-?"

"She's as chaste of me as you are. And I'm just about the only Olympian that's true of."

"I assure you, the thing with me and Eris-."

"I meant that I'm the only god she hasn't had sex with." He takes a look around the machinery, which puts me a little in mind of a Dwemer-built version of a nineteenth century factory complex. "Assuming that Zeus doesn't have a delayed explosion over Hera divorcing him, I might try and go that route myself."

"But Hades wants to have more children?"

"He had a... What did Vulcan call it? A 'mid-life crisis', some time after Greece went fully Christian. But rather than buy a flashy car, he wanted to change the way he treated the dead. He consulted a lot of people on what they thought that a God of the Dead should do, and unlike a lot of gods he actually listened. That was also when he started sharing Erebus' power with the shades. He also tried courting Persephone again, but that didn't work out."

I see Vulcan standing on.. stage, surrounded by what look like mechanical control systems. He waves, then goes back to studying the dials.

"Why can't Persephone get a divorce?"

"None of us can get divorces. And if you thought that Demeter starving Greece to get Persephone back was bad, remember that Hades is far more powerful than her."

"You mean he'd-."

"I don't know. But I do know that I don't want to find out. But." He brightens up slightly. "Neither of you came here for a history lesson, did you? Why don't I show you what we've been working on?"

back

Grind 3

next

29th October

14:44 GMT +1

"I know you said that technology isn't part of your domain, but I still don't understand why it isn't."

Vulcan looks around from the volcanic resonance engine he was cooing over. "Really? It's a pretty simple concept. Primal concepts have the largest impact on both the arcane world and the people living in it. The latter becoming increasingly important in more recent times."

Hephaestus pours more metal into a mould. They're making another metamaterial, something heavy as heck but super strong. "There's been lightning for as long as this world has existed. Darkness for longer."

"I know that, it's why enchanting swords is easy but enchanting guns is hard. But isn't smithing a lot more recent than everything else?"

Vulcan pushes a couple of levers downwards, and runes on the engine start glowing fiery red. "Isn't love?"

"Maybe, but sexual reproduction is a billion years old. Tool use is nothing like that old."

Hephaestus waves a tool a little like a coat hanger over his metal, the molten liquid visibly cooling as he does so. "Tool use is older than the humans who use most of them. And that matters more than you might think."

Vulcan nods. "There's a reason why we gods all look human. Before you, there was just power without form-."

Donna doesn't look impressed. "Are you saying we literally built gods in our own image?"

"I doubt it was a conscious process. But, in places, your ideas caused the Dreaming to… I'm not sure how you'd describe it. There was power, but you gave it form. Definition. That process eventually gave rise to the Titans. And because they already had powerful ties to the material world, moving from the Dreaming to the material world was simple for them."

"I know about the titans. I saw Oceanus this summer. Giant elemental monsters, who were really powerful because they embodied the most primal concepts."

Hephaestus shakes his head. "No. Not monsters. Not.. colossal animals, like some big elementals can be. The titans basically came from early humans, remember. And some parts of human life are so universal to your species that they had to share those elements themselves. Like breeding, for example. Or fighting for power."

Donna nods, a little irritated at the speed of the narration. "The titans begat the gods, resulting in a worldwide supernatural war which saw the titans lose to their children and either be killed or imprisoned."

Hephaestus turns his casting out, and then picks it up to look it over. "You're missing the point. Each god is a combination of the arcane characteristics of their parents, paired with some aspect of the world as experienced by humans. Humans have been making tools for long enough that nurturing and commanding could combine into crafting. It doesn't come up much these days, but flint tools are as much a part of…" He glances at Vulcan, who is hooking up his newly tested engine to an assemblage of some kind. "Our domain as metal tools. But they've got history. We've both tried, but our instinct for metalworking doesn't extend to circuitry."

"On the other hand, it can help with novel applications. Since you-" Vulcan nods in my direction. "-shared that idea about using jovium as a heat conductor, we've been building all sorts of things."

Hephaestus slots his casting into a rack with a dozen others like it, then pulls a chain to turn the pulleys to move it out into the middle of a clear area in the middle of the complex.

Hm. "So… You aren't the Gods of Technology."

"No." Vulcan picks up something that looks like a large bore rifle. "And we can't learn to become the Gods of Technology. But we can learn technology."

"From what you were saying about god breeding, would it follow that one of your offspring would be the God of Technology?"

"Hm." Hephaestus stops pulling and frowns as he thinks about it. "He wasn't, but at that point 'technology' wasn't much more than what was covered by my domain. And his mother…"

"Um."

"Probably not the right mix."

Donna frowns. "Just one? The myths-."

"I'm a married crippled smith who earned Zeus' disfavour. The goddesses weren't exactly lining up." He waves his right hand dismissively before clumping awkwardly back towards Vulcan. "Sometimes they named me as the father as a joke, or when they didn't want to get a mortal lover in trouble. Trust me, the real number isn't high."

"So who was he? And.. who was his mother?"

A very faint smile graces his lips. "I read everything I can on science and technology. I teach anyone with a mind to learn and a will to use their knowledge. And you need to ask me who my son's mother was?"

Donna blinks, shocked. "The myths about Erichtonius say-."

"Myths… Say a lot of things. I wouldn't put too much store in them." He comes to a halt next to Vulcan and turns around. "Zeus ate her mother because he feared her power. What do you think he would have done to her son?"

"So… You're saying that she's not a virgin?"

He shrugs. "We never married. And she couldn't acknowledge him…"

"So what would be?"

"What?"

"If learning and craft don't make technology, what does?"

Vulcan lowers his gun, rolling his eyes. "Can't we leave the theoretical theologism until we're well into our cups?"

"I was just wondering-?"

"As I said, the sort of technology that exists today wasn't a thing when Erichtonius was born. With no metaphysical source of power, he wasn't much more capable than a demigod. But… Athena is a war goddess as much as she is a patron of classical learning. I'm not sure that he'd have been technology even if he'd been born today."

"Technology. Someone sees a problem, comes up with a way to deal with it… And then a few years later it's being put to a use they never envisaged and society has shifted around it in unplanned and uncontrollable ways…" I smile. "How do you feel about E-"

"No."

"-ris?"

Vulcan raises his gun again. "Test seventy five, heat transfer gun mark four. Firing."

Hephaestus nods. "Thank you."

Runes along the sides of the gun glow, and there's a faint hiss as the air inside superheats and a projectile rockets from the muzzle, striking Hephaestus' metal barricade dead centre. Molten metal explodes away from the impact point, and I can see it continuing to dribble down from the point of impact.

Hephaestus tilts his head to the side. "Some damage."

"Hm." Vulcan smiles, then pulls another lever on his engine. For a moment, noth-.

The projectile flares brilliant white for an instant, and I get construct shields up just about quickly enough to prevent us getting enshrouded in vaporised metal!

"Hm." Hephaestus takes a moment to examine the dripping remains of his metal plates. "And it does that to four inch thick gromril. What do you say we try it against enchanted plates next?"

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Grind 4

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29th October

10:44 GMT -5

Ted crouches over the metametal samples like a bird of prey mantling its kill. "And how much of this can you produce?"

Vulcan shrugs. "Even with the increased automation we've built into our new plant, it's still not exactly a quick process. Not for industrial quantities."

Hephaestus nods. "You need a certain feel for metal that only comes with working with it for years."

"I can hire you five hundred foundry workers really quickly." Neither of them look particularly impressed by the suggestion. "What?"

"We could.. try, but manipulating metal by machine usually doesn't produce the same sort of… Arcane characteristics." Vulcan takes a small lead rod out of one of his pouches and lays it on a workbench. "This is a basic test sample. Standard size, total purity. Hephaestus and I could transmute it in a few minutes. Io and Pallas could do it in half an hour or so."

Hephaestus nods approvingly. "It used to be an hour. They're picking it up fast, compared to most mortals I've tried to teach."

Vulcan taps the metal sample with his right hand. "They're also three thousand years old. They know how to listen to the spirit of metal, how to shape it with hand and breath-. With their own spirit."

Ted looks like a child who's on the verge of having his favourite toy stolen. "I can.. hire blacksmiths..?"

Hephaestus raises his eyebrows. "Three thousand year old blacksmiths?"

"Do they..? Really need to be three thousand years old?"

"No." Hephaestus shakes his head. "Someone really committed could probably get a feel for it in…" He looks at Vulcan. "Twenty years..?"

"More like thirty. Unless they were literally doing nothing else."

"Thirty years. They wouldn't be as good, but they'd be able to do it reliably."

"Thirty years…" Ted leans back in his chair, holding up a small orichalcum rod and staring at it. Then he turns his attention to me. "Think the Atlanteans can shave a little time off that?"

I puff out my cheeks slightly, shaking my head. "I wouldn't like to say. There might be a pure arcane way of replicating the spiritual resonance, but I doubt that it would be easy or fast."

"Guess we won't be rewiring the whole country with zero-resistance wires, then." He closes his eyes, tilting his head back for a moment. "Okay, so you need smiths. Ancient-sword-master-meditates-on-top-of-a-mountain-for-a-day-before-each-blow smiths."

Vulcan frowns. "No, there's a difference between 'dedicated' and crazy."

Ted looks back at him with a mildly puzzled frown. "No, that was just hyperbole-. Wait, people tried that?"

Vulcan shrugs. "People will try all sorts of things. Especially when it comes to pleasing a god."

"Right, okay. But you need smiths." They nod. "And if I get smiths, would you be willing to train them?"

Hephaestus nods unenthusiastically. "Sure, but you need to understand something. Hellenists worship me as the God of the Forge. Just about all Amazons have tried their hand at smithing at some point in their lives, and it isn't just Io and Pallas who have it as their main occupation." He leans forward slightly. "We've got two students who can aid us in a worthwhile way."

Ted nods. "So don't get my hopes up, is what you're saying."

"Ah…" The three of them turn their attention my way. "Given the religious affiliation of most of the people you'll be recruiting-."

Vulcan huffs. "I work in a car dealership in Italy."

"Wait." Ted looks at me with an expression of amused disbelief. "You're being sensitive to people's religious sensibilities?"

"No, I'm encouraging other people to be sensitive. The bit of the whole.. uplift project I do isn't the bit which most people are going to have to interact with." Ted nods. "But the bit you're doing-."

"Yeah, people still ask if they need to pray to Zeus to make the weather control spheres work." He nods again before looking hopefully at the forge-gods. "Are you guys alright pretending to be..? I don't know…"

"An Italian car mechanic?" Vulcan shrugs. "I have a decent secret identity these days. A lot of us do."

Hephaestus frowns. "I don't, but it's not like I go trumpeting my true nature to everyone around me."

"Oh, er… On that subject?"

Hephaestus raises his eyebrows. "Yeah?"

"How did the Hephaesteia go?"

"Now you ask? I had to find out you weren't going to be there from Diana."

"And.. I'm… Sorry about that, but I really.. felt it was best not to be on the planet for a while. Did you get my letter?"

"Yeah, I got it. And given what you were doing I'm not too offended that you didn't tell me about it. It was just… A shame, you weren't there." He smiles. "It wasn't like the old days, and I think the statue was supposed to be Vulcan, but I loved every minute of it."

Ted nods. "Thirty one companies showing off the latest in bleeding-edge designs. LexCorp even brought in one of their power armour suits." I frown. "You know, the ones they sent out to fight Oceanus with you."

I nod. "Reverse engineered OMAC technology. Skipping millions of hours of research and development with the help of a supervillain from a parallel universe."

"If you see another supervillain from a parallel universe with technology like that, feel free to give him my card." Ted shrugs. "On the other hand, they needed to plug themselves in to ultra-high capacity charge points every half hour or so, so I don't think BAE Systems are panicking quite yet."

"Now that the Russians have their Red Rocket Brigade up and running, Mister Luthor might be betting on the American military panicking instead."

"No, I think at this point the US military knows the problems with current generation power armour sufficiently well that the shine's worn off the concept. What Lex was showing off was a step up in capability, but what they really want is something that can keep on working for days at a time without constant recharging or technical problems. But, ah, anyway, turnout was good and I'm looking forward to next year's."

"Yeah. Great." Vulcan frowns, then looks thoughtful. "If you can find smiths who can learn how to create metametals, how much are you going to want?"

Ted looks mildly confused by the question. "All of it. There is literally no amount you can produce that I can't find a use for."

"Are you sure? Jovium is fairly ductile, but orichalcum isn't something you can easily reforge. Once it's in shape, that's it."

"So..? This rod..?"

"A test piece. Nearly useless for anything else. We'll need to know your exact specifications when we get to work."

Ted nods. "What are you doing with what you're making now?"

"Heat capacitors, mostly. See, we found out how to-."

"You have devices which can store and release heat in a controlled way?"

"Yes, though we've done a lot of work improving the designs lately." Hephaestus nods. "We use Mount Etna-" Ted inhales excitedly. "-because the work we do requires so much heat that it just wasn't practical to use charcoal. But convection made just working over the magma impractical. These actually let us get a lot more work done. You.. think there's a market for it?"

"I'm already selling as many weather control spheres as I can make! Just about every volcano in the world will want a hundred if it means they don't have to worry about eruptions, especially after Yellowstone nearly went off last year!"

Vulcan frowns. "I'm not sure the other forge-gods will like that."

Oh?

"Maybe you should set up a meeting?"

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Grind 5

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30th October

10:03 GMT +5

Sam closes his eyes for a moment, and gives his head a small shake. "No, they're not there in case Superman 'steps out of line'. I had them deployed there right after Doctor Psycho appeared, because he made it pretty clear that he was interested in hurting as many people as possible and it seemed to me that the best way for him to do that was to mind control Superman. So I made some calls and got a squad put together, under the command of a man who respects Superman. And I chose him because I wanted someone who would use the least force necessary but would still do it if it turned out to be necessary." He leans back in his chair. "Do you think Kal-El would want to risk killing millions of people?"

I nod slowly. "Doctor Cizko requires a surprisingly large amount of time to take that sort of control of individuals. I'm.. not sure that a.. group of people in power armour without telepathic protection of their own would.. really be a good counter."

"Cizko demonstrated the ability to give people instructions they would carry out after they left his immediate environment. The idea was -and I want to be clear that this was the only circumstance in which they'd be deployed- that they would attempt to stop Superman if he went on a rampage only if we were sure that he was far enough away from the little bastard that he couldn't affect them."

"Wouldn't.. other superheroes be better counters?"

"Sure, if they weren't working their civilian jobs or running around doing God knows what at the time." He sighs. "I don't hate superheroes, Grayven. I wouldn't be having this conversation with you if I did."

"Hey, I'm a federal agent these days."

"You know, that would have been the way to go in the fifties." He brings his right hand up to his chin. "Let the Justice Society become federal agents, and have them become the umbrella organisation for all American superheroes. Given how popular they were, I think they might have pulled it off."

"Director Armstrong not getting the.. uptake she'd like?"

"I'm not sure that she'd be 'happy' with less than a hundred percent. But, no. Rookie superheroes don't want to spend the time that getting qualified takes-."

"Which is probably why they're becoming superheroes and not police officers in the first place."

He grins with the left side of his mouth. "Yeah, probably. And the older ones who could stroll through the qualification process don't see the point, because they already know everything we'd be trying to teach them and they've already either got working relationships with local police or.. don't want working relationships with local police."

"The Question?"

"Mm." He nods. "Which is particularly annoying, because out of state help is just what Hub City needs."

"Anything I can do to help?"

He nods. "Give it at least a couple of years before you overthrow an allied government again."

"Mister Talbot-."

"I'm not recording this conversation, Grayven. There were genomorphs and boom tubes all over the place and you were seen at several of the places that got attacked. Look, I think you did the right thing and I know PR's a pain in the ass sometimes, but if we're trying to persuade a whole lot of people to change how they behave-" I'm already nodding. "-we need to do things that make us look like their kind of people."

"I have no immediate plans to overthrow any more governments." Sam rolls his eyes. "Alright, fine. In the medium term Kahndaq and a few other ultra corrupt African places are going to have a change of officers, but I'm not going to be directly involving myself on the ground. And it probably won't be soon anyway."

"If anyone asks, I didn't hear that."

"Okay. Okay. And I'll.. go and talk to a few people. High potential/low experience types." Sam nods. "Now can we talk about your anti-Kryptonian defence budget?"

"Alien defense only came under my control recently, but I've got to say that I agree with a lot of the decisions. Again, it's nothing personal, but he comes from a whole race of superpowered aliens who get their superpowers from something the Earth has in abundance. America has to be able to defend itself against all reasonably foreseeable threats."

"Krypton's a giant radioactive asteroid belt. I'll take you there right now if you want to see it."

"Did they have FTL?"

"… Yes."

"And we know there was at least one survivor." He shrugs. "It always seemed likely to me that there would be others."

"Krypton underwent a period of extreme isolationism immediately prior to its destruction. While there.. are other survivors, the vast majority are in the phantom zone."

"And what's that?"

"I.. don't really understand the physics of it. Limbo, basically. They were using it.. essentially as a prison."

"For what sort of criminals?"

"Originally, the worst of the worst. Mass murderers, people like that. By the time Krypton went up they were using it for petty criminals; people convicted of theft and common assault. In theory, a lot of them could be paroled."

"That seems like something Superman might do."

"If he could reliably tell which ones were the mass murderers and which ones weren't, certainly. Surprisingly, they're not the most honest of people."

"And that isn't even the main problem. Technology is technology. If one species can invent a phantom zone portal, others can as well. Which means that we could have some of the worst criminals in Kryptonian history free at a moment's notice."

"And their jaywalkers. But, sure, okay. Just promise me that it's kryptonite weapons and whatnot, not.. giant, Kryptonite-enriched monsters you can't control or anything like that?"

"Heh." Sam shakes his head. "Even if I wanted to. No, we haven't gone quite that crazy."

"And.. have you made similar arrangements for other species?"

"What, like the Martians? We've got multiphasic scanners that can detect most shapeshifters and psychic insulators that impede telepathy."

"Thanagarians?"

"Nothing specific, but they're fragile enough that conventional armour piercing rounds will take them down. Beyond that, we'd need a space fleet. And in an uncharacteristically anti-capitalist display I understand that Lex Luthor won't be selling to us."

"It would probably trigger a massive decay in international relations if the US had a fleet and no one else did."

"Your idea?"

"No, his, but I think it makes a lot of sense. My advice is to train up as many people as you can and release them to volunteer when his training centre opens." I frown. "You have a… Team working out how to kill my species?"

"If I did, I wouldn't be able to tell you about it."

"Oh, no, I'm not complaining. There are two super-Earths covered in my people and one of those worlds is extraordinarily hostile to Earth's interests, whereas there are maybe a handful of Kryptonians around. Heck, one of the reasons I set up shop here was to get better anti-New God weapons. I want you to be developing them. Here." I reach into my pocket, pull out a data stick and pass it to him. "That's a pretty good summary of what we can do and how our metaphysiques work. They might find it helpful."

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Grind 6

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30th October

15:36 GMT -5

**No, just a rusted wheel-inner. Moving on.**

I turn away and trudge a little further up the Mississippi river bed. If this is what I've been missing…

**Aqualad to team. I have not yet discovered anything of note.**

**Color me surprised.** Wallace sounds about as enthusiastic as I feel. **Is this really the best thing we could be doing with our time?**

**Try to stay whelmed, KF. The people in this whole area are showing disrupted sleep patterns, and since that's just about the only symptom we know people carrying the new type of Star Conquerors show, somebody's got to check it out.**

I get a mental picture of him slumping slightly as he moves along the waterfront. **And we drew the short straw.**

And of course I can't scan the riverbed-. Or rather, I have, but that isn't reliable since the new type can use magic, can't they?

I see a shape in the water as M'gann swims by. **At least you're not having to breathe the water here. I don't even want to think about some of the things that I'm putting in my gills right now.**

I see a faint glow from Kaldur as I approach. He's using some sort of indirect water current detection spell in the hopes that it will speed things up a little. He's also using a water purification spell , but sadly for M'gann it only works on the caster. **Miss Martian, if you are putting your health at risk-.**

**No, no. It's just really… Ugh.**

**Your distaste is not misplaced.**

**So… What else have I been missing?**

**A couple of weeks ago we had to deal with a whole bunch of religious crazies.** I can hear the implication in Wallace's mental tone. *Can't imagine what got them all wound up.**

**I didn't make them crazy, Kid Flash.** Hm, another car. And oh so much mud. **What were they doing?**

**Kidnapping people they thought were being influenced by demons and 'exorcising' them with torture.** Richard sighs. **We got everyone out… Everyone who was still alive, anyway.**

**Which is really all you can do.**

**Hey.** Again, I get a mental impression with the words. In this case, Kon frowning. **Did you lose computer access or something?**

**Ah… Haven't tried it. And I.. do want to show an interest.**

**Alright.** I get a blurred impression of different images as Kon thinks. **Ah… And before that, there were a bunch of museum thefts Batman wanted us to look into.**

**Find anything?** A small sunken boat with a few brave plants growing off it. **Investigating a boat. Nothing suspicious on the exterior.**

**And I'm not hearing anything with my mind. You don't think they'd be able to hear us, do you?**

**Maybe? But they're not good swimmers unless they've got aquatic hosts, so while they might hide they can't really get away. And based on what Mister J'onzz said about Guy-.**

I get an image of her nodding. **It only takes a few days for the programming to break down.**

**Honestly, the team looking into people's houses has a better chance of finding something than we do.** I send a mental image of someone taking a Star Conqueror off their face and putting it in a cupboard. And then it jumping out at the next person to open it.

**Seriously, Oh El?**

**Don't worry, Kid. They don't actually hurt their hosts, remember?**

**Except for the beak wounds. Actually, yeah: how come a bunch of people haven't shown up at hospital with beak-wounds they don't remember getting? Or, y'know, just walking around with cuts in exactly the same pattern as everyone else?**

**It is possible that the Star Conquerors have learned to heal their hosts, or to attach themselves without the use of their beaks.**

I don't get any impression of Kaldur's thoughts, but I do get a rough sense of his location. Interior of the ship… Silted up. I generate a construct probe and start rooting through it. No bodies, at least.

**Maybe they just wear hats?**

**Heh-.** I get an impression of Wallace's surprise as none of the rest of us laugh at Kon's suggestion. **Really? No, those things were big. You couldn't get a baseball cap over one without it being obvious.** There's a pause as we all try and imagine it. **But-. I suppose a bigger hat might work.**

**I'll send a message to Artemis.** Richard doesn't sound too convinced either. **Hopefully she'll take it seriously.**

**What sort of hats do they usually wear in this part of the world? I mean, if-** No, just silt. **-we don't have a baseline, it would be hard to tell whether or not there's been any change. Oh, and boat clear. Moving on.**

**Houndstooth, maybe? I don't know if you could fit a Star Conqueror under one of those either. Aaand Artemis just replied with a question mark.**

The glow from Kaldur dims momentarily. **I can detect no inexplicable arcane presences in this part of the river. I will also point out that illusion would also explain the lack of alarms from hospitals. And the continuing lack of hats. Orange Lantern, how large could the Star Conquerors have grown in this time?**

**Green Lantern Corps records say they grow based on need rather than food or age. And they don't breed particularly quickly. Assuming the ones we found in April were all of them… One might have grown to Star Hunter size by now. Or at least be getting there. But we don't know enough about this type to know for certain.**

I drift over another section of riverbed. No, no points of interest here. **So how did the theft thing turn out?**

A slight sense of.. unease.. conveys itself over the link.

**Regrettably, those among the criminal group whom we were able to locate killed themselves to avoid capture.** Oh. **None of those we were able to identify had any prior history of criminality. Most of them also had no history of associating with one another, nor anything else linking them.**

**Any… Leads?**

**We have descriptions of most of the artefacts that are still missing. Sadly-. With Doctor Fate…**

**Yes, he can't identify them for you.** And Doctor Mist didn't seem like the book-collecting type. **I know a few people you could ask.**

**You…** And I know what Richard's going to ask even before he thinks it. **Wouldn't know a way to get into the Tower of Fate, would you?**

**Ah…**

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Grind 7

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30th October

18:36 GMT -5

"Look, when I said 'maybe', that's exactly what I meant."

We're standing on the plaza, just in front of where the Tower appeared last time. Most of the team's gone home, or at least back to base. They've got their own cities to protect and their own homework to complete. Kaldur's here, because he considers it his responsibility to investigate, Richard, because he doesn't want to let me out of his sight. Kon's here, because I'm here. Wallace I suspect came because he knows why I didn't trust Fate from the start, and Artemis is here because he is.

Really didn't think that would work.

The whole thing in Alabama turned out to be a total waste of time; some idiot playing around with subsonics. I could have given him a truly soundproof room. Richard could have upgraded his control program to something that would allow him to monitor what he was doing. But having spent the better portion of the day trudging along a riverbed I decided not to, and Richard had already notified the police.

It's basically just a noise complaint. He'll probably get off with a fine.

Wallace looks at me curiously. "Fate's dead, right? I mean… That was what that whole thing was about."

"Brain dead. We destroyed his personality, but we couldn't work out how to completely cut his connection to the plane of order. In theory, the Tower's intelligence should still be capable of detecting us. And since we've been here before…"

Kaldur swings his right hand through the place where the doorway appeared during our last visit. "It does not appear to want to recognise us."

Richard waves a sensor wand across the same place. "I'm not detecting anything either." He turns to look at me. "I'm not an expert on magic, but maybe having the guy who killed Fate here isn't the best way to convince it to let us in."

Kon frowns. "Hey."

"He's.. got a point." And I really don't know how long John had in mind when he said not to go looking for him for a while. It's been four months... "But… You can come back here without me whenever you like." I look upwards towards where the top of the tower was. Feels like a lifetime ago I was fighting Klarion up there… "Tower, Klarion the Witch Boy is dead. No replacement Lord of Chaos has been sighted. We're in the middle of a case, and we would benefit from having access to your library."

"Oh El?" Wallace doesn't look either pleased or displeased. "You're not exactly… 'We'." Kon's eyes narrow slightly. "I mean, you resigned." Kon keeps glaring. "He did."

"I did." I crank my empathic vision up all the way, until the lights on the far side of the plaza start to hurt. No, nothing. "But I don't have anything better to do today, so unless you're telling me to leave, 'we' are 'we'."

Kaldur raises his right hand in order to stop a discussion… They have most likely had already. "If the Tower will not grant us access, then we-."

The door appears, then opens wide. And…

What?

Out strides a man in flowing blue robes with golden thread decoration, the Helmet of Fate sat upon his head. Empathic vision's giving me nothing. Ring scan-

Don't do that.

-not doing that. And that wasn't John's voice. And that isn't John's build or John's walk. John sidles forward. And he's never had that sort of musculature. This man is… Built like a superhero. And he strides purposefully. And if that was his voice my ring just spoke in, then their accents are different as well. The same faint trace of scouse, but none of the Londoner. Sounds a little… Welsh, maybe?

I take a definite step back. I am not prepared for fighting a Lord of Order.

"Good evening. What brings you to my home?"

The ring on my left hand is fizzling and crackling and.. heeeee's got it already, hasn't he?

There's some decidedly confused looking at one another from my team mates. But Kaldur's leader.

"Lord.. Fate. We were told that you were dead."

"Did you come here to check?"

And breathe. No constant references to 'fate'. He's not back, he's not back. Which still leaves the possibility that it's some other Order spirit pulling the strings. Huh, I never really thought about it, but… Did he actually call himself 'Lord Fate', or did other people pick it up based on the references he made?

"No. I apologise. I was simply surprised to see you."

"It's quite alright… Aqualad, yes?"

"You are correct." Kaldur turns slightly to the side, gesturing to the rest of us with his right hand. "And this is my team. You.. have met them before, but-."

"No, Nabu met them before. This is the first time for me. Ah! Where are my manners?" He holds his right hand out to Kaldur. "Lord Fate. Pleased to make your acquaintance."

"Aqualad." Kaldur takes his hand and they shake… Companionably enough.

Kon looks to me for some sort of clue about what's going on, but all I can do is shrug. Okay, Larfleeze's old ring looks like it's still -yep, that's a small box-construct- working. Perhaps the lack of AI means that it's not orderly enough? My spell eater is still cold so that wasn't a direct att.. ack. But… Power rings draw power from somewhere else which means-.

And now he's looking at me.

"Orange Lantern."

"Lord Fate." I hold out my left hand. "Ah, if you're planning on using the name."

"I may as well." He takes my hand with his left and… Nothing untoward happens. "I understand that the Justice League still have me listed on the active roster."

Ahhhhhhhhaaaaa…

Right. And that's the thing about masked secret identities. Kon can't pretend to be Kal-El; he's not big enough. But if another martian pretended to be J'onn J'onzz, no one who wasn't another martian would know it. Heck, the Justice League that formed during the One Year Later thing happened because one Firestorm gave the next Firestorm all his old Justice League gear. If something happened to Diana, would the next Wonder Woman get an automatic placement?

I somehow doubt that any of them have ever talked about it.

"They have Nabu on the active roster. I imagine that they'll want to talk to you before confirming the succession."

I'm aware there have been other Fates in the comics, but the only one I can remember right at this moment is Hector Hall and this man doesn't sound American. And… Jared something? I think he was American too?

Of course… There's the other option…

He removes his hand and extends his right towards Wallace. "I understand that you had the displeasure of being locked in your body by my predecessor."

"Yeah… That-" His eyes shift to me before returning to… Oh great, now I'm going to have to call him 'Fate' too. He shakes his hand. "-happened. Do you not..?"

"No, but I see why you would be concerned. This is my own body. But it's no trouble at all to demonstrate." Without particular ceremony he reaches up and lifts off the Helmet of Fate, revealing…

Some bloke with long blonde hair. Not John. Maybe what John would look like after a century-long detox program and a body building course. He also doesn't have any of the weight holding him down that John has, the slight cringe that comes from having everyone around you die or be horribly injured again and again and knowing that you were to blame and that's it's going to happen again. This man is.. confident. Calm. Friendly. And there's enough difference in the structure of his face that I'm not worrying that John's done some sort of stupid bit of magic to reimagine himself.

"Ah! Forgive me. I shouldn't keep you all waiting out here, not if you're tracking down arcane artefacts which may have fallen into the hands of ne'er-do-well's. Please." He motions to the open door with his right arm while putting the Helmet under his left. "Come inside."

back

Grind 8

next

30th October

18:43 GMT -5

Artemis stares around the vast library. "What happened to all the stairs?"

"They're still around." Fate walks over to what looks like a broom cupboard and pulls open the door, revealing… Yes, there they are. "But I find them a little inconvenient for moving around. Since I can change the relationship between the interior elements of the Tower, I shuffled some of the more inconvenient ones out of the way."

He closes the door and leads the way towards a reading area. The shelves are arranged in such a way that I can't tell whether the place is very big, actually infinite or just repeating itself. Certainly, I can't see or detect more of us.

"If I may ask?" Fate turns to Kaldur with his eyebrows raised. "I have not heard of… A magician of your appearance before. Have you been a hero for long?"

"In my own small way." He walks around to the far side of the table and sits down, putting the Helmet of Fate down in front of him. "I've always been a minor magician. Human psychology, basic synchronicity… A little wart-charming. And then: Helmet. And the whole wonderful music of the universe opened itself to me."

Richard, Wallace, Artemis and Kaldur sit down opposite him. I stay back a little, and Kon folds his arms across his chest and stands nearer to me. Would John have given up and dumped it on some likely lad? He might, I suppose. If it was really getting to him. And I probably wasn't on the planet, so I can hardly fault him for-.

"You don't know who this guy is, do you?"

"Not the foggiest."

Fate says something to Wallace, who frowns but holds out his hands anyway. A moment later a book flies in from one of the shelves and lands in them.

"Do you think he's telling the truth? I mean, what did you do with the Helmet of Fate after you killed him?"

"I was in hospital, Kon. I had no input into what happened to it."

"But you know." My eyes dip slightly. "Paul."

"John had it. He's looked after that sort of thing before, he's the man I got Angelica's wings from."

"Mom said they'd put things like that in the reliquary on Themyscira."

"And I made my plans assuming that she wouldn't be involved."

He doesn't look impressed. Which is.. understandable, really. "So, is this a problem?"

"Don't know. Hope not. Having a powerful Order magician around would certainly be useful." He starts to open his mouth. "One who isn't a body-stealing parasite."

"If I'm not intruding?"

We both turn around to look at New Fate. The others are flicking through books, going from illustration to illustration and pulling out the 'possibles' for further study. I think about reaching for my rune stone, but this place is so full of magic that I doubt that I'd get a worthwhile reading.

Kon nods at him. "Who are you?"

"My first name is 'John', actually. But you'll excuse a magician for not wanting to give out his full name." He half turns, gesturing to the other four. "Now, why don't you.. join your friends. I'm sure they'd appreciate an extra pair of eyes. And I need a quick word in private with Orange Lantern."

And… Kon's muscles tense slightly. He knows I'm hiding something about this from him. Which I am, and will continue to do until I can find out what's going on from John and then he can decide. Kon walks over to the table and pulls out the chair next to Wallace, while 'John' puts his right arm around my shoulders and gently leads me away down one of the aisles.

He doesn't say anything right away, just leads me down a corner to an intersection. Two seats, a small table, a glass of milk and a tea set. The latter being for him, presumably.

"Please, take a seat."

No real reason not to. I pull away and take the seat to the left. He gently lowers himself into the chair to the right, Helmet on his lap.

"Now." He picks up the teapot and pours himself a cup. Teabags in a kettle, or is he just replacing the strainer with magic? "I'm sure that you're finding this whole situation extremely suspicious."

I reach for the milk glass, hold it up and take a good look at it. "I walked into here, didn't I?"

He sets the teapot down and shakes his head. "I don't follow."

"John Constantine could probably futz around with the magics of the tower, given enough time. But an Order-aligned magician? No, the tower's accepted you. Which means you could probably put me on a Möbius strip stairway or something and there'd be very little I could do about it."

"Except call the Ophidian, and I would really rather that you didn't." He looks around as he raises his cup to his lips and takes a small sip. "I've just got it looking the way I like it."

"Alright. How did you get that Helmet?"

"Ah… Where are you up to?"

"John visited me in hospital after the fight with Nabu. He had it with him then."

"And how did he seem to you?"

"Like it was doing his head in."

He nods, a slight smile on his lips. "Yes, that's… John… Wasn't the most orderly of people. I'm a bit surprised he didn't hand it over to someone else immediately."

"So how did you get it? And how do you know John?"

"Some British police officers believe in magic. I was in Cardiff when there were a series of… Apparently ritualistic murders. I offered to help, they accepted… Completely unnecessarily, as it turned out. John was already on the case. We traded phone numbers…"

"Just one case?" Though that might explain why John never bothered mentioning him to me.

"I phoned him for advice a few times, and we got together for a drink on the one occasion I visited London." He shrugs, taking another sip. "Having contacts in the know is vital in our line of work." I nod. "We weren't especially close, and all I could really offer him was an extra pair of hands."

"But he trusts you with the Helmet?"

He chuckles quietly to himself. "How many orderly people do you think John Constantine knows, oh Discordian Lantern?"

Fair point. 'Not many' would be my guess, which pretty much matches the contact list he shared with me. And while Mister Zatara might have been willing to take it up again… Okay, there wouldn't be a huge problem, now that Nabu isn't in it any longer. But Order might have issues with it, and if he were directly plugged into it…

But some bright-looking magician from Cardiff? I could sort of see that working. And it's not like John isn't known for dumping people in the deep end.

"Alright. The Justice League are doing a full cover up on what happened to Nabu, so…"

He nods. "Mum's the word. He's on holiday, or retired, or accepted a new posting."

"Have you had any contact from the Order side of things?"

"Not yet. It's possible that they don't even know that Nabu's dead. But that's my problem now."

I nod. "If you ever want any help, I'm happy to assist."

"Thank you." He drains his cup and puts it back down. "And… Since we're going to be colleagues in future… Why don't we get to know one another a little?"

back

Grind 9

next

30th October

20:05 GMT -5

"That guy seemed pretty normal." Artemis shrugs as I look at her. "As super powerful wizards go."

"I will try not to take offence on my queen's behalf."

Artemis winces very faintly. "Right. But is she powerful, like, Lord of Order powerful?"

Kaldur inclines his head slightly. "I do not believe so. But I am also not certain how skilled the new Fate will be without Nabu to guide him."

It's not far to the Salem zeta tube, and the locals walking along the pavements around us are giving us a degree of space. Fate aside, Salem doesn't have a significant superhero or supervillain population. And I know that Nabu didn't interact significantly with the locals.

Kon nudges me with his left elbow. "What did he want to talk to you about?"

"An expanded version of how he got the Helmet."

Kaldur nods. "And do you believe his tale to be credible?"

"Plausible, yes. I'll need to check it out before I say 'credible', of course."

Wallace.. appears to be getting a little annoyed with me. "Oh El, why don't you just tell us what you did with the Helmet?"

"Because I put it in the care of a person, and I want to discuss the matter with them before spreading that information."

Richard tilts his head slightly to the side. "You weren't expecting him, were you?" I nod. "Were you expecting there to be a Fate, or was that a surprise too?"

Ahh-hhh… "I wasn't expecting a Fate. I also wasn't expecting such a helpful attitude, so really that went better than I thought it would. What did you find out?"

"Each of the ar-."

"Ah, hold on, Supes." Wallace raises his right hand.

Kon frowns. "What?"

Wallace looks at me and I nod. "I'm not on the team. Which means that I don't automatically qualify for sharing sensitive information."

"Oh, come on!" Kon frowns at Kaldur and Wallace in turn. "We didn't even get in when we came here without Paul. And John.. Fate seemed pretty friendly. What's the point in keeping something secret if he can just go back and ask them?"

I hold up my hands slightly. "Look, if you want to handle this without me... That's fine. I was just.. trying to be helpful."

"Kid Flash does raise a point which several of us have been considering." Kaldur stops for a moment and stares me in the face. "Do you wish to rejoin the team?"

"Um. I… I'd.. assumed that after Hyde Park the League wouldn't want me to be quite so closely involved with their work. Particularly given how I've already rejected their rules of engagement. A young superhero who doesn't know their own strength is one thing, but everything I did was deliberate."

"I understand that there may be problems, but you did not answer my question. Do you wish to rejoin the team?"

"Yes." A little tension leaves him. And Kon, I notice. "Not that living with Alan isn't fascinating. I now have an encyclopaedic knowledge of forties and fifties superhero trivia, and it's been great-."

"Ah, Oh El?" Wallace looks around. No one in our immediate vicinity, but I can see people further away. "Secret identity?"

"Unfortunately, after the zombie attack… He doesn't exactly have one any more. It's not… Common knowledge, but it is out there. Look, Mister Garrick managed perfectly well for decades without-."

"No, he didn't. He got attacked, Joan got attacked and the companies they worked for got attacked a whole bunch of times because people knew where they'd be. Don't try and pretend it doesn't happen."

"Okay, I'll.. talk to him about improving his home security."

"And what about his family?"

"I don't think that any of Alan's old enemies are still active. Except Solomon Grundy, and he hasn't been seen for.. nearly two years? And anyway-" I shake my head. "-people don't go after the extended families of police officers."

Artemis winces. "They do in Gotham. Did, anyway. I don't think it happens so much these days, but it definitely happened." Richard nods.

"Alan's mostly been practising healing, but-" I raise my hands. "-okay, I'll mention it to him, see what he wants to do. But… Going back to the original question." I nod. "I would like to rejoin the team. I just didn't want to create ructions between you and the-" Kon gives my left shoulder a playful shove. "-League. So… What's the process?"

"It-." / "You need to talk to Batman."

Kaldur looks at Wallace in surprise. He makes a shrugging gesture with his hands. "What? Look, having Oh El back would be great. It's not like I want to try walking along a river bed for five hours. But he-."

He checks around us again, and I give it a quick ring scan as well. No listening devices I can detect, and at this point we're away from areas people usually go outside of work hours.

"Assassinated a member of the Justice League. He just said himself that the League might have a problem with him coming back."

Kon gives his head a small shake. "Batman was fine about him helping us fight Eliminations Inc."

Richard shakes his head. "Him coming back on the team means that he gets access to Justice League information. And authorisation. And it means that League members who aren't okay with him being back are expected to start teaching him again."

"Green.. Arrow…" Artemis looks uncomfortable as she says it. "Said he was fine with teaching him. I got the impression a lot of the League feel like that."

"I know Mom does."

Kaldur nods. "But in the League, decisions must be near-unanimous."

"Okay, I'll make an appointment with Batman. And not just appear in the Batcave this time. In the meantime, if there's anything you want me to help with… That's fine, no need for a full explanation."

Another nod from Kaldur, accompanied by a small smile. "Those of us who are not attending school tomorrow were going to follow up on some of these leads." Him, me, Canis, Roy, Garth, Tula and Zatanna… Maybe. "It would make things easier if you were with us."

"As long as it doesn't involve a fingertip search of the bottom of a major river again."

"No. Since we have a better idea of what the artefacts stolen can be used for, we are able to considerably narrow our search parameters. Though the search will still most likely be exhaustive."

I nod as Kon pulls open the door leading to the zeta tube.

"Sounds… More fun than today."

back

Grind 10

next

31st October

09:00 GMT -5

"Aqualad has informed me that you have an interest in rejoining the team."

I stand at parade rest in the Batcave. I'm mildly pleased with the situation, that this meeting was arranged so quickly, that there actually is a meeting, that I can't use basic scans to examine his equipment… And that Alan is going to have to stop making cracks about me 'getting a job'.

I pay rent.

"That is correct, Batman. None of my uplift projects require my continued input, I found you two magic users… At.. this point, it's that or found one of my own." Ah. "Another of my own, counting the Orange Lantern Corps."

"Doctor Mist has expressed a reluctance to work with the League in circumstances where we would be expected to intervene, and your handling of Angelica Blaze's reveal left a great deal to be desired."

"And yet, neither of them are parasites, and as such represent an improvement upon their predecessor."

Batman regards me impassively. "Doctor Mist has stated that if he saw a river surge and flood a populated area, he would leave the local people to drown rather than help them."

"Yes, I do appreciate that Doctor Mist's belief that natural disasters are 'natural' is a bit strange, but you needed someone who can fight the most powerful tier of magic using criminals and that's what you've got. He believes that it isn't his job to deal with problems that normal human society should be able to cope with, and… We know that building on flood plains results in homes being flooded, and yet.. it keeps happening."

"Do you agree with him?"

"No, because I believe that our objective should be to raise everyone else to our levels. I don't believe that we're 'apart' in the way that he does. On the other hand, I'm not as old as he is and it may be that once I've seen a few civilisations rise and fall I'll feel differently."

A slight inclination of his head. "How would you convince him otherwise?"

For a second I frown at the question, but alright. "Resocialise him. He has few friends and little investment in the particular lives around him. Change that, and he may be more open to interventionism. Or.. perhaps if you encouraged him to nurture those parts of modern civilisation which can resist threats of the tier you're recruiting him to fight, he would feel that it was acceptable until such time as those threats no longer exist."

"Plausible. Do you have similar plans for improving Angelica Blaze's public image?"

"No." I sigh. "A great many people have religious beliefs which are factually inaccurate. There is no way around it, no way to change their minds with mere evidence. The best I can think of is having her continue her mercy missions and to not have anything to do with me."

Batman nods. "While I still do not approve of your handling of Nabu, I have no objection in principle to you rejoining the team."

Great! "Thank you-."

"Other members of the Justice League may, however. I am aware that you have talked things through with Wonder Woman and Green Arrow, but as I understand it you have not spoken to most other members of the League."

"No, not… About that. I didn't think that restarting that argument was a productive use of my time."

"The team was founded to train the next generation of superheroes. I -and most other members of the League- have assumed that its members will eventually become members of the Justice League. While in the short term, it is likely that 'restarting the argument' would harm your working relationships, I also believe it is the best way to repair them in the longer term."

Oooooh great. I mean, I've spent time with Arnus due to Lantern Xor's upcoming trial and with the Lanterns during training, but we've never addressed the point directly.

"And if I do that..?"

"Then you will return to the team's active roster and be expected to take part in team activities. Including lessons."

"And I will endeavour to approach them with an open mind."

"In the intervening period, I do have a few tasks it would be helpful if you could perform."

"I've.. already offered to spend today helping the team."

"These do not need to be attended to immediately."

I nod. "Okay then. What can I do for you?"

He turns away, activating his computer terminal and bringing up an image. A group of superheroes; a man in light power armour and a youth in an ill-advised body stocking, flames churning around his hands. A woman in black and gold and a woman in gold and red.

And is that Flamebird?

"Superhero teams are far from being a new phenomenon. Even the Justice Society wasn't the first such alliance. But recently, large numbers of unconnected superheroes have been provided with improved equipment and training by an organisation called 'The Alliance of the Just'."

"Sensible. I did say the League should consider doing something like that."

"Given that the head of the Alliance is Vincent Edge, you may wish to reconsider your endorsement."

Ah. Vincent Edge, believed but never proven to be the founding father of Intergang. I suppose the skill set is somewhat familiar.

"I thought he was retired."

"He had a successful heart transplant early this year, and appears to be as physically sound as a man of his age can be. Despite your stated views on the matter, the Justice League is not an umbrella organisation for superheroes. If all that is happening is that he's had a Damascene conversion and wishes to redeem himself, then there is nothing about this which warrants League intervention. However, my concern is that this is a cover for an act of large scale criminality."

"Are all of these people..." I languidly wave my hand in the direction of the screens. "Known quantities with a history of heroism?"

"Most are, some are not." He takes a data stick out of the console and hands it to me. "While in other circumstances I might ask the team to investigate this, their increasingly public roles as partners of members of the Justice League make such an approach somewhat overt."

"I'm a known Justice League affiliate."

"You have also missed several missions undertaken by the team due to your resignation. I have also allowed controlled leaks to take place indicating that you have had a falling out with your mentors."

It is true.

"Any problem with me including Alan in this?"

"Since you have not yet rejoined the team, this is not an order. As such, you are free to proceed in any way you choose."

"Thank you. I'll-" I raise the data stick. "-get right on that."

back

Grind 11

next

31st October

18:58 GMT -5

Today was… Nice. Just Tula, Kaldur and I attempting and largely failing to find any further leads on the rash of thefts while Garth and Canis did little better.

Querying the families of the deceased produced… Nothing actionable. They reported that the people who disappeared had been mildly confused and a little distressed before their disappearances… Which could indicate a chemical compound being used to alter their thoughts, or a form of telepathic control that has brain damage as a side effect. I'm not aware of any currently active telepaths on Earth whose abilities work like that, and from what M'gann told me martian telepathy generally doesn't have that sort of effect.

Canis seemed to be enjoying himself, less from having me back and more from the sheer disregard for life shown by the perpetrators of the thefts. He and Garth were able to track one of the escaped thieves down, but sadly whatever kills them doesn't require them to be capable of moving. Whatever they stole had already been moved, and an analysis of the site yielded no clues about where it had gone.

And now I've got a meeting with-

"Hey! Orange Lantern!"

-Arnus, to talk about the Nabu situation. I wave with my right hand as Raquel flies over the Dakota City skyline and comes up alongside me. "Good evening, Rocket."

"You here to see Icon?"

"Yes, I.. phoned ahead. Batman wants me to talk about Nabu with everyone in the Justice League before he'll sign off on me rejoining the team."

She frowns. "Why do you want to come back on the team?"

"Because it's where my friends are? Why?"

"I'm only on the team until I can join the Justice League. That's what it's for, ain't it? I mean, you're already an official Lantern, you're in a Lantern Corps… What do you get out of it?"

"If you put it like that, what do I get out of joining the Justice League?"

She blinks. "The zeta tube network? Cooperation from police all over the world? You get to look like a legitimate hero, rather than some guy in glowing armor?"

"My abilities as a Lantern are at their strongest when I fight beside people whom I identify with most strongly. I'm better with the team than the League. And it's not like I can't do my own thing in my own time."

"It would make Mister Scott happy."

I nod. "That's the best reason, but I'm not in a rush on that front any longer."

"Why? Did he stop being old?"

"Yes, effectively." She blinks. "Oh, were you not in the loop on that? I got him a new lantern, and he's now elementally enough that as long as he wears his ring he won't decay."

"Huh. Okay then. How's the.. search thing going?"

"Since I haven't been told what we're looking for, I'm not completely sure. No significant further progress was made today…"

"It's statues. Weird little statues."

"I.. don't think you're supposed to-."

"Are you gunna tell anyone how you found out?"

"Nno."

"You can't look for something when you don't know what you're looking for, can you?"

"I suppose not. Are you continuing the investigation this evening, or doing-" Arnus flies out from behind a block of flats and we alter course to meet him. "-local patrolling?"

"Local. Icon doesn't like me being out late on a school night." The three of us slow as we get to within speaking distance. "Where do you want me tonight?"

"I believe that Sadler would benefit from your oversight this evening. There has been a small spike in rates of petty theft lately."

"I'm on it." She turns in the air and accelerates northwards with a wave.

Hm. Okay. While I know 'Augustus Freeman' reasonably well -at least on the professional level- I don't know Arnus at all. Not his.. distinguishing characteristics. I know the things which he's done from Justice League records and Raquel's mentor boasting contests with Wallace, but on a personal level? Almost nothing.

"Is it appropriate to call you 'Arnus'?"

"It is a name for which I no longer have any use. Since we are in costume, I believe that 'Icon' would be more appropriate."

"Alright. As I.. said in my message, Batman has made my return to the team contingent on me talking about the Nabu situation with all members of the League. Personally, I'd rather have drawn a veil over the whole thing. So if there's anything you want to ask me or.. volunteer, now's the time."

"Why did you request that Wonder Woman's lasso be used during your testimony?"

"Spite. Oh, and the reasons I stated at the time. I had roughly planned to storm out, and having to repeat myself might have interrupted that."

"Spite. Because the lasso symbolises not merely factual truth but divine truth. Because you wished to indicate that you would speak honestly even when totally in the League's power, telling us something we did not wish to hear."

I nod. "Pretty much."

"In the Cooperative, we learned to be cautious of primitive truth compulsion techniques. The evidence indicates that they often bias the answers given. Do you believe that the character of your own answers was influenced by the lasso's magic?"

"Once or twice, yes. Generally, not sure. But I had intended to be confrontational from the start and didn't say anything that I regret substantially."

He nods. "Is there anything which you would like to ask me?"

I have been wondering… "Why was slavery abolished in the US in eighteen sixty five?"

His eyebrows rise very slightly. "I was referring to my negligent treatment of Giovanni Zatara."

"That's between you and either your god or your conscience, as you prefer. You telling me now won't change anything. But if you want to…"

"Slavery was abolished in eighteen sixty five because that was the earliest point after the civil war at which the legislation could be passed in the House and the Senate, and then ratified by the States. Can I safely assume from your question that you are curious as to why I -who arrived in the United States in eighteen ten- had not taken action to end it sooner?"

"I'm curious as to your reasoning. Your life pod reconstructed you as a baby, and you didn't know anything about Earth society. On the other hand, by the time you were… Say, fifteen? You would have known enough, and you were powerful enough that I don't think anyone around at the time could have stopped you."

"Because I believe that Earth society needed to learn to deal with the evil of slavery itself. To struggle with its conscience and learn from that struggle, rather than have a solution imposed upon it by a single man. I take it that you disagree?"

"In cases where the provocation is sufficient, yes. Slavery, slaughter, mass mutilation and mass mind control would result in me intervening, more or less regardless of other factors."

"I cannot swear to you that the route I took was the best for Earth society. I am aware that in the short term many people suffered who could otherwise have been saved. Are you certain that your interventions have maximised utility?"

"Not certain. I don't think a person ever can be."

He looks away for a moment. "I did not intervene in the matter of Nabu's occupation of Giovanni Zatara because I believed at the time that the arrangement was truly voluntary. I did not know that their joining could function without the host's consent. When you.. confronted us and I became more fully informed, I was surprised that other League members had allowed that state of affairs to continue. I certainly do not approve of Nabu's actions."

"And mine?"

"I found them disquieting. But I cannot say with any confidence that you were in the wrong."

I nod, following his gaze. "Anything else, or shall we spend the rest of the evening on crime prevention?"

"I have no further questions at this time."

back

Grind 12

next

1st November

11:35 GMT -6

Miss Shimmer eyes me warily from just outside her laboratory door as I approach. "What are you doing here?"

I blink. "I live here."

She frowns. "No, I mean, why are you here at my lab?"

I smile. "I'm trying to show an interest in your work?"

She closes her eyes for a moment, shaking her head. "I haven't made any progress working out how to recreate the portal to Morgan le Fay's world-."

"No, no." I hold up my right hand. "Not with the work I set you. With your own studies."

She shakes her head again. "I'm not doing anything that's got anything to with-."

"Sunset." I tilt my head to the right. "I'm trying to show an interest in your work. Just… Being sociable, subletting landlord to tenant. I'm not demanding, I'm just aware that.. I haven't been paying as much attention to you as I have to some of the other residents except when I need you to do something."

"And you've got nothing going on right now."

"And-. Well." Ah… "I'm not exactly rushed off my feet at the moment, but when you're as powerful as me there's always something you can be doing. And let's be honest: you're a lot more independent than the children are. But." I lightly lay my right hand on her left shoulder. "I do want to make time for you. You're a valued part of the team, and that needs to work both ways."

She looks at me for a moment, then turns her head away. "Yeah. Okay, sorry, I-." She exhales. "I'm still not-." She looks uncertain.

"You're expecting me to do a Celestia?"

"No." She irritably brushes off my hand, then sags slightly. "Maybe? I don't know. I'm not good at… Social.. stuff."

"I used drugs to turn myself into a giant grey mutant and lied to everyone about it." I shrug. "None of us are perfect."

"Um. I guess."

"And I thought you and Iname were getting along well?"

"I-." She turns away and places her palm on the door's scanner. "Can we just talk about work?"

"We can talk about whatever you want to talk about."

The door slides open and I follow her inside. Hm. I remember a television series I watched back on Earth Prime where a wizard used lights to project a magic circle on the ground. Far easier to program it in and then press a button than to draw it out every time. Miss Shimmer has taken a more lego approach: metal parts designed to tessellate with one another are arranged in a warded enclosure or stacked neatly at the side of the main workshop. I don't recognise the particular configuration, but that's a decent opener.

I gesture towards it with my right hand. "What's that for?"

"Hm?" Miss Shimmer has responded to my intrusion into her territory by going right to her work station and metaphorically hovering. "Oh, ah, I was trying to…" She looks away awkwardly. "It didn't work, I just haven't needed the space, and I don't like the genomorphs being in here without me."

"What was it..? Supposed to be for?"

She hesitates, then shrugs. "I've been trying to use what I've learned about thaumaturgy to recreate unicorn magic. Wilson unicorn magic, not fae unicorn magic, however that works."

"Every failure is a chance to begin again more intelligently!" She gives me a black look. "How did it go?"

"I thought… Now I can use Earth magic, I thought I could build some sort of conversion device. Based on what I know about unicorn magic I came up with models for how it could work…"

"That's science for you. Come up with a theory, test it, and if it doesn't hold up then you know how the universe doesn't work."

She shakes her head. "I don't think I'm wrong exactly. But… I don't think magic on Wilson works like it does here. I-." She frowns at me. "Do you actually read the books you get for me?" I shake my head. "Ugh. Some of it matches up with what works here, but I think some of the… Not the operating principles exactly, but… Some of the constants are different?"

"So no wizard to unicorn converter?"

"It's theoretically possible, but…" She shakes her head. "It would take years to work out what the differences were." She shrugs. "I mean, without access to Equestria."

"Have you tried asking Zatanna for help? I got the impression that her talking backwards thing worked for just about anything."

Miss Shimmer's jaw tightens. "Yeah, that…" She huffs. "It just feels-. Stupid. Using a magic I don't understand to cheat. And.. talking backwards!"

"How are words more stupid than glowing keratin?"

"Because I grew up with one and not the other. And it's not like-." She throws her arms up a little and starts pacing. "It's not like I didn't know there were other ways of manipulating the environment using magic. When I was a little filly I used to nag the palace gardeners to show me how earth pony magic worked."

"Because you wanted to learn how to be an alicorn."

"No! I didn't even know that was possible until Celestia showed me myself in Starswirl's mirror as an alicorn. And then-." She looks like she's swallowed something unpleasant. "Celestia wouldn't tell me anything about becoming an alicorn. After a while I thought that maybe she just didn't know, or maybe it was symbolic or something. Then…"

"Then..?"

She shakes her head. "Some pegasus pony managed it. One moment wings, next moment wings, horn and about ten centimetres taller."

I nod. "Which.. means that Cel-."

"Yeah, which means she was lying to me the whole time. It's not like I was serious when I said I wanted to dissect her!"

I nod. "Dissections are for life, MRI scans are every six months."

"Exactly! I mean, we didn't have MRI scans, but I could have done something." She throws out her arms wide this time. "What was I supposed to do?"

"Follow Friend Computer's wise and benevolent guidance like a good meat robot."

"What? No, we don't have computers. I was supposed to mindlessly follow Celestia's orders!" Her pacing naturally turns her away from me as I briefly consider explaining 'Paranoia' to her and decide against it. "But yes! 'Meat robot'. That's exactly it!"

"But getting back to your work..?"

"The only example of Equestrian magic on Earth is this end of the portal. And I don't think I can build a laboratory in Filly-. In Philadelphia."

"Might be difficult. I could probably get a temporary one authorised…" I frown. "Is there any way to move it?"

"I don't-." She turns around, frowning. "I don't know. Celestia called it 'Starswirl's Mirror', but I couldn't check its provenance. And she wouldn't let me study it either."

"I didn't notice any particular object on this side. Is the anchor point in the air? Does it move… Actually, if there's been a portal there for who knows how long, is there a way to detect other examples of Wilsonian magic on Earth?"

She frowns again, this time in thought rather than frustration. "Actually, there… Should be. Let me just do some calculations."

back

Grind 13

next

1st November

23:20 GMT +6

Rain hammers into my construct umbrella as a construct riverbank springs into being, monsoon surge now being channelled away from the village and farmlands. In the dark my rings show me Kal-El going to work, grabbing people out of the water and lifting them to safety.

Ring, show me the whole of the river channel.

Compliance.

A couple more places are likely to breach. I extend the construct and lift its sides, increasingly replacing the channel of the river. I can't help but feel that this shouldn't be happening. Monsoon rains are an annual event. The fact that this river is the course the waters are taking shouldn't be a surprise. Why wasn't this area better prepared?

"Superman to Orange Lantern. Having any trouble?"

"No, sir. I'm directing the surge downstream now."

"Are you able to deepen the channel?"

Which is a sensible thing to ask. It would have been even more sensible to ask the local civil engineer six months ago, but this is an emergency response. We wouldn't be here if someone had asked that. Moving earth is of course well within my abilities…

A better question is: do I want to?

The people suffering the effects here are not individually at fault, but someone around here is, and they're living on a flood plain. Not far away from here, people make the entirely sensible decision to build their homes on stilts precisely because they've adapted to these conditions. This village hasn't.

No, I don't want to. Not strongly enough to do a full and proper fix. I can keep my current construct up all night, but beyond that…

"No, sir. I'm afraid not. I've got some building materials in subspace; I should be able to shore up this bank-."

"Can you dam the river for a few minutes?"

The area immediately adjacent to the river is uninhabited for tens of metres. I might not want to wipe the Bangladesh government's arse for it but I genuinely don't want these people to drown on my watch.

Agh, should have grabbed a Dolmen gate or two…

"Yes, sir. Say when."

My environmental shield wavers as he appears next to me. "When."

I expand my construct to the left and right of the bank at the same time as I block off the end. Water flow downstream cuts off immediately and Kal-El darts off in that direction. Of course, water doesn't stop coming. I'm building up a decent size reservoir here. Which is actually easier for me to manage than a small volume would be, as it being here is my fault and there aren't reasonable civil engineering solutions to this quantity of water being dumped on you.

And while I'm doing that, Kal-El-.

Oh. Goodness.

I assumed that he was going to improve the river channel himself. And it's not as if he was asking me to keep the water off for his benefit. He might need to breathe, but he can hold his breath for a significant period of time. I had thought that he might not want to risk sloshing the water out with the speed of his actions, but it's not that. He didn't want to scald the area with superheated steam.

I'm flying, so I don't feel the ground rumble as he hits it and forces his way through. I do see the glow as he melts the river bed and shoves it aside, the molten material cooling just enough to stay more or less where he puts it. And he's moving really fast; he's already further away from me than I could see with my unaided eyes in daylight. The channel will have about… Three times the volume when he's finished. More than enough for normal monsoons and certainly a start for the local people to improve upon if they so choose.

I suppose when all you've got is a hammer, you learn to get really good at fixing things with a hammer.

"Looks good from here, sir. How far are you planning on going?" I wait for a moment. "Sir?"

Of course, that's a problem with having communications gear that isn't Kryptonian-tough. Magma and molten glass aren't too healthy for portable radios. Okay, he's got that end covered, and once he's finished I'll be able to release the water faster than it's coming in. It'll be rather dull if he has to dash off, but if he can stick around then-.

"And done." Kal-El reappears next to me, easily catching his falling radio out of the air as he does so. He sees me looking at it. "Batman gave me a lecture after I destroyed the first one of these."

"That was impressively well timed, sir." He shrugs, apparently considering timing ploughing through molten rock precisely enough to catch an object he threw up before he started just a party trick anyone could learn. "Should I let the water go now, or leave it for a bit?"

"If you're managing okay, let's give it a minute or two." I nod. "You wanted to talk about something?"

"Yes, but-. This river shouldn't have overflown, right?"

"No, it shouldn't. And I think I know just the mild-mannered reporter to find out what happened to the levee maintenance budget."

"Is the Daily Planet interested in that sort of thing? We're a long way from Metropolis."

"The Planet has an international edition. And it's always worth knowing where your foreign aid money is being spent."

He knows Mr Mason better than I do. "What I wanted to talk to you about was Nabu." He raises his eyebrows very slightly, but doesn't interrupt. "Batman wants me to talk things out with the entire League before letting me rejoin the team."

"I.. see. I'm a.. little surprised that you want to keep learning from us, given how things were when you left."

"If I don't understand why you do what you do, I can't correct the thought processes that lead you to doing it. Either for you or for the next generation. And I really do find it easier to identify with the rest of the team."

"I'll admit, after what you did to Nabu I'll probably feel better having you where I can see you." He semi-smiles at his semi-joke. "I'll tell Batman that I don't have any objection to you returning to the team."

"Thank you, sir, but I think he rather wants us to talk about Nabu a bit first. I'd just as soon not, but…"

"In that case… You made your views and motives very clear, so I suppose you're finally ready to hear mine."

"I was ready to hear them any time you chose to volunteer them. I just didn't think it was a productive thing to spend time on."

"I -on the other hand- think it's an excellent use of my time to make sure you don't kill any more superheroes. And since you're rejoining the team, take this as my first lecture. If you're getting into a situation where you think you might end up having to use lethal force talk to your teacher first. You're a smart-" Don't. "-kid, but not even Batman sees all the angles."

"I gave Nabu a chance-."

"A chance to surrender, which you almost certainly knew he wouldn't take."

I look away for a moment. "Actually, I was hopeful that he would. I assumed that as a being of Order he'd be rational about it, put our personal enmity aside and do what makes logical sense." I look back at him. "So you believe that I should have taken a chance and raised the matter with Diana or Batman?"

"In your case, yes. You clearly brought other people in, so I take it that you had a way to avoid Fate's detection."

"Not one that would have been reliable for someone in frequent close proximity to him, but I could have risked it. But after you brought him into the League, I didn't think the risk was worth it."

"We can't teach you if you don't listen to us. And we can't answer your questions if you don't ask them."

"Alright. I can listen. But I should not have had to prompt you about something like that."

back

Grind 14

next

2nd November

12:56 GMT -5

"Hail, Lantern!" Marcus Aelius floats upwards as the Washington police deposit two people in suits into the back of a police car. "What brings you to Washington?"

"Lunch." I hold up a picnic basket. "If you're hungry?"

"I believe-" He glances down as the police pull away. "-that I can spare some time. But please tell me that you haven't brought dormice?"

"Ah… I haven't brought dor-." He bows his head slightly. "I thought Romans-."

"I spent ten years on Virmiron, and have spent a further three on modern Earth. And even in my youth, I thought that the fixation on dormouse-eating was a bizarre affectation of the idle rich. There is no time for faddish diets on campaign."

"I apologise for my assumption. All the.. more for me?"

"Hah!" He floats past me, heading in the general direction of Rock Creek Park. "I've eaten dormice before." I head after him, and we both accelerate as we go. "It is simply that when people discovered I was actually a Roman Centurion it was all anyone who hosted me put on. I have no wish to offend my hosts…"

"But I imagine that it got a bit tiring?"

"I come from Greater Germany! I visited Rome twice in my entire life!"

"So, for future reference, less dormice, more sausage?"

"If you're really trying to score points with me, bring something you've hunted and killed yourself with a bow or a spear." He lands on an area of open grass. "We could get a permit to roast it."

I take a couple of power armour safe seats out of subspace and deposit them next to him. "You know, I was going to ask why you stayed in America rather than going back to Italy. But if you're ethnically German-?"

"Bah. I went back to visit." He tests the seat before trusting it with his full weight. "The mountains are the mountains, and the Rhine is still mostly in the same place. But after nearly two thousand years there was nothing about the people that felt familiar."

I take the other seat, putting the picnic basket down between us and construct-lifting out tubs of salad, eggs, cheese and a small loaf of bread. "And Italy?"

"The Roman Empire was confident, proud, strong and aggressive." He pulls a plate out of the basket and uses a small energy blade to cut off a piece of bread. "Modern Italy… No people who worship their past could take its place. These United States are the closest I've found."

He watches with unconcealed amusement as I lift out the honey-glazed dormouse tub. Wolf.. seemed to like it. "If I may ask..?"

He chews a piece of bread, then swallows. "I doubt that you invited me to lunch for an autograph."

"Why did you become a superhero when you came back?"

"As opposed to a soldier?" I nod. "My alien tutors showed me examples of barbarity and harshness undreamt of by the most brutish barbarian or the cruellest tyrant. It all made.. political expansion seem… Trite. Trivial. I was told -and fully accepted- that I would serve Rome best by serving as a bulwark against such things. And then I returned…"

Yes. I imagine that was a shock. I've tried and failed to come up with a species that engages in interstellar travels using devices that can muck up time dilation so badly and would be inclined to train up local heroes.

"I had half-expected that upon my return I would found my own legion with which to defend the Earth, but in my absence…" He looks around. "The Earth was not inclined to wait for me." He adds a hard boiled egg to his plate, along with some carrots. "And you? What was your reason?"

"I originally said it was for self defence; I wanted to learn to protect myself in a clearly insane world. Having had a great deal of time to think about it…" He watches closely as I take a bite of dormouse. It's… Okay, though I'm still not sold on sweetened meats. "I think it was more about taking the opportunity to… Have a wider impact on the world in a way I just didn't before. Not that being an administrative assistant didn't have its own… Charms?"

Well. Sometimes.

"It is perfectly natural to want to make your mark. But is that really what you wanted to ask me?"

"Just trying to get a feel for your character. I usually-. I used to speed things up by using empathic vision, but… I got told that was creepy."

"So..?"

"Two things. The first and most simple is that Vulcan wants a look at your armour."

"Really? He didn't seem much interested when we met two weeks ago."

"He didn't-? Wait, you mean the superhero Vulcan."

"Yes. Naturally. Is there more than one of that name?"

Probably. "There's the forge-god."

He looks at me a little uneasily. "Normally, I would scoff. But after your turn in the theater, I believe that you may be serious."

"He and Hephaestus have been remodelling Mount Etna and-."

"I'm a Christian."

"What?"

"Certainly, the faith has changed from how it was practiced in my day, but surely you knew that-."

"Yes, I knew that the Roman empire converted, but-." I shake my head. "Didn't you used to swear by-?"

"Force of habit. Do you yourself not find yourself calling out to the Lord God when under stress, despite being a professed devotee of Discordia?"

"Not.. so much now, but I did. So… Shall I tell him 'no'?"

"It… Might be best. And the other question?"

"I wanted to ask about 'The Alliance of the Just'."

He nods. "Would you not be better off enquiring directly with its director?"

"Oh, I will be talking to him sometime soon. But I wanted to ask a member first."

He nods, and takes a bite of carrot while he considers his response. He certainly doesn't seem bothered by my asking. "I can stop muggers all day, but in order to maximise the utility of doing so I must also ensure that they are convicted and that their support infrastructure -fences and the like- are arrested too. And then… I'm not a police officer, and while I am tolerated here I do not automatically gain access to police information resources. The Alliance has their own database, which they share freely. All they ask in return is that I share my own case files so that other superheroes can benefit from them as well."

"Is that all?"

"I don't require training, either physically or in legal matters. Though I do see the value in them offering such to others. They also offer forms of insurance which people in our profession might otherwise find it hard to get, and attempt to negotiate working arrangements with police forces. I don't know if you keep track of superhero arrest rates..?"

"No. In fact I wasn't aware that a significant number did get arrested. America has traditionally been very tolerant of vigilantes."

"The ones who get arrested generally don't get called 'superheroes' by the newspapers." He jabs at me with a carrot. "If you're so interested, why don't I introduce you?"

back

Grind 15

next

2nd November

13:47 GMT -5

"…base themselves here, but the Justice League do virtually no policing within Washington DC itself. And intervening when the Hall of Justice is attacked feels… Strange."

I had rather assumed that a former Roman Centurion would be less sociable than this, but Marcus is actually quite pleasant company. And.. now I'm.. feeling mildly guilty for putting him on the 'low priority' Justice League membership list, more useful for the Pax Romana than for himself. His ship has FTL and some weaponry, but it's designed as a mobile infantry command post rather than as a ship of war. If it had been an actual warship, I'd have prioritised him a little higher.

"Trust me, their internal defences aren't that impressive."

We land in front of the office building which the Alliance are using as their head office. Budding superheroes aren't expected to come here in order to register, but apparently setting up an organisation dedicated to supporting pro-social law-breaking is easier from the capital city.

"So… How does the training work?"

"Some are online affairs, but I understand that they want to run on-site seminars as soon as they get enough interest." He leads the way through the revolving rooms and into the lobby. "I've told them that I'm willing to act as a tutor."

"For active superheroes or people thinking about starting out?"

"Either. Though personally, I'd wait until they'd been active for a few months before inviting anyone." He waves at the receptionist, who picks up his phone. "I think that too many journalists and other such rubberneckers would turn up otherwise."

"Maybe they could just give a discount. 'Five dollars off per scar'?"

"Would it not be better to reward those without-? No, that unfairly benefits those with superhuman resilience or regenerative abilities."

"So they do charge?"

He nods. "At cost. This organisation is a charity, but things must be paid for-" The lift doors open. "-somehow. Ah, Vincent!"

"Marcus! Always a pleasure." Mister Edge walks a little awkwardly out of the lift, visibly putting weight on his cane. "And Orange Lantern. What brings you here?"

"When the leader of a crime syndicate starts hiring superheroes, it sounds like a trend I should monitor."

"Ah." He nods. "Batman send you?"

"I'm not formally affiliated with the Justice League at present. However, if I had to guess how he felt about it…"

Another nod, then he turns towards the reception desk. "Patrick, hold my calls for an hour, will yah?"

"Sure thing, Mister Edge."

Mister Edge looks up at me. "We should probably have this discussion in private."

"As you wish."

Marcus and I follow him as he leads the way down a side corridor and into a small meeting room. He gestures to us to take a couple of seats, then closes the door and activates an instrument panel. Ring?

ECM field detected. Ring function not impaired.

"Can't be too careful." He makes his way over to the opposite side of the table and-. I push the chair out with a construct for him. "Mm, thanks." He sits down very carefully, putting his walking stick across his legs. "Welcome to my offices. Only moved in last month, so things aren't quite fully set up yet."

"I… Had understood that you were fully recovered. If you're not up to-."

He shakes his head, waving his right hand dismissively. "I'm probably better than I think I am. You have one heart attack, you never want to have another. And that's kinda why I'm doing this. I know it looks fishy as all get out, but..." I turn up my empathic vision. No, that would be too easy. "You met an angel, right?"

"I've had that… Happen."

"And you met a demon right outside the Hall of Justice. And I had a heart attack." He shrugs. "I know a man having apprehension about his own mortality isn't the best reason for… You know… Some of the things…"

"Some of the things you're alleged to have done."

"Yeah." He looks away for a moment, then shakes his head. "Ah, hell. No point lying about it now. I've done more than enough for God to damn me. And I don't think I've got all that long to make up for it. It's a-" He lightly taps the left side of his chest with his right hand. "-warning. A reminder. I've got money, my wife's dead and my son's companies are all legitimate. I want-. No. I need to give something back."

"Why superheroes?"

"I bought off dozens of police back in the day. Never bought off one guy crazy enough to come at me with his trunks on the outside. Someone crazy enough to fight like that could do anything."

Marcus smiles. "With proper organisation."

Mister Edge nods. "No one can say I don't know the law. Or how crime works, how it pays. This is my… My expertise. And you're all in favour of rehabilitation, right?"

He's probably talking about Thomas and Tuppence rather than alluding to Jade… "Of course. What's the point of putting people in prison if you're not going to try and straighten them out?"

"God…" He looks away for a moment. "God handled the 'straighten out' bit for you." He takes a deep breath before returning his gaze to me. "So." He manages a small smile. "You going to haul me off now, or is there something else you want to ask?"

"One thing. Could you please take off your ward?"

"What, this?" He takes a small metallic plate out of his jacket pocket and lays it on the table. "That any better?"

"Yes."

I'm seeing a genuine desire to redeem himself, and as he said it's built up around an imprint of a very Old Testament sort of God, glaring down at him while he lies weak and helpless. Not.. unusual in itself, but fairly unusual amongst violent career criminals. I'm not seeing anything else that would cause him to change his mind, it's literally just fear of Jehovah's retribution.

But I'll take what I can get.

"Thank you, you can put it back on now."

"Thanks." He slides it back into his pocket. "Do I want to know what you just did?"

"I used.. 'exotic' means to confirm your story. And I see that you were telling the truth."

He nods, managing a small smile. "Glad to hear it. You know, I'd ask for your input in all of this, except I already know what you'd say?"

"Really?"

"I don't think classified Justice League reports just 'happen' to get posted through our doors."

"It is not Justice League policy to comment on leaks."

It isn't, coincidentally.

Marcus' smile broadens. "I read it as well. You argued intelligently for the League to improve its command and control capacities. Has your view found any favor?"

"I don't believe so."

Mister Edge raises his eyebrows. "We could always use new trainers, if you can spare us the time? Or any information you've got on supervillains that you're allowed to share. I know.. normal crime. With super crime I can't tell what stuff online is true and what's nonsense."

I do need to check out the rest of the organisation as well…

"I can share my own records with you. Not Justice League records, but my own observations." Two nods. "And in return? I was wondering if you could help me track down some thieves."

back

Grind 16

next

2nd November

17:21 GMT -5

Hub City.

Pre-Batman Gotham without the architectural pretensions. The bit of Illinois that the rest of Illinois likes to pretend doesn't exist. And… I don't know. It was a hole during prohibition, it's been a hole since and it was probably a hole before that if we had the data to know for certain. Detroit says 'we're not Hub City'.

And it's not worth fixing. If I arrayed all of the countries of the world in order 'most in need of intervention' to 'least in need of intervention', I'd still have to go through hundreds of places before this was my highest priority. America-crap is still America, and this place by itself doesn't manage to turn a first world country into a third world one. The effort involved to completely overhaul everything would be huge, and there are plenty of places where that could more usefully be done. A lesser effort -such as The Question is supplying- barely manages to keep the rot from spreading.

The people manning the morgue barely bother looking up as the faceless man pushes the door open and lets himself in. This place is… Not as clean as it should be. It's not dirty-dirty, but it's far from medical facility standards. I see… Broken locks and wear and tear. No one manning the front desk. The computer there still had a cathode ray monitor, and that was locked to the desk.

"Where is she?"

"That is-" Please don't. "-the question." He looks over to one of the mortuary workers, who is listlessly leafing through a newspaper.

He looks up. "What?" I get a momentary look of interest, then he goes back to looking at Mister Sage. "You know the deal."

"Not my case."

I can't tell where he's looking without scanning through his mask. Which it turns out I can still do. I suppose that not everyone can keep abreast of the latest in thaumaturgical developments as well as maintaining two identities. Bruce Wayne had an inherited fortune, Victor Sage has an ill-maintained lighthouse. Heck, I could have one of my rings alter my vision so that I can see his face as if the mask weren't there. But… I don't. Because ridiculous as doing this with a man with no face is, it would somehow feel more ridiculous doing it with a man with a normal face.

"You pay bribes now?"

"Fighting mortuary technicians takes too much time."

"Fine." I raise my left hand in benediction. "If I started paying bribes now-" Holly doesn't count. "-I'd never stop, but-" Up to date computer equipment appears, dirt vanishes and equipment shimmers orange and then is as good as new. "-I can stretch to giving you the equipment you need to do your job."

The man takes a look around. "Saves me an annoying job tonight." He eases his chair back, and languidly rises to his feet. "Right this way."

"What made you contact the Question about this?"

"Someone gets killed, someone gets paid off. Or threatened. Even if it's shooting a thief in some warehouse. Technically, this isn't a stand your ground state." He shrugs. "This time, nothing." He comes to a stop in front of a drawer. "Gotta get my payoff some how."

"At least you're-" He pulls out the tray, watching my face as he does so. "-reliable." The body is in reasonable condition, and the bullet wounds-. I frown. "Did the security guards report her saying anything after they shot her?"

He grins, his disappointment at my stronger than predicted stomach washed away by my 'out of town' attitude. "You think they're saying anything?"

"Do you have anything useful to add?"

He raises his hands and turns to walk away. "Close her up when you're done doing whatever you're doing."

I raise my left hand and run a scan. "Why did you think this was worth my attention?"

"Officially unidentifiable bodies are not uncommon in Hub City. But some effort is usually made to identify them in case someone will take exception. This one was genuinely unidentified. Not local or state."

Curious. "Not reported missing, or you're sure she's not from around here?"

"Not reported missing, no police record in state. Nothing in the Alliance database."

"Uploading police reports to the Alliance database might be a little problematic, even for superheroes with good working relationships with the local police." I lift my hand away. Ring, ruthlessly plunder databases until you have a match.

Compliance.

"The bullet impacts don't appear to have been the cause of death. She might have lost use of the arm, but…" Yep, same as the other ones. I create a scan of her brain. "See here?"

"An aneurysm?"

"Technically, yes. But not a natural one. There have been a significant number of thefts across America recently where any thieves caught died with this injury."

"A suicide implant?"

"No residue my ring can detect. And Maryanne Sugden, fifty four, from Missouri, had no criminal record. Just like the rest."

"Mind control?"

"It's possible, but it's virtually impossible to detect after they're dead, certainly impossible after… That."

"More questions. Do you know what was stolen?"

"If it fits the pattern of the others,-" Which Kaldur told me when the alternative was asking me to wait outside of the third pawn shop. "-an icon from a dead religion."

"Magic?"

"Possibly, but probably not. The thefts in progress we stopped just involved small unenchanted statues. There are spells that can be cast with things like that, but if that's what you're doing it's usually just as easy to carve your own." I dismiss the brain scan with a sigh. "Would the victim of the theft be willing to provide more information?"

He bows his head slightly. "Define 'willing'."

"Not that I wish to interfere with any ongoing investigations you're performing, but I see no need to be confrontational about this. We're investigating a death we now know whoever it was didn't cause. High muckamuck criminals usually take other organisations stealing from them very personally."

"True. Pride takes the place of actual honor. That may be enough to motivate him." He reaches out for the corpse, right hand passing over her blood splattered eyes and lightly touching her forehead. "The death of criminals doesn't trouble me. However, if what you say is true then she… Wasn't…"

"Question?"

"Strange." He withdraws his hand.

"What is?"

"When I first tried to fight the wickedness of this city, it overwhelmed me. I came to the attention of many evil men and a few evil women. I left, half dead, and sought a new approach."

"What sort of approach?"

"Do you know of Nanda Parbat?" I nod. "While there, I learned to listen to the spirit of the world around me. Even after death, I should be able to feel the echoes of a person's life. When I touched her, I felt nothing at all."

…

Oh dear.

back

Grind 17

next

2nd November

18:44 GMT -5

Jeremiah Hatch stares moodily at me from behind his desk. "The hell do you want?"

There are two armed men behind me, but as far as I can tell they're just here as set dressing. Their guns aren't anything like powerful enough to harm me through my armour, let alone my environmental shield.

"Two days ago security guards in your employ shot a woman by the name of-."

"That was legitimate-" He waves his whisky glass in a vague motion. "-self defence."

"Surprisingly, you may well be right there." He frowns. "The woman's name was Maryanne Sugden, and as far as I can tell she had absolutely no motive to steal from you. No criminal record, no evidence of narcotics, no debt… I can't even work out why she was in Hub City."

"A regular mystery."

"Which is why I'm hoping that you'll be willing to help me. It looks like someone is altering the minds of innocent people and using them for theft."

"Not a bad line. Have to remember it."

"The programmed thieves kill themselves when captured or… Disabled. This makes the thefts difficult to stop, because we need to locate the perpetrator of the mental conditioning." I shrug. "Capturing the thieves gets us nothing except the responsibility to explain what happened to their family."

"So you think it's just some nutty costume criminal like the No Face?"

"I don't want to make assumptions at this stage. Costumed criminals usually have… Certain psychological tells which don't appear to be in evidence here. The thieves aren't uniformed, don't have any unifying characteristics at all, actually. No one is openly boasting about our inability to stop them…"

"You're telling me it could just be some guy in an office."

"It's possible. Given the… Low value of the items stolen so far, my guess would be some sort of test run for the process."

"Low value?! Those were antiques!"

"Mister Hatch, I am not an insurance claims adjuster. I am questioning you because I am interested in stopping someone using mind control, not because I am interested in any other types of crime which may be happening. I have.. rapidly become used to Hub City."

He actually smiles. "Yeah, it's a hole, ain't it? Kinda makes you want to burn the whole place to the ground and start over?"

"I don't think I'd start over. But please, any information which you may have neglected to share with.. whatever passes for legitimate authority around here, may serve to prevent things being stolen from you in future. And allow me to track whoever stole from you this time."

"And then what?"

"I stop them from doing it again. And then I study their methods and work out how to prevent anyone doing it again."

He smiles faintly, then pushes his chair back, gets up and walks over to the window. "And Hub City?"

"I don't want to spend more time here than I absolutely have to."

He nods, his back to me as he toasts his home city through the window. "Damn thing was, she didn't even really try to get away."

"Didn't she?"

He turns back around. "I spoke to the guys on duty myself. Needed to make sure none of them were in on it. But all their stories lined up and checked out. Blew the lock on the fence with a small explosive, rushed the warehouse and opened the door the same way. Got into the computer while the guards checked out the initial explosion, went right to the crate… Well, I still say they're valuable. To a collector, maybe."

"Statues?"

"Authentic antique figurines. I handle shipping all kinds of things."

"And they ignored everything else…" Wait. "Off the record, were there drugs in the case?" Ah, yes, I see there were.

"There's no cause for that sort of accusation. I'm a legitimate businessman."

"And the sad thing is, by Hub City standards you may be right. Can you confirm that there were other, clearly higher value items in the crate along with whatever was stolen?"

He nods. "Yeah, I think I can."

"Did they take anything else?"

"A few things got broken, but…" He shakes his head. "Stealing to order is a thing, right? Guess someone really wanted a statue of Satan."

"Do you have a picture?"

"Yeah." He walks back to his desk and puts his drink down. Then he takes a small key out of his pocket, unlocks one of the drawers and takes out a card folder. He opens it and flicks through until he gets to a picture. "Here."

Not 'Satan'. Cernunnos. Which breaks the pattern a little, as neo-pagan groups have revived his worship. Still, it's not a big thing, and we don't exactly know what the criteria are anyway. The statue itself looks old enough. The style is… First century, or maybe a decent replica. I'm not an art historian.

I make a point of visibly scanning it. "Thank you. I'm sure this will be helpful. You were.. saying that she didn't try to escape?"

He nods as he returns the paperwork to his drawer. "Two guys stayed on the gate, one in the control room watching the cameras and calling for backup and three went after the thieves. Two of them inside: dead woman and some other guy. They split up... Long story short, she was carrying what they stole so my guys went after her. The other thief got over the fence, and she tossed it to him right before running back inside. Security didn't notice she wasn't carrying it any more, and took a shot… Too late to get it back."

"The man?"

"It was dark." He shrugs. "Police found the car he got away in two days later. No prints."

"Genetic material?"

He frowns. "Where you think this is, Metropolis?"

Alright. A man, or an unusually butch woman. Possibly working alone, athletic and… That's it. I'll check the car, but it's not that hard to avoid leaving genetic material for a few hours. Then if the statue's warded I'm out of luck.

"Have you had any other thefts like this?"

"Where the thief committed suicide by security guard?"

I nod. "Or where the object stolen was a small and apparently low value statue?"

"No. Neither. Usually they try real hard not to die."

"Do you have any other statues like this?"

"No. And I don't think I'll get any." He picks up his glass. "Looks like it draws the wrong sort of crowd."

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Grind 18

next

2nd November

22:26 GMT -5

"…really nice people." Alan sounds genuinely chipper, something that's been happening a lot more since he became 'active' again. "I'm not sure what's got Batman so riled up. They're good kids. If we'd been this organised back in the fifties…"

I glance over to where Mr Sage is meditating cross legged on the bonnet of the car used as a getaway vehicle for the man who robbed Mr Hatch.

"I don't think he's riled up, exactly. It's his job, what he does for the Justice League. He makes sure that potential problems are investigated so that he's ready if they become actual problems. If they're not, then great."

"You still in Hub City?"

"At the moment. I'm just taking a look at the getaway car with the Question."

"So… Are you coming home tonight..?"

"Well... Ah, don't wait up, but I'm currently planning to."

"That.. Question guy. Ah… See, there was this one crazy guy back in the sixties, wore a suit and a metal mask. The Question kinda reminded me of him. Is he on the up and up?"

"I think so. I remember the man you're talking about, and I think that if the Question were like him then the murder rate around here would be a good deal higher. And he'd be dead from the retaliation." I look over to him again. No, still not stirring. "He's trying to commune with the car at the moment."

"Is it a… Magic car?"

"No, but it turns out that he's a minor magic user. I haven't seen him do anything beyond basic psychometry, but it's one thing I can't replicate with my rings."

"Good luck with that. I'll see you when-. Oh! That reminds me. How far have you got speaking to the members of the Justice League?"

"Not.. much further. It's something I want to do face to face, and with secret identities and everything it's hard to find time."

"And I get the feeling you're not exactly eager."

"You're right, I'm not." I sigh. "Did you..? I haven't heard you say anything about having a falling out like this in the Justice Society."

"That's because we didn't. I don't know whether that was because we mostly stuck to our own beats or because we mostly had the same moral beliefs, but I honestly can't remember us ever having something like this hanging over us for any length of time. I mean, there was that thing with Sandy… But by the time any of us knew that he was okay… Mentally okay, Wesley had already fixed things."

"It's not really the same thing. Mister Hawkins had gone on a rampage before being contained. Yes, with the benefit of hindsight… Getting him somewhere isolated and checking that he was still crazy might have been a good idea, but I'm not sure how practical it would have been. And that's… Not what happened with Nabu."

"I know. I know. Personally, I'd just try and get it done as quick as possible. Try the people who'll argue the point with you the strongest, get it out of the way."

So… Hawks? Well, no secret identity problem there. "Yeah… You're right. I'll.. try and prioritise it."

"You do that. Okay, you have a good evening."

"Good night, Alan."

I let the phone construct evaporate, then take a few steps towards Mr Sage. The problem with self-taught minor magicians is that while they might get quite good at using their particular abilities, those skills aren't transferable to other parts of the arcane world. If he can do what he claims to be able to do, we could find something jolly useful. If he can't, I can't get someone else in to do it. It's not Ambrose's thing, and brute forcing it high magic style would be inefficient to say the least.

Mr Sage slides off the bonnet and onto his feet with a squeak of the suspension. "We need the key."

"For the car? I can just start it-."

"Without the key, the car is not whole. If it is not whole, then it cannot lead us." He starts pacing. "We need the key."

Ah. He's still in the trance. He's only semi-aware of his surroundings as he tries to do what the echoes in his soul are telling him to. He needs to do things step by step… How vital is the particular key? The thief will have touched it, but only briefly. The car was stolen after all, and we already know who the owner is. The key wasn't recovered, but I can create a replacement easily enough. I can't get the original key, and if he's trying to drive the car then walking the route probably isn't an option.

I fabricate a perfect copy of the key. "Question."

He snags it out of the air with his left hand without looking around, already reaching for the car door. We don't have authorisation to take the car anywhere, but he's already lowering himself into the driving seat and slotting the key into the ignition. For one moment I'm tempted to get into the car beside him, a residue of schematic patterns from before I could fly faster than light at will. Guy you're travelling with gets into a car, you get into the car as well, right?

Mr Sage closes the door and slowly accelerates. I remember from How To Succeed In Evil that driving up to a locked gate and accelerating in low gear is the best way to break it down. Fortunately, Hub City doesn't spend more on its impound gates than it does on anything else. A filament flicks out, unlocks the lock and opens the gate before Mr Sage can reach it.

He doesn't look at me or the gate, just accelerates and turns right when he reaches the road. Okay, this place isn't manned at night… I take a sheet of paper out of subspace, and… I don't have Justice League authority. I'm literally just stealing a car. Okay, accessory to Mr Sage stealing a car… Ah… 'Dear Madam/Sir, borrowing this car as part of an ongoing Justice League investigation, will return if reasonably practical. Yours sincerely, Orange Lantern.' I take an envelope out of subspace as well, put a fifty dollar note inside along with the letter because Hub City and deposit it on the front desk. Then I close the gate, lock it, and take off after Mr Sage.

He's driving… Erratically. Not that I know how he normally drives, but he's weaving-

A woman panics as he drives into the wrong lane ahead of her, and veers towards a wall for a moment before my construct catches the vehicle and deposits it in a nearby lay-by. Mr Sage comes to some sort of sense, getting back into the right lane and driving down… I think he's heading out of Hub City. He's just turned onto the main thoroughfare. Police… He just drove past a squad car and nothing appears to be happening. Oh, he's not speeding. They don't have any sort of car recognition device built into their vehicles. I think I've turned my cynicism up too far.

Empathic vision shows his mental focus as he manages to drive safely. I never actually watched John when he-. Okay, not safely, but he drove through that crossing in one piece and no one crashed. A few damaged brakes -I'll fix those- and he's still driving more or less regularly. I never actually watched John when he was riding the synchronicity wave. I've never seen what happens around him. Maybe this is why John doesn't drive, he just walks or gets a lift. I could ask Mr Chandler-? No, he'll be asleep now.

I send a message to the League and to the team. Just an update. I'm not really expecting to find anything other than an empty room with a few traces of temporary occupancy. That's been the pattern, after all. Still, it doesn't hurt to keep everyone up to date. Like my old manager used to say: any of us could be hit by a car tomorrow.

Mr Sage has left Hub City proper and is driving through what looks like it was some sort of suburban industrial estate. Most of the units are empty, but… He's stopping in a car park and turning off the engine. I transition downwards, appearing just in front of the car.

"Here?" He just stares for a moment, then opens the driver side door and gets out of the vehicle. "Question?"

"I can't hear it." He stares around in apparent confusion. "I can't hear it."

"Nice to know whoever it is has found a way to block you too. I was beginning to think I was being singled out. Shall we do this the old fashioned way?"

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Grind 19

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2nd November

22:34 GMT -5

"Of course." He adjusts his coat, apparently unconsciously. "But the fact I can't hear it is significant."

"There are counter magics that can disrupt magic detection. I know a magician who can remotely cause any written or electronic records about him to spontaneously vanish."

"No, it's more than that. I can't hear anything here. If they had some way to disguise their trail I would still hear the echo of all of the other trails. The street here is dead."

Hm. There aren't enough 'street shamen' for there to be standard terminology, let alone good records of the state of the mystic systems of America's cities. "Is it.. similar to how you couldn't feel anything when you touched her?"

"No." He hesitates. "Perhaps. In the morgue I could hear the sound of the city, you, a little from the other bodies. Here, it's as if the city has stopped existing."

"Are you aware of anything which could cause that sort of phenomenon?"

"New or heavily redeveloped streets are sometimes quiet. Not quite part of the city yet. This is new."

"Can you guess what could cause it?"

He takes a last look around and then heads towards the closest industrial unit. "A better magician than me."

I float after him. "A slightly better magician than you, or a really strong magician?"

"I don't know." He looks at the door, then reaches into his coat pocket.

"Allow me." I attach a filament to the mechanical code lock and open it. "Question, I don't know your style at all. I don't know what's possible with it, or how hard it is, or what level of experience it requires. If you were trying to do this, could you?"

"No." He hangs back slightly as the door opens and I attach a filament to the burglar alarm, then pulls a small torch out of one of his pockets and strides forward. "All I can do is listen. The teachers in Nanda Parbat said that someone at one with their surroundings could do other, more dramatic things. But I had a job to go back to."

This company describes itself as a building supplies warehouse. As we walk through the empty building I send filaments out in all directions. Nothing that shouldn't be here as yet. Pallets of wood, cement, brick…

"And I imagine that killing the spirit of a place is fairly antithetical to what Nanda Parbat is about."

"Quite." He accelerates, moving quickly along the main walkways in the warehouse area. "This appears to be in order."

I nod. "Offices next."

Not much in the way of offices here. I suspect that most of the business is somewhere more central and this is just a pickup and drop off point. Ring? Ah, yes, there's an office towards the centre of the city, in a subsidised redevelopment zone. It wouldn't be practical to have large lorries drive in that area.

"If a thief dies in the commissioning of their theft, then they've brought it on themselves." Mr Sage checks the desks while I scan the server. Nothing relating to this case, though I'll make the results available to him in case there's anything else suspicious about the company. "However, if their minds have been altered they cannot be considered morally culpable. I assume that the Justice League does not have a secret pro lethal force policy."

"You assume correctly."

We head back towards the door, Mr Sage turning off his torch before we reach it. "You stated that the thieves died in all previous encounters. Do you have a plan for keeping this one alive?"

"Neither physical restraint nor telepathic suppression are sufficient. None of the magic users present said that they felt anything when thieves at the other locations died. Autopsies didn't show any kind of implant. I'm coming up short on things it could be. I have a purple healing ray, and I can use constructs to interface with every part of his body… But I can't guarantee either of those will work because I don't understand what's killing them."

He takes a quick look around the exterior before motioning me to follow him. Next unit, this one allegedly empty.

"The safest technique would simply be to monitor them rather than intervening directly."

"Unless we can get a lead on whoever's doing this, and that enables us to prevent it happening to anyone else. And since we really don't know what's going on or why a bunch of worthless statues are being stolen… We've got no way to make an informed decision."

The lock on this door is broken. I switch from 'investigation' armour to 'combat but in reasonably narrow corridors' armour and lead the way inside.

"You favour intervention."

"Yes, but I know that's not necessarily correct."

"How many dead so far?"

"Eleven that we know about. Six from the original investigation, five including Ms Sugden who turned up in various morgues with the same mortal injury. The original thefts only came to our attention by chance and the original briefing was to capture a mundane criminal gang." Dust, cobwebs, some damp… I lead the way deeper into the building. "I suspect that Batman would want us to hang back and observe. Attempt to follow them back to a controller."

We start checking abandoned rooms. This used to be a courier office. Now it's just dead.

"A sound idea. You still believe it would be better to intervene."

"In the unlikely event that we can approach one of these people undetected, I'm happy to hold off. But I would remind you, we don't know what the trigger is. If it does go off, the first I'm going to know about it is the target falling over with parts of their brain turned to mush."

"Difficult."

I take the offices while he goes through what used to be the sorting room. No sign of recent occupancy. A few discarded folders with mouldering paper work. Whoever stuck around to clear the office out did a reasonably thorough job-.

I hear the faint rumble of a car engine. Immediately I turn my environmental shield down to the minimum and I see Mr Sage's torch go out. Ugh. Did I miss some sort of alarm? We didn't conceal the car, but I doubt that Hub City police would follow up on us taking it quite this quickly. If it's something to do with the theft, would they recognise it? Can I risk scanning?

Mr Sage carefully picks his way across the office. He's got some sort of light amplification glasses on, but I've used those things and they're not the easiest to navigate with. "Who is it?"

"Power ring scans are detectable."

"Mm." He gets a… That's a periscope, out of his pocket and heads for a window. Taking care to keep out of sight himself, he removes his glasses, puts one end to his right eye and the other onto the glass.

I doubt that he can see much. There aren't any artificial lights out there, and that periscope doesn't appear to have any enhancements. I could take an infrared sensor out of subspace, but subspace evacuations are even easier to detect than ring scans.

"One figure. Humanoid. No apparent weapons. Heading for a disused unit on the opposite side. Knows where they're going."

"Did they see the car?"

"Can't tell. Also can't tell if there is anyone else inside their car." He pauses, then steps back from the window. "They're inside."

I'd prefer to intervene, but I'm trying to get back in with the team…

"I'll check their car, bug it if it's suspicious, then we'll monitor them from here."

He nods, then turns back to the window.

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Grind 20

next

2nd November

22:40 GMT -5

I remember the film 'Ghost Dog'. There was a quote… I don't remember where it was from originally. Ring? Ah, Hagakure. And apparently the line in Ghost Dog 16 is 'In the words of the ancients, one should make his decision within the space of seven breaths. It is a matter of being determined and having the spirit to break through to the other side.'

I'm not a wannabe samurai. I'm an Orange Lantern, but that entails that I do what I want to alter the universe to be more like I want it to be. It is a way which encourages introspection, but only outside combat. Mr Sage is watching someone through a periscope, a passive action which contains a minimal risk of discovery. And I'm not scanning with my super advanced xenotechnological hyper-tool because they might be able to detect that.

I carefully pull both rings from my fingers, then manually trigger my armour's phasing system to drop through the floor.

Irritating thing about encountering an ability I don't even begin to understand is that I don't know what else I don't understand that the user can do. If the person out there is something to do with this and not just picking up their house keys then they might have detected my phasing and killed the man we're trying to recover. Or they might have installed some sort of sensor in all of these buildings and know we're here already. Or they might have had some disenchanted Kobra Bestowed muck around with local magic, take a payoff and leave them to their own devices.

I don't know, and I don't know what it is that I don't know.

I drift through the ground in the direction of the car. One of the systems that got cut back to make this armour was the flight system: it's there, but it's not what you'd call fast. Now, how to approach this? I saw the direction in which the figure went, and I can easily keep the car between myself and that building. In addition to being invisible. Does it matter-? Agh! Annoying!

I drift up through the ground, the underside of the car suddenly being right there as my head pierces the asphalt. Drift up a little further, careful-. Someone ins-! No. Some body, tied to the passenger seat by the cord around their neck. Body still somewhat warm. Recent, then.

Not here for their house keys.

In most cities I'd inform the local police at once. In Hub… I think I'll leave it until we're done here. Without using a light or the ring I can't get a good view of their face… Given their approximate dimensions, there are any number of people on Hub City's missing persons list it could be. But the great thing about being dead is that your condition is unlikely to deteriorate.

I move around to the front of the car. This number plate hadn't been reported as stolen an hour ago, but if the owner was murdered when it was taken there's no reason to believe that it would have been.

I sigh. Nothing.

Okay, check the angle… Phase in, attach a tracking device to… The underside of the wheel arch. Tap twice to activate the molecular bonder, hold for a second… Done. It won't let us track the car, because if we can track it then so can anyone else with the right gear. Instead, it will respond to a particular sort of energy wave and give us its location when we choose to look for it. Safer, but less useful.

No point attaching a second. If they can find one, they can find two. If they can't find one, adding a second just increases the chance they'll find either of them. But… What now?

Were I a less enlightened Orange Lantern, I'd either be charging in or having some sort of episode trying to hold myself back. As it is, I'm… Confounded. There is no way for me to know the course of action most likely to keep the last thief alive. Assuming that was him. Assuming that he's in there. I would let him die if that was what it took to locate the ultimate perpetrator, but there's no guarantee that would work. Another body gets me no more information than I already have.

Tracking device on. The options are fall back and wait, or advance. And it's my decision. Yes, I could pass it on to Kaldur or Batman. I'd need to leave the area to do so, and there's the risk of detection… But any form of monitoring risks detection. And I'm well aware that I'm already verging on paranoia now, but… If they couldn't detect observation, what are the chances they could stop me? Heck, motivated like this I could simulate the parts of the brain that were collapsing as they collapsed and replace them when the effect ended. So: intervening it is.

Do I get extra help? I could retreat and call in… Who? Doctor Balewa and Angelica both have skills which I lack, but neither have specific knowledge of this case. And from the description in the team's reports, death happens quickly once the process begins. Something that matches my examination of the injury. John Fate might be similarly useful… Really, the time to call him in was when Mr Sage started driving, except there was no way to know this would actually lead to a contact and I'm sure that he's a very busy man.

Alright then. I'm going in, but I'm not going to rush things. I walk around the car-.

There's a note in the driver side window. Couldn't see it from the other side, but in the starlight I can just about make out the orange sigil drawn on it. Settles that question. I take a half-step away from the car and slide my rings back on, keeping my environmental shield to minimum. Immediately I regain the ability to see my surroundings. The person inside… Male, black, business-casual dress. As far as I can see the envelope is just paper. I can't see any poisons, electronics or arcane sigils.

Ring, scan the writing.

Compliance.

'To the Acolyte of Greed'

Close enough.

'What you seek is inside, and will be offered to you freely if you have the wit to take it. Come without fear.'

Lure or genuine offer?

Again, an imponderable. My presence in Hub City isn't a secret, but I can't know if they just put this here on the off-chance or if they actually know I'm here. Does luring me in actually get them anything? The sort of weapons that would be needed to successfully ambush me don't really care about precise relative locations. At most, it would buy them a fraction of a second. And it may be pride talking, but I'm increasingly dubious about my own worst imaginings.

Okay, going in. I raise my left hand towards Mr Sage's window and send 'going in' in Morse code ring flashes. Then I phase and drift towards the unit the car driver headed into. Not the front door, obviously. Assuming that the units were built according to a standard design I can go through the wall here and enter the neighbouring unit. Empty of anything concerning. I drift further in, heading towards the back of the building. Turn up empathic vision a little… Two people, both shot through with… Veins of black? One is otherwise fairly normal, while the colours in the other are translucent. Barely there at all. Something weird is going on, but frankly I've seen worse. And since they're not reacting I can assume they can't feel this.

Excellent.

Phased and invisible, I float through the wall behind them. The main lights are off, but there's a window letting in starlight and I can just about make their faces out. Karl Wilson, thirty seven, from Nebraska. Pale skin, orange hair and moustache, faint colours and not wearing any sort of concealing gear. Like the others, no significant criminal record. Almost certainly the thief. The other person is a bald mixed race woman with many scars and a number of facial piercings which would shock me if I hadn't met Raquel. I don't recognise her face. She's dressed in baggy trousers and a tube top, but it looks like it's a sports bra type thing rather than a normal garment. Something for exercising in. The other distinguishing items of clothing are the bandages wrapped around her forearms.

She… Reminds me of something. I'm not sure what. I've read so many comics -and League intelligence files- that… Well, they don't blur together, but there's a lot of very similar looking distinct things in my memory. Nothing about her triggers one specifically.

Oh well. I'll ask in a minute, when she'll want to give answers as much as I want to hear them. I could phase in and brand them both, but the displaced air might clue them in that I was there fast enough to trigger the suicide effect. Another approach. Record her face.

Compliance.

I float back through the wall, phase in, then send a filament underground in the direction of Mr Wilson. Tagging his foot is fine… Physically healthy. Nothing odd in his blood or bone or muscles… Or peripheral nervous system.

That black. Not as all-encompassing as Dark Druid, not as controlled as Ms Sackville. I could paralyse the woman right now, but… They both have the black. Could be sympathetic, magic or thought-activated… No, I need to purge them both at the same time.

Ring, filament to her as well, then brand.

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Grind 21

next

2nd November

22:44 GMT -5

Branding in progress. No resistance from unknown woman. Branding of unknown woman complete.

And Mr Wilson?

E-error error ERROR.

Make her want to help me.

Compliance. Alert! Unknown woman already wishes to help you. However, her concept of 'help' is significantly divergent from yours. Concept amended.

Thank you. Dare I ask exactly how she was planning to 'help' me?

Cult indoctrination.

Nothing serious, then. And what's that 'error' stuff?

error.

Yes, I got that. Explain the cause of the error message.

Unable to comply. If cause was know-.

You would have stated it, yes. Is there anything about him other than that black stuff that stands out as unusual?

No.

Are you able to preserve the structure of his brain?

No special impediment detected. However,-.

You can't tell what's going on, so can't be certain. Fine. Construct bio-regulator sarcophagus. Muffle sound, then use construct blades and cut through this wall.

Compliance.

Buzz saw constructs make short work of the plasterboard and corrugated steel. Another construct grabs the doorway-sized portion as it comes free and leans it up against an adjacent wall. The revealed room is illuminated by the glow of my constructs and the glowing sigil on the unknown woman's forehead as she stares beatifically at me. I didn't pay attention to it during my first look, but the stolen statue is standing in the centre of the room and…

Someone's covered it in blood.

"Good evening." I walk into the room. Full scan, please.

No further anomalies detected.

The orange sigil is struggling to form on Mr Wilson's forehead. For a moment it's complete, then it shimmers and flickers and vanishes again. Decidedly odd.

"Would you be so good as to-" And she's kneeling in supplication. "-tell me what's going on?"

"I was awaiting your arrival. Now, I wait at your pleasure."

"What have you done to Mr Wilson's brain?"

"Nothing, O Acolyte of Greed. Our Master speaks, and the dissolute who hear his words become like that."

"And those who are not dissolute?"

"We hear His truth, and are moved to serve Him."

"And how exactly are these thefts serving him?"

She raises her head slightly. "What reason would you have?"

What is she-? Oh. I nod. "Because I want it. No greater or lesser reason than that." I look at the sarcophagus holding Mr Wilson. "And if you've burned out a man's soul anyway, you may as well use him for something."

Her head dips again. "You grasp the lessons readily, Acolyte."

"Who is your master?"

"Our Master Is."

That's tremendously helpful. "Does he have a name?"

"Our Master transcends labels, rather it is we who bear labels to distinguish us from him."

"Did he..? Used to have a label I might have heard of?"

"If so, I do not know it."

"Do you know where he is at the moment?"

"No."

"Do you have a way of communicating with him?"

"His spirit moves through us. We are His hands as He is our will."

So, magic. Area effect compulsion? They feel a slight nudge to do something, not overwhelming, but enough to recognise it as him. Reasonably clever. "Why do they die?"

"Loyal in life, loyal in death."

That doesn't really… No, she's a cultist, I doubt that she's been told exactly how her master's mind control works. "How did you know I was here?"

"Your arrival was recorded on a superhero fansite. This-" She glances at Mr Wilson. "-dissolute one noted that you attended the morgue. Since your friends amongst the Justice League's sidekicks are investigating the thefts, it seemed likely enough that you would come here for me to attend in person."

"Have you been ordered to meet me?"

"No. I did it because I wanted to."

"And what did I do to deserve that honour?"

"You mastered Cain's lessons without instruction!" She's smiling, and her expression is making me uncomfortable. "Cain himself required the example of Har-Mammon to comprehend the power of greed."

Cain. Religion. Oh.

"The Dark Faith. Cain went to Har-Mammon, and the city's ruler tried to bribe him to go away. The more he gave, the more Cain wanted the rest where before he would have been happy with… What was it?"

"Water."

"But now he'd had a taste of the rest, he wanted it all." I bow my head slightly. "That parable stuck with me. Which means that you're a member of the Order of the Stone."

"You know it? You've..? Been inducted?"

"That depends what you mean." What were the lessons again? "I've deceived people who trusted me, killed people I didn't need to, stolen things that it was convenient for me to have and taught others what I've learned. All for the greater good."

"And lust?"

"Never really been a big part of my character, but my girlfriend has no complaints."

A few, actually, though not about that so long as I'm not using the rings. Hm, maybe I should consult with her about this? She's got more experience of personality cults than I do.

"You have learned much, Acolyte. But Cain teaches us to indulge at will, not control."

Alert! Neurological decay occurring!

"And it seems that the Master wants you to receive another lesson."

back

Grind 22

next

2nd November

22:48 GMT -5

"Oh yes?" Ring, construct neurons. And assimilate the black. "And what would that be?"

Att-error. At-at-attempting to comply.

"Superheroes tend to risk themselves to help worthless people, and berate themselves when they fail. None of my order would do so. This dissolute one is here to show us what you do."

My construct neurons are flickering and failing just as fast as the brand is. I'm restoring them just as quickly, but this isn't a viable strategy. Replacing the tissue is just resulting in the new tissue being destroyed as well. "I'm not sure I understand why it matters."

Black isn't death per se. I've seen any number of dead and dying people without the tiniest hint of black in them. It's more… A longing for nullity, or drawing on power that feels similar enough. So what I'm looking at is an implanted desire for death. But while doing that to a person might result in risk taking behaviour or suicide it doesn't usually result in living cells dying of their own accord.

"Cain's lessons are for all who have the wit to hear them." She stands, drawing a knife. "I was supposed to attempt to put out one of your eyes as Cain did unto the Caitiff, but I don't think I need to now."

Hooray for mind control. My mind control.

"I've been blind before. It didn't stick."

Okay, synthetic neurology. Not really true cybernetics, just novel chemical structures. No, lasts a fraction of a second longer but gets destroyed as well. Ring, rate of power consumption?

Approximately point eight percent per second.

No rush, then.

Total charge will be consumed in approximately two minutes.

Yes, I-. Never mind.

All three significant examples of black I've seen so far are magic based. Let's try that. I take a mage slayer round out of subspace and have the construct sarcophagus press it against Mr Wilson's head. No effect. Either not magic, or the round would need to be touching the location the spell is bound to. Opening up his skull seems like a bad idea.

My rings had a bit of an episode when I tried assimilating the black. It's not as if I want the black for itself; becoming a Host of Nekron sounds like a very bad idea. What else, what else…

His other colours are faint. I should be able to imbue him with orange light. That might-. That almost certainly will cause problems in its own right. And it might cause the black light to lose its connection. Mr Wilson… The missing person file mentioned that he went bowling..? Ugh, no, too specific. Can I manage generic desires? Maslow level one.

Food. Yes, his digestive system is running on empty. I suppose that whoever… Wait, that… Thing, they were going to sacrifice Batwoman… Bruno Mannheim. Bruno Mannheim 16 is a minor crime boss… No recent records, and no history of cannibalism. Still, it's a lead.

Neural structure decay reaching-.

Right right sorry. Food. Hunger. The basic desire to eat. The empty feeling soon to be sated. The satisfying crunch, the warmth, the sudden alertness of a burst of sugar. The calm relaxation, the smell.

Water. Dry patched tacky mouth cleared out and cool and damp. Sweat and dirt and stress wiped off and sent down the drain. Warmth. Life returning to your extremities on a cold day, the play of sunlight on your skin on a clear day. Rest. Come on, I can feel how tired your body is. The lack of focus as you relax and everything fades away.

Ring, progress?

Black light infection still present.

Next level it is, then. Know that you are next to a superhero who has your wellbeing foremost in his mind, and who will be escorting you to a very secure location when this is over. Walls all around, and competent personnel to guard you when you sleep.

Progress?

There is no measurable decrease in the extent of black light infection.

Alright. Um, since Mannheim or whoever's doing this clearly knows that I'm here: ring, message Alan and ask him to come to my current location at best possible speed. Include my location.

Compliance.

Infusing him with my desires hasn't worked. Imbuing him with desire externally doesn't appear to work. What do I do what do I do?

That…

I take Larfleeze's ring off my right ring finger, reach into the sarcophagus and put it on his left middle finger. Cease branding efforts.

Compliance.

The ring fizzles and crackles on his finger as it attempts to make a connection. What else, what else..? My tattoos. They are designed to hold and channel energy into me. I create constructs in their image on Mr Wilson's skin. And… She said that he heard her master's voice.

Inducing short term memory loss in humans is relatively easy. Harming long term memory is… Not. Even for a telepath, they'd usually have to wipe everything and start from scratch to remove the chance of things coming back. That or renew the effect every so often. Short term memory suppression is possible, though most methods involve turning off conscious thought.

Minor innate orange light resonance detected.

Progress! I'm only using enough orange light to drive most people insane-. Actually… Ring, if the black light infection vanishes, cancel all of my efforts at once.

Compliance.

Ah… Okay, if I'm working on the assumption that my desires -even the fairly common parts- can't embed because there's nothing to embed in… The Honden. There… Should be an imprint of every desire he's had there… And… I'm down one Ophidian and I can't risk withholding my constructs for a moment. But… My ring and his ring both have connections to the Central Power Battery. Could that work? Well, it worked when the Ophidian was with Larfleeze…

I take my personal lantern out of subspace, and touch it with my left hand.

Ophidian.

No, nothing. Alright, she's got a whole Corps to listen to now and I don't want to save this one man anything like as much as I wanted to prevent the rest of my friends being killed…

"Will his death hurt you?"

"No, not really. I don't even know-" That he's on his second marriage, two children from the first and one from the second, has good relations with them and.. never needed court orders to oversee his relationship with his ex-wife, at least. That his employer considers him reliable and gave a glowing account of his character to the police when questioned. That he's got a couple of parking tickets on his police record but paid them both promptly, and one fine for smoking marijuana when he was nineteen. "-him."

I'm not denying he's a person. He's just not my person.

"Then why are you trying to fix him?"

"I want the world to work in a certain way. People who are productive members of my society being turned into someone else's instruments is contrary to that. Not because it is injurious to them -plenty of things injure people whom I don't care about as individuals- but because it's a frustrating distraction. It means I've got more work to do to fix things. Like this! Have you got any idea how much work I could be doing now if I wasn't saving one guy?"

"Then why do you?"

"Would Cain have let Har-Mammon retain its independence? You can't put something like this in front of me and expect me to walk-" There's a sudden flare of blue light from the exterior door. "-away. BLUE LANTERN, IN HERE!"

The woman starts, her eyes widening as she turns to the door. "He must-!" Then she reorientates on me. "Purpose=Failure."

back

Grind 23

next

2nd November

22:50 GMT -5

I frown. "No it doesn't. BL-!"

Alan comes in through the door, plate armour style blue construct armour around him. Lantern Stewart and I barely had to spend any time beating that habit into him at all. "What have you got?"

"Karl Wilson. He's been mind controlled, and his controller is trying to make his brain collapse. His emotional resonance is almost nonexistent. I've been trying to infuse him with orange light with partial success, but it's not enough. He needs your help."

He nods. "Of course. Ah… How?"

"See the symbols I've put around his body? Copy those. And.. try and.. project things that make you hopeful into-." I put a construct manacle around the woman's arm as she lunges for me, the sigil on her forehead now glitching in the same way Mr Wilson's was. "Into him."

"Alright." He raises his right hand, blue cables extending from his ring and attaching themselves to Mr Wilson. "What's her story?"

"She's a member of the Order of Stone. Evil worshipping warrior monks." She swings up her right leg, kicking at my head. I catch her ankle in another construct manacle and then float her back against the far wall. "And-. Actually." I put a construct muzzle on her. "She's got the same thing he has, but it doesn't seem to be affecting her in the same way."

Alan squints slightly. He still doesn't find fine detail as easy as I do, but blue lines in the pattern already traced by my construct begin moving across Mr Wilson's skin. "I.. think I can feel what you're talking about. What is that?"

"Not sure, but it doesn't look too healthy. Any joy?"

"Black light infection fading, Orange Lantern. Mister Wilson will be restored shortly."

"Blue Lantern?"

"She's been getting more talkative the longer I wear her. Should I be worried?"

"Not unless she turns yellow. Fear isn't useful without a yellow ring."

"Alright then."

The blue ring's right. I can see the black lines fading slightly. Maybe if we had other colours to go with it we could go faster? Seems logical, but I don't particularly feel like having a tête-à-tête with Sinestro, so… That can wait. I reach into the sarcophagus and recover my ring, because I don't think dealing with that should be the first thing Mr Wilson has to do when he awakens.

Rings, total charge remaining?

Fifty four percent.

Drat.

"This isn't a viable long term solution."

"Seems to be working fine to me."

"One Blue Lantern in existence. Two Orange Lanterns on Earth, one of whom has agreed not to use his ring until his trial date. Between zero and four Green Lanterns. Orange Lanterns don't come more powerful than me, and I couldn't purge him on my own. That means we need to grab… Green Lantern A is on Earth at the moment, right?"

"I haven't spoken to him since our last training session."

"Even if three of us makes it faster, that means it takes three Lanterns to fix. Per person. We need a better solution-" The last black strands evaporate, and the colours behind them surge-.

I step back, cancelling my infusion constructs. Alan glances my way.

"That it done?"

"Hope's a little less… Dangerous than avarice. Give him a moment or two."

Ring, is his brain still collapsing?

Decay has ceased.

Restore his brain to its original organic state. I'm.. not exactly sure what happens to a human who has not-exactly-organic parts to their brain for a prolonged period, but I don't have any reason to find out.

Compliance.

Mr Wilson's eyes snap open. "Uuuuuuumgh?"

I transform the sarcophagus into a camping bed and set it down on the floor. "Okay, Blue Lantern, that should do."

Alan withdraws his hand, his construct fading. "How are you doing, sir?"

"Uh?" He shudders. "Like-. Like everything I've ever tried has been a total failure. Oh God."

"Sir, do you remember your name?"

"Um. Karl. Karl Wilson."

"Do you know where you are?"

"Aaaah…" He looks around, spotting the woman attached to the wall. "Wh-?"

"Mister Wilson, please try to focus. I appreciate that you've been through a trying time, but I need to assess your mental state."

"Right, right, sorry. No." He shakes his head. "No, I don't. I don't… I don't remember…"

"Don't worry, sir. That's probably for the best."

"Oh. Oh God, what did I do?"

"That we know about, one act of petty theft. I-."

Alan puts his right hand on my chest. I stop talking. "Which wasn't your fault, and neither was anything else you did while you were being controlled."

Mr Wilson looks stunned for a moment. "Ah. Yeah. Of course not."

"Now, I realise that you've been through a traumatic experience, but when you've had a chance to-."

He smiles. "Actually, I feel pretty good right now. If you want to ask me any questions, you can go right ahead."

I glance at Alan for a moment. "Thank you, Mister Wilson, but I think we should probably wait until you're in a police station." He nods cheerfully. "Blue Lantern, if you'd be so good as to escort him outside?" Alan offers Mr Wilson a hand up. He takes it, and they walk out of the room. I dismiss the bed construct and turn back to the woman. "And now you. What exact-?"

Ah. Darn.

I lift her body off the wall, pick up the statue and follow Alan out of the building.

back

Grind 24

next

4th November

09:21 GMT -5

Batman nods. "And the statue?"

"Since.. I couldn't prove that it was stolen property, I returned it to Mister Hatch. He was sarcastically grateful." From his expression, I think that Batman is well aware of Mr Hatch's business practices. "On that subject, sir, if you wish to pursue Mister Hatch, I would be perfectly happy to sub in for you in Gotham while you carried out a comprehensive investigation."

"That's irrelevant at present. Do you believe that the monk you encountered was behind the thefts?"

I shake my head. "Now I know who to look for I can start going through CCTV records, but I rather doubt it. I don't know whether she was the source or if her 'master' was making personal visits… Heck, since we still don't really know what the black stuff I was seeing was, I don't know whether or not it's something all members of the Order of the Stone can induce."

"Where did you first hear about the Order?"

And this is why it's important to take the time to cover yourself in advance of talking to the World's Greatest Detective. Especially if you're known to have a perfect memory. "They were mentioned in the League of Shadows' database, and again in various police reports passed to the Justice League. The same with some parts of their philosophy. I have a.. particular interest in alternate moral systems." I sigh. "Unfortunately, theirs is rather stupid."

"Purpose equals failure."

"It doesn't mean anything to me. I mean, on one level, yes, if you're not trying to do anything then you can't fail to achieve it. I'm just not sure why she said it to me like that."

"Was anyone else close enough to hear when she did?"

"Mister Wilson, but otherwise no. The Question was still in the building opposite and Alan hadn't arrived yet."

Batman bows his head slightly. "How reliable is the Question?"

"He's been working in Hub City for years. He's had appreciable success against the city's criminals, and has a number of scars which would have come from life threatening injuries. Empathic vision shows that he's genuinely committed."

"And his allegedly magical abilities?"

I shrug. "Plausible. It didn't make my rune stone glow, but since he's claiming to be using a form of psychometry that's not too surprising. It's something Nanda Parbat could probably teach someone who knew nothing about magic within the available timeframe. You'd need to have an actual magician speak to him to draw a firm conclusion."

He nods, then turns and walks away from the table to look down through the armoured glass into the examination area where Dr Balewa is studying the woman's corpse. I fall in just behind him. Mr Wilson was examined first of course, but they couldn't find any trace of whatever it was which caused the black light I saw. Dr Balewa was able to confirm that a part of Hub City has been gutted of arcane energies, but… He could also list several entities that could have done it and couldn't come up with any idea why they would have felt the need to.

Doctor Balewa is currently painting lines on the woman's naked corpse. Something to aid him in measuring particular flavours of arcane energy, I assume. It looks a little like what I've got-.

"Would the person who made Blue Lantern's ring be prepared to make any more?"

"I don't know. I'd imagine that he'd charge quite a lot, and I don't have another candidate."

"Hope isn't that rare."

"You're welcome to ask him. I'd.. suggest having Lantern Stewart and I have a crack at the next one. Or myself and Zatanna. I still don't know exactly what it was that finally broke its hold."

Below us, Dr Balewa raises his hands, closes his eyes and starts chanting.

"You would recognise it if you saw it again."

"Yes. I'd never seen anything quite like it. Even in those.. few people who have appreciable amounts of black in them anyway."

"We don't know how many there are or where they are. We don't know if there's an upper limit on the number there can be. We have no way to stop it, and we can only undo it by having Lanterns present before the suicide effect takes place."

Dr Balewa frowns as he concentrates.

"The other statues?"

"There were no traces of magic on them, or any exotic phenomena we could detect. They've been returned to their owners."

"Geh." The tips of Dr Balewa's fingers smoke and smoulder as he staggers away from the examination table!

Batman leans forward and presses the intercom. "Doctor Mist, report!"

Dr Balewa angrily shakes his hands, the smoke dispersing. "A minor side effect, Batman. I am afraid that I must confirm the Question's assessment. The woman's body is completely devoid of arcane influences. I cannot feel any part of her soul, or her life."

"Was her soul stolen or destroyed?"

"No." Below us, his body… Simplifies, colours merging and textures smoothing-. He vanishes, then reappears in the room with us. Batman and I turn to face him. "The magic involved in such a thing would leave its own mark, both upon her and upon her surroundings. There is nothing. It is not merely her soul that is missing, but every other arcane influence which I should be able to feel."

"Was her soul..? Nullified? Or have they just wiped her body clean?"

"If I am to seek out her soul in the hereafter, I will need more information on the practices of her Order."

"They regard morality and restraint as weakness, and learn to channel their desire for vice into a drive to act. I don't know what they believe as far as afterlives are concerned."

"What spirits do they worship?"

"A re-imagining of the biblical figure of Cain. Instead of being punished by Jehovah and leaving to found the first city, he wanders around the ancient world, steadily learning more and more about how to empower himself and control others with their cardinal vices: deceit, greed, lust and murder. I've no idea what they think happens to their souls. I don't even know if they believe in souls."

"Are they a large Order?"

"The League of Shadows didn't think so. I don't know."

"Doctor Mist." We both look at Batman, who is looking thoughtful. "Could the arcane presence you are looking for be hidden in a way that would make it impossible for you to find it?"

"No." He considers for a moment. "There are ways in which they could blur specific details, but that there was something there? No."

"How can you be certain? There are other ancient magicians-."

"And they are all younger than me, but that is beside the point." He looks at me for a moment, then gives a slight nod. "In… My early life, before…" He looks at his robes. "Before this. I had been a minor magician for a long time, and I wished to… I had been born a slave, and though I had risen far I still wished to know if there was more to life than I had experienced. So, I passed my authority on to my eldest son, set a great wooden pillar at the most powerful geomantic site known to me and sat upon it. I meditated, my spirit drifting free from my body, for… I do not know how long. I… Saw so much, all of the magics of the Earth, peoples I had never seen in the flesh, lands I had never walked upon. And as my body died… Just for a moment-". He smiles at the memory. "-I saw something beautiful." He shakes his head. "Batman, I have seen life's purpose, and now it is my owen. That." He points to the window. "That is not life. That is…"

He shakes his head.

Ah. I can't say I'm entirely surprised.

"Anti-Life. It's Anti-Life."

back

NEXT CHAPTER

Rampage

BACK

Rampage 1

next

Rampage

5th November

15:47 GMT +1

"Mister Grayven?" I look up as the Danish civil servant who fielded my request to speak to the Prime Minister as soon as possible appears from a nearby office. "Mister Lykketoft will see you now."

Mother Box.

Ping.

Boom!

"Ah-?"

I stride through the boom tube into Prime Minister Lykketoft's office. "Sorry to barge in like this, Mister Prime Minister, but it's actually extremely urgent."

"Not at all, Mister Grayven." He stands and offers me his right hand, which I shake somewhat urgently. "I'd offer you a chair, but…"

I shake my head, brushing the matter off. "Not a problem, I'm used to it."

He smiles, sitting back down. "Are you here to purge the Danish political establishment? I'm sure there are one or two people we could afford to lose."

"No sir. While I can't speak for the ability of your political establishment, in terms of probity you're doing quite well. I'm here because I've recently discovered that the National Museum of Denmark has in its collection three extremely dangerous magic artefacts, and I would very much appreciate it if you could arrange for them to be moved to somewhere a little more secure." I am completely serious.

"What… Ah… What artefacts are those?"

"A group of three necklaces with red beryl pendants dated as coming from the tenth century. They don't." I am authoritative.

"Are they older?"

"Almost certainly, but that's not the problem. Earlier this year a magic portal from a parallel universe opened briefly in Philadelphia, and a single individual from the other side came through. She's been working for me since, and…" Urgh. "I'm embarrassed about it now, but it only just occurred to us to look for people or artefacts which might have come through the portal previously." This is an immediate concern.

"And that is what we have?"

"So she tells me. All I can feel myself is that they are enchanted in some way, but she spent some time reading up on powerful arcane artefacts before she came through, and they match the description of a group of gems used by a trio of kelpies one of their historical heroes fought and 'banished'."

He nods. "And what do they do?"

"When active, they cause everyone in their immediate vicinity to become both aggressive and unusually receptive to the orders of the ones holding them. The more people they affect, the strong the effect gets, until… Everyone zombifies, in the original Vodun sense of having part of their soul removed. And then giant fish demons appear, and…" I shake my head. "It would be really bad and you've got them in a glass cabinet." Your preparations are inadequate.

He nods, a little stunned. "That sounds like something we should move."

"I'm glad you agree. Now, obviously I wouldn't presume to tell you where to put them. You have facilities?"

"Well… Ah, we have a high security metahuman prison-."

"I'm going to stop you right there. Does putting soul-sucking necklaces next to career criminals sound like a sensible plan to you?"

"I… Suppose not. Would a.. bank vault work?"

"Do you have a bank vault designed to resist magic-based attack? Because any magic user worth their salt will be able to feel these things."

"Is destroying them an option?"

I shake my head. "I asked, and, ah..? Short version? Uncontrolled magic discharges are very bad." Obviously.

He nods. "Do you have a suggestion?"

"Atlantis has facilities for handling artefacts like this. The Justice League could probably find somewhere reasonably secure to keep it contained." I shrug. "Giovanni Zatara lives in a house with all sorts of protective enchantment upon it. Either could work safely."

"And you? This.. expert you have? Does she know how to contain it?"

I nod. "Yes, but according to her, containing them isn't hard. You just.. don't put them on. The challenge is keeping other people away from them. My home is -obviously- highly protected with Apokoliptian technology, Atlantean magic and a species of telepathic warrior drones. And Sunset -that's her name, Sunset Shimmer- thinks that if she can study them in more detail it will become easier for her to trace any other objects that might have come through."

"Other objects?"

"As far as Sunset remembers, the one who created the mirror habitually sent dangerous objects through. We're only just starting to study how the magics of her home parallel interact with Earthly magics… Well, I don't think we have to worry about portals from there becoming a frequent occurrence, but I'd like to be able to tell you that for certain."

5th November

10:23 GMT -6

The boom tube collapses behind me as I drop the three crystals onto Sunset's work bench. She stares at them and then at me in surprise. "They gave them to you that quickly?"

"Emergency powers are for emergencies. The Danish government has authorised us to securely store them pro tem. We don't own them, so don't destroy them."

She walks over to take a closer look. "I wonder what happened to their owners?"

"According to the curator, Prince Haraldson was reputed to have killed a great many monsters before his disappearance. There was no specific mention of any kelpies, but if I had to guess…"

She frowns as she picks one of the amulets up, and I hear a faint… Music..?

"Hm." She puts it down again. "The bound spells are definitely still active. I think I'd better put a ward around them until I'm ready to start experimenting."

"You don't feel like going on a mind controlling rampage?"

"I don't want other people's power. I want to increase my power. I never wanted to hurt anyone."

"Ahhhha…?"

"No! Really!" She holds my gaze for a moment, then looks away. "Okay, maybe I… Thought about... Bucking Celestia in the face with alicorn-level earth pony strength once or twice, but I don't want to take her power. Someone's got to raise the sun."

"You don't want to do that?" I raise my eyebrows slightly. "I.. couldn't help but notice that your insignia is also a sun."

"Yeah, well, that doesn't mean I automatically know how to raise it."

"Don't I.. seem to remember something about it originally being-."

"Moved by a team of unicorns." She rolls her eyes as she starts drawing designs for the containment ward on her workshop's CAD program. "I don't put a lot of faith in Hearth's Warming stories."

"I was thinking that if it used to happen and it doesn't any more, that's a massive failure in contingency planning. One sniper gets a lucky shot at Celestia and the planet no longer has a sun." Sunset looks up, frowning. "Really, they should have a team trained up and practising regularly just in case."

"Huh." Her eyes move away for a moment. "Yeah, you're right. I guess I should be glad that it's not just me Celestia's bad at sharing with."

"So what does your insignia represent?"

Circles appear on her screen. "Right now? Nothing. I'm not a pony. I don't even have a cutie mark any more."

"Sun-."

She rolls her eyes. "Learning and using magic. And I guess it's a sun because everypony knows that the greatest and most powerful magic user in the world is Celestia. So after I've become an alicorn I'm going to see if I can trade it in or something, because I don't want a memento of her on my haunches forever."

"Maybe… You should think about it as… You've got one sun per side, right? Maybe it's about finding your own sky to shine in. You know? Two suns would burn the world, but one each-."

"That's not how it works." She looks over at the necklaces, and then back to me. "But… Thanks… For trying. And for… All this."

I beam, then spread my arms wide. "Hu-?"

"No."

back

Rampage 2

next

5th November

17:22 GMT -6

A rooftop in Central City, out of line of sight of any security cameras and within convenient travelling distance for a man who can run at light speed. He was supposed to be here twenty two minutes ago, but Wallace said that's pretty normal for hi-.

Then he's there, the coffee cup I put out already in his hand and at his lips.

"Thank you for taking the time to see me, Flash."

"Ignoring you didn't seem like a good idea." Mister Allen lowers his cup slightly as he looks at me. "Sorry I'm late." He shrugs. "You know how it goes."

"Only from Kid Flash. Though I imagine that if I had a secret identity to maintain I'd see the other side quickly enough." I gesture to the other chair with my left hand. "Would you like to sit down?"

He nods and takes his seat, putting his cup on the arm rest. "So. Bats has got you visiting everyone in the League."

"Batman suggested that it would help restore working relationships in the long term, yes."

"How far was I down the list?"

"Seventh. Diana, Batman, Mister Zatara, Green Arrow, Superman, Icon, you."

His face mask conceals his brows, but I think he's frowning slightly. "You meet up with the GLs all the time."

"Yes, and we.. talk about lanterning. Or the Russian space program." Having worked in administration, I appear to have the ability to appreciate Lantern Savenlovich's travails better than our other colleagues. "I mean, what do you think the chances of getting a heart to heart with-."

He nods. "Gardner."

"I was going to say 'Jordan', actually. Guy and I might have done, if we weren't mostly concerned with inter-Corps relations."

Another nod. "Alright. What did you want to say?"

I shrug. "What did you want to say? I was putting the whole thing behind me. The only reason I'm bringing this up at all is because Batman made me rejoining the team contingent on me doing so."

"You want to get back.. on the.. team? Aren't you.. eighteen?"

"Nineteen. And M'gann's forty nine and we're not sure how old Canis is. Do you think I've learned everything I-"

He inclines his head slightly. "No, I-."

"-need to?"

"-suppose I don't." He leans back a little. "You're saying this is for my benefit?"

"Flash, we can talk about baseball for half an hour if you want. I'm ticking a box, but I'll answer honestly any questions you have."

"Okay, ah… First off, I always thought Nabu would change his mind after a while."

"Okay."

He watches me for a moment. "You don't.. care..?"

"It's not impossible. I have not at any point claimed that I had access to all pertinent information. I don't understand his thought processes well enough to suggest if or when he might have relented, but it certainly wasn't impossible."

"No, I mean… Do you not care why I wasn't as gung ho about it as you were?"

"I-." I take a moment. "I don't consider eight months' careful investigation to be 'gung ho', Flash. I do consider eight months to have been a reasonable time period for him to have made alternate hosting arrangements on his own. Perhaps he would have after nine months. Or a year. It's an imponderable. I also don't think there's any point in me asking you how long you were going to wait. Though if you did have a figure in mind, feel free to share it?"

He tilts his head slightly to the right for a moment. "No. I can't say I did."

I shrug. "There you go. We can't discuss our different decision making processes because you didn't make a decision."

He leans back. "I suppose you're right as far as that's concerned. If he'd stayed on Kid Flash… I don't think I'd have killed him, but… Maybe."

I nod. "So… How 'bout them Stars?"

"We're not done yet. Kid Flash showed me your holiday report."

I do briefly consider a remark along the lines of 'One of you read my report?!', but I decide against it. "Fortunately, I very much doubt that such methods will be required anywhere near Earth."

"How many people did you kill?"

"I really don't know. Depending on how you assign the team efforts… Maybe a few million? Very few of whom will be missed by anyone. I take it you read the parts where I described Citadelian rules of engagement? And their behaviour in general?"

"Oh-" He nods in a very definite manner. "-yes. When I'm talking to you I want to make sure I know what's going on. And how did.. killing millions of people make you feel?"

"I didn't feel much. When you're not actually seeing the bodies, there's much less trauma, even for normal soldiers. Given how I detested their whole vile state, I didn't even feel bad intellectually."

"Did you feel..?" He looks at me with morbid curiosity. "Good..?"

"Mildly satisfied. One chore down, Vega made a bit less repugnant. I was happy about freeing Captain Comet and freeing their slaves, but… No, it didn't feel especially good."

"And when you killed the ones who helped you?"

"The ones I mind controlled into helping me. They weren't much different to the ones I'd killed. Literally, given that they were clones. Yes, I could have put them in prison, but that's really not how Vega works. No prisons exist for that sort of thing. I could have handed them over to the Tamaranian government, if they had the facilities. They would have killed them out of hand. The Crown Imperium would probably have had a show trial… Then killed them. Marooning was an option, but they didn't have wilderness survival skills and I didn't want to risk them rebuilding."

"Sure, it's all… Very logical. You do know that Robin's fourteen, right?"

"Yes. I'm also aware that he's seen quite a number of murders already."

"I'm not talking about his exposure to death-. Though you better believe I had a talk with Batman about that. I'm talking about their exposure to you."

"Um-." I blink. "Okay?"

"Kid Flash told you I never wanted him involved in this, didn't he?" I nod. "If he'd turned eighteen and he still wanted-." He shakes his head. "Maybe. You know how violent what we do can be. I try keeping him away from the worst of it, let him fight people like Snart who pull their punches. You're a soldier?" He shrugs. "Fine, so's Captain Atom. But I don't want kids learning to be soldiers. They've got to have normal lives outside of this, and.. frankly I hope they give it up. I sure don't want them regarding what you do as 'normal'."

Huh.

"I… Understand your concern. And while working for the Justice League I will follow Justice League rules of engagement. And I certainly won't glamorise what I do."

He picks up his cup again. "I guess that'll have to do."

back

Rampage 3

next

5th November

19:47 GMT -6

Ms Thal drops a would-be mugger to the pavement, frustration visible in her expression. She hasn't even taken her mace out. Not really surprising; she's strong, tough and well-trained enough that a opportunistic assailant would have to be very lucky, even if she didn't just swoop down on him. And while operating in 'policing mode' she doesn't use her mace as it's rather too lethal.

Even for Louisiana.

I descend slowly as she waits for the police. "I appreciate there's-" Now the mace comes out. "-never a good time-"

"What do you want?"

"-for this sort of conversation, but I was wondering if you'd like to talk about Nabu?"

She beats her wings, shooting into the air to gain a slight height advantage. The mugger isn't sufficiently coherent to take advantage, but I take a moment to attach plastic ties to his ankles and wrists.

"You've got some nerve…"

She's staring at my face, her focus total and.. frankly a little disturbing. Ring, blur.

Compliance.

Thank you.

"This isn't a job for people who don't. And I'd lose respect for myself if I was afraid to face…" I shake my head. "What? My acc-."

"One of the people you accused of abandoning an ally to an enemy."

"Well… You… Did that." Her hand tightens around the mace's grip. "And maybe you did it in ignorance, maybe you.. were busy, the situation wasn't given your full attention… But the result was…" I look around. We're a bit low to be openly talking about this, really. "I think I made it clear what I thought of the results when last we spoke."

"And now you… What, you want to be friends?"

"I'm aiming to rejoin the team. Batman wants me to talk out the Nabu situation with each League member first. We don't have to reach an accord… In fact, you can tell me to get lost right now-"

"Get lost."

"-and I'll just have to hear that from your husband as well, and I can go."

She reaches up to activate her helmet's communicator. "Katar, come to my location. The Orange Lantern wants you to tell him to get lost."

"I get the impression that wasn't actually what Batman had in mind, but I'll be fulfilling my end of the bargain. Really, if there's anything you want to get off your chest at all-."

"You directly accused me of cowardice before witnesses. If you were Thanagarian, I would have challenged you to a duel."

"And how would that have changed anything? Realistically, I don't have any chance against you without my ring, and you don't have much chance against me with one. So why don't we just say we had a duel and toss a coin-?"

"Orange Lantern." I float back in the air, bringing Mr Hol into view as he glides past me to float beside his wife. "I may share your opinion that a duel is not appropriate in this situation, but do not trivialise it. Or the offence you have given to both my wife and myself."

"If I thought that was trivial, I'd have told Batman he was being ridiculous about this whole thing and that it would blow over. So?" I sit cross legged in the air. "'Get lost', it's two words."

"Do you understand why what you did was wrong?"

"I've heard several people's opinions on why it was wrong, certainly. That I should have talked to the League, that I should have indulged Nabu more, that I'm-. Actually, Flash made a good point about me being a PEGI category above what the team's supposed to be. And.. it costs me nothing to hear your version. So, go ahead. Tell me."

"You should have asked us to join you."

"Why?"

"Because as you pointed out, Giovanni Zatara was our team mate."

"And not because you had something useful to offer? Do you have some particular anti-magic technique I'm not aware of?" I shake my head. "Even if I thought I could trust you -which I didn't, given that you agreed to let Nabu join in the first place- I wouldn't have involved someone who wouldn't have been able to materially assist."

"Katar…"

He takes a deep breath. "Even if you thought that we had nothing to contribute to the planning, unless you believed that we would have sided with Nabu, you should have informed us and asked us to participate. We would both rather have fought Nabu -even if that meant dying- than let him continue to hold our comrade hostage. And we both feel that was regardless of how efficacious involving us would be. For a Thanagarian soldier, there are few things more shameful than leaving an ally in the hands of an enemy."

"Then why did you? How many meetings did you have, Hawkman, where you sat with him and heard his voice speak from a stolen larynx and saw him look at you with stolen eyes? If that was supposed to be the worst thing a Thanagarian can do-."

"I was gathering information. Preparing to act against an individual who would have been an extremely difficult foe."

"And the vote?"

"How would sending him away have helped?"

"I would still trust you if you'd done that."

"Should I value your trust more highly than Zatara's life?"

"Should you have valued the trust of the superhero closest to his daughter, who is unscryable, who started a revolution in arcane technology and has numerous magic contacts? Who literally chained Nabu up at New Year? Yes, probably. How were you planning to do anything against him without me?"

"I had not yet gathered-."

"Yeah, you and Batman both, apparently. So.. I've.. caused you great offence by not including you in my plan even though you weren't including me in yours."

Ms Hol's wings are fluttering, a sign of extreme agitation. Mr Hol merely grits his teeth before continuing. "Not including us in the planning is insulting, but we did the same to you and in any case it isn't a mortal insult. Not attempting to include us in the attack is."

"Right, I'll bear that in mind in future. I'd rather there not be a next time, but…" I shrug. "Anything else?"

"I still want to fight you."

"Fine. The next Lantern training session is on Wednesday. Show up bright and early, but don't expect any satisfaction. Good evening."

back

Rampage 4

next

6th November

14:21 GMT

"You, er…" The police officer assigned to keep watch over me leans in a little bit. "You.. like… You know Batman then, do yuh?"

I'm sitting in a small office in Cardiff Central Police Station. With Alan making friends with a cross section of Alliance members and the team somewhere in southern Africa, I've been assigned to check John Fate's background.

"Ah… Yes? I wouldn't say we're social acquaintances at this point, but we've been colleagues for a little over a year now. I've been on a number of missions at his instruction."

"Could you.. like… Get his autograph fer me?"

"I can… I can certainly ask for you, but he.. hands those out only very occasionally. Usually for charity, after Superman has smiled at him for a couple of minutes."

She grins. "Ah, that'd be brilliant!"

"As I said, no promises, but-" A CID officer walks in, and the police officer moves away slightly. "-I'll certainly ask."

"Alright, Constable Williams. I think I can handle this one, thank you."

"Right you are, sir." She heads towards the door. "Shout if you need anything fetching."

"I will." The detective looks me over, apparently not very impressed. "What happened to the fancy armour, then?"

"I didn't think it appropriate to the situation. And it's not exactly chair-friendly." I open my hands, letting her get a good look at my power rings. She's a stout, middle aged woman with short brown hair. "If you want to phone the League and confirm my identity-."

"What do you think I just did?"

"Good, so you know who I am. Would it be possible for me to ask you some questions?"

"Just as soon as I'm shuwer we're not going to have some lunatic start knocking over buildings."

"No, no-. Ah, not as far as I know. I'm just checking the references of someone who might be working with the League at some point."

"Don't have a lot of costumed mental cases around here. I think we'd have spotted them."

"I don't think that the individual in question wore a costume." I take a picture out of subspace, showing John Fate's face attached to an approximately-correct body wearing a suit. "Does this man seem familiar at all?"

She frowns with mild irritation, then her brows unfurrow slightly in recognition. "He does a bit, though I'm jiggered if I know where from."

"He claimed that he offered to assist the Cardiff police during a series of ritualistic killings with a magic motive."

Her eyes widen. "That's never John Constantine. You send him on a body building course, did yuh?"

"You're right, that isn't John Constantine. Not unless something very strange is happening." Moderately strange. John's a common first name and Constantine is three thousand five hundred and sixtieth most common. My own is too rare to feature on any of the lists I saw. It might not even exist here. "But he claims he was around here at the same time."

"Might be." She reaches out for the picture and I hand it to her. "Several of the officers involved in that were moved off front line duties. Mental health." I nod sympathetically. That sort of thing doesn't bother me any longer, but mutilated bodies are a bit of a shock if you're not used to them. "I can show them the picture."

"I'd appreciate that. I just need to confirm that he was here and trying to be helpful."

"Alright. I'll get that done for you. Is there anything else?"

"I would appreciate a copy of the relevant case files. I'm not expecting a copycat or anything like that, I just want to make sure that I'm being thorough."

"The Justice League can request that. I'll have it scanned and sent via the proper channels."

A couple of days' wait, then. And it's mildly painful that it isn't all on computer. "Thank you."

I offer her my right hand, which she takes briefly before indicating the door. "Can you find your way out?"

"Yes, thank you. I'll look forward to hearing from you." I raise my right fore and middle fingers to my forehead in a mock salute,

-then step out and back-

6th November

09:25 GMT -5

into the city of Chicago for my next Justice League member meeting.

"Hey, ah, Nancy? I'll call you back. Looks like my nine thirty just arrived."

Mr O'Brian in civilian mode. He can't really hide what he is, but he makes an effort. His suit and shirt are red, material from that weird.. leotard.. thing he was for whatever reason wearing when he took the chemical bath which turned him into living rubber repurposed into office wear. His hair looks stranger still, a solid unmoving mass stuck on top of his head. He's not wearing his gog-. No, he is, the goggles have just merged with his eyebrows.

"Do you have a moment, Plastic Man?"

"Eh… Sure." He falls backward, morphing into an office chair as he does so. "Sit down, I'll get someone to make you coffee."

"Thank you, but I don't drink coffee. Also, I'm…" I shake my head. "Not sitting on you." I generate a construct chair and sit down opposite him. "I'm sure you know why I'm here."

"Because you need someone to sportscast your match with Hawkwoman?" He shifts back into humanoid form, his right hand now holding a microphone. "In the red corner, all the way from Thanagar, give it up for-!"

"No. Nabu."

The microphone merges with his hand, his whole body sagging. "Yeah, well, see, I didn't actually know-."

"Diana told me. You somehow managed to miss that he was possessed."

He shrugs. "It's not the first thing you think of. I mean, what was his name-?"

"Kent Nelson."

"Right! Kent Nelson was fine wearing the helmet for decades."

"And Nabu wanted to keep Kid Flash as his host-."

"Ah, hey." He holds his hands out in a placatory gesture, expanding them to three of four times normal size. "I wasn't even on the League when that happened. I didn't get access to the reports until New Year."

"And you didn't read through them."

"I read some. The ones about things we were actually doing. There are a lot of reports in there!" He returns his hands to normal size. "I don't even particularly think you were wrong, but… I thought if there was anything going wrong with Zatara then Batman or someone would have said something."

I could bear a grudge about this. Being on the Justice League should mean that you do the blasted reading. But I think this episode has already given him the kick he needed on that score.

"I.. suppose that's.. fair. Anything you want to ask me?" He shakes his head. "Then… Have a nice day."

I raise my fingers to my forehead again.

back

Rampage 5

next

9th November

10:09 GMT -6

"Uuuuuuuuugh."

Ms Thal wheezes, her right hand grasping spasmodically for the Nth metal mace I've sensibly moved out of arm's reach. Since I regard this whole thing as stupid, I haven't been using the sort of high-lethality ordnance which Thanagarian duelling custom would allow me to. I've -I sigh as I think it- been using… Giant… Orange… Boxing gloves. Of course, at this point they're pretty powerful boxing gloves, because… While she isn't the only Justice League member to severely irritate me where Nabu is concerned, at least the others were prepared to discuss the matter without challenging me to a duel.

But… This is a bit much.

I look over towards Mr Hol. "Is that it? Can you call it now?"

He makes eye contact with me, then gives his head a small shake.

"Oh, for goodness-." Ms Thal staggers to her feet, using her wide spread wings to maintain her balance. "You're clearly in no condition to fight and I don't like you well enough to heal you. Why don't you stay down this time?"

"Nrgh."

She.. either weaves, or narrowly avoids collapsing, then begins a staggering run towards me. I shoot her in the face with a construct bean bag round, forcing her to stop, staggering back to maintain her balance. A construct circular saw cuts through her helmet's strap and a construct hand hurls her battered helmet aside. It appears to have protected her face reasonably well, but the lower part of her face is already swelling from bruises and I can see a dozen cuts from where I slammed her into the desert.

"Please. Give up."

Out of the corner of my eye I see Alan say something to Mr Hol, who waves him off.

Another stagger, then she squares up to me again.

"Okay, can I yield? I literally-" I create a flimsy boxing glove construct, then let it evaporate. "-don't want to hurt you sufficiently strongly to make a construct. You win, well done. Honour is uphel-."

"No." She takes a step closer. "Fight me."

I fall back slightly. "Alright, you've convinced me that you'd have fought against Nabu. I doubt it would have been much more one sided than this."

"Not… Not convincing you."

"Look, if you're willing to get your face beaten in pointlessly-" She takes three hurried steps closer and swings her right fist. I turn it aside with my right hand and punch her hard in the face. She takes it.. pretty well. Stupid extra tough skeletal structure. "-I'm sure-" She tries to hit me with her left wing, but I counter with a construct shield. "-that you'd do it where it-" I step right as she pulls her wing back and swing a fist at the unprotected underside. That gets a wince. "-it actually mattered."

"I'm not-" She manages a clumsy hit on my faceplate. "-doing this for you!"

"Fine." I create a construct covering her mouth and nose, then start replacing her air with Thanagarian-safe-ish knock out gas. Another pair of constructs bind her arms and wings. "I hope you've impressed yourself, then."

She struggles, but Thanagar knows its people and this stuff is designed to weaken them fast. As her eyes roll back I remove the construct feeding her the stuff and create a stretcher construct for her. Then I wheel toward Mr Hol. "Is that enough?! Or do I need to hit her a few more times?"

He flaps his wings once to leave the ground and a second time to enter the combat area, gliding towards his wife. I move the stretcher towards him as he lands, his helmet staring at her as he uses the sensors to check her condition. "She is unable to continue. You are victorious."

"Wooowh. Is she going to try this again when she gets up? Am I going to need to give her a power ring just so I don't feel so-?"

Alan follows Mr Hol, and I pass Ms Thal to him. There aren't any medical facilities around here… There isn't anything around here, that's why we started doing this here. The Hawks' ship has basic medical equipment… Ugh.

"Why did you offer to surrender?"

"Because it was pointless! She's going to be recovering for… Two weeks?"

"I doubt that I'll be able to make her stay still for that long."

"Which means that no one gains anything from this. If it meant I didn't have to beat her unconscious, why wouldn't I surrender?"

"Pride in your abilities as a warrior?"

"I'm not doing this to win a flipping contest! I wear this ring to make the universe a better place. That did nothing!" I grimace. "The last Thanagarians I met weren't this mental. At least I don't think they were, maybe they were just hiding it better."

"Some.. parts of the military take.. certain parts of Thanagar's military traditions more seriously than wider society. Were these Thanagarians civilians?"

"No. Mercenaries. Nice bunch. Met them in Vega. Had a few drinks, helped them with a riot and got them a job training the Tamaranian military up while they rebuild."

"I'm not aware of any Thanagarians being in that region of space. What is the company called?"

"The Blades of Alstair." Who-. Oh.

"I see." I can't tell whether Mr Hol's frowning or not, but I suspect that he is. "No. They wouldn't have adopted that tradition unless Hyathis ordered them to. Excuse me." A downbeat of his wings and he's flying back towards his ship.

Yeah, probably shouldn't have mentioned that I was on good terms with them to an agent of the Thanagarian government.

Lantern Jordan drifts down. "Well. That was a… Thing."

"And let's hope that really is it."

He looks mildly curious. "What, you never felt like challenging someone to a fight?"

"Not for honour-related reasons. But while we're all taking five, and you're actually on Earth, do you?"

"With Guy once or twice, sure."

"No, not-. Batman's got me talking to every League member about Nabu."

He shrugs. "Why? You got a way to bring him back you're not sharing?"

"No."

"Then what's the point? However I feel about it, you did it, it happened."

"That's what I said. But are you sure? Nothing you want to ask, nothing you want to get off your chest?"

"I still don't think you should have killed him."

"Okay, what should I have done?"

"Kept working at it until you had a way to take him down without killing him."

I shrug. "Diana took the chains off at New Year. Given how powerful and skilled Lords of Order are, I would have to have been very lucky to get another opening like that."

He raises his eyebrows. "You're saying you couldn't do it?"

"I'm saying I don't know how to do it and I don't know if it could be done."

"Because if Zatara was alive after eight months, he wasn't in danger of dying. Look, I wanted to fly for the US Air Force. And if.. things had gone differently, I'd probably have killed plenty of people by now. But I'm not. I'm a space cop with a fancy ring. Superheroes aren't military, they're police. The Justice League isn't a military."

"The Orange Lantern Corps is a military."

"Maybe that's the problem. The US military doesn't do policing outside of disaster zones, because that's not what it's for. The rules of engagement are different, for good reasons. I don't have a problem with you wanting to be a soldier. But if that's what you want?" He drifts back slightly. "Then this is the wrong organisation for you."

back

Rampage 6

next

10th November

13:08 GMT -5

"No, I think I understand."

I watch Jade as she takes another bite of her sandwich, shaking my head slightly. "You do?"

She chews for a moment, then swallows. Then she carefully watches my face. "And you actually don't."

I shake my head again. "If I did, I wouldn't ask."

"It's about confidence. She needed to know that if she had to fight someone more powerful than her, she could do it."

"But.. she could. She actually does that several times a year. Everyone knows that."

"Did you?"

"I… Yes, I.. honestly assume that of everyone on the League. I didn't ask her because I didn't think the risk-reward made sense." I watch her take another bite, the news program playing in the background saying something about a series of earthquakes in Argentina. "Is that.. something you… Feel..?"

"Not… Exactly."

I lean forwards slightly. "Please don't ever pick a fight with a ludicrously out of your league superhero."

"If your enemies know that you're willing to fight them, it changes how they evaluate whether to attack you or not. They know beating you would cost them more."

"Oh no." I frown. "Thanagar's doing a John Byng."

"Or training their soldiers to think like Meiji Restoration era samurai. Who was John Byng?"

"A British naval officer executed for not 'doing his utmost against the enemy' in the eighteenth century. Voltaire put a joke about it in Candide, ah… 'In this country, it is good to kill an admiral from time to time, in order to encourage the others'." She.. nods. "The result.. was supposed to be that British officers became more aggressive, always attacking when in doubt."

"And they ended up controlling the largest empire in history."

"There was a bit more to it than that, but… It may have helped." I frown. "So that's what it looks like on the ground."

"What would have happened to her if she didn't challenge you?"

"Noth-." She raises her eyebrows. "Ah… Assuming that she included it in her report… I don't know. The most recent copy of Thanagar's Articles of War I've got predates the Equalisation Plague, two hundred years and a major social upheaval out of date."

"A dishonored samurai who didn't commit suicide after being dishonored would be reviled by other warriors and lords. And so would their family."

"I-." Can I.. say..? "Hawkwoman grew up in a military orphanage, so-."

"So her sense of identity is entirely tied up in being a loyal soldier and her entire 'family' would think the same way she does."

And who does that sound like? "Jade." I reach across the table and put my right hand on her left forearm. "If you want me to beat you unconscious as well-?"

She smiles, a slight hiss of air escaping from her lips. Then she rolls her eyes. "No, I'm-. It's been an adjustment, but the League of Shadows' disciplinary system didn't work like that. Experienced operatives were too valuable. And Ra's didn't want anyone thinking that a code was more important than him."

"So.. you.. don't feel-?"

She raises her eyebrows. "Can't you see?"

"I… Could. I choose not to."

She nods, turning her left arm slightly so her hand rests on my forearm. "I don't feel the need to.. lose a fight to maintain my identity because I've changed my identity. I chose not to be an assassin. She's still a soldier." I nod. "And I'm not really keen on losing fights or picking fights I can't win."

"But Hawkwoman was fine with it because anything else looked dishonourable to her." I shake my head. "I'd like to say it's crazy, but it's.. no."

"No." She pulls back her left arm slightly, so that our hands are clasped. "Challenging you to a fight without some sort of equaliser was crazy. Challenging you at all was just being true to her code."

She takes another bite of her sandwich, her eyes moving briefly to the people staring at us -me, really- from the other parts of the deli. I've got sound suppression on so they can't hear what we're actually saying, but at this point my visits and relationship with Jade are public knowledge.

"Thanagarians don't have equalisers to power rings. That was actually a factor in the formation of their policies towards aliens during their expansions; they knew that they couldn't risk pushing the Corps more than a certain degree."

"How close are they to Earth?"

"Pretty close in interstellar terms, not close at all in terms of absolute distance. They could send a fleet here, but unless we look like we're becoming an imminent threat it seems unlikely that they will." I shrug. "They don't have any rivals in this direction, but integrating other species into their empire… Well, settling their worlds over their objections, takes time and effort."

"Do you think the Hawks are sending information home, so-." I'm already nodding, and she narrows her eyes slightly. "You knew that?"

"It's obvious. But since we're not planning on picking a fight with Thanagar, there's no harm in it." Couldn't even if we wanted to. The one benefit of the Equalisation Plague was that in the aftermath internal disputes became unimportant, whereas Earth doesn't have a unified space program. When we finally get serious about space it probably will end up being a superhero-led effort. "In fact, reassuring them benefits us."

She takes another bite of her sandwich. I deliberately look past the gawkers -and the manageress who is making it clear that the seats are for patrons- and give the television my attention. Depending on the situation on the ground, an earthquake might-. No, it's moved on to covering a flare up of hostility in Kashmir. With that part of the world being a good deal more stable on Earth 16 than Earth Prime, I can probably leave that to local diplomats.

"How are your meetings with the Justice League going?"

"They're manageable. I'm getting a much better idea of where they think I went wrong."

A small smile. "Do you agree with any of them?"

"The Flash had a point, and I think… Green Lantern echoed it."

"Oh?"

"He's not happy about children being involved. And he's especially not happy about someone with my body count and modus operandi being involved with children."

"Children who can run at the speed of sound and break someone in half by talking backwards."

"Impressionable children who might decide to use those abilities in non-superheroic ways if I make a good enough case for it. And it is true that I'm a bit of an awkward fit." I shrug. "How are things in the mob? Any interesting assassination attempts?"

"One, by Two Face." She grimaces. "Or it might have been, but I get paid to protect the principal, not fight crazy people. I'm actually… Thinking about quitting. A corporate intelligence firm in San Francisco got in touch. They're interested in employing someone with my background."

"I imagine that's more up your street. And less likely to involve anything illegal. Want me to check them out for you?"

She looks at me sternly. "I'd like you to check them out as well. They look legitimate to me, but I don't have all of your resources."

"Not a problem. What are they called?"

back

Rampage 7

next

10th November

16:49 GMT -5

The train of lawyers, politicians and bereaved family members walks past me down the hall, Adom and Mr Tuckman waiting until there's some clear space before following them out of the meeting room. The lawyers are muttering to their clients, none of whom look particularly happy about the outcome. I wait until they're all past me before rising from my chair to approach my colleagues.

"So? Result?"

Mr Tuckman manages a satisfied smile. "There's still room for individual challenges, but I think we've convinced most people that 'Theodore Adam' and 'Teth Adom' are two legally distinct people, and that Teth Adom bears no responsibility for Theodore Adam's actions."

Adom is still looking fairly sombre, though that might just be as a result of Mr Tuckman's strongly phrased advice that he wear a suit. "I have no wish to insult the families of his victims, but I refuse to believe that this is the best way for them to gain redress. There were more jurists present than relatives."

Mr Tuckman looks just a little bit smug at that. "Welcome to America."

"No." Adom shakes his head. "That could have been resolved in mere minutes if a single individual had the authority to make a determination, subject to learned advice. Instead, it has been months. It serves neither me nor them." His eyes narrow slightly. "When I rule Kahndaq once more I will ensure this cannot happen there."

Mr Tuckman raises his right eyebrow slightly. "The Kahndaqi people might have something to say about that."

"My people will see my wisdom. And they will learn not to question me."

Best head this off. "Any problems? Or was it all…"

Adom's jaw tenses for a moment. "They required that I return to my mortal form."

Mr Tuckman nods. "Yeah, that was a little uncomfortable. I didn't realise that he still looked like…"

I frown mildly at Adom. I hadn't either, but then William Batson still looks like William Batson when he turns back. Why should Adom be any different just because he and his host are both adult men?

"A problem I will solve by not turning back at any other time."

Obvious solution, but perhaps here isn't the place to bring it up. "Mr Tuckman, do you need us for anything else?"

He shakes his head. "No, not today." He turns to Adom. "I'll contact you with a copy of the written text for your approval once it's been drafted. Should be within a week."

Adom nods, and offers him his hand. "Thank you."

Mother Box, hush tube.

Ping.

10th November

15:52 GMT -6

Adom and I walk back into the Mountain, hush tube closing behind us. "You know, I've been meaning to ask: beyond the gods' blessings, have you considered..? Looking for other advantages? Better weaponry, or further augmentations?"

He glances at me suspiciously. "As I have said before, I am content with the power that I have."

"Hey." I shrug noncommittally. "If you say so. But you're the one who wants to fight Shazam. And -correct me if I'm wrong here- last time they weren't enough. Were they?" His jaw clenches. "Adom, I'm your ally. I'm offering you aid to make both our lives easier. You don't have to take it, but it's there."

He considers for a moment, then his face relaxes slightly. "Your pardon. Having been betrayed by the one I once considered my friend and mentor, I find that I am… Reluctant to put my faith in those who make similar offers."

"Think nothing of it."

"I do not believe that there is a power I could gain within a short span of time that would improve my ability to liberate Kahndaq. No, my time is better spent in study. But… In the fullness of time, I may consider such measures before confronting him once again."

I nod slowly. "Perhaps something more trivial, then?" He raises his eyebrows slightly. "William's transformation changes his face. I should have realised that you still look like Theodore Adam under-" I wave my right hand at his face. "-that.. before now, and I apologise for my lapse. If you like, I can change that, make your faces match. Cosmetic work is far less involved than alterations to your arcane architecture."

"I would need to.. change?" I nod, and he grimaces. "I am loath to speak the Wizard's name even once more." He considers for a moment. "But, I appreciate you making the offer. I have no great fondness for looking like a murderer. Perhaps I will-."

He cuts himself off as the door to one of our secure storage repositories opens and Circe walks out. "Oh." She frowns at Adom's choice of attire. "Did someone die?"

I nod. "Theodore Adam. Legally speaking. Not that anyone will miss him all that much."

"Oh, you finally got that sorted out. Well done."

"A minor trial of my patience. It was no great achievement." Adom hesitates for a moment. "How is your school progressing?"

"Plans are being finalised and the demolition is done." She looks at me. "I decided to bind the rat thing in a crystal and put it in storage."

I nod. "Fine, as long as Miss Shimmer checked the seals."

She rolls her eyes. "Yes, even though I've been sealing elementals since before the rise of Rome, I had Sunset check my work."

"I'm sorry if it's inconvenient, but it's a standard process and a second pair of eyes-."

"Yes…" She waves her right hand dismissively. "Yes. I understand. And I do enjoy talking to her. Did you know that her people dealt with a Lord of Chaos?"

I nod. "I think she mentioned it."

She smiles. "I'm constantly surprised by what even I can learn from talking to her. Particularly concerning beings like that."

Adom raises his eyebrows slightly. "You have encountered a Lord of Chaos yourself?"

"I… Misjudged a situation involving a Lord of Chaos named Oggar." She carefully watches his face. "You recognised the name, Teth Adom. Did you know of him?"

He nods. "I did. He was once a mighty ally of the Wizard, but broke with him due to his own egotism. He felt that his power meant that he should have been the leader of their alliance rather than the Wizard's subordinate. After that, he wandered the world, finding his amusements where he could. I encountered him only many years later, when he decided to attack my nation in an attempt to wound the Wizard by proxy."

She looks curious, her eyebrows rising slightly. "You survived his attention, then."

Adom nods. "I had learned to use the Power of Atum to increase my ability to resist baleful magic. But it would not have been enough to stand against a Lord of Chaos. The Wizard lent me a portion of his own might, the Power of Ribalvei, so that I could stand against Oggar's magic."

Circe looks distinctly impressed. "You mean to say that you.. won?"

"Once I closed the distance, I unleashed the full extent of Lord Montu's berserk rage. Oggar's physical form was strong, but not strong enough to withstand my attack."

"And?" She shrugs. "He is a Lord of Chaos. Could he really die from mere physical injury?"

"No." A thin smile. "But he could feel pain."

Circe's smile on the other hand isn't even slightly thin. "You hurt him so much that he fled?"

"In a manner of speaking. I broke his body, and then waited for his magic to repair it. And then I broke it again. And again. And again, until he abandoned this world and returned to the Realm of Chaos."

"How long did that take?"

"Perhaps twenty days of constant activity."

She smiles, this time one of genuine pleasure rather than social lubrication. "Really?" She steps forward, linking arms with him and pulling him in the direction of the nearest living room. "Oh, I am going to want more details than that, pharaoh."

back

Rampage 8

next

12th November

17:32 GMT -5

"So… This is it, huh?" Dr Highwater carefully lifts the Medusa Mask from the padded Justice League case Lantern Stewart transported it in.

"Yeah."

Lantern Stewart doesn't look entirely happy about this, but KordTech has all of the licences required to analyse supervillain technology and is the only surface world site with enough qualified magic users to produce useful results with arcane equipment. If anyone is going to do something with this, it's KordTech.

Dr Highwater performs a brief visual inspection. "Mask is gold in color, but weighs more than this volume of gold should. Mask…" He prods it. "Is immobile, despite reports that it can form expressions. Mask has no visible way to attach itself to the wearer's face, despite reports that it remains attached during strenuous physical activity."

"Kid Flash was able to pull it off Roger Hayden's face just prior to his arrest."

"But why didn't it fall off?" He holds it up slightly. "I mean: look at it."

He's right. Not only is it taller than a normal man's face, it isn't clear how it was able to stay on Mr Hayden's face at all.

"It's a shame Charles Halstead wasn't able to provide a better explanation before he was committed." Dr Highwater tears his eyes away from the Mask to look at Lantern Stewart. "You're sure Mr Hayden hasn't suffered any of the same side effects?"

Lantern Stewart shakes his head. "Not according to the prison shrink."

Yes, that was something I hadn't known before I started reading up on the case. After getting a whole life sentence and passing his equipment on to Psycho-Pirate 2, Psycho-Pirate 1 gradually lost all ability to feel emotion. There are emotion-affecting magics which could have that effect, but that wouldn't explain why it stopped doing that for the second wearer.

"Mister Hayden claimed to have amalgamated the many masks Mister Halstead used into a single mask."

Dr Highwater nods. "Then I think we're ready for human testing."

I nod, and create a frame construct around the Mask. I remember that the comic version of this mask gave medium awareness but I haven't seen any sign of that in the League's records on either of the local Pirates. Which I suppose might mean that the Earth 2 version got that power not from the Mask but from living through the Crisis.

Lantern Stewart leans slightly to the left. "That seems a bit sudden."

"After.. what happened to Bobo, we decided that testing telepathic equipment on animals wasn't a good idea."

"How's the little scamp doing?"

"He's reached eighth grade now."

Lantern Stewart frowns. "Who's 'Bobo'?"

"He's the chimpanzee KordTech tested the updated Thinking Cap on. We've removed it now, but it appears to have given him human-equivalent intelligence." But not the capacity for speech. His vocal systems just aren't the right shape, so he mostly communicates by writing. "We're not.. really sure how, but we're not going to be testing it on any other chimps."

Lantern Stewart looks decidedly uncertain at that news. "So you're skipping straight to human testing?"

Dr Highwater nods. "Nothing in either Psycho-Pirate's background indicates a particular level of arcane knowledge, and Abraham Carlyle and Wolf Krieger were able to use it without any adverse side affects. This is just a quick trial run so I can get some idea of what it feels like to use, so I can pass that on to the arcanists so they can narrow down the range of things they're investigating. And we're not allowed to do human tests on objects of this class without a member of the Justice League being present."

"So it's my fault." Lantern Stewart nods. "Great."

"I don't think you understand exactly what this can do for the Green Lantern Corps."

"Make us all feel fear so we can train to work through it?"

"Why not just amp up your will?"

He frowns. "Is that possible? I didn't think that 'will power' was really an emotion."

"Should be. And the best thing about it is that it can affect as many people as the wearer can see. Marginally useful for a single Green Lantern, but in any situation where you need a whole task force…"

He nods. "One Lantern can hold back and enhance all of the rest."

"If they're a natural empath, they could use what they're doing to the rest of the force to enhance themselves as well. And they can suppress any conflicting emotions that the rookies are feeling."

"I don't think that's a good idea. Rookies shouldn't be in that sort of situation." He nods slowly. "But I take your point. That could dramatically cut down the casualties during major operations."

I beam. "Thank you for volunteering."

He blinks. "You want me to put that thing on?"

"No, of course not. Doctor Hightower is going to put it on and use it on you. I've already got recordings of how strong you are without it from our training sessions, now we just need to find out how strong a pre-m'eelam na'aquall Sector Lantern gets with it."

"Why don't we use it on you?"

"Do you want another giant cake?" He bows his head slightly, smiling as he does so. "Besides, I need to be available to yank the mask off Doctor Highwater if something goes wrong."

He nods. "Alright, but take things slowly."

Dr Highwater nods. "Of course. We don't even know if I can use it yet." He steps up to where I have the mask suspended in a head height frame. "Here goes."

He presses his face into the inside of the mask for a moment, then pulls it back. There's a slight tug on the frame, but otherwise I don't see anything unusual.

"Feel anything?"

"I felt it stick to my face, but I didn't get any sort of impression of the emotions around me. It might be that it only senses strong emotion, or it might be that the effect is only one way; it can create emotions but not detect them in the people around it."

"It put a small amount of pressure on the frame when you pulled back. It looks like it does stick. Try again?"

He nods, and presses his face back into it. "Okay, I'm-. It's moving, the mask is moving with my mouth as I speak. That.. feels.. weird."

"Yeah." Lantern Stewart walks around to the front. "I can confirm that from the outside. It looks different from how it looked when Krieger was wearing it, but that might be because your face is a different shape from his."

"Okay. If you're ready, I'll-" Lantern Stewart's ring flashes. "-try to-."

"Just a moment." He holds his ring out. "Go ahead."

"Batman to Green Lantern. The team was investigating a LexCorp facility in Argentina. They've just missed one of their scheduled check ins."

"I can head down there and take a look. What were they investigating?"

"A geology research center. I had no specific intelligence that they would meet any significant threats there."

"Understood." He glances at me. "Orange Lantern is here as well. Should I bring him along?"

"As if I'm giving you a choice."

back

Rampage 9

next

12th November

19:37 GMT -3

The world flickers around me and what the hell happened here?

This part of the world is a wasteland anyway, but the added lines of molten rock suggest that Kon needed to unleash-.

The air turns white as something very hot armourarmourarmour! Okay, regular heat vision, not Kon's version. Deflect towards the ground! The rock beneath me begins to liquefy as the beam pours heat into the volcanic rock, then cuts out. Appropriate response-

Lantern Stewart generates a construct shield.

-is kryptonite radiation. Since my run-in with an asteroid made of the stuff, I've had the opportunity to get hold of kryptonite samples of a variety of colours. Gold kryptonite is safest-.

A grey shape blurs past me, slamming into Lantern Stewart and sending them both careening out of-. Shit, where's he gone? Ring, accelerated per-.

Perception already accelerated.

There's a small landslide as part of the caldera wall explodes. There, right, moving! Saturate the area with gold kryptonite radiation and show me who we're fighting!

Compliance.

Predictably, Mr Luthor's done something to the area to disrupt ring scans, but optical scans show-

Lantern Stewart goes for height and distance, battering ram construct shattering as his opponent rams through it!

-a large, naked, grey-skinned humanoid with a pearly white horn jutting from his forehead. I'm guessing that's Doomsday 16, but if so then this version has kept his humanoid form better than the comic and animated versions. Though the bony plates covering his back are forcing him to hunch over somewhat and though he's notably over scale when compared to a human his proportions are fairly normal for someone seven feet tall. I think he's even got facial hair.

I don't remember anything about Doomsday being affected by kryptonite, but I don't remember him flying either and I've got the gun ready and he isn't faster than light. The laser strikes home and.. he isn't slowed in the slightest. Fine, green, and fire. This one… There's a slight shimmer before it hits his skin and nothing. He doesn't even look my way as his right fist crunches through Lantern Stewart's construct defences. I can't tell exactly what injuries he just took, but from the slow motion look of shock on his face and the approximate speed… Shattered lower ribs and severe internal bruising at least.

"Stewart, orbit."

And I transition forward, x-ionised broadsword coming out of subspace as I reappear. Construct armour to deflect. Doomsday's head is already turning my way, eyes lighting up as Stewart weakly tries to push away-. Innate interdiction? Darn.

My sword cuts into Doomsday's side as the heat vision is once more reflected away by my construct armour. This time the angle causes it to shoot skywards, then as he tosses Stewart aside and lunges at me the deflected energy spins in an arc across the sky! That could have hit-! He punches my right arm, construct armour cracking at once. I move the sword into a guard posit-. He redirects his heat vision, striking the side of the blade and melting through it. Fine, crumbler gauntlets it is-

There's a flash of green as Stewart disengages.

-then. Light flash, maximum intensity, kryptonite-enhanced smelling salts, ultrasonic pulse and punch the fuckwhereish-!

Blooughf!

I can't keep up, blows are slamming into my construct armour too quickly for me to perceive even with my mind accelerated. It's cracking and gone, kinetic barrier blocking the next few hits-. Right bubble.

I get maybe a second to look at him and then his heat vision starts up again, slashing across my armour! Agh, yep, that hit the projectorphase!

There's a sort of grunt from Doomsday as his arms blur and his eyes burn as he tries to strike me. I try flying away as fast as conventional ring flight allows me, but he's keeping up easily. Flying down through the ground around an extinct volcano while a Kryptonian weapon life form is trying to punch me seems like a bad idea… Where's the team?

I step out-

-and I reappear in.. what looks-

"Who the hell are you?"

-like a barracks, someone in full body armour levelling a gun at me.

"He-. Ugh." Kon tries to push himself up off the floor, his face covered in cuts and swelling with bruises. Sunlight shines out from him, but that doesn't actually make him heal much faster. He's not wearing his armour, but rather yellow LexCorp-branded overalls. A scan through it shows that the rest of his body isn't in much better condition than his face; his left arm is broken in three places and he's got fractures across his ribs, skull and spine.

Shit. Okay, that's going to result in a nasty concussion-

I take a purple healing ray out of subspace and shoot him with it.

-but the Danner Formula will knit his internal injuries together faster than those suffered by a normal human. He holds out his right arm and I carefully pass him the ray, being sure to maintain the beam.

Other overalled figures lay on the beds. Some have tourniquets over severed limbs, others have their uniforms torn away so bandages could be applied to lesser injuries. Visible skin appears to have… Grey, discoloured patches. I quickly spot Kaldur and Canis, both unconscious. Kaldur doesn't have any visible injuries while Canis looks like a normal person would if someone took a cricket bat to their face.

One of the injured shakes for a moment, then lies still.

"Superboy, what's going on?"

"You see the big grey guy?"

"Yes. Briefly."

"He happened." The man with the gun semi-slumps back against his own bed. Looks like volcanic gas inhalation. And a few bruises. "Fucker just came right out of the ground and started-." He emits a wheezing cough. "Started burning everything. Some sort of mutant kryptonian."

I take out another ray and shoot him, then pass it to him. "Use this on everyone."

He takes it, then looks at Kon who has just stopped using it on himself and is testing his left arm. "Ah, okay."

"Right. Big grey guy-."

Kon stands. "Do you know where he is now?"

I send my battered armour back into subspace, then shake my head. "No. Green Lantern A had to fall back, and I teleported here."

"Great." Kon nods. "This place is designed to be Kryptonian resistant. Lead lined everything, structural reinforcements and-"

"Wards."

"-w-. Yeah. Radio can't penetrate, which is why we missed our check in. And the reason it's like this is because this is where Luthor gets most of his kryptonite from."

The guard looks around from raying one of his injured colleagues. "Nothing illegal about digging for minerals. Plenty illegal about spying on private property."

"My team's the reason why you're still alive!"

"Digging for kryptonite, fine. And you didn't know there was a kryptonian down there as well."

"Seismic scans and ground penetrating radar showed nothing like… That thing." He exhales sharply. "Not that I think any of us would have recognised it."

"Alright. I wasn't briefed on your mission. Start from the beginning."

back

Rampage 10

next

12th November

19:39 GMT -3

Kon's sitting on his bed while the LexCorp loyalist walks around with the healing rays. As expected, no one regrows limbs and the dead don't rise, but cuts close up and broken bones start to knit together. Kaldur remains unconscious, while Canis groggily grunts and unsteadily pushes himself upright.

"Batman told us that LexCorp had started sending extra personnel out here, along with a lot of specialist equipment-."

"And that's no grounds for the Justice League to do anything! We applied for and received all of the appropriate licences from the Argentinean government. LexCorp is a legitimate business and does not have to explain itself-."

"Look. I'm asking so that I can try and learn why there's a crazy mutant kryptonian flying around outside. The more you interrupt, the longer that takes. So please stop talking unless you've got something pertinent to say."

"Fine. I'm sure the League will be hearing from LexCorp's lawy-." I glare, and he stops talking.

Kon smiles in thanks. "We.. took a look around-" Because clearly we're not talking about the bio-ship in front of LexCorp employees, who will no doubt be debriefed in considerable detail once this is over. "-and planted a few bugs. And then we sat back to watch." He shrugs. "We spotted the kryptonite right away, along with the cloning cylinders."

"Human cloning is illegal in Argentina."

Kon glances down the line of injured and diseased LexCorp employees. "I doubt they were planning on cloning humans."

"Okay. And the disease?"

"Canis said some of the workers smelled sick, but someplace like this… If someone caught a bug, everyone would get it."

Hm. While we're on the subject. Ring, what's causing that skin condition?

Novel bacterium, not on file. Symptoms will include increased aggression followed by dizziness, lethargy, comatosation and death.

Explains why he sounds so angry despite the lack of red light. Time frame?

Varies. Approximately one week from first symptoms appearing in an otherwise healthy adult.

"Oh dear."

Quick check. Kaldur's infected. Canis isn't, and neither's Kon. Canis said that New Gods of any power shrugged off conventional disease, so that isn't surprising. In Kon's case, alien physiology.. or his personal environmental field might be keeping him safe. Kaldur's infection is in the early stages. If they've been here less than a day that's a blooming fast rate of infection. Ring, transmission vector?

Bacterium is capable of airborne transmission.

Oh dear. I'd cure him, but he'd be reinfected almost immediately. This whole place is going to need to be quarantined very carefully.

"When did the rash start appearing?"

Kon shrugs and looks at the guard. He shrugs too. "I don't know. Three days ago? Why, is it Kryptonian too?"

"It might be. I don't have complete files on Kryptonian diseases. However, given the physiological differences between humans and kryptonians I'm not considering it especially likely."

"Is it.. serious?"

"Yes. Fatal within a week."

"Ah…" He looks down the row again. "Shit."

"I'm assuming that you weren't doing biological weapon testing-."

"No! No.. micro-scale.. stuff. The cloning cylinders were for synthetic life forms."

Kon glowers. "Improved genomorphs in a country that doesn't recognise them as being people."

Oh.. dear. "Can you please confirm for me that the psychotic kryptonian outside isn't one of yours?"

"We aren't fully set up yet. Even if we wanted to, we couldn't. You can see for yourself!"

"That wasn't actually a 'no'."

"I don't-! Okay, look, I can't swear to it or anything. I'm Deputy Head of Security, not the Director! But I've been through the labs plenty of times and none of the equipment was in… Y'know, full use yet."

"And if anyone knows how to keep a kryptonian/rhinoceros contained, it would be LexCorp."

"What?!

"The horn?" I generate a curved horn construct on my forehead. "You saw the horn?"

Kon shakes his head. "I saw him for about two seconds before he hit me. Once."

I generate a construct image. "This is what he looks like. And he's immune to gold and green kryptonite."

Kon frowns. "Didn't you say kryptonite works on kryptonians by using the same mechanism we use for collecting solar power?"

"Yes, but there're ways to block one without blocking the other. But we're.. skipping. You spotted the cloning cylinders..?"

"We wanted to find out exactly what they were cloning. And why they were doing it here."

"We're not cloning anything yet! I just told you-."

"The first stage of the infection results in unusual irritability. So I'm not getting annoyed. But please try and stop."

"Ah… Anyway, some of us snuck in, some of us held back… Then there was some kind of explosion-."

"From the excavation site." The security deputy nods. "A lot of our injuries happened when it first broke through. When you're that fast and that strong you don't need to be coordinated to kill people."

"Did you break through to where he was, or did he-."

"I don't know! We weren't even digging for more lab space, just for more rock samples."

"Okay, so we don't know why he woke up now. Then what?"

"I was there, in disguise. When he used his heat vision I tried talking to him in Kryptonese. That was when-." He moves his left arm. "He wasn't even looking at me, he just heard it and bang."

"But he didn't kill you."

"I don't think he was specifically trying to kill anyone. Just.. lashing out."

"Did he say anything?"

"No. I think he…" Kon concentrates. "I hit my head pretty hard, but I think he was.. groaning?"

"Yes." Canis nods. "But not one of pain. One of confusion. Bewilderment. As if the universe itself was utterly incomprehensible." It was quite tuneful. Ah, for a violin!

"You and Kaldur?"

"Aqualad was concussed when a flash of heat vision made part of the machinery explode. I was kicked in the face. At least twice."

"Everyone else?"

The security deputy points at the door. "Still here. The martian said she was doing something to its mind to make it forget about us. And Robin is going through our files. Like I said: lawsuit."

"Right. We need to check in with Robin, then I'll use my ring to contact the League. Because a rampaging super-kryptonian is definitely League business."

back

Rampage 11

next

12th November

19:41 GMT -3

Wallace looks around as I walk in, then smiles and raises his right hand to wave. "Hey, Oh El. You take care of the crazy kryptonian already?"

I look at him for a moment, then take my armour out of subspace.

He looks at the bent and battered plates and the burned slashes, then nods slowly. "I'm guessing 'not', then."

I return it to subspace. "Immune to kryptonite. Green Lantern A had to pull back. I teleported here."

He grimaces. "Immune to kryptonite? That's cheat-" Kon follows me into the room "-ing. All the different types of kryptonite, or..?"

"I tried gold and green."

"Not blue?"

"Fight lasted less than a minute. I needed to get out before he found a way to bypass my phasing as well as my kinetic barrier." I gesture to the door on the left with my thumb. "Is it safe to go in?"

Kon nods cautiously. "It depends on how fast he's moving. Miss Martian has trouble affecting him when he's moving at full speed. She nearly lost him when he left the facility the first time."

"And the-."

The door opens, and a moderately bandaged Tula walks out. She blinks in surprise as she sees me, then nods. "Batman sent you when we didn't check in?"

"Me and Green A. I'm afraid we lost. You found the wards?"

She nods. "They're not demonic, but I could taste the blood in the air. Ritual sacrifice, maybe something Aztec or Mayan." She sees my expression. "No, the sacrifice wasn't human. One or more large animals, but they were definitely killed to bind the spell."

"Lex found another expert. Someone local. But it's holding?"

"Between the changes we made to the spell and Miss Martian… He hasn't come back."

I nod and walk past her into the room she just left. Garth is studying the symbols etched into the walls to my right while M'gann's sitting cross-legged against the opposite wall, her eyes open but glazed and unseeing. Kryptonians aren't any more resistant to mental influence than humans, Torquasm Vo masters excepted. But when someone moves as fast as a kryptonian can move it can make it hard for the telepath to maintain contact. Wallace discovered that while sparring with M'gann, and Mr King said that he had the same problem with Ms Tyler.

"Miss Martian?"

Garth glances my way. "Did you fly in or teleport?"

"Teleport."

"If this-" He returns his attention to the wall. "-isn't blocking your teleport, we should be glad that kryptonians can't see people's souls."

"Paul?"

I return my attention to M'gann. "Yes. Are you managing?"

"Conner-."

"First place I went, he's all healed up."

She nods weakly. "It's… Hard.. to stop him remembering we're here." She looks up slightly, her eyes still somewhat unfocused. "Can I..? Let go..?"

"I could teleport in but I can't scan out. And I didn't have time to study what he wanted."

"He wants to die. It's the only clear thing I can feel from him. I think he's… Ill, or insane or… I don't know."

I nod. "How are you coping?"

"I can… Keep him from coming back. But-. You remember you said I should… Think about working with the mentally ill?"

"Yes."

"I-. I don't think I could do it. Not.. if this is…"

"On the bright side, if the disease the LexCorp employees have contracted somehow came from him, he might just be like that because he's physically ill."

"Really?"

"Kryptonians can get ill, even when they're powered up." I shrug. "Maybe. I still need to examine where he came from."

M'gann lowers her head again as Garth nods. "Robin's already taking a look around, but he doesn't have a power ring." I nod and turn back towards the door. "Kryptonians can't get immunity to magic, can they?"

"Not by any method I'm aware of them having historically. Having trouble?"

He smiles wryly. "We've modified it so that he should think that he can't sense us." He gestures to some.. vaguely familiar inscriptions. "But if we have made a mistake, then the first we will know about it is when an insane super alien smashes through the wall and kills us."

I smile back. "There's some good news, then."

"Could you..? Could you beat him?"

I tilt my head to the left for a moment. "I don't know. I.. can kill most things, but he's… Very fast, very tough and very strong."

He nods. "We can keep hiding until M'gann gets exhausted. Unless he decides to go somewhere else. How far can kryptonians see?"

"Depends on the atmosphere. On a clear day? Perfect vision to the horizon, which they can magnify so that it's as if it's standing next to them."

"So he can already see all of South America."

"If he's looking, most of it. And he can see radio waves and hear.. just about anything he focuses on. If he wants to find a population centre there's nothing we can do to stop him."

He frowns, and looks around the room. "No, we.. could… With more time, we could modify this to stop him perceiving the rest of the world and stop him noticing that he can't perceive the rest of the world."

"If you can-" My ring blinks. "-manage, that's a good plan." I head back out, raising the ring to my ear. "Orange Lantern."

"Paul? Oh, thank God."

"Hi Alan. Green Lantern A made it back in contact? Is he alright?"

"Physician sung him back into full health. Are the kids okay?"

"Miss Martian's getting a bit worn down, but apart from that, yes."

"That's a relief. Is that really a kryptonian down there?"

"Aside from the kryptonite immunity, he certainly acts like it. There's also been some sort of disease outbreak here that might be linked to him. I'm looking into it now."

"Okay. Batman's getting a strike force put together, but it's not going to be able to reach you for an hour at best. And we're going to need to hear everything that happened first."

"Okay. Let me just find Robin and I'll give you a full run down."

back

Rampage 12

next

12th November

19:46 GMT -3

Richard looks around for a half-second as Wallace and I walk into the laboratory. "Hey."

Several of the other scientists give me a considerably more wary look, but swiftly bend their efforts towards their work. A cone-shaped part of the facility has been punched out from the rock below, the sky above obscured… Presumably by the hiding spell. Rubble litters the area where rock and interior walls were thrust outwards rather than up, and while they made an effort to clear away the human remains there's still quite a lot of blood.

"What happened to Rocket?"

He looks out of the hole where the wall used to be at Doomsday's emergence point, eyes alighting on our-. On his team mate where she sits inside a kinetic bubble. "Grey guy punched her so hard it overloaded her kinetic belt. She can't turn it off. Can you get her out?"

I send a filament underground-. No, that would be too easy. I write 'Air okay?' with a construct in front of her. She gives me a depressed nod and a half-hearted thumbs up.

"Not in a way that was reliably safe. Any progress on the disease?"

He looks at me for a moment, then looks at the researchers. "Because you can heal us, but not them." I nod. "Know anything about the disease?"

"Nothing about its origin or how to regularise a cure."

He nods. "If it's an alien disease that can actually infect humans, we're probably not going to have antibodies that can kill it."

"Healing potion?"

Wallace shakes his head. "Already tried it. Helps with the symptoms, but it doesn't do anything about the actual disease." I nod. "Y'know, if anyone's got antibodies, it's gunna be that guy outside."

I nod. Assuming they're human-compatible as well. "No other.. team members?"

I'm assuming that if any of us had died they'd have said something, but no Artemis, Robert or Roy makes me-.

"No." Richard shakes his head. "The Arrow Clan are busy and Cornwall Boy is on some kind of vision quest."

"Alright. Kaldur should be up soon but the League-."

"Ah, Oh El?" Wallace points behind me. "Something-" I turn as two large black creatures-. No, red glowing sigils and curved horns. Genomorphs. Step through a shimmer in the air and take up position around the hole in the ground. "-you forgot to mention?"

"Ah, no? Those-." Horns at the sides of the head and curved downwards, actual rune glyphs, built like oversized gibbons… "Those are G-Oni. I didn't know they had any of those finished."

Wallace takes a half-step back, shifting his weight so he can dash forward at a moment's notice. "And who was it told them using demon magic was a good idea?"

"Technically, as long as you-."

Their horns glow for a moment. Then one drops down into the hole and the second ambles towards us. I suppose that they'd know me best.

"Hello." I stride forward, making myself the obvious target in case anything goes wrong. "The Justice League didn't tell me you were coming. I'm afraid that M'gann-."

"Blood. Speaks."

I nod politely. "I hadn't realised that Dubbilex was going to give your type the ability to speak."

"Not give." It opens its mouth a little more widely and I can see that its teeth are covered in what looks like blood. "Take."

Concern… Increasing. "And what brings you here?"

"Source. Of our blood. Where?"

"Th-?" They're.. made from.. that-? Okay, I suppose-. Some of them do have a certain Doomsdayish look to them. I just don't remember any comic version of Doomsday being telepathic. "Up in the air somewhere above us. He's extremely hostile and possibly not in his right mind."

"Why not. Here?"

"Given the damage he did, we felt that keeping him away would be a better idea. At the moment we're-."

"You. Keep away?"

"Yes, we're keeping him away because-."

For a fraction of a second I see the runes on its skin burn with purple fire-.

Then I'm slammed against the far wall as the torrent roars into the place I was standing.

"Sorry, Oh El, but they don't-"

The G-Oni turns, fire blazing forth once more. I generate a construct shield as Wallace throws himself-. The flames go through the shield and I'm forced to transition a metre right to stay out of the cone of hellfire!

"-seem to be the nice-"

The one in the pit blurs as it claws its way to the surface and lunges at Wallace!

"-kind of-"

He moves sideways, rolling under its claws then coming to his feet with practised ease before throwing a small pellet at its outstretched limb. It hits home, smoke violently hissing from the G-Oni's skin as the essence of vitriol goes to work. It doesn't react in pain, but it does slow as its runes turn a deeper purple and the smouldering decreases.

"-demon monster!"

The flaming one lines up with me again and in the corner of my eye I see a somewhat panicked Raquel gesture frantically at the bubble which means she can't move energy bolt! Two shots of orange light hit the G-Oni in the face and cause chunks of flesh to vaporise. In response its runes flare grey and its form wavers into intangibility.

"Orange Lantern to everyone."

It lunges at me, shadowy claws slashing towards my head! I swing two construct blades through its torso to no effect-.

Minor power drain detected.

No significant effect, before flying upwards to keep Raquel out of its arc of fire.

"We're under attack from magic-using genomorphs."

Wallace gets in behind the G-Oni dashing after him, throwing a vial at its back. This time it isn't just smoke that erupts; white-gold flame envelops its body, and it rolls around on the ground in a frantic attempt to put it out.

Looks like G-Oni kept the weakness to holy water.

The one pursuing me makes several leaps off thin air to try and reach me, then looks over to its burning brother and then leaps away, passing through a nearby wall.

"And we've lost sight of one! Look out!"

back

Rampage 13

next

12th November

19:49 GMT -3

I take a set of manacles out of subspace and clamp them to the still-burning g-oni as Wallace dashes off in the approximate direction the other one left in. "Robin, can you-!"

He uses some sort of bolas to attach a small device to its forehead without having to touch it. "Go!"

Ring-

I start flying in the direction Wallace headed in.

-can you detect it?

Not at present.

Great. Okay, most people are in the barracks but Kon's there. The magic room where the people keeping Doomsday away are located is probably its destination, assuming-.

"Hruagh!"

Garth's voice. I don't transition, because that's a good way to smash into someone. But I do accelerate, corridors blurring gahh!

I tumble to the floor, orange light flaring over my body as I try extinguishing the hellfires enveloping my left side! I don't want to burn! Agh, how are they strong enough to-? I dart back around a corner as the g-oni exhales again, spell eater finally turning hellfire back into normal fire so I can tend to my burns. Did Dubbilex literally feed these things demons?

"Contact, my location."

It comes forward, exhaling again. Fine! Railgun, mageslayer rounds. Not enough room for me to dodge properly, but the same goes for-.

The g-oni has about a half-second to spot my railgun before the flames gutter and it goes shadowy, my round passing harmlessly through its ethereal frame and punching through the wall behind it! Aaah… Magic phasing or altered states of being… If I had any angel feather rounds left I could have used those-.

"Mine too. It's trying to-." A disturbing roar drowns out Wallace's words.

"Superboy and I will protect the sick." Kaldur's up, good. "This facility will not survive if he returns. Describe the attacker's abilities."

"Breathes hellfire, which bypasses-" I just about see the claw coming through the ceiling in time to dodge, the tips of the talons justow! "Ugh, which bypasses armour and force fields. And selective phasing, which lets them do the same with their claws while hiding in the walls."

Just before the claw is fully retracted I see-. Wait, that's my-. Ring, physical status of my tattoos?

Small portion from right abdomen removed.

Oh.

"Yeah, and they can move pretty fast too!"

Manual restore of the ink… Just have to hope whatever's doing duty as my soul can cope.

**A-agh!**

The walls shake as I hear M'gann's exclamation of pain.

Right then.

Orange spikes shoot out in all directions, piercing the flimsy walls, floor and ceiling. I feel a tiny drain from seven o'clock high-

"Banishment works, but it hit M'gann. He can think about us again!"

-and brand you ungrateful bastard! I'm the reason you're legally a person!

Branding in progress.

Good. Maybe when it's complete, I'll-.

Connection lost.

Know no more than I do now. Right, ring, monitor for-.

"It's trying to-!"

And now my ring scans are working again. Doomsday's heading this way, though not at anything like his full speed. If this Doomsday is Kryptonian, I'm assuming that he gets an expanded visual range as part of the package. LexCorp means lead lined, but there are probably things he can see anyway. Wall's too thick for body heat-.

"Ward just failed. He's heading this way slowly."

"Maybe he's ugh." Kon doesn't sound hurt, so I'll assume that was an exertion-grunt. "Calmed down? If LexCorp was doing the same thing to… To him they did to me and Match…"

I start flying towards the magic room. "Lost contact with my G-oni."

"The one in the walls here…" I arrive to see Wallace uncomfortably prodding a mound of rubble and shredded genomorph while Tula stands back. "Ah, I think it.. died when Aquagirl did her anti-magic thing, but the other one vanished."

"Our attacker has similarly vanished. Injuries?"

M'gann walks out of the magic room, using telekinesis to dribble healing potion over the burns covering her forearms. **I'll live. Networking everyone now.**

**Bah. I had hoped-** Canis walks out of a connecting corridor. **-for better. When is the insane kryptonian arriving?**

**No injuries here.** I get a brief glimpse of Richard looking around the laboratory again. **And the G-oni Kid Flash set on fire… I think it's dead.**

**Ah… Darn it. I didn't even use that much.**

Tula crouches down, tattoos glowing as she holds her hands out towards the pieces of meat that used to be a g-oni. From her grimace I'm going to assume that she doesn't see anything wrong with killing demonic life forms. **I.. can't feel anything other than demon magic in the remains of this one. If you used something that nullified such magics, it would probably have been made hollow. The shock alone-.**

Alert! In-.

"The kryptonian's coming b-!"

I frantically create construct barriers as the ceiling collapses and the walls explode! Tula scrambles back as a concrete pillar falls towards her, narrowly getting her foot out of the way as it smashes down! Plaster, concrete, mangled electronics and office equipment follow it, making a solid feeling dome above us.

**Mghrh.**

Behind me, Garth uses water projections to hold up the wreckage above him and M'gann. Okay, probably easier to crumble this than actually put it back in any sort of order…

**Canis?**

**Uninjured, but trapped. Th-.**

**He's here.**

Fuck. **Aqualad, we can't get to you.** "Tempest, Aquagirl, M'gann, can you hold the ceiling up without me?"

Tula nods as she and Garth send more water out of their armour, running it over every visible surface.

Wallace watches them work. **Really wishing I could move through solid objects. Aqualad, what's he doing?**

**He is simply watching Superboy. He is ignoring both myself and the diseased LexCorp employees.**

Sounds positive. Because the only thing in there I'd rely on being able to hurt him would be Kon's heat vision. Kryptonians aren't magically immune to suns simply because those are the most common source of the wavelengths which empower them, but neither is anyone else in that room.

**Okay.** Garth nods at me. **That should hold.**

I nod, don my still-battered armour and phase out.

back

Rampage 14

next

12th November

19:53 GMT -3

I can see Kon's desires clearly. Kaldur's are somewhat dimmer, possibly due to him wearing magic armour.

Doomsday…

I hadn't ever given much thought to what Doomsday wanted. In the comics I'm not sure that he ever really had a motive. I did see a comic where he started getting intelligent and ended up trying to fix Superman being killed by Gog, and his Earth 12 alter ego either wanted power and control or was just following his programming to kill Superman. Oh, and he got possessed by Brainiac that one time. But Doomsday himself never really had a motivation beyond 'smash things'.

This one?

Frankly, I can't tell. There are patches that are dull, dull as Mr Wilson under the influence of the Anti-Life. There are flashes of light of all colours, appearing and disappearing at random as far as I can tell. That suggests either that he's insane or that someone has messed with his mind. Of course, if we're dealing with the undirected living weapon version from the comics… That might well just be what he looks like.

On the other hand…

Comic characters are family resemblance characters. There are certain characteristics to 'Superman' that make him Superman, but not every version of Superman is the same. The difference between 'I don't like that version of Superman' and 'that's not Superman' is more or less in the eye of the beholder. Klarion 16 looks right, but he's far more powerful than any version of Klarion I recognise from the comics. On the other hand he does look right, whereas this Doomsday doesn't look like 'Doomsday'. No bone spurs, the shell and the single horn… To say nothing of the fact that Doomsday can't fly or use heat vision, obviously.

So… What if it's someone else?

I break through the rubble wall and see Maybe-Doomsday floating just above Kon, looking down at him.

"Who. Who are… You?"

The voice is slurred, as if the speaker hasn't got full control of his own mouth. And there's a wheezing tone, as if he's inhaled a lungful of dust and hasn't got it out yet. If my x-ionised sword actually did anything during our brief fight, the wound has completely healed over.

Kon folds his arms across his chest. "I'm Kon-El. Who are you?"

Kaldur's visible straining to hold the rubble thrown aside by the grey kryptonian's entrance. I don't want to set him off, but… Have to risk it. I start grabbing bits of rubble from Kaldur's watery grip and piling them in the clear areas of the room.

"Ron. Dor."

"You're kryptonian, aren't you?" This.. Ron-Dor trembles slightly, but I can't see any corresponding emotional resonance. I don't know what's going on with him, but it must be extremely confusing for your emotions to bear no link to what's happening to you. "How did you get here?"

"Iiiii… I don't…" Hm. Kryptonians do have an equivalent condition to senile dementia, and confusion and fear are certainly symptoms. "Sickness…"

Okay, we can.. stick him alongside Match. If we can keep him this calm, anyway. Lashing out in a panic is a lot easier to explain than-.

"I. Made myself. Sick."

O.. kay… Not sure what that means. Kon glances my way, but this armour doesn't really allow me to convey body language and I don't want to risk breaking Ron-Dor's focus. Actually, with the Faraday cage.. firmly broken along with everything else… Ring, location of Kara Zor-El?

Kara Zor-El is presently located in the Kent residence in Smallville.

Phone them.

Compliance.

"If you're sick, we'll.. try and help. We just need you to calm down, okay?"

Kaldur breathes a sigh of relief as the last of the rubble is made safe, his tattoos dimming. Okay, if we can turn whatever's left of the ward into an anti-magic field to keep the g-oni away, we might-.

A grey blur as a g-oni leaps from the wall.

Kon seeing it and rising into the air to push Ron-Dor away.

Ron-Dor's eyes starting to light up-.

I'm forming a reflective shield and fuckfuckfuck! Two burning beams scythe through the barracks, slicing through three people-

"Airaaghr!"

-before I can interpose my shield and it's not reflective enough! Most of the energy is now burning through what little of the facility is left intact above us, but my construct is still receiving enough that it starts to fail almost immediately!

Kon's efforts to move Ron-Dor aside come to nothing as the man flails, sending Kon spinning into the far wall just in time for the g-oni to stab into the grey kryptonian with demonically augmented claws! It envelops his right side, talons sinking into his back and chest while its teeth bite into his shoulder! He spins and flails some more in response, smashing through an occupied-!

I frantically stick deployable kinetic shields around them, two immediately getting overstressed by the force of the impacts. Kaldur tries to hold him in place with his water bearers but Ron-Dor doesn't even seem to notice that he's being bound. I just about catch another blast of heat vision with a new construct deflector before Ron-Dor gets a decent grip on his attacker and squeezes. The g-oni's runes flare hot pink for a moment, then its body comes apart in his hands!

Okay, that's-.

The pink glow stays as the surprisingly small wounds the g-oni inflicted heal over.

Ron-Dor blinks, then-. I brace at the blast of air as he takes to the sky again.

Shit.

Hello? Who is it?

What-? Oh. "Hi, Missus Kent. I'm a friend of Kara's. Would you mind putting her on?"

Al-right, just a minute. Kara!

"Orange Lantern, are you able to track him?"

Ring, show me-. "Heading south west toward San Miguel de Tucumán-. No, he's already there."

He looks around to assess the state of the room and the injured.

Who is this?

"Hi, Kara. Sorry to bother you, but it's a bit urgent. Have you ever heard of a 'Ron-Dor'?"

Hu-? Ah, yes. Rondors are an extinct Kryptonian species, kind of like a cross between giant armadillos and unicorns. Why do you need to know?

Grey, with a single horn. Starting to work out the sort of thing that's going on.

"And can you think of any reason why a kryptonian would be big, grey, have a horn and be insane?"

Nam-Ek? I didn't think he actually existed, but he's supposed to be the one who made them extinct searching for a way to make himself immortal.

"Thanks, brilliant, call you back."

I hang up as Kaldur reaches a decision. "Follow him. Protect the people around him if he continues to be violent, and if possible protect him from the g-oni. I will direct reinforcements to you-" Kon picks himself up out of the rubble. "-as soon as they become available."

I nod, then I'm gone.

back

Rampage 15

next

12th November

19:56 GMT -3

San Miguel de Tucumán is a city of about a million people in northern Argentina. I've never been before, but from this height it reminds me of the better planned American cities; the roads all laid out in grids rather than the higgledy-piggledy European design. The area surrounding it looks like farmland and-.

Dust and chunks of road fly into the air as probably-Nam-Ek slams into a road and bounces into a building and I really hope there wasn't anyone in the way.

Kryptonian-tier brawls in cities are very bad. The sort of devastation I flat out can't cause, two Kryptonians can do in seconds without really trying.

I transition down as the screaming starts. Some places have drills for this sort of thing. Others are unlucky enough that this is a regular enough occurrence that everyone's learned how to respond. Here, people who have reached what they think is a 'safe' distance have already stopped running and turned back to look at the rubble Nam-Ek is pulling himself out of. Several have taken out cameras-.

"Run, you idiots! Run!"

Construct armour, start making repairs to my armour… The problem with integrating so many advanced systems is that that process takes longer than it otherwise would. Kinetic barrier gets prioritised, because I once calculated what would happen when a properly motivated Kryptonian hit someone like they meant it and the target basically gets vaporised. Not sure what went wrong with Raquel's system that it generated a persistent bubble, but I'll just be using the personal defence type so it shouldn't matter too mu-.

The building Nam-Ek's pulling himself out of visibly shakes and fuck he took out a load bearing column! I send filaments into the building behind him and create a girder construct to prop up the upper two floors. People are… Some of them are fleeing, but all too many are seeking cover inside which is a bad idea in super fights of this level.

Nam-Ek staggers into the road, drunkenly turning his head around as he peers at the city surrounding us. "Nam-Ek. Please! Calm down!"

He doesn't react to his name being spoken, so… Still wrong name?

My ring blinks for attention.

How would I fight him?

Filaments begin reaching around for materials to replace the column as I consider it. He's not showing any injuries from his landing or even from the g-oni's claws. Repeatedly shooting him isn't likely to work. Decapitation with an x-ionised blade or the Sword might work. Branding, perhaps, but it wouldn't be easy given that I can't see him wanting anything in particular.

Answer.

Orange Lantern, report.

Lantern Stewart certainly sounds better. "The kryptonian is in San Miguel de Tucumán and I'm not confident of my ability to contain him."

If you've got any kryptonite-.

"Didn't work." I do have the radiation signatures for other colours of kryptonite now, but that sounds like a good way to make the situation worse.

Flash and Superman are heading your way from the nearest zeta tube.

"Good. Orders?"

Damage mitigation. Superman knows how to fight these people. Just try and stop him killing anyone.

"Got it."

If they start punching each other… No, no, that could work. The surrounding landscape is relatively empty. If Kal-El gets him out of the city-.

Two g-oni shimmer into being behind Nam-Ek. Both blur towards him, grabbing him before he has a chance to fly away and digging into him with teeth and claws! Right, mageslay-.

Nam-Ek's eyes light up and nononoshield!

Two beams of red light burn through the neck of one of the g-oni and lash across the road, melting the tarmac, turning the paving stones red, turning a car to burning scrap and scorching the frontage of one of the buildings before I can get my shield in the way! Nam-Ek doesn't turn it off, he just turns himself to try and line up his shot better!

Ring, predictive-!

Another shot, this time lined up with the centre of a building where people are watching-. Why aren't you running away yet?! I send construct signs with 'EVACUEN AHORA' written on them down… Balcarce street, apparently. Better shield and moveitmoveitmoveit!

His eyes flare again, and this time I'm only just able to send the energy skywards as the g-oni claw around him to escape the burning heat! A second later my shield fails and a lance of heat pierces the building! The people inside have fled the site of the strike, brick and glass melting and the soft furnishings within catching fire from the intensity of the radiated heat alone.

The column in the initial building is repaired, so I abandon that and focus on-. Nam-Ek's gotten a grip on one of the g-oni, but this time it isn't ripping quite so easil-.

Another explosion of air and he's gone, passengers with him. Street reasonably intact, fire-. I dismiss the evacuation sign and generate cold guns, giving it a short burst of the physics-breaking beams. Out, good.

Now, where's he gone?

North east, towards Paraguay. He's tearing at them as-

A red blur precipitates out of the air next to me.

-he ploughs into and through the ground in an attempt to force them to release him.

"Where'd he go?"

"East-north-east, sir. I'll create a marker when I arrive."

I transition, firing up a broad beam of orange light as I appear and fuck! National Route 24 is only two lanes here, but the force of Nam-Ek's passage has torn the land apart and the cars are going too fast to stop! I take hold of them with construct crane grabs, lifting them over the new cleft in the landscape and-

Mister Allen is already past me, looking for an angle of attack. He's not like Wallace, where I can sort of keep up with what he's doing if I accelerate my perception of events hard enough. I couldn't even say where he is.

-setting them down on the road beyond. Ah! Inefficient! A bridge would-.

Another flash of heat vision, this time intersecting with a car before I can get a shield in position. The tires are on fire and metal frame molten as the car skids to a halt. The people inside-. Flash fried. Nothing I can do for them.

I generate a construct bridge over the torn area, put a 'SIGUE MANEJANDO' sign over it and move the wreck off the road into an adjacent field. Given the speed-. He's already out of effective range. My effective range, anyway. Okay, can't stay here, people are using the bridge… I start shoving earth back into place. I don't have time to properly restore the road. Shove, shove… Get enough gravel, fuse it into a.. temporary surface. Cool.

Right, good enough. I lower the angle of the bridge until it evaporates into the new road surface. Ring, where's Nam-Ek gotten to?

…

I watch in drop-jawed horror as he ploughs through the lower floors of a block of flats in Asuncion, the building fracturing and tilting in his wake.

back

Rampage 16

next

12th November

19:58 GMT -3

Transition.

Ring, show me the structure.

I can't try supporting with some sort of giant scaffolding construct. The shockwaves and demonic fire have done too much damage to the skeleton frame for the building to be able to support its own weight. I'm going to have to try to grab the whole thing -from the inside- and replace those parts.

This is going to be heavy.

I don't bother with filaments this time. The air between myself and the building turns orange, constructs burrowing in through the walls and merging with the still-whole parts of the skeleton. Large construct girders smash their way through the lower floors to attach themselves to the foundations as I frantically try to hold the whole thing together without crushing any of the people dashing about in a panic inside. Or worse, crouching and praying in terror in really inconvenient places!

The building's still tilting, but at least the rate at which the tilting is increasing has decreas-.

A chunk of fascia falls off from the foremost side, near the top. Everyone in the street below has had the sense to run, but the problem isn't just the failing skeleton any longer. The whole of the interior and exterior is starting to fail. I construct a construct mesh over the front… And, that floor and that floor and-. And-. And a bunch of arrows pointing to the exits because if I didn't have to worry about you stupid people I could just-! Throw this stupid thing into space with less effort!

Now.. get.. upright… Yes, good, keep going… I mean, yes, at this point the whole thing is more construct than building, but my effort will not be wasted! No, stop falling apart! I'm in charge here, you stupid building! See these rings?! Right, thank you!

Okay, that's… Upright, Now, to just… Fuse that, replace the missing parts of the skeleton with… Materials from the surrounding environment… Ugh, they're going to have to tear it down anyway unless I-. No, no, I've got an ongoing job to do. Put some cables between the parts of the skeleton to hold the floors up and make sure that the stairs are safe…

That'll have to do.

I remove my construct and turn away, trying not to look at the remaining chunks of the fascia as they part company with the building's exterior.

At least nothing else has collapsed while I've been busy. Ring, location.

Location available.

Why is he flying through central Brazil? What's he.. heading for? Is he just flailing around until he hits something which he can't punch through? Should I try talking to Dubbilex-? No. Someone will be doing that already. My job is to stop him hitting anything e-

Another blur, this time a blue one, shoots overhead.

-lse. Transition.

Far above Nam-Ek, I can see Flash's activity as he acts to remove people from their path. Not individual actions, but their results: people appearing in groups outside of their houses, vehicles and previous route of travel with confused looks on their faces and with slightly windswept appearances. Having Mr Allen convey you isn't anything like as traumatic as moving at near-light speed should be, but it still feels a little like standing in a wind tunnel.

If he's limiting himself to that, then he's out of offensive options. Against a flying opponent, that means that arm-generated tornado blasts didn't do anything very much. Did he get Mr Mercury to show him how to bestow and steal speed? I never thought to ask. An object thrown by someone at super speed doesn't automatically act like an object moving at the speed it appears to be actually would. At full speed, they usually go a couple of metres and then explode due to the air resistance.

Okay, if Nam-Ek started rampaging due to coming under attack by g-oni -either due to an entirely understandable reaction to things trying to eat you or something to do with their magic- then it seems reasonably logical that blasting them off would help him calm down. How to-?

Below me, he throws one off only for it to shimmer out of reality and then reappear ahead of him, leaping into his flight path while he was looking away. They're definitely getting stronger and tougher.

How to hurt them? If he can heal from attacks then I don't have to worry too much about harming him. I don't want to get within arm's reach for a crumbler gauntlet attack-

Armour systems fully repaired.

-and a railgun shot wouldn't… Firing down is inaccurate at these speeds and firing along risks a miss flying into something at supersonic speeds, which would be rather terminal unless Mr Allen caught it. Radiological weapons in a rainforest would be bad. And probably wouldn't even work. Gravity based weapons strong enough to actually hurt them, similar problem. Okay, apart from general purpose anti-magic and theurgy, what are demons weak against? Bigger demons?

And doesn't the fact that that was the first thing that occurred to me show that I've spent too much time with John Constantine.

What else..? Iron? Was that just fae, or..? Doesn't matter. A shotgun style blast of supersonic iron filings shouldn't cause much environmental damage, will pack a punch and doesn't have to be completely accurate. And if it has some extra effect on demonoids, then so much the better.

I generate a railgun, a far fatter one than usual, and start charging up the capacitors. While it's not going to cause long term damage to the area, in the medium term it's going to shred the rainforest quite effectively. Have to ask Euanthe to come here and fix it up afterwards.

"Orange Lantern to Flash, permission to engage."

"Whatwith?"

"Supersonic iron filing shotgun."

Another plume of earth erupts as Nam-Ek tries to scrape the g-oni off by burrowing underground.

"Goforit."

Scanning, calculating… "Sir, you'll need to be further away than that."

"Fastestmanalive. Givemeasecondnotice."

Okay, wait for them to come up for air. I can already see the Amazon river-. There! I form construct thrusters to go with my construct armour and blast after them.

"Firing in one."

Aim the gun and-.

The rings stop all external sound as the blast of millions of tiny slivers of metal shoving through the air reverberates around me. Trees evaporate, the air turns to dust and the ground beneath jumps at the force of the shot. I use my thrusters to jump away and start scanning for-.

Nam-Ek and company fly freely out of the far side of the new dust cloud.

"Didn't work. Resuming monitor du-"

And then Kal-El slams into the melee, making a dust cloud that makes mine look like a fart by comparison.

"-ty."

I watch as he grabs one g-oni, carefully breaks its arms and legs and then tosses it aside. The second gets what must be the weakest heat vision shot I've seen to its eyes. It recoils for a half-second, then ducks its head behind Nam-Ek's body and-.

Nam-Ek uppercuts, striking Kal-El right on the chin and sending him careering into the sky.

Okay, if he's not helping…

Ring, sonic detonator.

Compliance.

back

Rampage 17

next

12th November

20:00 GMT -3

Everyone thinks of kryptonite. Hold up this glowing green rock and see the strongest man on Earth fall before you. The sheer thrill of it might even explain why Mr Luthor keeps a ring with stonesetting made of the stuff in his desk drawer, despite the questions that would be asked if anyone else found out about it.

Everyone knows about kryptonite. What most people don't know is exactly how rare it is. There isn't a market price. It can't be openly traded due to being radioactive, and the people who have it aren't sharing. And similarly, people don't know that even before I made him immune to the stuff he'd gotten used to dealing with it; keeping his distance, wearing lead suits or grabbing lead plates from his environment as a shield, or just taking the person waving it at him down before he was weakened too greatly.

Though there are plenty of things he could do more efficiently, Kal-El is very far from being stupid. I honestly think that the reason why Kal-El never attempted any sort of information control is that kryptonite actually isn't a particularly good weapon to use against him. And as long as people think they need an ultra-rare rock, they fixate on the idea. And they don't try any of the other things he's vulnerable to.

There was an episode of New Adventures of Superman where a couple of 'criminal geniuses' tried to get Superman to use his powers faster than he recharged them, then trapped him in a building shielded from the sun. As far as I can tell, the sheer speed with which he recharges means that that wouldn't actually work, but a shield blocking the radiation wavelength which empowers him should be possible for someone to create with Earth technology. And yet, not even Lex Luthor has ever used that technique.

His enhanced senses are another potential avenue of attack. Intense light, sounds, even smells are decidedly unpleasant when your senses are as acute as his. And while Kal-El's used to it, I know that Kara tends to turn her environmental shield up when she goes into uncontrolled environments. And Nam-Ek should be even less used to it.

The sonic detonator goes off, and things don't get loud. Any human down there would explode, starting with their ear drums and then moving on to their bones. Nam-Ek's force field protected flesh means that those effects aren't a problem, but his force field protected ear drums are going to be reporting to his brain at full volume.

I don't hear him scream, but I do see him scream and clamp his hands to his ears. I do see the g-oni shudder, their grip slipping and-. One gone, the others only remaining on by holding onto each other as Nam-Ek slams into the ground and writhes in agony. I send a filament at one of them, only for it to fail about twenty centimetres from its skin. Ugh, no transitioning to the upper atmosphere, then.

"You can…" Kal-El floats down towards me, his hands over his ears as well. "Turn that off now."

"Certainly, sir."

Ring?

Compliance.

"I will warn you that the g-oni appear to have become considerably stronger."

He nods. "Understood." And he dives again, striking the uppermost g-oni with both fists. Its head jerks back and it loses its grip on Nam-Ek completely.

Another thing worth noting about Kal-El is that he's the League's strongest natural flier. Which means that when he hits someone he doesn't have to worry about the 'opposite' part of the 'equal and opposite reaction'. He can hold himself in the air with sufficient force to bring enough power to bear to beat almost anyone. It's one of the reasons why his actual skill level is fairly low, but in a situation where the enemy wants to grapple a kryptonian it's just the ticket.

The g-oni staggers to its feet just in time to take a super strength hook to the side of its head. It goes head first into the ground, rolling and skidding to a halt. Nam-Ek is groggily attempting to rise-.

The g-oni that fell off changes to their fire breathing colour, only for a red blur to deposit a medium sized stone in its mouth. It starts to choke as the red blur goes to town, punches swinging in from every direction. The attack appears to confuse it more than hurt it, and a moment later it simply crushes the stone in its teeth and then lets the fire flare outwards from its body. Not fast enough to hurt Mr Allen, but area denial is a very good technique to use against speedsters and the g-oni appears to have picked up on that lesson.

Nam-Ek recovers faster than the g-oni still attached to him, grabs its torso and squeezes while simultaneously blazing away with his heat vision. It struggles for a second, then switches to its tenebrous form and drops through his grasping arms. Nam-Ek stares for a second, then rises into the air-.

"Nam-Ek! I am Kal-El, of Krypton! Please, stop running!"

A flash of… Recognition? Is he actually-?

Then Nam-Ek's eyes flare, shooting Kal-El right in the eyes!

"Ah!"

Kal-El staggers, turning his face away and putting his right hand over his eyes. Okay, two can play at that game. Ring, photon accelerator.

Compliance.

Like with the sonic detonator, I can't perceive the precise result directly. Most of the energy is at wavelengths that humans eyes can't detect, and the power would be enough to burn through any eye foolish enough to try. But again, his own resilience works against him here.

"Guh!"

Stealth systems go, because he can easily see me from there if he decides to look my way. Kal-El recovers, blinking heavily, as Nam-Ek collapses again. Only for the burning g-oni to send a torrent of flame sweeping towards both of them. Mr Allen tries to tornado blast it away, but that doesn't work on hellfire! I'm already loading mage slayer rounds into a railgun construct but I'm not the fastest man alive! Kal-El spots it coming slightly too late, dive-flying aside and getting away with no more than a mild burn on his right arm.

Nam-Ek takes the full brunt of the attack to his back.

"Aaagh!"

He staggers forwards, but I can already see his regenerative abilities kicking in. A slight purple glow-.

Another explosion of air and he's gone again, heading north. Though at least this time he's got the sense to stay far enough above the ground that he's not likely to get grabbed by g-oni.

"Sirs?"

A g-oni tries to take advantage of Kal-El's distraction and gets an uppercut to the chin. "Can you hold him in place?"

Um. Brute force, no. Kinetic cage won't work because he can heat vision through it. I can't put a construct inside the cage without being in there myself, and any reflective surface… It won't be good enough. He'll burn through it. On the other hand… Ah, given how kryptonian flight works… If I'm just stopping him moving quite so fast… "I can slow him down. I can't promise more than that."

"Do it. Green Lantern's coming this way-" Another g-oni lunges for his back, only for Mr Allen to catch its rear left leg and toss it into a tree at supersonic speed. "-with a phantom zone projector."

"On it, sir."

Ring? Heading into Bogotá? Is he actually aiming at somewhere..? No idea, and beside the point. Transition.

Huh. Apparently that scrappy bit of nothing down there is called 'Siberia'. I wonder why?

The kinetic barrier goes into place first. He's doing a blind rush, but as far as I can see his back has already healed up. He's got kryptonian vision but between his confusion and my anti-eye beam he doesn't appear to be using it. He hits the barrier full on, immediately stopping. Not injured, though.

I send the projector back into sub-. No, I can't, it's locked in place. Fine. Artificial gravity generator. I need to nullify the planet's gravity exactly before he recovers.

He drifts back in the air, looking around for me-

Nullification available.

-and drops like a stone to the ground.

back

Rampage 18

next

12th November

20:02 GMT -3

Lanterns fly by running a force field through their bodies and pulling themselves around, relying on that same field to prevent them from pancaking when they take a tight corner.

Martians fly with telekinesis, shoving themselves this way and that with mentally projected force. The technique also neatly bypasses the whole 'equal and opposite reaction' thing, though I don't really understand how.

There isn't a lot of difference, but if you look carefully martians generally struggle to remain completely stationary. M'gann and Mr J'onzz bob up and down slightly while the Lanterns next to them remain fixed in place.

Kryptonians on the other hand fly by futzing about with space-time. Which is not to say that they fall towards a point in front of them, though wouldn't that be fun. No, that would be far too simple. According to Har-Zod, the actual process was never well understood, but they're certainly doing something which allows certain types of artificial gravity generator to interfere.

Nam-Ek glares up at me for a fraction of a second-

Better reflective shielding.

Compliance.

-before opening up with his heat vision, which is reflected nearly harmlessly from me and renders a chunk of Siberia a little more desolate before I correct the angle and send it right back at his face.

"Nrgh!"

He staggers back, trips and falls onto his back, right hand covering his eyes. My little trick still allows him to run and bound at extreme speed, and won't actually stop him flying once he's had a chance to adapt. But every moment for which he doesn't realise that and stays put is another moment Lantern Stewart gets closer with the phantom zone projector.

Of course, if he does try and run…

As he shakily regains his feet I fabricate more kinetic barriers and drop them into place, their projectors protected by heat-nullifying dampening fields. Nothing a kryptonian can't overwhelm in relatively short order, but I'm just buying time here.

"Nam-Ek-."

He exhales, hurricane force wind blasting from his mouth in my direction and being effortlessly nullified by the kinetic barriers.

Okay, ah… More kinetic barriers? I could make more x-ionised weapons, but I think he'd be too fast and… I doubt that the League would be happy with me killing him. I'm not sure that he's deliberately killed anyone up to this point.

Get to work.

"We've got people fighting the G-oni who were attacking you. We can-."

There's an explosion of gold-white fire to the south of us. I'm guessing that was Angelica dealing with the g-oni. If I understood correctly, Argentina was quite clear that it wasn't ever going to recognise demons as being people under the law and has an automatic death penalty for consorting with demons. Regardless of exactly what she's just done, it won't be considered murder, but if she's killed clearly intelligent people it won't win her points with the League either.

"We can help with whatever problems you're having. We have Kryptonian-"

He throws a clumsy but still kryptonian punch at one of the barriers, which shimmers into existence as Nam-Ek falls onto his back. Yes, he hasn't worked out how to get around the gravity nullification yet, which means if he hits it hard enough to overcome his friction, down he goes.

He struggles to get back up-. "Dnnwraawrah!"

Not a coherent word. Not a coherent thought either, otherwise my ring would have translated it. Heh, despite the insanity plea being a rather stupid comic book trope for people it shouldn't actually cover, I honestly think that this is someone it should. He clearly doesn't know what he's doing.

"Dnnwraawrahghwh!"

He -ah, he's floating again- shoots at the kinetic barrier again and strikes with enough force to overload it. And then he doesn't back off, he just keeps pushing… Do those things have a maximum amount of force they can take? I've been assuming not, but I haven't checked with the level of force a demented kryptonian can bring to b-.

Heat vision flashes out, burning through the protections I put in place and rending the issue irrelevant. Ring, adapt the gravity nullifier.

Attempting to comply.

I swing another barrier into his path, being sure to interpose a reflective construct as well. I also form another photon accelerator, which he spots before it's even fully formed and heat visions-. Damn it. Form more than-

Warning: total power reserves-

-one photon accelerator. Is he flat out tanking it, or is he.. hearing where they're appearing?

-at forty percent.

Yes, it turns out that getting beaten up by a kryptonian, accelerating yourself to cope with the situation and repeatedly fabricating complex objects does a number on your power stores. Ring, contact John Stewart and ask him how long he's going to take.

Compliance.

And sonic detonator again.

Compliance.

Nam-Ek collapses to the ground, then rallies slightly and punches the ground beneath him. I watch the earth around him exploding upwards into the air in response. Ah… Okay, this isn't an earthquake zone. A relatively small shake shouldn't do anything too-.

His heat vision flashes out, soil and rock melting as he sugar! I thrust beams of orange light into the ground, trying to reach-. Right, crumble! Grab him and drag him back before he can-.

"No time at all."

Nam-Ek twists, destroying his bonds even as Lantern Stewart activates the phantom zone projector! Hold him hold him hold h-!

"Gragh!"

"Firing."

There's no sound as the phantom zone projector activates, but Nam-Ek's body begins to shimmer and…

He's gone.

I dismiss my constructs, land, then call out my personal lantern. "That it?"

Lantern Stewart lands as well, checking the projector over as I tap my rings against my lantern to recharge. "We think so. I didn't…"

He falls to his knees, and I abandon my lantern in order to use constructs to hold him up.

"What's wrong?"

He takes a few breaths to steady himself. "Superman didn't have one of these lying around. Had to.. create some of the parts using constructs, with Martian Manhunter showing me what they should look like telepathically. It was… Strange."

He rises to his feet and I remove my supporting constructs.

"I don't suppose we can pin any of this on Luthor?"

"Probably not. Though I expect that he'll try and get as much mileage out of it as he can. You got a moment?"

He takes another deep breath. "Why? You wanna talk about Nabu?"

"Batman was rather insistent."

He shrugs. "You made your reasons clear enough for me. On my end, I was busy, I didn't have anything that I knew could counter a Lord of Order and I thought Batman was dealing with it." He looks at me curiously. "Is Batman making you ask so you can join the Justice League?"

"I just asked to rejoin the team."

He frowns. "I guessed we weren't exactly your favorite people in the world, but what's the point of having you in a recon team?"

"Think you just answered your own question there, Lantern Stewart."

back

Rampage 19

next

12th November

22:43 GMT -3

Mr Yao sings, and the grey fades from the skin of the LexCorp employees still in the makeshift medical ward. Mr Allen and Lantern Stewart assembled the plastic containment dome over the site in record time, so if we're really lucky and Nam-Ek wasn't carrying it, all that we need to do is a thorough decontamination of the site and we're good.

Actually…

"Accomplished Perfect Physician?"

Still singing, he checks the most seriously ill of the patients before closing his mouth. "I can treat the sickness in the bodies, but I can do little against the bacteria in the environment."

"That's-."

"We're-?" One of the patients presses his hands against his face, then rolls up his sleeves to examine his arms. "We're cured?"

"I am sorry, but as the bacterium is airborne all I have really done is reset the symptoms."

"But we can just leave, right?" Mr Yao and I look at each other. "Right?"

"Hopefully, yes. However, there's a chance that the disease has already escaped this facility. In which case, there isn't much point."

"Shiiiit." The man leans back against his headboard. "So… You can fix that. Can't you?"

Mr Yao smiles calmly. "We are studying the problem most judiciously. I am confident that with the resources at-"

"Ugh." The man pulls himself upright, checks his balance and then straightens his overalls.

"-our disposal, we will."

"I'm cured, right?"

Mr Yao nods. "Presently, yes. However, you are not immune to reinfection."

"I'm a microbiologist. If we're still working on the problem, I need to get back to the laboratory." He makes it halfway to the door before stopping. "Ah. Thanks."

Mr Yao inclines his head slightly. "You are welcome."

Several others rise to go after him, Mr Yao getting a nod or a wave. The rest of the staff are either still injured from Nam-Ek's rampage or not part of the medical team. For them, keeping out of the way is probably the most useful thing they can do now.

Mr Yao takes one last look around and then heads through a side door. I follow him, carefully closing it behind me. "So… Prognosis?"

"Until tests are completed upon Nam-Ek's blood samples, it would be premature for me to speculate."

The drawback of not having an actual super-doctor. Batman's a decent microbiologist, but the biological team here are so much better that we're leaving most of the research to them. And actual science is a good deal slower than super science.

"Could you heal an entire city?"

He nods once. "Certainly. But that would not prevent them from becoming infected again. And if the disease spreads outwards from the places Nam-Ek travelled, then the number of infected may well surpass my ability to cure."

I nod. "My best plan is going back to the Rao system and seeing if I can find-." My ring blinks. "Excuse me."

He nods, then lowers himself cross-legged to the floor. Powerful as his sonic abilities are, his reserves of energy with which to power them aren't inexhaustible. And he's not going to have much time for sleep if our worst-case scenario turns out to be true.

I raise my left hand to my ear and create a sound nullification bubble around myself. "Answer."

"Orange Lantern." Mr Luthor sounds reasonably composed for a man who's about to lose his kryptonite supply. "I understand that I have a problem in Argentina."

"Optimistically, yes, you only have a problem in Argentina. In summary, Batman spotted that you were building a cloning facility here and sent in a reconnaissance team. While they were here, apparently by chance, an insane kryptonian we've identified as Nam-Ek flew out of the ground, laid into the place and then went on a rampage. In the aftermath, we discovered that most of the workers here were infected with a lethal bacterium. Standard antibiotics are not having any effect. We're checking the local area to see if the disease has been transmitted to anyone else. Mister Luthor, anything you can tell us at this point would be extremely helpful."

"The Cerro Galán facility is built around the site from which LexCorp recovered the genetic samples used to create the first genomorphs. I suspected that they were alien, but I had no idea that they were from Krypton. I wonder why they lack Superman's abilities."

"Nam-Ek appears to have combined his genes with those of another species. Assuming that the other species was where you got your sample from and assuming that that species split with the humanoid kryptonian evolutionary tree before they gained their photosensitive abilities… It sort of makes sense."

"And if this Nam-Ek designed a technique for combining the biology of different species, that might explain why an alien disease is infectious to humans."

"Mister Luthor, if you were doing any sort of microbiological work here, we need you to release the relevant files and tell everyone here that they're supposed to be helping us."

He chuckles quietly. "While I like to think that my workforce are relatively loyal to LexCorp, I rather imagine that discovering that they're fatally ill would cause them to re-evaluate their priorities. But, certainly. If you put me through, I will be happy to clarify their priorities for them."

"Were you doing that sort of research?"

"The facility was not specifically set up to study novel diseases. It certainly wasn't set up to create new ones. I authorised the expansion of the facility in order to see what else could be learned from the study of the genomorphs' genes, and to see whether or not further samples could be discovered."

"And the kryptonite?"

"Radioactive substances have any number of industrial and medical uses. It would be foolish of me not to exploit one of the few earthly sources of the substance."

"Wasn't that a bit of a clue about where the DNA came from?"

"Biologists in the employ of LexCorp are somewhat familiar with the genetic structure of humanoid kryptonians. While it's certainly a common assumption that all kryptonite comes from Krypton, logically there's no real reason why it couldn't also be created in other places."

…

True… I mean, I make the stuff myself…

"Thank you for your cooperation, Mister Luthor. I'll transfer you now."

"Good luck, Orange Lantern."

I lower my hand and cancel the noise filter. Mr Yao raises his eyebrows. "Did you learn anything?"

"Nothing much." Okay, what else can I do? I certainly don't care enough about the people around here to cure them…

Rondor. Why would Nam-Ek drive them extinct trying to make himself immortal?

"Ring, contact Kara Zor-El."

Compliance.

back

Rampage 20

next

13th November

04:11 GMT

The Har-Zod projection looks thoughtful. "I was aware that Nam-Ek was an actual historical figure, but I had no idea that he had made his way to Earth. If he were truly immortal -or at least very long lived- he would have had more than enough time to acquire a spacecraft and make the journey."

"Do you have any more information about him?"

"I'm afraid not. While law enforcement was one of the Military Council's responsibilities, I rose up through the fleet. I was only ever directly involved in an oversight role, and certainly not with cases that went cold centuries ago."

"Kara to Orange Lantern. I think I'm ready here."

Ah… "You think?"

"The worst-case scenario is that we accidentally let everyone out of the phantom zone. You've got a power ring and I'm charged up with solar radiation. They're not, and we're inside a shielded space station."

"Except for Nam-Ek."

"That's why we've got multiple kinetic barriers and a completed phantom zone projector ready."

I nod, and start walking down the corridor towards her temporary workshop. "I'd have thought us getting sent into the phantom zone was a worse outcome."

"Ah..? I suppose it would be, but that's… That's not just unlikely, it's more like impossible. The equations-."

"I'll trust you."

Kara Zor-El's education in higher maths included dimensional physics. That didn't just cover faster than light travel, it also covered the techniques used to send criminals to the phantom zone. Since there's little I can do to help on Earth, I thought coming here with her was the most useful thing I could do.

"It's not that complicated." The crystal door flows away, granting me access. She looks around and favours me with a smile. "It's certainly far less complicated than what you do every time you use your ring."

"Yes, but I offload a lot of that onto the AI." I look at the result of her work: a phantom zone viewer. The actual overlay projector is a small red dish about a metre across on the floor, but it's plugged into the station's computers and a cluster of additional energy capacitors. In theory, this should allow us to communicate safely with people being held within the zone without risking them escaping. Krypton used to use a similar setup for locating inmates who had finished their sentences. "You know, we could use a system like this for returning inmates to the material universe."

"I.. don't think that's a good idea." She holds her hands over the control system, which glows faintly in response. "On Krypton we could parole them. On Earth, they'd be some of the most powerful people on the planet."

"There are other places we could put them."

"Well… Maybe." She shakes her head. "I'm not really sure how much I want Krypton's legacy to be defined by people like Tra-Gob or Ak-Var. Let's just get this done first." Her hands move and the computer chimes. "Okay, I've locked onto the quasi-." She looks at me and then looks away. "The place Green Lantern sent him to. As long as he hasn't moved too much, we should be able to find him without worrying about getting the wrong person."

I don my heavy power armour and generate construct armour. "Go for it."

"Initiating spatial overlay. It should only take a few-" Grey… Light begins pulsing inside the area above the projector. "-seconds. Just a moment while I fine tune it…"

The cone of off-white light flickers and then stabilises.

"Okay, so what do we need to do to get hold of him?"

"We actually can't. If he doesn't want to talk-."

A vague outline appears in the centre of the light cone. "Who's there?"

Kara and I share a smile, then I step forward. "Who am I talking to?"

"Doctor Nam-Ek of Xan. And you?"

"I am the Illustres of the Orange Lantern Corps. We met earlier today."

"Today..? I don't… What happened? Where am I?"

Kara nods. "He pre-dates phantom zone technology. He won't understand-." She steps forward. "Nam-Ek? My name is Kara Zor-El. You're in a place called the phantom zone. It's a realm outside the material universe. You're insubstantial and-."

"Of course! Wonderful!"

She frowns. "Wonderful? Ah..? I don't understand."

"My mutation. The virus I created to meld the rondor's genes with my own… Something about being here… I'm thinking clearly for the first time in I don't know how long."

"What do you remember since you did that to yourself?"

"Some things? I.. had to stay away from the anti-crime patrols… I think-. Oh lightbringer, the disease!"

"Yes. What is it?"

"Sacred Rao… Ah, it was a suicide attempt. You have to understand, I couldn't stand the isolation any longer! And everything else… Most things couldn't hurt me, and the few that did, I just recovered from."

"What is it?"

"The bacterium houses a programmed virus, based on the one I used to turn myself into… What I am. I thought that whatever it was that lets rondors cure sickness and heal injuries might not notice a disease that incorporated rondor genetic material. Since I'm still alive, I-. It didn't work."

Marvellous. "As far as we can tell, you managed to remain infectious. We've got a transgenic plague that's about to kill… If we're lucky, only a few thousand people. How do we stop it?"

"I never designed a way to stop it. I was trying to die."

Well. That's a problem.

"Nam-Ek, if there's anything you can tell us…"

"I… Think… Yes, I still remember its genetic structure. The bacterium is resilient, but the virus can't survive for more than a few minutes outside a living creature. I.. should be able to design a bacteriophage to target its host. If you deliver it by aerosol over the affected area at regular intervals, that should deal with any remaining cultures in the general environment. Are either of you bio-engineers?"

"No, but now we know that this works I can get hold of some at very short notice."

"Nam-Ek." Kara takes another step closer. "Is there anything we can do for you? You clearly weren't in your right mind, and if the cure works on you as well…"

"For me? Kara Zor-El, I feel better now than at any point since I drank my 'immortality serum'. I don't look like a monster, I don't stink like a midden… And I can dimly perceive that there are other people here as well. Company for the first time in centuries. Thank you for your kindness in offering, but I have everything I want."

"Ring, contact Batman and pass on the good news."

Compliance.

back

Rampage 21

next

13th November

13:35 GMT -5

Dr Balewa nods, and the last of the pieces of equipment used to create the g-oni is carefully lowered into a warded case for safe disenchantment. Across the laboratory, g-elves perform cleanup duties, tidying away equipment wrecked in the g-oni's escape.

"Okay. What happened?"

The g-pooka's horns shimmer for a moment as it makes contact with the nearest g-lusca and the pair of g-dwarves overseeing the cleanup. Dubbilex was here to supervise the g-oni's introduction to the world and given how he looked when I stopped in at the hospital on my way here I don't think he'll be answering questions for a while.

"WWe had finished the PPreparations. Our new brothers had RReached physiological maturity and WWere ready to be released. TThey were aware of their surroundings, their MMinds were in constant contact with us. TThen…" The g-pooka's horns are flickering and its body is shaking. "They complied with the physical TTests and their minds were NNormal and then we wanted to check their MMagic and then they started AAttacking everyone."

"Was there anything unusual about how they were thinking before that?"

"They were the FFirst g-oni. We did not know how they would TThink."

"Alright. Were there any signs of hostility before that?"

"They were designed to BBe a combat type. They WWere taught how to be hostile, and they TThought about it while they grew. BBut they were taught control AAnd social skills as well. We HHad no reason to fear them."

"How much demon magic were they supposed to be able to use?"

"A tiny TTiny amount. LLess than most HHumans." The g-pooka twitches more and glances at Dr Balewa. "WWe do not incorporate MMana well."

"Thet was most likely the source of your problem." Dr Balewa walks slowly towards us, patterns of light writhing around his right hand. "A human who encounters demon magic may resist it with the power of their soul. A newly born creature who had such power fed into them from the instant of their conception would have no such resistance." He looks at me solemnly. "You have experienced this yourself."

"Mana overload, sure, but that just intoxicated me."

"We CChecked the data from Atlantis. TTheir data on synthetic piscine CCreatures. It should have been SSafe."

"Atlanteans modify creatures native to the Earth. Their spiritual presence is greater than what genomorphs possess. Any reports which you received from them would make those assumptions for the creature's baseline state." He shakes his head. "Individual genomorphs have barely the tiniest scrap of spirit. The demonic presence would have been overwhelming." He sighs deeply. "I cannot yet tell whether they were truly possessed or turned into some form of incarnate demon like Miss Blaze. Whichever it is, they are a grave and ill-defined threat."

"Why would their minds have felt normal if they were that demonic?"

"They would have known what they were meant to be. The tests which you had planned would have revealed their true nature. I trust that you have no plans to create more."

"NNo no NNo."

Dr Balewa turns away, looking around the facility. "You will not create further genomorph types with innate arcane abilities. For those that you are already growing, you will not release them until I am here to supervise. Am I clear?"

The g-pooka cringes. "Yes. WWe are very sorry. We DDid not mean for this to happen."

He bows his head slightly. "People seldom do. How many of your own died?"

"Two g-trolls, three g-gnomes, eight g-dwarves and one g-elf."

"You have my condolences. But I hope that underlines why caution is required in-."

"I WWas HHere too. WWhen they attacked, I ran away AAnd they did not bother to CChase me." The g-pooka is twitching, and the twitching is spreading to other nearby genomorphs. "And I CCould feel what they were FFeeling. WWe are NNot meant to FFeel like TThat."

Dr Balewa frowns in confusion, while I lean down to hug the g-pooka, removing my mental shields as I and try and project reassurance. G-pooka aren't good telepaths, but this one had an empathic scan of an incarnate demon. A moment passes, and while the g-pooka hasn't stopped shaking the other genomorphs have.

Dr Balewa blinks, his face falling. "How old are you?"

The g-pooka doesn't turn to look at him. "I FFinished growing TThree months ago."

"Children, I am surrounded by-." He takes a deep breath. "Orange Lantern, can you assure me that they will comply with my requirements?"

I look down at the g-pooka for a moment. "Yes. I'll keep an eye on things. And… Despite this g-pooka's state, she was speaking for all of them. They know this was a foul up."

"They built souls from demon magic. Even you were not so foolhardy." He takes a deep breath. "I must also tell-" He looks around at the rest of the genomorphs in the room, who are looking at him with horns glowing. "-you that at least two of the five g-oni which you created were successful in escaping from the Justice League. We do not know how they will behave, and we will expect you to report it if they attempt to contact you."

"WWe will contact the JJustice League." Tremors having died down a little, I release my hold. The g-pooka pulls free, stands a little straighter and looks up at Dr Balewa. "We do NNot want them as part of UUs."

"Very well. Orange Lantern, please come with me."

He turns and walks away. I give the genomorphs another look over, then go after him. As we walk he makes a languid motion with his left hand and the air around us stills.

"Can these genomorphs be trusted?"

"Based on my experience with them and on what my empathic vision showed me, I have no reason to believe otherwise. Did you detect any other demon magic here?"

"Nothing that could not be explained by things being as they claim that they are. But there is more going on than that."

"Because they were decanting the g-oni at the exact moment that we were investigating LexCorp's facility?"

"Yes. There cannot have been more than minutes between them leaving their pods and their arrival in Argentina. Perhaps the martian ship was detected the very moment it approached? The magic of the one who placed the wards would have been capable of that, and I-" His eyes narrow. "-will be speaking with them personally before the end of the day. But, the genomorphs made no reference to doing anything but following their own processes."

"If they were feeding them demon magic, information could have been passed to the g-oni that way. The maturation process for genomorphs is finished when the individuals think it's finished. They could have 'decided' to become more awake at that point."

"Do you understand why they attacked Nam-Ek?"

I shake my head. "No."

"They were feeding upon his strength, using their magic to add it to their own. A new-born magician should not have the knowledge required to do that, nor any of the other magics they performed."

"At the time, I assumed that it was.. 'built in'."

"They may share knowledge readily, but that knowledge must come from somewhere. Giving someone power does not grant them the wisdom to use it well."

"So. Satanus again."

"Not certainly, but it is likely."

I nod. "Then perhaps we ought to take action against him sooner rather than later."

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NEXT CHAPTER

Retribution

BACK

Retribution 1

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Retribution

14th November

08:55 GMT -3

Absolute concentration.

I know full well that the League aren't going to let me keep the Medusa Mask, but it really does make most sense for me to use it here.

Crop-spraying constructs miles across rain bacteriophage down on northern Argentina, Lantern Stewart moving them around effortlessly. I wasn't certain exactly how much better it would make his ability with constructs, but this is far larger than any I've seen him use before.

Kal-El watches in the air next to me. "I was impressed with how quickly you and Kara came up with this."

"Nam-Ek came up with this. We just thought to ask him."

"But you had to do the lab work." He glances at me. "And you said that if you wanted to help the people here enough to do that with your ring, you'd just have used your ring in the first place."

"I know I say 'want', but… It's avarice. How much I want it for me. I mean, on balance-."

"Of course. I wasn't trying to imply you wanted them to die."

"Right."

Kal-El frowns faintly. "You're kinda making this hard going."

"We didn't make it. Realistically, even if we understood exactly what Nam-Ek wanted us to do, it would have taken weeks for us to get it right."

"So who did?"

I smile, the maw of the mask moving to mirror my mouth. "Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies. Ask me again and I'll give you an honest answer."

"Where you're concerned, I don't dare not get an answer." He folds his arms across his chest. "Who did the work? Was it Cranius?"

"No. Georgia Sivana."

For a moment his face tightens, images of a cross section of her past misdeeds being played out all across South America flick through his mind.

"I checked that she just did what I asked, and she got what she considered a fair trade out of it." Ploutos was perfectly happy to take a few books on xenoeconomics in exchange for speaking to 'Georgina Silva' for a few hours. He even seemed to enjoy it, though I don't think he realised who he was talking to.

Kal-El calms down slightly, though he still doesn't look impressed. "So you know where the Sivana family are?"

"Again-."

He bows his head and closes his eyes. "For God's sake."

"And yes, I know they've got a ring binder of outstanding warrants and gaol sentences each, but I've checked and they're genuinely committed to preparing for the Sheeda Harrowing and frankly I think that's more important." I go back to focusing on Lantern Stewart.

Absolute concentration.

"I wonder if we can administer other things like this."

"No, and you're not allowed to mention the idea anywhere near journalists."

I rotate in the air until I face him, then raise my eyebrows and slowly shake my head. "So Mister Kent-?"

"Journalists other than those who already have access to the relevant mission reports. We had enough trouble convincing the governments to allow us to do this."

I'd… Say something about telling them to get stuffed and doing it anyway, but unless the League has adapted to my last batch of recommendations I don't see any point in making new ones. On the other hand… Might be worth knowing more about the pressures they're encountering from that side.

"How did they want you to handle it?"

"A standard vaccination program."

"But we don't have a vaccine. We've got a bacteriophage. You can't inoculate people with a bacteriophage."

"No, but you can give them a dose whenever they get reinfected and run a screening program to spot them early enough that it wouldn't take Accomplished Perfect Physician coming back in order to heal them."

"That would take…" Survival time of the bacteria outside of a host organism… "At least two months, possibly more if it can infect animals or if any samples were in a shaded environment, and cost in the millions of dollars at a low estimate."

"That's why I persuaded them to approve us doing this." He uncrosses his arms. "Any trouble with using the Mask?"

"No, but I have to report that it doesn't provide any direct feedback on its own effects. I mean, I get that anyway, but for anyone else…"

"If you're angling to keep hold of it, you're wasting your breath."

"I just want you to keep me in mind for any future occasions when you think it could be productively utilised. Given how useful it is to combine its abilities and mine."

He nods. "I'll be sure to keep you in mind."

"So… How are you doing?"

"Oh, I just picked up a few bruises. Nothing serious."

"I meant about another kryptonian turning-." I frown. "Actually, this whole thing with the rondor has rather drawn my attention to the fact that I don't know the actual name for kryptonian humanoids such as yourself as opposed to other life forms from Krypton."

He smiles. "Actually, it's 'human'."

"What?"

"The word in Modern Kryptonese doesn't sound like human, but in terms of its origin, it's derived from an ancient word meaning 'thinking being'. 'Human' is the closest equivalent in English."

"Okay, ring? Translation off. What does the word actually sound like?"

"Ah… Kara could.. pronounce it better than me, but it's something like 'browkh' or.. 'blowkh'."

"You're a kryptonian bloke."

"Like I said, I'm not sure what the formally correct pronunciation is-."

I just shake my head. "Never mind. Has Kara talked to you about the phantom zone inmates?"

"The ones who aren't complete monsters?" I nod. "She did. But I don't really think there's much I can do about it. I'm certainly not prepared to risk the Earth if I release the wrong one."

"Why not get Green Lantern Tomar-Re to do it? I'm sure he still feels terrible about dropping the ball on the whole Krypton situation, and it would be a trivial matter for him to find a world without a yellow sun to perform test releases. And Har-Zod should be able to provide you with information on who is scheduled for release."

He nods, a small smile creeping onto his face. "That's not a bad idea at all."

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Retribution 2

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14th November

15:37 GMT -5

"…agreed to meet you, but you need to understand that he's not anything like as excited about this as you are."

Lyrissa nods, clearly puzzled as she walks along Sworth Way beside me. While the locals are blasé enough about super power activity to ignore me, she's-.

One of the observers wolf-whistles, which earns him a slightly nervous chuckle from his companions and a sour look from me. Lyrissa herself doesn't react, presumably due to not understanding the cultural context.

She's getting more than a few curious looks, one or two of the more observant rubberneckers noticing how the shadows around her feet aren't moving in the way optics suggest that they should. Which around here would ordinarily mean Mr Swift was out and about. Except he clearly isn't.

"Why not?"

"He's… Just.. generally aloof. Honestly, I was a bit surprised that he agreed to speak to you at all, given how long it took me to convince him to speak to me."

"So aloof that he-" She raises her right hand, a gauntlet of solid darkness forming around it. "-shows no interest in people who share his power source? Or aliens? Your world doesn't have interstellar travel."

"Djeergh..? We… Sort of do, it's just that the man who invented it has trouble dealing with people and so never bothered sharing the design with anyone outside of his immediate family. And our Lantern count is up to six." I raise my own right hand and shake it dismissively. "But I take your point. I suppose it does seem a bit odd. You.. got your translator set for English?"

She nods, then stops and looks upward at the apartment building before us. "Mister Swift lives here?"

"Yes? Something wrong with it?"

"Given how powerful you told me he was, I was expecting-." The shadows flow away from her, and she steps back with a gasp.

"What?"

"I just-." She sort of wiggles her hands for a moment, to no observable effect. "I just lost control of my shadows."

"Ah, well it appears that he's noticed you then. I suggest you go on up."

"I was.. my planet's champion, and he disarmed me without even-." She looks up, and I follow her gaze to three floors above us where Mr Swift is raising his teacup in a mock salute. "Without making an effort."

"Welcome to Earth."

"And he lives.. in a modest apartment in a small city."

"Oh, it's not that the rest of us are unaware that he's ridiculously, terrifyingly powerful. This is where he wants to live, what he wants to do with himself." I shrug. "I think it's a waste too, but it's… Proving rather difficult to change his mind. Heck, he only protects this city because he's got a personal investment in some of its people."

"Yes, you told me. It's just-" She looks up again, but he appears to have gone inside. "-that seeing it makes it more real. It's… Strange to see a being who could rule a world just not care."

I shrug. "Makes sense to me. Why take more power when you don't really want it?"

She smiles faintly. "I suppose that attitude is a privilege that comes with living on a peaceful world."

"Yeah. Peaceful." I nod towards the door. "You probably shouldn't keep him waiting."

She nods in return, and heads towards the apartment build-.

"Jade know you're palling around with alien women behind her back?"

I roll my eyes, then rise into the air to face Guy. "I told her about the Spider Queen as soon as I got back to Earth, so… Yes."

He looks like he's going to respond in kind, then his eyes narrow slightly. "She's from Talok Eight, right?"

"Yes. Her planet traded her to the Dominion in exchange for not totally crushing them."

"And you know what they're doing with the place now they don't have her?"

"Absolutely nothing. Thanks to the Guardians' negotiations on the return of the Dominators we took prisoner at Starlag." He starts to look smug. "Of course, there wasn't anything keeping them from invading anyway… And I may have sent a message informing them that in the event of an attack I would freely distribute orange power rings to the population."

"Ain't that a bit of a risk?"

"Risk? No, I'm positive the outcome would be dreadful. But it makes Talok Eight a high risk low reward target because the damage to the Dominion would be far worse than the damage to them." He thinks for a moment, then grudgingly nods. "So what's an Honour Guard Lantern like you doing in a place like this?"

"Chaselon liked your idea of using the Medusa Mask so much he sent me here right away t' pick it up. And I need t' ask a couple a' favors."

I shrug. "Sure. But first, Batman-."

"John told me. I didn't know what it was like for the guy being controlled, I didn't know Nabu was gunna make it permanent and thought if it was a problem someone would have said something." He looks away. "And… I guess maybe I didn't want to rock the boat too much. I mean, if you'd talked t' me I'd'a had your back…"

"Makes sense. What can I help you with?"

"You know how the Green Lantern Corps' got rules on sharing technology with primitives, right?" I nod. "I haven't spoken t' Tora in, like two weeks-."

"There'll be a universal communicator in her apartment by the end of the day."

He smiles, clearly relieved. "Thanks, man. I knew I'd be away from Earth a lot when I took this job. I just didn't really think about that part a' it."

"That's why Medphyll never took a promotion. And I've been assuming that the same was true for Abin Sur as well."

"Yeah, probably. The other thing is, I got talking t' Apros about how t' become a better Lantern, and he said I need t' confront things that 'undermine my certainties'."

"I'm not sure that's true, post-enlightenment."

Guy shrugs. "Maybe. But it can't hurt, can it? And I thought-."

"You thought of me. Thanks, Guy."

"You told Wondy she killed that botanist chick, you didn't tell Aquaman he had a son, you told Kaldur his pa wasn't his biological pa…" Ah… "You got anything fer me?"

I watch him carefully. I… "Yes."

He looks thoughtful. "I already know you know about my family. That's all… Dealt with." I don't quite meet his eyes. "What, did I accidentally kill someone? Did one of the guys back in the prison turn int' an axe murderer 'cause of me?"

"No. Guy, are you s-?"

"Yeah." He folds his arms across his chest and nods confidently. "Give it your best shot."

"There were at least three Ernie Ernests that I know about, and were probably more. When one died as a result of General Glory's complete inability to comprehend that the people around him weren't as tough as he was, the US army recruited someone no one would miss and stuck him in the costume."

Guy's aura dims, and he actually drops a little in the air as his eyes widen in shock and horror. "No."

"Having reviewed the records, I believe that General Glory was only able to operate in mainland Europe because he was too insane to be affected by the Spear of Destiny. Sacrificing a few young men to keep him fighting probably made sense."

"God. Ah." He shakes his head and regains his height. "That was a curveball. Y' got any more like that?"

"No, that's it. I genuinely can't think of anything else that could undermine you."

"Okay. Y'got any evidence of-?"

I take a folder out of subspace and pass it to him.

"Right. I'm gunna.. go read this. You take it easy."

I wave him goodbye as he flies unsteadily up into the sky.

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Retribution 3

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15th November

21:11 GMT -5

I never really thought about it in quite these terms before, but one of the nice things about an environmental shield is that it makes you immune to rats.

I mean, totally immune. If a squad of soldiers opens fire with armour-piercing rounds they will eventually hurt me. Rats on the other hand are totally out of luck. There is literally nothing an unaugmented rat can do to hurt me through an environmental shield, other than make me feel slightly bad.

"Mr Flannegan, this is pointless. You clearly need-"

"You were supposed to be Batman!"

"-professional help of a sort that Blackgate failed to provide you. If you stand down I'll see what I can do about getting your.. friends rehoused. How about it?"

Mr Flannegan himself is a bit of a mess. He's wearing a soiled and torn version of his old Gotham City Sanitation Department uniform, complete with an air tank plugged into a full face mask. I can also see seven rats perched on his person at various points and a look of total mental disconnection on his face. This is not a man at home to reason. But I have to try.

"…committer of mass raticide..!"

And when it fails, at least the City of Gotham will have a substantially reduced rat population. Now, how is he controlling the rats? I'm not reading genetic abnormalities or unusual brain structures, and his equipment is nothing like as complicated as it would need to be in order to grant radio-telepathy.

"…clubbed them and drowned them…"

Which leaves training… No. While rats can be trained, they can't be trained to continuously attack a hardened target. Chemicals? Air reads as normal, for a sewer tunnel. The rats' blood stream is similarly… Well, it looks like they've been getting steroids in their diets, but nothing that would explain this sort of behaviour.

"…eyes of every rat…"

Which leaves magic. That might explain his dentistry; there are certain forms of object-kinship which result in the practitioner taking on parts of the form of the subject of their craft. And it's not impossible that a mildly demented rat exterminator might develop enough of a bond with his targets to intuit it. Of course, without a way to understand what was happening, his mildly misfiring brain has filled in the explanation with whatever he's been ranting about while I've ignored him.

Right. I run filaments under the rat horde and block every exit to this corridor I can find. None of the rats are trying to get away, focused as they are on their attempt to get at me.

Then I begin transmuting the air into something a little less breathable. I do have a binding chain in subspace, and if I put it on Mr Flannegan it should remove his control. But that would send a huge swarm of rats rampaging across Gotham and I don't think that would impress my host overmuch. So I'll just stick it on him when he-

He dashes towards me and brings a length of pipe down on the top of my head, achieving no more than his rodent assistants did.

-gets picked up by the police. No, no, I can make the effort to drop him off. I'm pretty sure there was a confession at some point in that rant-

Confirmed.

-and that plus the more circumstantial evidence I've already collected should be enough for a conviction. Or at least, that should be enough for them to obtain warrants and question witnesses, all the sorts of busywork that large organisations are designed to handle and which superheroes aren't. And the pipe's broken. Rats are losing consciousness… He doesn't appear to have noticed, but it's honestly a little hard to tell given how completely deranged his expression is. Is that a result of him having contact with the rat swarm while they lose consciousness, or just… Him.

I suppose that I should probably give the GCPD a phone call and let them know what's going on. Ring, contact Detective Bullock.

Compliance.

There are a couple of rings-

Mr Flannegan finally notices that the rats aren't responding any longer. He turns away, grabbing one apparently at random and hugging it to his chin.

"Archibald! NOOOOO!"

-and then a quiet click as someone picks it up.

"Bullock."

"Good evening, Detective."

"Oh. You. What is it this time?"

"I'm in the process of apprehending the perpetrator of a series of rat-themed assaults and killing his minions."

"When you say 'killing'-?"

"They're rats. But don't worry, I don't need a licence since I'm not killing them for money or leaving poisonous substances unsupervised. I have an evidence folder to pass over, but I would appreciate it if someone could pick the perpetrator up. Or failing that, be ready to receive him when I bring him in."

"Ah, yeah, I'll get on to the front desk. Crazy or not crazy?"

Mr Flannegan pulls off his air mask and tries to bite me.

"Fairly crazy. But it might be a side effect from his untrained magic use. I'll try and normalise him before handing him over."

"Appreciate that. So… You covering for the Bat?"

"No, I just need a word with him so I thought I'd clear his schedule." I catch Mr Flannegan around the neck with my left hand and slide his mask back over his face with my right. "I don't think that chasing down fools like this is really an efficient use of Batman's time."

"Oh yeah? Why's that?"

"He's the chairman of the Justice League. He should be making strategic decisions and investigating wide scale criminal activity, not spending days pursuing individual petty criminals. He should be offloading that onto people like me."

"Didn't realise you liked it here that much."

"No one likes Gotham."

"Heh. Yeah, you're right there."

"It's just that it's trivially easy for me to capture people like Ratman here while I'm not as good at complex investigations as he is." Mr Flannegan in hand I walk towards the exit, spraying white phosphorus powder in my wake. It starts burning almost immediately, burning the rodent remains to a crisp. "Plus, a swarm of rats is actually a threat to him while it isn't to me."

"I suppose you've got a point. Not like the Commish investigates jaywalking."

"I barely understand why that's a crime. I mean, if someone gets hit by a car, do you really need to fine them as well?"

"Not considering what health insurance costs. Where are you? I'll see if we've got a car nearby."

"I'm in Farrow. Ah, ring says 'Burwick Street' but I didn't see any signs."

"Yeah, think I know it." I use constructs to lift Mr Flannegan out through a manhole before phasing through myself. "I'll send a car."

"Thank you. I appreciate-"

Three individuals in loose-fitting red clothing with a white butterfly logo are walking down the street towards us.

"-it, but I'm afraid that I'm going to have to call you back."

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Retribution 4

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15th November

21:16 GMT -5

Wait… Wait… Dimly coming back to me. They could make bright lights and… Just sort of appear anywhere one of them already was. Can't remember what they're called…

And they picked a fight with Shadowpact, right after they rescued most of the population of a town from criminals who were ritually sacrificing them. That made newspapers. And Mr Cassidy had been in the news before that for his work as a superhero plenty of times.

…

Okay, on page 2, but he was still in there. It was a matter of public record that he was a good guy. He's got an Encarta Populi page. And that's here, where he hasn't ever worked directly with the Justice League.

Oh. No, not the angel thing. They're not going to try to fight me, are they? I've got things to do that don't involve thousands of Gotham's citizens getting permanently blinded.

Empathic vision showing a sort of cream blur. This must be how Kal-El feels when he looks at a lead-lined building. Try and keep things civil… I swap my heavy armour for the lighter model, leaving off the helmet. Then I turn my environmental shield down so that they can see my face clearly and I smile warmly at them. "Something I can do for you?"

They hesitate, and the one in the middle looks at the one on the left for a moment. "Ah… Ah yeah. Is.. that.. the guy who was sending rats to attack the restaurants in Otisburg?"

"Among other things. I'm expecting a visit from the constabulary and if I'm very lucky Batman as well. So while I'm not exactly super busy, if there was something you wanted to talk about, I'd appreciate it if you'd get on with it."

"I wasn't-. Ah, we weren't really expecting to meet you.. here. Um, I just… You're the reason why I joined the Congregation. This is-" He smiles a little nervously. "-kind of a big deal for me."

"I'm not known for having a positive relationship with religious organisations." The woman on his left snorts. "Which congregation was that?"

"No, like, the Congregation." I slowly shake my head. "The.. superhero team. I mean, we're not, like, huge yet or anything, but we've been active for a few months-" And that's what happens when I don't have full access to the League's database. Things like this slip past me. "-and I think we're doing okay."

"Oh, right. Sorry, normally I actually read up on people I'm planning to meet. I haven't actually heard of you, but there are a lot of people I haven't heard of. Gotham's a.. pretty tough place to be a vigilante." I take a few steps closer, careful to keep my body language friendly. "What sort of training and equipment do you people get?"

"This stuff-." He pulls at his loose-fitting outfit with his right hand. "I know it looks like pyjamas, but it's actually stab resistant. And we've got a couple of members who're ex-military, or do boxing or martial arts or whatever."

"How long have you been training for?"

"Well… I guess.. I've been training since I was a kid, but I-." He shuffles uncomfortably. "I only joined the Congregation last month. After you had that.. meeting with an angel."

"With Zauriel." The female Congregationalist walks over to Mr Flannegan and checks him for injuries.

"Yeah, well, I'd-. It just made it seem more real, y'know? That was the first day I'd been to church since I was a kid, and I stayed afterwards to talk to Father Chris, and… Now I'm.. doing this."

"And.. you work in Gotham? Bit of a risky place to set up, isn't it?"

He shrugs. "I grew up here. And, well… There's plenty of stuff to do here. Batman's great and all, but he can't be everywhere."

"I realise that, but you're unarmed and wearing bright red costumes facing criminals with guns. I'm a little worried about what's going to happen to you."

"Nah, see, when we're near other people in the Congregation, we get stronger and tougher. Not that I wanna get shot or anything, but we can do more together than we could apart."

"And how does that work?"

"I dunno, man. I just wanted to do some good, y'know?"

"Good for you. Can anyone join up?"

"Kinda? They wouldn't a' let me in if they were doing background checks, but-." The man on his left coughs theatrically. "You gotta believe in God. It doesn't matter how, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, whatever. But you gotta believe."

"Believe God exists, or actively worship it?" He shakes his head and shrugs. "For example, I know that the Source exists, but I neither worship it nor accept it as the highest moral authority."

"Dude, that's like…" He waves his right hand over his head. "I think you gotta worship Him, but there was this course and I wanted to get on the streets as fast as possible-."

"You didn't do the course?" The other Congregationalist gives him a decidedly put out look. "Everyone takes the course."

"It's not like I don't know how to pray, man."

"It's not just about prayer, it's the whole operational philosophy-."

"Look, dude. I pray to God, not to whatever TV preacher thinks I gotta go on some 'course' before I can start doing good work." He holds up his right hand, which starts glowing. "And if that's good enough for God-"

I slip a rune stone out of one of my pouches. Definitely a reaction, though I can't tell what sort. I'm not hearing the sound which I heard when Zauriel used theurgy.

"-then that's it." He closes his hand and the light goes out.

"Enhanced physiology, light generation… Anything else?"

He turns back towards me. "Yeah, yeah, you can always talk to each other, so if you need help or advice you can always get it."

"Like.. a.. telephone..?"

"Like a free telephone that always works, and gets through right away. And if someone else in the Congregation needs help and you can help them, bang! You're right there!"

"Instantly? Any distance?"

He shrugs. "Yeah?"

Gosh. "That's amazing. Have you got any idea how hard point to point teleportation like that is?"

"I.. didn't.. go to college."

"They don't teach that in college. Look, I'd-" I spot a pair of police officers getting out of their car at the end of the road, torches in hand. "-really like to talk to you about the whole thing, now's just not a good time. If you give me a phone number-?"

"No need." Left Congregationalist looks a little smug. "We're having a meeting tomorrow evening in the Burnley mosque. Why don't you come along?"

"As.. I said, I'm not-."

"No, no man." Middle Congregationalist shakes his head. "It's not a service or anything. Sort of a cross-community outreach thing. Getting to know your neighbours rather than puttin' up walls. I thought it'd be weird too, but it's actually okay."

"Alright, in that case… I'll see you there."

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Retribution 5

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15th November

21:35 GMT -5

Richard nods. "I had wondered why Missus Harrison said we were the third people she'd explained it to."

Batman himself looks more thoughtful. "I was aware of the Congregation, but I was not aware of the full extent of their abilities. That is.. concerning."

Richard smirks. "That they can teleport, or that you didn't know they could teleport?"

"Both."

He's not wrong. "Should I go, or would it be better for someone else to speak to them?"

"You should go. I will arrange to have other operatives-" The team, then. "-investigate as well. Hopefully, the 'Congregation' will be just as harmless as the Alliance."

Richard looks out across the Newtown rooftops in the direction of the Knights Stadium. "The Alliance is mostly doing networking between existing heroes. From the sounds of it, the Congregation is encouraging people who weren't heroes before to become heroes."

"To become vigilantes, yes." He looks back around. "We won't know whether they're being encouraged to be heroes or not until we get a better idea of how they're operating."

"You said one of them checked the Ratcatcher was okay?" I nod. "I don't think a group who were dishing out punishment beatings would bother doing that."

"Unless they were seeing what I was doing. I don't have the best reputation among monotheistic communities."

Batman bows his head slightly. "It's baseless conjecture at this point. Report back to me after you meet them on Wednesday."

"Certainly."

Richard waves, getting his grappling gun out to continue their patrol as he heads to the far side of the roof. Batman steps back as if to follow him, then stops when I don't move. "Was there something else?"

Ring, precautions.

Compliance.

An orange hemisphere appears around us, opaque enough to make lip reading impossible.

"Why has no one arrested Collin Thornton?"

"Because we have no direct evidence of criminal wrongdoing. As you were successful in changing the law so that a demon can be an American citizen, we have to use the same standards of evidence as we would for anyone else."

"Satanus openly attacked the Hall of Justice."

"True, but we do not have good evidence linking Collin Thornton to Satanus, or to DMN production."

"And we need that, do we?"

He watches me for a moment. "What do you suggest instead?"

"Have Angelica ritually sanctify Metropolis. If anyone queries it, tell them it's a form of city-wide arcane protection. Wait until he moves, then do the same wherever he moves to. Keep doing that, keep watching him, until he slips up."

"I find that it's easier to gather information from people who are overconfident, rather than people who feel that they're under attack."

"What do you want to know? I mean, I'm sure that you've debriefed Angelica by now. You know what he is, what he does. Given his particular skill set -and that it can't be replaced if we removed him from control of his organisation- I can't think of anything that could be gained from leaving him in place that's proportional to what he gains from being left in place."

"To choose one example that I've been drafting contingency plans around, he doesn't summon a huge army of demons into Metropolis and kill millions of people."

"Sanctify the ground. Also, I have a Lantern Corps."

"Vril Dox has a Lantern Corps."

"I have at-will recruitment authority. I suspect that I can find a hundred people who really want to kill demons, especially after Fawcett City. Even if I have to take all of the rings back afterwards."

"It would still wreck central Metropolis."

"Do you think he's holding off on doing that because he's a nice fellow? Because he's decided to take advantage of the opportunity being an American citizen gives him and become an upstanding member of society?"

His jaw hardens. "Mind. Your. Tone."

"Someone's using the Anti Life Equation. That says Apokolips. There are only two groups we know of on Earth who have had contact with Apokolips: Bialya and Intergang. Intergang appears to have disappeared and the factions in Bialya have only agreed a ceasefire because they were running out of bullets. Neither Adom nor I have been able to find any evidence of Apokoliptian technology in the country. Queen Bee was a member of the Light, and I would assume that the rest of them were intelligent enough to keep a copy of her address book."

"The g-oni acquired knowledge of demonic magic they shouldn't have been able to get. While there are plenty of cunning demons, there aren't many who are capable of keeping up with modern technological developments. Satanus already demonstrated remarkably similar capacities when he used my Lazarus Pit as a hell portal. And he's only going to get more dangerous."

"Are you planning to attack him?"

"Of course I'm planning to attack him. And this time I'm talking to you about it first so that we don't end up working at cross purposes."

"When?"

"That depends on the outcome of this conversation. What are you doing? What are you waiting for? Are those things more important than getting rid of him as quickly as possible?"

Batman stares into me for a moment.

And another moment.

"My principle concern is my lack of intelligence on what is happening in Hell itself. The man I would usually consult-."

"Is still recovering from being possessed by a Lord of Order."

"Jason Blood, has disappeared."

"Do you want me to find him, or do you want me to investigate Hell myself?"

"I would prefer him to be found alive and well. However, if you believe that you can perform an investigation without him, you are free to do so."

"I'll need my access to the Justice League database restored." The Alliance's database -combined with what I am still able to pillage from police and intelligence services- is alright for some things, but what the League has is far better. "Including everything you have on Etrigan's precise capabilities. I do not want to get blindsided by that thing."

"Acceptable."

"Okay then." I dismiss the hemisphere. "I'll speak to you again when I have more news."

back

Retribution 6

next

16th November

09:57 GMT -5

"…can talk now, but none of them are exactly chatty."

I nod as Ambrose and I stroll towards the Tower of Fate for our appointment with John Fate. Since he's inhabiting the Tower full time, he's opted to keep it visible while he's actually at home. As a result, it has rapidly become a moderately popular tourist attraction and there's already a decent crowd in the general area when we arrive.

"You've made it clear that they're allowed to ask to go home, right?"

"I told them. And at least some of them speak English enough to explain it to the ones who don't."

"And an imam?"

"Might be a bit of a security issue there."

"You.. think your local imam might decide to send them back to Hell personally?"

"I don't know. There're three mosques in Indiana and I don't know the men who run them." I frown at him and he rolls his eyes. "I'm not John Constantine, and Indiana's a bit bigger than London. So it could be they're all fanatical magic-haters for all I know. Or they could be reasonable about it -which is not to say they'd be polite to someone like me- but I doubt people coming back from Hell gets covered in their training."

"No, but pastoral care would. Okay, how about… The man who's working as Adom's advisor on Islamic affairs, Mister Khalil. He's flexible enough to have politely dealt with a short-tempered pagan demigod for nearly a year."

He breathes in and then huffs out as we thread our way through the crowd. "Alright. Yeah. I could do with getting rid of them, to be honest."

"Learn anything useful from them?"

"Some Indonesian prison slang." He shrugs. "A bit. I'm not a thaumaturgist or anything, but I've got a better idea about how Hell's magic interfaces with new souls. I wouldn't want to write up it for an Atlantean journal, but…" An amused snort. "Next time you do something like that, I should be able to straighten them out faster."

"Could you shield a damned soul from Hell's magic?"

Another deep breath and a huffed exhalation as he considers. "De-pends. If they were just a bad person, yes. If they were doing demon magic themselves, no."

"And could you intentionally bind demon magic to a soul?"

He looks away for a moment. "That's not exactly hard. Do you want to bind it because you want to damn someone who might go somewhere else?"

"No. To hide an honest soul so that it looks like it's local."

"It would probably end up-."

"Ah, excuse me?" Ambrose and I stop about two metres from the door as a short blonde woman waves at us. "Excuse me? We're not supposed to get closer than this."

I smile at her politely. "It's okay, we've got an appointment." I keep walking until I reach the door, grasp the handle and then firmly turn it. The door swings open easily, leading into what looks like the foyer of a hotel from the nineteen forties. I hear a slight increase in the volume behind us, and as I turn back to usher Ambrose through I'm greeted with a hundred or so cameras-

"…cake guy…"

-taking pictures and recording video. Fortunately, none of them do anything silly like charging the door, but this does feel a little odd. Shadowcrest at least has a garden and exterior wall dividing public space from private space, as well as any number of wards designed to quickly and efficiently deal with those who breach propriety. The arrangement here appears to be 'public space right up to the exterior wall'. Oh, I'll mention it to him.

I follow Ambrose inside, closing the door as he takes in the interior. "Classy. And none of that non-Euclidean nonsense."

"No, I found that made it rather hard to navigate." John -helmet on head- walks down a curving staircase which… Actually, that should take anyone walking up it outside the tower. "Quite aside from the headaches. You must be Ambrose Bierce."

"And you're John." Ambrose looks John over, his eyes lingering on his biceps. "Don't think I have to worry about mistaking you for the other one."

John reaches ground level and approaches us. "On the other hand, you gave me a bit of a start. I don't suppose you're related-?"

"No. And I think that if you went through enough people in any profession you'd find people who look a bit alike."

"Hm. Alright." The helmet turns in my direction. "Why are we gathered here today?"

"To perform a feasibility study on invading Hell."

Ambrose's eyebrows shoot upward, while John merely inclines his head slightly. "I.. see. And what brought this on?"

"Satanus building infrastructure. I don't like giving my enemies time to organise themselves. And I also don't want a repeat of two months ago when I ended up in Hell grotesquely under prepared for it." I tilt my head to the right for a moment. "Also, my general rejection of 'villains act, heroes react'."

The helmet nods. "Are we talking about a true invasion with a large body of soldiers, or more in the way of a strike team?"

"Whatever we think we can get in and out safely."

Ambrose squints. "There isn't really any such thing when you're talking about Hell. Is that why you wanted to know if I could make it look like someone was local?"

"Yes. I could alter someone to physically resemble a demon, then you could bind enough magic to them in order to pass-." He's shaking his head. "What?"

"Wouldn't work. Yes, I could make someone pass casual examination, but they won't. Anyone doing anything for a Duke of Hell like Satanus would be bound to him. The Exegesis Guild have a slightly different system, but no demon outside those pacts would get anywhere important without being detected and annihilated."

"But they could pass in other, less secure places."

"Depends. If the Arch-Dukes are following his lead and binding everyone in their domains, we're out of luck."

"Is that actually likely? I always got the impression that demonic nobles valued their independence highly. Would they really just copy someone of a lower rank, someone who hadn't made them bend their knees and accept an oath?"

"Usually, I'd say 'no'. But after Satanus' decapitation strike in Fawcett this year, they might have become a bit more open minded."

"Unless he has."

Ambrose frowns. "Satanus is clever, but some of the demons still around are far more powerful. Arch-Duke Neron wouldn't accept someone like that as his leader, not in either sense."

"While I realise that it would be a 'Constantine' solution, I'm not making a deal with Neron."

"Wasn't going to suggest it. And not just because he would. Never summon up what you can't put down."

John nods. "Sound advice. Shall we continue this in the study? I've got a feeling that we'll need the reference material."

back

Retribution 7

next

16th November

20:33 GMT -5

"Orange Lantern!" The person I recognise as 'middle Congregationalist' waves as I approach the entrance of the Burnley mosque. A slow but steady stream of people are heading in the same direction, a variety of ethnicities represented amongst them. Gotham doesn't have a large Muslim population, certainly not a large enough one for them to be considered largely from anywhere in particular. "I didn't think you'd actually come!" His eyes move to the woman on my arm. "And… Ah..?"

"Jade. Jade Nguyen."

I shrug. "Jade actually lives in Gotham, so I thought that asking her to come made sense."

She'd be a pretty good fit with the Congregation, actually. Perhaps not as a member, but certainly as a trainer and intelligence officer. Though it wouldn't exactly be a bad idea for her to join as an active member. They seem to give out safe and reliable super powers, and I only promised to leave it a while before giving her super powers myself.

"Hey, Jade." He extends his right hand, and she detaches herself from me to shake it. "Den Petersen."

"Hello Den."

Jade's not exactly enthusiastic about this whole thing, but agreed that her information gathering abilities were much better than mine. Also, I like us being able to do work-stuff together. The differences in our skill sets usually preclude that, without her looking massively outclassed or me being superfluous.

Reminds me of the organisation structure that Stormwatch had when I started reading those, actually. Recognising that the organisation had several roles and that their empowered operatives weren't necessarily particularly good at all of them, the fellow in charge split them into three groups. In the event of a sudden high-end attack like an alien invasion or a powerful supervillain acting openly, one team… Can't remember what they were called, would be dispatched to directly engage it. There was a second team for covert investigations, because the skill set required was different. The problem the Justice League have is that they're set up to use all League members as team one and all of my former team mates as team two. And any setup which requires that Batman be sent to the front lines while Canis is used for intelligence gathering is a poor one.

And I think I may have volunteered for team three.

"Den, I did.. some checking earlier today, and it seems that the Quran is rather against polytheists like me coming inside mosques." For a split second he looks like I just kicked his puppy. Without his mask on his youth is far more apparent; I doubt that he's much older than my apparent physical age. "I'd still like to, but I don't want to offend anyone."

"Oh. Ah, I didn't know that." He backs off slightly. "If you wait here, I can go and check with Mister Kathia, see if it's alright."

I nod. "Thank you, I'd appreciate that."

He dodges past two headscarf wearing women in loose flowing robes as he hurries inside.

"Is that true?"

"Oh yes, completely." Jade isn't wearing a head scarf so much as an unusually broad hair band, but is generally conservatively dressed. "I imagine it was due to early Islam considering their faith an 'update' of the region's other two monotheistic faiths, while wanting to paint the local pagans as being entirely beyond the bounds of acceptability. Or maybe not; I wasn't there. But you can go in."

"I know you think that choosing a religion would be a good idea, but I doubt they'll let me do comparison shopping."

"They said it was all monotheistic anyway. Not a good match for you."

"You know, some people might be offended by the insinuation that they're going to Hell."

"Probably."

She watches the flow of people for a moment, no doubt picking up all sorts of details that I haven't realised are significant. Only one so far has the obscuring cream glow which the Congregationalists have, so I presume that the rest are just here for the outreach program.

"Though, I suppose… If I'm having to invade Hell anyway..."

That gets a quiet snort of amusement. "What about Valhalla? Odin's supposed to be very supportive to killers of all kinds."

"You can ask Prince Jon about it. Odin's supposed to be a bit of an arse, but I haven't had any direct contact with the Aesir. That might just be due to Jon marrying a valkyrie. Though, from my point of view…"

"That wouldn't be a problem because I'm not a valkyrie."

"No, I was going to say that with the einherjar on Earth, invading Asgard would be a lot easier than invading Hell."

She turns to face me. "Were you always this keen on invading places?"

I walk up to her, take both of her hands in mine and raise them to my lips, looking straight into her eyes as I do so. "Only for you."

Her eyes close as she lets out a mildly pained exhalation.

"Orange Lantern? Mister-." I glance away from Jade as an Indian-. No, probably Pakistani man puts his right hand on Den's left shoulder and gives his head a small shake. "Oh. Ah, sorry?"

"It's fine." I reluctantly release Jade's hands and we turn to face them. I extend my right hand towards Mr Kathia. "Orange Lantern."

"Yeah, I heard." British accent. Couldn't place it precisely. He takes my hand. "What's this about you not being allowed in?"

"I'm a Hellenist. Multiple gods." He nods in understanding. "So I wanted to check that I was allowed in."

He shrugs. "You can't come in the prayer hall, but we're not 'aving the meeting in there, mate."

"Glad to hear it. Does that mean we get to keep our shoes as well?"

"Long as they're not covered in mud."

"Thank you."

He shrugs, then turns to Den. "Den, would you mind introducing them around? I need to try and get hold of Amil real quick."

"Yeah, no problem." Den smiles at us. "This way."

Jade and I follow him inside, her eyes moving to take in everything while I rely on my rings. Looks like.. this place was a gymnasium that got converted. It's in reasonably good repair, compared to what I'm used to from Gotham-. "Den, were you around for that thing with Swamp Thing?"

He shivers. "Yes. I was pretty close to where you killed that giant rotting demon thing."

"Oh. Were you alright?"

"Had to shoot a couple of giant cockroaches, but yeah, basically." He glances back, smiling. "Selling the footage to Fox covered my rent for a few months."

"While I'm glad that worked out for you, getting the heck out of the way really is the most sensible thing you can do in situations like that."

He shakes his head. "By the time I could see it, there wasn't anywhere to run to. And with the vines all over the doors, I don't think I could have got out anyway."

I nod as he pushes open the doors at the end of the corridor, and leads us into the meeting room.

back

Retribution 8

next

16th November

21:07 GMT -5

"I… Have a range of responses? It really depends on how bad things are."

I'm not used to this. Yes, I occasionally go to a party or give a speech for work reasons, but those are far simpler. If I'm at a party then either people are there to do business networking and aren't particularly interested in me except as the half of the Lantern/Kord double act with the reasonable attention span, or I'm there with Diana and she gets the attention.

Was there with Diana. That hasn't.. happened since I.. got back…

And when I give a speech, I'm talking about a particular subject, usually to people involved in that area of business or technology. People who can be trusted to stick to the topic because that affects them directly. I've never been surrounded by… Fans.

"Like how Mighty Adom tore Asim Muhunnad apart with his bare hands and saved Kahndaq from tyranny! So if things are really bad, you just bam!"

Turns out that Gotham has a Kahndaqi expatriate community. The boy questioning me has a Teth Adom toy, and jerks it around to emphasise his words. His mother initially tried to stop him, but when I started answering like this was an actual question and answer session their family and their neighbours started gathering around.

"Tyranny's a bit abstract. I didn't work with Adom to overthrow Asim because he censored newspapers. I did it because of all of the people being-" Children present, and from his accent he grew up here. "-put in prison or killed for no good reason. Adom only killed him because he was very upset about the attack on Shiruta."

"Have you killed other people like him?"

He seems.. a little too happy at the prospect.

"Yes. I have. And I can't say it makes me particularly happy, because by the time things have gotten that bad I would be.. clearing up after a lot of very nasty things had already happened."

"Like what?"

"Omar!" His mother appears to decide that asking me about the most traumatic parts of my career isn't the most polite thing to do. "That's enough." She picks him up and looks at me apologetically. "Thank you for talking to him, and I'm sorry he was bothering you."

I shake my head. "No trouble."

"Moooom."

She carries him away toward the refreshment stand, and I realise that the rest of the family are serious-looking adults. A young man on the cusp of adulthood nods at me. "Like what?"

"Industrialised piracy, rape, mutilation, murder and genocide. I think there were drugs and cannibalism thrown in there as well, but once you've got murder and genocide, what else do you need? Earth is a fundamentally decent place, humans a basically good species. Someone would have.. killed Asim eventually. In other places, that's not the case. And.. I found myself.. the man on the spot."

An older man frowns. "Do you feel bad for the people you killed?"

"No. I don't think much about them at all. I'd rather not have to deal with situations like that, but I'd rather deal with it than have it not dealt with. The point I was trying to make for the benefit of the young man a moment ago is that superheroes are blunt force instruments and generally aren't good at rebuilding societies. Kahndaq took as long as it did because we had to make sure that civil society didn't collapse, that Asim's lieutenants didn't turn it into a war zone as happened in Bialya. Before I decide to use that sort of force I want to be very sure that there isn't a better way to go about it. So while things like that are probably where I've had the biggest impact, I prefer talking about the counselling sessions I've run in Belle Reve to try and help violent criminals reflect on their behaviour. I prefer talking about.. just about any other part of my work." I shrug. "The chocolate company I'm buying to protect it from asset strippers. Because if things get to the point where the least bad thing to do is kill a lot of people, then… Really, things should have been stopped well before that. And that -combined with Gotham's history of inter-community violence- is one of the reasons why I'm so happy that meetings like this exist. Because while I can come in after the shooting's started and cart the survivors off to Blackgate, I'd much rather not have to."

"Batman did a lot of damage to the gangs, but it was Lieutenant -now Commissioner- Gordon and the people in his Major Crimes Unit who turned the police force into a functioning, trustworthy organisation. And it was people in the wider community trusting that reform that allows them to act as a police force should; protecting people and enforcing the law in a fair and even-handed manner, rather than having to use threats and intimidation to get anywhere. I don't think anyone seriously thinks that life in Gotham was better a decade ago than it is today." A few of the members of my audience shake their heads, but most are just staring at me. "It takes a lot of things going badly wrong for Gotham to end up like it did. And anything citizens like yourselves can do to work against that has massive value for everyone."

I come to a halt, not really sure what else there is to say. I get a few approving nods from people who probably think they're older than me, and I try looking around for Jade. Ah, talking to Omar's mother. Good move. "And on a slight tangent, I would very much like to learn more about the Congregation."

The older man regards me somewhat cautiously. "What for?"

"Because while I'm the last person with any grounds for complaining about exotically dressed volunteer police officers, I have concerns about their training and their direction. And I think those concerns would be best addressed by me speaking to someone in a position of authority and offering my help early. Getting into fights with armed criminals is a good way to get yourself killed, but it's also a good way to inadvertently kill someone and get yourself arrested for murder. The top fraction of a percent of vigilantes like me might get a lot of publicity, but the figures on new vigilante survival are not good. And a lot of them get arrested for making a hash of doing the right thing, because keeping the peace requires more than just blasting people with fireballs or punching their heads off."

He nods, then half turns away from me. "I am going to talk to the Orange Lantern for a little while."

There are a few nods, then the crowd breaks apart almost immediately. The suddenness of it causes a few other people to look around, but the only one who actually starts to head my way is politely drawn into a new conversation.

Ah. "Thank you, but you don't look like a member of the Congregation."

Bushy grey eyebrows rise slightly. "You can tell?"

"They get basic wards as part of the package. It stops my ability to see people's emotions, and I can still see yours."

He nods. "My name is Adil Wasem." Oh. "And I see that you have heard of me."

"You basically organised helping Kahndaqis escape to America when Asim took over. Adom's wanted to thank you personally ever since he heard about you."

He shrugs. "I have lived in America for most of my life. I have little to go back to now."

"I apologise for not recognising you, but you're a bit.. older than your pictures."

"It is a side effect of living for as long as I have. But, you wanted to know about the Congregation." I nod. "I have known many excitable youths in my time. As a senior member of the community, I have tried to direct them to do something productive with their excitement, instead of joining criminal gangs. Sometimes I have been successful and sometimes I have not."

He pauses, gathering his thoughts. "A little under three months ago, I had a… A dream."

"A dream?"

"I am not so proud as to believe that I am a prophet, that almighty God would single me out. At the time, I thought perhaps that I was dying... So, yes, a dream. A.. figure instructed me to find certain excitable young people and to pray with them. I did… And a short time later they visited me wearing a red costume."

"Any particular prayer?"

"Yes, but one I have spoken thousands of times before. And not the same as the one spoken by others so visited."

Hm. So that's what it looks like when the Silver City pulls its finger out. "Of course. They said that they accept people from all monotheistic faiths."

He looks away, slightly uncomfortably. "It is hard… Many of the things that are a part of Islam cannot be traced with certainty back to the Prophet, peace be upon him. Some parts are certain, others may be the teachings of his followers, or the invention of later rulers… And Father Christopher tells me that Christianity is much the same. At my age, a man is not supposed to have to have his world view changed so greatly. To know that I have received the same message as devout men of other religions… To know that so much of how we all have lived must be contrary to the will of God."

"Do you.. organise them..?"

He shakes his head. "No. No, I am not in charge. But, many of the Muslims called upon to serve respect me. And you are right; neither they nor I know how to be vigilantes. What do you suggest?"

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Retribution 9

next

17th November

09:12 GMT -5

Commissioner Gordon stares at me for a little longer than would have been comfortable for me back before I got used to things like this. "Are you telling me that I've got vigilantes in my city who are part of a worldwide team and can come and go whenever they like?"

"No, I'm saying that you've got two: the Justice League and the Congregation."

"The Justice League are authorised by the UN."

"So's the ICC, but America's still going to declare war on the Netherlands if an American gets arrested by them." Behind me, Harvey snorts with amusement, then covers it with a cough when Commissioner Gordon's irate gaze turns his way. "I really think it would help you if you regarded this as an opportunity rather than a problem."

He looks at me extremely sceptically. "Yeah? How'd you work that one out?"

"Because if it's a problem then you can't deal with it anyway. You could probably get the budget for ten police auxiliaries. You won't be able to get the budget for the city-wide wards it would take to prevent them teleporting reinforcements in. And that wouldn't even stop them operating while they were here. They appear to be able to recruit and empower any monotheist. Which in a city like Gotham is about ninety percent of the population."

"Christ."

"On the other hand, I've spoken to several of the local members and one of their recruiters, and they're open to the idea of working very closely with the Gotham City Police Department. Which means you'd end up with police auxiliaries who could teleport, communicate with each other in ways which can't be intercepted and generate flares at will." I don't know if their ability to bring in arbitrarily large quantities of reinforcements very quickly is a selling point or not. Maybe skip that for now. "And you'd get to train them, which means they're less likely to create problems for you and less likely to get their fool selves killed."

"If they're that enthusiastic, why don't they just join the police?"

"Because that's not something people with superpowers do, whereas Gotham has had two significant vigilantes become police auxiliaries in living memories. And we both know that you used the extremely relaxed laws which legitimised Green Lantern to sneak Batman in. And yes, I'd be very much in favour of you subverting that, but they could have applied to join the police before they got super powers."

"What about their religious practices? I'm not prejudiced-."

"But…"

"No. I'm not. I treat anyone who wants to join the force in whatever capacity exactly the same. Religion is actually one of the few things that hasn't divided this city. But after Deacon Black, I've learned to.. take a closer look at newly emerging religious groups." His eyes narrow slightly as he remembers something. "And don't you have an ongoing dispute with… The Resurrection Crusade?"

"They tried to destroy the human capacity for free will. But since the individuals who did it died I don't consider the dispute to be ongoing. Unlike you I have all sorts of prejudices, but in this case I'm willing to contemplate the idea that the Silver City has actually done something right. Members of the Congregation have to spend time with people from other monotheistic communities, and firmly believe that no one Yahweh wasn't okay with could get in. As a result, they're actually less insular or intolerant than the average member of their community." I shrug. "I guess that when you firmly believe that a particular deity is the supreme moral arbiter, having them tell you that a particular group are actually 'okay' settles the theological arguments pretty firmly. Heck, they talked to me."

That gets a very weak smile. Which he swiftly quashes.

"Alright. I'm not promising anything, but I suppose there's no harm in meeting their representative."

"Thank you, Commissioner. Is there anything else I can do for you?"

"No. Thank you."

I nod politely, then turn away and leave him to his paperwork. Harvey follows me out of the corner office and into the Major Crimes Unit's office. "Superpowered guys on the force, huh? Don't suppose there's any chance of you picking up a badge."

"I'm not a US citizen. Though if Queen Hippolyta calls upon my services, I would be happy to do a term as a guard in Themyscira City."

"Heh. 'Guard'."

I turn my head towards him, smile politely, then pat him gently on the back with my left arm while simultaneously removing tar from his lungs and fatty deposits from his everywhere. He's not in as bad a shape as you might think from looking at him, but tobacco, alcohol and poor nutrition were having a deleterious effect on him. And now they're not.

Can't say I didn't warn him.

Harvey doesn't appear to notice as he escorts me to the door of the Major Crimes offices and waves me goodbye. In the hall-

"…a year now, transferred from Investigation."

A police detective I don't recognise is talking to Jade… Ah, leaning forward, posture confident, voice slightly quieter than expected… If I were less confident in our relationship I'd probably do something confrontational right now. Either that or 'assert our relationship' by embracing or kissing her. She'd tolerate it, but it would earn me a cutting remark or two later. But I'm not that insecure. And I know exactly how she feels about me. Not as strongly as I feel about her, but little strands of violet light have started wriggling their way into her consciousness when she thinks about me. And-

"Really?"

-I'm sure she knows that I know. Not like I kept my abilities -or anything else- secret from her. I wonder if she's consciously realised it herself yet?

"When Gordon became Commissioner, he cleared out a lot of the dead wood." He shrugs. "He goes for people with proven track records, and I like to think my work speaks for itself."

I turn away to examine a notice board while Jade does whatever she's doing. A 'weapon safety is everyone's responsibility' poster, a rota, photos from some sort of social event and a thank you note from a colleague currently convalescing. I wonder if I could talk Alan into coming here as a loan from the City of New York? Given how Gotham's recovering and how Batman has wider responsibilities, he might like swinging by and-.

"Should I be offended that you didn't run Detective Driver off?"

I turn around to face her, check the corridor in either direction and then step forward to wrap my arms around her, lifting her slightly off the floor as I forcibly bring her lips to mine. She makes a token resistance, then pushes her face harder against mine than I was prepared for. I'm actually struggling to prevent both teeth clicking and laughter as we kiss, my head being forced back as she relies on the strength of my grip to support her oral assault.

Okay, not as if I mind-.

From an inch away Jade stares into my eyes, the tip of my tongue held between her teeth.

My environmental shield means this doesn't hurt, but I really need to learn that Jade will attempt to turn anything she regards as a dominance display back against me. I lean towards her, relaxing my grip as her feet return to the floor. She graciously decides to allow my tongue to return to my mouth.

"In answer to your question, I love you and I trust you. And I'm not some sort of lunatic who feels the need to growl at any man who looks at you."

"No." Her lips twitch as she tries to prevent herself from smiling and for once actually fails. "You're some other kind."

"I don't know if you had any.. plans today, but I was rather hoping that you could spare me a little time."

Her eyebrows rise. "What did you have in mind?"

"Planning to attack Hell, naturally."

She tilts her head to the left and gives me a mildly irritated look. "You remember what happened last time we went to Hell?"

"And that's why I want to plan it properly this time. Planning a black operation assault against a hardened target in enemy territory just wouldn't be fun without you."

A minor eye roll. "Who else are we planning this with?"

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Retribution 10

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17th November

20:39 GMT -5

Ambrose, Jade, Euanthe and I stare out from the balcony in the general direction of eternity. Ambrose's eyes move from point to point, attempting to identify individual elements in the compressed confusion. I just try to treat it like a magic eye picture, trying not to identify elements but see if there are any patterns. Jade's more interested in the wards inscribed on the balcony's edge, and I suppose I can understand why.

Ambrose nods to himself. "I could get used to this."

Jade turns to face him, careful not to look out at the wider tangled mass more than she has to. "Standing on a balcony on the edge of primordial chaos?"

"The view's part of the charm." He tears his eyes away and gives her a winsome smile. "I got into magic because I like the weird stuff. I'm a sucker for a ridiculous true story." He pulls a packet of tobacco from his coat pocket. "You can't tell me you've never wanted to step away from your own life, Cheshire."

Her face tightens. "Only to make a better one."

I clasp my hands to my chest, smiling with joy. "Oh, darling! You really mean it?"

A flicker of uncertainty as my foolishness distracts her from her darkness-spiral. Her eyes slowly move to me, and I can see that she knows exactly what I just did. I-.

"Why does this view affect you-" Euanthe doesn't turn away, apparently preferring to reconfigure her body so that she's facing away from the vista and towards the people. "-when it is so dull?"

Ambrose raises his eyebrows. "Dull? That's a dreamstorm out there. The literal entry point for the thoughts of the universe as they enter the Dream. We're watching the very idea of ideas gain arcane existence. The underlying power gods grow from. The thing that underpins how souls exist, how magic exists."

"Yes. Dull."

"How is that dull?"

"There are no plants in it."

Ambrose squints. "How can you tell?"

"Simple enough." John strides through the French windows from the library, Helmet under his arm. "Euanthe is connected to the Green, and through it to all plant life. Nothing in the dreamstorm has a firm connection to any stable part of the Earth's magics. Even the parts of that that are plant-like aren't plants. It's all too primal to have any permanence or attachment, and since she doesn't have the curious monkey-brain that the rest of us do she isn't interested in it."

Jade gives me a cautious look. "I'm a little surprised that a Lord of Order can bring his home here."

He shrugs. "I think Nabu could. I found the books explaining how to do it in his library, after all. I think he didn't because he was Nabu." He steps aside, gesturing towards the library's interior. "Mordru's notes explain how to channel order while being of chaos, and vice versa. And the records on Lord T'Charr of Chaos and Lord Terataya of Order seem to imply they managed some kind of synthesis…" He smiles a little smugly. "It's possible. It's just not something he'd do."

"And you're confident that Hell can't eavesdrop on us here?"

He nods. "Dream doesn't like it when demons intrude in his realm, the dreamstorm is pretty lethal to anything that hasn't made extensive preparations -with earthly magic- and it will certainly render remote viewing attempts futile, if not outright sending anyone attempting one into a coma. The Tower itself is well defended, and I checked those protections myself. Short of going to the Silver City, we're as free of demons as we can be."

I nod, and our group follows him back inside the library. This part of the library is an open circular area, with desks in one direction and shelves in another. I suspect that it was at one point meant to be a demonstration space for a class, but at the moment it's serving as the home of a floating orb whose surface shimmers with iridescent colour.

John walks up to it, donning the Helmet as he does so. "A map of Hell." He raises his hands to the orb, and a series of glowing landscapes appear in the air.

Ambrose looks at them uncertainly. "And you're sure they can't detect you doing that?"

"The orb is a product of the purest Order magics. If a demon becomes a Lord of Order as well, maybe. Since that's unlikely, I'm sure."

"Right."

John gestures at the largest image. Spires of dark grey rock pierce a moody-red sky. Some anchored to the ground, while others stand on floating islands or are conveyed on the backs of giant hellish beasts. "Pandemonia. Hell's capital, and until recently the First of the Fallen's home. And before him, Lucifer."

Jade reacts to the information placidly. "Who rules there now?"

The image shifts, showing ranks of demons locked in combat.

"Basically, no one. After the First was killed, the locals fought amongst themselves for a while and then united when Neron tried to walk in."

I nod. "And went right back to it when he left."

Ambrose points to a particular building, the image zooming in on a pair of glowing golden figures surrounded by red barbed wire holding court while clearly separate clusters of demons attempt to curry favour with them.

"Agony and Ecstasy. Since when do they run anything?"

Ambrose shakes his head. "They don't. But the First basically gave them the keys to the place when he made them his enforcers. If someone in Hell wants to move anyone or anything from one area to another, the easiest way to do that is to ask them."

Jade nods. "And they can use the ability as a weapon."

John gestures with his right hand, and a few dozen strands of light link the various images. "Hell isn't a corporeal realm. The Provinces are only loosely associated with each other. Agony and Ecstasy can ease your passage, or they can stop the realm you're in existing in the middle of your body."

"Does that work outside Hell?"

"Not that I've seen. But they can open portals to send you somewhere it will. And they can use other magic perfectly well."

"When did they start working for Satanus?"

"Before I got this helmet. I haven't seen them have much to do with him directly, but they're regularly moving things for him in a way they aren't for anyone else."

"We might need to shield ourselves from them, but they're not our primary targets. If Pandemonia's at war with itself, great. I'll only worry if Satanus takes over."

Jade takes a half-step closer, watching the faces of the lesser demons gathered before them. "He doesn't need to rule openly if his allies are the only source of stability. By restricting their services to the highest bidders, they've become authority without needing to conquer the place."

John gestures again, and the point of view moves away from them and shows us a top-down view. A moment later, coloured patches appear showing the dispositions of the various districts. "None of the other pretenders control significant territory, or have the strength to make any serious pushes."

Jade nods. "And Agony and Ecstasy make sure it stays that way."

"Probably. Also worth noting that aside from his cordial relationship with them, Satanus has no overt presence in the city."

I nod. "Hopefully, the twins having actual duties there will mean that we won't have to fight them at all. What's next?"

"The Odium."

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Retribution 11

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17th November

20:44 GMT -5

"Hell's manufacturing centre. What do they make?"

John twists his hands, and a series of images replace those of the vaguely Victorian factories and slum housing that appear to make up the Odium. "Weapons, armour, tools, paper-. Well. Vellum. Bricks, metal girders, furniture… Pretty much anything a normal civilisation would need."

Jade straightens up slightly. "Demons make furniture."

Ambrose grins. "What did you think demons sat on?"

"I'm still not sure that I actually believe in Hell."

"Jade, Hell exists. We literally went there."

"We went to a place. I don't want to assume that everything I've heard about Hell is true just because a place a little like it exists."

John snorts quietly, and brings up an image of a trio of demons sitting on a bench and sharing a bag of eyeballs. "Demons sit, even in Hell."

She frowns slightly. "What do they make it out of? I had assumed that Hell was less… Material than that. Do they have mines? Farmlands?"

Another twist of the hand, and we're shown some sort of unwieldy vehicle guarded by demons who appear to have been cybernetically enhanced as it mows down a busy street. "Not exactly. Demons are good at manipulating the souls of the damned. Before the industrial revolution, they broke them down by hand and substantiated them into other materials. But then Belial had a bit of a brainwave, and they've automated a lot of the work these days."

Ambrose regards the image morosely. "Crafts are dying out all over."

"They probably couldn't cope with the increased population the old way. I mean, there's got to be a lag between the human population increasing and new demons coming into being."

Jade steps closer to examine the things being thrown into the maw of the vehicle. "Are those damned souls?"

John nods. "The damned and weaker demons. Some demon lords use it as an ultimate punishment for underlings who fail them, but those don't get scraped off the street."

"Did.. Belial get better from what the First did to him?"

John causes the image to pull out again. "If he has, then I haven't seen him. A demon like him would have had precautions against assassination, but the First is knowledgeable and powerful enough to bypass them. He might have been totally destroyed, he might have been captured and forcibly suborned… Which would explain how the third Sabbac got his power. All I can say for certain is that he isn't running the Odium at the moment."

"Satanus did say that Belial had helped him create the ball demon. But if Belial's not running the place any more, who is?"

"It's split." The image shifts to show a group of nine yellow skinned demons in black robes with red collars. "This is the inner circle of the Exegesis Guild. They started as a trade association of soul smiths in response to Belial's rise to power, now they do everything he did and more. As demons go they're not bad bosses, and they're not interested in directly threatening Earth."

"And who else?"

The image shifts to another building. Unlike the industrial revolution era look of the other buildings, this looks a good deal more like something from science fiction. A dystopian science fiction like Dune or Judge Dredd, but the technology is clearly a little more sophisticated than elsewhere in the Odium. Demonic robots stalk the grounds while cybernetically augmented damned souls guard the buildings' interiors.

And at the centre of it all, on a dais covered in thick cables and pentagrams and sitting surrounded by computer monitors is a figure of pink and white whom I remember quite clearly.

"Richard Simpson. Who worked with Satanus during their attack on the Justice League in June."

"They don't have any apparent connection at the moment. Richie's supplying him with equipment, but he's supplying a lot of other people as well."

Jade nods. "Satanus isn't strong enough to conquer Hell outright. But by setting up his henchmen in each region, he can gradually gain control without anyone realising what he's doing. Once they've all had time to cement their power, their combined resources will be enough to crush anyone left who could oppose them."

Ambrose smiles. "Demons who are used to bartering passage from Agony and Ecstasy, and buying equipment from Simpson. They get cut off unless they swear allegiance. And if they don't, they aren't strong enough to fight the ones who do."

Jade turns her head his way. "I'm surprised that the other demons aren't cunning enough to spot what he's doing."

He shrugs. "Who would be watching? When the First did whatever he did to the demons powering Sabbac, he decapitated Hell's feudal system. Neron, Rosacarnis and whoever else is left are probably spying, watching for any overt cooperation. But as long as they keep things quiet about it, there probably isn't any information to leak."

"In point of fact-" The image of the Odium retreats and another province comes to the fore at John's command. "-I very much expect that she's in on it. This is Gull, Hell's centre of commerce. Neron's power base was here, but after he was forced to retreat from Pandemonia he lost a lot of influence. Rosacarnis on the other hand has gained a lot of friends in a very short period of time."

"Do you know how?"

"She's the one manufacturing 'Devil Jizz'. In Hell, which explains why no police force anywhere in the world has ever found the manufacturing facility."

"Alright, but why does that make other demons like her?"

"I don't know, but if I had to guess, I'd suggest that they receive a tithe of souls from the income it generates. For one of the weaker demons, that would be very much worth their while. And the income would increase their power."

"It's a demon welfare service, funded by blood doning. Straight up demonic pacts aren't bringing in the souls anymore, so they diversify." I huff. "That's rather clever. I'll have to release that information to the public once we're done. Anything else going on in there?"

"Only if you want to make a pact with Neron." John fixes me with his helmet's eye holes. "Knowing what I do about Neron, I suspect that he would accept."

"Would you say he's a better man?"

"No, but he's less cunning and less imaginative. I strongly suspect that he'll be less of a problem a few years down the road. And with Satanus gone, he'll probably be the one taking over anyway."

"Do you think that the inmates would prefer Neron, or prefer no one?"

"I.. couldn't say. No one, probably. That way there's more room for them to fall between the cracks."

"We don't have the resources to destroy or liberate Hell in its entirety at the moment. But make no mistake: as far as I'm concerned that should be our eventual objective." He nods. "Is this.. pattern repeated?"

He nods, increasing the size of the other images in turn. "With Asmodeus no longer ruling Praetori, a polymorph named Shamma has built up the widest following. She's known to have associated with Satanus in the past, but again, nothing recent. With Aym gone, a damned soul named Mordecai Smyt now leads the largest warband in Internecia… The only thing I don't know is where Remiel and Duma are."

"And Etrigan?"

"Bound in suppression chains and dispatched to the Labyrinth. Should I assume that we're rescuing him?"

I nod. "Yes, I think so. If nothing else, I suspect that he'll make a useful distraction. So what's Satanus himself been up to?"

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Retribution 12

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17th November

20:57 GMT -5

Jade stares impassively at the image. "Huh."

"Yeah."

Ambrose rubs his chin with his right hand. "I'm not sure what I was expecting, but that wasn't it."

The grim tower and headless praying torsos are gone. Soldiers in blue/grey power armour now patrol a city that looks like something the Amazons might build. There are.. demons, but they have an icon of flickering black flame flickering on their forehead: the curved horns surrounding a lightning bolt which Satanus appears to have taken as his icon. As I watch, one attempts to lash out at a rag-swathed man being politely escorted by a soldier. It doesn't even manage to draw its fist all of the way back before the icon flares and burns its face down to the skull. The damned man looks around in fear, but a soldier pats him reassuringly on the shoulder and the group continue onwards.

"John..?"

"This is new." A demon knight in full plate stomps up to the one with the skull for a face, picking it up in his right hand and dragging it off. The sigil burns on his forehead as well, but he also wears it on his tabard. "That's Duke Sterocax. Nergal's younger brother and Rosacarnis' uncle."

"I thought that she kept him in a drugged stupor in her basement."

Ambrose frowns at me. "How the fuck do you know that?"

"I've had an interesting life. I suppose that Rosacarnis might have handed him over, but I doubt he'd be a willing participant in any scheme that benefited her."

Jade's watching him closely. "What can he do?"

"He's strong, and his body is supposedly impervious to attack. I'm not sure what sort of muggins would attack a powerful demon with conventional weapons anyway, but they won't do anything to him. Internal attacks like poison and.. presumably whatever Satanus is doing to keep him in line work just fine."

Ambrose shakes his head. "That's not all he can do. He's also really good at possession. That body wasn't his originally."

"I didn't know demons could possess other demons?"

"Neither did the Duke of Lethe. The way I heard it, he invested really heavily to get a perfect lukhavim bodyguard made, and Sterocax just walked off with it."

Jade nods slowly. "Can he possess other things too?"

Ambrose nods. "Of course. All demons can. But as far as I've been able to find out, he hasn't dared leave that body since he got it. Probably because he knows that Duke Malthous commanded it to kill him the second he did."

"How vulnerable are we going to be to getting possessed?"

"Depends. Have you sold your soul to a demon?"

Her jaw tightens. "No."

"Done any demon magic?" She glares. He raises his hands. "I'm just asking. The answer is 'not very easily'. Whatever you've done in life, you still own your soul until you die. Unless you run into one of the demons whose nature matches your vices really well, and they'd have to recognise that and it still wouldn't be immediate."

"And then what happens?"

"Ah…" He glances at me. "It depends. Sometimes they keep your soul around and just use your body for a bit. Sometimes they send your soul straight to hell. Sometimes they eat it or shred it… Nothing good."

"I still want to know how Satanus managed this sort of redecoration. Has he just..? Shipped matter in?"

John's eyes flare golden as he resets the map. "Satanus having a human father always made him something of an outsider in Hell. But when he and his sister began amassing power, it amused Lucifer to grant them Limbo."

"Together? They've always hated each other."

"That's probably why he did it. Not only did he know that they'd never actually rule it together, he knew that demons get barely any power from Limbo."

I nod. "Which is why Blaze created her pocket Hell rather than even try."

"Right. But aside from souls turning up there, Limbo's just a place. Naturally it's a barren wasteland, but aside from the fact that it's infinitely big there's nothing actually stopping someone from bringing matter in."

"Except that it wouldn't have the arcane attachments needed to work properly. Because it's in Limbo rather than on a living planet. Hades had that problem before he connected everyone to Erebos, and the people there still can't quite pass as living."

Ambrose nods. "He's getting a lot of power from somewhere. And he's being clever about how he's using it."

Jade turns towards Ambrose. "Who goes to Limbo?"

"Really minor sinners, usually. Not evil enough to get drawn into Hell-proper, but who don't have anywhere else to go. Sometimes agnostics and atheists from pagan societies who had an idea of 'divinity' but didn't have enough to do with their people's gods to go to their afterlife."

"What's it like?"

"It's-. It was like being half asleep for eternity. Souls there can answer questions, but they didn't have much agency. Not until Satanus did whatever he's done."

Jade nods, then calmly regards the map for a moment. "If Satanus is improving Hell, do we really want to stop him?"

"We don't specifically want to stop him doing that, no. We just want to remove his ability to operate on Earth. If this was all he was doing, I'd offer to help."

She nods. "Could he be getting the power from his allies in the other parts of Hell?"

John shakes his helmet. "No. Not unless entire countries were taking Devil Jizz and he was receiving all of the power. And if that was happening we'd all know about it. Agony and Ecstasy could probably help with a connection, but they couldn't power it directly."

"Is the power invested in the long term, or can he immediately redirect it?"

Another shake. "Unless I could watch him creating the spell, I'd have to go there and see for myself."

"It will probably come to that. I don't want to engage him directly if we haven't got a hope in hell." Ambrose shakes his head sadly. "Now, us. How do we get in and how do we hide?"

Ambrose nods at me. "Your tattoos should still work. Demons won't be able to feel your soul through it, so you could do a convincing damned soul act as long as you don't bleed. I could use magic to hide, but actually using spells in there would set off their alarms."

"John Constantine had the Seal of Solomon tattooed on his skin. I know the woman who did it. Worth doing?"

He shakes his head. "That only works when you're corporeal and on Earth. And it would be really easy for them to detect." I nod. "I could hide Jade as well, but hiding a Lord of Order is way above anything I could do."

John lifts the Helmet from his head, the orb's illusions vanishing as he does so. "Leaving off the Helmet of Fate probably wouldn't work; by now I've had too much exposure. So I can act overtly, or I can act as support."

Jade's eyes narrow slightly. "Put the hologram back on. If that's where we're going, I want to study everything that's happening first."

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Retribution 13

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18th November

13:55 GMT -1

I smile as the small cargo plane taxis down the runway, coming to a stop well within the safety margin provided by the LexCorp-laid tarmac. Unloading vehicles are already moving into place to remove the cargo and a mobile stairs vehicle is positioning itself to allow the crew to disembark. Lex, King Orin and Queen Clea will attend a formal opening tomorrow, but I wanted to be here for the actual first flight. I'd be a distraction from the celebratory event, but not putting in an appearance at all was inconceivable.

"What a fascinating device." Lord Cyprian squints slightly, a mildly bemused smile on his lips. "Mechanical engineering isn't a widely studied subject in Venturia, nor in the rest of Atlantis. I can see that I'm going to have to make sure that gets remedied."

"You have seen planes before, have you not?"

"Only far away from Venturia." He glances my way, nodding. "Yes, I realise that sounds ridiculous to a man as cosmopolitan as yourself, but I never thought it would become our problem."

"And now it's your opportunity."

"Just so. I'll be handling the trade negotiators while Queen Clea manages the political discussions." His smile grows. "I'm rather looking forward to it, though I'll try not to be too vindictive toward the cities who have been rude to us in the recent past."

"And Aurania?"

The smile fades. "They're in a somewhat special category. Queen Clea has made her will on the subject known. If they want direct trade, they can recognise her as Proconsul."

"Seems… A little late. Had he lived, Proconsul Philo would almost certainly have retired from the position by now."

"From a practical standpoint, I recognise the truth of what you say. But the Queen has issued her ultimatum, and we are bound by it. In the unlikely event that they acquiesced, I imagine that she'd… Run the full investigation into his death that she was denied at the time, attempt to re-educate cousin Ptra… And then pass the whole mess on to me."

"You?"

He shrugs. "I'm her Prime Minister. I'm perfectly well aware that if her meeting with High King Orin goes well that I'll be declared Heir-Designate. Having me govern another city for a time makes sense. And she knows that I would keep my temper better than she would. But… It's not going to happen."

"You haven't heard anything from them?"

"A few letters. And our spies are detecting a certain degree of concern regarding her new rapprochement with High King Orin amongst their elite. I imagine that our city and theirs will simply ignore one another for a time."

We watch the unloading for a few moments.

"Lord Cyprian… Not out of any desire to undermine your relationship with your sovereign or… Gain access to state secrets… But how does she actually feel about any of this? I ask simply out of an honest desire to help her to the best of my abilities."

"If I had to characterise her mood, I'd say 'grudgingly upbeat'. A problem she railed against for decades is in the process of evaporating, and..." He smiles faintly. "I'm not certain that she knows how to handle it. In a pleasant way, of course. 'Venturia leads the way' is a very pleasing narrative after our prolonged isolation, and the extra political influence and trade will be very nice."

"And her thoughts on our continued cooperation?"

"I imagine that she would look favourably upon any requests. Why? Do you have something in mind?"

"As I stated during our first meeting, my aim is to use the Earth to create the technologies and forces which I need to defeat my father. Any area not contributing to this goal is a problem for me. And I look across Africa, and I see a lot of places that aren't contributing."

"And Britain?"

I look away. "An indulgence, if I'm honest. Yes, they picked a fight with me, but I could probably have settled the matter with more subtlety. I've probably done more harm than good to my own cause."

"If it helps, I know that all of Atlantis approves strongly of your removal of that vile cabal. There are some magics which one should study only to learn to counter them." I nod. "But what about Africa?"

"Corruption, poor infrastructure, pointless internal strife… Have you seen Kahndaq?"

"I made a point of learning about it after meeting Lord Adom. What sort of assistance would you want from us?"

"Transportation and supply, mostly. I envisage targeted removals and polite warnings to those we leave in post rather than open invasions. Oh, and I'd very much appreciate it if you could build warm relations with newly installed governments once they've stabilised."

"I assume that none of these countries have significant oceanic ordnance?"

"You assume correctly."

"Then, while any decision would be taken by Queen Clea on a case by case basis, I am not aware of any of those aims being in contradiction to our own. And ultimately, we certainly have no interest in Venturia being exposed to the Anti-Life Equation."

I smile. "Glad to hear it. Ah, look, I've got another appointment shortly. Is there anything else I can do for either yourself or for Venturia?"

He nods. "One thing. One of my granddaughters will be starting school shortly. In light of recent developments, I feel that it would advantage her if she could be schooled on the surface, much as King Orin was."

"I can arrange that, and if your preferred school is awkwardly far from the coastline I would be happy to house the young lady during term time. But… I warn you that magic plays no part in the standard surface world education. I know of only one school that could even offer basic lessons, and they haven't formally opened yet."

"We can hire tutors for that. Her parents and I are more interested in immersing her in the culture."

"In that case, I will be happy to meet your family at their convenience to discuss specifics."

"Thank you." He turns to me and bows. "Lord Grayven."

I bow in return. "Lord Cyprian." I turn away, trying to put one of the piles of rock they cleared to make way for the runway between myself and the people working on the cargo. My presence here isn't a secret, but it is supposed to be quiet. Right, that should do. Mother Box, hush tube.

Ping.

I stroll through the tube and into King Myand'r's office, and he looks up as I do so. "Sorry I'm late, your majesty. My previous appointment overran slightly."

He shakes his head as the tube shuts down behind me. "I hadn't noticed. What do you want to talk about?"

"Dox.. sent me an update on the reconstruction work, but I thought that I'd check in with you as well. It sounded like everything's going to plan?"

"Yes, most of our larger cities are already hosting specialists from Euphorix. Your lanterns and Admiral Oswin's fleet have exterminated every pirate fleet of any size and purged the Spider Guild's nest. Vril Dox is… An interesting man to work with."

"I know that his social skills aren't the best, but he really is the best person to oversee the project."

He nods. "I know. I originally had in mind for my daughter Koriand'r and her fiancé to oversee the project, but I.. doubt that they would be as efficient as he has been."

"I didn't know she was getting married."

"She's betrothed, but given the lack of interest either of them have in maintaining the relationship it may end up being nullified."

Hm. Have to find out what's going on there. "I did have a request."

"What is it?"

"I'd like you to give me Kysarr."

He frowns. "Why? If you need more land for your Lantern Corps-."

"No, no. This is.. something I want to do for Tamaran. Kysarr has been a scar on the face of Tamarus for too long already. I want to replace the ruins with a memorial garden. A.. park. Grass, flower beds, trees, a.. tasteful memorial to those who died. I think the.. symbolism would be significant. And it would be an open natural space in the middle of the city."

King Myand'r leans back slightly. "I think that's a rather beautiful idea. Though I'm puzzled.. as to…"

"I do have.. sensitivity. When I returned to Earth after leaving Vega I.. discovered that in my absence one of my mentors -a man I respected greatly- had died. I've been.. thinking about an appropriate way to commemorate his life and achievements, and… It reminded me of the situation with Kysarr. I thought that -separate from the main memorial- I would build something to commemorate him as well."

"Oh. What sort of man was he?"

"Gosh, where to start?" I pull up a chair and sit down. "Ah, Alan Scott was born in a place called Metropolis in…"

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Retribution 14

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19th November

16:29 GMT -6

I look at the statue of Alan I've built in the centre of a glorified gazebo.

I don't know.

I mean, I'm happy with how the park has turned out. And as far as I can tell, so are the locals. Sombre groups paying their respects, or using the public consoles to either read up the history of the attack or -and I'm particularly pleased with this feature- learn what the area was like before it was destroyed. Other visitors are families, coming to get away from the noise and bustle of the city as building work happens everywhere, or just to exercise their legs somewhere a bit prettier. The smaller public terminals explaining the planting choices aren't getting a lot of use, but… Fair enough. I wouldn't read something like that at a park either.

But as far as a testament to Alan's life goes, I'm not sure that this is really the way to go. I mean, I don't have to worry about his secret identity here… Kind of annoying that even after his death he can't openly take credit for all of the things he did. Everyone who would care is dead! Even Vandal Savage, at long last. But… A statue? Okay, but of him in his prime? At his most famous? When he retired? When he started? As I knew him? And what pose?

I once spent two hours staring at the 'enter your name' screen for Morrowind, and this is something that's actually important.

And what pose? Tamaran might know Lanterns, but having a man standing there with his arm outstretched looks a little odd from a distance. And the design of his personal lantern doesn't lend itself to inclusion due to the thin strip that serves as its handle.

Okay… What? Skip the handle and have it resting on his hand? Alan never carried his lantern in combat. I don't remember him ever holding it when he recharged either. There are poses I could use, but they don't really look-

Avarice detected, Lantern Grayven. Look alive.

-right from the outside.

Hm.

I turn away and walk slowly out of the gazebo as Komand'r touches down on the grass just outside. She keeps her face somewhat blank as I watch, the thumb of her left hand idly caressing the material of her ring.

"First Lantern."

I nod politely. "Princess Komand'r."

She takes a few steps closer, a small arc of onlookers forming up behind her. "I think I prefer Lantern Komand'r."

"Very well. Lantern Komand'r. I simply felt that drawing attention to your lower rank might be impolite."

She smirks confidently. "How many Lanterns did you give orders to yesterday?"

I extend my left hand slightly. "Exactly as many as I wanted to."

She walks up to-. She walks past me, entering the shaded area of the gazebo. "I used to come out here to think, sometimes. Before you remodelled it. I don't believe that it would have quite the same effect, now."

I turn, but don't follow her. "I kept a record of how it looked before I cleared it. I could probably put a ruined husk or two back up for you."

She's still facing away from me as she clenches her left fist, ring shining brightly. "For some reason I don't feel the need any more."

I nod. "How have you been occupying yourself?"

She half-turns back towards me. "You don't know?"

I shrug. "I trust your judgement. And Hinon's and Dox's. I keep general tabs, but Lanterns are supposed to be able to handle their own affairs day to day. Nothing about Vega requires further decisions from me other than when it's time to go after the psions."

"I personally led the strike force that destroyed 'Commodore' Amalak's headquarters. I took the man's head myself."

That report I read. I tilt my head a little to the right. "As an Apokoliptian, I fully understand the drive to engage enemy leaders in single combat and kill them personally. But in actuality, it isn't usually a good idea. Particularly when they aren't a physical threat."

"His electro-surrogate had already killed seven of Admiral Oswin's marines. Attacking him personally not only removed the enemy commander from the field, it also served to cement our alliance with the Crown Imperium."

I raise my right hand, palm towards her. "You were the woman in the field. I don't intend to second guess you. And I'm aware of the strength of Amalak's forces. With them gone… What's left in this region?"

"The smallest pirate groups. Most of whom are fleeing or hiding. The Spiders are dead and the Crown Imperium has retaken control of Jarko's former holdings. The karnans are content with solidifying their grip on their homeworld. The only real threat are the psions." She turns fully to face me, a cruel smile on her lips. "And once they're dead, we should expect… Perhaps a decade of peace, before the Spider Guild muster a fleet to take revenge for their lost nest."

I nod. "I would have guessed a little less. What do you think should be our next move?"

"We should continue to rebuild, with great urgency. The future belongs to that group which can use the peace most effectively. And we should offer leadership to those groups in Vega who are less vigorous; settling accounts with the psions should happen sooner rather than later."

I nod. "I suppose I should be here for that. Very well, I.. don't have a project on Earth which requires my personal attention immediately. I'll set up a meeting with Oswin and Dox once I've finished here."

"Good." She nods, pleased. "After that, the most important thing will be a show of internal unity. Tamaran must have clear lines of authority."

"I don't intend to interfere in the Tamaranian succession. As I told your father, I don't think an alien-."

"Our soldiers and our engineers are trained by euphorians. It will not be an issue. But that is beside the point; when you sent Vril Dox here you imposed your will upon Tamaran."

Ah. "My intent was to send the best mind to oversee-."

"I know, and you were correct to do so. But it undermined my father still further. Someone will need to take over setting the direction of our policy soon, and they must have your support."

Hm. I walk forwards, entering the gazebo and then erecting a privacy screen. "I assume you had a candidate in mind?"

"Ryand'r is too young and foolhardy. Koriand'r would be a… Reasonable ruler. In a time of peace. We are not living in one of those. I've established myself as a capable warrior and war leader. My next step is to establish myself as a capable political leader."

"I'm.. not sure what you think I can do to help with th-."

"You can marry me." I raise my eyebrows slightly. "You're a noted warrior hero, capable of ruthlessness and generosity in equal measure. And apparently-" She glances at Alan's statue. "-sentimentality. These are all things that Tamaran respects."

"Hm." Certainly a direct approach. Maybe I can introduce her to Maxima? "As I said last time you raised the issue-?"

"I assumed that we would come to know each other better during the purge, then you assigned full control to myself and my sister while you attended to business elsewhere. I appreciate the opportunity, but it leaves my other ambitions… Frustrated. Are you still mourning for your previous lover?"

"No. No. It's not that." I pause, right hand going to my chin. "According to you, primary combat operations are now over, yes?"

"True."

"Komand'r, I meant what I said before. I regard a need for political marriage as a sign of weakness, both of an individual's position and a society's social organisation. I would never marry someone simply to shore up someone's position." She grimaces faintly. "But I do like having people around me who can match me. In power, in ambition, in sound sense. Perhaps you are that person. I won't simply marry you. But, if you wish to court me, you are welcome on my world and in my home."

"Acceptable." Her eyes flare with purple light, a somewhat unsettling smile spreading across her face. "I shall court you as no man has ever been courted before. You may wish to prepare yourself, Lord Grayven."

Um.

At least things won't be dull.

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Retribution 15

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21st November

10:14 GMT -5

What does it feel like to walk into Hell?

I've been there three times before. The first time was under London, and I'm not completely sure if we actually went to Hell or just got a snapshot of it. I don't remember experiencing any particular unpleasantness when the wave went past us, or when we were trying to close the portal. Had to change my spell eater out a couple of times, but that was about it. For most purposes, it could have been anything on the far side of the portal, and our assailants could have been any sort of enhanced zombie.

The second time was when Adom and I flew in during the Fawcett City fight. I didn't stick around longer than I had to, but other than the visibility issue I didn't encounter any particular difficulty.

The third time, our surroundings merged with the hellscape of the Odium. Probably due to the particular arcane hack Satanus was using to make the portal function in the first place. I didn't feel much then either. I… Didn't think to ask Jade whether or not she did.

I glance at her as Ambrose smears grave dust paste across her forehead.

She'd have said something, wouldn't she? She only complained about the risk-. No, I can… See her not commenting on her personal discomfort in favour of referring to something objective and external. It's just that this is a really crummy time to bring it up.

Ambrose backs off a little to admire his handiwork. Jade glances up, trying to see if anything's about to drip down from her forehead. "This is what being dead feels like?"

Ambrose opens his mouth to respond, then hesitates and closes it again. "You're not dead-dead-. Though, I'll say it again, that would have worked-"

"No." / "No."

Jade and I meet eyes for a moment, and she's doing that not-smile thing again.

"-and we could have kept your body perfectly healthy and stuck you back in it afterwards without any-"

"Bollocks you could."

"-trouble and yes I could."

Jade fixes him with a cold glare. "I'm keeping my body."

"Right. What I've done doesn't kill you, it just makes you count as being dead for most magic purposes. And the reason why this isn't as good as actually killing you is that your body isn't designed to work properly while it's dead."

"I was listening when you explained it. I won't heal properly and I'll get gradually weaker."

He nods. "You can't get pregnant either."

Jade's eyelids fall slightly, her expression implying that that was the most stupid thing he could have said. Then she turns her gaze from Ambrose to me. "Take me. Now."

I mirror her expression. "Necrophilia. Yay."

"Excuse me."

"And this is enough for me to fit in down there?"

"Yes. If you hadn't wanted to fit in in Hell, you shouldn't have murdered all of those people." Jade looks away. "Heck, we'll be using your sins as a compass."

"So in a way we're lucky I killed all those people."

Light flickers around John's helmet. "That would be pushing it. Please try to remember that I'm a traditional superhero. I don't find murder funny." Jade nods, pantomiming a chastisement she doesn't feel. "Ambrose, are your own preparations adequate?"

Having spent so much time around people at their physical peak, seeing Ambrose's gut hanging out of his open-fronted robe was a useful reminder of why I have my rings keep me looking like this. He's painted demonic sigils over all of his visible skin, as well as shaving his head and eyebrows. Though certainly no stranger to using demon magic, he's intentionally channelling it through his runes in order to make himself look like the very model of a demon sorcerer.

All he needs is a familiar demon.

Ambrose looks at me. "You about ready?"

Sigh.

Because while a sorcerer might be able to enter Hell freely, that entry can become permanent if he's not careful. Anyone with any sense doing that would be sure to have a reasonably powerful demon either bound or bought to act as a bodyguard. Something to ward off lower level attackers and make more powerful ones think carefully.

And since I can -technically- shapeshift, and since my rings are instantly recognisable… Guess who volunteered for that role?

The only thing I'm annoyed about is the lack of options when it comes to my new appearance. I'd have liked something a little bit classy. Or maybe just the form of a mini-Ophidian, I'm sure I could make that work. But there's too much chance of that being spotted, and I'm far too powerful to pose as 'just some demon'. Instead, I'm posing as one of Mammon's spawn. But with him being a significant figure in demon society, my form has to somewhat resemble his.

Ambrose's gut is about to be eclipsed.

Literally.

My rings float free from my fingers as my flesh begins to.. swell. Since I'm not actually a demon, they're swelling with added muscle and fat tissue rather than arcane power. Seems to be… Going okay. My forehead feels weird as the horns come through, but due to the placement of nerves it isn't hurting as I thought it would. And… Ugh, if I've got to have a huge gut anyway… I take my personal lantern out of subspace and hold it against my abdomen, the flesh swelling to encompass it. The rings enter next, a small cage of super-tough bone forming around them and anchoring them into place. Since the demon I'm pretending to be would be far more physically powerful than a baseline human I'm drawing on my knowledge of xenophysiology and bioengineering.

Ugh. I feel ugly.

I raise my talon-fingered right hand and take a look at the result of my changes. My fine object control is probably shot and I feel dreadful. But I don't look like me anymore, and my tattoos might conceivably be a spell a demon or his sorcerer might cast. And my mouth feels wrong, my everything is the wrong shape…

"Euanche, are 'oo ready?"

Euanthe grows, human-seeming plant flesh transforming to super-tough bark plates and brambles. Now that I've undergone a similar change, I can appreciate exactly the skill required to maintain control of a form this different from your norm-.

Oh, my distended stomach flops when I walk. That's revolting.

Anyway, she looks like a slightly smaller version of the Beast-killing version of Swamp Thing. One anti-demon minion, one demon minion, one skilled assassin depending on the sorcerer to keep her out of hell full time, and one corrupted sorcerer.

"Rea'y."

Jade checks her improved and enchanted weapons, including the Ace of Winchesters which I obviously can't carry myself. "Ready."

Euanthe checks her range of motion. Not a lot of plant life in Hell, so she'll be limited to what she brings with her. "I am ready."

"Alright then." Ambrose raises his hands, the space around us visibly darkening as the portal forms. "Let's be on our way." He starts chanting… 'Piscis magnus piscis minus carte tabula arca archa.' Really? Well, whatever helps him focus.

Jade sidles up to me as the wind -not an eldritch wind, just the product of a portal forming between two places of differing pressure- blows through the room. "How long do you think these disguises will last?"

"Thech're fine for mosrt purposes and theth teeth are horribowl."

"I guess this way I'll get a taste of Hell ahead of my time. Maybe after this I'll finally get around to choosing a religion."

"I'll take you to visit Ereboth myself."

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Retribution 16

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21st November

10:21 GMT -5

Purple-tinted nothingness swirls around us-

"Is this what people see when they die?"

-as Jade leads the way slowly through the aether.

Ambrose strolls after her, hands stroking the sides of his robe as if they're trying to get inside pockets his current clothing doesn't possess. "I don't know. I've never died before." He takes a moment to look around. "If I had to guess, I'd say that most people aren't coherent enough to experience this bit. Can you still feel the tug from-?"

"Yes, I can still feel it." She turns a little to the right and continues on.

"Jade?"

"Get into character, Paul."

"You're the most apparently-vulnerable member of the group. If you're having a problem-."

"Knowing I might be damned and literally feeling the pull of Hell with my soul are two-. Different things."

"If you need to take a break-."

"Ambrose, are Avarice Demons known for being kind to damned souls?"

"Not so's you'd notice. They're not especially cruel and they're usually not very ambitious, so compared to the local competition..."

"I am not enquiring for your own sake. You are an investment, and I intend to see to it that our.. employer gets his money's worth. There are other souls he could call up instead."

"Hm. Better." But she doesn't reply to my enquiry. "How long is this supposed to take?"

"Depends where in Hell you were going. And on a lot of other things that we don't know enough about. Less than an hour, probably longer than a minute."

"Do the provinces have anything to do with the Circles of Hell in Dante's Inferno? Because I… Assume that I'm being guided towards the seventh circle."

"In a word, no. Dante was more about bad-mouthing political figures he didn't like than about accurately reporting what happens to people when they die. I mean, Alexander almost certainly-" He glances my way. "-went to the Elysian Fields rather than Hell."

I shrug. I haven't actually asked about that. There are probably all sorts of famous people down in Erebos. Socrates and Plato almost certainly ended up there. It's a.. little odd that I haven't had to field more requests from historians for visiting rights. Or maybe the embassy is fielding th-.

The purple mist is suddenly gone and tight stone walls-. I raise a kaahuite shield as a hail of screaming arrows spring out from the murder holes surrounding us! Two miss outright as Jade and I move, three clatter off my shield and a sixth thunks into my left side. It… Huh. It barely even penetrates the skin, let alone causing me actual pain.

"Meat! Fresh meat! Freshagh!"

Jade's thrown knife finds the assailant behind the arrowslit easily while I barrel towards the nearest wall, swinging at it with my right arm! The wall shudders and cracks, further attacks immediately ceasing as I get a vague sense of those behind the wall falling back.

Fuck it. I'm a demon now. I hit it again.

Euanthe has already taken several arrows but doesn't seem to be affected, already reaching out with bramble-tentacles towards our attackers' hidey holes. Jade dodges another arrow and throws a small grenade through the slit protecting the archer. It detonates a moment later, the wall protecting whoever it was attacking doing just as well at shielding us from the shrapnel.

"You scum dare attack us!" Ambrose's sigils glow as he raises his hands… No idea what he's doing. My third punch shatters the wall, which is probably made of bits of soul or something but looks a lot like it's made of ill-fired brick. I thrust my left arm through, grabbing some sort of.. emaciated orc-looking thing and dragging it through.

"No! No! Nooooo!"

"Bottom-feeding scum." A punch with my other hand knocks a hole in the wall big enough for me to walk through, and the three other orc-like things there cower back.

"Ekg!"

Ambrose looks down at the arrow sticking into his chest, smiles and pulls it out. No wound on him, but orange blood is dripping from the tip. Sympathetic wound transfer empowered by demonic spite. Clever. One of the demons in front of me draws a short sword, so I throw the one in my hand at it with bone-crunching force.

"Guhk!"

"And part two." Ambrose brings his hands together and… I don't feel anything, but the demons in front of me shudder and shimmer before evaporating, their powdered remains floating through the air and into Ambrose's grasp. "Intelligence gathering. Let's see what this was about."

Jade walks through the debris and picks up a broken short bow. "I was expecting… More."

Euanthe's whole body is distorted, about a third of her torso turned into brambles now sticking through various holes in the wall to the rear of the parts while a stem supports her head in more or less the same place it was in when her body was fully humanoid. "I believe that more is coming."

Ambrose shakes his hands, residual demon evaporating into nothingness as he turns around. "Yeah, you're not wrong. Jade, gun. Mammite, sword."

I pull the sword from my belt and take a stance. The shield is really more buckler than anything for serious shield-walling, but if we actually need a wall then Euanthe can manage that aspect of things. I'm muscle for this operation until we break cover.

"Certainly, oh my fel master,

Gleefully, I charge disaster."

"Wha-?"

The wall Euanthe pierced evaporates as the demons did, revealing a vast open space and letting in the howls and cheers. I blink at the suddenly increased illumination, braziers of blue flames made up of burning pyrophobics attached to sconces around the.. arena walls.

An arena. Great.

"It seems our visitors have proven their mettle!" Euanthe leads the way out, arms swelling as she prepares to grapple. I follow her, taking a moment to look at the crowds… For the most part they put me in mind of slightly larger versions of the demons I fought in Fawcett City. "If not their intelligence! Who just follows a path laid out into Hell?!"

There's some laughter, and I suppose that it's somewhat deserved. Spawn camping. Truly, there's no evil that demons won't celebrate.

"And their opponent, no doubt hoping they'll last longer than the last bunch! Straight from Masak Mavdil, the toughest prison in the Labyrinth! Put your claws together! For!"

"You know." Ambrose looks around, his right toe drawing sigils in the blood-soaked sand. "I think we're in Ament."

"The lady Ran! Va! Daath!"

For a moment, nothing happens. Then the section of the stands opposite us bulges and explodes, broken benches and demons being sent flying into the air! A colossal green head darts out, grasping two demons from the air with its long sword-length fangs and chomping them down. Its head rises further as more of its colossal serpentine body begins to emerge and coil outwards onto the arena floor. A mantle of smaller snakes writhe around its face as its strangely blank green eyes stare all around for a moment before fixing on us.

And that's when Jade shoots it in the face.

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Retribution 17

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21st November

10:24 GMT -5

Gold-white fire completely fails to blossom what the heck?

"Did I pull the wrong lever?"

"No, that shot should have burned.

Mage, say what you have learned.

We face a beast

Pray say at least

That you've a fault discerned?"

The creature raises its head up further, a seemingly endless pile of coils flowing from the holding area underneath the stands. That's.. quite big. Its facial.. plate? Is about three metres tall, not counting the strange stag beetle like protrusion from its chin. The skin of the face is pale blue while the lips and markings on its chin horn are ruby red. The eyes are solid emerald green in colour, and the painted on eyebrows are jet black. There's a strange.. dome of some kind -presumably housing its brain- immediately behind the face, while on either side a hood like that of a cobra expands to a considerable distance. Lower down the trunk, as its 'neck section' starts to merge with its main trunk, I see swollen mounds of-.

Those are breasts. Eight of them.

"Ah, yep, that's not technically a demon."

"Does her being a lukhavim

Really affect the shape we're in?"

He squints at me. "Are you doing that on purpose?"

"What is it?"

"It's-. Okay, long story short? Most of Hell is made of soul-stuff. Souls come from material universe. God operates in the material universe. So Hell isn't as outside of God's sphere of influence as it originally was. That thing was spawned from the bit where the First first appeared, the bit totally outside of creation. Theurgy and theurgical weapons won't work. That thing could chomp angels all day and not care."

"Knowing that there are demons of that nature

Might have impacted the plan for this venture."

"There aren't many and they're usually too crazy to-."

"Where. Is. My. Son?"

There go the fangs again. The end of her tail finally becomes visible as it swings through the air and slams into the area of seating directly abutting her emergence point.

"I'd hate to be in the cheap seats right now!"

"To get involved with."

"How do we fight it?"

"Stab it until it stops moving, and try not to die."

The head is approaching us. Only very slowly, and the slight turns to either side seem to indicate that she doesn't find us especially interesting. But the rest of her body is spreading out along the far wall of the arena. Okay, she snapped demons out of the air and lashed out randomly but she isn't attacking the survivors, despite them being in striking range. Why not? I.. do remember that the Cabal in Magic: the Gathering used perception filters to keep arena animals focused on their opponents and away from the crowds. Perhaps they don't extend them to the 'cheap seats'? Or they don't block random attacks.

"Tell. Me. Where. He. Is."

Her head is.. sort of pointing this way. And I've got the largest lung capacity. "Family matters are no game,

Tell us, lady, what's his name?"

That gets me her undivided. "Etrigan!"

And.. now she's heading this way at speed, her head reaching forward as her coils uncoil to thrust her forward. Okay, not seeing natural weapons beyond the tail and teeth. She's.. five metres wide at her fattest point, but this doesn't look like a particularly hard f-.

I glance at my two squishy human colleagues. They've both got kinetic belts, but how certain am I that they work here?

I make eye contact with Euanthe. "The wench is mine,

The warlock thine."

Plant tendrils reach for Ambrose, lashing him to Euanthe's back. I grab Jade with my left arm -not like a buckler is going to do anything here- and start running directly towards the oncoming snake woman. Jade shifts to a better position, putting her hands on my forearm. "Do you have a plan?"

"Futile would be a frontal attack,

We need to stab her in the back.

Her form suggests not much agility,

I'll draw her attention away from thee."

"Why are you rhyming?"

What?

"Etrigan!"

"Looks like they said the magic word, folks! For those of you keeping track, Ran va Daath has killed over two hundred opponents in the arena since her release from the Labyrinth, and about five times that in spectators!"

She's not just slithering, she's using the coils against the far wall to push herself over the sands faster. Fifty miles an hour isn't much for a car but it's a pretty impressive clip for a giant demon snake. Closer, a little-. I alter my direction slightly, turning a little to the right and accelerating. She draws back her head slightly, but she's moving too fast to stop quickly enough to strike at me. Nonetheless, she stops pushing on the far wall and lowers her head slightly, curving her upper torso away from me and spraying sand as she uses friction to decelerate. I dodge back to the left, keeping a careful eye on her head as I move past her front end.

Immediate danger past, I grasp Jade with my left hand and toss her upwards towards Ms Daath's back. Jade sails smoothly through the air, draws enchanted daggers and stabs them into her side. With the flat of the blade facing Ms Daath's direction of travel they should hold on reasonably well.

I angle to the right again, Ms Daath's built-up momentum meaning that the rest of her body is continuing directly forwards even as she tries to turn. Agh, legs too short, I can't get ag! I'm knocked aside, staggering to stay upright as I don't get out of the way quite fast enough. Okay, step back, watch what she's doing before moving again.

Euanthe is running as well, long gangly legs moving her and her passenger far faster than I could mine. She's moving in an arc designed to keep her away from Ms Daath while still making good time across the arena floor. Heading for Ms Daath's holding pen? Ambrose points at the giant snake's head and a swarm of tiny… They're like birds made of shadows, appear around her face and start diving at her. Her eyes don't appear to have lids, but she lifts her head up a little and turns it first left and then right as she tries to give her snake-fringe the opportunity to bite the attackers.

"She doesn't have a spine!" Jade switches to keeping herself stuck in place with one enchanted knife while slashing at Ms Daath with an x-ionised blade. The snake demon now has a four inch deep wedge cut out of her back but doesn't appear to be responding to it at all. "Or.. blood!"

Oh fiddle. I really hope that Ambrose has an idea about that. Jade has the Sword of the Fallen, but it's a fairly distinctive weapon. And we still don't really know how it works. Right, what do I do? Flesh looks thinnest where the hood is, and I did say that I'd hold her attention. I dash towards her, this part of her body at a near stop while her head thrashes around and-. Ah heck, she's sidewinding part of her midsection towards Euanthe and Ambrose. No, I can't help with that, and it's a slow enough process that I'm sure Euanthe can come up with something.

I leap as best my stubby legs will allow, sword point down to anchor me to-.

The kaahuite point is turned aside by her scales and I'm just about to get a decent grip with my left talons before she starts moving again. Sword… Yep, just about kept hold of it, put it in the sheath and bring those claws to bear… Heave my disgusting, bloated belly over onto the top, good.

Jade glances back at me, eyes widening in interrogation. I just about have time to shrug as Ms Daath flips her head upside-down, spots us, and starts to roll.

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Retribution 18

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21st November

10:26 GMT -5

Jade snatches up her blades and leaps towards the 'safe' side. I on the other hand instinctively try to dig my toe claws in as soon as she starts to move, lose my balance and fall onto the sand fuck fuck f-agh! The light's blotted out as a giant snake coil flops on top of me and I just about get my arms and legs up enough to hold it somewhat off. I'm just glad this body is so tough.

"Little. Mammite."

Her muscles tense and relax, the weight being lifted off slightly before increasing…. Mrh, I'm okay. She may weight several tonnes but the weight of the bit actually resting on me isn't more than a fraction of that.

"This humble demon, this poor trapped soul

Will help the lady to find her goal."

Not that I imagine she can hear me. I didn't even see whether or not she had ears. She can hear.. somehow, right?

"He's in the Labyrinth!"

"Eat. Your. Soul. Take. Your. Knowledge."

Okay, sounds like this one isn't going to be solved through rational discussion. Glad we've got that eliminated. Now, while no one can see me there is probably some sort of spell set up to detect orange light use, so… Right, put my back into-.

The body section above me rises up into the sky. For a moment my eyes widen-.

ROLLROLLROLLROLL!

Bang! The fat cylinder of snake flesh slams into the sand next to me, but I don't stop rolling until I'm lying on my front and rise and sprint! I dash along the side of her body in the direction of her head as the part of her body that was on top of me rises up once more and slams down again slightly closer to me. It looks like… Yes, her head is now further off, while the rest of her body blocks my view of the rest of the arena.

Her face is pointing away from me, and unless she turns this way she can't aim any part of herself at me. But I'm supposed to be holding her attention. I halt my headlong rush, plant my feet and stab into her side with both sets of super hard fingernails. Force them in, turn them outwards slightly and then push and lift!

Two scale-covered meaty lumps come free in my hands, and I toss them aside before stabbing in once again. Jade was right; while Ms Daath is sort of oozing purple she isn't really bleeding. Small wounds aren't the way to do here, not unless we inflict enough to completely dismantle her. Which is the best plan I've got that maintains our cover.

My target twitches and then jerks away from me as she sidewinds this part of her body away from me, and for a moment I can look under it and see the rest of the arena. Ms Daath appears to be forming a rough circle two thirds of the way from the arena centre. Euanthe is forming wooden blades and hacking at a point about an eighth of the way from the tail while Ambrose… And her body comes down again before I can spot him. Okay, chance of me being able to keep my feet better if I climb on again? Minimal. Other option?

Ugh. I scurry -careful not to run in case part of her lurches back this way- towards the part of her body in front of me, and-. I glance left and see another coil coming in on my left side. Not.. in danger of grabbing me quite yet, but it will restrict my ability to move in that direction. Fine, can't do anything about that. I stick my claws in again and pull myself hand over hand up the curve of her body.

As I pull my head over the side a brilliant flash of light explodes from the head end as Jade tries a flashbang. Good shot, but Ms Daath doesn't seem affected as her face darts towards Jade! Jade ducks and rolls, narrowly making it through the chin-prongs as Ms Daath's teeth snap down on thin air. I see her arms jerk upwards as she attempts a strike into the bottom of Ms Daath's head with a blade, but the head's already retreating up out of range of her stab.

Okay, go. Like running on ice, grip with the toes, grip with the toes. Ready to grab with the fingers if necessary, but if Jade's got her attention at the moment-

Ms Daath raises a section of her neck and slams it down. Jade evades, but she's running out of room.

-then she won't be focusing on slashing me. I stop digging in my toes and simply sprint along her body, travelling in an arc around the arena. Ms Daath's face darts hither and thither as she tries to get a clean strike at Jade. Then she gives up on managing a mouth strike and tries slamming down on her with her chin spike, while at the same time shifting more of her body into the area to deprive Jade of the ability to evade her strikes. And she does this at the same time as smashing at Euanthe with her tail-spike, forcing her to shift to a more evasive shape to avoid being pounded to kindling.

I'm close enough now. Time to get her attention again.

"Hey, you! Snake tits!

I can see your saggy bits!"

She flips her head upside down, staring at me with expressionless face and writhing snake hair. Jade takes the opportunity to reposition herself on the opposite side to the coil build up while I draw my sword.

"Your display today ain't up to snuff

Come on if you think you're hard enough!"

"Weak. Edible."

I feel her body move under my feet, this part moving forward as she twists to bring her head in my direction in answer to my challenge.

"While in combat we're engaged

Etrigan still lies encaged."

She lunges face first at me, her head only just above the level of her body as she bends double.

"In deep Labyrinth, far from sight

What's the point of this stupid-?"

She rears slightly to bite down at me, and I wait until she begins her downward lunge to dig in my toe claws slightly and throw myself forward and down. Her teeth chomp where I was, while her chin spike -grab it!- passes close enough that I'm able to grab hold of it. And-.

And now we're rising into the air. Quite some way.

Ah.

I shift my hands to get a better hold.

"Go ahead, smash me you dope

You'll never see Etrigan as you hope."

I'll say this for this shape, the arm muscles are certainly strong. I release my right hand and draw my sword once more. Okay. Deep breath. The thin part of her neck is about three metres above and slightly behind me, and extends to eight metres further back. I am not confident of my ability to swing and leap, and it's probably just as immune to kaahuite as her lower body was. Claws? Not a great option, but if she swings me around-.

The world wheels as she flips wahgahagahgahletgo and now I'm falling back towards-. She's moving her head, claws claws and aim! I slide down her neck, claws cutting a visible furrow in the scales and she's twisting around on herself and leap!

"HSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!"

And there's the snakes. I backpedal along her bulbous head and slash with my sword, blade striking the first to dart for me directly on the muzzle-. Agh, these are immune too, the deflection nearly took it out of my hand! I pull my right hand back as the pseudo snake snaps for it, then spin my left around to slice at its trunk with my nails! Flesh parts and dig my feet in and get ready to-!

Her head turns face down, and I drop my sword as I jam both sets of claws into her flesh! No, it's parting it's parting there, something hard! My feet dangle as I hang off… If that part of her skull? Snakes snapping at me as their host swings her head left-.

"My. Boy! I. Hear!"

Demons flee from another section of the arena stalls as Euanthe spikes and hooks everything she can see, while Ms Daath herself-

"Mother! Comes!"

-dives for the sand which isn't sand any more it's a portal and where are we going n-?

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Retribution 19

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21st November

10:29 GMT -5

No restful purple void this time. The floor of the arena bends and ripples as if it were a rubber sheet and then the arena's gone and I'm getting a face of bwgf!

I try to pick myself up, but Ms Daath's body smashes me into a rock spire as she continues past. The spire snaps, but the force of the impact tears through my reinforced skin as I tumble to the ground. Ow! Yes, that's what pain feels-

"Yehaha!"

-like… I pick myself up and turn to face the-. The three green-furred demons staring at me from what I suspect they think is a safe distance. They're near-human in shape, but their heads are slightly too short and broad and their mouths too wide. They look a little like a gibbon would if it were dyed green and dosed with smilex. Doubt I'll get much sense out of them, but trying won't hurt.

"Gents, I think I lost that bout

Any chance you'd help a fellow out?"

The one closest to me starts a sort of panting-laugh noise, knuckle walks a few steps closer and then darts back to the hooted approval of his fellows. Okay, what have I got? Shield, kilt and loincloth. Sword… I glance up, but clouds of swirling grey… Ash? Cloud? Gas? Make it impossible to see more than a short distance into the sky. I don't know if my sword came with us or remained in the arena. If I remember the Grimoire Verum correctly, these things are opportunistic predators. Sub-sentient. Dangerous to people on their own or who are injured.

I make a point of standing straight and not showing that I'm hurt. The one on the left responds by sitting back on his haunches and slapping his forearms together.

"Hehahahaha!"

"OOOOOwh! OOOOOwh!"

I risk taking a moment to glance in the direction Ms Daath is hurtling in. In the distance stands a mighty fortified tower wreathed in spikes. Some spikes are clearly defensive in nature, designed to impale flying attackers or fend off scaling ladders. Others are.. architectural, giving the tower the look of the head of a morning star planted in the ground. I can't imagine what practical purpose they're for. Around the base of the tower are lesser curtain walls and fortifications, and it's these that Ms Daath is currently alternately smashing through or snacking on. The guards appear to be in the mould of the orc cosplayers I saw earlier, but considerably more beefy and.. some of them have horns. Standard pattern demon warriors, then. They're certainly standing their ground rather better than the arena fans did, but-.

I hear a quiet sound behind me and spin around, outstretched right hand slapping one of the demon… Imps? To the ground as his comrades caper backwards. I dart forwards, lunging to grab hold of his left leg with my right hand. As my fist closes around his limb I haul him off the ground, pulling him close and biting into his should-.

What the fuck am I doing?

I toss him aside, spluttering and spitting out… Bits of… I think it's mostly blood, but… Ugh. Cannibalism? Okay, it's.. arguable. These aren't humans, and they don't have human-equivalent intelligence. I eat animal meat… I didn't specifically want to do that, but it felt… Natural. I wanted to dominate them so they'd stop attacking me… And it occurred to me that biting one was the best way to do it.

I look around, ignoring the cowering imp. I wouldn't have thought that Hell could get to me, but… I mean, that probably was the best way to-.

Don't worry about it. What next? Aym used to rule here, his fortitude allowing him to survive and prosper. But who rules it now?

"You ignorant, ill-mannered, bottom feeding scum

Into whose domain have I chanced to come?"

"Heah heah heah."

Yes, that was a bit optimistic.

"I need to get to yonder fort"

I point in its direction with my right hand.

"Any chance you can correctly comport?"

The one I bit cringes sycophantically, then glances back at the other two. Another round of gasping pseudo laughs. Ah, heck with it. This time I turn away fully, and start my trek in the direction of the tower. The demon warriors are forming up, lines of pikemen attempting to hold her at bay while wizards and.. some sort of mechanised siege engine get into position to bombard her. Hm. I don't actually know that's exactly where Etrigan -and therefore Jason Blood- actually are, but it does seem like a reasonable bet. Certainly a better one than wandering the wastes pointlessly. I'm not in danger of getting stuck -John's perfectly capable of keeping track of me, and if things go totally to pot he can open a portal himself- but getting separated from the group's magician is going to make things a little awkward.

The demonic defence cannon fires, hitting Ms Daath right in the tits and burning away a layer of skin or two. Her retaliation is-. Her main face and all of her snakes orientate on the gun, and the ghostly blue runes lighting it up turn orange and then red for a moment before the entire assemblage detonates, killing its crew and sending shards of metal scything into the nearby infantry! I had.. wondered why she hadn't used magic against us. Perhaps we didn't inflict enough damage to be worth it? I must have run past the point where Jade attempted her initial incisions, and I don't remember seeing anything.

Three wizards raise their arms, orange and purple lights coalescing in the air above them before leaping towards their target. The hellfire strikes home and tries to splatter off her just as my kaahuite sword did, but purple strands wrap around spell and target both and hold them together. I'm too far away to tell exactly what it's doing to her, but she isn't letting it distract her from smashing into a foolhardy block of soldiers. The lights around the magicians intensify as they redouble their efforts…

And they should have been looking behind them. That way they might have spotted her tail before it smashed them into pulp and their bastion into rubble.

The spell lights fade from her as the casters die, and… I can't see any damage from here. Possibly it fades as soon as the attack stops. Mildly bothersome if true, but killing her isn't an objective. We can leave fighting her until we actually have to.

I lose sight of the fight around the tower as I come to a small clearing containing what's left of a guard post. It looks like she bulldozed it without directly engaging the personnel, but when a few hundred tonnes of snake-themed abomination does that there isn't much difference in the results. Should probably stop and see if I can find a weapon.

"You… You…"

Hm, wounded demon warrior. I do have two of Wallace's healing potions with me, but I think his injuries are a little too severe for that. If it even works on demons. He's basically just got his left arm and the upper left part of his torso left from what looks like a smash injury from a rock.

"Your wound is mortal,

And I'll not chortle,

Even though you don't exactly look your best.

I'm passing through,

Hi, how'd you do?"

I pick up a kaahuite scimitar from near his body and hold it towards him.

"Should I send you to your final rest?"

"Scum-snorting… Rhymers." He shudders, a disturbing gurgling noise coming from what's left of his lung. "Yes, yes! Aghh."

I slam the blade into his neck, severing his head with a brief spurt of blood. Then I step back. None of the others here are still alive, not that I can see anyway. I suppose that any survivors might have run after her. I turn away from the ruin and start once more down Ms Daath's wake towards the distant tower. One way or another, the fight should have resolved itself by the time I arrive. Now, what was that he said about rhym-?

A red skinned demon with two curved horns on his brow and a burning pentagram on his chest leaps from the tower. No wings that I can see, though that doesn't seem to concern him. A moment later he thrusts his hands forward and flames erupt, covering the entirety of Ms Daath's body.

I hear her screech.

William Hayes. I suppose he wasn't going to end up in Detroit, was he?

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Retribution 20

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21st November

10:34 GMT -5

Okay. He still shouldn't be able to recognise me. Bit surprised that Satanus put him in charge of something. He never really demonstrated the greatest planning skills. But, maybe becoming a demon encouraged personal-

Ms Daath locks eyes with him and his flames dim and then vanish completely. He flies around behind her, and she responds by pulling more of her body into a defensive coil-pile.

-growth? I'm not sure what the garrison here are supposed to do, but I suppose that he could use the inmates to practice his blood knighting skills. The more powerful demons tend not to simply be better brawlers, but better magicians and plotters. With the added essences of Aym, Belial, Beelzebub, Asmodeus and Craeteis, even a neophyte demon like him can pull his weight. I wonder if he calls himself 'Cabab' or 'Bacab' or 'Babac' now? No, no, for a Dark Kantian like him Satanus would want a choke chain: Satanus' power binding his augmentations together.

I accelerate to a jog, the broken walls of the outer fortification drawing closer. I wasn't really able to see a way into the interior from where I was, but there must be some way of moving materials and new inmates inside. Hm. I wonder: does rendering not work on demons of a certain level of power? I can't see any obvious benefit to keeping Etrigan in existence otherwise. And in Jason Blood mode he should be perfectly killable.

Maybe I'm not thinking about this correctly. Ms Daath was outside of the prison. Would they keep her in the arena until she died, then similarly use Etrigan in that manner? Circuses to go with the Devil Jizz bread? No, that doesn't sound quite right. There aren't enough arenas, or a good enough internal communications system for more than a fraction of the population to view them. Warrior training? A reminder to anyone looking that their overlords could sentence them to the arena-. No, no, they've already got rendering as an ultimate threat. A sudden death at the teeth of an abomination would probably be considered a good death. In their position, why would I-?

Studying the abomination. And Etrigan himself. How he was bound to a human, how the anti-creation abilities of abominations work. Because Satanus knows that he's going to have to fight the Silver City eventually, and if he's only got one thing that can trump their trumps…

Did she already kill Remiel and Duma? It would explain why they're not around, but I would have expected the Silver City to have a slightly stronger response to their people dying. But I suppose they'd have to know about it. There isn't actually a lot of good information on angels available in occult circles, most likely due to the fact that they aren't biddable and can travel to a summoner's location later at no cost to themselves. Particularly after what happened to John Dee, I suppose demons just seem like the safer bet.

The mortar valiantly holding up a chunk of outer battlement loses its fight with whatever does duty as gravity in this place, a sizable lump of masonry falling to the ground as I stroll through Ms Daath's entry point just in time to see the end of her tail disappear into the inner keep.

Hm. On the plus side, a convenient entry point. On the down side, the forces hereabouts are a little less distracted-

"Mammite."

-now. Mr Hayes floats down, long hair billowing from the heat given off by the hellfire-blasted stone. I assume, anyway. He's glowering at me as a sizable chunk of the orcoids charge in through the breach.

"It had best explain why That One has returned."

He's glaring at me, but there's no special fire to it. He doesn't know who I am, even with Belial's Evil Wisdom. Of course, given how Belial died…

I make a shallow bow.

"My lord, your pardon, t'was not my doing,

I'd more fun in mind than beast-pursuing.

She most dearly wants to see her pup,

So she's going to fuck your prison up."

The corners of his mouth turn down further. "You're speaking in rhyme. Harm does not find this amusing."

I shrug.

"I've noted no change in my thinking schema,

What can you tell me of these phenomena?"

"It is ignorant. This disappoints Harm." He lands and walks closer and… He's really quite an attractive demo-.

Wait, what? I can still see his desires. Either Satanus can't mask them or hasn't bothered in Mr Hayes' case. He's still the same loathsome man he was last time we met. Why isn't it.. bothering me more? Something's affecting me.

"A parting curse from the Morningstar. There was a fashion among lesser Its to speak in rhyme. He found it vexing, so when he left he made sure that it would never stop. Those Its who rise above an inconsequential level of power find themselves compelled to speak in verse for a time."

"I hope that soon I will be stopping,

Oh, what sick rhymes will Harm be dropping?"

"Harm is above such things." He looks around at the ruined fortifications and equipment, and sighs faintl-. The ruined fortifications, equipment and demons, and sighs faintly. "Harm had thought the Its would perform better. But Harm can punish them later."

"Will we pursue Ran va Daath into the interior,

In case your soldiers need a kick up the posterior?"

He smiles. "The interior is filled with failures. The Morningstar's failures at creating life without God. Demons too foolish to be let free but too useful to be passed to the renderers. A few damned souls kept for amusement. Harm finds it restful."

I raise my sword slightly.

"This blade is scavenged, it will not do at all,

If we should perchance need to engage in a brawl."

"Harm does not see why that is Harm's concern." He dips slightly into a dash start and then blurs, flash-like as he runs into the tower.

Well, if he's going to be a dick about it, I don't see why it's mine either. I start forward at a j-.

No. No. I'm in hell, and something is affecting me. I'm pretty much immune to direct magics, but something is still changing the way I think and feel. Why does fighting alongside Har-. With William Hayes feel like just the right thing to do? What are my vulnerabilities? The tattoos don't stop direct, manually aimed attacks, but I haven't been exposed to one of them. I had them checked after that G-Oni damaged it in Argentina and they're still working fine.

But what happened to that G-Oni? Chances are it died with the rest when Angelica burned them, but we knew that we didn't get them all. That… Could mean that there's a fragment of my soul around somewhere. I saw Ambrose bind the essences of those demons. I didn't see the G-Oni do that, but they were rather focused. Any loose fragment of my soul should have either returned to me or gone onto a thematically-appropriate afterlife. Thana hasn't passed on any messages…

Don't know. What elohfuck!

My basic tattoos draw magic energy from my surrounding area at an accelerated rate. They were doing that to build me a soul, but there wasn't a stop mechanism because John said it would trail off naturally as I stabilised. Ignoring the fact that whatever my soul is I'm pretty sure that 'stable' isn't an appropriate descriptor, I'm now surrounded by demonic magic. Were my tattoos set to only absorb earth magic? I don't rememb-. No, it's John, of course they weren't!

I'm a pretend demon actually becoming a demon. And it's already gone far enough that I'm apparently talking in rhyme. Test it.

"Oh, isn't this a dreadful to-do,

And I've no idea where I'm going to."

HOW DID I NOT NOTICE THAT!

No, I remember Mr Cassidy in Shadowpact. He didn't notice either, and got quite defensive when anyone brought it up. Okay, I'm rhyming. Could Angelica fix-

An image of the G-Oni vaporising appears in my head.

-this..? Yeah. Okay, there are a couple of bits of pomegranate left in the Atlanteans' lab. If all else fails I'll eat some of that. Or try consuming the demon magic with the orange light. Worst case, I'll end up like Alan.

But I've still got a job to do. I need to find Mr Blood and undermine Satanus. Which means that I need to follow the hotness-.

Mr Hayes, I need to follow Mr Hayes anyway.

I start jogging.

back

Retribution 21

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21st November

10:38 GMT -5

"I find myself talking in rhyme

Compelled to do it all the time.

Whatever I might think or feel

It is all really quite surreal."

FUCK! Even when I know it's happening, I can't stop it! All that's happening is that I'm getting funny looks from the demon soldiers I'm hurrying past as I dash after William Hayes who is a psychotic monster and not hot at all except literally due to Beelzebub's fire manipulation powers.

Demon me, you can do better.

And now I'm thinking about my relationship with Jade. Really? Really? But I am-? I mean, am I just thinking about it because of the demon magic, or is that just giving me an excuse? Look, whatever doubt she's having -and she's having more than I am- she was still willing to come to Hell for me. That's loyalty you don't get from demons.

Okay, Zatanna would probably be more loyal-.

Shitshitshitshit.

I actually… Felt that. What it would be like to accept slavish devotion without guilt or hesitation. I accepted that part of my desires before I achieved enlightenment, but since then I've been aware of exactly why it was a minority view. For a moment there it wasn't.

I haven't lived long enough to become the villain yet!

At times like this I am painfully aware of how irrational and relative my particular values are. I'm not sure if that's a weakness of me or of Orange Lanterns in general, but I double down on my attachments because I have attachments.

And Jade finding new strength through me makes her a better mate. Zatanna's still going to be on-side whatever the particulars of our relationship.

…

That's… True, but don't think I didn't hear the difference there.

H-urh. I'm.. tempted to hit the 'Call John' button. Not being myself is one of my major fears. But I'm so close to Mr Blood, and the locals are providing me with an escort! And if the fellow in charge can't stop one abomination, letting a few out should provide enough of a distraction.

The guard parts to allow me out onto a walkway which appears to.. run around the entire interior of the tower around a pit. Mr Hayes is already standing at the edge and gazing downwards, the other guards sensibly giving him his space.

"It thinks to outrun Harm. Harm will teach It that this is quite impossible."

I approach somewhat carefully.

"Your pardon, sir, but my knowledge is incomplete,

Who ruled this place before their rightful defeat?"

"Its name was Abaddon. It felt a surprising degree of loyalty to the First of the Fallen, and would not accept the change of things."

"Of the First's fall I'm sure I'd heard,

But who defeated the loyal bird?"

He slowly turns his head my way, a relaxed smile on his lips. "Harm had that pleasure. And now that Ran Va Daath has returned, the prohibitions against Harm slaying her son have lapsed. You will bear witness to Harm slaying Etrigan. Come."

I frown, as best my horns allow.

"You might well be perfectly alright

But Mammites were not designed for flight.

I'd love to watch you slay that clown

But I've no idea how to get-."

He picks me up in one hand and throws me over the balcony.

Ah. I'm falling quite fast. Not as afraid as I thought I'd be, but that's probably due to all the experience I have of being safe while airborne. Try angling for the walls? I think they're too far away, but a frame this strong might be able to maintain a grip at terminal velocity. What else? Using my rings to fly is an option, but a giveaway if anyone is paying attention.

Aaaaahh… Super strong organic wing design. Eidetic memory, don't fail me now. That'll do. Ring, go.

OWOWFUCKINGFUCK! IF I EVER DECIDE TO BECOME A DEMON AGAIN, I'M HAVING WINGS FROM THE START!

I don't open them wide. Rather, I use them to gradually turn downward momentum into lateral movement, spiralling in increasingly flat circles around the pit. Little bit wider, little bit wider… And I.. still don't know where I'm supposed to be heading-.

"It will follow Harm."

Mister Hayes flies past me, clearly under his own control and entirely unaffected by gravity. I.. close my wings a little, diving after him. For a demon and a murderer he's making surprising allowances for my apparent weakness. Which is somewhat suspicious. Harm always worked alone, and didn't appear to have any particular need for an audience.

"We're diving rather deeply into this well,

You are aware I don't have a scrying spell?"

"Harm does not see how that is a problem. It merely needs to follow Harm's lead."

"And not record your valorous deeds?

Demon Lords usually have certain needs."

"Harm does not care for the opinion of the 'Its'. It is simply convenient for Harm to send a messenger rather than go himself. You will bear witness to Harm and inform Harm's ally."

"To hear is to obey,

By your side I will stay.

But if I may ask and you aren't getting bored,

Who, pray tell, is this illustrious Lord?"

"Lord Satanus of Limbo. Here."

He stops suddenly, and I'm forced to spread my wings suddenly to turn my dive into upward motion. No, not enough simply to glide. I'm going to have to flap as well. Mr Hayes has already landed on a lower balcony and very pointedly isn't waiting for me. Flap, flap, oh this is.. not fun. If I do this again I'm going to be sure to work some Nth metal into the mix. No, not working. But the wall looks like regular rock, so if I grab on… Yep, got a grip, now I can claw my way up.

"Harm will inform It that this level is inhabited by Scabbies. They may eat you. It would displease Harm were that to occur."

Shield and sword at the ready, then.

"It's been a while since I've seen these climes.

Who -or what- are these Scabbies of thine?"

"Prisoners captured during the War in Heaven and now broken. They are beneath Harm's contempt but may be dangerous to lesser 'Its'."

"While I will endeavour to keep myself alive,

If they're using theurgy I'm not going to thrive."

"We are beyond God here. His miracles do not function."

Explains what might have happened to Remiel and Duma. How hard would it be to convince them to check in on their former comrades?

"A dangerous place,

For those denied grace."

"Harm finds it… Restful. Ah. They come." He stops walking and gestures for me to keep going. "Amuse Harm."

back

Retribution 22

next

21st November

10:41 GMT -5

I see the first one, and I'm suddenly less worried about the overwhelming power of the Silver City. The first one I see is emaciated, trembling and is quietly mumbling to itself. It reminds me a little of that poor creature from that.. horror program. How physically strong are they? Not sure, and-.

It looks up, and… Yeah. It's making-

"Tch-tch-tch-tch-tch…"

-a sort of clicking, sucking noise, its eyes blank and staring. The wings are there, but the one on the left looks like someone's been gnawing on it.

"Pathetic creature, gaunt and weak,

Is it truly the end you-?"

"HAEHHH!"

It pulls in its arms and snarls, sharp rotting teeth on display.

"Or mayhap that's too great a boon?

To help you leave here so soon."

No recoverable parts I'd want. I mean, look at it. Even Cranius would hesitate before sticking bits of this thing in his lab. Really, the question is what helps me get into a useful position with regard to Satanus. I mean, there's no mind left here and if the Silver City wanted it back then Remiel and Duma would have done something about it. Since there's no mind there to suffer, I'm not going to worry about what it thinks.

That's what the Silver City would want, right?

I sheathe my sword and reach out for it. It lunges for me, but those arms are about as strong as they look. Holding it presents no real challenge. But what would Harm find funny? The investigation into his murders showed that he wasn't particularly sadistic. He'd kill someone -including his sister- when there was a material benefit from doing so, but he didn't go out of his way to make them suffer. I don't remember anything about his sense of humour…

Broken angel in hand, I turn around and walk past Harm back onto the balcony. Careful not to let it look down, I turn its head upwards. The light here is.. okay. You can't see details for any distance, but it's certainly possible to see that there are other balconies from down here.

"You know, not all that long ago, Lucifer quit Hell. The Silver City sent Remiel and Duma to rule here in his place. Now, they probably couldn't hear you all the way down here… But maybe if you got a little higher. Yes?"

Something… A dim forgotten longing appears on its confused countenance. Nothing beyond the level of a mangy dog not immediately biting someone it remembers having fed it, but it's certainly a change. I walk over to the left extremity of the balcony, where it meets the wall of the shaft. Carefully, I lift the angel so that it can grip the rock face.

"Best of luck."

I step back as its eyes widen, and it takes its left hand away to reach upward to the next handhold.

And loses its grip and plummets downward.

I watch it fall for a moment, then shrug and turn back towards the entrance. Harm frowns beautifully. "That was not quite what Harm had in mind. Nonetheless, Harm appreciates its effort."

"Oh, come now. What's not funny about that? The first remotely positive thing it's felt since it got stuck down here, and it results directly in its death. It will feel despair that it thought it had become accustomed to with new bitterness as the last thing it ever feels."

"And then it will feel nothing. One of the few truly free creatures in the universe will eat its remains, and it will cease to be."

"Your pardon, my lord. I didn't bring my custard pies with me." Still, that's an interesting point of view. I stroll back towards the entrance, keeping a cautious watch on him at all times. "Free in what sense?"

"Almost everything that is, is created by God. Even this place, the souls in it and the capacity for the suffering they experience. Evil itself is defined by God. Harm always sought freedom from the chains of morality, and is now close to Its who cannot exist within that framework. Who can scarce understand it. Harm cannot help but feel jealous."

I lead the way back inside, keeping an eye out for any stronger inmates.

"There must be some way to graft that capacity onto a demon. Ran va Daath claimed to have dammed Etrigan, after all."

"That is why Harm has learned to tolerate lesser Its."

Tunnels, the layout… Deliberately confusing. And the width is such that a single being couldn't block it and that an army couldn't bring its full strength to bear. A few rags, a few well-gnawed bones… It seems a bit of a waste, leaving them here.

"Is there a Missus Harm?"

"Yes. She did not come here upon her death. At the time, Harm did not know the appropriate rituals."

I nod. "It's sad when families are broken up like that."

Somewhere in the distance I hear a whimpering.

"Harm notes that It has stopped compulsively rhyming."

"So it has. So either I've bored Lucifer's spell or… What, my power growth has halted?"

"Harm is surprised that It is not more familiar with the process."

"I didn't fancy paying Mammon's fees. I've gained a lot of power lately, but as I said, I've been away from Hell."

Hm-? He hangs back sl-.

I'm already crouched as the first Scabbie throws itself at me from the side passage. This one is notably stronger, only the skin visibly worried while the muscle beneath remains strong. One wing's shorn away at the shoulder, but the other seems reasonably healthy.

"Hellspawn."

I feint at his head with my sword but he doesn't seem concerned. I edge forward, feinting again while just close enough that inactivity could see it turn into a stab-. He slaps the flat of my blade aside with more strength than any human of his proportions would have, nearly knocking it from my hand! I step back and raise my shield as he steps forward, whipping his wing out in a feint of his own-.

Why am I wasting time with this scum? I've trained with Kon often enough to know what super strength feels like.

I push forward, grinning at the sting from his wing strike and from his attempt to reverse his advance to avoid my sword. I cut a shallow slash across his chest and narrowly miss chomping down on the tip of his wing with my fangs. The fact he's backing up is a fairly clear indication that he knows he's not strong enough to do much to me. It's a front.

Bringing my shield back up I push rapidly forward. One punch is blocked by my shield, my sword getting a decent cut on his arm in retaliation. He's still backing up so I charge, smacking into him and using my bulk to pin him against a wall. He punches me in the face with his left fist but I barely feel it. Harm-honey wanted amusing?

I bite, his fingers crunching as I mutilate his hand. Another bite gets me a chunk of palm and now my sword's in position. Slicing a wing off would be hard but for the unyielding stone behind us. I drop the sword and grab it by the bleeding end, pulling back just far enough to shove it into his mouth. The impact knocks his head back into the stone, stunning him, and I let the ridiculous failure of an angel fall to the ground.

"I remember something about the worst torture in Hell being one that gave the victims a view of Heaven, so that they would always know what they had failed to achieve. I don't know how to do that to this one, but perhaps propping him up on the balcony sans arms and legs would achieve a similar result? Mm?"

Harm smiles.

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Retribution 23

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21st November

10:47 GMT -5

"…Harm is not merely a capable warrior." Harm generously condescends to allow me to open the door for him. "Harm has been blessed with knowledge and intellectual ferocity to match Harm's physical abilities."

I nod. "The Evil Wisdom of Belial and the Evil Courage of Asmodeus."

"The Evil Wisdom and Courage of Harm." He walks down the corridor a short way, then turns back to indicate a cell door. "Harm's curiosity is most aroused by the interactions of contradictory and conflicting magics. Observe one of the Its Harm has studied."

I walk up to the door and move the slide away from the viewing slot. Can't see all that much on the far side. A trio of dull braziers take the other cardinal points of the room, and a double layer magic circle surrounds the man in its centre. He's suspended in the air by chains wrapped around his wrists and fixed to the ground by chains wrapped around his ankles. His head is tilted down and ragged blonde hair obscures his face…

But not the ragged ends of his wing stumps where someone took a chainsaw to them. Or the ragged hole in his chest from which someone tore his heart.

"They gave you Gabriel."

"Harm has observed that It tries to face away from the door." Harm's.. right next to me. I can feel his breath on my neck as he speaks. "It finds the existence of other Its shameful."

Former colleagues, reduced to feral beasts. Who wouldn't? But I always assumed that he was supposed to be allowed to repent. Was getting tricked into having sex with one succubus really that big a deal?

"I suppose that freshly fallen angels are somewhat thin on the ground. But wouldn't Remiel and Duma have been in control when he first arrived?"

"Harm has been informed that They oversaw Its initial punishment themselves." Oh, why did I give this body a penis? Things could get awkward if he looks down. "If It was not supposed to be punished, It would not be down here."

What could I say that would ingratiate myself with the Harmness further?

I lean a little closer to the hatch. "Hey, ponce. You may be pleased to know that John Constantine is alive and well. Actually… A little birdie told me that he's more powerful than ever, and Chantinelle has become an elemental of love."

There's a quiet groan from the fallen angel. Ah well, they can't all be winners.

And if the existence of Hell doesn't prove that…

…M.. n.. yeehh… Might be worth trying to get him out. Maybe? He was kind of a dick. But having him and the Silver City owe me a favour… Would they even want him back? Or maybe..? If his wings grant theurgy, what would his other organs do? Can't really tell Harm about that, not until I know more about what he's learned-.

Satanus is partially human. Able to move back and forth between Hell and Earth at will, without the huge expenditure of power it usually takes Demon Lords. I doubt that he's supplying Harm with research materials without the expectation of some sort of return. I.. don't know if Etrigan finds moving between Earth and Hell similarly easy thanks to Blood, though their pairing is demonstrably superior to most instances of possession. And Etrigan hasn't ever been banished…

"I would be fascinated to watch you work, and to discover what you have learned. But there is a rather large snake abomination heading this way."

"She will have to go to Harm's holding pen if she wishes to recover Harm's prisoner. Her mass will not allow her to use the central shaft. While Harm does not expect the Its who defend this place to stop her, her lack of self control will cause her to slow to fight them."

He moves away and -quick readjust of the loincloth- and I head after him.

"Are we trying to kill her, contain her… What?"

"Harm's experience suggests that the abominations cannot be killed by conventional means. Harm means to enjoy himself. When Harm kills Etrigan before her eyes, Harm is confident that she will focus her attention on Harm."

"Have you learned all you can from him? It would be unfortunate if you were to lose your only subject with his particular characteristics."

"Harm has performed as much research upon the demon as he can. Despite Its considerable suffering It refused to return to Its human form. As such, it has no ongoing value other than to instigate Harm's next fight."

The walk is somewhat circuitous, the corridors winding down and around. Glancing down side passages I occasionally catch glances of more Scabbies, though they shrink back as they meet my gaze. Plenty of potential bargaining chips here.

"You hold Etrigan deeper than Gabriel?"

"The angel lost its capacity for theurgy when it fell. It has little to teach Harm. The demon was more useful, and far more capable-" He pushes open a reinforced door. "-of escape."

"Weak mortal soul, stolen-power clad

Oh how your return, it makes me glad!"

Naked Etrigan chained to a rack, his muscles straining against his bonds. There are burns and cuts all over his body, but they're fading even as the small demonic creatures surrounding him cut and stab and brand.

"And you've got a new friend, too!

Both your guts will make my stew!"

"Harm has heard It before. Harm is no more impressed now than he was then." Harm walks closer, the imps scrambling back as he does so. "But Harm must inform It that our time is at an end. Its mother is returning and Harm no longer cares to be distracted."

"Mother would eat ten of you for lunch!

You'll not even land a single punch!"

"Forgive me for interrupting Lord Harm, but would you have an easy way to access Limbo?"

"Given Its inability to fly effectively, Harm intends to teleport It."

"Flee for your life, feeble boy!

Lest you become my mother's toy!"

"Could you send two?"

"Harm is aware that It has become attached, but Harm has work to do."

Shame. "I wouldn't expect you to blow off work for a first date, but have you really extracted all of the value from Etrigan here that you could?"

"Without the ability to study Its better half, Its utility is not great."

"Naturally." I walk past him and crouch slightly near the still rhyme-cursing demon. "Fall, fall, O Etrigan

And rise once more in form of man."

And he doesn't even have time to gasp, his body shrinking in on itself and naked demon being replaced by naked and.. bleeding man. Because Jason Blood doesn't have enhanced regeneration. Ugh. I take a vial of healing potion from my belt, remove the seal and pour about half of it onto one of the larger wounds on his chest. The rest I shove down his throat.

I look up to see Harm staring at me. "Harm is curious. How did It know the trigger phrase?"

"'It' knows all manner of things. Including that it is unwise to reduce Its value. Harm does have something of a-"

There's a tremendous crash, and the room shakes.

"-reputation. I can remove Mister Blood here to Limbo, and you can study him again once this prison is secure. And if you need a lab assistant… My calendar's looking reasonably empty."

His eyes narrow and his face hardens. "Harm dislikes It concealing information. Harm also dislikes his hand being forced." He raises his hands, purple fire flickering from his fingertips. "It will be disciplined later."

The fire roars, and engulfs both me and Mister Blood.

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Retribution 24

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21st November

10:47 GMT -5

Ow! Ow!

No… No, I mean, it hurts, but that fact isn't bothering me as much as it should. It's not as if I have a power ring available to use at the moment. Injuries will stick with me until I heal, and while this body heals quickly it does so using biological processes. Maybe… Having a ring available for so long has just altered the way I think about becoming damaged?

A.. nd the flame's gone and.. we're standing on a stone platform in a… A stone gazebo. Mr Blood drops the metre or so from where his bench was to the new floor level, cracking his head-.

I crouch down next to him, pull him into a sitting position and pour my last potion between his lips. "Try to stay alive, Mister Blood. Batman wants your counsel."

He splutters weakly for a moment, as if trying not to breathe the potion in. I toss the vial and then hold his mouth closed with my right hand until I feel him swallow, then remove my hand and pull him upright.

"Can you stand unaided?"

"What-?" He weakly pulls away from me, and I cautiously allow him. Seems… Fairly stable… "What do you want? Who are you?"

"Remind me: do you and Etrigan share memories, or do you not know where you are?"

"Some.. some things. Are you a friend of his?"

"He wants to make stew with my guts."

"That's a lot of stew. You've got-."

"Huge guts, yes yes."

"What did you-" He sways slightly. "-give me?"

"Etrigan was being tortured by Harm, new Demon Lord of Labyrinth. It seems that you retained his injuries, so I gave you a healing unguent."

"Why? You said.. Batman…"

"Did I? Oh, silly me. I mean Harm wanted a look at you, but Etrigan's mother took priority. Anyway, you dropping dead because you're not as tough as a demonic abomination would be awkward, so I'm keeping you alive." I take a moment to look around. "Though I should warn you: we're in Limbo at the moment, and there's a demon around here by the name of Sterocax who just can't help himself when it comes to eating living humans, so… Maybe try and look less alive?"

"If you wanted me to look less alive, then you probably shouldn't have given me a healing potion."

"Then I'd have to carry you. But, just so we're clear? If you start chanting 'fall, fall, the form of man', I'm pretty sure I can kill you before you can finish."

"Yes, I… Imagine that you can. I'm not.. entirely clear why it's in my interest to help you on that front."

"You're in Hell. If you want to get out, you have to stay alive. I'm not sure what happens if you die here, but I'm not liking your chances of actually getting away. There was this priest John Constantine used to know who shot himself right before the First of the Fallen got to him…" I shrug. "Guess how well that worked."

"Alright. My.. options for escape are.. almost nonexistent. What are we doing now?"

What indeed? Following the original plan would involve getting information on what Satanus is doing here… Ah. Yes, there's nice stonework and some vines climbing up it, but I'm not hearing birds or insects. And the stonework is free of moss and lichen. It's new, designed to look old. "Any thoughts on how Satanus could have transformed Limbo to look like this?"

"Are you going to tear my head off if I use magic to investigate?"

"Probably not."

"I.. suppose that's the best I can hope for." He walks over to the closest pillar and lays both hands on it, closing his eyes as he does so. "It's… Not Satanus' own power. It feels like… Creation, the Earth."

"Are you saying he opened a portal and brought stuff in?"

"No." He steps back. "The depth, the.. connection to the Dream, it isn't there. It's simplified, but… It's like someone has tried to.. mimic the material universe..?"

"An improvement on what was here before?"

"That would depend on what you mean by 'improvement'. For those who existed here, quite possibly. But I'm concerned about the level of power it would take."

"Didn't I hear about Hades doing something similar with Erebos?"

"I-. You may have done. Who.. are you?"

"'Mammite' will do, I think. But if it's similar to that, where is Satanus getting the power from?"

"I have no idea."

"We'd best try and find out, then." I wave my right hand in the direction of one of the paths away from here. "After you."

He looks at me, looks around for a moment and then with a sigh starts walking slowly in the direction indicated. "Why do you care?"

"That's a rather curious question. In theory, I should want to depose Satanus, but looking around at everything he's achieved… I'm not sure that it's wise."

"Because you don't think you could win. If you're going to try and persuade Etrigan to team up with you-."

"Hah! No. I mean, this looks like the best thing to happen to Hell since God told the First to 'get out of my sight'. This is the sort of thing more death gods should do. Even if it's just an attempt to build up support -and it almost certainly is- it looks like the sort of thing that all right-thinking people should encourage. Even if he's being a shit on Earth."

"Satanus is active on Earth? But he's a Demon Lord. The energy it would take for him to move between Earth and Hell is colossal."

"Satanus is only as demon as he is human. I'm a.. little surprised that you didn't know that."

"For some reason I'm not on Orange Lantern's mailing list. Ah, Orange Lantern is a human superhero who's been organising a lot of work in the field of arcane research on Earth."

"I know who Orange Lantern is. But I thought that you had a working relationship with Batman? Surely he would be able to provide you with information?"

"Batman only comes to me when he needs information. I don't think he's once shared something that might interest me."

"You might want to talk to him about that."

He glances back with a frown. "What.. are you?"

I suppose he might be able to help, there. "I'm a big believer in enlightened self interest. I don't make people miserable for fun or for misery's own sake. I do it because I profit from it. If Satanus has squared the hellish circle, then I may need to… Reconsider things. But, returning to Hell, I find that how I'm.. thinking about certain things has… Altered. I'm no longer sure that my conclusions… My desires, are my own."

"Had you been on Earth for long?"

"Yes, quite some time."

"That would explain it. Demons are essentially a highly specialised form of elemental. If you were drawing on magic from Earth for a prolonged period of time, that may well alter the way you think about things."

I nod. "And the Scabbies are the result when the inverse happens. Has Etrigan been so affected?"

"No, but he's got me to filter for him." His eyes widen. "If this is Satanus' doing, he could alter the nature of demons all across Hell."

"To say the least. I need to be at my best, but I can't trust my own intuition-."

Two grey-armoured soldiers step out from behind a buttress, guns levelled at us.

"Halt and identify yourselves."

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Retribution 25

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21st November

10:59 GMT -5

Satanus looks down at the two of us from his… Contrary to my expectations it's actually not a throne. In fact, this whole room puts me more in mind of Themyscira's throne room than anything else. Hippolyta's seat is made of wood and cloth, and it isn't decorated to any great degree because having ruled for three thousand years she has absolutely no need to remind anyone who's in charge.

His seat is made of the same grey-blue stone as the rest of the room, and the cloth supporting his arse is rougher than anything the Amazons produce these days. But I can see what he's going for: trying to move as far from the damaging demonic 'brand' as possible. Rather than doing the Disney thing of making Hades like Satan, Satan is trying to become Hades.

Which is a positive step. Still doesn't explain the drugs…

"Ran Va Daath escaping the arena is.. unfortunate. You have no idea how it occurred?"

"The ground rippled, and we were away. I don't think that it was anything that I did. I lost sight of my summoner during the combat… It's not impossible that he disrupted whatever spells were being used."

"Spells which both of you had no prior knowledge of?"

I shrug magnanimously. "Creation is the work of a lifetime. Destruction, a few minutes. And… The warlock in question is not entirely unskilled."

"Indeed." He leans back, fingers steepled. "Still, Harm has the matter in hand… And I'm prepared to accept that it wasn't intentional on your part."

"I'll certainly tell my summoner to avoid Ament for the foreseeable future. If I may ask, where..? Were we supposed to arrive?"

"That would depend upon your summoner. If you can fetch him, I'll give him the runes needed to come here instead."

"I'm sure that he would appreciate that. And when I see him next, I will be certain to bring him here." I make a point of looking around. "The place does look somewhat different now to how I remember it."

"The glory of a realm is the glory of its ruler. My people's strength, my strength."

"I… Suppose."

"You disagree?"

"I think.. Mammon would disagree. For myself, I suppose it would depend on what result I was aiming for."

"To increase your power and strength further."

"I… Am of the opinion that unlimited growth is a rather slippery pole to climb. But I suppose… In Limbo… Not all that many demons around…"

"Once you understand the ecology of Hell, it makes perfect sense. The First of the Fallen was cast out into literal nothingness, his thoughts and power turned to pure malevolence. That malevolence in turn defined its nature. A human dies in the realm above, and unless they have made alternate arrangements their own nature draws their soul here. And like bottom feeding crustaceans, we draw our sustenance from them. We break them down to empower ourselves, our magics and to build our great edifices."

"Yes..?"

"In a state of total dependency. We spend so much of our time attempting to manipulate the Earth. Why? Because without it we descend into a deadly entropic spiral. Everything we need ultimately comes from there. And what can we trade in return?"

"Magic, usually. Sexual favours or other forms of physical labour as well."

He raises his right hand and counts off fingers with his left forefinger. "Magic? They can learn to do that themselves, and theirs is more versatile than ours. Sex? They can engage in sexual congress with one another, or find a nymph or she-satyr if they have broader interests. Labor? They can do such work themselves or in the modern era build mechanical devices to do it for them. They only come to us if it is easier to bargain for our services than to do it themselves."

"Isn't that the way of all trades? And we hardly need to buy all of the souls which come here."

"Don't you find it… Insulting?" I don't immediately respond, and he leans back again. "How old are you?"

"I'd.. find it hard to say."

"I'm thousands of years old. These humans are lucky to live a single century. But they hew resources from their environment while we scavenge for what if they could deny to us, they would."

"Ah, the issue of long term supply."

"The issue of long term dignity, but yes. If you care nothing for that, this issue of supply. Why did you make the pact you did with the warlock who bound you?"

"It was a low-stakes investment. I wanted a better look at the condition of the market than I could get from here. He wanted an assistant who wouldn't feel the need to stab him in the back at the first opportunity. I mean, I can scarcely credit that Triskele still gets custom. Five years' freedom after making the pact? They may as well start a heroin habit."

"Hnm." A quiet cough of amusement. "What do you think of what I've done with Limbo?"

"It's less boring than before. And the guards-" I glance at our escort. "-are better dressed."

"Nothing about it troubles you?"

"Only the total blank I'm drawing on where you got the power from. The best I've come up with is that you've assembled a cabal of cultist-astronauts, sent them to a distant moon, opened a portal and shipped it back in pieces. But that wouldn't explain how the damned are so invigorated. I mean no.. slight upon your power, but…" I shake my head. "This is an order of.. magnitude…"

"My sister used a miniature model of Hell she created with her own magics to create a sympathetic link with Hell itself. Thus, she siphoned power already claimed by the Lords of Hell for her own use. If I told you that I was familiar with the technique, what would that suggest to you?"

I take another moment to look at the damned soldiers. "Siphoning from the Earth by creating a functioning society here? No, chicken and the egg." I look down for a moment. "Using the barely conscious minds of Limbo's inhabitants to connect to the Dream and gain power as the Earth does?"

"I considered it, and may do so in the future. But, no: they did not dream, and those sinners who died in dreams did not continue to dream."

"Then… Some other realm? Olympus? You seem to have a theme…"

"No. Not Olympus."

"Then wh-?" My eyes widen. "No."

He smiles, rising from his chair and walking down his dais. "Yes."

"I had wondered where Remiel and-."

"No, you do me too much credit there. They were simply recalled. We found another way. And I would show it to you; both of you. You, Jason Blood. Your cooperation could do much to aid the cause of the damned."

"I.. haven't understood what I'm seeing. I suppose there's no harm in seeing more."

"Good. And you." He turns to face me. "I think you will learn much as well, Orange Lantern."

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Retribution 26

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21st November

11:06 GMT -5

"'Orange Lantern'." Mr Blood sidles up to me as we are marched through the lower corridors of Satanus' palace. "I seem to remember you not being a demon."

"'We do not fall suddenly on Hell, but advance towards it by slight degrees; we damn every day.'"

"A misquote of Seneca that doesn't actually explain anything."

"I don't believe that Satanus has become deaf since he addressed us in his throne room-."

Satanus glances back. "Orange Lantern-. Can I call you 'Paul?"

"Stopping you would require an escalation which I am presently avoiding."

"Paul, then. Paul has a set of rather interesting tattoos, designed to make it impossible to divine his location with magic. Which means -at the simplest level- unless he actually walks into one of my traps, I'd have to confront him directly in order to attack him."

"You managed to retreat in good order the first time."

"You were quicker than I expected. And you managed to retreat in good order last time. No lasting injuries at all amongst your people, and Agony was severely injured. To say nothing of the defense battalion the Exegesis Guild sent after you. You've been most helpful to me."

"Not that I'm surprised, but are you going to tell me how you profited from that?"

"Agony was getting bolshie, and now he's doing what he's told. Your fight demonstrated that regular combat battalions aren't enough when it comes to fighting high level foes, and as a result every hellish faction of any significance is buying augmentations and combat golems supplied by my allies. You also demonstrated that Lazarus Pits could be transformed into portals."

"And that's not even mentioning Fawcett City. How much of that did you actually plan?"

He chuckles quietly to himself. "The actual outcome was a low probability event, but one for which I had accounted. I would have been a fool not to find a potential way to remove five rivals in a single stroke, and John Constantine's relationship with the First is common knowledge. I even made certain that mother's sword was in Ishmael Gregor's hands so that one of you could deal with him."

"Bit of a risk there."

"There were other contingencies. I wasn't certain how long it would take for one of you to strike him with it, but with people as fast as Father's acolytes available it was quite likely that someone would."

Of course.

"You're using Theo."

Mr Blood huffs in irritation. "Would you mind explaining?"

"The First of the Fallen had an ongoing dispute with John Constantine. John prepared to deal with him in a number of ways, one of which involved having Chan-." Ah. "Satanus' mother telling the First how to kill the two immensely powerful demons the Silver City created purely to keep him distracted. She then used their remains to create a sword capable of... Removing his power. He got stabbed, experienced physical death and woke up in Greece as an adult male human. He pretended he didn't know who he was, and the people who found him started calling him 'Theo'."

"Then a demon called Buer picked a fight with Constantine in an attempt to get the First his power back. He was successful, though the First ended up punishing him for getting outmanoeuvred."

"Mother got the Sword back afterwards, then traded it to me for protection. I then passed it on to Ishmael as a -hah!- 'sign of my favor'."

"The League was on the lookout for Theo reappearing after I cut down the First. When we couldn't find him… We don't have eyes everywhere."

"The First stated out loud where he appeared as a mortal man. I had a few employees standing by in case I got very lucky."

Mr Blood nods. "And whatever the First is, he still represents a powerful connection with God, and through Him to the Silver City. And in his weakened state, he can't do anything to resist."

"He's actually quite pathetic." I can hear the amusement in Satanus' voice as he says it. "He has no tolerance for pain at all. We barely even need to threaten him to ensure his obedience."

"And the Silver City hasn't taken any action?"

"Everything I've done here requires less power than what the First used on a day to day basis. I was a little worried when Remiel and Duma disappeared, but nothing's come of it. Now all that remains is to develop weapons that can reliably defeat the hosts of the Silver City-"

"By studying the abominations, and their link to normal demons."

"-and we'll finally be free to define our own future."

Satanus raises his right hand, and two guards ahead of us pull open a large door. On the other side is… It looks like an exploded view of an apartment. Settee, television, bed, bookcase… There's even a desk with a computer.

The muscular form of Theo, dressed only in boxer shorts and a dressing gown, glowers at us from an arm chair. "What? You're giving tours now? Etrigan's ball and chain and some.. fat fuck."

I raise my right arm, middle finger extended. "This fat fuck sliced you to ribbons in Fawcett City. Up yours, Theo." His face falls as he recognises the gesture. "Lord Satanus has been very clever. I think he's earned the right to show off a little."

"Close the door." The guards comply, and Satanus turns away to lead us further down the corridor. "The First was never the cleverest entity in Hell. Outsmarting you on the other hand was far more difficult."

"I'm still not sure how you knew who Jade had killed. Unless Ra's is actually down here."

"No, but several of the League of Shadows' senior people preferred death to dishonor. And repentance. I didn't know everyone Jade murdered… But I strongly suspected that you'd get to one of the ones I'd tracked down sooner or later. And I wasn't talking about that. Have you felt… A strange inclination to rhyme lately?"

…

"That was from you?"

"Indirectly. I suspected that you might be coming here, eventually. Most likely to kill me, or otherwise to be a massive inconvenience. But then I heard about your tattoos, the ones which draw power from your surroundings."

"I haven't exactly kept that fact a secret."

"But I had to know exactly how they worked."

"Bollocks you know that. The only person who knows that is John, and he wouldn't stab a friend in the back like that."

"No… But his demonic alter ego thinks just like him and knows as much as he does. You wouldn't have drawn enough power during a short visit to affect your behaviour, but if I picked up a sufficiently powerful avarice demon and… Made their essence generally available, then it was simply a matter of waiting for something to drain it."

We reach another door, and the guards open it as we approach.

"Why don't you say hello to the actual Mammon?"

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Retribution 27

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21st November

11:12 GMT -5

Mammon is a… Big fellow. His current morbidly obese but heavily muscled body is about fifteen metres tall, and is limply hanging from the kaahuite chains holding him upright. The room appears to have been constructed with him in mind; our platform stops a third of the way across the room, and the upper part of his stomach is level with us. Mammon's dull eyes focus on us slightly as Satanus leads us inside. I get a.. slight twitch, but he doesn't otherwise react.

"How much am I draining him?"

"Nothing he can't spare. In fact…" He reaches up and shoves the nails of his right hand into Mammon's left tit, causing demonic ichor to flow from the wound. "From the feel of it you're barely draining him at all. How did you enjoy the rhyming?"

"I didn't even realise I was doing it."

"I honestly thought that you'd absorb more than that. Still, I suppose that I can't draw firm conclusions on such a small sample size." He pulls his hand out and flicks the blood away. "How do you like it?"

"It was a clever way to bypass my defences. And I've noticed… A few slight changes to my outlook. Mister Hayes didn't disgust me in the way he did during our previous meeting. I didn't even register the suffering of the demons Mister Hayes threw at Ran Va Daath, I was instinctively more physically violent. Crueller, less empathic. And I haven't noticed any real advantages."

"Have you tried to use magic yet?"

Mr Blood looks at me with a degree of concern. "No." Why does he..? "Ah. The structure of my soul was too inhuman to use earthly magic, but if I become a demon…"

"You can use demonic magic just as well as any demon. Perhaps better. Given what you've absorbed from Mammon I'm forced to conclude that you aren't top tier… Yet. But you're certainly carrying more power than most, even before I take your rings into consideration."

"Are you..? Really offering me a job?"

"Oh, not just you." He turns to Mr Blood. "Jason Blood, your willing cooperation would be preferable. And once we have everything we need from you, I would be happy to return you to Earth -with or without Etrigan-, or employ you here."

"'Once you have everything you need'?"

"Defending my realm from the Silver City must take priority. But I firmly believe that it will be easier to get what we need with your help. And so I am prepared to be quite generous."

"When… You say… Without Etrigan..?"

"He's powerful, but hardly indestructible. Once we understand exactly what Merlin did to the two of you, I'm confident that we'll be able to unbind the spell."

"Etrigan's wanted that for as long as we've been together. And I don't think he has a mind to benefit you."

"Etrigan is a brute. As the Second of the Fallen and the Third of the Fallen demonstrated well, even the most powerful demon can be bound -or destroyed- by one with the right tools."

He appears to be considering that rather seriously. Surprises me, actually. Not that I know him well, but I'd have thought that after however many centuries of having an adversarial relationship with demons, he'd be a little slower to risk it.

"Would you be prepared to make a binding oath that you would keep to any deal we struck?"

"I'm willing to be bound in some matters. But I have no obvious successor. My work dies with me if I misstep. I will require some room to maneuver."

Oh. No, Mr Blood is not taking it seriously. He's just looking for an exit. Looking a little closer I see that much as he complains about some aspects of Etrigan's behaviour, he's actually grown rather accustomed to his dark passenger. I wonder if Etrigan will keep behaving in the manner to which Blood has become accustomed now that he's had a taste of Hell. And defeat. I do not believe that Etrigan is one to let his grudges go easily.

Satanus returns his attention to me. "And you, Paul?"

"It's… Tricky. I knew that I was being influenced, and you'd admitted to being the one behind it. This should make me sceptical, but… The magic is integrated into me now."

"A child would make different decisions to a man."

"I wouldn't be that blunt, but my thoughts weren't too far away. Who is your truer self? Who you were? No. I'm not the same man I was before coming to this universe. That was true after I lived through my first fight, let alone my bond with the Ophidian. Who I am? Today has been a change, yes, but how I now think and feel is less of a change than other changes I've undergone. I could learn to use magic now, opening any number of new options. Who I will become? I've never had a clear end state in mind. True, I didn't imagine… This-." I frown and look at him. "I can still change my physical form, yes?"

"I can think of no reason why not. Mammon might prove an influence in the short term, but if you stop drawing directly from him and instead draw from the same well as him then that should cease to be a problem."

"I laud your objectives… I dislike the Silver City on principle… What are your plans for DMN. The drug?"

"A bribe to gain support, and an outgrowth of my other research. Humans require a slower path to damnation, and it grants me demonic functionaries who are more human in mindset and possess more arcane power. Would you like to meet the caterpillar who assisted Harm during your first meeting? She has adapted rather well."

Do I? No, not really. "Then what does Rosacarnis get out of it?"

"They don't all manage to make the transition. And… Human sensoria can be just as addictive to demons as demonic power can be to humans."

Hm. Doesn't… Particularly bother me. Someone who plays a shell game should know what they're getting into. Actually finding the shell should be a pleasant surprise, not something you expect. "Beyond shoring up your power base, what else do you intend? I can't imagine that your allies will be entirely happy if you pave over their domains as you do your own."

"Once we connect this realm to the Dream, anything is possible. Imagine: being able to define the arcane mechanisms of a blank slate world. Free arcane energy without the restrictions that come with magic use on Earth. And not limited to demonic magic; if it exists in the Dream it can exist here."

"Again, your allies-."

"Will learn to live with it or become obsolete, just as they are obsoleting their competition now. I bear them no ill-will, but they are attempting to apply new techniques to the old paradigm. On a practical level, Richie came up with a fascinating idea for using great arcane arks to travel from one world's Hell to another when he was on his last bender. Bypassing physical space entirely to travel hundreds of light years in an instant."

I nod. "That could work. Only.. between inhabited regions, but there's certainly potential there. Your friends in the Light?"

"Will join us here, in the fullness of time. I maintain ties to them as much to ensure that they don't disrupt my operations here as any other reason. Earth has things I need… But that's not going to be the case forever."

"I'm…" Huh. Carte blanche to do what I want, without having to work around regulators or -frankly- the League. And if something misfires… It's hell. In utilitarian terms, I can undoubtedly do more good here. And Satanus did this without me prompting him at all. Who on Earth does anything like that? "I think-."

Brambles slice outwards from the 'Y' shaped cut on Mammon's stomach as Euanthe bursts free, the rest of my team behind her!

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Retribution 28

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21st November

11:16 GMT -5

I hold up my hands as Euanthe's stake-on-a-vine punches through Satanus' hastily raised shield spell and slices through the flesh on the left side of his neck.

"Guys, I don't-"

Ambrose sticks out his right arm, grabbing something inside Mammon. The Demon Lord's mouth twitches, and a glop of bile shoots out and hits one member of Satanus' cybernetically enhanced bodyguard right in the visor!

"-think this is-"

A small, magically enhanced EMP grenade hits the other soldier as he brings his gun up to face them, causing him to spasm and drop his weapon!

"-really worth-"

Euanthe's vine twists around Satanus' neck. He responds by grabbing it with his right hand and conjuring hellfire… Which does nothing. He realises after a second and tenses, pulling it apart with brute force instead.

"-doing, because it-"

Euanthe rushes Satanus, thick-barked plates covering her body as her right fist comes around to punch him!

"-turns out that-"

Jade raises the Ace of Winchesters, putting a round through… Something Satanus was trying to summon. It explodes in a short-lived burst of gold-white fire!

"-our objectives-"

Ambrose flicks bile from his right hand, then gestures to the door even as the guard outside point their guns at him. It slams shut.

"-aren't as incompatible-"

Demonic runes flare for a fraction of a second over Euanthe's bark before decaying to nothing. Perhaps I should have mentioned-?

"-as we thought-"

Euanthe's right fist strikes Satanus in the stomach and sends him hurtling across the room and into the far wall!

"-during our planning."

"Euanthe, I can't-" Jade tries to draw a bead on Satanus as Euanthe leaps after him. "-get a clean shot."

I take a step closer, making what I hope is a peaceful gesture. "How about you put the gun down-" Behind me, Mr Blood picks up Euanthe's stake. "-and we discuss matters like civilised-" The damned guard who got hit by the EMP grenade reaches for his gun with his right hand. Jade points the Ace at him and fires, hitting the seam where her gauntlet protects his middle proximal interphalangeal joint and severing the end of the finger. "-people."

"You do not need one." Euanthe uses vines to anchor herself to the wall as she drives vicious wooden spikes through Satanus and into the brick behind him. "I can kill this demon myself."

"We don't need to kill the demon ourselves! Satanus just told me that he's basically on the same page as me!"

"Uh-huh." Jade walks around me, stowing the Ace and taking a shaped charge out of her equipment harness as she heads for the door.

"Listen." Ambrose takes a quick look around the room and then walks up to me. "I had a look at the spells he had set up on Mammon, and-."

"He was funnelling Mammon's essence into me. Yes, I know."

Ambrose nods. "Yes, that might have been what it was. Or he might have been trying to have Mammon possess you."

I fr-. No, I don't frown, but I do try. "I'm sceptical that he would chain a Demon Lord up like this, then let him possess someone. He would have to be able to rely on Mammon doing what he wanted."

Ambrose frowns. "Are you.. serious about this? I thought you were just humoring him to get information."

"Human souls have to go somewhere. Satanus had observably improved the liv-. The existences of more conscious minds than most superheroes by doing this. And his plans for the future-."

Mr Blood gestures, and the stake extends into a staff. "They aren't feasible, I'm afraid. Even if reformatting Limbo was possible -and I'm not convinced that-

"Mister Blood, we walked through it."

"-it can be to more than a limited degree- demons like being demons. All Satanus will do is unite them against him. And that assumes that the Silver City doesn't also like demons being demons."

"A counsel of despair. Euanthe, let him down."

She grows a head in her back. "I came here to kill demons. He is a demon."

"Becoming a demon myself has really given me a new perspective on that. There are any number of demons we could kill; focusing on the one who is actually making himself useful is foolish and wasteful."

Satanus himself stops trying to snap the wooden beams impaling him. "How are you.. immune to..?"

"If it helps, Nergal's brother is around here somewhere, and we certainly don't need him."

Euanthe grudgingly removes her spikes, causing Satanus to fall to the-.

He vanishes before he can reach it. Ah… Darn it.

Ambrose grins. "That went well. He'll walk right into the trap, and then-."

"Will you shut up! " He frowns in confusion. "This is a disaster! What if these spells are tied to him? And he's got an army outside, and don't think for a moment-!"

Ow!

I stumble back as an arcane barrier appears before me. I look down-. A circle, Mr Blood drew a circle on the brick. Now I know how the Second of the Fallen felt.

Ambrose nods to Mr Blood, then stands in front of me with his hands in his pockets. "Can't help but notice that you've been a bit off, buddy."

"It's a change of perspective, certainly." I sigh. "We'll just have to stay here until we can work out how to enable me to control Limbo."

"And your friends back on Earth?"

"I'll visit once things have stabilised. The utilitarian requirement to keep this project going is overwhelming."

"And since when are you a utilitarian?"

"Since I got some perspective."

Jade steps back from the heavily mined door. The guards haven't tried to break in yet, but that's sensible on their part. If we could beat Satanus they'd need far more force than they have available locally.

"And what about me?"

"I'm afraid that I'm going to have to end our relationship. I gave it some thought, and my prediction is that there's almost no chance of a reasonable return on my investment in time and resources. I'm a demon Lantern and you're a baseline human. No hard feelings, but-."

She raises the Ace of Winchesters, points it at my chest and fires.

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Retribution 29

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21st November

11:21 GMT -5

UUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHGHHHHHHHHH…

When I was in Primary School, I had a verruca. Actually, I had several, but one in particular stubbornly refused to die. No matter how much cream I applied or how I savaged it with a pumice stone, it stayed attached to my foot. In the end, Mum took me to the doctor to have it frozen off.

That hurt a lot. But just on my foot.

THIS! HURTS! EVERYWHERE!

I think I fell over, but I didn't put all that many nerves in this body and I think Jade shooting me with a weapon designed to burn demons to annihilation has killed off a lot of them. Eyes are gone, along with the parts of my ear responsible for balance. Honestly, I'm a little surprised that my brain is still working.

AAAAAAGHHH!

Right… First step…

I think something is happening when I try moving my arms, but I've got no way to tell for certain. Okay… Need for subterfuge past. Call my rings, fix myself up…

Or… The guards would have heard Satanus trying to talk me around. Would it be better to try and stay-.

Ow. What? No, of course it would… N't…

Oh. I was… I said…

Rings now.

I don't feel anything with my skin, but eyes are back. Jade's standing over me with the Ace pointed at where my centre of mass should be. Mr Blood is crouching down next to her, right hand on his circle. Can't see any of the others. Jade's mouth is moving, but… No ears yet.

Okay rings, bit of a test for you. How fast can you restore my body when I really really want-.

Task complete.

"…listening now?"

And that pain's gone.

"Up up up." I use the rings' flight function to yank myself upright and-. Ah, clothes. And basic armour-.

Mr Blood grimaces. "And you couldn't offer me any-?" An orange beam leaves him… I think I bought that in Vietnam. It more or less fits. "Thank you."

"What-?" Jade sights along the barrel of the Ace at my head. "Ah. You can shoot me again if you want… "

"Think she's mostly-" Ambrose strolls back around. "-wondering if you're you again."

"I… Think so? Satanus was pumping Mammon into me. I worked it out just as I got to Masak Mavdil, but at that point I'd... Got far enough along that it didn't bother me." I take a half-step forward and push my right arm through the air above the magic circle. No response. Next, I hold out my left hand and float up my personal lantern. "Any other tests that you want to run?"

Mr Blood stands back. "You're certainly not a demon any longer. I'm not entirely sure what you are-."

"Constantine."

"Say no more."

Jade lowers the Ace, then looks pointedly at me with her head tilted slightly to the left. "And is there something you'd like to say to-?"

"Oh goodness me, I tried hitting on Harm." Uruhggh.

"-me?"

I grimace. "What was I thinking?"

Jade frowns. "You hit on Harm? Being a demon… Made you gay."

"No, I'm bisexual all the time. I just… As I became more demonic, certain things… Seemed less significant."

"Like people who can't provide 'a reasonable return on your investment in time and resources'?"

I step forward, delicately place my hands on her sides and gently kiss her on the lips. "Jade, you are not an investment vehicle. I do not do things for you in the expectation that you will do things for me in return, and I do not love you in order to demand that you love me back with equal fervour. I simply do, as a product of me being me and you-."

Her face switches back to neutral. "Okay. He's back."

"-being you. Did Satanus go home?"

A golden ankh appears in the air in front of Mammon, John stepping through a moment later. "He did. Right back to his office in the Newstime building, right in front of two members of the Justice League and five members of the Metropolis police department. Investigating a 'mysterious display of brilliant lights'. Given how you were acting up, I'm a little bit surprised that you didn't warn him."

"I nearly did. And the Congregationalists?"

"Long gone by the time anyone arrived. That part went fine, but there's a small army of Satanus's soldiers coming this way and I don't think they're going to be impressed with their employer vanishing."

Mr Blood shrugs. "I'm sure that Etrigan will enjoy tearing them apart."

"No, no, no, look-." Jade raises the Ace and I neatly turn it aside. "Not demon-me talking, but I'm not going to destroy someone's soul because they don't want to live in a place like Limbo used to be. We just need to offer them someone who can run the spells Satanus used to hijack the First's link to the Silver City. I can't do it." I look at the three magicians. "Any of you feel like volunteering?"

"I don't think that's a good-." / "Fuck no." / "One demon is quite enou-."

"Great. Chantinelle and Blaze can't do it… Mr Cassidy doesn't have the arcane knowledge the post would require… I'm not letting the First go free and Sterocax is a moron." I look up at Mammohgreat. "Is he alive?"

Ambrose shrugs. "Drained to the point that he can't remain conscious. He'll probably recover."

"Jade, can I borrow the Sword please?"

She stows the Ace, then pulls the Sword from its sheath and holds it out to me.

"Thank you."

I float upwards, heading for the chains holding Mammon up. The chains part easily enough, and I create a harness construct to hold his near-carcass up as he slumps forward.

"Wakey wakey." I deposit him against one wall and remove the harness. "Rise and shine." I pass the Sword back to Jade, and hover just in front of Mammon's face. "I've got a deal to offer you."

"HHhhhhhhhrrrrrruuhhhh."

He blinks, and his eyes slowly focus on me.

"Then speak, mortal."

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Retribution 30

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21st November

11:24 GMT -5

"We need someone to run Limbo, preferably while pretending to be Satanus. And when we say 'run', we mean-."

"Be your puppet."

"Not.. puppet, no. Like a normal demonic contract, we will agree to certain terms, and nudge each other every so often to make sure that the other party isn't cheating."

"Your soul would be an interesting-."

"Hah!" I shake my head. "You could try fighting the Ophidian for my soul… But I don't think you'd win."

"The Ophid-? Hrh. No. You may be right there."

"And in any case, that's not what I'm offering. You will take the form of Satanus, and appear to drive us off. You will then continue his reforms: remaking Limbo-."

"I know what he was doing. He enjoyed taunting me with the concept."

"And?"

"I prefer high-volume low-risk investments. Trying to take over Hell is high-risk single-unit. I use avarice. I'm not blinded by it myself."

Jade raises the Ace again. "The other option is we destroy you with the Ace of Winchesters."

"Do so. I've made arrangements. It will take time and pain, but I will eventually recover at a remote location far from here."

Jade glances at Ambrose for confirmation and gets a shallow nod. "It's possible. A lot of demons aren't cautious enough to bother. Or they can't spare the power it would take."

Mammon manages a semi-grin. "But I'm the patient sort."

"Nergal has a similar arrangement. A small part of the body left in a remote or concealed location."

"Nergal? Oh, I'll look forward to seeing him again, then. It's always nice when the competition aren't quite as clever as you are."

"I'm not seeing the risk here. Satanus already has everything set up."

"And he was working with allies who know his character and will probably notice if I replace him. And then there's the chance of him coming back. I already lost to him head to head once."

"Our holding facilities are quite good. And we'll certainly be able to warn you in advance of him returning."

"The anticipation won't make me any less fucked."

"It's in our interest that you remain in position. We won't just leave you flapping in the wind; we'd come to assist you."

"And? If he comes back even for a moment I'd lose control of his followers."

"Which would make it an unpleasant fight, but wouldn't stop you carrying on the work after we win. And I doubt that their personal loyalty is particularly strong."

"So I have to take risks to do something you want me to do in order to get something I don't want. Sounds like a bum deal to me." He's.. actually smirking. "Unless you can sweeten the pot."

"Yes, let me think about that for a moment." I stretch out my arms towards him. "No. Last chance."

"Yes, please kill me with something other than the Ace. That will cut down my regeneration time con-"

"Brand."

"-sideraaaaagh!"

Thirty interwoven orange cords erupt from each of my rings, leaping for every part of his body. About a third wind their way into his mutilated chest cavity, plugging themselves into exposed veins, arteries and broken organs. Others connect to the holes Satanus made in his arms and legs, while a couple more thrust themselves into his eyes, ears and mouth.

A couple, I… Try to ignore where they're going.

Jade glances at me. "Do we have time for this?"

As a demon, I don't really have to worry about making alterations. I read about Mammon in the Grimoire Verum and he's certainly no innocent. Really, the best thing you can say about him is that his deals are more or less honest and open and he'll occasionally let the client off if he can use them to trade up.

"John, how long would evacuating us take?"

"I can get myself home in about five seconds. Transporting the rest of you? That would take a few minutes."

"Ambrose, Mister Blood. Do you have anything to contribute at this point?"

"Not a lot." / "Not unless you want to risk asking Etrigan's help."

Orange lights are flickering under Mammon's skin. "John, take them back right away, then return for the rest of us."

"That will reduce the time per journey, but the total time-."

"I know. Go."

A glowing ankh flares behind me as a glowing brand begins to appear on Mammon's forehead. Now, let's see here… Self interest is fine, but I need to alter some of the surroundings so that he's not just interested in… Sticking souls in jars to expand his collection? Really? Yes, switch that out almost entirely in favour of the gradual and safe acquisition of political power, with a side order of believing that a broad base of popular support is the best way to achieve that.

Desire to defy the Silver City… Hm, he barely thinks about them at all. But there are a few memories I can link to create a desire for political defiance. Shame, really: if I hadn't committed to my course Satanus really would have been better for this. Acquisition… Switch away from 'special' souls and towards equipment and technology… Mm, I can't make him trust us, but a few more tweaks and I can… Make the project sufficiently important that he'll usually be prepared to risk asking us for help if things become really unmanageable. Make sure that the whole network isn't so strongly reinforced that it clouds out his rationality.

There. That should do it.

Jade stares as the brand evaporates and the orange tendrils connecting me to Mammon fade. "What have you.. done to him?"

"Reconfigured his desires so that he'll see things our way."

"How long does it last?"

"He's technically capable of reconsidering them, but it would take a massive life-changing experience. So Mammon?! How about it? Interested in ruling Limbo now?"

"Hm. I suppose asking for further concessions would be unrealistic." He tries to rise, and stumbles as he tries to move. "I'm going to need you to patch me up."

"Can do." I knit what's still there back together, and make reasonable guesses about what's been removed. Mmmm… He's probably more than a little drained by his experiences. Ring, transfuse ten percent power into him.

Compliance.

The door rattles and deforms as the soldiers outside begin their assault.

"Alright. Jade, Euanthe, we need to make this look good."

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Retribution 31

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21st November

16:18 GMT -6

Oh… Fucking fucking fuck.

"And when did you find out?"

Warden Waller is taking the disappearance of The Demon Constantine surprisingly well, all things considered.

"About two hours ago, when Metropolis called us about taking in another demon. Doctor Mist is trying to work out how he managed it, given how one of the few things we know for certain is that his suppression chains were working properly."

"How do you know that?"

"Because one of the guards was wearing them in his cell." She growls quietly under her breath. "Thinking he was Constantine."

"Please tell me that he's still being held in the suppression chains, because if he actually is Constantine-."

"Yeah, we checked that. And Doctor Mist double checked it. He's not. And now we're supposed to house a demon here who's even more powerful."

My eyes momentarily dip. "I really only did half the equation with the Sophont Recognition Act, didn't I?"

"What?"

"Most laws are designed for humans. This prison exists because people with high-end superpowers need to be handled differently. Demons need to be handled differently from either, but I didn't want to slow down the process of genomorphs becoming legally people to put the knowledge in place."

She frowns. "Do you know how he got out?"

I look over to the cell's toilet. "Were you disposing of his waste properly?"

"Yes."

"All of it?"

"We would have spotted him urinating out of bounds."

"If I was him, and I wanted to get out… It would be a long shot, but every part of his body is far more magical than a normal human body. If he cut the tip of his finger and drew a very basic summoning circle, or-. No, not a summoning, that wouldn't work here. A rune of calling."

"The chains were supposed to stop him doing magic."

"No, they stop him shaping magic or drawing on external power. His blood would have its own magic. The effect would be really weak, but… It would be pretty much unstoppable unless you regularly scoured every single object he had access to."

"And then another demon would sneak in here and bust him out."

"No… I don't know that's what he did, and given the wards Belle Reve has these days and how weak the effect would be -if that's even what he did- it would take a long time and the demon who arrived wouldn't be obliged to help him. But if he could cut a deal… I don't know, it's possible, and the only thing I can come up with… Until just then."

"What's your new security nighmare?"

"John Constantine isn't just a street magician, he's a street magician. He can do sleight of hand, psychological manipulation, escapology and probably other things that don't require the manipulation of eldritch energies. Plus, his body doesn't work exactly like a human body, so there are… Probably things he could do with that."

"You don't know."

"No, I don't know. Sometimes I'm not failing to tell people things because I'm keeping secrets, I'm doing it because I don't know."

She frowns, more confused than annoyed. "What? Where'd that come from?"

"Last mission.. didn't go as well as I'd hoped. And… A.. bit of an ongoing disagreement I have with the Justice League. Ah… Okay, helpful stuff… What are the rules on adding buildings to Belle Reve?"

"I need to draw up plans, cost it out and explain why the most expensive prison in the country still isn't complete."

"And if it was free, and could guarantee containment on high end magic using inmates?"

"What's the downside?"

"The building in question isn't a prison. It's the Tower of Fate. You'd be transitioning from a normal prison with extras to an extraplanar facility you couldn't own or really control. Honestly, the prison system just needs to be able to directly employ magic users."

"The prison system needs a lot of things." She nods her head at the cell door and I walk out. She takes another moment, ducking her head slightly as she backs up in order to check the underside of the toilet for blood-inscribed runes. "But if we can inspect the Tower we might be able to swing it."

"I'll let John know."

She walks out of the cell and one of the guards locks the door behind her. "'John' as in 'John Constantine'? Because I've heard things about him."

"No, different John. The man who owns the Tower of Fate. I don't know how to persuade him but I also don't know a better way to contain an unusually cunning or powerful demon that complies with current US law than asking him to let you use his basement."

"And killing him isn't an option?"

"Sure, killing him is an option. Just get the relevant laws passed by the House, the Senate, signed by President Horne-"

Her face turns down and she exhales in frustration.

"-and not declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court for treating one subset of people different from another, then get a jury to actually convict him, get the jury hearing the appeal to convict him again… And so on, and I'll happily kill him. And I already said that the Act could have used more work."

"Alright. You get hold of this 'John' guy, I'll put the paperwork together and we can-."

"Ah…" I shake my head. "Sorry, no. Telling him is going to be the last thing I do before I go off duty for several days. My last mission involved me going literally to Hell and turning literally into a demon. I'm getting checked out by specialist magic users and doctors and not doing anything involving the demonic for a little while. So I'm afraid that you'll have to use regular contractors or talk to the Justice League."

"If he says yes. And if Metropolis agree to send him here after our only demon prisoner escaped."

"He might still be here, actually. I imagine that Doctor Balewa is checking that, but you should probably have at least two guards with you at all times."

"For a demon?"

"He isn't actually much stronger than a normal man. A couple of burly guards should be able to take him. Alternatively, phone the Atlantean embassy and offer some green cards." I raise my right hand to my forehead. "Good day, Warden."

21st November

17:22 GMT -5

"Hey."

I look around to see Jade sitting on her settee. She sounds a little.. out of sorts.

"The Demon Constantine escaped, so Satanus's intelligence might well have been more recent than I was assuming."

"I was surprised it held him this long." She looks down for a moment, then appears to come to a decision. "Tell me about the Darkstars."

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Gods and Mortals

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Gods and Mortals 1

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Gods and Mortals

22nd November

09:16 GMT -5

Sephtian waves his hands over the control unit for his thaumic imaging array, and some of the glowing eases off. I don't sit up -because it's actually quite hard to move when you're this far under water and aren't wearing a power ring- but I do turn my head his way.

"So? How am I?"

Sephtian blinks. "How would I know?"

I try pushing myself upright. And fail. "Professor-."

"Your spiritual structure is unique. I can.. compare it to what you had upon the few occasions when I examined you previously." His head fronds wave. "You have changed. Given the nature of your life, this is expected. But I have nothing to compare you to."

"Magic users experience soul growth as they grow in power."

"Yes, that is true. And I have tried to compare the data we have on that with the data I have collected from you. And if there is a link I cannot find it." He floats back slightly. "I.. think that you should speak to a Controller."

"Controllers don't use magic."

"Perhaps not in their recent history, but historically-."

"No, they got these… Symbiotic super bacteria that made it really easy for them to manipulate the universe around them. It happened so early in their history that they never learned to do… Magic, and skipped anything remotely approaching a normal technological development. As a result, they don't really have good data on arcane phenomena. I mean, regarding them. And no other Orange Lantern has… Had the work done that I've had done."

This isn't really what I wanted to hear, but at least he can't find any obvious points of concern.

"Can I put my rings back on?"

"Yes, yes."

I put my hands out to the side and call my rings onto my ring fingers as Sephtian gestures again and the sensor bars slide aside. As they touch my skin my environmental shield flares back into life and suddenly moving becomes a good deal easier. I float upward in the water and assume an upright posture.

"Are my scry wards still working?"

"Yes, though I believe that I could replicate the technique which Satanus used to bypass them. The theoretical aspect is simple, even with our limited knowledge of demon magic."

"Great. Am I.. safe outside of Hell, or is that a wider concern?"

"Technically? Yes." He makes a sweeping motion with both arms. "Your soul is a stable construct of earthly magics. As Satanus said, it has been stable for some time. But, when exposed to magic that is not part of the Earth's arcane networks… It appears that you can continue to absorb other forms of arcane energy as well."

"And does that damage the earthly structure?"

"I don't know. Perhaps if you went back to Hell for a few weeks and then came back, I could tell you."

"The Ace..?"

"Worked. Your spiritual makeup no longer contains anything I cannot recognise as earthly. It has changed, perhaps as a result of half of the synthesis being destroyed. But it appears healthy, if atypical."

"And the fragment which the g-oni removed?"

"Were you able to confirm that Satanus was the one who sponsored them?"

"No. He didn't boast about it to me, and now he's not talking to anyone other than his legal team."

"If I understand what you saw correctly, what they removed was a formatted packet of arcane energy. You would have experienced a brief period of relative arcane weakness… Which would matter little as you are not a magic user yourself and were not fighting a conventional magic user. And then your tattoos would repair the damage. They might have been able to use it to remotely affect you through the sympathy principle, but given your recent travail I would be surprised if it was still similar enough to your soul as it is now for that to work."

I smile. "Do you think it could be useful for everyone to get reformatted every so often?"

"It… Is a known treatment for certain forms of remote arcane attack. But… The methods we have developed so far are usually as deadly as any attack. I am aware of only two successful cases out of a little under a hundred attempts that are documented."

"So..? Don't worry about it?"

"It may be of use to someone studying the orange light, but I do not believe that it is presently a significant threat to you."

"With a grand total of two Orange Lanterns this side of Vega, I'm not going to worry about that. Anything else you think I need to check?"

"Your.. rings. You have a powerful bond to them, and a sufficiently clever sorcerer could spread their magic through you into them."

"Shouldn't any spell be shredded when I recharge them?"

"Paul, I… Am grateful for the projects that you have brought to me. To Atlantis. But please do not give me any more. I have not attempted to study the arcane mechanisms of personal lantern recharging and I do not think that it would be a profitable use of my time."

"Sorry."

"So my answer is 'maybe'. I would wager that the Ophidian involving herself directly would have that effect, but I would not so wager for a normal recharge. Though that is not a certainty. I have no specific knowledge of power rings. I merely know that some arcane artefacts can retain tracing charms when being recharged."

"Okay." I hold out my hands towards him. "Please put a tracer spell on these."

He stares for a moment, and the rings sort of… Glisten? Alright, I've suspected that this is possible for a while…

Rings, there is a foreign energy attached to you. Consume it.

Unable to precisely identify energy form. Initiate general purpose consumption?

… Yes?

"In progress."

The water around my hands turns to ice-. No, turns to frozen oxygen and hydrogen before melting and turning into a cloud of bubbles.

"Did that get it?"

"No, it did not. Perhaps-."

"Rings, try harder. Not heat, not electromagnetism, not matter. Magic. Think more like the orange light itself. Like what you do when you turn someone into an orange construct."

"Attempting."

And I-. Feel something.

Sephtian gasps as a faint orange sheen shimmers over his skin.

"Consumption complete."

"Did I get it?"

"Yes. Yes you did. And please do not ask me to ensorce your rings ever again. I think you may have found a way to save on your frequent spell eater consumption, and I assure you that the experience is no more pleasant for the caster."

back

Gods and Mortals 2

next

23rd November

11:06 GMT -5

"Mammon. How are you doing?"

On the other side of the blood stained mirror, the Demon Lord waves his right hand negligently. "They accept me. Though how convinced they are remains to be seen." He's currently wearing Satanus's form, and even I can tell that his body language isn't quite right. Though he might just be relaxing away from the minions. "The hard test will come during my next face to face meeting with Ritchie Simpson."

"Angelica has offered to tutor you."

"I suppose that I should take every opportunity to learn how to ape the man I have replaced." His eyes narrow slightly as he leans forward. "What exactly did you do to me in order to make me accept this?"

I glance sideways at John, who shrugs diffidently. "People strive to seize the things they want. I altered your priorities a little, caused you to reweigh certain things."

"That does still worry me, so I assume that I'm not completely under your power. Can you do it again?"

"Only by coming down there and binding you again. And I'm fairly sure that I caught you at your lowest ebb. I doubt that doing it again would be that easy."

"Then again, avarice is one of my core traits. I can't imagine that makes me resistant."

"And mine. That's why what Satanus did worked. And hey: if you're still worried, completing Satanus' modernisation project should make it far harder for me to affect you. This isn't about one of us getting one over on the other. Ultimately, both our lives will be easier if we cooperate… Or at least respect one another's boundaries. I wouldn't have bothered keeping you around if I didn't want you doing what you want to."

"What you made me want to do."

"How much of a problem is that going to be for you?"

"That's the strange thing: it's not. I should be enraged. You altered my mind. If another demon did something like that -and I somehow survived- they would have earned my undying enmity. And yet, you've brought me closer to attaining the thing I now most want. I feel…"

"Grateful?"

"Indebted."

"My favourite author once wrote that if you want to make a witch really angry at you, do her a favour she can't repay. Because the obligation will just keep nagging."

"I'm a Duke. If that were all it was I could stand it in the certain knowledge that you would ask me for something eventually. As it is I have a strange impulse to build a… 'Working relationship'. How long will you live?"

"I don't age, but I'm in a dangerous profession."

"Aren't we all." He leans back. "What would you like? Partner."

"If the Light get in contact, I'd like their current roster. I'm not sure whether your witness testimony is admissible in court, but it would be very useful to know."

"Bah! Organisational intelligence sharing. What do you want? What can Hell do for you?"

"I… Don't suppose you know where Amon Tomaz is, do you?"

"I don't know who that is. He's not in Limbo, I'd know if he were. Should he be down here somewhere?"

"I don't know. Someone has found a very reliable way to disguise people and places from my rings. He could be dead and he could be alive. If he's in Hell, I'll pay his soul's ransom. If he's on Earth, I want to know where."

Mammon smiles. "Why do I get the feeling that the latter answer will result in us gaining a substantial number of new guests?"

"Because you're actually quite intelligent."

"You know, I once did consider commissioning a mortal to hunt down sinners and kill them before they could repent. A little demon magic to toughen them up, the odd favour paid for in advance…"

"Sounds like a good idea to me. And after the initial investment it would be self-funding. Why didn't you go for it?"

"While the return for Hell would have been good, when I worked out what my personal slice of it would have been… And now I.. see that that is the problem with the whole system." His shoulders droop a little. "Huh."

"So..?"

"I'll make enquiries."

"Thank you. Anything else?"

"What do I have to do to get a power ring?"

John makes a coughing/spluttering noise.

"Weirdly, you're a pretty good fit for the sort of person I'm trying to recruit. But I think I'm going to want to give it a few decades before I'm ready to trust you with something like that. And I'll want my Corps to gain a lot more expertise with magic. Besides, there's no way I'd give one to Satanus."

"I suppose. Well, best be getting back to it. Some old friends of the First's are coming around to piss on him, and I could use a good chuckle."

"I'll caution you against that sort of thing. We still don't know quite how he was re-empowered last time. It could happen again."

He shrugs. "I'd be fucked either way, and I'd give him your name to get out of the line of fire either way. As I see it, I might as well milk him for all he's worth." He smiles. "And you really can't dictate policy to me, can you?"

"I really can't. Good day."

The mirror clouds over until the image vanishes completely. Then John steps around the side and throws a rune woven cloth over the top of it.

"That went about as well as we could have hoped."

"I thought so too. Any guess on his long term behaviour?"

"None at all. I'll keep an eye on him." He checks the mirror over, then stands well back. "Now, what's this I hear about the Tower becoming part of Belle Reve?"

"The Demon Constantine somehow got away. This is the best magic containment site I know of. Heck, as far as I know Mister Zard and Mister Faust are still in here somewhere."

"Yeah. They are."

"If we're going to have any hope of keeping Satanus in one place, they need the best, and an expert who can afford to spend lots of time on site."

"Glad you value my time so highly."

"It was the best idea I had. If you can do better, please do."

"What about that place under the Tower of London?"

"No one knows how John Dee made it, and the British government is highly resistant to the idea of anyone interfering with it. Atlanteans have great magic prisons, but they aren't prepared to take demons for any purpose other than destruction. And we can't replicate what they have because America doesn't have the magic users."

John stares into space for a moment, then sighs.

"Fine. I'll have a chat with Waller."

back

Gods and Mortals 3

next

29th November

19:33 GMT -6

"Not that I am in any sense complaining-" Admiral Oswin gives me a look of mild curiosity. "-but is there any particular reason for this change of heart?"

I lean back in the 'important visitor' chair on the balcony overlooking his flagship's bridge. I wonder if this is just how big this sort of chair always is, or if he had it upgraded just for this occasion? Can't see any wear…

"I was distracted by home affairs." I shrug. "With the psions bottled up, the situation on Karna and the anti-pirate crusade, it didn't seem urgent… But I had a chat with Princess Komand'r and she made it clear that she -and Tamaran- want this campaign completed." He nods. "I do hope that I haven't thrown your own plans into any sort of turmoil."

"I.. would probably have sought to tie you down to a date before New Year, Karaltine time. We have laws about leaving Fleet Admirals out in the field for too long."

"They think you need a break? I'm sure that Tamaran would be happy to offer you hospitality and shore leave."

"I'm sure they would, but no." He smiles. "The law is in place to prevent Admirals building up an independent base of support with which to threaten the Crown. It wouldn't be an actual problem, but there's a…" He makes a circling motion with his right hand. "A certain poetry to being finished at that point."

"You have plans?"

"A.. gradual transition from war admiral to administrative admiral… And then hopefully dominion over one of our new colonies. With a.. title to match, naturally."

"No desire to stay in harness?"

"And do what? There aren't any other foes in this region to win acclaim against, not at the level of Fleet Admiral. And I certainly don't want Her Majesty to have time to forget about me."

"You're not concerned about the Spider Guild?"

"If they could bring a fleet to bear now, certainly. But given the amount of time our analysts believe it will take them, I'm perfectly happy to take a back seat and let some other young buck lead the defence. I assume that we can rely on Tamaranian cooperation in that fight?"

I nod. "Barring something truly bizarre happening. We should.. probably talk to the Queen and her Cabinet about future cooperation at some point… Get a few things down on paper."

"As long as you don't mind it being after New Year. That sort of discussion is best conducted when the celebratory hangovers have had a chance to wear off."

"Whenever you think best. I'm perfectly-."

The small hologram generator in front of us activates, the bust of the ship's flag captain appearing. "Admiral? My Lord Lantern? All ships report ready."

Oswin smirks, bowing his head slightly. "Think they're expecting us?"

I nod. "At this point I suspect that us turning up will be more of a relief than anything." I stand, nodding to the image. "Thank you, Captain. I'll get started right away. We should be finished by the time you arrive."

He nods formally. "Good hunting."

"Mother Box, hush tube."

"Ping."

I step through the portal, appearing at the very edge of the Wombworld's defence zone. The psions haven't exactly been lazy as their few remaining allies were hunted down and exterminated like the vermin they are, but they appear not to have wanted to be too overt in case that's what sets us off. I can see new weapon platforms, interdiction field and a.. defence fleet. Such as it is. The psions were never ones for risking their own necks if they could get someone else to do it for them, but they were never stupid enough to have no power projection.

Interestingly, no one else who used to be on the Citadelian side retreated here. Can't imagine why not.

I raise my left fist to my mouth. "First Lantern Grayven to the Orange Lantern Corps. One last obstacle lies between us and the liberation of Vega. Our job is to ensure that the combined fleet can bombard the place unopposed. Resistance will be stiffer than what the Citadel was able to provide, but you're all a good deal more skilled than you were back then. I have every confidence in your abilities."

I generate a singularity beam construct.

"Attack on my signal."

I aim at the nearest defence station, remembering everything I've learned about psion history and culture from Vegan and Crown Imperium archives. I can't really castigate them in absolute terms -compared to Apokolips they're positively small potatoes- but they have done enough to the people I now call mine to justify everything we're about to do to them.

Fire.

Immediately an area of space twenty centimetres across and millions of miles long gains a gravitational attractiveness equal to the event horizon of a black hole. The platform I targeted shudders and snaps as its gravitational control system is effortlessly overloaded, falling into two parts as I turn my weapon towards the planet.

Alert. Enemy countermeasures detected.

Graviton manipulation isn't a psion speciality, but when someone starts pointing a weapon like this at you, you learn to solve the equation very quickly. I've barely gone more than a couple of degrees before the beam fades out, but that's fine.

Ping.

Throughout the system my Lanterns are flying through hush tubes into and around psion defence systems. Already I can see flashes of orange, both from their constructs and from the burning atmospheres of those platforms which until a few moments ago had living crew.

"Gravyen to psion Wombworld. I request contact with whoever down there is authorised to issue a general surrender."

"You will be neither the first nor the last Lantern we have killed."

"I thought you might say that. So I'm not going to bullshit you by saying that when we win we'll leave a significant proportion of you alive or anything dishonest like that."

Ping.

"But we don't have to render you entirely extinct. We're prepared to accept any of your neonates who are no more than halfway through your indoctrination process. They will be apprenticed to the Controllers, who will take responsibility for teaching them not to be heartless blights upon the universe like you were. And who knows? Given enough time they might even learn to access the emotional spectrum. And you people were basically the maltusians' pets anyway."

Lantern deceased.

No, don't bother notifying me unless the fatalities reach ten percent. I knew there'd be deaths here, but… It's got to be done.

"Deranged alien, you will never take the Wombworld."

"As you will." Ring, cut communication with their command, and open a link to their crèche.

By your command.

Play them that exchange.

By your command.

In near-Wombworld space, the psions' last line is collapsing. But I won't say they're not giving it their all. Construct-defying shields flare into being, protecting spaceborne citadels for a few moments before hush tubes open to their interiors. That tactic is immediately abandoned throughout the battle zone in favour of using those shields to hem Lanterns in so they can be shot. That works a little better, but it swiftly becomes apparent that whatever their intellectual abilities they have no good counter to widespread hush tube use.

Exchange replayed.

I nod to myself. "Hello, lads. Remember me?"

"Y-yeah..?"

Space shudders as the Crown Imperium's fleet jumps in, swiftly followed by the few Tamaranian and Karnan ships that were available to take part.

"How would you like to be the last adults of your species left alive?"

back

Gods and Mortals 4

next

30th November

17:04 GMT -5

"…something I ever thought I'd have to worry about." Professor Palmer shrugs. "I read Batman's report, but-" I'm nodding. "-that interpretation didn't occur to me."

"And I don't imagine you've dealt with a lot of magic users."

"No, but… That wasn't it. I know there are biologists who've transplanted their brain into a new body and physicists who've uploaded themselves into robots or AI mainframes. The idea of one intelligence being transferred to another form isn't new to me. I didn't even consider the idea that Giovanni wasn't getting any time to himself." He bows his head slightly. "Though I don't imagine the fact that no one in the League did is improving your opinion of us."

I shake my head. "Actually… I don't know. When Batman told me to do this, I thought that it was going to be a waste of time, but… Surprisingly, I'm feeling a lot less hostile now that I can… Put fallible human faces to your judgement errors."

"Oh, thanks."

"Actually, Professor: your name is public knowledge. Why does your costume have a mask?"

"It's a combination of hair net and part of the system which defines the 'shrink area'. When I go really small I don't want to leave hairs behind inside something expensive or fragile, like a quantum chip or someone's brain." I nod. "Plus, I… Wanted to look like a superhero. It's not as uncomfortable as you'd think."

"Well, ah… Thank you for your time." I start to rise from my chair, then stop myself. "Is there anything you wanted to ask me about the situation?"

"About the..? Nabu?" I nod my head and he gives his a quick shake. "No, I think you made your point very clearly. If I had known how you felt about it, I don't think I'd have done what you did, but I don't know whether I'd have been more successful or not. You didn't do anything illegal… But…" He exhales. "What would I need to say to convince you to talk to-. I don't know, not me, but maybe Diana next time?"

I chuckle darkly. "You won't have to worry about that. I fully intend to make my feelings known as loudly and directly as possible."

"Good. Good." He smiles, and we both stand. "You said you were doing the whole Justice League. Who have you got left to go?"

"King Orin, Captain Marvel and Red Tornado."

He frowns. "I know Red is working on his secret identity, but what's the hold up with the other two?"

"Given the situation with his son, I'm a bit-."

"Oh yeah." He chuckles. "Guy said I should ask you if you had any dirt on me."

"On you?" I shake my head. "No."

"That's a.. rather specific reply."

"If I had information on someone else -naming no names- I wouldn't consider it appropriate to share it, even if it tangentially involved you."

"That's… Not worrying at all. But I guess I understand where you're coming from. How about Captain Marvel?"

"Captain Marvel works for a Lord of Order. And I don't think there's any way he'd be okay with my ruthlessness."

Professor Palmer nods. "True, but if you want to get back on the team and you have to talk to everyone…"

"Yeah, got to bite the bullet some time." He holds out his right hand to me, and I shake it before heading out of his office.

He's not wrong, but who should I start with? I can get in touch with William via Beautia and Red Tornado via Danni. Getting a message to King Orin would be similarly simple-.

"Hey, you're Orange Lantern, right?" I look up as a student walks towards me, pointing a little hesitantly with his right forefinger.

"That's me. Anything I can do for you?"

"Nah man, but my boss wanted me to pass a message on."

I wince internally. "If this 'boss' is involved in any sort of criminal enterprise-."

"No, dude." He shakes his head. "Gimme a sec." He takes an inhaler out of his jacket pocket and takes a puff.

Ah. Is that-?

The student shudders, and his face twists slightly. "Orange Lantern."

"Mammon." Because of course Mammon has his own cultists. And his own Devil Jizz variant. "What can I do for you?"

"I have the location you requested. Multiple damned souls tell the same story, and there's a taste on their souls that I can't readily identify. My own scrying attempts failed and I don't have any… 'Operatives' in the area."

"Tell me."

"What do I get out of it?"

"That taste on their souls. Does it improve the flavour?"

"I'm a collector, not a renderer. It gives them a certain uniqueness. But… I wouldn't like it to become wider spread."

"I suspect that it's Anti-Life. And as I understand it, the enemy believe that it would allow them to control demons just as well as everything else. I intend to attack their holdings on Earth with a view to expunging them from the universe entirely."

"That's not exactly a direct benefit."

"Superheroes are a long term investment. Insurance against apocalyptic problems that you don't ever want to have to deal with yourself. Trying to negotiate a better deal in situations like this is ultimately self-defeating."

"I… Suppose. It's in Saudi Arabia. Here." His host reaches into his jacket pocket again and pulls out a slip of paper. "Directions. The souls I interrogated weren't sure, but you could reasonably expect a degree of government collusion. Someone has been turning a blind eye for too long for it to be chance."

I take the note and look over the writing. Not somewhere I've been before, but I'm familiar with it. "Any idea of defences?"

"Strange guns. They guessed 'alien', but the people I've been interrogating weren't much more than gang masters. Some foreign mercenaries too. Nothing that should give you any difficulty."

"Thank you, Mammon. I will act on this at once."

"Happy to be of service. For a given value of 'happy'."

The student's face twitches again, then resumes its normal dimensions. "Ugh." He takes a moment to steady himself. "You get everything you needed?"

"Yes. Thank you." He smiles, nods, and starts to turn away. "And you're under arrest."

"What? What for?"

"You just used a controlled substance right in front of me. What do you think I'm arresting you for?"

back

Gods and Mortals 5

next

1st December

09:04 GMT +3

"…surprised that this country signed the League's charter."

I frown mockingly. "Alan. If the workers are getting paid a pittance then it's technically not slavery. And there's no international ban on serfdom."

"Ah…" William looks from me to Alan and then back again. "Isn't there?"

"Sorry, Captain. Black humour. It's officially discouraged, but not outright banned as chattel slavery is and it hasn't reached a level of cruelty in Saudi Arabia which outweighs their use as a US air base. And when a permanent member of the Security Council has your back, you can get away with an awful lot."

He watches me for a moment. "You're.. not just annoyed about Doctor Fate, are you?"

"The Justice League does good work. But I would advise against you being unaware of some-"

"Batman to Justice League."

"-of the limits of what it does."

"Doctor Mist has completed his preparations. Lanterns, on my signal."

Inside my armour I nod, take a deep breath and close my eyes. Feel the orange light around me. William's light is weak and diffuse, his strongest desires relating to the familial and comradely bonds he was denied in early childhood. Adom hasn't done much more than grunt since we arrived and his desires are strong and sharp. His soon-to-be brother-in-law is down there and he refused to give Batman any guarantees about his conduct. As a consequence, he's technically here on his own and not part of the group.

Major Adams's strongest desires relate to preserving his honour and reputation, which given what happened when he lost it isn't really surprising. Mr Yao has a burning need to serve his fellow man so intense that it's bordering on self-destructive. Or maybe self destructive. Barda wants to smash people, which is a desire that is sure to be realised soon.

And Alan? Well, I know his desires well enough but right now I can't see a gosh darn thing. He's gotten very good at channelling his hopes, even in abstract ways like this.

We strongly suspect that there's Anti-Life technology down there, and while Adom, William and Barda should be able to protect themselves, we don't intend to take chances we can avoid.

"Now."

Enkindle avarice.

Orange light flashes through the metaphysiques of the assault team, almost immediately mirrored by equivalent blue. That should keep out the Anti-Life, though sadly we don't have other colours of Lantern trained in this technique. Zatanna is going nowhere near this, no one thought that calling Sinestro was a good idea and what sort of lunatic would make a red ring?

"Done."

A moment passes.

"Done here as well."

"Assault team, confirm readiness status."

"Woophf. Captain Marvel, ready." He looks at Adom and gets a curt nod.

"Captain Atom, ready."

"Physician ready."

"Barda, ready."

"Begin the attack as soon as you can access the facility. Report all enemy contacts. Doctor Mist."

How do you destroy a stealth system when you can't even detect enough of it to know that there's a system there to disrupt? Simple. Simpleish. We know that the internal section is still metaphysically part of the Earth; if it wasn't, the souls of those who die inside couldn't pass into Hell. So getting in roughly the right area and supercharging that link with the most capable non-evil magic user on the planet-.

The landscape below us shudders and ripples, the small number of disused shorefront industrial buildings bending and then separating as new and far more technologically sophisticated buildings appear in between.

"Apokolips."

There's a certain similarity between the buildings and those I've seen in the images the League took while they were on Apokolips, but it looks like they mostly took existing buildings and added things. Four stationary gun points, positioned-

Adom and William dive, Adom pulling ahead and annihilating the gun he dove towards-. Through. William pulls up early and punches, the force field protecting it failing as the gunner tries to bring it to bear on him. His jaw tight, William pulls the man from his seat with his right hand and slaps the gun with his left, sending it flying from the roof.

-that they can -could- cover both the sky and any obvious approaches. A series of… Poles? Antennae or aerials? Are positioned at intervals in two rough circles around the buildings. Not generating a force field so I'm not sure what they're about, but Barda's prioritising them over the stationary guns as she dives down on her aero-discs. Two light jeeps that were on the far side of the complex accelerate around the side, rear-mounted blasters being brought to bear by the men standing in the back. One note from Mr Yao and the sand underneath them behaves like liquid for two seconds, solidifying once the jeeps are sunk up to their windscreens. And second note, and the men crewing it slump over, unconscious.

More or less by pure luck one of the fixed guns is pointing at Adom as he looks for a new target. The gunner fires, a beam of luminous purple something striking him in the chest. Adom grimaces and then flies into it, wisps of purple… Stuff decaying into mist as it washes over him.

Purpose=Failure

Barda misses a swing as… The aerials sort of shimmer for a moment. "It's started."

Purpose=Failure

William flits under a shot from the fourth gun and smashes through the roof before coming up underneath it and hurling it into the sky! The gunner is strapped in, and from the look on William's face he didn't take that into account. As Adom tanks the incoming fire a brilliant beam of energy from Captain Atom's forearms breaks the shield and reduces the front portion of the gun to mist.

Purpose=Failure

William hurries after his turret and catches it. The shield activates in response, and he breathes a sigh of relief before hurling it into the river. The shield triggers on impact but doesn't do anything to make the gun buoyant, the weapon and crew sinking under the water.

Purpose=Failure

Barda draws her sidearm and shoots out three more aerials. "It will only get stronger."

Purpose=Failure

"Doctor Mist to assault team. The device they used to exist outside of the world is still active. I must remain here to counteract it."

Purpose=Failure

William floats towards Mr Yao. "Doc?"

Purpose=Failure

A piercing note, and one aerial sparks and collapses. The rest don't.

Purpose=Failure

"I cannot counter it, Captain."

Purpose=Failure

Adom blurs, force fields failing and aerials breaking in his wake. The perimeter cleared, he floats to a halt next to William. "I see no difficulty."

Barda holsters her pistol and hefts her mega rod, stomping towards the front doors. "Thanks."

She swings the rod, the door snapping into seven pieces as the weapon's discharge radiates out from the point of impact!

"Let's find whoever's in charge of this place, and do the same to them."

back

Gods and Mortals 6

next

1st December

09:08 GMT +3

Beneath us, Batman drives toward the facility on a motorcycle. The men who had been on the turret William threw into the river swim to shore, just in time to be hit by a shot from Batman's bike-mounted bolas launcher. Not sure that he'll get anything useful out of them, but every little helps. While Mr J'onzz was available, Batman felt that including a natural telepath against a known memetic hazard was a bad idea.

Adom's already charged inside, Barda and William just behind. Mr Yao enters next at a slower pace. His job is to heal any prisoners with physical injuries… And any militants Adom doesn't flat out kill. Who even are these people?

"Lanterns, report."

"No problem here sir. Felt… Something when those aerials activated, but I'm not being hard pressed."

"I'd find it a darn sight easier to keep my hopes up if Black Adam was a little less eager to kill people who clearly weren't a threat to him. But I'm managing."

Purpose=Failure

"No it doesn't!"

"Orange Lantern, report."

"Didn't you hear that? The.. creepy voice saying 'purpose equals failure'?"

"I did not. Assault team, be advised-."

"It's the Anti-Life." I hear a crashing noise through Barda's communicator. "I've been hearing it since we got here."

"What does it do?"

"It tries to convince you that everything you've valued-"

"Captain Atom to Batman."

"-and tried to achieve was inherently pointless."

"The locals are wearing Apokoliptian armor matching the description of the people who attacked Shiruta. I think we've found the group responsible."

So much for getting Adom to leave any of them alive, then.

"But they are. No purpose has intrinsic value. It's all extrinsic. 'Why' never finds an answer. We -ultimately- value things because we value them."

"Not sure I agree with that."

"And that's why you've got a blue ring and I've got an orange one."

"Physician to Batman. I have found a.. holding pen. The people within are malnourished and unresponsive, but do not appear dangerous."

"If they're not in any danger, leave them where they are. The trucks carrying aid supplies will be here in an hour."

"I am moving on."

Purpose=Failure

"Okay, explain to me why people who get exposed to the Anti-Life want to fight or.. do anything? I can see why getting magically convinced that your convictions are facile-."

"It doesn't convince. It proves. It runs in your brain and shows you the meaninglessness in your own life. Most people break from that. Some don't. Some New Gods make it a part of them, and when that happens they see it as good. Natural."

"I.. still don't see-."

"Be thankful." I hear another grunt and a thud. "I can't answer the questions you want to ask. I was a warrior, not a researcher."

"Captain Atom to Batman. I'm… I think I'm hearing voices. Not 'purpose equals failure', some kind of telepathic noise. Running my anti-telepathy training."

And… None of them took psi-shock grenades, did they? Batman should have one or two on him.

"Understood. Teth Adom and Captain Marvel are innately resistant. If you need to pull back, do so."

"Understood."

"Captain Marvel to Batman. I'm in a drugs lab. They were making something here. I think it's some sort of hallucinogen, but I don't recognise the formula."

"I'll investigate once the facility is clear."

"Okay. Moving on."

"Adom to Barda. Does this mean that a God of Apokolips is here?"

"I hope so."

**Yes, it does.**

Purpose=Failure

I blink, and… About a third of the building is… Gone. It's not broken into rubble and I'm not even sure that it's dust. Where there was a building there is now a 'U' shape of cut off building and perfectly flat ground.

Purpose=Failure

Adom and William are struggling to rise, and I can see blood leaking through minor wounds on Adom's costume. Barda is off to one side slightly, her armour battered but unbroken.

Purpose=Failure

Major Adams is flat on his back at the far end of the blasted area, moving weakly. Mr Yao stands opposite Barda, staring in horror at the room cut in half by the effect-. Yes. Those are bodies, dead and maimed.

Purpose=Failure

The man in grey armour takes a few easy steps forward. His eyes glow dark red and his skin is a very pale grey which barely contrasts with the white of his hair.

**I am The Key.** He raises an Apokoliptian-looking firearm, pointing it at Adom. **Welcome to my laboratory.**

Purpose=Failure

Adom growls before launching himself forward. The Key can't get his gun on target in time-.

**No.**

Adom convulses in mid-air and then drops to the smoothed rock below, hands gripping the sides of his head.

**The Power of Atum and the Courage of Montu. A hard target.** The Key takes a step forward, raising his gun once more. **A closed mind, with a door soon to be opened to His Truth.**

Purpose=Failure

**But why aren't you listening?** He looks up, eyes pointing directly at Alan and me. **Ah.**

Purpose=Failure

Purpose=Failure Purpose=Failure Purpose=Failure

Purpose=Failure

"You-?" Alan pants. "You feeling that?"

Purpose=Failure

"Just more lies, Alan. Even when I was a nihilist, I didn't resent people for valuing things."

Purpose=Failure

A beautiful note, one which reminds me of Zauriel's singing, and The Key staggers drunkenly for a moment before switching his attention to Mr Yao.

Purpose=Failure

**One singer. I have a choir.**

Purpose=Failure

More militants emerge from the structure. Some carry blasters and wear all-enveloping body armour of the sort I remember from Shiruta. Others forgo the guns and have wires plugged into points all over their skulls. Their eyes are vacant, but they're looking at the downed superheroes.

Purpose=Failure

**Hear His voice through us.**

Purpose=Failure

Purpose=Failure

back

Gods and Mortals 7

next

1st December

09:11 GMT +3

Purpose=Failure

The Key strolls forward with a grin as his followers open fire! Barda activates her aero-discs, and manages to make it about ten metres into the air before they get shot repeatedly. They come apart, but she has enough momentum to go sailing out of the depression and out of the line of fire.

Purpose=Failure

Anti-riot mortars mounted on Batman's bike fire, launching two gas canisters in an arc into the oncoming militia. The Key smirks as exactly two of his followers aim their guns upwards and fire once each, effortlessly annihilating them.

Purpose=Failure

William doesn't bother standing. He just flies at The Key from his prone position, his eyes narrowing as he takes multiple hits from the blasters. Then-. He lurches in the air and all the shots hit him, his face taking on a decidedly burnt appearance and his uniform disintegrating.

Purpose=Failure

Mr Yao sings a harsh note, the air between him and the force following The Key rippling as he generates a shockwave! Three are knocked to the ground, while twenty or so others are forced to brace. Given the amount of force that particular song generates… That's some good armour. Mr Yao's song changes a moment later as fire gets redirected his way, the air just in front of him rippling as he does something to make it absorb the shots.

Purpose=Failure

"Batman to Lanterns, are you able to offer support?"

Purpose=Failure

I might be able to, but one glance at Alan… "I'll try, but… Too much Anti-Life exposure. If we split our focus-."

Purpose=Failure

"Do what you can." He accelerates, keeping away from the depression as he drives around toward the far side of the building.

Purpose=Failure

The Key raises his gun and points it at William, a grey glow emanating from lines on his armour. **You'll do, then.**

Purpose=Failure

He raises his gun, jerking forward-

Purpose=Failure

-and takes a blast of energy to the chest from Major Adams. The Key is knocked off his feet and onto the ground, though he keeps hold of his gun.

Purpose=Failure

And suddenly it's a bit more bearable. Alan rallies, and I send a filament after The Key, who is pushing himself up as a squad of his soldiers dash forward to shield him. Major Adams isn't up, and he's visibly shaking from the effects of whatever that initial explosion was. A rushed and not entirely accurate spray of shots causes him to-

Purpose=Failure

"Uoough."

Purpose=Failure

-go limp, his beam cutting out entirely.

Purpose=Failure

My filament nears The Key.. and.. fizzles out before it can touch him. Fine, brute force it is, then. I generate a railgun and load a crumbler round.

Purpose=Failure

Adom recovers, rising slightly before diving into the ground and forcing it apart as the Key gets back onto his feet. I track and fire, my round striking him directly in.. the.. chest and he just takes it. Ah..?

Purpose=Failure

A volley of shots fly at Alan and me and I'm forced to focus on our defence. Though the blaster shots destroy individual barriers easily enough, the technique of using multiple small overlapping barriers which Guy and I developed during our spars appears to be holding them off. Of course, it's consuming ring power at a not-inconsiderable rate-.

Purpose=Failure

Barda leaps over the rim of the flattened area, passing over The Key and landing amongst his retinue! She swings her mega rod, armour fracturing and bones breaking with every swing.

Purpose=Failure

**Fine.**

Purpose=Failure

The Key turns her way, shoving aside his retinue as he tries to get a clear shot that doesn't result in him getting smashed apart by her mega-.

Purpose=Failure

The Key is already turning away and jabbing his gun forward as Adom erupts through the ground!

Purpose=Failure

**I'm a telepath.**

Purpose=Failure

The gun strikes Adom on the forehead and briefly glows the same colour as The Key's armour.

Purpose=Failure

**A sneak attack?**

Purpose=Failure

Purpose=Failure

Purpose=Failure

Gah!

Purpose=Failure

"A-ah!"

Purpose=Failure

I send my helmet back into subspace and make deliberate eye contact with Alan. "Kind of loud. You'd almost think he had something important to say."

Purpose=Failure

Purpose=Failure

Purpose=Failure

"I'm… I'm not sure I can-."

Purpose=Failure

"The people being held down there have been exposed to the Anti-Life equation for weeks, months… And now the League is here. And that means they're going to be freed, because that's what we do. We're superheroes. We beat the bad guys. And the fact that the Anti-Life is as bad as it gets just means that he's going to go down harder because these people do not get to win."

Purpose=Failure

He doesn't exactly look at ease, but he nods and his environmental shield strengthens. "And I ain't dead yet."

Purpose=Failure

I nod, and he manages a weak smile. "What was that thing you said? 'When I am confronted by the greatest evils of the universe, I will rejoice'."

Purpose=Failure

Down below us, Adom strains to reach for the gun-device being pressed against his head.

Purpose=Failure

"'For when I am done, there will be. One. Less'."

Purpose=Failure

"SHAZAM!"

Purpose=Failure

From a clear sky, a lightning bolt hits The Key's gun and disintegrates it. Adom flashes as he transforms, but he's still super strong and The Key is decidedly off balance.

Purpose=Failure

A blue pulse radiates outward from Alan, and I-. He usually looks like a well-preserved fifty, but I… For a moment, he looks like he's in his prime again.

Purpose=Failure

As the wave passes over the soldiers they shudder. Some drop their weapons, others fall to the ground. One of the ones with wires coming out of her head blinks, suddenly cognisant of her surroundings.

Purpose=Failure

"YAAAAGH!"

Purpose=Failure

Wires in the head. Some sort of control-? No, he's using Anti-Life, and we knew that telepaths were a risk.

Purpose=Failure

First, finish what Alan started. All Things Strive.

Purpose=Failure

Orange light radiates out from me, and this time none of the soldiers without the head-wires manage to stay upright. The Key himself appears unaffected, grabbing Adom's hands and forcing him back.

Purpose=Failure

**You're still too weak-**

Yao stops his shielding song and fires off quick bursts of sonic energy, cutting neatly through the wires attached to the brains of the still-upright soldiers. And then collapses as The Key glances his way.

**-to stop-.**

Barda brings her mega rod down on his head.

back

Gods and Mortals 8

next

1st December

09:19 GMT +3

There's a flash of yellow light as Barda reappears, mega rod held aloft.

"So? Who was he?"

The head dress makes it a little hard to tell, but I think that she's frowning. "He was not of Apokolips."

"What?"

Her hand tightens on her rod's grip. "He was biologically human. Someone had somehow turned him into one of us."

"I'm not sure what that means."

She shakes her head. "Where is Scott?"

"Over at the triage centre with Physician and Blue Lantern, trying to work out how to fix The Key's victims."

She nods, and starts marching in that direction. I tag along behind her. "What did Highfather say about-?"

"Darkseid can give his comprehension of parts of the Anti-Life equation to anyone he wants, at the cost of losing the ability to use it himself. But The Key was just a relay. There's someone else using it."

"Damn. Ah, yeah, Batman checked what was left of their laboratory. The Key had developed some sort of LSD-like telepathy booster. It turns out that while there aren't many human telepaths with significant power, low level telepathy is much more common. We think that the implants were doing something similar, but we just don't have good enough data on New God technology."

"He and a handful of infected humans were able to dominate your most powerful heroes."

"Most powerful? But I was fine."

She stops, turns her head towards me and raises her eyebrows.

"What? I was. I'm not sure how practical using Lanterns to shield their allies would usually be on a wider scale, but I think we've demonstrated the efficacy of the technique."

She starts walking again. "How many other Blue Lanterns are there?"

"None that I know of. I ordered Alan's ring as a custom job."

"If the Green Lanterns haven't learned the technique yet then they probably can't. What other Corps are there?"

"The only one I've encountered so far is the Indigo Lantern Corps, and they didn't give me contact details." She snorts in frustration. "What happens with The Key?"

"Highfather will purge him of the Anti-Life, then he will be imprisoned until we're sure he isn't a threat."

"Is Highfather likely to do anything about the rest of the Anti-Life problems we're encountering?"

"He wants Scott and me to monitor the situation. If there are actual Apokoliptians here, he'll probably send more troops."

"And if it's just humans whom Darkseid is sponsoring, we're on our own?"

"Are you saying you can't manage?"

"No, but there's a difference-" Barda pushes open the door to the room we're using as a triage area. "-between 'managing' and-."

"This boy. Where is he?" Adom is holding up a picture of Amon -not a recent one, but the most recent Adrianna had- and pointing to it, while the few people who have been purged so far are trying to avoid meeting his eyes. "His name is Amon Tomaz, and he was recently here. Tell me."

Barda's eyes narrow as they shrink back. "Does he not realise that-?"

"I know, he's just worried. I'll.. get this."

She nods, and I jog over to Adom. "Mighty-."

"I know him." On a nearby bed a bald woman with plasters covering the holes in her head weakly turns her face Adom's way. "He was brought in with the same group as me."

Immediately Adom crouches down next to her. "And where is he now?"

She turns her head away, unwilling or unable to meet his eyes. "He wouldn't hear His voice. He wouldn't bend."

Adom nods. "The Key could not break his will."

"No. Everyone breaks. But The Key wasn't trying to break us. Just turn us. Amon kept resisting, right up until... I don't know if he is still alive, but I saw where they put him."

Adom stands. "Show me. Orange Lantern, please fetch Adrianna."

I'd ask him if he's sure… But it's Adom. I step out, and the tight bundle of focused desires that are Adrianna is easy enough to locate as I step back out into.. the road as the relief trucks drive past me. I rise off the ground and accelerate after the one she's riding in.

"Adrianna!"

She carefully rises from her seat and comes to the back of the lorry. "Orange Lantern. Have you found him?"

"We know where he is. We don't know what state he's in or if he's alive. Adom thought that you'd want to-." She jumps out of the back of the lorry and I'm so surprised that it takes me at least a quarter of a second to extend a flight aura around her. "Right." Can't step out with passengers, and I'm not transitioning until all of the Apokoliptian technology in that place has been thoroughly dismantled. Instead, I rise into the air, generate booster constructs and accelerate back towards the facility.

"What.. can I expect?"

"Lots of people with psychological and spiritual injuries. Some of the recent intake are in a bad physical state, and the man running the place created some kind of disintegration effect which killed and maimed more people. The longer term residents are physically healthy but we're still trying to remove the Anti-Life infection from them."

"And from Amon?"

"He wouldn't bend, apparently." The facility appears, and I decelerate and aim for the entrance closest to the triage area. "So I doubt anything good." I set her down and lead the way-.

"Then my choice is clear." She reaches into her pocket and pulls out the Amulet of Isis.

"We don't.. actually know that's necessary. One of those lorries has a purple healing ray, and the Physician-."

"I have berated Adom for not doing what is best for his people often enough that I do not wish for him to have cause to call me a hypocrite." She smiles faintly. "Perhaps it is a good thing that I did not receive any religious indoctrination."

"Perhaps?"

Without ceremony, she pulls the thong carrying the amulet over her head. "I am Isis."

back

Gods and Mortals 9

next

1st December

09:23 GMT +3

Dirt explodes upward before being blown away by wind that swirls from nowhere, sparks flying from the short lived dust storm. As it calms, the.. newly transformed Adrianna freezes for a moment, then moves her left hand to keep her tiny skirt down while her right moves across her barely-covered and significantly larger breasts.

…

Yes, I see why the normally conservatively dressing Adrianna might be a little disturbed to find herself wearing a... That. I mean, that golden belt is only a little bit smaller than the skirt and… That's not even a bra. It's providing no support at all. I can see it providing no support at all. And that necklace and those sandals can't be comfortable.

On the positive side, she's about six inches taller and a good deal healthier-looking. Added muscles… Which I can see. I wonder who designed this costume, because if it was Shazam-.

"Paul, do you have any clothing I could-?"

While she's not quite as buff as Diana, the change of clothing I have in subspace for her more or less fits. Adrianna nods in gratitude before heading inside the building.

Just missing Dr Balewa shimmering into existence, his eyes darting around as he tries to see what just happened. "What was thet?"

"Adrianna putting on the Amulet of Isis, and becoming a living avatar of the goddess. Which should at least make tidying up here a little-"

"Oh."

"-easier. Which way did-?"

My ring gleams, then Alan's face appears. Paul, get down here right now.

Ring, location? And go.

The somewhat dilapidated brick and mortar of the old parts of the facility and the more recent grey Apokoliptian synthetic stone zip past in an instant and-

Purpose=Failure

-agagakh!

A sarcophagus… Medical table open casket thing. Very Apokoliptian. Devices my rings can't identify cover a young man's face and chest, his emaciated frame-

"Ragh!"

-suddenly more visible after Adom tears the front off the device. Bruises, cuts, visible ribs whose positioning suggests that they broke and healed without being set… Burns, three fingers missing from his right hand and none of the rest still have nails. Missing nails from his big toes. Emasculated. Left eye removed and nose… Flattened.

Genetic match. Amon Tomaz.

I remember the comic… He was injured, Adrianna couldn't fix his spinal injuries-.

"Paul, he's been Anti-Lifed."

I dart forward, stepping around the manfully horrified Adom and the stunned Adrianna. Enkindle avarice? Shit, there's nothing there to enkindle. I let the orange light join the blue which Alan is already trying to use…

Stifling a sob, Adrianna gestures at Amon. Bruises vanish, nails regrow and scars fade, but… Yeah, accelerated natural healing. Some things the human body just can't fix by itself. I can do better on behalf of someone I'm invested in like Adom… Restore the eye, the testicles and the fingers, reset the ribs-.

Adrianna gasps and looks at me, but I swiftly shake my head. He's… His soul is filled with Anti-Life, but… I see what she meant. He hasn't accepted it as part of himself. He's just suffered so much that he's switched off. The Anti-Life can't grab him because he's not there anymore. Which doesn't help us. Reminds me of that thing in Sword of Truth…

Adom glances back at the telepathic woman who directed him here, but he immediately controls himself. Not her fault. Heck, even if she was involved, which is well within the realms of possibility. "Can you help him?"

"Not… Readily. There are things I could try…"

"Can you tell what ails him?"

"As far as I can tell, his mind has withdrawn from his body. With time and care, I'd normally be reasonably confident that he would eventually recover. However, there's still Anti-Life in there and it… I think it's preventing that. And because he's not there, Blue Lantern and I can't -at our current skill level- remove it for him. Highfather might be able to do something for him… I don't know."

Telepathy? No, no, too dangerous to risk Anti-Life exposure. A perfect circle of Lanterns is my strongest chance, but how to get people like that working together? Sinestro would obviously have to g-.

"Can he hear me?"

"Ah… There's nothing physically wrong with his ears or auditory cortex. Maybe? The sound's going in, but I'm not sure that it's reaching him."

Adom nods. "Please, step aside."

I frown, but I step back to allow him closer. He approaches to within a metre then stops, bending slightly to bring his face closer to Amon's left ear. "Amon? My name is Teth Adom. I am a super hero, and the ruler of Kahndaq. But, more relevant to you, I am your sister's fiancé. She has refused to wed me until you are recovered, and so I must correct your current state myself."

"A very long time ago, a.. wizard, granted me a portion of my gods' powers to serve as his warrior. In modern times, he did the same to a man who calls himself Captain Marvel. Perhaps you have heard of him? And in turn, Captain Marvel shared that power with his two closest friends, knowing that he would be all the stronger for having them fight beside him. When I was.. the wizard's champion, I could have done the same." He shakes his head. "I chose not to. I could not have.. imagined sharing the burden in that way. I told myself that I could not let someone that close to me, that I could not encourage someone I valued to share that danger." He shakes his head. "I was mistaken. I was simply trying to protect myself from further loss, as if every wound I took was one from which another was spared."

"You are my love's brother, and you have survived tortures that would have killed a lesser man. I believe that you have a great deal to offer the world. And to rise from your bed, you must push these lies from your head, this Anti-Life. But you are barely alive. How can you do this?"

"I could always have shared my power as Captain Marvel does, but I did not have a.. family with which to share it. And now I do." He lays his right hand on Amon's forehead. "Say my name."

"T-th…"

What?

"Teth… Adom..!"

I raise a construct barrier as lightning arcs from Adom into Amon! The black and gold body suit forms immediately, his muscles swell and his eyes focus! He staggers forward, then swings his right arm back and destroys the machines that had been holding him.

"We could have… Studied that…"

"Amon." Adom smiles broadly and grasps the bewildered youth by his right shoulder as Adrianna dashes forward to embrace him. "Do you understand me?"

"Yes. Yes… My brother?"

Adom bows his head slightly. "Not yet. But..? Soon?"

Adrianna pulls her teary face away from her brother's head. "Yes. Soon. Very soon."

Hm. Looks like I need to buy a new hat.

back

Gods and Mortals 10

next

2nd December

06:08 GMT -5

I watch as my porridge turns in the microwave. I've got a wedding invitation, but… What do you get the man who has everything? No, no, there are plenty of things Adom doesn't have, but while not without his vices he certainly doesn't include acquisitiveness amongst them. What do you get a man who already has everything he wants?

My eyes drift sideways to a black and white picture of Alan with the rest of the Justice Society. Huh. Well… Sure, but I don't think necromancy's really on.

Although…

"Something on your mind, or have microwave ovens started picking up TV signals?"

"Hm? Oh." I take a half-step back, then turn to face Alan. "No, I was just.. thinking."

He pushes a couple of slices of toast into the toaster, then glances my way with a wry smile on his lips. "Should I warn the Justice League?"

"No, no, that won't-"

"It's only fair to give them a running start."

"-be necessary. I was just wondering… Hawkman, Mister Carter Hall. Did he.. talk about his past lives much?"

"You mean, in detail?" Alan tilts his head back as he thinks about it. "No, not that I recall. At the time, I wasn't sure he wasn't just.. a little…" He taps his forehead with his right forefinger and I nod. "He mentioned having been to a few places… I think we were in Frankfurt, after the war, and he mentioned having lived not too far from there a couple of centuries ago. You might be better off asking-." He cuts himself off.

"Asking..?"

"I was going to say 'Ted Knight'. Aside from Shiera, Ted was the guy in the Society he was closest to." He sighs, then shrugs. "I guess.. in any group, you're going to have people you're closer to than others. If you were asking me anything about Ted Grant or Jay or Diana, I could tell you no problem." He frowns curiously. "What brought this on?"

"Carter Hall was the reincarnation of Prince Khufu, right?"

Alan nods. "That's what he said."

"And he died… What, twenty nine years ago?"

Alan nods again. "Sounds.. about right."

"So his new incarnation would be twenty eight now."

"Ahh…" Alan looks decidedly nonplussed. "Could be, I guess. Like I said, I wasn't all that sure the reincarnation thing wasn't just.. some sort of crackpot idea he somehow got into his head. I.. suppose… Well, it depends on how long he had to wait between reincarnations."

"Did he or Mrs Hall say anything about how long that normally took?"

"No, not that I-." He blinks. "Oh, hang on. There was one time… We got to talking about the transcontinental railroad, and he told me that he worked as a secure courier for the Pinkerton Agency in… Ah… Nineteen oh three? Or thereabouts? I wouldn't want to swear to the exact date, but it was definitely early twentieth century."

"So even if he dropped dead the next day, it can't take more than a decade, because he joined the Justice Society as Carter Hall in the Forties."

"Huh." His toast slices pop out of the toaster, and he carefully transfers them to his plate and starts to butter them. "I hadn't really thought about it, but you're probably right. What brought this on?"

"Adom knew Khufu. And they were friends and colleagues, two things he's not exactly overflowing with at the moment."

"He did tear a woman apart on worldwide television with his bare hands." Alan puts the lid back on the butter and sticks his knife in the peanut butter jar. "That kind of thing can put people off."

"He's also a demigod ruling a country of people who revere him. Another friend or two would help prevent further.. ripping incidents."

Alan chuckles quietly. "It's the way you say it."

I take my porridge out of the microwave and squirt in a small amount of golden syrup. "Did he tell you whether or not he-"

"Orange juice?" Alan shakes the carton at me.

"-got-? Ah, yes, thank you. Whether he got all of his memories back from birth, or they gradually came through as he got older, or… What?"

Alan pours two glasses of orange juice, puts the lid back on the peanut butter and then floats the glasses and his plate over to the dining table. I pick up my bowl and join him.

"No, ah… He used to collect antique weapons. One of the ones he bought was…" He frowns and takes a small bite of his toast, taking his time to chew before swallowing. "It was the dagger that the man who murdered Khufu used. That was what made him remember. It was made of Nth metal, so it kinda stood out." He points in the general direction of the stairs with his toast. "I've still got it upstairs, actually."

"You..?" I stop, porridge-laden spoon half way to my mouth. "Did everyone in the Justice Society just… Dump their old stuff on you? I mean, you had Diana's old clothes, Mister Nelson's books, Hugo Danner's research records and now I find out you've got Mister Hall's Nth metal dagger. I once bought a spaceship's central computer with one of those."

Alan shrugs. "I.. guess I just had the loft space. You want it for something?"

"If seeing it caused Mister Hall to get his past life memories back, it should have the same effect on whoever the current incarnation is."

"Huh." Alan thinks as he chews on his toast. "You sure about that?"

"No. Reincarnation is usually an iffy business because souls don't encode memories well. But if he could clearly remember multiple past lives well enough to hold conversations about things they'd seen, that's clearly not an issue here. The dagger.. should have the same significance to whoever he is now that it had to Mister Hall. Unless the trigger was a one-time thing which happened as a result of the shock of seeing it for the first time in thousands of years. I suppose that the only way to know for certain would be to try it."

"And what if.. whoever it is doesn't want to get their past life memories back?"

"Then I stick it back in the loft. After making the same offer to the current Shiera Saunders, of course."

"How would you find them?"

"Scrying. If we used the dagger as the focus, even a fairly weak magic user should be able to find them."

"I suppose the association would be pretty strong, huh." He thinks for a moment, then slowly nods. "I can dig the knife out after breakfast. One other thing I do remember, though."

I nod, my mouth full of porridge.

"It isn't just the two of them who reincarnate. The guy who killed them -Hath-Set- is supposed to get reincarnated too."

I nod again, then swallow. "Alright, manageable. I can stick him in stasis or.. on a planet on the other side of the universe or something."

"If this works… Have you thought about what you're going to tell Hector?"

"I'd be astonished if he actually complained about his parents reincarnating, but I'm sure we'll be able to come to terms if he does."

back

Gods and Mortals 11

next

2nd December

11:37 GMT -6

"Of course, Queen Adilah. And I'm very pleased to know that your efforts are being met with such success."

Amazing how quickly people can get a clue when they're totally dependent on you. Lex could supply Bialya's current ruler with more of the synthetic pheromone, but I strongly recommended that he not. It would be easy enough for -for example- the CIA to find out about and then he's broken the terms of his parole and I look like a fool for not spotting it. She was decidedly on edge after I vanished from the face of the Earth, and I've made it clear that I expect her to toe the party line if she wants me to keep helping her.

And if I could find as much as a toenail clipping from her sister, I'd use a Lazarus Pit and dispense with her services entirely.

"What freedom you allow me."

It was moderately pleasing to find out that my assessment of her political abilities was about right. Things weren't getting to the 'open rebellion' stage when I got back in touch, but government officials found her 'more difficult to work with' than her predecessor. Which without the pheromone would probably have resulted in her getting formally sidelined and reduced to a purely ceremonial role at best.

"If you were capable of exercising power sensibly without me then you wouldn't need me. But take heart; I've just the solution."

"I am not expecting to like it."

"I have in my employ a woman with significant experience in leadership roles. Her name is Miss Savage. She's been working as my PA for a little while, and it's a waste of her talents. Obviously, she's going to be representing my interests, but I've made it clear that she is otherwise there to help you."

"Is she a deviant as well?"

"Actually, yes." Oh, today is a good day to be me. "But you won't have to worry about the pheromone affecting her. We've been making marvellous strides in atmosphere filtration lately."

Also, she has so far demonstrated better taste. Nothing happening with her and Knockout. I suppose that she hasn't had the opportunity to demonstrate any of the traits an Apokoliptian would find attractive. And Knockout hasn't spent anything like as much time on Earth as her comic counterpart had. Ah well. They can't all be winners.

"I will endure her presence to the precise degree I am forced to."

I sigh loudly enough that she can hear it. "Look… Queen Adilah… I know you hate both the situation and me. And I know you'll cut contact with me just as soon as you can survive doing so. That's fine: I admire the drive humans have to improve their situations… But I'm not seeing what your exit plan is. Ignoring Miss Savage would be completely in keeping with your behaviour to date, but all that means is that you're cutting yourself off from a capable teacher. Are you getting tuition from somewhere else? Because if not, you're acting hard against your own interests."

"And why would you care?"

"It's a New God thing." I lean back in my chair. "I get this itch when realms are being administered inefficiently. But, it's true, in the short term you continuing to shoot yourself in the foot is in my interests. So, fine, your next dose will be with you in a couple of minutes and Miss Savage will be presenting herself tomorrow. Have a nice day!"

I dismiss the phone construct, before looking over to Miss Savage and Jean. "Alright, what's next on the agenda?"

Miss Savage gives me a mild frown. "I don't think I've been sufficiently briefed on Queen Adilah."

"I.. don't think I missed anything in my initial brief..? Incompetent, homophobic, play your cards right you'll basically be running the country..?" Especially since you'll have the pheromone as well.

"Her background. What she likes, who she was friends with at school, what she does for fun. My job will be easier if I can become her friend."

"Yeah…" I shake my head. "Not going to happen. When I say 'homophobe', I don't mean the occasional obscene barb." I smile. "Being around you will literally make her ill."

"Then why did you tell her?"

I… Huh. She.. has a point. It probably wasn't productive… "I don't respect her enough to want to make her happy with the situation. Honestly, it was a tossup between this and giving you a disguise ward so you could replace her entirely." I frown. "And hey; Bialya's the one country in the Middle East where-. No, you know what? I'm not happy with any member of my Elite being in the closet. Screw everyone else. Be resplendent."

She doesn't appear to be quite sure what to make of that.

"But if you really want to know anything else about the bitch, I've got the CIA's file and everything the g-gnomes have been taking from her brain since I prevented her assassination." I take the data stick out of subspace and pass it to her. "Yours to read -or not- as you choose."

She gives me a slightly odd look as she takes it. To misquote Abaddon in Do The Daemon Primarchs Still Hang Out?, I wouldn't have made you one of my Chosen if I didn't value your opinion. Or a New God, in her case.

"So as I was saying, anything else?"

Jean nods. "Mister Near reports that the situation in Britain is as stable as it could reasonably be. I have also received requests from a number of bodies that they be given access to the prisoners."

"Pick a handful of the least stupid and give them a tour of the facilities. No direct contact due to the prisoners being ritual magicians." Jean nods. "That it?"

"I believe those are all the matters that require your immediate attention, Mister Grayven."

"Good show." I get to my feet and step away from the table. "Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go and talk the Chinese government into helping Lex with his space program."

Mother Box, boom tube.

Ping.

I walk through and-. "Oh, not again." The boom tube behind me closes as I look around the… Workshop? Foundry? Sinestro, still working this time?

Yes, Lantern Grayven.

"Alright, I'll give whoever hacked my boom tube until the count of five, and then I'm going to start-" I slowly turn around. "-getting irritable."

"How much do you think I still care?"

I narrow my eyes slightly at the small, goblin like man in the lab coat sitting opposite me. "Doctor Sivana. And here I'd thought that Captain Marvel finally killed you."

"No. No, he didn't."

"Something I can do for you? Or can I go back-?"

He raises a small pistol. A radion blaster. I was somehow expecting be-.

"You told Vandal Savage that something like this would only work when your ring-based defences were compromised."

"Yes? That's true? What of it?"

"I'm something of a perfectionist when it comes to technology. It occurred to me that if a sufficiently large weapon could knock down your energy shields, there was no real reason not to make that weapon itself radion-based."

"I suppo-?"

"Turn your head to the left."

I turohhh. That's a big radion blaster, the end of the barrel just poking through the entrance of a subspace pocket. "Doctor Sivana, I'm not aware of any particular enmity existing between-."

"Do you know who the Sheeda are?"

I curl my lip. "The end result of a dying time line. Humanity's destiny if I fail."

He nods slowly. "That was where the portal sent me. To their future. When they found out, they opened a portal back."

I nod. "So we should expect a Harrowing. Worrying, but manag-."

"No. When they realised I was coming back to now, they sent an operative back to wait for me. It arrived during my family's annual meeting on Venus. My facility was destroyed. My wife is dead, along with three of my children."

"I'm so sorry, Doctor. If there are any parts left-."

"Do you think I didn't think of that? It was on Venus. Once the walls went down, there was nothing." I nod. "I want to exterminate the Sheeda. I want to kill every last one of them. And you are going to make that happen."

I nod again. "Yes, I am. Would you mind dispensing with the gun so we can discuss how?"

back

Gods and Mortals 12

next

2nd December

10:01 GMT -7

I rise from my seat in the reception area of the University of Arizona's School of Anthropology as Mr Cantrell strolls in and looks around. He spots me and does a bit of a double take.

"Mr Cantrell?"

"Sorry, I was-" He crosses the room and holds out his right hand. "-expecting you to be wearing…" We shake hands. "Your armour."

"I didn't really think I'd need it. I really only wear that when I'm expecting actual combat…"

"And I imagine it isn't all that comfortable." He half turns and gestures towards the door he came in through, and I follow him as he leads the way into the building. "Ah, you said you wanted me to take a look at something?"

"Well, yes. I want you to check the provenance of a knife for me." I lift the padded box in my left hand. "I believe that it's Ancient Kahndaqi."

"I am an expert, but… Why not ask Teth Adom? I thought the two of you were pretty close."

I bow my head slightly. "He said that the style was about right, but he isn't an expert in ancient metallurgy. But… I'm afraid that the knife is only my.. secondary reason for being here."

He looks mildly interested. "If there's anything else I can help with..?"

"Tell me about your dreams."

He stops, blinking in surprise. "Ah..? Excuse me?"

"Let's see… It would be ancient Kahndaq, fifth century Britain-."

"How-? What-?" He takes a moment. "Yes, I do-. How do you know about that?"

"Do you believe in reincarnation?"

His eyes grow a little distant. "I knew… I mean, I watched your interviews. I know there's more to the afterlife than Heaven and Hell. And I can-." He focuses on me again. "I have given lectures on different cultures' beliefs concerning religious and funeral practices. You think..? The reason I have these dreams is because they're..? Past life memories?"

"Yes."

"That still doesn't explain how you know about them. Am I on some kinda watch list or something?"

"Technically, yes. Given the number of arcane artefacts which seem to get unearthed during digs, the NSA maintains a database of people who are 'at risk' or whom they might need to consult at short notice. But in my case it was a combination of your age and a short scrying ritual performed with the aid of some of your previous incarnation's-" I lift the box containing the dagger. "-property."

He blinks, his mouth falling slightly open. "My God." He sort of huffs with amusement. "That's-. I mean, what does that mean about me, my character-. I mean, I'm a semi-practicing Christian. Reincarnation's never been part of the Christian religious tradition."

"Obviously, not all of your forebears were Christian. And there was magic involved. Now, the reason why I'm bringing this up-."

"Ah, would you mind if we did this in my office? You're kinda blowing my mind here."

"Under the circumstances, I think that's entirely reasonable."

Mr Cantrell leads the way through the Anthropology Department's corridors until we come to a small office on the second floor, walking in and dropping onto a soft chair held together by duct tape. "I'm just… Trying to get my head around it."

I generate a construct chair and sit down opposite him. "Quite understandable."

"So… Who am I?"

"You are Frederick Cantrell, PhD student at the University of Arizona."

He looks up. "Am I? Because I don't always remember the dreams clearly, but they always call me by other names. I mean…"

"Those people are dead. You have the same soul, true, but you are as much a product of your era as they are theirs. You have your own memories, you're living your own life. Nothing about the fact that you reincarnate takes away from that. You aren't doomed to mindlessly repeat the actions of your predecessors; in point of fact none of them were archaeologists."

He sits still for a moment. "The knife is the key. To.. fully… I don't know what the word is. Bring.. him… Them… Back."

"It was what restored your predecessor's memories, certainly." His eyes flick up at me. "Though whether you look at it or not is entirely up to you. If you like, I can leave and… In eighty years or so I'll have this conversation with your successor."

"I'm already dreaming their memories. Who's to say I won't just.. wake up as someone else one of these days?"

I sit back slightly. "What did you have for lunch nine days ago?"

He hesitates, then shakes his head. "I don't remember. I could.. guess."

"Right. Very few people remember things like that for any length of time. And if we went through your diary, you ran through the day in your mind and you remembered?"

"Okay, I'm not defined by my memories. But people in different eras think about things in very different ways, and those behaviors have their roots in their formative experiences."

"A friend of mine spoke to your predecessor's friends and family about how he changed after getting his memories back. There was some change, but he was still the same man. He just.. remembered some things that he'd forgotten."

He nods slowly. "It's tempting. Being able to remember what it was like living in an ancient culture rather than just guessing or working from fragmented records… Can I ask who my.. predecessor was?"

"Telling you would involve violating a superhero's secret identity. If you got your memories back you'd know anyway. But if you don't…"

He nods again. "Can I sleep on it? And I should probably talk things through with Sharon as well-. That's my girlfriend, S-."

"Sharon Parker. I was planning on contacting her myself, but if you'd-."

"She's-?"

"The two of you… As I understand it, something about the magic involved in your first death means that the two of you tend to find one another."

"So much for free will."

"Do you regret meeting her?"

"No. No." He chuckles a little nervously. "Even when we first met, it was like we'd known…" His face falls slightly. "Known each other for years. And we have. It's-. Her. All those women, all one woman."

"All those men, one man. Or many men with a few memories in common." I shrug. "As I said, it's entirely up to you."

"Let me just.. call her real quick."

back

Gods and Mortals 13

next

2nd December

22:18 GMT +8

"..if I could. Everyone else thinks I'm crazy."

Roy's entirely too proud to shiver. He's also too proud to slow down, despite the depth of snow we're walking through. He's been fairly uncommunicative since we arrived here, but this is going to be boring if I don't have someone to talk to.

"So, ah… How come it took you this long to ask me?"

"You don't exactly have the best reputation."

"On the contrary: I've got an excellent reputation. Ask anyone."

"Like the British government?"

I grin. "Actually, yes. You think they'd dare say anything bad about me?"

"Why didn't you tell me you knew where he was?"

Oh. Yeah, it has been nearly a year. "Pretty much the same reason why I didn't know you were a clone before you told us."

"And what was that?"

I shrug. "You didn't matter to me. I keep medical records of people I like so I can heal them. I don't think we'd exchanged two words. I had absolutely no motive to do anything with you or for you and I still think a bow's a stupid weapon." I stop and bend down, wiping snow from a nearby rock pile with my right hand. Runic wards, but weak ones. Enough to fool a power ring… Until I reinforced it with the power of my own divinity.

Just finding out that was even possible is making this trek worthwhile.

Roy snorts. "I think the Celestial Archer club would argue that with you."

"And how much better would they be as Celestial Gunmen? I could even make a purple healing pistol for them."

He comes to a halt just in front of me, staring at the fortress monastery thing up ahead. "You sure he's in there?"

"A lot of meat with his DNA is, yeah. I don't know whether he's alive or not. I wouldn't have left him alive. But there're quite a lot of things about this that I wouldn't have done."

Construct Ra's was at least able to confirm that Original Roy was in cryogenic suspension when he last updated himself. Unfortunately for me, he didn't keep himself informed of exactly where he was being housed beyond the fact that it was somewhere in China. And then the Chinese killed everyone on their League of Shadows membership list, rather than capturing and interrogating any of them. I can only assume that they transported it here first, though whether the suspension unit is still working is anyone's guess.

I stride forwards-.

"What are you doing? We can climb the-."

"It's not like they're a threat to me."

"League of Shadows killer monks are definitely a threat to me. If-."

"You picked that bow." Still, him coming back dead wouldn't exactly win me points with the League. "Fine, hush tube." The texture of the space in front of us changes slightly. "Just remember I don't have anything in the way of forward intelligence, and that you're much squishier than I am."

"I'll manage."

"Fine."

I stride through the tube and into a.. red walled hallway just in front of two rather surprised spear-armed monks. I.. guess this isn't that Monastery of Alien Evil where Prometheus got his cosmic key, then. I reach forward, spears glancing off my hands and I grab their heads and smash them together.

"The Chinese government okay about you having a body count?"

"They insisted. Everyone here's dead." I stroll towards the end of the corridor. "There's a xeno-team a couple of miles away to finish off anyone who survives us."

Lightly-stepping, arrow on string, he keeps pace with me. A point arrow, I notice. "The cryo unit's big. And heavy. There can't be too many places in here they can have brought him in."

I stop and turn to face the wall. "Right." I trigger my aero-discs and punch, wood exploding outwards into the Tibetan night. Huh, hadn't really considered that aspect of things before. The Chinese love getting excuses to rough up-.

"What the hell did you do that for?"

I shrug and I float out and downwards. Yes, a helicopter could-

An arrow hits me on the gorget. I raise my left hand and disintegrate the archer.

-land there, which means that Roy I would have gone through that courtyard, then through…

Ah.

I let myself drop, the roof under my feet collapsing and falling onto… Could be a dojo? A couple more monks, these ones with.. staves…

Oh… Fucking…

Jade takes a half-step back, mopping her brow. "Grayven."

"…" Um. "Jade." I take a step forward, and the closest monk charges me with a… Metal club thing? I swing my right arm and backhand him in half. "So, ah… This is where you've been?"

"… Yes."

Roy drops down through the roof hole and puts an arrow through the right leg of one of the monks. Out of the corner of my eye I see three others run at him.

"Roy, you got-. You got this, right?"

"Yeah, you handle Cheshire."

Jade and I watch each other for a moment.

I take her pardon out of subspace. "Look, I-."

"You took your time tracking me down."

"I haven't tracked you down. We're looking for the original Speedy. I didn't even know you were here." And what the heck do I do about that? I can't.. just.. let the Chinese kill her. If Roy hadn't seen her I'd just tube her somewhere…

"So finishing the job of killing everyone I know is incidental, is it?"

"I told you I was going to do that! The first time we had a conversation! Did you just forget!?"

She thinks for a second. "That was months before you-!"

"And? Infiltrating, finding out everything I needed to know, took time. And don't try and tell me you've never infiltrated anywhere before!"

"Not by telling them I was infiltrating them!"

"It worked!"

Someone -a monk- stumbles back into me. I grab her, twist her head 180 degrees and then toss the corpse aside. Jade and I just stare at each other for a moment, and I'm… I'm breathing rather quickly. Close your eyes. Slow your breathing. Calm, calm blue water.

"Why didn't you tell me at the time?"

"Because I didn't know how closely Ra's was monitoring you. I didn't want anyone without a vital role to play to know what was going on before we started. Telling you to make yourself scarce was the best I could do."

"And you didn't try and get in contact afterwards."

"My father visited me."

"Your f-?" I nods. "What did he want?"

"To say what a great job I was doing, and whisper a part of the Anti-Life Equation into my ear. I spent a week raving in agony, mostly reliving the moment where you tried to stab me."

"A knife wouldn't have hurt y-."

"It HURT me! I loved you! I don't care about the knife, I care about the fact that you tried to use it! RRREHHR." Calm… Calm blue waters. Oh… Marvellous, now I've relearned how to cry. "Fuck, it doesn't… Look, just take this." I throw the pardon to her, and she catches it. "From President Horne."

She opens it and looks it over. "So when the Chinese government kill me the US won't be able to prosecute my dead body."

"Just…" A somewhat battered-looking Roy stumbles into my line of sight. "Show us where the real Roy is, and Grayven can drop you off somewhere." He turns his head toward me. "Right?"

I nod. "Actually, I…" She would be a good fit for Mr Near's team, but I don't… I don't think me being around her will be sensible for a while. "Yes. Yes, I can do that."

Jade's eyes move from me to him and then back again. "I.. haven't seen him, but I know where they're keeping him. This way."

back

Gods and Mortals 14

next

3rd December

06:22 GMT +5:30

So while Mr Cantrell and Ms Parker are thinking things over… Who do we have left?

No record of Manitou Raven or Dawn survives to the present day. With their base of operations sinking and the passage of five thousand years… And the fact that their people didn't go in for written records, that's hardly surprising. They might still be alive, they might have died centuries ago… If they didn't pass the magic power threshold for automatic life extensions, that would be my guess.

There's a giant crater where Tezumak's people used to live, and good riddance. Power armour powered by the sacrifice of children is something the world can do without. If I found a surviving suit of armour in a cave somewhere I'm honestly not sure whether I'd hand it over for study or destroy it outright. I'd certainly kill Tezumak himself. Fortunately, I don't think that will be necessary.

Sela? No idea. Whaler? No idea. The Anointed One? I don't even know what species he was, let alone where he ended up. I did find out what happened to Gamemnae, and now I know why Atlanteans look uncomfortable whenever I mention her. According to Sephtian she was an exile who got very good at magic, conquered most of Atlantis by force majeure and set about reversing the sinking. Massive social upheaval, many many people dead… Her body is actually kept in the Temple of Orcus in the fervent hope that he keeps her in his domain permanently.

On a more positive note, Hindu mythology has plenty of references to Jarhanpur. The location where it's supposed to be used to be a place of pilgrimage, selling cheap gimcrackery to tourists. Then Partition happened. There are still people in the region, but they reach for their guns when strangers arrive.

One on a very long list…

Anyway, there should be an entrance to Jarhanpur somewhere around here. So I'm just waving my upgraded rune stones around until I-.

"Doctor Mist to Orange Lantern."

"Orange Lantern here. What can I do for you?"

"Batman.. did not send you?"

"No? Should he?"

The air just to my right shimmers and Dr Balewa appears, floating without apparent support. "After our confrontation in Saudi Arabia, Batman requested that I seek out other such sites. Places that are part of the world and yet apart from it. There is one here."

"Jarhanpur."

"If we are fortunate, yes. If we are not…"

"If we are not, shouldn't there be a few more League members on hand than just you?"

"The Flash and Lantern Stewart can be here in moments. But I hope, as you say, that what I feel is Jarhanpur."

"How much 'hope' are we talking about, here?"

"If it is not, then there is an Apokoliptian factory the size of a small country sitting in the second most populous country on the planet."

I nod. "I'm feeling lucky. But they might not be all that happy about you forcibly reintegrating them into the world."

"Your message regarding the first such location afforded me little time to study the phenomenon. I believe that I can act with greater subtlety on this occasion."

I nod, trying not to sigh. Then I call my armour out of subspace, add construct armour and a couple of railguns and expand my awareness outward. "If we encounter anything Anti-Life related, I would strongly suggest that you fall back."

"The lies of the Anti-Life affect me no more then they do you." He descends slowly through the air, landing lightly on the ground. "Now, I will make my final preparations."

"Go right ahead."

He raises his hands, faint gusts of wind swirling around him. The only other outward indication I have that anything much is happening is the brilliant blaze that my rune stones are suddenly emitting.

"Tell me: if you are not here to face the warriors of Apokolips, why are you here? What reason do you have for seeking Jarhanpur?"

"Adom used to know its ruler, before they either got destroyed or went into supernatural isolation. I'm hoping that either he or his successor are still around." I frown. "Actually, wouldn't you have been around back then?"

"I was alive, yes. It is hard to recall, but I think I spent the entirety of Teth Adom's reign in what is now Angola. I was not invited to join."

"Did you.. know of him?"

"I knew that some gods had blessed a mortal champion. Little more." I nod. "Ah. Yes, I have it."

A point in the air just in front of us shimmers a white-yellow before expanding, swirling as it widens and parts in the centre. The space between the rim of the coloured ring shows a foreign landscape, one far removed from the sun beaten scrubland around us. I see woodlands in the distance, while close up there's a stone-paved road cutting through a meadow full of lush grass and wild flowers.

Probably not Apokolips, then.

The last good record of Jarhanpur comes from well before the rise of Islam or Sikhism. Heh. An outpost of India from when it was the most powerful nation on Earth, with none of the religious strife that exists in the modern day country. I'm assuming that we're going to see a medieval idyll rather than anything that suggests they've kept up to date… But one of these places might surprise me one day.

"Are we going through?"

Dr Balewa holds his right hand out towards the portal. "I feel nothing of the Anti-Life. And I have other sites to investigate."

"Okay." Pretty reasonable, really. "Can you leave the portal open for me?"

"Eh-h." He glances at me, then makes a circular gesture with his right hand. "It will remain open for one hour. If I do not hear from you, I will return tomorrow and reopen it."

I let my construct armour evaporate and switch out my heavy combat armour for a far lighter version which leaves my face exposed. "Thank you. That should be plenty of time." I nod at the portal. "I just.. walk through?"

"The magic does not transport you anywhere. What you see is what should be here, if it had not been taken ehway. Your tattoos, your wards? They will not affect it."

I nod at him. "Right then. I'll report back in half an hour."

He shimmers out of corporeality once more, and I fly through the portal.

back

Gods and Mortals 15

next

3rd December

06:36 GMT +5:30

That's a lorry.

And I very much doubt that it was locally produced. The Daimler-Benz badge is still visible on the front of the cab and I'm reasonably confident that they don't sell to mythological Hindu princely states. I float down to just above the road. Quite a lot of wear and tear, including.. bullet damage..? Yes, aged blood stains and… It hit the fuel tank, causing a slow but ongoing leak. The tank's now empty, and since I doubt that they distil petrol in here there wouldn't have been a way for the owners to replenish their supply even if they did repair it.

Someone's opened a portal before. Probably within the last fifty years. Interesting.

But not strictly relevant.

Hm. The only supervillain organisation in this part of the world is Kobra, and they've been… I wouldn't say 'quiet'.. lately… But less overt than they were. There was a… With Jeffrey Burr being recognised as Kobra, the organisation was gripped by whatever the Hindu equivalent of millennialist fervour is. With him gone and derecognised, the crazy outward attacks on civilisation have more or less stopped. These days they've mostly gone back to financially motivated crime and shooting each other, so I doubt that it was a group of Bestowed who opened the portal.

India does have superheroes, but almost nothing in the way of higher organisation for them. The ones I've heard about come from major cities, and none of them are close to here. And most of them have spontaneously manifesting abilities, rather than being studied magic users. So not them either.

Which is actually a very good thing for me. It means that the people in here aren't totally isolated and that Rama Khan -or his successor however generations removed- probably opened the barrier himself. Which is… Interesting. I remember that in Justice League he was a pretty strict isolationist.

So… Ring, wide area scan, if you please.

Compliance. Warning, limited feedback available due to-. Spell Eater-.

The countryside disappears, replaced instantly with… An audience chamber. A richly dressed bearded man sits cross-legged on a pile of cushions. Armed guard surroundagh! I squeeze my eyes shut as looking at one sends a painful flash of light into my eyes!

"You would be advised not to look too deeply into the spirits of my bodyguard, outsider."

I return my attention to the entirely calm man sitting at the focus of the room. "I apologise." I bow my head slightly. "I was merely curious."

"Curiosity would not be sufficient to bring you here. How did you breach the barrier protecting this land?"

"An ancient and powerful wizard opened a portal while looking for one of our enemies, who use a similar technique to the one used to remove Jarhanpur from the world."

"'Ancient'? Who is he?"

"His name is Nommo Balewa, though he is also known as Doctor Mist."

"Yes." He nods. "I have heard of him. Will he attempt to breach our protection again?"

"I.. didn't ask, but I have no reason to believe so. He was specifically looking for anyone working with Apokolips, and since it was immediately evident that what he found here did not belong to them, he left." I risk a smile. "I rather get the impression that he's a bit overworked at the moment."

"Why did you not leave with him? You have no place here."

"I'm sorry, may I ask? You are Lord Rama Khan, sovereign prince of Jarhanpur?"

He straightens slightly, expression firm and proud. "I am."

"Excellent." I bow from the waist until my torso is parallel to the floor. "My lord, I humbly beg your pardon for my intrusion and thank you for permitting me to stand within your home."

"My pardon will be granted as soon as you leave. Why did you come here when it was clear that we are not what you sought?"

I straighten up. "You aren't what he sought. I would have stood with him against Apokoliptian soldiers, but I was looking for you."

"And what do you want of me?"

"One of my friends-. Two of my friends I should say, are getting married shortly. Since they don't really want for anything in the way of material possessions, I thought that I should try and work out something that they actually desire as a gift."

He smiles very faintly. "You are free to visit the bazaar before you leave."

"Thank you, but that wasn't what I meant. They're both somewhat short on family and friends, so I thought I'd try tracking down a few. Locating the current incarnations of Prince Khufu and-" His face falls and his eyes stare. "-Princess Chay-Ara was relatively straightforward-."

"They would not retain their memories."

"With all due respect my lord, you are mistaken. About eighty years ago his then-incarnation purchased the knife Hath-Set used to murder them. The moment he saw it, memories of his past lives filled his mind. The same thing happened with a woman named Shiera Sanders, Princess Chay-Ara's then-incarnation. Both have since died and been reborn again."

"That is… Remarkable. They remember every detail?"

"The current incarnations are trying to decide whether or not they want to remember everything. I'm expecting an answer tomorrow."

"Who do you know who knows both myself and the Hawks?"

"Teth Adom."

That doesn't appear to have been well received. "Teth Adom is dead. Murdered by the treacherous wizard Jebediah of Canaan. And if he were alive, he would not remarry."

"Yes, he was killed and his soul was bound to his corpse by the wizard. Five thousand years later an archaeological expedition opened the tomb and one of its members used a blood magic ritual to transfer Adom's soul from his corpse to an amulet, and used that to use the powers the gods of Kahndaq had granted him. He rampaged for a few years, then he met me. Teth Adom now controls the man's former body while he was consumed by Ammut. He has recently deposed the current Kahndaqi government and is establishing his own. A criminal gang tried to bribe him with slaves and he -predictably- killed them and freed the slaves. One of them decided that he needed someone close to him who wasn't in total awe of him and stuck around to berate him when she felt that he was failing in his duties." I shrug. "I suppose it was a choice between marrying her or exiling her."

Lord Rama Khan looks to my left, and a robed functionary there gives him a cautious nod. Rama Khan blinks in astonishment, then his eyes drop. "I.. did not know that the wizard had interfered with his soul's passage. If I had, I would have undone whatever he had worked, or not rested until I found someone who could."

"It was five thousand years ago. But can you come to the wedding?"

He shakes his head. "No. Since my predecessor's death, I can no longer leave Jarhanpur. But." He raises his right hand and part of the stone floor liquefies and leaps into it, reshaping itself into an urn. "I can send an avatar. Please, take this in my place and break it open before him."

A servant walks over to him, carefully takes the urn and carries it to me.

"Thank you." I take it. "I know that he will be delighted to see you again."

back

Gods and Mortals 16

next

4th December

10:03 GMT -7

Hector Hall looks at Frederick Cantrell more than a little nervously. "Hey… Dad..?"

"Not… Ah…" Mr Cantrell glances at me, but really all I can do is shrug. I don't know exactly how it works. "If I… Understand this right, I'll end up with his memories and.. I might start to act a little like him… I'm not convinced I'll actually be him."

"Right. No, of course."

Mr Hall has kept rather more in shape than Mr King: he kept working as a superhero and while his armour is strength-enhancing it isn't actually powered. The silver outer surface is actually reflective enough that it's uncomfortable to look at, even out of direct sunlight. I'm not completely certain why; Nth metal is usually a dull grey. I can only assume that it's something to do with the impurities in it.

Diana glances at Ms Parker, who hasn't stopped staring at the case containing the dagger since I put it on the table. "Sharon, if you don't want to look at it, no one is going to force you. Hawkman kept it in a display case and never once used it in combat."

Ms Parker shakes her head. "No, I'm not-." She breathes out, smiling -nervously, but still smiling- for the first time since we arrived. "All the times I've had… Déjà vu, looking at something and… Thinking that I should remember something about it. When Freddy told me about…" She nods at the case. "This… It just.. made sense. Actually having that knowledge… I think it will be a relief more than anything."

"But..?"

"But I'm still a little worried that it's actually some sort of magic alien brain parasite, and as soon as I see it my mind gets eaten and I get replaced with whoever it took its first imprint from."

Diana nods. "As Shiera explained it to me, she also remembered all of her other lives as well. The dagger was still in Libya for every incarnation between her and Chay-Ara, so I don't think that it could have recorded them."

Ms Parker nods. "O-kay, that's a little reassuring."

Mr Grant nudges me in the side from his wheelchair. "Never thought I'd see an old friend come back from the dead."

"You saw Solomon Grundy come back from the dead, didn't you?"

"I don't call people who break my left arm in three places 'friends'."

"Ah… Wait, you really never saw anyone come back from the dead?"

He looks up at me, frowning in bewilderment. "Alan, what have you been doing with this boy?"

Alan shakes his head. "Oh no. He does that to himself."

"Okay, smart guy." He nods at me. "How many people have you seen come back from the dead?"

"Depending on what you count… Fifteen? Ra's al Ghul and company using the Lazarus Pit, Teth Adom taking Theodore Adam's body, Edward Clariss-."

Mr Garrick winces. "Don't remind me. I won't say he didn't deserve Hell. I just wish he'd stay there."

"On the plus side, if he does come back, we can probably contain him."

"With a super speed demon, you ideally want to be a bit more sure than that. Doesn't the.. Justice League have an angel now?"

"The Justice League has an ersatz angel who can perform theurgy but doesn't have any sort of direct line to God. Angelica can't just forward a zoning complaint."

But Mammon was kind enough to offer to sit on him for me, so there's that.

"And then there's my construct lanterns, who aren't exactly alive or dead. Actually…" I look around the room and note the obvious absence from amongst the surviving members of the Justice Society. "Do you know where.. Red Tornado put Doctor Morrow? I'm… Hinon said she was going to look into whether it was possible to turn them back into people, and I… People were pretty okay about me having demon constructs, but I think seeing a human would be a bit much."

"I… Think…" Alan glances at Diana. "Diana said that Red was looking after him."

"Um. At the Mountain, or in his civilian identity home? Because I don't think-."

"Okay!" Mr Cantrell walks over to the case containing the dagger. "We might as well get on with this."

Diana looks slightly concerned. "If you are not sure-."

He and Ms Parker look at one another, reach down to take hold of one edge of the case each, then flip the lid and stare at the knife.

And…

"Ah…" / "How do we..?"

Mr Cantrell picks up the dagger and takes a closer look at it. Then he offers it to his girlfriend with a shrug.

"Hah!" Alan bows his head, grinning. "Guess maybe we were getting a bit ahead of ourselves, there."

"Oh, come on Alan." Mr Cantrell turns around. "It was a reasonable enough assumption-." He blinks heavily. "You-. And-."

"Ah. Are you okay?"

"I just remembered that time in forty seven when Al P-. Ah, Atom, tried using a sun lamp on Eclipso. I…" He frowns. "Why are you blue?"

"Diana." Ms Parker puts her hands on her hips, knife still in hand. "Your hair is still exactly the same." She walks over and.. runs her non-knife hand through Diana's hair. "It's been fifty years and I'm-." She jumps back as if Diana's hair became electrified. "I'm… Really sorry. I-I don't know what came over me."

Diana doesn't seem particularly bothered. "I think it was Shiera. Though I should say that I grew my hair out when I returned to Themyscira. I didn't cut it down again until I joined the Justice League."

"But you looked good with curls and I'm doing it again."

Diana smiles beneficently. "It's good to see you again, Shiera."

Behind them I see Mr Cantrell flex his right arm, then wince.

"No. No, I'm… Still Sharon. But I can remember fighting Rakshasa with you in nineteen forty eight, after we tracked that band of Thule holdouts to Turkey. I remember when you broke that French guy's leg after he slapped you on the-. Ah…"

Diana nods. "I remember the incident. He shouldn't have slapped me anywhere if he wasn't prepared to be slapped back."

Sharon covers her mouth as she laughs. "Oh God, he ended up in the hospital! It was dreadful! Why am I laughing about it?"

"Mom? D-dad?" Both Mr Cantrell and Ms Parker turn to the stunned Mr Hall. "It is-? I mean, you remember-?"

"That you've still got that stupid beard I told you that you should shave off, yeah." Mr Cantrell blinks. "I'm-I'm sorry, that was-."

"No, no, that's what you said before you died as well. I shouldn't have expected you to think different." He huffs quietly. "Lyta's fine with it. Daniel says it looks cool."

Ms Parker smiles joyously. "Daniel?"

"Our son-. You died before we even-." He shakes his head. "Well, you have to come meet him. I mean, it's going to be kind of weird…"

"Hector." Mr Cantrell looks rather pointedly at his… Son's..? Armour. "Where did you get the Nth Metal to make that?"

"Ah… You remember that spaceship you used to have?"

"Used to-?"

back

Gods and Mortals 17

next

5th December

10:03 GMT +3

"Intergang." Adom looks moodily down at what's left of Queen Beena's memorial. "They were behind the attack on Shiruta."

I nod. "And they were probably the ones behind the theft from Metropolis Federal Reserve last year, and the people who sent the children from New Genesis to Apokolips in tribute."

He nods slowly. "When I killed her, I did so for her attempt to dominate my mind. But I went to our meeting firmly believing that she was the one responsible. I know that she was far from innocent, but now I cannot help but feel that I have done her some injustice."

"She did plenty of things for which it was worth despising her. But…" I look around at the abandoned centre of Al-Qawiya. "I don't think there can be any doubt that leaving her in post would have been… Better."

"Who is her heir?"

I shrug. "She had no children. Her father had only one other daughter, and she was killed a few days later. Her father's sister married into the Saudi royal family and his brother was sent into exile. He died a few years ago and does have surviving children… But not only did his exile formally remove him from the line of succession, the marriages of members of the royal family have to be approved by the monarch to be valid and his wasn't. After that…"

"So. Not the youth the parliamentary faction have as their figurehead."

"He might technically be? Monarchies aren't usually set up to cope with the death of that many people. Heck, there's a good chance that Queen Beena didn't produce an heir precisely so that anyone deposing her would know that doing so would cause chaos."

"Hm." He doesn't sound too amused. "And have I not done the same?"

"I thought that your preference was that no one follow you. Because without the Wisdom of Zehuti, they wouldn't be able to exercise your authority as well as you can."

"But now I have a male heir." He sighs faintly. "If I were to die a year from now, with Amon more familiar to the public and my marriage to Adrianna sanctified, it may be that the governors would attempt to grant him sovereign authority regardless of my wishes."

"And you don't want them to?"

"Amon is a good boy, and he has all of the makings of a great man. But a year is not enough time to train the greatest man to be a king. And… I would not wish to set him against his nieces and nephews."

I smile. "Oh, congratulations!"

He turns to look at me, a slight frown on his-. "Ah. No, she is not yet pregnant. But we both wish to begin having children soon, and with the powers of Isis at her command, that will happen."

"How is she adapting?"

"Slowly but steadily. The powers of Isis are intuitive, but do not specifically come with the knowledge of how best to wield them. She has taken to experimenting with the desalinisation magics which Theodore Kord's company developed."

"Oh no, did I cost him a sale?"

"No." He shakes his head. "Adrianna will be focusing on using her magic to ensure the health of the plants we are using to de-desertify Kahndaq until the ecosystem stabilises. She will be taking water only to settle them in."

"Why.. restrict herself?"

"We have heard what both you and Doctor Balewa have said on the subject of the role of demi-gods within a society. Initially I wished to argue the point. Then I realised that my concerns regarding my successor were due to the very reasons he cited. And if I thought them true for that, then perhaps they were true for other issues as well. Turning the Sahara green by conventional means would be the work of centuries and require quantities of money which Kahndaq cannot provide. Providing water for ordinary uses should be something which the infrastructure of the nation is able to-" There are a series of gunshots and his head jerks away, his eyes searching for the source. "-do."

Another second passes and then he's gone. Ring, track and follow.

Compliance.

The city blurs underneath me. The fighting was heaviest around the government buildings, and with both sides wanting them and the buildings themselves not really being designed for surviving combat there isn't much left of them beyond piles of rubble. Further out the buildings are more intact, and that part of the population which has stuck around has adapted to the collapse of their civilisation as well as can be expected. Under Queen Beena private gun ownership was only legal for military veterans, but just about everyone who has stayed in what used to be the largest and most prosperous city in the country has made sure to lay their hands on a gun of some sort.

I come to a halt just behind Adom, staring down at the aid centre trying to keep the people here fed. People are fleeing from one part, but I see a smiling Amon intercept a volley of shots with his body before darting forwards and grabbing an ex-military AK-47 out of the gunman's hands.

"You don't need this." Amon pulls the magazine free, then takes hold of the gun with his right hand on the barrel and his left on the main body. Then he squeezes, the metal deforming and crumpling.

Adom shakes his head. "No, a poor choice. He should have shown the man that he was powerless, then demanded the gun."

"We have enough food for everyone. We're trying to give it to you, it just takes time." A squad of UN Peacekeepers push their way through the crowd and move to arrest the man, but stop when Amon holds up his right hand. "Why did you do-?"

"Your brother did this to us!" That.. guy really doesn't know when to quit. "He murdered the Queen-!"

And now his brother is holding you off the ground by your neck. Given what Amon has been through recently I'm a little impressed that he's exercising that degree of control.

"Your queen attempted to control his mind. This-" He points to where Kahndaqi civil engineers are overseeing the removal of rubble from a building levelled by artillery. "-is what happens when members of a government who had to be mind controlled into working together are no longer mind controlled. This is what happens when you give freedom to brutes and idiots. Are you a brute? An idiot?" He looks away, eyes scanning the crowd. "Are any of you? Your own military, your own government, they forced you from your homes with their fighting. We are the ones who are trying to build! Do you not want your country to work again? Together, we-."

The man he's holding gets a stable grip and uses the leverage to spit in Amon's face. Amon stares at him for a moment and then lets go, wiping it off with the back of his left sleeve. The man hits the ground and falls onto his back. The Peacekeeper corporal looks to Amon for a moment, and Amon closes his eyes and shakes his head.

"No. He's not worth it."

The man looks around, but while the crowd might not be all that happy about Kahndaq being the main participants in this UN mission they aren't going to pick a fight with the brother of the man feeding them. He turns away, the crowd shrinking away as he strides towards the outskirts of the camp.

"And if he comes back… Forget that this happened. Unless he has a gun."

The corporal nods. "Yes, Excellency. Everyone else, get back in line. We're working as fast as we can."

Amon rises a little way into the air, watching as order gets restored. Then he looks up at Adom and I and flies to join us, confusion written all over his face.

"My brother, I do not understand. We bring food and shelter and we are barely tolerated! If someone had offered this to me when I was a prisoner I would have kissed their feet."

Adom raises his eyebrows slightly. "Do you want someone to kiss your feet?"

"No, of course not."

"Then you are not here because you wish for one of them to kiss your feet. Why are you here?"

"Because I want to help people, as I wish someone had helped me."

"Yes. We do this because it helps them, not for their thanks. The work of a warrior or hero or leader is far more thankless than you know. You will meet many such as him." Adom looks down as the man leaves. "That man may have been wealthy once. He may have lost family. I am not solely to blame for what happened and you are not to blame at all, yet he lashes out because we are a part of it and we are in front of him. Others will do the same. Your conviction must be strong enough to hold true to what you know to be right when confronted with the mindless beast of their anger." He drifts forward and lays his right hand on Amon's left shoulder. "My brother, I approve of the way you handled the situation, but you should not assume that everyone will love you because you declare yourself a hero."

Amon nods. "Okay. So… How do I become a better hero?"

Adom thinks for a moment. "Perhaps… I should introduce you to the Justice League."

Amon looks puzzled. "The who?"

back

Gods and Mortals 18

next

6th December

18:33 GMT -5

Amon shakes his head a little nervously. "I am sorry, but I do not know who you are."

Kal-El smiles. "It's nice to know there's still someone in the world who can honestly say that. Your parents not big on television?"

"I don't remember. The people who controlled the Intergang slave factory where I worked for as long as I remember did not play television for the labourers."

"Oh, I'm.. sorry. I knew you'd been in a place like that, but I didn't know how long for."

Amon shrugs. "Neither do I. But you should not worry. Last week I was being tortured to breaking point by an evil god, now I am here, in the greatest city in the world, having breakfast with the Justice League."

Lantern Stewart bows his head slightly. "Who you only just found out existed."

"Yes, but I will read everything I can about you very quickly. And this is much better even if I do not know who you are."

Kal-El nods. "I'm glad to hear it. I'm Superman. This is Green Lantern."

Amon nods enthusiastically. "Like the Blue Lantern and the Orange Lantern."

Stewart glances at me. "Not too much like. I couldn't settle those law suits."

"I'm.. pretty sure that being on the Justice League gives you immunity, as long as you're on the job at the time."

"And how exactly would I convince a court that I made a cake the size of Manhattan Island for Justice League related purposes?"

"Attack by a deadly..? Christmas Cat..?" He gives me a look. "Yeah, I don't know."

Stewart exhales quietly and shakes his head. Kal-El seems… Almost lost for words. "Orange Lantern tells me you want to be a superhero?"

"I think so? My brother wishes to train me himself, but he is busy running a country. And… Given how strong I am, I agree with him that it is best that I have some sort of supervision."

"And having a social circle of people with the same sort of powers as you would probably be quite helpful as well."

"Yes." He nods. "Everyone my age I knew growing up is dead, so it would be nice to meet new people my age."

"Ah…" Kal-El tries to keep smiling, and just about manages it. Ah, Third World problems. "I'm… Yes, I'm sure it would be."

"I tried to make friends in Kahndaq, but…" Amon shrugs. "They kept calling me 'my lord'. Given my brother's position, it is.. difficult…" His face actually falls a little, then he rallies. "But I am sure that things will be better here."

"Recognised, Troia, B one two."

The lights flare and then fade as Donna walks out into the Hall of Justice library. "Hey-"

Amon smiles. "They are better here."

"-guys." She flies across the room, Amon rising a little off the ground in an apparently unconscious response. "You're.. Amon, right?"

"I was thinking of calling myself 'Osiris'."

"Osiris? I thought Isis was your sister. Wouldn't-"

"And that idea's strange to a Greek demi-titaness because..?"

"-Horus make more sense?"

Amon shrugs. "I was dead, my soul banished and my body placed in a coffin by an evil god. And then I was resurrected by the gods' power. That is closer to what happened to Osiris than what happened to any of the other gods."

I roll my eyes. "You've got a public identity and 'Osiris' is three syllables to the two in 'Amon'. I barely remember to call Donna 'Troia' on missions as it is."

He glances my way for a moment before deciding that he likes looking at Donna more. Something occurs to him and he holds out his right hand. "I am pleased to meet you?"

Donna takes his hand, and.. he raises hers to his lips and lightly kisses her knuckle. She looks a little uncomfortable with the gesture but decides not to do anything about it. "Ah… Is Diana here yet?"

Kal-El shakes his head. "No, something came up in India. She'll be along in a little while. Amon, why don't we head into the canteen and talk a little more about what we do here?"

Amon nods, he and Donna land and the group-.

"Orange Lantern. You got a minute?" Kal-El glances back, but Lantern Stewart just waves him on. He waits until the three of them are out of the room before turning back to me. "I thought of a couple of things after our talk in Argentina. About the situation with Nabu. You still talking to people about that?"

I shrug. "Yes. You know, when Batman first suggested it, I thought it would be a waste of time that would just result in more arguments. But actually… It's… Generally been a good way of talking about the underlying disagreements about the superheroic modus operandi. But it's also a nuisance, because I'd much rather have rejoined the team right away and it's not as if I usually have much to do with most Justice League members. This week was the first time I'd ever spoken to The Atom one to one. So?"

"So?"

"What exactly did you want to talk about?"

"You ever look at Doctor Fate's mission reports?"

"Yes. I read all of them several times. And I don't forget."

"Then you know how much work he was doing." I nod. "All the dangerous mystic artefacts he collected and put into storage, all the ancient evils sealed away he made sure stayed that way."

"Yes, as I said-."

"And we still don't have a replacement on the League."

"I found you two perfectly capable replacements. Both of whom have more experience than the rest of the League put together. And you should have been looking for additional magic users anyway. Heck, I gave Batman a list of possibles last year. Look, if there's been some sort of magical break out-."

"How about introducing us to the new Fate? You took him to Belle Reve before you brought him here."

"I… Can, but he doesn't have Nabu's knowledge. Honestly, I think-."

"Wonder Woman to the Justice League."

Stewart raises his ring. "Green Lantern here."

"Ram-uh. Rampaging earth elemental in India. If you can spare the time, I would appreciate your help."

"On my way." He lowers his ring and heads for the zeta tube. "You coming?"

I nod. "Might as well."

back

Gods and Mortals 19

next

7th December

05:08 GMT +5:30

Two, one-.

Lantern Stewart appears just in front of me. He spots me, and frowns. "You left after me."

"I'm an Illustres." I point at where a depressingly familiar giant figure made of shapeshifting rock sends a volley of stone tentacles at Diana, who weaves around most of them and punches the last into gravel. "Wonder Woman appears to be covering the retreat of the civilians there."

Five people: three adults, an adolescent and a child being carried by someone I presume to be his mother. They're carrying backpacks with food and cooking paraphernalia. They planned to travel. No other humans around. Terrain is rocky and lightly forested.

The giant stone creature has two thick legs and a mound of a body which is currently projecting two limbs on each side. It could be local… But I read this issue of Justice League, and there are plenty of ways to ruin someone's day when you control earth that it -or more likely he- isn't using. Soil elements match what I scanned in Jarhanpur, and it's shifting density and composition as it moves. Stone to hit, sand to move. Most forms of earth elemental I've read up on can't do that.

Diana punches the stone creature in the centre of its torso, rock cracking under the force of the impact! And then sealing back up again because it's a creature of magic. No blood to bleed, no permanent structures to break.

"I'll shield the civilians. Your mage slayer rounds should deal with that thing pretty easily, right?"

"No, not in this case. I'm afraid this is the time for reasoned discussion between intelligent adults."

"I'll get the civilians anyway."

He accelerates, the party ceasing their efforts to get away as they see him get into position to protect them. Diana-. Ah, yes. Not being limited to the human form for reasons other than convenience, the elemental fired a pillar of rock out at right angles from an existing arm, blindsiding Diana and slamming her into the ground. It stands still for a moment, then starts lumbering toward the refugees.

"Excuse me!" I zip in front of it… Can't see anything that looks like an eye. Just have to hope that the rocks are photosensitive. "Excuse me!"

Diana… Ah, I see. It's left a portion of its mass around her, reformed as carbon nanotubes and osmium. Her mouth is uncovered, but her arms and legs are bound and she's blindfolded by the stuff. I'm… Pretty sure that she can break out of that, given a few minutes to work at it. Assuming that the elemental can't remotely reform it. As soon as she feels the pressure forcing her into the ground ease up she shoots into the sky, attempting to get out of range.

Against a normal earth elemental, getting off the ground is a sound move. In this case…

"Excuse me?! May I have your attention for a moment, please?!"

The elemental stops, 'facing' me.

"Might I ask why you're doing this?"

Rock shifts, the outline of a face…

I bow in mid air. "Your highness. What brings you here?"

A rendering in stone of Rama Khan's face scowls at me. "I am apprehending fugitives."

"With all due respect, your highness, that's an awfully big avatar for chasing down five unarmed civilians."

"It is a matter of supreme importance, and they had a four day head start. I have been lucky to find them so swiftly."

Four day-? Ah. "Might I enquire as to why you are attempting to apprehend them? Or.. preferably, would you mind creating a smaller body so that we could discuss the subject like civilised people?"

"So long as you guarantee that they will not use the opportunity to flee, yes."

I glance over to Lantern Stewart. Ring, message him.

Compliance.

"Green Lantern, allow me to introduce His Highness Rama Khan, ruler of Jarhanpur. Since there could be legitimate reasons for him pursuing people and since Jarhanpur isn't a signatory to the League's charter, I'm going to request that you stay put for the moment."

The people within his bubble hear and appear to be protesting, Stewart himself doesn't look entirely happy, but gives a grudging nod.

"And could you possibly-?" Shards of something dense-. Osmium. "Wonder Woman-."

She floats down until she's beside me, pulling the last of the binding material from her face. "I heard. If he had spoken when I first arrived, I would have negotiated with him myself."

"You obstructed my attempt to enforce the law and save my people. I had no reason to speak to you."

The bulk of the elemental avatar falls backwards in a controlled collapse, shifting and gaining colour as it does so. It flows into a decent replica of his audience chamber, pillars supporting a slatted roof while a rough stone humanoid body for Rama Khan himself sits on transformed cushions. Diana and I descend, landing at the entrance and walking inside. I hang back slightly, letting Diana take the lead. Since she actually has legal authority to act here and I'm technically just a powerful nosy person.

"Lord Rama Khan. I am Princess Diana of Themyscira."

A very slight inclination of his head.

"Why are you pursuing these people?"

"The boy Jivan is my heir." Expected. It was either going to be him or the teenager, and it was a young boy in the comic. "He must remain in Jarhanpur until his education is complete."

"He is your son?"

"No. Jarhanpur's rulers are chosen by the land itself. We form a unique bond with it, and are enabled to shape it in accordance with our will." He holds out his right hand and a section of faux-flagstone fountains up to wash over his fingers before resuming its former appearance. "I have occupied this role for a long time, and now the land has chosen another. My last responsibility is to see that he is fully trained for the role, that when I finally die he will be a capable prince."

"Why does he flee from you?"

A scowl. "He flees because his mother is deranged. Four years ago, a group of refugees approached the entry point to Jarhanpur, fleeing from units of the Indian military. I opened the border and allowed them inside to protect them, granted them citizenship, healed their sick and injured and saw that they were educated in our ways. The land chose the young son of one of the refugees as the next prince, and so he was brought into the palace to receive instruction."

"And his family?"

"His only living family is his mother. She was given rooms in the palace as well. It has been many years, but I remember my own instruction, and I would not separate a child from his mother without good cause."

"I take it that his mother did not approve of the situation."

"When the wizard Nommo Balewa forced open a portal and allowed Orange Lantern in-" Diana glances at me and I nod. "-she and a group of confederates took the opportunity to flee. It was an insult to the hospitality I had extended, but I would not have taken action had they not abducted my heir. He will be returned to me, or I will take him."

back

Gods and Mortals 20

next

7th December

05:15 GMT +5:30

"What has he told you? When are we leaving?"

Jivan is being comforted by one of the group's menfolk while his mother -her name is Ailani- speaks to me. Since an actual dialogue is taking place Lantern Stewart has dropped his bubble shield, while the glow from his ring strongly suggests to me that he could bring it back up very quickly.

"He told us that your son is the person chosen by the spirit of Jarhanpur to succeed him, and that you kidnapped him."

"I do not care what the demons in his head tell him! I will not have my son grow up in that place!"

Hm. India has some… Interesting laws on religion, but on the whole they're merely 'stupid' rather than following the monstrous example set by its neighbour. Most Muslims here are of the conservative persuasion when it comes to both magic and innately magical beings: they're all either evil demon worshippers or actual demons, kill them with fire. Or whatever else is to hand. And if she actually feels like that then I'm not sure that any sort of rational arguments canwork here.

On the other hand, condemning thousands of people to death without their shaman-prince isn't something we want to do, and neither is having Jarhanpur declare war on India even if that is technically what happened when Rama Khan crossed the border. Or… If they accepted Jarhanpuri citizenship and violated Jarhanpuri law by doing anything to the shaman-prince then Rama Khan might be able to get them extradited. I haven't looked into how Indian courts handle this sort of thing.

"I… Would respectfully suggest that you not.. use that approach to argue your case here. Wonder Woman and I are Hellenists, and are unlikely to be swayed by it." She frowns in puzzlement. "The religion of the pre-Christian Greeks. It's polytheistic." Her face takes on a decidedly dour cast. "Now, Lord Rama Khan has given us his version of events and opening arguments. We would like to hear from you as well." I step back and indicate the gazebo. "If you'd like to join us..?"

"That madman tried to kill us! Why have you not taken us to safety?!"

"Because the Justice League is not actually empowered to do whatever they like wherever they like. Your precise legal status is sufficiently debatable that a negotiated agreement which we would enforce is far better than trying to work it out. While Wonder Woman and Green Lantern are obliged to protect your life, they're also obliged to protect the people of Jarhanpur, and if your son being removed endangers them…" I shrug. "They're technically obliged not to do what you want them to do."

Her face falls, then she gives her head a small shake and marches towards the pavilion. I.. seem to remember that in the comic version Diana admitted that she was wrong to insist that the child be put in the custody of his mother regardless of other factors, but I don't remember what else happened. Other than factually inaccurate beliefs briefly becoming true due to the broken lasso. I'm… Genuinely not sure which way Diana would jump on this one. Not even sure which way I want to go. Removing the child from the country seems stupid when he's not in any danger, but then again that system is inherently unstable. One guy falls off a horse and suddenly the whole nation falls apart. It would be safer in the medium term to return it to a normal relationship with the Earth. Why do they even need a shaman-king?

"You going with her or what?"

Right, yes. I raise my right hand to wave at Stewart, then fly rapidly back to the pavilion. Ailani hesitated at the steps, but glances my way as I approach, straightens her back and walks up them.

Rama Khan glowers at her for a moment, then turns his head back to Diana. Diana on the other hand is far more gracious, smiling warmly at Ailani. "Thank you for joining us."

Ailani's face unclenches slightly as she makes eye contact with Diana. "Thank you for protecting me from the demon."

"You see?" Rama Khan gestures to Ailani with his right hand while keeping his eyes on Diana. "She has no understanding of magic. She has insulted me continuously since-."

"Your evil has corrupted my son."

"Since I allowed her to escape to safety in my lands." He sneers. "Do not expect a rational discussion."

Diana keeps her attention on Ailani. "Ailani, why don't you tell me how you first entered Jarhanpur?"

She shrugs. "Militants attack the Indian army, the army attacks everyone. That's life here. When they came for our village, I had no desire to be raped and murdered. As many of us as could fled before they arrived. We were not fast enough. Or perhaps they were more eager than usual. They pursued, shooting at us…"

"You were not trying to enter Jarhanpur?"

"I had never heard of Jarhanpur until the people who live there told us where we were."

"Did the portal opening help you escape?"

"Those who were still alive."

Rama Khan frowns. "I had no way to move the portal to you. Nor do I seek to interfere in the internal affairs of other states. My people have known five thousand years of peace thanks to Jarhanpur's separation from the rest of the world."

Diana turns her head his way. "My lord, please. I have listened to your version of events. Allow me to hear Ailani's version as well."

"There are no mosques in that cursed land, no imams, and devils and sorcerers walk freely through the streets."

"If they cut contact with the outside world five thousand years ago, that would have been long before the start of Islam. Lord Rama Khan, would you have any objection to an imam being brought in to provide pastoral care?"

"As long as they do not constantly insult myself, my heir or my country as she is wont to do, I have no objection. We have any number of priests of any number of gods. One more will not make a difference."

Okay, I can probably find a moderate imam somewhere. Probably Kahndaq. The religious establishment there has become noticeably disinclined to criticise Adom's choice of gods. He hasn't actually banned them doing so or anything, but he has gotten quite serious about the protection of religious minorities and… Well. They know how popular he is with their parishioners.

"And what about his family? This is the first time you have allowed anyone to leave!"

"Yes, because his instruction has barely begun! If I die before he is trained it will be nearly as big a disaster as if I allowed you to abduct him!"

Diana raises her right hand slightly. "How much of his time do these lessons take?"

Rama Khan shakes his head slightly. "I was older than he is when the land called me, and my family knew what an honour it was. It was decades after my mentor's death that I gained the same understanding of our power, our connection that he had. But… After six years, he considered that I had learned everything I could from lessons alone."

"And he let you leave Jarhanpur?"

Rama Khan nods. "Of course. I was a prince and his heir, not a prisoner. If my duties required me to sacrifice certain things then I accepted that. The heir.. has a great degree of freedom once they are capable of succeeding their mentor."

"And that just involved them learning to communicate with the land?"

"There are many other things they should learn. I am not just the land's priest, I am its temporal ruler, as he will be in turn. But the need is less desperate once he possesses that skill."

"And once he rules in his own right?"

"I will be dead. And no others may gainsay him."

Ailani leans forward slightly. "You could not stop him leaving?"

"I will either have transcended the wheel of life or been reborn to it. In either case I will not be involved in what comes after."

Ailani's lip curls. "Your soul will lie in Hell."

Rama Khan's gaze is contemptuous. "You have many lives still to live."

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Gods and Mortals 21

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7th December

05:19 GMT +5:30

Diana sighs very slightly. "Ailani, do you want all of the people living in Jarhanpur to die?"

Ailani-. Oh shit, she actually… Ah… Okay, so this is what real religious intolerance looks like. Yikes. I guess with Afghanistan being all moderate on Earth 16 all the craziness had to go somewhere.

"I would point out that answering 'no' would give an opportunity for making converts to Islam unparalleled in modern history."

I mean, that's… Basically how Islam worked. Egypt-. Kahndaq was Christian before Islam existed. And Hinduism in all its myriad forms was the religion of India until clerics and armies headed this way from the Middle East. Rama Khan was fine with his fellow Ancients -who didn't call themselves that, obviously- practising other religions… Probably a bit too fine in Tezumak's case. Without hundreds of years of invasions and intercommunity violence there's no real reason for Rama Khan to care about that aspect-.

"So long as its priests can interact peacefully and respectfully. I will not have them tell my heir that his gifts are evil or demonic when they are essential to the wellbeing of our people."

"Your people."

"When you entered my country you accepted everything that came with it. You cannot simply pick and choose which laws you are subject to when you live in a place."

"I did not want to enter your country!"

"Then why did you!?"

"Because I wasn't driving!"

Rama Khan's lips turn down for a moment before he manages to return his face to neutral. Yeah. He made a point of what he thought was helping some refugees who were about to die, and not only were some of them really ungrateful but the mind of his country picked the son of one of them to succeed him.

Diana seems a little nonplussed. "What exactly are the laws and customs regarding your office?"

Rama Khan takes a moment to regain his equilibrium before responding. "I am the ruler of the state of Jarhanpur. I can make laws and unmake them at will, subject to the land itself replacing me if I err too greatly. As one of my abilities I -and Jivan- have an awareness of the state of our country and its people. This enables us to ensure that the laws and bureaucracy serve the civilisation. If a significant proportion of my people are unhappy about something I become aware of it and am able to make the appropriate changes."

"Do you have to?"

"I am only answerable to the land itself. But I am advised and aided by numerous functionaries. If my closest advisors all felt the same way it would be unusual for me to gainsay them, even if I could."

"Have all of your predecessors felt the same way?"

"No. Not all. There have been those who abused their position. Some through madness, some through self-indulgence and others through cruelty. My predecessor four times removed began the current tradition of bringing the heir to the palace to be trained and educated. Each of us who have lived in that way have held the good of our people to be the highest good."

"Why can you not wait until he is an adult?"

"Since the founding of Jarhanpur, there have not been enough rulers for us to have a firm idea of how long they usually last. I am the oldest there has ever been, but I am far from the first to live longer than the normal mortal span. What we do know for certain is that when a new heir is chosen the old ruler will not live much longer. By the time he is an adult I may be dead. I may be dead before he reaches his tenth year. I do not fear my own death. I fear failing in my duty to my people. And my duty to Jivan himself."

I don't think he's lying, and if Diana's picking up anything she not giving an outward sign.

"And what of his family?"

"I do not like the idea of Jarhanpur opening its borders. If they wish to enter, they can do so. Then they must remain either until he reaches fifteen or until I die, whichever happens first."

"Why are you so afraid of opening the borders?"

"Have you seen this part of the world? The communal violence, the poverty, the simple lack of infrastructure? Jarhanpur is a shining jewel surrounded by detritus. No, there is nothing Jarhanpur needs from the rest of the world."

Ailani scowls. "Except our children."

"He is of Jarhanpur. I do not make a habit of it, and I did not choose him."

"Then why not tell your demon to choose someone else?"

"I cannot. And it is not a demon."

"I-" Diana holds up her hands. "-don't think that's a helpful line of debate." Rama Khan and Ailani break eye contact with one another. "Ailani. Lord Rama Khan has agreed to allow you to stay with Jivan. You can have access to an imam, and once his training is complete he will be able to live his life as he chooses."

"You're just.. abandoning us to this monster?"

"If I thought that Jivan would be suffering at all, I would do everything in my power to rescue him. But so far I haven't heard anything which suggests to me that he would be hurt in any way by returning to Jarhanpur. You're asking me to condemn hundreds of thousands of people due to an.. inaccurate belief that magic is innately evil." Diana looks disquieted, but soldiers on. "And without a much better reason, I am not prepared to do that."

Ailani's eyes widen in shock and horror. "But I am his mother! I love him, and I am the only person who can decide what is right for him!"

"I don't.. like the situation, either. But if Jarhanpur will not choose someone else, you are asking me to condemn thousands of other children as well as their parents to destitution, if not death. Do you believe that they do not love their children as well?"

"So they have to work for their bread rather than just having their demons make it for them! I grew up with less than that!"

"No." Rama Khan slowly shakes his head. "When there is no one forming the link between the people of Jarhanpur and the land itself, the land is barren. And the weather is hostile. I never lived through such a period, but our oldest records speak of it, and… When my mentor died and I returned from Kahndaq, things had noticeably decayed. Healthy plants withered in the fields and the sky was grey and stormy as if the land itself mourned for her. The only alternative would be to resettle the entire population, and that would mean the end of our culture. Our history as a people."

"What about my people! Jivan is all I have left of my h-husband…"

"And I am not taking him from you! You would have been a princess, the mother of Jarhanpur's ruler! You could have watched over and guided him for your entire life, as he safeguarded an entire country! What could he learn to do here? Be a subsistence farmer until one group of bandits or another slew him?!"

"What could he learn in Jarhanpur? You have no electricity, no machines, no radios or telephones-."

"We do not need those things."

I look pointedly at Diana. Feeling my eyes on the back of her neck, she bows her head slightly and then turns slightly to make eye contact with me.

"My lord Rama Khan, might it not be in Jivan's interests to be educated in as many matters as possible? Discharging his core duties would obviously be most important, but he could not make decisions on what degree of contact with the external world was appropriate without knowing anything about it. It would be a simple matter to arrange additional tutors."

"That… Is not unreasonable." Not that he looks happy about it. "I know little of Islam. Could you also locate a priest who could be relied upon to conduct themselves appropriately?"

"Not personally, but I can introduce you to Adom's religious advisor. He's an extremely reasonable man."

Rama Khan nods. "Then I will accept. And in return, you-" He glares at Ailani. "-will cease your slanders and will agree not to attempt to remove Jarhanpur's heir again."

Ailani is shaking, tears quietly running down her face. "It seems that I have little choice."

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Gods and Mortals 22

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9th December

09:44 GMT +2:00

Arm in arm, Jade and I walk towards Adom and Adrianna's reception room. Ancient Kahndaq didn't actually have a formal wedding ceremony, and there isn't anyone still living to whom Adom could pay a bride price. For the same reason, the Ancient Kahndaqi custom of a prenuptial agreement isn't exactly… Appropriate. Again, Adom isn't gaining a father-in-law and.. doesn't actually own a great deal of property in his capacity as a private citizen. He wasn't even getting paid until quite recently, and his remuneration isn't exactly exorbitant now. He's certainly the least well paid Middle Eastern head of state.

"Orange Lantern!" Amon swoops down, coming to a relative stop in the air just before us. "Thank you for coming!"

"I'm delighted to be here. How did your meeting with the team go?"

"Ah… Well? I think?" He frowns a little. "Canis Minor was very friendly. It was…" He shakes his head and stops frowning. "Perhaps I am not used to people being so nice."

I wince internally. "He wanted to ask all about your Anti-Life exposure, didn't he?"

"And paint pictures of my time there. He showed me a sketch. It was… Disturbing."

"Canis grew up in a place where nearly everyone lives like they did in that place. He finds everything else weird."

Amon looks distant for a moment, then nods. "I… Yes, I think I understand how he feels."

I reach forward and pat his right shoulder with my left hand. "No. No you don't. And you should be glad of that, because he is a very strange man-" Jade coughs. "-indeed." I smile. "May I present my paramour, Jade Nguyen."

Who insisted on keeping her right hand free just in case she needed to save a half second on drawing a knife. And is wearing a tang suit because she wasn't willing to compromise her mobility -she can be so mission-focused- and that was the best we could do which met with Kahndaq's clothing… Customs, for women. Burka aren't required -and are actually pretty uncommon- but the local standards for 'modest dress' are quite a bit less generous than in America.

"Miss Jade, I am pleased to meet you." He holds out his right hand, which is now strong enough for him to squeeze iron through his fingers if he clenches.

Jade smiles politely and takes it with hers. "And you're Amon Tomaz."

"Ah, when I am in costume, please call me 'Osiris'."

"Oh? Was I supposed to bring my 'Cheshire' mask?"

Amon beams. "Are you a member of the Justice League too?"

Jade… Doesn't look sure whether he's serious or not. "No, but I.. have been known to work as a vigilante."

Amon nods. "We should fight crime together sometime."

For want of a better response, she nods. "Yes, that's certainly something we could-" Amon's head jerks away "-do."

His head snaps back. "I am sorry, but the chief steward is calling for me. I hope that you enjoy the service."

There's a slight gust of air as he speeds away. Jade blinks. "He seemed… Nice?"

"He's a very nice young man. He had a horrifying upbringing but appears to have responded by deciding never to behave-" Her eyes are already rolling. "-like the people who-." And that's why she's rolling them. "Not.. that I was… Making that comparison… In my head."

"No, I'm sure you weren't." We start walking again. "But if the people you associate with have certain similarities in their lives…"

"Then they can relate to one another's experiences and my friends can become friends with each other. Amon probably would help out in Gotham. And he does want to make new friends."

"Hm." She looks around at the corridor's wedding decorations. "What do you think their chances are?"

"Who? Adom and Adrianna?" She nods. "Pretty good. They're both working in fields they find very rewarding and can't be fired or made homeless. That means that two of the major sources of relationship stress aren't a problem. They've hashed out all of their disagreements ahead of time -quite loudly, at some points- and they know where each other stand. They trust and love one another. And… There aren't really any supervillains with both the power and motive to attack them." Jade gives me a decidedly patient look. "Oh. Ah, did you..? Make a.. decision about the Darkstars?"

"I'm going to join. It's just a question of when, really. I want to study Reach periphery languages and culture so that I know what I'm getting into. And I want to practice with an exo-mantle."

"Okay. But… I can visit Maltus whenever I want, but if you're training or being deployed, I'm not going to be able to communicate with you."

"I know. When you left-."

"We're not in that-." I shake my head. "We're not in that place. I'll miss you, but I'm not-" I get a small smile. "-breaking up with you over it. But… I don't.. want to get married until we're actually… Living together in one place. I'm not complaining; if this is what you need to do for your career then do-"

She leans into me, clearly not entirely happy about the situation. "I think it is."

"-it." I tilt my head over until my cheek presses against the top of her head. "If I could ignore the catgirl throwing herself at me, and the planet of the orange swimsuit models-"

"And the giant spider."

"-then I can-. I didn't ignore her, but… Yeah. Are you planning on saying 'no' to that corporate intelligence company?"

"I've already said 'yes'. I can quit without notice during the first three months. Assuming that the Darkstars accept my application."

I nod. "How… Hands off do you want me to be about that?"

"I want to know everything about their recruitment criteria. I don't want to get the job because you pulled strings."

"They… Usually only recruit people from the Periphery. Taking a human -or anyone from this far away- at all is going to be an oddity, regardless of your prior experience."

"You said that the Reach will eventually take control of Earth."

"Time travel… Yes. They might. And… That might be enough, and there are other Darkstars who don't look like any of the species in the Periphery. But they might turn you down for that reason."

"I've failed job applications before. And the corporate intelligence job would probably pay better."

"I.. don't know." I hadn't really… Thought of myself as marrying anyone. Not in the 'don't want to be tied down, not a one woman guy' sort of way. Just… Never imagined myself ever being in this position. If.. the Darkstars say 'no'…

We slow as we approach the door. "Ready to say 'hello' to Adom?"

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Gods and Mortals 23

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9th December

09:48 GMT +2:00

"Paul!" Adom is openly smiling. I mean, sure, he's got cause, it's just a little strange to actually see it. "Thank you for coming!"

He walks towards me, arms outstretched-. Ah. Whaw. Okay. We embrace, Adrianna smiling fondly at him. And I can see why. This is a huge transition from where he started.

He pulls away slightly, still smiling. "Mighty One. It's going to be an impressive celebration, especially given how quickly you put everything together."

Adrianna shakes her head as Adom returns to her side. "He had been arranging matters secretly since I agreed to marry him once we rescued Amon. I think that he is a repressed romantic."

Pretty heavily repressed. "Who did you decide to have perform the ceremony?"

Adom bows his head slightly. "None of those who came forward professing to worship Isis knew anything of any significance about the old ways of the religion. There are… A few whom I have been instructing, but having them bind us would be absurd."

Adrianna nods. "And since we commune with our gods directly, we have no need to seek their approval for our union. We decided to have a civil wedding ceremony instead. The Chief Justice will be solemnising our vows."

"I suppose that having an imam do it would be a bit awkward. Is now a good time to present my wedding gift?"

Adom shrugs. "If you like. But it was unnecessary for you to get us anything. We are not in need of the crockery or furniture with which to provision a new home."

Adrianna watches me with interest. "What did you get?"

"A jar of dirt." I pull said jar of dirt out of the bag hanging from my shoulder and hold it out slightly. "Which I will now break." I drop the jar, using a weak construct spike to crack it because on a carpeted floor it probably wouldn't break.

My hosts say nothing, content to stare at me and at the mess I just made. Adrianna shakes her head in confusion. "Is it..? Symbolic..?"

Something occurs to Adom. "No. Paul is a Discordian, a member of the Themysciran cult of their Goddess of Chaos. I do not believe that there is-" The soil shifts slightly under its own power. "-any greater meaning here. Or perhaps-" The material of the pot itself is absorbed into the loose earth, which rises upwards. "-the meaning…"

Adom looks mildly alarmed as the earth takes on a humanoid form, then his eyes widen further as features begin to appear.

"Rama?"

A moment more passes, and his features are fully formed. Next, coloured crystals are shifted to the outer surface to replicate the colours of his robes. It's still clearly not a person, but it's a far more lifelike facsimile.

Then his eyes glow light green and the face gains animation. "Adom. It has been some time."

"How-? I… How.. is..?"

"Your friend Paul visited me in Jarhanpur to invite me. And you-" He turns his attention to Adrianna. "-are the new Isis. You must be a remarkable woman to have found a place in Adom's heart. I am pleased that you have found one another."

"Who are you?"

Adom looks a little unsteady as he takes a step towards his old friend. "But… Jarhanpur is gone. I looked. It was the fourth place I went after I regained a body. I thought-."

"Husband."

"This is-. This is Lord Rama Khan, prince of Jarhanpur, and… He was a friend of mine, in my first life. It is you, not a successor?"

The living statue nods. "I am still me, my friend. I would have come in person if I could, but my mentor returned to the wheel a mere eight years after your own passing and I can no longer leave Jarhanpur."

Adom nervously holds out his hands, then embraces Rama Khan as he did me. "How? Where did Jarhanpur go?"

Rama Khan pulls away slightly, his eyes downcast. "Do you know what became of us after your death?" Adom shakes his head. "Then… I should leave it until another day. It is not a happy tale." Adom nods sombrely. "When I returned to my homeland, I altered its connection to the rest of the world… Cutting it off and making it physically inaccessible. Unless you flew very close to the entry point I would not have seen you."

"It does not matter. I am…" He turns his head in my direction. "This is your gift? This is more than I-."

"No. That's a third of the gift." I hold up my left hand and tap my ring twice. "If something's worth doing, it's worth doing with an insane intensity until it is completed to the most perfect extent possible. That's the Orange Lantern Corps way."

Adom's mouth opens slightly, then closes. He blinks. "Khufu."

Rama Khan's eyebrows rise. "Khufu?"

I look out of the window. "He was supposed to be-."

His mostly repaired spacecraft flashes across the Shiruta skyline and halts just outside. Adom marches out onto the balcony, Rama Khan and Adrianna following a little way behind him. Repairing the ship's system from Hector's… Work took the rest of my Nth metal, and it's still not entirely fixed. But it's at least a generation in advance of what the League's Hawks use and easily capable of supersonic no-shockwave inertially dampened flight.

A flicker of ruby coloured light, and Mr Cantrell and Ms Parker materialise. They're wearing slightly updated versions of their Justice Society era costumes, including the wing harnesses which they recovered from their son. Mildly ghoulish things, but Mr Cantrell's is the one he used as Prince Khufu so it's nothing that Adom hasn't seen before.

"Mighty One! It has been some time." Mr Cantrell strides forward and offers Adom his right hand. "Forgive me if my Ancient Kahndaqi is less good than it once was. I have never before spoken it with this mouth."

"Your-." Adom takes his hand. "The visions were true. You reincarnated."

Ms Parker walks towards them, Adom offering her his other hand. "We have both died and been reborn many times since we last spoke to you, Mighty One."

"You have no need to call me that." Careful to avoid touching their wing harnesses, he embraces them both.

Adrianna looks a little puzzled, clearly unused to Adom being this demonstrative. Rama Khan inclines his head towards her. "Millennia ago, a great evil arose who would have burned the entire world to ash. His followers acted against many peoples, and those of us who overcame them formed an alliance to slay the monster and exterminate his devotees to ensure that he could never rise again. And in the fires of that conflict we formed a lasting friendship, which bound us together in a hundred battles against the greatest monstrosities this world has ever known."

"An ancient Justice League?"

"I think that the League would consider us far too brutal, but the purpose was the same. And then Gamemnae…" He shakes his head. "I had thought that I had outlived all of my comrades. It is pleasant to know that I was wrong."

Mr Cantrell looks up. "Rama!"

"Your pardon." Rama Khan walks forward to join his old comrades.

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Gods and Mortals 24

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29th September 2004

01:09 GMT -5:00

"Young lady, I don't think that belongs to you."

The figure in the hood stands completely still at the sound of the man's voice, freezing just inside the shopping mall fire exit. Green light shines down from the sky, leaving her in no doubt as to who had spotted her. Exactly why her dad decided to make the family home in a city protected by the most experienced superhero on Earth was a mystery to her, but 'why' wasn't any help right now.

Weapons? None that would make any difference. She'd seen recordings of Green Lantern catching anti-tank missiles, then ignoring them as they exploded against his barriers. Heard from her dad about him blocking super strength punches without flinching, or training against the new Green Lanterns two-on-one and knocking them both into the Atlantic.

Evasion might be possible. She had smoke bombs-. But only a couple. And those would make it obvious that she wasn't a normal thief. Assuming that he couldn't just blow the smoke aside with a glowing emerald fan before she could get away. Running through the building and trying to lose him that way? No, that wouldn't work. His constructs weren't light speed, but they were faster than it was possible to run through a shopping mall. Assuming that he didn't just put a glowing green wall around the whole building, or fly through the walls like a ghost.

Damn it!

Head slightly down, hat covering most of her face, she slowly raises her hands and takes a step outside. Getting away from a top tier superhero is way too difficult. But once he leaves, escaping from the police should be far easier.

"Little young to be out this late, aren't you? Whereabouts do you live?"

She doesn't say anything, trying to judge from the surrounding illumination exactly how close he is. Staring directly at a glowing object at night would ruin her night vision for when the time to run arrived. Just wait for him to call the police-.

"Oh, f-." The light dims dramatically. "How old are you?"

The voice is coming from just in front of her. She looks up.

Dull green translucent flame drips off him, failing to quite obscure his brilliant red pullover and the lantern symbol in the center of his chest. Loose green jogging trousers are held up by a thick black belt, and from his neck trails a green and black cloak. Originally, she'd assumed that the cloak's black outer surface was there to allow him to conceal himself at night. But when she'd mentioned it to dad, he just laughed.

He said that Green Lantern doesn't hide. He was too powerful to need to, and in any case his green glow would make it impossible. Of course, being dad, he'd also said that Green Lantern probably wore the cloak because he picked it up in a costume shop seventy years ago, thought it made him look cool and hadn't ever thought about changing it.

For some reason, that made her think of the mask in her rucksack.

She looks up, making eye contact with him for the first time. His eyes are impossible to see. He wears a domino mask across them, and the eye pieces which she assumes are either holes in the material or clear plastic are glowing green. His hair is gelled back, and she knows that under the green glow it's blonde-. No. No, it isn't. With the green light reflecting off it, it should look slightly darker. But it looks the same green as the rest of him.

He holds out his left hand. "Hand it over."

She grudgingly passes over the satchel she picked up from the department store, along with the things she was keeping in it. Not most of the cash -that went into her jacket's inner pockets- but the things she was going to use to maintain herself while she got out of Gotham. That would mean breaking into somewhere else before she left. Perhaps in Blüdhaven? She didn't know the gangs there quite so well, but if it was just a snatch and grab before leaving the city anyway that shouldn't be a problem.

Huh. Lying publicity photos, taken from fifty years ago. Either that or he forgot to take his Clairol this morning. His skin looks older than it does in his usual photos as well. Less flesh on his face, wrinkles on his forehead and… Yes, his hairline is further back.

"If you take a photograph, it'll last longer." He nods at her. "Come on. Tell me where you live and I'll give you a ride back there."

Not the police? She's not sure whether the insult is worse-. No, take the opportunities you're presented with.

"I'm sure your parents are really worried."

She can't help but snort faintly. "I doubt it." Mom's in prison, and dad-. Why exactly isn't the world-famous superhero going after the internationally wanted mercenary assassin, instead of a teenage shoplifter?

"You'd be surprised. This won't exactly be the first time I've brought someone back home."

"Why do you even bother?"

"Because it's the decent thing to do." A green tendril conveys the satchel back through the door. Probably to be stolen by the first person to get in later this morning. Having someone else get the benefit of her work irks. "If you've had some kind of falling out-."

"Was stopping me really the most important thing you could be doing right now?"

"Anywhere in the world? Probably not. But it was the thing happening right in front of me."

So she didn't set off a silent alarm. "No, not in the world. In Gotham."

"Are you getting at something? Is someone making you do this?"

Another snort, this one with a little black humor in it. "Do you know the name 'Sportsmaster'?

"Yeah. He's a mercenary. I don't think he uses children to steal for him, though."

She glares, pulls her hat from her head. "My name is Jade Crock. Lawrence Crock -Sportsmaster- is my father."

A slight intake of breath. "In that case-."

"He's been living in this city for fifteen years."

"What?"

The green flames surge, brightening and filling the surrounding area. She folds her arms, trying not to squint as she settles her weight slightly on her right hip. "Yeah, him and Mom decided to move here when they found out she was pregnant with me. We've been living here on and off ever since." The green flames flick outwards, and she forces herself not to flinch as they touch her. "I think Uncle David spent a couple of years here as well. David Cain? The most dangerous assassin in the world?"

"In my city?"

"So when I ask if this is the most important thing you could be doing… I know it's not. So why don't you go and bother dad and leave me-."

The flames are sucked inwards, the green glow from the Green Lantern growing in intensity. "Is he here right now?"

"No, but he'll be back in a couple of days."

"You gunna tell me where he lives?"

She shrugs. "What's in it for me?"

"A serial killer gets the chair. And I don't think you'd be telling me about this if you cared what happened to him."

"No. I want to be there when you take him in. He's broken out of prisons before. I want to make sure you make it stick."

"Okay." The Green Lantern nods. "I can live with that. You got somewhere you can stay until then?"

She shrugs again.

"Alright. Let me make a call real quick."

back

Gods and Mortals 25

next

2nd October 2004

21:34 GMT -5:00

"…funny!"

A giant green hand swings the plainly dressed man hard into the station concourse by his legs, a hastily thrown explosive discus being effortlessly intercepted by a construct brick wall. The man gasps as his right shoulder breaks in two places, but barely has time to react before the hand moves again, lifting him up and then slamming him down on his back! A flash of green and the hand transforms into a pair of manacles.

"I surr-."

A pile driver construct appears over his stomach and slams down far harder than his concealed armor can withstand. The air rushes out of his lungs as the pile driver rises again and this time-.

From behind the police cordon, his eldest daughter smiles as her father's ribs fracture.

Green Lantern floats a little closer, though not too close. No need to give the man a cheap shot. "Had enough, Crock?"

Unable to respond verbally, the man has the wherewithal to visibly tap out with his still functioning left hand.

"Glad to hear it. I strongly advise you not to give the police any trouble, because right now they're the one thing protecting you from me."

Lawrence Crock, the Sportsmaster, lays back bonelessly and tries not to die. Green Lantern rises a little higher in the air, maintaining watch as the riot police with heavy chains come forward to bind his victim. He keeps watching as Crock is loaded onto a gurney and chained to it before being wheeled towards the armored police transport borrowed from New York.

Then he flies back towards the police lines, and his informant. Commissioner Bradley watches him a little cautiously, while the young woman looks at him with no expression at all.

"Took him down a little hard there, Lantern."

"He's killed at least thirty police officers arresting or transporting him. I thought that you would rather avoid adding to that number." He drops to ground level, landing a small distance away from him. "And I sure didn't hear him surrendering."

"I.. suppose not." Commissioner Bradley turns toward the young woman. "We're going to need to do a formal interview with you at some point, but there isn't any hurry. Are you willing to testify ag-?"

"Yes."

Bradley nods. "I'm glad to hear it. We.. have counselling ser-."

The young woman shakes her head. "I don't need therapy."

"And what about your sister?" The young woman's eyes dip for a moment. "Look, you said you don't have any other family in America. With both of your parents in prison, you need-."

"Does she need to decide anything right away?"

Bradley sighs. "No, but this isn't going to go away. I can have someone from child services visit your apartment tomorrow."

"What was the bounty on dad, anyway?"

"I don't know. And I'm not sure it can get paid to family members. But I'll find out for you and let you know. Do you need someone to give you a ride home?"

"Don't worry. I'll take her home myself. Ready, Jade?"

She looks at him cautiously for a moment, then nods. Green flames flicker around her for a moment, then she and Green Lantern shoot into the sky. The Commissioner, the station and eventually the city itself become impossible to distinguish from their surroundings as they vanish below.

Then the Green Lantern stops. "Bradley had a point. I think I went a little overboard, there."

"He had it coming."

"A lot of them do. But if you let it get to you, you end up like Judson Caspian." They look at each other for a moment. Her expression gives nothing away, while his… At this range it's easy to see through his aura and study his face. He doesn't just look old, he doesn't even just look old and tired. He looks drained, like someone sucked the life right out of him. "How many others are there?"

"Other master criminals?" He nods. "Not many. Dad said that you being here makes it too much of a risk. Most crime in Gotham is a lot more subtle."

He nods sadly. "There's a lot more of that going on than I think there is, isn't there?"

"If you want to operate in a city with a powerful superhero, you have to know how to bypass them. You're too powerful for robberies or assassinations to be profitable, but there are plenty of ways to make money that don't need those."

"You got anything specific you want to share with me?" She shrugs. "Alright. What do you want in return?"

"I don't want Artemis to end up in a children's home."

"Not worried about that yourself?"

She rolls her eyes. "They couldn't keep me anywhere I didn't want to be."

"Would you be okay with a foster carer? No offense, but you don't strike me as the maternal type."

"That… Depends."

"Alright. How about I find a couple of places and you tell me what you think?" She nods. "Anything else?"

"I want to be there. When you take down the mob, I want to watch."

"If it's safe. I'll probably need to bring you along anyway so I know where I'm going, but I'm not just going to leave you somewhere you could get killed."

She nods. "And I want your ring."

His eyebrows shoot up. "Excuse me?"

"My parents were training me to be an assassin. I didn't-. I don't want that. I don't want to be anything they want me to be. I know how to fight and I want to fight against people like them." Her eyes narrow as she looks at his ring. "You're old. Tired. But Earth's got three Green Lanterns and you're still the strongest. I want you to teach me."

He regards her for several moments.

"I can't promise that. I've had people try and use my ring before, and they could barely do anything with it."

"That's my problem."

He thinks about it, his eyes drifting away from her and to the landscape below them. "We clean up the city, you stay in school and get decent reports, and you don't get into any trouble. You manage that, and I'll train you. You okay with that?"

She nods.

"Okay then." He reaches up with his left hand and peels his domino mask away from his face. His eyes… They certainly don't make him look any younger, but there's a certain softness in them that she hadn't expected. "My name is Alan Scott. And since you and your sister are looking for somewhere to stay... I've got a spare room."

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NEXT CHAPTER

Excavation

BACK

Excavation 1

next

Excavation

10th December

15:48 GMT

"Mister Grayven."

Lord Sheldrake stares up at me, generally affecting an air of being mildly displeased by my presence but also of being far too polite to mention it. I can't help but smile. Not sure exactly what the cause of his attitude is. I mean, yes, I toppled his country's government with very little notice, and… Despite my best efforts there has been a degree of civil unrest. Not sure what the point of protesting is when all of the offenders are already in prison, but…

"Lord Sheldrake." I extend my right hand. "Good to see you again."

He takes it, and I get exactly one shake before he releases it again. "Likewise."

I watch out of the corner of my eye as Miss Amane twirls her scythe like a majorette's baton for a mildly impressed Miss Hutchinson.

"How are things?

"It could be worse."

I nod slowly. "If there's anything I can do to help..?"

"I'm not sure we'd survive more of your help." He sighs. "The acting Home Secretary signed off on the release paperwork. We're a bit short-staffed at the moment, so I hope you don't mind us not having a formal parole hearing."

"No no, quite understandable. If anything I'm a little impressed that things have been turned around as quickly as they have."

Lord Sheldrake turns away and starts walking into the grounds of the Tower of London. "If you'd like to come with me, I'll introduce you to the Chief Warder."

Arms folded behind my back, I stroll after him. Miss Amane is talking about something to Miss Hutchinson, but cuts herself off as soon as she notices me leaving and blurs to my side. Scythe over her left shoulder, she smiles brightly up at me and has a decided spring in her step. Miss Hutchinson brings up the rear.

Crowds are… We're definitely drawing attention, but the Yeomanry are on guard and keeping them back. Ordinary Yeomen, who include guarding John Dee's magical prison as part of their duties. They're wearing rather fetching red, gold and white uniforms and are armed with mostly-ceremonial-but-still-perfectly-sharp spears. No 'ER' on the clothes, but…

Ah. Magic. Probably more of Magister Dee's work. I wonder exactly how tough it makes them?

"I take it that you've familiarised yourself with exactly why Mister Fiendstein was imprisoned here?"

"Certainly." And despite the convictions I'm personally not convinced that there was anything sexual in it. For him, at least. "But I don't think that we'll have anything to worry about."

"They were children, Mister Grayven. And you're letting him out."

"I am aware. And his family are as well. I have ensured that the agreed upon conditions will be fulfilled."

He exhales with frustration, glancing back as he does so. "I know that you're lying. I know he doesn't have any family. What are you playing at?"

I frown. "Hey. Family isn't just about blood, you know." I reach out and pat Miss Amane on the head to her obvious pleasure. "Even Mister Fiendstein has people who are concerned about him."

"Un-Men." I glance back at Beryl Hutchinson, aka Squire, 'the brains of the outfit'. "You're talking about the Un-Men."

Lord Sheldrake stops and turns around just before the entrance to the Tower itself. "Squire?"

"Synthetic organic people created by Anton Arcane. Most of them live in the States now. Grayven's known to be working with them… I hadn't put it all together, but the time Fiendstein was out of Britain corresponds to when Arcane was still in Romania." She looks up at me. "Right?"

I nod. "True. There's knowledge in his head that doesn't exist anywhere else. Shall we-?"

Lord Sheldrake still isn't moving. "Are they dangerous?"

"They do exotic medical research. Kobra stole some of their drugs back in January and people died, but that wasn't really their fault. I.. don't think that having Fiendstein is going to make them more dangerous, and they mostly keep to themselves. I'd.. say not." She gives me a hard look. "Except for the fact that Grayven was trying to avoid telling anyone."

"They don't want news of the association getting around. They appreciate that they're unsightly-" Intellectually appreciate, at least. "-but they've got a good thing going on and don't want the bad press. And that's how you can be certain that they'll keep him under control."

"And what do you get out of it?"

"Improved biotechnology. Fiendstein will most likely be perfectly happy to share with them, and they can give him enough to do that he won't… Wander off, as it were." I pointedly nod toward the door. "Shall we?"

Lord Sheldrake turns and stalks through the entrance, irritation visible in every motion. Well, what did he think I wanted the man for? I follow him inside, feeling a mild tingle as I pass through the outer wards. These were a later addition, and aren't anything like as potent as what Dee put on the cells beneath our feet. Inside, it looks like a prison reception. The interior doors are barred and locked, and the yeomanry on duty put the 'beef' in 'beefeater'.

The Chief Warder exchanges nods with Lord Sheldrake, then approaches me with a clipboard. "Mister Grayven. If you could please sign here."

I take it from him and give it a quick once-over. Looks simple enough. "Of course." Sign and date, sign and date… I pass it back, and he countersigns it and then nods to the yeoman at the desk.

She picks up a phone. "Bring him up."

Drama aside, the actual prison isn't particularly large and they knew I was coming. It shouldn't take-.

The door opens with a clank, and a yeoman leads Mr Fiendstein out into the light.

Mr Fiendstein's various 'procedures' have made him an odd-looking man, especially without the coat which he used to wear continuously. His mouth is constantly just a little open, granting his improved scent and taste receptors access to the air. It also grants anyone near him the opportunity to spot his extended incisors. Not sure why he bothered doing that. Nothing in the reports I read suggested that he ever bit anyone, though his teeth are hardened. Maybe it was a side effect?

His head is unusually round due to his additional glands and jaw-broadening modifications. For similar reasons his neck is more or less non-existent, the flesh of the lower part of his head merging seamlessly with his shoulders. The bones are still there and he actually doesn't have all that much body fat, but all of those modifications needed space. His ovoid blob of a torso similarly looks like he should be fat, while in fact it contains an advanced organic chemical plant that lets him digest almost anything and usefully utilise it. His legs are strangely thin and short, the result of his altered musculature and skeletal structure. His visible skin is a very pale grey and the texture is rough in a way which in anyone else would suggest an unpleasant skin disease.

He grins as he spots me. "Oh, Mister Grayven! What a wonderful day! To be back in the bosom of my delightful family once more!"

"Mister Fiendstein. Ready to go?"

"Am I?" He sounds completely mystified as he turns to the desk. "Am I?"

Two slightly mildewed bags are passed over the desk by a glove-wearing yeoman. "Please confirm the contents and sign here."

Mr Fiendstein picks up the bags and flicks out his tongue, lassoing the proffered pen and pulling it into his mouth while he makes his search. I watch his grin grow as the yeoman recoils slightly.

One down.

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Excavation 2

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11th December

08:02 GMT -5

Sam sticks his head out into the waiting room and makes a beckoning motion with his right hand. I smile pleasantly and approach at a stroll as he heads back inside the complex proper.

I'm not sure if Project M is still properly classified. I couldn't get the files easily, but I'm pretty much convinced that was because no one has bothered putting them onto computer rather than any sort of super-advanced security measure. Still, I managed to acquire a copy of Vincent Velcoro's suppressed biography and… Well, I'm not sure how accurate most of it was, but it gave me a decent overview.

Sam glances back as he leads the way further into the Project's former home. "I take it there's no chance of you changing Luthor's mind about the starships?"

The corridors are too narrow for me to walk alongside him, so I settle for hanging back at a non-neck-straining distance. "Legally acquiring designs and engaging in legitimate commercial activity is not something I've been asked to prevent. Neither of them are acts of supervillainy."

"Until he sticks an armed ship in orbit. I've seen reports on how much damage Doctor Knight could do with the handheld version, and you can't tell me that Luthor doesn't already have bigger versions on the drawing board."

"And if he fires them-" I step aside as a technician comes past. "-then I'll kill him. But there are a lot of dangerous things in space."

Sam puts his hand on a palm print reader next to a heavy vault door. "Samuel Lane, delta seven five nine. Albuquerque."

A moment passes, and it beeps a rejection.

"Oh, God damn it." He sighs, and turns his head back towards me. "These old sites are a pain in the ass. We can stick all the new gizmos in we want, but the infrastructure is all so old that it's a coin toss whether any of it will work." He turns back to the device and leans closer. "Sam-u-el Lane, delta seven five nine. Albuquerque."

This time there's a more pleasant beep, followed by a clank as the door unlocks.

"Having trouble getting funding?"

He shakes his head. "We're rationalising. I want to completely refurbish some sites and completely decommission whatever we're not going to use. Half of these places are only still going because no one checking the budget really knew what they were for." He leads the way inside, a couple of scientists within looking around as we enter. "The president's using his popularity surge to browbeat Congress into reorganising the defence budget. It's going to end up with a whole lot more useful spending and about twenty percent less barrels of pork."

The door clanks shut behind us. "Only twenty percent?"

Sam shrugs. "He's not a miracle worker. Maybe if he gets a real good result in the election next year."

"Does he have your vote yet?"

He looks mildly amused. "No comment. From an organizational point of view, Senator Knight has already said that he's firmly behind the new spending commitments, and I can't see any of the other potential Republican nominees doing much to reduce them. We'll be able to keep working on this whoever wins." He looks over to the scientists. "Doctor Castle?"

The man steps forward. "General. Grayven." I nod politely. "We've had most of the surviving 'Creature Commandos' down here since the early fifties, in… Officially, it's 'suspended animation'. In practice -given how crude the techniques were- I don't know how they expected any of them to wake up again."

Sam's jaw hardens. "We're working on that. These people sacrificed their humanity for their country. They shouldn't have been stuck down here and forgotten about."

I frown. "I'm not even clear why the unit was created in the first place."

"Simple, really." Doctor Castle looks a bit pleased with himself. "The allies were looking for ways to circumvent the Spear of Destiny. Professor Mazursky had been trying to get federal funding for a unit of enhanced… Monster soldiers. He got approval for a small unit… Essentially to see if they were affected by it. They weren't. The commandos undertook a number of missions on mainland Europe prior to D-Day… But the techniques used to create them…" He steps up to a control panel and presses a large green switch. "See for yourself."

A heavy screen slides away from a… Bed? Open-fronted iron maiden? Given the tubes running into the poor bastard it looks like it was intended to be medicinal, but those manacles make it clear that he's staying medicated whether he wants to or not.

"Warren Griffith, codename 'Wolfpack'. Werewolf, obviously, with all the enhancements that entails. The process also reduced his mental acuity, and it was progressive. By the time they hooked him up to this he could barely write his own name. We don't know whether that decay is inevitable -just something all werewolves go through- or a sign that there was a fault in the process."

"Did you ever recover Mr Velcoro?"

Sam shakes his head. "No, and given that he's a vampire there's a good chance that he's still alive. For a given value of 'alive'. We never had any contact after he went AWOL, but I haven't heard anything about exsanguinated bodies. As long as he's keeping his nose clean he's not really our problem."

"And he wrote a book."

"We think he wrote most of that while he was still with the Commandos." I get a sidelong glance. "And its content is still technically classified."

I don't even dignify that comment with a chuckle.

Doctor Castle presses another button and… Not who I'm looking for, but perhaps the next best thing. "Elliot Taylor, Project M's attempt to replicate Victor Frankenstein's work."

"Fairly successfully, as I understand it."

"No, not really. The original creature was sewn together from dead parts. Introducing its body fluids to a critically injured but still living man… He had difficulty forming sentences-. Though as far as the researchers could tell, his actual intelligence was as good as it was before the procedure. His flesh was numb, resulting in poor coordination… He needed infusions of electricity in order to regenerate, becoming increasingly tired if he didn't receive it. He had immense trouble sleeping normally, suffered from severe headaches…" He looks at the cryogenic unit storing the man. "He's in there at his own request. As is Doctor Rhodes."

This bed doesn't have restraints, though it does have the refrigeration/drug combination. The images of her which I'm familiar with show her either as a baseline human or possessing that odd snake hair. Unlike Petra, the lines of her head stayed normal… Which presumably indicates magic rather than exotic biology.

It appears… That the change didn't stop at snake hair. Goodness.

No, irrelevant for now. "Have you considered inviting Cranius to take a look at them? It's his area of expertise."

Sam nods. "Not a bad idea. But -I'm sorry to say it- the work he's doing for us right now is more valuable. And given how long these guys have been here, I doubt that another year or two will make much difference."

"And the original creature?"

"He's in suspended animation in the next room. Originally, they didn't want to wake him up because they didn't know how he'd behave. That's why they made Taylor. Then the base they were keeping him in got attacked, and it got taken out of their hands. He worked with the team for a few missions, but when he found out about Taylor he stopped cooperating. Shut himself down. The letter he wrote to the old project head said that he didn't want to be disturbed unless… The.. 'sheeda' returned."

"Yes, and I need to brief you about them. But let's get the fellow back to his own people first."

11th December

07:33 GMT -7

"Uuuuhhhhnnhhhhh."

The figure on the slab stirs, his eyes flickering open.

And the first thing he sees is a joyfully beaming Cranius.

"Grandpapa!"

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Excavation 3

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12th December

10:14 GMT -5

Missus DiCarlo nods to me. "Mister Grayven."

This is a first for me, and the first time I've had a meeting like this that I've felt even slightly nervous.

"Madam President, members of the Security Council."

And Diana. Somewhat amusingly, she has actually been on the Security Council, as Themyscira's ambassador in the early fifties. I think that at the time the United States was hoping to encourage Themyscira to come out of isolation. And let them build an airbase in the Aegean. It.. didn't really work out. Diana in her early twenties might not have been the headstrong girl she was during the Second World War, but she had yet to become the Diana now who is in her early nineties.

"I am here today to brief you on an upcoming threat to planetary security, and to encourage your nations to take such measures as to improve your defensive capacities in the build up to its arrival."

Amusingly, the British Ambassador is absent. I couldn't find any hard evidence that London's woman in New York had done anything unpardonable, but she moved in the right circles. That, plus an understandable hesitancy in recognising a 'revolutionary' government means that the British seat is currently empty. Mildly irritating that it was China who insisted on waiting a little, but I suppose that even forty year delayed turnabout is still fair play.

"The group in question call themselves the sheeda, and those amongst you whose nations have gravity distortion detectors most likely noticed the first sign of their activity last April when an individual referred to as 'The Huntsman'-" I bring up a selection of the best images Doctor Sivana was able to get. "-attacked a facility on Venus. He possesses super strength, virtual invulnerability and gravity manipulation, which by itself isn't too scary."

"The scary thing is what happens during the main offensive. I will tell you now that while I have been aware of the existence of the sheeda for a while, a good deal of the intelligence I will be presenting to you comes from a single source. A criminal and scientific genius by the name of Thaddeus Sivana, who contacted me a short time ago with a view to forming an alliance to stop them."

"The footage you're about to see is from approximately sixty six million years ago." I dismiss the image of the Huntsman… It's another Flash situation, isn't it? The Huntsman or the Huntsman. I dismiss the image and replace it with one of the skies over ancient Earth. Sivana wasn't sure exactly how many Harrowings there had ever been, but by observing periods of history that were harder to get to he could make educated guesses. Sending a camera back far enough to dodge the temporal eddies generated by their time displacement drives and still be capable of recording was difficult, but he came up with a working solution eventually. "I have more footage than I'm going to show you here, but I want to give you some idea of the scale."

The silent image shows an inhuman city. A sprinkling of frost covers many of the buildings, while the bipedal near-reptilian inhabitants walk along the street protected by transparent heated passageways. No flying vehicles are in evidence, but their car-analogues float on low-thrust repulsors. The large buildings we can see are somewhat brutalist in their construction, the few windows being nearly entirely obscured by a complex network of heating and cooling pipes.

Then for a fraction of a second, a series of glowing green lines appear in the sky above it all. They form a cylindrical web, shimmering and glowing for several seconds before the harvest ship appears. The angle isn't great and we couldn't make it show scale at this point, but it's clear from the reaction of those locals who spot it that it very much isn't supposed to be there. The armatures hanging from the lower cone immediately orientate themselves and start firing, while from the upper part a grey cloud emerges.

I press another button and bring up a magnified image of the cloud. A swarm of winged arachnoids, each being ridden by a pair of sheeda soldiers.

"Roughly as fast and manoeuvrable as an attack helicopter, roughly as tough as a modern main battle tank. And they can deploy legions of them over any city they want in moments. And those guns-"

The rear soldier in each pair stands, aims the mounted weapon and fires.

Towering skyscrapers fall.

"-are far nastier than anything any earth polity has of an equivalent size. And these aren't the elite. They are completely standard air cavalry."

The swarms descend, and the camera spins for a moment before cutting out.

"Obvious questions, then. Where do they come from? Answer, in the vast majority of cases, the far future. Those are your descendants, circa one billion years from now. Who were those people? Sentient dinosaurs. The Earth has played host to civilisations before this one. Why isn't there any sign that they existed? Two reasons. Firstly, the sheeda are very thorough. Secondly, there are signs, but they're few and far between and often partially erased by subsequent cultures. How many times have they done this? We don't know. They've levelled at least one civilisation raised by biologically modern humans, one of genius Neanderthals, the dinosaurs and an aquatic species who now survive only in an Atlantean protectorate. I have details on each, but I'm afraid that we can't check to see if there were any others due to the sheeda's temporal countermeasures."

"When should we expect them? Their fleet will get here when it gets here. They're time travellers, so things like travel time are non-issues. They activate their temporal shift drives and they're here with perhaps a few seconds' warning at best. Their scouts are already here." I raise my right hand and make a beckoning motion.

Magnificus Sivana pushes in a large containment unit containing a sheeda mood three mind destroyer. A humanoid form made of dull orange vapour gazes blankly at the assembled dignitaries. His father got to him shortly before he could follow through on its advice and kill himself. Working out how to contain it once they knew what it was didn't prove to be that difficult; apparently their programming doesn't allow them to retreat.

"This model of scout attaches itself to people feeling particular emotions. In this case, shame. They then follow their victim around, learning from their mind even as they provoke them into destructive action. We haven't quite learned how to hack its operating system yet, but it's being worked on."

"The other sort of scout that we need to be worried about is the spine rider. Mister Mayer, could you please lean forward slightly?"

The German ambassador blinks, gazing around as if seeing the room for the first time. Magnificus already has his sidearm up, the dull green light of its targeting system strobing through the air until-. There! I generate a construct sphere around the blasted thing before it can fly away. Magnificus keeps the beam on it until its attempt to stab my construct is met with failure, then holsters his gun and pulls out a small containment unit. I move my construct until it is entirely inside the containment unit, then deactivate it, the captured sheeda creature inside now visible and unable to escape.

I turn back to the Security Council. Most are on their feet, several slapping the backs of their own necks. Diana's watching the corners of the room. Her senses aren't kryptonian acute, but I always suspected that she was better at spotting things than the average Jane. Armed security rush in with pistols drawn, but hesitate in the absence of a target.

I raise my right hand in their direction. "Thank you, gentlemen, but you can stand down. That was the only one in the room. But there are others, and they've been around for a while."

The head of the detail looks at Missus DiCarlo and Diana. The first nods, while the second looks like she's already planning my next browbeating. Literal or metaphorical, I wonder? I'd have said metaphorical, but she's been spending a lot of time with Barda lately.

Immediate panic over, the ambassadors start to return to their seats while a medic attends Mr Mayer.

"Several people, including my friends in the American and Chinese governments, have queried why I'm assisting Lex Luthor in building a space fleet. The answer is simple. While I value the friendships of those nations, the continued existence of the world-spanning civilisation of which they are a part is far more important. Giving any one country a space fleet is a recipe for international conflict. Putting it in the hands of a man with operations in every corner of the world, a man genuinely committed to the future glory of your species, is a far superior option. The model works for the Justice League, and I think it also works here, for the collective defence of your homeworld. Before too long, he will be opening training centres for people wishing to join his space fleet. I would respectfully suggest that your nations all participate in the program."

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Excavation 4

next

12th December

10:23 GMT

Doctor Palmer slumps. "That's got to be the most depressing thing I've ever heard. One billion years later, and all that's left of the human species is a world full of sociopathic scavengers."

Kal-El seems to be taking it more in his stride. "A billion years is a very long time. Maybe the human race just moved on?"

I shrug. "The sheeda remains I've been able to examine are human. Different from modern humans, even before their augmentations are taken into account, but recognisably human. Which is.. not to say that mainstream humanity is not elsewhere and the sheeda are an escaped supervillainous science project."

William smiles broadly. "I'm just glad that Doctor Sivana's still alive. I was really worried about him. Yeah, he's always come back before, but it doesn't usually take him this long. And now he's a good guy!"

Diana gives him a sceptical look. "I would not be so quick to give him that accolade."

"But he wants to help Earth fight against the sheeda. He's never done anything that helpful before. Maybe seeing the future all messed up changed him." He looks around at the rest of the Justice League, who for the most part duck his gaze. "It could happen."

I sigh. "Captain, I'm afraid that morality.. and.. human behaviour are a little more complicated than 'good guy team' and 'bad guy team'. Sivana never really hated you. The sheeda killed most of his family."

Batman looks thoughtful. "Do you think that he can be relied upon to maintain his focus?"

I stare incredulously at him. "You're asking me that? Yes, yes I think he will."

Batman directs his attention toward Captain Marvel. "Captain?"

He shifts in his chair. "Ah… I dunno. I mean, I hope so, but I've never really been in this situation before. Most of the people I fight don't really have rational goals. But he always got on well with his kids…" He looks at me. "You.. sure Miss Tia's dead?"

"I only checked briefly myself, but the facility on Venus was almost completely destroyed. And I can't imagine him lying about it."

William nods. Beautia Sivana tutored William in an attempt to bring his school marks up to par after he was fostered by Mr Dudley. He's taken the news of her death reasonably well, but I suppose that at his point he's painfully used to people dying on him.

Kal-El looks down the table. "Green Lanterns? Does the Green Lantern Corps have any records of these sheeda?"

Lantern Stewart shrugs. "About a civilisation that doesn't exist yet? I doubt it, but we might have recordings of their previous attacks. How long does this 'Harrowing' take?"

I shake my head. "No idea. We weren't able to record the whole thing before they learned how to jam us. Aquaman?"

King Orin shakes his head as well. "The Saremites who are living in Atlantis were in suspended animation when the Harrowing started. They say that if we can find any recording devices from their era they're happy to decode them for us, but given how much time has passed I doubt you'll have any luck doing so."

Lantern Jordan sighs. "Both of our rings were made long after when the last Harrowing is supposed to have happened. I can take a trip to Oa and take a look in the archives."

I frown. "What, you can't put in a request for a data transfer?"

"The Guardians don't like messing around with time travel. Too much can go wrong when you don't know what you're doing. Any data relating to time travel can only be accessed on Oa."

I.. suppose it's not that unreasonable.

Stewart glances at him, takes a breath and then continues. "And.. then there's the risk that they might decide that it's not a problem for the Corps to deal with."

I try not to grin. I fail. Yes, Sinestro was rather pleased to be able to tell me about that oddity in the Corps rules of engagement.

Hawkwoman is.. probably frowning under her helmet. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"The Corps doesn't interfere in the internal political disputes of a society. Even if they're turning violent. That's… Part of what got Sinestro expelled."

"The three major polities of my homeworld turned their radiological arsenals upon one another. I stopped the exchange and I stopped the war. I'm proud of what I did."

"Yeah, and you also took over the planet as its dictator."

"Jordan, would you rather I left the people who just tried to have an atomic war in office?"

"Point of.. information. Sinestro fifty-" I point to my yellow ring with my left index finger. "-did rule as an autocrat. Sinestro sixteen was technically just an advisor to the regime of Coordinator Arsona."

"Sure looked like he was running the show when he took me there." Jordan glares at the ring for a moment before dismissing it. "Point is, Guardians take a really long term view on 'internal'. If we're 'human'-. Ah…" His eyes flick to Kal-El and the Hawks. "I mean, if Earth's civilization is human and the sheeda are its descendants, then without any other treaty being in place they might decide-"

I just throw my head back. "Hahahaha!"

"-that we're part of the same civilization."

"Hahahaha." I get more than a few hostile looks. Alright, alright. I wave my right hand. "Sorry, sorry. It's just-. The Prime Directive sounded like such a good idea on paper."

Kal-El nods. "Until we know what the Guardians' position is, it seems premature to laugh about it. I'm more concerned about your preferred option of letting Lex Luthor build a space fleet."

"H-a… Kal-El, maybe if you hadn't personally ripped off all the guns I built on this station last January I'd have given you first refusal. But you can't refuse my guns and act all surprised when I don't try giving you any more."

"It's not that I think that the Earth doesn't need a military. It's just that I want to know why you didn't pick anyone other than the only surviving member of the Light to run it. Even you running it would make a whole lot more sense to me."

"Lex Luthor is considerably more intelligent than me, has a better contact network than me, understands business better than me and -no offence guys- likes humans a lot more than I do. There's no chance of him vanishing off to Tamaran for months on end… And.. he's got an ego: if I don't give him something important to do he'll just start acting out and I don't.. really want to kill him. And I'm keeping an eye on him anyway, and I'm.. pretty sure that you are as well."

Nods from Kal-El and from Batman, who activates a holographic display. "Do you know what this is?"

Scrub, desert, perimeter fenoh.

Yeah. That's one of the sites Lex is using to dig down to the Doomsday. I still don't really know how we're going to get the thing out, but just getting access to the database would be a major boon.

"I.. believe that's one of LexCorp's.. deep-bore sites in Texas? I think they were looking for oil originally, but with LexPower switching to cosmic converters I think they're going to use it for long term radiological material storage. I mean.. I haven't checked… It didn't seem important."

"I've noted several LexCorp sites in Texas being expanded, with substantial volumes of soil and rock being removed. Since you're supposed to be keeping him under observation, I thought that I would draw your attention to it."

"I'll ask next time I see him. I can't think of anything it could be that's more dangerous than the space fleet I've already okayed, but if it's worrying you… I'll check."

Batman presses another button, and the image disappears.

"Next item on the agenda: Magnificus Sivana's sheeda detection system…"

back

Excavation 5

next

13th December

11:22 GMT -5

Lex pats the site foreman on the back, smiling and nodding as he does so. The man nods back, then walks back to his unsubtly-rubbernecking team, gesturing to them to get back to work. Lex's eyes follow him for a moment, then drift over the rest of the site.

Earth's first starship factory.

Or, rather, the building site that will eventually become a starship manufacturing factory. Three months from the official announcement and the site has been cleared and the shell of a building mostly completed. Clearance work is ongoing in the adjacent plots, but Lex didn't want to flood the depressed Detroit economy with short term employment which would suddenly vanish once the initial construction was completed. So he rushed the initial building but is content to go a little slower with the expansion.

Which makes sense. Sivana's a once-in-a-generation genius, but we need him to focus on anti-sheeda technology. Mr Truggs is an excellent project manager and his neural enhancements make him good at cross-disciplinary coordination, but by his own admission he's not a genius or visionary. Dr Metcalf got burned hard by his experience with Mr Alva, and while Lex and I are going to continue trying to tempt him to come fully on board, at the moment he's limiting himself to designing equipment.

So -much as we'd like to- we don't have a super-genius heading the design team. Which is not to disrespect Dr Vekko, in any normal situation his decades in aeronautic engineering would make him a prime candidate. It just means that we've got to put up with normal development cycles, rather than the ridiculously accelerated 'super science' ones. So that we can get something into space and have ships to train people in, the first generation are pretty much just going to be updated Starseekers. Then it's.. anti-sheeda warships until either the Harrowing is over or we're all dead, and only then will we be able to switch to the exploration, trade and colonisation mandate that we're telling the public that it's all about.

His inspection finished, Lex walks towards me. "I think it's all coming along nicely."

"I defer to your experience."

"Really? You were only telling me last week how rapidly Tamaran's production facilities were expanding."

"Yes, but that was in orbit, and largely seized as a prize of war. They haven't really had to build anything from scratch yet. And they didn't have to train everyone from scratch either; I arranged for their government to hire thousands of skilled workers from one of their neighbours. Which isn't an option here."

Lex nods. "True. But my own ideological objections aside, could we?"

"Hm." This region of space does have several spacefaring species… None of them use anything similar to a cosmic converter or a luminal drive, and the core technologies do rather define the form the ships need to take. "We could, but I'm not sure how much benefit there would be. There are plenty of ancillary technologies Earth doesn't need to import… There's some value in getting someone to consult with… But it's not necessary and I don't think it's worth it. What makes you ask?"

"The sheeda's timetable." Lex turns away, making a sweeping gesture with his right arm. "Of all those earthly civilisations they extinguished, not one had the capacity for interstellar travel."

"Not that we were able to confirm, but I'll remind you that we weren't specifically checking that."

"But you didn't find any evidence in other parts of this system, did you?"

I shake my head. "No. Though… At the end of a Harrowing, the sheeda aren't really in any sort of hurry. It wouldn't be that hard to destroy anything in-system."

He nods. "And outside of the system?"

"We didn't get any footage of them using faster than light travel. Problem with that is that I can't check with our stellar neighbours. None of them were spacefaring during the most recent Harrowing." Ugh. "Which might mean that asking the Green Lantern Corps is a waste of time. They might well not have had a Lantern in the Sector at the time."

"With the luminal drive, we can slip the bounds of earth in a permanent way. We have stealth technology and a galaxy to choose from. If the Harrowing doesn't occur within the next twenty years, they'd have to scour the galaxy to find us. And from Doctor…" He glances around. "Sivana's report, we know that they don't have the manpower for that."

"And I'm sure they know that. If it really comes to it, I can open boom tubes and perform evacuations. It'll suck, but…" He nods. "I.. don't think we'll have twenty years."

"Neither do I, though I would still work on the assumption that we didn't even if I did."

I nod. "Wise. Look, I need a quick word with you about something.. private."

He turns back to me and gives a single nod. "My office?"

Mother Box, hush tube.

Ping.

I stride through, walking over to the main window. Lex follows me while the ever-attentive Ms Graves walks over to his desk to activate the office's observation countermeasures. I spot the air in front of the window shimmer from the one-way hologram projector, but I wait until Ms Graves gives Lex the nod before saying anything.

"Batman asked about Texas."

"I see."

"I told him it was for long term radiological storage, but since it's you and me I think he's suspicious."

"How bad would it be if they knew what we were doing?"

"My relationship with President Horne and General Lane would take a hit. They might want you killed, which I'd rather avoid."

"Yes."

"The US military getting the Doomsday would escalate international tensions in such a way that we'd probably be forced to share the luminal drive, and the Justice League getting it wouldn't be much better. Worst of all would be the sheeda getting it, especially if they don't have a faster than light drive of their own."

"I've already started installing Magnificus's detection equipment at all LexCorp sites. But I agree." He glances down at the carpet. "I'd actually consider destroying the thing. If only I had a weapon that could reliably do it." He looks back up. "I can increase security checks, but using the genomorphs would be rather a giveaway."

I nod. "That's probably for the best. Oh, and do you know a reliable, deniable, out of work mercenary? A professional, but not totally evil?"

"The Light got good service out of Black Manta. He's a consummate professional. I assume that you're planning to move on Kahndaq?" I nod. "I can get in touch if you want. Though there would be the question of what guise I should use. "

"Why not use L-3? I mean, did he know who you were?"

"Not so far as I know. But he might suspect the channel, given that we've been out of contact and you so publically tore through our colleagues. He did know at least two of them."

I shrug. "If he doesn't bite then he doesn't bite. But I didn't interact with him at all. It will be far easier for you to convince him."

"I can do that." He looks past me, nodding to Ms Graves. "While we're in a secure environment, information has come to light which I feel I should share with you."

"Oh?"

"You recall decapitating Klarion the Witch Boy earlier this year?"

"Yes, and I've got the pardon to remind me."

"At the time I didn't question it, but you did intend to kill him, didn't you?"

Where's he going with this? I frown. "Yes?"

"Did the sword you used have any particular magical properties?"

"Yes. Not sure exactly what they are, but it's been used for killing powerful magic lifeforms before."

"'Killing'." Ms Graves presses a button, and an image appears. It's… It's not Klarion, but a youth who somewhat resembles him. "This was taken three weeks ago. Police in Pennsylvania arrested him for attempted murder. He gave his name as 'Klarion Bleak'. When they recognised the resemblance they were concerned, but as he demonstrated no arcane abilities they assumed that the name was an invention."

…

Multiple Klarions or the old one stripped of his power? Does the Sword not kill people? I need to warn Mirabai. But first…

"Where exactly are they holding him?"

back

Excavation 6

next

13th December

09:29 GMT -7

"Mister Constantine, do you have a minute?"

A red-eyed John Constantine glances up from his mug of Sundollar tea and plastic-looking baguette. "It's too early for anything, and it's definitely too early for you."

"Thanks." I generate a construct chair and sit down across from him. We're not in a café, of course; John's smoking habit hasn't slowed down since he got lung cancer and just about every establishment in San Francisco is smoke-free. He considers it to be a violation of his civil liberties. "Not got over the jetlag yet?"

"Guess I'm feeling my age."

"You certainly are if a sinister man sits down and asks for your help and you don't immediately leap at the chance. Maybe you're learning?"

"Heh. Yeah, I doubt it." He takes a sip of tea and manages to only wince slightly. "What d'you want?"

"I believe that you're familiar with this?" I pull the Sword of the Fallen out of its holster and hold it up.

His eyes lock onto it. "Oh, cheers, I've been looking for that." He reaches out with his left hand.

I raise my left eyebrow and pull it back. "Fuck off, Mister Constantine. I know full well that Chantinelle made this sword. What I want to know is: why a man I killed with it is up and about again?"

"Did you check his body?"

"Yes, his head was removed, his intestine and his brain pierced. I even got convicted of his murder." From the look on his face I think he knows who I'm talking about. I frown. "I'm starting to feel a little hard done by there."

"So… What? You knew about that sword, but you didn't know what it did?"

"I knew Chantinelle killed the First of the Fallen with-" He's grinning in a decidedly unfriendly way. "-it… What?"

"No." He flicks his eyebrows up. "She didn't."

Oooooooh dear. "She didn't?"

"Oh, she stabbed him. Looked like he died. And then Buer found a way to bring him back. According to him, he got stuck somewhere in Greece for a bit."

"'Stuck'?"

"As a normal bloke." He takes another sip. "Which could mean that the same thing happened to whoever you killed with it. I've never touched the thing, and I didn't really have a chance to study it. Usually I'd just dig up something someone else wrote about it, but what with it being new and all there isn't anything to find."

"Powerless normal bloke, or did the First retain his capacity for magic?"

"I wouldn't be quite that quick to call a normal bloke 'powerless'… But, yeah, no magic."

I nod. "Appreciate your input. What's your consultancy fee?"

"If you can do anything about my head..?"

I raise my left hand. Let's see… Oh, look at that, a combination of age and years of drug and alcohol abuse, how completely unexpected. "Mister Constantine, I don't understand. You've already had lung cancer."

"Are you really going to nag me about smoking?"

"No. They're your lungs, do what you like with them. What I don't understand is why you don't set up a.. sympathetic resonance with a rat or.. something, and transfer the poisonous aspect into them. Seems to me that would be a lot safer."

"Yeah." He nods. "Right up until someone stole the rat and used the link to kill me."

"As you will." I could leave him a copy of Miss Shimmer's notes, but he'll have access to all of that via Circe's school soon enough. Right, ring, give him the full detox.

By your command.

Orange light strobes over his face before heading down. His heart and lungs get a blast, and then his liver.

"Right." I cut the beam off and close my left hand. "Feeling better?" He should, he looks like I took a decade off him.

"Yeah." He puts down his tea and extracts a packet of Silk Cuts from his coat's inner pocket. "Ta very much."

I close my eyes for a moment. I shouldn't be surprised. That's how he works. "Good day, Mister Constantine."

Mother Box, hush tube.

Ping.

I toss the hologram generator through-

13th December

11:33 GMT -5

-and then step through myself. Hm, cells aren't very big in this part of Pennsylvania. Klarion-.

"What are you doing here?"

Hmm. Seeing him with normal coloured flesh is weird. And.. no hair horns. Quick check… Yes. That's my murderee.

"Give you three guesses?" He's making.. sort of.. clawing gestures in the air. "Huh. Guess you really are powerless. Did you resurrect fast enough to watch my trial? Because if so, dick move."

"You stole my power!"

"In point of fact-" The pillow hits me in the face. I ignore it. "-I killed you. As far as I know your 'power' was destroyed. I didn't steal anything. And then Mordru came back and I had to kill him… So how's life been treating you?"

"YAAAAAGH!"

He throws himself at me, spaghetti arms pounding against my armour like gentle snowfall.

"Oh, come on, you're just embarrassing yourself. You couldn't beat me while you were at full power, this isn't going to work."

"…HATEYOUIHATEYOUIHATEYOU..!"

"So be it." I grab the top of his head with my left hand and lift him off the ground. Ring, assimilate this miserable waste of flesh. We will use his knowledge far better than he ever did.

Identity theft in progress. One percent complete. Alert: intense hate detected. Intense hate will slow progress.

Fair enough. Calculate…

I slam Klarion's head into the wall hard enough to stun him.

Intense hate no longer detected. Progress accelerating. Ten percent complete.

"Uuuuuggh?"

"You know, I actually felt bad for some of the people I did this to. But you? No. You deserve this."

back

Excavation 7

next

5th Lunar Conjugation

Sun Ascendant

Didn't there used to be a castle there?

I mean, sure, the view is undoubtably much improved by its absence… And as castles go it wasn't particularly large. Presumably Mirabai could have ordered it destroyed by magicians under her command, banishing it along with the memory of its former owner. I'd have kept it as a holiday home, but then I wasn't the man's unwilling concubine.

Sinestro, any ideas where she is?

I'm afraid that what I suspect to be multiple layers of defensive spells are interfering with my scans, Lantern Grayven. I can direct you to the main metropolitan centres, but beyond that you'll have to get directions from elsewhere.

That's going to be fun. Okay, okay, someone in the.. biggest building in the capital ought to know where she is. Mother Box?

Ping.

I can.. feel her approval. Oh, come on, it's not that out of character.

Ping.

Well somebox isn't getting a Christmas card this year. I fly through the hush tube and out into the sky over a… Huh. Puts me a little in mind of Themyscira, actually. Perhaps by way of the Academy or Canterlot. Technically there's a cleaned-up medieval city in there somewhere, but there's so much magic going on with its own-

Four spheres of orange light materialise around me and crackle, wiggly orange lines wobbling into existence between them. The areas of space between those lines are then filled in with orange sheets.

-purposes that it's clearly its own thing.

"The lower council of Jejune cordially reminds you that unlicensed flying is prohibited within twenty miles of the city perimeter. Please remain where you are until the duty justicator arrives."

Efficient, I approve.

"Is this two-way?"

"The imprisonment triamid is controlled by a simple geist, capable of answering basic enquiries. A justicator will be with you in.. eleven.. minutes."

"Where do I find Queen Mirabai?"

"No such person known. Do you mean: High Councillor Mirabai, also called 'The Forlorn', a member of the Council of Sorcerers. Defànt Mirabai, a noted painter of the-."

"The first one."

"The precise location of High Councillors is not a matter of public record. Her primary place of work is the Grand Senate, located in the south-west of the city."

Yep, I think I can see it. Mother Box?

Ping.

No, of course not.

"A justicator will be with you in.. thirteen.. minutes."

"Thanks for your help."

I walk through the hush tube and into the.. garden in the centre of the Grand Senate.. building? It's open air, plants in the full bloom of life intersecting artfully with carved stone. It's really quite delightful. Oh, and there are some guards in glowing armour and armed with glowing weapons heading my way, and behind them richly dressed folk, a couple of whom I recognise from Mordru's wall decorating detail.

"Hello everyone, good to see you again."

"Grayven." Queen High Councillor Mirabai stands from her not-throne. This time she's dressed in some decidedly non-slutty robes, and when she raises her right hand to halt the guards I catch a glimpse of Mordru's old ring on her hand. "What brings you to Zerox?"

"I've recently discovered a small problem with the sword Doctor Robbins used to kill Mordru. Turns out-."

"That it does not kill them so much of strip them of almost all arcane power, end any ongoing spells and recreate them in a mortal body."

"… Y-eah. And you already knew that."

She picks up a large staff with a glowing crystal embedded at the end and walks toward me. "I'm surprised to hear that you didn't."

"I've had a lot on, okay? It's not like it came with a user manual. I don't know where Mordru would have ended up, but if you need any help dealing with him, I'm considering it 'unfinished business'."

Mirabai glances left and right at the assembled luminaries. "It turned out that the combined arcane might of the Planet of Sorcerers was enough to deal with one powerless man. He will trouble us no more."

…

"Okay, clearly this was an unnecessary waste of everyone's time." I raise my hands. "Sorry to have intruded. I'll show myself-."

"You came here to warn us?"

"Yes? Oh, and I.. can't help but notice that you're not wearing a crown..?"

She bows her head. "I had been working under the assumption that you were another violent conqueror, much like Mordru. I thought that a strong show of ambition would impress you more than stating that I wanted nothing more than a return to the status quo ante tyranny."

I shrug, raising my hands in a gesture of ambivalence. "I am a violent conqueror, but the aim of my conquests is to create a stable and prosperous empire. The sort of place that a few generations on the people will thank you for making them part of. I wouldn't presume to think that I know better how to harness your people's abilities than their own unfettered civilisation."

"It seems that I misjudged you."

"Eh, I thought that you were going to use Mordru's ring to control the other councillors in the same way that he did… So I was doing just the same." Panic over, then. "Though while I'm here, an ally of mine is setting up a magic school-."

"Your world has magic?" A middle-aged man with entirely too much wax in his facial hair stands, apparently fascinated by the idea.

"Both Earth and Apokolips have active communities of magic users, but Earth's arcane education system is woefully underdeveloped. I'd be happy to.. brief a committee at your convenience."

Mirabai glances back at the speaker before returning her attention to me. "I am sure that we have much to learn from one another. In light of this development, I am going to motion for a recess…"

Wizards raise their left hands, most glowing blue.

"Motion carried. Grayven, if you could spare me an hour or two, I would like to get relations off to a slightly more honest foot." I nod. "Councillor Endor, please join us."

"But of course." Wax face lifts his robes as he leaves his bench, then hurries after her.

"Tell me, Grayven." Mirabai walks past me and I turn to keep pace. "What became of Captain Atom?"

back

Excavation 8

next

15th December

15:53 GMT

I look around at the Hny'xx facility's command centre. "How are the new guests fitting in?"

Karsta Wor-Ul shrugs. Now that she no longer feels the need to feign humanity she's gone back to wearing her old kryptonian military uniform. Including a patch of Krypton's weird flag and another of her House emblem. It's a near-recreation of her dress uniform, which historically wouldn't have included the sunstones she's wearing on her belt. The image of what looks like a black sun with an inverted 'S' stitched in silver on it is original, too.

"I think that you wiping out the rest of their species is motivating them rather well." She waves her right hand over a crystal -a Kryptonian addition to an otherwise still largely Citadel installation. A holographic image of the team appears, hard at work directing the g-elf work crew as they remodel the interior. "I've got Ecksey keeping an eye on them, and g-gnomes are monitoring their thoughts full time." She turns her head in my direction. "How long am I supposed to have them here for?"

"Until you've got a large enough defence force that a security leak isn't so important."

"If it's in anything like working order, the Doomsday is powerful enough to destroy anything this region of space has to offer. And then some."

"Certainly, but it's still one ship. The local powers might not be a match individually, but their fleets-."

"I was talking about fleets. Krypton was the pre-eminent power in our region of space for a reason."

Worth knowing, with the Spiders almost certainly heading this way. "Can you build more?"

"No." She turns fully around, shaking her head. "The species comes first. And Kryptonian ships need Kryptonian shipyards, which need all kinds of infrastructure I don't have and don't know how to build. Hopefully, Dru-Zod put a full database on the Doomsday, but if sending it to Earth was a spur of the moment thing he might not have thought about it."

"That.. seems…"

"It's not like we knew the planet was going to explode. It was just supposed to be a symbolic display of defiance to the.. Science Council. It's possible that he even set the central computer to wipe itself once it reached its destination."

"And if he did?"

"Then it's a hulk. I don't have the programming skills to program it and the computer on my ship isn't adaptable enough to work in its place."

"So, we'll need programmers."

She raises her right eyebrow. "Do you have a time machine?" I hesitate, and she notices. "Do you?"

"Not.. immediately to hand. Getting one would.. require me to devote significant resources to the task, and I'd really rather not unless it's essential." Human technology can do all sorts of things, but the fact that even Doctor Sivana appears to be shying away from two-way time travel suggests that there are very good reasons why it isn't more widely employed.

Ping.

Shit, really?

Ping.

Rrright, I'll bear that in mind.

"So, yeah, sorry, but unless it's that or the destruction of the universe, no time machine. But I can probably get you someone who can learn to program Kryptonian computers."

She frowns. "Like who?"

"More Coluans? They're pretty good at that sort of thing. We're probably going to have to fight the Machine Tyrants eventually anyway, and I'm sure that Dox is looking forward to remonstrating with his father. Or.. there's Daxam-."

"Pff. Those primitivists probably don't having anything more sophisticated than a spoon. They certainly won't have anyone who knows anything about spacecraft."

"Okay, but isn't it worth checking? It's not like you'll have to undertake a long flight; just step through a boom tube-."

"Okay." She closes her eyes for a moment. "I think this is one of those differences between Earth culture and Krypton culture. If an entire bloodline decides to do something completely stupid, you leave them to their folly. I'm not talking about one guy; every family has its black sheep. But everyone who went to Daxam followed their moronic anti-technology belief system and I'm not prepared to deal with their descendants at all."

"Alright. I.. don't really understand, but this is your project." I tap my left arm with my right forefinger. "What's with the.. black sun and… An upside down 'S' is 'resurrection', isn't it?"

"We're trying to resurrect my species. As for the sun… You've heard of Black Zero?" I nod. "Black Sun was their less well known political.. wing. We're not using exactly the same techniques here, but it.. felt appropriate."

"What..? Ah… What did you decide about their..? I don't want to say 'life cycles', but you know what I mean."

"Grow them to late childhood, then decant them so they can experience all of the joys of adolescence naturally. Basic implanted education, they can learn the rest as part of their socialisation and if they really need something the g-gnomes can implant it later. And I don't intend for this to be a long term thing; once we get enough to form a stable population I won't be making any more."

I nod. "How large is the first generation?"

"Ten individuals. One of them is even an El. I'm.. probably going to need some help. I haven't ever had to-."

I nod. "Not a problem. I'm sure Tamaran will be happy to lend you a few childminder.. s…" Wait a moment. Which version of Kara-El is this universe using? I didn't.. think to ask… She's not on Earth… Might be worth looking in to. An actual Kryptonian-kryptonian would be more than a little helpful. "And we can hardly leave it to the psions."

"I was slightly worried that was what you intended for me to do when they said they were child education specialists."

"I'm not going to give you a thing to run and then tell you how to run it. I'd never get anything done if I acted like that." She nods. "How long until the first batch are ready?"

"Three months. We're taking it slowly to start with. Once we know that the tissue scaffolding technique works on whole organisms like we think it does, we'll probably be able to reduce that."

"Makes you wonder why anyone gives birth naturally at all."

"Hormones. Bad planning. Built in biological triggers designed to make parents bond with their offspring. Exowombs were used on Krypton for a while, but then the technique got associated with cloning and fell out of fashion. Some of the Possession Worlds used it, but it never really caught on for wide scale use."

I nod. "Okay, well, thanks for bringing me up to date. How about we take a trip to Texas?"

She nods, and picks up a small Kryptonian personal communicator. "Ready."

Mother Box.

Ping.

15th December

09:57 GMT -6

We step out inside of the small prefabricated office block attached to the dig site. Having a kryptonian naval officer spotted here would be a little awkward, but with a quickly-donned set of overalls Karsta Wor-Ul looks just like another site manager. I'm using my illusion ward.

She looks around for a moment. "Lot of lead around here."

"Lex Luthor has a bit of a thing about kryptonians."

She looks up at -and presumably through- the plasterboard ceiling. "Does some guy called 'Wayne'?"

"Ah… Why do you ask?"

"A couple of satellites with his name on them are watching the site." She blinks twice and then returns her attention to me. "Problem?"

"I… Really hope not."

back

Excavation 9

next

15th December

10:07 GMT -6

Karsta Wor-Ul glances away from her personal communicator as a security patrol walks past. "Are those kryptonite weapons?"

"Probably." I shrug. "Problem?"

"Not so long as they don't fire them. I can get treatment. Humans get cancer."

"How do you even know about kryptonite?"

She shrugs, returning her full attention to her communicator. Except obviously not; she's a kryptonian who has had decades to get used to her enhanced senses. Bit of a shame she wants to avoid Kal-El, actually. He could learn a lot from her-. And now Kon and Match can't because I recruited her. Huh. Feel.. a little bad about that, but I think the ends justify the means if it means the kryptonian species comes off the 'endangered' list.

"Kryptonite turned up on Krypton sometimes. Something about our planet's core…" She shrugs. "Sometimes geologists found tiny amounts in metamorphic rock samples. I only know about it because it was a radiological hazard." She shakes her head. "I can't make contact with the Doomsday. Not from here."

I extend my left hand, making my ring glow. "If you need a more powerful broadcaster..?"

"No, that wouldn't be it. Dru-Zod would have known that the Science Council might have sent a ship or an Eradicator after the Doomsday. He wouldn't want them to be able to just signal a recall."

"If we got you on board, what could you do?"

"I worked with Dru-Zod for years, but he didn't give me any warning about this stunt. If the computer is still set up properly it should respond to my commands… There must be some reasons why he didn't tell it to fly right into Rao. But without knowing why he did it or what else he did, I don't know."

"How fast could you make an assessment?"

"About a minute, probably. The computer will either respond to me, or it won't. Then I can see whether he sabotaged the core. If he did that…" She sighs. "I don't want to just leave it here, but there won't be any sense prioritising it."

I nod. She's right, of course. Getting this thing out of the ground involves a lot of money and a moderate amount of risk, and if we can't get a capital ship out of it then it really isn't worth it. Worse, Lex will probably want to find a way to rig it to explode just in case Dru-Zod Junior knows about it.

Another security detail enters the room. "I don't suppose you can do any sort of super-drilling, can you?"

"I could probably punch through the rock, but the shockwaves would flatten-."

"Ma'am? Sir?" The head of the detail approaches us, while his colleagues stand back with their guns pointed at the floor, safeties off. "Can I see your identification, please?"

"Certainly." We're far enough underground here that I should be alright. I pull off my ward and put it in one of my pouches. Immediately the man stops looking at my chest and turns his face up to where my head actually is. "And this-" I hold out the keycard Lex gave me. "-and you can phone Lex for confirmation."

"Ah… I'd say I don't need to, but we're under orders to run random checks on everyone in case of shapeshifting or telepathy. Sorry, sir."

I nod, smiling. "I approve of your thoroughness. Please, go right ahead."

"Alright. Please wait here. Ma'am?"

Karsta Wor-Ul sighs quietly, but hands over her card as well. "I'm afraid I'm not wearing a magic disguise, but I-" She reaches for the zip of her overalls. "-had a tattoo done on my-."

"That's fine, ma'am. Excuse me."

He walks off, his subordinate staying on station just in case. "I thought Luthor had a thing about kryptonians."

"He has a thing about one kryptonian. If Kal-El had never gone to Metropolis and Lex had heard about him, he'd probably have offered him a job."

"Giving security guards kryptonite weapons is a bit extreme for a man with a grudge against one kryptonian. Aside from anything else they probably wouldn't hit him."

"Light speed weapons stand a better chance than anything else he could give them, and… K-lasers have the advantage of working on humans perfectly well as well."

"And on gods?"

The left side of my lip rises in a mini-gurn. "Eventually. Anyway, point is that LexCorp security guards are mostly just normal security guards."

"Yeah, thanks."

I don't look at the mutterer. "In the nicest possible way. Lex doesn't bother indoctrinating at this level. Now, if we were in Metropolis-."

The head of the detail walks back in, our keycards in his outstretched hands. "Thank you both. Ms Graves was able to confirm both of your identities."

Karsta Wor-Ul and I take them back. "Thank you. It's nice to see that you're so diligent. Had any trouble so far?"

"Not much. We're far enough away from everything that no one's really bothering us. Had a bit of a scare when one of the researchers got a high reading with a Geiger counter and there was a camera drone with a holographic disguise, but that's it so far."

"You get radioactive sand here?"

"It could happen, but it turns out the guy just hit the 'test' button by mistake. Bit of a relief all round when he realised. I'm a big John Wayne fan, but not that big a fan."

"And the drone?"

He shrugs. "No one's claimed it. If it wasn't for the hologram I'd think it was some kids playing around. Maybe a journalist? If it was kids we'd give it back after having a talk about respecting private property, but no one's come forward."

"And if it was a journalist?"

"Hold it while we get instructions from head office." He exhales with amusement. "We're digging a big hole. We don't even have explosives on site. We'd probably get told to let them look around then kick them out."

"No explosives? This is Texas, isn't it?"

"Hey, we're a guns state. You want bombs, that's Nevada!"

I nod, smiling. "I'll bear that in mind. Are we authorised to see the drone? I might recognise the more advanced components."

"Of course, sir. Ma'am. This way, please."

A short walk through the facility later, the guard shows us into an electronics workshop. The woman working there stares for a moment, her eyes widening in shock. The guard nods at her. "Katherine, you mind showing Mister Grayven the drone?"

"Ah..? Sure, no problem." She walks over to a chest of drawers and uses her own keycard to unlock one of the lower drawers. Pulling it fully open she picks up what looks like a commercially available four-rotor drone and turns around to put it on the workbench. "There's not a lot to it."

I gesture to it with my right hand. "May I?"

She steps back. "Sure, go ahead."

I raise my left hand and scan it.

No sign of Doctor Palmer, which is a major relief. Yes, he'd have to grow to a detectable size to see anything and there are three different types of sensors monitoring every part of this facility, but he's basically impossible to keep out of somewhere. But the drone itself…

Batman has two basic types of drone. First, the bat-themed ones. They're pretty high end and have unbranded custom made components. The new versions also contain a minibot, on the assumption that they might get brought down by someone who'd keep it for bragging rights. This isn't like that. The second type are designed to look like commercial drones, though they mostly use parts from smaller Rhelasian companies rather than WayneTech or LexCorp stuff like most commercial drones in the US actually do. He uses these a lot more these days because putting them together is less of a pain.

This is built almost entirely of LexCorp parts. Which means that either Lex was testing his people…

Or we're being Robinned.

back

Excavation 10

next

15th December

15:22 GMT

"That's easy, Mister Chairman. Because she's lying."

This causes a certain amount of muttering in the public gallery, and a none too pleased stare from the representative of the plastic cheese merchants. With public opposition to the bid rampant and my counteroffer edging up the price, Irene Rosenfeld herself is sitting only a few metres from me. That was dumb, but it's not as if any of them have any idea how to cope when your opponent is a superhero. I checked, and while superheroes have acquired companies in their secret identities before none have done so in their superheroic identity and none have done so while openly superheroic.

On my left, Mrs Loudon suppresses a smirk.

Mr Luff doesn't seem particularly perturbed. "And what exactly do you mean by that?"

"She told you that Kraft will keep the Somerdale factory open. She's lying. Under Kraft it will be closed within two years, while I actually will keep it open. She told you that Kraft will continue Cadbury's ethical sourcing practices. She's lying, they'll be breaking with the Fairtrade brand within five years in a frankly disturbing race to the bottom. I won't. In point of fact, I will go to war torn countries, bring the wars to a close, and lend my own money to the locals if they want to start farming cocoa."

On my right, Mr Queen groans quietly.

"I will pay corporation tax because I'll buy Cadbury's with money and not debt. Kraft will use every dodge it can to avoid paying tax. Kraft will mess about with the recipes and quantities in order to lower their costs. They will switch from cocoa butter to palm oil, and I hope I don't need to explain the environmental consequences of that. I won't. She's lying."

"And you're not."

I smile. "No. With regard to Cadbury's, and in consultation with the management, with Unite-" I gesture towards the gallery where the Unite representative is sitting. "-and with the general public, I don't feel the need to change much, to be honest. The management has a good growth strategy… Heck, their distribution chain is why Kraft are even doing this, clearly the strategy is a good one. The only thing I plan on changing is buying a few dolmen gates to speed up travel between factory and distribution centres."

"And you're guaranteeing that?"

"Of course. My complete, one hundred percent guarantee. Personal integrity is vital to my public work. Heck, I can remember when my parents banned my sister and I from buying anything from Nestlé because of their powdered milk sales practices. And despite the money I could have made, I stopped handing out Bleed Torsion Generators when LexCorp premiered their thaumokinetic generator and Stagg Enterprises revealed their cosmic converter." No idea how a pharmaceutical company got the rights to Dr Knight's work, but it's nice to know that someone is finally using it. "If you want me to post a bond somewhere, I'm happy to do so."

"That won't be necessary, thank you. Mrs Rosenfeld?"

"I.. can't stop wars, but I completely deny that Kraft will-" I reach down and pick up my briefcase. "-go back on the guarantees we have already-" I put my briefcase down on the desk in front of me. "-given. Orange Lantern has offered no evidence in a spurious and frankly insulting manner."

"Okay." I open my briefcase, revealing the Lasso of Truth. "I borrowed this from a friend of mine this morning. Would you mind putting the loop around your wrist and repeating that?"

Her mouth sort of wiggles.

Mr Luff sighs. "Orange Lantern, we don't habitually tie up our witnesses."

"Of course, but it seems to me that if this whole thing hinges on which of our guarantees are actually believable, using the Lasso of Truth could simplify matters considerably. Since it's literally impossible to lie while bound by it. I've given evidence with it before personally, and no one affected by it has ever suffered any sort of long term consequences." Mr Luff leans back slightly, whispering something to one of his colleagues. "I'll go first?"

One of Mrs Rosenfeld's lawyer-beasts leans towards his microphone. "Testimony derived from magic isn't reliable, and it can't take into account changes in the market."

"And? I'll be undergoing the same process."

Mr Luff nods. "There isn't a statute-defined standard on what sort of magic can be used in court, but this isn't court. I think I'd quite like to hear from both of you."

I pick up the loop of the lasso and pull it tight around my right forearm, then use my ring to float the opposite end over to Mr Luff. "Take hold of that and state a question."

He somewhat cautiously takes hold of it with his right hand and I release it from my construct. "Orange Lantern, is the testimony you have given here today honest?"

Truth

"For the most part. There aren't that many wars going on in places where it makes sense to try growing cocoa, and if the market was getting totally oversaturated I'd probably encourage them to grow something else instead. But I wouldn't alter the recipe or weights, dodge taxes or close the factory long term, or let my employees or other agents do it."

"'Long term'?"

Truth

"It might make sense to close it short term for refurbishment or if there was a fire or something."

"Fair enough. Mrs Rosenfeld?"

Lawyer-beast leans forward again. "I'd be happy to-."

"Thank you, but I'm not asking you. Mrs Rosenfeld?"

She turns to me. "I'd like to know how you came to the conclusion that Kraft has misrepresented its true intentions."

Truth

I'm still wearing that Lasso, but this is as good a time as any. "Kraft did the same thing in the parallel universe I originally came from. Also, I hacked your computers and stole your business plans." I take a print out version out of subspace and deposit it on my desk. "I'll be handing a copy over to the committee and such newspapers as want one. It's remarkable how different-."

"I completely deny the authenticity of anything you claim to have stolen."

Truth

"Oh, I totally stole them from you. I needed to show the world what a pack of lying liars you are, and I have a diplomatic passport. Which means that I can't be arrested or charged unless Queen Hippolyta withdraws it. And I thought, I should use that ability more."

I take the loop off my arm and toss it over to Kraft's desk.

"Your turn."

back

Excavation 11

next

16th December

09:11 GMT -5

Lex shrugs. "I'm.. not really sure what you expect me to do about it."

I lean back in my chair. "I'm not sure what I want you to do about it. As you may have noticed, I'm a bit more direct. You -on the other hand- toed the line of legality and snuck around the Justice League for years. I'm hoping that you have insight that I lack."

"Grayven… I don't know what you think LexCorp actually does, but only a very small proportion of what we do is in direct defiance of the law. It's always proven far simpler to employ lawyers to work at a.. potentially profitable avenue until they find a way to do it legally. It saves trouble and preserves plausible deniability for me personally. In.. this case… We have a hole in the ground. A very secure hole in the ground, but until we actually get access to the ship that's.. all it is." He leans back, looking thoughtful. "It might actually be preferable if the children did break in at this stage. There really isn't anything for them to see, and if they discovered that for themselves they'd be far less likely to go back at a more critical juncture."

"It's… Your site, but I'm not comfortable with that level of risk."

"If it came to it, I could have a convincing case made that LexCorp owns it legitimately. Or that Ms Wor-Ul does."

"Except that gets you shot. Or results in the League or the government sharing data on the Light and destroying your reputation."

"I have.. contingencies for that. Though they're not exactly pleasant." He raises his eyebrows slightly. "Not concerned about your own reputation?"

I shrug. "Not over this. Digging up a spaceship in order to return it to its owner and gain Earth an ally isn't supervillainous behaviour. If Sam thinks that it is then he should have given me a different definition."

Lex smiles. "Perhaps being open and honest from the start might have been a better idea."

I quietly chuckle. "I think it's a bit late to start on that now, for either-" There's a soft chime from his computer. "-of us."

His eyes dart down. "Mister Truggs has arrived. He has a proposal regarding our.. time line concerns which he wishes to put to us."

I nod. "I don't need to be in Opal until ten. Is this a.. group thing, or…?"

"Mister Truggs is publicly in my employ. Introducing him to the group effectively gives up my anonymity. Or at least my plausible anonymity."

I nod again. "As you see fit."

Lex presses a button, and a moment later Ms Graves opens the door to admit Mr Truggs. I hadn't really noticed before, but he's doing the Doctor Who suit with trainers thing. Makes sense. Wearing armoured boots makes more sense for me, but I never did like 'office shoes' myself.

"Lex. Grayven. Good to see you both." He takes the seat next to mine, leaning forward towards Lex's desk. "I had an idea about the AI, needed to run it by you."

I raise my eyebrows. "AI?"

Lex nods. "There are distinct benefits to having a single mind which can intelligently monitor every part of my infrastructure, or act as the guiding brain of an interstellar capital ship. Obviously, we're still at the planning stage now."

"Not so much. Not if you give me the okay."

"Mister Truggs, this is not an area where I want to take risks. Reliability is even more important than capacity where artificial intelligence is concerned. Covering our weaknesses is more important than being perfect in an area where we already perform well."

"I know. Hear me out." Lex nods and makes a small circling 'get on with it' gesture with his right hand. "Earth already has AI. Had it since the forties: the Red androids, GI Robot… And the Chinese had those Shaolin Robot things since two hundred BC. Problem is, they were clever but not adaptable. Programmin' learnin', learnin' the sort of things you want, that's tricky. An' risky, because you can't be sure they're learning the things you want until it's too late an' it turned out they learned things you didn't want."

"Originally I figured on doin' an upload. Get someone trustworthy, simulate their brain an' use that. But no one's got alla the skills we need, an' you can't get everything you could out of an AI setup if it thinks like a human. An' worse of all, everyone like that is bound to have something kinda screwy about them. I mean, take, ah… Leonard Snart. Nearly failed high school, smart enough to build a freeze ray in a prison workshop. An' what does he do with it?" I'm already nodding. "He uses it to rob banks. Or Steve Jobs. Founded a major computer company, revolutionised the electronics industry… Aaaaaan tried to cure his cancer with a Juice Weasel. An' I don't think making these people an AI is going to improve things. Human minds are built for human bodies. Get someone a bit messed up, end up with someone a lot messed up. So, back to square one?"

"But then it struck me: why upload one person?" He looks between myself and Lex, as if hoping for a sign of appreciation. "We got g-gnomes, we got ultra-resolution brain scanners… Give up a little time, an' we can copy the most useful thought patterns into a synthetic brain. Set it up so it has the higher functions of all of the greatest minds and the lower functions of a calculation engine. An' best of all, we can edit out everything not useful. Everything that makes whoever we're scannin' less than they could be. Take me, for example. I'm adaptable, rational and I learn quick. But I'm an instinctive iconoclast and I've got an arrogant streak a mile wide." He shrugs. "So we take the patterns and use them for the machine. An' then-" He swivels in his chair until he faces me. "-there's you. Determined an' patient, but you've got a temper."

I nod. "You're not wrong. I was going to therapy… But I've shot myself in the foot and damaged useful relationships because people made me angry."

He turns back to Lex. "An' then there's you. Intelligent, ideologically focused -which is a big deal for an AI- an' you've got the social skills of a psychopath without actually being one. But…"

I nod. "Yeah. Is it really that simple? I would have thought that the flaws were part-."

"Excuse me?" Lex raises his eyebrows. "What is it that you believe to be my psychological shortfall?"

"Aaaah." Truggs look at me. Then back at Lex. "You don't..?"

"Out with it, Mister Truggs."

"Paranoia. You don't trust people, you're on your guard, you need to know you could destroy everyone…"

Lex blinks, exhales and bows his head slightly. "I'm not paranoid, Mister Truggs."

Truggs looks at me, and I frown. "Ah, Lex… You remember when Kal-El first came to Metropolis?"

Another small exhalation. "Yes?"

"You remember how many risks you took? How much money you spent on anti-Superman technology?" He looks decidedly truculent. "Now, compare that to how much of a threat someone like… Well, like Karsta Wor-Ul has been, or Wonder Woman. What's the difference?"

He's frowning. "I'm.. not certain that I…"

"They're not living in your city. You can't stop him and he's in your face. So.. you.. took foolish risks and made the situation worse."

He frowns at me, his hands starting to clench for a moment before he forces them flat. Then he frowns at Truggs. Then he half-turns as if to consult Ms Graves, but thinks better of it. "You.. believe that I'm paranoid?"

Truggs shrugs. "Not 'totally crazy paranoid', but 'incapable of trusting people in a normal way'… Y-eah. You.. didn't know that?"

I lean forward. "Growing up as you did, the way your parents treated you, it's not surprising that you learned to.. cope. But it wouldn't be a sensible trait to include in an AI mind designed to run a military spacecraft." Lex looks decidedly disquieted. "No offence intended. I've long been impressed by how you function in spite of it."

"I.. suppose that -to an outsider- some of my decisions might seem-." His frown deepens. "Confrontational, but in business a strong stance can often grant superior returns."

I shrug. "True enough. But if that's all it is, why haven't you spoken with Lena recently?"

back

Excavation 12

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16th December

11:38 GMT -5

"Thank you both very much for coming."

Richard smiles warmly at Jay and Joan Garrick, while Hope seems somewhat less sure of herself. Jay's been 'out and proud' since the beginning of his career, but there's a slight difference between dealing with Jack Knight and dealing with a World War Two veteran and national institution. A bit of a rub as far as the wedding goes: Richard doesn't have any living relatives and most of his friends from the old days are either dead, in prison or wanted by the police. Clea's having a stiltedly polite conversation with Diana in one corner of the reception hall and Hope's brother Matthew is doing Best Man duties, but his side of the church is going to be rather empty.

Jay smiles. "I'd heard you'd gone straight. When I got the invitation I decided I had to see it for myself."

Richard raises his hand in mock surrender. "Straight as a die. Or she'll arrest me."

Hope bows her head slightly as Mr Garrick raises his eyebrows. "I wasn't going to make the joke myself, but how exactly did The Shade get involved with a policewoman?"

"My brother introduced us. We kind of knew each other through Jack Knight, after the Merritt case-" Mr Garrick nods. Yes, he and Jack's father were colleagues in the Justice Society, weren't they? "-but him and Matt had been working together against a drug trafficking network-" Who if I remember Starman correctly had been bribing Matt to look the other way before he had his epiphany and bit off the hand that had been feeding him. "-and he tried setting us up."

"Looks like it worked."

Richard looks mildly pleased with himself. "Actually, she dodged me for two months."

Hope sighs. "I wasn't dodging you. I was working. But… Yes, despite my reservations-"

Richard nods. "I have a bit of a reputation."

"-it actually has."

"Grayven."

I blink, turning away from the happy couple and their guests to face Diana. I smile politely. "Diana. Decided to stop stalking Clea?"

"It was.. interesting to see her again. Orin told me that you were working with her, but it was strange to hear her sounding so conciliatory."

"Just a matter of knowing what a person wants from a situation. There usually isn't anything particularly unreasonable about people's desires-."

"Rrrraaaahhhhh!"

I stop as we both turn to watch Kyle Knight charge past the open door, closely pursued by Hope's nephew. Lynne follows a moment later at a slightly more sedate pace. Nice to see her spending time with other children.

"People's desires, but if they want things they can't get, there can be problems."

Diana nods. "She told me. Her nephew becomes her heir-"

"Is recognised as her heir."

"-and she opens up relations with the rest of Atlantis."

"With the rest of the world. Thank you for making me aware of her. That engagement has been one of my more fruitful projects." Oh, hang on, she'd have-. "You were around during the forties. You can't shed any light on her mess of a marriage, can you?"

Diana shakes her head. "I didn't stay in touch with Queen Cora after our meeting. Not that I really imagine that the exact truth of what happened back then would have much effect on things today. Most of the people involved are dead."

"Yes, but a person who knew the truth could sell it to Atlantis for a high price. If Queen Clea turned out to have overreacted, she would most likely moderate her position in her future dealings. That would make Orin's life easier."

"And if she was right?"

"She's bitter about Queen Cora's actions anyway. But I think that if Orin found out that his grandmother was in the wrong, he would say so openly. And that would convince Clea that she could trust that he would deal honestly and fairly with her. It's a benefit either way. And as you say, any guilty parties are undoubtably dead now."

"But not Ptra."

I frown. "What stake do you have in it? At this point she doesn't have the skills to rule a city, even if they did reconcile. And I don't intend to put another idiot on a throne for the Justice League."

"Queen Adilah appears to be handling her office well enough."

"With a little help."

Her eyes narrow slightly. "From you?"

"From me, and from someone who actually knows how to run a country. Some of the things she's told me about the woman…" Ms Savage's feedback has been illuminating. Amusing. Frustrating. At least the.. stupid woman has the sense to follow good advice. Or maybe she thinks that I'll have her killed if she doesn't.

Can't say I wouldn't be tempted…

"One of the few things that her sister got badly wrong was not sorting out the succession. What's the point of building something if someone knocks it all down the moment you die?"

"You don't think dealing with Apokolips was a mistake?"

"Depends. Trying to trade with aliens in general isn't, and there wasn't really any way she could have known exactly what we're… They're like. There would have had to be a rehabilitation process, but it would have been easier than trying to turn Adilah into a competent ruler."

"And Lex Luthor-."

"-to do with that." We look around as Richard raises his voice. Hope and Joan left at some point, and Richard is looking decidedly apologetic. "Yes, I was with Injustice Unlimited while Zard was running it, but the only thing Dummy's incarnation had in common was the name."

"Zard wasn't exactly a good guy. But, alright, we never had you for anything worse than assault and theft. But that doesn't explain why you did any of it."

"It was the only thing that made me-" He holds up his left hand and lets it turn into dripping shadow for a moment. "-feel alive. I don't know whether that was Culp or.. my own mental state. But competing against people like you in a contest of power and wit was the only thing that stopped me feeling like I was sleepwalking through my own life. I'm not proud of it, but that was why."

"And you don't feel that way any more?"

"No. I'm actually happy just being." Richard risks a chuckle.

"I understand that he's been active in India."

I turn back to Diana. "Among other places. After Circe and I removed Culp, he felt that he wanted to do something to pay off some karmic debt. I suggested South America, but a couple of cities shut down in terror and they asked him to stop."

"We used to stop him by knocking his cane out of his hand. I would have thought that South America would have at least one person capable of doing that."

I snort-laugh. "Yeah. About that… He… Doesn't actually need the cane."

"Has he altered the machine? Is he concealing it somewhere else in his clothing?"

"No. He never needed it. He channels the power of the Shadowlands through his body. Since he's basically unstoppable and he only picked fights with the Society for fun, he… Spotted you… All of his pawns, so you'd have a hope of winning."

Diana blinks, the rest of her face losing animation. "You're saying… He was sandbagging."

"He was beachbagging. If Father turned up on Earth tomorrow, he's the one being I'd count on to win. He'd scare me if he weren't so chipper these days." Diana appears not quite sure what to make of that. "So… Given that he only picks fights with superheroes when he's bored… Does the League have anything to keep him occupied?"

back

Excavation 13

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16th December

11:38 GMT -5

Lex's mind raced as he skim-read another e-mail. Another cosmic converter completed and shipped. Low risk parts from the nuclear reactor it was replacing being transferred for recycling. Highly radioactive parts being transferred to temporary storage until the backup storage sites in Texas were complete. Slightly ahead of schedule, but not to a degree which suggested that corners were getting cut.

Paranoid.

His right hand didn't twitch as he considered checking what progress his anti-alien researchers were making with Savage's holdout weapon. Kryptonians were powerful, but their strengths were direct and their counters relatively readily available. New Gods weren't, but Grayven's reports of the nature of his homeworld were supported by enough evidence that he didn't think attempting to purchase such weapons from Apokolips was a sound strategy. Bitter experience with the Al-. The other alien, taught that simply trying to out-escalate people that powerful was frequently ineffective at anything other than distracting them for a few minutes.

Paranoid.

One of the sites in Texas had discovered a small robotic vehicle moving under holographic camouflage. On-site engineers confirmed that it was a LexCorp toy upgraded with LexCorp electronics by someone highly skilled in electrical engineering. They didn't have the facilities to check it for DNA fragments or fingerprints, but the chance of finding anything seemed remote.

Paranoid.

Not that he wasn't ordering it shipped to somewhere that could anyway. If by some miracle it didn't turn out to be from the Justice Youth it indicated that there was a highly skilled electronics engineer out there with time on their hands and a strong familiarity with LexCorp products. The Theodore Knight scholarship fund had only attracted a few truly worthwhile applicants, but having met Dr Thaddeus Sivana he'd come to suspect that the particular form of practical brilliance the Foundation was designed to support might frequently be paired with psychological iss-.

Paranoid.

With psychological issues which might make them less likely to apply for funding. He began typing an e-mail to the Head of Personnel about investigating the feasibility of modeling 'science genius' behavior and predicting their actions so that they could be approached before they became committed costumed criminals.

Paranoid.

Nylor Truggs was naturally under constant observation. He had so far given no outward sign of disloyalty, and if he did, killing him was a far more simple matter than killing Grayven. But there was no immediate need to do so. Even if his-. Even if he was wrong -and he clearly was- employees being willing to respectfully inform you of what they believe to be problems was useful and something he generally encouraged. He hadn't made any sort of threat to Lex or issued any sort of ultimatum. If anything, he seemed to be unconcerned by his-. His obviously flawed analysis. Facial analysis of his expression during the meeting supported that conclusion.

Paranoid.

How does a crazy person know-?

No. No.

How would a person, a random member of society, come to realize that their behavior was well outside normal bounds? The fact that psychopaths tended to do well in management was a well established fact, but therefore by the standards of their immediate environment they aren't unusual.

Family.

Yes, well, the less he learned from them-.

Which was rational. Completely rational. Even under other circumstances, given his diet and lack of exercise, it was unlikely that his father or mother would have lived past fifty. They made little to no effort to improve either themselves or their situation. Errors he strenuously avoided. So perhaps it had been a valuable learning exercise? A worthwhile illustration of what could happen if he fell into their habits? In any case, they never paid enough attention to notice his behaviors one way or the other.

Under normal circumstances, a person's parents were a source of guidance and protection. It would be.. natural, for a child denied such things to learn not to assume that they were safe.

Paranoid.

His hands move over his keyboard, dismissing his e-mails and bringing up the intelligence file on Leonard Snart. Yes. Abandoned by his mother and beaten by his father. Obviously clever. Possibly brilliant. Capable of designing the ice fortresses in months while denied access to more than basic writing or reference materials. But incapable of using that brilliance in a rational way. Why? Why does any social relationship function? Because people share assumptions and are generally prepared to act within them. In his case, the expectation was violated. He learned lessons which make it harder for him to act within a normal social framework. Not impossible; reports from the Central City Police Department indicated that he had a leadership role within the local costumed criminal community.

But if he could address his behavioral problem, he could better himself.

…

Yes. Human beings don't stop learning things in childhood. Leonard Snart could spend time with his colleagues without feeling obliged to freeze them solid. Lex himself had hired elocution teachers to help him rid himself of his Southside accent, and an expert in body language to improve the way he presented himself. There was nothing weak about being taught something by an expert in the field.

…

A genuine paranoid would not be able to do that. They would naturally assume that they were being fed misleading information by people who wished them ill. Mr Snart knew that a cooperative operation would reflect badly on everyone if it went wrong, so assumed that his colleagues would generally pull their weight. Likewise, Lex assumed that experts he hired would do the best job they could in order to gain future employment.

…

How does one learn to take a risk based on trust? What is the fundamental difference between Grayven and a chess grand master? The most obvious answer is that a chess grand master is simple to kill or threaten. Is that a proportional response to the potential threat they respectively pose, or… Evidence of poor socialization?

Hm.

How would he have behaved in Grayven's position? He would not have reformed the Light. With a position that powerful, raising people to his level would be a waste of time and resources. He.. might not have killed all of his former colleagues, but they would have been permitted very little freedom afterwards. Grayven had acted differently. That suggested that Grayven prioritized things differently.

Given that, when pushed, he didn't use anything worse than harsh language, was investing millions of dollars into researching ways to kill him rational?

…

Yes, yes it-.

Was it?

Normally, there were experts he could hire to advise him. But -in the abstract, with no concrete plans to follow through regardless of the answer- was there anyone he knew who would be able to relate to his position? A wealthy human businessman who had to work with powerful aliens and superhumans, earning his place amongst them with his intellect and wits?

A moment's thought revealed that the only such person he knew of was the entirely inappropriate Bruce Wayne.

Grayven is a potential threat, so putting resources into research may be a reasonable course of action. However, that justification only applies to physical threats. Atypical socialization can produce outcomes beyond a hesitancy to trust. Lex realized that his behavior might be 'off' in a number of small ways.

What other behaviors had Grayven and Truggs mentioned as being unusual concerning people who weren't a threat?

…

Lex reached across his desk, picked up his phone handset and dials.

A few moments passed, and then with a quiet beep the person at the other end picked up.

"Yes?"

"Lena. It's Lex."

back

Excavation 14

next

16th December

09:38 GMT -7

"Thank you all for coming."

Not a huge audience. Only twenty two of the forty I invited responded positively, and three of them didn't actually turn up. Fair enough, really. They're in an industry where when a job becomes available you don't have much choice but to take it.

Kurt Damsen, former Head of Development at a recently downsized computer game studio, takes a moment to pointedly look around the room. His eyes momentarily arresting as his gaze alights upon a former colleague. "I was mostly curious about what a superhero wants to talk to us about."

"I'm hoping that you can help me with something that's been… On my mind." I sigh. "Essentially, I want to offer you -collectively- data on a politically complex and turbulent region of space, with a view to making a computer game based on it."

A couple of exhalations, and I've definitely got everyone's attention.

"The reason I want to do that -aside from the fact that you're all talented individuals who have been ill treated by your former employers- is because I was the one who in real life was obliged to deal with it, and I'm really not sure that I did the best job I could have done. I'm.. curious to see if a player base would -when confronted with the situation- make similar choices or different ones."

Heidi Rose, award winning game developer and programmer with twenty years' experience who quit after her third hundred hour a week month in a row, glances up at the sky. "Is this somewhere close? Are we going to have to worry about extra terrestrial critics? I don't want to be probed."

"No, that's… No. It's extremely unlikely that most of the people mentioned would ever come to Earth, and the few that would probably wouldn't care."

"Are these well armed aliens who could come to Earth?"

I nod. "Oh, very well armed. Then again.. I.. know that several of you have worked on licensed games depicting superheroes before." A slightly wry shuffle from the people who worked on 'Justice League Adventures', a fairly generic action RPG which to this day has the League's founding members wince slightly whenever they see it. Except for Jordan, who got cut in favour of Lantern Stewart, and King Orin, who got cut entirely. "And that contained several alien races who hadn't decided to complain about it."

Kurt nods. "So, where is it?"

"A cluster of star systems about sixty light years-" I point. "-that way." I generate a map, though at this size it's impossible to make out individual planets and the stars are points of light. "As a result of a pact between the Guardians of the-" Ugh "-Universe…" Blank faces. Consider your audience. "The people who run the Green Lantern Corps." A few nods. "And one of its more infamous residents, Green Lanterns aren't allowed inside. How big a deal that is probably isn't obvious, so let me explain a little about how interstellar law enforcement works."

"The first thing you need to understand is that the species of the universe have no common set of laws. There is no Space UN. The nearest thing to a galactic legal authority is the Guardians, and though they're generally respected they don't have a generally recognised universal jurisdiction. There are civilisations who bar their operatives entry, and the Guardians accept that. Beyond that, given exactly how far criminals can run when they have access to faster than light travel, there are networks of bounty hunting organisations of varying degrees of… We'd say 'legitimacy', but in the context of there not being an overall law I suppose that they're technically all as legitimate as each other. Similarly, the vastness of space makes the sort of extradition agreements we have on Earth impractical except between near-neighbours."

Neil Cohen, lead writer on two of Wallace's favourite games and recipient of exactly zero dollars in royalties, raises his right hand. "So it's all handled by NGOs?"

"Courts on particular worlds often offer bounties and have agreements with particular organisations about standards and prices. But generally speaking, a stellar polity will only use its navy to enforce its own laws in systems where it has colonies, and maybe on the routes between them. Taking a fleet towards someone else's territory is obviously an extremely aggressive action. If a regional power is strong enough they might do it, but if all of the local powers are approximately equal then border hopping to avoid capture is quite viable."

"Green Lanterns can and do pursue violent criminals wherever they go, but then they're stuck with what to do with them. Quite aside from the fact that they probably won't know much about any political motivations they might have, they might be in a position where they know that the people they capture might suffer a grotesque punishment, or… Be able to buy their way out of trouble. Depending on local conditions they might return people they capture to one jurisdiction or another, or they might opt to maroon them instead."

"In places of widespread civil anarchy, the Green Lantern Corps might decide to move in in force and restore order. This acts as a sort of encouragement to spacefaring civilisations to maintain a degree of control over their own citizens and keep their interactions with their neighbours at least somewhat civil."

"As a result of there not being a major local power strong enough to assert itself, and the Green Lanterns being excluded by treaty, Vega was until recently a major pirate safe harbour. Two local civilisations were flat out evil, while several others were either cowed by them or willing to go along with it as long as they could benefit too. The nearest thing to a resistance movement was near-useless. And returning to why I'd like a game made, I.. fixed the situation partly by diplomacy with some fairly unpleasant people and partly by outright genocide."

A wave of unease passes around the room.

"On Earth, there are systems of law. Out in the wider universe, it's hit and miss." I take a handful of data sticks out of subspace. "There was no higher authority to turn to, and refusing to make a choice myself would have resulted in far more death… And those deaths would largely have been amongst those who weren't totally monstrous."

"Ahhh…" I focus on Kurt, who realises that he has the floor. "We make.. computer games."

"Yes. I think a modern game would be capable of modelling the relations between different parties in Vega, and having both a trading and fighting game play loop and faction missions to progress the.. main story in the direction of the player's choosing. Even if the finale is some orange deus ex flying in and dealing out frontier justice." I shrug. "Though I personally think that the end game coming out of nowhere is poor writing. Having fought two of the local boss characters myself I'm confident that you could come up with something better."

"No, I meant... Fictional space law is.. one thing and… Deciding to wipe out a civilisation because they're evil in real life…"

"If you were confronted by a xenomorph facehugger-" I generate a construct. "-and you had a gun, would you kill it?"

"If I could, yeah."

"Would you kill a hundred, if you could? They're newborn babies, remember."

He nods. "Yeah, yeah I guess I would."

"Would you have nuked Hiroshima, if it was the only way to stop Pingfang camp? Would you have flattened Dresden if it was the only way to close Auschwitz? Would you order a hundred men to charge a trench line, knowing that it was the only way to take it? And how could you be sure that those justifications were true?" He shrugs. "In my professional work I sometimes find it frustrating that people aren't prepared to make certain types of decisions. I'm hopeful that putting it in a semi-fictional context will encourage decisiveness and the development of appropriate decision making schema. And to make people more aware of what space age civilisations are capable of."

Sharon Pombo, unofficially blacklisted from working in any mainstream game company or games related media company after agitating for trade union membership and worker's rights, raises her left hand. "So.. are you.. hiring people to make this.. game..?"

"Not precisely. I hope that I have here the nucleus of a company. I'm willing to invest considerable amounts of money, do PR work for free and provide background information on the Vega Systems themselves. But it's up to you to form the company. Or not, if you choose. I imagine that your former employers would be quite willing to take the property off my hands."

There's a general tightening of jaws.

"Any further questions, or shall we start going through the data?"

back

Excavation 15

next

17th December

09:02 GMT -5

"And just where are you off to, young lady?"

Lynne freezes just this side of the hush tube aperture, her hands on her bike's handlebars. I'm smiling at the back of her head, arms folded across my chest in a mock display of gruffness.

"Out..?"

"Out where?"

She shifts her grip so that she can turn around to face me. Her expression briefly becomes one of mild irritation as she realises that she's not in any trouble. "Going bike riding with Imra?"

I look around. "I don't see Knockout. Has she already gone through?" Lynne's eyes drop, and I sigh. "Lynne, there is literally nothing that you and Imra could get up to that would perturb her, including fighting a death match against rabid bears. Your telepathic powers are considerable, but I'm afraid that this life we live makes us targets. You can be overwhelmed."

She looks up. "But I could get genomorphs to wherever I was in less than a minute."

"A minute's a long time in combat." She slumps slightly. "Okay, look, I know that Knockout can be a bit.. distracting. How about taking Iname with you instead?"

"Do I have to?"

"You have to convince me that you're going to be safe. I don't intend to ban you spending time with your friends, but I'm not going to let you risk your life to do so."

Her head dips slightly. "Ahh…" And then jerks up. "Drones! I could bring some drones with me."

"Those.. drones are probably more dangerous than Knockout. And they look more dangerous than Iname."

"But they can be invisible. Which means that Imra and Rokk…"

"'Rock'?" My smile broadens as I lean forward. "Are you spending time with a boy?"

"Yes? Rokk and Reep are coming, too. And I won't be.. doing anything with either of them. Or Imra."

"Oh, take all the fun out of it." I nod. "Okay, tell you what. Mother Box, drone squadron.. seven..?"

"Ping."

Riot control drones, designed to favour low lethality solutions and packing more shielding than blaster power. Should be enough.

Boom.

Five molluscoid drones drift through the opening, forming a rough arc between myself and Lynne. "If you can command them, I will consider it an acceptable compromise." Gain dominion.

Lynne nods, her eyes moving between the drones in turn. Obviously she can't do it with telepathy, vocal commands would give the game away…

"Drones, come with me." Become my invisible arms and eyes.

The drones float towards her, forming a circle around her and her bike before engaging their stealth system. I nod, pleased. "Very well then. All yours. Have fun!"

Lynne turns away, glancing up to where I know she can feel the drones to be. "Thanks, Dad!" She pushes the bike through the hush tube and lets it close down behind her.

Nice to see her doing so well. Hm. Knockout's brutalising her recruit and Sunset is working on her arcane transposition matrix with Circe. Teaching an old dog new tricks, though to be fair it's a fairly equal relationship. Circe might be a bit behind on theory and engineering but her practical knowledge is leagues ahead.

But… It's Saturday.

Saturday means that the team might even now be being briefed by Batman in preparation for investigating Lex's dig site in Texas. Sites, rather, unless they've managed to narrow it down somehow. Security looked good, and there wasn't anything I could think of that wouldn't attract more attention than it turned aside. We could let a random journalist in to take a look around…

Ping.

Yeaaaaaah, no. Secrecy is still the best policy.

Ping.

Because if Karsta wanted to talk to him then she'd have talked to him. She has access to hush tubes now. She's as safe as she can be. Especially if Amalak was the one hunting down her fellow escapees.

Ping.

I'm not saying that I disagree, but it's her decision. Okay, let's… Visit a couple of the other sites in case Batman is tracking me somehow, then… Visit the Rao system? I doubt that I'll find any ships, but you never know.

Hush tube.

Ping.

I stride through into the air above site three.

17th December

08:06 GMT -6

No problem with being spotted, since I did assure Batman that I would be checking these sites out for him. Sinestro, scan, if you please.

Certainly, Lantern Grayven. I'm happy to report that all is in order.

I know Scott's good at sneaking out of places, but how good is he at sneaking in?

Ping.

About what I expected. Okay, next site… May as well make it a boom tube this time.

Ping.

Boom.

Nothing much here, nothing much there…

I stop above the site with the actual ship beneath it. Lex told me that they think it'll still be two weeks before they get a hole down to the actual ship, and that will just be tiny so they can confirm that there's actually a ship there. Given the state of the surrounding rock it seems likely that the Doomsday buried itself by landing on the surface and melting the earth beneath it until it was suitably entombed.

Actually…

Sinestro, what sort of seismic monitoring is there around here?

Some, Lantern Grayven. None of it is particularly new.

Huh. Should be alright. Mining activity is pretty much mining activity. Even if the League access it -and they can- then it won't show anything odd. Alright. Mother Box, open a boom tube to the Rao system… You can prevent kryptonite radiation coming through, right?

Ping.

No, but I wanted to check. Okay, open it.

Ping.

I fly through and… Huh. The area immediately around me just looks like space, but staring towards anything in the distance results in me trying to see it through a green miasma. There's a lot of kryptonite dust in this system, and the part around Krypton's orbital plane is denser than most nebulae. Denser than more than a few planetary rings, actually. I… You know, I almost want to take some pictures. The sheer scale of the destruction is breathtak-.

Ping.

Really?

I frown. Yeah, okay, it's only been fifty or so years. It's surprising but not astonishing that there's anything left that can transmit…

Lantern Grayven, the dig site just sent an alert. The ship appears to be activating.

…

Oops.

back

Excavation 16

next

17th December

08:08 GMT -6

And back through the tube! Sinestro, get me Lex.

I have him, Lantern Grayven.

"…projected timelines, and I'd-."

"Lex. Problem."

There's a slight intake of breath. "Explain."

"Something in the Rao system was still transmitting. When I opened a-" Probably best I don't directly refer to the ship. "-boom tube, it was detected."

"We knew something like this was a possibility. Proceed with contingency plan A. I'll send a message to the site manager that she's to help you in any way you require. Can you contain the situation?"

One on one fight with a capital ship. True, kryptonians didn't design those things with anti-infantry purposes in mind so if I was actually standing on the hull I might be alright… "No idea. The specifications I've seen say that I should be able to, and we're fairly isolated here, but if I'm too slow… We're not that far away from some major population centres here."

"Understood. Keep me informed."

End call, open a hush tube to wherever Karsta is and call her.

Done.

"Karsta Wor-Ul, the ship's activating."

"Wuh? Ship? Grayv-?" I hear her exhale sharply. "Was it a cold start up?"

"As far as I could tell."

"Then its weapons shouldn't be able to fire for at least fifteen minutes. I'll be with you in one."

I nod, and cut the link. Great, okay. What next? I can't tube into the ship. Phasing drones can't get through its armour. Why aren't there any super-tunnelers around when you need them?

But…

There are constructs, both for tunnelling and for stabilising geological formations. I could probably-.

Lantern Grayven, those seismic monitoring devices are now detecting the vibrations which the Doomsday is causing. It's not enough to panic anyone just yet, but if the League are paying close attention then they will be aware that something is happening.

Great. Any sign of the Bio-Ship?

Not as yet. However, it may well be that your brother has outfitted it with ways to avoid ring-based detection.

Or Zatara might. Guh, if anyone was watching, me coming back to-

I was wondering when that would occur to you.

-the dig site the moment something happened… Okay, cover story… Someone misjudged an explosive charge. Mother Box, hush tube to the dig site.

Ping.

I fly through, landing on the rocky chamber just in front of the drill. A couple of overall-covered mine workers stare my way in surprise, and the guards only just manage to keep their guns stowed. The foreman shuts the drill down before turning to face me.

"Change of plans, guys and girls. Your site manager will be heading down here once she gets off the phone with Lex in order to confirm my authority. Your security clearance and pay grades are enhanced, but I'll remind you that your nondisclosure agreements are still in effect. Sharing information with anyone will get you fired and sued." Or worse. Lex does not take betrayals well. "The object we're digging towards is an alien relic which LexCorp is extremely interested in acquiring. I doubt-" I glance at the drill rig. "-that you felt it with that thing going, but there was a significant vibration a moment ago which we believe may have been whatever it is becoming active. As such, getting down to it suddenly became a good deal more urgent."

"Is it..?" One of the drill operatives starts talking, then realises that he might be interrupting and trails off. I make a circling gesture with my right hand. "Is it dangerous?"

"Yes, and that's why I'm here. If it looks like your life is being threatened I will be evacuating you very quickly. Sorry it's come to this, but the original plan was to pack you off just before making contact and for me to do the last part of the drilling myself so that you wouldn't be at risk. Now, that's not an option." I look at the shift leader. "How fast can we get down there?"

"We're.. still looking at days. Longer if you want a shaft big enough to pull anything up through. How big is this.. whatever it is?"

"Too big to easily bring up, but I'm hopeful that once we can get a connection to it we can stop it."

"And if you can't?"

"Then you get a LexCorp funded holiday in Australia while I try containing it myself. Look, this isn't a slave-mine. You want to leave, I'll open a portal. But I need you to decide now because we need to get-" The ground rumbles faintly. "-on this."

Sinestro, what was that?

Hard to tell. The Kryptonian Stellar Navy never fought the Green Lantern Corps, but they were certainly aware of our capacities. I can't scan the ship in detail, but given the epicentre of the tremor and the shape of the ship, my best guess is that it either test-fired its primary thrusters or attempted to extrude part of its drive system.

That's pretty-

Karsta Wor-Ul steps through a hush tube just in front of me and stares at the ground, presumably trying to see what's going on below us. Good luck getting a decent picture. Kryptonian vision's not that good.

-typical for the boot up. The central computer won't panic for another few minutes yet at the earliest.

I turn away from her and focus on the drill crew. "I need a decision now. Go if you're going, otherwise full speed ahead."

"Exactly how dangerous-?"

"Not completely sure, but my best estimate is 'as dangerous as a well maintained but sixty year old nuclear missile silo'."

The foreman looks at each member of his crew, getting a nod from each in turn. Then they return to their stations and the drill starts up again. Okay, good. "Karsta Wor-Ul, since it's booting up, could you try-?"

She already has her computer out, running her fingers across the control system. "Not getting anything, but communications are towards the end of the cold start sequence. And Dru-Zod might have tampered with it."

"The signal from Krypton?"

She shakes her head. "I don't know anything about it. He might have set it up, but I'd have thought-"

"Incoming phone call."

"-that whatever is transmitting it would have been found before Krypton blew up."

Who is it?

Number associated with 'Mitchell Kent'.

Gah, great.

"Keep trying to raise it. I need to answer this."

Ring, answer.

back

Excavation 17

next

17th December

08:12 GMT -6

I raise my left hand to my ear, generating a construct to keep out the drill noise as I do so. "Mitchell, good morning. What can I do for you?"

"Hey Grayven. Batman gave us an assignment and I was hoping you could help me with it?"

"Is that cheating?"

"Robin says it's only cheating if he directly tells you not to. Kid Flash says it's only cheating if you get caught, and then only maybe."

"And what did your mother say?"

"Nothing." I wait. "'Cause I.. haven't asked her."

"Mitchell, I'm not against a bit of 'out of the box' thinking, and I know well how useful contacts are in superheroism. Ask what you want to ask, and I'll think about whether answering is appropriate or not."

"Okay. See, he wants us to get inside a LexCorp building, and since you're working with Lex I figured the easiest way would be to just ask you."

"Ah… Yeah..? Any building in particular? Some of them do tours, you could just turn up…"

"They don't do tours to the one he wants us to get inside."

"Look… Mitchell… Managing someone of Lex's character is difficult enough without letting the clone of a man for whom he has a pathological hatred walk around anything he owns. Whereabouts do you want to go?"

"Some place in Texas."

Fuck! No, no, okay, he wouldn't be asking me if I was under suspicion… Un.. less.. he was asking me so they can see how I respond…

"Can you be more specific? Lex has oil extraction facilities, a few power plants and several places they're testing to see about storing nuclear waste in them."

"One of the nuclear waste ones."

I.. can see where this is going. "Just.. one at random..?"

"No. It's about sixty miles east of some place called Lubbock?"

Yes, yes, this one. "I.. can.. probably arrange that. Any special reason?"

"Batman doesn't think they're actually storing nuclear waste there. He thinks they're using that as a cover for something."

"No, they're not storing nuclear waste there. They're just excavating at the moment. It won't be ready for them to start bringing material in for a few years yet. Nuclear waste needs to be stored very carefully and things can go very badly if you don't get it right. Why does Batman want you to look at the place, anyway?"

"He's been trying to find out what happened to LexCorp's kryptonite. Apparently they made a bunch of lasers with it, and we think they're keeping them there."

Oh! Is that all!

"They're not keeping them there. The security personnel are carrying them."

"They are? But… Why?"

The site manager comes in with a couple of guards and starts shouting to people over the noise of the drill, while Karsta Wor-Ul keeps working on her computer.

I shrug. "Americans… Guns…"

"I don't think that's really-."

"Lex hates kryptonians. These guns would theoretically allow his security people to shoot a kryptonian dead." Very theoretically. Even a glancing hit would cause nasty burns, but a disabling injury would require several seconds' exposure. In the event of a serious attack by a fully charged kryptonian, getting the time to do that would require a fairly serious judgement error on their part. Still, it's better than nothing. "And since none of the kryptonians we know about have any reason to visit a construction site in the middle of nowhere in Texas, it doesn't really hurt anyone."

"I'm… Kinda…"

"You said that Batman wanted to know about the guns. I've confirmed their presence. I can give you a full count if you want, it's no trouble."

"Ah… Just a second…"

The line goes quiet. Not dead, but I think he's muted me. Hm.

It's not that surprising that the League would be interested in the location of kryptonite-.

It wouldn't be that surprising that a security organisation like the League was interested in the location of kryptonite. For the League it's radically out of character for them to do something that sensible. Which is probably why it's coming from the team, but…

Karsta Wor-Ul walks toward me. "Grayven." I raise my eyebrows. "We need to get through the rock faster than that drill will."

"I don't know any super miners. Magic-." Would Sunset..? Or Circe-. No, involving her wouldn't be wise. "There are people I can ask, but they'd have to be brought-"

Sounds return on my phone construct.

"-up to speed. Mitchell."

"Can we have a look around right now?"

"Who's 'we'? Because if it's the whole team-."

"Ah, no. My team. Kid Flash, Polara, Miss Martian and Zatanna."

"What.. exactly are you looking for? I mean, I've already confirmed the presence of the guns."

"Anything Lex doesn't want us to find. I don't think he'd send guards with kryptonite weapons to a nuclear storage site."

"You do know that kryptonite is radioactive, yes? That it's dangerous to humans as well as kryptonians? This is probably one of the few places they can fire the things without anyone suing when they get cancer."

"Are they actually firing them?"

"Ah… Let me check." Mute. I walk over to the guard furthest away from the drill and patch myself into his headset. "Those lasers you're using. Do you practise with them here?"

"Yes sir. We have live fire exercises twice a week. Just to keep us on our toes. We did a full training course before being deployed, but that was back at headquarters."

"Thank you." Unpatch and unmute. "Yes, they actually fire them sometimes."

"Just guns? Not anything… Bigger?"

"Like a.. kryptonite plasma weapon? Some sort of heavy laser cannon?"

"Something that would cause earth tremors."

"They've got drills. Those make quite a rumble." Cover or not? "They set off a few explosives a little while ago, and they've got permits for those. If you think Lex is turning this place into a kryptonite weapon research centre… It's not impossible, but as I said… It's years away from being anything other than a hole in the ground."

"Okay, that's fine. My team wins the contest if we get inside first, and if there's nothing to find then we don't find anything. So can we visit?"

"Ah…" Getting them off our back, versus the risk of actually still having the ship here. "Yeah, sure."

"We can be there in a couple of hours?"

"No, ah… I'll need to talk to a few people, make sure they're available to conduct the tour. This is a working facility, and I just know that Lex will have a grump-session if you being here delays things. Let me sort things out… Maybe… Tomorrow afternoon?"

"Tomorrow afternoon."

"Pencil it in, I'll confirm later."

"Okay, I'll do that. Thanks, Grayven."

"No trouble at all. Goodbye."

And hang up.

Karsta Wor-Ul raises her eyebrows. "Trouble?"

I nod. "Yup."

back

Excavation 18

next

17th December

09:24 GMT -5

Lex nods. "What's the current state of the ship?"

Karsta Wor-Ul taps her computer and uses Lex's projector to display a hologram of the ship. "The ship is undergoing a cold start. Normally, that would happen in dock and there would be a team of engineers on board to make sure everything worked properly. It's possible to do it in the field, but the process has about two hundred steps and wasn't ever part of normal operations because... How often do you lose all power and not get immediately destroyed in a place where you can't get towed back to a shipyard?"

Not.. often. There were one or two cases in Apokolips' last war with New Genesis where crippled ships were left behind, and the crews salvaged wrecks to restore them to working condition. But that was unusual in the extreme, and they couldn't really standardise that procedure.

Lex watches the hologram for a moment. "How familiar are you with the process?"

"Today is the third time I've read it. The first was when I was assigned to the ship as head of its marines detachment. Second was when I tried to work out how we'd run a drill for something like that. We decided it wasn't worth the time."

"So who is doing it now?"

Karsta Wor-Ul frowns for a second, then shakes her head. "Not a crew, that's for sure. Everyone left the Doomsday before it vanished, and every member of the navy was in-system at the time."

"How can you be sure? Given how hostile you and your cohorts were to the idea of isolationism, how do you know that others didn't feel the same way?" Lex shakes his head. "I always thought the 'Last Son of Krypton' story was unlikely, and you're living proof."

She blinks. "Because it was a general recall order."

I smile faintly. "Karsta Wor-Ul, Lex only knows about Kryptonian society through Kal-El. He won't understand the significance."

"Should have known." She gives Lex a hard look. "In America, when the nation comes to a decision and a law gets passed, everyone who doesn't like it does their best to frustrate it. On Krypton, we didn't."

"Do you really expect me to believe that you had no crime?"

"No, we had crime. What we didn't have was an acceptance of a level of law-breaking. Of course, we were closer to a direct democracy rather than a representative democracy… The point is, if a thug robs someone with a gun he knows he's breaking the law. If a soldier disobeys a legal order, he knows he's going to be court-martialled. But you let accountants bypass financial laws, lawyers have no loyalty to the court system-"

Lex narrows his eyes and gives his head a small shake.

"-and your politicians don't face censure if they break their promises. Any Kryptonian who did those things would know they were committing a crime. I hated the Science Council, but I had no grounds to dispute their authority. They came to power according to kryptonian laws and customs."

"But everyone-."

"Yes, everyone. It was a legitimate order from a legitimate source acting in accordance with the will of the majority of kryptonian citizens. No one disobeyed, and only a handful of us went AWOL after we returned. There weren't any Military Council fanatics hiding out on a military outpost on one of the Possession Worlds, or whatever paranoid-"

Lex twitches.

"-theory you're working on. And the ship has been buried ever since. Even if there was someone waiting and they installed animation suspension units, you'd have to explain why they flew to Earth and then buried themselves. And why the Doomsday's energy output was so low if there were active suspension units on board. Anyone who was prepared to openly defy the Science Council like that wouldn't have buried themselves, they would have either attempted a coup or gone pirate."

"What if some of your fellow escapees tracked it down?"

"On Earth? We didn't know it was here. If any of us had found it… There's no sign that anyone used mining equipment, and I didn't detect it when I entered the Sol system for the first time. And again, why would they board the ship and then stay buried? Or bother with the ship in the first place."

Yes, late nineteenth century, a squad of kryptonians could have forced the nations of the Earth into compliance relatively easily.

Karsta Wor-Ul shakes her head again. "No, it's happening on automatic."

Lex nods slowly. "What about that signal?"

She shrugs. "An automated warning, asking any nearby ship for help. Which might explain why the Doomsday is trying to respond. I don't recognise the authorisation code, but the officer would have been promoted after I left."

"Could we just deactivate it?"

I nod. "Yes, but the Doomsday isn't receiving it any longer. It only heard it due to the signal reaching through my boom tube."

"You opened-?"

"I didn't think that was possible for non-New God signals to pass through. I'm feeling-" I glance at Karsta Wor-Ul. "-notably less smug now."

"Hn." Karsta Wor-Ul thinks for a moment. "I might be able to alter it to send a cancellation, but if it was a planetary disaster then the authorisation needs to come from the chairman of the ruling Council. And the entire Science Council died with Krypton. The Doomsday would probably reject it."

Lex nods. "So we're still stuck trying to force an entry before the Doomday liquefies the center of Texas. Under the circumstances, I'm prepared to consider looking beyond our usual circle of help in order to ensure that we're successful. Grayven, do you know of anyone-" I'm already shaking my head. "-who could offer meaningful assistance?"

"The only geomancer I know is Tara Markov, and I have no idea where she is."

Lex thinks for a moment. "Is she a relation of Gregor Markov?"

"Half sister. But she was brought up by her mother in America and I haven't tracked her down." I don't know how her abilities work but something about her is preventing ring scans locating her. "I can put my people on it, or I can have them assist the drill. I don't know exactly how effective they'll be in either role…" I shrug. "Up to you."

"Can I assume that your people don't have any particular tunnelling abilities?"

"Sunset can do basic geomancy. But.. nothing like what Miss Markov can do. My other suggestion would be building a New God tech drill, but that would take me some time. Certainly longer than it will take the Doomsday to fully activate."

Lex shakes his head. "You'd think that with all this costumed lunacy we'd have at least one moleman by now."

I nod, grinning. "I was thinking that."

"Attempt to locate Miss Markov. I'll make preparations on the assumption that we'll be successful and will shortly need to slip a capital ship past NORAD. And I'll speak to Gregor; I have contacts in that part of the world and he may have an address."

I keep nodding. "Good-" Lex's mobile rings, and he picks it up off his desk. "-show."

"Lex." He listens for a moment. "Yes, that was.. expected. No, don't shoot it down. Maintain observation for now, Grayven will be with you shortly." He hangs up, then looks at me. "You said that ten members of the Justice Youth were unaccounted for?"

"Assuming that Match was telling the truth, yes."

"The detection systems I installed in one of the decoy sites just picked up-" He presses a few buttons on his computer, the hologram on his projector changing to… Oh, marvellous. "-the Martian's ship heading towards them under camouflage. So either he wasn't telling the truth, or another squad chose a more direct approach."

back

Excavation 19

next

17th December

09:33 GMT -5

Stabilise.

The dully gleaming tectonic stabilisation poles situated across the dig site appear to be doing their job. Certainly, none of the tectonic activity detectors across the state are picking up anything untoward. If I'm honest the trick is to prevent vibrations being nullified completely and giving the game away that way.

Stabilise.

So that's under control. Having fetched them, Miss Amane is now standing to attention, almost-. No, literally vibrating with excitement at the possibility of being given another vital task.

Stabilise.

The drilling continues nothing like fast enough and the Bio-Ship is loitering entirely too close for comfort and-.

S-?-tabilise.

And.. I.. felt that. A definite attempt by someone to use magic to feel this site. Probably Garth or Tula. The whole team wouldn't fit in the Bio-Ship these days and I wouldn't have felt it if it had been Zatanna. Okay, the poles are helping me normalise local magic fields so unless they're a lot better with geomancy than I think they are, they shouldn't detect anything suspicious.

Stabilise.

Unless that's.. suspicious in itself. I'd be annoyed with myself for not knowing that if it had been something that I'd had any reason to think I might need to know. I'm not the subtle guy!

Stabilise.

Call Mr Near or not? Lex gave me a mildly impressed eyebrow raise when I told him that The Spider worked for me, but I don't really know much about his capacity for non-violent intrigue. And him getting involved directly is a pretty giant red flag for my involvement.

Stabilise.

I try using the poles to extend the reach of my essence toward the Doomsday, but get nothing. Not too surprising. It wouldn't have been designed to interact with gods, and I can't properly be said to have conquered it. I can't even really feel it, which might be a side effect of Krypton being mystically inert. At the very least, I suppose that at least I can confirm that there aren't any living people on board.

Stabilise.

Incoming communication.

Stabilise.

Answer.

Stabilise.

"Sunset, talk to me."

Stabilise.

"How fast do we need to find this girl?"

Stabilise.

"Dunno. Ask me another."

Stabilise.

"Because this sort of ritual is easiest with body parts."

Stabilise.

"We don't have body parts."

Stabilise.

"I know where the Markovian royal family bury their dead. I could get part of her father's body really quickly."

Stabilise.

"Sunset."

Stabilise.

"I'd put it back."

Stabilise.

"Not the point. Royal graves are usually protected. It would be far easier to exhume her mother's family or perform the ritual on-site. And it would probably be easier still to look for geomantic disruptions."

Stabilise.

"I'm not an earth pony, Grayven. Geomancy-."

Stabilise.

"No, you're a human, remember."

Stabilise.

"I'm a human thaumaturgist being asked to use a type of magic I don't have a whole lot of experience with."

Stabilise.

"Necromancy it is-"

Stabilise.

"It's not necromancy."

Stabilise.

"-then and it kind of is."

Stabilise.

"I'm not going to be summoning the body part's spirit back and asking them where she is, because they probably wouldn't know. Scrying with body parts is perfectly fine."

Stabilise.

"Is that what Princess Celestia said?"

Stabilise.

"It's what I think, and it's what Queen Circe says and she outranks a princess."

Stabilise.

"Okay, look, you know your abilities better than I do. Find her for-"

Stabilise.

Incoming communication.

Stabilise.

"-me. Hang on." Answer.

Stabilise.

"Grayven, it's Lex. I've found her." Oh. "Gregor sounded rather pleased at the idea of his half-sister finding legitimate employment. Apparently some of the people she's been mixing with are violent criminals."

Stabilise.

"Shocking. One moment." I switch channels. "Sunset, no need to exhume anyone. Lex found her."

Stabilise.

"Oh." I hear a sound that sounds suspiciously like a spade striking soil. "So can I-?"

Stabilise.

"While I respect your desire to learn magic, I cannot justify using the remains of the recently deceased without a good, mission-related reason."

Stabilise.

"But-."

Stabilise.

"I'll get you some sheep bones when I get home."

Stabilise.

"It's not the same." She huffs. "Fine. I'll phone Zatanna and see if I can find anything out."

Stabilise.

"You do that. And no grave-" The line drops. "-robbing." I sigh faintly. Put Lex back on.

Stabilise.

By your command.

Stabilise.

"Sorry Lex, had to call off one of the people I had looking. When can she start?"

Stabilise.

"As soon as we can get her to you. Are you sure that your brother can't detect hush tubes?"

Stabilise.

"No. But unless she's got Bugs Bunny's digging skills it's still the quietest way to get her here. Where is she?"

Stabilise.

"Bludhaven. Halyard Square. You have her picture?"

Stabilise.

"Yep." I hold the ring away from my face. "Iname, would you be so good as to escort Miss Markov here?"

Stabilise.

"Will she try and resist, master?"

Stabilise.

"No, no, this is a voluntary thing. Just smile and-." She smiles. "Maybe not like that. Be polite, and get her through the hush tube."

Stabilise.

She nods. Right, ring, show me somewhere suitable. That'll do. Mother Box, hush tube.

Stabilise.

Ping.

Stabilise.

Miss Amane walks through at a normal pace, and I saunter toward the drill team. The foreman spots me, and steps away from the still-active drill so that we can talk at a reasonable volume.

Stabilise.

"We're bringing in a metahuman who can control rock to finish the tunnel."

Stabilise.

"So, what, we can just stop?"

Stabilise.

"Probably. To be clear, I had no idea that the woman in question was available and as far as I knew your participation was vital. I'm genuinely grateful that you all stayed on, and depending on how well she actually understands her ability, I may need you to direct her."

Stabilise.

"Does she just make rock… Disappear?"

Stabilise.

"No, but she can move tonnes of the stuff at will."

Stabilise.

"And where's she gunna put it, exactly?"

Stabilise.

"Depends on how precise she is, but I'm afraid that you're probably going to be manning the wheelbarrows."

Stabilise.

"For what we're getting paid for this, I'm fine with that. Not helping out yourself?"

Stabilise.

"I'm not supposed to be here, and I'm going to be dealing with the alien artefact."

Stabilise.

"Fair enough. What-?"

Stabilise.

Miss Amane walks through the tube, another young woman just behind her. Tara Markov is wearing a green parka coat, jeans and.. what I think is a brown and yellow leotard. Pageboy haircut and some sort of half-face mask thing.

Stabilise.

I've seen worse. I turn away from the foreman, who walks back to his crew and starts waving at them to close the drill down.

Stabilise.

"Thank you for coming, Terra. I need you to get-"

Her eyes widen as she sees me.

"-started right away."

She keeps staring. Is this about the decapitation thing? I smile and hold out my right hand. "Hi, I'm Grayven. Have we met before?"

She looks me over again, and then smiles brightly in a way I've become all too familiar with from Miss Amane.

"No. We haven't."

back

Excavation 20

next

17th December

09:37 GMT -5

Miss Markov's eyes unfocus slightly as she stares at the rock floor. "There's no room to compress it at all. I can pull rock out and shove it out the way if that's what you want."

"How much, and how quickly?"

"Give me a couple of minutes and I can probably pull out the whole column in one go." She glances up at the ceiling. "Without bringing the place down."

"And if we wanted a bit of subtlety?"

She shrugs in frustration. "Single lumps are easier, but I can pretty much keep throwing rock into a.. truck or whatever."

Another choice. Have them cart the rock away manually, or open a tube and expel it that way? And how to explain either choice? No, no, put the digging crew to work moving rock now and shove everything they can't remove somewhere by tube. Then have them move it through after we make it into contact with the Doomsday. I doubt that anyone is watching closely enough to know precisely how much material we're shifting. I wave my right hand at the drill crew.

"Get a conveyor set up. Grab as many people as you need, this has top priority. We'll shove rock through a portal until you're ready."

The foreman nods and the group takes off at a jog. This section of the mine had a conveyor spur leading to it while it was first being dug out, but it was taken out when the drilling began. We wanted to put monitoring equipment in there in its place, and to reduce the risk of someone seeing something incriminating. The nearest stretch isn't that far away, and the spur pieces are designed to be simple to assemble.

And hush tube to… I don't know, one of Clanadrern's abandoned cities. A way off the ground, so we don't have to worry about it piling up. Plenty of rock there, and even after Guy chased off the anzadorl the locals still haven't recovered to the point where it's practical for them to live in them.

Ping.

Okay, good. I mark a circle on the ground about a metre and a half wide. "Terra, please dig that out at best possible speed. Chuck the material through the portal."

She gestures, and with a tremendous crack a cylinder of rock a metre tall rises out of the marked target. A gesture sideways and it flies through the hush tube, even as another cylinder rises up from the ground. Not exactly quiet, but I can't deny the effectiveness. Possibility for a non-combat focused New Goddess? Mmm. Probably not necessary-. Ah, where are my manners?

I dismiss the now-superfluous guide construct and create a pair of noise-filtering headphones. In Miss Markov's colours-. Hang on a minute, shouldn't it be 'Markova'? That's how Russian-derived surnames work, isn't it? Oh, never mind. I hold them out to her. She notices, frowns for a moment and then takes them with her left hand and awkwardly puts them over her head one-handed.

Next step. Sinestro, is the Bio-Ship still in the same place?

It's certainly keeping its distance, Lantern Grayven. Though I will remind you-.

You can't tell for certain who is inside, and in fact the thing you're detecting could well be an illusion anyway.

Just so.

No vibrations not in keeping with normal mining work. My own aura is more or less contained, though I suppose they might be able to-.

"What am I digging for, anyway?"

"I'm afraid that's-"

There's a clatter as the first length of conveyor machinery is dropped into place.

"-need-to-know. Suffice to say that both I and your accountant will be very pleased if we reach our target in time."

"In time for what?"

"Miss Markov, I am grateful to you for your work, but I do not yet trust you with all of my secrets." She's making excellent progress. A quarter of the way there already. If I'd had the slightest idea that she existed I'd have sought her out sooner. "If you really want to know, you'll have to do quite a bit more work for Lex and I."

"Work like this? This isn't what most people hire me for."

"What, you're a mercenary?" I raise my eyebrows in disbelief as she nods. She's not much bigger than Lynne, for goodness sake. No armour, no weapons but her innate abilities… "Really? Have you any idea how much mining equipment costs? And how slow it is, compared with you? Honestly, you'd be better off staying in-"

A hush tube opens and Karsta Wor-Ul floats-. Notices the company and lands fast enough that Miss Markov might not have noticed.

"-the mining industry." I switch my attention to Karsta Wor-Ul. "What news?"

"Just an old probe." She frowns as a mass of gravel flies past her into my hush tube. "Kryptonian version of the Voyager probe. I don't think it was intentional."

Huh. "So I didn't fall for a cunning plan, I messed things up by accident. I'm not sure whether I should feel better or worse." She frowns faintly for a moment, then dismisses me. "Can you contact it now?"

"The rock isn't what was stopping me. But given what's happening, it seems reasonable to assume that at least part of the main computer is still functioning."

My eyes flick towards Miss Markov. "Might want to talk about this somewhere else."

"Why, can she understand Kryptonian?"

Useful. "Alright, so either main communications hasn't restarted yet or Dru-Zod set the ship to run in autistic mode. Nothing we can do until we actually get down there." Hm. "I've been meaning to ask: do you want me to put more effort into looking for other Kryptonian survivors? I haven't really-."

Lantern Grayven, your attention.

"What is it, Sinestro?"

"Since I was monitoring the seismic sensors anyway, I thought it worth drawing your attention to something."

An image appears in my mind, a confusing pattern of tiny shockwaves resolving themselves into… Footprints.

And back to English. "Grayven to site security. Intruders moving in from the west under some sort of active camouflage." Don't want to risk killing my friends. "Location on your headsets now. Low lethality response. Make it clear that you know that someone's there. I will revise these instructions if they get closer."

"Understood, sir."

While he has his own… Issues, Mr Rathaway was a bit more on the ball with the commercial applications of his sonic technology than his contemporaries. Anyone with super strength and flight would be able to push through a wide-area sonic pulse, but anyone else should get knocked over. My former team mates almost certainly have the sense to wear ear protection, but if not vertigo inducers are an option as well.

Another section of conveyor gets dropped into place, and some engineers who weren't part of the drill team start the process of attaching the pieces together and attaching them to the ground. That's proceeding as planned. Sinestro, how close is the tunnel now?

Close, Lantern Grayven. She will breach in another minute.

And if we'd had her from the start I'd probably let her, but as it is I'll need to pay her and dismiss her before then. Can't risk her seeing the ship. Not without more leverage than I have now. She can bring the rock back through the portal once the conveyor is set up.

"Alright, thank you Terra. Please stop digging and start helping the engineers."

She turns to face me, the last few chunks of rock coming up out of the hole at speed and floating just behind her. "But I haven't found anything."

"I know. But you're an external contractor and there are some things we don't want you seeing just yet."

Karsta Wor-Ul wrinkles her nose. "We might end up needing her anyway."

I nod, then hold out my left arm to the pit. "Shall we?"

back

Excavation 21

next

17th December

09:41 GMT -5

Ugh.

Manual labour.

Karsta Wor-Ul and I float upside down above the last few centimetres of rock between us and the outer hull of the Doomsday. It would be nice if I could use a construct for this, but unfortunately the use of power rings can be detected for quite some time afterwards. I haven't made a secret of the fact that I've been here, but if they talk one of the Green Lanterns into having a scan and it looks like I've been here a lot, that could be awkward.

So instead Karsta Wor-Ul softens pieces of rock with her heat vision and I shove it to the sides with my gauntlet-covered hands. Ridiculously primitive, and I'm definitely going to put a 'rescue drill' together once we're finished here. I attached a hologram generator to the mouth of the tunnel to stop anyone just looking down and seeing what we're doing, and-.

The tips of the fingers of my right hand bump into something harder than the gneiss surrounding it. I give it a prod… Yep, that's it. I shove my left hand into the same spot and shove, the slightly translucent grey/blue crystal of the Doomsday's outer hull becoming visible. The tip of the upper spire, unless I miss my-

"Out of my way."

-guess. I float upward as Karsta Wor-Ul descends, taking position right over the exposed patch. She holds out her right hand, cleaning a small section of the hull of all rock residue before planting a small crystal of her own on its surface.

"Come on, Dru-Zod. Don't tell me-."

There's a slight intake of breath.

"It's not about to fire, ri-?"

"Got it. I've got it."

Spikes of crystal extend through the surrounding rock, then grow towards each other to create a solid flat surface. The centre of the surface then retracts, revealing an entryway to the ship.

Which… Is too small for me to use.

"Um." Karsta Wor-Ul floats slowly inside. "Could you ask the ship to make it bigger? I'm-." More crystals appear along the base of the pit, growing around one another as the hull extends further in our direction. "Thank you. Everything alright in there?"

"Kryptonian warships were designed to be able to take on extra mass to grow larger as required. It looks like Dru-Zod had the Doomsday jettison at least part of its mass before landing it here." The entrance expands further, and I drop down slowly after her. "I suppose it didn't really need crew quarters with no crew."

I can see well enough in low light conditions, but I'd prefer it if the lights were on. Coming aboard a newly-reactivated capital ship should be a major event. We shouldn't be sneaking through like-.

The lights come on, points within the crystalline walls lighting up, brightness suffusing the interior. Mm. Maybe it's the low power state, but… Kryptonians really didn't care about interior design. The walls are bare crystal, slightly lumpy, but… It just looks boring. No New God would build a ship like this. I don't think that humans would either. Even their submarines have more personality than this.

I hold out my right hand as we reach an actual corridor, the entrance we used slowly closing itself behind us. Feels like… Yes, natural yellow… Alright, white sunlight. We head down the spartan, utilitarian corridor in the direction of the ship's command centre, sensibly located in the centre of the ship's main mass.

"Do you have control yet?"

Karsta Wor-Ul is still focusing her attention on her personal computer. "No. It looks like the main computer is disconnected from the peripheral systems. They're acknowledging that I'm authorised to be here, but I don't have command access."

I follow her into a shaft, dropping further inside. As science fiction starships go it's not all that big. Certainly not the size of its Apokoliptian equivalents. But then it wasn't designed with the same functions in mind, and it's still bigger than any military ship in this space sector. You'd probably have to go to Thanagar before you encountered anything larger, and the Doomsday would tear one of their Command Carriers apart without slowing down.

"Intentional or damage?"

"I was an infantry officer and the internal diagnostic doesn't know."

"I'm not seeing any damage."

"Me neither." Got to say, this ship is designed to make getting about inside relatively easy. Even for someone my size. Or maybe the corridors are designed to cope with traffic in several directions at once? "Damage to the superstructure repairs itself automatically. That doesn't require any input from the computers. Glasslords, you could rip a piece off the hull and it would try and grow back."

"So… Why were you so sceptical about us being able to build more?"

"Because it would be useless. And slow. Some of this hull is smart crystal mass, but most of it has…" She thinks for a moment as we approach what looks like a fortified crystal door. "There isn't a precise word in English and I don't speak Apokoliptian. Circuits, and other systems, as part of the structure. Make a whole ship out of smart crystal and all you have is an oversized paperweight."

"Mm. Still, it could be useful if we can use it to armour other ships."

"It wouldn't be efficient, but I suppose you could." She lands on the deck in front of a crystal outcrop. "Now, let's see what Dru-Zod left for me to work with." She lays her hands on the crystal. "Karsta Wor-Ul, Sub-Command Third."

The crystal grows slightly, holding her hands in place. Since she doesn't seem alarmed by it I'm going to assume that it's meant to do that.

"Can you tell if it's planning on shooting its way out? It would be an amusingly ironic way for Texas to die, but I'd rather avoid it if at all possible."

She glances back, slightly irritated. "Not yet. Give it a mo-"

The crystal barrier protecting the bridge retracts, crystal finger by crystal finger.

"-ment."

The crystal holding her hands retracts, and she takes a moment to check the bridge's interior. Pretty.. small, actually. Apokoliptian bridges are near-literally penis extensions for the ship's master. Kryptonians appear to have preferred compact and functional. 360o holographic screens, and station for the commanding officer in the centre and a circle of stations for the bridge officers. Practical, but it's not exactly blowing my socks off.

Then the screens light up, a male kryptonian in fleet greys embossed with the House Zod sigil staring down at us. Dru-Zod, presumably. There's a definite resemblance to his kneeling-fixated great nephew, but you wouldn't mistake them for one another.

"Hello, son or daughter of Krypton. If you're seeing this message, then at least one of us had the sense to overcome the Science Council's edict of isolation." He smiles, looking down for a moment. "Or perhaps we were all very lucky, everyone came to their senses and I'm cringing as the Military Council watches this after I recovered the Doomsday myself. No. No. I won't even dare hope that has occurred. The demographics are too.. against us."

"But, you're here. I am or more likely was Admiral Dru-Zod of the Kryptonian Stellar Navy. This was my flagship, the Doomsday. I instructed it to entomb itself on a world far enough from Krypton that the Eradicators would struggle to find it in the hope that it would one day be returned to service. It is yours. If practical, I would urge you to use it as a reminder of the power and majesty of the Kryptonian military. Return it to Krypton and inspire our people to seize the stars once again. But given what I have done, I could hardly blame you if you wanted nothing to do with them."

"In either case, please take the time to examine my records. I loaded everything I could on strategy and tactics onto the Doomsday's computers, as well as records of every battle the navy ever fought. Do not waste this vessel's potential. May Rao shine upon you."

Karsta Wor-Ul is already at the command station. "Weapons off. I've got control of-."

The holographic image shudders.

"If you're seeing this message, then the Doomsday has identified you as a member of the Kryptonian military. While I cannot approve of you violating the edict of isolation, I am not really in a position to fault you. May your example remind our people why we went to the stars in the first place."

Another shudder.

"Karsta Wor-Ul."

She looks up. "Dru-Zod."

"I'm sorry. I didn't have time to make a full neural clone." He sighs. "I'm glad that you escaped. I knew about your plan… If I hadn't been the highest ranking officer with the fleet I might have joined you. All secure data is now unlocked. The Doomsday is a fine ship, and it will serve you well."

back

Excavation 22

next

17th December

09:45 GMT -5

Karsta Wor-Ul's eyes unfocus as she uses the mind link control to get a better impression of the ship's status. A very faint sort of.. singing noise in the background that I only noticed when we stopped talking changes faintly in pitch.

I raise my eyebrows. "And?"

"Ship's in good repair. I was right earlier; it jettisoned about a third of its mass on Titania before making its approach to Earth."

"So is there now a useless Doomsday-shaped lump of ship sitting there?"

"No. Kryptonian warships aren't strictly modular, but they are designed to be able to remove less useful sections without weakening the rest of the ship. Crew quarters, main FTL drive, secondary weapon arrays and long range sensors are buried. I can pick them up once we get the Doomsday free."

"Why would-?"

"The Doomsday's been down here a while, but humans have been watching the skies for as long as they've had eyes. The computer would have detected intelligent habitation, and Dru-Zod programmed it to hide itself until kryptonians came to find it. With the extra mass… It actually would have had to melt Texas to hide itself, and that would have created obviously unnatural rock formations humans would have studied by now. And there's a limit to what stealth systems can do when a ship that big enters an atmosphere."

I hold out my left hand and generate a recreation of the Doomsday's original landing. "How.. much bigger are..?"

"'Secondary weapons' is misleading. They're called 'secondary' because they're not part of the core ship, not because they're smaller. And the Doomsday was designed to hold a company of marines in reasonable comfort."

"Main FTL is a disposable system?"

"Main FTL was designed to bypass interdiction fields. Which meant that we either needed to change systems a whole lot, or burned it out brute forcing them."

I nod. "Alright. Where are we at with the start-up and the digging?"

"I've told the primary weapons not to melt through the rock above us, so we don't have to worry about that. Peak primary power output is at thirty percent and rising, which is more than enough for peacetime atmospheric flight."

"You mentioned 'stealth systems'..?"

"We're already invisible to radar and thermal imaging. Hologram projectors will take care of visible light… Human-visible light."

"Gravity detection?"

"That takes longer. It's easier to futz around with the detection system than mess around with gravity precisely enough to hide a ship."

"And I assume that this ship can't teleport."

"What, so we could just fly it out of here?" She shakes her head. "No such luck. How about a boom tube?"

"Boom tubes are a viable method, but they're loud, easy to detect and the power requirements scale cubically with the size. I don't have a power source good enough."

She frowns. "I thought you said Apokoliptian ships-?"

"Yes, and they have Apokoliptian power sources to go with it. I could make one in a.. few months, probably. And if we used it-."

A nod. "Everyone would know that we used it. And I guess a hush tube would take even more power."

I nod in return. "An eye-watering amount larger. I'm not even bothering to plan for ever using it. You'd need Apokolips itself to power it. And highly stealthed ships to take advantage of it." So how do we get the ship out? "Can you dig out the area around the ship a bit?"

"Already doing it. But the lower fins are much deeper. Even getting space to turn around is going to take time."

"Right." I raise my left hand to my left ear. Call Sunset.

By your command.

"What?"

"Sunset, you said you could teleport as a unicorn. Do you know anything about creating larger portals?"

"You don't create a portal when you teleport. But.. yeah, I've been studying that kind of thing to try to learn how Starswirl's portal works."

"How big could you make one?"

"Ah…" She goes quiet for a moment. "I mean… In theory? There's no limit-limit, but the push back from Earth's natural magic systems gets really strong when you get to about a kilometre."

I generate a quick image of the Doomsday. Plenty. "Could you make one?"

"No, no I could not. I don't-. I could build the physical components it would need to work, but major workings like that… I don't have any experience running them. Circe probably does."

Hm. Richard could probably get the Doomsday out as well, but he isn't exactly subtle. I don't really want his associated with this endeavour, as it would put at risk his efforts to join the Justice League.

"Okay, thanks. Is she still there?"

"I'll pass you over."

"Grayven. Am I to understand that you want something large moved?"

"Yes. An alien spacecraft we're digging out. As you know, I'm having Lex build a space fleet and I don't want anyone getting distracted."

"I will assume that it's fairly large, then. There.. are.. a.. number of techniques we could employ. How far do you want it moved?"

"Far side of the moon at the absolute minimum. Ideally, all the way to Vega."

"The moon I could manage, if the exit point were properly prepared. But further than that is completely impossible. I once tried to use my powers to visit distant stars, and the magic… Like the air atop the tallest mountains, it grows thin as you travel further from Earth."

"Mordru said that magic rich worlds were rare."

"As far as I know, he's right. It would be nice to see another magic-rich world, but I can't really take the time away from the school that would be required to do a proper tour."

"Could we send it to one of them?"

"I have no idea. Do you have an expert sorceress at the far end, one who is familiar with the magics of their world?"

I… Could ask Kalista, but… I'm not keen. We don't have a good personal relationship and she has no real reason to want to assist me. Particularly given how I've allied myself with Alonzo. And he didn't list 'magicians' amongst the personnel he was willing to contract out to me.

On the other hand…

5th Lunar Conjugation

Sun Rampant

Mirabai smiles, nodding as she listens to my proposal. "Yes, those records of Mordru's which I've studied make mention of such things being possible. Being a Chaos Lord he had no need for external sources of power himself, but he had studied the theory."

I smile. "And in return..?"

"Your aid in opening such gateways to other mystically rich worlds. It will be an excellent way for us to share knowledge."

I nod. "Perfectly acceptable. If you would select a site, I will have my people get in touch about the design."

back

Excavation 23

next

17th December

09:59 GMT -5

I wince faintly as the figure I suspect to be Artemis dodges multiple sonic blasts. Very good thing that this all happened first thing in the morning. At night things would be decidedly more dicey. As it is, the excavation site is in an area of open desert. There's no cover, so even under active camouflage and protected by invisibility spells they're having a devil of a time getting closer.

Rather impressed they've developed those to the point that they can sustain them in combat. Wonder if the League are using those now?

Now, if this were a conventional frontal attack, they'd have overrun the place by now and all of the guards would be dead. Even on a normal zero-fatalities League mission I'd give them a fair chance. But they're allegedly supposed to be sneaking in, and it should be apparent to them that while the guards can't tell exactly where they are, they do know that someone is trespassing on private property. They can't really fight back, because they're supposed to be sneaking in and they are technically the ones on the wrong side of the law.

I am wondering, though: does Batman not believe that anything significant is happening here? Did he believe me? Because otherwise I strongly suspect that a Justice League member with worldwide jurisdiction would be demanding access right now. Or… Maybe they're coming later?

Anyway, the team has a standing strength of fifteen. Assuming that Mitchell was telling me the truth and his squad isn't taking part, that leaves ten. Two squads of five? Whoever is flying the Bio-Ship isn't M'gann. So… I'd guess Kon. The most obvious people to be in charge of the other two squads are Richard and Kaldur. Who's on the ship? Richard would ordinarily be the one I'd expect to hang back and observe, but he does kind of hate me.

Hm.

Ring, contact Mitchell.

By your command.

I raise my left hand to my left ear as it rings.

"Hey Grayven."

"Hello again, Mitchell. Lex moaned for a bit, but he's given the okay. You can have a look at any of the other sites right now, or the one you asked about on Tuesday."

By which time we will have either moved the ship or reburied it. Not easy to find unless you know exactly what you're looking for.

"What's the delay?"

"As I said, they had a bit of a cave in. Nothing too serious, but they're going to be clearing up for a little while."

"They let you in there."

"Lex is sort of stuck with me. And yes, I could force the issue, but I don't think it would really help with his rehabilitation. Tuesday okay for you?"

"I guess. I mean, thanks, but I'm kinda worried that the others will get in first."

Hm…

No. No.

Well… Can't hurt to ask…

"How would you… And your team mates… Feel about working as LexCorp security guards for the weekend?"

"Huh?"

"The security at those sites is good, but it could always be better. You're going to get in on Tuesday, at which point you win."

"And… Batman didn't say we couldn't stop the other teams."

"Exactly. I mean, this is basically a training exercise, right? I've already told you what's at the site, and you'll see it yourself on Tuesday."

"And.. we'll be able to see all of it, right?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Ah..? Lemme just go talk to the others."

The line goes dead. Oh goodness me! Hah! Okay, if M'gann is coming here I should get some sort of telepath baffle for the locals… Something Lex could have conceivably have handed out. Alright… Some sort of basic aetheric disruptor? No, magic, that would be better. Mother Box, open a hush tube to the site manager's office.

Ping.

I walk through, waving politely to her with my right hand as she looks up.

"Why are half my guards shooting up the desert?"

"So the invisible would-be infiltrators don't break in."

"And-. Who-?"

"Justice League sidekicks. I'm not exactly sure why they're trying to get into this facility-."

"We are.. digging up.. some kind of an alien artefact."

"Not illegal. Probably not something Lex should be doing, but certainly not illegal. Here." I take a mind ward out of one of my armour's pockets and hand it over. "A couple of them are telepaths, and this will prevent them hearing anything from you."

"Ah, thank you, but I'm not the only one who knows or who saw you today."

"Quite true. Iname?"

"Yes, Master?"

"AH!" The manager recoils at Miss Amane's sudden appearance, while I just take it in stride.

"Please pay our friends in Venturia a visit. We need…" Quick count, how many people here actually know what's going on, how many saw me… A few more and a few spares… "Thirty mind wards. Put it on my account."

"Yes, Master." She bows her head and then she's gone again. Hm. Wallace is about as fast as her these days. He can't vibrate through force fields -even weak ones- and all of the walls and doors include those. Doors are arranged like airlocks where possible, with sensors in the mid-section. Rock is conveyed in automated carts using a similar system. It's Flash-resistant, but… Well, there are limits.

On the other hand, I haven't felt him. And I think I would. Which suggests to me that he or his team are waiting until dark. If so, we'll have cleared up by then, rock fused back into place. At worst, he'll see Miss Markov. And she doesn't have any outstanding warrants, so she's a curiosity at worst. He could probably find out who she is, but Lex is allowed to hire metahumans just as long as he isn't using them to commit crimes.

Or he might have already seen everything and the other squad are only still competing so they can win second place.

…

I suppose I could phone him as we-.

Incoming communication.

I hold up my right forefinger to request silence, then raise my left hand back to my left ear. "Yes?"

"Batman didn't say we couldn't help LexCorp."

I smile. "Good lad." Okay, none of the guards outside know what I was doing. The fact that I've been here is known, so that's fine. "I can send you to the slip road leading to the site, or you can use your own tube to get there."

"Okay, we'll be through in a couple of minutes."

"I'll make sure there's someone to meet you."

I end the call, then smile at the manager. "Could you please send a security team who haven't met me to the site entrance?"

back

Excavation 24

next

19th December

22:03 GMT

Far below me, Komand'r raises her left hand in a psychosomatic gesture I need to talk to her about at some point. A huge construct-crane grips onto part of the Doomsday's FTL system and hauls it upward. I'm actually impressed; I still have trouble with constructs of that size.

She notices me watching. "Are you certain this is what you want to do with our time together?"

"Yes."

Space docks are frequently attached to space stations, but they don't have to be. Automated clamps with circles of thrusters attached can keep lumps of ship in place reasonably well while work is conducted. The arrangement is harder to defend and means that workers have to do without certain basic amenities, but since we're just slotting pieces together -and since I can't just open a giant boom tube to Tamaran and borrow one of their spares- it's perfectly adequate.

Komand'r looks upwards in my direction and then begins her ascent, bringing the last of the Doomsday's peripherals with her. "Is this how courtships are usually conducted amongst your kind?"

"There isn't a 'usual' about it. But… I suppose, yes. My brother Scott Free is New God of Freedom, and he met the woman who is now his wife while finally escaping Apokolips. That escape, from Apokolips' defences, from his pursuers, from Father's plans for him and from the Anti-Life, was the most amazing demonstration of his abilities and godly nature. Him assisting her in breaking the conditioning she had gone through for her entire life gave her the ability to direct the violence inherent in her own nature for the first time, allowing her in turn to viciously cast down those who stood against her."

"They make one another stronger."

"No, not-. Scott didn't become stronger when he escaped Apokolips. He became stronger trying to. It wasn't that she was taken by his strength of will or his skill with weapons, rather that they… Fitted together perfectly as the result of becoming who they were. And then… Orion and Bekka. Orion is a powerful warrior, but as a result of his heritage he lacked the… Connection to the cause of New Genesis which he needed to fully…" How best to put it? "Realise his true nature."

Komand'r and the giant lump of crystal she's towing reach low orbit, steadily starting to match velocities with the parts already assembled.

"Fully what?"

Huh? Oh, right. "Manifest… Himself. Grow to be as he should be. With her, he has a cause, something other than his own hate to champion. With her he can experience emotions and sensations which were otherwise denied to him. She in turn could not flourish on Apokolips, much as she wished to. In Orion she found the ideal partner, who healed himself in aiding her."

"Do you have other brothers with remarkable courtship stories to live up to?"

"… Kalibak's single."

"Sisters, then?"

"Only back on Earth Prime. And I don't really think that her example is entirely applicable to my situation."

And wouldn't it be awkward if it was. I'd put something about how she met her husband here but I promised her that I wouldn't.

"Why do you believe that repairing a ship for someone else to use will lead to a similar breakthrough?" She finishes her approach, moving the drive into place, attaching the docking clamps and then connecting the governing computer to the network. "Or did you simply need me for labour?"

"I'm not the God of Foremanship. Though that's a perfectly respectable thing to be a god of."

"You're the God of Conquest."

"I'm the God of Conquest. And for me, that means empowering those who act in my name and according to my purposes. Strengthening my subordinates and allies and integrating them into my greater whole." I slowly float in her direction. "I didn't strengthen Tamaran because of my obedience to an externally imposed system of morals. I didn't do it because I want you to return the favour later… Though I'd be a little peeved if you didn't. I did it because building people up is what I am."

She nods. "You are building things up. You saw us as broken and knew that we needed to be repaired. Saw me… And you did not side with the Citadel not because they dominated Vega, but because they did not build upon their dominions."

"Yes. Just so."

"And you're giving the kryptonian this because it makes her stronger while tying her more closely to you. That's what you did with those psions you captured." She's close enough now that I can see her eyes narrowing as the green glow they emit dims slightly. "I suppose that I understand now why you did not simply turn them into constructs. That's what I did to mine."

"A ruthless, rational, utilitarian course of action. But I've.. experienced how using memories of that sort makes you feel. Did you try drawing them into your ring?"

"Yes." She looks away for an instant. "It made me feel unclean."

"I.. might have done something like that. I do have a few construct lanterns of my own. But I made them from people who had literally irreplaceable expertise, not from people who -though clever- could be replaced."

"Are you telling me that I should not-?"

I shake my head, then wave my right arm left to right to give her a gesture she can actually see. "No. My nature is not your nature, any more than Scott's nature is Barda's nature or Orion's nature is Bekka's nature. I'm saying this to.. aid you in understanding me, understanding why I do things, how I'm likely to act in future."

She floats right up to me. If there were any atmosphere here to convey the sound we could speak normally and still be heard. As it is…

"You did not ask Karstawor'ul to agree to use the Doomsday at your behest in advance of returning it to her." I smile, and she tilts her head slightly to the left. "You gave it to her because it was the place in your domain where it could do the most good."

"Nearly. Mostly."

"Then for what other reason?"

"You don't.. build through a series of hostage-exchanges. Through… Ransom demands, holding desperate people at your mercy and demanding everything that have. My greatness is the greatness of my people. By living this epistemology, by honestly serving it, I will inspire others to do the same. With all that I have given her, do you honestly think that Karsta Wor-Ul would refuse me aid if I asked it of her? Would you?"

"Nnnno." She turns around, looking toward Zerox. "Still, it requires a great deal of faith in your subordinates to give them such a powerful ship-." She turns back to me. "Unless you left something on board."

I shake my head. "Such an act would ruin the rapport we have established. And in any case, I have given hundreds of people power rings. Any of my Lanterns are powerful enough to come to Earth and destroy it."

"Incoming vessel detected."

The Doomsday's hyperspace window shimmers into reality for an instant, and then the ship itself flies through. First time I've had a good look at it from the outside, and it's…

If I'm frank, I'm a little underwhelmed. This isn't a ship that was designed to look intimidating. This is a ship designed to look like a giant ice crystal. But… Different peoples have different philosophies and different technologies to use in the building.

I smile at the sight, and take a wine bottle and a couple of flute glasses out of subspace. I offer one to Komand'r, and generate a corkscrew construct.

And I don't mention that my godly nature means that those I treat in such a way are made far less likely than their characters would suggest to act outside the bounds of the role I set out for them. And I don't mention that as someone who isn't a New God she can't do the same to me.

No need to finish on a sour note.

back

Excavation 25

next

2nd October 2013

23:59 GMT -5

The woman clad in dull grey tries for a moment to keep her attention on the street scene before her, but as the minutes ticked by found herself unable to take her eyes off her visor's clock. In one minute-.

3rd October 2013

00:00 GMT -5

Right now it was nine years to the day since Bruce and Yolanda fought dad. Nine years since…

And the trick was still to not feel too good about putting a crossbow bolt through his skull, even after nine years. She'd feel worse about keeping the bolt if she didn't know that Bruce still had Joe Chill's pistol.

"Miss Wayne?"

And of course he'd get in contact now. "Batwoman here. Do you have an alert for me?"

"No, Batwoman. It appears that tonight will be a quiet night. May I remind you that you have a nine o'clock meeting tomorrow morning? Or perhaps I should say, this morning."

She can't help but smile. "You may."

"You have a nine o'clock meeting this morning, Miss Wayne. Perhaps a full night's sleep would be of use?"

She occasionally wondered what had led a former British Royal Marine to become the butler to an American surgeon. Alfred had told her at least three different versions of the story, and if it had been anyone else she would have investigated it herself. But… Doing something like that to Alfred…

And if she couldn't focus on what was going on around her then he was probably right.

"Batwoman to Cave. I'm ending tonight's patrol early."

"Understood. I'll expect you shortly."

His end of the radio goes silent, though she knows that he's only a word away. It took.. time, to learn to trust Bruce. Batman. The man who decided to take on dad for some girl he'd known for five minutes, and nearly died in the process. But with dad dead, she'd had a hate-figure missing from her life and he looked like he might fit the mould. Except he didn't. When they trained together, she didn't come away covered with cuts and covering broken bones-.

Except that one time, but they stopped right away and that really hadn't been intentional. Unlike dad.

She wasn't sure if she should be annoyed or pleased that she still hated him nine years after his death. She supposed it was a little like Bruce and his parents' death; the emotion was just so much a part of her now that it wouldn't ever go away, constantly informing her every feeling. Which was… Hm. It just was. It was almost certainly why she hadn't wanted to speak to mom, even after she got out of prison. Artemis talked her around eventually, but it only took one meeting for her to decide that once was enough. 'You feel bad now, great. That doesn't change anything.'

Occasionally, she wondered if Artemis was so forgiving because she couldn't really remember what it had been like.

She checks the roof, first with normal vision and then with the visor's augmented reality mode. No one, and the car was parked off the main streets. Just walking up to it in costume wasn't a good idea, as the reason why the car wasn't bat-themed was to avoid drawing attention to it when they drove through Gotham. She could change out of her costume, but she had to admit that she was always slightly worried that someone would take a picture and cover the internet with the image. And then everyone she ever tried to arrest would bring it up at every opportunity, which would be… Frustrating.

Fortunately, the car had a self drive system which was smart enough to pull in front of an alleyway for long enough for her to climb into the back seat. Then she could either change in the car or wait until she got back home.

It had taken her three years to think of Wayne Manor as that. Only two for the cave…

"Batwoman to car. My location."

"Unable to perform operation."

Great. "Type of error?"

"Axle tests indicate that the wheels have been removed."

What? "Confirm."

"Axle tests indicate that the wheels have been removed."

How did-? "Batwoman to cave."

"Cave here. Are you on your way? Would you like me to-?"

"Can you check the car's cameras? The computer thinks that the wheels have been stolen."

"What is this city coming to?"

"It's probably just a glitch."

"No, I'm very much afraid not. Remote tests say the same thing."

Great. "Any other damage?"

"Not that I can see. Should I call the auto-club, miss?"

"No." She heads for the edge of the roof at a run, vaulting over the alleyway to the next block as she heads toward the car's location. "It had wheels when I left it two hours ago. I'm going to find whoever took them and I'm going to explain to them why that was a bad thing to do. And I don't want Batman to know that the wheels vanished on my watch."

"A curious crime, miss. The sensors on the car should have detected the movement, and the wheels are not easily removed."

"I know."

Learning how to maintain complex vehicles was an.. interesting part of the training Bruce put her th-. Gave her. Not being able to outperform Harold on simple things like replacing the wheels had been galling, but the fact that she hadn't been lambasted for her failure had been an early sign that things.. were going to be different.

She slows as she approaches the edge of the roof, looking down toward the near-empty parking lot where she-.

It was up on bricks. The protective hub caps had been left on the ground next to it, wires had been expertly connected to the electrical shock unit behind them so that it couldn't shock the thief, and then the non-standard dimension nuts had been removed and taken away. Whoever it was probably hadn't realised whose car they were stripping. Check the surroundings… Clear.

She stepped off the roof, pushing forwards on the wall as her cloak spread out around her and hardened into a glider wing. Easier than using a line or a ladder, though she'd thought that Bruce was insane the first time he demonstrated it.

Sometimes she envied Donna.

A slight thud at touchdown was unavoidable, unless she got very lucky with the wind direction. She was scanning her environment again as her cape went flaccid, but her descent appeared to have passed unnoticed.

And now, the car.

Sensors in her visor could detect the tiny patterns of oil left by people's fingers whenever they touched anything bare handed. They could detect the fiber patterns of gloves a lot of the time, too… Except that if the thief had been expecting an electrical discharge they would wear rubber… Nothing. The surface of the parking lot wasn't soft enough to show footprints. She could take samples and run them through a DNA analyser to see if anything matched the police database, but this didn't strike her as a plot by a supervillain.

If they'd left a bomb, yes.

Or a whoopee cushion.

Hm. How did the thief know that the interior of the wheels was electrified?

"Batwoman to cave. I'm at the car. Three wheels are missing. Check car records for previous theft attempts."

"Right away, miss. What do you intend to do?"

She smiles under her mask.

"I'm going to go and ask some people some polite questions."

back

Excavation 26

next

3rd October 2013

01:19 GMT -5

"Let-. LEMME DOWN YOU CRAZY BITCH!"

She smiles as the tire-thief hangs upside down from a fire escape, a smart rope wrapped around his right ankle. "Now, why would I do a thing like that?"

"Nothing yet, Miss. I don't believe that the young man has attended school recently."

She doesn't directly respond, but moves slightly out of the shadows so that the camera integrated into her cowl can get a better look at his face. He's young, mid-teens at most, and his hair is a badly cut mop on top of his head. His clothes are in reasonable condition, and his general appearance suggests that he's not homeless.

He bends, pulling his torso upward towards the rope. He pulls at it, but it's far too strong to be torn by his fingers. Still, that sort of pull up isn't easy. She mentally re-evaluates his probable strength and degree of training upward slightly.

"Ahh." He loses his grip on his ankle and falls back into his hanging position. "Shit." His next move is to try covertly feeling in his pockets, but she raises her right hand and holds up the knife that fell from his jacket when he was caught.

"Looking for this?"

"What's this about, huh? I didn't do anything."

"That's not what your fence said. After I broke two of his fingers." She takes another step forward. "Exactly how common do you think tires like that are?"

"That fat fuck."

"He said this has become quite the habit for you. How long have you been doing this now?"

His face takes on a decidedly sullen cast. "I dunno. Couple a' years."

Not exactly a hardened criminal. Which was actually a little frustrating. Dealing with hardened criminals was simple. It didn't require empathy. But unlike Mom or Dad, Bruce's training emphasized a mission. A good greater than reputation or money that they were supposed to work toward.

It was entirely too simple to believe that taking down the largest crime families would be enough to 'fix' Gotham. Batman and Harvey Dent had managed that while she was still living with her parents. The fact was that while the out of control criminal element made things worse, Gotham's decay wasn't all that much different from what plenty of other manufacturing centers in America were experiencing. Cheaper to do it in Mexico, or in the Far East. And when manufacturing jobs went, all of the jobs which depended on the people doing them went as well. And when that happened, social decay wasn't far behind.

Bruce made it clear that he considered it his duty to his parents' memories to make Gotham work again. And she could see the logic, and tried not to begrudge him having had parents who were good people.

Too much.

Which meant that the correct thing to do here wasn't hand this little p-. This boy over to the Gotham Police Department. Child services, perhaps, but the first thing to do was to get him talking about himself. Find out what his home life was like. Work out why he was doing this, then come up with ideas for how to make sure he stopped.

Dad would just have killed him. Or beaten him unconscious, if he was in a good mood.

She presses a control on her belt and the tether pays out, depositing the boy on the ground and loosening to the point that he can stand. He rises to his feet quickly but hangs back, not wanting to risk trying to get past her.

"So let me tell you what's going to happen now. You're going to go back to my car-."

He recoils. "That was your car? I thought it was just-."

"You're going to go back to my car, and you're going to put the wheels back on. And we're going to talk about what else you've been doing lately." She steps aside, moving back into the alley's shadows. "Move."

Slowly, tensely, with constant wary glances in her direction, he ambles forward. At the mouth of the alleyway he hesitates-.

"Keep going. The tires are already there."

Hands in pockets, shoulders hunched, he heads out of the alleyway. Instead of following him she backs up, recovering her smart rope and using a grappling line to rapidly ascend an adjacent building. Far easier to avoid being blindsided from up here. Now to follow-.

"Cave to Batwoman. I.. believe I have a match."

"Tell me."

"Jason Todd, fourteen years old. Son of Willis and Catherine Todd."

She reaches the edge of the roof and takes a moment to watch him walking down the street. "So where are they?"

"Dead, in both cases. His father was a frequent guest in Blackgate, and it is unlikely that young Master Todd had a great deal of contact with him. In any case, he was killed in Blüdhaven last year in what may have been a gang-related incident. I'm afraid that I can't tell you any more about it than that, policing in Blüdhaven being what it is. His mother died in March this year from a drug overdose."

"And the reason he's not in a children's home is?"

"He appears to have phoned an ambulance for his mother, but left their apartment before they could arrive. I suspect that he knew that they wouldn't be able to do anything for her."

"Or for him, apparently."

Todd was still on the move. She checks the street and the surrounding rooftops, then fires a grapple line to the opposite side of the street and extends her cape. The resulting pull sends her flying across the divide and onto the rooftop opposite. Check immediate environment, free the grapple and check on Todd-.

He's backing away from a car that just braked hard in front of him, the front end having driven up onto the pavement to block his path. She's already running along the roof in order to get above them.

"Batwoman to cave: car registry."

"Reported as stolen five days ago."

Getting a tracer onto it from here would be awkward. They're designed to be throwable, but the sound it would generate hitting the car from here would make it immediately obvious to anyone nearby that they'd been hit by something.

She comes to a halt, takes a directional microphone from her utility belt and points it at the car.

"-trying to get the money."

"'Trying' don't cut it, Todd. Teacher lady wants t' talk. Now."

She carefully looks over the edge. Todd is talking to the man in the passenger seat, but two people have already got out of the back and are circling around-.

Her eyes narrow. One of them is wearing… It looks like armor, but the red-glowing lines don't look like something a street enforcer should be wearing.

It looks like the gear Apokolips has been sending to Intergang.

Todd backs up slightly, but he can't afford to run. The people facing him are fully fit adults, and they have a car. Her right hand comes up to her mouth, attaching the gas mask unit while her left readies the gas grenades. A light flick of her wrist and they're dropping towards her targets, earning a quick-

"Whu-?"

-from one of the enforcers before she drops, her feet smashing into her target's chest and sending him flying backward into the deserted road! The second enforcer draws a whip-handle, the glowing red whip itself materialising a moment later. The wielder looks completely confident for a moment and then collapses, coughing. Jade is already darting toward her, one strike to the target's wrist causing her to lose her grip on her weapon and another to the nose breaking it-

"Aie!"

-and forcing the woman into a staggering retreat. Next, she releases a smoke bomb and circles around-.

The woman she hit staggers forward as bullets fly at her former position. Car hasn't moved yet. Jade draws and throws a tracker, a light on the interior of her mask letting her know that it had made successful contact. An engine roars-.

Jade fires the grapple and leaps toward a nearby roof as the car shoots backwards, turns and blindly accelerates down the road away from her. A moment later Todd -apparently unharmed- heads in the other direction.

"Batwoman to cave. Contact the special crimes unit. And my team."

back

Excavation 27

next

3rd October 2013

01:43 GMT -5

Todd is held roughly between two thugs-. Between two children trying to be thugs. They force him to his knees in front of a woman who looks old enough to be his grandmother, who looks down at him in disappointment.

"Why do you do this to Old Ma, young man?"

"I was gunna get the money!"

She turns her eyes slightly toward the Amazon next to her who nods, suddenly a good deal more awake.

"Jason." The elderly woman leans forward and pats him on the cheek, causing him to spasm in his captor's grip. "Don't lie to Old Ma."

"I wbghr-." One more faux-affectionate pat and she removed her hand, giving him a moment to recover. "I was. I just stole the tires off some real expensive car! I was going to pay you at the meeting tomorrow!"

She reaches up to the side of her helmet and pings twice, waits one second, then pings again. Readiness pings from those amongst her colleagues who could wake up and get to Gotham at this hour.

She looks up, catching sight of a red cape for a moment.

And some other people who happened to be available. That one… Is a work in progress.

"Oh, if I had a dollar for every time someone told me that." The old woman turns away from Todd and strolls back toward her pulpit at the front of the room. "Do Old Ma a favour and string him up, would you?"

"Go."

A green blur sprints down the road, smashing through the doors of Ma Gunn's School for Boys and dashing inside. Wally West wouldn't get out of bed at this hour for anything less than a nuclear war, but Frank is a good deal more flexible. And far less mentally stable, but taking down a small number of Intergang-equipped children-.

Some of the children run for it, but the older ones slap their belt buckles. Apokoliptian armor grows over their skins as Frank appears, pushing against some sort of energy membrane covering the door. The drawback to having someone who can in theory replicate any of the team's powers is that the mental programming Ivo gave him to let him cope with those powers sometimes leads him to getting distracted. Wallace would have spotted the trap, but charging people allied with Apokolips just brought all of Frank's impetuousness to the fore.

One of the armored-up thugs chuckles and raises his gun, only for Luke to stop looking like a section of wall and start grappling him. Donna dives, punching through the thin stonework and plowing into two thugs armed with glowing batons.

"Kid Amazo, go around the-."

The force field holding him snaps back, sending him flying back out of the front door.

"Amazo. Wonder Woman."

He smashes into the road hard enough to break a normal man's bones. He can heal of course, but from the looks of things-.

"You know I-. Don't like mimicking Wonder Woman. It makes me-" He heads back towards the school through the air. "-feel guilty about hitting people."

"Focus, Kid."

Lonnie drops down next to the rear entrance, neatly jabbing four would-be escapees with his electrified cane. He's come on a long way since she stopped him administering punishment beatings to white collar criminals. Dominic's joke about him being her sidekick aside, she was quietly pleased with his burgeoning tactical sense.

"I think that's-" In the corner of her eye she spots Donna block a glowing club with her left bracer before punching its wielder hard enough to knock them clean off their feet. "-psychosomatic. I assure you, Wonder Woman does not have a problem with hitting people."

But the boss wouldn't escape that way. She fires her grapple at the school's western wall and used the pull to launch herself into the air. The pattern isn't exactly subtle. Not one of Intergang's pseudo-New Gods have fought to the death when escape was possible. She didn't see a Mother Box, but from Todd's description it certainly sounded like her office might have one of the-

She slams through the office windows, bolas flying from her hand just as 'Fay Gunn' strides through the doors… And hit only air as the woman made use of her more than human agility to sidestep it.

She rolls as she hits the ground, a smoke bomb dropping from her belt before she rights herself and the billowing clouds obscuring the room.

"Batwoman. Did Mister Todd try stealing your tires?"

New Gods were always stronger than baseline humans-.

Keeping low, she scuttles to her left, tossing a remote speaker right as she does so.

"Steppenwolf wasn't the only New God handing out favors, was he?"

A volley of bullets shreds the microphone, but Gunn is moving too quietly for her to precisely locate. Regular bullets. Not armed with Apokoliptian weaponry? Unlikely but possible. Those Apokoliptians who focus on direct confrontation would keep the best for themselves, but according to Todd 'Ma Gunn' had been training child thieves for Intergang for years. Which of the Apokoliptians would have granted her power? Granny Goodness was the obvious choice, except that the techniques she would use would be obvious somewhere like Gotham. And she was hardly the only Apokoliptian skilled in training young fighters.

She flicked through her mask's enhanced visual modes as she headed for the far wall. Nothing, predictably enough. Divine ability, technology, or had she made good her escape? Boom tubes were usually loud, but they were hardly the only way to teleport.

"Trying to fight outside your weight class, mortal?"

The voice roams around the room, suggesting either that she's moving rapidly and silently or that Gunn's using the same microphone trick that she did. Or some sort of New God magic, but at least that would mean that her combat abilities were more limited.

Act.

Left arm drawing her cape over her face, right hand throwing two photon flares high, toward the ceiling. The resulting flash isn't quite strong enough to light up the matte black material of her cape, but it's a close run-

Flare dying, drop cape, identify target, move!

-thing. She darts forward as Ma Gunn blinks and starts to turn, the capacitors on her knuckle-mounted tasers whining as they build up the sort of power needed to knock down someone who was New God tough.

Ma Gunn twists and grabs her right wrist with a grin as she swings her right fist. "This is a boy's school."

Painfully aware of what happens to human-strong people who try grappling with enhanced strength, she uses her charged left hand to hit the fingers holding her. They spasm and reflexively jerk back, freeing her to manage a throat-punch with her right. There's a buzz and a smell of burning as the contacts connect unevenly and the stored electricity arcs. Then-

Ooof!

-she gets a reminder of why she wears armor inserts as Ma Gunn's drives her bony fist into her solar plexus. She retaliates, sidestepping a clumsy swing while getting two solid strikes on Ma Gunn's nose.

"Been broken before, girly."

"No. Have you?"

Ma Gunn makes another clumsy strike with her right hand-.

While her left pulls off her shawl and throws it, obscuring-.

Concealing a weapon. Evade!

The red energy pulse bores through the wool and narrowly misses her left leg as she thrown herself to the side. A batarang gets shot out of the air while Ma Gunn's expression is one of mild contentment.

Right up until Todd hits her over the back of the head with a tire iron. She staggers, so he hits her again and again, the hard metal, leverage and strike location conspiring to overcome Ma Gunn's resilience.

Jade rises to her feet and punches the reeling New God with both hands, letting the voltage run through her head until Ma Gunn collapses to the floor. Todd hefts his tire iron again with malicious intent, but reconsiders when he notices her staring at him.

"So… What happens now?"

Jade triggers her radio, listening as the rest of the team report their status. Frank's already adopted Wonder Woman's manner of speech. It's not taking as long as it used to. Tomorrow's problem.

"Now we talk about your future."

back

NEXT CHAPTER

Foundation

BACK

Foundation 1

next

Foundation

20th December

17:56 GMT -5

It's.. not the Themysciran embassy.

I seem to remember that in… Tornado's Path? Red Tornado went to a job centre and stated that he needed a job for the purpose of survival. He's nothing like that desperate in this timeline. Doctor Morrow created a trust designed to pay out enough money for him to fund his own repairs, and with Morrow legally dead all of his remaining assets passed to his only acknowledged son.

But 'John Smith' doesn't have a good excuse for accessing those resources. His present residence is a two storey middle of terrace house a little way outside of New York City. Close enough to commute, far enough away that house prices are noticeably cheaper even in the good areas. And close enough that if necessary he can use the New York zeta tubes.

I'm a little early, and since his house is warded I can't just look inside. Apparently. It seems that I've finally managed to hit the League with the clue bat hard enough that something stuck. Might be a slight chance of the ward being detected, but an element-manipulating android is pretty easy to track with magic anyway.

I smile at a woman out walking her dog, then walk up the steps to his front door and knock twice. No immediate response. I asked if this was a good time to pay him a visit Saturday and he said yes, but as John Smith he also doesn't have a reason to have a superhero's phone number. Or the ability to answer the phone at any time. I wonder if he'd consider upgrading his-?

The door opens, and I'm still not quite used to seeing Red Tornado's more human-seeming body. In fact, I… Don't think I've seen him in it since New Year. He smiles, and I take the opportunity to scan the structure of his face. Ah, he went for a pure-tech with a pretend flesh coating rather than the synthetic flesh I made for Danni. I suppose that it's easier to maintain. He's still bald, and I'm not sure that's a good idea. Even the prematurely balding usually have some hair. I know Lex's head still produces a few thin red wisps he shaves off each day. Designing synthetic skin without follicles is easier, but it can end up being a bit of a giveaway.

"Paul. It is good to see you."

He holds out his right hand, and I clasp it with mine and shake it. Hm. Rather mundane in construction. I think it's actually slightly weaker than a human hand. Not the way I'd have gone, but it's his limb.

"Thank you for agreeing to talk to me, John."

We unclasp, and I hold out my somewhat belated housewarming present. Red Tornado… Ah, John, I suppose I should say, runs his right index finger through the paper wrapping and pulls out the picture frame. In it are a series of artificially coloured photographs of various members of the Justice Society in their civilian clothes. Mr Grant aside none of them are particularly recognisable, and only real boxing aficionados would spot him.

"Thank you." He steps back slightly. "Would you like to come in?"

I nod, and step though the door into his hallway. He closes the door, then leads the way into his living room.

"Can I offer you something to drink?"

I sit in the middle of the smaller of his two settees. "No, I'm.. fine, thank you. Do you… Drink?"

He sits down opposite me. "I designed this body with the capacity to eat, but only to keep up appearances. I can't process it usefully."

"You know, I could… Probably set you up with the same system Danni uses."

"I appreciate the offer, but I am more interested in improving my understanding of human social mechanics than in making marginal improvements to my non-combat chassis." He focus on my face. "You do not believe that the two are mutually exclusive."

"In your position, I would have made my chassis as durable as possible and then started my social dynamics studies. You can't study if you've been shot dead by a bullet a better designed skull would have stopped."

"But then I would be more resilient than the humans around me. I do not think that adding another point of divergence would help me in gathering good data. Besides, the level of violent crime in New York is far lower than it used to be."

I shrug. "It's your skull. How are your studies coming along?"

"It is… Different. When I socialise with my friends in the Justice Society or the Justice League, there is a far higher level of interpersonal engagement than in the hundreds of less structured interactions I now experience daily. Since Father designed me to be openly robotic I lack both the social dynamics programming that my brother and sister possess and the high speed analytic processing abilities of more modern AIs. Learning this way is challenging." He blinks for the first time. "And since I am confident you were about to ask, I do not wish to correct either factor."

"And I will respect that choice, even if it sounds daft to me." I sigh quietly. "I'm sure you know why I'm here."

"Yes. Nabu. I am a little surprised that it has taken you this long to speak with me. And I am further surprised that you felt a face to face conversation was necessary."

"I prefer face to face. And… It's not… Just Nabu. I also.. want to ask about Doctor Morrow."

"He is keeping as well as can be expected. We constructed a mechanical epidermis for him to occupy so that he can interact with people. Would you like to speak to him?"

Unsettling as I find him, I'm sure that Hinon would appreciate a little more data. "Yes, thank you. The Controllers are investigating whether or not it's possible to turn Construct Lanterns back into people, and I'd like more up to date information on his condition."

He nods, then gets up and walks to the door. "Father, could you come down here, please?"

"Just a moment."

"Though while we're waiting..?"

He turns back to me. "It was my belief that the technique most likely to persuade Nabu to leave Mister Zatara safely was gradual persuasion and a worldwide reduction in threats which served to justify his actions in his own mind. Therefore, that was the approach I pursued. I was… Surprised, both by how direct you were and how successful you were. I bear you no particular malice over the event."

I nod, leaning back slightly. "A perfectly reasonable answer. I assume that's also why you voted him in?"

"Yes. Since I had no leverage and no counter magic techniques that I could utilise safely, I felt that continued engagement was the best of the available options. Having reviewed your planning for the encounter in Hyde Park, I do not believe that I have any outstanding questions regarding your methodology."

"Anything you'd like to draw my attention to?"

"Given your ability to locate magic users, I am a little surprised that you could not locate at least one who would be willing to host Nabu in the short term. That would have made your statement that you would prefer a negotiated settlement more believable. That you did not leaves me curious as to whether you actually wanted him to refuse."

"I wasn't particularly comfortable making that offer at all. Volunteer or not, I didn't like the idea of leaving someone in a black void while Nabu puppeted their body. The golem option was far superior." I shrug. "If he'd said 'yes' I'd have done it, but no. I didn't want him to."

"You are still insisting that your offer was genuine?"

"I'm an enlightened Orange Lantern. If I hadn't wanted a peaceful solution I wouldn't have offered a peaceful solution. I wouldn't have felt bad about it."

He nods, stepping back from the door as footsteps echo down the stairs. "Thank you for explaining that to me. Father, you remember Orange Lantern?"

back

Foundation 2

next

20th December

18:01 GMT -5

I stand, and dazedly wander towards the man I've been strenuously avoiding.

"Yes."

He looks… The body is robotic. It's not as young-looking as the version who was killed by Red Volcano. Closer in appearance to his chronological age, though… Since Red Tornado is pretending to be in his early forties I suppose he's supposed to be in his seventies? His synthetic skin has hair, and there's a slight-. Ah, yes, it's thicker to better conceal the orange glow.

"Doctor Morrow. How are you… Feeling..?"

His eyes… Robotic, of course. He most likely doesn't have direct control of them. They're slightly slow in tracking me. It does help with making him look like a slightly confused old man, and therefore explain why he's living with his son.

"To be truthful, I don't feel much of anything."

"Numb?"

Red Tornado smiles. "Shall we sit down?"

Ah. Right, yes. I step back, trying to keep Dr Morrow in full view. I know that what I'm seeing isn't what's there, but… Yes, if I didn't know that then I don't think I'd spot it. The synthetic flesh is at least as good as what Dr Lockhart used for years. Not much point using what I made for Danni, as he doesn't have any way to interpret the inputs… I don't think..?

Dr Morrow himself walks in a far more robotic manner than his son does. Or either of his other chil-. Surviving children, do. Precise, measured to fit the intervening space between himself and the place he's going to. None of the small adjustments organic beings make. I wonder if he was like that before Truggs turned him into a Construct Lantern? If the robotic version of him was anything to go by he certainly had a thing for robots.

Red Tornado sits back down at the same time as I do while Dr Morrow takes the arm chair, perching on the edge before sliding himself backwards into its cushioned embrace. Which I suspect he can't feel. He seems to be moving far more gingerly than he needs to as well. Habit? He was old for a long time.

Again, I notice the delay as Dr Morrow focuses on me again.

"Numb. No, not exactly. I can still feel pressure on my… My outer surface. I still have-" He raises his right hand. "-proprioception, I can still hear and smell. It's more that the emotional connection to anything I experience has been stripped away. Red Inferno described what it was like to see her memories exactly as I wrote them and not as she was supposed to experience them. I think it's probably like that.

"No desire to be evil..? To kill all humans and replace them with robots?"

"That, or anything else. I think I've…" He turns his head to look at Red Tornado, who nods encouragingly. "That I've made progress in a lot of areas… Turning my designs into things with a public use. But the only reason why I've done that is because Tornado asked me to."

"And his opinion still matters to you?"

"His opinion is nearly the only one I've been exposed to. It seems that I can borrow motivation from the people around me. Or perhaps I just don't have any reason not to do what they ask."

"So you.. don't really care.. about anything."

"That's about right. I can't honestly even say that I prefer action to inaction."

"Are you..? Suffering at all?"

"I'm not anything at all. My former self would have found this state… Unpleasant. If that's what you want to know. Not that I was above doing this to other people."

"Really? I thought that your problem with AIs was that they kept being independent."

"Exactly. They were -as far as my goals were concerned- failures. I was aiming to create things that could pretend to be independent but were actually more like what I am now."

I nod, my eyes unfocusing as I try to actually see his desires. If he has his memories, then he should-. "How well can you remember your life?"

"Fairly well. Not perfectly, but better than I was able to toward the end."

Then he should still have his desires in there. I mean, he's made of orange light. His whole structure should lead to him following his desires. Lethargy-. The Praexis certainly didn't feel that. They even provided a commentary. And the hellwraith…

But he's right. I can sort of see what's left of his desires, but they're not… Sparking and flowing as the desires of living people do. Including Red Tornado. Rather than following links to other parts of his mind, they're linked to-.

I look down at the ring on my left ring finger. Huh. Not totally unexpected, but… I've been intentionally avoiding wanting him to want anything. And the result is… Stasis? Numbness?

"Huh."

Red Tornado raises his eyebrows. "Have you learned something?"

"Sort of. Doctor Morrow is numb because I've been avoiding wanting him to want anything. I think that the Praexis Demons behaved as they did because I wanted them to. I knew I.. did, but I didn't question it when they behaved more or less in line with my expectations. I suppose that as a test… Would you mind if I brought out my other Construct Lantern for comparative purposes?"

"I thought that you had a good number of Construct Lanterns."

"I did. Then I got into a fight with Agony and he shredded them. Permanently, as far as I can tell. Just got the one left now, and I don't really… Like… Bringing it out."

"Can you control it?"

"Yes. In fact, I think I can control it better than I thought I could."

"Then by all means."

I hold out my left hand. "Hellwraith."

The.. thing drizzles out of my left ring. "Yes, Master?"

And I look… Huh. It's… Behaving like a creepy demon monster because I want it to. My own assumption that it would behave in that way combined with my desire not to alter my Construct Lanterns' natural behaviour… Not that they have natural behaviour… And that's the only reason. Huh. At least that means that I don't have to worry about it actually possessing someone when I don't want it to.

"Alright. Red Tornado, Doctor Morrow, I have two options which you may like to consider."

Red Tornado nods. "I'm listening."

His father shrugs. "I'm literally incapable of moving until someone else wants me to. And you don't."

"No. I'm pretty sure that the Sword of the Fallen can kill you permanently. With a tiny chance of reincarnating you instead. That's option one. Alternatively, you don't desire things. But I can change that. I'm obviously not offering to give you your old desires back… Not all of them, anyway. But… The desire to build, to improve, to have your skills recognised-."

"And I already want them back. But I know that it's only because you want me to."

I nod, standing up. "Which is why I'm going to leave the two of you to talk it over while I strenuously avoid wanting you to want anything. Let me know when you reach a decision."

back

Foundation 3

next

21th December

11:01 GMT -2

"How offended should I be that you have left my king until last?"

Kaldur keeps his face blank as he swims along beside me. King Orin was kind enough to grant me an audience at relatively short notice, which I thought was jolly generous.

"I wasn't trying to offend you. Or.. him. I just didn't want to distract from his political work. After all, he's the one person on the League with a good reason for being angry with me."

"At least you do not need to be concerned that he will challenge you to a duel."

"I'd be more worried if he did. King Orin's intelligent enough that he wouldn't do that without a way to neutralise my advantages."

Poseidonis has grown. Certainly since when I first visited. But I can even see structures that have been expanded since my most recent visit. The floating guard posts inscribed with protecting runes are new, though I'd heard that they were planning something like this after the zombie attack back in June. The wide-ranging patrols by some sort of artificial sea monster with organic supercavitation abilities are new as well. Their speed, combined with the dolmen gate superhighways already linking up all but one of Atlantis' cities have drastically reduced the time it takes to move their military forces from one place to another.

"Are you sure that is possible?" I glance his way, and we make momentary eye contact as we leave what appears to be the designated 'swim lane' and head toward the palace.

"Sephtian threw a piece of lab equipment at me when I said 'magic-based interdiction field' to him, but in theory my ability to use my rings could be neutralised with one. And if anywhere was going to create such a device, it would be here."

"I will be certain to pass that information on. Batman will be sure to appreciate it."

"I wasn't planning to teleport into the Batcave again." The water around us shimmers as we pass through the outer wards. "Though if the Green Lantern Corps ever gets serious about hunting Sinestro down, I imagine that they'd find it fairly helpful."

Guards look me over as we enter the building, while Kaldur gets a familiar nod.

"What's… Happening with Koryak, anyway?"

Kaldur looks away for a moment. "King Orin made a substantial payment to his son and to the child's mother. I believe that he would like to form a closer relationship with Koryak, but his mother and foster father are… Uncomfortable with the idea."

I nod. "Fair enough. The first time they hear from him in over a decade is when his brother kidnaps their son. I can see why they'd be concerned."

"Avoiding the child's father does not make him safer."

I chuckle quietly to myself. "Oh, for a world full of rational people." Ah. "How are..? You and your parents..?"

"My father never requested a paternity test. They were not sure until I told them that I was not his biological son. It was an uncomfortable conversation."

"But you're… Alright now?"

"Our relationship remains strong. Regardless of our blood relationship, he is still the man who raised me. What did you think would happen, that justified you withholding that information from me?"

"I don't know. Anything. You just told me that it didn't change your relationship, and I highly doubt that you're about to go out and connect with your biological father. So other than making you uncomfortable, what did telling you achieve?"

"It told me that someone could use my blood in a spell to track Black Manta."

Ah… "No, no, hang on. He's been raiding Atlantean territory for years. He must have some protection against remote detection."

"Then it would have told me that he could track me."

"If he knew."

"You think that he does not?"

"He wouldn't know how long that your stepfather and mother had been… Together. He wouldn't know exactly when you were born-." Although that information would have been available to the Light after New Year. Would they have passed it on? No obvious reason why they would…

"Something has occurred to you."

"The Light pillaged Justice League databases last year. So he might have gotten your birth date. But no one other than me knew for certain. And if I'd told anyone, it would have been on the Justice League database. As it is, as far as he knows he still might not be your biological father. And I'd advise against putting it on a database that isn't on a power ring."

Private audience chamber coming up. We slow, and a functionary catches our eyes and gives us a nod.

"What will you do after your meeting?"

"I dunno. Check in with Batman, let him know that I've done all he asked-." Kaldur raises his eyebrows slightly. "Ask.. my.. teammates if they're prepared to have me back on a part time basis."

"That would be wiser. Batman is the one who determines team membership, but your conduct caused a degree of discord amongst us as well."

I exhale… Probably more sharply than is helpful. "What? Really? Kaldur, I like and respect you, but if you're going to give me shit about Nabu-."

"I am not. Zatanna was quite vocal in defense of your approach. What concerns several of us is that you did not share your feelings or plans with the rest of us."

"Oh." We come to a halt just in front of the audience chamber's doors. "So you're going to challenge me to a duel."

That gets a thin smile. "Do you think that I am less intelligent than my king?"

"No, but you don't have his responsibilities." I shrug. "Our team is supposed to be covert. I kept the secret for eight months without tipping anyone off. Telling you would have put you in a position where you-." Well. No, I wouldn't have allowed the secret to get out. "Where you would have to have decided whether or not you wanted to inform your mentors."

"Who may have stopped you."

"Who may have tipped off Nabu. I.. don't.. want to ever have to be in a position where I have to.. decide whether or not I want something badly enough to fight my team mates." I shudder slightly at the idea. "Keeping you out of the loop served that purpose. Among other things."

"You didn't trust us."

"But King Orin can. And Batman can, and Wonder Woman can, and so on."

"You may have better luck convincing our team mates to welcome you back if you would commit to being more open with them."

"Trust isn't a binary thing. I'm not accusing anyone of being inherently untrustworthy. I don't mind being more open, but I concealed my Nabu-related plans for good, mission-based reasons. What exactly would you have done if I had told you-"

The door covering oozes back, granting us entry to the audience chamber.

"-in advance? "

"I would have shared the burden of making that decision."

I frown, and give my head a small shake.

"What burden?"

back

Foundation 4

next

21st December

13:08 GMT -5

Alan focuses, and the light from his ring permeates every part of the ruined structure. As I watch, broken walls repair themselves, shattered glass unbreaks and torn carpet regrows.

While we contained and stopped Oceanus as rapidly as we could, the damage to the Atlantic rim was considerable. Six months on and there's still plenty of rebuilding that hasn't been completed yet. I'm not completely sure that this is the best possible use of Alan's time, but I suppose-

"Yyyyeeeaaaaaaaayyh!"

-that's not the point. Alan floats back, smiling at the crowd-

"Ambient hope detected. Charging. Charge: seventy three percent."

-rushing forward to take a closer look at the reconstructed house. He's not getting enough charge to make this a charge-neutral endeavour, but that's hardly a problem while he has access to his personal lantern.

"Blue Lantern! Do you have a minute!?"

He looks around from his newly acquired fan club, then flies in my direction. "How'd it go with Aquaman? You all finished up?"

I nod. "He was actually pretty reasonable about the whole thing. We actually spent more time talking about all the changes Atlantis is going through, with the arcane technology and better links to the surface."

"Just in time for Christmas."

"Ah… I suppose. I don't think they're doing anything at the Mountain this year. I was really more thinking about it in terms of New Year. You know, start the year back on the roster."

He nods. "Sounds like a plan. What are you doing for the rest of the day?"

"Jade's between assignments, so we-" He nods, doing the closest he manages to a salacious grin. "-were going to head into space so she can practise with her power armour."

He shakes his head. "Kids these days."

"Do you want to come? I don't think you've ever left Earth before, and your ring can do that now."

"Oh, that's not true. Back in…" He frowns, eyes turning away from me as he tries to remember. "Forty nine, I think it was. Alexander Salkind fired some.. kinda ray out of his flying saucer that opened up some kind of rift in space. Since I was the only guy on the Justice Society who could fly safely in space, President Truman asked me to fly there and take a look at it."

"Really? But.. your.. maximum flight speed…"

"Oh, it wasn't quick. They made me a flight suit like air force pilots wore, and it took me a couple of days to get there, see what was going on." He thinks for a moment. "Whatever Salkind was trying to do, him opening that rift caused all kinds of trouble for the world on the other side. I ended up spending a couple of months helping them deal with the natural disasters he caused. Almost…" He looks away again. "That was… Just after Rose… Got sent to Reformation Island. When the portal started to close on its own, I considered staying on. They were a.. nice people."

"What species were they?"

"Oh, human, near as I could tell. Didn't have a fancy medical scanner on my ring back then. Darndest thing, they even spoke English."

I frown. "Weird. You sure it wasn't some sort of colony Salkind had built with people from this Earth?"

"He wasn't really the kind of guy for that sort of thing." Putting it mildly, given the contents of his Justice Society dossier. "I don't know if it was a parallel Earth or something…" He shrugs. "Nice people. I'd have liked to have gone back to visit, but Salkind never said how he opened the rift."

"Alan… I come from another Earth."

"Oh, ah, I'm sorry if you think it would have helped, but it wasn't your Earth. And it wasn't the same kind of portal. I'd have mentioned it sooner if it was actually relevant."

…

"Hahahaha!"

Alan looks at me curiously, a relieved smile spreading across his face. "I'm.. glad you're taking it well, but I'm not quite sure what the joke is."

"After all the times I've withheld information from people about things, I don't really have the right to complain too loudly when someone does it to me. I mean, now that I know about it I'll take a look just in case, but-"

Incoming communication.

"-it's probably-. Excuse me. " I hold out my left hand. "Orange Lantern Illustres here. Go ahead."

Dox's face appears above my ring's sigil. "Illustres. Report to Maltus. I have an assignment for you."

"Can you.. give me-?"

Dox's face disappears.

…

Ring, call Clarissi Dox.

Compliance.

A moment passes, then he reappears. "Yes?"

"Can you give me a little more information? Do I need to bring equipment or personnel with me?"

"I am sending you on a diplomatic mission. There will be a gathering of government officials from around the Reach Periphery, and we need to make a show of strength and intent in order to win them to our cause."

"And you want me on hand in case the Reach try anything."

"They would be fools not to. I would prefer to have this conversation in person."

"I've got a Darkstar recruit and another Lantern here. Bringing them will mean that it will take me hours to reach Maltus rather than seconds. Is the delay a problem?"

Dox's face twitches very slightly. "No. That is acceptable. I will expect you when you arrive."

Alan raises his right eyebrow as Dox vanishes. "I thought that Xor fellow was still under house arrest. You're not planning on skipping town with him, are you?"

"No, he is. Alan, do you want to come to Maltus and see the results of you giving me your lantern?"

He smiles. "Yeah, I think I would. You inviting Jade too?"

I nod. "A little earlier than planned, but I'm sure they'll make allowances. She's just outside Gotham now. Shall we?"

back

Foundation 5

next

21st December

23:43 GMT

No one part of the whole is complete by itself. My desire is for all peoples to exist in reflexive equilibrium with one another, fulfilling their desires better together than they could apart.

"I thought I was supposed to be learning to fly myself."

Alan doesn't sound annoyed, but I'll admit that it's a fairly curious decision on my part.

"Yes, and you'll have plenty of time to do so. But I'm a lot faster than most Lanterns, and our first stop is a good deal further away."

"Zamaron." Jade's voice is flat. She's back in her professional head space. I don't compartmentalise anymore, but… I get it. "Which is where the star sapphire came from."

"Right. I've sort of been meaning to stop off there for a while to try and establish a working relationship… Or at least make sure that they don't dump another star sapphire off on someone else. Or try to use the one Zatanna's carrying to drive her crazy."

Alan frowns. "I thought you said that couldn't happen. Because if it can, you need to warn-."

I shake my head. "By.. by default, the star sapphire has certain effects on the mind of the user. Zatanna's staff protects her from those. But I imagine that a Zamaron who focused on it could bypass that, or… Just turn up and affect her manually. Ultimately, for the benefit of everyone, I need to persuade them to change their operational philosophy."

"The Zamarons supposedly use the light of 'love'." Jade uses her armour's control system to rotate her whole body toward me. "Which -for them- means obsessively, violently, crazily fixated on someone. So you've brought us, your girlfriend and your mentor."

"I love you both, Eros and philia; demonstrating both that there are other entirely more beneficent ways to experience love and that an Orange Lantern doesn't need to banish all other emotion in order to use the orange light. No one part of the whole is complete by itself. It's true for the Guardians, it's true for the Controllers and it's true for the Zamarons."

"And you're going to talk them around."

I nod. "Sure."

"And no one has tried to do that before?"

"Green Lantern…" Um. Jade's not in the know as far as Jordan's identity goes… "Two-. Er…" I generate a construct of him. "That one, isn't the best negotiator in the world. He treated his-. Star Sapphire being given the star sapphire-."

"Harold Jordan treated it as an attack to be punished, rather than an opportunity to learn why the attack happened."

I glance at Alan, who gives his head a small shake. "I can't comment on claims that-."

"Star Sapphire being Carol Ferris is public knowledge. The Justice League's first Green Lantern looks exactly like one of Ferris Aerospace's former test pilots. It wasn't hard to work out."

"Alan, you can witness that, right?"

"You mean, someone seeing past a tiny mask to identify the superhero behind it?"

"That, and the fact that I wasn't the one to tell her."

Alan nods. "Sure, I can tell Hal that. But maybe we should just not mention it."

"Oh, he doesn't need to know that Jade knows his name, but that tiny mask thing is going to get someone killed one of these days."

"It already has." Alan and I both look at Jade. I don't.. remember her mentioning killing any superheroes… But it's possible that she thought it would make me react more strongly than random people I'd never met. "Most superheroes start out wearing shoddy costumes with masks like that, and there aren't any unwritten rules about not going after them out of hours. The League of Shadows killed hundreds of small time superheroes in America alone."

"God, I-. And no one knew about that?"

"The information is all part of what the League took from Infinity Island, so I assume that Batman knows. Another benefit of a 'secret identity'. Most superheroes don't tell more than a couple of people what they're doing. Which means that when it happens it's not a superhero dying in some sort of grand battle against a criminal gang, it's… A police officer, a postman, a reporter… Dying from what looks like natural causes, unless the coroner looks very closely with very expensive equipment. Or a random, senseless murder."

That… "So we should expect an upswing in the number of neophyte superheroes?" Maybe I need to spend more time with the Alliance.

"Probably. Either that, or a whole lot of messy assassinations by amateurs."

"And more superheroes means more people being inspired to become superheroes rather than join the police."

"Eventually. The League of Shadows was usually only hired to kill the competent or powerful ones. It won't just be people seeing more superheroes, the ones who they see will be better at it."

"That's good." Alan frowns slightly at my expression. "Isn't it?"

"You mean, there suddenly being hundreds more super powered vigilantes with no respect for authority out and about? People with no idea how gathering evidence works? With no patience for running actual investigations but who expect to be allowed to punch out anyone they want for whatever reason?"

"I didn't know anything about that when I started out, and the first man I tried to bring in had a heart attack and died."

"And… You got CP-? You didn't get CPR training, did you."

"CPR didn't exist back then. I only heard about pumping someone's heart like that in the sixties, and I'd… Already more or less retired as Green Lantern by then. I know enough to save someone if it happened now. But I thought you said we were legally just people who happened to be around and decided to help out."

"Sort of. In America, as long as a superhero doesn't kill their opponents, that's generally how the law handles it. But get a bit more organised, start acting like an organisation -especially if a decent chunk of the new people feel differently about lethal force- then things could be a little different."

"Like McCarthy again?"

"Like the government making a serious attempt at forcing superheroes into joining the police. Like them actually enforcing anti-vigilante-"

Approaching Zamaron.

"-laws. Warp terminating in two, one."

The universe reappears, and we stare down at the pink-glimmering world beneath us. A flash of empathic vision shows me thousands-. How? Okay, the Controllers didn't know exactly how many maltusians joined them after Aga'po led them away from Maltus, but you'd think they'd have heard something if it were that man-.

I tether Alan and Jade and yank us all aside just before a giant beam of violet light blasts through the space we had been occupying! Alan and I raise construct barriers as a storm of lesser beams light up the space around us.

"You didn't phone ahead?"

"They weren't picking up!"

"Paul, they aren't going to talk and it looks like we're outnumbered. We should leave."

I take a moment to remove a buoy from subspace and record a message.

"You're right. Warp in two, one-."

back

Foundation 6

next

22nd December

07:12 GMT

"It's like a cross-country car ride."

I've been letting Alan handle the flying on the final leg, and Jade's been trying to sleep inside her armour. And he's not wrong. Any sufficiently long journey is just… Getting from one place to somewhere you'd rather be. In fact, it's worse than a car journey because you can't really see anything very much of your environment. If I look left or right all I get is a blur of blue with a few distant twinkling stars. Alan's a slower flier than I am, but I doubt that he'll be doing this on a regular basis. Otherwise I'd.. set up some sort of services station or something.

"With the drawback that if you lose concentration… You die!"

Or find a planet we could stop off at that wouldn't freak out.

"Really? That can happen? I thought the environmental shield stayed on whatever I was thinking?"

"You don't have to focus to maintain it, but if you focus on one of the other six emotions then it can and will shut down."

"So: don't get angry, greedy, scared, willful, compassionate or loving."

"It's more: don't get those things outside of a breathable atmosphere or in the middle of a fight."

"I'll keep that in mind." He calls up a star map. "Nearly there, aren't we?"

"Just about. Jade?"

"I'm awake."

"We're approaching Maltus."

"Good. Is there a version of this armor that can travel at faster than light speed under its own power?"

"There was a version they experimented with that had a short FTL range, but they had to compromise a lot of other systems and… Everyone who used it died within a couple of missions. Once the Reach worked out what they were facing, they could just send ships to the emergence point…"

"How long until I qualify for my own spaceship?"

"Three days?"

"I'm surprised that their training program isn't longer than that. Or do they only take people with backgrounds in combat and intelligence?"

"No, they accept recruits with all levels of skill. But in your case they can skip some of the basics. The main area where you're lacking is everything to do with space travel, so I imagine that they'll start you on that part of the training program."

"Alan, we are approaching the Maltus exclusion zone. Please stand by to transmit your authorisation signal."

He looks at me and I raise my left hand. "Orange Lantern Illustres to Controller Hinon. On approach with two guests, please don't shoot."

Hinon's curious face appears above my ring. "Or perhaps I should tell them to shoot twice just to make sure?"

"I'd rather you didn't. I've had more than enough Maltusians shooting at me today."

"What did you d-?"

"Alan, I am now terminating-"

The universe leaps back into focus, Maltus just ahead of us. Through ring-enhanced vision I can see Ranx, and his significantly expanded space docks. Several of them hold near-finished capital ships, while others contain cargo vessels and passenger ships from the region's various Controller protectorates.

"-warp. Please keep your hands inside the ride until it comes to a complete stop."

And I can feel the other Orange Lanterns. It seems that Dox's recruitment efforts are going well.

Hinon regards me for a moment. "You went to Zamaron. And they shot at you. What did you do to make them shoot at you?"

"Nothing! My friends-"

"A likely story."

"-and I appeared near their world and I had just long enough to look at them before the energy beams started."

"You looked-." She closes her eyes for a moment. "I will contact our sororal compatriots and smooth things over. Please try to remember in future that your eyes are not the mere light sensors that those of most of the rest of your species are. You looking at them touches them with the orange light in a way they may well have found uncomfortable."

"Ah. Please pass on my apologies."

"If you come up in conversation I will certainly do that. Otherwise I will avoid all mention."

"Alright. Is Dox onboard Ranx?"

"Yes, I believe so."

"I'll head straight there. Anything else?"

"A few of the more recent recruits would -and I can barely credit that I'm saying this- benefit from the wisdom of your experience."

"I'll check in once I've met with Dox. Whereabouts are you?"

"The forges attached to the Central Power Battery. Why, what do you want?"

"I've brought Alan with me. You said that you wanted a look at him?"

"Oh. Yes, that would be-"

Her face vanishes and reappears on Alan's ring.

"-interesting. Lantern Scott. Good to meet you."

Alan looks nonplussed. "Ma'am."

"I'm sending you a map now. I'll expect you shortly."

"O.. kay?" Hinon's face vanishes. Alan is left looking slightly concerned. "Should I be worried?"

"She's an expert on power rings. Given your unusual relationship with the green light, it's probably a good idea."

"Ah, that makes sense. Am I alright to go down there?"

"You're on the Orange Lantern Corps database. If there's somewhere you're not supposed to go, someone will politely let you know."

Ranx is approaching rapidly, growing to the point that it's visible to my naked eyes.

"And how about me?"

"Ring, contact Director Jeddigar's office."

Compliance.

"Illustres." That was quick, and it's the man himself. "What can I do for you?"

"I forwarded an application form on behalf of a human applicant for your organisation. Since I was heading here anyway I brought her with me. I appreciate that it's a little irregular-."

"No, not at all. We can perform her assessment now. Is she with you?"

"Yes. Where should she-?"

"Locking on."

Jade vanishes in a swirl of light. Of course. Teleportation is probably the best way to get around for non-Lanterns.

"I'll let you know when we're finished with her."

"Right-oh. Thank you for your help."

His face disappears. Well, he's a busy man.

"It's Christmas in three days. Is Jade really going to be stuck here for Christmas?"

"No, it-. Possibly, but that wasn't what I was talking about. I thought that she could use something that would let her travel back and forth.. easily…"

Alan chuckles. "How are you going to fit that under the tree?"

"I made a giant tree."

"You-?" For some reason that amuses him further. "Did you decorate it too?"

"Of course I decorated it. And I wrapped the ship. Who do you think I am?"

back

Foundation 7

next

22nd December

07:25 GMT

"You're back!"

"Hello, Rat-"

Lantern Ratchet attaches himself to my torso, tentacles stroking my face and armour.

"-chet. You're still stationed on Ranx, then?"

"Oh, yes. Clarissi Dox greatly appreciates my personnel-handling abilities."

I don't laugh, but I do smile just in time for him to run a tentacle across my lips. "I'm not particularly surprised that he passed that on to someone else."

"A lot of people have said that." Ratchet pulls away slightly so that he can actually look me in the eye. "I'm not sure why."

I start along the corridor in the direction of Dox's office. Charles Stross wrote in The Jennifer Morgue that a CEO's desk was their way of showing off, equivalent to… What was the quote? Ah, yes:

'Desks are to executives what souped-up Mitsubishi Colts with low-profile alloys, metal-flake paint jobs, and extra-loud, chrome-plated exhaust pipes are to chavs; they're a big swinging dick, the proxy they use to proclaim their sense of self importance.'

I really hope that Dox has become humanoid enough to want a big desk. Hopefully Brand or someone has been working on him.

"Dox was raised in an environment which encouraged self-reliance and the suppression of emotion. Much as you were raised in an environment that encouraged physical isolation. And his 'father' tried to beat the 'softness' out of him in much the same way that your own society tried to stop you wanting to touch people by cutting off your limbs."

Ratchet stills, his tentacles coming together beneath him in a gesture of sympathy. "I didn't know that. But why doesn't he do those things now?"

"How long did it take you to go from wanting to touch someone to venturing outside of your pod?"

Three billowing tentacles. Regret, uncertainty. "A considerable time. He is not yet ready to do so for himself?"

"I don't think so. He wasn't when I left."

Square grasping gesture. Resolution. "How can I help him?"

"Ensure that he has constant, normal and pleasant interpersonal contact. Enveloping me with tentacles is fine, but I-."

"No, I-. I have been made aware that you and Taranna have been unusually indulgent of my desire for physical contact. Some of the new Lanterns have asked if I am part of the corps' 'hazing'."

"Right. Different cultures have different ideas about what's 'normal' for physical touching. And.. given that we're recruiting fighters for whom letting people get physically close often involves an element of risk, it's good that you're aware of that."

"I should not press Clarissi Dox, and let him touch people when he is ready to do so?"

"More or less. But Coluans aren't big on touching people anyway, it's more the social aspect that he needs you to help him with."

"I understand. I will serve."

I nod and smile. "Thank you." Arriving at Dox's door, I raise my hand toward the door chime.

The door opens before it arrives.

"I've been monitoring you since you arrived in the system. Come in so that I can brief you."

I wave Ratchet goodbye as he floats away down the corridor, then step into Dox's off-.

Oh Eris, it's worse than I thought. Not only is there no desk, there's no furniture of any kind. Not even a stand for his personal lantern. He's got a wispy orange console around him which his fingers constantly move over without him looking where they're going. Okay, touch typing doesn't take a level ten intelligence but the displays are changing as he touches them. His eyes aren't focusing on me, and there's an orange glow in a circle around his head.

I walk over to just in front of him, then come to attention. "Reporting as ordered."

"Later than ordered."

"I had an opportunity to open diplomatic relations with Zamaron I felt it worth taking the time to explore."

His eyes focus on me for a moment, then close again. "You were unsuccessful."

"True, but that doesn't mean that-."

"I am aware that not all risks pay off. How badly did it go?"

"They shot at me without otherwise communicating at all."

"Try not to do that again."

"How are things here?"

"Your recruit Lantern Ragnar has been quite useful in continuing training the other recruits. Our total strength is up to seven hundred and forty four, not counting Lanterns Xor, Koriand'r and Komand'r."

"Any orange light incidents?"

"None which caused permanent damage. If you're interested, simply have your ring feed the information into your mind directly."

I will need to look into that. "So. Diplomatic conference?"

A holographic image of Reach space appears, the areas around the edge marked in colours indicating… Their defence status, I think. No, no, their predicted time until Reach assimilation.

"Since diplomatic events are not my forte, I am putting you in charge of the Orange Lantern Corps contingent. Sleer Prigatz will be in overall charge; diplomacy with border worlds is an official part of his job. Our primary goal is to secure fleet bases and construction sites. Secondary goals include supplies of personnel and raw materials and information sharing. A mutual defence pact is tertiary at best; none of these places would last long against the Reach by their own efforts, apart or together."

"Understood. You want us to show off a little?"

"These people understand power. Or think they do. They've heard of Green Lanterns. Some of their worlds even have currently serving Green Lanterns. You will be travelling with a small fleet of ships far more sophisticated than anything they can produce themselves, but I suspect that a demonstration from a Lantern will be the most obvious display of our power."

I nod. "A power that can be theirs, without any of that 'two-per-Sector' nonsense."

"You will be meeting diplomats and military planners. For the most part, they will not be the sort to take after Lantern Ragnar. They won't be fighters. Review the files of those who are, and focus your efforts on those."

I nod. "Are we expecting the Reach to stick their oar in?"

"They'd be fools not to. And they haven't established the largest interstellar empire in this galaxy by being fools."

back

Foundation 8

next

22nd December

07:49 GMT

That's a lot of Orange Lanterns.

I walk calmly through the training area as all around me Lanterns practise generating constructs, spar or sit in meditation. And I can't help but feel… Disappointed? I don't resent Dox for sending me away; he was right about needing to establish himself as being in charge. But I wish I could have been here to see this happening.

And I wish I recognised some of them. The majority of Orange Lanterns appear -predictably enough- to be clickers, and a decent minority are from Controller protectorates. I have my ring inform me of their names and their histories as I look around. There, a man who felt that his own people were too weak to stand before the Reach and so sought out a friendly power to provide that protection. There, a Greater A clicker who wanted to live longer than… Their..? Physiology would allow, and now seeks to repay the Controllers in the most efficient way possible. A partisan, a pirate, soldiers and psychopaths and-.

"You! In the robes!"

And then there's… This fellow. One eye, blue skin, some sort of mace-staff whose head is glowing with orange light. No, he hasn't integrated his personal lantern into it, he's just augmenting it with his ring. He flies into the open-sided corridor I'm walking along and lands just in front of me.

I smile, and give him a shallow bow. "How may I be of service, Lantern Zartok?"

"I haven't seen you here before. Are you a new recruit?"

"Oh, no. I've been a Lantern for some time."

His eye narrows. "Then why have you not been training with everyone else?"

So he isn't bothering to look me up? I know that I'm on the database-. Actually, do I have admin access? I do? Oh, good. Lock my file, would you? I smell a learning opportunity.

"I.. managed to irritate Clarissi Dox enough that he sent me back to my homeworld." I shrug apologetically. "I'm only here now because he's got a diplomatic job on that he doesn't want to handle himself."

"Bah!" Zartok grins, walking closer. "You can't learn to be a true Lantern by sitting at home!"

For a moment, I imagine walking around Hampden Park while glowing orange. Flying around Sainsbury's with a construct trolley. Picking up a late train and flying it to the platform in time.

"I suspect that you're right."

He puts his right arm around my shoulders-. On top of my shoulders, nearly but not quite around my neck. He's about thirty centimetres taller than me, a fair bit more muscular -and his clothing shows it off more- and I can see in him the desire to lead soldiers again. To prove himself in physical conflict, both as a fighter and a leader. I can't really assess his skills myself, but Dox appears to have left me access to everyone's full personnel files. Assessment… Bit of a nasty piece of work, actually led armies against peaceful civilisations because he found their natures offensive… But pretty good at what he does.

"Well, now is as good a time to start as any! Fortunately, I have reserved an arena for my own training! Join me!"

"Thank you for this opportunity. If you would be so good as to lead the way?"

"But of course!"

He releases me and flies off to the right, glancing back once to make sure that I'm following him. I oblige him. A few other Lanterns look around, but more seem curious than worried-. Ah, that one actually bothered to read my biography. Taking a closer look at my gracious host's present set of desires… He wants to establish himself as a leader, someone to be respected and -to a degree- feared. He'd really make a better Sinestro Corps member… Perhaps Kalmin is burned out on yellow rings? Anyway, assuming that he's true to his desires…

Hah.

He's planning to use this spar to demonstrate his superior skill and try to impress me so much that he'll be able to recruit me as a follower. He'll also want to show his superior abilities to anyone watching. Humiliating him totally will.. probably.. be counterproductive? It really depends on how much of an arse he's been. Would beating him down result in others liking me more? How would he take being so brutally outclassed?

He descends into one of the fighting pits, a small group I identify as cronies waiting in the stands. The hulking male glances up for a moment and then returns to gorging himself from the bowls of food around him. His desires appear to focus around hunting, eating and claiming territory. Dox put a note in his file indicating that he's an experiment. He should instinctively go from full-on combat mode to gorge mode to near-hibernation with little in between. Which would mean that the extremes of mood which come with orange rings might not matter. I'll be curious to see how that plays out.

The slender female looks me over but doesn't otherwise outwardly react. Inwardly, I can immediately see the changes as lights related to personal safety and room for advancement light up. It looks like she's mostly in this for the loot, but also derives a degree of satisfaction from the technical work her ring now lets her perform.

Not someone… I'd have recruited, but she passed screening.

Lantern Zartok lands on the opposite side of the arena centre, and I set down opposite him.

"The first thing you must know about being an Orange Lantern is that the stronger your desires are, the stronger you are!"

"I see. And the capacity for control?"

"Is of little use if you're already-"

I generate construct armour around my body.

"-dead!"

The orange blast leaps from his staff and splashes off my chest plate to no effect. Zartok looks momentarily surprised, then nods in approval. "Excellent reflexes! But can you-"

I step out and

appear just behind him.

"-do it-!" He swings his staff at the area I was a second ago. Part way through the swing it registers that I'm not there, and he intensifies his environmental shield and swings around, prompting me to step back out of his reach.

Hm. Reasonable response. A stronger environmental shield would protect against most attacks, and the obvious place for me to go if I was a total neophyte was right behind him. If I were taking this at all seriously I'd have gone far further away when fighting a Lantern with a melee weapon fixation.

"Agile. Or are you wearing a teleporter?"

"Personal teleporters are too easy to disrupt. Ring-based teleportation is far safer."

His eye narrows again. "Who are you? Were you a Green Lantern before turning your coat?"

"No. I'm your Illustres. And if you want to get anything out of this, feel free to come at me full force."

His environmental shield seethes with power as an orange sigil appears in his eye.

"I LIKE A CHALLENGE!"

back

Foundation 9

next

22nd December

07:53 GMT

Corruption tendrils reach out from my construct armour, grabbing, turning and hurling his spear construct back at him before it can strike me. He dismisses it before it can strike home, brilliant orange light shining from his staff's head for a moment before blasting toward me. I dismiss my construct armour and hold out my hands, drawing the power of the shot into my rings. Next comes a railgun-

I feel it as Lantern Grood switches into hostile mode and charges his environmental shield. I'm pleased to note that Drusa is intelligent enough to take a step away from him as he crouches to leap.

-which I load with a single crumbler round and fire. Zartok generates a weak shield construct, and can't keep the surprise off his face when it gets destroyed. Reasonably impressive, actually. When Guy and I started experimenting with defending against them, we stuck to trying better and better shields for a very long time before we gave up and switched to ablatives. He went ablative from the start-.

Or maybe that's just the best shield he can make.

That's less impressive.

Behind me, I generate a Super Soaker 9001 construct, fire a torrent of water at Grood before he can leap from his crouch, then follow up with a cold gun blast which freezes it in place.

I step out and

back as Zartok's staff blurs through the place I had been standing, then create an orange laser construct and fire it at Zartok's left hand. He's already turning to face me, and jerks his hand out of the line of fire as he does so. I reform my railgun and fire a rapid volley of tungsten rounds at his staff. His environmental shield takes the worst of it, but the staff is knocked from his grip.

For a moment, before he grabs hold of it with a construct and pulls it back.

To my left, I see a cluster of spectating Orange Lanterns move aside for Lantern Ragnar. I hope that he won't be offended by me drawing this out for longer than I did our fight.

Fist constructs are Zartok's next avenue of attack, and I note that despite his eye going completely to the orange side he's still reasonably coherent. Precision crumbler round shots shred each of them, then I connect myself to Zartok with two arcs of orange light.

"Brand."

Light flares around Zartok as he tries and fails to break the orange light connection using orange light.

"Yuuuraaagh!"

Hands behind my back, I stroll closer as he falls to his knees.

"Branding ten percent complete."

"Thank you. Lantern Zartok, unless you've been holding back a great deal-"

He looks up with a grimace on his face.

"Branding twenty percent complete."

"-then your understanding of the orange light is not good enough to break this connection. Wanting more might make your constructs stronger, but it leaves you with distinct vulnerabilities. Your own desire, its intensity, is what is making this easy for me. The best way to stop me… Is to stop wanting."

He grits his teeth-

"Branding thirty percent complete. Forty percent complete."

-and then stops himself. He takes a few deep breaths and drops into a sitting position, the orange sigil fading from his eye.

"A start. But not enough. You still want, and therefore are still connected to the-."

"By what right do you think to give me instruction!? The Controllers gave you two rings!"

I shake my head. "No. Actually, they didn't give me either of these rings. Though if it makes you-"

"Branding fifty percent complete."

"-feel any better…" I move my hands around to my front and take hold of my original ring with my right thumb and forefinger. His eye fixes on it as I pull it off and toss it to the floor. "Multiple rings don't increase your construct strength. They just extend your battery life. There. One ring."

He staggers to his feet, only for my construct chains to pull him down again.

"Are your bonds any weaker?"

"That ring. The design. It isn't like the others."

"Branding sixty percent complete."

"No." I hold up my right hand. "This is the very first orange ring ever created. It used to belong to Larfleeze."

"The first Orange Lantern! You are channelling the desires of an insane ancient! That is how-!"

"Hardly. It has no AI support. It's less physically resilient than the one you're wearing, and its maximum charge is only about eighty percent of what a modern ring can contain. Why do you think that the Controllers changed the design, if not to make it more effective?"

"How long have you-"

"Branding seventy percent complete."

"-had that ring?"

"Half a year." I indicate my original ring with my right foot. "I've had that one about a year and a half now."

"And you appear here now? I have been training, strategising and studying our enemies. What have you done to earn authority amongst us?"

"Hah!" Ragnar grins. "He beat me in a duel even faster than he beat you. I am grateful that at least he took my fight seriously!"

"Branding eighty percent complete."

"You should yield now. I'll be perfectly happy to fight you again when you've a little more experience."

"Branding ninety percent complete."

Zartok's nostrils flare, but he nods. I call my ring back from the ground and cancel the branding effect. He glares at me for a moment before rising and stepping back.

"Strength is nothing without direction. Discipline."

"I have discipline."

"You have physical discipline. You've clearly trained hard at it. The way your body moved, the way you reacted rationally to my attacks… But you lack spiritual discipline. I know Green Lanterns who can break branding attempts, and I know that I certainly could."

I look up and around. A reasonable gathering.

"My Lanterns. I am sorry for not spending more time here. I need a small number of you to volunteer for a dull diplomatic mission. I doubt that you'll learn much from it, but I will agree to devote what spare time I have to teaching you my techniques. And if you're wondering what's so special about that..."

I slide my ring back onto my left ring finger and then extend my hands.

"Did you know that it's perfectly possible for a mortal Lantern to create a personal lantern? Let me show you."

back

Foundation 10

next

22nd December

14:22 GMT -6

"…why I need to observe it as it happens."

Sunset winds down slightly as her presentation comes to a conclusion. I followed pretty much all of it, though the more complex thaumaturgical notation she used to prove her claims rather went over my head. Circe smiled and nodded at appropriate places though, so I'm going to assume that it's accurate so far.

I nod. "So, you know how alicorns are made."

"I-. No. Not exactly. I've got-" She presses a button on her wand -in the sense of being a narrow cylinder, not in the sense of being a literal magic wand- and a new lot of notation appears on the screen behind her. "-an explanation. It fits what… Cadenza told me happened to her…" She glances aside. "Before Celestia banned her from talking to me about it, anyway."

"And..?"

"Well…" She gestures to a series of squiggles on the mid-left of the screen. "As you can see, the evoca.. tion…" I shake my head and she rolls her eyes. "She got hit by a whole lot of magic perfectly aligned to her special talent and was very lucky that she didn't just explode."

Ah! "Which is why you want to study a newly developed New God, because they're as close to having a pony-style special talent as humans get!"

She stares at me, then at the screen, and then back at me. "Yes! That's what I just…" She presses her button a few more times, gestures at the screen again and then glares at me. "I can't even tell if you're being serious or not."

"Oh, this is all…" I wave my right hand over my head. "So I'm just going to assume that your understanding of the thaumaturgy involved is correct. But okay, you know how Mi Amore Cadenza did it-."

"By pure fluke." She pulls a face. "'Why don't you go and play with Princess Cadance and her friends?'"

"Now, come on. It isn't Cadenza's fault that she tripped over the one thing you want more than anything in the universe by pure luck. That's why it's called luck."

"I know. It's just… Urgh! You know?"

Circe and I nod sympathetically.

"I mean, if she'd actually worked at it a bit…" She shakes her head. "The point is, I could just replicate what she did and try and control it… Like she did… Somehow. And I might be as lucky as she was…" Her shoulders slump. "No, that would never happen. I think I'd have about a thirty percent chance and… Yeah, not doing it."

I frown in what I hope is an intelligent way. "But your special talent is 'magic'. Shouldn't any source of arcane power do?"

"If it was just about charging me up, yes. But… Okay. Part of my working theory which you apparently didn't listen to is that every pony is essentially a crippled alicorn. We manifest only one part of our full power rather than all of it. But with a tremendous influx of power that… Weakness or congenital deformity or whatever, gets erased."

"Ah… Are you basing that off a sample size of one?"

"There are two alicorns in existence. I only know how one ascended because the other wouldn't tell me how she did it."

"I thought… Nightmare Moon..?"

"While there might be some sort of underlying factual basis in the Nightmare Moon story, I couldn't find any credible historical account. And believe me, I looked. There are legends about Celestia fighting all kinds of monsters in the ancient past. There's no real reason that an evil alicorn couldn't have been one of them." Her jaw tightens. "Though if there is any truth to the story, it totally undermines her friendship fixation: exactly how many friends would a night-obsessed foal-eater have?"

I inwardly wince on behalf of Princess Luna.

"Anyway, one example and a lot of math. From what I can tell… From the models I've made for earth pony magic, unicorn pony magic and pegasus pony magic, the chance of the magic surge doing what it's supposed to increases dramatically if you can.. balance it out with examples of ponies manifesting as each of the tribes. Ideally they'd all have the same special talent, but…" She wrinkles her nose. "There are pegasus ponies who specialise in using pegasus pony magic, but there are literally no earth ponies who do. So… That's a bust."

"Don't I remember something about pony mythology claiming that your ancestors migrated from somewhere.. then.. settled in what is now Equestria?"

"That's the pony Christmas story. And it's plausible. I mean, if you totally ignore the lack of historical records or archaeological evidence, and the fact that no unicorn I spoke to has any idea how to move the sun or the moon. And the fact that Equestria has a huge desert to the south, oceans to the east and west and mountains and the north pole to the north. None of that is the sort of terrain that you migrate toward if you're already fleeing a blizzard and-" She air quotes. "-'windigos'."

"So how does studying a new New God help?"

"I know it's not about power or skill. Cadenza proved that-. And that's not-. She was a pegasus pony growing up in an all-earth pony community out in the middle of nowhere. Even if she'd wanted to, she wouldn't have been able to learn much about how her magic worked. But New Gods are able to absorb large amounts of magic and get a lot stronger almost at once. Without the magic needing to be associated with their nature."

"Why don't you just get rid of your magical bum parasite?"

"I-." She goldfishes for a moment. "My what?"

"You know." I wave my right forefinger in the general direction of her posterior, prompting her to take a step backward. "That thing which appears on your haunches when you taste of the kind of magic it finds most appealing."

"You-." Her eyes narrow. "Are you talking about my cutie mark?"

"Yes."

"Those aren't parasites."

"Sure they are. A pony has to have a special talent in order to get one, correct?"

"Well… Yeah..?"

"And if anything happens to it, their special talent vanishes, right?"

"It… Depends..? Minor injuries don't really do much, but there's a definite correlation between outright cutie mark loss and talent loss."

"So the cutie mark doesn't add anything useful, it just adds a layer of vulnerability. Sounds like a parasite to me. If you could work out how to erase one without losing the talent that attracted it, you wouldn't have to worry about energy formatting."

"Let's… Save that for a backup plan. I don't want to risk having everything I know about magic suddenly disappearing if I got it wrong."

"That just means that now is the ideal time! You're not a pony. I can do a quick tattoo-erasure, you won't risk losing anything because human magic doesn't work that way, and then you could go back-."

"No. I'm proud of my cutie mark, of getting my cutie mark and it's what's going to be on my haunches when I turn into an alicorn."

"You're proud of a parasite?" I give her a sceptical look. "Have you ever heard of toxoplasmosis? It's a disease which alters the behaviour of prey animals it infects so that its primary host can catch them more easily. Like the cutie mark parasite encourages you to regard it as a coming of age signal, when it really only serves that role in the same way as a Chlamydia infection does. And there's this species of fungus which infects ants and makes them-."

Circe lays her right hand on my left shoulder. "Grayven, I don't think that's going to help-."

Sunset glares at me. "What about your god-name? I don't hear you calling that a parasite?"

"Because god-name is a poetic way of referring to a complicated set of arcane mechanisms, not a… Mystic weak point. I survived Mister Doom effectively removing mine without my mundane skill set being altered."

"It's not a parasite."

"Fine. If you say so." I cough. "Without any evidence." I cough again as Sunset puts her hands on her hips. "But as for your proposal, I don't think Miss Kimble is really ready yet, but if you can find another volunteer I'll empower them while you record the results."

"Thank you."

back

Foundation 11

next

23rd December

08:12 GMT

"The nicest thing I can say about it is that it's functional."

Not satisfied with using a simple bust-projection, Hinon has decided to use ring telepresence to display both herself and my attempt at creating a personal lantern.

I can't deny that it's crude. I was trying to create something like a classical hurricane lamp, but with Ophidian-scale styling. Instead, I got… A child's clay model which sagged slightly before it hardened in the oven. It's wider than it is tall, the snake detailing looks -charitably- like someone haphazardly wrapped a rope around it and the glow inside flickers constantly.

"What did Kalmin think?"

"I haven't shown him. Kalmin uses empathic storage devices and manipulates light indirectly. I'm a little concerned about what he would do if he learned that direct manipulation by non-Maltusians could achieve this."

"I think that your concern is unwarranted. If anything, I would expect it to motivate him to greater efforts in his studies. "

"Why do you assume that I want to motivate him?"

"Because.. that's how using the orange light.. works best?"

"I thought that I was clear." She scowls at me. "I did not want him in the Corps."

"Are you barring me from showing him?"

"Of course not." She prods the lantern representation. "Do you intend to follow up on this capacity?"

"How do you mean?"

"You aren't the sort to be satisfied with an outcome this poor. Do you actually intend to practise? Are you going to require lessons?"

"No, I was just making a point to the recruits that there's nothing they can't learn how to do, including things they might have assumed could only be done by Controllers. I'd.. like to learn at some point, but it's not a priority for me." She nods. "How was your time with Lantern Scott?"

She smiles. "Oh, I do like him. Why couldn't you recruit more people like that?"

"Because they'd be bad fits for the orange light, and probably wouldn't have any reason to want to fight the Reach. How is he?"

"Perfectly healthy. Not entirely human… I'm not quite old enough to remember when Maltusians first bonded with our symbiotes, but I imagine that he's something like that. Something more than he was before."

"Any foreseeable problems?"

"That depends on your definition of 'problem', I suppose. He will gradually become less and less like a human male and more and more like a creature of hope. His past will continue to define the way he appears, the way he thinks about himself… I suspect, until he finally dies."

"How gradually?"

"I don't have enough data to reach a firm conclusion. Four hundred years, perhaps?"

I nod, smiling. "That'll do. Anything else?"

"No, that's everything. Enjoy showing off to Clarissi Dox's guests. Hinon out."

The construct disappears. Hm. Alan told me that 'nothing was wrong', but I felt it best to check just in case. I'm.. a little concerned, but… I suppose that the orange light will keep me human for as long as I want to be human. Which given the difficulties involved in wanting something you haven't experienced yet is probably going to be forever. Alan doesn't have that safety net. But then I.. suppose that Diana doesn't either. Greek demigods generally undergo apotheosis at some point…

A problem for another day, centuries down the line. Here and now I

step out

and back into the Lantern sparring area of the… Ugh, the 'extended field duration transport and command capital ship model four production order seven'. Apparently it's shorter in Coluan. Alan's firing crumbler rounds at their barriers as my escorts learn to create ablative barriers with his assistance.

A quick check on the sensor logs suggests to me that Lantern Drusa was already aware of the technique, though she isn't exactly enjoying the feedback from the repeated failings. Lantern Dul is holding up better, but her construct usage is noticeably less sophisticated. Rather than just the twenty or so thin barriers that Guy or I would or the ten that Drusa is managing, she's using four regular strength barriers. Which will still go down after one hit but will drain her ring's charge far more quickly. Lantern R-K'rr is only managing three barriers, but they're reappearing after each hit more quickly than those of his colleagues and he doesn't seem stressed by it.

Alan spots me, and lifts his railguns upward to indicate that they can take a break. Lantern Dul's wings are trembling with aggression, her muscles tensed, her fingers tight and a construct mace and a construct sidearm reflexively appearing on her hips. Thanagarian training sessions always include a physical element to prevent recruits hopped up on their version of adrenaline lashing out. She's trying to fight it, but-.

"Lantern Dul. Come at me."

Lantern Drusa floats away from her, Lantern R-K'rr doubles down on his shields and Lantern Dul shoots toward me, her wings, giant mace construct and sneaky pistol glowing orange as she finally gives vent to her desire to lash out! I shoot the mace construct with a crumbler, fire an orange energy pulse at the gun and grab her body with a reptilian claw construct before throwing her into the force fields at the far end of the room. They flare for a moment as she's thrown back and falls to the floor.

"Back with us?"

She gingerly picks herself up, the glow from her ring stable but fainter than her highest output. "Yeah. Yes." She unfurls her wings fully for a moment, gives them a slight shake and then folds them behind her back once more. "Sir. Thank you."

"You're welcome. Lantern Scott, for future reference, thanagarians benefit from involving physical actions in their training. Otherwise they get really stressed out."

He nods. "I'll bear that in mind in the future." He turns his head toward Lantern Dul as she walks back towards the other two. "I'm sorry for not taking that into account."

Of course, the Halls were human so didn't have that problem.

"Ladies, gentleman and other, we have now entered the system where the conference will be taking place and we're expected to arrive in around five hours. I thought that now might be the best time to go over my philosophy in relation to orange light use. Lantern R-K'rr has already heard the basics and I believe that Lantern Drusa-" I nod to her, and she remains expressionless. "-has done quite a lot of the required reading."

"While I've known Lantern Scott for about a year and a half, we've only been training together for about a third of that and the philosophies underpinning blue light use are rather different to those required for orange light use. So,-" I turn to face him. "-Alan, you're free to stay or go as you see fit."

He negligently waves his right hand. "I'll take a look around the ship when you're busy with your conference thing."

"Alright then." I sink down, a construct cushion forming under my bottom. "You may sit or stand as you choose. Let's get started."

back

Foundation 12

next

23rd December

08:16 GMT

"What do you want?" I take a moment to make eye contact with each of my students. "That's the most important question, one which every Orange Lantern should consider every day. But it's not the most fundamental question. The most fundamental question is: why does anyone want anything? Why do I, why do you, why does anyone, consider one state of affairs preferable to another?"

"The answer's simple. Those amongst our ancestors who weren't strongly motivated to gain possession of those things they needed in order to survive tended not to. You want food, because your body requires fuel to live. If you don't learn to like food, to want food, you starve to death. You want shelter, because you need somewhere safe to sleep, somewhere to stay warm when it's cold. You want camaraderie because you're not going to be healthy or alert all of the time and a threat could emerge at any time. This programming exists in all humanoid species I am aware of, and most non-humanoid species have something fairly similar."

"The problem comes when a species' sociological advancement occurs faster than its biological advancement. Take for example the desire to eat. In hunter-gatherer societies, high fat and high sugar food is hard to get hold of. Trees only fruit for part of the year, killing animals requires a significant investment in resources… But those are the things which give the one eating them most energy, the most ability to act and survive until an age at which they can raise the next generation."

"But then a species advances to the point where it learns to farm food animals or to refine sugar and suddenly it becomes far easier to get food of that type. A preference for a seasonal food that was necessary to survive through the leaner months becomes a preference for a food which is now available all year around. The result? Obesity. Heart disease. Evolutionary history has programmed people to want things because they needed them, and now they don't need them but still want them."

True of every society I checked, and a quick ring-comparison between technologies and most common causes of death appeared to bear that out.

"There are other, related problems. In my own species, our brains cope best with small communities. About a hundred and fifty people. But our economies encourage us to live in far larger groups; our larger cities can have over a million people in them. Our brains are quite literally incapable of perceiving that many people as individuals, let alone actually caring about what happens to them. But our economy makes us dependent on a huge number of people we've never met. We're forced to interact constantly with people we don't care about. That we can't care about."

"And how is this relevant to you? Simple. None of you really care about this. The Corps' mission, the defeat of the Reach. The talks we'll be having."

Lantern Drusa had been leaning slightly forward, but she straightens up now. Not immediately, not fast enough to draw attention, but she's clearly 'back in the room'. Lantern Dul blinks, her expression still. Lantern R-K'rr's mandibles relax slightly.

"Lantern R-K'rr, your species is capable of a much higher level of social awareness than the vast majority of humanoid species. You genuinely want to repay your civilisation's debt to the Controllers. But despite your interactions with them you have only a dim sense of fellowship with the peoples of the periphery. Am I wrong?"

"Teacher, you are not incorrect. The drives of members of my species make it… We can bond with anyone from our social structure, but they are too far outside it for the bond to trigger. Even those with whom I interact in a routine way are external agents. As with humanoids, it is widely believed to be a holdover from the ancient days when we lived in competing colonies."

"Recognising this about yourself, how do you focus your desires to perform other tasks?"

"In my own mind I relate everything I do to their stated wishes. I desire this conference to be successful because they so desire it. I.. believe that this reflexive reverence comes from the feelings which the greater sexes were supposed to invoke in us. They perform an essential function that the rest of us cannot, and so we are driven to do those things that are needful which they cannot do."

"How do you use that drive when the Controllers have not given you specific instructions?"

"That is.. less easy. As you have implied, the loss of particular worlds on the periphery zone is common enough that I know that it is not essential to prevent it to ensure the Controllers' safety. Nonetheless, the Controllers' desires guide my own, and I have observed that I am able to maintain my average construct strength better than many other Orange Lanterns."

I nod. "How do you intend to develop in future?"

"My current role does not require a great deal of construct power. If a Controller assigns me a clearly defined diplomatic responsibility -even if it is simply as a courier- then I will have no significant difficulty. Considering that as my medium term aim, I am more motivated to ensure our success here. A firm agreement will allow the Controllers to task me with a particular role."

I smile. Glad to know that he did the assigned homework.

"And your skills?"

"It is difficult to know where to focus my efforts. Since I will neither specialise in direct combat or investigation, there are no models for me to draw upon."

"Oh, that isn't true. Seeing the desires of those you would negotiate with is something even an inexperienced Lantern should be able to do. Taking it further… I know I can use my rings to enkindle the desires of those around me. I imagine that being able to do that would help a diplomat."

"Teacher, you are correct. I have not practised techniques that subtle."

I nod. "I'm sure that I can find time to teach you the basics. But be careful when experimenting on your own; you don't want to turn someone into a construct by accident."

"Teacher, I do not."

"We'll pencil that in for after this session. You should be able to try viewing your colleagues' desires while I work with them." A double blink indicates an acknowledgement. "Lantern Dul."

She shrugs. "One mercenary contract is as good as another. And how many Thanagarians get to use the greatest weapon in the universe?"

"If the records I acquired from the Green Lantern Corps are correct, two. Before the Equalisation Plague." She shrugs again. "You're an awful long way away from home."

"I go where the fighting is. Not like I have any special reason to stay home."

I smile, leaning forward slightly. "Lantern Dul, if you're going to lie to me it's going to be a good deal harder for me to help you. I come from Earth, and while I can just about believe that you left before you could be briefed on my world, we have two 'embedded agents' of the Thanagarian Empire as guests. And we do know it."

Her face falls slightly.

"Your Corps officer only personnel file would tell me why you're actually here even if I couldn't see for myself by looking at you. But don't worry. On Earth, Katar Hol and Shayera Thal are well regarded, and as it's common practice for our intelligence agencies to spend a certain amount of time monitoring our allies we can hardly take umbrage about you deciding that the Orange Lantern Corps bears watching. But motivation is always an issue for Orange Lanterns."

"I-." She blinks rapidly as she tries to reach a difficult decision. "I'm not here to report on the Orange Lantern Corps. When I left Thanagar, my assignment was to monitor the Reach, not the Orange Lantern Corps. The Corps didn't exist at the time."

"Very long term planning. I approve. And since you're here, I should help you improve as well. If only to make sure that the reports which the Thanagarian Empire receives are glowing." Lantern Dul's face reveals little, but the pattern of lights inside her show her confusion. Flashes of fear as she remembers times when she failed to read the room and suffered for it. She doesn't understand. "Tell me about yourself. Why did you accept this duty?"

back

Foundation 13

next

23rd December

08:21 GMT

"It was the most prestigious mission my history qualified me for. The Empire doesn't send people it can't trust away to alien societies for decades on end."

"But on your own?"

She lowers her head slightly. "I didn't start on my own."

Ah. No. I suppose… "I've been meaning to visit Thanagar for a while, myself. If you'd like to make a trip home I'd be happy to help you."

She looks at me slightly suspiciously. "Thank you. I would appreciate that."

"It would be somewhat harsh of me to refuse the Thanagarian Ruling Council services which I have offered Queen Hyathis." From the resulting surge of hate and fear I'm going to assume that she's a committed loyalist. "Considering that the Orange Lantern Corps has no interest in who rules Thanagar."

"The Ruling Council is the leadership of the thanagarian people. Warriors and commanders of proven ability."

"The Ruling Council is the leadership of that part of the Thanagarian people who have neither scales nor symbiotic algae. But that's beside the point."

Though it might end up being the point. Some colonies, those which Queen Hyathis founded, which predate the Equalisation Plague or which have substantial alien populations, are more liberal than Thanagar itself and probably wouldn't be all that concerned with who rules the Empire. But the more recent colonies are militant, mostly or exclusively settled by ex-soldiers and very loyal to the Ruling Council. If Hyathis ever somehow took Thanagar she'd struggle to control them. On the other hand, they don't have much in the way of military shipbuilding so she might be able to get away with just ignoring them.

No, not our problem. Not unless the Reach collapses tomorrow and Lantern Dul heads home with that power ring, which seems unlikely.

"The point is: how do you motivate yourself to fight for a cause that isn't yours?"

"Because I don't want to die."

"Sure. Great for shields and evasion; I used that drive myself. But what more?"

"Not dying means killing the one who's trying to kill you. I don't have a problem attacking with-"

I raise my left hand and generate a construct bunch of flowers.

"-my ring… What?"

I change it to a small ball, then a trumpet, then an image of a Praexis Demon. "And how long does that take?"

"Once the fight starts? A second or two."

"And before the fight starts?"

"A little bit longer."

I nod, then shift my construct back into a trumpet. "Please make a mace, and destroy my construct."

She hesitates for a second, then holds out her right hand. The mace construct forms, but I note that the orange light making it up grows in intensity relatively slowly. There are a good few seconds where it's actually translucent.

"Haarh!"

She swings it downward, and my trumpet is unmoved and inviolate. The mace is nearly knocked out of her hand, but she keeps hold of it despite her surprise.

"I often don't want to fight. If we get into a serious fight during this conference you'll hear in my voice that I mostly sound disappointed that it was necessary."

Lantern Dul swings again, this time making my trumpet bob slightly in the air.

"This isn't a direct result of my bond with the Ophidian. Or my experience, the duration of my exposure to the orange light. It is due to my understanding of my own desires. I want you to be better-" Another swing, to no greater effect. "-Lanterns. I want us to succeed against the Reach, not-. Only slightly due to my pride, but mostly because I consider their civilisation to be an abomination. These aren't.. separate drives, competing drives."

Lantern Dul's mace glows brilliantly as she begins to feel insulted. This time, the trumpet cracks from the strike, then fragments and dissipates.

"Well done. They aren't separate, competing drives. I have one drive; to me the universe just as hard as I can. I didn't care about the trumpet. I cared about the point I was making with it. And that's why it was strong. So, Lantern Dul, I'm afraid that if you wish to improve you'll need to go a little beyond short term survival as a source of motivation."

She nods, dismissing her mace. "What do you suggest?"

"If they are not stopped then the Reach will in time do to Thanagar what they've done to every world they've overtaken. And every world they take makes it more likely that they'll eventually manage to do that. We, here, are the best chance this galaxy has of stopping them. And if that's a little grand, consider that you have a chance to master a tool which no Thanagarian has before you. Let your pride empower you. And if you haven't already, I really do recommend taking up the meditation I described in my initial briefing document."

"I will examine it in more detail, Illustres."

And now the fun one. "Lantern Drusa. Who as far as I can see picked up a ring because it was on offer and you're not an idiot."

She's watching my face somewhat guardedly. And-.

"Good effort, but while telepaths would have difficulty seeing through… That's… Base fifteen planar physics, isn't it? It doesn't do a thing to stop me. You'd need some sort of magic defence. Or complete control of your emotions, and not merely their expression."

"I will remember that." She breathes out, and… Her emotional resonances dim noticeably.

"Oh, good control there. But I'm still a little concerned about your power output. Was I correct in my belief that you took the ring simply because it was there?"

"It takes up less space than the multi-tool, computer, personal force field and gun it replaced. Its peak output is greater…"

"But only if you're motivated. Having reached this, what do you now strive for?" I give her a moment, but she doesn't respond. "Your home civilisation is stuck behind the catagenesis barrier, isn't it? Not enough fossil fuels for widespread industrial development?"

"That is correct."

I narrow my eyes, getting snapshots of her life to date.

"No family since you left. No body language you could understand, no one you could trust. You didn't even need a city." I shrug. "So you work alone where possible, or with mercenaries of proven dependability where not. You value your reputation for practical reasons, no lasting friendships… Just.. surviving. Which is a problem. Tell me, what's a valuable metal on your homeworld? Gold? Platinum? Titanium?"

I raise my hands to the sides and let coins of various metals rain down, clattering to rest on the deck.

"You desire material security because it has served you well so far."

For the first time her eyes leave my face as she can't help but watch the coins.

"But even a moderately competent Lantern could mine out your home system's asteroids in a few weeks. A competent Lantern could transmute enough metal to cover their living expenses more or less indefinitely. Depending on market conditions." I close my hands, cutting off the stream of coins. "You want a thing which you needed but which you no longer need, as my species hungers for the fat giving us coronary heart disease. Without a cause, a.. need of your own, you will not develop further. I strongly encourage you to work at that."

back

Foundation 14

next

23rd December

13:02 GMT

I look over to where Lantern Dul is flying through space a short distance from me.

"You do know that you don't need to face the thing you're flying toward, don't you? That as far as your ring is concerned the direction you're facing makes no difference?"

She flexes her wings. "The nth metal in my wings allows me to alter gravity. I can fly without an atmosphere. And this pose minimises my profile."

"Which is important in an infantry fire fight." I look towards the oncoming but still distant planet. "But if they can hit us from here, the fact that your profile is half what it would otherwise be is.. pretty irrelevant."

"Then I'm doing it because it feels natural."

"Remember what I said about maladaptive thought processes?"

She looks at me for a couple of seconds, then furls her wings and comes upright relative to our direction of travel. She immediately slows down.

"If you're having trouble, you could just create a construct thruster."

Construct wings extend themselves from her back in place of her natural ones, then dissipate as she focuses on her desire to improve her abilities. Her aura flaring, she accelerates to catch up with me.

"Lantern Drusa, you've lived in this region. Any advice you feel like giving me?"

"Make sure they pay up front and in cash."

"I'm not sure that I'm selling. And I'm afraid that we're looking for regular transfers rather than a one-off deposit."

"If they've come here, then they've already decided to agree with you. The Reach are opportunistic. Anyone whose defences are worse than the rest will be targeted first. Unless nearly everyone leaves without agreeing to your terms. If that happens, the Reach will target them first."

"I can imagine the campaign slogan now. 'We had not realised that we had so alienated so many of our neighbours, and we will do everything in our power to correct this oversight'. Followed by all of their neighbours ceasing to trade with them and a massive uptick in pirate activity."

Lantern R-K'rr flies past us, rolling as if to demonstrate to me that he doesn't need to watch where he's going. "No. Too direct. Too blatant. The Reach can afford to stop expanding in this region for a generation or more without it affecting their long term plans. I would expect generous trade pacts. Perhaps even delays in the assimilation of worlds on the far side of the border. The Reach have excellent social unity."

"And the worlds on this side of the border don't."

I can hear the disdain in Lantern Drusa's voice. I think that's the first actual emotion she's willingly revealed herself to be feeling.

I could check, but in the interests of encouraging her. "How far from the border is your homeworld?"

"It's already on the other side. The only reason that the Reach haven't already taken it is that the predicted returns are too low. The economy is too primitive for them to care."

"That sounds a little out of character. It's not as if they've mined out all of the systems they already control."

R-K'rr comes to a relative stop in front of me. "Few stellar empires are 'efficient' in their use of space. The methods which the Reach use for incorporating societies into their empire without breaking their treaty with the Guardians of the Universe work best when the victim's economy has reached a level of complexity beyond what Lantern Drusa's world possesses. I expect that they will begin uplift procedures once the surrounding worlds generate a sufficient surplus."

I nod. "And how long do you think it will be until that starts to happen?"

"Twenty years. Though that could vary greatly depending on what we achieve here. The uplift itself will most likely involve a clique of Reach-affiliated technocrats sharing the benefits of Reach knowledge, and in doing so becoming the dominant political force on the planet. Previously, Darkstars have attempted to disrupt such attempts by supporting nationalist-isolationist elements to allow them to maintain technological parity. We discovered that technique to be unreliable, as the conflict itself drives the societal integration and mutual dependency which the Reach seek."

I nod, looking at our destination. The warships which have escorted the diplomatic transports here will be waiting on the edge of the system. The hosts are Controller-friendly, but several of the guests aren't. Or aren't other-guest friendly. It would only take one Reach stooge with access to the fire controls of a capital ship to do an awful lot of damage, both physically and politically.

A quick comparison between my 'expected' list and the designs of ship I can actually see suggests that almost everyone we're expecting has arrived. About half are already in orbit, while the rest are slowly chugging their way through the interdicted zone under local escort.

"Lantern Drusa, how would you handle it?"

"If the Reach want to waste resources assimilating a world with no industry, let them. It will probably make our life easier."

Lantern Dul twists to face the ship, where Lantern Drusa and Alan are taking it easy. "How can you say that about your home?"

"Easily. It means nothing to me."

"That's disgus-."

"Orange Lantern, Lantern Dul. If it means nothing to her then it means nothing to her." The patterns of light inside Lantern Dul indicate a complete failure to grok that idea at any level. "Lantern Drusa, it isn't my place to tell you what you should or shouldn't want. But unless you want something, you will permanently be limited to weak constructs."

"I was planning on doing technological analysis rather than front line combat. I don't need high power to do that."

"Because you don't need a power ring to do technical analysis in a safe laboratory. If you have the aptitude, you'll most likely be transferred. From the Corps' point of view, the only reason it's worth giving you a power ring is if you need to work fast or under fire. Otherwise, you might as well join the fleet's technical division."

"Illustres." The ship's communications officer isn't privy to the ongoing inter-Lantern conversation. And to be honest I'm not sure what sort of situation would require that they-. "A small flotilla of gordanian ships have entered the system."

"They're a long way from home. Which clan?"

"'Unending Conquest'. Do you know them?"

Unending Conquest. Doesn't ring any bells, and a quick check of the ring's database reveals nothing. Not that that necessarily means anything. Gordanian clans do break up sometimes, or form as gordanians who've drifted away from their clans unify. "No. And if they're here with gordanian technology then they left Vega well before I arrived there. Were they invited?"

"Not specifically, though this meeting was advertised as being open to all concerned parties."

"If I had to guess, I'd say they were here to tender for mercenary work. I don't see that as being a problem for us. What did Administrator Prigatz say?"

A quiet chime, and a new voice. "I said to ask you. I've never met a gordanian before. But I agree, one more group of mercenaries shouldn't be a problem."

"It's interesting, though. I'll try and find out how they got here."

"No. Leave that for my people. You should focus on impressing our allies."

"As you prefer."

I suppose I should make a big entrance. I wonder what would be most effective?

back

Foundation 15

next

23rd December

13:27 GMT

"Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and such other variations as nature or nurture have created."

Thick strands of orange light glow from me, fat and shimmering in a way which reminds me of the proton beams from the Ghostbusters films. No, the animated series. I think I.. only watched the films once each, whereas I must have watched dozens of episodes of the series growing up.

And on the far end of each strand is a replica of the capital ship next to it.

A hollow one, of course, but since they're opaque I doubt that anyone other than me knows that. From the gobsmacked expression on her face I'm certainly confident that Lantern Dul doesn't.

"This demonstration of the potential output of an orange power ring comes on behalf of me, the Illustres of the Orange Lantern Corps. In case you're wondering how many Lanterns I have working on this-"

One battleship turns its turrets towards its doppelgänger, and I have my construct copy the action.

"-demonstration, I will tell you. One. This is just me. Two rings, but that's just to extend my battery life."

Leaving the surface of the planet I see a twinkle of extraordinarily focused will. Ah, it seems that Lantern K'ryssma is joining us.

"And while I'm afraid that my colleagues aren't yet as capable as I am-" Okay, who designs a ship with that many crenellations? "-I've only actually been doing this for a year and a half. Part of the compact we're going to try to interest you in today involves giving your citizens rings like the ones I'm using to do this."

Complete, complete, complete…

I fire the construct ships' engines.

"The Green Lantern Corps is hampered in effectively resisting the Reach in two ways. Firstly, they simply cannot make rings fast enough to expand their Corps. We do not have that problem. We have a reserve of several thousand rings, and we're producing more constantly. And we want new recruits. Oh, we'll need you to do a certain amount of psychometric testing, there's no point in us trying to train someone who won't be able to cope. But you have between you a population about fifty million times that of the worlds we've been limited to recruiting from so far. And though there are already hundreds of Orange Lanterns, I want to make that thousands."

"Secondly, their existing treaty makes them powerless to resist the forms of conquest which the Reach is currently using. We don't intend to wait for them to conquer the minds of all those who oppose them."

Lantern K'ryssma slows as she gets closer. She doesn't seem too concerned about me, but Lantern Dul and Lantern R-K'rr warrant a second look. Ah yes. So far no Guardian has taken up Hinon's offer of a tour. And -just a hint of yellow, well contained and controlled- she knows that Guardians aren't immune to assimilation.

"And I assure you that it is very much-" All of my construct ships roll, guns pointed away from anything fragile. "-in your interests to make that you don't either."

Come on, grande finale. And this actually is going to stretch me. Another tendril reaches out.

I need to convince them of the power of power rings relative to the opposition. This is the best chance of realising my objective, of halting the Reach at a border we can reinforce. And I kind of want to show the Green Honour Guard Lantern what I can do that none of hers can.

Our Corps is the best.

And when we pull this off, no one is ever going to forget it.

The last tendril grows larger, flying out into space before generating a Reach battleship construct. Not one of those little cruisers or battle cruisers they send out to the Periphery to 'protect' trade convoys or 'deter pirates'. No. One of the big and terrifying ones they keep back with their reserve fleets firmly in Reach territory because they don't trust anyone but their own species to go anywhere near them. And because they take a stupid amount of resource to build and maintain.

And all of the construct guns that can lock on and fire.

This is just a demonstration, so I'm not actually simulating the exact weapon profiles, shields or armour. If these ships fired at this range in normal combat conditions the battleship's shields would… Well, they'd feel it a bit, but it would have already destroyed them before they got anything like this close. But I think that my simulated hull breaches and internal explosions give a rather better impression.

I simulate an uncontrolled core breach, then dismiss my-

Warning: low power. Nine percent remaining.

-constructs. "We usually encourage Lanterns to create things a little smaller than that." But I'll be fine for the rest of this talk. "My colleague Lantern R-K'rr told me earlier that he's occasionally run into difficulty with negotiators who aren't convinced -despite its words- that Maltus is prepared to pull its weight. This is Maltus pulling its weight. In a few hours my colleagues are going to start talking nuts and bolts with you; the ship designs they want to build, what they'd like each of you to contribute. And I'm afraid that this is one of those investments that will probably never show a profit."

"But it will prevent a rather significant loss. And I'm afraid to say that we have current information on that too. I'll be available later today if any of you have any questions which you wish to put to me personally."

Though now I think about it… Ring, how many people are sending me questions directly right now?

In excess of ten thousand.

I roll my eyes. Eris help us if these people ever get Twunter.

"Thank you for your-"

Conquest!

What was-?

"-for your time."

Ring, end transmission.

Compliance.

"Orange Lantern-"

"Excuse me a moment."

I hold out my hands and call my lantern-. Alan's old personal lantern, not the pile of fail I made yesterday. Out from subspace.

"This is my cause, this is my fight.

Shine through the void with orange light.

I've claimed all within my sight.

To keep what is mine, that is my right."

Orange light blasts out of my lantern and into both rings.

"Charge at one hundred percent." / "Charge at one hundred percent."

Now what was it I felt..?

Conquest!

That way. And in that direction is..?

The ring shows me the Gordanian ship. Looks… Most Gordanian ships are designed to be places of habitation as well as combat ships. That's clearly a pure warship. Recognisably Gordanian, but… Definitely improved. It's… I can't scan it properly, not the interior. But judging by what I can get from the shields and from the look of the weapons… Not quite on a level with our ships, but better than anything else. Interesting. I think I'll need to prioritise them.

I smile at Lantern K'ryssma. "I'm sorry, you were saying?"

"I wanted to wish you success. And to inform you that they want me to examine every agreement you strike in order to ensure that you are treating honestly with these people."

"An excellent idea. In fact, why don't you come back to Maltus with us once this is over? You can see everything first hand."

back

Foundation 16

next

23rd December

16:39 GMT

"Lantern."

That's a fortuitous time-saving. I look up at the trio of large and.. surprisingly well-dressed gordanians in front of me. The two at the back are muscle, but they're clearly 'diplomatic close protection' rather than 'space barbarian'. Their loosely-fitting clothing covers light body armour and their only weapons are side arms. The larger ships that were giving me the headache have remained at an acceptable distance, and their diplomatic yacht looked like something the Eldar would have built.

The man talking to me isn't armed with anything more dangerous than a small knife. Small by gordanian standards, a meat cleaver by human standards. He's also got what are either neural-linked equipment or actual cybernetic augmetics; a metal collar partially disguised by his hood which glows in patterns matched by the stationary ones on his robes and bracers. That's interesting. They require a much higher level of technical sophistication than gordanian clans can usually maintain.

"Ambassador. Pleased to meet you."

I bring my fists together in front of my chest and then extend them towards him. gordanians do have a formal-polite greeting, it's just rather fallen out of use as Vega became more violent. A slight flaring of his nostrils as the ambassador is mildly surprised but he mirrors my gesture, gently bumping his fists against mine. Between gordanians this is usually done with a bit of force but it looks like he's making an accommodation for the fragile-looking alien.

"I'm afraid I didn't see your name on the guest list. Are you one of your clan's contract negotiators?"

"No. I am Councillor Vayneek. I am the personal representative of our grand clan chief."

The appellation 'grand' implies that whoever it is has conquered other clans and brought them under his banner. Each clan would still have its own chief, who would in turn pay homage to him. "Not seneschal?"

He chuckle-rumbles. "No, no. No one fights our clan chief. I give advice, or represent him when he's busy."

"I wasn't aware that there was a gordanian presence in this region."

"Hm. Well, if you know us from Vega you can understand why we were curious about the Beast of Okaara taking a holiday."

"The Beast of Okaara has been disarmed and is sitting in a cell on Maltus. The rest of us are much better adjusted."

"Ah. Your work?"

"Not my sole work, though I was a substantial actor."

"Then you were the Lantern who helped make the peace conference work." I nod. "Yes, a few members of my clan were on the planet at the time. They reported your presence."

Did I-? Oh, the bar. Yes, now that I think about it, the three yellow line and a white blob emblem does look a little like the decoration Councillor Vayneek is wearing.

"Are you just here to see me, then?"

"We do want better information on you than we presently possess. But, no. Essentially, we're looking for worlds to settle."

"I'm afraid that most of the easily habitable ones in the region have been used by the Controllers for resettling refugees. And when I say 'easily'-."

He makes the hiss-cough noise that gordanians use to signal empathic understanding. "Habitable doesn't mean hospitable. No, we were going to enquire about worlds in Reach space. When you go on the offensive. Who gets them?" Huh. Hadn't really-. "Your Controllers don't seem interested in expanding. Their… Insectoid followers haven't spread out."

Ring, review stated policy?

"Worlds which were previously owned by species under the protection of the Controllers will be returned to them where possible. Worlds with surviving natives will be placed under their care… Once their civilisations have been cleansed of Reach influence."

"As expected. And the uninhabited worlds?"

"In inhabited systems, that will be for the locals to decide. Though given the population fall off that happens when the Reach conquer a place I imagine that they'll be putting mining or.. whatever, out to tender. Uninhabited systems… We don't have a firm view about what should happen to them. That's part of what the delegates to this conference will discuss."

If they're a fleet based clan, giving them a few systems that no one else really wants might be just the ticket. They can mine gas giants and moons, trade their surplus and perhaps build themselves a habitat.

"And further in?"

"Further in?"

"Worlds inhabited only by the Reach themselves. Clearly, they are too technologically sophisticated and too socially unified to be left to their own devices. I expect that your people will want revenge for the Reach's actions toward them. What are your intentions? Total depopulation? Exile? Client status?"

"I imagine that will be up for debate as well. None of the worlds that we would be targeting during early offensives have substantial Reach populations, so I imagine that any survivors would either be imprisoned until the end of the war or exiled back to the Reach proper."

"Is it your intent that there will still be a Reach proper?"

"The Reach covers a very large area of space. Killing everyone in it is impractical."

"Not what I expected to hear from the man who killed every Citadelian in existence."

"I didn't kill every single one. Just most of them. Once they fell below the level at which they presented an unmanageable threat to my allies there was no longer any purpose in harsher measures. Are you asking because you want their worlds?"

"I asked because I want to know whether we'll have to fight you for them. There are… Certain people, Green Lanterns amongst them, who will defend people like the Reach from punishment. As if their.. weakened status meant that the offences which led to the war did not occur."

"It's a tricky question, but to be honest…" I shake my head, and hope that his implant translates the gesture. "That's such a long way off that I imagine that it will be the topic of discussion for a very long time. I'm confident that a consensus will emerge long before we have to make such a decision."

"Whose consensus?"

"The consensus of everyone who agrees to participate in the campaign under the pact that we'll sign here."

"And if a… Non-signatory chose to conduct their own campaign?"

"There are at least seventy places currently fighting against Reach-affiliated traitors in their own civilisation. A few more where paramilitary groups are still active after a Reach take over. If they actually won, we'd applaud them." I shrug. "And if some other stellar power wanted to take a swing at the Reach, they'd be welcome to. Even somewhere like… Apokolips, for example. If two of our enemies want to spend their strength fighting against each other, who are we to stop them?"

"That is reassuring to know."

"Though… Fighting the Reach directly with a… Single clan fleet probably isn't the best idea. If you're seeking mercenary employment-."

"No, no." It's a little hard to tell, but I think he's… Pleased? "Thank you for telling me your position. It is reassuring to know that this campaign will not be marred by the pointless backstabbing that conflicts in Vega so often were."

"I'm happy to help. But -if you're planning any action- please let us know in advance. It would be so much easier if we can coordinate."

"I'll see what we can do."

back

Foundation 17

next

3rd December

18:03 GMT

I raise my eyebrows. "Well?"

Lantern Dul curls her wings slightly. "There are gordanians looking for work, but they're from the subservient clans. They're offering their standard warships for escort duties."

I shake my head. "Pointless. The Reach don't raid, and Lanterns and Darkstars are already annihilating their pirate proxies. We don't need anyone else on convoy escort duty because we won't be using their existing fleets for the assault and the Reach can't declare war on us without violating their treaty with the Guardians. Anyone else?"

"Some minor local private military groups. The only odd thing… Have you heard of the Citizenry?"

My face stills, my lips taking a decidedly downward turn. "A group of exclusively female murder-hobos. They're on my to-do list, they just haven't reached the top of it yet."

"I.. think I saw two Citizens in the bazaar. Their documentation said they were with another group, but they have a… Citizens have certain habits I've come to recognise."

"How?"

"They asked me to join them, once."

"You said no?"

"I'm not a cannibal. And I fight for higher goals than personal survival. I like having people around me I can depend-" She glances down at her ring as it glows brighter. "-u-pon."

"You should spend more time with Lantern Ragnar. I think you'd get on." Hm. I'd rather deal with Diana's crazy aunt sooner rather than later, but… Fifty percent chance that if she's even in the area she's going to attack the Reach to try and recruit female Beetles… And that's a big 'if'. "File a report, but unless we see warships or Empress Astarte herself they're not an imminent concern. Oh, and well done for gaining insight into your own motivations."

She lifts her left hand a little, staring at the ring on her middle finger.

"That's… It? That's all there is to it?"

"How do you mean? You were a part of the Thanagarian military for years. It's hardly surprising that having been born and raised in a heavily militaristic environment you're used to that lifestyle and regard it as normal and appropriate. The Orange Lantern Corps has a cause not contradictory to your core mission or the good of the Empire in a way that some of your previous temporary affiliations might have been…"

"I want to fight for a c-." Her ring surges again.

I smile kindly at her. "Say it."

"I want to fight for a cause, surrounded by people as devoted to it as I am. I don't want to have to watch my own back every moment, I want to know that I can finally depend on the people around me."

"Don't hang around with people if you wouldn't want to die in their company."

"That's… It? I just think about that and now I'm suddenly a stronger Lantern?"

I hold out my left hand and create a trumpet. "Give it a try. Earn your ring."

Her hand's moving before the mace is even fully formed. "HhhhhhhhhAYAH!"

She swings, her mace destroying my construct as she swipes it through the intervening space.

I smile broadly. "Better. And did you feel the difference?"

She looks at her brightly glowing mace. "Yes." She clenches her right fist, construct armour forming around her body. "I did."

"Good show. Try to keep that frame of mind. Lantern Drusa, anything suspicious in the planet's data networks?"

She shrugs disinterestedly. "Dozens of covert monitoring programs. Nothing special. And no indication that anyone's planning anything. I've already sent Administrator Prigatz everything I found on their negotiating positions."

"Odd. Do you think the Reach might have decided to just let this happen?"

"It's… Possible. An attack here would force all of the states on the periphery to work together. The Reach usually prefers to conquer with economic or political manipulation. They can't undermine or infiltrate an organisation that doesn't exist yet."

I snort quietly, nodding as I do so. "You're right. I think I just got too used to Vega." Hm. "Everyone on the periphery is briefed on Reach biomodification and indoctrination techniques. If they've slipped something past our filters, then it's too subtle to change overt behaviour. Lantern R-K'rr, anyone acting outside of their usual manners?"

"Teacher, not to a noteworthy degree. Today has mostly involved Administrator Prigatz passing out information for the delegates' consideration. The true negotiations will begin tomorrow."

I close my eyes for a moment, then turn my head in the approximate direction of the Reach homeworld and look at the desires emanating from that direction. I don't get any detail, just a general sense of Reachiness. Not like anything I've felt flying around this city.

"Then perhaps we'll be fortunate. Any chance we'll have an agreement by the end of tomorrow?"

"Teacher, it is doubtful. Do you think that the odds of us being attacked will increase?"

"No, but there's a major festival on my homeworld the day after next and I'd like to be able to go back for it. And my girlfriend's doing her Darkstar entry assessment and I'll have to fly her back… Clarissi Dox finally called me in for something, I don't really want to disappear after a couple of days, but…"

Lantern Dul frowns for a moment, then shrugs. "I doubt you need to be here all the time. And your file says that you can teleport instantly from anywhere."

"True."

I step out

and back again just behind her to demonstrate. "But other members of the Corps can't. I think it would be unprofessional to treat myself as a special case. And while I can teleport anywhere from anywhere, Jade can't. If I got recalled during the return trip I'd have to dump her in interstellar space. And while she's usually fairly understanding I think that would put me in the dog house."

Lantern Dul twists her right wing tip slightly. "Why not ask Lantern Scott to escort her and join her once the festival begins?"

"Because he's a lot slower than me. I don't know how much long ranged ring flying you've been doing, but I've always found it kind of-."

For a moment there's a discordant note in the patterns of desire around us, as if a desperate need suddenly appeared and then vanished again. Too fast for me to characterise it or precisely locate it. That way, but…

"Did any of you feel that?"

Blank looks from Dul and R-K'rr. Drusa shakes her head, her eyes glowing orange as she accesses the planet's communications network. "No reports of anything significant. What did you feel?"

"An out of place desire." I rise in the air and head for the exit. "Follow me. We're investigating."

back

Foundation 18

next

23rd December

18:06 GMT

Flying over the city-. Ring, I didn't think to ask. What's it called?

Youlsi.

Flying over the centre of the city of Youlsi, I get my first look at the native species away from the diplomatic… I think that keep is the right term. Possibly due to local hostilities the buildings appear to be organised into clusters of fortified domes. The city as a whole has defence shields and I can see that quite a lot of more recent construction has happened with only token fortification attempts. But the whole thing suggests a very defensive-militaristic attitude.

Which is fine for our purposes, I suppose.

The locals are lilac-skinned humanoids, differing from the baseline form in the size of their fingers and toes. Their distant ancestors were burrowers rather than tree-dwellers, and their limbs still bear the signs of having been digging implements. Civilian traffic is ground bound or subterranean, and the diplomatic protection gunships flash… Brown lights at us to show that we're clear to depart.

"Teacher, what are we looking for?"

"I'm not sure. Something out of place. Something that shouldn't be there."

Empathic vision shows… A fairly typical blend of humanoid desires. Ah, the other reason for the domes is that low level agoraphobia is pretty common amongst the local population. That explains the broad-brimmed hats and wide awnings.

Lantern Dul's ring lights up as she waves it in an arc. "I'm not detecting any weapon fire."

Lantern Drusa switches from monitoring local news broadcasts to monitoring security feeds. She makes momentary eye contact with me and shakes her head.

Ring, any unusual radiation patterns, or… Anything like that?

Typical patterns for this region not known. No obvious danger signs detected.

"Lantern R-K'rr, what sort of use do these people make of civilian teleportation?"

"Teacher, they make use of large platforms for point to point travel. They use them for bulk intercity transportation. Personal teleportation is virtually unknown."

"How 'virtually' is virtually?"

"The technology is not considered to be safe. Certain government officials have recall devices with which they may be evacuated if they are in danger. Certain wealthy individuals are known to use a similar system. Point to point teleportation is unknown."

"Ring, scan for known teleportation residues and.. magic."

Lantern Dul frowns. "Magic?"

"I know this world is thaumically near-inert, but if something squirrelly is happening magic is a possibility that it's worth eliminating."

"I didn't think power rings could detect magic."

"Orange power rings can assimilate things. Not just people, but-. Lantern Drusa saw me steal Lantern Zartok's construct?" Lantern Dul looks at her and gets a distracted nod. "You can drain energy without using constructs just as a function of the orange light. And once you've learned the feel of it-"

"No unexpected teleportation residues found. No significant 'magic' energy found."

"-you can detect it."

"Tea.. cher..?" All Lantern R-K'rr's eyes focus on me. "'Magic'?"

Lantern Dul nods. "Thanagarians didn't used to believe in it either. Some of my people still insist Hyathis uses plant-based biotechnology."

"And they're not precisely wrong… Any more than they would be wrong to say that the Seven Devils created nth metal with advanced metallurgy. It's just that-."

"The Seven Devils are real?" Lantern Dul stares at me, her eyes locked onto-. Onto my throat, actually. Huh. Her body language has adapted to non-thanagarian humanoids so much that I haven't needed my ring to interpret for me. But that is a thanagarian sign of shock and perceived threat.

"I'm not sure whether 'are' or 'were' is appropriate, but yes, to the best of my knowledge, at some point in Thanagar's past, they lived there. It's a shame there's nothing left of your magic traditions, really."

But that's not what happened here. Using magic to teleport to a place where magic is weak is supposed to be near-impossible. Sephtian seemed to think that it should be possible via the Dreaming, but that no Atlantean thaumaturgist knew enough about the place to even begin to work out a technique. An enchanted marker stone might work, but… Again, not detecting any magic.

"I have something." I turn my attention to Lantern Drusa. "Members of a species who weren't invited to the conference and don't live in this region are inside Yannakaan dome."

"Tourists?"

"No visa was granted and there are no immigration records."

"It's a start. Got a pictu-" She turns her construct-screen around. "-re?"

Ah. Oh dear.

I'll say this for qwardians, they're not body shy. The four hulking brutes with him are mutant-slaves, like the ones I saw when I visited their homeworld. They're actually wearing armour and equipment harnesses this time, so I'm going to assume at least a basic intelligence.

"Dul, alert city authorities. Encourage them to quietly evacuate that dome. R-K'rr, inform Administrator Prigatz. Drusa, with me."

I fly at high speed in the direction of Yannakaan dome. Scanning… No, I can't get them, though under the circumstances I'm sure that city authorities will forgive me hijacking their internal monitoring equipment. They're just walking through the dome's main thoroughfare like they own the place. Well, he's walking like he owns the place. The warrior slaves are just sort of trudging along behind him. The locals are giving them space, but they don't seem particularly worried.

Ring, contact Kalmin.

Compliance.

"What?"

That's not coming from my rings, but it's definitely his voice.

"Kalmin, a qward-. A q'ardajin party has appeared at the treaty conference. Do you recognise his face?"

Ring, transmit image.

Compliance.

"The clone-slaves are a new model. Varnathon's idea, no doubt. Such creatures have no place in the field. Their leader… He appears to have had further work done, but his name is St'nlli. He was altered by our mastermedics to serve as a spy on your home world, then augmented further once his original mission was completed. The last time I saw him he had mind controlled Lantern Jordan before one of the other Green Lanterns teleported him somewhere in order to remove him from the field."

"What can he do?"

"Superq'ardajin strength, endurance, speed and force manipulation. He can fly at will, and turn the allies of those around him into enemies. It is possible that he has been augmented further. I haven't seen him since that day."

"And his character?"

"Proud and loyal. An excellent warrior. If only he served another master."

"Thank you. I'll see what I can do about that."

back

Foundation 19

next

23rd December

18:10 GMT

The dome is just ahead, and there's still no panic inside.

"Evacuation is in progress. Local police are communicating that they are triggering a staged fire alert."

I nod. "Pass on my thanks."

"Are these men the same species as Kalmin?"

I nod. "Yes. More or less. Qwardians aren't precious about biological alterations, though it's not a particularly popular speciality amongst the Weaponer class."

"I read your report on your mission to Qward." She shakes her head, her environmental shield briefly dimming. "I am not ready to fight Thunderers."

"Qwardians are not a subtle people. When they attack, they do so with overwhelming power. If there were Thunderers here, then the planet would already be covered in qwa-matter detonations." I shrug. "I don't know why they're sending a small force. Kalmin doesn't respect his successor, but I get the impression that he's repositioning his people as arms merchants rather than destroyers and conquerors. I doubt that they're here to shop, but they might just want to sell us guns."

"And if he is here to fight?"

"Since it's just a small group, this isn't an invasion. So he's either here to talk or this is a matter of personal pride. He… Might have been to my homeworld before, but I've never met him. And Maltus hasn't had direct contact with Qward… Ever. I can't predict what he'll do until I talk to him. If we fight, your job will be to corral his escort until I can defeat or kill him."

"Lantern Dul is-."

"Thanagarians are resistant to telepathy due to the nth metal in their bodies, but you and I are the only Lanterns on this planet-." Ah. "One moment. Ring, contact Lantern K'ryssma."

"Compliance."

"Probably the only Lanterns on this planet who are trained to resist telepathy. Telepathy is a really good way of shutting down power rings, even if he can't manipulate our minds in other ways." I look her over as we head toward the nearest dome entrance. "Do you have armour or a personal force field emitter?"

"I'm wearing them."

I frown and-. Oh. A weak plasmic field emitter and some carbon nanotube plates. "Not a good time now, but we're probably going to need to upgrade your equipment sooner rather than later. Ring, armour."

My heavy powered exoskeleton appears around me, my vision wavering for a moment as the pickups stabilise my visual field.

"I prefer subtle-." I go invisible and then phase out. She blinks, then I phase back in.

My ring blinks. "Answer."

Lantern K'ryssma's head appears over my ring as I become visible once more. "Yes, Illustres?"

"A small group of Qwardians have appeared. Their leader is called St'nlli, and apparently he's telepathic. I'm about to confront him. Are you trained to resist telepathic intrusion?"

"No. You should evacuate-."

"Already doing that. If you're available, I'd appreciate it if you'd come to our location and serve as rearguard."

"I will be there shortly."

Someone in uniform -a local police officer- is waving a stream of evacuees away from the entrance we're approaching. I wave, then fly in through the open gates at maximum safe speed. The steady stream of locals parts around me but there isn't really an 'open' space in here, just larger tunnels. Internal monitoring shows me the Qwardians onward and to the left and I'm not just appearing because Qward has known for generations how to disrupt Lantern FTL.

Ring, grab a local screen and transmit.

Compliance.

"Mister St'nlli, what can I do for you?"

I watch him come to a halt and turn to face the public information display. "You can deliver to me the Green Lantern of Earth."

"Which one? There are four."

"The most experienced."

"I can call him, but it might take him a while to get here. Is there something I can do for you in-?"

"You, you are human as well. And a Lantern. I will kill you to draw him out!"

"We're not exactly-" The stream of evacuees falls off as we move into a larger tunnel, and I get enough space to accelerate further. "-close."

"I care not. Tell me your location or I begin killing these simpletons."

He raises his right hand and a wafting yellow energy field forms around it. His immediate surroundings are.. still somewhat occupied. The people there are beginning to leave, but it looks like local fire drills involve people leaving when they're told to and not before.

I generate a railgun construct and load a crumbler round. "Why are you here?"

"I was told there was a human Lantern here." He points his hand at a nearby wall and makes a pulling gesture. His aura immediately jumps to the wall and rips it apart. No one there.

"By whom?"

"It is of no significance. I exist to kill Lanterns! Now-."

My crumbler round covers the intervening distance with a sonic boom, striking him directly in the chest-. And being destroyed by his aura. He looks around, crouching slightly as I reload with tungsten and fire a volley from my position on the far side of the tunnel.

Ring, tell the police to evacuate now.

Compli-

**DESTROY ALL!**

-ance.

Ugh. Not a bad mental compulsion, but between-.

St'nlli bats my shots aside with his yellow aura and leaps from the gantry on the far side of the tunnel, shooting toward me through the air at high speed. Solid shots ineffective. I discard the railgun and form a yellow laser and a cold gun. The laser hits his bare chest and does little while the cold beam-

"Weak!"

-is somehow neutralised by his aura.

Then he punches me, his kinetic energy being easily absorbed by my kinetic barrier. He actually stops dead for a moment, and I use the opportunity to trigger my gauntlet's crumbler effect and slam both palms into his bare chest. His aura wavers for a moment and then turns red-.

I smell myself burning for half a second before I phase, fly left as fast as I can and then phase in, loading phasic rounds into my new railgun even as he turns to face me with a snarl.

back

Foundation 20

next

23rd December

18:13 GMT

Two hits, one creating a breach in his glowing red aura and the second impacting on his skin… To no observable effect. He gestures with his right hand and the aura leaps toward my railgun. Where it touches, the construct melts away into an amorphous blob of orange light, the energy remaining present but losing cohesion.

"Lantern Drusa."

Can't reform the gun, so I just draw the energy back into my rings and fire it at him. No effect. Construct battering ram, no effect. X-ionised-.

He swipes his arm right andagghr. A prickling sensation I know to be the result of my rings nullifying extreme pain is coming from every part of my body, my environmental shield-.

The aura turns yellow as he gestures down and I'm sent flying into the floor of the tunnel! D-AH! My kinetic shield fails to trigger -I think the emitters have been destroyed- and my environmental shield is gone. Re-establish.

"Kill his-"

Construct shield seems pointless, given his ability to neutralise constructs. I phase, dropping through the floor of the tunnel before he can reach me again. Utility tunnel should be yes. I drop phase, take a frisbee-sized metal disc out of subspace and begin x-ionising it.

"-retinue but do not-"

Rock explodes, the side of the utility tunnel facing the main tunnel flying away in the grip of St'nlli's yellow aura. Dust sticks around, so his grip isn't flawless.

"-engage directly. Dul and R-K'rr-"

I dash back, phase again and shoot upward through the rock. I've misjudged his position slightly and rather than blindside him I come out in the corner of his eye. He hurls his avalanche my way as I phase back in.

"-assist the evacuation, then act as-"

The first few lumps of stone are harmlessly stopped or turned aside by my newly repaired kinetic barrier.

"-backstops in case they try to-"

Then the red aura turns back on and I hear a quiet fizz sound as my kinetic barrier fails. I start repairing it immediately, but I'm encased in semi-molten rock before the field can come back up. The external surface of my armour is heating up, but I designed it for this sort of punishment. Approximately speaking. Molten rock isn't anything like as hot as some of the weapons I tested on it.

"-leave the area."

Can't see St'nlli himself, but his slaves have pale desires I can use to navigate.

I step out

and then back in a little way down the tunnel from him as the sphere of rubble he was using to crush me compresses inward. I feel Lantern Drusa move cautiously through cover some distance down the main tunnel with her environmental shield turned well down. St'nlli's bodyguard -assuming that they aren't just porters- are lumbering away in pairs. Lantern Drusa appears willing to do the job, but I suppose I shouldn't expect enthusiasm at this early stage.

"Teacher, I obey." / "Yes, Illustres!"

This time I make four railguns and immediately have them fire a barrage of phasic rounds. St'nlli winces as his barrier wavers, dropping the gelatinous rubble ball and orientating himself toward me. Load an x-ioniser spike in place of a phasic round now-.

"Ah!"

Damn it! He switched his aura back to yellow and dodged aside just as I fired! It doesn't.. look like the Qwardian scientists who modified him found a way to add rapid regeneration to the mix, but the shallow cut to his chest and a slightly deeper one to his left arm aren't even disabling injuries. He's bleeding, but-. Okay, restore kinetic barrier.

He checks his wound, dull red blood dripping from the cut on his arm. "Clever." His aura changes colour to.. grey..? And my phasic rounds stop making an impact. Phase disruptor, but if it's more or less line of sight like the others… Just have to watch the colour. I switch to solid shots-.

He covers the distance between us as I blink, his fists slamming into my newly recreated kinetic barrier twice before he switches his barrier back to red and destroys it! My own clumsy swings are turned aside easily -he's a lot faster than me- and he continues battering me even as I fly backwards, jerking left and right in a frantic attempt to find space-. Yes! He jinked the wrong way! Vertigo inducer!

He flies past me, gripping his head as he slams into one of the balconies along the tunnel side and smashes through it! Restore kinetic barrier again, construct armour, keep the inducer-.

His aura shifts back to yellow as he climbs to his feet, wiping the vomit from his mouth with his uninjured arm. Not affected any more. Fine, program vertigo inducers for remote activation, scatter them around using filaments, switch to… Don't want to repeat myself, try a laser instead but make it look like a railgun. Use a bit more power than the first time since I know it's going to penetrate-.

And miss as he lunges for me again cold field! No good! It looks like the yellow form of his aura doesn't transmit heat! This time he rains punches down on my faceplate, though with his aura still on yellow mode it doesn't do quite the damage his red mode did. I grab his left forearm with both hands as he tries to get a grip, turn the crumble effect up to maximum and wrench it in an attempt to throw him off! He turns his aura red-

**KILL ALL AROUND YOU!**

-and the fingers of his right hand rip through my construct armour and environmental shield to leave melted finger marks on my armour in the second before I remote trigger my vertigo inducers and hurl him aside! He has the wherewithal to go yellow again, but he doesn't get control of his momentum back fast enough to evade my laser construct!

"Eh."

Minor burn, right in the middle of his chest. I pour it on, causing angry welts to appear as the beam moves over his chest. He brings his hands together, lumps of rubble coming together to form a barrier in front of him.

"Progress report."

"Teacher, the dome is completely evacuated. Local military units are on stand by. Do you require aid?"

"No. Drusa?"

"One pair dead. The last pair are returning."

"Good work."

I create a singularity beam projector construct and send it down toward the base of the tunnel. This will go straight through the walls and I don't want to hit anyone I'm not aiming at. Nothing in.. space above us. Military aircraft are keeping low, good.

External. "Mister St'nlli, could I persuade you to surrender? We could use a man of your abilitie-."

His rubble shield blasts towards me, a quick but intense flicker of red turning it liquid! I activate the vertigo inducers at the same time as generating a cold field in front of me and flying backwards away from the oncoming mass. His aura goes back to yellow almost immediately, but as the magma reaches my cold field it flash freezes and explodes! He loses his grip and I take a shot with the singularity beam. I.. think I hit, but between his ring resistance and the-.

"Warning. Antimatter transition detected."

Damn it! I abandon all other constructs in favour of clearing my sight lines, and-.

Ugh! His two remaining henchmen grab me, grappling in an attempt to rip my ring arms off! My armour creaks from their raw power, but they aren't disrupting my constructs. The x-ionised disc I didn't get to use on St'nlli floats up behind the one on my right before lunging in through his neck! His head flies free in a burst of high pressure blood and I palm-punch the slave on my left with my right crumbler gauntlet! His face is burned down to the skull and his grip goes slack, causing his dying body to drop to the ground beneath us.

I look up, but St'nlli has made good his escape.

back

Foundation 21

next

23rd December

19:33 GMT

I see Dox sigh as he flies past me and lands next to the point where St'nlli vanished. He doesn't make eye contact with me, and I'd bet that he didn't make eye contact with anyone else on his way in here. Translucent orange light strobes out from his outstretched right arm, his eyes flashing orange as he takes in the data.

He lowers his arm. "Anti-matter transfer. You can't block those."

I nod. "I don't know how to block them. Do you want me to attempt pursuit? I could use a bit more brute force in a place we weren't using for a meeting."

His eyes narrow slightly as he stares at the wall, his mind clearly elsewhere. "No. It would almost certainly be ship-based, and it would have been moved after he returned. Second and third most likely possibilities involve it being planet-based but abandoned or in a secure and heavily trapped facility."

"Can we stop them doing that again?"

"Yes." He turns away from the site and rises into the air, heading back towards the entrance. I take off after him. "I will notify Administrator Prigatz to add anti-matter transfer jammers to our offer. Send him a full recording of your fight to help him make his point."

"Yes, sir. Do you have any observations about the way in which I conducted myself?"

"You should have used the singularity projector as soon as you determined that he was highly resistant to your railgun rounds, rather than attempted to use x-ionised blade weapons or lasers."

"I thought that it might worry people. The x-ray discharges are fairly distinctive…"

"If we were a civil peacekeeping organisation, you would be right. We are not. We are a military organisation. These people will be far happier knowing that we can reliably kill their enemies than they will knowing that we would put them in danger to keep those enemies alive."

"I had ordered an evacuation."

"Yes." He stops and turns in the air to face me. "Overseeing the training of other Lanterns has taught me that a mildly sub-optimal approach such as what you attempted here is significantly preferable to what most of our Lanterns would have done. I am not.. substantially displeased with how you conducted yourself."

I blink. Gosh. "I will be sure to take your instructions in the spirit in which they are intended."

He hesitates for a half-second. "Good."

"On a personal note-."

"Director Jeddigar informed me before I left that Jade Nguyen passed her assessment. Obviously, coming from a technologically primitive civilisation she will require substantial retraining before she can be deployed in the field. Though her practical experience will save time in other areas."

I smile. I didn't doubt it, but it's good to have confirmation. "I'm glad to hear it, but actually-."

"Christmas." He nods. "Given the positive impression you made today, I see little difficulty in allowing you to return to Earth for… How long?"

"Three days would cover my social obligations."

"Your presence should not be essential during that time. Return here afterwards."

"Thank you, but that wasn't actually what I was referring to."

A faint frown. "What was?"

"You've studied my world. You know that we have a small number of people who can create technology generations more advanced than anything we should have. One of these scientists has asked to be put in contact with you."

"That's hardly efficient. If they wish to trade resources they can do so through you."

"I.. think they want to talk to someone who understands what they're doing rather better than I do. Particularly the really advanced social science stuff." I take Georgia Sivana's communicator out of subspace and offer it to him. "Quantum entanglement based. She built this on her own, and human understanding of practical science-."

His frown deepens. "Is nothing like advanced enough to do that." He reaches out and gently takes it from me. "What is the creator's name?"

"Georgia Sivana."

"The young human female who pilfered your subspace pocket."

"That's her."

"And whom you reported is working with her father and brother on technologies for fighting your species' descendants who will return from the future to harvest your world."

"Yes."

He looks at the communicator for a moment, orange light playing over its surface. "Hm." Eyes locked on the device, he turns and flies away.

Gosh. I think that was my friendliest interaction with him yet.

I take a moment to look around the tunnel. The locals have mostly returned, though the area where we fought is cordoned off by the local military. A couple of Darkstars I haven't met before are assisting the scene of crime analysts trying to make sure that the area is safe. It should be, but I don't really know what St'nlli's auras were made of and Qwardians consider bystander casualties more as a feature than a bug.

But there's nothing for me to do here.

I step out

And reappear next to-.

"Say that again."

To Lantern Dul who is glaring at an unimpressed Lantern Drusa.

"I don't know if you have the mental capacity."

"Lantern Drusa, remind me-" They both turn to face me. "-to include social de-escalation in our next session. Lantern Dul, what you're feeling right now is the consequence of your increased understanding of your connection to the orange light. And not in a good way." She simmers down, her environmental shield dimming slightly. "You know what you want, but you're seeing Lantern Drusa as an impediment rather than a resource. Now… Take a breath."

She ruffles her feathers, closes her eyes and breathes in… And out.

"Consider: is assaulting or berating Lantern Drusa likely to result in her being more willing to help you get what you want?"

She takes another breath. "No."

"Then what is the rational way to pursue your own interest?"

"Push down my pride and take her insults."

I frown. "No? Find something she wants and trade. You have skills she lacks just as she has skills you lack, ring power being the most obvious." Lantern Dul nods. "And Lantern Drusa? Good work." She nods. "I don't suppose that killing them involved you getting any sort of personal revelation about your own desires, did it?"

"No."

I nod. "I suppose that would have been a bit convenient."

"But seeing the way you and St'nlli fought, I'm more motivated to seek one out. I wouldn't have survived that fight by myself."

I nod again, smiling. "It's a start."

back

Foundation 22

next

3rd March 2007

19:33 GMT

"Is that it?"

The woman in all-concealing red armor turns her head toward the crystal pillar in the centre of…

"What was it you called this place?"

The helmet includes a voice scrambler, because this is the one place where she doesn't get a do-over. And having Doctor Destiny discover her real face and name seemed like a very bad idea. Even with everything she'd learned about the way this place worked, she was under no illusion as to who its true master was.

The lower part of his jaw -all that was visible behind his skull mask- trembled slightly. Naturally she knew what his real face looked like. His identity hadn't been a secret to begin with, and his mask was more of a prop than a serious attempt to disguise his appearance. And despite visiting his living body in Arkham Asylum on several occasions, somehow, removing his mask here…

She shuddered slightly, the movement disguised by her armor's shock absorbers.

"The materioptikon. Or more accurately, the nexus of a series of fractures within its structure."

For a moment her mind jumps tracks, the experiences of the facet of herself who spent years living amongst magic users of all shades coming to the fore. And the legends of the Endless.

"The Dreamstone."

"No. Otherwise I wouldn't have named it something else. The materioptikon is my attempt to replicate the power of Dream's own gems. Without the insanity-inducing side effects that come from trying to look into the face of eternity with a human mind."

"I saw the pictures in your file."

In the reality where she joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And the reality where she joined the army. And the reality where she joined the Justice League.

"How did you heal yourself? I doubt that Arkham's healthcare is that good."

"Dream… Morpheus decided that since I wasn't in my right mind, he wouldn't take my ongoing theft personally. He restored my body and mind to the state they'd been in before I started using the Dreamstone… But he didn't take my memories."

"And he let you steal it again?"

"No! Honestly, it's like talking to a-." His jaw clenches again. "If I did something like that, knowing what I was doing… Even death wouldn't be enough to protect me from his wrath. No. Once I was discharged, I sought out the lesser stones and learned to touch the Dream through transubstantial mysticism. And with what I learned I created this."

She steps closer. His head is the only part of his body free of the crystal. There shouldn't be any risk… But she's noticed that she's become a good deal more risk-averse since she gained the ability to avoid most risk.

"To what end?"

"The Dream is the wellspring of all that is. Understanding how it relates to the waking world is the most significant scientific endeavour someone can engage in!"

And in the life where she studied with the sages of the White School she learned the usual outcome of trying to follow that path of study. Most learn nothing, some go mad and a few lose the ability to ever wake.

"I ask again-."

"What else is there? I've done everything a supervillain can. I've been rich, famous, adored by millions… I even ruled the world, for a while. What would I get out of fighting the Justice League for a fifth time? What could I do with this power that isn't simply repeating myself?"

She needs to understand this. "You could win."

"I've won before-."

"You lose in the end."

"Everyone loses in the end."

A flashback to every mistimed jump, every instance of being blindsided. Not every instance of her survived long enough to return here and reintegrate.

"Everything that can be built can be torn down. Every victory is fleeting, I know. I have an opportunity for unlimited discovery, a lifetime of doing what I want, what I love. Constantly learning and expanding."

"The journey, not the destination. But if that's the case, why did you fight the Justice League this time?"

"To bring the materioptikon to full power. It needed billions of dreaming minds to form a connection to the Dream. The actual fight was a distraction, an attempt to convince them that I'd returned to my old habits."

"Why? Why not just be patient?"

"Because there are people on Earth who could detect what I was doing and stop me. As it is, any irregularities created by my work will be written off as a product of what they think I did."

She begins to walk in a circle around his crystal prison. "Why would they stop you?"

"I don't have the best-." He tosses his head as she moves out of his visual range. "Really? Have you any idea how petty-?"

"Yes."

And she really does. More than one lifetime spent in the League of Shadows taught her any number of techniques for psychological manipulation. John Dee needs to be kept off balance. At least until she can secure his physical body.

"I can't very well stop you. But will you at least tell me what you're doing?"

She almost laughs.

"I think I'm having the same problem you did. I've used the materioptikon to live dozens of lives. I've learned more about the world than I ever dreamed I could ever learn. But when I think about doing it again…"

"You've already tried everything you want to try. All that's left is mindless repetition or urge indulgence. I know. I've been there, lived that."

"You said it was best to find satisfaction in doing."

"And it is. If you've lived that many lives then you have at least as much experience of this as I do. Can you think of anything better to do with this power?"

"I could wake up."

"And what would you do in the waking world, knowing what you know now? What could you do, but pick one of the dream-lives you've already lived and repeat it?"

What.. indee-?

There's a crack noise as a portal to one of the current simulations opens. She turns to face it, frowning. That was… Temporal physics. She didn't have a perfect memory, but studying various fields in physics to doctorate level repeatedly had left an impression. Time travel was new, though. She wasn't even sure it was poss-.

That version of her strode through the rift, helmeted head immediately seeking her. "Merge with me."

That was.. unusual. Merging made sense, of course. Anything she learned would be shared with all future iterations, and they were essentially the same person. But except in the event of total failures she didn't usually rush into it. Perhaps this iteration managed something truly unique?

She walked over to meet her, only catching a glimpse of the purple-robed figure behind her an instant before they touched.

"Red Queen?"

A moment of bewildering disorientation as the new/old memories organised themselves…

Then she turned toward her ally, and the solution to her oncoming ennui.

"Time Trapper. I'm ready."

back

NEXT CHAPTER

Clarion Call

BACK

Clarion Call 1

next

Clarion Call

24th December

06:12 GMT +1

The man tied to the chair looks up at me with a look of panic, before immediately shifting to hope.

"Oh thank God, you've got to get me out of here! I've been kidnapped!"

I take a moment to get a better look at him, frowning as I do so. He'd be about one metre sixty if he were stood upright, he's bald and he's wearing thick-rimmed glasses of a sort that haven't been in fashion for decades. He's wearing a white shirt (mildly dishevelled) and a pair of blue jeans. And… Correct for my host's physical abnormalities…

"I'm.. sorry, I realise that this seems a little heartless, but could you please tell me your name?"

"Sivana. Professor Theodore Bilford Sivana."

"I see." I hold up my right forefinger. "Would you please bear with me for just a moment? I'll be right back."

"What, are you working with him?"

I step back out of the room, closing the soundproof door behind me and turning to face the smugly smiling countenance of Dr Thaddeus Bodog Sivana.

"What do you think?"

"Doctor Sivana, why do you have your… Brother? Clone?"

"Parallel universe duplicate."

"That would have been my third guess…" I shake my head. "Why?"

He frowns slightly. "I have a little trouble with insufficiently well-defined questions. Could you possibly-?"

"Ah. I'm sorry. Why is he in there, tied to a chair?"

"I thought that tying him to a surgical table would give the wrong impression."

"Y.. es…" I.. take a moment to readjust. "I meant, in general. Why do you have that man in your complex? The fact that he is specifically tied to a chair is more or less incidental. But still pertinent in so much as he's bound."

"Yes, you see, this is exactly why." Doctor Sivana raises his right hand above his head and waves it for a moment. "I understand that my social skills are… Less than they might be."

"… Good?"

"I have a process, when my knowledge of a particular area-" He turns away from me and starts pacing. "-is under the required level. Ideally, I would consult a written work on the subject… Or a cross section of them. But-" He reaches the end of his pacing area and turns. "-I've tried that before, and I'm… Divorced. It wasn't my idea. I still love my-. My ex-wife. I think that something I'm doing is merely compounding my fundamental problem."

"That… Could well be."

"I am aware that… Cooperating with people outside of my immediate family is something I find... Trying."

"So.. you.. opened a portal to a parallel universe and abducted a version of you who trained as a social scientist?"

His face screws up in bewilderment. "No." His face brightens up. "I abducted the only version of me who isn't a supervillain!"

I blink. "The only-?" I frown. "I thought… There were reverse-morality universes..?"

"Ah, yes. That visit from your blue alter-ego." He brings his hands together in a praying gesture just in front of his chin. "It seems that there's something about me that results in me either dying or descending into villainy. Of one sort or another. Even when most of my peers would be the alter-egos of people who are heroes here. It's a puzzle that I've been meaning to examine for a while… But the matter of the sheeda is so much more urgent. I need to learn what I haven't managed to learn so far, and he's the best person for teaching me."

He nods, smiling confidently.

Hm.

"Doctor, do you remember when we started cooperating, I sent you an audiobook called 'How To Succeed In Evil'?"

He goes back to frowning. "Why would I need to read something on how to succeed in evil? I've been doing that for decades now."

"But you acknowledge that there are things about how the things which you do interact with wider society which you don't understand, yes?"

He looks thoughtful for a moment. "Yes..?"

"That's why I sent it to you. The main character has the same problem, only he's focusing on gaining money rather than developing new technology. There's a part which relates to exactly what you've done here. The main character is employed to make someone a great deal of money, and asks if he could consult with an expert on energy distribution networks. His employer has the man kidnapped."

Dr Sivana nods. "That sounds perfectly efficacious to me."

"But he wanted a phone call. Not only was the man some distance away -meaning that kidnapping him and bringing him to the main character's location took more time than a phone call- it also increased the risk of discovery by engaging in illegal activity in public. Whereas with a phone call he could have got the information he wanted more quickly and entirely legally."

Dr Sivana blinks a couple of times. "You believe that I should have phoned him."

"I believe that offering a voluntary exchange… His help in return for technology or money, would have put him in a far more helpful frame of mind. As opposed to-" I glance back at the door and through it to the yellow outline I can see through it. "-now, when he believes that he's the prisoner of a lunatic."

"Ah." Dr Sivana frowns a little. "I.. see. You may have a point there."

"Why don't you let me try to talk him around?"

"Yes, that's.. probably for the best. We participated in a multi-Sivana team up once, and I don't think that the rest of us gave a particularly good impression."

"Multiple backstab pileup?"

"More the same backstab in a thousand different vectors. Actually, I was a little disappointed that we all came up with essentially the same thing."

"Alright. I'll be back in a few minutes."

I turn away, reopen the door and step back through. "Professor. I'm very sorry about this and of course-" I extend a construct and sever his bonds. "-I'll get you out at once."

He doesn't get up, but brings his hands together and rubs the parts of his wrists that were bound. "Thank you. So… I can just… Go?"

"You can. However-."

"Oh God."

"You've met your local alter-ego. As you can no doubt tell, he's-."

"He's crazy! Like all the others!"

"But he's trying to redirect his inherent malevolence against some very unpleasant people who are planning on destroying our entire civilisation. The reason he brought you here is because he wants your help as a life-coach. He wants to learn to… Well, essentially, to not be a supervillain.. and… You're the only one he thinks can do it. You don't have to, and if you choose to help him then you don't have to live here to do it. And he's prepared to compensate you well and… If you're wondering why he didn't start with offering that, then you're beginning to understand why he needs your help."

His mouth opens and closes a few times.

"I'm a physicist. And he wants to learn social skills from me?"

I nod. "As I said, he's pretty desperate."

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Clarion Call 2

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24th December

09:21 GMT -5

"Are you.. sure this is how you want to spend your Christmas?"

Thomas shrugs as we trudge through the New England snow towards the sparring area. "Nah man. But if the boys back in Belle Reve fihnd owt all we did wuz go t' some shindig at Ma Sivana's house, my rep's gown."

I thought it was rather nice of the legitimate side of the Sivana family to invite Thomas and Tuppence to spend this Christmas with them. And since it makes the Governor of Louisiana happy and reduces the chance of him being motivated to try pardoning them, Ms Waller was willing to sign off on a three day pass for them both. Heck, she didn't even ask me to guarantee it this time.

I'd have made a crack about turning her into a liberal, but I'm not sure that she wouldn't have changed her mind just to spite me.

"The Sivana household is noted for producing noteworthy supervillains. Even the younger children are wanted for a laundry list of crimes."

"Yeyeh, but Ma Sivana's an accountant or something. I don't think folks gonna see it that way."

"She's.. not an accountant. She's an auditor."

He gives me a blank look, and the ground shakes beneath us. We both ignore it.

"Basically, she makes sure that companies aren't lying to people about how much money they're making or how much money they owe." He's still looking blank. But he doesn't seem irritated about it, which is progress. "Like a parole officer, but for big companies rather than people."

He grins. "Oh!"

"Although given her seniority, it's more like she's a supervisor for a bunch of parole officers rather than doing it herself."

The ground shakes again.

"How'd she meet… Y'know… Ah mean, y'all don't get t'be a parole.. auditor by hanging out with no supervillains."

"They met in college, and divorced when he went full career criminal. He actually tried making money legitimately with his inventions before that."

"That not work out so good? Ah mean, if he finished up a supervillain…"

"It didn't work out so good. I'm still not really sure why; the man's antisocial but his work's brilliant."

Thomas frowns in thought. I wait for a moment.

"That's the present tense."

"Ah. Yes?"

"Abra did this whole tawk on different ways a' sayin' stuff 'cause of when it happens. 'His work's brilliant' means 'his work raight now's brilliant'. Not his work back then."

"I've never been much good at formal English."

"An' alla the stuff you saw on Venus, that wuz old stuff."

"None of it was new, certainly."

His eyes widen. "You been seein' him!"

I keep my face calm. "Do you want me to say something you might have to lie about to Warden Waller?"

"You didn't put him in no prison."

"If I knew a mad scientist, and I was reasonably confident that he wasn't about to launch any random attacks on civilisation, and I had something I needed him to do, I would have no pressing reason to imprison him."

"Y'all got him workin' fer you?"

"I have received certain information-" Tuppence's head appears over the rise a little way in front, and I wave as she falls back towards the ground. "-that the Earth is facing an invasion from the future in the not-too-distant future. Also, I don't really-." Kraft and all of their malevolent minions have all but capitulated on the Cadbury's matter but I haven't bought it yet, and when The Vega Project starts work I'll be an investor rather than an employer. "-employ people. Certain classes of supervillain become exceedingly unreasonable if they think someone is telling them what to do."

"Oochff!"

Donna slams into the rise in an explosion of snow and earth, then bounces before coming to rest just in front of us. She takes a couple of breaths, then pushes herself up.

"You alright there? Because if you want to swap out-?"

"Yeah." She clambers to her feet. "Just took me-. I mean, her punches are usually so clumsy. I wasn't ready for her to actually get it right."

I wait for Thomas to leap to his sister's defence, but he doesn't look like-. Oh, come on. I know she's breathing heavily in sweaty, tight-fitting exercise clothes and she's basically a younger copy of the most attractive woman on the planet, but that's no reason-

She rises off the ground slightly and flies back in the direction of our ersatz sparring arena.

-to stare like an uncultured brute-.

I look at Thomas again.

Ah.

My first instinct is to take the piss. Something about clubbing her over the head and dragging her back to his cave. But… That's a bad idea here. I remember reading the comic where Da Bomb actually tried that with Power Girl… Plus, me taking the piss is just going to push him away.

"I'm not saying that she's out of your league-"

He tears his eyes away as she drops out of view. "Huh?"

"-but she's probably out of your division."

"Ahhh…"

Is he-? Oh goodness me, he's actually blushing. Right, really don't take the piss.

He shrugs, slumping slightly. "Aw, hell man. I know thayet. It was jus'-."

"Yeah, she was suddenly right there." He nods, looking slightly relieved. "I remember the first time I met Wonder Woman. By the time I got to her face she was like-." I raise my eyebrows slightly and tilt my head forward, a placid but mildly amused expression on my face.

He chuckles, nodding. "I don't-." He immediately sombres up. "Doc Quinzel says we should tawk about our feelin's an' stuff?"

"Yes, that's.. probably a good idea?"

"Kissed a girl one time. I didn't mean-. We wuz friends, growin' up? I liked her an' she liked me…" He stands there awkwardly for a moment. "Next day her mouth wuz all bruised up, like someone hit her with a bat. Her folks didn't want her to have nothin' t'do with me."

I nod. "Doctor Munro mentioned having a similar problem."

"But… Girl who's super strong lihk me an' Tuppy… An' ain't Devastation, 'cause-."

I nod. "You don't need to explain that one. Though I should point out that they're technically sisters."

Thomas boggles for a moment, blinks, then shakes his head as if trying to dislodge the image I just put there.

"Aw mahn, that is some bull shit!"

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Clarion Call 3

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24th December

17:42 GMT -1

"Lord Cyprian. Thank you for agreeing to see me."

The somewhat haggard-looking Atlantean Pureblood opposite me nods distractedly. "I must admit, I was expecting a visit like this."

I frown. "Well… Yes. I did apply to meet with a member of your government two months ago." Just before all of that… Time travel nonsense. "I realise that relations with the surface aren't Venturia's priority… At this point I'd rather assumed that you were refusing to meet me."

We're meeting in a drawing room adjacent to the main throne room. Contrary to both my expectations and the style of Poseidonis, the majority of the room is air-filled. Given that Venturia never traditionally had much truck with purebloodism, it's a curious design choice. I mean, there are any number of practical advantages, but if anywhere was going to do this sort of thing I'd have expected just about anywhere else ahead of Atlantis's isolationist southern-most city.

His eyes narrow slightly. "You're not here from King Orin."

"No? Should I be?"

"Ah." His eyes dip for a moment. "No, I.. suppose not. It's simply that I have been expecting a representative of his for some time. Given the work you have done in Poseidonis and the fact that you aren't an Atlantean citizen, I assumed that he was getting in touch obliquely."

"My.. relationship with King Orin isn't as bad as I thought it was, but we're nothing like close enough for him to use me as a diplomatic envoy. Even a back-channels one. If anyone, he'd.. probably ask Princess Diana." He sags a little and I raise my eyebrows. "I hope I haven't made a nuisance of myself. I didn't mean to come here under false pretences."

He studies me impassively for a moment. "No, no, the fault is mine. Your original application was most likely rejected out of hand either by my aunt personally or by a courtier in accordance with her standing instructions. I simply-." He takes a breath. "My aunt died recently."

I bow my head. "My condolences."

"It wasn't exactly a shock… But the subject of the succession is likely to be the trigger for a new round of disputes between Venturia and Poseidonis. Not that that's.. your problem." He smiles joylessly.

"I'm happy to take King Orin a message, but… As a foreigner, I would.. rather not involve myself in internal Atlantean political affairs."

"Thank you." He nods. "I will prepare a missive before you depart." I nod in return and begin to rise, but he holds up his right hand to stop me. "What.. was it that you wanted to speak with me about?"

"Not.. you specifically. Whoever is responsible for your arcane research policy."

"Project approval goes through me at the moment, so I'm the one you need to talk to. I've…" He reaches out with his left hand and indicates a rack of arcane data storage devices. "I've tried to keep up to date with the latest developments, but I imagine that you're more in the know than I am."

"My overview of the projects might be, but I doubt that my knowledge of magic theory is anything like as good as yours."

"Given everything that's happened I'm afraid that it might be, these days. In my youth I was working to become an archmage, but… The needs of the state were… Are, more important than my personal ambitions. I rather imagine that I've fallen behind. I'm afraid that Venturia doesn't participate in research projects conducted under the auspices of the Poseidonis Conservatory of Sorcery."

"Yes, I noticed that. As I said, internal Atlantean political disputes don't matter to me. You don't want to work with them? Fine. But you still have experts of your own, and I came here because I'm hoping that you could perform a separate project for me."

"I'm.. not sure what we can add to the resources already at your disposal."

"I've… Rather overloaded Sephtian's team. They want to do things with what they've already learned and I keep wanting them to do new things. And I value everything that they're doing, but that still leaves me with things I need to learn."

"Such as?"

"The precise structural link between the material Earth, Earth's arcane systems and the Dream."

He makes a sort of cough-laugh noise. "And.. you think.. we know?"

"No, if I thought you knew I'd just ask 'how much?' and we'd negotiate. I know full well that this will be a long term research project. Now, I've read up on previous studies, and it seems to me that they essentially consisted of trying to use dreams as an access point for sensory spells."

"Solo efforts generally involved insanity-inducing trances, and there have been far more of those. But yes, that's how it has been done on…" His eyes look up for a moment. "Three..? Occasions I recall reading about."

"I want to study the Earth's magic fields instead, and try to discern the nature of their connection. I understand that it.. may come to nothing, but it seems to me that if we know that magic originates there, there must be a connection we can… Measure. How much is the Earth's magic changing, how fast, why…"

"I don't believe that such research would be contrary to Venturia's interests. So long as you understand that our government will insist on being kept apprised of the project's progress."

I shrug. "I was going to share it with everyone anyway."

He sits back slightly, frowning curiously. "Why are you interested? As I understand it, your ring isn't in any way magical."

"Are you aware of this system's new planet?"

"I could hardly miss it. Several prognosticators became quite ill when it arrived."

"It's controlled by a member of my Corps named Mother of Mercy. When I met her, to find out whether or not I was trustworthy, she put me in an… Call it an illusion, where all of my desires were realised. And one of the things that it showed me was an arcane device called a Root of Yggdrasil. I know.. using magic becomes progressively harder the further you go from a magic-rich planet, and that was.. the device illusion-me used to bypass the problem."

"But it was not real."

"No. But it got around a fairly major problem we're going to have with arcane technology: if it just stops working when it gets past the moon. So I want to find out whether or not it can be real."

He nod contemplatively. "You understand that we don't have access to many of the amenities that you may have become used to in the laboratories of Poseidonis."

"Lord Cyprian, we haven't even started negotiating on a price yet. If you want unclassified information or technology, I'm happy to provide it. I can't enchant things myself, of course."

His face stills. "You're willing to offer us an arcane forge?"

I nod. "Or several. They aren't classified. In fact, Sephtian has been trying to encourage more people to build them. They're so much more efficient than traditional enchantment."

He nods definitively. "You have my provisional agreement. Please understand that this isn't really something that we can begin work on now-"

"Of course."

"-but once things are settled politically I will arrange a meeting between you and our archmages, and we can discuss the precise terms of our contract."

"Thank you, Lord Cyprian. I will be delighted to work with them."

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Clarion Call 4

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24th December

13:57 GMT -5

Jade takes a moment to attach her translation headphones, then jerks her head from side to side to make sure that they aren't likely to fall out. "Test. Test. Test." She frowns faintly. "I can hear the vibrations of what I'm saying through my skull, but the headphones are only playing English."

"That's the easiest to use model, I'm afraid. All of the others are significantly more invasive." I look her over. "Going in armour is an option. Your exo-mantle has integrated translation equipment."

"I'm going to stick out enough as it is." She checks herself in her bedroom mirror once more. "How do I look?"

"Oh! My heart's delight!

Oh! Lady of such gl-."

She turns her head to glare at me.

"The style is a little outside of Themysciran norms, though not enough to stick out. The colouration and use of pattern on the other hand are radically different to anything that they're used to. I find them appealing, but surface light is so little of what-."

"Of what you see-" She nods, returning her attention to the mirror. "-that I could wear a sack and you'd still love it."

I walk up behind her, wrapping my arms around her waist and pulling her into my chest. "And don't doubt it for a moment." Maybe I could-? "Hm."

"'Hm' what?"

"It just occurred to me that while I could connect myself to your visual cortex to-" She pulls away slightly. "-show you emotions as I perceive them, I'm the one person whose emotions I can't show you."

She turns around, smiling, my arms still loosely draped around her waist. "You're not doing a terrible job." She tilts her head back invitingly, and I gently lower my lips to hers. I don't follow though on my impulse to hug her tighter, because that would crease her dress and earn us a comment from Artemis. As we kiss I close my eyes and probe her with my empathic sense, gazing directly at her love for me and contentment with the situation. I haven't ever been as happy as I am now and I don't think that she has either.

No comment on a good chunk of that being due to the fact that she's confirmed as joining the Darkstars, and as a result we'll be spending a good deal of time apart.

Planning Christmas has been.. interesting this year. The Nguyens got an invitation to spend Christmas with the Crocks, which I thought was nice. The problem is that there's no zeta tube anywhere near where they live. So Artemis would be unable to take part in any emergencies that might arrive over the holiday. Staying in Gotham would make it just the three of them, as they don't have any other family in the area.

I'd rather like to spend the day with Alan and Jade, the closest thing I have to family on Earth 16. The problem is, with Alan pretty much outed and me not having a secret identity us both showing up at the Crock residence or them coming to New York combined with her mother being a convicted master thief and her sister being convicted of being a member of the League of Shadows risks Artemis losing plausible deniability as well. At some point even the GCPD have to pick up the clues. I still think that it's only the fact that she mostly operates at night on the other side of the country that has prevented that happening already. That, and the fact that there's no angle in it for the Light.

So where do we spend Christmas? My ice fortress was an option, but it's totally isolated and not exactly roomy inside. The kitchen is fine if you're just going to be there for a few days, but it's not really Christmas dinner worthy. Plus I haven't prioritised noise cancellation away from the main generator and Jade and I aren't exactly quiet when we're together.

Diana was the one who came to our rescue. Themyscira doesn't really have Christmas, but it's a big deal in the rest of the world and with the increasing (that is to say, some) integration that's starting to happen Queen Hippolyta knows that it would help if Amazons learned a bit more about Christian-orientated culture. Since celebratory days in honour of one god or another are pretty common on Themyscira already, doing Christmas wasn't anything like as big a deal as I thought that it might be.

I lift my face away just as she starts to get uncomfortable with the fact that she can't check her lines of sight, and from her momentary wry smile I think she knows it. "Is there anything else I need to know about Themyscira?"

"Nothing maj-. Ah, maybe… One thing?"

"How bad?"

"No, not… Bad. Just something to be aware of. You know that Amazon society -even before the exile- was homonormative?"

"I thought you said some of them tried hitting on you."

"They had sex between men and women a couple of times a year during major festivals for procreating. Them hitting on me means that they think I'd be a good sire for their children, not that they wanted to have what you and I would think of as a normal romantic relationship." Ah… "Mostly. I think.. one of them…" I shake my head. "It's now common knowledge that you and I are a couple, so that won't be a problem."

"Uh-huh."

"The problem that's more likely to emerge is that they don't see heterosexual relationships as being equally.. 'significant' to homosexual ones, and they might hit on you. I mean, you're… Really their type."

"I'll try and control myself."

"They also.. might try coming onto both of us together." Jade looks decidedly unamused. "Sorry."

"Unless you're a time traveller, Amazon sex lives aren't your fault." She sighs and looks down by my chest for a moment. "We… Need to talk about… That, though."

"Having sex with Amazons? I didn't think you'd be interested."

"No, not-." She looks up again. "Us. Family. What I'm going to do with this apartment."

I shrug. "I can put your belongings in storage easily enough. Or transport them to Maltus. Darkstar accommodation isn't exactly Spartan. Unless you want to keep it."

"I don't-." She leans into me slightly. "No, I do. This is the first place I've lived in that's actually been mine. I want to keep it."

"You can do that."

"How..?"

"Ask me."

She snorts faintly. "I think when you move in with your boyfriend you're supposed to actually be there."

"I'll be happy to keep the place warm for you, to be in tip top condition whenever you return. Though I might make a few modifications." I shrug. "You know how I get when I think something can be improved."

"Just so long as I can still recognize it."

"Of course."

"And family."

"As I said, I do want to marry you but I don't really think that married life is compatible with being at opposite ends of the galaxy or.. not really seeing much of each other when we are in the same Space Sector."

"The war with the Reach is probably going to take longer than our lives."

"No."

She pulls away so that she can look me in the eyes again. "'No', as in there's a plan to end it faster?"

"'No' as in 'I don't age'. At least, I don't at the moment. But… I have given it some thought. Once we've built up, and invaded the periphery in earnest, there's a… Natural break? Once we take all of the worlds that haven't been fully integrated and resettled. That's going to take.. at least years. But at that point there'll be far less demand on either of our services."

She nods. "Okay. That's… Okay. And what about children?"

"I suppose it depends on whether you want to return to the Darkstars or not after having them."

She smiles weakly. "Not prepared to be a stay at home dad?"

"I'm not-. No… Actually, I would be. But I'm… I'm aware that my behaviour can be fairly…"

"Mn."

"Inhuman. And I'm not sure that having me as the primary caregiver would be.. a good idea."

"As oppose to a serial killing assassin raised by professional criminals?" She exhales heavily through her nostrils. "I didn't ask if you actually want children."

"Honestly, I'm indifferent. But you do, and I won't do less than the best job I can when it comes to getting you what you want."

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Clarion Call 5

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24th December

14:15 GMT -5

Jade looks at the embassy's dolmen gate with the sort of impassivity she usually shows when she's concerned that she might feel nervous and is pre-emptively clamping down on it.

"What does it feel like?"

M'gann shakes her head. "It doesn't really feel like anything. Like.. stepping through thin air."

M'gann is wearing her shape shifting clothing, this time having it assume the appearance of a formal chiton/himation combination. It's mostly blue in colour, presenting a contrast to her chalk white skin tone.

Kon nods. "The first time I went through one, it took me a moment to realise that I'd actually gone anywhere."

He on the other hand is wearing pink. Alright, the outer layer is purple but the tunic beneath is clearly a good deal lighter. Given how basic his actual taste in clothing is, I imagine that it's something that Diana picked out for him. He's also wearing the diadem Io made for him, and every so often he reaches up to check that it hasn't fallen off. Mister J'onzz was wearing something similar right up until he saw that Alan was wearing jeans and a shirt and Diana's in what I recognise as her 'party frock' chiton. Paula and Artemis are actually dressed more like Jade; I don't think that Themyscira has ever seen an Ao Dai before, and-.

Should I have warned Paula that she might get attention of a sort she might not be prepared for? A still-athletic older woman with two physically capable daughters would have been considered a good catch in the old city. Not sure how it.. works now. The sample size of foreign women who visit is just too small. I know I already warned Artemis… Oh, I'm sure that she can take care of herself.

I'm wearing my Orange Lantern Corps robes, because even if being a Themysciran citizen means that I've got to wear a dress then at least I don't have to wear a frilly thing. Sword of the Fallen and Ace of Winchesters, because I'm not an idiot…

Diana looks over the assembled party. "If everyone is prepared?"

I attach a filament to Jade to share my enhanced ambient light vision. Themyscira is eight hours ahead and the sun there has long since set. Even if it is effectively late second spring for them, and… Huh. Which means that the sun must be setting later for them than it is for everyone else at the same longitude. Some sort of… Lensing effect? Or do the Five just heat and light the island with magic and not bother with-.

Everyone's moving, and Jade grips my left hand with her right and gives me a small tug to make sure that I'm aware of the fact just as Diana walks through the gate. As described, there's no flash of light or other indication of arcane movement, just day changing into night a few hours ahead of schedule. After Diana goes Kon, arm in arm with M'gann. Then Mister J'onzz, as -I snigger inwardly- Kon's girlfriend's kyrios, and then the rest of us in the order of our physical closeness to the gate as this is one of the older ones and isn't big enough for more than two people to pass abreast.

24th December

22:15 GMT +3

Diana heads down the steps on the far side of the gate to greet Captain Philippus. There's a small honour guard, but I imagine that they're more here to herd the tourists than anything else.

Yes, Philippus gives the party a quick once-over and then turns away, walking side by side with Diana in the direction of the inner city. The escort fall back a little to allow the rest of us to follow them as a huddle rather than make us march in single file. Kon, M'gann and Mister J'onzz stick close to Diana while Paula and Alan take a moment to look around. I note that he's done what I did and extended a filament to Paula and Artemis.

I lean a little towards Jade as we reach the plaza. "First impressions?"

"They have hoplites on guard duty."

"Three thousand years of isolation will do that to a people. And I meant about-."

"The air. It smells… Fresh. Fresher than I'd have expected for a people who don't have a modern sewage system."

A guard-. Ah, reflective skin, it's Zosime. Zosime comes up alongside Jade on the opposite side to me. "It can get a bit high in the summer. I think that is why the city has gradually moved up hill over the centuries."

"Jade, this is Zosime." Jade frowns curiously as she takes in the metallic parts of Zosime's skin. "Zosime, this is Jade. I've mentioned-."

"Yes, the one whom you love so greatly that you can walk into a Themysciran bathhouse without your virtue being distracted."

"It was clearly marked as the male bath."

Jade turns her head my way, eyebrows raised in amusement. "You didn't tell them about the spider girl, then?"

Zosime grins. "Pavlos, have you seduced Arachne? Are your tastes so bestial that we poor mortal women hold no appeal?"

"She told me it was a spiracle! And thanks, Jade."

Zosime's eyes widen and her jaw drops a little. "You actually did seduce Arachne?"

"As I understand Greek law, as the head of her own household she didn't require permission from-."

"You did?!"

"It was a perfectly reasonable misunderstand-."

"Hahahaha!"

"Thanks, Jade."

"You should be grateful I took it so well."

"But did your Arachnehahaha!"

"We haven't really been back in contact since."

Zosime gets a good enough grip on herself to frown. "Oh, that is poor manners, Pavlos! I expected better! Even in the Old City, a man would remain in contact with the women he accompanied during the Dionysia! You may have sired a son upon her who will need your guidance once he is no longer fed from the teat."

"That-. No, look, she looks like-" I hold out my right hand and generate a construct of the Queen and myself. "-that, we're clearly too physically-"

Zosime's eyes widen and she clamps both hands over her mouth to muffle her guffaws. One of the other guards frowns at her, then gapes as she too catches sight of the construct.

"-dissimilar to…" Why do I even bother?

"I'm sorry, did you say 'son'?" Paula comes up on my right, looking as if she can't entirely credit what she just overheard but can't afford to disregard it either.

"Pavlos coupled with a giant crab-spider!" Zosime points at the why have I still got that. "Perhaps the children would be in the manner of centaurs, but with twice the number of legs? Or perhaps they would have a human lower-."

"Humans and Spider Guilders can't interbreed. And it was a misunderstanding."

Jade nods. "With both hands."

"Both hands?"

"You could see the size of-." No!

"Hahaha!"

Change the subject. Now.

"How's Elpis getting on?"

"She's-. Haha!" Zosime wipes her eyes. "She is trying to pretend that the last few months of a pregnancy are anything but a maddening toil with which women are cursed."

Paula frowns. "I.. thought that only women lived on Themyscira?"

"I-."

"We have no need for other men." Zosime points to me. "We have Pavlos. An entire generation of Themysciran girls are named for him!"

Aaaaaaaagh!

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Clarion Call 6

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24th December

23:21 GMT +3

"Ah… Your majesty..?" I shake my head in incomprehension. "With the greatest possible respect... What?"

Having communicated that Christmas celebrations are mostly small family affairs rather than the more raucous city-wide celebrations the Olympians appear to prefer, we're not feasting on the inner city plaza but rather sitting in the palace's dining room. Unlike on my first visit, only Hippolyta and Philippus are joining us. I suppose that Menalippe and Acantha either thought that it was inappropriate or are spending it with their respective families instead. Actually… I mean, there are other black women on Themyscira, but they're not exactly common. I suppose… Given the events leading up to the Exile there probably are Amazons without living blood relations.

That's a bit sombre.

Queen Hippolyta gestures to me with her goblet. "It seems to me that you are the best person to ask."

"As opposed to Alan, who is a practising Christian? Or-?" I look around the room at the collection of Hellenists, aliens and agnostics I somehow met in the United States of America. Huh.

"If you'd like…" Alan makes a vague gesture with his right hand. "I'd be happy to give it a shot. Or say a prayer..?"

"You are kind to offer, Alan, but I think your listener is in a better position to speak on the subject precisely because he does not share the beliefs of your cult."

I look pleadingly across the room towards Artemis, who smirks at my discomfort and ducks behind her goblet.

"Besides, I am sure that his patron would approve greatly of him being forced to leave his comfort zone at an unexpected time."

"You're almost certainly right there, your majesty."

"And this way, the toll it takes on our crockery is much reduced."

Diana smiles, then leans to her left to explain the comment to Paula.

"Okay. Ah… Christmas is a.. Christian festival commemorating the birth of the son of their god. Who also was that god in human form. The Christian religion didn't really get going in its current form until quite a few years after his death, so a lot of what happened wasn't recorded particularly well or was later amended or mythologised. I haven't put significant time into discovering what actually happened, but what I have learned is that at least some of what is widely believed is untrue."

"But if we're mostly concerned about what Christians believe and not actual facts… The significance of the event is that prior to it, their god -imaginatively called God- favoured exclusively one Middle Eastern tribe. He demanded total obedience to a truly colossal number of commandments… Some of which were pretty reasonable, but a lot of which were really nitpicky.. concerning everything from hairdressing to what order particular food was allowed to be eaten in. New commandments could also be communicated via prophets on an ad hoc basis, including a particular favourite of mine where King Saul was ordered to utterly exterminate a rival tribe and is punished by his god for only killing most of them."

"Their god sounds like a brute."

"That's a pretty fair assessment. Oh, and there's another book in the bible -that's the name of their holy book- where he basically tortures a man for years and kills his entire family to prove that the man is so besotted with him that he won't turn from him whatever he does to him. But, where Christianity comes in is that after he tries living as a mortal man for a while, suddenly a lot of the really vile stuff gets thrown out. Out goes the pro-genocide agenda, in comes pacifism… In theory, at least. Only a small proportion of Christians at any point in history have actually been pacifists, but at least any theoretically know that their deity disapproves of it when they act out."

"The other significant thing that changes is that the franchise dramatically expands. Rather than exclusively favouring one tribe, their god is now perfectly happy to accept anyone who is willing to fulfil the new and drastically reduced number of observances his followers are obliged to uphold. This allowed the religion to reach an audience that wouldn't have been at all interested in the earlier forms of the faith. That's particularly important if you accept the religion's mythical framework, because they believe that a) their god is the only one and b) their afterlife is the only one. Though-"

I bow in my seat.

"-that particular belief has taken a few knocks lately."

Hippolyta frowns slightly. "So what did they think happened to the souls of everyone else?"

"Modern Christians believe that souls are judged upon their deaths, then sent either to Heaven -think the Elysian fields without the option for reincarnation- or Hell, a place of eternal torment inhabited by creatures who thrive on suffering. Depending on exactly which part of the religion they come form, they may allow sufficiently virtuous pagans to attain paradise, or they may believe that not being a Christian in itself disqualifies you. I-" DAMN IT! I should have asked Zauriel! "-haven't been able to check. Before Christianity… I don't know. Judaism isn't something I've really studied."

"So… What exactly are we celebrating?"

"Christians celebrate the birth of the man who would extend their god's covenant to cover them. As a near-life long materialist, I like family get-togethers and culturally sanctioned opportunities for over-indulgence… Which I don't have to justify because while the latter point is rather contrary to the ideals of the religion, I'm not a practitioner."

"But if you mean why are we celebrating it… The story of Christmas is the beginning of the period of that god's life where he learned what pain and suffering are like when you're on the receiving end of them. And after his physical death, when he could have said 'glad that's over with, now back to the smiting', he actually pushed for a religion that would tone down the violence and never did anything to counteract the peaceful message he promoted while human."

"An important part of Christian moral teaching is that anyone, no matter what they've done, can repent and seek forgiveness. And if they are genuine, then they will be accepted by their god as if they'd never done it. And that might be something to do with all of the people their god either killed directly or ordered his servants to kill-. Another story from their holy book has him drown everyone on the planet except for one family. It's just.. horrible. He was horrible. And having experienced it, having gained perspective on his own vices, he stopped being horrible. Did everything he could to dissuade it, and made it clear that his followers had to encourage and accept the repentance of others."

"Christmas marks a celebration of the first concrete step on the process which led to a total shit of a god becoming a decent god. And reminds us that we can all do the same."

Artemis is trying not to be too obvious about laughing. And failing. M'gann is frowning slightly while Mister J'onzz remains impassive. Diana has closed her eyes and is slowly shaking her head. Alan's face is a wince and Jade sighs, looking away from me.

"Though I should point out that you would probably get a different answer from a Christian priest, and if you're really interested then you should probably ask one."

Hippolyta takes a moment. Her eyes close as she breathes in and out. "You warned me, I knew the likely outcome when I asked a Discordian, and yet I did it anyway. The fault is entirely mine." She opens her eyes as I smile at her. "Has Eris anointed you her priest, or is your arrangement more informal?"

I grin. Any Discordian should be able to answer that one. "Yes."

"Alan…" She shifts her attention to my mentor instead. "Perhaps you could try..?"

"I'm…" He looks my way. "I'm not sure I can top that, but I'll give it a try."

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Clarion Call 7

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..ugh..?

25th December

08:57 GMT +3

Which makes it one in the morning back in Gotham. Of course, I don't have a problem waking up-

Jade's still sleeping body shifts slightly in my arms, and I change my grip to better accommodate her.

-but I doubt that Jade would be particularly amused by me trying to operate on local time. I lift my head slightly and-. Yes, the blackout curtains are in place, good. I relax against my pillow, the scent of Jade's shampoo filling my nostrils as my face intrudes into the area occupied by her hair. Hippolyta's not going to expect the rest of us to rise early, she's well used to-.

Something-. A hand, a left hand, moves slowly over my waist and then creeps up my chest. That's not Jade's hand, the angle is wrong. And-. That's a warm presence behind me. I don't remember-. No, no, I'd remember that. Ring, who-?

"Hey there."

I swallow, and move my face as far away from the back of Jade's head as I can without otherwise moving.

"Good morning, Eris."

"Normally? I'm all for change, but holding a Christian act of worship on Themyscira wasn't the best idea."

"Is that something you absolutely needed to tell me now? Because if it is, thank you, I'll get on that-."

"I only just found out that you're back. Have you been-" Her right arm worms its way around my side and across my chest, missing Jade by the narrowest of margins. "-back long?" The mattress shifts slightly as she uses her grip to pull herself closer-. And those are her breasts. She's naked, isn't she? "Are you avoiding me?" She moves again, this time moving toward the headboard so that her mouth is next to my ear. "Do I make you un-com-for-ta-ble?"

"Not particularly. Though things might get a bit awkward if Jade wakes up."

"Jade's awake." The light of my life pulls away slightly and squirms around, clearly not fully alert but getting there fast. "Who are you, and why are you humping my boyfriend?"

"She's not actually humping-."

"Didn't he tell you?" She leans forward slightly, and as her left breast brushes my ear I can see her grinning. "I'm his goddess."

"Oh. Eris." Jade closes her eyes and tries getting comfortable again. "Is this going to take long, or can I go back to sleep?"

Eris' right elbow plants itself on the pillow just above my head, and I can't really see what else she's doing. "That's it?"

"The only real surprise is that this hasn't happened sooner."

I feel it as she slumps slightly. "I think I'm attention seeking. I was all set up to be his trickster mentor, then he left the planet and -since his tattoos work on me as well-" Her fingers trace the part of the design running over my upper torso. "-I couldn't tell where he was. Kon Heliodoros always tells his god what he's doing."

"A full status update can definitely wait until later in the-."

Jade rolls away, pulls herself out of the bed sheets and climbs out of bed.

"Jade?"

She picks up her dressing gown and slips it on. "I'll be in the next room. Try and keep it down."

Ugh. I shuffle into her now-vacated divot and then turn around to face my-. Yes, naked goddess. "She's going to the other side of the galaxy long-term next week. You couldn't pick literally any other time?"

She affects an expression of frustrated honesty. "I really only knew you were back because one of my other worshippers sent a prayer my way."

"You have other worshippers?"

"Yeah! Thanks to your sterling example." She slides back under the sheets until her head is level with mine. "When she said 'keep it down', do you-?"

"No. As in, I had every opportunity to pursue you romantically, I didn't, and I'm not about to start now. Her permission is irrelevant, I just don't want to."

"Who said anything about 'romantic'?" I raise my eyebrows scathingly and she looks away. "Can't believe you picked the assassin." She looks back to my face, noticeably less amused. "I liked the robot. Someone to never grow old with together. Or the shrink. She seemed fun. Plenty of room for drama there. Melinoë definitely needs to get out more-."

"I wasn't picking a girlfriend-"

"Or Zatanna. You're a patient sort of guy, and you could do all kinds of things together."

"-for you. And I actually wasn't picking one for the practical advantage they could give me."

"She'd-" Eris glances in the direction Jade left in. "-be okay if she pushed you in new moral directions, made you make new contacts… But you've made her boring."

"I'll say it again: I-."

"Wasn't picking a girlfriend for me, yeah yeah." She slumps slightly, and looks at me sadly. "Are we breaking up? I just don't know how to keep you interested…"

"Eris… I can't be all-chaos all the time. I will continue to change the existing status quo, but I don't-. I've never been about change for change's sake. Even when that's boring." I reach out under the sheets with my right hand and put it on her left shoulder. "I'm genuinely grateful for the help you've given me so far, and I'm sure that you'll find at least some of the things I do interesting. Did you see it when I brought those people back from the dead? Or when I became a demon?"

"If you'd told me about that earlier I wouldn't be here now!" She extends her right hand and pushes me gently in the centre of my chest. "Ass."

"You turned up in bed with my girlfriend and I, and I'm the ass? Did you really just come here to 'talk about our relationship'?"

"I wouldn't have said no to expanding your erotic horizons. Either or both of you. I mean, you're only young once, right?"

"I'm young as often as I want to be."

"Which apparently be never." She turns and pushes herself up onto all fours, sliding up the bed to sit on the pillows. "Oh, that reminds me. Zauriel was looking for you earlier, so I told him where to find you."

"Oh. Ah, thank you. Does being told by you allow him to bypass the wards?"

She shrugs disinterestedly. "He's an angel, so I'm pretty sure that he could anyway. I just wanted to speed things up so that he didn't have to scour the whole world looking for you."

"Oh. Thanks. Any idea when he's going to actually get h-?"

There's a flash of light from around the edges of the blackout curtains. I blink, and the light dims. It's still brighter than it was a moment ago, but it's no longer blinding. If that was him then he's-.

Eris leans forward. "Try to stay alive, okay? I get bored easily when you're not around. And that's not good for anyone."

"Will do." I transition across to the curtain and pull it open. Outside-.

Golden fire burns across the sky.

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Clarion Call 8

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25th December

09:02 GMT +3

That's.. not meant to be there.

No warning bells sound from the plaza, though I'm not sure if that's because ringing the bell requires the senior guard to reach it or if this doesn't qualify as an attack on Themyscir-.

Dnnnnnnnnnn. Dnnnnnnnnn.

Okay, there we go. Golden fire indicates angel or pissed off saint. Theurgical magic. So either Zauriel really wants to make sure that he can talk to me, or I've really pissed someone in the Silver City off. No, no, be fair: Zauriel didn't strike me as the 'giant net of golden fire' sort-. Hang on. If Eris only just found out where I am, did he-? I doubt that I'm mentioned in prayers that often. Or at least not in ones which include my current location. I've.. sort of been assuming that the Silver City had a bypass for my tattoos, but it's somewhat theologically interesting if they don't.

I turn back towards the bed. "Eris-?" No, she's gone. I exhale. Ring, anything untoward happening on Themyscira?

A series of images appear in my mind. Nothing… Significant, though the fire is certainly attracting a degree of attention. Okay, armour, weapons, and-.

Jade strides back into the room, her eyes darting from me to the window. "What's that?"

"The Silver City-."

"Heaven."

"That's imprecise, but sort of. If you haven't picked a religion yet, now's a really good time."

She tosses her robe aside. "Give me my armour."

I raise my left arm, ring glowing. "I will remind you that Darkstar exo-mantles are not designed for arcane combat." Exo-mantles can be worn naked, but I include a more comfortable undersuit before bringing out the armour. She takes a moment to check the range of motion as I phase through the wall and fly onto the plaza.

The garrison has already assembled, and Philippus is marching down the front steps of the palace as I land. Her eyes fix on me the moment I appear, and I hold up my hands.

"I don't think I've done anything-."

"You described their god in rather unflattering terms last night."

"People do that all the time! The number one Spanish language obscenity is literally 'shit on God'. And they're all Catholic!"

But I can see where she's coming from. For a Hellenist, making rude comments about a god on their holy day is just about the rudest, most divine-retribution-inciting thing you can do. Doing it on Themyscira, yes, that might even literally be the result.

But come on!

"Look, if it was me then I'll happily take the consequences." Ring, how far does the net extend?

Unable to determine. Based on areas which can no longer be scanned, the planet Earth is enveloped at a height of one thousand kilometres.

Radio signals?

Radio signals are not passing through the barrier.

Well shit, we just lost all Earth's satellites. No GPS. No satellite phones or television. People might actually have to talk to their families over Christmas.

The horror.

Oh, and people in isolated locations without maps might get lost and be unable to contact anyone. That's a problem, but it's not my problem. Even legally. This is the Silver City acting out, and while I'm happy to help slap them down they're going to be taking the blame for any catastrophes which emerge-.

Oh crap, we just lost contact with the Watchtower. Zeta tubes should still work… Up until their next maintenance cycle, at which point they'll try to connect to the Watchtower, fail, and shut themselves off for non-critical travel. Dolmen gates should still work…

I ring scan the one in the lower city. Yes, it still goes to New York. I'll check whether or not the test gates we put in orbit are still working later, time allowing. Next check. I raise my left hand to my faceplate and-.

Nothing happens. I'd complain, but yes, if anyone was going to have a way to block access to demiplanes it was going to be the Host. And I doubt that trying to fly through an area demarcated by kilometre-wide strands of golden fire is a particularly good idea. No getting off Earth, then.

"Orange Lantern to Wonder Woman. Orders?"

"Don't. Do. Anything. Batman is contacting Father Mattias-."

"Which is a good idea, except that I just had a face-to-face with Eris."

"What did the goddess of discord and strife want with you this time?"

"She told Zauriel where I am, and apparently he's heading here. It might be wise if I wasn't in the city when he arrives."

"You told me that you parted on reasonable terms."

"I thought we did, but someone just set near-Earth space on fire using theurgical magic. My guess would be that someone just ruled against me."

"Mount Skybreak should be deserted. Go there and await his arrival."

"Sir."

I rise up off the plaza, and-. Ah. Lantern.

It appears, completely dull and lifeless.

Great. I remove my rings from my fingers and switch over to the kinetic belt's flight system. Can't recharge until whatever the Silver City is playing at stops. I recharged yesterday after coming back from Venturia, so… A hundred and eighty percent? I don't think that brute force would work against the entirety of the host anyway, but it's a pain not to have the option. I could try creating another one, but that would consume virtually all of my remaining power as well as letting anyone paying attention to that sort of thing know exactly where I was. And it probably wouldn't even-. No, if I'm able to create constructs at all then the shut off isn't total.

Don't know.

I've flown over the outskirts of the city, and I angle up towards the mountain summit. There's no way that's a natural formation. An island this size shouldn't have a peak like this. But I suppose that somewhere like this complaining about the gods doing some geoscaping is a bit unreasonable. There are mine entrances at several points, but the only thing near the top is the Temple of Zeus.

…

So I'll be avoiding that. Let's see… Yes, I think that's where they quarried some of the stone. It's as good a place as any.

I accelerate, the mountain drawing-.

GHAAAAAAH!

FUCKINGFUCKFUCK!

I drop out of the air as enough electricity to bypass my armour slams into me, frying both my kinetic systems and the emergency inertial system I added to prevent brick-dives!

Okay. Maybe Zeus looks around his temple as well. Rings-.

GAAGHUhuhuh.

Rings on, heal and shield.

Compliance.

The third bolt of lightning splashes off my construct armour as I fly at all speed for my landing zone. Okay, this is wasteful but my need is great. Filaments grab chunks of rock, assemble them into the approximate shape of a bus shelter and then fuse them together. That should do for-.

Golden fire explodes behind me!

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Clarion Call 9

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25th December

09:07 GMT +3

I immediately create a hemisphere shield between myself and the impact site. The fire isn't dying down, it's-.

Oh shit, there's someone in there! Hardened construct tendrils shoot out, poking the fire with mageslayer rounds in an attempt to drain the magics while I take purple healing rays out of subspace and fire at it. The humanoid figure staggers to its feet, fire covering its surface-. Those are wings, that's an angel. Flames die for a moment as my mageslayers tap it, then reignite a second later. The angel stumbles, burning wings stretching out in an attempt to regain its balance. I send a construct support forward to catch it but the golden fire burns that away. I think it's either trying to say something or to scream, but it either can't get any air or the roar of the flames is overwhelming the sound.

Ah, heck. Rings, try absorbing the magic energy from that fire.

Compliance.

The air glows orange as-. No, darn it! The orange glow is beaten back, the flames positively leaping towards it! What's left? The Ace is no good, didn't bring the Hellblazer with me and the tiny samples of kaahuite I have left over probably won't be much healthier for the burning angel than the flames themselves…

The Sword of the Fallen was made to negate magic like this. But for all I know the angel is working on a solution. Reincarnation as a mortal might be a worse option, and under normal circumstances I'd ask the patient. But here…

I draw the sword, move the dome shield so that it's above me and step forward. The formerly clear sky is darkening but the King of Olympus has either sated his wrath, got a sense of proportions or has decided to turn the cloud into a giant electrostatic generator to build up for a knockout punch…

So I'd best hurry up. The angel staggers a half-step in my direction, and from what little I can see of its face I think I can safely dismiss any notion of this being a trap. I draw the Sword of the Fallen, jog the three paces it takes to reach it and as lightly as I can cut at the angel's chest.

"I'm really sorry about this."

Stabbing it should trigger the death and reincarnation thing, but with a little luck-.

The flames flicker and die down, before dying compl-.

The poor bastard's burned to the bone in places. There's not much left of their wings but the horribly burned patagium, the hair and ears are gone and if they had any genitals before they certainly don't now. The red eyes are still there, whole and unharmed and he lies on his back and quietly moans.

Don't need to be an expert in theurgy to deduce who this is, but just in case… Ring, facial reconstruction.

Compliance.

The purple rays are causing the flesh to rapidly regenerate, but I get a flash of what his face should look like based on the all too visible skull bones and the muscle tissue attached.

"Zauriel. Who will be repenting for this one?"

His silver blood doesn't stick to the Sword, so I slide it back into its scabbard without… Alright, without collecting samples. There are more important things to worry about.

"Lantern."

"That was rhetorical. Don't try to answer until your head is in one piece."

"I misjudged."

"I know, but don't worry about it. I'm an acquired taste. Angelica is coming along great, we dealt with Satanus and-." I frown inside my armour. "What happened to your voice?"

"I misjudged the Mind of God!" Skin… More or less regrown, he gingerly rolls onto his left side before pushing himself into a sitting position. "I misjudged… By His command, the wrath of the Host of Heaven descends upon you!"

"And they decided to use you as a projectile?"

"I am Fallen." His face is a picture of distraught misery. "Oh Lord my God, I have fallen from your grace."

"But look on the bright side: you're not on fire anymore."

"The state of the body is of little significance. All you have done is deny me the distraction!"

"Alright. This is… Clearly not something I can relate to." The purple rays cease fire. No feathers or hair and the cut I made with the Sword of the Fallen is still a bleeding line across his abdomen, but he appears to be whole otherwise. "What happened? And… Do you want some clothes?"

"I.. have eaten of the Tree. I suppose that it is fitting. Hide my nakedness."

Angel imagery… A wave of orange light passes over his naked body leaving him dressed in… It's not like either of us know anything about fashion.

He looks himself over. "It will suffice." He looks me in the faceplate. "I know that you will not listen, but I beseech you to repent your sins before it is too late."

"I'll listen, I just won't comply. What happened? You went back to the Silver City..?"

"I was called before the Four Kings, and I recounted my tale. The King of the Bull Host was intrigued by the concept, while the other Kings felt that your actions warranted a more detailed examination."

I don't really remember anything about the various hosts, so I don't know whose favour I just earned. Good, I guess..?

"The matter was to be discussed at length. Then the Mind of God appeared before us. I was decried as an abomination, and your actions as subversions of the Divine Order. The Mind of God has taken direct control of the Host and has directed them to bring you to the Silver City."

Well. Fiddlesticks.

"So how come I'm still here?"

"If the full might of the Almighty was brought to bear upon the Earth, the Earth would be destroyed. But I assure you, there is no force on Earth which can resist what is coming for you."

"And the burning net prevents me bringing in a force which could."

"All that would happen is that they would die. The wrath of the Almighty is risen in such a way as has not occurred in mortal memory."

"Ah." Not a lot I can.. say to that, really. Sometimes the DM just hates you. "So… Hundreds of angels? An unlimited number? Do they just keep respawning until I… What? Die? Repent? Because if the Mind of God just wants a face to face meeting, I'm perfectly happy to-."

"1:1 Hear me, oh People of the Earth! Harken to my words, for I convey unto mortal ears the commandments of the Almighty!"

The voice booms across the island… Ring?

Recordings indicate that the voice is being heard in all parts of the world in the native language of the listeners.

I turn to Zauriel. "Who is that?"

"That is the one who the Mind of God tasked with your destruction."

"1:2 The human known as Orange Lantern is henceforth condemned by the commandment of the Lord God! Unto death I shall deliver him, as well as any who stand with him, shelter him or aid him! All loyal servants of the Lord-"

Ring, message Ted. Tell him to get somewhere safe. And Hol-.

"-are called upon to aid me in enacting this decree. So say I, Karrien Excalibris, the Archangel of War."

-ly.

Oh… Dear.

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Clarion Call 10

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25th December

09:13 GMT +3

"Not.. that I-." Ah. Even if he's been cast out, he might decide that he's supposed to obey anyway. "Zauriel, I'm going to need you to make a decision right now. Do you work for the Host, or for yourself?"

"I am cast out of the Host."

"Yes, but it's all that you've known for a very long time. I would quite understand if you wanted to try and get back on their good side."

"The Mind of God declared me an Abomination. At best, they would bind me in Hell."

"I didn't say it would be a clever thing to do, just that you might try to. Because it's familiar. Heck… I wouldn't be too surprised if you just transported yourself into Hell and reported for torment. But… As far as I know, you're the only other person on Earth condemned like this. So you're the only person I can work with without making the situation worse. And I need you to choose. Me or God."

Whaw. That.. sounded arrogant even to me.

"I…" He looks lost, which I suppose is a pretty reasonable thing for him to be feeling right now. "You said when we first met that you had thought that I lacked freedom of conscience. If the Fruit.. gave me that, then it gave me a capacity which I have never before had to exercise. I am not good at thinking outside-. I should not question the Almighty but I do not understand this!"

Okay, he isn't carrying a weapon, if he's cast out he probably can't use theurgy any more and I've still got my environmental shield… I send my armour back into subspace, step forward and hug him.

He doesn't.. really react. "What are you doing?"

I pull away slightly, hands resting on his shoulders. "I am both trying to offer reassurance and celebrating the fact that you are feeling something every human with any sort of intellectual curiosity feels throughout their lives. 'Why' finds no answer but you've got to carry on anyway."

"You regard this as 'progress', don't you?"

"No, being marked for death by the Host of the Silver City isn't.. really something I'd call 'progress'. In fact it's.. a rather large impediment to progress." I lift my hands off. "But in terms of your moral awareness, yes, it's progress. What don't you understand?"

"When the Lord God extended his mercy to the whole of the peoples of the Earth, His son gave us a moral framework that we might better guide our charges. I-. I cannot reconcile the commandments of the Mind of God with that framework!" He turns away, fists clenching and relaxing. "The Almighty is omniscient. The failing must be mine. But..!"

"You can't see where it is. Because at worst, I've committed a well-intentioned mistake, and the best way to convince me of that is to patiently demonstrate that with evidence. Because the problem isn't just you. The four kings couldn't see much of a problem with it either."

"We may be mentally inflexible, but we are not stupid. We have the capacity for reason…" He turns back to me. "How could we be so wrong?"

"I haven't heard anything that would lead me to believe that you were wrong. Did this.. mind of god thing explain its reasoning? Or at least its reason?"

"No."

"You can't repent unless you know how you've erred. You can't adjust your behaviour unless you know how you're supposed to behave. Heck, you wanted to become mortal anyway; you'd have needed what the Fruit gave you if you were going to become a human man."

"I know! That's-. Why! I…"

"What do you want?"

"I could accept my own damnation if I knew what I'd done that was so wrong! But I do not believe that I can accept not knowing!" He takes a moment to calm down. "What will you do?"

"I'm not.. sure. I don't suppose that angels have some convenient vulnerability I don't know about, do they? Other than coming apart at the psychological seams when their god stops making sense."

"We are vulnerable to kaahuite. And we are far from all-powerful. The Lord God has given each of us authority over certain spheres, but outside of those we are quite vulnerable."

"And when you're killed?"

"We return to Heaven and are shaped anew."

"You don't die die."

"We don't live live. We are celestial functionaries. That is all we have."

"Does that ever not happen?"

"Fallen… Like myself, would go to Hell. Otherwise, no."

"So even if I beat Mister Excalibris in a fight, he'd be right back."

"Yes-." He freezes. "No. If he broke faith with the Almighty, he would fall. But I struggle to see how such a thing could happen."

"How about if he killed someone not aiding me?"

Zauriel shakes his head. "I want to say 'yes', but… As things stand…"

"He'd need to directly and bluntly defy your god and that's not going to happen."

"He may be operating under other restrictions. He would not be so foolish as to announce them if he were."

"How dangerous is he?"

"Under normal circumstances, he is a fearsome warrior aided by theurgical magic. Now, under direct orders from the Mind of God, his magic is much expanded. He was the one who..." He looks away. "Burned me."

"So: very powerful, no real weaknesses and even if I could beat him he'd be right back."

"A dismal but accurate summary."

"How about the net? Is there a way to bypass it?"

"One who was superior in the Celestial Hierarchy would be able to overrule the Archangel of War. But that would mean going against the Mind of God, and none of us would do-." His eyes dip. "I mean to say, none of them would do that."

"Hell is still accessible?"

"Yes, but the Archangel of War will not hesitate to pursue you there if need be."

"Does Hell have other exits?"

"To other worlds, you mean?" I nod. "Yes, but those will be sealed as well."

"And the parts of Labyrinth which are outside of Creation?"

He frowns. "Those.. could not be blocked, though I imagine that they will be guarded by lesser means."

"Okay. I'm getting-."

"Wonder Woman to Orange Lantern."

I glance at my ring, then take a deep breath.

"Answer."

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Clarion Call 11

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25th December

09:17 GMT +3

"Paul. Just listen."

I take my armour back out of subspace. One positive in all of this is that the lightning bolts have stopped.

"The Archangel of War is in Israel, near Mount Gerizim. The League will attempt to negotiate with him. If that proves impossible, he will be fought with all available resources. On the assumption that you have a strategy which you don't want to risk communicating to us, we will attempt to delay him for as long as possible."

Ring, don't reply.

Compliance.

"Though I doubt that you need this reassurance, we do not consider his actions to be in any way your fault. No matter how abrasive you can at times be, nothing you have done warrants the threats being made against you and all those who know you. Police are being dispatched to those who are known to associate with you to place them in protective custody until this matter is resolved, and Jade has agreed to remain here."

I breathe a little easier.

"Despite Karrien Excalibris' threats, I would encourage you to avoid violent confrontation with him or his allies until all reasonable alternatives are eliminated."

…

Alright. Since it's you.

"Since we do not know what his precise abilities are, I will avoid contacting you again unless he attacks either you or anyone else. Wonder Woman out."

Nice to know that she was on that immediately. I return my attention to Zauriel.

"Zauriel, do my tattoos work against theurgical detection?"

"I do not know. The lesser theurgical rites which I used could not directly locate you. But it may be that Karrien Excalibris has access to others, or that he is wiser in their usage."

"What magics can you still use?"

"My capacity for theurgy was lost when I was cast down, but my soul is strong and I have millennia of experience with earthly magics."

"Can you soul-carve yourself to gain a ward like mine?"

"N-no. But I could.. replicate it in the short term. Why?"

"Because there are only three logical places for you to go. Where I am, where Shannon Coyne is or.. at a temple or other religious site where you might seek absolution for whatever it is that you're supposed to have done. Which means that as soon as you're detected, he will seek me there."

"I see. I will begin work at once."

"And prepare a spell to communicate with Satanus."

Zauriel begins tracing lines over his torso with his index fingers. Looks like he's ambidextrous. "He may well be willing to aid you, but before the power of the Archangel of War I doubt that he will achieve much."

"I have a gun that fires the essence of anti-creation. Unfortunately it's just a lever-action rifle, but I'm hoping that he can make more. We'll need to go to my fortress to pick up the original first."

"I realise the fact that you are speaking in those terms indicates that you have already decided, but are you certain it would not be best simply to concede?"

"What, say that whoever the Mind of God is can decree the death of anyone they want? No." Zauriel regards me impassively. "Alright. How would you have advised one of your charges if they were offered… Great wealth, in exchange for violently murdering an innocent person?"

"I would remind them that material wealth is transitory while the soul is eternal. But I know that you do not share my moral beliefs."

"I don't.. react well to claims of absolute authority. To… People who use 'because I said so' as if it's a valid argument. It's.. not necessarily a rational behaviour on my part, but there we are. And I'm afraid that in any situation, what I want is what I do."

"The Archangel of War is not known for his patience. If you are not delivered to him shortly I suspect that he will begin lashing out."

"And who would be responsible if he does?" His hands stop moving. "Are you ready?"

"… Yes, I am. And since he has not eaten the Fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, I am not sure that he can be considered a moral agent."

"I thought that you tried to convince me you all had free will."

"I was not the only angel to speak in favour of your actions. But I am the only one here. Perhaps my error became obvious to every other member of the Host the moment the Mind of God appeared unto us… Or perhaps it is as you had said, and they lack the capacity. In which case the moral agent is the Mind of God."

"Then call me the Ugliest Man. Because I think this has to finish with me lobotomising your god." Ring, plot course to the Ice Fortress which I left over the Atlantic.

Course available.

Okay, between my armour's stealth systems, height, and avoiding populated areas… A straight flight using the kinetic belt is probably best. If I phase… "How fast can you fly without giving away your position?"

"I have never flown without theurgical assistance. And now…" He flaps his featherless wings, generating precisely no lift. "Any other magics I could use in order to fly would reveal us."

"And I'm going to assume that they're intelligent enough to track zeta tubes." Darn. I take a kinetic belt out of subspace and hand it to him. "Put this on. I'll take you up, then lean in the direction you want to move in in order to fly."

He looks a little sceptical, but puts the belt around his waist as I take hold of him and fly us both upwards into the Themysciran morning sky. "Any idea why my personal lantern died?"

"I know no more of the technology than that it exists. The barrier will interfere with some forms of planar travel, so I would imagine that some part of how they operate depends upon planar connections being unimpaired."

That's what I assumed. Maybe I should take it as a compliment that he can't think of anything better? Would have been nice if he had a fix…

Themyscira is a dot in the ocean at this point, and as I look west I can see the curve of the Earth. I turn to look east, curious to see whether or not I can spot Mr Excalibris from here. No. Which is probably a good thing. If he was throwing enough golden fire around to be visible from this far away…

I turn back towards the west, adopt the traditional swimming pose and accelerate, releasing Zauriel as I do so. He wallows in the air for a moment, then gets the hang of basic flight and pulls alongside me as I accelerate. Ugh. My fortress has basic wards, but I never really intended it to be more than semi-secure. The scuttling system is more reliable than the anti-magic system. It does have stealth, but I don't leave it on all the time and having it go active now would make it obvious where I was going.

"You said that Mister Excalibris isn't known for his patience?"

"It is true. He is not. He has an enthusiasm for violence that if exercised for any other cause I would consider to be sinful."

"And now?"

"I suspect that he will become… Piqued, before we reach your citadel. I can only pr-. I can only hope that he still retains enough morality not to kill those whom he is not specifically authorised to kill."

Marvellous. Merry Christmas, everyone.

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Clarion Call 12

next

25th December

08:42 GMT +1

Connection made to monitored phone line.

Stop monitoring it. Them, stop monitoring all of them.

Compliance.

We're moving at near the speed of sound, the Strait of Gibraltar a short distance behind us. Less than an hour to the Fortress. A small number of American military aircraft are circling it already. I'm not sure what their intent is, and I can't ask them without falling foul of Mr Excalibris's decree. I don't think that model has a form of detection which can bypass my counter-detection abilities, and I know they don't have weapons which can impede-.

Ring, are they carrying nuclear weapons?

No fission-based weapons detected.

They don't have weapons which can significantly impede me. My fortress's shields are rated as being able to hold against low-yield nuclear weapons, but it's far easier to stop them by shooting them out of the sky than it is to survive tanking them.

Ring, find me news broadcasts.

Compliance.

"…those just joining us-" BBC News 24, well done ring. "-a being describing itself as the 'Archangel of War' has appeared in Israel, and has demanded that the superhero 'Orange Lantern' be handed over to it."

An image of Mr Excalibris himself, close-cropped black hair, stooped, dressed in steel and.. gold..? I'm assuming that it's gold plated plate appears on my mental screen. I was surprised to learn that he has cross earrings. The one on his right is the normal way up but the other is inverted. In memory of Saint Peter, I assume. His wings are midnight blue and he's carrying two swords wreathed in golden fir-. That's where they went!

"Justice League members Superman and Doctor Mist were seen attempting to talk to him a short time ago, but he does not appear to have responded either to them or to local superheroes."

Useful to know that he's still there. The image shifts to-. New York, KordTech. There are a lot of people out on the street at the moment, along with a strong police presence-. Ring, see if you can locate Vandal Savage. If I'm marked for death by the Host, it would be nice to take a few deserving souls along with me.

Compliance.

"Crowds began gathering outside KordTech offices and manufacturing plants as soon as the Archangel of War made his pronouncement. So far, demonstrations are relatively peaceful. The company's CEO -Theodore Kord- released this statement half an hour ago."

Ted stands before a blank white wall-. Yes, it's probably best if no one was exactly sure of his location. "Orange Lantern has done a great deal of work, both for my company and for humanity in general, even before we get into the work he's done with the Justice League. He's the reason why hurricane season is a thing of the past. He's the reason why we don't have to worry about global warming." He looks down at.. notes… I think he's mostly off-the-cuffing this. "So when someone puts a giant cage around the planet and orders us to hand him over… Someone who wasn't here when Fawcett City got literally invaded by demons from Hell..? Karrien Excalibris? Butt out."

"The Justice League have so far not given any indication of Orange Lantern's current location, and contacting him directly has so far proven impossible."

Can't imagine why.

"Vatican spokesman Cardinal Alfonsi gave the following statement-."

Probably irrelevant. I'd ask Zauriel about the relationship between the various churches and their god, but the wind is far too loud, and.. it's somewhat frivolous. If we win I'll have plenty of time to explain things, and if we lose… I imagine that this 'Mind of God' thing will be restructuring the whole mess of monotheistic religions anyway. Ring, let me know if any of Father Mattias's lot give press releases. Otherwise, switch channel.

Compliance.

"…don't know what he's done to deserve this."

"But you're sure he's done something?"

"Well I hardly think an angel of the Lord would turn up because he'd been jaywalking. Let's.. let's look at what we know. This is the man who's been introducing magic and other sorts of Atlantean technology into the US. Now, he may have been doing that with the best of intentions, but the Lord's opinion on the subject of witchcraft is very clear."

"Sure, that might be why, ah… 'Karrien Excalibris' has shown up-."

"Oh, come on! A literal angel shows up in Israel, what exactly does it take-?"

"Yeah, it might be, and you and I can speculate any number of reasons why God might have sent one of His messengers. But at the moment, we don't exactly know what Orange Lantern has done to offend the Lord. A person can't repent unless they know what they've done, and last time Orange Lantern spoke to an angel they parted on… Okay, not exactly friendly terms, but I didn't see a golden fire spreading across the upper atmosphere."

I guess no one thinks it could be a well dressed thanagarian this time.

"If you don't think it's magic, what do you think it is?"

"I don't know… Let's not forget that he's the biggest peeping tom in history."

I start chuckling inside my armour. Okay, I'd.. repent that. It wasn't a lot of fun for me either.

"I hardly think-."

"I'm not saying that's what it was, I'm just saying that-. God didn't send an angel when Doctor Fate fought the Nazis, or when Giovanni Zatara joined the Justice League."

"Then what about him invading the Garden of Eden?"

"God did send an angel when he did that, and they talked it out. Same problem with him being a pagan."

"Okay, I.. think we've taken that as far as-." There's a pause, and my internal screen shows the host freeze, blinking. "Ah, breaking news-."

Ring, what's Mr Excalibris doing?

He's flying tow-. Past Kal-El, over a good part of the crowd, landing in front of a small group of men. One is dressed as a Christian priest while the rest are wearing purple t-shirts with a downward-pointing sword on them. One of them is carrying a standard with a yellow banner with a yellow sword on it.

They're the Tongues of Fire. The paramilitary wing of the Resurrection Crusade. I hadn't realised that they still existed.

…

Okay, that's… Actually not a disaster. I knew they knew how to contact angels, it's hardly surprising that they could get this one's attention. And they don't know anything about me that isn't public knowledge. There actually isn't much about me that is a genuine secret. Unless… Mr Excalibris literally didn't bother to do any research on me. In which case-.

Mr Excalibris turns towards Kal-El and Dr Balewa. He points in their general direction with the sword in his left hand. His mouth moves, but the camera I'm taking this from doesn't pick up what he says. A moment later they both drop from the air, and Mr Excalibris stalks towards them.

Reveal myself or not? Reveal myself or not? It doesn't guarantee-.

Mr Excalibris sheathes his swords and… From the look of it he's shouting something at them. Okay. Not too much longer until I reach the fortress. Once I'm in Labyrinth I can broadcast my location without any difficulty, but until then it's-.

Mr Excalibris picks up Kal-El by the throat and tosses him across the stony ground, before turning away and vanishing in a wash of blinding light. Shoot, I don't know where he is. But if he doesn't-.

Fifteen flashes of brilliant golden light appear in the air around my fortress.

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Clarion Call 13

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25th December

08:46 GMT +1

The lights fade and… Androgynous, blonde, white wings… Classical angels, armed either with sword and shield or spear and shield. Their wings are outstretched but they're not having to flap, and their hair is merely ruffled by the wind instead of being plastered across their faces. Most of their number spread out to form a perimeter around my fortress, with three flying in the general direction of the closest planes.

"1:1 I act with the authority of God on high! This tainted citadel will be purged from existence. Retreat to a safe distance and bear witness to the destruction which comes to all who defy God Almighty!"

Aaaagh… It's more an inconvenience than anything else, but losing the fortress would be a wretch. There's nothing.. truly irreplaceable on board… Except memories… Once I get the Hellblazer I'll say that they're welcome to it. And if they destroy it before that… I'll just have to skip ahead and go to Hell without picking it up. I've got no idea whether or not Mammon can replicate the Hellblazer without an example to work from. I've got the designs and the Ace but I don't know whether or not he's got anyone familiar with Atlantean thaumaturgical notation.

Except… There are far more angels in the Silver City than this. What are the rest up to that I can't see?

Ring, what do the pilots make of this?

"…instructions from command or a bloody chaplain, at this rate. Take no hostile action, maintain distance. And for the love of-." Heh. "Whatever you do, do not lock onto them."

"Yeah, no shit, sir. Maintaining five mile distance. What exactly are we supposed to do if Orange Lantern comes here?"

"I do not know, Lieutenant."

And that makes three of us. Okay, a circle of twelve angels at equidistant points around my fortress-. They're looking upwards, arms raised… Golden light plays over their bodies, then reaches out left and right to form a circle. The other three are-

"1:2 As is written in Deuteronomy, chapter eleven, verse one: 'Love the Lord your God and keep his requirements, his decrees, his laws and his commands always.' The commandments of heaven outweigh any given by mortal rulers. Even if you have no concern for yourselves, then acknowledge the authority of Heaven and depart!"

-are preaching to the US air force. To be fair, if they are anything like Zauriel they probably don't want to kill innocent men and women. But the reward of mindless obedience to a cruel lord-

"1:3 I say again unto you-."

-is a railgun round to the face.

They can't actually die-die, right?

I drop invisibility, generate five railguns, load mage slayer rounds and open fire.

"Holyfuckingshithe's here!"

I don't know if it's the aura of white light or innate angelic toughness, but they're taking several hits-. First one then another drops from the air and then another, bodies battered and white togas stained with silver blood.

"1:4 Foul malefact-!"

Twenty three supersonic shots hit him in the face, one after the other. I see his eyes and magic fade as the twenty third hits and his skull cracks. I'll give them this, they're tougher than demons.

"You could have simply bypassed them."

Three on the far side of the fortress duck behind it, a song that sets my armour and teeth rattling uttering from their lips.

"You told me that-" I thrust upward, getting a clear shot for a second and winging one of them. He hurtles through the air and slams into the fortress's outer shield. "-they got better."

"I weep not for them-" I evade the gold fire which leaps from their weapons, but-. Urgh! My eyes just burst! That.. song it-! "-but for you as you embrace violence and murder so casually."

I consider snapping back with an observation about his master's conduct… And promptly realise that I have killed far more people than the paltry two or three million God did in the Bible.

The lead angel increases his pitch, my railgun volley being disintegrated before it can strike home while they get closer. Fine. Fortress, point defences live.

The outer shield deforms, tiny faults in the containment field causing tiny streams of plasma to leap out. The angels are blindsided, their clothes catching fire and painful-looking welts appearing on their skin. One angel who was heading back from the fighters stops in the air, stunned at the violence of the exchange. More importantly, he stops singing, and a moment later I learn that corporeal angels are vulnerable to cold guns as the fortress opens up in earnest.

"These are-" I switch to energy pulses and lasers as I fall back, getting a few hits in before the song changes frequency. At least my skull has stopped fracturing. "-not warrior angels."

And they're not going for him. Joy. Fine, music is your weapon of choice? Sonic cannons.

My railgun constructs disintegrate, being replaced by sonic lances which fire the moment they're whole. One angel gets his feathers shredded and tumbles out of the chase, but another change in frequency and they're proof against it again. In theory, this is a winnable way of fighting, but… I don't know what they have to do to get reinforcements and I don't want to wait for that to happen.

I rocket upward, accelerating to my highest safe non-instant speed. The four surviving angels who had been trying to surround me suddenly find themselves following me on a single vector. Right. A little bit-. Photon blast, Sword out and drop.

And they all dodge anyway, fine, accelerate down and swing and got you now fasterfasterfaster! Fortress, open up!

I roll left in the air as the angels abandon whatever area affect song they were using in favour of sonic lances of their own. I viff left, right and cloak-. And see their misses punch holes in the fortress's plasmic field and cut furrows into the armoured outer surface. Gr-. No, it's irritating, but at this point I've pretty much written it off as a loss. Just so long as I get the Hellblazer I can-.

I-.

I-.

Why can't I breathe?

Ring, my lungs feel fine. Are they fine?

Lungs are undamaged.

Any problem with the environmental shield feeding me oxygen?

Mechanism is impaired.

Consume magic.

Compliance.

"2:1 The air's vitality I deny to you. The water's coolness I deny to you."

Up and to my left-. Fuck. I never thought Mr Excalibris would go for a denunciation when he had two perfectly good sword arms.

"2:2 The nourishment of food I deny to you. The peace of sleep I deny to you."

And if I haven't dealt with this by the time that becomes a problem, I'll already be dead of oxygen starvation. At least the other angels are backing off. I.. should be able to get to Hell before the lack of oxygen becomes critical.

"2:3. The boon of sight I deny-" And the world goes black. Ring? No, no getting sight back, it seems. Sonic image. I fly into the fortress at speed, slowing only as much as I absolutely need to, "-to you. The gift of sound I deny-" Can't hear and the sonic image is gone as well. Ring, map, get me to the armoury. "-to you."

Compliance.

"2:4 From dust you were made. To dust you shall return."

Oooh cr-.

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Clarion Call 14

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25th December

08:49 GMT +1

My kinetic barrier triggers as I'm slammed into what I'm assuming is the corridor wall. Assuming, as I can't see anything or hear anything and I'm navigating by the map my rings are displaying in my head. Ring keep us going.

Compliance.

No visual or sonic scans, so I'm reduced to sending out filaments to feel my surroundings. The fortress is… Well, it's moving erratically, which with an object this size is not a good sign. Ring, try connecting to a terminal as we pass.

Compliance.

The map in my head shudders and expands-. Ah. A.. bout half of the internal sensors are no longer responding, and the image in my head looks like someone just tore the fortress in half. Since the main generator was in the centre towards the bottom, that's… Gone, so the fortress should be automatically using battery power to perform a controlled crash landing using its anti-gravity system. Except that system isn't really capable of performing its intended function if the fortress has been torn in half. The pieces would.. just overbalance. Plus the secondary damage would probably ruin the power distribution network anyway. I just assumed that if the place took this much damage that everyone on board would either have evacuated or be dead…

Focus. How do I maximise my chances of survival?

Ring, make sure I'm not creating adrenaline or anything else likely to increase my oxygen consumption rate. Or-. Wait, ring, is the oxygen in my blood being used, or has that stopped as well?

Oxygen level in arteries continues to be depleted.

So I.. could just… Scrapping most of my body and just keeping my head and blood is probably worth doing… Except I don't know that Mr Excalibris's next pronouncement won't be 'the Light of Avarice I deny to you', and if he did that I'd just die immediately.

I bounce off the walls and floor again, kinetic barrier taking the brunt of the impact. Based on how fast the fortress was falling and how much time has passed, I'm.. guessing that was this chunk hitting the water. Sinking isn't much of a problem at this point. The nearest Atlantean city is.. too far to get to on the oxygen I have available. And I don't particularly think that leading Mr Excalibris there would be a nice thing to do.

Seconds to go until I reach the armoury. Ring, how..? No, am I still using other chemicals? What exactly has Mr Excalibris done to me?

Food held in stomach is no longer being digested. Chemicals in blood stream are being processed as normal. Waste products are being evacuated as normal.

Would it work if I turned myself into a methane breather?

Unknown. Methane is found in Earth's atmosphere in small quantities. However, the precise extent of the edict is unclear. This ring can transmute oxygen so that it has never been part of the air, yet this oxygen behaves in the same way as atmospheric oxygen. Similarly, the mechanism this ring employs to maintain vitality in space is impaired despite not being related to the air.

How about full robotic?

A fully robotic body would not require atmospheric chemicals in the medium term.

My surroundings rotate as the chunk of fortress I'm in rolls, but since I'm flying blind anyway it's not as disorientating as it might have been. The ring's flight aura presses me against the door of the armoury as it interfaces with the controls.

And my brain?

This technique does not guarantee continuity of existence.

Because the handful of humans who have uploaded themselves weren't exactly the most mentally stable of people, and didn't bother recording the process in anything like enough detail. The door opens and I fly through as the fortress rolls over again.

Okay, need my blood, the rest can go. Give me the equivalent of what Danni has-. Wait, remaining ring power, and how much will this take?

One hundred forty three percent of maximum power remaining. Full physical conversion will require twelve percent.

Do it, make sure to keep my tattoos. And-

A really weird feeling passes through my body, sensory feedback from my extremities suddenly feeling… Off. I'm not numb, I still have full sensation, but… I move the fingers of my right hand, and I can't feel the movement of the skin, the tightening and loosening as it's stretched and compressed. You don't think about what it feels like to have bones until you don't have them anymore.

-get me to the Hellblazer.

Light… Doesn't return, but my ring is relaying an image of what would be there if I could see it through my newly robotic eyes. Surprisingly thoughtful. I fly at the storage locker holding the gun-.

And my vision glitches as the ring detects cracks running across the wall to my left, running in fits and starts across in all directions and accompanied by spurts of water. Huh. Pressure shouldn't be anything like enough to break these walls. I guess dust to dust is a damage over time thing. Fine, at this point I wasn't going to get much use out of this thing anyway.

I open the locker and extract the gun. The ring is best-guessing the colour of kaahuite but it can't quite match the weird… Ooze-glimmer that the stuff has. Probably because it isn't a visual thing but a response to the whole anti-creation aspect of it. But on the plus side, that means that I'm part of creation now. So the chance of me being able to get to an afterlife has increased. The downside being that that's what the people trying to kill me want to happen, I suppose. I load the gun as the water spills past me, work the mechanism… Good.

What next? I've lost track of Zauriel. I have the Hellblazer and the Sword of the Fallen. I have a chance of beating Mr Excalibris, but it's nothing like as sure a thing as I'd like. I'd prefer to go to Hell and work from there, but the oxygen in my blood isn't going to last forever. Which is the bigger risk? Can't tell for sure, but I'd guess the angel literally playing on God mode. For whatever reason he appears to have decided not to make a follow up attack…

How to get to Hell? The nearest portal I know about is near Cefalù on Sicily, but opening a portal right here would be a good deal quicker. A lot of the safety processes I'd normally want are unnecessary; there's no one around I care about and I assume that the surviving angels can deal with it.

The room around me is continuing to fall apart. I'm.. pretty much in the ocean surrounded by an unusually dense concentration of scrap right now. Ring, find 'down' and head in that direction.

Compliance.

I don't know if this is actually helping, but between my tattoos, the water and the wreckage I'm hoping that I'm a little harder to spot-.

"3:1 Malefactors cannot hide from the Wrath of the Most High, nor from his holy agents!"

Yes, because I can still hear him. Ring, any idea what that did?

Increased level of heat detected on external surface. Supposition: the world is now transparent.

My robotic eyes are now just showing me a confused blur, so I deactivate them.

Okay, take us up. Any way to detect the man himself?

Omnidirectional filaments.

Yes, that was the best I could come up with as well. Okay, gun… On a construct-mount because that will be faster than aiming it with my arms.

Oh, and put up a construct telling Zauriel to open a portal to Labyrinth right away if he's still there.

Compliance.

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Clarion Call 15

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25th December

08:52 GMT +1

"4:1 Bow, Worm, before the messengers of the Most High!"

Filaments shoot out to try to locate-.

"4:2 The air itself will reject your foul touch!"

And promptly fade into nothing. Environmental shield is still working -for all the good it's doing- and.. I.. still have no idea where he is, relative to me. In other circumstances I might try to provoke him with banter, but I can't speak without air. Gravity? Winged humanoids don't warp spacetime much, but I can't think of anything else. Ring, make it so.

Compliance.

Tiny distortions-. Given the distance I think those are the planes. Which leaves the rest to be angels. I can't tell from their deployment pattern which is Mr Excalibris himself and which are the regulars. Heck, for all I can tell one of those could be Zauriel.

"4:3 Foul defiler of God's flawless universe, I will-"

Wait, is that it? The Mind of God doesn't like me because I'm not from this universe originally? That would actually sort of make sense. I mean, it would be dumb, but if there was something inherent to my nature that was causing a problem rather than something I'd done then I could understand it!

"-send you to meet our Maker!"

Oh, no, he thinks his god made me too. And one of the gravity distortions is moving my way. Guess this is it then. I target him with the Hellblazer and squeeze the trigger, lever, trigger, lever-. Automate that, draw the sw-.

I'm jerked sideways, something slamming into me. Kinetic barrier.. appears to have been bypassed, but my environmental shield and armour hold strong. No idea where that came from or what it is, but it doesn't appear to be Mr Excalibris as I haven't been stabbed yet. Ah… There's solid ground underneath me. Ring, oxygen remain-? Ah.

Okay, can't use filaments. Ring, fabricate microbots and send them out to build a picture-

Overcome All Restrictions!

-of what's going.. on…

Did I hear-? I blink as my vision is… Partially restored. I.. think I'm seeing by infrared. One.. humanoid, lots of.. vague shapes… None of them look like angels, so, progress. The figure gets closer, and I think… Their lips are moving, maybe? I think my eyes are trying to show me parts of the spectrum I didn't design them for, and that combined with the fact that my brain hasn't fully adapted to the cybernetics yet is giving me a headache.

The figure stops just in front of me and touches my right vambrace. They then tap rapidly-. Ring, interpret.

Are you alive

Ring, display text: I am alive. I cannot take in oxygen and so converted my body to machinery to extend my lifespan. I need to get to the province of Labyrinth in Hell and to have the theurgical magics working on me dispelled.

Follow

The figure moves away. Don't have anything better to do. Ring, try matching the thermal image I just saw with everyone on your database. Any ideas?

Image resolution insufficient for reliable analysis.

Fair enough. And-. And the location the microbots were reporting as a rock-strewn wasteland is gone, as is the signal from the microbots.

Life Is To Be Lived!

I gasp, newly installed cybernetic lungs humming faintly as they suddenly gain the ability to process oxygen! Still don't know where I am, but at least I'm not going to die right away.

Each Essence Is Precious!

…

That time I definitely heard something. It sounded.. like…

What-?

No, no, think it through. I take the Hellblazer off its construct mount and press both of my rings against the kaahuite segment.

What Is Given Belongs To The Recipient!

And ring scan! Where am-

The towering edifice of Masak Mavdil itself towers above us and demon warriors are converging from all directions.

-I? Okay. And my rescuer is either Scott Free or Doctor Impossible, and since he's actually being helpful…

"Mist-. Mister Miracle?"

"I hope you had a plan for the next part, too."

"More a hope than anything else, really. What have I missed?"

"KordTech New York was.. disintegrated. People started being evacuated as soon as the mob started forming, but… We're not sure how many people made it out. Kord… Didn't."

Damn.

"They were moving in on Themyscira, Mount Etna and Mount Justice before you reappeared. Did you know ab-?"

"No, no, I just wanted to stop them destroying-" I lift the Hellblazer slightly. "-this. How did you find me?"

"I just listened to when Karrien started shouting again."

"There they are!"

We both look around as a thin and long-limbed demon climbs a rock and points us out.

"But about that plan..?"

"This is where Hell keeps captured angels. It marks the point where Hell.. started, where the First of the Fallen came to rest when God cast him out. If there's anywhere the Mind of God's theurgy won't work, this is it. And I've got a.. deal with the owner, but it's not one that the minions know about." Hm. "How did we get here?"

"Boom tubes aren't limited to conventional physical locations. And I was slightly faster than Canis. So about those demo-."

I switch the Hellblazer for the Ace of Winchesters and shoot the closest, who explodes with golden light. The rest scatter, seeking cover or forming a wall of kaahuite shields. Right idea.

"I'm here to talk to either William Hayes or Satanus. I probably can't beat you all, but I can kill an awful lot of you and the Archangel of War is hunting me."

A tremor runs through the host as out of the corner of my eye I see Mr Hayes leap from the middle battlements and fly at speed towards us. He comes to a halt in the air about halfway between us and the shield turtle.

"Harm remembers the It, and with little fondness." Looks like he's been upgraded again. Demonic cybernetics, kaahuite plate and… A cloak made from what looks like Ran Va Daath's skin. "If It has something to say-."

"The Mind of God has sicced the Archangel of War on me. I need to kill both of them, and as much of the Host as necessary to make that happen. Do you think we can cooperate?"

Mr Hayes smiles. "Harm has long wished to taste the flesh of angels. Harm believes that we can make common cause."

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Clarion Call 16

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25th December

08:03 GMT

Demonic sorcerers under the direction of Agony and Ecstasy chant, and portals to the other provinces of Hell open wide. Then Mammon-as-Satanus strides through one to Limbo about a half-second before Neron stalks through the one to Gull, arm in arm with Rosacarnis. He's dressed as a knight, kaahuite plate covered with a green surcoat. She's wearing a dress, runic symbols which hurt my eyes stitched into the fabric. Neron shoots Mammon a look of utter fury, while Mammon smiles politely and waves back. Rosacarnis merely nods, then the three of them head towards Mr Hayes, Mr Free and me.

"Orange Lantern!" Mammon's smile grows as he gets to within hailing distance. "I see that even Hell itself is not free of the havoc you create!"

Behind him, portals widen as soldiers begin marching through. Stercorax rides some sort of demonic insect-rhino at the head of a column of damned souls wearing what looks like grey power armour and carrying long-barrelled guns. Neron's soldiers on the other hand are more orc-like; hulking brutes armed with melee weapons and shields whose surfaces ripple with the power of the demonic spells bound to them. All of which will go dead if anything happens to Neron himself. A third column of mechanical and cybernetic… Things comes through another portal, the wraith-like form of Richard Simpson darting from war machine to war machine with gleeful energy. Other columns emerge from the other portals and move to occupy the positions indicated by the demonic civil servants who came here from Pandemonia with the Twins.

"I do worship Eris, my lord. A certain amount of chaos is to be expected."

Neron looks down at me contemptuously. "You are the one whom the entire Host of Heaven is pursuing? Such a small thing to cause such a great excitement."

I grin. "Thank you for coming, Arch-Duke Neron. I really appreciate it. It's a massive help to me, and I'm astonished at your generosity."

He and Mammon share a look, while Rosacarnis raises her right eyebrow. Breath hisses through his teeth. "We do not do this for you, fool. But handing you over to the lickspittles of the Silver City… Helping them, is inconceivable. Ejecting you amounts to the same thing. And if we killed you, they would simply come for your soul. And for the Host to have the temerity to invade our realm…"

Mammon nods. "The governance of Hell is… In dispute. Even before you slew the First, his power never entirely recovered from his defeat at the hands of John Constantine. There's not even any real consensus on who the forerunners are."

Neron's eyes burn with green flame. "Me."

Rosacarnis lays her right hand on his shoulder. "Calm yourself, your highness. You will have more than enough opportunities to demonstrate your strength this day."

Mammon nods cheerfully. "Which is rather the point. We're all strong within our own domains, but there is no real avenue to expand, to seize one another's territory and claim the Crown of Horns. Any of us who try-" He glances at Neron. "-get our knuckles rapped."

There's a sort of electric buzz as Mr Simpson appears. "It's a giant, demon, cock-waving contest! Whose is biggest?! Who knows how best to roger angels with it?! And who can do it when everybody's watching? Because if there's one thing demons respect, it's killing angels."

Mr Hayes smiles faintly. "Harm has no interest in either the crown or in waving his genitals. Harm is simply here to kill servants of God."

I nod. "You can't rule if no one is prepared to obey you. The lord who achieves the most, who demonstrates themselves to be in the most commanding position, will start getting pledges of loyalty from those who aren't strong enough to make their own claim. That will snowball… And Hell will have a new sovereign."

Mammon nods. "I'd thank you for the opportunity… But then afterwards I'd have to cut off my own lips."

"I don't believe that I've heard of the Crown of Horns."

Rosacarnis waves her right hand negligently. "After the Great Darkness rose, Lucifer agreed to share power with Beelzebub and Azazel in order to restore some semblance of stability to Hell. They both demanded that he forge them a crown to reflect their new status. So he did: one crown, which he suggested they share. Since they couldn't, it was left on a pedestal next to Lucifer's throne."

"Demons not being able to share was how John Constantine tricked the First, Second and Third into curing his lung cancer. It's a pretty big psychological weakness."

Neron's eyes narrow. "Mortals may consider you wise-" I can't help but shake my head. "-but you clearly know little of Hell."

"You guys know that I killed the First, right?"

Rosacarnis looks at me almost pityingly. "The succession is not simply a matter of killing your predecessor. The First did not kill Lucifer, and neither Remiel nor Duma killed him."

"What happened to them, anyway?"

The assembled demon lords look at one another, and snigger. Mammon shakes his head. "Never you mind. Simpson, are the Exegesis Guild going to make a showing?"

He wobbles his head from side to side. "Their mouths say 'yes', their troop movements say 'no'."

Neron's lip curls. "I'm not surprised. They've grown truculent and useless. I'm sure that the First only granted them their charter as a slight to Belial."

Mr Simpson nods. "You'll get no argument from me. I had to leave a good portion of my force behind in case they decide to pull anything, and I know what that does to my chances."

Neron nods. "I believe that it is firmly in Hell's interests that they be put in their place, once this is done."

Mammon nods. "Obviously. Any prince of Hell who won't respond to an external invasion is unworthy of their office."

"What are our chances?"

Neron sneers. "I don't much care what your chances are. But we've all been preparing for this. We've all been eagerly awaiting the day when we can overrun the Silver City and achieve dominion over the Earth. And while none of us were ready for it to happen today, we are more than capable of drowning the angels in their own blood."

"Glad to hear it." I take the Hellblazer off its harness and hold it out. "Would this help?"

Neron rolls his eyes. "A lever action rifle? We're not ignorant savage-"

Mr Simpson's eyes light up. "Oooooooooh. What have you done there?"

"-es." He frowns. "What? The kaahuite? Satanus wasn't exactly slow to attack him with it."

"No, the spell." He gestures. "Look at it!"

Rosacarnis cautiously takes the gun and examines the runes. "I believe that I understand. You're using the kaahuite to link anyone struck by the bullets to the Great Void directly. You humans can be so creative."

Mr Simpson's hands glow. "I doubt we'll have time for mass implementation, but if any of you want to pass weapons to my processors I should be able to replicate it." He looks my way. "This is good stuff, this is. Sephtian's design?"

"Technically, my design, which he checked and his employees enchanted, based on the work of whoever it was who created the Ace of Winchesters." I frown. "He ended up down here, didn't he? Which of you.. got him?"

Their eyes dart to one another's faces, their expressions carefully neutral. Mr Simpson shrugs and Rosacarnis returns her attention to me as Mammon and Neron's eyes meet and neither of them want to be the one to look away first.

"That will also be a matter to investigate once the Host are dealt with."

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Clarion Call 17

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25th December

08:19 GMT

"…avenged yourselves upon those who tormented you, but have you spared a thought for those who so callously decreed that you were worthy of such torments?!" Mammon's soldiers are fortifying their positions or setting up support weapons on the lower curtain wall around Masak Mavdil. Nonetheless, he's taking the opportunity to remind anyone who might think of wavering in the face of angels why they're fighting. "Those who gleefully cast down any who did not bow and scrape before them and their laws! I know that all of you believe as I do, that the current state of affairs is cruel and unjust!"

"Fool." Neron sneers, shaking his head. "Appealing to the damned. It is as if he doesn't want the Crown of Horns at all."

Mr Free looks a little amused. "And you think Hell's government should be of the demons, by the demons, for the demons?"

"No, it should be me." He glances at Mr Free and I, weighing up whether it's worth explaining the subject to us or not. "Those are damned souls without the strength to become demons. They are a breath on the wind. Weak, not merely of will but also of magic. Without that armour, without those weapons, a small group of my skirmishers could outfight the whole lot of them. Even with their… Arquebuses, and with the force their armour lends to their bodies, they are weaker both at range and in melee than my own soldiers."

"And in magic?"

He lowers his eyebrows, then chuckles at me. "The damned cannot use magic in Hell. If they could, they would have become demons by now."

I suppose… Most magic users draw power from the world around them, from Earth's natural magic fields. Those aren't accessible here. They should be able to use Hell's magic… Shouldn't they? Goodness knows that enough people on Earth do. Maybe it's something to do with being dead. Or… No. Neron is ancient. He might just be lying to me, or exaggerating, but I doubt that he'd be wrong.

"You don't feel the need to exhort your own troops?"

"My soldiers will fight when I tell them to fight, kill when I tell them to kill and die when I tell them to die." He looks thoughtful for a moment. "Still: it would not hurt to place myself in the van, to show them by personal example why I am their overlord."

There's a puff of green mist, and he's gone. I catch sight of him a moment later, already passing on orders to a demon identified in the Grimoire Verum as Archfiend Pyrus, who bows his head at once.

"So, you're the God of Freedom." Rosacarnis looks at Mr Free with intense curiosity. "It's strange to feel the power of-. You call it the Source, don't you?"

He shrugs. "I grew up on Apokolips. Granny Goodness wasn't big on theology."

"Ah. A pity. But it is strange to feel the magics of the Source from one without wings. We simply must get together once this matter has… Been dealt with."

"Any idea how long we've-" A blood red bonfire flares up a short distance from us. "-got?"

Mammon's soldiers turn to point a score of ectoplasma projectors at it as Mr Cassidy walks through. He starts to raise his trident and then thinks better of it, whistling as he gets a look at the assembled army. "Should I be worried about how fast you put all this together?"

"When you're an Illustres, you just have to be prepared for these things."

Rosacarnis smiles wickedly as she stares at him. "The Spawn of Nebiros. Have you any idea how many of my agents you've banished back here?"

His right hand tightens its grip on the haft of his trident, while his left waves vaguely. "Like… Ten..? Twenty..? You really want to do this now?"

"Whatever power your sponsor gave you, you are not one of us. And you have made it clear that your interests do not align with.. ours." She stops, frowning, and sniffs. "Why do you smell of the stuff of creation?"

"Ate a fruit from the Garden of Eden. Hey, Lantern-" He turns his head my way. "-I don't think it's working. I'm still finding her attractive."

"Your libido isn't my fault. How are things upstairs?"

"More angels are appearing, and… Excalibris is sending flocks after people like me. We're going to be down a few magicians before this is over."

"Chantinelle?"

He shrugs. "Haven't seen her. But since she isn't exactly a demon any more and she's got the same tattoos as you, she should be okay."

"And Jade? Diana?"

He shrugs. "I don't know. I don't know any Jade, and Wonder Woman doesn't tell me what she's doing."

Yeah, that's-.

"Is that a robot?" He's staring in the direction of a large mechanoid with anti-flier gun mounts. "Since when does Hell have robots?"

"Since Richard Simpson finished his apprenticeship after stealing Nergal's..-" I look at Rosacarnis. "-body. That's how you know him."

She remains impassive. "It's hardly a secret. I found what he and Constantine did to my father utterly hilarious."

I nod. "Remember to keep a watch out for giant rats. Your father didn't get to where he was by not having backup plans."

"Oh. That." She smiles. "I thank you for your warning, but the matter has been dealt with. Permanently."

"I'll let John know when I see him. I'm sure it-."

There's a jagged flare of pink light as Agony and Ecstasy teleport to us. Agony's playing with his barbed wire, but Ecstasy looks down at me in fascination.

"Um. I don't know what you're thinking, but I woke up in bed with two women this morning and so there isn't really anything you can offer-."

"You have met the font of all desire."

"What, the Ophidian?" It's hard to see given how the two of them are glowing, but this close I can see where they're both bleeding from the barbs biting into their skin. "Yes, we're fairly-."

Her eyes widen. "He's coming."

I try not to look at her brother, his erect penis, or the barbed wire snaking around it. "I've always.. thought of the Ophidian as female…" I frown. "Though now that you mention it-."

A blinding flare of white light flashes into existence in the wastelands a short distance from the tower! And the sound-! It sort of reminds me of Zauriel's song at KordTech, only-. Piercing and demanding rather than beautiful or inspiring. Winds blast over the defences as soldiers come alert and ready their weapons. I generate railguns and-. And I glance at Mr Free.

"Mister Miracle?" I offer him the Hellblazer. "I imagine that you could benefit from this more than me."

He looks at it for a moment, then shakes his head. "I'll.. see about countering the angels' song."

"But-."

He's already taken off on his aero-discs, moving to take cover behind the towering bulk of Masak Mavdil. Makes.. sense, I suppose. That's his speciality. I turn to Mr Cassidy. "Do you-?"

"I don't know anything about shooting real guns." He takes a two-handed grip on his trident. "I'll stick to th-."

The sound becomes deafening as the angels arrive.

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Clarion Call 18

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25th December

08:23 GMT

A flock of twelve angels emerge without particular urgency from the portal, coming to a halt above the desolate plane. One among their number wears a golden torc, and he positions himself at the fore.

"1:1 Denizens of this desolate place! Be it known…"

He takes a moment to look at the entrenchments.

"That…"

Mammon smiles, a small runic communicator in his hand glowing for a moment. "Don't keep me waiting."

The angel backs up slightly. "1:2 Good Lord."

The air between the lines and the angels turns green with fire from the ectoplasma projectors. I lower my rifle slightly as the angels begin to burn, only the two on the far left managing to turn and flee quickly enough to avoid the brunt of the firepower.

"I'm underwhelmed."

Rosacarnis raises her right eyebrow. "Did you believe yourself to be worthy of the full force of Heaven?"

The last two angels have nearly made it back into the portal before Mr Hayes blurs through the air and shoulder barges one of them. I can see his target's outline bend as his bones break. The other survivor turns and sings, and I'm treated to the sight of scintillating white light washing harmlessly off his Daathskin coat.

"Harm does not find It intimidating."

He then drops, grabbing his still-living quarry out of the air before flying back to the air over friendly lines. Local fliers make sure to give him space as he holds his trophy up high, the angel attempting to sing at him with shattered ribs. Mr Hayes shifts his grip in response, left hand on the top of his head and right hand forcibly closing his jaw.

"No." Mr Hayes shakes his head, head tilting slightly to the left as his head gets closer to that of his victim. "No."

Oh.. he.. wasn't joking about.. eating one. I can see the flares of golden fire as the angel's sanctified flesh burns him on the way down, but… He's certainly committed. And I suppose that Aym's indestructibility and Asmodeus's courage help.

"Won't that just weaken him?"

Mr Cassidy grimaces. "I know I'd be pretty weak if someone ate my face. It's like kryptonite or something."

"I mean Mister Hay- Harm. Isn't he using up his magic to keep himself from exploding?"

Rosacarnis shakes her head, watching Harm intensely. "When he seized Labyrinth, I thought that he was someone's stalking horse. At best, a brute of little lasting importance. But I will say without shame that no one else here would dare doing what he is doing. And that everyone admires him for it."

A chunk of shoulder falls to the ground beneath him, a faint gold flame flaring up from the ground where it lands.

"It's always nice to see a happy ending. Why did those idiots just fly into our guns?"

"Even a small flight of angels would be enough to send a disorganised rabble of minor demons running. Even a fell templar like my uncle would hesitate, knowing the price of being singled out. I expect they believed that they could command us to hand you over, or at least intimidate us into revealing your location. But now Hell is unified. Lucifer did not care to do that, the First intentionally avoided it and Remiel and Duma… Could not comprehend. This is new."

"Ah…" Mr Cassidy raises his trident, the head of which is vibrating and glowing. "I don't think Hell's the only ones who-"

For a fraction of a second I see six burning wheels through the portal. And then ohIdidnotknowtheyhadthose! Six… Spaceships..? In pearl and gold armour fly through the portal, their hulls humming and the burning rings which appear to provide their propulsion spinning around four veins near the middle of each vessel. Each one is about six hundred metres long, and as I watch the points where the wheel meets the spokes glow brilliantly-.

Rays of light zigzag out before slamming down into the densest concentrations of defenders. Neron's raised hands glow green and the bolt heading his way fades into nothing, while his soldiers hunker behind their shields as the sigils inscribed on their surfaces light up with eldritch light. Mammon's troops crouch behind rapidly deployed shields of whatever that silver material they wear is, but while Neron's followers appear to be merely knocked to the ground when struck the vengeful damned are torn apart by direct hits. One bolt fired a little after the rest heads for Mammon-

"Harm thinks not."

-before being intercepted by the brutalised remains of the angel Harm was snacking on. That's going to be a problem, though. Mammon can pretend to be Satanus perfectly well. He's got the intelligence, the cunning and the skill. But he doesn't have anything like the raw magical power. He actually can't survive punishment which Satanus could soak up, and if he starts taking hits-. I do not want Hell unified under Neron.

"I want one." There's a flash as Mr Simpson possesses a heavy anti-air emplacement and sets the autoloader clanking into life. "I want them all!"

"Hm." Rosacarnis studies the flying vessels for a moment as they fire again. "The weakest point in the spell matrix is just behind the prow."

I don't hear Mammon's response, but his emplaced cannons open fire only moments after Mr Simpson's flak cannons, black-flecked green smearing itself across the ships' hulls. Most of the initial ectoplasma volley is turned aside by whatever that humming shield is, but the kaahuite slugs have their intended effect and the barrier visibly wavers.

"Ring." I generate a frame for the Hellblazer, targeting the rear ship. "Gravitic accelerator."

Compliance.

"Fire."

BANG!

I blink, a burning blue line which describes an arc in the air between me and the ship I targeted suddenly appearing, the force of the sonic boom forcing Mr Cassidy to shield his face and plant his feet. I hear it as the song around the ship I hit fails-.

Neron grabs a spear from one of his subordinates and hurls it at the ship I hit. The vanguard of the angel's fleet tries to manoeuvre to block it but the accumulated fire it's taken has damaged its motive wheel and its efforts to turn only cause it to wallow and roll. Neron's spear slams into the front of the ship I hit, biting into its armour and spilling toxic green light outwards across its hull. The spear jerks as Neron's own arcane malice causes it to bite deeper and deeper, the green light on the outer hull forming runes of corruption and consumption-.

The ship's fire wheel fails and the ship plummets to the ground, a plume of dust and stone erupting where its crumpling nose meets the rock. A moment later the spear reaches its target and the midsection of the ship explodes in a wave of green fire.

Neron turns his head in my direction, and nods.

Another ship drops out of formation, the singing shield having been broken down enough by the kaahuite shot to allow the ectoplasma fusillade to melt the front portion of the hull to slag. Another volley of light lances out from the wheels of fire, but clusters of demonic sorcerers behind the front lines raise hands glowing with eldritch fire and send clouds of kaahuite dust up to intercept them. The bolts pass through, the light they emit fading until they strike their targets with a mere fraction of their original power.

"Ring. New targ-"

Angels fly out of the blinding light at speed, their bodies covered in gold-coloured armour and burning swords outstretched as they head for the front lines!

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Clarion Call 19

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25th December

08:26 GMT

"-et."

A new ship in my sights I fire again, the round passing effortlessly through the shield song even as it shifts pitch in an attempt to block it. Jets of flame from the first wave of angels roar into the first trench line, causing the outgoing fire to drop off to next to nothing as everyone there is forced to drop beneath their shields.

"At last."

There's a disturbingly sexual purr in Harm's voice as he stoops at his first target, and I'm glad that I don't find him attractive any longer. The angel he selected spots him coming and slows in the air, raising their shield as their wingmates cluster closer and raise theirs. They raise their voices, and an aura of white light forms around-.

Harm throws a kaahuite knife, which buries itself in the trachea of the angel on the left. His voice stutters and gurgles as his throat fills with his blood, disrupting the song enough for the focused gout of hellfire from Harm's mouth to get through. Their armour withstands it but it flows around the plates and into the joints and the ventilation slits. Their pose falters and their grip becomes less certain. Just for an instant, but that's all the time Harm needs to knock the centre angel's shield aside and slam into their body. He doesn't slow, using their body as a shield as he flies deep into the oncoming wave. He breathes fire again, the focused gout of flame enveloping his victim's head as he hits into another angel.

The surprised secondary victim was focusing their attention on the ground and is knocked spinning, plummeting towards the ground for a second before ectoplasma fire from the second line immolates them. Harm appears to be laughing as he changes direction, dropping down on an angel lunging at a knot of Neron's soldiers who were advancing toward the downed ship. A harsh and judgemental song forces the demons to brace themselves, but singing it keeps the angel's attention sufficiently focused that it doesn't react to Harm throwing his passenger until its late comrade is already impaled on its upraised sword.

Rosacarnis smiles. "He's a natural."

That said, I see what Neron meant about the damned. While his own people are managing with shields and… Are those crossbows? Mammon's people just can't cover enough of the sky or bring fire to bear fast enough to stop the angels reaching them. And then they can drop to the ground and wade in with their glowing swords, incoming fire reduced to next to nothing and their victims'-.

And then I hear a shriek of confusion and fear from a cluster of angels in one of the forward trenches and… Is that a cyborg zomb-? No. No, it's one of the Scabbies, enhanced with demonic cybernetics and with kaahuite blades replacing its hands. And.. teeth. The former angel darts past the defences of its brethren and slices at them in an insane frenzy, angelic armour and flesh parting easily around its blades. All across the front lines I see similar scenes as the concealed Scabbies are unleashed to cover the damned's retreat.

I work the lever, target another ship as my previous target falls victim to an arc of purple energy from one of Mr Simpson's arcane support weapons, and fire again.

The advance slowed and their crowded front line making it easier for their assailants to kill them, the next wave of angels simply bypasses them and heads for the outer fortifications. Airburst shrapnel bombs begin detonating before them, doing little against their armour but tearing wings to shreds. The gates open, a herd of bestial lukhavim led by Stercorax charging to assail any who fall. A small flock drops from the sky the moment they appear, raising a shield wall and singing in unison… To no avail as the invulnerable demon leaps from his steed, knocks aside their spear points with his chest and lays into them with his fists.

Mister Cassidy glances at Rosacarnis, reluctant to take his eyes away from the scene for even a moment. "Thought you were supposed to be one of the leaders."

"Yes..?"

She sounds a little distracted, eyes darting from point of interest to point of interest.

"Do you really think these foolish narcissists would be willing to work together if I hadn't spent years forging alliances?"

Work the mechanism, shoot the ship, work the mechanism…

"So why are you here at all? You really want the crown that badly?"

"No. I'm here to mark targets. Flight leaders, their best singers… And I ensure that our people have the knowledge of where they're hiding."

Marksmen on the curtain wall open fire, strands of purple light wrapping around angels in the throng apparently at random and burning them to the bone. And I hear it as the song across their lines falters.

Another ship manages a controlled crash, its shields down but with only infantry ectoplasma weapons available to take advantage of the fact. The angels assailing the front line have more or less finished pulling back, and the majority of Scabies have fallen to sonic attacks and resolute spear-thrusts. The ships fire again, trying with all their might to create a clear landing zone before the walls.

"Any idea why Mister Excalibris himself hasn't appeared yet?"

I redirect from shooting another ship to put a round through an angel who spotted us and dived for our position. We're a way back, but with the angels having the freedom of the air 'lines' don't really have the same meaning as they would with more mundane warfare. The bullet strikes him in the cuirass and punches through into his sternum, causing him to fall from the sky and crash into the ground a short distance from us.

Mr Cassidy sighs and walks over to him as he struggles to rise. "I'm going to say this once. Give it up. I don't want to-."

The angel somehow manages to push up enough to clumsily swing at him with his sword.

Mr Cassidy grimaces, raising his trident slightly. "Ah, come on. Don't-."

"1:1 I am the.. wrath.. of the.. Almighty!"

Blue Devil brings the point of his trident down through its head, and the angel falls still. He looks at me, then at the corpse at his feet, and he shakes his head.

"No. I assume that even in his enhanced state that he has some limits. We are making our stand here for a reason."

"What are we doing about their respawning?"

"Every weapon we're using disrupts their ability to do that to some extent. And…" She looks up, nodding in the direction of the upper battlements. I follow-.

Some.. sort of arcane device is being winched into place, another Scabbie… With a hole in his chest where his heart used to be. Chains are pulled taut, and some sort of arcane device lights up-.

Gabriel screams, and black mists rise from the ground throughout the battlefield.

"What-?"

Angel songs falter and fail, angel wings shake and shed their feathers…

"That's-. Nono-."

"The Song of Creation's Antithesis." Rosacarnis smiles as I shudder inside my armour. "Harm isn't just a pretty face. A shame it took so many angels to create a delivery mechanism, but-."

The ash-clouded sky above us is rent by fifty three purple portals, new angelic ships emerging from each one! They fire as soon as they emerge, beams of light stabbing down. Even weakened by whatever that horror emerging from Gabriel's ruined lungs is, the sheer volume means that they slam down into the demons and cause great devastation. Guns and sorcerers all over the battlements of Masak Mavdil open fire at once, and strange… Things take to the air and fly towards them. I've no idea what the full size of the Silver City's armed forces is, but-.

"4:1 Still your tongue!"

A white column of fire and lightning blasts down from a portal-. And those two burning swords and dark wings can only be Karrien Excalibris himself. His bizarre theurgical attack slams into the side of the tower, evaporating rock and defenders with equal abandon until it reaches the machine holding Gabriel. Someone pulls a crank and hurriedly aims him at it, black tears running down his face as he's forced to wield his power against the express will of the god he once served.

I aim the Hellblazer at Mr Excalibris and fire.

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Clarion Call 20

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25th December

08:28 GMT

A boom, and a blue line racing into the sky. Did I-? No, he's still-. The shot was on target, what just-?

Undetected air distortion prevented impact. The ring shows me where the actual path deviated from the intended path. Cannot correct without further data.

Mr Excalibris flaps his wings, evading Gabriel's unwilling attack while he gazes down onto the battlefield. Presumably searching for whatever heathen dared assail him personally. A horde of warrior angels stream past him from the portals, heading down to reinforce the stalled first wave.

Mr Cassidy braces himself. "Did you really have to draw his attention down on us?"

On the positive side, that allows Gabriel's song to nullify the ship's energy blasts. The hulls of the ones struck directly lose their lustre and begin to flake apart. Mr Excalibris's absence also allows the crews of the tower-mounted flak cannons to get their weapons working, and moments later heavy kaahuite-laced shots begin peppering the air.

"And now it's time to share the pain." / "And now it's time to share the pleasure."

Agony and Ecstasy raise their arms, barbed wire turning to… Energy barbed wire and snaking upward, taking on the same properties it had when I first met Agony during my aborted resurrection efforts. A moment later I see it touch the portals from which ships are still emerging, attempting to manoeuvre around their stalled comrades. And then the portals… Fluctuate, whatever the twins do to control the passage between realms apparently working perfectly well on the magic-. I'm assuming it's magic? Which the ships used to travel here. Only a few ships are flat out sliced through, but the energetic collapses shut down flight wheels and severely abrade hulls.

Something catches my eye to the… Um. 120o anticlockwise from the original portal. Ring, magnify.

Compliance.

Upgraded and upgunned versions of those shark-plane things that strafed me during my first incursion are heading in, their automatic cannons already firing at any knots of angels which attract their attention.

Ecstasy gestures and the subverted portals spin, ships and angels trying frantically to evade before they are consumed. Mr Excalibris is forced to turn his attention from me, his jaw visibly straining as he bellows orders. Angels form up into choirs, the outer members struggling to take the brunt of the incoming fire on their shields while their comrades sing. Portals judder as shredded angels tumble, then collapse as the angels are forced to destroy their own entryways with their songs.

What I think was supposed to be a pincer movement to overwhelm the demon army once it was fully committed is down to about a third of its strength. I create railguns and aim them at Mr Excalibris. Just need to work out what degree of distortion is in play and I can-.

"5:1 Know His Almighty Wrath!"

Mr Excalibris raises his swords over his head and swings them down, fire roaring through the air in their wake! A slice of curtain wall is reduced to slag and-.

And I grab Rosacarnis and fly as a five metre wide sheet of flame scours through where we were standing. Okay, those guys on the walls need to re-aim Gabrie-.

"5:2 Burn in the Fires of Judgement!"

Second line units try to split around the sheet of flame, their compact formations good for chasing off angels rendering them highly vulnerable to area effect attacks strong enough to burst past their shields. Another fiery blast annihilates a support battery on the tower, and angels dive for the one 'safe' approach.

The first is broken in two as Harm punches it hard enough in the stomach to make it explode. There's a rictus grin on his face as he batters his way up the stream of angels, a combination of hellfire and physical assault making them sorely regret taking the opening.

"Mister Miracle to Orange Lantern."

My railgun shots achieve next to nothing, the sheer chaos of the fight above me making it next to impossible to tell exactly what it is throwing my shots off. There's a cry of exhalation from the front line as the last of the ships supporting the Host's retreat is brought down by the claws of winged abominations. Mr Excalibris turns to face Harm and s-s-sings-.

Repairing.

Hooray for a robotic body.

"Go ahead."

The angels all around him either burn or evaporate, but Harm himself merely laughs.

"I.. think I've found the frequency Karrien is using to maintain his connection to the Source."

The fires around Mr Excalibris's swords dim down to a burn-on-touch level as Harm kicks a falling hundred metre long chunk of ship out of his way.

"And can you block it?"

"Block..? Do you understand the meaning of the term 'Source'?"

Neron leads the charge that overwhelms the last of the Host's first wave as Mammon repositions his damned, sending them running back to defend the tower. An officer I don't recognise from one of the other provinces sends a flight of winged demons up to skirmish with angels trying to land on the tower in order to buy time for the gun crews. I notice a couple trying to land engineers next to Gabriel's cradle, but the platform there is too badly damaged for them to stand, let alone actually work on it.

"Only in very approximate terms. If that's a 'no', what can you do?"

Harm draws a kaahuite sword and lunges at Mr Excalibris. The Archangel parries with his right sword, turning Harm's sword aside as he slashes with his left. Harm has already disengaged, pulling back out of his immediate rea-.

Golden fire blossoms into being all around Excalibris, momentarily obscuring Harm from view. I take a shot with the Hellblazer at an angel ship which is trying to support the attack on the tower. Constant attacks have already weakened its shields enough that my shot destroys them and goes on to strike the hull. Its motive wheel shudders and flickers as the sympathetic link begins interfering with its internal-

"5:3 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

-systems. The fires clear a little to show Excalibris and Harm grappling.

"5:4 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters."

I reach down and take hold of the Sword of the Fallen. What are my chances? Despite the damage the Host has taken there are still a lot of angels around here. And Mr Excalibris did more damage to the ground troops than the rest of the Host put together. We have no idea what else the Host might have in reserve… But if Excalibris is reduced to mortality, we should be able to clear up the rest, fix up the tower… Make contact with the Earth and find out what the heck is going on… Can I stab angels faster than they can be created? Don't know.

"5:5 And God said, 'Let there be light'-"

Harm's coat flakes away, his sword calcifies and in his instant of hesitation Mr Excalibris headbutts him in the face and then dives.

"-and there was light."

He just destroyed the kaahuite… Somehow. It appears to have a finite range given that the Hellblazer was unaffected. I take a shot at him, space bending to move the bullet out of his path, then I toss the gun aside and draw the Sword. Four more swords -these with x-ionised blades- take up a guard position in front of me. Construct armour-.

Mr Cassidy points his trident at Mr Excalibris and fires off a gout of flame. Mr Excalibris sings, the fire being buffeted aside and Mr Cassidy collapsing, bleeding from dozens of places. Rosacarnis gestures and a hellfire portal flares into existence in front of him for an instant, only for him to raise his voice and heighten his pitch and neutralise it. As he comes in I swing my swords, not believing that they'll hit him but just trying to control his appr-.

Hu-ahuh..?

Almost gently, Karrien Excalibris pushes aside my hand. His expression is no longer angry, just cold. Contemptuous. Getting distant and dimmer.

Oh.

His swords… The fires…

Well.

Brains don't have sensory nerves, so at least it doesn't hur…

"6:3 Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts!"

Shit.

back

Clarion Call 21

next

25th December

21:13 GMT -7

"Yes, Lynne talks about you a good deal."

I smile down at Imra, who seems a little uncertain about the situation. I've seen her.. a few times, picking Lynne up from school or dropping her off, but she's always stayed away from me. Being big and intimidating is.. mostly an advantage in my line of work, but Lynne has enough difficulty making friends without me scaring them away.

"Ah… Good things.. right..?"

"The fact that she talks about you at all is a good thing. Ah-." For a moment I look around the church hall. I actually don't know which of these people are her parents. Lynne hasn't.. mentioned them, but for a Christmas carol service I'd expect that a whole family would turn out. "Look, I don't want to…" I ignore the telepathic probe she sends my way. It's an almost instinctive thing for telepaths, and it's not as if it's particularly strong. "Lynne… Has trouble.. socialising… I'm grateful that you're-. That the two of you are getting along so well. It's a big weight off my mind."

"Oh. Ah, that's… Fine?"

Right, don't weird out the girl any more than necessary. "Has Lynne spoken to you about the Center for Paranormal Studies? I was-" I look around again. "-going to talk to your parents about it…"

"Yeah, she mentioned it. I don't really… I don't have problems keeping people out of my head or anything like that. And I don't really want to go to a school on the other side of the country."

I nod. "Fair enough. But how about volunteering there?"

"Huh?"

"They do a summer camp, for children who can't make the journey on a regular basis. But they struggle to find the staff for it, because there just aren't that many telepaths around. Since you seem to be in full command of your abilities, you would be an excellent fit."

Her eyes move away from me, a small frown appearing on her forehead. "That's.. not a bad idea. I'll give them a call."

My smile broadens. "Thank you." I start to turn away, then hesitate. "Oh, and don't worry about the travel costs: for something like this I'm happy to let you use my boom tubes."

She nods, still looking a little nervous about me being around, then turns to head away at a fast walk. Hm. Actually, given the year she's in, she might be advised to consider using her volunteering as an in for applying to go to college in Metropolis. I haven't mentioned her to Director Armstrong, but there's definitely well paid work for a telepathic Federal Agent if she heads in that direction.

I amble slowly in the direction where my adopted mother is talking quietly with a couple of people from her book group. Nudging her in the direction of greater social interaction was… Easier in some ways and harder in others. Lynne doesn't lack confidence, just… Motivation. She didn't interact with people in any depth unless I nudged her, though I'm pleased that she no longer appears to have that problem. Mortalla on the other hand… Is worryingly obedient to my wishes. Or anyone else's wishes. But putting herself out there, when all she's done is 'obey' since DeSaad finished working on her? Difficult.

Word went around after my chat with Clara, and everyone has been… Really understanding. She's still-. She's looking up to check that the rest of us aren't too far away, and she's trying to keep people she knows between her and the rest of the crowd… But it's still progress.

And I really hope that I'm not about to undermine that as well.

Miss Kimble is spending Christmas with her father, and since I firmly believe that her having exposure to normalcy is a good thing I'm giving her a couple of weeks off. The G-Goblins are having a bit of a get-together, Miss Amane decided that she wanted to hunt down Dr Robbins… I've actually got Miss Selton on console duty at the moment. Apparently she just finds Christmas at the Center depressing. Ghia'ta-.

Ghia'ta steps out of the crowd, a look of distinct disquiet on her face. "Grayven, are you sure that this is necessary?"

"Sure?" Mortalla laughs nervously at something one of her friends says. "No. But.. you understand.. why I can't take the risk?"

Her head dips. "Of all that I have learned since coming to Earth, the idea that love can become… Diseased, is the most…" She grimaces and shudders. "Horrible."

"Father never loved Mother. I'm not even really sure why he kept her around."

"Do you think he..? Hates love itself because of what happened to his first wife?"

It's an interesting question. I haven't been able to find out anything about Suli's character. I don't know who would have more information. Father Box told me how DeSaad killed her, but had no information on her service record. But… It was pretty clear that Father's character was down to Grandmother, rather than anything el-.

Wait. Could that-?

I'll have to look into it.

"No. I think that after she died he no longer had anything pulling him in another direction, away from malevolence… I don't think that he hates 'love'. He never blamed anyone but Grandmother for Suli dying. This is just… An authority thing."

She nods, and steps aside.

I sigh, and continue onwards. I raise my right hand in greeting to Mother before stopping next to a conversation on the opposite side of her group. "Chet, have you got a minute?"

Chet looks around, raising his eyebrows. This is the first time I've seen him dressed up a bit; usually he's an all denim man. He's a fifty-four year old widower who works as a professional van driver. He used to do long distance haulage, but stopped and switched to local jobs after his wife died so he could look after their now-adult children. His red-brown hair and beard are shot through with grey streaks and his skin looks lived-in, but that's more due to the strains of his life rather than any particular health issues.

"Sure, Grayven. What is it?"

I wave my right forefinger in the direction of a couple of seats set up in a less occupied part of the room. He nods, and we both head that way. He sits down, and I take a chair out of subspace before doing the same.

"It's about my mother."

"Oh?" He nods. "She seemed fine to me. Is there something wrong?"

"I'm… Aware that the two of you have been… Spending a good deal of time together. And I'm grateful. After how my father treated her, friends are a precious commodity and I have noticed that you've made a particular effort to make her feel welcome into the community."

"Ah, heck, Grayven. Your mom's a real nice woman. Being friends with her ain't exactly a hardship."

"Yes. Friends. But… These rings give me a certain insight-."

"Heh." He chuckles. "Kinda thought I was too old t'git the shovel speech, but I guess under the circumstances I can't really blame yah."

I shake my head. "Chet, you're a good guy. If I felt that you were someone I needed to give that speech to, this would be a very different conversation. I trust you not to mistreat her in any way."

He shakes his head. "Of course I wouldn't. I know she had problems with your pa-."

I hold up my right hand to stop him. "Yes. That's what I need to talk to you about. And why you can't be anything other than friends."

He watches me for a moment. "Hey, if she needs some kinda counselling-."

"No, it's-. My father isn't some.. wretched hick who likes to throw his fists around when he's in his cups. My father is the Apokoliptian New God of Tyranny. Quite aside from the fact that he's more than a physical match for me, he commands vast legions of brainwashed soldiers and a rather large fleet of space-faring warships. And though I could be wrong, I do not believe that he would tolerate his concubine entering into a romantic relationship with anyone."

He leans back slightly, frowning. "I though you got her away from alla that?"

"Yes, I did. I didn't fight him, or appeal to a higher authority. I asked respectfully, and hoped that he didn't spot me sweating. He doesn't care about her enough to intervene for the most part, but if he felt that someone was… Honing in on his turf…"

"My God." He sits there for a moment, staring a little blankly into space. "No, I-. You're right. I hadn't thought about that side of things."

"If… If she was any other woman or he were any other man, few things would make me happier than the two of you being together. But I'm sorry, it can't happen."

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NEXT CHAPTER

Judgement Day

BACK

Judgement Day 1

next

Judgement Day

25th December

08:45ish? GMT

"6:3 The whole earth is full of his glory!"

I try tuning out the sycophantic chanting as I look…

Okay, I'm not looking, obviously. That would require eyes. I guess..? I had sort of assumed that ghosts perceived the world around them by having the coherent magic of their forms form loose connections with the innate magics of the world around them. I… I think I'm seeing more or less normally, but that could just be my brain interpreting-.

Well… No, it can't. I no longer have an organic brain. Which does lead to the obvious question as to how I'm thinking. I mean, yes, okay, the soul is a complex system of arcane energy. There's no inherent reason why one wouldn't be able to think… If in an appropriately supportive environment. But brain damage is still a thing. Brain damaged magicians… Ugh, I'm trying to remember if I read anything about that… Atlanteans tend to fix brain damage with biomancy so they haven't ever bothered to study the effects in detail…

Oh, great. No rings means no perfect recall. And without all of the tune-ups I made to my thinking meats, I'm back to… What? Okay, Heaven… I assume. I'm surrounded by clouds as far as the 'eye' can 'see'. I guess the Mind of God doesn't want to see me immediately.

I was hoping for something a bit more creative. Fluffy cloud Heaven? That's something a low-budget televangelist might put out. Okay, try… Turning around.

…

It all looks the same. Or did I just not turn? There's no point of reference and I.. don't appear to have a physical presence. Which is irritating because I definitely remember there being a garden in the Swamp Thing version of Heaven. Even Anton Arcane got to go there. I am seriously supposed to be-? Alright, I did kill more people… But I did it for reasons of justice and order, not for fun or to assuage personal curiosity.

No, no, I'm not going to try to justify myself to these people. Let's try to do something productive. I picture myself reaching out with both hands.

Rings.

Oh, oh, that was not… I can't.. feel…

Eh. Alright, no orange light. Wherever I am I'm clearly beyond its reach. So I can't call my rings, reach the Ophidian-.

…

I can't speak. Which doesn't really make sense. Seeing is dependent on eyes, yet I can still see. Ghosts have been recorded as speaking, I'm clearly capable of forming coherent thought…

Sound? Yes, disembodied chanting. But nothing else, not even the wind which should be blowing if there really are clouds-.

Oh shit. No one can reach me here. No post-mortem communications… Assuming that the angels stop attacking Earth now that I'm here, Jade will get access to my contingencies file. So… Even optimistically, I've got a wait of months before someone can get the parts for a white power ring together. Assuming that those can override the restrictions from whoever runs this place. Because if Satanus could work out how to mess around with a Lazarus Pit, I hope that my friends have the sense not to use one in this situation.

HELLO!

Ugh, stupid idea. They wouldn't have put me here and then forgotten about me. Maybe they're hoping that the chanting will turn my brain to-. My mind to mush? Ghosts tend to fade without a focus. But… This place is so different from Earth that I can't assume that the same conditions apply here.

What am I actually going to do? My rings are in Hell… Unless Mr Excalibris destroyed them. Which… Eh, I was sort of attached to them, but a more modern replacement would actually be superior to both of them. I'm more annoyed about losing my lantern, because that was Alan's. The armour's aoh… Shit. Unless Mr Cassidy or Mr Free are really quick on their feet, I just lost the Hellblazer, the Ace of Winchesters and the Sword of the Fallen. Quite possibly to Mr Excalibris. I mean… It doesn't… Really matter if the Host get them. Does it? The Ace back-hacks theurgy to destroy demons and they don't need that work-around. The Hellblazer… That will enable them to discover that other focuses work and how they work, but it only really disrupts theurgy and the angels are pretty much the only ones who use theurgy.

How did Mr Excalibris counter Harm?

It sounded like he was chanting from Genesis. The very first bit. Where God forms the Earth from the formless void.

Ah.

So the Great Void isn't so much inherently anti-Creation as it is pre-Creation. And Mr Excalibris can wire it into the rest. If Harm survived that, I'm sure that he'll be disappointed. But he didn't convert the whole of it, just what was immediately around him. A time thing? A power consumption thing? A power flow thing? Don't know.

And someone who isn't me is stuck carting around the Sword of the Fallen. Again, I'm not sure that the Host would benefit from it. If they want to kill a demon they've got theurgy. The only problem might come if they decide to shank other pantheons… But it doesn't add much that they can't do with theurgy. And Zauriel said that they didn't really care about that sort of thing back while he was still playing for the Silver City. The absolute worst thing there would be if someone worked out how to reconstitute the Second and Third of the Fallen. Or… Would it? In Hellblazer, it was strongly implied that they were dispatched to keep the First too occupied, but with them gone he just went back to doing what he was doing when they were still there. And it's not as if they'd be better at cooperation with just two of them than when there were three of them.

…

I hope Mr Cassidy is alright. I mean, him and everyone else, it's just that he's the one I saw go down while being a demon in close proximity to an angel. Not that I can do anything about it, but I suspect that the only reason he was in Labyrinth rather than anywhere else in Hell was to help me.

And out of nowhere I'm reminded of the scene in Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey where they're falling into Hell. They scream for a while, then realise that nothing is going to happen and stop. And then, for want of anything better to do, start again.

Am I still enlightened? My desires… Yep, still all lined up, even if I don't really have any idea how to apply them in my new state. Nice to know that how I was thinking wasn't a product purely of the orange light.

I mentally and entirely metaphorically exhale.

I'm literally stuck here until some angel or other remembers I exist and flies over here, aren't I?

Excuse me, God. It's me, P-.

Clouds… Part. Behind them, some way away, there's a… Light? And just in front of that… Ah, more Bill and Ted. A humanoid shape on the seat, the whole thing so sharply illuminated that I can't make out any details. And we have movement. Without any sense of scale I can't tell how fast I'm going or how big what I'm moving towards is, but at least it's something.

Huh. Alright, this is about to get serious and I literally don't have a brain any longer. I may not get another chance to test this. Can I say my name here? Heh, I'm actually a little nervous about it. It's been a year and a half, after all.

"Penitent soul."

The voice comes from everywhere. Though I can't tell whether that's because I have no ears and am hearing it through some sort of mystical earphones, or because it literally is coming from everywhere. I'm getting closer to the hackneyed throne and… The impression I'm getting is that the figure sitting on it is about five metres tall. Inasmuch as that means anything.

Am I thinking at the Mind of God? Can you hear me?

"You have been brought here-"

Against my will, yes. I should be in Erebos right now.

"-because your particular sins have caused great problems for Creation as a whole."

Can you hear me? I don't seem to be able to ignore you, but you're not going to get much out of this if we can't have a dialogue. And not a 'you're so clever, Socrates' dialogue. I want to know what the heck is going on. And how the heck has anything I've done been problematic for the structure of Creation?

"By removing a fruit from the Garden of Eden, you have risked unbinding the link between the Dream and Earth. And worse, between the Source and the Earth."

…

Huh.

"I will explain matters to you so that you can properly repent before being sent to judgement."

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Judgement Day 2

next

A bit later

Assuming that time works here

That's… Interesting. And plausible-sounding enough that I can't dismiss it out of hand. It sounds… No one has successfully investigated the relationship between the Dream and the material universe in any sort of structured way; that was why I went to Venturia. So let's say that the Garden of Eden is humanity's collective dream, both of the Garden as relayed by the holy books of the Abrahamic tradition and of oases. The Source is.. behind the Source Wall, but it's also accessible. Many have tried, but hundreds of civilisations have records of the Great Darkness succeeding. Which makes me bloody glad that Yuga Khan wasn't around to watch it and get any ideas.

But how credible is the idea that Earth is special? I think I've rather gotten over the 'this is a comic written by people on Earth Prime' thing… In fact, I'm not sure I wasn't over it for long enough for it to really have been a thing. On the other hand, if even a fraction of the accounts of miracles -theurgical magic- are true, then compared to verifiable instances on other planets… Yes, actually. Not only does Earth have many more, but it also doesn't result in the miracle casters immediately transcending the material universe. There aren't enough aliens here for me to know whether that's a species thing or a location thing… Maybe when I get back to Earth I can talk to one of the more reasonable Source-worshipping groups about setting up a research project?

Of course, since the Roman Catholic Church didn't really have any way to tell theurgy from other kinds of magic until relatively recently, and since canonisation has long been more a matter of politics and economics than a sign of actual divine approval… It could all be bullshit. Or at least mostly. I suppose that the people to ask would be demons: did it burn when the man touched you?

So, okay. A garden like that might well result in the Earth being far more thaumically active than would otherwise be the case. Assuming that that isn't due to the presence of the life entity as I had been assuming. And I can't test it, because I'm stuck in Heaven and can't take the landlord at his word.

That's frustrating.

But I still don't see how moving a fruit would-.

"The Garden of Eden is the nexus of a set of highly specialised spells I set in place to ensure its permanence. While moving a fruit would not by itself be enough to disrupt that network, you exposed the Garden to kaahuite, and you exposed the fruit to both demon and damaged theurgical magic. The sympathetic linkage involved in doing that has created instabilities which required me to act counter to my long-established policy of limited direct interference in order to prevent the damage spreading."

Hm. Disconcertingly plausible. Though… Combining demonic and theurgical magic shouldn't do much more than make the demonic elements burn away in golden fire-. The Fruit bridged the gap. It's… Literally able to bridge the gaps between conflicting energies. Which would mean that all of those connections could exist together quite happily. And if there was no barrier between arcane energy systems… Yes, that… Could create problems.

Except that it was a single fruit. If the unintended side effects weren't immediately apparent then at least one of the researchers we had there would have detected something.

"While the magics inherent in the fruit itself would not have caused a runaway contagion, the linkage between the area outside of the Garden and the area within it would have caused the gradual breakdown of the separation. The Earth would have become a nightmarish realm where dream and reality overlaid one another, and the effect would not have stopped there."

There's a sinking feeling in the pit of my… In the bit of my mind that used to be connected to my stomach. I don't know whether or not he's telling the truth, but it's all-. I didn't check the arcane networks around the Garden. Long term sympathetic connection… Would Sephtian have thought to check for something like that? Would he have been able to? I mean, I'm not sure that it justifies an angelic invasion of Earth or killing me, but there could be a real problem there.

"Added to the problem created by the fruit is the problem of you. You are not from this universe. The rules by which you innately function are different enough that your very presence has been creating minor breakdowns in Earth's thaumatic networks. Though they are slight at present and being written off as minor and temporary fluctuations, they will redouble in power and continue to spread if left unattended. That is why I commanded the Host to act: only through extraordinary measures can we reverse the damage and restore the world to how it should be."

Which means Mr Cassidy, Angelica, Zauriel and myself should have been.. it. So why the attack on KordTech? And, Sephtian has samples of the fruit. And records-. They'll want to destroy everything, won't they? They won't do anything sensible like let us study the phenomenon so that we can guard against it. Would they go to Venturia as well? I would guess not. I only visited once, and that had nothing to do with the fruit. Since they don't celebrate Christmas they might have started reviewing previous research already, but I doubt it.

I wonder how 'extraordinary' these measures are going to be? They might just be going around and burning points of interest with holy fire, but if they've got access to Earth's source code then any number of things could happen.

"Do you understand, now, why I have acted as I have?"

Yes, because I've suddenly regained the ability to speak. But I suppose that there's no harm in giving it a try.

""I understand the explanation which you've given me and acknowledge its plausibility, but I'm not completely convinced that you're telling the truth.""

What? Okay, try again: killing me was entirely unnecessary when… No, I've been turned off again. Hm. Him asking me implies that he's not omniscient. Or that he's asking for my benefit.

"I am the Mind of God. I am a manifested expression of the thoughts of God Almighty. I speak the truth because I am part of that which defines truth. I speak the truth for I have no reason to lie."

""And the answer to the obvious question about omniscience is?""

"I am not the whole of the Almighty. To be in his presence as you are would scour you from the universe. It is through entities such as myself that the Lord God acts, for the safety of Creation. It is for the safety of Creation that the Source Wall exists. Were such power to be directly applied to the Earth it would be unmade. The Almighty might then recreate it, but it would be created anew and not restored. This option is available if the present cleansing cannot be completed, but it is not favoured due to the redeemable souls which would be lost in the process."

So… Not omnipotent? I assume that his god wouldn't want to destroy souls just by being around them… Or maybe there's something else going on? 'Yes, I could make a universe where that could work, but I put this one together without that functionality'? Some greater goal served by making that a possibility, and the work-around is granting a servitor race access to theurgy? I suppose that this Mind of God thing doesn't need to know everything, just what is needed for it to complete its appointed task.

But that still leaves me. Dead. Floating here. While I accept that I was foolhardy not to make thaumatic readings from around the Garden… That's about as far as I'm willing to go at this stage. I would want independent confirmation of the truth of what he's saying before I'd go any further.

"Do you now understand what you have wrought? The harm which you have caused in your arrogance?"

I feel my… Mouth? Able to work again, but this time I'm going to think about it carefully. Whether he's a genuine representative of 'God' or not, I appear to be completely in his power. And… Trying to put my pride aside for a moment, he could be telling the truth.

""Why was it necessary to kill me?""

"The physical reality of your presence would have been just as disruptive to paradise as it was to Earth. Your soul however is for the most part made of the stuff of Creation. I can withstand it and contain it."

Hm. Again, plausible. And it's not as if I would have simply walked up to Mr Excalibris and let him kill me. And if I'm really an epic-tier thaumohazard that would explain why no one else is around…

""I am still dubious, but if you can answer a simple question I am prepared to provisionally accept what you say as true.""

"Ask it then, that I may bring you closer to God."

""What's my name?""

back

Judgement Day 3

next

A bit later still

Probably

Because honestly, if God can't say it I may as well start calling myself 'Pavlos Nguyen' now so I can get used to it.

"Explain yourself."

""I am uncertain that you are truly who you claim to be. That you represent who you claim to represent. You have told me that I exist in a purely spiritual state, because my soul is for the most part made of local materials. I know my name, even though concentrating on it tends to have an adverse effect on me. No one else does. You appear to have been responding to the things I have been thinking. In my mortal life I was able to respond in that way by looking at the souls of others. I could not conceal anything from you even if I wanted to. Telepaths who have attempted to look upon my name have been rendered unconscious by it.""

""You claim to be a part of an omnipotent, omniscient being. You were sent here to deal with me. If that's true, you must know my name. Say it.""

"You would put your god to the test!"

""My goddess is Eris. Properly speaking, if I am to be tried, Lord Hades should be the one doing it, with a representative of the Host presenting charges if you felt it necessary. But putting that aside… Surely my name is a small thing? Given all the problems that occurred in the Bible with false idols -and that one prophet who got confused messages about whether he was supposed to eat bread or not- can you really blame me for wanting to be certain?""

"Your name is Paul. Do not test my patience and generosity in this way again!"

And the res… T. Ah, I see. A poor loser. Mother of Mercy took it far better. Which means you're not the Source, probably don't represent it and are generally acting contrary to my interests. Since you're clearly prepared to lie to me about that, I can't trust any evidence you attempt to provide on any other issue. And.. suddenly I'm feeling less bad about not conducting scans of the Garden.

I wonder what you actually are, under that glow? I'm… Struggling to think of anything that could fool angels like this. I remember comics where various beings assaulted the Silver City, nothing about... Maybe this is what I get for not reading Sandman all of the way through? Hang on, Zauriel's stay in Justice League started with him acting in opposition to one of the Four Kings, didn't it? Which one was it?

Oh, right. Obviously, the one who spoke in support of me, because if you want to take control of the Silver City for yourself but only control a quarter of its military you need to get the extra muscle from somewhere. But if in this timeline they aren't at loggerheads and the thing claiming to represent the Source clearly doesn't, they might well end up on the same side. Ass.. uming that he isn't the thing I'm talking to right now. I got the impression that angels aren't particularly mentally flexible. If he learned flexibility from somewhere, he might find outthinking them painfully easy.

"Knowing what you know now, are you prepared to repent, that you may be absolved of your sins and pass peacefully into my kingdom?"

Since there's no point in trying to engage with a creature like this, the most sensible thing I can do is try to restore my connection to the orange light. That and the obvious.

""My name is Paul-.""

I'm.. not sure what happened there. The all-encompassing cloud is gone, replaced with an empty sky the colour of an orange sunset. In front of me there are clouds, arrayed around a now-visible series of cracked stone steps leading up to a golden throne.

And the now-visible figure upon it, whose right hand is pressed into the blank space where his nose would be if he had a nose.

"This is exactly why I prefer to deal with people like you indirectly." He moves his hand away and looks up, a smile fixed on his lips-. His mouth. It's not actually moving. It actually looks like it's… Printed on. And his eyes aren't any better. "But I'm afraid that you seeing my face doesn't change anything. You have sinned against your God and against your fellow man-"

Boss Smiler.

"-and you've heard of me." He sits back, hands reaching up to adjust his jacket. "Or close enough. I'm Boss Smiley. And you haven't ever held political office. So I'm curious where you heard my name."

""Oh, I can talk now, can I?""

"Something I've learned from watching the best and worst of human leaders over the years. It really works better if you know when the jig is up. There's no sense doubling down on a failed strategy." He nonchalantly crosses his legs. "Though I wasn't wrong when I said that it didn't matter. I can keep you too isolated to tell anyone who I am. With the angels' help, I can leave you here for eternity if I have to. And with my soldiers on Earth… All kinds of things could happen."

""I freely admit that you hold all of the cards.""

"Good. You'd be amazed how many people hold entirely unrealistic expectations at this point." He shakes his.. disc-head, steepling his fingers on his lap. "So let's talk about you."

""Was any of what you told me true?""

He shrugs. "What is truth?"

""That which accurately describes events and situations as they occurred.""

"But does my truth have to be the same as your truth?"

""We can each hold differing non-hypocritical beliefs concerning a situation, certainly. But I'm afraid that 'political preferences' are not things that can be 'truths' or 'falsehoods'.""

"But my perspective being different than yours doesn't make me evil."

""I don't believe in evil.""

He moves his forearms out to either side, palms raised. "I don't, either. But I have a particular viewpoint on human affairs that a good many idealistic people find objectionable. It makes my work difficult, and it's a good part of why I usually don't communicate directly with people."

""I can't really comment until I know what that viewpoint is.""

"And I suppose there's no point in asking you to have faith, is there?"

""You can always ask.""

"That's part of my problem with you. Even now, I can't get the same feedback from you that I can from most people."

""What are you? You're clearly not an angel.""

"Actually, I am." He holds out his right hand, golden fire flickering on his palm. He then closes his palm, snuffing the fire out. "Or something like one. But what I want to talk to you about is a… Let's call it, a change in official policy."

""Which policy would that be?""

"I like superheroes. And supervillains. Three colour fun, wham, pow, sock." He raises his fists into mock guard for a moment before dropping them. "I've always been one for encouraging a prevailing narrative of truth and justice. Just so long as nothing fundamental changes."

""Oh.""

"Danner wouldn't get with the program. Sidelining his work wasn't all that hard, not with the Second World War making the whole eugenics movement too toxic to touch. But there's more and more like him every year and you even dug him up. It's getting to the point where I'm not going to have a choice but to stop suppressing super-tech and let it enter the mainstream, and if I'm going to do that I'm going to need a new narrative first."

!!!

""That's..? You?""

back

Judgement Day 4

next

The time is a secondary

concern right now

"Yes, of course it was. You're a bright lad, try to keep up. Now, for the new narrative, I was thinking-."

""Whow whow whow whow whow. Let's just go back to the bit where you were suppressing human technological innovation. How long for?""

"Why does it matter? What does it materially change about the situation?"

""Basically nothing, but that's not the point. I may know your name, but I don't actually know what you are, what you want or what you can do. I want to know what I was trying to work around.""

His shoulders sag slightly in a pantomime of a sigh, though I don't hear him exhale.

"I'm Boss Smiley."

""The boss of what?""

"How about we start with you?"

""You have power over me, that was never in dispute.""

"Then again, I don't see how telling you achieves anything." He waves his right hand to the side. "If I told you that I was the boss of a small construction firm in Central City, what would it change? You'd still be down there and I'd still be up here. What if I told you I was the Prince of the World? A spirit created by the prophet Abraham to keep tabs on the Silver City? A trickster god from a South American tribe the Aztecs killed, who infiltrated the heaven of the White Men to avenge his people? A proto-Slavic moon god who jumped ship as Christianity spread but never quite fit in? A diseased angel, a fallen saint… Any one of a hundred things? For all you can tell I might really be the Mind of God. What does it matter?"

""It would make me feel slightly better.""

He leans forward slightly. "Oh, you want something more meaningful? Fine. I don't exist."

""What?""

"You don't think you'd have heard of me if I existed?"

""There are probably hundreds of gods I haven't heard of.""

"Gods." That pseudo-plastic face is getting a bit grating. I would be fine if it was just a mask, but there's enough animation in it that it goes straight into the uncanny valley. "Those are useful things. Why does lightning happen? Gods. Why does the weather get hotter and colder? Gods. Why do people get sick, why do crops fail, why is there war, why is there peace..? It's the gods, no further analysis necessary." He fake-sighs again. "Simpler times. Easier times."

""Except for the people getting struck by lightning, frozen to death, killed by curable diseases, starving due to poor agricultural techniques, killed in warfare...""

He makes another dismissive gesture. "But civilisation marches on. Controlled and predictable. Safe."

""I.. don't understand.""

"How hard would it be for someone to wipe out the human race tomorrow?"

""Someone from Earth, or an alien?""

"From Earth."

""A.. few.. types of engineered diseases could probably do it. Nuclear weapons wouldn't, but it would be pretty hard going for the survivors. Certain.. exotic weapons could do it. The Sivanas certainly could, if they actually wanted to. Magic… It would be hard to do with magic, but I suppose that a sufficiently large sacrifice could alter the world in a way that wasn't survivable by humans.""

"And how many of those were available a thousand years ago?"

Is that where he's coming from?

""None. We didn't have the technology to create diseases intentionally, we didn't have fission weapons and it would have been difficult to get enough people in one place for the sort of sacrifice you would need. Are you saying that you believe that improved technology will inevitably result in humanity's destruction?""

"No. Not at all. Technology is developed and spreads because it serves a need, after all. There's no sense in keeping people living in caves if a natural part of the carbon cycle will result in a climatic shift that they can't survive without technology I prevented them from developing. No sense in preventing the spread of medicine when natural mutation can create a disease just as deadly as any laboratory. I'm just a natural conservative. I'm more comfortable when societal change is gradual, and when the levers of total destruction are in the hands of as small a number of people as possible."

""How… Conservative?""

"Did you have a chance to have a good look around the Earth when you were alive?"

""Yes.""

"That conservative. Magic was a problem early on, but a few whispers in the right place and hardly anyone uses it. Fission weapons looked like they might be a problem, but after a few polite conversations everyone was too paranoid to risk them. Superpowers, meet balance of power. But then there's you."

""What, you couldn't find me?""

"I couldn't speak to you. And I think you might have powered through anyway. You're invested in novel technology as an end in itself. But if it wasn't you then it would have eventually been someone else. As I said, I'm reaching the limits of what I can do within the current narrative."

""So...""

"I can send you back to Earth. You'd be.. alive, and I'm sure that a resourceful young man like yourself could get his equipment back before too long. And you'll work for me."

""In what way?""

"'Orange Lantern's technological revolution'. How about that? You can establish research centres…" He moves his right hand so that it's resting against his chin, and his left hand moves to support his right elbow. "Off Earth, under the sea… I suppose that it doesn't really matter exactly where they are. As long as they're out of the way. You can develop whatever you like, recruit whoever you like, do whatever you like. And I'll arrange for someone to set up a review board so they can carefully consider which bits of what you develop can be safely released into wider society."

""I'm not sure that's actually helpful.""

"The bit where you stop being dead is the helpful bit. The bit where I tell the angels that you've repented and that your friends aren't the enemies of Almighty God any longer is the helpful bit. I've got you over a barrel, and I know-" He clicks his right thumb and forefinger together, conjuring an image of my blue alter ego. "-that you can be a rational man when you don't have any say in the matter."

""Why are you so worried about this?""

"Do you know what happens to a civilisation when everyone gets super strength?"

""Mars manages.""

He tilts his disc a little to the left. "Mars. Where their whole species had to be reengineered by the Guardians. And where they've been physically unchanged ever since."

""Yes?""

"There are few things that humans can't adapt to, given time. But a change like that would flip the board. The economy, society… Huge amounts of the wonderfully intricate complexity of human civilisation would become irrelevant. Do you know how many wars that could cause? And then you've got every country arming up so that their armies can cope with people who can laugh off anti-tank rounds. A few people that strong? Great, everyone needs heroes. Everyone? No, chaos and misery and a reasonable chance of an extinction event. I won't allow that. So either you become my man on the inside, or I keep on with the extreme measures."

He stands, towering over me.

"Why don't I leave you to think about it for a little while?"

back

Judgement Day 5

next

I've got some

thinking to do

I can…

Eh.

I can move around very slowly. For want of anything better to do I head up toward Boss Smiley's now-abandoned throne and… Hover my point of view where my head would be.

Where I think my head would be. Since I've got no way to tell what the scale of any of this is… No, it's probably not relevant.

So, on the face of it, his offer is… Not good, but certainly liveable. I would still be able to do my technological work… Benefits would be slower in reaching the rest of the population, but progress would still be made. And I doubt that Atlantis's arcanotechnological revolution would just stop. My work with the Orange Lantern Corps would still carry on, and I could superhero as much as I wanted.

I'd be a near-useless Reed Richards.

Except… Near-useless Reed Richards isn't useless-useless. He still saves… Things, sometimes New York, sometimes the Earth, sometimes other worlds… Sometimes his own marriage. Point being, comic stasis might prevent him doing anything revolutionary but he still does a lot of good.

And I've just met the being responsible-. Well, I've met the being who claims to be responsible, and he has no obvious reason to lie about it. The one responsible for Reed Richards and every other poor super genius scientist being 'useless'. The reason why everyone in America didn't have super strength by 1930. The reason why cold guns exist but most people still use freezers with compressors. Probably the reason why AIs only just became people. And this is someone I might have to work with? For?

It would suck, but so does being dead and looking at an eternity of solitary confinement.

""Can I still..? Talk.""

Yes, I can. Somehow.

What.. even is he? I remember him from Sandman, where he was doing something while Prez was President. He probably arranged the death of his wife and… Wanted Prez to work for him in some capacity? I think I remember that the version in the original Prez comic was just a criminal businessman, but I never read that comic.

Are there ways to fake out theurgy? I never put any effort into studying it, so… I'd say 'probably', but I really don't know. This might actually all be a test on the angels' part, to see if I'm willing to sell out my principles. Which is part of the problem: of course I'm willing to sell out my principles. If I can't get everything I want, getting part of what I want may be acceptable. But angels don't seem like the type to respect that. Or understand it. I mean, that sort of thing was why Job was given a pass, even after refusing to deny his faith to save the lives of everyone around him. These people probably think he made the right choice.

Ugh, I'm getting bored already.

See, I sort of get Jews approving of Job, but why the hell do Christians approve of him? People died because of his stubbornness. Literally, a few words is all it would have taken. 'God sucks'. And Satan… Lucifer? Whoever it actually was, assuming that anything remotely like that ever actually happened, would have had a quick laugh at God's expense and gone back to whatever they were doing. But no. Keeping faith with God is more important than any amount of suffering. But if preventing suffering is good and getting into Heaven is good-

I take a moment to look around.

-and that's something I'm pretty sceptical about at the moment, then surely him giving up the opportunity to go to Heaven in order to help people is an act of profoundly selfless generosity? In fact, I can't think of much that would prove that he was more worthy of reward than doing that while fully expecting to be hideously punished for it.

So why aren't I trying to call Boss Smiley back right now?

Because I can't believe a word he said.

He wants me to work for him. But somehow I don't think that he had me killed so that I can sign a contract of employment in his office. Or… At the foot of his throne. I'm fairly confident that there's going to be an ongoing coercive element here, something bound to my soul that I'm going to need to agree to.

Which makes no sense. Why does a being who can control the entire Host without them being any the wiser need my consent to do anything? He certainly didn't need it to send me here in the first place.

What is he?

Aside-. Heh. If he's really the reason why schizo tech hasn't ever spread, then he's far more my nemesis than anyone else on the planet. Mr Truggs or.. maybe Lex could be dark mirrors, but this guy literally stands for everything I hate. The suppression of progress and unimpeachable authority.

Far more my nemesis.

Far more my-. Come on! Why can't I feel angry? Why can't I hate him?

And not just because it irritates me. If I'm sufficiently 'me' to even think about things in this way then I should still have my full range of emotions. Why..? Might I not?

No connection to the red light of rage. Hm. My personal lantern may have gone out but my ring still worked. And I didn't hear any mass pani-. Any mass reaction to everyone's emotions suddenly going dead.

Maybe this is just what being dead is like? Lord Hades -who bloody well better be protesting this- makes an effort to connect everyone in his realm to Erebos now, but back before he had his epiphany the shades used to be a fairly vacant lot. Maybe after a few centuries with no emotions that's just what happens?

But-. No. My soul is mostly made of orange light. If I'm complex enough to think complex thoughts I must have the ability to feel avarice.

""This is my cause, this is my fight,

Shine through the void with orange light,

I've claimed all within my sight,

To keep what is mine, that is my right.""

Oh, that's… I still know what I want, but the raw impetus is… Less. Which should be impossible. Most likely explanation? My thought processes are continuing to be altered in some way. I'm resistant to that sort of thing, not immune to it. So I'm not feeling what I'm actually feeling.

Hah.

But how to break that? Denied any access to information gathering and so unable to do the sort of patient investigation which I prefer…

""My name is Pau-.""

Ugh. Um… No, no, nothing's changed. I've drifted a little further down the steps, but aside from that everything is as it was. I'm going to guess that whatever is interfering with my mind to prevent me speaking my name only works on other intelligences. I've got no real reason to make a firm conclusion in that direction, but it fits the available data so it will do for now.

All that's left is brute force and mindfulness.

My cause is the betterment of humanity and of the wider universe. It is the creation of polities which enable individuals to realise their non-malevolent desires, and to enable that realisation myself. It is the sharing of knowledge and experience to build. It is to show people a better way to do things, to help people be better.

And it's a fight because the universe is full of fucking idiots. And more than a few malevolent individuals and societies who can't be talked around or down and need to be done away with.

'Shining through the void' I picked more because it sounded good than because of any deep philosophical attachment, but the way superheroes on Earth try to be role models I suppose that it applies in my case more than I originally thought. I'm trying to inspire my fellow Orange Lanterns to be mindful and stable, rather than barely restrained weapons.

Claiming all within my sight? Yep. My desires don't magically terminate at the end of a national boundary, or a certain distance into space. I might limit myself for practical reasons, but ultimately I'm assuming the infamous Maltusian 'unlimited jurisdiction'. Arrogant? Yes. Is my fricking ring orange?

What is mine? What am I keeping? Everything is mine, and I'm keeping the bits I've put effort into because I'm not about to let someone else mess it up.

Like Boss Smiley.

The world around me shatters. Three gold rings encrusted with runes rotate around me, three angels staring up at me in shock.

And the runes on the inner ring are turning orange.

back

Judgement Day 6

next

Finally getting

somewhere

I smile as the closest angel looks at me, then at the spinning rings and the glowing runes. I narrow my eyes as I see one that consists of a smiley face.

"1.1 Please remain calm."

He looks… Thin, shallow. There's no orange in there at all. Or.. much of anything else, aside from a thin gold wire frame I don't want to try touching. But I feel it. I feel my own desires surging, eating through the thaumoconductive… Whatever the heck-. Whatever the Hell this stuff is. Try and stick me in a fake Heaven, will you?

"1.2 We will restore your paradise as quickly as-."

There's a flare of orange light as the entire runic network covering the interior of the rings turns orange, and as I drain power from the system all three collapse to the ground. A moment later I collapse to the-.

And… Apparently I have a snake tail now. And-.

I run my surprisingly dexterous tongue around the inside of my mouth, blink with both sets of eyelids… Yep, my spirit animal is a snake. No hands… Movement appears to be fairly instinctual.

"-possible."

"Who are you?"

Speaking without using my mouth. That's interesting. I suppose that a snake doesn't have the right throat structures for English. And I don't remember the Ophidian ever having to move her mouth to speak.

"1.3 My name is Hamaliel." Behind him, one angel stands rooted to the spot while the other is backing away. "I constructed your virtualisation vessel."

'Virtualisation vessel'. Not a troubling name at all…

"Where am I?"

"1.4 The Silver City." He takes several steps closer before kneeling down to look at the largest of the rings. "And I'm sorry to say that there will be a slight… Delay in restoring your subjective experience."

"I seem to remember dying."

"1.5 Yes, death is usually what happens when you die. I'm afraid that your mortal life is over. But do not worry; by the Grace of God even such oddities as yourself are no longer denied union with the Almighty."

I slither off the.. pedestal the rings and I had been floating over, the other two angels edging nervously around the room in order to maintain their distance from me.

"Do you know who I am?"

"1.6 An intelligent serpent of some kind? I understand that humans have gained an understanding of advanced biological sciences."

He doesn't look up as I move around him. No obvious alarm from him, the other two are more nervous than anything else…

Do they..? Not know..?

"1.7 It seems like such a short time ago they were coming to understand basic horticulture, and now…"

He hums, then frowns as the runic array melts in response. He simply shakes his head.

"1.8 I'm afraid that I'm going to need to go back to the drawing board with this one."

"Do you have any specific instructions regarding me? Is there something I am supposed to be doing?"

"1.9 We were instructed to put you here, rather than with the others. But not beyond that." He turns his head and looks up at me. "I am sorry, but exposure to my more complex songs may prove disruptive to whatever purpose put you here."

"But you don't know what that purpose is?"

"1.9 By the hierarchy, such things are ordained. I have no need to know 'why'."

Hooray for mindless subservience. They might not know who I am, but I don't want to risk cluing them in by asking helpful questions.

"Do you need me to wait here, or is it alright if I go for a bit of a wander?"

"1.10 You are free to wander. No harm may befall you in the Silver City. You will be informed when it is time for you to return. Until then, marvel at the work of Almighty God."

"And… I'm sorry, I don't remember anyone explaining why I was in there?"

"1.11 As I said, neither of us need to know that. This arrangement-" Another hum, and the broken and molten remains of the rings float back into the air. "-is part of a project I'm working on. We're trying to make Hell obsolete."

"Could you..? Define obsolete?"

"1.12 Unfortunately, neither the absence of God on High nor the application of conventional 'pain' are particularly good mechanisms for encouraging repentance. We have thousands of years worth of data to prove that. So we're trying something different. My hope is that if we can demonstrate the glory of God in a way the… Ah, 'otherwise damned' can understand, it will be far more likely that they will come to understand their own vices and truly repent."

I nod. Between that and Satanus nee Mammon's work, eternal torment sounds like it's becoming a thing of the past. Only took them… How long? No, that's not important.

"I'll get out of your way. Good luck with the -" Soul prison machine. "-virtualisation vessel."

"1.13 Glory to God."

In excelsis. I.. slither towards the room's arched doorway. The room and the opening are strangely tall, and the walls are completely smooth. And silver, naturally. It's kind of dull, but I'll take that over getting incinerated again. Can I die twice? Let's avoid finding out.

Outside my containment room is a long corridor, the wall in front of me punctured by ridiculously tall windows showing a view of the exterior. More silver buildings and windows, and I can see more angels doing… Whatever it is angels find to occupy their time. None of them are wearing armour, and I can't see anything in the way of technology. And at the edge of the city… Looks like floating meadows. In other circumstances I might quite like spending time here.

Imma get the fuck out now.

I start slithering down the corridor to the right. Okay, try stuff out. I'm a disembodied soul made mostly of orange light. I don't have a power ring. Can I fly? No. Darn. I'm going to bet that what with the Silver City having been built for angels it almost certainly doesn't have disabled access. Constructs? No, no power ring. Hm. Self-modification?

Draconic wings extend from my back, and the rest of me shrinks to maintain my total volume. Trying to replace it with a jetpack… I get a jetpack outline with no functionality. How did Alan manage like this?

More importantly, was that whole thing with Boss Smiley real? Or just their attempt to show me something to warm me up to the idea of worshipping their god? I mean, Mr Excalibris was getting orders from somewhere. There is something calling itself the Mind of God around here. I've just got to avoid meeting it. Or anyone who can recognise me as a-.

Through the window I see a couple of gold-armoured angels fly over the outskirts of the city. I'm glowing orange and I'm in front of a window move!

back

Judgement Day 7

next

Moving

now

Maximum squiggle speed corner too fast roll-ing!

Okay, out of sight of the window. Don't know how much use that actually is, but if the angels I've spoken to so far are any guide they're not a species blessed with great intellectual curiosity. Ugh, my head is too close to the floor. I sort of remember being in serpent form when the Ophidian and I were merged, but we could float. That was far less objectionable than this.

"1.1 Hello? Are you lost?"

Wings spread, an angel lion descends from the upper portion of the room. That's… Odd, though he doesn't seem any more alarmed by my presence than Hamaliel was.

"It would be true to say that I don't know where I am. However, since I don't know where I'm going it doesn't really present much of a problem."

The lion alights a short distance from me and sniffs at me.

"1.2 How did you gain entry to the Silver City?"

Okay, I'm not having this conversation from the floor. Let's try…

I pull the lower part of my body into an approximate circle and begin coiling up onto myself. Feels a bit odd, but at least my head is off the ground without me having to constantly exert myself.

"I died. I've been in Hamaliel's machine since, as far as I can tell."

"1.3 Ah, you're part of a new trial group!" He walks over to a lectern and picks up a book and a quill. "How did you find it?"

"A little confusing. I was a Hellenist in life. I wasn't expecting to come here."

"1.4 I didn't know that we had started trials on non-monotheistic faiths. A.. jarring transition?"

He turns to an empty page and raises his pen. Ah, a feedback form.

"So… From what Hamaliel said, the aim of that was to put me in the ideal frame of mind to repent?"

"1.5 It is not simply a matter of the frame of mind. You must come to understand your vices, and accept that they are vices."

"And… Anyone I encountered. Were they… Real?"

"1.6 I'm afraid that I can't answer that without prejudicing the study. Does that worry you?"

"Existing at the whims of beings I don't understand? Yes."

"1.7 I was referring to the individuals you may have encountered. Though knowing that you are ill at ease with us is worth knowing. It has been quite some time since we had to adjust for polytheists."

What's the plan here? Answer his questions, subtly try and get more information on what's going on.

"I got a bit of an inconsistent message. The individual I spoke to claimed to be one thing, I demonstrated that they weren't that thing and then they became someone else. They started out pushing the paternalistic authority angle fairly hard, and then switched over to a… Sort of a might makes right manipulative approach..? I ended up disliking both, and I'm pretty sure that I'd have responded to a more.. logic and evidence focused approach better."

"1.8 I see." He taps the feathered end of his quill against the book's binding as he thinks. "And what form did these figures take?"

"The Mind of God... At least, it was supposed to be. I've never met the real thing. And someone called Boss Smiley."

"1.9 Curious. Few people on Earth know the precise manner in which God Almighty communicates His intentions to us. Have you studied the Silver City?"

"No. But… Have you heard of Boss Smiley?"

He raises his right hand and a book floats down from a wall-mounted bookshelf. Once it reaches his level it opens itself about two-thirds of the way through.

"1.10 'Heard of', yes. I assume that you're talking about a humanoid figure in a suit with a yellow disc for a head?"

"Yes."

"1.11 Our information suggests that he's some sort of minor demon who preys on the fears and prejudices of political figures. Persuasive, beguiling, and intelligent but with limited physical power. I'm not sure why a virtualisation vessel would show you someone like that. Were you involved in politics a great deal in your mortal life?"

"Not a great deal."

"1.12 I'll mention it to Hamaliel. But the most important question is whether or not they aided you in gaining perspective on your vices."

"The Mind of God representation brought up a few things concerning the possible unintended consequences of my actions which I'd overlooked at the time. I'd say that I'd want to check whether its observations were accurate or not, but.."

"1.13 Yes, quite."

"And I don't think… Whether what it said was right or not was rather beside the point. It could have been right, and I didn't take the time to check when I did it. That was something I… I had control of. I wasn't particularly pressed for time, I just… Decided to go as fast as possible."

"1.14 Pride on your part, do you think?"

Pride? Um. An irrational sense of my own value. I don't.. think so. If I held myself in that high a regard I don't think that I'd have bothered empowering Angelica in the first place. I'd just have offered to sponsor my team myself so that I didn't have to bother kowtowing to Batman.

"No… I know that I have limits. I think it was more… Impetuousness. Most people don't even think about doing the things I do, so I didn't have a model to measure myself against. I wanted the results and I… Just went for it. It wasn't that I thought that I was good enough to wing it if there was a problem, I literally didn't consider the potential for fallout. At least, not the fallout that might have fallen on other people. I mean, there's a limit to how much contingency planning it's practical to do, but… In the example he brought up, I really scrimped."

Yeah, I'm… I think I actually understand where Sephtian was coming from with his complaint about being overworked. At the sort of power.. we can bring to bear… When I get back to Earth, I'm going to.. cut back a little. Take some more time. And actually, getting back on the team should be a pretty good way to keep myself busy without risking flipping the board.

"1.15 That sounds like progress to me. I thought that you said that you found the method in which the argument was delivered to be unhelpful?"

"Yes, but I like to think that I'm not so prideful that I need the most powerful being in the universe to turn up in person to tell me I've done something wrong. If the argument is a rational one, then it shouldn't matter who delivers it."

"1.16 I see. And.. you.. said that you were a Hellenist?" I nod. "What sort of level of involvement are we talking about?"

"I.. met several. Traded favours with my particular patron..."

"1.17 I ask because we're had some traffic here in surprised neo-pagans who didn't... Do you understand how the destination of a soul is normally determined?"

"You associate your soul with the mythos in life."

"1.18 Not quite. Just being around minor divines is seldom enough. A devotee must participate in sacrifices, rituals, celebrations and ceremonies. They must genuinely devote themselves to their preferred patron. Would you say that your relationship with your patron was reverential, or were you simply trading favours?"

Huh.

"I.. might have been, I suppose. They didn't.. say anything."

"1.19 Were you an atheist before converting to Hellenism?

"Ah..? Yes..?"

The lion angel nods. "1.20 It's a not-uncommon problem. The thing about worshipping a god is that you have to worship them. Treating them as an equal just doesn't have the same effect, I'm afraid."

Oh.

"1.21 Now, what did the Boss Smiley representation want with you?"

back

Judgement Day 8

next

My first confessional

Apparently

"He wanted me to work for him. He claimed to have a policy of suppressing certain forms of social development, but that since it was getting to the point where his preferred system wasn't viable any longer he needed to change it. So he wanted me to take the most disruptive elements somewhere else where he wouldn't have to worry about them so much."

"2.1 To lead a great migration, such as Moses led from Kahndaq? Do you see yourself in that role?"

"Did that actually happen?"

"2.2 Not all of the details of the event made it into the most popular accounts, but if you're familiar with the biblical version that was more or less accurate."

A timely reminder that however polite he's being to me, angels are all about obedience to authority. However monstro-.

Boss Smiley couldn't talk Prez into working for him, because Prez had a clear mission and didn't believe that Boss Smiley had anything to offer him. Boss Smiley claimed that Prez had done work for him unintentionally afterwards, but that basic agreement was very important to him.

Willing obedience to authority.

I wish I remembered that graphic novel better. It sounds like Boss Smiley is a perfect fit for Heaven. Angels are good at obeying and bad at questioning. Humans sometimes do inconvenient things like 'the right thing' at the most inopportune times. Angels don't.

Is that his..? Thing..?

"Then… No. I'm rather against gen-ah..."

Except I'm not, am I? I mean, is it still genocide if you didn't exterminate them because of their membership of a particular group? Yes, yes it is.

"Against separating people out like that. My whole objective is to peacefully encourage certain types of societal reform. Just kicking out potential reformers is stifling to the society doing the kicking. Plus I've.. never really been interested in governing."

"2.3 Then what do you think that element was about?"

"My best guess is that either Boss Smiley has somehow infiltrated the system and was making me a genuine offer, or it was an attempt to see whether I would abandon my morals in the face of a threat. A sort of low-stakes version of the torments Job endured, my test of faith."

"2.4 And how did you feel about it?"

"The problem I have with the setup was its dishonesty. The figure I was talking to had already demonstrated a propensity for lying. So even if I was inclined to compromise, I couldn't trust him to keep up his end of the deal. It would have been as if Job renounced-" Wince. "-God but the torments kept on coming."

"2.5 Or if Abraham was permitted to sacrifice a goat in place of his son? Are you familiar with that tale?"

"Yes. I remember an interpretation of that story I read in the novel Hyperion. That version implied that it wasn't a test of Abraham's faith; rather, it was a test to see whether or not God was a deity worth worshipping. If he allowed it to go ahead, he wouldn't be. But the offer had to be genuine or it wouldn't prove anything. God passed the test by sending the goat."

"2.6 I.. don't believe.. that I've heard that interpretation before. But… Going back to your psychodrama, you feel that the setup was undermined by the figure's prior dishonesty?"

"Critically. If it was testing for my capacity to be morally compromised, but puts me in a position where I can't trust the figure making the offer, then the only reason I would accept is if I was stupid. I might be perfectly willing to compromise, but refuse to because I don't think I'll get anything out of it."

"2.7 And if it wasn't about compromise?"

"If it was really Boss Smiley? To be frank, that would be extremely worrying."

"2.8 No, I meant if the system was trying to deliver some other message."

"If it was 'don't put faith in false idols', then they picked some really unwise imagery to use. 'Being takes the role of God, turns out to be a lying shit' probably isn't the best way to convert someone to monotheism."

"2.9 But he wasn't God."

"He occupied the same role, relative to the observer. You might feel an absolute faith in-" Wince. "-God, and the ability to know with absolute certainty whether or not a particular instruction comes from God, but the rest of us don't. If it looks like God and talks like God and has power over you like God, then for everyday purposes it might as well be God."

"2.10 Really?"

"Do you..? Spend a lot of time on Earth?"

"2.11 Not for a while, no."

"It might help you design better systems if you were more familiar with human society and mindset. If you're taking in people who aren't monotheists, you need to remember that they're not going to respond to God in the way that you're used to."

"2.12 That's a fair point." He scribbles down a few notes. "So if it was a polemic against putting faith in false idols, it fell short. What other meanings do you think that it might have had?"

"That's the thing: I genuinely don't know. I suppose that it might even have been trying to persuade me that compromise was right. How many.. other people are in one of these things?"

"2.13 I'm not certain. Thousands at least."

"Have any of them reported these sorts of problem?"

"2.14 No, no, everyone else has remained inside their vessels. That's why I'm so interested in talking to you: you're the only one I've had access to."

"Is there some difference between me and the other candidates? Because if there is, that might be where the trouble is coming from."

"2.15 You are the first openly pagan individual, but given the wide range of forms of belief practised by earthly monotheists that shouldn't be a good predictor of the quality of their experience."

"No, that could be it. Ultimately, they all regard God as the absolute judge of morality, even if they don't always live up to their own standards. I don't. That indicates a completely different instinctual response to deific imagery."

"2.16 I suppose that it's possible. Why.. were you taken out?"

"The structure of my soul is somewhat unusual. The system couldn't handle it. Hamaliel's having to do a bit of a redesign."

This isn't improving my situation fast enough. If I wanted to talk about my shortcomings I could talk to Diana. Or Father Mattias if for some reason I wanted a monotheistic viewpoint. What else could I try? I could just slither out, but I don't have anywhere in particular to go and I'm sure that someone will stop me eventually.

"2.17 Your soul is unusual?"

Do I..?

Yes. I have fangs.

I loosen my coils slightly.

"Weren't you surprised that I was orange?"

"2.18 Snakes aren't my speciality." He takes a few steps closer and peers at me. "What colour should you be?"

I lunge, biting down into his shoulder before he can do more than gasp.

Mine.

back

Judgement Day 9

next

Nothing to

see here

I withdraw my fangs, my coils still wrapped around him. Looking at him, I can see the orange percolate through his psyche. But those are my desires rather than his.

"State your name."

"Rrall."

"And who does Rrall work for?"

"Rrall works for the Host, but wants what you want."

I shift my position, moving the forward part of my body away and then bending my neck around to look into his eyes. Good orange glow, without a sigil that would make what I've done super obvious. That, combined with what I see inside him…

I uncoil, moving back to the floor. "Given what I just did, why haven't you fallen yet?"

"Falling is only automated in the case of grotesque violations of the Celestial Order, though it can also happen as a result of a ruling by the Courts. So far I have merely spoken to you and been poisoned."

There's something different about his voice. Not just the orangeness, something of the absoluteness has gone as well. Not quite as much of a change as it was when Zauriel spoke, but it is noticeable. Or at least it is to me.

I reach out through the orange light bond my poison provides. "Is there anything I need to know?"

"This part of the Silver City is not regularly patrolled, but angels more militant than I can reach here very quickly if they notice anything amiss."

And those guys who attacked my fortress were warriors. A single-snake insurgency doesn't sound like a workable idea.

"How did the attack on Hell go?"

"I was not aware that there was one."

"Who rules the Silver City?"

"The Four Kings rule the Silver City in the name of God on High."

"Can you take me to where the other virtualisation vessels are?"

"I can. However, it will swiftly be noticed if we do anything to them."

Probably wouldn't be a lot of use anyway. I mean, I'm curious, but unless the souls there have some facility for theurgy-.

"Do the souls there have a facility for theurgy?"

"I don't know. I think it unlikely, as that would run contrary to the stated objective of the project. If they are already close enough to God to be capable of using His magic, they would not need special redemptive treatment."

"Where is Karrien Excalibris?"

"I don't know. I certainly haven't seen him recently. I'm afraid that he doesn't support our redemptive work. He prefers to brutalise sinners into obedience."

Yes, I know.

"Where is the Mind of God?"

"Everywhere and nowhere. It manifests only briefly to provide instruction to us, and generally does not linger long."

"Why not?"

"I don't know. If I were to guess, I would say that it was due to the risk of damaging either us or the fabric of the universe."

"Did the Mind of God empower Karrien Excalibris, or is he just that powerful normally?"

"I don't know. I'm a scrivener and researcher, not a warrior."

Ugh, the big one. "Can I appeal a decision directly to your god?"

"Certainly."

Oh good. "How?"

"God is omniscient. Speak, and He will hear."

This jaw isn't really designed for clenching. "If I wanted to do it in a slightly more direct way..?"

"I'm not sure. Perhaps..? Speak to a human theurgist? They usually come to Heaven only briefly before moving on, but if you were to speak to one they may be able to assist you in a way we angels can not."

"Explain."

"Angels such as myself are granted those forms of theurgy necessary to our positions, and are unable to manifest miracles outside of those bounds. Human theurgists are generally able to manifest a far wider range of miracles."

"Who in the Silver City is capable of restoring me to life?"

"The Four Kings could collectively authorise such a thing, but that is not our purpose. If someone has lived their life, what comes next is judgement and placement."

Ugh, doesn't matter. I can make a body for myself once I get my rings back, and Ambrose or John can bind my soul to it. Oh! Yes.

"Where do the new arrivals appear?"

"The front gates, naturally."

Ted… I think he was a non-practising Christian. Most of the other people at KordTech New York would be as well. I'd like to get him resurrected, but at the very least I should say something to him. Thank him for what he said. Get in touch with Mammon if Ted didn't… Come here. And his.. staff as well. Ah heck, Richard's parents, aunt and cousin are probably around here too, aren't they?

No, worry about that later. But what do I do? As I see it, the other virtualisation vessels are my only real lead on what's going on. Alternatively, I could try getting in touch with one of the Kings… Or biting one. No, they'll probably have far better theurgical protections than Rrall here.

Openly and honestly talk to someone about my problem, or sneak around and make a mischief of myself?

Okay, but this time they're clearly being controlled by someone who wants to do me a mischief. This isn't like not talking to the League, this is like not talking to the Light.

Definitely.

"Rrall, take me to the other virtualisation vessels. Using whatever mode of conveyance will attract least notice."

"Certainly."

He raises his hands and there's a flash of golden light-. And we're not in his office any longer. We're in a small silver-walled antechamber to a vast chamber I can see through the doorway. Inside, an angel is examining a virtualisation vessel. He looks around then turns back to his task, apparently unconcerned.

Rrall leads the way into.. the…

The room is big. Looking upwards I can't see the ceiling, the stacks of virtualisation vessels just sort of blur together at the edge of my visual range. Ahead of us I think I can see the far wall, but I can't swear to it. Having no horizon is visually confusing.

Inside each vessel is the translucent outline of a human, apparently in a state of repose. I can't see any faces I recognise, and without a ring I can't just compare them to my database files.

"What did you wish to see?"

"Take me… To the oldest."

back

Judgement Day 10

next

Lots of things to

see here

This is so undignified.

I was right, and the Silver City doesn't have disabled access. And by 'no disabled access' I mean 'you really need to be able to fly'. As a result, I'm now hanging off Rrall as his wing-flapping shoots us upward at space-distorting speed. Not a lot of orange coming from the inmates. These are supposed to be people in the process of repenting, aren't they? Surely they'd have a bit more avarice in them than this? Or maybe these are all the older ones and they've already mostly finished, with just a few 'deviant' thought processes between them and true unification with the Source.

I'm really going to need to talk to Mr Free about speaking to Mr Izaya about that.

Rrall ceases his flapping and we glide to a halt in front of a virtualisation vessel containing… A black woman. No idea who she is. No visible sign of distress… Not that I'm sure that there should be any even if she was in distress.

"Rrall, do you know who she is?"

"No, but I can find out if you like."

I look over the runes on the inner and outer surfaces of the three rings. I don't recognise a lot of them, but from the general structure… They're connecting the system to something external. I don't know what or where, but-. Wait a second-.

"Rrall, do you understand these runes?"

"I'm afraid not. It's not my area."

I catch sight of the Smiley rune.

"Okay, but that one there-." Darn, no hands. I point with my tongue and he gamely tries to see what it is that I'm indicating. "You see it?"

"The one which looks like a crude depiction of a smiling face?"

"Yes. I noticed it because-. Because it looks like Boss Smiley's face. And I.. could be wrong, but I think that runic setup is used for arcane power transfers."

"His face is a rune?"

"No, but these setups allow someone with sufficient arcane power to use a form of personal identification rather than a pre-existing rune. Ahri'ahn used a symbol made up of overlapping triangles on most of his really noteworthy artefacts."

Hm. Alright. If he wanted to talk to anyone held within a particular 'paradise' then he'd need to mesh his rune in there somewhere, but why is it in the power flow system?

"This is the oldest. How old?"

"She was born in the eighth century BC."

Around about the time the Jews embraced monotheism. So… What, they've been putting people in these things the whole time? But…

I look around again.

How many monotheists have died in human history? Actually…

"Are there any aliens here?"

"No. We only deal with the dead of Earth."

"What do monotheists on other planets do? Where do they go?"

"I assume that the Creator has made other arrangements for them."

Okay, but… This can't be all of the monotheists who have ever died. Can it? Can't hurt to ask.

"Does everyone get put in one of these?"

"No."

"Who does? What's the selection process?"

"I don't know. But I know that some people definitely go somewhere else. There are angels whose role is to ensure that happens."

"So we could ask them what the criteria are?"

"At the risk of being discovered, yes. And we might have to ask every single one of them if they only know who they are supposed to escort."

"Do you know any… Characteristic which definitely results in an escort or which definitely doesn't?"

He smiles. "Naturally, theurgists don't need an escort."

I suppose that if they're in communion with their deity anyway then anything else would be a bit point.. less...

I look at the virtualisation vessel to the left. It takes a few moments, but I'm.. not seeing a Smiley symbol. In fact, the outer ring looks like it's more focused on excluding influences than tying them in.

"Have these devices been modified since they were first made?"

"Not to my knowledge. We've only been using them for a few centuries."

I-. I can't frown. "You said eighth century."

"I said that she was born in the eighth century. She died in the seventeenth century. Such lifespans are unusual, but hardly unique."

"So is she the oldest person here, or has she been here the longest?"

"Oldest person here. Sorry."

I look right. Again, no Smiley. So I'm going to guess that the Smiley symbol only goes on the ones he wants to interact with in some way. If I could actually feel magic I could probably sort through this far faster.

"Can I assume that you can't look for the vessels with Smiley icons without triggering an alert?"

"I could inform the intendants that I was doing so to aid Hamaliel's work. Of course, I would then have to tell Hamaliel."

"Because you're very honest, or because they'd know if you were lying?"

"I-. I suppose that I'm very honest. Also because they'd know, and that would trigger an alert."

"I really shouldn't be surprised that you're a nicer person than me, but earlier today an angel sliced me into pieces and set the pieces on fire. It formed a fairly negative impression."

"That was extremely unlikely to aid in your rehabilitation."

I look around, searching for more Smiley faces. I can't immediately see any, but they're small and there are a lot of vessels around here. Alright, let's eliminate a known possibility. I stare at the occupant in the vessel directly in front of us, and… Yep, gold strands.

Boss Smiley isn't the Source. And if anything he said was true then I doubt that he'd be able to use theurgy himself. But. If he has the souls of a large number of miracle workers tied into a system he can control…

Is that possible? Wouldn't there be some sort of checksum for things like that?

"Take me to…" I turn my head to look at Rrall. "You can't remotely locate theurgists, can you?"

"I can, but why would I need to?"

"I've got a nasty suspicion that-."

There's a small explosion of.. colour, above us and to the right, and a ripple in the air as-.

As Rrall and I are yanked upward, bound in glowing energy chains!

back

Judgement Day 11

next

What

now?

I could try biting through the bindings, but since they don't actually hurt and I imagine that falling from this distance would I elect not to. Besides, if I'm being bound by an angel I don't want to give away the threat that my bite poses. Some sort of.. ripple passes through the surrounding area, and then Mr Miracle carefully descends through the portal I can barely make out on his aero discs.

"One angel and one.. snake." He looks at me carefully. "If you're the Ophidian, that's one heck of a diet plan."

"Mister Free, the Ophidian was the strongest arcane influence on my life when I was alive. We were literally merged when my arcane tattoos were trying to build me a soul from scratch. Why is my soul looking like this a surprise?"

I can't tell what expression he's got behind that face mask, but his head isn't moving. And he appears to be shielded against empathic vision.

"Paul?"

"I can't roll my eyes anymore, but imagine I'm rolling my eyes. Did you bring my rings?"

"Why are you in Heaven?"

And as much as I'd like to say 'fuck you, that's why', I now know why.

"Apparently I wasn't sufficiently reverential to the Olympians. I was treating it like a trade rather than a religion. Do you have my rings?"

"No, I gave them to Donna and she was taking them to Erebos. Where you're… Not."

"So it.. hasn't been long then? I don't really have any way to measure time…"

He shakes his head. "A few hours."

"Okay, resurrecting me can wait. We've got a bigger problem."

He nods. "Even after all of the angels you and the demons killed, just Karrien alone is powerful enough to be a major threat."

"No. Worse. I think I've found out why they came after me. Take a-." I go to point with my right arm, and fail due to not having one. Instead, I'm forced to settle for pointing my tail in the approximate direction of the virtualisation vessel I was just looking at. "Have a look at that. I think that Heaven has been suborned."

He floats down past us and waves his multi-cube at the device. "I was trying to trace where Karrien's power was coming from. According to Angelica he's never been capable of feats like the ones he was pulling off in Labyrinth before. If it really is the Source, Highfather might-."

"Ping!"

"I see what you mea-

"Ping!"

"-n. Energy's definitely being redirected from somewhere."

"Might it not simply be powering the system?"

Scott glances at Rrall. "Did you.. do something to him?"

"My bites brand people now. My desires are his desires."

"Okay… I.. think we need an expert on theurgical magic to take a look at this, because this is very different than New God technology."

"Are Zauriel or Angelica available?"

"Zauriel? He came back? And didn't try killing you?"

"Yes, Zauriel was cast out. He came to Themyscira to warn me, then came with me to my fortress but I lost track of him in the fighting. Angelica's had access to theurgy for a few months, but if we've lost Zauriel-."

"The League are tracking him now. Wonder Woman said 'hi'."

"I'm glad to hear that she's-."

"And she wants me to tell you that the Orange Lantern Corps is attacking the outside of the flaming cage."

I didn't know Dox cared. Maybe he just doesn't want me to be late returning.

"To be honest, in one-to-one combat and with Karrien excluded, I think Orange Lanterns win. Are they making any progress?"

"Hard to say. I think the barrier's been getting slightly weaker, but it's still blocking all direct communication." He glances along the lines of virtualisation vessels. "What are these things?"

"Hell two point oh. They put redeemable souls in them and feed them illusions until they reform. Except this one-" I clumsily point again. "-was capable of theurgical magic in life. And I suspect that there are others like her."

"They think the Source wants them to use its magic to do things, but only because they're being lied to. No angel would need to use someone else's magic. You got any idea who's behind this?"

"My guess is a… Thing called Boss Smiley."

"Who is he?"

"I don't know."

"What is he?"

"I don't know. I mean, we had a conversation. Probably. But I'm pretty sure that he was lying and I don't have any other sources of information."

"What does he look like?"

"A man in a suit with a smiley for a head."

He sighs. "I liked being an escapologist. The first time in my life I didn't have to deal with insane or evil gods the whole time."

"Earth really wasn't a good place to go if you wanted that to remain the case. Look, the theory I'm working on-."

"'Boss Smiley' wants you gone, connected to the Source using human miracle workers and used them to power up Karrien, but how did he take over Heaven?"

"I'm… Guessing that he used large amounts of theurgical magic to pretend to be higher up the Source-related divinity hierarchy than the Angel Kings… But I've got no idea how he acquired the magic to do that."

"So we need to disconnect him. Because even if that doesn't make the angels realise they've been obeying the bad guy, then at the very least it turns Karrien into a manageable problem."

"I hope so. Can you track any other theurgically active souls in here?"

"As long as they're powering Karrien, sure."

"Then… We need to work out how to suspend the power flow. And bear in mind that letting loose a lot of angry saints probably isn't very safe unless we can explain really fast."

"And we've got a way to-" He looks down. "-get them down. How about we head back to Earth while Doctor Mist takes a look at these runes?"

"Can I..? Do that?"

back

Judgement Day 12

next

25th December

23:43 GMT -5

I stare dejectedly at the rim of the circle chalked on the ground around me, then poke the end of my tail over the line.

It stays coherent for a couple of seconds, then begins to evaporate.

I pull the remains back. Darn it. The angels wrecked the zeta tube system, which means that we don't have any way to bring my rings back here faster. And given that they've still got squads going from place to place having 'words' with people who feel mystically active, no one likes Donna's chances of being able to fly them back.

"So…" Artemis looks me over again. "Are you gunna take her name?"

"Probably." I flick my tail a couple of times until it begins reconstituting itself. "I mean, I can't say mine. But I'm not keen on the spelling."

"Huh?"

"Nuh-guy-en. If we can change it to double ewe eye en or double ewe why en en ee I'd be fine with it, but as it stands the lack of any grapheme phoneme correspondence just bugs me too much."

"I… Meant the Ophidian. Because you're a snake." She blinks. "Are you and… Jade getting married?"

"Oh, ah… Yes, but not anytime soon. We're going to wait until the war with the Reach has gotten to a.. stable point. I don't think that the Ophidian has a surname." I coil up into a stack again. "Do you know what sort of snake I am?"

She slowly shakes her head. "It's hard to tell without knowing what colors your scales are. And what size you're.. supposed to be."

I slump, but it's probably not very noticeable.

"What's.. Heaven like?"

"I only saw the Silver City. It's a city without most of the things that make a city a city. It's silver in colour and so is uninteresting to the eye, designed for giants who could fly and filled with people who barely qualify as sophonts. And it's not where I was supposed to go."

"Ah..? You didn't see anyone you know, or-?"

"Like who? I'm not from this universe originally. My grandparents didn't go there." I-. I can't shrug. "The only person I actually know who's died is Michael Siskin, and… I don't know exactly what Nabu did to him, but I doubt that he'd be in a position to greet me. Even if he wanted to." I tilt my head ninety degrees to the right. "I didn't see anywhere anyone would spend eternity, just a place where angels hang out when they're not chopping people to bits and setting fire to them."

"Uoh. Did you..? Feel..? That?"

"No, I got to experience an entirely pain free death as my blood ran out through multiple sword wounds and my brain was incinerated. Zero out of ten, would not recommend." I take a look around the cave's training room. "Is this really a sensible place for us to be?"

She shrugs. "Doctor Mist says they only found this place because everyone knows about it. The wards are all still working, so they can't detect exactly what's happening."

Makes sense. That was pretty much what I was thinking when I designed them. Seriously, this is the second place anyone would look for the Justice League, right after the Hall of Justice. Probably before the Themysciran Embassy. 'Not knowing exactly what's happening inside' is the best we were going to get.

I look ar-. I slip off my own coils and try to style it out as I move the front part of my body to the other side of the circle in response to the sound of footsteps coming down the corridor. Zatanna comes first, Staff of Love in hand. I wave my tail at her as she slows from a fast walk to a near stop.

"Hello, Zatanna. Dead and decidedly not loving it."

She raises her staff, runes of various shapes appearing around a central Star Sapphire sigil.

Kon, M'gann and Richard follow her in, Kon walking up to the near side of the chalk circle while M'gann and Richard hang back a little.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm unlikely to get worse in the short term. But that's.. worse than dead."

"Plenty of demigods only became gods after they died."

"I can slither. And I have to bite people to brand them. Turns out that turning into a giant snake in itself doesn't help."

"Not all the gods get great portfolios…"

I shake my head-. Which is far more awkward than it used to be. "What's happening outside?"

Richard brings up a file on his arm computer. "Did you know that the British government has contacts in Hell?"

"Um… Short answer, I'm not surprised, given how thaumically active London is. Why?"

"They knew about what happened in the Labyrinth before the League told them. Or… Sort of what happened."

M'gann frowns. "What did happen?"

"Mister Miracle took me there at my request because it seemed like the best place to fight off a horde of angels. We were doing okay… Until Mister Excalibris started throwing massive columns of fire around."

"The footage they had made it look like it was… Humans, fighting against the angels."

"After our meeting, Mammon agreed to continue Satanus's project of liberating the damned. A.. significant chunk of the defensive force was comprised of his volunteers."

"'Damned', Oh El?"

"It's easier to get damned than you'd think. Basically, be a monotheist and don't make the grade, or be from a monotheistic society and not have any particular faith. Atheists and agnostics get damned, and they certainly don't deserve Hell as it was."

He glances aside. "That's pretty much what the British government is saying. Russia, China and Britain are pushing for the UN to treat this like an alien invasion."

"Good for-."

"Including allying with Hell."

"Huh. … Who's the lucky demon lord?"

He glares at me. "They're talking about trying to help demons destroy Heaven. You said the angels were getting mind controlled! You can't hold them responsible for what they've been made to do!"

"Not if they've been mind controlled, no. But if they haven't and they're just dumbly obeying bad orders then yes. I. Can. Hell's reform program is about creating a civilised society in the worst place that can exist through voluntary participation. The nearest the Silver City has to that is sticking people in a simulator until they're appropriately brainwashed."

"They-."

"They tried it on me."

"Do you really want the Justice League to help demon armies to invade Heaven?"

Yes.

"Not particularly. So why don't you focus on working out how to undo the mental influence setup Boss Smiley is using so we can stop them before it becomes necessary."

back

Judgement Day 13

next

25th December

23:48 GMT -5

Zatanna finally lowers her staff, blinking as she does so. Her eyes-. Glowing violet, though under the circumstances I can't really criticise.

"I think we can put you back in a human body."

"Delighted to hear it. Some variation on the bindings I was using to make my soul in the first place?"

"Exactly. But now that I understand what Missus Sackville did, I think I can do it better. Also, what do I have to do to start worshipping Aphrodite?"

"I'm not sure. The Amazon tradition involves stating a desire and a single act of devotion, but I think that's a cultural thing rather than a requirement of the goddess herself. I haven't met her." Ugh. "And… Much as I hate to say it, you should probably hold off on making that sort of decision until we've sorted out exact-."

"They killed you! I don't care what their reason was!"

The star sapphire is glowing in a way I find a little concerning… But then I'm literally made of orange light at the moment.

"I appreciate that, but we don't really know the extent to which the angels are acting on their own recognisance. Gods and elementals can be made to act contrary to their normal behaviour, make errors of judgement or.. just do bad things. Aphrodite certainly isn't blameless-."

"And she doesn't claim to be." Zatanna takes a breath, twitching slightly as she notices the intensity of the star sapphire's glow. "Ecuder rewop."

The jewel obediently dims, and her eyes return to their natural colour.

"Better?"

Her eyes drop to the floor, and she gives her head a small shake.

"No." She sags slightly. "Do you remember when you told me that John Constantine cut Gabriel's wings off with a chainsaw? And that he was a mass murdering rapist."

"Yes. Not perfectly any more, but yes."

Her mouth twitches in irritation as she looks up. "It wasn't like I didn't know that the-. Gods Wonder Woman worships existed. But when dad found out that I had the same magic powers that he did, he made sure I got an in-depth lesson on exactly what things like them were. What they did. I never.. thought about… Angels, and.. God in the same way." She breathes in and out. "And then I couldn't stop thinking about it and I actually read the whole Old Testament like it-. Wasn't God and was someone else."

"He's killed nearly as many people as I have."

"'Firstborn son of every Kahndaqi household'."

"I made a poster about it in Secondary School. Which is pretty messed up by itself."

"Who did he rape?"

"According to a source I haven't been able to confirm, Mary."

She flinches, then shakes her head again. "I shouldn't be surprised."

"Though I'll say again, Gabriel was the one who did that and the one who did most of the Old Testament murdering. We don't know what sort of orders he was getting, we don't know what he was thinking and the reason Chantinelle was able to seduce him was that he was having doubts about the righteousness of his cause. If the other angels I've spoken to are anything to go by he was doing that despite his brain literally being designed to prevent him doing so. The highest authority any angel I've spoken to has claimed that they're in regular contact with is their own four kings."

"So you don't think God told them to do it?"

"I'm not sure that the Source ever tells anyone to do anything."

She thinks for a moment, and appears to shrug it off. "Does Aphrodite?"

"If she did, Hippolyta would be m-." Diana walks into the training area, a familiar and heavily warded case held in her right hand. My eyes would widen if they could. "Oh shit, are we actually using that?"

She reaches over the chalk line and puts the case down in front of me. "If you can open it."

Since I didn't want anyone using it, the case is designed to be about as resilient as it was possible for me to make it. Kal-El might have been able to destroy it, but short of him…

"Mister Free couldn't open it?"

"Mister Miracle is explaining to the United Nations Security Council why allying with Hell is a bad idea. As you know, we didn't explain to the Security Council what it does."

Right. No. Because that would have been asking for trouble. There's no record on League computers, either.

I lay my tail on the orange-light friendly locking mechanism and… Yes, I can feel it.

Open. Yes, really.

Force fields disengage, runic defences are moved apart and rendered inactive by mechanical ratchets, explosives disarm… A bit depressing that this was what I plundered the database I took from Lantern Stewart's ring for, but it was all in a good cause.

I lift my tail off the case and squirm back a little and the lid comes free.

"Probably best I don't touch it, particularly now."

"I agree."

The Spear of Destiny -or whatever its actual name is- sits in its case, looking entirely innocent.

"Dare I ask..?"

"The sorcerers in the Atlantean Embassy have confirmed your conclusion. The runes are most likely being used to give Boss Smiley theurgical abilities. Our plan is to send Mister Miracle back to Heaven with the Spear, and use it to free as many theurgists as possible at once."

It works on the dead. Marvellous. Wonder if it works on me?

"And then?"

"Hopefully, that will be the end of the matter. Otherwise, the Justice League will seek out Boss Smiley and reveal his lies to the entire Host."

"You'd have to find him-. Assuming that he's actually physically there at all. And I get the impression that angels aren't very good at adapting to rapidly changing circumstances."

"I agree. The solution to that is to have someone with an existing connection to him present when we begin our search, along with a theurgist whom we know will work with us."

Hm. Not as if I have a better idea.

…

Or… Maybe…

"If they haven't missed me yet, I could go back to Hamaliel. Try and lure Boss Smiley into communion with me. Otherwise, I'm happy to hang around with Angelica. Not like I can die twice."

She picks up the case, careful not to risk either touching or tipping out the spear within.

"I will pass that on."

"Do I get to try biting a few more angels? With that silenced boom tube I could probably sneak up on them."

Diana looks at me disappointedly. "Since we have good evidence that the angels are being misled, I believe that our interests are best served by attempting to reveal Boss Smiley's deception peacefully."

I nod.

"Slither softly and carry big fangs."

back

Judgement Day 14

next

25th December

23:57 GMT -5

"Brother, might I have your attention for a moment?"

I watch through the 'hush tube' as the angel Rrall addressed turns away from the virtualisation vessel he was checking and steps towards him.

"1.1 How may I aid you, brother?"

"I have been tasked with assisting Hamaliel in improving the design of the virtualisation vessels. However, upon examining those presently in use I.. noticed several undocumented modifications that I could not explain."

The other angel doesn't seem concerned. "1.2 What did Hamaliel say about it?"

"I only decided that I needed to raise the issue today, and he is occupied with rebuilding a damaged prototype. I thought that perhaps you could enlighten me?"

The other angel raises his right hand, golden lights flickering around his fingertips for a moment. Checking that his orders are valid. Fortunately, they are. "1.3 In the name of the Most High, I will aid you to the best of my abilities. What is the nature of this modification?"

"It is a change to the composition of the outer runic ring on a small proportion of the vessels. I am uncertain as to what it does, but it certainly is not part of the original design."

"1.4 There should not have been any such alterations. Take me to one, that I may examine it and determine its function."

"This way."

Mr Free glances at the control system for the device. "Mother Box."

"Ping."

There's a faint hum as the capacitors work to provide the epic amounts of power the system requires, then the tube closes and reopens next to the saint we examined earlier.

"1.5 …impossible. If you are unwell, then it would behove you to seek a physician."

I tense. Rrall didn't think that what I did to him would be immediately obvious, but if we're rumbled then an awful lot of uncomfortable things are going to have to happen fast.

"I thank you for your concern. I feel fine, but if it will allay your concerns, I will consult a physician once our work here is complete."

"1.6 If you are certain."

Rrall glides aside as the other angel takes a closer look.

"1.7 Nothing seems obviously out of place. What exactly is the cause of your concern?"

"You see the rune here?" Rrall points at what I presume to be the Smiley rune. "In fact, this whole array. It is.. very different in design to the reflection system that the normal version has."

The other angel takes a closer look.

"1.8 You are correct. That should not be there." He raises his right hand and once more golden lights flicker around his fingers. "And yet, all is as it should be. Perhaps it is simply not for us to know?"

"Perhaps, but the directives I have received compel me to investigate. Unless you have received orders not to, I must continue."

"1.9 Of course you must. Perhaps we could refer this upwards?

"A sound suggestion, were it not for the fact that these are unauthorised."

"1.10 But it is authorised. You saw me perform the test with your own eyes."

Rrall shakes his head.

"I am the assigned notary. I have records of every test; I must. I have no record of this, and hence it cannot be authorised."

The other angel frowns.

"1.11 That is disturbing. Perhaps… The issue is one of two departments not communicating properly? It is unusual, but it has occurred before."

"I acknowledge the possibility, brother. But we only have permission to contain souls within authorised vessels. This is not authorised."

"1.12 You believe that she should be released?"

"Released and contained elsewhere until such time as the truth of the situation has been ascertained. You have tested me and you have tested the device. One of us is reporting in error."

"1.13 But if it is you, then we do not have authorisation to remove her contrary to established precedence."

"We can make a reasonable determination based on the situation, so long as we refer it immediately to the kings. This would require their personal adjudication, as they are the only ones who could have created this situation. In cases where such things have been discovered in the past, those who moved to a neutral state were judged to have acted correctly."

"1.14 We are but servants of the Most High. Still…"

He reaches both hands out towards the vessel.

"1.15 I think it best I probe a little more deeply before taking such action. I am much troubled by-."

He shudders, his eyes glowing white-.

"1.16 Heretic!"

Diana and I lunge through the tube as the angel takes a breath to fire off a song. She pulls ahead, coming up from underneath him and punching him right in the diaphragm. He bends, a shocked expression on his face as I drop down on top of him and bite down on his owfuckingarmour!

"1.17 Brothers, I am-!"

Diana punches him in the forehead, sending us tumbling through the air as-. Yes! Neck, b-ow! We slam into one of the virtualisation vessels and my vision glitches, the angel falling through my coils as if they weren't there. For a moment I see a peaceful pastoral scene, men and women working in a field of… Corn? And then I'm back in the room with Diana and people really need to expect more from Heaven.

Oh right, I can't fly anymore.

I slam into a rack of virtualisation vessels, my bulk uncoiling and causing me to hit parts of a row of them. Flashes of rehabilitation program flicker through my mind as I smash into several at once before Diana throws the angel at me! I twist in the air, trying to get an angle-.

He hits me about a third of the way down my length, and I try and loop around-. Can't get a grip! The angel recovers enough to push me away, though I manage to hit his left wing hard enough to stop him flying away. He falls with me as I try to get-.

A song of glory and peaceful authority resonates through the chamber. The angel and I are both stunned, falling freely for a moment before Rrall catches me and Angelica…

Ugh.

Angelica hovers in place in front of the angel, singing beautifully as he blinks, his expression of hate replaced by one of beatific wonder. Freedom.

Right. Let's go with the confrontational option.

back

Judgement Day 15

next

26th December

Early morning

Fucking angels managed to make me miss Christmas.

I twist my head in the direction of the still-shaking angel who works here. "Feeling any better?"

"2:1 I… I don't understand!"

"What exactly is it about this situation that you don't understand?"

"2:2 How could we have been so deluded? We-. I believed that the power of God would only answer those who acted in accordance with His holy mission. And… Minor contradictions… Yes, we are imperfect agents… Miscommunications happen. But not only did Rrall legitimately query the orders which gave rise to these virtualisation vessels, they contradicted him and ordered me to strike him down as though the Mind of God itself had issued the directive! And then Gabriel -who is now a woman, somehow- contradicted that! I had not even heard that he had been redeemed, let alone that he has such authority."

Pointing out that she was only able to do that by combining Mr Free's freedom-godhood with her stolen theurgy probably won't help him. But again, I'm faced with a religious fanatic who isn't really such a bad sort when he doesn't think that you're evil.

"2:3 And you-. What are you?"

"I'm a-" Somewhat. "-innocent man killed due to the same… Hierarchical confusion."

"2:4 Killed? How?"

Karrien Excalibris, with the burning sword, in Labyrinth.

"The being who has learned to work around the safeguards in the Silver City's magic systems used its knowledge to enter an apparently legitimate order that I be killed. As a result, a rather large force of angels attacked Earth. We are presently working to restore the Silver City to full functionality."

"2:5 God bless you."

The sound of Angelica's singing resonates around the towers of virtualisation vessels as does… Whatever being the God of Freedom means that he needs to do to apply the Spear of Destiny. I wonder if it's going to affect me? I'd like to think not, but then I'm not… Currently imprisoning anyone.

Apart from arguably Rrall.

They'd have considered that, ri-?

I hear the slight change in the background noise as the rings around the virtualisation vessel they're working on slow in their rotation, the outer layer of runes flat out evaporating and leaving smooth metal in their place.

"Okay, that should do it." Mr Free floats backwards away from the vessel, Spear still in hand. "No more connection to the Source for Boss Smiley."

Diana nods. "Now all that we need to do is confront…"

Rrall looks around as if just coming out of a mild daze, and I can see within him that the orange poison I injected him with is entirely gone. He blinks, then flaps his wings and flies towards me.

"Before you say anything, you work for an organisation that had just murdered me. My action was entirely reasonable and proportionate."

"3:1 I was trying to help you, to help all of the souls in our care. We were having a civil conversation until you bit me."

"And we kept having a civil conversation afterwards and uncovered what was really going on."

"3:2 You could have asked. Even if I had decided to say 'no', I-."

"We asked him." I jab the tip of my tail in the direction of… I turn my head towards the other angel. "What's your name?"

"2:6 Sariel."

"We asked Sariel. And what happened? New orders: kill whoever told you to check this. I can barely fight in this form."

"3:3 You had no way to know that I would need to check anything! You simply assaulted me because you believed that it was easier than taking a slight chance-"

"Less of the slight."

"-that I might act against you." His eyes narrow slightly. "You are a most unpleasant snake, and I will pray for your enlightenment."

"Too late on both counts." I slither away from the angels and towards the superheroes. "Are they all out?"

Diana shakes her head. "We have elected to leave the illusion active and merely break the link between the Source and Boss Smiley. The Host can decide what to do with the souls committed to their care."

"Assuming they actually are committed to their.. care."

Jade, then Hades. Or possibly Jade, Eris, Hades-. No, rings, Jade, Eris, Hades. I doubt very much that Donna is totally immune to the call of the orange light.

Diana smiles kindly at me. "You have not worshipped the gods of Olympus for long, Paul. And you were born in a Christian country. Building bonds of the spirit takes time." I nod dejectedly, though I doubt that anyone looking at me could tell that. "Mister Miracle, are you experiencing any ill-effects from the Spear?"

"No… Actually, using it feels natural, like some types of Apokoliptian technology. Are you.. sure this came from Earth?"

Angelica glances at it uncomfortably. "It was used to kill Jesus Christ. I doubt that.-"

"2:7 No, it wasn't."

Angelica frowns. "It wasn't?"

Rrall nods in support of his colleague. "3:4 Aside from the obvious fact that his name was 'Joshua' and not 'Jesus', that spear is clearly not in the Roman style. Legionaries were issued with light and heavy javelins for throwing, rather than true thrusting spears like that." He takes a closer look. "But it does feel earthly in origin."

Before we can get too off track… "Where next, sir?"

"6:1 All loyal servants of the Lord God! Harken to my words!"

"Hssssssss-." Why am I hissing?

"6:2 The Silver City is besieged! Stand guard and hold fast against the Enemies of Righteousness!"

Mr Free nods. "If he's not affected by Boss Smiley's magic anymore-."

"6:3 The legions of Hell assail our walls while the vile criminal I slew at the behest of God Almighty runs free in our halls!"

"Oh. Well, forget I said anything."

Angelica frowns. "Demons..?"

"Aren't demons ludicrously vulnerable to theurgy?"

Mr Free shakes his head. "You saw the same armies I did. They handled everything except Karrien himself. And if that was most of the Host's military force…"

"They might actually win. And-."

There's a flare of light from the entryway as a squad of warrior angels teleports in!

back

Judgement Day 16

next

26th December

A little later still

I keep my head low, slithering for cover behind the slumbering saint's virtualisation vessel as the warrior angels get their bearings.

"3:1 Peace, brothers." Sariel walks towards them with his open hands slightly raised. "The Archangel of War is operating in ignorance of the full facts."

A shrill shriek from the lead war angel slams into him, knocking him off his feet and sending him hurtling down the aisle!

"1:1 Be silent, Fallen One! You will be judged for your crimes soon enough!"

Rrall takes a moment to look at their armour and weapons and then literally bows out, stepping aside as they advance and genuflecting from the waist.

Diana steps forwards. Her arms are raised in a position which will allow her to block attacks with her bracers, but she's still not taking overt aggressive action. Oh come on! Angels respawn! And even if they didn't, these ones are clearly arseholes who could stand to have a bit of the arsishness beaten out of them!

"Soldiers of the Silver City, I am Diana, Princess of Themyscira-."

"1:2 We know who you are, Olympian. Your status does not grant you any privileges."

"1:1 I order you to stop."

The advancing angels freeze as Angelica raises her right hand, eyes blazing with golden light. I'm not an expert on the angelic hierarchy, but if she's essentially working off Gabriel's permissions she might well be able to overrule-.

"1:2 Gabriel was cast down, Abomination! He could not give us orders, and you certainly cannot."

I duck as the choir's song harmonises and the air in the aisle vibrates. Mr Free winces and ducks behind Diana, something that must be second nature after working with Barda for so long. Diana raises her arms, bracers crossed and the defensive magics laid therein turned up to the most powerful level. I watch the air ripple around her, the area immediately around her still and calm while outside of that aura is rippling like an ultrasonic scalpel.

The angels stop advancing, wings spreading as they focus on their song. Mr Free is fiddling around with one of his devices, but it shouldn't be possible to interfere with the angels' theurgy. Unlike what Boss Smiley -and hopefully Karrien- are doing, it's a natural ability. You can't just cut it off-.

He throws something, the object passing as close as possible to Diana's bracers before flying out into the vibrating field. It's.. shaking a little, but it's surviving the force remarkably well. Assuming that the attack is purely kinetic energy that's not too surprising. I'm not sure how a Terminan kinetic shield would survive force applied in that way, but-.

The projectile flies toward the lead angel, who pauses his singing just long enough to slash through it with his sword. It breaches the outer case easily-.

Causing the kaahuite inside to explode outward in all directions. The angels stop singing at once and try to spread out, though I notice two quietly coughing. Okay, their formation is broken… I slither another row over and then head towards them along the ground. One lucky bite is all that I-.

Diana's already on them, lunging through the air and punching the lead angel in the side of the head. He hits the ground with enough force to send kaahuite powder blasting away in all directions, and doesn't rise. Diana turns, her left bracer turning aside a flaming sword before cracking the owner's jaw with her counter.

Slither slither slither…

Diana turns, trapping a sword between her bracers and holding it there despite the exertions of its wielder. A spear-wielding angel stabs at her back but misses as she flies up without compromising her hold.

And the spear-wielder wasn't watching me. I coil and spring, my body landing on his wings and shoulders and bearing him to the ground. Spears are generally a better weapon than swords, but when there's a giant snake already inside your reach a short blade is much better. He turns his head to try and sing at me but I dart my head forward and sink my fangs into his head too quickly for him.

"1:1 Graaghuhmerciful Lord."

Urgh, I tasted him. Urr, I've got angel blood in my mouth. Bleu-agh!

I roll aside as one of his more situationally aware colleagues thrusts his spear at me, but since I'm still wrapped around my current victim it's a decidedly clumsy move. Fortunately for me, Angelica has had time to grab my target's spear and a moment later brings the haft down on my attacker's head. The blow merely staggers him, but gives her enough time to drop the weapon, grab his head with both hands and pull him closer. She then sings… Something quiet, I don't catch it, and he slumps to the ground.

I unbind my new recruit and pull myself free and Diana binds the last angel in her lasso. "Should probably keep hold of that spear."

"I…" She overcomes her reluctance with a shake of her head and bends down to pick it up.

Back down the aisle Mr Free helps Sariel to his feet and checks him over for serious injuries. Rrall approaches and starts performing a similar check on the squad which attacked us, sparing only an uncomfortable glance for the one I bit. Ugh, still got silver blood on my lips-. My muzzle?

"Angel blood's not a demon aphrodisiac or anything, is it? Because I've got a meeting with Satanus later…"

Angelica whistles, and I feel it flake away as she turns around to face Diana. Diana in turn is consulting Rrall.

"How soon will they be reinforced?"

"4:1 That… Depends. I do not believe that they specifically called for aid, and if there is another attack occurring then it may be some time. I'm afraid that I am not well versed in the Silver City's defence plans."

"Hamaliel or Karrien, sir?"

She shakes her head. "If demons are attacking, our first priority should be to stop them. Rrall, can you lead us to the closest observation point?"

"4:2 We would usually simply fly upward, but-. Yes. This way, please."

She glances back at Sariel. "Will you be alright?"

He's upright, but silver blood is leaking through his clothing and he's looking decidedly unsteady. "3:2 I will recover. Please, defend our city and our holy task where I cannot."

"We will do our utmost. Rrall, lead the way."

Rrall flaps his wings, moving at speed towards the entrance. Diana, Mr Free and Angelica foll-.

I look at my tail.

"You, angel, what's your name?"

"Echielias."

"Alright Echielias, this is going to be awkward for both of us, but I need you to either carry me or teleport me to Hamaliel's workshop."

He kneels down and scoops up a handful of my body. "With the Silver City under attack the anti-teleportation wards have been activated. I would need higher authorisation than I have to teleport myself. And I think it unlikely that Karrien Excalibris will grant it."

"True."

I wrap myself around him as best as I can without constricting his wings. Okay, that… Feels about done. Echielias tests his range of motion for a moment and then leaps, his wings beating and his vocal cords singing as we fly outside.

back

Judgement Day 17

next

26th December

Later still

There's something in the air, a shimmering around the buildings which I assume comes from their protective magic. Actually…

"Why aren't the demons just flying over?"

"While it is a slightly crude way to describe it, there essentially isn't an 'over' to the Silver City. The walls block all access points. Anyone who wishes to assail us must either pass through or over them."

I had thought this place was a bit literal. "How about under it?"

He flies us out into the open and then pumps his wings hard. Towers flash past us as we rise… The towers seem to rise higher than…

Ah, no, I misunderstood. The Silver City doesn't have a wall, but it doesn't float over a void. Now that I've got a better angle I see that there are some fairly substantial lands beneath it. And at the edge of those, a vast silver wall.

It must be quite a nice place to visit.

I stare out into the intervening space as Echielias lands us on a balcony. No, can't see the rest of the party. They might have used the boom tube thing… Or an actual boom tube if they're planning on assisting the Host openly. Now that we've cut him off from Boss Smiley, Mr Excalibris must be capable of prioritising, surely?

In either case there's nothing I can really do there. I unwind myself from Echielias and slither along the smooth floor. This.. corridor looks somewhat familiar. I think.

"Which way?"

Echielias strides past me and heads down the corridor. I try to follow, but fall behind as squiggling with part of your body upright is a lot harder than the lamia make it look. I think I'm just going to have to bear the indignity. I drop my head to near-floor level in.. what actually feels like a more natural position, and start squiggling in earnest. Come on, I can't get tired… Can I? No, I've got nothing to have lactic acid in. Okay, wiggling back and forward in a way which I'm confident would make me dizzy if I had an inner ear, but at least I'm making decent forward progress.

Echielias picks up the pace as well, and we-. I glance left as we pass a doorway, and that was Rrall's office. Excellent! And I can hear the sound of what I think is Hamaliel's song-.

One of his assistants steps out through a doorway a short distance ahead of us. He raises his right hand in greeting to Echielias, but freezes slightly when he spots me as well.

"Greetings, Melachus. How goes the day?"

"1:1 The Earth is engulfed in a flaming cage, several virtualisation vessels are reporting error states and an army of demons lay siege to Heaven. There have been better days. But it gladdens me that you have brought our guest back."

He doesn't sound very glad.

"1:2 But I am afraid that repairs to his containment vessel are not yet complete. We overestimated rather severely the effectiveness of our planar shielding. We're having to redesign the entire outer ring-."

"Yes, I need to talk to the three of you about that."

Melachus doesn't back up a pace, but it clearly takes an effort.

"1:3 I thought that you might. Does it absolutely need to be the three of us?"

"I'm afraid so."

"1:4 Well.. then… Come on in?"

"Thank you."

Melachus steps back into the room and we follow, prompting Hamaliel to look up from his engraving bench.

"2:1 I'm afraid that I'm not quite ready yet."

"Hamaliel, I couldn't help but notice a rune on the outer circle of some of these vessels which resembles a smiley face. What does it do?"

"2:2 A smiley face?"

"Yes, you know, as a personal identification rune. It's not yours, is it?"

"2:3 No. No. Just a moment." He walks over to a writing desk and leafs through a thick tome there. "That was added in.. revision..." He frowns, flicking rapidly back and forth through a cluster of pages. "I… I remember including it, but I can't see… I included a communication system so that we could… Could monitor…" His eyes widen. "We were supposed to be monitoring you, I clearly wrote that down. Why didn't I..?"

"If you are ordered to forget something, do you?"

"2:4 I don't… Understand. Ordered? By whom?"

"By someone using redirected theurgical magic to fake having the authority to give you orders."

"2:5 Yes, there are forms of words which could have that effect. I would need to speak to the kings to get permission to recover them. You mean that someone ordered me to grant them access and then to forget about it?"

"There's a certain amount of circumstantial evidence that something like that has happened. Including vessels in the main hall which were being used to house the souls of human theurgists."

"2:6 We don't have the authority to bind theurgists! Such a thing-!"

"You were deceived, it happens. Who has authority to countermand every potentially compromised order?"

"2:7 Just-. Just the kings."

"Then we need to get hold of them. How do we do that?"

"2:8 We are under attack. They will be on the walls at the cardinal points, directing the defence."

And one of them liked the cut of my jib.

"Which one is King Asmodel occupying?"

"2:9 The Gate of Earth. Though given his righteous wrath, it is likely that he has taken to the field in person."

I'm not going to test my luck against a demon army as a spirit snake.

"And the others?"

"2:10 King Aariel of the Lion Host is no less wrathful than King Asmodel of the Bull Host. And properly speaking I should bring the issue to my own king in the first instance. King Raphael will be at the Gate of Water. We should find him as swiftly as possible."

"Lead on. I'll be happy to explain it in full to him. But I'll probably need someone to carry me."

back

Judgement Day 18

next

26th December

On the home stretch

A flight of armoured angels gestures at us to land in no uncertain terms on the inner battlement of Heaven's wall. Hamaliel moves his hands over his chariot's controls and we begin our descent. But first…

"Echielias, if I removed my venom from you, would you feel obliged to attack me?"

"I do not believe so. You are contained and surrounded by warrior angels, and travelling into the presence of King Raphael. He can judge you better than I."

"Alright then. Bend down, will you?"

He crouches, and I press my mouth to the wound on his face. No idea whether or not I can actually do this, but it can't hurt my standing if I turn up without a mind controlled angel. I focus on the wants and drives I injected into him, carefully identify how they're linked into his existing drives and carefully suck at them.

For a moment not much happens, then I feel them start to weaken and fade. And something is arriving back in my mouth. Tastes like.. angel blood and need. Echielias gasps and pulls himself away, right hand shoving me off while his left clasps his newly reopened stab wound.

"2:1 Off, foul… Creature!"

"I was trying to remove my poison. If you want to keep it, or if you think you can heal yourself from an exotic energy infection which you're the second angel to ever be exposed to, be my guest."

He regards me loathingly for a moment, then reluctantly bends down.

"2:2 Finish your… Work."

I could make a joke about it, but I think it would be in poor taste. One last suck and I've got everything but the dregs. And they're sticking rather better and I'm nothing like good enough at this to remove them safely.

I pull away and turn my attention to the battlement as we land. White.. stone… Somehow, and I can see the runes carved into it. Looking upwards I can see machines similar in style to the angel ships, which I presume serve as the angels' artillery. I'm not hearing anything that suggests shooting.

Hamaliel steps solemnly onto the battlement and another angel steps forward to meet him. Hamaliel starts whispering urgently, and the other angel looks momentarily shocked. Then they do the theurgical test of honesty I've seen before. Hamaliel apparently passes because the other angel then turns his attention to me.

"1:1 You, snake. Come forward."

I… Carefully slither off the chariot, once again accepting the indignity of having my head this close to the ground.

"I am the Illustres of the Orange Lantern Corps, and I was recently condemned to death by the same broken system which caused Hamaliel to make corrupted 'virtualisation vessels'. I-."

"1:2 You? You were the one who lured the army of the Host into the demons' trap?!"

"I didn't make anyone follow me. Any angel who came after me received what they were actively trying to give. And if they weren't acting on proper orders, if they were working for someone who was manipulating the Host, then they weren't in the right."

"1:3 I read your record when you were condemned. You should have been grateful that you were to be granted a chance to redeem you-."

"I DON'T care what you think! You've already demonstrated a lack of basic data security. Every single one of your orders could have come from anywhere! Not just the commandment which condemned me, but every moral precept which your self-righteousness is built on. You have no credibility with me!"

"1:4 Our morals are-."

"1:1 Not 'every', young man."

The angel before me stops speaking at once and steps aside as.. an angel in radiant white robes and silver armour strides forth. The helmet has a distinctly crown-like quality to it. I instinctively bow my head for a moment before I notice who is following on behind him. Karrien Excalibris narrows his eyes at me, but doesn't say anything. He appears to have added the Sword of the Fallen to his own pair.

"King Raphael. Thank you for granting me this audience at what I'm sure must be a trying time."

"1:2 Word of what has occurred has already reached the ears of my brother King Aariel. The daughter of Gaea holds the wall in his stead that he may properly investigate the issue. Have you further news?"

"3:1 My king, there is some evidence that I have been ordered to forget corrupting the project. Notes… Irrational modifications whose purpose I no longer recall. Unless it was by your order, please, I beseech you, restore my memories that I may explain myself."

"1:3 By the power vested in me by God Almighty, I so order."

A faint golden light shines out of Hamaliel's eyes and mouth, and he blinks heavily.

"1:4 Speak, my son. Tell me how this 'Boss Smiley' so deceived-."

"3:2 It wasn't him."

What?

"1:5 Hamaliel, explain yourself."

"3:3 It wasn't him! No demon could give me orders!"

Huh? I mean, I'd just assumed that he'd snuck in and slipped a memo into someone's in tray, but I suppose that would have been a bit too easy.

"1:6 Then who? Who ordered that you-?"

Oh shit, it actually was-.

"3:4 King Asmodel."

King Raphael doesn't shout or flinch, but there is a slight tensing in his wings. "1:7 You are certain?"

"3:5 Yes. Just the initial order. After that… It just felt natural."

King Raphael raises his right hand in benediction, gold light flowing between it and Hamaliel's forehead. Then he lowers his hand and bows his head.

"1:8 Your honesty is confirmed, though perhaps under the circumstances I should not depend on such methods. King Asmodel will have to be… Questioned, once the current crisis is resolved. For now, rest easy knowing that you have acted as properly as you could have."

Hamaliel nods, though he doesn't look much relieved. So that's going to get resolved, but there's still the ongoing incursion on Earth to stop.

"Excuse me? I realise that you're needed here, but could you do something about the giant flaming cage around Earth?"

"1:9 I have not yet found in King Asmodel's disfavour-."

"And you can always put it back later, but it seems to me that at the very least the order to create it was of dubious validity. It's also creating major problems with navigation and I've got a Lantern Corps trying to get in. Quite aside from my own effectiveness in combat being increased by possession of a power ring, my comrades could significantly contribute to the Silver City's defence." Huh. "Also, who owns the army on the far side of the wall?"

"1:10 I am not sure that allowing you access to your allies is wise. I will consider the matter. The demonic army that stands before these walls flies the standard of Lord Satanus."

"I… Might be able to persuade him to negotiate. But you need to get moving on your internal-."

I shudder as a moan of utter desolation echoes around the-. The interior walls. Swinging my head around I scan the perimeter-.

And my eyes alight on the giant hole with the demon horde surging through it.

back

Judgement Day 19

next

26th December

Via roadworks

I can barely see from here, but it looks like-.

One of the wall-mounted support weapons turns away from the exterior and fires, scouring a section of the wall clear of defenders.

"Asmodel's gate?"

Hamaliel's clutching his ears. "4:1 What was that?"

"6:1 A weapon forged in the deepest pits of Hell." Mr Excalibris looks to his king. "By your leave, sire."

"2:1 Go. Bring this madness to an end."

Mr Excalibris raises his right sword, a gesture mirrored by about… One quarter of the angels I can immediately see. Then he leaps, wings beating as he flies towards the breach with his retinue.

"And we're sure that he's trustworthy, are we?"

"2:2 This is the first time that these walls have ever been breached. Whatever orders he was given, the need to act against demonic intrusions is built into us. He will fight." He looks down at me. "Know you aught of this weapon?"

"Remember that time you cast down Gabriel for unknowingly having sex with a succubus?"

"2:3 There was more to it than that."

"You used a person as a killing machine for thousands of years and you were surprised when he started finally having doubts." Not worth it. "Point is, the demons found a way to hook him up to whatever the heck it is that the Masak Mavdil is built over so that now when he sings theurgical stuff gets unmade."

"2:4 He willingly-?"

"I don't believe that they sought his consent. Look, I can't fight like this. If you-?"

BOOM!

Looks like the League have decided that secrecy is no longer required. William Batson is through first… Yes, burning pentagram banner, those are Neron's troops. The comparative scarcity of ranged weapons amongst their number giving them a decided disadvantage against the arcane lightning blasting from his sword. Their loose formation initially prevents them from defending as effectively as they did against the angels' attack in Hell, but they form up fast and their enchanted shields can soak magic-based attacks reasonably well.

Then Kal-El follows his colleague through and opens up with his entirely physics-based heat vision. And… It looks like he's being intelligent enough to keep back out of melee range of the ground troops. Winged skirmishers dive at him, but are swiftly tutored in the fact that while he doesn't have any specific natural resistance to magic, he does have two perfectly functional fists as well as a perfectly functional brain. He effortlessly outflies them, ducking and diving around their clumsy swings and striking them with his fists while maintaining his glowing red barrage against their ground bound allies.

"If you remove the flaming cage I can call in my Corps. And if you let me communicate with Satanus I can probably negotiate something."

King Raphael throws his head back and shouts a ringing note into the air. A moment later I faintly hear a response from another part of the wall. He nods to me.

"2:5 It is done. Now explain why you wish to communicate with the demon lord."

"We have an understanding. He gains power by improving the lot of the damned, I coordinate certain things with him. I want to find out why there's an army of demons-."

"2:6 It seems simple to me. Undermine the magics which guide us and empower us, corrupt King Asmodel into opening the gate for them and then charge the Silver City and reduce it to ruins."

"Okay, and that might help him get a better class of guest, but it also means having to deal with any human theurgists up close and personal if he occupies the place, and you'll just rebuild if he doesn't. And he's competing with Neron for influence and those are Neron's troops opening the breach." Grh. "Also, I need an outside line to tell my Corps where they need to show u-."

BOOM!

My Agent!

"Or maybe not."

BaBUM.

I look down and through my own scales see a glowing heart beating in my chest.

BaBUM.

I glow brighter-

BaBUM.

-and rise into the air. Growing in size as I do so. Now this is what existing as a soul with the sort of bond to the orange light that I have should feel like!

"Illustres to Clarissi Dox. Please acknowledge."

"Status report."

I suppose that if there's one man I could rely on to keep a level head in a situation like this…

"The semi-divine functionaries of Earth's Source-worshipping religions are fighting amongst themselves. While normally I'd say leave them to it, they appear to have root command access to the fabric of the universe. We need to normalise things."

"The Ophidian reported your death."

"I'm working on fixing that. I just thought that this was more urgent."

"Agreed." He didn't even pause. "I'm sending Lanterns through the boom tube to report to you. Others will remain on Earth to aid local authorities."

"Thank you." Over in the combat zone I spot Mr Fei counter the songs of the traitorous angels while the Flash attempts to assault the wall. "Tell them to look for the giant orange snake."

"2:7 What are you?"

"As I said, I'm the Illustres of the Orange Lantern Corps. And-."

And while I'm still asking permission to talk to Satanus, I'm only asking for a given value of 'asking'. That's what I was going to say. But I'm going to be called to account for everything that's happened today and yesterday, and that's going to be a good deal easier if I stay polite.

"And since Satanus' force is largely comprised of the damned and you have a new initiative to redeem the damned, that suggests that you consider them worth talking to."

"2:8 There is a great difference between attempting to redeem them and treating with them before they are redeemed."

"You tolerate other afterlives, don't you?"

"2:9 Because they are finite. The laws of entropy will not allow them to be sustained forever. Besides,-" He looks over to the swirling melee near Asmodel's gate. "-now that Karrien has arrived, I am confident that the matter is in hand."

Karrien turns in the air, raises his swords and incinerates his escort.

back

Judgement Day 20

next

26th December

And it's been a long day already

I… Actually wasn't expecting that. When he didn't go for me immediately…

"3:1 No. Not Karrien as well."

He looks so devastated that I'm tempted to say something to try and cheer him up, but honestly..? At this point I'd rather just nuke the whole miserable lot of them. I'm sure that anyone who wants to can find their way to the Source just fine without them. But why is Karrien going against the express wishes-?

Oh. Of course.

"He still regards the source of his orders as a higher authority than you. So he considers you illegitimate and anyone standing with you the enemies of your god."

"3:2 I believe we have established at this point that those orders did not come-."

"But it told him it was before you told him that it wasn't. This is what happens without free will!"

He grimaces. "3:3 I will conditionally accept this devil's bargain, on the condition that Satanus will accept being bound to leave once the threat to the Silver City is removed."

"And what does he get?"

"Illustres?"

I look down to where Ragnar and… Some other Orange Lantern whose name I can't immediately recall, float, waiting for me to deign to address them. New chap is Karaxian, wearing what looks like an armoured leotard. I'm not seeing a spare ring….

"One moment. King Raphael, if I am to negotiate for aid, you will have to offer him something."

"3:4 If you know his mind so well, what does he want?"

"Hell. You agree to recognise his sovereignty, recall Remiel and Duma and under no circumstances send angels there in future."

"3:6 That would cripple our ability to-."

"And?"

Raphael hesitates, looking over to the swirling melee as a flight of abominations under… Harm, of course, heads for the Silver City itself.

"3:7 I agree."

"Thank you. With me, Lanterns. Try and look like professional, well-disciplined soldiers."

Ragnar grimaces as I slither upwards towards the top of the wall. "I am well-disciplined."

"Then it should be an easy pretence, Lantern Ragnar. New Lantern, what's your name?"

"Lantern Onik, Great Master."

I could make a 'that's a long name' joke, but it's been a long day. "Any particular reason why Clarissi Dox sent you?"

"I was a novice in a Source-worshipping monastery before my calling, Great Master."

A priestly Lantern. My own mini-me. How thoughtful.

I crest the wall, the angels angeling the battlement backing off in a rare display of good sense.

"Was your monastery home to any species with an innate connection to the Source?"

"No, Great Master."

"Take a look around while you're here, and you'll see why that was a good thing."

And there's Mammon's army. Dispersed formation, already dug in, some sort of energy shields protecting the infantry and artillery pieces and more than a few mechanical… Thingies. Not a lot of fliers that I can see, but then I couldn't see the Scabbies in advance of their deployment.

Now, where is he?

Where is he?

Where is he?

Ah, there.

Flickers of fear shine out as the army comes alert in response to me flowing through the air towards their command post. Someone loses their nerve and a brief smattering of ectoplasma bolts fly at me before evaporating into nothingness about three metres from my body. Huh. I was planning to use a shield construct, but fine, I'll take it.

"SATAAAAANUS! I WANT A WOOOORD!"

There's a puff of lilac flame from… Another part of the hellish lines as a body double gets activated, posing as Satanus in full plate. But fine, if the angels get even more stupid having them not know where he is might help a little. I swoop down, stopping with my head about a metre away from him and with my tail undulating in the air behind me like I think I'm a Chinese dragon or something.

"I think you're the oddest looking angel I've ever seen. Including the ones made of wheels, wings and eyes."

"Not an angel. Come on, I'm glowing orange and I died recently."

"Paul?"

"I know. Surprised everyone that I came here. What are you doing?"

"Laying siege to the Silver City as retribution for their attack on my domain. We dealt them a solid blow at Masak Mavdil and I intend to capitalise on it." He looks left and then right along his lines. "Forgive me for keeping a portion of my forces back during that battle. I felt that a mobile reserve was more useful than an extra easily-bypassable trench line. I'm not here particularly to break you out, but I don't hate the idea."

"Okay, a lot of stupid things have happened lately and I probably don't have time to go into all of them. Do you still want to rule Hell?"

"Yes?"

"Neron has a pact of some kind with Asmodel. His forces have already taken their gate, and the angels are busy killing each other. You can't do better than that as far as attacking goes."

Actual-Satanus would either give it a go or go home at this point. But this is Mammon.

"On the other hand, you can barter. Trade your aid to the angels in return for a non-interference pact."

"Help… The angels."

"Neron's helping angels against other angels, so you don't really lose anything. You get to claim that he did it first, you get to perform a public transition from the old style demon-run torture nightmare Hell to… Just another afterlife which the inhabitants can make of what they will."

I shift forwards a little.

"Hell has a bit of an image problem at present, as I'm sure that you're aware. And on the off-chance that one of your people actually kills Asmodel… You'll have a major claim to fame."

"And Karrien Excalibris?"

"If you kill him, I'll owe you."

"Properly prepared demons can survive disintegration. Damned souls can't. They're unmade. Everyone he burned is gone for good. Fighting beside him-."

"Will be unnecessary as he sided with Asmodel. And I'm sure that if he wins here, Purgatory will be his next stop."

He looks left again, and I'm reminded that virtually all of these people would have at least broadly accepted the monotheistic code of ethics. In whatever form those existed in their society. Whatever they tell themselves in order to get by, the notion that they went to Hell because they were bad, and that the angels are good, is probably stronger than Mammon or I would like to admit.

"Total non-interference?"

"They give up all claims to Hell. Remiel and Duma get recalled from wherever they ended up. You still have to take Hell to make it yours, and you still have to compete for influence on Earth-."

"Capitalism."

I can hear his eagerness. As a demon lord he knows a person's motives as well as I do, and if he doesn't have to worry about an invasion then his relative weakness in direct combat is no longer a concern.

"Just so."

"Best fly up and have them open the gates, then. I need to greet my new friends."

back

Judgement Day 21

next

26th December

And I hope it ends soon

Mammon's army begins to break camp at once, weapons and defence equipment being stowed and loaded in.. to..?

Shimmering portals grant passage to relatively conventional looking armoured trucks, which drive up to infantry positions in what is clearly a preplanned fashion. I can hear the engines growling. No exhausts. Magic powered?

"Where did you get those troop carriers?"

"A little something from Mr Simpson. They draw mana from their environment. It's only really practical in high-energy environments, but in Hell it has the wonderful side effect of purifying the area of the broken down remains of sinners of ages past. It should prevent any more fingerwheat incidents."

We both look around as the great gates guarding the entrance to the lands of Heaven open.

"Excellent."

There's a puff of flame as he vanishes, then appears in front of the opening. Right, he's perfectly capable of dealing with King Raphael. I twist in the air and face Ragnar and Onik.

"Gentlemen, I don't specifically know what I'm capable of like this. If you notice anything out of the ordinary, let me know."

Ragnar draws his sword. "These minor Source-gods. Can they die?"

"Physical destruction doesn't guarantee stopping them, but they can be weakened to the point where they can't restore themselves."

He nods nonchalantly. "I can work with that."

"They are not gods, but functionaries who serve-" I wheel in the air and head for the top of the wall once more, my Lanterns falling in behind me. "-to tend the souls of those dead humans who put themselves in their care."

"They don't seem to be tending Illustres Paul."

"As an enlightened being I doubt that he requires their care."

"He certainly doesn't."

The fight around the gate is stalling as the demons are rendered unable to advance, instead falling back to the wall's fortifications and hunkering down. Something.. made of.. weird jagged shapes… Thick lines of colour in individually abstract designs come together into the distorted outline of a man as Dr Balewa tries to find something Mr Excalibris can't shut down. John in full Doctor Fate mode is helping, Mr Excalibris's golden fires flickering and guttering as golden shields impose conventional order in place of God's design.

Temporarily, at least.

Kal-El slams into the ground as he takes a song from… I'm assuming that the hulking angel in the silver armour is King Asmodel. Guy appears to be working out his theological uncertainties with a green hockey stick. Probably an uncomfortably personal story there.

Hm. While not a certain victory, the breakout at least appears to be contained. Harm's party on the other hand are nearly at their destination. No sign of Neron himself, which is a little worrying. This is a PR exercise for him. He's trying to establish himself as the rightful ruler of Hell in the Old School model. A demon king who kicks arses and erases names. Everything I know about demon psychology tells me that he should be somewhere close by. If only to keep an eye on his ally.

Agh, can't worry about that. If Dr Balewa can't deal with him then I certainly can't. Not like this, not unprepared. But Harm…

"With me."

I point myself at his destination and fly, my need to resolve this situation in an at least somewhat favourable way causing me to accelerate across the Silver City's hinterlands at a breakneck -yes, I know I don't have a neck, it's just a phrase- speed.

BaBUM.

I feel Ragnar and Onik fall behind -the latter more than the former- so I-. Feels like I could feed power into their rings, but let's hold off on doing that. Instead I reach back and drag them with me.

"Yehahahaha!"

Ragnar grins, orange shields glowing around him as the distance between us and the abominations drops to nothing extremely quickly. Onik holds his arms in.. what I'm assuming is some sort of martial arts pose, shimmering orange spikes extending from both of his hands. I'm not sure what his preferred style is, but his people have spent a very long time idolising the Green Lantern Corps so I'm going to assume that he knows at least roughly what he's doing.

Harm glances back and actually looks.. slightly annoyed.

"What is It?"

"Mister Hayes

I think we're going to have to part ways."

Annoyance turns to curiosity. "It has ascended." One of the abominations -a sort of winged teddy bear-stick insect thing- grunts something at him, then flinches back as it receives his full attention. "Go!"

His escort continue flying at their best possible speed, while the man himself slows and breathes a vast plume of hellfire directly into our path! I don't want to be hit and the space before me bends, fires flaring out to all sides. Harm abandons that approach at once and blurs towards us. Ragnar gets knocked back, his shields cracking as Harm puts his speed and strength to good use.

Power. Hm. He certainly has desires, messed up as they are. Let's see if I can slow him down a little.

Harm appears, blinking heavily as he wallows in the air. Ragnar immediately goes on the attack, his buzz blade howling as it slices into Harm's left cheek. Harm recovers enough to bat it away, only for Onik to fire… Tendrils of orange light, bound together into beams. I don't know exactly what they're doing but Harm is knocked back, blisters appearing all over his skin. He falls back, shrugs, then-.

A puff of hellfire and he vanishes.

Some sort of recall spell? Fine. I turn away and fly at full speed for the abominations. The rearmost one is a collection of mouths connected to a central blob by strands of flesh far too narrow to serve that purpose on a normal organic being. Half of them rotate my way, beams of black and purple energy flying from some while others spit something gelatinous. I flow around them, reaching out for its desir-. Okay, no, not going to work. I don't know what they think with, but being outside of creation appears to mean that they're sufficiently outside of the orange light to ensure that I can't use my exotic abilities on them.

BaBUM.

Orange bolts fly past as my escorts take their shots.

"Yurgaghereek!"

The.. thing shakes and tries to evade, but I'm not sure how injured it is getting. We're coming up on the Silver City now, and while I don't know what their actual task here is that's reason enough for me to want them stopped. I desire and they slow, an invisible force pulling them back towards me. The more powerful fliers try to fight against it, but to little avail.

Let's see what the chaotic waters of the pre-creation universe taste like.

I twist my head sideways as the mouth swarm thing gets closer and lunge, mouth wide and fangs bared! I envelop it, left fang piercing the central mass of its body while the right goes through one of its mouths.

And then swallow.

BaBUM.

Doesn't taste of much, actually. But I think a little pre-creation magic could help if I'm going to be fighting angels.

Digest.

back

Judgement Day 22

next

26th December

I'm sleeping in tomorrow

I feel my skin shift, scales hardening as my construct body adapts to having something outside Creation made a part of it. I wonder if not being from this universe myself helps with that? Or any residual energy I soaked up during my first visit to Masak Mavdil? No idea, and I doubt that it will help with the rest of these things anyway.

I wheel around, head snaking out to chomp on a black crystal gargoyle-looking thing. It fractures as my fangs bite into it, venom precipitating through its flaws for a few seconds before it too heads down my gullet. I should feel weirder about this, but I was planning on killing them anyway and at least this way there's a small chance it will stick.

And if I'm going to have to fight angels without my usual paraphernalia-.

Agh! A multi-headed lamprey thing has latched itself onto my side, chewing at my construct flesh! Onik slashes at it, but while its gel-like flesh parts easily under his assault it swiftly oozes back together. Monk he might be, but he hasn't been tutored in the more esoteric applications of the orange light yet. I bend, momentarily catching sight of Ragnar enthusiastically using his buzz blade on a seahorse/dragon/bat abomination and smacking another which had been coming up behind him towards the ground using my tail. An eye-tendril on the lamprey-leech spots me coming and I feel it shift its grip as it tries to burrow under my 'skin'. Instinctual, then: it should be obvious that I'm not an organic creature to any thinking being. All it's doing is getting closer to the bit of me that can digest it.

And the parts it's already bitten off haven't stopped being a part of me.

I twist back on myself and bite, my mouth filling with black slime. It tries to transform into vapour to escape but I breathe it down, the orange light already inside it answering to my desires and holding it in place.

BaBUM.

And digest.

"These things…"

Ragnar has pretty much cut his target in half, but both halves are clearly still active. The upper portion still has its wings and so can fly, while the lower half has… Parasitised on another abomination, granting it extra stabbing limbs at the cost of aerial mobility.

"Die…"

Ragnar goes after the upper portion, slicing off wings and head before the reformed creature can get a grip on what has happened to it. I'm not sure that the abomination is dead, but it isn't moving coherently enough-.

"Hard!"

A fat beam of orange light blasts from his eyes, widening to encompass the entire upper portion and reduce it to dust. Which still might not kill the blasted thing, but it will do for now.

A handful of abominations try to make a break for the Silver City, apparently passing over whatever line the wards consider to be an invasion. Being abominations, they pass through unhindered. Golden fire from a dozen towers with good lines of sight rains down the moment they do, to no effect. The sonic attacks which follow a moment later do some damage, helped by the fact that the abominations are far more interested in hiding from me than pursuing whatever their objective was supposed to be.

The rest of the flock are fending off Onik or doing their best to head back the way they came. I… Seem to remember reading that intelligent abominations are even more unusual than biddable ones. If they're fleeing… They can go. Defending the human souls here is far more important than helping the angels.

"Ragnar, hunt down the ones hiding-"

There's a flash as a series of small but intense explosions envelop an abomination made of blue eyes and pink cables. I take a moment to try and spot the origin, and get a friendly wave from Mr Queen.

"-in the City."

He turns away from the city, fires another eye blast at the lower part of his first target, then lifts his sword and charges after a smoky shadow which is burning everything it touches.

Then I pass through the barrier and the angels start singing at me.

The first hit surprises me so much that I don't block it; my construct-flesh ripples and I feel twinges of… Cramp, really. Okay, since they're.. misinformed rather than malevolent I'd.. probably feel a bit bad if I ate them. Instead I exert myself, lances of sonic energy bending away from me and expending themselves against the structure of the City buildings around me. Next I swoop down on an insect monkey that is using some sort of green.. magic discharge to try and eat a hole through a wall. It tracks me with eyes in the back of its head and ducks, arms changing sides as it points the green stuff my way. But instead of an attack, it forms a barrier.

"Are you intelligent?"

"Yes-yes-yes."

I shift my position so that it has a clear run out of the City.

"Flee back to Hell and I will not follow you. You are not worth my time."

"Kurrrk-kurrrk-kurrrk."

It… Chokes..? Uncertainly for a moment, then creeps in that direction as rapidly as it can while still watching me like a hawk. A few paces later an angel takes a shot at it and it abandons caution and flees instead.

Ragnar floats up beside me, eyes glowing. "Shall I..?"

"No, no, I've paroled him. Are the rest destroyed?"

He nods. "One is unmade by my hand, Lantern Onik crippled two and a fourth was slain by members of your world's Justice League."

"Crippled?"

He shrugs. "Studying fallen-."

"Not during a battle where they could be liberated and healed." I reach out through the orange light for his ring. "Onik, kill them and then report to me."

"Yes-" Fiss "-Great Master."

"Ragnar, any sign of anyone else?"

He clenches his right fist, emphasising his ring. "My scans aren't-."

He blinks in surprise as someone -ah, Mister Queen- lands on my midsection.

"Hey, Orange. Like the new look. It's very… Snake. In a good way."

"It's better than death." I turn the front portion of my body around so that I'm looking at him. "Something I can do for you, sir?"

"I don't really know demons, but green fire's bad, right?"

"It's Neron's favourite form of mundane attack, w-?"

"'Cause I saw some green fire in that tower over there-" He points. "-a minute ago. I'd go up myself, but I can't get a rope line into these walls and it's a lot of stairs-."

"RagnarOnikwithme."

I stick out my tongue, lasso Mr Queen with it and then head for the tower he indicated at speed. Neron being anywhere is incredibly bad news, but I was sort of hoping that the three remaining kings could deal with him. But if he's here while they're out there… It's not as if I know what he's been planning-.

The wall near the opening we're heading for explodes outward, green fire burning through whatever magic usually binds the place together.

And in the middle of the smoke and dust I see-.

Asmodel?

back

Judgement Day 23

next

26th December

Seriously considering letting him have the place

"1:1 Let there be light."

Owowowowow!

I back off, wincing at the sudden illumination. Wait, light shouldn't hurt, I'm made of light, what's going on? Is it.. what Mr Excalibris did to-.

"1:2 It may have been wiser for you not to eat those abominations, beast."

Mr Queen looses a short volley, and Asmodel responds by folding his arms across his chest and ignoring the explosions completely. A beam of orange light from Ragnar and a rapid series of energy pulses from Onik are countered by a song that sounds like it would be rattling my-

"Gahgh!"

-bones if I had any, and Mr Queen has dropped his bow onto the balcony beneath us. Since he's clearly in pain where he is I extend my tongue and toss him over to it to get him out of the cone of fire. He lands.. a little awkwardly, but as well as could be expected under the circumstances, and recovers his bow before taking cover.

"Dox, I've located Asmodel. Please relay that to the League."

…

Oh marvellous.

"1:3 Useless thing. No matter how much you mutilate yourselves, however you ride roughshod over your betters' plan for you, you never measure up to us."

"Is that it? Is that all this has been about?"

"1:4 It's about us no longer being chained to you wretches! It's about order in the universe, a divine order-!"

"Whatever happened to loving your fellow man as you love yourself?"

Mr Queen unwisely draws attention to himself, but I doubt very much that Asmodel has read the Evil Overlord list and he appears to feel chatty…

"1:5 I was always against that. One must be deserving of grace by living in accordance with its dictates. Anything else is undeserved charity."

"Not a fan of turning the other cheek?"

"1:6 Yeshua's nonsense. If you let a foe keep hitting you then the foe will keep hitting you. The correct response for the righteous is to strike down the unrighteous with full force, not let them carry on their evil work! Creating Yeshua was a grave mistake, and his drivel has bound our hands ever since. What does it matter if humans are enough like us to tap into the Source as well? Their connection has always been inferior. What of value could we possibly learn from another nephilim?"

"If you have to ask, it probably didn't work."

"Is that really what this is about? Bringing back the most violent forms of monotheism?"

"1:7 Violence is a tool of rulership. Once a kingdom is properly pacified it is required only against external enemies."

Ah, the dual moral standard. Interesting but.. unsurprising to hear it from an angel.

"And working with Neron? Killing me? What exactly was that about?"

"1:8 Neron is the perfect ruler for Hell. He has no virtues, forces his lessers into absolute obedience and tortures the damned until they decay as was intended. Satanus would make Hell into some parody of Heaven, a paradise for the undeserving."

"And me?"

"1:9 You do not belong in this universe."

"And Boss Smiley?"

He squints. "1:10 Who in the Celestial Order is-?"

He blinks, appearing to realise that he's been chatting with his enemies.

"1:11 As sole sovereign of the Silver City, I pay evil unto evil."

"I'm sure you do, but what-.

The ground shakes. And the Silver City isn't on the ground. What-?

"Great master?"

I look to where Onik is pointing as…

Ooooooooh dear.

Neron towers over the battlefield, apparently chuckling as League members and angels flail impotently at him. He must be about five hundred metres tall, and the swath of green fire leaping from his hands to incinerate a flight of angels suggests that his raw power has increased as well.

"Are you insane? If you give him more power, he'll-."

"1:12 He cannot maintain the power without me. The moment he has crushed my bleeding-hearted fellow kings, his enhancement will end. And he knows it."

Okay. Can't get in here. If I get back there-

I begin to pull my body around.

-I might-.

"1:13 And there is light."

OWFUCKOWFUCKFUCKFUCKOW!

Another barrier, great. Can't go forwards, can't go back.

"Ragnar, Onik, go and help the League."

They look at me blankly. They can't hear me. Ah… I pointedly jab the tip of my tail at each of them in turn and then again towards Neron. Ragnar beats his left fist against his chest in salute, then they're both flying back towards the fig-.

"1:14 Why are you here?"

I turn down as… Zauriel walks towards King Asmodel. The meat of his wings appears to have healed, though the feathers have only barely started regrowing. No burn scars either. Purple healing ray would be my guess. I try reaching out for his desires -or those of Asmodel- and get nothing at all. I try biting the barowowowow!

"I ask you to turn from this path, repent and seek absolution."

"1:15 I should have persuaded King Seraphiel to let you go and fornicate with your mortal charge. I will commend you for your loyalty to the Divine Plan. I only wish that your understanding of it were not so lamentably convoluted."

"Forgive me for contradicting you, King Asmodel, but my understanding is simplicity itself. We exist to protect, to guide-."

"1:16 I do not explain myself to fallen angels. You may repent those sins you have committed against me, then live out your mortal span on Earth. Refuse, and I will slay you here, and with your banishment still in effect you will burn eternally in hellfire."

"You do not have the authority to judge me."

"1:17 I have the authority of the Divine Plan. You have nothing."

"Much as it saddens me that you refer to the Almighty in that heretical fashion, it saddens me further that I must correct you."

"1:18 Your theurgical abilities left you when you were cast down."

"I have eaten the Fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And we both know that mortals -such as I am now- are perfectly capable of using theurgy."

Asmodel shrieks in rage, and charges his opponent!

back

Judgement Day 24

next

26th December

I owe goldfish an apology

There's a faint shimmer of gold across Zauriel's skin as whatever Asmodel just tried to do to him fails. Asmodel doesn't seem perturbed by that, and it's not too hard to see why. He's about three times Zauriel's size, and most of that extra mass is muscle. Ah, okay, not a lot of detail in diabolic texts on the precise abilities of mortal theurgists, but I'm sure that Zauriel-.

Zauriel sidesteps around Asmodel's first punch, misjudges the distance and gets clipped on the shoulder. Even a hit like that has enough force behind it to send him to the ground. He lands on his side with a thud, and is only just beginning to push himself up as Asmodel's right foot hits him in the ribs with enough force to lift him off the ground and send him into the far wall!

I hear a crunch…

"Ah, Zauriel? Much as I admire your…" Let's call it… "Effort, I'd feel marginally bad if you died attempting the impossible. Seeing as you seemed like a good man."

"Then I will die-" He tries pushing himself up, managing it on his second attempt. "-as I lived."

"Mindlessly following orders? Zauriel, this isn't helping-"

"With full faith in the Almighty, craving His forgiveness for my failures and-" He stumbles slightly as Asmodel approaches. "-yearning to serve Him with all that I-."

Asmodel punches him in the head, smacking his head back against the wall behind him. Zauriel's eyes lose focus for a moment as Asmodel grasps his head with both hands and squeezes-.

Zauriel's head deforms with a really quite unpleasant sound, then Asmodel drops his body to the floor.

Then kicks it.

"2:1 My actions are above the reproach of beings such as you."

"Is Zauriel dead?"

I tear my eyes from the remains of the dead idiot and look at Mr Queen. "I'm not an expert on angel physiology, but… Yeah, that looks like a fatal skull frac-. Ah, crushing."

"Okay, plan… Ah, what are we on now? E?" He draws a flare arrow and looses, sending it high into the air in the general direction of the melee. It won't reach from here, but people might be able to see it. You know, if Zauriel had a plan that involved his death then I'll be a little impressed. Most of my death-related plans are contingencies for reversing.. it.

Asmodel gives Zauriel's corpse another kick as I get it. I mean, where's he going to go, Norway? So Zauriel's here… Somewhere. Not… Really clear on how that helps us.

"Is 'Plan E' something Asmodel can stop if he hears us talking about it? Because I'm a bit out of ideas right n-."

"Kinda. You know how you said that Diana isn't human?"

"Yes?"

"And how the Spear of Destiny works with magic to send it to every human soul?"

I.. can't blink. "Alright… So..?"

"So what happ-."

He shudders, his grip on his bow loosening. Asmodel looks around in shock, staring through the wall. I feel…

I feel nothing. … Nothing. … Still nothing.

"Did something happen?"

Mr Queen drops to his knees, staring into space. "Oh God, oh God."

"If he's going to hear you anywhere, this is the place. But you're not telling me an-" The light bubbles holding me in place seem to dull, but they're still there. "-ything."

Okay, so Diana used the Spear on something. Nice to see her looking into her metaphysical development, but I'm not seeing how a big burst of truth… I mean, assuming that she ends up a Truth Goddess here. And… I didn't feel it. Because whatever the Spear is, I'm not what it was created to affect. Spear Neron? No… Neron's not noted as being particularly deceitful. I mean, yes, misleading demon contracts, but it's not really his focus. The.. damned Mammon is leading would have been affected…

Who else-?

Gold light flickers in the room around Asmodel, and Zauriel strides forth. And… Somehow dying got him his wings back. I got turning into a snake, and he gets his wings back. Well… Good for-.

And then that woman from the virtualisation vessels steps out at another point. And then… Some other people I don't recognise but who I guess are misdirected human theurgists.

Oh heck, that's Pope Pius XIII. And he does not look happy. Probably because they made him leave his mace back on Earth.

Asmodel looks around the circle, apparently unconcerned. "2:2 Do not expect me to be impressed. Each and every one of you is a failure, unable to grasp the full majesty of the Divine for more than a few fleeting moments. I can tear you into mere motes of mana without difficulty."

"No." Zauriel shakes his head sadly. "You cannot."

Hands come together at chests, heads bow, and Asmodel shimmers in golden light. He whistles, then shudders as the golden light intensifies in response.

"King Asmodel. You have violated the responsibilities of your office, abandoned your duties as an angel and wilfully turned your face from Almighty God."

"2:3 You do not have the authority to cast me down!"

"No. I do not." He looks around the circle. "We are but servants of a higher power. And you, sadly, have forgotten that."

"Your words mean noth-." Asmodel's eyes widen as the bubble surrounding me finally fails. "No no!"

"King Asmodel has fallen."

"Noooooaaaaaaagh!"

A circle of golden light forms around him and… He's gone.

Right, not needed here! I shoot up into the sky and then head full speed.. for…

An army is firing on Neron. He's glowing with green fire and I genuinely can't tell how much of it is being generated by him and how much is from the ectoplasma. Golden fire from the loyalist angels takes him in the back of the head as he begins to shrink without Asmodel's aid.

Where's Mr Excalibr-.

Diana has him pinned to the field with the Spear of Destiny through his chest. Maybe… All of his theurgical permissions..? Don't know.

"Aaaaaaaaagh!"

Neron screams as his flesh burns off, and for a moment we see a face more monstrous than the perfect human face he normally affects. Then that burns off too, mana and meat flash-frying as the combined assault overpowers his resistances.

I pull up short as he finally collapses to the ground, and Mammon strides past his bodyguard to ram a spear through his head.

Uh oh.

A blood-splattered King Raphael flies down as Mammon poses.

"A good job well done, I think."

"4:1 Who in God's name are you?"

back

Judgement Day 25

next

26th December

I'd like to go home now, please

As Mammon talks jovially to the three kings-. Well, two kings. King Aariel of the Lion Host was too badly injured to contribute much, and his retinue are still singing him back into reasonable health. Thanks to Diana his forces were in place to stop the break out overrunning the entirety of the Silver City's hinterlands, but he got rather a lot of green fire thrown at him when Neron stopped pretending to be Asmodel.

Someone else who's going to think twice before trying to talk his opponents down in future.

Diana and Dr Balewa are standing over Mr Excalibris's corpse. Diana looks… Sober. I'm not exactly feeling triumphant myself, but she could stand to look a little less unhappy about the death of the man who killed me.

"Is it safe to take it out?"

Dr Balewa closes his eyes for a moment. "I believe so. With the theurgists gone and Asmodel dead, his theurgical powers would return to their normal levels." He looks towards the kings, his eyes briefly alighting on me along the way. "Whether he returns to this place or goes to Hell, that is not for me to decide."

Diana takes hold of the Spear and pulls it free of his chest. His silver blood has dried, the cloth of his robes sticking to the haft for a moment before losing its grip. She takes a moment to examine the Spear. It appears undamaged, and the dried blood is flaking off on its own.

"So… We done?"

Dr Balewa regards me impassively for a moment, then turns his head to take in the battlefield. Damned souls traverse the area, occasionally signalling a medic or a sorcerer. Apparently they've got ideas on reconstituting 'dead' damned, as long as they're mostly intact. On other occasions there's an awkward moment as they find an injured angel and have to signal an extremely unsettled angel to tend them.

"The invasion has either failed, or succeeded beyond Mammon's wildest hopes."

"I'd laugh, but I don't think I can do that any more."

"Oh? Does he not benefit most from this outcome?"

I-. I can't narrow my eyes. "And what if he does?"

"It would not be beyond the abilities of a demon lord of his age and power to manipulate events in order to secure this outcome."

"And it could have been a sentient sock. I don't want to get obsessive about puppet mastering, particularly when I don't have a particular problem with the outcome."

"I have known Mammon a little longer than you have."

"Then feel free to keep an eye on him. It's not as if we're friends; he was just the least bad candidate available."

Diana's looking past me-.

"A ringing endorsement if ever I heard one!"

Mammon's smiling as he pats me on the midsection, and I undulate out of the way in order to keep him in full view.

"Yes, despite me not being exactly what they thought I was, the Kings of Heaven have -in their wisdom- decided to follow through on their pact with me. I will be returning to Hell shortly to… Cement my control."

Diana nods. "I hope that you use the opportunity to tend to those souls in your care more kindly than your predecessors did."

He leans towards her, his belly-. Ugh. "Let me tell you a little secret, in light of your recent personal revelation." He mugs magnificently as he looks left and right, pretending to check for anyone who might overhear. "Demons? Don't actually like other demons very much. My power rests upon the backs of the damned-." He straightens up, looking thoughtful. "Perhaps we should use a new word for them?" He shakes his head, wattle wobbling grotesquely. "Regardless, my power relies on them, their strength and loyalty. I'm no nicer now than I was a millennium ago. It's… The situation that's changed." He looks up at me. "Now, about your obligation to me-."

"What obligation to you? Zauriel killed Asmodel. Your deal for fighting Neron was that the angels recognise you as king. That's happened."

"5:1 Mammon, your actions have earned you a degree of forbearance." Raphael doesn't exactly look at ease with the situation, but perhaps he's at least happy that the demons and damned will soon be leaving. "But do not test us."

Mammon smiles innocently. "Heaven forbid."

"5:2 Orange Lantern. Asmodel's deceit and Karrien's wrath have caused both you and the Earth a great harm. As we continue our Holy work, these harms are things for which we must make amends. We would appreciate your input on what form our restitution should take."

I bite down my initial impulse to tell them to keep their grubby hands off Earth forever, without needing the low-key glare Diana sends my way.

"What happened to my weapons after I died?"

"I think Karrien and the God of Escapology looted your corpse." Mammon shrugs, and I think he's noticed just how repulsive I find his body. "With the pressing need to advance on Heaven, I haven't checked your mortal remains."

"Karrien was carrying the Sword of the Fallen." Blank looks. "The short sword Chantinelle used to kill the First? The blade is split in two?"

King Seraphiel nods. "1:1 A foul thing. I destroyed it when Karrien assaulted me."

Darn. No offence to Seraphiel… Not that I wanted him incarnated as a mortal-.

No, no, I did.

"Right. Can you resurrect the people who were killed?"

"5:3 Your nature makes it a little problematic, but I believe that we will-."

"Not just me. Mister Excalibris had a lot more people than just me killed."

He nods solemnly. "5:4 We will offer resurrection to all of those killed before their time who have entered our care."

"No. Everyone. Wherever they went. If you want to make up for that, you go to wherever they are-"

Mammon raises his right hand. "Except Hell."

"-or act through proxies or do whatever you need to do, and you fix this. And I want you to pay attention, because while you might not have thought killing them was necessary yourselves, you are part of the control mechanism for the system that allowed this to happen. Actually… That 'Mind of God' thing… Was that Asmodel?"

Raphael bows his head slightly. "5:5 We believe so."

"Not a giant man with a smiley for a head?"

"5:6 It… Why would you think that?"

Never mind, then. Boss Smiley seems a bit of an abstract thing for Asmodel to have invented, but..? Don't know. Could have pulled it from.. my mind… Fine.

"What are you going to do to prevent anyone else doing what Asmodel did?"

"1:2 We will of course improve our security-."

"No, that just makes them work harder. Angels need the capacity to disobey evil orders. Zauriel knew his instructions were nonsense all along. Heck, even Gabriel was getting there. You-."

The kings look at each other, and I faintly hear a complex series of rapid musical exchanges. Raphael nods.

"5:7 We have a solution."

"Alright."

"5:8 We believe that you wish for us to feed every angel upon the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Quite aside from the work we must perform in repairs and penance, we do not know what the result of such a thing would be."

And… Yeah. I sort of assumed that they would, or… There might be some other way to do it.

"5:9 We will restore Zauriel to life, and send him to live and work amongst you. While he does this, we will study both the changes to his behaviour and his soul, that we may better assess the risks and rewards. If he remains a good man, we will offer this to others. Is this satisfactory?"

"Yes. Now, what do I do about getting my body back?"

A short time later

I wake up to the scent of blood and ash. Body… Robotic, and Donna still has my rings. Okay, I-.

I look up at the Masak Mavdil as it towers over the…

"YOU FUCKING FUCKS!"

back

Judgement Day 26

next

8th July 2010

08:06 GMT -5

My future team mates appear to be Kid Flash -the Wallace West version-, Superboy, a tough looking black youth with bleached hair and a short, black haired boy. Probably a Robin, given that Batman's here. Yep, all teenagers.

They're all teenagers, for goodness sake.

I hold back for a moment. "Sir, you.. do know I'm twenty nine, right?" Wonder Woman looks at me in surprise. "If this is the training class then fine, but if there's been some sort of misunderstanding…"

She nods. "I believe that there has."

10th July

09:06 GMT -7

Diana and I float over the North Pacific Ocean, waiting for my new tutor.

"And -I'm just checking- Lantern Stewart wasn't an option?"

"Lantern Stewart is not on Earth at the moment. The Guardians can call Green Lanterns away to any part of the galaxy at short notice."

And Gardner… I'm not sure which version of Guy Gardner I'm dealing with here. I checked his records, and he originally worked as a prison behavioural therapist before moving to a school for mentally disabled children. So he's reasonably intelligent and capable of dealing with difficult people. On the other hand, Lantern Gardner usually isn't the easiest person to get along with himself…

"And having him 'teach' me in the sense of sitting there while Alan borrows his personal lantern isn't an option either?"

"As far as I am aware, he is not allowed to let anyone who is not a member of the Green Lantern Corps use his lantern."

I wonder why they.. didn't recruit Alan? Assuming that the comic version holds true, Abin Sur came down right next to Harold Jordan so recruiting him made sense. But where was the rush in recruiting Stewart or Gardner? Alan having used a green ring for so long should have made him look like a far more viable recruit than a wilful architect or a bullish school teacher.

I see a glow over the coastline as Lantern Jordan heads this way. So now I get to be taught by the man who was himself taught by Sinestro but has no teaching experience himself. No, he.. taught Arisia, didn't he?

Just as long as we're clear this isn't going to go the same way.

"Has Lantern Jordan taught other Lanterns before?"

"Not to my knowledge. You will be his first student."

"May future generations of Green Lanterns remember my valiant sacrifice."

She smiles warmly as Lantern Jordan approaches. "It is perfectly normal to feel apprehensive about the start of your training, but I have every confidence in Green Lantern's abilities."

"Honestly, I'm more worried about the orange light driving me insane than I am Lantern Jordan's-."

"Eyes front, recruit!"

Oh, this is how he intends to do it, is it? I suppose that it won't hurt to humour him. I come to attention, hands balled into fists with thumbs pointing down where the seams of my trousers would be.

"Good morning, sir."

"It's eight o'clock, recruit. In Officer Training that was practically mid day."

"If it makes you feel any better sir, I'm still on UK time so it's actually four in the afternoon." I smile-

-and he gives me a look of disdain. "You're here to learn, not to sass me. Remember that."

I bow my head. "I apologise, sir. Won't happen again."

"Right." He floats a little to the side and looks at Wonder Woman. "Okay, we're going to be working at this all day. You may as well take off. I'll send him through the zeta tube when we're done."

She nods. "Very well. I will leave him in your capable hands." She pats me on the left shoulder with her right hand, then accelerates towards the coast.

Leaving me with Lantern Jordan. He watches her leave for a moment, then turns back to me. "Okay, what can you do?"

"Flying, environmental shield, remote accessing computers and basic constructs."

"Show me."

Construct armour, please.

Compliance.

Glowing orange armour forms around me, thin plates of orange light floating in the air about an inch away from my body.

"How tough is it?"

"It let me slam face first into a forest without injury."

"And against actual weapons?"

I shake my head. "I haven't tested it."

"Then that's-" He pulls back his right fist. "-where we're gunna start." His ring glows for a moment, then he swings his arm forward strengthen strengthen strengthen!

An additional orange plate appears between Lantern Jordan and myself, and a moment later it fractures as a bolt of emerald energy strikes it directly in the centre.

"Your armor, I said."

"Looks like armour to me, s-."

"No-" The green glow intensifies. "-backchat!"

The plate fractures to orange dust and my armour booof! I go hurtling backwards, spinning as I go! Stabilise, stabilise, don't throw up! Armour construct still… Well, there's a dent it in, but it's still in one piece. Not terrible. Fix it.

"That wasn't very strong. You need to focus your wi-." He hesitates for a moment and I add a tower shield to my construct armour. "Your avarice better."

"Sir, I-. That isn't something I don't already know. But you hitting me doesn't really motivate me."

"Getting hurt doesn't motivate you?"

"I'm not hurt. My physical integrity isn't really threatened and since you've been a Lantern for a decade my pride isn't either."

"What, you want to take a shot at me?" His environmental shield flares and expands. "Go right ahead. You can see how far you've got to go."

"Sir, I don't want to hurt you."

"I wouldn't worry about that."

"No sir, I mean… I have no desire to hurt you. If I don't desire something, some outcome, then I can't do it."

His glow dies down a little as he approaches. "So what you're saying is: if I want to make you defend yourself I have to make you believe that you're genuinely in danger, and if I want to make you attack me I have to make you genuinely want to hurt me."

"Basically, sir. Yes."

"Okay." He nods and what have I done!? "I can work with that."

10th July

18:43 GMT -5

"…zero six."

I wave my right hand at Superboy as I walk into the sparring ring. "Good evening. Have you had dinner yet?"

He glares at me sullenly. "No. M'gann wanted to wait 'til you got back. How'd your special training session with Green Lantern go?"

I sigh. "Not 'special', Superboy. Remedial."

He blinks, his face relaxing slightly. "What do you mean?"

"I've had this ring five days. Robin's been Robin for four years. Kid Flash has been Kid Flash for two years. M'gann has been a shapeshifting telepathic telekine since she was born and you've been being programmed to be Superboy since before you were born. I -on the other hand- am seven years older than Lantern Jordan was when he got his ring. I'm not getting privileged treatment, I'm trying to catch you up."

"Oh." He blinks again, his eyes avoiding my face. "Ah… How'd it go?"

"Alright? I don't know, I've never sparred with a power ring before?"

"Well…" He shrugs. "Who won?"

"Neither of us? Both? It was a learning exercise, not a contest."

Though someone found out that while an Orange Lantern can heal his many injuries easily, he can't heal the ones he creates when you finally succeed in making him want to hurt you, didn't they, Lantern Jordan?

Maybe he can get Ms Ferris to sign his cast.

back

NEXT CHAPTER

Z-E-R-O

BACK

Z-E-R-O 1

next

Z-E-R-O

27th December

Fucking fucking fucking…

Stroke. Stroke. Stroke.

A little way to my right I spot a fisherwoman as she notices me and stops collecting her crab pots in favour of staring at me. Hers isn't the only boat around, even at this hour… Whatever hour it is, but I suppose that the irregular nature of my approach warranted a second look.

Stroke. Stroke.

Lucky that my muscles run off generator power…

A moment passes as I draw nearer to the shore, and she starts as she finally realises who I am. She calls out… Something in Themysciran Greek. The Amazons and I are both so used to me understanding each them perfectly thanks to the bullshit-magic of power ring translation that it probably hasn't occurred to anyone that I have no idea what anyone not speaking English is saying without it.

I lock my oars in place for a moment, wave, then return to my work.

Stroke. Stroke.

There was a time -and it feels like a long time ago now- when I was cycling back from my job at Gardners Books, and my chain fell off in an area with poor illumination. I couldn't see what I was doing well enough to fix it so I decided to walk home, pushing the bike along with me. An hour or so later, with my goal in sight, my mother got in her car and came looking for me. She offered to give me a lift back the last 300 metres or so but I opted to keep walking instead, preferring to finish the journey-

I pull my oars back inside the boat, stand and jump out into the shallow water. Once I've found my footing I turn and drag the boat up onto Themyscira's beach.

-myself.

I take a moment to look around. The women working on the shore are mostly still at their tasks. I'm pleased to see that it takes a little more than an Act of God's-Immediate-Subordinates to shake the women of Themyscira out of their routine. Or… As a Discordian, should I be displeased? Ah, I can be happy either way. A few look around to watch me -tasks permitting- but these are mostly the old school sort, who know better than to make casual enquiries where someone who has clearly caught the attention of powers greater than himself is concerned.

Right.

Trying as best I can to moderate the chafing effect of saltwater-soaked trousers made for a Greek man with waist far wider than my own, I stride towards the gates of the city proper. I should be safe now, but while being killed by violence probably-

I cast a cautious eye towards Mount Skybreak.

-isn't a significant risk any longer, I am starving to death. I made this body with functioning lungs but with only the same digestive system as Danni has. I can eat and turn the solid material into something useful for my robotic components, but I don't currently have any way to turn it into nutrition for my few remaining organic parts.

Ah, what the heck. I don't have adrenaline any more.

I hoik up the trousers by the waistband and run. Not quite as fast as I can in full power armour, but my robotic legs make me far more agile and the reduced weight gives me faster acceleration. The posture is… Ridiculous, but a nice thing about Themyscira's traditional isolationism is that there aren't any cameras around here.

The small group of guards at the gate start to form a huddle as I approach, the sergeant stepping forwards to hail me.

"Paúe!"

"Yes, that's me!" I lean back slightly, slowing as best I can on the stone paving slabs. "Please tell me that one of you speaks English?"

She narrows her eyes, taking in my dishevelled state and clearly not having the slightest idea who I am. That's rather the drawback of costumes, I suppose. I had thought that my tattoos might do, but I suppose that I wasn't in the habit of walking about naked.

She turns her head slightly away, keeping me in full view while saying something to one of her-.

One of the other guards blinks, her eyes widening in astonishment. "Phoinos lamptḗr?"

Okay, that… Sounded like 'lantern'. I smile politely and nod, while the sergeant frowns in disbelief. The one who recognised me nods emphatically, before saying… Something. The sergeant snorts in amusement before returning her full attention to me and gesturing to me with her right hand. At least her posture is a little more relaxed now. And she says… Something I don't understand, and points to the gate. I think I caught the word 'princess'… Maybe?

"I'm sorry, but I have no idea what you just said. Can I-" I take a few hopeful steps closer. "-go in?"

She says… Something else, but quietly. I think that she's spotted the communication problem as well. She steps out of the way, and makes a waving motion from me to the gate. A couple of her soldiers march ahead, but as I resume my run I swiftly bypass them. They shout… Something… I'm going to get my rings to replay this whole thing once I get them back. I hear them picking up the pace behind me, but they're far too slow to overtake me.

Okay, south-eastern portion of the city… Main boulevard there. Surprised faces look around in astonishment as I dash past. But where am I heading? Amusingly, Baroness von Gunther's laboratory is the closest point of interest. But… Eugh… Probably not anything there I could use. The inner city is my best bet, but… Iola and Tekla live relatively close to here and they both speak reasonable English. Would they be..? Home..?

Probably. Those Amazons who have taken the maternal plunge are rather getting babied themselves by their extended families. It's early morning, so… Yes, I'll take the chance.

I slow slightly and turn into a courtyard, briefly taking my right hand off my waistband to wave at a woman hanging her washing out. I get a decidedly appraising look before she waves back. I'd dance my pecs for her but this isn't really the time. Right, up the steps and knock on the doo-.

I hear loud and unhappy baby noises as I awkwardly stand and wait for whoever is inside to answer. They told me that Elpida is.. usually fairly even-tempered, but I've always associated babies with outbursts of random screeching and I'm mildly pleased to be being proven right. Even if the timing is a little inconvenient. Something in Greek gets shouted, probably the equivalent of 'come in' or 'it's open', but… I don't know that for certain.

I knock again, trying to indicate with the lightness of the force I employ that whoever is inside should feel free to prioritise the child. The disgruntled gurgles continue as heavy footsteps come closer, the door being jerked away as… A frustrated and tired looking Iola opens the door in her perizoma and.. nothing else, Elpida grumbling as she finally starts nursing from her fama's left breast.

I close my eyes. "I'm terribly sorry to disturb you -hello Elpida!- but I was wondering if I could borrow… Tekla for an hour? I need someone who can speak English."

"Pav-? Ah, Tekla is on duty. I thought that you were staying in the palace?"

"I was. Things… Happened, I ended up losing my equipment…"

"And your clothes."

"Yes. I got lent these by a guy called Alexios… I'll… Take them back when I… Get my own clothes back…"

She chuckles exhaustedly. "This is the life of a hero: running around in a another man's trousers."

"It's been a very trying couple of days."

I hear her move away from the door. "Come in. You can borrow one of my dresses. Or a piece of rope to tie those trousers up. And then Elpida and I can come with you. Perhaps the journey will stop her crying."

"Thank you."

"And open your eyes. I am sure that I have nothing which you have not seen before."

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Z-E-R-O 2

next

27th December

Early morning

Iola smiles as another woman insists on complimenting Elpida. She seems to take it in her stride, and I'm sure that I'd find it endearing if I.. had the slightest idea what they were saying to one another. I'm getting.. about as many odd looks as I thought I would, but I actually recognised the word 'Eris' at one point and that appeared to be adequate explanation.

I really need to talk to her about all of this. I don't think for a second that she masterminded anything, but I can see her throwing me at a complicated situation just to see what would happen. It's the wedding of Peleus and Thetis all over again: if people were behaving sensibly and rationally it wouldn't go anywhere, but since hardly anyone ever does… 'Shizzle be getting kray-kray'.

Or… Begotting..? I don't know, I'm far too white to use that slang.

Someone I.. don't recognise says something to me and then glances self-consciously at her friends. I just shake my head.

"I'm sorry." I raise my hands. "No rings. I've got no idea what you're saying."

She shakes her head and says something back, probably Themysciran Greek for 'what?'. Fortunately for me Iola fields the question, getting a nod and causing the crowd to back up slightly.

Iola leads the way… Nearly there. I can see the gates to the inner city a short-.

"Paul?" Donna drops out of the sky. "How did you-?"

"Rings?"

"Ah, well-." She lifts a small pouch with runes stitched into the material. "How did-?"

"Rings."

"No, you could be a demon or something."

"No, I'm pretty sure that the angels purged me before they resurrected me. Please, my brain is literally starving here."

She frowns. "What?"

"Donna!"

Still frowning, she passes the pouch to me. I open it up and yes! I grab Hinon's ring with my right hand and slide it over my left ring finger, a wave of orange passing over me as I do so.

Aaaaaand breathe easier. I have bones again! And a beating heart!

"Welcome back to the Orange Lantern Corps."

Larfleeze's ring… Or should I call it Krona's ring? Whatever, a set of Themyscira-appropriate robes replace my borrowed trousers as I put the other ring over my right ring finger.

"You are the Illustres."

I stare hungrily at my rings, flexing my fingers as I do so.

"So-?"

I lunge forward, enveloping Donna in an embrace. "Thank you."

"Okay?" She hugs me back, not quite as enthusiastically as I'm hugging her but it's nice anyway. "What happened?" I feel that I'm probably reaching her tolerance threshold and release her, stepping back slightly. "I thought you died. I just got back from Erebos looking for you."

"I died and went to Heaven." I shake my head. "I don't recommend it. The surviving Angel Kings resurrected me, but they resurrected me in my body. Which was in Hell."

"Wai-. What-? Why was your body in Hell?"

"Angels were trying to kill me, where else would I go for help? The leader of the angel assault force killed me. But that's all… Sorted, the people responsible dead and damned." And I will be checking that Mammon has Asmodel under control when he turns up. And Karrien Excalibris. "I'd like to take a short break before doing a full debrief, but if you want-."

"Oh! Sure, yeah. But… How did you get back?"

"Agony and Ecstasy were still there. Mammon's forces hadn't returned from Heaven yet, so as far as they knew we were still working together. I asked for a portal back to Earth. And they sent me to Skyros."

"Why did you want to go to Skyros?"

"I didn't, but I didn't feel like pushing my luck." I shake my head. "Skyros is where the First of the Fallen declared his vendetta against Creation. It's a demon holy site, inasmuch as they have those. I think they thought it was an honour or something."

But who knows? I really didn't feel like pushing it.

I turn to Iola. "Iola, thank you very much for escorting me. Elpida-" I lean down and give her a big smile. "-it's been lovely to see you again as well."

Iola smiles. "I am always happy to help you, Paul."

I straighten up, bringing my right fist up to my mouth. "Illustres to Blue Two Eight One Four. And… Other Lanterns too, I guess."

"Transmitting."

"I'm back, I'm alive, I'm on Themyscira and I've recovered my rings. Please let-."

"Paul?!"

"Hi Alan."

"Diana said the Angels brought you back to life, but when you didn't show up-."

"Sorry for the delay, but they resurrected me naked and without any equipment or money. I only just got somewhere from which I could contact you."

"Illustres."

"Clarissi Dox. I believe that I still have another day of leave remaining."

"Under the circumstances, I believe that I am willing to extend it."

"Thank you. I'll have my report ready for you before I return."

I hear gasps around me as-.

Oh.

Planetrise.

Ater Clementia moves over the… Not the horizon, I'm far too deep in the city to see that. But it's high enough in the sky that I can see it from where I am, along with Mother of Mercy's giant glowing sigil.

I wave, and the sigil glows as she retreats, the planet visibly decreasing in size in the sky.

Another crisis weathered.

"Orange Lantern Illustres signing off."

I lower my hands and breathe out.

Donna smiles. "Ready to enjoy what's left of Christmas?"

"No. Right now, I need a word with Lord Hades."

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Z-E-R-O 3

next

27th December

07:39 GMT +3

"You didn't.. have to come with me, you know." Donna glances my way as we fly over the orchard and head towards Lord Hades's palace. "Not that I'm.. trying to get rid of you or anything, but it is Christmas."

"World-ending catastrophes don't get put on hold because it's the holidays."

"Do Americans actually call it that?"

"What-? The.. holidays?"

"Yes. I had assumed that it was one of those anti-political correctness straw man things, but I've actually heard people doing it."

"It's.. just what I call it?"

"Okay, but-." I take a breath as we swoop downwards to the entrance, the undead on guard duty raising their right hands in greeting. "Donna, I… Struggle to pass up opportunities to mock America-."

She opens her mouth, hands covering her cheeks in mock astonishment. "You do? I'd never noticed that."

"It's just something about you-. Actually, did you have to sort out your citizenship stuff after you found out where you came from?"

"Did I actually, or, legally, should I?"

We land and walk inside the building.

"Both?"

"I still have a secret identity. Donna Troy was born in America, and explaining that I technically maybe wasn't would be a lot of work for no real reason. And everyone assumes that Troia's an Amazon anyway."

"Even after they hear you talk?"

Donna shrugs. "Diana speaks English without a Themysciran accent. Why shouldn't I?"

"Oh, I suppose… Ah, anyway, my point was going to be that there are other holidays and it wouldn't be the huge celebration it is if it wasn't the main annual Christian festival-."

"Didn't you used to be an atheist?"

"Yes, and that meant that I had to, for example, reject the seven day biblical week cycle. You would not believe how hard being theologically obliged to use a ten day week made things."

That gets a faint smile. "Right…"

"But calling it 'the holidays' is actually a-?"

"What are you doing here?"

Melinoë stares at us both from a short distance down the corridor, her hands on her hips.

"I died."

"The line is that way." She points down the corridor behind her, then turns back to me, frowning. "You don't feel dead."

"I got better. I'm here to make a formal complaint."

Her eyes narrow. "About not being dead?"

"About the whole process. I was assured in no uncertain terms that being a Hellenist meant that my soul would come here. It didn't."

"What?!"

"I know!"

She wheels and stalks down the corridor away from us. "This way."

Donna and I follow her at a jog, catching up with her just as she reaches the doors to Lord Hades's throne room. Which she proceeds to shove open, revealing the court within.

And the first thing I see is Ted Kord, blinking in confusion as Lord Hades finishes attaching him to Erebos.

"Huh? What?"

Lord Hades turns away from his newest resident and marches back to his throne before turning and seating himself. A functionary passes him a scroll and he has a brief glance at the opening passage.

"Theodore Stephen Kord."

"Yeah?" Ted turns to face him, then glances left and right in a frantic attempt to work out where he is. "Where am I?"

"You are in Erebos. I am Hades, King of the Dead." Lord Hades looks down at him, a sympathetic expression on his face. "Would you like to take a moment to order your thoughts? People often find it helpful."

"Ah..? Thanks?"

"Minos, would you be so good as to go over things with him? I believe that my daughter wishes to speak with me."

"Certainly, sire." An older looking but still vital man walks over from the advisor's area and beckons to Ted. "Now, are there any family you would like to speak to at this time?"

"Melinoë." Lord Hades raises his hands in greeting. "Pavlos! Donna! Approach! What business brings you to my court?"

We approach, and Ted does a double take as we make eye contact over Minos's shoulder. "Paul? What's going on?"

"Karrien Excalibris killed you. We're working on fixing it."

"Okay? Great? Ah…" He returns his attention to Minos. "I don't… Think so? Unless you're telling me otherwise?"

"Father, Pavlos died."

"Two in one day? That's a little unusual in this era. Do you mind waiting until we've finished with Mister Kord, or do the two of you want to throw dice for it?"

"I'm afraid that I've since been restored to true life, my lord. I won't be troubling you in your judicial capacity for a little while yet."

"You died, and yet left my realm?"

"Not precisely, my lord. I was resurrected without coming here."

"It must have been remarkably swift, then. Usually, a shade would come to us within a day or two."

"My lord, before this turns into one of those cross-purpose conversations which I know you find tiresome… I died, and my soul did not come here. It went somewhere else entirely."

Hades stands suddenly, his normally placid countenance filled with a sudden rage.

"What?"

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Z-E-R-O 4

next

27th December

07:44 GMT +3

"My lord, a little under three months ago I visited a site sacred to Earth's monotheistic religions and stole a fruit from it. When a representative of the site's owners confronted me about it, I admitted my guilt and offered to make recompense. Having seen what I had done with the fruit, the representative stated that he felt that my use of it was a good thing, but that he would need to consult his superiors before he could give me a firm decision."

I start pacing a short circuit in the middle of Lord Hades's throne room.

"Two days ago I received that decision. The earth was surrounded by a burning cage and I was sentenced to death. Along with anyone who aided me. The original representative was cast out and set on fire for daring to advance a position which was in line with his superior's general directives but turned out to be contrary to his superior's actual view on that particular matter."

"I healed him. I decided not to die, and endeavoured to fight the force sent after me. And… Though my allies wrought a great toll upon them, I was killed. Multiple sword strikes-" I create a construct image showing… My own death. I don't shudder, but it does make me feel distinctly uneasy. "-severing my arms, impaling me through the chest and setting me on fire. I wasn't aware of it, but according to witnesses my attacker also stabbed me through the head."

"I died. And I did not come here."

"Instead, I went to the Silver City, and was placed inside one of their… The illusion generating devices they use in an attempt to convince people of the righteousness of their god. I broke out, spoke to the locals, discovered that they'd all been deceived by one of their number and his allies and was eventually able to persuade them to resurrect me."

"My lord, I am… Not good at faith. I've been an atheist since I was old enough to realise that adults could be wrong about things. Even when I came to this world where gods clearly do exist, I didn't see that fact as.. relevant to me. It wasn't until I became a citizen of Themyscira that I… I began to think about what that meant for my life, the way I should.. live. And while I embraced Eris as my particular patron, I have paid homage to all of the major gods and.. several minor ones."

And what a waste of bovine bones and fat my sacrifice to Zeus turned out to be.

"My lord, if there is something I have done to offend you or the other gods-" I raise my right hand and wave it left and right. "-other than the obvious things I've done to offend Zeus and Apollo, then I apologise. Please, let me know what it is, that I may make amends. But if it isn't something that I've done, then…"

I stop, facing Lord Hades and looking him directly in the eyes.

"My god, why did you forsake me?"

"I did not. Though my brother has made representations to me concerning your eventual fate, I-" Oh dear. "-had a mind to judge you fairly. What was the nature of the being who slew you?"

"He was an angel. Significantly enhanced above the normal limits of their theurgical power by the magics of the souls of imprisoned theurgists."

"Where did you make your stand?"

"The province of Labyrinth in Hell, just outside Masak Mavdil."

"If you died in an afterlife other than this one, that might have resulted in you being trapped there. Certainly, it would have caused you some delay in arriving here. It should not have resulted in you going elsewhere. Whatever crimes you might have committed against them, it was for me to judge you and for them to make representations to me."

He steps down from his dais.

"When Donna came here looking for you, we all assumed that you had not in fact died. Now that I know what the reason for that was, I will be making extremely strong representations to the Silver City upon this matter."

I bow. "Thank you, my lord. After recent events I have far more faith in your judgement than in theirs."

He nods. "Understand that I will ask them about the fruit which you mentioned. It is my experience that people oft underreport their own culpability in such matters."

"Entirely reasonable. It was a magic fruit."

He nods again. "I will send word by Thana when I have their response."

"Thank you." I glance at Ted, who appears to have calmed down somewhat. "On a related matter, my friend Ted was killed during the angel's attack."

"Do you wish to witness his judgement, or make representations on his behalf?"

"Before I left the Silver City, I secured an agreement that the angels would resurrect anyone they killed. Clearly, if Ted is here then they will need to come here in order to discuss the matter with you."

"They have sworn to resurrect him?"

"Sworn? No, merely agreed."

"Still, that improves my negotiating position considerably. Good work. Hm." He looks thoughtful. "I assume that you would like to avoid going anywhere but Erebos next time you die?"

"In all honesty, I would accept here or the Orange Central Power Battery. This is the best afterlife I've seen, but I have a particular attachment to my Corps."

"Oh, I take no umbrage. I can well understand the desire to continue to oversee something you have created, even as a shade. Still, if you wish to ensure that you will come here, there is a spell I can perform to bind you to Erebos."

"As you do your dead?"

"It would not be quite the same. I am offering you no power. But upon your death it would bring you here, or notify me if it was disrupted. I am mindful that you were not able to come here, and I would seek to better fulfil my duties."

"I thank you for the offer, my lord. But… My spiritual setup is unique. I am… Hesitant to agree to this unless I could be completely sure that there would be no adverse effects, either on me, those around me or… You." He nods. "If I am not asking too much, could you please write a description of the spell you would use? While I do not believe that I know anyone who could cast it, there are Atlanteans who could understand how it works and judge the risk."

He thoughtfully strokes his beard with his right hand. "Yes. Yes, I would be interested to hear their thoughts, regardless of whether you avail yourself of my offer or not. However, I should see to my guest first. Mister Kord?"

"Yeah-? Ah, my lord?"

Lord Hades regards him for a moment, then bows his head with a quiet chuckle. "You weren't expecting to come here, were you?"

"Ah… No..? It's… Been a while since I went to church, and… I did host a hephaesteia… Tech expo thing. And I said prayers and… I mean, I've always liked technology." He blinks. "Huh."

"At least you went to the right place."

"It's just… I was kinda… Hoping to see my parents, and I'm pretty sure they're not here…"

"The Silver City have long been against such contact. I will demand that they change that position during our negotiations. But, once you are alive, you are free to worship as you choose. I would merely caution you to be aware of the consequences of your decision."

Ted nods emphatically. "Yeah, I-."

There's a flash of light as an angel appears.

"1:1 Oh king of Erebos-." The angel sees me and stops talking.

Lord Hades grins for a moment, then walks back to his throne and sits down with an air of nonchalance. "Is there something I can do for you?"

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Z-E-R-O 5

next

29th December 2011

9:16 GMT -8

"That's, ah… That's a bit of a complicated one."

I lean back slightly in my chair, mildly pleased that the studio managed to get one that met my requirements without being prodded. The G-Dwarfs have been… Not nagging me exactly, but repeatedly shuffling television offers to the top of my in tray for a while now. And given all the good work they've been doing in answering my fan mail, I felt like a bit of a heel for not cooperating. So here I am, sitting in the main studio of a minor religious affairs specialist broadcaster for a program which normally consists of pop-theology: inviting minor celebrities on to talk about the role of faith in their lives.

I may be a little more than they were expecting.

"Firstly, you need to understand that on the galactic scale, atheism basically doesn't exist. But then you also need to understand that I'm using 'atheist' in a very specific way. I'm referring to someone who has no belief in any higher power at all, and such a belief is very uncommon."

My interviewer nods. "So religion isn't something species grow out of."

"Not in the long term. It's not uncommon for there to be a bit of a dip following the discovery of the scientific method, because… There's suddenly an alternate set of answers for the 'Just So Story' parts of the local faiths."

"Ah, I'm sorry. Just so?"

"A collection of stories written by the British author and poet Rudyard Kipling. Amusing but nonsensical explanations for why parts of the world are the way they are. Elephants having trunks because something pulled on their noses very hard and stretched them out. In the mythological.. context, the equivalent would be the ancient Kahndaqi belief that the sun disappeared from the sky at night because the sun god was going through the underworld. At a certain point a civilisation gains the ability to demonstrate that such things are objectively untrue, and that can undermine the rest of the theological political establishment. The… Structure of the religious hierarchy."

"But, at the same time… That civilisation stands a good chance of having actually encountered a higher power. To pick a.. local example, Christians, Jews, Muslims and Sikhs believe in a single benevolent omnipotent creator god. But, all but the most close-minded will acknowledge that Wonder Woman has dealings with something, and that those beings have great magical might and are not human. Most worlds inhabited by intelligent beings will.. generate a god or two, given sufficient time. Earth has.. hundreds, each of whom might reasonably be considered a 'higher power', at least… Compared to most humans."

"And then there are… Sufficiently advanced aliens." I smile. "And I'm not talking about me here. Although I.. do actually have human worshippers now. There are.. also people who worship Superman, something I know he finds really uncomfortable. Probably the example of this that is most notable on a galactic scale is the worship of the Green Lantern Corps."

"The G-?" Mr McCay blinks in surprised. "The Green Lantern Corps? That's a little surprising."

"Oh no, it makes a lot of sense. The Green Lantern Corps has been around for at least a million years. They have a mandate to go out and do good in the universe. They have a clear and consistent moral and legal philosophy. A lot of places have stories of encountering Green Lanterns preventing environmental disasters early in their history, and then they get out into space, meet other species and compare notes… And it turns out that there's a great benevolent order of space heroes looking after everyone and everything. Or they encounter them when one of their own heroes is recruited, is brought to Oa and meets other heroes just as noble."

"Only a few places worship the Lanterns themselves. The Guardians of the Universe -the people who run the Corps- are considered to be minor divines in more than a few places. The largest purely Green Lantern Corps focused religion actually worships the green light itself. After the people of the planet Karax were saved from being eaten by the Spider Guild, they… Over time the practitioners of their main religion increasingly identified their concept of the divine with the philosophies of the Green Lantern Corps, and the light which empowers them."

"Things like this are why atheism basically doesn't exist. There are any number of more powerful beings out there. Refusing to believe they exist when you have good evidence that they do is simply… Foolish. Instead, what you get are materialists. People who believe that there's no… Fundamental difference between 'higher powers' and lower ones, merely a difference of power. What I find particularly amusing about it is how painfully logical such philosophies tend to be about moral utility."

"What do you mean by that?"

"If a normal man or woman dives in front of a bullet to stop it killing someone else, they are performing an exemplary act of self sacrifice. There are few acts more worthy of praise. On the other hand, if someone bulletproof like me does it, we're not really sacrificing anything. If I step in front of a regular bullet I probably won't even feel the impact. Rather than being an exemplary act of self sacrifice, it's merely a good deed. To that way of thinking, the more powerful you get, the more you have to do to justify praise. So the.. Guardians for example are worthy of respect not because they can crush planets as an act of will -and they can-, they're worthy of praise because of their constant and selfless acts on behalf of the people of the universe. They're not praising power, they're respecting actions."

"To that philosophy, anything that wanted people to directly worship it had better either be doing a lot of good in a non-self-serving way, or actually require it to accomplish a particular thing. An omnipotent being is of no interest to such a philosophy, because it would be trivially easy for it to do anything, and as such there is nothing it could do that would be worthy of praise. On Earth, the most notable group who have this belief are the sorcerers of Atlantis. They deal with spiritual beings on a regular basis, but almost all profess no particular religious faith."

"And what do your people believe?"

"My people…" I look away for a moment, my eyes running down the edge of the backdrop's scaffolding. "That's… Tricky. For the most part, those among my species who are aware of such things believe in a single divine power which runs throughout the universe. Precisely how that power is… Imagined varies from place to place. On New Genesis, they… Generally think of it in much the same way monotheists on Earth think of their god: a benevolent, unifying force for good in the universe. It isn't… Always considered to be responsible for the creation of the universe, but that belief isn't uncommon either. Obviously, they don't place any particular significance on the prophets of monotheistic faiths from Earth, but I imagine that you would find the generalities of their religious practice broadly familiar."

"Then you've got my own dear homeworld, Apokolips. And… The name? I've been assuming that it's a coincidence that it sounds like the biblical word of the end times, but given when that bit of the bible was written and the fact that I know that my father visited Earth about four thousand years ago it's entirely possible that the event got named after us. On Apokolips there's a split -and I've got no idea what the numbers on each side are- between those who believe that the Source -that's what we call it- is morally neutral and primarily motivated to make things 'interesting' so that it can learn from the rest of us, and those who believe that it is an essentially mindless energy, and ascribing any sort of agency to it is foolish."

"What makes this particularly significant in our society is that aristocrats like me… Connect to it when we come fully into our powers. On the New Genesis side, their ruler Highfather Izaya the Inheritor claims to have actually engaged in two-way communication with it, but… On Apokolips that claim is generally treated fairly sceptically. My grandfather tried something similar, with a bit less prayer-and-contemplation and a bit more brute-force-and-ignorance…" I face-shrug. "It didn't work out too well for him."

"Which possibility do you yourself believe to be true?"

I raise my arms high in an exaggerated shrug. "Don't know. I wasn't raised in a faithful environment. My father is the Apokoliptian God of Tyranny, and utterly rejects the idea of people bowing to anything but him. Since I.. expanded my education, I've tried reading up on the studies my grandfather performed… There's nothing conclusive. Across the universe, certain very selfless people can manifest similar magical -theurgical- power spontaneously, and when they do it… Feels like the Source. But that.. could just be mechanical."

"Other species have saints?"

"Pretty much. There are actually… Temples around the Source Wall dedicated to their lives. There are so many now that a pilgrim can spend their entire life walking from one to the next… Even taking into account the ones my grandfather destroyed."

BOOM!

Mr McCay can't quite help but jump as the boom tube opens.

"Now, last time I went anywhere near the Source Wall I ended up nearly being absorbed into it. I think my.. family have a bad reputation. But I have arranged for you to meet a temple leader from the temple with the best view of the closest part of the Source Wall to Earth. Don't worry, they've got high-quality translators, you'll be able to talk to them quite normally."

"And when they show you my grandfather's body… Wave for me, would you?"

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Z-E-R-O 6

next

2nd January 2012

8:11 GMT -5

There's a soft sound of displaced air as someone lands behind me.

"So… Are you just gunna stare at it all day?"

"No. Not all day." I turn around to look at Artemis and we smile at each other. "I just want to… Soak it all in."

She rolls her eyes as she walks past me and opens the Gotham zeta tube entrance. "It's just a training session, Paul."

"It's my first training session back. I want to get-."

"And aren't you going back to the other side of the galaxy, like, tomorrow?"

"Dox was kind enough to extend my leave slightly. Day after tomorrow. Apparently, he thinks that coming back from the dead will impress the delegates."

"Are you..? Really okay with all that?"

"Heh." She frowns slightly as I shake my head. "I read a Dungeons and Dragons fanfic a while ago, where one character remarked that he would rather die than lose a level. Because coming back from the dead just required a little gold and a high level cleric to fix, whereas level loss was permanent and required you to earn the experience all over again." I smile in what I hope is a reassuring way. "I don't like being caught unprepared. And I hate losing irreplaceable equipment. But-."

"You died, and you think the worst part was losing your sword?"

"I'm alive again now but the Sword is gone forever. Where would I find two demons as powerful as Second and Third to make another one?"

Neron would be a reasonable choice, if we ever find him. But I don't think even he has their level of power. And none of Hell's other worthies come close. That leaves… Trigon, maybe? Yeah, let's not.

"Would you really want to?"

"I'd like to have the option. It was a really great sword."

She shakes her head amusedly. "Since this is such a big day for you, do you want to go first?"

I close my eyes and smile beatifically. "No, I'm just going to stand here for another minute or two. You go right ahead."

"Okay, Weird Lantern."

"I love you too, Arrow Girl!"

"Recognized, Artemis, B zero eight."

I see the light flare from behind my closed eyelids as my rings respond to my desire for authenticity. I know it's just walking through a zeta tube, and it isn't like I haven't seen the team since I got back to Earth… It's not even as if I haven't worked with them during my extended absence. But I haven't been part of the team.

I step forward, my eyes open.

"Recognized, Orange Lantern, B zero six."

"Decided to grace us-" Beryl ducks under Tula's kick and then closes in. "-with your-" She sidesteps a punch and counters with a shot to the diaphragm, making Tula wince but not hitting a pureblood Atlantean hard enough to wind her. Beryl's eyes widen slightly as she realises her mistake, but she can't back up quite fast enough to dodge Tula's elbow and staggers back from the glancing blow. "-presence, have you?"

"I felt that I had deprived you for entirely too long."

Tula waves, then returns to a guard position. Hand to hand combat has never been her focus, so like me she hasn't spent much time training in it outside of the mandated lessons. At least, that's how it was when I left. Looks like she's decided to improve a little.

Artemis watches her movement for a moment, then turns her attention to Beryl. "Is everyone here already, or are we early?"

"Cornwall won't be here until this afternoon." Beryl steps in, then out again as Tula jabs at her. She then punches the side of Tula's extended arm, drawing a hiss. "Kaldur wants a word with you both before the meeting."

Both? I glance at Artemis, but she just shrugs back. I could understand him wanting to have a word with me, but if he wants to talk to Artemis as well it must be something not relating to my extended absence.

"He say what it was about?"

Beryl… Somehow manages to get Tula off-balance enough to trip and spin her, causing Tula to end up hitting the floor face first with a thud. Beryl steps back as Tula pushes herself up.

"No. Just something for senior members."

This time Artemis looks at me and I shrug. I wonder where the cut-off for 'senior' is. I'd.. guess Artemis, as everyone else either lacks field experience or hasn't actually been with the team all that long…

Gosh, it's only a year and a half.

I follow Artemis out of the training area and down the corridor towards the lift, and she slows to let me catch up.

"So… Are you gunna move back in?"

"Mmmmno, I don't think so. I might give my room the once-over just to make sure it's habitable in case I have to…" I shake my head. "Jade asked me to move in, so I'm actually going to be living in Gotham."

"Isn't she going to be on… Ah… Maltus?"

"It's cheaper than paying someone to house sit, and more secure than subletting."

"I guess-." She stops, then gives me an interrogative look. "Have you told Batman that you're going to be living in Gotham?"

I grin, and she shakes her head.

"You have to tell him. You went through all this trouble to get back on the team. This is the worst time for you to be hiding things from him."

I sigh. She's not wrong.

"Okay, I'll…" I frown. "Is he coming here today?"

"Only if he actually has a mission for us."

"If I haven't seen him by the end of the day, I'll send him a message."

She keeps her eyes on my face to make sure that I mean it, then turns away and walks into the lift. I get in after her as she presses the button for the meeting rooms.

"So how come you're not teleporting?"

"What, and leave you on your own?" She gives me a demi-shrug. "While I was in the Silver City, it was brought to my attention that I don't really know what the… Consequences of certain things I've done are going to be before I've done them. I don't know what the form of teleportation I've been using does to me… Or if it… Does anything to the people around me."

"Is that… Something we should worry about?"

"I don't know, that's the point. I mean, if it hasn't done anything yet then it's probably not a short term threat. I'm going to try and talk a Controller into coming here to check everyone just in case, but… I'm going to curtail my usage, just in case."

"I guess that makes sense."

The lift doors open and we proceed out, Wallace sticking his head out of one of the rooms.

"Hey, beautiful! Looking good!"

"Hey Wallace." I look him over lasciviously. "Not looking so bad yourself."

Artemis shoves me into the wall.

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Z-E-R-O 7

next

2nd January 2012

8:17 GMT -5

"Hey, look who's back."

Richard grins at me as I push open the door to the meeting room, construct ice pack on my head. Artemis spots it, then gives her head a small shake, breath hissing dismissively through her teeth. M'gann smiles, Kon nods and Kaldur…

Kaldur stands, and holds out his right hand. I dismiss my construct and shake it.

"Welcome back."

"Thank you for having me back." We release our mutual grip, and I step back to occupy an empty seat. "What's on the agenda?"

"In essence, what your return means for the team."

"It was only six months. You can't have forgotten what working with me was like that quickly."

Kaldur's eyes dip for a moment as he shakes his head. "The original purpose of this team was to give young heroes the opportunity to work independently from their mentors, and to hone their skills under the tutelage of the entire Justice League. You were to be the program's first graduate-."

"Except for Roy-. Ah, William."

Kon looks unconvinced by Wallace's technically accurate claim. "He went on two missions with us. And one of those was just him trying to work out which one of us was the mole."

"Regardless of the particulars of Roy's status, it is Orange Lantern who presents the problem."

I nod. "Because I'm not joining the Justice League soon, if ever."

Richard raises his right eyebrow. "Do you actually want to, Oh El?"

"… Not really."

"Then we have a problem. I am uncertain how much a League member can teach you. Lantern Gardner has been clear that you train together as equals, and Lantern Stewart has stated that he learns more from you than you do from him."

"There's always more to learn, but… Yeah. And…" I look over to M'gann. "I'm pretty sure that M'gann is a better shapeshifter and telepath than Mister J'onzz."

"Stronger? Yes." She nods a little reluctantly. "Better? No. He's got so much more experience than me that he can apply his power much better than I can."

Kaldur nods. "The team takes part in missions because there are things which cannot effectively be taught in the classroom. As the team gains new members, there will increasingly be things which they need to learn for the first time which we do not."

Richard nods. "You think we should start teaching classes?"

Kaldur nods. "And perhaps act as mentors to those young heroes who do not have mentors of their own."

Wallace nods. "Yeah. It can't be healthy for Cornwall to be getting taught magic by a dead guy."

"The uniform is perfectly clean, and he's a disembodied spirit. No risk of disease transmission at all. And only a small risk of boggarts."

"No, not healthy as in disease. I mean that he doesn't know how modern technology or society work. He doesn't know what superheroes are supposed to do."

I nod. When I last asked about it, Rob said that Mr Marrack Very Senior was fairly hands off about that part of his training. I'm not sure if he can't adapt due to being dead, or if he just thinks that it's something Rob needs to work out for himself.

Artemis gives Kaldur a.. slightly hard look. "So we're getting new recruits."

"Batman strongly implied to me that we would."

Wallace swivels his head to glare weakly at his closest friend. "Roooob?"

He raises his hands. "I can't say anything. If I said: 'even if I knew who they were, I wouldn't be allowed to tell you' then you'd know I knew, even though I hadn't said that I know. And you'd know that I knew if I said that I know but couldn't tell you what I know. And even if I said that I didn't know, you'd still think I knew!"

"Osiris. Amon."

Wallace jerks his head back around. "Wait, Batman told you?"

"No, but it isn't that hard to deduce. Amon's a nice lad, Adom admires the League, and I imagine that Batman would prefer him learning post-industrial age heroing from us rather than bronze age heroing from Adom. Plus, the fact that his social circle is a bit limited would make him keen on signing up."

Richard smirks. "Didn't you say that the League had too many super strong fliers, Oh El?"

"I said it had a disproportionate number of super strong fliers, to the detriment of team flexibility. Of course, once they get over a certain number they can use tactics which rely on it. And Amon also has enhanced speed and intellect."

M'gann turns to Kon while simultaneously enveloping his left hand with both of hers. "Do you think Kara will want to join?"

Kon gives his head a small shake. "She's not really.. into it. I think she finds the whole thing really weird. Krypton didn't really.. have superheroes."

"Huh." Wallace sits back a little. "I kinda thought being a superhero was just part of being Kryptonian."

"Traditionally, Els are scientific researchers. Kal-El grew up on Earth. Kara Zor-El grew up on Krypton, so she's a lot more… Traditional."

"Yeah, but she's still super strong, super fast and has laser eyes."

Richard shrugs. "I don't know, Wally. She's also got tons of knowledge from growing up in a space age civilization. She'd probably find it a whole lot easier to use that than learn about how Earth's laws work."

"Ac.. tually…" Artemis frowns. "I think she should think about coming here even if she doesn't wanna be a superhero. Robin, you remember how hard it was to learn how to use super strength, right?"

He nods ruefully. "Yeah, me and every thug and rooftop in Gotham."

"Superman grew up super strong, but she didn't. Is she.. breaking stuff?"

Kon shakes his head. "No, but she is being really careful. Superman suggested she try learning self defense, but she just said…" He shrugs. "'What's a mugger going to have that could hurt me?' And she's got a point."

"Zatanna has informed me that she would like to rejoin the team." Everyone looks at Kaldur.

Richard frowns slightly. "She didn't say anything about that to me."

I don't look at him.

"Her father no longer requires her care, and…" Kaldur looks at me, and after a moment everyone else's gaze follows his.

"What?"

Artemis rolls her eyes.

"Look, I didn't tell her to leave, and I didn't encourage her to come back. She's-."

Artemis nods sarcastically. "Yeah, I'm sure you coming back had nothing to do with her decision. And I'm sure the fact that Jade's gunna be on the other side of the galaxy for months didn't have anything to do with it either."

Ahhh… Shazbot.

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Z-E-R-O 8

next

2nd January 2012

8:28 GMT -5

"…po-ssible, but unlikely." Richard and I lag slightly behind the others as we make our way to the training area. "Flag Sergeant Pushkin is a career soldier in an elite military unit. The minimum age the Red Rockets are taking anyone is twenty five, and they'd be top flight officers and elite soldiers. There aren't… Red Rocket Juniors or anything like that."

"Sure there are." He raises his left arm and activates his holoscreen, displaying… A video of patriotic Russian school children wearing power armour made of painted cardboard boxes while Sergeant Pushkin watches in admiration. "See?"

"I think they're a little young for us."

It was nice to learn that he'd made the cut. Quite aside from the fact that it probably means that the Russian government isn't going to nag me about it, the League are going to have an easier time operating in Russia and its allies and can count on a slightly friendlier reception from a permanent member of the Security Council. In a few years they can promote Robert, then it will just be a matter of finding a French superhero worth including.

…

Four out of five isn't bad.

And.. of course, Justice League membership should be about expanding the League's capacities, not about national representation. But Sergeant Pushkin does increase the League's capabilities with his ability to effortlessly hijack nearby machines. His armour and weaponry aren't terrible, but they're not anything other League members can't do better.

"And the other three new League members don't have partners."

"Excuse me." I fold my arms across my chest. "Alan most certainly does."

Richard grins as we enter the training area and fan out, facing the zeta tube. Canis is sketching something while Beryl watches and Raquel tries to tell him to stop. Tula and Garth are standing so that their shoulders are touching. Let's see: Robert sent his apologies and Donna's back at college. Not sure where Roy is, and if Zatanna's rejoining she isn't here as yet.

"Isn't he kinda your sidekick?"

"He's got about twenty years' experience on me. So, no."

Beryl's head snaps around. "I thought we weren't allowed to use the-"

"Recognized, Red Rocket, two six."

"-'s' word."

Sergeant Pushkin marches out of the zeta tube, helmet under his left arm and smiling broadly. "Hello Justice Youth!"

There's a.. slight hesitation from the assembled members of the team, a marvellous diffusion of responsibility as no one wants to be the one to tell him that we're not actually called that.

We really need to pick a name, don't we?

"I am Red Rocket, but you can all call me Dmitri."

Kaldur finally steps forwards, holding out his right hand. "We are pleased to meet you, sir."

There's a slight flicker of hesitation before Dmitri shakes his hand. Not completely sure what that's about-. Ah. He's confused about the discipline. When people not entirely familiar with America's superheroic tradition hear that they don't run their… Our organisations with military discipline, there's a slight tendency to assume that we act like slobs when not in public. He's been to at least one Justice League meeting and I know for a fact those are nothing like as formal as military briefings. And yet, here we are, lined up to greet the 'officer' who was prepared for… A Scout troop or something. But we're also- Canis stows his sketchpad somewhere. -not as disciplined as officer cadets. Our costumes aren't uniform, our lines aren't straight and we're not all shouting 'yes, drill sergeant'… Which means that he's not sure either way.

"Please, it's Dmitri. I have no command authority over the team!"

Kaldur.. looks like he isn't completely comfortable with the situation either. "Do you have a mission for us, sir?"

"An assignment, yes. I am afraid that you will not be fighting the forces of evil today."

The training area's holoscreen lights up behind him, showing images of last week's fight in Heaven.

"As you know, winged humanoids of a species associated with Christian mythology attacked the Earth last week. At this point the Justice League is aware of all of the locations where they focused their efforts."

The pictures shrink, a rotating globe covered in red dots replacing it. Some of them… Ambrose escaped, but he was fairly peeved at me until I rebuilt his house. Ted said that he expects a fight with his insurance agency even though he can categorically prove that KordTech New York's destruction wasn't an Act of God. Looks like they nuked Aleister Crowley's holiday home, which is probably a good thing. Skyros didn't have any working telephones after what the angels did there, though I'm not sure what they were hoping to achieve. As far as I'm aware the First hated the place, precisely because of its historical significance.

"Some of these sites, there are clear reasons why they would be targeted. They have long histories of occult practice, or are… Home to strange monsters." A wide cross-section of red dots turn green. "But that still leaves us with many which do not have such histories or inhabitants. You will divide these sites between yourselves as you see fit, and investigate them."

Kaldur nods. "How long will we have?"

Dmitri grins. "Until something explodes!"

His joke falls… Somewhat flat. Though I suppose that he has a point. This is a fieldwork task with no obvious opposition. Unless something does explode, we could keep working on this until we have a solution. And once something does explode then it's probably too late for it to matter.

"Ah… That is, as long as you like. Local authorities will be investigating as well, but you have expertise and access to resources which they do not have."

There's a brief round of pings as my team mates' computers receive data packets on the locations. I tap my ring and grab a co.. py.

I frown. The heck were they doing on Ayers Rock?

"I have just a few more things to say before you may begin your work. First, I am your commissar for the week!"

Out of the corner of my eye I see Tula turn her head slightly towards Beryl. "Commissar?"

"I will encourage you in your work and sing uplifting patriotic songs!" He grins even wider. "But only if you are very slow, yes? Also, those of you who live here will have great pleasure of having me do the cooking. Best thing about not living in backside of Siberia is that we get decent food. Second, your old team mate Zatanna will be rejoining you, as well as new team mate."

"Recognised, Zatanna Zatara, B zero nine, Starfire, B one eight."

Starfire? What's she doing here-?

Zatanna strides through the zeta tube exit, wearing… Not her Sororitas armour, but a slightly armoured version of her old stage magician costume. She's also carrying her staff. She smiles at the team, then walks around the group to.. stand between myself and Richard.

Then-.

Ah. The individual I know as Red Star strolls out and stands at ease next to Red Rocket.

"Hello! I am Starfire! I will look forward to working with you all!"

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Z-E-R-O 9

next

2nd January 2012

8:39 GMT -5

Raquel has been shooting Mr Kovar puzzled glances since we sat down. He finally picks up on it, straightening up in his seat and looking directly at her, his face impassive.

"Yes? Is there something I can do for you?"

"What do you.. do, exactly? 'Cause I've been keeping up with foreign superheroes and I've never heard of you."

"I have not been active as a superhero. There is no reason why you would have heard of me."

And his head goes back down to reading the League's compilation of reports of the whole 'Sky On Fire' event.

"So… Why are you on a superhero team?"

"Because I want to be a superhero. Russia does not… After the collapse of the Soviet Union, our training systems for new superheroes have not been as good as they were. Many Russian citizens with powers join the mafia or radical political groups. America has the longest tradition of any country of producing superheroes. Therefore, this is the best place to continue my training."

"So you've been training. Who with, Red Rocket?"

"No, in the Zhukov Air and Space Defense Academy in Tver. I am not a.. qualified officer, but I have been trained combat and tactics."

"You a pilot?"

He hesitates slightly. "I am.. trained to fly light aircraft, fighter aircraft. I am not.. ace pilot. Is not.. useful, with my strength."

"You can't fly yourself?"

"Ahh…" He glances aside, smiling slightly. "Yes, but… Not very fast. I prefer space ship."

"You fly rockets?"

"No. My father… Worked on secret projects. Analysing alien technology for government. Some was.. not good for human body." He shrugs. "Some was very good for human body. Project produced a ship of.. many parts. Some human technology, some alien… Works better for me than for anyone else. Like the Chinese with their Immortal Dark Man." He smiles faintly. "Only my power does not eat me."

"Technically, his doesn't eat him either. The Durlan technology just causes his molecules to lose cohesion with one another. The ship doesn't consume him."

Mr Kovar nods. "I will remember that, sir."

"I'm.. not actually 'sir'. I was the team second in command, then I resigned."

"You are not an officer in the Orange Lantern Corps?"

"No, I-" I nod. "-am. But unless you join the Corps, or the Darkstars, or Legion, you still don't need to call me 'sir'."

"I was.. being polite. What should I call you?"

"Up to you, really. I'm fine with you using my name, Orange Lantern, Oh El… You can call me 'Illustres' if you want, but I'm not used to people using that title yet."

He nods. "I.. don't actually know your family name."

I sigh. "No one does except me, and I haven't found a way to communicate it to anyone."

He stares at me, his eyes widening slightly. "You are serious? It was in the file about you, but I thought it was joke."

"Not a joke-. Not a joke from whoever wrote the report. Possibly a joke from whoever's doing it to me."

He frowns. "That is very strange."

I shake my head. "Compared to magical mind control starfish, it really isn't." I wave my right hand, expanding my holographic screen. "Okay, so unless anyone has a better idea, I think we should start with the one in Liverpool. That's got John Constantine written all over it."

Raquel nods. "Your magic guy, right?" She tries to bring up his file, and… All that's there is basic biographical information. "Ah…" She closes the file and opens it again. Same result. "Didn't this..? Used to be a whole lot bigger?"

Oh, that's interesting. I call up the file on my own screen, then apply my ring to it. Yep, it's not a permissions thing. Not unless Batman's gotten a whole lot more paranoid and significantly upgraded his equipment.

"Huh. Never actually seen the results before…"

"What, the League getting hacked? 'Cause this isn't supposed to happen."

"John's got a spell he uses to wipe out people's records of him. Written, electronic…" Be interesting to find out... "Ring, what have you got?"

A two dimensional construct screen appears… With the full file. Score one for alien supertech. I flick my left ring finger at the screen, returning the contents to the League.

"Looks like it doesn't work on power rings, and if you remember the file then human memories are safe."

"I'll send a report to Batman."

"Yeah…"

Hm. I know this file was still intact when I left Earth. Which means that he probably performed the ritual more recently… I'd have to check when the League upgraded their arcane defences. Prior to becoming a Lord of Chaos John wouldn't have been able to brute force a decent ward. These days? Possibly.

"Anyway, an angel attack in Liverpool is something I suspect that he would have been involved in. Which means that I'm probably the best choice for looking into it."

"Other than, maybe, an actual wizard." She smiles in a way which looks decidedly sinister. "Why don't we ask Zatanna?"

"Yeah." I nod. "And maybe Beryl. That will make dealing with local authorities easier."

"Oh. Ah, I thought you were trying to avoid her."

"No, no, Zatanna… Is a good friend of mine."

Mr Kovar frowns faintly. "Is there problem?"

"After her father was possessed, I made a point of being extremely supportive. We did a lot of the research which resulted in the lich's destruction together, spent a lot of time together…"

His frown deepens. "She is fifteen?"

"Yes! Why don't more people remember that?"

"Ah." His brow smoothes. "So you did not-?"

"No. I have a girlfriend, we're perfectly happy together. I like Zatanna, but I'm not romantically interested in her. I have told her that."

He nods. "But she is fifteen, and likes you. We could ask either Aquagirl or Tempest?"

"No, she's probably a better choice. And I don't want her to think that I'm abandoning her." I glance at Raquel. "We agreeing on Liverpool?" She nods. "Okay, I'll ask them to join us."

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Z-E-R-O 10

next

2nd January 2012

8:46 GMT -5

Beryl glances up from her computer, messages sent to the appropriate people in the Liverpool police. "How exactly are we getting there? The zeta tube only goes as far as London."

Zatanna frowns. "Paul can just transmit us there."

"I'm… Trying to ease up on doing that."

She frowns, puzzled. "Why?"

"Because… When I spoke to Boss Smiley, he pointed out that I've been rushing.. certain things without knowing the results. I know orange light exposure alters the way people think, and I've been… Cavalier about it."

"Oh. Then how about I put a spell of protection on everyone first?"

"Um. " I glance at her staff. "We also didn't-."

"This?" She raises her staff slightly, and I nod. "If you really think it's a problem, I can just cast it without using it."

Mr Kovar looks back, his eyes moving from me to Zatanna. "Is there a problem? We can use my ship if it is necessary."

Raquel raises her eyebrows as I trigger the external door and we walk up the ramp to the exterior. "You brought it with you?"

"The Director…" He looks a little uncomfortable. "Knows that the Justice League is not entirely comfortable with government-backed, non-American superheroes. To reduce this discomfort, I and Red Rocket are to be supported to the fullest extent possible. I may be recalled, but ship is assigned with me."

Raquel stops. "Is it in the hangar?"

"No. Would not fit." He looks at me. "Ship is in upper atmosphere. Should I call to it?"

"Please do." He nods, and taps his earpiece. "Does 'fullest extent' mean that I can study the ship in detail?"

"Eah..?" He thinks for a moment. "Yes, but only for League purposes. Not to share with other governments." He glances up. "The ship will arrive in two minutes."

"I was more thinking about making sure that it was safe than replicating it." I shake my head. "Last time I suggested getting the League a self-defence fleet I was politely turned down."

His jaw tightens slightly. "The League's mandate does not include being the Earth's military."

"No, but it does include fighting off alien attacks. Which is quite hard to do when you're not allowed military hardware. There just aren't enough space combat capable metahumans to handle the job. And of course, no country's military is allowed to put weapons in orbit."

He folds his arms across his chest. "You think that is foolish."

"Heck yes. The treaty was dumb when it was signed -the US and the USSR both knew that there were aliens with the ability to reach Earth- and it's even dumber now. Your ship; is it really just cobbled together parts of recovered alien ships?"

"I would not use that word, but…" He nods. "Most of the critical systems were salvage."

Something occurs to Beryl. "Was that the ship Russia was using to search for Ocean Master?"

He nods, his body posture relaxing slightly. "Yes. It is not agile, but it is fast and reasonably well armed. I have performed several search and rescue missions with it. But I would not have wanted to attempt to attack the water monster with it."

Ring, scan for the ship.

Compliance.

At least I can detect it. It's a grey half-ovoid with some truly huge thrusters at the rear. Yes I imagine that has a pretty decent turn of speed. There are.. odd gaps between the armour plates. Salvaged? Or… No, they needed the space for the shield emitters, sensors and gunnery. I can already see parts from the technology of at least two species… Other parts that are relatively common could have come from anywhere.

Raquel regards Mr Kovar curiously. "Why'd you pick 'Starfire'?"

"I did not pick 'Starfire'. My superiors selected it based on the codename of the original research project. And the fact that no present or past superhero has used it."

"They say why they picked it?"

"There is… There are problems with many symbols of old Russia in modern Russia. The.. government does not like using symbols of the communist era, the sickle or the hammer. A-" He looks down at his t-shirt. "-star is generic enough that it is acceptable. And-" He holds up his right hand and red light crackles around his fingers, a white ball forming over his palm. Looks like… Unstable plasma generated from air molecules. I wonder if he powers it himself or draws power continuously from his ship? "-I can make things burn."

"I'm afraid you're not entirely correct about no one else using it."

He turns to me, eyebrows slightly raised. "A British superhero? I am surprised they did not check."

"No." I generate a construct image of Koriand'r. "My joint first recruit into the Orange Lantern Corps is called Koriand'r. Her name literally translates as 'starfire'."

Zatanna takes a look at the construct and quietly splutters. Beryl glances at Zatanna and smirks quietly to herself.

Mr Kovar looks her over. "Is she likely to come to Earth?"

"Not.. to work on an ongoing basis, but she'll probably visit at some point."

He shrugs. "I have not been officially announced yet. The name might change, but if she is not on Earth then it will probably stay. I have-" He eyes the statue again. "-question about the team."

"Go ahead."

"What are the rules on-" Ah. "-interpersonal conduct? I am used to military environment, but this is not military."

Zatanna turns her head aside, hiding her mouth behind her right fist.

"There… Aren't any formal rules. You're expected to behave in a professional manner when working, but other than that the only real.. issue is the age difference. Robin joined the team at fourteen, and-."

"I do not wish to date Robin."

Zatanna snerks.

"Okay, yes, good. But you should understand that there are a range of ages represented on the team."

"Yes, I will be aware."

There's a wailing sound in the air, quiet but growing in volume.

"Where are you planning on living? There are rooms in the mountain-."

He nods. "I am used to living in barracks. The mountain will be fine."

There's a woosh of displaced air, and the cloud cover condenses in a sudden brief downpour. His ship is about three kilometres above us, having reversed its direction in order to use its own thrusters to slow down. Movement arrested, it descends towards us, car alarms triggering across Happy Harbour.

"So, ah…" Raquel points up at it. "That doesn't come with a stealth mode, huh?"

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Z-E-R-O 11

next

2nd January 2012

15:52 GMT

Mr Kovar's eyes are constantly in motion as we head down Duke Street, taking in everything we walk past. Looks like the gentrification hasn't quite made it this far. There are some buildings which are clearly recent additions: metal balconies, large double glazed windows and areas painted white to break up the sheer red-brown of the brickwork. Others are plain brick, and half of those have their windows boarded up. Stripped for their eventual demolition or simply fallen out of use, I wonder?

The warehouse where the British heroes and I fought Dark Druid's victims a little over a year ago is quite some distance from here. No real reason why it might have drawn the attention of angels; the place was thoroughly decontaminated, both conventionally and mystically. Instead, they attacked an apparently random block of flats and burned off the entire top floor. Though it was evacuated, the fire didn't spread. They weren't attacking the residents, there was something particular about whatever was up there that offended them.

"Have you done much travelling before?"

"Yes, I have travelled across much of the planet."

"Just zoomed over it, or actually stopped and had a look around?"

"No, I have not visited. May I ask you a question?"

"Of course."

"I hear you in Russian, but the others speak to you in English. How is this happening?"

"What language are you speaking at the moment?"

"English. I need practice."

"Power rings have a translation system. As long as my rings are charged-" And.. I need to check whether or not Krona's ring actually has that feature. "-then anyone who hears me will hear me in their first language, and I'll hear them in mine."

"Ah. I knew the power rings had translation, but I thought it was only… For your hearing."

"No, not just hearing. It does writing and body language, too. Extremely useful when dealing with non-humanoids."

Except when you're not looking at the right part of their body, of course. If I'd been able to look the Queen in the face while I was…

I push open the doors to Uncle Joe's Café and walk inside. Not a lot of people in here at this time of day. One man is nursing a coffee in a window seat, a copy of The Sun laid out in front of him. A large bald man with an impressive moustache is cleaning one of the tables, and he turns around as he hears the door open.

"Fuckin' hell. You Orange Lantern?"

"Yes." I hold out my right hand as he puts down his cloth. "Pleased to meet you."

"Not going t' make a giant cake or nuthin', are yeh?"

"Wasn't planning to, sir, but one never knows when a situation will arise that calls for it."

He shakes my hand somewhat cautiously, then jabs his right thumb at the counter. "You want somethin'?"

"I would like to speak to Ms Spatchcock, if she's availab-."

"ANGIE!" He turns his head in the direction of the serving hatch. "BLOKE 'ERE FOR YAH!"

I hear stomping.

"It better not be John Bloody-" A woman emerges from the kitchen doorway. "-Constbloody hell!"

"Actually, it's mostly ash. Though they are redecorating. Do you have a moment?"

She looks at the bald man, who shrugs and then returns to his cleaning. "This way."

She leads the way back into the kitchen, steps out of the way for Mr Kovar and me to pass, then firmly shuts the door behind us. She takes a moment to size me up.

"John talked about you."

"He mentioned you a couple of times as well. Congratulations on surviving. A lot of his friends don't manage that."

She stares at me for a moment. "I heard the angels demanding you hand yourself over-." She looks away, shaking her head. "No, everyone heard."

"It got sorted out. What interests me is why they came here."

Her eyes widen. "How'd you know about that?"

"The top of a block of flats got burned off, it wasn't exactly sub-."

"They visited me. That bastard Constantine put something in me blood. So they had to get rid of it."

"I.. assume that they weren't gentle."

She folds her arms across her chest, rubbing her upper arms. "Felt like being set on fire, and I've been weaker ever since."

"Would you like me to make sure that you're healthy?" She nods, and I give her a scan. Hm. "Nothing much wrong, though if you're feeling weaker it's probably the result of arcane damage my rings can't detect. Knowing John…" Marvellous. "A few years ago he was given a blood transfusion from the demon Nergal. It made him… Demonier. Stronger, tougher, nastier. Filled with self-loathing. More than normal."

"And the angel got rid of it?"

"Probably. A magic-using colleague of mine is currently examining Elster Tower. I can ask her to give you a once-over as well if you like."

"Elster Tower. Not surprised they torched the place."

"Misery, suicide, and a few murders. Still unsolved. John stopped off here and they got worse… Then stopped. Which is his usual pattern. Why did the angels go there?"

She shakes her head. "They needn't have bothered, it's getting torn down…" She thinks for a moment, trying to work out whether to tell me. She's got a good enough grip on her emotions that I can't easily see… "There was a witch. She and her sons were murdering people, and she was… Doing something with the bodies." I nod. "John and me got her, but we didn't stick around for the police."

"John's never been very good at tidy resolutions. She and her sons died at the time?" She nods. "And their flat?"

"Left empty. I think John did something to make sure of it."

I nod. Wouldn't be too hard for him to make people forget it was even there if he put his mind to it. But actually clearing up the place would have been quite out of character for him.

"Thank you for your help."

"Make sure I'm not about to catch fire again and we're even." I no-. "Do you know where he is?"

"No. I haven't spoken to him for six months."

She mulls that over for a moment.

"It's not that I'm worried. But I think John Constantine is a man who wants keeping an eye on."

Not like I went looking for him immediately after he told me not to. But perhaps I could start looking for him a bit more actively?

"I think you might be right."

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Z-E-R-O 12

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2nd January 2012

14:32 -5 GMT

"…moral distinction between killing someone by using magic to stop someone's heart and just shooting them? Or stopping someone's heart and conjuring a fireball?"

I don't find Zatanna's cheerful response to Mr Kovar's question on magical ethics in any way strange, but I think that he was expecting something a little more… Conventional?

"I… Had been told that certain types of magic… You could not stop using them?"

Zatanna's eyes move to her staff for a second. As do mine. "I.. guess if you decide that you want to kill someone… You're always going to know that spell... And if you keep making enemies, you're more likely to be in a position where you want to kill people in the future." She shrugs as we walk down the slope into the training area. "Demons like it when people get addicted to making deals with them, but with demons it's them who do most of the work, not the one summoning them."

"…agreed to help him."

Richard and Robert are at attention in front of Diana and… A woman I don't recognise. A woman who I assume doesn't feel the cold, because that is not a winter costume.

"Good afternoon, sir. Another new recruit?"

"Ah, fuck you-" The woman raises her left middle finger at me. "-asshole."

"I'm.. afraid that I'm in a relationship at the moment..." I move my eyes from her to Diana, eyebrows raised in hope of an explanation.

"This is Mister Joseph Hamill. He recently had an encounter with a device which we believe may have been created by a mad scientist: a round yellow device-" She makes a circle with her hands about twenty centimetres in diameter. "-this size, with a dial like that found on a rotary dial telephone."

Raquel raises her eyebrows. "Damn, girl."

Ah. That makes a little more sense. I never read any comics where the H-dial was the focus. One with Alan where someone stole it to prevent Father Time researching it, and I… Think there was one with the Metal Men. Powers of dubious utility, often combined with radical physical transformations…

"Ah. That makes a little more sense."

"Etta called me after he was apprehended breaking into the Themysciran Embassy. I have confirmed that his version of events is largely true. Unfortunately, his transformation was a…" Diana looks at… Mister Hamill and he… She..? Tries to fold his arms across her chest, only for her breasts to get in the way. Yes, I can see how that could happen. "Traumatic one, and he lost hold of the device. It fell into the Hudson River."

I nod, then turn to Mr Kovar. "Starfire, how waterproof are you?"

"Pressure does not trouble me, but I still need to-"

"Gniyonna ecived, raeppa ni ym dnah!"

"-breathe."

Zatanna holds out her left hand, violet mist swirling around it for a moment before evaporating to reveal…

Zatanna frowns and holds up the device. "Anyone.. know what this is?"

"Yes, I hadn't realised that they kept it." I take it from her. "Red Arrow and Artemis played a prank on me with this last year. Plug it into the Mountain's communication system and it makes the internal communications system play 'God Save the Queen'. Quite annoying, but not what we're looking for."

Zatanna looks at Mr Hamill. "Did you.. get a picture or anything?"

She shakes her head. "No. I thought it was a.. kids' toy or something."

"Gnimrofsnart laid, raeppa ni ym dnah!"

Another cloud of violet mist and… An actual baby's toy. It does have a phone dial, and… Pressing the large plastic buttons changes the pictures. Huh. I think a small child would probably find that f-. Ah. LexCorp. Never mind then.

"Raeppasid." The toy vanishes in another puff of mist as Zatanna shakes her head. "Maybe if I had a better description?"

Mr Hamill shrugs, and if I needed any confirmation that she wasn't wearing a bra with that costume I now have it. "I was just playing with the dial. I wasn't even really paying it any attention."

"Do you have a picture of what you looked like before your transformation?"

"What, you think I was walking around dressed like this when I was a dude? Alla my stuff vanished when I transformed." She looks down at herself and grimaces. "Do you-?" She looks at Diana. "Do you have any, like, clothes I could borrow? I don't.. really…" She makes a vague cupping gesture.

Diana keeps a completely straight face. "I don't believe that I own anything in your size. Orange Lantern?"

"Sir?"

"Would you please act as Mister Hamill's tailor? I would also like you to attempt to assess how powerful the device has made him."

"Sir."

"Robin, I would like you to investigate the device. Mister Hamill found it on a building site, but he has no idea how it got there. I would like to find the device, but as Orange Lantern is fond of pointing out…"

He nods. "If someone could make that dial thing once, they could do it again."

"The ability to reliably give superpowers to people is something of grave concern to the world." She looks pointedly at me. I clear my throat and dip my eyes. "If the person who made it is a criminal then they need to be stopped. If they are a legitimate researcher, we need to find out how the device left their custody and encourage them to improve their security."

"You got it."

Diana looks at me for a moment, then smiles with… Embarrassment? "Which of you has seniority?"

Richard and I look at each other for a moment.

"Well, technically, Aqualad then Miss Martian, but I guess since they're not here..?"

"I was gone for six months. He does."

Diana nods. "Very well. I will leave Mister Hamill in your care-."

Mister Hamill pulls a face. "Wait, with the sidekicks?"

"You aren't in any danger, Mister Hamill, and we have no evidence of a criminal conspiracy. These young heroes are perfectly capable of performing an investigation."

"And I did once spin the moon around." I shrug. "Just saying."

Mister Hamill holds her gaze for a moment, then bows her head. "God, I'm… I'm sorry, this whole thing's got me so stressed out…"

Beryl pulls her neck in slightly. "Yes, being a woman. Dreadful position to be in."

"That is alright." Diana lays her right hand on Mr Hamill's left shoulder. "We are trying to help. Please cooperate with them."

Mr Hamill nods. "Yeah, yeah, I will."

Diana nods, then turns around and strides towards the zeta tube, Mr Hamill's eyes firmly affixed on her posterior.

"Robin, can I borrow Squire? I could use her intelligence and.. knowledge of female attire."

Beryl smirks. "Oh, I know nothing in my wardrobe would fit him."

"Okay. Everyone else, we're heading for New York."

I smile at the inadvertent transsexual. "Mr Hamill? Please come with me."

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Z-E-R-O 13

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Just a quick notice to finish this story only thread nicer than the last one

There is a new thread on questionable questing. Should be accessible in the list here. (linking the list itself since it should be SFW as per this)

Zoat is now banned. See here.

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Table of Contents

Stars, Crossed, part 1

Stars, Crossed, part 2

Chapter 1: Dependency Day

Chapter 2: Welcome to Happy Hour

Chapter 3: Prod Zone

Chapter 4: Skived

Chapter 5: Exfiltrator

Chapter 6: Acceptance

Chapter 7: Initiative

Chapter 8: Clueless

Chapter 9: Tracers

Chapter 10: Exaltations

Chapter 11: Home Font

Chapter 12: Beta Male

Chapter 13: Revolution

Chapter 14: Inhumanity

Chapter 15: Contingency

Chapter 16: Reordered

Chapter 17: Transparency

Chapter 18: Displaced

Chapter 19: Half-hearted

Chapter 20: Mirage

Chapter 21: Minutes

Chapter 22: Insincerity

Chapter 23: Preparation

Chapter 24: Unusual Suspicions

Chapter 25: Gude-Willie Waught

Chapter 26: Gaolbreak

Chapter 27: Ex Perdition

Chapter 28: Homecoming

Chapter 29: Aberration

Chapter 30: Widdershins

Chapter 31: What Lies Beneath

Chapter 32: Doppelgänger

Chapter 33: Prayer

Chapter 34: Spring in Blume

Chapter 35: Stars, Crossed, part 1

Chapter 36: Stars, Crossed, part 2

Chapter 37: Hullevow

Chapter 38: Black Reign

Chapter 39: Carpe Tempus

Chapter 40: Date Night

Chapter 41: Fool's Canon

Chapter 42: Triumph of the Will

Chapter 43: A Star Reborn

Chapter 44: Demeanour

Chapter 45: Family Day

Chapter 46: Zigzag

Chapter 47: Bindings

Chapter 48: Escalation

Chapter 49: Undermined

Chapter 50: Titanfall